#what happened to alice’s pseudo DAUGHTER

[prognostik-a2]

just finished and watched all of andersen’s resident evil films so that you don’t have to

[bucknastysbabe]

Criston cole x alicent daughter reader maybe aemonds sister and it be like when the dinner happens or something idk I just sadly love him

I SADLY LOVE INCEL KNIGHT TOO HE JUST— UGHGNGGNGNGBGNG ANGST

Immaculate - Ser Criston Cole

Ratings: Mature

Tags: Fantasies from Criston (no actual touch), his hateful internal monologue, anxiety attacks, weird pseudo Incest moments w Step daddy Cole, star crossed lovers type beat, Mentions of self-harm. This is just kinda angsty and strange

Criston waited outside the doors after the King was escorted away in a coughing fit, his disease taking over again. He was on guard for the Queen, always, as was his duty as sworn shield. Once the maesters were secured with the wasting king he had returned. Alicent had let royal guards stay on the inside of the room as his appearance may ‘unnerve’ some.

He knew what she meant. The cunt and her bastard seed. It made his chest swell with anger, bitterness, and that residual hurt he would never disclose to another. Just her whore he was. Years hadn’t quelled the ache when the knight thought back on it. So he tried not to.

Instead Criston spent the time attempting to overcome that eternal shame and stain on his once pristine white cloak and take care of the true born Targaryens, strange as they could be. He loved them all in their own way. An unsettled feeling sat in his gut from the ongoing dinner. There had been peace for too long and Viserys wasn’t there to hold up that invisible wall between the two clans.

As predicted, the dinner erupted into chaos. Criston entered from the back as Daemon was glaring down Aemond who simply swaggered off. Otto and Helaena stood awkwardly as the youngest princess watched with wide eyes. Rhaenyra and the rogue prince left immediately. Criston eyed Aegon who ambled back over to finish his cup.

The heir giggled at his sisters, “Wasn’t that grand?”

Otto sniped, “Extremely distasteful, shoving the lad’s head into the table and acting like children.”

Aegon, tongue rendered loose and bitter when he was in his cups began to argue with his grandsire. Criston locked eyes with Alicent, her own brimming with emotion. She ordered, “Take her to bed please.” He nodded dutifully and offered an arm to the second-born daughter, the poor thing grabbing him like a lifeline.

She would get overwhelmed quickly, not a good trait to have for a Targaryen. Alicent mused about sending her to be a Septa for years. Until the matter of the succession loomed ever closer. Septa had upgraded to a political pawn for whoever could offer gold and an army. Although the process had been stagnant. Criston didn’t mind that, much as he couldn’t speak of it, she was his favorite.

“There’s a war coming,” she warbled, doe eyes wide.

“Not yet sweetling, it may come to pass,” he hummed, squeezing her arm with his other hand as they passed through long halls. She shook blonde locks and pressed on, “No, no, I know it, look how we hate one another. That was dreadful. Mother’s going to sell me to a Lannister and make me take Gharion into battle.”

She whimpered at the end of her sentence, steps stumbling a bit. Criston looked down in concern, brows furrowing at his distressed princess. He wasn’t the best with comforting…still he would try. Rubbing her slim arm again he shushed, “Shh, hush now, you’re going to drive yourself up a wall thinking of things that haven’t occurred.”

Arriving at her chambers, he tried to dislodge her tight grip gently. The princess held on with a death grip, lilac eyes feverish as she begged, “Please don’t leave me alone, please Ser Cole.” He frowned, chest flipping and clenching at her cracking voice. The knight knew better, he just needed to get her to bed and leave. Last time he stepped foot in a Targaryen princess’ bedchambers it did not end well.

“I can’t sweetling, I’ll be out and about on patrol, not far away,” he said softly.

More tears leaked from gorgeous eyes. Criston was going to lose his already cracked willpower, he knew that much. “Please, please, I don’t want to be alone,” she wept, beginning to shake. He grimaced at her face going ashen and the tremors becoming worse, breath thinning into heaves. “Oh princess,” he sighed and picked the slip of a thing up.

She was having another fit, something the maesters said was due to ‘a hysterical temperament’. Shaking and crying and sucking in breaths until she received a couple drops of diluted poppy milk. He hated seeing them, made him want to coddle and pet her. Then he’d feel disgusting afterwards, emotions all twisted for the princess about less than half his age. The Seven cursed him for that.

“Where’s the poppy milk,” the brunette asked, laying her down on the impossibly huge bed. She managed to point a shaky finger at the large wardrobe. In two strides Criston opened it up and found the little glass bottle, swirling it around. Coming to perch on the bed he held the dropper out for the Princess, leaving two upon her tongue.

She relaxed soon after, but little hands were back tight in his cloak, twisted up. Criston clenched his jaw, unsure of how to navigate this. The princess asked sleepily, “Ser Criston, you’ll escort me to Casterly Rock right? And stay a bit? What if Lord Lannister is mean and awful to me?”

Criston would gladly rip the idiot’s throat out and present it to court if he put a hand on his sweetling. In the calmest voice possible Cole responded, “Yes I’m sure there will be Kingsguard present, knowing the Queen I’ll be there on watch for a bit.” She sighed softly, seeming more relaxed.

Silence enveloped the pair for a long time, Criston lost in his hateful thoughts. He needed to repent later. Drawing his sick blood would suffice. Shuffling and covers moving sounded from behind. The knight stiffened when she put her chin on his pauldron, hands finding his own. The princess murmured in a slight slur, “I love you Ser Criston. You always take good care of me.”

He wanted to cry but the brunette held her soft hands and hummed, “I love you too dear girl, don’t fret, I’ll protect you as long as I can.” She nuzzled into his dark hair, making no further moves, breathing in his scent. Scenes of stretching her pretty cunt flitted past his mind, her heaving pale body, melodic voice raw from crying his name. Dragging his cock along her innocent folds, the maiden incarnate.

Criston blinked and realized he needed to get out of here, very fast. He rasped to the princess, “I need to get on duty now sweet girl. I’ll be back later I promise.” She looked unhappy, begging a couple more times as Criston laced up and put on his helmet. He shook his head and shrugged her off, heart cracking in his chest.

“Ser please,” she whined, lilac eyes watery and so so achingly pure. Criston shook his head and pulled her close, pressing a kiss to her forehead. She gasped and stared, hands dropping. “You promise you’ll come back?,” she warbled. He nodded resolutely, beginning to shut the door. Criston wanted to beat himself black and blue doing his rounds.

The Seven constantly testing him by sending these abominable Targaryens, so impure yet there she was. He was weak and already failed once, he couldn’t fail again. Criston still came back to her chambers after the hour of the Wolf, exhausted. He sat down in a chair and watched her ethereal face, the moonlight casting a glow on perfect features.

Hatred boiling and churning in his chest Criston began to pull at his lower armor, what she wouldn’t know wouldn’t hurt. He’d take that pain for the girl fifty times over. That’s what Criston was here for anyways. Pain. Tarnish everything that may have once been good on his body.

[atopvisenyashill]

In a Rhaenys as Queen au what does Otto do if assuming Aemma still dies and Alicent still marries Viserys but he's been pushed down the line of succession and Rhaenyra is set to the future queen consort and Laenor is the prince of dragon Stone?

Okay so...the thing is there's several ways Rhaenys could come into her throne, and the most important note about this is that Rhaenys pushes Laenor's claim and not her own, likely because she realizes that the men will not be okay with her pushing her own. It would be one thing if Jaehaerys had supported Rhaenys' claim since Aemon died but if Viserys still married Aemma and Alicent, that says to me that Rhaenys came into her throne because she won the GC 101 by an incredibly slim margin, and against Jaehaerys' wishes. But it's not Rhaenys that is the claimant - it's Laenor. So if Rhaenys won the GC 101, what I think is more likely is that she is named Queen Regent, and Laenor is named King. I'm not sure what this means for Corlys' title (I'm assuming Prince-Consort but it might be more difficult than that, idk) but I do think this means Corlys is Hand, which means Otto is either something else (Master of Coin maybe) or, again more likely in my opinion, to ensure that her reign is not contested or usurped in any way, she just fires the whole Small Council (because it's Jaehaerys') and puts in her own people.

If she sends him home or demotes him, that makes sense to me that he would then attempt to get in with Viserys instead, and that's how the Viserys-Alicent marriage happens. Because of how close the GC 101 was, Rhaenys' claim is not as tight as she would want it to be. Marrying Laenor and Rhaenyra joins the competing bloodlines and helps her a bit but of course, having too many heirs is a problem and so I think what Otto does is suggest a marriage match between Laena and Aegon, or perhaps some match between Daeron/Aemond/Helaena and one of Laenor and Rhaenyra's kids. Because the thing here is - no one is changing anything here. They are literally just following Andal custom of a daughter before an uncle, and there's nothing in the rules that say that a girl cousin can't remarry back into the family - as a matter of fact, that's common even outside the Targaryens. Rhaenyra isn't doing anything wrong, and since the GC 101 decided to acclaim Laenor, Rhaenys isn't doing anything wrong either. If Otto genuinely tries to push Aegon as the true heir to the Iron Throne, his little rebellion is just going to end with Rhaenys taking Meleys to Oldtown and having a little talk with this upjumped second son and her favorite cousin, and not only would she be right to do so, she'd likely have the backing of a lot of the lords for taking a hardline approach to what is undeniably treason. Otto is just not that stupid, and I do not have a high opinion of that man's intelligence hah.

But an Aegon-Laena match is, imo, not Otto acting particularly "upjumped" (at least, I don't think it would come across that way completely) and considering that it's likely most of the votes against Laenor and Rhaenys were from the Reach (because of it's ties to the Citadel and the Faith and the Hightowers), if Otto pitches this as "this is how you ensure the Reach stays loyal, by having a child that is part Hightower marry back into the main line" that may be a convincing argument. It also may convince Rhaenys that she can't trust Otto, and she pulls the entire Targtower family out of Oldtown and makes them accept her as a pseudo-mother (foster mother?) to keep Otto's influence at bay even as she's agreeing to a match, or just straight up freeze that entire line (minus Rhaenyra) out of KL, the way she was effectively frozen out by Jaehaerys after Aemon died.

The main issue Otto runs into here is that Rhaenys is not the fucking one. If she thinks he's conniving against her, she's just going to get rid of him, not beg for him to come back when things get a lil difficult the way Viserys does (no shade) (well, a little shade). He has to be very careful how he approaches her because she is not going to fuck around, and if he fucks around, he's going to find out.

[butmakeitgayblog]

Okay so I tried watching TLFOAH and throughout the first episode I got this really crappy vibe (not from the performances) and it didn't match with the book. At all. I watched through to the end and walked away for a bit. It it hit me what the problem was. Male director. This series is not really from the point of view of any one woman or her experiences or her pain. It took the apologetic parts of the novel and centered them by making the suffering of the women especially Alice seem incidental. Nobody's fault. Generational trauma. Repetative. I know not everyone will share that opinion but the fact that they put a totally unnecessary sex scene in (none of it from Alice's point of view she's an object) nullified the whole story for me. Alice is a pretty object through the whole thing. She's an object to her grandmother. She's an object to the men around her. She's an object to herself. The series doesn't reckon with any of that, it just gives a patent "happy" ending. This really seems to be the trajectory of ADC's career too. Pretty object, patented storytelling. This story really could have benefited from a woman director who gets it what a shame.

I tell ya, I read this about 4 times, each time myself walking away for a but to kind of think it over, and I'm still just not coming up with the same conclusions you are. First and foremost, that line about her career? Totally unnecessary. It was tasteless, and I'm not sure if it was just rage bait or some personal bone you have to pick with women being unapologetically attractive, but frankly you can leave that shit at the door because I'm not gonna entertain it. She's an actress. Actresses by and large get paid to be pretty. If you don't like that, fair enough, but that's something you need to take up with Hollywood casting, not actresses trying to make a living. She's going to take the roles she likes (such as this one, which also happens to be the best role of hers to date), but also the ones she gets cast in. It's not like every actress has the luxury of turning down jobs no matter what your personal preferences are. You talk about being reductive and objectification in the rest of your message, yet really treaded the line on some sexist/misogynist sounding bullshit right there. Be better. That said, I'm not flat out saying you are wrong in regards to this show, but I don't think I got that impression of it at all.

I mean, it was stated from the start that the show is about generational trauma. It's about how victims of abuse can end up falling into and continuing cycles of abuse. I can't side by side compare to the book, but taking the show at face value, that's exactly what it did, so I'm not entirely sure what it is that you wanted from it.

Fundamentally, I'm not even sure what you're talking about the suffering being incidental and not painted as anyone's fault? It was. In her childhood years, it was Clem. In her adult years, it was June and Dylan. There was no ambiguity there. They were all shown as manipulative people who hurt those around them. June's motives may have been different, but she was still shown in a harsh light. In fact something I appreciated was that they didn't write Clem any sort of boo-hoo-woe-is-me sad boy backstory as a kind of way to write off or pseudo-excuse why he did what he did. He was just an abuser. He liked to hurt people, particularly the women in his life, plain and simple. He abused and took advantage of Candy, then June, then Agnes and his daughter, and there was no attempt to try and soften him to pull away from that fact.

Another thing that I appreciated was the fact that they didn't focus the show on the abuse itself, but rather the damage that's left it's in its wake, and the healing process that needs to be done. I don't think that approach lends itself to rendering the trauma itself incidental, but rather it shifts the focus from the violent acts themselves and more toward the victims left to pick up the pieces and move on with their lives. Too often in these cases people get so caught up in the story of the abuser and the whys and the whats and the white noise that comes with those high octane emotions. But the reality is that those scars last long after the dust has settled, and unfortunately by then usually nobody's really paying attention to the victims anymore because it all becomes about the sensationalism of the violence and the abuser. (*Cough* D3pp and Heard *cough* Tory and Meg *cough*)

That's what I think, in part, this show was trying to portray.

Now, switching gears here, while I had my own issues with the sex scene, I do somewhat have to push back on what you're saying here because while I could've lived without it, I do see what it was saying. I don't think Alice was being used as just a visual sexual object, but rather it was giving insight into where she was emotionally. Only, what? Days prior? A week or two at most? She had found out the man she loved - her childhood best friend mind you - had fallen in love with someone else. And that's after months of thinking he'd just left her behind, only to find out it was her own grandmother who had betrayed her and sent him away "for her own good". The girl was emotionally flailing and desperately searching for some sort of connection. She was desperate to find solace and comfort and thus, glommed on to whoever made her feel something that wasn't pain and betrayal.

That's a very understandable human emotion given the situation.

Enter Dylan, shithead extraordinaire, who she immediately thinks is hot. They have an instant attraction and he pursues her just as hard as she pursues him, and in the unstable emotional space she was in, it's entirely understandable that she'd latch on to someone like him. He makes her feel wanted and desirable, he's a fresh start and a way to leave behind her past. It would be so easy to fall into someone like him when you're already looking for a place to land to begin with.

However, really look at that sex scene.

Really evaluate it.

She's not even looking at him.

She's not holding him close or wrapping her legs around him, there's no prolonged eye contact or heavy kissing. Nothing that speaks of actual intimacy. She's disconnected from him and the moment. To me that is Alice's point of view.

You may take that as her being portrayed as just a sex object, but in my opinion it spoke volumes about what was actually going on with her internally, even if she herself was not entirely aware of it (although tbh I think she was.) Even the upside down camera shot leaves the viewer feeling off kilter, almost as though it's mirroring just how off balance and desperate she is, right along with how everything between them was from the start.

I don't think it's fair to reduce Alice down to just an object because at no time did I get that impression of her at at all. She is young woman who has had everything in her life ripped away from her over and over again. She's not stupid, just unsure of exactly who she is. She thinks she's a murderer, she thinks everyone who has ever loved her either hurt her, left her, or betrayed her. But even through that, she's cunning, and clever, she thinks on her feet and has a will to keep going. Just because she makes some bad decisions, that doesn't negate all those character traits.

And again, they don't soften Dylan as a character. I've actually had A Lot of conversations about the portrayal of Dylan and I think I've landed somewhere around: I didn't need to know much more about him. Would I have liked to maybe see more of the building blocks of their relationship? Yes. But in the same breath I think that might've only given them space to try and paint him in a more forgivable light when that did not need to happen. Because in the end this story isn't about the abusers. It's about the women who have to escape them. It's about the quiet after the storm and what they do to pick up the pieces. And I liked that they didn't try and make these women, Alice included, into these fake af perfect renditions of what we think victims should look or act like. Sometimes they're messy, sometimes they make bad choices, sometimes they're strong and resilient fighters who never turn back. Sometimes they do. One is not more worthy of sympathy or safety over another. They make their own choices and they're still allowed to be humans who are imperfect and none of that somehow diminishes what it is they go through even after the abuse is over.

And honestly I'm not sure of you and I watched the same finale. The whole point of June's letters and the Flowers burning down her statue that Clem made was about Alice and June and all the other women taking back their power and their stories from those who hurt them. It was point blank saying that not only is this June giving Alice back that power she had so mistakenly taken away as a family member who loved her and thought she was doing best but had gotten it so so wrong, but also it was her passing the torch on to Alice. Giving her the ability to literally burn Clem and Dylan, even June herself if Alice so chooses, out of her life and start over from the ashes (the Phoenix metaphor from the very beginning.) To start writing her own story.

I don't actually see that as a happy ending per se, but more a hopeful one. So very few times in life are we given the chance to wrap up our traumas and wounds in a pretty bow and have everything feel perfectly resolved. More often than not the people who hurt us don't ever have to answer for it. More often than not the worst people in this world don't suffer any sort of repercussions for their actions or are made to pay a price. What usually happens is we're left with the scars and the frayed edges of what we went through, and we do our best just to keep going, trying to make peace with it through the pain and injustice. I feel like that was a much more realistic - albiet whimsical for narrative purposes - ending than a lot of other options that I'm sure got tossed around the writer's room.

Now all that being said, yeah I think it would've been interesting to see a woman's directorial take on it. I'm not sure the changes they would've made but for the sake of it, it would've been interesting. Knowing what's been said though, I feel like this director cared a lot about the story as it was, not just what he wanted it to be, and added elements that I loved that weren't in the original script (such as the ending fire that tied up all the symbolism.) But also considering the author herself was hands-on through the entire process and the fact that the showrunner and producer was a woman (actually there were 6 women executive producers on this as well 3 women screenwritersand 2 women editors) worked closely with Holly, I think what got into the show was more or less what the author wanted. I don't think the director skewed what the overall message was, at least not in the author's eyes it seems. So while I may read the book down the line and adjust my views accordingly, for now I'm going to trust that Holly Ringland and Sarah Lambert had a very steady hand on the reins of this thing.

[navree]

@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. 

[horizon-verizon]

What made Rhaenyra x Alicent so popular when it's very badly written and don't make sense story-wise?

To oversimplify it, and there is a lot of overlap:

A)

Because they don’t know the actual canon story. 

Some believe that because Ryan Condal and some of the show writers read Fire and Blood, they know what they are doing and what’s presented on screen is what happened in canon. (This is dependent on them not caring to engage more and/or not being people who care to think more about what they are consuming).

B)

Because wish fulfillment.

These two women in canon lore where 9 years apart in age with Alicent being the older and hated each other. Because we have:

two women hating each other and fighting for power

the use of the evil stepmother trope

we have some people think these in of themselves indicate sexist writing. A case of women fighting each other because their womenhood makes them vulnerable to competing for scarce resources that men determine for them.

And many people feel that they could have been friends if only the men around them didn’t force them into it. (Meanwhile, this was not the case at all and an extreme misunderstanding of medieval society.)

C)

Because misunderstanding feminism.

Some think that female friendships, by themselves, are enough to gainsay male aggression on a systematic level. Thus they find the relationship inspirational and ignore details or inconsistencies. 

Despite the fact that Rhaenyra and Laena Velayron had a deep friendship in the canon lore. Maybe even a romantic connection. They connected after Laena and Daemon came back from Pentos to birth her last child. Gyldayn writes that:

Whilst Princess Rhaenyra misliked her stepmother, Queen Alicent, she [Rhaenyra] became fond and more than fond of her good-sister Lady Laena. With Driftmark and Dragonstone so close, Daemon and Laena oft visited with the princess, and her with them. Many a time they flew together on their dragons, and the princess’s she-dragon Syrax produced several clutches of eggs. In 118 AC, with the blessing of King Viserys, Rhaenyra announced the betrothal of her two eldest sons to the daughters of Prince Daemon and Lady Laena. Jacaerys was four and Lucerys three, the girls two. And in 119 AC, when Laena found she was with child again, Rhaenyra flew to Driftmark to attend her during the birth.

(Fire and Blood; A Question of Succession)

This is our canon female friendship of the Dance, which makes so much more sense with their shared personality trait -- daring -- and genuine love for dragonriding. 

I do not want to say that the people who do ship Rhaenyra and Alicent -- or the actors who played them who acted as if these two characters did have some sort of pseudo-romance -- are all brainless. I mean to say that some don’t bother to actually get to know, analyze, or read between the lines of the text for the sake of shipping and superficial enjoyment from seeing two women share intimacy where before, in the canon, they were enemies since Rhaenyra was 10.

They see women-as-enemies as unrealistic or simplistic when the story and context is anything but. If anything, the story shows us the multiplicity of women...you know because they are human. Who want power and still be flawed (Rhaenyra) or evil (Alicent). 

Basically, they think that making a saint or pacifying women is feminism. When it’s actually pedestalizing them and making men “natural” aggressors. And making women into passion-less, ambitious-less pawns for men to use AND assigning their worth to how and when they have sex.

This idea of men-evil-and-women-helpless/pacifists is prevalent in our current society (consider this POST by @rhaenyragendereuphoria).

D) 

Because some are very anti-intellectual and anti-feminism. Misgoynists.

They hate that their idea of femininity is being criticized. This ideal of women-want-power instead of simply being a good wife, mother, “soft”, etc.

E)

Because there are those who genuinely just find both Emma D’Arcy and Olivia Cooke are very attractive and see the show as just something to be apart of the zeitgeist of. 

They don’t want to engage any deeper than that. 

Some might feel “attacked” and dig in their heels and try to find justification to keep shipping the two. Pride then may come into it.

F)

Because performative activism, capitalism and marketing. 

This POST by @brideoffires. Quote:

It’s all part of this phenomenon of liberal identity politics oriented fandom “activism” which takes “critical capitalist consumption” as a form of ethical social justice. Capitalist consumption is rendered acceptable under neoliberalism if it conforms to specific parameters, such as identity and representation politics, so nowadays everyone can’t read literature or watch film without looking for ways that they are problematic on an individual level (without looking at, for example, how these books or shows may be written by people funded by imperialist weapons manufacturing companies or finance capital companies).

But by all means, use this as a place to begin to learn more about performative activism. Come to your own conclusions and be open to discussion.

[egipci]

I feel like there’s parallels to be drawn between Dean/John and Alicent/Otto. The almost religious devotion, the spousification and emotional incest, the objectification inherent to being daddy’s blunt little instrument. When Otto asked if Alicent would’ve desired it otherwise and she said "How could I know? I wanted whatever you impressed upon me to want" I thought of Dean’s DALDOM monologue.

Dean "I've done everything you have ever asked me. Everything! I have given everything I've ever had!" Winchester 🤝 Alicent "I? What have I done but what was expected of me? Forever upholding the kingdom, the family, the law!" Hightower.

Thoughts? Sorry if this isn’t in your wheelhouse, but you’re the only person I know who also likes these characters and enjoys fucked up pseudo-incestuous fathers 🫣

A+ no notes, etc. etc. <3

I don't know if I've spoken about it here before but the entire time I was watching I thought that whatever was going on between Otto/Alicent was weirder and more disturbing than the actual incest we saw! (At least more than the sibling stuff. Young Rhaenyra and Daemon were pretty icky, and of course their partnership is meant to be the O/A counterpart on the "Black side.") Dad/daughter emotional incest and uncle/niece grooming feel more viscerally repulsive because they're real phenomena we observe in our real world, compared to happy, consensual, widely-accepted sibling incest. But unlike D/R, and like J/D, you can just ignore Otto/Alicent if you want, because Dean is a man, and nothing really happens between Alicent and her dad compared to the "real abuse "of the marriage to Viserys, or the "real incest" normalized in-world. And of course part of what makes the trauma difficult to articulate both for Dean and for Alicent is that there is no "direct abuse" to point to! What do you do when your dad "bad-touches" your brain and shapes your very being into the perfect weapon and wife? Crazy stuff!

[dwellordream]

Initial Impressions of HotD, Episode 8

be warned there are spoilers below.

i have read fire & blood, but i am not judging the show as to its accuracy towards the book, as i had major issues with fire & blood, particularly in regard to how grrm wrote the female characters and handled the Dance.

this is not an evaluation of it as an adaptation but on its own merits.

The time jumps in this season so far are insane. We’ve done a six month time jump, then to about four years later, then again to ten years later, and now to six years after that. At this point we’ve nearly passed 20 years in one season alone. I understand they want to end the season with Viserys’ death, but I think the pacing really hamstrings the character development.

I appreciate them trying to give Vaemond some character and good reason to believe his claims will be believed in court, but I’m worried the show is going to white-wash what happens to him purely to give the Blacks the moral high ground again. I don’t think it benefits the show for the Blacks to always be reasonable and right, and the Greens to be cartoonishly evil.

The egg extraction scene on Dragonstone was gross and cool, and appropriately sci fi.

Jace’s determination to master Valyrian is a nice hint to how he might be grappling with the knowledge that he is a bastard. Though it is a bit confusing as to why he only seems to be learning it now, at 16, as opposed to when he was a small child.

It’s baffling to me why Rhaenys would be so loyal to Daemon and Rhaenyra. They themselves admit that they made it out as though they murdered her only son. Unless Laenor got some secret message to his mother later on, she has every reason to loathe them.

I’m not sure what court being almost deserted is supposed to imply. That Alicent is so unpopular as queen that most of the courtiers have fled? That they fear whatever disease Viserys has? That Alicent is such a religious zealot that court is now miserable?

Alicent’s gown is very clearly modeled after Cersei’s final look in GoT, which I loathed. I tolerate this a bit more because it’s not so anachronous to the pseudo-medieval aesthetic, and I do like her Seven medallion.

I do like the make-up on leprosy-stricken Viserys (at least I am assuming it’s leprosy). They did a good job making him look on death’s door.

Major trigger warnings for the scene in the aftermath of Aegon sexually assaulting a maid. I appreciate that they did not show the assault itself, and Alicent’s response is very interesting. She embraces Dyanna (the maid) and assures her that she knows it was unwanted, but then goes on to coerce her into drinking moon tea. It’s obviously not ‘good’, but I’m glad we didn’t see Alicent do a 180 and have her killed off on the spot or anything like that. I don’t think Alicent’s ‘I believe you’ was entirely feigned, though. She seems genuinely distraught when she confronts Aegon, and not just because of the embarrassment of it.

Aegon being genuinely lost as to what to do as his mother’s firstborn son and coping with that by being a sexual deviant and an alcoholic is pathetic, of course, but also sad.

Aemond’s adult actor looks much, much older than Jace and Luke’s, but I appreciate the absolutely deranged look in his eyes, lol. He’s clearly the warrior, compared to Aegon’s drunken sot.

I appreciate that Rhaenys does call out Rhaenyra and refuses to immediately agree to support Luke’s claim, even when Rhaenyra offers to betroth him to Rhaena and Jace to Baela. I have no problem with Rhaenyra being justified at times, but I don’t think making her the unproblematic heroine of the show really serves the larger themes of the Dance. The point is that they all kind of suck as human beings and don’t care about those beneath them on the social ladder. 

Rhaenys does then almost immediately revert back to supporting Rhaenyra and Lucerys once Viserys makes an appearance, perhaps reasoning that Viserys will never denounce his daughter as adulterous.

Vaemond goes a step further here than in Fire & Blood and publicly denounces Rhaenyra as a whore in court, which... what did he think was gonna happen? Ironically, Daemon immediately killing him in front of everyone was less shocking than Criston killing Joffrey for a simple joke. 

Viserys’ heartbroken speech and showing his ravaged face was genuinely wrenching, and I wish the pacing had been slower and allowed him more moments like this over the course of season 1.

Helaena’s speech about the joys of marriage was a little too on the nose but the scenes of her dancing happily with Jace were sweet, and Aemond’s speech was, of course, very accurate to the iconic scene in Fire & Blood where he calls his nephews out as bastards as passive aggressively as possible. 

I think trying to tie this all back into the Prince that was Promised and the Song of Ice and Fire is a mistake. The Dance is arguably the time of Westeros most-removed from questions of prophecy and the fate of the world, and that’s the point. It’s people putting politics and personal grudges over the greater good of the common people. 

Overall, I liked this episode a lot better than episode 7, but I don’t think it at all was as good as the first half of the season. The highlights were Rhaenyra and Alicent’s tepid attempts at faux(?) reconciliation, and Aemond hamming it up.

[angsty-prompt-hole]

Character Introduction: Manor/Cavalier Cove Residents

WIP: Roleplay characters, but a lot of them have WIP canon versions or appear in my WIPS as cameos.

All of these characters live in or around the Manor in Cavalier Cove, a collaborative liminal space roleplay world shared by me and a whole bunch of others. I’m not going to try and tag them all because I will most likely forget someone. They’ll see this though; I know most of them follow this blog.

Cavalier Cove, as mentioned above, is a liminal space in the form of a coastal town in some undefined region, and as a result it is a very strange place to live. Supernatural creatures walk around in broad daylight and many of the people living there are actually from other worlds. Just outside of the town proper is the Manor, which to outsiders looks to be abandoned. Inside, however, there is a whole group of people living there. They are, unknown to all of them, watched over and protected by a group of supernaturals who call themselves the Founders. The Founders have never revealed themselves to the residents, and as a result most of the Manor residents just assume the Manor is living, or that the strange things that happen there are the result of a singular source of magic.

Casey “Creek” Strader (nee Beck): Creek has had a hell of a life. All of her troubles started when she was possessed by the demon known as Red. Another demon, named Illyria, then also possessed her in an attempt to save her from Red, which sort of just made things worse. Creek was forced to flee from her hometown after Red took control and killed a few people. Eventually, she was un-possessed, but almost immediately after that, the eldritch entity known as Forest started influencing her, and then possessed her, which sparked an event that we call the Eldritch War between Forest and the Forsaken, an entity who is possessing Creek’s friend Alice (owned by @divine-champion​). Alice ended up killing Creek, which slingshotted Forest out of her, but she has been left with a black sclera in her remaining eye and an inability to die. While at the Manor, she met Derek Strader and ended up falling in love with him. Thus far, they have adopted three children, a former phoenix named Fey, a werephoenix named Rilan, and an undead phoenix named Jocyn (all owned by @nebula-starlight​ ).

Evan Forrester: Creek’s best friend, he tracked her down after she fled from their hometown, convinced that she was innocent of murder. He is insanely smart and extremely adept at anything involving technology, almost to a supernatural level. When he arrived at the Manor, he had no idea what he was getting himself into. He met a demon by the name of Maribel (owned by @divine-champion​ ) and they ended up falling in love, and he ended up pseudo-adopting a qualit (a dragon-like species created by @nebula-starlight​ ) named Vipro. At one point, he and Creek were kidnapped and experimented on, which resulted in him losing his right hand (also the incident which took Creek’s right eye), which Vipro replaced with a functional permafrost prosthetic of sorts. He has almost died on at least five separate occasions, but that doesn’t stop him.

Lucent “Mallory Perrault” Ran’kai: You can read her WIP canon blurb here. In the CC roleplay timeline, she accidentally opened a portal in the forest outside the Manor and ended up falling from the sky. Wanting to hide from the other dimension jumpers for a bit, she decided to stay at the Manor for a while. Here, she ended up meeting Cascadia, a Nyrix from the world of Valymis (owned by @eldritchnebula​ ). After discovering that Cascadia had just escaped from some bandits who had captured her, Mallory took it upon herself to help. This adventure took her to Valymis and gained her an adoptive daughter named Trinity. Her best friend Alonya and her pet skitnik (basically if weasels were interdimensional nuisances made into a unique species) Jannik are also at the Manor with her.

Lysanna Payne: A Winter Court fae who fled from Faerie and ended up as one of the Founders of the Manor. Her past is a mystery to most everyone except for a couple of the other Founders, and she refuses to speak of it. She maintains the mental ward, an area of the Manor meant for keeping various villains or residents who become a danger to others and/or themselves contained, and oversees everything related to that sort of stuff. She has a distinct set of abilities revolving around mental manipulation, which she uses to try and help the traumatized residents heal. She is no-nonsense, blunt, and more than willing to force you to take care of yourself.

Illyria: After possessing Creek, she dubbed herself Creek’s personal protector, and after being separated from Creek and given her own body, Illyria decided to stay at the Manor. She was also fast friends with a qualit named Nether, but was forced to let him die when he ended up being driven insane and became a threat to the Manor as a whole. She ended up pseudo-adopting Nether’s son and Vipro’s twin Talno. While at the Manor, she was also reunited with her lost mate Essix, and together they have three children: Seraiah, Brine, and Nevena. She also has a WIP canon version, but no intro has been written for that set of characters yet. It will be linked when I do.

Red: The cause of about 50% of Creek and Illyria’s problems, Red wants nothing more than to gleefully murder everyone she encounters, and she finds it’s more fun when she is possessing someone else and making them do it. When not possessing someone, she often takes the form of a massive ginger cat with yellow eyes. No one in the Manor likes her, and after she was forcibly separated from Creek, it was thought that she was gone for good. But the cat always comes back, doesn’t it? Red is also in a good chunk of my WIPs, but her character introduction has yet to be posted. I will link it here when it has been.

Pyre Blight: Pyre is a Duus’ire, a glitch demon species created by @eldritchnebula​ . They were created when some servers glitched due to a forest fire. They are more than a little obsessed with fire and are a general menace to their “brother” Arcade, a Duus’ire who has tasked himself with overseeing many of his fellow Duus’ire siblings.

Quinn Thalin: Quinn is an Everlight, a being that feeds on electricity and is some wacky embodiment of light. He’s a bit of an airhead and is oftentimes more focused on whatever weird experiment he’s thought up than anything else. He is never far from his Shadowcaster counterpart Theo, and is often the ray of sunshine to Theo’s grumpy pessimist.

Theo Raidus: Actually a shrika who has replaced a Shadowcaster, the counterpart to an Everlight. The shrika took on Theo’s name after switching with him, and thus far has successfully masqueraded as the dead Shadowcaster. Unfortunately for him, he has become very attached to Theo’s friends and has started to embrace Theo’s life. He’s moody and unpredictable, but Shadowcasters usually attach themselves to an Everlight (all light sources cast a shadow, and Shadowcasters are beings of shadow at their core), and predictably, Theo is never found far from Quinn.

[insert reference here]

Ian Wright: Wright is a Machination, a person who was forcibly converted into a clockwork cyborg and essentially sold into slavery. After being sold to someone from Cavalier Cove, Wright escaped and stumbled upon the Manor. He struggles to see himself as anything more than an abomination, and he struggles to see himself as someone with agency and free will.

[insert reference here]

Christine “Chris” Hardwell: Chris is a werewolf who was born and raised in Cavalier Cove. She’s always been content working at the dog pound and she even considers the dogs there her pseudo-pack, but lately she’s been catching the scent of an unfamiliar werewolf, and the scent seems to be coming from the dilapidated Manor on the other side of the forest. Her insatiable curiosity and burning desire to know everything going on around her lead her to investigating the Manor.

[the-firebird69]

There's further information today is a big day and it is in what's going on overseas they're attacking the pseudo empire in the Northern areas of each continent well both and Europe it's a mess there's tons of them that are gone and they're losing a lot of them you might lose more than we said but still what they're doing is ruining themselves both sides and they're both going to be useless and they're the ones here and really it's going to change because they're having a real war out there in the rings and it's forcing people to come here it's happening now.

-as far as money goes it is going to hash out in a strange way he has some people in his corner and key positions like Ken and his mom and his grandpa and some others who can help. And there are more and they're willing to do things and we're willing to help and others are too. But they can't go against with a whole bunch of these goons are up to but the solution is apparent the guns are checking out and the biggest pains in the ass are Trump and company and he doesn't want to do anything he says then we said this if they issue the check if he does that they're going to fight him and they're going to have to take the stashes and caches and the money and they need the money because they're getting paid people getting paid to try and stop him it's a very aggressive maneuver and probably the hottest area but his people would be either winning or losing in the long run if he gets president again it might be very bad so it's going on that he might do that and there's a big benefit to it and he doesn't have to do it directly and there are others who would stand up and do it each time a different group the first time would be Lexington Concord mom side or his side and they all work there and someone to get back at them but don't have that kind of juice. And Camilla doesn't have that and the Sun and daughter can't think of who. That whole thing was sponsored by JC and Mary. And he knows who it is it's a girl and her name is Alice and she works in Las Vegas and that's probably true.

Thor Freya

Olympus

So you're saying it's Saturn and he says September 11th and he says oh but that's not the real math the real math is when it's further away it's more dangerous but it's when it's close enough if that's the case or it's fraudulent and you're going to run into gravity you can't handle so I do understand that and it's not a mystery we know who we think it is but what you say is there's not enough of them to feel a thimble and it's not fair it like a Garth and he's like the last ones to go cuz he just sit there and hide. And that makes a lot of sense haven't really found any

Trump

It is very true but these things will hash out and Lexington Concord and the battle of the Bunker Hill and the first few battles no it's one more and it's not South Carolina it's in New York or something he's going to look at South Carolina was down there that makes a lot of sense

Thor Freya

Olympus

[chrismerle]

what’s up i spent way too long typing up a post about my thoughts on P5S, and it isn’t even all encompassing. i guess if you’re curious about anything i didn’t mention in this trainwreck just ask.

my spoiler-heavy thoughts/pseudo-review below the cut

THINGS I LIKED:

The characterization, broadly speaking. If you, like me, loved the Thieves in P5/P5R then you’ll be pretty happy with them here. There are a couple moments that made me roll my eyes (lookin’ at you, hot springs) but on the whole, the main cast are unchanged.

The new characters. Sophia and Zenkichi are great. Sophia is precious and Zenkichi straddles a very fine line of ‘realistically out of the loop, but gives as good as he gets.’ I don’t even care how silly their costumes were. Sophie looked like the Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, though I did like her little emoticon visor, but also she had no pants. Wolf’s mask was badass but the fact that his stupid pointy hat was riveted to the top of his stupid disco high collar killed it and I wanted to see someone grab his hat and pull it back to see it fling back into place like a drinky-drinky bird. Even so, the characters were great, and when I noticed that all the attacks for Sophie’s initial pseudo-Persona had question marks after them (Kouga? Dia?), it made me laugh, and Wolf’s a good all-purpose party member because he hits like a fucking truck and nothing is immune to Almighty. Plus in some of his post-battle dialogue he calls them all ‘kiddos’ and they consistently call him Gramps.

The gameplay. I mean, yeah, it’s VERY different than P5, but you all know that. And hey! The game no longer immediately ends if Joker gets knocked out (unless he’s the only one left in the party, obviously). It ran pretty smoothly, there’s something weirdly charming about the other Thieves showing up perched on cover points, and the only consistent issue I ran into is that in segments where the camera gets forced into a certain angle, it can switch back so abruptly at the end that you accidentally go walking right off a ledge.

I’ve never really played a Dynasty Warriors-type game before, so it took me a Jail or so to get used to it, but then I was just cackling as I mowed down swarms of Jack Frosts like a weed-whacker in a flower field with a knife the size of Joker’s torso. Honestly, it took me the longest to get used to the fact that the circle button became the all-purpose ‘interact’ button than anything else.

Actually, that’s a lie. It took me the longest to get used to the fact that if I left a Jail, I wouldn’t be losing any time. I’m very used to Persona games having the calendar constantly counting down, which wasn’t the case here.

The story, broadly speaking. It had some hiccups and some issues, which I’ll get into, but for the most part, it was fun. I’m...not going to outline every detail of the story here, but it felt very P5-y and I enjoyed it.

THINGS I LIKED BUT THAT NEEDED WORK:

The writing. It was a little inconsistent, beyond just the usual weirdness that I have accepted comes along with Persona games. (//patiently clicks through numerous conversations of the gang going ‘did this super obvious thing that this memory threw in our faces happen? Let’s debate about whether the most likely answer by a huge margin is the answer’ and several conversations of ‘are we sure this person is bad? We saw them playing nice, like literally every other villain we’ve faced’) A lot was great! Like, the bit with the Okinawa locals breaking into the RV while the kids hide in the bushes? Genuinely unsettling! Akane’s Jail and the fake Thieves was fun, and seeing Zenkichi scuttle from hiding place to hiding place without Thief powers was funny, and his Shadow’s glowing eyes watching him before becoming his Persona was both badass and unsettling. The realization that EMMA was actively lying to Konoe was nice. Character interactions were great and I loved that Sophia went with Ichinose at the end. There was a lot that was good. But there were also a lot of missteps.

Like, it kind of felt like the direction for the writing changed partway through. It started out as if each member of the Phantom Thieves was going to get their own time to shine, identifying and empathizing with a Monarch. Ann realized she could have been Alice. Yusuke realized he could have been Ango and also saw redeeming him as sort of like redeeming Madarame by proxy. Mariko was a link to Haru’s childhood and her father. The ghost Jail on Okinawa lured Sophie in and by the end she realized how much she meant to her friends ryuji said fuck. Akane was Zenkichi’s literal daughter. And then it went to Konoe and then EMMA, so Ryuji, Futaba, Morgana, Makoto, and Joker didn’t get a chance to shine in that regard. The switch from ‘a Jail for everyone to identify with’ to ‘whelp here’s the decoy and the end boss’ felt like they came from two separate drafts of the script, and it’s not like they had to watch the time; I got through P5S in about a third the time it took me to get through P5R. It took me about 35 hours. Considering the game kind of relies on you having played P5, they already knew their target audience has a longer attention span than that.

Owada was talked up as kind of a big deal, but he had like two scenes on-screen and otherwise was an entirely off-screen character. There’s a lot of mid-combat dialogue that is very difficult to focus on, which was sort of annoying when some of it was actually relevant. Ichinose’s reveal as a villain is very info-dump-y.

Plus, Joker wasn’t utilized particularly well as a silent protagonist. He’s got more implied personality than basically any other Persona protag. Which means he’s actually pretty expressive throughout the game, but I can probably count his lines of dialogue outside of combat with fingers left over. No one expects Yu Narukami to actually react to anything, so it doesn’t feel odd when he doesn’t. But the combination of Joker being reasonably expressive and having a demonstrated personality means you’re perpetually EXPECTING and WANTING him to say something about the shit going on, and when he doesn’t it feels like mentally missing a stair.

THINGS THAT I DIDN’T LIKE:

The cut corners. Like, a lot of things just seem lazy. There were scenes that really should have been included that weren’t, like how the Thieves escaped from the hotel after the police showed up; it cut from Zenkichi warning them and getting arrested to them arriving at the temporary hideout, so we never even got to see how the Thieves reacted to realizing the cops were outside. Requests to bond with the other Thieves only got a couple of text boxes, when they could have shown a tiny scene of them hanging out like they had all over P5. Rather than having Sae actually on-screen for her brief scene, the camera instead very unnaturally switched to an angle as if it was from her point of view, which was literally the only time the camera did that in the entire game. All of the Sentries look the same from Jail to Jail, instead of being unique to each Jail. Igor is completely absent for the entire game, and other than a throwaway ‘my master can’t be here’ from Lavenza it’s just not really acknowledged.

The missed opportunities. Like, there is no way to look at this except to assume that Joker was a horrible friend to literally everyone in this world state. Like, I can pass off the fact that everyone has their baseline Personae as being because they haven’t had access to their powers for a while, but when you combine it with the fact that NONE of Joker’s other confidants show up or even know he’s back in Tokyo, it leaves little to assume except that in this world, no confidants got maxed out. On top of that, the Personae are all basically pointless. They could be Pokemon or Stands or Digimon or fucking YuGiOh cards, and it wouldn’t make a difference; NOTHING about the game says ‘these entities are integral to this world and important to these characters.’ Also they could have had Akane actually realize who the Thieves were and it would have been hysterical, but that’s just my personal sulk.

The Requests. I liked the Mementos missions in P5/P5R. They felt like they had a point. Requests in P5S are all basically just fetch quests. ‘Go to Location A, fight so many of Enemy B to get so many of Item C. Turn in Request.’ Hell, one of them bugged out on me, I swear. There’s a Request to teach Zenkichi how to cook a simple meal, and Haru gives you a recipe including beef. I had no beef on me at the time, because if you want SP restoratives you gotta cook a fair amount and I used it, and I could find literally no beef in the city I was in at the time so I had to abandon the Request. On top of that, outside of getting food or a few moments where another character specifically asks for Joker’s attention, character-specific Requests mostly replace the ability to bond with the other characters individually.

The restoratives. Or, more specifically, the disparity between HP restoratives and SP restoratives. There’s essentially one cookable recipe to restore SP for every four recipes to restore HP. Even if I stopped at every store and vending machine, I’m pretty sure there were a couple cities where I could find NO SP restoratives for sale, while most stores and vending machines had at least two or three HP restoratives. And while it is true that you can go in and out of a Jail whenever you please to restore SP, that doesn’t help you if you run out during a boss fight you weren’t expecting (mini-boss encounters are virtually identical to regular monster encounters) or during one of the times where you CAN’T leave the Jail for reasons XYZ.

The final boss, and not just because I died and had to start over a few times. As a concept, EMMA could be cool, but in reality she just seemed like the writers threw Yaldabaoth and Maruki in a blender and poured the results into the game. Like Yaldabaoth, she is a false god who seeks to control humanity, claiming it’s what they want. Like Maruki, she seems genuinely deluded into thinking it’s for the best and that she’s not doing anything wrong. Her Jail looked like a slightly sci-fi reskin of the Depths of Mementos. The shtick with the multiple platforms and getting to actually SEE an all-out attack at the end were nice, but for the most part the fight itself was nothing special. Ultimately, EMMA had nothing unique going for her except her name.

Plus, EMMA’s entire rationale was that the majority of humans want someone else to control their lives for them, essentially out of convenience. And she’s presented as being more or less right, but that just being one of the hurdles of being human. It seemed a little dour and far-fetched. Like, the Thieves repeatedly point out that struggling allows people to grow, and they’re right, but in my experience, I’ve never actually met anyone who, upon hitting a roadblock, decided ‘Jesus take the wheel.’ Considering the greed with which her weird tentacle arms snatched up the solidified Desires, the pettiness of the complaints she used as a “gotcha,” and the fact that she just kind of reiterates her ‘people want to be controlled’ point over and over, I think it would have felt a bit more true to life and given her more agency if, instead of presenting her as largely correct, it instead acknowledged that everyone at some time or another hits a wall and wants someone to tell them what to do and had her capitalizing on those individual brief moments to hook people in, despite her having reams of data that for most people, those moments are temporary.

[brokehorrorfan]

Blu-ray Review: Amityville: The Cursed Collection

After the original trilogy, The Amityville Horror's storyline had run its course, as had its theatrical viability. The 1979 original is an iconic adaptation of Jay Anson’s allegedly true book. 1982's Amityville II: The Possession is a successful prequel that shows the murders that led to the house being haunted. 1983's Amityville 3-D rested its laurels on the 3D gimmick for a largely dull entry.

This would spell the end for most franchises (at least until the remake boom), but once the home video industry blossomed, the marketable title was revived for a spate of direct-to-video sequels. While the initial source material had been tapped, four of these later efforts borrowed a concept from John G. Jones' 1988 short story collection, Amityville: The Evil Escapes, in which cursed objects from the original house find their way into unsuspecting peoples' lives.

Vinegar Syndrome has collected the pseudo-quadrilogy of 1989's Amityville: The Evil Escapes, 1992's Amityville: It’s About Time, 1993's Amityville: A New Generation, and 1996's Amityville Dollhouse - the fourth, sixth, seventh, and eighth installments in the franchise, respectively - in a Blu-ray box set dubbed Amityville: The Cursed Collection. (The absent fifth entry, 1990's The Amityville Curse, is an unrelated Canadian production that remains out of print due to rights issues.)

Amityville: The Evil Escapes was made for television but features decent production value, including a strong opening with a rain storm and a fairly convincing facade of the original Amityville house at 112 Ocean Avenue. The Amityville Horror screenwriter Sandor Stern returned to write and direct the followup. While having one of the original creative forces at the helm is a good omen, his effort is light on scares.

The film follows Nancy Evans (Patty Duke, Valley of the Dolls) and her three children. The untimely death of Nancy's husband has put a financial burden on the family, forcing them to move to rural California to live with her mother, Alice (Jane Wyatt, Star Trek), who recently received an antique lamp from the Amityville house. The 300-year-old evil is attached to the lamp and then transmigrates to the most vulnerable person in the house: the grieving youngest child, Jessica (Brandy Gold), who communicates with her late father.

The familial melodrama is akin to a Lifetime movie, while a series of strange occurrences in the house causes further tension between its inhabitants. Naturally, the cursed lamp lights up whenever something happens. The ridiculous plot lends itself to a few entertaining set pieces, including a possessed chainsaw and a garbage disposal gone wrong. The gore in the latter scene was absent from the TV broadcast but was added for the home video release and remains intact on Blu-ray.

Duke is probably a little too old for her role, but she's good in it. The kids don't fare as well, but what's asked of them is fairly minimal. The cast also includes Fredric Lehne (Supernatural) and Norman Lloyd (Saboteur) as a pair of priests from Amityville, Aron Eisenberg (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine) as Nancy's son, and Peggy McCay (Days of Our Lives) as Alice's sister, who sets the story into motion by gifting her the lamp.

Amityville: The Evil Escapes's Blu-ray disc includes new interviews with Stern and cinematographer Tom Richmond (House of 1000 Corpses, Chopping Mall). Stern's conversation is an informative one, but the most interesting fact is that he had no idea more sequels were made after this one. Richmond details how he felt more like the lighting manager than the director of photographer, as Stern was more experienced and knew what he wanted.

Amityville: It’s About Time is directed by Tony Randel (Hellbound: Hellraiser II) and written by Christopher DeFaria (who went on to executive produce the likes of Mad Max: Fury Road, Gravity, and Ready Player One) and Antonio Toro. Its subtitle is not just a clever clock pun; the movie deals with time in rather interesting, if sometimes nonsensical, ways - including time shifts. The name also works in a metaphorical sense, as the core of the picture is about a character struggling to break the cycle of making the same mistakes.

In the film, the Amityville house has been torn down and replaced with a new development, but architect Jacob Sterling (Stephen Macht, The Monster Squad) helped himself to a antique clock. He brings it home to suburban California, where his ex-girlfriend, Andrea (Shawn Weatherly, Police Academy 3: Back in Training), is watching his two teenage kids, Rusty (Damon Martin, Ghoulies II) and Lisa (Megan Ward, Encino Man). The clock physically roots itself into their home and begins controlling the family members.

Rusty - who's depicted as a "troubled" kid in a very '90s way, complete with black clothing, an earring, and heavy metal music - recognizes that there is an evil presence, but everyone else blames him for the weird happenings in the neighborhood. While he's at the center of it, the plot successfully integrates the entire household, unlike the previous film, and the complicated family dynamic is a welcome shakeup of the formula.

Playing more like an ensemble than any other Amityville, each cast member is able to pull their own weight. Macht's role is fairly thankless, as a dog attack leaves him in failing health, but he fully commits. Jonathan Penner (Survivor) gives a charismatic performance as Andrea's pretentious psychologist boyfriend, and Nita Talbot (Hogan's Heroes), Terrie Snell (Home Alone), and Dick Miller (Gremlins) are among the neighbors who pop up.

If not for the tenuous connection to the Amityville Horror franchise, I suspect this picture might have more of a cult following. (It's easier for word-of-mouth to spread about a lone gem than the sixth entry in a direct-to-video franchise.) The most entertaining film in the set, It's About Time is a charming, if unspectacular, B-movie with a delightfully silly plot and several fun moments featuring special effects by KNB EFX Group (From Dusk Till Dawn, Scream), the most memorable of which sees a character melting into the floor.

Amityville: It’s About Time's Blu-ray disc includes new interviews with Randel and DeFaria. Randel seems to relish the opportunity to discuss the film, as he says no one ever asks about it, and praises the cast and crew. DeFaria explains that he offered to write the film as a way to get his foot in the door as a producer - which, looking at his post-Amityville resume, seems to have worked out for him.

Amityville: A New Generation eschews the franchise's traditional, suburban family dynamic in favor of a metaphorical one; a community of artists living in an urban loft co-opt. It focuses on Keyes Terry (Ross Partridge, Stranger Things), a struggling photographer who's struck with inspiration when a homeless man gives him an ornate mirror that has been in his family for generations. The mirror predicts the death of its first victim, which would be an interesting enough concept, but alas it is not consistent. Ultimately, the possessed object tempts Keyes to commit murder.

The film boasts a powerful supporting cast that includes David Naughton (An American Werewolf in London) as the landlord, Terry O'Quinn (Lost) as a detective, Richard Roundtree (Shaft) as one of the artists, Robert Rusler (A Nightmare on Elm Street 2: Freddy's Revenge) as a disgruntled ex-boyfriend, and a particularly charming Lin Shaye (Insidious) as a mental hospital nurse. Although the cast elevates the material, the script - penned by a returning DeFaria and Toro - remains lackluster.

While the previous entries did an admirable job to overcome their limited resources, A New Generation looks and feels very much like a '90s direct-to-video movie; THE of the same caliber as the endless Children of the Corn, Hellraiser, and The Prophecy sequels that were being churned out around the same time. Despite a direct connection to the Amityville mythology beyond the mirror, it hardly even feels like an Amityville movie.

Directed by John Murlowski (Santa with Muscles) made the inspired choice to hire The Amityville Horror visual effects artist William Cruse to handle the elaborate mirror effects. They're all accomplished in camera; an impressive feat that sounds great in theory but looks campy in practice. The film also features cinematography by future Academy Award winner Wally Pfister (Inception, The Dark Knight).

Amityville: A New Generation's disc includes new interviews with Murlowski and DeFari, plus a commentary by Murlowski. Murlowski's chat includes a breakdown of the analog effects, supplemented by behind-the-scenes footage. His commentary allows him to go more in depth, citing The Shining as an inspiration, pointing out the similarities to Oculus, and addressing shortcomings such as the pacing and the rubber monster. DeFari discusses the challenges of channeling artists' fears on screen and offers advice for aspiring filmmakers.

Amityville Dollhouse is perhaps the most traditional of the bunch in terms of concept, though its execution goes in a different direction. In it, a newly blended family moves into a house that the contractor father, Bill Martin (Robin Thomas, Summer School), built on the original Amityville lot. Bill finds an old dollhouse - a miniature model of the Amityville abode, naturally - and gives it to his young daughter. While the girl ostensibly releases the evil, the strange occurrences begin before she receives the gift.

The eerie events start small but escalate to the point where the family's younger boy sees his deceased father, urging him to murder his family. The father appears in three stages of decay, a la Jack in An American Werewolf in London. His ultimate form is something like a cross between Tales from the Crypt's Crypt Keeper and Friday the 13th Part VII's Jason Voorhees, but he's too loquacious to be scary, delivering a few Freddy Krueger-esque quips.

While the deceased father feels a bit out of place in an Amityville movie, he is the highlight of the film, thanks to exceptional makeup by SOTA Effects' Roy Knyrim (The Toxic Avenger Part II & III). Also notable is an appearance by a young Lisa Robin Kelly (That '70s Show). The film marks the lone directorial effort of Steve White, who executive produced all four films in the set, along with The Devil’s Advocate and Halloweentown. Joshua Michael Stern (director of Jobs) penned the script.

Amityville Dollhouse's disc includes new interviews with White, Knyrim, and director of photography Thomas L. Callaway (Feast, Slumber Party Massacre II), along with alternate footage from the TV edit. White, having produced the prior three films, offers an interesting perspective. Knyrim discusses the progression of the dead father's makeup and how existing creature parts were repurposed for demons in the climax. Callaway breaks down a few interesting techniques, like a 360-degree shot with a periscope lens and the challenges of lighting a character covered in latex.

The perfect companion to Scream Factory's The Amityville Horror Trilogy set, Amityville: The Cursed Collection is available exclusively from Vinegar Syndrome. It's not as loaded with extras as some of the company's releases (there's no input from any cast members and only one commentary), but each movie offers at least a couple of new interviews. All four films have been newly restored in 4K from their 35mm original camera negatives, so they look better than they ever have. Each disc is in its own Blu-ray case with reversible artwork, all packaged in a slipcase box designed by Earl Kessler Jr., which is limited to 4,000.

Amityville: The Cursed Collection is available now from Vinegar Syndrome.

[leahclearwaterdefensesquad]

Alice for the character ask game ❤️

i tend to overlook alice despite the potential her character has, so ty for this ask nonny

How I feel about this character

i, in general, like alice. i won’t say that she’s my favorite, and i don’t approve of some of her actions (like in eclipse, for instance), but overall i think she’s a really cool character, backstory and personality-wise

All the people I ship romantically with this character

like i’ve said, i’m not that into shipping with twilight characters, but i will say that jalice never really made sense to me?? alice, who has completely forgotten her southern roots, is more of a fast lane/city girl, which clashes with jasper’s cowboy vibes. i’m more into alice personally because her character provides sm potential, but to pick i would go with bella x alice for what i feel are obvious reasons lol

My non-romantic OTP for this character

alice and charlie!! i love the best friend becomes pseudo daughter dynamic that i feel her and charlie had built by new moon. charlie obviously has a real soft spot for her and i would’ve love to see them interact more.

My unpopular opinion about this character

there isn’t a lot of discourse surrounding alice (that ik of), so idk if my opinions about her would necessarily be unpopular. i dislike how alice sometimes treats bella like a doll. similar to edward, she repeatedly ignores bella’s boundaries, and i think we should hold them both more accountable for that.

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon.

More of her backstory uncovered! It’s so fascinating, and I don’t mean the parts that we know of in the books with James, I mean fleshing out her finding out where she grew up and the asylum, and also what she did between turning into a vampire and meeting jasper.

[victorluvsalice]

AU Thursday: Londerland Bloodlines -- Pre-Game Timeline!

So, I believe I've mentioned I'm replaying Bloodlines currently to determine what the timeline of the game is for my "Londerland Bloodlines" AU (now having been upgraded to an official story!). But when I started working on the opening chapter, I realized something -- I also needed to shore up the timeline for what happened before the events of the game! After all, even if I'm starting with Alice getting Embraced, knowing just how events in her and everyone else's lives happened is important -- if only because my characters are going to be telling each other their histories at some point. :p

So! Under the readmore is my current pre-game timeline for these versions of Alice, Victor, Victoria, Emily, Lizzie, and Bonejangles. I focused mainly on figuring out how Corpse Bride and American McGee's Alice/Alice: Madness Returns would go down, though I added some other notes explaining Alice's relationship to Wonderland in this world (since, obviously, she's not the Alice from the books!), and setting up how Emily, Lizzie, and Bonejangles ended up in the Giovanni Crypts. I may be tweaking things here and there as time and the story goes on, but this serves as a good first draft, anyway. Enjoy!

May 4th, 1984: Alice Pleasance Liddell is born to Arthur and Lorina Liddell – their second daughter after ten-year-old Lizzie (November 22nd, 1974).

June 9th, 1984: Victor Fitzwilliam Van Dort is born to William and Nell Van Dort, their only child. He grows up privileged but rather neglected, and becomes a rather shy young man.

November 5th, 1992: Angus Bumby, one of Arthur's psychology undergraduates at Oxford University who'd developed an obsession with Lizzie, breaks into the Liddell house, rapes and kills Lizzie, then sets the house on fire to cover his tracks. Arthur and Lorina die in the blaze, but a badly-burned Alice is able to escape through her bedroom window and is taken to hospital. She remains in the burn unit for a year, recovering – her body heals remarkably well, according to the doctors, but her mind doesn't. Unknown to anyone, a furious Lizzie's spirit refuses to go to the Underworld as a result of her horrific death, and remains at the site of the Liddell house, haunting it with vigor (namely throwing things at any male visitor).

November 11th, 1993: Alice is then taken to Rutledge Psychiatric Institute, as she's gone catatonic from survivor's guilt and won't respond to any stimuli. It's not as horrific an experience as her Victorian counterpart experienced, but Rutledge is still underfunded and contains Pris Witless and the Monroe twins, so it's not great either. During this time, Bumby manages to deflect all suspicion off himself for starting the fire by setting it up so it looks like the family cat, Dinah, knocked some still-burning kindling out of the fireplace, and sets up his Houndsditch Home for Wayward Youth – an orphanage for disadvantaged children looking for new homes and mental health.

September 7th, 2002: Alice shows her first sign of conscious life in years by drawing a picture of a rather more twisted Cheshire Cat than normal, as her subconscious gets tired of her laying around and plunges her into a mental fight for her life and sanity in a ruined Wonderland. Alice proceeds to battle her way across the various domains over the next year, and successfully wrests her sanity back from her corrupted counterpart, the Queen of Hearts.

November 1st, 2003: Having recovered enough to warrant living outside a care facility like Rutledge, Alice is released into the custody of one Angus Bumby, whose methods of memory management are applauded and derided in equal measure. Alice is only too eager to submit to his decree to forget the fire, but her subconscious doesn't make it easy – especially since she keeps thinking he looks familiar. . .

January 27th, 2004: Victor, taking a gap year between high school and college (to delay having to major in business like his father wants) is "strongly encouraged" to start dating his across-the-square neighbor, Victoria Everglot, daughter of viscounts Maudeline and Finis Everglot. Victor's parents think it'll be an excellent way to earn some more social status (they're millionaires many times over from the Van Dort canned fish empire, but their nouveau riche manners haven't earned them many actual friends among the elite), while the Everglots are only allowing this because they've been running on the ragged edge of "broke" for a while now and William is hinting some loans might be a side effect of letting their children date. Neither Victor nor Victoria is thrilled to be pushed into dating a near-stranger. . .but once they properly meet, they find their personalities mesh nicely, and they decide to keep seeing each other on their own terms.

May 28th, 2004: Victor and Victoria have been dating for a few months by this point, enjoying themselves and growing closer. The Everglots are growing less-thrilled with the arrangement by the minute and are constantly pushing potential alternate suitors onto Victoria – Victor assures her that he won't mind if she goes out with a couple just to shut them up, but Victoria is doing her best not to give in just so they won't believe they can run her life. On the Van Dort side, though, Nell's grown impatient with the two just dating, and manages to get Pastor Galswells to crash their date at the local coffee shop to (very reluctantly) extol the virtues of marriage. Victor is mortified and bolts – Victoria follows him, and assures him that she's willing to wait for a commitment. They manage to recover the date, even getting a prize from a little arcade game outside the laundromat – a cheap plastic ring. Victor goes on a walk afterwards in the local woods to clear his head, and ponders if he's ready to get more serious with Victoria or not. In the process, he ends up doing a mock proposal to what he thinks is a bunch of hand-like roots by an old oak, reciting the town's founder's vows and slipping the ring onto a finger.

Turns out it's actually a root-like skeletal hand, which promptly seizes Victor's wrist and tries to pull him into the dirt. Victor fights free, only for a half-rotted corpse bride to rise from the earth. He flees for the bridge – she follows and catches up before he can make it back to town. Victor faints as she goes to kiss him, and wakes in a strange and colorful world that he is informed is the Land of the Dead. Apparently everyone thinks he and the corpse – Emily – are married thanks to him speaking the vows. Victor blurts out that it was a joke – then, seeing Emily well up, clarifies he had no idea she was even there. He asks who she is and how she even came to rise – her friend Bonejangles steps in, explaining through song that she's a murdered bride, killed by the man who promised to elope with her, who vowed to wait under that tree for her true love to set her free. Victor feels awful for giving her false hope, and asks if they can talk more privately. Emily leads him to one of her favorite lookout spots, where they run into Victor's old dog Scraps (now just a skeleton). Victor apologizes for the misunderstanding, and Emily apologizes for frightening him – she was just so excited about finally being married. They talk a bit about Upstairs versus Downstairs, and Emily admits that she misses the living world and would love to see it again. Victor decides that maybe this is the least he can do for her and asks if he can take her up on a pseudo-date (after clearing it with Victoria first). Emily is all for this, and they head over to Elder Gutknecht's, the local magician, who provides them with a spell to return to the Land of the Living after sunset and stay there all night – once dawn breaks, Victor will remain, and Emily return Downstairs. They spend the time until nightfall touring the Land of the Dead – Victor finds he quite likes it and Emily, and tells her that, even if the circumstances aren't the best, he's glad he met her. She is too.

Finally, night comes, and the two return to the Living world. Emily pulls Victor into an impromptu dance in the moonlight, then Victor asks her to wait in the woods while he gets Victoria and brings her around to explain. He heads over to the Everglots. . .only to find the police there, and the Lord and Lady in a tizzy. Turns out, while he was in the woods, the elder Everglots finally talked Victoria into meeting one of their chosen men – one Lord Barkis Bittern, a newcomer to town who's been sweet-talking them. Victoria went to meet him at the coffee shop – and now they've gotten a note from Barkis saying that they'll never see her alive again unless they pony up fifty thousand pounds – a sum of money they just don't have. A horrified Victor checks in with his parents to let them know he's all right (there was some worry that he'd gotten kidnapped too), then sprints back to Emily to give her the news. Emily is equally horrified – and a little concerned, as the man who murdered her was named Edward Barkis. Victor gives her the description he got from the Everglots, in case he spotted the guy – yup, that's the bastard who killed her! Emily's certain that, even if Barkis does get the money, he'll probably kill Victoria anyway, so time is of the essence in finding her. They use the "emergency escape clause" in the spell to head back Downstairs, and explain things to Gutknecht, who agrees to help. Victor gives Gutknecht a flower Victoria gave him earlier in the day to help him track down her location, while Emily rounds up a bunch of her dead friends to storm the place and rescue her. Gutknecht finds Victoria in, of all places, the church – the gang descends on it, and finds both Galswells and Victoria tied up, with Barkis standing guard. He's – naturally a little shocked to see a bunch of walking corpses demanding he free his captives, but manages to regain his wits in time to steal General Bonesaparte's sword and duel Victor (who gets a barbecue fork from Ms. Plum that he uses rather well). Emily saves Victor from a fatal stabbing after Barkis disarms him, and a sneaky call to the police from Bonejangles summons them to save Victoria and Galswells. Barkis is brought in, Victor and Victoria are reunited, and the dead prepare to head back down Below. Victor introduces Victoria to Emily, and they thank her for her part in saving her. Emily thanks them in return, saying she was happy to spare Victoria a variation on her own fate and that she's thrilled to see her murderer finally brought to justice. She says that she'll probably be moving on for real to whatever's next soon, now that that's no longer hanging over her head, but that she'll keep them close in her heart. They say a heartfelt goodbye, and Victor and Victoria head home.

May 29th, 2004: The next day, Victoria apologies to Victor, but says the whole experience has badly rattled her and she'd like to take a break from dating while she processes it all. (In fact, she plans to take a break from the whole village, having talked her parents into reopening an abandoned summer home that they were never able to sell for a couple of months.) Victor understands – his parents do not, and he ends up on their shit list for supposedly letting her slip through his fingers. Even worse, Galswells immediately starts accusing Victor of dark sorcery because of the walking dead (never mind that they helped save his life). Few people take Galswells seriously, but even those who don't blame Victor for apparently driving the man out of his mind, and he becomes a figure of mockery and derision in the village.

July 4th, 2004: Alice, having endured about half a year of only semi-effective therapy from Bumby in the Houndsditch Home, suffers another psychotic break while visiting Pris Witless (who took to blackmailing her about a comment she made while not really with it that suggests she might have some responsibility for her family's death) and tumbles back into a freshly-corrupted Wonderland. This time, the source of her troubles isn't the Queen, but some sort of terrible Infernal Train built in the factories of Hatter's Domain, which flies across the landscape spewing a horrible black goo called Ruin everywhere. Alice battles her away across various domains trying to track down who commissioned the Train and how to stop the Ruin, while in reality she wanders in a hallucinatory daze across London over the course of about two months. During her travels, she almost drowns in the Thames after falling in; narrowly escapes a fire at her old nanny's bar (and secret brothel), set by said nanny's ex-pimp; runs afoul of the police by causing a scene at her old family lawyer's house looking for her beloved toy rabbit; and ends up briefly back at Rutledge when the local cops decide she's too much of a danger to herself to roam unsupervised. She goes catatonic again for a bit as she braves the last of her domains, and awakens with the terrible knowledge that Bumby killed her family – and worse, his activities at Houndsditch are a front for child prostitution. He isn't removing the painful memories of the children under his care – he's wiping their minds entirely and selling them to unsavory sorts! She tries to convince the staff of Rutledge of this, but none except Dr. Wilson and Nurse Darling are willing to listen to her – and even they can't do anything without proof. Superintendent Monroe forces her to return with Bumby when he comes to pick her up. . .

September 7th, 2004: So Alice confronts Bumby herself about his wrongdoings shortly afterward, cornering him in the Moorgate Underground during a quiet moment. Bumby smugly admits that she's right, claiming he's giving the children under his care a "new purpose" – and that Lizzie deserved what she got. Alice realizes that the key he uses to hypnotize people is in fact her sister's room key, and reclaims it, furiously telling him she'll go to the police with it. Bumby tells her no one will ever believe her – Alice points out the security camera, but Bumby tells her it hasn't worked for months (he made sure of that, since he uses this station to drop off kids sometimes) and that the key isn't enough to reopen her case. She can either storm off in a huff and return to the asylum, or submit to his care as the "tasty bit" he'd hoped to make her.

Alice takes a third option and pushes him in front of an oncoming train.

Fortunately, she's able to spin the incident as an accident (Bumby falling in front of the train) and – after a search of Houndsditch reveals his private journal, with the ledger for his less-savory activities – no one's much inclined to look too much into his death. Alice still thinks that it might be a good idea to get out of the country, though, just in case. Besides, after all that's happened, she craves a fresh start in a new world. She gets the help of Dr. Wilson (now the director of Houndsditch) to track down her rabbit, and prepares to go as far from London as possible – Los Angeles, California.

September 10th, 2004: Around the same time, Victor finally snaps when he receives a letter from Victoria, telling him her parents have decided not to move back to Burtonsville as they don't want to confront the memory of Barkis – or the Van Dorts. Without the hope that they'll be reunited and possibly resume their relationship, Victor decides to leave Burtonsville himself, concocting a story for his parents about wanting to go to college overseas. He too eventually decides that Los Angeles, California is the perfect place to go and starts making plans.

October 1st, 2004: Emily, having finished up what she wanted in the Underworld and said goodbye to all her friends, prepares to move on to whatever comes next. With Elder Gutknecht's help, she moves Upstairs for one final look at the moonlight before releasing her soul. . .

Only to have said soul snagged and bottled by a mysterious stranger. Trapped and only vaguely aware of what's happening to her, Emily is taken back to the Giovanni mansion, where she becomes part of a strange ritual. To her shock, the ritual restores to her a – well, semi-alive body; she's basically a very well put-together and sentient zombie. The resident Giovanni are impressed with her construction, but displeased she won't follow orders (they were expecting a servant), and lock her in the basement of their mansion for further experiments.

October 7th, 2004: Emily gains a cellmate – Lizzie Liddell! Turns out her soul was snagged by another Giovanni around the same time Emily's was, and she too was subject to the same ritual – with the same result. The two girls quickly bond over their shared backstory of "a rotten man plundered and murdered me" (if in two different ways), and their worries about their living friends (Victor and Victoria) and family (Alice).

October 10th, 2004: Getting frustrated with the failure of their latest necromantic ritual, the Giovanni try just yanking a soul straight out of the Underworld at random. By sheer chance (or perhaps the table still being contaminated with a bit of Emily's hair), they get Bonejangles, who is very surprised at going from a skeleton the Ball & Socket pub to sort-of-living man on a cold slab in a mansion in L.A. He's thrown in the basement too when he won't play ball – Emily is equal parts shocked, thrilled, and horrified to see him. Lizzie takes a little time to warm up to him, but his extremely different demeanor from Bumby and the other Oxford toadies wins her over, and soon the three are planning escape attempts and wondering just what the world outside is like. . .

October 14th, 2004: Alice arrives in Los Angeles, having reclaimed her bunny and said her goodbyes to her family's graves. She manages to snag a room at a rather crappy motel at the edges of the city, and starts looking for work and a better place to live. Unfortunately, her presence is noted by one Fish, a 7th Generation Malkavian, who sees her madness and decides that she must be brought into the clan. And what better way to lure her in than putting an ad in the paper, claiming he has an apartment for rent. . .

October 20th, 2004: Victor arrives in Los Angeles – or, more specifically, Santa Monica. He snags a rather nicer hotel room and starts trying to figure out what exactly he wants to do with himself while he's here.

Three days later, the question is answered when a drunk driver plows into him, and he ends up in the local clinic. . .

[lilacmoon83]

The Convenience of Love

Also on Fanfiction.net and A03

Summary: Regina laments losing her friend Mal to her mother’s evil, finding that she has been turned to stone. Robin promises they’ll find a way to turn her back, while Rumple tells them they have the curse and must get it back. Meanwhile, Snow and David continue to enjoy their honeymoon. And Killian Jones returns to the Enchanted Forest after many years absence with his daughter Alice in tow.

Chapter 4: A Vicious Plot

Regina looked at the stone dragon with tears in her eyes.

"This was my mother…" she said angrily, as Robin put his arms around her.

"I'm so sorry, my love," he soothed. She sniffed.

"This is my fault. The only thing Mal did was be my friend. She was trying to be better, you know," Regina said.

"She regretted the way her relationship with Aurora fell apart and that she cursed her," she added.

"I know...but she may still be in there. She was only turned to stone. We shall seek answers and if it's possible, we'll change her back," Robin told her.

"They came here for a specific reason though. They have it," she stated. His brow furrowed in confusion.

"They have what?" he asked.

"The scroll that has the spell to cast the Dark Curse," another voice said and they looked over to find the Dark One standing there.

"You…" Robin said, recognizing him from an earlier altercation he had before Marian died.

"Easy...he's the one that helped David find Snow when my mother and her father cursed her," Regina admonished. Robin looked at him with scrutiny.

"Why would you of all people help Snow and David? And what did David have to do for your help?" Robin questioned. Rumble giggled and Regina sighed.

"He had to sneak in here and hide something for him. Fortunately, Mal was understanding," she answered for him.

"Yes...and I need Snow White and her Charming prince alive...and procreating," Rumple added. Regina rolled her eyes.

"Could have done without knowing that," she muttered. Robin shook his head.

"Okay...but what is this curse? It can't be the one you told me about," he admonished. But she nodded.

"It is…" she confirmed.

"And if they cast it rather than Regina...then it would be very bad for all of us," Rumple replied.

"I told you that I'm not casting it for you! I would have to crush Robin's heart and that's not happening!" she spat. There was a gleam in Rumple's eyes that told her that he knew something she didn't, but then that really wasn't unusual.

"Well, you're in luck, because I no longer want the curse to be cast. I want you to help me stop them," he replied.

"Since when?" Regina questioned.

"Since now...things have changed, as the future often does. We need to stop the curse now. That's all you need to know," Rumple answered.

"Which means we need Snow and David's help," she stated. She hated having to burden them with this, especially during their honeymoon.

"They're at his mother's farm. We know the way, but we must be careful. We cannot allow Leopold or Cora to find it," Robin stated. Rumple held out his hand and conjured a vial in his hand.

"Drink half of this each and it will conceal you in your journey," he said, as Regina took the vial and they prepared to journey to Ruth's farm.

~*~

David's face lit up at the sight of his wife bringing some water out to him.

"I thought you might be thirsty," she said, as he quenched his thirst.

"I was...thank you," he replied, as he pecked her on the lips.

"Mmm...I think I'm a bit hungry too," he purred.

"Mmm...you just ate," she purred back.

"Not for food," he said slyly, as he kissed her deeply. She moaned into his kiss and her arms encircled his neck, as he pulled her flush against him.

"Come on...let's go for a walk," he suggested, as he put his shirt back on and they joined hands.

"Into the woods?" she asked coyly.

"I thought so...and I know a little swimming hole nearby that I used to frequent," he replied. She bit her bottom lip.

"But we don't have swim clothes," she teased. He smirked.

"We're not going to need them," he responded and she giggled, as they headed off into the woods for a romantic respite.

~*~

Leopold gazed out from the balcony overlooking his Kingdom and then back at Cora.

"So we have the spell now. How are we going to cast it?" he questioned. She smirked.

"We're not...we're going to force Snow to do it," she replied. He looked at her with a questioning look.

"And how pray tell are we to do that?" he inquired.

"We give her no choice. We wait until she has something even more precious than her husband to threaten and then we make her crush his heart to cast our curse," Cora revealed. His eyes widened.

"You want to wait until she births a bastard child by that shepherd?" he asked.

"Yes...it will be perfect. In fact, I suspect that noble Prince Charming will even offer up his heart if he thinks it will protect Snow and his child. Then he will be gone and we will mold the curse into whatever we want," she revealed. He mulled those thoughts over for a moment.

"I do like the idea of ridding my daughter of that idiot in the process," he agreed.

"But we have no idea how long it could be until she is with child," he reminded. Cora smirked.

"Oh with those two, I'd say it won't be long," she replied.

"Then I guess we just wait," he said.

"Mmm...they will come for us and try to steal the curse away once they discover that we have taken it from Maleficent," she warned.

"Then I will increase our soldier's patrol," he offered, as he left to carry out that task, while Cora mused about their plan.

"Soon Regina...you'll be my dutiful daughter again and I can rid you of that forest dwelling riff raff. And your whore of a sister will be put back in her place," Cora cooed to herself.

~*~

Snow moaned sensually, as he kissed her lazily and they waded idly in the water. Her legs were still hooked around him and he was still inside her, as they slowly came down from another powerful bout of lovemaking, this time in the swimming hole he had frequented in his youth. As always, it was amazing and they were determined to make the best of their honeymoon.

"Oh David…" she uttered breathlessly.

"I love you so much…" he said in a husky tone, as he kissed her again and she tilted her head, as his lips moved to her neck. Their lips met again and then parted, as she pressed her forehead against his.

"I never imagined I could be so happy," she mentioned fondly, as she looked at him fondly.

"Me either...my fear was that George was going to make me marry someone I didn't love. He's not a good man," he mentioned warily.

"I know...and I know the only reason he allowed our union was because he knew he would get my Kingdom for it," she mentioned. He shook his head.

"I'm sorry...you know I've never been comfortable with that part of this whole thing," he said. But she shook her head.

"My father is out of power and as bad as George can be, he's a far cry from mine. And I really could care less about the Throne or riches, you know that," she said, as she slipped her arms around his neck.

"You're all I want or need," she assured and he smiled.

"It may be a business transaction to my pseudo-father, but for us, this is love," he agreed. She smiled.

"True love…" she said, as their lips met again. Peculiarly, a bird landed on a branch above them and chirped incessantly. Snow could tell it was trying to talk to her in the back of her mind, but her husband's lips on her neck was making it very hard to concentrate. Until the bird got a bit louder and he raised his head, as they looked up.

"What does it want?" he asked, with a bit of irritation. She smirked at him, knowing that he did not want them to be interrupted. But she frowned at his message.

"It's from your father...George. There's been some sort of development in the whereabouts of Cora and Leopold," she said. She had taken to calling him by his first name, for he had violated her in a way no father should ever and therefore she no longer considered him as her father. He groaned and scoffed.

"Leave it to George to interrupt our honeymoon," he grumbled, but she smiled.

"Like we need to be on our honeymoon to enjoy our marriage bed," she reminded. He smirked and pecked her on the lips.

"Touche," he agreed, as they got out of the water, dried off, and got dressed again.

"Will your mother be really disappointed that we have to go back early?" Snow asked, as she bit her bottom lip.

"A bit...but she'll understand. We have a Kingdom to rule and I'll admit, if this is a credible lead and I can put Leopold in a cell...then I'm very eager to do that. And she'll want that too," he said, as he cradled his face in his hands.

"Part of me will not rest while he's out there and threat to the love of my life," he added, making her melt beneath his touch. They started back and she hooked her hand on his elbow, while leaning against his arm, as they walked back to the farm.

~*~

The Jolly Roger surfaced through the portal and Killian Jones turned the wheel to steady her. He smiled down at the small blonde girl, as he placed his hands over hers and let her think she was helping to steer them.

"You're a natural, starfish...you'll be an expert at sailing the seas in no time," he boasted.

"Just like you, papa," Alice said fondly and his heart clenched. They had been through a lot and he was no longer the ruthless pirate he had once been. He spent the last several years raising his little girl inside a tower where a witch had trapped her. But fortunately, he finally found a way to free his little girl from the trappings of the tower. He found his way back to the ship and they sailed through a portal with the bean he had managed to acquire. This would be their new life and he saw the surprise in those that frequented the docks, as he brought the ship in. It was understandable, for it had been many years since he had been seen or heard from.

"Captain...is that really you?" Smee asked in surprise.

"Mr. Smee…" he greeted, as he carried Alice off the ship and they shook hands.

"Captain...no one has seen you in years. You've been presumed dead...Blackbeard controls the seas," Smee informed him.

"And years ago, that would have bothered me, Mr. Smee. But as you can see, my priorities have changed," he responded.

"Yes...I must say I am quite surprised myself," a voice cooed and he saw Cora there. Gently, he prodded Alice behind him and gave the woman a warning look.

"I am no longer interested in your games, Cora," he warned.

"No games Captain...I'm just here to chat," she replied.

"And is your depraved husband with you?" he questioned.

"No...I knew you would find his presence disturbing," she responded.

"He's a sick man and it's no secret what he did to his own daughter. As a father now...he disgusts me even more," Hook replied.

"Yes...you certainly have changed and I want to do the same. My daughter hates me...and I only want to help her see that we can have a good life," Cora said.

"Well, as long as you're married to the man that violated her sister, she'll want nothing to do with you," he replied.

"But there's a way we can have a better relationship. There's a way we can have a fresh start, as can you and your little one," Cora tempted.

"It's a place where that witch could never find you," she added, as he turned to look at her.

"What are you talking about?" he asked.

"There's a curse...a curse that can take us away from here and to a new land. If you help me, I can promise you and little Alice a very good, safe life," she replied. He thought about it for a moment, but then shook his head. He knew Cora well enough to know that there were people that wouldn't have good lives though and he was no longer that man that sought revenge and inflicted pain on others.

"Tempting, but Alice and I will do just fine here," he responded, as he took his little girl's hand. Cora smirked knowingly and expected his rejection. But it didn't matter. He would run off now to find Regina and tell his old friend of her proposition. It was all part of their plan.

"Where are we going, Papa?" Alice asked. He smiled down at her.

"I have some friends in this land," he told her, as they began their journey to Sherwood Forest.

[ramblingsofagaysian]

A Journey to the Past

A/N: 10 days and 2400 words later, I've finally finished this. I'm currently extremely angry with another community I'm a part of so feel free to send me puppies or something. Anyway.

My take on what happened after James.

-----------

Alice had always found it somewhat ironic that she had the ability to see into the future, yet had no memory of the past. After 90 years though, she tried to not let it get to her.

After all, curiosity killed the cat.

But she couldn’t help it. Not when James had been hunting Bella, and she found out she had a connection to James. That he was a link to her past.

And that’s how she finds herself sitting on the floor, reading a book on the history of mental asylums, surrounded by papers. The book, along with a few others, was in Carlisle’s library. “You may not like what you find,” he had warned her, the horrors he had witnessed cast a shadow in his eyes. His long life as a doctor probably felt even longer in this moment.

It had taken her a little while, finding documents like these was difficult even though they had started to archive them digitally. She printed out what she could, still a little old school and finding it easier to have things physically infront of her as opposed to several pages open on a screen. It felt like a puzzle, and she was putting together the pieces.

A birth certificate. A family tree. Some old photos. Articles from a local newspaper. A death certificate. A patient file.

‘Mary Alice Brandon’ had been her name, though it didn't feel like it. It felt too distant to really belong to her. She had been admitted to St. Dymphna Insane Asylum on the 15th of March 1920, the same date as the death certificate. The corresponding dates felt like too much of a coincidence.

‘Electroshock therapy’ was listed in her file. To treat ‘hallucinations and delusions of the mind’ it said. A couple of the main side effects of this treatment was anesthesia and temporary memory loss.

Clearly it wasn’t always so temporary.

The tattered book in her hands detailed the general treatment of patients of the time. Hair shaved upon admission, well that explained her short hair. Personal items removed, plain clothes for every patient, isolation in what looked more like cells than bedrooms.

Between the electroshock therapy and how patients were generally treated, these asylums seemed to be more like prisons than hospitals.

She could have just asked Carlisle what it was like, instead of doing all the research herself but he looked so haunted when she mentioned her interest. She didn’t have the heart to ask him after that.

She felt a pair of arms wrap around her. Jasper. His embrace filled her with warmth and she felt the mounting pressure in her body dissipate. It could have been Jasper using his gift or it could have just been the effect he had on her, either way she didn’t mind.

~~~~~~~~~~~

When Alice asked him to accompany her on a road trip, he hadn’t hesitated to say yes. She was half his heart and soul, after all. He also knew that this could, no, would be painful and he wanted to be there when she needed someone to lean on.

They told the family that they’d be away for a little while, not too long though. Just a trip to hopefully find some answers. Esme gave them both a hug just before they left, Jasper still wasn’t used to it. And with a car packed with Alice’s research, they left for their first destination.

~~~~~~~~~~~

It was going to take nearly 2 days to drive to Biloxi, or it would at normal speeds. But with a Cullen at the wheel of an Audi TT, they’d get there in half the time but with 20 hours still to kill, Alice started playing some music from a playlist on her phone. A playlist she had deemed ‘Their Playlist’.

It shuffled through and the opening chords of Jon Pardi’s ‘Head Over Boots’ filled car. Jasper’s eyes looked lighter as he gave Alice a small smile for her choice in song. Alice, just being Alice, kissed his cheek and started to sing and even act along to the music. His smile grew to a grin and he was even laughing along with her, his heart warming with happiness.

If he didn’t know Alice was a vampire, he could believe that she was a pixie or a fairy because, to him, Alice radiated pure magic.

~~~~~~~~~~~

After a while, Alice took to reading through her research.

She had a younger sister, Cynthia. A 9 year difference between them. Alice found it hard to imagine being a big sister both figuratively and literally. She was small, she figured she always had been. Her slight frame was made to look even smaller, compared to the rest of the Cullens. Rosalie was tall and statuesque while Emmett looked about the size of a bear.

Oh how struck with irony, their family was.

Following down the family tree, she found a familiar name. Alice. But this wasn’t her, this wasn’t Mary Alice Brandon. This was her sister’s daughter. Her niece! And she was still alive!

She had managed to dig up a few pictures. Her sister holding a baby, she must have been around her mid-20’s. Another, her sister a little older with a young child, perhaps around 7 or 8. It looked a lot like an older photo she had found, one of herself and her family. It felt almost sweet, she just wishes she could have been there.

Flicking through a few more, she found a picture that looked an awful lot like Alice, but perhaps a bit older and hair much longer. Could this have been her niece? If it had been, she was the spitting image of her namesake.

~~~~~~~~~~~

They reached Mississippi and they took in the sight. It had been a long time since either of them had been here, a small sense of nostalgia filled them both.

The asylum that Alice had been held in was now a museum. Jasper leaned over to her, “I know what you’re thinking. You don’t have to do this, you know”. But that was the thing, she did.

So with a quick nod and a determined face, she marched on, Jasper in tow.

They got tickets and walked in with a tour guide. The place felt eerie, like air was heavier and something about the place felt familiar. Not that either of them believe in ghosts, not that it would be overly far fetched if they did, but if they did they would be sure the place would be crawling with them.

They walked the halls, the tour guide’s voice moving them back in time. To most, place must feel creepy but to Alice, it felt cold and unfortunately familiar. Jasper held her hand as they walked through a corridor of doors that led to patient’s rooms. Alice had been right, it did look like a prison. Felt like it too.

They walked by one room in particular. A flash, an image, shot through Alice’s mind. The room had been set up with two beds clad in blue and white striped sheets, like it would have been when it was in use. She ran her hand over a spot near the edge of the bed. There was something that was nagging her at the back of her mind. Something that had been significant, but she wasn’t entirely sure what.

They moved on to different rooms. This one was a treatment room. A bed with harsh leather straps and some crude equipment set next to it. The box was a control panel, it had several dials with varying numbers and switches. Numbers notating current and voltage. Connected to the control panel was what looked like a mix between a stethoscope and a world’s worst set of headphones. The sponges would be dipped in water to increase the conductivity at the contact points across the temple, and a bar would be placed in the patient’s mouth to muffle the screaming, the tour guide went on.

This equipment wasn’t just crude. It was cruel.

Could vampires have panic attacks? She wasn’t sure, but they were about to find out. Alice felt Jasper squeeze her hand. The pressure was grounding and it was sorely needed. With a nod from both, they left the asylum.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Biloxi was hardly Paris, but they could still make the most of their time together.

So it was as they were taking a lovely walk down the beach, taking in the warm sea air without a worry of being caught did they notice a familiar scent. Just down a little further down the beach, was none other than Kate and Tanya.

Alice shot off, running toward them and yelling with a chuckling Jasper not far behind. “Hey! What are you guys doing here? It’s a bit far afield, is it not?”

The Denali sisters turned around at the sound of a friendly voice, smiling, “The same could be said for you, no?” They hugged and perched themselves on a wall. It had been a while since they had seen each other. They were relaying the missed gossip about Edward and Bella, a glint of mischief showing in Kate’s eyes at the thought of experimenting with her gift in the presence of a shield.

They eventually came to the topic of why they were in Mississippi. Kate and Tanya were simply travelling. It had been a while since they had been outside of Denali and thought it was about time they saw how the country may have changed since their last tour, looking through golden eyes instead of red. Alice and Jasper told them about James and his connection to Alice, about the depth of research and how that led them back to Alice’s hometown.

“Alice,” Kate began, “How badly do you want your memories back?” the quirk of an eyebrow was her reply. “You know how you can trigger memories with certain sensations?” a nod, “Well…” Kate lifted her hand, flexing her fingers slightly, “We could give it a shot? See if we can shock your system enough to bring something back?”

Alice seemed to contemplate the idea for a moment, eyes scanning the sea for an answer.

“Let’s do it.”

~~~~~~~~~~~

Kate held out a tentative finger to her arm, “Ready?” Alice nodded again, preparing for the pain. She felt the pseudo-electricity bolt through her, it was excruciating. It felt like a crackling fire was coursing through her body. As soon as it began, it dissipated.

But nothing.

Her brow furrowed in confusion. Surely that should have worked? Or it should have at least done something. Anything… Wait.

The head piece with the contact plates.

She lifted Kate’s fingers to her temple, “Try again”.

She sprung off the wall to the sand. Images, no, memories, came flying from the pain. A note hidden in her bed in the asylum. Her father sending her to the asylum, his plot to kill her for knowing too much. Her young sister’s face. Her mother’s voice. If she could cry, her eyes would be flooded with tears.

Jasper was immediately at her side when she came back to the present, his eyes were filled with concern. Kate and Tanya followed suit.

Alice recounted everything she remembered, the Denali sisters recoiled in horror at some of the details. For all their centuries of living, the cruelty of humanity never ceased to make them turn in disgust. And Edward believed that they were the monsters.

~~~~~~~~~~~

They made one last stop before heading back to Forks. The cemetery. The Denali’s joined them, they decided a visit to the rest of their cousins was long overdue.

One of the recovered memories had been her mother’s funeral. A heartbreaking day and she now remembers the feeling of dread, being too young and far from ready to say goodbye to her mother.

So with a bouquet of flowers, they went and found the grave of Lillian Brandon. What she hadn’t anticipated was that her father’s, sister’s and her own grave would be beside it. ‘Mary Alice Brandon, 1901-1920’. Seeing her own grave felt bizarre at best and harrowing at worst, especially when the person it belonged to had nothing to do with the arrangements. This wasn’t faking one’s own death. This was her father’s attempt at just getting rid of her. She didn’t hesitate to spit on his grave.

As she lay the flowers down, another woman walked up to Cynthia’s grave. She was much older, must have been in her late 60’s, if not her early 70’s, hair grey and not much longer than Alice’s. She placed her own bouquet of flowers down on the grave, she must have been her niece. It was times like this that she wished she had Edward’s gift.

“Here to pay your respect to lost loved ones as well?” the old woman spoke, her eyes not leaving the headstone.

“Uh, yeah. Kinda of,” the woman turned to look at Alice, “I-I like to put flowers down on the graves of those who died too young, like my mother. To make sure that they are never forgotten, even after their own families have passed away”. It wasn’t a complete lie. Alice had always found cemeteries peaceful, and found short lifespans tragic.

“No one as young as you should have had to lose their mother. I commend you, dear, for not letting such tragedy turn you bitter.” and with that, she left.

~~~~~~~~~~~

The 20 hour drive back to Forks gave Alice a lot of time to think.

She had found her past, and got back some memories. Some were good, and some not so much. But that was life wasn’t it? She had good and bad memories since she was turned, and now these memories are less painful. Alice has grown a great deal since then, and she certainly had fewer stakes now that she had outlived her father by many many years. A small connection had even crossed her path.

When they returned home, Esme was there to greet them when they came in. “How was your trip?” she’d asked and Alice had smiled wide and said it was good. The Denali’s came by the door not long after, and the reunion took place.

The final piece slide into place, the strange empty feeling in her chest filled, and the small nagging voice in the back of her head went quiet.

Some of the things she had discovered were horrifying, even tragic. But some were wonderful, and the time away had done her good. After all, it was better to know and deal with it than to not know and spend eternity wondering.

So yeah, curiosity killed the cat.

But satisfaction brought it back.