#[ out of character. ] a raft fit for a queen

[aworldofyou]

Don’t mind the dirty mirror but here is a mun picture before a dog walk. My hair is longer :3c I like my ponytail here but it’s my favorite hat.

#[ out of character. ] just a shitpost #[ out of character. ] a raft fit for a queen #[ literaly wearing that hat right now ]

[ninja-muse]

March was a productive month, and not just because I read a good number of books. I also started writing again after a bit of a slump, and I managed to unhaul 37 books from my home library, though some of them have not actually left the house yet. The used bookstore I went to didn't take everything so I have to decide which one I'm hitting next. Or if I'm dumping the bulk on a thrift store because let's be honest, most used bookstores aren't going to want what's left either.

Can you tell I got rid of that many? Only if you saw the state of things before. My shelves are neat and tidy with no books wedged on top of other books to make things fit.

And I was so, so close to ending the month without buying more books! I really thought I was going to manage it! And then, well, I mentioned the used bookstore, right? I've been meaning to read Delaney but few bookstores stock him, and Lincoln's Dreams is one of the only Connie Willis novels I don't own. (That shop also had stickers, and a cute bookmark I can't show you because whiting out the identifying features would ruin the effect.) Under the Smokestrewn Sky was a rescue, of sorts. Why return it to the publisher when you could just buy it, right?

Anyway, in terms of books read, there were some really good ones! And only one that was not so great. I think I'm done reading and collecting Rat Queens and might need to include those in the next unhaul. And don't get me wrong about the Evie Dunmore. It is a Good Historical Romance Novel. There's just something about it that didn't work for me.

Click through to see everything I read this month, in the rough order of how glad I was to have read them.

I Love Russia - Elena Kostyuchenko, translated by Bela Shayevich and Ilona Yazhbin Chavasse

Portraits and memories of the unsung Russia—the poor, the broken, the marginalized.

10/10

🏳️‍🌈 author

warnings: so many, including but not limited to misogyny, homophobia, genocide, violence, sexual violence, drugs and alcohol, abuse, child death, suicide

reading copy

True North - Andrew J. Graff

The Brechts move to Michigan to restart a rafting business. They hope it’ll save their family, but it might do the opposite.

7.5/10

Menominee secondary character

library book

Sociopath - Patric Gagne

As a child, Patric knew something about her was off and kept countering a lack of feeling with dark acts. As a young woman, she learns the definition of “sociopath” and it changes everything. Out in April.

8/10

neurodivergent author

To a Darker Shore - Leanne Schwartz

When the invention that should have guaranteed Alesta's future fails, her best friend takes the fall and is sacrificed to the demon besieging their kingdom. To rescue him, Alesta must descend into hell, where she learns truths about her society—and her gods. Out in April.

8/10

fat protagonist, autistic main character, major autistic secondary character, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters, autistic author

warning: classism, strict religion, autism-related ableism

reading copy

The Temple of Fortuna - Elodie Harper

Amara’s living as a courtesan in Rome but misses her lover and daughter in Pompeii. When she returns to the city, her needs and desires are sent into turmoil—and Vesuvius has started to rumble.

8/10

🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (sapphic), Ethiopian secondary characters

warning: misogynist society, sexual violence, slave society

Funny Story - Emily Henry

What do you do when your partners dump you for each other? Move in together, of course! Out in April.

7.5/10

Iranian-American secondary character, Black secondary character, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (sapphic)

warning: toxic relationships, mainly in backstory

reading copy

Welcome to the Hyunam-Dong Bookshop - Hwang Bo-reum, translated by Shanna Tan

Tired of fulling expectations, Yeongju opens a bookshop. She’s not the only one to find happiness there.

7.5/10

Korean cast, Korean author

library ebook

Aftermarket Afterlife - Seanan McGuire

The Covenant has started actively pursuing the Prices and their allies, and all Mary wants to do is protect her family.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 secondary characters (lesbian, gay, bi man), Korean-American secondary character, 🏳️‍🌈 author

warning: canon-typical violence, bigots

library ebook

Knife Skills for Beginners - Orlando Murrin

Paul Delamare is filling in for a friend at a cooking school when a body is found on the premises.

6.5/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (gay), Black British secondary character, 🏳️‍🌈 secondary character (sapphic)

reading copy

Let Them Tremble - Wolf Epley

The revolution is brewing and both the workers and the government refuse bend. Throw in a destroyed print shop, ghosts, and malfunctioning Shroud devices, and you know things won’t end well.

7/10

major disabled character (partial blindness, limp, hand disfigurement), cast largely of non-racialized colour

won/digital reading copy

The Gentleman’s Gambit - Evie Dunmore

Catriona needs to avoid distractions to write her book but is pressed to help her father’s new colleague around Oxford. Elias needs her help if he ever hopes to smuggle antiquities out of the Ashmolean.

7/10

🏳️‍🌈 protagonist (bi woman), Lebanese love interest, Lebanese secondary character

warning: colonial/orientalist characters

library book

Rat Queens, Vol. 5 - Kurtis J. Wiebe with Owen Gieni (illustrator)

Palisade’s problems continue, including hallucinations, a hipster bar, and a sinister wizard.

6/10

major Black character, major 🏳️‍🌈 character (lesbian), 🇨🇦

off my TBR shelves

Children’s Books

Penelope Rex and the Problem with Pets - Ryan Higgins

Mittens hogs the bed, eats from the trash, and causes all kinds of trouble—and Penelope didn’t even want them!

Currently reading

I’m Afraid You’ve Got Dragons - Peter S. Beagle

Robert doesn’t want to be the country’s dragon exterminator on the best of days, but then Princess Cerise meets Prince Reginald. Out in May.

reading copy

Music from the Earliest Notations to the Sixteenth Century - Richard Taruskin

A history of early written European music, in its social and political contexts.

The Penguin Complete Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle

Victorian detective stories

disabled POV character (limb injury), occasional Indian secondary characters

warning: racism, colonialism

Monthly total: 12 Yearly total: 32 Queer books: 4 Authors of colour: 1 Books by women: 8 Authors outside the binary: 0 Canadian authors: 1 Classics: 0 Off the TBR shelves: 1 Books hauled: 3 ARCs acquired: 5 ARCs unhauled: 7 DNFs: 0

January February

#booklr #bookblr #book recommendations #book recs #reading wrap-ups #read in 2024 #my photos

[wineinthewidow]

Everyone on the show: Cersei is a horrible bitch and you know it. Everyone in society: Cersei is a horrible bitch and you know it. Tumbr: Cersei is a horrible bitch and you know it. me: now THAT is an unfair statement, and you know it.

#a raft fit for a queen [ ooc ] #got s8 #got salt #i am a leading lady [ salt ] #(im so happy my skin is now as thick as brick to character hate or else i'd be here pointing out so much) #(i mean she is a bitch but she's got her reason)

[vidalinav]

Queen of Queens: Prologue

Summary: Post ACOSF fic (so contains spoilers); in this chapter, Nesta dreams strange dreams 

This fic starts in the weeks between the ending and the mating ceremony and then goes beyond. Some chapters, especially in the beginning will feel like one-shots but they’re not. They all connect eventually to the main plot which is Koschei, Nesta’s power, the Mother, the Courts, other countries, fate and so on and so forth. Eventually I hope to have other character’s POV, but that is a challenge in itself. 

Updates every other Sunday (unless I feel like updating earlier); summary for chapters, dates, and all chapter links HERE; Masterlist 

~

Sometimes when Nesta closed her eyes, with the hum of Cassian’s breathing rumbling down her back, the darkness took her quickly. Other times, she’d have to count, her mind like feet racing to climb the staircase of the House of Wind. One step after another. 200. 500. 700 and up again… except she could never reach the bottom and she could never get to the top. The stairs would crumble before her, her handprint still firmly burnt into the stone as night swallowed each step.

Nesta didn’t dream often anymore, a testament to how far she’d come…

But on night’s like these, Nesta dreamed.

On night’s like these Nesta had a hard time even closing her eyes. But sleep always took her eventually. A thief in the night. A small death to the ever-present life she’d be afforded in the morning. Nesta hoped she’d make it to the morning… because sometimes she couldn’t tell.

Sometimes when she closed her eyes, she was already floating in that darkness. The moon beamed down at her, one single eye blinking as she blinked, letting that darkness ripple with light as if she were setting out to sea. She might have had a lantern in her hands, or maybe she was carrying the moon itself. She could never tell… or maybe Nesta just couldn’t remember. All of the details becoming foggy like the mist that surrounded her.

The worst part of her dream always came to her unexpectedly, which always seemed off to her for it was always the same dream…

Nesta would look around her, peer out into that wide open space of a glittering, black sea and the boat would start to shake. She was in a raft, she thought, or a canoe, or… perhaps she was floating on her back. But hands would reach up from the night. It would grab on to her boat—her canoe—her raft. The hands would grip the nightgown of her dress, whichever one she was wearing that night. This night, a pale blue with lace at the sleeves.

And the hands would pull her under.

Pull and pull and pull.

Until it didn’t matter if she was in the cauldron or the sea. It only mattered that she was drowning.

Nesta liked to say she fought against the tide, kicked and screamed and did whatever else she’d learned in training. But truthfully, she never fought that hard. Not after all this time. Truthfully, she was tired of fighting.

Instead, she would let it pull her and she would let herself sink. Let herself breath. Three… six… nine… She never made it to ten… Ten is when Nesta started to scream.

Perhaps not aloud, since Cassian never woke her and she seldom ever seen him wide eyed when she woke up panting.

But Nesta screamed, and the hands still ravaged, and she still sank, and she still didn’t fight back… And just when Nesta thought she wouldn’t make it to the morning, a golden hand would reach out from above.

A golden hand would cease the screaming, would grab a hold of her own, outstretched, waiting for the inevitable burning that always came, and a sweet voice, a feminine, soft voice would ring in her ears until her eyes drifted open.

Nesta would never forget the words—the details of the dream, maybe—but not the words that came on harp strings and trumpets roaring.

Oh no, she’d never forget what the voice called out, and Nesta would start asking questions to match that answer she’d received. She thought she should’ve known what it was.

Would she die today?

Would the cauldron come calling to claim the rest of its power?

Would they be plunged into another war?

Would someone steal the trove out from under them?

Would they finally realize she was as scared as before?

Would she go back into that city today and become who she always was?

Would they…

Would she…

Would someone…

And, Nesta would drift back to sleep with all these questions floating in the space between dreams. The darkness claiming her once more until she woke up, Cassian beside her asking her how she slept.

She never gave him a response, only kissed him, snuggled closer, ridding her skin from that horrifying cold with the warmth of his body.

But still… Nesta could never forget the words.

Not yet, the voice would sing.

~ I feel I wrote this in a weird way but my writing style changes constantly, and this creepy dream-like stream of consciousness sort of thing came out, so we’ll see if that stays or not. Or even if you thought that. 

Obvi, if you want to be tagged let me know. I forget all those tagged, so sorry, so I’ll just put you on the individual fic masterlist tag so I can just copy and paste. Of course, if you have a recommendation of something you’d like to see or just a topic that might fit in let me know and I will see. This fic will be interesting for me to write. It will definitely be different to anything I have written before. Hopefully you did not hate this prologue, but next chapter is wayyyy different anyways. So we’ll get into it. 

Best!

#Nessian #nesta archeron #cassian #post acosf #acosf #acosf spoilers #nessian fanfiction #nesta x cassian

[singingvio]

LEGEND OF MANGA LISTS: Top 5 SADDEST Moments in the Zelda Manga Series!

((NOTE: Twilight Princess mangas and the Skyward Sword excerpt in the Hyrule Historia are excluded from the mangas considered in this list.))

1. Volvagia’s Demise (Ocarina of Time part 1)

In chapter 3 of Ocarina of Time, part 1, the story depicted is titled “An Old and Beloved Friend.” This chapter mostly depicts Link and Volvagia’s fight, along with their backstory depicted solely in the manga and not in the game, as it isn’t canon. The chapter starts with Link’s bow out, a single arrow ready to be embedded in Volvagia’s skull, only for Link to falter. The dragon burns Link and nearly kills him, only for Link to be healed by Sheik.

Link insists to the Goron Link that he can’t fight Volvagia. Sheik makes a fairly robotic comment while playing his harp that the only way to subdue Volvagia is to kill him, and Link loses it, yelling at Sheik, “That’s easy for YOU to say! There must be some way to make him remember me!” Sheik shows him exactly what disasters are happening due to Volvagia’s tantrum, Kakariko and Goron villages close to destruction, and Link sadly recounts the story of how he and Volvagia met before his inevitable battle.

Link saw him as a baby, locked in a cage with a price of seventy rupees in Castle Town. Link bought the dragon and set him free, only for Volvagia to bite his hand and burn his hair with his flames. Link tries to ignore the dragon later, when it follows him, but then Volvagia ends up burning a Stalfos that had been sneaking up to kill Link. Link then befriended the dragon, and Volvagia said his name aloud, and the memory fades as Link is brought out of his story by someone warning him that the volcano is about to erupt.

Link, in a futile, heartbreaking effort to make Volvagia remember him, yells out, “It’s me! Link! Remember me!” Seeing as this does nothing, Link drives his sword into Volvagia’s flesh, beheading him. At his final moments, Volvagia remembers Link and starts to cry, calling his name out one last time to an expressionless Link as he dies.

2. Ghandi’s Defeat and Link’s Following Despair (A Link to the Past)

In Act 3 of A Link to the Past, Sacrifice, Link and Ghandi (a character created to be Link’s friend and travelling companion exclusively in the manga) travel through the Dark World, saving its inhabitants from fates worse than death to pay for their sins. When Link talks to a gossiping monster of a swamp, it is revealed that Zelda is at Turtle Rock, and Link heads there immediately. Ghandi, however, stays behind.

Ghandi claims that a bandit can’t risk her life just to save someone else, and Link argues that he only got this far because of her helping him. They inevitably split up, and Ghandi worries silently about Link and confesses to herself that she’s had a crush on him and can’t bear to see him reunited with Princess Zelda, as he clearly loves her instead.

Meanwhile, Link makes his way to Agahnim at Turtle Rock, to free Princess Zelda. Agahnim calls on a giant, firebreathing hydra to stop Link from saving Zelda, and Link, thinking nothing of it, defeats the monster with ease. Link comments on the monster’s strength, saying, “It’s kinda weak, for such a big…” and then he realizes. The monster vanishes into smoke, revealing the broken body of Ghandi, who isn’t dead, but very close. Link is heartbroken, and immediately hatred fills his heart as he turns on Agahnim for making him fight Ghandi.

Agahnim points out what Link is becoming, a hateful wolf, and Link watches his own body transform in horror as he cries out in agony. Zelda  manages to break free of her crystal cage, and heals Link from his beastly form. Together, they manage to heal Ghandi before she dies as well, and the two are properly reunited.

3. Pirate Captain and His Lady (Oracle of Ages)

In chapter 7 of Oracle of Ages, The Pirate Captain, Ralph and Link are stranded in an unknown body of water on a raft, trying to get back to the mainland to rescue Nayru. They’re rescued by the Pirate Captain, a man worn away to only soul and bone, as is his crew. Ralph and Link ask him how long he’s been sailing, and he replies that he doesn’t know and is very tired.

The Captain and Link discuss Link’s sword and its fine craftmanship, and then the Captain notices Ralph holding the Harp of Ages, and asks for a song. Ralph obliges, playing a traditional waltz, and the captain is happily lost in the memory of when he was in Labrynna, dancing with a fine lady under the stars. He says, “I remember this song from when I danced with her! We were in love, and the world was ours. Until it ended, and I set to sea to forget. But I could never forget… not her.”

He then makes a bold declaration, one soon revealed to be one of many when Link reads his logbook, that he will make it back to Labrynna to reunite with the lady he still loves to this day. As the ship is caught up in a horrific storm, Link gets his hold on the Captain’s logbook, reading in horror the logs there. “Day 23: set sail for Labrynna. Encountered a storm. Day 145: Storm. Day 317: Storm… They’ve been stuck in this storm forever!”

Link and Ralph attempt to escape the ship in their fear that they won’t be able to, and the Captain attempts to stop them. Link manages to tell the Captain that if he lets them go, he can fix things for him and his Lady, and the Captain, on the brink of tragedy as he lets Link and Ralph go, his final words are a request to Link. “If y’see this lady on your journeys, lad, tell her… the Knight who set sail… will love her for all eternity.” He shows Link a picture of Queen Ambi, and with that, he disappears without a trace, and is never shown again.

4. Shadow Link’s Final Stand (Four Swords part 2)

In chapter 12 of Four Swords part 2, The Four Sword Forever, we see the Four Links’ final stand against Vaati in order to save Zelda. Previously in the manga, Shadow was resurrected using the power of the Dark Mirror after a crushing betrayal from Vio, the smart, collected side of Link he’d thought to be his friend before his temporary defeat. The Dark Mirror is the source of all dark magic, including his life force. Shadow was resurrected right in front of Zelda, who was staring sadly at him, and he yells at her angrily to not take pity on him, as he hates it.

Zelda is then enshrouded in a dark cloud, and Shadow panics, asking Vaati what’s happening to her. When he realizes Vaati is going to kill Zelda, he completely breaks down, taking a quick detour to help the Links by disguising himself as Vio before going back up and grabbing a chair Zelda had been sitting in prior to her slow poisoning in the cloud, throwing it at the Dark Mirror with a scream and breaking the center of it.

Finally, in the final chapter of Four Swords part 2, the Links are almost where Shadow, Zelda and Vaati are. Shadow is incredibly weak, putting almost all his weight on the side of the Mirror. Vaati panics, yelling at Shadow that if he destroys the mirror, Shadow will die too. Shadow grins at Vaati, before saying, “That’s all right. I came out of the Dark Mirror. And with it’s power I woke you. How fitting that I use it to destroy us BOTH!” And with that, he shoves the mirror to the ground, successfully killing Vaati.

The other Links find his body lying next to the mirror, thanking him, and Shadow starts to close his eyes when Vio yells at him to “hang in there!” Shadow then calmly recounts what his life is like as Link’s shadow. “A shadow… usually only ever follows its body. It never gets to lead the way. Today I faced the enemy… on my own. It felt pretty good, but that still doesn’t make me… part of the body.”

Green (the leader and most ‘Link-like’ of the four) tells him the opposite, telling him that he’s their friend, and Shadow, with newfound energy, gets up and reaches towards the other Links, only for him to fade into the light and disappear, dying permanently and for the last time as the other Links stare at where he once was.

5. Skull Kid’s Backstory (Majora’s Mask)

In chapter 9, Fierce Deity Link, the Moon is stopped by the four Giants in Termina. Link sees Tael and Tatl reunited, and notes how sweet it is before thanking the Giants and joking with Tatl about how long it took for them to arrive. Skull Kid, meanwhile, shakes in the background, knocked to the ground and not getting up. In a moment of clarity, the mask not having control on him in his moment of emotion, Skull Kid despairingly recounts his tale.

Skull Kid sadly says that he didn’t mean for this to happen, only wondering why the Giants left him. A flashback is then shown from Skull Kid’s point of view, the Giants getting ready to leave as Skull Kid desperately tries to hold them back. “Why?! No! No, you mustn’t! Hey… Wait! I said wait! Don’t go! Hold on! I said wait! Don’t go! Can’t you hear me?!”

He cries out, many times, sometimes even trying to forcibly hold the Giants back and failing drastically. He ends up falling off a cliff, still trying to catch up with the Giants as he’s battered and bruised, still crying, “Don’t go!” He’s then seen travelling across the desert, tripping and folling multiple times, when he accidentally steps in a bird nest. The birds immediately attack him, yelling at him to watch where he’s going and that it’s fun to hurt him by pecking him.

Skull Kid shakily reaches a hand up to keep going, but gives up as rain pours down on him, tears pouring down his face as he stares at the ground in defeat. The flashback fades out, as Skull Kid says a truly heartbreaking line before being taken over by Majora’s Mask once more, initiating the final battle. “I guess… we never really were friends… after all. They didn’t even say goodbye. Nobody likes me. But with this… Everyone will do what I want! This MASK is my only friend!”

RUNNER UPS

Mask Creations (Majora’s Mask) - The deaths of Darmani, the Goron, and Mikau, the Zora, when Link dons both masks to fulfill their final wishes. Darmani, to see his son again and make the child happy, and Mikau, to spend at least one more concert with Lulu and the other members of his band.

Great Mayfly Fairy’s Transformation (Minish Cap) - The transformation at the hands of Vaati of a lovely singing fairy, with a beautiful voice. Link wistfully mentions that she looks a little like Zelda and Vaati, in a fit of mild hysteria at this point, transforms her into a horrible moth creature. Her transformation is shown to be painful and heartwrenching, as is her defeat.

Deku Tree’s Death (Ocarina of Time part 1) - The famous death of the Deku Tree, in manga format. Link is told of his quest by the Deku Tree, and that the Deku Tree is going to die in the next few minutes. Link cries and even punches the tree in a fit of anger and sadness, crying that the Deku Tree can’t leave him until the Deku Tree inevitably dies and Link must leave on his quest.

Green’s Defeat Against Vio (Four Swords part 2) - When the four Links are finally reunited, Green, Red, and Blue face Vio and Shadow in a battle to the death with Green fighting Vio. Their battle comes to a close as Green falls to the ground, seemingly stabbed through the gut as Vio walks off victorious. Red and Blue yell at Vio and cry over Green, until it’s revealed after Vio and Shadow leave that it was all a ruse and Green was only knocked out.

Zelda and Link’s Meeting (A Link to the Past) - Link finds Zelda in a dungeon, and Zelda tearfully recalls how she had almost given up hope of rescue, stating that she thought she had been all alone until Link had finally found her. Link then embraces her, stating that he heard her voice and she was never alone.

#Legend of Manga Lists #legend of zelda #ocarina of time #a link to the past #oracle of ages #four swords #majora's mask #minish cap

[miraculouscontent]

Ask Explosion #6

Asks answering previous posts:

Oh, okay! I’m glad, thank you!

(the post this anon is referring to)

Ohhhh.

And fjbgjnfkjgfg thanks >////<

I don’t think there’s much wrong with liking the design itself; I prefer Riposte personally, but that’s just me.

The best way I could put the “insensitive” part (I’m sort of dumb when it comes to this stuff and I talked about it before when I was working on that 3D model of Marinette) is that it’s so heavy on Japanese. I mean, they already have Kagami constantly wear what looks like a school uniform and Tomoe is just like--super heavy Japanese. It’s like the show doesn’t know how to balance “can’t tell at all” (with Marinette) and then “okay this is WAY strong” (with Kagami+Tomoe+Kung Food).

That makes sense! I guess the only problem then would be that the kwami can’t really act as mentors of any kind because “you’re saying this just because that’s all you can say” (like Sass, hypothetically, always willing to give someone a second chance, no matter what; I know that’s not what his power specifically entails but it’s just an example).

I would however definitely lean towards kwami being very strict in one alignment, so Tikki would always be on the path of pure good and thus never want to take/steal/whatever, whereas Plagg is always on the path of “bad,” but there are times where Marinette will have to ignore Tikki while Adrien will have to listen to Plagg.

And yeah, the guardians existing and the kwami not having so much control... not a huge fan.

Someone asked about Chat Noir’s flirting and he claimed that it was “on purpose” (you know, while throwing episodes like “Felix” at us but okay) and then he followed up with this:

There was also this other comment he made a while back when someone tried to make a suggestion to him:

Except he’s missing the point completely. When he talks about constructive criticism, he acts like it doesn’t matter, especially not anymore now that they’re working on Seasons 4 and 5:

(I mean, personally, I don’t think I need “engineering knowledge” to know when a rollercoaster I’d ridden nearly tossed the cart off the tracks and had questionable design decisions, but you do you, Astruc.)

Yes, constructive criticism is mainly for seeing a product improve, but that doesn’t mean ignoring it because, “well you haven’t seen the full product.”

“Animaestro” even has a bit of commentary on it:

Ladybug: What's with that trailer too? I am not scared of cats, at all.

Animaestro: You haven't even seen the movie and you're already slamming it?

Chat Noir: He does have a point, you know.

Ladybug: I wasn't slamming it. It's called constructive criticism!

(firstly, of course Chat Noir bows to Astruc on that one because he’s Astruc’s sunshine boy, ugh)

Ignoring the fact that a movie/printed book is usually a “full product,” criticism is also to say “you did this thing wrong, don’t do this in the future.” It doesn’t have to be referring strictly to the show. It’s just, “you did this thing wrong and here’s why, try to catch yourself if you accidentally do it again in the future, whether in what you’re working on now or otherwise.”

(He’s also talked about “unsolicited critique” before and I don’t know what that means? Like, dude, this isn’t someone’s fanfiction where I’d actually agree that you can’t go after them for their work. This is professional work.)

Anyway, remember “Chameleon”? When everyone saw the trailer and absolutely flipped out over it, then there were people who were like, “Wait for the full episode!!”?

Guess what? The full episode came out and people were either just as mad or even madder than before.

Astruc wants to have his cake and eat it to. He wants to say that his episodes are “stand-alone,” and that the order isn’t that important, but when people start pointing out issues, it becomes, “No! You have to wait for the rest of the episodes to come out!” and when people do that, it’s gonna be like, “Well, we already did the whole show so it’s not like I can change anything. *shrug*”

Also, just blaming it on “the industry” when everything else has been exhausted:

(He’s literally brought up before that the New York special was meant to have subplots about other characters, so it’s not like he can never say anything when something didn’t fit the “original vision”; I’m not asking him to get on his knees and say he’s sorry - plus, I do recognize that a lot of influence comes from the industry and people like Jeremy - but I expect a little more than the “whoops” he gave when people pointed out that “Weredad” contradicted his statement on Miraculous Ladybug.)

I think the reason people see it the way they do is because of Fu’s line in “Robostus” seems to imply the exact opposite thing happening.

Master Fu: Universe must always stay in balance. For every action, there is a reaction. For every wish, a price to pay in return. Had your robotic friend asked to become a real boy, someone would have lost his humanity in return.

New Asks:

Marigami is acceptable. I’m not crazy about it but it’s likable enough.

Lukadrien though... no, absolutely not. On a conceptual level, because it’s such a slap in the face for Marinette, and on a fanon level, because most of the jokes around it is Luka going to Marinette like he’s about to ask her out and then just asks for Adrien’s details. It’s just... ugh. I hate it (throwing Marinette into the ship still doesn’t help for me though because I’m not into the love square).

Bi erasure is my least favorite thing.

And yeah, it’s like--they set the love square ship(s?) out onto the water, then the Lukanette ship later with the plan to either sink it or just kinda... return it to the harbor if they don’t make a huge fuss about it?

Meanwhile, the love square ship has been in piece this whole time, and instead of letting it sink, they put it on a raft to keep it floating.

Depends.

In LadyBugOut? It’s already written and I haven’t posted it.

For canon? Like, Marinette being super disappointed at her view of Adrien being shattered or? :P

That’s accurate. I dislike about a fourth-ish of Season 1,then about half-ish of Season 2, then like... almost all of Season 3.

So we’ll just have to see what happens in Season 4.

I like Adrimi, but I’m not crazy about it and I don’t really write for it unless Lukanette is already the main ship (making Adrimi just a background ship). Adrien tends to dismiss Kagami a lot (like in “Frozer” and then “Miracle Queen” with him not committing) and I don’t want to see Kagami hurting like that (I agree with the anon completely that Adrien is more at fault than she is). They’re both emotionally-stunted so I usually have them wait it out or something to have them get together.

My ideal endgame is Lukanette while Adrimi is more like “let’s wait, let’s work on ourselves (especially Adrien; Kagami at least has on firm crush and wants to commit to it), and we’ll see where we go down the line.”

I don’t know if they really have the guts to arrest Gabriel. I also think that Lila might pick up the butterfly at the end of Season 5 or something after she’s been “dealt with.”

Chloe also is the mayor’s daughter so even if the law was that strict on teens, nothing would happen to her unless Andre got replaced.

Big yikes.

Maybe that the thing forcing Marinette away from Adrien and causing things to go wrong is the part of the curse trying to prevent the ladybug and cat miraculous from coming together?

So, close enough to be attracted and want to work together, but forcing the ladybug away from the cat to prevent the miraculouses from being used to make a wish?

I CHOKED ON MY DRINK.

ugh

ugh

ugggggggh

I’m 100% sure that Marinette wouldn’t be as uncomfortable around Adrien if Alya hadn’t constantly intervened. She’s the enabler of both Marinette’s anxiety and her crush on Adrien.

I went back and looked at the scene and it does kinda look like it, yes, because it basically goes from the intersection Marinette is in to another intersection that looks very, extremely similar and I don’t see Marinette in that intersection.

It was just a really, really bad transition. I remember being thrown off for a second too so I don’t blame you, anon.

I think Bob Roth’s intent was to scare Marinette away from showing that proof? He probably knows very well that Marinette has all the evidence she needs to make a case and already had a story planned for the press about how “the young talents they found didn’t measure up and the people deserved better.”

He just needed enough pressure on them for them to believe that he had enough authority to silence them.

And then Silencer tried to silence him instead. :3

I don’t think Marinette’s relationship with her parents would change too much. Like, they already let her just go out whenever she wants which obviously Plagg approves off, although Marinette might become more numb to the idea of being grounded because Plagg just teaches her, “hey lol Ladybug isn’t grounded tho,” so Marinette sneaks out all the time.

Yeah, Tikki would probably justify Gabriel’s behavior, and she wouldn’t really be able to get on his case for flirting as Mister Bug because she’s not aware of it.

lol it helps no one to have Tikki I guess.

Adrien overall and then honorable mention to Alya for Winny’s comment about her being Marinette’s conscience (which is probably why they almost never nail Alya for stuff she does).

KHNJFDNGFD THE LUKANETTE QUEEN MONIKER RETURNS >///<

And ugh, the absolute level of bias in that. Even if the video was made in, like, Season 2 (don’t know, didn’t see it), Season 2 still gives examples of why Adrienette isn’t making Marinette happy at all (and has some of the love square failings too).

The name and the fact that they gave it that name tells me everything I need to know.

Goodness gracious.

Yeah, people can talk about character’s flaws. I mean, we talk a lot here about Marinette’s struggles in getting over Adrien (partly brought on by a lot of outside factors but still).

Also, sure, Luka is a “pushover” because he’s one of the few characters who understands Marinette’s tunnel vision and isn’t bothered by it, okay. :P (Interesting that the topic of Chat’s entitlement towards Ladybug but Luka respecting her choices and just enjoying being around her makes him her punching bag).

Every time I hear, “Adrien needs more spotlight!!!” I lose a part of my soul. How people can’t see that Marinette is the show’s true punching bag is beyond me.

#other: ask and answer #relationship: Kagami Tsurugi & Marinette Dupain Cheng #relationship: Adrien Agreste & Luka Couffaine #category: salt #category: fandom #relationship: Luka Couffaine & Marinette Dupain Cheng #relationship: love square #character: Oni Chan #topic: kwami #character: Adrien Agreste #character: Alya Cesaire #special: Miraculous New York #episode: Silencer #relationship: Marinette Dupain Cheng & Plagg #relationship: Adrien Agreste & Tikki #character: Lila Rossi #character: Chloe Bourgeois #topic: the wish #relationship: Adrien Agreste & Kagami Tsurugi #character: Hawk Moth #relationship: Alya Cesaire & Marinette Dupain Cheng

[mostly-megan]

I Read The Triple Frontier Early Draft Script

And I have several thoughts on it. @frannyzooey Told me to, so I’m going to go down the line of points I thought were interesting and notes on the characters. It’s all going to be below the cut so we don’t bother the people who don’t care.

It was clearly a very early draft, but I still think it’s interesting to see how the characters changed over time.

Important note: Everyone except for Benny and Tom is only referred to by their nicknames, no real names. So I keep that up to keep from getting confused. 

I do not link to the google doc with the script, but you can dm me if you want the link privately.

Warnings: Mentions of violence, suicide, and sex; mild gore; character death; racism

Story:

Pope during the drug raid learns from a teen in the gang where Lorea keeps his money

Redfly, Benny, and Cat are in North Carolina and keep turning down bs military mission

Pope shows up on Redfly’s stoop, stays with his family, and he tells him about the heist

Redfly seems to agree, but only because Pope is asking and not for the money

The “ You were shot 5 times for your country and can’t afford a new truck” scene is here bit for bit

They go meet Ironhead at one of his support group speeches to convince him to join. He begrudgingly agrees.

Cat and Redfly talk at the fight about the job and both reluctantly agree since the other will do it

Cut to South America running through surveillance, we learn that there are two gun towers, ground sensors, machine guns, and several guards

Pope’s informant is Lorea’s sugar baby(?), Yovanna, who gave him a pic of the money in the office a few weeks prior

The plan is to hide in one of the maid vans and make their way in and out with the money

Everyone is distrustful of his old intel, so they do their own surveillance 

Getting caught in rain on heist day, they wait in the jungle for the guard rotations to resume, almost catching hypothermia

The heist vibe is the same, but this time they find the money is not there instantly

Redfly and Cat try to call the mission, but Benny and Pope insist on getting the money

Benny gets shot(grazed?) in the face and wants to say fuck it, but Redfly reminds him it was his idea

Pope blackmails the guard in the video room and gets the tape before killing him

While Cat, Benny, and Redfly grab the money, Ironhead is shot badly and they have to tape his mouth to keep him quiet

This is when Redfly snaps and decides they go out blazing

Lorea’s guards are outside waiting for them, but the boys literally blow up the front of the house and make a run for the river behind the house with a raft waiting

Lorea’s personal guard shoots him

Kidnapping Yovanna from her apartment, they get her money, passport, and visa to her Redfly grills her and seriously debates killing her, but instructs her to get to Australia 

After essentially holding up the airstrip workers, they see the news of the break-in on TV and weigh 8 tons of money 

Cat argues it’s too much weight, but agrees it will probably be fine

During the flight, Ironhead dies from his wound

Helicopter crash is the same

Pope goes in solo to speak with the farmers and they actually almost kill him before Redfly shoots way too many of them

They get pack animals from the farmers, load up the money and Ironhead, and start climbing

At some point, Cat insists they bury Ironhead because taking a body with them is going to start causing way worse issues

They camp at the burial spot, Pope voices how he blames himself for the death

The trek up the mountain is the same, including dumping some of the money and memorizing the coordinates

Getting to a port town, Cat gets sick from exposure, so they rest a few days

The local gang leader figures out who they are and uses his gang of kids to confront them

They shoot their way out and grab with guns and the money backpack on the way to the car

Benny drives and they almost flip the truck

They literally ALL get shot, but still make it to the boat and get away

The boys all agree to donate all the money to charity, in honor of Ironhead, and almost literally head off to the sunset

Characters:

Redfly

All-American late 30′s white guy; genuiniely wants to be a good person, but seems too wrapped up in the Army life

He’s the main character and most of the story is his POV

He is still with Molly and the girls, and we actually get a nice scene with them in here

He legitimately snaps once Ironhead is shot and doesn’t come back until after they bury him

He seriously almost kills Yovanna and sounds like he regrets not doing so

Says the words to her “After you sucked him off? You were lying there, playing with him- And you asked ‘What’s your real name? Where are you from?’-What did he say?” and I disliked it

Yovanna tells him that Pope thought he was so honest and he hates knowing he is not that person anymore

Pope

Mid-30′s white guy; way more of an instigator and really manipulated his friends to join him 

They never give a reason why he wants to get rid of Lorea

His argument for committing a crime is that America was founded on crimes and it’s not different them the war crimes they committed under orders

Seems embarrassed about his relationship with Yovanna and it’s implied he actually told her his name, but he told her Redfly is the most honest guy he knows. 

Calls some indigenous South Americans “Indians” and says they “don’t even know what century it is”

When an informant runs late, he says it’s because they run on Latino Standard Time

He saved Ironhead’s life once in fire and that is how he convices him to come, so he blames himself solely for his death

He literally brought cigars with them for after the heist. They smoke them once they are in the boat

They made Pope the asshole we don’t like, which is understandable, but upsetting

Catfish

Laid-back mid-30′s white guy who now trains Benny and works as a Private Investigator

He still is the main joker and sarcasm, but they really make sure we remember how dark his past is

There is a scene played as a laugh where he gets annoyed waiting for a cheating couple to fuck, so he holds them at gunpoint, tells them to strip and kiss, take the picture, and then tells them he’s sorry, but they should just get a divorce. It comes off terrifying and gross.

He seems to really distrust Pope and is closest to Redfly

He barely speaks Spanish

The Special Forces Museum put up a statue of him, the only living operative to have one, and his wife tells him to retire then because there was no topping that

When they argue about the weight limit, Cat says “Oh, I’m sorry, I missed you going to flight school.” And I appreciate that line.

Benny

Early 30′s white fighter

He’s described as being all or nothing and prone to manic depressive behavior and “prone to pills”

Redfly thinks he’s too old to go pro in fighting and Benny is v offended

He’s the only one to cry over Ironhead’s death

He still uses his “fuck you” money for a fire

He seems to have the most med knowledge and is the one checking for hypothermia, gives the “reason” why Ironhead dies, helps nurse Cat when he’s sick

He’s mostly played for laughs and it’s sort of a waste

Ironhead

Grizzled, but generous 55 year old white vet

He is literally the father figure here and is called that often

He is not related to Benny, but he seems to have a very soft spot for him as the youngest

He somehow served under Redfly?

He gave up running and gunning to mediate and help newer retirees

In the support group, his speech details all of the horrible things that he’s seen and had happen to him, this is supposed to be the reason why the younger soldiers listen to him

One of the group admits to almost committing suicide the past night and Ironhead say he will not tell him not to do it, just that he will not do it tonight and they all recite not tonight, it’s actually touching to “see” them all taking heart in what he is saying

He only agrees to help Pope because Pope once saved his life in combat and he told him he owes him. This scene is described as a father sadden that he can’t get through to his son, but says yes to keep an eye on them

In the “what will you buy with your money” scene, he says he will donate it to charity. It’s quickly followed by Benny excitedly saying he wants a Ferrari and Ironhead affectionately looks at him and says, “That’s a nice car, Ben!” Which made my doubting heart melt...

He the entire time gives the boys reminders to preserve their humanity and is the one who tell Redfly it’s good he let Yovanna go

When he’s shot, they say that the wound was through, meaning that the bullet entered and exited. But, when he dies, Benny says the bullet must have shifted and nudged into his heart. And I’m really annoyed by that clear mistake....

I genuinely did like this version of the character, not more than OUR Will, but I liked him

Lorea

His intro to the movie is literally leading the police in a high-speed chase in his yellow Lambo

He brings a business partner to his mansion during the boys surveying his house and they see his personal guard shoot the partner and cut off his head so it fits in the trunk of the car

I had to learn that, so now so do you

He has a thing for exotic birds and has to bring in several shifts of maids to clean up after them

He comes off here as way more of a rich wimp

Yovanna

Lorea’s sugar baby/girlfriend who sleeps with Pope and gives him info

She used to be a beauty queen

The script says Redfly is her type and she says out-loud that she wants to watch Pope and Redfly fuck. 

She taught one of Lorea’s birds to say “Hello, Beautiful” and lets that bird get loose in the mansion so she can get the pic of the money for Pope

I genuinely liked her character, too

My Review

I prefer the actual plot and planning of the final movie. The plan and surveillance here slowly fell together smoothly, but ultimately made far less sense.

But, I think they felt like actual friends here. They interact with each other instead of around each other

But this version is racist and kind of gross, so I’d take kind of boring any day

4/10, please do not make me read again

Tagging because you guys seemed interested: @frannyzooey @mandoplease

@krissology @pedropasscals (thought you might like it)

#triple frontier #excuse me while i go rewatch the movie #i only genuinely rooted for ironhead in this #and sometimes cat and benny #redfly bored me as usual #weird script review

[raywritesthings]

Not His to Change

My Writing Fandom: Arrow Characters: Oliver Queen, Laurel Lance, Robert Queen Pairing: Laurel Lance/Oliver Queen (if you really, really like bittersweet endings) Summary: Oliver gets to the afterlife once his work as the Spectre is completed and finds a surprise - and a lesson - waiting for him. Notes: Basically canon-compliant but not for Ol*city or M*rlance fans. Not really all that Lauriver either, tbh, this fic doesn’t really have an audience. Oh well. *Can be read on AO3, link is in bio*

As Oliver felt the energy leave him, he used his last remaining moments as the Spectre to construct the new world that his friends would inhabit together, a combination of two Earths. Two timelines needing to be merged. He brought back some whose lives had been cut short, softened the blows that others had suffered and crafted what he felt was the best version of reality for each of his loved ones that he could think of.

There were some things that he could not change. His father still remained buried on Lian Yu. Oliver could not think of a way for him to have become the Green Arrow without his father’s sacrifice out there in the life raft; the truth was, he was almost more scared of the man he might have ended up being without the island.

The other was Laurel. Oliver’s heart ached, but guilt twisted in his gut at the thought of callously cutting the doppelganger he had gotten to know the last few years down just for the crime of not being the ‘right’ one. The fact was, he had lost his Laurel years ago. And without her loss, the whole second wave of heroes in their city would never have been recruited. Her legacy had had that much of an effect. So he did his best to create the life he wished she had had the chance to have before it had ended; the life she deserved.

A wistful part of him wished that was a life with him, the same way he had wished it in the dream world the Dominators had created. But guilt stayed his hand again: Mia. Getting to know his daughter as an adult made her so real and alive, he couldn’t bring himself to deny her the right to existence. In the new version of Earth, he would remain with Felicity if only for her. So he would give Laurel her happy ending that the Undertaking had robbed her of instead.

Everything decided, his eyes slipped closed, and Oliver felt himself drift away from the realm of the living. Gradually, he felt awareness settle back into his body. The bone-deep exhaustion had left him, and he slowly sat up in the bed he found himself resting in.

It was his old bed, the same that he had had in the Queen Manor all those years ago. Brow furrowing in puzzlement, Oliver rose and looked through the dresser and closet, finding clothes to change into. Once changed, he ventured out of the room and down familiar hallways and stairs. He could hear the low murmur of voices coming from the kitchen, so Oliver cautiously pushed the door open, freezing in shock at the sight of the two people sitting at the kitchen island.

“—think you’ll stick around long, or back to traveling?” His father was asking.

Laurel shrugged, though as she did so, her eyes drifted to him in the doorway. “There you are, Ollie. We were starting to wonder if you were planning to spend your whole afterlife asleep.”

Her remark lacked the bite Siren would have had, her smile light and teasing instead.

“This is… we’re all here, then? There’s not a- a—” He wasn’t sure how to voice his question. Oliver couldn’t remember if being the Spectre had given him knowledge of Heaven or Hell, but he would have imagined wherever he ended up, he wouldn’t be sharing it with both Laurel and his father. They’d sat on rather opposite ends of the scale of morality, after all.

“Welcome to life after death, son,” his dad said. “Or what did that Dumbledore character call it in those books you liked?”

“The next great adventure,” Laurel supplied.

Oliver still felt a little numb, but as he drew up to his father’s chair, the older man stood and embraced him.

“It’s good to see you,” Oliver mumbled into his father’s shoulder. His real father. Not a dream, not a hallucination. Although, was it really the same thing?

He had changed the least about his father and his life, Oliver felt he could say. But even still, he had done what he could to clean up this and that, with the exception of the affair that had created Emiko. Even that he had improved with Emiko being a welcome member of the family rather than his parents hiding her from him and Thea. So was he talking to the father he knew, or just another figment of the man that wore his face? He hadn’t considered that at all, and it made his stomach twist uncomfortably.

Over his father’s shoulder, Laurel was watching him, her look both knowing and compassionate all at once. But this was a Laurel he had never really known either, as much a stranger to him as her doppelganger had once been.

His dad pulled back, keeping a hand on Oliver’s shoulder as he looked between the two of them. “Laurel asked me to let her know when you were coming to join us. There’s some things you ought to talk about, and I think she can explain it better than me.” There was a brief squeeze to his shoulder. “I know how hard you tried.”

“Tried what?”

But his dad walked out of the kitchen. Laurel slowly got up from her own chair but maintained a few feet of distance between them. “So, how was being master of the universe?”

It took Oliver a second to place the memory that question stirred; sitting on the floor of her apartment with a bowl of ice cream in his hands. He hung his head. “Definitely not what it’s cracked up to be. Let’s say I don’t miss it.”

“Not wanting that kind of power for yourself is what makes you a hero, Oliver. But… you did make some choices. Choices that weren’t yours to make.”

He licked his lips. “I couldn’t just kill your doppleganger.”

Laurel held up a hand. “I’m not talking about her. I’m talking about me and Tommy.”

He stared at her in confusion. “You loved Tommy.”

Laurel sighed. “I did in a way. But he wasn’t the love of my life. You know that better than anyone.”

Oliver shifted from one foot to the other. “I had a daughter, Laurel.”

“And I’m not saying you should have given her up, either. I am saying that I didn’t need to be forced into some kind of consolation prize marriage of convenience to make you feel better. I was happier without it.”

“How do you even know that?” He couldn’t help asking. If he had changed time, didn’t that mean everyone else forgot the old timeline? Wasn’t that how Barry said it worked?

Laurel shook her head. “Since I was dead, I got to pick which version of memories I could keep. I chose the version of the life I actually lived.”

Oliver swallowed a lump that was stubbornly trying to rise up in his throat. “Then… you really are my Laurel.”

“Mm-hm.”

He took a step closer, unable to help himself from folding her into his arms. It had been so long, and he had missed her every single day. She hugged him back.

“Everything you went through, everything you lost,” he said in her ear. “Why would you want to remember?”

“Because it created me. The best version of me I know how to be. I wasn’t going to let anyone take that away from me.” She drew back and cupped his cheek. “Not even you.”

“Only you could be that stubborn,” he said, the warmth in his tone belying his words. Laurel smirked back at him. “What happens when Tommy passes?” Even if he had brought his friend back along with so many of his loved ones, Oliver knew it couldn’t last forever. Everyone died eventually. And when his friend got to the afterlife, expecting a version of Laurel that now only existed as a fiction Oliver had invented to assuage his own conscience…

“Then he’ll find his place in the afterlife. I don’t imagine he’ll want to see me, at any rate.” Laurel left his arms completely, walking back to her chair to get a bag that she’d left hanging off the arm. “Considering he was getting ready to file for divorce before the me in that timeline was killed.”

Oliver’s eyebrows pulled together. “What?”

“From what I was told, he could see exactly what he saw in the timeline you and I remember. No matter how much power you have to wield, you can’t change who people are in their bones, Oliver. Only they can change themselves. And I wasn’t about to do that.” She finished slinging the bag over her shoulder, fixing her denim jacket so that it sat properly.

She loved him still. The lump was back, and he brought a hand up to try and wipe at the moisture starting to gather at his eyes before it could get out of control.

“If I could — if there had been a way,” he started. A way for both Laurel and Mia. God, he’d seen the way Mia had gotten on with Laurel’s doppleganger. He was sure his daughter would have found an even more supportive mentor in the Laurel he had known most of his life. The same way Thea once had.

She shook her head sadly. “Your family comes first, Ollie. We both know that. That’s why I’m not staying here. There’s a whole lot of afterlife to explore, a lot of it I didn’t see when I was alive. So you wait here for your family. It’s okay.”

It wasn’t fair, but he knew he would let her go. She was always the bigger person between the two of them, in the end. She walked past him and towards the door, and he couldn’t quite stop himself from saying, “If we’ve got the rest of eternity to spend here, my family might get sick of me after a while.” How many breaks had he and Felicity taken with their relationship, after all?

She looked back, a wan half-smile tugging at one corner of her lips as the long, blonde hair he remembered best spilled over her shoulder. “Then I guess you’ll just have to come running after me if that happens.”

He nodded. “Always.”

“Goodbye, Ollie.”

“Goodbye, Laurel.”

She let herself out of the kitchen, and he heard the front door shut moments later. Slowly, he walked to the island and took the chair she had sat in. Like most times, she had left him with much to think about.

If anyone could see fit to defy him even when he had held the power of a near-God, it was Laurel. A breathy laugh left him at the thought. She always was able to bring him back down to Earth, even when they were no longer on it. Wasn’t that a relief?

#laurel lance #oliver queen #arrow #lauriver #my writing #green arrow #black canary

[tabloidtoc]

National Examiner, April 12

You can buy a copy of this issue for your very own at my eBay store: https://www.ebay.com/str/bradentonbooks

Cover: Mark Harmon quitting NCIS

Page 2: Stars Who Rock Around the Clock -- they believe in the healing power of crystals -- Naomi Campbell, Shirley MacLaine, Adele, Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen, Uma Thurman

Page 3: Debra Messing, Goldie Hawn and Kate Hudson, Megan Fox, Katy Perry, Gisele Bundchen

Page 4: Eddie Murphy's roles and costumes

Page 6: George Clooney is turning 60 in May, and he says being an older dad to toddlers has its benefits -- his son isn't ever going to feel competitive with him and he'll be gumming his bread by the time he'd feel competitive with him, jokes the Oscar-winning actor, whose twins Ella and Alexander turn 4 in June -- George is well aware that growing up with two highly accomplished parents (his wife Amal Clooney is a successful human rights lawyer) can put a lot of pressure on a kid and that's why the couple is already guiding Ella and Alexander with strong values and kind hearts because George says it's their job to make sure that they care about people and that they challenge people in power and look out for people who don't have power and those are the things he was raised with -- the known prankster is also passing the practical joke tradition down to the next generation and he taught Alexander to take a piece of banana, chew it up and then spit it into a napkin, then stand next to him mom, pretend to blow his nose into it and look down until Mama looks at it, then eat it

Page 7: Partridge Family star Shirley Jones turned 87, and she's brimming over with gratitude for her wonderful life that's been chock-full of extraordinary experiences -- she says you have to have a good time and enjoy life to the fullest and before you know it you'll be 87 -- Shirley has three sons (her stepson David Cassidy died in 2017) and 13 grandchildren

Page 8: Take your etiquette test for tea with Queen Elizabeth

Page 9: Brain foods that may help prevent dementia

* Study says new drug slows Alzheimer's

Page 10: Jennifer Garner recently opened up about her real feelings on her body -- she's 48 and single and has three children with ex-husband Ben Affleck: daughters Violet and Seraphina and son Samuel -- in a recent interview, she admitted that her body has changed a lot since having three kids and she doesn't mind one little bit, even though she was hurt when a friend hinted she may be expecting again, saying there are some women whose bodies just, no matter how many babies they have, they bounce right back to that slim-hipped, no stomach and she has so many girlfriends who have that physique and she's so happy for them, but she's not one of them and she can work really hard and she can be really fit and she will still look like a woman who's had three babies and she always will

Page 11: 6 stomach symptoms you should never ignore -- catch problems before the become deadly

Page 12: After more than two decades, James Brolin says he's discovered the way to keep his marriage to Barbra Streisand going strong: negotiation -- it's taken two marriages and 22 years for him to figure it out and he and his wife have gotten so close being locked down together -- his mother was the sweetest person so he never really learned to negotiate with women but now he knows if you sit down and talk about a situation, you can work it out

Page 14: Dear Tony, America's Top Psychic Healer -- don't make snap judgments; you may lose the perfect mate -- Tony predicts a very hot summer coming and a lot more street crime

Page 15: Folks getting their COVID-19 vaccinations at the Berkshire Community College in Massachusetts got a shocking treat: a mini-concert from world-famous cellist Yo-Yo Ma -- while waiting out his 15-minute observation period, the musician sat down to play a socially distant symphony for his fellow inoculees

Page 16: Duchess Kate is never seen without a purse, but what exactly does she keep inside it? There's quite a history between royal women and their handbags: Princess Diana used her clutch bag to cover her cleavage from prying photographers, Queen Elizabeth moves her handbag from one arm to the other to signal to her staff when she's bored of chatting with someone, and Kate carries her bag in her left hand so she can keep her right hand free to greet and shake hands with guests and she holds her bag in front of her when shaking hands might be awkward -- according to royal protocol pre-pandemic, Kate must extend her hand first for another person to shake hands with her, so if she prefers to just smile instead of touching other folks, she uses her clutch to do that -- author Marcia Moody who wrote Kate: A Biography, says the duchess always carries four must-have items: in her small clutch, she carries a compact mirror, a handkerchief, blotting paper and lip balm and every now and then, if she's going to attend a tennis match, for example, Kate will carry a pair of sunglasses -- unlike Queen Elizabeth, whose purses come from a company called Launer, the duchess favors different brands, but mostly a company called Mulberry -- nowadays with three small children, the mom gravitates toward midsize bags with handles because she's got to take more items with her like a handy bunch of tissues, good for wiping little noses and faces, and also takes her camera along

Page 18: William Shatner confesses that when he starred in Star Trek during the mid-60s, he had no idea it would become a worldwide phenomenon still popular today -- Shatner, who turned 90 in March, says it's unimaginable and it's all beyond anybody's imagination or ability to repeat and the greatest thing about being the captain of the Enterprise for three years was his relationship with the cast and the roles were written so well

Page 19: Brandy is a one-in-a million cat because those are the odds she'd ever be found again after she went missing 15 years ago -- when Charles got the phone call from a California animal shelter that his missing pet has been found, he could scarcely believe his ears and the Los Angeles man was skeptical and thought it must be a mistake but he had made sure the two-month-old kitten had a microchip and sure enough, the malnourished stray they found was his Brandy -- Charles did break down and cry because he thought about all of the years he lost from her and when he picked her up, she started to purr and it was very emotional

Page 20: Mark Harmon finally lured wife Pam Dawber out of retirement to star alongside him on NCIS, but the pairing will be short-lived because he's leaving the show after 18 hit seasons -- the 69-year-old star is finally fed up with the backbreaking hours, endless rehearsals, and feuds with cast and crew, and plans to ride off into the sunset with Pam and retire to the couple's Montana Ranch -- Mark's contract is up after season 18, and he's agonized over whether to sign a new one and he's being offered the moon and the stars to come back for a few more seasons, but he says his heart just isn't in it and Mark has faced problems on the set over the past few years and he feels his age, he just doesn't need the aggravation anymore -- NCIS recently teased a possible departure of his character Leroy Gibbs when the special agent commander was suspended for assaulting and nearly killing a suspect but despite that, Harmon insists Gibbs not be killed off so he can leave the door open for a possible return

Page 22: Legendary actor Michael Caine just turned 88 and he's still going strong, starring in an upcoming comedy Best Sellers and says he knows he's old but he doesn't feel old, not in his head, where it matters

Page 24: They say money doesn't buy happiness, but what do people spend their money on that can buy happiness? You don't need millions of dollars to afford the things that happy people buy to stay that way and studies show that anything over $75,000 a year in income is gravy, which means yachts, jewels, second homes and art collections are not at all required -- the best thing to drop your cash on is experiences and doing is better than having and in other words, an object you own will never give you the consistent pleasure of an experience that creates good memories that live on forever -- also the best experiences are the ones that involve other people like having a picnic with family, going rafting with pals, or even just walking and talking with an exercise buddy

Page 25: Freshen Your Fridge -- make a clean start with this 5-step plan

Page 26: Tony's Mystic World -- may the force be with you -- the life force can be drained out of you by fear or worry

Page 28: Sensational Snaps From Around the World -- photo contest captures amazing sights

Page 31: When to trash it -- the useful lifespan of refrigerated food

Page 32: It's been 40 years since Marilu Henner starred on the hit sitcom Taxi, but the great memories and wonderful co-stars are always on her mind because she's still pals with them -- they always stayed in touch with each other and never lost touch and do a Taxi Zoom every two months and they're all very current with each other and they have a text chain as well and they're in contact every week -- Marilu is close with cast members Tony Danza, Judd Hirsch, Danny DeVito, Christopher Lloyd and Carol Kane

Page 33: Garth Brooks is overjoyed wife Trisha Yearwood has finally bounced back from her bout with COVID-19 -- she seems to be 100 percent, according to Garth, and at the end there during fatigue she got real impatient, really kind of mean and sassy and he thought well, she's back to herself -- after announcing in February that Trisha had the coronavirus and Garth said he had tested negative

Page 40: The grass is always greener when you use these simple gardening tips

* Avoid cat-astrophe -- the right way to add a stray

Page 42: 10 things you never knew about Glenn Close -- the wildly successful actress turned 74 in March

Page 44: Eyes on the Stars -- Sylvester Stallone and wife Jennifer Flavin leave a Florida hotel (picture), Jane Seymour is still looking on the bright side even as the world continues to weather the pandemic, one year after the death of Kenny Rogers his family thanked fans as they honored his life, Sharon Stone is dishing dirt about her Hollywood past in her recently released memoir like one moviemaker who told her to have sex with a male co-star to improve their on-screen chemistry, 28-year-old twins Lady Amelia and Lady Eliza Spencer who are the nieces of Princess Diana recently stepped out in South Africa as bridesmaids for fellow high society girl Leila Osato, director Christopher Columbus pooh-poohed internet rumors about the existence of an NC-17 cut of Mrs. Doubtfire but he did confirm there's an unreleased R-rated version

Page 45: Good Morning America co-host Cecilia Vega mugs it up for the camera on the morning show (picture), Gretta Monahan gets out of a car (picture), longtime GMA veteran Robin Roberts displays her ever-present sunny side on the set (picture), the Hollywood Hills home of Johnny Depp recently had some uninvited guests when a man was spotted loitering by the property's pool but ran off after being confronted by a neighbor and not much later Johnny's security team called police about another unwanted visitor who had taken a shower and helped himself to the actor's booze, Elsa Pataky has been married to Chris Hemsworth for 10 years and says patience and communication and understanding are what help their relationship be successful

Page 46: A Texas man has helped thousands of people by donating his blood platelets a staggering 962 times over the past 37 years

Page 47: Celebrity Weddings Gone Wrong -- Ryan Reynolds and Blake Lively, Cameron Diaz and Benji Madden, Nicky Hilton and James Rothschild, Chrissy Teigen and John Legend, Jessica Simpson and Eric Johnson, Freddie Prinze Jr. and Sarah Michelle Gellar, Katherine Heigl and Josh Kelley

#tabloid #grain of salt #tabloid toc #tabloidtoc #mark harmon #pam dawber #ncis #leroy gibbs #leroy jethro gibbs #kate middleton #duchess kate #princess kate #duchess catherine #catherine duchess of cambridge #james brolin #barbra streisand #crystals #eddie murphy #george clooney #shirley jones #partridge family #the partridge family #queen elizabeth #princess diana #jennifer garner #stomach problems #tony leggett #yo-yo ma #yo yo ma #william shatner

[rushingheadlong]

3 and 6 for the writer's asks ❤

Thanks!! I just answered 6 so I’m just gonna copy and paste the same answer here:

6. What character do you have the most fun writing?

Probably Brian or Roger, tbh? They both give really great POVs for stories, though in vastly different ways, and it’s easier to find their voices for me than Freddie or John.

3. What is that one scene that you’ve always wanted to write but can’t be arsed to write all of the set-up and context it would need? (consider this permission to write it and/or share it anyway)

afsdlkfjakslfkakl GOD THERE ARE SO MANY OF THEM

I keep playing around with various ideas for a sequel to the corset fic that deal with more kink negotiation and relationship details... specifically that Brian really loves the corsets and wants to get more and possibly expand into using them publicly, and the reader is just “woah woah woah, let’s pump the brakes here and figure this out”. and then talk of balancing competing kink needs and wanting to wear the corsets out of scenes and a whole bunch of stuff like that? but that is so much to deal with and I do not have it in me to write another 20k corset fic at the moment.

The potential sequel to Haul Away, You Rolling Queens is going to need a lot of set-up for how exactly Brian’s and Freddie’s magic works, and tbh it’s set-up that needs to happen over one or two separate fics before we actually get into the proper sequel so I’ve put all of that on the backburner until I decide how I want to handle it. (The long and short of it is that I just need to flesh out the abilities that sirens have in this series, and then Brian’s defensive magic isn’t actually “defensive” it’s the ability to hold things together - that’s why his wards weren’t working in the beginning of the fic, but why he could enchant The Rhapsody and the raft during the storm. And there’s a specific scene I have in mind where Brian is working with other sea witches and they realize that that’s how his magic works, but it’s not a scene I can fit into the proper sequel so... *shrugs*)

I have a fic that I’ve been playing around with for months now that focuses on Brian immediately after having surgery to fix his ulcer, specifically dealing with the resulting scar and body image issues because of that? I’ve actually gotten quite a bit written for it too, but the problem I’ve now run into is that I have an opening section that I love but the bulk of the fic would need to take place a year later at Ridge Farm and I can’t be bothered to figure out how to bridge that gap in the timeline to actually make this work adlkfjaslkdlak (but here’s the beginning snippet that I’ve been sitting on for like the last year, in case that’s of interest to anyone)

Brian gets released from the hospital with a strict dietary plan and a bottle of vitamin E oil to massage into his surgical scar, and the uncomfortable feeling of being a stranger in his own body. He’s lucky to be alive, he knows that, just like he knows that this surgery was the only way to save his life - but he still has moments, when he looks down at his disfigured stomach, where he wonders why this is the price he had to pay. 

It’s not that it hurts anymore, although it certainly did at first. There were days in the beginning when even breathing would make Brian painfully aware of every stitch holding his stomach together, but that had faded until it only hurt when he laughed, and finally until it didn’t hurt at all. 

No, the problem is that it doesn’t feel like anything anymore. It’s a jagged slash of nothing, twisting from below Brian’s navel up to his solar plexus. He runs his fingertips over it, feeling every bump where his skin now puckers together, and there’s no sensation on his abdomen at all. It makes him feel light-headed and a little sick and sometimes, when he touches his scar, he thinks he’s not touching his own body at all. 

The doctors had told him to massage it to break down the scar tissue and help it heal smoother and Brian wants that, he really does, but touching this part of himself becomes something that he actively dreads. He doesn’t like feeling the rigid mass of scar tissue beneath his skin, and every time his thumb slips into a crevice that he can’t see his stomach lurches unpleasantly. He hates how it leaves his hands sore, his skin tacky with oil, his fingers twitching from the sensation of touching skin that should be smooth but never will be again. 

So Brian stops massaging the scar, and eventually stops touching it at all. He masters the art of getting dressed without looking at his stomach, and then changing his shirt without touching it at all. There’s no avoiding it when he showers but Brian is no stranger to hating his naked body and with enough mental preparation he can scrub himself down without wanting to scream. 

His bandmates are understanding, at least as much as they can be considering that Brian doesn’t let them see the scar and refuses to talk about it beyond, “It’s fine, it’s healing well.” 

(It’s not entirely a lie, because on the days when Brian can stand to look at his scar he can see the ways in which it is healing. It’s less red, less irritated, but it’s no less scarred and no less numb - and no amount of improvement makes Brian feel more at ease in his new body.)

The Sheer Heart Attack cover gets changed to partially-clothed, rather than fully shirtless, allowing Brian to show up fully dressed while the others debate how much skin they’re willing to reveal, shuffling out of shirts and undoing more and more buttons with an ease that Brian has never felt, and now knows that he’ll never feel again. 

“You sure this is what you want?” Mick asks as he adjusts his camera settings and the four of them pile into position. “More skin will sell more albums.”

“We’re sure,” Freddie says firmly. He gives Brian an encouraging wink before adding, “Besides, what about always leaving them wanting more?”

Brian gives Freddie a weak smile as Mick snorts and mutters, "Whatever you guys want."

And from there… it actually goes alright. 

Brian still tires far too easily, but it doesn’t take any effort to lie on the floor and make different faces as Mick snaps photo after photo of them. His scar still pulls uncomfortably when he goes to readjust his position, but it doesn’t hurt when Roger makes him laugh and that’s more than he had dared to hope for when he was still in the hospital. They wrap on the shoot and for the first time in a long time Brian thinks he might actually be okay.

“Hey, Bri, you wanna jon us for some drinks?” Roger asks as him, Freddie, and John get changed out of their now-wet clothes and Brian hovers awkwardly near them, refusing to change out of his shirt despite the fact that there’s now vaseline smeared around the neckline. 

Brian offers him a half-hearted smile and says, “Sorry, can’t. I’m still not supposed to have any alcohol.”

Between the damage that the hepatitis did to his liver and his still-delicate digestive system, Brian has been dry since the beginning of the summer. He’s never been a heavy drinker so he doesn’t mind, for the most part... but there are moments where he’s forced to interact with his scar and the wrongness of it all makes him feel outside of his own body, and he wishes then that he could get drunk - just a little, just enough to pretend that the haziness in his mind is because of the alcohol, and nothing else. 

“Shit, sorry, I forgot,” Roger says, and Brian shrugs in acknowledgment.

#long post // #askgame #fic talk #quirkysubject

[aworldofyou]

MERRY CHRISTMAS EVE AND A MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL.

#[ out of character. ] a raft fit for a queen

[fangirlingweirdo]

TWT analysis - spoiler alert!

First of all, I just wanna start off by saying that this is heavily based on my opinions and just my personal review about the movie. I’ll try categorize them into different parts and make it brief as possible.

Story

I’m just go out and say I freakin LOVE Trolls World Tour. The concept of the movie where each tribes of trolls is a combination of different genres of music was very uniquely established and it feels so clever. The amount of energy in this film is more fun and exciting than the first film as it kinda introduces different types of trolls and their types of music and culture, showing that there’s more than just pop trolls in the troll kingdom. The underlying themes where dreamworks introduces the ideas about cultural appropriation, colonialism and musical criticism has never been more relevant and more applicable in society’s issues. The message behind the movie is very clear and they executed that perfectly to the viewers, especially to the younger audiences teaching about diversity and that it’s okay to be different and that differences matters. Although I do noticed some inconsistencies in the movie like they have been given a very little time to introduce the different types of trolls and the rushed subplots of the film, Like Cooper having his own story arc where he found out he’s actually a funk troll, (a pop and funk troll) Though I hope they left all those details on Trollstopia.

Animation

I could just let the movie speak for the animation itself and not give a review about it, but I just have to. The animation is a 10/10! periodt. from the visuals to the color to the character designs, you will never be disappointed. Dreamworks animation has a reputation for its good animation, and Trolls is definitely a game changer and the team outdid themselves with this one. Not only with the vibrant colors that stayed since the first film, but also the follow up included new visuals to overall enhance the look of the story, like with pop trolls and their combination of vibrant hues of colors and glitters, and with rock and their angsty mood and redish hues, and the other tribes of trolls that correlates with their type of genre.

Characters

I feel like this is gonna be longer than my other reviews for I do have a lotta bone to pick with this one. So WARNING, this ought to be long. You can skip and scroll it down if you want.

let’s start off with Poppy. Little Queen Poppy. She now became the Queen of the pop trolls and it’s up to her how she’s gonna rule the trolls. (obviously) Then she found out that there’s this whole other world of trolls and she now.. suddenly wants to reunite all trolls and their music. She also got a side plot where she tries to be this epitome of a “good queen” that is kinda her motivation throughout film. At first you’ll think, what’s wrong with Poppy? Like she IS the main protagonist in the movie, so creators must’ve made her like the ‘hero’ in the film. Well... 👀 hmm I— I dunno bout that. let’s see.

I get that the film wants to give her an arc where she has to understand the differences between them (pop trolls) and these other kinds of trolls. And then in addition to her optimistic, bubbly personality, she wants to unite all trolls against the viewed villain in film Queen Barb who wants to destroy all music and make em under rock. Everything could’ve ended greatly if Poppy will just listen. (i get it. whole point of the film is poppy not listening) Her tunnel vision kinda made her annoying at this time around. Her overall ideology about pop being the superior music has made it hard for her to accept all the other types of trolls and their genres of music. In a scene in Lonesome Flats, she kinda just.. disregarded the whole idea of “music can be also sad cause life is sad sometimes” she thinks that music is suppose to make you happy, which is true in a sense but not disparaging the fact that music can also be about sadness and other things in life.

Throughout the whole film, she’s only too focused on one thing and refuses to listen to any advice, especially given by Branch, Biggie, even from her own father. It just felt a bit out of character for me. I guess she might’ve thought her positive, optimistic ways that led the bergens to be their friends kinda checked out and saved the trolls so might as well do the same on this one, when clearly that’s NOT the case.

There was also that one scene where she kinda gets down on Branch for being a bad friend when he gave her constructive criticism and advice (in the raft), completely taking his words out of context assuming he doesn’t think of her as a good queen. (At this point, I wish he could’ve just said yes cuz honestly, it’s getting annoying lmao.) Which is.. why exactly? He’s with her throughout, supporting her despite all the warnings.. but anyways.

I guess the only thing I like about her is she did get the arc that she needed. I mean I thought her not listening has been her whole thing in the franchise like in the first film and Trolls Holiday. I kinda wanted her to realize the stubbornness she acted upon throughout the whole film and somehow it was executed quite nicely..? I sure wish this is the last time she won’t listen and that she learned from all these things. Overall, her character.. didn’t really work out for me this time unlike in the first film though her growth and development is enough. Hopefully they’ll work out on her character more in the future.

Now, Let’s go to Branch. Personally, I love him. He’s my favorite throughout the whole franchise. I’m just gonna say it now, but i’ll try not to look biased here. lol

I love how branch is the sensible one this time. I get that he became like the voice of reason for Poppy and her consort. And let me just say the character development of Branch, from being reclusive, withdrawn type of troll now becoming more open and congenial, the personality growth has made his character so much fitting and I’m so glad to see that. His vulnerability made it easier for him to connect with other trolls, especially to Poppy. There was that one scene where he opened himself to Hickory about his feelings towards Poppy. Just minutes before that scene, he didn’t trust him. But then moments later, he became honest to him, showing a huge amount of growth in his character.

All those aspects really built Branch’s character more stronger. However, I couldn’t help but wish there’s more like an arc to him as well. I mean there has been a lot of injustices for his character. Like basically since the first film, no one’s ever listened to him, even with his warnings about the bergens returning to get them, which turns out he’s actually right by the way and yet no one acknowledges it and still same thing happened in the second film. It’s like a running gag now at this point, where no one listens to Branch and Poppy and the other trolls downplays Branch’s excessive preparedness for danger, then at the end he was actually right about his assumptions. I’m not saying that Branch is always right and that Poppy is wrong. I’m saying they could’ve at least find a balance between that, where Poppy would listen more to Branch and Branch would at least dial down the paranoia and acknowledge the positivity Poppy tries to show. (but then I realized if that happens, the show wouldn’t be as interesting anymore lol)

His range of emotions and awareness is definitely not like other pop trolls. I saw this observation in where he claimed he liked the music of country trolls, sad and a bit gloomy not like the kind of music they are used to sing. And then I realized, he was actually the first troll to ever like a different genre of music. His flexibility and openness to different ideas and genres of other trolls has made him more unique from Poppy or any other pop troll, even blending in with the kpop and reggaton trolls. I just wished they didn’t just reduced his character as being the typical “love interest” of the main character, but making like an arc storyline for him as well (hopefully in future) in my opinion.

Now I bleed Broppy. I definitely love the subplot of the movie where Branch tries to confess his love for Poppy, which at first I thought “didn’t we already do this in the first film though?” but then I guess it wasn’t really official. Basically the story kinda revolves around them and how they teamed up to discover all these new types of music and trolls. It’s almost like a nostalgic feeling for the older viewers when they first headed out to an adventure in the first film. Only difference is Branch is harboring strong romantic feelings for Poppy, whom may also feel the same but totally oblivious to it. The subtle interactions between the two of them brings different energies in the movie, and those interactions are just what we need. Like with affirmations they give each other, and the cheeky smile exchanges. You can really feel the romantic tension between the two, which really vibes with the atmosphere of the show, especially given the chemistry between them in the first film.

The third act breakup of Branch and Poppy was definitely relevant to the story and their different personalities having to give them space for a re-evaluation of their friendship. Honestly that was totally necessary for their relationship, considering how different they are together, especially with Branch who wants to take their relationship in the next level (and that applies for Poppy as well whom I’m sure also feels the same way) So it’s reasonable they had to split for a while, not to ultimately close the chance of them being friends again because of being different but the fact that despite their differences, their love and care for each other will always be stronger, and that will help them find a way to make up again, which is what the message of the main plot tries to exhibit. I do wished they put like a moment for them where they just apologize for their actions (talking to you poppy. ahem)

Overall Branch’s character has left me half satisfied and somehow craving for more development and revelations about his background. The overall growth of his character since the first film is definitely something worth treasuring.

Now with Queen Barb. Well, She’s something else huh? 😆 With the movie running low on time to introduce these whole new characters, they definitely put enough time for us to get to know Barb. Her character as villain was introduced quite nicely. Although rock genre being shown as the villain, isn’t that a little overdone now at this point? But anyways..

Her plan was to unite all strings and make all trolls from different genres become a rock troll or rock zombie. Basically she just despises other genres of music so she forcefully took all different strings to destroy all music except rock. Kinda like what Poppy wants..? Now here me out. It’s like when Barb said she and Poppy are the same. Both of them wants to unite all trolls. Only difference is their mindsets about music. Barb thinks all other genres music are awful except for rock, and Poppy thinks pop music is the right music. There is one who thinks that other music are distasteful and one who thinks their music is the superior. If anything, Barb has a more reasonable point in trying to dominate the troll kingdom. Barb acknowledges the differences between them and the other trolls, and it may not be the right way to do it, she just wants to unite all trolls because she thinks music is what divides them. While Poppy wants to unite all trolls despite their differences, it’s almost like forcing them to give up their own music to follow what Poppy thinks is the right music. Either way, their interpretation of music isn’t really helping with what they want to achieve.

The only hole in her story I guess is that as she tries to dominate the troll kingdom, she didn’t seem to realize that her motives to destroy all music is almost the same as what the ancestors of pop trolls did, making her look like a hypocrite even though totally despising the pop trolls after what their ancestors did in the past.

Overall her character is very well executed as the villain of the film. Although you can easily sympathize with her. Unlike with the Chef in the first film, I can’t show any sympathizing emotions towards her. All throughout you’ll only be feeling mad toward the Chef. While with Barb, I honestly even had a hard time picturing her as an antagonist. For me she’s just a queen, who wants to unite all trolls. I guess her twisted ideologies made her look like the bad guy, but despite that, she’s doesn’t really look like the villain in the film. Now she had a change of heart, I am very excited to see more of her in the future.

Others

Like I said, with a short amount of time given in the film, there’s really not enough space for the creators to introduce these other trolls and their background like the Classical, Techno, Funk, and Country trolls. Though I had a little problem with TWT. I am such a fan of classical music, and I think they had the most brief screen time throughout the film. I was excited to see them in the trailer tho, and they had shortest amount of time in the film. lol but that ain’t important. I’m just saying, there’s a lot more to see and learn about these new introduced trolls. Now i’m not gonna lie though, as adorable as it looks, there are those characters that are only made for merchandise. (*ahem* tiny diamond *ahem*)

The musical numbers are definitely a feast in the eyes. Although very much consuming all the time in the movie and didn’t leave enough space for character development, I still love the music. I feel like the TWT soundtrack is so underrated though. For the whole week since I’ve first watched the film, I cannot stop bopping along with Don’t Slack. 😆

The new casts are adorable! Anderson Paak was there, Sam Rockwell was there, Heck Ozzy Osbourne was even there! I cannot stop watching the behind the scenes of the movie. They are all great!

Conclusion

Overall, the whole theme of the movie and all the underlying messages behind it was definitely well executed in the movie. The line that pretty much sums up the whole movie would be “denying our differences is denying who we are” has a powerful impact, and the message behind it is very relevant till this day. It also teaches the viewers about having to respect one’s preferences of their taste in music. From the storyline to animation to character developments, although there’s still a lot of inconsistencies in the film, they still managed to make the movie worth watching and worth recommending.

I’ve been thinking about these things now and I just feel like I need to let it out here lol. If you guys have any thoughts, feel free to tell me! 😄

#trolls #trolls world tour #trolls world tour review #branch #poppy #broppy #ttbgo #dreamworks #dreamworks review

[wineinthewidow]

Wow. Did you know.... I love you? 👀

wow what kindness / @steel-winter-rosenever denying

       Thank you, m’dear!! I love you too!! and thank you for always being kind and wonderful and loving.

#kneel before your queen [ answered ] #a raft fit for a queen [ ooc ] #(as a poc my self the dash has been really making me uncomfortable as of late) #(im negl) #(and you all have been just- THERE for me) #(because as i said i'd rather it be called out) #(and i hate hate D&D as the racist shits they are) #(but cersei as a character was IC- and everything about the dash has just made me #not want to be on it) #(so again thank you always) #racism #tw/ racism #racism mention #(i hate D&D everyone- not cersei) #(it could have been handled better yes but i still love cersei) #steel-winter-rose

[leowyattv]

Steep Grade Fadeaway

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Mama, in the maw Of a monster it appears When spat to mangrove’s entanglements In whose rootless cloak Womb-like repair’d did I float On Tidal pressure’s pat turns Of wave phrase & coastal sound. Grammy’s telegram Faroff drawing graph’d out In double bass clef, whitebread from the top of Wonderbread ridge, Omi? [[[ hives, hexagon life-rafts Ashkanazi Jews descendents in whose Nameless lineage bow’d heads lean past stalk & branch ]]] Holocaust a hologram to fool’s corner; Survived, devised lives, could I Then, they this disbelief hold After the fact hush, scattering creed, Belief like layers of sound same Overlaid, distortion via copying; this Terrain vague makes us Hungry for disbelief & away,— Shame at sensation’s predicate, we’re not we’re not were not them—then. Characters glynne & surrowe, iyse foes may say will not into world will For will’s sake. Gardner rescinds Offer for cylinder Heads, standing wave pressurized In tubular body, met with lip Aperture shifts & valve Select valve depressions trumpet Walls down, & Solomon’s temple’s walls Shake each brick laid If coded into video- game; mechanics of Megafauna’s jaws dent don’t puncture, dental spread of broom’s Bristles or concrete finishing screed. The lady grabs the keys & allows generations a soul’s Movement to buoy faith :: Clay takes on new shapes for Good, naked bracing Against surface, thrust short Rink’s fire firefly-stud’d, freight’d glows The fright force against density Darkness offers, suspension Cradle, safe durational rock shock’d By freight trains penetrative Expansion, gaseous fits in confines small; Cobbler’s shop a shack, canister Tremolo goes to tumble-wash, Eviction of nuns at Juniper Monastery, things object through Inaction, plants guard fruit from gulls’ gullets, Gourd raft or instrument & species disembark :: Parnassus lamb on spits, spurn Wager’d against poignant Stellation of spur’s star’d points, stud’d. It is rather lonely. Welter Weights waste excess swells In waist’s weight-gain, Spotted once then trimmed, deemed High hinderance if loot’s to be tuned up, then taken; Blood from thin laceration Above the right eye releases threads Of blood; hand held, yes Triads, amps per kilojoule of One grain of sand, which Between toes react, duststorm Shakes clapboards & window-garments, The fornification of conceivable indivisible parts :: Things poole gryn, Graham to you This, saturate, this saturnalia. Wherever sea rummages earth’s crust Sage’s city wisdom, said to overturn off- Compass underpass or Souls inhabitance Herenow splatoon ever in unum Pluribus, A well. If it gets to, it’s off in bramble patch again; Cavernous sediment down- Loads by way of remaining in stasis, Adaptation & change proceed With gradients of such nuance one is Sure as one can be Organisms are a constancy unmoved. English ivy, spry & welcoming Enough to juncos & finch-song, Strangles any individual offering A vertical support, a tall host, From whose apex, were One to climb douglas fir In that Spanaway house’s lot, one would note Yellow blazes from Scotch broom, an infantry Under which camas flower & prairie grass Die off; ecologists hear & provisions provide public. Nova scorch Canopy, What’s happened to it all Primates of later eon ask? Sand shook; mud slid, loosed from Roots once anchoring mass, Hook enters the base Of the bait, loop line Doubles & knots, casting out guesswork When fisheries bring ghostnets to Foreground & shore. Rasas. & family still Standing :: Burgess brothers Twin lute & nylon-string, Summerfield Tectosilicate feldspar recovers & with Katy & makes musical games to train good weapons, voice leading & harmony Accompaniment, just.— It promised. no ~ i ~, quotient, quarrel Quest-kill objective, quarantine, Can inquiry proceed experimental Without explorational? INgenuine (this venue, come now) To even ask, but to Figure this out buy redrawing What was that, Those shapes making layers first, Maybe dimensions, second? Sinkholes clog eventually. Can yonder’s crayon-wax Out rear windshield Make out landscape’s Attendees & absentees alike? The tipoff bid for children’s hospital Sutures lawmaker to industry Profit-centers, pediatric morbidity rallies, Shipping vessels on glass beds spit Beads of bleach, sleet freeze Hardening to barnacles, sharkfin decor, Trim efficiencies, sin, sign, nature, what Remains in speech decoder’s translation? Mama’s got through villanelle Format, perforated loss, refrains Rebounding sound given shape By lack surrounding it, cradling it, even. Shedding it, scalar skin or bark; Magnitude without direction; A temper vestibule in- Vests, jackets a body in Truncated coat, technics fold, inter- Ruptions :: hundreds die as baseline Nuclear arsenal refill Fun, a planting pot fresh with Manure, fertilizer funds, & dirt With paradox, halving lives A speculative endurance, Populating a futurity with Untraceable elegance, Like mycological spore, or mycelial Masses; like cryptocurrency Exchanges in blockchain Relationship & exchange verifiable With uncompromising math With extraneous dialogue In the wind; like let them be naked Physicists sporting labcoats Only, as a group Sure of dark matter’s Not being there, its criminality A subversion, defying Paradigm parameters, & the glottal Stop at this epistemological Dissolution, erotic even, A flush heating bodies up At the limits, the proximity Of other bodies, the desire For physical embrace & exchange enough, nearly, To assume such kingmaker species a half-life well off Into future, plutonium megawatt power-station Giving life to groups finding Each other, once again, beneath Night’s luminous bodies, Beneath moon’s thievery, Held by shadows, deep black density In whose unmappable infinitude a species Approaches a release from print, rose Compass, gold arrow, landscape & waterway Florescent with spectra of blue & volcanic reds, shorn from it, then, Held in what is after all, unnamable, Of near-absolute incompatibility With kingmaker species & yet, That which gave any of it The possibility of accidental beginning.

#poems #poets #poetry #poemsandpaintings #poemsandimages #poeticstories #writerscreed #artontumblr #whateveritis

[lucyreviewcy]

The Prequel Problem: A Tale of Solo, Grindlewald and Midsomer Murders

I recently watched two of the worst films of the last decade pretty much back to back. Fantastic Beasts: Crimes of Grindlewald followed in quick succession by Solo: A Star Wars Story. If you’d like to know the detailed specifics of what didn’t work in these movies, I’d recommend YouTuber Jenny Nicholson’s videos about both. In this article, I don’t want to review these two monstrosities, but I want to talk about why neither of these cursed pictures worked for me.

Prequels are always hard: you have to line everything up to fit neatly into an established story. It’s like trying to knit extensions to the sleeves of an existing jumper. Except you don’t have the same yarn that was used for the original, you don’t have the pattern for the original and the person you’re knitting it for is beginning to wonder why you didn’t just make an entirely new jumper. As exciting (and lucrative) as it is for fans of Harry Potter or Star Wars to be able to come back to the cinema time and again to learn more about their favourite universe, prequels often leave me cold. 

Solo is preoccupied with maneuvering characters into position so that the ensuing adventures make sense. By the end of Solo, Han Solo is fully formed. He’s got the Millennium Falcon, he’s got Chewbaca, he’s got that weird gun. All the unnecessary characters are hoovered up so that he’ll never run into them again when he’s Harrison Ford. Here, it feels as if the creative team behind the picture completely misunderstood what is great about a character with an extended mythology. 

Mythology matters. The Star Wars visual dictionaries are a great example of how building a complicated character through their costume and props should work. The visual dictionaries give detailed explanations of where each individual item of clothing came from, and what it means. They even explain why Queen Amidala has a white thumbnail in The Phantom Menace. These details add depth and texture to the character, and make them feel real. 

Where you’re sitting, look at your outfit or your surroundings. Observe the possessions that you own. Each item of clothing or possession probably has a story behind how you got it. It might not be an interesting story, it might just be “I went to Next once.” You didn’t wake up one day and buy your entire aesthetic (unless you’re on the lam in which case do you have nothing better to do than read tumblr all day? THE COPS ARE ON YOUR TAIL.) When fans become attached to characters with specific, recognisable, detailed costumes and possessions, it’s because their imaginations are set alight by the possibilities. Did he win that jacket in a wrestling match? Does she use that knife because her brother used it to carve her a toy as a child? We want to pontificate on these symbols and explore their possibilities. Han Solo’s different signs and symbols make him look like he has lived a life. 

Taking the example of the clothes I’m wearing right now. I’ve got on a sweatshirt I bought six years ago when it tipped it down while I was walking to uni and I had to buy an entire outfit from the campus shop, some porg-patterned shoes my boyfriend gave me for Christmas two years ago, and a headscarf my parents gifted me for my birthday this August. These are not blockbuster-movie-worthy stories. My point is that even my stuff has meaning, and was accrued over years.  In Solo, Han goes from being a guy who looks a bit like Han Solo, to being a complete cookie-cutter cosplay of Han Solo over what appears to be a period of weeks. Potentially days. 

As anyone who has ever rolled their eyes at a JK Rowling tweet will know, sometimes it’s better to be able to imagine the story than to be presented with it wholesale. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither was Han Solo. Fans who might have spent years coming up with their own stories of what happened when he did the Kessel Run, or when he won the Falcon are presented in Solo with a wham-bam-thankyou-mam origin story that closes more doors than it opens. 

Grindlewald on the other wizardly hand, has the opposite problem. In this film, Rowling runs around haphazardly throwing open doors into the lives of characters we never heard of in the original books or films, then abruptly closing them again. Credence isn’t a character who matters to those of us who cried when minor characters were killed in the battle for Hogwarts. We don’t want to know about his family. This movie is so preoccupied with creating a rich, integrated world that it manages to have simultaneously too much story and too little plot. 

Jude Law’s performance as Dumbledore is excellent. This is potentially because he’s the only proper link in the story to the wizarding world we know and love. We’re presented with new characters willy-nilly and asked to care about their emotional baggage. Interestingly, there is a place for this kind of writing, where lots of characters are introduced in a short space of time and immediately spend five minutes discussing their backstory and place in the plot. This is perfect writing for Midsomer Murders. Hollywood movie fodder, it ain’t. 

In a long-running TV series like Midsomer  which takes place in a world that is moderately similar to the real one, characters can spew exposition while they angrily reposition hay bales/brush horses/pluck pheasants because this is how the plot unfolds. Every person’s story links in to the central whodunit, every line of dialogue is a relevant clue. At the end of the episode, everything is resolved neatly. By contrast, there are inherent loose ends in a cinematic prequel which need to be tied into the main body of the original films/books. Grindlewald is really heavy on exposition for new characters, like Midsomer, but there isn’t a through line as clear as a “Whodunit” to bring the film to a satisfying conclusion. The introduction of a raft of new characters in Grindlewald would work better if, instead of a search for Credence, this film was a straightforward wizarding murder mystery where Newt must figure out who killed Credence. As it is, characters like Kama or Leta Lestrange are given a big portion of screen time, without having a lasting impact on the resolution of the story. The big reveal feels overly contrived to be as twisty as possible, and to link in some way to the original Harry Potter stories. The awkward and confusing conclusion is not a satisfying payoff for what feels like a three hour wizard history lesson. 

Prequels have a unique power to either expand or contract their universe. Solo makes Star Wars feel like it is unfolding on a much smaller scale, while Grindlewald weighs down Harry Potter with unnecessarily dark narrative baggage. Despite Hollywood’s consistent desire to make them, prequels are often a sure-fire way to disappoint fans. Allowing fans to imagine their own myths and legends within a universe may not make as much money as whacking out a lacklustre prequel, but maintaining a little mystery can keep the movie magic alive. 

#movie #prequel #crimes of grindelwald #fantastic beasts #solo a star wars story #star wars #midsomer murders #han solo #jk rowling #film #barnaby #inspector barnaby #neil dudgeon

[searchingwardrobes]

If I Die Young

Happy birthday, @followbatb ! This fandom isn’t just made up of writers and artists, it’s also made up of faithful readers like you. I so appreciate you following my stories, and I hope your birthday is fantastic! This story will seem in the beginning like it’s tragic with the title and the whole “major character death” tag, but it’s not what it seems. Just remember the Underworld arc and the whole “mostly dead” thing in The Princess Bride 😉

Summary: Killian reached the edge of the river and sank carefully to his knees beside the bed of reeds and roses he had spent all night weaving together. He deposited his love gently upon it, the soft petals of the middlemist roses seeming to embrace her. He stepped back, pressing his eyes closed in a silent prayer before pushing the precious cargo gently into the water. He clung to the tenuous hope that the rumors were true; that this river fed into the most legendary of waters: the River Styx. A Captain Duckling Enchanted Forest AU in which Killian goes to the Underworld for Emma instead of the other way around. Based on the song by The Band Perry.

Rating: T

Trigger Warnings: Major character is dead (but Killian goes to the Underworld, so . . . )

Words: 2,000 and some change

Also on Ao3 and part of my Fandom Birthday Playlist

Tagging: @kmomof4 @snowbellewells @whimsicallyenchantedrose @winterbaby89 @jennjenn615 @thislassishooked @bethacaciakay @teamhook @tiganasummertree @snidgetsafan @delirious-latenight-laughs @kday426 @let-it-raines @shireness-says @welllpthisishappening @wellhellotragic @distant-rose

 If I die young, bury me in satin. Lay me down on a bed of roses. Sink me in the river at dawn. Send me away with the words of a love song.

 Princess Emma’s arms swung limp against black leather. Her head was flung back at an uncomfortable angle, her long golden hair tumbling like a waterfall. She hadn’t gone completely cold yet, but her face was unnaturally pale, her lips void of color.

Captain Killian Jones, known by most as the fearsome pirate Hook, carried his load with a grim face, a single tear tracking down one cheek. He should have known the Dark One would take this love from him just as he had once taken Milah. He had doomed the princess from the moment they met. He should have stayed far away from her, but he was weak. Weak or his Emma was too stubborn and feisty to take no for an answer. Probably both.

He reached the edge of the river and sank carefully to his knees beside the bed of reeds and roses he had spent all night weaving together. He deposited his love gently upon it, the soft petals of the middlemist roses seeming to embrace her. They seemed fitting. It was a field of middlemist roses where they had shared their first kiss. Ever since, they always made him think of her and the love they shared. She looked exquisite, even in death, her white satin dress giving her the aura of a goddess. He bent and kissed her cold lips, another tear falling upon her cheek as he pulled back. Those weren’t the lips he had come to love; they weren’t warm or pliant or eager.

He stepped back, pressing his eyes closed in a silent prayer before pushing the precious cargo gently into the water. He clung to the tenuous hope that the rumors were true; that this river fed into the most legendary of waters: the River Styx. If not, he would most likely be dead in a matter of days. No one would believe that Emma had not died by his hand. He was a pirate, after all, one with a vicious hook at that. Her body disappearing wouldn’t bode well for him either, nor the secrecy of their romance. He was bound for the gallows if this didn’t work.

He would welcome the gallows if this didn’t work.

The little raft bobbed gently on the water, the current taking it softly as a fog rolled in. Killian was scarcely aware of his feet taking him into the waters, his eyes straining as he waded in, desperate not to lose sight of his love. Yet the fog was unrelenting, and he could no longer see her golden hair or the blush of the roses. Tears coursed down his face now, his chin falling to his chest as his eyes slid closed.

“Come aboard.”

Killian startled, looking up to see a dark hooded figure aboard a small boat. He stood in the bow, extending his bony hand to Killian, yet he could not see the being’s face.

“Come aboard, mortal. The Queen Persephone wants an audience with you.” When Killian still hesitated, the being sighed in irritation. “It is what you seek, is it not? A way to save your love from the Underworld?”

At that, Killian shook off this stupor, and took the sailor’s hand. Charon, he realized, ferryman for the dead. How the craft sailed, he had no idea. It had neither sails nor oars, yet it glided through the misty waters all the same. All concept of time fled Killian’s mind, and before he knew it, they were on a dark and foreboding shore.

Wraiths swooped through the air, and the fog seemed ever present as Killian made his way to the castle not far from the river. Charon had stayed behind, assuring Killian that he needed no guide. The man (being?) had been right. Something intangible seemed to pull him towards the castle, keeping him on the right path.

The castle itself was made of something like obsidian, it’s towers black and sharpened to points. The gate was made of a mixture of charred bones and spikes that resembled black ice. They opened for Killian automatically, and an invisible hand seemed to push him forward.

The floor was ebony marble, polished like glass. The throne room was empty but for the two thrones at the far end. The one on the right was as black and sharp as everything else, the man upon it white as a corpse in contrast. Yet Hades was handsome in a sharp and angular way, his long elegant fingers idly petting one of the large heads of Cerberus, the three headed dog of the Underworld. The imposing creature, as large as a horse and broad as a lion, hummed through one of its frothing jaws, taking obvious pleasure in its master’s ministrations. Yet the other two large heads growled as Killian drew near.

“Calm Cerberus, dear,” the figure on the left said gently.

Queen Persephone, in contrast, was soft and bright in every way. Her skin was tanned, like someone who spent most of her time in the sun. Her hair was a soft brown like earth turned over in the spring. Her eyes were as a bright blue as the sky, her lips and cheeks as rosy as flower petals. Life itself married to death. It was a perplexing picture.

Hades gave a command to Cerberus, and all three heads immediately calmed, resting their chins on the dais. Hades turned to Killian then, steepling his long fingers beneath his chin. Yet when he spoke, he addressed his wife.

“You know they always look back. Why waste your time?”

“Love is never a waste,” Persephone argued. Hades actually smiled then, clasping his wife’s hand and bringing it to his pale lips. Persephone smiled fondly in return, then looked back at Killian. She rose from her throne, made of cherry wood instead of black marble, and stepped down from the dais to approach the pirate.

“I am honored to be in your presence, goddess,” Killian said as he bowed. He didn’t think “majesty” was the right word for a deity, and hoped he had addressed her correctly.

He was relieved when the goddess smiled at him. “I think you just might be different from the others, Killian Jones. A princess and a pirate, a most unlikely pair. Like the god of the dead and the goddess of spring. Most people think my husband tricked me into eating that pomegranate, but I ate it willingly.”

Killian was surprised at the fondness in her eyes. Persephone turned then and snapped her fingers. A young woman in a gown of deep purple and a bronze colored hooded cape hurried to the goddess’s side.

“Guide Captain Jones down the hidden road out of the Underworld.”

“Yes, my queen,” the woman said, bowing low.

Persephone turned to Killian again. “I am sure you have heard the tale of Orpheus.”

Killian bowed once again. “Aye, most honorable Queen, I am not to look back or I will lose my love.”

Persephone gently took Killian’s chin and lifted his gaze to hers. “That is right. Go and do not look back.”

The sad expression on her face wasn’t at all encouraging. Neither was the sinister expression on her husband’s. He had the oddest feeling this was a game to them.

Nevertheless, he followed the hooded woman out of the throne room and out of the castle. She led him past the desolate royal grounds, past the fields full of wraiths and fog, and into a dark and foreboding forest thick with gnarled trees and thorns. Just as they entered the woods, she turned to him and threw back her hood. She had the alabaster complexion and colorless lips of one of the dead, yet her beauty was unfading. Her mahogany hair shimmered despite the darkness, and her chocolate brown eyes swam with both sadness and intensity.

“I am forbidden to assist those I guide, so listen to me carefully now.”

“Who are you?”

Her gaze lowered to the dead leaves at her feet. “One who knows more of love and loss than most can imagine.”

Killian’s eyes widened. “You’re Eurydice, the woman Oprheus loved. The one he almost rescued from death.” She simply nodded, and Killian’s jaw clenched. “How cruel to give you this task!”

She gave him a sad smile. “It wasn’t given to me, I requested it. Perhaps one day love will conquer death, and I wish to be there to see it.”

He clasped her hands in his one. “Thank you.”

“Now,” she said, putting her hood back over her head, “not only can you not look back, neither can you reach back. So keep your hands at your sides. Don’t try and check in any way that she’s there behind you. Also, Hades doesn’t want to let any soul go from his kingdom. Believe nothing you hear, no matter who the voice sounds like. And finally, you can’t look back until both of you are out of the tunnel to the Underworld.”

Killian nodded. He knew the story of Orpheus well, and that had been his mistake. He had stepped out into the land of the living, and thought it would be safe to look back at Eurydice. Sadly, his love had not yet crossed the threshold, and she had disappeared like mist before his eyes. The voices she was warning him not to listen to had to be Emma’s, who else could tempt him to look back? So he filed that away as well. He threw back his shoulders and drew in a steeling breath. He could do this. For Emma.

“I’m ready.”

Eurydice nodded. “I can’t look back either once we begin, so keep your eyes on me and don’t stray from the path. Emma is to keep her eyes on you in the same way, so she is depending on you as well.”

Killian swallowed hard, and sent up a quick prayer to whatever god or goddess would listen and take mercy on them. Eurydice faced forward and plunged into the wood.

Killian quickly learned that it wasn’t just what the voices said. (Are you sure she’s really there? Can you really trust Hades? What about your brother? Doesn’t he deserve to be saved too? Don’t you love him just as much?) It was the pull they had on him, the tugging on his heart to doubt, to fear. It took much more willpower than he had anticipated not to give in to their suggestions to glance back or turn around and go back for his brother. And though he had been prepared for Emma’s voice, he had underestimated how strongly it would affect him. Her pleas sounded so desperate, frightened, and broken. (Help me, Killian! Please! They’re hurting me! I can’t see you! Where are you, Killian?) So afraid was he of losing sight of Eurydice and getting them both lost, his eyes went dry staring at that bronze cloak as she wove between the trees. It was no simple trail, that was clear, and without a guide he and Emma would be hopelessly lost.

Finally yet suddenly, he was in the bright sunshine, just a few miles down the riverbank from where he had watched Emma’s body sink at dawn. The urge to spin around, to see if his love was really there was strong, but he resisted the temptation. It would be just like Hades to trick them. To tell Eurydice to guide him, then go back later for Emma. Instead, Killian went to the edge of the water. It wasn’t the ocean, but the gentle rush of the current calmed him nonetheless. He took in deep breaths as the sun sparkled on the water, praying, waiting.

“Killian,” a familiar voice whispered at his side. The slender fingers of one of her hands wrapped around his bicep, the other closed around his hook. Though it was only cold steel, he swore he could feel the warmth of her hand through it.

He turned to look at her, her bright jade eyes, her pink lips, her rosy freckled cheeks. He choked on a sob as he pulled her close to him, breathing in the familiar cinnamon scent of her hair. He buried his fingers into the soft strands and trailed kisses along her cheeks.

“You’re here, you’re really here,” he choked out.

She laughed as he kissed every available spot on her face; her nose, her chin, her forehead. Then his lips found hers, and the memory of them cold and still fled as she kissed him back with abandon. They kissed until their lips were swollen and they were gasping for breath.

“I love you,” Killian told her, his forehead pressed to hers.

“I love you, too,” Emma whispered back.

In the shadows just beyond the threshold, Eurydice smiled beneath her bronze hood. She watched Killian Jones scoop Princess Emma into his arms, watched the princess wrap her arms around his neck and kiss him with passion and exhilarating happiness. As she turned from the scene to descend back into the cold darkness, she couldn’t wait to tell Queen Persephone that love had finally conquered death.

If I die young bury me in satin. Lay me down in a bed of roses. Sink me in the river at dawn. Send me away with the words of a love song.

#cs ff #enchanted forest au #captain duckling #greek mythology #hades and persephone #eurydice #the underworld #fandom birthday playlist #for followbatb #on her birthday #if i die young