#all while being so kind and caring despite being an outlaw in the main story

[roaringheat]

YEAAA LONE WOLF <333

[athenawasamerf]

Feminism in Egypt, Part 2

FGM

FGM has a long, bloody history with African and Arab women. Some people say it originated in Ancient Egypt; others lean more towards it being a Bedouin Arab tradition. I’m not here to discuss the origin story of one of the most horrific human rights infarctions on earth. I’m here to talk about the current feminist struggle against it.

FGM was outlawed in Egypt in June of 2008, and a 2014 survey showed that a whopping 92% of married women and girls between 15 and 49 years old have been subjected to FGM (I will talk more about the inclusion of 15 year olds in official surveys of married women in a post about child brides), and that 72% of these crimes were carried out by doctors. In 2008, a DHS survey of women and girls in the same age range showed that 63% of them were in support of FGM as a practice. Of those 63%, 60% cited husband preference for ‘cleaned’ girls, and 39% cited religious reasons. All of these are easily googleable facts, but these things always sound so clinical when they’re presented like this. Cold, sterile, detached. So, let’s get a little deeper into it, shall we?

Girls in Egypt are mutilated anywhere between birth and marriage, but mostly before the age of 15. These are children. Every single year, we have cases of babies, toddlers, children, young women dying from botched mutilations and infections, especially after the 2016 criminalisation of FGM practitioners. Parents will take their daughters to backwater clinics, or have ‘doula’s who have no medical experience of any kind visit them at home, and cut into the flesh of their young daughters with non-sterile equipment, often without anaesthesia.

I’ve heard and read first-hand accounts of girls who got topical anaesthesia that wore out halfway through. I’ve heard and read first-hand accounts of girls who were dragged, kicking and screaming, and held down by family and neighbours forcefully as their bodies were torn into. Of girls who bled for days, of girls who had to have their legs bound to each other for weeks, of girls who couldn’t stop screaming in pain every time they went to the bathroom, to complete apathy and even disgust and anger from their families, of girls who were snarled at for making noise while their bodies were being torn away on their own beds, of girls who still have constant pain over a decade later, of girls who hate themselves and hate their vulvas, and hate their lives. Of girls who are suicidal, of girls who are terrified of marriage, who have trust issues, who can’t handle the thought of anyone touching them there again, after the first time being so traumatic and painful and horrifying. All of this is done while the family, and even friends and neighbours, celebrate in joy. It’s even tradition in some rural areas to take all the female children of the family to get ‘fixed’ together, dressed in pretty dresses and fancy shoes.

I’ve also heard of women who are asexual due to trauma, whose husbands rape them continuously, who are abused for refusing sex, whose families disown them for being such a disgrace, whose husbands divorce them and leave them for dead, whose husbands marry multiple women besides them, and they are left to fend for themselves, unable to get a divorce and move on, and completely abandoned by the people they trusted the most. They’re told the angels will curse them all night for refusing sex, but what about their trauma? What about their feelings? What about them, as people? Nobody cares.

So, how did we get here? There are 3 main reasons.

The ’’religious’’ folk will cite a (weak) hadith as their proof that FGM is a good, healthy practice. It goes that the prophet saw a woman going to get her daughter cut, and he told her to ‘not cut severely, as that is better for the woman and more preferable to the husband’. Apart from any implications of misogyny in this hadith, it has been disputed multiple times, along with a couple others in support of FGM. You can read more about that here.

Regardless of the truth of FGM having Islamic support, the reality of the matter is that a huge amount of actual, real life Muslim people cite these hadiths as their reasoning to mutilate their daughters, and everyone sees that as completely justified. The truth of the matter is this: Someone put these hadiths into the public conscience knowing full well they will be used to abuse, maim, hurt, kill women for centuries. Whether that someone was prophet Muhammed himself or later scholars, no one can actually ever know.

The second, more indirectly religious and directly misogynistic reason, is to ensure ‘purity’. You see, as I’ve talked about before and as many of you already know, women in Islam and in MENA in general are seen and treated as property. The family’s honour lies between a woman’s thighs. A young girl who speaks to boys her age in the most innocent context possible can be subjected to house arrest, beatings, forced stopping of her education, even death, for daring to put the family’s honour in jeopardy. A girl who has a boyfriend, well...

In a society that places so much value not only on women’s virginity, but also on their complete removal and separation from the male sex at any cost, it’s not very surprising that tips and tricks like using FGM to ‘cull a woman’s sexual desire’ spread like wildfire. Girls are mutilated to make sure they don’t become wh**es. This is said frankly, openly, it’s common knowledge. If you refuse to hurt your child in this way, you will be met with disdain and disgust, and even wails of despair, with shock, with animosity. “Do you want her to become like a prostitute and ruin your family name? Do you want her to walk around uncontrolled? Don’t you know what shame she will bring on you?” These statements are directed at girls as young as... in the womb, if you show your dissent early enough.

And the final reason is the least of them to hide under religious pretences, and the most misogynistic: Because this is how men prefer their wives to be.

You might think when I say preference here, I mean it in the way I mean, “Oh, I personally prefer brunette hair,” but you would be sorely mistaken. By prefer here, I mean demand. I mean a man could force his grown wife, through physical force or through abuse, to mutilate her body for his satisfaction. I mean that men will sneer at un-mutilated women. I mean that men will beat their wives on their wedding night to within an inch of her life for ‘cheating’ them if the wives are not mutilated. I mean men will suspect their wives of adultery and murder them, which carries a reduced sentence of ‘time served during investigation’, just for the simple act of having intact genitals. I mean men will divorce their wives on their wedding night for being unharmed, for being whole. I mean men will act so entitled to women’s bodies that they will always have the assumption that the ‘product’ they are ‘buying’ is cut to taste, and they will become violent and aggressive and murderous if they find out this is not the case.

I personally don’t know whether or not I’ve been mutilated. With such high numbers in Egypt, the likely answer is yes, but I genuinely have no clue. I am not allowed to ask about these things, or I’ll be seen as a loose wh**re. My parents would beat me up and they still wouldn’t allow me the dignity of knowing whether my own body has been altered against my will. I don’t know if I’ll ever find out.

The feminists fighting constantly for tighter regulations, for harsher punishments, for longer sentences; these women are seen as the spawn of the devil. Accusations of loose morals are thrown their way day in and day out. Death threats and rape threats (’that’s what you want anyway isn’t it?’) are hurled at them from every direction. They are silenced. They are ridiculed. But they are prevailing. This year, the Egyptian president has decided to alter the FGM laws to cover loopholes, and possibly to increase enforcement. He has also altered the charge set to doctors who perform FGM which results in death from manslaughter to first or second degree murder.

The problem, however, remains in lack of reporting. Ever since the criminalisation of performing FGM in 2008, and the setting of punishments in 2016 as a minimum of three months’ jail time, to a maximum of 2 years, or a minimum of 1000EGP to a maximum of 5000EGP fines (63.71 to 318.53 USD), and until 2018, and possibly until today, not a single mutilator had been convicted.

Imagine being fined as little as 60 dollars for the permanent mutilation of a little girl’s body. And even that is not happening.

People refuse to report the monsters who do perform this, despite a 2012 gynaecology convention condemning the practice, and calling it an inhumane act, and stating quite forcefully that it is not a medical procedure, and that it is an infringement on the human rights of women and girls, which medicine and medical ethics do not condone. And yet, the public opinion remains the same: this is their business, it is not our place to intervene. It is not our place to get this fine young man thrown in jail, or fined, for performing a ‘cleaning’ procedure, and besides, wouldn’t you rather they had a medical professional perform it, rather than an uneducated woman, or a barber, or a butcher? It is not our place to report this family and tear them apart -  what did they ever do to us that we may hurt them like this?

No one ever asks what little girls have ever done for us to fail them like this.

[rwby-necro-au-archive]

Ozpin Week

Day Six: Day Off/In Battle

@ozpinweek

Description: It’s no surprise that running a Necromancer academy can come with issues. Necromancy is outlawed in many parts of the world after all.

One such issue is the equally unsurprising amount of Pursuers that try to sneak into beacon. Good thing that beacon is made for this, by having what is essentially a maze surrounding it’s buildings. The pursuers most times end up getting lost due to this.

Perhaps it’s also good that a certain headmaster watches his academy and students like a hawk in case of such incidents.

“How upsetting, and on such a lovely day like today.” Ozpin sighed. It would seem that he had been swamped with sorrowful reports and countless uninteresting meetings all day. What he had truly wanted was to be outside or at least to be interacting with his students. But it would all have to wait until these reports and paperwork were finished.

Even though today had started off as it normally would, Him getting up, getting ready for the day, and then heading off to the academy, it still felt like it was particularly monotonous and dull. Nothing interesting had happened, hell even the students hadn’t done any of their usual antics today.

He shook his head, it’s not like any of them could anyways, they had term ending exams to study for. Although he couldn’t help but wish someone would’ve done something.

Knock Knock Knock

A gentle but firm knock was heard at the door. He could tell it was Glynda, it was the small, seemingly insignificant details that he focused on when it came to people. Even the way someone knocked on a door could tell you who they were.

“Come in, Glynda.” Ozpin called out cheerily.

The door opened, “I will never understand how it is that you know whose outside your door even before they walk in.” She quipped.

“I always did pay attention to detail did I not?”

“That is true. Anyways, you look like you’ve had the life sucked out of you. How much paperwork?”

Ozpin leaned back in his office chair “What on remnant makes you think that I know? Absolutely nothing interesting has happened today. Such a shame, it’s such a lovely day too, and here I am stuck doing paperwork.”

Glynda gave a sympathetic sigh, “You aren’t the only one. Despite that, that’s not what I’m here for.”

“Right, To the point. Is it something I should be concerned about?”

“Yes actually.”

His face became stern in response, “What is it?”

“A pursuer has decided to go looking for students to harass on premises.” She explained

“Why haven’t you or the other staff gone to handle the situation.”

She gave an eyebrow raise “Why?”

“My apologies but if they haven’t done anything yet then what would be the point in coming to me?”

“Fair. This one has been…..persistent. He refuses to “take the hint” and stay away from the school. He essentially mocks any staff that tries to get rid of him. Figured you’d be in more luck getting him to leave the students alone.”

Ozpin pinched the bridge of his nose. How annoying. Not just a pursuer but a pursuer with the gall to mock his staff and harass innocent students, his students. It’s no wonder she came to him with the issue, she’s most likely more frustrated than he is.

“Also, I figured since you’ve been stuck in here all day that it would be good to give you something interesting to do. Not to mention get some fresh air” Glynda smiled

He smiled back “I appreciate it. Now then, where is he right now?”

“Seemingly lost in the northern wing’s maze.” She said, she handed him a photo taken from security footage.

He thanked her before leaving his office. Sure, pursuers weren’t an uncommon problem at Beacon but that didn’t make their presence any less annoying.

What was more surprising was that none of them whom he himself had dealt with, have had the audacity to actually go to their boss to tell him about his so called “friend” being a necromancer. Although, what pursuer would ever want to admit to their boss that they ran away from a necromancer?

In fact they, to Ozpin’s amusement, started heavily embellishing their stories to the other pursuers about what he was like. Some tales painted him as a terrifying monster, some painted him as a roughed up intimidating man with unspeakable power, and some painted him as a different being entirely.

It had turned into a game for the headmaster, to see what stories the pursuer he was dealing with had heard. At least it made the job of getting rid of those pests more enjoyable.

Without fail though, every pursuer who had heard about him was surprised to see him in person. The man they had heard was a terrifying monster, a roughed up untouchable man, or a different being entirely, was in reality a dapper, polite, and well kept 6’8 man with a northern Atlesian accent and a love and protectiveness for children.

He quickly walked out the main buildings doors and searched around for the northern entrance into the maze. Once found, he set off towards it. As he walked through the crowd he was greeted by students, all of whom were most likely on their way out of the school, he gave a quick hello and wished them well on their way home.

“Of course a pursuer would choose a time like this. Easy targets.” He mentally noted.

Once he entered the maze, the rest was muscle memory. He knew every corner, every corridor, every alley, every brick, stone, and piece of concrete of beacon like the back of his hand. Knowing where everything was at Beacon was as easy as walking itself for the headmaster.

As he walked he also listened. Listening was important in a situation such as this one. Eventually, what he had been listening for was heard. A yell. He picked up his pace and followed what he presumed was a female students yell.

As he listened further, it wasn’t just the one student, it was a group of them, most likely friends, who this pursuer had decided to go after.

This pursuer seemed to be a real colorful one too, throwing slurs and disgusting innuendos at the girls. There were 3 things Ozpin specifically hated, Pursuers, Those who aim to hurt children, and Creeps. Unfortunately for this pursuer, he was checking all the boxes.

He reached a corner and peered behind it. There stood 5 female students, backed into a wall by this disgusting excuse for a man.

“I bet the guards will have some real fun with you bunch once you get to atlas.” The pursuer sneered.

Ozpin appeared out from behind the corner, standing behind and over the pursuer, “Well that’s not very nice, now is it?” He spoke cooly.

The pursuer jumped and turned around. Eyes widening in realization as he looked up at who was standing in front of him.

“Y-you’re the monster all of the pursuers were talkin’ about.”

“Why yes! That is me!” He said cheerily

“I-I ain’t scared of you! You aren’t anything like they make you out to be. You’re just some guy, I can take you!” The man yelled.

“Tch tch tch, none of you ever learn from one another, do you?”

“The fuck you talkin’ about?!”

Ozpin smiled and looked towards the students, “Now students, here are 2 lessons for you all. Looks can be quite deceiving, take this man here for example. He may look threatening, but in reality, he is weak. He is weak because he is letting his anger get the best of him, which is not a wise decision if you are going to engage in combat.

When you are angry during combat, you stop thinking about how to hit your enemy, and instead just think about hitting your enemy anywhere in general. This leaves you vulnerable.”

“Fuck you!”

“Oh dear, and it seems we have quite a vulgar man as well.”

“Why are you bein’ so polite? I thought you were supposed to scary.” The pursuer snickered

Ozpin laughed, a cold, merciless, and wheezy sound, no doubt from his smoking habit. “Well, my friend, What kind of an example would I be setting if I wasn’t polite? I’m the head councilman of a country, a headmaster, and a professor! It’s my job to make sure I’m setting a good example on how to deal with pests such as yourself.”

He looked over at the pursuer, “show time.” He thought. In a simple blink his eye colored changed from a warm, caring hazelnut brown to a cold and soul destroying green.

“Besides, I am a merciful man. I wouldn’t want to make more of a fool of you when you’ve already done most of the work yourself.”

The pursuer visibly froze, he mentally laughed “Everytime, without fail. I don’t think I’ll ever get sick of it.”

Ozpin turned back to the students and told them to go home. He had business with this pursuer that he needed to attend to. Who was backed against the wall and helpless now?

The pursuer continued to yell slurs and insults at the headmaster. Eventually, he took out a blade an managed to slice Ozpin across the cheek, causing the headmaster to stumbled back some.

Okay, maybe not helpless. But he surely was backed against a wall in a maze with him.

Once he regained his footing, Ozpin ungloved one of his hands as he gently touched two fingers to the wound, “Well, I’m impressed, consider yourself lucky. You’re the first pursuer to ever actually land a hit on me. Even if it was a cheap shot.”

The pursuer laughed victoriously, while distracted by his small victory, Ozpin grabbed long memory. Quickly shifting it into its shotgun form.

“Although,” He spoke.

He harshly shoved the pursuer against the brick wall, leaving the man slightly dazed and confused. Ozpin aimed long memory at the wall besides the pursuers head and stared down at the man.

“Hasn’t anyone ever told you not to bring a knife to a gun fight?”

[self-loving-vampire]

Ultima V: Warriors of Destiny (1988)

Summary

Ultima 5 is what you could call Ultima 4′s edgier but “cooler” sibling. The gameplay has gained in complexity, dialogue has been greatly expanded, and the ground-breaking system of virtues and morality from the previous game has been twisted by the tyrannical Lord Blackthorn following the disappearance of Lord British.

Ultima 5 also introduces more of a day/night cycle to the proceedings with the introduction of NPC schedules, enabling a level of world simulation that was very new at the time of release. It goes on to make good use of this system by casting the player in the role of an outlaw fighting against the new government, meeting with members of the resistance in the shadows, and going around the martial law that has been imposed.

Freedom

Just like in Ultima 4, you are dropped into an open world right from the beginning, and your tools to explore the world have been expanded. 

The inclusion of more complex systems also enhance the feeling of being able to interact with the world with less barriers, as there is now furniture you can use, barrels you can search, etc.

Like with Ultima 4, there is only one way to win and a list of absolutely required steps that must be taken to reach that victory, but the order in which these steps can be taken is rather flexible, allowing players to create more of a personal narrative as they follow clues they picked up on wherever their instincts or whims took them first.

It is worth noting that there are actually some optional quests dungeons this time around, which is always nice.

Character Creation/Customization

While it is very nice that you can import your character from Ultima 4 into this game, I would say that this aspect of the game has taken a step back in a sense even as it has made progress in other ways.

The eight classes of the previous games have been reduced to four: The standard Fighter/Mage/Rogue Bard trio plus the Avatar class the main character belongs to, which is an all-rounder. As before, there is not really any customization beyond equipment either.

However, the positive of this is that equipment has been greatly expanded from the previous game. While in Ultima 4 you were limited to merely choosing your character’s weapon and armor set from a very short list, Ultima 5 not only enlarges the list but also allows for equipping multiple armor parts (such as a helm or amulet) while also providing a secondary hand slot.

What this means is that two-handed weapons now also give you a trade-off between their big damage and the option to use a shield in your other hand, or even dual-wield.

This greater variety of equipment allows a greater degree of specialization for your party members, though by modern standards this still isn’t much. The supremacy of ranged weapons also continues here, as magic axes are undoubtedly what you should be equipping everyone with later in the game, and now that class does not restrict equipment every single one of your party members will end up in plate with a magic axe.

Story/Setting

This is, in my opinions, one of the most interesting things about the game. Ultima 5 takes all of the virtues from the former game and turns a corrupted form of them into the law.

The game is pretty explicit about this too. Early in the game, in the town closest to the shack you start in, you can find a man in the stocks together with his son. The man is being punished for failing to donate enough of his income to charity as the Law of Sacrifice demands, while his son (who is barely breathing at this point) is being tortured for not reporting his father to the authorities.

Throughout your travels, you meet many kinds of people. From victims, to resistance fighters, to supporters of the regime and everything in between. Throughout your interactions with these groups you will have to discern who can be trusted (generally easier than it should be since the bad guys tend to be meaner or even cartoonishly evil at times) and learn how to fight Lord Blackthorn and the Shadowlords who corrupted him.

The Shadowlords are, incidentally, the part of the story that I don’t quite enjoy. Fantasy is full of one-dimensional ancient evils and dark overlords. By making the events of the game the result of an unambiguously malevolent supernatural force rather than human failings of the type that are not uncommon in real life, the game makes those events feel more distant and less complex.

This very series already has had plenty of “Defeat this one evil force and everything will be fine” plots. They are generally devoid of the moral complexity that the series is now aiming to explore and I want to know what this game would have looked like without the Shadowlords.

Fortunately, however, this effect is not too pronounced. Blackthorn remains a misguided man with good intentions. He admires you a lot, actually, and seeks avatarhood himself. He has such a positive view of the virtues that he sought to enforce them by law.

(Then again, his actual plans for the shrines make this apparent idolization feel dishonest, or at least inconsistent.)

And there is a real type of authoritarianism that functions a lot like this. Even on this site there are many who would be in favor of things like surveillance, police brutality, and harsher punishments. Even on this site there’s a whole lot of people who seek to punish others over stupid things like shipping the wrong fictional characters.

The people I grew up with even went as far as yearning for a dictator who would unleash death squads to execute all the “bad” people. This is a wish that I still see in many people, even those who grew up outside of the circumstances of my country of birth.

This is not an error that humans need supernatural corruption to fall into.

Other than that, I find the dark twist on the existing setting from the previous game to make for a spicier world to explore. 

This is also the section where I should point out that Ultima 5 introduces a rather large and dangerous “Underworld” map that is easy to get lost in. While it is mostly barren, you do have to visit various parts of it as part of the main quest, and I just find the concept of a massive dark world beneath the earth to be a super interesting one (I mean, I have even run D&D campaigns based primarily in the Underdark).

I kinda wish there was more to it other than some items and a companion to collect. Something like a town would have been interesting.

Immersion

This is one area where the jump from Ultima 4 to Ultima 5 was massive thanks to the day/night cycles, NPC schedules, expanded dialogue, and even the addition of words of power to the magic system.

But the best thing I can say about it is really that it calls on you to actually roleplay and engage in the world as if you were actually there, at least to a degree, and it does so through a combination of atmosphere and gameplay.

You will not only want to be careful with your words when talking to certain people to avoid being reported to the regime, but you can also learn the resistance password and use it to get help and information from other members.

While these systems are all still pretty rough here, they still come together well enough to make this a lot more immersive than the average JRPG.

One thing that does feel really off is that the guards are not only superhumanly tough but you also lose karma for attacking them. They also behave strangely in that even though you are a wanted outlaw they don’t actually hunt you on sight, only trying to arrest or kill you if you refuse to pay tribute (as if they didn’t recognize you or your companions at all). This despite wanted posters.

So there’s definitely some rough aspects to the crime system in this game.

Gameplay

Massive improvements have been made in this area, and I don’t just mean the above-mentioned expansion of items and the addition of NPC schedules.

For one, enemies now drop things other than gold, such as food and armor pieces. The magic system has also been improved so that you can now mix multiples of a spell at once instead of having to do it manually every single time.

Additionally, spells are now cast using a consistent language of magic composed of several words of power, which you can chain together to produce effects.

But I would say that the single most significant improvement in the gameplay is the simple fact that most NPCs now have significantly more keywords that they react to in dialogue, including many that do not come up through normal conversation with them. The system is still not perfect, but you can have more of a conversation with characters now and switch from topic to topic relatively easily.

In terms of combat, you can attack diagonally now (only monsters could do that in Ultima 4) and random overworld encounters are much easier to avoid now, cutting down on what eventually starts to feel kind of like padding in the previous game (but see below).

Despite the fact that the material rewards from combat have been increased and items are much cheaper now, Ultima 5 is actually significantly more difficult than Ultima 4. Not only do you have less health, enemies also seem to do more damage.

Dragons and daemons in particular are a nightmare, as they can summon more daemons (who can posses party members) and are extremely durable. A single dragon is a very tough challenge for an unprepared mid-level party, and even after giving most characters magic axes they still prove tough to take down while also being extremely damaging. Trying to fight multiple ones at once without blowing powerful spells or glass swords is costly at best and foolish at worst. Dragons are best thought of as boss-level enemies probably.

I am pleased to report that the dungeon crawling is better in many significant ways. Not only are the graphics more pleasant and immersive but also fully cleared rooms no longer respawn endlessly the moment you step out of them (in fact, they may not respawn at all).

It is not all positive however. The descend and ascend spells seem to be nearly useless this time around and the spell to instantly exit a dungeon is gone entirely. This can make getting out of the underworld such a pain at times that you might even prefer to literally kill yourself in-game and lose some XP instead of doing that. Fortunately you can now dig up and bury moon stones, so you can create moongates down there to quickly escape that way.

There is one problem in terms of balance though. While obtaining gear is significantly less of a problem now due to many enemies dropping tons of torches, gems, and keys, your experience will lag far behind your itemization and your quest progress. This means that to actually reach the 8th level and unlock all of the ultimate spells you will need to either explore all the dungeons thoroughly while focusing XP on one character, or otherwise just grind a lot.

Enemies just don’t give enough XP for a smooth progression otherwise. This would have been solved entirely by making significant main quest events (such as finding the artifacts of Lord British or destroying the Shadowlords) grant experience, but no such luck.

This makes for a strange endgame where you’ll have so much money that you run out of worthwhile things to spend it on while at the same time still feeling forced to grind out enemies, even if you imported your Ultima 4 character for an XP boost.

You do want to have access to these 8th-level spells too, as the final dungeon can be brutal without them or items that replicate their effects.

Adding to the experience issue is the fact that you can’t level up at will in this game. You have to camp and hope that an apparition of Lord British will appear and level you up (if you have enough experience). He does not always show up, and as far as I can tell he does not appear at all if you sleep on a bed or camp inside a dungeon. It has to be out in the wild in the overworld (and possibly also in the underworld).

I wish leveling up was just not tied to him at all.

Aesthetics

As is often the case for this series, the game looks and sounds really good for its age. The jump from Ultima 4 is particularly notable, as the level of detail is on a whole other level, particularly within the dungeons.

As with the previous game, the aesthetic core of the Ultima series (after the first trilogy) lies in the virtues. While there is still a karma system involved, it is much simpler than having to maximize eight different virtues. The karma system determines how much XP you lose on death and how much shops charge you, encouraging players to behave (or at least atone for their misbehavior).

But the biggest impact on the feel of the game is the above-mentioned corruption and tyranny affecting the land. Some of my favorite moments were early on, when I was just starting to get involved with the resistance and investigating what was happening around the overworld.

That said, I think that if the guards did actually recognize you on sight and hounded you more aggressively after spotting you the atmosphere could be even better (assuming they were balanced a bit better).

I think some of the music some versions of the game have is quite good too.

Accessibility

This game manages to up the complexity from Ultima 4 while not being any harder to play. Chances are that if you’re importing your Ultima 4 character you will need only a little bit of adaptation to do fine in Ultima 5.

As before, you will need to take many notes throughout the game. More so than in Ultima 4 due to the greater size and density of content. However, if you played Ultima 4 and took notes for it, this is somewhat alleviated. The mantras for the shrines remain the same, and the world’s geography should be mostly familiar (though there have been changes there as well).

You will also still need to consult the manuals and map frequently, at least early on.

The difficulty has also increased dramatically. You will likely end the game with about 200-ish HP rather than 800 and every enemy is much more deadly. Both the early game and the final dungeon will challenge the improvident.

For these reasons, the game is not that easy for newcomers to pick up but I would not call it obscure or complex.

Conclusion

I would say that the positives definitely outweigh the negatives on this one. The story and setting are interesting even if I don’t agree with all of the decisions made in crafting it, and the rest of the game is usually tolerable at worst. Nothing nearly as annoying as Ultima 4′s Reaper and Balron sleep spam (in fact, a plot-relevant item you can find renders Reapers pretty much helpless).

My primary complaint about the game is that the balance is poor. You will end the game loaded with all the items you could ever want while struggling to reach level 8 with even a single character even after doing nearly everything you need to do before the final dungeon.

I know there is a remake of this game made using Dungeon Siege, which I have not played. I think this is a good thing and I’d hope that it fixes some of these issues, but even apart from that I wish there were games that set out to achieve the core concept of this game.

What I am talking about is an open world RPG in which you play an outlaw who must hide from the state and meet other rebels in the darkness, but with complex and mechanically-competent systems to enable all the interesting possibilities this should enable.

I do not assign numerical ratings to games with these reviews, but I can definitely say that I liked Ultima 5 better than Ultima 4. I think it is worth trying even today despite the late game grind.

[the-archlich]

. . .

I haven't posted much about Overwatch League in a while because no one cares. This isn't about esports, though. This is about an extraordinary personal narrative that anyone who loves a good story should be able to enjoy. One with so much dramatic tension it makes my bones tingle. The protagonist: Eui-Seok "Fearless" Lee.

Our story begins in 2017, before the Overwatch League is a thing. Tournaments are relatively small outside of Korea, with teams cobbled together from whoever can be found. In this environment, one team emerged as exceptionally strong, with Fearless at the head.

We move to 2018, halfway through the inaugural Overwatch League season. The Shanghai Dragons are 0-20, having lost Every. Single. Match. The org scrambles to right the ship while there’s still time. They look desperately for someone who can save them. They turn to Fearless. He gets signed, but due to visa issues he can’t make it to the US until 75% of the season is over. By the time he gets there, it’s too late to change the team’s culture of defeat. They finish the season with an astonishing 0-40. This makes them arguably the worst professional sports team (esports or otherwise) in the world.

Fearless stays on.

For the 2019 season, the team makes huge moves. He’s one of only 3 players out of 12 who remains with the team. They sign a roster consisting mostly of teams who were just the runners-up in the Korean minor league championship. Some of the brightest rising stars in the business. Everything looks set for a redemption arc. And then, mere days before the start of the season, Fearless becomes extremely ill. He has to return to Korea for medical care. The season starts without him. He’s replaced. That year Shanghai breaks their winless curse and goes on to have a relatively successful season, even winning one of the inter-season championships by knocking out the top 3 teams in a row. It’s an exceptional story; one that Fearless didn’t get to be a part of.

That did not stop him.

Once he was well enough, he was transferred to Shanghai’s minor league team, playing in China. This was a team almost as unsuccessful as their parent organization. Through a monumental effort, Fearless carries them to the regional playoffs almost singlehanded. Victory just barely slips through their grasp and the end the season in 2nd place, after losing the regional final in an unfortunate 1-4.

But Fearless proved himself and in 2020 he was signed back onto the main Shanghai roster. He had to split time with another player in the same position. But again and again, Fearless proved himself superior. As the tip of the spear, he led Shanghai to an extraordinary season. COVID doesn’t make him miss a step. Shanghai ends the regular season as the #1 team in the world, with a staggering 27-2 record. During the playoffs, they end up falling at the end, finishing in 3rd place. This would be enough for almost anyone else, but Fearless’s story wasn’t done yet.

The Dallas Fuel has struggled almost as much as the Shanghai Dragons. Despite signing some of the biggest pre-OWL stars in the 1st season they ended it in the bottom 4, barely above Shanghai. The end the season in 10th place (out of 12). Season 2 isn’t much better, ending in 15th (out of 20); Season 3 sees them in 13th (of 20). Major changes are needed. So major changes are made.

Remember the team Fearless played with before all of this began? Over the next couple years the other members were signed on to different Overwatch League teams. They were scattered all over the globe, having different experiences, learning different playstyles, and learning a lot of English swearing. Dallas, with the kind of deep pockets you only have if you’re funded by Big Oil, pays through the nose to reassemble the old squad, under their original coach. After 4 years of ups and downs, Fearless is reunited with his old friends. For once, Dallas really looks poised to make an impact.

And then once again, days before the start of the season, a player has to resign due to health problems. Not Fearless this time, but a specialist on the team. No one else plays the characters he does. There’s really no way to fill that hole. And no time to hire someone new, Dallas has to go on with it anyway. They lose their first game narrowly in a 3-2 against local rival the Houston Outlaws. It’s as bitter as defeats can get. They win their 2nd match but get creamed the 3rd. They win the 4th handedly but it’s against arguably the weakest team in the region. Mixed results. These 4 games are qualifiers for a tournament and they barely slid through thanks to some math in their favor after several other teams went 2-2.

But Dallas is in the tournament. The way ahead is terrifying. First they have to overcome the San Fransisco Shock, the championship team from 2019 and 2020. And if they somehow survive that, Dallas has to head to a rematch against their bitter rivals, the 4-0 Houston Outlaws. If by some miracle they win both, they make it to the tournament finals, playing against 3 other teams for the prize.

Everyone thinks that the Dallas match is just a formality before the Shock fight he Outlaws. Fearless has had enough of that. Leading the way as always, he absolutely demolishes the Shock, despite his counterpart on that team being regarded by many as the best in the world at their mutual position. The rematch against Houston begins. Once again, Fearless destroys everything in his path; despite his opposite number being an early candidate contender for rookie-of-the-year. Now, Gina and I are Outlaws fans (after Philly, obviously) so we were pretty bitter at that point, but the strength of this narrative won me over.

From the 12 teams in the western region, Dallas and Florida advance (after Florida wins a frustrating victory over the otherwise undefeated Philadelphia Fusion). In the Eastern region, the top 2 of 8 also advance. One is the Chengdu Hunters, a team that was previously sort of the beloved clown of the Overwatch League. They’re serious this year, emerging as the only undefeated team in Asia.

The other is the Shanghai Dragons.

COVID means that competition between east and west is hard. But there’s a solution: the University of Hawaii. A fiberoptic cable along the floor of the Pacific Ocean connects the University of Hawaii to servers in Tokyo. Dallas and Florida fly to Hawiai to play from the university. Chengdu and Shanghai connect to the servers in Tokyo. A brand new “minimum latency” tool is used to increase ping for the eastern teams so that it’s equal with the western ones in Hawaii, about 50 ms. Now lag isn’t an issue. The playing field is even and the two regions can battle it out in this tournament to see who wins.

With a first-to-3 victory condition, Shanghai narrowly beats Florida in an incredible 6 map series. I saw the whole thing and the two were within a hair of each other the whole time. Truly extraordinary. Dallas has to go up against the undefeated Chengdu Hunters. Dallas does what they did to other undefeated teams and beats them handedly in a 3-1 series. Now both Florida and Chengdu are in the redemption bracket, with a chance to rise from the grave and still claim victory.

This means that the fight everyone wanted to see comes to pass. Fearless and Dallas face off against his old team, the powerful Shanghai Dragons. What followed was somehow just as good as the Florida matchup. It’s first to 3. Dallas wins the 1st map. Shanghai grinds them to a draw in the 2nd. Then Shanghai takes the 3rd. Dallas narrowly scrapes out a win in the 4th. Shanghai crushes them in the 5th. So once again, it comes down to the 6th map in a first-to-3 series. Not only that, this is the 6rd time in a row Shanghai played 6 maps in a first-to-3. They won the last two.

Not this time.

Putting in an extraordinary effort, Dallas pulls it off. And I cannot stress enough, 70% of their success was due to Fearless being absolutely relentless. He looked like the most dominating individual in his position the game has ever seen. Already an MVP candidate only 25% of the way through the season. Any other time that would be the climax. But this story isn’t over. This story is too good to end there.

Florida beats Chengdu, weathering the weird magic the team has always possessed that occasionally lets them slay giants. They have their rematch against Shanghai, with the stakes incredibly high. Loser goes home. The winner goes on to face Dallas for the crown. Hungrier for victory than they’ve been since 2018, Shanghai obliterates Florida in a quick 3-0.

In a little less than 3 hours, Shanghai will play the rematch with Dallas. Fearless will once again face his old team, including his replacement, a highly respected player who goes by the extremely fitting name of Fate. Can Fearless do it again, leading his old friends to victory over his old team? Giving Dallas the redemption they never achieved, the same redemption he gave Shanghai last year? Or will he fall once again, after all of this?

There are 3 more tournaments like this in the season (not including the finals). Maybe this story will somehow become even more dramatic over the course of those. Impossible to say. But tonight, this year’s protagonist goes up against his final boss.

This is truly as good and dramatic a story as you could hope for. Whether this is an incredible personal triumph for Fearless or a heart-rending tragedy, it’s going to be one of those things that you never forget.

[wazafam]

Dragons have always been an integral part of fantasy and fiction, with many cool dragons gracing myriad television shows, movies, and books. The magical world of Harry Potter is no different, with dragons being one of the most feared magical creatures that exist in the wizarding world. Introduced in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, in the form of Norbert (or Norberta), many dragons have since then made an appearance in the stories.

RELATED: All The Patronuses Of The Harry Potter Characters

Despite being the most famous magical beast to exist in this world, even regular wizards do not risk keeping a dragon in their household and leave the care of these creatures to professionals known as Dragonologists. The primary reason for this is that dragons are temperamental and quite dangerous. The second reason is that even among wizards, not many know about them in detail or how to care for them. With many unanswered questions about dragons, it might make sense to learn some of the most interesting and lesser-known facts about these winged wonders.

10 Female Dragons Are More Dangerous

Amongst the many things that J.K. Rowling has made cannon about Harry Potter, is one fascinating fact about female dragons, as revealed in Fantastic Beasts & Where To Find Them. It is quite obvious that a giant fire-breathing animal with sharp claws and teeth is supposed to be dangerous.

However, as explained by Newt Scamander in his book, females are to be feared more than males. In fact, a female dragon is larger in size when compared to a male, and is arguably more aggressive. Despite the difference, wizards lacking specialized training shouldn’t approach either of the two genders.

9 There Are 10 Distinct Types Of Dragons

In the world of Harry Potter, dragons (like many other animals in the muggle world) have distinct breeds. There are ten most prominent breeds that have been classified.

These include the Chinese Fireball (also known as the Liondragon), the Antipodean Opaleye, the Hebridean Black, the Common Welsh Green, the Hungarian Horntail, the Peruvian Vipertooth, the Romanian Longhorn, the Ukrainian Ironbelly, the Swedish Short-Snout, and finally, the Norwegian Ridgeback. Although it is an infrequent occasion, mating between two different breeds has happened once in a while, resulting in the birth of a magnificent and extremely rare hybrid dragon.

Fanart by Kali Nelson, Dan Mumford, and Weronika Sobczyk.

8 Dragon-Egg Trading Is Strictly Prohibited

Being a magical creature, it is a given that dragons possess magical properties. In fact, many of their body parts such as scales, livers, blood, and even horns are utilized to make magical artifacts. Many powerful wizarding wands have Dragon Heartstring as their core.

RELATED: 10 Interesting Things Only Harry Potter Book Fans Know About The Marauder's Map

However, one of the things that have been strictly prohibited is the trading of dragon eggs. As written in Newt’s book about magical creatures, dragon eggs are in fact a Non-Tradable Commodity of Class A.

7 Dragon Breeding Is Also Strictly Prohibited

Being highly dangerous and temperamental in nature, even wizards fear these scaly fire-breathing lizards. As revealed by Ron Weasley when Harry tells him that Hagrid has always wanted a dragon, owning or breeding a dragon is illegal according to wizarding law.

This was a decision taken during 1709’s Warlock Convention; the breeding of dragons was not only outlawed because these creatures were extremely hard to tame but also because the risk of a wizard getting detected by a Muggle was much higher if he/she happened to have a pet-dragon lounging in his/her backyard.

Art from Pottermore.

6 Dragons Are Spread All Over The Globe

While some dragons are more powerful than others, it cannot be denied that each and every one of them is a rugged creature capable of thriving in the harshest of environments. Although their common habitats are mountains, dragons have been spotted in many different locations and climates all across the globe.

As the names of each of these dragons suggest- they can be found in places ranging from New Zealand, Australia, Wales, Britain, Norway, Hungary, Peru, Romania, Sweden, to the harsh and icy Ukraine. However, it needs to be noted that they are extremely territorial creatures, and seldom like to share their territories with others, including other dragons.

5 The Most Beautiful

Despite being dangerous creatures, dragons are magnificent in their own right, with some of these breeds deserving appreciation for their incredible beauty. The most beautiful among the different dragon breeds have to be the Antipodean Opaleye. Its scales are pearly and iridescent, and its eyes do not have pupils, housing multicolored and glittering eyeballs, which grant the dragon its distinctive name.

RELATED: Main Harry Potter Characters, Ranked By Character Arc

The Hebridean Black is also quite beautiful owing to its jet-black body with an arrow-shaped tail and stark purple eyes. Another dragon that is quite attractive is the Swedish Short Snout, known for its small size and silvery-blue scale.

Fanart by Kali Nelson and Weronika Sobczyk.

4 The Rarest

While the dragon population is closely monitored by the wizarding community, who sometimes cull and sometimes breed these creatures to sustainably maintain their numbers; certain breeds are rarer than others. The Norwegian Ridgeback is one of these rare breeds. However, the reason for their scarce numbers is the dragons themselves. Known to be strikingly aggressive towards their own kind, they have managed to kill many of their brethren, leading to their rare status.

However, the rarest is the Romanian Longhorn. Unlike the Ridgeback, the Longhorn’s diminishing population is directly caused by wizard-interference, who have unapologetically killed many of these grand creatures just to harvest their scales. The numbers of Longhorns had dropped so much in recent years that a program for intensive breeding was established by wizards to save this endangered species of dragons.

Fanart by Kali Nelson.

3 The Most Aggressive

All dragons are inherently aggressive. However, while some do not attack unless provoked, others are simply born dangerous. The most aggressive amongst the dragon breeds include the Hebridean Black, the Norwegian Ridgeback, the Hungarian Horntail, and the Chinese Fireball.

These dragons have been known to attack human populations, fight amongst themselves, carry off cattle and large dogs, and even fishing boats, on some occasions. The Chinese Fireball, however, has an exception to its aggressiveness, being particularly inclusive of its own species. As many as three Fireballs have been known to share a single region; something which is rare for these extremely territorial creatures.

Fanart by Kali Nelson.

2 Encounters With The Outside World

Most dragons tend to remain within their territories and unless provoked do not interact with the outside world. However, their penchant for human flesh, as well as certain notable incidents in wizarding history clearly indicate these creatures coming in close contact with the outside population. The most notable of these include the 1970s incident whereby a number of kangaroos were reportedly killed by a male Opaleye. The Ilfracombe Incident also happened because of the Common Welsh Green. In 1802 a Norwegian Ridgeback was reported to have picked up a whale-calf from Norway’s coast.

Furthermore, during the later years of the nineteenth century, a rise in the population of the Peruvian Vipertooth- known for its liking of human flesh- the International Confederation of Wizards had to intervene and exterminate a large portion of their population. Similarly, the Ukrainian Ironbelly has also had its native wizarding community keep a close eye on its activities and population after an Ironbelly reportedly ambushed and carried off a fishing boat from the Black Sea, back in 1799. Thankfully, the boat was relatively empty.

Art from Pottermore.

1 Unique Method Of Incubation And Raising A Young Dragon

Unlike other animals, dragons have a unique method of incubating their eggs. As revealed by Hagrid, from what he had read in the antiquated Dragon Breeding for Pleasure and Profit, dragon mothers do not keep their eggs inside nests.

To incubate them, and make them ready for hatching, these mothers are known to breathe fire on their eggs, an alternative of which could be placing them on direct fire or a burning-hot utensil hung over the fire, as Hagrid had done with Norbert. Upon hatching, a dragon chick usually craves dragon milk, which if not available can be replaced by a mixture of brandy and chicken blood. This concoction needs to be fed to the young dragon once every half an hour.

NEXT: 10 Most Powerful Witches In The Harry Potter Universe

Harry Potter: Interesting & Little-Known Facts About Dragons from https://ift.tt/3dhbnjY

[andrewmoocow]

Steven Universe: The Fantastic Mutants chapter 4: The Deadpool and Peridot Show (originally posted on August 29, 2020)

AN: Welcome back to The Fantastic Mutants everyone. This is a very special chapter because here I have a co-writer, whether I like it or not.

Surprise everyone, it's me Deadpool! Since this kid refuses to get his writing done quickly, I've taken it upon myself to "help" him out since no one can understand me better than me. Now then, back to my cohost here.

Yes, Deadpool of all people has decided to help me. Though I'd rather do all of this myself without any distractions.

Kinda like how this author's note is distracting us from the actual main event! Now let's just get this rolling already!

--

We begin on a talk show set in a blank white space, inhabited solely by a drop-dead handsome mercenary dressed in a beautiful shade of red with hints of black that was currently tearing it apart for no good reason. You know him, you love him, it's the sexiest anti-hero to have ever graced this dying industry, Deadpool.

"Thank you, thank you all!" yours truly bowed for an unseen audience as he finished tearing the set apart. "Now if all y'all have been lying under a rock since like, I don't know, '91, I am known as Wade Winston Wilson. I was created by Rob Liefeld and Fabian Niecieza for The New Mutants #98 in February 199-"

"Wade, I believe everyone knows who you are already." My white thinky-box, represented by a bold underline, cut me off. "You're already an Internet legend and of course, there's Ryan Reynolds."

"Can we just can the prologue already?" my yellow thinky-box, also represented by underlining but this time it was in italics. "There's gotta be people coming here solely for us who don't know what's going on."

"Okay wiseguys, you asked for it." the man who looked like a cross between Ryan Reynolds and a Shar-Pei underneath that creepily adorable mask replied. "So in case you guys are just joining us, this is a crossover with the modern classic with some of the most psycho fans in the Internet, Steven Universe." I explained. "Last chapter, our smol sunshine baby of a protagonist was kidnapped by the Master of Magnetism Magneto for some most likely evil science experiment by our favorite evil dictator with a superiority complex to compliment his tiny dick, Doctor Doom. In response, the Crystal Gems have decided that they need more hands on deck, and more characters than this story already needs."

"What does he want this to be, the DC Extended Universe?"

"I'd watch that mouth if I were you buddy." I called the dialogue box out. "Our author here has had experiences with those fans. If that Englishman can think he's free to call MCU fans Marvel Zombies, than he's free to have his own opinion. But someone that fanatical deserves to be called something similar, like a DCheep! Get it, because he's a sheep!"

"Can we please move on? This recap has already taken up two pages and I got real-life things to do." The author begged Wade.

"Okay, okay! Let's get this started already, keep your pants on!" the masked macho-man declared, marching off stage in an alluring fashion. "Cue scenery!"

--

Not too far from Westchester County, there was a shitty apartment where dwelled the hideously scarred human mutate, Wade Wilson. He was out like a light after the badass battle to the death he totally had last night, no joke. Not even a chimichanga could wake him up, and he didn't care that much for them. Yeah, no joke.

"Come on you sack 'a crap, wake up!" his blind, black, elderly roommate Blind Al groaned while fishing Wade out of bed with a snow shovel. "How much off-screen carnage puts you this much to sleep?"

"Enough for readers to get a glimpse of what I do in my spare time." Deadpool declared as he woke up, looking like he had a fantastic night's sleep. "Morning Al, off to do a crossover, see ya later!" he hurriedly greeted the old woman before leaving his room.

"Should I tell him he's not wearing pants?" Al muttered to herself. "Naw, he'll figure it out himself."

--

And figure it out he did. Immediately after that scene, Deadpool was wandering around the street fully clothed and ready to get this chapter over with.

"So, can we have our co-stars please show themselves?"

The author complied by dropping Connie, Peridot, Lapis Lazuli, Bismuth and Nephrite into the scene. "Wait, how did we get here?" Peridot wondered aloud. "And who are you?"

"Ooh, I get to hang with everyone's favorite character!" Deadpool cheered. "I've been writing up jokes about the fans I've been wanting to say for quite a while." He added to the readers while searching his hammerspace for cue cards. "Let me see, Molotov cocktail, big-ass cartoon bomb, reminder to sue Marvel & Capcom for leaving me out of Infinite, God knows how many machine guns."

"Uh, while you're looking for whatever it is you want, let me introduce myself." Connie introduced herself. "My name is Connie, pleased to meet you."

"Hey, can you put your cue-card search on hold and say hi to the kid?"

"Ah, here they are!" Deadpool declared as he fished a series of flashcards from seemingly his butt. "Been wanting to do this for ages." He said before clearing his throat, and he began to read off of them.

"Here are some complaints I have heard about Steven Universe. Complaint #1: literally no one can stay on-model because storyboarding is the devil. Complaint #2: Rebecca Sugar is a total butchphobic abuse supporter because she treats Jasper like crap and lets Lapis off the hook despite the fact that she's even worse."

"Please note that these are clearly not the opinions of the author. He's just been around Tumblr a lot and knows just how these so-called 'fans' think."

"Who said that?" Bismuth wondered aloud. "Oh hey, Bismuth!" Wade exclaimed as he just took notice of her. "That reminds me, Complaint #3: Making Bismuth an antagonist in any way, shape or form is racist because all minorities are pretty little angels than must be defended at all costs despite the facts that we're all human beings who have the potential to be complete balls to the wall sociopathic!"

"Okay, now you're just being used as a mouthpiece for the author. Hey buddy, can you stop him by introducing your version of the X-Force?!"

As a way to shut him up, the writer dropped the X-Force into the current scene on top of Deadpool. Their members, aside from Wilson, consisted of big names like Cable, Domino, Bob & Psylocke, to those who are only familiar to movie-watchers like Copycat, Negasonic Teenage Warhead, Yukio, Bedlam & Shatterstar, and even Outlaw & Fantomex!

"How did we get here?" Cable asked the other black-ops mutants as he got up. "Oh hey Natey, knew you'd come along sooner or later!" Wade greeted his cybernetic compadre. "I was just getting myself introduced to these characters that we'll be paired up with for this crossover."

"Hi, I'm Bob, Wade's best friend!" the HYDRA agent Bob cheerfully introduced himself. "Name's Domino." Neena Thurman responded.

"A pleasure to meet you, dearest jeune fille bleue." Fantomex greeted Lapis in a gentlemanly fashion. "You may call me Fantomex. "

"Charmed." Lapis replied.

"Wow, everyone wants Lapis! First Fandral, and now Fanto."

"Can you blame her? She's the writer's fave and top SU waifu! Favoritism much?"

"Name's Negasonic Teenage Warhead." Ellie Phimster introduced herself. "This here is Yukio." She added gesturing to a Japanese girl with pink hair and a big smile. "Hi there!"

"I'm Wade's girlfriend Vanessa, though a lot of people call me Copycat since that's my power." Vanessa stated. "Yeah, totally original."

"Call me Bedlam." Bedlam stated. "And this here is Shatterstar. Unlike the rest of us, he's an alien from the Mojoverse."

"And finally, these are Outlaw and Psylocke." Shatterstar gestured to the cowgirl and the ninja in the one piece. "Nice to meet ya." Inez Temple greeted. "Indeed." Betsy Braddock added.

"So, what brings you to my neck of the woods?" Deadpool asked Connie. "Don't give too much away, cause I already got a basic knowledge of what happened last chapter."

"Chapter?" Connie tilted her head in confusion. "Steven was kidnapped only an hour ago! What do you think this is, some kind of story?"

"You'd be surprised Girl-Who-Wasn't-Actually-Dressed-As-Gohan-In-That-One-Episode." The Merc with a Mouth grinned underneath his mask. Before anyone could move on however, a stereotypical overweight nerd who looks like he doesn't get out much wheeled in on an automated scooter with a plate of brownies in front of him. "And you are?"

"I am simply an SU Critical that wants to congratulate you for making my voice heard." The nerd congratulated Deadpool. "As a way of saying thanks, have some brownies."

"I get it! Deadpool won some brownie points!"

"Don't explain the joke dumbass. The punchline should be coming up now."

As Wade snacked on the brownies, he came to realize something was wrong with them. "Hey wait a second. Yo, stereotype! Why do these brownies taste like literal dogshit?!"

"That's my secret ingredient!" the nerd revealed, much to Wade's disgust and he angrily tossed the brownies on the ground. "It's to symbolize how I believe Steven Universe has gone bad ever since the barn arc ended since absolutely nothing can compare to the amazing character development Peridot got!"

"Oh, it's so nice to see someone notice my splendidness!" Peridot blushed as she felt humbled by the nerd. "Of course, then they had to devolve her into a mindless comic relief who only-"

"WHO ARE YOU CALLING MINDLESS COMIC RELIEF YOU CLOD?!" the small Gem shrieked furiously before she pounced on the basement dweller and began choking him. "I'll teach you to talk back to me immediately after giving my praises you hypocrite!"

As Peridot continued assaulting the nerd, everyone else watched in either shock, bemusement or in Deadpool's case, pride. "I think I want to be her new bestest friend already."

"But I thought we were friends!" Bob weeped sadly while Bedlam gave him a comforting pat on the head.

--

"And now it's time for a cutaway gag!"

"Cutaway gags? You gotta be kidding me, we're not Family Guy!"

"Just let the writer do his thing man, it's his imagination!"

--

"Come on Willy, I know you can do it!" a child version of Deadpool called to a whale in a scene that is clearly a reference to a certain all-time classic "Boy and his non-human friend" story. However just as Willy finally leaped over the rock Wade was standing on, he was immediately harpooned in midair and dragged towards a pirate ship manned by Captain Ahab. "Hey, wrong whale story Habbo Hotel!"

"After so many years of searching, that accursed whale is now mine to profit off!" Ahab and his crew celebrated their capture. "I'm talking sequels and an animated series to start, but the sky's the limit!"

"This ain't the last you'll see of me Old Thunder!" Wade cursed the sea captain as he made off with his prize. "I'll bring that whale home, just you wait!"

--

"Okay, that's a pretty unique idea for a gag. But seriously, back to the show."

--

"So, we're here because Magneto has kidnapped Steven with a bunch of Sentinels." Connie recapped to Deadpool while they were out and about in the city. "Now that you know what we're doing, can you tell us what you do?"

"I'm glad you asked Connie." Deadpool declared. "Allow me to explain the only way you Steven Universe characters probably know how. IN SONG!"

"Wait, a musical number, in a fanfiction?! Seriously?!"

"Hey shut it, this is gonna be good!"

"Lights please." Wade announced, shutting off the lights with a snap of his fingers, and turning them back on with another snap. He was now dressed as an Elvis impersonator with Cable, Domino, Bob and Copycat as his band. "What song do you plan on playing?" Vanessa asked her boyfriend.

"Just watch and listen." Wade responded, and began playing a parody of a classic movie song. "Here I go!" he started singing while Cable provided backup on the drums. "Woo! Ah-ha, ah-ha, let me show you what I work with!"

"Well Gambit was in league with a bunch of thieves, Cyclops has almost two thousand tales!" For his first act of insanity, the Regenerating Degenerate made about fifty longboxes filled with comics appear for Peridot & Lapis to rifle through. As soon as they discovered one with Wade fighting a vampire bat creature on the cover titled "Deadpool: The Gauntlet," the Deadpool on the cover continued the song.

"Well my friends, you're in luck cause up your sleeves, you got a kind of guy that never fails!" After Deadpool emerged from the issue Peridot was holding, he shot down various villains emerging from the other comics while singing.

"You got a real badass in your corner now, a real Wolverine type in your camp!" he then demonstrated by transforming his face into that of Logan's and then back again before letting bullets rain from above. "He can shoot, kablam! Bullets galore, all you gotta do is say my name!" Wade crooned. "And I'll say: 'Miss Peridot and Lapis Lazuli, what will your pleasure be?'"

As he sat the Gems down on a beach blanket, Deadpool then assumed pirate attire and set a heavy treasure chest on the ground. "Just give me a guy and I'll shoot him down, you ain't had a mercenary like me!"

Peridot began to excitedly open the chest while Lapis rolled her eyes. "Life's like a treasure chest," Wade's disembodied voice continued. When the treasure box was opened, the mercenary exploded out of it and made gold fly everywhere. "AND I'M GONNA BE YOUR KEY!"

Unlike her smaller partner, Lapis was still not amused. "C'mon, whisper to me what you want," Wade kept crooning, followed by splitting himself into four smaller Deadpools. "You ain't had a mercenary like me!"

"Contractors pride ourselves on service." One of the mini-Wades stated, and then they merged into the prime Wilson while spawning a lavish couch for his two guests. "You girls the hoss, the queens, the Shah! No matter what you wish, I'll be your bitch! How 'bout a few chimichangas?"

"Have some of Sample A, try all of Sample B!" Following the chimichanga rain, Peridot and Lapis were handed free samples at a supermarket before they found themselves on a velvet pillow held by Wade. "Anytime, any day, I'll help you babes. You ain't had a mercenary like me!"

A brief dance number then ensued between Deadpool and his hands. His left hand vocalized and the degenerate replied with an "Oh my!" When the right hand started singing, it was responded with "No no!" Both hands harmonized and they got a "Ha ha ha!" They sandwiched Deadpool between them as he peaced out with a "Zip-a-dee doo-dah!"

When Deadpool returned, he pointed straight at Peridot. "Give me a good badda-yadda-yadda!"

"Badda-yadda-yadda!" Peridot excitedly repeated. "Good, scotty-wop!" Wade then pointed to Lapis. Her reply was more unsure. "Uh, scotty-wop?"

"Everybody now!" Deadpool compelled the readers. "Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!"

"Bibbidi-bobbidi-boo!" the readers answered excitedly.

"Yeah, y'all got it!" Wade congratulated before proceeding to demonstrate his healing factor. "Can your friends do this?" he asked, casually dislocating his arms. "Can your friends do that?" he added, ripping out his spinal cord to bounce on it like a certain stuffed tiger. "Can your friends pull this?" With that, Wade tore his skeleton out of his body and started dancing the Charleston with it. "Out a little hat?!"

Suddenly, Wade's skeleton started filling itself with dynamite sticks on the verge of exploding. "CAN YOUR FRIENDS GO-" The human mutate was interrupted as the TNT exploded, and the clouds gave way to him beatboxing while doing a silly dance.

"Call me the Merc with a Mouth, I am always there. North, West, East and South! So don't sit there slackjawed, all buggy-eyed! I'm here to answer all ya evening prayers!" he continued. "You got me bona-fide certified! A hired gun for your charge affair!"

"I got a powerful urge to help you out! So who's gonna die? I really need to know!" Deadpool said as the song began to reach its climax while pulling a long strip of paper from Peridot's mouth and began rubbing his bottom with it. "You got a list that's three miles long no doubt. So all you gotta do is pay-wayho!"

For the final setpiece, Peridot and Lapis now stood atop a mountain of dead Marvel characters that are so obscure, not even the most hardcore fans knew a thing about them. "Miss Peridot and Lapis Lazuli, what will your pleasure be?" Wade asked tunefully. Peridot then picked up one body, and its head suddenly turned into Deadpool's. "Anytime anyplace, I'll help you babes."

A few bodies rose from the dead, only for Deadpool to shoot them all down. "You ain't had a mercenary, never had a mercenary." He concluded. "You ain't had a mercenary, never had a mercenary."

Bullets once again began raining, along with all sorts of violent weapons as the song finally ended. "YOU AIN'T, HAD A, MERCE-NARY LIIIII-IIIIIKE MEEEEE!"

With the X-Force performing a kickline to finish things off, Deadpool pulled on a string dangling from above. "You ain't had a mercenary like me!" A flickering neon applause sign dropped down, capping off the rather pointless number.

--

"Well, that was a waste of time that'll never be spoken of again."

"Sincerest apologies to Alan Menken, Howard Ashman and especially Robin Williams. He would've been 69 this year. NICE!"

--

"Okay you generic-looking monster, time to discover who you truly are!" Connie declared to a captured Sasquatch while she, Peridot, Deadpool, Lapis and Cable were dressed as a certain band of meddling kids and their voracious canine pal. Connie ripped off the Sasquatch's head to reveal that it was a mask worn by an evil parrot with a scar across his face.

"Zoinks! Like, it's a parrot!" Deadpool declared in a beatnik voice. "Wait, a parrot? Is that all?"

"Far from it mein friends!" the parrot answered in a German accent. Suddenly, large robots kicked the walls around them down. "Behold, my Nazi robots!"

"N-Nazi robots?" Lapis stuttered. "Jeepers, this is just getting too weird."

Deadpool then glanced expectantly at Cable, who groaned while pushing up his glasses. "C'mon Cabey, say the line!" he exhorted the cyborg. With a heavy groan, Cable quietly said "Jinkies, run."

"He's right, let's split up gang!" Connie commanded, and the crew were off to the races. After passing by the same flowerpot approximately five times because there wasn't that much in the budget, the five came across a hallway littered with doors.

When Deadpool and Peridot burst into one door, they came out of another not too faraway, same with the others. However at the end of a door, they came across a blue digital ghost with yellow eyes & teeth and a grainy laugh.

"Ruh roh, rit's Rames Rarles the Rindly Rohnny!" Peridot exclaimed, making every word she spoke begin with R before she coughed. "How does anyone speak like this?" she asked Wade. "Because speech impediments are funny!" the mercenary replied. "Now let's move!"

"Seriously, why can't I be Fred?!" Cable complained while emerging from another door with Deadpool by his side instead of Lapis. "Connie gets the cool ascot, and all I'm left with is this bulky sweater and a short skirt!"

"Well for one, that skirt actually looks pretty cute on you." Wade answered with a stupidly cheeky grin on his face. Before anyone else could charge through more doors, zombie cats and dinosaurs that could move without thinking came charging in. "Wow, Scooby-Doo became a lot weirder than when I was a youngin."

--

Returning to the real world, the Crystal Temps and the X-Force have just plowed through an entire armed squadron inhabiting a conveniently abandoned office building and now had their leader tied up in a chair. "We ain't gonna let all those hallway fights amount to nothing!" Wade declared holding the squadron leader at gunpoint. "We've tried every torture technique in the book: eating your own food, threatening your family, doing a silly dance to some awesome music and yet still you won't talk!" he exclaimed. "So let me ask this again! What does the guy who gave Magneto & Doctor Doom those Sentinels look like?"

"What?" the gunman asked nervously, causing Wade to smash another wall. "WHAT COUNTRY ARE YOU FROM?!" the mercenary shrieked. "What?" the captive continued squeaking. "WHAT AIN'T NO COUNTRY I EVER HEARD OF!" Deadpool yelled. "THEY SPEAK ENGLISH IN WHAT?!"

"What?" the man said a third time. "ENGLISH MOTHER-" Deadpool began, but then he noticed the T-rating and groaned. "ENGLISH YOU BASTARD, DO YOU SPEAK IT?!" he reiterated. "YES!" the gunman finally said something other than what. "THEN YOU MUST KNOW WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT!" Deadpool kept yelling. "WHAT DOES YOUR MASTER LOOK LIKE?!"

"We could just beat the info outta him and be done with it." Bedlam advised. "No need for all this Pulp Fiction parody crap."

"Was I talking to you?" Wade asked his teammate tersely before going back to his captive. "Now where was I? Oh yeah! Does he look like a bitch?"

"Now you're just skipping lines!" the gunman squealed in defiance. "What else do you wanna do with me?!"

"Okay, I got another question for you." Wade stated. "Have you had your prostate exam lately?"

"What?" the gunman muttered, fearing what could come next. "In fact, I got just the girl to help me." Wade declared. "Hey Connie, your MILF of a mom is a doctor right? Surely you must know what I'm talking about!"

"Yeah, pretty much!" Connie answered. "Here, lend me your sword. We might need to operate." Deadpool said as he menacingly snapped on a pair of rubber gloves. "Hey author, why don't we cut to another scene before this gets too violent?"

--

"Now then, what are we working with he-There it is!"

"AUGH!"

--

Elsewhere, a stereotypical shadowy figure watched from a large video screen as the X-Force tore through his mercenaries. "That masked maniac is onto us!" he growled quietly while pounding his fist on an armrest and turned his chair to face Ruckus, Gorgeous George, Hairbag, Ramrod & Slab, the Nasty Boyz. "You five track him & those rainbow women down and kill them all!"

"Yes sir." The Nasty Boyz complied and set off for the Merc with a Mouth. "Now where do you suppose the merc could be now?" Hairbag asked his fellow Boyz. "My best guess, he's probably at that Hellhouse run by Patch." the Southern-accented Slab theorized. "Hopefully they have room for his head as a trophy."

--

"Well here we are at Saint Margaret's School for Wayward Children." Deadpool decreed as he suddenly parked a limo that he totally always had in front of the mercenary dispatch center he loved frequenting. "I suggest you try not to look at some of its inhabitants funny, some of them can get a little ballistic."

Entering the bar, the two teams had all eyes on them by all the other mercs at the establishment. "Uh, hello there." Connie nervously greeted one of them. "I don't think you're old enough to be here little girl." The mercenary replied ominously. "Don't worry Jessica, they're with me." Deadpool told the larger man. "So, where's Weasel?"

"Right here old buddy!" the bespectacled bartender called for Wade. "Hey, Weasel!" Wade exclaimed to his old friend while sitting down at the bar and exchanging a fistbump. "I see you're doing well Poolboy." Weasel said to his friend. "And who's the green midget with you?"

"This is Peridot, a member of the Crystal Gems." Shatterstar introduced Peridot. "Oh, you mean those rock ladies that creamed those Chitauri only to get creamed by Thanos?" Weasel asked, making Peridot pretty mad. "Hey, we creamed Thanos right back!"

"We're looking for information sir." Connie said to Weasel. "A friend of mine has been captured by Magneto & Doctor Doom using those Sentinel robots, and we want to know where they've come from."

"You want confidential info little girl?" the barkeep stated. "Go see Multiple Man over there at that poker table, he's usually the guy to talk to since he's a detective."

"Yet one mystery he can't solve is the mystery of why he can never get his own movie."

"ZING!"

At a nearby poker table, Jamie Madrox and some of his duplicates were playing cards with the albino mutant Caliban, and the four Jamies clearly had the upper hand. "All in!" one of the clones declared shoving his chips into the pot. "I know you are cheating Madrox." Caliban informed his opponent. "I mean, there are literally four of you!"

Just then, Deadpool abruptly shot one of the clones dead and sat down where he once was. "Deal me in." he simply declared as if nothing happened. "Caliban welcomes you Mr. Pool." Caliban nervously greeted the regenerating degenerate. "And who is your little friend?"

"You may call me Peridot, the suave, attractive and positively adorable leader of the Crystal Gems!" Peridot introduced herself arrogantly. "So, you more members of the X-Men? Haven't seen you around the mansion."

"Actually, we're members of a different team of mutants." Madrox replied, while his surviving doubles sadly carried their dead comrade away. "There are actually quite a lot of them you see. X-Factor; the one we're a part of, X-Statix, Excalibur, Generation X, the Morlocks and most famously Alpha Flight."

"Half of them sound so late 20th to early 21st century." Peridot commented. "I mean, X-Statix? Talk about totally cool dudes!"

Suddenly, there was a knock at the door. "Is this Saint Margaret's? We'd like to have a word with the owner." A voice came from the other side, catching all the patrons and employees off-guard. All was quiet, but then the Nasty Boyz came crashing through the wall instead of the door. "LET'S GET NASTY!" they all cried out, springing into action.

"Alright, what the shit is going on here?!" Bob "Patch" Stirrat, the elderly owner of Saint Margaret's growled, emerging from another room while stroking his big bushy mustache. "Oh god, it's the Nasty Boyz."

"The Nasty Boyz?" Peridot and Lapis repeated in unison before they laughed at the evil mutant team's name. Suddenly, the wood tables of the bar came to life and changed their form thanks to Ramrod, who used them to restrain everyone aside from Deadpool. "Okay boys, frisk him."

On Ramrod's orders, Gorgeous George used his shapeshifting powers to grab Wade by the ankles and dangle him above the ground. "Let's see what he's got here." Ruckus muttered, fishing through the belongings dropped as Wade was shaken up and down. "Various pistols, swords, nunchucks, staves, forks, a bazooka."

"Most of those were from a Ninja Turtles convention I went to last year." Wade revealed. "Don't know where the bazooka came from."

"Rubber chicken, five month old bag of pizza pockets; that are still warm," Slab continued for his teammate. "Ryan Reynolds's phone number, large collection of nude selfies from Thumbelin-WHAT?!"

To Slab's absolute shock and fury, he found an overfilled file of lewd pictures taken by his sister Kristina Anderson with her phone number on it, along with a message saying "I bet you want more, my raging sex machine!" Crushing the file in his hand, Slab furiously glared at Deadpool. "Wilson, you son of a bitch!"

"Geez Chris, I thought you had a sense of humor." Wade grinned cheekily. "After all, SHE'S YOUR SISTER!" Then like Thor returning Mjolnir to his hand, the mercenary wiggled his fingers to call one of his katana blades back and free himself from Gorgeous George before rescuing his friends. "SSSSSSmokin'!" he hissed before spin-dashing out of the bar.

"After that degenerate!" Hairbag exclaimed while Slab frothed in wordless rage and the Boyz gave chase, leaving the bar in tatters. "Hey, which of you assholes is gonna clean this up?!" Patch exclaimed, but then he answered his own question by handing Weasel a broom.

--

"Everyone, to the Deadpoolmobile!" Deadpool exclaimed as the X-Force and Crystal Temps piled into the limousine from earlier. "Where did you ever get this car anyways?" Bismuth asked him, and he replied. "Don't think about it!"

Far across the city, Robert Kelly was left facepalming and a colleague of his scratching his head when they discovered that one of Kelly's limos was missing, its place taken by a graffiti message saying "I O U".

"I hate that Deadpool." Senator Kelly groaned.

--

"You get back here this instant you red-masked c-" Slab called for Deadpool as the Nasty Boyz chased them in a stolen taxi, but his cursing was cut off by Deadpool popping out the sunroof of the limousine to open fire on them.

"Wait, if Deadpool is up there, then who is driving?" Connie asked the group, and that's when Yukio made a shocking realization. "Oh my god, Demon Bear is driving!" she exclaimed pointing to a demonic bear that was taking the wheel. "How can that be?!"

--

"That's right folks, Lawrence Abrams is here to report that the insanely infamous insane mercenary Deadpool has started an intense car chase where he's hijacked a limo belonging to Senator Robert Kelly and is being chased by a group of other mutants called the Nasty Boyz." Lawrence Abrams said on the television at the Baxter Building, where Garnet, Pearl, Colossus and Wolverine had now caught wind of the event. "And there's also some kinda bear driving the limo for some reason. Why's there a bear?! Who gives a damn! And now onto Sally Floyd with politics!"

"Deadpool." Colossus glowered in embarrassment. "Come my friends, we must go and handle this crisis ourselves." He declared while preparing to leave the building. "But you let Connie go on that mission for her optimism." Pearl stated to the metal mutant while setting Reed and Sue's young son Franklin Richards on the floor.

"We know Pearl, but that maniac is a whole 'nother level of unpredictable." Wolverine grumbled. "And there's a high chance Connie's life is at risk here! Right Garnet?"

"Logan is correct. I can see multiple paths where things go horribly wrong." Garnet agreed with Logan. "Oh, you're leaving already?" Franklin's older sister Valeria asked them. "Mom and Dad were just about to introduce you to H.E.R.B.I.E."

"It's alright Valeria, they still have friends to help." Susan assured her daughter. "Go on Gems, we'll catch up with you back at the mansion."

"It's been a pleasure to be shown around the Baxter Building and meeting the kids Sue." Pearl said gratefully and shook the Invisible Woman's hand. "I especially like how Franklin reminds me of Steven."

"Bye Ms. Pearl!" Franklin said goodbye by hugging the tall Gem's leg. "Oh, goodbye to you too Frank." Pearl replied. "Hey, what about me?!" the Four's AI H.E.R.B.I.E exclaimed irritably. "Don't I get anything to say?!"

--

"Oy Cain, you gotta check this out!" Black Tom called to Juggernaut while he was watching TV. The Brotherhood of Mutants had stopped to refuel their ship and Black Tom had run off on his own when he discovered a TV shop playing the same news report of Deadpool's car chase. "What say we give Deadpool an old one-two before Mags finishes up?"

"You son of a bitch, I'm in!" Juggernaut exclaimed eagerly, giving his teammate a fist-bump that knocked Tom to the ground. "You okay there?"

--

"We have your limousine surrounded! Come out of the vehicle with your hands in the air!" a police officer barked into a bullhorn as they had Deadpool and pals backed into a corner. "I would make a police brutality joke, but even I know that would be too soon." Wade said to the readers as he screeched the limo to a stop, making donuts on the street and damaging numerous police cars in the process.

"Okay, now you're just either showing off or defying us." The cop with the megaphone japed. Just then, a mighty thud briefly shook the ground. And another. And another. And another. And-

"Quit stalling writer, we know who it is! It's the goddamn Juggernaut!" Deadpool interrupted the third-person omniscient narrator. "Literally everyone and their goddamn long lost relatives know who he is!" The mighty Juggernaut continued inching closer to the fanboying mercenary while the police scattered out of fear of him and Peridot poked her head out the sunroof to see what was up.

"Uh, Wade?" the petite Gem squeaked nervously. "You know who that is right?"

"Didn't I just say that it's ol' Juggernaut?!" Wade exclaimed to his new best friend. "Oh, the things I could say about how much of a badass he is! This guy has beaten the shit outta Cyttorak, the Thing, Colossus, Blob & Thor and even called banging She-Hulk a stalemate! Maybe, that last one was actually a cl-"

Before Deadpool could finish the sentence, Juggernaut grabbed him by the neck with just two fingers and brought him very close to his helmeted face. "Hello Wade." He beamed callously. "Hey Cainy, is that new toothpaste I smell?" Deadpool greeted him nervously. "What flavor is it this time, Feeling Bad About Your Shitty Mutant Powers So You Get New Ones from Cyttorak?"

"Goddamn he went there." Black Tom muttered, only to receive a glare from his partner.

"Deadpool!" Garnet called for the Merc with a Mouth as she, Pearl, Colossus and Wolverine entered the scene. "Oh, hey guys." Peridot nervously waved to her fellow Crystal Gems. "What brings you here?"

"We came here to take control of this current situation." Pearl explained. "No matter how much you want to swear and kill and all sorts of other crass activities, we still need your help in saving a friend of ours."

"I appreciate you want me to be more involved in this story Mordecai," Wade said to Pearl. "but can this wait a bit? I'm currently in the middle of worshipping the Juggernaut, bit-"

However within seconds, Deadpool was mashed into the ground by Juggernaut, leaving only a few scattered body parts lying in a puddle of blood. "Oh, so rude!" his disembodied head declared indignantly. "And to think we were buddies at one time Marky-Mark." He then turned to face the audience one last time before the degenerate would meet his not very possible untimely end. "But since I'm literally nothing but blood, my head, a few fingers, an upper arm and my dick right now, let's lighten the mood a little with some more gags, shall we?"

"As if we didn't waste enough time already."

--

"I love the smell of 372,844 pancakes in the morning." Deadpool declared as he flipped his last pancake and added it to the growing mountain of pancakes. "Smells like victory!"

"Why on Earth would you need this many pancakes?" Bismuth asked while Deadpool turned on the ceiling sprinklers to pour maple syrup all over each and every one of them at once. "Well, that's pretty clever I'll admit."

--

"Okay Peridot, ace this test and you're on the team!" Wade, now a coach for the girls' swim team comprised of Lapis, Bismuth, Domino, Warhead, Yukio, Outlaw, Copycat, Psylocke & Nephrite, announced to their soon to be newest member Peridot while she prepared to dive.

"This is it Peri, get this right and you'll make everyone proud!" Peridot muttered to herself while adjusting her cap and gazing at Lapis. As soon as Coach Wade blew the whistle, Peridot leaped into the water…and soon began struggling to keep herself afloat in a very exaggerated manner. "AAAAAGH, SOMEONE HELP! LIFEGUARD, COACH, SOS! THIS WAS A HORRIBLE IDEA!" she shrieked for help before the chlorinated water won out and she sank to the bottom.

"I'll save you!" Cable roared while assuming the role of a lifeguard, preparing to jump in the water after her when Wade stopped him. "No no, wait for the punchline."

When Peridot finally breached the surface, she dramatically gasped for air and then frantically paddled towards the end of the pool, grabbing the ledge with a serious expression on her face. "So, how do you like my swimming?" she asked, acting like nothing had happened. However, no one else was there to answer except for Deadpool. "Hey, where did everyone go?!"

"They jumped ship an hour ago because they were tired of waiting." Wade answered. "But you still get on the team cause you really made me laugh."

--

"Gotta say Lapis, we got quite a team here." Deadpool remarked proudly to his fellow baseball player Lapis. "Uh, yeah, they're great." Lapis nervously replied while failing to get the joke. "So, who's on first?"

"Yeah, and what's on second." Wade responded eagerly. "No, I want to know who's on first." Lapis continued asking. "Exactly! We already established that who's on first, what's on second and I don't know is third."

"Wait, do you not know their names or are those seriously what they're called?" the ocean Gem asked, causing great irritation for her team captain. "Dammit Lapis, you spoiled the punchline!" he reprimanded her. "In fact, this whole Abbott and Costello tribute was just an excuse to see you dress up as Bob again! I mean, can you blame me with those shorts?"

"Abbott and who now?" Lapis remarked with a raised eyebrow.

"You really need to get out more." Wade deadpanned, lowering his eyelids in response.

--

"Welcome back one and all to Celebrity Jeopardy." Pearl announced, now dressed as Alex Trebek. "Now before we proceed, I'd like to apologize on the behalf of our contestants to all viewers with rather unusual lifestyles. We here at the studio refuse to judge anyone based on how they live, and sincerely hope you accept our apologies. Now then, let's proceed with our contestants."

Deadpool was in the podium closest to Pearl, now dressed as Sean Connery. "Mr. Connery is in first place with only -1 dollar." Pearl began recapping for the viewers at home. "About as many points as your mother gave you!" Wade cackled.

"Classy." Pearl responded crossly before shining the spotlight on Lewis Black, aka Peridot. "Mr. Black now has a score of, shockingly enough, -6,000 dollars." She explained, prompting the small Gem turned abrasive comedian to climb up on top of her podium in the middle. "Is that enough to buy my own bus?"

"And finally, Josh Brolin, now having raised 35 dollars." Pearl concluded while Juggernaut assumed the role of the aforementioned actor many may know as a certain Mad Titan. "I don't feel so good." Cain muttered. "Damn, walked right into that one!"

"Very well then. With introductions out of the way, let's move onto the board." Pearl stated, moving her eyes from the podiums to the categories. "Tonight our categories are Annals of History, Potent Potables, What Bulls Hit, Jokes, Popular Foreign Television, Places with Names Ending in 'Nia' and Video Games." Deadpool then pressed his buzzer. "Mr. Connery, you have the board."

"I'll take What Bullshit for $500 Al." Wade announced with a stupid grin on his face, clearly misreading the category he had chosen. "And I can tell you plenty of things that are bullshit."

"No, it clearly says What Bulls-" Pearl began to correct the masked contestant before she came to a realization. "Whoa! Okay, walked right into that one. Anyways, the question is: "It is commonly believed bulls are enraged by this color". Mr. Connery?"

"I'll tell you something I've hit recently." Deadpool chortled. "Hit up a few bars over the past week while hanging with your mom. She and I had a wonderful time, if you get what I mean! Wink wink, nudge nudge."

"I don't even have a mother!" Pearl ranted hotly. "And can we please return to what was happening earlier?! These pop culture references are nothing but a waste of time!"

"Thank you!"

"Boldface, you ignorant slut."

--

"Oh no, Wade!" Peridot yelled for Deadpool as she dashed out the limo to check on the puddle of blood and body parts that was once her new friend. "Please speak to us you clod, you can't die like this!"

"That's because I can't!" Deadpool proudly declared and in a beautiful Disney-like spectacle, slowly reassembled himself until he was the full-bodied lovable manic once again. "Healing factor baby! Got it when some asshole tried to cure my cancer, along with looking like a walking tumor."

"Uh hey, remember us?" the Nasty Boyz cried out in unison, catching the merc's attention. "Oh right, you guys. Gotta wrap up the chapter somehow." As a result, Wade opened fire on the evil mutants, shooting them in the arms, kneecaps and especially their dicks. "Oh and Bismuth, Peridot? You guys got Black Tom & Juggies. I'll take Garnet and Pearl!"

"You got it, I guess." Bismuth complied before she and her little friend squared off with Cassidy & Cain, leaving Wade alone against the senior Crystal Gems.

"Hey, what about us?" Lapis asked the writer, who responded by typing, "Didn't think that far ahead. You guys can just do crowd control."

"Okay Q-Bert and Drinking Bird," Deadpool exclaimed. "you two may have thousands of years of battle experience on your show but in terms of franchise ages, I've been doing this for far longer! There was even a graphic novel trilogy where an actually insane version of me killed the rest of Marvel, tons of classic literature characters and even other versions of me!"

"Do you have any idea what he's saying anymore?" Pearl asked Garnet. "I'm not sure. I fear he may be too unpredictable for us to comprehend!" Garnet answered fearfully. "You can try if you want." Deadpool beckoned them with a silly dance. "But I can assure you that hilarity will ensue!"

Pearl leaped at the Merc with a Mouth, but she was quickly denied a hit when Wade did a pirouette and kicked her in the back, sending her flying into a lamppost. "See, what did I tells ya?!"

Garnet tried her hand at attacking by enlarging her gauntlets & launching them at her foe, but they proved to be useless against him. Deadpool then rapidly fired his gun at Garnet, but she blocked all the bullets with her gauntlets and then finally moved so fast, not even Deadpool could catch her and was punched in the face.

"Wow okay, you got the guts!" Wade yelled while readjusting his head from the hit. "Seems like I really am a bit outmatched by you Garnet. Or maybe a certain someone just wants to make things fair!"

"Come on you maniac, what else can you throw at us?!" Pearl asked pointing her spear. "Oh what else can I throw?" Deadpool replied, letting out a sinister giggle while wearing a pair of shiny glasses and clasping his fingers together. "Let me show you!"

Whipping out his katana blades, Deadpool laughed maniacally while using them to tear the background apart, leaving nothing but a blank white space behind. "WELCOME CRYSTAL GEMS TO MY TURF! I PRESENT TO YOU THE FOURTH WALL, WHERE LOGIC IS JUST AS ILLEGAL AS JAYWALKING!"

"This is starting to remind me of that Uncle person." Pearl muttered in awe. "I thought we promised to never speak of that man again." Garnet instructed the former servant. "Well if he wants to make jokes and talk to the audience, then so can we."

When the two Gems joined hand, there was a bright shimmer as the pair merged into the returning glamorous Sardonyx. "Ladies, gentlemen and everyone in-between, the Gem Hostess with the Mostest has finally returned!" the fusion of Garnet and Pearl announced. "And it seems we have a very special guest star today."

"Sardonyx, huh?" Deadpool muttered while scrolling through the Steven Universe wiki for statistics. "Oh I see, she's here because we can both break the fourth wall!"

"A worthy opponent for you I must say!" Sardonyx chortled before smashing Deadpool in with her hammer. "Of course you realize this means war!" Wade roared, proceeding to whip out numerous cartoon guns, launching them all at once. "RATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATATA-RATA!" he screamed while launching lead at his fusion foe, following up with a declaration of "Omae wa mou shindeiru."

"N-NANI?!" Sardonyx cried out in shock before she spontaneously combusted with a cry of "HIDEBU!" However, the explosion cleared up and she was perfectly fine. "Psyche! Hammer time!"

Before Sardonyx could hit Deadpool with the hammer again, he disappeared into a cartoon hole like it were a solid object and reappeared out another. "Ha, that Spot douche should take notes from-OH GOD!"

"Anyone up for Whack-A-Mole?!" Sardonyx exclaimed, proceeding to whack her opponent multiple times with her hammer before he vanished and popped out another hole. And another, and another, and another, and another, until the hiding began to tire him out. "Jesus she's good." Wade panted, and then he began to make a plan. "I swore that I would never use this the moment I stole it from those schmoes, but I'm left with no choice!"

Sticking a hand up his red-clad butt, Deadpool pulled it out while holding a small black jewel that seemed similar to the Infinity Stones. "Ough, I also swore to never use it again because looking for it is a literal pain in my ass!"

"That Infinity Stone isn't canon!" Sardonyx objected while sounding like a stereotypical nerd. "Oh it may not be canon my dear, but we're in the Fourth Wall where anything could happen." Deadpool explained deviously. "With this Continuity Stone, I could warp all reality to my whims! I could use it to go back in time and erase One More Day by preventing Civil War from happening, or maybe beat the shit outta that Judas Traveller prick and his butt-buddies! But what I plan on doing now is using this stone to erase you from this reality once and for all!"

"Oh no, I don't feel so good!" Sardonyx dramatically announced as she felt herself fading away. "I'm melting! Melting! Oh what a world, what a world!" With that, the fusion finally vanished and presumably Garnet & Pearl as well. As Deadpool let out a heavy sigh, he suddenly realized that the Continuity Stone was now missing. "What the?! Where did it go!?"

"Looking for something Ninja Spidey?" a familiar voice rang out. Sardonyx was now back to normal and smugly held the Stone in her hand, setting it down like a golfball and swinging it at Deadpool's eye, causing his body to explode.

"Can I at least get one F-bomb in Mr. Author Man? Please?" Wade begged the author by putting on his best puppy dog eyes until his disembodied head landed in one of Sardonyx's hands. "To be or not to be," she began quoting Shakespeare. "That is the question."

"I got a question." The mercenary's head growled angrily. "On a scale from one to ten, how much do you think I FUCKING hate you?"

"Watch the mouth sonny, children could be reading this!" Sardonyx chortled. "Now then, let's finish this chapter!"

--

One bypass of the chapter break later, Sardonyx and the defeated Deadpool were now out of the Fourth Wall and back in the real world where the Nasty Boyz, Juggernaut & Black Tom were now nowhere to be seen.

"Okay, I give up!" Deadpool complained while his body began to regenerate. "I'll go with your stupid plan! Didn't really need to treat me like how Pearl killed that one Irishman during the Easter Rising."

"It was an accident!" Pearl exclaimed as she and Garnet defused. "And how did you possibly know?"

"But before we move onto the next chapter, can we make a quick stop first?" Deadpool asked. "There's a joke I think needs resolving."

--

"You'll never take the whale from me Wilson!" Captain Ahab exclaimed as he engaged in a swordfight with the dread pirate Straw Hat Deadpool and his motley crew. "I'll surrender when I get eaten alive!"

"Funny you should mention that Habbo." First Mate Peridot sneered before she whistled loudly for Willy to breach the surface, breaking most of Ahab's ship and swallowing him whole. "I'll get you for this Wade!" Ahab shrieked vengefully. "You haven't seen the last of me!"

When Ahab was finally swallowed, Willy gave the pirates his farewells and dove back into the water, free again at last.

"What did parodying both Free Willy and Moby Dick have to do with anything?" Pearl asked Straw Hat Deadpool. "You know what? After what I've experienced, I don't think I want to know."

--

At long last, the chapter is done! Good thing too, because my partner has just started college as we write this and all that education is gonna cut into his freetime!

Yes indeed, the next chapter will take a bit longer to come out because of college. But I still get a few months off soon, so there you go.

Well, that should settle it. You get some free writing done and I won't take your ANDY ONLY stuff. Hasta luego amigo! And be sure to give my regards to your mom!

[jeremys-blogs]

The Last Unicorn: Unhappy Fantasy

Everybody loves a happy ending. We all love the idea that, no matter what bad things come about, everything will turn out all right when it's all over. That good will triumph over evil, true love will win out and that everything that could go right will go right. But as you get older, you come to realise that this won't always be the case. Bad things will happen, and they will happen to good people at that. But you don't always need to be an adult to come to realise that, as children too can grasp this concept. Media aimed at them will usually try to go for the more upbeat of tones and stories, but every once in a while you'll get a story that just won't want to sugarcoat things. A story that will look at its young target audience and let them know that we won't always get wat we want. For me, the first film to truly do this, to make me realise that not every ending would be a happy one, was the 1982 Rankin/Bass film, The Last Unicorn, an adaptation of the book by the same name by Peter S. Beagle. This movie was unlike anything else I'd seen up to that point, and as I'll say here, it's also unlike most of what I saw afterwards too.

Our story, which I first encountered via an old VHS lent to me by a family friend way back in the early 90s, stars a nameless unicorn who, after an encounter with some humans, begins to feel that she might be the only one of her kind left in all the world. Worried, she sets out from her forest in search of others like her, and along the way she comes across a number of dangers, including witches and bandits, all while picking up a couple of human allies, Schmendrick the magician and Molly Grue. Together they journey to the castle of King Haggard, the man responsible for taking unicorns from the world through the power of his beast, the red bull. But this endeavour takes its toll on the unicorn, as magic forces her into the form of a human girl before her arrival into the castle, which eventually leads to her falling in love with the King's son, Lir. After much time searching, the group once more face off against the red bull, and after resuming her unicorn form, our heroine fights it off, releasing all other unicorns from their imprisonment in the sea. The evil King is vanquished, unicorns have returned, and the party go their separate ways, with their journey now complete.

Now, to this day, I can't recall another animated film meant for children that has this kind of feel to it as I watch it, and bear in mind that I've known it for the better part of thirty years now. It's a kind of melancholy that just sits there in every moment. This is a fantasy world, yes, but it's also a fantasy world where a lot of the wonder and majesty that you might find has come and gone. A world where all the truly great things have faded. The unicorn we see is truly the last of her kind in the world, to the point where even two random human can recognise it. The fantastical creatures locked up in the cages of the witch? Unreal illusions hoaxed by her to fool gullible carnival-goers. The land King Haggard rules over is barren and dead, a far cry from the lush place it supposedly used to be before his rule. Even characters like Molly are those who feel like their best days are behind them, to the point where she feels initially quite bitter to see the unicorn at this point of her life, rather than as the young maiden she used to be. This whole world just feel worn down, past its prime, which was really quite something for someone as young as I was when I first saw it.

And it's not just the overall world that has this feel to it. Characters both ordinary and fantastic just struggle with feeling happy a lot of the time, or even optimistic. Schemndrick is constantly frustrated over his lack of magical talent, Molly, as I said, has grown up disillusioned with the supposedly romantic life of an outlaw's wife, and as for the Unicorn herself, she undergoes more than a few bad times. The transformation into a human girl utterly horrifies her, and it's something which puts her in a truly unenviable situation during the final act. A choice between her original life and her newfound love for Lir is put before her, and in the end it's not even her that makes the choice. She returns to being a unicorn and, as a result, can no longer be with the Prince she's come to care for. When the movie is on its last moments, she laments what has happened, that she regrets returning back to her original form as she will no longer experience love, which is something unicorns apparently can't feel naturally. She's given a happiness and it's taken away from her, and while she's grateful that her kind are back in the world again, this is a sting that's going to stay with her all the same.

And you know, there's one line in this movie that perfectly sums up exactly why it feels the way that it does. It happens towards the end, and Molly wonders if their journey is going to have a happy ending. Schmendrick responds by saying "there ARE no happy endings, because nothing ever ends". This, I think, is a perfect example of just what kind of mindset this story has. It's not trying to be some classic fairy tale of good triumphing over evil with its heroes riding off into the sunset. Good may score a victory over a terrible person and his beast, and yes a force for good is returned to the world, but it comes at a loss. When Schmendrick says this, you feel as though this really isn't the end, that this is just one moment of the much wider story. Good wins today, but tomorrow there might be something else, something where the other side is victorious. When Lir rides off, he'll likely go and do other things, have other adventures of which this was only one, so too will Molly and Schmendrick. It's fascinating to me that one line, only a few seconds long, can conjure up all these worries about what might happen after the curtain falls on our cast, but there it is.

Now I realise that this must make the movie sound incredibly pessimistic, and yeah, it's hard not to come away with that feeling when you finish watching it. This isn't a "happily ever after" kind of story, despite the fact that the goal of the quest was fulfilled. The dour tone of the story is so prevalent that, even as you see a whole herd of unicorn riding free, there's this feeling that something was lost along the way to making it happen. But, despite the story's clear stance of criticising or undermining certain classic ideas of fairy tales and other fantasy tropes, there's nevertheless a spark of hopefulness in here. Despite the hardships, the unicorn triumphs, restoring her kind to the world, even if it cost her something personal. Schmendrick, having gone through his own difficulties, emerges at the end as a fully-fledged wizard. Molly gets to presumably spend her remaining days with someone who treats her well, in stark contrast to the life she had prior to meeting the unicorn. Success arrives to all our main characters, so the film clearly thinks that good things can happen to good people in spite of the glass-half-empty tone it appeared to have, even if those characters had to be put through the wringer to get there.

The Last Unicorn, it must be said, is not a movie to watch if what you're looking for is an unambiguous good time. The mood is sombre, the designs are not exactly appealing with the obvious exception of the title character, and if you're like me you'll likely find yourself finishing this movie with a big scream at the screen saying something like "WHY CAN'T THE UNIVERSE LET THIS UNICORN BE HAPPY FOR FIVE MINUTES?!?!?!" But let it never be said that the film is ineffective at making you feel exactly what it wants you to feel. It set out to create a bittersweet children's fantasy story, and by God it made one. Maybe it was because I first saw it at a young and impressionable age, but subsequent viewings through my life nevertheless made me feel exactly as I did that first time, that I'd just watched something unique and memorable. It's hard to say whether this film deserves to be on any lists of the greatest animated movies of all time, but there's no denying that it did things kids' movies just don't normally try to do, and certainly not back then. It's a sad movie a lot of the time, but if the likes of Inside Out taught us anything, it's that it's okay to be sad every once in a while 😉

[arthurmorgan-s-heart]

Arthur Morgan x F!Reader: A Lovely Night in Valentine

WARNING: Light smut

Arthur worries.

He would never admit it, but he does - he worries, about everything, and everyone (even Micah, God damn him).

But he worries about you most of all - another thing he would never admit, though for different reasons, reasons that have his heart aching every time he sees you. He doesn’t need anyone teasing him over an unrequited crush.

So when sunset comes and goes that day without a trace of you, after you’d told him you’d be back from Valentine before dark, Arthur worries.

He tries to dismiss it at first, to put it out of his mind; you can take care of yourself, after all - you’d proven that many times over. Still, he finds himself growing more and more restless with every hour that crawls by, his mind making up scenario after scenario even as he tries his best not to assume the worst: had you been injured? Captured? Arrested? Killed? Even his journal does not calm him as it usually does; every word he writes feels awkward, every pencil stroke clumsy and wrong. He heaves a frustrated sigh as he strikes out yet another sentence, staring down at the page filled with crossed out drawings and scribbled strings of nonsensical words for a moment before flipping his journal closed and standing up from where he’d been sitting on his bed. He had to know where you were. He had to be sure you were alright.

He’d never forgive himself otherwise.

The camp is almost silent as he crosses it in long strides, most people having retired for the night already, though a few are still sitting around the campfire, talking in hushed tones. He saddles his horse quickly before anyone can questions him, climbing up hurriedly before spurring his horse into a quick trot and leading it out of camp, his thoughts so focused on you that he doesn’t hear Lenny call out to him as he disappears between the trees.

The journey to Valentine takes less than an hour, but even as he pushes his horse into a gallop, it seems to Arthur that half the night has gone by before he finally reaches the town, his thoughts racing all the while.

Even as preoccupied as he is, he can’t help but notice the unusual silence - the streets are deserted at this hour, a jarring change from the usually bustling and noisy traffic that plagues the town during the day. He slows his horse from a gallop to a trot and then to a walk as his eyes sweep over the dark buildings, looking for any sign of you. He tries his best to keep his thoughts from growing frantic, and yet he can’t help cursing himself for waiting so long; by now, you could be dead, or taken far away, or -

The soft whickering of a horse interrupts his thoughts as he rides down main street, drawing his eye, and he feels an immense wave of relief wash over him: your horse is hitched outside the saloon, the graceful Arabian mare you’re so proud of. She seems calm despite her usually skittish nature, which comforts him somewhat.

She snorts nervously as he rides closer, though she seems to settle as she turns her head to look at him when he climbs off his horse to hitch it next to her. She was a nervous, volatile thing, easily frightened by strangers and friends alike, but you and Arthur had ridden together so many times that he had become one of the rare persons who could approach her without fear of being bitten.

“Hey there, girl,” he says, raising a hand to pat her neck - she doesn’t recoil at the familiar gesture, as he knows she would with anyone else. He opens his satchel, pulling out a sugar cube and offering it to her. She takes it greedily. “Now, where’s Y/N gone, uh?”

The music and laughter drifting from the saloon draws his eyes, and he feels himself frown - his memories of that place are less than fond. Still, it’s as good a place as any to start looking for you.

In three short steps, he’s standing at the door, and he takes a deep breath before pushing his way in, the warmth and noise of the saloon immediately engulfing him.

The room is crowded - it always is. After all, there’s little else to do in a cattle town in the evening but drink the hours away. His eyes sweep over the crowd - but the faces that greet his eyes all belong to strangers. He sighs before stepping further in, murmuring half-hearted apologies as he shoulders his way through the press of people, his eyes darting this way and that to try and find you. But there are too many people, and it’s too loud, and God, what if you’re hurt, or taken, or -

A loud, familiar burst of laughter shatters the dark train of his thoughts, and he looks to a shadowed corner of the room - where a man is smiling down seductively at -

You.

Despite his relief at finding you safe, he can’t help the jealousy that bursts in his chest at the sight, hot and fierce, and he’s stepping towards you before he can stop himself, coming to a halt just a few steps behind the man in front of you, close enough for you to see him, but not enough to interrupt. You’re smiling and laughing, seemingly very taken with the young man - a thought that has his blood boiling despite his best efforts - , and your eyes flit to Arthur for half a heartbeat before leaving him again. Another moment goes by, just long enough for you to register just who it is you’ve seen before your eyes return to him.

“Arthur!”

He feels almost smug when you stand from your chair and come toward him, the young man you’d been talking to just seconds before seemingly forgotten as you sidestep his attempt at holding you back, your attention shifting entirely. Your smile changes, ever so slightly - it’s warmer now, softer. Arthur is not sure he’d have noticed had he not already known your every smile by heart.

“Hey,” he says, smiling down at you. He can feel the other man’s eyes on him, but he refuses to meet his gaze. “It’s late. Was gettin’ worried.”

You laugh, almost sheepishly, though there is an impish glint in your eyes.

“Sorry,” you say with a smile. “Got a bit carried away. I’ll just - “

“Don’t know who you think you are, friend,” the young man you’d been speaking to suddenly seems to find his courage, stepping closer, trying his best to look intimidating even despite the fact that Arthur is a good head taller than him. He comes to place himself in front of you, between you and Arthur. “The lady and I were in the middle of somethin’.”

Arthur feels anger slowly bubbling up in his stomach, and he finally meets the man’s eyes - he seems taken aback by what he sees in Arthur’s eyes, suddenly a lot more nervous than a mere few seconds ago. Arthur open his mouth to speak, but you come back around to face the young man before he can say a single word, your eyes as dark as Arthur’s, shoving him back with a hand on his chest.

“We wasn’t,” you say lightly, though you make no effort to hide the threat lurking beneath your every word. “Now, get lost.”

He seems about to protest, scowling as he open his mouth to speak, but his eyes flick to your hand as it reaches down every so slowly toward the gun you keep at your hip, and he turns away without a word, leaving you behind.

“Asshole,” you hiss between your teeth before turning back toward Arthur, taking a deep breath to calm your anger.

“Did I interrupt somethin’?” he asks as he follows you back to your table, sitting down across from you.

“Not really,” you answer, waving the waitress over. “He’d been starin’ at me all night like I was fresh meat on a butcher’s block. Was only gonna rob him.” Your eyes flick to him. “You want a drink?”

“Think we better go,” he answers, though he desperately wants to say yes. Even though he would do anything to spend time with you, Valentine’s saloon had not been very kind to him.

“Come on,” you say with a bright smile as the waitress reaches your table. “One.”

Arthur sighs, though he can’t quite hide his smile, taking off his hat and throwing it down onto the table.

“Alright. One.”

-----

“And then - And then - I climb up on the Count, sit up there a second… an’ he just bucks me right off! Didn’t leave me time to grab the reins or nothin’!”

The laughter Arthur’s story earns him is loud, earnest, and contagious; as he laughs along with you, he can’t quite decide if the heat he feels rising in his cheeks is due to the alcohol he’d been drinking for the better part of the last hour, or to the sight you make, with your wild hair, your flushed skin, and your bright eyes.

Beautiful.

The thought almost catches him by surprise. It’s not as if it had never crossed his mind before - it had, many times, in the years since you’d fallen in with the gang. But the thought had always sent his mind into a frenzy before - how dare he look at you in such a way? You deserved better than an ugly old outlaw ogling you at every turn.

Now, though, his thoughts are lightly muddled by drink, just enough to dull the sharp edge of his self-loathing, and for once, he allows himself to look at you, to try and memorize every little beautiful thing about you (as if he hadn’t done it a thousand times before). He looks at the glint in your eyes, the arch of your nose, the shape of your lips, the curve of your shoulders, following with his eyes every line of you he knows he’d never be allowed to touch.

He’s staring, he knows he is, but he can’t bring himself to look away, even when your eyes meet his and you arch an eyebrow at him as a teasing smile blooms on your lips.

“I got somethin’ on my face or what?” you ask playfully, leaning in toward him. The first few buttons of your shirt are undone, and it hangs open with your motion, just enough to give him a tantalizing glimpse of your collarbone and the skin of your chest, invitingly flushed by drink and the warmth of the saloon. He can’t help it; his eyes flick down, and his mouth is suddenly dry, heat blooming low in his stomach as he drags his eyes back up to yours, though he can’t help but linger on your lips for half a second more than he should have. He knows immediately when he meets your gaze again - you saw. The din of the saloon suddenly seems muted, as if walls had sprung up between you and the rest of the crowd, and you’re so still that he almost thinks you’ve stopped breathing entirely. He knows he should say something - explain, apologise, something, anything - but even as he opens his mouth to speak, he feels his tongue turn to stone at the sight of the heat simmering behind your eyes - a heat that seems to rival the one he feels roaring within him, a heat he had only dreamed to one day see in your gaze. He can only watch as you stand and step toward him, no words passing between the two of you as you simply reach down to take his hand and pull him along with you through the crowd and toward the door.

“Let’s go.” Your voice is barely above a whisper, but you know he hears you - and the way his hand tightens around yours betrays his impatience.

-----

You don’t make it very far - you’re not sure you could have, anyway. You and Arthur stumble out of the saloon and down the steps, barely able to keep your hands off each other - the moon is high in the sky, and the streets are as empty as they were when Arthur had first ridden through town, so there is no one to witness him pulling you into the alley next to the saloon and pressing you up against the side of the building.

This is unlike him, he knows it - is it the alcohol that’s made him so bold? Or perhaps he’d finally gone mad. He supposes it hardly matters - you’re here, and you’re looking at him in a way that no one had in many, many years.

Despite his eagerness, his first touch is almost hesitant - hands fluttering about your hips for a moment before he finally allows himself to touch you, drawing you as close as he can manage. He looks at you for a moment before opening his mouth to speak - and you just know he’s about to ask if you’re sure, if you really, truly want him, this, to ask why, to say he’s not good enough for you - and so you press your lips to his before he can say a single word; that seems to be enough to make him forget everything and anything holding him back, and he’s groaning into your mouth, pressing you harder against the wall behind you as he kisses you like a man starved. Your hands fly up to his shoulders, grasping tight, one bunching into the fabric of his shirt while the other finds the back of his head, keeping him against you.

“Jesus…” you hear him breathe in between kisses, and you can’t help a quiet chuckle as he trails his lips down the side of your neck. You feel his hands leave your hips, coming up to your shoulders before smoothing back down, over your breasts and your stomach, settling at the buckle of your belt. He raises his head to look at you, meeting your gaze, silently asking for permission. You nod, and the belt clinks and falls open easily under his fingers, followed by your trousers, as his lips return to your neck. Your breath hitches in your throat when you feel his hand reach down the front of your trousers, past the layers of cloth, until he finds the heat of your core, pressing one finger there and drawing a surprised gasp..

“You okay?” he asks, voice low and rough, and you nod, gripping him tighter as you lift one leg to wrap around his hips to press yourself closer. He growls at that, moving up to circle your center, and you muffle another moan, grinding yourself down on him as he traces quick, tight circles that have you shaking and shuddering.

“You like that?” You hear him pant against your ear, and you can’t manage to find your voice, only nodding vigorously as another moan leaves your lips. His fingers slide back down toward your center, dipping inside ever so slightly, and you give a pleading whimper as you cradle his cheek, forcing him to look back up at you. In the darkness of the alley, you can barely see him, though his eyes seem to gleam with a light of their own, and you draw him to you for a heated kiss as he pushes one finger inside you, moving slowly. His thumb comes to press at your center again, and you moan into his mouth, once again pressing yourself against him, trying by any means to bring him closer, deeper.

Both of your hands are on his shoulders now, gripping so tight that your fingers hurt, though you can’t bring yourself to care. One hand leaves his shoulder when he pushes a second finger inside you, pressing flat against his chest as you throw your head back and give a breathless moan, moving your hips in time with his hand as sparks spread through you, from the pit of your stomach to the tips of your fingers. You can hear music and voices drifting out from the saloon, but it almost feels as if you’re in another world entirely, a world belonging only to the two of you.

Pleasure builds within you quickly, steadily, and your heart is beating so loud that you can barely hear Arthur’s voice as he whispers quiet praise against your ear, beckoning you further toward your end as you choke out moan after moan, the thought of staying quiet quickly fading from your mind as you feel yourself come to teeter on the edge of your pleasure as it hovers just out of reach for a moment before you finally let yourself fall apart with a long, thin moan, throwing your arms around Arthur’s neck to bring him against you.

“Did so well, sweetheart,” he breathes, pressing a few kisses to your neck as you roll your hips against his hands a few more times, desperate for every last drop of pleasure he can give you. “Such a good girl.”

You give one last shudder at his words before letting your leg fall from around his waist, leaning forward to kiss him long and deep before letting the hand you’d kept pressed to his chest smooth down toward his stomach and the warm, hard line you can feel pressing against you. Before you can reach it, however, his own hand comes down to grab yours, bringing it back up to his mouth before he presses a few feather-light kisses to your knuckles. You arch an eyebrow at him questioningly, and he simply smiles, bending down to kiss the side of your neck as both of his hands find your hips again.

“Another time,” he answers. “Got everythin’ I needed tonight.”

*Crawls out of her goblin hole and screeches* I LIVE!

This doesn’t exactly follow the prompt, but it’s what came to me. I hope you’ll still enjoy, anon!

[littlemisssquiggles]

Little Red Headcanons: Ruby’s Big Bad Boyfriend II

Okie dookie, so I guess I’m writing headcanons for Ruby Rose now too. As some of you might know, I recently shared a headcanon post highlighting the prospect of Ruby gaining a love interest inspired by the Big Bad Wolf from the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale.

It was met with some good reception. Thanks everyone! Including an essay response by @yellow-eyed-green-crocodile​ This sequel post will be my response to Yellow’s comments.

Yellow Comments:

“…Rather than him being a coward like that, and since you made him up as a frend of Neon’s, wouldn’t it be cooler if he was actually a good person, even if he does have that pimp attitude? This is just my opinion, though, but it makes him more human, in a way. Plus, we already had the traitorous coward, and that was Lionheart.

The Big Bad Wolf, in all of his stories (that I know of) would use charisma and trickery, though, so wouldn’t it be better if the show would highlight how those traits could be used in a positive manner?

Like, charisma can be his personality trait, that he uses to get chicks, but he also uses the qualities of the wolf in his figjting style, like using words and comments to distract his opponent, and planning out and using different moves in order to make his enemy think that he is about to do something, but actually have something completely different in mind.

Dante’s flaw could be his overconfidence. He is so used to getting what he wants, that, when he is put in an unexpected situation (for example, Ruby Rose), he doesn’t know what to do an puts up a front, but, if the scenario gets too uncertain, he becomes angry and may lash out, just like the Big Bad Wolf.

I think you said that he is a mix between the Big Bad Wolf and the Huntsman, so I think that we could give a bit of an idealistic side to him, almost naive. What I mean is that, while he likes women and to pick them up, he is not just some perverted brat, but someone who genuinely cares about the people he meets. I’m thinking the main character from Outlaw Star, if you ever heard of or watched that anime. The main character is a big pervert, but with a heroic heart. In Dante’s case, couple that with some light anger issues (because Big Bad Wolf) and we have a lovable character (in my opinion). He could be a big tsundere for Ruby, and his every interaction with her would make her laugh, which would get on Oscar’s nerves. That would be kind of cute, kind of like the comedic scenes from old 90s anime.

I’m sorry for overwriting your character like that and I hope I didn’t seem rude for doing it. I just wanted to give my two cents on a character like him…”

 Squiggles Answers:

‘Sup Yellow. Nah you’re fine m;dude. You didn’t come off disrespectful or rude at all (you never do to be honest so hakuna matata). You’ve certainly humanized the Dante character a lot more than I did and I like quite that.

Usually the Big Bad Wolf is the villain of the Little Red Riding Hood fairytale. So to see a version of him in another medium that’s actually more of a good guy would be a fascinating twist. Your idea actually makes reconsider an alternative concept I had for the Dante character that I didn’t include in the original headcanon post. So I guess this goes out to you, fam. 

Let’s say… Dante could be your titular bad boy womanizer type with a hot streak. The type of guy fathers warn their daughters to steer clear of since he’s known to be a ruiner of the sweet girls and a breaker of hearts, y’know what I mean? A problem child. The local attitude problem. Another beast to be tamed through the care and appreciation of a kind hearted beauty like Ruby Rose. Maybe.

I can see Dante characterized as a younger watered down version of Adam Taurus WITHOUT all the elements that made him problematic to fans and the detrimental unhappy ending to his story. Let’s say, despite being a prince at Atlas Academy and a strong huntsmen, Dante secondarily exhibits all the warning signs of a master manipulator fueled by his own selfishness and greed. Like there are two sides to him and the one he normally gives off in public is the side that causes others to become intimidated by him.

It is this side that raises many red flags with Blake Belladonna. And out of concern for Ruby (since Dante has shown interest in her), the Faunus girl tries to warn her about Dante’s ‘type’. So right out the gate, Dante is labelled as a bad person. The big bad wolf.

But in a surprising twist, Dante, like you imagined, isn’t such a bad person. He’s just another child from a very privileged background who is forced to act a certain way as a means of adhering to the responsibilities and burdens of someone with his family name. 

Let’s say the Alarick Family are a long line of powerful men who grow up to become influential leaders who govern their respective fields with an iron fist. Dante, as the current heir, is no exception to his longstanding rule and he’s constantly placed under heavy pressure from his grandfather to be the type of man he believes all men should be.

Tough. Charismatic. Analytical. Calculating. Knows all the right ways how to get others beneath him to bend to his whim since the Alarick philosophy is that all men are pawns to be used to get them ahead. 

Long story short, Dante is often usually misunderstood due to many things about him from his family prestige to even his blatant anger management issues he suffers with (which his family refuses to get him treated for; preferring to cover it up most of the time).

That’s one version of this idea. If not the troubled rich kid concept then perhaps Dante could be a troubled kid who bares old skeletons in his closest since he was stripped away from his abusive family household as a kid and has been bounced around foster care for most of his life until deciding to join the huntsmen academies in an attempt to make something of himself. 

What if…growing up, Dante was mostly treated as a ruthless, conniving monster given where he came from. So he sought the huntsmen lifestyle since huntsmen and huntresses are seen as heroes. Good people. And that’s what Dante desired to be seen as. Someone good capable of doing good things in spite of his crappy start to life. Huh. Now that I think about, I’m sort of making a case for Dante to have Qrow’s approval since he knows what it’s like to be young and dealt a poor hand. Whether that means he’d be open to his youngest niece dating a guy that reminds him too much of himself especially at that age. Hmmm…that’s a curious question to ask.

Moving on---let’s say, like a wolf, Dante is a loner at heart. Despite being one of the most dedicated students at Atlas Academy, Dante is often seen alone. He even refuses to spend time bonding with his teammates since he prefers to stay far from others; out of fear of possibly being hurt or hurting them, 

Now this is making me consider Dante being one of the two unknown members of Team FNKI as a small fanon headcanon. I know I already gave him the surname Alarick in his other counterpart but since this is a different interpretation of the Big Bad Boyfriend Dante character, let’s give him a different name so there’s a difference between the two ideas.

So Dante Alarick would be the wolf in sheep’s clothing version of the Big Bad Boyfriend from the original post and this new version----the more humanized Big Bad Boyfriend will be named…let’s stick with the first name as Dante but change his last name. 

This version shall be dubbed Dante Ingouf. ‘Ingouf’ is a name meaning ‘the wolf of the God Ing; a warrior’.

So let’s say…in this new interpretation, Dante Ingouf is one of the remaining members of Team FNKI. That ties into my original concept of Ruby meeting Dante through Neon Katt. 

Dante could be the lone wolf of Team FNKI who Neon notices might have a little thing for Ruby and she tries to set the two up or something like that. And since Dante is meant to draw inspiration from the Big Bad Wolf, let’s make this version of him a wolf Faunus. 

One of my headcanons for Team FNKI is that Flynt is the only human leading a predominantly Faunus team. 

Perhaps it could be part of the Faunus discriminatiory culture of Atlas where, even at the huntsmen training academies, the Faunus weren’t allowed to be leaders of their own teams. So it’s an awkward situation where Flynt was only made leader cause he’s human; not cause of his own merits. 

It could even be a thing where Neon is the only Faunus on FNKI who actually gets along well with Flynt. So basically Neon is Flynt’s best friend and partner on the FNKI team since she’s the one who looks out for him the most in their group. 

This helps tie into the fact that I totally ship Flynt and Neon which fits into my headcanon about the two secretly being a couple but are forced to keep the true nature of their relationship under wraps since, despite being genetically compatible, human and Faunus interracial-interspecies relationships are heavily frowned upon in Atlas; as much as the Faunus themselves. 

Neon is indifferent about it since my theory for her is that Neon comes from an interracial household with Faunus and human parents. But Flynt, on the other hand, is very hesitant about going fully public about his relationship with Neon especially since he isn’t sure about how his very ole school father, born and bred in the pinnacle period of Faunus discrimination in Atlas’ history, would react to his son having a Faunus for a girlfriend.

 Anyways, getting back on track with Dante Ingouf. He’s a wolf Faunus and his Faunus features are his wolf tail and sharp fangs and claws that only appear when he’s enraged. I remember reading somewhere that once upon a time, Ruby was originally going to be a wolf Faunus before her concept was changed. I also remember many Pineheads playing around with the thought of Oscar being a dog Faunus (since he’s got the cute puppy dog eyes already).

So…making Dante Ingouf, my version of Ruby’s Big Bad Boyfriend a wolf Faunus is…actually quite perfect!

The Big Bad Wolf falling for Little Red and becoming her love interest for a while. 

Huh. Wasn’t there a cute animated short based on that idea?

Anyways, so to reiterate--- Dante Ingouf, in this version of the character, is a wolf Faunus who is a member of Team FNKI and he becomes a love interest of Ruby’s who ends up being her first boyfriend for a brief period of time while she’s in Atlas. More on that in a minute.

Do you know what I just realized that’s funny? Ruby’s Big Bad Boyfriend could be the equivalent to my Oscar’s Other Rose Pinehead headcanon. I talked about Oscar having another Rose in his life who could challenge his relationship with Ruby, drawing inspiration from the Rose, Fake Roses and the Fox from the Little Prince Story.

Now I’ve created another character like that with Dante. Just as how my Rosaline Fox is the antithesis to Ruby Rose, Dante Ingouf is my interpretation of the person meant to challenge Oscar’s for Ruby’s affections or at least be the catalyst to make him realize his true feelings for her.

Huh. It may seem that I have a habit of creating physically attractive third-wheel love interest characters whose sole purpose is to both challenge my OTP on their relationship with each other while simultaneously helping them to realize what they, my OTP, really mean to one another.

Huh. How does that Britney Spears song do? Oops I did it again.

Since I did it with the Rose Fox character, I might as well do the same with the Dante Ingouf character. 

If I had to picture what Dante would look like, it’d be like this----

Since he’s meant to challenge Oscar, giving him physical traits that contrast starkly with Oscar’s can be fitting.

Since Oscar is a small farm boy born and raised in the farmlands of Anima near Mistral Kingdom, Dante would be a big bad city boy brought up on the streets of lower class Atlas Kingdom whose been passed around the block many times due to being in foster care.

Since Oscar is two years younger than Ruby, Dante would be two years older than Ruby. Dante would be between 18-19 years old. Let’s say 18 going on 19 to put him closer to Ruby’s age.

Since Oscar is short and small in stature, Dante is tall (as tall as Jaune who is the tallest of our heroes) with a muscular built. Picture Sosuke from Free! 

Since Oscar is considerably dark-skinned with his tanned complexion, let’s say Dante is a white wolf Faunus with pale skin (as light as Ruby’s). 

This is matched by his short, messy artic snow white hair to contrast equally short and messy Oscar’s sunny countryside black hair. 

I also want to play around with the idea of Oscar and Dante sharing at least one trait, similar to how Ruby and my Rose Fox character shared the name Rose in their name.

I wanted to give Dante freckles just like Oscar but…maybe not. However I do dig the idea of Dante having green eyes to match Oscar’s. I know Oscar’s eyes are essentially hazel or more specifically hazel green eyes. So let’s give Dante’s green eyes the same shade of green as Oscar’s. 

So if Oscar has avocado eyes then Dante would have olive eyes---green with a small hint of red at the centre. Though the red becomes more prominent whenever Dante is angry. Probably something like this:

I made this quickly with Rinmarugames.com, just as rough starting foundation of what Dante might look like. It’s not the final idea but it’s something I could work with to make one if I wanted to, y’know what I mean? Something to play off of along with all the other descriptions I gave for Dante’s key features. I would’ve liked for his hair to be much messier than this (like in the Kaneki Ken example) but that’s as much as I could do on the site. For now, this will do as a rough idea. Starting to remind me of another character named Dante but for now, let’s work with this. 

So Dante starts off as this troubled lone wolf type who prefers to stay far from others since he has a lot of baggage to him. He’s been rumoured to date a lot of girls when he feels promiscuous but most of them are just that--- rumours and for the ones that are true, the relationships ended so badly that that’s how the rumours were sparked; basically.

So Dante falls for Ruby but, as you said, doesn’t know how to properly talk to her and ends up treating her in the same manner he’s treated other girls which results in turning Ruby away from him. At first. It isn’t until Dante loses his big bad boy demenour and starts being real with Ruby, when she finally gives him a chance. The two grow as friends until Dante asks Ruby out again. The last time Dante tried asking Ruby out, she refused. But this time, she said yes. The two go on their first date. It goes well and...from there, they agree to go out again eventually becoming boyfriend and girlfriend. 

But...since it's basically a first time for both of them, neither feel like they know what they’re doing most of the time. Even though he’s the more experienced once in their relationship, Dante is surprisingly just as clueless and anxious as Ruby is. He’s had many on and off flings with girls in the past but nothing serious or promising. Ruby is the first girl he's ever had those types of feelings for and Ruby, in term is experiencing all this as something entirely new to her. 

For most of her teenage years, her main ambition has been becoming a huntress. For some time, she's been apprehensive about forming bonds due to her awkwardness at first interactions. She's had one or two friends in the past but her time at Beacon has been the most open she's ever been.

While she learned to appreciate and ultimately came to love the friendships she's grown close to since Beacon, a romantic relationship is definitely something she's a complete novice to.

Most of the time she panics and worries about if she's doing certain girlfriend-y things right. Like I can definitely picture Ruby Rose being the type to be in a relationship but often forget that she has a boyfriend since she's such a dumb-dumb to the whole spiel; y'know what I mean?

Nonetheless, Ruby likes Dante and wants to give their relationship a fair try regardless of her clumsiness in all of it. But despite being in a relationship with Dante, my idea is that Ruby’s increasingly close friendship with Oscar is a factor that becomes a thorn in that.

Like y’know those stories where you have two best friends who are really, really close and it can even be hinted that one of them might have a crush on their friend. But then the friend gets in a relationship and it’s this awkward thing where the other friend has to watch and listen to his friend talk about their relationship and you think it’s bad for the other friend since they’re the one with the crush. But then you get the flip-side where you learn that the other friend talks a lot about her best friend with her boyfriend causing them to become jealous of their relationship since the boyfriend desires to become close with friend but the friend’s best friend is already filling that role. Y’know what I’m talking about.

That’s how I see the Rosegarden + Big Bad Boyfriend love triangle going. Ruby and Dante would be in their relationship trying to figure things out however at the same time, Ruby has her strong bond with Oscar also developing. Dante takes notice of how close Ruby and Oscar are and becomes suspicious of whether or not Ruby and Oscar are together-together or have feelings for one another.  Especially when he learns that Oscar has a crush on Ruby too.

However Dante doesn’t want to accuse Ruby of anything. Given how awkward she is in their relationship as a first-timer, he can tell that she’s not the cheating type or the type to mislead him like other girls. That’s part of the reason why Dante gravitated toward Ruby. She was genuine at heart.

Still, Dante could sense something unique about the way in which Ruby values Oscar compared to her other friends. Long story short, let’s say Dante comes to the conclusion that Ruby loves Oscar but, due to her own naivety when it comes to her feelings, doesn’t quite realize it yet. But the signs are there.

This makes me think of a small scene where…let’s say, Dante plans on confessing his love for Ruby but the conversation takes an interesting turn  into a fight about Ruby’s friendship with Oscar. Something like:

Dante: Can I ask you something? That Oscar kid, what is he to you?

Ruby: *smiling* He’s my friend.

Dante: I know that’s what you keep telling me but…is that all he is to you?

Ruby: *naively* What do you mean?

Dante: I mean…when it’s just us, it’s great. I feel like you really do care about me and I love that a lot. But even when it’s just us, you also talk a lot about Oscar too.

Ruby: Yeah well…of course, I do. Cause we’re friends. Great friends. Best friends. You know that.

Dante: *pressing* Yeah but I never see you act this way with all your other friends. I mean, you may mention them once or twice but for the most part, it’s him. It’s always him. Even when he’s not here, I feel like he’s constantly coming between us because you keep bringing him between us.

Ruby: *defensively* What does that mean? Oscar isn’t between us! He’s my friend. One of my best friends. I care a lot about him and if you have a problem with him then...we might have a problem. Do we have a problem?

Dante: I dunno? Do we?

Ruby: What? You’re confusing me.

Dante: You’re confusing me!

Ruby: ...What? 

Dante: *sighing exasperatedly* Look, I'm your boyfriend. I know...this is a first for you but usually when two people are a couple, they're supposed to feel like they're in a relationship. I may be your boyfriend but when it comes to Oscar, even though he's the friend and I'm the boyfriend, I feel like it's the other way around. Like I'm the friend and he's your boyfriend.

Ruby: What! Oscar... as my boyfriend?  *snorts* No that's....not...We're not like--- I mean yeah we've definitely gotten close but...it's not like we're together like how we're together.

Dante: So then why? Why is he so important to you? You don’t act this overprotective towards any of your other friends. You don’t bring up your friends every minute. You don’t check in on your friends every minute. You don’t care about your other friends the way you care about him---

Ruby: That’s not tru---

Dante: And you certainly don’t invite your other friends on your date with your boyfriend.

Ruby: Is that what this is really about? Because I invited him to the concert with us?

Dante: It was meant to be a date! Our date.

Ruby: … In my defense, I didn’t know it was a date. You didn’t tell me.

Dante: *incredulously* Because it was a surprise! Surprise date night. What’d you think I meant when I said I scored us tickets to see Nevermore?

Ruby:*innocently* That… you were inviting me and… all my friends?

Dante: But only Oscar conveniently showed up?

Ruby: Yeah cause I only invited Oscar since he's my only friend who likes Nevermore as much as I do. That’s why he was with me.

Dante:  I was with you too. I’m here with you. I like Nevermore too. Not like you care. All you care about is Oscar.

Ruby: *crossly* Okay, that’s enough! *sternly* I know I’m the big dummy here when it comes to being in a relationship but that doesn’t mean I can’t tell a jealous boyfriend when I see one.

Dante: That’s not---

Ruby: *angrily* You are! You don’t get to yell at me and say confusing things to make me feel bad and you don’t get to do that by using Oscar.

Dante: …Ruby I…

Ruby: *furiously* NO!  Oscar is my friend. You don’t know anything about him or what he’s going through right now where he could really, really use the support of a friend. Someone he can actually trust. That’s the thing. You don’t know him at all but I do. So you don’t get to use him to bring up problems you’re having with me. You don’t get to use his name like that and make me feel guilty about my relationship with my friend. That’s not fair Dante!

Dante: …I…*guiltily* You’re right. That…was uncalled for. I’m sorry. You’re right about me not knowing Oscar like you do. And I guess that’s the part that’s really bugging me. The why. I don’t need to know what kind of trouble Oscar’s going through right now since I’m sure it’s something he probably told you about in confidence so it’s not really any of my business to pry. But can I at least know why do you care so much about him? Please.

Ruby: …Did I ever tell you my story? What happened to me and my friends after what happened at Beacon?

Dante: Well...you told me you that you guys split up and you and that Jaune guy and his team paired up for a while. Made the whole trek to Mistral on your own.

Ruby:  Yeah. Let’s just say travelling to Mistral on our own wasn’t as easy as we’d hoped. But, against all odds, we made it. Once inside the kingdom, I figured things would be better for us and for a small time it was. But all Mistral did was remind me of how broken things were. Sure, during the day time when everyone was together all happy and safe with big bright smiles, things were great and for a moment, you’d think things were normal again just like the good old days.

But at night, when the lights were off and the doors were closed and my friends were together in the other room, I was alone. Completely alone. And when I was alone, that’s when it would all hit me. My team was broken. My friends had died. My school was gone. I was far away from home with no real idea of what we were going to do next. That’s when I would finally remember that I was... hurting too. But it’s not like I could’ve just fallen apart then and there, right? I had to be strong both for myself and my remaining friends. We didn’t know what we were going to do. Didn’t know how we were going to get there but…my friends decided to join me to go to Mistral. Despite their own grieves, they chose to follow me because I’m the one that gave them the strength to move forward. That’s what Jaune told me. I had to be their leader. Their strength. It was a badge and burden I had to carry. I had to be strong because a team is only as strong as their leader. So I would push whatever bad feelings I had back then away. Bury them as deep as I could. Hoping that no one would notice my pain. And y’know what, it worked. No one ever suspected it.

My friends were none the wiser. But that didn’t stop me from feeling the way I did. The pain hurt but I kept it down and do you know what that felt like?

Dante: … *shakes head silently*

Ruby: It's like…being cast out at sea during a terrible storm. When you're trying to swim but the current is so strong that you keep getting swept under the water.

I tried to be strong for my team. My friends were broken up and I had to be the one to do everything I can to keep them together. I needed to be because that's how we were going to get through this and make it as far as we could.. Everyone was drowning in the storm and I needed to do what I can to help them stay afloat. But… I was drowning too and… no one noticed I was. 

But...somehow... he did. 

Dante: ...Oscar?

Ruby: *nods slowly* This fourteen year old farm boy who just showed up at our door out of nowhere…who knew nothing about me. Who had no business yelling at me about my feelings. Somehow he's the one that saw me drowning out of everyone else. He saw me. 

Dante: …And let me guess, he helped you out of the water. 

Ruby: No. He drove the storm away. 

 A little drabble of a script there but I think you can get the impression of where I was sort of going with this. 

I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of bringing up the V5 Dojo scene. As a Ruby moment, it was significant because it highlighted the moment where Ruby finally disclosed her true feelings over all the events that took place after Beacon. It’s the first time we saw her profess her true feelings that wasn’t on paper. We know she mentioned it in her letter to Yang (which I’m still unconvinced she actually got although V5 did a poor job of showing that she did) but Oscar is the first person she came clean about everything to. And judging by the fact that that moment with him was in her fondest memories, it’s a moment that meant a lot to Ruby since Oscar genuinely helped her out.

My hunch is that Ruby must've been really lonely during the V5. I mean sure she had Jaune, Ren and Nora and for a while her Uncle Qrow. 

However Qrow left for a bit and JNR were a team who had lost a member but still had each other to lean on. Ruby lost her whole team who were torn apart by the events of Beacon.

Sure JNR are Ruby’s friends and her secondary family. But they weren’t Ruby's core family. Her team. And at the time, Ruby wasn’t sure if she’d ever see Yang, Weiss and Blake  again. This could also justify why Ruby looked out for Oscar so much during V5. 

Technically he was basically alone too. I mean, sure he had Ozpin in his head. However I’d like to think that Ruby started chumming up to Oscar so much during the Mistral Days because she saw a lot of  herself in him. 

A young kid with an unexplainable force inside of him that he now has to learn to control while juggling responsibilities placed on him (ironically by the same dude who enrolled Ruby into Beacon despite being younger than the recommended age who also made her leader of her own huntress team). 

I’d like to think that Ruby gravitated towards Oscar since she saw him as another person for her to help and support. But what she didn’t expect was what Oscar did for her. 

She didn’t anticipate him seeing right through her facade of indifference over her own grief. She didn’t expect for him to call her out on it either. I’d like to think that the dojo scene was the moment that solidified to Ruby that she can trust Oscar. I’d also like to think that Ruby’s bond with Oscar would be seen and treated differently than her other bonds with her friends since their rapport is different.

Oscar has proven himself to be the type of supportive comrade to Ruby who wouldn’t hesitate to drop everything and immediately bound to Ruby’s aid if he noticed she was in danger. 

So, naturally, she’d do her best to reciprocate this when she’s looking out for him too. These two kids share so much in common that naturally their bond would be different and unique to each other since their predicaments is unique to them and done in a way that only they can understand.

Ruby and Oscar can relate to each other in a way that no other character in the show can so the prospect of these two rosebuds growing close on the basis of those shared similarities is almost inevitable.

I can even see Ruby and Oscar ultimately falling in love with each other as a result of how much they can relate to one another. After all, not to say it in a cheesy way but…it’s like they were made for each other. It’s almost like it’s their destiny to come together in some shape or form. Whether that turns out to be romantic or remains close but purely platonic, who knows? But since this is my headcanon, I’m hoping it turns romantic.

This is why I like the idea of third wheel characters (like my Rose and Dante) being introduced to help these rosebuds realize their feelings. In the Little Prince, the Fox taught the Prince to see what his Rose truly meant to him. That he was responsible for his Rose. I cannot wait for this to be incorporated into Oscar’s side of things for when he realizes how much Ruby means to him as his one true rose.

As for Ruby, I would like to see a Dante incarnation for her too. I still stand by my hunch that Ruby and Oscar would fall for each other at the same time but Oscar would be the one to realize his feelings first and possibly confess first. But Ruby would feel the same way. It would just take a little longer for her to realize. That’s why I dig a Dante Big Bad Boyfriend character to sort of give a nudge.

Like I can picture Ruby having a Big Bad Boyfriend based on the Big Bad Wolf but the wolf isn’t such a bad guy. He’s actually a Big Good Wolf who falls hard for his little red rose. The wolf and the rose start a romance---it’s an awkward once since it’s a first for them both but they try to make it work. And for the most part, it’s great since the wolf and the rose do care about each other. However the wolf also takes notice that his little red rose also shares a unique bond with a little prince.

At first the wolf becomes envious of the rose’ connection with the prince. But soon the wolf comes to see that what the rose shares with the prince is special and true. The wolf knows that the little prince is in love with the little red rose. Their love for the rose is what they share. 

However, the wolf soon realizes that the prince is the true love of his little red rose and despite being heartbroken about this revelation, the wolf is understanding. Rather than becoming enraged and hurting his rose over her love for the prince, the wolf decides to set the rose free so that she may be with her prince.

If I had to picture Ruby and Dante breaking up, I can imagine it only ending on good terms. In spite of his anger at first, Dante would come to be understanding of Ruby’s bond to Oscar and he would be the one to end things between the two. It would be a break up of mutual understanding. I can imagine Dante calling out Ruby on being in love with Oscar but instead of saying yes or proving him wrong, all Ruby could do is apologize.

So…it’s almost like a yes and no. Yes she possibly feels that way but no she isn’t completely sure yet or doesn’t want to admit it because at the time she’s with someone else and dealing with the confusion of that. That kind of thing. So the only sure thing Ruby can do in the moment is apologize to Dante for not reciprocating the same feelings. All she can do is apologize and…Dante understands all of it.

Dante: The way you describe how you feel about Oscar, that’s how I feel about you. I came here to tell you that I love you Ruby. But…I think you’ve already given me my answer. I don’t know what he did or how he did it, but whatever Oscar did to steal your heart, it worked and it shows. Whether you’re ready to admit that yourself or not, you love him; don’t you?

Ruby: …I....I’m…sorry.

Dante: He’s the one, isn’t he?

Ruby: …I’m so sorry.

Or...something like that. Maybe. So Ruby breaks things off with Dante. She’s sad but not heart-broken. She’s more confused for the most part. Unsure of her own feelings. And ironically, the person she turns to in this moment is the cause of her confused feelings. Her little prince. Oscar.

 And while he’s comforting her, Ruby gets a small flash of realization that what Dante said was true. 

Oscar had grown on her in a way she didn’t imagine. She now cared about him in an unexplainable way that feels both different and unique compared to her other bonds. 

Did that mean that she loved him? It could be. She’d honestly needed time to figure it out and make sense about it. But at least for that moment, she was just contented that Oscar was by her side. Supporting her as always in the way that made he appreciate his presence in her life. And for that moment, that was all that mattered…or something like that.

And that’s pretty much all that I gotta say to that. I went off of another tangent and…as usual, not quite sure if I actually answered you Yellow XD But in a nutshell, that’s what came to my mind after reading your essay comment. I guess you can let me know what you think of all of this now. I think you might like Dante Ingouf a lot more than Dante Alarick.

Alarick is the Bad Ending version of the Big Bad Wolf while Ingouf is his Happy Ending version. Heck I’m almost even tempted to make these two versions of my Dante character half-brothers or fraternal twins.

Like Dante Ingouf is the bastardized Faunus counterpart to his twin brother---Alarick who was left at an orphanage because his mother quote, unquote ‘had an affair with a Faunus’ since her snooty rich boy husband was infertile and the family was in desperate need of an heir. 

So one of the babies, the first born of the two, turned out to be a Faunus but the family were racist and didn’t want their next heir to be of Faunus bloodline. Luckily the other twin was clean of any Faunus genes. So the family, being of prestige in Atlas, decided to keep it a big family secret. Discarded the twin that was a faunus and raised the other human one as a single child. Spoiled him rotten too.

That’s something I’ve wondered in RWBY. We’ve seen human twins and Faunus twins. But never a pair of twins where one is human and the other is Faunus. That’d actually be kind of cool.

Buuuuuuuuuut….I’m getting ahead of myself again. Plus I’ve jibberjabbed for too long. Hope you enjoyed the post.

More RWBY Character Headcanons

 ~LittleMissSquiggles (2019)

[sunshinexlollipops]

So, this is a topic a lot of Rdr2 fan writers have touched upon, but I'm curious about your thoughts on Mary Linton. Do you think she was using Arthur in the events of the game? Do you think she was selfish for not following Arthur or was she reasonable? Do you think it's fair of her to hurt Arthur by stating that "he'll never change"? And while I get the feeling you'll touch this topic in ACW, how do you think Arthur with a new S/O would handle her coming back into his life?

Ohhhhh, anon, you are wanting some tea I tell you! Good thing I just stocked up on Lipton.

So, Some if you may have read a reply about Mary Linton before and why I felt about her as the way I did, but it wasn’t this specific or mentioning of ACW, so here we go!

—————

Was Mary using Arthur?

Yes.

Love her or hate her, when you respond to Mary’s letter Arthur and meets her outside of Valentine, it becomes very clear that she lured Arthur in with her letter to save her brother, Jamie, from the chelonians (aka the weird turtle cult).

She admits this by saying Arthur is the only person she knows who can help, and she begs him to go and get Jamie back, despite how upset you can tell Arthur is at the prospect.

He makes it obvious when he tells her how he’s not good enough to be her husband, but is perfect to be her knight in shining armor. He even almost leaves before the player is given the choice to help Mary or not.

This continues on with the mission involving her father in Saint Denis, when you have to get back Mary’s broach after her father sells it for drinking and gambling money.

As I mentioned in my previous post, Mary knows Arthur is fiercely loyal. He is one of the most dedicated characters, and he has made many sacrifices over the years that have cost him so much, with even Mary being one of them.

She knows that, and he does. Arthur writes about how Mary can “play him like a fiddle” and “like no one else.” He knows he’s being used, that he’s just falling down the rabbit hole again and he knows where it ends.

But he will always come when Mary calls. Always.

Granted, near the last mission, it is obvious Mary cares for him too. That their spark was never quite snuffed out.

The problem is that the ended for a reason, and no matter how much time passes or what they long for, they are both too stubborn to really compromise for one another.

Saying this though, Arthur did want to leave the gang to be with her if you continue with her side missions, but it just wasn’t meant to be.

It never was, and they both know that.

It’s just a matter of actually admitting it to themselves and each other.

Was she selfish or reasonable when she left?

I would say there is SOME reason in Mary initially rejecting Arthur, but there is a catch that makes it not entirely pure.

It is understandable if Mary broke her engagement off with Arthur if it had solely been about him running with Dutch and remaining an outlaw, but it wasn’t.

It’s stated in the game that the main reason Mary and Arthur split was because of Mary’s father and his intolerance of Arthur, and the hypocrisy of it all.

Arthur hates Mary’s father. And for good reason.

Arthur isn’t a good man, but he is honest about it. He never hid what he was from Mary, and she knew when they got together that he was in the Van Der Linde gang and what he did in it.

But that didn’t matter until Mary’s father put his foot down, saying Mary had no reason to be with someone like Arthur.

It would be rational if his reasoning was that Arthur was too dangerous with his lifestyle for Mary, but it mainly came down to a battle of morals.

Mary’s father views Arthur as scum, a criminal not worthy of his daughter. He constantly drags Arthur into the dirt, and places himself and his daughter up on a pedestal that he deems unreachable by the likes of Arthur.

The problem is, Mary’s father is just as crooked as Arthur in some ways.

He’s a drunkard, a liar, a thief.

While you can argue we don’t know much about him, we do know just from the mission in Saint Denis that heals Mary’s belongings to sell them so he can continuously fuel his addictions at a cost to his family.

The way he talks to Arthur is condescending, and you can tell that there is definitely a war of egos going on between the two men.

It’s pretty much just a pissing war, with Arthur being the main target with even Mary taking jabs at him, and refusing to acknowledge he flaws in her father.

Ultimately, it is why they split.

And that’s why her leaving Arthur isn’t as reasonable as it could be if her intentions were solely based on the clash between her father and Arthur, and her denial to see that her father was only ever calling the kettle black.

I wouldn’t necessarily label it as selfish until she demands that Arthur change, when she can’t even admit that her father isn’t as great as he’s made out to be.

Was it fair of her to tell Arthur he could never change?

Okay, so I do want to say this before I get into the logistics of Mary saying that to Arthur: this game is focused on showing us redemption.

Arthur the entire game, Arthur is reflecting and figuring out if the man he is now is the man he wants to be.

Mary saying this line was assuredly to drive home Arthur’s will to change for the better, or to overall look at himself and know that something needed to be done.

So I wouldn’t entirely say it was all on Mary for that line— it was definitely a ploy by the writers for their overall message in the game.

However, they chose Mary as a conduit to relay this because she is from Arthur’s past, and the reason why they split was, as she says, because Arthur wasn’t willing to part with the gang and change for her.

Once upon a time it may have been true, but things were different. I doubt Dutch was the man we came to know, even in the prequel, and things weren’t going to hell as they were. It was the calm before the storm, so why would Arthur think he needed to pack up and leave when everything was just fine?

But the changes in Dutch and the changes in the world that were driving the life an outlaw to extinction have Arthur reconsidering everything, even before we play. There is doubts being voiced with Arthur as soon as chapter one, and that alone speaks of a great shift within him.

He isn’t blind anymore. He can’t afford to be.

And he sure as hell isnt blind when it comes to himself.

We see how Arthur is changing from the very beginning, and we can tell that he is thinking differently and wondering if this life is worth it anymore.

When Mary says Arthur cannot change, she is only refusing to see what is really happening, like with her father.

As I wrote in another post, she calls upon Arthur and uses him because he is he only person she thinks she can go to when Jamie needs saved, and when her father does too.

She keeps Arthur around and on a string because of what he is. She doesn’t expect him to change because what she asks of him is the very thing she criticizes him for.

And as I said, you cannot expect someone to change when you keep them around for what they already are.

So no, it wasn’t fair of her to say that. Both because Arthur was capable, and she wouldn’t let him prove he did.

And what about ACW or just another significant other being with Arthur when Mary reappears?

Oh anon, I can definitely tell you that Mary will be touched upon and talked about in my fic. There’s no doubt, because Mary is one reason Arthur is the way that he is.

I don’t want to spoil much, or explain things as I intended with the story, but yes— come chapter two, expect Mary to come into the picture.

As for Arthur having a different significant other, they wouldn’t be happy.

It’s obvious that Arthur isn’t over her, that he never quite can be. He is always loyal to her, and even with a significant other, he would more than likely still help Mary when she asked him to.

That being said, he would be able to admit that what they had has passed, and if Mary does express interest, Arthur would just smile sadly at her and tell her it’s a while too late.

He will remain kind to her, but he wouldn’t jeopardize his new relationship over something he knows won’t work out, and is wrong like that.

Of course, there would more than likely be fights between Arthur and his partner. Lingering jealousy, fear of him being unfaithful— of something rekindling.

Him still offering to help Mary won’t help the situation, but it is going to be up to his partner if they want to see through to his intentions.

Which isn’t anything romantic with Mary. For him, it’s a principle thing.

Because his heart is with his partner, no matter what. But he would not leave Mary out to dry just because it no longer lies with her.

With ACW, we’ll see this play out, and I’m pretty excited to portray the tension and conflict when it comes to Mary’s sudden reappearance and calling on Arthur.

So, looks like that’s it! Thanks for the submission, anon!

Hoped this answered all your questions! If not, of if you have any more, just hit the inbox up again. ;)

[prairiedust]

The Folktales of Supernatural

Here is the third and probably last post in my trilogy of the folkloristics, folklore, and folktales of Supernatural. You do not have to read the first and second posts necessarily, but it is a series, so…

Anyways, in Unhuman Nature, Ross-Leming and Buckner gave us a thumbnail of season three’s main arc-- Dean’s imminent hell deal-- in Jack’s perfectest day evaar. However, Dean got to do for Jack what no one was able to do for him when he was living under the shadow of his own death. Instead of taking a joy ride, going fishing (or to the beach, come ON show,) or fine okay spending some time with a girl with daddy issues (come ON buckleming,) Dean took care of business and showed Sam how to take care of the car. When Sam was also undergoing the Trials, they were again racing against the clock. Cas, too, was under the shadow of the Leviathan infestation, and there was very little carpe in the few diems he had left until the creatures destroyed him. There was always the understanding in Unhuman Nature that TFW would be doing everything possible to save Jack, but while Sam and Cas were best tasked with trying to find a cure, Dean knew that what would be the right thing for Jack was not being in the bunker dwelling on his imminent demise, and living is a particularly Dean thing.

It was a wonderful way of retelling this particular series legend, and using that series “motif” in a new way (anyone want to tackle a Supernatural Motif Index LOLOLOL) to do the “what happens when a story is retold” theme.

So, to tie up this trilogy of close readings, I want to talk a little about how the European version of Sleeping Beauty is a good way to understand what else is going on thematically with the trifecta of recursion-retelling-mirroring that’s been going on.

There are very few citations here as the evolution of Sleeping Beauty is more or less accepted as general knowledge now-- the concept is explored in Folk and Fairy Tales 2nd edition, edited by Martin Hallett and Barbara Karasek. It’s also on Wikipedia, if you’re into that.

CW for discussion of the non-est con to ever non-con and other unsettling themes that are nonetheless perfectly ordinary in folklore.

Sleeping Beauty was once considered to be perhaps one of the most wholesome of the Grimms’ fairy tales, but (in pop culture at least) the shine is starting to wear off. I was playing the Ellen edition of Outburst with some people I didn’t even know about a month ago and one of the “clues” was “Sleeping Beauty” and as soon as the guesser put that card up on her forehead, a guy shouts out, “That story is about sexual assault, fight me!”

Which makes this particular “folk tale” a neat way to show how folklore, or storytelling and retelling, is such a good frame for season 14.

I mentioned in the first post of this series that Sleeping Beauty is a great example of the intercycling of folklore and literature-- oral tales can become literary works, and vice versa, and they can comment on one another in surprising ways.

Let’s start with one of the most recent iterations of the Sleeping Beauty story and a move from one kind of text to another-- Disney’s 1959 animated movie, “Sleeping Beauty.” I know a lot of readers on here will know it-- and we’ll work our way down to the centuries-old bones of this tale.

Right off the bat, we get a really great (and subverted!) example of that “rule of three” 2/1 pattern I already talked about. The king and queen invite three “good fairies” to their daughter’s christening. They are even called “good fairies” by the herald as they enter on a sunbeam, so you already know there’s gonna be a bad one. The first fairy, Flora, gives Princess Aurora the gift of beauty. The next, Fauna, blesses the baby with the gift of song. Before fairy #3-- Merryweather-- can bestow her gift, Maleficent arrives, totally pissed that she hadn’t been invited but cool as a frozen cucumber, casually lies about her reason for showing up and then curses Aurora to prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die on the evening of her 16th birthday. Merryweather uses her turn to alter Maleficent’s curse, as she does not have the power to nullify it: Aurora will fall into a deep sleep that only “true love’s kiss” can awaken her from. In hopes of protecting her from the curse in any way shape or form, King Stephan orders every spinning wheel in the kingdom to be burned, but the fairies say that this will not be enough so they sequester her in the woods under the alias Briar Rose, and they all live as peasants, eschewing magic and raising her in almost total isolation so that Maleficent can not find her to work the curse. Neat. Briar Rose gets into mischief anyway, gads about the forest singing like a klaxon, meets a prince named Phillip who is having Adventures in the Woods, falls In Love™ with him despite some now-creepy hand-grabbing. Later the fairies tell her not to worry about mysterious forest dudes and traumatize her by telling her that her entire life has been a lie, and then inexplicably send her home to the palace for her 16th birthday celebration despite the fact that the whole reason for hiding out was to keep Maleficent from being able to find her. Maleficent discovers that Aurora is at the palace, games the anti-spindle situation by luring Aurora up to a tower to a magical spinning wheel; Aurora pricks her finger on the spindle, and Bob’s your uncle. The good fairies put everyone in the castle into a deep sleep (so that while they are waiting for some weirdo to fall in True Love with a sleeping teenager, eugh, the people she knows (aka JUST MET) will sleep with her so that they won’t be upset by the complete failure of their plans) the fairies realize that Prince Phillip, the guy that Aurora has been betrothed to since she popped out of the womb, is one and the same as Mysterious Forest Dude that she fell in love with, and they send him to Aurora’s castle. Maleficent imprisons him, the fairies help him escape, he tears through a thorn bush that Maleficent creates as an impediment, kills the witch, and wakes Aurora with a chaste kiss. It’s fine, they met once, it was only a kiss (IT WAS ONLY A KISS), and this was 1959. So, that’s the Disney text in a nutshell. Folklorist Kay Stone says in her book Some Day Your Witch Will Come that while Disney had been called “a ‘Master of Fantasy’ in fact Disney removed most of the powerful fantasy of the Marchen and replaced it with false magic.” While her criticism of the Disnified Grimms tales is explicitly feminist, the criticism stands as Disney’s product is far divorced from the folk “originals.”

Most people are familiar with the Grimms’ written version of “Sleeping Beauty,” or “Little Briar Rose,” as they titled it when they published it in their first collection. This is the version that Disney partly modeled their story after. I won’t retell it, I’ll just discuss differences between the two versions, so please go read D. L. Ashliman’s translation here. It’s short. And. It turns out that the German “folk tale” that the Grimms brothers harvested is more than likely based on a story that was published by Charles Perrault in France which re-entered the Germanic oral tradition at some point. In this version, there are thirteen “wise women” (as opposed to fairies) in Briar Rose’s estimable father’s kingdom, but he only has twelve golden plates for them at the celebration of her birth, so he only actually invites twelve wise women (which is a hilarious commentary on what the lower classes thought of the nobility, am I right? Heaven forbid you don’t have enough fancy plates, quelle horreur or rather wie schrecklich or whatever the German equivalent would be.) Again, after eleven blessings, the evil crone who was disrespected barges in and curses the princess to prick her finger on a spindle (not the spindle of a spinning wheel, though) and die at fifteen; The next-eldest of the wise women modifies the curse and dad has all the spindles destroyed. Fifteen was apparently too young for a sexual awakening in 1959 but it was fine in 1812. Also, there were no shenanigans in the woods-- Briar Rose grows up a princess. She finds an old woman illicitly spinning in the castle one day and wants to try it, pricks herself with the spindle (the German version never specifies where) and her sleep is so profound that the entire castle falls asleep with her. A massive thorn hedge grows up because neglect, and eventually conceals the castle, and all that is left of the kingdom is a legend. Many other princes met agonizing deaths in that thorn hedge trying to get to Briar Rose but one day Her ACTUAL Prince shows up. The thorns turn to blossoms, he sails right through, kisses the girl, and as she wakes up so does the whole castle. The tale is over with an “and they lived happily ever after” ending.

Charles Perrault, the Frenchman who wrote the version of “La belle au bois dormant” or “The Sleeping Beauty in the Woods” that the Grimms’ informant possibly retold a hundred years later, has seven good fairies invited to the shindig, because everyone assumes that fairy number eight is dead or too ill to travel or senile or whatever. Here you can see that this isn’t an error made because a king was afraid of committing a faux pas and not from being afraid of the “bad” fairy, but because no one bothered to check on the old woman and find out what the reality was. You know what they say about what happens when you assume. So this time a young fairy steps forward and changes the curse, and instead of violently burning all the spinning wheels and spindles, the king merely outlaws their use. When the princess is sixteen or seventeen, (French nobles apparently had a little more childhood than German peasants,) she finds an old woman spinning in a tower who has remarkably never heard of the spinning ban. She hands over the spindle and the princess pricks her hand, and faints dead away. The king puts her on a bed of gold and I’m gonna quote Ashliman for this next part: “When the accident happened to the princess, the good fairy who had saved her life by condemning her to sleep a hundred years was in the kingdom of Mataquin, twelve thousand leagues away. She was instantly warned of it... [and] set off at once, and within an hour her chariot of fire, drawn by dragons, was seen approaching.” She puts everyone in the castle to sleep and this time the thorn hedge is actually a privacy fence that sprouts up under the good fairy’s magic. A hundred years later, some prince is having Adventures in the Woods when he sees the tops of the castle towers from a distance. One of his retinue tells him there’s a pretty girl inside, so he goes to check it out. Bruh, the brambles part for him magically, but allow only him, out of all of his party, to enter. He doesn’t awaken this princess with a kiss, but by the mere act of falling down beside her and being so genuinely and enormously in love with her that she wakes up on her own. Ol’ Charlie’s story is not over by half, though. They talk for hours, Perrault has a lot about eating and getting dressed and then they nap together a little, and finally get married. The prince’s mother is an ogre, however, and wants to eat her grandkids, Dawn and Day. Where does this come from? Why is it in here? What the actual heck? And it gets crazier from there. The prince becomes king and rides forth to wage war in a distant land, and the queen actually tells her steward that she wants to eat the little girl for her dinner. He tricks her by hiding Dawn and serving the queen a lamb instead. Next day, she wants to eat the little boy. He tricks her again by serving her a baby goat. Then, she wants to eat her daughter-in-law and they serve the evil queen venison. Then one day she hears the voices of her erstwhile entrees in the castle, discovers that she had been tricked, and prepares a cauldron full of venomous reptiles to throw the three innocents into to their deaths. The prince-turned-king shows up just in time and his mother is so beside herself with rage that she actually throws herself into the vat instead. So, yeah, weird stuff. Stuff that the Germans left out, or forgot, or decided that there was no “moral” that they wanted anything to do with. Was Perrault out of his damn mind?

WELL AS IT TURNS OUT, Perrault was actually retelling a Neapolitan folk tale that had been collected long before by a fellow named Giambattista Basile. He called the story “Sun, Moon, and Talia.” There is some evidence that it predates Basile, but most folklorists start there because the problem with oral tradition is that it’s rarely written down (ba-dump-tsss.) So we can definitively pick up the European version of Sleeping Beauty in Naples, Italy, in the early seventeenth century, when this mid-level clerk and author writes down a whole bunch of “nursery tales” and then dies. One of the stories he writes down is called “Sun, Moon, and Talia.” And I didn’t want to talk about it much before, except that I think understanding that Perrault seriously sanitized Basile’s story is the perfect illustration of “what happens when a story is retold.” In Basile’s story, to which I’m linking an okay version here with a content warning for rape and for the fact that they linked that painting “Nightmare” to the story, http://www.mftd.org/index.php?action=story&act=select&id=3364, Talia the princess is not cursed, but her father’s scholars tell her fortune and say to the king that she would “incur great danger from a splinter of flax.” He forbade flax (from which linen is made) from entering the castle. So in this version, it is the material, not necessarily the method of transforming it, that imperils the princess. Yes this is a giant metaphor for sexual intercourse and/or loss of innocence. Nonetheless, she comes across a woman who is spinning flax into thread, wants to try it, and gets a splinter under her nail. She falls down dead. The king is heartbroken, shutters the castle, and leaves her propped up on a throne. Some time later, another king comes across the castle, explores it, sees the dead Talia who seems to be weathering her death remarkably well, and has his way with her. I can only imagine what ran through Perrault’s head when he came across this. “Sacre bleu!!! Non, non ma petite chere, this will not do. A true king would never!” or something like that. ANYWAY, Basile’s story is still the frame on which Perrault based his literary fairy tale, for Talia gives birth to twins, a boy and a girl, Moon and Sun, one of which sucks the splinter out of her finger, and she awakens. The king finds her but keeps her a secret. The king’s wife (he has a wife!) sends for them, and then to get revenge on her husband she orders the children cooked and served to him one day, but again there is a switcheroo and the cook uses lambs instead, and later it all comes out and Talia marries the king and Basile’s moral (vastly different than that of Perrault) is “Those whom fortune favors find good luck even in their sleep.” I don’t know if that was written in “sarcasm gothic” or not.

The bones of all of the stories are the same, but in each iteration something has changed which makes a huge impact on the overall themes of each telling. First, Perrault drops the rape of Talia, and slides the villain role over to the prince’s mother and makes the rape-king a virtuous prince to erase the royal philandering and necrophilia, and there is no kiss at all. The Germans bring the kiss back, weirdly enough, to somehow reach back through Perrault’s chivalrication to the sexual component of Briar Rose’s awakening-- it might be the imagery of the spindle, which in some cases is a big rod typically dropped between a spinner’s knees to make the yarn or thread, or it could be the completely bonkers idea that just kneeling beside her bed would not be enough to break the kiss (but then again, why wouldn’t a test of virtue be enough? Indeed, in the Disney version, the three fairies arm Phillip with “the shield of virtue.”) In Basile’s version, Talia dead, not sleeping, and in the Disney version there is the totally weird seclusion until young adulthood (that weirdly enough hearkens to the Irish legend of Deirdre, a woman who was betrothed to the king of Ulster and was sequestered to both preserve her innocence and thwart a dire prophecy but who still managed to run off with another guy and cause an epic war) and they rename the princess Aurora, which is Latin for Dawn, which is the name of her daughter in the French version. It’s all very intermangled.

Did other stories with similarities come from a single stalk, an ur-story like the Great Hunt may have? D. L. Ashliman in Folk and Fairy Tales: A Handbook tells us that Grimm and other folklorists believe that these SB stories are the vestiges of myths (132) such as the story of Brunhilde, who was put to sleep with an enchanted thorn for reaping a warrior favored by Odin. Or does this particular metaphor just crop up in cultures everywhere through synchronicity? In the Japanese folktale The Matsuyama Mirror, a young girl is given a mirror by her father, who tells her that whenever she is sad she can look in the mirror and see her mother, and eventually the mirror’s symbolism thwarts her evil stepmother, much as in the story of Snow White. Is there an even older story that connects these two?

I chose these four versions of Sleeping Beauty because for one thing this story was mentioned in the text of The Scar, they are clearly family, and the American/European versions are the most familiar to me (and I assume at least the American audience of Supernatural) so it easy to demonstrate this “digging down” to get to the seed of a story-- in this case the sterilization of the Sleeping Beauty story is an excellent metaphor for a powerful trauma weathering and being repressed-- or healed-- over time. Many scholars have noted the sexual symbolism of the spindle, which if you’ve never seen one is a rod of varying lengths with a round weight at the bottom, and in hand-spinning, typically a spinner hangs the spidle between their legs and it can pump up and down as it spins. Even the later versions of the story that feature spinning wheels have a spindle on them, and it is an unmistakably phallic component of the rig, coupled with the pistoning action of the spinner’s foot on the treadle to spin the flywheel. So hm. However, not all spindles are sharp enough to possibly prick a hand or a finger, and in the original “Talia” it is the flax splinter that inserts itself into her flesh. At any rate, it’s a metaphor for sexual penetration retold for an audience that has increasingly moved further and further away from being able to see (or is unwilling to acknowledge) sexual subtext.

Jack’s perfect day was bittersweet, but was also unmistakably idyllic and idealized, almost Disnified, although the magic was still unmistakably powerful. The scene by the river, where Jack explicitly invokes the memory of John, should also illuminate scenes from the series’ past, such as Dean’s dream sequence where he was fishing off of a dock, or where rogue angel Daniel was fishing when he was found by Castiel and Hannah. Fishing is a motif, if you will; it’s been featured in the show before. Jack’s eventual death is one of the show’s tale types. Dean, Sam, and Cas have all been through it-- as Cas says in The Spear, it’s “something of a rite of passage.” But we’re being told this story again from a point of view that was almost tragically abbreviated the first time-- when John trades his soul for Dean’s in In My Time of Dying, we got very little of what it means for a parent to sacrifice themselves for a child. Likewise, the other times that TFW faced their dooms, they had (albeit under duress) volunteered themselves. Jack was an innocent. Dying is perhaps the ultimate loss of innocence-- it certainly was for Talia. So by stripping away the halcyon glow of the river scene, we get to the bones of where the “under threat of impending death” tale type originated in the series.

This whole season so far has been the most clever way possible to do a “retrospective.” It’s not a sign that a show is tired, but that it has reached a point of self-reflection that very very few shows ever get to.

I have to wonder if this way of painting season 14’s arc through a constellation of motifs-- through callbacks as hysterical as the Scooby lunchbox full of pressurized gas in Mint Condition to returning characters as poignant as Lilly Sunder’s appearance in Byzantium, to thematic parallels to past seasons-- is going to continue into the second half of the season. We will know quickly, as the stakes have been raised after Dean’s repossession, whether Dabb and his writers continue to use the motif index of the show, or if this retrospective period is over and we’ll be covering new thematic ground. I will say, this theme has been tied up pretty neatly with the mid-season finale, that while Castiel essentially stepped into the Jack’s Fractured Fairy Tale much the same way that the way the good fairy modifies the evil fairy’s curse in Sleeping Beauty, that choice could shift everything in his mythos over to “beat the devil” which is another favorite SPN story, Tale Type 210a or whatever (and is irl ATU 330: The Smith Outwits the Devil and hopefully would be 330C which is the kind of “Devil Went Down to Georgia” classic American and African-American story.) (Imagine the SPN Tale Type Index starting with “1-199 - Origin Stories - 1a Burning Wife, 1b Burning Girlfriend, 1c House Burns Down, 2 Demon Blood Fed to Infant” and etcetera… anyways.) And we know that Cas and Sam are going into Dean’s headspace to get him, so there’s the rescuing forces storming the sleeping castle trope (remember the “sleeping” patron in Rocky’s Bar?) getting resolved potentially. But I do believe that this focused close reading brings to light a “healing trauma” theme that the history of Sleeping Beauty makes explicit. It is not the only reading of the show to do that, but again, if I could describe Dabb’s era with one phrase it would be “There’s no such thing as too much meta.”

See y’all Thursday night!

[unicorns-bookshelf]

Disclaimer: I have voluntarily reviewed this book after receiving a free copy from Hidden Gem Books.

The review may contain very minor spoilers!

I have to admit – despite my love for the sci-fi genre and all the opportunities it presents, I haven’t actually read many books that were straight out space operas with spaceships, aliens and grand intergalactic adventures. I have, obviously, consumed other media from that genre but the books for some reason rarely found their way to my shelf. Because of that, when I read Caspian’s Fortune’s description, I immediately thought that this was exactly what I was looking for to help me fix that obvious oversight on my side.

Caspian Robeaux is an outlaw and his life isn’t an easy one. He has a huge debt with a dangerous and influential Priestess Veena, his ship (a rather necessary tool to run his courier jobs) is in dire needs of repairs and the money from his most recent job was stolen and almost gambled away before he managed to get it back. Not to mention that his only friend and companion is a sassy robot called Box, who spends all his days teasing him and watching soap operas on the internet. He doesn’t need any additional trouble but it comes anyway in shape of a Coalition Commander who will do everything to make Caspian return to his used-to-be home and face the injustice he’d experienced in the past.

The plot is simple enough - the local depressed prick is forced to get a grip and change his miserable situation for the better with the help of quirky, colorful companions. There are space ship battles, sassy banter and mysteries to be uncovered. I felt like the beginning was a little slow and it took me a bit to get into it but it might have been because it was my first ARC and I wasn’t sure what to expect, so I was rather critical at first. Nevertheless, I began really enjoying the book only after Cas and his friends left the Devil’s Gate.

The characters were solid, likable an easy to root for. Caspian, despite doing his best to look like an asshole who doesn’t care about anything other than his own business, is just genuinely a good guy. He’s willing to put the well-being of others above his own safety and freedom. He always chooses to do the right thing while complaining about it throughout the whole process. Despite his bitterness about the way Coalition treated him, he clearly misses the days he’d spent serving on their ship and enjoys the moments when he’s allowed to act as a part of the crew, fitting in with them naturally. I found the moments when he reacted like a crew member would just to think “Wait, I’m not a part of this anymore” a few seconds later quite cute.

Box was a delight most of the time, although he did have some annoying moments, especially when he kept suggesting Cas and Evie should hook up. Besides that, he had a fun, vibrant personality which nicely contrasted with the common trope of a stoic, emotionless robot companion. Also, binge-watching tv shows when you’re stressed is totally relatable.

Evie gave me a lot of mixed feelings when she first appeared. On one hand, soldier lady with a huge sword is a big yes in my books, on the other I was so afraid that she will become one of those women that are only introduced to fall in love with the main character and once they do, they lose any hint of personality and skills they might have had before. I was just waiting for Cas to save her from grave peril or say something nice so the awkward romance could unfold.

And then it didn’t happen.

Evie stayed badass but also kind through the whole book. She is loyal to her crew, strong and resourceful. Despite being often annoyed with Cas she’s always willing to see the best in him and is ready to call him out on his bullshit. I really appreciated that she didn’t end up getting the sexist treatment female characters often get.

Besides the three main characters, Caspian’s Fortune has a solid cast of supporting characters, mostly the crew of the Tempest. My personal favorites were Greene, who was a good leader with a strong moral compass and Laura, whose little crush on Evie was adorable. There were also very interesting alien characters from different races, each one diverse and properly described, despite not playing that big of a role in the story. It was a nice piece of worldbuilding that I appreciated.

Besides the alien races, the worldbuilding was rather limited. We got to learn about the places where the action took place, mostly the Coalition and its relationships with neighboring planets and territories. I felt like there wasn’t enough info about Veena and the Sargans overall. What was the Priestess of? What was the deal with the Sargan Commonwealth? However, as it wasn’t really the focus of the story, it didn’t bother me that much, just something that made me curious.

All in all, Caspian’s Fortune is a really enjoyable read with a likable cast of characters and fast-paced action. It’s not revolutionary and has some flaws like limited worldbuilding and a bit of a slow start but it’s a solid beginning of a promising series. I’m definitely interested in seeing more of Cas’ adventures when another book comes out.

Rating: 4/5  Get it on Amazon here!

[multifandomaddictedfangirl]

Misconceptions about Breaking bad ~ my theory (Spoilers!)

So I’ve just finished watching Breaking Bad. All seasons. I really loved the show. It was well written, well directed, well thought in every details, very well played with such talented actors. It is a masterpiece. Clearly, it was a show that had been thought of and worked on for a while to be perfect (like no plot holes, no OOC actions, no wasted moments, no pointless moves, no useless lines, etc.). Besides, this show had everything: badass action, fighting scenes, tension, drama (big time), humor sometimes (not often) and emotions (a lot).

However, I think there is a HUGE misunderstanding to what this show is about and an ENORMOUS misconception of why it’s so good and really likeable.

A lot of people I have met IRL, or read online, really loved this show as well. That’s not a surprise. As I’ve said, this show was really good for a lot of reasons and I will never deny that.

But as I was reading them/talking to them IRL, I’ve realised something. They loved Breaking Bad because they loved the story and the character of Walter White. They loved the story of an american middle aged white man, with a normal life, a traditional family and a boring job, becoming this super extra badass who ends up building and controlling a meth empire. Usually, they particularly loved season 3-4 when Walt is supposedly at its greatest moments. They loved Walter White and what he has become: a badass, a smart ass meth dealer, a dominating boss, a good provider for his family... a real man. They loved him as a hero. They loved him as a protagonist who should succeed and get what he wants in the end. They loved him as a character that they were rooting for. They also loved the dream of a normal guy starting off nothing and ending up being the big boss in the game. They loved the idea of having this exciting/dangerous/ illegal/ outlawed/badass “dream life”. Like in an action movie. They loved the fantasy that Breaking Bad exposes.

So here’s the thing... Those people don’t like Breaking Bad. Because that’s not the show. That’s not its point. That’s not its essence. That’s not what it’s trying to show us. That’s not what it’s about. At all.

Obviously, there are multiple interpretations and levels of lecture in a piece of art. And I don’t think some are overall better than others. I think it’s pretty condescending and arrogant to believe there is a “good way” of consuming medias/arts, and a “bad way”. There are just different ways. And that’s great.

However, if you pay attention to the show, for like 10 minutes, it’s pretty clear what it is about.

Breaking Bad is a criticism of Walter White and of this fantasy of a badass action-movie lifestyle. The whole point of the show is basically to say: “Look at that kind of lifestyle society makes you fantasise about, and look how you really don’t want to have it cause it actually sucks. Look at how you DON’T and SHOULDN’T want to become Walter White.”

Walter White isn’t portrayed as a glorious badass mastermind hero by the show. He shouldn’t be read like that. Of course, he is the main protagonist and so, the audience is meant to follow his story. But Walt is first portrayed as a bad guy. Not only like a villain. But as a bad person. Someone you should despise for his personality. Someone who should disgust you. Someone you should hate for who he truly is. Someone you shouldn’t be rooting for. Someone you should quite quickly want dead.

When the show begins, yes, he is portrayed as a normal family man, working a basic job, providing for his family which he seems to care about. But the show already makes it clear that he is a very proud man, who thinks he deserves better than his current life, who thinks he can do better and have better just because. Just cause he is Walter White, a chemistry genius. His world, what he has, doesn’t seem to be enough for him.

(Btw some of my friends argued that Walter White wasn’t such a bad person in the beginning of the show, and that “the meth dealing turned him into an asshole”. While I would agree with that, I also wanna point out that in the beginning of the show, Walt isn’t the greatest person neither... His life is built around a very sexist scheme. He always expects Skyler to do breakfast for him and basically all the housework, because she is his housewife and that’s the way things are supposed to be. We never see him being grateful for what she does. If he’s the only one working, “providing for his family”, it’s more likely because he didn’t want Skyler to. Skyler is a competent woman, she could have found a job with a better income than high school teacher. But I don’t think Walt, fulled with pride, would have accepted to be taken care of by his wife. He wanted to be the alfa male since day one. Because he more likely already had internalised pride, sexism and toxic masculinity and fake virility. We never see him share his true feelings with Skyler. He doesn’t want to look vulnerable. Never. He’s never real with anybody. He refuses to admit that he feels bad about his life and prefers to hide behind a mask, which he will continue to do throughout the show. Because expressing your true feelings to someone who cares about you is not an alfa male move, so Walt rejects this idea. So no, I don’t believe Walter White was such a great person in the beginning. He already was an asshole. He just became waaaaaaaay worse.)

Anyway, then he got diagnosed with cancer. And the money issue appears. If the family pays for Walter’s chemotherapy, they will take a huge risk of bankrupt. They need more money. The family needs more money. But let’s note that Walt’s friends, Eliot and Gretchen, DO propose to pay for his therapy. But Walter refuses, again because of his pride. All the events that follow, all the murders, all the meth dealing, all the horrors, EVERYTHING could have been avoided if Walter White hadn’t decided to be an arrogant jerk and say “suck it” to genuine help.

The money and the (supposedly) rightful idea providing for his family will be Walter’s justifications for ALL his actions during the ENTIRE show (even when his cancer is cured and the family doesn’t necessarily needs this huge amount of money anymore).

The truth is Walt never just wanted the money for chemotherapy or to help his family. He wanted the money because money equals power and influence. And Walt dreamed of power and control over the others. He wanted to be the only one capable of providing, the one everyone else would praise, admire and thank for the rest of his life. He wanted to be a god. Before even cooking his first batch, he already was a narcissist self-centered and arrogant prick, only thinking about his own good.

When he starts to cook meth, it just becomes even worse. The show gets darker, bloodier, more violent. Everything breaks bad, as thev title of the show clearly explicits. Walt finds a new way to express his desire of control, his dream of being finally respected/feared, and the silent violence which he was hidding inside of him.

(I think Walt somehow wants to turn the symbolic violence he was victim of (not being manly enough, especially compared to his brother-in-law, Hank who kinda bullies him in the beginning of the show) into a physical violence he is now in control of).

He then becomes a monster, who is capable of the most cruel, creepy, insane actions to get what he wants. He completely looses sense of reality. If we sum up what he did: he started cooking meth, he missed his daughter’s birth because of the meth dealing, he lied to everybody who cared about him, he tricked his DEA agent brother-in-law Hank, he mentally abused and manipulated Jesse to make him his puppet, he provoked Hank’s accident paralysing him for a while, he turned Junior against Skyler, he abused Skyler and made her part of his business letting her no other choice, he killed Gus’s men, he disolved murdered bodies in acid, he let Jane died while he could have saved her, he made Jesse kill Gale, he blew up a old people’s house killing Gus and hurting multiple innocents, he told nazis where Andrea lived and therefore caused her death, he ordered killings in prison, he blackmailed Hank with a fake confession video, he kidnapped Holly, he caused Hank and Gomez’s deaths, he killed Krazy8, he killed Mike, and he poisoned a child.

And the show makes it pretty clear that it’s not sane, that NONE of this is cool/badass, that it’s just miserable actions provoked by a desperate man, that it will just bring him sadness, loneliness, loss, misery and disfurtune, that Walt slowly but surely goes down this path of destruction and cruelty and that he will never come back. That what he once had (a family who loved and respected him, friends who cared about him, friendly neighbors, a stable job which had always been enough to provide for the family, a beautiful house, a great life, really) will be gone forever. And he will never get all of that back. Even if Walt just realises that in the final episodes.

His problematic lack of trust (even towards Jesse who never betrayed him!), his egocentric paranoia (the fact that he always thinks he is the center of some sort of conspiracy in the meth empire, despite the fact that it is a huge business and he is just not alone in this), his insane quest of power (the fact that he is never happy with what he has and always wants to extend his market/to extend his influence) and his huge PRIDE will always and constantly lead him to making huge mistakes and screwing up everything, making everything way worse. Walt is often the cause of his own failures.

But rather than learning from his mistakes, grow up and adapt, those mistakes just reinforce his beliefs, his fears, his desires, and justifies somehow even more his further actions. Walt is stuck in a vicious circle that, you know already from season 1-2, will lead him towards his end.

Everytime Walt tries something, he fails. He is not a badass mastermind meth dealer. He takes a lot of stupid decisions because he is too impulsive and doesn’t know how things really work in the real life. There is plenty of things he doesn’t know, even if he never admits it. He always have more competent person around him to do the job. Sure he cooks meth better than anybody else (except maybe Jesse in season 5), but meth dealing isn’t just cooking. Without Jesse, without Gus, without Mike, Walt would have never been Heisenberg.

Relying on other isn’t a bad thing (on the contrary), but that’s not what Walt does. Walt USES people. He manipulates them, he mentally ABUSES them, destroys their self esteem, threatens them, makes them believe they have no other choices but to order him. He did that with Jesse (big time), and also with Skyler for instance. The truth is Walt sucks and he needs others but he always denies it because he doesn’t want to admit that he is vulnerable and lost and that he actually is not “the big boss in the game”.

And whenever he makes a decision by himself (usually to cross someone), he FAILS. Like dramatically. He always puts himself in a position that is worse, usually more dangerous, just because he couldn’t shut up and keep his pride. Yes, sometimes, he also succeeds but it’s then quickly shown that what he thought was a success will turn up against him.

Even when Walt does look badass, it’s during short moments taken apart from big story. Yes, if you take some scenes out of context, Walt looks cool. But if you just take some time to analyse the context, than the scenes loose all its power and Walt appears the way he is inside: powerless, weak, insecure, pathetic.

For instance, when Walter says to his wife “I’m the danger”, it’s not meant to be seen as a badass line (and it has, by many people). It’s pathetic because he has, at that point in the show, lost control in his professional life. So he’s trying to regain control and influence in his private life by terryfing someone who looks weaker than him. He cannot hurt or scare his actual enemies in the meth empire because they are more powerful than him. He is at this point lost, confused and vulnerable. He needs to regain his manhood, his position of power, his role of alfa male. So to do so, he decides to terrify his wife, who is just a normal person and doesn’t know the meth world (and so, who has to take anything Walt says for granted). He’s like a bully, in school, attacking the weakest because they are in quest of manhood and influence. And we know bullies are actually the most insecure kids.

Besides, when Walt fails, he doesn’t even admit he screwed up, says sorry and learns from his mistakes. He denies he made a mistake and takes the blame on others. That’s, again, profoundly PATHETIC. He lies to everyone. While he claims that he doesn’t want anybody’s pity, he keeps lying to make it look like he was just the victim of unfortunate events against him. That’s why Walt isn’t even a good likeable villain. He denies what he truly wants (money, power, control, sense of manhood...), he hides behind a fake justification, and he doesn’t realise or admit that his means are deeply cruel (murder, mental abuse, meth dealing, child poisoning, lying, bloodbath assassinations...). Even if he has convinced himself he’s doing all of this for a good reason (provide for his family), it’s like he is not aware of the monstrosity of his actions. He never admits he has become a merciless monster. Not to his family, not to his wife, not to his partners in crime. Most villains would say: “I believe what I do is fair and justified, but to do so, I have to become a monster and do unspeakable things and that’s what I’m gonna do”. But Walt doesn’t.

(Walt would probably say something like “I’m a good person, I want to help my family which totally explains all my actions which weren’t even THAT bad if you look at it a certain way and there was no other choice anyway, I’m just a victim, but I’m still powerful, but I had to, but I’m in control.” And honestly? UGH.)

Walt is a looser, who tries to hide the fact that he sucks. He is not a badass, or a mastermind. He’s mostly scared, pathetic and lost. Breaking Bad always show us that. Breaking Bad is about the fail and the path towards the end of Walter White. It’s about Walt becoming worse and worse, but not by doing things more and more illegal/horrible. He’s becoming worse and worse as a person. More pathetic as the show evolves. More miserable. More lost. More desperate. And he ends up with NOTHING.

Walter White looses everything. His friends are so terrified of him that they don’t want to have any contact with him. His wife completely despise him. His son is ashamed and disgusted of him. His daughter will grow up without a father. His former associates are mostly dead. His partner, Jesse, hates him and runs away from him. Walt dies alone, abandonned by everyone, knowing nobody will miss him and that he has failed to do what he first wanted (take care of his family), that the person he once was, who had a great life actually, is gone.

The show makes it very clear that following Walter’s path is not something cool. It’s not something you should want or dream about. Because in your fantasy, the meth business is badass and cool and fun. But in reality, it’s difficult, horrifying, dangerous and life-ruining. The point of the show is to stay: Walt got stuck in this because he was, and always had been, a proud, narcissist and pathetic person and he has LOST everything when he tried to be the badass he never was.

This fictional lifestyle, based on pride, toxic masculinity and badass action fantasy, that is nourished by a lot of fictions and medias that we consume, is BAD (hence the title). The show criticises it over and over again.

And in my opinion, that’s why it’s so good. The show doesn’t glorify what society already praises to be the dream. It questions it, it shows us its true nature, and criticises it. At the end, Breaking Bad isn’t just a badass exciting action-movie turned into a serie (it would have been quite boring if it was). It’s more than that. It tells a story about us as human, as people, and it deconstructs a fantasy we all have had at some point. And it does it perfectly. So I really loved this show, but it saddened me to see so many people having this misunderstanding about what the show was trying to say.

[preserving-ferretbrain]

Not Exactly T.H. White

by Viorica

Wednesday, 14 January 2009

Viorica's review of the BBC's cracktastic Merlin.~

After what might be called a bitter breakup with BBC’s Robin Hood, I promised myself that I’d avoid any further TV shows that were more enjoyable for their badness than their quality. So when the majority of my Livejournal friendslist began squeeing over Merlin, I swore I’d avoid the temptation. No matter how shiny and cracky and homoerotic it appeared, I was not going to watch it, because I knew that if I did I’d be sucked into shiny-cracky-homoerotic-bad TV land. But eventually the temptation grew too strong, and I downloaded the first season to watch over Christmas break. I expected bad special effects; I got that. I expected inaccuracy; I got that in droves. I expected mediocre writing and acting, and I got . . . something else.

If you assumed from the title of the show that Merlin is based on Arthurian legends, you’d be better off abandoning that idea right now. The series revolves around a teenage boy named - you guessed it - Merlin who is sent to live at the court of Camelot by his mother, because he’s manifested magical powers, and she has an old friend, Gaius who lives at Camelot and who is better equipped to train Merlin than she is. Unfortunately for Merlin, magic is outlawed in Camelot, and has been since the birth of Prince Arthur about twenty years earlier. Yes, Merlin and Arthur and the same age, and that’s only the beginning of the divergence from the original stories. Merlin manages to land a job as Arthur’s manservant, much to Arthur’s chagrin, as Merlin has a tendency to call Arthur out on his bullshit. From there on in, it’s up to Merlin to protect Arthur from various pissed-off sorcerers (Arthur’s father Uther Pendragon has ordered all magic-users burned at the stake, which has naturally rubbed them up the wrong way) while simultaneously trying to hide his own powers and protect innocent people from Uther’s wrath. He’s helped by Guinevere, aka Gwen, a maid at the castle, and her mistress Morgana, Uther’s ward, who disagrees with his policies. Merlin is also mentored by a dragon being held prisoner under the castle, who has an irritating tendency to intone “Protecting Arthur is your destiny, Merlin!” at least once an episode.

If you think it sounds cheesy, you’re completely right. It’s intended as a kid’s show, and filmed with the audience in mind - despite the rather high amounts of violence (at least one person dies per episode) the camera always cuts away from the nasty stuff. The main conflict is Merlin’s need to hide the fact that he has magical powers, and the fact that this keeps conflicting with his need to protect Arthur, which obviously has no basis whatsoever in Arthurian legend, but then neither does anything else. As the series progresses, Arthur and Merlin’s relationship evolves from that of mutual resentment to comfortable partnership, and eventually friendship (which comes off as very, very very homoerotic, probably due to the fact that it involves a lot of hugging and acts of unwavering devotion. The cynical part of me thinks that the writers are playing to the crowd.) The actors playing Merlin and Arthur are actually quite good, and what they bring to their roles - quiet goodness in Colin Morgan’s case and brash testosterone in Bradley James’s - helps establish the boys as genuinely likeable people, struggling to figure out their place in the world. Angel Coulby is incredibly sweet as shy, blushing Gwen, who spends most of her time trying to make everyone as happy as possible. The weak link in the cast is Katie McGrath, who plays Morgana with a maximum of two facial expressions: smug and perturbed. The older actors are obviously having fun with their roles, and bringing some gravitas to the characters as well - Anthony Stewart Head’s Uther is unlikeable by virtue of his actions (this is, after all, a man who ordered all magicians put to death over a mistake he made) but thanks to Stewart Head’s talent, you can see a bit of humanity shining through from behind the throne. Richard Wilson’s Gaius is your standard mentor/father figure, with a dry sense of humour that managed to make me laugh at least once an episode. John Hurt voiced the Dragon, and there really isn’t much to say about his performance - given the fact that all he gets to do is blather about destiny, there isn’t much room to stretch. The guest stars are touch-and-go - Santiago Cabrera, who played Lancelot, was absolutely awful, while Asa Butterfield was suitably creepy as an eight-year-old Mordred. No one is giving Lawrence Olivier a run for his money, but they’re a very talented bunch, especially considering that most of them haven’t hit thirty yet.

I’m not entirely sure what I expected from the writing. Before watching it, I’d heard the show referred to “crappy tweenager fantasy” so I assumed it’d be a lot of rambling about Destiny and True Love and The Power of Friendship. While that is included (see my note on the Dragon of Destiny) it’s not as wearing as you might expect, mostly because the characters point out the stupidity of doing something because it’s My Destiny at least once an episode. No one wants to watch a show about people who do things because they’re told; most of the struggles come from Merlin and his friends struggling with the expectations they’re being held up to versus their own inherent sense of what’s right. My personal favourite episode revolves around a young boy who Uther wants to execute because he’s a Druid-in-training. Merlin, who obviously takes the stance that killing innocent children is wrong, enlists Morgana’s help to hide the boy, and Arthur’s to smuggle him out of Camelot. For this he is repeatedly chastised by the Dragon, because the boy is eventually going to kill Arthur. Merlin and co say “Screw this” and smuggle the boy away to his own people. At the end of the episode (spoilers, obviously) Arthur asks for his name, and the child replies “Mordred.” It’s a deliciously eerie moment (helped out by Mordred’s creepy stare) and an interesting message about Destiny v. Free Will: the choices of Merlin and his friends will make or break Camelot, but it’s up to them to decide what it’s worth. Fortunately, not all of the destiny-related storylines are that gloomy. For example, one of the show’s most endearing points is the relationship between Merlin and Arthur, which begins with Merlin flat-out chastising Arthur for taunting a servant. Although Merlin is repeatedly pushed towards the prince by the dragon (for this reason, he’s acquired the fandom nickname “Slash Dragon”) their relationship eventually becomes that of friends. When Merlin goes to protect Arthur at the potential expense of his own life, he’s doing it out of affection for the prince rather than a sense of duty, and that - the inherent nobility of the main cast - is a big part of what makes the show so endearing.

There is, of course, the problem of the show’s title, which I’ll have to address or risk this article becoming unadulterated gushing. I’m not especially familiar with Arthurian legend - I know the basics, and I’m about thirty pages into The Once and Future King, but I’m far from an expert - but from what I do know, I honestly can’t understand why they decided to tack the name “Merlin” on it at all. There are references to “canon”, such as it is - in one episode, Arthur is wounded by the Questing Beast - but overall, it plays out like an original story with occasional allusions to Thomas Malory or T.H. White. As I’ve said, it’s good enough to stand on its own, and I think the attempts at labelling it an Arthurian adaptation are going to be detrimental in the long run. Instead of being remembered as a well-written original series, it’s going to end up being dismissed as “that crappy Arthurian adaptation that screwed up the stories”. Actually, the fact that they felt the need to try and slap the name of a pre-existing story on it kind of makes me sad, because it implies that they felt they couldn’t market an original series, and that’s just depressing. Aside from the rage-inducing potential for Arthurian enthusiasts, there’s some holes in the writing - in one episode Morgana says that Gaius has been caring for her since before she can remember, then later claims that she came to live in Camelot when she was ten, implying either than she has long-term memory loss or that someone didn’t proofread closely enough. Still, the small slipups aren’t enough to detract from a genuinely enjoyable show. And if all else fails, you can always hit mute and enjoy the eye candy.Themes:

TV & Movies

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Wardog

at 10:16 on 2009-01-14Hello, welcome - and thank you for this wonderful review. I no longer need feel ashamed of my secret love for Merlin. When it first came on, I dismissed it after about 10 ten minutes (Uther's first 'by the way, this is the backplot' speech didn't help) but a few weeks later my LJ friendslist also exploded with squee and joy, so I gave it another go and, lo, it was simultaneously awesome and awful and utterly utterly watchable.

You're absolutely right about Morganna not being quite up to speed on, y'know, this 'acting' thing ... but she is very, very beautiful, so I don't mind. And the dragon is a bit repetative, despite being voiced by John Hurt.

The weird thing is I don't really get any slashy kind of vibe from Arthur and Merlin, despite the fact that these two boys finding friendship and making sacrifices for each other ought to be very homoerotic. I suppose I find it slashy in principle but there isn't much a spark between the actors (I mean in terms of teh gay) to make it stick. Possibly I am just missing.

As you say in your conclusion I do find Merlin's status as an adaption interesting - I actually rather enjoyed the complete lack of respect with which they treated the mythos, once I got over myself about it. The Arthurian background does give it all a familiarity and a resonance that might have been lacking if it was just Generic Fantasy Story About Friendship and Valour. Although it is a bit dodgy I have come to think the Arthurian dimension does add something - there's always something joyous about watching people play in the paddling pool of literature and start a water fight.

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Rami

at 10:49 on 2009-01-14Yay! I somewhat guiltily enjoyed Merlin myself, including the not-quite-aside allusions to actual canon / legend (the court genealogist appears to be Geoffrey of Monmouth ;-)). Arthurian legend, historically, has been pretty flexible and as far as I know there isn't any real canon — so I'm all in favor of going in a new direction with it, and I'm quite willing to forgive the writers for taking advantage of all the gravitas and popular awareness that Arthur's story gives you. As you said, that moment when the little Druid boy tells Arthur his name is eerie -- but it would have been meaningless if it hadn't been Mordred talking to Arthur, and / or you didn't know who Mordred and Arthur were.

About the cast — Anthony Head and Richard Wilson are brilliant, of course, I can't disagree, but I have to admit I don't share your reservations about Katie McGrath. (But maybe that's because of the eye-candy factor.)

Perhaps it's my lack of slash goggles but I don't see the "very, very homoerotic" between Merlin and Arthur? I wonder if it's just 21st-century cynicism that makes "heartfelt and sincere" have to mean "Twu Wuv"?

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Rami

at 10:52 on 2009-01-14Oh God Kyra and I have just posted very nearly the same comment.

Resistance is futile

I mean, no, FerretBrain doesn't have a "Collective Consciousness" feature...

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Wardog

at 12:06 on 2009-01-14You will be assimilated....

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Viorica

at 22:18 on 2009-01-14I suppose the slash question depends on what you go in expecting. I was told repeatedly before ever watching it that the boys were the slashiest slashy things that were ever slashed, so I went in with slash goggles firmly strapped on. And I suppose there's an interesting study to be done on the way men show affection v. the way women do and how it's interpreted by outside observers . . . but as far as fandom's concernd, it's all about the pretty and the gay.

As for Katie McGrath, she is pretty, but there's always this irritating feeling that I'd like the character so much more if she could emote properly. As it is, she tends to grate.

Apropos of nothing, have you watched the video diaries? They're screamingly hilarious, and both Bradley James and Colin Morgan act uncannily like their characters. It's a little creepy . . .

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Wardog

at 11:35 on 2009-01-15That's the thing, although I'm not a slasher myself, I do occasionally find myself on the outskirts of fandom enough to have some slash goggles of my own. I was prepared for slash, I looked for slash, I saw ... the motions of slash ... but I didn't *feel* the slash. Sometimes there's a genuine spark between actors or something about the way a relationship is portrayed that makes me secretly believe something could conceivably be going on between them. I was re-watching DS9 (sad bastard that I am) recently and, despite knowing not a damn thing about the DS9 fandom, I became immediately and increasingly convinced that Sisko and Dukat were having incredibly hot hatesex... (Dan holds out for Dax/Kira girlsex, however, - they are certainly very giggly together).

I watched some of the video diaries - Bradley James is so adorably silly. I mean this in a maternal way, not a sick way. I particularly liked his musing on the cockatrice.

By the way, I meant to ask, what caused things to sour with Robin Hood? I never watched it so...

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Gina Dhawa

at 16:04 on 2009-01-16

Arthurian legend, historically, has been pretty flexible and as far as I know there isn't any real canon — so I'm all in favor of going in a new direction with it ... that moment when the little Druid boy tells Arthur his name is eerie -- but it would have been meaningless if it hadn't been Mordred talking to Arthur, and / or you didn't know who Mordred and Arthur were.

This is my justification for liking

Merlin

the way it is. T.H. White took some pretty big liberties along the way (though if you're thirty pages in, I won't spoil that), as have any of the people who have written the story down over the years. The trouble is convincing people there's not really a canon to be followed, that if you take the earliest versions of the stories and put them to what you might find in a modern collection, there are so many differences that you might think you weren't reading the same story at all.

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Viorica

at 19:51 on 2009-01-16Well, it could be argued that there are some basic plot foundations- Merlin being Arthur's mentor, Guinevere as his wife (though they still have time to do that), Morgana being his half-sister, etc. I think the reason some people don't like it is because they grew up on "The Sword and the Stone", so the show is effectively stomping on their childhood memories. I don't have any such memories to get stomped on, so it doesn't bug me.

Re: Robin Hood. It started out as silly fun, but it as it went on, you realized that the people running the show didn't know or care what they were doing. There were no efforts at making the costumes or scenery look nice, and virtually none of the characters were likeable, or even tolerable. Their Robin is the kind of guy who whines at an ex-girlfriend for "betraying" him when she's forced into marriage with another man. The urge to punch the title character in the face was stronger than any desire to keep watching.

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Sonia Mitchell

at 22:16 on 2009-01-16Great article. I didn't catch all the episodes, but definitely enjoyed the ones I did see. I like your point about the gravitas the older actors bring, particularly Head (in what could have been a pretty thankless role given his character's lack of humour).

Interesting discussion about the appropriate amount of reverence for the source material, too. I quite like the way Merlin did it, with plenty there for people who do know a bit about Arthurian legend but not so much you know for sure what's going to happen. I never saw Smallville, but I think of Merlin in much the same way - you know what happens down the line, but these are the gaps in between. And knowing what lies ahead is an interesting experience, because you're watching for it and everyone involved in the show knows you are (of the ones I saw, Lancelot's episode was the most willing to play with this).

It's also pretty dangerous, of course, because unless they're willing to go down the rejected destiny road the main young characters all have to live. I think they've got a nice balance - there's plenty of peril, but the real danger is more often disgrace than death (though I missed the last few episodes, so for all I know there was a dramatic and bloody finale).

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Viorica

at 01:30 on 2009-01-17There was *almost* a dramatic and bloody finale, but it was averted. You should really watch to see why, though- that episode actually managed to make me tear up a bit.

"Great article."

Thanks!

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Rami

at 12:44 on 2009-01-17I never saw Smallville, but I think of Merlin in much the same way

Yes! It's not all that different in many ways -- Smallville takes a lot of liberties with Superman canon (Lex Luthor and Clark Kent being friends, for instance), and I guess one of the reasons that it's more or less accepted is that Superman canon has been retconned so many times nobody's sure what *is* canon anymore. I think much the same is true for Arthurian legend ;-)

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Arthur B

at 15:05 on 2009-01-17I think in comics continuity Lex Luthor and Clark Kent

were

friends until Clark mistakes a controlled explosion in Lex's lab for an actual fire, and horribly injures Lex as he tries to put it out.

Six nerd points for me.

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Wardog

at 19:39 on 2009-01-17I have come late to the party...

The trouble is convincing people there's not really a canon to be followed...

I think this really nails the issue; perhaps, for a lot of people T.H.White is "canon", although it's Roger Lancelyn Green for me, personally - I have no idea who that guy is but basically every book available for kids about anything vaguely mythic, Greek, Norse, Egyptian, Celtic, was written, semi-turgidly, by this dude. Anyway, what I've got distracted from saying here is: a lot of those things we associate with the Arthur Legend today have very little in common with the early source material. Guinevere is barely in Malory - he just wasn't into chicks - and there's a sense that a lot of her bad press comes from the fact he decided to situate the fall of his macho martial ideal in damn women with their lack of appreciation for war, dammit, war. There's very little actually 'romantic' about Le Morte.

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Wardog

at 19:43 on 2009-01-17Also I am now definitely avoiding Robin Hood. I heard it was rubbish but fun, but that sounds like it's moved into "just plain rubbish" territory.

[scotianostra]

On 9th April 1747 Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, the leading Scottish Jacobite rebel was beheaded on Tower Green.

A longer post than normal from me as in my opinion Simon Fraser was one of the most interesting characters in Jacobite history. A man of contrary, he was known to be very kind to the lesser clansmen taking a paternal interest in their affairs. A quote regarding him says that...."Generally he had a bag of farthings for when he walked abroad the contents of which he distributed among any beggars whom he met. He would stop a man on the road; inquire how many children he had; offer him sound advice; and promise to redress his grievances if he had any" In his own estimate, he took care his clansmen were ‘always well-clothed and well-armed, after the Highland fashion, and not to suffer them to wear low-country clothes’ Lovat was also a brute of a man forcing a young woman into marriage and raping her in an attempt to legitimise the union. Lovat has become more well know lately thanks to Outlander, where in their world he is grandfather to the main protagonist Jamie Fraser and played brilliantly by the fine Scottish actor Clive Russell. Back in the real world he has been in the news only this year, I shall cover that at the end of this post.

Born in 1667 into the ancient clan who fought with distinction in the Wars of Independence – Sir Simon Fraser was one of the co-victors of the Battle of Roslin and his sons were close friends of Robert the Bruce, Alexander marrying Bruce’s sister Mary – Simon was the second son of Thomas Fraser of Beaufort who was closely related to Lord Hugh Fraser of Lovat, chief of clan Fraser.

Simon became his father’s heir when his elder brother was killed fighting alongside Bonnie Dundee against the forces of King William III at the Battle of Killiecrankie in 1689. He was still nowhere near being clan chief, however, and took himself off to Aberdeen University from which he graduated in 1695. Lord Hugh Fraser, the 9th Lord Lovat, was a weak man who unexpectedly signed over the clan leadership to Simon’s father in 1696.

Lord John Murray, Earl of Tullibardine and the most powerful man in Scotland, disputed the succession and fell out spectacularly with Simon in Edinburgh. The young Fraser hothead duly went north to Castle Dounie to try and persuade Hugh’s widow Amelia to give him the hand of her daughter, also Amelia, in a dynastic marriage that would seal his succession. Tullibardine was having none of it and moved his niece to the Murray stronghold, Blair Castle, where he planned to marry her off to Alexander Fraser, heir to the Lordship of Saltoun.

Simon retaliated by kidnapping Alexander and frightening him away, and to make matters worse in October, 1697, he went back to Castle Dounie and forced the widow Amelia into a sham wedding, raping her to consummate the “marriage”.

Tullibardine ensured Simon and his father were declared outlaws and when old Thomas died in 1699, Simon was unable to legally claim his title as 11th Lord Lovat which later passed to one Alexander Mackenzie who had legally married the younger Amelia.

Simon Fraser somehow managed to persuade King William that he was no threat, despite having his own personal army, and he was pardoned in 1700, only to be declared an outlaw again the following year over the forced marriage and rape.

Simon went off to the court of the Stuarts in France where he devised the plans that were eventually used in the 1715 and 1745 uprisings. Long before the former, however, Simon was double dealing, giving Queen Anne information about the plans of James, the Old Pretender. He was found out and King Louis XIV clapped him in jail for three years.

Even after he was released he was prevented from travelling to Scotland and thus missed the Act of Union which he opposed.

Still desperate to get his Lovat title and the chieftainship of his clan back, Simon sided with the forces of the new King, George I, during the ’15, and was given back his title as a reward, with Alexander Mackenzie imprisoned for being a Jacobite. The two men would fight in the courts for the next 15 years as to who was entitled to the income of the estate. Simon eventually won and spent his time building up the Fraser estates and wealth, even taking command of one of the Independent Companies of Highland soldiers established by the Hanoverian regime – the Fraser Highlanders.

As I said early Fraser was a man of contrary and to me was very like "Bobbing John" The Earl of Mar another Jacobite who a tendency to shift back and forth from faction to faction, no sooner had Fraser built up this "Hanoverian" army that he started openly campaigning for the restoration of the Stuarts. The Government responded by cancelling his military role.

When Bonnie Prince Charles landed in Scotland he was still playing games.

He allowed his sons to fight for the Stuarts, but stayed at home himself “loudly lamenting the wilful disobedience of children,” as Sarah Fraser has put it. Lovat did meet Charles, however, and expressed his anger at the lack of “siller” which he knew would be necessary for a successful campaign. They met again after Culloden, at which Clan Fraser fought bravely and suffered many casualties, and Lovat advised the prince to get away and re-form his forces. Charles fled through the heather, as we know, and made it to France while anyone associated with the Bonnie Prince was hunted down. The Duke of Cumberland’s troops were not taking any more games from Fraser and burned Castle Dounie.

Lovat managed to make it to Loch Morar but was captured there while hiding in a hollow tree. Although approaching his 80th birthday, The Fox was taken south to London.

He pled not guilty but his trial was a formality and he must have know his fate would be the same as previous nobles, the Earls of Kilmarnock, Balmerino and Derwentwater who were executed for treason the previous year.

At his trial, ever the Fox he insisted strongly upon his affection for the reigning family. Such were the characteristics of Simon Fraser, but of course he was found guilty the sentence, hanging, drawing and quartering was commuted later to a mere beheading by the King.

In a way, Lovat had the last laugh. Newspapers and pamphlets of the time recorded that as he was led out to the scaffold on Thursday, April 9, 1947, a wooden stand that had been erected near the Tower to seat crowds eager to see the execution collapsed sending hundreds plunging down. At least nine people died and dozens were injured, which amused Lovat – the phrase ‘laughing your head off’ is said to date from that event.

According to a woodcut print made on that fateful day, Lovat “with some composure laid his head on the block which the executioner took off with a single blow.”

As I mentioned at the top Lovat has been in the news lately, Simon had requested burial at the family mausoleum at Wardlaw near Inverness and the government initially agreed but changed its mind thinking his body could become a rallying point for further trouble. He was therefore buried in the floor of the chapel within the Tower of London, St. Peter ad Vincula. The chapel was refurbished in the 19th century and the floor was relaid. One of the coffins uncovered during the works had the nameplate of ‘Lord Lovat’. The names of those found are now recorded on a plaque on the wall of the chapel.

Fraser folklore, and written in several books says that his body was spirited away from London, the stories even go so far as to name the boat ‘The Pledger’ that sailed north to The Beauly Firth, where he was taken to the family mausoleum, there is even a plaque in the crypt that reads “In this coffin are laid the remains of Simon Lord Fraser of Lovat who, after twenty years in His own Land and abroad with the greatest distinction and renown, at the risk of his own life, restored and preserved his race, clan and household from the tyranny of the Athol and the treacherous plotting of the Mackenzies of Tarbat. To preserve an ancient house is not the greatest credit. Nor is there any honour for the enemy who despoiled it. Although that enemy was strong in his plotting and unrelenting warfare, yet Simon who was also skillful and cunning defeated him in war."

Last year the headless skeleton inside the coffin was exhumed to be examined by experts from the University of Dundee in January this year they announced that the bones in the coffin did not belong to Simon Fraser, but to a young woman. So it looks like his body did end up rotting in The Tower's Chapel.

To understand how big Lovat's trial and execution were I have posted a number of pics all dating back to the eighteenth century, and the plaque from the Crypt at Wardlaw.