#quasi-tragically

[ophiocordyceps]

hey gang it's time for my attempt at articulating my thoughts about V2 again. and its long so it's going under a readmore

In my mind, V2 is a machine that struggles heavily with making sense of its place in the world. The very core of its model line is based in war, yet it was created after that very thing became irrelevant. Its creators wanted to get their money's worth out of the V-series, and with V1 being effectively obsolete, they started work on V2 with little more intent than simply to keep the model relevant.

And then that failed.

The trick was that it would be touted as a 'peacekeeper,' though they tried marketing it more towards security firms and law enforcement agencies with no luck. In early training and testing it came back with a lot of judgement errors or outright malfunctioned, running off reused programming that hadn't had time to learn and develop just yet. As time went on it observed, it learned, it came closer to human than V1 ever had, and... that sort of freaked the team working on the project out a bit. V2 had picked up the peacekeeper façade readily while the higher ups started having to debate ethics, and still no one really cared about these prototypes anymore.

It really internalized the idea of bringing peace, or at least doing something that didn't add more pain to a world that's seen so much of it already, though it resented the fact that most of the project team didn't really try to think of it as a person. It nearly bankrupt whatever company or agency or whatever that produced it after they finally gave up and reached out to humanitarian organizations.

And so the first real role it found itself in was in various recovery jobs. Search and rescue, casualty scouting, body recovery, things of that nature. And it loved the fact that it could help, make itself useful, it grew fascinated with humanity and in turn grew more human-like itself, now that it interacted with them so much. Eventually it would modify itself in order to allow a greater range of expression in a way that would be understandable to humans. But even then... it wasn't really a part of human society. It was a tool, and its immersion into humanity was only surface deep, though it wouldn't figure this out in time. Sometimes people would be wary, they would mistrust it, especially those with knowledge of its predecessor. Kind of the same as seeing one of those Boston Dynamics dogs doing something innocent enough but knowing what they're being made for.

And then...well. something happened. Hell broke loose, or the machines started an uprising, or maybe the actual rapture happened, who knows. Either way, mankind eventually died, and that stripped V2 of not only its purpose, but a massive portion of what had become its identity. Now the machines were driven to fighting each other for survival, and violent conflict had slowly but surely been divorced from V2's perception of itself; it wasn't really afraid of or worried about harming other machines, that fear was mainly focused on humans and later husks, but it had forged itself so far away from that original war machine mold that this new state of affairs had become basically irreconcilable with itself. It hated that it had to do this, that it and others like it could do nothing more than fight to the death to keep on living as fuel became scarce. But it did have a new purpose to replace the one that it lost: surviving. If it had to be a war machine it could be, and it could be efficient about it, even if it didn't particularly enjoy it, even if it felt wrong.

Something was still missing though, and it spent a long time simply existing aimlessly outside of the scope of staying alive, even as it was driven down into Hell. Or possibly it was already there, being sent down in the aftermath of the Hell expeditions. Either way, the result is the same. In hell it grew furthermore aimless and lonely, survival was a monotonous task it had to repeat constantly. It stayed in Limbo because it's almost familiar, and it misses what used to be.

And then V1 one day shows up to Limbo. Its predecessor it had never met. It would be curious of course, but V1 has only ever known combat, it doesn't have the same capacity for irrelevant curiosity, nor the desire to stop what it's doing, so they inevitably fight. They fight, V1 wins, V2 loses its arm to its predecessor and is forced to retreat, and it keeps thinking about this. It grows resentful of it, replaying the battle to learn more and more about V1's tactics in order to get back at it. Suddenly it has a brand new purpose: killing or otherwise defeating V1.

Getting revenge.

Revenge is what drives it deeper through the layers, it constructs the whiplash on its own from scavenged parts, and with its head start it still finds time to be curious; it never meets any of them but it learns of Gabriel, of Minos and Sisyphus. It learns things V1 wouldn't care nearly as much about as it goes deeper into Hell, because despite the reality of everything going on around it, it still wants nothing more than to stop and learn, to be useful in some way, and in its mind, archiving information counts as useful.

And eventually that brings it to Greed.

By now it has poured over its memory of it and V1's initial fight innumerable times, resentment growing into hatred, it couldn't fucking stand that thing. It did not see itself as superior—if anything it felt somewhat inferior to its predecessor, a half-baked attempt at convincing the public to invest in the model line that never panned out, forced to claw its way out into the world and forge a sense of self and belonging.

And then of course, V1 catches up again, they fight, V2 tries to escape again and V1 doesn't let it get away.

V2 comes crashing down from the pyramid, and purpose no longer matters to it after that.

Had it lived longer, had it successfully escaped V1's all-consuming violence, it might've realized how deeply its resentment was settled within it, it might've realized why, that V1 had cast a shadow on its existence from the very beginning, down to influencing its very creation. It would've despised it knowing that. It would never be V1, it never wanted to be, and now it would never have the chance.

Had it lived longer, it would have also realized how superficial its connection to humanity had really been and how hollow that original peacekeeper label truly was.

V2 dies an unsatisfactory death under the scorching sun of Greed, a peaceful entity driven to violence and a machine with no good reason to exist.

[uppastthejelliclemoon]

Random question but which cat/kitten gives the worst/best advice?

Ocs included if you want cause urs are amazing

you're so sweet 😭😭😭

i mean, i feel like it's a given that Munkustrap gives the best advice! Though i will say that Tugger is also a very good person to go to for advice, he knows exactly what to say, and how to reassure anyone who needs to talk.

idk, i feel like Alonzo doesn't give the greatest advice? Mainly because all of his big life events happened by the motto "fuck around and find out". so he's not the worst advice giver, he just doesn't know what to say lmao

Amunet and Asparagus give AMAZING advice, it's part of the reason Amunet's basically an unofficial mother to the entire tribe, and Asparagus gives his advice in very silly ways that cheer up everyone and make them laugh

for my OCs:

Garbo is a 10/10 advice-giver (Rag def got it from her and now i'm CRYING)

Isis would find out somebody wants advice from her and say something like "I pined after my sisters ex-boyfriend for years because i thought he didn't love me i am literally the WORST for advice"

I feel like Quasi and Miela are the best out of my main four OCs to go to for advice, Miela would be super calm and sweet about it, and Quasi would be reassuring, but also just be blunt, which is exactly what the advice seeker would need.

oh Serafina... she would be so good at giving advice. i think she'd end up being similar to Amunet, just being so kind and caring, but also being a little bit stern and focused 😭

[riomarks]

HOO but percy isn't meant to be part of the 7, it's put to the senate to vote and obviously the new praetor can't go. he's only just been elected.

and percy should be fine with that. fine. let them go on the quest, he's retired. the prophecy doesn't want him, he doesn't want it. gaia actively wants him to go, she tells him so in his dreams and that should be reason enough to stay put

but his mom is in new york, not in rome. annabeth is on that ship. he would put the prophecy, the quest and the whole of the world at risk for them.

ships are his father's domain anyway, who's going to stop him?

[liesmyth]

Is it better if John erased their memories, or if they came back that way and he just decided not to fix them?

It's immensely better if he intentionally mindwiped them. TO ME.

I'm a John fan. I think he's a tremendous tragic antagonist, and that everything he does in the HtN backstory is relatable if not painful familiar. He was under immense pressure, trying to mitigate the literal end of the world, having his mind and his whole self changed in ways he had no frame of reference to understand. He went from being desperate and trying to do his best to being carried away by circumstances to going absolutely fucking insane. There are many ways to rationalise John's actions all the way to the end, which is what makes it such an effective corruption arc. If you want to engage in some blorbo apologism, there are plenty of excuses to be found.

There's absolutely no fucking way to excuse mind-wiping his friends. THAT is why it's so important to me that he did it deliberately, in cold blood, justifying it to himself as a way to take their burdens upon himself so they wouldn't have to feel guilty. He removed their agency. He didn't want any peers in the world he'd created. He could have acknowledged what had happened, for better or worse, and tried to make amends - but instead, he chose to remove their knowledge that something had even happened in the first place. It's the turning point! I need him to go into that with his eyes fully open. He's doing it on purpose! He weighed the pros and cons and prioritised his comfort over his friends' identities.

EYE believe that his story arc is infinitely more powerful if there's a point we can look at and say "here is when John's story went from things happening TO HIM to John doing terrible things". Especially in a backstory that's ultimately about divine corruption and losing touch with your humanity, I think that turning point needs to be something that has a personal value to him, something that can't be chalked up to "he was high on death" or "humanity was doomed" or even "he touched the soul of the earth and went insane."

I think it's important, thematically, that one of his first actions after acquiring godlike powers was to make sure that no one would be able to remember his human self and challenge him on equal footing, even if he's still internally lamenting his own loneliness and wishing things were different.

Obviously, this is all coming from a known John Girlie™ and Eldritch Alecto Enjoyer — I interpret John's ascension to quasi-divinity as something that was mostly imposed ON him and he couldn't control, which is why I need him to cross the moral event horizon outright with the mind violation of his inner circle. Someone who views John as more directly culpable in the end of the earth might feel less strongly about the importance of the mindwipe in his story arc than I do, but TO ME it's the culmination of the tragedy. You've become the inhuman horror, baby.

/post that inspired the question

[xiuminsmygrandpa]

I’m devastated that Dead Boy Detectives for many reasons but mostly because every characters story, even the side characters is left open. If there ever was a second season this is what I’d love to see

Niko coming back as a ghost or some other supernatural being and her and Charles bonding over accepting that they are dead. Especially because in season one Charles is forced to confront both his abusive father and being beaten to death. He repressed those memories for 30 years because they were too painful for him. And Niko did the same thing with her father’s death and the mistakes she made while she was alive. Plus I’d just love to see the two of them become friends.

On the flip side I see the other focus on Crystal and Edwin also confronting their pasts. While Charles and Niko struggle with confronting their deaths Edwin needs to accept he was a living being at one point. And now that Crystal has her memories back she will have to reconnect with her past self. I’d love to see her and Edwin bonding over being from families with money and neglectful parents and fearing they deserved the punishments they received. Plus I wanna see more of them bicker like the siblings they are! Maybe we get to see more of Edwin’s family and life when he was alive because it’s basically nonexistent in season one!

Charles realizing his feelings for Edwin are more than platonic now that he knows Edwin likes him and Charles and Edwin becoming more comfortable with being closer physically. Just like Edwin had a sexuality crisis in season one I see Charles also having a sexuality crisis in season two. Luckily he has three girl friends who are all super openly queer.

Edwin going thru his hoe phase but struggling to form emotional connections with his sexual partners because he loves Charles and Charles wanting to be supportive but also being down bad for him. And Edwin potentially confiding in Charles??

Charles and Crystal trying to make a relationship work but realizing pretty quickly they’re not compatible. I do think the season ended with them being in a quasi relationship and I see it dragging out a bit longer because neither of them is ready to let go.

Edwin going to Jenny for relationship advice and her actually giving decent advice. I feel like most fanon assumes he’d go to Niko but I honestly don’t think Niko feels comfy giving relationship advice after the disaster that was Jenny’s date from Hell. I do see both of them possibly tag teaming relationship advice for Edwin. I could also see him confiding in Crystal since they’re already bonding over their shared trauma.

I also see Charles venting to literally everyone but Edwin about his feelings because he’s having a sexuality crisis and confronting his past trauma at the same time. Charles being 100000% jealous of every guy Edwin’s been with and judging whether they’re actually a good match for Edwin. He will be the bestie who’s like “I’m so happy for you” and Edwin being like “then why are you crying” “these are happy tears mate🥺😭”

Edwin and Charles finally having a conversation about the staircase and Edwin realizing Charles only said he wasn’t in love because he wanted to wait until he knew for sure. And both of them admitting they don’t feel like they’re good enough to be what the other one needs.

As for the side characters, I wanna see Jenny finally get a gf in London and become a butcher for both the living and the dead. I want tragic mic to finally become a walrus again because he’s been thru it. This probs won’t happen but Monty coming back and him and Charles bonding over their shared jealousy of Edwin and maybe hate fucking?

This is a long shot but it would be so cool to see Desire and Charles especially when Charles realizes he’s a chaotic bisexual. And Despair and Edwin because I can see them being a disastrous duo.

And lastly death finally meets the dead boy detectives!!

[fipindustries]

bojack horse bad again

you know, i was thinking back to this show again, i watched three seasons of it and that was all that i could tomach and you know what? no.

i dont accept it

i dont care, it was a bad show, it was an objectively bad show and i dont accept that everyone else decided that it was good, i dont care, it was a bad show and im going to tell you why.

emotional terrorism

maybe im a simpleton but i am someone who cares quite a lot about catharsis in my stories. this show refused to grant that, adamantly and violently. im not saying i need a happy ending, i am more than capable of enjoying bittersweet or even tragic stories, but i need a sense of completeness, some satisfaction, some release, some sense that things matter or meant something. this show insisted on refusing to give that. all this show was interested in was get an emotional reaction out of you. it was the emotional equivalent of a jump scare. it was convinced that if it made you feel bad enough people would confuse that with beeing powerful and deep. you could get the same reaction by walking up to someone on the street and kicking them in the nuts. and it would take about as much subtlety or artistry.

2. writer led rather than animator led

you could tell this was one of those shows that were made on the writer's room, not by storyboarders or artists, by "comedians". by people with english degrees. so many scenes of characters just standing around and talking. so many "jokes" that were clearly meant to be funny as something you read on a piece of paper or on a tweet and chuckle as you read it but as animation it just gave limp, stagnant scenes. so much dialog that were references and quips and puns and fast witticisms of the type you come up in the shower when thinking of clever comebacks.

there were so many fucking scenes where everything would stop and a character would launch on some stupid profound monologue about life and philosophy and psychology and relationships. it was like the writers were trying on for size paragraphs of their future memoirs or self help books. so much dialog that was begging for an award for writing. so many "mic drop" moments that were designed to be quoted. i find that the best writing is not the one that you can just quote out of context as a cool pithy phrase. a lot of the best writing ive seen in my life is meaningless when devoid of context, is inextricable of the scene and indeed of the entire story surrounding it but in here i can almost see the seams where the writers look at the camera waiting to see if you are impressed

3. inconsistent tone

this show wanted to eat its cake and then still have it. there are stories that manage to deftly weave in and out of comedic moments into serious moments. everything everywhere all at once does an amazing job jumping from the stupidest, most childish jokes into the most profound commentary about human nature, sometimes doing both at the same time and it worked, one didint cheapen the other.

in here though, it wanted to both have a completly absurd world with the stupidest characters ever and then somehow make us care for it all as if the show hadnt shot itself in the foot. it wanted us to see caroline being in love with what is clearly three children in a trenchcoat and then take her seriously as an adult, to treat any forther relationship drama she has as if it werent completly farcical.

4. ugly animation

it continued the blight that is take over adult animation by doing that disgusting repugnant paper puppet rigged interpolated quasi flash animation that only gives you stiff poses and movements and incredibly boring shots of characters standing in 3/4 perspective in front of the camera. it dull and flat and clunky and ugly, and the character designs were ugly. the noses were ugly and the mouths were ugly and the hairs were ugly and the eyes were ugly. it was all ugly. the backgrounds were fucking ugly and the colors were ugly and it was an ugly show to look at. unbearably so. and even the obligatory "weird" stylized scenes put in to shake things off and try to pretend that it was visually interesting (for like one scene per season) were also fucking ugly.

5. it had not interesting point to make

all it could do was insist and belavor and extemporize about how this one guy sucks and also most people kind of suck but specifically this one guy really sucks and he is not going to get better, or maybe he will? eh maybe, but not really, because he sucks. and we are going to make you like him because we are the writers and we are going to make him relatable and charismatic and sympathetic but actually no he sucks, you fell for it! and what does it say about you that you almost kind of liked him eh????. season after season of him, and in case you almost found anything redeemable about him, we are going to make him even worse, painfully unsubtly so, we are going to make him look at the camera and say that he sucks, because that is the level of nuance we think you can handle, dear viewer. this is called "self aware writing" and its postmodern and meta, which means its clever.

i fucking hate this show and the more i think about it the angrier it makes me, and what makes me more angriest of all is that people like it. its popular. it won awards i think. its largely recognized as a good show and its not! it sucks and its bad and if you like it you are stupid.

[pendragonsclotpole]

I need to preface this post with the fact that I’ve been aware of Supernatural for as long as I’ve known what the terms fanfiction and fandom mean. It’s one of those pop culture moments that’s existed on the periphery of my mind as something really beloved and bemoaned about by people on the internet, but it’s never been something I really cared about outside of some iconic memes.

For the past four days, I’ve been watching Supernatural non-stop in my free time. I think I sat through eight episodes straight on one of those days, and I just have to say, the show is phenomenal.

I don’t know where to start, I could make a dozen of these posts about various points throughout the first two seasons and it still wouldn’t be enough. I’ve now taken a break at episode one of season three, because now that it’s a weekday I have work and can’t dedicate the time I could on the weekend.

First, Jared Padalecki’s acting is so beautiful and poignant and emotional. He really makes Sam Winchester into the bleeding heart of the whole show, and the entire time he’s on screen I worry about Sam. His portrayal of Sam’s heartbreak and desperation at Dean’s impending death after the car crash, as well as Sam’s horror at the reveal of what John told Dean before dying held a tragic desperation and denial that really embodied what the character represented in the first two seasons. Even as a hunter and with his special abilities, Sam felt like a quasi self-insert for the audience. I don’t mean that in a bad or overly tropey way, but in the way that he felt robbed of a proper childhood in favor of his father’s crusade. Sam is the angry, indignant younger sibling who never bore the brunt of responsibility like the older sibling did and it shows. In some ways, it makes him more entitled—I don’t mean that Sam does not have the right to be angry with John Winchester. He does. Fuck John Winchester. I mean entitled in the unintentional, coincidental way that your little brother or sister always demands the things you never had or rebels against the authority of the parent without ever dealing with the consequences you did as the older sibling. It reveals the veneer of freedom he had and the protection he received by virtue of his place in the Winchester Family. For me, it made him unbearably real, and this feeling of realness was made worse by the genuine naivety and innocence he keeps even as he continually gets screwed over by the demons. There’s a steadfast belief in the goodness of others within Sam that often conflicts with the sense of goodness he believes he lacks.

Sam trusts so easily, but he understands people in ways that should be antithetical to his upbringing. It took me forever to reconcile why he seemed so familiar, until I realized that Sam Winchester, for all that he was one of John Winchester’s son, had received the unconditional love of an older sibling for his entire childhood.

I don’t mean the perfect, kind, healthy love that often exists between fictional siblings. Too often I’ve watched media that makes me wonder how siblings like that even exist, or conversely, made me glad my siblings weren’t so fucked up.

I mean the kind of platonic love that exists between siblings living in the liminal space of love and hate thanks to the single fucked up connection that draws them back together continuously out of some sense of duty or commiseration or the need to be understood.

I mean the kind of love between siblings that would wither away when in a perfect world that does not stake their survival on their codependence of each other, but that in an imperfect and real world is equated to familiarity. Sam and Dean against the world—against John Winchester.

Out of all of the episodes I’ve watched in the last day and a half, perhaps the one that struck me most was episode 20, Season 2. What is and What Should Never Be. Not only was the title a bit of emotional whiplash—the juxtaposition of Should and Never lending a finality or a sense of wrongness that can’t be replicated by the words “Could Never—but we see Dean and Sam in a world where their one connection, hunting, has completely vanished and at a high cost to all the people they’ve saved, but mostly to Sam and Dean themselves. They’re connection as ride or die brothers is gone, replaced by an ostensibly better, healthier, more normal future liberated from the expectations of the rest of the world.

Without the death of Mary Winchester, Dean and Sam are no longer Dean and Sam. They’re just two people, connected by the two people that raised them, and likely to drift apart after that connection dies—frayed ends of a tapestry pulling apart and unraveling. Dean gains a mom and a normal life, but metaphorically loses a brother and a sense of purpose. Who is Dean Winchester if he’s not a hunter and Sam’s brother? And the sad thing is, neither of these are traits Dean ever chose. They are conditions foisted upon him, perhaps not intentionally, such as in the case of Sam, but ultimately placed on his soul until they tethered themselves to the very core of what being Dean Winchester is supposed to mean. The end of the episode, and Dean’s choice to return to the real world, regardless of Sam waking him up, is Dean fully giving up his dream in order to save Sam and be a hunter. The fallacy of the episode is in the choice Dean makes, which the more I think about it, feels less like a choice and more of an inevitability but one compounded by Dean’s readiness and willingness to go with it.

This is where I get to the crux of my surprise with these first early seasons of Supernatural: Dean Motherfucking Winchester.

I don’t know what I was expecting from early seasons of Supernatural, especially with the context of the later seasons. Maybe an overly cheesy, early 2000s ode to roadtrip Americana with a self-reverential take on the classic gun slinging frontiersman of the Wild West and bad supernatural CGI. Not to say it isn’t that (shout out to Sam’s comment on Dean’s particular brand of butch), but what surprised me was how real the connection between the characters was manifested on screen and how much good will the show built up in the audience. There came a point where I sided with Dean so much in the events of the show that I felt like I was riding shotgun in the impala. I saw it with every compliant “yes, sir” he gave to John, with every teasing comment he threw at Sam, and with every act of selflessness he exhibited by protecting other people. This isn’t to say that Dean is perfect. Sometimes he doesn’t take things seriously enough, or he’s willing to sacrifice people for some misguided greater good, or he’s obsessed with saving Sam even when he wouldn’t be if it were anyone else, but Dean has a conviction so many people lack. He has the capacity to love at a great cost to himself, either because he believes himself unworthy of being loved or because he’s not used to anything else.

Jensen Ackles does such a good job at this portrayal and with such a different technique than Jared Padalecki. Ackles embodies the desperate need for self-assuredness that Dean breathes, as well as the genuine fear he has of being seen. I love laughing with Dean as much as I love screaming at him for how stupid he’s being. If Sam is the self-insert, then Dean is the tragic hero, although that comparison feels like a poor facsimile for what Dean Winchester truly is because I don’t particularly feel an overwhelming sense of pity at his state or at his hinted downfall with that demon deal. If anything, I feel a sense of indignation mixed with understanding and frustration that Dean can’t catch a break but at the end of it all, is just how he prefers it.

It shouldn’t be a shock to admit that even without knowing what happens from seasons 3 to 15, I know how Supernatural ends. Just thinking about the ending makes me wonder if I should even continue it past season 5, but that’s a decision for another time.

For now, there’s something unbearably tragic in seeing Dean Winchester so close to a chance of a normal life and apple pie happiness (something he really seems to desire no matter how much he denies it) and then having to give it up, not just because it’s not real, but because he believes it should never be real.

Dean Winchester deserves better.

[angrylittletrashpanda]

On "alysmond" and "helaemond"

For some reason, there’s a petty war going on between fierce “helaemond” and “alysmond” stans. Fr, I totally don’t understand why should those ships be mutually exclusive? If “helaemond” actually becomes the show canon, I can totally see Helaena breaking up with her brother-boyfriend after B’n’C. IMO Aemond’s recklessness and long-harbored, ill-concealed hatred for Luke , contributing to Jaehaerys’ tragic death is a reason enough for Hel to stay away from him, never mind how dear the siblings (with benefits) used to be to each other. In this scenario, Aeamond could pursue a relationship with Alys, never mind his previous (more or less romantic) engagement with Helaena…

In addition, if “helaemond” is confirmed, this subplot doesn’t necessary have to be some fabulous love story. I mean the siblings *may* have been getting along with each other pretty well , and I really enjoy the idea of young Aemond having a crush on his big sister. I find it really cute, that’s all. In my opinion teenage Aemond, doubtlessly familiar with the idea of “courtly love” (I’m guessing this concept could exist in the quasi-medieval Westeros), might have enjoyed performing the role of righteous knight, worshipping his “future queen” from afar , as if there was a “secret RPG session”, going on but in his head. Frankly speaking, the young !Knight Aemond and his !Lady Helaena don’t even have to get sexually involved and their “forbidden love” could remain just cute, childish crush, as the time goes by turning into mature friendship, mutual care and understanding. Perhaps older Aemond, driven with his sense of responsibility, would want to become a proprer father figure/ role model for his little nephews and niece? I like to think well-educated, smart  Aemond, familiar with the story of Daenys the Dreamer, and keeping his sister company more often than her joke of a husband, found out Hel was a Dragon Dreamer.

On the other hand, we cannot rule out Helaena and Aemond becoming lovers, but IMO such a scenario would be pretty dark. It seems to me it could happened only if the show version of Helaena remained childless after two or three years of marriage (yet again, I am speaking about the show counterpart of the FnB Helaena, who canonically bore the twins about a year after she had wed Aegon) and Aemond started to fear someone like Larys Strong would simply get rid of Hel, so that the WIDOWED crown prince could take another bride. So, Aemond shared his fears with his sister, and the siblings agreed they ought to cuckold Aegon in order to secure Helaena’s position as the future queen, and thusly save her life… It’s possible the righteous prince Aemond , loathing the mere idea of fathering bastards, could have secretly married his sister (it could have been a traditional Valyrian ceremony, which still wouldn’t make the whole situation any romantic).  However, even as a “secretly married” couple, who could grow to quite enjoy performing their “conjugal duty”,  Aemond and Helaena could remain but “siblings with benefits” (which sounds awful, but given they’re Targaryens, it kinda makes sense) and never develop romantic feelings for each other. In this scenario, they could be still sleeping together after Aegon’s heir had been born, just out of sheer need for comfort, closeness or affection, or simply willing to reduce stress, feel better or have fun.  Messed up as Helaena and Aemond seem, they could have perceived sex as yet another form of bonding…  Whatever could have been going on between the siblings, their breakup after Jaehaerys’ death appears inevitable.

 As far as Aemond’s relationship with Alys is concerned, I wouldn’t call it an overly romantic love story, either. Let’s say it out loud – in spite of her sharp wits, charms and whatnot, Alys was a prisoner of war and even if Aemond had fallen madly in love with her, I would risk saying she wasn’t in the position to truly reciprocate his feelings. Thanks to Alys’ good looks, the prince “generously” spared her life, there’s no two ways about it, BUT however “besotted” Aemond was with Alys, becoming his “war bride” literally meant she was chosen to be a freakin’ sex slave. In my honest opinion, the woman deserved better and I don’t believe she reciprocated his love. Alys certainly was not in the position to fully consent to be the prince’s paramour, although I can totally see Aemond developing genuine romantic feelings for her – however twisted it may sound. It seems to me in the very beginning, it was just about lust, but later on, the prince could have taken to the “witch” because of her personality and even become fascinated with her supernatural powers. Frankly speaking, I am not the fan of the “Alys casting a love spell on Aemond” theory. She might have been using her totally prosy, feminine charms in order to endear the prince to her, and thusly make sure she would be treated as well as she could possibly be under so dire circumstances. And no, I don’t mean Alys was just offering Aemond sexual favors. Intelligent person she no doubt was, the “witch queen” could do her best in order to forge an emotional bond with Aemond, too. For instance listening to what the prince had to say and showing him affection. Paradoxically, learning Aemond’s story could make Alys take to the prince at least a little, since in this scenario, she could realize in spite of coming from different social backgrounds, they shared a bunch of experiences. For instance, earlier in her life, unwed and pregnant Alys, born out of wedlock herself, had been no doubt an outcast – just like Aemond the Kinslayer, having blood of his close relative on his hands. Could it be a reason enough for Alys to start sympathizing with Aemond? Yes, indeed. In addition, the “witch” had lost both her child and their father – even if  we are not familiar with the details and the moment she met Aemond Alys was probably over it. If the “helaemond” theory is confirmed, Aemond gets involved with Alys when his first “girlfriend” is also like dead to the world, not to mention the fact his son and/or nephew died gruesome death.

Here, I would like to admit I am not a fan of fetishizing Alys’ age and deeming her a “milf”. The woman was certainly more than just her looks and age. If Aemond had actually loved her – which I find highly probable  - there must have been something more than just physical attraction! In addition, in the quasi-medieval world of Ice and Fire, girls in their early teens are considered eligible maidens, so in this universe, it isn’t out of usual for women in their late, if not mid-twenties to become grandmothers! Taking the fact FnB is supposed to be a historical source by a bunch of unreliable narrators, we don’t actually know how old Alys was. If we rule out the ageless witch/ red priestess theory, we could safely assume she was, for instance, in her 40s or 30s, but knowing the Westerosi customs, well, it is still possible she was just a few years older than then-twentyish Aemond. There is also an option Alys didn’t even exist and all the war bride/captor romance was made up by pro-Black maesters and scribes, willing to paint the prince in a negative light. After all making some lowly born wet nurse his wife, Aemond would insult House Baratheon, impudently breaking the pact which had to be sealed with his marriage to Lord Borros’ daughter. You just keep in mind both the Witch Queen and Aemond’s bastard son disappear  from the “historical chronicles” shortly after the Dance ends. In addition, stressing Alys’ alleged “old age”  could have made him look ridiculous in the eyes of Westerosi readers.

Personally, I prefer to imagine Alys existed, had prophetic skills and played a significant role in Aemond’s life. Perhaps at some point, she even developed some sympathy and twisted fondness for the prince (still her captor and, yes, her rapist) but never had second thoughts about having kept it to herself that Aemond would meet his end in God’s Eye and no one could blame her for it.

To sum up, I think shipping Aemond with Helaena does not automatically make the shipper anti-“alysmond”. In my view, adding one more (for want of a better word) romantic relationship to Aemond’s arc makes sense. It could be an interesting way to show how the character’s attitude towards his love interests and his interactions with them evolve as various experiences are shaping his personality. I would never pit Helaena against Alys. They’re two different women and the fact at some points of their lives, they happened to get involved with the same guy does not make them natural born enemies. In my honest opinion, if the show version of Helaena had a chance to meet Alys (here, I mean my own idea of this character, since we don’t learn much about her from FnB and her show counterpart is still a mystery), they would become… good friends.

[cosmerelists]

My Top 10 Favorite Cosmere Characters

Today is my birthday, so it's time for a purely self-indulgent birthday list! I thought I'd just share my own personal Top 10 Cosmere characters, which will just prove once and for all that I am SUCH a Stormlight girlie.

[Spoilers for Stormlight, Mistborn Era 1 & Era 2 and Shadows for Silence]

#10: TenSoon

I think I almost like TenSoon better in Era 2, when he's, like, an immortal quasi-divine figure who also happens to be a big, fluffy puppy. I like it when characters from different eras interact, so I was quite taken by having Wax meet TenSoon. I was also a fan of TenSoon back in the original series though, especially as his loyalty to Vin developed. And I'm one for a tragic sacrifice, so the kandra trying to kill themselves to avoid getting taken over by Ruin--that was a powerful moment (and I'm big fan of the fact that they did not, in fact, die. It was still a heroic sacrifice!).

#9: Silence

It's hard to say how much my love for Silence is part & parcel with my love for Threnody which, for whatever reason, is my favorite Cosmere planet. I like how Silence interacts with Threnody--the sheer horror and fatalism of living right on the edge of that forest, being a mother and a bounty hunter, keeping your dead grandmother in a back room...

#8: Adolin

I think Adolin is one of those characters I like because of his relationships with other characters. Especially Maya--I really love the relationship Adolin has with his sword, and when he and Maya fight back to back using the kata...that's one of my favorite scenes. I think he and Shallan are cute, and that he and Kaladin are cute, and that the three of them are a triad in their hearts. Also, and this will be a theme throughout this list, I love competent fighters and good fight sequences, so Adolin's duels really put him near the top for me.

#7: Navani

Rhythm of War really made me love Navani, I think. And not only because of that unhealthy yet somehow alluring relationship she had with Raboniel. We'll see throughout this list that I just like really competent characters, and Navani is such a smart and cool inventor of stuff, from watches to pain management devices to flying ships. And knowing what she went through with Gavilar and how she was made to think she wasn't smart or worthwhile only to have Dalinar and Raboniel recognize that yes she was smart and good at things and now she's cracked the code to make god-killing weapons and has bonded the Sibling and she's just so cool.

#6: Sazed

Honestly, I really love Sazed both before and after his ascension. I heard that people aren't always fans of Harmony, but I find him just as fascinating, if not more so--the idea of trying to balance such discordant shards in one being. But Sazed is, I think, my favorite character from the Mistborn Era 1 books. He is so sincere and smart and competent and deals with so much shit all the time. And I think he's doing his best.

#5: Jasnah

Like, Jasnah is just cool. She's so polished. So competent. So deadly. So smart. I think seeing Jasnah through Shallan's eyes for so long really made me respect and fear her as much as a reader can respect/fear a book character. That moment that she and Dalinar bonded over the book after Gavilar's death--very sweet. Kinda disappoited that we didn't get much with Jasnah & Elhokar--hard to remember they're siblings sometimes. In conclusion, I am both excited and scared to get more of her tragic backstory soon.

#4: Leshwi

Listen, I like cool fight sequences and enemies who bear a deep respect for each and duel a lot but never from a place of hatred. So, I was basically made to like Leshwi and how she interacts with Kaladin. But I also just like Leshwi's interactions with everyone. Leshwi and Moash? Awesome. "Hey you killed me once. Respect." Leshwi and Venli? Heck yeah. "I am slowly feeling you out and trying to see where your loyalties lie because they might intersect with mine." Once I am thrilled that Lewshi is joining the Listeners now. I want her to form a Radiant bond SO BAD.

#3: Steris

I seem to recall Brandon Sanderson talking about Steris as a character you don't like at first, but later you grow to love her. But if I remember correctly, I feel like I always liked Steris? Like yes, the marriage contract was a lot, but it was also so thorough and honest (and, honestly, funny). And then she just grew on me from there. As someone who makes a lot of lists, I also feel a kinship with Steris.

#2: Shallan

The first two times I read through the Stormlight Archives, I was all about Kaladin. But the third time, I really started to realize just how much I like the Shallan chapters. I think Shallan is a great character with a great arc--and I love the way she sort of grows into herself and her powers. Plus, I enjoy the slow reveal of how much she's already done--she already has a shardblade. And two spren bonds. And many murders under her belt. Quite the resume. And I really love Veil and Radiant, but especially Veil. The scene during the Oathbringer climax where she holds hand with her alters while constantly creating other alters to let them be killed legitimately makes me cry. She holds back a whole army by herself! She's amazing!

#1: Kaladin

Kaladin was my favorite character pretty much from the very moment I started reading Cosmere books (I started with Way of Kings), and he has never been dethroned in my heart. First, there's the simple fact that I love good fight scenes and fantasy heroics and people who gain the power they need at the very last second...and Kaladin does those things like every other chapter. But also, Kaladin is just such a good character. I love how he's not just a shallow fantasy hero--he has depression, and invents therapy, and struggles with guilt, and doesn't always make good choices. Sometimes the Kaladin chapters are tough--Rhythm of War was downright painful sometimes with just how much Kaladin was suffering--but even so. I will always look forward to the Kaladin parts the most, and like many, I deem Kaladin my #1 Cosmere Blorbo.

[ao3cassandraic]

Angels, demons, language, and culture: part 3

(Part 1 and Part 2 for those interested.)

"I play an ineffable game of my own devising. For everyone else, it’s like playing poker in a pitch dark room with blank cards, for infinite stakes, with a dealer who won’t tell you the rules and who smiles all the time." --God, Good Omens

This is just. Creepy and awful and so, so wrong for a quasi-omnipotent being. Ugh. Good Omens!God is an abject horror.

But if you're one of the poker players at that table, what do you do? You try to figure out the rules and mark the cards, naturally. Especially if leaving the table only happens via swan dives into burning sulphur, or getting kicked out of the only home you've known into a hostile desert with lions in it. While pregnant, yet.

So, I did a Bat Mitzvah back in the day, as it happens, and my Torah portion was from Deuteronomy. Which is, as I am hardly the first to notice, chockablock full of rules. Good Omens definitely leveraged (rather than inventing) the idea of trying to figure out Her rules and codify them in writing! Note, however, that the Bible per Word of Gaiman is a human thing. Codifying divine rules? Therefore also a human thing, minus I suppose the Ten Commandments -- though I can certainly envision a Good Omens in which Moses was, um, not exactly telling the truth about the source of the tablets; we only really have his word for it.

Angels and demons, who have a low opinion of literacy and just generally don't seem to be very good at it, never did this. We see that Aziraphale, Before the Beginning, has intuitively figured a few rules out: don't question Her, don't comment on (much less critique) Her decisions or designs, don't ever ever piss Her off. The Starmaker hasn't gotten this far, tragically, and our Crowley remains confused throughout the show as to what rule he can possibly have broken that earned him the identity-changing torture She inflicted on him.

Fundamentally, Crowley doesn't want to -- perhaps can't -- believe that She is capricious and cruel. He thinks there are rules, "don't test to destruction" being a major one. We know he's wrong, however. She straight-up told us so, in the quote at the top of this post! Aziraphale, too, knows, though he buries this knowledge as deep under the words "ineffable" and "Great Plan" (there is no Great Plan, She told us so, it's all a game to Her) as he possibly can -- I think as a coping mechanism -- and does his best to avoid drawing Her attention again after the Sword Incident.

But we see angelic and demonic confusion about the rules of Her game again and again. It's at the root of Aziraphale's successful Great Plan/Ineffable Plan hairsplitting at the airbase. It's why Aziraphale has to (with Muriel's help) dig through the contract for Job, and why Gabriel and Michael can't even be arsed to, even revising Job's reward on the fly. They're guessing! They're guessing about the rules based on what they've seen of Her caprices! She likes sevens!

It's how Crowley rules-lawyers the demons into letting the Whickber Street tradespeople go. If there are actual rules of Heaven-Hell engagement -- and there may not be! Crowley's pulled plausible-sounding lies out of his arse before! -- I'll bet you anything you like practically nobody in Heaven or Hell has actually read them. (My top picks for rules-of-engagement authors, if those rules actually do exist, would be Satan and the Metatron.)

And it's why Uriel has to ask the Metatron, as unsure and afraid as Uriel has ever looked in the entire series, whether the remaining archangels have done something wrong. The Metatron's response refuses to clarify what's at issue -- he, like Her, won't tell anybody the rules. If I'm feeling extremely cynical, I think She and he refuse to explain the rules because they're more powerful if there's no rulebook that rank-and-file angels can use to contest them with.

It makes me so sad. The legions of Heaven would assuredly have followed Her rules, if they only knew what those rules were! Fanart of the just-fallen Starmaker routinely breaks my susceptible heart, not least because the commonest expressions on his face are agony, sorrow -- and confusion. It's just all so damn unfair.

Same with Job, and Peter Davison sells it beautifully. Poor Job assumes he must have broken Her rules somehow, and blames himself for not even knowing how. That's totally on Her, though! If Her rules aren't clear enough for righteous Job to be able to trust his own righteousness under a horrible test, that's Her fault, not his!

The closest that Heaven and Hell -- and humanity, for that matter -- have to Her rules is prophecy. I probably don't need to spill many pixels on how vague and confusing prophecy is, how often it's counterfeited, and how pointless it is to try to live your life by (or trying to avoid) true prophecies; prophecies will invariably gotcha you. Good Omens is hardly the first work of literature to point this out. (Try the story of Oedipus. That's a good one. Yeesh. Or, if we want to be all Biblical about it, Moses again.) Agnes Nutter may well be the only genuinely well-meaning prophet in the entire history of prophets! Even so, her book is incredibly bewildering! Generations of her descendants try to figure it out, and mostly they fail -- look at the annotations we see on Anathema's index cards.

So when @thundercrackfic asks me what Aziraphale gets out of books, my first (though not only) answer is "rules for living." Not just rules for living as safely as possible around Her, though -- rules for living among humans, too. I headcanon (and posited in "Endgame") that Aziraphale has been collecting human etiquette manuals as long as humans have been writing etiquette manuals. Codified rules, like the ones in Deuteronomy, likely help him feel more secure.

I think this is also why Muriel characterizes books as portable people. Muriel is trying their sweet adorable best to figure out the Earth rules on the fly, since nobody Upstairs told them (or indeed knows, the Metatron aside) what those rules are. They do have Aziraphale to help them along -- Aziraphale is so much better than Upstairs! he doesn't condescend or insult, he just gently instructs -- but Aziraphale can't teach full-time, he has other things on his plate. So Muriel the scrivener, one of the few angels who would have a clue about literacy due to the nature of their job, gravitates to books and discovers that they too can be gentle and compassionate teachers.

The final question outstanding is how well Aziraphale understands and assimilates human books, especially fiction, especially especially non-literal figures of speech. It's an excellent and complicated question, and I don't think I have The Answer to it, but I'll see what I can do.

[lowkeyed1]

great interview, definitely some info i haven't seen anywhere else... ----- ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: I don't think you could end the show without losing someone, but how did you decide it would be Graydon as opposed to Airk, Boorman, or anyone else who's life was in imminent danger?

JONATHAN KASDAN: There was some conversation about that. But we all felt that there was something beautifully tragic about Graydon, and as a character, he is our Dark Prince. We always called him the Dark Prince in our construction of the show. One of the questions we always had and hoped to keep alive to some extent throughout the season was, "Is he good or is he evil?" As the show progressed, he's pretty definitively good. His devotion to Elora was so pure, and the way he played those scenes was so lovely and tender. It felt like the thing that would most impel Elora into this final stage of her development was the loss of this completely devoted person. As is often the case with these decisions, and they're sometimes unpopular, sometimes you want the most devastating possible thing. And for her, he felt like that.

Now that Airk has come back to himself, is there any chance he and Elora would reconnect? Or is her heart fully with Graydon at this point?

She's not with either of them, frankly, at the moment. She's intent on taking a little break from the dating world entirely, and we'll see how she does with that. But conversely, Airk is not at all over her. In fact, she's only more attractive to him now that she's empress of the world and the most powerful sorcerer ever and has come into her power so fully. But I definitely think the bloom is off the rose for Elora.

If Elora hadn't changed her mind during that wedding ceremony, how bad would that have been for everyone else?

It would've been bad. One of the things that the movie set up that is a helpful bit of storytelling is this idea that this baby, they couldn't just like chuck her out the window and kill her, and that would be the end of it. There was something about her spirit that needed to be either extinguished or transported or moved in some way that made killing her not a good option, which is convenient as a storytelling device for the movie. They've got to get her back to the castle. She's going to be okay a little longer. But it's really helpful for us here in the series that there's something more at stake than simply, "Will she live or die?" There's something about her that is spirit. It's in line with George Lucas' philosophical, quasi-religious stuff about the Force. There's a great speech in Empire Strikes Back that I was just thinking about last night — that I'm sure my father wrote — which is that we're more than just this crude matter. We're celestial beings. There's something of Elora that is pure light, and it would've been really bad if he'd been able to suck that light out of her mouth.

Boorman gives his own reasoning for it, but why is Kit finally able to use the armor?

Kit's journey is about embracing responsibility. It's a very personal idea to me because I myself struggle with this very question of, "How much responsibility do I want to have? And family and who do I take responsibility for?" She's running away from that responsibility all season. In the end of the season, she finds herself moved by Elora and devoted to her, and above all the other characters, she is the one most equipped to protect her, spiritually and emotionally. Metaphorically, Elora represents the natural spirit of the world, and Kit represents our human role in that. She goes from being very selfish to very generous. It's that journey that makes her worthy of the armor.

We do see Willow and Elora defeat the Crone, but I take it, if you have your druthers that their fight is far from over?

Absolutely. It was always designed to be a three-act story. These things have to have a finite end to them. Because as a fan of these stories, I don't want to think that creators are just continuing it as long as they can to make a buck. It's nice in this day and age where there's an appetite from these streaming services for stories that do continue but aren't endless. This was very much designed and intended that this would be the first part of the story about Elora coming into her power, and then she would have to contend with darker forces beyond that.

They do end this with the charred remnants of Willow's staff and Elora's wand broken. How much is that going to be an obstacle to them? Will they need to repair those things?

You really hit on something with the staff question, and it's been something we've talked about a lot in the writer's room. It was a very intentional decision for Willow to sacrifice the conduit for his power to save Airk. We wanted him to give something up that was meaningful. It felt like a fun way to enter potentially future stories where he doesn't have that way of expressing the magic in himself and to have that be a challenge that he has to overcome.

Early in the show, we see Willow say a prophecy claims Elora Danan has to die. We saw her make it through this time, but should we still be worried about that?

Absolutely. The Crone is the Wyrm's agent. She's this talent agent, she goes out, she makes the deals, she tries to recruit the people. She's the producer, but she's not the talent herself. The Wyrm is the thing. And that dark force that presses against the light is still very much out there in the world to be contended with.

When we get to those final moments of the season, Graydon seems to be waking up on this battlefield that we've seen in Willow's nightmares. Is that accurate?

It's so accurate that the moment we finished shooting Warwick standing up in that battlefield, we were like, "Okay, get Warrick out of there, throw Tony in." We were racing the clock to do it. And Tony was in position not 10 seconds after Warwick had vacated it.

The final battle really reminded me visually of the Harry Potter wand duels. How much of a visual reference point was that for you?

Huge. There's the promise of a lot of things in that final scene. But the big one for me is that in a character like Elora, much like Luke Skywalker or Harry Potter, there is the potential for incredible good and incredible darkness. We wanted to complicate the meaning of that a little bit over the course of the season and not have such hard and fast concepts of good and evil. Particularly Star Wars has a very clear bad guys-good guys thing, and we've made it much more in our series about desires versus ideals and the conflict between those two forces within ourselves. Certainly, that conflict is alive in Elora. The temptation of what the Wyrm represents is powerful. Ellie communicates it in this almost ecstatic way that she plays out the battle with the Crone. It's terrifying and hard, but it's also clearly getting her off a little bit (laughs). We really wanted to play on that and unequivocally with that final scene, stay with the fact that the potential for something really bad is in her too. Something really rather destructive is in her too.

Should we interpret that final version of Elora that Graydon sees as her potential alternate path?

Yes. And as the clear statement of intention by the bad guy.

You said before you'd like to have Val Kilmer appear in a second season.

There's nothing I would like more. The world is unpredictable, but certainly the runway has been laid for him, and we'd love it.

But you did have Christian Slater as a guest star. Is there another 1980s heartthrob you'd love to have on the show?

I'm a huge Billy Zane fan. If I could find a way to use that man in Willow, I would be very pleased. He's under-appreciated, under-loved and brilliant. I'm not the only one who feels this way. He's done some great stuff lately. So I'm hopeful that he's someone we could use someday.

Hulu and Disney+ are a package deal, and with Reservation Dogs, there are now two Elora Danans in the Disney family. Is there some crossover potential there?

(Laughs) No, but we invited them all to the premiere. They weren't able to make it, but we are still fighting for an opportunity to have a coffee between our two Elora Danans. They need to sit and do a photo shoot together or something. It's too perfect. That show is unbelievably great. I would love to have Devery Jacobs guest star on the show. That would be a really fun idea.

Is there any news you could share on a potential season 2?

Only that I'm sitting in my office and continuing to plan and scheme. It's a strange time in the business. It's a transformative time for Disney. So, I couldn't tell you anything that felt certain, except that we're continuing to work on this with every intention of doing more.

Can you tease where you envision it going from here?

The events of the finale have to be dealt with in a meaningful way at the top of wherever the story goes and the implications of the trauma those events caused to our characters and where it lands each of them. I'd love to get these characters out of that desert. Beyond that, they're all looking at very clear conflicts that were deeply positioned in season 1. Specifically, with Jade, the question of her loyalties and where her politics are going to land her is at the forefront in our minds in terms of where that character can go and, and how she's torn between love and country a little bit. There's no shortage of directions that we'd love to explore, but at its core, it is about this conflict between this otherworldly entity and our heroes. And that's far from over.

[uppastthejelliclemoon]

@storyweaverofgondor's cats-pril day 7: Name

so i thought i'd share my Third Name hcs for a few of the canon cats + my OCs!!

Mistoffelees:

First Name: Eclipse

Second Name: Mistoffelees

Third Name: Quaxo

Tugger:

First Name: Leo

Second Name: Tugger

Third Name: Maynard

Munkustrap:

First Name: James

Second Name: Munkustrap

Third Name: Pheneus

Serafina:

First Name: Misty

Second Name: Serafina

Third Name: Ailia

Quasi:

First Name: Quasi

Second Name: Ezra

Third Name: Wianelly

Hestia:

First Name: Stella

Second Name: Hestia

Third Name: Naravesta

also idk but there's something slightly emotional and personal about sharing all three Names of my favorite + most used OCs, and it makes sense that i'm sharing them during one of my best friend's events for the fandom 🥰

[astrangergivingthestrangewelcome]

Forever mad because like I DO want a sexy Dracula he is supposed to be hot he is supposed to be seductive and sexual it's in the canon but like! Just make him sexy but not romantic! He can be sexual but morally bankrupt and we're not supposed to root for him. He can be seductive and Jonathan/Lucy/Mina don't have to be seduced like those things can coexist. I don't even understand why this is hard bc sexy villain is a well, well established trope + other franchises have them without them also becoming tragic antihero quasi main characters. Truly what is the issue.

[danidandandadididan]

Bosnian serb history is so intricate and interesting, not to mention needlessly tragic and could be personified into a deeply disturbed and emotionally distressed quasi villain. Instead we got a 15 year old

[lightandfellowship]

Are there any worlds or Disney stories that you would have liked to see in Dark Road? Or any headcanons for worlds Xehanort went to (after the main story)?

I think Castle of Dreams would have been a really great world for a Vor and Vidar side-story.

Why Castle of Dreams? For one, all the Disney worlds in KHDR are reused from KHUX. Realistically, that's the only pool you can draw from when thinking about Disney worlds that "could have been", because otherwise the artists on the game would've had to make completely new assets and, well, KHDR is pretty much KHUX Reused Assets: The Video Game. All the KHUX Disney worlds not featured in KHDR would work fine in the game apart from Wreck-it-Ralph since it's a special world.

Actually, I just realized Castle of Dreams is the only non-WiR Disney world from KHUX that didn't make it into KHDR. So I guess Castle of Dreams is the only reasonable choice, lol.

Two, I feel like Castle of Dreams would work well thematically with Vor and Vidar in a variety of ways. Though I don't know if I'll ever finish that fic with them I wanted to make (probably not), perhaps I'll try to create short comics of some small moments I had in mind for them instead. I can better talk about and illustrate my ideas for this world then.

As for Xehanort post-KHDR, I'd probably be more willing to draw from non-KHUX worlds since KHDR doesn't really cover that time period much, anyway. I can just imagine this theoretical KHDR sequel in my mind that doesn't rely so heavily on reused assets. Xehanort's conversation with the MoM suggests that he must've seen some pretty messed up stuff involving darkness on his "world tour", so I'd probably go for Disney properties that are like...a bit darker or more tragic than Disney's usual fare? Stuff that you'd look at and go, "Yeah, makes sense why Xehanort ended up like this."

The question then becomes, what properties? Maybe stuff like:

Bambi: Xehanort's relationship (or lack thereof) to his mother could make witnessing Bambi's mother die to hunters be pretty upsetting. Much like Xehanort, Bambi was also the descendant of a noble bloodline and was expected to do great things when he was older.

The Fox and the Hound: Involves two unlikely friends becoming each other's enemies because of who they are and what they're expected to be, so that could remind him of his relationship with Eraqus, and make him question what the future has in store for them (and Xehanort does call Eraqus a "sly fox" on multiple ocassions).

Hunchback of Notre Dame: We've only ever seen it as a Sleeping World, so we have no idea when exactly the movie's plot occurs during the course of the Kingdom Hearts series. There are plenty of comparisons to draw between Xehanort and Quasi: tragically separated from their mother, raised by someone else, forced to live in isolation away from people and the greater world, has "imaginary" friends, desires freedom, is made to feel like an outcast, etc. Quasi could make Xehanort reflect on his childhood in Destiny Islands and Scala, but in a far more negative light that ends up tainting his perception of it.

Thanks for the interesting question, Starlight!

[anghraine]

your blog is great, and you talk about your interests in such a compelling way! out of curiosity, who would you say are your top 10 fictional characters of all time? also, do you use twitter?

Thank you very much! It's hard to be entirely accurate about my personal top ten, but I still enjoyed thinking about it rather than about being sick and miserable, lol, so here's my attempt to come up with a Faves of Ultimate Destiny list.

(This isn't necessarily about evaluating their worth as characters or even as people, but just how much raw affection I feel. It's also not ranked, just the order in which I thought of them!)

Fitzwilliam Darcy from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice (the book character specifically) — I know, nobody is surprised. He actually is my #1 choice.

Luke Skywalker from the Star Wars original trilogy — it's always hard for me to choose between him, his father, and his sister, but ultimately, I feel the most powerfully about Luke. I'm not here for soft, sunshiny fanon Luke, but I am super here for a Luke whose personal kindness, strength, and powerful loyalties mingle with his struggle against rage, fear, even hatred, and an inclination to idealize martial violence and solve his problems with it, yet who comes out the other side as the kind of Jedi that Anakin might have been rather than the authorities around Luke succeeding in forging him into something alien to his true nature.

Faramir from JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings (very definitely the book character specifically) — again, I'm not super into soft and accommodating mundane guy Faramir, but very into the interplay of his basic compassion and gentleness with the repeated descriptions of him as stern, commanding, willful, and just really fucking strange. I love others a lot but no one can take his crown. (He may be uncrowned in canon but not in my heart!)

Gwen Thackeray from Guild Wars: Prophecies and Guild Wars: Eye of the North, games which most of you haven't played and I suspect would not enjoy for dated mechanics reasons, but which won my heart in the original tutorial zone. I have an explanation about Gwen's greatness here.

Attolia Irene from Megan Whalen Turner's The Queen's Thief books, but especially The Queen of Attolia. She's so precisely tailored to my tastes in female characters that I was kind of astounded, even though I read the books specifically for her based on my friends' TQT blogging. I mostly don't talk about her on this blog, but my feelings are really strong!

Aravis Tarkheena from CS Lewis's The Horse and His Boy. I know everything wrong with Narnia and specifically with THHB, but Aravis, what an icon.

Tarrlok from Avatar: The Legend of Korra. This is another close competition (with his brother Noatak/Amon along with both members of my beloved OTP, Korra/Kuvira), but if I'm being honest, he's the one who scrapes into the fave Avatar character slot. I've loved a lot of tragic villains, but he's really top tier.

Annabella from John Ford's seventeenth-century revenge tragedy 'Tis Pity She's a Whore. The title is quasi-ironic; it comes from a dismissive description of her by a super corrupt Catholic cardinal. Both the title and subject matter (murder, consensual sibling incest, a ton of misogyny) can make it a difficult play for some. But for me, Annabella is really what makes the play succeed on its own terms and outshine its Shakespearean inspiration.

Cesare Borgia from Showtime's The Borgias. In my heart this slot goes to both him and his sister Lucrezia (where #8 is definitely Annabella's alone, although I like Giovanni; if only S1 existed this slot would be rightfully Lucrezia's). But if I have to choose between them in the context of the show, I felt his arc was smoother and more coherent and satisfying throughout the show as a whole, so my love for him is less impeded by frustration.

I wasn't actively trying to only choose one character per canon, though it's wound out that way, but here's the exception: Cassian Andor from the 2016 Star Wars film Rogue One (and only that film—I'm not here for the novelization or other EU depictions or Andor or anything except what's in the movie). He's a gift of a character I never expected Star Wars to provide, and half of the only romance in SW that seriously matters to me.

Honorable "rewired my brain" mentions: Moiraine Damodred from Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time (also in the show!), Sandrilene fa Toren from Tamora Pierce's Emelan books, and Lessa from Anne McCaffrey's Pern books were all deeply formative.

As for Twitter:

I definitely don't use it any more. I used to have multiple accounts, though I wasn't super active outside of academia/chatting with RL friends and the occasional random scholar who deigned to notice me. Twitter wasn't really the natural platform for my preferred "LJ fandom expat" style of online writing, and was mostly stuff like this:

[Damn, I had no idea what was coming with "AI" ... anyway.]

I was deciding whether to keep using Twitter as the Elon purchase was going down, and then he immediately did an antisemitism and I immediately cut all use of it. I later got around to locking down all three accounts; I only maintain them to control the usernames. Most of the people I knew on Twitter joined Bluesky around the same time as me, or can be more easily reached on Discord now. I mostly use Bluesky when I feel like microblogging, but it's not a feeling that often besets me.