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allaganexarch · 1 year

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i know you're probably not into maleficent/aurora anymore, but since you were like THE malora writer, i'm curious in what do you think would happen to maleficent when aurora dies? either from natural causes like old age or somethiing terrible happened

My friend, this is so kind of you to say!! This is also, unfortunately, MY JAM LOL

So in my personal interpretation, I think once Aurora became more sure of herself and the relationship, she would learn (passively, not even really thinking of it as such) to de-fuse Maleficent a lot of the time. Maleficent is naturally temperamental and always about 3 bad steps away from starting a fight. Once Aurora learns that this is just sort of how she is and she isn't actually mad, and doesn't even usually mean anything by it, Aurora learns to just kind of skillfully sidestep like 99% of Maleficent's bad moods. As a result, because she isn't being fought at every turn, Maleficent (also without realizing it) calms down a LOT, and tends to stop seeing everything as a challenge or threat, even from ppl who are not Aurora. This mostly just freaks ppl out, because you know she always seems super calm until she is suddenly Not LOL, and the average person does not know how to tell Maleficent's "actually calm" from her "quietly seething."

Additionally, while I believe that Maleficent operates on her own code of ethics and doesn't just do whatever, I also think her ethics and what she considers "wrong" differ significantly from where the average human would draw the line. As she grows more comfortable in her relationship with Aurora, I think she would be surprisingly willing to draw lines where Aurora wants her to, at least most of the time, because in her mind, e.g. not harassing someone who mildly annoyed her is important to Aurora, while it's not that important to Maleficent.

However, I think both of these changes, no matter how long Aurora lives, are utterly temporary. Once Aurora is gone, Maleficent will go back to the way she was before, if not ultimately worse, because in a sense kindness will remind her of Aurora, and I don't think she will ever reach a place where that is a good thing for her.

I think Maleficent's first reaction would be a kind of desperate fury, sort of like a wounded wild animal but with very powerful magic. She would be absolutely terrorizing the countryside, especially anyone she perceived to be responsible. It's almost worse if Aurora dies of old age, because then the fault in her mind would lie with...everything, the nature of life itself. This phase could last forever, depending on other factors, and I think it would be a very long time before Maleficent is even slightly functional again.

Even in eg. Prisoner-verse where Maleficent has other friends, I can see her getting into terrible fights with almost all of them. Girl can be next-level vicious when she wants to be, and even if her friends have known grief, most of them don't know exactly what she's going through, and therefore from Maleficent's perspective are not in a position to comment. Also I think "Aurora wouldn't want you to live like this" or similar would be like, the worst possible thing you could say to her, and might send her spiraling into a murderous rage all over again, because how DARE you presume to tell her what Aurora would want?

I am really a sucker for these kinds of villain backstories LOL, you can play me the same tune over and over and I will never get tired of it. I think the only kind of person who could reach Maleficent would be someone who's sort of similar to Aurora, at least in unfailing kindness. I'm imagining someone just trying to save her village or w/e from being razed to the ground showing sympathy to Maleficent for her lost love, and Maleficent showing just the smallest amount of mercy in memory of Aurora, even if ultimately she hasn't changed or healed at all. (oh my godddddd don't look at me I want to write this now lol)

So anyway, it was 5:30 in the morning, a very normal time to be awake, and I was thinking, well, would anyone in Prisoner-verse be able to calm her down at all? I think she and Kinsale would absolutely get into a really bad fight, and Zenovia would try to be chill about it but she would also pretty quickly be like okay well talk to me when you've calmed down lol. And then I realized............

“Hey.”

Maleficent doesn’t move. She doesn’t know how long she’s been sitting here. Odd, that she doesn’t feel a fresh wave of fury at Joy’s presence. Then again, perhaps she is simply too tired to feel much of anything.

“I’m not going to say anything.” Joy holds out her hands in a show of defense.

Maleficent inhales, sighs. Her throat is burning. She only distantly remembers the sound of screaming, and realizes now that the memory was of her own voice.

“Good,” says Maleficent. Joy of all people should know that there is nothing to say.

A long silence follows. Joy joins her on the floor some distance away, and pretends to train her gaze upon the fire.

“I do have one question, actually,” says Maleficent.

“Hm?”

Maleficent closes her eyes. She tries to imagine Joy the way she looked in pictures, with long, beautiful hair that she wore in intricate curls, and a radiant smile full of youthful mischief. “How did you…not…”

But words fail her. She holds out her hand, grasping at nothing.

“What,” says Joy, “burn down the world?”

Maleficent sighs again. It is as apt a question as any.

“Well, it was perhaps to my benefit that I am not nearly so powerful as you, Mistress Maleficent,” says Joy, although her characteristic attempt at wryness comes out remarkably strained. “I wouldn’t have gotten very far.”

Maleficent opens her eyes. The flames of the fire flicker and dance, enticing in their destruction. “I’m not sure I would have cared.”

Joy chuckles, dry and mirthless. “Yes, well,” she says. She does not continue.

Outside, a terrible wind howls, desperate and mournful. The windows rattle and the fire flickers low, casting them both in dramatic shadow.

Maleficent inhales. She closes her eyes again. “Does it ever…?”

The words catch in her throat. She already knows the answer.

“No,” says Joy quietly. A long silence follows. The embers from the fire crackle meekly, and the mournful wind falls deadly silent.

“But…I don’t know. You find…other reasons. To, you know…” She waves her hand vaguely at the fire, and stokes it back to life.

Maleficent shakes her head. Reasons? The word feels foreign, meaningless. “I don’t know that I ever had a reason for anything, before…”

Before her, she means to say, but she cannot. There was always a before her, yes, but now there is an after her. Everything from now on is after her, without her, and the mere idea of it is something akin to drowning, or perhaps slowly suffocating, deep underground, with the weight of the earth sinking down upon her chest. What did she do before? How did she live? However is she to live now, knowing what she has lost?

“Yeah,” says Joy simply.

Maleficent doesn’t know how long they sit together in silence after that. It hardly matters.

ANYWAY THANK YOU ANONYMOUS FRIEND I HAD FUN LOL

#character death cw #malora #maleficent x aurora #exciting tag for writing things #exciting tag for answered asks #fic:prisoner #char:joy #god i feel so bad LOL i'm like ahhh i don't really write malora anymore what if one of them DIED :) and now it's fun for me sdkjnfkdjsfnfds #the post editor gets worse every time i use it i stg #guys i'm reeeeeeeeeeally thinking about writing this #you don't understand give me a villain w a lost love who sees sth of their lost love in the protag and i go fucking feral EVERY TIME #one minute im normal the next minute i'm on the roof howling it's really bad!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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magnoliae · 3 years

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Hii, I saw u had ppl who support the penumbra podcast on ur DNI, and i was just wondering, what was the hiring event u were referring to? It's on my list of podcasts to listen to n I was wondering if I should take it off

Hi! Ill start from a beginners perspective of the penumbra as the main controversy is very much a direct result of all of penumbras past mistakes, sorry if you know parts of this already. Also Im white and started listening mid season 2, so this is more of a rundown than like an authoritative judgement.

Theres two unrelated stories that are just going into the fourth season, one a scifi noir show with many themes on family, trauma, recovery and corruption, and a fantasy D&D like fiction which I have not listened to as much so I dont know the themes as well. However both stories are really popular because of their diversity in primarily LGBTQIA+ charcaters, but also race, disabilities, age, gender.

The main protagonist of the scifi noir is Juno Steele, a black disabled nonbinary character who has PTSD and other traumas. However, the penumbra has a predominantly white cast and writing crew, especially at the beginning of the show, and didnt explicitly give any charcters a race or ethnicity (except for iirc the antagonists of the now non-canon pilot who were south asian and said to "breed like rabbits" yikes).

Then in 2017, penumbra hired Michaela Buckley, whose art is a whole nother can of worms of racist and transmisogynistic caricatures. As the first "official" artist she gave the characters a lot of their traits that are still seen today, especially races and ethnicities like black for Juno, and South East Asian for his love interest Peter Nureyev. As a white person its not my place to judge the harmfulness in making an angry alcoholic character with a broken home black, and a suave homme-fatale thief Asian, but it doesnt sound good on paper.

When people brought this up with the creators of the show, they sort of made it canon but not really? Nothing really was mentioned on changing their ways or combating fandom racism. According to this timeline by @/ofdreamsanddoodles they later apologised, but still sold Buckley's merch. They also kinda sidestepped it by making their future "race blind", however the setting is very much not a utopia so idk the decision to avoid race as a topic seems a bit glaring imo. I think Buckley as well apoligsed separately, and she never intended to be like, the voice of god on canon representation.

The recent controversy however is around the newest artist penumbra have hired after their season 3 artist left. They hired Ellison Estephan, who also has a history of drawing racist, lesbophobic and transmisogynistic caricatures. the link goes over one of the most offensive artworks, which the penumbra team later address.

The first "statement" was given by one of the showrunners, Harley Takagi Kaner, on twitter I think a day after the announcement. However they basically only talked about the bullying theyve received in the meantime. It was mentioned later by Kevin Vibert how this was done in the spur of the moment by Harley. Vibert did compare the numbers of slurs sent to him, a white cis gay guy, vs Harley, a nonbinary POC so like, I understand why Harley would try to stop like abuse rather than criticism, but it wasnt great when this looked like their only official apology. Ellison also dismissed their offensive art as "goofy", which was also not great when fans hadnt heard anything else from the team. They did later apologise properly.

Then a week after the announcement, Vibert releases an 12 page statement on the matter. However, a large part of this was more going over why it took the team so long to respond and their hiring process, rather than an actual apology. In regards to Ellison's infamous artwork, he only goes over Alessandra Strong because no one on the hiring team was a black woman. And the response was it made sense to make a tall gruff muscular woman black because of her personality and because previous fans (like Buckley) had drawn her as black so it'd be taking away representation. I cant truly make a judgement on that, but he handwaves away the overly offensive caricature style which is what people mainly had an issue with, and didnt bring up the other characters. The crew have also decided to keep Ellison as their artist, so this is just another case of the penumbra team refusing to make changes and not take accountability in writing their characters and plot.

#ty for the ask!#antiblackness #misogynoir #long post #transmisogny tw

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flying-elliska · 5 years

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S3 Rewatch - Episode 3 - Mercredi 12h10 "Tu choisis pas"

I haven't given up on those ! And man I miss skam france a lot so doing this again is making me really happy atm, recapturing a little of the magic.

This clip really was a happy surprise and ep3 is Alexia's time to shine. They did a great job giving her a place in Lucas's story (even tho I would have liked to see her react to Lucas's coming out in particular.)

The clip starts with a quick shot of a Raptors poster ("You also can be one of us!") - that's the French version of the Penetrators right ? So basically a Straight Institution TM. Followed by Lucas quickly noping into the Foyer to avoid Chloe. He's noping out of Straightness all around.

I love Daphne's look in this clip, the green bow scarf thing in her hair is super cute, and the whole moment where she desperately tries to hide that they're having a party while everyone is like eh whatever is hilarious. She is such an unlikely candidate to organize a clandestine party in the school at night, and yet. Everyone is stepping out of their comfort zones.

I did laugh at the part where Daphne brings up Alexia's bisexuality as linked to her shoes, that felt like a clunky way of bringing the subject but those shoes are awesome. And calling Alexia chelou is a throwback to Eliott being all like hey we like weird right? It's cool to be chelou right ? Bi/pan kings ! (A bit mean from Emma though lol) but those would exactly be the type to own their weirdness/queerness. Even though, as she says later, she might not be afraid to stand out but in the end, it's all natural. I am not a big fan of the whole "we're all sexually fluid anyway" but I remember having similar thoughts as a baby bi. It was a way for myself to reassure myself that I wasn't actually weird, that this was in a way a core human experience (I still honestly believe a lot more ppl than we/they realize are at least somewhat fluid, but not everyone.)

For the whole "Lucas becoming a part of the girl squad" thing - it does feel a little artificial at times. But it's also interesting in terms of gender dynamics. There's a bit of an element of "Lucas isn't a real dude so it's chill" that can be a bit demeaning at times - but it also means that he can sidestep the whole charade of war between the sexes/treating girls like objects like his friends do and so he can find temporary shelter with them even though in the end his squad matters more (and that's logical tbh), and they can help each other out.

Alexia bringing up the Kinsey scale and Lucas - nonchalantly but not really - immediately wanting to know more is like such a mood bc you learn so much from being surrounded by other queer ppl, but it can be so tricky to ask when you're not even out to yourself. Then she brings up Emma and Daphne kissing. Daphne is obviously embarrassed and says she didn't take the initiative while Emma treats it as a silly thing she does when drunk. Meanwhile Lucas has probs been struggling with this for years, so it might have hurt a little to see them talk abt it like it's inconsequential- and it's not really surprising when he says - oh that's cool, you can just brush it aside when convenient then. Like at that moment maybe he is thinking that bisexuality in this way is the best option - he can't really deny his attraction to guys anymore but he sees an opportunity to sweep it under the rug. When he says "and everyone still thinks you're hetero" with that fake smile, as if that was the best possible option, I was like, ouch. But I felt like I really understood Lucas a lot more. Compared to Isak (who always seemed to struggle more with the attraction itself, a lot more nervous around Even) Lucas's goes for it around Eliott but also ropes Chloe in much harder - his main fear is about the social repercussions.

Alexia's response is one of my favorite non-Elu moments of the season. It's such an important debunking of the stereotypes about bisexuality. You fall in love, it's not about picking sides. And you can't calculate, it's not about what's most convenient. It just happens. And Lucas needs to hear this, too. He can front with the best of them, but he can't force himself to feel things bc they're convenient. But the message will take some time to sink in. That little downcast look at the end, though. Ugh. He probably feels like he committed a blunder, we know from later that this blocked him from coming out to the girls. From Emma and Daphne being somewhat dismissive he might have expected them to be all "haha yeah it's cool we're still straight anywayyy" but Alexia is way ahead of them on that one. She doesn't let the implication that straightness is the norm slide and I love her for that. I was so blown away when I discovered the Kinsey scale, this idea that it's not "normal" vs the outliers but that's it's more of a spectrum. So drawing strict boundaries is difficult. It's such an important message. It's the first time I really felt they were taking her character and her sexuality seriously and that was really cool. As Lucas's story gets pretty angsty at times, it's also cool to be shown that struggling with yr sexuality is not always a necessity, that some people manage to be very open and proud and easy about it.

Also I saw Coline wearing the "you don't choose who you love" shirt today at Paris pride awwww perfect day to analyze this clip 💕💕💕💕🌈

Previous clip

#skam france #s3 rewatch #it's overinterpretation time !!!

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