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mayyourshipsbewithyou · 4 years ago

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Things I loved about In the Heights

-The sounds of the city are part of the music of the opening song

-The frame story is the only way this story should be told; the story only works if it shows the results of Usnavi's decision to stay

-Anthony and Lin shaking hands

-Yay to random mixed race couple asking for directions

-“I hope you’re writing this down I’m gonna test you later” only makes sense with kids

-Showing different residents of Washington Heights provides scale

-I’m not sure about the decision to cut Camila, but if it means less Nina drama, then I love it

-I love how Usnavi has his friends’ orders all ready to go

-LOVE how Usnavi announces Benny’s entrance

-Everything about Vanessa in this movie is perfect=> she’s given so much more depth, her beauty is downplayed, she’s kind of a nerd, but has a beautiful smile

-Nina’s heels=> metaphor for her reaching for the stars

-I love the actress that plays Nina; she’s the right age and her singing voice is so sweet

-Nina’s hair is straight when she’s at school; as soon as she comes home, it’s curly=>she can be herself at home

-When Nina turns around and sees the crowd of people counting on her=> I felt that

-I love seeing Nina get her acceptance letter; I remember what that was like for my brother

-Camila must have died while Nina was at college in this version; Nina lost her mother recently which helps explain her different reason for dropping out; she feels lost

-I don’t know why Sonny is using this deep voice, but I love it!

-Whoever decided to have 96,000 take place at the pool is a genius

-The graphics at the beginning of 96,000 are good for helping regular people understand the rap

-Pete just put his arm around Sonny=> are they dating?

-Sonny yelling 96,000 as he enters the pool=> the sound design

-Pete nodding along to Usnavi=> sucking up to the family

-Usnavi is such a proud cousin-uncle during Sonny’s part in 96,000

-Vanessa making her “I'll be downtown” walk down a ramp

-The dancer doing flips is now a diver doing spins into the pool

-On stage, the lighting was dark; in the movie, it’s underwater

-The circles of people in the pool reflect the zeros in 96,000

-Lin and Chris being rivals is perfect; their bromance is everything

-Nina and Benny being together before the events of the movie means they are the beta couple and have less drama than Usnavi/Vanessa which is how it should be

-Benny joins in during “on that fire escape”=> like West Side Story

-Benny’s “Let me in” against the fence is hilarious

-Nina and Benny are FUN, not angsty like in the original

-Nina following the little girl=> following herself, following her dreams which eventually lead her to the sea; all of this is done while she’s talking about her past

-Nina and Benny instrumental™ part 1 in the middle of “When You’re Home”, Benny interrupts=> their story isn't complete yet

-Benny says he believes in her without discounting her feelings

-Everyone loving Nina=> I finally get it

-Nina is home geographically and with people who love her

-Benny is Nina’s home

-In the Heights is about how dreams are great, but the life you have now can be so beautiful

-Nina’s hair during the dinner/club scene is great

-Usnavi is wearing his dad’s hat for his date with Vanessa; he knows that she is to him what his mom was for his dad

-Family dinners are the same in every culture

-Awkwardness of long-time friends going on a date

-Vanessa offers Usnavi his first drink of the night; he thinks that’s what she wants; because why would she want him and only him?

-Usnavi whispering in Vanessa’s ear is so sexy

-Love that Benny is on Nina’s side instead of being mad at her

-I wonder if they thought 5 years of Benny working for Kevin was too much or too little since they changed that line to "all these years"

-Benny’s reactions to Vanessa dancing at the club are hilarious

-Vanessa laughing at Usnavi dancing with someone else

-Nina is always smiling and laughing at the things going on around her; not as self centered

-Nina and Benny dancing at the club=> all of the yeses

-Usnavi is too nervous about being alone with Vanessa that he un-dated himself; he wasn’t quite ready

-Love that they consciously cut all the “Usnavi, help me” parts=> Vanessa is not a victim

-Fireworks are a romantic setting for Sonny and Pete, just saying

-Usnavi/Benny/Nina talking about the fourth member of their square gives me feelings; I need more of these four in fanfic, my dreams

-“I got to wait for Vanessa”=> the stuff dreams are made of

-Benny is such a good person; he’s even better than the original which is what he deserves

-Usnavi is relieved to have Vanessa call his name

-“Don’t walk away from us tonight”=> great addition

-To give Usnavi and Vanessa some of Nina and Benny’s original lines is to see the face of God

-The first time I saw this, I’m ashamed to admit, I thought Benny was going to steal money from the dispatch; I was a fool

-Dancer with fireworks on his shoes

-Benny is smart and good; he isn’t doing this for Kevin or Nina but for the people of New York

-Abuela was able to see stars again on the last night of her life

-I’m sad Blackout isn’t exactly the same but the orchestral parts that cover up what is unsaid is so beautiful it makes up for it

-Abuela’s family is her “fireworks”; they are what light up the Heights

-Sonny came to Usnavi instead of being with his dad during the blackout; his real family

-Abuela’s smile as she looks at her family while reflecting on her childhood is the most beautiful thing there will ever be

-Paciencia y Fe as a dream sequence is how it was meant to be

-The transition on the subway from reality to memory

-Paciencia y Fe is a mixture of cultures; like Abuela’s memories

-“Wide awake”=> stepping off the subway

-The same actress played Abuela on Broadway and in the movie

-Abuela may be in a musical, but she’s still an old woman

-“As I feed these birds”=> back to the present

-Calor means heat in Spanish but in English it sounds like color

-Abuela dying during the night of the blackout is perfect

-Usnavi saying “she was just here” twice: when she was literally just there and many years, maybe a decade, after the fact

-Usnavi’s daughter is the life that goes on after Abuela is gone

-Usnavi and Nina crying together

-Those closest to Abuela are inside and everyone else is outside

-Iris was sitting on the outside and now she’s in the middle; needed comfort from her friends

-“Should we take a break?”=> we’re past the point of an intermission

-“No daddy, keep going”=> does this look like a stage production to you? It’s a fucking movie

-There isn’t a clear point for an intermission; the action stays strong over where the intermission should be; this is a movie, not a play, and movies don’t have intermissions

-Everyone’s holding candles; like the stars Abuela loved so much

-Iris called Usnavi Daddy for the first time because that was the point in the story where he needed to hear that the most

-“I thought about the people I care about the most, I thought about you”

-Anthony makes Usnavi sexy in a way Lin never could

-So many people love Vanessa, but no one better than Usnavi

-Abuela paid to have Camila's napkins cleaned after all

-Usnavi is the kind of parent that doesn’t sugarcoat life

-Vanessa listed no emergency contacts even though she had people

-“That’s senorita to you”=> yes girl, get it

-Love Daniela for getting everyone out of their asses

-“Tonteria�� means foolishness=> the more you know

-How fast Carla says no to “ask me why” shows how quickly she wants to please her love

-Usnavi’s Nueva York t-shirt=> I need it

-Daniela’s first effect being on a woman whose hair is terrible

-Carla pushing that man away from her woman with a bullshit excuse

-My friend was laughing at the parts that were meant to be jokes

-Usnavi’s entrance being announced in Carnaval del Barrio; just like Benny in the opening song

-“There’s nothing holding me down”=> assuming he was rejected

-The different communities dancing with their flags

-Nina being part of Carnaval del Barrio is great

-Even Kevin, kind of an old man, can get down

-Since Nina and Benny sex scene wasn’t shown on screen (praise Jesus), I have to assume Nina told Daniela even though she knows she’s a huge gossip

-Everyone stops because Sonny, a kid, starts singing

-Vanessa and Sonny are so powerful together

-Vanessa’s hand on Sonny’s shoulder

-A kid providing Usnavi with the “flag I’ve got in my hand”

-Usnavi and Vanessa dancing together is muy romantico

-Everything about Nina’s appearance in “When the Sun Goes Down”

-“Let me just listen to my block”=> peak Nina

-Abuela wrote “for Usnavi” on her lotto ticket 😭

-They cut so many songs but kept Champagne=>I love their priorities

-The pause before “you outta stay”

-Everyone has such great chemistry; especially Usnavi and Vanessa

-The choreography in Champagne is what I’ve always imagined

-Usnavi didn’t have time to cash in because Vanessa came over

-Vanessa and Pete friendship for the win

-“Best days of my life” is said thrice=> good things come in threes

-Usnavi staring at the room where Vanessa kissed him

-Iris knows he stayed; she loves her dad so much

-Usnavi looking out his window in Washington Heights and seeing his friends on his dad’s beach

-When Usnavi talks about Kevin at the dispatch, the camera flashes to an abandoned building

-“Vanessa at the salon”=> Usnavi sheds a tear

-Vanessa being front and center during Usnavi’s decision to stay

-Hearing the sounds of the beach during the unveiling

-It’s all about Vanessa=> perfection

-Lin being at the ending is perfect no matter the context

-“Say it so it doesn’t disappear”=> the sad reality is your neighborhood probably will disappear

-Usnavi telling his daughter “you’re it” is everything

-Iris understanding all of the little details of her father’s store now that she knows his story

-Iris is the goddess of the rainbow like the light that appears when water appears on a sunlit day

-“Man, you talk forever”=> that’s so “How I Met Your Mother”

-Iris has a necklace of seashells, like the islands

-Vanessa would sooner get wet than let go of Usnavi’s hand

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thorraborinn · 4 years ago

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Just out of artistic curiosity- in terms of traditional depictions, would you say it’s more likely that the brisingamen was closer to a closed-front necklace or an open-front torc?

Given my background, my first move is to always look toward the word itself -- if men means one thing specifically, then we know it's that. Unfortunately, so as far as I can tell, the word men ('necklace,' basically, but with this bit of ambiguity apparently) doesn't really differentiate between different types of neck jewelry.

I can show support that it was not one of the strings of beads and pendants that women would wear suspended from the front of their dresses attaching at brooches -- one of those is called a sǫrvi, and Snorri actually gives us that definition confirming it was current in his time: En fyrir því er kona kennd til gimsteina eða glersteina, at þat var í forneskju kvinnabúnaðr, er kallat var steinasörvi, er þær höfðu á hálsi sér. 'And for this reason is a woman referred to in reference to gemstones and glass beads, that there was in old times a woman's accessory, which was called a stone-sǫrvi, which they had on their necks.'

It is very possible I'm missing something here, since this is a semantic context I'm not really used to, but usually when the word men is used in Old Norse, there aren't any context clues that tells us what the men in question looks like. There is one instance where the men has a tygill, a tie, like something to tie it onto the person's neck, so it's definitely inclusive of something that goes all the way around, but that wasn't really in question anyway, and this particular men is on an idol of the Finnic Jumala (Jómali in the Old Icelandic) so it might not be the best example to extrapolate from. There's a men in Vápnfirðinga saga that seems to be somewhat more solid (the footnote calls it a hálshringur, a collar, but in-text it is just called men), but this also seems to go all the way around and have a way to tighten it.

I can't find a separate word for a torc, and even in Modern Icelandic I can't find a way to say torc without describing a type of men (or other word for neck jewelry).

When we look to archaeology we see that there's a bunch of stuff that fits sort of this somewhere-in-the-middle description, stuff that's pretty solid but does wrap all the way around like this rather torc-like neck-ring from the Hiddensee hoard:

Or these, from the Høn hoard. I'm not sure, since I can't see it especially clearly in the picture, and I'm not an expert on this stuff, but it looks to me like the back parts of these could constitute a tygill like the men had that was fastened to Jumala in the aforementioned saga description:

And going back a bit to the Migration Age (when we might imagine that stories about Brísingamen already existed and were being shaped into how they would later be told) we find incredible stuff like this:

Here's a gullgubbe with a necklace, looks like it's maybe got some big chunky stones on it...

...or perhaps they're not stones at all, but seeds. Be sure to check out this discourse about drift seeds and Brísingamen (also known as 'sea-kidney'). The papers referenced are here (Meaney, paywalled but you can get it on sci-hub) and here (Tolley -- this is giving me an error trying to load, but it downloads and opens fine).

Finally, either the single most important piece of evidence, or not at all, or somewhere in the middle (lol) is this:

This is a silver pendant found in a grave in Aska, Sweden. It's usually accepted as a depiction of Freyja. Personally, I like to exercise a little caution when identifying figures that get found with little secondary context so I'm gonna stop short of saying that it is Freyja. But there's also no real reason to reject that hypothesis, either. The figure here definitely seems to be wearing something around her neck with a prominent big round thing in front (seed? jewel?). It's not exactly the clearest depiction, but it might be an actual depiction of Brísingamen (which means the person who owned it wore a necklace on their necklace).

Anyway if the sea-kidney stuff is true, then it seems reasonable to me that there could be a tradition of describing Brísingamen in terms of that, making it a sort of special case in comparison to other jewelry and fashion. If it's not relevant here, then I guess the average Scandinavian would just picture whatever the coolest neck jewelry they could come up with would be, and that may well be one of those sorta-solid neck pieces that still attach in the back. Gonna tag @thorsvinur for backup here, he knows much more about what people actually wore and thought was cool in the Viking age.

#ask #anon #long post #freyja #brísingamen

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softpine · 3 years ago

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hii brandi!! could you please explain what has been revealed about finn’s death / case so far? i know some of it but i forgot some of it too 😭😭

yes i can!! 💖 some of this stuff has only been mentioned in passing as of yet, so don’t feel like you’re missing anything if you’re thinking “wait, when did that happen?” because it was probably like 1 sentence, six months ago, that i added for extra context lol

LEADING UP TO FINN’S DEATH:

Many neighbors, including Rosie and Isa, contact CPS after seeing Finn with increasingly more injuries. Finn resents CPS’ involvement and does everything he can to keep them away.

Tensions run high between the Atwood’s and Officer Tim Andrews, the neighborhood cop. This culminates in Richard being arrested for disorderly conduct and aggravated battery during a bar fight. The charges are later dropped, but the incident increases the animosity between them.

Steven suddenly ends his friendship with Finn. Without anyone to stop him anymore, Finn starts getting into fights at school. He becomes heavily disliked by his peers.

Finn’s Grandma Bessie gives him a gold necklace and instructs him not to let his dad find it. Soon after, she passes away.

Finn wants to run away to live with his aunt Etta and cousin Liz in New York. He asks Officer Andrews for a ride. Reluctantly, he agrees to pick Finn up on March 13th in his personal truck.

THE NIGHT OF FINN’S DEATH (March 13, 1982):

Richard and Finn are planning to go on a hunting trip. Lucy invites herself on this trip as well, and brings friends. Many of these people are also heavy drinkers & drug users, so the trip quickly turns into a party.

Finn doesn’t have time to grab his bag (with all his belongings and money in it), but he does have his necklace, which he can sell for cash, so he decides to take the chance and continue with his plan. The last thing he remembers is running into the woods towards the location where Officer Andrews will be waiting in his truck.

Chris Porter (Steven’s father, and long-time friend of the Atwood family – you’ll remember him later as the headless man) was at this party. Years later, Steven says that on the night Finn died, Chris came home in a terrible mood and was covered in mud.

THE SEARCH:

On the morning of March 14th, Lucy and Richard wake in their tent to find that Finn is gone. His backpack is still there, so they assume he started his day without them, and would be back soon. Hours later, he still hasn’t returned. They walk to the nearest gas station to use their payphones. Lucy frantically calls her sister, Etta, who urges her to hang up and call the police. Richard calls Chris, who says they shouldn’t call the police unless they want CPS to take Finn away once and for all. Lucy and Richard spend the rest of the day searching the woods for Finn themselves.

Finn is finally reported missing that evening, almost a full 24 hours after he was last seen. Police find the money in Finn’s bag and assume he ran away. As a result, the investigative effort immediately relaxes. They start to focus their search on truck drivers that were in the area and may have given Finn a ride. Police are not aware of the party that occurred the night before. Every person involved, including Lucy and Richard, lawyers up quickly or outright refuses to talk, like Chris Porter.

THE INVESTIGATION:

Finn’s body is discovered by a fisherman on March 27, 1982, a mile away from the Atwood’s camp site. The temperatures had been below freezing for most of the last two weeks, so his body is found in relatively good condition. This is when he is given the nickname “Angel of the Bay” for the cross necklace he was wearing, and the way he was lying on his back with his arms out at his sides like wings. An autopsy is performed, though the results are not publicized for many, many years. The only information released is that the manner of death was homicide.

Lucy and Richard were in the middle of a press conference when they were informed that Finn’s body had been found. Police wanted to see their reaction live, though most people now view it as cruel and unfair to deliver the news in this way.

The lack of info led to wild speculation among the public. Finn’s parents were prime suspects in the court of public opinion, but other theories were tossed around as well: Satanic cult rituals, a bullying incident gone too far, a serial killer traveling through the area, etc. None of these claims can be backed up.

Finn’s case grows cold.

His case is reopened in the 2000s. New information is released to jog people’s memory, including that Finn’s cause of death was blunt force trauma, that no weapon was involved, and that a red or black 1976 Chevrolet Pickup was circling the area leading up to Finn’s death.

Sometime in the 2010s, Chris Porter is called in for questioning in relation to Finn’s case. This scares him, though if he knows anything about Finn’s death, he doesn’t give up any information. Days later, Chris sets his truck on fire in the road. It was a newer model, and couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Finn’s death, but it was a strange reaction nonetheless. Chris then lies down in front of an oncoming train, which kills & decapitates him.

Tim Andrews is now lieutenant of the precinct. At 62 years old, he can retire anytime he wants to. The case remains open today, though new leads are difficult to come by.

#see like.. this could be a whole book on its own but it's not really the story that i want to tell #so these details are important but they're not really.. necessary #if that makes sense #like you don't need to remember most of this stuff #it's like seasoning on the main course meal #asks #anonymous #nonsims #brandi answers #DeathTW #MurderTW #ChildDeathTW #AbuseTW #ChildAbuseTW

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accio-victuuri · 3 years ago

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BoXiao : Endorsement CPNs

Just listing a few of my favorites, where we clowned so hard with what appears to be bxg biased signs from brands. Mostly 2020-2021. This was supposed to be a simple post but it got a little bit out of hand. So. Here you go. Enjoy!

Note: If you don’t like CPN posts, just scroll along. If you don’t like BJYX — this is not for you. don’t hurt yourself and skip this post.

1. RoseOnly - I will not add the RoseOnly x Peace Elite collaboration here anymore cause most of the people reading this should be familiar. A little bit of my thoughts on that are here.

Now let’s move on to other clownery, cause when I said we did see some 👀 before, I meant it.

• GG’s campaign with them where he showcased a bunny with rainbow colored flowers. They could be showcasing all the kind of flowers they have or LGBT friendly advertising. After all, All love is love. 🌈

• For Roseonly’s 8th anniversary, GG had a campaign and VCR w/ them and that big 8 flower. 8 means bo. It’s truly used for the anniversary but of course we CPN cause we are clowns.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fwGnDR4zspI

• During Web’s promo for rules of my world and when his teaser photos came out— RoseOnly released a photo of a black rose ( same color as Web’s clothes in the teaser ) with the caption:

You’re the coolest guy in my heart.

• When they were doing a teaser for their new endorser, some people were pointing out that the silhouette looks like Bobo. lol. Twins!

• All the references to the Lonely Planet and Little Prince for this promotion. We all know that they both love LP and whether this is CPN or a personal preference— we’re claiming it!

• The green rose they once advertised with the caption I ONLY LOVE YOU. and with the green rose symbolizing innocence, simplicity and forever young. Green and those keywords, who do you remember?

• In 2019, they did a selling bundle with Shu Uemura which was a brand Web was endorsing at that time.

• In a live, the color green and red rose were together — GG and Web colors.

• An Ad in their online store where the display is the Leo rose which is Bobo’s zodiac sign. and GG is holding Libra. Leo x Libra. And with the caption below for their advertisement. We know Web is the Leo of all Leos but it’s still 👀

The proud Leo has a child-like arrogant temper. Some people think they are not easy to get along with, but they don’t know that they just have not entered their hearts. Actually, Leo’s tenderness is only for the right person.

Some other thing that I will add here for reference but I don’t necessarily believe. Link from weibo.

• When GG was announced as their brand spokesperson and Web gave a clue in his post. Also GG making 3 different posts and kadian combinations.

I’m adding in this collab they had with Eleme, the same time Web was endorsing the brand.

I’m sure I missed a couple more from RoseOnly but that just depends on how clear your BXG glasses are. To me the most important is their Lonely Planet / Star campaign with GG last year.

2. Shu Uemura - This is one of the OG brands that Web endorses and who loves him very much. They signed him when he was not yet a big star and flew him to different countries. They treat him very well. 🤍

• The most recent one is from their Ad with Bobo and a red ribbon which made us all think of WWX. I can understand from an Ad perspective that it’s perfect to pair up with a red lipstick — but our brains are wired to CPN. Soooo. And this is not their first offense with stuff like this.

• This Ad featuring Bobo : - "博"君一笑 BJYX.

• For the promotion photos of this eyeshadow palette, the colors and look is similar to GG’s painting for the Guangdian album cover. Yes. This was done some time after the song was released.

• This one is more of a coincidence. Years apart, both on the same day, they posted about a collaboration with One piece. It’s their favorite Anime. GG as Luffy & Web as Roronoa Zoro.

3. Qeelin - will be very lazy with this one and copy/paste from my jewelry post. Take note that this Bobo design is not new and had always been a classic from Qeelin.

4. Kai Xiao Zao - Ah! KXZ! The brand that loves GG the most. So what signs did they give?

• Their recent new product is wontons. Who do we know that likes wontons? It reminded BXGs of the unofficial BTS when Web was nagging GG to eat Wontons.

• They used a well known BXG idiom:

"你是夏日限定, 也是来日方长"

5. Chunzhen - Endorsed by Bobo, and this is under Mengniu. It caused some drama— cause GG & Web are technically promoting the same company. but like, there are so many other c-ent artists endorsing this brand.

• They posted for this year’s Qixi, stating in the Caption that Bobo is able to balance love and work. Really? How did they know? And they had made a character called XIAO ZHEN for qixi ( a cartoon girl with blue hair ).

• Zhenguoli ( endorsed by GG ) and Chunzhen drinks which are under the same company posted graphics of the two drinks together. 👀

• Also since it’s both under the same umbrella company, and both yogurt drinks— you can see their boxes together in shops.

6. Stride - In Bobo’s box set initial release, 3 flavors were included and one of them is passionfruit or bai xiang guo ( bxg ). Of course, bxgs bought it because we were represented. ✌🏼

Also in a message, the brand acknowledged BXGs but later had to delete it because of well— you know who.

Dear Moto/Passion Fruit fans,

Thank you for your support to Hyunmai's spokesperson~. The gift box endorsed by Yibo is temporarily sold out, it is recommended You first collect and purchase, if it is sold later.

Please buy it as soon as possible~

7. Swarovski - endorsed by Web 🤍

• They had turtle charms and bracelets, which endeared them to BXGs.

• They had a bracelet where you can put charms and in their Ad, it spells YIBO. of course. However a BXG noticed that on their recommended letters to add next, the letters are XZ + heart with a dot.

• Last year’s promotion of a lock necklace— Web changed his Weibo header. ‘Lock love, lock you.’

• His May 2020 Mother’s day promotion video that includes a confession (?). I know this is far off but the line used:

“ I love you, want you to see. I am Wang Yibo, this is my unique confession" is so similar to GG’s Bazaar confession.

youtube

8. Budweiser -- What we basically CPN about them is that they are an LGBT friendly brand and it’s always a plus when our boys endorse those kind of companies.

• Here you can find the CPN on the can that GG supposedly created with them.

• Their ad about ALL LOVE IS LOVE.•

An earlier Ad that had two male leads. and another one recently released with same sex couple. 🌈

Also they did a collab with G-shock which is a brand that Web endorses.

9. Man Han Feast Noodles

• The most recent one is GG playing the Guqin ala LWJ and looking out the window to see the moon ( again ala LWJ ). Best part is GG looking like he would burst out laughing and they kept in the Ad.

• In their Mother’s Day post one line says “if you love someone you’ll always encourage them to eat more”. Sounds like a familiar gesture right? Who do we know nags each other to eat?

10. Zenith Do I even have to explain this?

• GG chose a rainbow watch from Zenith collection for Qixi Festival. 🌈

11. Mengniu - Oh well, just last week they had to clarify as an Ad from them was seen with the words: "并肩于雪山之巅" = BJYXSZD. (Side by Side at the snowy mountain top)

12. Anta/ Li-ning - I’m adding it here cause the store owners in this video brought out GG/Web standees together 😂 Context is, there was a BJYX gathering going on so they took that out cause they knew the attendees loved them.

Plus this shopping app that put them together.

I’m capping this post here and will update this sometime in the future. However the ones I added here stood out to me or I experienced when it came out. I wanted to add Luckin Tea / Lays / Olay but that will be for another time.

As with all the CPN, feel free to not believe any of these and just take it as a coincidence. Or people clowning and reading into things more than they should. lol. Whether these are intentional or not, BXGs are always there to support the boys whenever they can. 🙏🏼

#bjyx #yizhan #cpn post

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familyagrestefanblog · 4 years ago

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Miraculous Shanghai theories and analysis

All those leaks and informations we got for the Shanghai special caught my interest BIG TIME and I wanted to post my theories and thoughts before it airs.

Just as a warning, I wrote all of this yesterday before the new promo poster got released this morning but fortunately it's doesn't disprove anything I'm about to say.

So let's go!

Let's start with my tamest theory of this post to clear the track for the batshit craziness that gonna follow: The Peacock miraculous will be involved in the Shanghai special as well.

This doesn't necessarily mean that we will see Mayura but at the very least the Peacock miraculous will be brought up.

I'm certain of this because of two things:

1. The specials logo

It's nothing wild. The yin-yang is obviously Ladybug and Chat Noir and when we cross out the other rainbow colors of the Renling promo pic we are left with two colors: Hawkmoths purple and Mayuras blue.

And 2. In a trailer we saw Gabriel in an old ruin which definitely could be the Guardian temple before Ladybug restores it in "Feast" (the special takes place somewhere in between s2 and s3 so that checks out).

Maybe he goes back to where they found their two miraculous and the Grimoire and then checks out the ruins (cuz honestly why not?) or maybe he is on his way to the creepy underground place. We will see.

Okay but now, let's start with the good stuff! :D

I'm putting it under "continue reading" because it's quite alot and it gets... specific lol

Let's continue with the Renlings and the fact that this time around we are not going to get a new Miracle Box but they are all combined into ONE Miraculous.

That may sounds incredibly overpowered and out of nowhere without context but I think I might now what we are looking at.

The Renlings were called the Kwamis "cousins" so we have to go back to the Chinese Zodiac our Miracle box is based on, because it isn't only made of 12 animals. Cause our 12 animals are also segmented under 8 guardians of the zodiac. And how many Renlings to we get? 8.

Four of these Zodiac guardians are assigned to 2 animals and the other four guard one.

They are segmented as the following:

Thousand Hands Guan Yin - Rat

Akasagarbha Bodhisattva - Ox & Tiger

Manjusri Bodhisattva- Rabbit

Samantabhadra Bodhisattva- Dragon & Snake

Mahasthamaprapta Bodhisattva- Horse

Vairochana Buddha - Goat & Monkey

Acalanatha - Rooster

Amitabha Buddha - Dog & pig

But let me get back to this later.

Unfortunately I legitimately can not explain why these particular animals were chosen to represent the guardians. All I can say is that my initial thought still holds up and the monkey, bear, tiger, dragon, mantis, snake, horse and hawk (look im calling it a hawk in this post idk) are all martial art styles. But they neither belong to one group nor is one of the groups complete.

Maybe I just missed something here (which is definitely possible) but I just can't find the reason for these animals for the guardians. Beside the Dragon as most important one of course, but that's a given.

Anyway, let's continue. A detail that can support my zodiac guardian theory is that while we can only see two animal circles in the promo pic entirely, one of the two has ONE DOT in its picture and the other one has TWO.

Signifying for how many Kwamis the one guardian is assigned to? Possibly.

The dragon in the middle is shown with 8 dots all together, that means is it fair to say that the dragon functions as the main guardian that combines them all. That explains why our new girl for the special has a 8-in-1 Miraculous, why her eyes change for each Renling and why she is trained so professionally.

We don't know yet why the Renlings are all put into one Miraculous, since they work differently from the Kwamis, but I have this thought that the Renlings (in their ONE necklace) were created because of what happened to the guardian temple almost 200 years ago.

Countless Miracle Boxes were lost that day and Fu's Box with the Ladybug and Cat were thought so as well. Possibly the Renlings were an attempt to recreate the powers of at the very least the lost zodiac Kwamis. The Dragon was made into the main guardian and is supposed to step in place for the LB and Cat as we can see on its different color coding echoing the yin-yang, but It obviously didn't work and the Renlings neither possess the same powers or can they be put in separate Miraculous nor is the Dragon a healthy replacement for the yin-yang.

But is was a desperate attempt in a situation that was believed to be lost and I find that thought exciting!

(Btw i have a similar theory for the Superheros from the New York special but that's a theory for another day)

Where to continue, where to continue?

Alright let's stay with the 8 Dragon dots because THOSE caught my interest in more than one way.

As I already said, I think the 4 white dots and 4 block ones stand for the 2 types of zodiac guardians, but now let's take a look at the animal circles surrounding the dragon.

We can see the Bear, the Hawk and a bit of another one between the Bear and Chat Noir in addition to the Dragon. These four circles have animal pictures that are completely colored in (just like the dragon brighter dots)

And now look closely at the animal circles around Chats head. Those are not colored in! Just like the other four Dragon dots. So isn't in interesting that they had our two leads basically hide those four particular animal circles? Almost as if there is a reason for this, huh?

And you know, I looked further and maybe I found something here. And for this let's take another look at the Renlings, shall we?

Four of these Renlings have something in common with our two main characters, can you guess what?

I'll give a hint: The eyes.

I compared all the promo picks we got from the Renlings and noticed that:

1. The snake and the horse have blue eyes like Marinette

2. The monkey has green eyes like Adrien

And 3. The Mantis is the only Renling with special eyes like Chat

The other 4 Renlings have brown eyes in different shades.

But this on it own isn't too exciting. So what if some Renlings share the same eyes as our leads? Well, would you believe it? When I filled in the placements of the other animals circles, through a shot we got in the leaks, I noticed that those 4 Renlings that shear their eyes with Marinette and Adrien are ALSO the 4 animal circles our leads just so happen to hide from us.

How interesting

But that not all I got. Not even CLOSE, I'm just getting started here!

Because not only do Marinettes Snake & Horse and Adriens Monkey & Mantis stand out here, oh no, it gets BETTER!

Now let's take the two promo pics from the Renlings we got where they are finished and colorized.

Did you know that both times they are put in the same formation, just with slightly swapped placement among the Renlings?

And once again here one could say "So what? They were lazy while designing the pics, that's it" but NAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH hear me out!

Not only are the Renlings put both times into the same formation, the way they switched their placements isn't random at all:

1. Marinettes Snake and Horse stay both times on exactly the same spot.

2. The tiger and the bear switch places

3. So do the dragon and monkey

4. And the mantis and hawk.

The way the Renlings are shown to us on the promo pics is anything BUT random and that is something that will always get me interested! :D

But you know what? I'm still not done yet. Let's continue with this creepy ass stone door we see Gabriel at

Because as I mentioned, while Marinettes Snake and Horse stay unchanged in their formations, Adriens Monkey and Mantis not only do change places but they aren't paired with another either. So does that mean that Adriens guardian Renlings are just inconsistent? No, not at all. They just have a different meaning and place then Marinettes.

First of all: the Renlings special hair is bright green, just like the color of the tiger (a CAT) on the rainbow scale we got and Adriens/Chats + Monkey & Mantis eyes. And second: in the other promo pic the Renlings have a pink background, just like the rainbow scale color or the Mantis!

Coincidence? I don't care anymore, next point! :D

Because not only THAT but when we take a closer look at the creepy stone door we can make out the placement of every guardian animal as well. And MY, is this fascinating:

As the colors make it clear when you compare these guardian animal door placements to the rainbow scale from the promo pic, here Adriens Monkey & Mantis are in the right places but Marinettes animals are a bit off.

In fact. Everything about the placements of the animals (besides Adriens) are just a bit off.

- Marinettes animals and the bear are almost in the right place just mirror-reversed.

- The Tiger and the Hawk are one place too left.

- And the Dragon shouldn't be in the middle, it should take the place between Adriens animals but it was forced out of position to replace the yin-yang.

But taking the dragon out broke the balance of the animal circle. Everything here is slightly off by one point and that is much more significant than you would initially think. Because when you now turn the whole circle one quarter to the left (there is a reason for it, trust me) and put the dragon back in place then you will get a good part of the picture I've been looking for a long while.

What I'm showing you here are the 4 Chinese creatures of the cardinal directions and they are basically what I would expect to be on the upper layer of a Chinese Miracle box (I'll get to this on another day). And as you can see here, we are basically almost there aren't we?

The tiger of the West and Dragon of the east are in place and while the creature of the North is normally the turtle it is always accompanied by a snake, which is now on the upper place.

"but what about the bear? And a snake is NOT a turtle!" I'm getting to it, my goodness :/

Regarding the bear one thing needs to be said: it is definitely true, the bear is in the wrong place. I don't even know why there is a bear in this formation in the first place and it stuck out to me since day one. The creature of the south is a bird, the HAWK should be here.

But there is a difference between "this thing is in the wrong place and completely random wtf??" and "This thing is in the wrong place but I can see a pattern continuing from other formations that are off as well".

The bear is not only here, it's also:

- alongside the tiger (who is btw suspicious af as well) covering the center points from the Renlings formation that should belong to Adriens animals.

- is with Marinettes animals the only other one that is basically on it right place on the creepy stone door, just mirror-reversed.

-is the new "peak" of the zodiac guardian animal circles because moving the dragon out to the middle left the other ones off-balance and now its kinda tilted to the left. But when we look at the creepy door with not corrected animal placements we see that this was indeed the hawks place. And remember as well, the bear and the hawk are the only two animal circles we see in the promo pic besides the dragon

Meaning in short: That damn bear stole the hawks place and I need it to stop.

Which brings me to the turtle and a whole new can of worms (miraculous should pay me for this omfg...).

Because what if I tell you that the snake, who is normally just accompanying the turtle, being the creature of the north here instead of the turtle is not only "okay enough" it is actually the needed puzzle piece to connect this zodiac Renlings circle with the Chinese Miracle box in the design master Fu had it?

Let me explain

Do you remember when I started talking about the Renlings I said I would come back to the way the rl zodiac guardians are paired with the zodiac animals "later"? Well, later is NOW, because there is one more way those 8 dots from that damn dragon caught my interest and it also explains why I just turned the guardian stone circle one quarter to the left.

Because believe and behold, this is not the only place where things are "slightly off".

A while I started taking closer looks and research on the original miracle box design and the Kwami spirit circle we saw in "Sandboy".

I will try to not go into unnecessary details with this now because all of that needs its own post. I'm already going off the hooks with this one. But just like here I noticed with these two things rather quickly that "things are slightly off, but in a suspiciously systematic way".

Going straight ahead to the example I'm talking about, the order the 12 zodiac animals follow on the side of the box is straight up upside-down. The first zodiac animal is the rat (or mouse) and the last one the pig and YET in the box the rat is right at the bottom and the pig on the top.

This upside down arrangement of the animals results in the wrong animals being the 4 who have a guardian assigned for themselves

The four single miraculous in between the 4 directions are obviously the ones I'm talking about. Here they are Tiger, Snake, Pig, Monkey (I hope you are making a connection here) but that's wrong, as are the other 4x2 ones.

BUT

When we now flip it upside down again, having the rat start on the pigs place and the pig end on the rats, then things suddenly are correct.

Here the rl guardian pairings again:

Thousand Hands Guan Yin - Rat

Akasagarbha Bodhisattva - Ox & Tiger

Manjusri Bodhisattva- Rabbit

Samantabhadra Bodhisattva- Dragon & Snake

Mahasthamaprapta Bodhisattva- Horse

Vairochana Buddha - Goat & Monkey

Acalanatha - Rooster

Amitabha Buddha - Dog & pig

As you can see, now it's correct.

You may wonder what this has to do with the Dragon dots, so lets look at the Kwami spirit circle next.

I've been analyzing and taking this thing apart now for MONTHS now. And while I'm certainly having a blast, the fact that I now officially have an entire FOLDER at home dedicated to this thing alone is quite...

Bruh...

But thankfully we will really only need the basics for this theory here.

Through zooming in and watching the "Sandboy" Kwami spirit World scenes over and over again I was able to figure out the placement of each Kwami.

When you now follow the moons in the middle towards the Kwamis you will notice that only the moon at the top alignes with one and that's DUUSU. The other 4 miss the Kwamis just by a bit.

But remember what I said the entire time. Everything is just slightly off by ONE little factor but when we "fixed" that factor for the stone wall there was still something left that didn't fit. That's because not only are the Shanghai zodiac guardians structures off, it was built on top of a structure that is ALREADY slightly off by another factor!

Something is fundamentally WRONG with Kwami balance in the current ml universe and what I think happened to throw everything off is NOOROO.

Keeping this point short for everybodys sanity, in the french version of "Sandboy" we find out that Nooroo is having his 3500 cycle birthday and him being the Kwami which gets its birthday pointed out is no coincidence. (Guys please just go with me here, I really dont have the strenght to elaborate on this now as well)

So when Nooroo is the factor that brought imbalance to the Kwami system then how does the spirit circle look like WITHOUT Nooroo?

Now THIS is more like it!

Without Nooroo the size of the circle changes slightly all around and now the other 4 moons align with the Dragon, rat, chicken and horse.

And believe it or not, but take a guess what it looks like when we now highlight these 4 Kwamis in the arrangement of the 12 zodiac Kwamis both upside down and correct?

It's the 2 types of Dragon dots.

And let's take this further. When the 12 Zodiac Kwamis are upside down then so is obviously the entire upper layer of the Miracle box as well, which explains why, although the 5 Miraculous places around the yin-yang are based on the 5 chinese elements, the way they are arranged here is once again upside down.

Meaning the yin-yang is upside down as well, but not only that. I always found it weird that the yin-yang here is placed SIDEWAYS when this is not exactly the normal way of showing it.

So when we now turn the yin-yang a quarter to the left and take the 5 Miraculous surrounding it along, we might be closer to the puzzles solution. Because when we now take Nooroo out (as he wouldn't be there when things had gone right) then Fu's miracle box should have looked like this:

Notice 2 things here in particular:

1. Now the Turtle is at the top, which completes the connection between the Renlings Snake and the Kwamis Turtle to create the only creature of the 4 directions that is portrayed with one accompanied: the Turtle of the North.

And while I'm already at it, this is also the reason why Fu's/Ninos Miraculous is the only one that doesn't fit the hero color scheme when activated.

The Turtle of the North is colored BLACK and sometimes with additional white, just like the activated Miraculous.

And 2. Now after being mirror reversed and turned one quarter to the left the Ladybugs and Cats yin-yang isn't sideways anymore and looks EXACTLY like the yin-yang used in the Shanghai promo pictures. Almost like this is the way it is supposed to be or something.

Alright. Ive told you ALOT now but this is precisely the reason why I wanted to post this before the special airs. I'm definitely not entirely right with all of this, there is alot I haven't figured out about these things yet or simply haven't seen yet. What I just showed to you is not anywhere close to done so some questions are still left open.

I wanted to make another point about how the zodiac monkey, mantis and horse are the only 3 Renlings that do not have any symbol on their bodies and how this could connect to the object Hawkmoth has in that one leak

But even i think this is going to far now and I should wait until I watched the special xD

But my point in all of this (and everything I haven't even touched upon here but will in the future) is that everything in s1-s3 was influenced by this fundamental off-balance of the Kwami system that I think was caused with Nooroos creation. Which is very fitting for the Kwami of our main villain I may say. And the fact that these 4 miraculous are also somehow linked to the peacock out of all miraculous gives us an explanation for its villainous usage as well.

I think the Shanghai special will start the exploration of what happened by at least laying down and introducing the most important aspects of this particular topic.

To say that I am TRILLED for this special is quite the understatement and I'm gonna have a BLAST analysing the hell out of its lore!

So I guess there is only one thing left for me to say:

Miraculous crew

#miraculous #Ml theory #Ml Shanghai theory #Ml Shangai spoilers #Ml spoilers #Ml leaks #I'm thrilled but in so much pain right now wtf

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streets-in-paradise · 4 years ago

Text

Royal Treatment

Troy (2004) Reader Insert Fanfiction - Part 10

Word Count: + 9 K

Characters ( most mentioned) : Achilles, Mycenaean Princess!Reader, Helen, Patroclus, Ajax, Agamemnon, Menelaus.

Pairings: Achilles x Mycenaean Princess!Reader.

Warnings: Very light smutty undertones.

Summary: Since her last private encounter with Achilles left her with more doubts than certainties, the princess keeps trying to obtain a clear answer from him. During the celebrations, she comes up with an idea to test his interest.

Disclaimers: This was inspired by a mix of greek music ,various drum solos and improvisations of greek folk that I found on youtube and some mediterranean, egyptian and turkish music I have been listening to. Also, I want to apologise if part of this sucks. i’m still learning how to write some stuff and I don't know if this is as good as it was in my head when i pictured it.

Note: My use of the name Alexander here is only a reference. I know that’s how Paris was called in some versions of the myths and I’m only playing word games with that.

Tags: @yerevasunclair @mother-dearest-loves-me

The celebrations started with a short formal gathering in the throne room. The place was slowly getting crowder and the princess arrived later than usual but it wasn’t a concerning time range. Wordlessly, she returned to her spot alongside her father. She noticed the cup of wine he was holding and smiled to the pourer that remained close to him. The servant boy smiled back and the king looked at him like he was ready to order his execution. As a soft gesture of support against his bad mood, she holded his free hand. She knew that words of reassurance trying to explain herself or a convincing tale weren’t enough, so she tried something else. The sudden contact made him stare at her. He was still upset, she saw it in his eyes. Quickly, she changed the intention of her approach. Instead of acting like a caring daughter giving him reassurance, she showed the support of a loyal subdit. She kissed his knuckles and bowed her head in sign of respect, pretending to recognize his absolute authority over her. Agamemnon reacted positively, giving her a half smile that wasn’t exactly of approval but showed forgiveness. He was vainglorious about his self perceived but non existent mercy, appealing to that was more effective than trying to show affection.

The obsequious flatterers of the king started to gather around them, since that part of the festivities was nothing but an excuse to formally celebrate himself. Inevitably, some of the praise fell upon her and she kept her attitude towards it pleasing and passive, avoiding smart remarks or destacable commentary. She wished she could be left alone with her friends, but she had to keep performing for a bit longer. Helen was close to her and right next to her husband, but the distance that implied was a real bother. They shared some complicit glances despite being under the watch of the brothers.

Using their unexpected presence as an excuse to flatter their own egos, both kings started to show off some of the treasures of the conquest presented as gifts for the ladies. Argos wasn’t sacked, there was no need for excessive violence because Achilles speeded up their surrender. Still, as it did for other cities, their submission implied some concessions. Agamemnon got the military control of the land and demanded a share on the treasures of the city. Since he didn’t have a queen, his daughter had to occupy the passive role in his acts of ostentation. She had a collection of jewelry that was entirely based on stolen relics from every city he conquered, having at least one for every place. That wasn’t going to be the exception. The acquired riches were everything he had to brag about after Achilles took the symbolic glory. Knowing that most of the presents must have heard about what the warrior demanded of her, it was also a good way to reinforce her royal magnificence and the image of his control over her. On that occasion, the commemorative object of the victory she got was a necklace.

The young women were the centre of attention, as luxury objects whose value was being increased. Menelaus was acting like a loveful husband to Helen while he filled her with gifts from his share of the spoils, his older brother almost looked like a sweet, prideful father. The ceremonialize praise was hypocrisy, but it was fun for both girls to see their despicable owners pretending to be caring. Fortunately for their exhausted selves, the last and most expectant arrival stole all the attention.

As always, Achilles showed up very late. He tended to skip the pointless ceremonies that weren’t about him and he liked to leave his public hanging. Eudorus and Patroclus entered the room at his right and left side, wondering what he was going to do next. Without minding the context or any appearances of propriety, he walked right to the front of the crowd. Once he found his spot to stay, he blatantly stared at the ladies and saluted them from afar with a smile. Before his entrance, Agamemnon was in the middle of a self complacent speech that he interrupted. The sight of such a simple act creating more distraction irritated him even more. The king tried to save words with him, but Achilles robbed him of the speech before he could carry on.

“ My apologies to the ladies, I almost miss their honors.” He simply commented. “ Quite a charming pair, very sweet. I hope they enjoy what my effort got for them.”

The women stared at each other.

“ It’s not my wish to offend you, brave Achilles, but I don’t depreciate my husband’s courage.” Helen replied with extreme politeness.

“ Father knows my taste in jewelry.” was the princess’s defense.” And he is a smart strategist and clever politician. The brightest conductor of the army, of course.” She smiled to the king, trying to look like a sweet praiser. “ Your alliance is a treasure we must cherish because your accomplishments together are an honor to us all.”

” You honored me, I’m doing the same. “ the myrmidon replied.

“ It was no bother, the glory is yours. Nobody questions that.” The princess gave him the most formal answer that occurred to her in the moment.

Trying to keep with the ceremonial tone, she created an immediate distraction to relieve the tension of the moment.

“ Can we all thank this man as he deserves? This is an historical day for the city. He is the first fully consecrated hero in the times of my father.”

To her exhortation, claps and cheers filled the precinct. After that, Agamemnon decided to put an end to the formalities. There was no way of making it about himself again, so he concluded it. The festivities continued in the banquet hall.

Helen tried to reach her niece so they could do the short walk there together, but her very pleased husband stumbed in their way. Unlike his brother, he was radiant of pride because of the fervent defense that his wife did of him. If he didn’t love Helen, at least he loved how she made him feel.

Agamemnon grabbed his daughter by the wrist before she could escape to their side. Holding hands for the appearances, the started a whispered argument.

“ This is your second mistake in a row. What do i have to do with you?” He reprimanded her.

“ I got away from that shameful situation in the most elegant way, that’s what I’m supposed to do. If i were a man, I would have punched him.” She lied.

“ If you were a man, I wouldn't need him.”

“ Do you think that you would have had your own Hector of Troy if I would have been your baby boy? Quit dreaming, father. This is what you have, I do my best to serve you.“

“ You call this serving me??”

“ Who do you think I was serving when I agreed to bathe him ? Do you think that I enjoyed being degraded into servant work for him ? ” She fakely complained. ” I hate his petty audacious attitude as much as you do, but I stand him because it is what I have to do. You don’t know how hard I’m trying for you.”

She released herself from his grab.

The banquet involved less tension because the informal ambient demanded less interaction between them. She had to sit next to her father and keep with the good behaviour but the distractions kept him too busy to keep bothering her. She remained silent most of the time, but she didn't mind.

Achilles and Ajax were the centre of attention. They had a toast in their honor and people started doing them all sorts of questions. Ajax looked a bit upset because the myrmidon stole what he perceived as his chance to get major glory. He was doing a relatively good act pretending not to care about Achilles's decisive role in the victory and she felt a bit bad for him. One of her very short interventions on the talking was an attempt to validate him, but Agamemnon used her comment as a startpoint for malicious comparisons against Achilles. Using his massive amount of knowledge on heroic tales, Patroclus solved the situation. He did a magnificent defense of both heroes, talking about the complementary balance of their best traits with examples of some of their past feats. His eloquence was impressive for someone of his age, as it was his audacity to argue with the king.

Helen was having the time of her life just by witnessing how Menelaus's nervousness was growing at every instant. It was very strange for her to see him like that, fearing that anything could trigger a suspicious response from his brother. He was having a small sample of the life of lies he forced her into and she loved it. The funniest aspect about the situation was that Patroclus maintained a respectful tone the entire time. He was polite in his corrections and Agamemnon would have been the one looking bad if he would have reacted harshly.

While hearing their argument, Achilles glanced at the royal ladies for an instant. He noticed a slight change in his cousin's attitude, a rush of confidence that he wasn't expecting him to display at least there. He started suspecting their involvement and it's possible partial influence on him. The women glanced back innocently and the three shared their prideful approbation.

Patroclus's shift on the conversation frustrated the king's intentions of turning one hero against the other. Ajax got his well deserved acknowledgement and the curious boy took his chance to do all sorts of specific questions to him, giving him a moment to shine without entering in disputes with Achilles.

Since her comment started the argument,the young myrmidon tried to engage the princess in his rambling. She wasn't versed in the technical aspects of combat, but she tried to remain as a curious listener. Ajax's point, supported by the boy, was to affirm that he was the strongest man in Greece while Achilles was the fastest. He was trying to impress his listeners with less known anecdotes referring to that quality. Achilles didn't bother in refuting him and he barely paid attention because he was amusing himself by subtly ruining the girl's focus on whatever he was telling. Imperceptible gestures, smirks or just staring at her for longer than necessary were enough to achieve it. Staying concentrated in the talk was impossible for her, but she managed the situation adecuately.

When the meal concluded and the dancing started, Ajax offered her to join the festivities with him. She declined in favor of staying as Helen's companion. Ereny asked the princess's permission to be released from her daily duties and, once it was given to her, both handmaids got it. They knew that the young girl was going for the myrmidon captain and they wished her good luck.

The queen was left once more to witness how her husband chased the concubines. She didn't love him nor cared for what he did with them, but the blatant display was humiliating. She struggled to keep the appearances of love between them, but he made it harder everyday. The prideful public aspect of his cheating upsetted her because it was an insult to her pride as a woman. Her niece stayed with her, promising her that they would only have to wait until the brothers would leave the room with their respective companies.

She was feeling slightly disencouraged as well. That was a great time to lose herself in the dispersion of people, but there were too many stares following Achilles and she would never get there unnoticed. An insane amount of women were expectantly waiting to be chosen by him for the night. The ladies were competing for his attention, some being less subtle than others. She wasn't jealous, but she didn't want to engage in that game. She never tried to compete for attention and she wasn't sure of wanting to start there.

While she remained in her seat watching the crowd, her mind kept focused on one thought: Achilles seemed to fancy her in some way, but she still didn’t know how. She started fearing about the image he had of her. He described her as cute, he said that her face was adorable. Those were compliments fitting for a sweet girl, not an attractive woman.

She didn't have any certains but, if it was the case, she wished she could prove him wrong. He teased her for a very long while and she wanted revenge, but she was the princess and she couldn't allow herself such behaviour. She urged to show him how perfectly capable of displaying sensuality she was and the first thing that occurred to her was dancing.

She never showed off in public about the full capacity of her skills. Immediately as she got older enough to be allowed to stay late night in festivities, she got enraptured by the dancing of the concubines and she ended up learning to dance from them. She wanted to learn it only for herself, because she loved the graceful aesthetical aspects of the movements and she admired their performances. Her father didn’t allow her to do it but, like almost every other thing bringing joy to her life, she did it behind his back.

It was her secret talent. If she could disguise herself in the group of dancers to participate in their performance, it would be hard to difference her from the actual performers. With that in mind, she started imagining Achilles's reaction if he could see her dancing like that. She wondered if he would feel as teased as he made her feel, if he would acknowledge her womanhood and if he would want her.

Her thoughts were interrupted by Helen.

" Do we have to stay like this the entire time?" She complained.

" We have to wait until they leave. It’s the best for now. " The girl replied. " I don't get it. Does he enjoy himself thinking that everyone is watching him cheat on you or what? Anyone would expect that after the devotion you faked he would think it twice and be more discrete but no, there he is... making you look like a fool. "

" I'm thankful to get him away from me. I only wish he could have some decency and keep it private.” The queen confessed. ” I don't deserve this humiliation. I'm a good wife, I do everything he demands of me. All I ask in return is to be respected, at least in public." Her voice was breaking a bit.

“ It’s never enough with them, they only think about themselves. “ the princess reminded. her.” I think we should do the same more often.”

“ What we did classifies as such.”

“ It wasn’t entirely selfish. We saved lifes … and their egos from an historical defeat. I mean a bit of real selfishness. A good payback. ”

“ I just want to be left alone. A lover wouldn’t repair the scars in my pride.”

“Many men would give everything they have for a night with you.” The princess commented to her. “ Do you never feel the need of being desired by a man that you want? “

“ Where did your good judgement go?” Helen mocked her.

“ You know everything about my sentimental life, but we never talk about yours.”

“ What most of those men have to offer is not what I would wish.” The queen explained. “ I have experienced desire. If we are talking about impossible aspirations, I want love.”

“ Why choose? You can have both.”

“ What did I do of you? Are you hearing yourself? Aren’t you the same girl whose goal was to have a nicely arranged marriage planned by herself using political strategy ? ”

“ You don’t want me to give up on love. Why should I let you do it ?

" You know better than anyone why I have to."

" That's not going to happen. My mother was alone, we have each other." the princess remarked. " Look at what we accomplished. We stopped a massacre, made a new friend and I got closer to the man I love, more than I ever thought I would be. "

" I told you, it is too late for me. "

" Helen,I used to think that my feelings for Achilles were a fantasy. I was ready to accept it as a comforting dream and carry on with my life. Thanks to you, I changed my mind. " the girl explained. "You have helped me so much. How can you think that I wouldn't do the same for you? "

" I doubt I would find love in a place like this, but I appreciate your concern. " the queen stated.

" Promise me that, if you do someday, you will let me help instead of giving up."

" We won a battle, dear. Not the war. " Helen clarified.

" We can win many more. " her niece reassured her. " You deserve to be loved and to own your desire."

"To be honest, I feel I’m more aware of what I don’t like in a man than of my actual preferences. I don't know what i like anymore. "

" Don't worry. We have time, i would love to help you to rediscover your taste. If it is not now, we will keep digging into figuring it out."

" It's not wise to get involved with someone that would never be mine. "

" You know what? I think I overcomed that. '' the princess declared. " I don't care anymore. Maybe Achilles will never be mine and so what? I want to be with him, I don't mind how. Perhaps he will never make me his wife and that's fine, I don't need to own him to love him. Love is not only about marriage. If marriage can exist without love, love can exist outside of marriage and you can find it. "

“ You have to tell me now what happened in that excuse of a bathing ceremony.” Helen teased her, encouraged and excited.

The princess tried to explain it to her carefully, watching over her expressions and paranoidly checking for the presence of unwanted listeners. Listening to her cheered Helen up.

“ What are you doing sitting here? “ she reprimanded her.

“ If I’m going to do a move, it has to be safer than this. “ The girl clarified. “ I can’t risk being seen by my father or inspiring gossip.”

“ He could have kissed you right there. “

“ Reason in the form of Hesione stopped me from finding out if he would have .” The princess added. “ I don’t know if i can do it now. Have you seen all those women ready to step on each other's heads for him? I’m not going to do that.“

“ You don’t have to be part of that,you are one step ahead.” Helen stated “ If you want a moment to get things clear. This is it.”

With that, she dragged her up from her seat.

The young ladies mixed themselves in the crowd, trying to have fun on their own. The princess procured not to concentrate in trying to find Achilles and just enjoy herself in the company of her aunt. Helen’s mood improved from the brief downfall it had because she redirected her thoughts. Instead of thinking of the public humiliation brought to her by her husband’s behaviour, she focused on the victory over him that she got. She humiliated him indirectly, her actions caused a situation that made him feel like an idiot in front of his brother. Some justice was served that time and she was able to celebrate. It was a small triumph, but just thinking about that made her start laughing without an apparent reason. The sudden boost in her joyful mood started to manifest in her dancing.

The queen’s grace was famous, but Helen never looked prettier as she did when she was really happy. She irradiated her emotions and the ambient felt renewed around her. Bright of happiness, she started dancing right in front of the musicians and the magnetic effect of her approach made them play the same song for longer, just so she wouldn’t leave. The percussionist was jaw dropping with her and even the princess was impressed by how obvious he was.

He was bewitched, but not in a lustfull way. The handsome young man was worshipping Helen with his music and she started responding with her dancing straightly to him. Since she realized that her niece was right next to her evaluating the situation, she encouraged her to follow her moves instead of teasing them with stares. Then, both girls found themselves dancing for the musicians and letting themselves go to the beat of their music.

Unlike the queen, the princess tried to keep her moves as chaste and cheerful as possible. Still, forgetting all her concerns to the sound of the music almost ruined her intentions . The fastening of the beat betrayed her for an instant and some very inappropriate hip flicks she did under the influence of the stimulation around her impressed her dancing companion. She isolated the movement of her hips to the rhythm of the song with a great synchrony. Sharp hip flicks combined with contractions of the lower belly creating a single circled swing. Cheering from the crew of artists made her realize of how she let herself go completely and she calmed down, going back to her usual style.

It was too late, Helen was too curious to let it go. Once the song ended, she had to abandon her admiror. Then, she started questioning her.

“ What was that?? It was incredible! “ She complimented her.

“ Sorry. The beat was great and you were pushing me in the wrong direction.”

“ When were you going to tell me about this?” The queen recriminated her.

“ Our mystery is solved. I think you are into pretty boys worshipping you with respect. Sweet admiration, not those looks of when you know that the man is mentally undressing you.” The princess teased her to avoid the topic.

“ Don’t try to get away from this. “ Helen teased back. “ You have to teach me that.”

“ I lost control, I wasn’t supposed to do that here .” the princess excused herself.

“ You will explain to me later where that came from, now I want to learn how to move my hips like that.”

“ We all have our unique ways of expression. You have your makeup skills, I have this.” the girl joked. “ I didn’t mean to hide it from you, the occasion to show you never presented. “

“ It presented itself now.” Helen rectified. “ We have music and a proper space. “

She was reluctant, but agreed.

“ Only because it’s you who is asking. I owe you too much to say no.” She admitted. “ This is absolutely inappropriate so i will only show you hip moves. For a proper lesson, I need secrecy."

“ Forget protocols, we are having fun.” Helen encouraged her.

Her niece took the position of instructor and decomposed the otherwise integrated steps of the movement so Helen could learn it and copy it. Very slow like at first, the queen achieved it with great enthusiasm. The princess oriented her into repeating it a few times before trying to find a pace with the rhythm. She guided her into picking that pace and, soon, both were dancing at a matching tempo. Helen looked bright with happiness.

" I don't want to brag, but this makes me feel beautiful." she joked.

" It's not very lady-like, but it's fun." her niece replied.

They were being happy with themselves, not caring about anything else. The relegated corner of the place they picked as their fun zone wasn't the safest spot to feel some freedom, but it was the best they had. For once, they ignored the certain chances of attracting stares, the perceptions and everything that tied them. The princess showed the queen two more combinations of hip movements. They were trying hip locks to the sides when a sudden but partially expected intromision ruined their bubble of concentration.

" Watch out, princess. Those moves look so sharp that you could have cutted me with your hips." Achilles told the mycenaean as he passed by right next to her.

The sound of his voice was enough to make her jolt and she lost herself to it, immediately stopping what she was doing.

" I’m glad to see you having fun. I tought you weren't going to get up. " Patroclus cheerfully saluted them, appearing right after him.

Both ladies at once responded to his greetings.

" What are you doing over here?" Helen inquired. " We saw you dancing right in the center with some girls a while ago. You are doing great."

" To be fair, most only looked at me because I'm standing next to him." the boy admitted. " When we came nobody cared but now everyone does because they found out I'm the cousin of Achilles."

" I'm doomed to always being the daughter of Agamemnon, very few people care beyond that." the princess commented. " I treasure those and don't mind for the rest. "

" Don't worry. You will make a name for yourself soon and that will end." Helen added. " Younger noble girls from big cities can be like that but growing up makes them wiser. In a few years, you will start to be seen as yourself and they will adore you. "

Achilles was impressed by the soft naturality of their interactions. They were comforting him as close friends. He kept listening to their conversation.

" It's fine, It doesn't affect me that much. " Patroclus tried to explain himself better. " In fact, I'm hiding from your husband."

To the mention of him, Helen looked exasperated.

" What has he done now?"

" He was talking with Achilles and I was there with them. " the boy started telling them. " He must be too drunk to care about being too friendly. He started saying nice things about me and ended up offering me a woman. "

Helen got second hand embarrassment.

" I'm sorry, darling. Did he make you feel uncomfortable?"

" He said some stupid thing about how he had her before and she was perfect to make me a man. It was disgusting."

" That's the House of Atreus at it's best. Imagine them at their worst. " the princess added. " Ignore him, Pat. You may be too young, but are already a better man than him."

" I have faith in you." Helen emphasized. " I think you 'll be a great hero because your morals match your potential as a warrior. You will make us all proud."

" We love you. " the princess concluded. " Keep ignoring anything you hear from him or my father. They think they know better than everyone else but they are the worst combination of cruel and stupid. "

" I leave him with you just once and you are already pampering and overprotecting him?” Achilles commented, his mocking hiding a shade of happiness. " He knows that Menelaus is not a good example of what truly means to be a man. "

" He has you. " the queen complimented him. " You aren't perfect, but you are guiding him right. It doesn't matter how many battles you win. To me, he reflects the best of you. "

Patroclus smiled at her. Helen's praise impacted him in a positive way.

" She wasn't a strong supporter of you." The princess clarified. " Her opinion changed after meeting him."

" Spending so much time with people who love you changes the perspective. " The queen hinted, indirectly including her niece in the affirmation." I used to think you were a cold, emotionless man with no care for anything. Your bond with Patroclus is only one of many proofs of how wrong I was. I commited with you the same mistake everyone does with me: I judged you by what you appear to be. "

" Good, It's mutual." Achilles simply replied. " You are stronger than what I thought you could be. I started to see it in all the stories that your niece has told me about your shenanigans. I like you a lot more thanks to her."

" It's the first time ever when somebody likes me first. In Sparta, you will be addressed as Patroclus's cousin." the boy added, mocking him with pride.

" Seeing you again in my lands would bring me great joy. '' Helen stated." I hope that this shameful experience with Menelaus didn't scare you away."

" Don't worry, queen. " Achilles reassured her. "If you are guilty of anything, is of cherishing so much that he doesn't want to leave your side."

" I have new friends that like me for me. Get over it. " his little cousin kept joking.

" I celebrate it. They are a good influence for you. " Achilles replicated." Today you humiliated a king for the first time and you did it so cleverly that he couldn't find a way to argue. Agamemnon, of all kings. I can't be more proud. "

" He deserved it. He was trying to create spite between you and Ajax. That's low, even for someone like him. '' Patroclus explained.

" Thanks for helping me there. If it wasn't for you, he wouldn't have stopped until offending one using the other." The princess told him." Not so long before he used to say that Ajax was a brute fool from an insignificant kingdom, now he wants to make him the next Hercules. He is desperate, he wants so badly to get rid of your cousin that he is willing to accept any other who would obey him.``

" I feel bad for any contestant in the army aspiring to get the same glorification he has." the boy affirmed. " Achilles has you, that's a great advantage. They will never make it."

The princess laughed softly, glancing at the warrior.

Achilles's gaze followed hers, in complicity.

" You are the queen's favourite, you will run with the same advantage. "

" The bright daughter of the highest commander designs political strategies for you… All the rest are doomed."

" You are so sweet!" the princess thanked him.

" I don't see why not pointing it out. "

" Agamemnon is too foolish to see it, but you think like a politician." Helen told her.

" What's greatly convenient, because having to stand polítical tangles is what Achilles hates the most about his work. " Patroclus insisted.

" Odysseus had helped him with that countless times. " the young lady reminded him.

" He is a king, his polítical work is for his own benefit." Helen remarked. " I know they are good friends, but the goal of Odysseus's work is not to raise him up above all the heroes."

" His competence has no chance because now he has you aligned with him and working with his interests. Honestly? I think that's a bit unfair." Patroclus concluded.

" They must have their own tricks." Achilles defended himself. " I guess she is mine now."

" We shouldn't be discussing this here. " the princess warned them. " Can we bring up something else ? This is a party, we are supposed to talk trivial things. "

" Where did you learn to dance? " Helen asked, pretending to be innocently curious.

" Seriously??"

" It is a trivial topic. " the queen remarked before explaining herself to the recently arrived men. " What you just saw was me attempting to learn some incredible moves I saw her doing. I had no idea, it was a total surprise and I'm very curious."

" The story behind it is not as interesting as you think it is." the princess clarified.

" When she says that, assume the opposite." Achilles mocked her.

" I have been secretly involved in dance practices of the palace's concubines for years. I don't like to show it at parties because it is something I learned for my own gratification and my father is not supposed to find out. " She confessed " Helen looks so happy, she inspired me to relax and I forgot were I was."

" Wait, are you a dancer? That explains a lot of things. " Patroclus commented, impressed. " I wrecked you when we were trying to teach you self defense but I noticed that you have some flexibility. "

" It's nothing compared with what it requires to be a fighter. '' the princess corrected him. " Being more specific, I'm not a dancer because it's not my occupation. I learned from actual dancers and I practice for fun. It's very liberating for me, a great pastime during the absences of my father. "

" How is it that we keep discovering secrets of yours? " Achilles asked.

" You are one of the few who know me as i am. " she tried to explain herself. " I discovered my fascination with dancing right after I started being allowed to stay all the way during parties. I saw a performance and I knew then that I wanted to do that. I wasn't paying attention to the lustful men around the dancers, I loved their movements. Men may see it only as their entertainment, but the dance looks like a celebration of femminity. I wanted that."

" How did you do it?" Helen insisted.

" It took some time. " She started telling. " When Agamemnon saw me following the girls at a gathering because I was trying to learn from them he was scandalized. He forbade it to me, he said that dancers were whores and no daughter of his was going to humiliate him behaving like a whore. He tried to make it up for me by sending me to the temple of Artemis to dance with the priestesses."

" Of course, you had to learn from the virgins. How would you dare to question his expectations? " Helen joked, sarcastically following the line of the reasonament.

" It wasn’t my wish, I did it because he said it. Dancing like a priestess was not what I wanted.” the princess kept explaining “ I went to the temple, behaved well, learned what they wanted to teach me and worshipped the goddess in the ritual dances. The priestesses liked me and my father started bragging about how his girl was so pure that the temple of the virgin goddess wanted her."

" He didn't let them have you because he needs grandchildren if he wants his bloodline to continue. " Patroclus guessed.

" I wouldn't have joined them. I honor the gods and sometimes i pray, but i never felt loved by any of them. I respect the dedication of their priestesses, they find fullfilment in serving them. It's not for me, I never felt the mistic call. " She commented. “I did what I was sent to do, I was respectful and that was the end of it. It didn't erase my original interest for the profane dances as Agamemnon thought it would."

Helen laughed briefly. It was always funny to hear examples of the complete ignorance about the sensibilities of women that the Atrides had.

" I waited until his next absence and I went to learn with the concubines of the palace. " The princess kept explaining. " They are not used to being respected by ladies. When I told them that I admired their dancing and I wanted to learn from them they didn't know what to say. It must have impacted them, because they agreed to instruct me in secret. That's how I learned. I keep joining their practices when I can. It helps me to relieve tension and it is my secret way of self expression."

" You managed to make yourself be equally liked by temple maidens and palace dancers? You are a true politician, even outside of politics." Achilles pointed out.

His comment made her smile.

“ Now that I think about it, It is the first time I see you dancing. I didn’t have the pleasure at the wedding party.” He reminded her.

“ I didn’t dance much that time and, certainly, not as i like to when I’m not being watched.” She replied.” This was an accident, Helen was flirting with one of the musicians and the ambient inspired me to lose control.”

“ I wasn’t flirting, I was dancing to his interpretation.” The queen defended herself.

“ You don’t need excuses with us. If you want me to kill your husband, just make a sign.” Achilles joked.

Helen laughed more than what she should have.

“ She is thinking about it!” Patroclus added, cracking of laughter.

“ It is not worthy to ruin your reputation for it, but thanks for the offer.”

“ It can be an accident in the middle of a battle. We can say that he got in the way of my spear.”

The princess laughed harder then.

“ See? She gets me.” The warrior commented.

“ It’s the same kind of grim joke I would have made.” She explained, still laughing.

They shared glances, looking deeply into each other’s eyes for an instant.

“ Do you want to dance with me?” Achilles offered her. “ We couldn’t last time and you are making me curious..”

She took his hand as a sign of approval, smiling with delight.

“ You can dance with me, Helen.” Patroclus playfully added, remarking how they seemed to have forgotten of them.

Helen grabbed his hand and both were laughing,

They walked following the intensity of the music’s sound with the intention of finding the group of musicians again. When they resumed dancing the princess stopped caring about anything else but her partner. It was reciprocal, because Achilles couldn’t take his eyes off her. Remembering some of the wild thoughts she have had before, she unveiled her sensuality for him within her dancing. Her movements were like a soft tease implying that there was so much more that she could be showing to him if the show would have been private. Her hips, waist and chest were the areas of her body that the moves highlighted. Combined with the graceful gesticulation of her hands and arms, it was a very appealing sight.

She knew that he wasn't able to touch her more than what would look necessary because of the context and she was using it at her advantage. Still, since he wasn't able to express himself with actions, he did it with words.

In a particular moment, when he ended up behind her while she was doing torso undulations, he got a chance to grab her hips and whisper close to her ear.

" You should have done this in Phthia, behind closed gates."

They were so close that he was able to smell the scent of her hair.

" It wasn't the right time, but if you invite me back i can take my dancer suit for a private performance." Was her tempting reply. " I have one, you know? My friends helped me to make it."

" I don't think I would let you go after that."

She was melting, her heart was throbbing and her head racing with thoughts of him. However, she did her best to keep going as before because she needed to feel sure of being a woman in his eyes.

While his hands were still on her hips, she changed the move and started doing internal hip circles. The sharp motion, first of her right hip and then the left, incited him to pull away one hand at the time, following the rhythm of her every action. The roundness of the hip rotation made her push her butt slightly against him in a movement that looked accidental but didn't feel as such.

She put some distance between them, enough to spin around and face him again. The song ended shortly afterwards.

" Sorry, It was the music. I almost forgot that you were there. " She apologised, faking innocence.

" Some people may be staring ... Don't you care for discretion anymore?" He teased her.

“ Most people here are drunk. They couldn’t care less, I couldn't care less.” She answered. “ Besides, this was pretty discrete compared to what I can actually do.”

“ Why are you doing this? ”

“ Because I want.” She simply admitted. “ You are the only man I ever wanted to dance for, the first one who has me like this.”

It was a strange confession of feelings. Metaphorically disguised, but it was there.

Achilles didn’t answer. Not because he didn’t wish to, he couldn’t do that at the moment. First, because of the context surrounding them but mostly, because it wasn’t a good time to be open with her. He didn’t want her to confound his own growing feelings for her with a rush of lust. He cared deeply for her, it started fast and it took him by surprise. He felt good having her in his life, even when it was at moments. After each of their reunions he felt a bit more infatuated.

Right there, she was making his body crave for hers, but he didn’t want that to be his first response to her affections. He guessed that she was acting so sensually because she wanted to confess herself but didn’t know how. He thought that she must have heard that was the way in which he prefered to be approached, that she had to make herself be wanted for him. He would have lied if he would have denied that he was enjoying it, but he was trying to avoid thinking with his crotch.

She had given him plenty of subtle signs about her feelings before and he never gave her a direct answer, mostly because he didn't find a good moment for it and part of him felt like he couldn't allow himself to do it. He didn’t want her to assume that he only reacted then because he was horny.

He was trying to do better for her, but she didn’t understand it like that at first.

The princess interpreted his silence as rejection. For the sake of her own pride, she pretended not care. She kissed his cheek,smiled at him and went back to Helen’s side. For the rest of the night,she tried to carry on as it never happened. Internally, she felt stupid, but it was the only way she found to overcome it.

She focused again on helping Helen. Acting carelessly, the first thing she did afterwards was to take advantage of a short pause of the music to talk to the man she was sharing glances with as a way to stimulate her to get closer. The princess started by praising his playing and asking his name in front of her and Patroclus. Smiling proudly, he told them to address him as Alexander. The princess didn’t hesitate in starting calling him Alex. He was very respectful, especially of the queen. He expressed his admiration for her in a kind way and didn't attempt anything on her, clearly seeing her as unreachable. Helen seemed to enjoy his harmless attention. In the conversation, they also found out that Patroclus had musical inclinations. Alexander was a percussionist playing Toubeleki and Patroclus made his contribution to the small talk speaking about his experiences learning to play the khitara. Helen was grateful for the care of her friends, both trying to make efforts for her just because they saw her getting along with him. For obvious reasons, the talk was short, but it was a good start.

They lost sight of Achilles and the princess was secretly relieved for it. She was mortified thinking that her attempt of pursuing him ruined everything between them. Over the course of the party, the three stayed together because they were already comfortable enough with each other.

They got involved in trivial talks with many different people. At one moment, they crossed paths again with Ajax while they were waiting for servants to bring them something to drink. The salaminian hero was doing the same and he greeted their encounter. He was a bit tipsy, but he was good company because he was funnier to be around than what most people assumed. The four fooled around together for a while. They were drinking and joking and the princess almost forgot how bad she was feeling, until he reminded her that she still owed him a dance because he was the first one trying to get her away from the table. He was just joking and It wasn’t his fault, so she tried to keep being sweet to him. Her polite reply explained her refusal linking it to his circumstantial state. Avoiding to sound mean, harsh or sarcastic, she promised him that she was going to dance with him the next time she would find him sober. Fortunately, It made him laugh.

He resumed their previous conversation in an infinitely less formal way, saying that he was perfectly fine because he was the strongest man in Greece and the effect of a few drinks weren’t an impediment for him. He told them that he could show them on the spot how he was able to lift both women from the ground at the same time and Helen considered the discussion about his state over, fearing that he would actually try it. She felt relatively comfortable with him and it was a grateful surprise. For such an intimidant looking man, he was very nice and likeable. After sharing some more laughs, she ended up dancing with him.

Their brief encounter cheered the princess up a bit, simply because it was very hard not to laugh with the amount of funny insanity that they came up with. Still, she kept feeling out of place, like if nobody really needed her there. Helen was probably waiting until the end so she could have a longer conversation with the percussionist and Patroclus deserved some time to have fun on his own if he wanted that. She couldn’t help to think that she was ruining the party for them . Openly expressing her wish of not being followed, she excused herself saying that she had enough fun, was too tired and prefered to rest. She hugged her friends, thanking them for their company and wishing them goodnight.

In her walk to her bedroom,the princess speeded up her pace to avoid being disturbed. She didn’t want to be approached by anyone else, wishing to forget about her feelings of shame. She almost reached her destination, but the hold of Achilles's strong arms deviated her in an empty hall.

“I can't deal with this now. " she admitted. " Would you let me go? I will talk to you in the morning"

" If we wait any longer, we will never do it. " He stated, embracing her waist.

" What are you talking about??" She complained.

“ Don’t play the fool now. You can’t try to hide anymore.”

" I know that I ruined everything. "

While hearing her, he seemed slightly confused.

" By now, you must know how I feel for you. '' She explained herself. " I may be good at reading the feelings of others, but I get easily overwhelmed by mines... I have spent my lifetime training myself to suppress them, I don't understand myself sometimes... I wanted you to see me as the woman I am because only then I could make you understand how I feel."

Her explanation made him chuckle for an instant.

" What's so funny ??." She tried to pull away from his contact, but he was obviously stronger than her.

" I see you as a woman, I have always done it. " He replied.

" I know how you act around the women that you like. It is not how you acted with me. "

" Do you think that I don't want you?" A light chuckle escaped from his lips again. " You are so lovely."

" That's it. I'm always the sweet innocent lamb, I can't escape from that. " She complained. " I'm a living, breathing woman with feelings and desires. "

" I'm aware of that. " He reassured her. " That was a very interesting reminder of it, but I know it."

" Then why do you keep ignoring me? " Her voice showed frustration.

" Things between us are not so easy. "

" You know, before you start thinking about it, I have to say that stepping into helping you was a choice I made based on my convictions. " She clarified. " I believe in you, I didn't do it looking for any retributions. Even if you don't correspond my feelings, that wouldn't change anything. I'm still commited to our pact."

" Calm down." He caressed her hair. " Can you stop assuming that I think the worst of you? I don't."

" I don't know what else to do to get a concrete answer from you.” She insisted. “I just want that. I don't mind the outcome. If you don't feel the same, I will respect it. "

Then, he crashed his lips against hers. It was a sweet kiss, intended to serve as a response confessing his affections, but it was charged with the passion of the long craving for it that he also had. She was in such bliss that he felt her body trembling.

He smiled against her lips.

" Are you alright?"

" It’s the longing. " was all she could answer.

“ You didn't have to do anything else to get me. " He clarified. “ I liked you in Sparta, now i think it’s something more than that.”

" I haven't stopped thinking about you since the day we met." She confessed. " I didn't know then that it was going to get that far, but here i am."

.” Odysseus spent half of the way back telling me to stay away from you like a father scaring away a suitor that he dislikes. “ He confessed. “ I did it for a good long while, but you came to me on your own and you dazzled me."

" He doesn't dislike you, you are his friend. " She clarified " He knows of somebody who hates you and he tries to protect me from him. "

" I will never allow that old drunk to hurt you. " He said, in what sounded like a promise.

" Would you steal me from him?" She playfully joked.

" If it's what I have to do to keep you safe, I would."

She kissed him, clinging onto him and refusing to pull away until being breathless. In that act, she condensed years of hidden adoration for him and all her hopes.

Achilles felt it, and he couldn’t help to love her for it.

“ My room is close. “ She offered. “ It’s safer to continue there.”

She giggled and headed first. It wasn't wise of them to be seen getting inside there together, so they had to do it in turns.

The princess arrived first, leaving the door unlocked. Her heart was racing with expectancy. The warrior appeared shortly afterwards, closing the door behind them. Immediately after seeing him, she kissed him again.

" Slow down, lioness." He teased her after she finally pulled away.

" I wish I could." she joked in reply.

" This is what I mean when I say that you are adorable, not that I see you as a cute little girl. " He commented." You are so tender, it gets me."

" Really?" She asked, impressed.

" I love it. " He answered, honestly. " I also loved what you did for me tonight. "

" It didn't look like that. " She pointed out.

" It didn't have to look like that. It was dangerous. " He reminded her. " I like some risk, but you took a pointless one."

" I wanted you to want me and I think it worked."

" You need to know that I don't want you because you did that.” He confessed. “ I want you for you and I want all of you, not just this."

" Then take me." Her proposition sounded like a beg. " I'm ready." She was talking against his lips, holding his hands and pushing them against her body.

" Not tonight, princess." He was teasing her, his cheeky tone got on her nerves.

" Why?? " She complained, her frustration almost made her raise the tone of her voice. “ I want to be with you, I don’t care for anything else. Father will end up selling me for power anyways, It will be the buyer’s problem. ”

" You didn't let me finish." He corrected her. " I'm not going to take you for myself tonight. " He explained as he started to leave a trail of kisses from her jaw in direction to her neck. " But I have many other ways to show you how good you make me feel. "

She gasped and he smiled against her skin.

" The massage was amazing. " He added as he kept descending. " And that dance? You are spoiling me, that’s royal treatment."

" There is nothing I wouldn't do for you."

He stopped for an instant just so he could look at her in the eye, feel the intensity of her love, and kiss her lips once more.

#troy 2004 #troy #troy (2004)#troy 2004 fanfiction #troy fanfiction #achilles #helen of troy #patroclus #ajax #brad pitt #diane kruger #garrett hedlund #reader insert fanfiction #achilles x reader #female reader

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marjansmarwani · 4 years ago

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would’ve loved you for a lifetime

Tarlos || 7.6k || ao3

Prompt: Characters are secretly married and one of them is hurt at work

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The story of how TK and Carlos came together, and how they almost missed out on their future before it even got a chance to start.

For the wonderful @acejuddryder on her birthday! I hope you enjoy this AC and that you have a day as good as you deserve 💕

I came across this prompt a while ago and @bellakitse encouraged me to write it and I am so glad she did! I have been wanting to do a non-linear narrative for a while, and this worked perfectly for that. Shoutouts to both @officereyes and @firefighterstrand for helping me with bits and editing for me, you’re champs 🥰

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Judd watched as TK went about repacking the first aid kit with a smile on his face, humming to himself. This had been going on for the majority of their 24-hour shift now and in hour 23, Judd’s patience was finally up.

“Okay kid, what gives? You’ve been grinning like the butcher’s dog all shift.”

TK glanced up from his work, startled, “I have not.”

“Yeah, you have dude,” Marjan informed him as she tossed him more supplies, “want to fill us in?”

“It’s not just today either,” Paul noted, coming around from the other side of the engine, “you’ve been suspiciously chipper for a few days now.”

“Can’t a guy just be happy without getting the third degree? Jeez.”

“There’s happy, and then there’s this.”

“You too Mateo, really? I thought you had my back, man.”

“Don’t guilt-trip the probie,” Paul admonished, throwing his polishing rag at TK for emphasis, “just tell us what’s up.”

TK was saved the trouble of dodging the question by the sound of his phone ringing in his pocket.

“Saved by the bell,” he declared as he fished it out of his pocket and stepped to the back of the rig for some semblance of privacy.

“Don’t count on it lasting,” Judd called after him, “we’re getting right back into this as soon as you are done.”

The others returned to their tasks, eager to finish with the end of their shift in sight. Their focus was soon broken by the sound of a gasp and a clattering sound from where TK stood. They all looked over to see TK, standing on the other side of the engine bay, expression stricken and body trembling.

“TK?” Paul asked hesitantly but got no response. Not even an indication that their teammate had heard him. They crossed over as a group but Judd got there first and reached down to grab the abandoned phone. The call was still going. He watched as Marjan approached TK, comforting hands reaching for his and Paul reminded him to breathe in his even, calming voice as he lifted the abandoned phone to his ear.

“Hello?”

“Mr. Strand?”

“No, this is his friend. He seems to be...a little out of sorts right now.”

The voice on the other end sighed, “that’s understandable. Would you please just inform him that his husband should be heading into surgery shortly and that he should check in upon his arrival so that the doctor can give him an update?”

Husband? Judd was so stuck on that word he almost missed the rest of the sentence. He managed to unfreeze his brain long enough to answer, “Of course, I’ll make sure he gets there. What hospital?”

“St. David’s.”

“Thank you.”

Judd hung up the phone and stared at it for a moment. He felt the eyes of the team on him but he took a steadying breath before he looked up. When he did he ignored the curious gazes of the others and looked directly at TK, “they said I should tell you that your husband should be heading into surgery shortly, and that you should check-in when you get there so a doctor can update you.”

TK nodded, but said nothing else. No explanation, no objection that they were wrong; that he didn’t have a husband.

Because as far as Judd had known as of a few minutes ago, he didn’t.

“I need to go,” TK finally said and his voice was so pained it almost hurt to hear, “I need to get there.”

“I hate to break it to you man,” Paul said gently, “but you are in no shape to drive right now.”

“I’ll take him.”

The words were out of his mouth before he had even fully processed them. But when the eyes of the team fell to him, he repeated them: “I’ll take him. Clear it with Cap?”

The others nodded and he hoped they had picked up on what was left unsaid: tell Owen that he apparently has a son-in-law he doesn’t know about; tell the Captain that TK is a wreck but that Judd had him.

“There’s only a bit of shift left, we should be able to hold down the fort. Go, and keep us updated.”

Judd nodded at Paul and the others before reaching out a hand to put on TK’s shoulder, “C’mon kid, let’s go.”

His voice and guiding hand were gentle, and TK barely nodded before allowing himself to be led out of the station and to Judd’s truck. He climbed into the passenger seat silently and didn’t utter a word for the whole drive. All Judd could do was shoot him concerned glances and try to push back all the unanswered questions in his mind. Now was not the time for answers —his one and only concern was making sure TK was okay. The rest could come later.

----------

They started on a Tuesday.

As things went it wasn’t a particularly notable day for a beginning, but there wasn’t much notable about their start.

They were two people colliding; contrasting desires meeting in the in between, in the common ground. They wanted different ends but the means suited them both just fine. It was hot and heavy; it was rough and quick. It was needy and physical and everything they wanted (if only for a moment).

Then eventually, it was more.

Not at first —it wasn’t more for a long time. For months it was just blowing off steam, just mind blowing sex. There were a few dates of varying success, but they continued their dance around each other and the feelings they both had. Then TK got shot and they both watched their potential future teetering on the edge, ready to topple over with the weight of uncertainty. Eventually TK woke up to the chaos of adjusting to life again and a solar storm, and in the quiet that followed the chaos they found themselves in each other.

From there it was simple: after the start they had it couldn’t be anything but. In all that time they had gotten to know each without really meaning to and now they found themselves fitting together like a pair of gloves; fine on their own, but infinitely better together. They slipped into rhythms like they did embraces, and they were happy.

They dedicated time to getting to know what they were without an audience and without really realizing it, they had become a secret. A badly kept one, but a secret none-the-less. They existed in the peripherals, their life together a separate entity from their lives as seen by the rest of the world.

From the outskirts they became TK and Carlos and as time went on, there was less and less space between their bodies, their names, and their hearts.

And with each passing Tuesday, they grew closer.

---------

Judd kept stealing glances at TK.

They were in the waiting room of the hospital, and TK had spent every moment since they sat down anxiously bouncing his leg while he fiddled with the necklace he always wore.

“Hey, it’s gonna be okay.”

“You don’t know that Judd.”

His voice was strained and quiet, so unlike the TK Judd was used to. He followed his gaze to the door the nurse had informed them the doctor would be coming through to give TK an update. That was nearly 10 minutes ago and TK’s eyes hadn’t left the door once.

Judd had so many questions but wasn’t sure how to broach the topic. How do you ask your friend about a spouse you didn’t know they had when they are full of fear of losing them?

He was saved the trouble of trying when TK spoke beside him, “I know what you’re thinking, just go ahead and ask.”

His voice was resigned and Judd felt bad for even thinking about the question, but he did need to know.

“You have a husband. Is it...someone we know?”

TK pulled his glance away from the door long enough to glance at Judd. After a moment, he nodded: “Carlos.”

“How long?”

“Not long.”

“Are you…” he began, but trailed off. He wasn’t sure what to ask. He had been leaning towards “happy,” but that seemed wrong in this context. He didn’t know what the right thing to say was; he had no idea how to approach this situation. He wished Grace was here. She was so much better at this kind of stuff.

They were quiet again until TK spoke, “I love him Judd.”

The admission was made quietly, TK’s voice low and sad. Judd turned to look at him and TK met his eyes as he continued, “I need him in my life. I don’t know what I’d do without him. I can’t lose him, Judd.”

Judd swallowed as he studied TK’s expression. It was full of a familiar fear; one that he had felt anytime he thought about the mere idea of losing Grace. He reached out a hand and gave TK’s shoulder a comforting squeeze. He knew better to promise that it would be alright — they had no way of knowing that. Instead he settled on a truth he knew.

“You’ll get through this,” he told TK firmly, “and you won’t be alone.”

--------

Time passed and they began to learn the mysteries of each other past the physical. Before TK knew just the spot to kiss to make Carlos moan each and every time, now he could tell you the name of his childhood dog and that when he was 5, he had wanted to be an astronaut.

Carlos still knew all the ways to make TK melt under his touch but now he also knew how TK had pushed himself in the fire academy so he could feel worthy of the legacy of being the legendary Owen Strand’s son. Their secrets emerged from the shadows into open hearts, more and more revealing themselves with each passing day.

Stolen hours became endless evenings and frantic hookups became languid movie nights. Time passed and they began to feel at home with each other. Soon it became normal for TK to show up at Carlos’s home at the end of his shift as it slowly became more of a home to him. But, then again, the person who lived there was starting to feel an awful lot like home too.

Their connection was generally known; they weren’t trying to sneak around. But while seeing them dancing at the bar or grabbing lunch at a food truck became more and more commonplace, the depth of their relationship was still a secret from most —including them, for a time. Michelle likely knew, Paul surely suspected; but the fact that they were falling more and more in love each passing day was a surprise to even them.

It was TK who said it first; in a casual moment without a second thought. Carlos nearly tripped over his own feet when he heard it, but it had been like a dam breaking and soon it became commonplace, almost like breathing for them both.

Time went on and their love grew. Time went on and they grew together —learning each other's edges and finding out where they fit. They were a puzzle, slowly coming together until the right piece was found. From there, it was a quick solve before the final picture revealed itself.

And what a picture it was, Carlos thought to himself as he lay in his bed, watching TK sleeping soundly beside him. There were times he had to stop himself from reaching out to touch him, to make sure he was real. Sleep didn’t come easily to the other man and once it was found it was easily lost, so Carlos refrained, allowing his gaze to do the work for him. After everything he could scarcely believe they were here, after everything he couldn’t believe that they had found each other.

These were his favorite nights, he decided. The ones where he got to fall asleep to the sight of TK beside him, the nights he was lulled to sleep by the sound of his breathing. He knew he wanted more nights like this — really, he wanted every night to be like this.

But it was too soon for that, so for now he would savor the nights they had.

[continue reading on ao3]

#911 lone star #911 lone star fic #tarlos #tarlos fic #my writing #userkimmy #userjilly #sunshinestrand #jazzyjess #aanathema #lonestarbabe #moviegeek03 #lire-casander #do I usually tag more people?#probably but my brain is tired

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el-oh-her · 5 years ago

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Barbie Movies That Are More Relevant Than You Think

1. Barbie’s Princess and the Pauper

> The Big Thing: Shows a realistic representation of 1st world problems and 3rd world Problems coexisting. Annalise is a princess in an arranged marraige and Erika is an indentured servent, both looking to esacpe, but are determined to overcome these issues. They acknowledge that they have differerent problems but are both struggling in their own right. It’s important to know that they don’t wish they were someone else, they just wish they could escape their personal struggles.

> Women supporting women!

> Female Leads that are friends and aren’t catty towards each other

> Annalise and Erika talk about things other than boys, althrough an arranged marraige is a plot point and all boy talk is really about that particular plot point.

> “Duty is doing the things your heart may well regret” is the most badass line in exsitance, okay?

> The Princess loved science.

2. Barbie and the 12 Dancing Princessess

> The Big Thing: This story is about extremism and the dangers of a binary system. In this case, it’s Law vs Chaos, and unregulated freedom of expression vs overregulated conformity. The 12 are unruly and chaotic and uncaring about their royal status which causes strain on the kingdom and they are super unprepared for royal life. The antagonist comes in, strips the color and the fun and is all rules and control and is trying to teach them how to be “proper ladies” which is also done in an extreme. Neither of these are right, and in the end the girls use their unique interests to save their father, and they acknowledge they should behave better and be prepared for royal life. They essentially find their middle way.

> Realistic siblings. No one calls the other “sister”

> Lacy, the frail sister, is never treated poorly by her sisters despite the fact she causes a few issues in the plot. Super supportive sisters.

> LI isn’t a prince. He’s a shoemaker.

> There’s an assassination attempt in this one! It technically succeeds. Really good show on adult topics in a children’s movie.

> Power and Corruption are thematic here with the villain.

3. Barbie’s Mariposa

> The Big Thing: This one is about destorying an entire society for personal gain and power. If you’re American, you’d understand why THIS is super relevant. The queen is bring poisoned and is the life source for all the lights, and those lights are what protect faeries from the monsters in the dark. The Big Bad Guy plans to take the throne with these monsters as her minions, promising them they can eat faeries. She will destory this land to gain the throne, and she doesn’t care who dies along the way.

> Has a Cinderella vibe to it. Good rendition

> Two First World Entittled rich faries are humbled through the journey, and learn to be king and selfless despite starting with selfish intentions. GROWTH.

> Skeezite is a funny word.

> ACCENTS. I think they’re all Spanish, but can’t confirm. The only Barbie movie that didn’t do British Accents, I’m pretty sure. Vocal Diversity is 10/10

4. Barbie Fairytopia Series

> The Big Thing: DISABILITY IN A FANTASY WORLD DONE WELL. Like holy shit the plot is the Big Bad is commiting bio-terrorism by poisoning the air that affects all faeries except for Elina because she was born without wings. DISABILITY BECOMING THE ONLY THING THAT CAN SAVE YOU. YES. She does get wings at the end, but I always saw it as a prostetic because if she lost her necklace she lost her wings. And in a later movie she has to trade them away to save someone.

> Bibble is valid

> This series does the “girl who doesn’t fit in” trope well because Elina is constantly seen as the girl who doesn’t fit in. In the first movie she’s the girl without wings, in the second she’s the faerie, not a mermaid (Nori gets mean towards her because the mermaid prince wanted a fairy to save him or someting like that), and in the last one, I’m pretty sure she’s sort of regarded as the charity case. I can’t remember exactly, so don’t quote me. Either way, Elina is the most relateable Barbie character for people who struggle fitting in wherever they go because Elina never fits in at first (but it’s a barbie movie, so you know, acceptance and stuff)

> This marks the third movie on this list with an assassination attempt for power. Power #Corrupts

> Good overcoming narrative. Elina survives all her trials towards being accepted in society.

5. Barbie as the Island Princess

> The Big Thing: This one is tricky because Barbie is a white character, and that is a valid critique for this one. However, the topic is handled well despite this fault due to the movie’s context. This one is about a status quo society and their treatment towards a different “Cultural” upbringing. Ro grew up on an island alone outside of society and talks to animals. She has an entire different set of values and beliefs. Her curiosity sets her off into a populated civilzation and a big part of the movie is the Prince Character making genuine efforts to help her adapt and make her comfortable for what she is used to, and the rest of the society relegating her to a barbarian. She struggles trying to fit in to a society that wants her to adapt to their society, but refuses to make any adaptions to hers. Her not being from there is eventually what saves the day, which is a healthy message that differnet people learn the world differnetly, and these cultures can meet and interact and help each other without forcing one to obliterate itself. Ro doesn’t stay in that society. She goes off sailing with the prince character, a happy medium from her island roots and desire to be around other people.

> ANOTHER assassination attempt.

> Big Bad has a daughter she’s trying to marry to the Prince, but the daughter doesn’t love him and is happy that he finds love. she and Ro are friends. 10/10 Women supporting women.

> Ro’s cultural roots are celebrated a lot. It’s nice!

> Prince never puts Ro in a corner to change, from what I remember. He guides her through what she’s willing to do, and helps accomidate her with that makes her uncomfortable (sleeps in the greenhouse,for example). 10/10 m8

6. Barbie and the Diamond Castle

> The Big Thing: The catalyst of this movie is Liana and Alexa’s lively hood being destoryed by a storm, and now homeless and jobless, they end up questing with a magic mirror to save Melody and the other trapped Muses. Alexa is hesitant and even gives up to stay in a Lotus Casino type place because there’s food and shelter there. There’s a heavy value on having enough to eat, and having a place to live. Displacement and poverty, I guess is the right word for this.

> Okay so I heard around that Alexa and Liana are queer coded based on their dress colors in the final scene matching the Lesbian and Bisexual Flag and I stan that because honestly, Barbie need some gay.

> The Will Sing For Food scene hits differently than any other scene in Barbie Movies. It’s just such a real thing.

7. Barbie and the Three Musketeers

> The Big Thing: Sexsim. This one is very on the nose of “women can’t do this.” and then Barbie adn Co proves them wrong!!

> I am pretty sure there are SEVERAL assasination attempts in this one.

> “Release the Fireworks!!” is carved into my mind.

> The Master Trainer is an old lady maid. Cool trope subversion.

Honestly, people who cry about adult themes in their kids movies need to watch these movies. Did you notice how many ASSASSINATIONS happen in these movies? SO MUCH ASSASSINATION.

These movies are deeper and more complex than given credit for. I can admit that Barbie’s early movies didn’t do great with racial representation, but we can also praise them for accomplishing their aim of empowering young girls as much as they did.

I can’t say much for mordern Barbie since that’s not my era. Perhaps someone else can comment about that better than I can.

TL;DR: Barbie movies deal with adult themes in a child friendly setting and they are well done and you should go watch them and see how much deeper and complex these movies can be.

A Barbie Movie I DO NOT STAN: Princess and the Pop Star. That movie is “Two whiny girls hate their privlaged life and wish they were someone else’s privlaged life and I guess help the poor” It’s not good. You can enjoy the bops it produced, but that movie is INSANELY Problomatic.

#Movies #Barbie

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taylizmasterpost · 4 years ago

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Liz After the Agency (September 2012 - September 2014)

So, Liz is spiraling. Her mental health isn’t doing great. And she was just asked to leave The Agency (presumably to take care of herself, although the public reason given was for her to start a solo career). Things are bad.

However, in the darkness, there’s always a light. And the light for Liz, in this case is her neighbor, Bryan Brown.

24 September 2012 - Liz and Bryan tweet at each other for the first time:

17 October 2012 - Taylor writes This Love:

Now, this COULD be about Liz, considering the back and forth. However, I’m more inclined to believe Taylor wrote this about Swiftgron’s first break up, right after they got back together, which you can read more about here.

The same day, Liz makes a vague tweet about jealousy:

It’s crazy weird to me that the same day Taylor is celebrating getting back together with Dianna and writing This Love, Liz is pissed off and jealous about something. Coincidence? Maybe. But I don’t think so.

22 October 2012 - Red is released. According to a later interview with the photographer who did the Red booklet (who happens to be Liz’s current roommate), Taylor based the concept of the photoshoot on some headshots they’d taken for Liz:

“Taylor is a mutual friend of ours. Stephen and his brother were friends with her years before, and I became friends with her separately. What ended up happening was one of her background singers needed headshots. When Taylor saw them a few months later, she came to me and was like, “Liz showed me the shots you took of her, and I need my album to look exactly like that.” Clearly, this was a no-brainer. I said, “OK!” Before then, I’d been kind of burned out on music photography. A lot of the shoots were super controlling. I needed a new perspective on the field itself and wanted future shoots to be very free-flowing — just the artist and a minimum crew. Luckily for Stephen and me, that’s exactly how Taylor presented the Red album shoot. So it was just the three of us shooting everything together. She wanted everybody else to remain off set, allowing for a more personal and intimate experience.”

So, I don’t know why Taylor did this. Maybe she wanted to look like a hipster for the Red album and Liz was the best she knew. Or, maybe, she wanted to scream to those who knew her well that this album was about LIZ HUETT.

In this series of Liz headshots, there’s also one specific photo of Liz wearing the Stevie Nicks moon necklace that Taylor possibly gave to her:

Is this possibly one of the reasons why Taylor wanted to mimic them for the Red album?

Later that day, Taylor goes on Good Morning America and says she wrote a new song “like two days ago” (probably talking about This Love?)

And after that, Taylor tells the LA Times that Begin Again and State of Grace are about the same person:

“There were a few track list choices I knew I was going to make way in advance,” she said. “I knew I wanted to bookend the album with ‘State of Grace’ and ‘Begin Again’ because they’re inspired by the same person who inspired a few songs on the record. I wanted to start and end the album with the first and last song I ever wrote about that relationship.”

“Then in between those songs, I wanted to paint a picture of the ups and downs I’ve experienced in life and love, not necessarily in the order it happened chronologically,” Swift continued. “I like to spread the emotions out in a way that never makes you feel like there’s a sad lull, then a burst of four songs in a row about joy. At the end of the day, I make a track list based on what my gut feeling tells me.” ‘Begin Again’ is my song version of a cliffhanger ending. Throughout the whole album, there have been songs about the trials and tribulations of love and loss, and there at the end of the record it starts all over. As soon as I wrote that song, I knew exactly where I wanted to put it.”

Now, I don’t think this means Begin Again is about Liz. I think it means that Liz is the past relationship in the song, and Dianna is the present. And Liz actually has a song called “Good About Her” that kind of mirrors Begin Again and I find that HILARIOUS and also kind of a smoking gun.

26 October 2012 -Taylor goes on Katie Couric. Katie asks if Taylor’s ex in WANEGBT got the message and Taylor says she “hasn’t heard from him since” and also mentions “some of my exes like to write really long emails.” Now, if the song is about Liz, this is a lie, because she definitely did get lunch with Liz after WANEGBT came out. However, I think it’s fair that what she’s hinting here is that things did not end well in that messy relationship.

25 October 2012 - Liz quote tweets Caitlin about crying on the treadmill to All Too Well :

8 November 2012 - Liz releases Never Know on YouTube:

youtube

The lyrics that make me think this is about Taylor are the “now and then I catch myself singing your old song.” ESPECIALLY in the context of that treadmill tweet and Liz probably having written this during her Nashville sessions over the summer. However, it could also be about Jason, who, as we know, was a struggling musician before he became a photographer.

18 November 2012 - Taylor shoots the MV for IKYWT, wears the same black and white shirt she wore around when Liz first joined the band. Liz calls the news of her leaving the Agency “bittersweet.”

And “bittersweet” is the exact same phrasing that around a week later Taylor would say the ex who most of Red is about used to describe listening to the album:

19 November 2012 - Ali Puliti tweets about listening to two Liz demos -- Blessed Are the Brokenhearted and Dammit, meaning this song, which wouldn’t be released until 2018, was likely written during those summer 2012 songwriting sessions:

When the song was eventually released by Jana Kramer in 2018, Liz posted this on Facebook:

The song also notably contains the lyric “cause I could hear you in the kitchen, playing your guitar” which REALLY REALLY makes me think of Taylor. Although it could maybe be for Jason, who was also a musician.

Here’s the story Liz told about the song:

“‘Dammit’, actually, was a story that I lived out. Like, I was with somebody I was, you know, getting very serious. We were talking about starting a life together and we even had this house, like, picked out in the city where we lived and we would drive by it and be like ‘one day when we buy that house’. And, so, when we broke up, the pain of, like, saying goodbye was really, you know, really intense, but it was also mourning the loss of the hypothetical future. So, it was like saying goodbye to the past memories and stuff, sort of what we almost had and that’s where that song came from. So, honestly, I didn’t write it for anyone else, but myself, truly. But, um, it’s beautiful that music has such a way of resonating with someone who might not even know and they connect with it so much that another artist would want to sing it. It’s such a high compliment.”

And here’s a quick clip of Liz singing it. So, seems like a Jason song, if not for the fact that she wrote it almost a year after they broke up and kept it hidden for years before eventually giving it to another artist.

13 December 2012 - Taylor’s birthday. Liz does not wish her happy birthday. This, to me, is the biggest evidence that there’s some amount of bad blood between them at this point.

14 December 2012 - The Music Video for IKYWT comes out. Taylor wears a shirt she wore a LOT when TayLiz was first a thing in 2009. She also wears a key necklace, which will be important later.

17 December 2012 - Liz posts a picture from Claire’s birthday party using a picture without Taylor in it (even though it seems fair to assume Taylor would’ve been invited).

20 December 2012 - Liz tells a fan her favorite song from Red is All Too Well:

21 December 2012 - Liz wishes Claire happy birthday. Further signaling bad blood with her and Taylor since she didn’t bother to do it for Taylor.

9 January 2013 - Liz releases Blessed Are the Brokenhearted:

youtube

Here she describes love as “burning up out of control” which is the same phrase Taylor used on Red -- “burning red” -- and Begin Again -- “I’ve been spending the last eight months thinking all love ever does is break and burn and end.” Also, the idea of love as an out of control flame really does describe their relationship.

20 January 2013 - Liz releases One Hand on the Wheel:

youtube

Here, much like in Red, Liz describes a relationship using the metaphor of a car. The relationship is messy, maybe even toxic. There’s even a lyric that sounds like it could be out of treacherous: “Being wrong shouldn’t feel so right like it does / But it does.”

22 January 2013 - Liz releases Wreck of Who I Am.

youtube

This is the song that is the strongest evidence for me that Liz WAS going through some mental health stuff over the summer when she was doing all this songwriting, and that that Reddit post about running into a drunk Liz who said she was fired for being “out of control” seems somewhat accurate. Here Liz sings about her battles, the way she’s losing them, and asks her younger self what she would think if she saw her now.

I’m not going to go into too much detail on Liz and Bryan (since unlike her and Jason there’s no need to use them to say much about TayLiz) but, despite his flaws, he was the person to pick Liz up off the ground when she was feeling this way, so he should get some credit for that.

Sometime around this - Liz releases Stones. Similar upbeat nature to Blessed Are the Brokenhearted with mentions to some of the struggles of Wreck of Who I Am.

Choice Lyrics:

When you’re knocked off your throne And lying on your back Things will never be so clear Cause when you see it all like that Sooner or later it comes around Yeah we all taste that bitter truth But all the stones you’re throwing now Will be the ones they throw at you

Also with these batch of songs, we get Sun Out of the Rain:

So baby, hold on, the storm will roll away It may be pouring down, but it’s only for today A million pieces might be falling into place And when there are no words to say We’ll make the sun out of the rain

29 January 2013 - Chantelle Paige posts a picture of Liz and Taylor and talks about a “sad night turned awesome.” Once again, I think this is a throwback from that night in 2012.

2 April 2013 - Liz goes to therapy. Her and Bryan are dating at this point.

2 September 2013 - Liz tells a fan on twitter that she hasn’t been to any of the Red shows, which to me definitely backs up that fan account of Liz being bitter about being fired.

23 December 2013 - Liz wishes Taylor Happy Birthday. This seems like a peace offering to me, considering they haven’t spoken in like a year and she refused to do this the earlier year. Also worth noting that Swiftgron is on its last legs at this point.

1 March 2014 - Sara Evans releases Put My Heart Down, which was co-written by Liz and is about walking away from a toxic relationship:

youtube

Now, from what I know of Liz and Jason, this doesn’t seem like their dynamic at all. It’s too soon for it to be about her and Bryan However, it does remind me a LOT of what Taylor was writing about on Red. Her are some choice lyrics:

I never pictured us fighting this much Thought we were figured out, but it’s so messy now Your words cut so deep and I think you should leave

Put my heart down and walk away This kind of love is dangerous So pack up all your things, just leave some air to breathe A million toxic tears fallin’ like rain over here This is the final hour The end of our story tonight And I don’t wanna fight

Now, please go listen to Treacherous, Battle/Let’s Go and Story of Us and tell me this is not the same relationship.

Bonus though, this song is copyrighted for 2014, making it make even LESS SENSE for it to be written about Bryan.

17 July 2014 - Timothy James Brown releases a song called Change My Mind that was co-written by Liz. I’m out of video links, so here are some choice lyrics:

All the horses became soldiers Dark as night to drag me away A complicated kind of heartbreak When you promise somebody you’ll stay

I know you’ve been hurting I know more than most I don’t have the courage Where you’re going, I can’t follow

To me, this reads as Liz making peace with leaving the Agency. She recognizes her demons, and how they ruined her relationship with Taylor, and says “where you’re going, I can’t follow” because she’s not in a good enough place to keep touring with Taylor.

So things are looking bleak in TayLiz land. However, Liz seems to be recovering! She’s writing songs acknowledging some problems in the relationship and her own battles, and she’s also in therapy and dating Bryan. It’s time for some reconciliation. But first, let’s see what’s up in Taylor-land:

Liz References on the Red Tour

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one-boring-person · 5 years ago

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Just A Babysitter. (Part Four.)

The Lost Boys x reader (mostly Laddie x reader)

Warnings: none.

Context: (Y/n) and Laddie go to the Boardwalk to spend some time together, whilst Michael and Star get intimate in the hotel.

A/N: I'm sorry this is so short, it's more of a filler part, really. I'll ty and get a better part up later.

Part One Part Two Part Three Part Five Part Six Part Seven Part Eight

Laddie is practically bouncing off the walls when I tell him the next night that we're going into Santa Carla by ourselves, no Star, no vampires, just the two of us, the youngster spouting nonsense about going to buy comics and candy, hoping I'll take him on some of the rides Star normally won't let him go on. With a bright smile, I assure him we'll have fun, though I am confused as to why Star doesn't want to come with us; I did ask her to join me, but she declined me almost as soon as I said anything.

My answer arrives as soon as I hear the familiar sound of someone entering the cave, the footsteps only newly familiar to me: Michael. As he lights the room, he catches sight of Laddie and I leaving, instantly coming over and stopping me with a harsh grip on my arm.

"What the hell did they do to me? What did you do?!" He accuses, voice laced with horror and fear, as well as panic.

Pulling my arm from his grip, I give him an odd look before replying.

"It's not my place to say." I reply, sourly, pushing past him with Laddie in tow, knowing Star will most likely work her magic, in whatever way that is. All I know is that Laddie does not need to be around to find out, and neither do I.

Exiting the cave, Laddie and I ascend the steps, shivering a little in the cool night air as it swirls around us, the raging water somewhere below us loud in the otherwise quiet night. As we emerge over the top of the cliff, I allow myself to laugh when the young half-vampire races over to where my motorcycle is hidden, reaching up and trying to push the bike forwards.

"You won't get very far with the brakes still on." I call out to him as I join him, kicking out the stand and releasing the handbrake so he can at least try to push it. A surprised gasp of pride leaves him when the motorbike moves, though I don't tell him that it is, in fact, me pushing the vehicle onto firmer ground, not him, knowing full well that the Triumph is much too heavy for him.

"You wanna ride up front for once?" I offer him, smiling when his face lights up. Climbing onto the bike first, I settle myself before reaching over and picking the little boy up off the ground and placing him in front of me, brushing some of his long hair out of my face. Directing him to hold onto the unoccupied areas of the handlebars, I make sure he's secure and start the engine, chuckling when he jumps a bit from the sudden vibration - my bike feels a little different to the motorcycles the boys ride.

"Ready?" I question him, revving the engine for emphasis.

"Yeah, let's go!" Laddie encourages, excitement evident in his voice.

"Ok, you better be holding on!" I warn before throwing the bike into gear, starting off at a relatively slow(ish) speed until we hit the road, where I push it up. In front of me, Laddie screams in joy, enjoying the new perspective he's getting from riding in front of the driver for once, delirious cries of exhilaration escaping us both as we thunder down the main road. Thankfully, there aren't many other vehicles driving around, giving us mostly free run of the flat expanse of concrete, allowing me to make the ride more interesting. I keep the speed at a controllable high, making sure I can easily brake without giving us whiplash should I need to, though I manoeuvre the bike in a slalom in any case, whooping with the boy in front of me as we go, my chest pressing into his back as I try to make us as streamlined as possible.

Too soon, the bright lights of Santa Carla come into view, prompting me to slow down as I take the first turn into town, trying my best to obey the traffic laws I don't care about, not in the mood to be pulled over tonight. In record time, I manage to skip all the traffic lining the streets and pull up on the Boardwalk, turning the engine off when I finally find a safe spot to leave the motorbike. Climbing off, I help Laddie off, only to have to catch him again when he falls, his legs shaking from the thrill of the ride. Grinning, I lift him onto my back, carrying him further into the busy area with some ease.

"Where do you wanna go first?" I question him, looking at him over my shoulder as he glances around, eyes wide and impressed as always.

"Comic book shop, please!" He requests, pointing over my shoulder at the Frog's store to my right.

"Okie dokie, let's get going." I agree, heading over towards it, Laddie holding on tight as I go, his fingers gripping the front of my leather jacket eagerly. Upon entering, the two boys who run the shop, Edgar and Alan, give us a suspicious look, though they don't come over, instead just allowing us to look around at the comics on offer. Letting Laddie down, I go over to a particular one which catches my eye: Vampires Everywhere. A chuckle escapes me at the name of it, knowing how true the statement technically is as I take it with me, flicking through the pages briefly as I continue to browse, joining Laddie when we've both picked out three or four each. I take them over to the checkout, where I hand them to Edgar, who is manning the till, his brother currently guarding the comics outside the vicinity of the shop. As the boy comes across Vampires Everywhere, he looks up at me, eyes narrowed.

"Are you aware of the bloodsucker problem around here, too?" He asks, voice a little gruff for a young kid.

"The bloodsucker problem?" I question him, playing it off as a bit of a joke.

"Yeah, Santa Carla ain't the fairy town everyone makes it out to be." Edgar informs me, drawing a scoff from me.

"There is no one in the world who calls this place a fairy town. But no, I wasn't aware we had one. I thought that was the next town over." I respond, shrugging my shoulders in mock concern.

"Well it isn't, so you better make sure you and you're kid are protected against them when they come knocking."

"Ok, I'll make sure my brother and I are appropriately prepared for this. Thank you." I say, giving him a tight smile before paying and leaving, Laddie trailing behind me.

"Right then, where to next?" I ask him, smiling down at him as he considers my question.

"Can we go in there?" He points at a little store selling trinkets, some of the wares already catching my eye.

"Sure, let's go!"

Going over to it, we start browsing, eventually buying a couple of small things before the cycle is repeated, again and again, until we are forced to buy a bag to carry it all in, the money David and the boys have collected from victims over the years finally coming in useful. I manage to get a small something for each of them, as well as a tonne of new stuff for Laddie, who needs to experience some sort of humanity before it is taken from him. By the end of the night, he has a new leather jacket, a bracelet, some figurines and some badges and patches to go on the coat, whilst I've come out of tonight with a new necklace depicting a striking scorpion.

After hours of browsing and going on the rides, we find ourselves back at my bike, eating a portion of fries between us as we watch the crowd become thin, both of us in a good mood after the time we spent together. I notice that Laddie has started yawning more frequently, though, so I quickly make the decision to get home before he falls asleep on the ride back, binning the empty packaging and helping him back into the front of the bike.

"Lets get home, hmm? We can show Star and the boys everything we got." I encourage him, smiling when he grins excitedly, quickly breaking off into a large yawn as he does so. Climbing up onto the bike, I start the engine and swiftly peel off into the traffic, going as fast as I dare in order to get home at a decent time. The roads are mostly empty again, but the drivers that are present are unbearably slow, so I try to overtake as much as possible, nearly spinning off course when a lorry looms up out of nowhere, Laddie screaming out in pure ecstasy at the dangerous turn of events. From his reaction, I deduct that he's been listening to Paul a little too much, taking on the happy-go-lucky vampire's attitude with ease. I smile at the bought, knowing Paul will be happy to have another adrenaline-junky in the gang, though I doubt Dwayne will be too pleased after trying his hardest to teach the young boy the safer perks of being a vampire, despite often ignoring his own advice.

Within fifteen minutes, I've pulled up outside the cave and hidden the bike, lifting Laddie into my arms as I realise he's just as exhausted as I am, his eyes drooping closed even as he tries to fight the sleep off, at least until he's shown off his new stuff. Carrying him down the walkway, I grab the rest of the stuff and enter the familiar confines of the sunken hotel, quickly looking over at the bed in the corner of the room, swiftly finding it still occupied by both Star and Michael, though the latter has sat up and is eyeing his hand in amazement. At my arrival, he looks up, blue eyes finding me with ease as I shift Laddie's weight in my arms, trying not to interrupt anything especially not Star's sleep.

Awkwardly, I shoot Michael a quick smile in greeting before going to sit on my armchair with the half-vampire in my arms, cradling him against my chest as we wait for the boys to return, Laddie keeping his eyes open as much as possible whilst we do so. After a couple of minutes, though, I notice he has fallen asleep against me, clearly exhausted after the night out, even if it hasn't been a particularly strenuous one. Smiling to myself, I rock him a little, happy that the boy is around to keep me sane, uncaring of whether or not Michael is watching me from across the room, his curious gaze not completely unnoticed, though I do look up to stare him down as I finally register the loud laughing of the other boys returning home, evidently having just fed. None of them come into the main room, most likely going straight to their sleeping positions, a quick look at my watch confirming this to me, my own tiredness catching up to me as I make the decision to get some sleep.

Standing carefully, I take Laddie over to his cot, where I tuck him in after removing his new jacket and his usual shoes leaving all of his new stuff beside the bed as I bid Michael a good morning and excuse myself to my own room. As I enter, I notice someone is sat on the bed, his lanky yet short frame sprawled across the space lazily as he waits for me to recognise him, his face just visible in the light from the other room.

"Marko? What're you doing here?" I question, smiling a little as I pull off my jacket and boots, removing all my jewellery as I go.

"Well, I heard you have the others some attention last night, and I wanted some, too." The vampire responds, his grin almost audible as I sigh and shake my head, knowing full well that I can't refuse him.

"You know I'm always open to giving you attention. You don't have to wait until you want to make even with the others." I point out as I slip into the bed, pulling the covers over us as he moves to wrap me in his arms, spooning me with his head resting just behind me, his frigid body temperature radiating through his jacket and into me, though the duvet helps to keep me warm. Humming in contentment, I draw small patterns onto his hands as I try to lull myself to sleep, enjoying his presence immensely.

"God, what would I do without you guys?" I muse, my eyelids drooping closed as my voice softens, the chuckle that resonates behind me only serving to make me fall asleep faster.

He goes to reply, but I don't register it, my mind not quite with it as I allow myself to drift off in his arms.

Part Five

#david(thelostboys)#joel schumacher #the lost boys #vampire #dwayne(the lost boys)#kiefer sutherland #marko(the lost boys)#paul(the lost boys)#star(the lost boys)#laddie(the lost boys)#santa carla

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ganymedesclock · 5 years ago

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Dead Cells and the weight of small lives pt.2 (NPCs, the dead and alive)

Continuing from part 1, now that I’m refreshed, rested, and ready to continue this monster post. I finished off last post talking a bit about the way Prisoner acts onto NPCs and interact-able bodies, so this chunk is picking up with that in earnest.

Here is the thing. If you punt the corpse of an executed prisoner, that’s generally a dick move, so this is another place I feel like I can understand why people might get the takeaway Prisoner is kind of a jerk. But I feel like it’s worth examining, in detail, the kind of interactions he has.

The mechanics of Dead Cells are very focused on scavenging, looting, and a limited amount of buying your way forwards- and, spoken as someone starting to dip my toesies in the higher Stem Cell counts- thus, more difficult runs- any random encounter you can get items from is a godsend.

It’s also where you get a lot of the lore of the game, in random events- some of which will show up in multiple areas, others unique- that tell you about the world.

It’s in these interactions, mainly, that I see Prisoner characterized as a fairly compassionate guy with a morbid sense of humor, and I struggle to see him as a total uncaring asshole. To gloss over a large number of interactions, here’s some common threads:

Prisoner is fairly flippant about death / used to seeing corpses. He will also sometimes kick the bodies with his bare feet to make them drop items, which, as a fairly tactile sensitive person, the thought makes my soul depart my body. Kicked bodies are seldom visibly disturbed from their position by this, though they do drop items.

He is not opposed to looting said corpses / prying useful items out of their hands, though he may comment on riffling through someone’s stuff being a social no-no while doing so.

At the same time, he far more often uses “personlike” language rather than “objectlike” language to describe the bodies (“this guy” “her” “him” “population”) with the main exception being interacting with a bloated, waterlogged corpse.

You can virtually always examine a lot more than what has money or weapons and Prisoner will have salient thoughts about it suggesting he is proving keenly observant and not specifically looking for loot and ignoring all else.

From here, I’ll go into several incidents I think are pretty noteworthy.

A fair warning that these are quite morbid and discuss/depict the kinds of things people do when everything is falling apart and people are dying all around them, so, not exactly gentle reading.

1. The Flower Loving Prisoner

This is a fairly common encounter you can find in the Prisoners’ Quarters and Promenade, possibly other places. It is a small cell, with several points of interest, mostly being the large number of potted flowers and the small window. Poking around will have Prisoner note that the flowers “have been a bit underwatered recently” and that the fabric of the mattress was torn up and used elsewhere.

Specifically, for a noose- the person occupying this cell hung himself, and his corpse is holding a single flower in its hands.

For the room, Prisoner remarks “looks like this guy loved flowers.” For the body itself,

“Guess he wanted to choose the time of his death. He’s holding a faded flower between his fingers. A moment of silence… NAH! I’ve got better things to do!”

The “nah” is punctuated by him kicking the body, causing it to drop a necklace- but not the flower it’s holding.

So here’s the thing. This is a flippant action. At surface pass, Prisoner is disrespecting this person who is characterized by growing flowers in a prison- and holding onto this small thing of beauty, even in death.

The thing is though, someone who doesn’t care at all wouldn’t, of their own accord, independently air the idea they should have a “moment of silence” for this person, even to veto it a second later. Nobody is here to see or care what Prisoner is doing.

Also to someone who doesn’t care at all, the entire rest of the room would be of no interest; it would be trivial that flowers were important to a dead person.

So this creates an interesting duality. On one hand: Prisoner very clearly doesn’t care much about bodies. This is a repeated pattern. The main time he’s particularly shocked by corpses is when they were someone who was alive the last time he checked (as is the case of the Tutorial Knight). He has a calculated angle and he’s interested in what he can get from them and how it can prevent him from dying, again.

On the other hand... Prisoner equally clearly cares about people. He thinks a lot about what people wanted, felt, what choices they made. He shows a lot of interpersonal intelligence and even to people who he has every reason to not listen to, his responses tend thoughtful and he socks this information away as important in a context where he is, by necessity, otherwise rigidly focused on survival. He hates the King, but will also talk thoughtfully about the way the royals of the island lived.

And of the two elements in this juxtaposition, while survivalism and gallows humor are clearly strong threads in him... it’s clear the caring part is the larger factor of the two. It persists, while his cheerful morbidity sometimes just utterly fails.

2. The Stilt Village family

In the fishing hamlet, you can find a small house featuring a hanged woman. A letter by her feet, that the Prisoner notes are probably her last words, reads:

“The Malaise won’t get us. I’ll protect you… I’ll protect you.”

The Prisoner, our usually quite chatty protagonist, has almost nothing to say here. The closest he gets is, on examining the woman’s body, notes she “opted for the fast method” and aforementioned observation that the note is her last words.

There is also a bed in the room. Two sets of small feet poke out from under the blankets. If you examine it, Prisoner only says “throats slit.” and nothing more.

There is nothing in the room to loot, no jokes made, and the overall attitude is deeply, crushingly somber. There are closed drawers, but there’s no prompt to go through them.

If Prisoner didn’t care, this would just be more of the same, what’s three more bodies, right? But it’s clear that he isn’t just idly curious about the way people live and what they thought and felt- he has a certain amount of compassion, so that faintly nauseous feeling we get as we creep through this room is probably simpatico with our protagonist.

These people are strangers. He never knew them. They’re villagers of a fishing hamlet that was a hotbed of rebellion, and disrespectful of the king; they are small lives. They are “irrelevant people”. Mechanically, you have no gameplay incentive to stand here and look around.

But it’s clear this encounter affects Prisoner a lot emotionally. He doesn’t know who these people were, never met these kids or their presumed mother- but it’s clear he didn’t want this to have happened to them.

In particular Prisoner seems to be disquieted by young corpses any time he finds them; the closest he comes to joking is finding the executed body that he notes is “either a dwarf, or... no more than seven or eight years old. ...Let’s... say she’s a dwarf.”

Another half-joke, also in the Stilt Village, is he finds a desperate letter to the Alchemist, written by villagers pledging their bodies to his research and begging him to save them. Prisoner notes that it’s partially damaged by water and hard to read, and then frankly follows with “I don’t think I want to understand what I read.”

This is worth noting, in particular, because we find a lot of the Alchemist’s grimoires, and he mentions his “volunteers” often- the kind of things that happen to them in particular tend to be fatal. One setup in High Peak Castle notes that those exposed to the experimental cure became twisted half-plant beings, and then as a near afterthought, notes “the subject failed to survive.”

So Prisoner- who’s just trying to save his own hide at best- is pretty strongly depicted as more upset at what happened to the villagers than the Alchemist who was trying to work on a cure. This is significant, when we happen to know said Alchemist becomes the Collector, who basically spends the entire game using Prisoner to harvest resources from corpses (the titular Cells) in exchange for better equipment. The Collector also makes it quite clear from the start he knows who Prisoner is, but is not interested in disclosing this information.

(And, if you, like me, don’t think Prisoner is the same person as the King given the wild discrepancy of personality and other evidence- when he finally does “fess up” it’s in the form of lying to Prisoner’s face)

3. Moments of anger

This is actually not one moment but several. Part of what Dead Cells does with its dialogue is convey tone and intensity by changing colors. Most text comes in blue boxes- when it’s lit in red, it’s almost always for emphasis. Especially if the textbox shakes slightly and the text scrolls faster than usual, giving it a sense of slamming into place on the screen.

In several areas- the Promenade or the Ramparts- you can find a setup of “live target training” in which a human prisoner was chained to a post, and then shot at by archers. This is at first perhaps a bit morbidly funny, given the wall behind the prisoner is littered with arrows- but, overall, it’s just dark.

In particular, a single arrow has struck the shackled prisoner. When Prisoner observes this, he notes “Only one arrow hit the target.”

Then, in shaking red text, “Right in the head.”

He then turns and faces the empty stand where the guard stood, and flashes a thumbs-up that I struggle to read as not rather scathing in its condemnation. Again- to someone who doesn’t care or thinks of this as funny, that kind of emphasis doesn’t make sense.

But even some things he says calmly seem to suggest Prisoner’s pretty angry about the whole situation- sometimes, upon finding a large gallows section, it will have an order pinned to it:

By order of the King, all persons presenting behavioural disorders or noticeable deteriorations in their appearance... shall be imprisoned, and hanged by the neck until dead. ...(If the prison doctor confirms the diagnosis of infection.)

There is a distinct beat before the last line is read, and then Prisoner’s commentary ensues:

“Glad they added that. For a second there I really thought we were talking about genocide.”

He also at one point responds to a desecrated statue of the King, defaced with “We’ll skin you alive!” by calling it a “brave and courageous statement,” and seems mildly impressed that someone peed on a royal order in the Stilt Village relatively high up. Besides that, a lot of the area flavor text talks about the abuses of the guards, and in particular in High Peak Castle, it’s noted the royal guard were pulled back into the castle when the rest of the island needed them.

In a way, the way that Prisoner uses humor often trivializes his own anger, which again, ties back to what I said in part 1: everything the game says about small lives- about the “irrelevant little people” that suffered in the wake of the plague emphasizes that Prisoner’s perspective is that he is one of those little people. In the sewers, examining a strange cocoon, Prisoner seems to have a full-on crisis about what he is and why he’s here before interrupting himself with a joke.

Someone who thinks they are important and is used to demanding others’ attention and validation doesn’t treat their own genuine anger and revulsion like it’s something to shrug off.

#Dead Cells #The weight of small lives #readmore #death mention

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svtskneecaps · 4 years ago

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i’ve been enabled

here’s the sitch on the goddamn harry potter hogwarts mystery app game

it fucking sucks

here’s my main issues in a handy list i’ll go down later:

the gameplay

energy

art / visuals

the story

the writing

the choose your own adventure like elements (technically gameplay since there isn’t much else l m a o)

and i have receipts for most of this stuff. fun fact, i’ve been taking videos of all plot relevant events since year 1.

some context:

i’ve played up to year 3 myself. i have watched up until the very beginning of year 5 in someone’s youtube series (will bits? that was his main character [henceforth referred to as MC]’s name, however that was a year ago and it was in the background like a podcast so the details are sort of fuzzy. i have not played the game since march (it’s september, ish), but i’m loading it up as i type this just to get a feel for it

idk whether to assume my audience has or hasn’t played the game. i’ll keep my complaints as clear as possible.

i’m mainly an author so the storytelling sections are where i’m really going to pop off, since that’s something i have the most experience with and passion in, but i’ll be touching on everything else because compounded it’s all pissing me off lmao

[a couple hints at spoilers for maybe an event in year 1, and year 3, but nothing major]

let’s start with: THE GAMEPLAY

there isn’t any

literally. there’s like. zero gameplay.

you tap some highlighted figures, and then sometimes you get to trace a little shape, and sometimes you get to play rock paper scissors to fight somebody (they did manage to make duelling slightly better but it’s still not good by any standard)

sometimes you get to choose between three dialogue options, but those have barely any impact on the story or on your character. any impact they have is limited to a couple stat points, or maybe some house points, or like. some event at the end of the year. but like barely any make any real serious difference (but i’ll touch on that more later)

and then there’s the factor of stat points (and this gets kind of mathy, so feel free to skip to the bolded sentence)

for those who haven’t played the game, you have three stats (empathy, courage, and knowledge) that you can level up by taking classes, 1, 3, or 8 hours, for various rewards

back when i stopped playing, i had gained 8914 points in courage. if i recall correctly i was only about halfway to leveling up that stat. if you take an 8 hour class, you receive consistently 200 stat points, with a possibility of extra rewards that i can’t count for since those are randomly generated.

to get those 8914 points, i would have had to take 44.57 8 hour classes (while 8 hour they only take about 7, counting for the 2 hours it takes my energy to recharge to full). with 44.57 classes taking 7 hours each, to get halfway to level 24, i would have had to have done:

THIRTEEN STRAIGHT DAYS OF GRINDING, ASSUMING THAT ALL I HAD BEEN DOING WAS CHECKING ON THE HARRY POTTER HOGWARTS MYSTERY APP

and again, I WAS ONLY LIKE HALFWAY TO LEVELLING UP

I AM BARELY BEGINNING FOURTH YEAR. I AM NOT EVEN HALFWAY THROUGH THIS GAME.

i think they’ve fixed this now; it said i had 8914/1550 courage and when i got stat points it fixed itself and jumped me from level 23 to 28, so thanks for that jam city.

but it doesn’t change the fact that the grinding is fucking horrible and i’ve done my fair share of hours, and who knows what it’s going to look like when i get to a higher level again

the energy

yes, i know it’s an app game. i know they want my money. but holy FUCK the energy recharges disgustingly slowly, and every bit they expand my energy bar is an insult

“here, have another energy capacity!” they say, and then add to the amount of energy it takes to complete a task at the same time, so now shit just takes me even damn longer

it’s an insult. don’t think i didn’t fuckin notice jam city.

since it’s an app game, naturally, energy requires paying real world money or the (semi) rare in-game currency to get more if you blow through your bar. they want your money. i know they want my money, but it doesn’t make me any less disappointed by how damn blatant they’re being. app games like bakery story probably also want my money, but at least those are still fun to play.

the art / visuals

now i’m not an artist. nor am i a 3-d modeller. but if solo indie devs and 10 men teams can make video games that have to have models with a much fuller range of motion (since there’s ACTUAL GAMEPLAY and not just little cutscenes of characters moving around) and that don’t make me sick to watch, then jam city working on a HARRY POTTER GAME should be able to (jk rowling fucking sucks but her books have brought in so much goddamn money that they can afford to pay their devs enough to make the game look good; in this case i’m not entirely sure where the blame lies)

there’s like. 10 motions characters can use while in the cutscenes and talking. like 10. and i can recognize every one of them, and there is not a single motion unique to a character. the characters are something i’ll touch on later in the storytelling sections, though. just, please god give them SOMETHING even SLIGHTLY different. like make two versions of a couple of the crowd animations at LEAST, so that when people celebrate at the end of the year there’s not twenty people in the shot doing the same “pump my fists in the air in celebration” motion at the exact same time. PLEASE.

sometimes animations in story events and classes sync up too, which is. beyond distracting. like it’s completely immersion breaking and i mean please, please jam city, if you haven’t fixed that please fix it. please.

the animations that roll in flying class are fun, ONCE. when you’ve seen them eight hundred thousand times because you’re grinding up your courage stat, they get hella boring. all of the classes are like this to some extent but flying is the biggest offender since those were the longest animations. if they haven’t implemented a skip button since i last played it, they should. they fuckin should.

also the fertilizer animation in the greenhouse scenes is gross. you pick up a deformed cone of dirt with your shovel like a slice of cake and then shove it clipping through the edges of a pot, where it disappears without a trace. i hate it. jam city please make the game look good.

if you still play the game please tell me it looks better; i’ll be playing through a couple things after i post this but it’s hphm. it’s gonna take me a goddamn long time to hit all the points and confirm whether what i complained about has been fixed or not

also also, wearing dresses is so distracting, especially while dueling. the way the dress flexes around your legs is like you’re wearing clothing made from jello and when my character does the idle animation her hands clip through her skirt, and there’s all kids of glitches with hair where it clips through outfits (and why in the fuck do the necklaces float a full foot from the character’s body)

the storytelling

alright there’s a lot to cover so strap in

i’m not mad about the story having some of the same beats as harry potter. whatever, right? if it worked, it worked. having a big climax at the end of the year just works well for storytelling. having a school bully antagonist also works well for easy storytelling (it’s kinda cheap, but whatever works, right?) it’s what you DO with the archetypes you use that makes or breaks your story

jam city broke it

i don’t know how to organize my thoughts so here’s a bulleted list

it is very clearly obvious they wrote this as they went along (ex. a previously unseen character pops up in year 3 and was supposedly the best friend of your greatest enemy in previous years) and didn’t think to fix the plot holes

there’s too many goddamn characters (i love them, but with a big cast comes a whole host of problems [I WRITE FOR A KPOP GROUP WITH 13 MEMBERS, I HAVE A LOT OF EXPERIENCE WITH THAT], and we’ll get there)

there’s too much goddamn filler for the sake of forcing us to spend time and in-game energy (yes i KNOW it’s an app game and they want our money but THEY COULD BE A LITTLE MORE SUBTLE ABOUT IT)

what honestly pisses me off the most about it is that IT COULD BE GOOD

IF THE STORY WERE GOOD, I WOULD FUCKIN IGNORE ALL OF THAT OTHER SHIT

but it’s not, and here’s the biggest gripe i have:

none of the choices you make matter. none of them. to the point where it’s immersion breaking at BEST

for example, while my MC is a hufflepuff, i know a lot of people play in slytherin. scenes where snape gets upset with your character and takes away house points no longer make sense for a slytherin MC, because snape would be infinitely more likely to give you three years of nightly detentions, or pitch you off the astronomy tower, than he would be to take house points from slytherin

honestly, they should have waited. if they wanted to put choose your own adventure elements into the game, they should have planned out every single one of those story arcs in detail, and THEN released the game. they could leave some of the more basic choices in and those choices only mattering for short term effects wouldn’t irk me as much as it does right now because THERE WOULD BE CHOICES THAT MADE A DIFFERENCE.

your very first choice over how you felt about your brother’s disappearance only matters for what wand you get (which i immediately forgot which really says something about the impact of that choice :)))) ). no matter what you pick, you still end up chasing after him for the rest of the game, so who cares?

story beats don’t land different based on your house. you could absolutely play it that merula hates you regardless of your house, that’s fine. just remember that if your MC is slytherin and lives in the female dorms, she probably shares a room with merula. which makes things fucky for all kinds of reasons, none of which jam city addresses in the current game, as far as i’m aware

also, there’s the deal with rowan

rowan is a character that goes into your mc’s chosen house no matter what (and as rowan changes pronouns with your player, i’ll be using “they” [or “she” as my player is a she and that’s what i’m used to; i’ll try to refrain but i might slip up occasionally] ). as far as i can tell, rowan’s personality remains the same no matter what house you’re in. they don’t try to play up the traits that match the house, rowan is just usually a sweet bookworm. why would the hat have put them in gryffindor? rowan khanna for me has never seemed to display any gryffindorish traits; or at the very least, no traits that should be prioritized over, say, the ravenclaw traits they have VERY STRONGLY (since rowan fills a sort of hermione role; rowan knows things about things and is your go to for research)

can we just put rowan in ravenclaw? sure, it would make it hard for fans in different houses to communicate between each other about the story for a time since certain sequences of events would play out differently, but here’s the thing:

if events play out differently based on your choices, people will want to play your game multiple times to get every ending

that’s the fun of a choose your own adventure game. if events play out distinctly differently if you’re a hufflepuff or a ravenclaw or a slytherin or a gryffindor, then people will want to play through the game four times at LEAST, once for each house, to get all the fun pieces of story (WHICH MEANS, they’ll be spending more and more time and using more and more energy, so you can make the same amount of money off people buying energy and watching the ads and maybe MORE while being able to cut out some of the more shitty pieces of filler)

in the current version, your house is just, what color are your robes and who is your prefect. i haven’t watched anyone who wasn’t a hufflepuff, but i’m sure that certain scenes and conflicts play out the exact same no matter what house you’re in

as an example, your house should affect how the duelling confrontation in year one should have gone. snape and flitwick should have different dialogue based on whether you’re a slytherin, or a ravenclaw, or a gryffindor, or a hufflepuff. snape fucking hates gryffindors, so he should be far less lenient against gryffindors, and on the flip side he should be battling between himself with how strict to be if you’re a slytherin; maybe he hates your guts because of a grudge against your brother, but you’re still in his house and we all know snape plays favorites. flitwick should be more disappointed if you’re a ravenclaw, because that’s his house and he had higher expectations for you. neither of them have many ties to hufflepuff that would skew the confrontation in a drastic direction, but had this been the first version of the game, then the confrontation that plays out in the current version we have would work fine for hufflepuff; you’re one of flitwick’s favorite charms students and he taught you this skill, and he’s disappointed to see you use it in this way, but not nearly as much as if you were one of his own

AND NOW PEOPLE WANT TO PLAY THE GAME MULTIPLE TIMES TO GET ALL THE DIALOGUE, WHICH MEANS MORE TIME, MORE ENERGY, AND MORE MONEY, JAM CITY, ARE YOU HEARING THIS??? MORE MONEY!!!!! IT’S A WIN WIN FOR EVERYONE

while we’re at it, change jacob to match his house. if you’re still gonna make him have the same house as the MC, make him match it. from how all the characters describe him that bitch is as slytherin as they come, if you’re gonna make him a hufflepuff with me then give him a clear, hufflepuff motive god damnit

finally,

the characters

there’s too many.

the problem with a big cast is no one gets enough screen time and some characters end up getting shunted to the side. that’s just what happens. you HAVE to zero in on four or five side friends and let the rest of them slip to the side. looking at my friends menu there are 17 characters you can befriend, not including hagrid, the quidditch crew, dobby, talbott, and chiara (since those are, as far as i know, unlocked via side quests, which are... fine. i don’t have any particular gripes about the side quests except for the thing with lupin being twice the size of tonks which, if you’ve read the seventh book i don’t need to explain how weird that is to you)

and BECAUSE there are so many, a lot of them have to be defined by one trait. ben is a coward, rowan’s clever and booksmart, penny has her hand on the school’s pulse and makes potions, liz likes creatures, charlie fuckin loves dragons, tonks likes pranks (seriously that’s her whole personality), andre likes clothes, barnaby is a dumb jock that likes creatures

like, traits are fun. but if that’s ALL THEY HAVE, that’s when things get a little fucky

how many of these characters have dimensions? i’m in year 4 chapter 4. the first screen recording of the game i took was on december 5 of 2019, and assuming i played about a minimum of 8 hours a day (”““played”““) until the final screen recording [may 20, 2020] before i dropped the game for about six months (i know for certain it was more than that, since i had some kind of activity going on at just about all times for at least a month of that, but i’ll take the generous estimate), at bare minimum that makes 1344 hours i spent playing this game, or about 56 days (keep in mind, this is a LOW estimate)

in those 56 days of gameplay, i don’t know ANYTHING about the characters other than their utility in my quest. i don’t know penny’s favorite color or even her favorite potion to brew, or how and why she started and when [there’s a reveal in third year that i watched someone play through, but i don’t know if i ever played through it myself; i don’t have any screen recordings of the event]. i don’t know anything about ben or his family aside from the fact that he’s muggleborn. i know some basic facts about barnaby’s family, and that he’s tough and likes creatures. rowan grew up on a tree farm and i have a vague recollection of her mentioning siblings. do we know anything about them?? do i know anything about how the characters interact with each other?? are barnaby and liz friends? they both like creatures. do they talk to charlie?? do ben and penny hang out while we’re not there? are ben and jae friends?? are jae and charlie??? DO THESE CHARACTERS EXIST WHEN THEY AREN’T NEEDED FOR THE CURSED VAULTS???

why in the fuck don’t i know these characters?? why don’t we know anything about tonks other than her affinity for pranking?? there’s a sharp bias in who the writer’s favorites are (they like the characters with angsty pasts they can twist around; what do we know about ben aside from his blood status? and he’s been around since first year; he’s the second friend you unlock. i know more about barnaby and i’ve known him for a much shorter time)

if you separate the routes, you get a chance to zero in on certain characters and actually develop them. if you’re a gryffindor, you befriend ben, charlie, and jae much more quickly and they make up the closest of your friends, along with rowan, if jam city is determined to keep their tutorial character constant across all plotlines (i still think rowan should be solely a ravenclaw, but i’ll allow rowan’s house to change so long as their personality shifts to emphasize certain qualities in order to match the change in house; your house should not just determine the color your robes are)

if you’re in slytherin, maybe you befriend barnaby in place of ben in the original game, or maybe there’s an arc where you clash heads with merula (who can still be an enemy even if you’re both in slytherin; merula doesn’t like competition and the MC is exactly that) and the rest of the slytherins in your year find themselves caught in the middle; maybe there’s an arc where your MC finds themself totally alone without allies due to the conflict between them and merula (might i suggest year two, while coming up on the climax of the year?)

hufflepuffs get to focus on tonks and penny much closer. ben can also be in this plotline, but he shouldn’t take center stage (characters should cross over plotlines, but only take center stage in one, aside from perhaps rowan if rowan remains constant). maybe chiara can get implemented into the main plotline to fill out the roster, and if not, diego caplan can get implemented earlier (i haven’t met him yet and know nothing about his character)

and ravenclaws get the ravenclaw characters BUT YOU GET THE POINT, i don’t want to bore anyone by repeating myself; this is long enough as is

what i’m saying is, these characters all have a different enough base that each route will be different just by focusing on different characters; ben and jae will respond to a situation much differently than penny and tonks might, which would ALREADY shake up the storyline of each house based on which house you choose in the beginning, and then characters overlap plotlines so you could leave hints in each route to the other characters’ unique backstories and motivations that leaves the player wanting to get to know the rest of your WELL DEVELOPED CAST (((MAKE SURE THEY’RE WELL DEVELOPED OR THIS WILL NOT WORK)))

WHAT I’M SAYING IS, THIS GAME COULD HAVE BEEN SO GOOD

if they put more effort into the story then maybe i would have gunned through the hufflepuff route so quickly and then restarted to go through all the rest of them. if you want people playing your game for longer then THAT is the way to go

yes, it will take time. yes, it will take effort. but you know what?

IT’LL ALSO MAKE YOU A FUCKTON OF MONEY FROM PLAYERS PLAYING EACH ROUTE IN FULL AND THEN PLAYING THEIR FAVORITE ROUTES AGAIN SO WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU WAITING FOR

anyway, what i’m saying is, i hate this game so much because of the potential it had to succeed, and the potential it had to be a really good game. even if they didn’t change the gameplay much, even if they didn’t change the models, i could get past ALL OF THAT if the story was interesting

so uh. jam city, if you’re reading this, please. i will let you take away all of my days of playing this. i will let you render all of my progress obsolete and send me plummeting back into my first year at hogwarts to go through the game again, if you JUST, MAKE, MULTIPLE, ROUTES!!! MAKE MY CHOICES MATTER DAMN YOU!!!!!!!!

i’m also willing to let you use the ideas i posited here without credit or payment. because that sounds like a legal hassle and i am far too lazy to deal with that sort of thing, i just want to play a good game. please. please give me a good game to play.

also, make energy take 3 minutes to recharge. please.

so uh

TL;DR : i hate this game. and i wish i didn’t hate this game.

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thebibliomancer · 5 years ago

Text

Essential Avengers: Avengers #208: Eve of Destruction!

June, 1981

“From eons past comes the world’s most savage warrior... THE BERSERKER LIVES AGAIN!”

So this is the Berserker!

Hm. He looks somewhat less impressive as some Roman looking dude as opposed to a shambling vaguely human shape of rock and undying fury.

But I’ll give him a chance to impress in the actual book.

So last time: Wonder Man was working on a cowboy movie, badly, when he got the Avengers call that it was Avengers time. A new island had appeared in the middle of the Mediterranean and the only inhabitant, the Shadow Lord, made the US navy look like fool chumps. The Shadow Lord captured Wonder Man’s publicist Rachel Palmer and explained his whole backstory to her.

That his people the Earth Lords moved to an island, mastered the four elements, and became very concerned with an immortal Berserker so hit him in the face with a volcano. But since it was a dick move to wipe out several towns to get one guy, the Earth Lords disbanded except for Shadow Lord who had to stand watch for two thousand years in case the Berserker came back. And then the Berserker came back.

Instead of fighting the Berserker, Shadow Lord ends up fighting the Avengers a lot and then they beat up his city and then he dies. He wasted his entire life but he feels pretty okay with leaving his responsibilities to them.

This time: world’s oldest man causes problems on purpose.

He’s spry though.

And apparently between issues he chipped off all the rock, found a shield and spear, and also murdered an entire regiment. He’s been very productive between issues.

But he’s got more murder to do because he’s got to show off his sick skills before the Avengers show up so that its more impressive when they survive his sick skills, unlike all these poor dead Italian army people.

So he’s being attack by tanks and planes. And that just makes him scoff at the cowards attacking him with projectiles. Scoff in English.

I don’t know how he knows modern English. The Shadow Lord explicitly learned English out of Rachel Palmer’s brain to explain how he could speak it and then next issue, a guy that’s been buried under rock for two thousand years just pops out speaking English.

If both of them had spoken English with no explanation, I wouldn’t have even noticed. Comics be like that. Aliens speak English.

Anyway, his shield has an aura that turns metal to dust before it even strikes it. So he blocks a cannon shell without much fuss. And the plane on a strafing run gets his spear, which flies up and slices it in two. And then he pulls out what he calls a Cerellian power-sword and swings it, releasing a searing beam of energy which rips open the ground a hundred yards away to bury some tanks.

So he was buried in lava while carrying some sweet gear, apparently.

And it is very sweet gear. But the man himself was described as dangerous and dammit I don’t see it yet.

We pivot sharply over to the Avengers on Shadow Lord Island where the Shadow Lord again tells the Avengers to carry on his mission and gives Rachel his necklace before dying again.

And then, because Rachel got the exposition last time but no main characters did, she recaps his deal. Including the part that the Avengers already know, like how they beat him.

This is some clunky exposition but I’m the one who always complains when comics don’t establish enough context for me when I’m picking up random issues in the middle of a story.

Captain America asks Rachel, since she’s the new expositor, who the Berserker is but she decides that can wait. Its much more important to hold a funeral for the Shadow Lord.

And perhaps its the mistimed insistence on due to the dead when they can bury an ancient Avatar after stopping an ostensible threat to the world that explains why the Avengers give the funeral their full passive-aggressive 110%.

So on an island that’s soon to collapse into the sea, Wonder Man finds a rock to use as a headstone, Iron Man digs a grave with his repulsors, Vision carves several slabs of rock, Jocasta fuses them into a coffin, Beast carries the coffin over to the dead Shadow Lord, Captain America puts him in the box, Wasp carves an inscription on the headstone, and Scarlet Witch uses her power to change the probability that the grave won’t fill itself in. Which I find the most passive-aggressive move of all, for some reason.

And then the Avengers all gather around and bid farewell to a man that they accidentally killed.

Only after they’ve done all this does Rachel decide to tell them-

Nope.

After all of that, she says “I could tell you but it will be much clearer if you see it for yourselves... in the pool of memories.”

Ffs, Rachel.

So she takes them to the pool of memories, which was apparently something Shadow Lord showed her how to use off-panel.

Geez, the best stuff keeps happening off-panel.

And luckily, when the Avengers leveled the city, they didn’t quite manage to break the pool of memories. Which isn’t a pool. Its a fancy bowl of water.

There’s no reason why it couldn’t have been a pool, artist Gene Colan.

Or: once it was drawn as a bowl why didn’t you change it to something accurate but still with a cool sounding name? Vessel of Memories. Or Font of Memories. Bam, its a bowl with water in it, intrigue!

Anyway, Rachel dips a finger into the memory water which is definitely not pensieve because it predates it by nearly twenty years. This causes a flashback to queue up in the water and for it to start monologuing directly into the Avengers’ heads.

“What follows was culled from the memories of the Berserker himself. Listen carefully. The fate of the world may depend on it.”

So. Wait.

I know its called the Pool of Memories and I know that the Earth Lords were magic enough to remotely erupt a mountain. But does the Pool of Memories contain all memories in the world? Because that’s fairly impressive and just a bit creepy! Or does it just contain the Berserker’s memories since the Earth Lords were stalking him a little bit? How did they get the memories? Its going to turn out that the memories in the Pool of Memories way predate the Earth Lords so how the heck does this all work??

Come back to life, Shadow Lord, and explain your Font of Exposition!

Anyway.

SO! The Berserker goes back to prehistoric cave man times.

He was the sole survivor of a war party against another tribe and he had to run from them and was cornered near the “Cave of Glowing Walls.” Which is a cave. Which had glowing walls.

None who entered had ever returned but between the being beaten to death by clubs that you know and the death you don’t, Pre-Berserker picked the unknown.

“His pursuers laughed at his folly as he went into the cave. Inside, he saw the walls themselves emitting a horrible, unearthly light -- and the reamins of all those who had preceded him.”

“Within moments he too was felled by the lethal glow. He felt the life draining from him. But he did not die there. He was different from the others. Slowly, tortuously, he crawled to safety.”

“His nearly lifeless body tumbled down the rocky slope outside the cave... only to arise hours later, now surging with incredible power -- power bestowed upon him inside the cave of glowing walls!"

Okay. So. At this point I have to ask.

Is this just Vandal Savage? Is this one of those serial number filed off things so the Avengers can fight Vandal Savage?

Anyway, Pre-Berserker brushed himself up, marched right back to that enemy tribe, and killed the entire thing. For the cave also filled him with an unquenchable fury.

An unquenchable, undying fury.

Because he stopped aging.

And because he was always being extremely pissed and killing, people started calling him the Berserker.

And one day, much, much later, he was doing his favorite activity of killing in the city of Sumer when he caught the eye of a nobleman who thought to offer him money for him to kill specific people.

This turned the Berserker’s life around. It had never occurred to him that killing people was a career.

From that point on, he had direction to his life. He wandered the world as a mercenary and apparently was there and shaped history.

He helped set up the dynasties of the pharaohs. Helped with Alexander the Great’s conquests. But it gets even more bonkers.

His reputation became so great that actual factual aliens from another world showed up to hire him.

“At first he cringed in superstitious fear before these alien creatures... But once in battle he discovered that he enjoyed killing foes there as much as back on Earth... a feeling that would be oft-repeated as his exploits took him to scores of other worlds. The destinies of empires -- of entire planetary systems were decided by who hired him first.”

Been there, shaped history. IN SPAAAAAAAAACE.

And his space jobs paid him in sweet gear. And now we know where he got his sweet gear.

What I don’t understand is why he went back to Earth at all?

Yes, he probably could have conquered the Earth with all his sweet space gear. Maybe probably. Marvel’s kitchen sink goes back a long way. Turns out there was a Ghost Rider who ghost rode a flaming mammoth.

But either way, the guy didn’t have the ambition to do that. He was perfectly happy as long as someone paid him to murder people. Preferably in sweet gear that helped him more efficiently murder people.

He comes back to Earth and joins the Roman legions but why? He got to travel planet to planet to different battlefields and shape empires that spanned star systems. Shouldn’t Earth feel kind of small after that?

But he has to be on Earth and joining the Roman legions otherwise how could the Earth Lords get wind of him and scheme to hit him in the face with a volcano.

That was established last time so now we need him to reach that point. Even though the newly established intermediate points make that endpoint suddenly weird.

But it be like that sometimes.

The Font of Exposition runs out of backstory just as the city runs out of ‘still existing.’

So the Avengers and Rachel rush into the Quinjet and fly away just as the city falls apart into the sea.

Gosh, I’m sure glad we spent time doing an elaborate funeral for Shadow Lord when his grave is now spilling into the ocean.

Rachel gets frustrated that all the evidence for this scoop that she rushed into danger for just sank and that she’s going to be a publicist for bad movies forever.

Simon “Wonder” Williams counters with ‘hey at least you’ll still have a job’ considering he bailed on filming to go do superhero stuff.

And indeed we see Merriwether T. Fenniwell, telegram man, delivering a telegram to Avengers Mansion.

“Mr. Williams.

Due to unexplained absence from set of Guns of the Gunman you have been replaced. Find yourself another job and another agent.

Sid Sterling

Star-Maker”

Your mistake there was not telling anyone you were going and why, Simon. You possibly would have been fired anyway. But you only have yourself to blame for not even making an attempt. Geez.

Anyway, don’t feel too bad for Simon. Back on the Quinjet he’s apologizing for being rude to Rachel on the set, saying he was just frustrated with his own lousy acting.

And Rachel slips her hotel key into his pocket and tells him to make it up to her by coming by for dinner.

The original plan was to drop Rachel off at the film set before going to look for the Berserker but whoops, they find him first.

“The Avengers gaze in awe at the scene of carnage and devastation below them -- a scene reminiscent of war or natural disaster. But this bloody tableau was crafted by no clash of armies nor by earthquake or flood. It was created by... the Beserker!”

When they find him he seems to be digging a hole in the ground with his super space spear.

Logically, Beast and Iron Man knock him into the hole.

That’s the smart move, right?

No.

The Berserker had been digging up a space chariot pulled by space robot horses. And I like to think that the Avengers knocked him right into it.

I do wonder about how the chariot ended up buried and how the Berserker found it so quick. I’m not worried about how it still functions perfectly after two thousand years. It be like that in comics.

Anyway, the space chariot has more to recommend it than just not having to feed or maintain it for two thousand years. Its also got a demon mouth carved in the back that leaves a trail of fire as the chariot flies. Yeah, also its a flying chariot.

And its not mundane hot fire. Its force field space cold fire. Uh, so basically think the tron light cycle walls.

Because the Berserker flies circles around the Avengers to enclose them in a cage of non-burning fire.

The fire does still consume oxygen and apparently the fire cage is air tight so its going to burn up all the oxygen inside and asphyxiate the Avengers.

Well, Vision and Jocasta will be fine. Oh, and Iron Man. He has his own built-in respiration system. But the rest will die and that’s a bummer.

THANKFULLY IRON MAN IS WONDERFULLY AND BIZARRELY PREPARED FOR THIS EXACT SCENARIO.

If this specific ability ever comes up again, I’m going to lose my shit because its so specifically tailored to this plot. I love Iron Man’s ridiculous swiss-army armor sometimes.

So you know his shoulders? Those things on top of his arms? Kind of a raised area on his armor?

Those are apparently epaulets and they’re ‘break shoulder in case of asphyxiation emergency.’ He rips them right off to pull out two emergency oxygen cylinders.

The idea is that the breathing Avengers will pass the two cylinders around judiciously and hopefully they’ll last long enough between everyone that the fire cage will burn itself out.

Which does happen. Good job, Iron Man.

Meanwhile, Berserker has scooped up Rachel because “this woman is but a reward that is a great warrior’s due.” Yeah, he’s that kind of immortal guy from prehistoric times. And also he’s been under rock for two thousand years.

Rachel protests being damseled, which honestly two times in as many issues isn’t great, but Berserker is like ‘hush i’m working’ and then he blows up St. Giovanna’s Cathedral, just because he can. And then he blows up a town, off-panel, to reveal a secret city that Caesar built to honor him.

Geez. How much stuff does he have buried around here?

The Berserker lands his space chariot and decides that two thousand year is a long enough vacation so he needs to get back to his work because if you love what you do, truly you’ll never work a day in your immortality.

Berserker: “The instruments of war may change over the centuries, but the nature of man never does! I shall easily sell my services -- as always -- the the highest bidders. Then will the land be once again awash with the blood of millions that will fall under my sword... and once again the planet -- nay the entire universe -- will know and fear the greatest warrior that ever lived!”

Like I said, he loves what he does. And is probably the best at what he does and it ain’t pretty?

He also tells Rachel to go inside this building that's been buried underground for two thousand years and put on some proper raiment.

I gave the space chariot a pass. It’s from space. But Rachel finds and puts on a dress that should have decayed a very long time ago. Is it a space dress? Its probably a space dress.

But the space dress decolletage prompts the Berserker to notice and recognize the necklace Shadow Lord gave Rachel.

When Rachel tells him how she came about them, Berserker is like ‘lol eat shit the Earth Lords, mine now’ and steals the necklace from Rachel to wear for himself.

And then the Avengers show up for some more action sequences.

Or, lets be honest, more chances for the Berserker to show off his sweet space gear.

He blows up the ground beneath the Avengers’ feet with his power sword, sending several tumbling into the Earth.

When Iron Man rays him with a repulsor, the Berserker smirkingly no-sells it, informing Iron Man that his fancy armor is actually fancy space armor.

Berserker: “Ha! The tyrants of Aturak IV built this armor to withstand a proton cannon. ... Surely it can handle the bite of a mosquito!”

Geez, not just repulsors, he’s also proofed against Iron Man’s mightiest weapon?

And then he follows it up by throwing a dagger at Vision. Vision scoffs that he’ll just go intangible and let the blade pass through. But, of course, its a space dagger, from the Arkossian system.

It sticks in intangible Vision and starts draining his energy.

For not knowing anything about the Avengers, he’s doing a good job at making them all look like chumps, with sweet space gear that seems selected to thwart them.

And that’s part of writing a credible threat, I suppose. Having said threat able to pose a decent challenge. But playground style ‘I do this’ ‘Nuh uh, my guy is immune’ doesn’t always make enthralling fight scene.

Anyway, speaking of selectively thwarted, Iron Man finds himself magnetized to Berserker’s shield. And whatever metal approaches Berserker’s shield must yield.

It has that metal disintegrating aura and apparently magnets.

Iron Man manages to pull away somehow, but the shield short-circuits one of his power pods (those roundy things on his hips) which knocks the armored Avenger unconscious.

And then! To add insult to injury! Berserker’s shield magnetically steals from his pocket the hotel key Rachel gave Wonder Man and disintegrates it. Guess Wonder Man isn’t getting lucky tonight.

But he is having an idea. One of those epiphany ideas where an unrelated but thematically similar or adjacent happenstance or utterance makes you figure out the whole thing.

A key happening reminds him of how the Shadow Lord could unlock a Shadow World and would not that imply a key?

So while Wasp does Berserker the first injury this whole fight by zapping him in the face (and then getting swatted, alas) Wonder Man grabs for the necklace Berserker took from Rachel.

Wonder Man tries to figure out how the pyramidal amulets on the necklace fit together but gets sword smacked by Berserker who doesn’t appreciate someone tugging on his new bling.

But the Avengers pull off some good teamwork combo attack.

Wanda uses her powers to make the probability that some columns will fall over be 100%. Captain America throws his mighty shield and the Berserker yields right into the path of the falling column. And Jocasta melts the falling column to try to cover him in molten rock, which is the one thing they know works.

But I suppose that a mere falling melting column doesn’t compare to an entire volcano or maybe he spent those 2,000 years thinking of exactly what to do in this situation. Because Berserker swings his sword above his head, diverting the molten rock away from him.

And then Berserker drags Jocasta into his metal disintegrating shield for trying to give him a hot shower.

He’s apparently familiar with or at least not too surprised at the concept of robots. He’s been to space, after all.

He also decides that rather than hold her against the shield until she completely disintegrates, that he’ll dunk her in the molten rock she had tried to use on him.

Beast finally climbs out of the hole that I assume he’s been in this whole time and tries to tackle Berserker but the guy just slams Beast into Scarlet Witch.

And now its just Captain America vs Berserker. Which of course means that Captain America is going to make a Thing of it.

Captain America: “Alright mister -- it’s just you and me now. And so long as one Avenger stands -- we’re not defeated.”

He kicks the energy space power sword out of Berserker’s grasp to Berserker’s surprise but Cap notes to himself that doing so sent a shock from the sword through his boot. Guess his soles aren’t rubber.

And since Cap got to say a cool thing, so does Berserker. Although substitute ‘cool’ for ‘kinda hurtful.’

Berserker: “Bah! A weapon is only need to battle a true warrior -- you are certainly less than that!”

And then Berserker slams his shield into Cap’s head, knocking him out. How ironic. He who lived by the shield was knocked out by the shield. Really makes you think.

Now all the Avengers lie sprawled unconscious at Berserker’s feet. And now that they’re unconscious, he can actually walk back some of the smack talk.

Berserker: “In truth, they were fine warriors but even they were nothing next to my power!”

I had been wondering. I wouldn’t think that he’d have fought many people like the Avengers in the past times. Maybe IN SPACE. You got the Kree and the Shi’ar up there.

Anyway, when I said that all the Avengers lie sprawled unconscious, I spoke in error.

Wasp was only stunned and now she’s been overlooked what with all the full-sized people lying about.

Her strategy now that she’s alone on the battlefield with the guy is... she flies up to him and zaps him in the face.

You did that last time, Wasp! And like last time, he just whaps you out of the air! With his hand this time, not a space energy power sword. But then he decides to step on you, deciding that she’ll be the first of the Avengers to die.

Yeah, he doesn’t seem much for the ‘they were honorable foes, I’ll let them go so I can fight them again.’

However, now Wonder Man is up and he rushes Berserker to grab at the necklace again.

Berserker unveils one more sweet space gear. He grabs Wonder Man’s wrists and uses his gauntlets to sap his strength. So even though Wonder Man has super strength (that whole thing about how he punches as hard as Thor’s hammer hits), he’s getting weaker and Berserker is getting stronger.

But in a very comic booky way, he summons up all his remaining strength for one last effort.

Wonder Man breaks Berserker’s grip and grabs the necklace. This time he manages to make the pyramid go into the other pyramid, pulling the wearer -- Berserker -- into the Shadow World.

Wasp recovers one more time and since she half knows whats going on, decides to make it so that the trip is one way.

She blasts the necklace, shattering the pyramids so that it can’t be used again.

Berserker: “I’m disappearing... this cannot be... the Berserker cannot be beaten...”

And then he’s gone. Never to darken Earth’s doorstep again. Trapped forever alone in an empty the shadow realm.

Yeah, this was his only appearance. Kind of a shame. I don’t think he’s a unique villain but he was fun. Being a long-ago sealed evil that doesn’t even really want to take over the world, just get paid, gets bonus points from me. Its less generic, anyway. Plus, he had an absurd arsenal and his limited ambition means he’d have been great muscle for another villain.

Not sure I buy him as a threat to the whole world but he’ll do a lot of damage on the way.

Both him and the Shadow Lord were almost too interesting to be one and dones.

Anyway. I can’t get over what Wasp says when Wonder Man congratulates her for figuring out his plan to trap the Berserker.

Wasp: “I’m glad I helped... but I’ll never forgive myself for destroying such a beautiful piece of jewelry.”

Sure, Jan.

Anyway, when the rest of the Avengers wake up, Wonder Man explains it all. How he figured out that the necklace was a key from what the Shadow Lord said when he gave it to Rachel and that the Shadow Lord entered the dimension at sunrise so logically the gate could only be reopened at sunset (???? how did he figure this out? And also what? And why?).

Since he apparently had to run out the clock, he used his unholy ... ACTING TALENT to take a dive when Berserker clocked him and then pretended to be knocked out while the rest of the team got the shit beaten out of them and almost died. “Luckily for us all, it worked.”

Wonder Man: “Too bad Mr. Bertolini wasn’t here to see it. It was the best acting I ever did!”

Rachel: “You sure had me fooled, Simon. Maybe there’s hope for you yet.”

Oh. So. I guess the scene at the movie set was to set up this... character arc? For Wonder Man. That he’d learn to do an acting and use it to resolve the conflict.

The dramatic irony though is that his ass is fired off that movie for leaving to go on this journey of self-discovery slash fighting some ancient dudes.

Oof.

Follow @essential-avengers if you think acting is just as important as lasers in being a superhero. Or for other reasons. I’m not picky. Like, reblog, comment. These are also actions. That are important to being a superhero. Maybe.

#Avengers #essential avengers #Wonder Man #Wasp #the Berserker #Jocasta #Iron Man #essential marvel liveblogging #Captain America #Scarlet Witch #the Vision #Beast #what a servicable two parter this was

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