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fuyyu · 10 months ago

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so, i have this little piece of analysis on the world building of winx club's original run. it was meant to be part of kind of a rewrite based on fate's tv show fumbles and i have contemplated the idea of making a video essay on it but since it will most likely never happen, i am posting here a snippet of the perspective i was the most salty about.

✨ technical spells ✨

(or whatever the english adaptation used to call them)

there are many aspects of the workings behind magic that are never explicitly stated in the series, but through the shows events we can deduce them. for example, witches use magic thanks to negative energy or something akin to "waves", elements that aren't necessarily spiritual. all witches seem to focus on mind control or natural phenomena and they don't have access to transformations (or they can access transformation-like powers without it); on the opposite side we see fairies who use positive energy or spiritual/conceptual powers (that's why we can have some kinda bs-y powers like "technology"): they are the most powerful when they transform. we know also that witches, if they so wish, can become fairies (just like mirta did) so it's really more of a choice than anything else.

what they all have in common is, evidently and weirdly, that they are female magic users. considering the context in which winx club was first released, i won't tap (too much) into gender identity matters for this post, so every time i talk about women in this post i am (unless specified otherwise) refering to cis gender women, as i could expand on trans perspectives but i prefer to refer to the canon for now.

in the second season, this phenomenon is tangentially but subtly explored. how, might you ask? this the season to be jolly, because an interesting character is introduced to do so: professor avalon. he is an expert of ancient magic, assuming the teaching role for a brand new class in charmix, which focuses on "technical spells".

what are they? avalon states that there is a significant difference between magic that fairies use in combat when they shout out random names and recited enchantments. so, technical spells seem to access a different magical source which can be taken advantage of through these very specific formulas and rituals engineered over the centuries by knowledgeable fairies, witches, enchantresses, wizards and so on and so forth.

this is extremely relevant.

not only it appears most of the witches magic is perpetrated through rituals of sorts, making them probably the primary technical spells user-base, but in this instance avalon says that the magic fairies usually use when transformed is somehow invoked from their within, and it's spontaneous. this is proven true in many episodes when the fatigue in battle derives from depletion of one's magical energy. and we know witches can achieve this ability, too. there is an internal and an external energy source. what is the origin of this internal magical capability?

we can point at various possibilities. but before we do that, i would like to explain why i think these may be the options.

up until the 3rd season, which is the original run, we never see (human) men using magic without any kind of aid. men (or men presenting, in some cases) who use magic are:

valtor, a demon made by trixies' foremothers

nabu, who needs a sceptre to use magic

dark circle's wizards (s4), who are implied to use in some measure earth's fairies magic, captured through millenia

saladin, a light's company/alliance member, uses a sceptre like nabu

wizgiz is a leprechaun

palladium is an elf

avalon too is heavily implied not to be (totally) human, because of his paladin form

men, in this status quo, have to either spend a great amount of effort, time and resources to master magic (but basically never master it like fairies do) or become a specialist. and here is the catch. in season 1 we learn something that basically confirms (or at least, so i see it) magix a women's world, as opposed to the world bloom comes from: specialists can be women as well.

while there are no male fairies, no male witches, and all male magic users are non-human or aided by external sources (magical objects and technical spells), it's implied there are, indeed, female specialists when darcy enters a specialists' bike contest and the announcer immediately identifies her as a woman. this alone doesn't confirm that female specialists are a thing and if they are they are probably very scarce, but the announcer let us deduce it by being taken aback but not commenting on how that shouldn't be possible in the first place. somehow, it's let to be understood that a female uniform exists as well. this may vary from adaptation to adaptation, but in italian there isn't much of an objection to her participation on the spot.

so, we can safely assume that there are no gender policies on academy enrollment in any of the schools. it's just not possible for men at the current state of affairs to enroll in alfea or torre nuvola. but women can enroll in insititutions like fonterossa.

❤️‍🩹 why is that? ❤️‍🩹

(or better put, why could that be?)

here the rewrite is heavy handed, but this can be a very fun and interesting thought. maybe magic is, at it's core, creation. magic is the ability to not change reality, but to make thing exist in reality. let me explain.

when flora makes dying plants vigorous, she isn't changing the plant's structure, she is creating the nutrients ex novo and providing essentials (such as sunlight previously absent) and making it so that the plants feels the benefits of those new things.

traditionally, and in the winx club world view, women hold this power. women have the miracle of birth on their side. and the power to make a new life has to, somehow, be the same that allow magic to flow. it could be whatever, you can call it life force or whatever.

so, magic could be inherently tied to one's fertility (and here various conversations could be started, as to "would a transmasc still be a fairy?" and "are sterile women capable of magic?") or the potential of it. faragonda is a great fairy, but she doesn't transform anymore and that might be why. she can still use powerful magic, though. most of it is relatable to technical spells, if we want to force this point of view, but i will let that to you.

another option is chance. at some point magic just happened and women are the one who got it for cosmical possibility and their appearance, as well as other invisible characteristics, are results of that magic and not viceversa as previously theorized.

or again, it's hormonal. maybe progesteron and other typically female hormones are tied to magic. or a fictional hormone is. this would allow men to use it too, in limited quantities and enhance it through external sources (accessible through previously stated magical tools).

this was, in my humble opinion, a great starting point for a hypothetical winx tv show. it could elaborate on a complicated world building while tapping into social aspects that, being the kids' cartoon it is, the original show couldn't. it could give a definite structure to the magic world and open up infinite possibilities for the earth's narrative that apparently lost all of his magic (but we know it didn't really), investigate new storylines and give some fairies god-like status (thinking about dafne and bloom rn). also it could be a great trampoline for so many environmental details, like people in the background using casually magic only being women and men rarely doing so.

it could also be an amazing way to explore complicated gendered issues of the real world, through a meticulous deconstruction operated in these new lenses.

why am i salty about this? 2 reasons. the live action didn't pick this up and THE ORIGINAL CARTOON FORGOT ABOUT TECHNICAL SPELLS AS WELL!! they are never brough up again. damn you, winx club.

(finally letting this thought go and if you want to expand on this please do)

#winx club #mine: text

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dez-wade · 2 years ago

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Omg okay so you know how Forever asked for mod ideas to add on twitter? Well I can't stop thinking about the one I recommended bc it'd be such a fun server event.

The one I recommended was a double life mod. Which is basically like, two random PLAYERS (not eggs >:( !!!) are matched up and they are "soulmates". Soulmates share all dmg between the two of them which means if one of them dies, the other does as well.

I was thinking its an optional event obviously but theres some sort of prize for the last soulmate pair left standing. Maybe something like being able to ask the federation for ANYTHING (except obvious things like creative mode or leave the island) and its implied u can ask for egg lives too but idk if that'd ACTUALLY be a prize or just bait.

Essentially the participants are trying to make it to the end and be the last pair standing so they can get the prize which could include alliances, desperately trying to protect each other nd making it to the end bc they have the same wish OR betrayals bc they dont :D

I think it'd be a nice incentive for players to interact and be active since I think how active you are will have to be a factor or else a pair can just join the event and never login until everyone else dies lol.

I'm thinking, just like the actual double life series, each pair has like 2 or 3 lives until they're out of the event? I also think it'd create interesting dynamics.

Like how funny would it be if tazercraft participated but they werent paired up since its random, so their soulmates just have to accept that they have to work as a 4 person alliance? Would any soulmates rather go solo then stick around their soulmate? Would there be drama about soulmates going and doing dangerous things alone, risking if not actually accidentally costing them one of their lives?

Idek I just think it'd be fun. Idk who I'd hope Forever is paired w bc it'd be fun no matter what, but I do think he'd absolutely gear up his soulmate and give them everything he can so they can survive since if theyre BOTH downed, they will be completely reliant on the kindness of other players/participants to see if they'll be revived or lose a life which. Isn't ideal. I actually think he'd set up a statis room and want a code for if one of them is in danger and needs a tp yk

Tysm if u read this all, you are my fave Forever blog bc u Understand my cubito which is why u unfortunately got the brunt of this ramble 🙏🙏🙏

Ooh I actually like this idea! Actually I have been excited for Tazercraft's Murder Mystery because one of the roles is "Lovers", and if your partner die you die. So I really want to see the random matchups we could get.

In a way, it'd be like your government assigned partner all over again like it was with the eggs, but this time the French and the Brazilians can participate since they've always been just a big polycule. So it'd be nice for a short event where you can get some good but not game-breaking rewards.

I agree that Forever would become very protective of his partner and instantly set up an enderpearls stasis chamber like he does with his family, but I'd love to see how insufferable he'd get too if he got someone like Philza lol.

Anyways I really like this idea mainly because I'd love to see the unexpected duos that would come from it even if temporarily. I really hope the admins think of some type of event like this, but if not we can get something close to it with Tazercraft's Murder Mystery at least!

#qsmp #q!forever

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nodutra19 · 5 months ago

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This might be my favorite episode in the whole series. Though I don't play "favorites" for the most part and just look at things as a whole, rather than through rankings.

By critiquing patriarchy and gender, RGU necessarily critiques hero worship. Now, I haven't actually studied up on hero worship just yet. It's an idea I became familiar with after reading The Pike by Lucy Hughes-Hallett. After BHM, I'm gonna read three of her other books, starting with Heroes: Traitors, Saviors, and Superman: A History of Hero Worship. Maybe I'll write about RGU and hero worship by the middle of next month.

In particular with this episode, and as has been built over time, is the idea of "special people." A few episodes ago, Akio waxes poetic over how "special" Utena is, and how special people don't know they're special. There's a few layers to that, but here I wanna focus on the hero worship aspect in terms of Souji/Nemuro.

I've loved this episode for a very long time. It truly feels like a wrinkle in time and space. It gives me nostalgia for a where and when I never laid personal witness to. Last year around this time I read American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin. The very first chapter has the quote:

Around the globe, scientists were soon to be celebrated as a new kind of hero, promising to usher in a renaissance of rationality, prosperity and social meritocracy. In America, reform movements were challenging the old order. Theodore Roosevelt was using the bully pulpit of the White House to argue that good government in alliance with science and applied technology could forge an enlightened new Progressive Era.

For some reason I never drew this connection to RGU until today. It did tickle me on my rewatch last year but still.

"Genius." What a loaded word! I've read about geniuses, from Marx to Oppie to Tolstoy to Nabokov and now to W.E.B Du Bois, and they were all just as foolish as they were intelligent! I think we see here a sort of prefigurement to Akio and his relationship to Prince Dios. Literally they are the same, but Prince Dios lives on as a separate image to which Akio aspires because 1.) He wants to regain lost time and 2.) These are the demands of patriarchy.

But that's all it really is: an image. An idea. A rotten ideal in white. "But is that what she really wants?"

In this case, Professor Nemuro somewhat does fit the mold of a "genius." A genius is an odd person, a disconcerting changeling. A Byronic solitary figure who "doesn't fit in," who "stands out," who "comes into your life like a hurricane." They're a little beyond human ken. They are a "god among men." They are often "hard to work with." And the worship is just as cultic and religious as all these romantic phrases imply.

Of course, most of their contemporaries think lesser of them than what subsequent myth making would imply. In the case of Marx, he could be a bit grumpy (and was a D1 bum in the funniest sense. An iconic debt shuffler) and had terrible handwriting. You'll often hear people say "Smart people think so fast they can seem rude" or "Have bad handwriting." Behaviors and traits that would otherwise be pathologized are at least excused if not embellished if someone is a "genius."

I think there are other layers to this stuff, especially, I imagine, for those who are ace and aro, but I dunno enough about that to get into the weeds about it.

To bring things real close to RGU, I remember some years ago getting into a conversation with some several years older than me. They were an immigrant, and so I helped them with dealing with the culture shock they were facing. Eventually we got to talking about generations, and they said "I think this generation [referring to mine, Gen Z], will change the world. If more people were like you, things would be better." I was obviously flattered, especially the second bit, but the first bit had always bothered me. As I'm reading through David Levering Lewis's biography on W.E.B Du Bois for BHM, I'm reminded of how Du Bois came up with the idea of the "Talented Tenth." They were essentially the Black Vanguard who would lift the Black race up. Later on, however, he revised it to the "Guiding Hundredth," which attempted to democratize the idea and expand racial lines to something more intersectional. Having gained this knowledge after that conversation, I realize why I was bothered by what that person said: it seemed another form of idolatry. Changing the world isn't the work of a chosen few predetermined by a secular mandate of heaven (In Oppie's time, it was scientists. Nowadays, the "heroes" are entrepreneurs and venture capitalists), it will involve all of us, of all walks of life.

My thoughts are very soupy on this subject, so pardon if I seemed rambly and unfocused.

I'll at least leave a few quotes:

I've become convinced that genius is a vastly overrated commodity. I think this country is full of geniuses, guys and gals so bright they make your average card carrying MENSA member look like Fucko the Clown. And I think that most of them are teachers, living and working in small town obscurity because that's the way they like it. —Stephen King Insomnia

To hell with the philosophy of the great men of this world! All great wise men are as despotic as generals and as rude and insensitive as generals, because they are confident of their impunity. —Anton Chekhov, after souring a bit on a late controversial play by Tolstoy. As translated by Rosamund Bartlett

Genius…means little more than the faculty of perceiving in an unhabitual way. —William James The Principle of Psychology

That last quote is part of the epigraph of the Du Bois biography I'm reading. So rn I got a lot on my head about geniuses, professors, heroism, hero worship, masculinity, etc.

For Marx and Tolstoy, I recommend the biographies Love and Capital: Karl and Jenny Marx and the Birth of a Revolution by Mary Gabriel and Tolstoy: A Russian Life by Rosamund Bartlett (along with her excellent translation of Anna Karenina)

Fansub release + translation notes for Utena ep 22!

さすがに何でもよく知ってるわね。でもそれだけの情報網があるなら、早く奴らの正体も突き止めて欲しいわ。

You know everything, don’t you Juri? With such a vast intelligence network, I wish you’d hurry up and find out these people’s true identities. (literal translation)

You know everything, don’t you Juri? I wish you'd put your little birdies to work finding out just who is behind this. (final translation)

情報網 (jouhoumou) is an interesting word to use here! It literally means “intelligence network”, so Nanami is implying that Juri has a bunch of spies feeding her everytthing that happens at the school. To actually use the word “intelligence network” sounds a little but out of place in English though, so I rephrased the line a little to sound more conversational and accusatory.

Boy: しばらく消えないでしょうね、根室教授。 Nemuro: ん？なんだい？ Boy: 雪の事ですよ、教授。

Boy: Won't disappear for a while still, eh, Professor Nemuro? Nemuro: I beg your pardon? Boy: I was talking about the snow, Professor.

There’s a double meaning in the first line here — the boy could reasonably be talking about the Professor himself not clearing out for a while. That was actually my original phrasing: “Won’t clear out for a while” but Anya suggested “disappear” which is actually much closer to the original Japanese phrasing so I changed it to that. I think this exchange preserves that passive aggressive dig at the Professor pretty well!

あの人は花が散るのを見たくないんですよ。こうすれば短い命の花も少しは長持ちさせることができる。でも、こうまでして永らえても花自身は嬉しいんでしょうか？

She hates it when the petals begin to fall. This way even a short-lived flower can be made to last a little longer. But… I wonder how the flowers feel about their existence being prolonged like this.

This is one of my favourite exchanges in the show! I think this really emphasises how Japanese sentence structure and general way of phrasing things differs drastically from English. A literal translation of the first sentence would be something like “That person does not want to see flowers scatter”. Each part of the sentence sounds weird if translated individually:

あの人 - “that person” being used because Japanese prefers that phrasing to third person pronoun “she”.

花が散る - “flowers scatter” is the most natural way to say “petals fall/die” in Japanese but sounds very odd in English

見たくないんですよ - “does not want to see X” also sounds very funny when translated directly to English, but simply conveys the idea that she doesn’t like seeing something happen.

When taken as a whole, complete idea though, the sentence can easily be translated into something that sounds natural in English: “She hates it when the petals begin to fall.”

The hardest part of this to translate was the last sentence. I originally had translated it like this: “So much work to make them last, and yet I wonder if the flowers themselves are happy.”

こうまでして - to go this far/to put in this much effort/to put in this much work. However, this is more of a tone setting phrase than a meaning carrying phrase, so it’s okay not to translate it directly.

永らえる - to prolong something’s lifespan. This is hard to translate because while the phrasing works in Japanese, the preserved flowers are actually dead. So you can’t translate it as “I wonder how the flowers feel about being made to live so long” or something of that ilk. My original translation of “make them last” works, but I prefer the final translation of “existence being prolonged”. It sounds more applicable to Mamiya’s situation, and this exchange is all about that metaphor.

永遠に憧れる心が美しく思えたりするだけだ。

(lit.) We just think of a heart that longs for eternity as beautiful. (??)

We just romanticise the idea of eternity.

Another great example of Japanese phrasing that sounds super weird when translated directly, but can sound very natural when the core idea behind the words is translated properly. “Romanticise” is such a succinct one-word translation of the several word phrase 「憧れる心が美しく思えたり」!

Thank you to my amazing editor @dontbe-lasanya for their help with the episode as always!

Follow the blog to stay updated with new episodes. For all episodes released so far, go here:

Rose divider taken from this post.

#rgu #revolutionary girl utena #akio ohtori #souji mikage #professor nemuro #utena tenjou #kunihiko ikuhara

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queenlucythevaliant · 3 years ago

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I noticed that in some of your fanworks on the Pevensies, you imply a deviation from canon where they reign to old age before returning to earth through the wardrobe, and I think that's really neat! I also realize that that would probably mean they would spend more time with Cor and Corin in that alternate scenario and I also find that really neat.

You don't know this, my dear, but you've just gotten me up on my soapbox ;)

So you know how the Tolkien Legendarium has a sort of tiered canon where a given text is considered more or less legitimate with reference to what we understand of JRRT's final intentions? Like LotR and The Hobbit > published Silmarillion > Children of Hurin, Beren and Luthien, Fall of Gondolin > HoME > Unfinished Tales, etc? Star Wars used to do something similar, back before the Disney buy-out.

Well, I say Jack's timeline is second-tier canon and should be treated as such. The fifteen-year Golden Age, in particular, is all but contradicted by the actual text of LWW: "Long and happy was their reign." (Emphasis mine).

The list of things they're supposed to have done also doesn't fit into fifteen years terribly neatly. We're told the Pevensies (1) finished stamping out the Witch's army (2) drove back the Northern Giants in a series of wars (3) entered into friendships and alliances with countries beyond the sea (4) became tight enough with Lune that he trusts them to manage Corin, his only remaining son, in a hostile country and in battle even after Cor's abduction (5) saw new construction on Cair Paravel (6) build up a Narnian navy and made them a "seafaring people" (7) had enough peaceful leisure time for hunts and tourneys and balls and whatnot, and (8) forgot about England. They were also pre-teens when they took the throne and, presumably, needed to be educated. I honestly do not believe that Jack intended a fifteen-year reign for the Pevensies when he wrote LWW.

Also, consider that a Golden Age has to be long enough to actually, ya know, be considered an age. It would be another matter entirely if we were told that the Pevensies' reign was the start of Narnia's Golden Age, but no. Doctor Cornelius says "Their reign was the Golden Age in Narnia and the land has never forgotten them." Would we call QE1's reign over England a Golden Age if she had reigned for fifteen years rather than forty-five?

So yeah. I tend to imagine between forty and fifty years for the Golden Age. The timeline, and with it the fifteen-year Golden Age, is second-tier canon and doesn't overrule what Jack put in the actual text of his books.

#yeah Tumnus is still around when they leave but he's elderly and who knows how long fauns even live #with the way Narnia to England memory works I don't see any reason why the Pevensies shouldn't have been in their fifties or older #when they left #it just makes so much more sense #we all know that Jack's timeline is mostly bunk #why do we go on treating it like it gets the final word on these things?#narnia #long and happy was their reign #ask me hard questions

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pennielane · 2 years ago

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succession, the beatles, and potential series finale clues

as a beatles blog runner who fucking loves succession *cracks knuckles* finally, my time has come

although 4.02 isn’t the first time succession has referenced the beatles (we all remember the “beatles were putting out their best work when they were all suing each other” line); 4.02 is the first time succession really uses the band dynamics to potentially, maybe hint at the way things may turn out in the end (i cannot attempt to understand the labyrinth that is jesse armstrong’s brain so i could be like, way off base. however. parallels were drawn and i think we need to examine those parallels).

in 4.02 roman says to shiv and kendall: “stop ganging up on me like you’re lennon and mccartney and i’m fucking george. i’m john, motherfuckers. [points to shiv] ringo. [points to kendall] yoko.”

let’s break this down:

1. stop ganging up on me like you’re lennon and mccartney and i’m fucking george

this is the most obvious statement roman makes; shiv and kendall are evidently teaming up as the “leaders” of the siblings and are leaving roman “out” of it, like john and paul did *at times* with george (cue george’s death glare in get back part 1)

2. i’m john, motherfuckers

this is where it starts to get interesting. roman deems himself one of “leaders” of the group. some say john was the Ultimate Leader of the beatles (including paul at times). i don’t know if i would go so far as to say that roman is calling himself the Ultimate Leader, though it is possible. i think he’s more implying that he’s one of the ~important~ ones.

3. [points to shiv] ringo.

it is SO interesting to me that he calls shiv ringo. ringo is either seen as the “unimportant” member of the beatles, or the glue who held them all together. there’s sort of no in between with ringo. a lot of people who are Very Into the beatles recognize that ringo was often the balancing member of the band, the one who wouldn’t often speak up, but when he did, they all listened and obeyed. but tbh, since roman is an asshole (with affection), i think he’s essentially saying that shiv is unimportant by calling her ringo. but ringo IS important, so remember that.

4. [points to kendall] yoko

it is extremely fascinating that he calls kendall yoko. the public discourse around yoko is generally all over the place and often unfair (but sometimes...fair), however the basics that the entire world knows are that yoko came in and “stole” john from paul. ergo, by roman calling himself john and calling kendall yoko - is he inadvertently aligning himself with kendall? will we see a roman/kendall alliance down the line?

5. who is paul?

the fact that paul wasn’t mentioned at all (except at the beginning) is fascinating. because if neither kendall or shiv are paul, then who is?

as a certified beatles stan, it’s obviously logan. john and paul are famous for having this extremely complicated and co-dependant relationship (even throughout the breakup and post-breakup era), and while all the kids are obviously dependant on logan’s approval and affection, roman is undeniably the most in need of logan’s approval and affection. john was arguably the Needier one between john and paul, so the fact that he identifies himself as john makes a lot of sense.

6. what does it all mean?

does it mean that shiv doesn’t really hold much weight in how things end up? or does she actually hold the most weight? does it mean roman tries to align himself with logan but ultimately ends up getting swept away by kendall?

food for thought. could mean nothing, could mean something

#succession breathes about the beatles and i go feral okay #the beatles #succession #caro thoughts

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studentofetherium · 2 years ago

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if you were going to see each Monogatari character paired with another character in a story which dynamics do you think would be most compelling?

i'm not sure if this is about characters within the series or crossovers so i'll do both

Koyomi: he already interacts with everything, so i'm skipping this one

Hitagi: a story with her and Koyomi's sisters could be interesting, since their personalities would be at odds with each other but also they already have that connecting factor

Mayoi: Suruga! i think the biggest missed opportunity in Monogatari is that we never saw Suruga and Mayoi interact in canon (and i'm certain that at least pre-Hana, Suruga could see Mayoi)

Suruga: ...well Mayoi would be the #1 but to go with someone else, i think it could be fun to see her hanging out with Tsukihi in some fashion, especially if she knows Tsukihi is an oddity

Nadeko: Sodachi! there's a lot of potential in their relationship, i think, and what little we've seen of their interactions are great

Tsubasa: we're shown that she has some sort of off-screen relationship with Koyomi's sisters so seeing more of that could be cool but Suruga is like the only character that Tsubasa never spends any meaningful amount of time around so i'm going with her

Karen: going for something more specific here but a Karen Ogre-type story involving Karen getting lost and Mayoi having to save her would be cool, and also would probably be better than the actual Karen Ogre arc

Tsukihi: i loved the short story where Tsukihi and Sodachi talk for a bit so i just want to see more of their life together because there's a lot implied there that just isn't shown

Yotsugi: coming up blank here sorry

Ougi: i think she should go on a road trip with Tsubasa

Sodachi: TSUBASA!! no further explanation needed

and for crossovers,

Koyomi: let's put him in a room with Shirou and lock them inside

Hitagi: Shiki Ryougi sorry a lot of these are going to be Nasuverse lmao

Mayoi: i'm not sure why but i keep coming back to Rika Higurashi. i'm not sure if there's actually much overlap between them, but the vibes fit, at least

Suruga: Suruga is a hard character because her to defining character traits are self-criticism and lesbianism and the latter is a bit shallow but i think Ciel might be interesting?

Nadeko: Sakura Matou. especially if it's post-Nadekomono Nadeko and post-HF Sakura

Tsubasa: a bit of a pan-Nisioisin crossover but her and Sharyu could have a lot of potential considering how much overlap there is. and i mean, Tsubasa has probably already met Sharyu anyway

Karen: once again i wanna see her with Shirou

Tsukihi: Hibiki Hibino. there has to be something to do with them both having supernatural hidden sides

Yotsugi: i think her and Hisui could be really funny

Ougi: i think horrible things would happen if she could talk to Maria Umineko for even five minutes

Sodachi: i think she deserves to join the Back Alley Alliance

#monogatari #tsukihime #<- because like half of these are from there anyway

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threeletterslife · 3 years ago

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10 | Legends of Darlaria

⨰ summary: You wake up amidst a war with no recollection of your past. Faced with suspicion and distrust, you struggle to assimilate into a foreign nation—otherwise known as your home. But on your enlightening journey to search for your identity, you come face to face with the General of the Army.

⨰ pairing/rating: yoongi x reader & jungkook x reader | PG-15

⨰ genre: 70% angst, 30% fluff | war!au & magic!au

⨰ warnings: profanity, death of minor characters, mentions of blood, severe injuries

⨰ wordcount: 5.6k

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⧖⧗Circa Emerald⧗⧖

The General is silent.

Time ticks by and with each passing second, you feel more and more anxious. You begin to gnaw on your lip, chewing on the cracked skin, drawing and tasting blood.

You expect the General to blow. Or maybe he’ll scoff and say, ‘I knew it.’ Or what if he laughs at you? What if he doesn’t take you seriously? What if he tells you that your mind is playing tricks on you? And what if he’s right? Do you really know what you saw? But no… You’re so sure. Why would you make up that illusion in your head? How would you?

Before you can doubt yourself even more, the General speaks.

“He recognized you?” he says, oddly calm. “How so?”

You chew on your lip some more before answering, “He grinned at me.”

The General stares at you incredulously. “Well, grinning and recognizing are quite two different things, Officer.”

He doesn’t understand. He wasn’t there.

“No, sir. He… He grinned because he recognized me. And when he realized that I didn’t remember who he was… Sir, I wish you could’ve seen his face. He looked so… horrified,” you say. “But horrified wouldn’t even be the right word. I’ve never seen someone look so devastated. No, petrified? Sir, I can’t describe it, but I was just… It was almost as if he expected me to know who he was. And he couldn’t even properly fight back. I don’t think he had his magic. It was like watching a flame slowly flickering out…”

You didn’t know you were shaking so hard until the General places a steady hand on the trembling desk.

“I see,” he says. “It looks like my soldiers had already confiscated his gemstone.” He hums. “The Darlaeans are interestingly weak, Officer. Without their gemstones, they are nothing. But their stones are quite valuable for trade outside these realms… Until the Darlaeans threatened war on any nation that would dare to trade with us.” The General sighs and he looks up to stare into your eyes. You can’t help but feel strange comfort in the familiarity of his gaze. “I don’t suspect you, Y/N,” he finally says.

“You don’t, sir?”

“If you don’t remember being Darlaean, are you really Darlaean at all?”

“Sir…”

“Isn’t that what you’d been implying? That the fact that a Darlaean war prisoner recognized you means you’re of Darlaean blood?”

“Well, yes… But… Well, you didn’t have to say it out loud,” you whisper. “It’s almost embarrassing.”

“If I had not said it out loud, would I have thought it in my head, and you would’ve magically heard me?”

“... I mean, I was sort of hoping…”

The General shakes his head. “You’re not Darlaean, Officer.”

He would never feel for a Darlaean.

So you must be the furthest thing from being one.

“You’re a fire medium—a Solarian. There is no reason to doubt your alliance, Officer. And to be quite honest, there is a large chance the war prisoner was hallucinating,” he says, crossing his legs. “They find it traumatic to be stripped of their magic. Who knows? The man you saw probably wasn’t seeing the real you.”

Oh.

You haven’t considered that at all. It’s an explanation that seems to ease your spiked nerves. Or maybe it’s the way he tells you this explanation. Or maybe… it’s the way he looks at you. With trust. With fondness.

“Thank you, sir,” you say, your tight grip on the edge of the desk loosening.

“There is no need to thank me, Officer,” he replies. “I’ve done nothing at all.”

You smile, shaking your head. “You reassured me, sir.”

“Did I?” He’s either pretending to look oblivious or he really is oblivious.

You nod your head, smiling so brightly that it’s actually hard for him to keep eye contact. For Sooht’s sake. Why are you smiling like that? He didn’t even say anything mildly funny.

But it’s your smile—your bright grin that makes Yoongi suddenly realize why he’d been so cold to you during your investigation.

You’re dangerously easy to like. Dangerously easy to care for, too. If he’s not careful, he might just—

“But what will happen to him, sir?”

His eyes flit to meet yours. “Him?”

“The war prisoner,” you say with curiosity. “What will happen to him?”

He wishes you hadn’t asked.

He clears his throat. “Well…” Why does he feel embarrassed admitting this to you? It’s almost as if he knows you’re going to tell him off for this. And why is the lighting in his tent so unbelievably soft right now? It perfectly outlines the gentle curves of your facial features, and he can’t help but stare for a second longer than usual. “Do you really want to know, Officer?”

“It sounds a lot like you don’t want to tell me, sir,” you say, raising your eyebrows.

There’s a long pause.

Then, the General sighs, looking down at his knees. “It’s hurt them or get hurt ourselves,” he finally says. “Kill them or get killed ourselves.”

In some twisted way, that had answered your question. He looks up hesitantly as the realization sets on your face.

“Oh,” you say. The smile is long gone. You begin to chew on your lip. He’s scared that you’ll storm out of the tent, upset about the unnecessary loss of lives, but he’s even more terrified that you’ll judge him for being so cruel. But he can’t help it. He’d meant what he said.

You take a long time to answer, seeming to mull over your thoughts in your head. All Yoongi can do is patiently wait, which is fine for him. He listens to the quiet ambiance of the night—the gentle fluttering of the summer wind against the tent, the dull flickering of the lamplight. Then, he finally hears your voice, soft, as if spun out of silk.

“Well, sir, I suppose… I suppose this is war,” you say.

He’s pleasantly surprised at your response.

“I suppose it is.”

He gazes up at you, comfortably perched on his desk, legs slightly swinging back and forth. You look like you’re lost in thought again, eyes glazed over and lips slightly parted. He wonders what you could be thinking of.

He hopes you’re not overthinking too much. After all, the Darlaean that you claim recognized you is a desperate, pathetic (slightly delusional) soldier who won’t be alive by tomorrow morning. But alas, he just knows—as your General, mentor and colleague—that you’re rethinking the moments when you’d met the war prisoner. For Sooht’s sake, he hates seeing you in agony over things that aren’t your fault.

But you can’t seem to get that innocent, boxy smile out of your head.

Sure, of course you’re not Darlaean. Of course you’d never plan to go against your own nation. You wouldn’t want to betray your friends here. And you would never dream of betraying the Solarian General.

That stupid necklace is definitely a gift. Maybe it was a Darlaean’s gemstone decades ago. But it’s yours now. You don’t care who gave it to you or why. Because your past is not your problem anymore, and you’re Solarian through and through.

The boxy smile flashes in your mind again.

You flinch.

So why the hell does the face of a Darlaean war prisoner haunt your mind? He’ll be dead by tomorrow morning. Dead. You hate to think of it. What if he has a family? What if someone is waiting for him to come back to his nation? What did he do wrong to get himself killed so mercilessly?

Hurt them or get hurt ourselves. Kill them or get killed ourselves. Does this apply to torture?

Does he even deserve to be killed?

But… he’s a war prisoner. You’d rather him—a stranger—disappear off the face of this nation than anyone you know and have come to care for. It’s a thought that fills you with immeasurable guilt: who are you to dictate who deserves to die and who doesn’t?

“You should be careful,” the General says.

It freezes your frenzied thoughts.

“Careful, sir?”

“Doubt has little place in the army,” he says. It’s almost as if he’s in your head. Or he knows you too well. But before you can even make up some excuse for your doubting, the General tugs at the collar of his uniform and clears his throat. “It’s getting hot these days, isn’t it?”

Is he really changing the subject to the weather? But you’d rather talk about that than dwell on the topic before.

“I guess it is, sir,” you say, humoring him. “It feels like autumn was just yesterday.”

The General nods. “Summer is always a bloodbath,” he says. His sharp eyes flit up to yours. “The heat agitates people.”

“A bloodbath…?”

When you blink, you see a flash of unmoving bodies piled on top of each other on a bloody battlefield, and shivers run down your spine.

“It’s a good thing I’m not afraid of death,” the General says with a snort.

Your eyes widen. “Sir!”

“It’s a joke,” he says, cocking his head, an amused smile on his face. “And didn’t you think the same?”

“Well, on second thought, maybe I’m not in a position to say such a thing,” you say, chewing on your lip. “I don’t remember being in life-threatening situations. So who am I to say I’ll be afraid of it or not?”

“Easy,” the General says. “You ask yourself, ‘Will I care too much if I don’t exist anymore?’”

“Of course I wouldn’t be able to care about my existence if I’m already dead,” you say, shaking your head. You let out a small smile. “Sir, this is getting too dark, don’t you think?”

“Would you rather we talk about the weather?” he asks so seriously that you almost miss the sarcastic glint in his eyes. “It’s not too humid, this time around, and I do appreciate the coolness of the mornings.”

“Or I can ask you a question and you could answer it,” you say with a grin.

“Ah, is this payback for the investigation?”

“You were quite cold to me in the interrogation room, weren’t you?” you say, upturning your nose. “Maybe it is payback. What was it that you said to me? ‘And what makes you think you can ask the questions here,’ was it?”

The General lets out a small laugh. “I was trying to set a somber mood!”

“Oh, it made me somber all right,” you laugh. “Are you ready for my question?”

“Of course I am.”

He almost flinches back in shock when you suddenly lean into him, glaring just as he did when he had questioned you in the interrogation room. The playful look on your face is gone—replaced with quite a serious expression. Your eyes search his, and he hopes you don’t notice his Adam’s apple shift when he involuntarily gulps. He didn’t know you could be so intimidating.

“When you first met me in Circa Sapph, what did you want to know about me?”

He blinks.

You stare.

He blinks again.

Then:

“What kind of question is that?”

His inquiry has you spiraling out of character. You immediately lean back from him and sigh. “You’re supposed to answer the question, not question me right back! What was that thing you said again? And what makes you think you can ask the questions here?”

Yoongi laughs. “Well, we’re not in the interrogation room, are we?”

“I worked up the courage to ask you that question sir,” you protest. “If you could answer it, that would be great.”

You worked up the courage to ask him? He wonders why. He thought personal questions always came naturally to you. In fact, you seem to have a penchant for coming up with the most arbitrarily invasive questions. Not that he minds.

“What did I want to know about you? When I first met you?” Yoongi says, tapping his chin in mock thoughtfulness. “I wanted to know what the hell you were doing in my tent.”

“Riveting.”

To be quite honest, he remembers more than that. But why would he share those thoughts out loud?

“If that was an unsatisfactory answer, you could use the wonderful interrogation tactic of threats,” he says half-jokingly.

“I don’t think I’m cut out for interrogating,” you snort, swinging your legs. “Besides, what would I even threaten you about? That I’ll constantly bother you so you won’t get any sleep? You’re already sleep-deprived.”

Yoongi laughs. “It sounds like a very pleasant threat to me. A tiring task for you, however.”

You roll your eyes. “Whatever. I’ll tell you what I thought when I first saw you.”

Yoongi raises his eyebrows. “You will?”

“I thought you were royalty.”

“Me?”

“Yes! You walked in all seriously with a trail of blood running down your face and for Sooht’s sake, you looked terrifying. I also noticed the shitty posture right away.”

Yoongi laughs. “Of course you did.”

“It was actually a very pleasant initial impression. Until you stormed straight towards me and undid all of poor Namjoon’s hard work,” you say with a teasing smile.

“Oh, really?” Yoongi says. “I can’t say I had the same initial impression as you did.”

You raise your eyebrows. “Was it unpleasant, then?”

“Not that, either,” he answers. “It was a… confusing initial impression.”

“And how can an initial impression be confusing?”

“Because I felt like I would’ve remembered someone like you.”

Silence.

For a second, he wonders if he overshared, which is a problem he rarely—or never—has. Maybe in some weird, twisted way, you are a good interrogator.

“I’m pretty unforgettable, aren’t I?”

But immediately after those words leave your mouth, he sees a look of embarrassment creeping over your face. You quickly stare down at your knees.

“No, no,” he says. “Crazy enough, you’re right. You are unforgettable.”

“Or you just have a good memory.”

“Maybe that too,” he snorts.

Either it’s the summer heat in his tent or his cheeks are warm for apparently no reason.

“What if—”

Before you can get your full sentence out, the water clock chimes, interrupting you.

Your eyes widen when you realize the time. “Oh!” you say. “It’s so late. I didn’t mean to stay here for so long. You must have a lot of work to do, sir.”

The words, ‘You can stay for longer’ get caught up in his throat. And by the time he almost utters them, you’ve already hopped off his desk, straightening out your uniform. It’s too late.

“I’m sorry for bothering you with so many useless dilemmas and invasive questions,” you apologize. “I’ll get out of your hair now.”

He nods. “Right. Well, then. Goodnight, Officer.” A pause. “Although you and I both know neither of us will be sleeping any time soon.”

“You’re right,” you smile. “But goodnight anyways, sir. Thank you for reassuring me.”

For a moment, you linger at the entrance of his tent, and he holds his breath. Are you going to ask him one last intrusive question? Or will you leave him in silence? And why does he wish it were the former?

But alas, you give Yoongi one last smile and exit.

He watches the red curtains flutter and your figure disappear into the darkness.

“Hey!”

You’ve taken just two steps from the General’s tent when you hear a familiar voice. When you turn around, you see Captain Im waving at you, jogging up to you with a book under her arm.

“Nayoon!” You greet her. “What are you doing out so late?”

She smiles. “Some light reading. But it’s a little difficult to read in the dark, so I was just about to retire to my bed.” Nayoon glances at the short distance between you and the General’s tent. “What about you? What are you doing out so late?”

It’s an innocent question, but for Sooht’s sake, where do you even begin? How can you possibly explain to Captain Im that you rushed to the General’s tent to inquire about a serious matter questioning your possible allegiance and then left with a strange, warm feeling growing in your chest?

You don’t explain, that’s what.

“We were reviewing battle plans,” you say nonchalantly.

“Always busy, as usual,” Nayoon chuckles. “You two never get any rest.”

“Says you!” you laugh. “What were you reading about this time? The history of the universe?”

“Oh, no,” she replies. “That’s what I would consider medium-weight reading,” she says with a teasing lilt to her voice. “I was only rereading some Solarian folktales.” She holds up her book, and you’re surprised to see how frayed it is—almost falling apart at the seams.

“Solarian folktales?”

“Just something we all grew up with,” she says before her expression softens when she comes to the realization. “I can retell you one if you’d like.”

“Oh, I’d love to hear it.”

Before you know it, you and Nayoon are settled in your tent, the light of the oil lamp radiating a soft glow. She looks up to the ceiling, leaning back as if to gather her thoughts. Her long hair brushes against the straw mat as her head tilts up, and she blinks slowly, seemingly visualizing the story unfolding before her eyes.

Her voice is light and silvery when she begins:

“Once upon the spirits’ time, there was a young orphan named Haneul. She was about eight or nine years old with bright, curious eyes and a passion for knowledge that kept her warm on the coldest of nights. She wandered the streets of Elu alone, often begging for food and a place to sleep after a long day. She’d just barely scrape by with the little money she collected daily from doing odd jobs around the village. And more times than she could count, she’d go to bed hungry. Yet even with her struggles, Haneul never lost hope.

“She had a dream. A dream so strong and bright and vivid that it allowed her to wake up the next morning and jump onto her feet with determination. A dream where one day, Haneul would own a book. Just one single book that she could call hers. In reality, she owned close to nothing—the clothes she wore every day, a tattered cotton bag and a small gourd for water. But those were her essentials. She wanted to own something that would bring her happiness.

“And so every day, she would visit the village library to read whatever caught her eye, wishing and wishing that one day, she could walk out after having purchased a book.

“The year Haneul turned eleven, however, was the year that the Park Dynasty was throwing a celebration for their sixtieth anniversary of connecting with the spirits of earth. Wanting to look her very best for the feast, the maternal king announced that she would like to have a beautiful wig made for her—one with luscious braids and silky, black hair. She would pay a generous sum to anyone who would donate their hair. A sum so generous that if Haneul were to acquire it, she could buy the whole library!

“Haneul ran her fingers through her tangled hair, which stopped just below her shoulder. With her dream just one haircut away, her fingers began to tremble with excitement. She quickly borrowed a knife from a kind shop owner and carefully slid the dull blade across her dark strands. She cut off as much as she could without injuring herself. And then she stared, a mass of black hair sitting in her palms.

“Her head felt so light. And she could feel the afternoon breeze tickling her exposed ears, for she’d cut her hair so short that it barely reached the bottom of her nose.

“Then, Haneul ran. She ran to the royal palace, squeezing her hands around the loose strands of hair that had once belonged to her. However, she was stopped at the entrance by the guards.

“‘What are you doing around here, young one?’ they asked her.

“And Haneul replied, ‘I’m here to donate my hair for her majesty!’ She lifted up her hands to show them.

“The guards looked at her with sympathy. After a little bit of quiet staring, one guard finally spoke up. ‘Well, dear… The maternal king is looking for a donation of hair that is at least the length of a dwarf sunflower. You know how tall those can get, child.’

“Another guard piped up: ‘Take good care of your hair, and maybe we’ll be able to accept your donation in another decade.’

“Haneul was heartbroken. Even as an eleven-year-old girl, she understood the longevity of ten years. Ten years for her hair to grow back. Ten years for her to grow silky, lustrous hair fit for her majesty. But Haneul’s eyes were set on her dream, and she wasn’t ready to let go just yet.

“From then on, Haneul spent every single solarin she made on spinach and sweet potatoes, which consisted of her diet for the next ten years. She never tied her hair, washed it often in the stream a day’s walk from the village, and brushed it regularly with a comb she traded three days’ worth of food for. Then, she waited.

“She waited without complaints, without agitation, without impatience—only hopefulness. She waited and waited and waited. She watched the leaves change color from verdant green to golden yellow to fiery red several times over. She watched a little cherry seed grow into a grand, blossoming tree. She witnessed a baby being born and watched him become old enough to do small chores all by himself. And as the years passed, her hair slowly grew back. For ten years she waited, spending two hours a day meticulously brushing her silky tresses. Compared to her ragged clothes, her hair shone like an onyx stone.

“The villagers were astounded by Haneul’s progress over the years. She’d also grown into an intelligent young woman, admired by every person in Elu. And as the days of the seventieth anniversary of the Park Dynasty and their connection with Sahn came close, Haneul began trekking to the stream every day. She found it peaceful there, often sitting on a rock nearby and dipping her feet into the cool stream.

“The day before the maternal king was expected to announce her desire for a new wig for the celebration, Haneul visited the stream for the last time. There, she sat, carefully combing her hair with her brush, eyes closed and feeling the silky strands against the fingers. Her hair was so long that it trailed to the back of her legs, and if she was not careful, it would also drag on the ground when she sat.

“‘This is it,’ she said to herself. ‘My dream will finally come true.’ But there, at that moment, a small breeze swept across the vicinity, playing with the strands of Haneul’s hair. She paused. For a moment, she thought the wind was trying to communicate with her. But that would be silly. The wise spirits of Sori had no interest in mere human affairs. And they would certainly not entertain the thought of connecting with someone as unimportant as she is.

“So Haneul began imagining how she would rearrange the library after she would buy the property. Maybe she would rebind some of the books that were beginning to fall apart. Or maybe she would reshelve the disorganized books into separate sections. Or maybe!—a real idea—she could host reading classes for the children in the village. How wonderful would it be to share her love and knowledge of reading?

“The wind rustled her hair again. Haneul paused. This couldn’t be a coincidence, could it? Was she being silly? For the love of Sori, why would air want to communicate with her?

“But Haneul’s waited for ten years, and she decided that she can wait some more for the spirits of air. Slowly, she outstretched her hand, and she waited, heart beginning to beat quicker in her chest.

“To her complete and utter surprise, the leaves on the ground began to stir. She felt another breeze caress her hair, and she gasped, nearly falling off her rock in shock.

“She’d found the connection with the spirits of air. The first Solarian to do so—just about seventy years after the Solarians connected with earth.

“In the end, Haneul bought the library she’s always wanted and still had money left over to build a school—endorsed by the maternal king, of course. She’d read her own books every day, and listen to the peaceful sounds of the warm, afternoon breeze turning the pages.”

Nayoon smiles. “It’s the story of how a young woman connected the Solarians with Sori, the spirits of air,” she says, running her fingers through her own silky hair.

“It was so beautiful,” you say. “But for Sooht’s sake, talk about patience. I like spinach, but I don’t think I could eat it for ten years straight.”

“It’s what makes her Solaria’s very own legend,” Nayoon says with a smile.

“I can see why,” you say, nodding in agreement. The mental image you’d conjured of Haneul flashes in your mind, and for a moment, the picture aligns with Nayoon’s face. What an interesting thought. “You know, it sounds crazy, but Haneul reminds me of you. It’s not even just the hair, but it’s the… how do I put this into words? The feel of it,” you say, gesturing toward your friend. “You two feel so similar. It was almost like you were telling your own story.”

Nayoon laughs, tenderly twirling a strand of her long hair around her finger. “Hm… You’re not crazy for thinking that at all. I really do see myself in Haneul a lot.” She pauses a little. “It’s…” She sighs, a hundred emotions flashing across her face. “To be quite honest, “Haneul’s Tale” has resonated with me for years. It’s the reason I learned to wield air.”

You cock your head. “Really?”

“Yes, well…” She stares at her hands. “It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but I was born without elemental wielding.”

“Then you’re very accomplished for having learned two elements after birth,” you say, reassuring her with a small smile.

“I wouldn’t say accomplished,” she says sheepishly. Another small pause. “Well, I’m from a family of fire mediums. It didn’t really take that long until I could wield fire.”

“Oh, really?” you say. “Then how old were you when you began?”

“I was nine.”

“That’s fairly early!”

She hums. “I suppose so…” She stares up at the ceiling of your tent, eyes glossy and a little clouded over. She seems to be reminiscing and seeing how comfortable she is with her thoughts, you almost want to leave her with them.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” Nayoon says. She sniffles a little, shaking her head. “I spaced out a little there.”

You smile. “It’s all right. You looked like you had a lot on your mind. I didn’t want to interrupt you.”

“They’re not-so-great thoughts, though,” Nayoon says. “I’m actually really glad that I snapped out of it.”

“Not so great thoughts…?”

“Ah, yes…” She hesitates a little but lets a deep breath out and decides to elaborate. “I don’t talk much about it, but my entire family perished in the war when I was very young.”

“Your entire family?” Your eyes widen. “Oh, Nayoon, I’m so sorry.”

“Oh, no, it’s really fine,” she says. “I don’t remember too much.” She sighs, and it’s the kind that holds so much weight to it that you can’t even begin to imagine how much her family’s death had impacted her. “Who am I kidding?” Nayoon says. “I remember it so vividly, Y/N. Like it happened yesterday. My parents died in the same battle. I cried in my older sister’s arms the night we got the news. Then the next day, she set off to avenge them. I cried alone when I got the message that she didn’t make it… So, yes, I do remember everything. But it’s fine,” she says again. “It really is. You shouldn’t worry.”

“Oh, Nayoon…”

“It’s fine,” she repeats. “I was very fortunate that a kind woman took me in. She showed me her collection of books—books that she’d collected for her entire life. And that’s when I found this one,” Nayoon says as she holds up the frayed storybook. She smiles wistfully. “‘Haneul’s Tale’ was the first story in here, and I read it so many times that I memorized every word of it by the time that I was ten. I wanted to be just like her. Well-read, patient, diligent, passionate…”

“And you are,” you say. “You’re the fourth sector captain of the Solarian Army—might I add the youngest captain to ever set foot in the central tent—and an Elunian prodigy. I think you’ve succeeded.”

“Thanks,” she says with a grateful look on her face. “But I’ve still got a long way to go.” She sighs before laughing a little. “I’m sorry. You didn’t ask for my autobiography, but here I am, spouting it out for you.”

Crazily enough, that’s not the first time that’s happened to you.

“Oh, no,” you say. “I find all of this fascinating. You’re here because of everything that has happened in your past. It’s interesting how much of your present can be shaped by your memories.”

“Interesting, indeed,” she says. “And thank you,” Nayoon adds. “If I may be honest, you’re a wonderful friend, Y/N. It’s just so easy to talk to you.”

You smile. “And thank you for trusting me. It’s difficult to open up about your past, but I’m grateful that you decided to share it. And that fairy tale—it was beautiful. It makes me want to become an air medium, too,” you laugh.

Nayoon giggles. “I can let you borrow my book, then.”

You gasp. “Oh, no. I couldn’t do that. You cherish that book, don’t you? I wouldn’t want to fumble through it with my awfully clumsy fingers.”

Nayoon laughs. “Oh, Y/N, just take it,” she says, handing you the old book. “I’ve memorized all the stories, anyway. You can return it after you’ve finished reading to your heart’s content. Besides, how can you say no to some of Solaria’s most classic tales? Aren’t you curious about how we connected with the other elements?”

When she puts it that way… It’s a little hard not to resist.

Soon, you’re alone in your tent, tucked in your covers with Nayoon’s book in your hands. The detailing of the book is fascinating—thick, creamy pages, crisp, black ink, beautiful watercolor illustrations to accompany the stories… Yet you still find yourself nodding off to the vivid images.

As interesting as the book seems, you’re a little more worried that you’ll fall asleep and somehow crumple up the pages—you couldn’t do that to Nayoon! So, you set the book aside and look up at the red ceiling of your tent, sleep almost overtaking your senses.

So much has happened tonight. More than you bargained for when you slipped out of your covers this morning. But then again, it has been quite a productive day. Your conversation with the General, with Nayoon… And now you have a wonderful book that you can read in your spare time.

There’s a breeze outside that flutters the curtains at the entrance of your tent. The night air is warm yet gentle, and it lulls you to dreamland all too quickly. But maybe the ease of slumber that you’d coveted for circas isn’t so great after all.

You have a dream.

Not a wondrous milestone like Haneul’s, but a nightmare. One that mars your thoughts and puts a deep frown on your sleeping face.

The stench of blood. The horrid sight of dead bodies with missing limbs and heads. The sound of cries of help and pain. The foreboding feeling of danger.

Your feet feel heavy, sweat and blood dripping from your forehead. Your hands are grasped around another. A woman’s. But her skin is cold, and she has no pulse. It’s then that you realize you’re crying. Your eyesight is blurry. You taste blood on your tongue. And you’re hurt too. A sharp stinging pain pervades your entire leg.

You limp, arms straining to drag the dead soldier across the battlefield. Trying your best to carry her back home—wherever that is.

You know this is a dream because you can’t sense your own thoughts. Or maybe you’re so scared that you don’t have any at all.

A strangled scream leaves your lips. “Help!”

It doesn’t even sound like you. You can’t recognize your own voice.

“Please!” You’re sobbing. “Please, someone! Help!”

But the other soldiers are a blur in the background. No one even gives you a second look.

Your hands shake, yet you refuse to let go of the soldier.

Then, you feel a presence.

A familiar presence.

He’s tall and bloodied from battle, but he grabs the soldier’s legs and helps you lift her up from the muddy ground. A rather shadowy figure, but you seem to know him. You seem comfortable with him. A colleague? An acquaintance? No… he seems like your friend.

“Thank you.” You’re sobbing again. But this time, they’re tears of joy, not sadness.

“I’m sorry,” he answers, words full of sorrow and regret. “I’m sorry,” he repeats.

You don’t know what he’s apologizing for. But the you in your dream seems to understand. She—or you—nods solemnly, tears making clear streaks down her dirt-covered face.

Then, the man looks up.

“Let’s bring her back home, all right?”

He smiles—a kind, kind smile that understandably doesn’t quite reach his melancholy-filled eyes. But it’s the kind of smile that stretches his lips into a familiar, boxy shape.

⨰ previous | series m.list | next

⨰ a/n: this week was absolutely fucking insane because 1) my friend and i were literally physically assaulted by a man who wanted money from broke college students :') 2) the guy i was seeing told me to step on a scale even though i'm considered underweight and struggle with body image and face dysmorphia 3) my college went on a full lockdown because there was a threat on campus... while i was ON CAMPUS. i was stuck in a building for five hours :))))))))) anywho! i hope you enjoyed this chapter! the next one is one of my favorites so i'm excited to share it!! (on the plus side, i got invited to a yacht party???? time to live out my y/n dreams LMAO)

please consider telling me your thoughts with a comment, an ask or a reblog :) i love hearing readers' impressions/rambles/predictions! if you want to join the taglist, send in a private message, ask, reply to this post or reblog with your request!

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tsukiyadori · 3 years ago

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Left-Right Dynamics in KinnPorsche's Visual Direction

KinnPorsche stroke me as a tale more aligned to classic BL from the yaoi era, as in very strong seme-uke dynamics (including the questionable conflation of narrative agency, character traits and top/bottom preferences). In that, left of the ship means seme and sometimes that translates into visuals as well.

Basically: left = power, sway, being in charge and having agency.

The title and premise makes no qualms to establish Kinn as the seme and the one in power. The trailer material on the new version is also very strongly inclined in having Kinn on the left. Which is also probably why the epilogue in that trailer with Porsche taunting Kinn with his feet works so well for contrast. It's contrast in tone because that one's funny and comedic, but Porsche is also the one with the hidden power and agency and on the right sight of the visuals. In between one of the to be climatic moments is that fight that are all sorts of turns, defying left and right, which is probably when they are on equal power levels fighting together and in between that fight Porsche is left side when he assumes Kinn of his alliance. (That's also one why the new series' direction is magnitudes better than the old direction of that 9 minutes trailer from Filmania. Over there in everything more, let's say physically tensed between the two it's Kinn left and Porsche right, fittingly Kinn being on the right when he's injured, but other than that it's all over the place. Especially standing out sorely when Kinn comes in to tell the family that he bought their house he's right side - and even occupying less of the screen than Porsche and family on higher zoom level. Aren't you in position of power there Kinn? Why are you so small?)

So I thought this was going to be about Porsche starting low and climbing up to stand on equal eye levels to Kinn and love going to be what gives him that power boost. (That's also totally a staple in any romance. The heroine has to work herself up to convince the guy of having value, and usually the love of the guy and him being prisoner to it is the only thing that properly elevates the girl's status and even then (unless inane narrative handstands happen) the heroine typically can only hope to be equals in their little world of two.)

Surprisingly, quite surprisingly, the show starts entirely on the opposite. Before they meet, Kinn and Porsche are both left sided. They are in charge and in control of their lives respectively. Kinn doing his daily business? Left. Porsche doing his work charming the ladies? Left. Porsche being asked advice from his co-workers? Left. Talking to his brother or uncle? Left.

Then they meet, Porsche is having the upper hand because Kinn is troubled. Left. He even first sits and then raises up to demonstrate that Kinn is at his mercy.

Now, typically such a usurpation cannot stand. A seme has to be in control and by premise Kinn is coming to get that control. And he does it slyly. When he is in Yok's bar waiting for Porsche, Porsche is still granted left position authority. But that's just on Kinn's whim, as the sack on Porsche's head and his kidnapping are there to enforce. Once he is out of that sack again Kinn is just about always left sided.

Until Porsche literally fights it. And... wins. For the time being. Well, that's hardly permissible, troublesome uke needs some more spanking by the narrative, so that he learns his place. Which promptly happens with his uncle screwing everything royally up. Does that seem like punishment for resisting his uke-fate? Sure. From there on, he's always right sided. Even towards his uncle and brother. And by the time he and Kinn meet face to face again, he's obediently situated on the right side.

And Kinn gets to say his iconic "Your life is mine".

But then it gets interesting. Porsche regains his left status pretty much immediately after. And keeps it. Even with Kinn. At first, it's because of Korn from whom it's implied that Porsche has some special value he doesn't even know himself. Then he gets the right to be head bodyguard, which allows him to gain left side on the regular despite being a newbie.

Obviously Kinn has to get to show his power, so wasabi drink and apple shooting are having him on the left side and Porsche on the troubled right. But Porsche being Porsche he gets to be left lots of times sided even when he screws up.

Kinn is already powerless against his hazards.

Add the first inklings of attraction from Kinn's side, and it gets worse for him:

Kinn is higher and bigger in the picture, clearly in power, but also on the right. And he stays there. Kinn dressing up Porsche? Sure he's left, but the mirror reveals what really is happening. Dressed up Porsche walking into the frame impressing Kinn even whilst trippling on his own feet? Left side. Kinn chiding drunk Porsche? Kinn is left, intends to shake him off even more to the right, but then only makes Porsche gain more ground towards the left. Even on the choking he's at Kinn's mercy, but still on the left. Kinn is already his prisoner, low-key it's oozing out everywhere.

And then Porsche relents after understanding Kinn saved his life. That's where Kinn starts intruding his heart.

And just the same, he's bigger, but only ostensibly so. But Kinn kills that newfound inclination, so by the time they meet again, Porsche is left again. Kinn is far more troubled with his feelings than Porsche, and it shows. Even when he's wounded, lower seated, he's still on the left. Kinn already has his eyes glued on him, and that gives him that position of power. (Everything Tankhun also has Porsche constantly on the left, he's in charge of bringing new wind in.)

It takes a dead drunk Porsche not quite in his mind to have Kinn back in seme place to be in charge move that romance plot on.

But even that is temporary. Right the next day Kinn is shoved to the right side again, obtuse Porsche has all the power over Kinn's heartstrings. For Kinn to gain left side ground again, it needs a Porsche who's overheated and passing out in the sauna.

Like really, Porsche is only right side, when he's kind of out of it for the entire first third of the series so far. And except his one confusion about remembering the kiss, it's exclusively when he's drunk, not fit or drugged.

And not even always then because all his drugged taunts also have him on the left and Kinn at his mercy. Even when he's drugged and literally having zero agency, he still has all that power. It takes all the iffiness of that dubcon to put Kinn into left side power position, which also happens visually, as it's only then that it shifts entirely to Kinn on the left. (Aligned with the start of Free Fall's instrumental version kicking in.)

Episode 5 is interesting. Because usually dubcon and noncon are narratively there and excused as instruments for the the seme to establish and hold his power position.

But that's not happening:

There literally isn't a single instance where Porsche is on the right with Kinn. Kinn is even smaller and more humbled, half of the times. And this is with Porsche at his objectively worst low point, but he still has far more sway over Kinn than how much his own trauma is putting him down.

Notably, Porsche on his own without Kinn is very much right sided:

As in pretty much as good as completely. His conversation with Pete? Right sided. His casual sex attempt with that girl? Right sided. Vegas showing up? He's on the right. Drinking with his friends? Right. His crawling punishment is even showing how he starts left, but winds up right.

Visually, this is some really nice craftsmanship for supporting the narrative dynamics. (Like the whole possession allegory in the dialogue lines.) I like secondary language narratives like that a lot, and it's so nicely consistent across the board. Very intriguing are Korn and Kim in all of that as well. They are clearly hidden powers, but whenever they actually show up, usually they are on the right side, often smaller or lower positioned in the frame. It's like having inconspicuous camouflage, which is exactly their sort of power style.

But the biggest surprise is still that Porsche still holds ground even with all the narrative grind downs already from the beginning. Porsche loses agency, but at the same time he gains just as much power over Kinn since Kinn falls first and much faster, and it cancels out for the most part. And Porsche is already using this power. Unwittingly and later also very knowingly. Going by the trailer scene, he'll even get very intentional and cocky with it.

It definitely does feel like as if some archetypical narrative skeleton was very much watered down? Does that make them verse? Maybe a bit? Them both being very good fighters and the shooting rounds with them switching left and right sides looks tempting to hope for some more verse elements. But probably that's not for too soon. Kinn will have to do amends first and that will definitely regain him a lot of left side ground once he establishes himself in Porsche's heart, and then his material power will hold more sway in his favor.

I will be very curious how this dynamic will play out. Utsukushii Kare also played a lot with left-right dynamics in its visuals, but that one stayed very true to the more niche whipping boy seme archetype from the beginning to end. (Which this one clearly is not.)

#drama #kinnporsche #kinnporsche the series #ramblings #thai drama #cinematography

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miamlfy · 4 years ago

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Gryffindor Scum

A/N: WOOH PART THREE IS FINALLY OUT! There was so many ways I could have written this part and I actually rewrote it a few times. This part is more centered on Draco rather than the reader but I guess this series is mostly on Draco. Feel free to give me feedback/ideas!

Pairing: Draco Malfoy x Fem! Reader

Summary: Draco has an unwelcoming experience with Blaise and Pansy.

Warnings: Implied depression, Pansy, and a few swear words. Perhaps spelling/grammar mistakes as well.

Word Count: 1,9k

Series Masterlist

Masterlist

Enjoy!

(Not my gif, credit to whoever made it)

Draco laid wide awake on his bed, staring onto the ceiling. He spent hours tossing and turning, just wanting to fall asleep just like everyone else in the house, however, his body refused to shut down. Draco continued to glance down to Harry’s muggle alarm clock he had on his nightstand, 3:46am it read. He let out a sigh, your mum wanted everyone up by 6am. So much for a good night’s rest, he thought to himself.

His stomach was filled with the nervous feeling, his whole life had changed for him during the summer and he knew life at Hogwarts would also change. If someone told his past self that he would be dating a half blood or better yet living amongst Gryffindors, he would’ve laughed in their faces and told them to fuck off. Draco would have never imagined that this would be his life now, not that he hated it. He loved it, every second of it. He loved being in a household which held warmth, love, and security. He loved having parental figures that asked him on the daily if he was okay but most of all, he loved having you at his side.

You were there for him for anything he needed the minute he stepped foot into your house. At first, Draco was scared your relationship would have declined when he moved in but instead it got stronger and the love was blooming more than ever. They spent many nights together alone, talking about the present and the future.

“If I become a professional Quidditch player and you a healer, you can help with any injuring I get.” You said while picking on the grass you were laying on.

Draco chuckled besides you, “I’ll also be on the stands cheering you on and being the loudest there.”

Those moments the two of you had are what kept Draco going. You were his world and his yours. He got so used to spending each day with you that he wasn’t sure if he’ll be the same spending less amounts together at school. Now, Draco wasn’t much of the clingy type but after living in the same house for almost three months only to go back to school and being separated by house rivalry but going to take its toll.

Draco scoffed to himself, whoever created such things and made him believe them were children, he thought. House rivalry was nonsense. Draco looked over to the clock once again, not much time has passed since he last checked it. He rolled onto his side and decided to at least get some sleep to avoid being an awful mood the in the morning.

Draco was woken up by the smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen. He looked over to Harry’s bed to see it empty and unmade, no doubt already waiting for the delicious delights Lily was cooking.

Draco was still getting used to seeing a human cook rather than house elves. Lily wasn’t the only person who cooked in the Potter household, he also learned that you, along with Harry were taught some things. James, however, was often kicked out of the kitchen after his many, many, failed attempts on cooking.

He got up from his bed and quickly made it along with Harry’s. Although your twin brother was fully capable of making his own bed, Draco hated a messy room and often opted into making your brothers bed. Heading downstairs, he saw your luggage packed and ready to go by the front door. Lily made the three you do it the night prior.

“Ah, he’s up.” He heard you say, you stood on your tippy toes to place a kiss on his cheek. You always complained about your shortness to him, and how it wasn’t fair the Harry got the tall gene.

“Come sit down, there’s pancakes, eggs, and bacon on the table already. Help yourself.” You said to him.

Draco nodded and took an empty seat next to James. He began adding foods onto his plate, before he could start eating, James began speaking to him loud enough for him to only hear.

“Draco as you know, the trial between your parents and us is still happening.” Draco nodded as James spoke.

The trial was taking longer than expected and although it was unrealistic to think it would end with an agreement immediately, Draco wish it was over. Both parties refused to step down. Not that Draco wanted your parents to give up, he knew they wouldn’t. He just wished his own parents would come to terms that Draco wasn’t returning to them and to drop whatever they doing to claim themselves as the best wizarding parents out there.

Well, he just wished his father would stop. He knew his mother couldn’t do much, she was just there to be a wife of a pureblood and a mother to heirs. Draco knew she tried to be there for him but the way she was raised proved that the only way she could try to show her love for her son was to buy him things and spoil him with anything and everything he asked for.

Narcissa still sent him letters once a week, whether it was sending him money, treats, or asking a simple ‘How are you doing?’.

Draco stared at James and nodded his head allowing James to continue.

“Word has gotten out and it’ll most likely be in the papers soon which means people will say things to you. Don’t let them get to you and force you to pick a side, in the end it’s you who decides.”

Draco already had a side picked but he knew Mr. Potter was right. His ‘friends’ will no doubt try to make him change his mind about everything and force him back into being the self-centered prick he was.

Once everyone finished the very delicious breakfast and got into the muggle car Lily owned, with complaints from you for having to sit in the middle seat, the five of you headed towards the train station.

“Harry move your bloody elbow!” You yelled out to your brother. “It’s stabbing me in the side!”

“Maybe it’s you who should move, my elbow is fine where it is!”

Draco slightly laughed at the interaction, leave it to the two of you to cause some sort of chaos in any given situation. He sat back in his seat and looked out the window, watching all the cars drive by.

His stomach was getting the same feeling it had during the night. He began chewing on his lip, a habit he had of doing whenever he was nervous. Taking notice of this, you took his hand into yours.

“Are you okay?” You asked looking at him. Concern was written all over your face as he looked at you. Looking at you is what made him more present and calmer. He loved looking at you, you were always so beautiful to him.

“Yes, I’m fine.” He responded, giving you a genuine smile. You reciprocated the smile and leaned your head on his shoulder.

Draco let out a yawn, his lack of sleep getting to him. Perhaps he’d be able to nap on the train.

Arriving at the station, the three of you said goodbye to your parents. Lily was making sure everyone had everything they needed while James looked ready to cry. Regardless of this being the fifth year of doing this, he was never ready to say goodbye to his children.

Draco noticed some Slytherins giving him weird looks as he stood with the Potters, a few gasps were heard from others when he hugged James and Lily goodbye. He didn’t care though; it was a bit amusing to see some of his peers sporting confused looks.

“Alright kids be safe and be good, I don’t want to hear about any more pranks on teachers or students,” Lily said, looking directly at you and Harry. “Includes you now, Draco. These three gremlins can be quite the influence.”

“Three?!”

“Yes James, three.”

“Now that’s not fair, Sirius should be in that list too!” James said. Lily shook her head as if her point was proven.

Draco followed Harry and you onto the train, he saw a few first years still waving goodbye to their parents through the windows. He saw you poke your head out of one as well, he wanted to laugh at the fact that you looked no different than a first year, but he knew it was best not to as he didn’t want to make you mad.

“Tell Uncle Moony that I say hi!” He heard James yell. You replied with a ‘will do’ and pulled your head back as the train began to move. Draco could’ve sworn he saw James wipe a few tears from his eyes.

“Are you going to come sit with us? Harry already went with Hermione and Ron to find an empty compartment.” You asked your boyfriend.

Draco shook his head, “It’s best if I go sit with the others, Granger and Weasley aren’t much used to having me around unlike Harry and you.”

“Alright well if anything happens, you can come find us.”

Draco nodded, allowing you to place a kiss on his lips as a short bye. Watching you skip as you went to find the others, Draco went on his way to find the people he calls his friends.

The compartment in which they were in wasn’t hard to find, upon entering it Draco placed his luggage above and sat down next to Blaise.

“Strange,” he heard Blaise say. “We didn’t think you’d be joining us.”

“And why is that?” Draco asked turning his head to look at Blaise.

Blaise continued to look down at the book he was reading, “It seemed to us that your alliance has changed.”

Draco scoffed but before he could speak back, Pansy had already taken the stage.

“You left us Draco.” She said, forcefully making herself sit in-between Draco and Blaise. She placed her arms around Draco’s neck.

“Come back to us Draco, we know you’re still in there.” She shook him as she spoke, “We know they brainwashed you now come back.”

Draco threw Pansy’s arms off of him with a bit of force, making her pout. “No one has brainwashed me.”

“They clearly did, you don’t even want to be with me anymore!” She screeched. Draco rolled his eyes at her delusional self.

Blaise closed his book and made Pansy go back to her original seat. He looked directly at Draco as he spoke.

“We don’t want you here anymore, Draco. You made it clear to us that you no longer want to be in this friend group the minute you hugged that mudblood and her blood traitor husband. Not to mention how friendly you’ve gotten with Y/n Potter.”

Draco felt his body becoming hot with anger as Blaise targeted the slurs towards your parents.

“Now leave us and perhaps you’d want to change your house tie as well, seeing as you’ve become Gryffindor scum.” Blaise finished.

Draco angrily stood up, glaring at Blaise as he grabbed his luggage and stormed out slamming the compartment door with such force. He stood there for a few seconds, taking notice that his hands were shaking as he rubbed his eyes with them.

“This is going to be one long fucking year.”

#draco malfoy one shot #Draco Malfoy #draco malfoy x reader #draco x you #draco malfoy x you #draco malfoy x gryffindor #draco malfoy x y/n #Harry Potter #harry potter imagine #harry potter x reader #harry potter x sister!reader

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historyhermann · 3 years ago

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“Disenchantment” Is Queer Through and Through

Image via Twitter @Disenchantment

In recent years, series like She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, DuckTales, Steven Universe, and Adventure Time have praised for their LGBTQ representation, making strides and laying the groundwork for animation going forward. However, one series is often not recognized in this same respect: Disenchantment, Matt Groening’s adult animated comedy series.

Reprinted from The Geekiary, my History Hermann WordPress blog, and Wayback Machine. This was my first article I ever wrote for The Geekiary and in some ways I'm proud of it still. It was originally published on March 1, 2021.

Warning! There are all sorts of spoilers ahead!

The queerness of Disenchantment did not begin with the latest season, but it is integrated into the show itself, beginning in Season One. For instance, in one episode, "Love's Tender Rampage," a married woman casually admits she slept with her chambermaid because she is "attracted to people who are good at their job," admitting openly that she is a lesbian. No one bats an eye or criticizes her for that. In another episode, "The Limits of Immortality," a griffin helps the show’s protagonists. They have a masculine appearance, saying they are a lady and that gender "is a spectrum." Again, everyone accepts this and moves on, with no other comment. At the end of one episode, "Stairway to Hell," the nameless, faceless god says he invented "they" before "he" or "she" but that no one mentions this.

Throughout Disenchantment, two supporting male characters are shown to be in a romantic relationship, which becomes an important subplot. Odval (voiced by Maurice LaMarche), the Prime Minister of Dreamland, scheming to expand his power in Dreamland, and Sorcerio (voiced by Billy West), a royal adviser and wizard, are a gay couple. This is first shown in the episode "The Limits of Immortality." They often call each other lovers and are part of a mysterious secret society known as the Seekers, which engages in sex orgies. One reviewer for IndieWire noted that Sorcerio and Odval had been "a couple for a long time." They even wink at each other as a sort of secret code in one episode. Apart from Odval and Sorcerio, it is implied that an exorcist named Big Jo (voiced by Maurice LaMarche), and his assistant, Porky, are in a relationship, with Elfo saying, in one episode, that Jo and Porky are in a "toxic relationship."

Queer themes continued in part 1 of Season 2. In the episode "Steamland Confidential," Bean travels to the steampunk city aptly named Steamland, which originally appeared in the Season 1 episode "The Electric Princess." On one hand, this world is driven by logic, modernized, and acts as a foil (and alternative) to Dreamland. On the other, it is egalitarian and is more "progressive in terms of gender equality than Dreamland," as noted by IGN, giving Bean a new perspective.

In the episode "Freak Out!," after running away from Alva Gunderson (voiced by Richard Ayoade), who wants to begin an alliance between Steamland and Dreamland, between magic and science, Bean is helped by a female explorer named Lady Bowmore (voiced by Tress MacNeille). When a man will not let Bean go into the League of Gallivanting Scrutinators, Bowmore calls Bean "hot trash" and brings her inside, with indications that she likes Bean and Bean likes her.

The episode “Last Splash” literally blew representation in Disenchantment out of the water. The whole episode is a love story between Bean and Mora (voiced by Meredith Hagner), a mermaid and entertainer who failed to become a star, trapped in a carnival with other so-called “freaks,” all of whom Bean freed from their cages.

Bean, Mora, and Elfo travel on a steamboat named the Miss Adventure to her homeland. Bean opens up to Mora about her feelings and they bond. After Mora sings a little ditty to Bean, they kiss and have sex. The following morning, Bean wakes up and does not find the necklace Mora made for her around her neck, deeply distressing her. At the end of the episode, the necklace washes up to the shore and then washes out to sea again, confirming that what happened wasn’t a dream.

David Opie of Digital Spy praised the episode for the tender episode between Bean and Mora, exploring Bean’s identity with "a kind, gentle respect," and said that based on her past encounters with men, it means that Bean is either bisexual or pansexual, but this is never defined directly. He praised this as groundbreaking to see the lead of an animated show express "queer feelings like this," arguing that lead characters in TV are still "rarely allowed to deviate from heteronormativity."

Opie’s analysis is confirmed by the fact that at the end of the episode "Love’s Tender Rampage," a drunken Bean kisses Elfo, and in the episode "The Very Thing," it is implied that Bean likes mermaids. In other episodes, she is shown trying to have sex with various male callers, who run away after realizing she is a princess. Furthermore, the fact that Jacobson is bisexual may give some hints on her character's queerness.

However, Opie’s argument that the whole storyline with Mora is "dropped entirely" because the show is more "concerned with advancing the wider plot ready for season four" and that "Last Splash" is a one-off episode, is only half-true. While it is correct that Mora does not appear in any other episodes of the season and that the show does the plot in order to prepare for the second half of Season Two, in the episode "Bad Moon Rising," Bean tries to process her experience with Mora. She is distraught because she falsely thinks it was all a hallucination. Sitting in her room, which just happens to have a painting of a naked mermaid on the wall, she tells her stepmother, Oona, about it. She calls the experience with Mora "so hot I didn’t even care about the sand."

Oona tells her she hopes that someday, "the right man, woman, or creature will mate with you," showing that she is ok with anyone having a relationship with her stepdaughter. This is a progressive attitude in the regressive Dreamland society. In the same episode, Bean bursts into a council meeting, declaring that "gender is a construct" when they tell her that women aren’t allowed in the meeting. Begrudgingly, they listen to her plan to protect Dreamland.

Disenchantment is a step forward for Matt Groening in terms of inclusive storytelling. Opie points this out, noting that Futurama never had any authentic LGBTQ representation, apart from an alien named Yivo who appeared in the made-for-TV film based on the series, The Beast with a Billion Backs. Yivo (voiced by David Cross), as Opie explains, might have been the first non-binary character, as they have no defined gender. This is because they date, and later marry, all those in the universe. While Yivo later breaks up with all of them by the end of the film, sklee remains in a relationship with Colleen O'Hallahan (Brittany Murphy) who once had five boyfriends. However, the series proper included a trans character named Hermaphrobot (voiced by John DiMaggio) who has been criticized for her "intersex slur-referencing name," and her character playing into stereotypes.

Groening’s other major animation, The Simpsons, also explored queerness to a varying degree. Patty Bouvier was outed as a lesbian in season 16, and Waylon Smithers, who was always gay-coded, did not come out as gay until Season 27! As Opie rightly points out, The Simpsons still lacks "strong queer representation when it comes to its central characters."

Even though Bean is a strong queer protagonist, who often gets drunk and in trouble, many reviewers in mainstream pop culture publications are overly critical of Disenchantment, almost dismissing it entirely. Take, for example, a 2018 commentary by Melanie McFarland of Salon. When reviewing the show’s first season, it states that people should not buy into the feminist framing of the show, because of the gender composition of the writers, noting that a room full of White male writers deemed the racial stereotype of Apu in The Simpsons, highlighted by Hari Kondabolu’s documentary, as acceptable.

This is still a valid point when looking at the writers listed on the Wikipedia page for the show. After all, in a recent BBC News interview, Groening said he didn’t have a problem with the way Apu was portrayed, voiced by a White actor Hank Azaria, adding that they are not going out of their way “to comfort bigots” while calling racism and bigotry a big problem.

Even so, the show does make a strong statement about female empowerment even in the non-racial patriarchy of Dreamland, as McFarland calls it. For example, in the episode “In Her Own Write,” Bean goes to a coffee shop and meets a woman there who convinces her to start writing, leading her to write a play. However, due to ingrained sexism, her play is rejected because she is a woman. After Merkimer (voiced by Matt Berry), one of the suitors chosen by her father, King Zøg (voiced by John DiMaggio), who she accidentally turned into a pig, takes the play from her and turns it into a terrible production, she does a stand-up act at the coffee shop. Her father, disgusted by the play, supports her wholeheartedly.

Many fans have been excited about the Morabeanie ship, including the person running the official Twitter account for Disenchantment, who has posted about it over and over since the series premiere, even RTing fans excited about the pairing.

Hopefully, in the second half of Season 2, Bean’s identity as a queer woman, whether she is pansexual or bisexual, is explored more through the re-appearance of Mora, since both deserve happiness.

#disenchantment #bisexuality #pansexuality #lgbtq #animation #adult animation #kisses #alcoholism #morabeanie #the simpsons #apu #mermaids #meredith hagner #abbi jacobson

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wither-rose-circus · 4 years ago

Note

*slides into DMs*

Hello there, I would like to hear about your Listener Jimmy ideas

Disclaimer: this got really long I am So Sorry

So I’m not skimming through Jimmy’s entire series to get his full relationship with either entities it’s 100+ episodes long like Jesus fucking Christ but I did skim through a handful of videos to get a basic understanding

And I noticed they did mention Jimmy in the end credits, but I think what’s noteworthy is that they didn’t specifically praise him for anything like the others, only scolding him.

I assume that’s partially why the Listeners chose him.

For context, though, I wanna clarify my general Listener headcanons

• The Listeners are to the Nether what the Watchers are to the End

That is not to say they are from the Nether, but that it is their domain. Both the Nether and the End are (or were, in the Nether’s case) total wastelands. From what I understand, the series hinted at some sort of war between the two factions. That is what I believe caused these two lands to be destroyed. Prior to 1.16, the residents of the Nether were diseased and undead, hinting that some kind of disaster happened (Even now, the achievement for finding a bastion references some war among the Piglins, the End Cities have airships and are decked out with leftover enchanted diamond armor, etc). Now, what in the Nether has to do with the Listeners?

• The Listeners are related to Ghasts

Now I know that sounds weird, but hear me out. The description for the achievement Uneasy Alliance goes as follows: Rescue a ghast from the Nether, bring it safely home to the Overworld... and then kill it. This directly implies that ghasts are not native to the Nether, but to the overworld. Now what are ghasts obviously inspired by? Ghosts. What is the Nether obviously inspired by? Hell. What do you get when you put that together? Ghasts are player souls trapped in the Nether. How does this related to the Listeners? The Listeners had their souls trapped within the Nether in the form of ghasts in an attempt to wipe them out. Only some were eventually able to regain their senses and escape the Nether via players’ portals. But why were they trapped?

• The Listeners oppose the Watchers because they believe the Watchers are taking away players’ autonomy

This is less headcanon and more directly reading into the series. The Listeners tell the evolutionists that they need to take back their freedom, that the Watchers are controlling. My personal interpretation of the Watchers is that they are “Awoken,” which is based on how the credits poem references players awaking from dreams. They are essentially the end goal of that process. When a player passes through the portal in the End, the Watchers judge their soul and decide whether or not to awaken them. This leads to them ascending to the Aether (yes, that Aether), which they believe is the “perfect” version of the game (everyone being in creative and thus unable to fight or be hurt, constantly daytime so no mobs, access to the creative inventory to do whatever they please, etc). Now, how did they know what the Watchers were doing in the first place?

• The Listeners are former Watchers

Due to their similar designs, I believe Listeners are simply rebellious Watchers who believe no one group should have control over a player’s life. After the war, they were subsequently banished to the Nether, which has only recently begun to recover. However, this separation left them stripped of the Watcher’s all seeing eyes. This led them to utilize sound to more discretely convey their messages. They have dedicated themselves to “freeing” players from the Watchers’ grasps and recruiting whatever souls they can still get their hands on. This is where Jimmy finally comes in.

The Evolution server was unique in that the players brought to it were specifically chosen to be tested. It was essentially a recruitment effort. The Watchers state that choosing to take Grian was a difficult decision, likely meaning they assessed each one individually. Due to their dismissal of Jimmy, I take it he was not heavily considered. This negligence is what allowed the Listeners to latch onto Jimmy.

Jimmy arrives in the Evolutionist’s old spawn before any of them arrive. We know it was before because Jimmy placed the enderchests the Listeners gifted the rest of the team and because, upon returning in his next episode, the Listeners’ symbol is replaced with that of the Watchers. However, when the evolutionists show up, he’s nowhere to be found, only making his way back with the signs they left. But Jimmy’s videos imply he never really left the main area, so something happened to him between that cut. This is where I believe Jimmy was “marked” by the Listeners.

So now, tumblr user Harley the Pancake, I am so sorry I’ve rambled for like 3 pages without answering the question, but these are my headcanons for pseudo-Listener Jimmy, specifically in the context of 3rd Life:

• Jimmy has bouts of auditory foresight. They’re not consistent, but tend to happen in relation to bad things. This is why he got so defensive towards the Red Army. He foresaw them, specifically Ren and Martyn, killing Scott. However, these flashes are purely auditory, so he had no context as to how or why they killed Scott. His own paranoid imagination applied the idea of Scott being sacrificed (Ironically, this actually sealed Scott’s fate, as neither of them would’ve been killed the way they were had they joined the Red Army). Jimmy is not fully conscious of this ability and tends to chalk it up to gut feelings.

• Jimmy has Nether traits. This comes from more general evolutionary traits you would expect from having lived in a place like the Nether. Not being very affected by heat, more resilient to lava (yes I know that’s ironic for his first death to be lava but I said resilient, not immune), piglins are less likely to aggro on him, etc.

• Jimmy can understand both Standard Galactic and, to a lesser extent, Piglin. Standard Galactic is something he can read fluently while Piglin is something he can vaguely understand. He can’t speak Piglin because Piglin is a very guttural language and few players have the vocal cords for it. If you asked him how he knows these languages, he wouldn’t have an answer. (I also headcanon Scott to be inhuman in different ways, though, so he also knows Standard Galactic. Jimmy just kinda assumed it must’ve been a normal thing to know.)

• Jimmy vaguely remembers past dreams/lives, most notably sounds. He tends to remember sounds specifically so he gets this intense feeling of deja vu when several server members talk to him.

• Jimmy has incredibly conflicting feelings towards Grian for reasons he can’t explain. On one hand, Jimmy vaguely recognizes Grian as a friend from Evo. On the other, he has this instinctual discomfort due to Grian being a Watcher. He can’t tell Grian is a Watcher, he just gets this strange gut feeling around him. (Grian, on the other hand, is very aware Jimmy is part Listener.)

And that’s all I’ve got for now, sorry for how long this was!

#mcyt #3rd life smp #minecraft evo #minecraft evolution #solidaritygaming #smajor1995 #Grian #the watchers #the listeners #asks #Harley-the-pancake

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rachelbethhines · 4 years ago

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Tangled Salt Marathon - Day of the Animals

While perhaps not my favorite episode this season, Day of the Animals is easily the best written story of season three. Even so, it still has problems due to the third season’s poor approach to characterization.

Summary: Rapunzel, Varian, Angry and Red are returning stolen loot that the two girls had stolen years ago. They are accompanied by Max, Pascal, Ruddiger and Hamuel who all cannot stop quarreling with each other (or in Hamuel's case, just being useless). While messing with a sea shell pendant, it magically transports the humans into it, leaving the animals to fight over it. A minor thug named Dwayne, steals the pendant forcing the animals to work together to retrieve it.

So Why is a Polynesian Inspired Kingdom Within Riding Distance of a Northern European Country?

If you’ll remember my review of Beginnings, Neserdina’s princesses were wearing Polynesian garb and dancing the Hula when prepping for the competition. Now I’ve already went into length as to why that’s not good representation, but in addition to that it’s also just plain dumb. You can’t just transport one ethic group and dump them into another part of the world because it’s convenient for you. You don’t earn any brownie points for doing that. Especially when your fantasy world is still based off of our own historical earth.

To make things even more confusing, we actually saw Neserdina way back in season one in Way of the Willow. It’s where Willow bought the gremlin knock-off.

That is an island. How the heck do you get to a volcanic island riding in a horse and cart? And don't tell me they’re riding to a port, because Corona is a port city already. They could have gotten there by boat. It’s also can’t be too far away from Corona’s borders if Angry and Red were able to get there on foot during their year long travels.

The only explanation is that the entirety of the Tangled crew doesn’t understand geography, and this won’t be the last example in the show to back up that statement.

So Why Is Rapunzel Here?

We get explanations for why everyone is on this road trip, except for the main character herself. Red and Angry are trying to return some stolen loot. Varian is wanting to pick up rare alchemy supplies at the market and was invited along because Raps hopes it’ll be a chance for Ruddiger and Max to get know one another better.

But why on earth does Rapunzel feel the need to come on this trip herself? Doesn’t she have a kingdom to run? While I’m sure Eugene is more than capable of handling things, this doesn’t reflect well upon the writers supposed plan of making Rapunzel appear more responsible.

Literally any other adult could have come along on this trip. This wasn’t something Rapunzel needed to waste time on. Lance especially would have been more appropriate here as he’s the one who’s suppose to eventually adopt Angry and Red. And the sad thing is, all they had to do was give Rapunzel a line about needing to attend some sort of diplomatic business in Neserdina. That’s it.

In a show that’s supposed to be all about Rapunzel; Rapunzel sure doesn’t have a whole lot of reasons to exist in the majority of the episodes.

Lack of Worldbuilding Strikes Again

At this point I’m kind of numb to the whole “magical thing just exists for no adequately explained reason” and so I’m not as upset as some people are about the shell necklace. But it’s still not good writing.

Why does this thing exist? How did come to be cursed? How did it get mixed in with their stuff? What activated the magic and why did it only effect the human’s even though the animals were closer to it?

Just something show. Anything. You bothered to give use rules for how this thing works and even stuck to them this time, but you can’t just make the last leg of the trip and give us some exposition?

Yeah, okay.

So Where Exactly Are We in Relation to Corona?

We can see Pittsford and Ivangarr on the road sign and we have to be in riding distance to Neserdina from Corona, but like are we in Corona still? Are we in Koto, which is Corona’s nearest neighbor to the east according to season three. Are we in some no-man’s-land where none of the kingdoms have control, or are we already in Neserdina itself?

The series gives us no sense of direction nor any firm placement for Corona within it’s world. I only know it is a Northern European country because Corona itself is a peninsula with a north sea, uses French, English, and German fashion/customs, and Rapunzel is a Germanic fairy tale. But like those clues are thrown into a blender and contradicted several times over, on top of never being told where it’s closest kingdoms actually lie.

All of this matters when traveling and exploring the wider world are big themes of your show. You need more solid and consistent world building than this. It also impacts how much authority and control your main character has within the episode itself if she range of political power is limited to one area. So like we need to know where the heroes stand here.

(FYI I personally headcannon Corona as former Prussia which was once part of Germany and it’s alliance of smaller kingdoms. It’s also a peninsula next to the Curonian Spit)

This Is Not Progress

Okay so the idea here, is that the show is implying that Rapunzel is trying to improve Corona’s justice system over Frederic’s previously inhumane crack down on crime. However, this is terribly executed.

For starters the show has never called Frederic nor Rapunzel out for their previous misbehavior. You can not change any system for the better without acknowledging the flaws within said system first. Therefore this comes right out of nowhere and doesn’t stick around long enough to stay within the viewers minds for later.

Secondly, Rapunzel is incredibly fickle about who she does and doesn’t set free. The Saporians were still in the dungeons last time we saw them, Caine was shipped off to the prison island and left to die there as far as we know, and the Stabbingtons are shown shackled together in the wedding short even though they supposedly changed their ways and befriended Eugene again.

Meanwhile Dwayne and Stalyan are free to go their marry way and continue their life of crime, Varian is only released from his overly harsh punishment because he kissed Rapunzel’s ass not because it was wrong to imprison him in the first place, and later Cassandra gets away scot free because she’s Rapunzel’s bestie even though she committed the worst crimes out of everyone in the show and for very little reason.

That’s not justice. That’s not compassion. That’s not progressive reform. It’s just nepotism, and it’s every bit as corrupt as Frederic’s classism and totalitarianism.

Just because Rapunzel is “nice” it doesn’t mean that she is kind. Real reform has to treat everyone with equality and have a set of base standards that are beyond one person’s personal judgment. She is still a dictator and an abuser even if she lets the occasional person go free on a whim.

Finally, Rapunzel’s methods are just downright ineffective. Dwyane may not be a threat to our heroes, but that doesn’t mean he’s not a threat to other people. He’s not actually sorry about trying to rob people at knife point and he fully plans on continuing being a thief after feeding Rapunzel the lines she wants to hear.

Furthermore, we don’t know if this course of action is born out of malice or desperate need. He half heartily comments about finding ‘an honest job” but can he even do that? Is it even a realistic option for him? The series has been weaving this class inequality theme through out it’s past three seasons and directly connecting that to Corona’s crime rate.

Eugene had a hard time finding a job during season one directly due to his past record, remember? A life of crime he was forced to lead in order to survive, and he’s the Prince Consort! What chance does Dwayne have? Did Rapunzel even try to help him find work or did she just wag her finger at him and told him “Now, now, stealing’s not nice.”

The show wants to act like Rapunzel is this progressive reformer but then they turn her into a Republican instead. That’s not me being sarcastic either, this approach to criminal justice is the foundation of conservative belief and has been for centuries. The right are not interested in why people commit crime. They don’t care about addressing the fundamental problems in society that lead people to break the law. Let alone bother to analyze why those laws exist in the first place. Instead they resort to doublethink and survivor bias to either write off those that fall through the cracks or make excuses for why their policies repeatedly fail, often ignoring the fact that things aren’t actually working for whole swathes of people who aren’t themselves.

Tangled the Series is far too simplistic and childish in it’s approach to deeper subjects like this to enforce the messages it supposedly wants to enforce. Rapunzel herself relies on magical thinking, double standards, and personal bias to see her through every and any problem and the show just rewards her for it rather than challenging her to grow and in doing so winds up supporting people like her in their authoritarian ideas, whether that was the writers’ intentions or not.

In short, Rapunzel shows no interest in putting in the real work it would take to implement genuine restorative justice. She doesn't honestly care about Dwyane or his victims. She’s just posturing here for the sake of her self image.

You’re Not In Any Position to Talk Rapunzel

Speaking of Rapunzel being a hypocrite.... The entirety of season three’s main conflict is her having a petty bitch fight with her supposed best friend and needlessly dragging everyone else into it.

In fact that’s the whole show. Rapunzel repeatedly failing to get along with other people because she’s deep down a shitty person despite the veneer of ‘friendliness’ she slaps on to hide it. Having her just say she knows better does nothing to convince me that she’s actually learned anything. You have to show that she’s learned it first, and that requires acknowledging her own wrong doings.

Varian’s face here just tells it all. Rapunzel is full of shit and no one in the show knows it better than him. Why are they even friends again? Why should we trust her with the three kids she neglected more than once? Why should any of these people take what she says seriously?

Well This is Contradictory

Also, since we brought up double standards, here’s Varian undermining that whole “jail is bad” thing Rapunzel is trying to push with Dwayne and later with Cass. Not only is the show under cutting it’s themes for a joke, but it just reinforces the abuse Varian received. He’s now bought into Frederic’s stupid beliefs and winds up reinforcing to the audience that that his ‘reform’ was due to his past imprisonment.

As an adult watching this series, Varian’s supposed redemption continues to increasingly look like a victim complying with their past abuser out of fear of further harm rather than anyone genuinely learning to be better.

Can We Please Stop Infantilizing the 16 Year Old

As if to deflect from Varian’s past mistreatment and continuing parentification, the show then goes on to showcase the opposite extreme whenever possible. I know it’s hard to tell just from these few screen shots alone, but over the course of season three Varian is spoken down too and treated condescendingly by the rest of the cast, and by Rapunzel in particular, even as he enters his later teens/early adulthood.

Some of this is just to due to Rapunzel being her usual holier than thou self, but there’s also times, like here, where Varian is lumped together with the actual children of the show, even though he’s 6 to 8 years their senior.

In fact out of everyone Rapunzel interacts with, Varian’s actually the closest to her in both age and development. Queen for a Day forced the two of them into a power imbalance due to a mixture of classism and society’s ongoing unhealthy (and often artificial) divide between younger and older teens, but as we get further and further away from that point in time and as Varian nears the same age Rapunzel started out as, that imbalance becomes less and less relevant.

Look at how this scene is framed, He’s standing between Angry and Red and is placed lower than them to make it look like he’s one of them. He’s not.

Varian may still look 12 with his big old eyes and short stature, but seeing as how we’re past Hearts Day, he’s actually close to being 17, if he isn’t already. The timeline gets even wonkier after The King and Queen of Hearts, but trust me, we’re close to being two years past Queen for a Day, if not more so.

Varian, for all counts, should be Rapunzel’s equal by now in terms of story. Not only is he closest in age to her, but he’s also the only other person going through a coming of age arc. And of the two, Varian’s the one who has actually learned and grown as a person. He has more real world experience than Rapunzel ever will and knows how to implement that experience. (He’s also the more mature, but that’s more of a failure to write Rapunzel competently than a reflection of his capabilities.)

No matter how you slice it, Varian shouldn’t be taking orders or advice from Rapunzel; no one should be, really; and he most certainly shouldn’t put up with her condescension. Rapunzel is not his nor anybody else’s mother. She’s not even a big sister like figure, and at no point should be treated as the leader of anything or anyone.

Rapunzel is a Poor Man’s Rose Quartz

I typically try not to draw too many comparisons between Tangled and other shows outside of the occasional parallel, as a show should be able to stand on it’s own for good or for bad, but it’s hard not to discuss the series without also discussing Steven Universe in some way.

Steven Universe is this generation’s Batman the Animated Series or Scooby Doo. It’s the game changer that everybody else is trying to copy in some manner. Chris desperately wants Tangled the Series to be the next Steven Universe, right down to how the show is structured, paced, and what themes are presented. But unfortunately Chris has no idea why Steven Universe works the way it does.

For starters SU adjusted it’s pacing as it went along, smoothing out its rougher edges while Tangled doubled down on its filler. SU had a planned arc from the get go and stuck to it, so that by the time the twists came they made sense. SU kept it’s focus on Steven purposefully so that the story unfolded from his view point while making to sure to acknowledge the importance of other characters around him and their conflicts. It didn’t make him infallible nor shove aside everyone else’s arcs.

But most importantly, Steven Universe was written by a bisexual nonbinary person who set out to make a show for people in the queer community like themselves. Meanwhile, as a middle aged white man, Chis hasn’t a damn clue about his primary audience and has shown no interest in connecting with them.

This isn’t to say that Steven Universe is a perfect show. No show is beyond criticism. Nor is this to say that straight white cis men can’t write; many of them do and can portray characters unlike themselves competently enough. But if you’re completely disinterested in other points of view than you can’t be a good writer of fictional stories, that’s just a fact. Because in order to understand proper characterization you need to acknowledge that not every character ever will be like you and that even you’re main heroes will hold beliefs and experiences different from yourself. Otherwise there is no genuine conflict to build off of. Either no one will disagree with each other or the conflict will come across as flat and forced, complete with lopsided bias.

Therefore, in the end, Rapunzel winds up being less of a Steven and more of a Rose Quartz/Pink Dimond. Both are spoiled princesses/co-rulers of a kingdom that mistreats it’s people and anyone outside of it, who rebelled against their guardians, supposedly out of a sense of justice, but really for themselves and their own freedom, only to make things even worse for everyone. On top of that they both accidently harmed their friends, freindzone their best friend while also bossing them around, are condescending to their love interests, is controlling of people who trust them, and throws temper tantrums when they don’t get what they want, oh and neglected someone for an inhumane amount of time.

Even then, Rapunzel winds up being the worst of the two.

The whole point behind Rose was that she is someone whom the main characters place upon a pedestal and as the series went along slowly had the scales fall from their eyes and learned to view her for who she really was flaws and all. By the end, in Future, she is even metaphorically removed from her pedestal when Steven removes her picture from the wall.

Rose also grows as a character, unlike Rapunzel. Her story is deliberately being told to us backwards. The awful person she was in the past was no longer who she was by the time of her death. True she was still flawed, and the consequences of her actions continued on even after her demise, but she actually tried to be a better person. She got called out for her behavior, she wasn’t excused for actions even when the show explained why she did what she did, and she stopped doing harmful actions whenever she realized that they hurt someone.

Greg was allowed to stand up to her and show how she was wrong, and she respected him for it and later fell in love with him because of it. She tried to better control her temper when she wound up hurting her friend. Her failed revolution and her mistreatment of Spinel was actually born from a misguided desire to help, rather than outright selfishness.

Rose Quratz/Pink Dimond is a brilliant fucking character. You may not like her, but you can’t deny that she is one of the most complex figures in children’s media to ever be created. She is real, nuanced, and multifaceted. He role within the story is complicated, messy, and intricate. She is the most well rounded female character I’ve ever seen and she is what I had hoped Rapunzel would be when I first watched season one, only even more so as the actual focus.

I want women in cartoons to be people!

But Rapunzel fails at every turn to follow through with this promise. She is not a deep complex character. She’s not a flawed and complicated heroine. She’s a blank canvas in which the creator can shove his creepy ass views upon. She is never taken off her pedestal, she’s never allowed to be wrong, and she is forced to spout the the creator’s personal bias against other characters.

Rapunzel isn’t a person. She had the chance to be one, but then was reduced to .. to this. As a woman, the treatment of Rapunzel and Cassandra in this show is just flat out insulting.

So What Is the Difference Between Angry and Red Now?

I’m all for character growth, but at this point Angry and Red are just interchangeable. Anything that made them uniquely them has been lost, and they’re now just fulfilling the generic rambunctious little kid trope. Red becoming more assertive shouldn’t mean she stops being an introvert altogether; that’s not how that works. While Angry shouldn’t lose her temper completely just because she’s wiling to open up more.

So Why Dwayne?

I like Dwayne as a character and in truth I don’t mind his existence here, and unlike that werewolf hunter last time he at least was established in a pervious season. But this is still time that could have went to a more important antagonist.

Also notice that Dwyane gets a villain song, but not Lady Caine or Zhan Tiri. Just saying.

Rapunzel Has Not Earned the Role of the Wise Sage and Mentor

Rapunzel has never learned to listen to others. Ever.

On it’s own this might have been a good speech, but when taken in context of the wider story it just makes Rapunzel look like an ass.

A year traveling does not make Rapunzel suddenly all knowing. She is not wiser nor more experienced than anyone else in this scene. She’s also a crappy leader and big fat hypocrite.

Even when she’s technically right, as seen here, she’s still in the wrong because she never follows through and acts upon her own advice; making this whole story pointless in the grand scheme of things.

And that’s the core problem with season three. Rapunzel is shoved into a role she is not designed for and the whole premise of the series runs right off the rails. You’re main heroine in a coming of age story can not inhabit the mentor role. She can not simultaneously learn and grow and be always right while instructing everyone else.

All through out season three Rapunzel is either rendered completely useless in her own damn series, or she utterly fails to fulfill any sort of narrative promise laid out for her while she infuriatingly hijacks the story from more interesting and dynamic characters.

Behold The Only Reason Why Varian was Included in the Episode

Speaking of hijacking things, Rapunzel of course has to get the idea to save everybody, even though what she thinks of isn’t anything special. It’s not derived from her character as an individual nor from all that experience she supposedly has. It’s literally an idea anyone could have come up with and the show just hands it to her in order to justify her exitance.

Meanwhile the character who actually is useful to the plot is sidelined and reduced to just a plot device. And not just here, Varian is rendered practically pointless in all but two episodes in season three, even in episodes that he actually should have more impact in, like the season opener and series finale.

Good writing treats characters as equally contributing to the plot in ways that complements who these characters are.

Ok I’ll Admit That This Line Is Funny

Look, I know this whole review series is about pointing out the negative, and I stand by my opinion that Tangled the Series is one of the worst written shows I’ve ever seen, but I want to make one thing clear.... I do not hate the show. If I hated the show I would not waste my time reviewing it.

Yes the over all writing is shit, but there are a lot of good things to be found in the series beyond just the crap story arc. The humor is usually solid, the animation is gorgeous, the music is a delight, and the majority of the characters are likable even though they don’t develop in the ways that they should. There’s a lot of talent that went into this show and there’s a lot of potential to be had in it’s set up and lore.

Being critical or negative about the aspects of something doesn’t mean you dislike it, or that you’re not a real fan, or that you’re just a ‘hater’, and I actually find TTS to be fascinating because it’s such a mess. I write reviews because they’re fun and because I genuinely think there is something to be learned from Tangled’s mistakes.

So Why Do We Cut Back to Rapunzel Here and Not Varian?

This is such an odd framing choice. Varian is the one who is talking and reacting to what’s happening. It’s his pet that’s in trouble and therefore he carries the emotional weight of the scene, and yet it’s Rapunzel’s shocked face we focus on? Why? What’s the point of that? She has no business being the center focus here. The action does not involve her.

If you wanted to include her for a later set up then why not have both her and Varian present in this shot? Usually I can at least count on the story boarders to frame things better than this, but they really missed the mark here. Unless Chris is just that stupid and petty that he over ruled them and forced Varian out of the scene, but that seems like a pointless fight to pick, even for him.

See This is How you Fulfill a Narrative Promise

The conflict between Ruddiger and Max was set up in season one with What the Hair, then it was reiterated a few episodes ago during The Lost Treasure of Herz Der Sonne, and then it was reintroduced in this episode along with a stated lesson about working together that they needed to learn. By they end of the episode, guess what, they’ve learned to work together. That is how you properly set up and resolve a conflict.

It’s clear from this that the writers of Tangled the Series know the basic tenants of writing and how to fulfill narrative promises. So the fact that they don’t follow through with this in the majority of the show’s episodes and ongoing story arcs just baffles me.

Is it negligence? Is it hubris? Is it incompetent management and editorial mandates? Is it just one asshole ruining everything or is this a failure in the writers room as a whole?

I just don’t understand what the fuck went wrong here. There’s no reason for why the show got as bad as it did. How does the most acclaimed animation company in the world put out such amateurish tripe?

Just... wow.

Now you know why I’m mesmerized by this show. It is a mystery to be solved, like trying to figure out how the crew on the Titanic fucked up so badly or why Hindenburg blew up. You just can’t look away.

Conclusion

Like I said at the start, structurally speaking this is the strongest episode of the season. I personally enjoy Lost Treasure a little more, just because Rapunzel annoys me less in that, but it’s not a bad story. However when you’re best episode in your final season is filler, then you know you’re in trouble.

If you like my reviews and want to support my writing endeavors you can drop a tip in my kofi https://ko-fi.com/rachelbethhines

#tangled #anti-tangled #anti-rapunzel #tangled the series #rapunzel's tangled adventure

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terrific-togekiss · 4 years ago

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What if Pokémon Legends went on to other Regions?

This has been a topic of the Pokémon fandom for awhile. With the announcement of Pokémon Legends: Arceus not too long ago, many fans are anticipating and speculating the future of this ambitious side series.

Being able to not only witness, learn and partake in the legends that shape both the regions and Legendary Pokémon, leaves much room for creativity.

This is all merely speculation.

Here's my take for how any future Pokémon Legends games could play out.

Pokémon Legends: Mew

Set about roughly 20 years before the events of Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow, the elusive Mew makes an appearance in the Kanto Region.

This prompts many scientists to want to study and catch the original Pokémon, foreshadowing the creation of Mewtwo and the Ditto.

You, the player, are taken under the wing of a much younger Professor Oak, with the Gen 1 Gym Leaders also showing up to lend a hand.

As the plot focuses on you tracking down Mew before various criminals and an older Team Rocket, try to for their own nefarious purposes. Helping Professor Oak invent the Pokédex and with his research.

Gene splicing and gene testing on Pokémon grew after the War LT. Surge fought in, with an older Team Rocket using it to their advantage.

This Team Rocket being a much bigger criminal organization, before the player took them down and a smaller one appeared in Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow.

A younger Giovanni is also present, as the player gets to know the man that would go on to lead present day Team Rocket. He's a friend to the player... for now, giving some insight on who he was beforehand and show how he took over the criminal organization, setting up the events Pokémon Red, Blue and Yellow.

Mew's appearance in the Kanto region, inspires him to the point of illegal gene testing on Pokémon.

As a nod to Pokémon first debuting in 1996, the game takes on a more of a late 60s to mid 70s aesthetic, so it feels like the player is shaping the legends that set up Gen 1 of Pokémon.

Plus Kanto in the Legends artstyle would be mindblowing. And take inspiration from 60s to 70s Japan.

In addition, to avoid looking too similar to Pokémon Legends: Arceus. Being more of a modern era Japan region, than a Meiji period Japan inspired region. While following in said game's footsteps, by focusing on the secondary legendary than the main one (Mewtwo).

The starters would be Chikorita (Gen 1 is about Nature vs Technology), Torchic (Peace and War aesthetic) and Popplio (60s to 70s definitely saw a rise in many famous and popular musicians).

Pokémon Legends: Celebi

Ever wonder the origins of the Legendary Beasts: Raikou, Suicine and Entei?

What they were before they were killed in Brass Tower revived by Ho-Oh? How Ho-Oh came down and choose them, saving their lives? The sea Lugia stays in the deep for? The early days of Johto? The ruins of Alpha in the past? The early days of the Kimino Girls?

Well now you, the player, do now! ...sort of. As the title of the game implies, the player meets and befriends Celebi and gets to see many of these events via time travel.

Not only would this include a huge mechanic separate from other Legends games, but it would be the most unique in how it could be approached. As Nintendo is no stranger to time travel games (e.g. Majora's Mask) that impact both the plot and gameplay.

Time travel tends to create stories that are very confusing or very heartwrenching. Or both. But I have no doubt it would be the latter.

It also leaves room for many side quests.

Starters would be Bulbasaur (Time is all about growth), Scorbunny (Bunny Rabbits are not only a common symbol in the older days of Japan, but of Spring much like Ho-Oh) and Froakie (ninjas were more prevalent during this time period, as they slowly faded out).

Pokémon Legends: Jirachi

1000 years before the events of Pokémon Emerald, (Omega) Ruby and (Alpha) Sapphire, chaos raged across the ancient Hoenn Region, between two legendary Pokémon: Groudon and Kyogre. The Draconid people hope and pray for the arrival of Rayquaza to save the Hoenn Region itself.

This is where the player steps in: in order for all this chaos to end, the wishes of the people must be heard. And the only Pokémon capable of that is Jirachi.

The player would go around helping wishes be granted, traveling and training Pokémon along the way.

An ancestor of Zinnia also makes an appearance as a friend and rival of the player.

To maintain the wishes and stars aesthetic, Deoxys also makes an appearance with its origin being explored. Being able to explore space itself, meeting Pokémon said to have an "alien" origin, like Elgyem and Beheeyem.

Latios and Latias can also be caught, flying on them just like in Omega Ruby and Alpha Sapphire.

The meteor that would hit the future Sootopolis is what awakened Groudon and Kyogre, said Meteor containing Deoxys. Setting up the game's plot.

Since it's roughly 1000 years before the Gen 3 Pokémon games, Hoenn resembles and takes inspiration from Japan during the Heian period.

The starters would be Turtwig (Theme of continents being at stake), Chimchar (Japanese and Chinese relations) and Totodile (sea monster symbolism, which is often associated with crocodiles and related animals).

Pokémon Legends: The Dragon

Two Princes, of Galar origin, known as the "Twin Heroes" share the power of an unimaginable Legendary Dragon. Bringing Truth and Ideals to the people of Unova. They live and lead from Relic Castle.

You, the player, are a friend of the princes and over the course of the game, your alliance with them changes. Struggling to choose between Truth or Ideals. Serving as a major story mechanic.

A feud and disagreement between the Princes happen, with the player being caught in the middle and to try to quell the anger of the Dragon.

In addition to finally seeing Reshiram and Zekrom before they split, Victini is also present with the Swords of Justice Pokémon (Cobalion, Virizion, and Terrakion), the Forces of Nature (Tornadus, Thundurus, and Landorus) and even Meloetta tries to raise people's spirits.

Team Plasma's origins are alluded to, with the army of the Princes baring an odd resemblance to the future evil team.

The game has more of a wild western aesthetic since Unova is based on New York. Think late 18th century America. With horseback riding on Pokémon like Zebstrika and Rapidash, bandits and criminals that try to steal your Pokémon and being able to explore Unova in its entirety.

Or perhaps roaring 20s to 30s America. If that setting sounds more vibrant and close to the Unova of Gen 5. This is all still speculation.

You even get to ride Keldeo in a later part of the game.

The starters would be Chespin (Chesnaught is based on a Glyptodon; fossils were found in South America), Litten (Wrestling is popular in New York) and Mudkip (mudpuppies are found in Lake Michigan).

Pokémon Legends: Diancie

Set after the Kalos War, you the player are caught in the middle of it going off to fight with your Pokémon. Hoping to make a difference as the Professor (ancestor of Professor Sycamore) takes you under his wing. And hoping to help the war turned world that is Kalos.

Yveltal and Xernas have both gone into slumber, with Zygarde needing to be restored to at least 50% (player can go to 100%), so the world of Kalos can be healed from this war.

The main game focuses on Diancie: since Diancie is the Pokémon of diamonds, the war has forced soldiers and leaders to exhaust the many resources of the Kalos region. Particularly precious stones and diamonds.

The player befriends Diancie later in the game as the two work together to bring an end the greedy hearts of those involved.

The game resembles France during the 100 Years War, with the player character even having armor as part of their attire. Due to Kalos being based off of France, roughly Middle Ages or Medieval France in this game's case.

AZ also makes a few appearances in the game, racked with grief over firing the Ultimate Weapon, mostly keeping to himself over the game's plot.

As a new gameplay mechanic, the player can befriend other trainers to amass armies to overcome many challenges, like beating other armies and crossing obstacles.

Volcanion and Hoopa are also present in the game and can be caught.

The origins of Mega Evolutions are expanded on, with the player getting their hands on some Mega Stones. Due to the energy of the Ultimate Weapon.

The starters would be Snivy (said Pokémon is based on French nobility), Piplup (Empoleon is based off of Emperors and can be a nod to Napoleon) and Charmander (Charizard is based off of European Dragons).

Pokémon Legends: Marshadow

Set in the ancient Aloha region, when Tribes followed the Tapu Pokémon, you the player find yourself stranded in this intriguing region.

Ultra space wormholes begin opening across the region and its up to the player to figure out why and how to stop them. Even being able to traverse the Ultra Megalopolis in its entirety.

Necrozma is up to it and the player must learn why. With Marshadow playing a bigger role, since most of its origin is shrouded in mystery, so this would be a great opportunity to explore those origins.

Along with the origins of the Z-Crystals.

The game has more of an ancient Polynesian world, seeing as how Aloha is based of Hawaii. Being able to sail to smaller islands and even catch Pokémon while doing so.

The starters would be Grookey (drums are a popular musical instrument in the tropics), Sobble (chameleons are native to Hawaii) and Tepig (pigs have been brought to Polynesian Islands in the past).

Pokémon Legends: Zarude

3000 years, before the events of Pokémon Sword and Shield, a black storm covers the very region itself. This black storm causes Pokémon to randomly Dynamax and Gigantamax. Many live in fear of what the next day brings, as hope of a better day seems like only a naive dream.

The player joins with many Pokémon researchers (some being ancestors of familiar faces in Pokémon Sword and Shield), in order to track down the source of this chaos.

Zarude comes in as he helps providing with resources from various forests, so less Pokémon and people are harmed. Or worse.

The player believes tracking down Zarude, will lead them to stopping this madness (Eternatus).

The game looks much like 13th to 14th century Britain, in much of the fashion of characters and even dealing with the equivalent of a plague. Ironically enough.

The starters are Treecko (Forest theme and light in the dark theme in contrast to the Darkest Days), Fenniken (Magicians are a common Middle Ages motif) and Squirtle (Cannons were first invented in Europe, around this time period).

#pokémon #pokemon #pokémon legends arceus #pokemon legends: arceus #pokemon legends #video games #video game ideas #my post #mew #celebi #jirachi #diancie #marshadow #zarude #terrific togekiss

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warcraft-lore-archives · 4 years ago

Text

The Formation & Ideologies of the Holy Orders of the Light

The Church of the Holy Light

Humanity’s foremost religious organization, the Church of the Holy Light, was formally established in the heart of Lordaeron many centuries ago. The spiritual teachings that gave birth to the church, however, date back much further to the time of the Troll Wars when a human warrior named Mereldar began having visions of beings made of the Light. Those strange holy lifeforms – known as naaru – taught her and others about the wisdom of virtues such as protection, justice, retribution, holiness, and compassion – all tenets that would later be embodied and espoused by countless paladins and priests of the church. Enlightened, Mereldar and the others set out to write down the beings’ teachings in a series of books that quickly sparked the formation of a significant religious movement in the Eastern Kingdoms [World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume II, pg. 126]. The Church of the Holy Light, as it would come to be known, eventually expounded all sorts of other virtuous ideals, but its core principles – the five tenets put forth by Mereldar – would always remain unchanged.

The Holy Order of Northshire Clerics

Sometime well before the First War, a few members of the Church of the Holy Light moved south and established Northshire Abbey on the outskirts of Stormwind City. Because of their great skill in the healing arts, the clerics of the abbey typically accompanied Stormwind’s soldiers in times of war and mended their wounds whenever needed [World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume II, pg. 125-126].

Unfortunately, they were targeted by the orcish horde during the First War for the very same reason they were lauded by their brothers and sisters in the Alliance - their prowess with the Holy Light. Many of the clerics – unarmed, untrained, and unable to defend themselves – were massacred when the horde razed Stormwind City, although some survived and fled to Southshore with other refugees [Tides of Darkness, Chapter Six, World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume II, pg. 125-126].

Though the clerical order was all but wiped out in the First War, their demise paved the way for a new, more powerful holy order in the coming years known as the Order of the Knights of the Silver Hand.

The Order of the Knights of the Silver Hand

Formed by Archbishop Alonsus Faol shortly before the Second War, the Knights of the Silver Hand were mostly born of a need for more capable warriors and leaders on the battlefield [World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume II, pg. 152-153, Tides of Darkness, Chapter Five]. Distraught at what had happened to the Northshire clerics, the Archbishop proposed the idea of training a small group of priests and knights to wield the Light in battle [Tides of Darkness, Chapter Five]. Just as Mereldar before him, Faol believed the core traits of the Silver Hand to be retribution, holiness, protection, justice, and compassion, each of which was embodied by a founding member of the order [World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume II, pg. 154].

Although initially small, this branch of the Church would grow quickly in size after the Second War, with notable paladins like Arthas Menethil and Alexandros Mograine joining its ranks. The original organization, however, was rather short-lived. After Uther refused to join Arthas in culling the infected civilians of Stratholme, the prince suspended the paladins from service – something which he technically did not have the power to do [NPC: Arthas Dialogue, Ashbringer: Death is Contagious]. Nonetheless, the order fell apart not too long after when irreconcilable ideological differences between its members caused it to fracture, leading to the formation of the Argent Dawn and the Scarlet Crusade.

It was not until after the Third War that the Knights of the Silver Hand reformed, this time with the help of renowned paladin Tirion Fordring [Quest: In Dreams]. Unfortunately, the holy order would dissolve yet again a couple years later – absorbed into the newly-formed Argent Crusade at the start of the war against the Lich King – only to be revived for one final time following Tirion’s death at the Broken Shore in Legion [Quest: The Light of Dawn, Quest: A United Force].

Of the many different holy orders existing today, the Knights of the Silver Hand likely resemble the core Church most in their principles and beliefs. All paladins who join the reformed Knights of the Silver Hand must swear an oath to protect the weak, uphold what is righteous, fight against injustice, and act honorably [Quest: Champion: Delas Moonfang, Quest: A New Path].

The Brotherhood of Northshire

Although he spearheaded the formation of the Knights of the Silver Hand, Archbishop Faol also took it upon himself to reform the Holy Order of Northshire Clerics after the Second War as a new religious organization known as the Brotherhood of Northshire [Plaque: Archbishop Alonsus Faol].

The Scarlet Crusade

While the Scarlet Crusade was not officially founded until after Alexandros Mograine’s death, the xenophobic ideology that ultimately led to their split from the Knights of the Silver Hand began to emerge approximately a year earlier – around the same time Prince Arthas culled Stratholme [Ashbringer: Death is Contagious]. It started when the Knights of the Silver Hand, lacking the sufficient numbers needed to stop the Scourge, moved to recruit from other races. Some prominent disciples of the organization, believing that “lesser” races such as night elves, dwarves, and gnomes would pollute the order, refused to include any non-humans in their ranks despite the pleas of their compatriots that such a thing was necessary if they were to put an end to the Scourge threat [Ashbringer: Death is Contagious, Ashes to Ashes]. Disgusted at his comrades’ racist beliefs, the paladin Maxwell Tyrosus took many of his followers and left the Knights of the Silver Hand. Those remaining, including the likes of Saidan Dathrohan, Renault Mograine, and Brigitte Abbendis, went on to form the Scarlet Crusade [Ashbringer: Ashes to Ashes, Quest: Annals of the Silver Hand].

Although they started out thinking of other races as simply “unclean,” the Scarlet Crusade would grow much more dogmatic in their beliefs over time. They rationalized that because the Scourge had no restraints on their tactics, neither should they if they intended to triumph over them [RPG: Dark Factions, pg. 87]. As a result, the Crusade eventually came to believe that all outsiders were potential carriers of the plague and thus had to be destroyed [Page: Scarlet Monastery, RPG: Lands of Conflict, pg. 94].

The Argent Dawn

Following his departure from the Knights of the Silver Hand, Maxwell Tyrosus formed his own order that, unlike the Scarlet Crusade, would continue to preach the values of the Holy Light and accept all races. This new religious organization was known as the Argent Dawn [World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume III, pg. 103, Ashbringer: Ashes to Ashes, Quest: Annals of the Silver Hand].

Though the Dawn sought to adhere to the ideals of the Church of the Holy Light in a way that their compatriots in the Scarlet Crusade did not, the non-canon RPG asserts that they still strayed from the church’s established teachings in a notable way. Similar to, but far less fervent than the Scarlet Crusade, the Argent Dawn maintained that the church’s methods of dealing with their enemies was insufficient. They were convinced that since evil constantly changed, so too must the forces of good change to deal with them [RPG: Dark Factions, pg. 87].

Many holy organizations – namely, the Knights of the Silver Hand and the Scarlet Crusade – survived time and time again despite incurring heavy losses and undergoing massive restructuring. The Argent Dawn, however, ceased to exist as a faction entirely following its assimilation into the Argent Crusade during the war against the Lich King [Page: Argent Dawn].

The Brotherhood of the Light

The Brotherhood of the Light has existed for some years now, but its origins and why it was established are somewhat unclear. An old and likely outdated quest implies that the organization was formed prior to the Argent Dawn, whereas more recent sources claim that the sect was formed afterward and is in fact an offshoot of the Dawn [Quest: The Fate of Ramaladni, NPC: Crusade Commander Korfax Dialogue, RPG: Dark Factions, pg. 126]. While not canon, it may be worth adding that the RPG asserts the Brotherhood of the Light was formed a few years after the Third War, suggesting that it was indeed established after the Argent Dawn’s inception [RPG: Dark Factions, pg. 126].

Nevertheless, the Brotherhood was founded by a group of priests and paladins who, much like the Scarlet Crusade, held ideological beliefs that put them in contention with other sects of the Church. Where the Argent Dawn traditionally adhered to a strict code of morals and ethics, the members of the Brotherhood of the Light shirked such restrictions and did not consider themselves held in check by human emotion [NPC: Crusade Commander Korfax Dialogue]. While that makes it seem as if their ideals aligned with the Scarlet Crusade’s, the Brotherhood actually found the Crusaders to be without reason and overly zealous in their cause [Quest: Like Rats].

The Argent Crusade

After the events at Light’s Hope Chapel that culminated in many death knights gaining independence from the Lich King, Tirion Fordring took it upon himself to merge the Argent Dawn and the second iteration of the Order of the Silver Hand into a new order known as the Argent Crusade [World of Warcraft Chronicle Volume III, pg. 174, Quest: The Light of Dawn]. Although the Crusade would carry out many additional tasks in the coming years, it was initially founded with the express purpose of putting an end to the Lich King [Quest: The Light of Dawn].

The Scarlet Onslaught

Not dissimilar to the Argent Crusade, the Scarlet Onslaught was also primarily established to go north and obliterate the Scourge once and for all. The idea of a “Scarlet revival” made from an elite cadre of the Crusade’s most faithful remaining in the Eastern Plaguelands was first proposed by a man known as Bishop Street. It was only when the Crusaders arrived in Dragonblight, many months after their departure from New Avalon in the Plaguelands, that their leader High General Brigitte Abbendis officially sanctioned the Scarlet Onslaught [Item: The Diary of High General Abbendis, NPC: Lord-Commander Arete Dialogue].

Although Abbendis and the rest of the Onslaught’s leadership were killed partway through the war against the Lich King, the organization continued to persist well into Legion [Quest: Onslaught Envoy].

#world of warcraft #WoW #warcraft #lore #canon lore #world of warcraft lore #scarlet crusade #argent dawn #argent crusade #knights of the silver hand #arthas #arthas menethil #turalyon #tirion #tirion fordring

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