#seriously fei thank you - they're perfect

[cawsofdeath]

Finally broke down and got my and @dirty-mcurdy‘s (very old) otp OCs commissioned, and they turned out b-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l-l-y

A huge, huge, huge thanks to @blauerozen for such a wonderful piece; you did them more justice than I could have hoped, and you were an absolute delight to work with :)

#oc stuff #commission #seriously fei thank you - they're perfect #we love them a whole lot #it's possible i cried a little bit #fate alaina #kei kame

[calebneedsahug]

Hello! First of all I just need to say I love you're writing so so so much ( Welcome to the Feywild, Lucidian Rim, and A Better Day are Particular Favorites of mine! P.S I'm still not over And You Don't Need Me.)

Anyway I see that you do fic requests, and I've seen this floated around different places in different variations a couple of times, but seeing as you're the AU Champion(at least to me) I thought you'd be the perfect person for this. (No pressure seriously if you don't like it just ignore this)

Okay so it's an AU where after Caleb dies in Cognoza it's revealed that he's actually the long lost son of............ARTAGAN Whaaaaaaaat.

Artagan had a fling right after getting to the mortal world with a powerful (SomethingIdk) and she hid the pregnancy locked baby Calebs Feyness away and. Send him to the dwendalian Empire After dying he comes back more fey-like Wacky/Angsty Hijinks Ensue;) I mean they're both gingers, Caleb speaks Sylvan; they both love Jester and they're both curious people soooooo IDK

As for like ships/Ratings I'm Partial to Shadowidomauk or any variant of that but you have free reign, Same with the rating, if you feel it needs to be spicy-bring the heat, but all up to you if you decide to write this🖤

thank you so much!!! this is such a fun idea!! i did take some liberties to fit this all in with how i hc Caleb's folks, but!!! here it is!

hope you enjoy the first chapter! no guarantees on when i'll update next, but i've got most of the next chapter written already too <3

#au champion omg <3 #fic requests #shadowgast #caleb widogast #artagan #critical role fic #cr fic #read on ao3 #i've also never really written about Essek being the only one to watch Caleb die and #oof

[of-the-moors]

So I've been thinking about the whole Maleficent movie + sequel = 'feels like a trilogy but may never be because M:MOE was kind of a disappointment' thing.

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed M:MOE from an entertainment perspective. It had some funny moments, and some touching moments, and Angelina Jolie and Michelle Pfeiffer (which I always want to pronounce 'Per-FIFF-er' for shits and giggles) are an electric combination. Sam Riley, as usual, managed to convey more with eyebrow twitches and eye movements than his lines alone would suggest. Elle Fanning is once again a delight.

But.

BUT.

What the actual fuck was up with that storyline?

News just in: there's nothing wrong with a gentle fairytale. A movie doesn't HAVE to end with an epic MCU-inspired megabattle. Yawn. Been there, seen that.

So the first movie is character-driven. Maleficent is a sweet and innocent little soul, she's betrayed and violated by someone that she has chosen to trust, it fucks her up, she knee-jerk retaliates, feels vindicated, then over the course of the movie comes to realise that she may have gone overboard etc. By the end of the movie, she's not back as she was, but she's a better version of herself that she was sixteen years earlier.

She has agency. She makes her own choices. She is beholden to nobody, except on occasion, the moral questions of her servant (more on Diaval later).

Aurora doesn't really have much of a say in anything, other than her choice to go to the castle, but it could be argued that it wasn't so much her CHOICE as the curse playing out. Either way, it's not really relevant, as she's barely more than a child and doesn't know her arse from her elbow.

The end of the first movie wrapped everything up quite nicely, and a sequel wasn't strictly necessary.

The thing is, if you're going to make a sequel, you owe it to the original movie to not cock it up.

The tone just wasn't the same, for starters. It was very much a Mega Worldbuilding CGI Wank, as compared to the insular and gentler tone of the first film. I mean, Maleficent had a main cast of just seven people, and that includes Phillip who only had a handful of scenes. The cast of M:MOE blew WAY out. It changed the tone, and not for the better.

Why introduce the Dark Fey at all?

Are we seriously to believe that the entire population of Maleficent's race, less herself, have been living a hundred clicks off the coast of Ulstead all of this time, and yet they let Maleficent - who apparently is like their queen or something? - grow up an orphan in the Moors? Um, collecting her and taking her back to be with her own kind would have taken what, an hour?

If you're going to introduce a situation like that, at least have the decency to explain it and close the gaping plot hole. One line would have sufficed. "Your parents chose to leave the sanctuary. By the time we realised that they had been killed, it was too late to bring you back - too late to take you from the only home you had ever known. So we have watched over you instead, ever since."

Wow, and I'm not even a script writer.

And the war. I mean, really? Ingrith is a psychopath - a genocidal maniac, to use Angelina Jolie's words - and she wants to kill off the entire population of the Moors. Um, okay. I get the feeling that the Dark Fey retcon was conceived as a handy plot device to spawn a Big Battle Scene, and the implications of that were ill-considered.

At least they didn't go and pair Maleficent up with one of them. I know that there was implication with both Conall and Borra, but at least it wasn't overt. You can't have one who was burned by love to the degree that Maleficent was suddenly falling in love with a relative stranger in a matter of days; it's beyond out of character. So thanks, folks, for refraining from that particular trope.

Then there's Maleficent's agency. She was very much a reactive protagonist, and made very few decisions of her own will. Is she even still Maleficent?

There was so much wasted potential.

The first movie had a character who, through the actions of another, no longer believed in true love. By the end of the movie, she believed in true love in the sense of filial love. Romantic love, no, that was still tosh, but the love of a mother for a daughter? Oh yes, that existed.

The second movie SHOULD have expanded on this, using the wedding of Aurora and Phillip as the catalyst for further growth and acceptance on the part of Maleficent. The movie we got does, in a way, come to the same place - Maleficent accepts that romantic true love exists, albeit not for her - but it feels entirely secondary to the Great Big Battle. It was messy. So, so messy.

I almost feel as though we're owed a third movie, to right the wrongs of the second. To tie up the gaping plot holes which were introduced but never adequately explained - or even addressed! It's unlikely to happen, unfortunately, but we can only hope.

A third movie would need to complete Maleficent's arc, that's for sure. From not believing in love to believing in filial love, to believing in romantic love for others but not herself, the logical conclusion of that arc is for Maleficent to have a reason to believe in true love for herself again.

In the interests of interesting cinematic conflict and confusing our winged protagonist, two competing love interests would make for an interesting story. A parallel plot could bookend the plot of the first movie by recasting Maleficent in the role of protector - have Aurora's baby taken by an antagonist - ideally a magical one - and centre the story around recovering the child and defeating the evil whilst navigating matters of the heart.

Who would Maleficent be drawn to? A mysterious and volatile man of her own species, now that she knows that she's not the only one? Someone as exciting as herself? One whose wings match her own?

Or is love steadfast and loyal? Kind and devoted and dependable? Of course, I refer to Diaval, who is, in my mind, the only logical love interest for Maleficent, but she'd need some prodding to see that. He'd need to do something incredibly brave and she'd have to realise what losing him would really be like, that old chestnut. But really, he's the one. He's both her conscience and her constant, and his rationality and calm nature are a perfect foil for her impulsive hotheadedness. They're two halves of a whole, even without the romantic undertones.

(Let's not go into how Angelina Jolie and Sam Riley evidently agree with the above assessment of the Maleficent/Diaval relationship, based on interviews and the way in which each plays their character against the other. Or that Sam Riley is the unofficial official captain of the Good Ship Maleval. Someone should tell him. He needs a proper hat for it.)

I like the delicious synchronicity of Maleficent, burned by what she thought was true love, creating her actual true love in that darkest time of her life, and then not realising it for two decades. It has a certain perfection to it.

But hey, it isn't going to happen for much less than a miracle. Thank heavens for fanfiction, eh? Fixing the dodgy shit one fic at a time.

#maleficent #maleficent 2 #maleficent 3 #angelina jolie #sam riley #elle fanning #maleval #diaval x maleficent #maleficent x diaval #diaval #nitpicking #outright complaining #please fix it #it was a train wreck #someone high up start rattling cages #disappointment level: high