#twilight history

[therealvinelle]

Hi, how old do you figure Didyme was when turned ? Assuming Aro is 30 when he's changed, then Didyme would have to have been 15-20 years younger to be Marcus' age when she was turned. Now, I could roll with Didyme turned at 30 years old, which could mean she had already a husband and kids (or not, or was a widow, or... anything). Just curious for your take^^

I've wondered the same thing.

The Guide says Aro was in his mid-twenties when he was turned, which means he can't have been older than 26-27.

It doesn't say anywhere in the Guide how long Didyme was, however, and my attempts to narrow it down lead me nowhere:

For Aro to turn Didyme, she likely hadn't started a family of her own. Sadly I don't know at what age Mycenaean women were married off (contrary to common belief that everyone got married at twelve and had sixteen kids by nineteen before the nineteenth century, peasants and the working class have traditionally waited much longer than the nobility (whose lives and marriages were the ones recorded), as they had to be financially secured before marrying or thinking of having kids. Which can take years) nor do we have any information that points us towards Aro and Didyme's societal position, so all I can do with this is say I think it's unlikely she was older than 30.

For Aro to return for his sister, they have to have had a relationship before he turned. Which could mean they were a year apart and did everything together, could mean she was an infant and he doted on her. He does, however, have to have known she existed, which means I consider it very unlikely she was born after he was turned. That being said, one could conceive of a timeline where Aro kept tabs on his family, lo and behold his old mum's gotten pgrnant, and the child grows up to have a no good, very impoverished and Dickensian future ahead of her so Aro steals her away. ... Goddamnit, Didyme could have been born after Aro was turned. OR SHE COULD BE OLDER THAN HIM. We simply don't know!

For Aro to successfully have turned Didyme, he can't have been a newborn. However, that doesn't narrow it down.

Didyme might have been of an age similar to Marcus's, but that's an assumption.

Per canon, we've got nothing.

Personally, in headcanon land, I like to picture she was in her early twenties, and that it was a few years (less than ten) after her brother disappeared until he returned for her.

[bebx]

By John Atkinson Grimshaw

[lionofchaeronea]

"Magical rapture / Pierces my heart; / Fixed is my gaze / Burning with terror; / I reel, my heart faints and fails!", illustration by Arthur Rackham from p. 86 of Siegfried and the Twilight of the Gods, published by William Heinemann in 1911.

[chaosfantasmic]

[actthreesceneone]

That scene where Richard was describing the Greek students, all i could think about was this:

[vrag-veshtica]

if I had a nickel each time I lost my mind over the second couple in bl ID BE SO FILTHY RICH BY NOW I could pay for the therapy I need to figure out what's happening

[ravewing]

napoleon crossing the alps but its twilight sparkle

(normal vers under the cut)

[sovietpostcards]

An room in the Intourist Hotel overlooking the Kremlin and the Red Square (Moscow, 1978).

[therealmeursault]

The Secret History characters are so My Little Pony coded

[ourstaturestouchtheskies]

art history playlist moodboard – twilight soundtrack vibes but it's the indie/alt rock bit

Vale (Farewell) – Arthur Hacker // Morning Mist in the Mountains – Caspar David Friedrich // Countess Mordvinova’s Wood – Ivan Shishkin // Wilds – Ivan Shishkin // Temptation – William-Adolphe Bouguereau // Norwegian Highlands at Sunrise – Hans Gude // April Showers, Napa Valley – Jules Tavernier // The Dark Wood – Ivan Shishkin // Fawn – Josef Schmitzberger

[therealvinelle]

I wonder, do you think Caius comes from Sparta ? It would surely explain why he's so strict with the discipline. Aro and Marucs for example I always imagined as being from Athens

They're older than either of those cities (well, Sparta is a bit of a gray area since not much is known about Sparta's early history but they certainly predate the Sparta we remember), and were already several centuries old by the time the Greek dark ages were over and the Ancient Greece history has remembered blossomed.

I headcanon Aro as being from a sparsely populated island for whatever reason, but the Mycenaean era being what it is (not well known and more to the point, not something I know much about) I couldn't say anything specific.

[fibula-rasa]

Cosplay the Classics: Elizabeth Montgomery in “Two”

“Two” first aired on 15 September 1961 and is the first episode of the third season of The Twilight Zone. Sadly, “Two” is the only episode that features Elizabeth Montgomery.

Montgomery was nearly ten years into her professional career in 1961. She had already carved out a solid resume in television, appearing prolifically on anthology and episodic shows and occasionally stretched her legs on the New York stage. Samantha Stephens was still three years away when Montgomery took her voyage through The Twilight Zone.

In its five seasons, The Twilight Zone was a crossroads of up-and-coming and well-established performers. “Two” paired the rising star Montgomery with Charles Bronson, who had a decade more acting experience in TV and film than Montgomery. Though Bronson was the more established star, “Two” is Montgomery’s showcase.

Read on below the jump!

“Two” relies on minimal dialogue throughout and notably Montgomery only has a single line spoken. The role relies almost entirely on Montgomery’s action/reaction, expression, and styling. The episode begins on Montgomery as The Woman wandering an abandoned city. The first nine minutes of the episode pass with no dialogue, with context given by visual elements and Serling’s opening narration. The entire episode takes place on a small section of city street (at the old Hal Roach studios, conveniently already in disrepair). 

We learn through newspapers and magazines that this city is in The Man’s homeland, invaded by The Woman’s nation’s army. Signs of the city’s long five-year abandonment are everywhere, including full skeletons left where they fell. (The macabre element of skeletons is used sparingly across the Twilight Zone and usually in circumstances less grounded in reality than “Two,” such as “Long Live Walter Jameson” and “Queen of the Nile.”) As The Man mulls over his first encounter with The Woman a dove flies up behind him as a symbol of his genuine desire for peace. Through a variety of posters and advertisements, we learn that The Man’s homeland had a culture heavily invested in war.

Collage of the war-related paraphernalia in “Two”

All of that is solid storytelling, but Montgomery’s acting adds an extra something. When The Woman first encounters The Man, Montgomery performs hair-trigger reactivity. Despite The Woman’s dire situation—a stranded foreigner in a decimated country with seemingly no chance to ever return home—her reluctance to trust The Man is significant. Pairing Montgomery’s wordless portrayal of these responses with the jingoistic quality of The Man’s homeland and the notable length of time that the city has been abandoned makes me feel that her feelings might not be a simple holdover of wartime hostility on her part but potentially extended trauma. Perhaps The Woman had previous awful experiences with other straggling remnants of The Man’s military, who may not have been as ready as The Man to give up wartime attitudes in spite of the war clearly being over.

The Woman is understandably acting like a cornered animal. As the episode progresses, The Man tries to be as calculated as possible in communicating to The Woman that he doesn’t want a fight through his actions, turning his back to her, and not retaliating the third time she launches an attack on him. Montgomery, in turn, does a great job of drawing out the cornered animal characterization—alternating between curiosity, hope, mistrust, and open hostility. Montgomery’s characterization gives the role the added dimension that saves the episode from feeling too much like an overly simple fable.

Unfortunately, it’s in executing the fabular aspect of the story where “Two” falters. The opening narration by Serling specifies: 

“It’s been five years since a human being walked these streets. This is the first day of the sixth year as man used to measure time.  “The time: perhaps a hundred years from now, or sooner, or perhaps it’s already happened two-million years ago. The place: The signposts are in English so that we may read them more easily, but the place is The Twilight Zone.”

It’s established here that the location is meant to be a stand-in for any city in any country, and that the use of English is merely a storytelling convenience. So, even though “Two” is intended as a Cold-War era anti-war statement, they are intentionally distancing the fiction from the contemporary real-world conflict. To create further distance from a contemporary place/time, they establish that the rifles are laser guns.

But, then, that one line that Montgomery speaks in “Two,” seventeen minutes in, is “Prekrasny” or “прекрасны,” a Russian word for beautiful or pretty. This pretty much grinds to a halt the concept that this is a cautionary fable and not a vision of a dark future where the Soviet Union and the United States moved to open warfare. While I’ll admit that the conventions used to establish “Two” as a fable are cheeky and a little on the corny side, the episode itself would have been stronger without the suggestion that The Woman is Russian.

I’m not sure who made the call to use a Russian word. I wonder if perhaps Serling wrote his introduction and he had a different read on the story than its writer, Montgomery Pittman. Maybe Pittman intended “Two” to be more of a dark premonition with a twist of optimism and Serling thought of it more as a fable and the two approaches hampered each other in the final product? This is pure speculation on my part of course, but it’s a black mark on what I think could have been an even better episode than it is.

Regardless, I think “Two” is a strong episode and a fine example of a Serling-esque story written by someone brought on to lighten the load of Serling, who worked himself to the bone on Twilight Zone. I also appreciate Pittman’s confidence to rely so heavily on visual storytelling techniques, taking into account that the high quality at which we watch the show now does not reflect the quality home viewers would have had in 1961. It reflects both Serling and the producers belief that viewers would be fully engaged in watching the show as it aired rather than just passively having it on in the family room while unwinding after dinner. 

Elizabeth Montgomery’s performance heightens the whole affair considerably. That’s no shade on Charles Bronson, in fact I think the monologuing he’s given could have come off as unbearably hokey if delivered by a lesser actor.

If you can believe it, this is my very first time cosplaying The Twilight Zone! (Though I did play Rod Serling in a set of sketches in high school. I was as weird as a teenager as I am an adult, okay?) If you didn’t already know, I run another blog called Twilight Zone in Close-ups, examining the powerful use of close-up shots on the show by testing out how much of each episode’s story can be communicated solely by its close-up shots.

☕ Buy me a coffee! ☕

[operose-reblogs]

I desperately want a zelda game set in the time when the sheikh people were building the guardians when the king of hyrule at the time said 'these fuckers are too powerful. Time to try to commit genocide I guess :/'

This was a Canon even that was talked about in i think the book for the development of botw

And the link and zelda of the time is not only trying to defeat demise but also the king because wtf. And by the end they help the sheikah people found kakariko village.

The history of kakariko village is devastating to me and the fact that the royal line of hyrule is always portrayed as good and holy but also they did THAT. I just really wanna see what all that world looked like at the time and also seeing the acknowledgement that the devine right of kings is a little (a lot) bullshit

If anyone has and comic or fic recs PLEASE message me

[pomegranateboba]

Should I do a hunger games simulator of all our Summoners and the arcana twilight cast

Idk comment down your summoner's name if you would like to join

(edit: requests are closed now so you can spectate :))

[bunnakit]

your top five favourite soft scenes in bl <3

ask me my top 5 bl anything 🌸

AAAA I LOVE SOFT SCENES THANK YOU AL (and happy new year beloved!)

BE MY FAVORITE | PISAENGKAWI

i could just make this entire list scenes from Be My Favorite, to be honest. Pisaeng and Kawi are so, so fucking soft, but this is one of my absolute favorite moments. you just know Pisaeng's heart was crawling up his throat.

HISTORY 3: TRAPPED | TANG YI x MENG SHAOFEI

your former enemy now lover, one of if not THE most powerful man in Taipei, stopping in the middle of heated kissing to kneel at your feet and reverently press a kiss to the wound you received while protecting his sister? FUCK. i didn't consider this one of my favorite BLs but i literally can't get this scene or them out of my head, so i might be wrong about that.

NOT ME | SEANWHITE

Is that the sound of your heart beating? Thump, thump, thump, thump.

GAWD. what the FUCK man. i feel like crying just briefly rewatching that scene alone, it's such a gentle reprieve from everything going on in their lives, an impossibly soft moment captured between them. and seeing White so playful in love? AUGH.

MOONLIGHT CHICKEN | FINALE

i could also fill all 5 of these just with Moonlight Chicken moments but i wanted to include a moment that wasn't necessarily between a couple. i love this moment of family and peace at the end of everything, the way everyone comes together and things are different but that's okay. there's so much i always want to say about MC but i feel so much for it i can't ever really properly put it into words (shocking from me, i know.) this show is just so special to me.

SEMANTIC ERROR | JANG JAEYONG x CHU SANGWOO

I was so nervous.

it's Sangwoo's acceptance and Jaeyong's palpable relief. it's how Jaeyoung looks like he still can't believe this is happening. it's how they fit so perfectly together like they were always supposed to find each other. I NEED MORE OF THEM.

because it was so hard to pick just 5 here are 3 honorable mentions:

LAST TWILIGHT | MHOKDAY

i'm still here. i'll probably be here for a while. i'll probably never forget this.

KISEKI: DEAR TO ME | ZE RUI x ZONG YI

the reunion was so incredible and soft and UGHHHHH. the way i felt so fucking relieved like it actually affected me at all

KISEKI: DEAR TO ME | CHEN YI x AI DI

it was so nice to see them so soft after all the shit they had to go through to get together. they're so comfortable and at peace with just about the only people they can be that way with and it makes me want to bite someone.

[nebulousfishgills]

Alright, I went a little nuts. Watcher Screenshots as Twilight Characters