#whereas show mal is like actually pretty reasonable | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dylanobrienisbatman · 3 years

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The main problem with the whole mal vs the darkling thing in regards to being possessive (or really when it comes to any of their traits) is the fact that throughout, the darkling is clearly framed as the villain and his actions reflect that, whereas Mal as supposed to be the good guy and best romantic partner for Alina, and yet he has all these awful character traits and tendencies. So its less about how awful the Bad Guy is (since he's supposed to be), and more about how awful the person that we're supposed to believe is the best option for Alina is. I don't ship either, just my two cents.

Okay well... two things. First, your comment about "its less about how awful the bad guy is, since he's supposed to be", takes every comment I've made about Darkles out of context, which seems fitting since everything Darklina's spout about Mal is out of context. Him being the Bad Guy is fine, and if you like him AS A VILLAIN, and acknowledge all the bad shit he does, then my posts aren't for you. I think he's a very interesting villain, and a lot of the terrible shit he does that I have to keep making posts about make him a good villain, the problem is when the terrible shit the "Bad Guy" does is romanticized and viewed as the reasons why Alina SHOULD have picked him. So, don't assume everyone gets that "hes supposed to be awful". The point my post was making is that Darklina's love to call Mal possessive, but then turn around and act like Darkles literally enslaving her in somehow sexy and romantic. It's fucking not, and it's transparent as hell that y'all romanticize and sexualize the actually possessive character, and then project false character traits onto Mal. It's so transparent, it's almost funny.

But, more importantly, to your second, very wrong point, I wonder how much of the narrative about Mal having "awful character traits and tendencies" is actually a commentary on Mal as a character, or is it just Darklina's lying about things Mal has done and everyone accepting that misinterpretation as canon. Because, if were making a list...

Fuck boy - False! Mal was not a fuck boy! He was an attractive teenager who hooked up with consenting girls his age when he could, and he was not in a relationship during that time. Alina had never told him how she felt, so he is not beholden to her. (Also, nobody seems to have an issue with the fact that Darkles hooked up with Zoya in the show, that doesn't make HIM a fuckboy... interesting) (also also, nobody seems to discuss Darkles literally sexually assaulting Alina, and lying and manipulating her to get her to be physically intimate with him so he can use her... double interesting).

Slut Shames Alina - FALSE! The ever favourite callout line from Darklina's "He's all over you" isn't him slut shaming her. First, he has no idea what their relationship is like at that point, but more importantly, he is making an observation of her status in the little palace and how she has become his tool. He has dressed her up in his colors, made her put on a show for his benefit, and has created a situation where Alina appears to be his. Mal is noting that after months of searching for her, believing she was being hurt, tortured, or worse, when he arrives to save her, she looks like the Darkling's pet. (and, even if he WAS angry because he perceived them to be romantically involved, boy just spent months fighting for his life, lost multiple friends, and almost died to find her, all while coming to the realisation that he was in love with her, and then he shows up, after not hearing from her for months... I'd be pissed as hell too.) Important Note: He even acknowledges that what he said was wrong and tries to apologise, before Alina tells him that he was right. (Shadow and Bone, pg. 286). He also then apologizes, completely unprompted, for what he said. (Shadow and Bone, pg. 297).

Fat Shames Alina - False! This one is particularly laughable to me, because its one of the Darklina arguments that falls apart the second you actually read the scene. They are running for their lives in the forest, and Mal has to hunt and gather to feed them. He is noting that Alina's appetite has increased since he last saw her, and he makes a joke (ya know, how you do with friends) about how it would be easier to keep her fed if she still had her more meager appetite from before. He makes no comment on her weight, or her size, and he is not actually commenting on her appetite in a negative way, he is just acknowledging that it's a lot more work for him now that she eats more. Right before he says the line, the quote even proves that he isn't shaming her or thinking badly of her: "With a bemused expression, he watched as I gobbled down my portion and then sighed, still hungry". He is noting a change in her, and complaining that its made more work for him. If you think thats the same as fat shaming, well... thats a you problem.

Hates Alina's Powers - FALSE!!!! How to begin... do we talk about it was Mal's idea to hunt the stag in S&B, because he knew she needed it to be more powerful so she could stop the darkling? Do we talk about how he vowed to find the firebird for her, even though he was terrified of what all that power would do to her? Do we talk about how he literally died so she could achieve the power she needed to save the world? Or maybe we could talk about how he believed in her power more than anyone else, like when everyone was making bets about her abilities with the Cut and he knew she'd go further and better than anyone else expected her too, or when he tells her that he was never afraid of her powers, only what seeking all that power would do to her (which is literally the theme of the books, that power corrupts and seeking unmatched power can destroy you)? Mal being afraid of what is going to happen to Alina, being protective of her and worrying over her, is not the same as him hating her powers. He exists to help remind Alina of the themes of the story, and to guide her into maintaining her humanity.

Abusive - ... Do I even need to explain this one? Must I deign an explanation as to why this favourite Darklina lie is so fucking stupid, and also totally hypocrisy? No? Because we all know Darkles is actually the abusive one and they're trying to project their own shit onto Mal to further their abuse apologist agenda? Cool. Moving on.

Possessive of Alina - False! Throughout the entire series, Mal is quite literally the opposite of possessive, but yall just cant read. Not only does he quite literally step out of the way and allow Nikolai to court Alina without argument, which is the most direct example of him not being possessive, he also spends two full books believing, and repeatedly saying over and over and over, that they can't be together because he is not good enough for her. Mal believes, fully, that Alina deserves more than him, better than him, because he's just a tracker and a soldier, just a regular man with nothing to offer her but his love and his protection, and she is a Saint and should be a Queen. Possessiveness is the wish to own and control someone, it is literally the opposite of Mal believing that he's not good enough and doing everything he can to ensure that Alina achieves everything and gets everything he believes she is owed. A possessive character would not tell her to tell him to leave because he has nothing he can offer her, no title or land or country or crown. A possessive character would not promise to be the blade in her hand, because he believed he had nothing but the blood he could spill to offer her.

Angry - True! Yeah, omg, you caught us, Mal is ANGRY! Heaven forbid a teenager who is traumatized beyond belief and has to give up everything in his life, his position in the military (he deserted for her), his friends and the job he loved (Mikhail and Dubrov died for him, and he can't be a tracker in the army... because he deserted... for Alina), and, most importantly, he has to give up Alina (she should be Queen, he believes, and he has to give up the future he imagined with the girl he loves, who he was pretty sure loved him back, because she's a saint and queen and he's just a man), and more, is ANGRY. He has to be the one to find the amplifiers that he knows will end up hurting her, because thats what she needs to save the world. He has to sit by while Nikolai treats him like the dirt on his shoe and tries to woo Alina for his own personal gain (because Nikoalai did not love Alina. Maybe he came to care for her, but he proposed and spent all of S&S trying to get her to marry him when it was obvious they were not in love. He straight up says its so that the next King of Ravka can be married to the Sun Summoner. It's a power grab.) and he can't do anything about it. So yeah, Mal is angry. And yeah, sometimes he's even angry at Alina, just like sometimes she's angry at him. But they always find their way back, always apologize and try to be better for each other, and if you think anger is a toxic trait, and not simply a natural human emotion, might I suggest touching some fucking grass?

Idk why you thought I'd stand for Mal slander on my blog, cuz I will not. So, I'm gonna stop there, because I have shit to do today, but I really do wonder how much of Mal's 'toxic' or 'terrible' traits, that make him such a 'bad' love interest for Alina, really comes from Darklina's who refuse to actually read the text critically at all, and instead take everything he does and says out of context to further their agenda that Alina should have ended up as the Darkling's fucking slave forever, because thats the "girl power feminist" ending somehow. Mal supports her, loves her, sacrifices for her at every turn, and does everything he can do, to the point of literally dying for her, to ensure that she can defeat Darkles and save the world. He protects her, and when they end up happy and safe together on the orphange that they've rebuilt to help the children that were victims of Darkles war and genocide, he spends his days bringing her tea and cakes and flowers, kissing her silly under the stairs in the view of all the teachers, and calling her names like beauty, beloved, cherished, my heart for the rest of their ordinary life together, if love can ever be called that.

#Malina #anti darklina #malyen oretsev #mal oretsev #shadow and bone #if yall could just learn to fucking read... i am begging you

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serpenteve · 3 years

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people love to pull the “aLiNA iS 17!!!” card when talking about the Darkling, it’s just ridiculous to me because Alina and Mal are also first army members and no one cries “child soldiers!!” Applying modern concepts regarding age to fantasy or history stories will always irritate me.

But, I also don’t really get why YA authors are obsessed with giving their characters these ages, looking at Nikolai and Kaz’s life too, it makes almost no sense how much they were able to accomplish by 20 and 17 years old. It’s not as if we’re supposed to treat these characters as children.

It's pretty much a staple of the genre that you have to have protagonists within a particular age range (typically 14-18) and if it's not contemporary YA (which is a lot less popular than YA Fantasy) it's also very common for these technically-not-yet-adult characters to be acting in an adult capacity. For example, a lot of them will conveniently be orphans or will be spending a huge chunk of the story away from their parents or authority figures so they can have the space to make their own decisions without asking for permission from an adult supervisor that could hinder the adventure and pacing.

For the Grisha trilogy, I always read Alina and Mal as adults. They've served in the military for over a year, they don't require permission from previous authority figures (like Ana Kuya, for example) to make their own decisions, and like adults, they are free to make their own mistakes and face the consequences without having some parent or guardian swoop in and "fix" the problem for them. They are certainly immature and still learning how to take responsibility, but that's also a staple of the coming-of-age novel and watching that journey of self-actualization is what makes the genre so compelling to me. They are even considered mature enough to get married at the end of the trilogy. Six of Crows takes this up to eleven with all the major players being either orphans, estranged from their parents, or miles away from their parents. They grapple with a lot of issues that certainly would not be out of place in your typical adult crime novel.

There are a lot of YA books like this that would have worked better as adult fiction but perhaps the writer (or publisher) decided to change the genre to make it more marketable. The inconsistencies in the passage of time in the first book does give the impression that perhaps Alina and Mal were originally written to be older but then it was changed in later drafts. And considering about nearly half of YA readers are adults themselves, it doesn't surprise me that there's a lot of readers who outright ignore the ridiculous canon ages of the characters, myself included. Or that there is a push for more "mature" YA books that's given rise to genres like "New Adult" or whatever.

Personally, I think the reason so many adults read YA is because it's much more accessible and typically more fast-paced than adult novels. There's also more emphasis on character-driven stories and themes of personal identity and a narrative style that is more breezy and easy to digest in a few hours. It also helps that these books usually come with a built-in fandom to gush about whereas adult novels don't nearly have as much engagement from their readers or online communities devoted to analyzing every minor detail, unless you're one of the few popular fandoms like ASOIAF.

For the Netflix adaption, they have upped the ages and Alina is 25, which I thought was very interesting. I'm not sure what the official reason was for this---perhaps the book character was too insecure and inexperienced to be likable to a TV audience or maybe the show writers thought a cast of soldiers that are free to drink, fight, and sleep with whomever they want most obviously translated to adult characters as well.

Anyway, I also find it very interesting that certain parts of the fandom like to pick and choose between the two mediums (i.e. the books in which Alina is a 17 year old white girl vs the show in which Alina is a 25 year old half-Asian woman) to infantalize the character as much as possible.

Edit: Apparently Alina on the show is 21 and it's Jessie who is 25 🙈

#viv answers #and by 'interesting' i mean 'transparently dumb as fuck'#wow this was long i guess i had a lot of opinions lol

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petruchio · 3 years

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ok so! another cool thing we have learned from the shadow and bone adaptation is that the significance of your point-of-view choice in writing is essential, and must be done for a reason.

alina’s first person pov vs. katniss’ first person pov represent both sides of this debate, in that alina’s is what makes tgt NOT very effective, whereas katniss’ is what makes thg VERY effective. the key difference here is that we HAVE to have katniss’ first person pov, for a few reasons. first of all, she would seem pretty heartless if we didn’t, and her affect would be super flat--this is a big part of the reason why katniss in the films is such a flat character. without her internal monologue, we get no insight into why she acts the way she does, so she just kind of comes across as flat. we don’t get that internal monologue explaining that she’s acting that way on purpose, so that she won’t be seen as weak by her opponents. contrast that with alina--we don’t really need to know why alina acts the way she does, because she’s not a character who really does much work to hide her emotions. she just kind of says and does whatever she’s thinking. the

another key difference is that katniss always thinks she knows what’s going on. katniss spends so much time in her head explaining every single one of her actions, justifying why everyone around her is acting a certain way, or even just figuring out the narrative that she thinks is going on. thus, with every reveal that goes directly against what katniss has thought, it’s an absolute game-changer. she has a whole narrative that she’s built up in her head, and you, as a reader who is also in her head, believe her. it’s not that katniss is an unreliable narrator, it’s that she just doesn’t have all the information. so the stories she concludes out of her limited information seem true and valid, and you as a reader believe it because katniss believes it. by contrast, alina literally never knows what’s going on, and to be honest she doesn’t spend much time trying to figure it out or justify anyone’s actions. she pretty much has to go by whatever other people tell her, whether that’s the darkling, baghra, mal, or everyone else who just kind of explains things to her. and she takes most of it at face value, she doesn’t assign deeper motivations to anyone, at least not until after she’s figured out what their motivations actually were. thus, every reveal that goes directly against what alina thinks isn’t that much of a shock, because it’s just another person telling her something.

in terms of the love interests, this is another case where the point of view shift would have been beneficial in shadow and bone, but wasn’t in the hunger games. in the hunger games, what’s so amazing about katniss and peeta, is that peeta is being 100% honest with katniss, and her main problem is that she just doesn’t believe anything he says because of the insane situation they have been placed in. by contrast, mal is also being honest with alina by writing her letters, but since we never see that, it just makes him come across like an asshole because alina sees him as an asshole. it’s harder to flip that around for the reader, because it’s not obvious to us. so, in the show, when we’re able to see him writing the letters back and knowing she isn’t receiving them, he’s automatically like ten times more sympathetic as a love interest--we KNOW he is trying to reach her, instead of him just telling us that he was doing it like 70% of the way through the book after we’ve spent the entire opening thinking he was just being an asshole for no reason.

those are just a few examples of the ways in which the first person narrative is essential for the hunger games, but fails alina in shadow and bone. it would have served tgt far better to have been in third person, even potentially with multiple povs like six of crows, because the characters would have all been explained without them just having to constantly explain themselves to alina. by contrast, katniss’ personality and character must be driven by a first person narrative, because her justifications for everything are crucial for understanding her character and the world she inhabits.

#caroline speaks #grishaverse #thg #sorry more essays but like. damn #long thoughts

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whatshername-please · 4 years

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Out of the Water - Chapter VI

Synopsis: You were very proud to be a mermaid, thank you very much. You didn't want to be where the people were. Actually, you'd rather avoid it. Defending the merfolk was the biggest goal in your life... well, it was until you meet a certain pirate... it seems that your family really had a thing for humans, after all. Not that you'd ever admit it...

Word Account: 4875

Part 6 of ?

Pairing: Harry x reader (he is not in this chapter, sorry)

Warnings: Some cuss words and underage drinking.

A/N: English isn't my first language, so I'll probably mess up some tenses, grammar and stuff. Go easy on me, please. Feedback is always appreciated

Masterlist here

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"I'm never, ever setting foot on shore again, grandpa will have to find another diplomat because I quit!" you announced very eloquently to the only merman in the room: your brother who, on the other hand, was trying to make you help him with his summer homework.

"Yeah sure, it's not like you say this every time you come back from Auradon or anything" he didn't even bother looking up from his essay "Who won the battle of the Irish Sea?"

"But this time is true, they made it personal" you grumbled, swimming back and forth impatiently.

"They always do..." he said absently, knowing very well it was pointless to try to reason with you when you were having an outburst "Was it the Kappas?"

Ok, no matter how pissed you were, you could not have your own brother messing up the Water Kingdom's History like this, so you sat by his side and took the paper from his hand.

"Let me see this" you corrected him, perusing through the essay he wrote "Not the Kappas. The selkies won after the kelpies joined their side."

"I know you're sad..." Nereus said after a while, eyes filled with concern.

You sighed and put the essay down.

"I'm not..." you began, but he interrupted you before you could come up with some excuse.

People believing that you were angry and cranky was one thing, but Neptune forbid anyone to know you've got a heart.

"Yes, you are! It's been almost a week since you went to Auradon and I've never seen you so off. Yesterday Aethra said she couldn't wait until she was old enough to go to the surface and you didn't even roll your eyes. Last year, when Ogen spoke the same thing, you made a complete speech of why life under the sea is much better than anything humans have to offer, you had slides and everything."

He squeezed your hand gently and offered you a supportive smile.

"Even Aqua noticed how quiet you are… Please don't tell her I'm telling you this, but she said she prefers you ranting to this silence."

"I doubt" you let out a breathy chuckle.

The presence of your brother was comforting so you allowed yourself to let your guard down and lay on his lap while he stroked your hair. Both of you stayed a while like this, each one absorbed in your own thoughts. Yes, it had been almost a week since everything had happened and you still had nightmares about that; the look on Harry's face when he said Ben was just going to throw them all back inside the Isle would hunt you forever.

Truth be told, you swam next to the barrier a couple of times, but the only things you saw were seaweed, rocks, some weird looking fish and a dead goblin. It wasn't like you could ask someone to tell Uma you'd be expecting her and, even If you could see her, what would you do? People inside the barrier could not hear anything from the outside, and again, even if they could, what would you tell her? How sorry you were? That it wasn't fair? Uma didn't need anyone saying what she has known all her life.

You were torturing yourself, feeling your stomach turn on itself with guilty when your grandfather glided into the room. Both of you and your brother stood up, showing respect to the king of the seas.

"May I talk to you for a moment, my dear" he pointed to you and your brother took his belongings and left the room, he whispered a "good luck" as he passed by you and swam off.

"Yes, grandpa?" your chest filled up with hope that your grandfather had spoken to Ben and made him change his mind about the Isle.

However, it was only wishful thinking because the reality was way crueler than whatever you could have imagined.

"About tomorrow…" he started.

Oh no! Ben and Mal's engagement party was tomorrow, but you had already decided you weren't going, no matter how hard your grandfather or anyone tried to convince you to.

You couldn't stand the idea of having to smile to them while all you wanted to do was to scream and cry. How could you pretend that everything was okay when nothing was? The hypocrisy made you sick.

"I won't go" you told him, you even tried to use your 'heiress of the throne' tone, but of course the current king of Atlantica wouldn't fall for that.

"You're the diplomat between the human kingdom and the water kingdom" he reminded you, his expression turning as serious as his voice.

"Was" you corrected him "I quit".

That little voice inside your head was telling to stop defying your grandfather. He could be very understanding of some things (like you still didn't believe he knew about Uma all the time and didn't lose it), but he also had plans for you that required you to be Atlantica's representative, because, accordingly to your grandfather and mother, no one would defend the water kingdom's interests better than you.

Actually, that was their way of saying "We don't want to deal with this and since one day you'll have to rule, it's better that you know what to do. Also, we don't want the fish eaters thinking that we hate them".

But, being honest, your grandfather liked humans now as much as he did in the past; the only difference was that he learned how to tolerate them.

Anyway, the truth was: Auradon wasn't as great as people wanted to believe. In theory, having all kingdoms unified was a superb idea, but in practice most of places were losing their own cultural identity, adapting their traditions and habits to fit in Auradon's new rules. If your grandfather had followed all King Beat's proposals 20 years ago, Atlantica would have become a tourist attraction for humans.

It wasn't like King Triton didn't want to be more engaged in Auradon society, but he was afraid to lose the independence of the merpeople. Thus, he hoped that when you assumed the throne, you'd have a better foreign policy than he had without giving up Atlantica's culture and pride.

He looked at you and his piercing glare went right through your soul...

King Triton, intimidating? No, not at all.

"This is not just the King and Queen's engagement party, but also your friend's"

"But grandpa..." you cried out.

"I won't hear it" he raised his hand to show that his decision was final and he wouldn't hear anything else.

You tilted your head back and groaned, if you couldn't talk yourself out of this, you could very well show your dissatisfaction.

"Glad we came to an agreement" he gave a pleased smile like he always did when his wishes were fulfilled and, as he swam past you, he patted your hair "And you might end up having fun"

You rolled your eyes and lay on the floor, defeated. You don't know how long you stayed there, contemplating your misfortune, when suddenly you felt something walking on your tail; you craned your neck and saw Sebastian staring back at you.

"Traitor" you murmured.

"Being in the human world is never my choice. Your grandfather asked me to" he explained, sliding down to your side and you turned over to have a better view of him.

"No one likes to be there, so why do I have to go?"

"For the same reason I had: your grandfather is the king. But I didn't come to discuss the fairness of life" his words caught your attention and you raised an eyebrow in curiosity.

Sebastian seemed a little anxious: he looked side to side and beckoned to you to get closer and, when you did, he said in a muffled and rushed voice:

"You know Derek? That lobster? Yesterday, he was near the northern part of the barrier and saw a girl with teal hair there... even better, he said it was the second time he spotted her there by sunset"

Before you could refrain yourself, you picked the crab up, holding him on the palm of your hand. There was no use in denying that you knew Uma because Sebastian had followed you in Auradon and was aware that you and the sea witch's daughter were friends.

"What?" you practically yelled and your whole body shivered with joy for knowing that Uma had been looking for you "Are you sure?"

"Yes" he confirmed "I thought it could lift your spirit up "

"Sebastian it did! I'm going there now" you stood up in a heartbeat, but before you could make your way to the Isle, Sebastian called you.

"If you go there now, King Triton will think you're avoiding the engagement party" he remarked reasonably.

Damn it, he had a point

"Why don't you go tomorrow after greeting King Ben and his future queen?" He suggested, eyeing you innocently, but you saw right true his intentions.

The only reason he told you about Uma was to give you a boost of encouragement to go to Auradon again, this way you would be excited for the party and wouldn't complain too much about being there.

He was a clever crustaceous.

Well, it worked, at least now you could pretend you were having fun, whereas what you were really looking forward to was seeing Uma again.

"Deal" you hold out your hand and you he shake it to seal the deal.

Even if the party was dreadful, the perspective of meeting Uma again was pretty motivating. You should have asked if Derek saw someone else with her, it was weird but you wouldn't mind seeing Harry again.

_____________

"Ugh, I can't believe I'm going back there"

Talking to Sebastian got you very excited; however, now that you really had to go, you were having second thoughts about it.

You didn't have to attend to any human gathering to go to the barrier; you could very well wait in Atlantic until sunset.

"Why can't grandpa send someone who actually wants to be there? Aqua wouldn't mind, or April or Adryan..." you whined - any of your cousins would gladly go to Mal and Ben's engagement, but of course you were the one your grandfather insisted on.

Nereus, who tried to fix your hair in a new style, hummed blankly to show he was listening.

"I'm feeling sick... Grandpa can't make me go if I'm sick" you turned your face to him and he casted an annoyed look at you before going back to applying pearls in your hair.

"You already used that one not to go to the Royal Cotillion" he reminded you, turning your head forward impatiently when you tried to look at him again.

"But I was sick" you protested, earning an amused glare from him "I was sick of human's bullshit".

He burst out laughing.

"I don't think our grandfather will consider it a good reason to skip this ball" he said after regaining his composure.

"Well, at least I'll be closer to the Isle" you mumbled to yourself, but Nereus heard you.

"Why? What will you do?" he stopped what he was doing and sat on the dressing table, staring at you "Please, don't tell you plan on bringing the barrier down by yourself".

"I don't have the power to do it… You know I've tried" you joked and thankfully, Nereus played along.

"You don't need power, use your head... I mean... it is very hard. I'm pretty sure if you swim fast enough you can make a whole in the barrier"

You punched him playfully and got up.

"Hey, I didn't finish your hair" he called out.

"But I have to go, otherwise I won't arrive in time" you explained, grabbing your comb and placing it between the shells and pearls your brother had adorned your hair with.

Of course, the truth was you weren't leaving because you didn't want to be late, but because your brother was smart enough to figure out that you were up to no good.

"Wish me luck" you hugged him.

"Good luck!" he kissed your cheek and with that, you left.

Your mother told you to be kind and not to forget the manners she taught you, your grandfather said how proud of you he was and even asked if you didn't want to take his royal carriage, to which you denied politely.

You rather swam by yourself and if you were going to the Isle after the party, a carriage pulled by dolphins would be hard to go unnoticed.

You bid goodbye and took the path towards Auradon. The City wasn't close to Atlantica, but years of comings and goings made you an expert and you were able to arrive there in a very short time. Also, fins were so much faster than legs, which made the travel easier.

In other circumstances you'd have stopped to talk to many friends that lived nearby, but a little mantra was echoing in your mind "The faster you get there, the faster you leave. The faster you get there, the faster you leave" - you didn't mean to stay more than the necessary; after all. Your grandfather told you to go to Auradon, but he didn't say how long you had to staythere.

Besides, Sebastian said Uma was seen at the barrier by sunset, but what if she decided to go earlier? You were going to be there one hour in advance for precaution.

Although magic was highly discouraged, there was no other way for the merpeople to become human without it. That's why a magical necklace was given to any mermaid or merman who wanted to venture themselves ashore.

Those necklaces weren't given away easily, though. In order to acquire one, you had to fill a formulary explaining why you needed it and it had to be accepted by King Ben and King Triton themselves. It was very bureaucratic and the only reason this process had to be done was because King Beast declared all magic should be banished so you could not hand around magical objects freely.

However, since you were a royal diplomatic, they made an exception.

Call it privilege.

One good thing about those necklaces was that King Triton made sure that once you went through the transformation, clothes would magically appear to. It was a huge improvement since your aunt Ariel had gotten her own legs from her deal with Ursula; imagine how would it be if you had to walk around naked until you find something to wear.

At least the merfolk didn't have to worry about that anymore. So, once you got on the beach and turned into human you had on a beautiful dress that matched the shells your brother chose to decorate your hair.

It wasn't as pretty as your tail and fins, though.

You headed to Auradon Prep because the party would be held near the school (why they were so obsessed by this place was beyond your comprehension). When you finally arrived, everyone was already there, talking and having fun.

Thankfully, your cousins that lived in Auradon weren't hard to find and rushed towards them - you couldn't help but notice that, as you got closer, they exchanged money between themselves.

"What's going on?" you asked, intrigued by what you just saw.

"Nothing" Arabella answered "What a lovely dress you're wearing. How is gramps doing?".

She changed the topic way too fast, which made your curiosity grow, but you decided to ignore it for the time being.

"He is fine. He misses you a lot and says you should visit us more often. I can't understand Bella, why do you prefer being here among sweaty humans?"

"Do you ever change the subject?" she complained, rolling her eyes "This is a party and I refuse to deal with your bullshit today"

"Maybe tomorrow, then!" you fired back and she voiced her discontentment with an exasperated shriek.

"Why are you like this?" she said before flouncing off, bouncing her hair as she did so.

"What did I do?" you asked Ella, who had been quiet up to that moment, and she chuckled.

"I miss this" she said, pointing to you and the crowd.

"You're the only one"

"It wouldn't hurt if you came to visit us once in a while, you know" she looked up, her hopeful smile made her eyes crinkle and you mirrored her expression, smiling too.

Ella was Ariel's younger daughter and, even though you didn't see her as much as you would like, she was probably your favorite cousin; she was kind and outgoing, which was a good counterpoint to your not so affable nature.

Before you could reply, one of the merfolk who attended Auradon Prep joined you both, he gave you a little bow and handed your cousin some money. You waited for him to leave before question her about it.

"Ella, what's happening?" your tone made clear you wouldn't take a "nothing" for an answer.

The girl sighed, knowing it was a lost battle.

"Maybe there is a bet going on…" she told you, voice trailing off.

You raised an eyebrow, face turning stoic and you feigned boredom.

"Does it involve me?"

"Well, some people didn't believe you'd show up today after the whole Audrey fiasco" she glanced at you out of the corner of her eye and, when you didn't say anything, Ella went on "We made a bet: everyone believed you wouldn't appear, you know. I was the only one who knew you'd be here and now I'm making a lot of money."

She showed you the amount she had already won and it was kind of impressive. It seemed that half of Auradon was sure you hated the human world.

They were right.

Okay, not hate. It was a great dislike.

"I can't believe you thought I'd come" you said without hiding the indignation in your voice and a little offended that your own cousin didn't know you better.

"C'mon. I knew you wouldn't want to, but I was certain grandpops wouldn't give you much of a choice, so even against your will - and I know you must had protested a lot - you'd be here today"

Your cousin was kind, yet cunning, and that was why she was your favorite.

"I'm impressed" you clapped, nodding your head slowly as you did so.

"I know. I'm amazing" she teased and then, her expression became concerned "How are you, by the way? I've heard they will close the barrier forever"

You whined, for one moment you had forgotten about how you failed the Isle and Uma. First you were angry at Mal and Ben, but now? Now you wanted blood... not literally, but you were kind of mad.

"I've been better... you just remind me I had to wish Ben and Mal my best regards in the name of Atlantica."

"Okay, see you later" she cheered and added on for precaution "Try to be polite, please"

When she asked you that, the memory of Sebastian, your mother and grandfather pleading you to be civil in this party echoed in your mind.

What did they think of you? That you were a mannerless monster?

You were very well educated, thank you very much, but didn't waste your good manners on people who didn't deserve it.

"Can't make any promises" you laughed off, disappearing into the crowed to find the King and Mal.

You didn't have to look for them for long as a mass of people was surrounding the fiancés to be while they thanked everybody for coming to their party. They seemed so merry and pleased whilst their subjects wished them all the happiness of the world. People in Auradon were just so fucking good and gracious, weren't they?

Hypocrites.

You had a plan, though.

1- Smile.

2- Greet.

3- Leave.

It was simple, short, and impossible to mess up.

Smile, greet, leave, smile, greet, leave. You kept repeating it like a mantra as you approached them.

For one moment their cheerful expressions froze and their eyes widened to the size a saucer, but they recomposed themselves quickly enough. Either they were surprised to see you there or they were afraid you were going to snap.

But you wouldn't snap.

You had a plan.

"Your Majesties" you smiled, bobbing a curtsy to them.

1 - Smile. Check.

They saluted you, asking how things were back in Atlantica and the conversation was brief and polite, like it should be.

"In the name of Atlantica I wish you both prosperity and wisdom to rule, and that your life is filled with great joys"

You said that in a very diplomatic tone that could have fooled anyone.

2 - Greet. Check

They thanked you and you made your exit.

3 - Leave. Che...

"And…" you turned back with a spin.

Screw the plan; you didn't sell your voice to a sea witch, so you may as well use it.

"Speaking for me, I really want you both to be happy. I mean, someone has to, right? Considering that you doomed thousands of people to a life of suffering just so you could have your perfect happily ever after without any inconveniences"

Then, you left.

One day you'd be all diplomatic and shit, but that day wasn't today.

And, to be fair, you've tried to be reasonable for years and all you got was "Oh sorry, we can't let anyone off the island. It's not that simple, this would require lots of planning and social reintegration, but we will take this matter into consideration in the future...". That's why you started speaking your mind: even if didn't change anything, at least it wouldn't leave a bitter taste in your mouth for not saying your real opinion.

Yeah, your grandfather really should reconsider who he sent to land for affairs of state.

Whatever, just a few more hours and you'd be making your way to the barrier to see Uma.

You were trying to find your cousin again when Audrey intercepted you, looking rather tense.

"Hey" she greeted you but without meeting your eyes.

Audrey seemed to have taken a strange interested in her hands, which she wringed unsteadily, you noticed.

"I just wanted to say I'm sorry for.. you know... cursing you and your family..." she said, voice shaking a little.

Oh! So Audrey was a nervous wreck to talk to you, how amusing. It boosted your ego but you weren't that mean.

"Relax, Audrey. It's all forgiven" you put her mind at ease.

She let out a breath and her face brightened up.

"But" you offered her a smile that slowly fade into a severe frown "If you do it again I'll make you wish for something as sweet as sleeping for 100 years".

It was clearly a joke but Audrey didn't get it as she excused and made herself scarce in seconds.

"You know... if you want people to understand when you are joking, you shouldn't keep a straight face"

You jerked your head to face Jay, who handed you a glass with a purple liquid in it.

"I wasn't that intense" you took a sip of the drink, it was way too sweet for your salted water taste, and you were pretty sure that it was alcoholic too.

Well, maybe alcohol was the key to survive this party.

"C'mon! You were like this" he mimic you, making quite a murderous expression. Then, resuming his neutral expression, he added "You are like the sea'.

That was new… but you weren't sure about what he meant by that.

"I'm salty and I scare people?" scrunching your face up in confusion.

It took some good minutes for Jay pull himself together.

"I was going to say imposing and beautiful, but that too" he said, wiping the tears from his eyes.

You couldn't help but crack a smile and, since you didn't think of a good answer (which was very unusual), you took another sip of whatever beverage that was.

Fortunately, Jay didn't notice how embarrassed you were by his compliment and changed the topic soon after.

"So, how ar..."

"Stop right there" you warned him, holding your finger up.

"What?" the VK's brows burrowed in confusion but deep inside he was afraid that he had said something wrong.

"I know this face." you explained "Every time people ask how I am, they do this pitiful face and I can't have that... not from you…".

It was painful how most people assumed that you were miserable because of last week events. Okay, you were sad and pissed but gosh, you hated that condescending attitude.

"Sorry, I just wanted to make sure you were okay" he didn't seem offended by your words, but the atmosphere between you two grew colder and awkward.

Great, of all people you could have snapped at today, you did it to Jay.

Now, you were sad, pissed and stupid.

"Sorry... I didn't mean to be rude" you apologized "If you really want to know, I'm a mess. The only reason I didn't cry this whole week was because I live under water, but if you tell this to anyone, I'll deny it".

"It's going to be our secret then" Jay stroked your arm to show support "You really care about the Isle, don't you?"

You shrugged, not knowing what to say to him. Yes, you cared about the Isle and the people there; it was hard to explain the reason, though.

Maybe another time…

"By the way, I wanted to ask you this..." he cooed and if you hadn't been so busy with that drink, you'd have seen the mischievous gleam in his eyes "Did Uma and you already know each other, by any chance?"

You choked.

Hard.

Jay went to your aid quickly and helped you to recover, slapping your back lightly.

A mermaid choking on a liquid, what a joke.

"No..." your voice cracked and it wasn't because you're still faint "Why would you think that?"

"Well…" he began, but was cut off soon after.

Thank goodness, Mal and Ben announced they would start their pronouncement and Jay joined his former friends. All people gathered under the balcony where the Royal Family stood proudly, and everybody was eager to hear the news their King and Queen would say.

It was difficult to hear one's thoughts over the cheering and acclamation. However, since you didn't share their happiness, you stayed away from the commotion, enjoying your sweet drink.

Ben started his speech, of course he was very pleased to have Mal as his queen and everyone was happy.

Everyone, except the people on the Isle, of course.

You scoffed so loudly that if people hadn't been hearing Ben's speech, they would have heard you. Subsequently, the king proposed a toast to Mal and you wondered if it would be rude to ignore it.

Everything would be so much easier if your grandfather had made your brother the diplomat of Atlantica, considering he was a people pleaser like you would never be.

Well, it wouldn't hurt to raise your glass, so you did it... very discretely.

For everyone's surprise, Mal announced she couldn't be Queen of Auradon, causing a wave of gasps and murmurs from the puzzled crowd.

Really? Were they really surprised? Like, Mal was a drama queen, she just needed an emotional solo or Evie knocking some sense into her head for her to change her mind.

Unless it involved the Isle of course, then she didn't care to condemn them forever, you thought bitterly.

Yep, you were salty enough to cause hypertension in every single soul in Auradon.

However, you did not expect, not even in your wildest dreams, what followed next. Actually, even after years, you'd still remember that day and think "what the hell just happened". If people were shocked when Mal said she couldn't be queen, they nearly had a stroke when she brought down the barrier. It wasn't like she let just the villain kids off, she destroyed the barrier, and everyone was free.

As a personal note, you observed how fast Ben changed his discourse from "We can't get the merfolk off the Isle without consequences, we need preparation, meetings, plans..." to "Ok, my bae wants to bring down the barrier and I won't argue with her. So yeah, let's do it".

Not that you were complaining but, had you known that it only took a love potion for Ben do what you wanted, you'd have done it.

Wow! What a wild thought to have...

Maybe you were getting a little drunk...

But the barrier came down so, whatever...

You looked at King Beast's face and he was about to pass out any moment, but other than that, everyone seemed very excited to meet the villains.

It wasn't like a minute ago they didn't give a damn about the people there or their fate.

Well, maybe that was Auradon's magic: one moment you hated each other, in the next you were all singing and dancing on a bridge.

You finished your drink in one go, because that was going to be a party to remember.

#harry hook x reader #harry hook x you #harry hook imagine #descendants imagine #descendants x reader #Out of the Water #uma daughter of ursula #jay son of jafar #mal and ben appear too but meh #harry hook fanfiction #descendants fanfiction

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goatsandgangsters · 3 years

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okay okay okay EPISODE 6. I’m still… out of fucking breath. from the last one.

I didn’t plan on live-blogging because then I’d have to keep pausing to type but actually I’m having too much fun, I guess I’m liveblogging now

my posts just keep getting longer and more and more incomprehensible

I forgot to mention in my last one, but it was a really good call to include the whole “west ravka wants to secede” plot line. it adds a lot, politically, and also adds a sense of urgency. whereas the book is a little bit like, the darkling is kind of a dumbass if you think about it because ALL HE HAD TO DO WAS WAIT LIKE 50 MORE YEARS, WHICH IS NOTHING IN THE GRAND SCHEME OF THINGS, but now there’s definitely like. political urgency and necessity that the books don’t convey to the same degree.

also adds a lot of dimension to What Happens At The End of The Book. which, I’m not there yet, episode-wise. but liiiiiiiiike.

BEN! BARNES! HAS! THE! RANGE! oh I love that they let him be lovesick and terrifying back-to-back like this, god he’s so fucking good. like, we all knew? we all knew this was a stroke of absolute casting genius? but god I don’t think we were actually capable of realizing To What Degree

oh god Inej looking at Alina I’m gonna CRY I actually got teary-eyed??

poor fedyor. he was planning so many double dates and then darklina had to go and breakup. (side note: I am SO INTRIGUED that the darkling thinks ivan is hilarious, so I just think the two “grumpy one/sunshine one” couples should go on a double date. get ravkan ice cream. why can’t this family ever have a funky fresh good time)

“I’ll never let go, helvar”

yo, real talk, why’s the darkling’s bed so short. dOES HE SLEEP WITH HIS LEGS DANGLING OFF THE END. this furniture is absolutely not proportionate to his height at all.

also it’s interesting how often he calls her “miss starkov” instead of alina, considering in the book he’s like “hello alina, how are you alina, alina how is alina today, alina I’ve seen what you truly are alina, FINE alina MAKE alina ME alina YOUR alina.” I’m pretty sure when I first read shadow and bone, literally the only reason I learned alina’s name is because he kept saying it

FASCINATING, CANON ZOYA/DARKLING???????????? honestly don’t know if I like that??? I prefer to think that he has not gotten laid in a couple hundred years because he’s just bad at being a person and isn’t actually as slick as he thinks he is. I cannot believe they un-canoned Zoya/Mal and canon’d this, UNEXPECTED. feels weird.

on the plus side, I genuinely want a polycule of a solid half the trilogy characters and I guess it’s getting more canon by the minute! this is zoya and her girlfriend alina and alina’s three boyfriends mal, darkling comma the, and nikolai, who are also or have been zoya’s boyfriends at one point or another plus alina’s girlfriend genya who is also zoya’s girlfriend genya and genya’s boyfriend david” I’m allowed a seven-person polyship right?

fedyor and ivan go on double dates with the seven-person polycule. it’s a really tight booth in restaurants.

also this is zoya’s ex-girlfriend nina who sometimes visits from ketterdam and brings her boyfriend and her girlfriend, and her girlfriend’s boyfriend, and his boyfriend, and his boyfriend.

AND THEN THEY ALL GET BRUNCH, THANK YOU AND GOOD NIGHT

baghra can come too but only because she likes getting day-drunk on mimosas with nikolai and bITCHING with him

god I miss brunch. and friendship. and cocktails. and human contact.

anyway back to actually watching this episode

I really like that Alina is about 10x more Actively Involved in everything that happens to her vs. in the first book where she’s more along for the ride

it is emotionally a weird experience to see Mal get pelted with a water bottle and go YEAAH followed by aw nah, he doesn’t deserve that. There is A Mal in another universe who deserves to get pelted by 15 water bottles but it is not this Mal. This Mal can stay. Book Mal is on thin fucking ice and will be pelted with water bottles. But Show Mal is Valid and Allowed. god Archie’s SO FUCKING good. I CANNOT BELIEVE I’M HAVING SOFT FEELINGS ABOUT THIS BUT HERE WE ARE, LIFE IS FULL OF SURPRISES, such is archie’s power and he deserves praise

“Your powers don’t scare me” OHHHHHHH SUCH AN IMPROVEMENT THANK GODDDDDDD !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

WHAT the FUCK I am having EMOTIONS over malina scenes

I LOVE NINA SO FUCKING MUCH. I love her endlessly giving Matthias a hard time. he deserves it. god I love HER SHE’S SO GOOD!!!!!!!!

ohhhhhh the MLEMS are FIIIIIGHTING

OHHHHHHHH THE EMO BOYS ARE FIIIIIIIGHTING

oh. my god. they stole the fuckin. they. okay but like, his horsies tho :(((((

KHDFGKSJDFHGSKDFJHGKH DAVID!!!!!! hkdfjhgdfkjghsdfhg d a v id. fjkdhgsdkjfhgdfh dddddaaavviiiiiiidddd. DAVID.

I absolutely love the thought of the darkling, ivan, and david hanging out, because it’s like the three least social people in all of ravka. and they absolutely LOVE one another’s company because no one talks, there is no small talk, and they can just SIT in SILENCE and it’s nICE. sometimes they make brief eye contact and nod a couple times and then go back to politely sitting in silence.

sdfjkghskhdf his disdainful little ~a d o r a b l e~ about mal and alina deeply resonates with my experiences of reading the books. though AGAIN, WEIRD TO BE HAVING FEELINGS NOW.

GOD SO NOW I HAVE TO DECIDE!!!!! IT’S SO FUCKING TEMPTING TO WATCH 7 AND 8 TOMORROW NIGHT. IT IS SO TEMPTING. THEN I CAN UNBLACKLIST IT AND REBLOG ALL THE GIFETS.

BUUUUUUUT I have a busy and hectic week and 7 and 8 would be a really nice treat to have waiting for me NEXT Friday as motivation to get through the week

But that also means I have to keep being vigilant about not looking at Content for another week AND IT’S REALLY HARD TO MAINTAIN THAT RESOLVE NOT TO LOOK

god I don’t know what to do. delayed gratification normally comes so naturally to me, this is an actual struggle. I thiiiiiink I’m gonna try and hold off because future!me will be grateful next friday. but mid-week me who wants to look at gifsets will be mad.

#it took me like two hours to watch because I kept pausing to liveblog #and go on tangents about polycules and brunch #I recognize that that was a BIG tangent but also like.#feel free to join me in 'everything is brunch and nothing hurts' world because it's nice there #I really want the enormous ravkan polycule and the enormous ketterdam polycule #and I will take ANY opportunity to talk about the single most important brotp in the entire grishaverse which is baghra and nikolai #it is not REMOTELY RELEVANT TO THIS EPISODE but I will TALK ABOUT IT #okay I think that's enough tags that it won't show up in tracked tags #grishaverse #shadow and bone

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where-theres-smoak-2 · 3 years

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S&B Book Review From A Show Viewer.

I did it, I got the Shadow and Bone book yesterday and I’ve just finished it. I have to say the ending left me both shocked and flabbergasted and not necessarily in a good way but I will get into why soon. I don’t want people to think that I thought the book was bad because its not, I thought it was ok, I mean its not my favourite fantasy novel but I still enjoyed parts of it. I think the best way I can describe my feelings about it is you know when a film comes out that’s based on a novel they always say watch the film before you read the books or the film will disappoint you, well I feel like its the other way round with the books, I just think the show is better than the book, and by watching the show first I was a little disappointed with the book and I do think if I had read the book first I would have enjoyed it more if that makes sense. But like I said there were parts of the book that I enjoyed there were even some things that I think were handled better in the book than in the show. But overall in my opinion I do think that the show is better. So in this review/ comparison I am going to talk first about the parts that I wasn’t so keen on then the parts I liked as I like to end on a good note. Also let it be known I have only read the first book and obviously there are spoilers for both the first book and the show. The rest is under the cut.

Dislikes.

1) The Characters.

So when I got half way through the book there was something about it that just didn't feel right to me and I couldn’t, at first, put my finger on what it was. For some reason I just wasn’t enjoying the book as much as I thought I would. Then it hit me, I didn’t really like any of the characters. In the show I loved or at least liked pretty much every character. For example Marie and Nadia, although they were only side characters who didn’t get much screen time, I liked them, they seemed like such sweethearts. But in the books Alina describes them as being two faced, how they are all sweet to Zoya to her face but then are mean behind her back and Alina wonders if they are the same with her and she doesn’t really seem to trust them. Whereas in the show like I said they seemed genuinely sweet and it seemed like Alina really was friends with them. Another example is Dubrov and Mikhael. They are only really in like a paragraph or two of the book and they aren’t nice at all. In the show they were lovable goofs, their friendship with Mal is soo wholesome and we see Alina meet them for the first time. However in the books Alina already knows them and they refer to her as ‘sticks’ which she hates and she also thinks about how Mikhael had once ‘pawed at her’ whilst drunk. The reason why I think their show counterparts are better (other than they just seem to be nicer human beings) is because I liked them I was sad when they died. I was upset when Marie died. I cried when Mikhael and Dubrov died, because I cared about their characters. Whereas in the books to be honest I really couldn’t have cared less when I learnt that they had died.

Even the main characters didn’t do much for me. It’s not that I didn't like them I just didn't love them the same way I did in the show. I can understand now why so many people dislike book Mal. He is barely in the first book, in the beginning its not that he’s a bad person but its obvious that Alina feels ignored by him and he’s a little oblivious to her, its the classic taking a friend for granted until you lose them and then realise how much they meant to you situation. I think the fact that we don’t see any of what Mal is up to whilst they are separated doesn’t do any favours for the character in the book. When he does show up he is cold and actually kind of mean to Alina. I do believe that alot of this is because he is traumatised by witnessing the deaths of his friends but I will get into that more later. As for Alina and the Darkling again I didn’t dislike them I think out of all the characters they were the most interesting but I didn’t feel that same connection with them that I did in the show. Basically there wasn’t a single character where I had that I love this character moment, I was just kind of meh about them all.

2) Alina’s Age and Agency.

Another thing that the show did better in my opinion was aging Alina up and giving her more agency. In the book she is only 17 and I think you can tell that. She is much more timid and dare I say whiny in the book. I mean she comes across as a teenage girl which is what she is so it’s not the books fault she was written as she was supposed to be. But after seeing her show counterpart who wasn’t afraid to stand up for herself and defended Mal the book Alina seemed like a different character, one that I felt like I just didn’t know and one that I didn’t love as much as the show version. I mean in the show Alina shows these moments of defiance. Like when she is first brought to the General’s tent and he asks ‘well’ and she replies ‘well what’ before remembering who she is talking to and adding ‘sir’. Again when the Queen in making the comments about her being Shu and asks her maid to say good morning to her. And so Alina tells the queen she doesn’t actually speak Shu before again remembering who she is talking to and adding ‘your highness’. When Mal is being bullied at the orphanage and she threatened the bully with I think it was a letter opener. She has this kind of snarky, sassiness about her that I didn’t really get in the books. Also I feel like Alina had alot more agency in the show. Like burning the maps to get on the skiff. It was a terrible idea no doubt, but it was her doing something to get herself on the skiff so she could help her friend. In the books their unit is ordered to cross the fold from the beginning, Alina has nothing to do with her being on the skiff. Also with her relationship with The Darkling, Alina is mostly nervous around him and he is the one that initiates all their kisses. Whereas in the show Alina is the one to kiss him first. I do feel like in the book Alina is more kind of pushed and pulled around by the plot or by other characters and doesn’t really do much for herself. Like another example is when Baghra reveals that The Darkling is the Black Heretic in the book she has this whole plan for Alina’s escape which is for her to go to Os Kervo and board a ship where her passage has already been paid for and in the book Alina just goes with it, whereas in the show we see her decide not to take Baghra’s instructions and escapes herself, her own way, again it might not have been the best choice seeing as she puts herself right into The Crows hands but it is her choice. Even the decision to go after the Stag isn’t hers in the books. It’s Mal’s. There was one decision that Alina did make for herself and it was one part of the book that I think I hated the most which I will get into later.

I do like that she is older in the show as I feel like I personally can relate more to her as an adult as oppose to a teenager. Its also fresher because there are so many of these young adult fantasy adaptions where the heroines are 16-18 years old and that nice but you are still a young adult in your early twenties and so I think its a nice change to see a slightly older heroine if that makes sense.

3) The Darkling’s name and Novokribirsk.

Well I know this one is not going to make me popular with the book fans but I really didn’t like that no one knew the Darkling’s name or rather that he didn’t have a name really. I know his name reveal is a big deal to book fans and that was one thing they didn’t like about the show and maybe if I had read the book first I would have agreed. But I personally, having learnt his name in the show, found it difficult seeing everyone refer to him as The Darkling because in the show it is only really used by his enemies and always in a derogatory way and as a slur, everyone else just calls him The Black General or General Kirigan. I also think the fact that he does have a name in the show makes him a little more human. The other difference between the show and the book is Novokribirsk. In the show although I didn’t necessarily agree with him expanding the Fold into Novokribirsk I understood his reasons behind it, his motivations. But the West Ravkan rebels plot doesn’t exist in the book and so I just couldn’t understand why he was killing his own people, why he was killing Ravkans. If he had expanded the Fold into Fjerda or Shu Han I would have understood but Novokribirsk made no sense. I am sure I am wrong about this but I kind of felt like Bardugo was trying to be shocking and trying to show look he’s a villain but it just didn’t line up with the rest of his character. Like he is power hungry yes but he also cares about the Grisha and the Ravkans and so him turning on the people of his own country with no motivation at all didn’t make sense to me. Instead of feeling shocked I just felt kind of confused by his actions.

4) The Reveal That Genya Is A Spy.

This is another one where I feel like if I had read the books first it wouldn’t have bugged me so much. But one of the more powerfully emotional scenes for me in the show was that conversation between Genya and Alina in episode 7 where Alina realises that Genya was Kirigan’s spy. It is heartbreaking to see these two friends fall apart like this and you can see both of their sides. You can understand why Alina feels betrayed but you can also understand why Genya did it. But in the book the scene just isn’t that emotional. Alina realises that Genya is a spy but whilst we see her thoughts and her processing it she doesn’t confront Genya about it. Instead Genya tells Alina that David feels terrible about putting the collar on her and that he feels like he has destroyed all of Ravka. As Genya leaves Alina calls after her asking her to tell David she forgives him and then she silently, in her head, forgives Genya too. I just was disappointed in this scene when I read it. I do think this is just another thing that was handled better in the show.

5) Mal and Alina’s Sudden Romance.

Ok I’m not hating on Mal and Alina here I actually think (well more in the show than the book) that their relationship is cute, I don’t hate the relationship its just that I prefer Darklina. But in the book I was actually really shocked when they kissed. For me I feel like it was a little jarring and I would have preferred if their kiss had come in the second book. I think the problem is it just felt like there was no development. I mean we had Alina spending the majority of the book lamenting about how Mal doesn’t like her back and only sees her as a friend. We barely see Mal in the book at all and then all of a sudden they don’t just kiss but are confessing their undying love for each other and I was just left with my head in a bit of spin at how fast that change came. But hey maybe it was just me. I do think part of the problem is that we only get Alina’s pov so that makes it come as more of a surprise. But they went from just friends to intense burning love in 0.1 seconds flat and for me it was just too much of a rush. I just wish it had been built up a bit slower as I felt like they got to the whole I love you’s a bit too quick. Even if they had their first kiss at the very end of the book and then continued to build the relationship in book 2 and have the love confessions then I think it would have been a bit more believable to me.

6) Shaming Alina.

Ok so there were a couple of times where I felt like other characters were shaming Alina for having feelings for The Darkling and for falling for his manipulation. Of course I could be misinterpreting this but I didn’t like the connotations behind these lines. The first was when Baghra is organising for Alina to escape and Baghra tells her she’ll organise for a servant to be placed at Alina’s door who will claim she is ill so that Alina has more time to get away. When Alina tells her the servant would have to be placed this evening as The Darkling may come to her room and Baghra replies with ‘foolish girl’. Obviously this makes Alina feel ashamed and even more foolish for falling for The Darkling’s manipulation. Here’s the thing I don’t mind Alina feeling foolish I think that’s realistic, I think any of us would feel like a fool if we were in the same situation. What I don’t like is the author having other character’s call her foolish for being manipulated by someone. I just don’t think its the healthiest of lessons to teach to young girls that if you are unfortunate enough to be manipulated by a a man than girl are you a fool. I don’t necessarily think it was the author’s intention to present it that way but I do think that is a message that a young girl could take away from this, I mean if I can interrupt it this way than others could too.

I felt a similar way with Mal’s line when he says ‘I love you, Alina, even the part of you that loved him.’ Look I’m sure that this line was suppose to be romantic and show acceptance. But it bothered me, it really really bothered me. It bothered me because once again it is suggesting that Alina should be ashamed that she had feelings for the Darkling, it presents Mal as being this oh so righteous person because look at him he loves her even though she once loved The Darkling. It suggests that its harder for him to love her because she loved the darkling and like she has to be forgiven for it or as if she has been tainted by it. It wasn’t Alina’s fault that she developed feelings for The Darkling or that she was manipulated by him. And Mal isn’t a better person for loving her even though she loved The Darkling, he shouldn’t get extra brownie points for loving all of her unconditionally.

7) Alina Is A Murderer!!!

Ok so this is the part of the book that shocked the hell out of me but also left me utterly confused and I hated it, I really hated it. I’m also kind of baffled as to how I’ve not seen anyone talking about this. I mean maybe I am over-reacting but I have only just finished the book so it is still pretty fresh. But there is a huge difference between the ending of the first book and the ending of the series and that is what happens in The Fold. So first off Mal doesn’t sneak on to the skiff he is there because the Darkling is planning to execute him as a traitor by feeding him to the Volcra. The other thing is there are alot more people on the skiff, you’ve got the ambassadors from Fjerda and Shu Han, you’ve got Kerch Merchants, you’ve got an envoy for the King, you’ve got a ton of Grisha and their are also a ton of soldiers, all on this skiff. The darkling also never has Ivan kill the ambassadors they don’t try to fight back against him after he expands the Fold. What does happen is this, The Darkling throws Mal overboard and this is what triggers Alina being able to free herself and her power from The Darkling’s control. She then abandons ship and jumps off the skiff to Mal and leaves everyone who is onboard to die. Which in itself is bad enough but that's not all she does. She doesn’t just leave them without her light to protect them she uses the cut to destroy the skiff, she damages the mast and also cuts the skiff in half essentially stranding them there without any way of escaping. She does this knowing that they will all die.

I know what some of you will say. How can you be mad about Alina doing this when the Darkling has killed people and you still like him. Well first off because The Darkling is the anti hero in the show whose motivations I understood and well I’ve already said I wasn’t a huge fan of his actions with Novokribirsk in the books. Also with him being the antagonist I know he’s going to do things that are morally grey or downright dark. I don’t however expect it from my hero of the story. Also I wouldn’t have cared as much if Alina had a valid reason for doing it. Like she was sacrificing these people to safe a larger number of people or something like that where she was in some kind of moral conundrum where sacrificing the people on the skiff was for the greater good, if it was for example a situation like Clarke from the 100 and the Mountain Men, what she did was terrible and definitely morally grey but she did it to save her people and that’s what made it interesting to see her struggle with the guilt of it, to be horrified at what she had done but understand that it was a difficult decision for her that needed to be made for her peoples survival. Or even if it were a similar situation to Katniss and Finnick in Mockingjay where she knew she couldn’t save him so had to make the choice to sacrifice him to stop the mutts from coming after the rest of them. But that’s not what was happening here with Alina, she does it to save Mal. And look I get it. Mal is her childhood friend, and Mal is the person she loves, Mal is her home. But Mal is also one person and she probably could have found a way to save him without sacrificing everyone else to do it you know like she does in the show. It’s not even just the leaving them behind bit that gets to me but I just don’t think it was necessary for her to break the ship. It was one thing to take her light from them and use it to protect only her and Mal, but at least if she had left the skiff unscathed they would have had a chance to survive.

I mean maybe I am just have too much of a rigid idea of what a hero is suppose to be or gotten too used to heroines being a certain way but the difference between the hero and the villain is that whilst the villain does everything for themselves and is usually very selfish the hero is supposed to be selfless. They are suppose to think of the greater good and put that above all else, they make personal sacrifices and that doesn’t necessarily mean not protecting their loved ones but it also doesn’t mean leaving innocent people to die just so that you can save one person, regardless of how important that person is to you.

I mean I feel like we are being told that Alina is this saviour and that she is the hero but then the character isn’t acting like the hero. I mean she doesn’t seem to care about anybody but Mal and yet she is still very judgemental of the Darkling even though he is trying to save his people albeit in completely the wrong way.

I mean one thing I will say is that she does recognise that what she has done makes her like The Darkling. She also does have guilt about it and nightmares but I found it hard to have sympathy for her because I just didn’t think it was necessary for her to do it.

I don’t know maybe I’ll feel differently about it in a few days after I’ve processed it more but at the moment I feel strangely betrayed by the book like they’ve taken one of my favourite characters and ruined her. Which I know is silly because the books came first but I just can’t help but think my show Alina would never. She saved Mal and everyone on the skiff.

Grey Area

Ok so this section is an odd one, so this is things that I’m not sure how I feel about them I liked some bits but also didn’t like some bits.

1) Alina’s POV

So the book is told entirely from Alina’s pov and to be honest I am of two minds as to whether that's a good thing or a bad. I mean most YA fantasy novels are told from the heroine’s pov like The Hunger Games or Divergent. So this is something that can work, but in the case of Shadow and Bone I feel like having it solely from Alina’s pov was at the detriment of the other characters. I feel like because Alina doesn’t like alot of the other characters or has negative thoughts about alot of the other characters the reader also doesn’t like them. On the flip side of this it does very much put you in Alina’s shoes so it helps you better understand that isolation she feels and that not really trusting people, doubting them. You can understand her struggle to connect with people and how she always wonders if they really do like her or if they have an ulterior motive. There is this one part earlier on in the book where she talks about how people, in particular girls, would befriend her but it was only because she was friends with Mal and they were interested in him, so they used her to get close to him. I think this really does explain why she struggles to trust people when she gets to the Little Palace as she automatically assumes that if they are trying to be friends with her its because they want something from her. Because you can see her thoughts you also get a really good idea of how insecure she feels and how much she wants to be accepted. Like there are several parts where its obvious that she wants to please The Darkling, or she wants to impress Baghra or Botkin. She worries about how the other summoners will react if they find out she is struggling with her powers. There is one scene I loved where Alina is finally able to summon on her own and she just rushes outside to the lake where all the other summoners are to show off her powers because she is just so excited. All of this where its exploring Alina’s thoughts and feelings is great and well written but I think the problem of having it from her pov is although you get a good idea of Alina and how she feels, first impressions are also important and we get all of our first impressions of the other characters through Alina. However Alina doesn’t really like anybody, so when she talks about how mean Dubrov and Mikhael are and how they call her names and ignore her, or when she talks about Mal not really seeing her and taking her for granted, or when she thinks about how two faced Marie and Nadia are, how grumpy Ivan is, how intimidating and mysterious The Darkling is, and so on, these impressions of the character stick with the reader and so I think it is then hard for the reader to change their view on these characters, if that makes sense. So in some ways the first person narrative is great but in others I think it is a little bit of a problem.

2) Mal’s Reaction To Alina And The Darkling/ Their Reunion.

Ok so this might be a controversial one but I’m kind of split on which of Mal’s reactions I prefer. I know that seems crazy considering how mean he is to Alina in the books when they see each other again for the first time since she is discovered to be Grisha, but hear me out. On the one side I liked how non judgemental show Mal was when Alina admits that she had feelings for Aleksander. I liked that he said she didn’t owe him an explanation because its true she doesn’t, just like he doesn’t owe her an explanation for any relationships he’s had. So in that sense I think the show did it better.

In the books their reunion doesn’t go so well. Mal shows up at the Little Palace having found the Stag and unlike in the show he does speak with Alina. But its a very negative interaction where he gets angry about her wearing black and talks about how the Darkling is all over her and just in general makes her feel bad about this new life she has found as a Grisha. Obviously I didn’t enjoy this scene but there was one element of this whole reunion that I did like and that is Mal’s trauma. In the show they don’t really address the trauma Mal experiences at seeing his friends die beyond a small conversation with Alina where he tells her what happened to them. But in the book during this scene and then later when they are travelling to find the Stag together Alina notes a few times that he sometimes gets a look in his eyes or that he seems different. There is a notable change in him due to what has happened to him and I feel like this gives some depth to the character. Yes he acts like a dick to Alina but its because of his trauma.

Likes

Ok on to the good stuff, things that I loved from the books.

1) Grisha Powers And Amplifiers.

So I’ll be honest the books do a better job of explaining the Grisha abilities and the amplifiers than the show does. So in the show they do have that line about the small science feeds us and merzost feeds on us. Well in the book this is better explained and you find out that a Grisha gets stronger and healthier the more they use their powers. Whilst in the show Alina tricks the testers by cutting her hand, in the book she actually supresses her powers. As a result this makes her ill, she always has circles under her eyes and she has no appetite so she is really skinny. I really like this idea that instead of draining them like most fantasy powers do in other series it actually makes them stronger. I thought it was a very interesting concept. It also explains why Baghra looks to have aged despite being immortal like The Darkling. In the book when Alina asks The Darkling what powers Baghra has he replies that it had been so long since she had used them that no one knew. So it seems like the reason why Baghra has aged is because she isn’t summoning.

The other thing that we get more information about in the books is the use of amplifiers. Morozova’s creatures aren’t the only amplifiers other Grisha do have them for example Ivan has a bear claw and Marie has a seal amplifier. I think Zoya also has an amplifier. We also find out that a Grisha usually can only have one amplifier.

2) Ivan’s Backstory

Ok this is probably a small thing but I really wish they had kept Ivan’s backstory in the show. He lost family to the Fjerdans, if I remember rightly I think it was his father, brother and uncle. Though correct me if I am wrong on that. But this has obviously had an impact on him and he says they died fighting the King’s wars. It just really goes a long way to explain why Ivan is so loyal to The Darkling. Its because he believes the Darkling will end all wars and seeing as Ivan has lost a large portion of his family to war it makes sense that he would stand by the Darkling.

3) Alina’s Time At The Little Palace.

So another thing the books did better than the show was showing the time and training that Alina goes through. In the show it only seems like Alina is at the Little Palace for a few weeks but she is actually there for at least five months if not more. You also see her struggle with her powers and combat training more and you see her starting to get better at both. In the show by the end of episode 4 she can summon on her own and she has that break through but it takes alot longer in the books. But yeah I would have loved to see more of her training.

4) Baghra and The Darkling.

So this isn’t really something the book does better but it was a scene that I really liked and that was where Alina arrives to her lesson with Baghra and The Darkling is there and she is surprised that Baghra is arguing with him. Whilst we do get the interaction between Baghra and Aleksander in the show which I did really like, Alina herself never sees the two interact and I think it would have been interesting if she had. I just wish in general that we had gotten more interactions between the mother and son. The other thing I liked was during the scene where Baghra is helping Alina escape Alina question why Baghra would be betraying her son. One thing I did wonder when watching the show was if Baghra knew all this information about Aleksander and how he wanted to expand the fold and if she really did believe he was power hungry, why did she stay by his side. Well the book does give an answer to this and she says she loves her son that’s why she is trying to stop him because she doesn’t want him to cross a line he can’t come back from. I do feel like this adds more depth and complexity to their relationship which I am always glad for. I can’t wait to learn more of their backstory.

5) Alina’s Mirrored Gloves.

In the books the gloves David makes for Alina are used alot more. They are also described as being mirrored whereas in the tv show they looked more like gold chainmail. Also she gets them sooner in the books. But they’re really cool and she uses them to like distract or blind her opponent during hand to hand combat. Also I really like the scene when they are introduced because its basically Genya giving Alina a tour and they go to the Fabrikator workshop and when Genya introduces David he’s working on the gloves and he just goes these are for you. It’s awkward but also funny.

6) Genya and David.

You get so much more of their relationship in the books. Well by so much more I mean Genya does talk to Alina about David. As a result we get one of my favourite interactions in the book where they are having a girly talk and Alina tries to reassure Genya that David will come around and that he’s just shy, then Genya says ‘“Maybe I should lie down on a table in the workroom and wait to see if he welds something to me.” To which Alina says “I think that’s the way most great love stories begin.” I don’t know why but I just loved this I think its because its just two girls talking about a crush and I think its very relatable. But yeah Genya and David are very cute.

7) Tidemakers.

So one of the things I wished we could have seen in the show was the tidemakers using their powers. We get told about them and obviously they can control water but we never see one. Well in the books we do get Tidemakers using their powers and we get Alina describing them to us. There is a particularly cool scene that happens at the winter fete where tidemakers create this wave as part of the Grisha demonstration that then gets turned into mist by inferni. It wasn’t much but I still enjoyed getting a little glimpse of them using their powers.

Ok that’s all I can think of for now, I’m sure I’ll think of more once I’ve had more time to process the book. But overall I thought it was ok I am interested to see where the characters go from here. I ordered the second book already and its due to arrive tomorrow so looking forward to that. As for this book if I gave it a rating I’d say its probably a 6/10 I thought it was good but there were some things about it that I think it could have done better with.

#shadow and bone

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bigskydreaming · 4 years

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@seekingxanadu

LOL I think you and I aren’t likely to ever agree on the subject of Jason’s role in the show, xanadu, as I actually like him being present and would enjoy seeing him end up more integrated into the team in the future. Yeah, there are a lot more classic Titans that they still haven’t gotten to, but IMO there’s a lot of reasons for that (like Wally and Roy currently being used elsewhere, Vic with the Doom Patrol, others perhaps ‘on hold’ because there’s always any number of projects or potential projects in the works that aren’t even announced to the public yet, etc).

Personally, I think its likely Jason’s role in the show and mythology has been expanded instead of introducing more Titans in his place for the same reason Hawk and Dove are here despite never being hugely present in Titans stories for the most part: they’re cheap.

Like tbh, that plays SO much more of a role than most people realize with shows like this, where budget concerns are constantly an issue, and special effects tend to carry the highest price tags. As far as the showrunners are likely concerned, the more they can bring in non-powered characters and give them screentime, the better....because it saves money.

For that matter, superhero projects belonging to the various live action shared universes love to cheat special effects whenever and wherever possible....and roster choices are absolutely made with an eye towards if any existing properties produced by the same companies have special effects that can be repurposed and used with other characters. Like, creating the special effect for the first time tends to be the most expensive part by far, whereas its often relatively simple and cheap to reuse it in a variety of ways....so they all like to do this as much as possible.

Just as an example, take the X-Men movies (sorry if they’re unfamiliar to you, they’re just the instances I can speak to as a sure example of this).....to most people, a LOT of the mutant characters used in the various films seem random as hell....like Azazel in First Class, and Sunspot in DOFP, etc. Thing is...those two and other characters were picked primarily because of the special effects. Azazel’s similarities to Nightcrawler wasn’t a coincidence, it was the point. The studio already had the special effect they’d created for Kurt’s teleportation power signature, and it’d been easily one of the most positively received and talked about special effects of the original trilogy....so they wanted to use it more. Cheap and easy, compared to making new ones for characters with entirely different powers. So by making Azazel one of the primary villains, they just used Kurt’s special effects and gave it a slightly different tint. Same thing with Riptide, Shaw’s other henchman in that movie....totally random choice given he’s never been remotely associated with the Hellfire Club and what they showed in the movie isn’t even really how his powers work in the comics...but the way they portrayed him in the movies allowed them to reuse some of the tornado effects they’d created for Storm in the original trilogy. Havok’s power displays were just repackaged versions of Cyclops’ special effects, and for Sunspot in DOFP they just reused stuff they’d developed in the original trilogy for Pyro...even though again, what Sunspot was shown doing in that movie isn’t remotely how his power works in the comics.

So like....this is a very very big consideration for studios with any and all superhero projects, both film and TV...its why WB picks nonpowered characters to center TV projects around whenever possible, like Arrow and Batwoman and the reason Hawk and Dove were referenced as being looked at for a possible spin-off pretty much since Titans started...and its not a coincidence that the Flash was the first superpowered character they chose to expand their TV universe with, as superspeed has always been one of the cheaper effects to create (its also why Smallville utilized Clark’s superspeed even more often than it did his superstrength). Same thing why when picking another ‘powered hero’ to add to Arrow early on, they went with Ray Palmer and gave him basically just an Iron Man style suit to start...because even when they eventually had him develop his shrinking power....again, super cheap. Size changing effects just involve shooting a lot of different takes using scale models or messing with proportions in post. Compared to what’s required for a lot of DC’s more high profile heroes....that costs nothing to do.

Odds are, Jason was originally introduced in S1 purely because they could use him to advance Dick’s solo storylines in ways very few other characters could allow for, given a key point of Dick’s story arc in becoming Nightwing over the course of two seasons has revolved around touching on where he’s been and come from, and how he’s now grown past that. To really make the most of that, you need something connected to his past, to Batman, and given its notoriously difficult and complicated to secure approval to use Bruce in any and all live action projects, with the sheer volume of different people you need to get on board with it....Jason was a much easier alternative.

And then once he was relatively well received, they jumped on the chance to expand his role because he enabled them to expand their core cast of characters without dramatically inflating their budget at the same time. Just like that’s why Hank and Dawn were never going anywhere any time soon.

So tbh....he’s very likely not taking anything away from any other Titans’ chances of appearing...since the same hurdles and reasons to take it slow are still there for a lot of the other characters. After Arrow ends, it might be a different story with that freeing up Roy to start making appearances...and who knows with Wally because even though he plays an entirely different version of Wally, bet you anything they’re waiting to be sure Keiynan is definitively done playing Kid Flash or the Flash show is for sure never going to bring him back, before considering either Wally for use elsewhere. Like, I know he already said he was done playing Wally but actors change their minds, so I doubt anyone in the studios took that as an immediate green-light to launch a new Wally project elsewhere.

This almost certainly played a factor in their killing off Garth in just his first appearance....water effects are notoriously hard to make look convincing, and this one’s on the writers too given that I bet people in the writers’ room in general weren’t pushing really hard to make Garth a core character for the show....a lot of TV writers reeeeeally hate trying to write for characters who are intrinsically affiliated with say, the ocean, if they’re not otherwise an ocean-themed show already.....because its just another version of why a lot of comic book writers say they have a hard time showcasing Arthur in JLA books, due to a lot of his most thematic abilities being so location dependent. (I mean, personally I say in both cases this is just a lack of imagination and not a good excuse for not using Garth or Arthur more, lol, but like, it is what it is. This tendency among writers as is still already exists).

And the DC expanded universe and which production companies are affiliated with which properties and studios and stations and all that is a huge complicated mess, so I’m not even going to try tracing the connections to verify for sure, but I’d be willing to bet Titans has access to either some of Supergirl’s special effects or some of Superman’s movie special effects or both (or possibly just to Superman special effects developed for various projects that have come and gone over the years without ever making it to completion). Either way, bet you anything that has as much to do with the decision to introduce Superboy into this particular ensemble, as does just them wanting to have a Super-family character in the mix and Superboy was next on the list, not already being used elsewhere.

*Shrugs* But yeah. Never underestimate the power of the dime even with something as fundamental as picking a core roster. Actually, ESPECIALLY with something that fundamental, since that’s the foundation any and all budget concerns spring from. As much as I love the original Judas Contract storyline, I’m not at all bothered to see Rose kinda shoehorned into Terra’s role in a truncated variation of it here....because first, that story’s been adapted a ton in a variety of different ways, so its not really a huge loss to not have it fully adapted again, but second.....its less likely that Rose took Terra’s role here and more likely that Terra was never remotely an option for the show given how ridiculously expensive her powers would be to render well....so they looked at what else they could make fit a similar role and decided hey, why not bring Rose into this as well, even though she’s not primarily associated with this generation of characters?

And Joey was obviously always a strong candidate to add to the cast as early as this, of course. My bet is other than possibly Roy, depending on WB’s overall plans for him, like, I would guess the next most likely Titans to show up/be added to the cast are Lilith, Mal and/or Karen. Telepathy’s cheap and easy to gimmick up some power signature for.....tbh, I wouldn’t be surprised if the only reason Lil HASN’T shown up yet is because they’ve been saving her for after the Jericho storyline is done, given that her powers would cut through all the stakes and suspense and reveal Joey was riding shotgun in Slade’s head from the very first time the Titans encountered Deathstroke this season. For that matter, it’d be extremely difficult to write her as not sensing the sheer chaos going through Dick’s mind this entire season and cutting off that storyline early, and it does seem they’ve known exactly where they wanted to go with Dick this whole time so I can easily see them having decided early on they viewed this as a necessary part of his evolution into Nightwing, and Lil’s mere presence would throw a spanner in those works.

And as for Mal and Karen, again, the shrinking powerset is relatively easy to pull off and its likely more just not wanting to invest in Karen’s suit/flight just yet that’s been the delay there, and Mal’s sonic powers OR his teleportation powers are both relatively easy and cheap.

And of course, other non-powered characters not usually affiliated with the Titans are always a possibility. I’d put money on freaking Golden Eagle being a more likely contender to show up than some of the other powered Titans, for that matter.

Anyway, just my industry take on the matter in general, lol. You know I’d always be for Jason as a Titan as I think he would have ended up one eventually if he hadn’t died when he did, and I’d love to have just one adaptation that doesn’t stick to his death and Red Hood storyline. He doesn’t need it to be an interesting character, just good writing. Its not like Bruce or Dick are definitively chained to one specific storyline outside of their own origin stories, so no reason Jason should have to be either. (And honestly, in line with everything I was talking about here......IMO the nonpowered characters are always a degree safer from being killed off than the powered characters. Doesn’t mean they’re ever totally safe, and it doesn’t mean the show’s necessarily ‘at capacity’ for powered/expensive characters already, but at a certain point the cast list likely will end up sticking with just the powered characters they have until one of those powered characters is killed or otherwise written off...before adding another ‘expensive’ character to take their place.)

But yeah, anyway, lol. Don’t know if that might make you a little more positively inclined to Jason taking up a slot on the show....all things considered, I truly doubt that it was ever a case of them picking to make Jason a series regular OVER adding another classic Titans character in that place instead. It really is more likely IMO that the cast list we have this season was more or less already otherwise in place and they just looked at things and said “we can’t really afford to introduce an additional character on top of the other ones we want to add already this season, like Joey, Slade, etc, and especially not one with special effects heavy powers...BUT we can bring Jason in as more of a presence in the ensemble and bump him up to series regular without too much trouble.”

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rebdot · 4 years

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I am about to rant about why the staging etc. of Le Bien Qui Fait Mal is actually genius.

alt title: tired production arts student dissects the kink song in hopes it might stop haunting her as she sleeps

Read under the cut!

Okay so Le Bien qui fait mal is well known for being “the kink song” in MOR and you know what, I absolutely agree. Salieri gets dragged around the stage by people in very revealing leather outfits, sings about how something is “so good it hurts” and just looks VERY into what’s going on. But there’s actually a pretty good reason for all this seemingly random kink imagery.

So, first of all, the lighting is actually insane in this song. Beforehand, during Mozart showing him his progress, the lighting is a pretty bright blue - that’s important, remember that! But as Le Bien (that’s how I’m shortening it for this) starts, the lights quite suddenly switch to red. Red light is commonly associated with the red light district i.e prostitutes and sex in general. That’s the start of all the sexual imagery in the song. Throughout, it switches to green, which is a very unnatural lighting colour (as opposed to yellow or blue, which evoke the perception of day and night accordingly, or even orange for an open flame), and also magenta. Green cements it in the viewer’s mind that this is in Salieri’s head - most of the rest of the light throughout the show reflects the setting, whereas this is jarring and surreal looking. The pink/magenta lighting does a similar thing to the red, albeit to a lesser extent. However, during the instrumental break (in which the dancers also pretend to be instruments funnily enough), the light switches back to blue, although it’s darker and somewhat less bright (despite being light) than the earlier scene. This is Salieri coming back to reality slightly - at the end of the day, he’s listening to Mozart conduct, he’s not actually in some kind of weird BDSM party - but yet he’s still not there yet, and the lighting goes back to the red/green combo for the last chorus.

Now that the lights are out of the way, we can get on to why listening to his rival conduct music has seemingly made Salieri think of, well, what’s going on on stage. The context of the song is that Salieri, upon hearing Mozart’s music, realises how good it is and feels insanely jealous over it (and maybe other things, but I digress). It is Salieri realising that, at least in his opinion, Mozart is better than him. It’s about power. This is why, in the staging, Mozart is on stage and yet above everyone else (specifically Salieri), unaffected by the chaos on stage. In fact, he’s still conducting the music and by association everything that’s going along with it. The BDSM imagery many people have decided is completely random (although fun) reflects this as well - most of BDSM is about power dynamics and the likes. This explains the costumes and the aggression that Salieri is getting shown by the dancers.

Speaking of dynamics, as a side note, I’m pretty sure that is the implication of most of the choreography - the dynamics of the music reflecting the dynamics of the dancers on stage (that’s just what came to me while I was watching the performance for the 700th time)

So yes, the song is incredibly sexual, and the staging and lighting decisions absolutely reflect that. But just like the almost uncomfortably masochistic lyrics of the song are a metaphor for Salieri’s feelings of jealousy and awe at the music mixing together, the kinky performance on stage is a metaphor for the emotional power dynamic he pretty much brings on himself and actually sticks to the rest of the show (switching between complimenting Mozart’s work to actively trying to sabotage it multiple times). It’s full of contrasts and more clever than most people give it credit for.

#shoutout to my buddies for having to see the much less eloquent version of this as i was basically going HOLY SHIT THEIR MIND earlier #i'm not claiming to be an authority on this! it's fully possible this isn't at all what the creators of the show were going for #this is just my interpretation!#mor #mozart opera rock #mozart l'opera rock #mozartoperarock #moraholics #le bien qui fait mal #antonio salieri #florent mothe

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that-shamrock-vibe · 5 years

Text

TV Review: Young Justice Outsiders Part 1 (Spoilers)

Spoiler Warning: The first part of Young Justice Outsiders is finally all available for viewing so I thought I would give my thoughts on Season 3 thus far, it won’t be in depth because for me this season hasn’t been but there are light spoilers so be warned.

General Reaction:

I have been a fan of Young Justice since I found out about the series, I love it. I love taking these sidekicks and putting them in the spotlight. It’s why I loved Teen Titans and Young Avengers. I guess because I discovered them while I was a teenager myself, season 1 aired in 2010 when I was 19 so technically that counts, that I relate to them but also the first two seasons of the show were so well done and made for gripping binge-worthy viewing.

So you can imagine that I, like many other fans of the show, was thrilled when after an injust cancellation it returned 5 years. The only problem is Young Justice: Outsiders lacks the spark and somewhat originality that the first two seasons had.

These first 13 episodes of season three lack centric main characters, a strong A-Storyline and, until the last 4 episodes, that gripping binge-worthiness I mentioned the first two seasons had. Instead we have an Easter-Egg season crammed with characters who are splintered into different groups who each have their own storylines that, again until near the end of the 13 episodes, don’t really tie-in with each other and feel like they each need their own shows to develop fully.

Also, there is another time jump between Season 2 and 3 which makes more sense here than it did between 1 and 2 because in real-time 5 years has passed since the end of Season 2 whereas there it seemed to be done to push ahead the story and give the franchise a Star Wars feel of making it a multi-media experience with the comic-book tie-in series filling in the space between 1 & 2.

What’s Good:

Alright so I want to be fair to the season because it does have some good aspects which I actually liked.

Fan Favourites:

I will get into the sheer volume of characters introduced to this season further down but for now I want to talk about the fan-favourites introduced who were somewhat fleshed out rather well.

Firstly Lady Shiva. I have never seen Lady Shiva before but I know she is a fan-favourite character and, considering the underwhelming performance of Talia al Ghul recently, a favored replacement for her. I still think Nyssa al Ghul is a good replacement particularly in Arrow but here I understand why people like her. I thought the fact she is the trainer of the new League of Shadows recruits as well as an Enforcer for The Light to be quite good, although I do find myself thinking that, as mentioned, Deathstroke was exactly in that position in the second season and he was barely used, I hope that’s not the case here.

Then there’s Cyborg. It’s about god-damn time they brought this guy in. Just when I thought this season was not going to get graphic or gory they give us Cyborg’s Post-New 52 origins and that imagery of Victor’s body after the explosion was so good for me. I also liked how they’ve updated the Cyborg look and now given him mood-lighting with Father Box control which causes an interesting relationship between him and new character Halo.

Finally there’s Terra. I am excited for what has been teased with Terra so far. The fact she was part of the Markovian Royal Family which was introduced in the first couple of episodes and then herself being properly introduced in the last episode with her Geokinetic powers, while not yet fully realized I am sure will be great.

Beast Boy:

So again this is very much a light spoiler review but what I will say is watch out and be patient for Beast Boy because he does not have that much to do at the start of the season and only really appears in snippets as the opening scenes of the episodes but in the penultimate episode of Season 3A it is all about Beast Boy and it’s probably my favourite episode despite one glaring aspect of it which is an Easter-Egg within the DC Multiverse.

What’s Bad:

Shifting Allegiances:

There is a big shake-up in how our heroes are affiliate themselves with in the first episode alone.

Not only do Batman and Black Lightning quit the Justice League, Batman taking other members with him for his own team, but the original Aquaman Arthur Curry, who has just had his own billion dollar movie released, is no longer in the League and instead his protege Aqualad has not only become the new Aquaman but the leader of the League.

Then there’s the Team which this series is supposed to focus on. Again there’s a shake-up in the roster and the team that is shown in the promotion is pretty much the team for this season but...because of all the other characters introduced this season we do not spend enough time getting to know the new team, the new members on the team or the reasons why the members of the team who were there at the end of last season aren’t there now.

For instance, it is kind of explained why Tigress and Superboy are no longer on the team as they’re part of Nightwing’s new team and therefore in that promo image not this one, but Guardian and Lagoon Boy all have left without explanation. We know what has happened to Beast Boy and Bumblebee has a kid and is pregnant again so that probably explains their reasoning. Guardian aka Mal Duncan and Lagoon Boy weren’t very interesting characters which maybe explains their absence in terms of production but in-canon that can’t be the only reason.

Arsenal was expelled from the team during Season 2 so his appearance in this line-up raised curiosity, but he only appears in one episode but not with a single member of this team and instead with his fellow Roy Harpers.

Then new team members Arrowette, Spoiler and Thirteen who were promoted are barely used. Yes Robin II aka Tim Drake leaves the team and takes Arrowette and Spoiler under his leadership to form their own team with new character Orphan, but Arrowette and Spoiler were both introduced as civillians in Season 2 yet nothing is done to reference that. In fact many people thought Arrowette was Artemis in a new suit at first.

Thirteen remains on the team but I do not think has a speaking line and if she does it’s forgettable. All I know about this character is she is the protege of Zatanna but she has her own problems this season apparently and so this completely new character is barely utilized properly.

Also Blue Beetle, Bart Allen as Kid Flash, Static and Wonder Girl are all returning characters yet hardly either seen, utilized or developed in this season. Static loses Black Lightning as a mentor and Wonder Girl is seemingly dumped by Tim Drake when he quits the team due to Batman leaving the League, but Blue Beetle and Bart Allen who were focal characters last season are blink and miss them characters this season...glorified cameos at best.

Too Many Characters:

This brings me on to my biggest issue with this season, there are way too many characters introduced and involved in this season. There are 13 episodes but it feels like they have a combined total of 130 characters introduced. We have new characters that we are supposed to focus on and new ones that seem to be there just to be there.

For instance, new characters like Cyborg, Forager, Halo and Geo-Force I get we are supposed to focus on, but Cyborg isn’t introduced until Episode 10 and then heavily focused on for 4 episodes, while the latter three are all introduced at the start of the season and slowly and organically developed.

Then there are characters like Steel and Katana who I almost forgot were introduced at the start of Episode 1 until Episode 10 when there were slightly more prominent.

Speaking of that Episode 1 Easter-Egg hunt, once Batman announces he is leaving the Justice League he makes it clear that four members of the league are resigning to join him, Katana, Plastic Man who was introduced in Season 1 and again to this day I cannot say if he’s actually had any speaking lines, Hardware who I have no clue as to who that is and Batwoman...Batwoman! You had probably the best LGBT superhero and yet she’s only seen in two images and that’s it. What, the, hell!

Then Episode 9 “Home Fires” is an episode full to the brim with Easter-Eggs, I can’t even call them characters because aside from maybe three of them none of them are focused on. Along with Bart Allen who actually has something to do here, Iris West-Allen actually has some comedic moments and then Karen aka Rocket who has some speaking lines and Lynn Stewart-Pierce who is the ex-wife of Black Lightning but isn’t as good here as Christine Adams portrays her on Black Lightning aside from the fact that in this continuity she is the sister of John Stewart aka Green Lantern.

Aside from them, there’s the introduction of Lois Lane with son Jonathan, the reintroduction of Red Tornado’s human-looking form John Smith with daughter Traya Sutton, a pregnant Bumblebee, Iris and Barry’s twins Dawn and Don, Mera and son of Aquaman Artur, Rocket’s sassy son Amisted and the re-introduction of Black Lightning and Lynn’s daughter Anissa and Jennifer Pierce.

Away from this storyline in the episode is the reintroduction and death of Ocean-Master along with the introduction of Lady Shiva who kills him and the introduction of Granny Goodness. All this was just in the one episode.

Then we have Ra’s al Ghul and his followers, I can’t say League anymore because Ra’s has left both the League and The Light and Deathstroke seems to have taken his place in both, we are reintroduced to his followers such as Ubu and the Sensei but also introduced to the cameos of Talia al Ghul, Damien Wayne and a mysterious Red-Hooded Ninja...

Also when we are finally reintroduced to Batman and his new team, the only one we see return is Katana along with new character Metamorpho...I don’t know who this character is but I like him.

Wonder Woman said it best in Episode 8 when there’s a meeting of all the leaders of these hero teams and says that between her, Batman, Aquaman(lad), Nightwing, Robin, Miss Martian and Oracle. they do in fact have 5 teams at their disposal. That is way too many teams to focus on in one season, particularly when 3 of those teams haven’t been properly established yet and the other two have had massively unexplained shake-ups.

Missed Opportunities:

As mentioned before, there is another time jump between Seasons 2 and 3, here it is two years rather than five as it was Between 1 and 2 which makes no sense because less real-time has passed in each gap but I digress.

However, once again due to this time jump, we miss out on some major development. The biggest crime being that one of comics most famous stories, The Killing Joke is seemingly told as Barbara goes from Batgirl to Oracle and able-bodied to wheelchair bound.

Now maybe Young Justice creators took inspiration from the only time that story has been told in film or television and thought just to skip it but then why not have a spin-off series centred on the Bat-Family, which has grown this season not just by Batwoman and Spoiler but also Orphan and Harper Row who in the comics becomes Bluebird to make a grand total of 10 Bat-Family members, so you can flesh out these characters and iconic stories.

What’s Teased:

Alright to end this review on a somewhat positive note I want to talk about what is hopefully teased for the back-half of this season coming in June.

Terra:

Firstly we have Terra aka Tara Markov. Introduced at the start of this season but then formally introduced in Episode 13 as the Geokinetic Metahuman who is apparently enslaved on Bialya and later rescued by Nightwing’s team. However, the ending tease for the season shows Terra being taken in by the Team and secretly messaging Deathstroke who is now the leader of the League of Shadows having never apparently left the League apparently.

The only issue with this is it seems they’re playing out The Judas Contract which has also recently been told recently in the animated films. I mean it is clear at this point that they’re making the team in this series their version of the Teen Titans without calling them that but we shall see if we actually get to see this played out.

Red Hood and Damien Wayne:

Two Robins for the price of one. Jason Todd as an in-canon character was never physically shown on screen in the second season as he was apparently introduced and killed in that 5 year gap. However, with the introduction of this Red-Hooded Ninja who is under Ra’s al Ghul’s leadership with the exact same hairstyle as Jason Todd...it stands to reason that we will soon meet Red Hood in Season 3b.

Now as for Damien Wayne, Talia is introduced as a cameo this season as she watches Nightwing’s team flying away standing besides her father Ra’s holding a baby boy in her arm. It stands to reason that this is Damien and so unless we have a time-jump of 10 years I doubt we’ll see him again in any major capacity but the fact he has been introduced is big if the show reaches that 10 year gap.

Baby Sidekicks:

So as well as Damien, we have the infant forms of Don & Dawn Allen aka the Tornado Twins and Jonathan Samuel Kent aka a future Superboy. Also this season we meet Anissa and Jennifer Pierce who in the future become Lightning and Thunder respectively.

These pose as great teases but much like Damien, unless there’s a jump by 10 years I doubt they’ll be heavily focused on.

Apokolips Now:

Alright so Apokolips is DC’s hot topic at the moment, not only did they try to push it and Darkseid in the movies until Justice League fell flat but also the end tease of Season 2 showed Darkseid meeting with Vandal Savage and they are now apparently associates just as The Light were with The Reach in Season 2.

Now while any sort of Apokolips influence is minimal this season thus far, we do get an episode on New Genesis, a reintroduction to the Forever People as well as Mother Boxes and an introduction of Forager.

All this I feel is gearing up for Darkseid to either be the big bad of Season 3 overall or the overall villain of Season 4. Either way they are currently teasing Darkseid like they teased Thanos and that tease paid off in Infinity War so allow a series with those stakes.

Recommendation:

So overall I have to say, this season has a gripping ending but it took a very long time getting there. It never felt like a chore but at the same time the other two seasons gripped me from the start. I am still looking forward to Season 3b but I will be curious to see if the 5 month wait is worth it or not.

I will give this part of Season 3 a rating of 6/10, it was an okay start with a dragged out middle and an exciting ending. Hopefully the excitement will run the way through the rest of the season.

So that’s my review of Young Justice: Outsiders (Part 1) what did you guys think? Post your comments and check out more TV Reviews as well as other posts.

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wasabicakes · 7 years

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Uma and Harry's relationship: An Analysis

So I’m going to dive right into this. Heads up: All my info is coming from one of the books in the Isle of the Lost series, Rise of the Isle of the Lost (kinda spoilers, yeah?), as well as Descendants 2. In Rise of the Isle of the Lost, we actually find out quite a bit about their friendship and dynamics. This isn’t by any means an encyclopedia of their friendship nor their characters individually. There’s a lot I’m not including in here (Sorry!), but I’m just bullet pointing the most relevant parts that I’m comparing, so this thing isn’t just a massive wall of overbearing text that makes your eyes go bloodshot.

Uma and Harry are each others oldest friends on the Isle. They like to cause mayhem together. Gil peaced out from their group years ago for reasons unknown, so its been the fearsome twosome for a long time. Until he joins their crew later on in the book.

They decide to join a “boat” race run by Captain Hook where the winner gets one of his old busted ships from his fleet.

Uma takes Harry’s hook and tells him he’ll only get it back if either he or she wins that race. They make a deal that whoever wins gets to be captain and the other will be first mate. We already know how that turns out.

At first Harry is hopeful she will make him captain at some point, but after she rescues him during an adventure I won’t tell you about, he’s all on board with her being captain.

From there on out, he calls her captain multiple times, even lending her his hand and saying, “Captains, first” so she goes ahead of he and Gil. When Uma’s feeling down, he and Gil offer suggestions of what mischief they could cause and Harry goes, “Captain’s choice.”

Their relationship is full of banter. They take jabs at each other, they’re sarcastic. Examples: Harry teases her when she nearly falls off the ship twice trying to unfurl the masts in a hurry when she has no clue what she’s doing. She makes fun of him for not staying on his feet when the ship sways hard. And how he never beats her at anything. And that’s just a little snapshot.

I don’t know how much time has passed between the events of Rise and and Descendants 2 - they’re still close friends, still captain and first mate respectively - but their relationship seems different now in the weeks? months? that have passed. In Rise, Harry flirts with Uma, but she never once teases or flirts back. He’s the one who is more proactive in getting her attention in that sense and she is unfazed: “As if. You work for me, remember? Do I have to keep reminding you? I’m captain, you’re first mate,” said Uma, pointing a finger and stabbing his chest with it. “First date if you’re lucky,” said Harry with a wink, pulling on his collar and strutting a little. “Shut up,” said Uma with a laugh. “And see to that sail.” (Ch. 13) “A few minutes later, Harry swiveled on his boots and returned to her side, leaning in closely. "Uma, darling,” he said, in his rough brogue. “I just need to ask again - how are we going to find that thing in the water?” “Leave that to me,” said Uma. “Just get this ship ready.” (Ch. 13) “I don’t think this symbol marks the treasure. Remember, we’re looking for a trail. The path isn’t on the ground. It’s written on trees. If I’m right, there are more of these markings. Follow them, and we’ll find the treasure,” said Harry. “Or we’ll find out where two lovers carved a heart in some tree,” said Uma. “Are you trying to tell me something?” Harry joked. “That I’ll cut you if you don’t find the treasure chest?” Uma snorted. (Ch. 27) She also offers us this little tidbit (in Chapter 13, for reference): “Uma knew, try as she might, she couldn’t hurt his feelings. It was all part of the game of question-and-rejection they’d played forever.” What does this even mean though? With all of that in mind, let’s flash forward to Descendants 2. And for the tl;dr crowd here is essentially what this next part is all about:

Where we have scenes like these -

(x)

These moments occur when Harry is performing his part of the song from the What’s My Name scene. In the first gif, his lines at this part are: Never learned how to count ‘cause I’m number one. He crouches down in front of her and she says the words when he does, even putting her finger up to represent the number one. In the second gif, Harry directly points to her and says, “she’s the captain”, then the camera flashes over to the moment in this gif, her winking at him and smiling.

(x)

Again during Whats My Name, Uma goes to the stage and he promptly joins her where this happens. They move closer to each other spurred on by her grabbing his hook. Their smiles after she says it. LOOK AT THEM GRINS. And immediately after they both laugh and she playfully bumps him. Remember those quotes from before? Where Uma’s not particularly bothered, enticed by or even interested in Harry’s flirting in Rise of the Isle of the Lost? Well, look at our little sea witch now. It looks like she’s very much enjoying his attention. For Harry’s part, he seems twice as smitten with Uma than he was before. If he was merely flirting with her for fun in Rise, his actions in the movie show it’s developed into straight up infatuation. This boy is S P R U N G. In the text? He flirts. In the film? We literally never hear a flirtacious line come out of his mouth. He doesn’t quite initiate contact between he and Uma in the movie. But Uma does. It’s almost like a reversal of their dynamic, but with actions instead of words. And Uma’s the one that starts it. Whereas Uma didn’t care when he flirted in the book, Harry is enthralled by her in the movie whether she’s giving him attention or not. All eyes on me, let me see 'em indeed.

(x)

I want to say this moment is the one that saw the S.S. Huma rise out of the waters all majestic-like and for good reason, too. Some context: She pushes Gil aside and turns to Harry. Her tone and his expression are serious when she asks, “What’s my name?” And this is how he responds. First, body language. He literally lowers himself by kneeling before her, putting himself in a position of reverence, submission. He takes off his hat - taking off one’s hat is typically done for courtesy - and says her name in…. awe? Adoration? Respect? [Insert adjective of your choice here]? You pick because - watch the scene again if you can - even the sound of voice is different when he says her name. And his eyes. He never breaks eye contact with her once throughout that entire exchange. (Remember that time in Rise he called her captain and didn’t genuinely mean it? My how things have changed.) Speaking of eyes…

(x)

She’s dancing on her throne and the camera turns away from her to Harry where he’s literally following her every movement.

(x)

Harry looks at Uma like he just discovered fire and is so captivated by what he’s seeing he can’t look away. He seriously isn’t looking away. None of the above gifs scream platonic from his side. Like, none. I can’t comprehend how you could even view him as thinking of Uma as merely a friend at this point. I never got the sense he was this interested in her in the book, but clearly his feelings for her have exploded since. What the hell happened with them after Rise but before Descedants 2 began?? Let’s talk about that second gif real quick. One of Uma’s moves involves swinging her arm around and pointing it at the crowd around her and they respond in kind by looking away. Except for Harry. Harry doesn’t flinch. Harry doesn’t move. His position remains the same. He keeps on looking. His eyes are glued to the girl in front of him. The line in the song before this scene comes from him, as well: Uma’s so hot they get burned if they look. They get burned, eh? I guess Harry is exempt from this particular fate.

(x) His body is turned towards her, watching as she mocks Mal. He’s biting his lip as he watches. Now a lip bite can mean a few things: scared, anxious, uncomfortable. But it can also be flirtatious. Nothing else about his expression or stature signals that he’s feeling anything other than good af, so its pretty darn safe to say he’s just plain into her.

As for Uma, she is winking at him again and she taps him on the chin (physical contact!). The moment after this is adorable - dare I say, better than this moment itself? - because she looks so pleased, backing up as he steps forward to get in Mal’s face and talk about the ways in which he’ll harm her boyfriend.

(x)

LOOK AT UMA’s GRIN. LOOK. AT. IT.

And of course, I wasn’t going to not mention this moment:

(x)

Again, she’s the one initiating contact with him - running her hands through his hair - and he genuinely looks like he could die in that moment and be perfectly content with that. She even bends down, increasing how close they are to each other.

Meanwhile he is leaning backwards into her touch, mouth agape, watching her the whole time (I wasn’t joking about his eyes never leaving her). His mouth curls up into a smile at the end! If that first moment where he says her name didn’t catch you, then this moment would have for sure.

Now I know there will be some who say: Well, those actions by Uma aren’t necessarily flirty. It could mean nothing. Some people are naturally more touchy feely - they like hugs, placing hands on shoulders, linking fingers - and those actions are never intended to mean anything more. All of which is true. All of which is fine. But Uma? She’s not one of these people. Not based on everything I’ve read and seen. We’re not (please, please correct me if I’m wrong!) presented with scenes where this kind of behavior is displayed by her in the book. In the movie, she does wrap her arms around Harry and Gil but for the most part we don’t see her initiating physical contact a lot. So I tend to think her behavior here means something. Even if its just her being playful. Because she doesn’t act this way, exhibit these particular behaviors (light friendly touches, the winking), towards anyone else but Harry. Which leads me here, the final scene I want to discuss:

(x)

Now this. This is intriguing. Scroll back up folks, look at Uma’s body language, her expressions in those moments she’s initiating contact with him. She’s oozing confidence. She’s joyful, bouncy. She’s totally in her element. But if you glance down here again. Her expression. It’s different. She looks vulnerable, overwhelmed (?), almost lost in Harry’s intense stare. Again with the eyes. Their eyes are locked. The space between them isn’t exactly wide. And Harry is the one leaning closer. Harry. And he’s biting down on his lip and he’s staring at her and his head is tilted. We’ll never know what was suppose to happen in this tiny moment - if anything even was! - as it was broken by Gil talking, shaking them out of this interaction. But to me, it looks like he wanted to kiss her and Uma was shook by the very prospect. And that is certainly something.

Because this is the same girl who - however long ago it was - told him to shut up about him being her first date or threatening to cut him when he teased her about couple’s carving hearts into trees and it having any relevance to them. In conclusion: Harry/Mal is nothing. Uma and Harry’s relationship has kinda sorta maybe changed, Uma is now Harry’s north star and moon and literally every celestial body in existence, and I really want to see where this is heading for these two pirates. Don’t let me down Melissa and Kenny.

#Uma #harry hook #huma #umaxharry #disney descendants 2 #submission

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voices-softasthunder · 6 years

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for the 30 days of character development challenge: 3, 6, 8, 10, 13, 17, 27!

so katie you sent me this ask literally MONTHS ago but bc you’re so amazing and sent me a bunch of asks i didn’t get around to answering all of them!! so here you go, questions you probably forgot you asked about my ocs (and made me decide which ones to answer for, rip im so indecisive!)

3.) Name one scar your character has, and tell us where it came from. If they don’t have any, is there a reason?

So one of the first I think of is Vivienne Beauregarde. She’s a Gryffindor who was in 6th year during the Battle of Hogwarts, but already of age so she was allowed to stay behind to fight (though obviously plenty who weren’t allowed did stay too!) Viv is…. ferocious. She throws herself full force into things, which included the fight. Her twin sibling Mallory, who she loves with all of her heart, was fighting too and happened to be one of the more skilled-at-Healing members of Dumbledore’s Army, so Mal was one of the three designated field medics in the battle. Viv devoted herself to protecting Mal in the fight - both because strategically, they needed as many Healers as possible, and because she absolutely loves her twin. This meant Viv did so much to protect Mal, at the cost of her own safety. When Mal was hit with a Disarming Spell, Viv just handed them her wand without a second thought. She then broke off a leg of an Acromantula she’d killed to use it as a weapon now that she didn’t have her wand (the leg has barbs an inch or so long so it’s a pretty damn useful weapon for fighting up close!) and uses that. It’s honestly a miracle she dodged the Killing Curses, but she was hit with a lot of spells that did damage but still couldn’t bring her down. Acromantula bites, cursed wounds, all sorts of injuries and she stayed on her feet for hours. The only reason she didn’t die is when she finally collapsed, Mal was right there to stabilize her and so she made it until the Battle was won and she got full medical care at St. Mungo’s. Now, with all that backstory, she obviously has a lot of scars. One of her big ones is a huge Acromantula bite on her arm (since she tackled a lot of those up close). She also was hit with a Reducto full in the abdomen, but Mal was able to keep that from killing her, so she just has the scorch marks and shiny regrown skin to show where it almost blew her apart. Interestingly though, for where she *doesn’t* have scars is on her face and neck. That’s because when she was being healed at St. Mungo’s, they healed a lot of the damage there while she was unconscious (one spell that had hit her in the face was possibly messing up her breathing, so understandable to repair that damage, and then they just went on to clear more of it). However, once she woke up Viv was angry they healed a lot of the superficial damage on her face. They’re her battle wounds, her marks of valor - proof of what she went through for her twin. She insisted that they be left behind. Lucky for her, the Healers hadn’t gotten around to doing the cosmetic work on scars below her neck, so she still has a huge array of scars to show there.

That turned out really long but honestly I have so many other possible scars to talk about for people rip! I’ll also talk about Lavender (who isn’t an OC but is an important character in all of this). She survives the Battle with deep scars from Greyback, mostly at her neck and upper torso. Since they’re cursed, she doesn’t have a choice of whether to heal them or not, and they are always really vivid. As soon as she’s released from the hospital, she joins the fledgling group of Aurors who are being recruited to have a defense against future dark wizards (as does Viv, since who could keep her away!? Her recuperation is way longer though so she doesn’t join until a few months after the battle, whereas Lavender and others start training within the first week). Lavender gets new scars in the future of course, but one of her werewolf-caused scars is visible on the underside of her jaw and she has them all over her neck, so they’re by far her most visible. This absolutely produces a challenge in Auror training when she and others have to pass the concealment tests that Tonks mentioned in OotP!

6.) Describe your character’s happiest memory.

Ooh this is hard to pin down just one thing! Even my OCs with the toughest lives have multiple good spots to choose from.

For Sue, her happiest memories involve her beloved partner Beck, her family, or both. Beck’s family was… not the most involved ever, and when nobody comes to pick them up after their first summer when Hogwarts ends, Sue’s mother decides that Beck is coming home with them until their mother or stepfather get their shit together and get Beck, because no twelve-year-old is going to be waiting alone at the train station obviously! That’s the first of many times Beck goes to the Li household (their flat is right in London so it’s very easy to go there from Kings Cross), and sometimes it’s hours, sometimes it’s weeks. While that’s obviously shitty, that’s the background to a lot of Sue’s happy memories where her partner (who for the first few years they know each other, they say best friend! Then girlfriend comes later) is so unequivocally welcome in her family. So many good holiday moments there, and there was one Chinese New Year celebration that fell during the Hogwarts winter holidays that Beck was able to attend, which made Sue so happy that the most festive holiday for her family was now something Beck could take part in! That’s definitely up there for happiest memory, but maybe one concrete one is right after her little brother Todd comes out to their family as trans (he’d learned it was a possibility and it was okay through Beck, who by the time they’re 16 is out to everyone including all of the Li family). Because Richard and Catherine Li are probably the best parents EVER, they accept and affirm Todd 100%, as does the oldest Li sibling, Ava. What they don’t understand yet, they ask and want to know (and Sue and Beck have done a lot of reading when Beck was trying to figure out their identity, so they have the information!) The specific memory that’s one of Sue’s favorites is when Todd gets his wish to have his hair “cut short just like Sue’s!” and she helps him buzz his hair. Their parents and older sister are there and supportive, and so is Beck, chatting with Todd in the British Sign Language that they had worked so hard to communicate well with Sue’s mother and siblings. It’s really representative of so much good in her life that she loves about her family.

Another character who does have a few happiest memories I can pin down is probably Anthony! A lot of his happiest memories were also during summer vacations, specifically with his best friends Kevin and Phoebe. There’s one specific summer day they’re all at Kevin’s house, goofing off in the kitchen (maybe helping with dinner? maybe causing more distraction than actual help?) and singing and dancing. Anthony has loved theater and plays all his life, and while he can’t sing on key at all, Kevin has sung all his life and Phoebe is pretty talented as well. He had taught them some of his favorite musicals, and Phoebe and Kevin dancing around and singing along. There definitely would have been some Into The Woods, A Chorus Line, and Anthony’s (at the time) favorite, Pirates of Penzance. One of Kevin’s dads took a break from cooking to get out the camera and snap some pictures to immortalize their fun, which were very cherished mementos later, if so incongruous to remember when they were that young and carefree… Anthony did have very happy memories even in later years in the war though, especially with Blaise when they officially started dating in the beginning of 1998. They had a ton of happy moments, like the first time they told each other “I love you”, or almost all of their spring vacation where they were free from Hogwarts and spent nearly all of their time together. Anthony really cherishes a memory from a little after Valentine’s Day when they were in the Prefects’ bathroom together (a place with decent privacy to protect their secret relationship!) and just fell asleep in each other’s arms.

8.) Day of Favorites! What’s your character’s favorite ice cream flavor? Color? Song? Flower?

Hannah’s favorite ice cream is strawberry cheesecake. Her favorite color is light green, her favorite song is Celestina Warbeck’s Could Any Seer Have Foretold This, and her favorite flower is probably a bulbous buttercup or trumpeting lily.

Phoebe’s favorite ice cream is probably chocolate but in milkshake form, and her favorite color is purple (either violet or lavender, either is beautiful). She has a lot of favorite songs, but pretty much all are from musicals - Without You from Rent always makes her cry and she loves almost every song in that show; Dust and Ashes from Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 is one of the most recent additions to her favorites list. However her all time favorite might be Les Miserables’ Bring Him Home (her mother is French so she fell in love with the original Les Mis book, and knows both the French and English songs to all of Les Mis!)

10.) Can you define a turning point in your character’s life? Multiples are acceptable.

Two turning points in Padma’s life! The sad one is the Battle of Hogwarts where she lost her sister and many other people important to her. She had never imagined the war would end so soon, thinking it could stretch years into adulthood and of course it seemed inevitable that some loved ones would die, but the reality of it and the war so abruptly being over took a lot of grappling to understand. Rebuilding the wizarding world was a huge part of her life that began after that turning point of course. She also had a few lasting injuries from the Battle - she’d fought on the roof of the Astronomy Tower, which was an amazing vantage point for firing down at the Death Eaters below. However, they realized this before long and began amassing forces against it and the other towers they had strategically placed fighters. None of Voldemort’s forces were able to take the towers to then use for their own snipers, Padma and her comrades fighting them off. They tried their best though and one Death Eater who flew up on broomstick fired a Dark curse at her that cut deeply into her face, and if she hadn’t partially dodged probably would have beheaded her instead of just leaving a huge scar (I considered talking about her in the scar portion but it was already really long!) It was never fully healed because of the Dark magic, and it left her with limited mobility on the right side of her face because of the damage. Once the Death Eaters realized they wouldn’t gain control of any of the towers, they decided to just destroy them. A few of the smaller ones like the West Tower had the stone roof turned into molten lava by a powerful curse, so the fighters on that one needed to be quickly evacuated and it became useless. The Astronomy Tower lasted the longest, but its damage was most severe. While the other towers mostly just had the roof and battlements destroyed so nobody could stay to fight there, the combination of giants attacking the base and Death Eaters flying around it led to the whole thing crumbling. Padma was one of the few to survive of all of those who were on the towers, because she was already halfway down the tower from it crumbling apart, clinging to the outside for dear life, when it was all brought to rubble and so she didn’t fall to her death. She did a ton of damage to her right foot when she eventually hit the ground, though luckily for her it was a short enough drop to be survivable.

That’s long and pretty depressing but the more fun turning point in her life was the gay awakening! She was in her 20s and had spent all of her life until then thinking she was straight because she had been in relationships with guys and it was very hard to identify the lack of attraction there by its absence. She just thought other straight women had the same indifference to dating she had. It was one day when she was entranced by her fellow Auror Susan Bones working out, doing press ups and biceps showcased. That was when Padma was hit with holy fuck this is what they’re talking about when people say they’re actually attracted to someone. After that, things made so much more sense in her life.

13.) What does your character’s bed look like when he/she wakes up? Are the covers off on one side of the bed, are they all curled around a pillow, sprawled everywhere? In what position might they sleep?

Ginny steals all of the covers every time, so they’re bunched around her. Harry (or one of her other partners, since they’re both polyamorous and date other people) often has a little corner pulled back but it’s very imbalanced! She sleeps on her side and legs curled up underneath her, often turned away from her partner so that she can be the little spoon. When she sleeps alone, the sheets often get tangled because she still pulls them in her sleep! Once the kids are born, if they need to be in her bed after a nightmare or something, she’ll hold them close in front of her (which helps comfort them and keep them covered instead of having the sheets accidentally pulled off of them by Ginny!)

Priscilla Wagner sleeps on her side too, but ramrod straight. Her one hand is always under her pillow, holding her wand so she’ll be ready at a moment’s notice. Her covers are tucked in very loosely so she can kick them off easily and instantaneously, and jump out of bed unhindered by anything. She doesn’t sleep too well.

17.) What’s your character’s desk/workspace look like? Are they neat or messy?

Ava Proudfoot becomes Head Auror by default after the war, since she and Kingsley are the only fully trained Aurors who are still alive and didn’t fight with the Death Eaters when it served their best interests. Kingsley obviously becomes busy running the whole government as Minister, so training the few remaining trainees who also were on the right side of the war and all of the new recruits is a very busy job. She manages to keep her office absolutely pristine though. None of them know how she does it. Ron and Dean dare each other to make messes there; dumping untidy sheafs of paperwork or leaving crumbs from a pastry they happened to be eating while meeting with her. They keep trying to figure out how she gets everything so clean so well; it doesn’t even seem like she reaches for her wand to cast the cleaning charms. She just has everything in order and however she does it, it impresses the hell out of everyone.

Ginny has different workplaces through the years - immediately after the war ends, she works in a task force to round up remaining Death Eaters, Dementors, etc after the war (they serve basically as a short-term interim Auror squad - the new Auror trainees are being worked round the clock to get as fully qualified as quickly as they can, so there’s not much time for them to do the necessary immediate work! There were many people like Ginny who weren’t interested in joining the Aurors because that would be a career commitment of years, but she and Luna and many others work for the months that they need immediate help.) Then she’s free to go do other things, which is in her case becoming a chaser on the Holyhead Harpies. She doesn’t have concrete workspaces for either of these jobs - for the work she does to rebuild after the war, she’s basically based out of home and then meets the others on their missions. As a Quidditch player, it’s mostly just her locker where she stores all of her equipment, and then the whole sky around their pitch is her workspace! Her locker is a goddamn mess though - Harry helps remind her to bring back the dirty laundry and they figure out some good charms to clean out the pervasive odor of sweat in there. Still, her Quidditch uniform and gear is always strewn about and very disorganized. The only pristine thing is her broom, a beautiful Nimbus 2004 that she gets issued by the team and is pretty much the nicest thing she’s ever been able to call hers in her life. She polishes it every day and stores it inside her locker in a fabric case that keeps all of the dirt away from it - and is magically reinforced so if/when she throws her boots or helmet carelessly into the locker, the case will protect the broom. Later in her life, after Ginny retires from professional Quidditch, she works as a sports reporter and primarily writes from home (to nobody’s surprise, her desk there is a mess!) She has a cubicle at The Daily Prophet offices in London, but rarely works there even when all of the kids are at school and she doesn’t need to work from home. She doesn’t like it very much, not just because of how pathetic the Prophet was during the war, but also because she’s alienated a lot of her colleagues in interviews she’s given since the war! Ginny Weasley-Potter does not hold back her opinions.

27.) Pick two songs that describe your character at two different points of their life, and explain why you chose them.

Definitely Phoebe is the best person here! I’m going to cheat and go with a few songs to describe one of the points though. Empty Chairs at Empty Tables from Les Mis is the first to describe her immediate-post war life. She loses her entire family in the war, as well as other loved ones. Dust and Ashes, which I mentioned earlier as one of her favorite songs, really reflects how she struggles in the immediate aftermath to find any purpose in living and going on (SO much survivor’s guilt…)

Later in her life, I’m trying to pick a specific point to describe… Either Another Day from Rent, or more accurately the part of the Finale B where it’s lyrics from Without You and Another Day blended together beautifully. It resonates with her a lot, when she’s finally happy with her life again and making the most of it while she can. “There’s only now/There’s only here/Give in to love/Or live in fear” describes a lot of different feelings she has, and since all of these are from musicals and she became a huge musical buff (no small thanks to Anthony for introducing her to them!) so a lot of these feelings and similarities are ones she feels in-story. There are definitely a lot of happy songs to think about for her later life when she’s living her truth, has a great support network, and lots of love, but that’s the main one I’m thinking for right now!

This got really long (no wonder it took me forever to do it!) but I hope you enjoy reading as much as I did writing, Katie!

#dianameras #Vivienne Beauregard #Mallory Beauregard #Lavender Brown #Sue Li #Beck Turpin #Todd Li #Anthony Goldstein #Blaise Zabini #Kevin Entwhistle #Hannah Abbott #Phoebe Corner #Padma Patil #Ginny Weasley #Priscilla Wagner #Ava Proudfoot #thanks again katie! <3 #ask meme

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100wordanime · 7 years

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As the first episodes of the Winter anime march before us pretty much every ani-blogger has been giving their first impressions and a lot of these have been negative. While there are a couple of shows winning people over for the most part people who watch a lot of anime have been universally eye-rolling at some of the shows coming out this season. A small number of people will take this as a sign that the anime industry is dead argument has some grounds whereas the rest of us will simply rearrange our schedules, dig out some titles from our watch lists, and wait for the next season because there is always another season coming.

Rather than look at the state of the industry, or all of the titles that I’ve had the dubious pleasure of sampling this week, I want to look just at the romantic comedies. Specifically I want to look at Seiren, Fuuka and Masamune-Kun’s Revenge (and yes, Masamune-Kun’s revenge is described as a romance and a comedy on MAL).

While the three shows are quite different, they all have one thing in common and that is that they aren’t particularly exciting or at least their first episode wasn’t particularly good. Okay, that and for some reason they all seem to follow the male protagonist rather than the female lead.

Seiren is perhaps the worst offender of the three in regard to having a fairly dull first episode. Admittedly MAL simple says it’s genre is ‘school’ and by that they’ve nailed it. We follow a high schooler about as her goes to school and interacts with people. However, that isn’t really exciting. The high school students in question don’t have a great deal of personality and aren’t really memorable in their own right. Other than his friend, who I only remember because he seemed like the only character with sense in his head, none of the other characters really had any kind of impact.

This show has no particular gimmick unveiled in its first episode (though the Crunchyroll write up would says that “this campus romantic comedy…depicts his pure relationship with three different heroines” leading us to believe that they are hoping that the multiple heroines will be the gimmick). But if that is the cast then surely during the first episode we should have at least met three strong contenders for a romantic lead role and unfortunately we haven’t. The one girl in the class who sits on his desk is probably going to be one but really, other than being a little bit bossy, she hasn’t demonstrated much of a memorable personality and she has zero romantic chemistry with the lead so that possibility doesn’t really entice.

And while a show lacking a gimmick isn’t exactly a death sentence, what else could this story do? Romantic comedies are generally formulaic in design so they either need a clever setting, a gimmick of some sort, or really strong and memorable characters with excellent chemistry to sell their story. Seiren has none of these things. This doesn’t make this story bad but it does make it excessively bland.

Moving on to Fuuka we see this show attempt the comedy aspect of the romantic comedy by delving into some of the worst clichés anime has to offer. Girl runs into guy, guy sees her pants, girl smacks him into the middle of next week (in this case after breaking his phone), this sequence is repeated only the next time the phone goes off the roof, guy attempts to save girl (though in this case she doesn’t need it), boy has only sisters who meddle in his life or dominate him, etc, etc. Some of it is kind of amusing when they play the cliché and then change out the ending but mostly it kind of misses the mark. But, at least it is making some sort of effort.

After establishing the two characters and literally running them into one another, what develops over the first two episodes is a kind of friendship that might be able to develop into a romance (though the guy really needs to make her pay for the damage to his phone). The two characters actually do play off each other quite well. We then also have the other girl, the childhood friend who is now an idol and is clearly holding a torch for Yuu. This definitely gives us hints of conflict or some sort of emotional decision that will need to be made later on though it is impossible to know whether anything will come of this.

Despite having characters who are slightly more memorable and actual chemistry, this show is still fairly bland and this point. It’s checking off the clichés and while it is putting its own spin on some others are just played as they always are and the characters aren’t quite strong enough to make up for the deficit in original story-telling. So yes, more interesting than Seiren, but that show didn’t set the bar all that high.

Lastly we have Masamune-Kun’s Revenge. While I have an issue with even considering anything romantic could evolve from these mean spirited characters, I’ll overlook that and just assume that after pretending to like the girl to win her affections, Masamune-Kun may develop something of a conscience. Otherwise, this show has no business claiming romance as a genre.

Masamune-Kun’s Revenge has a gimmick. The guy was rejected by the girl when they were young and now he is out to get even. That’s memorable and it allows clear establishment of character for the protagonist (even if that character is horrible). So why did this first episode feel so bland?

I know from reading the impressions of others, that some people really enjoyed this. They found there to be some genuinely clever moments and I’ll admit that when the story focussed on Masamune-Kun and his actively seeking revenge (information gathering, plotting, spying) there were some interesting moments. However everything else is more or less forgettable. The loli-mother and the younger sister barely have enough personality between them to make a whole character. I kind of felt the only reason the sister was there at all was so the mother had someone to comment to and so that someone could voice the audience’s disgust at the main character preening in front of the mirror. The classmates all seem like they are desperately trying to have individual personalities but none have quite succeeded. Essentially the school has guys who are desperate to be rejected by a complete cow of a female lead, and girls who are either non-entitites or are followers of the female lead. It doesn’t really draw you into the world of these characters nor does it feel like a fairly believable setting.

While I’m not a die-hard romance fan I do enjoy a good romance story or romantic comedy. However, Winter 2017 has currently served up these three bland contenders and to be honest I’m kind of sad that not one of them is really grabbing me. I’ll probably watch Fuuka through (unless the panty-shots do me in, which is a possibility) but I’m not holding my breath that it will amaze.

Anyway, if I really get stuck for romance I can always marathon Kimi ni Todoke. That has enough sickly sweet in it to forget about any of these shows.

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Karandi James.

Friday’s Feature: March of the Bland Romances As the first episodes of the Winter anime march before us pretty much every ani-blogger has been giving their first impressions and a lot of these have been negative.

#anime #Feature #Friday&039;s Feature #Fuuka #Kimi ni Todoke #Masamune-Kun&039;s Revenge #rom-com #romance #Seiren

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