#she did a lot of great things and was a very intelligent woman who succeeded despite a lot of obstacles but uhhhh

[anotherpapercut]

the way white liberals talk about Ruth Bader Ginsburg as if she had some sort of unique ability to decide cases correctly and was like the only person standing in the way of the US and utter chaos is so funny to me bc like a) Sotomayor and Jackson have better judicial records than her ?? and b) if you trained an AI by making it watch 250 hours of John Oliver I think it would make the correct decision as often or more than she did

[calliecat93]

Callie’s Disney Princess Retrospective: Beauty and the Beast

(Snow White) (Cinderella) (Sleeping Beauty) (The Little Mermaid)

The Little Mermaid was a huge success for Disney. It was such a big success that it began the Renaissance Era of Disney Animation and returned Disney to the top animation studio. While many people such as John Musker, Ron Clements, and Glen Keane can be credited for the film's success, the biggest player by far was lyricist Howard Ashman. He put his heart and soul into the film, and not just with song lyrics. He wanted the characters to connect to the audience. He wanted to play a part in the story. He wanted this film to be something special, and he succeeded. But he was also frustrated, could be argumentative when others didn't like his vision, and unknown to everyone, he was dying. After winning two Oscars for The Little Mermaid's music, Howard revealed to composer Alan Menken that he had AIDS, and he didn't have much longer to live.

However, Ashman wasn't going down before completing one more film. Though he had been writing music for Aladdin, he ultimately ended up as the lyricist of another film. A film that had been through many different iterations and was handed off to newbie directors. Little did anyone know just how impactful this film would be for Disney, and for the industry as a whole. Well, except for Ashman himself. The film that we are discussing today is the first animated film to ever, ever be nominated for Best Feature. That film is 1991''s Beauty and the Beast.

Overview

Belle is a beautiful young woman, but is seen as an oddity in her village due to her love of books and her utter disinterest in local heartthrob Gaston. When her father, an inventor named Maurice, leaves for a science fair, he ends up taking refuge in an old, abandoned castle. But the castle is actually enchanted and acts as the home to dozens of talking inanimate objects... and a fearsome beast. When Belle goes looking for her father, she offers to take his place as the Beast’s prisoner. But during her time in the castle, Belle discovers that this Beast may not be as much of a monster as he appears, and this may lead to both discovering true love...

Review

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I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that this is by far one of Disney’s most beloved films. It got praise form both critics and movie-goers when it came out, and it’s only become more beloved in the nearly 20 years since. Belle is praised as a feminist's icon and the film for it’s themes of toxic masculinity, judging a book by it’s cover, and some of the darker aspects of society like those we blindly praise. I... like the film, but I never loved it to the extent as others. Not because it’s bad, that is a ridiculous notion. I just liked other films more and Belle just didn’t interest me as others like Cinderella or Mulan or Ariel. But seeing it again as an adult who has seen the darker aspects of society since I was a kid, it REALLY rings more deeply than it did back then.

One aspect that no one can argue about is the animation. The film is beautiful. It has some of Disney’s best animators at the time such as Glen Keene, Mark Henn, Andreas Deja, and so much more. There was so much life put into the film and it is a true visual spectacle.I meant hey managed to take inaminate objects, and bring them to life. Sure they have faces to help humanize them, but to make us believe that these are talking, moving objects that were once human is still a VERY difficult task. But they have so much personality like the suave, passionate candlesick Lumiere or the stuffy, orderly Cogsworth. The backgrounds andf settings are also great fromt he Sleepy Hollow-esque village to the gothic castle of The Beast, to the creedy woods that look even more terrifying when it snows. There’s so much color and lighting that is used so well, especially with the castle eminating so much mystery and intrigue compared tot he plain village that Belle is from.

But the setting we all remember most of all is the ballroom. While Disney has been using CGI some before, such as Big Ben in The Great Mouse Detective (yes,t hat WHOLE setting was computer graphics), this is probably the biggest use to date. The ballroom is a gorgeous golden color and looks so big and vast. It takes you’re breath away. There’s a reason why this is the most well-remembered part of the film. The animaiton for this film was very straining, especially due to conditios to accomodate Ashman that we’ll get to later. It was stressful, but they absoluteley put their all into it. When you watcht he ballroom sequence, added to the dance and Angela Lansbury’s lovely vocals, you forget that you’re even watching a movie. It feels like... well, love. It’s by far one of Disney’s best looking features.

As I said in the intro, the film ultimately fell into the laps of two relatively rookie animators; Kirk Wise and Gary Trousdale. This was after several various attempts to adapt the film, with none successful. Wise and Trousdale’s biggest claim to fame at the time was doing animaiton for EPCOT’s now defunct Cranium Command attraction (look up Who Stole Buzzy, boy is THAT a story) and while they had worked on other features, they had never been in the director seats. To make it more difficult, due to Ashman’s health continuing to gradually decline, Katzenburg decided to move produciton over to New York to spare him from having to travel. Which is a VERY noble effort and it’s sweet that they were willing to do so to keep working with Ashman, but as you can imagine this was quite a strain on the production team and as before, they would sometimes clash with Ashman and his vision. Still, they along with Menken returning as composer and writer Linda Woolverton, they reworked the then-script into something that they were happy with.

The setting is very reminiscent of another Disney work, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. One of two segments from the Package Film Era feature The Adventure of Ichabod and Mr. Toad. We all know the story of Ichabod and his infamous ride where he encountered the Headless Horseman. Here we have a similar quaint village where people seem rather simple-minded. Like in Sleepy Hollow where everyone took notice tot he rather strange looking Ichabod Crane, we see a similar notice of Belle who is an anomaly to them. Though unlike Ichabod, who had pretty much everyone under his thumb and is kind of a gold diging jerk, Belle is ostracized and is a FAR better person. Gaston bears a striking resemblance to Brom Bones in both looks and social status (tough Brom isn’t as bad in comparison or even compared to Ichabod, though still a Jerk Jock) and the Bimbettes bear a bit of similarity to Katrina. I wouldn’t be surprised if the crew used Sleepy Hollow as inspiration for setting and character design. Only thing missing is the Headless Horseman, which that would have been interesting XD

The film deals with several topics. There’s the standard ‘don’t judge a book by it’s cover’ and ‘true love conquers all’ messages. Both of which are handled very well. But there are also some that IDT Disney had ever really tackled to this point. There’s encouraging women to make their own choices, which Disney HAS tackled but this one does it differently with Belle rejecting the standard good-looking man and falling for the monstrous looking one. In fact there is really a strong theme tearing down toxic masculinity and male entitlement. It says that no, men are not obligated to a woman and that women have the freedom to reject them no matter the societal pressure. Especially if they act as despicable as Gaston. With how much more aware we’ve become of how horrible some men in power can be and how they use that power on vulnerable women, this remains a relevant message to todays audience. It let’s women be empowered, confident, and enjoy things like reading as well as have the hope of finding those who will be accepting. These are all important things, and the film does an excellent job in showing it and what actual love should be like. The Beast especially starts as a jerk, but once he decides to become better and wants to be better for no ulterior reasons, he proves worthy of Belle’s love. That’s how love should be and how a person should change themselves. Again, very well done.

Despite his health and being downcast about not completing Aladdin, Ashman still put his all into the film. As I said, they outright shifted production to another state at a time when social media and things like Skype and Zoom were a distant dream. Still, Ashman along with Menken put their all into the soundtrack, and it paid off big time. This film, along with The Little Mermaid, really set up the precedent for Broadway-style animaed films and considering that they continue to be successful, I’d say that that says a lot. There are a lot of memorable songs int his fimlm, and there’s even some that didn’t make it in. One in particular, Human Again, actualy got animated and added back for the film’s IMAX release and various home media releases (sadly it’s not in the Disney+ version). The score is also very well done, especially at the end. Just listen to the music when the Beast finally turns human again. It added to the outright magical animation will leave you in awe as much as Belle was.

But what about the vocal tracks? Good question. Let’s go over them:

Belle/Belle Reprise: Our first song which as the name suggests, is about our leading lady. It does a lovely job establishing her character as a book-loving, intelligent young woman feeling that there was be more than this life ans village that she remains stuck in. It also establishes the village’s rather simple-mindedness and socital expectatons, finding Belle a beautiful but very strange girl because of her loving reading more than getting married. It also establishes Gaston’s smugness, entitlement, and holding the entire village’s admiration, The music is optimistic, but there’s a lot here that’s gonna take a dark turn a the film goes on. The reprise is short and more somber, but let’s Belle express her unwillignness to marry a man like Gaston, wanting to find love on her own terms. Little does she know what’s awating her right after.

Gaston: No one can have a song named after Gaston like Gaston! Yeah, this inspired plenty of meme’s, didn’t it? Even Disney itself has gotten in on the fun haha! But seriously, this is a fun villain song. I gotta give Gaston this, he’s a smug, horrible person but he shows that he can back up many of his boasts. I don’t doubt that he can eat dozens of eggs a day or is as strong as an ox. The song also further shows the town’s utter blind devotion to this brute, not being concerned about his entitlement to a girl who clearly isnt interest and more because of how handsome and grand he is. Isn’t society fun kids?! But then at the end, after Maurice is kicked out, it takes a darker turn as Gaston makes his plans to essentially blackmail Belle with her father’s safety... and right back to blind praise! I feel zero sympathy for any of the villagers in this film. But yeah, a song with a lot of dark implications, but still a very enjoyable villain song.

Be Our Guest: This is a true show-stopper, and I’m not just saying that. Lumiere wanted to create a show, and BOY did he succeed. The song is the most like a Broadway number in it’s composition and grand feeling. The fact that we have a huge number full fo singing, dancing, stuntwork, etc is being done by a bunch of dishes and pretty freakin’ impressive. Yet the animators gave it all so much life and Jerry Orback sings with so much passion and energy and it is just SO much fun to watch! Especially with poor Cogsworth at first trying to get everyone to calm down, but by the end he gets real into it... well until Lumiere knocks him to the side. The only negative is that for being a song about serving Belle dinner, aside form a bit of The Grey Stuff she didn’t even eat dinner. For shame! So 1 out fo 10 of food servive, but the show was worthy of two thumbs up!

Something More: This was the song that replaced Human Again. It’s a sweet song about Belle and Beast beginning to realize their feelings the more that they spend aroudn each other. Belle sees that Beast may not be very well-mannered or much of a looker, but he does have a good heart and the more they interact, the more it begins to show. Belle’s kindness, intellience, and willingness to look beyond the surface has Beast falling in love with her, yet his fear of being a monster is still holding him back. Still as we see the two do things like have dinner, play in the snow, or even Beast letting Belle read to him, the more we see that spark of love slowly grow, even if they haven’t fully grasped it. It helps advance the romance, and it’s just really sweet.

Beauty and the Beast: The song that won Menken and Ashman another Oscar. It’s not hard to see why either. The song is beautiful. It’s performed by Angela Lansbury, and her gentle vocals accompanies by the gentle orchestra is just lovely. The woman outright did the song in one take. One take. That is insane, yet it happened. And I can see why because the song is just beautiful. It adds to much to the already majestic ballroom scene, being about two unlikely individuals finding love and ultimately making the other a better person. It’s just a work of beauty. There’s also the pop version by Celine Dion and Peabo Bryson, which I also really love. It’s more commerical, but still very pretty especially with Celine’s gorgeous singing voice. Both versions are beautiful, and the first thing I think of when I think of this film... and no, not just beause of the name.

The Mob Song: This is exactly as you would expect with a song with that title. It’s dark, angry, and scary. Gaston rallies the troops to kill The Beast, convincing them that he is a danger to them all. They grab their torches, weapons, and there’s just this tense atmosphere throughout. This is the culminaiton of al the socital expectations and blind devotion to a person who doesn’t at all deserve it. It’s also a very accurate protrayal of the mob mentality, where you become a part of this hivemind following the rest of the crowd no matter how wrong it may be and despite your own senebilities. The only ones who don’t fall into it, Belle and Maurice, get tossed into a basement for their trouble. What makes this song sad though? In Disney+’s documentary Howard, produced by Don Hahn who also produced this film, it was explained how in the eyes of several of his colleagues, it seemed like Ashman was venting about the AIDS epidemic. That was a VERY dark time where the gay community was especially under fire, persecuted, hated, and so many other horrible things because the world chose to blame them for it. Ashman was a gay man. He had an ex partner die of AIDS, and had another partner at the time who talked about him in the documentary. Imagine being scapegoated just because of your sexuality, even though you never caused any harm, and society hated on you and others fell into he mob mentality, and they went as far as to either demand you to die or do the job themselves. All because you were different. Really adds a new perspecive to the song, doesn’t it? This can be applied to so many groups too, which makes the song even scarier, but also emphasize even more how dangerous the mob mentality is. Very effective song.

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Sadly, Howard wouldn’t live to see all of his numbers to completion. With his health declining rapidly, Menken and various others went back and forth between Burbank and New York in order to work with him. Ashman worked until he psycially couldn’t anymore. He was even giving notes to performers like Paige O’Hara despite barely being able to talk. He managed to complete his work, at least to my knowledge, before his passing on March 14th, 1991, just a few months before the film’s release. After a screentest, which proved very successful, Don Hahn and some other colleagues went to see Ashman in the hospital to say their goodbyes. Hahn told him of the reception, and jokingly asked who would ahve expected that the film would have turned out so great? Ashman’s response? “I did.” The work he managed to do for Aladdin would be included in the film, which we’ll discuss when we get to that one. The soundtrack won the Oscar which was awarded to Ashman (as well as Menken) posthumously and a dedication to him was including at the end of the film. It’s always sad to see such a talented individual leave us far too soon, but his work truly brought new life to Disney and is beloved even all these years later. That is a legacy that will never fade.

Now we get to characters, and we have quite a good number of them. We have of course the village that Belle is from. On the surface, they seem like pretty plain people, satisfied with their way of life. But this also causes them to at least not think highly of those who break from that way of life. The men work, the women care for the children. If men don’t work, they’re jerk slobs. They all especially fall into blind admiration for the strong, handsome Gaston who is hailed as a local hero. So much so that no one gives ANY of his terrible actions an ounce of consideraiton. Selling Maurcie tot he looney bin? Well he’s alreafy viewed as crazy, so ah well. Belle trying to tell them that The Beast isn’t a monster? While their first imprression of him is defeniteley a bad one, the fact that they listen to Gaston and not the woman who actually interacted with The Beast says a lot about how simple minded they all are. I hope they learned their lesson after all was said and done, but even if not Belle doesn’t have to pay them any mind anyways.

The only person who is accepting of Belle is her father, Maurice. He’s viewed as a crackpot, but Maurice is a good-hearted, smart, and perfectly sensible man. He’s a bit of a goof with how his inventions can go haywire, but otherwise is no diferent from any other person. But like his daughter, his interests have him judged instead of what he’s like as a person. It’s especially sad when he tries to get help to save Belle, and he is merely laughed at and thrown out because of his status. Maurice is a loving father, accepting of Belle and of her interests and choices. She isn’t interested in Gaston? Fine with him. People view her as odd? That’s utterly ridiculous. It’s really nice to have a parent who is supportive and involved int heir kids life, especally compared to Triton last time who may be caring, but is utterly against everything that matters to Ariel. In fact it’s the firs ttime we’ve had this since Snow White and Cinderlla’s parents are dead and their stepmothers are horrible, Aurora grew up away from her otherwise caring parents, and Ariel... it’s complicated. Maurice is a good guy and it is good that Belle has someone who accepts her unconditionaly. She loves him so much that she sacrificed her happiness for him twice to protect him, which really shows how strong their bond is.

That brings us to our villain, Gaston. He is a hunter who is muscular, handsome, and has physical skills that he can back up. However he is also entitled, egotistical, sefish, and just a horrible person. He wants to marry Belle only because of her beauty and instead of trying to get to know her or shifitng atteniton to any of the girls who would gladly grovel before him, he pursues her despite her not liking him. It’s especially bad when he goes to her house, sets up a huge engagement party, and gets into her personal space in his attempts to charm her. She not only rejects him, but promptly humiliates him. Yet instead of thinking that he had tried far too hard and jumped the gun, he blames Belle for daring to reject him. He reflects exactly how society can view someone like him. No one thinks about the woman, they only see a good-looking man get rejected despite us not knowing anything about ther perosn or their relaitonship. Especially if that man is essentially a celebrity, which makes people look past anyhing.

But none of these things are indicitive of an evil perosn. An arrogant jerk yes, but not evil. That all changes when, after Maurice tries to get help, Gaston comes up with a new plan. He decides to have Maurice admitted to an asylum for being crazy, and to use this to force Belle to marry him. This is what shifts Gaston from a jerk to a true villain. This is how far his entitlement and selfishness goes. He is willing to take Belle’s own elderly father and use him and his freedom as blackmail to force her to marry him. Even compared to the four villainesses before him who committed horrible acts such as attempted murder, mental/emotional abuse, and even attempting world domination, this is utterly despicable. Then there's him deciding to kill The Beast. Despite what he says, it's not because of the potential risk to the town, it's solely because he sees that Belle loves him and can't stand it. He outright calls her crazy AND locks her and Maurice up out of pure entitlement and selfishness. He doesn't give a damn about Belle or her though and well-being. Only about his own.

Gaston is entertaining, but very much evil. As I said above he bears a lot of similarity to Brom Bones from Disney's The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. A muscular jock-like figure often the most beautifiul girl in town. Only while Brom was a jerk, he was arguably less bad than Ichabod Crane depending how you looked at it. Gaston essentially has Brom's muscles an Ichabod's selfishness. He cares only for himself and his own pride. Admittedly he put up a decent fight against The Beast, but that's only because Beast wasn’t fighting back until he saw Belle. When he did, Gaston whimpered and begged like the pathetic man that he is. Then he stabbed him despite being spared out of pure spite. An act that cost him his life. Fun fact, originally he survived the fall and was truly killed via the wolves. They ended up saving that for Scar's death in The Lion King. But yeah, Gaston died in the undignifiedmanner that he deserved. A despicable but memorable villain who was perfect for this film.

Then we have the castle characters. You’d think that it would be difficult to give life to a bunch of furniture and appliances... and it probably was. But this movie makes it look easy. They do give most of them humanoid features, like eyes and a mouth, but not all of them and even then it would be so easy to make it look creepy. But the castle staff is just os much fun and beaming with personality. We’re gonna discuss the main four: Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, and Chip.

Lumiere is a candlestick, which matches his passionate characterization. He’s a showman. A romantic. A more daring, out-going character compared to his frequent frenemy Cogsworth. Cogsworth is a clock and I think he’s implied to be the Beast’s butler or some other kind of advisor. He’s stuffy, nervous, and the most lawful of the characters. Though he CAN get into the fun of things with a little provoking as demonstrated in Be Our Guest and the big battle during the climax. Hoenstly, Be Our Guest is a great number to demonstrate the two’s contrasitng perosnalities. Belle has been banned from eating and Cogsworth doens’t want to both break the Beast’s orders nor cause a bunch of noise that would anger him. Lumiere however? He’s dead set on getting Belle to fall for the Beast, so she should be treated as their guest, not a prisoner. Plus he and the other staff are tired after ten years of being stuck as they are and all alone, so cue the extravagant show number. Lumiere is having the time of his life while Cogsworth tries to convince everyone to stop... but by the end gets caught up in it and joins in ont he fun. Too bad that Lumiere knocks him off the center stage at the end haha. But yeah, their constant banter is amusing but they are clealry friends, especially in the fight where Cogsworth saves Lumiere. They’re both also performed wonderfully by their VA’s, Jerry Orbach and David Odgen Stiers, the latter of whom would appear in several more Disney films, including one for this series that we’ll get to fairly soon.

Mrs. Potts is a teapot and her son Chip is a tea cup. I guess that Chip ended up that way to match his mother, which her being a teapot matches her mothelry persona. She’s very kind and consoling towards Belle and seems the most understanding about The Beast and why he acts ike he does. Which since I think that she was essentially the house caretaker, makes sense since she’d have likely been the one looking out for him. Plus she herself is a mother, and since Beast has the emotion coping skills of a child, she’d know how to deal with it. Chip is the token child character, though not a bad one. He’s a nice kid with a huge curiosity. It’s really cute how hen allt he adults are seeing the bloomign romance between Belle and Beast, he’s uttelry confused like any kid would be haha! He takes a liking to Belle quickly, though more like he sees her as if she were an older sister than any kind fo crush or the like. He’s also smart, figuring out how to use Maurice’s inveniton to free Belle and Maurice quickly...and him wanitng to do it again got a good laugh out of me haha! Mrs. Potts is a nurturing mother and her with Chip is so sweet,e specially when they’re truly human again. Plus her advice of how things will turn out alright in the end is advice that I look back on sometimes. it’s really comforitng.

So... as I’ve mentioned in these reviews, a big issue is how underdeveloped that the prince has been. The first two were plot devices only. Phillip and Eric were better int hat they were active int he plot and Eric had some more perosnality and motivation than the other three did. But it just didn’t feel like the male elads were... quite at their full potential yet. They generally didn’t recieve any character development and were mainly there for the sake of being a lov einterest to the heroine. That all changed in this film with our hero, The Beast.

Beast is one of the most well-developed male leads in a Disney Princess film. A few like Aladdin, Naveen, and Eugene rival him for overall best (though tbf the former IS the lead of his movie so that may not count) but Beast helped make the princes more equal to their princess without overshadowing her. Beast is the co-protagonist to Belle and the character that recieves the bulk of the character development. The opening tells us all that we need to know: Beast was once Prince Adam, a spoiled brat. When he turned away an elderly begger, it turned out that she was an Enchantress and she cursed him into his monsturous form. Since he looks like a monster, he subsequently acts like a monster... or more accurately, like the child that he never truly grew out of emotionally. He’s angry, lashes out constantly, and roars at the top of his lungs when at his limit. Like how a child screams and throws a tantrum when things don’t go their way because they lack the social and emotional coping skills to handle their feelings properly. Becoming a beast left Beast isolated and ashamed to face reality, and thus he didn’t learnt he proper coping skills. He accepted that he would forever be a monster, and succumb to acting like one.

That is, until the day that Belle arrived. When she offers herself to free her father, it’s the opportunity that Beast never beleived that he would get. If he can win her love before the rose petals all fall, he’ll be human again. He’ll be free. While he begins still acitng agressive and even bordeirng on emotionally abusive, e isn’t heartless. When Belle is crying about not getting to say goodbye to her father, Beast seems to legit feel bad for hurting her. It doens’t change his behavior, but it’s still a small moment that shows some humanization. It’s important to add moments like this and his despair when using the mirror to hear Belle talk about him. She’s justified in disliking him at that point, but it’s his reactions that matter. It shows his insecurity, his fear, his utter despair that he’ll be cursed for the rest of eternity. He’s already succumbed to acting the part of a monster and is already struggling to act more polite. As amusing as the scene of him yelling at Belle through the door is, it demonstrates just how hard this is for him but if he can’t improve his behavior, then he has no chance. He knows it, and views it as hopeless. It helps humanize The Beast, showing that despite his appearance there IS a human soul in there somewhere. Someone who on some level does want to be better, but he doesn’t know how. If not for these moments, Beast would have been utterly unsympathetic, but they pulled it off.

The turning point comes after Beast rescues Belle from the wolves. Remember, he’d already pretty much given up on winning Belle over and being human again and the confrontation on the third floor certainly didn’t help matters. He could have just let Belle to her own devices... but instead he went to save her. I sincerely do not believe it was because she was a prisoner or because he needed her. He had given up. He had succumbed. But he did it anyways, showing that he isn’t a bad person. It’s something that Belle sees and she gets him back to the castle to treat him. She called him out on his temper, but is sincerely grateful and Beast is stunned by this genuine act of kindness. She didn’t fear him. She wasn’t disgusted by him. She didn’t even leave him to die despite having pretty good reason to leave him and go. Belle still chose to save his life as he did her’s, showing Beast probably the first true act of love that he ever experienced in his life. We know nothing of his family and while I’m sure that staff members like Ms. Potts certainly cared for him, clearly they didn’t do much to quell his spoiled behavior. Belle was kind because she’s a kind person, and Beast finds that he wants to be kind to her in return.

From that point, we see Beast in a new light. He calms down significantly. He’s happier. He carries himself less like a wild animal and more like a person. He’s outright excited when he prepares the library to surprise Belle with. He’s still awkward as shown with his table manners and interacting with birds durign Something There, but he is trying. He’s trying for Belle. He activly enjoys her company. He sees how beautiful she is physically, but that’s not why he likes her. She’s kind, intelligent, independant, and she makes him feel in a way that he never has. He still feels that she can’t love him because of what he is, but the change that she has caused is so evident. He’s fallen in love and the ballroom scene only strengthens that with himt he happiest that he’s been all film. But the crowner that truly demonstrates htis? When Belle expresses missing her father, he lets her use the mirror. Not only does he seem legit concerned when they see Maurice freezing to death but when he sees Belle’s clear distress, he decides to let her go. He’s sad when he does so, knowing that she may very well never return. But Belle’s father needs her. he can’t force her to say and be miserable. He loves her so much that he decided to let her go. But it does mean that he gav up his final chance at being human after feeling more human than he had in ten years, and he is left in despair.

His despair is so strong that when Gaston and the mob arrives, he doesn’t even try to fight back. He just waits and is prepared to let whatever happens to him happen. Fortunately Belle coming back restores his will to live and he fights back. When Gaston grovels for his life, what does Beast do? He grants it, simply growling at him to leave. It is that moment hat shows how much of a better person that Beast is compared to Gaston. He was an angry man bordering on abusive, but he changed. He met someone who wasn’t willing to take his behavior, but was also willing to see the good that was in him. He changed for her, and it made him a kinder, more selfless person. The only thing that remains is his self-loathing, even saying that maybe him dying is for the best after Gaston has stabbed him. Fortunately Belle confesses her love, and it not only saves his life, but breaks the curse just in time. Beast is restored to Adam, having earned the right to having his humanity back. It was a lovely way to cap off his development, and allowed him to earn his happily ever after.

Beast was very much Belle’s equal. Even nowadays they’re both promoted and marketed pretty equally. One’s story would have been incomplete without the other. They gave each other what they each wanted and needed. I’ll go into specifics for Belle when I get to her below, but in the Beast’s case he needed someone kind, but also independent. Someone who wouldn’t tolerate his behavior and push him to change himself, but still kind-hearted enough to see that there is something there and be willing to help. Belle treated him in a way that no one else had. She was defiant, but also caring. She pushed him to rediscover his humanity. She got him to want to be kind. She got him to want to be a better person, and he not only treated her better but he was kinder to his staff as well. He finally grew up from the spoiled brat that he was before. He had found a reason to, and his love was so genuine that he let Belle go to be with her father again. It’s a beautiful story of growth and did enough to make Beast’s issues clear and not excusable, but sympathetic enough that we wanted him to be better and feel happy when he does so. He’s the best developed male lead in a Disney Princess film up to this point and helped pave the way for equally well done male leads. Ones not there just to fill out a plot beat and be the princesses’ reward, but to stand at her side as her equal.

Boy did THAT one get long. there’s other minor characters. Le Fou, The Bimbettes, the psyche ward keeper voiced by the late, great Tony Jay, various other castle characters, etc. all of them are entertaining, I just don’t have much to say about them. So then... we have one more to go.

Belle Analysis

https://youtu.be/M4ne1A1aNrI

Belle is one of the most praised and beloved Disney Princesses of all time. She is smart, playful, independent, and kind-hearted. I feel like she gets overly praised at times, mainly because some like to use her to bash her four predecessors since she didn’t have the goal of falling in love. I won’t repeat what I said about the four, you can read the reviews, but it’s a VERY unfair argument not just to them, but to Belle as well. She’s used as a tool to bash other female characters instead of being loved for herself. Then agains he also gets bashed for the Stolkholm Syndrome argument, which we’ll get to that aspect here soon. But for now, let’s just discuss Belle piece by piece and see where the path leads us.

Belle’s intro establishes everything right off the bat. So much so that the intro sing is literally titled Belle. She’s bookish and cheerful, but it’s clear from her interactions witht he villagers and their own gossip that she’s seen as weird. The only people who seem to like her as she is is the bookshop owner and her own father. The women are jealous of her beauty, the men only see her for her beauty, and both sides are confused at her lack of conformity. Belle lives in a town that clearly has very old-fashioned views regarding gender roles. The men work, the women get married and have babies. They all seem content with this... except for Belle. She enjoys books and adventure, musing about wanting more than the provincial life that she has. She strolls through the village with her nose stuck in a book, but has no trouble navigating at all depsite the distraction. Books provide her a source of adventure and thrill that her limited life does not. She breaks those old-fashioned norms and he village is uttelry baffled at to how she can be this way. But what truly makes her a bafflement to everyone? Her utter rejection of Gaston. While just about every other women swoons at his feet, Belle couldn’t be less impressed if she tried. She’s familiar with how he is and if she had’t recieved his advances before their first scene, she’s probably seen it enough times to know that she doesn’t like him. Him dismisisng her passion for books and insulting her father did him no favors.

On the surface, Belle does’t seem bothered by these things. But when home, she does express some hurt about ti to her father, the one perosn who loves her for her unconditionally. She knows that she doesn’t fit in. She knows that she’s not happy with her life. She wants someone to understand her besides her father. She wants more to life where she can be herself. She wants to find love on her own terms and not have to deal with the advances of men like Gaston. None of this stops her form being able to handle herself, as demonstrated when Gaston goes to her house to force a proposal. She handles kicking him out with utter grace and her “I don’t deserve you” line is icing on the cake. But none of that changes how she feels. If anything, it enforces it. The village is all on Gaston’s side and at that point, her father has left for the science fair. He won’t be there forever, hence why she wants to find someone who will love her for her. To control her own destiny. To those who feel forced into their gender roles or being forced into a relationship that they don’t want whether by an agressive person or by peer pressure, Belle’s struggle is very relatable. Her independant spirit is also admirable as while she is dismayed with where she’s at, she still is able to smile and live her life as she wants. She’ defiant. She makes do with what she has and is able to handle what’s thrown at her with pure wit and ingenuity. Gaston nor anyone else can bring her down... at least, not until her wish for adventure ends up unexpectedly granted.

Before we progress forward, let’s pause to discuss Belle’s VA, Paige O’Hara. When Beauty and the Beast was beginning casting, O’Hara was already a rising Broadway actress and Disney happened to be seeking Broadway talent specifically. After several call-backs, she finally earned the part. She’s credited Howard Ashman as a huge help in guiding her to finding her voice as Belle, and she performs the role beautifully. She captures Belle’s independence yet playfulness very well, as well as her defiance and heartbreak in certain scenes. And her singing? Beautiful. Maybe not on par with Jodi Benson, but you can tell why she was a rising Broadway star. Today, O’Hara works mainly as a painter with Belle very much being one of her main muses. Sadly due to how much her voice has aged, she rarely plays Belle herself anymore, the role nowadays being primarialy done by VA Julie Nathanson. While she also does a lovely job at the part, O’Hara will always be the first to bring the character to life. Fortunteley she still shows a lot of love for the role and has attended multiple events and even got to reprise Belle at least one more time during Ralph Breaks the Internet. She had reprised Belle multiple times between various DTV films, TV appearances, and other events. So even if she is limited nowadays, her large body of work will live on forever.

Back to the film, Belle discovers that her father is in danger and ends up at the castle. We all know what happens at this point. Belle offers to take her dad’s place, Beast agrees, and Maurice is kicked out before Belle can so much as say goodbye. She’s distraught at this, and who can blame her? In a matter of hours, her life as she knew it was ripped away from her. Now instead of her old provincial life, she’s a prisoner in an enchanted castle ruled by an angry beast. Even when given the nicer room, she doesn’t feel that much better. She’s never going to get to see her father again or even know if he’s safely back home. She has no reason to believe that a rescue is coming. Some may say that she should try and get out, but isn’t she allowed this? To be upset and at a loss of what to do? It’s not like she just cries the whole time, she calms down enough to refuse to go to dinner despite the others insisting that she does. Even when Beast yells at her to do so, she refuses. She may be a prisoner, but she’s not going to play the victim. She’s going to be as she normally is; however she wants to be.

Soon, Belle’s able to calm down enough that she decides to go explore the castle. She is ultimateley a curious, adventurous spirit. Regardless of the circumstances, she can’t help but want to learn more about this new, strange place and these new figures that she’s encountered. You can tellt hat she’s warming up reatly during Be Our Guest where despite not actually getitng to eat anything, she is just havng far too much fun to care. It gets her spirits back up and now she can’t resist exploring more. Even if it risks The Beast’s wrath, one her curiosity has peaked, she can’t resist it. It’s a great strength, but also probably her biggest flaw. Despite having been told not to and knowing by now how Beast will react, she slips away from Cogsworth and Lumiere to go explore the West Wing. This ends with her seeing the trashed area, finding the Enchanted Rose, and getting yelled at by an enraged Beast. That is the last push needed to make Belle decide to escape.

So now that we’re at this point, we have to talk about one of the big topics that comes up when discussing this film: Stockholm Syndrome. To put it simply, Stockholm Syndrome is when the victim becomes emotionally attached to their aggressor and doesn’t want to leave them and tries to justify their actions. So when the vicitm is rescued, they may react negativly or even aggressively towards the rescuers in favor of the agressor. it’s a psychological response. This is actually a case where I was able to go to a professional to ask about it,: my own mother. My mom is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and currently works as a therapist. I’m fairly sure that she’s never treated anyone with Stockholm, but it is something that she knows of. I did ask her about if the film did glorify Stockholm Syndrome as some accuse it of. The gist of what she told me is... well, there’s enough in-film that either side can use it to prove their case. After all she DOES develop positive feelings towards Beast while a prisoner, so one can take the context and use it as an example, and same for the side who don’t agree. Ultimately Belle is a ficitonal character. We can’t sit her down and give her a psychoanalysis because she’s not real, and most of us doing these analysis’ aren’t therapists, psyologists, or mental health experts anyways. I’ll leave some sources below if you’d like further reading on the topic, but doing research isn’t the same as being a professional trained to go over these kinds of things. My mom said at most, Beast can be viewed as emotionally abusive, though it is because of his own trauma and he did ultimately improve to be a better person.

I fully agree that yes, if someone wants to make the arguent that the film promotes Stockholm Syndrome, they can. It’s their opinion, this came out in a diferent time than now where we take things like emotional abuse in cinema far more seriously, and in the end it’s a piece of fiction and people are free to view it however they wish. But the same also applies to me and in my opinion, no. Belle does NOT suffer from Stockholm Syndrome nor does the film glorify it. Now I am not an expert by any stretch of the imagination. This is strictly my opinion going off my understanding of it. I may be wrong and if that’s the case, I apologize. But from what I know and understand, the case in the film is not a straight forward situation like the various case studies in the real world. Plus I think we see enough of Belle being defiant and not feeling positivly towards Beast to see that she certainly hasn’t developed any psychological attachment towards him to cope with her situation. We’ll be seeing her feelings towards him change, but I’ll explain why I don’t feel that it counts down below. But again, I’m not an expert. This is just my understanding of it.

So... why the long tangent there? Well we’re now at the wolf attack scene. The turning point in the relationship. Belle’s effort to escape ends with her cornered by a pack of vicious wolves. Fortunateley, The Beast rescues her and drives the wolves away... but he is inured in the process and passes out. As I said in Beast’s character breakdown, he didn’t have to do it at that point since he’d given up, but he did so anyways. It showed that he isn’t a bad person. Something that Belle also saw. The Beast had been aggressive and rude to her throughout, and she had every good reason to continue on her way now that the path was clear. But Belle didn’t. She got Beast onto her horse and took him back to the castle, the closest shelter, to treat his wounds. Is this because she feels compelled to do so after forming a psychological dependency or attachment to him? No. We see as she treats his wounds that she still isn’t going to tolerate his temper and rudeness towards her. She stands up for herself and talks back at him until he calms down. She very much retains her independence. So then... why did she save him? Because Belle is a good-hearted person who just saw this seemingly hateful beast save her life when he didn’t have to. She isn’t the kind of person to leave an injured person to die. She did it out of kindness and gratitude as we see when she genuinely thanks Beast for saving her life. She’s seen a new side to him now, and it’s made her reconsider her earlier stance. Thus Belle remains at the castle.

The characteristics of Stockholm Syndrome include positive feelings towards the captor and belief of goodness in the captor, no real effort in escaping, learned helplessness, and feelings of pity to the captor. You can read the list and learn more here, and the link will also be with the sources. So you’re probably looking at that and going ‘...uuuggghhhh’ at the movie right now. Which fair enough. However let’s also look at where we are now. This is the part of the film where Beast makes an honest effort to improve himself. He’s nicer, trying to be more polite, and treats Belle as a person. She’s really not a prisoner anymore at this point and while mybe theposisbility of being human again is motivating Beast, for the most part I think it’s because he genuinely grows to like Belle. As for Belle, I think that she likes the castle. It’s enchanted and full of intrigue and mystery, just like in her books. It’s the escape form that provincial life in the village that she’s been longing for. It’s a temptation that she just can’t resist. The staff all like her and treat her kindly and no one tries to force her to be something that she isn’t. Beast especially loves Belle’s love of books, even giving her the huge library to repay her earlier kindness. Belle is able to be who she is and be around those who are accepting of her. Even fi for the staff it’s for ulterior motives, IDT that they’re faking liking having her around and Beast certainly isn’t. This isn’t really a straight-forward captive or abuse situaiton that Stockholm Syndrome would apply to in my opinion, especially since Belle never once succumbs to the Beast’s terms. She only respects and acts friendly with him when he does so towards her, and they are both clearly benefiting positivly from it. We know that Beast has no malicious intenitons regarding Belle and it’s Lumiere and co. insisting on the relaitonship happening moreso, and that’s because they want their humanity back so it adds a bit of complexity. It’s just not a straight forward case where we can easily apply Stockholm Syndrome to and get an accurate reading, at least in my opinion. She certainly is FAR from helpless.

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So then let’s discuss Belle’s feelings for The Beast. We know how much Belle’s influence changed The Beast. But what about Belle? She really doens’t change during the movie, nor did she realy need to. She’s already confident about herself, likes herself, and she knows what she wants with her life. Sure her curiosity can get her into trouble, but otherwise she didn’t realy need a character arc like Beast did. What Belle needed was acceptance. To find someone who would like her for who she is and not see her as weird for it. Beast doesn’t at all view her that way. He enjoys being around her because she’s smart and independant and even gets her to read to him. It’s that kind of acceptance that Belle hasn’t recieved from anyone outside her father. The more that she sees Beast try to be better, the more that she sees how sweet and endeairng that he really is and she’s more than happy to help him. I think that seeing this kinder side bloom and that acceptance and even enjoyment of her is what makes Belle fall in love with him. It’s what helps make the ballroom scene so magical. Two people considered outsiders coming together and dancing the night way happily together. It’s beautiful, magical, and the perfect culminaiton in everything prior. They brought out the best in each other. Made each other happier in a way that no one else had ever done. They’re better now because of the other, and it’s just lovely to see.

But of course, we know what comes next. While happy with Beast and being at the castle, Belle still misses her father. When she sees him in the snow and horirbly sick, she’s distressed. Seing this, Beast allows he to go. Honestly I think that Belle could have left whenever she wanted at that point and Beast wouldn’thave fought it, but she was staying willingly at that point because she was happy. But her father needed her now. If she truly had Stockholm Syndorme, I don’t think that she would have done so. But she doesn’t really give it any kind of thought here. While sad to leave The Beast, she has alreayd mad eup her mind when told that she could go. She leaves to save her father, The Beast giving her the mirror and unbeknownst to her Chip tagging along. Belle fortunateley gets Maurice home safely... and just in time for Gaston to initiate his plan to have Maurice locked away. Belle is of course shocked and outraged and in a panic, uses the mirror to confirm The Beast’s existence. Despite her insistence that he isn’t a bad person, it’s too late. Gaston realizes that she’s in love with the ‘monster’ and we get the iconic line: “He’s no monster Gaston, you are.” Beast treated her like a person and improved himself from his more toxic behavior. Gaston treated her like the prey that he seeks during his hunts, refusing to let up until he’s won. Beast had even kept his word about letting Maurcie go and returned him to the village safely, and of course let Belle go to help him and even seemed to feel guilty for what he had done previously. Gaston though? He shows no guilt over trying to use Maurice to blackmail Belle. He continues his horrible behavior not only by forming the mob, but locking Belle and Maurice in their own cellar for simply speaking against it. Belle didn’t call Gaston a monster because she’s been conditioned or due to a coping reflex. It’s because Gaston is a genuinely despicable person while Beast grew to become a good person. She saw this and stood her ground as she always has, but this time at the point where she won’t tolerate it anymore. Which if it was your parent being shipped off to the insane asylum by some jerk just because they want to marry you, woudln’t you call them a monster in comparison?

So we reach the climax. Belle and Maurice arrive after Chip frees them with Belle rushing to get to Beast. She makes it and seeing her reignites Beast’s will to live... but he’s stabbed by Gaston. Belle saves Beast from falling over the roof, but there’s nothing that she can do to stop him from dying. She’s devestated, blaming herself for it. Beast’s final words to her are that at least he got to see Belle one last time, and if she hadn’t figured it out before, I think that this was when Belle realized that Beast loved her... and that she loved him. We knew that Beast certianly loved her but we needed it confirmed from Belle as the curse was still intact. As Beast lay motionless, Belle cries and at last confesses that yes, she does love him... just as the last rose petal falls. With that confession, the curse breaks and Beast is ressurected/becomes human again. Belle is shocked as she sees not The Beast standing before her, but Prince Adam. You can tell how confused she is. is this reallyt he same person that she loved? Adam confirms it and Belle looks into his eyes... and that’s all it takes for her to finally smile. yes, it is the same man that she had fallen in love with. They kiss,a nd the curse is truly broken. Everyone becomes human again,t he castle is restored to it’s original state, and Belle and Adam dance happily, free to live happily ever after.

Belle is a role model character. She’s there for girls to look up to, and I think that the amount of fans that she has proves that she succeeded. She encourages girls to be themselves. To be independant and not bend to social norms or pressure. To find love for themselves and not succumb tot he pressure of unwanted admirers or the pressure to marry them. Something that happens far too much in reality. She doesn’t change, but there was no reason for her to. As I said, Belle’s not one of my favorites. Not because I dislike her by any means. if anythign I like her much more now as an adult now that I have a stronger understanding of the film. I just have princesses that I like more, and that’s really it. I also don’t like how some insist that she’s the best Dsney Princess compared to her predecessors because as I hope I made clear in those reviews, the previous four pricnesses are NOT badly done. If anything, I think it’s more anti-femenist to use a woman to bash other women without just cause. Saying that belle is better because she didn’t fall in love witht he guy at first sight or didn’t sell her soul for a guy without caring to analyze those characters isn’t empowering, it’s saying that if you don’t act a certain way as a woman, you’re anti-feminist. Which is a terrible stance. No woman is the same and women shouldn’t be used against women in this kind of way. Regardless, that’s an issue with certain ‘critics’, not Belle herself. She’s a great character and someone that I can admire. Maybe not as much as others, but I can certainly see why she’s left such an impact on so many and not even just little girls. To many people of all kinds. Who could be upset about that?

Final Thoughts

Beauty and the Beast is a lovely film. Is it my favorite? No. I didn’t watch it all that much as a kid. As an adult I have a greater appreciation for it. It’s beautfully animated, it’s themes are well-protrayed and still relevant, the characters are memorable and fun, and it’s music is phenomenal. I can absoluteley see why this as the first animated film to ever be niminated for Best Picture. It’s a tragedy that it lost, but it still proved that animation very much had staying power as Walt proved all those years ago. And of course the film is the final testament of Howard Ashman. He may not have been part of the Disney Renaissance for long, but his contributions single-handedly changed the company and their films for the better. Even today this style of musical films is very much going strong even over 30 years since it began with The Little Mermaid. We lost Ashman far too soon, and who knows what amaizng things he could have one if he were still alive. We can never know the what ifs, but we can always appreciate what came during his lifetime. He, Kirk Wise, Gary Trousdale, Alan Menken, Don Hahn, various animators, and so many more did so much to bring this film to life, and it will forever stand as a true Disney Masterpiece.

The film was a giant success, and Disney wasn’t slowing down one bit. The very next year, another animated feature would come out. A film about a dashing street rat who found a magic lamp and unleashed a magical genie who would make all his dreams come true. But wait you may ask, isn’t this a Disney Princess retrospective? Yep. So why am I talking about a dashing hero? Well there is a princess in it, but she occupies a bit of a unique place in the line-up. She is the first and so far only Princess to not be the main charater in her film. But she still left a huge impact and i included in the main lineup so we are NOT leaving her out. So next time, come along as we enter a whole new world to discuss 1992’s Aladdin, and in particular Princess Jasmine.

Image Source: Animation Screencaps

Further Reading on Stockholm Syndrome: Healthline, Medical News Today, GoodTherapy, WebMD,

[nejitenforlife]

NejiTen Month 2020

Day 1 - Your Favourite Trope

(As soon as I read this, every trope I enjoy fled my mind, so I ended up doing the one suggested. Even then, it didn’t end the way I was expecting, but I suppose, when do my stories ever?)

Word Count: 1,704

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“You have got to be kidding me.”

Tenten hadn’t thought her day could get any worse, and yet there she stood, her day considerably worse than a few short moments ago.

What had started out as a normal routine mission had quickly turned into one of the worst missions of her life. And now… now this? Did they expect her to sit quietly and accept it?

Tenten did her best to reign in her anger, but her voice still sounded short and clipped, even to her own ears. “So, you’re telling me that you don’t have any other rooms available? None at all?” Hell, she would take a dingy springy mattress in a room the size of a closet at this point. Anything but…

“I’m very sorry,” the clerk replied, sounding very unapologetic. “But we are filled to capacity. You were lucky to even find these two rooms available.”

Tenten turned her glare to her sensei who had the presence about himself to look sheepish. She had told him to book accommodations earlier, but he had been adamant they wouldn’t need them.

“Fine,” she said finally, turning back to the lady behind the counter. “Is there any other hotel in this town that might have a room for me?”

“I’m afraid all the hotels and motels are full due to the festival this week.”

Great. Just great. She turned again to her teammates, Gai and Lee looking uncomfortable with her display of anger—they were used to her getting annoyed with them, but she didn’t often get angry. Neji, on the other hand, was ignoring her temper tantrum altogether, his gaze fixed on the furnishings of the lobby around them. She suspected that it was taking every ounce of self-control he had to keep his gaze away, and she swore she saw the hint of a smirk on his infuriatingly perfect lips.

“Can I at least swap rooms with one of you?” she asked the two bushy-browed men before her. She would take having to sleep in the same room as Lee or Gai over having to share a space with Neji. Anyone but him.

Gai shuffled uncomfortably from foot to foot, his gaze darting away from her without giving an answer. Lee sent her an apologetic smile. “Sorry Tenten,” he said, “but Gai sensei promised to spend the evening teaching me the fundamentals to a new taijutsu attack.”

He leaned forward, his voice dropping to a whisper while his eyes strayed to Neji for a moment before finding hers again. “Also, Neji would not like if you shared a room with one of us.”

Tenten didn’t care one iota what Neji liked, not at the moment. She was mad at him and she wanted to remain that way—preferably as far away from him as she could get.

Before she could form a retort, Gai called Lee and the two of them made their way to what would be their room for the night. Tenten heaved a sigh, knowing she wouldn’t be able to get out of this, and resigned herself to the fact that she would just have to keep her wall of anger up. She would not let him break it.

“Are you ready, Tenten?” Neji asked, having made his way to her when she wasn’t paying attention. He watched her with his shrewd lavender gaze, and Tenten felt the urge to smack the smug look off his face.

She didn’t answer quickly enough for his liking, and Neji heaved a long-suffering sigh before grabbing her hand and starting towards the stairs that would take them to their temporary room. She glared at the back of his head, but his grip held when she tried to pull away from him.

“I didn’t give you permission to hold my hand, Neji. Let go.” She made sure her voice was stern, but still he didn’t even so much as loosen his hold on her. She gritted her teeth. He was insufferable.

Neji unlocked the door to their room and pushed it open, tugging her in after him as he walked through the threshold. Tenten wanted to bolt out the door, take her chances elsewhere—anywhere but here—but Neji was already closing the door behind them. Only after the door was shut and locked—seriously, did he have to lock it too?—did he let go of her hand.

It was late, their mission having had taken a lot longer than expected, and Tenten was exhausted. All she wanted to do was shower and crawl into bed, but the way Neji was looking at her made her realize he had other plans in mind. Plans she would not let herself get dragged into.

Before he could so much as step closer to her, Tenten held out a hand in warning, glaring at him. “Since we have no choice but to share this space together, we need to set some ground rules.” Her glare intensified when he opened his mouth to interrupt, and he promptly shut it again, arms crossing his chest stubbornly and his lips flattening into a frown. “First,” she continued, “no touching.”

This made his lips turn upwards into a smirk, and Tenten had to ignore the way it set her heart racing. “Are you afraid you will not be able to resist me if I touch you?”

“No.” Yes. He wasn’t fooled for a second, his smirk widening significantly at her unconvincing reply.  “Second,” she continued, “no talking. I’m mad at you and I don’t want to hear whatever excuses you have come up with.”

“How are we to clear up this misunderstanding if I am not allowed to speak?” he asked, raising an eyebrow at her.

“Misunderstanding?” If Tenten weren’t so angry, she would have laughed. “Did I just happen to misunderstand seeing that woman all over you, and you allowing her attentions? I didn’t realize we were allowed to flirt with other people in this relationship. Maybe I should go down to the bar and find someone to flirt with as well.”

Neji’s once amused face instantly turned hard and he glared at her, a growl rumbling in his throat at her words.

“No.” Tenten held up her hand to stop him. “You do not get to be jealous right now, Neji.” No way in hell was she going to pander to his manly pride. “If you can flirt with other women then I have every right to do the same.”

Tenten could see him visibly trying to calm himself; his fists clenched and unclenched at his side and he inhaled deep breaths through his nose. Finally, he began to relax. “I am sorry that I have upset you, Tenten,” he said, his voice low. “But I promise that I was not flirting with that woman. I barely even noticed she was there.”

“Right,” Tenten scoffed, “because you couldn’t see the way she was flaunting her boobs in your face, or feel her hands touching you?” It made her sick to even recall the scene, and Tenten could feel her anger rising again.

“We were in the middle of a mission and I was collecting information on the enemy. I was focused on my job. If I had made a scene, I could have jeopardised my position.”

It made sense. Of course it did. Tenten knew Neji had gone in to spy on their target, having to use his byakugan to spy on where their target was having a secret meeting behind closed doors. They needed the intelligence as part of their mission—one that ended up going pear shaped, though they had succeeded in the end.

Neji took advantage of her silence and stepped towards her, reaching out to take hold of her hands. “Do you truly believe I would be attracted to another woman, Tenten?”

Tenten’s shoulders slumped and she felt water pool in her eyes, though she refused to let them fall. “No, of course not,” she replied softly. “But she was so beautiful and voluptuous and I’m, well… not. Sometimes I wonder what you see in me at all.”

She wasn’t planning on getting all deep and emotional with her boyfriend, but the insecurity had been weighing on her mind for some time now, and she couldn’t keep it to herself anymore.

Neji squeezed her hands, his eyes soft and no trace of amusement on his face as he searched her gaze. “Do you wish to know what I thought of that woman? I noticed a pesky fly buzzing around my head, nothing more. I would not be able to recall what she looked like even if I tried.”

He reached up with one hand to caress her cheek, chasing away a tear that had broken free. “Do you wish to know what I think of when I see you?”

“What?” Tenten asked, her voice barely a whisper.

“I see the beautiful, fierce, kind woman who I fell in love with.” He cupped her face in both hands, making sure she could not look away from him. “You are perfect for me, Tenten. I will only ever want you by my side.”

Tenten opened her mouth to say something—what exactly, she wasn’t sure, having just had the breath stolen from her by his words—but before she got the chance, he covered her lips with his. He kissed her passionately, one hand sliding around her neck and into her hair while the other circled her waist to pull her closer.

He pulled away far too soon for Tenten’s liking and rested his forehead against hers. “Am I forgiven?” he asked, using his arm to cinch her closer still.

Tenten knew she couldn’t stay mad at him, not after what he had just told her.  She smiled. “You’re forgiven.”

“Good,” he said, eyes shining with heat. “Because it would be a shame to waste the evening being angry when we could be doing other, more enjoyable things together.”

Neji walked her backwards until her knees hit the bed and she toppled onto it. She pulled him down with her, a mischievous smile on her lips. “We better not waste anymore time then, should we?”

“Definitely not,” Neji replied before devouring her mouth once more.

[princesssarcastia]

we’re tunneling under rock bottom, lads.

alrighty then.  ladies, gentlemen, and those of you who know better: here it is.  just laying bear the incredible shame which is my current descent back into hp.  I’ve been reading lots of fic, and now i’m having a lot of thoughts about it.  putting them under a readmore because I’m morally opposed to even accidentally subjecting people to this if they don’t want to see it.   in the immortal words of groucho marx, these are my principles thoughts, and if you don’t like them....well, i have others.

ugh. oh god. here we go.

i’m frankly disgusted with the way james potter is frequently cast as this HIMYM-Ted-Mosby-like character, who meets a woman—no, doesn’t even meet her.  just sees her.  and decides this is the woman he’ll marry, and then continues to pursue her even though she makes it clear she’s not interested...FOR YEARS...sort of casts himself as a wounded, sympathetic party...and then eventually succeeds!!  which is some Narrative Bullshit, because it implies that’s a way to get someone to go out with you, Which It Isn’t.  like, I don’t think this interpretation even has any canon grounding, but that’s beside the point because canon is a roast and I am carving off only the bits I want to eat for consumption.

the mindset i’m using to justify this to myself is that.  look.  tmi hour with princesssarcastia.  these books actually do mean a lot to me.  they were the books that made me like to read!  they opened a whole world for me; not just the world of HP but countless others, some better written, some much much worse.  it was like they flipped a switch in my head and suddenly i had this glorious form of escapism that had been in front of me all along but that I could now take advantage of.  I would literally not be the same person I am today if I hadn’t read them.  i know everyone says that but I really do mean it.  hell yes I should, and WILL, be more critical of the source material and the fan material now, compared to when I first read them.  I should not only be more critical, but I should also openly criticize it and its author, JK Rowling.  But it’s like with lovecraft, okay; he was shit and JRK is shit, but they laid out the bare bones of something more spectacular than their tiny, bigoted minds could fully flesh out.  so now, fleshing it out is our job, especially so we can rub it in their racist, transphobic, antisemetic faces that we’re way better at it than they ever were.

still hate snape!  really, really do.  he’s a bigot and a bully and he never changed, and the fact that he was poor and his father abused him doesn’t change that or make him redeemable somehow.  It makes him more interesting, sure!  More fleshed out, more three dimensional.  But as a person he still sucks.  He was Neville’s boggart!  And not in the way that McGonagall was Hermione’s boggart; not like some face or representation of a more abstract fear.  It was Literally just snape that Neville feared more than anything else in the world, and I will not abide that.  Snape is bad for the same reason Umbridge is bad: your teachers are supposed to be people you can trust, they are people entrusted with your welfare, they are supposed to broaden your horizons and introduce you to the world around you in increasingly complex but ALWAYS, ALWAYS KIND ways.  Snape does not do that.  And I always thought the idea of him still loving Lily decades after he inadvertently sent Voldemort on the path to murdering her, and spending those decades doing something he hated and making the children in his care as miserable as he was, was much more sad than it was romantic.  That’s not a romance, that’s a tragedy that he walked into with his eyes wide open, and karmically deserved.

The best fics are the ones that understand that Ron Weasley was harry’s first friend, that he was kind, and that his jealousy and temper didn’t make him any less those things.  Ron Weasley is a ride-or-die bitch with, frankly, more emotional intelligence than hermione had sometimes, and I respect the hell out of him.

There really must have been more to the wizarding world than Harry ever sees, and that makes it fertile ground for fandom to grow its own ideas in.  For instance, to fight a war against all the death eaters, their families, the bigoted ministry employees, and the snatchers, there simply MUST have been more order of the phoenix members than were named, the first time ‘round and the second.

When you think about it, the concept of the Order of the Phoenix is actually fascinating. because on the one hand, it’s kind of a private paramilitary group?  It’s basically a militia populated by some government employees, INCLUDING cops, and schoolteachers, and healers, and sometimes your neighbors.  That’s sort of a scary thought in the abstract, though it does literally happen in the U.S. allll the time.  But on the other hand, it’s a group of people dedicated to taking direct action against rising fascism in their government and society.  punch nazis 1995, amirite?

Very excited because today, for the first time, I read a harry potter fic where someone (hermione, of course) mentions human rights. [dead men have no tails, by DuskGlass] and it’s very offhand, narratively; there’s not deep exploration of it.  But it leads to some wider questions I’ve been musing over...

...which is, even though the wizarding world is separate from the muggle world, how does that work out historically?  specifically when it comes to shitty stuff, though there are certainly nicer areas of this to explore if you’d like to.  For instance, How involved were british wizards in colonial efforts?  Did british, french, and dutch colonists in the americas participate in the genocide against native people there?  In the atlantic slave trade?  How involved was the british wizarding world in colonizing India?  And, were native american wizards and indian wizards involved in that conflict?  I mean, i can’t imagine they weren’t.  And if they weren’t, and the european forces still succeeded anyway, they the european wizarding world would have to have been involved in that, right?  when exactly did wizarding and muggle society start splitting far enough apart that muggle wars were not wizarding affairs?  Are there wizards in every country on the planet?  Is there the same level of disengagement in every other country as there is in Great Britain? These are questions i’m sure Hermione must have gotten answered for herself at some point.  I’d like to know the answers as well.

In retrospect, a lot of Hogwarts classes seem centered around defense and offense; in training people in combat, even if that’s not explicitly what they call it.  not in any fudge/umbridge esque “they’re training the kids in combat to take over the government!!!!” way, but in a “this world is actually very, very dangerous, from creatures to rogue magical objects or rogue magical people who mean you harm.”  That’s a fascinating mindset to have; it’s a fascinating paradigm to shift to, I imagine, especially for muggleborns.  Sort of prudent in canon, given the whole Voldemort thing, but it makes you wonder if the wizarding world then just always has some kind of asshole trying to take it over and kill a bunch of people along the way.

I’ll probably have more thoughts at some point, but that’s it for now.  feel free to discuss these, or any other, harry potter thoughts with me further.  I gotta get my enrichment somehow.

[goofygomez]

An analysis of The Last of Us Part II and its themes

I’ve seen a lot of people share their experience with playing The Last of Us Part II, and it’s safe to say most of it has been largely negative. It’s no secret this might be one of the most divisive games of all time, and it will probably stay that way for a long time after. I personally adored this game. I believe this is the masterpiece of masterpieces, and it’s the only game to ever top the emotions I felt when playing the first game, although I will say in terms of raw story (with nothing else like gameplay to support it) the first game is still a bit higher on the list for me.

But for all intents and purposes, when considering all aspects of this game, I think this is the single greatest accomplishment in game design and storytelling I’ve ever seen in a video game. That being said, I would like to try and respond to some of the criticisms this game has gotten, and furthermore, I’d like to try and analyze some of the themes I noticed when playing the game. Keep in mind this is MY opinion, and should not be taken as fact. This is just my experience, and I’ll respect yours one way or the other.

Take this as a MAJOR WARNING that there will be spoilers for both games in this post.

With that, let’s start with the common criticisms:

1.       “They killed Joel for no damn reason. He deserved better.” This is an easy one to tackle. For one, Joel most definitely did not deserve better. Even though we might love him for being the first game’s MC and have grown attached to him, there’s no way we can or should look past the fact that he, Joel, is a bad man. He even says himself in the first game that he and Tommy did some questionable things to survive in the 20 years between the outbreak and even during the events of TLOU. While he may be perceived as the hero of the franchise, when you look at his rap sheet, you start to notice he’s not so great after all. Take the ending of TLOU as the most glaring example, where Joel has been told Ellie must die in order for the Fireflies to develop a vaccine. His first and only reaction is to kill every single Firefly he sees and murder the surgeon who would have killed his “baby girl”. Would I have done any different in his shoes? Probably not, but that’s the beauty of the first game. Its ending and the ambiguity of Joel’s morality given his actions is one of the driving forces that make the first game so spectacular and why it’s still being discussed 7 years later. Now let’s talk about the second point to this criticism: “He died for no reason”. If you recall, the people who killed him were former Fireflies, one of which (Abby) was the daughter of the surgeon whom Joel unceremoniously killed. In their eyes, they had every right to go after Joel. Like Anthony Caliber, one of the best TLOU speedrunners, said in one of his recent livestreams, “Joel signed his own death sentence when he killed Marlene and the surgeon back at the hospital in TLOU1”. While it may seem overly zealous to us as players who have grown to love Joel, if the roles had been reversed would you not do the same? Would you not want revenge for the killing of your father? And isn’t that exactly what Ellie is doing in this game, which most players justify in this hatred of Abby?

2.       “Joel was out of character in giving out his name and trusting strangers. They dumbed him down for the sake of plot.” As I recall, Joel literally gave Henry and Sam his name and followed them out to their hideout barely 30 seconds after meeting them and beating the shit out of Henry. Joel may be an untrusting person at heart but he always does so with reason. The most common reason people give of this is “He didn’t trust the guy asking for help in Pittsburg and ran him over so why trust Abby and her gang”. First of all, that was literally the one situation Joel had already been on the other side of, and knew perfectly well it was rehearsed. On the flipside, he and Tommy had just saved Abby and literally mention there’s no other way to go other than with her because there’s a huge blizzard and a herd was after them. And especially now, after Joel has been living in Jackson for 4 years now and has been living comfortably in a community very obviously open to new people. Abby’s group gave them no reason to distrust them, and giving out his name, in any other situation, would have made no difference in the outcome. It was just unfortunate they happened to be after him.

3.       “I hate playing as Abby, why are they trying to make me sympathize with her?” That’s the whole point, they’re not. The entire game, you keep rooting for Ellie to find and kill this woman who wronged you, and when you’re forced to play as her, you’re understandably angry. You’re upset, and you feel you have to slog through this seemingly endless section of the game. But as you keep playing, much like I did, you start seeing the other side of the story. Abby is not the villain the game paints her out to be when she killed Joel. She’s another human being with human emotions and a very real reason to hate Joel and to want him dead. As I said before, Abby is doing exactly what Ellie eventually does after Abby kills Joel.

4.       “Why would Ellie go through all that effort to not kill Abby in the end?” I will touch on this in the analysis of the themes, but simply put, it was about breaking cycles.

Now I’d like to start defending how and why I believe this is a masterpiece by first taking a look at one of the admittedly less touched upon parts: gameplay. This aspect usually takes a step back when it comes to narrative-based games, and it is obviously not the most resounding part of this game, but it is clearly not taking a back seat either. The flow of both combat and mellower scenarios in this particular game is astounding. When battling opponents, the AI feels like one of the most intelligent I’ve ever seen in a video game. The way the enemies communicate between each other, telling the others when the player is out of ammo or when they’re flanking to create much more nuanced fight sequences, coupled with the expanded worlds Naughty Dog has come up with to create a seamless experience when fighting hordes of enemies without it feeling stale or repetitive, is one of the most immersive gaming experiences I’ve ever had. Each encounter feels unique and challenging in some ways you may not have felt before in the game, and by the end you’re so immersed in that feeling that going through the Santa Barbara group (to me, at least) was almost automatic and I could see so many different options for me to approach each situation as it came my way.

Likewise, Naughty Dog have managed to turn the puzzle solving from the first game, where you simply had to find a dumpster to step on or a door to open with a shiv, and incorporate the environment and world into it, finding clever ways to get over obstacles without simply having a step-up ladder be the end of it. The mechanics that went into the rope puzzles, breaking windows to get to previously unexplored territory (which is admittedly not new in gaming, but still a cool concept to add to the franchise) paired together with so many more new little features to bring the world they created to life, and bring you into it as well.

As always, and as was the case with the first one, you can’t talk about The Last of Us without talking about the soundtrack. The haunting score created by the masterful mind of Gustavo Santaolalla, a fellow Argentinean like me, brought to life some of the most heart-wrenching moments and the most beautiful ones as well, in a way that can only be achieved with amazing sound design and music. The main theme song, which is a sort of homage to the one from the first, takes a much darker approach, choosing instead to focus on the bass and that resounding low voice in the background, setting the tone for the rest of the game: a much darker, grittier, and grounded experience that will pull no punches. Santaolalla managed to create a score that mimics the first one in melody and rhythm, while succeeding in mirroring it to create a more dissonant accompaniment to the gruesome story you’re brutally killing your way through.

Another aspect of the game that deserves all the praise it gets, and one that people seem to at least be in consensus about, is the graphics and animation design. I can safely say this is hands down the most beautiful, gorgeous, astounding, breathtaking game I’ve ever laid my eyes upon, and that might not be enough adjectives to fully encapsulate how I feel about the graphics in this game. One can argue all day about the morality of the characters in the game or the balance between right and wrong that Naughty Dog so masterfully plays with in the story, but one thing is for sure: The graphics design team deserves so much credit for actually bringing the story and the characters we know and love to such vivid life. You can see it in the little things, like the veins in Joel’s arm as he plays “Future Days” by Pearl Jam and the facial expressions Ellie can make if you stand in front of a mirror during the museum flashback; you can also see it in the larger things, like the jaw-dropping backdrops that range from a beautiful mountain range in the snow to the downtown Seattle skyline. No moment will be wasted by stopping your pace to just admire the absolutely gorgeous view you’re presented with every time you enter a new game world. The attention to detail in animation is also not lacking at all, with so many little actions being given special treatment as we see Ellie patch herself up and still having the actual bandage over her arm instead of disappearing like any other game, or the way Ellie’s fingers perfectly (and correctly) play chords without resorting to generic hand gestures. You can see the love and care the developers have for this game in every tiny crack in the game that simply takes your breath away and that sometimes you won’t even see from the vastness of the world around you.

And finally, the story. It is definitely a divisive story, and Neil Druckmann did warn us it would be. There were times, namely the moment they switched the POV to show me the first 3 days from Abby’s perspective, when I was genuinely wondering what the hell they were thinking. My faith in Naughty Dog never wavered, though. I kept playing because I thought, “There must be some reasoning for this.” And to my greatest relief, it finally clicked for me a few hours into Abby’s section. Namely, the moment where she meets Lev and Yara, two Seraphites that defected after the former shaved his head. At first, it seemed weird that they would be cast out for such a stupid reason, but then you start to get to know them, and you understand the real reason they had to leave their religious cult. As I said before and will say again, this is a game about perspective. Up until that point, I just wanted Abby dead, albeit with some guilt since learning that it was her father Joel killed in that operating room. But seeing Abby’s willingness to help total strangers, much like Joel did at the start of the game, was what sold me on this game’s concept. The purpose of this story is to make you feel the regret and the weight of the actions you impart on the world, as you can see the carnage Ellie left in her wake during your time as Abby, seeing Abby’s friends butchered by either Ellie or Tommy, realizing they’re no different than the villains we have such tunnel vision about. The ending is something I’ll get to in the themes, but I just have to say I love the way it’s such a parallel to the first game’s ending, up to the point of divisiveness in the people who actually played and finished the game (which at the time of writing this is less than 4% of players).

Now onto the themes. One of the things people always praise about the first game, and rightfully so, is its themes and how well it portrays them through certain characters to create a cohesive and coherent story that pulls at your heartstrings and makes you root for the “heroes” of the game. This time it’s not much different, with the minor exception that this time, there are no heroes. Just like Neil Druckmann said many times during the development of Part II, “While the first game was about love, this game is about hate”, which is one of the main themes.

1.       Hatred: I can safely say there have been very few times of my gaming life where I’ve been so viscerally angry (in a “good” way) while playing a video game as I have as I tore down through countless enemies that got in the way of me and my target. This game will let out the worst parts of you in ways you can’t even imagine, and will make you take a look at the way we glorify violence in video games without the usual preachy tone of “video games cause violence”. Like I said before, this is a game that mirrors the first one while paying homage to its themes. To take a page out of Abby’s book, it’s like a coin. There are always two sides to it. On the one hand, the first game’s main theme was love, and how loss and grief can be overcome with it with the proper care and time. The Last of Us Part II shows us the uglier side of human nature, which is anger, despair and a natural desire for revenge (another theme). Both games show us the natural progression of a grieving person, but both of them take wildly different approaches. Granted, we don’t know how brutal and vicious Joel was right after losing Sarah, but it’s safe to assume he was nothing short of a monster, which eventually didn’t really help in dealing with that loss until he found love and hope in a little girl whose safety was now his utmost responsibility. In Ellie’s case, she’s still in that first stage. Ellie as a character has always been reckless and foolhardy, and her actions in this game are a testament of how well Neil Druckmann and Halley Gross know their characters. The entire game, right up until the final moments where she’s about to finish Abby off, her actions are fueled by a rage and desire to exert justice onto those who’ve wronged her. In other words, she’s looking for revenge.

2.       Revenge: Both main characters have at least one thing in common, and it is their desire to avenge their father/father figure. I truly believe that Joel’s death was not only justified (from a storytelling perspective) but also crucial to the development of a sequel that both enhanced the world of The Last of Us while building onto it with new ideals and perspectives. The idea this time is definitely not one we haven’t seen before in so many other mediums: “Revenge is bad and is never worth it” Seems trivial to even suggest it when we all know the outcome, but The Last of Us Part II manages to not only build upon the idea that revenge is a double-edged sword, but it also manages to balance the perspectives within that cycle to attempt to explore the psyche of the characters we’ve put into the boxes of “hero” and “villain”. And subsequently, they manage to break that characterization by showing us both sides of the aforementioned coin to see, in no unclear terms, that the consequences of our actions when dealing with vengeance always circle back to expose the nastiest side of our nature. It stands to reason that we, as the player, would at first be on board with Ellie “finding and killing every last one of them”, and demonizing Abby for not only killing but torturing possibly one of the most beloved characters in gaming history. We want her dead. We want her to suffer for the crime she’s committed. Yet, in our quest for vengeance and justice, would we not be succumbing to the same cycle that brought Abby to killing Joel in the first place? Did she not think, from her perspective, that she was entirely justified in killing the man who had not only destroyed the one chance humanity had against the Cordyceps, but also murdered her father in cold blood? Are we not the same as Abby for wanting her dead after she kills one of our own? When does it end? And that’s the real question. This whole thing, the lust for revenge that can only be quenched with cold-blooded murder, is just another facet to our complex and grey morality as human beings. It’s natural for us to feel angry and upset at this, and I believe all the hatred people give this game that stems from it forcing you to play as Abby is the exact nature the game is trying to bring out of us and show to us in a mirror.

3.       Cycles: While this may not be such an obvious catch as the first two, it’s still very much ingrained in the inner workings of this game’s narrative and how both characters view the world according to their reality and perspective. The concept of revenge, as stated above, is a repetitive one. One that causes cycles and events to repeat themselves if left unchecked, and The Last of Us Part II plays with these masterfully. Starting the game with a heartbreaking moment and setting the dark tone for the rest of the game is what starts the first part of this cycle, which is Ellie wanting to avenge Joel’s death, much like Abby avenged her father’s death after 4 years of despair, planning, and training. Ellie’s desire to kill Abby is what leads her down the path we would characterize, were she some random character and not the main one of the franchise, as the villain’s route, going down a dark path that prompts her to mindlessly and mercilessly slaughtering countless people whose names you hear from their friends’ mouths when you kill them, to the point where you end up getting to Abby’s closest friends and companions and murdering them too, not unlike Abby murdered Joel. It is a sobering feeling to realize the character you most love and root for is, in the eyes of the other main character, as much of a villain (if not more) as we as players make Abby out to be. It is at the end of the game, which a lot of players had qualms about, where Ellie is beating Abby within an inch of her life that she realizes this is not worth it. Killing Abby will not bring Joel back, and will certainly not bring her any satisfaction, as showcased by how traumatized Ellie was after the killings of Abby’s other friends and the fact that she still kept seeing Joel’s lifeless body as she attempted to drown Abby on that coast. Then, as we are mercilessly choking the life out of her, which is yet another example of the visceral anger the game elicits from the player, we see a different memory of Joel. One of hopefulness, where Joel is playing the guitar and smiling. It is at that moment that Ellie realizes the only thing she can do now is to move on with her life and accept Joel’s death as something that happened. To add onto this realization, it’s probably good to mention that Ellie must have seen some of herself in Lev in that killing Abby would have left him (if not dead) in a state much like the one she, Ellie, was at the start of the game. Coming back to the theme of cycles, if Ellie killed Abby, what’s to stop Lev from coming after Ellie the same way she came after Abby, and so on and so forth. Both these things coupled help Ellie finally break the cycle and go back to the farm, where she’s greeted with the consequences of her actions in a more emotional and real way than the PTSD: Dina being gone and Ellie leaving her guitar behind, symbolizing her letting go of Joel’s memory and accepting her reality.

The game scares us; it scares me. It is a harrowing experience that will only get better with time and will, in my humble opinion, go down as one of the greatest games of all time for years to come. No matter the context, and no matter the medium, I wish it were easy to find such real, emotional, and powerful pieces of art as this one more often. But alas, we will have to wait and see. As someone whose name I can’t seem to remember said: “This will mark the gaming industry and divide it between ‘Before TLOU2 and After TLOU2”

[tblpress]

The day before James Spader won an Emmy for his portrayal of Alan Shore, the morally dubious lawyer on “The Practice,” the actor was at the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden at UCLA, admiring the statues -- especially the female forms. “Look at the beautiful curve of her back, right at the base of her spine,” he said, noticing a dancer at the top of Robert Graham’s “Dance Columns.” “It’s the most perfect curve in nature.” Then Spader felt a breeze and started ambling in the other direction. “I just want to walk into it,” he explained. “Oh, my God, that is nice.”

The sculpture garden, a favorite hideaway of Spader’s, brought out in him a charming mix of formality and earthiness. When Gaston Lachaise’s bronze powerhouse “Standing Woman” caught his eye, the memories rushed out. “My sons, when they were growing up, always enjoyed her rather ample” -- here he used a word not proper for this newspaper but that means “derriere” -- “and her rather ample breasts,” he said. The boys, Sebastian, now 15, and Ellijah, 12, would come here with their scooters. “So you come around,” Spader explained, “and lo and behold, you have that beautiful” -- that word again -- “over there. You can hardly resist scootering by and giving her a poke. She has nice calves too. She’s ample everywhere. She’s spectacular.”

James Spader, network TV star: To anyone familiar with the 44-year-old actor and his work, it sounds almost absurd. With the outre air of highbrow naughtiness and deep but slightly distracted intelligence he’s been known for since his 1989 big-screen breakthrough in “sex, lies, and videotape,” Spader could hardly have cooked up a more improbable career move. And yet starting tonight on “Boston Legal,” the new David E. Kelley show spun off from “The Practice,” TV viewers will get a weekly taste of the actor who has specialized in finding an endearing human side to wealthy school bullies, creepy cocaine dealers and sensuous sadomasochists.

Spader headed toward a section of the UCLA campus blanketed by California sycamores that he and his sons, he said, often climb and swing from. “See that?” he asked, pushing a branch down. “This is a perfect perching spot. I’d do it more aggressively, but there’s people around and it makes them nervous.”

Making people nervous is, of course, a Spader trademark.

“When we first went to the network about James, they shrieked in horror,” Kelley said. “James Spader is not a network face. They didn’t think he was the kind of persona American audiences would want to welcome into the living room on a weekly basis. But once we began to focus on him, he was the only choice. What James does so well is there’s a nucleus to this character that is humane and decent. He manages to let that nucleus shine through even when he’s committing egregious, contemptible acts. You don’t know if you like him or not, but you can’t wait to see him next.”

Kelley hired Spader to play the brilliant agitator whose dirty ways forced the firm of Young, Frutt and Berluti on “The Practice” to close its doors last year, after ABC slashed the show’s budget, forcing Kelley to fire half his cast. Spader, whose most recent television appearance had been a guest spot on “Seinfeld” in 1997, was supposed to play Alan Shore only long enough to shake things up.

“The goal in the beginning was to bring new life to the show, and the luxury we had as storytellers was that we didn’t have to protect the character for the sake of a long series run,” Kelley said. “You can only do so many things with a character that are overtly unlikable and still keep him redeeming and a character that people want to tune into and cheer for. Since we didn’t have that burden, we could swing away with him.”

The high-end firm of Crane, Poole and Schmidt might prove a better fit for Shore, who will be surrounded by other conniving legal eagles, including William Shatner as his boss, Denny Crane, and colleagues played by a cast including Rhona Mitra, Lake Bell, Monica Potter and Mark Valley. Alan Shore, Kelley promised, will “defy this law firm as he defies the conventions of regular characters on television.”

“When we watch James, there’s a lot of unknown complicated stuff in his mind, but we don’t know what that stuff is,” said Steve Shainberg, who directed Spader in “Secretary” (2002). “There’s something very unusual about him we can’t put our finger on, but that makes it more intriguing and exciting -- God help us.”

Yet for all the unpredictability that comes across on screen, Spader’s “Boston Legal” co-stars described him as meticulous, exact and particular on set.

“He’s always looking for the truth of the moment, and he gets fidgety when it’s not there,” said Shatner, who won a guest actor Emmy for his portrayal of Crane on “The Practice.” “He becomes as recalcitrant as a donkey until he can find the right way to deliver a line. He never says a word that doesn’t seem to come from the organic character. That’s because James himself is a little weird. But we love him for it.”

The Un-Brat Pack career

Two days after Spader nabbed the top acting award for a drama series, beating out television heavy hitters James Gandolfini, Martin Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland and Anthony LaPaglia, he was on the “Boston Legal” set at Raleigh Studios in Manhattan Beach. Three episodes of the show were being shot simultaneously, and he had found no time yet to contemplate his win. The Emmy, he said, was tucked away in a corner full of boxes as Spader, who recently separated from his wife, Victoria, waited to move into a new house.

“I was surprised at how quickly I lost the feeling of stunned confusion and ignorant bliss and how quickly it turned into work and pragmatism,” Spader said. “The award doesn’t mean anything to me -- and I don’t mean that in a derogatory sense. I just haven’t had time to go there yet. Even when my older son called to congratulate me, we moved rather swiftly on to the subject of an upcoming concert” -- the Pixies at the Greek Theatre -- “and the best way to score tickets, which is a much more constructive conversation for us.”

Like other actors who started taking shape in the ‘80s, Spader could easily have cultivated a Brat Pack aura. Instead, he went for a more original brand of alienation, playing seemingly WASPY characters with a devious air and an anti-WASPY erotic charge to them. The roles he took in movies such as “White Palace” (1990), “The Music of Chance” (1993), “Stargate” (1994) and “Crash” (1996) didn’t always hit big but always set him apart -- none more so than “Secretary,” in which Spader played E. Edward Grey, a lawyer who draws his self-mutilating young secretary into a joyful S&M; relationship.

“James is very formal and specific and respectful,” said Maggie Gyllenhaal, his costar. “I remember when we shot a five-page scene in which Mr. Grey asks me not to cut myself anymore, James noticed and responded to everything I did: every breath I took, every shift of my gaze, every movement of my hand. His work is very specific.”

And that, according to Camryn Manheim, who starred on “The Practice” for eight years, can be intimidating. “After you saw ‘Secretary,’ wouldn’t you be scared to go on a date with him?” Manheim said, laughing.

“I was scared of him,” she added. “He’s weird and strange and eccentric, and I mean a lot of that in the very best way. He plays all of these sexually charged characters. He looks at you too hard, like he’s got your number. But behind all of that, he’s a very simple man who is very thoughtful and insightful about the world and humanity.”

Confronted with the praise of his colleagues, Spader took a deep breath and looked skeptical. “Maybe this thing they are describing is just obsessive-compulsive. It just seems to be what the job is, to just try and get the right intention of whatever ... you’re saying. Who is to say if whether what you end up tumbling toward is the right place when you’re standing on your feet in the middle of it? I’ve had a lot of fun acting, and that’s been the only reason to continue doing it.”

Spader, who dropped out of the 11th grade to pursue acting in New York, attributes his interest in acting to the love of storytelling he inherited from his family. The son of teachers Todd and Jean Spader, the actor grew up with two sisters on the campus of Phillips Academy, a fancy Massachusetts prep school. “My father was an English teacher and he taught literature and poetry, and my parents would read aloud and my grandparents read aloud,” Spader said. “My grandfather would write stories and we would make up little plays to read and perform during the holidays. There was always a tremendous amount of humor in all the households I spent time in.”

But there were other reasons for wanting to become an actor. “I started doing theater when I started thinking of nothing but girls,” he said. “I can’t imagine that the two don’t relate. I don’t mean to be glib. In sports and in many other areas, girls and boys are separated. But in theater, you’re all mixed in together. How can it get any better than that?”

Being an actor, for Spader, has never been about celebrity. The press tent for interviews with winners at the Emmys came as a surprise and an “indignity,” he said jokingly. When someone at the Governors Ball on Emmy night remarked how rare it is that Spader has succeeded at being famous and simultaneously living a private life, the actor was incredulous.

“I don’t try to be mysterious,” Spader explained later. “I just protect my private life very carefully. I don’t go out a great deal. To see and be seen I could care less about. I don’t go to see movies at big premieres. If I go out, I go to a quiet place for a meal or I might go to listen to live music with a whole lot of people who are more interested in listening to the music than who is sitting next to them at the show.”

His new TV world

Spader may be on his way to television stardom, but he has never followed a television show from beginning to end -- the way he hopes viewers of “Boston Legal” will.

“That’s something I had no concept of,” Spader said. “Working on the show, I was experiencing the same anticipation for what was going to happen from week to week as the people who were watching it. When you do a film, you know what is going to happen to your character from start to finish. I knew very little about Alan Shore at the end of last season, and I still don’t. I like that constant shift because what I like the most about all of this is the telling of the story.”

What he likes the least is the fuss. He refused to hire a stylist for Emmy night, picking out his tuxedo and shoes himself. He did not prepare a speech. When his name was announced, Spader charmed the crowd by complimenting the women in the room: “You’ve all made wonderful choices in shoes and dresses tonight, and you all look absolutely beautiful.”

“I realized I was going to have to put together some sentences quickly and I wasn’t going to be yet another person to make a music joke,” Spader said. “It worked so well when the gentleman from ‘Arrested Development’ made the singing reference, but I knew that that couldn’t be used again, and certainly not by me. I really don’t have any idea what ... I was saying. Certainly, during the course of the four hours that I was there I had spent enough time admiring women’s shoes and dresses and how well they filled them.”

But as offhand as he may be about that trophy, it’s fitting somehow that Spader will be in the rare position of starting his new gig already having won an Emmy for the role. To his surprise as much as anyone’s, the TV gods have smiled on him. “Does anybody have any illusions about the fact that the Emmys come at the beginning of the television season? The timing seems precise to me,” he said. “And I think it’s grand.”

[thelittlehansy]

How many things Hans share with domestic abusers ?

I just cant count the number time i read that hans remind them of their toxic abusive ex. Hans has already be link to "domestic abuser " in fanfic.  in some modern AU fanfic  i read Hans beats anna because you know...he is the villain. I also saw that there was some fanfic where Hans rapes anna and elsa 🤢 because you know....he didnt even kiss anna but he would totally do it because yeah....he is the villain.

And just people imagine the worst about what if hans succeed into marrying anna.  So lets back to one of my favorite things.

List 🤓🤓

This times how many signs hans share with abuser in the movie ? i took an article on the web about the subject.

1-CHARMING.

“Initially, he showers his woman with praise, adoration, and attention. His courtship is sweet and intense filled with phrases such as, “I can’t live without you.” He quickly pushes for an exclusive relationship or engagement.”

Yes he is charming ! There was love at first sight this is  very much possible hans said things describe above maybe he even means some of them because again...that scene when he is alone smile smitten  by anna under the boat. The only difference is that there was specific reasons about the fact that he ask quickly Anna to marry him he didn't have times the gates were going to be closed and he could said goodbye to his key to the throne this is why he propose so fast to anna. So the comparison with abusive relationship and what is describe above dont seems really honest as they was an explication to his behavior if he could have times to seduce her during a long time ,  he would have done it  i think (?) one the thing we know about him is that he is a very very patient person.

2. JEALOUS.

“He views other men as a threat to the relationship and accuses you of flirting with everyone from his brother to the mailman. “I know you are looking at him.” The irony is that he often is the one who is cheating.”

Behavior never show in the movie we dont know how he would have reacted to kristoff presence. when his show his "true colors" hans show us that he dont cares about anna and that   she is last of his worries.

X

3. MANIPULATIVE.

“This man is very intelligent. He knows how to detect your weak spots, and he uses your vulnerability and past pain to his advantage. “You were abused as a kid because you are so ugly.”

He never said such an horrible thing like what is described above but...he is smart he us manipulative he did use others people vulnerability ! So very much positive !

but again there is still these problem  about hans being manipulative ? ..who put totally in question hans manipulation in the movie toward anna and seriously put doubt about how much he actually manipulate anna.

 His smitten smile when she left also present in kids book who tell “ hans is smitten by the princess”  the fact that anna called him lunatic and not a liar in the book a  frozen of shadow. and hims admitted he did not manipulate her at all in a frozen heart

4. CONTROLLING.

He wants to know where you are going and who you are with at all times. He may check the mileage on your car or follow you to the grocery store. He often refuses to allow you to work because you might “meet someone.”

Behavior never show in the movie again once hans reveal his true colors he show us that he dont give a damn about anna.

X

5. A VICTIM.

“His poor choices are everyone else’s fault. When he loses his job, gets into a fight, or a business deal falls through, it’s always because of the other person. He is never at fault. “You make me hit you.””

Behavior never show in the movie when he reveal his true colors we dont know.

X

6. NARCISSISTIC.

“The whole world revolves around him. As the “little woman who is beneath him,” it is your job to meet his every need. He is the master; you are the unworthy slave. It’s invigorating for him to know that everyone around him “walks on eggshells.””

Behavior never show in the movie with anna or with the others people  also we dont know.

X

7. INCONSISTENT.

“Mood swings are a common trait for an abuser. One minute he seems happy and sweet, the next he is pounding his fist.”

Honestly i will not say behavior not show in the movie but more contradictory behavior hans really knows how to stay calm , tolerate frustration and Someone like that would have never succeeded  to did what hans did. I think He will act more like the duke of weselton if he had mood swings.

X

8. CRITICAL.

“No matter how hard you try you will never be able to satisfy this kind of man. He thinks nothing of degrading and verbally assaulting you. “You are a stupid, fat, disgusting tramp. You can never leave me. No other man would have you.””

Behavior not show in the movie at all.we dont know if we cant satisfy hans or if he degrade others people and verbally assault them. Then  again he left anna at the end he didnt tell her "no man expect me would want you" but the contrary he break her heart and leave her.

he said to anna that she was desperate for love and was willing to marry him just like that which was true and also an opinion shared by both Kristoff and Elsa and the audience.

the part when he said “you are not a match for elsa” he was responding to anna.

So thats left us with only one thing the “ oh anna if only there was someone out there who loved you”. and trying to deduce that from  this line Hans will said to anna the kind of stuff describe above is....extremely exaggerated. Behavior not show in the movie

not enough evidence.

X

9. DISCONNECTED.

His main goal is to isolate his victim from family and friends so that you are totally dependant on him. “Your family causes too much trouble for us. I don’t want you seeing them anymore.”

Again behavior not show in the movie he never tried to isolated anna when he show his true colors hans dont give a damn about anna anymore. Even the argument between the sisters was not intentional on his part anna arguing with elsa was far from being his goal since him what he wanted was elsa benediction and anna behavior was the last thing that he needed and just the fact that he wants to kill elsa as we all know is in order to be king not to isolated anna from her family. 

X

10. HYPERSENSITIVE.

The slightest offense sends him ranting. Everyone is out to “get him.”

Behavior never show in the movie  there was the moment with the duke of weselton  but the duke was not even criticized Hans but anna and Hans reaction was to assure his plan.

so we only have hans responding to anna that not this is her that is a not a match for elsa during his betrayal scene. So again based yourself on that and deduce “omg he is hypersensitive” is...exaggerated. We need more evidence. So in the end we just dont know again !

X

11. VICIOUS AND CRUEL.

A significant number of abusers harm children and animals as well as a partner. Inflicting pain and intimidating others is what gives him power. “I’ll kill you before I’ll let you go. If I can’t have you, no one will.”

Behavior not show in the movie he is able to show kindness to animals as he show it with Anna horse. We dont know about hans relationship with children and his whole relationship with animals. 

X

12. INSINCERELY REPENTANT.

He will swear to never “hit you again.” But unless he receives professional help and strong accountability it’s very unlikely that he will change.

Behavior never show in the movie the betrayal scene.

X

IN CONCLUSION : , we dont know. we just dont know if Hans had a behavior similar to domestic abuser with their girlfriend/spouse and if Anna would end up in a abusive relationship with him. 

honestly (that’s  only my opinion ) but judging by his behavior in the movie , his plans , his desire i think Hans would not have been an abusive Husband but an Absent Husband only interest by his job and not his queen since the start even if he liked Anna at some point his big dream to be king is what is the most important to him.

So  again  the only thing he has in common with domestic abuser is that he is manipulative but even that...hans manipulation on anna...is put in question everywhere in the beginning of the movie...books...vidéo games where it say he has a crush on her.All of the rest we just dont know or he saw contradictory behavior.

Hans never show us to be jealous , controlling, possessive, physically abusive , oversensitive , blame others and play the victim , oR inconsistent.  and even based on the movie we just cant affirm that hans is someone that verbally insult person since he never show that behavior again in the movie.

So hans acting like a domestic abuser is as true as a headcanon for someone who will like the idea of him being one. 

We just dont know how would have been his marriage with anna. All of this assumptions about hans characters to me really as based on the fact that we compare abusing someone and someone trust and put them in the same case.  This is not any better but this is believe  are two very different things. 

 i also have read lot of time woman said " hans was nice to anna and then show his true colors" then they compare that to abusive domestic relationship. But the thing is that an abuser once he show you his true colors he began to be controlling, jealous, physical abusive , emotionally abusive. Hans once he show his true colors. he leave anna he abandon her the comparaison is not very great here since in the end Anna yes would have trust issues but did not  suffer of abusive relationship victims suffer. 

We also learn think about Hans in his backstory in the frozen Franchise so yeah we dont have confirmation this is canon to the movie but this is very much canon to the frozen franchise and officially publish and approve by disney : He was not an abusive child.  he never abuse people on the contrary he was abuse by his father and brothers both physically and emotionally.  (the majority of people dont reproduce this behavior once adult but reject it) he Hates violence and is someone peaceful. He is not controlling over person but situation. He has all his life being bully because he is not cruel  and hates his father view on social darwinism and how he treat their citizens. He is used to criticized and be called a disappointment. He also dont play the victim. again the only thing confirm by his backstory is that he can be manipulative.

so i m gonna finish that post with that gif who show us that Anna is not scared of Hans. something again that rarely or just  dont have in domestic abusive relationship in real life.

[wheres-the-pool-ladder]

The Sycorax Killed and Saved the Time Lords, and Also Killed Clara

The title is mostly a joke, but hear me out.

Warning: Major Spoilers for a number of series finales.

Literally every New Who Master episode wouldn’t have happened if Ten hadn’t lost his hand in the sword fight against the Sycorax. Hell, a lot of New Who would be changed. There are several points in the timeline where the Doctor might have just straight up died.

Because Jack found the Doctor’s severed hand, and used it to track him. Jack finally catching up to the Doctor caused the Tardis to fly all the way to the end of the universe just to shake him off. This wouldn’t have happened had there been no hand to find. Which means they never would have come across Professor Yana, who wouldn’t have opened the chameleon arch and become the Master and then steal the Doctor’s Tardis. So the entirety of the three-part series 3 finally wouldn’t have happened, since the Master’s still stuck as a human at the end of the universe. (As an aside, The Lazarus Experiment wouldn’t have happened either, since Tish only got the job working for Lazarus because of Saxon. So she wouldn’t have ended up on the news, thus never prompting Francine to call Martha about it.)

Martha likely continued traveling with the Doctor, since she had left to be there with her family after the trauma they endured during the Year That Never Was. They may or may not run into Donna, since without the metacrisis, Dalek Caan doesn’t need to manipulate events surrounding her. Let’s say they do. Turn Left doesn’t happen since events aren’t converging on Donna. But all of reality’s at stake, so Rose would have to find another way of warning the Doctor.

Now, the show could’ve likely ended at series 4, since the metacrisis wouldn’t have happened without the hand, so the whole of reality could’ve ended up destroyed. But let’s assume they find a way to save reality since A) Dalek Caan had set the whole thing up to betray the Daleks anyway, and B) without the hand Ten would’ve regenerated into Eleven, who had managed to save the Earth from the Atraxi in 20 minutes without his sonic or Tardis while dealing with post-regenerative trauma, so he’d probably figure out how to stop Davros. Since there’s no TenToo, the Doctor probably wouldn’t leave Rose at Bad Wolf Bay, so she may end up traveling with him again. This may prompt Martha to leave since she might feel like the third wheel now that the man she fancies has reunited with the woman he loves. Donna would likely stay, since she doesn’t need to have her memory erased.

So we move onto The End of Time, which wouldn’t have happened. Plain and simple. The Master’s still stuck at the end of the universe, so the whole reviving him wouldn’t have happened. The Doctor doesn’t need to stall for time after The Waters of Mars (which probably wouldn’t have ended the way it did, as he’s likely still traveling with Donna and Rose), so he never marries Elizabeth I, so the very end of the Shakespeare Code doesn’t happen either. Liz One still remains the Virgin Queen, and the Doctor doesn’t regenerate, but they’re already Eleven, so...

Since the Tardis doesn’t get completely obliterated by the Doctor regenerating, he doesn’t crash into Amelia Pond’s garden and then end up returning 12 years later due to the Tardis repairing. Maybe different circumstances cause Amy and Rory to become companions, maybe not. If not, then River wouldn’t exist, so Silence in the Library/Forest of the Dead never occurs.

Gonna skip series 6 for a minute and move onto Clara. Since the Master’s still stuck at the end of the universe, Missy isn’t able to give Clara the Doctor’s number. So Clara never travels with the Doctor and jumps into his time stream, becoming Oswin and Victorian Clara, so the Doctor never tries to find her in the first place. She also never ends up dying in the Trap Street. So the Sycorax started the chain of events that led to Clara’s death. The Doctor may have ended up dying in the Dalek Asylum if he hadn’t met Oswin. If he survives, the lack of Amy and Rory means he doesn’t end up in the Victorian period to mourn them, so he doesn’t meet the Great Intelligence. This would also end up changing Classic Who a tiny bit, since Eleven accidentally gave the GI the idea that the London Underground is a “key strategic weakness”, which they use in The Web of Fear. So The Bells of Saint John doesn’t happen either. Neither the GI nor the Doctor have any reason to be there. The Name of the Doctor doesn’t happen either, since the GI doesn’t try to enter the Doctor’s time stream, which means Clara would have no reason to enter it. Paradoxes are confusing.

Even if the Doctor had met the GI in Victorian London, this might mean the GI succeeds at rewriting the Doctor’s timeline. Let’s say he and whoever his companion is manages to find a way and move on.

If TNotD doesn’t happen, or they stop the GI, The Day of the Doctor might still happen. If it doesn’t, then the Time Lords are dead, so we can thank the Sycorax for the Time Lords being alive for a while. It would happen without Ten though, since in canon Ten is somewhere between The Water’s of Mars and The End of Time, so Journey’s End has already happened, and he’s regenerated in this universe. So we have 33% less bickering. Current Companion may still inspire the Doctor to try to save Gallifrey. If that does happen, then the Time Lords would still try to come through the cracks in time, prompting the Silence to try to kill the Doctor, and trying to blow up the Tardis would cause those very cracks in time. Paradoxes are still confusing. They probably wouldn’t be able to kill him at Lake Silencio, since River might not exist if the Doctor hasn’t met Amy. If he has, then that likely goes the same way as canon. If he hasn’t, maybe they would have succeeded in blowing up the Tardis, since the Doctor only noticed the cracks because he met Amy. So the Silence cause the universe to never exist, while simultaneous causing another paradox by preventing the very events that led to them blowing up the Tardis.

If they don’t succeed in erasing the universe, the Doctor would likely stay on Trenzalore longer than he had in canon, since he doesn’t need (or rather, doesn’t think he needs) more regenerations yet. He still thinks he’s got one left. He may end up regenerating into Twelve while on Trenzalore, which may end up triggering the whole gifting-the-Doctor-more-regenerations thing at some point down the line. So then we end up with Thirteen.

Post-Trenzalore, the Doctor doesn’t meet Missy. The Master’s still stuck at the end of the universe, and even if they weren’t, the Doctor doesn’t know Clara, so Danny’s death (if it even happens) doesn’t cause them to search for the afterlife.

Assuming DotD happens, since the Master’s still stuck at the end of the universe, Simm!Master wouldn’t have been able to leave Gallifrey, and never got stuck on the Monasian ship where he encountered the Doctor and Missy. So he never regenerates into Missy, and the Doctor never goes to the Mondasian ship to test Missy’s ability to be good. The Doctor Falls never happens, and Bill never gets turned into a Cyberman. This also means she never gets turned into a Pilot by Heather, so she never gets to go on adventures with her space girlfriend. The Doctor might have never even met Bill, since they’re not guarding the vault at St. Luke’s University. The Doctor doesn’t regenerate, but she’s already Thirteen, so...

Since they don’t regenerate, the Doctor doesn’t fall out of the Tardis and meet the Fam. Series 11 doesn’t happen.

Since the Master was never on the Mondasian ship, they never regenerate into the Dhawan!Master. So they never go back to Gallifrey and hack into the Matrix, learning about the Timeless Child. The Master doesn’t kill the Time Lords. So the Sycorax started the chain of events that led to the Time Lord’s death. The Doctor may or may not find out later, depending on whether the Time Lords keep “granting” them more regenerations just to keep the secret.

TL;DR: The Sycorax are responsible for every bad thing that’s happened to the Doctor from series 3 onward, paradoxes are super confusing, and the Doctor needs to up their sword fighting skills.

To quote Mabel Pines: “Time travel, man! Why you gotta be so complicated?”

[lulubette11]

Ok, I’ve just gotta say that I’m struggling with this whole Jill Ellis farewell thing.  I am truly and seriously torn.  I loved her at the beginning and I loved that she was a woman in a demanding head coaching position.  I loved that she was a lesbian with a wife and a daughter.  I loved the way she always seemed calm and composed during press conferences.  I loved a lot of things about her.  And then I thought about how little she used HAO in the 2015 World Cup.  And then she started disrespecting Ali Krieger.  And then she cut Whitney Engen.  And then she fucked the team up so badly that they crashed out of the 2016 Olympics.  I don’t care what anybody says - if you take World Cup winners from July 2015 and turn them into a team that doesn’t even get the chance to fight for an Olympic medal one year later.....that’s 100% on the coach.  But anyway.  And then she freaking cut Ali Krieger after even more disrespect and dishonest answers to questions about why she wasn’t playing anymore.  And then she left her dangling at 98 fucking caps.  98 fucking caps.  No previous player on the USWNT had ever made it to 90 caps and then not gotten to 100.  Not ever.  But Ellis left Krieger frozen out at 98 fucking caps.  What monster does that?

So, ummmm, yeah I love what Jill Ellis has done for the future of female coaches everywhere.  I love that a lot.  I understand what a huge deal it is to coach a team to win a World Cup Championship, not just once!  But twice!!!  It’s an enormous, earth-shattering accomplishment.  I want to celebrate Jill Ellis.  That’s what I do.  I broadcast the hell out of achievements like this all over my real-life social media.  I teach my uneducated friends and family about Pat Summitt and other women who have succeeded in male-dominated fields, especially sports.  And I really, truly want to feel joy in my heart for Jill Ellis because I honestly think she deserves it.  We’re not going to see another coach win back to back World Cup titles in our lifetime.  It might not ever happen again.  But I can’t fucking do it because I can’t forget what she did to Ali Krieger.  

Ali didn’t lose her spot because somebody better beat her out for it.  She didn’t lose her spot because she got old and slow - even though that’s what US Soccer has been preaching and what most idle fans now believe.  She didn’t lose her spot because she stopped being a great teammate or leader or player.  WE DON’T KNOW WHY SHE LOST HER SPOT and that’s one of my biggest problems with Jill Ellis.  We’ll probably never know the truth but from all intelligent reasoning it was somehow US Soccer politics.  Maybe Ali was the sacrificial lamb for the often-whispered about coup that many of the players tried to stage after the failed 2016 Olympics.  Maybe Becky Sauerbrunn lost her captaincy because she spoke up about what happened to Ali and challenged Jill on it.  We’ll never know.  But what anybody with a brain should be able to figure out is that Ali got done dirty.  And then, when all other options failed and there was no more time for Ellis to fuck around with less-qualified and less-talented RBs (this is not a Kelley O’Hara bash or a Casey Short bash or a Crystal Dunn bash - those three and Ali are the best OBs in the player pool), Ali was finally invited back in the 11th hour.

That’s not great work from Coach Ellis.  That’s an embarrassing spotlight on a situation that just got swept under the rug for 2 years.  Whatever.  Ali came back and looked like she never left and played very meaningful minutes in the 2019 World Cup.  Who would you want playing the second half of the championship game against the Netherlands and their powerful, talented forwards?  I’m not knocking Emily Sonnett, but there’s no way that game is a shut out if she plays the second half instead of Ali Krieger.  Sonnett is great but she just doesn’t have that big game experience yet (and Ellis insists on playing her out of position as an OB instead of a CB).  

So here I am....wanting to celebrate Jill Ellis but not being able to.  I love the USWNT and I hope the next coach is great and helps them win the gold medal in the Olympics next summer.  I hope that Ali gets another shot at an Olympic medal before she retires but I don’t know that it will happen.  I hope a lot of things.  And I honestly wish Jill Ellis well in whatever she does next.  But I can’t just forget that she almost got away with robbing Ali Krieger of her 100 cap ceremony Thursday night.  Imagine the past 6 months differently - without Kriegs on the roster.  Stuck at 98 caps by a vindictive, petty coach.  I know the team is about way more than just one player, or even one group of players, but it shouldn’t be all about one coach either.  I want to celebrate Jill Ellis and maybe someday I’ll be able to.  Ali Krieger doesn’t seem bitter about it but I still am.  I’m working on it.  It was pretty telling that the oldest players who contributed to the team’s ‘thank you Jill’ social media post yesterday were Julie and Crystal.  That said a whole lot right there.

So for now I’ll say thank you Jill Ellis for bringing Ali Krieger back.  And for keeping Jaelene Hinkle out.  Those are the two smartest things you’ve ever done and I genuinely appreciate you for both of them.  I’d like to thank you for moving Julie Ertz to be the best holding midfielder in the world, but that was Rory Dames’ genius so I can’t do it.  But thank you for keeping her there. Thank you for getting rid of the 3-back system (even though it’s a good system if you use the right players in the correct positions).  I’ll keep working on this list until someday I can just tell people about the great lesbian coach, maybe the best coach ever, who brought the USWNT two, back to back, World Cup Championships.    I sure hope so.

[swinfinities]

Long Live the Queen: Part Seventeen

No one really liked the plan. All of High Command knew it was a long shot at best. If they failed (which seemed the most likely outcome), then the Rebellion would be placed pretty firmly on the losing side. It would be beyond difficult to recover from that sort of loss. Still, if they succeeded... then the war was as good as over. It was high risk, but an even higher reward.

It had taken a lot of convincing. Months of squabbling had passed before Mon, Padmé, and Bail had managed to convince the rest of High Command to vote in their favor. But it wasn’t until Yoda and Obi-Wan began to argue that minds really started changing. After all, it is hard to disagree with the Grand Master of the Jedi Order.

All the while, Luke and Leia were kept safely hidden within the walls of the Yavin temple. Luke continued his training, at least when Obi-Wan wasn’t busy lending his expertise as a military advisor. Leia listened in on some of their sessions from time to time, but most of what they said was far beyond what she could understand. Yoda had promised, when all of this was over and the Empire destroyed, that she would be trained as a Jedi as well, alongside her brother and a new generation of Jedi knights. Sometimes, late at night, Luke would try to teach her some things, too, though not much more than a few simple meditative exercises. He even let her hold their father’s lightsaber once or twice. Leia always marveled at the power contained in such a small device—a power that seemed, somehow, not completely mechanical. As if there was some life to it.

But still, even being surrounded by thick walls of stone, guarded by trained soldiers and ancient Jedi, Leia felt a profound sense of unease. No matter how much she tried to meditate, to push it out of her mind, the feeling remained. A dark spot of dread in her heart that was slowly gnawing away at her sanity.

“It’s okay to be afraid,” her mother had said. “I’m afraid too. It’s okay if you don’t want to go on this mission. No one will think any less of you.”

No, Leia didn’t want to go through with this mission. But she still said yes anyway. Because it didn’t matter what she wanted. If she had a chance to do some good for the galaxy, that is what mattered. And she would do it standing side-by-side with her family, no matter if they lived or…

Or died.

Leia still had a hard time coming to terms with that part. She didn’t like thinking about it. She didn’t really even know how to think about it. The only thing she knew is that she felt scared.

But, somehow, the sound of the approaching ship, still just a little blip on the horizon, filled Leia with some long-awaited peace. It was as if the universe was trying to tell her that she was in the right place after all.

The ship approached the landing pad, making a soft descent and landing amid the sizable crowd that had gathered not only to greet the ship’s pilot, but to get a closer look at the ship itself.

“That’s an Eta-2 Actis-class Interceptor!” Luke beamed. “I’ve never seen one up close. They haven’t been in use since the Clone Wars! Heavy-repeating ion cannons… high-impulse, 118-megalight ion engines… Look! You can see how the reduced repulsorlift housing lets the ion impulse chamber gimbal up to thirty degrees for increased maneuverability. See, that was one of the big improvements over the older Aethersprite-class models—”

“You know that I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about, right?” said Leia.

Luke looked sheepish.

“It’s just… a really great ship, is all,” he said. “Master Kenobi says he used to fly one like this during the Clone Wars. So did dad. Except dad’s was yellow, not red.”

“Yes, it was,” said the woman climbing out of the cockpit. Luke immediately recognized her as the Jedi from his vision. Their mother’s friend and their father’s old apprentice, Ahsoka Tano.

“I remember,” she said. “It was bright yellow. It wasn’t very good for staying hidden but… Anakin was never very good at that anyway. He always dove in lightsaber-first to any conflict. It was probably foolish but… we won a lot of battles that way.”

Ahsoka jumped down from the ship onto the platform and walked up to Luke. She offered him a small bow.

“You must be Luke,” she said, smiling. “You look just like Anakin. I can sense that you have a lot of your father in you. The Force is strong with you, as it was for him.”

“Thank you,” Luke said, bowing in return. “It is an honor to finally meet you, Lady Tano. I’ve only ever heard stories about my father… but you actually met him. I just… I wish I could have met him, too.”

Ahsoka laid a gentle hand on Luke’s shoulder. 

“There’s hope for that yet, young Skywalker. And please, just call me Ahsoka.”

“Alright,” said Luke.

“And it’s wonderful to see you, too Leia,” said Ahsoka. “Although you’re quite a bit bigger than the last time I saw you. I guess I’ve spent too many years running around the galaxy, I missed getting to see you grow up.”

“A pleasure, as always,” Leia said with a kind smile, curtseying just as a princess was trained to do.

Ahsoka caught Luke trying to get another glance over at the ship behind her.

“So, you like the ship?” Ahsoka asked.

“Yeah,” Luke said, trying to hide his excitement. “I’ve never had a chance to see one up close before.”

“It’s been sitting in storage for quite a few years now. Figured I’d dust it off again for one last mission. Do you want to get an even closer look? The cockpit’s all yours.”

Luke’s eyes lit up.

“Can I?” he beamed.

“Be my guest,” Ahsoka replied. “Just be careful not to disengage the reverse power coupling. The actuator tends to flip if you so much as breathe on it.”

Luke excitedly jumped up onto the ship and dropped down into the cockpit, grinning from ear to ear.

“Oh, well this certainly looks familiar,”  said Obi-Wan, walking up to greet them. “A Skywalker in the cockpit of an old Jedi interceptor. That does bring up some memories. Unfortunately, not all of them are good. I think I’m even getting a headache on behalf of my past self.”

“Obi-Wan,” said Ahsoka.

“Ahsoka,” he replied with a curt nod.

“You can’t fool me with that stiff-as-a-board routine, Obi-Wan. I know you too well. There’s a big, soft heart somewhere underneath all that beard.”

“Me? Stiff?” Obi-Wan said. “I don’t know where you got that. I can be funny—”

Ahsoka practically ran up to Obi-Wan and wrapped her arms around him. It took a few moments for Obi-Wan to get over the shock, but he hugged her back, too. They just stood there for a while, letting the other soak up so many years of shared pain before they finally let go.

“I’m very happy that you’re alright, Ahsoka,” said Obi-Wan. “If only one Jedi could have survived the Emperor’s purge, I would have wanted it to be you.”

“I’m not a Jedi anymore,” said Ahsoka.

“Are any of us?” Obi-Wan replied. “There’s no Temple. No Council. No Order. What does it matter what titles we wear?”

“I suppose you’re right,” said Ahsoka. “What matters is setting things right again. Speaking of which, where is Yoda?”

“In a briefing. That we should probably get ourselves to as well, unless we want to incur the wrath of Senator Amidala. Luke! Come. We’ve got to get ready.”

*****

The briefing room was emptied, except for the select few who had been given the clearance to know about this mission—other than the Jedi, there were the members of High Command, a few intelligence officers and high-ranking pilots. Luke and Leia were there, too, but they stood uneasily towards the back, both feeling very out-of-place in a war room.

“Thank you all, again, for your willingness to volunteer for this mission,” Mon Mothma began. “I’m sure you understand the risk involved. This is not a mission I would have approved under normal circumstances but… I have known Senator Amidala for many years, and I know that nothing would have prevented her from attempting the mission anyway once her mind was made up, in spite of anything I could have said. So, I propose that we give them the best possible chance of success that we can. As such, I am appointing Senator Amidala to be the commanding officer of this mission. I will therefore cede the floor to her. Padmé, if you will.”

“Thank, you Mon,” said Padmé, standing and taking her place before the council. “Captain Andor, you have the latest intelligence reports?”

“Yes, senator,” said the Captain, stepping up to address the group. “The ISD Devastator was confirmed patrolling the space near Saleucami. Two days ago, it made an emergency jump to Korriban, where it has been reported to have picked up a single Imperial light shuttle. It’s not certain, but the reports highly suggest that Darth Vader is aboard. The Devastator then moved to Telos to support the Imperial fleet against our forces stationed there. As of 0900 this morning, it is still in orbit. There haven’t been any sightings of Vader yet, but analysis of the Empire’s offensive strategies on Telos suggest Vader’s hand is in the campaign. This is the first real clue into Vader’s movements that we’ve found for months. If we’re going to act, we need to act now or Vader is going to disappear off the map again.”

“Is your droid ready, then?” asked Padmé.

“He is,” Captain Andor replied. “He is in position and ready to leak the information when I give the signal.”

“ISB is going to know it’s a trap,” said General Draven. “I don’t believe that they will commit a significant force to investigate, let alone Vader’s personal destroyer.”

“Of course they’ll know it’s a trap,” said Ahsoka. “That’s why we have to make the bait as tempting as possible. Not only the promise of the Rebel base, but of a Jedi… there’s no way that Vader won’t come see for himself.”

“He’ll have backup,” said Draven.

“It matters little, how many ships the Emperor sends,” said Yoda. “For no rebels on this moon will he find. A single ship is all we need. Risk destroying the ship, Vader will not, lest his prize he destroy with it.”

“Captain, is your strike team assembled?” Padmé asked.

“Yes,” Captain Andor replied. “Twenty men, plus the slicer. Enough to get us inside and take out more than a few stormtroopers. And I’ve got a pilot who should be able to get us in and out of a tight spot.”

“Then get ready and have your ship standing by for further orders,” Padmé ordered. “General Merrick, how long will it take to have the evacuation underway?”

“I can probably have all non-essential personnel off-world by 2200 tonight. It’ll take a little longer to get the equipment and munitions, but we can probably have the base cleaned up in two rotations.”

“You have one,” said Padmé. “Anything that isn’t boxed and shipped by tomorrow night is getting left behind. It’s not ideal, but time isn’t on our side. You are authorized to use any and all ships and crew you might need to assist in the evacuation. Getting these people out of the system is our number one priority.”

“Then it sounds like we’re committed to this,” said Obi-Wan. “The more I think about it, the more I wonder if this plan isn’t as crazy as I thought it was.”

“No, it’s still crazy,” said Ahsoka. “But just crazy enough that it might work. After all, my master was the expert in crazy schemes.”

“Yes, I suppose you did learn from the best. Well then, I suggest we all begin preparing. Tomorrow is going to be a very exciting day, no matter which way it turns out. May the Force be with us all.”

[pastryseungs]

On Children (2018)

Creator: Wú Xiao-le

Dir. Chen Wei-ling

⚠️ Spoilers !! ⚠️

very long post ahead~

i recently watched this Taiwanese show on Netflix and it gives me Black Mirror vibes as well! i relate to this show so much that some have made me ugly cry lmao. its so weird and entertaining that some leave you silent and zoning out for a few minutes after each episode ends :<

Ep. 1 Mother’s Remote

dude this episode was honestly so sad and infuriatingggg. believe it or not though, some parents just actually want the best for their children and their future, but some actually take it too far.. like this one.

Pei Wei’s parents are going through a divorce where Wei (Tzu-Chuan Liu) ends up living with his mother (Yu-Xuan Wang). after forging the signatures on his report card and manipulating his grades, Wei’s mother restarts his day with a remote to give him the chance to “fix” his mistakes. he is eventually pulled out from school to attend cram school.. ten times to pay for what he did. eventually, when it slightly goes back to normal, he meets a girl named Lan (Hsin-Yu) and the two immediately became friends because of their love for art.. which also immediately blossomed into puppy-love after a month.

Wei’s mother eventually catches the two at the library and treats them out to lunch, before banning Wei from seeing the girl again. he fights back, which sends him back to the day before he was about to meet Lan for the first time. but Lan doesn’t recognize him at all, which led him to countless suicide attempts which were all reversed by his mom’s remote. the line, “How many times do I have to do this?” hurts me so much, he just wanted to be free and happy and his mother just can’t give him that all because of bad grades.. damn..

the scene cuts and changes to a few years later with Wei as an adult.. at first i thought he actually was still with Lan but it turns out it was another woman :< that night, Wei is asked by his mother to go out for dinner and he meets Riley, the daughter of his mother’s friend. the two talk for awhile, Riley revealing that she was actually in a relationship that her family knows but doesn’t accept and Wei revealing that he’s also in a relationship as well.

Wei then buys an airplane ticket for his mother, and went to his mother’s house to retrieve the remote. with his mother forgetting her passport at home, her taxi goes back to her house and sees Wei across the street, holding the remote.

this scene was actually so sad for me, because the last part was Wei going back in time when he met Lan. i actually felt like Lan’s the person that gave Wei a sense of freedom when he felt suffocated/drowned by his mother’s strict attitude towards him. you can actually see the longing in his eyes when he went back there.. gosh i was so sad when this episode ended. this one’s actually one of my favorite episodes !! the open ending led me to believe that Wei and Lan actually ended up together and lived happily ever after~ 😤💗

Ep. 2 Child of the Cat

after failed attempts at getting good grades, Guo-yan (Hsiu-Fu Liu) meets a girl named Lo Chih-Wei (Yu-Ping Wang) after seeing her having a nervous breakdown and harassing another student, she then tells him about some sort of parallel universe and that it offers them something to kill in exchange for intelligence. Guo-yan then develops this delusion after killing their house cats with cat food mixed with rat poison.. he then starts succeeding in his academics, even announcing his perfect score in his mock exam during his grandfather’s funeral.

the line, “Why must you impose all you want on me?” was so sad.. his parents were putting him under so much pressure, even extending his tutoring hours just to make him study harder and try to pass the exams. but at that point, it was too late, his tutor informed his mother that he needed to see a psychiatrist since he might be going through something, but his mother was indenial, thinking that his son was alright and that he was probably just the typical lazy teenager, which was not the case. he was already asking for help through his actions !! even going as far as making his mother find a non-existent noisy cat to take care of during his exams because he couldn’t concentrate.

this episode kind of frustrates me because Guo-yan’s mother listens too much to their relatives/in-laws advices and criticisms that she doesn’t listen or even bat an eye when her son is literally going through something. the ending was somewhat happy though, with Guo-yan learning how to do carpentry and building their own shop maybe?

Ep. 3 The Last Day of Molly

to be honest, this one made me ugly cry :< you’ll never really know until its too late, huh? Molly’s mom (Ivy Yin) probably won’t know that she was the reason behind Molly’s demise if it wasn’t for that machine/gadget.

Molly (Gingle Wang) had a lot to offer in their world with her writing talent. sadly, in order to save face, she was too obedient about the fact that her mother wanted to enroll her to Medical school and make her get a degree in another country. she was the highest-ranking student in their school, which made her mother have high expectations for her. she disapproved of everything she did, saying that a job wouldn’t be suitable for her and that she has to work hard in order to work a certain job. it just baffles me how much some parents think its their choice to choose their child’s career path .-.

the saddest part was when Molly’s mother found out that she had caused this mess. the guilt literally made her feel like she should be behind bars for the rest of her life, and that Molly would want that too. her demise was probably the best revenge she could think of, since she resented her mother for making her study and focus on things that she thinks will make her rich in the future.

i felt so sad for Molly’s sister, Kelly, because she was already expected to follow in her sister’s footsteps, even going so far as extending her tutoring hours while she was still dealing with grief. personally, i wouldn’t be able to do so until i already feel better and moved on a little. its hard to deal with grief especially when you’re so used to seeing that person all the time, which is why i somehow understand their pain.

honestly though, i can’t help but ugly cry during the part when Molly says, “Mom, I love you and I’m sorry.” if it wasn’t for Molly’s death, her mother wouldn’t realize that she was taking her children and their family for granted.. damn.

Gingle Wang is such a great actor !! she also kinda looks like Minnie from G-Idle too! :>

Ep. 4 Peacock

always be careful what you wish for. tbh, this episode was really weird and scary for me. Qiao-Yi (Yu-Xuan Wang) was ready to risk it all just to get everything she had always dreamed of, which included her sight, her talent for painting, seeing colors, and her appearance. she was literally turning into a peacock just to get help her family stay afloat and help her enter a good college and stay in school to be rewarded as their donor.

her school, Victor, was really weird as well. students were not allowed to ask questions during class, which led to students literally isolating another student in class because she was curious.. no wonder some are having a hard time in their class. the school was full of self-centered, snobby brats that only cared if you’re rich or have something luxurious to offer, it was honestly so weird for me. i’d hate to experience that kind of environment, i probably wouldn’t last three days.

if i was in her situation, i’d probably want to fit in with the others as well if it meant being less lonely and having someone to talk to even if everything you talk about is too shallow for your liking. it was just so sad that they were willing to trade anything just for a good life and financial stability, which led to Qiao-Yi’s mom (Chiung-Hsuan Hsieh) as the peacock in exchange for Qiao-Yi’s and her brother in their parents’ (or maybe just her mother?) dream schools.

Ep. 5 ADHD is Necessary

it was just so wrong for the Ruo-wa’s mother (Chuan Chen Yeh) to make her daughter fake a mental illness to help them continue living a lavish lifestyle, which eventually led to Ruo-wa’s (Frances Wu) demise.

Ruo-wa’s mother wanted nothing but for Ruo-wa to achieve and maintain a high-rank in terms of intelligence. but, you see, Ruo-wa isn’t exactly the best in terms of academics, the girl was so focused in school that she doesn’t even know what she’s really great at! her mother was so desperate for both of them- mostly her, to stay afloat that she would make her daughter detailed and organized notes to help her study, to help them keep the lavish lifestyle, because she couldn’t accept the reality that they had to live at the Pigeon Cage because of Ruo-wa’s intelligece. she also did this for her late son, which caused her to be awarded for having a high-ranking son, which also led to his demise. all this time, she thought that her son had died from a car crash, but he was actually destroyed for having a low rank and wanting to be a carpenter.

also, i can’t help but point out that they look like characters from the movie Divergent (2014). they literally look like they belong in Abnegation/Candor/Erudite lmao. and people who are being sent to the Pigeon Cage were Amity/Factionless/Divergent, since they were all special and talented in their own ways and they knew how to farm; sadly, they don’t belong in the real world. i was also so happy when i saw Wei, Lan, Guo-yan, Kelly, and Qiao-Yi !! like, at least they were saved from their parents’ grasps and they’re now free to do whatever they desire.

i was so sad when the police went there and trashed everything, killing the children that weren’t even bothering anybody just because they were low-ranking and weren’t doing their part in the community. in the end, it was Ruo-wa’s mother that had the last laugh and it was just so infuriating for me.. i wanted her to have the karma !! not Ruo-wa’s demise !! 😤

the place in order and everyone was at peace and getting along, why did she have to ruin it all for them? and why did Ruo-wa had to be destroyed ??? i feel like i could compare this to Divergent people ?? since they’re different and they’re being destroyed for not belonging somewhere.. like a Divergent person.

wellll that ends my post !! also, if this is what eventually happens to technology, then imma head out ✌️😗

[mintchocolateleaves]

On the Blinding of Sunlight (1/3)

Summary: It doesn’t take a detective to realise that this a fairly obvious encounter of what would call a one night stand. Does Kazuha even remember?What does he do if she does? What does he do if she doesn’t?

Notes: Another for the ‘In the Nature of things’ series. Just a note, everyone is about 24/25. And they never confessed when they were teenagers. Hope you all enjoy!

Heiji wakes to discomfort.

Not an aching sort of discomfort, or a painful one, but rather, to the cold. He hardly ever sleeps in his clothes, usually overheats during the night when he wears too much alongside his blankets, but now, he feels goosebumps rising up his arms. He supposes that it’s because his duvet is pooling around his legs, leaving him bare in his not-quite-warm enough apartment.

For a moment, he blinks, wearily, at the ceiling. It takes a few seconds to confirm that yes, this is indeed his ceiling, although he’s not sure why he’s wondering whether it’s his own in the first place.

Maybe his brain is recalling things that he’s incapable of remembering just yet, in his half-awake state.

Heiji decides not to overthink it, and opts on reaching down for his blankets instead, tugging them up.

Two strange things happen as he does so. The first, is that there’s a resistance to the duvet that does not usually exist. The second, is that the area where he touches his sheets are slightly sticky, soiled.

Heiji, twenty-four and having just made detective, does not take long to figure out what the stickiness is from. Which is irritating, frankly, because he thought that at this age, he would be past the whole, wet dreams stage of his life.

Apparently fucking not.

Great.

But then, why the resistance?

Now, Hattori Heiji is good at deductions, is good at finding the evidence and putting two and two together, linking information well enough to build a pretty decent timeline of events. He’s good at connecting the dots. Intelligence isn’t something he boasts about, often, but he certainly has a wealth of it.

What Heiji is not good at, is waking up. He’d been a morning person as a teenager, but like many things, he’d grown out of it, and now he needs a shot of coffee each morning to properly wake himself up. It takes his brain a little while to catch up with the rest of him if he doesn’t.

So, for a few seconds, there is no link between the resistance of his blankets, and the soiling of his sheets.

But then, there is movement beside him, and Heiji’s heart heaves in his chest. He takes in the faint sound of breathing beside him, and his own hitches. He takes note of the extra dip in his mattress, and the penny drops.

It doesn’t take a detective to realise that this a fairly obvious encounter of what would call a one night stand.

He blinks, opens his mouth and is faintly glad when he doesn’t hear a broken sort of internalised screaming. His mouth is dry and his throat is raw, and he hopes that this is from the alcohol and not from the evening that’s just passed.

Perhaps the most worrying thing is that Heiji can’t really remember much of the previous evening. There’d been a party, a celebration for his promotion, and there’d been a fuck ton of alcohol.

There had seemed to be a sort of consensus among the colleagues that could attend, that he was to get completely fucked up.

And blacking out, seems to show that they’d succeeded. Heiji drunk too much and now, there is someone in his bed who should not be there.

He doesn’t want to turn around, worried for who it might be. Someone he knows would lead to awkwardness, he knows, and if it’s someone he doesn’t know, then that’s probably even worse. Or maybe better… you know, Heiji doesn’t know.

He’s not exactly done something like this before.

He’d never thought that he’d be the type to have a one-night stand, always trying to save himself for Kazuha – that idiot – if she wanted him, after he finally gets around to offering his confession.

Heiji was meant to save himself for the woman he’s in love with not–

He turns.

– The woman that he’s in love with?

Kazuha?

You know what, Kazuha is always welcome in Heiji’s bed, if anyone belongs there it’s her, but he kind of would like to remember the entire ordeal of how she got there. In the vivid detail he deserves, and yet does not recall.

(Kazuha?)

Fuck. Why doesn’t he remember? This is a sort of cruel victory.

Heiji decides not to overthink it. He can figure what happened later, find a way to remember everything later on and it’ll be just… fine. Hopefully.

His eyes dart down to Kazuha’s body. She’s wrapped up in his blankets – she’s always been one to steal blankets, jeez, what a menace – but her shoulders are bare, as are her calves. She curls in on herself in the foetal position, breathing even and relaxed, oblivious to Heiji’s own internal conflict.

Does Kazuha even remember?

What does he do if she does? What does he do if she doesn’t?

A sigh. Heiji can hardly go back to sleep like this now. Not now, not when he doesn’t know if Kazuha waking up beside him will cause some… horrible change to their dynamic or something. Not now that he’s wound himself up, and he’s near to freaking out.

Looks like he’s going to have to get up then. First, a shower – he always does his best thinking in the shower. Then, breakfast – he always does his second best thinking around a mouthful of food.

Then, when he’s got a stomach full of food, he’ll decide what to do next.

Kazuha?

(He still can’t believe that they probably…)

-

Halfway through reheating miso soup, Kazuha makes herself present.

She enters the kitchen in one of Heiji’s shirts, which isn’t actually that strange, since she usually stays over in his spare bedroom on short notice, stealing shirts as bed clothes. He probably won’t get it back, because she steals clothes and never gives them back, but that’s the furthest thing from his mind.

Wearing his clothes is constantly distracting, but now with his memory, he finds his eyes lingering a little longer than usual and – dammit, he just got out of the shower, Kazuha, don’t do this to him.

Alright, all he needs to do is play it cool, Heiji can do that. He’s the epitome of cool, it’s not difficult, and so he takes a deep breath, and plays it lukewarm instead.

“Mornin’,” he says, and of course, his voice is scratchy, breaking ever so subtly. Luckily, neither of them brings any attention to it. It’s going to be one of those days, he supposes, which is just… marvellous.

Kazuha is still her usual relatively evil self though, because she looks at him, raises an eyebrow and smiles, “morning.”

She is never usually this nice to him before noon. Unlike Heiji, she’s never been a morning person, and so whenever she wakes, she spends at least thirty minutes being grumbly, getting angry at little things he does, like opening his mail too loudly, or turning the radio up too loud.

Then, she’ll move on to the fact that she could be having a lay-in right now, or a bundle of naps, and she’ll fixate on it for a while, nose crinkling and eyes bright as she talks about getting more sleep.

(Admittedly, Heiji usually just listens at this point, offering nods at all the right places, so that she doesn’t find out that he’s fantasising joining her as she does the same things. He’s taken to fantasising a lot of domestic shit with Kazuha these days, napping together, watching crappy T.V shows together on his old, tattered sofa.)

Despite himself, Heiji is suspicious. He’s either done something very wrong and now Kazuha is offering him a false sense of security, or, he’s done something very right and he can’t remember how to replicate it for the future. He doesn’t know which it is, only which he hopes it is.

“Miso soup?” He offers when he realises, he’s staring. He points to the stove where he’s stirring the soup. It’s basic, his version, but it’s still filling beside the rice, and it’s got a lot more flavour than the soups he’s made in the past.

He’s not really the best at cooking.

“Sure,” Kazuha says, leaning against the counter and staring. Which is another warning sign, because she’s not throwing jibes out at his cooking – she usually does. “Did you remember to put the rice on this time?”

Ah, there it is.

Heiji forgets to put the rice into the cooker once and apparently that’s it – something to be held against him for the rest of his life. Well, excuse you, Kazuha, Heiji actually did remember this time. It was the first thing he did this morning when he got into the kitchen.

(He always makes sure to do it first, because yeah, he’d probably forget it again. But that’s so not the point he’s trying to make. Shut up Kazuha.)

“Idiot,” Heiji says, but it’s warm, like usual, “of course I remembered. I’m not useless.”

“Juries still out on that one,” Kazuha jokes.

Heiji glowers. He grits his teeth, shakes his head and mumbles, “oi.”

Because she is both evil and some sort of temptress, Kazuha leans forward – enough for Heiji to realise that she’s not wearing a bra – and smirks. She must have some idea what she’s doing to him, right? She does, surely?

And then, an excellent deflection: “Do you have any eggs?”

Heiji is a fully functioning adult who lives two minutes from the convenient store, of course he has eggs. He takes a second to lean over, open the carton. Err – well. Of course, he has a… single egg?

Wow – he hadn’t been expecting to be running so low on the eggs. Heiji would blame work, the stress of early morning wake-ups, but really, this is on him. Maybe he should start writing a grocery list or something. It would help make him into like… a competent adult or something.

A pause. Heiji glances at the egg. It is a testament to how much he cares for Kazuha when he says, “final one, ya want it?”

Some would say that giving his food away to someone else when he’s so possessive of it the way he is, is progress. Or some shit like that. Probably Kudo, it sounds like something Kudo would say in passing.

Fuck Kudo and the voice of reason that lives in Heiji’s brain.

Kazuha lifts a hand to her chest, as if shocked, and overwhelmed. She widens her eyes and looks, for a moment, comically lost.

“You, offering me the last of your eggs?” She gasps, “Heiji you’re spoiling me. Do you have a fever?”

Heiji rolls his eyes. And for a moment, they’re just as playful as ever, are still just usual friends, no awkward air around them. Which is nice, yet confusing. Overwhelming and underwhelming at the same time.

Although, as he’d wondered earlier – does Kazuha even know? Heiji himself only knows because he’d woken up beside her, because he’d had the evidence to sort through. But he’d been gone by the time Kazuha had woken up.

So, does she know that they–

Heiji is going to drive himself crazy, he just knows it. Should they be talking about this, or sweeping it under the rug? What is the protocol for moments like this?

There’s a nervous energy in his stomach and it’s starting to make him feel a little sick.

He would ask someone but there’s only three people he’d ever consider using as a confidant and all of them are out of the question. There’s Kazuha herself, which is just – nope. It’s not possible to confide in the person he’s got the… problem… with in the first place.

There’s Kudo, but well, there’s only so much he can share with his friend before it’s pushing things and Heiji kind of thinks this would be pushing things a little bit.

(Plus, like, Kudo did spend like, eight years pining after Nee-chan, he’s probably not the best person to go around asking romance advice for.)

And then, lastly there’s Kudo’s girlfriend, Ran, Nee-chan. A close friend, but much closer to Kazuha than with him. And Kazuha is probably going to need a confidant if she does remember anyway, so…

Looks like he’s going to have to wing it. And by wing it, Heiji means: hey, watch as I fuck this up because I honestly have no fucking idea what I’m doing.

God, he hopes that Kazuha is mentally more prepared for this than he is. She probably would be, you know, she’s in touch with her emotions a lot more than he is.

“Coffee,” he rasps after a second, because coffee is always good. Kazuha stills, looks at him with a frown, brows drawing together with concern. “I need some coffee, you want some?”

“Uh,” Kazuha blinks, pauses. “Sure? Heiji, are you okay?”

He is, and he isn’t. Heiji is confused and nervous, and fuck, he’s a little bit terrified too, whether this is going to cause a whole big new change. Heiji’s never liked change, it draws itself out, it makes everything different and unchartered.

Heiji doesn’t remember shit, he’s panicking and really, what he needs is to sit down, drink his coffee and process everything.

“Yeah,” Heiji says, straining for a smile and waving the comment away. “Y-yeah, fine. I just need to wake up, is all.”

Kazuha doesn’t call the lie out, but he’s pretty sure that she picks up on it. She knows him better than he knows himself, sometimes, so it’s definitely not gone over her head.

She smiles, it falters a bit as she glances away, but returns within seconds, bright and happy again. She says, “make the pot strong for us both. Jeez, mornings are the worst.”

Heiji lets out a faint laugh. He says, “They really are.”

And that, is that.

[and-then-there-were-n0ne]

As machine learning and robotics improve in the coming decades, hundreds of millions of jobs are likely to disappear, disrupting the economies and trade networks of the entire world. The Industrial Revolution created the urban working class, and much of the social and political history of the 20th century revolved around its problems. Similarly, the artificial intelligence revolution might create a new “unworking class,” whose hopes and fears will shape the history of the 21st century.

The social and economic models we have inherited from the previous century are inadequate for dealing with this new era. For example, socialism assumed that the working class was vital for the economy, and socialist thinkers tried to teach the proletariat how to translate its immense economic power into political clout. These teachings might become utterly irrelevant in coming decades, as the masses lose their economic value.

In order to cope with such unprecedented technological and economic disruptions, we probably need completely new models. One that is gaining increasing attention and popularity is universal basic income.

UBI suggests that some institution - most likely a government - will tax the billionaires and corporations controlling the algorithms and robots, and use the money to provide every person with a stipend covering basic needs. The hope is that this will cushion the poor against job loss and economic dislocation, while protecting the rich from populist rage.

[…] Yet the formula of universal basic income suffers from several problems. In particular, it is unclear what “universal” and “basic” mean.

When people speak about universal basic income they usually mean national basic income. For example, both Elon Musk and former President Barack Obama have spoken about the need to consider some kinds of UBI schemes. But when Musk said that “There’s a pretty good chance we end up with a universal basic income […] due to automation,” and when Obama said that “whether a universal income is the right model […] that’s a debate that we’ll be having over the next 10 or 20 years,” it is unclear who “we” are. The American people? The human race?

Hitherto, all UBI initiatives were strictly national or municipal. In January, Finland began a two-year experiment, providing 2,000 unemployed Finns with $630 a month, irrespective of whether they find work or not. Similar projects are underway in Ontario, Holland and Livorno, Italy. Last year, Switzerland held a referendum on instituting a national basic income scheme, but voters rejected the idea.

In the U.S, Representative Ro Khanna, a California Democrat, proposes to greatly expand the Earned Income Tax Credit program, boosting the income of poor Americans by about $1 trillion. Though the plan does not promise any stipends to the unemployed, it is seen as a first step towards instituting national basic income.

The problem with such national and municipal schemes, however, is that the main victims of automation may not live in Finland, Amsterdam or the U.S. Globalization has made people in one country dependent on markets in other countries, but automatization might unravel large parts of this global trade network with disastrous consequences for the weakest links.

In the 20th century, developing countries made economic progress mainly by exporting raw materials or by selling the cheap labor of their workers and service personnel. Today, millions of Bangladeshis make a living by producing shirts that are sold to customers in the U.S., while people in Bangalore, India, earn their keep answering the complaints of American customers.

Yet with the rise of AI, robots and 3-D printers, cheap labor will become far less important, and demand for raw materials might also drop. Instead of manufacturing a shirt in Dhaka and shipping it all the way to New York, you could buy the shirt’s code online from Amazon and print it in Manhattan. Zara and Prada stores could be replaced by 3-D printing centers, and some people might even have such printers at home.

Simultaneously, instead of calling customer services in Bangalore to complain about your printer, you could talk with an AI representative in the Google Cloud. The newly unemployed workers and call center operators in Dhaka and Bangalore don’t have the education necessary to switch to designing fashionable shirts or writing computer code - so how will they survive?

Under this scenario, the revenue that previously flowed to South Asia will now fill the coffers of a few tech giants in California, leading to huge strain on developing economies. American voters might conceivably agree that taxes paid by Amazon.com Inc. and Alphabet Inc. be used to give stipends to unemployed coal miners in Pennsylvania and jobless taxi-drivers in New York. However, does anyone think American voters would also agree that part of these taxes should be sent to Bangladesh to cover the basic needs of the unemployed masses there?

Another major difficulty is that there is no accepted definition for “basic” needs. From a purely biological perspective, the only thing a Homo sapiens needs for survival is about 2,500 calories of food per day. Over and above this biological poverty line, every culture in history defined additional basic needs, which change over time.

In Medieval Europe, access to church services was seen as even more important than food, because it took care of your eternal soul rather than of your ephemeral body. In today’s Europe, decent education and health care services are considered basic human needs, and some argue that even access to the internet is now essential for every man, woman and child.

So if in 2050 the United World Government agrees to tax Google, Amazon, Baidu Inc. and Tencent Holdings Ltd. in order to provide a basic income for every human being on earth, from Dhaka to Detroit, how will it define “basic”?

For example, will universal basic income cover education? And if so, what would these services include: just reading and writing, or also composing computer code? Just six years of elementary school, or everything up to Ph.D.?

And what about health care? If by 2050 medical advances make it possible to slow down aging processes and significantly extend human lifespans, will the new treatments be available to all 10 billion humans on the planet, or just to a few billionaires? If biotechnology enables parents to “upgrade” their children, would this be considered a basic human need, or would we see humankind splitting into different biological castes, with rich super-humans enjoying abilities that far surpass those of poor Homo sapiens?

Whichever way you choose to define basic human needs, once you provide them to everyone free of charge, they will be taken for granted, and then fierce social competitions and political struggles will focus on non-basic luxuries - be they fancy self-driving cars, access to virtual-reality parks, or enhanced bioengineered bodies. Yet if the unemployed masses command no economic assets, it is hard to see how they could ever hope to obtain such luxuries. Consequently, the gap between the rich (Tencent managers and Google shareholders) and the poor (those dependent on universal basic income) might become bigger and more rigid than ever.

Hence, even if universal basic income means that poor people in 2050 will enjoy much better medical care and education than today, they might still feel that the system is rigged against them, that the government serves only the super-rich, and that the future will be even worse for them and their children.

People usually compare themselves to their more fortunate contemporaries rather than to their ill-fated ancestors. If in 2017 you tell a poor American in an impoverished Detroit neighborhood that she has access to much better health care than her great-grandparents did in the age before antibiotics, it is unlikely to cheer her up. Indeed, such talk will sound terribly smug and condescending. “Why should I compare myself to nineteenth-century peasants?” she might retort. “I want to live like the rich people on television, or at least like the folks in the affluent suburbs.”

Similarly, if in 2050 you tell the useless class that they enjoy better health care than in 2017, it might be very cold comfort to them, because they would be comparing themselves to the upgraded super-humans who dominate the world.

Modern communication systems make such comparisons almost inevitable. A man living in a small village 5,000 years ago measured himself against the other 50 men in the settlement. Compared to them, he probably looked pretty hot. Today, a man living in a small village compares himself to the 50 most gorgeous hunks on the planet, whom he sees everyday on TV screens and giant billboards. Our modern villager is likely to be far less happy with the way he looks.  Will universal basic income include plastic surgery for everyone?

Homo sapiens is just not built for satisfaction. Human happiness depends less on objective conditions and more on our own expectations. Expectations, however, tend to adapt to conditions, including to the condition of other people. When things improve, expectations balloon, and consequently, even dramatic improvements in conditions might leave us as dissatisfied as before.

If universal basic income is aimed to improve the objective conditions of the average person in 2050, it has a fair chance of succeeding. But if it is aimed to make people subjectively more satisfied with their lot in order to prevent social discontent, it is likely to fail.

- Yuval Noah Harari, 21 lessons for the 21st century

[mimeparadox]

Why Lauren Reed Failed (and Cassandra Ovechkin Succeeded)

(A link to my previous Lauren post, of which this is a spiritual sequel to.)

When Cassandra Ovechkin debuted in season 2 of Nikita, all signs indicated that the series, which paralleled Alias in many ways, had a Lauren of its own in the making.  While she wasn’t presented as an obstacle from the word go as Lauren was, the potential was clearly there, what with her being a lovely woman from Michael’s past who returns to his life with some heaving capital-b Baggage. Then, as subsequent appearances revealed that she was not only a spy, but an agent for the antagonistic private intelligence agency Gogol, the similarities with Lauren became all the starker (*1). Only one thing: unlike Lauren, her story is actually effectively told, and a lot of the reason why that’s the case has to do with empathy.  

Empathy is a key component in writing; without the ability to put oneself in a characters’ shoes, it can become very difficult, if not impossible, to truly understand them, or write them in a consistent or natural-seeming manner. Furthermore, it is quite hard to convince audiences to care about a character if the writers themselves don’t.

Lauren, in particular, really needed viewers to care about her.   Arguably the true protagonist of the show’s third season, she required at least as much viewer investment as Sydney herself. Instead, the writers allowed their perception of the character to be colored by Sydney’s (*2) and they mostly treated her like she did—as an intruder and rival, instead of as someone who, at least initially, had done nothing wrong and was in a situation equally as awkward as Sydney’s.  Soon after their first workplace clash, Sydney declares “I hate her,” and it’s not clear the writers disagree. For the first half of her story, the show paints Lauren as an altogether inferior substitute for Sydney—not as fun, not as admirable, not as smart, not as worthy of respect.  While the rosiest interpretation of the Vaughn-married-someone-else narrative (*3) suggests that Lauren has many admirable and attractive qualities, the best the series can do to show that is treat her with reluctant admiration, or as a well-meaning fool.  Even after the double revelation of her allegiance and family dynamics hits the viewer on the head with a “SYDNEY PARALLELS!” hammer, the writers still can’t spare a moment to investigate how and why she became that way, or what the similarities actually say about either woman.  While the increased focus in the second half of the season gives tantalizing hints about the Lauren that could have been, the series never commits, ultimately using the revelation as a license to celebrate casual misogyny. 

Cassandra, in contrast, is treated first and foremost as a person, and this allows the writers to navigate her story much more gracefully. While Nikita’s impression of Cassandra, much like Sydney’s impression of Lauren, is often neutral to negative—first because of her relationship with Michael, and later because of her lying—Nikita doesn’t allow this to diminish either the character or the series’ empathy for her. When she is revealed to be a double agent, the series allows her to explain her decision and place it in a wider context; yes, she has lied and has worked for bad people; so have Nikita and Michael.  So has Sydney, for that matter: when Cassandra speaks about joining Gogol, she mentions that she did so because she was broke and bored, and being a spy seemed exciting, which are, according to Sydney, exactly the same reasons why she joined SD-6.  Are they also Lauren’s reasons for joining the Covenant? Impossible to say: Alias doesn’t care.

It’s hard to craft a motivation or a consistent inner life for a character if one can’t see them as a person worthy of consideration. It’s particularly hard when a narrative’s unofficial official stance is that characters only deserve empathy if they’re on the heroine’s side.  This had been a consistent issue with Alias: note how both spy parents’ morality is determined not by what they actually do, but by whether or not they’re acting in Sydney’s interests when they do it. Note how Sydney never had to wrestle with the harm she caused while with SD-6, or with people (rightfully) mistrusting her because of her past allegiance.  With Lauren, this myopia comes to the fore, with fatal results.  Nikita, meanwhile, is all about empathy: it’s a story about a woman whose journey towards the light began with the thought “this girl is like me.”

It’s worth mentioning how each series’ reveal affects each character, in part because of how similar they are, but also because how they alter, or don’t alter, the way each character is perceived. “They’ve been working for the bad guys all along” is a plot twist that forces viewers to look backwards: viewers must look back into what’s gone on before, and consider how much it all did or didn’t matter.

Cassandra’s role during her debut, in addition to that of—in Person of Interest parlance—a number, was that of  a secret-keeper: not only was she keeping the truth about Valeri Ovechkin for Michael and Division, she was keeping the secret of Max from the world, and the secret of Max’s parentage from everyone.  While she is nominally in a position of power, as both first lady and someone who (she believes) is owed a favor by the U.S. government, her secrets and lies have served to isolate her and keep her trapped (*4).  Every successive revelation serves to reinforce that narrative: in increasing the number of factions she must keep mollified and the number of lies she must tell in order to remain safe, they make Cassandra seem more like herself.  

One of the worst things about the Lauren reveal, meanwhile, is just how thoroughly it undoes what scant development she’d obtained during the first half of the season.  It is perhaps the best indication that the reveal hadn’t been planned from the start: surely if it had been, the transition from well-intentioned naïf Lauren to cold-blooded killer Lauren wouldn’t have been as abrupt. And yet, there’s no attempt to reconcile the two sides of the character, or to clarify just how much of the character we saw in the season’s first half was an act. The reveal essentially wipes the slate clean, which is not exactly a great thing to happen to a character who already had much of the audience against her.

This is not to say, however, that the way to fix Lauren’s story is legitimately making her the good guy she pretended to be during the first half of her story, or to make her more like Cassandra. It might have made it easier for her to retain what little empathy the writers had for her, but it would have also robbed her of much of what made her ultimately interesting. A Lauren who remained a good guy would have ultimately had no place in Alias’ story. At best, she would have been another Dixon: someone who sticks around, but whose story has no greater resonance (*5). We eventually got our “what if Lauren, but good?” character in the form of Nadia, who was much better at it.  No, Lauren needed to be a villain, and there was no reason why her story couldn’t have worked. All that needed to happen is for the writers to care.

----

Footnotes:

(*1) There’s also the weird thing where both characters have roots in Britain, despite neither being born there. 

(*2) And eventually, the fandom’s. Lauren’s eventual fate is hard to explain as anything other than an attempt to mollify the worst of the fandom.  

(*3) The one that posits that Vaughn fell for her for reasons beyond availability and looking like Melissa George.

(*4) She is, in essence, what Sydney feared she’d become in season 1—Alias’ themes taken to their logical dark extremes.   

(*5) This, I feel, would be true whether or not she remained with Vaughn. In fact, a love triangle resolution where Vaughn remains with her would have likely rendered his character pointless as well. 

Credit where credit is due: My original Alias pictures were obtained from the Alias: A Free Agent fansite, which is somehow—and thankfully—still mostly accessible after all these years. Hat tip to @derevkosark for pointing me in its direction. The current pics are my own. 

[ofqueensandwitches]

They Could Have Been a Family

Albus used to want a lot of things in life. When he was young, he wanted to be the greatest wizard of all time. But as he got older, he learned that the only thing he ever needed and wanted, was a family. And the thought that he could have had if things were, haunted Albus until they day he died. In his dreams, he had succeeded in convincing Gellert that they could still be the greatest wizards of all time without having to annihilating the Muggles. If only he had been wise and brave enough to stop the fight between the man he loved and the brother he should have loved, he could be together with Gellert like they'd always talked about, and his siblings would be happy. If only he wasn't such a selfish bastard who thought himself to be better than the whole world, he could have everything he wanted with Gellert by his side, and gave his siblings the peaceful and wonderful life that he'd always pictured in mind.

When he sent his brother back to Hogwarts, he was both surprised and wary that Gellert had asked to come to Hogwarts as well, claiming that he wanted to properly finish his education. Albus convinced himself that he could trust Gellert though, and risked nearly everything he had, and practically begged Headmaster Dippet to accept Gellert. If it hadn't been for Albus' brilliant credentials, and Gellert's own remarkable intelligence, Albus doubted that Gellert would be accepted. But he did, and he graduated top of his class a year later. He was incredibly amused when the Headmaster wrote to him that slowly, Gellert and Aberforth learned to accept each other's presence and importance in Albus' life. With his brother and lover away, leaving him alone with his sister, Albus took it as the second chance he had to finally find a way to, for lack of better words, cure Ariana. But it was only when Gellert had returned home, that Albus finally found a way to save his sister from the terrible fate she was condemned to. That was the moment he decided that he truly had fallen for the blond.

As years passed, his love grew stronger when he saw how Gellert protectively glared at a young man who would later become Ariana's husband. As years passed, his love became more profound when he saw how Gellert wordlessly helped and supported Aberforth to step out of the great shadows Albus had unconsciously cast over his brother. However, he didn't tell Gellert how much he loved him until that day when Gellert told him that with Albus and his siblings in his life, he could learn to live without all the glory he'd craved when he first came to England to find the Deathly Hallows. And as he watched Gellert fought back a smile, even as the blond told him that he loved him too, Albus realised that without the Hallows, as long as they were together, the could still become the greatest wizards in the world. They could do that together, their love growing stronger as days passed, strong enough to overcome whatever darkness that had corrupted the blond's heart in his youth. With Gellert by his side, his little family of three had become a family of four.

He returned to Hogwarts to teach while Gellert chose to join the Ministry. After all the years he spent taking care of his siblings, Albus realised that he was actually rather good with children. He realised that he actually liked them, especially when he saw the succeeding at something. This, of course, led him to be one of Hogwarts' most favourite professors. Several years later, at the young age of thirty, when Armando Dippet retired after a couple decades of holding the position of Hogwarts' Headmaster, Albus took over the position. In no time, he became known as one of the greatest headmaster Hogwarts had ever seen. He'd just turned thirty-eight, exactly twenty years since the summer he met Gellert, when the blond told him that he'd run for Prime Minister. Naturally, Albus was a little hesitant at first. After all, he knew how easily tempted they both were by power. But Gellert proved him wrong, and as the blond slowly made his name as the youngest and greatest prime minister England had ever seen, Albus thought he couldn't have been happier.

In the summer of 1926, Albus and Gellert was invited to visit the wizard United States. For the first time ever, Albus was going to leave England - to leave his siblings. He was worried, even though he knew that they were all more than old enough. He couldn't help it though. He'd spent nearly all of his adult life taking care of his siblings. But they both assured him that they would be find, and told Gellert to make sure that Albus would have fun. So, albeit reluctantly, Albus left for America with Gellert. The moment they set foot in New York, the capital of magical America, everywhere they went, people respected them and treated them as if they were Gods. It would have flattered Albus beyond belief, if he wasn't too busy making sure that it wouldn't be affecting Gellert too much. But after the umpteenth time in the week of their visit of Albus nagging his lover about it, Gellert lost it. When they were in the middle of the MACUSA's atrium, Gellert shut Albus up mid-sentence with a passionate kiss. There was a sneaky grin on the blond's face when they finally pulled apart. Mockingly patting Albus' cheek, Gellert told him that Albus worried too much because, with the redhead by his side, there was no way that he'd return to his evil ways. Not when it meant that he'd have to give Albus up. It was the best flattery Albus had received in his entire life, and he would sure that Gellert knew that.

It was on the last week of their visit when they decided to go to the Muggle part of New York, and just wander aimlessly around like every other tourist. They were watching a group of anti-magic Muggles doing their demonstrations when a dark-haired, skinny boy bumped hard into Gellert. When he realised what he'd done, the boy was trembling so bad, Albus thought he was having a seizure. So, being the kinder one between him and Gellert, the redhead reached out to touch the boy, to convince him that it was alright. The moment his fingers came in contact with the boy's knuckles, he was shocked by the amount of power he could feel rippling under the boy's skin. The same kind of power he used to fear, but now admired, in his sister. He was asking the boy what was his name, when a middle-aged woman yelled out a name in anger, and the boy scurried back to her without a second glance at Albus or Gellert. But Albus remembered his name, Credence Barebone, and he made a mental promise to himself that he'd be back for the boy.

Two days later, after a long discussion with Gellert, who looked both worried and excited at Albus' plan, they came to the building where Credence had run into, a building that they both found to be an unacceptable place for children to live in. The woman, who was simply the most dreadful person Albus had ever met, put up quite a fight when he told her that they wished to adopt Credence. It was only after Gellert muttered a faint Confundus! that the woman finally let Credence go. Normally, Albus would frown at whatever trickery his lover pulled to make things go in his favour. But when he noticed the whip-marks on Credence's back when he bought the boy new clothes, he knew that Gellert had done the right thing. He merely gave the blond a smile though, when he asked why did Albus suddenly pull him into one of the changing-rooms while Credence had gone to look at the shelf of shoes. But it wasn't like Gellert cared why exactly Albus had snogged the life out of him. They both knew, as they made their way back to England with Credence to meet the rest of the family, that whatever made Albus happy would make Gellert even happier.

Their family of four had become a family of five.

Credence was very shy. After years of mental and physical abuse under that horrible woman's hand, the boy was as flighty as a baby phoenix. That was why Albus introduced him to his sister first because, if there was anyone whose soul was gentler than Credence, that would be Ariana. It took awhile, but slowly, Credence rose like a phoenix. Under Ariana's gentleness and love, he learned how to control the Darkness in him, and how to use all that unimaginable power he had for good use. Under Aberforth's patience and bravery, he learned that it was okay that progress took sometime, as long as he dared to make the step forward toward improvement. Under Gellert's ambitions and brilliance, he learned that sometimes, a little Darkness was needed to make the world a better place, as long as he remembered not to lose himself to it. Under Dumbledore's trust and carefulness, he learned that he had to believe in himself first before he could belief in others, but never forgot to stand up for what he believed to be right every once in awhile.

It didn't take Albus long to realise that Credence's magic was quite different than what was normal. He didn't really need spells to perform magic because it relied more on his instincts. Both Albus and Gellert watched in barely repressed pride and amazement whenever Credence did something incredible and his only explanation to how he could have done it was that he'd asked his magic to do what he wanted. By the time Credence had turned thirty-two, he had changed from the timid young man Albus and Gellert had had found back in America, into a confident one with the gentlest soul anyone could possibly know. When Credence decided he wanted to teach Defence Against the Dark Arts at Hogwarts - because, who else other than Credence would be better for the position, when he literally had Darkness inside him that he'd learned to accept in order to control - Dumbledore would be filled with so much pride, he'd convince Gellert to take two-weeks off his busy schedule so they could go to Paris to celebrate it.

It was in Paris where they met Nagini. Albus had always hated circuses, finding them to be barbaric. Gellert, on the other hand, hated them because whatever Albus hated, he hated too. They hadn't really planned to visit the circus when they got to Paris because, as two of the greatest wizards in the world, both of them were more interested in visiting all the renown magical sites. But it only took Credence letting slip how he'd always wanted to go to a circus, for the older wizards  to change their mind. Albus could barely hide his dislike throughout the show, but he tried to bear it for Credence, whose unadulterated happiness made him looked like a little boy. However, the moment the beautiful Maledictus made an appearance, that was be the moment Albus realised that his son had grown up into a man. But Albus didn't realise that he wasn't the only one who had noticed the change in Credence. Before Albus could see it coming, Gellert had gone to Nagini's handler, threatened the man to free Nagini lest he'd charge him with life-sentence for slavery, and then went off to tell the Maledictus that she was finally free. He gave Nagini a choice to join him and his family, or to live her life they way she'd always wanted. Kind woman that she was though, Nagini chose the former, and with a smile on his face, Gellert introduced her to a pleasantly surprised Albus and a dumbstruck Credence. Albus would have kissed Gellert's mischievous smile off his face if hadn't remembered that he needed to welcome Nagini.

Their family of five had become a family of six.

With Nagini added into their little family, Albus and Gellert worked tirelessly to find a cure for her. They even went as far as asking help from their old friend Newt Scamander, who was off gallivanting all over the world with his newly-wedded wife Tina Scamander nee Goldstein. Credence was the one who introduced Newt to Tina during the scholar's book signing in America, and Credence had tagged along with Albus to come to the event. Credence saw Tina standing in the crowd with her sister Queenie, who had dragged the older Goldstein to come because she'd heard that the Albus Dumbledore would be there too. Credence then called out Tina's name, remembering her as the only person, other than his adoptive fathers, that had cared about him. Together with Newt, Albus and Gellert did everything they could to save the Maledictus from her curse. The only other person who worked harder than Albus or Gellert or Newt, was be Credence himself, who would probably be willing to sacrifice his life as long as the woman he loved could be happy. Albus wouldn't allow it though. Not when he and Gellert could do something about it as the so-called greatest wizards in the world. So, even though it took them years, at which point Nagini had almost given up many times if it weren't for Credence's optimism, they finally succeeded.

When the realisation that she would no longer fear for a time when she wouldn't be able to change back into human finally settled in, it was like there was a huge burden lifted off her shoulders. Nagini gave them them all a smile so big and so beautiful, with tears welling up in her eyes, and Albus was almost convinced that the young woman was literally glowing in happiness. So thrilled she was for being cured, Nagini then surprised everyone by going down on one knee in front of their whole family, and proceeded to ask Credence to marry her. Credence - bless his gentle, awkward soul - yelled out No! so loud at first, that it brought Nagini to tears. It was only after Gellert glared at the him that Credence realised belatedly that he'd done something wrong. Taking the hands of the woman he loved so he could pull her into his arms, he hastily explained that the only reason he'd said no was because he wanted to propose to Nagini himself. When the two of them kissed, Gellert shook his head in exasperation, muttering fondly how idiotic they were being. That was when Aberforth, the cheeky bastard, asked him when would Gellert finally make an honest man out of Albus.

Long story short, a couple months after Credence's wedding to Nagini, Albus and Gellert had their highly anticipated wedding, before running off to Hawaii for their honeymoon.

When he came back from his honeymoon, just a couple weeks before the start of a new school year in 1938, Albus found a determined Credence waiting for him in the house he now lived with Gellert alone. Beside Credence, a nervous yet supportive Nagini was holding her husband's hand firmly. In his absence, Albus had left Hogwarts in Credence's care because, even though the Obscurus hadn't known it yet, Albus was grooming the him to be his successor. Even though he was worried that Credence had done something horrible, Albus told himself to calm down, and nodded at the son he'd adopted many years ago to tell him what was wrong. Like what he knew his newly-wedded husband was thinking secretly, Albus thought that Credence had come to tell him that in his absence, Hogwarts had burnt down to the ground. Therefore, when Credence revealed that he wanted to adopt this boy named Tom Riddle that he met in a Muggle orphanage when he was delivering the boy's Hogwarts letter, Albus was extremely pleased, that he didn't truly realise to what exactly he'd given Credence his blessing. It was only after Gellert looked at him with what suspiciously looked like tears in his heterochromic eyes, that everything dawned on him.

From becoming adoptive parents, he and Gellert had become adoptive grandparents.

Their family of six had become a family of seven.

Albus was excited to meet this boy because he was their seventh addition to the family, and seven was a powerful number.

Unfortunately, it was quite sometime later when he and Gellert were properly introduced to their adopted grandson. It happened during the boy's winter break, when both Gellert and Nagini, who had started to work as Newt's assistant and had gone with him to the Amazon for his research, came to Hogwarts to visit their three family members who was residing at the school. Aberforth and Ariana, both them had just opened a bar in Hogsmeade to be closer to their brother and his family, came to visit too. The first impression Albus had of the young boy was how simply beautiful he was, with his dark hair and pale skin that matched perfectly with his uncanny blue eyes. Albus' second impression, however, was how angry the boy seemed to be with the world. How the boy hated the world with all his very small being because of all the unfairness life had pushed in his way. There was such a Darkness in his heart, greater than Gellert's or even Credence's, that at first, Albus was worried. He was worried that his son had made a mistake. But as years passed, Albus was proven wrong once again.

With all the gentleness and love he'd learned from his Auntie Ari, with all the patience and bravery he'd learned from his Uncle Abe, with all the ambitions and brilliance he learned from his Father, and lastly, with all the trust and carefulness he'd learned from his Dad, Credence had raised Tom into a better man than Albus could possibly imagine. There was still a bit of ruthlessness in Tom's heart that he'd gotten from his Grandpa Gellert, who still had his own moments of Darkness; and also a bit of malevolence in everything he did that he'd learned from his Mum, who still had problems forgetting that she no longer had to see the world with extremely suspicion. But Albus would be more than glad to remind Tom from time to time, as he took the boy for their nightly walk by the Lake, that those traits he had weren't signs of evilness. That as long as he remembered that love was the most powerful thing in the world, Tom would grow up to be a good person. Albus would know. He'd seen, experienced it. After all, it was the love he shared with Gellert that had given him the wonderful life he was living.

He was so proud of his grandson when he graduated  top of his class, like Albus himself and Gellert too. Unlike his father who became a teacher, or his mother who became a Magizoologist, Tom chose to join his Grandfather at the Ministry, applying to become an Auror. He refused to be treated differently though. He didn't want to pass just because his Grandfather was the Ministry of Magic. No, Tom worked really hard to prove to everyone that he really was brilliant enough to be an Auror. It made Albus even more proud of him. That was why when Tom came to visit Hogwarts when he was officially an Auror, several years after he'd graduated, and Albus caught him locked in a passionate kiss with the new teacher Minerva McGonagall, the ageing Headmaster turned a blind-eye. After all, he was once young as well. And when Tom begged him to not tell his parents or his Grandpa about it because he wasn't ready yet, Albus easily agreed. He did have to deal with a grumpy Gellert though, when Tom finally revealed that he'd been in a relationship with Minerva for a few years and was planning to marry her. But when Albus saw the rare smile on Tom's face as he looked at his future wife, Albus thought it was worth it. Besides, he knew that Gellert couldn't stay mad at him forever.

Years passed, and before Albus knew it, he'd just turned a hundred years old. He'd watched his bloodline continue through his sister, whose great-granddaughter had just married young Sirius Black. He'd watched his brother branching his bar all over Europe, both wizarding and Muggle worlds, before he finally married a Muggle woman at the old age of seventy-two. He'd watched his son became one of the most respected Hogwarts professor the school had ever known, second only to himself. He'd watched his daughter-in-law became a famous Magizoologist with one of his favourite students, her name written in all of the books his current students used. He'd watched his grandson became a world-renown Head Auror, and later on took over the position of Prime Minister of Magic. He'd watched his husband became one of the most respected and feared men in the world with himself, who would later be known as the first person who finally made an open-alliance between the wizarding and Muggle world. And when Albus later on let his soon took over the position of Hogwarts' headmaster from him so he could enjoy retirement with his husband, Albus thought he'd been the luckiest man he could ever dream of.

But that was all it could ever be though. A dream. A dream that would never happen. A dream that could never happen. Because the reality was, Albus was a coward and a fool, and it had cost him everything. The reality was, his sister was killed all those years ago by the man he'd loved when she was only fourteen. The reality was, even if his brother didn't outright hate him anymore, Albus knew that whatever love Aberforth ever had for him, it died with Ariana. The reality was, he'd failed to stop Gellert from becoming the monster that had nearly destroyed the whole wizarding world in his agenda to eradicate every single Muggle in the world. The reality was, Credence too had become a monster because of Gellert's influence, both broken men's hearts were dead to the pleas of their loved ones as they wrecked havoc to the world that had hurt them. The reality was, with Credence joining Gellert, Nagini was left broken-hearted, and with no one left to fight for, she'd given up fighting and let the Curse consumed her. The reality was, Tom had taken the same path as Gellert, and was even more hellbent in destroying the world that had abandoned him from the day he was born.

The reality was, as Albus stared at the edge of Severus Snape's wand, it was all a dream, and he'd failed.

And as he calmly waited for the green light of the Killing Curse hit him, Albus thought that Death was the best punishment he could ever ask for.

After all, it was all his fault that the wizarding world he so loved was so torn apart with the acts of broken men he'd failed.

[diamondcitydarlin]

I grew to love Daenerys very quickly because I see a lot of myself in her, or the other way around. Both, I guess. I know a lot of people feel the same. I’m a woman who grew up in poverty with a controlling parent, who was sexually assaulted as a child, who suffered from an eating disorder for 13 years straight, who endured a lot in my formative years that dealt a huge blow to my confidence. I have learning disabilities (ADHD, dyscalculia) for which I was called ‘stupid’ and other ableist slurs in school. For a huge chunk of my 20′s I didn’t think myself worth much of anything or any one’s time. I didn’t aspire to much. I had dreams but I disregarded them because everything I’d been through to that point told me that I wouldn’t be able to achieve them anyway.

And then I gave birth to my son and everything changed. It does when you become a mother, all the things that had meant so much before completely pale in comparison to this person you’ve brought into the world. He’s only 5 years old today, but he was what encouraged me to be stronger. How could I protect and stick up for him if I couldn’t do it for myself? 

I got into therapy. I started on medication. Today, we’ve moved to New York, I do voice acting and am working on a career in TV production as I’ve secretly wanted to do all my life. It’s still an uphill battle. I’m still underestimated. I’m still thwarted by people (coughmencough) who think I’m an idiot and that I couldn’t do their job better than them even though I have since proven I can on the projects I’ve been given. But I don’t care, because I know I will succeed. I am ambitious now, I love myself and I reach for my goals. 

I fell in love with Daenerys quickly for how much of her story more or less mirrored my own and it’s why, no matter how much time could have been spent on it, I can never fully support the concept of her story ending as the Mad Targaryen Tyrant. I know that’s more emotional investment talking than anything from an objective standpoint, but I don’t know that stories are worth much of anything if they don’t inspire, if they don’t grip us with emotion. 

I feel like in many ways in the show, at least, Daenerys is seen as inherently culpable for things her ancestors did and, more to the point, because due to the world she lives in the circumstances she was given, due to simply being born a woman, she had to take what she wanted with fire and blood. She had to show what she was capable of against a world that thought her worth nothing, that would’ve swallowed her whole if it had its way. And yet, though we’re told this is all evidence that she’d become a tyrant, she used the power she’d be given to help those who needed it. She lost sight of that only at the end, for no real reason other than that between her and Cersei, the writing wants us to assume that women given total power and control will inherently go crazy with it and abuse it. Maybe that wasn’t the goal, but it’s a reasonable conclusion to come to nonetheless. 

I know Kit Harrington (I believe?) has made the argument that there’s empowerment in depicting a female tyrant, part of the varied kaleidoscope of female characters in GoT, but we already had that written very well (imo) with Cersei. Having Daenerys succumb to the same gives off such a disheartening message as per women going for what they want, women succeeding. Yes, they may succeed, but they will go mad. They will abuse it. Inevitably. 

That’s not Daenerys in my heart, anyway. Daenerys, to me, will always be the Queen that wielded her potentially devastating powers to protect those in need, who proved her strength against those that doubted her, against those that enslaved and raped and murdered without mercy. Daenerys, to me, will always be the Queen that pushed her way forward not for the glory of power, but to protect and build something better for those crushed under the wheel in a world where no one else was willing or able. 

Daenerys is a dragon, but as we’ve seen, dragons are not heartless monsters. Dragons love, they bond, they protect- not just with their mother, but with Jon, with Tyrion, etc. Their power is fierce but they are intelligent and capable of great things. But of course, it’s much easier to characterize them otherwise. It’s much easier to ‘put them down’ rather than understand the true scope of their being.