#I have a few positions I’ve seen people dp

[rosicheeks]

You wanna be bend over to be dp'd?

Any position pls

[writeturnlove]

The Mate Chapter 5

By V.C. Turner (@writeturnlove)

CHAPTER WARNINGS: Do NOT read if you are under 18; SMUT, SEX, DP, MFM SEX, THREESOME, UNPROTECTED SEX, BLOOD PLAY/KINK, BITING, BRIEF MINOR BONDAGE.

To say that I’m nervous would be an understatement. I’m terrified. In less than 24 hours, I will be bonded to two men and ascend to a leadership role over a group of people I didn’t know existed a few months ago. We’re just minutes away from another pack meeting; this one called by the Elders, who plan to introduce us as The Alpha Triad. The Fates decided that I am the one true mate of the Alpha and Beta wolves of the North Pointe Pack. Once the Elders verify the mating, no one dares question their judgment.

I’m standing between my mates – Steve on my left and Bucky on my right. I’m shaking. Steve notices and places a reassuring hand on the center of my lower back. Bucky slips his hand into mine and squeezes. Today is the first time I’ve seen them since their mothers took me away from the Alpha house before we could break a fundamental rule: No sex before the Bonding Ceremony.

The ritual is set to take place tomorrow night beneath the full moon and in front of the entire pack.

But tonight, we must stand before them and assert our positions.

My breath is coming out in short bursts. Steve turns to me, lifts my chin, and places a chaste kiss to my lips. He whispers in my ear.

“It will be fine, Sweetheart,” he says.

My body instantly settles, and I can think clearly again. Steve calms me when I need it. I love that about him. I stop shaking and focus on Sasha Barnes as she calls the meeting to order.

“North Pointe brothers and sisters, it is a proud day for our pack. As predicted by Elder Evelyn and I, we have confirmed The Alpha Triad,” she announces.

A hush falls over the large room. Several tense moments pass before measured chaos begins. I can’t tell what they are saying because I’m too far away. What I can hear are the sounds of shock coming from the crowd, and I brace myself for what comes next.

From our place backstage, we see Evelyn Rogers step forward. She holds her hand up and the room immediately quiets, yielding to her authority.

“Family, as the prophecy had dictated, our Luna has been chosen. Tomorrow night she will be bonded to the Alpha and Beta of our pack. I now ask The Alpha Triad to step forward to stand before the pack, for tomorrow the three of you shall be joined for life.”

Steve leads the three of us onto the center of the stage and the sound of whispers starts up again. The moment hangs over my head like a heavy cloud, threatening to soak me with the weight of this new responsibility.

Bucky squeezes my hand again, then leans down to me.

“Stand tall and look each one of them in the eye. They need to see strength to respect you and your position,” he advises.

I straighten my posture and gaze into the crowd. There are expressions of shock, caution, and a few looks of disgust. Fuck them. I’m Luna. They will just have to deal with it.

“As you know,” Sasha begins, “While this is a happy occasion because our pack leaders have found true love, it is also a time of concern. The prophecy regarding the Alpha Triad states that there will be an upcoming war with a vampire clan. The conflict between our species has raged for millennia, however we’ve enjoyed several decades of peace due to a treaty signed by our ancestors. Unfortunately, this peace is about to end. Since we do not know when our enemies will attack, we must begin preparations immediately. My son James, as Beta, will help organize the tactical preparations, while Alpha Steve Rogers will divide the pack into specific groups who will ensure that each pack member and their families have the resources to deal with this threat. Now, I will turn the meeting over to our Alpha.”

The room falls silent as Steve steps forward, bringing Bucky and I with him.

“North Pointe Family, I know that much of what you heard comes as a shock. My primary concern is to ensure the safety of this pack, so we will begin organizing and training starting next week. I will delegate some of my usual duties to other pack leaders as I will be sequestered for the next two weeks as part of the bonding ritual. Speaking of my personal life: The fact that my new mate is also the mate of my Beta came as a shock to me, too. While a part of me knew, deep down, that she was the one for both of us, it was only just confirmed. This joining, this Alpha Triad is unfamiliar territory for all of us, however this is how things were meant to be. Y/N is a part of this family, and she will always be our Luna,” Steve declares.

My breathing picks up as all eyes focus on me. I don’t want to talk tonight. I have way too much on my mind to form a cohesive thought. Judging from the looks on their faces, I worry anything I say will make me an even bigger target than I already am.

Bucky speaks next and I internally thank him for the favor.

“North Pointe pack, I didn’t want to admit it to myself at first, but I felt it the moment I met y/n. I realized she was – she is my mate, and now I can’t imagine life without her. I will protect her with my life, and I expect my pack members to do the same. No one shall harm her, physically or mentally. If they try, they will answer to us,” announces Bucky as he turns to Steve, who nods in agreement.

I’m not required to speak. I could stand here until the meeting is over, but I can’t remain silent.

Something inside me feels an undeniable urge to say something; to stake my claim to these men and to this pack so that there is no question as to my position.

In a voice that comes out stronger than expected, I shock the Hell out of everyone when I let go of Steve and Bucky, and step forward to the front of the stage.

“North Pointe, I am an ordinary human compared to the strength that each of you wield, but do not mistake my humanity for weakness. I was not born of you. I do not have the blood of your pack running through my veins, but I am Luna, and I do not take that honor lightly. This is my oath to all of you: I will provide comfort and protection to those in need. You are my family now and I am willing to die for my family. If you learn nothing else about me on this night, know this: Those who come for my family will pay with their blood,” I state.

PLEASE CLICK ON THE LINK ABOVE TO READ THE REST.

[turboacek-blog]

The Love-Hate thing with XY

Something I’ve had thoughts on ever since I’ve seen more of the Anipoke community and it’s an interesting situation

XY seems to be a fan favorite series of all the Pokémon series

With XY generally being seen as one of the best from a more ranking critic review viewpoint (look at IMDb scores for example)

So why is there such a divide among fans?

1) It gets so much loved it’s hated

It’s a weird yet normal reaction

There are definitely some fans out there that praise it so much that it can get annoying

Some actually use it to put down other series which is definitely not good

And some it’s the only thing they mention which over-saturates it in the grand scheme of Pokémon discussion which can also be annoying when out of 15 posts 12 are XY stuff you can get sick of it

2) XY is the only or one of the few watched by some

I’m constantly surprised by the number of fans that have only watched XY or started with XY

Clearly, some of it is an age thing, when they were in that general age range XY was on TV so it was naturally their first series

But also for one reason or another the way XY was presented got a lot more people wanting to check it out, I don’t know for sure but apparently XY brought in a lot of viewers and it can’t be just the regular wave of kids watching Pokémon for the first time

I mention this as people are then using XY as their basis whether it’s the constant comparison to SM specifically the art style or that they never watched Original series to DP/BW so it has that affect that when you’re watching something older some things don’t look as good since it is older especially for younger viewers

3) Social Media

Social Media been around for awhile before XY in 2013

But around that time was also a pretty big boom as stuff like YouTube were getting to the point that people were YouTubers, Vine was alive, twitter and Facebook were still the general share thoughts platforms and etc

So when clips from this time are shared they were more widespread then before and since it’s more modern its less likely to be gone

For example it’s hard to get stuff from OS-DP as it was just the byproduct of being older

Not everything was digitized, and some of the stuff that was is now gone whether a website taken down, or copyright on YouTube video etc as not everything was just on Serebii and Bulbapedia

Where XY was at a time that was fortunate enough that stuff is hard to lose and copyright was better understood and etc so it was able to build up views and likes and etc

Like I saw a vid where someone who never watched Pokemon was reacting to Ash-Greninja like there's something there

4) Miscellaneous stuff

General stuff that some like but I don’t want to say is a main reason or is big enough to give its own point

Visuals: people loved how XY looked, the art style plus the animation and 3D camera

Approach: generally the most shonen of the Pokémon series and when stuff like shonen is a big hit amongst a similar demographic it gets love for it like Ash being more “mature”, him being more of a leader, etc

Romantic side plot: Serena's crush on Ash at least from what I noticed has its own community with shipping, and I can see it bringing in a lot of girl viewers as romance is a common drawing point for young girls plus it’s a general thing people can like

Preferences: some might just generally like characters like Alain over a character like Paul, which I think is just a preference thing than an objective thing, and this applies to everything naturally

5) Least amount of Problems

I have my personal thoughts on XY, some positive some negative

But I can say from a more objective/critics point of view XY has the least problems of any series

XY consistently looked great, had what feels like the least amount of “filler” episodes, had at least solid arcs for Ash Clemont Serena and Bonnie, decent rivals, a supporting cast, etc

As even though I don’t think Sun and Moon had problems it definitely got backlash from the art style change alone let alone the formula change

BW was a soft reboot so it had a negative response from existing fans

JN had production issues that had them have recaps and such plus the co-lead with Goh stuff

So when you can point to negatives for other series that don’t really apply to XY it’s easy to hold it higher

It’s like saying they all have 5 positives but XY has like 1 negative while the others have 3+ negatives. It doesn’t matter about the positives as the negatives weigh them down more

Like even though it has its weaker points if I have to grade it XY doesn’t go below a 5/10 in anything (plot, character, pacing, etc) where you can say some series do fall below that line

Like I personally don’t care for the Team Flare Arc after the league but I wouldn’t say it was bad in the slightest

So my conclusion?

XY was definitely the right place-right time series

The social media boom, plus the general improvements XY made from BW gave it a lot of fans

So now whether they think it genuinely or they just have nostalgia for it, have XY rated higher and like to talk about it regardless of how much it’s already been discussed

It’s similar to how I remember Original Series

Doesn’t matter what May, Dawn, Paul, etc would do people would still bring up Misty Gary Charizard and etc

And it’s the same with XY, doesn’t matter what the Alola Gang, Iris, Cilan, Goh, or Chloe, they get compared to Clemont Bonnie, Serena, etc, and even Ash gets compared to his XY version

But since XY is more recent and for the most part OS fans aren’t online like that they get the status of being the most vocal and etc

As someone who was older when XY came out and wasn’t around for all the YouTube and etc

They do hype up XY a little too much

But at the same time, I do get the dislike or neutralism for SM and JN, and BW

As people can not like certain aspects of XY but none really got or deserve the backlash the others did so they look better as a result of not having that issue

As if hypothetically all Pokémon series in a vacuum are 7/10’s

Things like BW’s soft reboot make it a 5/10 to those fans for example and this can be applied to all series even XY but if others have more visible issues then they get bogged down more which results in making XY look better

To XY’s credit is a feat in itself but having the least number of issues doesn’t mean any issues which are where a lot of anti’s and people that just get tired of it come from as some do genuinely think XY is perfect

Overall XY is a solid series it came out at the right time when everything surrounding it was more controversial and it was able to explode in popularity thanks to the internet

Both sides are justified as XY has its good points but the fact that it’s seemingly the most discussed and regarded series does seem a bit excessive and I sympathize with those that don’t like it for that or just don’t like that series in general

[seven-oomen]

Hi, Ben!  I hope you’re doing okay, and that your hand is feeling better!  (There was an incident here a couple years back involving a girl whose retractable lead malfunctioned and she grabbed it on instinct.  As I recall the results were…not pretty…)

I’m sorry they’re being stupid about your assistance again, and I hope someone more helpful steps up.  I’m glad you’ve been able to get some of the work done, and I hope it’s helping it feel more like home.

I got to see DP&W over the weekend, and it was indeed absolutely phenomenal, and I have A LOT of thoughts about it, of varying types on various subjects, but those would be very, VERY rambling and probably spoiler-ridden, so I may see about sending them later if I can scrape together both time between shifts and sufficient focus, but will withhold them now in the interest of brevity.  XD  Maybe I’ll manage to talk some of the friends that haven’t seen it yet into going to refresh my memories.

Also, this video popped in my Insta suggestions the other day and I was curious as to your opinion of its accuracy XD :  https://www.instagram.com/reel/C971zVTIm8A/?igsh=NzlvcW80eGc2eHFn

Anyway, I have to clock in soon, but I hope you and Yara are doing well, and I hope things maintain an at least generally upward trajectory of improvement.  Sending all the best, most positive thoughts and vibes!  Take care!  *Lots of hugs to you both!*

-

B! How are you doing my friend?

My hand is doing a lot better, i have a few new scars over my palm and fingers but it’s functional again, so that’s an improvement.

And yeah, the municipality I moved to... let’s just say I’m not holding much hope to get the things I need. And that I will probably need to save up for a decent electrical bike (either a cargobike or an e-bike with a dog cart behind it). Which is like 2K on average. So, that’ll take me a year at this rate.

But at least I’m making some progress in my new home, so there’s that! I still have to put wallpaper up and stuff, but it’s so hot right now (30C/86F) that I’ve decided to postpone the renovations until the temperature cools down again.

And please send them if you remember. I’ve been dying to talk to people about the movie since the 24th (I saw it in an early screening, and I’ve been keeping quiet about it since, but it’s been so hard.)

I may also be working on a short a/b/o Logan/deadpool story because there’s not much else to do in this heat with my pain and fatigue. (The movie was so good though).

And yeah, that reel is actually pretty damn accurate on the relationship of Amsterdammers and their bikes. (And the rest of the Netherlands too, to some extent. Outside the big cities it’s much easier to ride a bike, but you’ll also have to bike much further on average.)

Hope your shift goes well, big hug from me and Yara <3

[voidcat]

I tried to keep it short bc there r many sources or even instagram pages/posts that explain characters in detail. And speaking for myself I got JY on his first banner simply because I like him. Sometimes this game is all about getting someone because you like them. But for my case that can make clearing end game content a tad difficult later on 😅.

Also if anyone else happens to read and disagrees or has diff thoughts, pls feel free to add!!

I’ll start with the 4* then tell you my suggestions regarding the current 5*s…

Qingque is a fun and great dps but because her skill is a little gacha/gambling like, she can be Very skill point hungry. So she’s best paired with characters that are SP positive (this legit became a criteria in hsr lmao. Some supports who regain sps are Hanya 4* or Sparkle 5*. Sunday when his ult has been activated on a character as well as his Lightcone if I’m right.)

That’s why the typical go to team you might see for Qingque is a mono quantum team consisting of her, sparkle, lynx 4* and fu xuan 5* (great sustain unit and boosts crit rate too. As someone who got her on a rerun I’m v happy w her. She can even restore a little hp for teammates when she uses her ultimate so that’s nice)

TLDR: go for supports that aren’t skill point hungry, other than that, it’s usually a go-to to use supports buffing characters too. Skill points are key to maximize Qingque’s effect though.

Tingyun is a great support. She buffs and her ult energy regenerates. Her skill lasts for three turns too. She was usually a must in many Jing Yuan comps and she scales on attack so you can slap that cowboy set on her at early or even late game. One complaint I’ve seen often and witnessed myself is she’s usually the character enemies attack the first/most so you need a sustain unit or a good healer that provides continuous healing (Bailu does that for 3? turns but i don’t rmr if after using skill or ultimate atm) also effect res too! Get some speed on her so you’ll use her on your damage doing unit first!

As for a Sunday and Jing Yuan…

Jing yuan is a good hyper carry but lightning lord loves taking his time. I’ve seen leaks that next path, some more harmony units like Bronya will advance not just the character but their “summon” unit too. So hopefully this means Bronya E will have an effect similar to Sunday’s in that regard and will make lightning lord faster. What is lightning lord? Basically the source of JY’s follow up attack. His ults and skill use grant him points- max limit 10. The more points the higher damage as well as advanced. I like JY but up until Sunday release he had fallen off his thrones in terms of meta sadly… because he is a hyper carry he needs supports in his team- and if you want to put a sustain one that debuffs enemies or buffs the team (Sunday or fu xuan imo)

Sunday’s kit is veeery good rn. As someone who usually uses hyper carry type of dps and as someone with not that many supports, I went for him. Since he is a new character and a long waited one, I think he will have reruns later. But if you want a good support early on you can go for him. I’ve seen people pair him with p much anyone and the results are always good. He advances a character, buffs crit dmg etc basically.

If you want JY simply for dps reasons, I could suggest waiting for the second half of banners and try to get Firefly. She is one of the game breaking dps units and metas to this day and would make clearing end game content etc very easy too. Oh also, next half, with Firefly we will get Fugue (tingyun 5*), she is nihility and a break dps support. The current meta for the past few patches have been break metas mostly so there’s that😭

I am now playing HSR. They give you a free 5* character and idk who to pick...any recommendations? (Someone who's fun to play and useful overall pls)

cy!! i am loving your hsr updates updates AAAAA im so overjoyed that you’re playing!!! T T . OKAY I ACTUALLY ASKED MY MOOTS THIS EXACT SAME QUESTION NOT LONG AGO BECAUSE I WASNT SURE EITHER. i am hoping one of them can comment and help us out because im unsure which one to suggest ajansndkkx

evie’s thoughts (take with a bucket of salt)

gepard — a shield type of character? i was told that he’s good to use if you don’t have aventurine

bailu — this is a healer !! a very cute healer, though i have never used her and don’t have her so i have no clue aajajksks

bronya — she is a ,, support !!? buffs up your characters and things like that ^^; i think she is very helpful! i use her whenever i cant use my other support

himeko — i was told she is very good for post-game battles (there is one called pure fiction and i see that people tend to use her + herta as a combo) & i love her ultimate!!

welt, yanqing, clara — i either don’t have, haven’t used, or genuinely don’t know what to say about them ajansjdkk

[five-rivers]

Changeling Chapter 1

A DP Fae Au fic. I've been promising you this for so long XD. I can hardly believe I'm finally delivering, even if it's only one chapter for now.

.

Chapter 1: In the Beginning, There Was an Offer

.

They studied legends. According to those legends, today, Beltane, was a time of renewal, of birth, of fertility.

It was not supposed to be… this. Their dreams weren’t supposed to be crushed today. Not under this sun, not under these blue skies and among softly blooming flowers.

This kind of news should have come with rain. It should have come with storms.

Maddie wiped tears out of her eyes and Jack patted her on the back. The air smelled sweet and dusty at the same time. The bench was uncomfortable.

“We could try adoption,” said Jack. He sounded shocked, too. Drained. His voice was pulled taught over a great hollowness. “Lots of people adopt. We can- can do some good in the world, maybe.”

Maddie sniffed and cried harder. She’d wanted her own children, and Jack knew it. Adoption was all very well and good, but at this point the suggestion felt like some consolation prize, and she felt terrible for even thinking it was, because Jack was right, it could be a good thing, and…

She wanted children. Her own children.

“Excuse me, I believe I can help.”

There was something about how he said that, about how the voice wound and slipped through her ears that had Maddie’s head snapping up. The man who stood to the side of the bench wore a long coat with a deep hood. Symbols, symbols that Maddie had spent hours, days, weeks, researching were stitched into the fabric. His eyes glittered in the shadows. The fingers of his hands, clasped in front of him, were too long, their coloring faintly lavender, as if they had been dipped in ink and retained the stain even after they’d been washed clean.

This was not a human.

“How?” asked Maddie, feeling hope drip back into her limbs even as Jack tensed behind her. “How can you help?”

.

“We shouldn’t have done that,” said Jack as they drove home. “We really shouldn’t have done that. Maddie, they’re evil, there’s always a catch and it’ll always be looking for a way to push us into it.”

“The catch is in the open,” said Maddie, leaning back against the seat of the car and closing her eyes. “It isn’t as if it’s in the fine print and we’re going to stumble into it. We have one, and then I get my tubes tied, or you get snipped, and we go on with our lives.”

“What if we have twins? Triplets? Maddie, we should have talked about this.”

“There wasn’t any time,” Maddie said defensively. “I had to decide right away.”

“What are we going to do if we have twins, Maddie?”

Maddie bit her lip, her eyes opening without her full permission as she thought. “We know how to deal with things like him.”

The car jerked just a little to the right as Jack failed to suppress his flinch. “Do you remember our work on motivations? On why they take artists, musicians, children?” he asked. He forged on without waiting for an answer. “Creative sterility, we called it. For this one to be able to cure sterility, he has to be powerful. I don’t think nails in pockets and inside-out clothing is going to stop him.”

Such protections were hit and miss to begin with. One faerie might hate bread, another might love it. The sound of bells would drive off one, and another would wear them in their hair. Even cold iron was no guarantee against them.

“We’ll have to find something better, then,” she said, firmly.

.

Maddie laughed. Not a twin. A single child showed on the ultrasound monitor. A girl. A beautiful baby girl. Perfect.

On the other side of the bed, Jack sunk into a chair, obviously relieved. “She’s healthy?” he asked the OB/GYN.

“Completely,” she said. “This is quite the miracle the two of you put together here.” She shook her head. “We must have gotten something wrong during our examination. I can’t even begin to tell you how sorry I am to have put you through all that, and I won’t blame you if you wanted to find a new doctor.”

“It’s fine,” said Maddie, patting the woman’s arm. “It happens.” Yes, being approached by a powerful fae just ‘happened.’ “The important thing now is to make sure there aren’t any complications.”

.

They made sure Jazz was born on a Sunday, with two middle names, one of which Maddie made sure to forget. They scheduled her baptism for as early a date as possible, even though both Jack and Maddie were as lapsed as it was possible to be.

Precautions.

Jack had his surgery only a month later.

They were safe. They had won.

The family of three snuggled together on the couch. Well, Jazz snuggled inasmuch as a newborn was able. They watched TV.

“Jack, dear,” said Maddie, roused to awareness by a news story about a rising young businessman. “Is that our Vlad?”

Jack blinked at the screen. “I think you’re right,” said Jack. “I haven’t seen him since college. I don’t think we’ve talked to him since college.” He frowned. “Did something happen? The three of us used to be so close… He was the only one in the whole folklore department that would put up with our theories, do you remember?”

“I don’t know,” said Maddie, trying to remember. “It was like he was there one day, gone the next.”

“Do you think he’ll mind us getting back in touch?”

“Only one way to find out.”

.

(As it turned out, Vlad did not particularly care to get back in touch.)

.

Jazz was not a normal child.

She saw too much. She understood too much. Her teeth grew in early. She learned how to get the milk out of the fridge at about the same time she learned how to walk. Her eyes were too large, even for her age. She didn’t start talking until she was almost two, and when she did, it was in complete sentences. She took to responsibility like a duck to water. No, she demanded responsibility, from waking up the family in the morning to answering the door. She loved rules and games, and the rules of games.

But they had never raised a child before. Perhaps this was simply how they were. Perhaps this was within the expected variety of humanity.

Most importantly, Jazz was theirs. Completely.

.

Maddie was not terribly concerned when her period missed a few days, or even when it was late by a week. But when it started pushing two…

She bought a test.

It came back positive.

.

Danny’s birth was different from Jazz’s in almost every particular. Instead of being infused with a sense of joy, proceedings were overshadowed by dread. Jazz had been born in a hospital. Danny would be born at home, behind every ward and protection Jack and Maddie could conceive of. The midwife they hired was more than used to odd belief systems and threw a few of her own traditions in as well.

It couldn’t hurt.

.

It didn’t help.

After the birth, Maddie held Danny in her arms. He’d been born in a caul, which had been slightly alarming, even though Maddie had known that it was a thing that happened regularly, and that, by most accounts, it was lucky.

He was such a tiny little thing. Smaller than Jazz. Which made sense, he was a little premature.

“I won’t let anything happen to you,” she promised him, whispering into the silky, wispy curls on top of his head.

Someone knocked on the door. Maddie jerked her head up, even though the front door wasn’t at all visible from the basement. Jack flinched hard enough to drop the towels he was holding. The midwife froze.

“Hospitality,” croaked Maddie. Those rules were always humanity’s first defense against the uncanny. Don’t want something in your house? In your life? Don’t invite it in.

Although, she had arguably already invited in the fae they were worried about. Hence all the other contingencies.

The knock came again. And again, louder.

Jack let out a sigh of relief. “It can’t get in,” he murmured. Then he smiled, broad and bright. “We just have to wait it out.”

Maddie nodded, tears in her eyes. The knocking continued. This was far from ideal, obviously, but she’d been half expecting the fae to simply rip through the wards like tissue paper.

Perhaps the theory that more powerful fae were more bound by custom, more vulnerable to their weaknesses, held water? She and Jack had always dismissed it as fanciful, but they’d never been able to gather evidence before.

Then, a sound that made her heart stop.

“I’ll get it!” called Jazz, childish voice muffled by distance and the obstacle of the floors above. She’d been told not to answer the door when Danny was being born, to wait patiently in her room, but for all her unusual maturity, she was only three.

Faster than she’d ever seen him move, Jack bolted for the stairs, pushing aside several pieces of furniture and medical equipment in his haste. He took the stairs four at a time and nearly taking the door off the hinges.

He wasn’t fast enough.

“Who are you, mister?”

“Me?” said a voice Maddie had prayed against ever hearing again. “I am your uncle, my dear. Did your parents not tell you about me?”

.

Jazz tipped her head to one side and stared up at the man, making her eyes extra big. She knew it made a lot of people uncomfortable when she looked at them like that, so she treated it as a kind of test.

The man smiled, kind and patient. He was kind of funny looking, but in a good way.

“No,” she said finally. “Are you Mommy’s brother or Daddy’s brother?”

“Ah, you already know about uncles, then. I was worried I’d have to explain. May I come in? I would like to greet your little brother, as your parents promised I could. I have gifts for both of you.”

Jazz liked gifts. “Okay,” she said. “But I dunno if Danny’s been born yet. Mommy said it can take a while. And I dunno if he can have gifts, yet. He’s gonna be really little. That’s what all my books say, and also the internet.”

“Jazz! Don’t!”

Jazz turned to see her Daddy skid around the corner, just as her uncle stepped across the threshold.

“Not quite on time, I fear,” said uncle. “Young Jazz has already let me in.” He patted Jazz on the head. She ducked away and stuck her tongue out, like she always did when Daddy did that. “Having greeted my niece, I would like to see my nephew.”

.

The fae did walk past the rest of the wards as if they weren’t even there. It didn’t even break them, just ignored them. Some of them he even commented on, as if approving.

He gazed down at Danny with his otherworldly eyes. The midwife had retreated to the corner of the room, refusing to look at what was happening. Jack had attempted to attack the fae with his bare hands, only to be pushed away with something approaching gentleness by an invisible wall. Maddie didn’t know where Jazz was. Upstairs, somewhere, hopefully.

“So beautiful,” the fae said, brushing Danny’s forehead with his off-color fingers. Faster than Maddie could react, he had a pair of scissors in his hand and was cutting off a lock of hair. “A lovely child.” The lock of Danny’s hair disappeared into the fae’s coat.

If Maddie didn’t know better, she’d call the expression on the fae’s face love. But she did know better. Love was as incomprehensible to the fae as fae laws were to humans, so she’d call it by its true name: avarice.

She tightened her grip on Danny, as if she could keep the fae from plucking him from her arms.

“Not now,” said the fae, after another moment. “Soon, I should think.” It ran a hand over Danny’s head. “Soon.” The fae looked up, meeting Maddie’s eyes. “I will return,” he said, “in one year.”

“For what?” demanded Maddie, unwilling to get her hopes up.

The fae blinked slowly. “For his birthday.” He tilted his head. “To determine whether or not he is ready. Perhaps, also, to visit my niece.”

“You stay away from Jazz!” snarled Maddie. “You have no claim on her.”

The fae merely shrugged, then smiled, slyly. “She does, however, have a claim on me. I promised her gifts, before your husband whisked her away.”

“Gifts,” repeated Maddie, hoarsely.

“For the sister of my child, yes,” said the fae, voice and face as calm and even as ever. “Would you ask me to forswear myself?”

“Then,” said Maddie, “you can leave them here, with us.”

“You will give them to her?”

“Yes,” said Maddie, through her teeth. She did not say how long she would let Jazz be in the presence of these ‘gifts.’

“Very well, then,” said the fae, pulling a number of boxes out from beneath his coat. “One year. Be prepared.”

And, with that, the fae faded from view, as if he had been an illusion all along.

Danny was still with them. Their son was still with them. Still theirs.

“One year,” she said, breathless. “Only one year.”

“One whole year,” corrected Jack, rushing to her side. “You’ll see, Maddie. Next time, that fae won’t know what hit him!”

“One whole year,” echoed Maddie, weakly.

“One year to prepare,” said Jack. “Look what we did with half that time! We’re Fentons! We can do it!”

“We can do it,” breathed Maddie. “One year. We’ll be ready.”

Jack nodded, firmly. “We’ll be ready.”

[hecallsmehischild]

Recent Media Consumed

Books

The Road to Wigan Pier by George Orwell. First, I actually appreciated the foreward to the “Left Book Club” copy, even though it says that anyone who is not a member should disregard it. It gave an interesting rebuttal to parts of the book. That aside, I’m not totally sure what to make of the book. On the level of descriptive writing, I rarely find something this richly penned. But it’s loaded with concepts and lingo and even a monetary system I’m unfamiliar with, and that hampers my understanding of the points. I get the general gist, but all the finer points are very lost on me, simply because I’m an American millennial.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving A F*ck by Mark Manson. I’ve seen the “F*ck” series titles floating around here and there, and I’m intrigued by a couple of them. The idea of this one is that people give way too many f*cks about everything, and that you really need to pick where you give your f*cks in life and never give a f*ck about anything that doesn’t line up with your values (in a nutshell). It’s an easy and interesting read. It’s interesting to me that, in the wake of what I hear was many years of positive-mood and high self-esteem type self help books (most of which I’ve only heard of and never read, were they before my time?), we’re getting a backlash of “Yes, life sucks. Yes, life has pain. Dealing with pain and failure appropriately is a part of life. Accept that, or lose yourself to complete entitlement” type self-help books. I’m curious what this trend produces in people over time. I’d also like to highlight that this book has the best discussion of dividing “fault” and “responsibility” that I’ve ever read.

Shows

Loki. WHAT EVEN. WHAT EVEN. WHAT. WHAT THE. WHAT THE. FRESH… THE FRICK FRACK PADDYWHACK???!!!

Mushi-shi. So, turns out the first time I watched this I somehow started on Season 2, and my source cut out before the season end… no wonder I was pretty confused. So I started re-watching this and… I remember how incredibly unsettling this anime is. It’s equal parts gentle wonder and soft horror, a blend that is very difficult to describe unless you’ve seen it. Much like Mushi themselves, eh? I think I’ll balance this out by ending each watch session with an episode of Log Horizon rewatch. That’ll keep the emotional balance intact.

Claymore. I ended up dropping this one halfway through. It has an interesting concept, but the “things that bug me” points mounted pretty fast. In the early episodes, everything is so dark that it’s hard to see what’s going on. There’s a huge amount of monologuing and info-dumping IN monologue, and this goes on even mid-fight, and even CALMLY mid-fight. Yes, this isn’t the only anime that does this, but it decreases my enjoyment. It’s difficult to take the story seriously when the big bad yells, “Why can’t I defeat you?” to the weakest-but-somehow-also-the-strongest member of a team, and then have a colleague of the team member calmly explain to the big bad exactly why he’s unable to land a blow, then they take off his head together. This show has a lot of that sort of thing. I’ll read up on how the series ended, not interested in slogging through the other half.

Elfen Lied. This is a re-re-rewatch for me. I stumbled on this anime when I was newly inducted into anime-watching and, well... given that Princess Tutu was my very first anime, this one was a real shock to my system at first. By all accounts I should have dropped it and run screaming at the time, but I couldn’t. There was something about the sheer tragedy of the story that called to me. Plus it was VERY short. So I returned to it from time to time. Now that I’ve developed more of a feel for what I do and don’t like in a story, how does this hold up? The relationships are terrible, imo, and the whole thing about diclonius is never explained enough (and I still don't understand the ending) but it's STILL hard not to be pulled in by the sheer tragedy of the series.

Movies

300. I haven’t seen this movie since college. Is it weird how much I enjoyed it as a romp? Yes, there’s death and tragedy, but the dry humor and utter gung-ho-edness of it is infectious. It’s a good flick, I’m really glad I went back to see it. And I also finally understand Leonidas telling the traitor, “May you live forever.” Damn, man. No wonder he flinched.

Weathering With You. GORGEOUS. I need to see more by this animator… LIGHT. WATER. FOOD. I hear they’re calling this person the new Miyazaki? I CONCUR. And the story is sweet and beautiful and just yes. Yes. Oh, look, he made something else before this movie…

Your Name. Okay so I have mixed feelings about this one. On the one hand, fantastic story and, once again, gorgeous animation that all makes me want to track with this creator in the future. And the twist definitely socked me in the gut, I didn’t see it coming. On the other hand, I feel like this movie hits an extreme of “show, don’t tell” in a way that comes awfully close to a negative. I didn’t think that was possible, but this movie switches timelines, POV, points in time, etc, so rapidly that it becomes difficult to keep track of what’s going on, properly. I could not imagine watching this movie in theaters, it has to be watched with a remote in hand to pause, rewind, rewatch, discuss what the heck just happened. It’s like watching Mystery Skulls videos, with that level of rapid fire little details that are incredibly important to the plot, but for a feature length film. Also, after some discussion, I came to see (and agree) that there’s a foundational issue in the main relationship that doesn’t bode well for the future, as much as I rooted for them to be together. Still, it’s an incredible movie and I can see why it was the highest grossing movie for Japan a few years back.

Games

Diablo II. I’m really happy. I live in a house with my husband and his best friend, and in the past year or so we’ve begun playing games together. This is the sort of game I would never have gone to on my own because I actually need someone in the room who I can ask, “Hey, how do you assign attacks again?” or “Hey, is this piece of gear better than the piece I’m wearing?” I don’t like playing the number game on gear so much, but I let the two of them dress my character up and then I back them up in a fight and enjoy myself. Looting and exploring for treasure is probably my favorite aspect (says the person who plays Breath of the Wild just to forage for mushroom and herbs), although as a level 20 Amazon I’m now shooting out waves of 8 arrows at a time, and that’s pretty epic too. It’s a special kind of joy to find out you actually like a type of gaming as long as there’s people there who can explain things along the way and who don’t get annoyed at re-asked questions. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m having a blast playing Diablo II in a group. And as for the other game we play together as a group…

WoW Classic. I covered this before, but back then I was a lowly level 17 Dwarf Hunter. Now I’m a lowly level 36 Dwarf Hunter. With a mount! I have epic skills like explosion traps, poisonous shots, and multi-shot. My wolf has gained a ton more skills, too, and is (or so I’m told) a pretty effective off-tank. I have been told I am an effective DPS person, which makes me very happy. I really enjoy this kind of gaming, but specifically when I’m in the same room as the people I’m gaming with. Communication is a lot easier and we work really well as a team that way.

[echidnapower]

EP’s FanFiction Master Post

So this is something I should have done a long time ago on my previous account, but better late than never. For those of you who find me, this is going to be a place where you can find all the fics I’ve written over the years. This will be added to over time as I fight to revive my muse.

It’ll be categorized by fandom, so you can quickly find what you do or don’t want to read. Here we go.

Pokemon

A Valentines Dream Come True -  It's Valentines Day, and a certain redheaded Gym Leader is finally getting to enjoy it with the boyfriend of her dreams. During their time together, they get into a little discussion about dreams, and Ash doesn't wanna tell her his! So to get him to spill, she tells him her dreams...when she finally learns Ash's dream...will both their dreams come true? - Based on a drawing from @miyatoriaka​, which can be found HERE.

AAML: Diamond and Pearl Version -  Follow me as I remake the DP episodes in order and in sequence, all so I can add the biggest star besides Ash himself. Misty! Watch her and Ash's love grow as they go on their journey. The absolute LONGEST story in my portfolio, and you will see my writing evolve the longer you go on. Be prepared for a massive read that even now is STILL going.

All I Want For Christmas Is You -  It's Christmas time and the Ketchum household is hosting a party with all of Ash's friends. But while Ash and Misty dance around their feelings for each other, another Sensational Sister is about to find herself in a situation she never could have expected, but she'll be darned if she lets it slip through her manicured fingers. (Spinoff of @hollylu-ships-it​‘s "A Christmas in Kanto" comic which can be found HERE.

Best Friend -  "Why? Why did I have to be so stupid as to make the mistake of falling in love with my best friend?" - Story told in Misty’s POV.

Blessings From Heaven -  I'm Ash Ketchum, and I'm getting married today! But how did this come to be? Through God's devine planning is how. Here's my story: I'm marrying Misty. - Warning for religious themes, told in Ash’s POV.

I Miss You -  Misty misses Ash terribly, and it's affecting her emotionally as she's more irritable than usual, if that was even possible. But Daisy has a plan to get Ash to come and see Misty again. Will her plan have the desired effect? Or will it cause something she never could've seen coming? - Based on a trio of drawings from the long lost Simply-Nicole. The old art can be found on my dA page HERE, HERE, and HERE.

I’m Misty, and You Are? -  Misty tells the story we all know and love...literally. She's telling the story. Based on artwork from the long lost Simply-Nicole, which can be found on my old dA page HERE.

Keep The Faith - This time it's May and Drew getting married, and it takes place in the "Blessings From Heaven" universe. Warning for religious themes.

Looks -  It's Ash's birthday and all of his friends have gathered together in the woods to reminisce on the time they spent traveling with their favorite Pokemon Trainer. But something's about to happen that could change the way that Ash and Misty look at each other forever…the question is, is it for the better?

Lovesick -  Kenny is feeling strange...he feels like he's sick...but is he really ill? Or is he just lovesick?

Madam Zara -  When Misty decides to get experimental with her appearance, she finds herself in the hands of a world-famous beautician named Madam Zara. With most of Misty's makeovers ending less than ideally, will this be the one to shatter the mold? And how will Ash react? - Based on a drawing and idea from @hollylu-ships-it​ which can be found HERE.

Our Own Sunset -  Ash and Misty watch the sunset together, but Misty's bothered by it. - Set in the AAML: Diamond and Pearl version universe.

Pokeshipping Week 2015 - My first time participating in Pokeshipping Week ever, hard to believe it was five years ago.

Pokeshipping Week 2016 - This year of Pokeshipping saw me collab with @hollylu-ships-it​, you can see the art she put together on her Tumblr page.

Symptoms of Love -  Ash and Tracey are hit by a Vileplume's Stun Spore, and Misty has to fend for herself in order to find a cure. But once she gets Ash back to health, Ash still feels many of the same symptoms from before. Why is that?

Tell Me I’m Pretty -  It isn't easy being the youngest sister, especially when your oldest sister is getting married and you're the only one without a date for the once in a lifetime event. Misty can't help but feel like she doesn't measure up somehow, but a surprise visit from her closest friend is sure to make her feel pretty once more. - Inspired by THIS piece from @hollylu-ships-it​.

The Road Not Taken -  When Ash gets some bad news from home, he goes into a depression and starts doubting both himself and the choices he's made. But luckily, someone is there with him to remind him he's loved and cared about. - Based on yet another drawing from @hollylu-ships-it​. Look at it HERE.

Warmth -  It's New Years Eve, and the recently married Ash and Misty Ketchum are ready to host their first ever holiday party at their home together, but when a snowstorm makes it so no one can arrive safely, Misty is saddened. But will they really end up spending their New Years Eve alone? Or will surprise visitors warm their hearts?

Super Robot Monkey Team Hyperforce Go

Iron Girl -  A robot girl who hates the fact she's a robot...will she realize just how important she is or will she continue to simply wallow in self-pity?

War Between the Living and the Dead -  The war between the living and the dead has begun, and the Hyperforce has to go up against their biggest challenge yet. But with help from their allies across the galaxy, they can triumph! Or can they? This is my take on what Season 5 would've been, plugging plotholes and making sense out of a series that left us all hanging.

Buzz Lightyear of Star Command

Reflections of a Legend -  Buzz Lightyear Personal Log - Stardate 92893.81. I don't quite know how to explain this, or what I'm feeling, so I guess I'll just start talking and tell you what's on my mind. There's someone I just can't get out of my head, and truthfully, I'm not sure I want to. - This is a first-person dive into Buzz’s character.

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Kim Possible

Angels Watching Over Me -  Kim and Ron are going down a dark path that could eventually end in their own destruction...literally, not figuratively. When the Sloth dangles over a cliff that holds their fate in the balance, who will come in their time of need? How about...someone they never could have dreamed? - Based on a true story, warning for religious themes.

Busted -  Hana wants cookie, Hana tries to get cookie, Hana gets caught trying to get cookie.

The Running Back -  All-star Running back Ron Stoppable is about to face the biggest challenge of his life. He's got just a few seconds to win the championship for the Middleton Mad Dogs, but more importantly to him, he's got just a few seconds to make his girlfriend proud.

The True Meaning -  Both Ron and Kim are well aware of the true meaning of Christmas, and that's why they're volunteering at a church's Bethlehem Revisited event to spread the word. Kim's happy to help and all, but...why is Ron calling her such a weird name? - Warning for religious themes.

Trick or Treat -  Kim is pulling a trick on Ron, will it be a great treat, or is he about to suffer the wrath of Kim Possible? He has no clue, yet.

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Fillmore!

A Promising Tomorrow -  Takes place immediately after the end of the episode "A Forgotten Yesterday." Fillmore's lost two of his old friends now and needless to say, he's tired of losing people to the darkness he was lucky enough to escape from. Luckily, Ingrid's there to show him that his efforts to rehabilitate his delinquent friends haven't exactly gone to waste. There's one person who's benefited.

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Miraculous Ladybug

You’re Loved -  Adrien Agreste, Chat Noir, different identities but more alike than he would like to admit. No matter who he becomes at any given time, there's always something very important missing in his life. Will he ever find what he's looking for? Or is it possible he's always had it and never realized it?

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Beyblade

We Are One -  Kai gave it his all battling against Brooklyn and his bit-beast Zeus. Now, after his close brush with death, Kai must summon the strength to go and support Tyson before disaster strikes the world. But there's no way he's strong enough to do it on his own...but thankfully, he won't have to, which is what Kai is about to learn. Sister story to "I Can't Lose You."

I Can’t Lose You -  A week after Tyson's battle against the evil bit-beast Zeus and his trapped blader Brooklyn, the world is slowly making its way back to normal. Kai managed to survive and is recovering in the hospital, and Tyson is getting some much-deserved rest. But when Kenny comes to tell Tyson that Hilary has quit the team, he loses it, and goes to find out why. My first Beyblade story.

Save a Dance For Me -  With the all new BBA launching with a gala to celebrate the occasion, Tyson finds himself in the uncomfortable position of needing to ask someone to be his date. He has someone in mind, but will his greatest beyblading rival get in his way and turn out to be his greatest rival in love?

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Teen Titans

Healing Touch -  With several Titans pairing up, the lingering emotions are taking a toll on Raven's empathic senses and causing her to lose control of her own feelings. When she gives in and does something completely crazy, it's up to Beast Boy to pull her out of a dark place and bring her back to the light. - There is accompanying artwork from @hollylu-ships-it HERE and HERE.

More Than a Hero -  I've learned a lot of lessons under Batman, he taught me everything I would ever need to know about being a superhero, about being Robin...but Starfire taught me how to be Dick Grayson, and she taught me how to fly. - Story from Robin’s POV, accompanying artwork from @hollylu-ships-it​ is HERE.

Robin Rising -  Life is good for Dick Grayson, he's the leader of a team of superheroes he's blessed enough to call his family, and he's about to turn 18 which he figures will open up a whole new world of possibilities for him. But when his old mentor and "father" calls in, showing that he captured a criminal that had eluded the Titans forever, things get flipped upside-down. - Multichapter fic which is part of a much larger universe, plenty of accompanying artwork can be found over on @hollylu-ships-it​‘s account. Go give her a follow and fav.

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Sonic the Hedgehog

A Light in Darkness -  A small band of heroes go back in time to try and prevent a cataclysmic event that would eventually destroy all of creation as they knew it. But what is the nature of this threat? How dangerous is it? And how far will they have to go in order to stop it from viciously destroying all they hold dear? Features a deep cast of Sonic characters, and a very special OC owned by @e-vay​

Anonymous -  For Shadow the Hedgehog, Christmas doesn't mean what it means to his friends and the rest of the world. Instead, he has a self-appointed mission he needs to carry out. But this year, he may find something that he's never really had before, and it could change the way Shadow sees Christmas for the rest of his life.

Christmas Wishes -  For ten years, Amy Rose has only wanted one thing for Christmas, and she's finally come to accept the reality that she'll never receive it. But a conversation with Rouge rekindles her hope and her Christmas spirit. Will she be let down again? Or will her one wish finally come true this year? Read to find out. (Sister story to my other story titled "Anonymous")

Comfort In the Storm -  When a thunderstorm strikes and leaves Cream quivering in fright, it's up to Tails to find a way to alleviate his crush's fears, and maybe even give her a reason to enjoy thunderstorms instead of fearing them.

Cream Adventure DX: Author’s Cut -  A redo of an old story. Cream finds a strange statue in the meadow, and she knows just who to go to to figure out what it is, but she gets more than she bargained for when she goes looking for him. What happens?

Dreams of an Absolution - Silver lays awake at night and reflects on his life in this apocalyptic world Iblis has destroyed...but most of his reflections revolve around a certain fire girl with lavender fur. He wants to be happy with her, but a warzone is a bad place to kindle love, and so every night he lays awake, and dreams of an absolution.

Relations -  Knuckles has a problem. He's in love...but...that presents a very unique problem...or does it?

Running to the Point of No Return -  Sonic is the fastest thing alive, and Amy is told that that's the biggest obstacle keeping her and Sonic away from each other. But what's she supposed to do to keep up with him, when there's NO ONE fast enough to keep up with him?

Scars -  Some things that happen in life leave scars behind that go with us for the rest of our lives. For Miles "Tails" Prower, such a thing happened to him in the depths of space many years ago...the loss of his first true love...though the pain weakens and the scars fade, they never go away completely, and Tails has learned to live with and embrace that fact.

Seven Rings and Five Fingers In Hand -  A redo of the final battle in Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonamy style!

The Heart of Chao - Chao are adorable little creatures, and they make great pets for anyone who's looking for something to take care of. But there's more to chao than just being cute, they're filled with more heart and love than anyone can imagine, and that can sometimes lead to bringing others closer together. Here are just a few stories of that very thing happening to our favorite characters.

Trapped In This Machine -  Sonic has seemingly fallen madly in love with Amy, but is this sudden romance truly sincere, or is it only skin deep, hiding something sinister underneath? - Inspired by a drawing from @e-vay​, found HERE.

[ayamari-no-goshi]

Verboten 13 | (T)

ff.net | AO3

Fandom: Danny Phantom (DP)

Summary:   AU. When Danny was five years old, he went missing for 2 weeks. In the years that follow, his family tried to make sense of what happened, only for the truth to be discovered years later.

Warnings: rated T for violence, mentions of death, language. Be prepared for some very weird things

Parings: Danny/Sam

Notes: originally uploaded to Ff.net. Cross-posted to AO3 and tumblr. This fic is very heavily inspired by folklore surrounding mysterious wilderness disappearances

Chapter 13

After his mother made sure he ate something light, Danny escaped to his bedroom and set up a video chat with his friends. Once all of them were certain they would not be overheard, Danny told them about the strange green wall that saved him from whatever tried to attack him.

His friends were convinced it had something to do with his ghostly side. However, he wasn't as certain. Up until that point, the only ghostly abilities he'd seen were the random bouts of invisibility and intangibility of his arms and legs. Not only that, he hadn't been able to switch to his ghostly appearance since he returned from the other side.

Although it took a while, he eventually opened up to his friends about the little information he had about his abilities. Instead of being freaked out, they seemed fascinated. After a quick argument, Danny eventually gave in and agreed to let them attempt to help him figure things out.

It wasn't exactly the result he wanted. While he knew he was alive, he couldn't ignore the fact part of him wasn't exactly human. Up until he was released from the hospital, he thought he might be able to ignore what happened to him. However, between the events at school and whatever the thing that tried attacking him was, he knew it was impossible. Clockwork and Frostbite even warned him he might be in danger in the world of the living.

Speaking of Clockwork, how would the ghost contact him? Or better yet, how would Danny contact him? Did the ghost know what that thing was? Or how it could be stopped? If anything, that was the sort of very important information he needed.

Danny sighed and prepared for bed. He hoped everything would start making more sense in the morning.

….

When he finally wandered down to the kitchen the next morning for breakfast, Danny was surprised to find Vlad Masters talking with his parents. His unofficial uncle stood and swept him into a hug once he realized he was there.

"Daniel, I'm so happy to see you're alright." Vlad made a show of being concerned once he released him. "I'm deeply sorry I was unable to visit you when you were hospitalized. Between the police investigation from both my employee's and your class' disappearances and the resulting paperwork, it was impossible to make the trip."

As much as Danny usually didn't mind the visits from Vlad, today, the man sent shivers down his spine. It didn't make any sense. As unnerved as he was, he figured he was just being paranoid and tried to shrug it off. "It's fine. I mean, I know how busy you are. I did get your 'get well' gift though. I can't believe you were able to get the blue prints for that shuttle! It usually takes at least a few years for NASA to release information like that."

"It was no trouble at all, my boy. But, your parents told me something troubling. You were attacked yesterday?"

Danny just shrugged as he grabbed some of the pancakes waiting on the counter. "Yeah, the police are looking for the guy," he eventually answered after he sat down and took a bite.

"Honey, Vlad's here at our request." After raising a questioning eyebrow at his mother, she explained, "Your father and I did some digging on the thing you saw yesterday. On accident, we discovered other similar reports, not just from here, but from other places where there have been a lot of strange deaths. To be blunt, Danny we're not exactly sure what you saw, but we're becoming worried something dangerous has started crossing over into our world."

"So why…?"

His dad startled everyone by pulling Vlad into a side hug. "Your mom contacted Vladdy here to see if he had some contacts for our research, and he decided he wanted to directly get involved. Isn't that great?"

His mom fondly shook her head as Vlad tried to pull himself out of his dad's grasp. "What your father means is that Vlad has offered to both fund and assist with the research this time around," his mother clarified.

"I felt it was prudent I was more directly involved," Vlad explained as he straightened out his suit. "If I understood what your parents told me correctly, you didn't see a person?" With that question, the normal businessman seemed to vanish, and a stranger suddenly appeared in his place as his expression turned predatory.

The expression reminded Danny of Plasmius, and it made the uneasy feeling worse. "Uh… I told my parents everything I saw." He quickly finished his pancakes and ignored the desire to get a second helping. His parents even got the real maple syrup this time. It was so tempting, but he needed to get away from Vlad. Once his plate was rinsed and put in the sink, he headed towards the doorway. "Well, I need to get going. I promised Sam and Tucker I would meet up with them."

"Young man, you're not seriously thinking about going out today after everything that happened?"

He just rolled his eyes at his mother. "I think as long as I stick to the main streets and don't try to dodge behind buildings again I'll be fine." Before he left the room, he glanced at Vlad. "Hey… this might sound weird, but… uh, has anyone else gone missing from your company?"

The man's eyes narrowed at the question. "I'm not sure I understand what you mean, Daniel."

"It's nothing. Forget I said anything." Not wanting to be questioned any further, Danny ran out of the room to get ready. After getting ready in record time, he sped from the house and towards the park.

….

Well, he could have done a better job at forming an escape plan. Sure, he managed to get to the park without being attacked or having his parents decide they needed to follow him, but he wasn't supposed to meet up with Sam and Tucker for another hour. Groaning, he plopped himself down on an empty bench and reviewed his options.

He could continue to sit where he was, but being a teenager, boredom would quickly get to him. Checking his phone, he realized he probably didn't have enough of a charge to keep him entertained while he waited. Now that he thought about it, ever since his misadventure to the land of the dead, it had trouble keeping a charge. Something about that place probably fried it.

Not wanting to risk it going dead, he thought about his other options. Fast food was out. Tucker would kill him if he took a trip to the Nasty Burger without him. He could walk around town, but after what happened yesterday, he really didn't want to risk running into whatever that thing was again. Actually, what was he doing in the middle of the park, alone, when that thing was running around town?

Paranoid, he glanced around. Other than a couple nearby trees, his current position put him in a rather open area of the park. No one or thing would easily be able to sneak up on him, and now that he thought about it, the weird feeling he got before it appeared wasn't present. While he wasn't completely relieved, it was better than nothing, and it still left him with nothing to do.

He checked the area again. The park was strangely empty for the time of day, though with all the strange things happening around town, he figured people were just staying away. So, maybe he could try to work on control his abilities a little. Having some sort of handle on the invisibility and intangibility would be nice.

After setting an alarm on his phone so he wouldn't forget to meet up with his friends, he started focusing on his hands. When his abilities activated, it often felt as if the affected limb went numb, so he focused on that. However, attempting to will his own arm to go numb was just as hard as it seemed, and he quickly grew frustrated. Though, he did notice a cold child run up his spine.

"How quaint. Didn't your allies give you any information when they helped you escape?"

Startled at the voice, Danny jump up only to find Plasmius floating behind him. As he backed away, he realized the scenery changed. The purple and green swirls of the sky immediately alerted him to the fact he was back in the land of the dead. How in the world did Plasmius do that?

"It's a nice trick, isn't it? But it's really not that hard. Creatures like us who have ties to this world can easily slip into it. It's only difficult when we try to bring the living with us."

"I'll remember that," Danny replied dryly. "What… what do you want?"

"There are many things that I want," the creature admitted, "but right now, I'm only interested in your progress and possibly to trade some information."

"Well, I'm still living, if that's what you want."

"Yes, but not quite. While I loathe to say I'm not as skilled in being able to detect other ghosts and spirits as some of the others I've encountered, I can still detect the faint thrum of a ghostly core within you. Why don't you change into your more fitting form?"

"More fitting?" Danny repeated faintly. This thing thought him looking like a ghost was more fitting? "Sorry to disappoint you, but I haven't been able to chance since I came home."

"Really? With how much ambient energy is available in your home, I would have thought it would have occurred fairly regularly as you adjusted. No matter. It seems your body is naturally responding to this world."

"Huh?" His attention turned to the flash of light around his midsection. Knowing what that meant, he hugged his stomach as he tried to stop the process. His core was active. He could feel its power trying to surge through him. "Come on. Stop it." He didn't want to give Plasmius what he wanted, but his feeble attempts meant nothing and the power overcame him. As he fell to his knees as his body recovered from the recoil of trying to stop it, he sensed Plasmius float closer to him.

"It's remarkable how human you still look in that form. I would have thought there would have been a more drastic change as your core settled."

"You mean you were expecting me to look something more like you?"

"No, not necessarily like me, but it is unusual to find a ghost who could easily pass as a human without attempting to hide anything."

Standing, Danny glared at the specter. "Are you just here to marvel at how weird I am? Or can I go now?" It was one thing for him to be unsettled by the changes, but he didn't need some creepy ghost, who happened to be partially responsible for what happened to him, commenting on how he was different than other ghosts. Of course he was different! He was still human.

The ghost pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. "I am getting somewhat sidetracked. Now, Daniel, like I said, I approached you for information and nothing more. Firstly, what do you know of what is stalking this city? You encountered it recently, did you not?"

"How did you…?" A chill ran down Danny's spine as he backed away. Was this thing spying on him?

"I believe I mentioned that I do try to keep taps on you. I still have not given up on wanting you to become my eventual heir after all, but rumors of it and others like it have been circling for a while. Ghosts older than I despise them, but it has been difficult to procure information regarding them."

"You probably know more than I do then," Danny replied. Plasmius did seem like he only wanted to talk, but that didn't mean he could change his mind. If he did decide he wanted to attack, there was little Danny could do to stop him. If he was able to get out of this, he was definitely going to focus on working on his powers just so he could defend himself against Plasmius. "It looked like a deformed person. It… it…" The memory of it holding something red and the sound of dripping blood made his stomach turn. "It took… part of that person. When it left, it turned into an old lady."

Plasmius frowned as he mulled over the information. "Daniel, what exactly did it take?"

The image flashed across his mind again, and his shook his head to try to get rid of it. "Look, I don't know. There was blood down the front of the guy's chest. It was part of his body. I don't want to think about it anymore."

"Hmm… I wonder if that was the intention or an afterthought. I will investigate that. If it was intentional, then the rumors I've heard may in fact be true," the ghost muttered to himself before glancing at Danny again. "Now, I have one final bit of information I need from you. What exactly do you know of my involvement with the companies of Vlad Masters?" His almost friendly attitude turned icy.

"Involvement?" Danny replied nervously. He could feel Plasmius' energy building, and he knew the specter wouldn't hesitate to attack if he wasn't careful enough with his words. "All I know if that you took one of Vlad's employees for experiments." After debating for a moment, he slowly added, "The person who helped me escape said you've done a lot of experiments like that. Wait, are you spying on Vlad so you can get new people for whatever you're doing?"

Nothing he said was technically a lie. However, he was definitely wasn't going to say anything about how Tucker managed to copy some of the ghost's files and discovered he was spying on what seemed like all aspects of Vlad's companies. Yeah, that was going to remain a secret.

Plasmius narrowed his eyes which prompted Danny to back away. "Butter biscuits! I seem to have unintentionally given away too much. I believe our meeting has come to an end, but mark my words, boy, it would do you well to stay out of my business. What I'm doing is to benefit both of us." With that warning, he faded from view.

Danny spun around to attempt to figure out where he went only to find himself back in the park. There didn't seem to be any sign of Plasmius, and he didn't seem to have any of the weird chills he tended to get before something strange happened.

He should be happy he hadn't been injured by the other ghost, but the interaction left him unsettled. How did Plasmius know where he was? Was he stalking him? Actually, seeing as the ghost orchestrated an entire scheme to get to him when his school was on a camping trip that was probably the case. To make matters worse, now that he was something in between a human and a ghost, Plasmius could pull another stunt like that any time he wanted.

Not wanting to stay out in the open any longer, he grabbed his phone and ran. According to the clock, he still had some time before he needed to meet up with his friends, but that was not going to deter him from going to Sam's house. As silly as it was, her parents' anti-paranormal stance almost acted as an unofficial ward. If anything tried creating chaos in that house, he was positive Mrs. Manson would somehow throw it out of the house by sheer force of will.

Once he was out of the park, he took a moment to text Sam to let her know he was on the way. While he knew she wouldn't exactly mind if he showed up early, it was still better to let her know so she could keep her parents at bay. The only tolerated him after all.

When he was done, he noticed something off about his reflection. His hair was still white. Panicked, he checked himself, and sure enough, it seemed as if he was still in his ghost form. He tried to trigger the change, but he had no idea what to do to reverse it. When he was with Frostbite, his body just seemed to do it automatically. Not wanting to say out in the open any longer than he had to, he ran.

As he approached Sam's house, he called her to give her a heads up on his problem. Her response was to have him climb up the rope ladder she had for her regular escapes so he could get to her room without risking her parents seeing him before the problem was fixed.

Ten minutes and one harrowing rope ladder climb later (seriously, that thing was a safety hazard), Danny found himself sitting on Sam's bed while she examined him. Her pokes and prods made him self-conscious to the point where he actually pulled away from her.

"I get it. I look weird, but will you seriously stop?"

She shook her head as she sat down beside him. "In all honesty, you don't look that weird at all. Compared to the last time I saw you like this, you actually look healthy." When he gave her an incredulous look, she grabbed his hands. "What? I'm being serious. Aside from the glow, you look fine. The first time, you had this weird green tinge to your skin which was really creepy."

"Thanks? I think?"

Realizing she was still holding his hands, she let go and stood up. "Ignoring that, my parents are actually still home for once. Let's see if we can get you back to normal, well, your version of it, that is." At his indignant 'hey', she just laughed.

==================================

So, the little jab about real maple syrup... To be honest, I don't care for the stuff, but so many people I know make a clear distinction between normal store bought maple syrup and the "real" stuff (apparently you just have to double check what you grab?). And because I'm thinking about it, Karo isn't fake maple syrup; it's corn syrup.

Did you know it's fun to write Plasmius? His speech is a bit odd as he tends to attempt to sound as educated as possible while still throwing in some causal aspects. I find it that balance fun to write.

[windblooms]

answering meta/build asks i got over the past week below!

Anonymous said:

okay team comp help,.. I need your advice - I want to use diona, bennett, rosaria and childe on my team but I’m not entirely sure about rosaria’s mechanics... what do you think?

rosaria is meant to deal physical damage - of course she can be a cryo damage dealer, but just like xinyan, physical damage is more convenient with the nature of their skills.  it’s too early to definitively say what rosaria’s mechanics are, so i’ll just comment on your team’s elemental resonance and synergy: two cryo gives +15% crit rate against enemies affected by cryo.  bennett and childe is already a good combo, great for vaporize and big damage.  you also have a freeze comp going on sans bennett.  rosaria could be your dps whenever childe switches back into ranged form!  so i think so far your team is pretty solid :0 

Anonymous said:

I have a question! Are you familiar with the Genshin yourtuber Zy0x? I really like their videos, but do you know if they’re any good? Thank you!

i have heard of him yes!!  admittedly though i don’t really watch a lot of his content . . . all of the things i’ve heard about his videos, though, have been very positive!  in-depth and explains the nuances between different artifacts, weapons, etc.  i believe he’s (mid)core with how he explains things as well . . . ?  overall someone who i’d trust if i was lost on a genshin topic.

Anonymous said:

what artifacts/weapons would you suggest for a sub dps/support xingqiu? c5 btw

i would recommend support xingqiiu over (sub)dps xingqiu.

subdps: 

weapons: primordial jade cutter/skyward blade > sacrificial sword > festering desire.

artifact sets: 4piece heart of depth > 2piece heart of depth + 2piece noblesse. 

artifact main stats: hp flower, atk feather, atk% timepiece, hydro damage bonus goblet, crit rate/damage circlet

artifact substat prio: crit rate/damage > atk% > hp% > energy recharge.

support: 

weapons: skyward blade > sacrificial sword > festering desire.

artifact sets: 4piece noblesse > 2piece heart of depth + 2piece noblesse.

artifact main stats: hp flower, atk feather, hp% timepiece, hydro damage bonus goblet, hp% circlet

artifact substat prio: hp% > energy recharge > atk%. 

Anonymous said:

hello!! i’m not sure if you’ve already answered this type of question before but with the fact that childe’s potential is locked behind his constellation is he still worth pulling for a f2p? :0 he’s not really kind in that regard lmao so i’m still trying to decide who to pull between him or venti and which bow would be best for who when i have both stringless and rust sitting around unused ㅠㅠ

yes!  childe is still worth pulling.  let me put this on a scale, hm . . . if diluc is the best dps in the game, a 9/10 on the scale, then childe is like . 7.5/10??? even if he doesn’t have constellations.  his aoe (in my opinion) is actually more than diluc’s due to riptide procs.  he also has amazing synergy with bennett, even when not ulting.  my point with bringing up childe’s constellation lock is that there’s just so much more he can do with them than without - c0 childe and c6 childe are not the same character, unlike c0 vs c6 keqing (hahaha someone fight me over this).  

stringless is currently venti’s best gacha bow, besides skyward harp, but the new 5star weapon elegy for the end is looking to be venti’s own 5star weapon.  so weapon prio for venti would go elegy of the end > stringless > skyward harp > favonius warbow imo. 

for childe, skyward harp > viridescent hunt > rust > stringless, but only stringless if you build bennett!  explanation here. 

hopefully i helped clear any confusion. :0

liastark0:

Hey! I have a few questions, which is a better healer, Qiqi or Barbara? Also, can I be considered really luck if I get two five stars within thirty pulls (hu tao and qiqi), cause people are talking about getting a good five star in ninety pulls and im like “???”, I barely have enough primogems for a three ten pulls.

Istg, your such a good help when it comes to genshin.

qiqi is the better healer - 5stars have higher base stats than 4stars.  qiqi scales off of atk, while barbara scales off of hp.  qiqi’s skill can also apply the physical debuff superconduct because it’s electro, whereas barbara’s hydro skill cannot apply debuffs. 

same logic kind of applies with their ults, with the addition that qiqi can just quick cast and switch out to have her allies attack enemies who are marked, continuously gaining health until the mark wears off, while barbara’s ult heal value is fixed. 

and yes, you are really lucky if you get a 5star within 70 pulls - much less 30!!  and about the “people are talking about getting a good five star in ninety pulls”, this is true.  90 pulls is hard pity, and there is a chance to get a 5star between 76-80 pulls.  getting a 5star in less than 76 pulls is rare enough already, so the fact that you got 2 within 30 (when the pull rate for a 5star is 0.6% - not even a full percent) is amazing. 

Anonymous said:

Hi, could I have some Genshin advice please? If not, feel free to ignore! I currently have an r5 white tassel on Hu Tao as her weapon. I like the crit rate stat, but I feel bad having a three star weapon on her. I also have the favonious lance and a dragonspine spear, should I swap the tassel out for one of those? Thank you!

keep white tassel, especially if it’s r5!  don’t use dragonspine spear because the physical damage bonus on hutao is icky.  r5 white tassel beats out favonius lance on all regards imo as well, since the white tassel r5 passive increases normal attack damage by 48%.  yes, even if it’s a 3star weapon, i’ve seen lots of hutao players excel with it.  so it seems as if white tassel r5 is your best option so far!

Anonymous said:

Catch me looking at childe's complicated af playstyle and thinking "big brain time"

HSADLJFSDFD YEAH?  his playstyle doesn’t take long to get used to though :0 it’s just about counting your seconds or getting a feel for when you should switch him back to ranged form so your skill cd isn’t too long.  he also has a lot of repetitive terminology in his kit LOL thanks mhy ;; but i promise playing him is easier than it sounds :0

[writeturnlove]

Good Evening fanfic friends,

I'm sorry this update took so long, but I wanted to post it as soon as I finished writing it. This chapter contains some intense sexual scenes, so I'm asking that readers be at least 18 years old to read it. I'm going to put a brief excerpt below, however the rest can be read by following the link above.

The Mate Chapter 5

By V.C. Turner (@writeturnlove)

WARNINGS: Do NOT read if you are under 18; SMUT, SEX, DP, MFM SEX, THREESOME, UNPROTECTED SEX, BLOOD PLAY/KINK, BITING, BRIEF MINOR BONDAGE.

To say that I’m nervous would be an understatement. I’m terrified. In less than 24 hours, I will be bonded to two men and ascend to a leadership role over a group of people I didn’t know existed a few months ago. We’re just minutes away from another pack meeting; this one called by the Elders, who plan to introduce us as The Alpha Triad. The Fates decided that I am the one true mate of the Alpha and Beta wolves of the North Pointe Pack. Once the Elders verify the mating, no one dares question their judgment.

I’m standing between my mates – Steve on my left and Bucky on my right. I’m shaking. Steve notices and places a reassuring hand on the center of my lower back. Bucky slips his hand into mine and squeezes. Today is the first time I’ve seen them since their mothers took me away from the Alpha house before we could break a fundamental rule: No sex before the Bonding Ceremony.

The ritual is set to take place tomorrow night beneath the full moon and in front of the entire pack.

But tonight, we must stand before them and assert our positions.

My breath is coming out in short bursts. Steve turns to me, lifts my chin, and places a chaste kiss to my lips. He whispers in my ear.

“It will be fine, Sweetheart,” he says.

My body instantly settles, and I can think clearly again. Steve calms me when I need it. I love that about him. I stop shaking and focus on Sasha Barnes as she calls the meeting to order.

“North Pointe brothers and sisters, it is a proud day for our pack. As predicted by Elder Evelyn and I, we have confirmed The Alpha Triad,” she announces.

A hush falls over the large room. Several tense moments pass before measured chaos begins. I can’t tell what they are saying because I’m too far away. What I can hear are the sounds of shock coming from the crowd, and I brace myself for what comes next.

From our place backstage, we see Evelyn Rogers step forward. She holds her hand up and the room immediately quiets, yielding to her authority.

“Family, as the prophecy had dictated, our Luna has been chosen. Tomorrow night she will be bonded to the Alpha and Beta of our pack. I now ask The Alpha Triad to step forward to stand before the pack, for tomorrow the three of you shall be joined for life.”

Steve leads the three of us onto the center of the stage and the sound of whispers starts up again. The moment hangs over my head like a heavy cloud, threatening to soak me with the weight of this new responsibility.

Bucky squeezes my hand again, then leans down to me.

“Stand tall and look each one of them in the eye. They need to see strength to respect you and your position,” he advises.

I straighten my posture and gaze into the crowd. There are expressions of shock, caution, and a few looks of disgust. Fuck them. I’m Luna. They will just have to deal with it.

“As you know,” Sasha begins, “While this is a happy occasion because our pack leaders have found true love, it is also a time of concern. The prophecy regarding the Alpha Triad states that there will be an upcoming war with a vampire clan. The conflict between our species has raged for millennia, however we’ve enjoyed several decades of peace due to a treaty signed by our ancestors. Unfortunately, this peace is about to end. Since we do not know when our enemies will attack, we must begin preparations immediately. My son James, as Beta, will help organize the tactical preparations, while Alpha Steve Rogers will divide the pack into specific groups who will ensure that each pack member and their families have the resources to deal with this threat. Now, I will turn the meeting over to our Alpha.”

The room falls silent as Steve steps forward, bringing Bucky and I with him.

“North Pointe Family, I know that much of what you heard comes as a shock. My primary concern is to ensure the safety of this pack, so we will begin organizing and training starting next week. I will delegate some of my usual duties to other pack leaders as I will be sequestered for the next two weeks as part of the bonding ritual. Speaking of my personal life: The fact that my new mate is also the mate of my Beta came as a shock to me, too. While a part of me knew, deep down, that she was the one for both of us, it was only just confirmed. This joining, this Alpha Triad is unfamiliar territory for all of us, however this is how things were meant to be. Y/N is a part of this family, and she will always be our Luna,” Steve declares.

My breathing picks up as all eyes focus on me. I don’t want to talk tonight. I have way too much on my mind to form a cohesive thought. Judging from the looks on their faces, I worry anything I say will make me an even bigger target than I already am.

PLEASE READ THE REST ON ARCHIVE OF OUR OWN....

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[letterboxd]

Greater Lovers: The Céline Sciamma Q&A.

“It’s a new narrative of love.” On the eve of its Valentine’s Day wide release, Dominic Corry puts your questions to the writer and director of our highest-rated romance film of the decade, Portrait of a Lady on Fire.

Few films have more hearts beating on Letterboxd lately than Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire, which has a 4.4 average rating, was second only to Parasite as the highest-rated feature film of 2019, and holds the number one position on our official Top 100 Narrative Feature Films by Women Directors.

“This is one of the most emotionally intense viewing experiences I’ve had in a while, so I’m not ready to sum it up with a neat and tidy star rating,” wrote Trudie. “My body is still visibly shaken… yearning personified,” said Lucy. “I’m going to think about those last fifteen minutes for the rest of my life,” swooned Stephanie, speaking for us all.

Starring Noémie Merlant and Adèle Haenel, the film had a short Oscar-qualifying run in American theaters at the end of last year, and although it was criminally overlooked by the Academy (it was not France’s submission for International Feature, though it is up for ten Césars), it’s finally going wide on American screens on Valentine’s Day.

As a giant fan, it was a huge honor to personally convey all the Letterboxd love for Portrait of a Lady on Fire to Sciamma, and to take with me several of your questions. (Lucy, we read your entire comment to her: “I just wanted to thank Céline for Portrait of a Lady on Fire. It holds a very special place in my heart now and is my favorite film of the decade. I’m truly, eternally grateful.”)

Spoiler warning: several questions reference the nature of the film’s ending, without getting into specifics. And a warning for easy fainters: Kristen Stewart may have been brought up during this interview; and Céline has been reading your Letterboxd reviews.

Adèle Haenel (left) and Noémie Merlant in ‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’.

What would you like to say to your Letterboxd fans who have fallen so completely in love with your film? Céline Sciamma: Well thank you! No, but really. Because what touched me the most is the fact that people will write about films. And that’s the beauty of this digital era. I’m paying a lot of attention about what’s going on around the film, what is being said. I’m really looking at things, so I’ve seen a lot of Letterboxd [reviews]. And I’ve seen that Letterboxd, at some point, used the emoji thing, which was really, really beautiful and fun [Sciamma is referring to the fire and picture frame emoji we added to our Twitter name at the time of the film’s release last year].

And the fact that people who were touched by the film would take the time to write about it, I think it’s something really beautiful, especially with this film, which is about how love is an education to art. Because art consoles from love, or makes us greater lovers. I find it beautiful that people would express their feelings and put their heart and their mind into cinema. As a young cinephile there was no internet, and I remember writing, just only for myself in little diaries, about film. And so I found it really, really important.

There’s one question we like to ask every filmmaker we speak to: what is the film that made you want to become a filmmaker? Well, the film that made me understand filmmaking, mise-en-scène, was The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Jacques Demy, as a director, his films in France, we see them when we are very young; he made Peau d’âne, which is a film that is shown to kids. He is such a great director. Definitely as a young kid—I was twelve years old—I found out that, okay, there’s somebody behind this with a vision. Somebody would paint a city like in Les Demoiselles de Rochefort. Somebody would paint a wall to make it sing the vision of somebody.

And when discovering mise-en-scène—the fact that there was a director, a vision of somebody—it really blew my mind. I remember I fell in love with the idea of cinema. So, you know, it’s not one film that makes you want to be a director. There are some films that connect you to the idea of cinema and vision and just make you crave for this idea.

Before this interview, we asked our community to submit questions for you. The first is from Letterboxd member ‘I’, who wants to know if you were inspired by any movie in the process of making Portrait of a Lady on Fire. When I’m writing a film, or just even just going with the idea of starting to dream about a film, I don’t watch films anymore, because it’s a very fragile moment. I’m trying to be candid and I’m trying to create this prototype and not to begin being in dialogue with the history of cinema.

But then when the script is done, and especially when we are talking with the team, with the DP, there are some films that can come up in the discussion. “Okay, we should we should take a look at that,” regarding one specific issue. For instance, with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, regarding the lighting, there was this idea, I mean you could definitely look at all the period-piece films and be like, “What about the candles? Are they in the frame? Are there a lot of candles? Are they on chandeliers? Or are they held?”

So, I’m thinking about that, this issue of the light in the candles. Night. Day. So me and [cinematographer] Claire Mathon, we had that discussion. So Kubrick, Barry Lyndon, we watched obviously.

And also at that moment I’m trying to watch, not specifically films that seem to be related, but films that give me faith in cinema. For instance, Jeanne Dielman by Chantal Akerman, which is such a radical film. I’m trying to get radical positions that have nothing to do with the film, subject-wise, but of people who firmly believed in the language of cinema, and were radical about it. I’m trying to watch radical films that renew your faith in cinema. I mean, they’re major pieces of art, but just give this feeling that you can be radical, you can be bold, and to get this excitement about, really, the language of cinema.

Many of our members are writing that Portrait of a Lady on Fire is the most romantic film ever made, and one of the best expressions of female desire ever put on screen. What’s the most romantic film you’ve ever seen? You know, it’s weird because when I think about it… film is emotional right? A lot of the things that come to my mind are films that are not necessarily pure love stories. This is gonna sound stupid, but E.T., for instance, is a great love story. This is a great love story for me, and one of the greatest endings in terms of how a relationship ends: E.T. has this idea that the breakup between the two characters is… they want the same thing. And that’s why they’re breaking up, because one is saying “come” and one is saying “stay”, which I think is the most heartbreaking breakup, not being a breakup.

I think there might be a new contender for most heartbreaking breakup. The ending of it is really climaxing. Because when we watch love stories, it’s harder, the frozen image of two people leaving in a car, you know, marriage, whatever. Like the romantic-comedy ending where they end up together, then that’s the end. Eternal possession as a promise of fulfilment. Or, it’s the tragic ending, where they will never [be together]. And I really tried to find another way [in Portrait of a Lady on Fire], like in E.T. you know, it’s two people saying “I love you” but not being together. It’s a new narrative of love.

So I’m always trying also to think about forms. Mulholland Drive is a film that definitely was also an inspiration, because it’s a film that creates its storytelling around an idea of love. Everybody said: “Oh this film is so hard to get”. [But] it’s really simple. It’s like the first part is a dream of a story that has already happened. And so Lynch created this, screenwriting-wise, he created this idea that those two women, they meet and suddenly they’re in bed together and one says “I think I’m in love with you”, which means that Lynch is telling us that “I love you” is always something you say in the past. And with Portrait of a Lady on Fire, I was thinking I have to create a form where “I love you” is something that always has a future. So that’s the kind of dialogue I have with films that inspire me.

And also Titanic. It has kind of the same structure as Portrait of a Lady on Fire: the presence of a love story but the memory of a love story. And also, not being together even though there’s a tragic death. It’s a love story about emancipation. And that’s so much what we’re trying to tell: it’s not about whether you end up together, or you don’t. A good love story isn’t about that, it’s about: did it give you emancipation?

This last question is from Pauline: “How much do I need to pay you to hire Kristen Stewart—who has just said Portrait was her favorite movie of 2019 and that she has seen all of your movies—in your next project? I’m ready to write the check, just say a number.” Well no, it’s not about the money. But I met Kristen Stewart a few months ago. So I mean, it’s already a start. We talked about cinema, and, and I really enjoyed talking about cinema with her, so…

‘Portrait of a Lady on Fire’ is in select US theaters now, and on wide release from 14 February. This interview took place in the English language and has had minor edits for clarity. With thanks to NEON, Cinetic Media and Ginsberg/Libby.

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[threewaysdivided]

I saw your conversation about Sam Manson. I was talking to Imekitty about this, but I’ve noticed a few things that (sort of) make Sam’s relationship with her parents seem more like teen-drama than actual hardship. If you look closely, she’s got a lot in common with them: outspoken political-activism, possible shared-interest in vintage clothes, and no shame in saying they don’t like certain people. Also, after the Fentons, they were the first to volunteer to use the Ecto-Skeleton, risks and all.

(In reference to this post.)

It’s been a little while since I rewatched DP so I’m not well-placed to do a detail-analysis implication-breakdown right now, but yeah - that fits with the overall impression I remember getting.  To me they came across as being sort of old fashioned set-in-their-ways conservative and snooty, and maybe a bit too Pleasantville -  but more often in the way of parents who do genuinely want good things for her and to be able to be proud of her despite not really understanding her interests, choices or friends and being very bad at expressing it.  Plus she seems to have her grandmother fully in her corner a lot of the time.

I really wish that the writers had committed to one or the other; either making it clear that Sam’s martyr/ persecution complex is mostly just regular self-inflicted teen-drama BS and giving her an arc addressing it, OR fleshing out the idea that she faces a lot of judgement/ pressure/ control/ nonacceptance in her home life and that her negative traits are a bi-product of defensive/ coping mechanisms resulting from that strained dynamic, rather treating things with Roger Rabbit Rules.  

(Which isn’t to say that a person can’t have similar interests/ personality traits to, and positive interactions with, their parents while still having a strained, broken or even abusive relationship with them on a deeper level, but the show never really goes hard enough in either direction to make it work.)

As mentioned the last post, this is kind of a consistent pattern across DP - the writers tend go with the low-effort first answer for whatever is Funny or Awesome or Convenient in the moment rather than putting in the work to find a solution that’s consistent with the characterisation, themes and world-lore overall.  There’s enough internal contradiction in the show that I don’t think it’s actually possible to take every canon detail as canon without fundamentally breaking things.  And in some ways that’s kind of cool; it makes the series more open to interpretation, and trying to distinguish authorial intent from authorial incompetence and come up with theories that account for as many pieces of canon as possible is really satisfying.  But, you know, it’s also kind of bad writing in general.

I think the thing that bothers me about Sam’s characterisation in particular is that - where it tends to be more obviously out-of-character when it shows up in other places - there’s a pattern to the inconsistency with how the writers handle Sam:

Throughout the series there’s a double standard in how Sam sees herself/ seems to expects others to act, compared to her own behaviour:

Despite being pro-pacifism she’s okay with smacking Tucker and encouraging Danny to destroy the trucks she doesn’t like

Sam values self-expression and is a feminist, but derides other girls for wanting to express themselves in a conventionally feminine way

Sam doesn’t like being forced to conform to others’ values but is okay with forcing others to conform to hers

Despite being anti-consumerist she shows very little discomfort at, or awareness of, her lavish home life and material belongings

She encourages Danny to take the moral high ground towards his bullies but has no problem antagonising and getting into petty verbal spats with Paulina herself

Sam stalks Danny and his love interest out of jealousy/ protectiveness but threatens to end their friendship when he does the same

In Mystery Meat, when Danny tries to express his discomfort/ anxiety, Sam hijacks the conversation to complain about her own parents instead of listening.

In One of a Kind Sam photographs Danny and Tucker hugging in their sleep, without their knowledge, with the stated intent of putting it in the yearbook, then uses it to blackmail them into silence. 

Side note: this joke is also tacky on a meta-level because it boils down to “male intimacy ha ha toxic masculinity no homo amiright?“ Would have been nice if show didn’t use low-key sexist humour as much as it did.

Instead of expressing that she’s hurt by Danny’s “pretty girls” comment in Parental Bonding, Sam retaliates by pushing him to ask Paulina out - a move she knows will most likely result in him getting publicly shut down and humiliated.

Then, after getting the result she wanted, she comes over to gloat and insults Paulina, rather than dropping it now that her point’s been made, which is what ultimately sets off the episode’s subplot.

In Memory Blank Sam permanently physically alters Phantom’s appearance to better suit her tastes while he’s not in a position to understand or give informed consent, then lies when Danny notices and asks about it later.

To be clear this definitely isn’t the be-all-and-end-all of her character and it’s not there 100% of the time - there are plenty of moments when she is loyal and generous and helpful and sincerely kind and where her stubbornness comes in handy.  But it’s the aggregate pattern of all these small instances that drives a crack through the foundation of her character integrity; producing this insidious undercurrent alternate-reading of Sam as someone who, at a deep level, just doesn’t respect or recognise that the emotional needs, pains, opinions, autonomy and boundaries of others are as real and valid as her own, and who responds to criticism with passive-aggressive hostility.

Again, I think that’s why people are so quick to point out that line from Phantom Planet, even though we all know the episode was a complete mess.  None of the examples above are particularly bad in isolation - you can’t really point at any one of them and say “oh no, bad girl” without sounding like you’re making a mountain out of molehill and irrationally hating on her just to hate on her.  It’s an uncomfortable slowburn pattern of subtle micro-transgressions that accumulates across the series - a “you might not notice it but your brain did”.  And it makes sense that it would be the worst-written episode that amplifies and brings that regular bad-writing undercurrent close enough to the surface for people to consciously recognise and use it to articulate those frustrations.

To wit: Not because it’s most telling of her character but because it’s most telling of the specific bad writing that regularly hurts her character. 

And again, from a storytelling point of view, it’s okay for Sam to have flaws.  She’s a teenager!  She’s learning.  She’s allowed to be egocentric and self-important and do things that aren’t the best at times.  It’s okay if these are her character weaknesses and a source of conflict with the rest of the cast.  But again, for that to be satisfying something really should have come of it.  It would have been nice if the writers were willing to have any self-awareness about these flaws being flaws that a person should recognise and grow past in order to have healthy relationships with others.  But they didn’t - because it’s easier to keep her as she is - to the point that they’ll actively bend the narrative to roll back or skip over moments that would have necessitated that growth.  So, even though they call attention to her flaws, the writers end up rewarding and enabling them instead of letting her learn.

And again, this isn’t meant to hate on Sam.  Hanlon’s Razor in full effect: it’s clearly a result of authorial/editorial incompetence rather than deliberate malice.  I know this isn’t the intended interpretation.

My preferred reading of Sam Manson is that she’s a Rosa Hubermann/ Hermione Granger/ YJS1 Artemis Crock-type character.  Someone who’s passionate and forceful and maybe a bit abrasive and hard to love at a glance, but whose core nature is compassionate and sincerely kind and loyal-to-the-death for the people they value.  I wish I could 100% like her without caveats; to be able to say that even if I don’t agree with her flaws I can at least understand that they’re a valid product of the life she lives, that they make her who she is and that she’s trying her best to be a good person who will get better despite them.  

But I can’t because the writers don’t give her that.  They’re always prioritising other things over the integrity of her character.  They don’t give her background enough time and context to make her negative traits feel resonant with it (because that would take time away from the Wicked Cool Radical Ghost-Fighting Superhero Action™) and the framing and plotting doesn’t give her chances to recognise or grow past them (because that would mean character development and those negative traits are an easy source of cheap conflict).  The writers just don’t seem to care all that much about Sam - her actual character, who she is, how she came to be that way, what she wants or how her negative traits would actually play against Danny and the others.

And that sucks.  Because she has a lot of potential to be a well-rounded and great character.  I’ve seen plenty of fics that seize that potential and roll with those gaps and the result is very good.  I wish I could like her canon depiction without feeling like I have to actively ignore a bunch of latent behavioural red flags as the price of entry.

She deserved better.

[berenshand]

pLease talk about why benedick and claudio are foils!! i’ve only just gotten into much ado and i’m thirsty for analysis 👀👀

hoooo eee you opened a can of worms here my friend. there is literally nothing i would rather talk about than this. im so sorry i am not kidding when i say i wrote an essay in response to this

Ok so, a big theme in Much Ado is realistic vs idealized love, and there’s also a lot of generalizations about love, but Claudio and Benedick generalize about love in totally opposite ways. At the beginning of the play, Claudio sees Hero and immediately thinks ‘she is beautiful and I would like to marry her’. Sure, he’s seen her before, but he was distracted because he was, you know, about to go to war, but in the first scene, he tells Don Pedro that he “liked her ere I went to wars.” Like, he didn’t realize he was in love with her til after, but it was love at first sight.

Claudio, through the whole play, is idealistic – he wants everything to be perfect, to be black and white. There is no room for ‘maybe’ in his character (which, unfortunately means he does not use his brain cells). When he talks about Hero, he almost always talks about her beauty or her chastity. He’s focused on the superficial, and he’s hyperbolic (almost like Romeo). He’s trying really hard to be the perfect courtly lover stereotype – he can’t just say ‘Hero is beautiful’, oh no, he has to say “she is the sweetest lady that ever I looked on”. Benedick even says Claudio used to speak “plain and to the purpose” but now his words are “fantastical”. So Claudio is way over the top.

Claudio expects everything to be perfect. Another big theme in the play is appearance vs reality. Claudio thinks that because Hero looks perfect, she must be perfect, and Claudio seems to be incapable of interpreting things beyond the surface-level, which is foreshadowed when he sees Don Pedro with Hero. He literally planned this with Don Pedro, but as soon as Don John and Borachio show up and say ‘oh by the way, DP’s in love with Hero’, Claudio’s like ‘damn, Don Pedro must be in love with Hero’. Y’all know Shakespeare loves a soliloquy, and Claudio does get one here, but it isn’t a ‘hm should I listen to Don John who is notoriously untrustworthy’ soliloquy, it’s a ‘well I guess Don Pedro screwed me over’ soliloquy. Claudio sees/hears something, has no evidence to contradict it and says ‘well, that must be true’. He doesn’t look for counter evidence or take Don John’s character into account. He’s gullible, black-and-white, and idealistic. If someone says something he can’t, for a fact, disprove, it must be true.

Later, when he accuses Hero, he says, “O Hero, what a Hero hadst thou been, / If half thy outward graces had been placed / About thy thoughts and counsels of thy heart!” He’s finally learned that people aren’t always what they seem, but HE LEARNED IT FROM THE WRONG PERSON because he always sticks with his first impression, instead of like, trusting the person he loves and wants to marry. His first instinct was to believe Don John at the party that Don Pedro isn’t a loyal friend, and a few scenes later, to believe Hero isn’t a loyal fiancée. His trust is completely based on perfection: he wants people to be perfect, and when they aren’t, he doesn’t just like. move on. He completely goes off the rails. In the party scene, he’s furious with Don Pedro, which makes him snap at Benedick and storm off in a huff (meanwhile Benedick is stood there like ????????????), and when he accuses Hero, he can’t just do it quietly. Like Beatrice complains, he waits til they are in church in front of God and everybody and completely destroys her life. He learns one negative thing about her and her perfection is destroyed and he will never love again.

Benedick, on the other hand, does not believe in love at first sight. He doesn’t believe in love at all. Nearly every single one of his lines in the first scene is him complaining about love. He says every man who marries will eventually “wear his cap with suspicion”. (This means married men have to wear caps to cover up their cuckold horns – Elizabethans had a sort of… urban legend that if your wife cheated on you, you would grow horns). So Benedick is basically saying ‘women will never be faithful’ (the irony of this is apparent later when Balthasar sings “men were deceivers ever”). However, Benedick also says a lot of stuff about being a ladies man??? He’s very inconsistent – the whole ‘appearance vs reality’ thing comes up with him too bc its like he really doesn’t want people to think he’s interested in romantic love but he also really wants them to think he can Get It. Who is the real Benedick????? We don't really know bc he keeps swapping personalities. Personally I think it’s interesting how Shakespeare seems to like flipping the connotations we expect… in Romeo and Juliet, he gives day a negative connotation and night a positive one, which is almost unheard of in western literature, and in Much Ado, the consistent character (Claudio, who is consistently gullible and idealistic) is a much less positive character then the inconsistent one (Benedick, who has no clue what he is doing ever).

A few scenes later, Benedick is in the garden complaining about how men make fun of other men who fall in love, then become the exact thing they’re complaining about by falling in love “and such a man is Claudio”. He goes on to say he will never fall in love (methinks he doth protest too much), but if he does the woman he loves will be perfect in every way. On the surface, it sounds like he has high standards, but what he’s really saying is ‘I will never marry because no such woman exists’ (not unlike Beatrice saying a man with no beard is too young for her but a man with a beard is too old – she’s saying she won’t marry because there is no such man in between – you either have a beard or you don’t). Benedick is an idiot, but not that kind of idiot. He knows the perfect woman doesn’t exist. Where Claudio is idealistic, Benedick is realistic.

……and then like one page later, he hears his friends say Beatrice loves him and he goes ‘oh hell yeah I will be horribly in love with her’. His soliloquy from earlier that said ‘men are idiots because they mock love then fall in love’? He’s proving himself right. But the difference between him and Claudio is that he can always acknowledge Beatrice’s faults. Even in the very beginning, he says Beatrice is prettier than Hero, though she is unfortunately “possessed with a fury”. Even now, when he’s deluded into thinking she loves him, and he’s listing off her virtues, he can still say she is “wise, but for loving me; by my troth, it is no addition to her wit”, and not only is he acknowledging her faults, he’s also acknowledging his. He even decides to be kind to her because he hears his friends roasting him and thinks ‘wow am I like that? I need to fix that’. While Claudio refuses to even consider that he might be wrong about distrusting Hero, Benedick is making a list of his own flaws and calling it Things I Need To Work On. Claudio’s list is more like Things I Am Right About Without Doing Any Critical Thinking.

What this all boils down to, for me, anyway, is again, that idea of realistic vs idealistic. Claudio is idealistic about himself too. He always thinks he’s right. Benedick knows he has flaws and actively tries to fix them. Claudio has unrealistic expectations of perfection. That whole ‘love is not love which alters when it alteration finds’ thing does NOT apply to him. If he finds an alteration he will not only stop loving you, he will give up on love forever, and ruin your entire life in front of every single person you know. He thinks love is nice. That it’s a warm fuzzy feeling that makes you feel like chirping birds helped you get dressed in the morning. But Benedick knows that love is a choice. His love for Beatrice isn’t love at first sight. In fact, they had a past relationship that ended badly. His feelings for Beatrice change on a dime because he decides he is going to love her, which is a crucial part of any real relationship, romantic or otherwise. We have to choose to love people in spite of their failings because everyone has failings. If we give up on everyone who fails us, we will be alone – just like Claudio and Don Pedro end up isolated from everyone in Act 4 and 5.

When Hero and Claudio reconcile, they slip right back into their dramatic overwrought nonsense – Hero’s all ‘I truly was dead, because you killed me, but I have returned to life’. Beatrice and Benedick are like “I take you for pity” and ‘here’s a shitty sonnet you wrote about me lmao’. Claudio and Hero feel like Romeo and Juliet 2.0, but Beatrice and Benedick sound like your favourite real-life married couple because they can make fun of each other. So again, Shakespeare is playing with expected connotations: the person who’s more serious should probably be a more positive character than the one who can’t take anything seriously, but it’s Benedick, who literally never stops joking around, who is the positive character, and Claudio, who takes everything Very Seriously, who ends up looking like an idiot.

This is a really long answer but basically, they’re foils because Benedick is unserious, realistic, and introspective, while Claudio is serious, idealistic, and self-righteous.

[manion798-blog]

What a Producer Does, or "How to Herd Cats"

Various people are overwhelmed by the verbalization "producer", and a goliath number individuals don't everything considered have the foggiest thought what it is a creator, you know, does. I've found that it is bewildered so much that it's truly shocking conversation grub at a bar, considering. Beginning at now, maybe if I were a performer... notwithstanding, I stray. Vindicating the way that the term creator is astounded, faint, and when all is said in done might require to clear, everyone seems to agree that there are different sorts of producers, notwithstanding the way that they stand confined from respect to how they're part jamie horowitz .

Kinds OF PRODUCERS

The business standard line is that making seems like social occasion cats. In the occasion that you've ever advanced, notwithstanding, you like that is woefully bewildered. Making sees happening changing to party broke out, hurt, purposeless cats on a boat in a hurricane while recovering from goliath sedation.

Constantly a producer is submitted for things like; sorting out cast, get-together, and zone; finding, paying, and orchestrating gathering; coordinating spending plans, copyrights and structures; controlling or managing the for the most part discussing the inventive decisions; finding, raising, or giving resources or cash related experts to the creation; gathering dispersing channels and showing openings; and managing the creation as a last resort. From a general point of view, a producer needs to make it go, paying little mind to what it is. They from a guaranteed perspective do such an everything. Inside the universe of advancing, in any case, are subcategories of creators, and each will when everything is said in done focus in on different pieces of the work. It's exceptionally muddled from being a contender; sure, you're a contender, at any rate what kind? Every producer mixes and asks their obligations subject to the necessities of the endeavor. Also, every so often they don't. As such everyone's issue. Here are a few the ways the verbalization "producer" is eliminated up:

FILM PRODUCER

The most all around noticed viewpoint on a creator is the striking Film Producer. This individual is submitted for each digit of the methodology of a film, film, or TV program. The creator central purposes everything, and is essentially stressed over guaranteeing the level of the pieces get together to back, make, pass on, and get money off of a film. In this sense, being a producer is pretty dark and non-sensible, at any rate immeasurably titanic. Such producers aren't continually committed for the bewildering decisions (they delegate that to the chiefs, DPs, etc), yet they do have the last say about what ends up in the film, and they fill in as an astonishing passing round when there are creative areas.

CORPORATE/COMMERCIAL PRODUCER

Another colossal kind of the clarification "producer" can best be depicted as a corporate or business creator. This is someone who will run the imaginative and picked exercises of the creation and plans the client gets what they need. A creator in this sense passes on the creation from the client's head and completes it last longings to the client. This is standard in a creation alliance that does corporate/mechanical/client based work, or with the beating with the beating with the stinging with the craving with the throbbing with the longing with the expectation of complimentary creators who put forth territory updates or records for showing attempts. Such a producer everything considered fills in as a contact between creative longings and the clients' stray pieces. This position is a fundamentally more real condition, instead of inventive. Such a producer may all around be clearly connected with the imaginative, also, in any case. Specifically, such a producer deals with the client. They should change chicken crap assessments into chicken serving of blended greens.

PREDITOR

Someone who will everything considered do all from criticalness to shooting to staying in contact with changing is known as a "preditor", got from "creator/boss/article chief". This is standard of individuals in or from the news world, videographers, and creation affiliations who have more unassuming creation parties. You correspondingly find this an incredible system when a client is looking for someone to "produce" a video for them: they're taking a gander at a preditor. It has gotten truth be told more certain genuinely TV, in like way, considering the course that there is no substance and lacking cash related way to deal with oversee manage direct remuneration a whole gathering to do things one individual can do. A producer is relied upon to shoot all that they can get and a short period of time later change the pieces into a fathomable story. A scramble of the time this is a kept band sort of producer. You comprehend the individual you see at a close to event who has a camera with an intensifier and is going close, and you know, you fundamentally know, that he will change his own record later? That is usually a preditor. In the current economy, in any case, fights like YouTube and the consistency and moderateness of video gear has made the craving that inside and out everyone can be a preditor. Generously keep up a key sensible ways from this need, and graph that the music isn't in the violin itself. It's in the duty concerning fit subject expert.

LINE PRODUCER

Someone who makes and manages the spending plan nearly as the gathering, plan, etc for each film as such is seen as a Line Producer. Interminably less innovative, such a creator is more stressed over getting secure with the money go where it needs to go and guaranteeing everything runs as enough and as monetarily as could be central pondering the current condition. A cash related structure is all around limits subordinate upon "subtleties", as such the name. A line creator runs the standard pieces of a creation. In non-Hollywood signs, this passing on gets blended in with the obligations of a standard creator and a preditor. For example, I did a goliath store of such a work in NYC. I was given a set degree of money by another producer/client/whoever and suggested "produce" something. I would then make the detail spending plan and discover, plan and select get-together/resources/zones/licenses/transporters subject to this cash related procedure.

Pioneer PRODUCER

Another get-together of a creator that various people imagine is someone who goes out and finds assessors or various wellsprings of financing, or is rich and resources the endeavor themselves. This is standard in film and story cases, and that individual is allowed either a producer or pioneer creator credit. As a rule when you find a free innovative "looking for a creator to help with my film", this is what they're taking a gander at. This is reliably the control of a pioneer producer considering the way that the person who gives the money is the person who has the last say in how things complete. They're the boss. They direct everything, paying little psyche to the way that they're head focus is on and on concerning financing or running the film's accounting. It's by no means whatsoever, by any stretch of the imagination, in any capacity by any means, in any capacity in any capacity whatsoever, hard to dismissal to consider that the clarification behind creation a film is to sell it. These people are there to assist you with doing combating that.

Changed PRODUCER

There's on a fundamental level oneself pioneer. This is someone who is submitted for the whole undertaking, in the event that they have money. This is standard of short motion pictures and changed movies, all around things with no/lo cash related procedure. The producer, in this sense, does everything not being done by the innovative/gathering/editors. This cements paying (or not paying) each other individual. Every so often from their own pocket, a scramble of the time from an investor's. A free creator, likely, is other than the standard innovative force behind the endeavor, other than. It's standard for the producer to other than have paid one of a kind cerebrum to the substance or be figuring everything out the film.

[bellatrixobsessed1]

why people do women wrong? it's always the man that gets good. I mean: Pansy Parkinson-no development. Still evil bully Claudia-turn bad, no redemption Azula-from bad to worse, no redemption. Only regina and kuvira have a redemption (kuvira does not deserve it) The others stay bad, insignificant. // From bad to good,redemption. Draco Zuko Soren What i learned is that women are worse than men. Do you know what I mean...

This one is a little tricky for me to answer because I’m not sure if I agree or disagree. I’ve seen a lot of media where the female characters are treated awesome (I’m thinking of the heavy girl power shows; Winx, W.i.t.c.h., Totally Spies, KP, etc.) But then there are some where the treatment isn’t so great. I can see why you’d say so but I think I kind of lean more towards saying that it isn’t a gender issue so much as I have a habit of latching onto and getting attached to characters that aren’t particularly well liked by the creators and/or fandom.

The reason I don’t think that this is a gender issues is because we do have characters like Regina and Kuvira (personally I do think that she deserved it, I’m a rather staunch Kuvira supporter lol) are proof of that. We also have Shego  from KP (who in the very final episode, if I remember right) ended up having a hand in saving the world. She and Drakken ended up getting an award for it (again it’s been a while since I’ve watched that tho so I could be wrong). Regardless she was pretty consistently humanized throughout, and sometimes shown in a more positive light. More recently, Icy from Winx finally got a backstory that painted her in a more sympathetic light. Pretty sure she also helped the good guys in the finale (it was kinda unclear because I watched the Italian version and I don’t speak Italian). This was particularly astounding to me because up until then the writer seemed to really not like her lol. And of course we have Regina who has, what I think, is one of the most amazing redemption arcs out there. Her sister got a redemption too and so did Ursula and Maleficent. Anastasia got one. In season 7, Cinderella’s step mom got one. Even Cora got a little redemption arc and she was one of the meanest bitches int show lol. Say what you will about Once, but a good lot of their female villains turned good (and if they didn’t they were humanized). And then there’s Kuvira who also got a redemption, even if the execution was somewhat rushed.  Acxa is also a good example. Again, say what you will about Voltron, but Acxa, Zethrid, and Ezor all got receptions and ended up fighting for the good side. There were even scrapped plans to make her the pilot of the yellow lion. Hell, Haggar got some humanization at the very end. She was eventually portrayed as a woman who just wanted to be reunited with her son. 

So I think that there are many examples of shows where the females (and female villains) are treated well. Enough of them, at least for me, to safely say that I don’t think it’s a gender thing.

At the same time characters like Azula and Isabella are the reason why I can see why you’d say female characters are done dirty. Azula especially seems to get poor treatment even from the authors when her situation is very similar to Zuko’s and literally every other character gets sympathy by the gallon. But tbh I think that it’s more of the fandoms than the creators. I’ve noticed that with Isabella, for example, her brother, Guy, gets a lot of love and sympathy and everyone seems to love him. No hate on Guy, because I like him too. But Isabella is an abuse and an (implied) rape survivor. And she went from good to evil to good again and then back to evil where she stayed and died. It has been a while since I’ve interacted with that fandom, but I know that back when it first came out, everyone hated her and there was like no sympathy for her even when she was good. I think that it’s because they saw her as a replacement for Marian and so they did that ship war thing where they hated her for getting in the way or whatever. I’ve actually stumbled upon an outright hate fic or two about her. 

Regina also got so much hate from the fandom. I’ve noticed that a lot of people liked to praise Hook and excuse a lot of what he did, but they’d constantly demonize Regina for similar stuff. Like before her redemption the fandom (at least the portion I talked to) hate this hate boner for her and would constantly shit talk her at every opportunity. Back when I fought everyone who disagreed with me I remember constantly getting into it with a handful of Rumple fans who would hate on Regina for being a killer while simultaneously dismissing and justifying the murders Rumple committed???? 

Azula, I feel, has become the fandom’s punching back. She and Zuko both have the same father and were exposed to abuse from him. Different kinds, but still abuse. They were both kids. But for some reason Zuko’s negative actions (as a result of his abuse) tend to get swept under the rug while Azula’s are always discussed. I think that it has a lot to do with that Zuko did get his redemption. But at the same time I’ve noticed quite a few people justifying some of the bad things he did in the past while knocking Azula for doing bad things. 

I also think that it might have  to do with Azula being realistic. I know a lot of people who say that they see people they don’t like in Azula and for that they can’t like her. Which is fair enough. I have a few characters that I don’t like because they remind me of people I don’t like. 

As for Claudia and Soren; I’m not caught up with DP. But I feel like Claudia is going to be redeemed. I think that Aaron might be treating her as Azula but with a redemption. But I’m also kind of skeptical because there’s speculation that he was lying about the whole ‘plans for an Azula redemption’ thing, which is a whole other matter that I’m not even going to get into right now. I think that with DP we’re just gonna have to wait and see how Claudia is handled. 

Bottom line I feel like fandoms tend to be harder on female villains than male villains. I don’t think that its necessarily the writers. And even then I’m not quite convinced that it is simply because they are female, because I have seen quite a few female villains get lots of love from the fandoms. And despite it all, Azula does get sympathy from the fandom and I’ve seen several people who don’t particularly like her, say that they at least feel bad for her. I think that it’s just kind of easier to pay attention to the hate than it is the the love sometimes. Because one unkind comment tends to just really stick out among positive ones. Hateful comments also tend to have more of an impact than kinder ones. 

TL;DR While I can see why you’d say that female character are done wrong, I think that I lean more towards it not being a gender issue. I think that there are many factors as to why certain female characters get less sympathy while others get more. I hope all of the above made sense.