#and unfortunately our family has a lot of young people who die badly

[leighlew3]

Hi Leigh. I hope you’re feeling okay. And if you’re not, that’s fine too. We all love you and are here for you.

I know it’s probably not the best time to discuss my concern but like ptsd sometimes ruins my head and I feel extremely paranoid if I don’t try to protect someone I care about.

What I’m trying to say is(and this is entirely presuming through some of your previous posts) that sometimes you do more than your sibling. Which doesn’t mean that it’s bad unless…..it’s sort of intentional in his part?

Once again I’m sorry if this makes you mad and I get it, family can be complicated and I’m just a stranger trying to give you unsolicited advice.

I have a reason to do so and that is I’ve seen my mom under the shadows of her brother. Considering he was a monster and I’m assuming your brother isn’t. Because I only know just one part of his life. However, I’m trying to advice you(sorry for the unsolicited advice btw) because my uncle is a horrendous man. When my granny got cancer and was on her death bed, it was almost the exact situation that you had described in one of your posts. And so I got flashbacks of that time(ptsd??) and I have to admit my uncle is probably way worse considering he tried to sexually assault me when I was 10. But that’s besides the point. What I’m getting to here is that it took years for mom to recognise the behaviour and the nature of her brother until she snapped and then completely cut him off for good. But all those years, she suffered under his tyranny (?) and unfortunately I had to deal with it too.

I just hope that if your case is similar even just a little to what I described, just think about it as a whole. That’s all. I’m not telling you what to do. All I’m saying is be careful.

Much love ❤️

First, thank you, and I'm so sorry you went through that. 💜

So, my brother... was always a genuinely good guy who did the right things, when it counted most at least, especially compared to our evil, abuser 'father'. Unfortunately, he's lately been going through some sort of early mid-life crisis or something, I dunno. But he's just abandoned a lot of people and responsibilities he shouldn't. Things and people that should mean the most are now on the bottom of the priority list.

I've always taken care of our mom single-handedly. I think he's chipped in financially, barely, like... a couple minor times. And for a long time he made more money than I did, so there was no excuse. He just always even as kids amidst trauma -- checked out. His way to deal was to just... not. To run away. To shut it out. Go about his life. Leaving us to survive alone, etc at the time.

Anyway, it broke my heart when I told him this last Christmas might be our last with mom, and to please come, she wanted to be with him and the boys (my nephews) for Christmas, badly. And he instead decided to spend it with his new girlfriend of (at the time) 2 months. The boys were devastated because they could tell grandmama's health was declining and they wanted to be with her/us for Christmas...

Now, after her death, the oldest (15) has said, "Well, we didn't get to see her for Christmas and now she's gone." and the youngest (11, an extra sensitive young soul) hasn't stopped crying fairly regularly since she died. They were already dealing with their parents' split a year or so go, and then their dad basically checking out the second he met the new girlfriend. And now they lost their grandmama who loved them SO much and made them her whole world in the way she made her own children (us) her whole world.

Mom did the best she could for us under hellish circumstances, and she was not perfect, but she was a GOOD mom who loved her two children, would die for her children, always put us first above ALL, including and especially herself. She loved and cared for him so much and he just abandoned her. But for me I always saw no other option BUT taking care of her. She took care of me the first 18 years of her life. So I took care of her the last 18 or so years of hers. I told her she could retire as a teacher's aide and I'd take care of her when her back and legs got bad after years of steroid use due to her asthma + years of abuse. I took care of her, and us. For so long. And in the very end, her last year or so, I was the one bathing her, cleaning up her bowel movement bags, helping her get to the commode by her bed, I was the one feeding her, bringing her her pills, and bankrupting myself on her medical costs -- even as I myself was dealing with long COVID exhaustion/heart/BP issues. To the point that she and I even started having issues of emotional conflict due to both of us being so fucking TIRED and exhausted and frustrated, her suffering, me exhausted and at wits end mental health wise in every way. Those are things I'll forever have to live with and try to process and forgive myself for but at the hospital one night I washed her hair and face and put her lipstick on her and she forgave me for my moments of frustration, and gently thanked me for taking care of her, especially because I was the only one who ever did...

Anyway, I asked him, in order to make room for her hospice bed while she was in the hospital, if he would grab some bed cover bags for the beds to go into my storage, so hospice had room to install her literal death bed. I hadn't slept in a week, being at the hospital anywhere from 5-12 hours a day to be sure she was being treated right and wasn't alone. She hated being there alone and I refused to let her be alone. I was exhausted. His ex wife was there at the hospital with mom to relieve me more than he was. She's been there for me this whole time in ways that if I hadn't had her, I don't think I would've made it through.

So, I was running around making sure mom's whole room was redone for her comfort, the equipment, etc (for what wound up being 2.5 days before she died, but at least I got her home in time and she passed at home like I always promised her I would make sure she did) -- and I just needed him to grab $10 plastic covers from U-Haul and come help me move the beds. He came to help me move the bed, but claimed her couldn't buy the bed covers (?!). He came by a total of... 3-4 times, briefly, throughout the hospital / hospice / hell final days because his priority was his new girlfriend and her children, over his own dying mother, his sister who was exhausted, and his sons who were devastated and hurting and trying to process it all.

I love my brother, I always will, but in her final days he broke her heart. He abandoned me. And now she's gone and aside from him holding me for 30 seconds the night she died (the first time he's really hugged me in half our life) -- he hasn't even called or texted since she died, or the memorial, to ask if I'm okay. He hasn't checked on me. He's just... living his life.

One of mom's dying wishes, I even have on tape, was telling him to take care of his little sister (me) and his sons (especially due to recent events that were devastating her around all that).

And I'm breaking. And I'm not okay.

But this is where it's that thing... where it's always been mom and me, just us, against the world, on our own, no matter who else came or went. No matter what, we at least had each other.

But now she's gone.

I don't have my mom anymore, my best friend, my confidant, my biggest champion and defender... my world is gone. Half my heart and soul is gone. And I don't even have my brother either, really. Barely ever have. I took care of our mom alone most of my adult life while he got to live his. And I'm angry with him for abandoning us all this time and putting it all on me, but especially at the end. And I don't know if I'll ever be able to get past that. My mom always thought he'd come around, she only ever wanted to see the best in him, and it's heartbreaking. She loved him so much, just as much as she loved me even though I was the one who was always there for her... because she couldn't ever really face that he just... wasn't there, and wasn't going to be there.

But I was. Even in the end. And now I'm broken.

But he's just living his life.

And none of that seems fair.

But that's life, I guess.

#personal #crying as i type this #i've cried more the last month than in my entire life #i dont usually cry #so #yeah

[eats-the-stars]

my grandpa’s funeral is tomorrow. I should probably be more upset about this, but I don’t really feel much at all about the fact that he died last week. even though we were fairly close and I liked him well enough. it might be a family thing, though, because neither of my sisters or my dad is very broken up about it. it was a very swift, businesslike recovery from his death that mostly involved cleaning out his room and setting up the funeral and all of that only took, like, three days. i expect the funeral to be a pretty small, quiet affair without much crying or anything. he lived a long time. most of his friends have already died. the rest aren’t the kind to make a fuss about it. oh, except my one aunt and cousin will definitely be crying heavily and saying a bunch of deep and probably false things about how close they were to my grandpa and how much they’ll miss him. they love attending funerals, and I’ve always found their grief very shallow and performative...almost insulting since I’ve seen them act this way at the funerals of people they’ve barely known...but I can’t really say anything because my own grief is usually very thin and quiet. I think I used most of it up when i was young, and there’s not much left. oh, and I also recognize that this is different from a lot of those early deaths, since most were young or died violently. in comparison, I actually feel some relief that my grandpa is dead, because he lived a long, eventful life, got to see his grandkids grow into their twenties, got to meet his great-grandkids who were born last year. didn’t have any major regrets or things he still wanted to do. and in the end, he was suffering so much and also the kind of person who told us often over the last few years that he was waiting to die and just hoped it would be fast. which it was. he spent two nights at the hospital, they put him on morphine for the pain, and he passed quickly. all in all, not a bad life or death.

#me #death #i feel like mourning is easiest when a person has lived a long life and is ready to die #if everyone was lucky they would live a long life with few regrets and then die fast and easy in their old age #so my grandpa was pretty fortunate in that regard #grief is a lot crueler when the dead are young and died violently #and unfortunately our family has a lot of young people who die badly #i think it must just be bad luck #because a lot of times it is just random violent accidents #like getting crushed by a falling tree or falling into a river #or getting in a motorcycle accident #but then sometimes my relatives have also been murdered #usually shot #oh and my one relative was abducted along with his girlfriend and tortured to death in the national park close to our hometown... #so there's also that kind of death #oh and my one young cousin who accidentally died from eating rat poison that was left in the garage #and their twin who was fatally struck by a car #and my other young cousin who was accidentally strangled after getting tangled in something that i can't remember #those last three were all under ten years old #so when i mean young i mean sometimes very young #oh and my best friend from childhood died kind of in front of me #from a...grand maul? seizure? he was epileptic #and that was when we were thirteen #i remember because it was very close to my birthday #and because my mom died that same year #so yeah...the goal is to live to be super old and then die in a hospital on morphine...

[demigoddessnation]

(excessive) Teresa slander

and everything wrong with it

— an essay by me

1. People lose sight of the real villain in the story. We were really given this power-hungry, violently elitistic organization put in charge of a decaying world and decided to pin the entire blame on a teenage girl. Teresa was a pawn in a game she deliberately wasn't provided full understanding of. A rather biased pawn at that. The actual evil behind all this were the people who had the power of life and death in their hands - those who could exploit a potential cure to their personal gain and advantage. While those people would've been driven by selfishness and lusting after population control, she was motivated by her own moral compass, which was unfortunately very much manipulated from the very beginning.

2. She was (to her death) a kid. She's a fictional character, yes. But slandering a teenager for not being lawfully good is like pushing penguins off a cliff and frowning when they don't avoid the fall by flying. Like any young person, she had a cause she wholeheartedly believed in and supported. She allowed herself and her friends to get hurt in the name of this cause which she believed transcended the pain of the individual and worked for the greater good. It's not easy to agree to this when all you know of the world is pain, loss and death, and though her decisions didn't work out, they were made with the sternness of someone who's lived through too much for their age.

3. There's a suspicious hint of ✨misogyny✨ to it. Interesting, really, how all the hate goes to Teresa whereas she didn't exactly execute all the betrayals and scheming by herself. Aris also had a significant part in all that, but people seem to dismiss his role in that case. Maybe it's the movies that watered it down, but he was in the epicenter of events just like her. Also, if you dig further, you'd see that the rest of the guys are all constantly having their trauma discussed in depth (specifically the Ivy Trio and Gally) while Teresa's past is hardly ever acknowledged. Trauma can't and mustn't be compared between characters and to say that every single one of them was severely (unfairly) traumatized is an understatement, but ignoring traumatic experience for the sake of villainizing someone is profoundly wrong. If you're going to be judgmental, do it fairly and correctly, without picking and choosing whatever appeals to your own personal opinion.

4. "I laughed when she died" shouldn't be a thing. Again, she's a fictional character, yes. But on a mental level our brains can't functionally distinguish between fictional characters and real people (that's why falling for a fictional character can feel as intense as falling for someone in real world). There's still something inherently wrong with laughing at someone's death, just saying.

5. Even if there is intense hate for Teresa, it shouldn't be directed to Kaya Scodelario. There's this fine but important line to draw between a character and the actor who plays them. The case with Kaya and Teresa is one of the most problematic parts of this fandom because the actress can't possibly be held responsible for something her character has done!! This is a role and it in no way means Kaya condones what Teresa's said or done. People get paid to act in movies, not to magically merge with the person they're scripted to play. Also, Kaya is a very kind and educated person. She's not from the Maze Runner or Skins, she's an actual person with actual feelings. Everyone needs to respect this and treat it accordingly.

6. Teresa has been demonized and manipulated for so so long. Even if you don't understand her point of view and motives, it's still heartbreaking to see how badly and harshly life had treated her since she was a child. The very first time she was found as the only survivor in a village of dead bodies, she was thought of as a ghost, an evil omen. She has always been "the only one" - the only one immune, forced to watch her family die; the only girl amid a group of guys with a variety of underlying trauma and issues; the trigger for change. It doesn't help that she used to be separated from the others with Thomas and labeled an elite subject. She was meant to be an outcast and the fact that she never really got to bond with them contributed to her being clay in the hands of WCKD. Even if she was fed a lot of information about the world, the cure and the vileness of the WCKD trials, she would still choose to side with the organization because the promise of finding a remedy prevailed in her mind, as opposed to the mindset of Thomas whose righteousness did get him in some difficult situations but kept him from becoming a radical idealist (which made him more aware of how impractical and painful the process of finding a cure actually was).

7. The story wouldn't have worked without her. Maze Runner is a great analogy for elitism, class division and government problematicness but its most impactful message comes from how the readers get to see the victims of the global catastrophe that is the Flare. We get insight into the Cranks, the violent work of WCKD and the mass panic that quickly spreads worldwide but what truly works out the resonance here is the fact that we see that the group of main characters isn't entirely impenetrable in their righteousness and incorruptibility. We have a bunch of broken people who set off on a journey to find life outside of running and fighting for survival. However, without the chaos factor that's Teresa, the battle against WCKD seems linear which can't possibly be true since the line between good and evil is basically obliterated at this point of global deterioration. She's the turning point where you realize that there are no winners in the war, nor are there good or bad guys, only victims and opportunists.

In conclusion, I hope to see a day when the psyche of characters is better explained and understood instead of bashed the way it is now. There's some really great character building going on in TMR and it's a matter of time we progressed past the need to point fingers left and right when we could take in the bigger picture of the story. The way we react to characters like Teresa actually says a lot about how we would react to her behavior in real life, and sometimes that could be limiting us from figuring out that at the end of the day people like this exist and will continue to exist under the influence of grand promises, corrupt authority and crisis.

#the maze runner #maze runner #tmr minho #tmr newt #tmr thomas #tmr #tmr teresa #tmr gally #small rant

[beebrainedstudios]

More ADSOM Headcanons

Just cause I feel like it.

- Whenever Osaron possessed Holland, the tips of his hair, his hands, and the skin around his eyes would grow cold and hard, like stone. This effect was also partially present even when Osaron wasn’t in full control, which helped contribute to Holland’s “uncanny-valley youthful” appearance.

- This is really more of an extrapolation of canon, but Osaron is a cleithrophobe and a somniphobe (I think those are the right words), meaning he’s afraid of staying still/being trapped and sleeping! Both situations remind him of his time on the throne in Black London, which, in combination with his natural restlessness, makes him very active to the point of obsession. These fears are a huge part of his more, more, more motivation and put him in conflict with Holland often; during Holland’s time as king, Osaron would possess him at night out of an intense desire to move and avoid sleeping, and he didn’t like it when Holland would sit on the throne (I don’t think we ever actually see him do so...).

- Lila loves poetry. Though she wasn’t exposed to it much when she was young, she gets more opportunities to read it during her time in Arnes, and she secretly hoards anthologies of poems she finds on her travels. Rhy later finds out from Kell and is happy to share some Arnesian literature with her; it’s a great way for him to get rid of some of his old school scrolls.

- Antari naturally have a higher body temperature than normal people due to the warmth of their magic. An Antari who is badly ill or unable to access their magic will typically be very cold to the touch and may even be at risk of hypothermia.

- Alucard has pain in his shoulder during the winter from the injury Berras gave him, and there is a large scar on the back of his head (hidden by his hair) where his father struck him with his cane.

- I may explore this more later, but all of the separate Londons have their own climates and ecology; Grey is the equivalent to our world, Red is overly warm and humid with lots of floodplains, White is cold and snowy (even before the Split) with mountains and cold jungles, and Black London is tropical and somewhat coastal (its ocean is much higher and closer to the city, and the river is bigger). Animals also vary between the worlds. A tiger in Grey looks different from the same species in Red, and mythical creatures such as dragons, sea serpents, and unicorns actually exist in some of the worlds (they’re still very rare).

- Kell, Lila, the Danes, and Maxim have all named their weapons. Maxim’s royal full-sword is named Suncatcher. Lila has too many knives to list, but all of them are named something fearsome and tough, like “Claw,” (or after poets, but she’d die before admitting it). Kell secretly named his silver knife Loyal, as it has always been true to him like he wants to be for everyone else. Athos’ whip is named Typhon, while Astrid’s twin axes are named Mercy and Victor (she typically refers to them in Maktahn though).

- Antari are naturally more vulnerable to poisons and blunt injury than normal people, but are more resistant to open wounds or blood-related injuries; they’ll be much weaker and sleepier while healing, but have a dramatically lessened recovery time.

- Unnatural eye colors are extremely common in all non-Grey worlds, and things like strange hair colors or even small horns and such occasionally occurred in Black London. It is also common for someone’s appearance to change when their magic is activated, like Maxim’s molten eyes.

- Calling someone “blackhearted” has a significantly stronger connotation in non-Grey worlds.

- Dog-sledding is a thing in the White world, but it typically occurs outside of London due to the need for snow cover.

- All of the worlds have different pet preferences. Birds are the most popular pets in Red, White prefers dogs or mules, and Black likes marine animals/fish (especially octopuses, mantis shrimp, and cuttlefish).

- Also sorta mentioned in canon, but Antari can be much stronger than is seen in the main series. They can specialize in certain spells if given enough training (such as healers being able to regrow limbs) and in theory, one could gain the ability to carry others through world gates. There are also many As spells that have been lost to time. Unfortunately, most current Antari either lack the training or the experience needed to learn these skills.

- Alucard is sometimes uncomfortable post-ACOL during high-profile events, as many noble traditions remind him of his family. He also really misses his crew and being a pirate.

- Nobody liked King Nokil (Maxim’s dad) as he was openly cruel, violent, and selfish; the Storm King, a testament to his volatile personality. He was also known for threatening staff (like he does with Teiren in Steel Prince). When Maxim took over (through a series of trials where he beat Nokil; his father lived for several years after Maxim took the throne and even met Rhy), he was seen as the Sun returning after a Storm.

- Athos, as much as he enjoys Holland’s suffering, also sees him subconsciously as a comfort object, like some people’s lucky tokens or trinkets. Holland provides an immense measure of security as someone strong who can fight, defend, and die unquestioningly for the Danes; this is very useful and comforting for someone who has only ever known violence and insecurity, especially someone who feels at least somewhat responsible for the protection of another. Athos is unaware of this sentiment, but does acknowledge that having Holland as a shield and bodyguard makes him feel safer.

- Rhy hums a lot, especially when he’s thinking.

- Kell often has nightmares centered around boats; while he blames this on his drowning experiences + Rhy’s disappearance, these are actually subconsciously connected to the night his parents sold him. Sometimes, the boat will be on fire (his mother is a strong fire magician).

- Oshoc do occasionally pop up in powerful artifacts in Red, but they are typically too weak to sustain themselves for more than a few hours. They aren’t naturally aggressive; all oshoc, like Osaron, are sort of like AIs- they learn through interaction. However, while it is entirely possible to have a nice oshoc, it’s never been recorded.

- Teiren and Maris regularly meet to discuss magic and whine about their coworkers.

#adsom #a darker shade of magic #acol #a conjuring of light #agos #a gathering of shadows #shades of magic #kell maresh #rhy maresh #lila bard #holland vosijk #alucard emery #maxim maresh #athos dane #astrid dane #the dane twins #osaron #wow theres a surprising amount of worldbuilding stuff here #neat #adsom headcanons #adsom headcanon

[sarahjtv]

BNHA 296 Spoiler Thoughts

Ok, wow.  I was just sitting down enjoying my Sunday when the next chapter suddenly decides to drop onto our laps and bring us all to tears.  I did not expect it, but I welcome it with somber feels.  Of course, since this is the aftermath chapter, I have a lot thoughts.  Here we go:

•The chapter starts off with narration from Deku on what happened after the big battle.  This tells us that he’s still alive (presumedly) thank god.  There’s a panel later that shows him on a stretcher (I think) or a bed, but he’s unconscious.  Regardless, I don’t see Deku’s limbs going back to normal after all this unless something comes in to fix them.  Eri’s not an option here because she used all her energy on Mirio recently, so don’t go thinking that’ll work unless there’s a time-skip.

•So far, Pixie Bob, Wash, Present Mic, and Thirteen are still alive and fighting.  Thirteen, however, seems to have lost an arm when she was in the lab... We do see some of her face, so that’s a reveal if anything.  

•Deku says that their were at least 10 Near High-End Nomu in that battlefield.  3 of them were disposed and 7 escaped.  We did see one get captured by Best Jeanist in the last chapter so maybe they can get some intel from it.

•Mr. Compress is alive!  I’m honestly glad that he’s alive because I could’ve sworn he was going to die.  That reveal we had about him being the descendent of the Perilous Thief was just too big for him to be killed off right away.  I’m hoping we can learn more about him and the Thief later.

•Back at the resort: ReDestro, Getten, Trumpet, and more than 16,900 PLF soldiers were caught.  Edgeshot is still alive too, but he looks tired and his arm is messed up.  I do not see that Old Samurai hero from the top 10 around, so my best bet is that he’s alive.  I hope...

•Now, we REALLY get a look at all the death and destruction that this war has caused.  Adults, kids, and families are either injured or dead.  Everyone is traumatized.  Thankfully Froppy and Uraraka (I can’t spell her first name right to save me...) are working on rescuing (Uraraka in particular is good for this thanks to her Zero Gravity).  A lot of other heroes like Koda and Manga are helping out too, but the screams of people in pain and horror do not leave the pages and it’s honestly haunting to read.

•And poor Uraraka.  As she’s saving people, you can see her hair get messier and messier.  There’s one really well-drawn, but sad, panel of her with spots of blood on her and her hair isn’t “floaty” like it normally is.  It’s droopy and straight down like she’s been caught in rain or something.  I’m not used to her being like this.  This war is going to make her rethink things, I think.  

•There’s one hero, who in the mist of all this, says that this whole thing was a mistake.  He’s thinking about finding a new job.  I highly doubt he’s the only on thinking this.  War affects people badly.  They want to fight for the greater good, but the cost is their own mentality, physicality, and even their lives.  Sometimes other people’s lives.  So, in a world of heroes where things like this happen on a devastating scale, you have to wonder “Is being a hero really worth it?”  I’m sure more heroes, maybe even students, will be thinking about this in the future.  I won’t be surprised if some quit entirely.   

•And now the hero death toll.  Oh my god...  The first thing I saw when I saw the leaks was Midnight’s death.  I’m devastated.  Her horniness aside, I loved her character.  Midnight genuinely cared for her students and wanted them to grow into amazing heroes.  She supported her high school friends, Present Mic and Aizawa, the whole way through including Shirakumo’s death.  She adopted the cat the 4 of them took care of during high school and I believe it’s still alive today.  I can’t imagine what Mic and Aizawa are going to feel when they hear about this.  I honestly thought she was going to make it out alive.  I thought that she was safe and had some plot armor on her.  But no.  She’s dead.  Midnights’s not coming back.  The students are mourning her especially Mina, Kirishima, and Momo.  The three main players in the sedative plan.  Their plan worked, but had it worked sooner, a lot of lives could’ve been saved.  Ultimately, none of this is their fault, but it’s going to weigh on them heavily.  Please give these kids therapy.

•Adding onto Midnight, heroes like Crust, Majestic, X-Less, and Native are dead.  We know about Midnight, Crust, and X-Less now, but the rest were not known yet.  I doubled out Majectic and Native here for reasons.  Majestic was Momo’s 2nd intern mentor before the war.  We didn’t know much about him or his Quirk (it was some sort of levitation via ring platforms), but he did save the student’s lives when they were about to be run over by Gigantomachia.  Looks like that was a sacrifice.  Native, if you remember, was the hero Iida, Deku, and Shoto saved back in Hosu back when they fought Stain.  We didn’t know much about him, but it sucks to know that he was saved then only to be killed now.  This will probably hurt Iida, Deku, and Shoto real bad knowing that saving him became pretty null and void in the end.  

•Aside from that, the rest of them look like they were young, in their prime, or veterans in the world of Pro Heroes.  It just sucks in general to have to see all these lives cut short.  But, that’s how war goes, unfortunately.  

•Endeavor...  I’m one of the people who actually like Endeavor.  I will never forgive him for what he did to Shoto and his family pre-Sports Festival.  But, I wanted to see how he would redeem himself after Kosu.  So far, he was doing well.  He didn’t expect forgiveness and only wanted to atone.  Everything in the Todoroki family was finally going well.  And then Dabi/Touya showed up and screwed up everything.  Now, everyone knows about Endeavor’s past as an abuser and they will never see him in the same light again.  I don’t think he has a choice but to admit to his sins publicly and then retire.  I hate the idea because he is a good hero, but I don’t see any other way he’s going to get out of this.  Same with Hawks.  I don't see him going back to hero work either.  

•There’s one small panel with 2 kids from the short Remedial Course Arc we got with Shoto and Bakugo.  Rough translation, one of the kids asks if things will be okay and the other says that they’ll be fine because “That’s what Five Weenies told us after all!”  This broke me.  “Five Weenies” refers to Shoto Todoroki.  As funny as this should be, hearing that Shoto, the one who arguably got mentally scared the most in this whole battle, still gives those kids hope that everything will be okay... I just don’t know what to say.  I’m glad Shoto kept those kid’s spirits alive (Bakugo did too; neither are visibly in this chapter for some reason), but he is by no means “fine”.  #GiveShotoTodorokiTherapy2020

•And finally All For One.  Fuck this guy.  All that death and destruction and he wants more.  The translation’s still rough, but based on what he says in the end, I think we are going to get a Prison Break Arc.  He says “Go free my main body.” to the Nomus  AFO is still in Tartarus.  Guess who else is there?  Stain, Overhaul (the Ultra Analysis said that he got prosthetics or something for his arms and his Quirk adapted to that) , Moonfish, Kurogiri, I think Muscular, and plenty of other villains.  Horikoshi hinted that Moonfish might come back (he was apparently going to executed, but idk...) and the preview says “The worst is yet to come”...  Yeah, this war is over.  We’re really only just beginning. 

#My Hero Academia Spoilers #Boku No Hero Academia Spoilers #MHA Spoilers #BNHA Spoilers #MHA 296 #BNHA 296 #spoilers #thoughts #summary #my thoughts #essay #Midnight #Deku #Izuku Midoryia #Tsuyu Asui #Froppy #Ochako Uraraka #Ochaco Uraraka #Uravity #Mina Ashido #Pinky #Eijiro Kirishima #Red Riot #Momo Yaoyorozu #Creati #Endeavor #Enji Torodoki #Shouto Todoroki #Shoto Todoroki #Tomura Shigaraki

[defyances]

𝐀𝐍 𝐀𝐍𝐀𝐋𝐘𝐒𝐈𝐒 𝐎𝐍 𝐋𝐎𝐑 𝐈𝐑𝐄𝐋𝐈𝐀

( where yugen is so incredibly obsessed with this woman that she decides to rant about her )

on: her followers

to start us off, we’ll discuss the main event of irelia’s performance: her relationship with blossoming blade. they are very close with each other, and it can be interpreted as platonic or romantic. i only say this because they establish their relationship as teacher/student, a platonic/familial bond that can be as powerful as a romantic one. but i also digress, given the affectionate remarks they give each other such as:

irelia: i wish i could give you silks, but i must give you steel. blossoming blade: stay by my side. i cannot ask for more.

irelia: ionians into formation! blossoming blade: i’d follow you to the black heart of noxus itself.

&& there is so much more. blossoming blade is not confident in her ability to fight, much like irelia && her lack of confidence in her ability to lead, which might explain why irelia has some sort of connection to her. she sees her as a mirror of herself, and much like she needed at one point, blossoming blade needs someone to support her. so, she will give that plus much more. lastly, irelia’s reaction upon blossoming blade’s death; it is simply undeniable that they love each other.

i am a bit bothered by the lack of interactions between irelia && zinneia since it is implied that zinneia is her former mentor:

irelia: zinneia, you are a master at your craft. zinneia: and fate has sent you to give my craft purpose.

irelia: as a child, i watched you dance at the placidium every spring. zinneia: it was your bravery that brought me to the fight.

i was hoping to have more information on their relationship && the sort of impact zinneia had on irelia, but at the same time, it gives me the opportunity to fill in the gaps! given zinneia’s interactions with the rest of irelia’s followers, she is an elder ( we will not talk about how that isn’t reflected in her card art ) who leads the dance program at the placidium. while irelia’s o’ma taught her how to dance, zinneia perfected it with her lessons, and she became the mother/grandmother figure in her life once all her family members passed away. it assures me that irelia did have a support system ( even if a part of her might disagree. ) i will do a more thorough ( * headcanon based ) look at their relationship in another post.

when irelia said she is a warm && caring person, she really meant it. she cares a great deal for her followers as shown:

coastal defender: generations tended this land. i cannot leave. irelia: we must retreat for now, but i promise we’ll return.

ribbon dancer: stand behind me! they won’t hurt you. irelia: if they hurt you, i’d never forgive myself.

fighting for your freedom is important, yes but not so recklessly. if a battle isn’t turning out in their favor, irelia would rather retreat and keep her followers safe rather than dying in vain. her tone is mother-like, always worrying for them even though they are confident and determined to protect their home, and at their deaths, she is torn apart. she is both grateful ( ‘ your sacrifice mattered ’ ) && heartbroken ( ‘ so young . . . ’ ), which is why i emphasize her hesitance to believe in herself as a leader. she is responsible for their lives and for each that falls, she fails. she cannot fail them ( something she says herself upon the death of her card ); her people deserve to live to see the day of bittersweet victory.

on: noxus

as expected, irelia harbors a lot of hate towards them, and rightfully so. however, what i want to talk about is riot confirming my assumption on how deep this hate runs.

imperial demolitionist: for the empire. irelia: so young, already so wicked.

imperial demolitionist: remember the objectives. irelia: ‘murder the innocent’ and ‘destroy their homes’?

for those who don’t know, imperial demolitionist is a child. irelia is speaking to a child and not in a tone you would expect an adult would talk to a child ( especially one who was brainwashed to commit awful atrocities. ) this confirmed my headcanon of irelia’s white && black mentality: no matter who you are or how you came to be, if you are noxian, she will kill you. she will refuse to see you as anything but a tyrant, and she will continue to allow this hate to fester and dehumanize noxus as a whole. she won’t even refer to them by name! she has her reasons, given how much they have taken away from her, but it doesn’t make it right. as we all know, noxus has slaves, ranging from adult to children, and will send them to war whether they volunteered or not. they have to act in order to survive, but irelia can’t see that they’re trying to live; she sees them trying to kill her home, so in turn, she’ll kill them. && that is a flaw i will cover more on in another post.

even though the faith in herself wavers, the passion to protect ionia doesn’t with how confident she talks back to the noxians. she threatens them, promises to kill them, even when faced with their technology and their machinery. she has that much faith in her people and the land, and it’s admirable. no wonder why people follow her.

on: shurima

i never expected interactions between irelia and the shurimans ( especially with azir and nasus ), but it was a pleasant surprise nonetheless! azir && irelia are two fierce leaders, fighting tooth and nail to secure the safety of their homes; however, the difference between their idea of leading is evident within their interactions.

azir: a leader must see victory beyond each loss. irelia: my heart weeps for every fallen ally.

azir: war is an instrument that can make or destroy its leaders. irelia: instruments create beauty; war ends it.

from my perspective, azir isn’t so affected by the loss of lives in the war like irelia is ( it could be because he’s become desensitized after leading for so long or he truly doesn’t care ), and i could be wrong as i am not so familiar with azir. but with irelia, it is obvious that she is very sensitive towards the death of her people. whether they were close to her or not, as far as she knows, they were innocent souls, and they were dragged into this war unprepared. so many lives lost, so many deaths unjustified — it is simply unfair to her people, who have done nothing wrong. && no matter how many times she’s seen a body belonging to the first lands, it never hurts any less. she’s been able to mask that pain over the years she’s grown, but she still grieves, and it can be seen/heard whenever someone very close to her dies.

another difference i like to point out between the two leaders is their viewpoints on war: azir sees war almost like survival of the fittest. in the second quote, war is a way to create leaders, the best of the best while irelia sees it as destroying the beauty of life. war is a massacre, no matter which side wins, && even though she also strives for victory, she will only remember it as the day that peace died.

nasus: sorrow weighs upon you, but death could bring you peace. irelia: not yet, curator. i am far from done.

this made me snort because it’s basically nasus telling irelia, “k’ing yourself would make you feel better,” but i’m sure it isn’t meant to sound that way. rather, he understands her grief && how badly it is affecting her, so he is “testing” her will to see how strong it really is. if she had the opportunity, would she die && end her suffering there, or would she continue to preserve despite the agony she holds in her heart? irelia answers almost incredulously; if she dies now, ends her suffering now, who will lead her people to victory? certainly not anyone she knows/trusts. so, she cannot die. she will not die, not until she knows that her home is safe. ( this plays a bit into my headcanon that irelia doesn’t really fear death since she anticipates the day of reuniting with her family && ending her torment. )

there isn’t much to say about her interactions with the soothsayer && the voice of the risen other than she’s grateful for their aid in these trying times.

on: miscellaneous champs

lastly, i’ll be touching upon her interactions with in-game characters — which, suffice to say, isn’t a whole lot. it’s a bit disappointing. i expected more interactions with shen, karma, riven, and zed; i expected interactions with yasuo, yone, and lulu ( who is apparently in ionia?? ) but unfortunately, we weren’t given that. but i won’t say i’m heavily disappointed either because we did get some interactions with ionian && noxian champs plus extra.

shen: the balance requires a watchful eye. irelia: ionia needs brave hearts and able hands, too.

much like akali, irelia does not believe in waiting around && letting the land fight on its own. she even questions shen’s philosophy because of the slaughter that happened, which makes me theorize her faith in the spirit; clearly, she still believes in it but not so deeply like shen and the elders.

karma: ionia speaks through me. irelia: then tell me when this bloody fight will end?

she even questions the spirit of ionia itself, in a tone that is tired and desperate to end this terror. she is a lot nicer to karma in lor than lol, which confirms my suspicion that while irelia was initially frustrated with karma’s ( lack of ) action, she has come to understand her reasoning through the years that they’ve worked together.

zed: pledge yourself to the shadows. irelia: noxian tyranny has already forged our bond.

riven: [ dies ] irelia: irredeemable.

isn’t it crazy how irelia would rather side with the “evil” shadow master rather than the former noxian? of course, zed isn’t all bad, and riven isn’t all good, but it just further proves how she doesn’t treat noxians as humans at all; however, i would also like to point out her interaction with riven is if she’s against her. irelia would perhaps give her a chance if her quote in-game with her proves anything: “you want redemption? join me, and kill your masters!”

&& i’m still flabbergasted by her interaction with zed. she might not entirely agree with him, but she’ll work with him without hesitance. after all, they do share the philosophy of killing all noxians.

irelia: join us, prince jarvan. dance by our side. jarvan: i’m afraid i was born with two left feet. it’s a lightshield thing…

jarvan: noxus will pay for what they did to your people. irelia: yes, demacian prince. we will see to that.

so not only does she have shurima’s support but also demacia’s! a bit shocking since demacia is antimage and irelia is technically a mage, but i am glad to see that she and jarvan are on good terms.

irelia: my family...h-have you seen them? kindred: drifting between innocence and consequence.

STOP!! astra and i literally discussed this: if irelia was given the chance to talk to kindred, she would most certainly ask for her family && question why she was spared. of course, kindred would answer ominously, which in this interaction, makes me curious. between innocence and consequence? what do they mean? is her family stuck in limbo? are they currently being judged based on irelia’s actions in life? or are they waiting for irelia to join them? perhaps we’ll never know.

#˗ˏˋ⠀ 𝐡𝐞𝐚𝐝𝐜𝐚𝐧𝐨𝐧. ›› the day you died，you did not tell your body. #/ wow this is the most i've written for a character ever #/ three hours n i was just rambling nonsense at the end sfjdhsb

[sittingoverheredreaming]

I have a lot of thoughts on how Age of Calamity could have worked better for me, but one thought I’ve had since the Demo that only got stronger after completing the game is the idea of putting Impa in Terrako’s role, because I’m just not fond of a robot changing everything instead of a character we know and love.

The game still opens with the original timeline calamity, but after the first shots of the castle the focus moves to Blatchery Plain, where the final battle is taking place. Impa watches from near Kakariko Village, where she and other Sheikah, are stationed to defend their home. She wants to run and help her princess, but is held back. You know this is how it was foretold, you know this is how it has to be, someone, possibly Purah, reminds her. (You cannot take the idea that the Sheikah as a whole had some knowledge that the events of BotW would happen in order for Ganon to be defeated from me). And so she waits, until Zelda’s powers awaken, until Link is taken to the shrine of resurrection and her princess approaches her to ask her to guide him when he wakes, her princess, who has lost so much, tells her that she is going to fight Ganon alone for as long as it takes. And as Zelda walks away, Impa breaks, she can’t let her suffer like this, she opens a time portal and jumps to before it all unravelled.

The first battle of Hyrule Field happens largely the same as in game, except everyone is surprised to see Impa there, rather than at the research lab or in Kakariko. No one more so than Zelda, who comments that it has been years since Impa has visited her. For a split second it’s clear how deeply sad about it they both are, but Impa quickly fakes a smile and says she’s missed her and it seemed like a great time for a visit. Later the King seems mighty unhappy about it, but reluctantly agrees to Zelda’s request to have Impa accompany her to approach the Champions. (Maybe Link doesn’t even get to go with her yet, and there are some parallel missions about him proving himself, and/or he happens to already be there for one or two of the battles, it’s easy to put him in Zora’s Domain with Mipha, but it also makes more sense to leave him out of the Gerudo Town mission).

At the end of the chapter, it’s revealed that the Yiga Clan and Astor have taken the opportunity to capture the original Impa from this timeline, having noticed the time travel using their own ancient technology and figuring out that the presence of the other Impa means no one will notice if the original is missing. Kohga interrogates her for information, but Astor states there may be a better use for her, and then the scene cuts to black. 

That’s all we see of that Impa for a while, the story progresses much the same as it did originally (maybe with a little more adherence to BotW canon and some more character stuff, but that’s not my point here), with Impa inserting herself into every situation she can and trying to steer events away from the original timeline. Unfortunately, part of that is encouraging everyone to drop their use of Sheikah technology, which eventually leads to a fight with Zelda because You sound just like father! Is this why you came back? Just to be his puppet? And she says she doesn’t want Impa coming around her anymore, and she’ll be going to the Spring of Wisdom the next day without her. Impa panics but cannot change her mind, and when she tries to run after her Link blocks her way.

The next cutscene is at night in Zelda’s bedroom, where she tosses and turns unable to sleep. She then hears a noise outside, which turns out to be Impa, sneaking in through her window. She apologises, and says she was wrong, and claims Purah and Robbie have made a discovery that could change everything, Zelda should come see it now before her father can stop them. Zelda agress, relieved to have something other than the pressure of the coming day to focus on and follows behind Impa as she leads her out. Unseen by Zelda, Impa’s eyes flash with Malice-- she is this timeline’s Impa, controlled by Astor.

The next day, Zelda is nowhere to be found. The king is barely keeping composure, Link is being kind of a dumbass in where he looks for her for a little levity (is she behind this curtain? Is she under this table?), the champions, who have come to escort her too, are very uneasy and Impa is all but having a breakdown because she feels this is definitely her fault, and this is when it comes out that she time traveled from the future and the Calamity is going to erupt that very day. Then the search for Zelda gets really frantic, and eventually someone raises the question of wait, if you’re from the future, where’s the Impa that was originally here? They put together that the two disappearances are likely related and decide that the likely most fruitful course of action is to raid the Yiga hideout.

And so they go, and of course it’s a trap, the Calamity erupts while they are all occupied fighting Yiga lackeys (Kohga, Sooga, and Astor are conspicuously absent). Impa urges the Champions not to go to the Divine Beasts, but then the other Impa starts insisting that one is an imposter, that one tricked her and Zelda into being captured, and the Champions begin to falter. Why had she come from the future and only said so now? Was that some tall tale spun to keep them there while Hyrule fell? Why should they abandon the only hope of Hyrule winning this war? They are all in agreement, Link grabs a hold of Zelda and they depart, he and Zelda for the castle, the Champions to their Beasts, all the while Impa yells after them that they can’t win.

And then, once they’re gone, the other Impa begins to fight, Malice coursing through her, strengthened by the Calamity. It’s a playable up to a point, when Impa begs her to remember Zelda, to remember the point of everything, and there’s a quick set of flashbacks to them playing together as children, Impa defending Zelda from Bokoblins, them tinkering with Sheikah tech as young teens, and then just a series of quick flashes of Zelda’s face. The Malice disperses, the timeline’s original Impa quakes in fear of what she might have done, but resolves to change the outcome of the Calamity. Impa says they may not be able to do it alone, and they nod resolutely before the scene cuts.

The new Champions are brought from the future, much the same as before (but they’re enough to defeat the blights on their own without another character). The Impas rush to the castle, where Astor is waiting. Zelda is inside, he says, and soon she’ll die there. It was foretold.

That triggers another flashback. A fortune teller, younger than Astor, dressed suitably for an audience with the king, but unmistakably the same man, whispering to King Rohm those same words. You! screams the time traveling Impa. You caused all this! 

They begin to fight, two against one, and Astor asks Can’t you of all people understand? How much have they asked of us, only to cast us out when we become inconvenient? What has our loyalty ever eared us?

Cut to King Rohm in the past, telling a child Impa that she must protect Zelda with her life. Cut again to him with a young teen Impa that Zelda can’t be distracted with any frivolous studies or games, and Impa is not to see her anymore.

In the present, both Impas appear to falter for a moment. Astor smiles and opens his hands to them. They look to each other, and nod.

And then completely obliterate him.

They make their way to Zelda and Link in the Sanctum, where Ganon’s power has converged for an endless assault on the hero. He’s protected Zelda, but he’s wearing down. For a moment it looks like the Impas are too late, but then the Divine Beasts strike! Maybe here there’s a mission for each of the Beasts complete with some cutscenes of each Champion pair.

Then, as Ganon is weakened, Link strikes again and again. Zelda despairs because even now, her sealing power will not awaken. The time traveling Impa tells her she knows she can do it, she’s seen her.

You have? Zelda asks, hope in her eyes for the first time since the Calamity started.

And then Ganon summons his strength to strike at Impa. She falls, badly injured, and Zelda and the other Impa run to her side while Link batters Ganon further.

Princess, Impa says with faltering breath. Your power has always been in your heart. I wish I had defied fate sooner. 

Her eyes close, and Zelda lets out an anguished scream for her old friend. Her power explodes outward from her, the bow of light materializes and the final fight is played as her, taking Calamity Ganon head on.

She is victorious, but it is, it seems, a bittersweet victory. She emerges from the castle somber, Link trailing her, one Impa carrying the other.

But Age of Calamity is a triumph story, and Mipha has healing powers.

Impa comes too and has an emotional reunion, and then the new Champions agree it’s time for them to return to their own time. Goodbyes are had-- Sidon is particularly lingering, though he won’t say why-- and they all step into a portal Impa makes.

But then it doesn’t close.

Impa realizes that she has to return as well. She argues I fixed it! I belong here! But it is unmoving. She turns heavy hearted to say her goodbyes. The Impa that belongs there promises she’ll be at Zelda’s side from now on. Link nods. The Champions say their bit, and then she finds she doesn’t know what to say to Zelda, and ends up pulling her into a tight hug and then running through the portal without another word. 

She finds herself back in her half-destroyed word, the bright sun of a peaceful Hyrule replaced with the dark clouds of the Calamity. Impa’s shoulders slump.

But then a portal opens up, and a letter flutters down, on stationary clearly marking it as from the Royal Family. Impa catches hold of it and smiles, a little piece of the victory she fought for now in her hands.

#age of calamity #age of calamity spoilers #impa #god this turned out long

[tempestaurora]

Your tags under the Peggy post. I’m shaking!!! Please punch marvel in the face and let us have that movie!!! That’s the most perfect fix it idea ever!!!!

can i actually just run through my avengers movie idea for a sec? because it’s been one of my repeated day dreams since april 2019.

alright: so it’s set maybe six months, maybe a year after avengers: endgame. unfortunately, tony and nat are dead. this cannot change, unless we get some kind of magic going, and i’m not knowledgeable about marvel magic enough to get a fix. so.

we start on an avengers: age of ultron-like fight scene, where the remaining avengers - literally whoever is left, plus spider-man, maybe bucky if he’s feeling it - are kicking some butt. maybe aim or modok or something, its irrelevant. they clean up, head home, and perhaps swing by the new compound. it’s smaller than the last one, still in the same kind of location. there’s clearly work still being done to fix it up. 

steve is perhaps out on the grass, reading a book. maybe he’s in a wheelchair, because he’s old now. they say hello, head inside, maybe someone stays out to talk to him. now, a new character/avenger could totally bring it up - in my head, i like to imagine jessica drew or riri williams, or one of the young avengers maybe. alternatively, perhaps there’s just boxes all over the foyer.

“what the hell is this?” sam might ask, after tripping over one. he had not been looking where he was going.

“oh! my delivery!” perhaps bruce replies, as he is the last remaining Science Guy (not including rhodey, who is Weapon Science Guy) in the avengers. “after shield-gate and the decryption of those files, a lot of old shield stuff got declassified.”

“and it’s here?”

“well shield’s still kind of... gone, i guess. where’s a safer place for it than here? ooh, the report on who killed jfk!”

bucky, across the room: “want a spoiler?”

the plot goes on; perhaps there are more aim or modok or something bases to be taken down. or a criminal gang. idk. they’re a side plot, who will perhaps become important in the final act, but for now, bruce starts reading through his files, until:

“barnes! you might be interested in this. it’s the original ssr paperwork about dr. erskine’s serum.”

“the one steve’s got?”

“the very same.” they flip through a few pages, and bruce slows. “this doesn’t make sense.”

“hm?”

“the serum. it’s self-sustaining. self-vitalising.”

“in english?”

“steve’s cells are reproductive. when they die, more take their place. it’s how he combats illness; his cells flip over so fast that the sick ones don’t have a chance to catch on. but...”

“but what?”

“if this is accurate--which, it is. i’ve looked at his bloodwork myself! if this is right, it means that steve’s ageing should be slower than a regular human’s. perhaps by three times, even.”

“and what does that mean?” bucky is frowning now.

bruce looks from him, and then moves to the window, where steve is out on the grass, reading a book. “it means that he shouldn’t look like that.”

“banner?”

bruce turns around. “he lived one life in the other timeline, right? lived his life with peggy carter and then came right home.”

“yeah? yes.”

“then... that’s not steve. it can’t be.”

there’s dramatic music, bruce and bucky’s worried faces. steve takes a sip of a fruity drink from a straw.

they bring in some kind of scientist they know; maybe cho, idk, and they go over his bloodwork in secret. slowly, more people are let in on the secret, like sam, who bucky tells because he’s on the team, he guesses, but he’s only got like one friend. perhaps there’s still that other danger going on, but they really need to get to the bottom of this - 

if that’s not steve, who the hell is it? and if that’s someone else, then where the hell is steve rogers?

scott lang and hope van dyne get called in to help build another quantum machine - they don’t have one anymore after steve returned the stones. a time machine is a bit too dangerous, even for them. old steve is around quite often - he likes the quiet, he has a room in the compound, no friends his own (new) age.

but something slips. he’s watching. he may look old, but his hearing’s still good. his vision’s still spectacular. he’s not steve rogers. he’s something else. they cannot comprehend his knowledge.

for much of the plot, we aren’t sure if they’re right, that he’s not steve. he’s acting like steve. he has steve’s memories, his voice, his mannerisms. maybe some people are sceptical - like peter, perhaps, on a weekend visit to train, psyched about the quantum realm idea, but really guys? because old steve has called me queens since the funeral. he can even recite those dumb psas he made. maybe peter talks too much, too loud, and the fake steve rogers knows the jig is up. they’re going to access the quantum realm and find the original steve - this is his final chance.

“you know,” old steve says, heaving himself to his feet, “your friends are right. i’m not steve rogers.” he starts growing bigger, and possibility gelatinous. i imagine it like the young avengers’ mother - some inter-dimensional being, who becomes sinewy, creeping tendrils of flesh and matter; massive in size with a harpy kind of roar. everyone rushes out to see this gigantic mound of flesh--

“what the hell is that, parker??!!”

“uhhh that’s not-steve. he’s acting very not steve today.”

the fight begins, and it becomes clear that whatever this is took steve’s place. stole him, kept him hidden somewhere, and now they’ve gotta get him back. they separate into teams; fighting the monster and racing to the quantum realm. at first, no one has their suits - perhaps they tag team it, or get new suits, or maybe peter has edith on him, and he calls down another iron spider, and she informs him that there’s a falcon x/captain america suit or something; a nanobot suit for sam. something very cool for the suit up, you know?

meanwhile, bucky and bruce are at the quantum machine; perhaps parts of the monster have detached themselves and fight them, too. perhaps the monster calls down its brethren and glowing green lights appear, monsters crawling out from other worlds. bucky gets suited up, and bruce sends him back--

there’s a battle--and bucky flying through time--and fighting--and bucky getting smaller and smaller--and chaos--and bucky landing in the night on a street in 1949.

he gets it pretty fast. it understands why steve might want to stay here. it’s the kind of life they dreamed for themselves after the war. a quiet suburban street; the city off in the distance. the lights are on in plenty of houses, bright yellow. he knows almost automatically which one to look at. 

he peers through the front window, and there they are: peggy carter and steve rogers. he looks exactly as he did the last time bucky saw him young. they’re smiling. they’re dancing. perhaps not well - bucky was always the better dancer of the two. he’s about to raise his fist and knock on the window, but then peggy and steve stop, look around, and two small children, one blonde, one brunette, come rushing in. they laugh, picking them up and spinning them around, part of the dance. bucky stares.

there’s a massive fight in the compound, maybe doctor strange is there? idk. maybe he could feel the walls of the dimension cracking open to let these monsters through. thor is there, he deserves to be. captain marvel perhaps, too. but the more they knock down, the more grow back.

perhaps bucky walks through the neighbourhood, visits his family. he knows that no matter how long he spends in this place, it will only be a minute in the real world. so he goes home. he gets on a bus, then a train, hops the turnstile and finds his old house. he’s come home from war. his family cries. he cries. he holds his mother. his father calls his sisters and they rush through the night to greet him. he can’t leave in the night, he can’t. so he sleeps there until morning. returns to steve’s house and watches from a distance as they do the school run.

peggy kisses him goodbye and leaves for work. steve watches her go. but he is still perceptive as ever; he sees bucky, heads over. they hug. they talk. bucky breaks the news to him: this isn’t real. this is made up. a simulation, specifically to keep you here. something else has taken over your life.

steve doesn’t believe it - maybe they fight, i’m not sure. maybe bucky gets angry and even spits out the words “are they even searching for me yet? have you even told them what i’m going through right now? it’s 1949 - i remember this year as the year my handler got pretty trigger happy with waterboarding.”

we go between the fight at the compound and the 40s a few times, as bucky spends the day stewing and steve spends the day looking thoughtful and sending meaningful looks out the window to where bucky had been standing, but no longer was. as it grows dark again, early evening, the children return home from school, peggy comes back from work, steve starts cooking dinner.

he looks out the window and sees bucky out on the front path, watching the yellow-lit kitchen. he goes outside, asks if he wants to come in.

“no,” bucky replies. “if i go in, i’ll never leave.”

“is that such a bad thing?” steve asks.

“it is when it’s not real.”

“buck--”

“i wanted a life back then. i wanted this. some nice house in some nice neighbourhood. fall in love, settle down - the whole nine yards. but i got captured, steve. i got tortured, and brainwashed, and now i live in the twenty-first century, and i fight bad guys with ridiculous powers, and i have a computer that i can carry around in my pocket, and--things are good there! even the skinny, angry version of you could’ve lived better there. might’ve even got a cure or two for your sicknesses.”

“bucky--”

“this, though. this isn’t real, steve. i want it to be, so badly. you deserve this. deserve the peace and quiet. deserve the life, and the happiness and the--the girl. but right now, in the time you left, there’s a monster tearing up your friends. our friends. and they need help.”

“they’ve got captain america.”

“they don’t need captain america. they need steve rogers.”

steve can’t help but look back through the window, to where peggy and his kids are talking, serving up dinner. he sighs. “i can’t leave this behind, buck. i can’t.”

bucky sighs, perhaps this argument goes on longer, but he resigns himself to it. “i thought you might say that. i’ll be out here for another hour, and then i’m going back.”

bucky waits outside on the front path for an hour. steve eats his dinner and laughs with his family. when the time comes, bucky gets up, and looks back at the front door, hopeful. but--steve doesn’t show. he heads back.

the fight continues on, bucky breaks the news to bruce, and there are some bad injuries, maybe. i’d say that someone might die, but the real emotional climax of this film is steve-centred, so we probably don’t need a death. fighting goes on for an avengers-appropriate amount of time, and the tide turns against the avengers. then... just as all hope seems lost:

a second captain america shield slices through a monster, pinning down sam. its that holographic one (photon?) from the comics; just something tony had worked up before he died. the camera pans over to steve in his captain america get up; the same one he left in; catching the shield.

more fighting, then steve: “are you using my shield?” 

sam: “the other, fake you gave it to me.”

steve shrugs. “it looks good on you. keep it.”

also during/near the end of the fight, bucky and steve reunite, and hug, because i’m a sucker for hugs. 

bucky: “i thought you weren’t coming back”

steve: “i wasn’t. but--i couldn’t leave you behind again. not after you showed up like that.”

“but how’d you get back?”

“i still had my pim particles and suits stored in the attic. i think the monster stole my shield when he stuck me there, but he left everything else behind.”

“... i’m glad you’re back.”

“i’m glad to be back. really.”

they win the fight. i dont care how. maybe aim or modok or something shows up or maybe good old fashioned teamwork gets the job done. but they’re happy, and they’re together, and inter-dimensional travel has now been introduced. *cough* spiderverse *cough* 

steve still gives up captain america - he’d spent four years in the past as a stay-at-home dad and husband, only using the old suit for press stuff, so he doesn’t really want it back. he liked settling down. that’s what he wants. perhaps he moves to brooklyn or harlem or wherever, to whatever apartment bucky and sam set up for themselves. he cooks and paints (a little girl with blonde hair and a small boy with eyes like peggy carter’s) and punches his fist halfheartedly in the air, droning “go team” whenever they head out on their missions.

he really did mean it when he said sam looked good with the shield.

there would probably be a b plot of another character Doing Things, like thor and captain marvel and whatever their adventure is. but i don’t know what it is yet. there’s a happy ending. then, the first credits scene is some inter-dimensional shenanigans and a villain being introduced. i personally imagine that kang is going to be the next big villain, but he’s time travel, not dimensional travel, so i don’t know.

then, your optional after credits scene: bucky and steve standing by the kitchen counter, talking and whatnot. i don’t know what about. maybe bucky’s getting ready for a mission, maybe steve’s just in a white tshirt and sweats and he’s just having a nice day, making himself some coffee, reading a good book. they talk, and steve nods bucky over.

“what?” bucky asks.

“thank you,” steve replies.

“... ‘til the end of the line, remember? i’ve got your back, rogers.”

“and i’ve got yours. you know that?”

“course i do.”

they smile. they’re happy. they’re at home. the screen goes black as soon as steve leans in and kisses bucky. 

(or: your platonic ending: the screen goes black as soon as steve and bucky bump fists in a friendly non-gay way)

then: STEVE ROGERS WILL RETURN IN THE FALCON AND THE WINTER SOLDIER

it’s a reoccurring role. he’s largely in the background, cheering them on, and occasionally waiting up in bed when bucky gets home from a late-night mission. he trains sam with the shield on weekends.

the end

#marvel #mcu #steve rogers #avengers #avengers endgame #no read more cut we die like men #this took me almost an hour to write up #despite only taking ten minutes to imagine #anyway: kevin feige hire me #bethany talks #Anonymous

[wordsnstuff]

20 Mistakes To Avoid in YA Fiction/Romance

* This is a re-upload due to the original being flagged a few months ago for having a gif of two teenagers...*GASP*... dancing. What, tumblr? What is “adult” about that? The post has been in appeal for 4 months, and I have a feeling it won’t leave, so I decided to finally repost it. 

--

YA Fiction is an incredibly popular genre of literature, and most people have picked one up and devoured it in less than a day, but there is a trend in the genre where in certain instances, people forfeit quality for a cheesy dramatic plot. A lot of these stories are just regurgitated cliches with vaguely interesting characters and just enough drama, fluff, and mildly (or extremely) sexual content to keep the reader paying attention. (No shade to the authors, because obviously, any author who writes and publishes a book works hard, no matter the end product.)

There are a lot of aspects of YA Fiction that repeatedly rear their ugly heads and annoy readers or flat out scream dangerous messages to the young people that indulge in them. I thought I’d put the spotlight on a few in the hopes that it will help clean up the genre’s reputation as new and more awakened authors contribute content to it.

Below you will read about some common mistakes that YA Fiction/Romance writers make that either ruin the story, promote dangerous messages, or unrealistically portray teenagers.

Forgetting The Supporting Characters

The supporting characters are an important part of any story, even if the main plot revolves around two people. Supporting characters provide subplots, information to the reader, and more opportunities for your audience to connect and relate to your story. It’s always good to give your supporting characters love and attention when creating and writing them. Sometimes they end up carrying the story.

A mistake that a lot of authors make is that they give the reader a couple defining characteristics, a name, a relationship to the main character, and then just make that character pop into the reader’s view whenever the main plot needs them to. No backstory. No life of their own. Just support to the plot, and that’s a huge waste of potential. You don’t want your readers to put down your book and either forget the supporting characters existed at all, or believe that they were extra pieces of a puzzle.

Using Slang Badly

Writers should not feel the need to include current slang in order to make their story more relatable or popular amongst their targeted demographic. Slang is constantly changing, evolving, and most importantly, dying. Not to say that you should only write in traditional terms or put “thy” and “thee” everywhere, but using standard English and avoiding the trendy but temporary slang words is key.

If you must use slang, try to use the bare minimum and only in fitting circumstances. If your character is the type to say “OMG her dat boi memes are on fleek” then, by all means, go right ahead, but you probably cringed when you read that. That would have been totally normal 2 years ago, but every bit of that sentence has died over time, and no matter how much you think a slang word will stick, don’t risk it.

Sympathy and Envy Mongering

Two emotions that YA Fiction and Romance always try to invoke in their readers are sympathy and envy. The author either wants the reader to feel bad for one or many of the characters, or they want them to be jealous of the awesome (and usually unrealistic) lives the characters have. Don’t be one of these. It’s tired and boring and not original in the slightest.

Are sympathy and empathy both totally okay emotions?

Yes.

Are they all you need to write a good story?

Nope. Not at all.

The reader needs and wants to feel more than jealous of and sad for the characters in the story. The best stories are the ones that trigger a complex whirlwind of emotion. Sympathy and envy are the easy way out, and you get out of those emotions what you put into them.

Unrealistically Portraying Teenagers & Teenage Life

Teenagers look up to and compare themselves and their lives to the characters and lives of the characters in your story. Keeping in mind that your audience is young and impressionable is essential for authors of the genre.

Love At First Sight

Love-at-first-sight does not happen. Infatuation, maybe, but love is more complicated than that. Writing a plot based on “love at first sight” can leave a bad taste in your readers’ mouths from the start, and that is something you should avoid at all costs. On top of that, love-at-first-sight is a very easy-way-out move and if you’re dedicated to your characters and your story, there’s a good to fair chance that you can come up with a more satisfying build up.

Unrealistic Romantic Situations

If you’ve ever opened a YA Romance, chances are you’ve read a scene in which the protagonist and the love interest end up in a stunningly beautiful place and the love interest sweeps the protagonist off their feet prior to riding into the sunset. This, unfortunately, does not happen very often, especially in teenage relationships. The most romance you’re going to get (usually) is the love interest offering to pay for the protagonist’s bag of skittles with the leftover money from their paycheck they earned at McDonald’s.

Just because teenagers don’t really go to great lengths to rent an entire ice-skating rink in the middle of the night so they and their crush can skate to Ellie Goulding music doesn’t mean there can’t be cute and memorable moments. Great doesn’t always equal grand and that’s important to remember. A lot of the time, teenagers appreciate fantasizing about things that are actually possible.

Happy Endings

Not all stories have to end happily, and you’ve definitely been told this before, but nobody ever takes into account how stories about teenagers have so much potential when it comes to endings. Teenagers read books about teenagers and unfortunately, this means that a lot of them will take what you’re writing about and try to change their own lives to match. Be honest in your depiction about what actually happens when you leave high school.

The majority of the time, high school sweethearts won’t stay together. Long distance won’t work, they’ll find someone else, the spark will die out, their personalities will undergo drastic changes, and their goals and plans for the future will turn out differently than they expected. “And they lived happily ever after” is criticized harshly for a reason, especially in YA and YA Romance. Most stories don’t end happily, but there is more than one story in a person’s life and giving a person their happy ending as they graduate high school is a great injustice, to your character and your readers.

Avoiding The Dark Parts Of Teenage Life

Teenagers, despite what a lot of the media claims, go through some really serious and stressful and damaging things. Teenagers suffer from mental illness and deal with the intense pressure of the education system and hold their heads high in the face of stigma over every little detail about them. They suffer from eating disorders and body dysmorphia and self-harm tendencies, and that doesn’t even bring into account the bullying and family issues and the stress of constantly learning and feeling things for the very first time with little to no guidance or assurance or resources to ask for help. It is hard being a teenager. Do not forget that, and don’t leave the actual teenagers reading your story feeling underrepresented and/or abnormal because they aren’t as stress-free as the characters they look up to.

Exaggerating How Teenagers Interact With Each Other

A lot of teenage interactions are short, awkward, and uneventful. Teenagers aren’t super eloquent and socially apt, but YA Fiction seems to believe they are. It’s quite rare that a teenager will just walk up to someone they like, say “wanna go to dinner on Saturday?” and all will be fine and dandy. It’s quite rare that a teenager will saunter up to someone who talked about them behind their back, say something super clever and damaging to their enemy’s ego, and saunter off like the king/queen of the world. Those interactions look great in our heads, but they usually contain a few stuttered words and “um”s and blushing. Confidence is usually a trait that people develop later in life, so try not to push it if you’re trying to be realistic.

Maturity of Teenagers

Teenagers are underdeveloped human beings with minimal experience in most areas of life. They do not have it all figured out. A lot of YA books revolve around characters that are extremely intelligent, disciplined and ambitious at a level of maturity a 25-year-old be on. This is not accurate. Making characters “awkward” or “childish” does not have anything to do with how mature they seem to readers. There is a distinct difference between an awkward girl with childlike innocence and a girl who makes mistakes, does not have her life figured out, and is not yet comfortable with casual social interaction. The latter things I mentioned are pretty universal when it comes to teenagers.

Unfitting Aspirations

There are more than two paths in life. It seems that in YA you’re either going to graduate, get married, pop out a couple kids and live the rest of your life in the suburbs, or you’re going to leave home, go to college, travel for 20 years and settle in some random country in Europe writing poetry until the end of your days. There is no in between, which sucks. There are a lot of interesting things you can do in life, not to say that either of the two life paths I mentioned are uninteresting. You could take a gap year and travel the world, go to college, move back home for a couple years then maybe get a job that has you traveling and exploring new things for the rest of your life. You could meet the love of your life in college and have some kids but put them in online school so you could travel with them. You could live your whole life in an awesome cabin in the forest casting spells and adopting wild squirrels. There are so many ways life can be and restricting it to opposite extremes takes the imagination out of the future.

Not All Teenagers Think Their Relationships Will Last Forever

This one is pretty self explanatory, so long story short, not every relationship a teenager enters into is with the end goal of staying together forever, or even more than a few months. Most teenage relationships are pretty short and not very meaningful, and portraying every single couple in your stories as “we’ve been going strong for 2 years and plan on getting married right after graduation” is inaccurate and will probably cause your readers some disappointment in the future.

Relationships Aren’t A Teenager’s Only Concern

Most teenagers are more concerned about the F they got on a History test than they are about who they’re going to stare at next period. Everyone has more than just their crush to worry about. Some teenagers have to worry about where they’re going to get their next meal or how they’re going to get a ride home from school or even how they can apologize to a friend they’ve hurt. It’s not all about relationships for teenagers, in fact, relationships are a pretty small part of teenage life. If all your character has to think about is the hottie they sit next to in Biology, perhaps you should work a little more on character development.

Unnatural Appearances

Most teenagers are not model-level attractive. All teenagers have break-outs and leave the house late with greasy hair or with their shirt on inside out. No teenager shows up at school every day looking absolutely flawless, as if they’re about to walk down the runway. Please keep that in mind, because portraying teenagers accurately, especially when it comes to physical aspects such as weight, acne, etc. is super important. In YA and YA Romance, you must keep in mind that the teenagers you are trying to appeal to should not feel like a piece of trash because they aren’t as perfect as your characters. Yes, YA Fiction is Fiction, but just because you know that it’s unrealistic doesn’t mean your readers do. Readers of YA Fiction compare themselves to the characters in your books whether you like it or not. It is not hard to realistically portray physical appearances of teenagers.

Avoiding Dangerous Messages

A common problem found in YA Fiction is the lacing of dangerous messages found in the smaller details. You may miss them the first couple times you read a story, but if you go looking for them, you will find them, and perhaps you will find the source of a lot of mistakes you’ve made. YA has a bad habit of endorsing mindsets that lead to bad decisions. Some of them, however, can be avoided in your own writing.

The Need To Change The “Flawed” One

Nobody in this world is perfect. Expecting the person you supposedly love to be flawless all the time is not realistic. People make mistakes. People are not always happy and bubbly and confident about themselves. People do not always act the same one day as they did the day before. Human beings are flawed and should be portrayed as such, especially in the stage of their life which is the most confusing and scary. Teenagers are underdeveloped human beings, and for some reason, teenager girls in YA Romance expect teenage boys to be charming and loving and never ever make a mistake, which is ridiculous. Creating love interests that appear flawless and can make no mistakes is detrimental to your audience. It raises your readers’ expectations to an unattainable level which causes them disappointment and might cause their future partners unrepairable damage to their self-esteem because they’ll think that in order to find a partner, they cannot be flawed and cannot make mistakes.

Glorification Of Illegal Activity

It’s not “cool” or “edgy” to pump yourself full of deadly and mind-altering substances you know absolutely nothing about. It doesn’t make you “badass” and it isn’t a personality trait unless that trait is stupid. Whatever your position is on drugs or alcohol or whatever, there is no excuse for putting the idea in the heads of young readers that doing things that are illegal and addictive and that might even get you killed is ok. Not only because most of your readers are younger than 21, but because it will always be dangerous to take drugs, commit crimes, and drink. Your choices are your choices. Don’t impose your habits and excuses on kids who don’t know any better.

Slut Shaming

News flash: it’s 2017, people. Nobody cares who you’re kissing or dating or having sex with. People are finally getting used to the idea that maybe, just maybe, it’s not the end of the world if you do whatever you want, as long as you’re not hurting yourself or anyone else. This recurring theme of “I hate this person because they do what they want with their body” is getting old and annoying. Believe what you will regarding religion and morals and what is right or wrong or whatever you want to believe in, but the second you start turning your story into a commentary on the decisions and beliefs of other people, you’re in the wrong. There are other, more creative reasons to make your characters hate each other than their sexual activity.

Forgetting The First Times

One of the most exciting parts of being a teenager is that everything you’re experiencing, you’re experiencing for the first time. Everything is confusing and exciting and 10x more painful or memorable or enjoyable, and that’s neglected all the time in YA. I don’t mean the common trope of the first kiss or the losing of virginity. I mean love and infatuation and loss and heartbreak; it’s all happening to them for the first time in their lives, and these events make up their memories that they will carry with them forever. Teenage years are incredibly heavy times for people. It is, after all, the years in which they learn the most and the fastest and where the majority of their brain development takes place. These moments that you’re writing, the first kiss, the first time having sex, the first time your character loses someone they love, they’re all going to determine how your character will develop in the future. Treat them that way. Teach young readers that it’s normal and perfectly okay to be scared and inexperienced and lost. That’s the bitter-sweet part of youth and it’s beautiful.

Bad Boys And Boring Girls

Bad Boys are, in reality, bad news. The real “bad boys” in this world are slimy, manipulative jerks who trick girls (usually more than one at a time) into thinking they have feelings for them, using them for things like sex or money, and then either end up controlling their entire lives, introducing drugs and problems, or breaking their hearts. It’s sad, but it’s reality. Yes, there’s always a cause for this behavior, and sometimes these bad boys grow out of it, but that’s not always the case. Portraying these bad boys as “changeable” is not only dangerous for the female readers but also the men in their future. If you make girls think that they can change whomever they’re with to be the perfect prince charming, they will never be satisfied with someone who is flawed (spoiler alert: everyone is flawed) and they may destroy the self-esteem of whoever they’re with by making them think they need to change to be lovable.

Boring Girls are, sort of, connected to bad boys in this sense. They show up in every story, which makes sense financially because authors who make more relatable main characters sell more books. It’s just demographics. But at the same time, this stretch for a wider audience can end up influencing girls’ expectations of themselves and their love lives. If you make every protagonist completely boring, compliant, and devoid of strong, defining traits, girls will take that as advice. They will learn that all a girl has to do to make people fall in love with them is sit quietly and be pretty, which is horrible, in case you hadn’t noticed. Teach girls to look up to strong characters with rich personalities. Nowadays, that counts as an original idea.

Generalization

Portraying every aspect of teenage life and teenagers themselves as if you opened a book full of cliches, closed your eyes and pointed at something is not ok. High schools and families and personalities are different wherever you go, and making blind generalizations about aspects of teenage life can not only change how your reader interprets their own lives, but how adult readers assume teenage life is when they’re not around. It is important to not reinforce the assumption that there is always a popular clique and mean jocks and awkward nerds and dead-beat stoners because these stereotypes are a way for people to justify their snap-judgements, and not only does that say a lot about you as an author, but that will breed a whole new generation of judgmental, close-minded people.

Glorification Of Unhealthy Relationship Behaviors

I’m gonna say this once: It is not “hot” to have the love interest constantly putting restrictions on their supposed loved one. It’s not okay to borderline stalk someone and use “I love you” as an excuse, even if the person reciprocates your feelings. It is unhealthy to ignore someone when they say “no, no, not now” or “no, stop, not here” when you’re in the middle of initiating sex or even just kissing. It is disgusting when romance, especially YA Romance, which has mostly young, impressionable readers taking in your messages, promotes these behaviors like they’re something to strive for. Like it or not, your writing is going to alter the way they imagine a “perfect” relationship. If you aren’t willing to take that responsibility seriously, you should not be writing YA, and especially not YA Romance.

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[pilferingapples]

for @shitpostingfromthebarricade , who very nicely asked for an elaboration of my partial disagreement with the idea that Grantaire represents “the people”  of France or Paris: 

First let me say again it’s a partial  disagreement; I do think he represents a specific segment of the people. But one which is not ~~**~~ The People~~**~~  which I will hopefully be able to explain here?

- As far as “the people” goes, that term-- that specific  term, “the people” detached from other qualifiers-- especially in Hugo’s specific  political-social group-- seems to have been used mostly to mean the workers-- workers, small artisan-merchants, maybe peasants. If someone in a socialist-writer text of the period is called a “child of the people” it means they’re from the working class; if they’re a Man Of The People , ditto. Feuilly is the representative of The People in the Amis’ group-- Enjolras even specifically says so, in the middle of one of his full-on visionary speeches--Feuilly,vaillant ouvrier, homme de peuple, hommes des peuples” (valiant working-man,man of the people--and then the transition/combo that can be read as “man of all peoples”  or “men  of the people” , plural (or, actually, as “the people’s man”, depending on what you’re choosing to focus on. Lamarque song rewrite go!) .  For a guy with very few lines, Feuilly is specifically carrying a LOT of social/political representation here :P (and of course it’s even more Symbolic because Feuilly has no known human parents; his class background is also his family background, he’s of The People, full stop, not of any more specific background. )

We’re never given Grantaire’s exact socioeconomic background, and certainly working-class kids could go into art studies in certain circumstances-- but Grantaire also has no apparent job and has a lot of middle-class-kid hobbies (boxing, singlestick, dancing, etc etc). Everything about Grantaire marks him as middle-class in background, currently choosing to vie-boheme it up. He’s definitely not a representative of “the people” in this sense. 

I also can’t go with Grantaire representing Paris, at least not Full On Spirit Of Paris.  Leaving aside that Grantaire specifically disavows Paris and his own Parisian-ness in Preliminary Gayeties, Hugo sets up very specific symbolism and character for Paris in Les Mis, and he’s pretty direct about it!

 Hugo’s Paris is wild, bold, anarchic, laughing, unafraid of violence, sometimes lazy or careless but essentially generous, bold, insightful and daring, and always  inherently inclined to liberty (and also essentially Romantic at its heart, because this is a Hugo novel and anything good has to be essentially Romantic at heart:P)  (and Hugo has a Lot of Feelings about Paris). Paris in miniature--Paris Atomized, Paris made human-- is Gavroche,  not Grantaire. Even among just the Amis, the one closest to being Hugo’s Paris Avatar is Bahorel, who shares so many echoes of the gamin chapters in his intro, the group’s flâneur-- flâner est Parisien!--and connection to the city,  in the same way Feuilly is their connection to the wider world and internationalist causes.  

But like I said, I do  really think Grantaire represents a part of the population of Paris! An important part! 

Specifically, he’s representing that part of the population that wants to take a damn break.   The part that feels that “of great events, great hazards, great adventures, great men, thank God, we have seen enough, we have them heaped higher than our heads”,(4.1.1) the part that having found a seat wants to sit.  The perhaps selfish, but very understandable, part of the population that is secure enough itself to feel like it will do nothing but lose in another revolution, that “some one whose name is all” that says “I am young and in love, I am old and I wish to repose, I am the father of a family, I toil, I prosper, I am successful in business, I have houses to lease, I have money in the government funds, I am happy, I have a wife and children, I have all this, I desire to live, leave me in peace.” (5.1.20)

That is to say...Grantaire is representing the apathetic, the burned out, and the bourgeoisie. 

This is certainly not the most flattering thing to be representing, but then Grantaire isn’t a particularly aspirational  character--not until the very end of his arc, when he stands up and announces himself For The Ideal. Like the people who close their doors,like the bourgeoisie who just wants to rest, he doesn’t hate the ideal, really...but he’s had Enough Trying, he wants peace and security and to not die or see his loved ones die,  and all of that is very understandable! But if he were genuinely happy  with that...well he wouldn’t be with the Amis at all. He also wants that Ideal, a better kinder world, and unfortunately to get that he’s going to have to stand up.

..Well, not him, personally,of course. When he  stands up he’s-a-gonna die, albeit in a super symbolic transformational/salvational way.  But the Not Very Subtle At All implication is that this is where the revolution wins: when the comfortable people , and especially  the bourgeoisie (well, as Hugo defines them), who have been sitting down, sleeping, wake up and take part. 

(This is of course true in a grand sense-- revolutions need mass participation! -- and it’s also true in the very specific sense of what went down in 1830 vs 1832. In 1830, a lot of the bourgeoisie did  get involved , and it’s a big part of why that went as smoothly as it did. But in 1832, by and large they said No Thanks We’re Good; a handful of students and some wild Romantics really was about all participation outside of the working/poor classes. But this is already so freaking long and this is not a Barricade Day post!) 

So: all of that very  long ramble is to say, yeah, I think Grantaire is symbolizing not The People (who are , symbolically and historically, already on the barricade)  but a specific and crucial subset of The People Of France (Or Wherever), which is why I never feel like I can go either “Yeah!!” or  “Ugh No” when I see a “Grantaire is the people” mention. :P

--sorry I can’t put them under a second cut >< , but these are relevant longer chunks of some of the quotes above!

Of great events, great hazards, great adventures, great men, thank God, we have seen enough, we have them heaped higher than our heads. We would exchange Cæsar for Prusias, and Napoleon for the King of Yvetot. “What a good little king was he!” We have marched since daybreak, we have reached the evening of a long and toilsome day; we have made our first change with Mirabeau, the second with Robespierre, the third with Bonaparte; we are worn out. Each one demands a bed.Devotion which is weary, heroism which has grown old, ambitions which are sated, fortunes which are made, seek, demand, implore, solicit, what? A shelter.”(4.1.1, Well Cut) 

The bourgeois is the man who now has time to sit down. A chair is not a caste.

But through a desire to sit down too soon, one may arrest the very march of the human race. This has often been the fault of the bourgeoisie. (4.1.2, Badly Sewed)

And it appears that they are going to fight, all those imbeciles, and to break each other’s profiles and to massacre each other in the heart of summer, in the month of June, when they might go off with a creature on their arm, to breathe the immense heaps of new-mown hay in the meadows! Really, people do commit altogether too many follies. An old broken lantern which I have just seen at a bric-à-brac merchant’s suggests a reflection to my mind; it is time to enlighten the human race. Yes, behold me sad again. That’s what comes of swallowing an oyster and a revolution the wrong way! I am growing melancholy once more. Oh! frightful old world. People strive, turn each other out, prostitute themselves, kill each other, and get used to it!

... I don’t think much of your revolution,I don’t execrate this Government. It is the crown tempered by the cotton night-cap. It is a sceptre ending in an umbrella. In fact, I think that to-day, with the present weather, Louis Philippe might utilize his royalty in two directions, he might extend the tip of the sceptre end against the people, and open the umbrella end against heaven. ” - (Grantaire, from Premliminary Gayeties, 4.12.2)

What, then, is progress? We have just enunciated it; the permanent life of the peoples.

Now, it sometimes happens, that the momentary life of individuals offers resistance to the eternal life of the human race.

Let us admit without bitterness, that the individual has his distinct interests, and can, without forfeiture, stipulate for his interest, and defend it; the present has its pardonable dose of egotism; momentary life has its rights, and is not bound to sacrifice itself constantly to the future. The generation which is passing in its turn over the earth, is not forced to abridge it for the sake of the generations, its equal, after all, who will have their turn later on.—“I exist,” murmurs that some one whose name is All. “I am young and in love, I am old and I wish to repose, I am the father of a family, I toil, I prosper, I am successful in business, I have houses to lease, I have money in the government funds, I am happy, I have a wife and children, I have all this, I desire to live, leave me in peace.”—Hence, at certain hours, a profound cold broods over the magnanimous vanguard of the human race.  (5.1.20, The Dead Are In The Right and the Living Are Not Wrong)

#long post #all of the words or none of the words that's how it goes #Grantaire talk

[ramenandchill]

Character criticism

Today’s criticism: The entirety of the show Boruto

Hood day/night my children. How are you all? I hope you all are eating your veggies and drinking your water. I hope you all are taking care of yourselves to the best of your abilities and that your all doing well back home, wherever home may be.

Today, we’re going to be tackling the mess that is essentially the anime,Boruto. Basically why it’s not as good as it could be, and why it has potential. I even have an alternative plot for Boruto, and I thought I would share that with you all, my loves.

So first, let’s summarize what Boruto is;

Boruto:next generations is a spin-off show to the Naruto series. A series that once followed the life of Naruto Uzumaki and his fellow friends as growing shinobi, now follows his son Boruto Uzumaki and his friends, who are the next generation of ninja growing up in the shinobi world.

In depth: the setting takes place in a now peaceful shinobi world, where the 5 great nations are no longer at war or no longer have bad blood anymore. Naruto Uzumaki is now the 7th Hokage of Konoha, and Sasuke Uchiha serves as the shadow Hokage, protecting Konoha from the outside. Most of the Konoha 11 have children. These children are learning to be ninja, and are growing up to become extremely powerful each day.

Though this plot sounds very entertaining, it is far from that and the lazy writing shows through many parts of the Anime. Here are some problems I’ve encountered with the plot and characters itself.

1. The children are extremely overpowered- for one, the children in Boruto are too overpowered. One thing that was interesting about Naruto was that we got to grow with the kids and see them develop their powers. Though some were prodigies at a very young age, we got to see them develop even more and we realized that they weren’t too ultra powerful and that they could be beaten. Once we as the audience realized that our beloved Naruto characters were only kids who weren’t all prodigies, the suspense was amped up quite a lot. The chunin exams is a great example. In the forest of death, many of the genin weren’t too powerful, and we saw a lot of genin groups die in the forest of death. We even saw a Sannin, Orochimaru, sneak into the exams and bite Sasuke, which caused the main plot to kick off. A lot of the times, we weren’t sure that our faves would make it out of their life or death situations. But In Boruto, the suspense is not there. We know that most of the kids, especially the 3 main characters, Boruto, Sarada, and Mitsuki are all powerful. There’s no “if” they are gonna make it out. We also don’t get to see much hit or misses from the children. We don’t get to see their trial and error with learning their parents jutsus and developing their own so it’s hard to grow with them. Their powers ensure that they get out of most situations, and it takes away from the hard work their parents did to reach the level they are at. Their powers look rather more genetic (which I’m sure they mostly are), than actual hard work.

2. The next generation-another problem is that the kids are essentially carbon copies of their parents personalities. They aren’t their own selves, which very much annoys me. I rather see the kids be their own person, rather than adapt ALL parts of their parents personalities. I don’t mind the children having small parts of their parents incorporated into them, but Boruto really takes it to new heights. The personalities are more copy paste. Most of them act exactly how their parents do or once did. One of the few characters this probably doesn’t go for is Mitsuki, as he’s rather pleasant compared to his father, orochimaru.

3. The lack of screen time- this is a minor issue to me, but I don’t appreciate how a lot of the interesting characters like Sarada are glazed over. The other teams besides Team Konohamaru are usually not shown progressing as much, and are given the much shorter end of the stick than the main characters, which is rather annoying.

4. The Konoha 11- the Konoha 11 have been greased so badly. Their powers seem heavily downgraded, and their character designs look awful. A lot of them look like pedophiles and Shino looks like a can of bug spray. Their powers seem very light, compared to in the Naruto series. For example, Shino not being able to control his bugs and messing up, is a regular for the shows gag unfortunately. That’s so unnatural because we know Shino is very serious and calculated and careful, so that gag is not funny at all. Even Naruto, who’s a master at shadow clone jutsu, has reverted back to his childhood. His clones are ineffective but they do it as a gag, which is dumb. They have made some of the Konoha 11 a shell of there former selves, which frustrates me. They were so cool in shippuden and such, but now their once cool and mysterious powers are downgraded for laughs, which aren’t funny.

5. Naruto and sasuke- Naruto and Sasuke are horrible fathers. For people who should want to make the most of family because they never had any, they don’t even spend time with their kids, which is so dumb. Naruto does Hokage work, but nothing is stopping him from making shadow clones to do the work for him, so that he could spend time with his family. Sasuke is even worse to the point where seeing Sasuke triggers Saradas sharingan because of the overwhelming emotion she felt from seeing him for the first time in years(I also hate how Sarada just bonds with him after an episode. Their relationship would need mending and building considering how long sasukes been gone. He doesn’t know much about her, so he should learn steady over a period of time like how it is in real life). That’s awful. They could be there for their families but their not, which is so weird for characters of their backgrounds.

6. The plot itself- the plot itself drags on for very long and in my opinion isn’t interesting. The plot is constantly jumping. The Arcs aren’t that intruiging and follow benign story plots that could only possibly serve as filler. It takes so long to get to the main plot of Borutos story. Here’s a list of the 17(Yes,17) arcs that have occurred in Boruto so far;

I can tell you that a lot of these are pretty much anticlimactic and waste time. Some are cool to sit through, like the time travel arc or Kara Actuation, but some are like the War arc of shippuden. If something’s like the war arc of shippuden, I rather smell someone’s booty than watch that again. So please, you can even read the plots yourself, and find that they aren’t that captivating.

7.The Villains- last but not least, we have the very copy paste villains. Just recently we’ve gotten some newer villains with a new agenda but it won’t be a breath of fresh air for long. For example, we know that so many of the villains such as Momoshiki, have been just copy-pastes of Kaguya. Their a Naruto and Sasuke level threat which we know that both Naruto and Sasuke could beat them any time. I’m bored of seeing Naruto and Sasuke fight villains that we know they will beat anytime. And with the villains point- I bring to you why Boruto has potential. You see, the Kawaki arc(Kara arc) showed that Boruto could turn into a show about a rivalry, and we saw the clip of Kawaki and Boruto fighting at the very beginning of the series. This is cool that a character like Kawaki who is shown in the end to have a strong resentment towards the ninja world for making him what he is, eventually will try to go the mile to end the age of shinobi. We will have to wait for this, sadly and I wished they introduced this sooner.

Alt plot: my alt plot goes a bit like this. Let’s say that the peaceful world is not exactly completely peaceful. The 5 nations aren’t at war anymore but the smaller countries within them aren’t exactly that peaceful. There aren’t a lot of casualties at all, but some people are still a tad bit resentful.

Let’s say that some of the great nations have become docile. The New generation of kids no longer learn how to be ninjas. Instead they go to regular school and for those who would like to be ninjas, there is a fake kitty-program for them to take. It’s not serious enough for them, though. Jonin still go on message delivering missions. The Hokage is still there, all of that.

Now let’s say a character like Kawaki and an organization behind them, a small one, has been wronged by the shinobi world. They aren’t exactly like the Akatsuki, open with their deeds. However, they are internal threats like Danzo almost, who live within the village. Nobody suspects them because they pose as regular citizens in the lands that no longer practice the way of shinobi life as they once did.

Now let’s say this organization start taking out unsuspecting Jonin. One by one, 2 by 2, Jonin are turning up dead left and right. Nobody can really explain their deaths yet, but their deaths are really disturbing. Next, Anbus investigate, but some of them are even taken out too.

The Hokage and village are becoming restless once again. Then citizens start going missing and dying. This doesn’t just happen in Konoha though, this also happens in other nations. This can make a rift between the nations who think that the other nation is sabotaging them, which can influence bad blood again. These villains are tearing up the almost perfect world from the inside out. They bring back people like Kakashi, Yamato, Tsunade, Kurenai, Gai, basically everyone from the old days, and the Konoha 11 for their lines of defense.

People propose that the children should learn to be true shinobi. Some argue that they shouldn’t, but it is decided that the children should learn to protect themselves and their lands. So now, medical ninjitsu classes are taught, ninjitsu, chakra types, genjutsu. The ninja school is rehashed.

Sasuke comes back to the village and is asked if he’s seen anyone enter the village but the answer is no, which gives a clue.

Soon, the children graduate and learn important lessons about friendship and teamwork. We watch them work hard to learn and perfect their parents Jutsus. we watch the trial and error, but we watch them turn out great in the end. They can even have Boruto face off against this villain when he gets older.

They learn from the oldest Shinobis and earn their powers, instead of just having them materialize them and genetically master them.

(p.s honestly Temari and Shikamaru should’ve had twins, one boy and one girl, have them both be smart but have one learn shadow possession and one learn wind style. The boy is obvi Shikadai who learns shadow possenion cuz that’s already cannon, and the girl Tomoe, could learn wind style from Temari. She doesn’t have to be a carbon copy, but she could still learn her mother’s craft.)

Thank you for coming to my ted talk my loves, and I’ll see you on the next episode of Character Critisims.

#anime #naruto #boruto #analysis #ted talks

[evengayerpanic]

Beyond the Hollows [Week 2]

Read Another Part: [One]    [Two]    [Three]    [Four]

_________________

By the time Sae opens her eyes again, the sun has finally gone down and the hotel room she lays in is dark aside from the faint glow of a light on behind the closed bathroom door. The room is silent.

For a second, it all feels like a dream- no, it feels like it’s all been a nightmare. Zombies... Lukas... Kate.

The best part of a nightmare is that you can wake up from them. Maybe a little anxious, a little on edge, a little worse for wear for a moment... But when the sleep shrugs off and your mind clears, the nightmare is over. It’s over and done with and you can move on.

Sae waits for the nightmare to fade, but it doesn’t.

A brief glance around the room confirms to the twenty-two year old that she didn’t hallucinate the horrors she saw what felt like only moments ago.

Kate isn’t there, all that remains is the blood stained over the cocktail dress Sae was supposed to wear out to Copa Cabana. Lukas is missing too, the face of fear and concern he had as he tackled Kate away from Sae flashes painfully in the young woman’s mind.

She stifles a sob, only stopping herself upon seeing the young girl curled up in the bed across from hers.

The child sleeps. The man that rescued Sae, her Father, curls up around the girl protectively. Their brows are furrowed in identical worry, but the evenness of their breath denotes just the slightest moment of peace between the two.

Sae isn’t willing to ruin that for them, even in her grief.

Her grief is quiet, the agony swallows her up and for a moment Sae wonders if her sister is still in the hall, if she can go find her... They promised their whole childhood to never leave each other, maybe Sae can-

“You’re awake.” A voice breaks through her planning.

“What time is it...” Sae whispers, not turning to face him, not able to turn and look Curtis in the eye.

She knows its him, if it wasn’t obvious from the fact that there is only four people in the room, she can tell his voice from anywhere. She’s grown up hearing that voice; her sister’s boyfriend for almost six years and fiancee for two... He’s been like a brother to her, or he was her brother, at least, until a few hours ago.

“Four, I think, I turned off my cell to save battery.”

“It’s quiet.”

“You missed all of the screaming.” His voice is flat and emotionless. “You could hear the entire resort go to hell until about one, then it all went silent.”

Sae doesn’t speak, the air between the two is tense and thick. A shiver runs down her spine as she realizes the reason for the silence. “Everyone’s dead.”

“Not everyone, not us.”

“Not yet.” She spits out the words like poison.

Her name comes out like a trickling of wind. “Sarah...” Curtis breathes, his head dropping to his hands. “I’m so sorry, okay, I never should have said what I said.”

“You never should have left him out there, Curtis-”

“Sarah...”

“No, I know that Kate is dead or something, but Lukas? Lukas wasn’t. You left him out there to die.”

There is silence again, before a small sniffle is heard and Sae turns to face Curtis finally... His face is red, and his eyes are puffy, and she knows he’s crying but she just can’t feel sorry for him. Not after what he did.

“I had to keep you safe.” Curtis finally whispers.

Mouth dropping open just slightly, eyes squeezing tight to stop the tears that threaten to fall, a single word escapes Sae’s mouth. “Why?”

“You’re like my little sister... No, you pretty much are my little sister. I couldn’t save Katie, but at least I could save you, so that was more important.”

“He was your friend, you should have saved us both.”

The sound of a snore quiets the two again. A minute goes by. Two. It’s almost five minutes before Curtis starts to speak again, his voice strained with emotion.

“Look, when you decide you are going to propose to someone, a lot of thoughts go through your head...” He starts with a wistful sigh. “If you’re good enough, if you can provide for them, if this is really the person you want to love for the rest of your life.”

Sae turns to stare at Curtis.

“You don’t really expect that the rest of your life, is going to suddenly just end in the blink of an eye.”

His words hit Sae in the chest. “I’m sorry.” She admits, hanging her head. “I’m not the only one that lost her.”

“I’m sorry too, I know you really liked Lukas, but in that moment, the only thing I could think is how Kate would want me to save you, no matter what.”

An admission escapes her. “I actually didn’t.”

“What?”

“I didn’t like him... not like that. I mean he was nice and all, but I don’t...” She struggles to find the words.

“I like girls.” Her heart thuds in her chest painfully with the realization that this is the closest she’ll ever get to telling her family the truth. Her sister’s gone, before she could know what Sae wanted so badly to tell her.

“Oh.” Curtis goes quiet.

“Did you know, that I thought the worst thing that could happen this weekend... was that I’d tell Kate and she’d be angry with me.”  A bitter laugh escapes Sae. 

“I never imagined that all of this would happen.”

Curtis nods in recognition. “None of us did.”

He’s quiet again for another few moments, Sae can almost see the wheels turning in his head as he processes the information she’s just dumped on him.

“She wouldn’t, you know.” He settles on.

All Sae can do is make a soft ‘hm’ in response.

“Be angry? She loved you. She just wanted you to fall in love and be happy, whoever that was with.”

“I know, Curtis.”

“I’m not angry either.” Curtis looks her in the eye when he says this. “When we get out of here, I want you to know that I’ll support you, no matter what.”

In the first show of solidarity since everything fell apart, Sae reaches over to take Curtis’ hand, squeezing it to show her appreciation. “I know.”

“Now let’s figure out a plan to get out of here.”

_________________

The older man wakes not long after Sae, he’s careful to not disturb his daughter as he slips out of the bed and over to the two young adults near the door.

Together, the three of them brainstorm how to get out of the resort. Curtis is convinced that as long as they can get to their cars, they can go find help.

Sae isn’t too sure of that, but it’s the man, Martin Hess, as they find out (here on a special week-long vacation with his eight year old daughter Caroline), who happens to be the deciding vote between them.

“If we stay we’re sitting ducks.” He explains, offering a water bottle to Sae, and a chocolate protein bar to Curtis. “This place is locked up tightly, which fortunately means nothing from the outside is getting in... But, unfortunately, it also means that those monsters aren’t able to get out on their own, either.”

“So?” Sae asks, grimacing at the thought that her sister is lumped in as part of the ‘monsters’ roaming.

“He means that they’re all still out in the halls, and the lobby, and they aren’t just going to go away.” Curtis interrupts, glancing at the door. “We can either run for the cars, or we stay in this room until they find us.”

“Couldn’t help find us too? Police or something, they’re probably out looking for survivors.”

Martin shakes his head. “In a city this big... I don’t think anyone will be going room to room in each resort searching for uninfected folks for quite a while.”

“We could wait right? It’s safer in here isn’t it?”

“No.” Martin voices, adamant against that idea. “We’d run out of food. I packed a few snacks for the trip; cheese strings, water bottles, bear paws... Snacks so Cari wouldn’t ask me to stop every five minutes for a Beavertail or Dipping Dots, but it won’t be enough to feed all of us properly for more than a day or so.”

Curtis nods his agreement. “Look, Sarah, if we go, we go now... We need to get to the cars and get to the police, or a fire station. One of them will keep us safe.”

“It’s our safest bet, I agree.” 

Sae looks between Martin and Curtis, for a moment she can see how scared they both are, how utterly terrified they are of leaving the room and she also feels that same fear. They seem to know what they’re talking about, but the idea of leaving the safety of the room and willingly going out into the hall, it’s crazy.

Her heart pounds in her chest, but slowly she lets herself nod. “Okay, whose car are we going for?”

“Mine.” Martin insists. “It’s an SUV, it can take a hell of a beating and Cari’s carseat is in the back.”

“Okay.” Curtis nods. “Sarah, I want you to take your keys just in case we get separated or anything.”

Sae nods, the tiny breath of air she was holding expelling from her body as she glances from Curtis’ determined face, to Martin’s concerned one and finally to the girl still curled up on the bed sleeping.

“When do we do it?”

_________________ 

It isn’t quite seven in the morning when the four survivors decide that they’re all ready to go.

They’ve woken up Caroline, and made the official introductions between the eight year old and her two new friends. They have also gotten her to pack the rainbow unicorn backpack she brought on vacation with all of the snacks that they can fit in it.

The two men have broken apart the desk chair that sits in the hotel room, using the metal legs for bats, more reliable bats than the wooden chair leg that Curtis found and used the night before.

Sae, from some stroke of luck, has managed to change out of the cocktail dress stained with her sister’s blood and into a pair of jeans and plain tee-shirt that Martin had in his suitcase. The jeans are too wide and need to be held on with a tight belt, and the shirt swims on her, but anything is better than running around in a skin-tight dress with the memory of her sister being bitten seeped into the material.

The plan is simple; Curtis and Sae are going in front, with Martin and his daughter following close behind.

Curtis has Martin’s keys because he’s the fastest runner out of the four of them, his role is to get to the SUV as quickly as he can... If he can start it up, they may be able to make it before they get overrun.

Sae and Martin’s roles are to beat away any of the monsters that get too close using the metal chair legs, their only weapons against arms, legs and teeth.

Cari? Cari’s only job is to be brave.

It all seems so easy, until the door to the room opens and they’re met with the carnage in the hallway.

It’s like the scene of a horror movie; blood stains the floor in pools, people (or what remains of them) are crumpled into heaps, and the only sound you can hear comes from the piles of bodies littered along the hallway; moans, groans and the unmistakable noise of something gnawing through bone.

Sae has to cover her mouth to conceal the gasp that threatens to escape, Martin shields his daughter’s eyes before the whimper on her lips can make it’s debut, and Curtis motions the group to move on.

They’re able to walk down the hall a little, moving away from the lobby where it all began and instead following a little hall to a fire exit, it had been decided that going the path more secluded had less of a chance of running into the monsters they were trying to stay away from. It almost works... almost.

Curtis has his hand on the handle to the door, ready to open it, when a scream erupts into the near quiet air stopping him and Sae dead in their tracks.

As they turn their heads towards the scream, the sight meeting them has Sae’s heart still in her chest.

Cari has been knocked to the ground, her eyes trained in horror on the beast that advances on her father.

Sae lets out the gasp she held earlier.

The creature is easily six feet tall and over two hundred pounds, as a human he would have been intimidating with the muscles swelling around his arms, chest and legs... As a mindless and relentless zombie attacking them, he is absolutely terrifying.

In mere seconds he goes from advancing on Martin, to tackling him to the ground. All at once, the man, Sae and Cari scream.

“Curtis we have to do something now!” Sae begs, taking a hesitant step forward and brandishing the chair leg like it’s a bat, she’s set to take a hit on the zombie before she’s stopped by Curtis grabbing a hold of her arm and pulling her back.

“We can’t.” He quirks his head to the hall they’ve just come from, another creature stumbling it’s way over to them, foot dragging like it’s been broken.

“We need to go now, Sae, we can’t help him.”

Sae turns to stare at her almost brother-in-law in horror, Caroline’s screams pierce the background at the same time as Martin’s pleas for help start.

“Curtis, we need to.” She’s determined as she tries to break out of his hold, her eyes narrowing as he holds her almost painfully tightly.

“We have the keys, we can still get to their car and get out of here.” His eyes are wide in his frantic demands. “Come, there’s no way we can help him.”

Sae stares at him for another moment, her eyes filling with tears as she shakes her head. “No, I can’t, she’s just a little kid, we have to help them.”

For a moment, his eyes soften and Sae feels like she’s broken through to him... But then Curtis is holding her arm tighter and trying to drag her towards the fire door, his face red in an unrecognizable fury.

“It’s us or them, Sarah, and I sure as fuck choose us. Come on!” He growls in her ear as he struggles to pull her towards the door. “If the roles were reversed, they’d leave us behind in a heartbeat!”

Her eyes flicker between Curtis, anger and determination written across the features that once held nothing but humour and adoration... And then they flicker to Martin and Cari, the tiny girl screaming desperately as her father tries to fight back against the monster that has him pinned to the floor.

“No!” Sae finally screams, her mind returns to the night before, Martin putting not just himself but his daughter in danger to try to get Sae and her friends into his room, into safety. “No, they wouldn’t!”

She rips away from Curtis’ hold, and stands facing him, panting in desperation. “I’ve got to help them!” She demands, refusing to give in to him.

“Then I’ve got to leave you behind.”

Her heart breaks in ways Sae never imagined as her sister’s fiancee turns away from her and pulls open the door to the fire exit, rushing down the stairs and out of sight. For a second she’s frozen watching the spot where he used to be, until another desperate scream from Cari snaps her back to reality.

She turns back towards the chaos, swinging at the zombie with the metal chair leg and hitting him in the shoulder just as he ducks his head and sinks his teeth deep into the flesh of Martin’s throat.

“Noooooo!” A scream breaks out and it takes Sae a moment to realize that she’s the one screaming, as Cari joins her crying out in anguish.

She pounds the chair leg into the zombie’s shoulder again, trying to beat him off of Martin but the damage has already been done, blood spurting from the open wound in the older man’s throat.

Sae is screaming and crying and pounding on the six foot monster’s shoulder as Martin twitches and spasms on the floor, the only sound escaping him is a gurgled plea to “Take... Ca-ri... Run...”

It takes Sae a moment to react, dropping the metal chair leg as the beast she was attacking turns to face her, his mouth a crimson red and his eyes the same milky white as her sisters were only the night before.

The seconds that follow, all Sae can hear is the blood rushing through her veins as she jumps into action.

She runs for Caroline, scooping the child up with one arm and not stopping as she flees from the nightmare unfolding in front of them. She’s holding the girl against her side, just barely able to keep them both upright as she races down the hall in the opposite direction from the fire exit, the path to safety being blocked by six feet of pure horror and Cari’s own father who she’s sure is either dead or turning into one of them.

Sae races past other creatures, zombies she supposes, some of them are too preoccupied with their own catch to worry about a sprinting twenty-two year old and the eight year old arm luggage she’s picked up.

A few turn towards them and Sarah tries her best to run around, or shove them away as she races desperately towards the fire exit on the opposite side of the building, the one that’s just past her own room.

There’s a thought that occurs to her just moments before she can see the doors to the fire exit.

What if Kate is still around.

The thought is just barely in the back of her mind, her instincts to flight taking over until it’s almost too late.

She catches sight of Kate, skulking around what Sae can only assume is the body of Lukas... From the barely visible blonde hair and bright blue v-neck he had been wearing the night before, it confirms exactly who it is.

Sae freezes, Cari still pressed against her body, as she stares at the shambling, grotesque mess that her dearly loved older sister has horrifically become.

A hole where her shoulder once was now shows skin flaps barely clinging on to the meat underneath, blood drenches the front of Kate, from her mouth and shoulder all the way down her dress. Red bits adorn her neck and jaw, and it’s with a shudder that Sae realizes that the red bits are pieces of Lukas’ flesh.

Kate lets out a groan that runs down Sae’s spine, and the blonde stumbles backward into the fire exit. She’s shaking her head, tears collecting in her eyes when she steps in a puddle at the top of the staircase.

She loses her balance, arms flinging out to try and correct herself, but all Sae manages to do is slam the door to the fire exit closed in front of her, before her ankle twists and she sends both her and eight year old Cari crashing down the staircase behind them.

#Beyond the Hollows #original content #original story #zombie saga #zombies #lesbian #lesbians #queer women #queer zombie saga #an Even Gayer Panic original #original series #tw: death #tw: zombies #tw: slight gore

[zghostreviews]

She ra review part 1

I know this isn't anime, but this show and how horrendous the writing got has honestly bugged me to no end.

SheRa 2018 is a "reboot" of the 80s SheRa, though I wouldn't even call it reboot considering the creator trashed the original constantly and also never even watched the original show in the first place. The only thing this "reboot" has in common is that it uses the names of the characters from the original and that's it. The show is basically a fucking fanfiction labelled under original work outside of that essentially.

Going into the actual show topic.

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I started this show pretty much a year or 2 late, basically just waiting for all the drama to die down from the annoying reactionary communities. When starting out, I REALLY wanted to like the show, and honestly, I was enjoying it back then. Unfortunately, as episodes went by I started enjoying it less, ESPECIALLY in season 5 where everything had officially gone to shit.

The writing for this show is honestly fucking awful, they had many great ideas but either these were executed badly, or they didn't go completely through with it. There's also a lot of stuff that didn't make sense. Like when it comes to the princesses, elements, and their runestones. The elemental princesses are all able to do that rainbow power thing that I forgot the name of, yet some princesses that actual have a power that is elemental(*coughs*spinerella*coughs*) aren't able to be included in this. Glimmer which doesn't even use an elemental power can be included, but Spinerella, who literally uses wind, a fucking elemental, can't be included?? That sure doesn't make sense. This show also has a problem with further elaborating on things.

Though they did a REALLY good job with the writing of Shadow Weaver, she is a VERY complex character and you can truely tell the writers put alot of their effort into her. If you're not some fucking catradora stan that just immediately hates her character just because she abused your fave, than you'd definitely agree.

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Going into the characters themselves.

Adora

She's very bland for a main character and Im honestly not a fan of her design. Why is she shaped like one of those bugs from the ants movie when she was a soldier that constantly trained since childhood? She should have muscle of some kind, and that goes for everyone else in the horde minus Rogelio, Scorpia, and Huntara who was a former horde member.

Catra

I really....really don't like catra, she reminds me of 4 different goals I knew....if they all merged into one person... Catra is a selfish, manipulative, and very unstable character. She had SO many opportunities throughout this show, literally since the first season to just join the good side Adora is now on. Catra, unlike Adora was very much aware that the horde was evil since day one, yet when offered the chance MULTIPLE times to join the good side, she refuses, but is still VERY adamant on stalking Adora, and constantly trying to kill her. Season 5 was especially awful, she literally got worse and worse overtime until this season and in season 4 was willing to commit mass murder(or would it be mass genocide?) all because of Adora, just to spite her. I see many catra stans trying to say catra's redemption arc was better than Zuko's when um, no? It wasn't. Unlike catra, Zuko didn't have multiple chances to better herself and join the good side automatically. Zuko, from what I remember, couldn't just immediately drop everything and join the good side. He was a prince of the fire kingdom who was stuck under his father's command and he actively had to work to better himself throughout MULTIPLE seasons before he could join the good side and gain people's trust. Meanwhile Catra had multiple chances since literally day one to better herself and go to the good side, yet she just wanted to be an asshole, attempt to kill everyone, abuse others, and overly obsess over, stalk, and literally murder Adora on multiple occasions. Literal toxic relationship, but that didn't matter as long as it was catradora end game.

Bow

I actually have no problem with him, he's a nice support character. The only annoying thing is that his abs are constantly showing no matter what he's wearing, except for the one time when he was trying to hide his real self when we first meet his dads.

Glimmer

I didn't like this girl either. I hated the way she treated her mother. She just seems spoiled and whiny and way too quick to do things without an ounce of thought. The way she treated her mom most of the time was just completely unnecessary. Like dayum bitch, she just doesn't want to lose the only other family she has left. As someone with mother issues and does not have a mother, Glimmer had literally no reason to be that fucking rude to her mother, her mother just cares about her well being, safety, and overall existence, unlike mine.

Shadow Weaver/Light Spinner

Excellent character, very well written, bonus points for having a hot voice and having big milf energy. She was the horde kids caretaker and trainer from what it seemed. She has a lot of layers to her. If you look more into her character you see that she actually does care about people around her, she just could be emotionally stunted. She was kinda both selfless and selfish. She had this whole obsession with gaining power which she had even as light spinner, which definitely hints at her family maybe being disappointed in her for being powerless or something along those lines. She even shows signs of having been abused herself, but unfortunately continued this cycle of abuse on Catra and Adora specifically. Shadow Weaver had many goals that involved Adora specifically and she was willing to hurt others in order to finish this goal. Even as Light Spinner this was prominent as she was willing to help save the universe even if it ended up harming herself or others around her in the process. She wasn't just some cruel old woman, but a very complex woman that had a lot of baggage. Sucks that they ended up killing her, I wish she got her own redemption because her story definitely had a lot of potential to be great. It would've been cool to see her try to better herself out of her own willingness, repent for the shit she'd done, maybe a childhood backstory to understand her better, and she tries to apologize to those she used and abused and it doesn't in any way involve having to accept her apology. I just think Shadow Weaver was a neat character.

Hordak

The mindcontrolling is not an excuse for how fucking shitty he is, he became a fucking a war criminal and coloniser out of his own free will. The fandom seems to think that shadow Weaver had done everything wrong, but look at hordak like "uwu my sweet cinnamon roll". Hordak literally colonised kingdoms, kidnapped infants and young children, most likely imprisoned and/or killed those babies parents/other family members, tried to take over the whole world, and other actual war crimes, but he got a pass to walk off into the sunset because he had feelings for someone, and his big bro was mean to him when he was in the cult. Don't come at me with the 'buts' you have, wrong hordak didnt do any of the bs our hordak did when he was no longer under mind control.

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I think I'm done for now. It's 1am now. I'm gonna just stop here and continue with more at some point.

#spop critical #shera review #part 1 #long read #mobile post

[princesssarisa]

10 facts about Shana and her mother Darika. Plus the full OC interview with each of them :)

Here they are! Shanna, the “Beauty” of my wlw Beauty and the Beast retelling (which still lacks a definitive title, though I intend it to include the word “rose”), and Darika, her mother.

Shanna 10 facts 1. She is 14 years old during the story’s prologue, 17 when the main plot starts, and 19 by the end.

2. My facecast for her is the late Israeli singer Ofra Haza (best known to some of us for providing the voice of Moses’s mother Yocheved in The Prince of Egypt) when she was very young.

3. She’s mixed race. Her mother’s ancestors were white pseudo-Europeans, while her father’s came from a Middle Eastern-inspired culture. Both practiced the same Judaism- and Shamanism-inspired religion, though. She’s her world’s equivalent of a Jewish person who’s half Ashkenazi, half Mizrahi.

4. Her name is partly a variant of the Yiddish “Shaina,” meaning “beautiful,” and partly an abbreviation of the Hebrew “Shoshanna,” meaning “lily” or, more significantly, “rose.” It has nothing to do with the Hebrew “shana,” meaning “year” – they’re just almost-homonyms.

5. Unlike most traditional Beauty and the Beast Beauties, she’s the eldest of three sisters, not the youngest. Her two sisters aren’t wicked, but they are a bit of a handful because they’re so young, and she’s had to be their responsible caretaker. She plays that role well – her little sister Zuri sooner calls for her than for their mother when she needs help – but it’s kept her from fully exploring her own potential, which she finally does get to explore during her time with Liriel, the lady beast.

6. Her personality is very much like Disney’s original animated Belle: bookish, sweet, emotional, full of dreams, yet intelligent and strong willed too. She’s more socially awkward than Belle, though, and unfortunately, she also has the self-doubt of Robin McKinley or Megan Kearney’s Beauties. Unlike Belle, she’s internalized the idea that she’s odd and oversensitive, so she tries to act like a “normal” down-to-earth villager, until the year she spends with Liriel makes her realize her worth just as she is.

7. She’s an aspiring author and poet. At age 13, before her family fell into poverty, she wrote a play based on the popular story of the heroine Lady Yasfira, portraying her as more flawed and dynamic than in most retellings, giving more sympathy than usual to the “evil” queen who opposed her, and portraying them as having once been friends. (Think either The Prince of Egypt or Wicked, or both.) The play was never performed at the time, but years later, with Liriel’s encouragement, she fine-tunes it, and then they perform it together for Liriel’s animal servants – this plays an important role in their growing feelings for each other.

8. She rarely lets herself get angry, but when she does, she can verbally annihilate you.

9. She realized she was bisexual at age 11 when, after her first crush on a boy at her school ended, she developed a new crush on a girl. She probably realized this more quickly than most real-world bi girls do, because the setting, Zalina Island, has no homophobia. She never acted on her crushes, but only out of shyness, not because she saw anything wrong with liking girls.

10. Despite her gentle personality, she’s not especially femme: she’s more soft butch, or maybe futch. She dislikes dresses (fortunately, Zalina Island has no taboo against women in pants) and generally wears just one or two feminine articles, like a shawl or earrings, with otherwise boyish clothing.

Interview (as she would answer it around the middle of the story)

What did you want to be, when you were a kid? There were so many things I wanted to be at different times. A queen, a princess, a duchess, a prophet, a traveling bard, an actress, a shepherdess, a farmer, a lady knight, a prime minister, a priestess, an acrobat, a cook, a kitchen maid, a dressmaker like my mother, a merchant like my father, a doctor, a midwife, a goldsmith, a fairy… and eventually, I realized that the one way to be all those things was to be a writer.

When did you know you wanted to be a writer? As soon as I was old enough to realize that stories didn’t come out of thin air, but where written by people. I wanted to do it as soon as I knew I could.

Who inspires you? My mother, my father, and a wide array of fictional heroes and heroines.

If you got to choose, where would you like to live? With whom? I’d love to live in a castle. I try not to care where I live as long as my family is with me, but my dreams of living in some splendid beautiful place never seem to die. I wouldn’t want it unless my family was there too, though.

Which item would you never give away? My journal, where I write down my secret thoughts, poems and stories.

Tell us about the biggest mistake you made in your life. Until recently, I might have cited the time I forgot to write an important history essay for school because I got lost in writing my play Yasfira and Anefri. Or else the time I lost my temper with my three-year-old sister Zuri and hurt her feelings so badly that she ran away and was missing for over an hour. But now, there’s no doubt that my worst mistake was asking Mama to bring me back a unique flower if she could find one on her trip to the city. Who would have thought a flower would cost so much?

Did you ever fear for your life? Yes, the moment when I saw Lady Liriel for the first time, after I followed Mama back to her lair – half wolf, half dragon, and entirely terrifying – and even more so, when she sniffed the air and I knew she smelled me hiding there.

There’s people who say you’re strange. Do you have any comment on this? I’m afraid it’s true. So often my imagination feels more real than the real world, my mind flies off to places that no one else believes exist, my emotions swell and crash like tidal waves no matter how much I try to swallow them and put logic first, I’ve always asked too many questions, and I feel less alone with only my books, paper and pen than I do in crowds of people.

Tell us something about you that nobody knows. Well, not many people know how strange I am anymore. I’ve learned to copy Mama and pretend to be as sensible and down-to-earth as she and our neighbors are, instead of spewing my feelings and dreams the way I used to. If the villagers knew about my romantic fantasies or the stories and poems I write in my head, they would laugh or scold even more than the people in the city did when I was small. 

What would make a perfect day for you? A few hours spent reading, a few spent writing, and maybe a trip to the theatre in the evening, with people who understand me and let me feel free to be myself.

Darika 10 Facts 1. She takes on the father’s traditional role in the Beauty and the Beast story. Her husband was a merchant, but he died in the same shipwreck that destroyed his merchandise and left the family impoverished. But a few years later, she learns that one of his ships survived after all, has to travel to reclaim its cargo, but gets lost in a forest… and we all know the rest. Recent BatB retellings have put a lot of effort into answering the question “What happened to Beauty/Belle’s mother?” in interesting and poignant ways. To be different, I thought “Why not make her mother the living parent?”

2. My facecast for her is the New York City Criminal Court judge Rachel “Ruchie” Freier. Not that I know much about Judge Freier, but her face look right for the character.

3. At the beginning of the story, she’s 35 years old. By the end, she’s 40.

4. She was born in a small, poor village at the base of the White Pine Mountains. Her parents died when she was a baby, so she was raised by her grandfather and her older sister, who have since died too. 

5. She worked as a seamstress in the village until she met and fell in love with a wealthy young traveling merchant from an elite port city. Despite the disapproval of his social circle, they married. After his death, she took their daughters back to her home village to start a new life.

6. Her impoverished upbringing and family tragedies have toughened her. She takes a very practical, hardworking, no-nonsense approach to life, tries to teach her daughters to do the same, and is calm and resolute in the face of hardship, focusing on “What are we going to do about it?” She sometimes loses patience with her daughter Shanna’s dreaminess and sensitivity, which makes Shanna, who adores and idolizes her, feel inadequate and weak.

7. Inside, though, she feels just as deeply and intensely as Shanna does. Her love for her family is limitless and she’s actually very dependent on Shanna, who fills the role of the family’s nurturing caregiver more than Darika’s temperament lets her do.

8. One thing she and Shanna have in common, which Shanna learned from her, is strong integrity and deep compassion for others. For her, the best part of being rich was all the good she could do for the poor, while the hardest part of becoming poor again was having so little to give to those even poorer.

9. Her sewing is more than just her job – it’s an art. She embroiders the clothes and quilts she makes with all kinds of colors and unique designs. The vibrant images she creates are an outlet for the emotions she doesn’t express.

10. Her personality is inspired by assorted beloved literary heroines, both classic (Jane Eyre, Elinor Dashwood) and modern (Tamora Pierce’s lady knight Keladry of Mindalen). For all their differences, and though they’re much younger than Darika, all these heroines are quiet, practical, dignified, staunch in their integrity, deeply caring and passionate on the inside, and yet with masks of stoic self-control that they only drop when intensely provoked. I like those heroines and admire them, yet sometimes their popular role model status annoys me, because it’s hard for a highly sensitive, naturally effusive person to act like them. So Darika pays tribute to them, but the story will also emphasize that her daughters don’t need to be like her.

Interview (as she would answer it around the middle of the story) What did you want to be, when you were a kid? A forest sprite or a good witch. I had a wild imagination in those days, before the real world tamed it.

When did you know you wanted to be a seamstress? When I first learned that the flowers and birds on my childhood quilt hadn’t sprouted there by themselves, but were embroidered by my mother, and that the storytelling tapestries that hung on the village temple walls were sewn by other villagers in the same way. I wanted to create beauty like they had, and to tell stories through pictures, while at the same time creating useful things for others: clothes, blankets, handkerchiefs, etc.  I think I willed my own talent for sewing into being to do just that.  

Who inspires you? My older sister Shanna; the namesake of my daughter. We lost our mother very young, so she took on the role of mother for me, and every day her love and strength have inspired me as I’ve raised my own children.

If you got to choose, where would you like to live? With whom? I would live in a clean, elegant, comfortable house with my daughters, a servant or two, and my husband, if only I could bring him back.

Which item would you never give away? My wedding ring.

Tell us about the biggest mistake you made in your life. Three of them, one directly after the other. First, when I was lost in the Great Forest during a storm, I took shelter in what I thought was an ordinary cave. Then, when I found that the inside looked like a castle, I should have turned and left; even then I knew that such an enchanted place would be dangerous. But I was cold, wet, and afraid I would die if I went back out into the storm, so I stayed. Last but not least, when I discovered the greenhouse garden in that castle-cave, I crept in and picked a rose as a gift for my daughter Shanna. Who would have dreamed a single flower would cost so much?

Did you ever fear for your life? I feared for my life when I was lost in the storm, but even more so when I came face to face with Lady Liriel. I’ll never forget the sight of her matted fur and vampire-bat fangs as she glared down at me.

There’s people who say you’re cold and stony. Do you have any comment on this? They don’t really know me.

Tell us something about you that nobody knows. Very few people fully know me, not even my daughters. I play the role of the calm, practical peasant woman, but it’s only skin-deep. Shanna thinks all her wild passions and romantic dreams came from her father, but really she inherited them from me too. My grandfather knew the secret me, and so did my sister, and my husband. But they’re all gone, and as I’ve buried each of them, I’ve buried those aspects of myself more deeply.

What would make a perfect day for you? A quiet day of embroidery by the fire at home, with my daughters all near me and all happy.

#my writing #oc ask #10 facts #oc interview #shanna #darika #my ocs #cinefantastiquemitho

[sailorsilverladybug]

An Apology to My Readers: Delays

I wanted to let everyone know that I fully intend to finish my stories, but over the past few days I just haven’t had any will to write. Unfortunately, I am afraid. I’m afraid for my life. I’m afraid for my family. I’m afraid for my town. I’m afraid for my state, and for my country. I live in constant fear, and it hasn’t been helping me find inspiration. It’s been tearing me apart.

I have asthma, or more specifically severe allergies to perfumes and chemicals that react like asthma. This means that I am more likely to have a severe reaction if I come into contact with Covid-19. Comorbidity. You see that word and all you can think is that this is a death sentence. I have left the house three times since early February. Each time I come back and worry for the next several days that I’ve somehow been exposed. Except, my husband is a necessary worker and went to his job every day through the lockdown and continues to go now when the country is reopening too soon and there are thousands dying.

Worse, I have a son in the marines, and he doesn’t always have time to contact his worried mother. I’ve always been a worrier, but never like this before. I wish I could tell you why I am so afraid, but I don’t even know myself. I’m not afraid to die, I suppose, but I don’t want to go out struggling for days, maybe weeks, without enough air. That sounds horrible to me.

So I haven’t been able to write. I haven’t been able to find the hopeful part of me that never writes an unhappy ending. The part that believes there will always be another miracle. The piece of me that thinks everything will work out if you just do your best. How can I, when all around me thousands of people are dying and many of those deaths could have been avoided if people had common decency.

For all those people out there who think a mask is a political statement, please stop. It doesn’t mean you support the democrats. It means we want to live. I am horrified that you could play Russian roulette on not just your life, and the lives of your parents, siblings, spouse, children, and grandchildren, but on MY life, and the lives of MY husband, my son, my nieces and nephews, my sisters and brothers, my mothers and fathers, my grandparents, my friends, and my neighbors. Please stop thinking just because you might survive it, that everyone else will. Some of us won’t.

Be a hero, wear a mask.

Social distancing, proper safety precautions, and wearing masks shouldn’t be political. Stop listening to ANYONE who says it is. Keep your politics away from my immune system. At least let me have the RIGHT to live. That’s all I can ask of anyone.

So no, I haven’t been writing, and I haven’t been responding to emails, because how can I have hope if the very people my town needs to survive are ignoring that we have to live and are refusing to social distance, refusing to wear masks, refusing to remember that people live here all the time. They hear people say we had no cases in our area, so they come in droves, bringing it from outside. My community is almost HALF senior citizens, and the rest of us are made up of couples and young families.

I want to live long enough to meet my own future grandchildren. I want to live long enough to walk the Appalachian Trail, and to see the rest of my beautiful country. I want to live long enough to publish my novels and see them sell millions of copies. I want to live long enough to accomplish my dreams.

Sailor Moon is the type of hero we really need right now, and I so wish that I could sit down and give you a story with her hopeful tone and her joyful light, but I can’t. Right now I would put her on a mission of vengeance, and that isn’t my Sailor Moon. My Sailor Moon always does what is right, even when it’s hard, even when it hurts, even when it means she will lose, because she is the true hero, who refuses to give in, or to give up. My Sailor Moon could never be turned dark because there isn’t a scrap of darkness in her. She has everything she could ever want or need. She is a good daughter and tries to obey her parents and do what they’ve taught her. She is truth and hope and unconditional love.

Sailor Moon would wear a mask. She would wear that mask and walk right out into the middle of town and she would stand up for those of us who need someone to hear us. Not just those with compromised immune systems, but those who have been treated badly for centuries, for the ones who need a place to flee because they don’t have a home anymore due to war or terror. Sailor Moon would love the way we need a hero to love. She would show us that anyone can change, that any heart could be healed, and that any barrier can be breached with a hand outstretched, with love, with friendship, with faith.

Unfortunately, that isn’t the world we live in. It isn’t the world around me right now. I live in a world where a man drove into a grocery store parking lot in MAINE with a rebel flag proudly displayed on his back window... who walked into the grocery store full of necessary workers and refused to wear a mask because it was his ‘right’ to make a political statement. I live in a world where people think it’s perfectly fine to treat others like their lives are meaningless, and where those who are the most necessary workers among the population are often paid the least. Where they can’t afford to stop working even to protect their families because they don’t have that nest egg of savings that those who have more had. I live in a world where people are being evicted from their homes for not paying rent they couldn’t meet because they weren’t ‘essential workers.’

Find me hope and I think I would write a million stories in a day, but I have none. Not when the man who is my president is drawing crowds of unmasked people together and those people then go and infect other people. Meanwhile people who are trying to stay safe are treated like they are making a political statement.

Be a hero, wear a mask.

I’m living in a world where I am afraid to let people into my home for fear they might have Covid. A world where I’m afraid to go out with my sister-in-law to the grocery store... and after the one trip I took with her I panicked for days. Where going out with my husband makes me terrified because someone coughed near me and wasn’t wearing a mask. Where walking into a bookstore means a handful of hand-sanitizer to protect the elderly couple who work there and I still have to listen to people treat them rudely, then force their way past me out the door and ignore the fact that using a walker means it’s more difficult for me.

I want to live in Sailor Moon’s world, where an entire community would come together to tell the military to leave them alone. Where Sailor Moon can take the hand of her enemy and remind them how to be human. I want to live there, where magic could fix a pandemic, and there is always someone there to take your hand when you’re afraid and you wouldn’t be afraid to reach back.

Bring me some hope and I’ll show you my dreams for a world like Sailor Moon’s. But until then my pen is down. My torch is out. My muse is huddled in a corner unable to come out because she’s me, and she is afraid to die like this. Bring me some hope, please. Tell me everything is going to be okay, because right now, I don’t think it will be. Even after this disease goes away, there is still so much hate and so little empathy. I don’t think we will get through this. Bring me some hope.

Be a hero, wear a mask.

[mythologyfolklore]

Ares and Athena through the years - Ch. 13

Chapter Thirteen: The Odyssey, Pt. 01

.

Zeus was doing his correspondence.

He was also mentally cursing himself for allowing Ares to go on his world trip.

The war god, who was always written off as stupid and incompetent had been a big help with the mail, but now Zeus was submerging in a sea of prayers, letters from both his own pantheon and from abroad, and complaints. Complaints en masse.

“'You won't be needing me', he said, 'That stuff is really easy', he said!”, Zeus grumbled irritably.

Then there was a knock on the door.

“Enter!”

It was Athena, who came in.

Zeus stood up. “My little Owl-Eye! So good to see you!”

Athena looked around, assessed the situation in one glance and grinned: “Too much paper stuff?”

“Too much paper stuff”, he confirmed.

“If I help you with all of that, will you let Odysseus finally return home?”

Zeus laughed heartily: “I was going to do that anyway! But how could I possibly refuse that offer?”

Athena beamed at him.

Cute.

.

After doing the majority of her father's paper stuff and questioning how Ares with his lack of tact had done this all those millennia, Athena wasted no time in descending down to earth and onto Ithaka.

She had to take a look at the situation there – and to see, if the son of Odysseus was any good.

In the shape of an old friend of Odysseus' she went up to the palace.

Even from the outside, she could hear a lot of noise.

What the Tartaros is going on in there?

As she came into the yard, she saw strangers – probably the suitors of Penelope – playing boardgames to waste their time, sitting on the skins of bovines they had slaughtered and generally living the high life consuming the wealth of another, like parasites.

Soon she was noticed and approached by a young man with chestnut brown hair.

The sharp green eyes, so much like those of Odysseus, gave away who he was.

“Welcome, welcome!”, Telemakhos exclaimed, “Do come in, our respected guest! We shall give you the best we have to offer! And after you have eaten and refreshed yourself, tell us what brings you here.”

Athena could tell, that the young man was miserable at the situation, but he didn't show it.

He was nothing but polite and respectful towards his guest and readied her a place apart from all the insolent suitors.

“I don't assume you want to eat with this noisy crew”, he commented.

“No, I prefer to eat and drink in peace.”

Just a few moments later, the suitors came in, rude and hubristic as they apparently always were.

They were served and then forced a musician to sing for them. The man glared at them hatefully, but began to sing beautifully.

Telemakhos looked pained and murmured to the disguised Athena: “Would you lend me your ear?”

“Of course.”

“I hate this. I hate how these people consume the goods of another without care or compensation, while my mother and I mourn my dear father, who is most likely dead, even though some say that he'll come back one day. But our hope is dwindling from day to day. And we can't even give him an honourable burial, because his bones are probably lying on the bottom of the sea, where the salt water washes and bleaches them. But tell me, stranger, who are you, which family and what home do you come from?”

“My name is Mentor, son of Anchialos and Lord of Taphos. I'm a good friend of your father's and our fathers were friends before us (you can ask Laertes, I heard he lives away from here out of shame). I'm on my way to Temesa to trade precious metals and tissue. I wanted to pay you a visit, because I heard that your father was home. But apparently he's not. But I'm certain he's not dead either; perhaps some brutal and savage tribe is holding him captive and keeping him from coming home. Now I'm not a prophet, but I know for certain, that the Deathless Ones will grant him a safe homecoming soon. He won't stay away from home for much longer, I'm sure. But what about you? Are you really his son? You have his eyes, you do. I may not have seen him in over twenty years, but his face was hardly one I could forget!”

“He is my father”, Telemakhos sighed, “But I wish that rather instead of such an unfortunate man it was one, who could be here with his family, growing old in peace in his own land.”

Athena pitied the young man, but had to keep her act up.

“Now, now. Your family was made for glory and you're no different, I can tell. But tell me, what is this celebration here for? Those men there certainly don't obey the laws of hospitality, uncouth and shamefully as they're acting. Any sensible man would be ashamed.”

Telemakhos frowned – just the way his father always did.

“I'm not going to lie: there must have been a time, when this was an honest household, wealthy and abundant, while its master was still here. But just a few years ago, the entire noble population of this one and the surrounding islands have come to woo my mother and now they're feeding off our property. We can't get rid of them, they won't leave until my mother marries one of them. She loathes the idea, but she can't offend them by refusing outright, so she's putting them off for as long as she can. Meanwhile these parasites are eating my reserves and sooner or later they will surely kill me.”

“Mentor” was indignant. “By the gods, you really need Odysseus back home! Would he come through this door in full armour and make short work of them! Oh, for them to be taken by dark Soteira¹ and rot in the underworld!”

“I wish”, the young man muttered.

But the disguised goddess continued: “But it's all in the hand of the gods, whether he will come home and have bloody revenge. For now, this is my counsel, from an old friend to a young one: summon the council of the island, tell the suitors to leave and your mother, if she chooses to marry, to return to the home of her father, for a dower to be prepared. As for yourself, prepare a good ship with twenty rowers and travel abroad to inquire about the whereabouts of your glorious father. First travel to Pylos and ask Nestor and if he can't help you out, move on to Sparta, to the court of Menélaos – he came home last, as far as I know. Should they give you hope, that your father is still alive, hang in there for another year. Should you hear, that he's dead, make a burial mount for him, with many gifts, as is appropriate. Then eliminate all those insolent suitors. Haven't you heard of how Orestes gained glory by slaying the murderer of his father Agamemnon? You're no longer a child, you're a grown handsome man. Hesitate not. Defend your honour, so that future generations may speak well of you. But I must leave now – surely my crew is getting impatient down at the harbour!”

Telemakhos smiled warmly (that was his mother's smile): “Thank you for your advice, kind old man. But won't you stay just a little longer? You're my guest, how could I possibly let you go without a gift? A precious and pretty one-”

“I'm afraid I really have no time”, she chuckled, “But I will come back and till then chose a really beautiful guest gift! It will be returned with one of equal worth.”

Then she turned into a small owl and flew out of the window, leaving behind a stunned Telemakhos.

.

Meanwhile Hermes had made his way to Ogygia, the island of Kalypso.

The nymph welcomed him and served him nectar and ambrosia and wanted to know, what he was here for.

Hermes, now refreshed, briefed her on the situation: “The King of the Gods has sent me to let you know his will. We happen to know, that you're keeping a poor man, who has been away from home for twenty years. Ten years he spent in the land of the Trojans, three lost at sea and seven years he has been languishing here, pining for home. This is the will of His Majesty: for this mortal to finally get home to his family, to reclaim his home and embrace his wife and son again. That is his lot, not to vegetate here, far away from his loved ones.”

Kalypso blanched and her eyes filled with tears.

“This … this is not fair! Why won't the gods allow, that a goddess may be happy with a mortal? Êôs loved Orion, only for him to die by the hands of golden-throned Artemis! Demeter loved Iasion, only for him to be hit by the Thunderer's lightning bolts! I saved this man, hosted and fed him, offered him immortality, so he would never grow old and die-”

“Êôs and Demeter were loved back”, Hermes countered, “Odysseus isn't happy with you. We see this man weeping on the strand day after da. Not every mortal wants immortality, Kalypso. Immortality is no blessing for a mortal, even though a lot of people think that. Odysseus needs his family and they need him. Let him go. Don't risk the anger of the King of the Gods.”

The nymph choked back a sob, but nodded.

.

Poseidon was returning from a party in Ethiopia, when he spotted something he did not like: his nemesi- er, the mortal he hated, merrily rowing on the surface of his sea on a raft with provisions.

Within seconds he put two and two together: the other gods must have decided for Odysseus to be allowed to go home, while he had been away.

“Well, I'm not letting him off easy”, Poseidon grumbled and unleashed a mighty storm, house-high waves, deadly currents and all.

.

Odysseus clung to his raft, as it was thrown back and forth by the waves and realised, that he was likely going to drown.

“Aw, shit!”, he muttered and held on tighter, because there was no way he would accept a death as inglorious as drowning.

But as he was clinging to his wooden raft, he soon saw the foam on one of the waves shift into the shape of a woman.

That was Leukothea, formerly Ino, the daughter of Kadmos and Harmonia and aunt of Dionysos, who had been deified by Poseidon, many centuries ago.

She pitied the struggling mortal thrown around by the raging sea.

“Poor man” she spoke, “What have you done to provoke the merciless wrath of Poseidon, that he wants to drown you so badly? But fear not, I'm here to help you. Listen: take off your clothes and everything that drags you down, then tie my scarf around your chest – it will save you from drowning. Once you have reached dry land, give it back to me.”

She handed him a silken scarf and dived back into the waves.

Odysseus frowned. Why would I need this, when I have a raft?

Right in that moment, said raft was torn apart by a particularly huge wave.

Never mind.

He did as the marine goddess had told him and took to swimming.

In the meantime Poseidon retired to his crystal palace on the bottom of the sea.

Odysseus spent the next two days fighting against the raging sea, trying to finally reach the shore.

All the while, Athena was with him, never once taking her protection away.

She stilled the winds and gave him the strength to swim long enough to reach the shore of the land of the Phaiakoi.

The long-suffering hero finally found a piece of strand, crawled onto the shore and fainted.

When he came to himself, he took off the anti-drowning-scarf and threw it back into the sea, back to its owner.

Then he turned his back onto the water, stumbled further inland and crawled under a bush.

Exhausted, hurting everywhere and too tired to do anything, he fell into a healing, restful slumber.

.

Athena meanwhile entered the sleep of Nausikaa, the princess of this land, disguised as one of her friends. She inspired her to go out in the morning to do her laundry with her maids and maybe play at ball and Nausikaa woke up, resolved to do just that.

.

Odysseus woke up to women's screaming.

He crawled out from under this bush, covered his private parts with a leafy branch and went to investigate.

Soon he came across a group of ladies, apparently looking for something.

When they saw him, they screamed and fled, all except for one.

She didn't seem to be afraid at all.

And perhaps she could help him.

So the former hero cleared his throat and with many a flattery asked her for help.

The lady introduced herself as princess Nausikaa of the Phaiakoi and gave him some of her father's clothes she and her maids had been washing earlier.

Once washed and finally dressed, he could feel a divine presence cast a spell on him.

When he stepped back in front of Nausikaa, he guessed that Athena had made him look younger and more stately than he actually was, because the princess proclaimed her hope to have a bridegroom as regal and handsome as himself.

Then she pointed him a way to the city, while she left for some place else.

One of her maids guided him and instructed him on how he should come to the king and queen to plead for hospitality.

He did as told and they received him kindly.

.

Next morning, king Alkinoos called an assembly of the local nobility, introduced them to this stranger and informed him of his request.

They marvelled at the newcomer, whom Athena had given godlike beauty, so that he would find approval and be liked by the people here.

“This stranger – I don't know who he is – has been stranded here and beseeches me for help to return to his homeland”, Alkinoos explained. “No supplicant has ever asked us in vain for safe transport. So let's ready a ship and rowers and let him go where he wishes to, as soon as possible. But first we should host him according to the laws of hospitality. Let a great feast be prepared and summon our best musician.”

This was done and not much later, the entire nobility was gathered in his hall to feast.

Demodokon, the blind singer, entertained them with his beautiful music and sung of the glory of the Achaeans in the Trojan War.

The musical reminder of the events made Odysseus upset and he pulled the cloak he was wearing over his face, so no one saw him cry.

.

Next was a small tournament.

The young Phaiakoi competed in all kinds of sports.

Odysseus was feeling too gloomy to participate in discus throwing, but when one of the young men provoked him and questioned his masculinity, he got so angry that he grabbed the biggest, heaviest discus at hand and threw it much farther than all the others.

“As you can see”, he turned to the stunned Phaiakoi, “I'm more than adept in the art of war and battle. If any of you wants to challenge me in another discipline, I'm more than confident, that I can best them. Except when it comes to running, as my leg muscles are out of shape.”

Alkinoos quickly pacified his guest and called to music and dance.

Odysseus marvelled at the dancing skills of the Phaiakoi, at the gracefulness of their movements and how their feet practically flew across the dance floor.

The singer Demodokon sang about the love of Ares and Aphrodite and of how her then husband Hephaistos had caught them in his golden net.

A pair of dancers performed a rhythmic ball play and everyone clapped along to the beat.

Odysseus turned to Alkinoos: “You praised your people as the best of dancers and it's really true! The sight astonishes me.”

That pleased the king and he ordered for rich guest presents to be given to the flatterer.

The man, who had provoked Odysseus earlier, gave him a reconciliatory gift (an iron sword² with a silver handle and ivory sheath) and an apology, which the older man gladly accepted and wished him, that he would never regret having given his sword away.

Evening came and after a nice bath Odysseus went to join another banquet, which was about to take place.

On the way he met Nausikaa and they bid each other farewell, as only men were allowed at the Symposion.³

As all men sat down to eat, Odysseus cut off a good piece of his meat and offered it to the grateful singer as a token of appreciation.

Demodokon continued his earlier song about the heroic deeds of the Achaeans in the Trojan War. Odysseus requested: “You sing so beautifully and accurately of those events! But now sing of the wooden horse! Sing of the thing that Epeios built with Athena's aid and which was brought to Troy, filled by Odysseus with warriors to raze Troy to the ground! If you can do that, I would be forever grateful!”

The singer did so and everyone was captivated.

But the memory made the war veteran weep bitterly.

When Alkinoos saw this, he ordered Demodokon to stop and asked Odysseus what the matter was.

“Also”, he added, “I still don't know who you are. What's your name, your family and the name of your home? Were you there in Troas or did you lose someone dear to you in this terrible war? A family member, a comrade or a friend?”

The other man wiped his tears away and stood up.

“I am Odysseus, son of Laertes, who beguiles men with cunning and beautiful words, whose fame reaches to the skies. I come from the bountiful island of Ithaka and I couldn't possibly think of a sweeter sight than my own home.”

The whole room was silent, as everyone stared at him.

.

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1) Soteira: "Saviour", an epithet to many goddesses. In this case a euphemistic epithet of Persephone. 2) The Trojan War is supposed to have taken place in about the 13th or 12th century BC, which was still in the bronze age. So an iron weapon was something special. Iron was hard to forge, because it requires a higher temperature than copper and tin (the components of bronze), but it's also tougher than bronze. Therefore it was in high demand and it would stay that way, during the iron age and beyond. But because it was harder to work with and for other reasons, it was a lot more expensive than bronze. 3) The Symposion (a banquet with music, dance and philosophical discussions) was for men only. Ancient Greek misogyny, everyone. -_-

#Greek Mythology #odyssey #zeus #athena #telemakhos #hermes #kalypso #poseidon #leukothea #odysseus #nausikaa #alkinoo