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#convergent evolution got me fucked up
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This is an oddly specific gripe but I see it just often enough to irritate me so here goes:
I hate when sciency types use BS technicalities to create what amounts to click bait.
Let me give an example: just seen someone claim that "there is no such thing as a tree because actually they are totally unrelated and it's an example of convergent evolution." Shut the fuck up nerd if it's made of wood and has leaves it's a fucking tree. Stop acting like the colloquial definition carries no weight just because of some ambiguity in the technical definition. There are two different definitions for a reason.
Another example: "being cold doesnt give you a cold it just suppresses your immune system which makes you more susceptible to getting sick." That's still the cold causing me to be sick. I would not have gotten sick if I were not cold. Just because it's not the only reason I got sick doesn't mean it wasnt a cause.
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ruthlesslistener · 8 days
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do you have any headcanons for anything you've been holding onto, but haven't had a good chance to post about? I love your fics and I wanna peer into your mind palace
Shhdhchs EXCELLENT bc ive had a lot of thoughts but this quarter + anxiety in general has been killin me
-Okay so I'm still hyperfixated on Destiny 2 bc of a DnDestiny game I'm in, but since Hollow Knight is a special interest and I read a couple of frankly stunning crossover fics (one with the Inheritance Cycle, one with Transformers, both are outstanding and I will recc them wholeheartedly if you ask- the TF one especially blew my tits clean off which is saying something bc I have zero TF knowledge, also its 500k words but I'm rambling), my brain has been essentially locked into the concept of a crossover AU where a couple of my D2 OCs get slingshot into the HK world via a fucked-up warpgate through wish-dragon magic, and it's now got me kind of obsessed with the idea of the world of Hollow Knight taking place on an alien planet that had some convergent evolution re: general insect body plans, but went off the fuckin' rails with everything else. So here's some worldbuilding thoughts on that:
-Their planet would be far from Earth and the origin place of the Ahamkara and precursor race to the Worm Gods, who are distant relatives to each other that took to the stars to opportunistically feed off of rifts in reality. They are in turn sister taxa to the Wyrms and Higher Beings from Hollow Knight, who also feed off of the wants, desires, and gulf between what-is-desired-and-what-is-true, but unlike the worms and wish-dragons, the Higher Beings are essentially 'settled' species. They're the farming civilization to the hunter-gatherers of their Destiny-based kindred, and yes, both branches of the family tree fucking despise each other and look down scornfully on the other's lifestyle. The Higher Beings view the Worms and Ahamkara as little more than scavengers, while the Worms and Ahamkara see the Higher Beings as glorified slavedrivers with sticks up their asses- though it should be noted that since the Ahamkara's whole deal so far has been malignant trickery as a hunting style, this doesn't neccessarily carry the same negative connotations that it would in our society. I also don't know enough about the proto-Worms to say how their race would react, but the Worm Gods as they are now certainly are something that Wyrms would look down on
-(Yes that means I have thought extensively about the Pale King's ghost bristling aggressively at a baby ahamkara barely a few hours old. In my defense, it's funny, and also I almost never remember to write him as the cold, prickly, arrogant ass that he is bc his kids make him Big Sad)
-The planet would likely be smaller than Earth with lighter gravity, though how much smaller I can't say because I'm not a fuckin' physicist. I just want an excuse for making fuckoff-huge animals a thing even beyond the inherent space magic thing going on
-Oh, and most life is underground because the atmosphere is thinner than Earth and so the upper surface gets bombarded with deadly amounts of radiation, which causes the mind-wiping effects of the Wastes (where the angle towards their sun is the greatest and thus the strongest). Ngl I did briefly think about potential magnetic field fluxes also being the cause of that effect but like, I cannot overstate how little I know of things outside biology
-HK being set on an alien planet lets me do wack shit with the species there too bc I'm no longer bound by comparing them to Earthbound species. For example, I can make Quirrel an isopod with cricket legs. Who's going to stop me, God? He doesn't exist here
-That also means I can stop being bothered by Herrah's dubious leg placement bc it would kill me forever otherwise
-Also, them being on an alien planet gives me even more of an excuse to never put traditional vertebrate species in there, which is great. I've said it before, but putting Earth vertebrates in the HK setting totally ruins all the fun for me because I love the concept of all the species diversity being made up of invertebrates, and that the 'advanced' bugs we see have filled the niche that vertebrates would have otherwise taken over. Like the carboniferous period but on steroids
General HK thoughts too:
-been toying with the idea of wyrms having a set of evertable inner jaws like polychaete worms, which would be used for keeping dirt out of the mouth and biting off chunks to eat, while the outer jaws (the ones we see) are used for killing, digging, and sparring with other wyrms. The idea is that the outer ring of mandibles bites big circular chunks out of the substrate, which then breaks off into tiny pieces they filter out in between gaps in their mandibles and pack down into tunnel walls as they move forward
-I've also been toying with the idea of them secreting some kind of mucus as they dig that's almost a calcifying substance, but now that I think about it, I can probs just put those glands in their frontal mouth so if they need to reinforce a tunnel (like, say, one burrowed in sand instead of rock), they can mix their saliva in with the substrate to chemically solidify the tunnel walls
-Which btw is a major thing for ecosystems bc the tunnels are used for lots of different things by lots of different species. Wyrms are terraformers baybee!! Kinda the same way wildfires are, but still
-I've also been thinking about maybe making it so that the row of plates I like to draw on their backs act as a secondary pair of belly scutes, which means that wyrms can slither just as easily upside down as they can on their undersides, which helps underground. It's not as efficient as the super-smooth scales on a blind snake, but that's the tradeoff they get for needing to be so heavily armoured
-I'm also leaning towards making marine/freshwater variants that are just straight-up bobbit worms on even more steroids, but since I already have fuckoff huge marine alien bobbit worms in a scifi setting of mine, I'd need to figure out a way to make them unique
-I learned that there's internalized folds of exoskeleton for muscle attatchment in my invertebrate biology course and got really excited about that being a potential basis for the formation of skeletal elements in the world of Hollow Knight- like, maybe bug bones started off as those lil folds (i forgot their technical name which is embaressing bc i literally just took the final this night) becoming stronger and deeper-set into the body to better support the weight of larger and larger bugs, and then it spiraled into a skeleton analogue from there. Being derived from the exoskeleton probably means that it would be less strong than our bones, but it would likely also be lighter
Misc:
-God I really need to write Hornet in Silksong so bad. Fuck. I need need need to write this mildly autistic unsocialized princess running amok in a civilization that isn't ready for her. Also my interpretation of Lace is basically an oc at this point but I don't want to do anything with her just yet bc that shits a lot of work, I just need to write everything down for her so far (and tbh Lurien probs also counts at this point but thats more filling a niche that TC left unfufilled)
-I've also got gijinka thoughts in that I'm leaning towards making Lurien a trans guy who didn't have any gender-affirming surgeries bc a.) I love love love making a variety of trans characters and b.) Hallownest isn't a society where the concept of being transgender is an issue, so there's no need to do it to pass, only to prioritize your own comfort. And since Lurien never expected to be seen in anything but his formalware, he never saw the point of bothering
-(The aformentioned point also applies to normal bug Lurien but this is more of a personal thing here)
-Need to focus more on how the latent magic of the god of a realm changes your eye colour, with the more intense the shade = the more involved you are with their magic. Using Lurien as an example again: his eyes were brown naturally, but after he became Watcher, they slowly shifted to shades of paler and paler blue. I also like the idea of Quirrel's eyes getting more blue the more memories of Hallownest he unlocks, until they're the same shade as the Blue Lake in his final scene
-This can also happen in reverse; for example, my Lace gijinka starts off with gold eyes to signify the church of Pharloom's hold over her, but then slowly revert back to brown as Hornet gives her more and more hope that the institution can be toppled, until they're eventually their natural deep brown with just the faintest flecks of silver in them (signifying Hornet's importance in her life)
-It just occurred to me the other day when I was at work that Striga and Morgana from Castlevania S3 are almost exactly how I imagined my Vespa and Herrah gijinkas to be and now I can't stop thinking about it. The main difference is that my Herrah is a fat spider-orc with tats and Vespa is a fae queen with bee features shimmering through her human veil, but still. Its uncanny
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velvetwyrmz · 2 months
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in your specbio au, are collectors biological organisms? To me it makes more sense for them to be eldritch gods considering their reality-warping powers. Does your au explain how they got so powerful?
ohhhh man im so glad you asked. yes they absolutely are. originally i was going with the 'born from cosmic events' but tbib is about being as realistic as possible (which is surprisingly difficult in a fantasy series who wouldve thought). and that WOULD work but for sai direct bloodlines and family trees are like. necessary (its all about royalty and religious politics and courts and shit). and even if by some 0.00000001% chance that the right particles align in space and life forms, it would not be able to sustain itself or continue to evolve, and it probably wouldnt be so complex. so they follow a similar evolutionary path as the one on earth, appearing very human thanks to convergent evolution. also, i couldve gone with them being eldritch beings where collie's human form was an illusion or some shit, but again i kind of need. physical human forms for SAI to work.
now when it comes to their powers, that is surprisingly easy to explain. they are. reality bending. now if we get existential for a moment. we dont even properly know what reality is. as lowly humans we cannot reach the fourth dimension, see colours beyond what our eyes can perceive, and are missing out on a whole lot. theres a good vsauce video on this idea i think. but its surprisingly easy to just go 'yeah they fuck with reality' because of that. not saying they have a completely different set of physics though. just dark energy or something lmao
time to rant about collector history. in their earlier days, they discovered a unique type of plant that managed to convert normal energy into magical energy. through ingesting the fruits of this plant, and genetic modification, they were able to give themselves this same form of energy. it gives them their powers - shadow warping, telepathy, telekinesis, extending their life spans, and other things that break the laws of physics (or maybe they dont idk im not a physics major, if some nerd can explain that as realistically as possible i will love you forever). but eventually the royal family begins to gatekeep this plant so only they get access to it, destroying any other trees before they can be hidden away. so now only the royals and the archivists (aka the top students of their respective schools who are in charge of studying the universe and its organisms) have these magic powers.
oh and btw. the trees in question are in fact palistrom trees. they originate from Gaia (collector planet) and ended up with the titans because of events in SAI. palistrom trees are the only known organisms that are able to naturally produce magic.
now its quite rough and is subject to change, but thats the best way i could balance actual science and the existence of literal magic. in a way physics and math are their own forms of magic, so yeah
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understandableparadox · 10 months
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Intrusive troll biology with Paclus Sacrin
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SS: No quarrieS=S were S=Submitted to me S=So im going to go ahead and continue on the path of bridging our S=Species together through the S=Spirit of mutual realization that our biology is diS=Sgusting!
SS: today we are going to diS=ScuS=S=S Trollian Reproduction!
SS: now to S=Start, im going to S=Say S=Something. You are going to feel the urge to revert to a nearly decade old verS=Sion of yourS=Self.PleaS=Se attempt to avoid that! or don't! im not nearly checked in enough to be worried about it!
SS: now moS=St of you are already acquainted with the bucket thing, trollS=S of each quadrentS=S fill up a bucket with reproductive material before they are S=Slated to be drafted, S=Said materium is brought to the mother grub, then S=Some form of magic happenS=S and boom! baby trollS=S in copiouS=S amountS=S of egg S=Slime!
SS: now before we S=Start up on the S=SuppoS=Sed magic, we S=Should attempt to underS=Stand the concept of a common anceS=Stor, not the mythological AnceS=Stor, but infact the the TrollittoS=Sphex BurmenS=SiS=S!
SS: notably the oldeS=St S=SpecieS=S of troll at the croS=S=S S=Section of a convergent evolution line between S=Some beeS=S and beetleS=S that were Very inveS=Sted in each other. creating a uniquely fucked up race of hyper violent pS=SychoS=S~!  with that we have a more deS=Scribable and leS=S=S alien way for you, a normal human with way to much intereS=St in alien bodieS=S a in to underS=Stand S=Said alien bodieS=S! 
SS: gaining traitS=S from both beetleS=S and beeS=S, you would aS=S=Sume it would be a fucked up croS=S=S S=Section but thankfully itS=S almost full on bee! ancient trollS=S were divided in worker and S=Soldier trollS=S, thiS=S diS=Stinction becomeS=S more pronounced aS=S trollS=S gained more S=Sentience, efficiency and more intereS=St in understand themselveS=S. 
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SS:the SoldierS=S unfortunately never managed to gain S=Such speedy S=Sentience, relying S=Still on the pheromone baS=Sed orderS=S of the mothergrub. who at thiS=S point had a worker troll harem, which iS=S why the mother grub haS=S the face of a troll but no other featureS=S that resemble a troll. that genetic material is processed the natural way and boom, eggS=S and egg S=Slime! just... copiouS=S amounts of S=Slime...
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SS: S=Sorry, i worked a few S=SweepS=S at a brood cave as a egg S=Slime S=Sweeper and it waS=S horrible and one of the few timeS=S i actually felt groS=S=Sed out. I got over it of courS=Se but getting over it and being fine with the egg S=Slime are two  different thingS=S in my profeS=S=Sional opinionS=S
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SS: anywayS=S at S=Some point in troll culture the acceptability of fucking a maS=Sive troll faced bug started to plummet! from what I can S=See the hacking of pheromone S=Signals of the S=SoldierS=S was aS=Stoundingly eaS=Sy for early troll S=SocietieS=S, and with that the ability to preform artificial inS=Semination on the mothergrub with collected genetic material(aka, the bucket). the “Natural” proceS=S=S of reproduction was leS=S=S about the need to create more trollS=S but something more akin to how you humans S=See S=Sex, S=Something for both pleaS=Sure and S=Solidifying relationS=ShipS=S and a way to feel aS=Stoundingly weird  and awkward about becauS=Se you don't know how it workS=S and everyone haS=S an opinion on where and how you S=Should learn it! then it was hijacked by a pS=Sychotic faS=SciS=St regime that waS=S blown apart by meteorS=S summoned by weird angS=Sty teen godS=S but now where back to the pS=Seudo normal S=Sin againS=St nature verS=Sion minuS=S faS=SciS=St control.  
SS: well that'S=S all from me for now, pleaS=Se! feel free to aS=Sk me anything you happen to have questionS=S on in termS=S of Biology, ChemiS=Stry or Alchemy! oh if you need baking tipS=S i can help with that aS=S well!
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blorbologist · 1 year
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percy de rolo - 10
10. Different dynasties.
Spotted hyenas are wicked smart and have social structures similar to many primates! Complete with family dynasties, politics and drama, all centered around the female matrilines. Of course there’s a lot of brutal takeovers, and even the cubs will fight viciously if they’re female - but tbh most primate societies (bar, like, bonobos) can be pretty horrific at times, too. The convergent evolution in a carnivoran which can break bone and take down massive herbivores is fascinating - we need less Warrior Cats, more Hyena Clans.  
Okay, okay, you know what? I have two main ideas for Percy and this prompt
An AU where it’s Vesper, not Cass, that survives. I think the main idea behind this is that it’s Vesper’s line that would inherit Whitestone, not Percy’s, allowing him and his kids to be out of the limelight. Perhaps she was away at the time on family business, potentially courting a possible match, and returns home to find them all dead. And as the big sister, she grew up feeling responsible for her siblings - seeing them dead, gods, thinking that she failed them? She’d be devastated. Percy’s the only one left and by gods does she have to get him out. But she gets riddled with arrows getting Percy out, and - hey, it’s alright, she got one out. One of her siblings is safe, and that’s good enough. I imagine that the Briarwoods couldn’t rely as much on manipulation with an older target, so Vesper might get mind-controlled more than Cass is in the campaign. Percy still has his whole no Mercy shtick - idk where I’m going with this kjtrjnjjgk
The other idea was that there are other de Rolos - maybe cousins or something - and once Whitestone is freed they contest Percy and Cass’ claim. Citing that Cass was under the Briarwoods’ thumb for years, and Percy’s less than savory actions here and there in a propaganda war. For the sake of the AU I’ll say Whitestone ends up siding with these proper, noble, righteous de Rolos, forcing Cass and Percy to see their city saved and yet still pass into unworthy hands. But at least they’re safe, right? (anyways they don’t have anti-magic Conclave defenses so inevitably Vorugal flies over and blasts it, VM swoop in to save Whitestone AGAIN, and THEN they finally fucking have their castle back.)
(Send me a prompt and I’ll write a ficlet, a HC or an AU idea + share the science fact that inspired the prompt!) 
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taxfraudhousewife · 2 months
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how far do i go back before i can stop feeling guilty
i know it wasn’t me just my blood
closest i’ll ever get to sweet white guilt
guilt any european might hold so it shouldn’t matter
from sand made soil by way of blood and salt
from soil never mine but i still long like it is
i don’t care — not me
from soil steeped in seasonal flood
from red the poppies grow
i don’t care — not me
if they came for the jews and the slavs and the gays and the muslims
fuck am i supposed to do with that
if they came for the healers and artists
then i have no choice right
i don’t care — not me
if it’s everyone but me might as well shower with them
i got lucky
the right mix of jew and slav and gay and muslim can be nothing at all
the right mix gets to be niece and cousin of everyone else dragged away
why now and not two years ago
is that what happens when you see one palestinian kids brain fall out her fuckin head
maybe it’s actually the worst thing i’ve seen
is that good or bad
every weird fuckin execution makes me think of you
is that what your last waking seconds were
cold and hungry and probably better off dead
i didnt get the humiliation part of genocide until now
it makes me think of you were your last few years spent ashamed
was it cause of how you turned out
do you blame them like i do
you blame them by the masses i know
but by the man do you blame them
had you not been ethnically cleansed would you personally still turn out like that
i hate them hard like it would bring you back
i know you’d hate it but the thought of you fills me with hate for them
you don’t get it cause it’s you but you looked like shit i’m being deadass
you were so skinny and green and it was so fucked up and i just wanted to cry the whole time
you don’t get it i know you don’t care but that was fucked and i still dont understand
i can’t understand and it just fills me with hate for them
all i know or think i do is
they did that shit to you
i wish i knew you before you lost your fuckin marbles
before they stole your fuckin marbles
i know it’s still you just missing several marbles
but it makes me really fuckin sad cause you’re nice
i hated people harassing me to eat i thought you were sabotaging me
i hated the body shaming i thought everyone was lying to sabotage me
maybe it was cause yours sounded less like an accusation
you of all pieces of shit made me eat and i couldn’t make you eat
i know it’s different i know it’s just convergent evolution
still i can’t stomach it
the thing in my head is always
I COULDVE TAKEN CARE OF YOU
then i could’ve been your right hand
isn’t that fuckin dumb as fuck
bold ass assumption for me of all pieces of shit to make
still i could’ve i would’ve
easy for me to say now
is that how lenins and hitlers are born
whatever it is you got me i’ll die for your cause except i won’t cause i’m scared to
sometimes i feel like it wouldn’t feel right to now
never called myself uyghur but an extension of you
not the village not the elders and children just you
really you and husya were the only things holding my heart there
husya is not okay i repeat the husya is not okay
i hoped you might save him as dumbfuck as that sounds
i thought he’s a terrorist and you’re a terrorist so obviously you’re like friends with his boss
hoped too hard you might be friends with his boss
didn’t think to know you’re not iran backed
he used to be normal i did his online russian course in grade nine
in grade ten i saw him for two days and we drank hennessy on the bus
he didn’t talk about it
not a god fuckin damn idea where he is now
like we don’t even know what fuckin country he’s in
would you happen to know
can you see him from all the way up there
is he blowing up malls is he freeing slaves
does he eat well is it hard to get weed wherever he is
you men and your abandoning
if you’re not in cold storage and you care to divinely intervene
and if you feel bad for my grieving you if you might make it up to me
can you watch over him o holy muslim jesus
make him gtfo while he can
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beetlepedia · 9 months
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the wasp mimic mantidfly is the manticore of the small world. how can you be this shaped and get away with it. deceptions within deceptions. so so so so so crafty. flies are always up to no good and shapeshifting but this one in particular gets me, it's gorgeous and ridiculous
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perfect animal. evolutionary peak. maximum weaponry. the alicorn of bugs. greature. it doesnt have a stinger but when it feels threatened it moves its abdomen in a stinging motion like a wasp,then raises its abdomen and spreads its wings in a defense display. even if it can't sting it's still got the snappers, mantidflies evolved their forelegs independently of mantids, it's called convergent evolution and it's nature's way of saying flies need to do more fucked up stuff right now as we speak
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princeresnikov · 1 year
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okay 1. if you're not wildly obsessed with your own characters then what even is the point? which leads me to 2. Clementine. Specifically I'm obsessed with how well she fits into the White Death's family, like I know it hasn't exactly been shown yet, and a lot of it is in my head, but Clementine, The Son, and The Prince all tend to pick up habits and phrases from each other without meaning to. And the way Clementine was raised means she's got a few habits and traits that The White Death himself had when he was young that end up with his kids too, something something convergent evolution.
Also I'm so mad at myself because there's a big part of Clementine's character that ties into the whole good luck/bad luck/fate theme that I've hinted at/alluded to but never been explicit about and I'm worried about it seeming like an ass-pull unless I'm more direct about it. 😭😭 Because she doesn't necessarily have good or bad luck but fate has played a HEAVY hand in her life, which she actively uses to her "advantage" and it's one of my favourite but fucked up parts of her life...
Anyways can't believe the story is almost 1/3 done already wtf hahaha
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ckret2 · 3 years
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Alright let’s talk GVK spoilers!!!
My reactions as best I can remember them!
- love how Kong is humanized from the very first scene, like every time he shows up he’s humanized so much more than other titans are. If that was at the expense of other titans being made likable I wouldn’t enjoy it so much, but like, Godzilla is made pretty lovable over the course of Monsterverse, Mothra is too, and all the titans featured for long are given recognizable emotions that let us see them as more intelligent and feeling than “just” animals; so all of them are made understandable/likable/sympathetic. But of them all, Kong is the only one really humanized. Which makes sense, because like, big monkey! Basically our distant cousin!
- And they kept playing, like, normal songs for him, which cracked me up.
- I really appreciated how you could SEE the titans in this movie. After all the weather effects to hide the titans in KOTM, there was such a clear difference in this one from the very start. Kong in the daylight! Godzilla makes his first attack at night, and even then you can see him much more clearly than you can for most of KOTM! Nice!
- after the Iwi were portrayed as silent stoic witnesses in Skull Island, I really appreciated that they took an Iwi character, made her a main character, and gave her dialogue and a real role to play in the story while also keeping her deaf/mute. I think that was a good way to improve on the way that the Iwi got got sidelined in the last movie while still maintaining the worldbuilding!
- I didn’t appreciate so much that, y’know, they murdered the rest of her people off-screen in order to do it. Couldn’t they have gone “her parents died so she got adopted by a Monarch agent that was close to her family, but like, the rest of her tribe is fine”? Or at the very least “their island got fucked up so they had to be evacuated but like they’re settling in somewhere else”? “They’re living under this island dome with Kong and they know what’s up and Monarch’s keeping them in the loop and they decided they’re chill with their new dome home, but this one girl likes to go on adventures with Monarch”? Something? Did we have to kill them all off? Y’all make up an entire fictional indigenous culture and then murder them off-screen when you don’t need them? Just let them live.
- a few minutes in I was like “hold on, we’ve got two characters that speak sign language, we’ve got a giant gorilla, gorillas learn sign language, is there any reason they can’t teach Kong?” and then later I was like “OOOOOH!!” Humans and titans learning how to communicate with each other has been one of my favorite themes to explore in Monsterverse fanfic so I was absolutely tickled to see it getting explored in canon, too.
- That said I think it’s hilarious that the girl managed to teach Kong to sign without, like... anybody seeing. Kong’s hands are above the tree line and there are cameras everywhere, how did NOBODY with Monarch see him signing.
- Bernie’s weaponized being an annoying coworker to such a degree it can only be called an art, and I really appreciated it.
- Godzilla’s extra chonky in this movie and I dig it. Roomie noted he was extra crocodilian and I dig that too.
- “There’s been no confirmed titan sightings in three years” I don’t buy that for a minute. They’re BIG. Rodan NESTS IN VOLCANOES. They found a MOTHRA EGG. Humans have A SCARILY WELL-FUNDED ORGANIZATION DEDICATED SOLELY TO FOLLOWING TITANS AROUND. Like, most of the lore in GVK that I don’t personally like, I can be like “eh... I can tweak it just a little bit with headcanons to make it work for me...” but NO confirmed titan sightings? You expect me to believe ALL of them moved underground when we’d previously seen them all prefer to live above ground? You expect me to believe that now that they’re all AWAKE, they learned how to HIDE?? Uh-uh. And at the end of KOTM there was stuff in the credits about using titan droppings as biofuel, obviously they’re still walking around up top! Can’t take that from me. Nope.
- Who the FUCK is Ren Serizawa and how is he related to Ishiro Serizawa? IS he related? Maybe they just dropped the surname as another “yeah this is a Godzilla movie for Godzilla fans” easter egg but I have a hard time believing that he can’t be somehow related to the other character with the Very Important Last Name who was so important in the last two Godzilla movies. If he is related I’m sure it’s been explained in a tie-in comic or the novelization or something, I’ll look it up later.
- I had to look up how much weight huge battleships can carry while writing a KOTM fic where Ghidorah hitches a ride on one, and y’all, I had to pull weird gravity-negating magic to get him to ride on that boat. Godzilla and Kong woulda sunk that boat like a rock. All I could think during that scene is “this wouldn’t work and I know that because I DID THE RESEARCH and I wasn’t even getting PAID.” I’ll choose to believe that Monarch gets special heavy duty ships designed to carry titans but nobody mentioned it because it wasn’t relevant to Kong’s journey.
- The bit where they could see where Godzilla was swimming because he’d got half a ship hooked to him that was bobbing around on the surface, didn’t Jaws do something like that with a buoy? It’s been ages since I’ve seen Jaws. Anyway good reference.
- Insert “they’re gonna need a bigger boat” joke
- I LOVED the part where they shut down all the ships to get Godzilla to leave. Both because, one, it’s a spectacular callback to KOTM’s “turn off all the guns so he knows we’re not a threat” that makes it seem like now that’s just what Monarch knows what to do to get G to chill out, and two... we know that Godzilla backs off either when he’s killed his enemy or when his enemy has yielded to him. At the end of KOTM—and the end of GVK—the act of yielding is presented as very ceremonial and uniform across species: everyone lowers anything they’ve got that could be dangerous (claws, fangs, beaks, axes) and bows to show Godzilla they’re not gonna fight. Battleships, obviously, can’t bow, but even without being inducted into whatever secret titan cultural intricacies might be going on, humans have figured out their own way to “bow” to Godzilla: cut all the power, so their ships can’t move and can’t use weapons. I know the movie presented it as “playing dead,” but c’mon, if Godzilla could hear MechaG power up from halfway around the planet then he could hear that Kong’s heart was still beating, and he’s been around enough boats to know humans can turn them off and on when they want. The humans bowed to Godzilla. He accepted that they yielded and left.
- Mark Russell looked like such a dad in this movie, like he’s retired 100% from being a rugged action hero and now he’s just Pure Dad. I like him better when he’s a dad, it’s a good development for him. He got like 3 lines and I’m like “I appreciate this character development.”
- Despite all my qualms about how conspiracy theories and extremist groups are handled in Monsterverse (and WHICH conspiracy theories they decide to reference), I really love Madison and Bernie’s dynamic. The adult man who’s the excitable wide-eyed believer in every BS conspiracy you can possibly imagine; and then the serious, severe Teenage Girl On A Mission who’s hypercompetent because she was raised for five years by a friggin doomsday cult militia; and despite having wildly different personalities they’re just, in total agreement about everything. Handled just a BIT differently (like, leaving out the more gross IRL conspiracies) they would be a wildly fun comedic duo—especially with Josh the Only Sane Man coming along as the hapless sidekick. And they all play off of each other so well! Both in a comedic sense, and in more serious moments—when Bernie talked about his wife, there was a real moment of empathy between him and Madison with very little said. I’d watch an entire movie just about the three of them. I’d watch a TV show.
- On the one hand I wasn’t too much of a fan of KOTM’s “all titans... are inherently In Tune With Nature... nature has a Balance, because that’s a Real Thing and not an anthropocentric concept to describe how we like nature to act, and they automatically restore it... because they’re like, some kinda borderline divinities or something... we should probably be worshipping them...” thing; but, now that it was totally absent in GVK, I sorta miss it. Like I feel like there needs to be a balance, a few humans who are like “i lowkey worship these dudes?” and a few others who are like “they’re cool but like, that’s a lil extreme” and that neither side be presented as Right in how they regard titans’ relationship with nature.
- “All titans come from THE HOLLOW EARTH” nah I don’t buy that it’s silly. Basically, what I object to is the idea that all titans have some sort of intrinsic similarity (they all come from the same hitherto-unknown location; they all are part of the same pack that has the same alpha; they all are fueled/fed by the same energy source; etc) rather than letting them be SEPARATE species whose only unifying traits are “they’re all big enough to fuck everything up everywhere they go” and “they’re big enough that the typically-insurmountable barriers between different biomes (mountain ranges, valleys, long distances with terrible weather) aren’t insurmountable for them, so even if they’re specialized in different environments they still all have to deal with each other pretty often.” I’ll make some exceptions for convergent evolution (i.e., claiming multiple titans developed similar traits that are relatively easy to spontaneously evolve and a prerequisite for a creature to survive at such a large size). But I can’t buy “this big gorilla has more biologically in common with this big crocodile-iguana than he does with, say, gorillas,” or most of the other “all these titans have THIS IN COMMON” claims that Monsterverse makes, including “everyone’s from hollow earth.” So I’m tossing that out the window and substituting my own headcanons. Some might’ve evolved there but some evolved on the surface. Maybe a majority of them like ducking in and out of the hollow earth like some kind of titan shortcut system. Kong’s species, I can buy, IS native to hollow earth, considering that they built a whole-ass society down there with tools and architecture.
- I’m SO curious about the little underground Kong home, the Godzilla motif in the floor, and the axe that appeared to be made with a Godzilla scute. What’s the story there??? We know Godzilla’s species and Kong’s species are ancient rivals. Is it because Kong’s species hunted Godzilla’s to steal their scutes to make weapons, seeing them as a valuable resource the way, like, early humans considered woolly mammoths a valuable resource—thus making that Godzilla on the floor equivalent to cave art of mammoths made by people who hunted them—until the Godzillas got pissed and started fighting back en masse? Or were Godzillas and Kongs already enemies when Kongs decided to start making weapons out of their corpses? Did they use to be allies, fighting together, with Godzillas voluntarily offering shed scutes and/or bones of their deceased members to Kongs, and that place used to be a shared home until they started fighting?
- What about that power source, is it something that was already there that both Kongs and Godzillas started to deliberately harvest for technology/atomic breath? Or did Godzillas automatically channel that stuff and Kongs exploited/borrowed/traded with Godzillas to utilize it too? Or is the power from Godzillas who collaboratively poured a bunch of power into the place thus that Kongs were able to use it too? I doubt Godzilla’s species CREATED all that weird energy but the question remains of whether, like, they channel it FROM underground, or naturally produce the same thing in their own bodies, or what.
- Godzilla using his atomic breath to dig a hole STRAIGHT TO KONG just to KICK HIS ASS is hilarious. How lucky that Hong Kong just HAPPENS to be straight over Kong’s house! Were all the tunnels to the hollow earth made by pissed off Godzillas who wanted to kick monkey ass??
- I loved the aesthetic of the battle scene in Hong Kong, with the brightly colored neon building outlines, VERY cool look. The choreography of the battle scene was great too, especially
- we literally broke into applause when Kong shoved the axe handle in Godzilla’s mouth. Love it, perfect callback, that was the ONE thing from the original King Kong Vs Godzilla I was hoping to see referenced and there it was.
- You could really see a difference in how Kong and Godzilla fought—Kong doing a better job at using tools and the environment, Godzilla fighting more like a reptile. They seemed to emphasize Godzilla’s more animalistic behaviors in this movie to accomplish that contrast—he was down on all fours and moving like a crocodile more often, he was clawing at Kong’s chest—but even though it seemed a bit different of a combat technique it also didn’t seem out of place compared to how he fought in prior movies. And we’ve already seen that if Godzilla’s involved in a fight and one of the combatants knows how to use the environment, it’s typically not gonna be Godzilla. (See: Ghidorah using the reflection in a building’s windows to see what’s behind him, and recognizing a nearby power source and biting it to juice himself up.)
- So many of Godzilla’s enemies seem to have specialized in negating his atomic breath in order to combat him! The MUTOs directly suppress his ability to use it—and it makes sense that that’s an inborn ability they have, since they evolved to use Godzilla’s species as prey. Kong has a weapon that both acts as a shield to absorb the breath and turn it back against Godzilla’s species—they didn’t evolve to counter Godzilla, but they developed tools once a rivalry happened. Ghidorah’s the exception—which makes sense, since he came from space—but even at that we see him using tactics specifically to take into account Godzilla’s most powerful weapon (such as keeping one head on lookout for when he starts glowing so that they know when they need to dodge).
- LOVED the reveal that MechaG was based off of Ghidorah’s brain, it has vibes of both the Kiryu Saga and the way that Heisei MechaG is based off of Mecha-King Ghidorah. Not the most surprising plot twist, since we’d theorized that they might use San to make MechaG, but I wasn’t 100% sure they were gonna go with it until they finally did. Even when I was going “huh, the mecha pilot’s chamber looks weirdly organic” I didn’t make the connection to WHY until the reveal, lol.
- “Ghidorah’s necks are so long that the heads have to communicate with each other telepathically” that’s COMPLETELY WILD but I love it, it follows very well from their prior portrayal as telepathic empaths in Heisei, it lines up with their emphasis on electricity (because BRAINWAVES AND ELECTRICITY, hey ho movie monster pseudo science!), and it very much compliments my own private headcanon that they’ve got some psychic/mind control abilities.
- The movie ended with both “Godzilla won, technically” but also “since they teamed up as equals, the ending doesn’t FEEL like ‘Godzilla wins, Kong loses’ but rather ‘they both won against a common foe’” and since I’m on both Team Godzilla and Team They Should Be Friends, I’m happy with this outcome. Plus since the last time they fought, the Japanese movie company graciously let the American monster win, so it’s only polite that the American movie company graciously let the Japanese monster win.
- There were just a few too many humans in this movie. I was intrigued by Ren but we didn’t get much out of him, but like I guess somebody had to be in the pilot’s seat other than the Apex CEO. Didn’t care for the author of the hollow earth book, I feel like his role was superfluous. Didn’t need the Apex CEO’s daughter there at all, coulda done without her. How about this, combine all three roles. Instead of having a whole-ass author who knows about the hollow earth, just casually reference that Rick from KOTM wrote a book about it since he was the expert, and (since he wasn’t in this movie) say that he tragically died going to explore the hollow earth himself, and that way we’ve got the book with the “titans are from there” theory AND an excuse to share the “humans die when they go underground” info. Now, have Ren be working for Apex as a pilot for Mechagodzilla, but have him be MechaG’s pilot because he’s also a good pilot in general, and can fly those HEAV things. Have Apex send him to Monarch to be like “hey, you guys trust me right, since I’m Ishiro Serizawa’s relative? We at Apex have heard all about your failed hollow earth expedition, and due to Ishiro I’ve got some past ties to Monarch so I’ve got high clearance with y’all, so I could bring over this useful Apex tech that’d let you go underground and use what I know about hollow earth from my past time at Monarch to help guide things.” Once they’ve got the little chunk of energy stuff and go topside, he hustles it straight to Apex and straps into his seat to run MechaG. Bam, you’ve combined “person who knows enough about hollow earth to help the expedition,” “person who represents Apex’s interests and gets the energy,” and “person who pilots MechaG” into one character, in a way that takes three flat/underdeveloped characters and turns them into a single interesting character with a lot going on and some intriguing ties to the rest of the cast.
I think that’s everything?? Hoo.
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rainhadaenerys · 3 years
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Analysis of the Game of Thrones Soundtrack: House Targaryen
This an analysis of the music of House Targaryen by Jordi Maquiavello. I really love his videos, I think his analyses are brilliant, but unfortunately, a lot of people don't know them because they're in Spanish. So I decided to try to translate this video, one of my favorites, in which he talks about the music of House Targaryen, mostly about Dany's themes. By the way, before I start, I must warn that I don't actually speak Spanish. But I'm a Portuguese speaker and the two languages are very similar, so I think I could understand most of what was being said. If I commit any huge mistake, feel free to warn me. Also, I might skip some parts of the video like jokes or other parts I didn't think were essential, but I tried to keep the translation mostly faithful to what was being said. Anyway, let's start.
Before we start, the Game of Thrones Soundtrack can be found in the public articles of Wikipedia (HERE).
Season 1
House Targaryen has themes related to three characters: Daenerys and Viserys Targaryen, and Jorah Mormont. The first theme we hear in the show is Viserys' theme, "A Golden Crown". Later we will see why Viserys has his own theme and what's the meaning for Dany's character development. What we hear is a harp as the main instrument, and the theme contains several rests (pauses). It's a theme with a mysterious sonority, and finally, a group of violins joins when Daenerys enters the bathtub. It's a very different theme from the intense ones we will later see with Daenerys.
(Link to A Golden Crown)
(Link to the bathtub scene)
In the next scene, we see the first appearance of the Dothraki. Their theme will also influence a lot Dany's theme in the future. The theme is called To Vaes Dothrak, and starts with a duduk. It's an Armenian wind instrument, and it's the main instrument of the Dothraki theme. This duduk is accompanied by drums that play in the rhythm of a horse ride, obviously because a huge symbol of the Dothraki people is the horse:
(Link to the theme To Vaes Dothrak)
(Link to the scene where Dany meets Khal Drogo)
Again, when Viserys whispers in Dany's ears, Viserys' theme plays again, this time with a distant violin. And in this scene, Dany and Drogo's romantic theme, Love in the Eyes, plays for the first time. But the theme plays in an accelerated rhythm, because in this scene, the theme is from Drogo's perspective [I didn't understand everything Jordi said here, but that's the gist of it]. The drums sound progressively, until Drogo and his bloodriders ride away.
(Link to the theme Love in the eyes)
In Dany and Drogo's wedding, Drogo gives her a white mare, and we hear the theme (Love in the Eyes) because Daenerys is grateful for the gesture, but we hear it distant because she still sees Drogo as a brute barbarian and she doesn't like him very much.
It's important to talk now about the musical theme of the fucking dragon eggs, which are chords in a metal wind instrument (brass instrument) that appears every time the dragon eggs appear. It's the "Finale theme", theme of the birth of the dragons, but played softly here in the beginning. (This sound appears in this scene the moment the dragon eggs are shown)
During the rape scene, the theme that starts playing is Love in the eyes, but the scene ends with the theme playing in a minor tonality, because obviously, Daenerys isn't happy.
(Link to the wedding scene)
The next episode starts with the dragon eggs. Again, the fucking eeeeeeh sound. Here, the composition is very interesting, because we hear very distant chords very, played with a duduk of what will be the final composition, because, for the first theme, we are told directly about the dragons, instead of just showing the damned eggs.
When Doreah teaches Dany how to please Drogo (he starts a small rant of why he hates Dany x Drogo), "Love in the Eyes" plays, to prepare us for the next scene. (Jordi then remarks on how incredible Dany's evolution is, when Dany is here timid even though Doreah is her slave, and later she will be confident with Daario). During Drogo and Dany's sex scene, Love in the Eyes plays, but it sounds perfectly melodic now, because they are finally both in love with each other (he then starts to rant against Jonerys haters that say Jonerys was rushed even though Dany goes from being raped by Drogo to being in love in an episode and a half).
(Link to the dragon eggs scene, Doreah teaching Dany, and Dany and Drogo sex scene)
Let's skip some scenes that don't go anywhere and start again our analysis in Viserys' death. When Viserys threatens Dany, we hear some chords that intensify to generate expectation, fear, unease. When Viserys believes he got what he wanted, the theme Golden Crown plays, because he believes he finally got what he wanted. But things get twisted, and we hear minor chords, and meanwhile we see Viserys beg for his life. It's pertinent to remark something very cool, that the theme doesn't change while the gold pours on Viserys, and the theme stops playing just as Viserys dies. Viserys' theme goes with him just as it came.
(Link to Viserys' death scene)
I'm going to skip the parts before Drogo's death, because they have nothing important, and won't influence the soundtrack in any important way. When Daenerys kills Drogo, the theme "When the sun rises in the west" plays. This theme starts with recycled chords from a previous scene, in which the Maegi tells Dany for the first time the famous phrase, "when the sun rises in the west and sets in the east, blah, blah, blah… I am a witch", and then Love in the Eyes stars to play, but there's something important in this composition, this theme lacks something: the drums. The duduk will even play the theme faster, the melody is modified because Drogo has died. The drums that evoked a horse's gallop no longer are here, and the theme is not sounding in a moderate tempo (tempo is the rhythm, how fast a music goes), but at an accelerated tempo. We could almost say it's Presto (a faster tempo), but I'd say it's an Allegro tempo.
(Link to "When the sun rises in the west")
(Link to the scene where Dany kills Drogo)
Let's talk about the scene of Drogo's pyre. The scene uses three themes. First place, the fucking metal wind instrument sound of the dragon eggs that drive me crazy (when we see the dragon eggs). In second place, Love in the Eyes plays for the first time associated with the love theme from Jorah's point of view, when Daenerys kisses his cheek. Here is the first time Dany shows affection to Jorah. Before this, we knew Jorah liked Dany, but this is the first time Jorah receives a show of affection on Dany's part. The theme Love in the eyes plays solemnly, with inverted chords.
In the continuation of the scene, the drums come back, because Daenerys has established her own leadership position over the remaining khalasar, combining with the theme of the dragon eggs. It's in this scene that the theme Love in the Eyes becomes Dany's theme permanently, dissociating the theme from Drogo. Love in the Eyes intensifies as Dany enters the fire and dies. (Basically, Dany has taken over Drogo's role, which is why the drums are not just for him, but for her)
(Link to the theme that plays in the scene, Fire and Blood)
(Link to the scene)
In the next scene, finally, we see the dragons, and the metal wind instrument sound that we we hearing since the fucking first episode. And when Dany starts to get up, this theme used for the dragons starts being played by strings, growing and growing with major chords, until the composition explodes and we wear the theme Finale (basically, the small dragon egg sound evolves into the theme Finale). He hear the strings section together with strong and clear vocals. The vocals will be very important in Daenerys' themes, because they symbolize all the people that follow her and are loyal to her, from here on. The metal wind instrument sounds converge in a composition combined with the Main Theme, with strings, drums and choir together.
(Link to Finale)
Season 2
During this season, the soundtrack almost doesn't evolve. It evolves only in the last episode in an important way. But during the entire season we will have two themes: Qarth, the theme used during the entire season, since we are in Qarth, and Pyat Pree, Pyat Pree's theme. The Qarth theme utilizes an oriental touch of Essos, also represented previously in the Dothraki theme, and later, in Yunkai and Meereen's themes. This preference for wind instruments and exotic scales, especially oriental ones, is due to the fact that Essos is completely different from Westeros. They are different cultures, have different customs, different armies, different economies, and different politics, like how in Essos slavery is legal and in Westeros it’s forbidden. Even Syrio Forel, in the first season, showed us the difference between the two continents in the fighting style. This is why the soundtrack of Westeros is completely different from the Essos one. The contrast between the compositions gives life to the series, making counterpoints between the different plots, Jon Snow’s plot in the North, the different plots in the South, and Daenerys’ plot in Essos. This contrast gives us the feeling of plausibility of the world and the show, and very different tones in the soundtrack, that we are able to associate unconsciously.
(Link to the Qarth theme. It uses a wind instrument and percussion in an exotic scale, in this case, an oriental scale.)
The second theme we see in this plot is Pyat Pree’s theme, the wizard that kills the Thirteen and kidnaps Dany’s dragons. His theme is a dark version of the Qarth theme, with a lot of percussion with a mystical and magical touch. It’s a perfect theme for this character, because he is the magical and mystical side of Qarth. And it’s dark because he’s an evil wizard with not very ethical intentions and methods to get to power, killing innocents and all the Dothraki khalasar that accompanied Daenerys, bringing Dany to the House of the Undying.
(Link to the theme Pyat Pree)
For weeks, I’ve been bombarded by people asking me to make an analysis of the House of the Undying scene, and sincerely, no. The best analysis channel of GOT has done it, and hundreds of channels in English and Spanish have analyzed this fucking scene. Gods! Enough! According to the soundtrack, what is the House of the Undying scene? Just one more scene of the show. Zero musical complexity. It’s Daenerys’ theme, Love in the Eyes, playing with vocals, and when she sees Drogo, it plays the version of the theme from when Dany killed him, When the Sun Rises in the West. And that’s it! Nothing more!
Now this scene is what’s interesting (referring to the scene when Dany finds her dragons chained). Pyat Pree chains Daenerys, and soon Daenerys will say the magic word. Is it the theme Dracarys that will sound? No! Dany’s dragons have evolved throughout all seasons together with Daenerys, so their soundtrack also evolves with her. The first theme of the dragons is Finale, that relates to the brief sound of metal wind instrument, because it evokes their roar and their minuscule size, it’s a birth and growing. But then, this is the first moment when we are shown that the dragons are very dangerous, which is why the theme that plays in this scene for the first time is Mother of Dragons, because the dragons have just demonstrated their power for the first time, and Daenerys has demonstrated her power too, since the dragons have obeyed her orders (Mother of Dragons is an evolution of that first sound used for the dragons). So while this is the second evolution of the dragons (like Pokemon), it’s important to emphasize that this version, Mother of Dragons, is a more accelerated version, with vocals, and with major chords of the theme Love in the Eyes, Dany’s theme.
(Link to the House of the Undying scene)
(Link to the theme Mother of Dragons)
It’s important to emphasize that every season finale of Daenerys, with the exception of season 5, is with her power growing. In the first season her dragons are born. In the second she recovers her dragons and becomes rich by sacking Xaro’s house. In the third season she has a legion of soldiers and people. In the fourth season she is queen of Meereen. In the sixth she has her army and navy ready. And in the seventh season she is fucking Aegon Targaryen. Yes, very powerful finales. But there is something to be explained.
Game of Thrones’s Main Theme has a meaning. And it’s this one: the fight for power, the ascension to the throne, and the fall.
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Exactly. The second season ends with Mother of Dragons combined with the Main Theme because 1) Daenerys has demonstrated to have enough power over her dragons and 2) because her power has increased considerably, from a nomad with newly born dragons and on the verge of death, to a rich traveller with powerful dragons and a ship. They are huge differences. That's why the Main Theme of Game of Thrones intensifies, because her power has grown, just like in the first season, from a khaleesi with nothing to a Mother of Dragons.
(Link to Dany's last scene in season 2)
Season 3
During this season, Daenerys gains two new themes, and it’s probably the season in which her power grows the most. When she’s in Astapor, and we see the scenes with the Unsullied, we hear drums and distant vocals, because they are preparing us for what’s to come. We will associate these drums to the Unsullied’s army.
Like I have commented, when it comes to the soundtrack, Daenerys is a sponge. She absorbs musical themes that are utilized in other themes associated to her, like what happened with the melody Love in the Eyes, that is inspired by Dothraki themes, her several Targaryen themes, like the previous chords of the theme Mother of Dragons, which are inspired by an inversion of Viserys’ theme, etc, etc. When Daenerys obtains the Unsullied and executes her master power play, we hear for the first time this wonderful “drop” (when Drogon sets Kraznys on fire), that we will hear in each season. This sound is obtained with a cello and a double bass and a a tremulous effect. It’s a sound that evokes the roar of a dragon. In first instance, I associated the theme to the title of the theme itself, Dracarys, that is, the theme would play when a dragon would set something on fire after Dany says the word dracarys. This way, it would have a complete meaning. But it isn’t like that. The “drop” sounds twice without this happening. When Daenerys orders the catapults to fire in Meereen, and when she kills the Dothraki khals (in season 6). This… doesn’t make much sense. So… is this Dany’s theme when she’s a badass? Maybe, but then Ramin Djawadi puts the theme in the scene when Drogon kills the Sons of the Harpy in Daznak’s Pit. Daenerys doesn’t order anything, Drogon simply burns the Sons of the Harpy. So this is not the Daenerys badass theme. So what is it? It’s the Targaryen battle theme, both for Daenerys and for her dragons. It’s a drop that sounds before an imminent attack, besides being the theme of when Daenerys takes the Unsullied from Astapor.
Here we have to have something very clear. The theme Love in The Eyes is Daenerys main theme. This theme will sound in all of Dany’s themes. Well, since all of them are variations of this theme, Mother of Dragons is the theme of Dany’s dragons. Dracarys is the theme of the Unsullied first, and later the Targaryen battle theme (to make it clear, when I say Targaryen I include the Unsullied and the dragons, basically Dany’s army, including her).
Dracarys uses Mother of Dragons in a descending scale accompanied by ascending and descending chords.
(Link to the theme Dracarys)
(Link to Dany's scenes in Astapor)
After this wonderful episode, let’s go to the next, when we first see Grey Worm. In this very beautiful moment (when Dany asks the Unsullied to choose their names and Grey Worm says that he will choose Grey Worm, because it's the name he had the day Dany set him free), we hear very soft chords of the theme Mhysa, that will play when she takes Yunkai, giving us a hint of Dany’s position of mother (and a hint of the Mhysa theme that will come).
(Link to the scene)
In the Mhysa scene, the Mhysa theme plays for the first time, one of my favorite themes of the series. The choir starts with a children’s choir. When Daenerys is lifted up by the slaves, it intensifies, and a woman’s choir starts to sound. And when the theme breaks in its climax we hear a men’s choir. And in the credits, the three choirs unite. This refers to Mhysa’s own theme: Daenerys has united men, women and children that now follow her, and is a mother for them all. We leave aside the male choirs, because now, there are civilians following her, not just soldiers. It’s a wonderful composition, an interpretation of Love in the Eyes, combined with the Main Theme in a natural major scale with choir. One of the best Ramin Djawadi has composed in Game of Thrones.
(Link to the theme Mhysa)
(Link to theme Mhysa with lyrics - I've seen different versions and fan translations since we don't have an official lyrics and Ramin himself said that the song doesn't exactly mean anything, it's kinda gibberish, but that's the best I found from what the fans could make. But the translation could very likely be wrong)
(Link to the Mhysa scene)
Season 4
During this season, we have to have something very clear: it’s the season Daenerys takes Meereen, but at the end, things get twisted, and Daenerys takes, at least in my opinion, bad decisions: exiles Jorah and chains her dragons. And the soundtrack warns Daenerys of this. But let’s start from the beginning, Meereen’s theme:
(Link to the theme Meereen)
Remember the oriental and exotic touch we mentioned in the previous seasons? It’s the same. But this city has something special: it’s the older, biggest and most powerful of the previous cities. Which is why the theme has such large notes, it’s a grandiloquent theme compared to the previous ones. When Dany takes Meereen, and we see this magnificent shot of her looking over Meereen from the top of the pyramid (after she takes the city and crucifies the masters), we hear Mhysa, on the scale of Meereen’s theme, as the theme of Dany’s triumph.
(Link to the scene of Dany taking Meereen)
When Dany learns of Jorah’s treason and exiles him, we hear the love theme of Jorah to Dany, when he says he loves her. But when she finally decides to exile him, the theme starts to play with minor chords, and converts into a heartbreak theme, one of the saddest themes of the show.
(Link to the scene Dany exiles Jorah)
(Link to the theme Forgive Me)
And here, it’s where everything goes to shit (scene of Hazzea’s father). One of the last scenes of season 4. The composition that will analyze here is Breaker of Chains. The first part plays when the farmer comes with his deceased daughter to the throne room. What we hear is the theme of the dragons (Mother of Dragons) in a minor scale, with a melancholic touch. The scale continues with a small pause, and the theme restarts when Daenerys chains Viserion and Rhaegal in the catacombs of Meereen. We start again to hear an intensified theme with what seems to be a low trombone with the Main Theme. The entire composition is a negative theme, including making some leaps that the original composition doesn’t do in the same bar (measure), as well as indicating to us that something isn’t well. Like the song’s own title, Breaker of Chains, that reminds us that Daenerys, the breaker of Chains, is chaining her own children. It’s the Mother of Dragons theme in a descending scale with a trombone accompanying it.
(Link to the theme Breaker of Chains)
Season 5
In this season, we will have of one the most complex, brilliant, and better written of the show: Sons of the Harpy. I know this is an analysis of House Targaryen, but I couldn’t not talk about this song, because it’s a constant theme in this season, and its anatomy is brilliant. Remember the scene where the citizens of Meereen hiss at Daenerys when she executes Mossador? According to David J. Peterson, the language used in Slaver’s Bay is Low Valyrian, and specifically in Yunkai and Meereen, Ghiscari. Ghiscari, according to Peterson, is a very sibilant language, since most words have letters pronounced as “S”s. This is why in Mossador’s execution, Meereen’s citizens use this “ssss” sound, that reminds us of a serpent, and the great conflicts in the city start. The slave culture is directed by the mythical figure of the Old Ghiscari Empire, the Harpy. Therefore, the Harpy is the representation of the power of the slavers, their symbol. Which is why in every city of Slaver’s Bay we see in the show, we see the statue of the Harpy. When Daenerys finally takes Meereen, and casts down the Harpy statue from the pyramid, the slavers obviously don’t like it. They create a terrorist group, the Sons of the Harpy, and they have a theme. If we could use a word to define this theme, it’s claustrophobia. It’s a theme that seems like it’s going to trap you, won’t let you escape, an obsessive theme that stalks you. This is why it has chords so firm and loud, the tempo is so Presto (fast), it’s a complete declaration of intention. And this theme starts with a main idea.
It took me time, blood and sweat, but I was able to translate this song. There are no articles of Ghiscari or Valyrian about the word Harpy, or about the word utilized in the very theme, no phonetical coincidence. But in Old Ghiscari, this word does exist. Investigating possible translations, words in Ghiscari and Low Valyrian, what the theme says is the following:
Harpies! Harpies! Queen, we are the sons of the Harpy!
Queen, queen, queen, the harpy comes for you!
You you know what this theme is? It’s the theme Mhysa, but inverted, in a descending scale with minor chords, with the famous drums of the slavers sounding at all moments. The choirs are the most terrifying in the show, brutal. During the season, the idea basis of the theme is used in the scenes of this group, including the scene of Barristan’s death. But we hear these choirs so terrible, so claustrophobic, in the scene of the fighting pits, because nothing can or will escape them in that place. Now let’s analyze all the fighting pit scene.
During the entire battle scene, we hear the drums, until Jorah is about to die, and we hear minor chords of Meereen’s theme. From these chords, they grow, and play during the scene between Jorah and Meereen’s champion. Here, the drums stop sounding, because we no longer are seeing the scene from the perspective of the audience in the fighting pits, but from the perspective of the Queen of Meereen, Daenerys. When Jorah kills Meeren’s champion, the music stops, and we only hear the screams of the audience. We start the second act, where a Son of the Harpy tries to attack Daenerys and Jorah kills him. In the moment the mask of this terrorist group is revealed, the theme Sons of the Harpy starts to play, this time, for the first time in the show, with vocals. The theme grows as the members of this group are revealed, and explodes when Daario screams “protect your queen”. Daenerys takes Jorah’s hand, and the love theme of Jorah to Dany plays over the song, because the love Jorah feels for Dany has overcome the situation that is happening. The composition continues to play, and when they are surrounded, the theme of the Sons of the Harpy is renewed, until Drogon appears.
(Link to the theme Sons of the Harpy)
Third act. The silence is used to indicate to us that shit is going real, and suddenly Drogon returns. The theme Mother of Dragons sounds for the first time in the ominous way we know currently, because Drogon has come back to save his mother. Give me the drop (he says this referring to the Dracarys theme that sounds when Drogon attacks the Sons). After Dracarys, Mother of Dragons sounds again in a solemn way, and more paused when Daenerys tries to pet Drogon. The theme grows while Daenerys climbs onto Drogon’s back, we have one beat symbolizing Drogon's (I couldn't understand) and the theme explodes for the first time in the show, with no cuts, loud and clear.
(Link to theme Dance of Dragons)
(Link to the Daznak's Pit scene)
In the next episode we hear Mother of Dragons again, in the same way we hear in the scene when Daenerys pets Drogon. And after that, Daenerys goes to explore. Why not? Daenerys the Explorer. We hear again the theme that we didn’t hear in almost 5 seasons: To Vaes Dothrak (when the Dothraki appear and surround Dany), and that’s how Dany’s storyline in season 5 ends.
(Link to the scene)
Season 6
Just like the last season, season 6 starts with the theme To Vaes Dothrak. We will skip these first scenes because they bring nothing new, and go to the scene where Dany kills the khals. What we hear when Daenerys throws the fire on them is Dracarys, and the theme grows as the place burns. It’s when Dany gets out that we hear the theme Khaleesi, one of the most beautiful of the show. We hear drums to generate expectation, and Mother of Dragons plays followed by chords of Finale (the theme of the first season finale), because of the parallel between the scenes. Then we have chords of Love in the Eyes, and end with chords of the theme Mhysa, everything combined in the same theme, to show what Dany has achieved, unite one of the biggest khalasars in Dothraki history, and making them kneel before a woman. After Winds of Winter and Dragonstone, it’s the best theme of House Targaryen. It’s the theme of Dany’s reign over the Dothraki.
(Link to the scene where Dany burns the khals)
(Link to the theme Khaleesi)
The next song is brief, but very intense, because of the power of the scene. We see Drogon for the first time in a long time. Mother of Dragons sounds even more powerful than the time Drogon saved Dany, because he is much bigger, and Dany’s power is bigger as well. And it’s important to remark that as Dany’s power grows, the ominous nature of the theme grows. The theme pauses as Dany makes her speech, and in the moment she starts telling the Dothraki that they will be her bloodriders, Khaleesi starts to play, growing in intensity until Drogon roars.
(Link to the theme Blood of my Blood)
(Link to Dany's speech to the Dothraki)
Episode 9 of the season starts with the attack of Meereen by the slavers, and what plays is the Sons of the Harpy theme until we get to the dialogue between Dany and Tyrion (where the music stops). When Drogon gets to the negotiation scene, we hear the theme Reign, that starts with Mother of Dragons on a negative scale, with minor chords that sound apocalyptic, because wee see this scene from the perspective of the slavers, that are scared to death. While Daenerys flies over the ships and Viserion and Rhaegal free themselves, Mother of Dragons plays in its complete form, until Dracarys sounds when Daenerys says Dracarys. The scene ends with the theme Dracarys in its apogeu.
(Link to the scene)
(Link to the theme Reign)
Now let’s finally analyze Winds of Winter, a composition that ends the season. Many have analyzed and theorized that the theme is the union of the Greyjoys and the Targaryens, but there’s more to it. Why does the sequence start with this shot? The Greyjoy banner covering the sun? If we remember, the Greyjoys call themselves the storm that comes when the sun dies. This scene represents this symbolism, because suddenly, the Greyjoy flag no longer covers anything, because Yara’s Greyjoys are not Greyjoys. Her flag is blue, her clothes too, while Euron’s are black, as are the traditional Greyjoys. They look at the flag this way, because they have sworn allegiance to a queen, breaking with their previous customs, like rape and pillaging. This is why this scene is like this. And we see a contrast between Theon and Yara, with Theon serious and Yara smiling. It’s not a union theme, it’s a theme that symbolizes what the Greyjoys of Yara have become. Only the main chords of "What is dead may never die" play, without its main melody, because the protagonist of the scene is Daenerys. The theme continues with the Main Theme, symbolizing power, with the theme Dracarys as a countermelody. Until Drogon appears, and Mother of Dragons plays. When we see Daenerys, the choirs sound at the rhythm of the Dracarys melody, while the camera distances itself and the episode ends.
(Link to the theme The Winds of Winter)
(Link to the scene)
Season 7
The season starts with Daenerys arriving at Dragonstone, and it’s one of the best themes of the show in regards to soundtrack. The theme used in the scene is called Dragonstone, and it utilizes seven of Dany’s themes. As Dany approaches the beach, Dracarys plays combined with the Main Theme, as if it’s a combination of The Winds of Winter, adding bass to the melody Mother of Dragons at a low tone. As the dragons appear and fly over Dragonstone, Dance of Dragons plays, because the dragons have returned to their home. As Daenerys steps on shore, soft chords of Mother of Dragons play. As Daenerys touches the sand with her hands, Love in the Eyes, Dany’s theme, sounds, because Dany is finally home. As Dany sees Dragonstones gates, Dracarys plays combined with the Main Theme, because the dragons and Daenerys are reminded of their Targaryen legacy. As the gates open, Khaleesi and Mhysa play together, because Daenerys is walking to take her throne. As Daenerys starts to climb the stairs, Dance of Dragons plays again, because Daenerys and her dragons have entered Dragontone. As Dany takes down Stannis’ banner, soft chords from Breaker of Chains play. As Daenerys walks into the throne room, Mhysa and Love in the Eyes play together. As Daenerys walks into the chamber of the painted table, chords of Stannis’ theme play.
(Link to the theme Dragonstone)
(Link to the scene)
__________________________________________________________
The translation of this video ends here, but I decided to also translate bits of other videos in which he talks about the rest of Dany's themes in season 7 (with the exception of the theme Truth, because he has many videos talking about this and I want to focus this post on Dany).
Spoils of War episode
(Link to the video analysis of the episode)
I'll skip the Stark reunion, because there's nothing special in the soundtrack. So I'll start analyzing the dragonglass cave scene. The theme that plays in this scene is one that we haven't yet heard in the show (the theme Dragonglass), and it utilizes the Three Eyed Raven theme, of when Bran and his friends get to the cave beyond the wall. It's a theme that combines the themes of the children of the forest and the theme of Bran's dreams from the beginning of the show. The theme has two parts. The first one is when they see the dragonglass (the dragonglass theme combines the children of the forest's theme with new chords), and the second part is when Jon shows Daenerys the drawings of the children of the forest, where the composition of the first part continues, until the drawings of the white walkers are shown, and the theme White Walkers is used. The theme grows until Daenerys walks closer to Jon, when Jon and Daenerys' theme, Truth, starts to play. This time, it plays in another scale, but it's the theme from the previous episode. And if we pay attention, as the scale is changed, no longer we hear the chords of Jon and Ygritte's theme, we hear the theme of House Stark, when Jon says the North won't accept a Southern ruler. As Jon and Dany walk out of the cave, the theme grows, and four chords of Jon and Ygritte's theme play, so we have one more part of Truth.
(Link to the theme Dragonglass)
In the beach scene, chords of Love in the Eyes play distantly, but very low and almost unrecognizable, negative, because Daenerys is angry and doesn't know what to do. This theme plays until Jon gives her advice, at which moment Truth plays again, the version of the previous chapter in the same scale. We confirm what we say previously: in first place, the theme of Daenerys and Drogo plays, and then the theme of Jon and Ygritte plays, but for longer this time. Truth sounds twice in this episode, in the two scenes of Jon and Dany.
(Link to the cave scene and the beach scene)
Now let's analyze the battle. The song that plays in the battle is composed by several themes together. As I said in my analysis of the battle of Castle Black, battles are a pulse between the two opponents. And the soundtrack shows this. At first, we hear the Dothraki screams combined with a line of musical tension, one note with higher and higher tone with beats of timpani, which inspires tension and expectation. Until Drogon appears, and Mother of Dragons plays, the theme associated with Dany’s dragons. But we hear it slightly low, as if the it was lowered by a few tones. It’s the first time this theme plays with a negative connotation, because we see the battle at every moment from the perspective of the Lannisters, and at no moment from Dany’s perspective or the Dothraki’s perspective. That’s why the theme of Dany’s dragons sounds so low and negative.
After she sets them on fire, a theme with progressive beats plays, like the rhythm of horses riding. This theme corresponds to the Dothraki, who are executing a cavalry charge, and again, it plays with a negative tone, until the Dothraki stand over their horses and start to shoot, which is a new Dothraki theme, with a regular progression, on the rhythm of horses riding.
Once again, the dragons' theme starts to play, when Drogon burns the line of the lancers and the wagons. When Jaime orders the attack on Drogon, Mother of Dragons continues playing, but it combines with the Lannister war theme, Blackwater, which has several beats of timpani and combines with Rains of Castamere. The theme resumes when we see Bronn trying to get to the scorpion. When Bronn kills the bloodrider, the scorpion is revealed, and Cersei’s theme plays, Light of the Seven, in a very low tone. It plays because, as we’ve seen from the second episode of the season, the theme plays when the scorpion appears, because it’s a weapon created by Qyburn, and Qyburn is linked to Cersei in this theme. When wee see Drogon, Light of the Seven is combined with Mother of Dragons.
When Tyrion sees the Lannister army being destroyed, the theme that plays is Rains of Castamere, the theme of House Lannister, played in violin, just like House Stark’s theme, that is, in a sad and nostalgic way. Until Drogon appears again, and Mother of Dragons plays in a negative way again. At no moment it sounds with a positive connotation or with the original scale of the theme, because we are seeing this from Jaime’s perspective. Once again, we see Bronn, and Cersei’s theme plays again, and again it combines with Mother of Dragons.
When the scorpion hits Drogon, chords of Love in the Eyes plays, softly, combined with Mother of Dragons, this time, for the first time in the sequence, in its original scale, because we see it from Tyrion’s perspective, and Tyrion is worried about Daenerys. When Dany tries to take the spear from Drogon, Jaime rides towards her, and the Lannister battle theme that was playing, Blackwater, plays again, but with beats of Light of the Seven in the same scale, because what this theme meant was Jaime’s sacrifice for the Lannisters and for Cersei.
(Link to the theme Spoils of War Part 1)
(Link to the theme Spoils of Wart Part 2)
(Link to the battle scene)
Beyond the Wall Episode
(Link to the video analysis of the episode)
As I commented, in Spoils of War, Mother of Dragons is played in a negative way, because we see the battle from the perspective of the Lannisters. In the scene where Dany decides to go save Jon, we hear Mother of Dragons played in this same negative way, because we see the scene from Tyrion’s perspective, who doesn’t want Dany to go, he doesn’t agree with her action and worries about her.
(Link to the scene)
(He starts to analyze the battle, and I’ll skip this part because only Dany interests me).
When everything seems lost, My Watch has ended, Jon’s theme, plays. It’s a theme that only plays in very personal moments for Jon, like Jon abandoning the Watch, Jon’s death, and even in this episode, when Jorah lets him stay with Longclaw (for his children). But it also plays in moments where Jon is about to die, like the Battle of the Bastards. Which is why this theme plays in this moment, nostalgic and depressing, until Drogon arrives. Now it’s important to note that in this season, we saw Dany’s dragons more than any other season. And yet, in no moment does the soundtrack portrays them as positive when they are attacking, only in moments like when Dany arrives to Dragonstone, or when Jon pets Drogon. In Spoils of War, the dragons' theme sounds completely apocalyptic, it portrays the dragons as evil beasts, including in the episode when Drogon burns the Tarlys. And even in this episode, when Dany leaves Dragonstone to save Jon, it sounds negative. So in the scene when Dany arrives to save Jon, it’s the first time we hear Mother of Dragons played in a positive way, because it’s a rescue, and we see this from Jon’s perspective. Then, the theme of Jon and Daenerys starts to play in the scale of Mother of Dragons. It’s wonderful. It plays accelerated because of the urgency of getting away, and that’s the mistake that Jon makes, because the theme of the White Walkers starts to play, in the same scale that Cersei’s theme plays when Bronn hits Drogon, because the two scenes are parallels.
This is why I like Viserion’s death scene so much. When Drogon is hit by Qyburn’s scorpion, a dramatic music plays. When Robb Stark dies, a dramatic music plays. Here, there is no music, because we see the scene from Daenerys' perspective, and Daenerys has not screamed, has not cried, has said nothing. She simply looks at Viserion falling and dying without expression, because she is in shock. She can't believe one of her dragons has been killed, because until now, they were invincible. It's a scene of complete shock, because it's something completely unexpected. The theme Love in the Eyes plays, because Daenerys still doesn't believe it, and is freaking out inside. When Daenerys flies away and looks back to Jon, two chords of her theme with Jon play, but completely unrecognizable and very low, because Dany can't believe in absolutely anything of what just happened.
(Link to the theme that plays in the scene, Against All Odds)
(Link to the scene)
____________________
He starts talking about Benjen, and only about the Jonerys theme, and since I'm trying to focus this post on just Dany, I'll leave Jonerys for a later post. The Dragon and the Wolf is mostly Jonerys, so I won't translate that either.
About season 8, I also won't translate the videos, but I'll remark here on a few things Jordi said about Dany in each of them.
(Link to the analysis of Episode 8x01)
(Link to the analysis of Episode 8x03)
When Dany arrives in Winterfell, King's Arrival, the theme that played when Robert arrived in Winterfell, plays, but with a different harmony (that combines Dany's themes, like Dracarys).
(Link to the scene)
(Link to the theme Arrival at Winterfell)
In the Long Night episode, when Dany decides to abandon the plan and go save everyone with her dragons, and she and Jon start to burn the wights (which gives hope to the combatants on the ground), the theme used is the same used when Dany saves Jon in the Frozen Lake, Against All Odds. This is a theme that combines Mother of Dragons (Dany's theme with her dragons) and Truth (the Jonerys theme). As Jordi says, it's the "Jonerys flight theme", and it plays as Dany and Jon save and bring hope to everyone.
(Link to the scene)
By the end of the episode, when Dany sets fire to the Night King, another interesting thing happens: instead of Mother of Dragons (the theme of Dany's dragons), the theme that plays is Love in the Eyes, Dany's theme. This emphasizes how Dany is important, not just her dragons (my comment: it's Ramin's way of saying that this is about Dany's bravery and selflessness, not just her dragons, that Dany is not "nothing without her dragons", which I love).
(Link to the scene)
In Jorah's death scene, the Main Theme of Game of Thrones combines with the theme of heartbreak of Jorah and Dany.
(Link to the scene)
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shallow-gravy · 4 years
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Ch. 1  /  Ch. 2  /  Ch. 3  /  Ch. 4  /  Ch. 5  /  Ch. 6  /  Ch. 7  /  Ch. 8  /  Ch. 9  /  Ch. 10  /  Ch. 11  /  Ch. 12  /  Ch. 13  /  Ch. 14  /  Ch. 15  /  Ch. 16  /  Ch. 17  /
Word Count: ~4700
Warnings: naughty language, descriptions of body horror
Author’s Note: so this is a special chapter because it actually features my friend @electriicfleur’s amazing Fallout 4 OC Nora Adler and her son Shaun! If you’re into Fallout (or Paladin Danse) please please go check out her series on AO3 because I don’t even like Danse but she made me soft for him Char is such a fantastic writer and her stories deserve all the love 🖤
XVIII. Oh The Bliss II
                        __________
Oh the Bliss will set you free
Oh the Bliss is gonna make you see
-The Hope County Choir, Oh The Bliss
                        __________
Diana does not stick close.
She gets separated from Hurk and Sharky after they briefly think they’ve managed to rescue Dr. Lindsey and a few other people the Peggies were holding hostage. A second troop of cultists surrounds the geothermal springs as soon as they’re trying to make preparations to leave, almost like they’d just been waiting to spring a goddamn trap on the deputy and her friends.
And of all the dirty fucking traps, the illusion of a hostage is the one that gets her.
Just as Diana comes skidding up to the woman, close enough to see the fucking tears streaming down her cheeks, dodging bullets the whole way, she disappears in a sickly green cloud of fog and Bliss powder.
And Diana inhales before she even realizes what she’s doing.
She distantly feels the ground coming up to meet her; isn’t sure, but she might be calling out for Hurk and Sharky. For help. For anyone but the familiar figure she meets when her vision finally comes back.
“Welcome to the Bliss,” Faith says sweetly, with a little giggle, before blowing another handful of that fucking powder straight into Diana’s face.
She doesn’t know if she ever truly falls unconscious. There are colors and shadows and sounds and voices all around her, none of it coherent.
“You’ve been invited into our home...into our heart. Trust in the Path and you’ll find the answers you seek.”
She’s back in that effervescent place, lush grass beneath her feet, fog drifting past in a breeze so gentle she can’t even feel it. She can’t feel much of anything, though, to be honest.
Directly in front of her a tree stands in the distance, oddly lopsided with the verdant growth decorating its branches. She starts forward, bidden by some compulsion she can’t explain. Rabbits dart through the grass in front of her feet, leaving little afterimages in their wake.
She is reminded suddenly, distantly, of the first time she’d smoked opium when she was eighteen. Not even a year outside of Cascade County - barely longer than that since Liliana’d been stabbed by a mugger and left for dead in some dingy alleyway, and God, that should fucking hurt, thinking about that, but for some reason it doesn’t - and one of Diana’s friends had gotten his hands on the stuff from a friend of another friend.
Friend is a term used loosely—they were more like party acquaintances, drawn together whenever someone needed a fix or wanted a buddy for a trip. This feels a lot like that did. Weightless, painless, unhindered by worry. It was easy to see why people got hooked on the stuff and its derivatives, and she’d never touched the shit again after that first time.
She can only wish she had that much of a choice when it comes to the Bliss.
Faith reappears, twirling through the grass, afterimages echoing in her passing before she blinks out of sight in a flicker of fog. Diana tracks the movement only sluggishly, feels herself getting pulled to turn around, watches the ghostly woman shimmer back into existence on her other side.
“Even those who fight against us seek salvation,” Faith says as she drifts closer, little songbirds dancing through the air around her. She flickers and blinks out again, displacing the fog around where she’d just been.
“You’re proof of that,” comes from behind Diana and she spins around once more and Faith is right there in front of her, reaching out to grasp the deputy’s hands and pull her toward where Joseph stands amongst a little group of Peggies all seated in the grass. “We all need guidance in times like these.”
Diana catches motion out of the corner of her eye and can’t help glancing away from the pastoral scene laid before her. It’s never easy to tell what’s a trick here - everything is a trick, really - but it seems like there’s something prowling out there beyond the path, beyond the bounds of the fog.
A chill of unease runs through her, but her attention is drawn back when Faith leans in and whispers.
“Now you’ll see. Now you’ll truly understand…”
“Those on the outside will see what we have built here together, in our New Eden. The love,” Joseph preaches to his little flock, but he turns his head and looks directly at Diana with those eyes that send her hackles straight up and goosebumps racing across her skin. “And they will come. And they will try to take from us all that we have built.”
He approaches slowly, holds his hands out in that fatherly gesture he seems to be so fond of, even as he admonishes her and those she came here with. “You judge me. You judge us; the things that we have done...”
He gets so close he fills almost the whole scope of her vision, touches her, holds her by her shoulders. “You know, people say...that I’m crazy.”
His voice lulls her, disarms her even more than she already has been. She doesn’t know why it seems so familiar until she realizes it’s the same exact tone that John takes whenever he feels like indulging in that deceptive tenderness he’s so wont to use like a weapon.
It would make sense. Even raised separately as they were, it’s almost like convergent evolution; some things, some traits, developed analogously on their own. John’s wielded gentleness selfishly, manipulatively, she knows this - knows a little of his past from Joseph’s very own book - but the Father himself she finds harder to pin down, harder to pick apart; especially as she’s been Blissed out of her mind two out of the three times they’ve come face to face.
“But when you wake up in the morning, you look at the same news I do. Do your eyes not fill with horror?” he asks, turning away from her to look off into the distance, bidding her gaze to follow him.
She sees Faith and their small group of followers again when he finally moves out of the way. And horror rips through her at how the scene has changed while she’s been distracted; those people who’d been so happy, so intently rejoicing in Joseph’s words, lay dead at Faith’s feet. That white lace is covered in huge splashes of crimson. Her smile is full of bloodstained teeth.
“This is the world!? This!?”
Diana blinks, shakes her head and turns to look back at Joseph and her jaw drops at what she sees. He stands there facing away from her, arms outstretched toward the sky, and those shadows she thought she’d seen before are wolves prowling in from beyond the fog, coming in to circle around him balefully.
“This is the world we built for our children!?”
A flash blinds her and she raises a hand to cover her eyes, squinting as a mushroom cloud blooms on the horizon behind him.
“Communities being torn apart!? Walls being erected? Because leaders are too impotent to act! Bullies are too addled to lead righteously,” he exhorts, extending his hand out to her once more, beckoning her forward.
She has no choice. She hears snarling and high-pitched growls all around her, and those wolves are literally snapping at her ankles to force her forward, back into his arms.
“I did not ask for this,” he says, pulling her close as the afterwind from the explosion decimates the trees along the path behind him, approaching at an alarming rate. “I was chosen…”
Diana opens her mouth to scream but no sound comes out, tries to pull away from him to run but she is stuck fast. The wolves are circling, howling now, and the shock from the blast blows her hair back as Joseph keeps his hold on her.
“See, everything is coming to an end. You can feel that...I know you can.”
Her hair whips around her face as the fallout overtakes them, bathing the world in sooty darkness, burning embers falling and sparking and popping all around.
She chances another quick glance to the side, at the wolves caught up in that unholy baying. Their fur is burning, melting away in the impossible heat from the blast.
“You came as a locust into our garden. A serpent. I knew you would. I knew I would have to fight to protect all that into which I have poured my blood and sweat. What I did not anticipate was your causing me to have to turn watchful eyes upon my own family,” Joseph practically hisses as the torrential wave of wind and searing heat envelops them. “You sow violence wherever you tread; I chose to lead because I saw what was coming, and you dare stand before me, before my family, and have the audacity to tell us we’re wrong!?”
The heat evaporates her tears as soon as they’re shed, blurring her vision. It’s an odd feeling in that she can’t feel it, per se, but she knows what’s happening.
Joseph’s voice gets louder and louder even as she watches the skin starting to burn and flake from his bare torso. His tattoos peel and flutter away to get lost in the torrent of debris. But his hold on her is as strong as ever. “You, parading around like some Lilith - some demon - drawing my own brother back into the sin I have tried so hard to purge from him!”
Flesh peels from muscle and bone; his yellow aviators are melting down over his cheeks, fusing and sloughing off with the rest of his flesh. She knows the same thing is happening to her. She can’t even shake her head to deny his accusations, try as she might. She is paralyzed by a potent combination of Bliss and absolute, blind terror. Diana struggles for breath, feels like she’s drowning in heat. Feels like her lungs are melting inside her chest.
“You fight, and you spit poison and you rail against us, and you are blind, deputy! You are blind to the fact that only I can save you!”
His eyes are utterly mad; so full of wildness, so blue it almost hurts her to look. They are housed not by flesh, but only bleached bone now. The fingers clasping her tight are skeletal; she can feel the tips of bone digging through her own wasted and molten skin. Bone rasping on bone.
“Only I can save you!”
“Only I can save you!”
“ONLY I CAN SAVE YOU!”
                                .  .  .
“Is she dead?”
“No. She doesn’t want to wake up though-”
“Are you sure? She was floating face down-”
“Yes, Holly, I can feel her fucking heartbeat!”
“Well-”
“Hold on-”
A sharp crack against her cheekbone is what finally knocks Diana back into something like consciousness.
She wheezes, rolling onto her side and curling up from where she’s prone on the ground, trying to protect herself somewhat from whatever new vague and malign entities threaten her.
“Hey—hey! It’s okay. We’re not gonna hurt you.”
“Ahh, fucking...fuck,” Diana whines hoarsely, rolling over once more so that she’s propped on her elbow. She feels that familiar clenching of her abdominal muscles, knows what’s coming better than she has any right to.
The two women who dragged her from the drainage basin take some steps back, looking at each other with furrowed brows as she violently empties the meager contents of her stomach. It’s mostly river water.
She spits and gags and dry heaves for a few more minutes before one of them, darker-haired with a somewhat angular face, approaches carefully.
“It is her…”
“The deputy?”
“Mhm,” the dark-haired woman confirms. She squats beside Diana, not exactly making any moves to help, but looking concerned nonetheless. “Better now?”
Diana groans and rolls back onto her side, gets her first good look at her newest savior through narrowed eyes. The big silver hoops dangling from her ears catch in the sunlight, blinding the deputy for a half-second, reminding her of her latest Bliss-induced nightmare. “Who are you?”
The woman glances back to her companion, plain and blonde. “I’m Nora. And that’s Holly,” she replies, her gaze drifting back down to Diana. “And you must be Deputy Baker.”
Diana tentatively takes the hand Nora extends, letting the woman help her to her feet. She glances back and forth between the two of them. They’re dressed normal, jeans and t-shirts, and Diana’s anxiety settles a smidge. She reflexively reaches for the holster strapped around her thigh, not surprised to find it empty. “Where are we?”
“Bit northwest of the brewery. What happened to you?” Holly finally pipes up, taking a few cautious steps closer.
Diana’s narrowed gaze flicks to Holly. “The fucking Bliss happened to me. You two know who I am, you must know about the absolute fucking hard-on Joseph and his fucking siblings have for me.”
Holly’s brow pinches and she almost seems to shrink back. Nora, however, puts a hand out in something of a conciliatory gesture, trying to stop tempers from flaring. “Yeah...yeah, we’ve heard.”
Diana lets out a ragged sigh, reaching up to run a hand back through the wet, tangled mess of her hair. She glances up at the sky, notes the position of the sun. It’s morning; nine or ten, probably. “You haven’t seen two guys running around with a missile launcher and a doctor, have you?”
The women glance at each other again and then look back to her.
“Uh, no,” Nora replies a little cautiously. “Can’t say that we have. We’ve been avoiding the main roads—that’s how we found you all the way down here.”
Diana glances around finally, realizing they’re at the bottom of an embankment, on the shore beside what’s presumably a bit of the Henbane. A dragonfly buzzes past, blessedly ignorant to all that lies wrong with the world around them.
“Mom? Is it safe to come out now…?”
Diana whips her head toward the sound of a young boy’s voice, startled at what she hears.
“Yeah. Come on out, Shaun,” Nora calls toward a thick stand of bushes further up the embankment.
She walks forward to meet the child that emerges, settling a hand on his shoulder before turning and facing Diana again. “This is Deputy Baker. Remember, the woman we were talking about who might be able to help us?”
“Holy shit,” Diana mutters. She bows her head and swipes her palms over the thighs of her pants to clean the dirt away. Then she reaches up and presses the heels of her hands against her eyes, trying to gather what remains of her wits in the face of this newest unexpected responsibility.
Holly folds her arms across her chest, meandering forward a bit. “Listen, we’ll help you if you’ll help us. We’ve got weapons,” she says, suddenly reaching down to lift the hem of her shirt. There’s a pistol nestled into the waistband of her jeans. “The Resistance has an outpost at the jail, right? If we get you there, can you promise they’ll protect us?”
Diana looks over at the blonde, a grimace turning down the corners of her mouth. She doesn’t have much of a choice. Not with a kid involved. Even not knowing a thing about these women, but she hasn’t known a thing about any of the civilians she’s managed to rescue from the clutches of Eden’s Gate. All she knows is that she needs to get back to the jail anyway, and if they’re close to Whistling Beaver, they’re not that far from the Cougars’ outpost.
So why does she feel so apprehensive?
“Yeah. Yeah, of course they’ll do what they can for you,” she replies wearily. “The county sheriff - Whitehorse - he’s been working overtime to keep the place upright, but...I’m sure he’ll be happy to take on some more people, as long as you’re willing to pitch in.”
The two women glance at each other again. Diana is still far too fatigued to catch the brief look of trepidation that passes between them.
“That sounds fair,” Nora finally posits. “We’d be happy for any assistance he can provide.”
                                 .  .  .
“Christ, Baker, what the hell were you thinking bringing those two here!?”
Diana frowns and spins to see Whitehorse crowding the doorway, one hand planted against the frame. His mouth mirrors the shape of his mustache; turned down, angry.
She’d been in to check on Dr. Lindsey after hearing Sharky and Hurk had brought him back safely; left Holly, Nora and Shaun back near the entrance once they’d made it to the jail. She’d thought the three would easily find some assistance from Tracey or Virgil.
“What!?”
“Those two are not Resistance.”
Diana blinks. It takes a few moments for her to piece together his meaning. “What!? How the fuck do you know that-?”
Whitehorse angles his head, letting out a heavy sigh. He reaches up to remove his hat, runs his free hand up over where he’s balding. “They’re in a holding cell for the moment, til we can figure out what to do, but I know them, rook—I’ve been sheriff out here a long time. I knew Nora’s parents, and I know Holly. They’re both with Eden’s Gate.”
Diana turns back to the doctor, putting a hand up as if asking him to wait. “Uh, I’ll catch up with you later, okay,” she mutters distractedly before starting for the doorway, straight for Whitehorse. “They have a fucking kid with them-!”
“Yeah, lots of families up and joined the church since they moved in; they’ve got kids, we already knew that,” Whitehorse admonishes as he steps aside to let her past and then follows her back into the jail’s break room.
Diana’s mind reels. She’d been apprehensive, hadn’t known why; thought it was just Bliss lingering in her system, making her paranoid. She stalks across the room, back toward the makeshift armory, Whitehorse trailing along behind her. “So what are you gonna do,” she spits back over her shoulder.
The sheriff blinks, taken aback by his subordinate’s icy tone. He clears his throat, places his hat back on the crown of his head, straightens up and settles his hands on his belt. Watches as Diana stops at the armory desk and rattles off a string of weapons she needs. “We need to figure out what the hell they want. If they’re here doing reconnaissance, we can’t let them leave again.”
Diana takes the hunting knife placed in front of her, and then a couple Desert Eagles, sheathing and holstering her new weapons. Then she takes the AR-C placed on the desk last, checking the magazine before slinging it over her shoulder by its strap. “You got any spare radios back there?”
The woman manning the armory comes up with a CB and Diana takes it, giving her a nod of thanks before turning back to the sheriff. “They said they wanted protection. Was that just a fucking lie?”
Whitehorse huffs, following after her once more as she breezes past him and makes her way through the opposite doorway toward the holding cells. “I don’t know, rook, but we can’t exactly rule out the possibility-”
She stops suddenly in the middle of the hallway, whips around to face him and he almost barrels right into her, huffing again and stopping himself up short.
“So...so what’s their deal, then? What do you know?”
The sheriff blinks and then gives her a withering look, shaking his head at her erratic and anxious behavior. “First of all, I’m gonna need you to calm down and take a breath. Can you do that, for God’s sake?”
Diana fumbles to clip the CB to her belt, grumbles something to herself and then just stands there looking at him expectantly.
Whitehorse sighs, looking off down the hallway for a beat before lowering his voice to answer her question. “Nora Adler’s family used to own a farm out in the valley. When Joseph and his people moved in, they...saw the light, or what have you,” he says with a demonstrative wave of his hand, “up and sold all their assets off to John. Moved in up at the compound with their two daughters. Only, last I knew Nora’d left years ago. Couldn’t stand the thought of losing the farm—couldn’t stand the church even more, way I’d heard it. I don’t know when she came back, and I don’t know who the kid is—he’s too old to be her son.”
Diana absorbs this information, nods her head briefly. “Okay. And the other one?”
The sheriff shrugs, reaches up to wipe his palm down over his mustache. “Holly Pepper. Another local, though she never left. We...used to get calls about her ex-husband. He wasn’t, uh...well, he wasn’t exactly very good to her. But Joseph painted a real pretty picture; had her hook, line and sinker after the husband up and disappeared.”
“So why bother saving me? Why not drag my fucking carcass right back to Faith and Joseph?”
Whitehorse’s mouth twitches and he gives her another shrug. “If they wanted a way in here, you were it, Baker. They must have known they’d be let in if they had you with ‘em.”
Diana fumes. She still feels like absolute shit, but to know that she’d been taken in so easily by the presence of a child? Put everyone sheltering in the jail at risk because of her own ineptitude? Anger lances through her, hot and sharp, fueling her anew.
“Let’s go have a chat, then, shall we,” she hisses through her teeth.
Their three prisoners look up at the sound of the cell block door opening. Diana and Whitehorse make their way down the stairs, and the sheriff shoos out the guard he’d had posted so that they can have some privacy.
The boy, Shaun, sits curled up into Nora’s side on one of the cell beds, his eyes red-rimmed and tired.
She has an arm around the boy’s shoulders protectively, glares at Diana and the sheriff with no small amount of rancor when they approach. “I didn’t think this was what we meant when we asked for assistance…”
Diana stops in front of the cell door, sneers and crosses her arms belligerently. “And I didn’t think I was helping a couple of fucking Peggies.”
“We’re not-”
Nora shoots Holly a withering glare to shut her up before refocusing on Diana, frowning pointedly at the language she’d used in front of the boy. “It’s not like that.”
Diana scoffs and lets her eyes roll to the ceiling. “Okay. You wanna tell me how it is, then? Inquiring minds are dying to know—‘cause from where I’m standing, it doesn’t look so hot.”
Holly makes her way forward, grasping at the cell bars, looking almost frantic as she sees Diana placing a hand over one of the guns now strapped to her thigh. “Listen. Listen to me—whatever you heard, whatever they told you about me and John—it’s over! It’s been over for months, I haven’t even seen him in-”
Diana’s mouth immediately thins out into a tight line. She stiffens, looks at Holly, up and down quickly.
“Goddamnit,” Nora hisses at her companion, “shut up! You’re not helping our case-”
Whitehorse blinks, obviously taken aback by the impromptu confession. “Oh, Holly,” he groans and bows his head, reaches up to scrub a hand down over his face.
“I just—they need to know! Look, we’re trying to defect here, and I’m just trying to be honest with you,” she replies quickly, eyes darting back and forth between all of them. She lingers last on Whitehorse, like she’s trying to plead with the man she might’ve once known, maybe even been friendly with. “And Nora’s never been with them, not really, you just said so yourself-”
Diana attempts to rein in the intense wave of indefinable feeling that prickles through her, attention so sharply focused on Holly that whatever else is said starts to blur into background noise.
“That true, Adler?” Whitehorse queries, turning his attention to Nora. “God knows I’d like it to be…”
The woman glances down at Shaun and then sighs, rubbing a hand over his back reassuringly. “Yes, it is, Earl, I swear it. I—it’s a long story, but...look, when I left I went east, about as far from Montana as I could get before I hit the ocean. Got settled, started working for this independent news firm out in Boston. The Railroad? Time was, they were looking for their next big story, and I was...feeling pretty heartsick over leaving Nadine here with our parents. So, I...told them about Eden’s Gate. Told them there might be a story out here.”
The sheriff’s brow pinches. He reaches up to scrub his face again. “Those three kids that came out here last summer…?”
Nora shakes her head quickly. “No affiliation with me. I never met them, but I...heard what happened. That was around the time I started to realize things were getting too dangerous.”
“So why the hell are you still here?”
Diana finally finds the wherewithal to peel her gaze away from Holly, tries to hone her attention back in on Nora and the sheriff.
“I...I was trying to convince Nadine to leave with me again. But she was so young when I left - and our parents started using the Bliss so often - the cult pretty much raised her. She’s completely devoted, and I...finally realized if I kept pushing, it could get me killed. And I have other responsibilities now,” she explains, glancing down at the boy nestled up against her.
“And what about you?” Whitehorse turns back to Holly, fixing her with a stern glare. “Finally realize John Seed’s a goddamn megalomaniac and not second husband material?”
Diana’s gaze flicks to Whitehorse. She curls her lip, swallows down the nameless thing trying to claw its way up from inside her.
Holly frowns. They see her lip tremble, but she manages to maintain her composure enough to offer up something of an explanation. “I believed what we were doing was right. For a long time. I believed it. I never liked how they were muscling people around, taking property and...and bullying, but...but when people started dying…”
The sheriff lets out a heavy sigh, watches the blonde shake her head miserably before looking down toward the floor. He turns to the deputy after a beat, bushy eyebrows going up. “Well...what do you think, rook?”
Diana puts her hands on her hips, turns away from all of them to scan the opposite side of the room. She closes her eyes for a moment, pushes the thought of Holly and John as far into the back corner of her mind as it’ll go. “I think I need some fucking sleep, Earl. Can we deal with this later?”
“You’re just gonna keep us in here!? There is a child involved in this,” Nora cuts in venomously from behind her.
Whitehorse glances over at the cell before casting his gaze back to Diana. He’d seen her bloodshot eyes, the dark bags underneath them, the smudged makeup. The anxiousness, the irritation in her body language. They haven’t known each other long, but he’s good at reading people. And he knows what somebody looks like when they’re crashing.
“You had another run-in with Faith,” he mutters, and it’s not a question.
She looks at him sideways, grimacing.
Her silence is answer enough. He sighs, reaches up to rub the back of his neck before giving her one curt nod. “Fine. Go take one of the beds upstairs. I’ll make sure our guests are comfortable for the time being.”
Diana’s expression finally softens just a touch. “Thank you,” she mutters, glancing back and locking eyes with Holly for just a moment before starting for the stairs.
“And don’t forget to put a call in to your friends! I’m sure they’d like to know you’re alright,” he calls after Diana as she heads for the stairs.
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aviculor · 4 years
Note
Correct me if I'm wrong but from the guidebook's leaked scans I've seen so far it seems that only Applin is going to get a Gigantamax form, not its evolutions.
The only scan I’ve seen is this one
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You can see the bottom half of its base form up top, which doesn’t match Applin or Flapple, but lines up almost perfectly with Appletun.
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As I’ve said before, this caramel apple tsuchinoko “wyrm in an apple” creature is the one I’m most interested in. Both Flapple and Appletun are really good, but this mysterious entity is my favorite design of the bunch and it’s probably the thing I like most in the whole generation. I would have preferred if it were a normal pokemon rather than a Gigantamax since A) I could have it as a real permanent team member, and B) because it looks like a new, separate pokemon rather than a special battle enhancement of Appletun. But it’s got the three red clouds circling it and the light source for its shading at the bottom which means it’s a Gigantamax. And in other guidebook pages, the Gigantamax pokemon’s base form is shown next to it off to the side. And this thing has Appletun next to it off to the side. It seems really cut and dry to me. Unless you’ve seen something I haven’t.
WAIT A FUCKING SECOND I’M SO STUPID
FLAPPLE IS ON THE OTHER FUCKING SIDE WHERE THE PAGE BENDS
THIS THING GIGANTAMAXES FROM BOTH!?!?!
The line splits depending on what game you have, and then converges??? That’s so cool!!!!!!
The rest of what I said about wanting it to be a normal pokemon rather than a 100-foot-tall temporary powerup I can only conjure for 5 turns in specific areas still stands though.
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silvysartfulness · 4 years
Note
10, 14, 19, 41, 44!
Ahh, thank you very much for the Ask! :D
10.  Is there a fandom you read fic from but don’t write in?
Actually, I haven't really read fanfic in a very, very long time? I do love fanfic, I just haven't been invested enough in any fandom to gather spoons enough to read fiction in a long time. I've mostly lived in my own original storyverse Pangaea for the past three years or so.
I think the last fandom I actually read some fic for was the MCU in the early days of the first Avengers movie? I was relatively into frostiron for a while and helped my wife beta her fics Spiting The Sun and Do Ut Des, as well as reading some other fics I unfortunately can't recall the names of.
14. Go on, who are your BroTPs?
I love Wei Wuxian's and Wen Qing's dynamic! It's so so so rare to see a male-female friendship that isn't romance coded.
Literal bros with amazing dynamic would be Wei Wuxian and Jiang Chen, because who needs their heart anyway.
19. Is there a ship which you wished you could get behind, but you just don’t feel them?
Several, but it's a lot more to do with brain fatigue than aversion to the ships themselves!
I wish I had the energy and focus to read more XiYao, I really do love their chemistry a lot. (I may be on a slippery slope there, we'll see. Maybe I'll point back to this post in another month and laugh hollowly and say ”ahaha, guess I should have seen that obsession coming”. Or not. Who can tell? Not me. I just work here.)
I also... both kind of love and hate SongXiao? Like, I love their dynamic, but there seems to be a very black and white (ba-dum-tsh) view that they're the acceptable pure cinnamon pairing in opposition to the problematic clusterfuck that is XueXiao - and since I'm very much into XueXiao, I daren't look too deeply into SongXiao since there's almost always a very negative vibe regarding Xue Yang and Yi City there. But as two parts of the SongXueXiao disaster that I love, I definitely like them a ton.
SangChen? Is that the shipping name? One of those I can see would be fun, but am just not really feeling it.
To be honest though? I'm a thot for good writing and characterization and if something good enough pops under my nose, I'm very willing to give it a shot, no matter the pairing.
41. List and link to 5 fanfics you are currently reading:
I'm still very new in this fandom (hard to believe it's only been a bit more than a month since I jumped in!) and with my brain getting easily overworked, I actually haven't read all that much?
But let's see if I can scrape together 5 fics I read or have read!
1. Chopping Block. This has got to be one of my fave (Song?)XueXiao fics. The way the characters are handled is beautiful, and there have been several of those gut-punch ”oh.” moments where the hurt is so, so good. (The ”his hands get cold” scene, man. MAN.)
2. Red Azalea. This is another utterly charming (Song?)XueXiao fic, a delightful capricious post-Yi-City dance that will also deliver the occasional devastating emotional backhand.
3. My Erstwhile Dear. Aka the fic that decisively picked up my heart and rubbed it face-down into XiYao to the point I'm even on that slippery slope to start with. I find myself thinking about this fic a lot. Like. I probably get distracted thinking about it on an almost daily basis, hoping it'll update. The format of written letters delivers the hurt in such an elegant way, you just gasp for breath.
4. Rewritten. Found this because you rec'ed it! One of the very few modern au's on my list (nothing against modern au’s as such, just not my favourite trope, especially for this show) and damn. Hngh. One of the best openly SongXueXiao fics I've read. The character dynamics, the characterization, the whirl of the timeline layout and the background plot slowly creeping into view... Fucking masterpiece.
5. I'm not being creepy, I promise, but pretty much anything you've written for this fandom? Like, that is literally the last thing in my open fic tabs? Picking one single one is super-hard, but This Place Could Be Beautiful is the one I have bookmarked to browse your stuff, it actually had me literally tearing up reading it, and that's a very good thing? Lick Your Exit Wounds is another one I've re-read several times. Exposure Therapy for some good lighthearted fun (which, still, had me literally tearing up at the part where WWX just so quietly and resignedly asks if he's done something wrong, damn you) And tbh? I. Cannot. Wait. for the fucked up SongXue roadtrip. I cannot. Like. Its state of non-existence torments me. Torments me.
44. What ship do you feel needs more attention?
All mine, of course. (insert ”those pairings were mine, those other OTPs were other people's”-joke here.) Seriously, I'd love for more well written, messy SongXueXiao. XueXiao is also very, very good. And since it seems I at least glance in its direction these days, why not, more XiYao.
And honestly? I have the largest soft spot for any interaction between Wei Wuxian and Xue Yang. Whether sexy or just snarking off doesn't matter (doing both is a bonus).
They are such absolute parallels, the sassy street kids who climbed their way up and through convergent evolution became founders and inventors in a whole new area of cultivation. Never really fitting in - but unlike, for example, Jin Guangyao, who lives and breathes propriety and etiquette to get to own be part of that society, they both just give the cultivation world a big middle finger and walk their respective single plank bridges into the dark. If not for their opposite stances when it comes to caring about other people, they could have been something amazing together. (The whole ”I suffered so I will make sure no-one else will” vs ”I suffered so why shouldn't they?” approach in action there.)
I’m very weak for this, okay, and my brain often tells me delightful stories where they just snark endlessly at each other and it’s beautiful.
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boymeetsmxm · 4 years
Text
June 2020 | #1
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Every month, we ask our reader members to rec us some BTS works they’ve enjoyed. The works can come from any source (AO3, Tumblr, Twitter, Wattpad, etc.), can be either a fanfic or a SM AUs, and doesn’t have to be from our own writer members. We’ve compiled this month’s recs in this list; Happy browsing!
SFW | Fanfic
Pull me under by Oh_Hey_Tae (AO3)
 Fluff | Pining, E2L | Oneshot
Summary: Hoseok works at a summer resort and Namjoon is the newest lifeguard. Chaos ensues.
@galaxiejoon​​ said: this is one of my favorite Hoseok/Namjoon fics, its very cute, funny, and sweet. 
How to get away with blind dates by Tsoookie (AO3)
Fluff | Fake dating, College Au | Oneshot
Summary: Kim Seokjin is already at that age where he probably should get rid of his single since birth status. His roommates, Namjoon and Yoongi wants to help him but Seokjin refuses to accept it. After all, why would he agree to date someone he doesn't even know?
@tigertaehyunq​ said: just a cute little fic on Taejin that warms my heart. I love the characters, the way the story is written and how it progresses. The plot twists are fun too. 
Coalescing Memories by @dawndrms​
Fluff | Mutual pining | Oneshot
Summary: Taehyung and Hoseok have always been close, closer than close but they never seem to get that their feelings for each other are mutual despite already acting like boyfriends.
@bangtiddies​​ said: ah this fic was so sweet and cute!! the domestic simplicity between hobi and tae, annoyed yoongi just wanting them to finally admit their feelings for each other, hoo boi i'm soft.
NSFW | Fanfic
Glass Diamonds by Ginforink (AO3)
Smut, Angst | Pining, Denial of feelings | Oneshot
Summary: Jungkook accidentally fires his skateboard through the window of a dance studio.
@joopiterjoon​​ said:  I liked this because it was tropey: Skaterboy Jungkook falls for Dancer Jimin. I don't read this kinda Jungkook often but this couple and their interactions felt real while also having 90s movie vibes.
Sweeter than sweet by @j-sope​ (Tumblr)
Angst, Fluff | Pining, College Au | WIP
Summary: In his second year, Hoseok discovers dance, befriends Jungkook and his silly friends — and makes the mistake of falling head over heels for Park Jimin’s boyfriend.
@hobiance​​ said: i love this fic for many reasons! it's wonderfully paced, and although sometimes you feel like you just want to throttle sope because they're being such emotionally constipated boys in denial, it's the perfect balance of angst and fluff. it's never so sad you're heartbroken, but it keeps you on the edge of your seat-- and there's some amazing comedic relief tucked into the story as well. genuinely one of my favorite fics of all time!
Got a kiss (with your name on it) by Orphan_account (AO3, account required)
Fluff, Smut | Oneshot
Summary: “I just—I just thought, like. Maybe I wouldn’t be so horrible if someone more experienced than me taught me what to do.”
@megahwn​​ said: I'm reccing this work because it's one of the first Taekook fics I ever read, and it holds a special place in my heart for that reason. The smut is sweet and gentle and their relationship is so believable in its evolution. I definitely reccommend it! 
Fake sugar by Minverse (AO3, @park-loins​ on Tumblr)
Crack, Angst, Fluff | Fake sugar daddy au | Completed Series
Summary: Hedge Fund wunderkind and Certified Awkward Gay Jungkook needs a sugar baby to show off at work, and Professional Competitive Eater and Objectively Beautiful Human Jin just wants to stop working shitty side-jobs. Fake Sugar Daddy AU. A trope and a half.
@joonsrack​ said: Jinkook was never on my radar until I read this masterpiece. I didn’t think they would work but it did, so much. The author brought to life the characters so vividly, I kind of miss them ever since I finished this masterpiece. The humor is grad A worthy of its own award, the plot is hilarious and original and everything you need to keep warm at night. The relationships in this (be it the platonic ones or the romantic ones) are just so well mapped out. Minverse is honestly the best writer I’ve ever read, be it from fanfic or published book.
A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Epenthesis in Academic Convergence by Bazooka (AO3, account required)
Angst, Fluff, Humour, Smut | College au, Teacher au, E2L | Completed series
Summary:  Epenthesis; A phonological phenomenon in which two disparate sounds meet, creating a third sound between them which wasn't there before.
There were a lot of jobs worse than being partnered with world-renowned Absent-Minded Professor Kim Namjoon, but Professor Kim Seokjin couldn't think of what any of them were at the moment.
@joonsrack​ said:  Im reccing this fic because the namjin in this gives me life. They're just two dumbass perfect for each other if they could just stop being dense for like, one second. I also love the format the writer used, with the hilarious teacher/course rating. It sets the tone perfectly for the story. 
Same damn hunger by Orphan_account (AO3, account required)
Angst, Smut | College au, FWB, Slow burn | Oneshot
Summary: When it comes to fucking around with his best friend, Yoongi follows two rules:
1. They must be inebriated.
2. They must not kiss.
@j-sope​​ said: I will never shut up about this fic. this fic is brilliant. both yoongi and hobi are so well written, their relationship is beautiful and it's definitely the sope fic. who knew a kiss could be so important? it's funny, full of feelings, there's the perfect amount of angst to balance everything. the dialogue and writing style were amazing, everything about this fic is amazing, tbh you don't even have to stan sope to have a good time with this. it's the sope bible. idk what else to say i just love it, nothing will ever top this ever 2145145/10 
SFW | SM AUS
None this month
NSFW | SM AUS
None this month
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ptrparkcrs · 4 years
Text
& you say rise above (self-para)
summary: peter meets an old friend in an unexpected place and faces dire consequences word count: 3002 trigger warnings: violence, injury, death mention, spider-man cops (completely useless, but existent)
It was ten seventeen PM. He had been at work late, probably too late, troubleshooting something small and nitpicky that even he barely understood. At least there was always food somewhere in the building, and FRIDAY liked him enough to not yell at him when he stole a second donut, or a third, or when he ordered an extra-large pizza on Tony Stark’s credit card. As long as he didn’t leave his workspace too greasy and saved some leftovers for Tony, he’d probably be fine.
Whatever it was he had been supposed to be working on, clean energy or artificial intelligence or consumer goods or fancy sunglasses, it probably wasn’t supposed to have been reconstructing the lenses of Spider-Man’s mask to better conform to his facial expressions, but Peter had had to do some repairs after Gabby had torn the thing to shreds. If Tony caught him sewing on the clock, what was he going to do? Let Spider-Man go without a mask? Put Peter’s life at risk? No, he’d be fine. He’d been too antsy to focus on real work, his ribs still healing, his face still a little tender. He’d needed a concrete physical distraction and the satisfaction of knowing he was fixing something.
(He’d be totally fine in a day or two; he was almost there, but Gabby had done a pretty solid number on him. Broken ribs, a black eye, scabs where the pavement had rubbed his chin raw, the whole shebang. He told everyone it was a bike accident, even though he didn’t own a bike, because nearly beaten to death by a chemically ramped-up teenager wasn’t something that could realistically have happened to completely normal, non-superhero guy Peter Parker. In retrospect, he should have said he’d crashed his skateboard into a taxi again, which he had done more than once in high school, but hindsight was 20/20.) 
Still, the time spent on the mask during the day had meant a pile of unfinished work, which had meant staying at the tower later. Peter knew that, as best as he’d tried not to be, he was a nepotism hire. He’d waltzed into Stark industries with little training and few qualifications, and he was determined to prove that he was just as suited to be here as anyone else. Yeah, he’d had the internship, but he’d gotten that through sheer dumb luck and minor internet fame, and he and Tony both knew it had been a cover, anyway. Yeah, he had a college degree, but most of his actual work experience had been mediocre photography for a vaguely predatory, second-rate newspaper. He’d been a child prodigy, sure, but last he’d checked most child prodigies peaked sometime around high school, and building the Spider-Man suit for personal gain wasn’t about to go on his resume. He knew any interview process he’d gone through had been performative; he knew that the job had been his no matter what, so long as he hadn’t actually blown up the company. He didn’t want Tony to regret his decision, and he really did want to keep his job. That meant actually doing his work, even if he did have to stay long past dark.
So he’d finally finished—the work and the mask—and headed home to find Sandwich demanding a second dinner and a walk. Fine. Okay. He could do that.
“All you’ve got going for you is your body, bud,” he said. “Don’t know why you’re so determined to ruin that.” Sandwich was beautiful, in a scraggly rescue dog kind of way (Aunt May said he looked like the dog from Annie, which was probably a compliment), but he was also dumb as a rock. He put a few treats in the bowl anyway and went to find a leash.
As he dug through the storage cube where he was sure he’d left the good collar, Peter heard sirens. They sounded close, maybe a few blocks away, and getting closer. His police scanner was on his nightstand, but there wasn’t time to check. Sirens were as good a cue as any.
“I’ll be back soon,” he told Sandwich, as he grabbed his suit from the pile on the floor, pulled it on, and headed towards the window. “We’ll walk later. Promise. Please don’t eat the couch again while I’m gone.”
The dog grunted and went back to eating.
&&&
Web swinging was hard today. His body groaned with every movement, resisting the stress of his acrobatics. Still healing. He hadn’t realized she’d gotten him quite that badly; he’d been up against way worse than a single teenage girl, but he hadn’t had anyone try so determinedly to kill him from such close range in a long time--not since Norman, or maybe Harry, but that had felt a little more reluctant. Fine, he’d go easy on the somersaults.
So long as whatever was up there wasn’t a troupe of murderous acrobats, he’d probably be okay. At least the new mask was holding up well.
What was up ahead, three or five or seven or twenty-six blocks from his apartment, he’d lost count, was—lights. Sirens. Yelling. A strange, echoing thump-thump. Shit. He dropped himself onto a rooftop to survey the scene, his ribs only groaning a little bit as he landed in a crouch. A bank, long closed for the night, its windows smashed. A row of police cars, like a barricade. Coming in from the north, fire trucks, an ambulance. A small throng of bystanders, their phones out, edging around the scene. A trail of broken asphalt running away in the opposite direction.
And in the middle of it all, a figure.
A man, maybe. In a long jacket, something more than the night obscuring his face. He—if it was a he—didn’t seem very big, but he hovered several feet above the ground, supported by what appeared to be a pair of giant robotic arms. Another pair spread wide into the night air, lashing at anyone who tried to approach.
Peter was pretty sure he’d seen those arms before, or something very like them. Mostly in sketches, then once or twice in a lab in college, never in use, just propped up safely against the back wall. They help my dexterity, Peter. More precise.
But that had been in a secure research lab up at Columbia, where the arms had helped a man’s clumsy hands study nuclear physics at an atomic scale, not ravage a bank on the Lower East Side. Stolen tech, maybe? A copycat? Convergent evolution, two people independently building the same machine at the same time? But what were the odds of that, really? These were robotic arms, not clean energy or self-driving cars. It was too niche. Who was this man, and what could he want?
He swung down, closer, landing on the hood of a police car. The officer standing next to it looked down at Peter and sighed.
“Hey, Spider-Man,” he said. “You can go home. We’ve got this.”
Peter tethered himself to a lamppost closer to the bank and leapt off the hood, angry at his stupid fragile body keeping him from somersaulting away for maximum dramatic effect. “That’s what you always say, Bill.”
“It’s David.”
“I really don’t care.”
He landed on the lamppost, but just barely. The many-armed man had seen him coming and was getting closer, one of his robotic limbs swiping at Peter’s perch. Peter leaped off before the pole could crash down and rolled to the ground, where he finally got a good look at his assailant.
He hadn’t imagined it. He knew those arms.
“Doctor Oc—"
Doctor Octavius. His thesis advisor. A kind, absentminded, academic type, the brand who left their office littered with sticky notes to remember to buy milk, who replied to emails four days late at two in the morning. He’d called Peter a genius kid, said he’d had what it takes to save the world. Because that’s what scientists do, Peter. We change things. We fix them. We make them better. We help the people who can’t help themselves—you get that, don’t you?
Oh, he got it.
Doc was wearing glasses, and his jovial smile had twisted into a sneer, but it was unmistakably him. He lowered himself to the ground, all four metal arms swirling around him.“Oh, great,” he said. “It’s the bug boy. What, couldn’t send any of the real superheroes to stop me? Daddy too busy arresting innocent people?”
With all due respect, Peter thought, what the fuck? Sure, he wasn’t an Enforcer, but his old professor going on a crime spree with a set of weaponized robot arms, probably having some sort of episode, called for enforcement.
He lifted himself off the ground slowly. His body was already screaming for a break, and they were barely getting started. “Look, dude, I respect the whole eight-legs thing, but you don’t gotta be so literal about it. It’s kinda—what’s the word? Tacky.”
Doc lunged at him; Peter dodged. “Wait, no,” he continued. “Kitschy. Campy. Gaudy.” Another swipe, another dodge. “No, I was right the first time. Tacky, it’s tacky.”
The next swipe came from behind him, and Peter jumped out of the way just in time. “What do you even want, Doc? For a guy in tights to teach you that robbing banks and taking hostages is wrong? Congrats, you got it!” He didn’t know if there were hostages; he’d been too stunned by Otto to check, he just assumed there were. There were almost always hostages when the guys in costumes got involved.
“How do you know my name?” Octavius growled.
Yep, there were hostages.
“I dunno, it was just a vibe. You kind of look like my dentist.” And the man who shaped my college career, but same thing.
Most nights he could go on like this forever. Banter, dodge, punch, jump, repeat. Talk him into submission, until he was too worn down by Peter’s endless punchlines to punch back.  Tonight, he was tired. He was injured. He had a dog at home waiting for a walk. This needed to be quick—rescue the hostages, get Otto taken in and looked after. (Kindly, he hoped; the Otto Octavius he knew was a good man, and was probably in there somewhere, scared and confused.) In the morning, maybe Peter Parker could call to innocently, coincidentally check in on his old mentor and get the full story.
“You’re a nuisance, Spider-Man. You know that, don’t you?”
“So it said on my report cards.”
Octavius stepped closer, and Peter webbed one of his metal legs to the ground, but he kept swiping. In his real arms, the human ones, Peter could see a briefcase, presumably full of the stolen money or techno-weapons for looting safety deposit boxes. So he already had what he wanted, but still the hostages, still the rampage, still the crazed look behind those horrible dark goggles. Peter could deal with him, the cops could free the hostages, they’d be fine, this was fine, everything was going to be fine.
But how had this happened—why had this happened? Did he poison everyone he touched? Ben, Gwen, Norman, even Harry, all either dead or driven mad by his proximity. Who next? Tony? May? Steph? MJ? His high school science teacher? His next-door neighbors?
You ruin everything, Peter Parker. They’re safer if you don’t love them, if they don’t love you. You’re a time bomb. A nuclear blast. Look at what you do to them. What you’ve done. You’re not worth it.
His spider sense alerting him to an incoming blow put a pause on the cycle of self-loathing. He couldn’t dodge in time, and an angry fist landed hard against his face. He groaned, and he tasted the blood from his (now probably broken) nose as it dripped into his mouth. “What do you want, Otto?” he spat.
Shit.
“Doctor” he could get away with as a joke, but how would Spider-Man know Doctor Octavius’s first name? He wouldn’t, that’s how. Not unless they knew each other in real life, civilian life, faces uncovered and feet on the ground. Peter, you idiot. His cover, which he had so carefully maintained for the past eight years, was about a minute from being blown by an academic in octopus cosplay. 
This shouldn’t have been happening. He was a professional, he was good at this. He had learned from his past, he was doing better, and these were amateur mistakes. He was off his game, that’s what this was. He was exhausted, injured, overworked, stunned by the improbability of it all. His whole life was improbable; he should have known to expect this kind of thing by now, but he wasn’t convinced he wasn’t living out some middle schooler’s sadistic Mad Libs. He still had time to fix this.
Otto said nothing; he just laughed.
Peter tried to launch himself in the air for a swing and a kick, but his reflexes were slowing, his injuries worsening. Whatever healing he’d done had been set back several days, and every movement was more labored than the last. Before he could evade, the arms, all of them now free of webbing, wrapped themselves around him and pulled him in. Peter hissed in response, his exhalation short and shallow, doing his best to suppress a yelp.
“Oh, come on. Personal space, dude,” he said, and the top left arm pinched his wrists together in response. He was now being held fast in evil, sentient handcuffs, no hopes of swinging away in sight. Nothing this stupid would have happened to Tony; Tony would have had lasers and lights and taken out this guy in minutes. Hell, he could have called in the Iron Legion for backup if he’d wanted, but a single man didn’t deserve it. Peter was a disappointment, again. This should have been so easy, and yet.
And yet.
Peter wasn’t Tony Stark.
“Otto,” growled Octavius.
Peter said nothing.
“Why did you call me that?”
This time, Peter squirmed. He was being held tightly, so tightly. His wrists were raw, his chest burning, and at some point, he had started to bleed. Work was going to have to buy bike accident twice this week. ”I told you. You look like my dentist. His name’s Otto. It was a lucky guess.”
“Somehow, I don’t believe you.”
His head spun and his mouth tasted like iron and asphalt as the world tunneled in around the edges of his vision. His hands still tied, he tried to gain some leverage with a kick, but the other arms squeezed even tighter until he was sure he felt a crunch. Great. This was it, this was how he died. Sometime around midnight outside a random bank because his college thesis advisor had taken up a life of crime and he’d been too weak and injured to do anything about it. Yeah, that tracked.
“Who are you, Spider-Man?”
Peter couldn’t speak, couldn’t move, could only steel himself as his spider sense turned on high alert. Imminent danger, big time. Yeah, he got it. With the human hand not holding the briefcase, Otto pulled the mask from his head.
And immediately dropped him, limp and winded and battered, to the ground.
Peter’s bare skin was so cold, the streetlights so bright, every sound and smell heightened without the mask.
Otto’s face had cleared with recognition, and his sneer fell away. “Peter?”
Peter groaned. Then he peeled himself off the ground and launched a flurry of web bombs until Otto was wrapped tightly all over. It wouldn’t hold long, but it would have to hold long enough to get him taken safely into custody. Locked up in the Raft for ten to life, a brilliant man’s work cut short by his own creation. (Was it too soon to make Frankenstein jokes?) But Peter couldn’t think about the tragedy of it yet. He had to keep moving.
He kept his head down until he found the mask by Otto’s feet. His hands were shaking, and it took impossibly long to fit it back over his head. It was twisted or too small or made for someone else entirely, bunching around his neck and pulling uncomfortably against his swollen face. And then he stood up, wobbly and wheezing, and faced the officers who were pulling the hostages from the building. Maybe they’d been inside. Maybe they hadn’t seen him. Maybe it was okay.
“You’ve got this from here, Bill,” he said, and, with every ounce of willpower he had left, he swung away on shaky arms to pick up his dog, call Aunt May, and hide in his childhood bedroom for the rest of his life.
&&&
The officers may not have seen him, but there had been bystanders. There are always bystanders, just like there are always hostages. They have cameras. They have social media. They flock to danger, to drama, to sensationalism. They post suffering for the likes and the retweets and the fleeting moments of fame. A Spider-Man sighting was pretty commonplace--novel, but not extraordinary. But this tableau, a hero in crisis, an identity revealed, that was media gold. This was a millennial icon’s Pyrrhic victory. This was a new weak spot in the Accords. And under all that bravado, he was just a scared little boy. They didn't recognize him (there was at least one audible boo when someone realized that Spider-Man was just another pasty white boy), but they’d seen him, and that was enough.
The responsible thing would have been to keep his secret, to respect the sanctity of what had happened here tonight. But the bystanders are never responsible.
While all the others had been texting and tweeting and snapping and streaming, at least one had had the wherewithal to take a picture with one of their fancy, enormous, three-lensed phone cameras and capture Spider-Man unmasked, clear as day, battered and bloody but distinctly him, and send it straight to the Daily Bugle.
(The ball’s in your court now, Jameson.)
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dellaliz19 · 5 years
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Stranger Things Season 3 Review (SPOILERS)
I just ... fuck you, Netflix, a little bit, but maybe in a nice way?
Ok, so for real I just binged the third season of Stranger Things, and boy, I have some thoughts.
Firstly: I really did enjoy this season. It was enthralling, totally designed to be binged in one sitting. But. I also have some pros and cons with it so, let’s do that, shall we?
Pros:
1) Eleven and Max: I love that Eleven and Max get to have a real friendship here. I know the jealously thing rubbed a lot of people wrong last season, so this was a really welcome progression. I like that Eleven gets to find herself more, and that through her friendship with Max she realizes that her unintentional codependency with Mike isn’t healthy either, and is able to grow.
2) Steve: Steve remains a total great character. I love how he just rolls with Robin coming out as gay; that’s so important, to have someone be able to come out (in media taking place in the 80’s) and to be positively recieved by a friend. Also Steve and Dustin remain bro goals, and I really love the deconstruction of “Steve Harrington, popular guy,” and him coming to terms with that.
3) Character growth: I do like that Eleven, Mike, Steve and grow as characters ... though I’d be hard pressed to say if the others do (maybe Will, a little at the end?). Everyone else kind of seems stuck in a cycle, which I’ll get to in a minute.
4) New characters: Robin and Alexi were both really great characters! Robin really worked off Steve and their friendship felt super natural, and I liked the geek/popular kid dichotomy they worked off of. Smirnoff still makes me sad, and although that was a poignant moment, and a good narrative death, I’m going to be a little bitter about it 🤷‍♀️
5) The plot, monster, world building: all really solid. This get like a natural evolution of the last season, while also ramping up the stakes while not jumping the shark.
The cons
1) The cycle: so, there’s a thin line between “a formula” and “formulaic” and this season skates that pretty thinly. Call backs and the 3 or 4 small diverging plot lines where the gang eventually all converge onto one plot are fine, but there were moments where it really felt like a retread. Billy doing the Barb pose as he gets sucked in by the monster, Joyce getting to be happy and then having that snatched away at the last second, the “you two have sexual tension” speech, Nancy and Jonathan’s arc, Joyce’s “maybe I’m just crazy!” and Hopper accidentally well meaningly gaslighting her and a lot of other really specific things ... it just sometimes felt like a greatest hits album and you really have to use those more sparingly in my opinion.
2) Hopper: so look, I’m holding out hope that “no, not the American” means some miracle happened. But as it stands, I’m so torn about Hopper’s supposed fate: on one hand, it’s a good narrative death, and on the other hand ... it kind of feels like really low hanging fruit shock value? First; the whole “it’s a date” and now you’re dead thing is such a damn cliche stop hurting Joyce! I mentioned shows really have to watch for cycles and it feels like Stranger Things has decided that “kill one major character” is going to be part of theirs and I just ... I felt like you should have either had Billy or Hopper, not both, because Billy is basically immediately eclipsed by Hopper, and Billy was the one who got to (kind of) have an arc of redemption. (Also like, Joyce having to live with the realization that she physically turned the keys that killed him? Fuck you, politely, Netflix).
3) Billy (and his sort of redemption arc): look, I hated Billy in season 2 (mostly because of the people who wobbified him), but I GOT Billy. Billy was an interesting character because he seemed like a totally non redeemable bully until you met his father and then it was a real “aha, there is complexity!” moment. Cutting Billy’s father out of this season is probably narratively smart (this plot has a lot going on), but it really limits the true depth you can have with him. He was always going to die: he’d led way to many people to the slaughter by then, but basically waiting until the end of the season to explore the stuff with his mom just made him feel really rushed, as he spends most of the season as a slave.
I did enjoy this season! It’s tells a good story, and it’s visually appealing and perfect for binging. It’s not perfect over all, but honestly it’s really good and I’d definitely recommend it!
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