#and he dies and no one grieves and his own dad CELEBRATES his murder like this whole thing wasnt his fault in the first place

[redrose-arrow]

Do you think Royal Ranger is not as good as his other books? I know a lot of people don't like Madelyn.

I honestly don’t think the Royal Ranger is a weak link in the series. I am aware that a lot of people don’t like Madelyn, and I think that’s fair and understandable, even if I don’t agree. I actually have another post up about that, so go check that out if you want to know more about why I like Madelyn and why I think many other fans do not!

In regards to the strength of the Royal Ranger itself - personally, it’s as high up there in my personal ranking as some of my other all time favourites. I’ll explain why in a bit.

For starters - I think a lot has to do with expectation management: we never would have gotten the stories we wanted. Romantic relationships - and even emotions, in some ways - don’t even reach the podium in terms of the series’ focus. I think, since I never really expected to read a book in which Will and Alyss’ relationship would be a focus, I also wasn’t that disappointed not to get that. More on that later.

Obviously, there’s the discourse surrounding Maddie. If you don’t like her, it’s already challenging to convince you to like her books. I have another long post about this, in case you’re curious :). In any case - I love her.

What I also loved was Will’s character development. Now, this is a tricky point, because I know a lot of fans do not approve of how Will’s depression was handled. Let me preface my own point by saying this: I understand. I understand that the harsh pull-back to reality is not something that works for everyone and I can understand that many fans would have liked to see something else. But here’s the thing: it works for some. It worked for a close friend of mine. It worked for me. Throughout the series, we always see Will as the hero. Even when he’s addicted to warmweed, he recovers from that quickly (ignoring the trauma is another point unrelated to this one). He almost dies - more than once - but he’s always quickly back on his feet. The Royal Ranger is the first (and so far only) book in the series that explores a different side of his character. His darker side. The side that’s hurting, that’s uncaring about anyone, least of all himself. The side that could kill him in more ways than one. The side that he needs to be saved from. Seeing that side of him shocked me, and I love the book for it. Especially to see his growth back to happiness. He laughs again, for the first time, but when he’s reminded of Gilan and Jenny’s relationship he’s sad and a little jealous. He has to physically restrain himself when he finds out he’s hunting Ruhl, but he’s also joking around with Maddie when they’re coming up with their plan. And then there’s the crying, and we read that the tears are for Alyss, finally, but they’re also for Maddie. And for him - most of all, for him. That growth was so relatable for me, that sentence so close to me, I loved it so much, I cannot help but love the entire book for it.

But. Alyss had to die. Believe me when I say that that was a shocker for me too. In my post about why I like Maddie I mentioned that I think many dislike Maddie because she’s Alyss’ replacement, and I want to include that here as well. Yes, Maddie’s pretty much a replacement for Alyss. And something in me hates it, to excuse a male author for killing off one female character to introduce another, and yet again, I cannot help but do so. In this book, Maddie has two roles: one, to be a female hero, and two, to help Will’s character development. There’s little for me to say about the first point, so let’s delve into the second. Given the fact that the Royal Ranger was initially the finale for the series as a whole, we can assume that Will’s character development (that I mentioned earlier), was the most important aspect of the book. So, his dark side needed to be brought out. If Halt would’ve died, Will would’ve been heartbroken and he might’ve gone a little crazy too, but his mentor was old, and so the impact would’ve been different. Halt getting murdered was just too unrealistic, which leaves a semi-natural death, and that’s just not interesting for this series to explore. (Not to mention that that would’ve truly made the fandom riot.) The death of Horace or Cassandra would’ve disrupted the Royal Family too much, and it would’ve required much more of a politics focus than the series likes to delve into. That leaves us with Alyss as the only viable, realistic, and simply useful character death. Yes, yes, YES, I would’ve loved for both Alyss and Will to mentor Maddie, I think she could’ve learned a lot from them together. But that situation wouldn’t have made good on Maddie’s second role. Add to this that a Will-and-Alyss relationship never would’ve been explored a lot anyhow, and her death can be seen in a different light. Hence, I don’t very much mind her being killed off as much as others (but I am still heartbroken about it). Especially since in the future books, Maddie has really come into her role as a character of her own, and since her second role then isn’t so important anymore, she doesn’t really feel as a replacement anymore.

Now that we’re on the topic of death, here’s a quick detour to Crowley’s. Yes, I would’ve loved to see more of Halt’s grieving, but again, that’s not something the series pays particular attention to in general. It would’ve been a little too Halt-focused book and honestly? Wouldn’t have really added something to the plot. So we have to make do with a short sentence that mentions Halt finding comfort in the fact that Crowley died happily. (Also, why do y’all want Crowley to have been murdered so bad?? The man was ancien, let him rest in peace after a natural death with a smile on his face.)

Then there’s the matter of Cassandra and Horace’s parenting. Again, something that not everyone approves of, and rightly so. Yeah, maybe disinheriting your daughter is not the way to go. I agree. I also think it’s a very interesting “mistake”, because it is something that happened in medieval times. Furthermore, Cassandra takes after her father and Horace admits to being a bit sexist. It’s interesting, especially when you see how much Horace and Cassandra grow as parents throughout the Royal Ranger books. Fairly, the fact that Horace and Cassandra admit to not being the best parents makes me readily excuse their actions, but I cannot help it (and, I have loads of headcanons about the Royal Family that make me love them more and more).

Another thing about the Royal Ranger that tends to be disliked is the “repetition” - by which I mean Will turning in Halt 2.0 (in more ways than one). Again, there’s a few reasons why I don’t mind, and even love it. One - why wouldn’t Will be like Halt? Everyone loves their father-son relationship, and there’s more than one son I’ve seen turn into their dad in real life. Two - Will’s confronted with acting like Halt by Jenny. He tells her he just tries to copy his mentor, and she shoots right back saying how much he always complained about that. Yes, Will’s a lot like Halt, but it’s fully backed up and admitted by the series - also when it’s said that Will was barely considered as Commandant because, like Halt, he tends to bend the rules a little too much, and again in Duel at Araluen, when Duncan expresses his faith in his granddaughter partially because Will’s her mentor and Halt was his. Third - I like the parallel between Halt and Will’s relation-/apprenticeship and the one between Will and Maddie. Again, it makes sense for Will to copy Halt in a lot of things (Gorlog knows I copied a bunch of my teachers when I was standing in front of a class). But here’s the thing - Will and Maddie already know each other. They’re close. They’re almost literally family. It’s a very interesting balance that I loved to see in the Royal Ranger 1, and again in book 4. I’m really hoping for it to be explored even further in book 5.

All in all, I really like the compromise of the Royal Ranger. We got another apprenticeship, without the repetition of Halt being the mentor. It’s in the future, so we get a glimpse into the later lives of our favourite characters, but the fact that there’s 15 years unaccounted for leaves enough to the imagination. We have a new main character, but the original characters play important and recognised roles. For me, that means the Royal Ranger is many of the things I love about the original series, but it’s also fresh and new and therefore a valuable addition. Getting back to a point I made earlier: it’s an addition to the series because it is a little different and a little the same. Again, if the series would’ve ended with the Lost Stories, that would’ve been perfect. But if it would’ve continued the way a lot of fans wanted it to (honestly me included, and again, a very understandable point) the series would’ve become extremely repetitive (something that it is risking now as well, I’ll admit, but it’s taken a few more books). So, to me, the Royal Ranger seems like a fair compromise between continuing the series and keeping it intact!

Again, a bit of a longer answer, sorry anon! Also, I want to stress again that no one forces you to love the Royal Ranger - least of all me. If you want to pretend none of that happened - be my guest (even I love doing that every now and then). But I hope to have shown you why I also celebrate its existence!

#ranger's apprentice #rangers apprentice #the royal ranger #trr spoilers #ask redrose #ask redrosearrow #thanks for the ask! #trr

[supercasey]

TMA Child Avatars AU

Alright, so ever since I listened to the episode about Agnes’s origins, I keep thinking about an AU where a bunch of the other Entities, after realizing that it’s at least possible to create an avatar from birth, perform their own rituals and make a bunch of the future Archives gang. This AU has a lot of potential for angst, but since TMA is sad enough, I’ll probably mostly focus on the world building and fluffy/funny stuff (‘cus god knows I’m a slut for that shit).

To all my followers, I’m sorry I keep making kid AUs; I got told in like 2015 or so that I sucked at writing kids and it’s Never Left My Mind, so now I always wanna make stupid AUs in order to practice writing kids better (I also have an original story I wanna write soon with a ten year old as the main character, so yeah, I need all the practice I can get).

Anyways, here’s all I’ve got on the AU this far (explanation under the cut; a very long post is up ahead):

Character Backstories

Jonathan “Jon” Sims - Apprentice Archivist of the Eye

Jon is a very complicated story, at least from everyone outside of the Eye’s gaze. It was Elias’s idea to create him, and were it not for Gertrude getting lucky, no one but Elias, Peter Lukas, and Simon Fairchild would have ever known that Jon existed until he was ready to become the next archivist. Gertrude found out by pure chance when she accepted a live statement from one very frightened Delores Sims, who told the archivist about how a strange man had been stalking her ever since she found out she was pregnant. Out of completely nowhere, her husband died a month after she conceived, and even though it looked like an accident, Delores swore that she saw an arm surrounded by fog push him down the stairs. Things only grew worse for her over the next few weeks, as in the midst of her grieving her dead husband, Delores began seeing green, glowing irises out of the corners of her eyes, watching her every move as she lived her life, which was followed by the stalker in question appearing constantly in her dreams, always watching her from afar, an unpleasant and frankly unnerving grin on his face the entire time.

Suspicious, and finding the description of the stalker all too familiar by the end of the statement, Gertrude investigated Delores’s claims on her own time, going so far as to break into Elias’s office in order to dig up more information on whatever he was up to. No matter what her theories may have been, none of them were anything like what she found in his letters to his associates. Somehow, Elias had conspired alongside the Lukas and Fairchild families to find their heirs/avatars together, and Elias was the last person to acquire one of his own. Gertrude was unsure of the details at the time (and she still unfortunately is), but from what she could gather, the child growing in Delores Sims’ body was somehow touched by the Eye because of something Elias had done, and they would be born with the perfect framework to have the powers that an archivist learns over several years of training at birth! With no time to lose, Gertrude got back into contact with Delores, and after much discussion between the two women, she convinced Delores to come to her apartment when she eventually went into labor, and to give Gertrude the baby after they were born so that she could keep them safe from Elias.

The birth was meant to be done in secret, but the second the first contraction occurred, there was a knock on Gertrude’s door, Elias waiting for her on the other side with an unhappy grimace on his face. He came armed with a gun, and threatened to murder Gertrude if she didn’t allow him to claim the child as his own. Aware she still had many rituals to stop in the near future, and that none of her assistants were experienced enough to stop them by themselves, Gertrude reluctantly agreed to let him inside, but on one condition; the child had to be shared between them. Elias was abrasive to the idea of course, but he eventually complied with his archivist’s demands, not wanting to replace her so early on in her career. The sight of her stalker coming into the bedroom to watch her give birth unfortunately sent Delores into a panic attack while she was still very much in labor, making the rest of the birth a rather dangerous thing, but the child survived, leaving his mother terrified and shaking. Gertrude had planned on letting her go on her merry way after the baby was born, but Elias wasn’t taking any chances, and he shot her as soon as he deemed it safe to.

Since then, Gertrude and Elias have had dual custody of Jonathan- the name was Gertrude’s idea, on the grounds that it was a nice, proper name for a young man- trading him back and forth every other week. It’s been hard, especially with the adults he calls his parents wanting to kill each other, but Jon’s oblivious to most of the fighting right now, assuming his folks are just going through a messy divorce.

Martin Blackwood-Lukas - Adoptive Son of Peter Lukas

Peter ended up running very behind in the whole child avatar thing (a first for his family, something Simon reminds him of on a daily basis), and he really struggled with creating a baby avatar that would actually be able to “keep up” with the other young messiahs that were coming to be. Eventually he realized that his family’s usual method would take too long, so out of desperation he went to Elias and Simon for help. It was Simon’s idea that worked; he suggested that since the normal methods weren’t working, and kids usually don’t become lonely until they’re older, that Peter should try his own summoning ritual like the Lightless Flame did with Agnes. Peter was hesitant at first, but he gave in quickly, sacrificing a number of lonely souls to his entity in a well-timed manner, until finally, he found a small, swaddled baby in the midst of the fog; a supposed gift from the Lonely for his loyalty.

Peter was delighted by this discovery, and so were his colleagues, the men relieved that their hard work had actually paid off for once. After naming the little boy Martin- it was Elias’s idea, though he didn’t have much of an exact reason for the name, simply claiming that it “suited” the child- and before long, Peter began raising his newfound son much the same as he was; in almost total isolation, save for a variety of rotating nannies and caregivers. Unfortunately for Peter, this went horribly wrong almost as soon as he got started, as by the time that Martin was six months old he had accidentally forced five different nannies into the fog out of fear of them leaving like the ones before them had. With no other options available, and being able to actually leave the fog if Martin threw anymore fits, Peter was forced to raise his son by hand, which again went wrong, but for very different reasons, as to his shock, he became quite attached to his adopted child.

This evolved into Peter having doubt of the Lonely for the first time in his life, but he refused to acknowledge it for as long as he could. But he was finally forced to when, after Martin turned five years old, the rest of the Lukas family insisted on performing a test on the child to see how well Martin could handle the fog without any guidance. He had been inside the fog before of course, with Peter holding his hand or carrying him through the dense chill, but the family wanted to isolate Martin inside for a full month. This secretly scared Peter like nothing else ever had, but out of fear of what his family might think, he didn’t say anything at the time, simply watching from afar as his son was dragged into the fog and left to fend for himself. The ritual went wrong within the first week, Martin having a full-scale breakdown and nearly hyperventilating to death, and yet the family kept him in there for another week before the intervention.

The results of the test of course disappointed the other members of the Lukas family, who suggested that they simply leave Martin to disappear into the fog and look for a new, more sufficient messiah to serve their god. The news hit Peter incredibly hard, and despite his previous inhibitions and fear, he knew he couldn’t let the Lonely consume his one and only son. So, without telling anyone of what he was up to, he ventured into the fog, rescued Martin, and fled to live with his estranged ex-husband the Magnus Institute. Since then he’s been living with Elias at his house and avoiding his family at all costs, all while young Martin has grown up alongside the other entity kids and has struggled to figure out his role in everything, but at least he has his dad on his side through all of this.

Sasha James - Chosen Daughter of the Mother of Puppets

(Note: I headcanon the Mother of Puppets as a giant spider, so that’s how I’m writing her… sorry if this is inaccurate, but I’m only on MAG 152, y’all. Besides, I think this is cool af.)

Sasha was very much planned, even more so than Agnes was so many years beforehand. The Mother of Puppets had her minions gather hundreds upon hundreds of orphaned infants and bring them to her nest. She swaddled each every one in her webbing and kept them like this for several weeks, allowing them time to adjust to the webbing and adapt. Unfortunately, most of these children weren’t cut out for the Web’s influence, and while a few indeed held their adoptive mother’s mark, almost none of them were marked deep enough to become a fully realized avatar. The unsuccessful batches were subsequently sent off to orphanages across the world and replaced with new babies, this process repeating for years and years, until finally, Sasha was born. There was nothing special about her parents, yet she not only bore The Web’s mark, she seemed to have it embedded into her very soul. This, of course, was met with celebration from the Web, and plans were quickly made as to how to raise her moving forward, as no one wanted Sasha to end up like Agnes did.

Annabelle Cane ended up being the one chosen to home Sasha for the first few years of her childhood, and she was dutiful in her new, rather honorable role, as she not only cared for the child well, but she treated Sasha as her own, though she was careful to be seen more as an older sister than a mother to the girl; that role was, of course, reserved for Sasha’s real mother. When Sasha finally turned five, the Mother of Puppets announced further plans for the young avatar, calling on Annabelle to take Sasha to the Magnus Institute and give her to one of their hidden agents there so that she could learn more about how the Web uses it’s influence over other entities. This worried Annabelle, who wanted to keep the child near her and prove that she was the most loyal of the mother’s children, but she would never disobey a direct order from the being that had given her life such meaning. So, rather reluctantly, Annabelle gave Sasha to another member of the Web, watching from the shadows as this unworthy follower took the blessed daughter into the institute for further training.

This went wrong within only a few months. Gertrude ended up finding out who the Web’s spy in the institute was, as she had suspected that another entity was trying to control her from the shadows, and after disposing of the threat and searching their home for anything useful that she could use against the Web, she found Sasha. The archivist was tempted to kill the supernatural child on sight, but while she can murder her assistants and enemies without much remorse, on the grounds that it’s always for the greater good, killing a child is a very different story. So she took Sasha in, raising the Web’s child as her own alongside the Eye’s own prodigy Jon, all while trying to help Sasha control her slowly budding powers. The Mother of Puppets has been trying to get Sasha back ever since, enraged that the child is so close to her yet just out of reach, but with no luck, though there’s no telling how long that will last.

Timothy & Daniel Stoker - Dancer and Future Ringmaster of the Stranger

Both Tim and Danny are chosen ones of the Stranger, created as soon as their god had gained enough spare power to create them. Tim was born first, being the Stranger’s first attempt at birthing an avatar that might be powerful enough to help lead the Unknowing, but Gertrude interrupted midway through the ritual. By some miracle, Tim survived the ordeal, but he was left “incomplete” to some degree, leaving him simply marked and not fully connected to the Stranger. The entity’s followers ended up keeping him around though, both because Nikola Orsinov was too fascinated by the newborn baby to give him up, and because his parents wanted him to survive, but it was agreed that another attempt would be made, this time with more planning involved. Four years later, Danny was born, and with Gertrude too preoccupied to intervene this time around (and because she didn’t realize they’d try again so soon), the ritual went much better and created a far more suitable vessel for the Stranger’s powers.

After that, Tim and Danny’s parents died, fully succumbing to the Stranger’s transformation and leaving them orphaned. Not that their presence was strictly necessary after the kids were born, as Nikola Orsinov was more than happy to take over in most of the child rearing, genuinely growing quite fond of the two boys, particularly Tim, as despite his lack of supernatural abilities, she found him to be rather endearing, which is probably the closest she can get to genuinely caring about someone. Both brothers were raised more or less the same way, save for Danny being showered with more praise and being trained as a future ringmaster while Tim was mostly ignored and trained to be a dancer. Some followers of the Stranger feared that Tim might harbor resentment towards his little brother and try to kill him someday, but to their surprise, Tim only grew more protective of him over the years, swearing to keep Danny safe as he grew up to fulfill his destiny and help their family mold the world in their image.

Eventually though, when Tim was eleven and Danny was seven, Tim realized what was actually happening behind the scenes, and not wanting his brother to risk being sacrificed for the world’s destruction, he told Danny everything, leading to the young messiah to run away with him to London (they were raised primarily in Russia, but moved with the circus a lot, and were in France at the time that they finally ran away). There, Tim found the infamous Gertrude Robinson, who he knew had the power to stop the Unknowing, as she had once saved him from becoming the Stranger’s avatar, and inadvertently led him to having a little brother. Tim and Danny have since moved in with Michael, and they visit the Magnus Institute whenever they get the chance, as both boys have grown to become friends with the other avatar kids. You’d think that the Stranger’s followers would be furious about all of this- don’t worry, many of their acolytes are- but Nikola has laughed it off entirely and keeps insisting that the boys are just having a “sleepover” or are away at “summer camp” (in fucking January, apparently).

Melanie King - Cadet of the Slaughter

Honestly, the Slaughter wasn’t as into the whole “let’s make an avatar from scratch!” thing that the other entities’ followers were doing, but hey, sometimes child avatars just kinda wind up on your doorstep, ya know? Melanie ended up being found at about four years old, sobbing on her hands and knees outside of a burning hospital and calling for her mommy and daddy to come back to her, but no one answered her cries, and she was left to weep for quite some time before someone found her. The hospital, you see, had been overrun by the Corruption and promptly burned to the ground by the Desolation, neither of which bothered to stick around for some worthless child. Melanie’s parents were both inside when the entities clashed, leaving her orphaned and scared, and while Alfred Grifter, who had been on his way to a show with his bandmates at the time that he found her, had intended on just leaving her be, he saw the overwhelming rage and blood-lust in her crying eyes, and realized in that moment that she was touched by the urge to kill, just like he was.

Melanie was promptly taken in by Alfred Grifter and the band, who honestly had no idea what the hell they were doing. On one hand, Alfred knew that keeping a kid around was unbelievably dangerous for all parties involved, but on the other, he really didn’t want to leave Melanie all by herself, for fear of what she might do if left without any guidance from “people” who knew what she was going through, at least to some degree. That isn’t to say Alfred and his bandmates were all that great at raising her- they mostly just brought her to gigs and let her play on her Gameboy backstage while they started massacres- but they did at least try to give her somewhat of a home. It wasn’t until five years into this that some other Slaughter followers found out about Melanie’s existence, to which they told Alfred to give her to them for proper training. Knowing her life would be horrible with them, Alfred gave his ward a backpack full of everything she ever owned, a kid sized guitar, her Gameboy, and sent her on the run.

Melanie was scared out of her mind at first, having grown to see Alfred and his bandmates as her new family; she had already lost her parents, so why did she have to lose the band, too!? But there were no other options, she had to run, so she did just that, attacking any adult who tried to stop her along the way. She didn’t actually know about the Magnus Institute when she made her way to London, and Alfred didn’t tell her to go there or anything, but she ended up being spotted by Adelard Dekker while she was looking for a place to stay in the area. Seeing that Melanie was an avatar of some kind, Adelard managed to convince her that he was safe, and to let him take her to someone that could help her. He brought Melanie straight to Gertrude Robinson, who agreed to house the child since Adelard couldn’t, though she ended up letting one of her unofficial assistants (*cough* Gerry *cough*) take her to live in his flat so she wouldn’t be as easy for Elias to monitor/get ahold of.

Julia Montauk & Alice “Daisy” Tonner - Children of the Hunt

(Watch as I fuck with timelines so badly that the people who keep track of this shit will order a hit on me) The Hunt found both of their avatars in strikingly similar yet different ways; Julia was first, born from the womb of another entity’s follower, but bound for so much more than anything the Dark could give her. Years after her destined birth, Julia’s mother was viciously murdered by the People’s Church when she was just five years old, her father Robert Montauk going down the path of becoming a fully-fledged Hunter, and in the process he unknowingly marked Julia with his newfound entity, which in turn unlocked an unprecedented potential inside of her, not that it was fully realized until another tragedy struck her. This next tragedy, unfortunately, claimed Julia’s father. Mr. Pitch was mistakenly summoned, and in it’s rage, it destroyed Robert while he was in the midst of a sacrifice. The monster would’ve gotten Julia next, had it not been for the intervention of a nearby Hunter.

Trevor Herbert honestly didn’t mean to get involved, but when he witnessed a little girl screaming as she ran out of a house, a giant mass of darkness chasing after her, and no one willing to so much as call the damn cops, he knew he had to rescue the poor kid. In a flash he ran over, picked Julia up, and ran away with her to safety, managing to get her in his car (which he stole, but that’s not important) and drive as far away from her old home as possible. In the aftermath, Trevor had no idea what to do with Julia, since he had never actually wanted any kids of his own, but… well, he ain’t heartless, and that monster was still out there somewhere, just waiting to sink it’s cursed teeth into this young child’s flesh. Trevor ended up keeping her after that, becoming her adoptive father as he traveled with her around the UK, slowly but surely training her to hunt the same monsters that claimed her beloved parents.

You’d think that would be the end of Trevor Herbert adopting little girls marked by the Hunt, but nope, he just can’t catch a fucking break! He found Daisy about a year later, when Julia was eight and becoming more adjusted to her new lifestyle. Again, Trevor wasn’t really planning on going on any hunts at the time that this happened, he was just traveling through the area, but upon finding a bloodied up, terrified little girl being chased by a boy who looked possessed… well, it wasn’t like Julia wasn’t lonely, and again, Trevor isn’t heartless, and he sure as hell can’t let things go. So yeah, he kidnapped another child touched by the Hunt, even though this one actually had a living parent, and once again he took to traveling the UK with his adoptive daughters, secretly reveling in his new role as a father. Daisy, while scared at first, quickly grew fond of her new family, and even fonder of her new nickname after Trevor patched up her wounds, and noticed a flower-shaped scar on her back, prompting him to start affectionately calling her Daisy.

Yep, things were going pretty good for the family of three, but of course, shit eventually caught up with Trevor, not that he thought he could avoid it forever.

The police eventually caught wind of “Trevor the Tramp” traveling with two little girls who looked an awful lot like the missing thirteen and ten year olds Julia Montauk and Alice Tonner, and in his desperation to keep from getting arrested and having his children taken away, Trevor fled to downtown London in order to lie low for awhile and raise his daughters in relative peace, only ever going out for food runs and the occasional hunt. It was through one of these hunts that he ended up meeting Gerard Keay, the two of them chasing after the same book that had been summoning shadow people to wreck havoc on the city, and after a bit of back and forth banter over the campfire that was once a Leitner, Gerry convinced Trevor to move in with him so that the girls and him would be safer and actually have a home. Although he was hesitant to accept an offer he thought was too good to be true (also, he’s not gonna lie, he thought Gerry was a vampire when they met), Trevor agreed and moved into Gerry’s flat with his daughters, and has since helped Gertrude and her assistants with monster hunts.

Oliver Banks & Georgie Barker - Fetchlings of The End

Georgie and Oliver are an odd story, with the latter of the two having gained his powers as a mere toddler, being plagued with horrible, ghastly dreams that would keep him awake through the night, leaving him absolutely haggard by morning. His father tried everything to help Oliver through this torment- counseling, medication, bedtime rituals- but nothing worked, and before long, Oliver’s beloved father was claimed by his nightmares, dying of a heart attack that he couldn’t stop. Alone and misunderstood by everyone who tried to raise him, Oliver ran away countless times, coming across Georgie during his last attempt. He found the little girl to also be on the run for similar reasons, but unlike him, she wasn’t the least bit afraid. She wasn’t exactly happy, but she wasn’t a bawling mess like he was. Together, the two of them struggled to survive, relying on kindhearted drifters for support while they avoided the police until, at long last, something took pity on them, that something being a large, fat tabby cat.

As it were, the tabby cat- dubbed The Admiral by Georgie- wasn’t a normal cat in the slightest, and although it couldn’t speak, it’s intentions were clear; it was there to help these lost, orphaned children. Oliver was skeptical of course, but Georgie wasn’t about to look a gift cat in the mouth, so Oliver reluctantly followed the cat and his little sister to an apartment building, and from there, into an unoccupied flat. Since then, the two children have been living with Admiral in that very same flat, the cat providing them with a fully stocked fridge, warm beds, and running water. It’s still unclear what the Admiral is, but he seems kind enough, and is obviously quite protective of his newfound children, accompanying them on their outings and occasional visits to the institute.

Michael Crew - Prodigy of The Vast

Out of all avatars to be raising children for their entity, Simon Fairchild absolutely has had the most fun with it all, treating it almost like a fun game or pastime. He was the first (save for the Lightless Flame having Agnes, of course) to “create” an avatar child, and from minute one he was overjoyed with the results. A few years after news broke of Agnes’ origins, and the followers of other entities were all arguing over whether or not to follow suit, Simon didn’t bother waiting for anyone’s input or permission, simply throwing himself into the deep end and praying he could make his plan work. Seemingly overnight, Simon somehow acquired a baby later identified as the missing and presumably dead infant Michael Crew, who he referred to as Mike when he finally introduced him to his friends/associates. He still hasn’t told anyone how he even got the kid- not even Peter or Elias know what he did!- but by some means, he illegally adopted Mike and took to raising the kid like a duck takes to water; a bit unsure at first, but growing to love it fast!

When Mike was introduced to the rest of the entity followers community, many were shocked (excuse the pun) to see that the infant had a long, frightening Lichtenberg scar running down his right arm, his back, and his right leg, the scars glowing a bright blue whenever he took to the sky or, as Elias learned the hard way after accidentally annoying Mike by bouncing him on his knee for too long when he was a toddler, used his powers to electrocute people. Even with his child being such an oddity, even among other avatars, Simon took it all in stride, proudly bragging about Mike to anyone who would listen, most of these people being victims of the Vast, who were hardly able to hear Simon’s excited rambling over their own shrieks of terror. He usually also insisted on bringing Mike with him, even when he was a mere infant, though he at least kept the kid in a tight harness on his chest. In all honesty, Simon being such an excited parent was what kick-started a lot of other avatars to start acquiring their own child avatars, as he made it look so easy!

However, things weren’t always perfect, especially on Mike’s end as he grew older. Being the eldest and more or less “firstborn” of this new generation of entity-made avatars put a lot of pressure on him at a very early age, pressure which Simon tried to help him deal with by not acknowledging it, which unfortunately didn’t help in the slightest. Thankfully Mike started to feel less unsure of his place in the world as he reached his teen years, seeing as the younger kids were now getting all the attention and giving him a chance to breathe. Even now that he’s an angsty teenager, Mike loves Simon like a father, referring to him as such without hesitation. This, of course, delights Simon to no end, and makes all his peers low-key high-key jealous of the awesome relationship he has with his son.

Helen Richardson - Droplet of The Spiral

Not much was known about Helen when Michael first found her. After being sent into The Spiral by Gertrude on what he thought to be a suicide mission for the greater good, Michael was half certain he wouldn’t find anything but his end in that place. Instead he found a small, strange toddler where he was meant to find… well, he didn’t actually know what, but certainly not a baby, that’s for sure! With no one watching baby Helen, and therefore making him believe that she had been abandoned by The Spiral’s other creations, Michael had no reservations against scooping her up and taking her back to the physical world with him, where he was met be a very confused Gertrude Robinson. Michael wasn’t exactly keen on killing/abandoning a baby after he got out, so he and Gertrude brought her back to London with them in hopes of finding out more about the odd child. Along the way, it became clear that the baby was gifted with The Spiral’s powers, the giggly toddler continually screwing with reality, though she wasn’t aware she was doing so.

Back home in London, it took another three weeks of research, but Gerry eventually found out more about the child Michael had more or less adopted. Her name was originally Helen Richardson, and her father, a rookie paranormal investigator who had once been marked by The Spiral, was obsessed with the distortion, and was willing to do anything to become more than simply marked by it. He ended up finding a map similar to Gertrude’s, and a few years before she even knew it was possible, the father went into The Spiral and used his own daughter as a vessel for the entity, hoping she would be a good enough sacrifice to earn it’s favor. This of course ended in disaster, with the father “disappearing” while Helen absorbed The Spiral’s power, but seeing as she was so young, it couldn’t manifest properly, even after two and a half years spent trying to “raise her” within the deepest depths of it’s domain.

With research still being done on what to do about the child, and whether or not the team can remove her powers without killing or permanently injuring her in the process, Michael has agreed to take Helen in, secretly delighted to be raising a baby. With the Stoker Brothers already under his roof, Michael has his hands rather full with them and baby Helen, but the boys take her antics in stride, having learned quickly how to deal with the apartment they live in occasionally “growing” some new doors and changing color at random. Luckily for Michael, he has back-up in the forms of Gerry and Gertrude, who occasionally take Helen and the brothers off his hands for him so he can take a break/fix whatever Helen may’ve accidentally broken with her powers.

Character Roles in this AU

(Feel free to add your own OCs/other characters if you wanna do stuff with this AU, I’m just naming characters I know about/remember!)

Avatar Kids: Jonathan “Jon” Sims, Martin Blackwood, Sasha James, Timothy “Tim” Stoker, Daniel “Danny” Stoker, Melanie King, Julia Montauk, Alice “Daisy” Tonner, Oliver Banks, Georgie Barker, Michael “Mike” Crew, and Helen Richardson.

Avatar Kids Semi-Reluctant PTA Group: Elias Bouchard, Gertrude Robinson, Peter Lukas, Gerard “Gerry” Keay, Trevor Herbert, Michael Shelley, and Simon Fairchild.

PTA Allies: Basira Hussain (Daisy’s best friend and the local Normal Child™), Agnes Montague (Everyone’s emergency number for avatar child advice), Alfred Grifter (Just shows up to hang out with Melanie and cause problems on purpose), The Admiral (Guardian to Georgie and Oliver and occasionally the other kids; best babysitter), Adelard Dekker (Comes around the archives sometimes and always brings presents for the kids + assistants), and Rosie (Elias’s assistant and the only sane and sensible adult in this Chili’s tonight).

PTA Enemies: Nikola Orsinov (Tim and Danny’s “Mom” who keeps kidnapping Jon on accident), Annabelle Cane (Hates the institute and wants Sasha back), Jude Perry (Hates the kids but loves Agnes; worst babysitter),  and Jared Hopworth (Nightmare flesh man that needs to fuck off; mediocre but funny babysitter).

Character Descriptions

(Feel free to tweak the physical designs if you want; I’m just going off my own headcanons, and seeing as my drawing skills are pretty shit, it’s not like I’m gonna be doing much art for this outside of writing. So yeah, go off with your own headcanons if you want to!)

Full Name: Jonathan “Jon” Sims-Bouchard-Robinson Age: 7 Birthday: October 26th (Scorpio) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Eye, Marked by Literally Fucking Everything Guardian(s): Alexander Sims (Biological Father - Deceased), Delores Sims (Biological Mother - Deceased), Gertrude Robinson (Adoptive Mother - Current), Elias Bouchard (Adoptive Father - Current) Appearance: African heritage with dark brown skin, worryingly short for his age, dark brown eyes that glow bright green when he’s using his powers, long black hair with a few green and grey hairbands tied in, constantly “borrows” Martin’s sweaters to wear, occasionally wears skirts but most of the time he wears slacks, constantly looks sleep deprived, has a very intense stare, and occasionally he can be seen carrying his stuffed moth around. Personality: You’d think he’d be a quiet kid, considering his entity, but no, he has Questions and he wants them Answered, goddammit! He wasn’t raised around many kids his age, being home-schooled by Elias and Gertrude all his life, so he struggles to connect with the other avatar kids. Is only close to the S1 gang at first, but he gets closer to everyone else over time. Idolizes Gerry and thinks he’s the coolest guy ever. Appears rather cowardly at a glance, but he’s braver than most people give him credit for. Would die for his friends/family.

Full Name: Martin Blackwood-Lukas Age: 8 Birthday: February 29th (Pisces) ((This one’s for you, Dane)) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Lonely, Marked by The Eye Guardian(s): William Blackwood (Biological Father - Uninvolved), Edna Blackwood (Biological Mother - Uninvolved), Peter Lukas (Adoptive Father - Current) Appearance: Polish heritage and pale as a fucking ghost, average height for his age but growing fast, pretty chubby, covered head to toe in little red freckles, short and curly red hair, bright brown eyes, wears big round glasses, wears sweaters and comfy trousers almost 24/7, carries a backpack full of “emergency tools” wherever he goes, usually has a cup of tea in-hand, and sometimes wears a small sailor hat that Peter gave him. Personality: Incredibly reserved, much like Mike, but he’s been trying to come out of his shell more. He’s “Best Friends Forever” with Jon, and gets along well with Tim and Sasha as well. Fears Melanie and Daisy. He likes hanging out with the other kids, but he often gets talked over, leading him to withdraw for awhile if it’s bad enough. Adores his dad, and is so much braver than anyone knows. Incredibly snarky when he feels like it.

Full Name: Sasha James Age: 10 Birthday: November 18th (Scorpio) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Web, Marked by The Eye, Marked by The Stranger Guardian(s): Francis James (Biological Father - Deceased), Patrick James (Biological Father - Deceased), Annabelle Cane (Adoptive Mother - Uninvolved), Gertrude Robinson (Adoptive Mother - Current) Appearance: Mixed race heritage of African and Caucasian with dark brown skin, slightly taller than average for her age, long dark brown hair, wears big round glasses, sometimes wears a little make-up if she can get away with it, wears a lot of turtleneck sweaters and long skirts, always has at least one cobweb on her, carries around a stuffed spider that she brings with her to the archives every day, and she wears a headband most of the time. Personality: Easily the most level-headed of the kids, as she’s been raised around paranormal stuff the longest and is rarely bothered by the stranger things that happen. She hates Artifact Storage with a passion, but other than that, she loves exploring the institute and occasionally stealing Gertrude’s laptop to mess with it. Very tech savvy, and even more curious! Incredibly smart, to the point that she can even outclass Gertrude and Gerry with her quick-wittiness.

Full Name: Timothy “Tim” Stoker Age: 12 Birthday: August 3rd (Leo) Entity/Mark(s): Marked by The Stranger, Marked by The Eye Guardian(s): Markus Stoker (Biological Father - Deceased), Olivia Stoker (Biological Mother - Deceased), Nikola Orsinov (Adoptive Mother - Uninvolved), Gerard “Gerry” Keay (Adoptive Guardian - Current) Appearance: Mixed race heritage of Latino and Korean with dark tanned skin, slightly on the taller side for his age, messy/spiky black hair that looks impossible to comb, dark brown eyes, is described as a “handsome young man” by strangers, has a very charming smile, wears a lot of Hawaiian shirts and shorts (even during the winter), needs to wear glasses but he refuses to wear them in the archives out of self-consciousness. Personality: Probably one of the brightest personalities of the avatar kids, Tim comes off as very cool and funny, but underneath all of that he’s rather paranoid, afraid that the circus will come and force his baby brother into becoming a monster. Protective of his little bro and the archive kids, but he still teases them to no end. Smarter than he looks, and isn’t afraid to break his cool guy persona to tell someone off.

Full Name: Daniel “Danny” Stoker Age: 8 Birthday: August 1st (Leo) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Stranger, Marked by The Eye Guardian(s): Markus Stoker (Biological Father - Deceased), Olivia Stoker (Biological Mother - Deceased), Nikola Orsinov (Adoptive Guardian - Uninvolved), Gerard “Gerry” Keay (Adoptive Guardian - Current) Appearance: Mixed race heritage of Latino and Korean with dark tanned skin, about a head shorter than Tim, somewhat neat black hair that sticks up in odd places, eyes are impressively dark and glassy looking, slight gap between his front teeth, is described as being a “handsome young man” by strangers, wears a lot of tank tops and shorts as well as the occasional hoodie if it’s cold, and loves running around barefoot. Personality: A lot of people describe Danny as being a “smaller and cuter Tim”, but that’s just not true. Danny is a lot like his older brother in many ways, but he has a much more refined taste for adventure, constantly getting himself into trouble with Jon on the grounds of “exploring” or what have you. He idolizes his big bro to the moon and back, and loves hanging out with him alongside the other kids. More of a follower than a leader, but he doesn’t mind. Secretly fears the day that the circus will come back to make him into their future ringmaster.

Full Name: Melanie King Age: 9 Birthday: June 7th (Gemini) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Slaughter, Marked by The Corruption, Marked by The Desolation, Marked by The Eye Guardian(s): Boris King (Biological Father - Deceased), Carrie King (Biological Mother - Deceased), Alfred Grifter (Guardian - Uninvolved), Gerard Keay (Guardian - Current) Appearance: Irish heritage but not terribly pale, rather short for her age, incredibly thin from malnutrition, short brown hair with the ends dyed bright blue, bright brown eyes, brings her leather jacket and her guitar with her everywhere she goes, wears a lot of pink/blue skirts and band t-shirts, wears black leather boots, has a lot of bandages on her knees and knuckles, and always has a camera ready to record things. Personality: Melanie is probably the most disconnected of the avatar kids (save for Helen), seeing as she only just recently joined the group, but already she’s beginning to befriend Sasha and Basira. She’s very protective of the other girls, and she keeps challenging the boys to fight her (only Danny ever agrees; he always loses). Secretly idolizes Julia and Daisy, but will never admit it. She sees Gerry as her big bro and Alfred Grifter as her adoptive dad; she misses Alfred more than she let’s on. Would stab as a warning.

Full Name: Julia Montauk Age: 13 Birthday: April 19th (Aries) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Hunt, Marked by The Dark, Marked by The Eye Guardian(s): Robert Montauk (Biological Father - Deceased), Linette Montauk (Biological Mother - Deceased), Trevor Herbert (Adoptive Father - Current) Appearance: Indigenous heritage with dark tan skin, tall for her age, skinny enough to look malnourished, close-cropped red hair that gets her mistaken for a boy a lot, metal grey eyes, a scar runs diagonally across her right eye, often wears medium length skirts and oversized t-shirts, always wears athletic shoes, has a lot of scrapes and bandages on her knees most of the time, and has abnormally sharp canines. Personality: Before the deaths of both of her parents, Julia was considered rather normal for her age, being interested in horses, dolls, and dress-up games. After her mother died, she became more tomboyish, which only became more extreme after her father’s death. Since being taken in by Trevor, Julia’s been trying to act more like an adult in an attempt to seem less vulnerable, to varying degrees of success. She adores Trevor to the moon and back, and sees Daisy as her little sister. A bit standoffish around other children, but she’s got a good heart.

Full Name: Alice “Daisy” Tonner Age: 10 Birthday: March 15th (Pisces) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Hunter, Marked by The Slaughter, Marked by The Eye Guardian(s): Greyson Tonner (Biological Father - Deceased), Antoinette Tonner (Biological Mother - Uninvolved), Trevor Herbert (Adoptive Father - Current) Appearance: Welsh heritage with cream colored skin and a light tan, average height for her age, short and shaggy blond hair, has a number of tiny scars all over her face and hands, has a huge scar on her back that Trevor has told her looks like a daisy, striking green eyes, wears a lot of sleeveless shirts and shorts, refuses to wear dresses or skirts, prefers to be barefoot, and has abnormally sharp canines. Personality: Is already rather hot-headed at her age, especially after her encounter with Calvin while he was being possessed by a spirit of the Slaughter. Even so, she’s protective of her newfound family of Trevor and Julia, and while she misses her mother, she believes it’s best if she stays where she is. She loves playing outside whenever she can, and will spend hours chasing after squirrels and rabbits if left alone for too long. A bit argumentative, but she gets along really well with Julia and Basira.

Full Name: Oliver Banks Age: 10 Birthday: June 14th (Gemini) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The End, Marked by The Hunt Guardian(s): June Banks (Biological Mother - Uninvolved), Isaac Banks (Biological Father - Deceased), The Admiral (Adoptive Guardian - Current) Appearance: African heritage with dark skin, has an array of pitch black freckles on his face, short and neat black hair that reaches just below his ears, ghastly grey eyes that look almost clear and turn black when he’s using his powers; used to be dark brown, worryingly thin from years of malnutrition, wears a lot of baggy and long-sleeved shirts, wears sweatpants, has boots on everywhere he goes, and he’s almost always shivering. Personality: The more distrustful of the “End Siblings”, the only person Oliver even sort of likes is Jon, and even then he’s still scared of him. Constantly fidgeting and yawning from both his paranoia and fatigue. Is protective of Georgie, but more out of obligation than friendship. Prefers to be alone, and rarely visits the archives. He knows something bad is coming, but he’s too scared to do much about it. In the end, he knows he’ll do the right thing, but for now he’s hiding until the bombs finally fall.

Full Name: Georgie Barker Age: 7 Birthday: December 9th (Sagittarius) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The End, Marked by The Hunt Guardian(s): Georgie Grounding Sr. (Biological Mother - Deceased), Sarah Grounding (Biological Mother - Deceased), Jason Barker (Adoptive Father - Deceased), The Admiral (Adoptive Guardian - Current) Appearance: Mixed race heritage of African and Indian with dark brown skin, fairly chubby, has an array of light brown freckles all over her arms, back, and face, has long and curly black hair done up in poofy buns using colorful hair bands, paints her nails all the time with different colors every week, cutest little smile you ever did see, wears a lot of ghost-related clothing (mainly t-shirts and jeans), and she brings her ghost backpack with her everywhere she goes (it has her stuffed leopard inside). Personality: Despite being an avatar of the End, Georgie has a very upbeat personality, having no time for her adoptive brother’s endless worrying and fearfulness. In fact, all her fear has been gone since she was little, so she’s never scared to explore something new and parade into danger! She’s very close friends with Jon (even if he’s distant sometimes) and best friends with Melanie, though she gets along with most everyone else as well. She may be a chipper person, but look out, she’s carrying more baggage than she let’s on. Loves The Admiral more than life.

Full Name: Michael “Mike” Crew Age: 14 Birthday: May 13th (Taurus) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Vast Guardian(s): Ramsey Crew (Biological Father - Uninvolved), Whitney Crew (Biological Mother - Uninvolved), Simon Fairchild (Adoptive Father - Current) Appearance: Caucasian and pale as a ghost, shaggy white hair that’s almost always wind-swept, strikingly pale blue eyes, smells of ozone and burnt hair, incredibly short for his age, very bony and thin, tends to wear a lot of oversized hoodies on the grounds that they make flying more fun, clothes are almost always pristine and clean, his back, right arm, and right leg are covered in a Lichtenberg scar that glows bright blue when he’s using his powers, permanent bags under his eyes. Personality: A very, very quiet kid, at least around strangers. He’s much bubblier around Simon, but otherwise he’s viewed as an “old soul” by most adults. He does have a sense of humor though, taking a bit too much pleasure out of sending people soaring into the air against their will, especially if they insulted or annoyed him beforehand. Secretly a bit protective of the other avatar kids, and has been known to take them flying if they promise not to let go of him when they do so. Nice kid, but don’t make fun of his height or he might just electrocute you out of spite.

Full Name: Helen Richardson Age: 3 Birthday: February 23rd (Gemini) Entity/Mark(s): Avatar of The Spiral Guardian(s): Tiara Richardson (Biological Mother - Uninvolved), Dexter Richardson (Biological Father - Deceased), Michael Shelley (Adoptive Guardian - Current) Appearance: African heritage with dark brown skin (has the beginning patches of vitiligo on her face and hands), fairly chubby but Michael swears it’s just baby fat, has bright purple eyes with swirling yellow irises, has short but frizzy black hair that cannot be tamed, is often dressed in very colorful onesies and footie pajamas alongside the rare dress, and occasionally she’ll have a child leash vest on (though it often disappears because of The Spiral). Personality: She honestly doesn’t have much of a personality yet, being a toddler and all, but she’s a very giggly child, and loves nothing more than making Michael “be silly” with the use of her powers. Speaking of which, she has very little control of her abilities, and although she’s too young to understand their impact on the world, she still feels bad when she accidentally goes too far and gets Michael hurt. She adores Michael and Jon, and loves it when Michael brings her to the institute with him. Very playful and mischievous.

And that’s all I’ve got for now! I wanna write some fics for this at some point (particularly I wanna write a fic that has all of the kids’ origin stories in better/more detail), but for now anyone is free to fuck around with this AU, so long as you’re not doing too much shipping between the kids (hints at ships are fine, but they’re still kids, y’all) and ESPECIALLY not any shipping of the kids with the adults/guardians. Feel free to PM me or scream about this AU in the notes/tags; I’d love to hear people’s thoughts!

#supercasey ramblings #supercasey writes shit #my writing #tma #tma child avatars au #jonathan sims #gertrude robinson #elias bouchard #martin blackwood #peter lukas #sasha james #annabelle cane #tim stoker #danny stoker #nikola orsinov #melanie king #alfred grifter #grifter's bone #julia montauk #daisy tonner #alice daisy tonner #trevor herbert #georgie barker #oliver banks #tma admiral #the admiral #mike crew #simon fairchild #helen richardson #helen distortion

[swansstuff]

So uh, I've been thinking about a hypothetical Trucy Wright: Act Attorney and here is the very poorly written outline for it because yeah. No spoilers except the Apollo Trucy thing. Tw death, murder, blood and grieving so yeah.

Trucy's first case is literally her first ever case. This is a flashback case. We follow her as she wakes up, slightly stressed about today, Phoenix gives her cereal and a pep talk and a cryptic message. Trucy asks where Papa is, it is Miles, they are married. Phoenix is cryptic about that too. He stays behind as he "has to buy groceries" so Trucy heads into the office. Apollo greets her, it's clear they know they're siblings, and he hands her a case. Miles is prosecuting. She is fucking terrified. She goes to the crime scene, Gumshoe is the detective and he's educating his teenage sons, constant confusion of who's who, because they are twins and they look very like Gumshoe, it'll be kinda funny. Its a simple investigation. During the investigation, the player can check Trucy's profile and the profile system shows character's middle names now. We get some gems such as Klavier Hyacintha Gavin later on, the reasoning behind this is coz Trucy is nosy. The important one here is Trucy Mia Wright. She says something about how she chose her own middle name when Phoenix adopted her and she chose Mia after learning about her. Yada yada. Trucy wins the case. Edgeworth is very proud, Phoenix is in the gallery and there's a flash of him crying proud tears, Apollo hugs her afterwards, Athena congrats her.

Next case, flash forward three years later, we do not see Phoenix and nobody really mentions him. Thats because he's fucking dead but we don't know that yet. This case is a Fey case, we meet Maya who is married to Franziska and they're technically on honeymoon in Kurain and Pearl becomes the Maya to Trucy's Phoenix. Its another fey murder case. There are a few mentions of Trucy's admiration of Mia, mainly just a mirror of a few lines she's said and a conversation where her and Maya talk about her, Trucy says she would have loved to meet her and Maya explains how her spirit has been dormant for ages now and how she assumes she's moved on.

"If you want I can try and channel-"

"No no no no NO. Its ok!"

This is our first hint that Phoenix is no longer with us, but we don't know until later thats what she means. Sebastian is the prosecutor, the player finds out that Miles is taking a break from prosecuting work, Trucy already knew of course, and Sebastian is dubbed Chief until he comes back, Fran says

"It would've been me were I not on my literal honeymoon right now." We are not told why yet, but it is because of Phoenix. Kay Faraday is the detective, somebody murders someone and frames Maya, no-one is shocked by this. We also get an update on Iris, she's thriving. She wins yada yada.

Next case, a couple of months later, Trucy gets a call from a friend that the player can't identify at first. Its Katrielle Layton. She needs Trucy's legal knowledge because someone is sueing her detective agency because have you seen how they practice. This, of course, turns to murder and we get another surprise when we meet the prosecutor. Who probably has a licence to practise law in England? Simon Blackquill, he is British ok. Yeah, Trucy wins with Kat's help, we meet Ernest and Sherl and Alfendi and Flora if we have time. I miss them. Trucy and Kat have a conversation that cryptically addresses their fathers and their "whereabouts" and living up to their legacy. We see Trucy cry, but only a similar flash to AJ:AA and we do not know why. Yet.

Next case, flashback case. Trucy is the assistant on this case but we still play as her, even in the court sections since Phoenix is prepping her for the bar and getting her to give him the answers. The bar exam is only in three days. Klavier is prosecuting. The case somehow relates to Kristoph and there's the whole mirror dynamic thing of when Phoenix lost his badge. Kristoph is dead by now, but the whole thing is there was a plot inside prison to make Phoenix pay for putting a bunch of them in, Kristoph was the assumed ring leader until he died and the cops now dont know who's running it. Somebody (Godot? That would hurt big time) was their inside man, sent to figure that out, so when whoever it was turned up dead, the whole thing got exposed. We get a bit of a Mia moment in the trial where Trucy tells Phoenix to flip over the receipt (thats evidence for some reason). Phoenix says "I feel like that shouldn't be the second time someone has said that to me". The killer is found, by Phoenix, and put into isolation, as have most of the other participants. We then see Trucy get her badge. They have a conversation and Trucy says Phoenix basically forgot about it for a couple of months. The case closes with a foreboding "and I forgot about it too, until..."

Next case. Phoenix is fucking murdered. Trucy gets a phone call late at night, she hears laboured breathing on the other end and a "don't forget I love you" from Phoenix. Trucy pulls a simba and goes "dad? Dad?!!" And the line goes dead. The player is presented with a choice of who to call. They have two phone calls. Who they choose first makes no difference, but the second time they are forced to choose Ema who will trace Phoenix's phone call. They could call Apollo and he would comfort her, Miles would panic, Maya would say he was just messing around, Athena would sense her distress and say she's coming over etc. You could attempt to call Phoenix back but he would not answer and you would be allowed to call someone else. Ema then traces the phone call and we follow Trucy to the crime scene. We get a truly haunting cutscene where everything kinda goes blurry except Phoenix's face and the blood. Trucy doesn't cry. She stands there in shock. The WAA is there in various states of shock and upset. Return of grieving Apollo I guess. Miles turns up and the look on his face is haunting. Trucy and him make eye contact and they share the thought of something has to be done. And then. "The bar association took me off the case and Papa too, they said we were too close to it. As a result, we never found out who did it... Until now." And we see a determined Trucy face. We jump forward to where we last saw Trucy, she and Pearl are coming back from England and its a bit more cheery. Trucy sends Pearl on a train back to Kurain and heads on home. She enters the house and we see Miles pouring over Phoenix's case. He jumps up and runs towards her.

"Trucy! I think I have a lead, I-"

"Papa, you're tired, go to bed." (Or better dialogue along those lines)

Its clear he's been doing this sort of thing a lot.

"But I do! At least...I think I do..."

He trails off and rests his head in his hands.

"Do I? Or am I just a mess?"

Trucy gives him a sad smile.

"C'mon let's go to bed."

Miles returns the sad smile and fades out like all ace attorney characters do. The player is given the option to look around. There's probably some emotional dialogue and bits that give clues to how she and Miles have been fairing the past 3 years. Answer is, not very well. Examine the pile of papers on the table. Trucy will take a look and then realise her papa may have actually been onto something. Its a diagram of which prisoners knew each other, with an arrow from each leading to a defense attorney we have never met. Trucy is confused, but she calls for Miles anyway. He comes back downstairs and Trucy asks him about this lead he found.

"Well I realised all those prisoners would know this defense attorney (insert name?)"

"Why? And why would they be suspicious?'

"They (pronouns?) Were always the defense attorney who would take on the cases of those Wright had already accused. They gained a reputation of being the doomed defense attorney."

"So... They knew all the prisoners in the plot and they had a grudge against daddy... Papa I think you're onto something!"

And the case continues, since we already know who's been accused, it plays out more like an investigations game, Trucy has to prove it, with Miles' help of course, literally every other character we know and love plays a part in making sure this guy gets a guilty verdict. There is still a courtroom bit and a moment when all is looking dark, Trucy literally has a full on breakdown as the Judge threatens to remove her from the case again. Miles is by her side, they're both technically prosecution here i guess. Miles, however, is too deep in his own mental breakdown to help. Everyone else is in the gallery besides Pearl. Pearl channels Phoenix as a last hope sort of thing. Phoenix comforts her and tells her to keep fighting, he touches her badge and probably says some sort of bullshit about it. The Judge is about to bang the gavel when Trucy and Phoenix object at the same time. Miles looks up and realises whats going on and he objects too, a little later. The battle goes on until it finishes and the other attorney has a breakdown that steals little bits from every other murderer Phoenix has put behind bars.This is the one time seeing the word guilty on your screen feels good. There's a whole heartwarming celebration at the end, Phoenix sticks around for a little bit and everyone gets a bit of closure. Its assumed he's gone since Pearl passes out and Trucy dips out for a sec. She's away from the festivities, staring at the badge in her hand and we see someone coming up behind her. Maya is channelling Phoenix now. He gives Trucy a hug and utters the words "the only time a lawyer can cry is when its all over and, Trucy darling, my light, its over." Echoing both Diego and Mia.

And the screen fades to black with a final hug between father and daughter.

:)

#ace attorney #my writing #trucy wright #miles edgeworth #phoenix wright #maya fey #franziska von karma #pearl fey #professor layton sorta #etc i cba to tag everyone #tw death #tw grieving #tw blood #tw murder #:) #wrightworth #franmaya

[holyhellpod]

[TRANSCRIPT] 1. Pilot

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Trigger warnings: discussions of death, fridging, child abuse, child death, alcoholism

[Music]

“In one sentence, this is X-Files meets Route 66. Two brothers, cruising the dusty backroads in their trusty ‘64 mustang, battling the things that go bump in the night.”

These are the first two sentences of Eric Kripke’s pitch of Supernatural, dated August 30, 2004. Based on iconic media such as Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, On The Road, The Odyssey, and The Matrix, Kripke considers Supernatural to be Star Wars in Truck Stop America. He went through over two dozen rewrites of the pilot to get to what we know today: grimy, gritty, horror-filled hero’s journey of the lives of two extremely damaged individuals who don’t really like each other personally or have anything in common, but love each other to death. They save people. They hunt monsters. That’s the family business.

The original pitch for the pilot had Dean informing Sam that supernatural creatures are real and they killed their mum. Sam spent his whole 21-year-long life believing that their father killed their mother, and now their father’s body has been found with Dean as the lead suspect in the murder. Sam has to make the choice to run back to their aunt and uncle’s house in LA where he can spend the summer interning at a law firm before he starts at Stanford, or help Dean fight monsters, and you KNOW which one he chooses.

In the pilot that aired, Sam knows about the supernatural. He and Dean grow up trained as warriors by their father John to hunt supernatural creatures, kill evil, and save people. The plot goes as thus: Sam, a 6 month old baby, is in his crib when an unknown man appears. Mary, Sam and Dean’s mother, walks in. John, their father, comes in as well to see what’s wrong, and finds Mary pinned to the ceiling with a slash across her womb. The house catches on fire, Dean as a four year old takes Sam out of the house, and John follows soon after.

Cut to 22 years later, Sam is a college student at Stanford with a beautiful girlfriend Jess whose resemblance to his mother is, ah, uncanny. He reveals that he’s got an interview on Monday with the law school at Stanford. His idyllic, apple-pie, safe life is interrupted by the appearance of Dean, who asks Sam to accompany him in finding their Dad. That’s the premise of the first season: finding Dad.

Sam makes a deal with Dean that he’ll help on this one last case before he embarks on his life as a lawyer-to-be. Dean takes the deal, but when they realise that John left the case unfinished and skipped town, it’s up to them to follow in John’s footsteps and pick up hunting again, as a fambily. However, Sam reiterates that he needs to be back at Stanford for his meeting that will determine his future, and Dean drops him back. But of course, this is not to be. When he finds Jess pinned to the roof of their bedroom, her womb slashed open, and the apartment starts to burn down, Sam is forced into repeating the history of intergenerational trauma that traps them in the hunting life. The trauma their father inflicted on them is a Promethean circle that leaves no one unscathed.  

John is a hard man. While it’s evident in the first scene that he loves his boys, his grief coupled with his military history twists him into a drill sergeant who works his kids to the bone all in the name of the fambily business. He often puts his own needs above that of his kids, especially Dean, who often acts as the go-between Sam and John. From the very beginning, Sam is positioned as John’s mirror, pulled back into the hunting life when his girlfriend dies just like his mother. Both John and Sam have their lives upended by the death of their significant other, except for Sam, he has Dean, and John had his sons. Bringing them into the life meant leaning on them when he couldn’t handle his grief and the exhaustion of the job himself, but this is a caustic dynamic: your children are not your partners. Dean should not have gone on a hunt by himself at 17 to lay to rest the ghosts of two closeted nuns, when he was closeted himself. John should not have put the burden on Dean to look after his brother while John was away on hunts, because Dean was a child. It robbed Dean of his childhood, forced him to grow up too quickly, and left him with a saviour complex and control issues that he carries well into the last season of the show.

The abuse Sam and Dean suffer at the hands of their father is something that permeates the entire show, all the while the characters apologise for him and little commentary is made on how badly he messed them up. In the pilot, We don’t see him in the present, only in 1983, and then sporadically throughout the rest of the show, notably in seasons one, two, four and five, as well as in the show’s 300th episode “Lebanon”. He is a ghost that controls the fate of these two men, as he directs them where to hunt while at the same time refusing to even show his face in times of dire need. In the episode “Faith”, Dean is dying and John doesn’t make an appearance. In the episode “Home”, Dean calls John scared and crying and begs him to come back to their childhood home of Lawrence, Kansas. Again, John doesn’t show up for them.

There are many moments throughout the show that seem to hinge on one decision, and John’s decision to become a hunter and raise his kids as hunters too is one of them. Another decision is Dean’s choice to die in the last episode. Cas’s choice to partner with Crowley and suck all of purgatory’s souls into himself in season 6. Sam’s choice to settle down with Amelia in season 8.

But it all comes back to the very first decision: Sam deciding to go with Dean to find John. We know now that the demons Azazel and Brady were just waiting for the opportunity to kill Jess when Sam was at his most oblivious and unguarded, which they took after Dean re-entered his life. the repercussions of this reverberate throughout the entire show, most obviously in Sam choosing not to settle down with a woman for the first 7 seasons. But Jessica’s death is the impetus Sam needs to start hunting again, just like Mary’s death was the impetus John had for starting to hunt in the first place.

But actually, with the last episode of the series in mind, another choice is made clear. Dean’s choice to go to Sam.

If the first season would have you believe, Sam Winchester is the protagonist of the series, and Dean is his second in command. He’s one of five main characters throughout season 1, including Dean, John, Mary and Azazel the demon. Azazel begins the narrative by invading Sam’s childhood bedroom and killing Mary, but after the ordinary world of their lives before we hit the call to adventure, Sam is shown as an ordinary guy who just wants to make something of himself. He admits to Dean in some truly spectacular exposition that he swore he was done hunting for good, and that he’s put that life behind him to live safely with his girlfriend and college friends. Of course, being Supernatural, it doesn’t turn out like that.

If you take the last few seasons as gospel, it’s clear that Dean is the emotional heart of the series and Sam exists as his narrative foil. Somewhere along the way their roles got reversed. It’s Sam’s emotional journey we follow throughout the first season. It takes us until episode 4, “Phantom Traveler”, to find something that Dean is afraid of. As the season wears on, it becomes increasingly clear that all he wants is to have his family back together — Sam and Dad, all under one car or motel roof again. Sam, in the Winchester tradition, wants to find Jess’s killer, suspecting that the thing that killed Mary is the same thing that killed Jess. This obsession drives him throughout the first two seasons.

Sam’s motivation in the pilot is laid out clearly: he has to make it back to Stanford on time for his interview for law school. While it’s normal for regular people, it's about as far from the Winchester normal as can be, and that’s what Sam likes about it. It’s normal, it’s wonderbread, it’s safe. It’s freshly baked cookies and a tab at the only bar on campus. It’s your girlfriend in a maid outfit on Halloween, which you still don’t celebrate because it reminds you of what you gave up to be there. It’s getting a 174 on the LSATs but not telling your family because you don’t talk to them anymore, and you haven’t for years. It’s fine.

And then it all comes crashing down, and Sam’s motivation changes. He’s the hero accepting his journey while grieving the loss of the most significant person in his life since he ditched his family at 18 to live in the world instead of saving it from the sidelines. He’s the one our story hinges on, and it’s his reactions we live and die by. When Mary dies, we hardly know her. We don’t know John, either, so it’s hard to gauge how broken up we should be by her death. While I wouldn’t say we know Jess necessarily, we do know Sam, so when he grieves we grieve. The framework through which we view all of these events is Sam’s perspective, even if we do see Dean without Sam. I’m pointing this out because it’s important to know who we sympathise with most, and whose story a narrative is trying to tell. What exactly the narrative is saying is completely dependent on who is saying it.

One of Dean’s defining traits is that he’s great at getting laid. In the original pitch, Dean was supposed to be covered in tattoos and smoking like a James Dean-type. Nevermind that James Dean was queer, as is Dean from On The Road, the character the eldest winchester is named after. Dean chases tail like he’s a dog chasing bumpers, and he’s attractive and charismatic so it works out well for him. He doesn’t take it hard when a woman rejects him, which is something that a lot of men need to learn.

Sera Gamble, staff writer, executive producer, and showrunner of seasons 6 and 7, said about Dean:

“Dean always has a great comeback line, so it’s always fun to write him. Dean’s introduction to us in the pilot was him hitting on his brother’s girlfriend, specifically pointing out her boobs.”

But this is not all Dean is. He’s first and foremost Sam’s protector. In Dean’s second scene of the pilot, Dean is shown to rescue his brother from their house as it burns down, carrying him out of harm’s way. Dean, as the older brother, knows it’s his job to protect his younger sibling. It’s been drilled into him since he was four years old that he is supposed to protect Sam above everything, even when Sam ditched their family. Before the pilot, Dean and Sam hadn’t spoken in two years, and Sam hadn’t seen John in four. But by the end of the episode we realise that Dean hasn’t given up the mantle of protector. He rescues Sam from the building where Jess is being burned alive. First and foremost, Dean will always protect Sam.

At 26, Dean has seen things and done things that no one should see or do. Where Sam is sullen and quiet, Dean is loud and brash, getting into trouble, jumping headfirst into situations he shouldn’t be in. The situations he shouldn’t be in include: a crime scene, a river, a motel room, a haunted shack. Places he should be include the police station, because Dean winchester is many things and one of them is a felon.

We can’t find ourselves sympathising too much with Dean as a main character just yet because we don’t have any attachment to his weaknesses. Yes, Mary died, but she is such a non-character it doesn’t register (unless of course you’ve been through a similar tragedy, then sympathise away). Yes, he loves his car and his guns and his leather jacket, but we find out later that they are handmedowns from John. Dean’s personality is a carefully curated list of acceptable likes and dislikes, inherited from the abusive, alcoholic father John is to him and the woman, wife and mother he thinks of Mary as. In the pilot, Dean is the lovable scamp, but his desperation is lying in wait beneath the mask of finding his father. He wants his fambily back, but more than that, he wants his fambily safe.

We see Sam and Dean’s strengths play out through the episode. In their first encounter with the Woman in White, she possesses the Impala and drives it towards them. They both jump off the bridge, but while Sam clings on, Dean hurls himself into the river. Thus the death-defying stunt ends up a funny gag as Dean drags himself out of the muck, and Sam is positioned as the smarter brother. I mean, he got into Stanford, right? so he’s smarter, right???

Another moment establishes the bulk of their characters in two lines. Sam says, “What I said earlier, about Mum and Dad, I’m sorry,” and Dean replies, “No chick-flick moments.” Within this simple exchange lies the heart of their differences: Sam wants Dean to be okay. Dean would rather push Sam away than offer up his feelings like a charcuterie platter for anyone to pick apart.

From what we know of John, he is a man obsessed. Sam reveals that their whole lives have been based around trying to find the thing that killed Mary. John trained his sons to be hunters from an indeterminately young age, after finding out about the supernatural from various side characters and piecing the rest together himself. From how the other hunters talk about John, he is a master in skill and execution, and Dean and Sam take after him. Sam is smart and coordinated enough to be good at everything, and Dean is naturally gifted in intellect, tactical skill, and weapons. Together they make a formidable team. By the time the show really gets going, John, Sam and Dean are legends in the hunting community. Dean comments in a later episode that he’s famous, and other characters point out the same thing. Characters introduced later know who they are before the boys know who the other characters are and what their connection to John is.

The implications of John raising his sons are hunters are multitudinal. Because Sam and Dean have been raised this way, they have saved a lot of people that otherwise would have died. But it’s at their own expense. They can never live normal lives, and even when they settle down in season 8 at the Men of Letters bunker, the echoes of their loneliness and isolation are still present. That’s why it’s not enough to focus only on Sam and Dean, or introduce more characters just to kill them off, because the brothers are fundamentally lonely and isolated. And the point of any story is to have your characters progress (although in the case of a short story, it’s to reveal something about a character), so when they start out a certain way they need to have outgrown that stasis that they were trapped in by the end of the series. Sam deserved to build a life for himself in the hunting world, with another hunter and/or the queen of hell, making connections and a home for other hunters to stay in and, as one tumblr user says, a monster rehabilitation centre. Dean deserved to outgrow his trauma and simply grow as a character instead of being stuck as an depressed alcoholic with anger issues.

On the surface of the show, Dean is supposed to be Han Solo and Sam Luke Skywalker. But the first thing we learn about Sam to do with his family is that he left them as soon as he finished high school and had a chance to escape. Dean, however, stayed loyal to John and continued hunting. This dynamic of Sam rebelling against the the God figure of their father and Dean’s dependency on their father’s approval continues into the fifth season and parallels the storyline of the angel Lucifer rebelling and his brother Michael staying loyal to God. It certainly is an interesting dynamic, which I  just realising as I type this paragraph was repeated in my own family. Me, the youngest rebelling against my abusive father around the time I started watching this show while my older brother continued to live with him, in squalor and destitution. There were no Gardens of Eden in our family, only a hell of our father’s making. My dad loves muscle cars and heavy metal, too, and I haven’t spoken to him in three years.

The motel room they find John occupying before he takes off is something you’d see in a serial killer’s lair. There are articles printed out and stuck to the wall, a line of salt encircling the room, various talismans and charms, and information on the woman in white. From what we see, John lives up to his legendary status, putting together a pattern of strange deaths and disappearances over the course of 20 years for his sons to eventually solve. But we already know by now that he puts hunting above his own children, and it becomes clear as the episode goes on that he is sending them out on hunts that he himself either can’t or won’t finish. He disappears and leads them on a proverbial and literal ghost hunt as they chase him across the country.

The universe of Supernatural started with monsters but encompasses a lot more than that. Kripke’s vision, which personally I think he executed really well, was small town Americana meets monster of the week. It’s ghosts on highways, cannibals in forests, and spirits in lakes. It’s a possessed car on a bridge aiming straight for our protagonists. It’s gas station junk food and driving 16 hours across multiple states on a hunch. It’s sleeping in your car and brushing your teeth at the side of the road because you couldn’t afford a hotel for the night. It’s grit meets slime. It’s real and fantastical at the same time. When I say this show activates the part of my mind that lives for road trips across a barren country through miles and miles of desert, I’m not lying. I used to love road trips as a kid, just staring out the window with my gameboy in my hand and Alanis Morisette’s Jagged Little Pill album in my discman. I long for those days.

The lore is one of the most interesting things about the show. in most episodes, the characters are seen to flick through physical books to gather information about what they’re fighting, which seems to take hours if not days. At one point I’m pretty sure that their father figure Bobby digitises his library, but then that’s never brought up again, so maybe I imagined it. There are hundreds of different creatures throughout the seasons, including some the show made up (Jefferson Starships in season 6), others they’ve taken from folklore and legends and put their own spin on. The interesting ways they present creatures, some pure evil, others sympathetic, is one of the reasons I loved this show from the beginning. All I ever wanted to write was urban fantasy, and this show presented it in an accessible way. I grew up in small towns with populations of less than a thousand people, so watching the characters go through small towns, back roads, truck stops and service stations in the middle of nowhere just hit me right where it hurts.

The lore of the woman in white is thus: a husband cheats on his wife, and the wife, in a moment of insanity, murders her children. When she comes back as a vengeful spirit, she finds men who have been unfaithful and murders them. The character of Constance hitch hikes along the road waiting for men to pick her up, and even if they haven’t been unfaithful she seduces them before she kills them. Spirits are shown to have special powers: they can move objects, wield weapons, and kill with their hands or minds. They can also appear and disappear at will, making them hard to fight.

As with all episodes of tv shows, the problem they face is something out of the ordinary. The Woman in White is a ghost, something they’ve hunted before with ease. Sidenote: this show can be summed up as Pru from Ride or Die podcast says, “the Winchester school of boys who fight ghosts real good.” While a normal ghost would be taken out by salting and burning their bones, laying Constant Welch to rest isn’t that easy. Before they can find her bones to burn, she appears in the Impala while Sam is driving. But Sam figures out a plan: drive the Impala through the house she can’t go home to where her children are lying in wait to drag her into the underworld. And the monsters only get more interesting from there.

Now that the show has finished, it's interesting to examine what it could have been. We know what it is: a 15 year long experiment in family dysfunction and queerbaiting. We know it’s about choices and free will. But what could it have been? It could have been more than family dysfunction. Throughout the entire show, the premise has always been about two brothers, and that’s to its detriment, as there’s only so many times they can rehash the premise of brothers betraying each other. The showrunners were so bent on keeping the show about Sam and Dean that they neglected the other storylines that could have proved more interesting and killed off all the characters that were a threat to their dynamic. It could have been about characters becoming their own creators in stepping outside the narrative, usurping their writers and choosing love instead of violence. It could have stayed about found families, instead of focusing solely on Sam and Dean in the last episode, which undid all of the groundwork they’d laid out in the last 7 or so seasons.

But what we have is what we get, and while the show falls down in some respects, especially with regards to its treatment of people of colour and the queer community, it is still a show that I’ve loved since the Howard administration, and something that has changed and improved my life in numerous ways. If I hadn’t started writing Supernatural fanfiction, I wouldn’t have majored in writing, and I wouldn’t have the experience to write four books and some novel length fanfiction. Supernatural has inspired me so much over the years, and I will always considered it kismet that it entered my life. I know others feel the same, and you only have to step into the fandom for a day to realise the impact that Supernatural has on people all over the world. Few shows have had both the gall and opportunity to shape television in the way that Supernatural has and do the things that it has done. Falling in love with it again at a time when I was outgrowing a previous hyperfixation, feeling lost and adrift, and burnt out from writing 150,000 words in the middle of a pandemic, has been extremely serendipitous, and I can’t wait to dissect every single thing about this show.

You can find the show at holyhellpod on Instagram and tumblr, and patreon dot com slash holyhellpod. I’ll talk to you soon.

[Outro music]

#holyhellpod #supernatural #spn #dean winchester #sam winchester #<25 mins #transcripts

[theliterateape]

I Like to Watch | True Crime Television

by Don Hall

Traveling to Kansas for Christmas during a raging pandemic was a balancing act between stupid, reckless, and necessary.

Dana and I struggled with the decision. We spent Christmas last year at the casino I was working at and Joe came out from Chicago to play. I had to work, Dana and Kelli got a room at the West, and we FaceTimed with my family. It was weird. I had never, in my life, worked on Christmas Day. With a few notable exceptions, I had rarely spent Christmas Day apart from my family.

A couple of factors came in play when making the decision to travel to Kansas during a pandemic as the odds of contracting the virus increased by the day. 

First, my dad is in precarious health. A cancer in his marrow has been sitting quietly for years and is always a threat. In the past year, he has suffered kidney failure and is on dialysis three times a week. The idea that I would miss his last Christmas for almost any reason was horrifying.

Second, my sister's youngest son died this past April. We flew up and helped her for a week but this was the first Christmas she was to endure while still grieving. 

Yet there was this virus.

We decided that, if we were diligent about our masks and social distancing even within homes in Kansas, stay with my sister (who is a high school government teacher and has been online for months now), and make sure we were COVID-free before the trip, we were willing to take the risk.

It was worth it. As of this writing no one has the virus in my immediate family so we did our job and the trip was wonderful.

My sister, anticipating that Dana and I would be picky about what television we watched, binged on her favorite genre, True Crime. Turns out, Dana and I are just fine with True Crime, so we spent more than a normal amount of time watching salacious documentaries and dramatic recreations demonstrating the ugly face of human beings during a holiday known for its celebration of the best faces.

‌On the morning of July 13, 2011, 32-year-old Rebecca Zahau was found hanging naked and bound from her wealthy boyfriend’s Coronado mansion. Authorities were quick to rule the death a suicide, but strange clues found at the scene — including an eerie message scrawled in black paint on a nearby door — convinced her family that she had died by someone else’s hand.

When college-age men began showing up dead in bodies of water across the country, many of the deaths initially appeared to be accidental drownings. But a team of retired NYPD detectives led by veteran Detective Kevin Gannon believe there may be a more sinister explanation for the deaths after noticing in nearly all the cases smiley face graffiti has been found near the body.

In the dead of the night, eight people were shot “execution-style” in a brutal family massacre that left a small rural Ohio town reeling and questioning who could have carried out the cold-blooded murder of an entire family. For more than two years, they were no answers until a shocking series of arrests of another prominent family in Piketon suggested a possible growing feud between two families, who had once been close friends.

This stuff is grisly, man.

My mom and I used to have a disagreement about the nature of man. She believed that we are essentially good creatures who get seduced by the dark side. I believe that one afternoon spent with a two-year old tells the opposite tale. Children, when left alone, tend to be greedy, self-centered, narcissistic, violent. Adults are merely children who have learned to lie better about these innate impulses.

Spend a few hours watching true crime documentaries (and a few more hours watching public outrage videos) and its easy to see which narrative is more accurate.

One of the most erroneous concepts to follow these types of stories is that someone who murders his wife and kids, shoots up a school, kills her co-worker and stuffs pieces of the body in mason jars to be distributed through a gruesome Etsy store are insane. That these outliers are mentally ill.

I disagree. If horrifying behavior against our fellow humans is an indicator of mental illness, then we're all batshit crazy. Like the antiracism argument, if everyone white is racist regardless of actions or intent, then the term racist has no meaning (or at least no bearing on societal solutions). If everyone is nuts, then nuts is the default.

"That guy who got some trim and shot his wife in the head to get the comic book insurance is not normal" is a cop-out that lets the rest of us off the hook and creates a zone of denial surrounding our own behavior. These people aren't crazy, they simply thought they could get away with it like when you pilfered the stapler from your workplace or used your phone to take a covert photo of your sexy co-worker so you could go jack off to it in the stall of the McDonald's bathroom.

True Crime is not so much a genre of how terrible some people can be. It is a genre that acts as the mirror to society as it is rather than as we hope it is.

Traveling to Kansas during a global pandemic was insane. For all our justifications and precautions, we made the trip because we thought we could get away with it consequence-free, no more and no less.

Given that no one in my family throughout the holiday is suffering from COVID symptoms, we got away with it.

#I Like to Watch #True Crime

[dottie-wan-kenobi]

I loveeee all the songs u chose for Tim!!! Can u maybe do a post or smth explaining why cus it’s so interesting seeing the choice behind these songs

Hi yes I can!! I’m not gonna do all of them here (I can def do the rest if you’d like!!) bc that’s just a Lot all at once lol. Also I might have typos and I apologize but dkjsfhakh I have bandaids on my fingers and it’s hard to type :^/

Disclaimer: some of these songs fit a lot better than other ones

Hard Times by Paramore

I chose this song bc it’s abbout being sad, but the tone is upbeat and happy. Something I’ve noticed abt Tim is that he is (usually) functionally depressed. Like, I read an article about high functioning depression, and it said that a lot of people who have it have a hole in their life – that they can have a job (and Tim does, being either CEO or Red Robin or both), a partner (who I like to think of as Kon), and be part of a family, maintaining this happy/upeat facade, but if you ask them what they do for fun…they usually can’t answer that. And I don’t think Tim can. When he was younger, he could, but what now? 

Fave Lyric: “Walking around / With my little rain cloud / Hanging over my head/ And it ain’t coming down / Where do I go? / Gimme some sort of sign / You hit me with lightning! / Maybe I’ll come alive”

Little Lion Man by Mumford & Sons

I chose this bc I can picture Tim, during a low moment like when Kon or Bruce died, just falling apart and thinking he’s not going to survive it, isn’t strong enough, had something to do with their deaths happening,,, etc. Also there’s a line that references anxiety and like lmao that’s Tim!

Fave Lyric: “Tremble for yourself, my man, / You know that you have seen this all before / Tremble, little lion man, / You’ll never settle any of your scores / Your grace is wasted in your face, / Your boldness stands alone among the wreck / Now learn from your mother or else spend your days biting your own neck”

Heroes (we could be) by Alesso feat. Tove Lo

I chose this bc Tim needed a happy song and also because this has such Young Justice vibes !!!! This is Tim and his friends having fun, roaming around, kicking bad guy ass together!! Actually upon looking at the lyrics again, it’s both YJ and Batman & Robin. It just encompasses Tim’s early days of being a hero I think, the happy carefree nature and the bravery and the hope

Fave Lyric: “Everyday people do everyday things but I / Can’t be one of them / I know you hear me now, we are a different kind / We can do anything”

Burn The House Down by AJR

Tbh I mostly chose this bc its a bop and I think he would sing along to it. BUT I also think this kind of represents his life as a public figure/celeb??? And if I wanna go even further, I think it could represent him when he’s older and more confident, with a better self esteem and maybe a lil less depressed (which I hope is in the cards for his future). Also it talks about lying a lot???? I’m sorry, I don’t have a good analysis for this one lmao

Fave Lyric: “Way up way up we go / Been up and down that road / Way up way up, oh no / We gon’ burn the whole house down / Watch me stand in the line / You’re only serving lies / You’ve got something to hide / We gon’ burn the whole house down”

Don’t Let Me Down by The Chainsmokers feat. Daya

I chose this bc it reminded me of Tim and Dick. I’m of the opinion that Tim getting fired from Robin was the right choice and that Dick wasn’t being cruel or anything like that at all, but I also think that Tim probably saw it that way which is valid. So it’s like, to him, Dick was his big brother who was basically always there for him, and then suddenly… he’s not. And everything else going on in his life starts to suck dramatically, and not having his big brother makes it worse, and he feels betrayed. Meanwhile Dick really is on his side, life is just also terrible for him too so they can’t be as close as they were when Tim was Robin. It can also be about Bruce or Kon tbh – just, wanting one of them to be there and they’re not.

Fave Lyric: “Crashing, hit a wall / Right now I need a miracle / Hurry up now, I need a miracle / Stranded, reaching out / I call your name but you’re not around”

More under the cut!!

Don’t Play by Halsey

This…. I chose this bc I really love the celebrity versions of the Bats, and also how competent Tim can be, and this song brings both of those together. Lol this could also be like…what other people think the Bats/Tim think like?? “Don’t play with me, I’m rich and will fuck you up” kinda thing. This is one of the ones that fits less well than the others but I still get Tim vibes from it so I’m keeping it

Fave Lyric: “Tryna take back what you say to me / I don’t give a damn what you say to me / There ain’t no time for games with me”

Over My Head (Cable Car) by The Fray

I get the feeling that after bad shit happens to Tim, he feels the way this song shows. I haven’t read much YJ so I can’t be sure, but I get the feeling that Tim, no matter what the truth is, feels like he’s alone and there’s no one who will help him. Obviously that can be tied back to his childhood and how he had to take care of himself, and so when there are people who actually do wanna help him he doesn’t see it?? And he’s down on himself so he’s probably thinking “they don’t want to help me, and I can’t blame them”

Fave Lyric: “But that’s how it’s got to be / It’s coming down to nothing more than apathy / I’d rather run the other way than stay and see / The smoke and who’s still standing when it clears” 

Icarus by Bastille

Okay not so much the drinking aspect of this song but EVERYTHING ELSE. I even used one of the lyrics for a fic title. Basically my thoughts here are: 1) everyone looks to the Robins and sees how much they do and it’s just A Lot, 2) Tim knows Jason died and so he probably thinks that’s in his future too even if Dick survived, and 3) Tim is doing a lot and feeling a lot and trying to protect himself and his feelings, which is hard work especially for someone so young

Fave Lyric: “Living beyond your years / Acting out all their fears / You feel it in your chest”

Needed Me by Rihanna

Again,,,, the Competence. I love that shit. I love BAMF!Bats, and tbh I think this could apply to more than just Tim, but I picked it for him bc of the first lyric!! This is also one of those ones that doesn’t fit super well but djkhfjkdshah I think this could really fit an AU Tim where he’s like. More morally gray. Not necessarily a bad guy but just more confident, more arrogant maybe, and more jaded from the hero-ing life

Fave Lyric: “I was good on my own, that’s the way it was, that’s the way it was / You was good on the low for a faded fuck, on some faded love / Shit, what the fuck you complaining for? / Feeling jaded, huh?”

What I’ve Done by Linkin Park

Okay I think this fits a lot of different things: his actions after Kon’s death, his and Damian’s relationship, the lies he’s told (to ppl like Steph, his dad, Tam?), his relationship with Bruce maybe?? I can also see it as him thinking on who he was as a kid – a stalker basically lmao, but ultimately harmless – versus who he is now – a skilled vigilante who’s definitely not harmless. Stark difference there. Also he’s forgiving himself, which is something I think is important for somebody with a low self view

Fave Lyric: “In this farewell / There’s no blood / There’s no alibi / ‘Cause I’ve drawn regret / From the truth / Of a thousand lies”

Tell Me You Love Me by Demi Lovato

I chose this because I think Tim is fucked up by the neglect he suffered in his childhood. I think parts of this song can be directed at his parents, the Batfam, his partner(s). He’s afraid that they’ll leave him and he needs the reassurance. Whether or not he gets it is another matter but kdsjfjkdsah. Really, I think this is all just what he’s thinking, and NOT what he’s saying. He needs the reassurance, yes, but he’s not actually asking for it because he doesn’t know how

Fave Lyric: “Bad at love, no, I’m not good at this”

bellyache by Billie Eilish

When I first added this to his playlist I somehow didn’t realize it was about a murderer but dkjfhkjshjkah whatever I’m keeping it. Let’s just go with this is a song about being fucked up (in whatever sense u wanna take that as) and it’s not happy? But like the first one, it’s upbeat and positive. I think the happy sound hiding the less pretty truth is something that explains Tim a lot. Also its a bop and he might sing along to it

Fave Lyric: “Everything I do / The way I wear my noose / Like a necklace / I wanna make ‘em scared / Like I could be anywhere / Like I’m reckless”

Migraine by Twenty One Pilots

Just Another Song About Tim’s Abysmal Mental Health

Fave Lyric: “Behind my eyelids are islands of violence / My mind ship-wrecked / This is the only land my mind could find / I did not know it was such a violent island / Full of tidal waves, suicidal crazed lions / They’re trying to eat me, blood running down their chin / And I know that I can fight or I can let the lion win / I begin to assemble what weapons I can find / 'Cause sometimes to stay alive you gotta kill your mind”

Fake Love by Drake

I hate Drake but kjdsfkjdsfhajh this goes back to a few things. His celebrity and how he’s seen/treated differently by others because of it, his low self view and the paranoia that people aren’t really there for him no matter what the truth might be, how he sees things others wouldn’t, his relationships with people like Damian and Bruce. I think he’s more forgiving than this song would imply, so maybe this is also for that AU Tim I mentioned above???

Fave Lyric: “I’ve been down so long it look like up to me / They look up to me / I got fake people showin’ fake love to me / Straight up to my face, straight up to my face”

Six Feet Under by Billie Eilish

TIMKON TIMKON TIMKON. Post Kon’s death TimKon and Tim is grieving and trying to forget bc it’s so painful!!!!!!

Fave Lyric: “Our love is six feet under / I can’t help but wonder / If our grave was watered by the rain / Would roses bloom? / Could roses bloom / Again?”

Flaws by Bastille

Idek, I feel like this could be how he could view his relationship with Steph, Cass, Damian, Bart, Dick??? Anyone? Just feeling like he hides his flaws and how he feels, and they don’t really (or at least, he thinks they don’t), and he likes that.

Fave Lyric: “There’s a hole in my soul / I can’t fill it, I can’t fill it / There’s a hole in my soul / Can you fill it? Can you fill it?”

do re mi by blackbear

I’m mostly joking when I say this but this is how he feels about Ra’s al Ghul. It doesn’t fit exactly, bc Tim and Ra’s were NOT together ever at any point, but this song is about being annoyed by someone you have a history with and wishing you’d never known them. Which is how I feel Tim should feel about Ra’s. lol

Fave Lyric: “If I could go back to that day we met / I probably would’ve stayed in bed / You wake up everyday and make me feel like I’m incompetent”

Bored by Billie Eilish

I really think this is Tim talking to his parents. Like, when he’s a kid, or when he’s older and looking back, he’s thinking “I did everything I could, it wasn’t enough, and I know it’s not fair but I can’t do anything about it.” I think this song is supposed to be romantic but I’ve never heard it that way skdjfkjsdhakjh I just always think about Tim, home alone and thinking about his parents.

Fave Lyric: “I’m not afraid anymore / What makes you sure you’re all I need? / Forget about it / When you walk out the door and leave me torn / You’re teaching me to live without it / Bored, I’m so bored, I’m so bored, so bored”

Rose-Colored Boy by Paramore

This one is like… everyone else seems to have an easier time being optimistic and positive than Tim does, in his mind. Idk I don’t have much to say kdsjfhsdjkah

Fave Lyric: “Hearts are breaking, wars are raging on / And I have taken my glasses off / You got me nervous / I’m right at the end of my rope / A half-empty girl / Don’t make me laugh, I’ll choke”

King of the Clouds by Panic! At The Disco

This is mostly because it’s a bop and Tim would like it. But also…this is a song about dimensional travel (apparently) and having ambitions that seem lofty, both of which I think Tim can definitely understand!! 

Fave Lyric: “And when I fall to rise with stardust in my eyes / In the backbone of night, I’m combustible / Dust in the fire when I can’t sleep a wink, I’m too tired / This old world, this old world”

#tim drake #song analysis #asks #idk what to tag this as #meta #??? #this is 20 of them!! if u want more lmk (there are still like 40 more songs I think) #but im done for the day ksdjfkdash #its so hard to type like this #Anonymous

[lili2424]

One of the ‘Riverdale’ Season Premiere’s Saddest Scenes Was About Betty, Not Archie

By Alex Zalben  @azalben Oct 10, 2019 at 10:50am

In the midst of the Riverdale Season 4 premiere, “In Memoriam,” which dealt with the real world passing of star Luke Perry, as well as his character Fred Andrews, one of the episode’s most heartbreaking scenes had nothing to do with Archie Andrews (KJ Apa). In fact, a mostly silent, less than 30-second long scene featuring Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart) got across an entire story without saying a single word.

Early in the episode, which takes place on July 3 and 4 before the teens of Riverdale enter Senior year of high school, Archie finds out that his father Fred has been struck down by a hit and run driver. The rest of the hour jumps between the minutiae of dealing with a funeral, to Riverdale-esque tropes where Archie tries to grapple with the event like a typical mystery on the show, even though it very much is not. And all throughout the hour, Archie’s friends are there for him. Jughead Jones (Cole Sprouse) writes Fred’s obituary, Veronica Lodge (Camila Mendes) takes care of the funeral arrangements (only to find out that her father Hiram, shockingly, has paid for them himself from jail), and Betty Cooper (Lili Reinhart) provides emotional support throughout for the boy next door, her best friend for as long as they both can remember.

It’s only after Fred’s funeral that we get the scene in question. As everyone else shuffles out of the cemetery, Betty stands alone at the grave of her own father, Hal Cooper (Lochlyn Munro). Betty always had a complicated relationship with her father on the show, but that got extra complicated when it was revealed in Season 2 that he was the masked killer known as The Black Hood. He was arrested, thrown in jail, and then throughout Season 3 Betty and Hal built their relationship back up through a twisted Hannibal Lecter/Clarice Starling style dynamic.

And then he was shot to death, right in front of her, in the Season 3 finale.

In the Season 4 premiere, Betty stands alone at his grave, which is covered in trash and been defaced with spray-painted words: “The Black Hood burns in Hell.” Betty brushes some of the trash aside, and in a wrenching final shot, we see how utterly alone she is, as the camera cuts to an extreme wide shot of Betty standing at the grave, tiny in the frame.

This could have been enough to underline the disparity between how the town treats a true hero like Fred — the annual July 4th parade is hastily reassembled to become a Fred Andrews celebration, as the Core Four brings his body back to Riverdale — and a monster like The Black Hood. But there’s an extra detail that’s important to note, and that’s the date on the grave. Hal didn’t die years ago, or even months ago: he was killed on May 19, 2019.

Inasmuch as Riverdale deals with any sort of actual passage of time (let’s not discuss FP Jones’ fiftieth birthday, please), given that Hal died on May 19 and Fred’s funeral is on July 4, while Betty is standing as the emotional rock for Archie, her own father was murdered in front of her less than two months earlier. You can certainly write between the lines here, that in the scenes we don’t get to see Betty’s friends were there for her the way they’re there for Archie. But it’s a very specific choice on the part of writer/showrunner Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa to not have Betty mention her own father’s death at any point in the episode.

At least a bit of that, I’m sure, is to keep the focus on Archie and Fred, and by extension Luke Perry. But as a result you get two other impressions from the scene. The first is the strength of Betty Cooper as a character. She’s dealt with unimaginabletragedy over the course of the past three seasons, experienced events that would break anyone, and she’s only come out stronger for it. Part of that is Lili Reinhart’s performance, which is beautifully nuanced in every episode of the show — her speech about the day Fred Andrews was her Dad in “In Memoriam” was so searingly real, it felt like it might have actually happened — and manages to get so much across with just a few flicks of garbage off a grave and a look. Part of that is how the character has been treated; where most shows would turn Betty evil, or break her, every new fresh hell she has to face only makes Betty Cooper stronger

But the other, important impression the scene gives is that we never really know what other people are going through. The episode very firmly sucks the viewer into Archie’s perspective, and that’s important as he’s acting as the audience’s surrogate, walking us through the seven stages of loss. But while we’re feeling our own heartbreak, other people may be feeling other things, as well. In fact, there’s a very good chance that they’re going through heartbreak of their own. That, too, is part of the grieving process, to revisit past pain; and that’s what Betty is doing here. It’s not just a one-off scene to tie into the overall plot of the show (though it serves that function, too), it’s to momentarily take us into what loss feels like for others. Archie’s plot is all about sympathy; Betty’s is about empathy.

It’s a remarkably complex scene for a show that usually deals with bear attacks and corpse brothers, but that’s always been the beauty of Riverdale. Like the town itself — and Betty in particular — there’s always a lot more going on below the surface.

Via Decider.com

#lili reinhart #betty cooper #riverdale #decider #bughead #riverdale season 4 #riverdale spoilers #betty riverdale

[insanityclause]

“I’m a meat and two veg kinda fella,” says Kenneth Branagh. “I love my fish and chips, and my English breakfast, and I like my football and horse racing – my dad loved the horses.” His tastes, he admits, such as his signature dessert recipe for melted Mars bar over vanilla ice cream, were formed in his working-class childhood.

For the past four decades, this son of a joiner from Belfast has been living cheek by jowl with that other great scion of the lower classes – William Shakespeare. Ever since Branagh became a stage and film star playing Henry V in the Eighties, he’s been directing Shakespeare’s works, adapting them, playing many of his great characters. Now, at 58, he is assuming the bald pate, sharp nose and very pointed beard of the playwright himself, in the self-directed All Is True.

It’s an unexpectedly moving portrait. Branagh’s Will is entering his 50s, and retiring from London to Stratford-upon-Avon, where he had long owned a house, and where at 18, he had married Anne Hathaway, a 26-year-old already pregnant with their child. It’s 1613, the Globe Theatre has burned down, and the playwright is still grieving the death of his only son, Hamnet, many years earlier.

“For me, it was a sort of time travel,” says Branagh, whose enduring boyishness hides the fact that he is eight years older than the Shakespeare we meet in the film. (The playwright died in 1616, at the age of 52.) Branagh’s Shakespeare is stiff of bearing; Branagh isn’t. He’s playful while having his photograph taken in the London hotel where we meet, and his comfortable clothes – knitwear – mirror a softness in his tone and manner. It masks a seriousness that shows itself often when he speaks.

After all these years exploring Shakespeare’s work, does the think he has a feel for the man? “I have a sense of preoccupations that repeat themselves,” he says. “They came together when I played Leontes in The Winter’s Tale a couple of years ago, because it did feel like a play from a man at the end of his professional life, maybe in the evening of his life – there was such a longing in it for this lost child, such an ache for the reunification of a family, that it seemed to add up with all sorts of longings in the plays, even in the comedies.”

The grief for Hamnet in All Is True is so acute that, set against the way Will yearns for a male heir, and his complicated relationship with his daughters, Susanna and Judith (Hamnet’s twin), it makes you wonder whether Branagh has been contemplating his own mortality. Does he wish that he had had children?

“Didn’t happen,” he shrugs. “It doesn’t seem to me to be valuable to be wishing and hoping for things that don’t appear to have been on your dance card. I go with what we have. I start with, are you healthy, do you have some family, do you have some friends? Anything north of that’s terrific.”

Since 2003, Branagh has been married to art director Lindsay Brunnock. Before that, of course, he was married to Emma Thompson – a celebrity coupling that was so ubiquitous between 1989 and 1994 that they were referred to simply as “Ken and Em”. They acted in a series of Branagh’s films together, such as the history-repeats-itself thriller Dead Again (1991), the rather precious paean to privilege, Peter’s Friends (1992), and a very winning Much Ado About Nothing (1993), before the partnership ended with Branagh’s affair with Helena Bonham Carter. Does he think he and Thompson will ever work together again? “I don’t know,” he says. Would he like to? “She’s a terrific talent, so who knows?”

Branagh is clearly not keen to talk about his personal life, however much of it is already in the public arena. Yet so little is known of Shakespeare’s life that All Is True must make a series of guesses to fill the void. (The script is written by Ben Elton, who has already treated the subject as comedy in Upstart Crow.) But the element most likely to raise eyebrows is the casting of Judi Dench as Hathaway. Dench is 84. It’s very unusual to cast a woman 26 years older than her leading man, isn’t it? “Is she 26 years [older]?” says Branagh, surprised. “Really?” I nod – does he think audiences will balk at that?

“I don’t think so. I was aware that for the past 100 years of cinema that age gap has usually been the other way round. If it felt it was going to kill the story, I would have been terrified; for some maybe it will, but for me, not at all. She’s unique and to have that chance with one of the greatest living actors, the age thing didn’t come into it.”

Is it an example of “age-blind casting”? “Yeah, I guess so. She was the right person for the role.” The film seems to suggest that Hathaway and Shakespeare reunite sexually, too. I wonder if, as a director, he considered having a physical scene between them? “No, it didn’t seem appropriate for this. I wouldn’t have balked at it if it had seemed right, very much not.”

He also shares a seven-minute scene with Ian McKellen, who plays the Earl of Southampton, to whom Shakespeare famously dedicated two poems. It evolves into a duel between heavyweight Shakespeareans when both recite Sonnet 29 (“When, in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes”). “I practised for that scene as I’ve never practised before,” Branagh admits, explaining that he went to see McKellen perform as Lear last year, and rehearsed with him backstage. “I found that pretty intimidating… You’ve got to be up pretty early in the morning to keep up with Dench, but with him…”

It’s one of the pivotal moments of the film, which clearly suggests that the Bard was in love with a man. Is that an unavoidable conclusion from the Sonnets, four-fifths of which are addressed to a “fair youth”? “I think it’s certainly unavoidable not to consider it very strongly,” Branagh says. Is there room for doubt that Shakespeare preferred men? He laughs. He’s weighing his words carefully. “I think it’s a strong possibility.”

Branagh does this a lot, studiedly avoiding sound-bites. Asked if he believes Shakespeare was indeed the author of the plays, he decides: “The other theories are brilliant speculations, but there has been no winning piece of evidence. In the current state of knowledge, I would follow the man from Stratford.”

Branagh’s family moved from Belfast to Reading to escape the Troubles when he was nine. As a boy from the sticks, who arrived at Rada in the late Seventies, then went on to act, direct and try his hand as a playwright, had he wanted to actually be Shakespeare?

It’s impossible to imagine it, he says. He just felt “so at home and happy telling stories in the theatre to a live audience, the itinerant nature of it. Those that were ahead of me – whether it was Shakespeare or actors of the past or directors – I was inspired by them.”

Branagh’s career began in a blaze of glory. But while his stage reputation continued to grow, in film at least there was a mid-period lull. His Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1995) was panned; his run of big-screen Shakespeare adaptations stuttered with the widely derided song-and-dance version of Love’s Labour’s Lost (2000), and even when he returned with a striking As You Like It (2006) set in 19th-century Japan, around the same time as The Magic Flute (2006) and Sleuth (2007), all three “received a pretty rough time”, he says. Yet he’s sanguine about criticism. “Sometimes people don’t like ’em. It’s as simple as that. I put the same feeling into all of them.”

He has always had a phenomenal approach to work that seems to border on mania. Since he was 29, he has been using meditation to ensure that he doesn’t yo-yo between frantic activity – “I wouldn’t characterise it as manic, but I would say, yes, extremely hectic at times” – and its corresponding depressive state.

“I knew I had to work quite hard at all those things that would try to allow you some peace amid the noise and haste. I like to read about spiritual matters and I’ve developed the meditation since then to try to find the way to turn down the noise. When the engine’s revving really high, I think you have to be careful.”

A decade ago, Branagh made the decision to leave the West End production of Hamlet he had been about to direct, starring Jude Law, to take up the reins of Thor (2011) for Marvel. It was a change of direction that opened the door to a new phase in his career, as a director of blockbuster movies. He won’t accept the charge that comic-book films have killed grown-up cinema – “Well I’ve just made a grown-up film, I’d say” – and mounts a strong defence.

“In the best hands you get stories that involve spectacle and, in some cases, depth or wit or creative imagination that allows for a really cinematic experience, they provide stories that make you want to go to the pictures. They ain’t killing grown-up movies.”

His hit 2015 Cinderella, starring Lily James and Richard Madden, will be followed this summer by a lavish Disney adaptation of Artemis Fowl, Eoin Colfer’s 2001 novel about a boy genius who discovers the fairy world beneath our feet. Blockbusters bring their own set of pressures. Does he fear that if Artemis Fowl bombs, that avenue closes? “No, it doesn’t feel that way, although perhaps it is that way,” Branagh says. “I think if it felt like that it would be quite hard to do the work, but I’ve certainly been in situations where if a movie doesn’t work you’re really aware of the cold winds that blow around you for a while. It’s a commercial business and these are big investments.”

What would he do if an invitation to take on the Bond franchise came his way? “I have absolutely no idea,” he says. “I have Artemis Fowl to finish and I hope we get to make Death on the Nile [the second of his Agatha Christie adaptations, after Murder on the Orient Express, in which he stars as Poirot] towards the end of the year. Ask me the Bond question a picture or so from now.” He leans back.

“I should be so lucky.”

There will be a preview screening of 'All is True' followed by a Q&A with Kenneth Branagh at VUE cinema in Leicester Square on Wednesday 6th February, from 6.30pm.

Tickets are £20 for non-subscribers and £10 for subscribers.

[jackblankhsh]

Fell on Black Days...

When Chris Cornell died my social media feed flooded with posts about those lamenting the loss.  It reminded me of previous occasions such as the death of David Bowie, Alan Rickman, and the plethora of celebrities who passed last year; online communities posting music, gifs, memes, and video clips as a way of eulogizing the departed.  Then as now I scrolled through myriad such signs of mourning wondering why these deaths mean so much.  

I usually feel detached from the demise of a celebrity.  Even those I admire have never really affected me in any obvious fashion.  It’s hard for me to be overly distraught over the loss of a person with whom I had no interpersonal relationship.  That isn’t to say I don’t have some type of personal connection, but such threads always struck me as more nebulous and abstract.  For instance, throughout high school and college I listened to Pantera a great deal, however, when Dimebag Darrell was murdered I didn’t experience any profound melancholy.  And yet, I know for a fact that his death still affects the mood of many Pantera fans.  Simply putting any of their music on a jukebox eventually elicits the attention of a CFH enthusiast, who invariably nods somberly – funerary headbanging – as they turn the conversation, almost immediately, to the death of Dimebag:  “This is a kickass song.  Sucks that he’s dead, man.”  Joy of the song sharply gives way to a reminder of the dead.

Now, that may seem an extreme example, a murder is bound to hold root in anyone’s mind, but the same is true for celebrities who have passed less horrifically.  Dead musicians draw out the most common instance of this, really listen to the conversations people have about deceased celebrities.  Talk starts out mentioning why so and so meant a great deal to an individual, but discussion soon moves towards two statements:  

1.  There will never be more (films, songs, paintings, etc.) from Blank. 2.  What remains will often be less enjoyable; now tainted by death a song, a scene, or a photo becomes a reminder of loss.  

What concerns us most is that we’ve lost those things which gave us happiness.  The joy of hearing a song or seeing a film will never be quite as potent now that it serves as a reminder of loss.  However, it’s never about the person, it’s about their product.  To this day, people still remark on the suicide of Hunter S. Thompson in regards to wanting his writing, particularly the dagger prose with which he might stab whatever current political madness is rising.  Yet, I’m willing to assume, with absolute certainty, Thompson’s son, Juan, doesn’t want his dad back so he could write another book.  Fans can only want back that part of the celebrity they actually knew.

Our connection to famous people is often indirect.  We assume a level of relationship potential based on how their works make us feel as opposed to any understanding of the actual individuals – just because you love Kurt Cobain’s music doesn’t mean you’d be best friends.  (In fact, the more one tends to learn about beloved celebrities the less appealing they actually become.  Hunter Thompson could be a wild merry prankster, or a frighteningly explosive volcano.  Just ask his ex-wife.  Louis Reed may play the music you love, but he never met a woman he wouldn’t brutalize.  Roman Polanski:  rapist.  And let’s not even start down the horrifying litany of offenses numerous sports icons commit from every conceivable type of cruelty to outright murder.)  Because we don’t actually know them celebrities can be the people we want most in life:  someone who understands us; and a vicarious means to see our dreams come alive.

So it’s no wonder those products become tainted.  Hearing a beloved song by Bowie is a constant reminder that the man who wrote it, who seemed to speak to your very soul, is gone.  Watching Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, depending on your inclination – Jane Russell or Marilyn Monroe – means that vicarious sex appeal really is just a dream because the actors are dead and gone.  There’s no one living it for you, and though films are always fantasy, they seem less so knowing the performers are alive somewhere in the world.  In essence, what’s lost isn’t so much the celebrity, but a degree of connectivity to others as well as dreams.  

Abstract though it may be art unites at a subconscious level, so do sports.  At the minute details our preferences become subjective; however, broadly speaking they involve general themes.  I may have turned on “Becoming” because of my own particular reasons, yet it speaks to any other Pantera fan who hears it, in essence giving us proof we aren’t alone in life.  There used to be someone who created something that connected strangers to one another.  It’s a profoundly unique accomplishment.  So it’s no wonder the loss of that focal point leaves us adrift for a while.  Such communities orbit the celebrity, and without them a real threat seems to emerge:  the lynchpin is gone, so the whole cosmos may fly apart.  Yet, now is the beginning of true immortality.  The memory sustained by devoted fans, the legends turn into mythical gods, holding the universe together.  

#

I get how material is tainted by the loss of a celebrity, but I’ve always been comforted by the fact those same materials still persist.  For instance, Chris Cornell is gone.  I can still listen to his music, and though it may stir some darker sentiments than before, his absence doesn’t change what it once meant to me, and will mean again.  That thing which was significant to me still remains, so in a way is comforting.  Still, I find it hard to cry over the loss of a man I didn’t know.  Loving his music doesn’t mean loving him, and I haven’t lost his music.  In fact, I haven’t lost anymore of Chris Cornell than I ever had, while his friends and family have lost an entire human being from their lives.

Others aren’t likely to be as dispassionate as I am.  I’m well aware of this.  As such I can’t help wondering if I’m missing out on something.  While no one ever wishes to grieve it seems like those who do, in these instances, who are not his immediate friends and family, have lost something profound.  It’s entirely possible I’ve missed out on a depth of feeling of some significance, and I sometimes worry if that means I lack something human not having that.  Still, it may simply be that I’m more connected to the moments of my own life:  at this movie I got my first kiss; this album acted like the soundtrack to that horrible winter; her book inspired me to be a writer, and his showed me the way to my voice… it probably sounds incredibly narcissistic I’m sure.  Unless one considers it like this:  any kind of death is mostly a reminder of our own mortality, so although there’ll be no more elegant plays, films, songs, or whatever, recognizing the loss should serve as inspiration to spend time with the real people in our lives.  

Sure, let Bowie be the soundtrack to your adventure, but make sure to have one.  He certainly did, and who’s to say you might do any less?  Missing the words of Hunter, what’s wrong with yours?  Alan Rickman can’t share that sonorous voice, so I guess it’s time you did.  There’s an absence in the universe that needs to be filled, not because of some selfish desire for fame, but because maybe you can make someone feel less alone carrying the torch a celebrity dropped when they died.  It doesn’t even require being a superstar.

Going back to Cornell, there’s someone out there right now who feels a bit of worry.  The creeping dread flickers at the edge of their mind-sight threatening the possibility there will never be another Soundgarden, or Audioslave to sing the songs which made their life shiny on dull days, brilliant in blackest night, and endurable when torturous… yet, perhaps, it takes a simple visit to kill such bleakness.  

Put on an album.  Pour some drinks.  Share some memories, while making some more.  Because it’s never really the musician, the actors, or the athletes we’re remembering.  It’s seeing that film where a first kiss happened, hearing the music that made high school bearable, the bonding chats at the ballpark… escapism in real time, flavoring the days.

The seasoning tastes a bit different, but it’s still there.  That’s life.  

“Someone tried to tell me something Don’t let the world bring you down Nothing will do me in before I do myself So save it for your own, and the ones you can help.”

Well said Mr. Cornell.  Thanks for the tunes.  They’re more precious now, though the cost is too high.  Yet, unable to change reality, the only thing I can do is what I will do.  Keep playing those songs so a rock legend becomes a rock god, and so, in a way, immortal.

#writing #honestyisnotcontagious #celebrities #dead celebrities #soundgarden #chris cornell #essay #nonfiction #op ed #opinion

[justsomeheadcanons]

PLL-Supernatural AU

Seriously though, picture seasons 1-6 being written like Pretty Little Liars... 

Season 1 

Sam getting weird calls and vaguely threatening messages often centered around his past or Jessica. 

Dean receiving pictures of his dad in dangerous hunting situations, always taken from behind, with no explanations, until one day, after almost a month without hearing from his dad, he gets a text "Haven't heard from daddy in a long time Dean... worried?" And barely a few hours later he receives a picture of Sam sleeping captioned “Night night Sammy! See you in Hell ;) “

Dean rushing to find Sam and  tell him about the text messages and their dad’s disappearance. They decide to go on a “bonding weekend” so that Dean can talk about their dad’s real job without alerting Jessica. Dean warns Sam about how worrisome and intrusive the texts are but he isn’t very concerned, the thinks it’s just a creepy prank. Dean leaves to continue searching for answers on his own, but is interrupted in his search by Sam, who’s been lying in bed, devastated by Jessica's death in an inexplicable house fire.

The two of them setting off to find their dad, clueless as to where to start, taking cases that the mysterious messages lead them to, promising answers as to where their dad is. 

They finally do find their dad, but their joy is short lived because he dies shortly after in a suspicious car crash.

Season 2

The two brothers, utterly devastated by their loss decide to take a break in their hunt to grieve, but their tormenter will not let them rest.

As if the weirdly specific and really intrusive messages weren't enough, Sam suddenly starts to get messages about seemingly random people. Some are just normal people, others are researched by the police, and some even declared dead in strange circumstances.

They pose as police officers to have the number looked up and realize that it’s been used to contact almost everyone Sam had been getting messages about, including Jessica. The number then leads them to Azazel, who they fight and kill. Making them wanted by the police .

Season 3 

Turns out Azazel was just a hit man and the real deal is a local underground celebrity named “Lilith” who owns the fake company the Winchesters set up to explain some of their purchases and lauder their money.

They try taking her out legally or discrediting her, but it’s unsuccessful so in a last ditch effort to make their problems disappear they attempt murdering her, but she’s well protected and they fail. Dean is kept captive by Lilith’s crew and Sam is arrested by the police both for killing Azazel and for trying to kill Lilith.

Season 4

Dean is tortured

Sam meets Ruby, one of Lilith’s ex operatives in jail.