the snow queen
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(ID below cut)
[ID: part three. We continue from where we left off:
As they continued on their journey, they were visited from above. "Such a cold, cold day to travel, wouldn't you agree? Where are you going?" asked the crow. The Batman looked at the Snow Queen before he answered, "I'm still not quite sure." He looks up at the black crow soaring over their heads before it lands on his shoulder.
The crow hopped excitedly, unable to keep its secret. "I know, I know!" exclaimed the crow. "What you're looking for is up ahead at the Ice Palace. Just wait, just wait," said the crow. "First let me tell you a story. There's a man who would do anything to save the one he loved. But now he is the one who needs saving." Growing impatient, the Batman asked, "Is this who we're looking for?" "Could be, could be. See for yourself," answered the crow. "But you'll never get inside." With the taunted warning, the crow flies away.
Before them towered the palace in all its icy splendor. Giant stalagmite columns rising up to touch the sky. Walls formed by drifted snow and window slats cut from the cold winds. A fortress of impenetrable ice. Their final destination. And well guarded! Batman and The Snow Queen stand outside the magnificent castle before being ambushed by guarding dragons. They fight ferociously against Batman and, despite his bravery and efforts, he is unable to weaken them. The Snow Queen gently lays her hand on his shoulder, making him stop and to ponder.
The Batman grew weary and unable to defeat the monsters before him. But her soft touch caused him pause. She didn't bring him all this way to lose him. There was another way...
He stands with his new icy armor. He carries a giant shield and dons a protective helmet to block the monsters' attacks before throwing the frigid spear at them. The narration continues, When he struck them, the beasts shattered, breaking into a hundred pieces. She could now safely enter the palace with her guest by her side.
END ID]
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enw/6.0 spoilers below the cut
i’m trying to get back into the island fic frame of mind which necessitates thinking about z*nos bc half the things cori is struggling with post enw are related to him. they can’t cast bc of his whole body switcheroo, and when they try to cast it takes them back to that day, trapped in another’s body, desperately dragging themself across the snow to save their friends. and his death weighs on them too, not bc they feel guilty but bc after everything he did to them—hurting shtola back in sb, stalking them throughout enw, projecting onto them and failing to see them as their own person or anything more than a mirror (literally not their own person but a reflection of him), the body swapping!—they only feel relief that he’s dead.
cori is generally a kind and empathetic person and i do a lot of hand waving wrt the amount of killing the wol does—first bc i do think the game is a bit unserious about it frequently except when it suddenly decides to be and secondly bc it just fits her character. she is “the shot that never misses but never kills.” she is not baha blasting two nameless cult members in rak’tika, etc. so any time she does really kill is i think a big deal for her.
but with his death…they have just been so tired and terrified and not wanting anything to do with him but to be left alone. they didn’t want his help at all with endsinger but didn’t feel in a position to turn him down. they didn’t want to fight him in the end but again didn’t feel in a position to reject him—what would he really do if they said no? what would he do to them or to their friends or to anyone else if they let him go? especially if they stayed behind and were not there to stop him.
maybe he’s changed and just wanted to help but they don’t believe that. they don’t trust him, and why would they? but there’s a part of them, later, that wonders if that should matter. if it should matter whether or not his intentions were just or pure or true when he did the right thing anyway. and they wonder what it says about them that they were so quick to disregard that and to feel such relief—almost happiness—at his death.
there’s a quote from the second book in the masquerade series that i think about a lot when i’m thinking about this situation cori is in.
Was goodness still good if you hewed to it out of tactical necessity? Was there, Baru wondered, any difference between being good and pretending to be good for your own gain, if you took the same actions in the end? Was there any difference between telling the truth unconditionally, and deploying the truth in service of your agenda, if you told the same truth? Maybe the Oriati thought so. Maybe the difference between truth-for-itself and tactical truth was the only difference that mattered. Maybe the most crucial and subtle distinction in life was the difference between someone who was truly good and someone playing at goodness to gain power.
ultimately i think cori comes to the same conclusion as the last sentence—it does matter why he did it. now they just have to figure out how to live with the judgment they made, and a decision they made when they thought they were going to die.
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I’m sorry but I don’t believe that poster, even if they’re new why are they digging up old posts just to argue, and on posts not never tagged so they actually have to dig through old posts to find what they’re looking for! I don’t know anyone who joins tumblr just to do that so it’s hard for me to give them the benefit of doubt here, everything they say feels like an excuse this hurts me? Why are you looking for it then????
That's funny anon, because I was checking Tumblr, saw your ask in my notifications, and guess who popped up in the notifications, just after you did, reblogging a post I made about FE16?
Lol
At least I made myself clear about Tumblr etiquette and what I believe is and engaging/not engaging with someone -
Still, I ultimately think they're just trolling, or desperate for attention, but it's not something I have enough patience and time to give, I'd rather write 2k about Lorenz's ancestor being a bastard scion of House Hresvelg, than reading those word vomits.
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thoughts on the R vs A stan debates
I see Rhae/nyra and Alicent as equals in their sins ultimately - not the specifics, but the capacity for doing wrong (and for wanting to do good) and that they both keep sinning against each other and then trying to make it right at just the wrong moment, when the other one is most angry and nursing her wounds.
People are valid to have a preference for one over the other or dislike one or the other, but there’s this “Cinderella and her wicked stepmother” headcanon some stans of the book seem attached to that the R focused parts of the fandom keep trying to push that doesn’t work for the tv canon. It flattens and erases the complexity of both characters IMO. Because then A stans try to similarly flatten her and it gets very intense back and forth. The book has no interiority, is a faux history told entirely from a pov centuries removed from events, of course their tv inner lives are and should be more complicated than that?
The way Twitter fandom does it, there’s this endless argument over who is the Madonna and who is the Villain and it’s flattening both women: “Madonna” is not actually a compliment and it requires doing a lot of twisting of their characters for people to shove their “fave” into the role of perfect mother goddess.
Neither of them are, that’s what makes them good lead characters?
For one example: Emma has outright said they played the lead up to the knife scene as R directing aggression and a real desire to do real harm at A and R’s half-siblings.
So, in that pivotal scene, we have BOTH R using her status as heir and favoritism from her father to demand her little brother be tortured AND Alicent demanding her step-grandson's eye be taken.
I love them BOTH. That is messy af. And fantastic? Let women be MESS. And people of their culture and time period, where those are things you can actually demand if you have their respective forms of status.
That moment sticks with me because, as I see it, that was the final moment where they put the wounds in their own kids/half-siblings that led to the war.
At a certain point one stops being solely an abused child and has the choice whether to become an adult who abuses kids in their family or not .
*Both of them made the wrong choice* and wrote the future in blood IMO.
Am I saying the equation of wrongs done perfectly balance on both sides? No. I think that's a useless discussion people have been having for months now. There’s no end to it. It cannot be finally resolved.
I've seen people screaming back-and-forth for months and what I came to is this idea of them as equals, narratively speaking. Because they are narrative creatures, not real people, and it doesn't matter. Nothing will be gained by one side “winning.” Even if they were real and went to family therapy (...or couples therapy) the focus wouldn't be on tallying up.
I see it as this story of 3 generations where each one wrongs the next and then becomes adults who do their own wrongs in turn. With the time between "fuck around" & "find out" getting shorter each time until the 4th Gen who mostly don't even get to live to adulthood & make their own mistakes.
Otto and Viserys 100% started it. But along the way, carrying those soul wounds, R & A become adults who continued it, writing soul wounds into the next generation of kids, and did their part writing the bloody future Viserys and Otto got started. And some of their kids are just old enough to make some awful adult decisions to bring it all home so the 4th generation doesn't even get to have a peaceful childhood.
The only 100% innocent victims are the 4th Gen kids (all the ones who were under 10 when the war started including R's youngest kids and I would say I include Lu/cerys as well since he hadn’t fully become an adult when Aemond killed him). Everybody else is varying levels of involved in the shitshow IMO.
Anyway, all of that is why I find the entire debate irrelevant to me at best and, at worst, a source of a lot of hot takes that seem to want to vilify or Madonna-ify one or the other and I don’t agree with vilification or Madonna-ification of either.
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Omg this is gonna sound really random but hey here we go
So I was listening to Ship in a Bottle (since I had been searching for it for WEEKS as I didn't know its name until I finally found it on the Gustav playlist, thank you very much for that omg)
And i realised "hey wait a moment. Baby boy Gustav is literally captain of the Auxiliary Team in rtte. Ship in a Bottle mentioned a captain many, many times. waiT OMG WHAT"
Thought it was pretty funny seeing as you probably put that song in his playlist with one of the reasons being the captain thing and I just did not realise it for days
I was vibing too hard to notice😭
Anyways would love to know if this was really one of the intentions when you put Ship in a Bottle on baby's playlist! <333
oh no you opened a can of worms.
SO in gustav's story/playlist the concept of a captain (authority figure) is a huge motif and the identity of the captain changes over time. on berk he was first given that role on the A team (though by that point in the playlist he's fully abandoned his affiliation with the hooligans), then while searching for fanghook alone he was his own captain (a role he gave himself). that song is at the point where he's deciding to give up his own freedom/compromise his morals to serve another captain, the hunter harald bloodaxe. cato is the next captain of the story. until he reunites with cato, he is in a sort of in-between where he fools himself about who has control in his life (views himself as the boss of the shipyard, which really belongs to dagur. views himself as the captain of the chicken, when he knows full well that he's sailing to either hiccup or cato's side).
the song the traitor is fantastic for portraying how his identity changes at the end of otwd. he defers to the 'captainhood' of hiccup and dagur (the chiefs with the power to determine what happens to him next) and labels himself as the traitor. not a captain, afterall :(
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