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screamingatanemptyroom · 3 years

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Please Fix the Story pt 26 - The Higher Realm

The Higher realm continues. So close to the end!

Master post linked here

Enjoy!

______________________________

Time passed, but it was difficult to tell how much. Time worked so differently in the different realms. How long did we really spend trying to save one lower realm? Minutes? Decades? It felt like no time and forever. Adonis and I traveled to lower realm after lower realm, fixing the stories, stabilizing the world before heading back to the higher realm.

Some lower realms were easy, if a bit annoying, such as the high school dramas. In those I would often play the “average” new girl at a school. I would meet new people, and was supposed to go on to have romance, betrayals and coming of age realizations. I quickly realized that befriending all my supposed romantic leads instead of dating them, reconciling with my rivals instead of humiliating them, and pushing towards success all together was a much more satisfying strategy. Fortunately, graduating valedictorian with a happy and psychologically healthy group of teenagers often stabilized worlds that had been torn apart by half-baked character design or infighting between rivals.

I took calculus so many times that I could recite lessons in my sleep, but at least the worlds were saved. Despite our success, however, Adonis was often frustrated. He had his own vision of how we were to save these realms. His plans almost always involved us dating, making the high school romance “successful”.

I refused.

He had been a lot more likable since our first meeting, and I was able to consider him a close friend and ally… but I felt uncomfortable at the idea of even pretending to have a romantic relationship. It was definitely a more difficult route to stabilize the world without a romance, but I chose it every time. Adonis pouted and complained, but couldn’t argue with success, and I was successful.

Some lower realms were more difficult. In particular, zombie apocalypse stories were my least favorites. The worlds often couldn’t be stabilized until a cure was found or humanity’s survival was assured. This meant that Adonis and I sometimes spent decades within these realms, working to build armies, or teams of scientists. There was hardly ever any running water, which meant showering was few and far between.

My unwashed self was made even filthier by my absolute failure at using anything with range. Bow and arrow, guns… anything that would keep me out of the gore, I couldn’t hit even the largest of monsters. Fortunately I picked up a sword with relative ease, which allowed me to fight… but this also meant I got covered in rotten blood and guts.

I hated zombie worlds the most.

Realm after realm. We worked constantly, spending very little time in between in the higher realms. Adonis would often try to use those moments to push his ideas regarding fate and the higher realm’s story, but as soon as I rejected him, which I did every time, he would simply scowl and pull us into the next lower realm to save.

It was getting old.

“How many lower realms are there?” I asked one evening as we recovered from our latest mission, rubbing my sore shoulder where I had taken a blow in the last sci-fi alien battle. The wounds disappeared with the realm traveling, but my mind still could feel the wound, projecting the pain long after I had left that form behind.

Adonis leaned back in his chair, his grin a little too bitter to be a natural expression. “How many unfinished stories are there? Infinite, Bel. There are infinite lower realms. We will never be able to save them all. Not like this.”

“It’s not like there’s a lot of options.”

“There are options. You just don’t want to hear them.”

“What, this fate you keep talking about?” I sighed, closing my eyes, tired. “ It sounds like a terrible idea.”

“It’s not.” His voice was quiet, but the intensity shown through all the same. “It’s our duty. Everyone’s survival depends on it.”

“But what you’re saying is: we follow along some sort of script…”

“Fate.”

“…fate… here, in the higher realm. And that is somehow supposed to fix the lower realms?”

He chuckled. “You’re oversimplifying it, but pretty much. We follow our fate, and the heroes of the lower realms will find their happiness tied to ours.”

“What if they don’t want that ending? What if they don’t want that happiness?”

“Of course they do! Everyone wants a happily ever after with their destined one.” He snapped. My eyes flickered open to study his enraged expression.

“I don’t.”

“You’re selfish!”

I shrugged. “Am I? If you’re right, we submit to fate here, everyone in the lower realms gets an automatic happy ending… but most of those worlds aren’t breaking because they don’t have a happy ending. They need a wider world, different ideas… and what about the side characters, even the villains… what about their happiness?”

“They don’t matter.”

“Why not?” I raised an eyebrow. “Just because they’re the villains?”

“They’re evil.” He stood up, trying to tower over me. An intimidation tactic, one that might have worked before we’d spent countless years fighting in life-or-death battles together.

“Have you met the heroes and heroines of some of these realms?” I laughed. “They’re not much better. I don’t think these roles are as clear as you would like them to be. And I don’t think you and I having a happy ending together, and forcing a simplistic ‘and they lived happily ever after’ on all the lower realms will actually fix them. In fact…” I stood up, and he stepped back slightly at the danger in my tone. “I bet we would break them all the more. Are you really so foolish as to think that saving a universe of worlds would be so simple?”

“…” Adonis was gritting his teeth, his hands clenched so tightly the knuckles were white. But I didn’t back down. Didn’t step back. I knew he wouldn’t hit me. He wouldn’t dare step out of the role he imagined himself to be in. Wouldn’t dare cross a line that might ruin his chances at the happy ending he seemed to crave so desperately.

“…” The silence stretched on between us. We were at an impasse. He wanted to follow fate. He wanted clearly defined roles and rules to follow. And I?

I wanted freedom.

*** Soul transfer 11% complete. ***

It’s been forever since I last saw those words… I thought it had disappeared. For some reason, I felt a deep sense of relief at the glowing blue sentence. Something within me had frozen during these many trips to the lower realms, but finally it was growing again.

“The next world is waiting.” Adonis spoke up, his tone flat. I noticed an odd shifting of his gaze, a reluctance to meet my own, and felt a sense of unease.

I won’t like this next world. I cracked my knuckles and gave him a thumbs up. Well, no sense running from a challenge.

We left.

______________________________

I woke up in a luxurious canopy bed. Staring up at the fabric , I raised my arms and have a cheer.

“YES! NOT A ZOMBIE WORLD!”

On the downside, the setting appeared to be a more primitive era, medieval at best, which meant no running water, but at least I appeared to be noble or wealthy.

At least if I suffer, I’ll be clean while I do it!

“Princess?” A young woman dressed as a servant entered the room, seeming very confused. “Are you all right? I heard you yelling.”

I smiled brightly at her. “No worries. It was just a nightmare.”

She visibly relaxed. “Even so, you seem in a much better mood, if I may say so.”

“Really?”

“Yes, you haven’t broken a single thing this morning.” She, unfortunately did not seem to be kidding. “I’m so glad you’ve accepted your father’s decision.

I didn’t have my character’s memories yet. I needed to accept the mission first. In the meantime, acting too out of character could destabilize an already poorly functional world.

“I’m still… thinking it over.” I spoke up cautiously.

“It’s not so bad, your highness.” She smiled at me. “Most young girls feel a little uneasy when their father arranges their husband. But you’ll be happy. I just know it.”

Arranged marriage?

“After all, Prince Harold is reported to be a true gentleman, a might warrior, and a handsome young man!” She sighed dreamily. “Any woman would be thrilled for a chance to be his bride.”

“I’m. Sure.” I spoke through gritted teeth, the satin sheets crumpling in my grip. Adonis, when I find you, I’m going to make you regret every life decision you’ve ever made… and the ones you’ve only considered making. What kind of lower realm did you land us in? As I plotted my revenge, the mission screen popped up.

**** NEW WORLD: A Divided Kingdom****

This is a romance fantasy story featuring a prince and a princess from different kingdoms, putting aside their differences to save the world.

“I already don’t like this.” I muttered.

The Princess Alaire of the Yenlar Kingdom was a clever, independent woman, horrified at the idea of an arranged marriage. Prince Harold of the Bestion Kingdom felt differently. He fell in love at first sight and vowed to woo the young maiden. The couple was different in almost every way, and seemed destined to bicker and fight.

“Then how about we don’t get married?”

But fate had other plans…

“Of course it did!”

A terrifying beast threatened to destroy both their kingdoms, and to survive, the political marriage had to go forward. Uniting the kingdoms, and therefore their armed forces, was the only way to save their people.

However, despite the happy ending, the first book was not well received by readers and the trilogy was abandoned due to poor sales. The reason given was that the romance was “forced” and unbelievable.

Your mission is to bring a satisfying end to the story, while making ensuring the survival of both kingdoms.

**** DO YOU ACCEPT THIS MISSION? ****

YES? NO?

“Quick question.” I spoke quietly to the glowing words in front of me. “Do I have to marry the prince to ensure an ending?”

The kingdoms will not unite without the political marriage.

“That wasn’t what I asked. I asked if I HAVE to marry the prince. What if I can save both kingdoms without a political marriage?”

The stability of the world is all that matters.

“No lecture on the necessity of fate?”

**** DO YOU ACCEPT THIS MISSION? ****

YES? NO?

I grinned. “Sure. Let’s do it.”

As the words faded away, I jumped out of bed. My head spun slightly as I accepted the memories from the poor princess of the original story.

She had not been happy.

She had dreams, ambitions. The Kingdom of Yenlar allowed for women to inherit the throne, and as the firstborn she was ready to take over from her father, to rule her nation. She had spent her entire life preparing. Studying law, economics, warfare…

And all of it had meant nothing in the end.

She had begged for a political treaty. One that did not involve marriage. The Kingdom of Bestion had refused to even discuss it. They stated that there was too much distrust between the kingdoms to move forward without some sort of permanent assurance. Even the threat of annihilation from the ancient beast of legend wasn’t enough to have them reconsider. That wasn’t the full story, though.

Later she discovered that Prince Harold had seen her at a party. He had supposedly fallen in love with her at first sight, and became determined to marry her. He had learned of her plans to marry a minor noble, one who would support her position on the throne without causing an imbalance of power within the nobility. He had no chance, as far as she was concerned. The threatened destruction of their people was just the perfect opportunity to force the matter.

She had lost all power. Becoming a figurehead, a beautiful statue beside the true king, Harold. He ruled over both nations with an iron fist, treating her own people more harshly, much to the approval of his staff. She slowly became bitter and deranged, watching the destruction of the people and the nation she loved so dearly.

Beyond the end of the first book, when the realm’s story ended, she had attempted to poison him and failed. Harold had been disappointed, but felt that she still had use as a figurehead. They faked a stroke, and kept her mute and weak with poisons. A lovely doll. A perfect figurehead.

…is this a fantasy or a horror? Sheesh, no wonder the trilogy wasn’t going to sell. I shuddered, still standing awkwardly next to the beautiful bed that had belonged to a lovely young woman.

I will change this story. I spoke silently to the memories, feeling a sense of relief that didn’t belong to me as I did so.

First, let’s try to reason with Adonis. He and I had worked together in multiple realms, side by side. We were friends. We may not see eye to eye when it came to our approach towards fate and the lower realms, but he had never forced me to do something I didn’t want. He had always respected me and backed off when I said no, even if it made him unhappy.

Hopefully this time will be the same. I thought uneasily. Hopefully he will listen.

______________________________

“No.” His tone was gleeful, but his face was calm, towing with a silver goblet rather than meeting my gaze.

“Are you joking?” I leaned forward, keeping a gentle smile on my face to fool the guards and our fathers who sat on the other end of the enormous dining table.

“I’m perfectly serious, Princess Alaire. Our kingdoms face certain doom at the hands of the ancient beast. The only way to survive is to work together. We can only work together if we trust each other. The only way the Kingdom of Bestion will trust the Kingdom of Yenlar is with a marriage alliance. It’s out of my hands.”

I reached forward and took the cup from his hands, forcing him to look at me. “Why are you forcing this, Adonis? You know it didn’t work out so well for the originals.”

“Careful Princess.” His eyes glanced over at the nearby guards. “You don’t want anything to destabilize the situation further, now do you? Better to act as a proper princess should.”

“Answer the question. This plan already failed. Why do you think it will work?”

“Simple.” He leaned forward and plucked the goblet back from my hands. “We’re different. You may not want to admit it, but we have spent lifetimes at each other’s side. Growing up, going to school, facing enemies, fighting together… we could make this work. It would be a wonderful ending.”

“You know what happened to Alaire after the first book.”

“I would never do that to you.”

“But you are.” I growled, wishing I could punch him. “You are trying to make me a beautiful figurehead, just like Harold did to Alaira.”

“We would rule side by side.”

“What use is that promise, if you are already ignoring my wishes and forcing me to do this in the first place?”

He shook his head. “You have to trust me. This is the only way we can defeat the monster, and stabilize this realm. We’ll save this world. Together.” He smiled. “It’s our fate.”

I threw a plate at him, forcing him to fling himself on the floor to avoid injury. Walking out, I ignored my father’s shouts of rage. Picking up a bag I had packed ahead of time, just in case, I changed into some light armor, grabbed a sword, and headed out into the forest.

If I couldn’t win by a political alliance, I was going to find another way to save the world.

I was going monster hunting.

I searched Princess Alaira’s memories of the legends and stories, going out in a northern direction towards the area known as Death Valley.

As I marched onward, my thoughts wandered over the time I had spent since I had woken up in the Higher Realm. I couldn’t help but feel disappointed with Adonis. He might truly think that he was saving the world by insisting on going through with the marriage, but his lack of willingness to even consider other options was frustrating. He was the only person consistently by my side through every one of these worlds, someone I considered a friend, and being unable to rely on him served to make me feel all the lonelier.

My mind briefly touched on the assassin of the first realm, Liam. I had thought with his comments and actions that he had known about my mission… that he might be from the higher realm too. But no matter how much I looked for him, no matter how much I hoped to see him again, I never did.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he was someone from the lower realm, and I’ll never have the chance to see him, to thank him.

I felt a sense of despair. How long can I keep doing this? Is this why Adonis preaches following our fate so much? Is he as tired of traveling, tired of the missions and the different lives? Is he just hoping to end all this?

I sighed, keeping moving. I’m not that tired, not tired enough to sacrifice my freedom. Not yet, anyways.

It took several days of traveling. Fortunately from my years of experience in zombie worlds, I was well prepared to survival in the wilderness. At least here the rivers were clean, allowing me to bathe occasionally. Finally I was at the entrance of the valley, staring up at the pillars on either side.

There were ominous words carved deeply into the stone.

Only death lies ahead.

I stared at the words silently for a few moments, and then shrugged.

“Still better than marrying Adonis.”

I moved forward.

______________________________

The valley was dark, a deep fog settled in permanently, apparently unaffected by the weather beyond its borders. Dark twisted purple trees rose all around me, their roots tearing through the earth desperate searching for nutrients. The valley was quiet, suffocating in an unsettling silence. My presence there felt like an intrusion, my instincts screaming at me to run away, to escape.

I kept moving.

There were no other signs of life. But I knew at least one other being lived here, the reason why nothing else dared to.

The Ancient beast.

There were no descriptions of it in the legends. Just that it was deadly, enough to take on entire armies. And that it was terrifying.

I feel like I should have seen something by now, if it was so large. I sighed, sitting on one of the trees, staring up at the mountain ahead of me. Shouldn’t it be easier to find an enormous beast that terrified an entire world?

…

Wait.

I looked up, struggling to see the top of the mountain in front of me.

I’m in a valley…

The mountain moved up and down, with regular motions.

There shouldn’t be a mountain here.

It was breathing.

I drew my sword, inwardly despairing. I had underestimated the sheer scale of the monster. I had thought it would be the size of a house, an elephant. Instead it towered stories above me, unimaginably large.

I was doomed.

There was a rumble as the beast in front of me shifted. I couldn’t tell the shape, just an impression of scales and spikes. Slowly, something lowered down in front of me, stretching forward in all directions, filling my vision. I saw teeth larger than my own body, the white of them contrasting with the dark fog around us. As I prepared myself for my death, an eye opened to stare at me.

It was a beautiful dark blue.

“…”

Suddenly, I felt relief. It was incomprehensible. I was standing in front of an ancient beast, enormous and terrifying, and instead of fear and dread… I felt safe.

I raised a hand, almost despite myself. “Hello there.”

The eye blinked. I comforted myself that it hadn’t eaten me yet.

“I think you look awesome. I’m Princess Alaira from the nearby kingdom of Yenlar. I actually came here to kill you, to protect my people… but now I realize that you could crush me like an ant, and that was a bad plan.”

The eye blinked twice. It seemed more confused than anything.

“I have a much better plan, if you would be willing to listen to me.” I let out a laugh, slightly startled at how… villainous it sounded.

*** Soul transfer 20% complete. ***

The creature let out a sound like thunder. I felt that it was laughing too.

______________________________

The wedding was this morning.

I was surprised as I drew near to see the party going. You would think that after I disappeared, they might have canceled or delayed it. I assumed that Adonis had felt sure that I would agree with him in the end. That I wouldn’t be able to let the world end just because I didn’t want to marry him.

Well too bad, buddy. This princess has a different plan in mind!

I could see him, standing on the elevated stage before two thrones, waiting. I couldn’t see his expression from this distance, but I imagine he was barely hiding his worry. Alaire’s father and Harold’s father were also waiting on the platform, their postures betraying their impatience.

“Let’s get this party started!” I yelled.

ROOOOOOOAAAAAAR!

The ancient beast let out a triumphant roar as he flew closer and lowered his head, letting me jump down onto the platform before landing behind me, a large, threatening mountain of a creature.

“Alaire?” The king called out, confused. “What are you doing?”

“Hello, Father.” I also nodded to Adonis, who stared back.

“What is this?”

“Your daughter is a witch!” The King of Bestion shouted, drawing his ceremonial sword. “She betrayed us!”

“Hold on, father.” Adonis held out his hand, stopping his attack. “I’m sure it’s not what it looks like.”

I grinned.

“Nope. It’s exactly what it looks like. I’ve teamed up with the Ancient being. We’re friends now.” I gestured at the monster high above us, who let out a grim chuckle, shaking the ground. “So now I make the rules, got it?”

“…”

“I’ll take everyone’s stunned silence as happy agreement! Now, first rule: Wedding canceled.”

“What?”

“You can’t do this!”

The three other royals on stage shouted simultaneously. I simply pointed again at the enormous creature.

“I can do whatever I want. The big scary monster behind me says so. Next, the kingdom of Bestion will surrender to me, as will the kingdom of Yenlar.”

“You want to rule the world?” Adonis’s gaze was… disappointed. I grinned shamelessly. “Nope. But here’s the thing: Our kingdoms face certain doom at the hands of the ancient beast. The only way to survive is to convince the monster not to kill us. The monster only trusts me. So I have to rule both kingdoms.” I shrugged. “It’s out of my hands.”

I threw his words from earlier back at him, and felt satisfied as he winced in recognition.

“We… surrender.” His words were quiet, defeated.

“You unruly child!” My father tried to shout, but a roar from the monster above us silenced him. He quickly surrendered too. I accepted both surrenders, quickly organizing the meetings to bring our governments together under one rule. Fortunately, the princess’s years of study served me well, guiding me smoothly through the process.

______________________________

I had one more confrontation with Adonis, the night before the coronation. He was escorted to my rooms by guards, saying he had a request. I hesitated briefly, but allowed him in, waving the guards behind the door so we could speak freely.

“What was that?” He shouted as soon as they had left.

I stayed sitting, forcing myself to be calm. “I fixed the story.”

“You ruined everything! Even if it stabilizes this world, it will ruin it in the long run.”

“Says you.”

“Trust me.” He threw up his hands as he paced back and forth. “Everything will go a lot smoother if you STOP CHANGING THE STORY.”

“I thought that was why we were here, though?” I sighed, leaning back in my chair and cleaning my nails with a blade. “To fix the lower realms, to save these worlds? That requires change, right?”

He paused in his movements, glaring at me. “Stop acting stupid. These worlds are broken because they didn’t follow the rules. We have to follow them perfectly.”

“I don’t want to though.” I shuddered. “No offense, but if the story is going to require us to have a romantic relationship, I’m finding an alternate solution.”

“That’s what the story requires, you have your role to play. You know the consequences of not playing the right part.”

I sighed. “No, there’s always different paths to take. You’re a good friend, and I’m glad to have you by my side, but that’s different than love.”

“…”

“You clearly don’t love me either, so why are you making such a fuss about this? As long as we complete what we came here to do, that’s all that matters, right?”

“…”

“Right?”

Adonis stepped closer to me, his atmosphere slightly threatening. “Why are you so different from what you are supposed to be?”

“What are you…?”

“Why can’t you just accept.”

His hand grabbed my wrist, the grip painful.

“your.”

He pulled me closer until our faces were inches apart. His bright blue eyes were blazing with anger as they stared into my own.

“fate.”

Letting me go, he walked away, putting some distance between us, before turning back to face me.

“This lower realm is stabilized. We should return.” His smile was cold. “The next mission is a little different from our previous ones. We’ll talk about it later.”

“…”

“And next time…?” He laughed, a bitter sound. “You’ll play your part whether you want to or not.”

THUD.

The blade in my hand threw through the air, stabbing into the wall inches from his face. I smiled cheerfully as he looked back at me, shocked.

“Try touching me again, and I’ll cut off something you’ll miss. We’ll discuss missions and roles again in the higher realm, but for now?” I rang a bell and guards came in, escorting him out. “I have a coronation to plan.”

______________________________

My coronation was held outside so that the Ancient beast could stand behind me. It seemed cheerful, letting out victorious roars and swaying from side to side. The people cheered as well, seeming a lot happier than I expected them to be. I guess they’re relieved that they won’t be eaten by the giant monster? I wondered idly how I was going to incorporate the creature into the day to day life of a monarch. For an odd reason I had very little doubt that the monster would stick around.

However, all my plans came to nothing. As the crown was placed on my head, bright blue words formed in the air in front of me:

100% complete.

**** You have finished the mission! ****

It was time to go.

At little sad, I looked up at the ancient monster above me. “Thank you, friend for your help. I wish I could stay with you longer.”

A mournful cry echoed through the world. It seemed to understand that I was leaving. Before I could say anything more to reassure it, the world around me shimmered and disappeared.

Only to reveal a furious Adonis standing in front of me.

“Happy now, Your Majesty?” He sneered.

“Oof, someone’s still a little angry that I used an ancient monster conquer the world. Believe it or not, I’m sorry that I’ve hurt you. But you know why I did what I did. Let’s talk about it in the morning.”

I walked away, feeling his glare on my back long after I was out of sight.

______________________________

When I woke up, I realized that I couldn't move.

I panicked, struggling to move my arms and legs, only managing to turn my head slightly. Enough to see Adonis’s smug expression as he sat by my bed.

“It’s time for our story to progress, Bel.” His smile was strange, twisted. I couldn’t talk back, I shook my head slightly side to side.

“I’m the hero, you are the heroine. If the relationship between us can’t be advanced by working together, than it must be forged in adversity." He reached down and picked me up, carrying me out of the small cottage I had arranged for myself and into the castle courtyard. Whatever drug he had injected me with was slowly wearing off, and I struggled in his arms, finally able to shout.

“Put me down!”

To my surprise he did, and although I struggled to stay upright, I kept my balance and glared at him.

“What are you planning?”

He sighed quietly. “I’m tired of always being the one to compromise. It’s time for you to make a sacrifice, Bel. I’ve avoided this so far, worried that progressing our story this way would kill you, but it seems that it is our fate that we take this risk. It’s… unfortunate. I do very much hope you don’t die.” He paused, trying to smile at me. “Don’t worry. It’s only temporary. I’ll come and rescue you soon.”

“A sacrifice?” I felt cold, even as I stood in the warm afternoon sun. My thoughts were slow to form, possibly a side effect of the medication. “Why?”

He shrugged. “There’s an order to everything. Rules. Law. They are all that stand between us and pure chaos. No one can ignore them. Not you. Not even me.”

“Then sacrifice yourself, asshole! Why send me?”

He shrugged. “It’s your role to play, not mine. Your fate.”

“Screw fate! I don’t care if you say it’s temporary or not! Friends don’t sacrifice friends!” I was furious, still weak and feeling helpless.

His hand reached out and brushed my cheek, the touch freezing my skin. I wanted to move away but I could still barely move, only managing to glare at him. “Don’t look at me with those eyes. It’s not my fault. If you want to blame anyone, blame the story.”

“Ad…”

“Sorry, you must accept your fate.” I felt a pinch in my arm, the stick of a needle as he injected something into the muscle. Immediately darkness overwhelmed me.

“We all do.”

Everything faded into darkness.

______________________________

When I woke up, I was in a strange world, surrounded by forest. I lay on my back, still feeling weak, fury coursing through my veins.

Adonis and I had worked well together, despite arguing multiple times in the past. But now… any goodwill I had towards him was gone. He had betrayed me. Knocked me out and sent me to somewhere dangerous, somewhere I could be killed, just to follow his precious fate. To get the story he wanted.

“Are you lost?

I looked over at the source of the voice. It was a tall young man with dark hair, wearing grey, non-descript clothing. He kneeled down next to me, and I found myself staring into dark blue eyes.

“Seems a good description for my current situation.” I smiled despite the dizziness. “Nice to meet you, Stranger.”

He grinned, reaching out a hand to help me up. “Call me Liam.”

Liam? Could he be…?

“…Nice to meet you, Liam.” I laughed. “Or should I say: nice to see you again?”

*** Soul transfer 25% complete. ***

#writing #please fix the story #fantasy #fate #next part will be fun #world hopping

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theji · 3 years

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Things Yizhan Made Me Do

It's BXG Day today! 🐢💛

To commemorate the occasion, I thought of making a list of 13 out-of-character things that I've done since falling into the fandom. (OK I'm a bit late I meant to do this sooner, the day is ending soon in a couple of hours).

1. Start a blog

And a public one, no less. I had a blog when I was in my teens but that was private, like a personal diary. My day job already involves writing so off-work I would usually like to indulge in mindless activities. Now, here I am, maintaining a Yizhan blog. I have not even used Tumblr prior to this but I'm enjoying it now, rambling about our fav boys. Writing is not a chore if it's about them.

2. Join a fandom

I joined a boy band fan club once upon a time, some 15 years ago, but I was never as invested in it as I am now with Yizhan. Back then it was just buying some merch, attending their concert/autograph sessions, listening to their songs. Apart from work, dog mum duties, personal relationships, other hobbies like kombucha brewing, most of my free time is now spent on the fandom. My Netflix account is crying. There is just so much to do and catch up on (I'm not complaining). I also enjoy interacting with and learning from other bloggers here. Antis are no fun and some industry news/developments/hate messages are upsetting but ultimately, you curate your own fandom experience. And I choose positivity and rationality.

3. Indulge in RPS

I don't ever 'ship'. What is 'ship'? 😆 I was always a dutiful audience, just enjoying whatever drama series and moving on after that. I started with CQL like most people and I didn't even notice/like GGDD until much later. Didn't even set out to 'ship' anyone but now I'm a self-professed turtle. SZD is SZD, and anyone can see something special between them if you keep an open mind. I wrote about my SZD reasons here previously. That said, GG & DD are individuals, each with their own successful careers. They come first, the ship comes second. That I'm very clear of.

4. Use Chinese apps

Gosh, my phone and tablet are now full of Chinese apps. I used to have only WeChat cos I needed it for work but now I have Weibo, Oasis, Douyin, WeTV, MangoTV, Youku, etc. Some of them are not even available in the app store so I had to find alternative sources to download them. haha..I even have paid membership for some of these apps. And now, browsing Weibo daily becomes a routine. If you wish, you can just get stuck browsing Weibo for a long long time. It's entertaining.

5. Read fan fic

I only started about 6 months ago but now I'm hooked and fics are largely the only thing I read these days, apart from news. But I only read Yizhan or WangXian fics (p.s. calling for fic recs of other pairings!) I know some might have different feelings about fan fics but to me, I really just see them as fiction, with characters (and sometimes traits) bearing similarities to GGDD. Similarly, I separate the platform from the incident so I have no problems going to A03 despite GG's incident. I just enjoy seeing the characters named XZ/WYB having happy endings in many different timelines and universes. While most of the fics I read are explicit (by design), I don't use them as tools to play out certain fantasies or to think of GGDD in a sexual manner. In fact, I really hate fics that have little substance and just go into the explicit parts without plot development. I like those with interesting premises too, like one I read recently where XZ is a serial killer and WYB is a police officer investigating the case but also in love with him. I do have plans to share my list of fav fan fics some time down the road so keep an eye out for it!

6. Willingly read Chinese

Yes, Chinese may be my mother tongue but I don't use it much in daily living unless I have to. I also find it tedious to read Chinese cos the characters are just so squashed together. If I have a choice, I will always pick English. But now, I read so much Chinese from my daily weibo browsing. I even read fan fics in Chinese! Who am I? On the plus side, I think my Chinese comprehension and translation skills improved. I also picked up some internet lingo used by Chinese netizens, which are pretty interesting like doi, 🐮🍺, 🖍. My all-time fav is yyds.

7. Act like a cougar

In real life, I have always maintained that younger men are childish. At least those I have encountered. But look at me now, fangirling over two younger men (I am closer in age to GG, but still..). I even jokingly call them my 'China Boyfriends'. I look at them very respectfully most of the time.

8. Buy merch

Seriously, once you start, you can't stop. At least that was what happened to me, although I'm still quite selective when it comes to supporting their endorsements. I usually go for consumables like food, cosmetics vs collectibles cos I'm more practical. Also, GG says to support their merch within reasonable means so that's what I'm doing. Just buying things that I'm interested to try and not because it has their faces or names slapped on it. In a way, this suits me cos I like trying new brands and stuff anyway.

9. Keeping a Yizhan archive

Photos, weblinks, videos, songs, fan fics list..my phone is full of these things now. I think my Yizhan photo gallery is only second to the folder with my dogs' pictures. But how can you resist when we are blessed with new pics of them almost every week?

10. Camp for livestreams

I'm lucky I live in the same time zone as the boys so I don't have to wake up in the wee hours of the morning just to watch something. But that's the thing, being in the same time zone sometimes make me feel like I HAVE to watch that thing live because, why not? Why wait? Not shy to admit that I once watched a live programme in the middle of work but I made sure I finished what needed to be done. I think so long as we don't let these livestream schedules run our lives, there's no harm in camping for them.

11. Watch c entertainment

I am one of those who used to pass over Chinese productions, simply because it's a Chinese production. Not in a scoffing manner but I'm just genuinely not interested in them nor the celebs. I was more of a US/UK production kind of person, occasionally Korean/Japanese. Now, I'm learning to enjoy them although I just watch those with GGDD in them. No energy to follow other Chinese celebs anyway. The other programme I'm contemplating watching even if it doesn't have them in it is Who's the Murderer (GG was only in one of the cases) cos I like the premise. On the flip side, now my sis and partner keep making fun of me cos to them, all I do now is "watch China shows". That is so not true. Or is it?

12. Write fan mail

I wrote a letter to GG once. A long-ass letter. I hope he read it. That's all I'm gonna say. 🙈 hahahahaha

13. Desire to visit China

China was never on my list of to-visit places. Just wasn't interested. I have been to Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou a few times in the past for work but even then, I never felt the urge to revisit for leisure. Now, I wanna visit GG and DD's home town, visit Chongqing to see the graffiti wall with Bobii Zanbii on it, eat mala hotpot and try out their sauce recipe, attend BXG events, dine at the CQL restaurant... Watching TTXS also made me realise that there are many beautiful places in China with natural landscapes and all that. I used to be clouded by my disdain for the regime and some behaviour of its citizens but now, I recognise that the country is separate from the regime or a smaller group of poorly behaved citizens. China is a beautiful country and I would love to visit some day. I will fly over immediately on my own if someone gives me tix to ADLAD!!

Well, I hope some of these things resonate with you. Feel free to share the OOC things that Yizhan made you do.

Once again, Happy BXG Day! 🐢💛🐆🐇🐷🌶🦁🍑🐶🍍🛹🎋

#yizhan #bjyx #things yizhan made me do

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stewblog · 3 years

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OLD (2021)

M. Night Shyamalan needs to let someone else write his movies.

The central concept of Old is fantastic. “An exotic beach inexplicably makes everyone who visits it age at a highly accelerated rate” sounds like a fun scenario to watch. It also seems like a setup rife with interesting thematic avenues to explore. So it’s incredibly disappointing that Shyamalan only occasionally taps into the juice of the premise while all but ignoring anything that would otherwise give the story any amount of dramatic or emotional heft.

We’re led into the film by a family on vacation. The mother, Prisca (Vicky Krieps), “miraculously” finds online some heretofore unknown fancy schmancy hotel in an unnamed exotic beach location. But Prisca is there just to soak up the sun. She and her husband, Guy (Gael Garcia Gernal), will have an easier time breaking the news of their impending divorce if their two kids, Maddox (Alexa Swinton) and Trent (Nolan River) have had a few days in paradise first. They’re told by a friendly concierge that he’s giving them exclusive access to a private, hidden beach. Who could turn that down?

They’re not alone, though, as two additional families find themselves on the beach and I suppose this is where the script really begins to buckle under its own weight. We have 11 characters total, all vying for time and attention. And while some exit the story sooner than most, it still feels like too many people vying for attention, especially when you consider that there’s essentially no real story to begin with. It has the trappings of an Agatha Christie-style whodunnit, but those at least are driven by the likes of a Miss Marple or Inspector Poirot. There is no single driving personality here, no one character we can ever look to for any kind of a narrative or thematic focal point to center the proceedings.

Whose story is this? I honestly couldn’t tell you. I’m not sure Shyamalan could either, honestly. None of these characters have any real defining qualities beyond their surface level identifier of doctor, mother, kid, teen, gold-digging trophy wife, rapper named Mid-Sized Sedan, etc. The only thing driving the film forward is the central mystery and even that only remains interesting for so long when there are no characters worth investing in or rooting for. There’s about enough material here for a solid 30-45 minutes of television. Had Shyamalan made this an episode of The Twilight Zone or The Outer Limits, it would likely be considered an instant classic. But as is, the limited material is stretched far beyond its capacity to sustain interest. There are some moments of body-related horror that stick out, but those moments are fleeting and far between.

Tying it all together into a package that is, at times, simply excruciating to watch is the utterly abhorrent dialogue. I can’t remember the last time I saw a professionally made film with dialogue this poorly written and delivered. Though I suppose I should be far less hard on the actors tasked with reciting words this amateurish. It’s as though the script was written by an artificial intelligence program that had no real understanding of how actual people converse or even talk.

My perception of Old might have been salvaged at least minimally if the ending hadn’t gone so hard into explaining everything. Once the reveal is made, it makes sense in context but then it just...keeps explaining things. I wouldn’t go so far as to suggest that nothing be explained, but leaving things with a more sinister or even minimally mysterious edge would have done wonders for how thin everything before it ends up feeling.

It’s been nearly 20 years since Shyamalan released his last universally liked film (Signs in 2002), and yet I still have yet to be able to put my finger on what or why it all went wrong. He’s been on the outs, as it were, in terms of perception for too long for his bafflingly bad output to be the result of ego. And it’s not like he hasn’t made a few good things between Signs and now. I’ll readily defend his script for Devil (yes, the demon-possessed elevator movie). But on the whole, I’ll likely never be able to reconcile the fact that the guy who made a stone-cold, pop culture-defining classic his first time at-bat theatrically with The Sixth Sense could fall so hard, and just...keep falling, for the most part.

Is Old the worst thing Shyamalan has made? Almost certainly not. Even The Happening can be enjoyed as a gloriously stupid b-movie and it’s hard for a bar of failure to be lower than The Last Airbender. But Old may be the film that feels like a strong case of a wasted opportunity, and that stings more than a disastrous failure.

#m. night shyamalan #old #movies #movie reviews

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squadron-of-damned-writes · 3 years

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tagged by @thiswaycomessomethingwicked. Found this sitting in my drafts after third of a year later. No time like the present, right?

Rules are: List the first lines of your last 20 stories (if you have less than 20, just list them all!). See if there are any patterns. Choose your favorite opening line.

(how convenient that AO3 shows 20 works per page by default!)

1. It most certainly is a morning and the doorbell rings. Like the beginning of a horror movie, Sam thinks as he makes his way from his room to the front door. (The Night In Gale, 2019-10-11, Good Omens x Supernatural)

2. The remnants of the stained glass creak and shatter under the heavy plate sabatons. The men clad in deep red robes watch the armoured figures walk through the raided monastery in careful silence. (Moon And Destiny, 2019-08-24, Les Misérables x Wizardry)

3. “Alright squad! Who are we doing this week?” (One Gay at a Time, 2019-08-31, Les Misérablex x Queer Eye for the Straight Guy)

4. Light. Everything is is spinning. Light, even behind closed eyelids. It’s omnipresent. Radiant, blinding, magnificent light. (Like A Teen Girl,[1] 2019-11-15, W.I.T.C.H.)

5. Witches have pricking in their thumbs, Varen had his stomach worms, and Lyris had her teeth. She could feel them vibrating in her gums. It usually went away with a couple of flagons of mead, but apparently not tonight. If anything, it made it worse. So here she was, Lyris called Titanborn, tipsy but not yet drunk, sitting by the campfire with the two of Companions and a growing feeling of dread as her teeth planned to run for the hills. It made her only more irritated. (Mind How She Goes, 2019-11-30, Elder Scrolls Online)

6. “Well, are you going to stand there the whole night?” (The Past, the Present, the Death, and the Devil, 2019-12-19, Les Misérables)

7. There is this thing they don’t tell you about dying – it gave you mother of all headaches. In all those tomes and epic sagas there could had been at least once mentioned that the brave heroes and mighty beings who returned from the Other side felt like a horse kicked thorough their head. This terrible pain was usually why your freshly resurrected dead scream in agony and want to destroy things. (The Many Deaths of Me,[2] 2017-04-30, World of Warcraft)

8. As strange as it was, Lyris finds an odd sort of peace here. It is not her old home – she doubts she could ever return there – but her cabin near Riften is a new home. At first it was a house, but she made it a home. It was a hard work to get there, and she is rightfully proud of it all. (To Be Found, 2019-12-09, Elder Scrolls Online)

9. Say what you want about the Tribunal and Vvardenfell, there is something that draws a good hero to the city of Vivec. That something might be a divine presence, but most likely it is simply the presence of a quarter with publicly accessible forges and looms in the close proximity to a bank and the drop site for commissioned works. (The Battlespire, 2020-05-09, Elder Scrolls Online)

10. “Your Majesty, a message for you.” The chamberlain presents the envelope on a silver tray with a gentle bow. Queen Ayrenn picks it up with her delicately manicured fingers, and the soft warm breeze of early autumn attempts to snatch the piece of creamy paper from her as it hurls large honey and amber coloured leaves before finally settling them on the ground. (War Ends, 2020-07-26, Elder Scrolls Online)

11. “Allow me to ask you again for clarification, Your Ex-” “Charles, dear brother. Simply and plainly Charles, for we all are equal in the eyes of the almighty God.” “- Charles: I have died.” (The Man Who Saved A World, 2020-08-12, Les Misérables)

12. So that’s it, you suppose. You are going to sit down on this chair, because someone has to. (The Tale of Two Fates, 2020-09-05, Death and Taxes)

13. There is a saying in Ferelden: When you think you’ve reached the bottom, the Maker shows up with a shovel. Like most farmer wisdom, even this one applies in Orlais. (Land Turned Red, 2020-12-29, Dragon Age)

14. So you come to the supermarket on Friday morning and in the ice-cream isle is a poorly paid and even poorerly shaven retail worker unloading boxes of frozen pizzas, eyeing them like man who’s missed out on breakfast and his contract doesn’t include lunch break. (Observations of an Unconcerned Bus Driver, 2021-03-07, Stardew Valley)

15. They are giving him that look. He knows it well and hasn’t seen it in a long long time. It is the look that says: “I can’t believe that out of all the people in Thedas, he was the one to save us.” (Fine Literature, 2021-03-14, Dragon Age)

16. A young woman stands in a garden. It is a beautiful garden, very lush in spite of all damnation raining from the sky lately, now that the Veil is gone and… And all that. (Houserite, 2021-03-29, Dragon Age x Homestuck)

17. If you asked Solas, it was the most predictable outcome, blatantly staring you in face, shoving middle finger into your nose and blowing a raspberry. However, nobody asked Solas and even less people cared for his issues with Sera’s behaviour, and thus when Dorian goes missing, almost everyone is surprised. (The Excellent Week of Dorian Pavus, 2021-04-09, Dragon Age x Doctor Who)

18. Talent. A short and complicated word. What is a talent? (Necromancer’s Virtues, 2021-05-06, Dragon Age)

19. Fucked.That’s what they are. Fucked. Completely and thoroughly. The Trade Tongue is a limited and insufficient language and lacks any imagination whatsoever when it comes to cusswords. (The Wolves Breach Through, 2021-05-29, Dragon Age)

20. There are a lot of ways to tell that you’ve woken up the wrong way in the morning, and I was pretty certain that I’ve hit three of them at least: Every fiber of me was aching, two men were looming over me with worried expressions, and the sky was dark. Especially the last bit was extremely worrisome, since I was fairly certain I fell asleep in my bed at home under a solid ceiling above which is mum’s room and after that is the attic and after that is a roof and only then you get to see the sky. (Real Feeling of Sharing,[3] 2021-01-10, Dragon Age)

Observations:

I use the opening lines of a story like most people use headlines; luring in the reader by making them think “Hold on, what’s going on?” and hoping it ignites strong enough curiosity for them to read further to figure it out. For that reason more often than not the opening lines are not exactly related to the story.

A surprising amount of mu openings also clearly say: “The story you know is over.”

Also very specific thing which is less about opening lines and more about the trope of my fics: A suspicious number of beginnings based on the fact that the person of focus is dead or implied to be, or implied to be really close to it.

I also don’t like long introductions to the story, so it’s either “Things are happening now, figure it out dear reader” or “This is a thing I am going to focus on because it’s my thing, deal with it, plot will come later.”

Favourite opening line is from The Wolves Breach Through, especially because it quickly evolves into a rant about langauges. The Night In Gale is a close second, because I love to take a piss on the source material. For this reason The Battlespire also comes close to the top, although the fic in itselfwas shit.

[1] Like A Teen Girl should get renamed, because the story evolved from “Parody of the Magic Highschool Girls premise” to “Drama With the Lads”, but I eh, who cares anyway, right?

[2] The Many Deaths of Me deserves to be rewritten by older and more experienced me. It could be a great fic.

[3] Probably going to get renamed to Original Real Feeling of Sharing, but only when I start the next story from the series.

tagging: @timesthatneverwere @thewronglong

#writing

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offbeatcappuccino · 3 years

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Do You Like Brahms? Final Review (Spoilers!)

Cast: Kim Min Jae, Park Eun Bin, Park Ji Hyun, Kim Seong Chul

Streaming Platform: KOCOWA TV

Year: 2020

Rating : 8.9/10

Synopsis:

Do You Like Brahms? is a drama set against the backdrop of the field of classical music in Korea. The story revolves around two protagonists Park Joon Young (Kim Min Jae) , a talented piano prodigy, who’s won numerous accolades at various global piano competitions, and Chae Song Ah ( Park Eun Bin) , a business major who decided to repeat four years of undergrad to major in violin. Their stories intersect when Joon Young decides to return to Korea for a sabbatical after his successful North American tour and Song Ah chooses to take an internship at the Kyunghoo Cultural Foundation, the same foundation which offered its first scholarship to Joon Young to help support his musical studies. The growing relationship between the two characters and the conflicts that they face with their friends and families as they struggle to succeed professionally, but also personally forms the crux of the plot.

The title of the drama Do You Like Brahms? has a lot of significance to the actual plot of the show. Johannes Brahms was an accomplished German composer and the most famous story about this personal life is his unwavering love for Clara Schuman, the wife of another famous composer, Robert Schuman. The title is significant in the drama because Brahms is the only composer that Joon Young outright refuses to play, but also because both Joon Young’s life and to a certain extent Song Ah’s as well parallel Brahms’ own life.

Pros:

Realistic & Healthy Relationships: Almost all the romantic relationships that I’ve seen in all the dramas I watched this year all had some sort of “fate” element that brought them together. For instance, in It’s Okay to Not Be Okay, Ko Mun Yeong and Moon Gang Tae were acquainted with each other as children, but then drifted apart after Ko Mun Yeong practically spooked the living daylight out of Gang Tae. However, In Do You Like Brahms, both Park Joon Young and Chae Song Ah meet by random chance and its really heartwarming to see their relationships progress in the same way that it does for many people. They start out as acquaintances at work, who quickly become friends, before committing to a serious relationship towards the later half of the series. Seeing them at all three stages is truly heartwarming and comforting, especially due to the strong chemistry shared between the two leads.

Unlike other characters in other k-dramas, Joon Young and Song Ah aren’t dramatic in the way they show their affection to each other. We don’t have some crazy scene where one saves the other’s life or even the typical k-drama piggyback scene that happens whenever the female lead gets too drunk. Rather, we see scenes where affection is conveyed by the way that Joon Young asks Song Ah if she’s done with class, or whether they want to grab dinner together. It’s the way that the very shy and timid Song Ah feels comfortable enough to pull Joon Young’s strings from time to time, or how she gifts Joon Young an umbrella because he doesn’t own one. Similarily, Joon Young shows how much he cares about Song Ah in the way that he uses the beige handkerchief hat she gave him to clean his piano or how his usual sad face lights up every single time he sees Song Ah’s smile.

Another aspect of Joon Young and Song Ah’s relationship that I truly admire is how good these two are at active listening. Even during their most explosive arguments, they never try to cut each other off and make a genuine attempt at listening to each other. When one of them is having a rough day, there isn’t this desperate attempt by the other to offer useless advice. Instead, they just let the other just vent as much as they want, while they’re sipping on another cup of tea. Even when things are rough, they constantly respect each other’s boundaries. However, the show also acknowledges that their relationship is not perfect by any means and its nice to see them work through their problems. Overall, it’s really nice to see a k-drama that doesn’t glorify toxic relationships.

Realistic and Nuanced Acting : A common problem that arises when you’re doing any type of drama based on playing an instrument is that very often a show will show an instrument being played the wrong way, or will rely on professional musicians as body doubles to play the instrument. As someone who played violin from the ages of 11-17, I can confirm that this drama does such a good job highlighting all the nuances that come with playing the violin, whether it be tuning your instrument , your string breaking, or even rubbing rosin against your bow, and even the sentiment surrounding being last chair in orchestra was really nice to see because you know the show writers really did their research when they decided to write the script for the drama. Also, major shout out to Park Eun Bin for her vibrato technique and I guess it helps that she played violin at the college level. Same goes for Kim Min Jae, who also knows how to play piano. Fun fact about the show is that many of the pieces played by the characters in the show were actually played by the actors themselves and they spent a considerable amount of time brushing up on their skills to play some pretty complicated pieces.

Cons:

Conflict: It doesn’t take long for viewers of the show to figure out that there are some serious obstacles in Joon Young and Song Ah’s relationship with one of them being Joon Young’s inability to prioritize and move on from his past. This is an issue that somewhat works itself out in this drama, but I think the other more serious issue for this couple was the very apparent disparity these two had in their professional lives.

One issue in this relationship was how insecure Song Ah felt because she was not an accomplished musician like Joon Young and was being constantly berated by those around her that she simply was not good enough to be Joon Young’s girlfriend. One of the major scenes in this show was Song Ah’s advisor straight up telling her that she would be a “good wife” to Joon Young by taking care of him before his performances and by doing so, completely invalidating Song Ah’s own professional dreams of becoming a violinist and her own journey in music. While Song Ah does ultimately quit the violin for valid reasons and ventures into the world of music management and event planning, it was somewhat disheartening to see that Song Ah really does end up doing exactly what her professor said she would and it was also disappointing that Song Ah and Joon Young did not ever really have a sincere discussion about this issue, especially considering the toll that it was taking on Song Ah’s life.

This brings me to one of the biggest cons of the show, which is that both Song Ah and Joon Young have serious issues in their life outside of their relationship, which they never confront individually or discuss with each other. In addition, the way the show is written, there is no room for resolution of these issues and we’re left with an ending that is sweet and romantic, but also feels like the show was wrapped up way too quickly.

Lee Jung Kyung: Most complaints about second leads on k-dramas is that they do not get a proper storyline and many viewers are left wanting more scenes of the second leads. The problem with this show is the exact opposite, which is that the second lead in this show has absolutely way too much screen time. Lee Jung Kyung is a poorly written character, who at many times comes off as whiny, self-absorbed, and irrational in her newfound infatuation with Joon Young. I understand that she’s supposed to be a source of conflict for the main couple, but so much of the plot was devoted to Lee Jung Kyung, when the writers could have been investing that time on Song Ah’s and Joon Young’s character development and conflict resolution.

#do you like brahms?#kim min jae #park eun bin #kdramas

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ranger-report · 4 years

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Opinion: JURASSIC WORLD Learned Nothing From JURASSIC PARK

Twenty-seven years ago (god, can you believe it?) a sci-fi blockbuster with Things To Say exploded into cinemas. Tackling the subject of science, control, and whether or not man should play God, it also featured state-of-the-art special effects, intense sequences of dinosaur action, and just enough human heart to win audiences over. Of course we’re talking about Jurassic Park. It’s a monumental film that still holds up today, even as the effects are finally starting to show their age. It’s a deep shame that the sequel series, Jurassic World, has learned nothing from it. If anything, World is very much a reaction to Park...and not in a good way.

The first three films in the Park series all dealt with questions of science and progress, and what responsibility man has to the things he creates. Sure, The Lost World and Jurassic Park III weren’t nearly as deft in the handling of these themes as the first film, but they maintained the same spirit. Jurassic Park asked whether or not mankind had the right to resurrect a dead species for their amusement; The Lost World carried this over, asking how much responsibility man should have in maintaining this resurrected species’s existence; Jurassic Park III insinuated that man could still finds things to learn from these science-born dinosaurs even if they weren’t the real deal. Science was the forefront in these stories, perhaps to diminishing results, but at least Science maintained a consistent role of moral gray area. Park III is considered the low point of the series, a brisk hour-and-a-half of rollercoaster excitement with goofy moments and lightweight human drama, but even that film conjures impressive moments of dinosaur action and awe, including a river sequence where Dr. Alan Grant, finding himself returned to this world he vowed to disavow, discovers he still has reverence for the giant beasts that roam this island, and maybe doesn’t hate them as much as he lays claim. The scene in the aviary with the pterodactyls is particularly effective, using shadow and light and fog and height to add tension and terror. No, it’s no masterpiece, and if you detest the film, I don’t blame you. But detesting that film is what led to the existence of Jurassic World, which claims to hold the same ideals as the first series, but none of the actual heft.

Jurassic World starts off with an interesting premise: what if Jurassic Park had actually opened to the public and was a success? This is a great hook, sure, but with everything that has come before in the first three movies, this isn’t something that should have ever come to pass. But, movie needs to movie. We have questions of whether or not science should be creating these creatures, whether or not they have the right to experiment with DNA and create “new” dinosaurs that are bigger meaner and badder than regular dinosaurs, questions of corporate influence. As with the first Park, World plays the same beats: everything is great, people are coming to visit and inspect certain aspects, everything goes wrong, dinosaurs get loose, people start dying. World turns the scale up to 11 since now we have an entire amusement park full of people instead of a small group of survivors, meaning bigger thrills, bigger sequences, bigger dinosaurs. Everything is bigger, including the science, but while it’s bigger it’s also hollow. Nostalgia and references to past films can’t fill the void that the film builds around this premise we’ve seen before. I admit that when I walked out of the theater the first time, I was happy. After the letdown of Park III, World felt exciting and invigorating and fresh. Then I watched it a few more times, and the sheen began to vanish. Stilted dialogue, characters with little charm, obvious setups, contrived danger, and an obvious sequel bait ending revealed the true corporate influence of the film: franchising. Meanwhile, Science and Nature were still adversaries in this new series of dino-centric films, but Science became less of a gray area, less of a “How much right do we have?” and dialed into a “Science Is Evil And Scientists Do Evil Things For Money.” Meanwhile, Nature, which is true neutral in the first three films (just don’t fuck around with Nature and you won’t get bit), has become the True Good Guy, and instead of seeing the fear of messing with Nature, now we see how Nature is being oppressed by Science, and so we should begin to empathize with our friendly dinosaur foes.

And what about those sequels? Both The Lost World and Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom start with the premise that Something Has Survived and opens with dire situations. One involves a family on a beach who stumble across dinosaurs, the other involves corporate espionage gone horribly awry when they underestimate the prehistoric menace around them. Both are tense, well-shot, and arguably Kingdom’s sequence is the best opening scene in the series. And both films move forward from there, revealing the dinosaurs are still alive (Lost World explains a second island called Site B, Fallen Kingdom simply continues the tale), getting Jeff Goldblum involved, and asking what responsibility the creators have for their creations. But the key difference between the films is that Fallen Kingdom asks the audience to have empathy and sympathy for the dinosaurs of the island -- most of them, in fact, excepting the genetic mutations crafted and grown by the park scientists. Blue, a raptor introduced in the first World, is the reason Chris Pratt’s Owen goes back to the island to help rescue the creatures from imminent death. He formed a bond with the raptor from birth, and the dinosaur -- of a species that once was the scariest goddamn thing in cinema -- is reduced to little more than a pet with big teeth and claws. The Lost World shows us that Nature is scary, and when Science believes that it can control Nature then Life Will Find A Way (remember that line?). Dinosaurs in the first three Park films are forces of Nature, and if left alone will leave you alone. But Nature doesn’t take kindly to intruders: see literally every scene in The Lost World. Even the big leaf-eaters are dangerous and scary when uncaged and scared. Fallen Kingdom makes the big ask of the audience to see the dinosaurs as on-par with the human characters, to have empathy for them. And while, to an extent, we should have empathy for Living Things, Fallen Kingdom goes so far as to spare the lives of dinosaurs brought to the mainland rather than let them die so they don’t get released into the world of humans. Which, if you’ve seen The Lost World, is kind of a bad thing. Many people reacted poorly to the T-Rex roaming through San Diego searching for its young, and Fallen Kingdom decides to not only go with that same premise, but ups the ante by unleashing several species out into the human world, this time a cliffhanger. In fact, the upcoming third film, Jurassic World: Dominion rests entirely on this premise, and will no doubt focus on attempting to contain the prehistoric creatures roaming through suburbia. But how can we, the audience, even take this seriously when we’ve been asked to have empathy with the dinosaurs now? If these creatures are now characters, toys to be sold and displayed on children’s coloring books, exactly how deadly can they -- or will they -- be?

Dominion already appears to be making similar decisions as Jurassic Park III, by including Sam Neill and Laura Dern as Alan Grant and Ellie Sattler respectively. And in continuing to funhouse-mirror the previous trilogy, now instead of a dinosaur island that is strictly off-limits to humans we have dinosaurs in the human world. Both sequels were primed as rollercoasters, introducing new creatures and thrills, and no doubt Dominion will make the same mistakes as Park III and the other World films. But Park III at least remembered that the focus of the show is the big bad dinos, how uncontrollable they are, how scary they are, and how Nature is a force unto itself. Alan Grant learned by the end of Park III that the raptors he was researching in his studies were similar enough to the raptors of Site B that he could find a way to communicate with them to a degree of saving everyone’s lives. He had turned his nose at the Science of the creations, not recognizing the Nature that still existed in their modified DNA. What will he learn -- or unlearn -- in Dominion?

The Jurassic Park films were all about asking questions. “Your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should,” Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm says in the first film, to great effect. Meanwhile, Jurassic World’s tagline could be summed up as “The scientists never should and they are still doing it.” Where we were asked to think in the first films, now we can sit back and be told the moral. We can just watch the onscreen drama as Things Happen and People Get Eaten. Jurassic World learned the wrong things from Jurassic Park, and to that effect, perhaps the filmmakers were so preoccupied with whether or not they could make a new Jurassic film that they didn’t stop to think if they should.

#jurassic park #the lost world #jurassic park iii #jurassic world #fallen kingdom #dominion #steven spielberg #colin trevorrow #dinosaurs #film #opinion #universal pictures #ck burch #rubyranger #ranger report

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huihuiheart · 4 years

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Goretober D1: Lost Hope - Ghost!Hoseok

Gender Neutral reader

Warnings:Ghosts, murder (including children), avenging, blood, gore, death, graves?,mentions of abuse, mentions of bullying, mentions of suicide, bones.

Word Count:2,309

Even after all these years that same fateful day haunted you. The day you lost your childhood friend. Not that anyone else would believe the truth even if you knew what it was. Insisting to your parents that you wanted to come home from college for the anniversary of Hoseok’s death, despite their advice. Not that it took much to get them to cave, you were an only child and if it needed comfort during that time, they’d let you come back for ‘comfort’. Only that’s not why you wanted to come back, at least not entirely.

Two years after Hoseok’s passing his parents had stopped letting you come over and sit in the yard the two of you had spent years playing in. The yard you knew held their secret. The year he “disappeared” and the two following they had let you come over and put together your little memory of Hoseok, telling them it was all his favorite things so he’d know to come back to you three. They got anxious though, noting how all three years you’d placed your little monument of his favorite things in the exact spot where they had buried him beneath.

You knew they were afraid you would figure out their secret, little did they know you’d known from the start. You didn’t know exactly how they’d done it, you thought that perhaps even his mother had some remorse over it. It at least appeared that way from how she’d cradled his bloodied lifeless form with tears streaming down her face while carrying him outside, silently following her husband’s direction. He’d dug up a spot nearby your shared fence all while you watched in the dead of night from your bedroom window. Mrs. Jung laid out a blanket and settled Hoseok’s body onto it, carefully wrapping him like there was a chance he’d get any colder at this point before settling him into the grave her husband had dug. Unable to watch she shook her head and turned to leave the work of hiding the body to her husband. Mr. Jung obviously did not share any of his wife’s grief, practically dancing on the grave. You knew Mr.Jung had never had the same love for his son that his wife had, but you’d never known it to be as bad as what you were seeing. The man went out as the sun peeked out across the sky to get flower garden supplies to hide the fresh plot of dirt.

The next day when they’d panicked and called the police you quickly learned that it was no confession of guilt, but instead an elaborate cover-up. Your parents were too busy sympathizing for the grief-stricken parents to listen when you’d tried to explain that it was all a ruse. Your parents made sure to keep you too occupied to be able to go bother the police with your made-up stories of murder. Even taking you to a therapist who dismissed it saying it was simply a coping mechanism for losing someone without explanation, especially at a young age. So that’s how you came to the conclusion that you’d keep it to yourself, simply honoring Hoseok the only ways you could. Since the Jungs had stopped letting you come over you’d put your things together on your family's side of the shared fence. It only took a year or two for the flowers from their yard to miraculously appear on your side of the fence while immediately dying on their side. That one of very few outward signs of the more sacred secret that you held onto.

The secret that Hoseok was still very much a part of your life. The ghost of your young friend surprised and terrified you both on the first night you grieved him. Agreeing to slip out each night that week to visit his grave in secret just to see him. At only 11 you’d assumed he’d be terrified, but he’d seemed focused solely on making sure you’d be okay. Telling you how to deal with your school bullies, to stay away from certain people, and that his friend group better look out for you or he’d be sure to haunt them. And just like that, the real reason behind your little tradition to honor Hoseok’s memory was born. He didn’t often visit you throughout the year, only making the occasional exception when you’d come to his grave at night heart battered and shattered to bits and weep over it muttering nonsensical things in the midst of your pain. Unbeknownst to you keeping tabs on all those responsible to deal with accordingly.

Tonight marked the first night of your usual week with Hoseok, whom you’d not seen since the year prior. The ghost had aged along with you to appear roughly 26 at this point, yet still a child at heart. Setting up your monument like usual in preparation for him. His favorite snacks and drinks out, a few of the flowers he’d caused to grow on your side of the fence in a vase on it along with some mementos; the teddy bear he’d gifted you, the last picture you two had taken together, and the bracelet you’d strategically dug his grave up a little to get to, the one he wore to always match the half that you wore.

Diligently you waited until the first light of morning, with no sign from him.

And again the second night as well.

Even a third night this went on. Something you never would have expected from Hoseok.

Finally, on the fourth night, the night that marked the date of his death he showed himself. Popping open the snacks and snickering at the sigh you gave, focus on the grass distraught at the thought your friend might not come. Until you heard the familiar sign of his presence though.

“Hobi! Geez! You kept me waiting, you know.” You huff with a small pout only making Hoseok let out a hearty laugh now. Laying back in the air he crosses his legs as he floats slow circles around you munching on his snacks.

“Did I worry you, little one?” Hoseok raises his brow watching your reactions with a small smirk.

“A little bit, yeah. I was afraid I’d forgotten something.” You admit shoulders drooping a little.

Hoseok hums, reaching out to brush his fingers against your cheek. To anyone else, it would seem like a simple chilling breeze, but you’d come to recognize and grow fond of the sensation that let you know he wanted to comfort you.

“You didn't, you've done perfectly little one. As always. I was just lost in thought. Planning really.” Hoseok shared and it causes your brows to furrow.

“Planning what?”

“Nothing that should be of any concern to you little one. It’s a mess you don’t need to be any part of.” Hoseok waves off your question, resuming laying on his back again.

“If it’s a concern of yours then it’s a concern of mine too, and you can’t even say anything about that considering you know I get that from you.” You stubbornly insist and the chuckle he gives at your response isn’t as light-hearted as his earlier laugh letting you know whatever was on the mind of the sunshiny ghost boy was rather serious.

“My time here is coming to an end little one.” Hoseok sighs, finding your eyes with a gentle gaze, “There’s something I must do, and then I have to go away.”

“For good?” Your eyes widen, becoming glassy at the thought of actually losing him this time as he nods.

“For good little one.”

“Can’t you just not do whatever it is and stay longer. I-I don’t want to...I-I can’t lose you. N-Not for good.” Your words whimper past your lips, almost pathetically you’re sure. Feeling the ghost wrap himself around your distraught form to bring you comfort.

“I’m afraid I can’t. I’ve been given a lot of time, but still only so much.” Hoseok’s lips leave a cold kiss on your forehead.

“Can I help you then? I want to do something for you one last time.” Your tears fall and Hoseok wishes he could wipe them away for you. Had circumstances been different he had no doubt you’d have been the one and only for him, unfortunately, fate had not been so kind.

“It won’t be pleasant and I can’t promise things will go well for you if you do help me.” Hoseok offers a warning but doesn’t deny you. That is simply enough.

“If things go poorly will you promise to take me with you? If they won’t go well I’d rather be far from here and with you than trapped here without you any longer.” You inquire almost begging they’d go poorly knowing that no matter what you’d much rather be with him.

“You still have a life ah-” Your hand-raising stops Hoseok’s counterargument.

“You’re the only real life I’ve had in this world. I’d be far too miserable without you.” You speak honestly knowing that either way Hoseok would be able to tell. “And if you won’t take me with you, then I’ll find a way to go with myself.”

“Very well. The first thing we need to do is call my parents.” Hoseok tells you, getting right into the plan.

With furrowed brows you pull out your phone and find their home number, dialing it. Following his instructions to put the phone on speaker and hold it put to him. Surprised at his parent's answer, he chuckles.

“I wonder why you two don’t sound so distraught considering what today is. Or have you both forgotten about me that easily?” Hoseok nonchalantly asks, his mother sputtering on the other line. His father had the same attitude that night 15 years ago, however, simply scoffing.

“Is that you boy? Why don’t you haul your scared ass back here? See what I’ll do to make you run off just like always.” Mr. Jung threatens over the phone, making you pale. You’d always had your assumptions, but you’d never had proof of what he’d done until now.

“You know if you both had been remorseful I would have shown you some mercy, but it’s too late for that.” Hoseok sighs before having you hang up the phone.

“What now?” You blink at him as he shakes his head a little.

“Now you should stay away, I’m going to repay them for what they did to me.” He tells you and from the look in his eyes, you don’t need him to explain further.

“I told you we’re in this together. If you’re going to do that then I’m going to help. Just tell me what to do.” You insist, standing to follow him into his yard and to the back door. Where he easily slips through and silently unlocks it for you.

“Leave my father to me. Mother should be easy enough for you to handle.” Hoseok slips into the kitchen and opens a drawer picking out whichever knife he deems perfect for you to use. Grabbing one for himself.

“W-What should I do?” You question, voice slightly squeaky as it shakes a little. You knew you wanted to bring him justice like this, but you still weren’t certain of your actions.

“Just go for the throat or heart, make it quick. Mother always seems to regret her actions after the fact, so I’ll give her that much.” Hoseok’s words alert you to just how thoroughly he’d thought this out, “After you handle that go out back and dig up my grave. I want everyone to know what they did. I don’t want anyone to remember them as the good people they pretended to be all the time.”

You two stumbled across his mother first. The woman fainted at the sight of the ghost. Hoseok leaves you to handle her while searching for his father. In some ways the woman fainting was ideal. It meant she wouldn’t scream or struggle, wouldn’t plead and beg for her life. However, this is when she looked the most peaceful and harmless. Yet thinking back that hadn’t stopped them from doing what they had to Hoseok while he slept. Firmly gripping the knife over your head you swiftly brought it down to her chest, pulling it away dripping in her blood until it fell from your shaky grasp as you stood again. Blood splattering further across the floor at the knife clattered to the ground near your feet.

It took you a moment to gather yourself enough to remember what Hoseok had instructed you to do next. You felt queasy and weak as you moved towards the back, grabbing a shovel to carefully dig up all that was left of Hoseok’s physical body. Simply bones wrapped in scraps of the blanket, carefully laying everything out next to where the grave was.

Trying to slip back inside to find Hoseok, he stops you. Not before you catch a glimpse of his destruction though. Red splattered everywhere. Writing on the wall, descriptions of the true people his parents had always been inside. Something he wanted to shield you from even after you’d just murdered someone for him.

“Come. It’s time to either say goodbye or for you to come with me.” Hoseok simply informs you, making his way over to where you’d laid out his bones.

“I can’t say goodbye. Not again.”You shake your head, following behind and following his guidance to lay down on the grass. The ghost of your friend kneeling beside you and gently stroking over your cheek with a small smile. He kisses your forehead before his touch is over your eyes, urging them closed. Suddenly they’re growing heavy and you’re feeling yourself falling off into a slumber.

“Sleep little one. When you wake we’ll be together somewhere much safer......forever.”

#goretober #bts one shot #bts hoseok

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amycuscarrcw · 3 years

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╰ °✧ that’s AMYCUS CARROW and HE seems to look a lot like JASON RALPH. according to ministry files, the PUREBLOOD used to attend HOGWARTS and be in SLYTHERIN. now, they’re 25 and is an UNSPEAKABLE. A childlike rage and a childlike loneliness, the hushed quiet of hospital wards, a fine line between madness and genius, the sickly sweet smell of rot , a slowly unravelling thread, the endless ticking of a clock, are the best way to describe them. it doesn’t say in their file, but word around the street is that they’re a DEATH EATER. @mmprophet

introduction.

basics.

NAME: Amycus Cyrus Carrow AGE: 25 BIRTHDAY: January 13th. (Capricorn.) PRONOUNS: he/his BLOOD STATUS: Pureblood. CAREER: Unspeakable. Employed by the Department of Mysteries, on the surface Amycus largely concerns himself with the studies of Thought, Space and Time. Considering the black mark on his schooling records and unsociable demeanour, it’s almost a miracle that the Ministry had ever hired him - in this matter it’s highly likely that strings were pulled to ease his way in and nobody really knows what they do down there in the Department of Mysteries. Most of the ministry employees are just grateful they don’t have to encounter him very often. EDUCATION: Hogwarts WAND: Pine, 11 3/4″, Dragon Heartstring. PATRONUS: Amycus cannot, and is unlikely to ever, form a corporeal patronus. If he could it would be a Raven. Frequently associated with loss and ill omens, Ravens surface throughout many mythologies spreading prophecy and insight, carrying the messages of gods. There’s a mysterious quality to the raven, they can be charismatic when they require something of you and excellent at hiding themselves when they don’t want to be seen. Greedy and vain. Curious and yearning for freedom. They are observers who only step into the light when it is to their advantage. BOGGART: It’s the smell that comes first — damp earth, rotting leaves, the slimy new growth of those old woods, milky earthworms writing through freshly turned soil. It’s thick and cloying, suffocating in the dark. Then the weight of it, soft at first, spilling across his skin. Each shovel full growing heavier and heavier as he sinks in, deeper and deeper into the earth, in amidst the roots of the trees that gleam white like bone. It’s hard to see in the dark but he knows who it is who holds the shovel, who takes his time to slowly fill the grave that Amycus’s own clawing fingers can’t seem to catch a grip on, to climb out of. His father still cuts the imposing figure he had when Amycus was just a child. This is what happens to blood traitors. Even after all this time, their father’s shadow looms large over him. more ABOUT.

summary.

+ The Carrows were sickly children, forever in and out of St. Mungo’s with some mysterious illness or the other for most of their childhood. Whilst their father had seemed largely indifferent to their suffering, their mother had been utterly enamoured with it (too enamoured, some might think.) Attention had always been scarce for Peony after her marriage, one almost couldn’t blame her for enjoying the sympathy that her poorly children brought to her. (Though they couldn’t certainly blame her for the poison she slipped into their cups.) + The twins were mismatching bookends; Alecto overflowing with every kind of feeling and Amycus devoid of any of it, but they were all the company each other had growing up. They relied on each other, in their own way, an understanding born through a tumultuous childhood. + They were expelled from Hogwarts in a scandalous fashion in their Sixth year after a long string of unproven accidents culminated in the pair being caught red-handed (literally) in one of their games. Their wands were broken, they were expelled, and it cost a great deal of social capital on the family name to get the decision overturned and to allow them to be packed off to Durmstrang for the rest of their education. + Amycus had loathed Durmstrang. Sometimes he thinks he can still feel the cold of that place in his bones. Never mistaken as an overly sociable person, his isolation there had only served to further entrench him in his sour dislike of social situations.

+ He now works in the Department of Mysteries and when spotted out and about he frequently seems distracted and out of sorts. + There are very few people in the world that Amycus will willingly spend time with, which is why it had been so odd when he’d gone and picked up a friend, seemingly out of nowhere. One day he had been her brother, the person he’d always been, and the next he had been her brother - someone who befriended women named Lucy in the breakroom. Alecto had been deeply suspicious of the woman who wanted to be her brother’s ‘friend’ from the get-go, intent on discovering the agenda behind it, a suspicion that had only grown further the more that Amycus grew attached. When his friend had abruptly disappeared, in the manner that a great many people were disappearing these days, only to be found dead some weeks later and half her family with her, it had seemed a little too coincidental for Amycus to believe that Alecto had nothing to do with it. He hasn’t confirmed his suspicions, but there’s definitely an edge to his interactions with his sister lately.

personality traits.

+ Intelligent - Amycus has always lived in a world of his own. What he lacks in emotional awareness and a distinct inability to decipher what other people want or expect from him, he has always equalled in cleverness. He absorbs information like a sponge and retains it with an almost eerie degree of accuracy. Books were his solace growing up and he seems to always have one on hand. + Innovative - An adaptive thinker with a particular talent for problem solving, Amycus’s booksmarts transfer into practical application. He is good at coming up with new ways of applying what he has learnt and adapting his knowledge to fit the situation. + Focused - There is a laser precision to Amycus’s focus when he becomes interested in something. Dissuading him from a task once he has set his mind to it is nigh on impossible, to the point where most people who have come to know him understand that it is better to just let him get on with it. + Meticulous - A perfectionist at heart, Amycus is fastidious when it comes to attention to detail. He is clinical in his approach to life, sharp and incisive and never willing to let the smallest of details go. + Composed - For such an agitated mind, filled with nervous tics and idiosyncrasies, Amycus has a rarely disturbed composure. While the world rages around him he remains calm and measured. It had once been his greatest asset, the ability to remain steady in his path when the rest of the world unhinged itself, but these days his composure seems to fail him more and more often and in a world that requires restraint, he wonders where his own continues to disappear to. - Shy - Amycus always struggled with socialisation. He tries, of course, with the same uneasy yearning he’s never been able to shake that demands people acknowledge his gifts, but he has always been odd, unsettling to the people around him. He might blame it on his mother, for his isolated childhood, or his sister who he had learned quickly would not be an easy companion, or his father’s cowering temper, or perhaps on his peers at Hogwarts and later Durmstrang who had been unnerved by him and his strange mannerisms, but the truth of it all is that there is no one to blame except for himself. Amycus does not socialise well and has learned, by and large, to keep to himself to avoid the censure that often follows his attempts to reach out to others. - Impressionable - People have always been fond of considering him weak-willed, but Amycus has simply always been easily influenced. He’d wondered once if it was the apathy that fills him that makes it so, that he simply didn’t feel enough to be decisive, but Lucy had disproven that theory. She had filled his head with thoughts that were so entirely incompatible with the Death Eater agenda that he sometimes still hears echoes of them, ghosts of a person he might have been if she’d survived to make it so. Luckily he’s always had his sister to give him a solid shove back into line when his thoughts veer into dangerous territory. - Apathetic - He has always wondered if perhaps there is simply something wrong with him, in the pathways of his brain or in it’s chemistry. Over the years he has observed the highest highs and lowest lows of emotion, he has seen it in his fellow Death Eaters and his peers at school, in his own family, and yet he feels so rarely that sometimes he wonders if he might be imagining it. At least, that was the case before Lucy - he still can’t comprehend the ruin she’d wrought on his emotional landscape but he does know it’s infinitely more unstable than it had once been. He refuses to acknowledge the feelings she’d made him aware of, or the way in which the heartbreak she’d introduced into his life by rejection and then her death had tipped him over the edge, but he clings to the old comfort of apathy like pretending might just return him back to what he’d been before she’d come into his life. - Ruthless - Capable of monstrous things if they are put into his path or demanded of him, Amycus is largely a passive creature. He has never had a problem with what society considers distasteful or abhorrent and has little in the way of self-restraint to keep him from simply slicing through the obstacles that present themselves in his path. He struggles with the idleness of life after the war was won, of the return of rigid social norms and the pressures of living up to pureblood societal rules. - Explosive - The rarely sighted and often questioned presence of Amycus Carrow’s temper is something that people don’t give much consideration. He has always been considered a cold person, apathetic and even, not given to strong emotions, if any at all. But every so often if the motivation is presented Amycus’s detachment gives way to something else entirely: blinding and overwhelming and violent, his temper has been known to explode with ugly consequences. It happened once at school and the repercussions were something that have stained their family name and reputation to this day. It is fortunate, perhaps, that the Carrows have never cared much for an untainted image.

bio.

(trigger warning: inexplicit mentions of abuse, violence, death.)

Amycus Carrow had been born with the taste of decay in his mouth.

His family tree rotted long before his birth, a once grand family besieged by the gossip of their peers and the ever-mounting debt that crept in like the shadow of the old woods that had overrun their family estate. It swas no surprise that he had turned out so twisted and wrong, given his circumstances. Amycus was a symptom of a much greater disease.

Weaned on poison instead of mother’s milk, shepherded in and out of hospital wings since his infancy, it was easy to believe such a bony little creature would not last the harsh winters of the moors, but survive he did. Amycus was clever, or so they’d soon learn, behind his solemn, eerie stares and an unceasing discomfort within his own skin lay a mind riddled with black holes and infinite constellations. His father’s library was his most trusted companion inside the walls of their quiet home, tucked into corners where his sister’s rages couldn’t rattle him with only books and the contents of his own journals to entertain him.

From those books he discovered the threat the Muggle and their more insidious cousin, the Mudblood, presented to wizarding kind; he learned of the sanctity of the blood that flowed through his veins and how to recognise the taste of Belladonna and Angel’s Trumpet and Baneberry on his tongue disguised by his morning pumpkin juice. (‘You must drink every last drop, my darlings.’) The Carrow home was full of secrets, but the woods at their door buried the darkest.

People didn’t like him very much - he’d been an offputting child and at Hogwarts that proved doubly so. Away from his mother’s care he grew stronger and taller but no less odd, no less curious. They didn’t like the way his speech stumbled and faltered and how frustrated his inability to communicate with others made him, they didn’t like the steady, unblinking malevolence in his stare. It bothered him: his teacher’s wariness and his peers mockery, their inability to see the multitude of worlds trapped in his head.

But he was clever and his experiments (suggestions whispered into his ear from his wrathful sister) never left tangible evidence behind. The girl who fell down the stairs of the Astronomy tower, or the boy whose skin had bubbled and burned for days after he’d dropped the wrong potions ingredient into his cauldron. He never meant to get caught; after hours in the midst of a snowstorm the feeling had blindsided him and her blood had been so vivid against the snow — as it turned out, she would be one more stain upon their family name.

There was no evidence it hadn’t been an accident, his parents had insisted, but Dumbledore had not agreed. The board of governors had been called, but not even an old name like Carrow could budge that decision.

The day that Amycus and Alecto were expelled from Hogwarts, the broken halves of his wand clutched in his hand and his father’s fingers digging into the bones of his shoulder, was the day that Amycus understood just how deep the threat of muggleborns and their sympathisers ran. An appeal had given him a new wand and a new school, but even cold and remote Durmstrang could not smother the burning grudge that had arisen within him.

What Dumbledore stole from him, the Dark Lord would return three-fold in the years to come. Amycus would allow himself to be branded just like his father, a mark of his allegiance, in exchange for opportunity, for the influence to get him inside the door of the Department of Mysteries, and in those mysteries he has found purpose. Oversight is unheard of behind that door: there is nobody to dissuade his interests or curb his tastes and so long as he is careful - well, it’s almost as if you could get away with murder down there.

#mm.intro #still under construction because i can't help myself but #abuse tw #violence tw

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kathrynalicemc · 4 years

Text

Kiri Amaryllis Profile HPMA

Identity

Name: Kiri Amaryllis (aka: Wilson)

Gender: Female

Age: 16 (year 6)

Birth Date: July 14th 1997

Species: Half house elf

Blood Status: Half blood

Sexuality: idk yet

Nationality: British

Residence: Wilson Manor until 11, Hogwarts Kitchens

The Mage

Wand: Willow, Unicorn hair, 11”

Gold coated, vine wrapping around with leaf near the tip, silver/cyan transparent crystal at the base

Misc Magical Abilities: Wandless house elf magic

Boggart Form: Her aunt, uncle, cousins

Riddikulus Form: All of her friends having fun with her (Nessi, Dafne, Theo, etc)

Amortentia: Fresh cut flowers, the mud after a rainstorm, blueberry tarts, herbal tea

Patronus: Light grey Mouse

Patronus Memory: Her mother teaching her gardening and her father teaching her baking

Animagus: Deer

Mirror of Erised: Both of her parents and Samuel happy and alive, her friends accepting her for who she is, herself being brave and confident.

Specialized/Favourite Spells: Specialized in healing magic & herbology. Also has the natural wandless house elf magic.

House: Hufflepuff

Appearance

Faceclaim: TBA

Height: 3’6

Physique: Short, skinny

Eye Colour: Brown

Hair Colour: Sandy beige

Skin Tone: Pale grey/pink

Body Modifications: Big downward drooping house elf ears, big oversized eyes.

Inventory: Wand, her old teddy bear Mrs Felt (pastel cyan/grey with white ruffle neck collar, pink flower on one ear, very tattered and old), pockets are full of trinkets she finds and collects (rusty bottlecaps, paperclips, rocks, plants, small misc trivial items), photographs of her parents and Samuel, a spare blueberry tart.

Clothing: Pale light yellow dress with plant pattern, Green knit cardigan, strips of fabric around legs, hands, face, etc.

Relationships

Father: Lenwin

-House elf that works for the Wilson family

-Skilled in baking and cooking

-Gets transferred to Hogwarts kitchens when kiri is accepted

-Teaches his daughter to bake

-Very soft spoken and kind but also has sharp wits

Mother: Mirai Wilson

-Human

-Daughter of Lord Samuel Wilson III

-Secretly married Lenwin

-Dies during the battle of Hogwarts, saving students. Was a nurse

-Taught kiri how to garden

-Very warm and outspoken in her beliefs and morals.

Aunt: Niera Wilson

-Death eater

-Treats Lenwin and Kiri poorly

-Owns Lenwin (and then he is stolen by Samuel when he kicks her out)

Uncle: Roland Wilson

-Son to Samuel

-Brother of Mirai

-Death eater

-Dies in the battle of Hogwarts

Grandfather: Lord Samuel Wilson III

-Owns the Wilson Manor

-Gets sick and dies shortly after Kiri leaves for Hogwarts (suspicious death)

-His daughter Niera takes over as the false heir to the Manor and uses it to host dark wizards and death eaters after the downfall of Voldemort

-Very kind man who treats everyone with respect

-Gifts Kiri with his families wand that always seems to be a perfect match to his family line

Love Interest: ??

Best Friends: Nessi Lucerne, Dafne Arcano

Background/History

Lord Samuel Wilson III of Wilson Manor has two children. His firstborn Roland marries Niera and they are death eaters obsessed with pure blood purity. They have twins named Damien and Andrew. Samuels second born is Mirai. She falls in love and weds the Wilson Manor house elf named Lenwin who is owned by Niera and Roland. Together they have Kiri. Her Aunt and Uncle and cousins make her life hell and mistreat her and Lenwin. They also hate Mirai but are more tolerant because she is human and family. Once the second Wizarding war starts, Samuel kicks Roland and his family out of the Manor for supporting Voldemort. Those few years alone with Samuel, Mirai, and Lenwin in the Manor were the most peaceful years of her life despite the war. Then, at the battle of Hogwarts, Mirai and Roland are killed. Roland was a death eater and Mirai was a nurse at St Mungos and with the Order trying to save students by evacuating them. Niera became spiteful and bitter towards her father and secretly poisons his wine that is delivered weekly to the Manor. Samuel eventually became sick and worried for the future of Lenwin and Kiri so he opened a vault in Gringotts and within he stashed all his wealth, hiding it from Niera, and waiting for Kiri to claim heirship to the Manor. He also gifted Kiri his family wand right before she left for Hogwarts. It was always in his family and it has a history of being perfect matches with members of the family that are pure of heart. He also gets Lenwin a transfer to work in the kitchens at Hogwarts so he can be close to Kiri. Kiri gives herself the last name of Amaryllis to fit in with everyone else at Hogwarts because she only had a first name as a kid, as her abusive aunt wouldn't let her or Lenwin have the family name. She named herself after her favorite flower. Samuel passes away a little while after Kiri gets to Hogwarts and Niera and her family falsely inherit the Manor where they host all manner of dark wizards. Kiri becomes friends with all sorts of people at Hogwarts and they eventually help her become more sure of herself and confident. Eventually, when she is ready after Hogwarts, she returns home to defeat her Aunt and claim her ownership of the Manor.

Personality

-Shy

-Nervous And skittish

-Lacks confidence

-Curious

-Kind of kleptomaniac (takes trinkets and trash she finds and collects them)

-Loyal

-Works hard

-Runs and hides when scared

-Quick to cry when pressured

-Really tries hard to please everyone

-Wants to fit in and be accepted

Misc

-Gives herself the last name of Amaryllis when she goes to Hogwarts. It is her favorite flower

-She is simply only known as Kiri as a child with no last name. Just like her father Lenwin

-Her aunt and uncle would only give her scraps of fabric and burlap sacks to wear so her parents would wrap her up in strips of cloth for warmth. She keeps doing it when she gets real clothes because it's like a comfort blanket to her and reminds her of her parents.

-Keeps her trinket and plant collection in her cardigan pocket (bottlecaps, paperclips, rocks, flowers and plants, misc items)

-Her favorite food is blueberry tarts that her father makes and she grows her own herbs for tea

-During free time she is almost always in the kitchen helping her father cook or in the greenhouse tending to plants. She also volunteers in the hospital ward

-Occasionally falls asleep in the Hogwarts kitchen pantry

-Uses her Mouse animagus to steal trinkets or food

-Has tea parties with her friends in the greenhouse or by the lake

-Can’t form a full corporeal patronus for the first few years because she lacks confidence

-Given a stuffed bear, Mrs Felt, by her mother as a child and keeps it as a memory of her. It brings her comfort.

#hpma #hpma mc #hphm #magic awakened #hpma profile #kiri amaryllis

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timehasbeenbusy · 4 years

Text

17 & 18 November 1828

Monday 17 November 1828

5¾

11 25/60

From 6 40/60 to 8 read from page 30 – 42 of the Brief History of Christ Hospital and wrote the whole of the above today – Breakfast at 8 20/60 – off to Halifax at 8 50/60 down the old bank to Mr Briggs – said I had seen Holt, and what I had said to him – Mr Briggs thought I had better give away the coals - getting them would be expensive – must have an engine – did not think they would pay – giving them away would not, said it was my present mind to get them at all rates – Mr Briggs said he would see Holt, and go with him to plan the ground, Mr Briggs shewed me an oak-root round table made at Brighhouse priced £20 – one not so handsome sold to Mr Stead for £25 - About 20 minutes there – then sat 25 minutes with Mrs Veitch (poorly in a bad cold), then at 9 ¾ got to Savile hill –the breakfast things not removed Mrs and 2 Miss Wilcocks – Miss Pickford much better for the baths of St Gervais, to spend the winter at Roma – to write there poste restante – Mrs Wilcocks going to write to her today – begged a little of her paper and wrote ⅓ of the first page small and close, hoping my letter to Genoa was received, giving my address in Paris – observing she could be complacent in writing full letters, all crossed, as I had just seen, to Mrs Wilcocks - to write to me before expecting to hear of or from me again – uncertain as to my stay here, but would not exceed 10 days or a fortnight – asked what beauties she most admired and what thought of this place and that – should not at this moment say of what use her information might be to me – thought that by hook and by crook, I should see her before the twelvemonth’s end –

½ hour at Savile hill –then went to Throps – not at home – could learn nothing – my job was but a small one – would think about it – Throp most likely to be at home between 12 and 2 – returned along the canal – the new lodge to Stonyroyde, nearly roofed gable-end, labells windows, little building expensively hewed – got home up the old bank at 12 – Letter from Mariana Scarbro’on my desk – 3 hurried pages 2½ pm yesterday, ‘great change – cannot last much longer – ‘the struggles are dreadfully severe, and it is indeed a trying scene to us all’ – Mariana sat up on Friday night, but says she bore it well – ‘as to myself, have no fears on my account – I am honestly and in truth the best of the set’ would ‘like me to write something more than a mere statement that life was no more ….to appear in the York paper ……..’some little tribute to his merits would be gratifying to us all’ will write tomorrow (ie today) if any thing happens – if not on Tuesday (ie tomorrow) – offers to bring my father cod, sounds as she passes through – Had just begun to write when (at 12 20/60) Miss Hudson of Hipperholme called for ½ an hour – going to send off a parcel from Whitleys tomorrow by the van in 3 or 4 days to Miss MacLean if I had any letter to send Whitley would enclose it in time tomorrow afternoon – said I was much obliged etc etc but a very bad correspondent abomined letter-writing only said what I had to say – did not believe I could make up my mind to write – thought I, no, I wont send in her parcel, I do not understand all this, they shall have it to themselves Miss Hudson Miss Maclean had asked many questions about the place – it was not very beautiful country and she had said so – I abused the house – said much wanted doing at it – it was a doghole of a place as I always told people – I certainly never said much in its favour -

Came upstairs again at 12 50/60 – from 1 to 3, wrote 3 pages to Mariana including the following ‘as to the request that I should write something more than a common obituary notice, be it remembered Mary, that I am not an advocate for long paragraphs of this kind in newspapers, and, above all, that it is Steph, not I who can do this best – when I am serious, you know my repugnance to speak or write strongly in praise or dispraise – all that I need add is, that, were my own father in the circumstances of yours, and I heard I persuaded myself to write any thing more than a mere ‘announcement of the death, it would probably be something like the following’ –

‘Died on ------- at his house in Scarborough, in the ----- year of his age, after a long and ‘severe illness, William Belcombe Esquire, ---- years a resident physician in this city ‘where his talent soon established him at the head of his profession, where by his mild ‘and gentlemany manners, and active and useful benevolence, he was soon and lastingly endeared to all who knew him well – He was eminently successful in his practice which ‘was very extensive ‘to the last of his professional career, he devoted a considerable ‘portion of every day to his numerous poor and‘gratis patients; and it does not fall to the ‘lot of every one to be more sincerely lamented, or to leave behind him a good name ‘better deserved – But Mary, do you not think, it would be best for Steph to draw up a ‘proper memoir to be inserted in the Genteman’s Magazine? To do this, no-one is better fitted than your brother – As a professional man, he might give a brief and comprehensive sketch which, in doing credit to his father, might reflect some credit upon himself – your father’s practice which laid the foundation-stone ‘of his reputation in York, was, at that time new in England? His services in the navy, experience in the ‘West Indies, studies and intimacies with the man of letters on the continent, mild treatment of insanity cases,‘not to forget (if thought proper) descent from an old and respectable Lancashire family, and his marriage with‘whom, - might, if well handled by his son, do some dutiful honour, and some practical good – give‘my best regards to Steph, and tell him so – Then write the following to Mr Birmingham ‘Shibden hall Monday 17 November‘1828 – Sir – Being domiciliated in Paris, I wish to take over with me, on my return, a small box of plate viz ‘1 tea-pot, a couple of dozen folks, dozen spoons, cream jug and sugar, - basin, snuffers and tray, and a couple of ‘waiters – I know, some particular permit is required for this from the French chef de douanes – I shall be much obliged to‘you to take the earliest opportunity of giving me all necessary information on this subject, direct to Mrs Lister,‘Shibden hall, Halifax, Yorkshire – on my arrival at Dover, I will pay you any expense that may have been ‘incurred on my account – I am, Sir etc etc A Lister’ – all which took me till 5 – then skimming over again Cronhelms Book-keeping – dressed – dined at 6 25/60 – at 7 sent off to the post by John, my letter to Mariana ‘Doctor Belcombe’s Scarborough’ and to Mr John Birmingham, Commissioner, Old Ship Hotel, Dover, Post paid’ then Sat talking till after 9 – wrote the last 3 lines – went up to bed ay 10 5/60 – very fine day not so damp and thick as these last few days – rather inclined to be a little frosty – reading the rules in Hutton’s Book-keeping, till 10 ¾

Tuesday 18 November 1828

5 50/60

11 10/60

Read the 1st 45 lines Saturday 2 I went out at 7½ - went to Cowgate wood – took the wallers from walling and stayed there to right the set started against the wood in Pearson’s great brow – stayed with them and did not get home till 10¼ - sent John to make holes for planting in Pump Lane – find on my desk letter from Mariana Scarbro’, 11 hurried lines dated yesterday 17th instant ‘at 5 minutes before 1 today my precious father breathed his last without a groan, tho’ from 11 yesterday to the same hour at night his sufferings were very severe, after that he became calm and composed until 5 this morning, when difficulty of breathing returned and continued till within a few minutes of his death - Steph was with us - my mother at this minute bears ‘up tolerably, and we all do our best – I will write again in a day or 2 – God bless you – always yours Mariana’ –Will she get my letter of yesterday today? What will she think of what I wrote to announce Dr Belcombe’s death? It will seem cold, praiseless, spiritless, heartless – how different our feelings! Her expression precious father –shocks me – dear father – or simply father - It smites me best to think of those I love when gone as if they were still here – I never yet could say my poor uncle and Mr Sunderland’s exclamation on first seeing him a corpse ‘poor thing!’ shocked me more than I could describe - Letter also from Isabella Norcliffe, Langton, they had heard a bad account of Dr Belcombe’ think it will be a happy release but I dread the effect it will produce upon Mariana, whose nerves are little able to bear such a shock – I fear there is no chance of our meeting at Lawton, as of course she will not leave Scarbro’ just at present’ – they leave Langton for Bath on the 2nd of December -

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shadowthrone-ammanas · 4 years

Text

So the first thing with the tiny Hat Kid/Borrowers AU that I came up with was that originally it was based off of the visual of a mod level I was playing where there was a lantern the size of Hat Kid. I didn’t start it thinking about the Borrowers as “humans but tiny” I was thinking of them as like Hat Kid’s species.

So when I later decided Mu was also tiny that resulted in having Mu be also distinctly not just a tiny human and it had ripple effects on the borrower species design

So, background details: Most of the characters are still the same. However, the locations are different. Mafia Town isn’t on a little island, it’s on a larger one with both underground-undersea Metro tunnels and shipping routes. There is a large forest- Subcon- and some mountains, the Alpine Skyline, which then have a desert in their rainshadow.

So that’s all the chapters except Arctic Cruise on one reasonably sized landmass, instead of scattered all over the planet, much more accessable to tiny Hat Kid

I’m gonna put a ‘read more’ right here for the sake of people’s dashboards. I hope that’s okay.

Borrower biology notes: inspired a little bit by ruffs and also my attempts to work out having Hat Kid, Bow Kid, and Mu as members of the same species

3 or 4 sexes in a similar way to ruffs or white-throated sparrows; about all I have pinned down is that Mu’s facial-hair-no-ponytail-and-long-bangs/tendrils/flaps combo is associated with one of them, bow kid’s no-ponytail, no-hair-flaps, no-facial-hair combo is another, and hat kid’s ponytail-and-flaps-but-no-facial-hair is a third (yes this means two of them are trans)

The Borrowers, as they sometimes call themselves, are the result of an incredibly powerful spell a few centuries back. They used to be about the size of humans, before the spell; and pretty much all of them lived on two islands.

The Mafia wanted to move to those islands, so they gathered up all the Time Pieces they could get into one spot on the island and had a sacrificial Mafia member do A Thing involving the time pieces and a great deal of other magical items to remove the islanders; faking a wild magic surge. The result was that as far as the rest of the world was concerned the entire species simply vanished, turned into these tiny little echoes,and also this was much less scary than it should have been. There is still a spot on the island Hat Kid is from that will likely have nothing grow there for thousands of years.

The Time Pieces exploded into much smaller fragments, time shards, which scattered all over the world, and the shrunken islanders started to try to adjust to their new lives.

Which was made a lot harder by the Mafia moving in; they spread false information claiming that the tiny post-transformation islanders weren’t sapient anymore and were pests, like large mice, to be dealt with with poison and rat traps.

Some Borrowers start using time shards to power things; others do the dangerous thing of tapping electricity from wires; others use tiny candles and other pre-electric style technology or magic.

Their society adjusts to a world where “eaten by a seagull” is a plausible cause of death, everyone can double-jump, most people can carry more than their own weight, and an umbrella is easily enough to completely stop all fall damage. Square-cube law! Luckily the magic helps keep them warm, but Borrowers still have a faster metabolism than they did pre-spell and need to eat more often.

Amongst other details, it’s common for a Borrower to end up on their own due to being separated from their clan or having the rest of their clan die. Solitary borrowers don’t tend to last long, so they generally try to get adopted by the first clan they come across, basically just showing up and starting to pitch in; there’s always something to be done.

Also Borrowers are a little more scent-focused than humans, most noteably being more able to notice the scent of borrowers than a human is able to notice the scent of other humans; this is really helpful for lost borrowers finding other clans.

Hat Kid is the kid of someone relatively important in a borrower community on the other island. They treated her poorly/were neglectful, so she ended up falling in with, basically, the local borrower criminals. (Not many places have enough clans living closely enough together to really have borrowers that are criminals by borrower standards; stealing from the taller folk is not considered a crime but rather just survivial, and attacking the taller folk is basically considered lunacy.)

Eventually Hat Kid, at age 11 (okay actually older, like 16 or so, but she maps to a human 11 year old), decided to fake her death and entirely leave her old clan. Due to various shenanigans including her not being out to her old clan, the fake murder, a real murder done by Hat Kid, and paranoia she managed to be accused of murdering herself and got exiled which is a Big Deal. She stole the one local aircraft (that she had helped build) and fled, exploring far beyond her family’s reach (especially now they didn’t have a timeshard-powered aircraft).

In between her ‘ship’, her skills with an umbrella and movement, audacity, and sheer dumb luck Hat Kid managed to live alone for quite some time, eventually landing in Mafia Town due to an incident involving a Mafia with a bugnet, losing the time shards that powered her ship in the process. She meets up with Mu and is like. FRIEND! Sure, I’ll join up with you!

…aaaaand then Mu wants to use the time shards that powered Hat Kid’s airship thingy to hurt the Mafia more. And Hat Kid is like, no, no I need those. Result: Mu leaves in a huff, Hat Kid is alone again.

Hat Kid’s ship, by this point, has been repaired enough and has enough time shards to fly a little, so she goes and recklessly lands on the local above-ground train and hitches a ride, ending up at Dead Bird Studio. Grooves finds her and is like, this borrower-mouse is wearing decent clothing and a hat. Whose escaped pet is this.

Hat Kid is semiverbal but definitely literate and manages to get her hands on a writing implement and explains that she is nobody’s pet. The Conductor and Grooves decide to hire her for movies.

Directors: a sapient borrower-mouse who wants to be an actress and is actually good at it just when we need a new actor and fresh movie ideas! Perfect!

Hat Kid: This weird clan has lots of infighting and mostly trades in movies? I get to be adopted and to use my skill in acting for things that aren’t lying to people? Perfect!

So that’s a good month or so for Hat Kid, with the culture clash never being clarified, whoops. Both the Directors think Hat Kid is going home to her family when really she’s doing stuff like looking for that time shard she thinks might be present or fixing up her ship more or getting food that isn’t provided by the Directors. (At least they recognize that providing lots of snacks to the tiny child is a good idea.)

Then the movies (both of them) are finished, and the directors are like. Thanks for working with us. There’s no more movies for you, kid, stop showing up to filming there’s no more filming involving you. (Grooves never really started seeing Hat Kid as fully a person and is pretty cruel about kicking her out from his side of the studio, too.)

In the Director’s culture: “Seriously kid contract is done, the movies you starred in have no more filming, wouldn’t mind working with you again later but uh we are not currently working on a movie right now why are you here?”

In Hat Kid’s culture: “We’re exiling you. Again.“

So she goes to Subcon Forest. Yes, this is stupid and risky. Hat Kid does not care.

Snatcher sees this absolutely tiny person and is like. You’re too small to be a threat. Also too small to have a soul worth the effort of eating it.

So he hires her to do stuff like detail work on repainting the Subconites’ houses and other stuff a tiny person can do.

He proceeds to assume she’s being cuttingly sarcastic when she calls him "dad” or “dadcher”. Instead of 100% serious. (Her perception of this as an adoption is helped by Snatcher making an effort to dig out old books and old memories on what of the local flora and fauna is edible and provide Hat Kid with fresh local food, which is a Special Effort as, well, subconites and dwellers feed off of ambient magic and abstract stuff while Snatcher eats souls.)

After maybe about two weeks he’s out of work for Hat Kid and tells her so, like, “No more work for you, kiddo. You’re free to leave.” Then is mystified when Hat Kid leaves in tears. Like what did he do wrong??

I have no clue what Hat Kid would be up to in the Alpine Skyline. Something. Probably trying to impress random nomads and goats and not understanding why they’re impressed but still leave her.

Eventually she finds out that Mu has gotten her hands on time shards and is managing to use them to set places on fire. Hat Kid goes to stop her because no!! You do not just indiscriminately set Mafia Town on fire! Even aside from all the tall folk living there you don’t know how many borrowers are living in the walls!

So she stops Mu, then realizes that pretty much everyone watching her has either ‘exiled’ her or has been known to hunt borrowers before (eg the Mafia) so she flees down a subway tunnel and lives in the Metro for a few days before meeting the Empress. By this point Mu’s very public yelling about how the Mafia were killing her people has gotten on the news, so she’s aware that at least some borrowers are sapient and people, and is like. You work for me now.

Hat Kid is like, my greatest fifth chance!

Eventually, though, Hat Kid manages to annoy the Empress. By this point she’s gotten used to the idea that something is wrong with her, people really don’t care about her, and at any point she could be abruptly betrayed and exiled, so she panics, assumes she’s going to be kicked out very soon, and ends up deciding to preemptively betray Empress by stealing her time shard. Empress is throughly baffled and also very upset and puts out a bounty of a few thousand or so on Hat Kid’s head; time shards are valuable damn it but also…only one?? she’d been known to bring back five or six at once?

(Time shards aren’t very tangible to most people by default. Borrowers can interact with them always and make them solid to everyone. Hat Kid could’ve easily reversed that and forced Empress to use magically charged tongs to pick up her time shards and hire another borrower to fix them but she didn’t. The longer Empress thinks on this, the more confused she gets.)

At some point during Hat Kid’s time in the nyakuza Mu ends up adopted by Cooking Cat. She shows up on TV sometimes, joining in an episode with stuff like running commentary while perched on CC’s shoulder or butting in to help frost cakes or whatever.

Hat Kid’s confused upset post-nyakuza wandering ends up leading her to where the Conductor is just coming back from a cruise. Conductor is like LASSIE I HAVEN’T SEEN YOU IN FOREVER! Hat Kid is like ??? and then decides that maybe…maybe kicking her out was entirely Groove’s idea and Conductor still likes her? Maybe?

And then in the ensuring confused discussion Conductor begins to realize the culture clash. Conductor ends up adopting Hat Kid, and later takes in Bow Kid as well because she was separated from her family and saw Hat Kid riding on Conductor’s shoulders and just sort of. Jumped on his other shoulder, startling him, and was like “HI”.

At some point Hat Kid and Bow Kid end up guest starring alongside Mu (they made up) on Cooking Cat’s show. Possibly several times. Hat and Bow are adorable and while they don’t really say much unscripted and it’s usually sentence fragments they’re still popular for a mixture of Adorable and their sense of humour eg Bow Kid insisting that duck is actually “quackers” in a dish involving duck and cheese to set CC up for a terrible “cheese and quackers” pun.

Mu, Hat Kid, Bow Kid, and the TV Trio end up working together a lot to try to change things for the better for the Borrowers. Meanwhile Snatcher is off doing his own thing, having heard of the culture clash (Mu explained it on TV at some point) he works out a schedule for when Hat and Bow are staying with the Conductor and when one or the other or both are staying with him. He ends up with a few borrower clans living in his forest (they followed Hat Kid) and is just like, sure this works.

I greatly admire people who can just come up with AU ideas and build on them and then come up with a whole story for the AU. I love that it has a happy ending too. :)

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theliberaltony · 4 years

Link

via Politics – FiveThirtyEight

After a stint as the Democratic primary front-runner, Sen. Bernie Sanders’s revolution is rapidly stalling. After a series of surprising losses on Super Tuesday, he lost again in Michigan earlier this week, despite spending days campaigning across the state.

In contest after contest, Sanders has struggled to make inroads with key Democratic constituencies — in particular, black voters and older voters. But there’s another trend that’s plagued him throughout the primary: He does poorly with women. According to aggregated exit polls from the states that have voted so far,1 Sanders’s support is 8 points lower among women than his support among men.

Sanders consistently gets less support from women

Vote share by gender in entrance and exit polls from completed state primaries and caucuses, by candidate

Sanders Biden State Men Women Diff. Men Women Diff. Iowa 26% 20% -6 16% 16% 0 New Hampshire 31 23 -8 8 8 0 Nevada 38 30 -8 18 17 -1 South Carolina 24 17 -7 48 49 +1 California 38 32 -6 19 28 +9 Texas 34 27 -7 33 33 0 North Carolina 27 21 -6 42 42 0 Virginia 29 19 -10 49 57 +8 Massachusetts 31 26 -5 34 34 0 Minnesota 37 25 -12 39 41 +2 Tennessee 27 23 -4 38 44 +6 Alabama 20 14 -6 61 65 +4 Oklahoma 30 21 -9 40 37 -3 Maine 38 29 -9 29 37 +8 Vermont 53 51 -2 24 20 -4 Washington 41 27 -14 28 36 +8 Missouri 38 32 -6 56 64 +8 Mississippi 18 12 -6 78 83 +5

Source: Edison Research

Sanders has consistently been at a disadvantage among women in this year’s primary. And that’s not a deficit that a Democratic primary candidate can simply ignore, since women make up a majority of the party’s electorate this year — 57 percent of primary voters so far.

“Consistently having lower support among women is a problem of optics because it makes it look like there’s something going on that prevents women from backing you,” said Kelly Dittmar, a political scientist at Rutgers University–Camden who studies gender and politics. “But it’s also an actual numbers issue because men are just a smaller proportion of the Democratic electorate. You need to do well among women in order to win the nomination.”

It’s hard to pin down a single reason why men seem to be more attracted to Sanders’s candidacy than women. There isn’t really evidence, for example, that Sanders is especially likely to attract supporters who display hostile feelings toward women. In a recent analysis, researchers for Data for Progress did find that gender bias kept some voters from supporting Warren — but Sanders’s supporters didn’t hold more sexist views than Biden’s. But there is evidence, according to an analysis by Dan Cassino, a political science professor at Fairleigh Dickinson University, that while support for Biden increases among voters with more sexist views, those with the most sexist views were disproportionately likely to favor Sanders. And sexism was higher, in general, among men.

“Educated Democrats who are quite sexist are disproportionately likely to be Sanders supporters,” said Cassino. “To be clear, there aren’t a lot of those people in the Democratic Party. But because of their education and social capital, they’re probably more inclined to tell people about their views and express them online.”

This doesn’t explain all of Sanders’s struggles with women. But his lopsided support among this group provides a window into some of the divisions that are roiling the Democratic primary electorate this year — particularly the limits of Sanders’s lefty, anti-establishment message and the aggression of his supporters at a moment when many Democratic voters are laser-focused on finding a candidate who can beat Trump.

At a Biden rally in Detroit last week, Mary Mckenney, 69, said that she hadn’t made up her mind about which candidate to support until the race narrowed to Biden and Sanders. Then, she said, her choice became very clear. “It’s not even that I don’t like Bernie’s ideas, I just think they can’t happen,” she said. “And I think if he’s the nominee there will just be more fighting and conflict. We need someone who can bring Democrats together.”

Views like Mckenney’s aren’t universal among Democratic women. Plenty of women are enthusiastic about Sanders — including Mckenney’s daughter Carrie, 43, who was standing next to her at the rally. But older women like Mckenney make up a much bigger share of the Democratic electorate, which makes them a disproportionately important group. So far, women over the age of 45 have made up 38 percent of Democratic primary voters, while women under the age of 45 only made up 19 percent. And the age gap that has emerged across the primary is almost certainly shaping women’s support for Sanders too: older women tend to be more moderate than younger women, which means they may be less likely to see Sanders’s calls to upend the status quo as feasible or appealing.

But generational fissures aren’t the whole story. Women of all ages told us they liked Sanders’s ideas but found aspects of his candidacy alienating. “I don’t have the same aversion to the DNC and the Democratic establishment that a lot of Bernie supporters seem to have,” said Tiffany Keane Schaefer, 31, who lives in Chicago and volunteered for Warren but is now undecided about who she’ll support. Schaefer told me she’s disturbed by some of the criticism Sanders allies levied against Warren for not endorsing Sanders after she dropped out. “Right now it feels like I am getting blasted every single day on social media about why Warren isn’t doing enough to help Sanders.” That antagonism makes Schaefer feel uncomfortable about the prospect of supporting Sanders, even though she’s closer to him on the issues than to Biden.

One of the central messages of Sanders’s campaign is the need to take on the political establishment — including the party whose nomination he is seeking. On the day before he won the Nevada caucuses, Sanders tweeted, “I’ve got news for the Republican establishment. I’ve got news for the Democratic establishment. They can’t stop us.”

That kind of message obviously appeals to people who are disaffected with the Democratic Party — but to people who don’t have a problem with the party, it can seem like an unnecessary risk. “I understand why the young people love Sanders — student debt, it’s a real problem,” said Grace Andrews, 79, who was waiting outside the Biden rally in Detroit with her grandson. “I just have a concern that he is not willing to make the compromises that are necessary in our political system, or work with people in the party who may not share his views.”

Women are especially likely to say that being a Democrat is an important part of who they are. According to our analysis of a Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape survey of likely primary voters administered from Feb. 20 to Feb 26, 63 percent of Democratic women say that their party affiliation is somewhat or very important to their identity, compared to 58 percent of Democratic men. That’s not an enormous difference, but it is statistically significant — it also lines up with other research that finds partisanship functions as a more important social identity for women than it does for men. Women over the age of 45 are especially likely (67 percent) to say being a Democrat is an important part of their identity.

Of course, not all women are turned off by the idea of radical changes to the system — including radical change to their own party. “It just feels like the Democratic Party has forgotten what it means to be the party of the working class,” said Diana Post, 30, who lives in Detroit and said she was torn between Warren and Sanders until Warren dropped out of the race. She now describes herself as a “big Sanders fan.” “We need someone more radical than what the establishment is putting forward, a candidate who can shake things up.”

Over the course of the primary, voters have been asked if they would prefer a candidate who agrees with them on the issues or a candidate who can beat Trump. According to the exit polls so far, women are likelier to be in the latter category: 65 percent of women say they would prefer a candidate who can defeat Trump, compared to 59 percent of men. That isn’t an overwhelming gap, to be sure, but it’s still noteworthy given that women make up a disproportionate share of the Democratic electorate. And in the primaries so far, voters who prioritize a candidate who can defeat Trump are disproportionately likely to support Biden.

That was where Ruth Vail, 77, said she had landed. She was standing on the University of Michigan quad, waiting with her 15-year-old grandson Leo to hear Sanders speak. But even though she was curious to hear what Sanders had to say, she said she’d probably be voting for Biden. “I think unfortunately it’s just going to be very easy to paint Sanders as an extremist, someone who’s a scary person who wants to change everything,” she said. “And I really just want a president who won’t keep me up at night, thinking about what he’s going to do next, thinking about who he’s going to appoint to the Supreme Court. The most important thing to me in this election is just ensuring that Donald Trump is no longer our president.”

Laura Bronner contributed research.

#IFTTT #Politics – FiveThirtyEight #politics #538 #Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Meredith Conroy

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madrivervalleyicelandics · 5 years

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Personal reflections on the ethical dilemma of responsible care and decision-making for horses that can no longer be ridden:

(cross-posted from my Facebook page, here’s the link to the FB post if you’d like to interact with the post on that medium instead: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=2189166171191133&id=1257596561014770&__tn__=K-R )

This is sort of a hot-button issue, so bear with me. After reading a few posts and discussion threads this morning, I decided to write about this subject, which is one that weighs heavily on my mind as a horse owner (or steward, if you prefer that word), breeder, trainer, and overall enthusiast.

We live in a country where it can be said that every good horse is just one bad sale away from slaughter. The US market is saturated with horses who cannot find suitable homes, due to age, injury, health or behavioral issues, etc, and each year thousands of horses are shipped over our borders for slaughter after running through traumatic sales and bouncing around from location to location, scared, stressed, and poorly cared for in the interim. The scale of the problem is immense, and for many owners the message is clear: keep your horse. Keep the old horse you can no longer ride, do not try to re-home it into situations where it leaves your control and may be mistreated, passed around, injured further or ultimately end up on a truck to a slaughterhouse.

It seems very simple: you've made a commitment to care for an animal, and so that commitment should be for life. But horses are complex creatures with very nuanced needs.

So this is the story of two retired mares that I own and can no longer ethically ride: Glæta and Tinna.

Glæta is a beautiful 1st prize mare who I purchased as a competition horse. She was known for being a somewhat complicated ride, but she was fully trained and I bought her at around age 11. She was diagnosed with Cushing’s Disease less than a year after I bought her, and because of her young age, her diagnosis was delayed because we were chasing symptoms and missing the big picture - we simply could not believe that our new, young, athletic mare had developed this awful condition normally associated with elderly horses. By the time we finally figured it out, her suppressed immune system (a symptom of Cushing’s) had caused her to develop secondary infections including Ehrlichiosis and then Lyme Disease. We gave her all of the best veterinary care and medication and I spent years paying for all sorts of therapies ranging from traditional to alternative, as well as giving her the best care and biomechanically correct R+ training possible (she was the first horse who sparked my interest in clicker training, and my first foray into bridleless riding and liberty work). We had more good years together and did ultimately return to the competition track, but over time, Glæta began to let me know that she did not enjoy being ridden anymore. She did everything I asked, but I could feel that she just wasn’t fully comfortable. The Cushing’s / Lyme combo made it hard to build her topline normally, and meant that sometimes she had aches and pains that she told me about with just a meaningful look. On those days, I knew not to bother her. I felt that there was no reason to push a horse who had done so much for me to do something she no longer enjoyed, so I made the decision to stop riding her. I took to ponying her a lot, but it was not really enough exercise or stimulation. She could not retire onto lush pastures, given her metabolic condition, and due to the hormonal component of her disease, she became infertile so our dreams of breeding her were dashed. Her days consisted of doing a whole lot of standing around in our paddocks. It didn’t seem like a great life, and she began to lose muscle and gain weight, even on a low-sugar, slow feeder diet and no grass.

Tinna came to me as a bit of rehab training project. She was a horse I had trained in the past who had lost the ability to trot since I’d seen her last, and she had become quite tense. Once she arrived home and I was able to have her thoroughly examined by a vet, we found a large rope of scar tissue beneath her skin, running from her elbow to almost her wither - we suspected that at some point she had had quite the injury and torn her tricep. The scar tissue had shortened that side of her body and she was very tense and reactive. Using clicker training, classical dressage techniques, regular bodywork, and scar tissue massage daily with arnica oil, I was able to retrain her to trot and to move harmoniously and comfortably. I even began to ride her again, and got her up to walk/trot/canter, some tölt, and basic lateral work. But she was only able to tolerate light work, and no matter how carefully I conditioned her, once we got past a certain point of exercise, she began to express discomfort. Ultimately we found that she, too, had contracted Lyme disease, and based on the numbers, it seemed she had had it for a very long time (which prompted my new policy of testing ALL new horses that come in for training for Lyme disease, if they haven’t been tested). Treatment did make her more comfortable, but she was still not able to be exercised normally. The amount of exercise that we were able to do with her was not enough to keep her fit, and she began to gain some weight. I knew that, without exercise, she would develop metabolic issues if she were allowed to graze on pasture, but that put her in the same position as Glæta - confined to dry lot paddocks. Not a very interesting life.

So you see my problem: I love my horses, had the means to keep my retired horses, and I wanted to keep them, and I didn’t give a damn if I never rode either of them again - but keeping them meant that their health needs were not being met. They were not getting adequate exercise or stimulation, and “putting them out to pasture” was not an ethical option, as it would have resulted in inflammation, obesity, and the further decline of their health. Neither one of these mares could be ethically rehomed, as they both required rather special care and handling, and were not suitable as pasture pals or riding horses, even for light riding.

I got lucky. I found Meadow Ridge Farm, which is a fabulous Natural Horsecare facility in Ontario that provides a stimulating lifestyle for herds on paddock paradise track systems. The horses roam all day on miles of tracks, where they have slow feeder hay stations instead of grass to graze. Their hooves largely self trim, and their body condition stays fit and healthy as they move around so much. Boss lady Jen White is very skilled in equine nutrition and feeds them mineral-balanced diets, trims and balances their hooves if they fail to self trim adequately, and provides them with any medication they may need. I continue to own both of my mares, but I board them with Jen. Both are healthy, happy, and well-adjusted - far better off than they were here at my farm.

Retirement boarding facilities like Meadow Ridge are SO needed. But for many, they are not accessible. For those owners, the question of what to do when a horse can no longer be adequately exercised becomes even more complicated. Some horses can go out to pasture, but many can’t, especially easy-keepers who cannot tolerate a lot of pasture. Some people can build paddock paradise systems, but many, like me, do not have a suitable property for track systems. Many of these horses cannot be ethically re-homed. I will say, right now, that I feel there is no shame in humanely euthanizing a horse who can no longer be adequately managed. If the choice is between the horse merely surviving (no thriving) with compromised welfare, or being sold into uncertainty, or being put to sleep while comfortable in a happy, safe environment before he begins to suffer, I feel that I would always prefer to see a horse put to sleep than forced to live in pain or be risked to uncertainty. It is my hope that, as veterinary medicine continues to improve and we all continue to learn more about our equine partners, retirement boarding facilities like Meadow Ridge Farm will become more and more common and popular. Until then, I try to always be open-minded and nonjudgemental when people run into the problem of what to do with a horse they can no longer ride. It’s too common to see snarky people snap, “well, you shouldn’t have bought the horse if you ONLY wanted it for riding,” and, as I found with my two mares, things are simply not so cut-and-dried.

Horses require exercise to stay healthy. They need to move constantly in order to have healthy digestion, balanced blood sugar, good circulation, joints, hooves, etc. When that becomes impossible, for a myriad of reasons, it creates a complex ethical question for the person who loves the horse. It’s not about RIDING, it’s about exercise and adequate welfare for the animal. Be kind in these discussions, and recognize that there is no one-size-fits-all solution. Different horses have different needs, and deciding what comes next for a horse who can no longer be exercised normally may prove very complicated. Sometimes there is no happy solution. At the end of the day, I do believe that most people want what is best for their animals.

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