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prismatoxic · 2 months

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okay, shipping brainrot from my last post aside, i'm still thinking about the shapeshifter arc. the other sites i use don't have inline posting or do but it's clunky, so i guess i'm theorizing here. some of this may seem obvious; bear with me, i'm not trying to be patronizing, just working through things. this will probably be long.

(edit: i've since learned there's canon explanations for all of this. regrettably i don't like them. enjoy my ideas of what would be better maybe? but keep in mind i wrote this before i knew it had been explained anywhere else.)

laios reveals what he knows of shapeshifters, and that they function on memory:

no one ever really suggests in chapters 39 or 40 who thought of which fake except in the case of which ones laios must have thought of, but i want to posit who i think each one came from, and what it means narratively if i'm right. so, mostly a thought experiment/character study that i could be wrong about or that was never meant to be clearly defined in the first place. but maybe fun to think about? (i'm sure other people have done this before too, but i think it'll be fun to write up.)

from the outset, i think it's worth mentioning that chilchuck knows all three laios fakes are, in fact, fakes. two chilchucks say this, but the one on the right is the real one. senshi and marcille immediately corroborate this, though we can't tell which of them it is except that it's not any of the really obvious fakes.

what i think this suggests is that, brought to the surface, the warped perceptions of the rest of the party that chilchuck, senshi, and marcille have can be easily discerned when compared with the real thing. each of these laioses is from one of them, but they immediately figure out none of them are right with the real laios right there in the room. this is important.

as for who's who...

i think it's fair to assume that giant laios is from chilchuck. laios is the tallest member of their party, at six feet; while chilchuck sees marcille and senshi as their correct heights, laios is a giant to him, and his bulky armor doesn't help. that's why, even if this is his perception, it's glaringly obvious that it's wrong as soon as it's made physical. it's the only big one, and easily falls into the camp of "doesn't seem to know much about monsters" that the others also do.

stupid laios is, i think, from marcille. because the giant one is so likely chilchuck's and i don't think senshi sees laios as someone who stupidly wants to eat everything (even if senshi's opinion of him isn't stellar right now, "i have to eat it" wouldn't be paired with being an idiot to senshi), it tracks that marcille would be the one to remember him this way. to someone who doesn't appreciate their monster eating and otherwise thinks he's an idiot just as much as the others do, dumbly muttering about eating things seems like a reasonable portrayal of laios.

feminine laios, then, is from senshi. i think his physical perception of the other party members is the most off-base; this is likely because he's known them for the least amount of time, and his idea of what they look like is based more on their races than anything else. i think the resemblance to falin might not be intentional--someone suggested to me the other day that the dwarf perception of tall-men is probably more feminine in contrast to how Macho dwarfs are. i think that makes sense (if it ever comes up canonically, i haven't seen it yet). laios and falin do just... look like gender-swapped versions of each other, also. so if senshi sees laios as a feminine person, well... that just winds up looking like falin.

so this leaves us with only the real laios. confronted with their perceptions of him, his friends can immediately tell all three are incorrect.

moving on, we eliminate the three most obvious fakes from the rest of the party, starting with marcille:

if we take into account what i just said about senshi, i think this is his. racial stereotypes about elves being what they are, him not knowing the party as well as the other members do... she stands out, and that's why.

now this is where things start to get interesting.

the next two fakes to be eliminated aren't so blatantly incorrect that they can be struck right out at a glance, but it's not hard to notice the flaws when you look closer, and chilchucks A and B are the ones to point it out. chilchuck is naturally observant; most of his fakes seem to emulate this. (the one who addresses the fakes is A, the real one, but B is proving himself able to pick up on the things A notices. this is important.)

notably, chilchuck and senshi assume these must be laios's versions of them.

we can assume this is correct, if we want to. we can take the framing of this as being an intentional reflection of the truth.

or... or... we can look a little deeper. we can wonder if, perhaps, this isn't a reflection of laios, but a reflection of his friends and what they think of him. laios may not immediately notice the problems, but i don't think it's because he doesn't remember these details. i don't think laios sees much of anything in vague terms; he's observant in his own right, but in ways he doesn't really recognize, nor does anyone else. i think he was so focused on their faces and mannerisms that he didn't notice the bigger picture, glossing over something because so many other factors are at play.

senshi and chilchuck think laios doesn't take notice of things, but the vast majority of the shapeshifter arc is about them and marcille not trusting laios's judgement as it is, given how things went recently. is it possible there's more to their assumptions here than what the text explicitly says? i think so!

so then who do these two belong to? marcille, i think.

if we assume dumb laios is hers, then we can also assume her perceptions of the others are kind of broad and vague. she doesn't think poorly of them, necessarily (at least not in as obvious a way as she does with laios, who, i'll remind you, she's currently upset with), but she doesn't commit unimportant details to memory, like chilchuck's neck band or the damage to senshi's helmet.

we've got three more "obvious" fakes to get through, and laios offers another lore tidbit on how the shapeshifters work:

anyway, the first of the next round is marcille again, setting the stage for how these three next fakes are eliminated.

marcille changes her hairstyle all the time, so this isn't a surprise. the last one pictured here winds up being our next fake, as indicated by her grimoire:

so the fake marcille in this section is the one with the most visibly different hair texture (who even draws attention to this), and the spellbook that's woefully incompetent. i think she's from chilchuck.

he's observant, as i said before; even if he didn't commit her hair to memory, he did remember the stuff she's said about how important hair is to magic. maybe that's why the texture is so striking. more importantly, chilchuck isn't wary of magic quite the way senshi is, but he also doesn't understand it. the general tone of the low-quality grimoire also just... sounds like the way he'd frame something like that. (plus, the "how to turn back time" bit is a thing he specifically called her on when she suggested it a few chapters ago.)

so the next fake chilchuck and senshi are revealed via their tools:

i think the chubby-cheeked chilchuck with the simple lockpicks is from senshi, and i think the ordinary-looking senshi with the simple cookware is from chilchuck. the former speaks for itself--senshi sees chilchuck as a child, and knows absolutely nothing about picking locks. as for the fake senshi, chilchuck has a decent mental image of him but knows nothing about cookware.

so now we're down to the final three fakes, and there's only one person left who they could be from: laios. nobody thinks this, not even laios himself, but i want to explore the concept because i think it has extreme merit. the three remaining fakes have some key similarities between them, namely in that they're all close enough interpretations that making a distinction is difficult. they look a tiny bit different, but both the real people and their fakes make plausible cases for why they're the actual person. i want to talk about why i think laios is the one who made that so, and what that means about him.

chapter 39 ends with all his companions--real and fake--doubting his skills. seeing a pattern?

chapter 40 opens with laios determined to regain his friends' trust in him...

...while his friends (and their fakes) talk about how he's liable to like the fakes more, because they're monsters.

this is a needlessly cruel interpretation of laios, but after how things went post-falin-rescue, it's not a surprise. they see him as reckless and single-minded, more interested in the things he's weird about than in the people around him.

laios is really bad at talking about what he's thinking--not because he's hiding it, but because it doesn't occur to him that it's important. meeting the lunatic magician in the paintings is a prime example of this, but he does it a lot. they likely have no idea why he told toshiro about falin and the black magic; to them, laios was being flippant with sensitive information, not worrying about their safety. to laios? he was trying to get help. he trusted toshiro, and his perception of their friendship made him think the information would help them gain an ally who cared about falin as much as they do. he wasn't trying to put falin or marcille in danger--far from it, in fact. but he didn't tell his friends about his thought process. he didn't think it was important to share.

(he's autistic but we all know this. moving on)

so, we have laios's plan: the pairs cook together, while he watches for behavioral differences to discern who's who. it doesn't occur to him, or anyone else, that the people he's watching for mistakes are his own perceptions of his friends. and now we get into the meat of why i wanted to write this post.

assuming i'm correct... let's talk about laios's view of his friends, and how he challenges those perceptions.

starting with my favorite, chilchuck:

chilchuck A, of course, is in fact the real one. this is a pretty significant character moment for him too, in my opinion; we know he has difficulty expressing his emotions, and that a lot of his conflicts so far have stemmed from that. the fact that "chilchuck B asked for help with a menial task" is a gotcha moment to him is... telling. not only because it's so obvious to him, but because it's not obvious to any of his companions. he thinks they know this about him, but he's never openly expressed anything to make them think this is an issue he'd have, in addition to having sought help in the past.

his "convictions and pride and all that" seems to them like someone trying to convince them of something, not someone reminding them of facts he assumes they know.

anyway, back to laios. if we accept that chilchuck B is made from his memories, this suggests several things. first of all, chilchuck B is, despite his softer eyes and willingness to ask for help, still a fairly accurate portrayal of chilchuck. he's easily annoyed and he's observant, two traits chilchuck is known for. i think the reason chilchuck B has the kinder eyes and the more gentle disposition is because to laios, those things are indicative of someone being a good person, and he very much thinks chilchuck is a good person.

we know laios isn't especially good at reading people in general. thus, his idea of who his friends are is skewed in broad strokes, but not in the ways they think. he knows who chilchuck is, but he also associates chilchuck with his own ideas of what makes someone "good", which results in a chilchuck who's less rough around the edges. confronted with this--the real chilchuck asking him if he can tell--laios compares the two and thinks, reasonably speaking, the nicer one who trusts him has to be the friend he respects so much.

senshi and marcille also want to accept this chilchuck, likely for similar reasons. they also respect and care for him; they've seen him go through a lot. laios's ideal of him is just that, ideal. in a roundabout way, it's only their deep fondness for who chilchuck really is that makes them want to see him this way.

next up, we have marcille.

the fake, marcille A, is a radical departure from what makes chilchuck B a fake. laios notes that the real marcille is exactly the same as she always is. the reason, then, that marcille A confuses him--and the others--is that after everything they've been through, their perception of her has changed radically.

if we look back to senshi and chilchuck's marcilles, it's readily apparent when they're eliminated that both interpretations hinge on the knowledge that she performs black magic. senshi's tries to use it to prove herself; chilchuck's has a grimoire loudly proclaiming it's what she does. contrast this to marcille A: she doesn't mention black magic at all, and her grimoire looks strikingly similar to the real one.

that's because laios doesn't think her performing black magic changes anything about who she is. her doing so proved her to be just as dedicated to falin as he himself is, and the knowledge that her goals involve it doesn't faze him. (additionally, marcille has been teaching him magic, and falin had tried in the past. though his image of a grimoire is flawed to someone experienced, to anyone else it looks fine.) thus, marcille A isn't a flagrant black magic wielder; she's someone who's been fundamentally changed by what they--and falin--went through.

let's go back to chapter 27:

chilchuck and senshi are appalled, and will continue to be. while they ultimately don't prevent marcille from doing this, and care enough about both her and laios (and in chilchuck's case, falin as well) to be in tentative support, this changes their view of her in a negative way. she's dangerous now, in a way she wasn't before, but she's still marcille--goofy and a little reckless. thus, their views of her, and the illusions that result.

laios's opinion of her changes for the better.

she is, all at once, both competent and loyally dedicated. she will stop at nothing to help falin. whatever goofiness she exhibited before now is gone, replaced by the cold demeanor of someone who is doing something extremely dangerous for reasons that are inherently selfish, but ultimately too important to reject.

thus, we return to marcille A: cold, sharp, dedicated. not reckless or goofy, but methodical and haunted. she may have returned to "normal" since they left the castle town, but laios's opinion of her, and understanding of her love for falin, has been forever changed.

so faced with the real marcille--still silly, still whining, still frequently annoyed with him--he's confused, because that's deeply familiar, but it doesn't line up with what he knows about her now.

the truth, of course, is nuanced--these things are true about marcille, but only under duress; it's similar to how laios becomes a competent leader when the going gets tough. she has this within her, but it's not her default state of being. still, the shapeshifter picks up on the strongest memories laios has of her, this new interpretation of someone he thought he knew.

now then--onto senshi, the punchline of this particular joke about the differences between the copies. i still think it says a lot.

i think this one speaks for itself, though i find chilchuck's agreement interesting. senshi is the newest member of the team; little is known about him. laios happily notes that senshi "always looks cool" while chilchuck says he looks normal (and chilchuck B insults the real one). laios sees senshi this way because he thinks senshi is cool as hell, and this manifests in an idealized version of a face he's not as familiar with as he is with chilchuck and marcille.

this is clearly comedy, but it also speaks to the same desire to see the best in the rest of the party. marcille is the only one who notices likely because her opinion of senshi isn't so romanticized. chilchuck's senshi, of note, wasn't a perfect replica: we don't see much of him after the obvious fakes are hauled off, but he's a little squashed (he's the top one):

which indicates that chilchuck's visual memory of senshi is already flawed. if we compare this to giant laios and the marcille with the unique hair texture, it tells us chilchuck's attention to detail is more specific than the others'; he can remember the hole in the helmet, the importance of hair, but he doesn't quite see the bigger picture. giant laios is also surprisingly... rugged? which i imagine has to do with chilchuck's perception of him as a tall-man. (or maybe how he clearly has trouble seeing laios's face half the time, lmao...)

anyway. laios thinks senshi is super cool and chilchuck has an imperfect idea of what senshi look like as it is. (i wonder if chilchuck is some degree of faceblind? not enough to not recognize someone at all, but can't pinpoint specifics.)

and so, we arrive at the moment of truth.

so let's go over what i'm theorizing here... all the remaining fakes are illusions based on how laios sees his friends. the illusions manage to make mistakes that reveal the truth to him, but i think the reason for that harkens back to what laios said earlier... the illusions are being updated over time.

laios isn't considering any of the things that give the fakes away until this moment. if it had taken a little longer to resolve things, maybe they'd have started course-correcting, but they aren't given the chance. laios makes sure they aren't--he acts very quickly. even as he presents the three pairs with his findings, he's aware that everything will fall apart as soon as he does... and he's banking on that. while the shapeshifter illusions defend themselves from being killed, he gets right to the heart of the matter in the only way he knows how: confronting the actual monster involved.

when all's said and done, laios reveals how he figured it out:

potentially of note, all of these details happened before the red dragon fight. chilchuck fighting a mimic and revealing his history with them, senshi gushing about the dungeon's ecosystem, and marcille being attacked by the undine weren't super recent memories. when laios brought them forth in his mind, he had a delay before the shapeshifter updated its illusions.

well... except with marcille. marcille A actually didn't show her hand so easily; it was the real marcille's carelessness that proved her identity.

but what this suggests is that, when confronted with the realities of marcille versus his idealized version of her, laios had to make a choice: did it make more sense for her to have been radically changed by the revival and subsequent loss of falin, or was the presence of a marcille he knew so well proof of an illusion? she was the one who was the most different, and as such, the contrast was the same one that eliminated all three laioses at the start: with the real thing in the room, the fake became apparent.

so, to reach a conclusion: one again, laios has proven he's not as scatterbrained as his companions think, but this time he did so on a more personal level than usual. to them, he reveals that he knows their quirks enough to define them by such when they're otherwise faced with convincing copies. to us, the readers, if we accept what i've suggested here... he's revealed a lot more. he respects, admires, and idolizes his friends, all out of fondness: he wants to see them in an ideal way, whatever that means for each of them as individuals.

anyway thanks for coming to my TED talk

#dungeon meshi #extensive spoilers for chapters 39 and 40 but also a little bit 27 too #I REALLY LIKE WRITING META SORRY. THIS IS LONG #tox.txt

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idv-sunsxin3 · 2 years

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Helloo! Seeing these bnha-twst asks gave me a random thought so can I request how would the dorm leaders in twisted wonderland react to an mc that's like Mitsuri from demon slayer? The way she acts, way she wears, and like her super strength and stuff hehe

Dorm Leaders with KNY Mitsuri-like! MC

Headers’ art via Twisted Wonderland Official Game {edit by me}

{Scenarios/Headcanons}

Female! MC

Note// I’ll stop accepting anime character! Reader requests as I have other plans, sorry :’3

___

I can imagine Riddle acting stern towards you in the first impression, by how indecent you look with the way you wear your uniform-(I’m sorry-)

He slowly learns how strong, kind, and passionate you actually are than you seem- and eventually starts to become more respectful with you.

Riddle discovers that he likes to see you practice your sword fighting from afar very often-

Your sword is strange, yet you made it look so graceful and professional when using it in his opinion,,,,-

Gets extremely red whenever you embrace him- (making you get concerned if he’s angry or having a fever-)

Would politely and gently offer to buy you another uniform but with the proper size, pretty much concerned if the uniform you’re wearing is uncomfortable for you ,,,-(also internally questioning who the heck tailored you the uniform so improperly-)

___

He already knew since the beginning, that women can be stronger and fearful than men-

And you are literally the living example-

Pretty much threatening everyone in Savanaclaw to respect you whenever you visit the dorm-

Always maintains eye-contact with you, ignoring the boob window like a pro- (drinking respect women juice)

___

He won’t publicly admit it, but he freaking loves the Sakura mochis you make-

You somehow have the privilege of him serving you Monstro Lounge’s menu dishes with nice discounts,,,,

Watching you eat the meals with a very bright smile makes him melt and desire to see you smile more,,,-

Oops, since when did you ordered 5 more dishes for your table-???

Bonus points for Azul assuring you that the extra dishes are on the house,,, 😤

Doesn’t like to get fat, but regrettably likes junk food- As you encouraging him to eat junk food with you sometimes alters his weight balance of diet decisions-

Also bonus points of you encouraging him to exercise with you-

Y/N// Azul, let’s have lunch together,,,!

Azul taking out the bento you made for him this morning without hesitating// Yes, honey-

___

When you and Kalim are in the same luxurious room, your vibes will always be “everyday is a party”-

AKA lots of food, music, and dancing,,,-

But mostly him dancing as you eat handfuls of yummy food,,,, 🤭

You both are just pretty wholesome,,, Kalim likes to be pretty affectionate with you and even worship you like a queen-

Likes to place his hands on your cheeks for some reason, squish squish,,, 🥺

___

Picks up the habit of styling your pink hair daily-

Pretty much wouldn’t approve the massive amount of food you eat and other traits you have that ladies don’t usually have- So he definitely oppressed you to limit that before his overblot- 😔

Starts hiring a more proper, personal tailor for you from now on- (and also firing your tailor, he won’t accept protests from you, sorry dear-)

After his overblot, he learns that your traits are actually a gift(and that you surprisingly don’t get fat when eating a lot since you also train a lot-), so he then reassures you to be yourself instead,,,-

Loves to spoil you by dolling you up, buying you dresses that you may love to wear for outings, events, and your dates with him-

Often tries to button up your shirt out of concern, and then gets frustrated at how the buttons keep popping out from your shirt in the process- 😅

___

SJJSJJDJJSSJW??!!

Pretty much sobbing how kawaii and pretty you are-

Big simp.

That’s it, you will be his Persephone-

But.

How to talk to a pretty lady like you, if he shy??? 😔😭😫

POOR BOY, IT’S FUNNY IF HE DOES FREQUENTLY TURN PINK WHENEVER SEEING YOU- IT’S LIKE COPYING YOUR HAIR COLOR TO MATCH- (Which can make you think Idia is just trying to match with you so you find it cute nonetheless-)

Sorry, Idia reminds me of Obanai for some reason ngl-

___

Admires you.

Likes to watch you eat, even loves spoiling you with special banquets-

Pretty much a himbo who is in love with a wholesome girlboss-

Malleus will always try to protect you and carrying you away from Lilia who seems to have discovered that you like eating(effect: Lilia trying to make you taste his cooking-)

Scolds Sebek if he ever disrespects you with his loud, harsh tone- (Sweet people like you do not deserve to be yelled at,,,-)

___

{BONUS} What if the dorm leaders learn that Mitsuri-Like! MC loves in a man who can excel her in strength, since she wants to have someone who can protect her? note// this is just a “what if” don’t take it seriously-;;; 😅}

Determined to be stronger for MC and win over her heart

Riddle, KALIM

Usually doesn’t want to put a lot of effort on something, he will nonetheless be determined to become a more capable man for you

Leona

Knows his physical limits, but he benefits by using his brain to protect MC from harm

Vil, Riddle, AZUL

Already insecured that he’s not strong enough to meet MC’s love standards

Azul, IDIA

“I’m your type.”

MALLEUS (LOL-)

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moosemonstrous · 5 months

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I never write in the second person, but it seemed to fit, so 🤷

Ghost Rider Pacific Rim AU - Yegor Ivanov's edition

Say, you're in charge of security on a large, well-appointed quasi-military base housing twenty thousand people - mostly J-techs and their families, but also a sizeable assortment of soldiers, scientists, medical staff, relief workers and support crew. It's the most stable job you've ever had. The general populace is just so grateful for the giant robots you deploy to fight the ever-nastier demons crawling out of The Breach, you barely have to pay any attention to actual security part of it. Your subordinates haven't reported a single issue they couldn't deal with themselves in years. The eggheads fight between each other to secure your approval. You have the respect of the international leaders for keeping Hong-Kong off of their priority list. Somehow, in this beautiful, messed up world you managed to carve yourself out an existence most people can only dream of.

And you got there by making a hard decision once, ten years ago. Eli Morrow was a dangerous psychopath and once his usefulness ran its course, it was your responsibility to put him down. Sometimes, one man has to pull the trigger for the good of the many, and that day you pulled the trigger. Figuratively. It was a regrettable situation, but you don't really regret it, because you gave Eli every chance under the sun to pull himself together.

You said it broke your heart, to see what he did to his brother, but secretly you were relieved. You've done many terrible things together, before the monsters stopped being just men in a different uniform. You had a good handle on Eli for so long, you almost forgot that rabid dogs will bite their master's hand given half a chance. If it hadn't been poor Alberto, it would've been you.

You didn't believe for a second Beto's kids turned up on base purely by accident. Call it fate, or karma, or whatever you want, you can't pretend seeing a mirror image of a young Eli in your own damn hangar doesn't strike a chord deep in your chest. It's not a pleasant sensation.

You have no idea what their mother told them - she was smart enough to get out before all hell came loose, so maybe she was also smart enough to keep her mouth shut. The younger one is a non-issue, at least. You forgot he had the--the whatsit, some condition the medical was working on, the hook you had on the Reyeses to keep them on base. You should dig into the files, see if the same hook will work on the older one.

And you need all the hooks you can think of, because you fucked up. You panicked and figured, well, he doesn't know his old man's jaeger is a goddamn death trap kept only because it would be more expensive to take it apart. He doesn't know it killed every recruit to ever step a foot in it. And he's as sentimental as his father was, all wide-eyed at the sight of the machine making up a good portion of your nightmares.

Only Robbie Reyes is a little too much like his uncle, too, because he doesn't. Fucking. Die.

The whole K-Sci department is very excited, of course. The techs aren't. You should've timed yourself better, made sure Canelo and the rest of the old guard were off-shift when you brought Robbie to The Charger. Now they're watching your hands and lowering their voices whenever you step into the hangar. You can't make the problem disappear without someone starting to ask questions. You need to be smarter than that.

If you can't get rid of him, you must learn to control him. He's no Eli Morrow - and you kept a lid on that can of worms for nearly a decade, from boot camp through black ops to TJP. One scowling teenager is nothing. He needs a strong hand and a little misdirection, that's all.

He watches you too, though. Like he already knows. He can't--can he? How? Who would've told him?

That broken eye of his is tripping you up, that's all. A strong hand, and a promise of medical support for the younger one - you will have him asking 'how high' before the next demon is due.

Besides, piloting jaegers is such a dangerous job. Anything could happen out in the sea. You can live through another regrettable loss. You don't think you can live through whatever Robbie Reyes is planning when he looks at you like that.

#Ghost Rider Pacific Rim AU #Yegor Ivanov #robbie reyes #Meanwhile Robbie’s internal monologue consists of 'oh my god is it schizophrenia' on a loop

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canmom · 2 years

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Animation Night 119: Dick Williams

heeheehee, dick

So. If you’re an animator, or have even thought about trying animation at some point in your life, you’ve probably ended up recommended a copy of this book...

Which is fair, it’s a fucking great book. It pretty much set the standard for animation pedagogy forever since.

You may also likely know the legend of its creator, Richard Williams. I believe I may even have mentioned him on Animation Night before, but since it’s been some time, let’s set the scene.

Animation is about compromise. On every production, from TV to film, you have to accept some limitation on your vision: drawings you don’t have time to correct, shots that might look better on 1s, CG where hand-drawn animation might look better. Part of the art of the animator is learning to do more with less, like developing a style that demands a more manageable drawing count.

Yet animators are proud creatures. It’s painful to let go of a sequence you know could be better with more time!

Which means... in the great annals of Animation Lore, there are a few times where some industry legend gets enough clout where they can get away with just going completely all out on a film. In the best cases, this results in films like Takeshi Koike’s Redline (Animation Night 19), which occupied Madhouse for a good seven years, but resulted in an exhilarating, one of a kind sakuga feast.

This one paid off, and while it rather strained the resources of Madhouse and they weren’t in a hurry to let Koike do whatever he wanted again, It’s clear that he levelled up a lot from the effort, with the nigh perfect understanding of 3D form becoming the foundation of his later Lupin films. But in these cases, actually finishing the film is maybe more of the exception than the rule...

The next famous case is that of Yuri Norstein - a titan of Soviet animation, who I have regrettably not yet covered on Animation Night! But Animation Obsessive have, in wonderful detail, so please go read what they have to say.

Norstein, famed for his films like Hedgehog in the Fog and Tale of Tales but fiercely independent, had a somewhat tense relationship with his superiors at Soyuzmutfilm. This came to a head when he set out to make an insanely ambitious feature-length adaptation of The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol. In 1985 he was fired from Soyuzmutfilm for working too slowly... but he found private investors after the fall of the Soviet Union... and has worked on it ever since, with an animation team consisting of just Yuri Norstein himself and his wife Francheska Yarbusova whose drawings form the cutouts which Norstein animates. Even now, 37 years later, he is still working on The Overcoat. Occasionally, clips surface.

youtube

It probably won’t be finished before Norstein dies, and at that point someone will probably find all the finished footage and edit it into something like a film. But the investors still seem to be willing to indulge him, perhaps because it’s not exactly expensive and it has the aura of a legend so they’re willing to play the long game.

But of course, the most famous of these quixotic passion projects is The Thief and the Cobbler, directed by Richard Williams. So let’s set the stage.

Richard Williams, in his own account, got interested in animation at age 10, in 1943, when he got a paperback book called How To Make Animated Cartoons. He started pursuing it seriously at age 22, while working as a painter in Spain, returning to London and working briefly in advertising while self-funding a short fim The Little Island, which he describes as a ‘half-hour philosophical argument’, released in 1958 when he was aged 25.

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After making this film, Williams came to a very familiar realisation: he didn’t know nearly as much about animation as he had imagined. He describes watching Bambi for the second time and ‘crawling out of the theatre’ trying to figure out how they did that. He started idolising the animators at Disney and Warner Bros such as Ken Harris - someone he would one day work alongside, and become a close friend, and in the end be a pallbearer at his funeral. And The Animator’s Survival Kit‘s prose is still soaked in reverence for these animators, with a lot of cute little anecdotes about moments Williams spent with them.

His reverence for the Disney ‘full animation’ school was cemented after seeing the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine (Animation Night 86) and watching an unimpressed audience walk out - something Williams at the time attributed to the jerky animation that didn’t respect the movement principles of Disney. He describes by contrast how completely he was blown away by The Jungle Book, seeing the hand of some of the Nine Old Men like Milt Kahl, Frank Thomas and Ollie Johnston - so he wrote them a letter about how much he was impressed and they invited him to come visit.

At this point his intro drifts away from autobiography, so let’s give a brief summary from other sources. During this time, Williams had founded a studio in London, which mostly made TV ads and animated segments for live action films such as the comedy Casino Royale (1967).

Notably also in this period, Williams animated segments for a film about the Crimean War, The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968). The drawings for this sequence were insanely intricate, calling to mind the woodcut engraving style of newspaper illustrations contemporary with the war.

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1971 saw his adaptation of A Christmas Carol, which was warmly received in the States. At this point he was frequently inviting talented animators from the States to come and teach the pathetic British how it’s done, including Grim Natwick (who is described as ‘still brilliant’ in the Survival Kit) and Ken Harris, who gets a fascinating little paragraph:

It takes time. I didn’t encounter Ken Harris until I was nearly forty and he was sixty-nine. I had to hire most of my teachers in order to learn from them.

I hired Ken in order to get below him and be his assistant, so I was both his director and his assistant. I don’t know if this is original, but I finally figured out to that to learn or to ‘understand’ I had to ‘stand under’ the one who knows in order to catch the drippings of his experience.

This period in the 60s and 70s was also the beginning of the saga that would lead, eventually, to The Thief and the Cobbler. Originally the film was to be titled Nasruddin, about the folk character Mullah Nasreddin. Williams had a hard time finding any sort of funding for the film, falling out with other production companies at times, so he quietly plugged away at it while working on other projects.

The Nasruddin connection runs a little deeper actually, because Williams was hired in 1976 to illustrate a collection of Mullah Nasreddin stories by the Sufi occultist writer Idries Shah. I’m not sure how this came about exactly - whether Williams went out of his way to draw Nasreddin, or if he happened to get hired by coincidence. In any case, the idea was clearly occupying a lot of his thought - but more on that anon.

The 70s also saw Williams work on animation for the title sequences for two of the Pink Panther movies, during which time he invited Art Babbitt to come to London to teach - Babbitt being the man who had been fired from Disney after the animators’ strike in the 40s, thus evading canonisation as one of the Nine Old Men. Babbitt also did some work on Thief and the Cobbler, and rendered this memorable quote about Williams:

He's a director, designer, animator, and has a good layman's knowledge of music. He's a dreamer. He has more to learn as far as animation is concerned, but God, he can draw like a bastard

By this point, Williams would have been 42 years old. He was still making ads, despite ‘despising the form’, and making the occasional film or TV special such as Raggedy Ann & Andy (1977) and Ziggy’s Gift (1982).

Of course, the real point he became famous was when Who Framed Roger Rabbit came about. The strange Disney/Spielberg collaboration is actually one I’ve written about before, back on Animation Night 40, where I said some kinda mean things about old Dick. What I don’t really talk about there is what the film is about: yes, it’s about the animation industry and full of little injokes, but it is also to adult eyes recognisable as a parable for how San Francisco lost its public transport system, leaning on the idea of the auto-makers conspiring to destroy it. The real story may be a little more complicated, but having now seen the strip mall sprawl in both ends of California, I can see why people would come up with it. It’s grim out there.

I also didn’t talk much about the production. Williams was involved precisely because Spielberg saw footage of Thief and the Cobbler and was so impressed that he approached Williams.

By all accounts, working on Roger Rabbit was intense for everyone involved. Williams writes of drawing scenes late at night in the hotel room, and there was all sorts of goofy studio politics with neither Disney or Warner Bros wanting the film to favour one or the other (leading to situations like the piano scene where Donald and Daffy Duck were obliged to have exactly even screen time; the same goes for Bugs and Mickey.

It was also, I learned recently, a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for one young James Baxter, then 20 years old studying animation but frustrated by the more experimental approach taken at his course, wanting to learn - like Williams himself - something more tied down like the Disney tradition. Traditionally animated films on the scale of Roger Rabbit are basically never made in the UK (and odds are, never will be again now CGI is king), so Baxter and some of his university friends dived for the chance.

Baxter joined the production as an inbetweener, working basically non stop on animation for that year (‘eat, sleep and animate’) but so impressed the Disney animators with a brief test he did of Thumper from Bambi that they gave him a few small scenes of feet and hands to animate. His success at this led to him getting more scenes, and this is where we get a little anecdote about Richard Williams (see, this is relevant!):

Baxter: Not being a seasoned animator, not being, y’know, knowing kind of the ropes of that, I did the classic junior animator mistake of going too far with something before you show your director or your supervisor, and I got the beatdown! I got the classic beatdown from Dick, which was great. I had gone way too far on like a shot of one of the weasels and, you know, he said ‘yeah yeah yeah! No, get the drawings, go get the drawings!’ So I had to stand behind Dick for an hour or so while he drew over my pencil drawings with a pen, one by one.

Interviewer: Ohh, wow.

Baxter: That’s kind of awesome. Not on a separate sheet of paper either, just like, my drawing, his pen.

Still, Roger Rabbit was completed on something like a schedule; the animation helped kick off the Disney Renaissance and now everyone wanted a piece of Dick. Off the back of that, Williams was able to negotiate a ‘negative pickup deal’ with Warner Bros: they would buy the film on a specified date for a specified price. Williams believed he could fund the film through a major studio, so rather than seek European arts funding, he went for the Warner Bros deal - a decision that would eventually be fatal to the project.

So at last the passion project, at this point already ‘in production’ for around 25 years starting in 1989, could really get underway. Thanks to the work done by the visiting animators, it represented the final film for a number of notable animators: Ken Harriss, Errol Le Cain, Emery Hawkins, Grim Natwick and Art Babbitt.

Williams’s approach was... utterly uncompromising. Sakugabooru commenter pkoduah provides a nice summary of the issues:

1. The film was led by animation rather than story. He thought of the most technically impressive animation scenes and then tried to shoe horn them into a story. If even half of the care that went into the animation went into the story and clear locked down storyboards it would had fared better and not been such a hydra. Even after the 2+ decades the story is still not fully resolved. 2. Richard Williams had an almost religious commitment to working on 1's, even for relatively slow scenes. If he just changed that one thing he would have greatly increased his chances of meeting the deadlines. 3. The decision by a particular still powerful animation exec to steal his thunder with Aladdin which is heavily based on the Thief & Cobbler, put further pressure on the execs to take drastic measures with William's glacially paced project.

We can also add that the story - with its goofy orientalist framing featuring jokes like Grand Vizier Zigzag and Princesss Yumyum, and an incredibly simple story that simply revolves around a macguffin - feels like a relic of a different era of animated film. Despite Williams’s disdain for it, it feels like it has a similar feeling to Yellow Submarine.

As an animator who’s tried it, the insistence on working on 1s is especially crazy to me. At first glance it sounds like twice as much work, because twice as many drawings, but it’s worse than this - because issues in an animation, inconsistences of shape and line, become much more obvious on 1s than they do on 3s or 2s where you can get away with larger changes of shape.

The modern worldview is quite different, incidentally. Lower framerates, when used properly, can also create a snappy, impactful feeling (c.f. the Kanada school, or Mitsuo Iso’s ‘full limited’). It requires a slightly different approach with stronger poses and a lot of drawing skill, since each frame is pulling more work, so a sequence designed to run on 1s will not look better with half its frames missing, but a sequence designed to run on 2s or 3s can look just as good.

In the Survival Kit, Williams briefly comments on the issue, saying in his entire career he’d basically only found one sequence that worked better on 2s for reasons he didn’t understand - to him, animating on 2s was purely a cost saving measure, and now he finally had the chance to do his passion project, he wasn’t going to accept anything less than the best possible.

But then, I think Williams’s motivation was less about appealing to audiences, and more about showing off to his art senpais - the great animators he idolised. It’s telling that one of the first anecdotes in the Survival Kit is about Williams and Ken Harris:

In 1967, I was able to bring Ken to England and my real education in animation articulation and performance started by working with him. I was pushing forty at the time, and, with a large successful studio in London, I had been animating for eighteen years, winning over one hundred international awards.

After seven or eight years of working closely with Ken, he said to me, ‘Hey Dick, you’re starting to draw those things in the right place.’

‘Yeah, I’m really learning it from you now, aren’t I?’ I said.

‘Yes,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘you know . . . you could be an animator.’

After the initial shock I realised he was right. Ken was the real McCoy whereas I was just doing a lot of fancy drawings in various styles which were functional but didn’t have the invisible ‘magic’ ingredients to make them really live and perform convincingly.

So I redoubled my efforts (mostly in mastering head and hand ‘accents’) and the next year Ken pronounced, ‘OK, you’re an animator.’

A couple of years after that, one day he said, ‘Hey, Dick, you could be a good animator.’

The anecdote continues with Williams going down to visit Harris in his trailer when Harris was aged 82, and finding that Harris could still correct his work. He still didn’t have Harris’s ‘thing’. But, at least, Harris said he ‘had his own thing going’.

It’s never mentioned explicitly, but the shadow of The Thief and the Cobbler hangs over the Animator’s Survival Kit. The footage that earned this praise from Ken Harris was footage from that film. By that logic, it should have been an immense success for Williams: finally earning him his place among the canon.

So why is it instead such a negative memory for Williams?

Well, in 1992, the film was still in progress, with just fifteen minutes left to complete - but it was too much for Warner Bros, who didn’t want to be seen as making a knockoff Aladdin. Williams was booted from his own passion project, putting Fred Calvert on to hastily fill in the gaps in the story and discard the unfinished sequences, adding a number of musical sequences with far lowre quality animation performed by a number of subcontractors including Sullivan Bluth Studios, Kroyer Films, Wang Film Productions/Thai Wang Film Productions in Taiwan and Thailand, Pacific Rim Animation in China and Varga Studio in Hungary. A second recut was performed by Miramax, removing even more of the original.

The resulting mess landed poorly in theaters, and Williams, utterly dejected for obvious reasons, shut down his animation studio and went back to Canada, spending the next few years as a teacher while nursing his wounds and starting work on writing what would become The Animator’s Survival Kit, published in 2002. And, in a sense, the story has a happy ending: Williams’s book became a bestseller, the reference on animation; Williams could pass on the secrets of the masters he revered, and trust that he would be remembered as a great teacher and animator.

In 2008 he was invited to become an artist in residence at Aardman; in 2010 he finished a film he’d begun in Ibiza in the 1950s titled Circus Drawings, and then he spent the rest of his life setting out alone on a new grand passion project, an adaptation of the ancient Greek comedy Lysistrata by Aristophanes. The first part of the film, titled simply Prologue, was released in 2015, featuring elaborate hand-drawn camera moves and background animation all done in pencils and photographed directly. You can watch it:

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What of The Thief and the Cobbler? Well, the workprint of the film prior to the edits has survived, and the legend of it gradually spread across the industry. Williams showed his workprint in 2000 at the Annecy festival, impressing Roy E. Disney, who started on a project to restore and finish the film... but this fell through as Disney turned away from hand-drawn animation and Roy left the company.

Instead, the restoration effort was led unofficially by fans. A filmmaker Garrett Gilchrist, created the Recobbled Cut of the film, which used all the Williams-era footage that could be found from various sources, including unfinished pencil tests and scenes rotoscoped by Gilchrist to deal with dodgy footage, all edited to basically the structure of the workprint with some added music. As more and more people saw the Recobbled Cut, the film began to be rehabilitated, and Gilchrist created further revisions as more sources of original footage came to light.

So a good ending for Williams, right. But I’ve talked a lot about how it is made, what is the film itself actually like?

In its Recobbled form, The Thief and the Cobbler is very very obviously an animator’s passion project lmao. It’s full of Williams’s homages to Islamic art, with the stark geometric patterns creating some very clever shot compositions.

The actual story is very light on dialogue, and in contrast to Aladdin, it keeps its characterisations very simple. The thief and cobbler themselves are both basically mute, driven by very simple impulses: the cobbler is simple and well-meaning and enchanted by simple things, while the thief is single-mindedly determined to steal the Golden Balls, never mind the consequences. It’s not a surprise it didn’t land well in a time when the rule in animation was Don Bluth and the Disney Renaissance: there are no ‘I want’ songs or really, character arcs as such.

So the Cobbler gets with Princess Yumyum, but... like a fairytale or a Golden Age disney film, not because we’ve been sold on them as characters who have chemistry and want to get with each other, but more because Yumyum seems to find the Cobbler kind of... a weirdly endearing little pet and that’s what the plot demands. The Thief continues his thieving throughout. Late in the movie, a massive army of barbarians shows up out of almost nowhere, leading to a spectacular scene in the cogs of their giant war machine, but we aren’t really asked to believe in them as a culture. It is basically a series of setpieces loosely strung together.

I have said in the past that The Thief and the Cobbler is callous in the treatment of the historical Islamic culture it depicts. It is certainly an Orientalist film and certainly very British in its outlook, there’s no question of that. Still, while I do still think the joke names like Vizier Zigzag and Princess Yumyum are tasteless, I think it would be hard to say that Williams does not have reverence or devotion. It’s a different beast than Aladdin - the way he shows this devotion is through his mad, obsessive craft. I’m not quite sure how I’d feel about it if I was on the receiving end of it, mind you. (I would be quite curious to find out what the Arabic dub does with it, if there is one.)

The thing is that Williams is, far more than a director, an animator. Like, say, Masaaki Yuasa, he loved the medium of animation more than anything - no matter what he’s animating, he’s clearly beyond happy if he can make it move in a cool way. The Animator’s Survival Kit is intoxicating because he really sells you in this fascination with how things move - the nuances of a walk, the effects of timing and spacing and gesture, like what does happen if you make this frame go up and this frame go down? The previous generation of animators was his god, but he also was keen to experiment, find new possibilities. For this reason, Williams is still relevant. Even if he had... fascinatingly strange ideas about how gay people walk!

But this means, unfortunately for this film, that he was far, far more of an animator than he was a director. In fact this ends up a very endearing quality. The Thief and the Cobbler is an intensely idiosyncratic film, a true expression of the worldview of Richard Williams both good and bad... the workaholic maniac that he was, a man with something to prove.

And for a man with a great deal to say about acting, we should look at the acting in this film. Since many scenes are wordless, it falls to the acting to convey the emotions of the characters in the scene. And... they’re certainly not subtle, but they are creative, full of clever and surprising images. It is I suppose a very theatrical mode of acting: a lot of exaggeration and big movements.

On the other hand, the characters’ inner worlds are like... well they aren’t really there. Pretty much everything is right there on the surface. Everyone is really exactly what you see. It’s interesting to contrast this with the psychological turn soon to be taken by anime in the 90s, in Eva or films like those of Mamoru Oshii. A character like Motoko Kusanagi has incredibly graceful 3D movement, yet she barely emotes... and nevertheless through the framing and script, we know a lot about what she might be feeling. Shinji sits still listening to his tape player. Sometimes less can be more.

What of the Thief? He is the most enigmatic character in the film, and yet he too is not complex. We don’t know why he wants the Golden Balls, why he tolerates flies buzzing around him, but he surely does. He’s just a weird little slinky gremlin guy, and in the end he gets away.

Of course, Williams talks a fair bit about gender in his presentations on animation acting. The Animator’s Survival Kit bonus DVD includes videos of lectures, so here’s a clip someone uploaded of some examples of what he’d say:

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You can see how his interest here is in really pushing and exaggerating that gender difference - of course, pushed to extremes for pedagogical purposes, but still, it says something about the worldview he was operating under. Especially at the end when he gets a laugh by, essentially, animating a very effeminate walk for the bodybuilder character.

So a character like ‘Princess Yumyum’ is exactly what she appears: curious, vulnerable etc., a feminine ideal. There is little room for contradiction, or even straining against the bounds of this role like Princess Arete. The same is true in a lot of Williams films. Animation is about exaggeration, of course, but Williams was inescapably a man born in the 30s.

But that doesn’t mean we can’t learn from him. Learn a lot, really. Thanks to Wiliams, even though the renowned animators of Disney and Warner Brothers have died, we can get a sense of how they used to think about things, and build on them. We can understand the tricks of spacing he uses to create a sense of impact, and pick up on some of his observations and insights about acting. And certainly, his exhortation to do figure drawing has caught on in a big way since the book has been published.

I feel like, in many ways, I can see myself in the young Richard Williams - well, not nearly as accomplished, but the awe he feels towards those old Disney animators, I feel towards people like Weilin Zhang, Mitsuo Iso, Shinya Ohira, James Baxter... the ‘how can they do that’, but also, one very important line:

Irrepressible ambition made me change my opinion that they alone could attain such heights; I figured, I think correctly, that given talent, experience, persistence - plus the knowledge of the experts - why should everything not be possible?

I couldn’t stand it any more. I had to know everything about the medium and master all aspects of it. Cap in hand, I made yearly visits to Milt and Frank Thomas, Ollie Johnston and Ken Anderson at Disney.

For my part, I joined a lot of animation discord servers and now, starting this month, I’m trying to hit that “James Baxter’s first year” sort of pace. We’ll see how it goes. But like... all these guys are human. My muscles aren’t any different than theirs - I just need to see if i can shape my brain to acquire that power of observation and intuition for drawing. The method is clear enough. Like Williams, I won’t be an exact clone of my idols - I’ll become my own thing. If I just keep at it.

Anyway, I have gotten over my reluctance to screen The Thief and the Cobbler - orientalist as it may be, it is an important movie to animation history, and one worth seeing again, as well as Williams’s earlier animations to see where he came from. So if you fancy joining me, we’ll be at Twitch tonight - please head to twitch.tv/canmom and we’ll begin the movies in 15-20 minutes probably!!

#animation night #richard williams #the thief and the cobbler

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horizon-verizon · 1 year

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Why do people think that Rhaenyra would either be forced to attack Alicent’s kids or that she would be willing to do so? (Rhetorical Question)

I have read metas about Alicent knowing about how her kids will always be a danger to Rhaenyra’s claim in the practical sense, basically agreeing with Otto. And I have seen others suggest through memes, TV edits, gifs and metas or short posts how Rhaenyra displays a hankering for green blood, often citing episode 7 and in Fire and Blood where she says that Aemind should be “sharply questioned” for calling Lucerys a bastard, weaponizing treason claim against him and Alicent. Emma D’Arcy’s quote about Rhaenyra weaponizing treason and their surprise at Viserys’ actor is also cited as evidence of Rhaenyra’s power-hungriness, bloodthirstiness, unjustified cruelty, and evil.

But here are a few things:

In the book, Alicent demands for Lucerys' eye before Rhaenyra demands for Aemond to be questioned "sharply". Book!Rhaenyra responded to Alicent's cruel demand with her own to try and protect her child.

While the show has Alicent demand for Lucerys’ eye way after Rhaenyra demands Aemond be “sharply” questioned/tortured.

I may be accused of trying to say that it only matters who did what first in a confrontation and some may claim that it doesn’t matter who did what first. However, the reasons why who did what first is important is”

to point out the antagonizer and find out why they antagonized (Who, What, When, Where, Why)

to keep track of people’s actions is to begin to parse out their motivations is part of a fair adjudication

some people have pointed out that Aemond dropped the rock before Lucerys attacked him again with the knife. If you argue this, then you yourself are arguing like me for “who did__first” to defend Aemond--you would have no room to talk

The book explicitly says to us that Book!Alicent was the one who wanted to violently hurt a child first. The very thing that some fans have used to reason we should all hate and blame Rhaenyra for.

(Fire and Blood; “A Question of Succession”)

However, HotD has Rhaenyra call for Aemond’s questioning before Alicent demands for Lucerys’ eye:

Viserys: Aemond...I will have the truth of what happened. Now.

Alicent: What else is there to hear? Your son has been maimed. Her son is responsible.

Rhaenyra: It was a regrettable accident.

Alicent: Accident? The Prince Lucerys brought a blade to the ambush. He meant to kill my son.

It was my sons who were attacked and forced to defend themselves.

Rhaenyra: Vile insults were levied against them.

Viserys: What insults?

Rhaenyra: The legitimacy of my sons' birth was put loudly to question.

Viserys: What?

Lucerys: He called us bastards.

Rhaenyra: My sons are in line to inherit the Iron Throne, Your Grace. This is the highest of treasons. Prince Aemond must be sharply questioned so we might learn where he heard such slanders.

Alicent: Over an insult? My son has lost an eye.

Viserys: You tell me, boy. Where did you hear this lie?

Alicent: The insult was training yard bluster. The lot of boys. It was nothing.

Viserys: Aemond... I asked you a question.

Alicent: Where is Ser Laenor, I wonder? The boys' father? Perhaps he might have something to say in the matter.

Viserys: Yes. Where is Ser Laenor?

Rhaenyra: I do not know, Your Grace. I... could not find sleep. I had gone out to walk.

Alicent: Entertaining his young squires, I would venture.

Viserys: Aemond...look at me. Your king demands an answer. Who spoke these lies to you?

Aemond: It was Aegon.

Aegon: Me?

Viserys: And you, boy? Where did you hear such calumnies? Aegon! Tell me the truth of it!

Aegon: We know, Father. Everyone knows. Just look at them.

Viserys: This interminable infighting must cease! All of you! We are family! Now make your apologies and show good will to one another. Your father, your grandsire, your king demands it!

Alicent: That is insufficient. Aemond has been damaged, permanently, my king. "Good will" cannot make him whole.

Viserys: I know, Alicent, but I cannot restore his eye.

Alicent: No, because it's been taken.

Viserys: What would you have me do?

Alicent: There is a debt to be paid. I shall have one of her son's eyes in return.

So if Book!Alicent has done the reviled-thing of trying to hurt a child first while the show has its Alicent do it after Rhaenyra does hers, the show is guiding us to see Alicent as the one who’s more helpless.

It certainly helps that she tried her damnedest to divert attention or anger at Aemond between Rhaenyra’s demand and her own demand.

Aside from that, notice how she immediately tried to stop Viserys from actually getting Aemond’s account to try to clarify things:

Viserys: Aemond... I will have the truth of what happened. Now.

Alicent: What else is there to hear? Your son has been maimed. Her son is responsible.

Alicent wanted Viserys to immediately punish Lucerys without gathering accounts. She immediately thought that the Velayron boys were out to get Aemond and didn’t want what would have become a fairer adjudication, thinking that the V boys “obviously” were the only ones in the wrong.

(While I don’t think this specific line was her intentionally trying to divert the conversation similar to how Rhaenyra does, the result is the same: diversion from addressing how this happened in detail and parsing out people’s actions.)

Quick summation:

Yes she still did it because she was angry that her son lost an eye. Yes, any caring mother would seek out punishment againt the kid who permanently maimed her kid. My problem stems from Alicent always having been prejudiced against the boys and Rhaenyra for more than simple motherly protectiveness which drives her into the unreasonable demand for another maiming of a child. especially when said the child was protecting his brother from her son fighting them, calling them bastards and saying that they will die screaming, that a large part of Aemond's hatred at his nephews stems from her feeding her kids ideas of the boys' unworthiness and thus the sens in Aemond that something is being "stolen" from him at all. That's he's put into danger when he never was. that he cannot see himself as a true perpetrator against the boys nor Rhena and Baela (as who the hell tries to make off w/their cousins mother's dragon or whatever right after her funeral? Someone who has no real care or respect for said cousins).

Alicent has actually been very responsible for this mess in the first place, and she wanted to make Lucerys pay for it.

But if we look back at the fight, we see that Lucerys brought the knife not because he knew Aemond was down there but because Baela and Rhaena woke them up so they all could go see who “stole” Vhagar. The boys went with the girls for protection in case this “thief” was dangerous, so of course they brought knives. But none of these kids thought Aemond was the one who did it before they actually saw him. (Video link)

So Lucerys didn’t take the knife for Aemond specifically, but for whoever he thought was a threat. This is the middle of the night after all. His cousins woke him and his brother up for protection. And as a boy who was being trained to fight because this is a medieval-styled world, he would bring a knife when his cousin brings him and his brother because that is what he has for self-defense and protection against the "thief". They don't even know that Aemond is the "their" until they go down and see him.

However, Alicent makes it seem that Lucerys intentionally meant to harm Aemond from the beginning:

Alicent: Accident? The Prince Lucerys brought a blade to the ambush. He meant to kill my son.

However, Lucerys seemed to think that Aemond was going to hurt them with Aemond hurling “bastard” and other threats at them, even though he had put down the rock, but he actually picked it back up! (Video link)

It was a volatile situation among children. No one is thinking clearly: there was already a fight and siblings are involved. But one side is much younger than the other.

This could have been fairly settled if there were more focused and cooler heads or a family not set against each other swirling with unchecked and undeserved paranoia, but we have Alicent responding as an angry mother, and while it’s justified that she is angry that her kid was harmed we need to remember that immediately punishing a person for harm before understanding what exactly happened for this to even happen at all is unconstructive--so that one can point out things that went wrong to these kids--AND she put these kids against each other by telling hers they shouldn't respect or regard Rhaenyra nor her kids bc of bastardry.

We the audience know that Baela and Rhaena think one can steal a dragon. Aemond stole the opportunity to claim Vhagar, but Vhagar chose him. We, the audience, know that a dragon has to choose the riders right back for there to be a bond, but Rhaena misunderstanding isn’t what I’d call a sin on their part. But the really burning part is actually Aemond doign this right after Laena's funeral and not even looking contrite about it, flouting the girls' emotions completely, as I already mentioned.

This all should have been addressed in a fair, cool conversation. Lucerys would have been accordingly and safely/fairly punished. Aemond as well (not physically or dismissively, something like having to apologize to his cousins and nephews and do favors or something).

But it wasn’t because the mothers were desperate with Viserys not being as involved with his green kids, the rift b/t Alicent and Rhaenyra coming from Otto's manipulations, and Alicent trying to shut things down before they could be properly addressed: “What else is there to hear? Your son has been maimed. Her son is responsible.”

Then Rhaenyra sought to redirect focus to the bastard-calling because this is something that, in this feudal society is “worse” and they all know that Viserys would have felt this was the thing to address seriously first and more. Because he is King, any and all questioning of the boys' legitimacy or "lies" about their parentage involves treachery, which then always involves disobedience of him, which then (in an absolute monarchy) is almost always treated first. That is the expectation of a King in this feudal world. Bad parenting, definitely. It only makes things worse, as it does not satisfy the objective need to punish the right people according to their actions, green or black.

So he went in, not addressing how exactly any of the kids even got down to fight each other -> Aemond claiming Vhagar and the others going down to confront the mystery “thief”.

And before there’s more arguments for how eye-for-and-eye was a valid mode of justice for these feudal people:

Book!Daemon also thought in this way when he concocted the murder of his nephew through Blood and Cheese to avenge Book!Lucerys--who Book!Aemond intentionally killed--YET SOME OF THE SAME PEOPLE WHO ARGUE FOR ALICENT LOOK AT HIM AS IF HE WAS THE ONLY EVIL OF THE STORY WHEN BOOK!ALICENT ACTED ON THE SAME EXACT PRINCIPLE WAY BEFORE HE EVER DOES

if you are one of those who argues that Viserys and any man who marries a girl in her teens and younger are automatically groomers and it doesn’t matter that this was a feudal medieval setting and that it doesn’t matter that this was normal, and then you argue how eye-for-an-eye was “normal” for this medieval setting and Alicent was completely in her right to use this “normal” means of punishment and that is all of that argument

You’d be using double standards and saying that the rule of eye-for-an-eye is a privilege for some people over others. Why would you criticize the "15 years olds got married, sometimes to older adults" (a practice that was present and ubiquitous in this society where people died much sooner) and then turn around and defend eye-for-an-eye specifically on the argument that "those were the times"?!

When medieval persons actually tried to have people marry as close to age as possible most of the time for concern of not messing with humors and the safety of the girl. That it was considered perverse both in real life and in Westeros for a man to have sex with his new wife until she at least had her period. And that if the parents wanted the political benefits sooner or to lock them down, they'd choose to marry their children however convenient. Compare to eye-for-an-eye, that sort of direct "he stabs me, I stab him" sort of thing actually is not a legal medieval practice. Again, this is a monarchy. You do what the king says. And there is a that no known precedent for this anywhere in Seven doctrine nor is it mentioned in ASoIaF lore.

Meanwhile, eye-for-an-eye is not “fair” in of itself--even if it’s believed to be.

You’d be hypocritical and ignorant.

Even if Rhaenyra’s offer to marry Jacaerys to Helaena is was just desperate move and not one of pure good will, has Alicent herself really pursued Rhaenyra’s ruin out of soldiering for values that are themselves good and pure?

However, doesn’t Rhaenyra’s offer also show that she’s willing to create a peace that people claim that she isn’t willing to make? Does it not make Helaena a queen (giving Alicent more influence), regardless whether or not her husband was (and he's not) illegitimate? Have you people heard of Orys Baratheon, Benedict Justman, real-life Henry VII?

No, in that scene in episode 6, Alicent merely wishes to dismiss Rhaenyra, and we saw so with Rhaenyra pulling up the suggestion that they build fortifications against the Triarchy and Alicent dismissed them, when fortifications would be much better on the realm than constant war and using more peasant lives to fight for those constant wars...yet Alicent says they shouldn't hurt t"the realm". Who is the realm?! Certainly not the common folk, who would love to be less involved in warfare and lose family members in it?!

It’s not a peace of friendship but a sort of accord and bring about unity against the rebellious lords.

To which Alicent then rejects out of the idea that her daughter should not “lower” herself to create this “peace”?

So what if it was a desperate move? It would bring desirous results. It would create some sort of unity against the supposed many, unaccepting lords, if that is really what’s feared. Not as much as Rhaenyra marrying Aegon (II), but what is to stop the lords from deposing or pressuring Rhaenyra if she married Aegon? Just try to force her to abdicate the throne for him instead if they would be so bold to try to pressure her at all after she ascends? If we go by Otto and Alicent's thought that there would be massive rebellion, and that Rhaenyra would be "forced" to kill Alicent's kids?

So what is Alicent's true motivation for dismissing this proposal? It's out of pride. Pride that cost her, as we know what happened later in the Dance .....

Alicent's main beef(s) with Rhaenyra is that Rhaenyra:

deceived Alicent so throughly with Aemma/the mother-is-dead element

was able to find some real intimacy/sexual agency (episode 4, Alicent in the garden scene talks about about the “romance” of being bale to choose amongst the suitors)

[part of last point] had sex outside of her unwanted marriage while Alicent is stuck with a decaying man who loves his dead wife over her.

gave birth to "savage" bastard children (“savage” is what she calls them after learning of the pig prank)

But wait....

Then all this means Alicent actually doesn’t want peace or harmony or even real safety for her kids (and thus HotD's writing unfurls itself). For herself, those in the Keep, or the realm (whatever this "realm" is, though I suspect it is KL merchants and rich folk since they'd be paying the taxes more often than not).

Because when we later see her talk to Viserys about Rhaenyra’s proposal, she didn't once cite realm-peace as her reasons or strong reason to not marry the two. She explicitly says and implies that Jacaerys is not worthy of Helaena.

And why isn't he? Because of his supposed bastardry.

In Westeros, bastards are hated because the it’s believed that they are “born from lust, lies, and weakness, and as such, they are said to be wanton and treacherous by nature.” And that they will be competition for the resources and rights/privileges available to trueborns.

(Sounds like a mega-blood purist to me.)

And, she did at one point feel that Rhaenyra herself would not hurt her children nor allow them to be hurt, but then Otto basically told her the lords had much more ability to bend Rhaenyra to their will and then Rhaenyra lied to her using Aemma's death and their "bond" as friends in episode 5.

Again, Otto is the one who tells Alicent to be scared of Rhaenyra by using the idea that Rhaenyra would “have no choice” but to execute her own half-siblings. and he does this specifically to motivate her into doing what he wants above all, not to actually look out for Alicent just for Alicent’s sake.

Rhaenyra lying to Alicent can be seen as "proof" that Rhaenyra doesn't:

see Alicent as trustworthy (and she’s not)

respect Alicent's authority as Queen Consort

or can be a good Queen

As the logic is that if she can use her mom's death against Alicent--her psuedo friend--then she doesn't respect the customs and traditional values of the lords she will rule one day.

However, what Targaryen has ever really thought or acted as if Westerosi customs were either "good" or more important than their own rule? Jaehaerys, for all the good he did, did those goods not because he thought that the customs were inherently correct but because he wanted to keep his rule and the future rule for his descendants intact. He also married his sister despite the fat that the Poor Fellows and Warriors Sons were still about and thank lt his own mother and very powerful stepfather/regent opposed, actively trying to separate him and Alysanne.

The Doctrine of Exceptionalism was a tactic/dispensation to keep this one Targaryen custom in "hard" incest (sibling and avuncular marriages) in a society that already practices "soft" incest (Andal and First Men first cousin marriage). It's all bad, this helps realize how I know some people will think about this.

There is always an element of selfishness and self-interest to both a royal rule and nobles' power over those they have under their feudal protection. And there is a practicality to following the "rules" that people wrongly think equals actually believing in those rules' validity, since people seem to think obedience absolutely equals agreement.

And should we actually sit here and think that no Westerosi noblewoman has ever had premarital or extramarital sex and still go through the risk?

How did some never get caught? By being smart, observant, and manipulative--which means that nobles, being human beings are always actually playing by the rules, including the women. (The Tyrells, Brenden Justman's noblemother, Elissa Farmon, etc.) Or just plain lucky, with the people around them accepting the hidden benfits of such children to come from it, o to hide if for the image, or because they genuionely wish their hapiness (could be a thing, ASoIaF is anot ALL bleak).

The problems and chaos does not stem from Rhaenyra. HotD tries to claim that it is the patriarchy limiting her and Alicent helping to do so. Fire and Blood, does it better.

So show!Alicent was both too indoctrinated and conditioned, too believing in the corrupt feudal moral ideology. Or she is just too afraid to disobey.

So it was mainly personal with her, not political. People are thinking about what they would do in her position, not what she is actually doing.

Alicent in episode 6 is not thinking about the other lords or any endangered grandkids. She is thinking about who is willing and able to support her. As she reveals to Larys. Her other main goal in episode 6 was to get Rhaenyra punished.

Alicent wants Rhaenyra to act “womanly”, act submissively to the demands of society, herself, and Viserys without protest or resistance--like she herself has submitted herself into.

Isn’t this a sort of narcissism, to expect someone else to act like you without bothering to really understand why they act as they do?

Let’s imagine that you have a got this new job with all the benefits and great pay without working that hard for it because you are part of a rich and infleuntial family that happens to be more influential than your friend’s family, which is itself still very influential and rich enough to them them a similar job that pays less than yours does. Let’s say that your friends has had to deal with a few pervs and you had to still deal with being made an example of and being doubted by many people around you because of your gender or sexuality, race, etc. Yet your friend comes up to you one day and says that you have it better than them and you don’t deserve to have better than them. (I don’t know if I made a great example, but I will run with it until I think of something better, since feudal monarchial states versus capitalist democracies have their own styles of patriarchy--but still, there are going to be ways we can draw parallels.)

A capitalist, modern set up is not equal to feudal/monarchial succession. I use advancement in socioeconomic position here as the shares trait, nothing else.

It’s similar to the Alicent-Rhaenyra thing. Alicent thinks that Rhaenyra has had such a good life and that she should suffer like her....but Rhaenyra has also been a victim of patriarchy, and much more than the grooming claims with Daemon if we were to bring that up. Her mother dies from having to birth an heir Viserys feels confident in--a male heir; thus Rhaenyra is made it feels that she is not enough her whole life and her mother dies for this goal but that's treated as being the risks of her "job" similar to how battles are for men. She's also having to grapple with the fact that the person she would have to marry will mostly look to her as a means to get dragons--Alicent is not the only girl to be married off for someone else's ambition. And Rhaenyra is also shamed for doing exactly what a male at her age and position would do. How is any of this fair to her?

Except Rhaneyra at least has allowed herself to seriously resist and question the patriarchal values and demands through her troubling with the pressure to become a mother and what that means for her agency, while Alicent never has. And Rhaenyra is still trying to do her duty, as she refuses Criston Cole. It's just that she is not being totally obedient body and mind while doing so.

Alicent has always been a static character because she learns nothing progressive that actually makes her stop a minute and consider how some of her own actions have made her more miserable than she needed to be. Or we’re not really made to dwell in it--just how helpless she thinks she is.

And I don’t mean the kind of "static" character that stays the same because they support the other characters and is a literary device. I mean she is philosophically too conservative and repressed to really change for the better while also just a really badly written character with nonsensical inconsistencies and behavior that is not psychologically veristic. Episodes 8 and 9 where she changes into a being that doesn't match the person of episodes 6 and 7.

8 and 9 are where she abandons her previous claimed motivation of protecting her kids to forgive and want to become friends with Rhaenyra...because Rhaenyra apologized. This is not complexity. It is bad writing and a huge misunderstanding of the psychology of friendship on the writers' part. .

I already explained how and why Alicent hurts herself and Rhaenyra, how she has prompted her own suffering and that of her kids HERE, HERE & HERE. If you wish to argue against this notion, it’s best if you read and counterargue my points from these, as it’s long and I’m not going to extensively repeating myself.

Basically, Alicent has not given much assurance to us or Rhaenyra that she understands her and has ever truly had her best interests at heart. Ever. Her actions have given ample reason to Rhaenyra to build up ways of counteracting against her.

And that Alicent should have had more faith in Rhaenyra’s strength of will to not kill her own brothers and nephews/nieces before Lucerys was killed and before that stupid, inconsistent showing of her acting much more submissively in episode 10 when she was unwilling to actually engage in war with the greens because of the PrOpHeCy. I won’t even get into it here, it’d be long.

When we look back at the 7th episode, we see that Aemond had ample time and space to leave the fight but he decided to continue talking [LINK] after he had beaten them back.

Aemond had proven he was stronger against this group. Why continue to hold his nephew and shout about how they were bastards? Because he’s high on his victory in both claiming Vhagar and having beaten back a whole group of kids.

Here’s another thing. the show have made it seem that Aemond was the long-suffering, stoic victim of bullying, but when we actually think about it.....Aemond was protecting Alicent by saying it was Aegon who called Rhaenyra’s ons bastards, and that proves that they both learned to see these boys as bastards undeserving of respect from Otto and Alicent.

The Velayron boys would have endured the court treating them as burdens, pariahs, nonentities whenever they could and we know they did since we see them look nervously around in episode 8 when Rhaenyra comes back to court and they head to the front to the Keep where Aemond practices with Cole. If this society hates bastards so much, it’s going to manifest in adults mistreating children even when they are officially named trueborn. If you are a marginalized person or a person who has had a cultural stigma attached to them for most of their life, you can think what sort of looks these boys would have gotten, what passive aggressiveness and slights they would have recieved.

Funny thing is that we don’t get to see any of that when they were young and even in the 8th episode, we don’t really get to see the courtiers really show their dislike or disgust.

So we’re left with the impression that things aren’t so bad for these illegitimate boys, that they don't have people on their necks on a daily basis since they could remember. But logic and knowledge/observation of how Westerosi lords treat bastards tell us that it most definitely is happening.

And this matters because I am saying that Aemond and Aegon, even Daeron (not Helaena necessarily, maybe some non-malicious, out-of-touch comments) would have definitely mistreated and bullied the Velayron boys if the writers actually knew and felt the world of aristocratic Westeros and the dynamics of a royal court. But no, we don’t even get that, so we also discouraged to believe that Rhaenyra’s kids are in any real danger from Alicent. But we also now that if she were to succeed in proving their illegitimacy, they’d die.

The consistency and attention to subtext simply isn’t there. So why should I respect this show?

And this is what I said in a previous post:

Plus, we do see that it is possible to philosophize yourself into a more compassionate stance even when you’re being mistreated by both adults and kids by looking at Jon Snow, Arya, Daenerys Stormborn, etc. Being bullied or oppressed is not the absolute justification for violence and/or a return of consistent bullying, even if it is a prompt. I can feel bad for Aemond, but I realize what the writers are doing, what his authority figures have directly taught him, and know that Aemond is still responsible for his own prejudices because he is not as helpless as people may believe. He is still a prince and can use his undoubted trueborn status to either make his nephews lives a living hell (fore reason already started about how their bastard status could get them daily ostracized) or stick up for them. But we know that entitlement and desire for the throne (inspired by and encouraged by Show!/Book!Alicent and Otto), by the book, prompts all the green boys to hate the Velaryon boys.

So really, I don’t understand why Alicent’s narcissism isn’t obvious or that people don’t realize the show’s badly written and gives us more pushes to favor Alicent/the Greens over Rhaenyra/the Blacks?

Also a rhetorical question. It’s because sometimes people want the fantasy of being able to both follow the rules, get the material and social benefits for it, and still be considered a victim who others have to support and entertain above their own needs or desires.

#Rhaenicent #alicent hightower #hotd critical #hotd comment #rhaenyra targaryen #rhaenyra i #the Velaryon boys #aemond targayen #hotd characterization #alicent's characterization #alicent doesnt have any points #sharply questioned #book vs tv comparison #hotd #asoiaf #fire and blood

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chucktaylorupset · 2 years

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I'm late but do u have any other unhinged (or hinged, I'm desperate) essay writing methods you've heard of? Please and thank you

Based on the word desperate I am going to act while assuming the worst. So if there is indeed a deadline stalking you like a predator animal through the bush while you are an innocent three legged and zero word count gazelle, you will be as quickly and well armed as you can to meet the challenge.

This is the quick version, the meandering funny version can come later, either I'll reblog this or put it in a new post.

Here is what you do. Get a speech to text app or failing that a voice memo. You can default to whatever is preinstalled in your phone, especially if you have very little time.

Start a new file. Say words in order into the microphone about what you plan to write about. Summarize your general intro and thesis, explain your body paragraphs, bullshit like you have a conclusion. If you do not have body paragraphs and this is a research essay, summarize each of your sources in turn. Then try to say how at least two relate to each other, but ideally you do this for as many sub groupings as possible. When you are done, make sure to save.

If you have a voice memo, you will need to play back and transcribe this. When you're done, you should have a bunch of raw words.

Ideally you do as many steps as you have time for, but if it's real bad and you are out of time, you can turn this in right now. You should probably follow this up as soon as possible with an email to the teacher/professor. This can be scary, so I will give you a form.

Dear [PROF NAME. REMEMBER TO CHANGE THIS TO THE ACTUAL NAME].

I hope this message finds you well. Regrettably, I do not have a final draft for [ASSIGNMENT REMEMBER TO CHANGE THIS PART TOO]. I'm sorry this is last minute and I know your late policy is [YOU KNOW THE DRILL] but I was wondering if there was anyway to get an extension. I know that this is not my best effort, and if at all possible I want to do better.

Thank you for your time,

[YOUR NAME].

If looking up the late policy stresses you out, delete that section of the sentence. Make sure the email has sent.

You then should get yourself a glass of your preferred beverage and maybe a snack and then go to sleep or nap, depending on your deadline time. School is stressful. Writing deadlines are stressful. You are expending a lot of energy working very hard and being very brave and this should be rewarded.

These next steps can be taken immediately, if you have enough time, or after an answer on the potential extension, if you did not.

It is editing time. Take those bunch of raw word vomit and pretty it up a bit. If speech to text then you need to fix all the words that the program transcribed wrong. Sometimes there's the rare app that will leave you with both the audio and the transcript and you can reference the former to fix the latter. Make sure to check for homophones, machines are still learning the difference between "write" and "right." In the machines defense, writing is very difficult.

Put in evidence and quotations that are much harder to verbalize on the fly. Maybe in your summarization you have already marked where this evidence should go. Reword sentences to make them appropriate to written format instead of voice. Feel free to expand your ideas.

You now have a bunch of words that you can turn in. Congratulations! Do that, check to make sure you have a receipt of your submittal as I have fucked myself that way many a time. Revisit the step of hydrate/refuel/hibernate. Rejoice.

Remind yourself that you have done some very hard important work. Hopefully this method has made that easier. If it has not, I hope it at least has not made it worse, especially if you are already stumped. From reading your ask, I'm not certain that's the situation at all but I'm playing it safe.

Do not feel bad if this method did not work. I myself benefit from it by being a very particular person.

Mileage varies. This method gave me a 1,200 rough draft after speaking into a microphone for eight minutes and forty-one seconds. Which made me very, very angry, particularly at my mother, but that is a story for another day.

#my post #ask and answer #i answer #worst ways to essay

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kaiyablog · 2 months

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Feminism and Family with Fishop and Faiya

In this conversation, Bishop and Kaiya, English 1102 students from Atlanta, Georgia studying computer engineering and sociology respectively, encourage each other to reflect on their journeys with feminism, putting a special emphasis on the influence of family. Pictured above is Steven Crowder a famous alt-right political YouTuber known for making feminists look bad in his “debates”, edited to portray a basic feminist argument.

Kaiya: Do you remember when you first learned about feminism?

Bishop: When I was younger I watched a lot of YouTube and for some reason, the algorithm recommended a lot of weird YouTubers, although at the time I thought they were funny and smart. YouTubers like Steven Crowder (pictured above) and Kevin Samuels portrayed feminism negatively and in those days, I was influenced by the charisma and seemingly logical arguments presented by these YouTubers. ⁤Their narrative against feminism was presented with "logic" and "conviction" regrettably, I bought into it. ⁤⁤The ideas they propagated painted feminism as an ideology that was unnecessary and even dangerous to. ⁤⁤At that point in my life, I hadn't really examined these perspectives, and I took them at face value, subscribing to a worldview that was, in retrospect, deeply flawed.

Kaiya: How would you describe your relationship with your masculinity?

Bishop: Growing up in a family that adheres to more "traditional" gender roles and ideologies. It was pretty tough for me to express myself without hearing things like "man up" or "real men don't *blank*" inflicting a rigid framework on how I should navigate the world as a male. Phrases like these squashed my ability to express vulnerability or deviate from stereotypical expectations. Overcoming these entrenched beliefs required introspection and courage. And as I grew older, I tried to tackle these ideas of masculinity my upbringing put on me, and I am now trying to work on expressing myself as I feel.

Kaiya: You mentioned you grew up in a family that emphasized more traditional gender messaging. If you want to one day have a family, how would you raise your kids with respect to gender?

Bishop: I would approach parenting with a commitment to dismantling traditional gender norms. I would focus on fostering an environment where values such as equality, inclusivity, and individual authenticity are promoted. I would encourage open discussions about gender, to make sure my children understand that their identities are unique and valid. Ultimately I just want my kids to understand their true selves while recognizing and respecting the diversity of others.

Continuing in the theme of family, how has feminism influenced or shaped your perspectives on family dynamics, roles, and expectations? Can you provide specific instances where your understanding of feminism intersected with your experiences within your family?

Kaiya: Yeah for sure. So I am the oldest daughter of 5 kids, coming from a fairly traditional catholic family that was pretty in line with gender roles. Unfortunately (or perhaps fortunately) for my dad in particular, I came out loud, argumentative, and always quick to point out anything that sounds like it could be biased. This often came out when my little brother was allowed to do things like getting a phone, or going outside to play by himself at a younger age than I was. I never thought my parents were trying to be sexist, but I loved to argue it.

Bishop: Can you share a specific instance where you felt empowered or challenged by feminist principles in your life?

Kaiya: Hmmm, yeah. For a long time I didn’t believe there was any point to feminism. I always thought gender discrimination was something white women made up to feel like victims. Then my (shitty) high school boyfriend was being, well, shitty, and I realized how sexist and disgusting so many of the males around me were, a lot like the YouTubers you mentioned. It was really discouraging but becoming a feminist made me accept that men suck. No I’m just kidding, what I mean is feminism helped me to realize the disgustingness of sexism did not mean there was anything wrong with me.

Bishop: I want to talk some more about your relationship with feminism. How does mainstream media’s portrayal of feminism compare to your own understanding?

Kaiya: I would be lying if I said that mainstream media didn’t help me become a feminist. I had a lot of anger against men, and found myself well represented: I am a girlboss, I like to wear heels to be taller than men, I can be louder than men. I take engineering classes literally just to show GT men that a girl can be smarter than them. But I am also mature enough to know this alone is not feminism, and I don’t think I ever thought otherwise.

To connect our conversation back to family, one way I don’t fit the media's feminist portrayal is that I want kids. I want to have a daughter and teach her to love the world because I know love is feminist. My feminism right now looks like anger, but I also know that feminism looks like love and everything in between.

#feminism #feminist #sexism #masculinty #femininity #post colonialism #girlboss #youtube

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medinanieves81 · 1 year

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8 Facts To Consider When Selecting Hotels For Your Upcoming Excursion

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#ee

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the-insomniac-emporium · 3 years

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Slumbering Hearts (Alcina Dimitrescu/Reader, Soulmate AU) Pt. 2

Fandom: Resident Evil: Village Rating: T for language Warnings: None Summary: In a wicked twist of fate, you find out your soulmate is none other than your employer, Lady Dimitrescu. To your misery, she (at first) seems equally displeased, her heart already belonging to another. But in time, the two of you find yourselves wondering… could the universe be right, after all? Soulmate AU in which every person has a unique “soul mark”, which they share with their soulmate. Notes: Reader gets a bit of a backstory here, with just enough concrete details to serve the plot in future chapters. Hopefully enough is kept vague for people to enjoy it. Now... Time to meet your new kids-in-law/the gremlins :) Previous Chapters: 1: In The Shadow Of Giants

2: Uncertain Destinations

“You already know my name, as well as my fate, and I have neither threats nor demands to make of you. I am at your mercy, regrettably, with nothing more to say. Shall we consider ourselves ‘introduced’? Or is there more you wish to ask of me?” You wonder, eying ‘Alcina’ with a bored expression. It felt odd to refer to her that way, even within the confines of your mind. She had been ‘Lady Dimitrescu’ for as long as you could remember; starting with your years in the village, and continuing through your months here at the castle. One day, perhaps, you would grow used to calling her by her first name. For now, you simply hoped to focus on other matters.

“Tell me of yourself, your past. Who were you before you came here?” Alcina asks, surprising you. What did it matter, now that you were stuck here? At first you shrug, avoiding eye contact, not wanting to open yourself up to her. But before long she’s placed a hand on your shoulder, applying just enough pressure to encourage you to speak. You win this round, you think.

“Somehow I doubt you’ll find it terribly interesting. I was born in the outskirts of the village, on a small farm, just like any other. I had a pet dog, went to ‘school’ with my neighbors, and spent my weekends volunteering with the church. The only thing you might not expect is that I lived outside the village for about a decade. Traveled for a while, never really staying anywhere for terribly long. Eventually, I got tired, and so I came back to help my parents with what little property they had left,” you explain, quietly. Being vague had been intentional, considering the nature of a few details. Did she need to know why you had left? Or that you had once revered Mother Miranda?... No, because if she learned that, it would not be long before she learned that you had changed your mind years ago. Something told you that she wouldn’t appreciate your lack of faith in her mistress. “That was six months ago, roughly. Barely got to spend time with my parents before I was ‘donated’ to the staff here.”

“Not many ever leave the village. Those that do rarely, if ever, return. How particular,” Alcina replies, giving a soft hum. There’s something in her expression that tells you she’ll eventually ask you to elaborate. For now, however, she seems content to move on. Internally you sigh in relief. “I suppose this is sufficient to sate my curiosity, for the time being. Now come with me, I’d like to introduce you to my daughters, to ensure that they understand you are… off limits.” With that said she stands, once more reminding you just how small and fragile you are in comparison, before heading towards the exit. You’re nearly forced to jog in order to keep up with her long strides. As she leads you through hallways, down a flight of stairs, and past several nervous looking maidens, she slows down the slightest bit, having eventually noticed your struggle. Admittedly, that’s more kindness than you would have anticipated. Perhaps she was used to adjusting her pace for her daughters?

Whatever the reason, you do appreciate it. Still, by the time you arrive at your destination, the castle’s library, your legs are feeling the smallest bit sore. Brushing off the ache, you follow Alcina inside. Then you’re taking in the sights, having not been here before, admiring the impressive collection. Glad I’m not responsible for cleaning this place, you think as you pass by dozens of filled shelves. Before long you encounter the three daughters. They’re sitting in a semi-circle, each with their own book, though they’re quick to sit up once they spy their mother. One by one they’re smiling up at her, not even sparing you a moment’s glance. Admittedly you’re glad for that. What good could come from their attention, especially when they don’t yet know who you ‘truly’ are?

“I’m glad to see you’re all in one place, my darlings. There has been a… development, of sorts,” Alcina says, speaking in the same tone one might use to address a faculty meeting. In a less intimidating household, it would have been much harder to hold in a laugh. Was this always how she spoke to her children? For their sake, you hoped not (though the concept was amusing). Regardless, it is at this point that the daughters notice you, with one of them looking intrigued enough to send a shiver down your spine. You’re pretty sure her name is Daniela, being the only one you haven’t met before today. A toothy grin spreads on her lips, and once you make eye contact you swear that she winks at you. This literally could not be any worse, you think, unable to stop yourself from frowning.

“Does it have to do with this little thing?” Daniela purrs, taking a step towards you. Instantly both Alcina and yourself are tensing up. While your soulmate shifts in front of you, an incredibly faint rosy tint to her cheeks, all you can do is pinch the bridge of your nose between two fingers.

“This ‘little thing’ is not your newest playtoy, Daniela. Rather, they are my-” she hesitates, disliking the way the word feels in her mouth- “soulmate. I expect the three of you to behave, understood? At the very most, you are allowed to prevent them from leaving the premises, but even then I expect you to remain gentle. Have I made myself clear?” Alcina asks. Now she’s not the only one blushing, as Daniela looks so embarrassed that you wonder if she’ll pass out. Maybe now you’ll think twice about flirting with everyone you meet, you think, remembering the various rumors you’ve heard about her. For a moment, part of you imagines what your relationship with her would look like, were you to continue ‘courting’ her mother. Could this be a moment you could torment her with for life? Get some cheeky revenge for all the maidens who couldn’t risk it? A lovely thought, though one soon interrupted.

“Of course, mother. We will not lay a single finger on them, unless we have no other choice. Right, sisters?” Bela replies, turning to her siblings with an expectant look. Neither of them seem terribly pleased, but they nod, each giving their own verbal affirmations. All three spend a few moments glancing you over, reevaluating you now that they know who you are, appraising your worth. It’s not hard to imagine that they all find you lacking- at least in comparison to their mother. “Are introductions in order? We’ve met before, but I hardly know anything about them. It would be… nice to properly meet the newest edition to our family.” The way Bela says the words makes you nervous, and the way Cassandra grins only worsens the feeling.

“If you desire such, I see no reason to forgo such a thing. Perhaps the three of you could give them a tour? I must return to my duties, and I doubt they have seen much of the castle, given their… former occupation,” Alcina admits, softly. Was this a confirmation that you’d no longer have to spend every day working yourself to the bone? On one hand you were somewhat relieved, but you also regretted the possible loss of your preferred coping method. Worse, were you really going to spend who knows how long with the dreaded Dimitrescu daughters? They were going to rip you to shreds, at least verbally, you were sure of it. How could you ever meet their expectations? If they were anything like their mother, you would never be enough to satisfy them. Or at least that is what you assumed.

“I’ve seen a fair bit,” you interject, awkwardly, hating the way it brings everyone’s gaze back to you. Alcina’s lips twitch, as she fights back a frown. Evidently she didn’t appreciate you countering her suggestion.

“Please, we insist,” Bela fires back, a pleasant tone covering her thinly-veiled animosity. “I’m sure we’ll have a wonderful time getting to know each other. You do want to learn more about your soulmate’s children, don’t you?” Something about the way she speaks makes you want to laugh. When you smile back at her, it’s without a hint of any placating intentions, rather a dewdrop of mischief. Bold of her to assume that you wanted to make her mother happy. After all, it was clear from her phrasing that this was a ‘test’, a ruse to ‘reveal your true colors’ to Alcina. But you were as uneasy about your part in this as Bela was, neither of you finding yourself a suitable match for Alcina. Despite the way she narrows her eyes at you, her mother is smiling again, glad that she had a way to keep you occupied for the time being.

“It’s settled then,” she says, moving to give each of her daughters a kiss on top of their heads. They giggle at the affection, looking rather proud of themselves. Then she turns to you, hesitating, clearly having the instinct to give you a kiss as well. Half of you wants to stand on your tippy-toes, expectantly, wondering if she’d do it (and how flustered it would make her). Instead, you pretend not to notice, accepting the awkward shoulder pat she ends up giving you. “I will see you this evening, for dinner. Do try to enjoy yourself. But don’t forget-” she leans in until her mouth is right next to your ear, breath tickling your neck- “behave yourself. I will not tolerate any tomfoolery, understood?” Alcina does not pull away until you’ve nodded, and you do not relax until the library door has shut behind her.

Except now you’re alone with her daughters. Wonderful.

---------------------------

Dealing with finances was not, to put it simply, Alcina’s ‘favorite’ activity. Although she employed someone to handle the majority of the paperwork, she made sure to go over it herself to ensure accuracy. There were many aspects to her business, being both legitimate and illegitimate, technically. One could never be too careful about their records. After all, failing to file tax returns had taken down Al Capone, of all people. Who was to say that such a mistake, or one in a similar vein, could not damage House Dimitrescu? Certainly it wouldn’t be enough to ruin them entirely, but it could lead to certain ‘nuisances’ bothering the village. At the end of the day, Alcina cared more about the impact it would have on Mother Miranda than anything else, even the possible decline of her household.

A nasty habit, really. Few knew the extent of her self-entitled devotion to the cult leader. The only bond that ran deeper was that she had with her daughters, who meant more to her than she could ever vocalize. Even then, she viewed them as a gift from Miranda, which in turn strengthened her love for the woman. Now that love leaked into everything she did. With a flourish of her pen, she signed away some of this month’s earnings. So what if she already ‘donated’ a large portion of her income to the village and its leader? Certainly this was a way to show the level of her devotion? Certainly Miranda would take notice, eventually? Praise her for it? Take Alcina’s hand in her own, thumb caressing her skin, eyes filled with a long-sought affection?...

The sound of passing footsteps brings her back into the moment, and Alcina stares down at the mountain of paperwork she’d yet to approve. With a deep sigh she readjusts her reading glasses, sets the finished document aside, then gets back to work. A part of her mind soon starts to drift to other subjects. To you, primarily. Would your affection be easier to gain? Steadier?... But could it, in any way, compare to Miranda’s? No matter how she tries to brush the thoughts away, they nip at her heels, circling her head like vultures. Only time would give her the relief she so desperately sought.

---------------------------

“So, don’t tell me you really think you’re my mother’s soulmate, right?” Cassandra says, somewhat grumbling, as you trail behind Bela. It’s less than five minutes into the tour, with the siblings having behaved so far, focused on actually showing you around. At her words, both her sisters started walking slower. Their gazes were still locked ahead of themselves. The way they positioned themselves, however, made it clear that they were listening. “Is it some elaborate scheme, hmm? Did you spend a dozen hours with the other servants, noting every last detail about her soul mark, before copying it? Do you really think that you’ll get away with this?” Well, ‘twas good to know who the most paranoid of the three were.

“Ah, yes, it’s all a great, horrible ruse. You’ve caught me red-handed, I’m afraid,” you chime, sarcastically. A hand goes to your forehead as you fake faintness. “I’m just so desperate to be scrutinized by yourself and your mother, to have my every movement watched, to somehow be less free than I already was. I simply… cannot… believe… that you saw through my bluff.” With that you give a dramatic sigh, pausing in the hallway to give Cassandra a judgemental look. If not for Alcina’s instructions to keep you safe, you’re certain she would have beheaded you on the spot. “I’m not claiming to understand the universe’s decision. But I’m also not giving up immediately, no matter how much the three of you scare me.” At that, Bela stops in her tracks, slowly turning to you. Instinctively you go to take a step backwards, only for Cassandra to catch you, holding you in place. Next thing you know, the oldest daughter is grabbing your head, staring you right in the eyes.

“Answer one question, and maybe I’ll make sure you don’t fall victim to some tragic, unfortunate accident. Can you see yourself loving my mother?” Bela asks, more intense than you’ve ever seen her before. Despite that, you don’t tremble, swallowing your fear long enough to reply.

“Honestly? I don’t know. She’s terrifying… and beautiful. Cruel to some of the maidens I’ve met… and loving to you three. I… I don’t know if I can love her,” you admit, gulping. “But isn’t that part of the point of trying? To find out? I am going to try, for both my sake and hers, to love her. To cherish her. What more would you ask of me? I cannot tell you how the days to come will go, whether or not your mother will enjoy them, or even whether she could love me. This is not a situation you can threaten into resolving the way you want it to. So let me go, finish the tour, and give me a chance. You owe your mother that much, do you not?” Soon enough the hands keeping you in place loosen their grip, and Bela turns away with a scoff. Honestly, you can hardly believe that your little speech worked. You aren’t given much time to celebrate, however, as the sisters quickly resume their walking. Before long, Daniela is speaking up between giggles.

“I like this one already.”

#alcina dimitrescu x reader #lady dimitrescu x reader #alcina dimitrescu #lady dimitrescu #resident evil: village #re8 village #gremlin trio is protective #they're like #you're not cool enough for our mom #hey tumb please stop fucking up the order of my tags #this is the second time you've messed up my attempt at being funny

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thebibliosphere · 3 years

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Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites (an update)

Friends, vampire romancers, and monster lover aficionados…

I’ve got a fairly important update for you all. As I’ve mentioned many, many times, I’m struggling with the length of Phangs. There is simply too much book, and while I’ve made substantial cuts to the original manuscript, it’s been at the expense of many things I love and want to keep. Including my sanity.

To give you an idea of how bonkers the size of this thing is, the halfway mark is, at present, registering at over 700 pages on Kindle and the Apple store. Which is roughly, give or take, 500 pages in paperback. It is huge. And I’ve no idea how I created something of this size, and still not have all the things in it I want to include. So, to remedy this, and to avoid cutting out any more of the things I love, I’ve decided to split Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites into two books.

Regrettably, this means that the Ot3 doesn’t become firmly established until book two. It’s still heavily implied, and you get all three characters interacting together (read: flirting their supernatural socks off), but their relationship as a triad won’t be fully formed until the second book. Which is not what I want, and I know it’s not what a lot of you want either. But I need to be realistic here and do what makes sense for the narrative arc of the story, and also for my health. I thought with giving myself an extra month of wiggle room to keep working on things I’d be able to fix this issue, but truthfully, it’s not something I can fix. Not without cutting Nathan’s character arc and his development as a disabled character, and honestly, I’d rather scrap the whole novel than remove an iota of his arc.

It is extremely important to me to have a queer disabled, romantic lead who neither dies, nor is “cured,” and is still portrayed as lovable, sexy, and above all else, happy, while still experiencing difficulties and setbacks that comes from living with disabilities and chronic health issues. And Nathan is that character. He’s a deaf, disabled werewolf who uses mobility aids and wears a magical hearing aid who eventually learns to overcome the ableism and alienation he faces because of his injures*, both from the outside world, and from his family. It’s a huge part of who he is, and the narrative of acceptance and positivity that makes Phangs what it is. And I just... can’t lose that. I can’t. I’ve tried and I can’t.

I also just don’t want to delay the book any further.

You have all been incredibly patient and understanding in waiting for this novel while I scraped my health off the floor over the last four years. And while it’s perhaps not the exact thing I wanted to put out into the world, what Phangs was intended to be and what it has turned into over the last few years are entirely different things.

What started as a funny post on my blog, which was never meant to be anything more than something playful, has morphed into a fully formed microcosm. The plot and world building didn’t so much get away from me, as grow multiple extra arms and legs and sprint off the slab. And while that was happening, the character arcs were off doing their own thing. Becoming fully formed and nuanced behind my back. What should have been a trilogy now looks like it might be a five-part series. Possibly six.

The good news is that you’ll get book 2 much sooner than previously expected! The reason for this is that most of it is already written, I just need to take the time to restructure and edit things, as well as take a short hiatus to get my hands fixed up. Turns out typing over 4 million words in one year when you have Ehlers Danlos is really not good for your hands. (This is also why my inbox is still currently closed.)

But I still understand that many of you wanted this book purely for the Ot3 and that’s fine! The Ot3 still happens, it is set in stone. It’s just more of a slow burn than previously expected. And I get that’s not what some of you want or signed up for, which is why I’m letting you all know now.

So, if you’re disappointed and would like to cancel your Amazon pre-orders, I’m sorry to hear that, but I completely understand.

If you are a Patreon/Ko-Fi supporter, please know that you will receive the second book as part of your initial pledge. (This includes those of you who pledged for exclusive hardbacks, and some named characters who have been shuffled into book 2 to let them have more than a passing name drop.) I do not expect you to fork out more money for the story you have already paid for, some of you many multiple times over. Without you, none of this would be possible, and I still wouldn’t be here. Thank you for making this series possible and helping to keep me alive and paying for my medical bills.

Anyway, I am sorry for this wall of text. And I’m sorry if I’ve let any of you down with this news. The happy polyamorous paranormal triad is still coming. And you can take that last part however you like.

Also, for those asking, links to the Fluff and Fangs edition (without smut) will go up a few days after the launch of Flirting with Fangs (with smut) which launches on the 24th of November 2020. I’m not sure if Amazon will try to ding me for having two editions of the book up at once, so that’s the reason for the extra wait. Thank you for understanding, and for asking. Your continued interest in this kooky world I’ve created has kept me going, and I really hope it’ll be worth your wait.

Thank you for understanding, and again, I'm sorry if this is disappointing news to anyone. I did my best, but sometimes our best still falls short of what we would like. -Joy

#Hunger Pangs: True Love Bites #Hunger Pangs book #Phangs #Joy Demorra #Hunger Pangs by Joy Demorra #book updates

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leannan-sithe · 3 years

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Godspousing Terms

This is a suggested list of godspousing terms that have been developed and loosely defined by our 50+ person private discord. We find them helpful to make distinctions, so hopefully you do too!

Basic Compound Terms

I propose godspouse be used as a generic umbrella term for any non-platonic relationship with an entity that is not in our world / on this plane, or however you wanna describe it.

godspouse, god-spouse, god spouse are all the same term, but I find godspouse more distinct about the type of relationship happening (and, it is easier to use on places like tumblr, where the split god spouse shows up when you search god or spouse now)

This word structure can be used for any number of words, primarily god- and spirit- added to terms like -spouse, -partner, -consort, -family, -mate.

The first word can also be: fae-, hero-, angel-, demon-, or other-. Otherspouse is commonly used as a neutral pronoun when in mixed company, i.e. when addressing a group of godspouses and spiritspouses, "Who are your Otherspouses?"

Concept of Courting

What is courting? To new folks, it sounds formal and intimidating. In short, it's a term for dating or pursuing a romantic / non-platonic relationship. Depending on your Otherpartner, courting can be informal and casual or formal and structured.

Some entities have their own political or cultural norms, and they may require structured courting. To give vague examples, this could be like going on dates for a set time before calling the relationship 'serious' or like going through a set of rituals in your pantheon of choice before you can date the partner.

Each entity has their own courting requirements, much like people. Be sure to discuss this with them! Dating can lead to marriage or other vows, so it's worth having open, clear communication.

List of Flexible Terms

-spouse

Can be generic or can imply some form of marital status.

-partner

For relationships that are more than 'dating' but do not include marriage; often used in partnerships that emphasize equality between the human and otherpartner.

-family

Not strictly a godspousing term, but useful in-context; used for relationships with entities that are familial, i.e. this god is my godfamily because they are my brother.

-consort

Although it can be a boyfriend/girlfriend equivalent, this term is more frequently used for relationships where the consort status (unmarried, still courting) of the human partner is important to the otherpartner; Consort IRL was used as a name for romantic partners of royalty who would not carry on hereditary royalty or political power; for some entities, this distinction is important as these entities have lives of their own and may hold power.

-mate

Less commonly used, but seems to imply an intimate relationship with trust that doesn't require definition by marriage or other agreements; IMO, the vibe is informed by the concept of 'mating for life' heavily, in that animals don't need formal documentation, they just are together.

Godowned and Godservant

These relationships are structured around Ownership or servitude, in a similar way that nuns commit to the Christian God.

Godowned has many expressions, but in short: the human has agreed to be owned by the otherpartner, for any variety of reasons. Ownership is not necessarily a Master / sl*ve relationship, although that is one expression of it.

Godowned example:

Because I am Theirs, Deity has committed to taking care of my emotional and mental well-being, to the point of bothering me when I need to take medication or when I need to step back and take time to myself. I submit to the nudges when they are given, as I've agreed to this dynamic and it's helpful for me to have someone give me instructions.

Godservant can be similar if not identical to Godowned, although it implies more of a servant relationship with the deity in question, not always ownership. This relationship dynamic is often very formal and includes vows and explicit expectations from the human and the otherpartner involved.

The servant concept is often expressed through acts of devotion, like learning a new language as a devotional act to the deity or doing research about the deity's pantheon etc.

Although not required, this dynamic is frequently expressed by being a Devotee/Devoted/Dedicant of [DeityName]. There is a formal declaration that you are dedicated to this particular Deity, which is often used as your public identifier (ex. Hi, I'm Rook a Devotee of Fairge, not Hi, I'm Rook, a pagan.)

The term Godsl*ve is also available for use! I am censoring it here solely to avoid the term coming up when sl*ve is searched on Tumblr. There is no judgement that I'm trying to imply.

Godsl*ve can be all of the above, but is clearly much more explicit about who wears the pants and who does not wear the pants in this relationship. This dynamic tends to have Dom/sub components and often is very structured with rules and requirements to be performed by the human involved.

Alternative Terms

As to not muddle the water more than I have already, here is a list of other terms folks use but are either less common or not generic enough to be included.

-thrall, -bride, -groom, -nun, -sworn, -lover, -f*cker

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#godspouse #godspousery #godspousing #pagan #paganism #spiritspouse #spirits

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sunshinestardrop · 2 years

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Ok but like my favorite daydream to have is one where I’m part of the pokemon world and like I dont really do battles or anything but some friends and I buy a house in the middle of nowhere (Probably a heavily wooded arear) that we dont really intend to use since we’re going on our journey soon and just plan to use it as a sort of ‘rest spot’ for when we need a break.

But we figure thats not gonna work when it occurs to us just how long we’re gonna be gone for an no one will be there to keep the house in shape. So I offer to stay behind and take care of it. Im not much of a battler myself and my only partner is a little Oddish that I never actually caught and just kind of decided it liked me enough to hang around. So they go and I start upkeep on the house.

But I get bored really quickly. Eventually I come to the conclusion that since I’m pretty good at taking care of Oddish I can probably start gardening as a hobby, so I get to that. I start with random plants I find around and pull out the seeds and when they start to grow I venture out more. I find a apricots tree and start to take seeds from that too- and eventually began taking the fruits from that as I try to dig up some information about how to make pokeballs out of them.

My garden starts to grow and I know Im not going to be able to keep up with it. So my first goal is to get a water type that can help me water the garden. Because Im an idoit with not only no pokeballs but also no idea how to catch a pokemon I just kind of go to a nearby lake and start throwing food into the water and ask (Annoy) any pokemon dumb enough to come by and eat it. Some want to battle, but Oddish and I are not really capable of battle so they get shooed away. A lot of pokemon reject our offer- apparently not very excited at the idea of no battling- but the tiniest little Dratini comes by and is willing to come along so I just kind of let it wrap itself around my arm and we head off...

and then there’s this whole situation where im a dumbass who has no idea that Dratini only learns like two water moves and neither of them are useful but theyre my friend now and they can stay for as long as they want because Oddish and I love them. Still gotta find a water type to help with my plants tho.

And eventually I find a Magikarp that is a fantastic splasher and set up my garden a little bit closer to a lake so that my new Magikarp friend can water the plants they only way they know how.

My garden starts to thrive, and I mean like really thrive! With Oddish’s sweet scent Im able to attract more bug pokemon to pollinate the plants- some that even become ‘regulars’ of my garden and hang around long after they've had their fill- as well as some other Randoms that show up to nibble of veggies that I dont know what to do with. eventually I start to notice that a lot more plants are going missing, some even torn up from the roots. The other pokemon lead me to a munchlax that had been tearing up a good portion of my garden and after a little scolding I show the little guy how to gently take the editable part without tearing apart the entire plant. Eventually I have a little garden helper. Munchlax starts by just picking out the plants I ask him to pick and then eventually learns how to care and tend to the plants when I can’t.

All the while Im still trying to figure out the whole Pokeball making thing, which goes terribly but I have all the time in the world to figure it out. I do figure out that i need some mechanical parts and have to (Regrettably) travel back to civilization to get them.

Theres a city thats a ways away from the house, so I know I’ll have to make a trip there. I leave Munchlax (the gardener), Magikarp (The waterer), Dratini (The ‘guard dog’ lol), and a few other regulars in charge of the garden (That has grown huge by now) while Im gone with Oddish who insists on coming with me. I bring some of my fruits and vegs with me as food since I dont really have the money to buy anything other then what I need- being a hermit in the forest for so long.

So we head off with a smooch to each my my friends heads and promise to be back in three days (One to get there, one to search for parts, and the last to head back)

While traveling in the woods we find some pokemon that won't take “No, we don't battle” as an answer and Oddish- who has technically been training in an unconventional way (Aka, using moves to help me with my garden and sometimes chasing off misbehaving pokemon)- chases them off swiftly. By the time we make it to the city my baby has evolved into a Gloom! Weirdly enough everyone in the city gives us a wide berth while holding their nose. I can’t figure out why though.

I wander through town completely oblivious, simply focused on my goal. While there people whisper about some dangerous organization making its way through the region and worried that they’ll be next but I pay no mind to them, what kind of silly story is that anyway. Someone even has the audacity to accuse me of being part of it! Still, I pay them no mind and Gloom makes quick work of their team when they attempt to battle me. I go back to my search and eventually find a poke center where I can cozy up for the night before head off to buy my stuff.

It’s the off season for trainers to come and go (where the beginning of spring is usually for young kids to start their journey) so it’s just me and a few stragglers. I chat with some people and we talk about pokemon. At some point I admit that Gloom isnt technically ‘my’ pokemon and just kind of like a buddy that can stay as long as they please. No one there really gets it but Idc. I give people the fruits and veggies i brought along- some trade items and others give money which I take just in case before heading on our way.

Stuff happens, I get my parts, and along the way I find a shiny charmander that I make friends with and offer to bring them home since they’re pretty skittish and not that interested in battle- and since charmander is such a popular starter pokemon people are almost hellbent on catching the little guy for battle. I feed some stray Meowths and accidently spend an extra day in the city before returning home.

At home Im nearly bombarded by Munchlax and Dratini- who seem pretty frantic- I dont really know what happened but apparently there was some chaos that tore up almost half my garden while I was away and left the two pretty shaken up. Thankfully no one was hurt but I go into a panic because I can’t find Magikarp!

And am only sent into more of a panic when what was once my little Magikarp bursts out of Their lake- now a fully grown Gyarados. I nearly pee myself in shock but accept the big guy with opened arms. Gyarados seemed to have caused most of the damage, maybe in a rage induced frenzy? or maybe from fighting something very big and very dangerous? I’ll probably never get the whole picture. So instead of dwelling on it I start to get back to work on my garden.

I continue on with life, receiving letters from my friends via messenger starly (who eventually becomes a Staravia, then a Staraptor) People begin to stop by my house more often- apparently the travelers I met that night told others about me and my willingness to trade (Surprisingly good) food for Knick knacks. Dratini, Charmander, and munchlax evolve once as well. Every now and then a trainer wants to battle, and I let them know that we only battle when the others are up for it. Sometimes they are, and sometimes they aren't. either way the more forceful trainers are ushered away by my very annoyed Vileplume who is happy to offer them a good wiff of their flower. all in all life is pretty good.

Eventually my ability to make pokeballs improve, and I finally make a fully functional pokeball and leave it on my workbench overnight- only to find it in use he next day. Dragonair- whos grown to be quite the little smartass- had claimed the ball as their own.

Whelp, whatever, it was their decision and I was chill with it. Sadly, a few others get jealous of Dragonairs newfound spot and demand a ball of their own. So I spend a few sleepless nights crafting more only to find that Ive run out of parts. With only two working Pokeballs that Dragonair and Vileplume claimed residence of I leave Snorlax, Charmeleon, and Gyarados to care for the garden while I head back to the city.

Having traveled to and from there a few times I know a good amount of people and pokemon alike (The local strays always clamoring to harass me for food) and I’ve actually started to do business with a local mom and pa shop that buys my stuff whenever I’m in town. It’s a life I never thought possible, but it’s the best life Ive ever lived.

There’s still rumored and people still suspect me, but it becomes less and less as time goes on. Unbeknownst to me many of the trainers that stop by my house on their way to the city also speak very highly of me and I am a welcomed sight to weary travelers. I just go about my day happy with life like a dumbass.

I get challenged a few times, and because of my unconventional way of training my team I’m considered an enigma to people who have been taught how to properly battle. Most of the time My pokemon just kind of... know what they need to do and Im used as an extra pair of eyes to help cover them. They trust my judgment and I trust them.

It does scare some trainers when all I do is stare in silence while my pokemon just go ham, but whatever.

Generally I set up a nice life both in and outside of the city. Living my best life like some sort of weird poke hermit. I don't know when or how it happens but I somehow become a sort of ‘destination’ spot for trainers. In no way am I an official battle spot, but I somehow become a halfway house for trainers and travelers alike. A lot of the time if youre looking for a battle you have to get through all the ‘regulars’ that want to make sure youre not here to cause problems, and then a very protective Gyarados that will obliterate you if they feel you have any bad intentions.

after all that youll be met with a garden spreading an acre out, pokemon freely wandering around just minding their own business and enjoying life, a fiercely protective shiny Charizard and a kindly Snorlax in a farmers hat too small for their head. Apricot saplings line the house and I’ll most likely be chilling on the front porch, or maybe working with Snorlax in the garden. I’ll welcome strangers kindly and offer them some food or a place to stay the night depending on the time of day.

The world comes to a halt there, a peaceful little bubble where people can take a moment to enjoy the world and not think about their next more. There is no rush. No worries. I am happy, and maybe for a moment you can be too.

---

That was a lot longer then I expected it to be, but I wish this was my life.

Names for my team:

Vileplume- Marigold

Dragonite- Hero

Charizard- Icarus

Snorlax - Gumbo

Gyarados- Leviathan

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horizon-verizon · 1 year

Note

I’m Team Black all the way but I do think that Viserys handled the eye situation poorly. Aemond was by no means innocent or blameless in the fight but he is still Viserys’s son. Therefore, Viserys should have shown that he cared about Aemond instead of focusing all of his attention on the bastard issue. Both things needed to be addressed. Aemond’s missing eye and the bastard rumors. I don’t blame Rhaenyra for trying to get Alicent in trouble for the rumors, she endangered her children with them. However, Viserys quite literally not caring at all that his son lost an eye is appalling and I get why Alicent snapped.

*EDITED POST* (3/27/24)

Disclaimer:

Viserys did handle it poorly in terms of morals, but I also think that the poor handling is partially a result of:

the pressure to punish his own grandchildren in a scenario where it was obviously an accident and the solution should/can never be to do "eye for an eye"

him having to address the flying accusations before he could get to Aemond being down there at all when he should have been asleep in his room.

Transcription of A Portion of Episode 7:

Viserys: How could you allow such a thing to happen? I will have answers.

Harrold: The princes were supposed to be abed, my king.

Viserys: Who had the watch?

Criston: Young Prince was attacked by his own cousins, Your Grace.

Viserys: That is no answer! It will heal, will it not, maester?

Maester: The flesh will heal. But the eye is lost, Your Grace.

Viserys: Aemond... I will have the truth of what happened. Now.

Alicent: What else is there to hear? Your son has been maimed. Her son is responsible.

Rhaenyra: It was a regrettable accident.

Alicent: Accident? The Prince Lucerys brought a blade to the ambush. He meant to kill my son. It was my sons who were attacked and forced to defend themselves.

[...]

Rhaenyra: My sons are in line to inherit the Iron Throne, Your Grace. This is the highest of treasons. Prince Aemond must be sharply questioned so we might learn where he heard such slanders.

Alicent: Over an insult? My son has lost an eye.

Viserys: You tell me, boy. Where did you hear this lie?

Alicent: The insult was training yard bluster. The lot of boys. It was nothing.

Viserys: Aemond... I asked you a question.

[then Alicent tries to bring focus to Laenor's absence and Rhaenyra's messiness and away from Aemond, Viserys yells that the fighting must cease , Alicent says this is "insufficient" and demands Luke's eye. Queue infamous attack]

And Fire and Blood's Account:

Afterward, King Viserys tried to make a peace, requiring each of the boys to tender an apology to his rivals on the other side, but these courtesies did not appease their vengeful mothers. Queen Alicent demanded that one of Lucerys Velaryon’s eyes should be put out, for the eye he had cost Aemond. Princess Rhaenyra would have none of that, but insisted that Prince Aemond should be questioned “sharply” until he revealed where he had heard her sons called “Strongs.” To so name them was tantamount to saying they were bastards, with no��rights of succession...and that she herself was guilty of high treason. When pressed by the king, Prince Aemond said it was his brother Aegon who had told him they were Strongs, and Prince Aegon said only, “Everyone knows. Just look at them.”

(Fire and Blood; A Question of Succession)

Recap of the Book vs Episode 7

So in the book, Viserys immediately tries to get the boys to come to his version of a peace because he knows that his daughter and his wife will come to blows over this. It is Alicent who demands Lucerys lose an eye to match Aemond's, which Rhaenyra follows up with questioning for torture. Rhaenyra does this to bring to attention the high crime of treason, which would and did bring focus away from Lucerys, parry Alicent's attack, as well as get to the heart of Aemond's hatred for the Velayron boys: the succession and how he feels they do not deserve what he thinks is his by his "legitmate" birth.

In the show, we see Alicent be upset that Viserys will not immediately punish Luke (now eye for and eye yet) and doesn't want Viserys to even get to the bottom of how this happened. But before all that, we also see Viserys actually show great concern for Aemond's eye. And before Alicent tried to get Lucerys immediately punished without investigating how this happened in the first place, Viserys was questioning and asking Aemond what happened, his version of the event.

It's right after Alicent demands punishment (still no eye) that Rhaenyra says that it was an accident, and Alicent continues to say that Rhaenyra's kids attacked her son, so Rhaenyra puts out the treason-talk card. In both versions, (canon vs TV show), Alicent is the one pressing, but in the book we see her doing it with a healthy amount of entitled outrage to actually demand Lucerys' eye right from the start.

Answering the Ask

But that's Alicent. What about Viserys?

In both versions, he, yes, shifts focus to the bastard allegation.

To HotD's Viserys, being King and being a father comes out with him acting as King before acting as a father. I would argue that even as a father, his first act in asking Aemond what the hell happened AS WELL AS freaking out over how he lost an eye for a minute shows he does care about Aemond. But again, Alicent interrupts, thinking that there's nothing to investigate. Which is why I talked about her actions.

One, Viserys is a guy who really values communal seemings of peace and family for the sake of obligation If he were MBTI'd, he'd be an ESFJ. But keeping within ASoIaF, he was really into the style of being a conciliatory and happy-go-lucky king, trying to suppress conflict as easily and less chaotically as possible...without actually analyzing the best way to do that or believing that sometimes you need a much firmer hand.

After the back and forth between her and Rhaenyra, Viserys hears "bastard", his King role is activated (because this is feudalism). Check out the post by @rhaenyragendereuphoria HERE:

In some ways, commoners are freer - but these are worlds where "freedom" is a strange word. Feudal societies were quite dystopian. [...] However, no one is given rights in these societies, not even men - not the way we would define rights. Their idea of "right" is just as arbitrary as their idea of "freedom". They are societies based on privileges, and privileges are always revocable, unlike rights.

and treason against the crown must be addressed, according to the principles of kingly conduct, above all else), and Viserys shifts focus be a use that is a serious charge in of itself.

Especially after he himself has said over and over again and made it clear that no one was to ever go directly against the declares word decisions of a ruler (this is literally the law/custom). No one is exempt -- we hear Viserys say to Aemond "Your father, your King, demands it!'" because being a father doesn't just mean being a daddy. It means being the authority and the one who is your superior, who you owe fealty and loyalty to.

And this is where Viserys is partially coming from. Another part, a big one but not the only one, is that he wants to protect Rhaenyra, who he knows had these kids out of wedlock but also knows that the boys could die, she would have her reputation ruined, he'd lose his heir, he'd lose some house honor (which gives the entire family credibility, not just Rhaenyra and her kids) and he loves them. Aemond loses an eye. Okay, and in the interim of him accusing Rhaenyra of having children, not her husband's, and "lying" about their origins and "messing up" the succession, Viserys, Rhaenyra, and even Alicent and Aemond would lose so much more. And another part is that maiming the heir to the Driftmark seat would piss off Corlys, who Viserys had already pissed off numerous times.

So I think all this is why you have Viserys so focused on the bastard allegation more than his son losing an eye. Both in the book and the show, because the situation remains the same except which of the women says what, when, and Viserys actually showing more recorded concern in HotD than in the book over Aemond's eye.

So yeah, not the best dad but there is also an element where Alicent wasn't making it easy when she could have. You know ..by not being so prejudiced and mentally stale for the sake of feudal gender conformity and demanding that Rhaenyra should've treated as if she were treacherous herself for sleeping with others while she couldn't.

#vhagar claim #asoiaf asks to me #hotd comment #viserys i's characterization #alicent's characterization #rhaenyra's characterization #westerosi bastards #westerosi sexism #westerosi monarchy #hotd episode 7 #sharply questioned #westeros succession #asoiaf #hotd

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lovesgonnabe · 3 years

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Love Is Worth It Episode V - We Got The Pandemic Blues Under a New York City Skyline

Characters: Chris Evans x Maya Alonso-Evans (Black OFC)

Warnings: straight fluff, cursing, implied smut.

Word Count: 3485

Summary: What happens in NYC stays in NYC!

AN: The NYC Skyline prompt is by @iguessweallcrazyithinktho thank you so much for letting me use your theme I hope I did it justice. If you haven't read any of her stuff what are you doing get on it!

Disclaimer: There’s only slight edits so there may be errors. Also if you haven’t noticed this series will have many time jumps and things referenced here may make more sense later on in the series when new episodes come out so please bear with me.

Taglist: @thesecretlifeofdaydreamss, @canadian-girl87, @i-just-like-fanfics, @omg-mymelaninisbeautiful if you would like to join the taglist message me.

Please leave a note and tell me what you think!

June 13th, 2020

Being with Chris had its many perks but not working was definitely one Maya never wanted to take advantage of.

When Chris first brought it up when they got engaged she looked at him like he had two heads and said “I worked to hard put myself through school to get these expensive ass letters behind my name to just stay my ass at home” and that was the last time they had that conversation.

But fast forward to 2020 If you told Maya that she would have to close both of her dermatology offices in the middle of award season a few months ago she would have laughed at you.

She just couldn’t see herself not working because she loved what she does, but with both New York and Boston putting in place stay at home orders there’s nothing she could do.

It didn't help that it was only Maya in Boston dealing with work and all that entails, Delilah's up in the air school situation, and a whole hoax of things while Chris was in L A being as supportive of a husband and father as he could be on the other side of the country.

At least Dodger was being pretty normal.

Thanks to Chris's family for being so helpful where they could because for a minute Maya felt like she was beginning to drown.

This saga starts with the beginning of the pandemic.

January was chill there were whispers that there was a deadly pandemic on the horizon but no one took it seriously.

February Chris had left at the beginning of the month to LA to promote his new show Defending Jacob and it wasn't like anything out of the ordinary the couple worked, and called each other daily.

Chris told her he'd have to be there through March but would be home in time for Maya's birthday in April.

Her lawsuit against Boston PD was settled out of court for an undisclosed amount that was donated to charity and trust me that lawsuit cost them a pretty penny because Chris was threatening to go to the press and Boston PD did not need anymore negative press.

After finding out that the older officer already had many reports against him for abuse of power he was "let go" by Boston PD and the other officer was demoted to desk duty and sent Maya an apology letter for his actions

She thinks he only did it because her husband is Chris Evans but she tries not to be a cynic.

In mid March with her offices were forced to close and the lives of her twenty employees were in her hands, but sin there was no money coming in she had to regrettably furlough all of them until she could open back up.

This news could come at a worse time because Lilah's school was trying to transition them to online learning for the rest of the year.

So Maya now had to also be her home school teacher for the last 2 months before summer vacation .

Maya does feel blessed because she was still able to teach some derm online classes through NYU, and her family was healthy but Chris still wasn't home.

Because of travel restrictions in LA on April 1st Maya found out that the earliest Chris could be home was in possibly July or Mid June if they are lucky because he need to start filming for Grey Man that was set in Boston.

Then rumors started to swirl that Chris could be cheating on Maya but

She doesn't play that and isn't a dummy

Chris isn't stupid and

He's been in their home in LA quarenting with his brother Scott the whole time so if some foul shit did happen she would be the first one to know and on the first jet smoking to beat some ass.

But hey when it rains it pours.

In interviews Chris would say he was "quartining with his family at home in Boston."

They would try to make the spaces look just like Chris and Maya's homebase in Boston even going as far as strategically moving photos of them in the background to make it look like his office at home.

And it actually work most people thought Chris was in Boston anyways and it was all gossip the others thought he went back home to clean up this mess.

But nope Chris was not in Boston he was 2,764 miles away and this time it all just felt different and he hated not being able to be there with them during this crazy uncertain time and Maya just needed a vacation.

In April Maya and Delilah just had dinner at the house for her birthday they facetimed Chris and once Liliah had gone to bed Chris and Maya had sexytime over the phone.

The rest of the month Maya just went with the flow and did the same through June.

Now we are all caught up and in the present day.

It's Chris's 39th birthday but he was still in LA.

Maya stayed up to call him at midnight in LA because that was their tradition but now it was about 12pm and Chris has not picked up any of her phone calls Maya was annoyed.

Maya and Delilah sat in the Den as Maya was detangling Delilah's freshly washed hair getting ready to put her curly hair into braids as Mulan played on the tv in front of them.

"Mommy can I call dad it's his birthday and I haven't got to talk to him today. Lilah says playing with Maya's phone.

"Go ahead sweetheart maybe you'll have better luck them me." said Maya as she sectioned Lilah's hair.

As the facetime ringtone went Dodger who was laying in his dog bed next to Lilah began to bark and then he ran for the front door Maya looked that way but didn't see anything since the alarm didn't go off either which she found strange.

She shrugged it off only for a second until she heard a bag hit the ground as she quickly stood up the only thought in her head was to protect Delilah helping her to hide under the couch.

As the person entered their den Dodger continued to bark and she grabbed a pair hair scissors about to attack the intruder until she saw his face and exhaled the breath she didn't even know she was holding.

"CHRIS you scared the shit out of me" she said before he could say anything.

He laughed "Baby I didn't mean to scare you" Chris said

Lilah screamed and crawled from under the couch.

"daddy, daddy, daddy I missed you and Happy Birthday." Lilah said running into Chris's arm.

"I missed you to babycakes you been taking care of mommy for me" Chris said holding Lilah and walking towards a still shocked Maya.

He kissed Maya's forehead trying to pull her into a hug but she rolled her eyes and pushed his hand away.

"Chris i thought you weren't coming home till July" Maya asked

Chris shrugged "plans change now are you gonna come and give daddy a kiss you what"

He said flopping on the couch with Lilah on his lap.

Mays sucked her teeth peeked his lips and told Lilah to come so she could finish her hair.

Her saltiness cause Chris to laugh as Lilah moved over to her mom.

They were sitting on the same couch so Chris bent over and began to whisper in her ear. "Stop acting like that baby I wanted to surprise you"

Maya gave minimal response and Chris didn't like that so then he brought heat.

When he walked Maya had on a beige short set the top was fairly tin and the shorts barely covered her ass, he could see her nipples stand at attention on her delicious breast when walked.

It's been 3 months since he's had sex with his wife and boy can he feel it. He gave her tigh a firm squeeze now pecking her spot behind her ear forcing Maya to stop mid greasing Lilah's scalp to take a deep breath.

"if you stop acting up tonight I'll do that thing with my tongue that you like if not daddy won't be letting you cum at all tonight.

Chris said moving his body back to his original position smirking at his shooken up wife whose attitude did a 180 quick, fast and in a hurry.

Chris was no home and with his girls and he couldn’t be any happier.

After braiding Delilah's hair Maya went and they dropped her off at Chris’s moms which was a fight in itself because she wanted to stay with her daddy but Maya had other plans.

The original plan was to take Chris out of the country for his birthday but plans change.

Before Chris showed up today Maya had nothing planned for Chris's birthday because he was not suppose to be home they were just going to the same thing they did for her birthday.

On there way back home my had an idea with there hands intertwined Maya began to speak.

“So birthday boy what do you want to do for your birthday” Maya asked

“You know I don’t care as long as I’m with you my love” Chris said kissing her hand.

Maya giggled “Well we’ve dropped Dede at your moms and Scott said he could take Dodger”

She states looking at the puppy through the rear view mirror as Chris began to rub is thumb over her knuckles.

“It seems you already have a plan for us babe” he smirks

“I know you are just getting home but how about we drop Dodger off and I was thinking maybe drive to New York, I need to get out of Boston and have a bit of a staycation”. She said.

Chris chuckled and looked at Maya as the stopped at the red light.

“Wherever you lead I’ll follow. He said

“You are so corny old man” Maya laughed as she leaned over and peek his sweet lips.

They continued their drive to Scotts and talked enjoying eachothers company for the first time in a while, they were so wrapped up in each other that Dodger had to bark to remind Chris he was about to pass Scoots house .

Maya laughed at the puppy then pet him telling him how good of a dog he is.

“Alright birthday boy Scott has Dodger now let's switch its my turn to drive you around” She said.

They headed home to pick up a few things and then The Evans were off and headed for there trip.

After the 3 and 1/2 hour drive they got to New York and the barren streets shocked them.

They are staying in there penthouse apartment on the upper east side that over looks Central Park and New York's famous skyline.

Before settling in Maya decided to get groceries once she got back Jazz played softly in her ears as the punchy aroma of the candle Slow Burn hit her nose.

“Hey Chris I'm back” she called out to him.

She was met without a response just the smooth stylings of Frank Sinatra.

Maya put the groceries in the kitchen and headed to their master bedroom.

Kicking her shoes off and following the rose petals into the bathroom that revealed Chris who sat in all his glory in the pink tinted bathtub.

Apparently he did not hear her as his eyes stayed closed and his arms outstretched.

And all Maya could do was admire the greek god that was her husband.

His long wingspan encompassed the entire back of the tub as his strong biceps would flex ever deep breath he took. And don't to get Maya started on those baby blues which were one of the only things Lilah did not get from Chris. Those same blue eyes were now looking straight at her.

“I was hoping you’d be back soon” he said

Raising his head to look at his goddess of a wife smirking at him.

“So I’m guessing you would like me to join you?” She asked

Maya teased him as she began to slowly remove her clothes.

“Hey aren’t I the birthday boy that shouldn’t even be a question Maya so you better bring your sexy ass in here” Chris said to her as his arms still laid on the back of the tub looking like a king”

Maya stepped in with Chris’s help the warm water encapsulating her body as she sinks down.

She sighs in satisfaction when her body is finally completely in the water as she lays into Chris’s embrace.

They just sit there and enjoy each other company, washing the dirt off of each other from the day, and stealing kisses from one another.

Maya and Chris were that couple you loved to hate they didn’t show off their love that much with Chris’s anxiety and Maya’s destain for public scrutiny because she’s black woman with a man of Chris stature, PDA was mostly off the table. However behind closed doors they are the cutest most intimate couple you’d ever meet.

Once she was clean from her road dirt Maya left the water first placing a kiss on Chris’s lips as she headed to start dinner and Chris laid back and continued to relax.

Once Chris finally got out the bath he found Maya in the kitchen halfway finished with dinner.

“Jesus babe it smells fantastic in here and I see you changed the music” Chris said

He was now fully dressed in a blue t-shit in matching joggers, his hair damp from the bath as Lauryn Hill's rendition of Can't Take My Eyes off of You played in the background.

She chuckled “only the best for you my king”

"Mhm I like the sound of that" He said as he went in the fridge and grabbed a bottle of white wine and poured them both a glass.

She was at the counter cutting up veggies.

“Ok so how long do I have wait before I can devour all this?” he asked placing the glass in front of Maya.

They took their first cheers of the night tapping the glasses together.

Maya took a sip and moan at the taste of the wine.

“Soon Chris don’t stress it babe you will be fed very soon” she said.

Her hips began to sway to the music as she hummed along.

At long last, love has arrived, and I thank God I'm alive

Chris walked up behind her wrapping her arms around waist swaying with her body and catching the rhythm.

You're just too good to be true, can't take my eyes off you

Moving her hair to her left shoulder Chris begins to kiss her neck.

"Remember when we first bought this place." Chris asked

"Yes you didn't want to you said my place in Brooklyn was enough for us" Maya said putting the knife down and melted into Chris's strong arms.

"Mmm but you did an excellent job at convincing me why we need this place, 3 bedrooms right in the Heart of the city just for times likes these when want to get away." Chris said with his arms still wrapped around her.

She laughed "I thought it was because you fucked me against the balcony on our terrace is why you said yes"

He smirked at the memory "well that to"

Chris sucked on her neck and moved his down her satin dress but the timer on the pot decided to be a cock block and go off before he could make a move.

He groaned and Maya laughed directed him to get ready to eat.

Just as the food was finishing up Chris set the dining table for two, taking the rest of the flowers from his bath laying them out between the kitchen and there Terrence where they were having dinner overlooking the city.

It was a beautiful night. There was a soft breeze and the city was a glow quieter that usual but still a sight to behold.

Maya brought out the food as Chris poured them another glass, they both sat prayed then rose their glasses to cheers again.

During dinner Chris made some corny jokes that always seemed to put Maya in a better mood as Maya would slyly rub her foot up Chris’s pant leg.

Next came dessert still out on the terrace they shared a slice of cake (more like Maya fed Chris cake) which is how she ended up in his lap enjoying the very expensive yet immaculate view they had from their home.

He rubbed her thigh as he kisses her shoulder just thinking of the fastest way to get Maya out of her dress.

"god you are beautiful" Chris said

His hand now playing with the trim of her panties under her strappy white satin dress.

"Oh no birthday boy you not fucking me out here tonight you gotta come inside for your last present" Maya said.

Chris groaned Maya got up seductively waking back inside her curves just begging him to follow her

“This woman Is going to be the death of me” Chris thought as he came back inside and closed the door that lead to the terrace.

Maya handed Chris his third and final glass of wine of the night.

He raised an eyebrow "Are you trying to get me drunk Mrs. Evans so you can have your way with me?" he asked.

Taking a sip from his glass he smacked Maya the ass and watched it move as she walked towards their living room.

She laughed "I wouldn't have to get you drunk to have my way with you Mr. Evans"

Their living room had floor to ceiling windows that overlook Chris's second favorite city, and that's where Maya stood wine glass in hand looking all the people that looked like ants. But all Chris could think about was how this woman fell for him.

She watched the scenery and he watched her but when that signature trumpet blew he remembered that the music was still playing and so did she.

Maya turned around to see Chris was watching her one hand in his pocket and the other still holding his wine, she made a face at him.

"What are you looking at me like that Chris, you ok?” she asked hand on her hip taking another drink from her glass.

The moon shined off her skin like she was in the sun, her white dress reminding him of their wedding day the way it hugged her figure.

Still speechless Chris walked up to her placing both of their glasses on the coffee table, he brushed her hair behind her ear and she moans nuzzling her head in his touch.

"Baby I am absolutely perfect because I am here with you" he says.

Chris softly pulls her by the waist bringing her flush against her body as raspy voice of Louis Armstrong in Le Vie En Rose brought butterfly’s to Maya’s stomach because this was their song.

His hands lay softly on her waist as her arms lay around his shoulder as they dancer slowly around there living room.

Hold me close and hold me fast, The magic spell you cast, this is la vie en rose.

His cologne sent waves of pleasure and warmth through her body, when Maya laid her head on his chest not wanting to let him go. As their heartbeat became in sync the moonlight casted their sillones on the ground.

They were two lovers who were lost in eachother hoping to never get out and wanting to hide from the world it felt new but familiar.

Once the song ended Chris kissed her so deep and and passionately Maya thought she was gonna cum then and there.

Chris's hands moved from their previously respectable position making circle on her hips to the bottom of her ass telling Maya to jump causing Maya wrap her chocolate legs around his waist.

As Chris walked he kept repeating how much he missed Maya so much while he was in LA.

They couldn’t even make it back to their bedroom for their first round of many.

And Maya was a goner as Chris made love to her all night in every corner of their apartment as the city watched as the couple were engulfed with each other.

But there was a little voice in the back of Maya's head "Well damn how are we going to top 40 next year" it asked.

The preoccupied side of her brain shooed hat thought away so she could just enjoy being with her man at this moment.

Thanking god there was no more space between them like the miles before.

#chris evans fanfiction #chris evans x black ofc #chris evans x black!reader #chris evans x poc!reader #chris evans x reader #chris evans x black reader #chris evans x ofc #chris evans x original female character #chris evans x black women

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literateleah · 3 years

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the paradox of emily prentiss’ audience perception and character design

some of y’all about to be real mad at me, but it must be said:

emily prentiss’ character design makes no sense: my personal opinion + an objective analysis

i think it can be challenging to separate the versions of characters we have in our little brains from actual canon content, but doing so is important for understanding what those characters are truly like, especially within the context of their environment and in contrast to others around them. plus developing a deeper understanding of the media we consume is super fun and interesting! with that being said: emily prentiss should not work for the fbi and here’s why (in three parts regarding who’s responsible: cbs, paget, and fans) (sit down and grab a snack i promise this is over 3k words)

quick disclaimer: i don’t dislike emily at all! that’s my girl, i just looked closer and realized some funky things the writers did and felt the need to analyze her of course: so let’s get into it

part one: what cbs did

cbs set the stage for emily’s introduction on the heels of the departure of lola glaudini as elle greenaway! lola has clarified that she decided to leave the show because filming in los angeles was not the best environment for her personally, and after one successful season on a major network (but not much established long term plot or drama beyond elle’s departure as a character) a consistent ensemble cast was required- particularly because the bau had been criticized for being predominantly male in the first few episodes of the show and not much development was given to penelope or jj yet. enter emily prentiss.

for the duration of seasons 2-3ish, emily was framed as a chip off the block that was elle greenaway, just slightly…richer? in her first few episodes emily was hesitantly polite but ambitious, clean cut, intellectually concise and held her own within the team. she seemed equal parts intimidated and frustrated by her male superiors (gideon, hotch) but certainly proves herself among other profilers. her childhood was explored only within reference to her strained relationship with her mother (which was only ever referenced once more after the fact) and we received a short overview of her educational and career history in her first few episodes. emily fit right into the hole elle had left, and didn’t have many major storylines yet.

seasons 4-6 brought a bit more development and depth to emily’s character! she begins dropping more snarky remarks, one liners, and socially deepening her relationships with the other team members. this seems more within the lines of elle’s design, but emily arguably took more time to grow into her place within the team. during the foyet arc she was vulnerable and supportive, and the doyle arc gave her some independence and agency she didn’t have previously. this era also solidified her appearance and persona as more edgy, which falls in line with general fanon perception of her character (especially when compared to jj or penelope). i can’t address this era or season 7 without mentioning that cbs was actively trying to remove paget from the cast, similar to how they did to aj cook as well. paget has spoken about this instance before, and i believe it slightly affected her portrayal of her character, and “lauren” was somewhat of a goodbye for both paget and emily (thus why she wished for mgg to direct since they were best friends).

season 7: in my opinion, one of the best seasons for emily. she was wisened and deeply wounded by her experiences with doyle, which was understandable of course. she returned to the team she loved and learned to appreciate life in a different way, remaining mature during this time period as well! though her departure was a bit less than graceful and sudden at the end of this season, it made sense compared to some other exits the team had seen.

now *sigh* all the rest.

paget as emily appears in two separate guest appearances (once in s9 and once in s11, and she is referenced offscreen as well) before permanently reprising her role as unit chief of the bau. these appearances were most likely to boost ratings and get the team back together (i.e. 200) or just to pepper in international cases (tribute). emily’s personality remains pretty consistent here, just more mature and comfortable in leadership positions (seeing as she is running an entire branch of an international law enforcement organization). then season 12 hit.

upon the departure of thomas gibson as hotch, cbs reached out to paget to see if she would be interested in fulfilling her role as emily within a longer term unit chief position. i’ll get into why this is wack in a few paragraphs, but the remainder of her time on the show is spent on a mature portrayal that seems very distant from her previous versions. emily is more authoritative, gives orders with ease, and has no qualms about leading a team of agents or even receiving promotion offers as director of the entire bureau.

thus concludes a general summary of the canon content cbs gave us as viewers. now let's talk about what they didn’t give us, regrettably

the primary aspect of emily’s design that comes to mind for many is her queer coding. though not much was to be expected from cbs, a prime time cable tv network, each of her relationships on the show (all with men) seemed oddly forced, and without much chemistry as compared to the SOs of other main characters. rumors of scrapped plotlines have floated around about what may have been, but the ultimate lack of acknowledgement of any queer characters in the main ensemble still leaves a feeling of disappointment to audiences, and leaves more to be desired as for how emily navigates social bonds.

part two (sidebar): what paget did

i think it could be agreed within audiences that paget brewster’s portrayal of emily made the role what it was! her dry witty delivery and emotional prowess combined with sitcom acting experience made her performance a mainstay for years. i think she did the best she could with a confusing and at times flat characterization, and brought the role to life.

paget also heavily contributes to fanon indirectly with her comments outside of the show (press, cameos, twitter etc). her general continued interest and fondness for the role post production affects fan perception, particularly in what she chooses to elevate and comment on. she and aj have both spoken about viewing jemily content, and paget and thomas have both also commented on hotchniss. most cast members feel free to comment on their characters in the appropriate timing, and seem open to discussing fanon ships and theories outside of canon!

part three: what fanon did

as we can tell from this fan space as well as the presence on insta, tik tok and twitter, fans LATCHED onto emily super quickly. she’s remained a favorite over the years, and this fan persistence is what brought her back so many times after leaving (so many times). in my opinion, queer coding and a bolder female trope (in contrast to her female counterparts) are the main pulls because they resonated with so many fans- new and old. with that being said, newer fans of the show in the past year in particular have been heavily influential in fanon, solely because of the large influx of fan content and popularity of it.

fan content began to take coding and bite size moments and snippets from the show as canon, and cemented it into much of the content and discourse they created. these small pieces of emily’s character are significant, but have become magnified by how easily they are to share and edit. for example, a collection of catchy one liners from emily over the seasons makes for a great video edit intro, or gifset! there’s absolutely no problem with this content, it just all combines to create a certain fanon perception no character escapes (this isn’t a phenomenon limited to emily or the cm fandom!)

these droves of content also solidified emily’s personality as much more defined, but at the same time, simplified it in a way that’s slightly harder to explain.

fanon: more emo/goth than canon basis

fanon: more introverted/anti social than canon basis

fanon: more violent/chaotic when canon emily is relatively well mannered and doesn’t start many conflicts (particularly in the workspace)

fanon: much less maternal when canon emily displays desire on multiple occasions (even crossing professional borders) for children, particularly teenage girls (possibly projection)

(again, nothing wrong with this interpretation at all and it still varies! This is just a generalization based on most of the popular content i have seen)

part 4: why it doesn’t work

let me start with this: emily prentiss does not like her job.

we don’t receive much in depth information about emily’s internal feelings and thoughts towards her mother beyond resentment. this stems from wanting to make it on her own, as a professional and as an individual (cough cough college deposits). this makes emily’s insistence on proving herself to authority figures in her earlier seasons is interesting to watch in different circumstances. she cites her experience and denies help from her mother when justifying her placement in the bau to hotch, she is extra vigilant about being helpful on her first case with gideon, etc. nevertheless, emily forges her own path outside of diplomacy and becomes a successful profiler and agent, with the help of her privilege, wealth and name whether she likes it or not. but if we read between the lines and fill in the blanks cbs neglected, these ambitions may subconsciously be oriented towards pleasing her mother.

example one: emily’s authority issues go further than just “rebellion” or “anarchy”, she frequently questions the ethics and sustainability of the work that the bau does. every team member does this, but emily much more so than anybody else.

in “amplification”, emily almost breaks federal protocol to inform civilians of anthrax threats. she butts heads with both hotch and rossi on this front, and ends the episode with having a conversation with rossi about the ethics of lying in their line of work. emily resigns to a solemn “it be like that” and moves along, accepting this reality.

on multiple different occasions emily laments to derek about the darkness she sees on the job, and it’s shown that this gets to her quickly on particularly bad cases. this is another contradiction of the design that she can supposedly “compartmentalize” better than others on the team, when she cannot unless the lives of others are at risk (doyle arc, s7 finale).

emily also responds in this way to many cases involving children, a similarity to jj many don’t notice upon first watching the series. “seven seconds” and “children of the dark” come to mind, during the latter in which emily is prepared to cross multiple professional lines to adopt a teenage girl left orphaned by the case, until hotch stops her and establishes that her emotions can’t rule her judgement on the job. regardless of hotch’s thoughts about her attempted caretaking abilities, these actions and impulses deeply contradict the typical bureaucratic pathways of the work the bau does.

the looming reputation of her mother’s diplomatic history hangs over emily, and after going to law school and working for the cia, she most likely did want to forge her own path as far away from being a socialite: being a spy. her inner nature doesn’t always reflect this profession, and leads me to believe that with her knowledge of psychology, law procedure and care for children: emily prentiss might be more inclined to working in social work, placing suffering children and teenagers in homes they deserve.

and finally, the hill i will die on: emily prentiss was an bad unit chief

this wonderful post touches on my general sentiment, but there were many reasons as to why emily prentiss’ career arc makes little to no sense (plot holes included).

first: her background. emily attended chesapeake bay university as well as yale and achieved a ba in criminal justice. keep in mind that though timelines evidently don’t exist in the cm universe, emily prentiss is ONE YEAR older than aaron hotchner (for context). in her first episode, she professes that she has worked for the bureau for a little under ten years in midwestern offices- something the audience laters knows to not be true. emily worked with the cia and interpol as a part of a profiling team and undercover agent up until roughly TWO YEARS before her canon introduction. plot holes and time gaps aside, this makes me wonder, why didn’t she just say the cia was a backstop without revealing the highly confidential nature of her work with doyle (similar to jj’s state department backstop and cover story)? penelope or hotch could have easily accessed her file and seen that she did not in fact have experience with the bureau in midwestern offices recently, and given the fact that erin strauss set up her bau placement, i’m presuming these formalities or references were overlooked.

second: her experience within the team. emily worked as a part of the bau with the bureau for roughly 6 or 7 years. after this, she is invited to run the entire london branch of interpol, one of the most renowned international law enforcement organizations. i’m surely not the most knowledgeable on requirements or standard timelines for such matters, but with the fact that emily had never led a team in her life (not in the bau or interpol previously) and had roughly 10 years of field experience, i don’t believe she would have ever realistically been considered eligible to run the whole london department.

third: her return to the bureau. fanon depiction of their relationship aside, if you believe aaron hotchner’s last wish before going into witsec was to entrust his team to emily prentiss, you’re dead mistaken. bringing emily back was clearly a pull for ratings after the loss of two main characters (hotch and derek), but logistically a bad decision. let’s suppose emily has had 4 or 5 years of experience in london now, this established authority position would be unlikely to change at the drop of a hat, even for old teammates or friends. also considering how close they were after a decade of working closely in bureaucratic and field contexts, i firmly believe hotch would have referred jj for the job of unit chief but that’s another discussion for another time.

emily’s reign as unit chief is odd, because of the many chaotic storylines crammed into it. but amidst bad writing and viewings plummeting, emily’s character is completely flattened. completely. emily is unrecognizable, both in appearance (that god awful wig) and personality. at times she acts as a complete wise authority, giving orders and delegating local authorities as hotch did. but at other times she makes multiple illegal, emotional, and incorrect judgement calls based on personal circumstances that lead to further chaos (deleting the recording of her and reid’s mexico conversation and reprimanding luke in “luke” for the exact same thing she did in season 6 even though she enabled her to do so come to mind).

i’m not sure if this is due to paget trying to find her footing in the role again, or the writer’s bad decisions towards the end of the show wrecking any previous design for their ensemble. then, there’s the infamous “wheels up” scene in s13e1. notoriously cringey, this seems like a vague caricature of something rossi would say many years in the past (the same goes for her pep talk in “red light” in the hunt for diana reid). these moments are meant to mature emily in the audience’s eye, but instead completely removed her from who we understood her to be, and made her an unreliable leader.

part five: and why it does

in theory, emily was a bolder foil to jj, similar to elle who she arguably replaced at first. she came into her own, and stands as a more uniquely developed character than almost any other in the main ensemble. she isn’t as maternal or domestically inspiring as canon jj, less bright and sunny than penelope, not quite as stoic or intimidating as derek or hotch. And yet at the same time, she’s a fairly blank slate. stripping fanon content away entirely, canon emily has few defining traits (all of which are constantly changing), and that may be the key to why we love her so much.

#long post #emily prentiss #ITS HERE #and its a doozy #read if you'd like #leah writes #if there's typos i apologize #this was a fever dream

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