thedaisiesandwhatnot-blog-blog

[thechaoticbow]

tj: it says no trespassing but i'm allergic to the rules

amber: and dairy

tj: wow. ok. just expose me

[prinxlyart]

Your Vinira is sSO SWEET MY HEART US MELTING! How Viney not only accept Emira' stutter but straight up loves it?! Oh my poor bleeding heart! Now, my own question: How do the redeemed Blight parents react to their relationship?

Ooohhh see at least in my Willumity headcanons, Alador and Odalia don’t redeem themselves for several years. Like, maybe 8 or 9 years from when our girls first start dating. I imagine Viney and Emira become a thing in roughly the same time frame. So Emira doesn’t even tell her parents about her girlfriend. Viney introduces Emira to her parent(s) (eventually, maybe after like 6 months of dating?? Maybe a year?) and they are super wary at first because a Blight???? Is dating our daughter?????? And Viney reassures them that yes, they’re dating and it’s not some wild ruse. That being said, the heads of the Blight family also don’t know they’re dating so like. They’re trying to keep their relationship on the DL.

But if I’m gonna dip deeper......

( way deeper. This is another one of those Long One’s, lol )

I think....if Alador and Odalia catch wind of their daughters dating people they don’t approve of, there would be hell to pay. Like, all of them being grounded until further notice and that means escorts to and from school, no friends, no extra curricular activities, nothing but school and home. Not even their “approved friends” are able to communicate with them because their scrolls would be confiscated. Tutors (babysitters) while they do homework and further studying on weekends. No contact with the outside world. And if they even try to speak with anyone at school? They’ll all be pulled from Hexside and be homeschooled from then on.

All the while they’ll be using their connections to have Viney, Willow and Luz expelled, permanently. They may not have too much sway over these delinquents’ lives, but they’re going to make sure they’ll never be able to advance in society. And then they find out that this “Luz” is the Human that dared go against Emperor Belos? I can’t even begin to imagine the hell they’d bring down on them all.

So yeah, there’s a lot of disaster scenarios like that that haunt the Blight girls and ensure that they’ll never tell their parents of their relationships and will keep most displays of affection away from the rats that would somehow get the word back to them. At first it might hurt Luz and Viney to not be able to be affectionate, but Willow 100% understands. She already has that history looming over her in her memory. Viney and Luz will often use the Secret Room of Shortcuts in order to just hang out with their respective girls between breaks when they can.

I genuinely don’t know how the timeline of events will play out in the show in regards to Belos and the portal. It could take just days, weeks, months??? Years???? Before he’s taken down accordingly and a new portal is made.

Regardless, I like to think that in that time though, the moment the twins turn 18, they leave and they take Amity with them. They’re not just going to sit idly by anymore. Whether that means revoking their family name by some intensive ritual or just fleeing and using whatever money they took with them to find an apartment somewhere, they need to get out from under their parents’ thumb. As soon as they’ve established new lives for themselves, they are as open with their relationships as they want. They might even be a little over-eager, what with Amity kissing her girlfriends for probably too long at school in front of everyone, or Emira actively distracting Viney from her work while on the clock.

By the time we get to the point where they’re trying to re-enter their children’s lives, it’s stiff and awkward at best and like bulls butting heads at worst. The Blights are using any method they can to bring their children back home, whether it’s promises of extra freedom or putting in a good word to their coven of choice; even sending them extravagant gifts that none of them want. This maybe goes on for about a year before the twins and Amity agree to meet with their former parents. They bring their respective partners with them too; not as back up or anything, but mostly as moral support and as a giant middle finger to their parents.

Alador and Odalia don’t hold back their disdain. For their children’s’ foolishness, for their childish behavior thats ruffled so many feathers within the Emperor’s coven, for the damage they’ve all done to the Blight name; and for their daughters’ choices in partners.

They could take all of the other nonsense their parents were spouting, but being so outwardly hostile to their respective partners??? That causes Emira to nearly turn the entire Blight Manor upside down and Amity to summon an abomination large enough to chuck the manor into the Boiling Sea with her parents inside. Edric manages (somehow) to keep them both sane long enough to continue their conversation, at which point I think the Blights simply write off their girls’ anger as petty childishness.

And that. Is what sets off Luz, Willow and Viney. They absolutely go off on the Blights and just tear them both a new one. I think it’s been a long time since the Blights actually feared anyone besides the Emperor, but in that meeting, they feared these teenagers who seemed to radiate more power than they’d ever been witness to before. I think Emira and Amity are both shocked but Edric just gets comfortable and summons some popcorn to watch the show because finally, someone is telling off these miserable witches they used to call their parents.

They don’t meet with their parents again for a few more years after that encounter. I think Emira and Viney maybe break up once for a week before getting back together due to a misunderstanding, but Amity couldn’t possibly be happier with her life as it goes on, free from her parents and being able to be with her girls as she wants.

Over the course of the following years, they all still receive correspondence from their parents. On every birthday, they send a sum of money and a simple greeting. Every holiday season is the exact same. I think Luz is the only one to actually reach out to Alador and Odalia. I think she sends them a photo of their most recent holiday get together; where everyone is smiling or laughing or making messes or whatever. The exact opposite of every holiday held at the Blight Manor. They see each of their children, smiling and looking truly happy. And on the back, Luz maybe writes something about wanting to speak to them. Alone. Not with Amity or Willow, not with Emira or Viney, not with Edric, no one else. Just Luz and the Blights. They agree.

When Luz meets with them, it’s tense. They’re all quiet and stiff and still have an aura of hatred hanging between them. But Luz clears her throat and informs them that she’s planning on proposing to Amity and Willow. She’s still not sure when, or how, but it’s something she’s planning. She also informs them that if they don’t want to miss another wedding, they’d better clean their acts up and fast. And she just hands them a small scrapbook full of pictures of Emira and Viney’s wedding. They hadn’t even known it had happened. They weren’t informed, let alone invited, and Luz was granting them possibly the only chance they’ll ever have again at being in their children’s lives. Luz lets them know to reach out to her if they decide they want to be in their kids’ lives again and leaves them with the scrapbook.

When they do reach out, Luz shows up at Blight Manor with three others in tow: Eda and Lilith Clawthorne and Camila Noceda. They are three different kinds of pissed and the Blights have the good sense to just be good hosts and invite them in with little fanfare or argument. They all settle in with cups of tea and I think Lilith goes first; she tells them about how she’s had the opportunity to watch Amity grow up, even more so after she abandoned the Emperor’s coven. Over time she still acted as something of a mentor, but also as a parental figure when she or the twins needed her to be. She was honored to officiate Emira and Viney’s wedding. She’s grateful to be part of their lives because she’s been a witness to their incredible achievements. She really digs the knife in deeper when she tells them that Emira and Viney are considering having kids but Emira’s been especially hesitant due to fears that she’ll somehow end up like her parents.

Eda goes next, not even having touched her tea, just sitting with her legs and arms crossed and glaring at them in the most severe way. She tells them about the various sleepovers she’s hosted over the years. How at least half of those sleepovers found Eda talking outside with at least one Blight child if not all of them in the middle of the night.

She tells them she got herself a scroll for the first time ever because she knew those kids needed an adult figure that wouldn’t reprimand them for existing. They needed an adult figure to go to for comfort and guidance, someone that could reassure them that their best is more than enough. They don’t need to work themselves into the ground for a scrap of approval or force themselves into the rigid mold their parents made for them.

She tells them she’s seen more tears from the Blight kids than she’s ever seen from any other kind of creature. Not even Luz cried as often as they did, and she’s a giant softy (Luz lets out an indignant “hey!” At that and pouts). She tells them that she, Edalyn Clawthorne, the Boiling Isles Most Wanted, has provided more warmth and comfort for their kids in the time she’s known them than they [the Blight Parents] had in their lives.

Eda hasn’t had magic for years. But everyone knew how powerful she once was. They had all gone to school together too, of course they remember her and the trouble she caused. She lets them know that if she even had an ounce of the magic she once had, she would use it to decimate the Blight parents in every way possible for causing so much harm to three bright, talented, loving children that have grown into some of the most powerful witches the Boiling Isles has to offer. She also lets them know that before they even consider being part of those kids’ lives again, they have a lot of shit to work on and sort out. Because if they don’t? It doesn’t matter whether or not Eda has magic. She will decimate them.

Finally Camila sets her empty tea cup down and levels them with the most venomous stare she can. She’s the only one of Luz’s guests that’s actually also a biological mother. If she could, she’d probably go Super Saiyan with the sheer power she’s exuding with this stare. The Blights actually flinch which causes Lilith to have to hide a chuckle (she’s been on the receiving end of that rage before and she’s excited to see it unleashed on them).

She just starts tearing into them like her life depends on it. She doesn’t hold back in the slightest. She admonishes them for holding their social status at a higher priority than the safety and happiness of their own children. Her criticisms and curses are all laid out with razor precision. The longer she goes on, the more the Blights shrink in on themselves. Alador definitely starts crying at one point but refuses to wipe his tears away because he knows there’ll just be more anyway. The Clawthornes are shocked at seeing him cry, throughout their time at Hexside and while Lilith worked with the Blights in the Emperor’s coven, they’d never seen Alador express an emotion beyond irritation. Odalia also has tears in her eyes but she refuses to let them fall. Her face is bright red in shame though, it just grows steadily more red as Camila goes on. (Luz idly notes that that must be where Amity and the twins get their blushing genes from. She also notes that Odalia looks remarkably like Amity and wonders if that’s what Amity will look like when they’re that age. Her heart flutters a little at the concept of being with Amity for the rest of their lives, but she tampers down the runaway thoughts to refocus on her mom’s tirade).

By the time Camila’s done with them, Alador and Odalia are hiding their faces in shame. Alador’s trying to stifle his crying to the best of his ability cuz his breaths are turning ragged from how much emotion he’s experiencing. Odalia is desperately trying to wipe her tears away without ruining her makeup, but she’s also quietly sniffling and hiccuping. Camila sits back with a satisfied huff and Luz pats her shoulder (as a thank you? As a good job? As a ‘tag me in it’s my turn’? Who can say).

After letting the Blights collect themselves, Luz clears her throat to get their attention. She struggles for a moment to figure out the best way to say it, but ends up setting her jaw firmly and just blurting it out: she asks for their blessing for her to marry Amity.

After a moment of shocked silence, Luz’s courage starts to crumble a little and she begins to explain herself; she knows that Amity doesn’t value their opinion. She hasn’t for years now. Luz also doesn’t value their opinion. But if she’s going to such lengths to try and give one of the loves of her life her parents back? She may as well start off with a show of respect.

Odalia is the one that gets up from where she’s sitting and quietly approaches Luz. Eda and Lilith are about ready to throw hands if need be and Camilia starts to put her arm in front of Luz, but Luz stands up to meet her. Odalia gently takes Luz’s hands (she also notes that her hands are just as tiny and soft as Amity’s) and brings both of their hands up to about chest level. She has to clear her voice before she speaks; her throat became tight with the tears and hiccuping she was trying to hold back.

Odalia takes one hand to draw a large circle around their joined hands before clasping Luz’s hands again. She tells Luz that she absolutely has their blessing, and vows to do whatever she needs to to atone for the cruelty she put her children through. And so the Everlasting Oath is sealed.

Alador also stands up and does the same in a tear-strained voice. After his oath has been sealed, he places his hands on Luz’s shoulders and thanks her for being so damn stubborn.

They promise that they’ll be in touch with Luz again soon, but they need to talk to one another first and really sort everything out. Luz gives them a small smile and confirms that she’ll be waiting to hear from them as the Clawthornes/Nocedas stand up to leave. Before they leave, Odalia gently places a hand on Camila’s shoulder and asks her quietly if she could maybe come to her for advice on how to approach their children when they’ve figured themselves out. Camila stares at her for a moment before giving her a smile and nodding. She doesn’t have a scroll or anything, so she tells her to just reach out to Luz when they’re ready to talk. Odalia just nods and the Blights watch as their guests leave.

I think it particularly strikes Alador how casually Eda ruffles Luz’s hair and pulls her in for a side hug, loudly telling her how proud she is of her for pulling such a bold move. It dawns on him that he used to do that to Edric when he was still smaller than his own knee. It may have been after the first spell Edric ever successfully cast. Odalia sees Camila scoop Luz into her arms and plant a giant kiss to a her head, probably also praising Luz. They watch as Luz puts her arms around Eda and Camila’s shoulders as they leave the Blight estate and Alador closes the door before he starts crying again.

I think that’s the first time in years the Alador and Odalia really hug each other properly. Not to pose for a picture, not just a quick greeting as they pass each other in the halls of the Emperor’s coven, but like. For comfort. I don’t think they really realized how big and cold and empty their manor is until that moment.

I think it takes several months for them to get their acts together. They seek out a family counselor, they have weekly tea with Camila, they dust off the parenting books that have been untouched on the shelves in their library for decades. They look into Viney’s family and find out that she and Emira have started their own service beast program. The general air of grief and undertone of determination is interrupted by a moment of sheer pride at knowing their eldest daughter not only found someone she loves, but has taken the risk of starting her own business with her wife that’s a genuine service to the Boiling Isles. They make a few duplicates of the newspaper article they found announcing the grand opening of the first Service Beast Training Center and Shelter on the Boiling Isles and have it framed in different places; there’s one on the desk in their study, there’s another on their wall in their bedroom; they each have their own copy at their desks at work.

No joke, it’s taken Luz months to convince Emira and Viney that Em’s parents are trying to change. Emira has absolutely 0 faith in her parents being able to turn over a new leaf. It’s not until they hear Camila say that she’s surprised at the Blight’s improvement after their last tea meeting that they even consider that they actually are trying to change.

Luz coordinates a day and time for them to all meet once Emira and Viney agree to do so. I think they meet at a park somewhere, maybe a particularly nice public garden (maybe it’s Willow’s). Emira’s never seen her parents look so nervous before and that already sparks some hope in her heart that all of Luz’s efforts might not be naught. I think Odalia tries to reach out to hug Emira but like, actually flinches when Emira steps back. So instead they sit at one of the secluded garden tables and just talk.

Alador and Odalia apologize in as much depth as they can. Emira just sits and lets them say everything they want to say. Once they’re done with everything they can think of, they just sit in silence for a minute while Emira processes everything they’ve said. It’s not until Viney squeezes her hand that Emira finally starts crying. She wants to be angry, she is angry, but her entire heart feels like a full-grown griffon just stood up from where it was sitting and flew away. Her heart feels so much lighter. She stands up and moves to her parents and they stand and embrace her tightly for a while. Viney also feels like a huge weight has been lifted just watching the exchange. Maybe she also cries a little bit because she’s so happy to see her wife so happy. (And she maybe ignores the sound of a high five happening in the distance; she’s like, 90% sure Luz is there with someone else spying on them to make sure the meeting goes well).

All the Blights have full-on waterworks going on because they each individually realize this is the first time they’ve expressed their love for each other in probably more than a decade. Long before Emira and Edric took Amity and left. Viney maybe also hears a muffled sniffle and when she turns around to see, yup, there’s Luz, and she’s definitely crying into Willow’s shoulder. Viney rolls her eyes. Luz is such a sap. That’s probably why they all love her so much. She brings out the sap in all of them too.

After the Blights finally calm down, Alador and Odalia have an entire separate list of things to apologize to Viney for, which takes her off guard. She maybe expected an apology for the last time she saw them in person, but they went waaaay deeper than just that. And then they don’t stop at the apologies? They start thanking her for all sorts of stuff. Like loving Emira and being there for her when they weren’t. For helping her grow into the incredible person she’s become. They also congratulate them on their Service Beast Shelter and ask if maybe eventually they’d be allowed to visit and see them in their element. That’s when Viney’s face finally splits into a wide grin and she joins the big family hug they’ve got going on.

Lmao so yeah, long story short, it takes them a long-ass time, but eventually the Blights learn to love Viney 💖💖💖

[hawkepockets]

13,40 and 44 for the oc ask, please! :D

13. which oc’s complement each other the best?

oh it’s GOTTA be my ryder twins 🥺 not only do they split the braincell but like, scott is the right brain & sara is the left... they’re so much less functional when they’re apart.

honorable mention: farrah & honey anna! it’s not usual for wardens to work in pairs but they’re so good for each other! without farrah, honey wouldn’t have the commitment to stick around & fight the blight, and without honey, farrah would have sunk into her grief for the couslands so deep she couldn’t come back up.

40. what motivates oc?

umm tbh i think all characters should be motivated by love! for max it’s love of magic first, for barbara it’s love for bethany, for fionn it’s heart full, love for everybody! even if someone is bad they should still be driven by love (or at least convinced that they are)!

44. how long does it take oc to open up to people?

of my oc’s, fionn has the most complicated relationship with trust. he makes a real effort to trust people, or at least act on a trust he wishes he had for people. he’ll be kind & welcoming to strangers and proceed like he 100% expects good things from them, but everyone in the carta was mean & disappointing. it’s a long long time before fionn really feels trust in his heart. even with his first friends varric & harding, fionn waited months for the other shoe to drop, for one of them to reveal some motive for being nice to him, and they never even knew. :(

even if he trusts someone completely, it’s very hard for him to talk about his feelings. he doesn’t feel like it’s necessary.

[bountyofbeads]

https://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/wayne-barrett-donald-trump-rudy-giuliani-peas-pod-article-1.2776357?outputType=amp&__twitter_impression=true

REMINDER: Trump has relied on Rudy Giuliani as a "fixer" ever since Trump bribed Rudy to kill a mob-related money laundering investigation into him 30 years ago.

The late Wayne Barrett wrote about their corrupt 30-year relationship in 2016:

Peas in a pod: The long and twisted relationship between Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani

By WAYNE Barrett | Published SEP 04, 2016 5:00 AM ET | NEW YORK DAILY News | Posted September 25, 2019 |

Let's start with the fact that Donald Trump's top surrogate, Rudy Giuliani, is on the payroll. In January, he joined a law firm, Greenberg Traurig, that represents Trump and son-in-law Jared Kushner.

Last year, the firm handled Trump's suit against the Florida city of Doral so his golf course could override noise regulations that barred him from bulldozing before sunrise. More recently, it handled Kushner's $340-million acquisition of the Watchtower properties in downtown Brooklyn.

When Trump paid a $250,000 fine in 2000 for secretly funding a million-dollar lobbying campaign against an Indian casino in upstate New York, he was represented by Greenberg.

Giuliani brought Marc Mukasey, the stepson of ex-U.S. Attorney General and lifelong Giuliani friend Michael Mukasey, with him to Greenberg; Mukasey is now representing legendary leg man Roger Ailes. Mukasey launched into a tirade recently against New York Magazine reporter Gabriel Sherman, calling the Ailes biographer "a virus" willing to "use any woman" to Weinerize the Trump debate adviser. His dad, who once branded Trump a "peril" to national security, delivered a Republican Convention speech the night after Rudy's screed.

This intertwine may or may not have something to do with why the Greenberg firm lets Rudy, one of its newest partners, hired early this year ostensibly to run a cybersecurity unit, travel the country with Trump, introducing him at rallies and fundraisers, challenging Hillary Clinton's health based on stuff he finds in corners of the internet, declaring her Clinton Foundation troubles worse than Watergate, wearing a "Make Mexico Great Again Also" cap, and helping draft policy speeches diagnosing African Americans for white audiences.

I even watched Rudy on TV, before one joint trip to Ohio, loading suitcases into the back of a Trump SUV in front of Trump Tower, the only baggage that slows him down.

Rudy has actually been more visible in his buddy's campaign than he was at times in his own $50 million presidential attempt in 2008, when he managed to convert the months-long top ranking in the polls into a single delegate. The imperial 2016 candidate who hates losers, especially ones who wind up in Vietnamese prisons, has instead embraced an epic dud, his solitary act of empathy in a campaign of callousness. He could've trashed Rudy like he did John McCain: "I like people who weren't caught with their command center down."

But the onetime comb-over twins just had too much in common. Though bombs-away hawks today, they got multiple draft deferments during the Vietnam War, with athlete Donald citing bad feet as his excuse and Rudy using an ear defect to sidestep his ROTC obligations.

Trump is now warning of a rigged election, invoking the image of Philadelphia blacks cheating at the ballot box and calling for voter suppression squads to "monitor" suspect precincts. Rudy said the 1989 mayoral election he lost was stolen and spent millions on suppression squads, dispatching off-duty white cops and firefighters to minority districts, when he won in 1993.

The two amigos also spark similar antipathy in Mexico, their latest joint destination — Donald for a mantra of insults, and Rudy for a multi-million-dollar anti-crime contract his consulting company won in Mexico City that flopped so badly the police chief declared he was "no fan" of Giuliani's. Rudy even tried to lend credence to the Trumpian fantasy that "thousands" of Muslims in Jersey City celebrated 9/11, quibbling only with the number.

Then there's the wife trifecta. No one in American public life, other than perhaps their kindred spirit Newt Gingrich, has ever mastered the art of a bad divorce like Rudy and Donald, carrying on as if spousal humiliation was the point.

Ask the kids. When Trump married mistress Marla Maples nearly four years after he walked out on Ivana, the three convention stars, Don Jr., Ivanka and Eric, didn't show up. Andrew and Caroline Giuliani made strained appearances at Rudy's 2003 wedding to Judi Nathan, but in 2007, both distanced themselves from their father's presidential pursuit, with Caroline Facebooking her preference for Obama, as close to the ex-mayor's heart as she could plunge the dagger.

Rudy's wife Donna found out he wanted a divorce when he announced it on TV, just as Marla had a couple of years before. Rudy then chose Mother's Day to alert the press that he would be having dinner with his new love and led the cameras on a 10-block walk with her after dinner, kissing her goodbye while his wife and kids simmered. His divorce lawyer declared "we're going to have to pry her off the chandeliers to get her out of" Gracie Mansion. Even Donald Trump was offended, writing an open letter to New York Magazine and urging Donna and Rudy "to sit down with each other in a room, without your lawyer, and see if you can settle this."

But Rudy was only following in the divorce-as-spectacle footsteps of Donald, who'd used the New York Post as his personal hammer a decade before, relishing in Marla's "best sex I ever had" headlines even as they horrified young Ivanka and Don. Trump told Newsweek the scandal was "great for business," and pushed Marla to seize on the opportunities it presented, including half a million to pose in "No Excuses" jeans.

He'd brought his mistress to the same Atlantic City boxing matches he brought his wife to, aboard the same helicopter, just as he'd set up Marla in a sparkling suite on the Aspen slopes while he was vacationing with his family. Young Don told his father then "you just love your money," a line he did not revive in his convention script. Ivanka, shocked by headlines on newsstands during her walk to school, just wept.

Rudy and Donald first got together in the late 1980s shortly before Donald became a co-chair of Giuliani's first fundraiser for his 1989 mayoral campaign, sitting on the Waldorf dais and steering $41,000 to the campaign. A year earlier, Tony Lombardi, the federal agent closest to then-U.S. Attorney Giuliani, opened a probe of Trump's role in the suspect sale of two Trump Tower apartments to Robert Hopkins, the mob-connected head of the city's largest gambling ring.

Trump attended the closing himself and Hopkins arrived with a briefcase loaded with up to $200,000 in cash, a deposit the soon-to-felon counted at the table. Despite Hopkins' wholesale lack of verifiable income or assets, he got a loan from a Jersey bank that did business with Trump's casino. A Trump limo delivered the cash to the bank.

The government subsequently nailed Hopkins' mortgage broker, Frank LaMagra, on an unrelated charge and he offered to give up Donald, claiming Trump "participated" in the money-laundering — and volunteering to wear a wire on him.

Instead, Lombardi, who discussed the case with Giuliani personally (and with me for a 1993 Village Voice piece called "The Case of the Missing Case"), went straight to Donald for two hour-long interviews with him. Within weeks of the interviews, Donald announced he'd raise $2 million in a half hour if Rudy ran for mayor. Lamagra got no deal and was convicted, as was his mob associate, Louis (Louie HaHa) Attanasio, who was later also nailed for seven underworld murders. Hopkins was convicted of running his gambling operation partly out of the Trump Tower apartment, where he was arrested.

Lombardi — who expected a top appointment in a Giuliani mayoralty, conducted several other probes directly tied to Giuliani political opponents, and testified later that "every day I came to work I went to Mr. Giuliani to seek out what duties I needed to perform" — closed the Trump investigation without even giving it a case number. That meant that New Jersey gaming authorities would never know it existed.

It's hard to watch Giuliani invoke his 14-year history as a federal prosecutor when he calls for Clinton's prosecution and square it with the seedy launch of his own relationship with Trump.

When Rudy was mayor, Trump hired the lobbying firm that included name partner Ray Harding, the head of the state's Liberal Party, whose ballot line had provided the margin of difference in Giuliani's 1993 election. Harding's firm quickly went from three lobbying clients to 92, and it steered the controversial, 90-story Trump World Tower, the tallest residential tower in city history, through three levels of Giuliani administration approvals despite loud opposition from community groups led by Walter Cronkite.

Both Harding and his son, a top Giuliani official, wound up felons. His other son, Robert Harding, a Giuliani deputy mayor, has long been a lobbyist at Rudy's current employer, Greenberg.

The Giuliani administration also wrote a 1995 letter of support to HUD for $365 million in mortgage insurance for Trump's Riverside South project, affirming that the Westside Yards site was in a blighted neighborhood, a contention so ludicrous that Donald had to eventually withdraw the application. A board of Giuliani appointees, pushed by Harding's firm, also approved renovations at Trump's 100 Central Park South, where Eric Trump now lives.

Rudy wound up a friend, speaking at Fred Trump's 1999 funeral, doing a grope scene with Donald in a 2000 Inner Circle skit, inviting Donald and Melania to his Gracie Mansion wedding and attending Trump's 2005 Mar-A-Lago wedding.

As aligned as Trump and Rudy appear, there are enough stark differences to make the embrace uncomfortable, at least if the blank-slate broadcast interviewers would do a search or two. When Mitt Romney ran against Giuliani, he said Rudy made New York a "sanctuary city," based on Giuliani's urging undocumented people to settle in the city. PoliFact found the assertion "true."

As mayor, Giuliani was the top Republican champion of the assault-weapons ban, sued the gun industry and called for "uniform licensing" of all guns, contending that the free flow of firearms into the city from unregulated states was killing New Yorkers.

Rudy was also one of the only elected pro-choice Republicans who even supported partial birth abortion. He's recently begun to perform same-sex marriages. He is, in all of these respects, an anti-Trump surrogate.

Yet Trump has said he might name Rudy to chair an immigration commission or to head homeland security. Trump apparently forgets that Rudy already gave us one homeland security secretary, his business partner and former correction and police commissioner Bernie Kerik, who blew up like a land mine before he could take office and wound up sentenced to four years in federal prison, partly for lying to the White House.

[percontaion-points]

Shadow Heir chapters 9 & 10

Click to see the rest of the snark & image descriptions.

Chapter 9

I’d never been fishing before. It wasn’t something you really did a lot of in Tucson.

This is a joke, right? Like how the fuck can Mead sit there and think “Obviously nobody in Arizona goes fishing!”

I think that Arizona has the second highest boats per capita in the country.

Most of what I knew about childbirth came from TV, when people would boil water and make bandages out of sheets. I was pretty sure modern medicine had advanced past that, but I hadn’t bothered taking any sort of labor class. There’d been too much else going on, and I figured I could always do it “later.”

Right, heaven forbid that we cut into Eugenie's precious “sitting around and feeling bored” time.

“It’s too early,” I said from the backseat of the Reeds’ car. Candace had taken it upon herself to drive because she was certain Charles would “follow the speed limit.” He rode in the passenger seat, carrying a bag they’d long ago packed on my behalf. “This has to be something else. I’m only ... what, twenty-nine weeks? I’ve got eleven more to go.”

It's baffling to me that she's been seeing doctors frequently, but not one of them apaprently bothered to tell her that multiple babies tend to come earlier.

Or, I thought, what would’ve happened if they’d been born in the Otherworld? Because I had to assume they would’ve come early there too, in a position not suitable for natural birth. Dorian had seemed confident of his healers’ magic to handle anything, but I wasn’t so sure—especially considering the gentry track record with infants.

This is going back to an earlier comment of mine of how many mothers and babies died because they couldn't understand things like “breech baby”?

I gazed at my children and sighed happily. “We’re exactly where we need to be.”

Chapter 9 summary: Eugenie is on edge until time starts to pass, and nothing happened as a result of her banishing the spirit.

As time passes, she begins to long for Dorian's company, too. Which is weird to her.

Evan takes her out fishing one day, and they talk about what Eugenie wants to do after the babies are born. She says that she hasn't really thought that far ahead, and is only just trying to get through the pregnancy. However, she's grateful for Evan for leaving it open-ended enough. Says that most people are well-intentioned, but just openly tell her what she should do, rather than to ask for her opinion.

The next day, Voltage shows up, and says that Dorian and Maiwenn acted in unison to send him to Eugenie. She finds the fact of them working together to be difficult to believe, but she refuses to listen to the message that they sent with the spirit. Says that if there was any real trouble, Dorian would have tried to get in contact with Roland, rather than to send Voltage. She sends him away, but not before ordering him to return to her should anybody try to order him around again.

About a week after that, Eugenie awakes to a feeling of wrongness. She goes to Candy and says she thinks she might be in labor. They race her to the hospital, where the initial intake doctor is optimistic that they'll be able to pause the labor. But as Eugenie is examined, they say that this is happening, and it's happening now. However, thanks to the fact that they're early, the babies need to be delivered via C-section, because they're turned wrong.

So they cut Eugenie open and deliver the babies. The girl comes first, followed by the boy, and they're both quickly swept away to NICU. The doctor later sits with Eugenie and tells her that both babies are nearly 3 pounds, with under-developed lungs. So they'll remain in the NICU for a while. They take her down to the NICU, where they show her the babies. Eugenie is overwhelmed at the sight of them with all of the tubes coming out from them. She names them Ivy and Isaac.

Eugenie also thinks about what might have happened had she delivered these babies in the otherworld. There's no way that the delivery would have gone smoothly with only magic, not understanding things like C-sections. And forget about ensuring that the premature babies would thrive.

Chapter 10

I caught hold of his hand and tugged him forward. “Come meet your grandchildren.”

Chapter 10 summary: For the first two weeks, Eugenie tries to pump to supply her own breastmilk for her babies. But she thinks that her fae heritage is preventing it from coming in properly. The nurses are quick to assure her that formula is just as good as breastmilk. (Fed is best, after all.) It's another two weeks before the twins are strong enough to come off from the ventalators and to be held for the first time.

Eugenie comes home from that daily hospital visit to find Roland there. After the initial excitement wears off, she realizes that he shouldn't be there. After dinner, Roland says that the otherworld was struck by a terrible blight about a month ago. Which might be why Dorian and Maiwenn sent Voltage up to her. They are now too busy fighting for their survival to worry about a prophecy that's probably going to take another decade at the minimum to come to fruition. After Eugenie sent Voltage back, Dorian went to Roland to beg for his help in bringing Eugenie back. A perpetual winter has swept across all lands. All of them. It's so cold that people are literally freezing to death. And those who do survive have no food. Even Roland, who hates the fae, is like “Damn, this is too much torture.”

Dorian seems to think that this is the cause of the Yew kingdom, because they are 100% unaffected. Roland goes on to say that the fae are reduced to coming over just to get food and supplies.

They talk about pulling Eugenie out from Alabama so that nobody can discover where she had been, and where the twins are currently. Roland tells her to wait until she's gotten a chance to hold them before leaving.

[foxymuses]

---- im still working thru painting some things rn (i gotta paint at least one more for tomorrow when i mail them out) but i gotta say a thing before i lose it

on the topic of warren and his family, he wasn’t super close to them. not the way i see a lot of hawkes portray their muses. like, ren was very close to malcolm because malcolm was the one who helped ren hide his abilities through mastering dual daggers, and the majority of ren’s abilities are so powerful because 1) the amell AND hawke magic genes are strong but 2) because he had malcolm to teach him outside chantry law. 

he had never been incredibly close to leandra on the basis that he had never had too much in common with her. he loved her, he did, and growing up (before the twins), ren and leandra were close enough where things were friendly and familial. but when the twins were born, her focus shifted almost entirely to them, while malcolm kept ren in mind. 

warren did his best to help raise the twins, and he has always been incredibly protective of them, but naturally he was closer to bethany because they both had magic. while bethany and carver were close because of being twins, carver and warren always had a strained relationship. not antagonistic, and they could count on each other where it mattered, but carver was always at the end of the ‘see what warren is doing? be like that’ or even the “don’t do what your brother did”. everything was in reference to warren, not even by warren���s choice, and that fueled carver’s desire to prove himself.

because warren is naturally a chill person (like, he could be high all the time and it would be no different than how he already is), he didn’t view this as anything one way or another. in fact, a lot of the time, he wasn’t even around when carver got these comparisons, and when he would hear about it, or when someone would say ‘did you hear what carver did’ or something to that effect, warren was more or less unaffected. he didn’t care how similar or different he and carver were. and this lack of care only furthered carver’s irritation at his older brother, because carver had to overthink everything in case he acted too much or not enough like warren, and especially to make sure his two siblings stayed apostates. he would never have turned them over to the templars, but it was often a point of frustration between the two hawke brothers that bethany was far more careful and precise in her magic use where ren was hidden but less concerned.

it became a worse point when carver found out that ren’s specialty in magic was blood magic. not that malcolm taught him that, but ren found it easy to use when he was using daggers as his main weapon, because daggers create little cuts and gashes everywhere so manipulating that was only logical. it created a huge blow out between the two, and ren and carver didn’t speak for several weeks, wouldn’t even be in the same room. malcolm and leandra had to finally say ‘this is enough, get over it’

then of course, malcolm died and warren became the technical head of the hawkes (leandra was still in charge, but as the eldest, warren now had to take on a vast majority of the responsibility). that meant he was also in charge of carver. this caused the rift to grow further.

then came the blight and escaping to kirkwall, where several times you can hear carver comment on how they wouldn’t have even made it were it not for his older brother, a fact he resents but acknowledges, made worse by the fact warren is only half sure what he’s doing at any point in time. top off everything by losing bethany, and things get worse. this brings us back to leandra, because after malcolm died, leandra sort of also started to crumple, and while she did run away with a mage, she was still aristocratic in upbringing, so her and warren had different ideals and handles on things. running for your life across the wilds was not something she knew how to handle properly, and while she deferred to warren for decisions, that meant she also put all the blame for bethany’s death on his shoulders. it doesn’t matter if she really did blame him or not, warren was now handling the death of his sister, the animosity of his brother, and his mother’s grief by himself. and he does blame himself for everything, even though he knows its not entirely his fault, because he is the eldest and he should be able to protect them all better than he is.

in an effort to maintain the peace, he leaves carver behind when they go to the deep roads, because he doesn’t want to risk him dying and having to let leandra know that another child is gone, and placing that blame on warren’s shoulders too. so carver stayed, and when warren gets back, he finds out that carver joined the templars. and that hurt. 

and he knows a lot of the reasons the templars leave him alone is because carver, even if he is an ass, keeps them off warren’s tail one way or another, but at least in my playthru warren and carver were at 100% rivalry before they even hit the deep roads. after the initial letter about settling in among the templars, they don’t speak at all until leandra dies.

and this, too, is different for warren, because he wasn’t close to leandra by any means. he worked his way back into high town for her, and restored her name with the viscount, but aside from dinners and the occasional fireside chat, they rarely interacted. leandra had more discussions with bodan and sandal than she did with ren, because he was out unwillingly solving kirkwall’s issues. in fact, aveline came over to talk to leandra more than ren did.

so when leandra is part of that ritual and dies in his arms, he’s sad but he’s not depressed. the worst is the guilt -- it’s nice to hear her tell him she’s proud of him, something she hasn’t really ever said in sincerity, and the fact she dies from blood magic, something he himself practices, definitely hits too close to home. but aside from throwing himself at bandits or highwaymen a bit harder than usual, he doesn’t really grieve her all that much. he’s not happy she’s dead, of course, and he for sure blames himself, but he doesn’t feel as lost without her as he did without his father.

so then he bumps into carver after the qunari start their shit, and there’s a very tense exhange where he asks if carver got his letter about leandra, to which carver did but couldn’t come for the funeral because he was out of the city on training, and then they part ways with a few disguised ‘be carefuls’ and that’s that.

when the big boss battle comes in act 3, despite their problems, carver won’t fight against warren, and warren would have ever only incapacitated carver to prevent him from hurting any of ren’s friends or to keep him out of the fight. they’re still brothers, and he still love carver, they’re just not friendly. and he still has aveline take carver from the city when shit hits the fan.

carver is one of the first to know that warren was left in the fade, and he’s also one of the last to find out that warren crawled his way out and is fine. their lives are not connected save a letter here or there, mostly written by varric. and when varric becomes viscount of kirkwall, and carver returns to the city, the high town estate has been transferred to his name per warren’s request. after that, though, their interactions essentially stop.

obviously with people who write these characters, things can change around based on how our muses interact, but default-wise, warren did not have substantial relationships with most of his family, and considers his companions more family than his family was (mostly varric and aveline, as they were his first friends, and are the only two (aside from anders who can just tell) who know ren uses blood magic at all). 

there’s no real point to this, it just needed saying. warren will protect his family, naturally, but they are not something he is emotionally attached to.