#all. lothar
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prcspero · 7 months ago
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It felt…karmic that he’d lose them and there would be nothing he could do to save them.
@lotharx & @alrikhart & @alessiathepath
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prcspero · 7 months ago
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Save was one hell of a word. Prospero wasn't really sure that he could save anyone. He would try though. He'd made that promise and all that so he damn well had to now. Not that he'd needed to make a promise to want to save either Alessia or Alrik. Still, it was good that the words were out there in the open. Alessia had made him sware and so had Alrik. The druid never went back on his word. Not even with devils.
That was why they had gotten into this mess in the first place, wasn't it? All of this was his fault. Maybe some other Darkfriend could've caused that night at Nornwatch, but they hadn't. It had been him that the Dark One had taken a hold of. He wanted to remember everything he had done, but it felt like he had only come up empty. There was no way he could take back what he had done and there was no memory of what had happened before. Dwelling on it would only keep making the burden that much heavier and he had to focus on finding and saving Alessia. That was his priority.
"Her name is Alessia. She told me to make sure her brother makes it to Lysara and I told her that they both would. I don't ever go back on my word." He paused. "So I will find her and bring them both to Lysara. Let's hope we're both still alive for a date, yeah?"
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Lothar was practically called to attention when Prospero mentioned he'd someone to save; Prospero still couldn't look the barbarian in the eyes, but that truth had splintered something away, opened a vestige that Prospero seemed keen to hide under lock and key. It wasn't as though Lothar was known around the world for his ability to hold a conversation, but he'd learned when to muster up enough of a sentence to nudge another in the right direction.
His steady gaze remained on Prospero, arms crossed, "Who are we to save then?" Another nudge but his inquiry was casual, there was no insidious curiosity; Lothar merely wanted to let the other know that if he was to need assistance, the Ax would be there. It was as simple as that; he needn't cash in on baseless flirtations to represent his own dedication to the cause of saving others, but it also didn't hurt to extend himself in that regard.
"Save her, travel the rest of the way, then a date - it sounds easy enough," a smug expression overcame Lothar's normally unreadable countenance, but the warrior knew that their difficulties were only just beginning.
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claret-ash · 5 months ago
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I don't often share my WIPs to tumblr, but I just had to share my thoughts here! 👀
Faerin would COMPLETELY be the type of friend to tease Anduin over his unusually focused, but soft tone whenever he talks about this mysterious "Wrathion". She's determined to meet this dragon who Anduin seems to have so many stories about... so that she has two future teasing targets! 😈✨
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skymagpie · 1 year ago
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I recently read "The Last Guardian" and I am absolutely delighted by it, I feel like when it comes to Khadgar content this is a huge "must read" because the whole book is just so good-natured despite the fact that this sets off a never-ending series of deeply traumatizing events for Khadgar.
Here's some things that canonically happen in this book and that I just found so endearing or fun:
The Kirin Tor literally sends Khadgar off to Medivh because Khadgar kept wandering the halls of the Violet Citadel at night and being so nosy that he caught his professors on drinking binges, sleeping with students or trying to summon demons. Medivh knows that they sent him here hoping he dies because he knows too much.
Khadgar rambling and babbling and being delightfully awkward
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Khadgar forgets how to talk when he meets Medivh and makes some strange sound to which Medivh asks Moroes if "the lad is ill."
Medivh having scheduled times for breakfast, lunch and dinner and keeping to them. Also he and Khadgar are just eating porridge with sausages for breakfast every day when he is around.
Khadgar having his inscription set with him that he carries all neatly packaged and tidied up, even though he is this scruffy dirty looking teen boy.
Lothar and Medivh both have this dad relationship with Khadgar, but Lothar is like the cool supportive dad who would take you to a soccer game and would support you at pride with the wrong flag.
During this particularly deep conversation about time and space, Medivh encourages Khadgar to have a bit of wine, Khadgar gets a little tipsy and then Medivh encourages Khadgar to live a little and try to levitate e mug with his magic even though he has been drinking - naturally it ends with Khadgar cleaning the floor afterwards.
When Medivh falls into a coma after their demon encounter at Stormwind, he entrusts Khadgar with handling his mail and Khadgar spends most of his free time sitting next to Medivh's bed and reading him the mail - especially the funny parts.
In the same situation when Medivh wakes up, he sees the startled Khadgar on the floor (after a vision of Sargeras) and softly asks him why he didn't ask Moroes to set up a bed for him there if he wanted to stay in his room.
Khadgar goes very quickly from "Guardian! There is an ORC in the tower!!!" to "Garona is my friend :)"
Khadgar and Garona spend a lot of time rebuilding the library after Garon thrashes the place in order to save Khadgar's life. They make a makeshift woodwork station in the stables outside Karazhan.
Khadgar has like a lowkey puppy crush on Garona and this is actually innocently cute.
Khadgar and Garona on the road when they flee from Medivh is such a nice sequence because they protect each other (from the orcs and humans who would hurt the other one) and also about the fact that they feel betrayed by Medivh. Also Khadgar just wants her to like and trust him 😭
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Lothar gets Garona to wear the Stormwind armor by telling her that it matches her eyes and that Khadgar will wear it - and then Khadgar also tells her it matches her eyes and she looks good in it. Lothar using elementary school level tactics to get them to wear the Stormwind armor is so funny.
I just feel like this book was really fun and the pacing of the story was great between building up Medivh as an antagonist who genuinely cared for Khadgar, solving the murder-mystery around him and had the right amount of just daily domestic stuff between Khadgar and him and Khadgar and Garona. Not to mention the excellent parallels between Medivh losing his youth and waking up as an old man and Khadgar losing his youth while also going through what is a very sad coming of age story for him.
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druidonity2 · 9 months ago
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Since the moment Faerin Lothar was datamined i've seen alot of 'OoHh aNDUIN'S FUTURE WIFE????' and as annoying as that is you know what?? Ill accept it if he takes her last name.
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rage-claw · 3 months ago
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this is insane the female night elf model is 7ft even, are u telling me faerin is 7ft+
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bruchfest · 4 months ago
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dynamic tags
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keepingupwiththeboltons · 5 months ago
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mariocki · 5 months ago
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Funny Games (1997)
"Why are you doing this to us?"
"Why not?"
#funny games#1997#austrian cinema#horror imagery#blood tw#michael haneke#susanne lothar#ulrich mühe#arno frisch#frank giering#stefan clapczynski#doris kunstmann#christoph bantzer#wolfgang glück#susanne meneghel#monika von zallinger#although it's been on my to watch list for a long long time‚ this is also exactly the kind of film that I'd never take any particular#effort towards finding‚ content to spend years saying 'oh yeah i really should watch that'. so I'm most grateful to @bimbobussy for taking#the initiative and providing me with a copy; years and years of interest in film and in horror have meant that i was more than familiar#with the plot‚ the layout‚ the fourth wall breaks‚ and that might have been something subconsciously putting me off getting round to this#but im really glad i did. what an experience. my prior knowledge didn't feel like a hinderence; instead it leant an awful expectation to#the earlier scenes‚ allowed for dreadful recognition of what was coming. and i still got played! the misdirection with the knife‚ dropped#in an early scene‚ the planting of a seed of an idea that's there just to be subverted‚ a blackly comic bit of sleight of hand.#Haneke fills the film with such subversions: it's in the 4th wall breaks‚ the first of which is brief and subtle enough to go nearly#unnoticed‚ but which build in defiance of audience expectation to become outright challenges to the viewer‚ a kind of accusation of#complicity in the horrors unfolding; and then again‚ those horrors: Haneke actually keeps most of the violence offscreen and for all its#reputation for shocking horror‚ you actually see very little; except for the aftermath of that violence‚ which we do see‚ which we're left#to sit with for an uncomfortably long time‚ another accusation perhaps‚ or simply acknowledgement that the worst can sometimes be for those#left behind‚ the witnesses and the mourners. something very like genius at work here‚ a troubling masterpiece on violence and its impact
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warcraftish · 1 year ago
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On a scale of 1-10, how much would it hurt Wranduin shippers if Anduin turned up to the Dragon Isles and immediately started putting the moves on Sabellian?
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prcspero · 7 months ago
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closed starter for @lotharx location: lostlands note: :angrytiddies:
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Tired was the word he would use for how he felt right now after everything that had transpired. Prospero had never really been through a fight quite like that one before, but he had to say that facing down a dragon and speaking with some deities was not on his bucket list. Maybe he should have put those things on there though. That seemed to be the least of their concerns now. He should've been with Alrik and Alessia right now. Instead, he was here looking at this barrier. This wasn't magic he had ever seen himself, but he'd read about it. Seven layers of elemental and spiritual magic formed this prismatic barrier surrounding Iskaldrik. It would take precise movements to even make a dent in it. And he may have been old, but this was not something that one person could do alone.
Nevertheless, he had been on his way back from observing it only to run into his future date. He still wasn't sure if they were actually going to go on that date or if it had been a joke, but he'd keep pretending that it was the former. There was a question lingering in his mind though. "And here I thought you were a normal, stoic soldier with an ax. Little did I know you were sipping colossus juice."
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feuerfreiarchive · 2 months ago
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In a 2003 interview with Legion, Flake shared a funny anecdote: "When we first came to Mexico City, we played together with Kiss at the Stadion del Sol. We flew back in the middle of the night on a Boeing 747 and shortly after takeoff Till said to me: 'Man, if we crash now, we're going to kill a few thousand people.' You have to know, we just flew over the slums. Suddenly there was a bang and it came from the front. And I thought: 'Aha, the cockpit exploded, bye, thanks!' Till said to me: 'Have a look and see if the engines are burning.' We kept sinking. At that moment I took Till's hand and said: 'I actually don't want to die!'. A stream of sweat ran down between our hands and it was dead quiet around us. The lights were off and the screens were dark too, 'So' I thought, ‘so now I'm going to be on the news’. Just like the magazine List sometimes says: 'Plane crashed - 200 dead - the causes are being investigated.' All I can say is: I now know how it feels to be in a plane like this just before it hits the ground. Paul turned to us. Very slowly, like a puppet, he made a gesture like I'd never seen before: he just waved at us, it was like, 'Guys, it was nice seeing you’. I looked at Till and thought through everything that was in my life that happened so far and somehow in my head there was only one 'Well, yes!'... We didn't hit the ground after all, it kept going... What I only found out much later: the plane was struck by lightning and what happened is that all computer programs failed. From that moment on, the pilots flew this gigantic airplane again like before: with cables to the wings. Suddenly the Stewarts came through again and asked: What do you want to drink? Our connecting flight was then like taking a tram. There is definitely a feeling of being a newborn. In retrospect, Till, who was just writing lyrics just before the bang, said: 'I was about to write ejaculation!'" Quote from Legacy (2003) Photo by Frank Lothar Lange (Teotihuacan, Mexico, April 1999)
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vigilskeep · 4 months ago
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i feel like i’m being deliberately confusing so i’ll go over the barest of facts as it’s shaping up and pin some names on the background characters
bann lothar trevelyan has five children. his first wife, lady gisela, was a sickly noblewoman from the anderfels who he met when she moved east for her health, and he married her for love despite her family’s history of mages, something the trevelyans historically strictly avoided for centuries (both pious and perhaps desperate to kill rumours of tevinter connections). they had four children:
arthur trevelyan, circle mage necromancer, liar extraordinaire, engaged to josephine montilyet as a kid before found out as a mage, has an adopted daughter from the circle
helena trevelyan, templar, kind of terrible, muscles like you wouldn’t believe, maybe loves you but will only show it 6-12 months after you’re dead
maxwell trevelyan, his class is civilian. family disappointment, kind of useless and very pathetic but in a sort of charming way occasionally, NOT thrilled that his siblings are all insane and the titles ended up with him. the moustache situation is bad
caitriona “cat” trevelyan, circle mage. professional baby of the family which let her get away with way more than it should
when the shock of her mage children eventually killed gisela—or so the story goes, though one might say that she was already weak and probably shouldn’t have been having four children in the first place—bann trevelyan was eventually convinced to remarry. but this was for political gain, a marriage to the lady joan, a much much younger woman from an influential ostwick family. she wanted none of it, and a year or two after her first and only child’s birth, immediately accepted an offer to join the grey wardens. the child was:
beatrice “bea” trevelyan, who grew up quiet, reserved, and kind, but became considerably less reserved after she was lauded the herald of andraste, took up the assassin specialisation, saved the world, and married red jenny herself
lady joan—or ser joan of the grey wardens, as the lady preferred to be called—died with many other grey wardens at the battle of ostagar.
bann trevelyan always regretted her fate, as if his regret after the fact was any good to her. it made him unwilling to push their daughter into an arranged marriage or the chantry life as he was expected to do with his younger children. this made the remaining children from his first marriage deeply anxious, sure his intention was to push them aside and give her their inheritance. (the bann was very distant with all his children, except perhaps his beloved eldest son, thoroughly convincing the rest that he disliked them specifically.)
bea was thus somewhat mistreated by her elder siblings thanks to their anxiety/jealousy, though she would assure you it never got out of hand. she spent the majority of her time simply ignored, in the library or with the trevelyans’ horses, except during the visits of her aunt: a templar named ser adelaide, bann trevelyan’s younger sister who had been passed off to the chantry as she was supposed to be. she saw herself in bea for that reason, and also had never been fond of lady gisela, so bea was her particular favourite and she visited whenever she could
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prcspero · 11 days ago
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Us. Prospero heard the word and had almost short-circuited. The statement was true, but how did he even explain himself? How did he cover up the reason he couldn’t show up? The Dark One had His soldiers and it damn near hurt him to think that he would be forced into doing His bidding whenever it was needed. That was what happened at Nornwatch. Prospero still wasn’t sure what his part was in all of that, but he knew that it had caused more pain than he had ever wanted to cause anyone in his life. There was nothing he could really say to Lothar in response so he just simply…didn’t. Not to that at least.
The man’s words had triggered a memory in his head. Of his father. His brother. His mother. If he had just listened… Not thinking about it was the best option. Prospero looked up from the ground that he had been staring at for an unknown amount of time. Why Lothar was still standing there when he did was surely an answer to a question he would never ask. With a short nod of his head, he let out a breath. It seemed unlike him to not say anything, but he had no idea what he was supposed to say. None of them had been disappointed in him. None of them had pushed him away. They were just here. It took no time at all for him to move forward and, without a second thought, wrap his arms around Lothar in a hug. “Please don’t let go,” he breathed into the other’s shoulder, grip tightening with every word.
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"Maybe you're no warrior but...." This wasn't like Prospero, well, not the Prospero he'd seen over the grueling months it took for them all to find safe passage to Lysara. Despite Lothar's own disdain at being practically helpless in Iskaldrik's fall, he tried his best to keep silent enough about how he truly felt to be within Lysara; but then darkspawn seemed to spill over into its borders, too. "You should have been out there with us," confirmation that yes, he'd seen the Hart siblings, fought alongside them, even.
"Currently, though, I'm not sure what they've planned next." Hesitant, but even Lothar could try to be reassuring, "They fought well." In the barbarian's terms he was trying to tell Prospero not to worry, they'd both been valiant and fought a battle in which any would be proud of; they were safe.
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taybatwo2 · 1 month ago
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Another Mini-review of the IDW Monster High Comics!
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The Howliday Haunt comic came out today, and ugggggh, it’s…..yeah.
Again, hopefully I’ll continue my in-depth reviews for these in January, but this might be one of my least favorite…so far…kinda…? I dunno these have me stupidly curious but I can’t say they’ve been amazing…?
It’s still giving Wednesday or Riverdale vibes or the MH Lisi Harrison books, and I have never been into those.
If you want to start in on my actual, full comic reviews you can start here:
A REALLY quick rundown, there will be spoilers:
Frankie goes in before her first day of school to map out her classes and hears Johnny Spirit whistling. They talk and flirt and she says he’s her first “fiend.” Cut to the present, students are still missing, there is a school dance coming up the “Howliday Haunt” and Johnny hasn’t really spoken to Frankie since but he is INCENSED that no one is worried about the missing students and are only talking about the dance.
Frankie can’t dance, and after Cleo blows off helping her to retrain her two left feet, Johnny’s music helps her to dance. Frankie wants Johnny to want to ask her to the dance and he does.
Doctor Frankenstein is still too busy to be a chaperone at the dance (and HE IS STILL IN THE SHADOWS. I HATE THAT). The three ghoul friends all dress up in their collector doll outfits (that Clawdeen designed), and all go to the dance (with Frankie riding on the back of Johnny’s motorcycle).
Johnny pours truth serum into the fog machine (at least he didn’t spike the punch bowl like most bad boys in high school films) to try and see if any of the students/faculty is behind the kidnappings. Nope! And Mr. Rotter vows to lock Johnny up until the school crumbles to dust (again…overkill). Frankie and Johnny escape (thanks to Frankie’s arm locking the doors shut behind them), and he rides off to search outside of the school for what happened to all of their fiends, while Frankie searches inside. He makes her promise to come home after everone is saved. She also kisses him…TWICE!
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Pros:
The artwork looks nice.
The decorations for the Howliday Haunt are great.
They made Johnny look VERY handsome, younger me would have been doodling him in the margins of her school book instead of Andy Beast.
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We get to see the three ghouls in their new Howliday lurks (and Frankie in her Stitched in Style) outfits. Robecca is in her SDCC outfit. And I think they look much better than the dolls.
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We get to see some more background characters in this (Lothar, Johnny Spirit, Valentine, Spelldon, Lagoona, Manny, Holt, Clawd, Rochelle, Venus, Eyera, Kjersti, a shrunken down Gooliope, Toralei, Mr. Rotter, Frankie’s Dad, Bram, Jinafire, Viperine, Finnegan, Iris, Meowlody, Purrsephone, Spectra, Operetta, Deuce, Heath, Abbey, Jane Boolittle, and a witch named Brooke:
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-note that Bram was not with Gory, Lagoona was not with Gil, and Operetta was not with Johnny and while Draculaura talked with Clawd she mentioned Poe too, and Frankie said she tried making another boyfriend again, which are all “mehs” to negatives to me.
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Some of the party guests have some nice new outfits (Spelldon is a standout).
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Johnny dressing up for a dance is putting on a loose tie and that checks.
Johnny calls Frankie “Stitches,” and I can’t help but think that is cute and something HOLT WOULD SAY.
Lore “Additions:”
Johnny said the reason he looks like a greaser and was in detention for 3000 years was because time is “screwy” there. Frankie has a kidney from a guy named Larry.
Frankie apparently met him the day before she started school because she was mapping out the halls beforehand. He became her first “fiend,” then they didn’t talk because he didn’t want to drag down her popularity.
Johnny has a ghost motorcycle.
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that also checks out.
Johnny is in detention because he didn’t follow “orders and rules” and “tricked [Nightmare] onto the roof.” Which is kinda small potatoes in my opinion.
You can touch ghosts in Monster High if “you truly believe you can.”
You can only listen to ghost music on a “dead” medium like CD’s (I think Operetta recorded her music and it didn’t need to be on a dead medium…)
The school of Monster High responds to characters (specifically Draculaura after she spilled some of her blood) like in G3 (minus the blood). TW: blood…self harm…?
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Frankie lost her right leg to a “Golem Retriever playing fetch.” An actually funny pun. And now has two left legs and can no longer dance except to the sounds of Johnny’s music (or thinking about his music).
There is now a “Monstrous Monarch” contest at Monster High.
Cleo thinks that Frankie dyes the white streaks in her hair.
We get to see the Stein’s mansion. It’s fine.
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Draculaura might have alluded to having dated “bad boy[s], or girl[s] or non-binary[s].” Why does she thinks everyone has had that phase….👀👀
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Witches can make truth potions (and it reveals that Purrsephone has a crush on her best friend’s date -her sister’s or Toralei’s date….?, Bram took out Jane Boolittle as part of an elaborate bet, Jinafire rigged the Monsterous Monarch vote -we never got the results of it btw-, Mr. Rotter takes ice cream from the -student- creature lounge, Draculaura is tired of trying to be perfect, Clawdeen is afraid of being with Toralei because she might/did screw it up with Toralei, Clawdeen thinks Cleo is a better dancer than her, Cleo likes Clawdeen’s fashion designs and misses talking about designs together and she misses Ghoulia -who is still missing in this-).
Cons/Nitpicks:
I am still not feeling the story. I don’t know why they are putting these random pairings together (they are not written badly here, but it’s just like…WHY?!? She has such good chemistry with Jackson and Holt, and with Andy and kinda with Neigthan if you REALLY wanted to go that route). But why the flirting with Manny in the Halloween special? And why the love connection with Johnny? Probably because it would make me curious to buy the floppies and THIS SUCKER DID! Johnny and Operetta broke up because “they worked better as band mates.”
All three main ghouls are drawn the same height. I badly want Draculaura to be as tiny as she was in the show, and Frankie to be as tall she was too!
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Frankie trying to make another boyfriend (his first words were: “AI is legitimate form of creative expression” to show that he was brain dead and that it didn’t work out but it’s okay, HE HAS AN EXECUTIVE JOB IN SILICROW VALLEY). I hate it ALL!!
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Abbey has been repeatedly looking annoyed or bored at Heath in this whole comic run including in this issue in this panel:
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Toralei doesn’t have her thicker stripes, cat nose, or orange blotch.
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Deuce’s outfit at the dance….his fashion sense has taken a nose dive since him and Cleo broke up again.
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And some of their new scary puns just don’t feel natural (in my opinion: “school bloody” instead of “school body” is not an upgrade. “Wormy” instead of “worried.”) *shrugs*
What are your thoughts? Are you loving these? Hating them? Forgot they existed? Are you really hoping I’ll get back to it and actually upload my longer reviews with full page artwork (me too!)?
Did you have a Nostalgia Critic flashback when you saw Johnny with his loose red tie and black jacket?
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NOW YOU HAVE TO LIVE WITH THAT IN YOUR HEAD TOO.
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bookshelfdreams · 1 year ago
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Hey I like a lot of the takes you have regarding the pirate show so I wanted to ask for your opinion on smth that's been bothering me for a while:
I have a deep seated dislike for Hamilton. Twinkifying the fucking founding fathers, romanticizing slave abusers and overall villainizing the wrong people while others (Hamilton at the front naturally) gets sung at. Speaking of singing - I really hate it. Shipping (i want to repeat) the founding fathers, the blatant white washing bla bla bla. Anyway those are all known problems and better people have said it smarter before and that isn't really my point
It's the fact that a friend of mine recently brought up that Ofmd pretty much is the same and I shouldn't scream so loud in my glass house. Inaccurate historically speaking, the blatant ignoring of the slave owning that the real Stede and Edward did and so on and so forth. Minus the singing perhaps if we ignore Frenchies and Izzys
So. Does it make me a hypocrite to like ofmd so much but despise the mere mention of Hamilton? It's a thing I'm really stressed about lately and that kind of ruined my joy about finally getting season 2. I would love to hear your opinion. or that of your followers for that matter.
Thank you 😊
oh thank YOU because I do feel that this is an interesting thing to examine and we do not talk about it enough.
I have never seen Hamilton, or listened to the songs (except some snippets). I have never been involved in the fandom. I really, really can't speak to what the musical itself did wrong and right. But I will say this: There was a reason it got as popular and received the critical acclaim that it did. I can't speak to how it addresses the systemic injustice baked into the USA from the very beginning, and I do have a suspicion that it glosses over a lot of uncomfortable truths. But I also feel it is important that we divorce the source material from the fandom it spawns because ultimately, Miranda isn't responsible for Hatsune Miku Binder Jefferson, or the whole hivliving debacle.
Just as David Jenkins isn't responsible for the handwaving of slavery in fanworks, or the great Izzy Hands Debate, or whitewashing in fanart, or shitty, racist headcanons of the characters of colour, or whatever deranged scandal is yet to come to light. This is true for all fandoms; criticizing fandom dynamics is a very different conversation from criticizing the canon.
Let's focus on the canon here, though, because defending the fandom is pointless, and not something I want to do. Curate your experience.
The first thing to say is: If you like ofmd but don't like Hamilton, that's not hypocritical at all, that's first and foremost a matter of taste. Things are good when we like them and bad when we don't. We don't have to find objective reasons for it.
If the fact that the historical Stede Bonnet was a slaveowner, and the historical Blackbeard also participated in the slave trade, are dealbreakers for someone, that's valid. People have every right to be uncomfortable with that. The conversation could end at this point, if we want it to (I don't because I love to hear myself talk).
If we look at the historical figures a little closer the first stark difference is the cultural context in which they exist. The founding fathers seem to be extremely mythologized in the american consciousness but also, are understood to be real historical people. The founding myth is fundamental to the way in which the USA perceives itself (that is, as a beacon of freedom and democracy), and it's pretty hard to reconcile that with the bloodshed and human misery it was founded on. It's uncomfortable; and it's not just an American problem. Every western nation/former colonial power has quite literal corpses in their closets they'd rather not talk about (just so you don't think I'm getting on a high horse about the famed Erinnerungskultur here; go ask a german person about Lothar von Trotha and what he did to the Nama and Herero to receive a blank stare). The difference is, that the founding fathers are too prominent and too important to just not talk about, so instead, they are sanitized to a degree that can be straight up historical revisionism.
That's not Miranda's fault. Nor is it the fault of any one particular piece of historical fiction, biography, documentary, or what have you. But it is the context in which Hamilton exists and, from what I understand, a culture to which it contributes. Especially since it's based on a biography of the real Alexander Hamilton, and (again, to my understanding) claims to tell a more or less accurate story.
Pirates, on the other hand, are perceived completely differently. They are mythologized, but not for ideological reasons, not as state-building propaganda. Pirates are more like folk heroes; cultural icons (near) completely divorced from whatever historical figure once lived. They are "real" in the sense that they are based on real people, but engaging with them, from the start, has a layer of removal from reality that engaging with figures like the founding fathers hasn't. Blackbeard is from a saga. George Washington is from history.
ofmd, specifically, makes clear at every turn that what we are told is a fictional story that has very little to do with any real events. It's openly anachronistic, it has absurd internal logic. Life-threatening injuries are walked off. There's actual magic. Dinghies are treated like spawn points in a video game. Everything, from the costumes to the vernacular to the story beats, tells the audience that none of this is real.
You wouldn't accuse, idk, A Knight's Tale, or Mel Brooks's Men In Tights of whitewashing history. I feel like ofmd plays in a similar league; it's a comedy very vaguely based on history, and it makes sure the audience knows we are not about to be told anything true. If you watch ofmd, you know this isn't about the real, historical Stede Bonnet or Edward Teach.
So. Let's examine the actual story, yes? The story that is told here is anticolonialist, antiracist, and challenges oppressive power structures as much as is possible for a production like this. It addresses these things and condemns them, both explicitly and in its underlying message. (I'm not gonna explain all of this, enough ink has been spilled about it by people smarter than me)
I do not know what Hamilton is about at its core. I know Our Flag Means Death is about authenticity in the face of the whole world telling you there's something wrong with you. It's about resisting dehumanization and reclaiming your personhood. It's about love, in a radical, system-destroying way, about breaking the cycle of abuse, about healing, and finding joy.
Yes, the real historical figures it's based on were all horrible people. Again, if that's a dealbreaker, that's fine. I'm not trying to convince anyone who is deeply uncomfortable with that fact; it's perfectly understandable.
However, for me, personally, the story as a whole is so far removed from reality, and so firm in its message, that I feel this is forgivable.
(Oh, and a lat aside, I also feel like likening ofmd to Hamilton seldom seems to come from a place of genuine criticism. Often it seems to be more along the lines of "Hamilton is cringe, and if I say ofmd=Hamilton ppl will be too embarrassed to defend it" which yk. feels kinda disingenuous to me.)
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