some things that may or may not happen after the ending of Swan Lake
"Odette, now resigned to her existence, bids a sad, lingering farewell to Siegfried. The prince knows that she is gone forever. In utter grief, he is left alone." - Swan Lake (Kent Stowell version) summary
I.
Siegfried is left alone. He will always be alone. He dies an old man at the edge of a lake.
II.
Siegfried is alone. He will always be alone. He dies a young man in the middle of a lake.
III.
Siegfried is alone. He is alone until the night after the party, when a swan appears at his bedroom window. He has never seen the glow of moonlight on her wings before, and the sight makes him cry.
When he opens the shutters, she settles next to him on his featherbed. She can’t cry anymore, but she bops him on the head a few times.
IV.
Siegfried is alone, and he cries on the Jester’s lap. The Jester doesn’t think he’s paid enough for this. He certainly doesn’t have a joke prepared for when the crown prince accidentally declares his love to the wrong bird.
The Queen wonders if she can adopt the Jester and marry him off.
V.
Siegfried is alone, officially, but he’s never truly alone because there is a swan that follows him everywhere. Anyone who wants to get any business done learns that they are not allowed to question this.
The swan is kind of an asshole, though: she’s especially prone to biting women who look at the prince just a little too long.
VI.
Siegfried is alone, entirely, and intends to always be alone. “I will never love again,” he says, to anyone who will listen.
“That will certainly make a much better ballad,” his mother says, “the poets will be thrilled. But we’ve still got a kingdom to run and a dynasty to continue.”
VII.
Siegfried is officially not alone, but he’s not happy about it. He has a pet swan who is also not happy about it. And a new wife, who is the least happy of them all.
“The swan stays in the marital chamber during sex,” the prince says.
His wife would find a way to kill him if she wasn’t afraid of said swan pecking her eyes out.
VIII.
Siegfried is only sort of alone, and he hasn’t given up: he asks the Jester to promise to love his swan more than any other woman, on the grounds that the Jester has no sisters and has never loved a woman, nor does he intend to. “I don’t think he specified romantic love,” Siegfried says.
The Jester promises to be the bird’s bestie for life, and suddenly the swan is a woman, and there are screams from outside because the swans that have taken up residence along the roof are women now, too.
IX.
Siegfried isn’t quite alone, but he isn’t happy, because the Jester promises, and nothing happens. The prince and the swan go off to cry again. The Jester asks the Queen for a raise.
X.
Siegfried is alone. He changes his crest to one that shows a swan, wings spread above a blue square lake. He rules his kingdom, as fairly as one can ever be while wielding absolute authority, but spends the rest of his life watching the sky. He dies alone on a bed made of straw.
XI.
Siegfried is alone. One day, a friend points out some swans to him, but he refuses to look at them.
“The form of a swan is a prison and a curse,” he says. “What if that’s not what they’re supposed to be?”
He bans all depictions of swans from the kingdom.
XII.
Siegfried is alone, or he isn’t. Either way, he becomes a vegetarian.
XIII.
Siegfried is alone. But he has loved, now, and he knows how to do it again. One day, he manages to move on.
He teaches his daughter everything he has been able to learn about preventing curses.
XIV.
Siegfried is alone. He fucks the Jester.
XV.
Siegfried is alone. A few years later, he learns that a minor noble some forty miles away has a beautiful new wife and two dozen new maidservants. Nobody is sure where they all came from.
But Siegfried knows, and he cries, and he is happy for her.
XVI.
Siegfried isn’t alone. He gifts the swan that follows him around the fluffiest pillows. Demand she be paid the choicest foods. The jokes and rumors abound, but he ignores them.
Sometimes servants will hear him talking to the swan as though she’s a person. Sometimes they swear there’s a pattern to her honks, like she’s answering him.
XVII.
Siegfried is alone, although he treats his pet swan like a queen. Sometimes, the servants will hear him talking to her.
“Can you still understand me?” he asks. “Odette. Please. Tap my hand if you understand me.”
The swan doesn’t move, until the prince offers more shrimp.
XVIII.
Siegfried isn’t alone, until he is. Because swans mate for life, but that life is only a decade or so. When she dies, he calls for a week of mourning throughout the kingdom.
And when she dies, there’s a part of him—a part that he hates—that feels free.
XIX.
Siegfried isn’t alone. Because Von Rothbart is defeated, somewhere. Maybe he cursed the wrong princess. Maybe he fell and broke his hip. All anyone know for sure is that one morning, there is a woman lying on the cushions reserved for the swan.
Salad and shellfish go out of favor, as the new queen refuses to eat them.
XX.
Siegfried is alone, until a woman shows up at the castle. She’s wearing a white dress splattered with blood, and carrying what appears to be the severed wing of a giant owl. The prince mounts it on the wall above their thrones.
XXI.
They live happily ever after.
XXII.
Or, they don’t.
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last thing i'll say but these people are relying on their audience's trust and ignorance of media production, that is why the initial video is so brazenly manipulative with only ryan talking about the expenses for ghost files, but i see people not realizing they already produced travel season—one post on here like "steven hasn't had his own show since dish granted, if they're out of money it's not because of his food shows" when 1) he's CEO and 2) we first saw that clip of steven and andrew at the end of the mystery files s2 premiere that was probably shot months if not a whole year in advance of the announcement, so what they've done is produce six episodes of a show they can't afford, that the audience didn't know about and had to pay to see before they walked it back
the apology is pure damage control!! they noticeably don't bring up their asinine "television-caliber, quality content" refrain: they still think they're in the right, spending beyond their means chasing some made-up standard when TV is dying and anything can be on TV, and they throw their bloated staff before the mob to guilt-trip viewers when the real cruelty is overhiring and overpromising stable employment; the actual mature, responsible thing that many companies have done in this and adjacent industries (print media, performing arts) is shut down, temporarily or forever
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Hey I need your help. Why does Sun leave his team so much? I think it's played off as quirky in the show but it just bugs me so much. Like to me even as nice as he is he's still not their as he should be. Like if I'm supposed to relie on someone but they just do what they want how am supposed to trust them period? Am I reading too much into it?
They actually covered this "Before the Dawn".
Sun just kinda goes where he wants and barely lets his team know anything. He's been doing it since day one, too. He arrived at Beacon ahead of his team, then left them again to chase after Blake, and then it's all brought up in "Before the Dawn" for about 500 pages, because that's Sun's only character trait.
Honestly, I prefer it as the quirky show version than the book version that endlessly harps on it as a bad character trait and you should hate Sun for leaving his team all the team and he's a bad character because he's bad. Instead of, "Oh, there goes Sun again. Least he could do is tell us in person."
Honestly, now that I think about it, the main inspiration for this is his allusion of the legendary Sun Wu Kong from epic story of Journey to the West. The Monkey King would always run off to do, well, whatever. Honestly, the only thing keeping him in check is the crown on his head that tightens whenever Tripitaka utters a prayer.
As for why? Well, your guess is as good as mine. Like I said, I'd prefer to think of it as a character quirk instead of a thousand word essay on why Sun Wukong is a bad character in a book that made NOBODY look good.
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Real raiden stans would never let that false god (shit)fire Liu kang allow to make raiden mk champion above kung lao. His "supposed" best friend and fellow monk.
Some friend huh?
That's not liu kang,nor kung lao and definitely not raiden. Doesn't even act like raiden.
For the love of god,do not buy nor get into mortal kombat through mk12/mk1
PLAY MK9-MK11 IF ANYTHING.
I'd rather y'all play mk:shaolin monks or the og arcades but ya know.
This is the real raiden:
This is the real liu kang:
*honorable mention: mk legends liu kang. Can't fit any more images,tumblr limit. Ugh.
And THIS IS THE REAL KUNG LAO!!!!!:
Like gdi. I know my boiz. And whatever nrs be cookin rn is dogshit. So i tell you for your Sanity as raiden stans,kung lao stans,hell and the real liu kang enjoyers.
Dont fucking watch or play mk12/mk1 storymode. It sucks.
I couldn't even stomach it drunk af for my man shang tsung. The arguably the only GOOD thing about that game. And thats being said by people who didn't care for shang tsung. I love shang tsung. And i say its dogshit. Not shang but the whole set up for the storymode.
Shang tsung is kinda treated like crap and kung lao is somehow worse in there than in mk11. At least him and liu are still and act like friends.
Raidne just stole and swapped personalities with liu kang. And fire god liu is insufferable and an arrogant asshole.
Condescending af.
And overall like i said i couldn't even stomach it. I got a quarter way through. Little over the hour mark. Of the 4hrs of shit storymode. And i couldn't continue.
AND I WAS WASTED AF! and usually i can take the piss out of things and enjoy shitty media and have fun but i wasn't. I was just mad. And i didn't wanna be mad about my fave game series.
So i decided to play mk11 instead of watching shitty storymode of mk12/mk1.
Kung lao,raiden,liu kang.
I am so sorry they fucked you guys over. You deserve so much better honeys.
Smfh.
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finding old posts that imply or say chris is smart (i do think he's like of average intelligence) are so funny to me because like. he's def not the smartest he could be. walk with me for a second. while chris is not like, dumb to a fault, he makes really questionable decisions that someone who's sharp minded wouldn't make. take ashley, someone who's definitely smarter than him, telling him "you can't go out there chris!" when chris, blinded by this need to protect and save his friend, says he's gonna go out there despite the stranger Explaining why it's dangerous in the first place. chris seems to not put a lot of thought into it, only thinking about saving josh. yes it's a heroic thing to do but it Was really dumb at the same time, because he kind of ignored the perilous nature of it. even the stranger says "you don't seem to understand the magnitude of the situation" and honestly, chris didn't understand anything about the situation At all. obv who could i mean he's just a teenager. i say all this not to shit on him, but to just remind everyone that just because chris wears glasses does not mean he's smart lol
i kind of noticed a pattern that people wrote with him and josh's dynamic. chris is smart and josh is impulsive (to a degree josh Can be impulsive). but chris, as i said above, kinda puts no thought into serious situations, or any situation at all (he's prob too concerned with like trying to be funny honestly). now we go to josh, who's Described as "thoughtful", like that's him!!! id argue josh is the smarter one of the two, not to mention he constructed the entire prank by himself, as we all know like come on, and had to deal with some complicated machinery. like how was he not thought of to be the smarter one? chris has more moments in the game where he's such a dolt. i say this affectionately.
tldr, chris being kind of a dummy is actually like how he is and it's so weird to see him depicted as otherwise lol
(also he's a canon twitter user and addicted to his phone. do with that what you will)
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