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quizmasterfred · 8 months

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13 in 'The God Complex'

I saw a Reddit post a while ago asking 'what episode would you like to see a different Doctor tackle', and now it's been ages but i had some thoughts, and can't stop thinking about it, and just desperately need to write them down somewhere so here if you're seeing this: sorry, you've got to deal with my ramblings now.

This could replace ‘Legend of the Sea Devils’ wholesale. It was most people's least favourite centenary special, so hopefully we’re not losing much. OR, if you want to wrangle 4 specials in that year, it comes between ‘Eve of the Daleks’ and LotSD, which I’ll elaborate on later.

Arrival:

13 genuinely intends to follow through with “that moment on the beach where you tell me everything”, directly says as much at the end of EotD. Instead of fobbing it off with “whatever happened to the lost treasure of the Flor de la Mar”, they ARE going to San Munrohvar, which Yaz is ecstatic about.

In the OG God Complex (quick reminder: 11/Amy/Rory originally), it’s Amy’s faith in the Doctor which brings them there, and it’s the same now. Except it’s not just the generic faith of a particularly attached companion, it’s the exact specific moment of Yaz knowing she’s about to get that conversation.

Her faith is both restored, and about to be rewarded. After years of asking, and wondering, and being fobbed off, finally the Doctor is opening up. And right after Yaz’s coming out to Dan? Wow - what if!

They aren’t there because Yaz “has faith in the Doctor”, they’re there now because in the exact moment the TARDIS launched, that faith was higher and more intense that it has ever been.

Dan:

Common complaint is that Dan’s a bit of a blank slate – Diane, Liverpool, nice bloke. Fun moments, but not enough time to really develop as a character. I’m not going to make a spectacular reveal here and give him an amazing arc, but at the very least we have a chance to make that blank-slatedness really work. He takes on Rory’s role in the story:

13’s Room:

We never see 11’s room, only hear the TARDIS’ cloister bell as he looks in. The implication, of course, is that he’s afraid of dying – permanently. Trenzalore, no more regenerations. Very nice and subtle for 11’s arc/personality – the old man disguising himself as a 20-something.

13 has a very different problem: she’s the Timeless Child, she’s been alive for potentially a billion years before her memories begin, and she’s still regenerating. 11 is afraid of regenerations running out; 13 is afraid they’ll never run out.

It’s harder to convey my idea here with just a noise, not showing the inside of the room itself, so I will describe what I imagine the room to look like, but if there’s a way to do this without showing the viewer, that’d obviously be great.

Her room is a field of graves: “Susan Foreman”, “Sarah-Jane Smith”, “Alastair Lethbridge-Stewart”, “Donna Noble”, “Amy + Rory Williams” (an exact copy of the grave from ‘The Angels take Manhattan’), “Clara Oswald”, River('s Screwdriver/Neural Relay sitting on a Library server?), “Bill Potts”, “Yasmin Khan”, even one written in Gallifreyan (could be inferred to be the Master, but not directly stated). Only a brief look, but enough for someone to pause it and read a bunch of companions’ names.

Many are faded, symbolising a fear that one day she’ll be so old with so many lost loved ones, there simply won’t be room for all of them, and she’ll starting to forget their names and faces. Thousands more we can’t read, the people she’s yet to meet across all her future lives, and they will age and die all the same. In the centre, she’s still there. Alive, young, never dying. Maybe it’s not even Jodie standing there – maybe it’s Ncuti Gatwa, or some completely other actor: ‘generic future self’.

This is the moment of tragedy for her. After her own chat with Dan, the fireworks, seeing Sarah + Nick happy, she had decided to give it a try with Yaz. But seeing this room is what changes that. This is the moment she says to herself:

In OG, this happens immediately after 11 effectively invites Rita to join the crew, but maybe we can swap these around. So 13 sees this, completely psyches herself out of pursuing a relationship with Yaz, knows in her heart that her biggest fear is losing more and more and more people, but seeing Rita being a little bit brilliant again makes 13 invite her along anyway. She can’t help it – a clever little human working their way in, no matter what. Bittersweet.

Speaking of:

Rita:

Another young Muslim woman who’s a little bit brilliant and a little bit too brave? In all of time and space, it’s a bit weird for a bottle episode to have someone who, on the face of it, is basically a carbon copy of our main companion, right? We’ll see.

13 gets along with Rita just as 11 did. Maybe Dan is the butt of the ‘with regret, you’re fired’ joke. Maybe in a moment alone, Dan can crack a line to Rita that ‘she’s got a thing for clever Muslim gals’. But of course, most importantly, Rita and Yaz have a bit of bonding over their shared faith. Rita mentions ‘Jahannam’ in the OG, and we can use that to get some insight to Yaz’s faith. We know she’s practicing-enough to visit a Mosque (mentioned in Rosa), but really we get very little exploration of what Islam truly means to her throughout Chibnall’s run. Give Yaz something personal that isn’t tied to the Doctor, y’know.

Then, the phone call when Rita is about to die. Like 11, 13 tries to talk her into coming back: maybe she can save her, she really wants to save her. She can’t convince Rita, but Yaz takes the phone off of her. Two young women of the same religion have a heart-to-heart about faith and rapture and Jahannam. They both start off thinking Yaz was brought here for the same reason Rita was (and the viewer does too) – stealing their religion from them.

BUT, Rita gradually realises that isn’t true for Yaz. She realises that Yaz’s faith in the Doctor is stronger: “if you come back, the Doctor can save [you/us]”. That brief, shining moment of beauty that Yaz felt when the Doctor confirmed she would follow through on ‘tell[ing] you everything’ was so powerful, it eclipsed her religious faith. Not forever, she hasn’t become an atheist, but the novelty, the cocktail of love, and rewarded patience, and anticipation, and trust – for a tiny moment, it out-shone her other faith, and that’s why the TARDIS was pulled in by the eponymous God Complex.

Maybe Rita says it explicitly, or maybe she doesn’t. Either way, Yaz also realises what Rita has seen, but the Doctor isn’t privy to Rita’s side of the conversation (because… phone). They hang up, turn off the cameras, and Rita dies. If Yaz hadn’t let the Doctor take over her life and heart, could she have saved Rita? Did someone die because she failed as a Muslim? (Obviously the answer is no – that’s not how faith/religion works, and Rita was dead anyway because that is how the minotaur works, but the point is Yaz has a total crisis here)

As with the OG, the very next scene is the Doctor’s ‘I figured it out’ moment.

Yaz is hit with a whole fresh wave of guilt. The whole reason they’re here, the thing that killed Rita – and the Doctor agrees with that assessment (the Doctor couldn’t hear Rita, so this obviously isn’t actually the Doctor saying ‘you’re right, you got her killed’ – the Doctor would never think or say something like that – but that’s what it feels like to Yaz).

Yaz’s Room:

Now this is what’s really beautiful about the change from 11 to 13. Amy and Yaz’s rooms are the same thing. Amy’s is a little girl waiting by a window for her Raggedy Man to come back; abandoned. Yaz’s is a young woman in a basic white TARDIS console room, surrounded by sticky notes and sheets of paper, after hundreds of failed attempts to make it fly, waiting for the Doctor to come back from Gallifrey; abandoned.

[Quick side-note: the moment between Amy and Gibbis where she says ‘I thought that room was for me’ about the Weeping Angels still works for Yaz. In her only meeting with the Angels, what was the result? They took the Doctor away from her for 3 years]

11’s speech to Amy, tearing down the image of him in her head – saving her life by pretending he can’t – absolutely stunning. But 13 has even more to work with here: Amy/Rory, Clara (died because she became too much like the Doctor – hello Yaz), River. The added tragedy of breaking not just a friend, but someone who is actively in love with her and who she shares those feelings for, and the only way to save Yaz’s life is to shatter those feelings.

AND: Bill. "Remember that man who tried to kill you, Graham, and Ryan in a plane crash the instant he met you? The man who tried to kill us all on Gallifrey, and is ultimately the reason I left you, vanishing for 10 months? The man you’re most afraid of, of every villain we’ve met together? I TRIED TO HELP HIM. I put his redemption above Bill and Nardole’s safety because ‘[he’s] the only one person that I’ve ever met who’s even remotely like me’ (direct quote, btw(!) – ‘World Enough and Time’), and it got her mercilessly killed and converted. That’s the sort of person I am, and now I’m about to get you killed too."

Falling Action:

Because Yaz is a little bit brilliant, and coming into her own as “becoming like the Doctor”, like Clara did, she later works out that the speech in her room was ‘the plan all along^TM’ to get rid of the minotaur, and starts to patch herself up by telling herself that the Doctor didn’t really mean not to trust her. So Yaz presses, once again, asking for the Doctor to tell her something about herself.

The Doctor, of course, actually was being genuine, because her own room – the field of graves – scared her that much. 11 rebuffs Amy’s question, continuing with his exposition about the prison. 13 does the same to Yaz. The episode started with Yaz being elated that the Doctor would finally open up, and ends with 13 reverting back to closed-off, and refusing to answer a personal question. Because 13 saw what was in her room, and decided, against everything they both wanted 45 minutes ago, that she can’t fix herself. So back in the box it goes.

Then:

From 11’s perspective, this could be perceived as bittersweet. He’s still afraid of death, but at least there’s someone here and now commiserating with him. Maybe it would be a gift, and maybe he can accept it in time, and go to Trenzalore in peace. But for 13, it’s just bitter. 'Yes, it would be a gift – if only I could ever have it. But at least I can grant it to you.'

We can either do the beach scene now, ‘can’t fix myself’…

(and then in my ideal world, alter Power of the Doctor to give us a slightly happier end / opening up / explaining 13's hotel room / Thasmin kiss, because god knows us gays need someone to throw us a bone – but that’s not important right now, not relevant to 13!GodComplex)

Or this is where the Doctor goes ‘let’s fuck about looking for the Flor de la Mar’, cue LotSD. Again we see the contrast between her genuine intent to be honest with Yaz 45 minutes ago vs fobbing it off now. Yaz’s heart is broken for real, just after she managed to convince herself that the Doctor’s speech in the hotel room was all a trick.

I can't stop thinking about it, because Doctor Who has consumed my every waking moment for the last 2 months...

#13th doctor #yasmin khan #thasmin #11th doctor #amy pond #the god complex #eve of the daleks #legend of the sea devils #power of the doctor #doctor who

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ilikestuff69 · 4 months

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On the topic of Haymitch fancastings

So, I am finding a lot of the discussions around who should play young Haymitch to be rather perplexing and infuriating because everyone seems to forget one crucial detail. During his games, Haymitch Abernathy was SIXTEEN. YEARS. OLD.

We need to stop fancasting actors who are in their late 20s/early 30s to play teenagers. There are incredibly talented child actors who will be able to play those roles and I personally think it’s important to have actors who look the right age in stories and with this story, the tributes being children shows how the Capital will take anything innocent and harmless and twist and corrupt it just to either kill it or break it and they do this so they can insert their control over everybody.

And that’s not the only problem I have with people forgetting Haymitch is 16 during his game. I saw a tiktok where the person in the tiktok states, and I quote, “Katniss describes Haymitch as "a looker", woody Harrelson is pretty good looking (imo) so young haymitch has to be as well. Pls don't do what we did for Jace in City of Bones. He was supposed to be beautiful, like he was described in the books” Now I can’t speak on the whole Shadow and Bones aspect of this post as I am not a fan of that series (nothing against it, just never got into it) but even if they do cast an actor in their 20s to play Haymitch that is still an actor playing a character who is SIXTEEN! That’s supposed to be A CHILD! Why does the child HAVE to be good looking for you?! I’m sorry but that’s kinda fucking weird. If we were to ever get a Finnick book/movie these same people would probably say they should just recast Sam Claflin even tho Finnick was fucking 14 during his games, and they’d only say that because they want to thirst over Finnick again.

Also, and this really doesn’t have anything to do with this post because I think we all can agree this is dumb, I saw someone state that they should just recast Woody Harrelson and de-age him because no one will be able to be Haymitch like him and like… c’mon guys. 1. Woody was a great Haymitch but let’s not act like no actor could give a performance on the same caliber as his. 2. Haymitch’s personality in the new book/movie will probably be very different to how he is in the first book seeing as the events in this new book/movie are the events that make him become the man he is later in life.

Long story short, I think Haymitch should be played be an actor closer tho the age he was in the books rather than have an adult play a child. But that’s just me.

Also, while we’re on the subject casting, if President Snow is to appear in the new book/movie, he should absolutely be played by Kiefer Sutherland. If there was ever a reason for nepobabies to exist, it’s for moments like this. It be like when Kurt Russell and Wyatt Russell played the same guy at different ages in Monarch: Legacy of Monsters.

#the hunger games #haymitch abernathy #woody harrelson #sunrise on the reaping #suzanne collins #president snow #coriolanus snow #kiefer sutherland #donald sutherland

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venomouschocolate · 26 days

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Why Do They Talk Like That: a stream of consciousness

Fantasy linguistics are so hard like where do you draw the line... I mean none of my characters are referencing major theistic religions or using real life loanwords or expletives but then there's quote-unquote fun stuff like "sadism" or "lunatic" or "sinister". i.e the Marquis de Sade does not exist in this world, but the concept of pleasure from cruelty does... Latin is not a language there, but I, personally, am writing in English, which has much of its etymology rooted in Latin (as well as pretty much every other language ever), even if there is no hate for left-handed people or indeed the left in this world, so "sinister" is inexplicable in itself now (odd how the left has historically been demonised and that it's also the socialist side of the political spectrum. not that odd really. thank you robert walpole?). The same with "lunatic": the moon is literally worshipped in some areas of my world, but it's still a term characters use, despite the moon having positive connotations.

Where Do You Draw The Line... I can't write in a conlang because a) I am not masochistic but b) I want my work to actually be read. You can imply different languages with accents and word choice and compound words, but ultimately I am writing in the same language for all (despite being bilingual, go me!) and ultimately that language is one that exists only in our world and not in the one that I've created.

While we're here, let's talk about swearing (cursing if you're american?) in fantasy settings. I don't mean "oh my god/s", that's arguably blasphemy and certainly not explicit; I don't mean "bloody" (not really explicit either) because frankly that does tend to fit a fantasy vibe with the type of characters likely to use it (considering the real world stereotypes and thus the archetypes an author will write using it). I mean expletives like "fuck", "bitch", "shit": STOP USING THEM. you absolute buffoons.

Recently I read a fantasy novel which included a whole magic system and several countries with absolute monarchies, etc, and they kept using expletives and it just did not work, and it never does. A step back: I believe that using expletives when writing in a real world setting (provided it's period-believable, of course) can work, and often (not always, not even mostly) works - I do it myself. However, believable expletives and exclamations and intensifiers can and sometimes do make or break worldbuilding, at least for me. The worldbuilding in the novel was fine, good even! But every time the (twenty-eight-year-old) mc used "fucking" or "bitch", I was immediately yanked out of the story and into reality. It was like reading a period piece (say, in the 19th-early 20th century) and seeing "bitch" in the expletive (slur) sense. I don't care whether it would be used: I don't BELIEVE that it would be.

Suspension of disbelief is everything, which (as a theatre kid...) is, I suspect, why musical films don't work: we're primed for a more true-to-life piece, whereas in a theatre, we're prepared to cast a lot more aside. We KNOW they're actors, we know bursting into song is unrealistic, but it's the stage! We believe it anyway. Seeing a fantasy character, particularly one that was meant to be a minor royal, consistently THINK in expletives (and not just exclaim them!) felt to me like watching Mean Girls The Musical The Movie. I did not believe the magic (which was a major plot point so it kind of sucked). I did not believe that the characters saying "bitch" and "fuck" would say those words, especially since those characters were almost exclusively limited to the middle-aged queen, an almost thirty-year-old established to be groomed into mild-mannered obedience, the former queen's guard and a (bastard) prince. I did not believe that the characters whose thoughts I was reading would think them, and thus I did not believe in the story.

If you're going to create a prose-based world intended to be separate from our own in terms of religion/history/sociopolitical structure/magic/etc, you NEED to think about the linguistics. I'm not saying think HARD or be super mega creative: in my sky-worship country, a common exclamation is "stars-be", short for "stars-be-dimmed", ditto "skies-be" and "skies-be-felled". My sun-based little sillies go "be-set" as in "sun-be-set"; the only country in a technological revolution (also the only country with guns): "I'm not wired that way"; "he's gearing for a fight"; "I was shooting for you". Furthermore, when explaining their culture in other languages, they struggle for words, because, for example, a train is a monolingual concept (one falters when about to describe someone as a "train wreck" and just goes "sorry"). It's not clever, it's not particularly original, but, in my opinion, it makes the language, and by extension the world, more believable.

While I'm mid-rant: there's a marked difference between characters of different class and upbringing. My more religious, self-righteous queen of skycountry says "my stars": she rules the country, she is a little crazy insane, she feels that she owns the sky, too. A less-educated character uses slang like "lunar", "feared", "heartfulness" where his posh boy counterpart says "insane", "afraid" and "empathy". And yes, I am totally neurodivergent, and I think about details, and I also study the development of the English language and want to continue to do so at university, so of course I am more drawn to it, but at the end of the day if you're writing prose then the words are really bloody important.

TLDR: worldbuilding is hard; do your high fantasy (or even low fantasy) characters NEED to say "fuck"?

#writing #ocs #worldbuilding #fantasy writing #fantasy worldbuilding #linguistics #or just me being autistic #ven talks about sociolinguistics #surprisingly for the first time #creative writing #writing advice #rant #yeah this is just a rant #the book was kill the queen btw #and it was good despite the fact that being clean would honestly have improved it #this is going to be so valuable when i'm rich and famous #got the capital letters out for this

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pinkeoni · 1 year

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Re: The Concern for Actor Ages

This is a post to discuss and hopefully alleviate some of the concerns regarding the actor’s ages for season 5, as well as offer a counter to some of the points being made.

The whole “the actors are going to look so old once season 5 comes out!!” is a joke as old as season 4. And like, I get it. I GET it. The actors do look a lot older than they are supposed to be. And honestly, it will probably happen again. I just don’t think it’s an actual issue.

And clearly, you’ve never seen El Camino.

So El Camino is a sequel film to the tv series Breaking Bad, which is meant to take place directly after and during the events of the last season of the show. It was also made several years after the series had concluded.

The biggest concern from fans was centered around Jesse Plemons reprising his role, who now looked much different from how he looked while filming the show. For comparison, here is Jesse Plemons in Breaking Bad vs Jesse Plemons in El Camino

There were a few options to circumvent this:

Force Jesse Plemons to lose a ton of weight during their short 50 day filming period, a dangerous and unhealthy method

Digitally de-age and slim down, an unreliable process with the potential to be distracting

Somehow find an adequate actor who looks exactly like young Jesse Plemons

And here’s the option that Vince Gilligan decides to go with, which I think is much better:

Cast Jesse Plemons in the role and have him act as is with his current appearance, and ask the audience to suspend their disbelief

To be fair, suspending your disbelief for a film production is a lot harder than say, for a staged production. An audience watching a play understands that what they are watching isn’t a perfect representation of reality, but an audience will interpret a film as reality.

So maybe it’s a little impossible to not notice if actors look different from how they are supposed to in universe. And if it’s distracting for you, maybe it can’t be helped. And I probably can’t change your mind. I didn’t find myself distracted when watching El Camino, however, because Jesse Plemons fucking kills it.

His performance is great. Plemons had gained maturity and skill in the six years since BB ended, and it’s reflected in his performance. He sells it and I buy it.

And I bought it in season 4, too. Of course the kids look older than they’re supposed to. But what were the Duffer’s supposed to do? Reverse time? Stop a global pandemic from happening? Find the fountain of youth?

They do use digital de-aging with El, but that was specifically to express El at a much much younger age that doesn’t have too much screentime. De-aging the entire cast for the entire season would have cost too much, taken too much time, would be too distracting and take away from the performances. And all of the kids do a stellar job.

So my general reaction when watching season 4 and seeing that the kids looked older: 🤷🏼‍♀️ Oh well. Shit happens.

To add another layer to this, I think it’s interesting to be able to peak behind the curtain and see the filmmaking process in the actual finished product. In a perfect world where pandemics don’t happen and production doesn’t take years, the actors would look how they are supposed to in universe. But they don’t. Seeing it warts and all just makes it so much more interesting and human.

Does this mean I always wanna see mistakes in the production? No, but when it’s something as unpredictable and human as how human bodies look, I’d rather just see the actors for how they are.

So. The actors are going to look different. It happens. I promise it’ll be fine. It could distract you, but once you accept the reality of it, you can move on.

#also when i say ‘see actors as they are’ i dont mean vecna cause hes like. obviously supposed to be a Creature #i mean specifically when it comes to the kids ages i just dont care that much #also not directed at anyone. this has been a conversation that has been happening for a while #stranger things

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jadedbirch · 9 months

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The Three Musketeers (2023) - Part 1: d'Artagnan

Directed: Martin Bourboulon

Starring: Vincent Cassel, Eva Green, François Civil

First of all, you do not know the struggle we had to go through to even get our eyeballs on this movie! Only die hard Dumas idiots like me would have even bothered 🤦🏻‍♀️. Finally, we had to buy it from AppleTV. Anywho, below is my live blog of the latest French nonsense! I make a point of tutoring myself watching as many 3 Musketeers adaptations as possible, regardless of the psychological damage, and I kind of have high hopes for this one despite the fact that I can already tell they cast more for 20 Years After than for The 3 Musketeers. But I'm willing to pretend there are no good, young actors in France (because there's no other way to explain these casting choices) for the sake of my own sanity. The rest of my babbling and movie spoilers will be below the cut!

I see we start the movie in 1627, which already makes me laugh 🤣. The book famously starts in 1625 and then they time skip a year and a half into the future because I guess Dumas remembered that the war starts in 1627. Alex was the king of inexplicable time skips and I see the movie has chosen to stick to history rather than literary canon 👌🏻.

Everything is cold, dark, and wet. I have no idea what's going on, or who this blond woman is, or why d'Artagnan is coming back from the dead. But I'm always in favor of immortal abominations 😈.

It does entertain me that Eric Ruf, who played Aramis in an earlier French adaptation, plays Richelieu in this one. Nice touch.

LOL d'Artagnan gate crashing the musketeer headquarters all "I'm not Soviet, the French do not stand in line!" Anyways, he's authentically obnoxious, which I like, although clearly also 20 years too old.

I feel like this is an AU that takes place before they invented soap and also dyes, which is hilarious because if they're going for historical accuracy, this is just what the plebs think looks "authentic". Why are these men all so dirty and old? At least they make fun of Athos being a thousand years old in the movie, but why is Jussac also so ancient? And still serving in the guards? Life expectancy back then was like 25, but surely no one would be serving in the army past the age of 50, which was like Ancient for the 1600s, even among nobility.

I must laugh at the fact that Athos straight up introduces himself to d'Artagnan as Athos de Sillegue, le comte de La Fère. So, I see we are just going to go there 🤭🤭🤭. This changes his story arc completely though, stay tuned for my whinging. 🤦🏻‍♀️

Absolutely incredible, legendary , A++, 11000/10: bisexual Porthos waking up in bed with a lady and a dude after a night of debauchery! Chef's fucking kiss! I forgive the fact that there are no young people in France.

Aramis, so far is very Murder Kitten. I do wish he'd wash his face more and do something about his guyliner (I feel like he should have just committed to MORE MAKEUP frankly because the guyliner alone is odd), but c'est la vie, I guess.

Plus one point for Athos getting wrongly arrested, minus twenty points for making Athos a Protestant WTF? And in what world would a nobleman of Athos' lineage get sentenced to death for stabbing an unknown woman? This is all so silly! (I do have to give Milady points for just like fucking with him so fantastically. Plus one revenge point to Milady.)

Aramis torturing a guy to save Athos is honestly 👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻👌🏻 11/10 Murder Kitten, automatic plus one point.

This is all incredibly Dramatique, as much as it strains credulity. I love it when modern directors decide that they can write better "action" than Dumas himself. I'm just sitting here screaming "Why would you have that conversation where anyone can hear you!" Minus one point.

I must say Constance and d'Artagnan have a much more believable romance here than in the book. Plus 5 non-creeper points.

(Please I can't stop looking at how old all these Musketeers are 😅😅😅)

Okay so they've also given Athos a BROTHER. Who is part of a Protestant conspiracy. This is all so fucking crazy, I don't even know what to say. Am I watching the musketeers or La Reine Margot? 🤔

Incidentally, the King also gets a brother! Everyone gets a brother! J/K at least the King really did have a historical brother. Athos just gets fucked with in this movie a lot. Automatic minus one point for unnecessary siblings.

WHY must you all insist on having these super SECRET conversations in the middle of a public square where literally anyone can hear you? Minus one dumbass point.

And now d'Artagnan must go to England.... Alone? Because it's more heroic this way? Ambushed by ghost squirrels in the woods? Oh no, that's just Athos, lurking in the woods, as one does. "All misery comes from love." Thanks, Old Man Lush.

This revisionist tale of Milady's past is all very convenient but I FUCKING HATE IT every single time they try to do this in modern adaptations. Let Milady Be Evil 2023! But I see that you will not. Listen, it's not "feminist" to turn the villain into the victim. I'm so tired. 🤦🏻‍♀️ These misguided attempts at feminism really do not do her any favors, she has a lot more agency as simply the Really Bad Girl who just wanted money and power. Minus 5 points for not letting Milady have any fun and minus another 10 points for giving her an abusive ex-husband!

As for Athos, IMO it's always much more compelling to let him be the guy who tried to kill his beloved wife for betraying him, than to make him the spineless man who turns her over to the authorities for Handwavium. Yes, it's pretty fucked up. But it's much more humanizing and makes him a darker, more interesting character. And I will always maintain that.

(This movie is so fucking dark, all the scenes take place at night or in some cthonic tunnels or prisons ffs have mercy on my eyes!)

Oh dear, here we go again. Milady taking a Dramatique - and completely unnecessary - dive off a cliff. Only this time, we know she doesn't die because.... She can swim? And definitely will not have all her bones broken by that 1000 ft fall. Minus 20 points for lazy writing.

(My God, everyone is so dirty, you would think they never did their laundry in France 🤦🏻‍♀️)

Ironically, the only well lit scene takes place in what looks like the Notre Dame which is just very silly as that place is a sepulcher.

(Once again, we are advancing the plot by having super secret conversations conducted in the middle of the palace with an open door where anyone can see and hear you plotting 🤦🏻‍♀️ Minus one petty point.)

Okay, so poor Constance has been kidnapped, and our young hero (who is already a Lieutenant because he and his pals conveniently saved the King's life in a plot twist that was very necessary in other to return Athos to favor in this version) lies unconscious in the streets. They probably didn't even try to kill him this time because they know he's immortal. And speaking of people who just won't die, in a mid-credits scene, it is confirmed that Milady is indeed, very much Not Dead Yet. Surprise! The scene is now set for war in The Three Musketeers: Part 2: Milady.

In summary:

I tallied up my totally random points and ended up with a score of -51, which is Not Good, my friends.

Okay, so I've seen much worse? It's better than Atrocity in 3D, for example, which was just barely watchable as a film and as an adaptation. But they changed so much about the plot and some of the main characters, that it doesn't really feel true to the spirit of the book at this point, which is my main criteria for measuring whether an adaptation is successful. And the main reasons for that are because it's much darker and grittier and less fun than the novel. Which - Quelle domage!

I know that as an unrepentant Athos fangirl, I tend to be biased, so I was trying to be on guard (heheh get it?) for my own biases while watching this. But it's really difficult when Ya Boy is such an integral part of the novel as well as this particular adaptation. And so I must regrettably come back to what a shame it is that they've cast a 60 year old Athos (Vincent Cassel is 57 and he's a fabulous actor whom I've loved in many of his worlks), and I feel like they had to rewrite his character to be more age appropriate and less of the drunken asshole he is in Dumas' first d'Artagnan book. But that's the asshole I fell in love with, and will stan forever. Without him going around beating his servant, indulging his gambling addiction, and being a sarcastic pain in everyone's ass, it's just a completely different story.

Pros:

Hot Eva Green!

bisexual Porthos!

d'Artagnan is given a much less creepy love story with Constance (and I assume he will also not be nonconning Milady in this adaptation)

The King and Queen are much more humanized and sympathetic here.

Cons:

Visually really drab, everything is brown, everyone is dirty.

Very little humor unlike in the novel and some other adaptations.

EVERYONE IS WAY TOO OLD, which changes the feeling of the story significantly, and IMO for the worse, because these people are just not allowed to have fun, and subsequently, neither is the audience.

I will still absolutely be here for Part 2 because I am a masochist!

Grade: B- as a piece of art, but a C as an adaptation of the Dumas classic.

#the three musketeers #2023 the three musketeers #alexandre dumas #the three musketeers: d'artagnan

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imzsuzsis-blog · 3 months

Text

—————————

Dream ( Lando)

“Loki? Hello?"

I was in some white place, a blanket on me, I couldn't move.

“Someone? Hello? Where am I?"

I stroked my belly.

"Where are my twins?"

I cried because there was a fresh scar there.

"Hey, new mom, or should I say it quietly to dad, if you could take a break. I just gave birth, just like you, even though you're a star, even you just gave birth. So stop whining please. Us average people know from the news that they broke up with this certain Loki back in July. After that, she tried unsuccessfully with even more boys of him age because they all said that a boy can't be pregnant."

I craned my neck back, my cell phone nowhere, to look at this nonsense on the internet. Because we definitely didn't break up, I love him.

"Lando Norris, I brought some people."

"Leah, Penelope."

I took them trembling, then I realized that it was really over with Loki, I was left alone with two babies. I looked at them, they are really a mixture of Ollie and myself, they are so beautiful.

"My beauties, my God. It's a pity that the abbots aren't here either, we're breaking up with the foster abbots. Because of a grudge.”

With tears in my eyes, I started to kiss them, and I didn't want to let them go.

"But you have to, dear."

Mother sat down next to me and stroked my hair and I shook my head.

"If I've done it all the way up to now, I can do it all the way now. I am already an adult, a twenty-five year old adult. I won't give them away forever. They are my daughters and I can raise them, their room is waiting for them."

"I know, but you gave up Formula 1 because of them. You even moved from Monaco to avoid the news about you and them. Now what?"

She stroked them too, not just me.

"I will finish my medical degree and fulfill my dream."

"Lando, it's not your dream, it's your father's, it's only you who lived it, that's why you're going to the doctor's office now by mail. You don't belong there, you could become a very good actor, maybe a singer, you are talented in these. Remember the casting of the Avengers, when your friend Tom called you... How would you not like to try what you would really be like in his place, as Spider-Man. How clever you were, you wove webs, climbed walls and jumped everywhere and enjoyed it.”

Mother smiled at me, I just shook my head, I knew where my path was leading.

"My mother was with me for half a year, it was a big party, but I wouldn't try it again. I'm sorry, but it's not my way."

I looked at her and Leah as I woke up next to her sister, a minute here or there will not count, only that they grow up in love and that I find them another daddy. Who is not dismissive like everyone else towards me.

———————-

Real

"Mom, I'm going to be a doctor!!!! Leave me!!!!!"

I woke up sweaty and screaming again like the day before the race, Loki and Max comforted me. Then I dreamed that everything went wrong at home during the birth, then mother and father had a fight, then the Olivers, then Max and Pietra and all of them because the good boy suddenly became ugly.

"My treasure"

He knelt down in front of me and started stroking my face in circles.

"Dream and depression are a bit much for you, my dear. You dream up a lot of madness."

"I know, and the reason for all this is the fucking adoption papers. What Ollie throws out, saying that he is responsible for making mistakes, I want to take responsibility too... But it's not my management that won't let me, they gave me this fucking paper and I don't have much time to do it."

I opened my laptop and the first thing that came up was an email to review the ideal foster parents. In my anger, I wrote back that no, I can decide whether to raise two girls or not to leave them alone!!!!! Also, I'm twenty-four, a fully responsible adult, don't let them decide what I wear and where, who I date, where I live, who my friends are or whether I'm pregnant and whether I want to raise my child or not. I looked to my side, read the paper and took deep breaths.

"You know what, Loki gets caught."

I tore the sled apart, threw it up and started giggling.

"I'm a father!!!!"

I squealed with joy and kissed Loki on the lips, who, after taking off his top, began to tease us with his fingertips. He ran sexily into my hair and we started moaning more and more softly.

“Sex?"

"I don't know, but there's blood in your underwear."

"You're stupid, aren't you?"

I looked at him in horror and I was in pain again.

“Which? Strong?"

"How the hell do I know???? Ugh!!!!”

I stood up and crossed my palms in front of me and took deep breaths.

,.Amanda now!!!!”

"I'd rather not put my feet up somewhere."

"What's up my dear, we'll go and that's it, home practices won't help right now."

———————

Dream (Loki)

I've been a star on the internet since July, when he broke up with me. In almost every video or picture, either he or I is crying about the breakup.

"Billy, this sucks, I know it was short, but it's true love."

I told my brother that we may only be half-siblings, but we still tell each other everything.

"Loki, don't whine. You were the bastard for getting him engaged so soon. To you, because he was pregnant from her previous relationship, the guy."

"This is not about the fucking engagement!!!! And not because the guy was pregnant, but because the fucking media won't leave me alone!!!!"

"Do you still love him? Where did your relationship go wrong?”

"It must have been when he finally admitted that he was in love with Oscar. It could still be something he is holding on to from before his kidnapping, or I don't know."

Crying, I looked at Insta, where I saw that was all.

"Finally, the little ones were born, they're fit and healthy."

Burying my face in my palms, I got into my car and went to my usual place at the gas station, because it's in a nice place, I can park in the vicinity, and I can walk up the hill and I always sit on one of the benches when I want solitude.

"Be..."

"I'm not going, our relationship with Lando ended badly, we had a rough time on the open street. Millions of videos attest that it was.”

"Really..."

"Oliver, I say no. Lando doesn't want to see me, he even hates me."

I went through…

“Loki!!!! Not!!!! Ambulance!!!”

—————————

Real

"I was hit by a fucking car, fuck me!!!!!"

I just felt that Lando was prodding me and stroking my face to wake me up.

"My dear, if you could, you could even perform this screaming show on stage."

He told me both erotically and sarcastically, so that all the women in the clinic would giggle at this.

"The way you put it, it wasn't fucking funny, bitch!!!!"

"But, but Loki... You screamed, in public. Not me!!!! Where the hell are you going? My love."

"From now on, the pregnancy is your fucking business, cheater!"

"But fuck it!!!! I've said it a hundred times, I'm trying to get my lost memories back!!!!!! I am not a cheater and I would never be cheated!!!!!!”

“This is bullshit!!!!! The way you look at Oscar... You're in love with him!!!!!"

"It's not true, it's just business!!!!"

"Lando, Loki, please don't get lost here!"

"No, if you tell the truth... Oscar or me."

He took off him hat and threw it on the floor like a fucking diva.

"You, but Oscar saw them being kidnapped!!!! Are you happy now!!!!"

"Stupid whore!!!"

I slapped him, got up and left.

Or knocking on my door for thousands of years.

"Who the hell is that???"

"I'm at Lando, let me in!!!!"

I let him in. His face was teary, his lips were parted and he was shaking from everything.

“What happened? old warrior."

I let him in and he stopped at the wall and barely took a breath. He put his fingers to his mouth, on which the sleeve of his pullover was half pulled up, and it was chewed, as were the cords of his coat.

"I confessed everything to him, but we had a rough fight."

"Fuck me, Lando. But what the hell?”

"I don't know, he figured it out!!!! He said that I was looking at Oscar."

"Who, what, here we go?"

“Patoooooo!!!!! Max, help me!!!!!!"

He fell on our necks and sobbed soundlessly.

"What are you saying?"

"That I'm cheating on you."

"But, but that's not true of you, when we were together you wouldn't have done that for any money."

"I know, Pato. It's a fucking concoction he made up."

"What will happen?"

"Breakup."

He hissed between his teeth, he couldn't take it anymore and we saw him calling his mother.

"What are you saying?"

"That this is a real relationship and that we talk about it."

"Are you telling her the truth?"

"She knows in broad daylight that she was kidnapped from the open street, no, I don't give mom the truth."

"Oliver?"

"It's good that you joke about it, really not."

"Anyone married in the field?"

"Sergio? Good… Pick it up… Please!!!!”

We all saw that he cried more, he probably took Lando's side in the matter. We also knew what a jealous type Loki is, their relationship can no longer survive this.

"On the one hand, he's still here, so he comes here, on the other hand, he thinks he's a jealous dick, and he thinks I should throw him away as soon as possible. There will be another.”

He almost tore the ring from the new one with our help and threw it far away, with an angry face, but not only that, but also the bracelet he received not long ago, he threw it far away and screamed.

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fragmentofmemories · 12 days

Note

Since you reblogged that post about how it's ok to send you questions & statements 👀 I'll try asking a few!

a) do you draw traditionally ? if yes what's your favourite medium ?

b) do you have a favourite Touhou-related track/song ? or any recommendations ?

c) is there any voice actor you especially like ? (from any country)

d) is there a specific character or media you really like but don't make fancontent of (for whatever reason) ?

Feel free to only answer to the questions that interests you btw~

I feel like most of these answers are going to be boring because I'm somewhat neutral on these (lol), but I'll try anyway--

a) The answer is... Not really! I spent my earliest drawing years (2019-2020) using a sketchbook and whatever stationery I had. Nothing really professional or creative, just me practicing for the first time.

Which is to say I haven't drawn traditionally in a long while. As soon as I got my first and current tablet, I switched fully to Digital.

Although, that's part of the reason why I want to buy a new tablet with a screen (I don't really know what those are called).

It's not traditional, obviously, but I feel like it'd help me improve my drawing skills further. Also I need to switch my old tablet.

Don't ask me for any pre-2021 drawings btw. Besides being very low quality, I just don't feel like talking about them.

---

b) If you haven't listened to the Cafe de Touhou albums before, I'd definitely recommend those! There's 8 of them, each one themed after a different game, but they're all great.

As for official tracks, I can't say I have many favorites, but if I were to pick a few:

youtube

This might be a hot take of sorts, but music is probably the aspect that interests me the least about Touhou. By no means I'm saying it's bad, obviously. I'm just saying that, compared to the characters, gameplay, worldbuilding and everything else the series offers, the music never interested me as much.

---

c) VAs are something I haven't payed much attention to, unless it's someone very prominent in the field and you can immediately tell "Oh they hired X again for this character".

I'm guessing Johnny Yong Bosch comes to mind first when it comes to VAs, just because he tends to voice my favorites (lol). He's the current voice of Zero (Mega Man), and he also voiced P4 Hero (Persona 4), and Lelouch vi Britannia (Code Geass, also my favorite performance of his).

Meme answer, but I'd also like to add Carlos Villega for being the Latin American voice for Hisoka in 1999 Hunter X Hunter. I say it's a meme because, for some reason, he was given a French accent in that version and I can't think of him without it as a result.

1999 HxH's Latin American dub didn't age very well, but it's nostalgic to me nonetheless.

---

Since I'm pretty much in a Castlevania mood rn, I have to wonder why haven't I drawn Shanoa yet?

She's one of my favorite protagonists ever (if not my favorite), her character is tragic and incredibly well written, and her design is just plain elegant.

Yet, I never stopped to think "I should draw her next", for some unknown reason. Perhaps in my spare time, while I'm taking a break off ODG, maybe?

Besides her, there are other characters I really like yet never drew before, which is to say Leif and Shanna (Fire Emblem), Kasumi Todoh (Art of Fighting) and Rei Reiho (Devil Summoner)

Lastly there's my non EO/CoH DRPG parties (I.E currently Labyrinth of Zangetsu and Stranger of Sword City). Drawing six characters at once takes a long time...

#thanks for the ask!#ask post #''i'm not sure how i'd answer'' i say. as i make one of my longest posts yet.#(lol)

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downwiththeficness · 7 months

Text

Shadow and Veil-Chapter Forty One

Summary: Eva Moore’s life was a carefully constructed fiction. Every day, she did exactly what her mother in law, her husband, and his best friend expected of her. No mistakes. And, that was going pretty well for Eva right up until a huge complication literally tried to run her over. Now, she’s faced with trying to keep the pieces of her life from falling apart while attempting (and failing) to keep her feelings for her husband’s new business partner at bay.

A/N: This fic is a sister-fic to A Need So Great and A Need Unleashed. You do not need to have read ANSG or ANU to read this fic, but there are Easter eggs from those fics in Shadow and Veil for readers with keen eyes. This fic is explicit for canon-compliant blood, gore, violence, and sex. As such, it is intended for an adult audience, only. A/B/O dynamics come with their own warning. Anyone under the age of 18 should not interact with this work. I do not consent to reposting this work to other platforms. Reblog only to Tumblr.

Word Count: ~4,100

Start from the beginning Previous Chapter Next Chapter

Masterlist Read on AO3

They were ostentatious about it.

For days, Horacio and Eva went out into the city and made themselves known.

Or, more accurately, Diego made himself known.

Eva was surprised at how fast Horacio slipped back into the persona. It washed over him as soon as he pulled on the ridiculous baby blue coat from his suitcase. There was flint in his eyes and his jaw was permanently clenched. His walk was slower, meandering. He stopped acknowledging her presence when they were in public.

For her part, Eva fell into old habits. She kept her eyes down and spoke only when she had to. Whenever Diego reached for her, she made herself flinch. To anyone who was looking, Eva barely existed. She was a shadow in the heavy light of Diego Jimenez.

And, that was fine.

She got to sit off to the side while Diego had ‘meetings’ with various strangers, eating and drinking whatever she thought looked good on the menu. Some of the people she was now surrounded by gave her questioning looks, but very few mentioned it. Those that did were met with a glare so furious that she felt bad for them.

While she enjoyed the scene being played out in real time, Eva listened to the conversation. She never thought of herself as a particularly devious criminal. Nor did she ever think that she was doing anything that couldn’t be replicated by the average person. But—God—were some of the people running drugs in and out of the area doing it the hard way.

Too many bribes.

Too many risks.

Too many variables that could lead to a complete and total clusterfuck.

It wasn’t her problem, though.

Eva was just an actor in an elaborate farce. She might be playing her part, but she never forgot her primary goal. What Horacio did to make himself look legitimate was irrelevant as long as she got what she wanted. What the other players wanted in the game was even less of her concern. Even if they were idiots.

She was swirling a fruit filled cocktail that vaguely reminded her of refajo, waiting on an order of Gordita de Harina when the conversation she wasn’t supposed to even remotely understand became touched with fire.

The men Javier was working with were, understandably, putting their lives on the line to let Javier and Horacio attempt to take out their competition. And, given that risk, they wanted more than the agreed upon payment. They weren’t even being subtle about it—telling Horacio and Javier outright that they would pay up or be exposed.

She sipped at her drink while she watched Horacio take that information in and start to make a series of decisions. He could pay them more—the States was fronting the bill on the endeavor—but, Eva knew Horacio well enough to predict that he wouldn’t give in so easily. What she wasn’t very sure of was how Diego was going to execute the plan Horacio settled on.

Back when she had no idea Horacio existed, Diego seemed like the kind of criminal that was both brutal and shrewd. When he made a move, it was quick, effortless, and cutting. No indecision. Just action.

A dangerous combination.

Horacio looked down his nose at them, letting the silence hang above the table. In the meantime, Eva’s food arrived and she happily munched on the crunchy cookies while the others at the table engaged in a tense stare down. It didn’t last more than thirty seconds, or so, but it certainly felt longer.

Horacio sniffed, “This is not a conversation to have in public.”

The two men they were dealing with nodded, saying that they had somewhere to talk privately. Eva felt the hair on her arms rise in warning. They were being way too casual about having to go to a secondary location to get what they wanted.

Horacio seemed to be one step ahead of her, “No. We have a place. My partner will give you an address.”

She smiled into her drink while they moved back and forth through the argument. At first, it seemed like neither side would give in and that they would end at an impasse. But, eventually, Javier mentioned a secondary payout—something to sweeten the deal—and the argument ended.

The group stood to leave. Eva mourned the rest of her meal, but threw back the cocktail in one long gulp to tide her over for the next hour or two. In the parking lot, she looked for a familiar face while keeping her head low and her shoulders hunched.

Josh hadn’t yet made an appearance, but he had to know they were in town by now. Diego was making all kinds of noise and Josh would have to be both blind and deaf if he failed to notice. Especially if he was as keen on getting back at Diego as he seemed.

She wondered how he would do it. How would Josh approach the person he probably considered his worst enemy, the person who had brought down everything he’d worked to build. If she knew him (and she did know him) Josh’s approach would definitely be dramatic. There might even be a speech.

From the backseat of the car, Eva asked, “Where are we going?”

Javier answered, “Safe house. Kind of.”

“Kind of?” When the two of them were silent too long, she prompted, “I asked a question.”

Horacio sighed and glanced at her in rear view mirror, “Its more of an interrogation room.”

She blinked rapidly, “You plan on interrogating them?”

“No.”

Javier’s voice was low, and there was something in it that hinted at danger. Eva stared at the back of his head, feeling all of her questions fall away. They rode in silence for the next half hour.

The ‘interrogation room’ was actually a house far out of the city. Eva stared at it, thinking that it really wasn’t much of a house. It was more like factory that hadn’t seen use in at least a decade. The brick facade was crumbling and there was a long, wide trench that must have carried water at one time or another. A few of the windows were broken and there were birds nesting in the divots of the roof.

Walking in, Eva was immediately hit with a wave of dust. The compact dirt floor was cracked and each step brought up more plumes of dirt. Out of date machinery and furniture was piled in the far corner, leaving most of the space empty and bare.

“Well, this is a shit house,” Eva muttered around a cough.

Javier laughed, his hand coming up to cover his face.

“What?”

“It was actually used to make fertilizer,” he said, still laughing.

Eva looked around, “Yeah. I could see it.”

Horacio put his hands on his hips, “Our boys are not far behind. We need to set up.”

Javier, knowing what Horacio wanted, began to look through the various parts and furniture. He seemed to be looking for something in particular, tossing broken pieces carelessly to the side.

Eva stood next to Horacio, “What are you setting up for?”

He cut her a sidelong glance, “We have to make an example of them before they decide to double cross us.”

She made a soft sound of question.

His mouth thinned, “If they inform the cartel that we’re masquerading as one of them, we’ll have bigger problems than just your ex-husband.”

“Wouldn’t the government step in?” she asked, “We’re here because they asked us to be.”

Javier set down a pair of chairs and tugged a table from the wall. He was obvious about refusing to look in Eva’s direction. Something wasn’t right, but she couldn’t put her finger on it. There was tension between the two of them that was unfamiliar and suspicious. With narrowed eyes, she looked to Horacio for an answer.

Horacio ran his hand over his hair, “It will only go so far. We might get an hour’s head start. Enough to get out of the country—or, most of the way.”

She suppressed the memory of fleeing to Texas, of crossing the border with one eye looking over her shoulder. Eva pointed at the open door, “Those men want money or our lives? Is that what you’re telling me?”

He nodded.

Her head dropped back and she looked towards the ceiling, “I should have gotten a drink to go.”

Horacio chuckled and reached into his jacket pocket. From it, he produced a flask, which he handed over to her.

Eva took it and lifted onto her toes to press a short kiss to his mouth, “You’re an angel.”

He hid a shy smile, then cleared his throat, “You should wait in the car.”

She spun open the top of the flask, “That’s not going to happen. But, I’ll go sit over there. Nice and quiet. Won’t say a word.”

Horacio looked unhappy, but gave an eventual nod.

Eva sauntered over to the furniture pile and found a chair that didn’t look like it would break under her weight. She dragged it to the far end of the room, letting the wood scrape against the floor the whole way. Sitting daintily, she twisted open the flask and sipped Horacio’s preferred tequila while she waited for the action to begin.

A car rumbled up the road and pulled noisily to a stop near the large, open door. Voices chatted amiably outside for a moment before the two men wandered in. Horacio greeted them, all smiles and smooth words. Javier was a little more terse, but Eva couldn’t see an ounce of trepidation in their guests.

At least, she couldn’t see it until Horacio pulled the gun from the back of his waistband and shot one of them in the head.

Eva’s whole body jerked. Her ears rang with the single burst of gunfire. She gripped the flask tight while her knees drew up towards her chest. Her heart hammered painfully against her ribs. It was difficult for her to draw breath. She wanted to look away, but couldn’t.

Covered and blood and brain matter, the surviving man went for the gun holstered against his hip only to have Javier hit him hard with a two by four. Eva cringed at the sound of it, knowing that he had to be seeing stars.

Kneeling on the dirt floor, blood pouring from a wound on his temple, he spit blood and curses at Horacio. He was trying to be brave, was even looking Horacio in the eye. But, Eva could see the slow panic spreading across his face. It settled into the creases of his eyes and the tension in his jaw, ruining his every effort.

Horacio loomed over him, speaking in low, smooth, Spanish, “I’m sorry for your friend, Mateo.”

He was not sorry.

Mateo spit more blood.

She was struck with a visceral memory of Horacio standing in a dark basement, staring down at a man with much the same expression on his face. In hindsight, she knew that Horacio saved four people from being tortured to death that night. This, though, this was very, very different.

Eva drank deeply from the flask.

Javier hauled Mateo into the chair and took two steps away. He pulled out a gun of his and held it at the ready with the barrel pointed towards the floor. Horacio watched Javier until he gave a nod, then shoved his weapon back into the waistband of his pants.

“I’m not a man who takes threats lightly, Mateo,” he said, genially. “But, I understand that you don’t know that about me. I will let this go one time.”

The flask, halfway to Eva’s mouth, paused. A slow, hot wave of emotion rolled over her. It was both strange and familiar. A taunt from her subconscious.

Horacio was hunched over, finger in Mateo’s face. The afternoon sun cut across his eyes, illuminating the brown so that it gleamed. Sweat gathered at his temples. The muscle in his jaw worked as he explained what was going to happen next.

“You know who I represent,” he said, “and you know what I can do to you and anyone you care about.” Horacio paused a moment, “I’ll make you disappear. I’ll make it as if your entire life never existed.”

That was...one hell of a threat. Eva felt a little bad for the guy. He probably had no idea what kind of man he was dealing with, what kind of man he’d tried to extort.

Mateo, bless his heart, replied, “You don’t scare me.”

Horacio straightened. His shoulders blotted out the sun’s rays, casting Mateo in mostly shadow, “Maybe I don’t. But, what about your boss? What will he do if he finds out you’ve defected?”

Mateo’s denial was cut off with a sharp slap across the face. Horacio leaned down again, “We’ll keep you safe for a while. Hide you away. A few weeks. A month. But, what will he do when we give you back to him?”

Eva shivered.

Tipping the flask back, Eva drained it and replaced the cap. Feeling warm for a number of reasons, she crossed her arms and tried to pay attention to what Horacio was saying instead of how much she wanted to kiss away the snarl on his lips.

“You’re going to take the money we agreed on,” Horacio sneered, “You’re going to to job you agreed to. And, when we’re done, you’ll never see us—or your competition—again. ¿Claro?”

It took Javier pulling back the hammer on his pistol for Mateo to nod. Even then, Eva wasn’t convinced. She didn’t like the way this went down. Didn’t like that there wasn’t any assurance that Mateo was going to cooperate. He might be pissed off enough to run back to his boss and make up a story to cover his ass. Or, worse, tell the truth.

The unknown made her antsy.

Her head jerked up at the sound of another car driving closer at high speed.

On alert, Eva got up and ran over to the door, shading her eyes with her hand so that she could peer up the road. She couldn’t see the car, but the plume of dust behind it was enough for her to turn back to Horacio and yell that Mateo had ordered back up.

Horacio, gun already in hand, aimed and fired. Mateo swung hard to the side, dead before he hit the ground.

Javier gave a frustrated yell, “We needed him, Carrillo!”

“We’ll find another,” Horacio called over his shoulder. He grabbed Eva by the arm and dragged her to the car. The keys were pressed into her hand, “Get back to the apartment. Drive fast. Don’t stop.”

“I’m staying here with you,” she spit, despite the rising fear.

Horacio’s hand was gripping her jaw tight in a flash, “You will listen to me! Go. Now.”

It was the voice of an alpha giving a clear and indisputable order. Eva couldn’t have disobeyed, if she wanted to. She got into the driver’s seat while Horacio yanked a case she knew contained several guns and extra ammunition from the back seat.

He made his way to the front of the car and leaned into the open window to kiss her. They shared a short, meaningful look before he pointed to the road and walked away.

Eva started the car and gunned it away from the factory. She drove without care for the law or the other car roaring towards her. The only sound she could hear was the wind blowing past and the tone of Horacio’s voice as he ordered her to go.

Her hands squeezed the steering wheel until they ached. They didn’t loosen until she got back to the city. Even then, Eva kept watching the cars around her to make sure she wasn’t being followed.

After parking in the lot, she got out and hurried to the door. With it closed behind her, Eva took what felt like the first breath of air since Horacio handed her the keys. It burned in her lungs, made her suck in several more.

Eva turned the deadbolt and rushed to the bathroom so that she could throw up a few shots of tequila and her meager breakfast. On the floor, she rested her head against the cool tile and tried to calm down.

Horacio and Javier were well trained. They had weapons and they knew how to handle themselves. She knew this. But, all the knowing didn’t put her mind to rest. The slow creep of panic kept coming in spite of it all.

Fuck.

She hadn’t even looked at the other car as it whizzed past her—didn’t know how many of them there were. A flurry of thoughts went round in her head, most of them beginning with the words, ‘what if’. Not a one of them made Eva feel any better.

Stop making a scene, Birdie.

Eventually, with effort, she was able to get herself up and off the floor. She washed her face in the sink and patted it dry. Then, out of an abundance of caution, Eva pulled the gun from her toiletry bag and loaded it.

She went around the apartment and closed all of the curtains, carrying the weapon with her every step of the way. Nervous energy made her pace for a solid ten minutes before her feet began to protest. With nothing to do but wait, Eva sat on the couch and watched the door.

The sun sank low and the already dim apartment grew even dimmer. Eva didn’t want to chance turning on a light. She would sit in the dark all night, if she had to. Anything to make herself feel safe.

A quick, firm knock made her jump, made her lift the gun and aim. Eva blinked rapidly to focus her vision while she held her breath. She stared at the blank door, as if she could see through it to the other side.

“Eva, its me.”

Oh, thank God.

Eva rushed to the door and unlocked it. Horacio moved past her, hustling towards the bathroom without saying a word. Confused, she locked the door again and followed him, setting the gun down on the island on the way.

“What happened?”

He turned the corner to the bedroom, “We handled it.”

She scoffed, “Obviously. But, what happened?”

Eva walked into the bathroom and stopped cold. Horacio was covered in blood stains. On his suit, on his shirt, in his hair. There was a bruise blooming above his eye. He looked like he’d been through hell—and, she guessed he had been.

“Are you hurt?” she rasped, unable to keep the tremble from her voice.

He looked up from where he was unbuttoning his shirt, “No.”

She pointed at the stains, “So, that blood isn’t yours?”

Horacio’s hands paused, “No.”

Eva watched his face carefully. It gave nothing away. Not a single hint as to what he might be thinking. The man she knew was all locked up behind an impenetrable wall.

“I don’t like when you keep me in the dark,” she said lowly.

He sighed, and she could see the faintest crack in his composure. Then, because she needed something to do with her hands, she stepped forward and pushed the jacket from his shoulders. It fell to the floor with a dull thud that echoed off the tile. The tremor in her fingers returned as she helped him out of his clothes. Every layer revealed more scratches, more bruises. More blood.

“I thought you said you weren’t hurt.”

Eva looked up at him with accusation in her tone. Horacio’s mouth thinned and he tossed his head gently to the side. She narrowed her eyes at him, earning a low grunt. Holding his gaze, Eva stared hard while she waited for more.

Naked, he leaned over and started the shower, “Its superficial.”

Eva hummed in a disbelieving tone, but didn’t comment further. She watched him climb into the shower and tilt his head back so that the spray of water washed down his face and neck. In profile and obscured by the glass of the shower door, she could almost fool herself into thinking this was just another night. Just another moment of casual intimacy between them.

The bottom of the tub went pink.

Blowing out a breath, Eva gathered up his clothes and held them at arm’s length so that she could throw them in the trash. She couldn’t say that she was sad to see that jacket go, but wished she had just tossed it while he wasn’t looking and not because of the blood spatter.

Eva dusted off her hands and went back to the bathroom. She hopped up onto the bathroom counter to wait for Horacio to finish showering. He was focused on scrubbing his fingernails against his palm. Eva got comfortable, willing to let him take all the time he needed.

She wanted a story and she was going to get it.

He was surprisingly quick about it, cutting off the water in just a few minutes. From the steam, he emerged and wrapped a towel around his waist. She allowed herself to admire the view while he ran a towel over his hair and face. Under different circumstances, she might be inclined to coax him over to her, to tug the towel from his hands and pull him into the space between her legs.

“What happened?” Eva asked lowly while she resisted a dreamy sigh.

Horacio sighed and set the towel down on the counter, “Its not very complicated.”

“Then, it should be easy to tell me.”

A tiny smirk appeared and disappeared in the space of a heartbeat, “Four men in the car. Javier climbed to the rafters to pick off a few as they got out. From there, it was easy to defend our position.”

Eva nodded, “How did you get home?”

He shrugged, “We took their car. Windshield was broken, but it ran.”

She almost laughed at the thought of Horacio and Javier stealing the car of their would-be assassins, “Is that...it?”

Horacio leaned a hip on the counter and crossed his arms, “We kept one alive for a while. It was mostly his blood…” he gestured towards the shower.

Eva swallowed down the image of Horacio killing another man, “Did he tell you who sent them?”

A hum of confirmation.

“And?”

His mouth spread into an unkind smile, “It wasn’t Mateo.”

She drew back, “Who?”

The smile widened a fraction, “Josh.”

“You’re shitting me.”

“No,” he replied with a chuckle, “We got his attention.”

Eva didn’t want to hope too much that they were finally getting where they needed to go with Josh. But, her chest fluttered with anticipation, “You think he’ll come for us soon?”

“I do.”

She glanced to the side in thought, “We should lay a trap.”

There was amusement in his voice when he replied, “I assume you have an idea.”

Eva met his gaze, “Why would you think that?”

Horacio rolled his eyes and reached out to put a hand on her thigh, “Eva, you’ve been plotting the entire time we’ve been in Mexico. Now, out with it.”

Abashed at having been caught, she leaned into him a bit and said, “I’m disappointed that he sent four men to kill you.”

A blink, “You think he should have sent more?”

“I think he should have come for you, himself,” Eva replied.

Horacio’s brows rose, “You said he was a coward.”

“He is. I just thought he’d get pissed off enough to overcome it.”

The hand on her thigh squeezed gently, “You can’t be right all the time, Eva.”

Huffing, Eva slid from the counter and walked around Horacio to the bedroom, “Maybe we have to up the ante a bit.”

Horacio followed her, “How?”

Eva thought about it while she pulled off the dusty clothes she’d been wearing all day, “I don’t know.”

A sense of defeat sat ill in her belly. Eva thought she knew Josh so well, so deeply that her plan would work. Maybe he’d changed since she left Louisiana. She certainly had.

Horacio sidled up behind her and pulled her into his chest. Eva let her weight fall into him, resting her hands on the forearms that circled her waist. His skin was warm against hers. His chin dropped to her shoulder, “You were right about one thing.”

She turned her head, laying her cheek against his, “What’s that?”

“I have something he thinks is his,” Horacio rumbled. His hand pressed against her stomach, “But, I don’t think he knows how much I have her.”

A smile flitted across Eva’s mouth.

He kissed her shoulder, her neck, lips hovering over the gland beneath her ear, “I think we should show him.”

#Shadow and Veil #Narcos #Horacio carrillo #carrillo #maurice compte #au #a/b/o dynamics

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taggedmemes · 1 year

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SENTENCE MEME ⟶ SAINTS BLOOD by SEBASTIEN DE CASTELL / ch18 - ch27 always feel free to tweak the sentence to fit your muse.

'a fellow tried to use that line on me yesterday.'

'this is why i prefer to spend my time dealing with people who want to kill me.'

'is that all you think i'm good for? information?'

'is there no one in this country with anything better to do than concern themselves with my love life?'

'i can tell when you're remembering her.'

'she's not a ghost. she isn't haunting you. this isn't some curse you're under.'

'there's a rage inside you.'

'be calm? what the fuck is there to be calm about?'

'even i can feel something's very wrong here.'

'i was woken in the middle of the night by a rather strident visitor.'

'she has the right to whatever comfort is available to her now.'

'perhaps she saw me at the tavern last night and is now so lovestruck that she's left her husband and family behind, just to come and declare her love for me.'

'your story has a hole in it bigger than the one i'm going to put in you if i don't get a truthful answer.'

'don't tell me how to fight.'

'you know, i really am more comfortable when we're outnumbered.'

'if he were here, he'd probably tell you that you don't have long to live.'

'we fear neither pain nor death.'

'we don't know how many might be waiting for us.'

'war is an even greedier god than death.'

'do those gods of yours /really/ love you?'

'that was unnecessarily cruel.'

'that isn't cruelty. come with me. i'll show you what cruelty looks like.'

'he never mentioned anything about his family.'

'there was some sort of ritual to all of this.'

'you aren't fine. you're shaking...'

'he hides it, he holds it in.'

'i don't know if you're genuinely stupid, or just tired of life.'

'you don't get to talk to me like that any more.'

'it's possible that you've been beaten, poisoned and tortured one too many times to ever hope to stay sane.'

'well, you're not dead, so that's something.'

'you're drifting off again.'

'i don't know who you are, but i know why you've come.'

'i'm going to choose to ignore that command.'

'don't stare at me like that. i know i look stupid with blood on my face.'

'well you smell like the backside of a horse.'

'you're getting maudlin in your old age.'

'go with them. kill anyone who tries to touch them. /anyone/.'

'it's what i do best. now you need to do what you do best.'

'we need him alive so we can interrogate him.'

'he'd get annoyed and threaten to have my tongue cut out for him to wear as a necklace.'

'that's a nice story, but you're lying.'

'true, but i'm in a lot of pain, so it's possible that i forgot.'

'i'm sorry if my aim was off, but kindly go fuck yourself.'

'there are seven hells for those who would kill children and i will make sure that you find yourself in the worst of them.'

'do they /like/ it when people try to have them killed?'

'you need to get yourself under control before i let you go into that room.'

'look at your hands: they're still shaking. and don't pretend it's just nerves.'

'you're scared and you're frustrated and you're so full of rage you can't even feel it any more.'

'you always look like you want to kill someone to me so it's hard to see the difference.'

'it turns out we're both terrible actors, so we have that in common.'

'stop taking the blame for /everything/.'

'i'm not some little girl in pigtails.'

'what's happened to the world when you can't even count on rapacious murderers any more?'

'you're fast and you're clever -- but you'd make a lousy politician.'

'you're not going to die.'

'she's alive. trust in that and stop imagining her death.'

#the greatcoats #saints blood #rp meme #rp sentences #sentence meme #sentence starters #roleplay meme #starter sentences #rp sentence prompts #rp sentence starters #rp sentence meme

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navree · 2 years

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@selkiesstories got me thinking about it, so time for yet another round of “y’all tell me you want me to talk about something and i perform a thesis dissertation”, the viserys targaryen is the worst edition.

so, positives i’ll say for viserys is that paddy considine is incredibly in the role. he’s a good actor and he worked really hard to imbue viserys with a lot of layers that, even while hating him, made me feel emotions for him anyway. there are times during paddy’s role where i could see the glimmers of viserys not necessarily being a bad person, just an incredibly stupid one who doesn’t think about how his choices impact others, and had potential to be something better, a better man and better father and better husband and better king (if he had kept his interactions with alicent strictly platonic, i could see the seeds for him filling a kind and nurturing paternal role in her life, to offset the fact that while otto loves his daughter, he will prioritize his ambitions to alicent’s detriment. alack alack, viserys had to go and crush on a fifteen year old). but also he sucks, and i wanna enumerate why in A List to excise all of my rage:

viserys is a bad husband

aemma - i know paddy and everyone else and their mother have been on about how aemma was the great love of viserys’s life, and most likely he did love her, but viserys was awful to aemma. aemma’s function in viserys’s life was entirely to be a brood mare. even before she was named queen during the great council and thus had more of an imperative to try for a male heir, she’s pregnant, and not with rhaenyra, as the show has rhaenyra start off at fourteen and the great council takes place ten years before the start of main events. aemma has to endure a constant life in a hazardous condition, given that being pregnant is no picnic generally, and especially not in pseudo-medieval times, for viserys’s sake. and it doesn’t appear that viserys has stopped to think about how that might affect her, not just physically but also psychologically as ALL of these pregnancies, excepting rhaenyra, have ended badly either through miscarriage or stillbirth or infant death. viserys has to be told, point blank, in the simplest language, that aemma does not want to be pregnant again. it’s nearly twenty years of marriage before aemma is able to just firmly tell him that enough is enough, and it’s apparently been nearly twenty years of marriage before viserys even stops and thinks that maybe reducing his wife to a walking uterus is in fact a bad thing.

and then he kills her. like, that’s the pièce de résistance of viserys’s treatment of aemma, he literally murders her. and the worst part, genuinely the worst part of it, is that he doesn’t let her have any say. he doesn’t even try to talk about it with her, this woman he apparently loves so very much, he does not explain what is happening or offer her the option of choosing, or explaining, or doing anything. he unilaterally makes that decision, and then does nothing to prepare her or help her or even try to comfort her. he lets her die not only in pain but in utter fear, and begging for her life, while people are actively holding her down, on his orders, while she struggles. it genuinely doesn’t matter to me how much viserys loved aemma, or was devoted to her in their marriage, or missed her once she was gone, he was a bad husband to her in her life and was directly responsible for not just her death, but the horrible state in which she died.

alicent - god let me count the fucking ways. so first things first, i’m going to be really brave and strong and not dwell too much on viserys looking at someone his daughter’s age, a young teenager, and immediately deciding that this is someone it would be appropriate to pursue sexually, we all know it’s disgusting and vile and even if he was the best man on the planet in all other aspects i would still hate him for that alone. but viserys is also a bad husband to alicent, even more so than he was with aemma, as he appears to have no particular care for her as a person, for her own wants and desires and interests or anything about her other than as a fleshlight and a babymaking machine. he also doesn’t appear to have learned anything from aemma, as he has no problem impregnating alicent constantly in the early years of their marriage. the age gap for all of his children with alicent appear to be two years between aegon and helaena and two years between helaena and aemond (in the books there’s a four year gap then between aemond and daeron, but seeing as the writers definitely forgot about daeron until it was pointed out to them via twitter who knows what that will be in the show). considering that a pregnancy takes nearly a year to come to term, and that the human body does need a recovery period and can’t get pregnant immediately, it’s easy enough to infer that viserys was just constantly having alicent pregnant as soon and as frequently as possible from ages fifteen to twenty, and only stopped due to increasing infirmity, and likely the fact that they had four healthy children, three of them sons.

viserys also shows an astounding lack of care for alicent’s physical wellbeing at all. he drags her to and fro around the kingswood while heavily pregnant, to the point where rhaenyra’s the one noticing that alicent’s uncomfortable while he doesn’t give a shit. not only that, he also summons her for sex in the dead of night at a whim to the point of demanding that she be woken up. alicent’s nineteen years old, she’s just had a baby she’s shown to be active in raising, most people would look at that and think “damn, let’s let her have a break, get some rest and a full eight hours of sleep”, but no, viserys needs to exercise his marital rape license so he has her woken up and brought to him and then doesn’t even give her the benefit of disassociation by trying to check and see that she’s engaged during the assault (i hate him i hate him i hate him i hate him). he also doesn’t compensate for this by caring about her emotional wellbeing. he is repeatedly and publicly dismissive of her and humiliates her in front of other people without a care to how it makes her feel, not just in front of family but in front of the entire court as well. he doesn’t give a shit about times she’s in distress, like on driftmark, or attempt to engage with her about her own feelings or take anything she says into account at all even in their private discussions. alicent is barely a person to him, let alone a wife, she’s a vehicle for him to satisfy his sexual urges, a functioning womb (honestly big “napoléon saying ‘it is a womb i am marrying’ when he married his second wife after divorcing his first solely for her apparent infertility vibes, and guess what i hate napoléon too) that gives him the sons he killed aemma for, and then a nursemaid for the bulk of the marriage.

viserys is a bad father

rhaenyra - so first of all, let’s be clear that the gap in viserys’s relationship with rhaenyra vs. his other kids is such pitch perfect “golden child and the scapegoat” that it should be required viewing for half of parents who don’t understand why their children don’t get along. but even with viserys’s clear favoritism and the detriment it causes to his other kids, that doesn’t mean that he hasn’t failed rhaenyra miserably. because he has. for the first fourteen years of her life, viserys appears to have somewhat ignored rhaenyra. she’s his cupbearer, yes, but by all counts they aren’t necessarily the closest behind perfunctory love from a parent to their only child and a daughter to her father, and he was just constantly not caring about her throughout her childhood. rhaenyra seems infinitely closer to her mother, and vice versa. this isn’t something that goes away even when rhaenyra is named heir, as they still seem to have a very stilted and cold relationship with each other, and it isn’t one that gets better, he doesn’t even try to connect with her after his marriage to alicent until she forces his hand through acting out. viserys never tries to foster any sort of personal relationship with his child, the child he’s supposed to love the most, even with the fact that he prefers her over all of his other kids, and even then his personal favoritism is highly likely a manifestation of his guilt over having killed her mother. and in spite of all his love and favoritism and guilt, he doesn’t have any qualms in completely decimating her friendship with the only close companion she appears to have, not to mention doesn’t even care enough to give her the decency or consideration of any prior warning of what he was doing to prepare her for dropping that nuclear bomb on his relationship with her and her relatinoship with alicent, and certainly never attempts to try and repair the damage he’s caused and the pain he’s inflicted on his daughter, or even apologized for the position that put her in.

viserys has also done an abysmal job in helping rhaenyra at all politically. we see this in episode 2, when he doesn’t want her actually participating in small council meetings, he doesn’t want her engaged in political happenings at all or doing anything an heir would be doing. this only gets worse once he has sons. viserys knows that the legal assumption in westeros is male primogeniture, it’s why he was willing to kill aemma just to have a son even though he already had a daughter in her teens. so viserys knows that, after having aegon, that the entire country is going to assume that aegon is now heir, and he knew that this would only be reinforced one aemond and daeron were born in turn. but viserys doesn’t do anything. he does not publicly state that rhaenyra isn’t going to be supplanted, in spite of what he said to her privately, he does not issue any sort of edict or official code or add and addendum to the targaryen doctrine of exceptionalism that says they’re also allowed to follow absolute primogeniture rather than male dominated primogeniture. he does nothing to publicly support her position at all beyond the original oathtaking, and that is the only thing he does for her in the TWENTY YEARS between proclaiming her as his heir and his death (no, his condition in episode 8 is not an excuse, given that it was apparently a recent enough of a final decline that vaemond needs to inform rhaenys of it as if it’s not entirely common knowledge, and even if we assume that he dropped straight into imhotep mode the second they returned from driftmark after episode 7, that’s still fourteen years of him being healthy enough and coherent enough and mentally agile enough to do his job and as such try to do anything to shore up rhaenyra’s succession and help her out).

viserys also doesn’t seem to care about rhaenyra participating in the political process, which is a huge misstep on his part. he should be wanting her regularly at small council meetings, he should be wanting her to get some experience as a ruler, as a poltician, as a strategist, hell even as a battle commander, given that she’s a dragonrider and has been since the age of fucking seven. but viserys does nothing to try and help her or prepare her or give her any kind of guidance on what it’s like to be a ruler, to make decisions for other people, to really have any kind of experience in something approaching queenship to prepare for what’s to come. viserys basically ignores rhaenyra not just as a daughter, but as a political heir, except for occasionally telling people to ignore their lying eyes on whether or not a platinum blonde white woman and a platinum blonde black man can have two brunette children with skin so white it might as well be translucent. and given that rhaenyra’s inability to actually govern well is a direct cause to her downfall and eventual gruesome death, viserys is basically 0 for 2 in “not being responsible for the horrible ways his loved ones have died”. not to mention that the entire issue of the animosity between rhaenyra and his other children is due to the fallout of his own favoritism, maybe they’d hate her and her kids less if viserys wasn’t constantly holding up his precious golden child and her kids at the physical and emotional expense of his four other fucking children, god he sucks. good going with your favorite kid viserys, now let’s look at the ones you don’t even give a shit about.

aegon - i don’t even know if i have the words to describe all the ways that viserys has screwed aegon up. imagine, for a minute, you’re aegon. your relationship with your mother is already gonna have issues, by sheer virtue of the fact that your mother had you at the ripe ole age of sixteen due to unwanted sexual advances by a man old enough to be her father, who is in fact your father. you probably spend a lot of your formative years hearing about how much your father has been wanting a son all his life, to the point where the wife he had before your mother died in the process, but now he’s got a son, and that’s you. but he doesn’t pay any attention to you. he doesn’t nurture you or love you or care about you or even seem to like you that much. is kid aegon going to have the emotional intelligence to think about whether or not there’s something deficient in viserys’s character and to not see his father’s lack of love as a failing on his part? no, he’s a kid. what aegon likely did was blame himself, was think that there was something so lacking in him, so horrible, that his father who is renowned for wanting a son, decided that he was such a bad option that he’d rather have a daughter after all, and would favor rhaenyra over aegon and all the rest of his siblings for the remainder of his life. aegon likely feels responsible not just for his father not caring about him, but for his father not caring about helaena and aemond and daeron in turn, because he somehow messed up. viserys’s abandonment and negligence of aegon is a huge part in why aegon turned to various different vices to try and cope; he has a complicated relationship with his own mother (discussed at length here) and his own father doesn’t give a shit about him.

and when viserys does deign to remember that he has a kid, it’s never positive attention. we see viserys actually interact with aegon twice, and neither of them are good. in the first interaction, he’s scolding aegon, so already we’ve got an idea that when viserys notices aegon, it’s mostly just to point out his flaws or ways he’s failing, which does a number on anyone, let alone a kid. and the second is at driftmark. viserys at driftmark is a post unto itself because of how abysmally he behaves throughout the entire episode and how he’s the worst man in all westerosi history in that scene, but imma focus on aegon. aegon gets blamed for telling aemond that rhaenyra’s bastards are bastards (understandable of aemond, he wants to protect his mother from his piece of shit father, god bless you my boy), and viserys’s reaction is to get up in his face and scream at him and pull rank, talk to him not as a father to a thirteen year old, but as a king, the supreme law of the land who has the power of life and death over everyone, including his son. it’s the middle of the night, aegon’s not entirely sober, his father’s angry and potentially volatile, and he’s got to make a decision. does he say aemond’s lying and put the onus of the situation back on his ten year old little brother who has been grievously injured and permanently disabled? does he do what aemond couldn’t and blame his mother and potentially shove her at the king’s mercy, knowing it could end badly for her? viserys hasn’t created an environment where aegon can tell him any sort of truth and not have it end badly for people he loves, and he chooses instead to lie, because viserys doesn’t care about the truth, doens’t care about him, and doesn’t care about aemond or alicent. when viserys isn’t completely ignoring him and giving him twenty different complexes, he’s apparently terrorizing him, and forcing his own son to view him not as a parent, but as the head of state, and only the head of state, and to react accordingly.

helaena - we don’t know as much about helaena and viserys’s relationship, because they haven’t done much to develop helaena as a character, which is annoying, but we still know that viserys is a failfather even with her. for one, he never interacts with her. not as an adult, and not even as a baby, which is put into stark contrast with alicent actively taking a role in nurturing and raising helaena as a baby even though she’s only eighteen or nineteen when helaena is born. but one thing i think is another point int the long list of points against viserys and how messed up his negligence of his kids is, helaena is a dragondreamer. you know, the thing viserys is? if viserys spent any time trying to bond with his daughter, or get close to her, or even just learn anything about her, he likely would have figured it out. can you imagine how nice that would have been for helaena, how much that could have helped her, to have someone who can understand what these random dreams and visions she has sometimes are? we don’t know how helaena feels about her prophetic abilitites, because again, lack of characterization, but we know that a lot of what she sees is violent imagery that she struggles to express properly, like foreseeing aemond’s attack and disfigurement, or getting frustrated trying to tell her mother about the imminent threat of rhaenys at aegon’s coronation. having a present father who would be able to tell that she’s talking about likely would have gone a long way with her, but viserys doesn’t give a shit about his children so he doesn’t even know that his own child shares this ability with him.

aemond - listen, i am not the first, and i will likely not be the last, to point out that viserys’s treatment of aemond is horrendous. i am not reinventing the wheel by pointing that out, but i am going to talk about it, because it’s truly one of the worst things viserys has ever done. like all of his siblings, aemond suffers from viserys’s neglect and lack of love, he suffers along with aegon and helaena, watching viserys heap praise and devotion on rhaenyra while ignoring them and repeatedly demeaning their mother and he has issues that arise when you’ve got a parent in your life that isn’t present and doesn’t care about you, it’s left him with a constant desire to prove himself and an inability to express his emotions except in times of extreme emotions. but unlike his siblings, aemond doesn’t just have to deal with viserys’s neglect, he also has to deal with the ironclad, irrefutable knowledge that his own father doesn’t care whether he lives or dies. because when aemond is attacked on driftmark, he could have died. and not just in the immediate aftermath of losing your eye, but afterwards, from the possibility of infection or any number of issues that can come from treating a severe wound in a pseudo-medieval society. aegon is, at maximum, ten years old, in a tremendous amount of pain, having to come to terms not just with a long recovery process but a permanent disability that’s going to require him to relearn absolutely everything about the way he lives his life, and does his own father care about it? no, viserys decides that the real issue here is that someone called rhaenyra’s kids bastards.

viserys’s son has been the victim of an unprovoked attack, he was not only beaten but had his eye slashed out, and viserys does not care. he does not think about comforting his son, or trying figure out what the prognosis is, or do anything to try and help him. he doesn’t even ask that luke apologize for maiming his kid! no, the real crime is that someone said something mean that might reflect negatively on rhaenyra, so he yells at aemond and forces aemond, a child, to make tough calculations, to choose who to sic viserys on next in order to keep himself alive, to have to try and protect his mother at the expense of his brother, to then have to actually be the one to de-escalate the situation in the face of alicent’s distress and viserys’s complete disregard for her emotional state, or aemond’s himself. that’s the position viserys puts aemond in by not caring about anything other than the potential insult to rhaenyra. aemond is now going to spend the rest of his life not just dealing with any trauma from having been physically assaulted and losing an eye at the age of ten, but dealing with the literal proof that his father truly doesn’t give a shit about him. it wouldn’t be that much of a stretch to look at who aemond is as an adult, stoic and implacable (with bursts of real rage and hatred like we saw at storm’s end when he lost it at luke) and always keeping himself in check and in control, and extrapolate that aemond realized that he needed to be as strong (pardon the pun) as possible because the only parent he has to protect him is someone who needs protection herself from an uncaring spouse, who is his own uncaring father.

and then, after years of aemond having to pick himself up and not getting any sort of support from him, or even an ask for someone to try and right this wrong done to his own son, viserys has the gall, the nerve, the audacity, to stand up and basically just say “why can’t we all just get along? for me?” in front of god and everyone. as if his son isn’t sitting right there, dealt a lifelong blow with constant consequences for the crime of...doing exactly what viserys did. viserys claimed the riderless balerion, and aemond claimed the riderless vhagar, viserys should be proud of his son, should be bonding with him over what it’s like to have something so ancient and powerful under his control, a dragon from the conquest itself. but aemond was punished for it because two little girls were grieving and irrational and two idiot boys didn’t stop to point out that they were being ridiculous and instead gang up on someone who hadn’t done anything wrong, and viserys doesn’t give a shit. viserys tells his family to love each other, he’s telling aemond to forgive someone who hasn’t even apologized for the huge wrong he did aemond and doesn’t seem to care that he did it at all. viserys is focused on harmony, for rhaenyra’s sake, at aemond’s expense, and aemond has to sit there and take it because if his sons do something he doesn’t like, viserys will pull rank like he did at driftmark to get them to fall in line even if their physical and emotional wellbeings are at stake (seriously, if you crank the volume at the start of the last supper scene, aemond’s bitching about how much he hates the idea of dinner and aegon’s attempting to offer advice, bad advice yeah but an attempt was made, cuz they both know that there’s no way they can try to get viserys to see their side and let them beg off, because he wants rhaenyra to have happy subjects within her own family).

daeron - we don’t know anything about daeron because the writers apparently got a 404 error while looking at his side of the targaryen family christmas wreath they call a tree, but safe to say that daeron was probably neglected by him too, and likely made the calculation to spend what appears to be the entirety of his life at oldtown with his hightower relatives rather than be around a father who treats him and his siblings like furniture. but god, viserys has screwed up his entire family beyond repair.

brief sidenote: viserys is the worst father out of all of hotd’s fathers. no i am not kidding. lyonel, by all measures, is a good dad to his sons, from the little we see of him, daemon in pentos at least was an actively present father who cared about his daughters and the third child he was gonna have with laena (and didn’t make choices on her bodily autonomy that left her dying painfully in absolute terror as people hold her down on his orders, finally daemon doesn’t fuck up, shocking), and otto, for all his myriad of failings and how much he sucks, clearly loves alicent dearly, wasn’t an ignorant or dismissive father to her in spite of actually having male heirs, and was as close and devoted a father as he could be before his own bad choices traumatized his child for life. and then viserys is there, ignoring his children until guilt makes him pick one as his golden child at the expense of all the others, and acting as if any emotional problems of physical traumas they endure are a mild inconvenience from strangers rather than his own children.

viserys is a bad king

the only thing close to a smart decision viserys ever made was appointing otto as hand, as otto is actually a smart politician who knows how to do his job properly. in all other aspects as a king, viserys sucks. like, he’s just genuinely, incredibly, bad at his job. like, there’s a reason why he needs otto in order to function half the time, because all the things he does are really bad

daemon - viserys should have dealt with the situation better than he did. nearly every episode has daemon fucking up in some respect, but because daemon is his brother, viserys overlooks serious flaws that could cause him problems. daemon’s public contempt for rhea royce puts runestone’s, and the entirety of the vale’s, really, loyalty to the crown in question, and thus viserys’s reliance on one of the major houses of westeros at risk. viserys keeps on trying to give daemon political positions he’s bad at, such as master of laws and master of coin, and we have no reason to disbelieve otto that he was a problem in both positions. and when he was commander of the city watch, he could have seriously turned the population of king’s landing against the targaryens with the way he was acting (and if you don’t think that would be a problem, might i remind you that losing the support of king’s landing was what got rhaenyra in serious trouble, killed one of her sons, forced her off the throne, and ultimately helped lead to her death?). and he continuously lets daemon do whatever he wants, like occupying dragonstone even though it makes him look weak, or waltz back into court after being banished, which also makes viserys look like a king not worth respecting, and a weak politician. and before i get any “daemon’s stronger than viserys and a dragonrider that’s why viserys can’t stand up to him”, viserys is an absolute monarch in a pseudo-medieval society where his word is absolute law and nothing he does can be considered illegal with seven of the finest elite warriors in the country at his beck and call and multiple armies at his disposal, if he wanted to decisively deal with daemon like any decent leader might, he could have. easily.

the velaryons - the issue with the velaryons is where i get to point out one of the reasons i hate viserys the most, which is ironically why i dislike historical figures like mark antony, or louis xvi: i hate stupid politicians. there is nothing that irks me as much as a stupid politician. viserys is a stupid politician (sorry dave and dan but however much you thought the “i’m not a politician, i’m a queen” line slapped, being a reigning monarch makes you a politician as it is a political position that requires you to participate in politics), and nothing exemplifies that as much as how he’s handled the velaryons. viserys (somewhat) isn’t a stupid man in general, and he’s aware of the fact that the velaryons, particularly corlys, have a chip on their shoulder about the great council and how both rhaenys and any of her heirs were sidelined for viserys’s sake. and in spite of that, viserys completely bungles that relationship time and time again.

the dismissive and outright rudeness we see him use on alicent in social situations is the same way he treats corlys’s legitimate policy concerns in small council meetings, even though corlys is a major ally and powerful lord who shouldn’t be the constant butt of the joke in front of other political actors in the realm. viserys also publicly humiliates corlys in the ending of episode 2 when he says he’s marrying alicent, not just in having strung corlys along with the potential of the match with laena before pulling the rug out from under him, but also by springing it on him there. what viserys should have done was tell corlys beforehand, in private, that he can’t accept laena’s suit, citing the fact that she’s young and something something can’t wait that long yada yada, and given corlys room to process that in private, so that he’s not taken off guard and make to look a fool in a public setting in front of other lords.

viserys’s favoritism of rhaenyra also posed problems for him with the velaryons, politically. we know that corlys didn’t care that rhaenyra’s kids weren’t actually laenor’s, but rhaenys and vaemond clearly did, and if corlys had listened to them more, viserys’s stubbornness not to see the truth could have been seen as a massive insult towards them and retaliated, could have decided that house targaryen had broken faith by this point with house velaryon and that they don’t need to be beholden to them anymore, certainly not when house targaryen and westeros at large are dependent on house velaryon and their fleet. and while this is mostly conjecture, as the aftermath is all in the time jump, the fact that viserys appears to have done nothing about laenor’s murder, which becomes egregious when you remember that the prime suspect for laenor’s murder is viserys’s daughter and her husband, viserys’s brother, and that the whole thing reeks of institutional coverup for the sake of rhaenyra and daemon’s reputations. it’s entirely possible that part of what drove corlys off (again, corlys being a powerful ally in the realm and on the small council) was the fact that his own king, who is a stupid politician, isn’t doing anything about this crime committed against his own family, for the sake of his favorite child, and that this is just the straw that broke the camel’s back in a long list of slights that corlys has been putting up with from viserys for his entire reign. viserys’s failure on the velaryon front is extraordinarily bad politics, and bad kingship that could have put himself and his entire line in jeopardy if the writing for the velaryons wasn’t so fucking schizophrenic.

the succession - i’ve touched on it in why viserys is a shitty father, but viserys’s failure on the succession is a huge political problem as well. viserys all but lit the powder keg of the dance of dragons on fire by not doing anything to shore up rhaenyra’s succession. it’s not just about him being a bad dad, it’s him being a bad king. a good king wouldn’t have just made the lords swear an oath, he would have prepared rhaenyra for power and given her responsibilities and showed her how to rule and planned for her transition into power, like i mentioned above, all of which he didn’t do. a good king would have looked at the time passing since the oath was sworn, and figured out a way to renew it, such as making every new lord come to king’s landing and swear the oath once they inherited, or having a big renewal like it’s a vow renewal ceremony. a good king would have codified rhaenyra’s succession into law, so that it’s not just one man usurping tradition, but the legal qualifications of the realm, especially after sons started being born to him. and if viserys were a good king and a smart politician to boot, he would have, as mentioned, added the idea of absolute primogeniture to the doctrine of exceptionalism (the doctrine of exceptionalism is the general rule jahaerys worked out to explain why targaryens were allowed to marry incestuously even though it was sin in the eyes of the seven, and seriously how hard would it have been for viserys to go “yeah not only are we allowed to do that but we can also go with whoever was born first regardless of gender, #closertogodsthanmen” and be done with it!). but instead, he does none of this, and allows the situation to fester and does nothing to rectify it on any level and lets the problems of the succession build and build and build, doesn’t even put any safeguards in place for when he dies. somewhere in the seven hells, in between the beatings aemma’s ghost should be allowed to give him for what he did to her, viserys cannot be surprised at the outbreak of civil war, he all but ensured that there WOULD be a civil war by not doing anything about all the situations he’s caused with regards to rhaenyra’s succession and the lack of follow through.

viserys targaryen is a bad husband to both his wives, a bad father to all of his children, and a bad king to westeros, and as much as i love paddy in the role, the idea that he was a good man who was trying his best and as lovable as ned stark himself needs to fucking die.

#personal #house of the dragon #hotd #anti viserys i targaryen #sorry for the absolute novel but i'm tired and i'm so angry and all the feelings came bubbling up lol #it's the way he's fucked over his children that's particularly egregious to me #like i'd written viserys off the second he started viewing alicent as a plausible romantic option #because that was so fucking disgusting i was never gonna see past it #but if you think about how he's hurt his own kids it's basically unforgivable #i'm glad he's dead and rotting i hope aemma gets to smack him with a fire poker forever and ever amen

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