#and then the irony is that that key choice will lead him to them

[ilynpilled]

I feel like as the resident dishonor/honor guy enjoyer I have to speak on honor as a construct and how it seems to operate in asoiaf in my eyes. I will be stating the obvious here imo but: violence IS inherent to it. Be it directly or through the enablement of it. “Honor”, as a feudalistic moral construct, revolves around the reinforcement of a status quo. It is a moral construct that is embedded into a feudalistic structure, one that is inherently violent. It can be deeply flawed and destructive as a result of deeply rooted systemic issues. Being “honorable” is very complicated because, again, it does not exist based on a very sensible moral framework. It ends up contradicting itself because the way society is structured in Westeros.

Almost nothing embodies this more clearly than the KG. They are supposed to be the paragons of honor: an unsoiled white cloak.

Vows are social contracts this society is built on. This is why Jaime is very restricted in a lot of ways in his world by his label. Breaking one of the most important contracts (one that happens to be key in reinforcing a feudalistic structure: it places the king’s will above every single other moral or ethical code) makes it so he is not believed or trusted and he is unable to operate properly within their society in a lot of circumstances, as we witness in his chapters. It is honorable to protect the weak and the innocent, but it is honorable to protect your king in all circumstances and reinforce a status quo. To obey your family and play your societal role. To obey laws, even if they are unjust. To keep your word, to be honest. Loyalty to a tyrant has to be inherently more honorable (especially in certain positions) to maintain this status quo, even though it contradicts other oaths and we know it is inherently immoral. Balancing values is the most interesting aspect of characters dealing with ‘honor’ and morality. Feudalism is what makes the honor system collapse. Honor itself can be a more vague concept, “the quality of knowing and doing what is morally right”, but the way it is defined and how it operates within this society is so fucked. The KG appear in the weirwood dream (mirroring the imagery of The Others, conflating the honorable white cloak with snow and cold and death.) “You swore to keep your king safe” “and the children as well.” Yeah, the innocent children of kingslanding as well, that would have burned to ash. It is honorable to save your king, to protect the weak, to save the children, to save the innocents of KG, to obey your father. He tells this to them in the dream, he explains his reasoning for killing Aerys, but they do not budge. That is what Jaime fears the most, the complete collapse of everything that holds meaning to him, heroism becoming undefinable with these conflicting moral codes, which is likely another huge part of him keeping it a secret. It is something he feels powerless against. The way things are prioritized is wrong. Morality becomes skewed. In Jaime’s mind the enemy and primary source of doom is this nonsensical moral construct that contradicts itself represented by institutions that make no sense. It is what makes his symbolic fire go out. His moral code conflicts with this society’s code of ethics, which eventually leads him to cynically accept amorality. It is disillusionment that tears the idea of heroism and being “honorable” apart and leads to moral nihilism.

Another aspect of the honor code and its violence is the fact that it places more value to individuals based on class. It is dependent on class and a flawed social structure. This is despite the fact that vows of knighthood call for the protection of those that are too weak to protect themselves: the underprivileged. Jaime keeps having this epiphany of an inherent equality in death that seems to contradict the way society is structured. Aerys’ life is worth inherently more according to the honor code than Rhaella’s, than the lives of thousands of innocents, than Jaime’s. Yet, a lowborn hand, no one, seems to die harder than Aerys does (and nobody cares). A crown is worth nothing when crows feast on victors and vanquished alike, and the rightful heir himself. We are all equal in death, so the text is indicating that something is not right here.

When it comes to characters and their relationship with honor the important through-line is examining whether they are being “honorable” in the abstract sense, if they base their actions around empathy and a sense of actual justice, or if they are abiding by made up flawed constructs. Being viewed as honorable by this society does not make you a good person. In fact, in order for you to abide by the honor code you would likely have to turn into an amoral individual. For example, if you try to keep the cloak pure white you will metaphorically soil it. Like every one of Aerys’s kingsguard did. To keep their oath to the king, they broke vows to protect innocents and protect women. They should lose their honor by a lot of definitions, but that would mean the status quo collapses. Jaime’s knighting for this reason is very much like a boy being sacrificed at an altar. It is not just about drawing a parallel between young girls and boys being sentenced to bloody doom by violent constructs created for their gender.

“Blood is the seal of our devotion.” He bleeds on his plain white tunic. It was never “pure white”, it was always all tainted in blood. It is inherently violent. You can argue that is when “the boy died.”

Very rigid and hypocritical honor codes built for feudalism lack nuance and lead to amorality. I think George aims to address, interrogate, deconstruct, and then reconstruct honor, as with most other key concepts present in fantasy. Honor can be redefined. Examples like “No chance, and no choice”, among many others, are at the root of that reconstruction. Even then, the reconstruction does not conflate it with pacifism necessarily. For example, Chelsted did the ‘honorable’ thing, in the abstract moral sense, of quitting his job and not supporting a tyrant anymore, but that act achieved nothing in preventing the wildfire plot. Same with essentially everyone important at court abandoning the situation that is Aerys, turning away from a gaping wound and not addressing it before it was too late. Jaime had to soil the ‘white cloak’ and disrupt the status quo and lose his “honor” within those terms by murdering his king and his pyromancers as a kingsguard and actually save half a million lives. It was not glorious, nor was it anything like the songs, and the city is still doomed because there is no way to get that festering corruption out of there at this point, metaphorical of the greater problem with KG, but it was heroism, a choice with meaning, and a form of triumph, even if the consequences break Jaime down the line. He gets no answer to the question of what it means to be a knight and a man of honor if society’s version of it is so skewed. Then, Jaime and the readers get an answer in the form of Brienne: “I dreamed of you.”

[bird-inacage]

The Heart Killers: Predictions (Kant as Bison's Keys to Freedom)

Welcome to the first of my speculative brain dumps on this couple. The updated trailer has had my brain theorising like crazy.

Khao has mentioned a few times now that Bison was adopted into his family, and killing essentially became his way of life. Kant then comes along and becomes Bison's escape - a welcome distraction from the violent life he leads.

Whether Kant's undercover objective it to scope for dirt or to take the brothers down, it's through this mission that Kant begins to sympathise with Bison and the circumstances that led him to become a hitman. His feelings will ultimately compromise or derail his original objective. Once everything is out in the open, this doesn't seem to deter Kant. If anything, it only doubles down his resolve to protect Bison from harm. "I just need to know I'll always be with you." "You think I'd go on living if you died?"

We've been told that Kant goes goo-goo eyed for Bison pretty early on. My hunch is that once he finds out the type of life Bison is swept up in and just how dangerous it is, his personal mission will be to try and free him: "I'll help you start over". And if he can't free him in the immediate effect, he'll join him in order to watch his back. "We'll take care of each other. This isn't just an empty promise." Based on the fact he was asked to help with detective work in the first place, Kant must have some pretty handy skills in his arsenal, and likely knows a thing or two about survival.

On that basis, perhaps the real conflict for these two won't be the getting things out into the open, but what Bison chooses to do for his freedom. We don't yet know whether he’s on good terms with his adoptive family. It could very well be that he simply doesn't want to kill, but has too much gratitude towards them for taking him in, that he could never disobey or defy them.

So when Kant tries to find him an out or whisk him away - Bison will then have a choice to make. To leave with Kant, or side with his family. Staying would also mean exposing Kant (who seems eager to protect him) to the same violence he's desperate to leave behind, which may further complicate things. "With the way I live, I can't promise you anything." (I could die tomorrow).

The other thing I would be wary of is in order to 'free' Bison in some way, shape or form (from his supposed crimes and lifestyle), Kant may have to sacrifice or offer something in exchange. Considering he's the one tasked to investigate the two brothers (in order to put them behind bars, I would assume), there's a poetic irony if he turns out to be the key to Bison's freedom. Hearing how Khao loves Kant as a character also speaks volumes to me about his role in the story and what he means to Bison. But I may just be letting my mind run riot.

(Note: very interesting shot in the trailer below. To me, it almost looks like they're doing a 'training' exercise for something. Bison with his gun on Kant whilst he jumps into the sea tied up).

Narratively speaking, I’m not sure how this all of fits into a romcom of all things but I have a feeling Jojo is going to surprise us with his hijinks. Let’s wait and see!

[oswinsdolma]

bbc merlin is a tragedy. it's not a new take by any stretch, but a lot of analysis (mine included) often seems to gloss over what i think is one of the most interesting roles in tragedy. we have the tragic hero, and the fucked up symbiosis of merlin and arthur in that role. we have the battle of fate against free will, humanity against god, all that good shit. but we never really discuss the role of the audience, and the part we play in the story.

in ancient greece, tragedies were about learning a lesson, reflecting on the past. you could argue that it wasn't even necessarily about the story and the characters themselves, they were just vehicles to get across something to an audience in a human way, rather than in a torrent of philosophy or law. and because they are stories, we take them and transform them into metaphors that tell us what we need to know. and in a lot of plays, that's the end of it. we see the play and think about what it means, but there is catharsis at the end; the story is over, and we go about our lives, perhaps changed, but apart from the story itself. ultimately, we are helpless to the fate of the characters within story, but we can take control of our own.

but the thing is with merlin, is that we're not helpless. yes, we sit and watch as merlin makes choice after choice that leads him down a darker path. yes, we see the irony in characters' mistakes and can do nothing about it. but the key thing about the story of merlin and arthur is that it isn't over. arthur has not risen, and merlin still waits for him. we cannot bring him from the lake, nor can we ease merlin's pain, but what we can do is remember. and the more you look for it, the clearer our role becomes: "a boy who would, in time, father a legend" in 1.01 and "the story we have been a part of will live long in the minds of men" in 5.13. yet i think the point that really hammers this home isn't one of the obvious ones, but what merlin says to arthur in the disiir episode: "as if the world were so much more than itself". because yes, it's about magic but it's also about stories. about transcendence and legend and dreams, metaphysical and half fabricated and a shared collective that is so much more than the original story on its own. we, those who live after arthur died, take his name and we make it into a thousand more things: a king, a traitor, a christ figure, the best of our humanity. he, and the others in the story, become metaphors for us in the same way the ancient poets crafted their tragedy, but in merlin, we don't get catharsis: we get perpetuity. because in merlin, the story is never over. in merlin, our role is not to mourn, but to hold vigil. to remember all that was in the hope that what died will rise from the ashes anew.

the beauty of the story of merlin and arthur is not that they were doomed by the narrative, but they get to live. that tragedy can befall the greatest of men, but it is not always the end of the story, not always the absence of hope. and no small part of that is due to us, as the audience, breathing life into the legend by passing it on, by holding the torch as something important to us and learning from it, arthur both a beacon of tragedy and of hope. there are few stories where this lies hand in hand, and besides the obvious two-sided-coin stuff going on, that is because of the refusal to let the story go. i said we make stories into metaphors, and i think this is arthur's: tragedy is inevitable, but not inhuman. and when you can hold on no longer, those who love you will guard you until you are ready to rise again.

[watching-pictures-move]

Movie Review | Raw Courage (Rosen, 1984)

During the opening credits, we get closeups of Ronny Cox greasing up his toes and Art Hindle putting on a really tight t-shirt. The heroes, who include Cox, Hindle and Tim Maier, spend the entire movie in short shorts. And during the climax, the lead villain, played by M. Emmet Walsh, grabs Cox’s crotch, again in closeup. Now, I play for a different team, but if any of this sounds enticing to you, I’d suggest giving this movie a look. 

I’d also suggest giving this a look if the idea of a TV-grade riff on Deliverance or The Hills Have Eyes (the latter is pulled from directly with a few key images) sounds like your kind of jam. The heroes here are a trio of marathon runners who find themselves up against a group of paramilitary survivalists who use them as prey for their training exercises. You know these are bad guys because one of the first things they do is ritualistically berate a female member who got injured and made a tactical error. They call her very mean things, like “fat ass”, which in some cases can be used appreciatively (especially when spelled with “ph”) but not here. These guys are not nice people, which you also figure out when they kill one of the heroes. 

Cox is the writer and star, and this is very much an acting showcase for him. I’m so used to him as bureaucrats and hardasses that it’s a nice surprise to see him this mild mannered. (The glasses are a nice touch.) The movie doesn’t beat you over the head with it, but you do get the sense that he’s been using his running hobby to run away from his domestic problems, and there’s irony that he just now literally run away from his biggest problem yet. The exploration of masculinity is not unlike those other movies I referenced, one of whom also stars Cox. 

I’m not sure this was actually a TV movie, but the direction definitely feels like it, and not necessarily in a bad way, as some of the blunter camera moves and framing choices give accentuate the visceral impact of the proceedings. You do get the sense that certain things are being softened (the bad guys don’t spout too much of their ideology beyond their pseudomilitary discipline), but there’s also a pretty gnarly impalement, so who knows. But ultimately this is a case where the realities of physical strain and the desert environment do most of the work. You’ll feel nearly as out of breath as the characters as you watch this.

[cabe0512]

I think I need to answer these questions as well, since leaving them unanswered would spell doom and confusion for the story.

Shortly after Season 4, Striga and Morana did decide to leave it all behind and enjoy a life together. But note that, in the opening of Chapter 1, I did hint of other vampire lords and dark magicians warring with each other over the power vacuum that Dracula left behind upon the realization that the resurrection plot failed (at least, in their eyes) and that Dracula is truly dead (unaware that he is living the best life in Whitby at that point in time).

Even before the curse was noticeably eating up the land of Wallachia, these dullards sped the process by slowly decimating the land each battle after battle. Whoever hasn't taken a side in this conflict - both human and vampire alike - were unceremoniously killed in the crossfire.

Among those who refused to take a side were Striga and Morana, whose dreams of a quiet life were snatched away from them due to the war. And so to protect themselves from being among the dead, they decided to take action themselves; to bring down both factions and assuming control of the country themselves by conquering the capital of Targoviste.

Despite their reasons for doing so being truly noble at heart - to stop the war and help the country heal - it ultimately backfired when the survivors boldly refused to acknowledge Morana as the de facto ruler of Wallachia, as vampires have caused enough damage to their homes that letting them rule over the country was too far.

So what initially began as a way to deescalate the situation through strict diplomatic means eventually led to the harsh beginning of rebellion across the country, which Striga had no choice but to cut them down brutally to keep the populace in control. In the end, the war resumed but the key figures behind both sides have changed.

As for Hector, they still couldn't forgive him for his hand in Carmilla and Lenore's death. When word of Hector's appearances outside of Styria became known, Morana orders search parties around the country to find the traitorous Forgemaster and bring him to justice for their deaths.

While Morana and Striga definitely have much more to do here than in the entirety of the original show, their journey is ultimately a tragic one. I rescind my previous statement about them getting what they deserve, as this plot thread is basically them trying to clean up the mess that other vampires have made but never getting the respect nor the goodwill of the Wallachians despite doing so, leading them further down a dark road.

In what could be the ultimate case of irony, despite never going along with Carmilla's ambitious plan to conquer the world, Morana and Striga ended up having to do so in the end.

I would have loved striga and morana in any other story and with any other writer

I felt the same about Carlisle Cullen when I read twilight

[inamindfarfaraway]

If we can’t have Batfamily movies and all Batman movies must be set in the early years before Robin, at least let us have one about the Gotham Justice Triumvirate. With Harvey Dent in the central role. Here’s my pitch:

Badass DA and wonderful person Harvey.

Harvey and Jim Gordon and Batman’s friendship. Jim and Harvey are friends! They’re two normal humans hanging out with a vigilante/living shadow cryptid who has no concept of normal human interaction! Think of the in-jokes they must have! Near the beginning, after Batman pulls his trademark disappearing act on them Harvey asks if Jim thinks he’ll ever say goodbye to them. Jim’s reply is some form of “when hell freezes over”, maybe even “Yeah - when he’s seeing you off to Arkham and me to Blackgate.” They laugh.

Harvey and Bruce Wayne’s friendship.

The fun and dramatic irony of writing Bruce and Batman as completely separate characters.

Depending on the timeline, possibly a cameo of newly fostered little Dick Grayson! To whom Harvey is like an uncle.

Gilda’s character being fleshed out. Exploring her side of the marriage and views on her husband’s career and mental decline and alliance with the Bat.

Harvey and Gilda’s relationship. And her and Two-Face’s relationship! He doesn’t care for Bruce, but he does love her equally while she apparently doesn’t even know he exists prior to him killing people. That’s an interesting dynamic.

Mafia intrigue and drama as the heroic trio finally bring down the previously untouchable Maroni empire.

Judicial, political and police force intrigue and drama as Harvey and to a less examined extent Jim fight to preserve their moral integrity in and reform their deeply corrupt institutions.

“For Gotham” is a key phrase, and may be the title. It’s said by each member of the triumvirate at different points when demonstrating or discussing how far they’re willing to go and how much hope they have for their city and its people.

Accurate, in-depth DID representation with Harvey and his protector alter not yet named Two-Face, who, reasserting himself after years if not decades of repression, resentment and ingratitude by the person he’s only ever wanted to protect slowly grows into a persecutor. Now Harvey’s wary, dismissive treatment of him is very understandable because of how terrifying DID can make life when you don’t understand it/your alter(s), and the need for control and excessive responsibility his childhood of abuse and neglect has cemented in him. But it’s still damaging. Other than lash out sometimes at people making Harvey feel threatened (Pre-)Two-Face hasn’t really done anything wrong before the events of the movie. They’re two sides of the same badly scarred coin each just trying to survive and make sense of their pain, equally sympathetic and valid… at least at the start. An element of the tragedy is that Two-Face could have healed and been a true friend to Harvey, if different choices were made and different chances were given. But the pressure of the Maroni case, a lifetime of unresolved trauma and post-traumatic stress from their father and each other, some plain bad luck and some mistakes lead to him becoming another abuser and a supervillain besides.

Music! Harvey has a theme, Two-Face has a theme. They hit opposite beats and parallel each other a lot yet never quite harmonize well. The coin (and the destruction and despair it represents) has a leitmotif that slowly rises to prominence in both. This motif is also associated with Christopher Dent. Harvey and Gilda have a love theme. Bruce and Batman have distinct themes that complement each other perfectly when played together, and when Bruce’s emotions shine through in Batman or Batman’s grimness peeks out of Bruce elements from the other piece are mixed in. The concept that Gotham’s ‘soul’ can be saved and humanity is worth fighting for has an uplifting theme, the main theme of movie and an antithesis to the coin’s, that has sections and elements woven into each member of the triumvirate’s themes and is repeatedly reprised in different tones.

Harvey’s external plot is making Gotham a better place, specifically via dismantling the Maroni crime family. The structure of most of the movie builds up to the climax of the trial of Salvatore Maroni himself. Maybe there are even recurring shots of Harvey’s calendar with an increasing number of days crossed out, to really drive the countdown home. To the main characters, it’s a beacon of confidence; a chance to prove law, and law for the good of the people, does hold power in Gotham, to send a message to everyone that things can and will get better. Nothing (and no one) is beyond redemption. To the audience, it’s a doomsday for Harvey we’re helpless to stop that taints every victory and happy moment on the path toward it.

His internal plot is grappling with his severe psychological issues rooted in his nightmarish childhood. He goes to therapy, he’s in a good place right before the start. But the first scene is… rough.

He visits his alcoholic father Christopher in the cheap hotel Chris, reduced to a pathetic old man, is staying in. Though he still calls him Dad and wants to try to reconcile, it’s clear he understands his regular, brutal beatings and otherwise generally neglectful parenting style (at least half the time) were wrong and he’s uncomfortable and tense. Chris solemnly presents him with a coin. The coin he would flip every night to ‘decide’ to beat him or not, which always, always came up heads for punishment. He said it was fair and that paradigm - that that his desires and actions don’t matter, he was just always bad inside and always deserves to suffer, in short that Harvey’s fate isn’t in his control - shaped the system’s entire personalities and worldviews, Harvey striving to prove it wrong and over years of bearing trauma and triggering experiences, his much more cynical protector internalizing it. With trembling fingers Harvey picks up the coin and looks at both sides. Two heads. The music cuts out. Dolly zoom on him that makes the room appear to close in around him, as a boy’s pleas, cries and screams of agony echo and he dissociates. Two-Face, who always acknowledged the flip was rigged, switches in. He smiles ruefully and says in a calm, quiet voice, “I understand.” Then he lunges to his feet, punches Christopher to the ground, grabs him by the throat and slams him against the wall, right fist raised to strike. He is now anything but calm. “Why? Why did you do it? Not the beating, that was just because you’re a sick bastard and took your anger out on the person least able to do anything about it. But why use the coin, why make it a game? Why lie? To shift responsibility even more? Just for fun? Tell me! Why would you bother to put a little spark of hope into your son’s eyes only to crush it? Answer me!” Instead of answering, Chris notes he’s bleeding; his right fist is closed so tight his fingernails have punctured his skin and the coin inside it is cutting into his palm. The shock of seeing that damn coin literally, physically hurting him brings tears to Two-Face’s eyes. He looks back up at his father, full of only raw grief and sadness for himself and his alter. His voice breaks. “Why, Dad? Did you really… not feel anything good when you looked at me?” “Did you really believe every time?” is all his father can say. Two-Face’s expression hardens, his fists clench again and he squares his shoulders. “Only half of me did. Goodbye, Christopher,” he says bitterly. The second he slams the door his facade of strength crumbles. He falls to his knees, sobbing and heavily dissociating. Cradling his head in his hands and raking them through his hair smears blood on and in the right half of his face and hair. Cue title card!

So yeah, there are only a couple of months between that day and the Maroni trial. He can’t bring himself to throw away the coin despite knowing he probably should. Gilda can’t understand why and urges him to leave it behind. He says it’s “too important” and “a reminder”, although of what, he can’t verbalize. The coin eventually ends up being habitually fidgeted with and kept on his person like a lucky charm. He’s trying to ‘redeem’ his trauma, turn it into something good, by drawing on it to motivate him to fight for justice, but the coin in practice is just a trigger. His PTSD, guilt complex and self-worth and control issues are dragged to the forefront and he dissociates more frequently. He falls further and further into obsessive workaholism. Loses sleep. Misses therapy sessions. All that matters is giving the absolute most he can to his city. Rest can wait, quality time with his wife and friends can wait, Harvey Dent the person can wait until the case is closed. Until after the trial. Everything will be better after The Trial.

The Trial happens. Everything is not better.

Maroni unscrewing his flask occurs in the background of the shot out of focus. When the acid is thrown, it sprays through the air in slow motion. We see Harvey and the witnesses’ (including Gilda and Bruce) shock transitioning to panic and horror as he flinches away too slowly, the coin in his hand flung into midair revolution and a wayward drop of acid approaching it. With a last close-up on his wide left eye reflecting Maroni’s smirk, cut to black. The most tortured screams you can imagine ring in our ears. No music in any of this.

Harvey and Two-Face’s mental health sinks to rock bottom during their hospital stay. Gilda, Bruce and Jim’s visits comfort Harvey little, especially since Batman duty calls Bruce away at a critical point (remember, nowhere in the script does it say Bruce is Batman). They’re given the coin back and discuss that life isn’t fair, but it should be… if they played their dad’s game now, it would be fair. All that work, all the blood and sweat and tears Harvey put into Gotham and this is how Gotham thanks him. He was never going to change things. Not playing by the rules of a rigged game, at least. It was never up to him. He never had it in him to be good, to be someone not worthy of punishment, let alone to improve other people’s lives. Flipping the coin, Harvey whispers with shattered eyes, “I understand.” Of course, seeing their scars is the last straw. Two-Face switches in, literally locking an anxious Harvey in a dark repressed chamber in their inner world to stop him getting in his way, and escapes hospital. Gilda, on her way to his room, begs him to stop and he hesitates but, genuinely sorrowful, decides his quest for justice takes precedence and runs into the stormy night, the shadows and rain obscuring his trail. She calls him, phone in a death grip. Fade out to its continual ringing.

This might be too weird and artsy but what if from the Fuck My Life I’m Listening To A Coin Now toxic epiphany onward, the shot composition is roughly pretty much symmetrical? Within shots or with shots mirroring each other. Not perfectly, obviously, but like. Rewind looking for it and it’s there.

The penultimate scene is another rooftop rendezvous and this time Harvey isn’t present; we and his friends feel his absence. Batman regretfully tells Jim and shows him footage of a new criminal taking the underworld by storm: the fledgling Two-Face. Jim is first disbelieving, then devastated and turns his back so Batman won’t see him cry. He angrily tells Batman not to comfort him, and to leave now that he’s given him the shitty news, because that’s all he ever does for him. We pull back to show Batman is staying, pained, guilty and truly having no idea how to proceed. Jim assumes he’s already silently vanished. Once he collects himself and goes inside to inform his subordinates, Batman lingers in front of the Batsignal where they took their shared vow. “Goodbye, Harvey,” he says softly.

The epilogue is Two-Face’s confrontation with Maroni. Several months later, the Mafia don’s out of prison already thanks to the, again, incredibly corrupt legal system. Two-Face acts venomously calm and civil while holding him at gunpoint. He remarks how long and hard Harvey worked just to bring Maroni to court, and how now with some broken laws and spilt blood here Maroni is in front of him in a fraction of the time. Helpless, like he was in that courtroom. He explains his “fair” game to kill him or not in a speech clearly quoted from Christopher, shows him both sides of the coin, tosses it and stares at the unseen outcome in his hand. “Lucky,” he announces, making Maroni slightly relax - a little spark of hope put into his eyes, you could say. Suddenly Two-Face shoots him twice in the heart. “For Gotham, not you.” Harvey switches in (implicitly his alter’s guilt is a positive trigger for him as his anger is for Two-Face) to find his alter has committed murder, with a smoking gun in his right hand and flecks of blood on that hand and his suit. He staggers back in horror and drops the gun and coin. A pang of practically physical pain interrupts his calling Jim to turn himself in, because he can’t choose that, can he? He falls to his knees. With trembling fingers he picks up the coin and, pleading under his breath to just have this one chance, flips it. It comes up scarred. Two-Face resumes control. He smashes the phone under his heel and stands. The final shot is him walking purposefully toward the camera so it zooms in on the vertical divide of his suit jacket.

[shadowed-dancer]

"A Half-baked puppet" aka: what was Touya talking about in 351?

In 351, Touya really tears into Shoto (both physically and verbally) and I've seen a lot of confusion over the verbal aspect of things. What was the driving factor behind his words? What exactly got him so upset? Let's figure it out:

This chapter is kind of hard to read because Shoto and Touya discuss a million topics all at once, so let's narrow it down to the single conversation that leads to the "half-baked puppet" comment. I think the key to Touya's frustrations comes from these lines:

His annoyance seems to come from the fact that Shoto has the perfect body and was given everything needed to succeed (a good school that would promote him) and yet, in Touya's eyes, he seems to think Shoto "wasted" these opportunities by continuing to depend on others rather than using them to make something of himself.

"You sure don't capitalize on it" = you just copy dad and do everything he says. You have not done anything on your own to use your powers to their fullest potential. You are wasting such a good power by being someone's puppet, rather than making something of yourself.

Remember: all Touya ever wanted was to be seen and to be a good hero who surpassed All Might. I'm sure at some point it crossed his mind that, if he had the perfect quirk and body, he'd have easily accomplished this goal. Instead, he's had to work, struggle, and burn himself to get to the point he's at.

Shoto, meanwhile, had everything Touya wanted, but did nothing with it; he just copied Endeavor. He worked at his dad's agency (both during the Stain incident AND during work studies, which Dabi actually saw thanks to Hawks' footage), he uses his dad's moves, he even has a similar costume. Let's not forget this beauty from 345:

Touya believes Shoto has "taken the easy way" by letting everything happen for him without doing anything himself. Dabi saw Shoto as a puppet molded by Endeavor, and as such he doesn't think Shoto has done anything beyond what his father arranged. Meanwhile, Touya had worked hard to improve his flames despite being a "failure".

The irony, of course, is that Shoto has done things on his own, Touya just doesn't know because it was never publicized. For example, Shoto's choice to intern/work study with Endeavor looks very puppet-esque on the surface. It's only after Shoto explains his motivations that you realize this really was an independent choice. Touya never saw this because of course he didn't. None of Shoto's internal conflict was put on the news, only the end result. He only ever saw Shoto following dad around during internships, not the reasoning behind this.

The other irony is that Touya is the one copying Endeavor. Yes, Touya has 100% trained himself and improved his power on his own, but he is entirely reliant on copying Endeavor's moves. Every named attack Touya has ever done in the series has come from Endeavor. This does not mean Touya has been "depending on everyone else"; Touya still had to work super hard on his own to get to this point, but he is very much influenced by his father.

Basically: Shoto was trained by Endeavor and has to work to be individual, Touya had to train himself and chose to be more like Endeavor. They're opposites.

Yet Shoto agrees that he's "half-baked" because, to an extent, Touya is right; Shoto has taken his situation for granted (i.e. his perfect body and quirk). In 351, Shoto acknowledges Touya in this exchange:

Shoto's response to "you'll never make a damn thing of yourself" is "You're not wrong about me. I took the long way around, and was full of doubt all the while." I believe "the long way" in question here is that Shoto did indeed act as Endeavor's puppet for the majority of his life. He was on track to never making anything of himself. He was full of doubt because he knew he didn't want to be like his dad (and this manifested in his stubbornness to only use ice) but he didn't know what else to do. It wasn't until he realized "it's his power" that he realized he could be the kind of hero he (Shoto) wanted to be.

Tl;dr From Touya's perspective, Shoto was a puppet who had everything handed to him and never had to work hard to get to where he is, yet squandered this by (seemingly) never working to be anything more, whereas Touya has had to fight constantly (both against enemies and against his own body) to be where he is today.

[justthatpratte]

So I Just Watched "Free Guy" Yesterday

Which is a movie I am calling a Ryan Reynolds film rather than a Taika Waititi film because Ryan was just so great in it. I have so many feelings about the movie, I have to talk about it somewhere and y'all are the unlucky sons o' bitches that get to hear it.

First, I have to say that this movie wasn't particularly groundbreaking in any way. It was just a good movie. Not a great movie, not a movie that challenges long-held movie stereotypes, not a movie that is fully awake on social justice, etc. Just a movie that kept me entertained for the majority of its runtime. With entertainment as the goal, it nailed that.

Now, I'm partial to stories of artificial intelligences (the movie AI made me straight up sob). I'm obsessed with stories of creation and the human condition, and A.I. always seem to hit the spot when it comes to exploring those themes. I don't quite like the way it was implemented in the game world; by which I mean, I don't like the way Keys (whom I was excited to see, I hope Steve-From-Stranger-Things gets more roles so I can finally remember what his actual name is) programmed Guy to be a lovelorn weirdo with no social skills who is awakened when he finds his dream girl, a trigger that smacks of Manic-Pixie-Dreamgirl tropes despite Millie not exactly fitting that stereotype. This annoyed me especially because that programming leads Guy to stalk and harass Millie in the game in a way that no woman would enjoy in the real world. Millie, for her part, is written to be apparently completely blind to the real-life dangers that cyberstalking poses for women. Guy sets off so many red flags in this movie it's like he collects them, and the irony is in the statement Guy makes at the bank when he "gifts" the hot-hot-violence-girl (I forget what they named her asset) with agency, which is that most men are awful and choosing to be single is not a bad thing.

It's actually interesting how many times the movie makes a great point about the real world, only to stumble over that point later with its actual progression. It feels like the movie struggled with elements of feminism, which makes me think the writing team did not include a single woman. There's a part in the movie where Buddy just starts feeling up Dude, which is played for laughs, but is a very clear example of sexual harassment and consent violation. It's nice that Dude can just punch people who creep on him, but not all guys who are sexually harassed by other guys have that kind of freedom. It's even weirder that the guy is a security guard, because while the ACAB crowd sort of acknowledges that security guards are often wannabe-cops without the authority, they are just as likely as real cops to abuse the little authority they do have. I have heard some horror stories about women and even kids who were abused by security employees who were on the job, so the choice to include that scene is mind-boggling to me. Plus, Dude's objectification isn't excused by the fact that he was created to be a meathead; he was still created, in the same universe as Guy, with the same software. He's just as much of a person, even if he's a bit differently-abled compared to the others.

So let's talk about some stuff I did like in the movie. I LOVED the diversity of avatars and vehicles and even the weapons. I loved that there were color-changing cars, and that there was a diversity of "skins" for the avatars and the whole city was a jumble of mismatching periods and styles. The freedom of choice and expression that represented to me was wonderful. I play FFXIV, and while there are a lot of people wearing the usual old-timey clothes, you can pick out a lot of people in the background at any given time in their underwear, or in heavy hot pink armor, or with accessories and weapons that glow or have fire effects on them, or wearing cartoonish Moogle masks. You can ride dragons, but you can also ride glowing foxes called Carbuncles, or giant, fat baby chicks, or a car that looks like the fucking Batmobile. There are also mechs and little plane-ships and all manner of other things if you've got the cash to pay for them. I love that. I want that for the real world. I want people to be able to dress how they want and customize their homes and vehicles (safely, ofc) and not be judged or harmed for it. THAT is the future millennials want.

Another thing I liked was Keys's concept of a world with live A.I. that are constantly learning and changing, even when the players are absent. I love the idea of visiting a new world that humans created and just hanging out with the people in it.

However, when Millie told Guy he wasn't "real", that sort of misrepresents what reality actually is. What she meant was that he couldn't exist in her world, even though she could exist in his. Even if he had no intelligence, he would still be "real" for what he was. The world he exists in is still real. Code and machines are real, tangible things; they're not just imagination. They're concrete things that you can see and touch. Just because the virtual world wasn't created the same way ours was (probably; hopefully) doesn't mean it isn't "real". It doesn't cease to exist when you acknowledge it ("I think, therefore I am"). If the definition of personhood is sapience (intellect+empathy), then it doesn't matter whether that sapience is artificial or organic. The physical manifestation of the body is, similarly, not important; we have fleshy bodies full of blood, and A.I. have steely and plastic bodies full of electricity. The game is essentially just hosting Guy's mind; his body is a part of the servers on the bottom floor.

Which reminds me of something that, as a programmer, I had to really squint at in the game. There are a lot of things the movie gets right about programming, but there are a LOT of things it gets hilariously wrong, which isn't really a criticism as much as an observation. It's funny how infuriating a movie that incorporates your field can be, as I'm sure all medical workers well know. A lot of the visual representations of Keys and his partner, the husband from "Ghosts" (US version, whom I also hope to see a lot more of so I can remember his actual name) actually working on the game gives me 90s hacker movie vibes. That may have been at least partially intentional, but there are some points I really tilted my head at; like, the fact that you don't need to include a whole other game's worth of assets in order to steal its engine (there was literally no reason for the paradise game area to be in the new game, that is so much more data than is needed and would bog down the servers if it was just loaded in at all times and running the programming for an entire other environment that nobody was even going to use). Or, the fact that they had to load in a bridge to reach the other game world when a programmer could just remove the barrier with a few key presses. Or the fact that you wouldn't even need to see the paradise game area to prove that your boss (Taika Waititi; I am not sure if he is an actual asshole or just enjoys playing one) stole your game engine; there would literally be code you could view and read and be like "huh, this is identical to the code I wrote". Most of the time when developers get caught with stolen software, it's because the game's programming was leaked and the original authors were able to see with their own face-orbs that the code is a literal, line-for-line copy of what they themselves wrote.

There was a lot of cheese in this film too (not in the literal sense), which isn't necessarily bad, but the moments they chose to use it sort of undercut important emotional responses. When Millie kisses Guy to wake up his A.I. programming (again, very squicky plot point), the visual representation of his choice map was unnecessary and distracting because of how silly it looked. It was a little jarring, even for a movie that takes place in a universe where neon signs and iridescent coin bubbles are bouncing around.

I did like the ending for Taika Waititi's character, Antwan (who is basically the film's equivalent of EA), who made a bunch of stupid decisions in the interest of maximizing profits while alienating his entire consumer base, and then lost everything when the truth got out about his shitty business practices. If only that were more representative of the real world, but it does fill me with warm memories about the downfall of the XBOX One and subsequent firing of its lead developer, who called backwards compatibility "backwards thinking. We need more of that.

We see a lot of stories about the creation of these worlds, but I'd like to see some exploration of them too. I want to see what the relationship is like for these immortal game characters and their tragically mortal creators. I want to see the characters in the game learn about us, lose us and cope with the loss, and welcome new people and get accustomed to that rotation.

Anyway, the thing I liked the most about the movie is that it made me think.

Also!! Jacksepticeye was in the movie! That was very exciting to me, since I'm going through his catalog of LPs right now (I just got through Bloodborne and Elden Ring and I'm now watching God of War). If Markiplier had made even a moment's appearance, Free Guy would have been my de facto favorite movie. Honestly, in spite of not being particularly fabulous in a lot of ways, it's still in my top ten. I love, love, LOVE that they included real Youtubers in the movie. This is the first movie I have ever seen blend Youtubers and famous film actors. There were loads of big-name actors I recognized in the movie apart from Ryan and Taika; the Rock was in it, Jim-from-the-office was in it, Channing Tatum was in it, Hugh Jackman was fucking in it and I didn't even notice (I was fuming that his character wasn't more front-facing; I've been waiting forever to see him do a movie with Reynolds), fucking Chris Evans made a cameo. The actual Alex Trebek was in the Jeopardy scene. Tina Fey was there. And then they also had Pokimane, DanTDM, and LazarBeam (none of whom I watch, but I was still excited to see them) in the movie, which to me means that the mainstream is finally beginning to acknowledge that Youtubers are professional entertainers, writers, and actors on par with their traditional media counterparts, which is an important development for internet culture as those of us who make our living online can attest that the greater culture doesn't take our contributions seriously.

This is especially true for Youtubers, who often have a closer relationship with their fanbase. It feels special to see somebody you've been following for years finally be acknowledged in the mainstream. I wanted to run and tell Seán that I'd seen him in the movie, even though I'm sure he'd never see the message given that he has almost 30 million followers and subscribers on his channel. But like in Markiplier's case, I've been watching Mark since just before FNAF blew up and back then he still had kind of a lot of followers, but not so many that you couldn't touch him. He would read people's comments and reply, and he'd answer direct messages. It was cool to be there during that time, even though I never interacted with him personally. Even today, Mark interacts directly with his subscribers while he's streaming and it's like the touch of God to be acknowledged by somebody you have so much love and respect for. It's awesome to think you could be watching and talking to somebody right now who could be famous all over the world one day. It's cool to think it could even be you someday.

I also love that the name of the movie is a pun. Because Guy is a guy from Free World, but the movie is also about freeing Guy.

Anyway, if you haven't watched it then do so now and if you noticed anything I didn't feel free to point it out! I would love to discuss it more.

[raayllum]

claudiez, an explanation

Introduction

On the surface, Ezran and Claudia are both very similar and incredibly different characters. They are both the younger sibling with a powerful father and older brother, buckling under the weight of their family’s legacy and following in their father’s footsteps that they alone must uniquely shoulder. Yes, Callum is a prince - but Ezran is the next king. Yes, Soren yearns for Viren’s approval - but he is not a Dark Mage, slowly purposefully destroying his own body for Viren’s plans. 

Moreover, Claudia and Ezran are tied together by their passivity and kindness. Claudia can be cruel and thoughtless, but she does have a (loose) moral code and a kind streak to her. She, normally, doesn’t want to hurt people - or those she considers people, anyway - and Ezran doesn’t want to hurt anyone, showing loss and sympathy even for Viren in 3x09. 

They are also incredibly different. Claudia chops magical creatures into pieces for her spells with zero remorse. Ezran can talk to magical creatures and bonds with them intensely. Ezran has empathy for just about everyone and everything, and Claudia’s turns on and off like a switch if something gets in the way of her ultimate goal of keeping her family together (or pleasing her father). 

Yet it is because of all of this — the narrative weight they hold, their similarities, and their differences — that make Ezran and Claudia uniquely situated to one another as a fascinating ship dynamic in the future.

Disclaimer: None of this meta is me positing that there are current romantic feelings between either of them in canon (there isn’t) or that their dynamic isn’t platonic. It also isn’t saying that I think they will be canon (they definitely won’t, for numerous reasons). This meta is simply an explanation of what I think is fascinating about their current dynamic, and the potential it has in a post-canon, fanon future over a decade down the line. Okay? Okay.

So without further ado, let’s talk about Claudia/Ezran. 

Family Parallels & Narrative

As previously mentioned, Ezran and Claudia occupy parallel narrative positions. They are both younger siblings and follow more directly in their fathers’ paths than their older brothers. Ezran never knew his mother, but Claudia is haunted by the loss of hers. Ezran becomes a king much like his father, but also decides to grow behind who Harrow was: “I don’t want to be that kind of king,” as he can acknowledge that his father was a good man and a good king, but a deeply flawed one. Claudia, in many ways, also surpasses her father’s level of skill as a dark mage, yet falls further and struggles even more than Viren does: “But I don’t understand, the switching spell would save [Harrow’s] life. Why would he say no?”

These paths lead them to collide in contrast twice, near the start of their arcs in s3 and near the end, as they fulfill each of the roles their family has passed down to them, Soren acting in defense of the True King. 

These collisions are steeped in irony and development for reasons we’ll get to a little bit later, but keep it in the back of your mind for now.

Moreover, it is possible that they are the descendants of the Orphan Queen — who was linked to Aaravos, likely, and somehow got his Key — and one of the first dark mages, Ziard, who received gifts from Aaravos.

No matter which way you slice it, Claudia and Ezran carry a narrative weight that Soren and Callum have largely unburdened themselves from by becoming detached almost completely from the expectations of their families; Soren as a loyal crownguard even as it turns him against his family, and Callum largely shedding the trappings of prince-hood to pursue mage-hood. 

Viren attempted to use Soren as a pawn, but he left and liberated himself. Claudia stayed and was used further. Another parallel between her and Ezran, specifically in regards to Viren, is how the dark mage attempts to use each of them as pawns, and the different ways they cope with making choices. If you’re interested in a more in depth exploration of this topic, check out my meta Claudia, Ezran, & Choices :: A Comparison Meta (s2 & s3).

Viren — with help from others in Katolis — is able to back Ezran and Claudia into corners. He tells his daughter to choose the egg over her own brother, yet Claudia does the opposite when the time comes in 2x07. Viren forces Ezran in between a rock and a hard place, manipulating the boy partially into choosing the third option of abdication. 

But, if we’re going to talk about Narrative and parallels, we have to talk about the parallels that Claudiez has with Rayllum.

Rayllum Parallels

There are two main parallels that Claudiez has with Rayllum. Beyond the fact that Rayla&Claudia are very strong foils for each other, Claudia and Ezran mirror the thematic completion that Callum and Rayla have, in addition to having parallels with their arcs across all three seasons. 

To begin, I’ll explain what I mean by my first point. I’ve touched on this before in previous posts, but Callum and Rayla are the embodiment of what each character needs to learn. Callum is very open and needs to find a way to protect who he loves and grow in confidence; Rayla is a capable protector, but unsure of what she’s fighting for and she needs to learn how to open up. They naturally grow and learn from each other, simultaneously accepting one another just as they are while also radically, positively, transforming one another.

And the same can be said for Claudiez, as just like the roles Rayllum occupies for each other — instigating Rayla’s journey for figuring out who she wants to protect being inspired by Callum (1x02—2x07) and Callum’s mage arc being set off by Rayla (1x03—2x09/3x09) — Claudia and Ezran are also each other’s Agents of Narrative Change.

Claudia’s arc is officially set off in 1x03 when Ezran specifically discovers the egg and then chooses to listen to Rayla over her. Her arc from that point onwards is dealing with the repercussions, ultimately, of Ezran’s actions first and foremost. Claudia has to get the egg back and redeem herself to her father, and Ezran is the narrative wedge consistently driving her to lose more and more of herself. It’s not just that she betrayed Callum that causes her to lose him as a friend, it’s also that she put Ezran in danger. Claudia never doubts her father in season two, but it’s clear in season three that she struggles with what he’s done to Ezran and struggles with what she’s done, too.

Claudia is also the lynchpin in Ezran’s biggest internal arc of choosing to go home in 2x09. Claudia (and Callum) are the ones who inspire him to go back, even if he’s facing something he’s not ready for — and even if at first, he can’t understand how anyone could leave their family. 

Ezran draws both inspiration and comfort from Claudia, and perspective. He sees that she was told what to do, rather than make a choice, and to go where she was needed the most in the eyes of her mother. Ezran then realizes that he can’t be passive in the same way, and makes an active choice to go where he’s needed the most, too: home. 

As I’ve already mentioned, Ezran is the embodiment of everything Claudia needs to learn, and Claudia is in many ways the warning sign of what Ezran could become if he relies on his passivity. 

The second core parallel is what got me onto a ship in the first place, which is the interplay and parallels between Ezran and Callum’s arcs with grief in season two. Claudia tells Callum the truth in 2x02, in which breaks down in tears and after a brief disagreement in the following episode, seeks comfort in Rayla’s arms over the girl he’s known his whole life. Likewise, Rayla is there and as his closest friend after his brother, Ezran should by all means go to her. Instead, he breaks down in tears and ends up stumbling across Claudia. In spite of the fact she’s more or less become his enemy, Claudia is the one there for him the first time he grieves his father. 2x02 and 2x08 even end similarly, with Rayla and Claudia coming across each prince and being a bit unsure of what’s going to happen from there on out, and their reconciliation scene in the following episode ending in a hug, before Callum and Ezran choose to trust and help Rayla and Claudia respectively (Callum goes along with her illusionist plan, and Ezran helps Claudia find milkfruit). 

Again, that’s not to say that Claudiez is intended to be romantic in any way — it’s not, and TDP is a celebration of all different types of love. Familial-platonic-romantic parallels and relationships between characters are often contrasted (Viren and Harrow with Harrow and Sarai, Claudia and Soren with Callum and Rayla in 2x08, Callum and Rayla with Callum and Sarai in 2x09, etc). But there are also parallels drawn between canonical romantic couples in the show — the Rayllum and Lain/Tiadrin parallel handholds in 3x08 for example, or Harrow and Callum watching Sarai and Rayla leave in 2x06 and 2x07 respectively — and multiple interpretations of a relationship are Fun. Sue me. Or cry with me. Whichever floats your boat.

Other interesting Rayllum parallels include the beginning of their arc matches up with the ending of Claudiez’s first arc, with Rayla threatening Callum’s life and his brother intervening in 1x02. This scene is mirrored in 3x09 with Claudia (technically) threatening Ezran’s life and Soren stepping in. Just food for thought. 

But, now that we have the parallels largely out of the way, let’s talk about why Claudiez suit one another in regards to

Personality

For anything I ship that I’d like to be endgame, there are three main things I have to take into consideration: shared values/goals, personality, and narrative weight. This is why there are some couples that have a decent amount of narrative weight, but I can’t get behind them because I don’t think their personalities mesh, or vice versa, where I think they’re cute and work well together, but there isn’t enough of a narrative, transformative pull to them in canon to really draw me in. 

But as I’ve already talked about the parallels, I want to start by saying that one of the really cool things about Claudiez is that, even at this point in canon, they do have shared values in common. Although so much of their ship is predicated on years far past what canon could possibly cover and on Claudia having a redemption arc, there’s a key value they do share that is incredibly important for any ship involving Ezran in particular: they both see the throne the exact same way.

Claudia’s loyalty is an incredibly valuable trait in a relationship, once she figures out who to be loyal to. Moreover, she may be able to see clearly through manipulative politics in the future and be a loyal protector of Ezran politically, after everything she’s learned. It would pair well with Ezran’s determined idealism as he works to make their world a better place, as she would understand the demands of kingship but also support him through it.

There’s also the fact that they have a shared sense of goofiness and like to be mischievous without malicious intent. 

Claudia and Ezran also bring out new sides to one another as well. For example, Claudia has a smug streak with everyone else in her life that she’s close to: her brother, Callum, and her father. 

When Claudia is uncertain around her father, it is because he is heading down an increasingly unhealthy path. Meanwhile, Ezran is the one person that Claudia feels a healthy aspect of uncertainty around, and it can teach her how to exist in a new capacity she’s unfamiliar with. Her view on Ezran is already changing and evolving in ways that aren’t happening with anyone else. 

Ezran is also shown to be more thoughtful of Claudia’s possible feelings than even Callum, as he remembers what her headspace might be while Callum is too distracted by his appearance / crush.

Ezran and Claudia also have a surprisingly intense emotional connection in spite of their scarcity of screentime. 

Ezran’s deep sense of compassion and forgiveness is also useful for Claudia, offering olive branches over the course of the show, but that doesn’t mean he won’t hold her accountable. In many ways, Ezran is the only person who does, in a way that’s actually communicative and leads to partial reconciliation, rather than residing just in mistrust or anger the way that Callum and Rayla do.

There are a few reasons for this, I think. The first is that Ezran is one of two people who saw Claudia prioritize her brother over her mission in 2x07. He is Hope and Faith embodied in the narrative of the show, his horizons broadened by his empathy and belief in second chances, as well as the pointlessness of unnecessary violence. 

Ezran is the only person other than Soren that Claudia is willingly vulnerable in front of about her own issues (which can’t be said for her relationship with Callum). She’s also shown to be better equipped at taking care of Ezran emotionally than she is for Callum, where she fumbles a bit. Unlike on her and Callum’s date where he compliments her and Claudia doesn’t say anything back, her and Ezran’s conversation is entirely reciprocal in sharing and supporting each other through their hurt.

Claudia is also the only one to not only believe Ezran right away about his gift, but to guess (rightly) that he has it. Callum and Rayla (and Ellis) either don’t really believe him, or have to be convinced, leaving Ezran to feel even lonelier about something that already set him apart and made him feel different.

[1x09 vs 2x09]

They share lingering looks as Ezran ultimately gives her another chance in season three. Ezran still believes in her even after the battle and everything has gone terribly wrong.

(Quietly plugs in this parallel as well.)

And I think there’s a few reasons for that. Some is what I’ve already mentioned, of Ezran’s forgiveness and empathy being that large and stretching that wide. He and Claudia have also made it clear they are care about each other, as Claudia is the only one other than Callum and Rayla to call him Ez, and their bond is tested to the distress of both of them in 3x02: “Ezran please, we talked about this—” / “I’m sorry.” 

But more than that is arguably the scene where Claudia is at her most genuine in the whole show, and it’s with Ezran, and him alone.

Claudia has already gotten what she ‘needs’ out of Ezran, and so she is apologizing purely because she wants to. She acknowledges the way he may be feeling, offers zero excuses, and is surprised when Ezran responds to her in good faith. Even after everything, he still trusts, believes in, and (platonically) loves her, and she isn’t sure what to do at first with his show of good will. He’s seen all of her up to this point — her betrayal, her love for her brother, her kindness and the comfort she’s offered him — and still sees her as worthy. And more than that, he already knows all of this, and tells her so. 

It’s going to mean all the more to her later on in the series, when Ezran will likely be one of the only people who still believes she has the capacity to grow and change for the better. With Ezran, Claudia wouldn’t be seeking absolution from a third party she never hurt, nor would she be in a relationship with someone who would always, to a degree, hold her past against her the way Callum or Rayla would. Ezran sees all of her — and he likes her anyway, just as Claudia has a unique viewpoint into his being as well. 

There’s also some real poetic justice in, by becoming Ezran’s queen, Claudia ends up on the throne her father coveted so desperately, but upon the Narrative he was so greatly opposed to. Not out of Strength, but from a Narrative of literal Love, built on forgiveness and vulnerability with the one character who lives that path more than anyone. The king and his high mage, united at long last, well suited and well balanced, growing up in every way that matters to face what they aren’t ready for, together. 

Other Misc Things:

There are also parallels that Claudia’s relationship with Ezran has between her relationship with Callum, for example:

So despite knowing Callum from a very young age as well, if she doesn’t view him as a little brother, then why should she see Ezran that way? Which is as good a segue, probably, as we’re going to get to the next section, which is how Claudia/Ezran being in a relationship would affect their family members.

One of the appeals of Claudia staying in the castle with Ezran is that she’d be close to her brother, and Soren would likely be thrilled about two of his favourite people ever getting together. He knows their individual and joint history and that they would take care of each other. It would mean Claudia’s been able to grow and let go a lot of her guilt and that Ezran is making choices for himself, independently of what anyone else thinks, and the the royal family that Soren is sworn to protect and that his own blood family will be one in the same. He’d never have to choose, again. 

However, to say that Callum would have an averse reaction to the news is an understatement, and this is one of my favourite facets of the ship. He and Ezran could really duke it out, Ezran possibly even pulling rank as prince, and Callum struggling to reconcile a lot of difficult feelings he still has regarding everything between himself and Claudia, from broken hearts to bitter enemies to accepting allies, but trusting her with his baby brother’s heart? Being forced to recognize Ez is an adult who doesn’t need his approval? It would force the boys to grow up a lot and ultimately end up in a better place, but it would take a lot of time. Callum’s reaction is also one of the things that might make Claudia hesitant about having a relationship with Ezran in the first place, as we know she understands and respects the relationship the two brothers hold.

This is where Rayla would come in. I’ve talked before about Rayla having parallels to both Soren and Claudia, and the unique understanding she could bring to the table. In this scenario, she’d be intervening not only to try and keep Callum from falling apart, but also on behalf of Ezran, who is like a little brother to her. She’d be the perfect halfway point of getting the boys to reconcile, while understanding why Callum is so against it, and it would likely bring her and Claudia closer, as Claudia would understand what Rayla had done for her and Ezran in spite of the girls’ complicated history. 

One more final, somewhat unrelated note: Ezran and Claudia are cat people. If Ezran was five years older, this would be flirty. Don’t at me, you know I’m right. 

(In other words, Claudia has a ferocious beastly side, and Ezran can tame it. Or, as one of my favourite poems has said: 

why is it always the woman who has to see past the beast in the man? why does she always have to clean his wounds, even after he has damaged her beyond repair? why is it always the man who is worthy of forgiveness for being a monster? I want to see the beast in the beauty. the half smile, half snarl. the unapologetic anger. I would like to see the man forgive the monster. to see her, blood and all, and love her anyway.

beauty and the beast | Caitlyn S. )

Conclusion

Claudiez isn’t going to be everyone’s cup of tea, but it is mine post-canon, 10+ years down the line in the character’s lives. I hope this meta could help explain why I like these two so much and everything they have to offer as a ship even if it hasn’t made you ship them. Thank you for reading and I hope you enjoyed!

—Dragons Out

[kingedwardvi]

“When Somerset had been taken back into the Privy Chamber, in May 1550, Edward Lord Clinton, John Dudley's nephew, also entered the king's private apartments at the head of two hundred armed yeomen. The counsel for the estate, however, reflected the more settled rhythm of the exercise of monarchical authority. Royal governance rested on contact and communication, and nothing was more natural than for a king to be surrounded by the men who supported his governance of the realm. 

The Dudley years were still years of minority, but a middle-teenage minority quite different in its political dynamics from the earlier years of Edward's reign. The important age for Edward, both conceptually and practically, was fourteen. In 1526 his cousin, the fourteen-year-old James V of Scotland, had been declared to be of an age to exercise his royal authority personally. 

For Edward the change was less formal but still significant. In January 1552, three months after his own fourteenth birthday, Edward drafted 'Ceirtein pointes of waighty matters to be immediatly concluded on by my counsell', to which his principal secretary William Cecil added a note that ‘These remembrances within written wer delyvered by the kynges Majestic to his privee Counsell' in the inner Privy Chamber at Greenwich, and handed to Lord Treasurer Winchester in the presence of the officers of state and the officers of the royal household.

These were matters of business Edward symbolically delivered to his Privy Council in his Privy Chamber, once again blurring the distinctions between the formal and the informal.The weeks leading up to the death of Edward in July 1553 were similarly expressive of the power of personal monarchy in binding to gether the political establishment at court, in Privy Council, and in Privy Chamber. 

Edward was at the centre of the plan to divert the royal succession away from his half-sisters Mary and Elizabeth, and to leave the crown to (in the words of Diarmaid MacCulloch) 'a reliable evangel ical dynasty'. This dynasty was at best notional. It lay in the Suffolk line, through the heirs male of Frances, the daughter of Henry VIII's younger sister Mary, and then the heirs male of Frances' daughters Jane, Catherine, and Mary Grey. 

'My devise for the succession' was drafted by Edward, and in it the king wrote Jane herself into the royal succession (and her mother out of it) by skilful editing. The line which gave the crown 'To the L[ady] Fraunceses heires masles' and then 'For lakke of such issu to the L[ady] Janes heires masles' read, after correction, ‘To the Lady] Fraunceses heires masles, if she have any such issu befor my death to the Lady] Jane and her heires masles'. 

The crown simply went to Jane by default. For centuries this has been read as the supreme example of Dudley cunning, because John Dudley's son, Lord Guildford, married Jane Grey on 21 May 1553. But although Dudley enforced the king's will, it was Edward himself who set out to preserve his godly legacy and, implicitly, his political establishment. 

It is likely that Edward took fairly wide counsel from the men around him--men like Thomas Wroth and Henry Sidney of the Privy Chamber, John Cheke, and perhaps William Petre. Petre drafted part of Edward's will, which perhaps reflected Cheke's relationship with the king by making significant provision for Cheke's old Cambridge college, St John's, and exhorted the king's executors to 'travayle to cause godly ecclesiasticall lawes to be made and sett forthe' after his death. 

Of the twenty-four men who signed the engagement to maintain the succession as limited by Edward, fifteen were counsel lors for the estate (sixteen if the name of John Gosnold is counted) and one (Cheke) was the king's tutor. Two of the signatories (Edward Griffith as solicitor and John Lucas as master of requests) had been called into commission to work with privy councillors and gentlemen of the king's Privy Chamber just over a year earlier. Corporate identity and solidarity underpinned their commitment to ensuring that the will of the king was enforced.

Also built into 'My devise for the succession' is a key to how Edward, in the final weeks of his life, understood (and arguably experienced himself) the gradual emergence of adult kingship out of minority. The first part of the 'devise' established the order of the royal succession after Edward's death. In the second half (much of it deleted, but still extremely signifi cant) Edward explored forms of governance for a future Suffolk king. If over the age of eighteen at accession, full power and authority was his. But in providing for a royal minority, Edward divided governance between the king's mother and a council of twenty.

This 'gouvernres' could do nothing without the 'th'advise and agrement' of six members of the council. If she died before her son reached the age of eighteen, the governance of the realm would be directed by this council. But the crucial age (again mirroring Edward's own experience) was fourteen, because he wrote in the provision that ‘after he be 14 yere al great matters of importaunce [should] be opened to him'. 

In a deleted paragraph, Edward offered a mechanism for the election of councillors. If four councillors died during the female regency, a gathering of the council, assembled on the authority of the governess ‘letters patent, would choose four more 'wherin she shal have thre voices'. But if the governess was dead, 'the 16 shal chose emong themselfes', until the king was fourteen years old (changed from eighteen) and then he by ther advice shal chose them.

The 'devise' suggests that Edward imagined for a male successor under the age of eighteen a minority of two stages. The first-like his own-would be governance on the king's behalf, but by his mother rather than a protector, supported but at the same time limited by the council estab lished by Edward's will. The second stage necessarily involved the king not only in the business of governance but in the choice of the minority council. 

The clause survived in Edward's letters patent of 21 June 1553, and it was mixed governance at its best. But it was also, interestingly, a mark of the possibility of emerging operational kingship after the age of fourteen. The great irony of 1553 is that without Edward, the boy-king, the regime crumbled.

Without the person of the king - the practical focus of authority and legitimacy - the body politic was headless, and a political establishment marked by a sophisticated coherence in the final years of the reign collapsed. The corporate consensus of the signatories of Edward's letters patent cracked in the difficult days of the summer of 1553, and it did so because of mixed and conflicting loyalties. 

In the traumatic weeks of July 1553 the boundaries between the lawful and the unlawful-and the dynastically and politically acceptable and unaccept able-blurred. The power of dynastic succession of the long shadow cast by Henry VIII's will, complemented by the surprising energy of Mary Tudor's mobilization of the localities triumphed over the attempt to preserve the Edwardian political and ecclesiastical establishment[...].”

Alford, Stephen. “Kingship and Politics in the Reign of Edward VI”

Fan cast: Charlotte Hope as Lady Jane Grey; Ed Speleers as King Edward VI.

[frostahesmegabite]

DWC Day 1 - Reunion - Daily Writing Challenge Entry - Mega Goes Home

[ This scene takes place after a two year storyline between the FBC Guild that I’m the GM of and a personal storyline between Megahes and his Fiance, Naturasu. During this time, Megahes was cursed by a Cultist to slowly die from an agonizingly painful hex that was slowly killing him and all hope of its curing/removal was stripped away when this Cultist was killed during the conflicts. Ammaelin came to save Megahes (and acquired some ‘favors’ along the way) by using fractured shards of a Naa'ru to force Megahes into becoming Light Forged in a sense. This process took several years thanks to the manipulation of time via magic and while Mega felt the strain of three-four years of work, for everyone else it was roughly eight to ten weeks before his return. ] The Zeppelin ride to Orgrimmar was agonizingly slow, probably more than any other ride Mega had ever had on one before in his entire life. It was enough to drive him mad and the longer it took in combination with the closer it got to taking him home to Naturasu the worse it became. The goblin fidgeted, tugging at his clothes and making sure all the buttons on his shirt were done properly. His sleeves still crisp and the ironed lined still present. Hell, he even fought with the rolled up sleeves and their buttons that kept them pulled up to his biceps. The wait on returning home was killing him. What was Nat going to say when he walked in the door? This reunion between her and him played in his head a thousand times just today alone, he couldn’t even count the amount of times that he played out similar scenarios while he was away. “Nervousness does not become you Mister Frostbite.” The voice was formal and flat, its source coming from a blinding armor clad Blood Elf that stood several feet higher than himself. Crimson red hair blowing in the breeze thanks to their mode of transportation. Ammaelin, the Blood Knight who was responsible for the absence that proved to be a miraculous, and most likely a very heretical, healing process. If one could butter their bread with his smugness, one’d choke on it just from looking at him. “I’m aware, but that doesn’t make it any less. I been gone for three years now.” He quickly brings up a hand to stop the Elf, they’ve had this conversation several times before already. “And I know, I know. Months for her, for everyone else. Years only for You, Me and the others. But still years for me…” “We did what needed to be done, especially in regards to our agreement. You would have surely died otherwise.” Ammaelin’s head turns if but barely, just enough to cast a glance down upon the golden metal that was imprisoned into Mega’s flesh near his wrists. “You are lucky that you had those shards hidden away. Had any other Paladin known you held those, my brother's curse would have been the least of your concerns. I have no doubt the Church or the Draenei would have come marching on your doorstep…” Megahes’ face contorts as draws upon sarcasm to mock the Elf. “I have no doubt…” Mega blows a massive raspberry in the Paladins direction, which causes him to turn and look back upon the horizon, not giving in to Mega’s provocations. “Look. I know how risky tha thing was and I appreciate what you did and I get that I owe ya. But… all’a that aside. I’m just nervous man. What if…” He just stops and breathes, voice quivering a bit as his eyes begin to moisten, forcing him to stop and look back over the side of the Zeppelin once again. “If she doesn’t approve or she’s moved on due to thinking you dead or not coming back?” “I mean, I could have put that in better words, but yeah.” “I think perhaps you worry too much.” Megahes grumbles and sighs, running his hands up and down his face several times before they slide into his hair, where he just grabs hold of himself and pulls out of frustration only to realize he’d fucked it all up. His head shakes and he sets out to fix his hair as best he can, a nervous tick, to be sure. Mega was about to open his mouth to retort, but the Paladin stopped him by pointing to the horizon. Pandaria’s Jade

Forest. Pillars of tall stone began to rise and fall down into gorgeous forests, rolling hillsides and lily and reed filled rivers. The air was crisp and something about it just filled one's body with a rejuvenating sense of purpose and peace. “We’ll be at your domancile shortly, Mister Frostbite. I suggest you gather your things and we’ll drop you off directly.” If Mega wasn’t nervous before this, he sure as hell is now! His nearly trips… Well, he does actually, right over his own two feet and in a fluster, he looks about for something that wasn’t there before he speedily heads towards the cabins to gather his bag. He’d had this ready hours ago. It wasn’t much, he had no time to prepare for this little ‘retreat’ of his, which he was thankful for now as he threw it over his shoulder. He pauses and looks over at Ammaelin. “For as big of a pain in tha ass ya have been these past couple of years, thank ya. Truly. If it wasn’t for you and them Priests, I wouldn’t be makin’ this trip back.” Ammaelins’ face during this brief statement was a rollercoaster! Disdain and irritation appearing quickly was soon replaced with an oddly peaceful smile by the end of it. “Our time has taught us much, Mister Frostbite, about a great many topics. It has been… enlightening.” His choice of words being an intended pun and irony placed upon Mega. There were no hugs, no great exchanges of physical emotion. The two just look at one another before Mega turns and descends into the bowels of the Zeppelin so he can board the loading platform and get lowered down to his home. Their home. Gold, this was excruciating. The platform lowers slowly, painfully so, at least to him. Each inch makes Mega’s ears pound so hard that he can hear them in his ears and if it got any higher in his throat, he’d choke. “I’m gettin all nervous for nothin’, she probably ain’t even home. Probably in Orgrimmar havin’ some drinks or workin’ at the Knot.” He blows through his lips with enough strength to cause a slight whistle. Stress and worry, all self-induced of course, at how this was going to go. He was happy, no doubt, but worry came natural. The lift jerks as the ground makes contact, nearly sending him sprawling down to the floor of it just for him to look up in utter irritation, sending up a solid middle finger at the crew whether they could see it or not. “Ain’t no wonder these things fall out of tha fuckin sky so much…” He grumbles, straightening himself and clambering off before they end up actually managing to kill him somehow. Once off, the Zeppelin began to hoist the platform once more as it turned to head off towards its next stop. Mega’s red eyes watch it drift off for a moment, offering an overhead wave in case Ammaelin was on deck and looking down upon him. Given time, Mega turns away from it, looking at his pandaren styled home. The smell of the Arboretum orchids wafting through the air hit his senses and caused him to smile and for a moment, peace was welcome until he began to pick up his feet, swearing they are encased in lead the closer to home he became. Much like a scene from one of those cheesy romance books he kept hearing people go on about, he freezes at the door, hand up and ready to knock but nothing comes. No, instead he pats himself down and takes the key out of his shirt pocket and uses that instead. Quietly, creeping open the door slowly as if he expected to walk in and find his place full of cobwebs and everything cold and abandoned. The sight he gets is quite the opposite. Everything was nearly just as he left it. Albeit, more golden now. Naturasu loved her gold and it was a miracle that everything they owned wasn’t gold or khorium at this point in some facet or another. The sight brings a small smile to his face, sucking him into the house where he quietly closes the door behind him, fingers tracing over chairs and couch arms before he lets his pack slide down into the floor where it was quickly abandoned. Quietly, he walks through the house, almost scared to break the silence just to realize that that’s all there’d be

but a sudden clattering coming from the kitchen broke what he hadn’t dared. “Oh gold… what is she remodelling in there now?” It was a good question to ask! Not one that he had malice towards however, as the modifications they’d made thus far were phenomenal. His feet take him into the doorway where Nat can be seen in her usual home attire of thigh-high socks and underwear along with a set of tools, some powered and some not, as she was working on some of their retractable steps that allowed the two of them to cook shoulder to shoulder despite their obvious size differences. And it was this image that made him choke in silence and just stare at her. She was still here and all of his fears, irrational or not, just vanished and all he’s left being able to do is croak out a cough and throat clear. Nat’s voice calls out in irritation as the work clearly wasn’t going as planned. “Just leave tha rollers and frames there on the floor Sugah, thanks.” She must have thought he was someone from the Contingents Engineering or Supply Staff. Had this been any other time, Mega probably would have played into this mistake and taken up the chance to pretend to be said person and elicit some lewd scene, but, no, not today… Well, at least not right -now-. “Sorry, I uhh… must have forgotten them back at tha office. I can go back and get them if ya like.” Mega’s voice quivered in a nervousness that refused to leave his bones that were joining with both excitement and happiness. Naturasu on the other hand, froze entirely just to drop the wrench that was in her hand to the floor. Slowly, she wheeled about, perhaps not sure if she heard the voice correctly or if it was just her senses fucking with her. Whatever her reasoning, the moment her copper colored eyes hit Mega’s own crimson hues, time stood still for them both. No words came, they didn’t need them. Naturasu hit her knees and before she could even get her arms outstretched entirely, Mega was across the room, pinning himself to her and locking his own behind her in an embrace so strong that Titan Steel couldn’t have broken it if it tried. The two remained conjoined and just wept. [ Thank you again for reading my entry to the @daily-writing-challenge ! This is Day One (09/19/2021) and today's words were #Reunion and #Afterlife. I had the choice of using one or both, but decided to run with only Reunion today just in case I decide to pull out some deathly stuff later in the month. ] [ Edit Addition: I apologize if there's some formatting issues. I tried to implant a couple of images to help convey things but Tumblr just wasn't having it, so I had to remove them. I've tried to correct the errors I did find, but I may not have gotten them all. ]

[burningthemidnightcityoil]

ON CLASSES

Classpects run on Irony, Puns, Wordplay, and each class has a secondary verb, in addition to the one they share with their pair.

Witch - Which. “Choose / Choice”. A Witch chooses power. Witches are the Powerhouse of the Session(cell). They are akin to Thieves, for a Witch takes power. But the difference here is that a Witch doesn’t need to take it from other people, a Witch takes back their own power from whatever Guardian (or “familiar”) has it. Its not like an Heir, where the Heir can just wait for it to come; a Witch has to grab it or be forced into its service.

Heir - Air/Err. “Inherit”. An Heir inherits power. While Heirs are akin to the Page, where they both inspire others to help them; the difference here is that Heirs will inspire others to Guide them (Literally inspire others to act as Seers), while Pages inspire others to Serve them (Inspire others to act as Knights). Heirs don’t like being Served (In fact, Heirs Homestuck-Historically have conflicts with Guardians because of their Service), and Pages don’t like being Guided. (Most Pages tend to talk smack about those trying to Guide them)

Mage - Magician. “Perform”. Mage’s are showy, in addition to being knowitalls. How you are Seen is Important. There are three Mages, two known and one HC’d, that give this. Sollux, inspite of his problems, is a Show Off and tries to play it off Smoothly. His performance is more important than his powers (Or Spells, if we’re dedicated). Meulin also tends to be Showy. Both by showing off her favorite couples, and by her Disciple self showing off her rommance on literal cave walls. HC’d Mage, Diamonds Droog / Draconian Dignitary, is all about the Show and the Class, and not about Flash Powers or Transformations.

Seer - To See. “Envision”. Seers See Seas. What you see is important. Unlike their counterpart, the Mage, A Seer’s visions are more important than their Spells. (This is inspite of the fact that both Mages and Seers are equally capable of both Visions and Spells, as well as Performance. It seems what what indicates if you’re a Mage or a Seer is if what’s important is How you are Seen, or What you See; A Mage wants to be Seen, a Seer wants to See).

Thief - To Steal / To Steel / Steel yourselves. “Enforce”. If Knights are the Law, Thieves are the Enforcers; because they literally reinforce themselves by taking what they want. Let’s take this a step further, and include all definitions of Enforce Thieves Strengthen, Intensify, Force, Drive and Urge whatever they set their sights on, to be what they want it. (After all, they Steal, or Take By Force / Violence)

Rogue - To Go Rogue / Haywire. “To Cross”. Rogues are pretty good about making connections, and making connections work; be it between people, or their Aspect. (Roxy between her Friends and her Windows; Nepeta with her Romances)

Knight - Night. “To Bare / Bear”. Bear hands? This may seem outlandish, but the origin of the word Night is “Bare” or “To be Bare of Sunlight”. And Knights tend to put on a kind of Mask, or Shield, or rather, Helm / Helmet as they feel their weaknesses (or what they think are their weaknesses) feel bare to the world (Dave and his Sunglasses; Karkat and his Temper; Latula and her Gamer Attitude).

Page - Chapter. “To Assemble” YOU BOY, EQUIP ARMS. This one took a bit, but what’s a Page without a Chapter? Be it a Chapter in a Book of Pages, or a Council to of all those they have called on to serve them. A Page is a Knightly figure that has a Round Table, akin to a Rogue’s Merrymen. A Page inspires others to play Knight to them, or to serve them. To call to Arms, or call to Action. So basically, if Robin Hood is a Rogue’s Mythic figure, King Arthur is a Page’s mythic figure. So literally, all those a Page calls on personally, makes them apart of their Round Table of Knights. (Wait, does this mean that HS^2 Jane is Morgan Le F--)

Maid - Made. “To Make” Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice. Maids are the Makers. They don’t so much as Maintain, though they do that too, as they create. Consider. Aradia is a prime example. She dies, so she makes Time for herself as a very powerful Poltergeist. She becomes a Robot, and makes Time for Herself by her many many Robot Time Copies, or as Time is Numeral, making Numbers. She becomes a Godtier, and suddenly, Time in the Dream Bubbles align perfectly with the Present. Notice how when we are first introduced to the Dream Bubbles, Time was a real nonlinear pain. But when Aradia took the Reins on this Time Management Stuff, and suddenly the Dream Bubbles were Linear and aligned with our Story. She did want to see the end, after all (And the more living Time Gods entered the Bubbles, the more Linear things became) For Porrim, its about Making Space for others in both her various views and her uh... Various Views. For the Dolorosa, this included making Space for herself, and for her son. She possibly even helped direct him closer to the idea of Freedom (And he did see visions of another space in time...)

Sylph - Sylvan / Wood Threshold. “To Matter” Okay, this one is like the Knight’s, if not more complicated (and likely gonna require more development in the future, cos this took waaay too much digging for my liking). Thing is, Sylph is a difficult thing to name from name alone unless you look into the word itself. Because its derived from Sylvan “Of the woods”. But we break that down into two things. Silva, the Woods, and Hyle, Matter. Hyle / Hule is already the Greek word for Matter or Wood in any case. And our word for Matter is already derived from Mater, the Latin word for Mother. (The original English word was displaced by Latin; Andwork was once our word for Matter). Unfortunately, I can’t quite make the connections here yet, so I’m not sure if “To Matter” is the proper verb. I can, however, describe some loose connections that at least tell me I’m on the right track: ... Sylphs are defined by their Environment; Such as Kanaya’s relations regarding Trolls (A motherly figure), Aranea defined herself by Information and giving Information (which ain’t healthy), Mindfang defined herself a Thief because the Troll Empire was lead by a Thief And HC’d Sylph of Mind, Snowman was, quite literally, the Universe (And its Multiverse, which is a Mind thing). So a Sylph defines herself by her “Woods”, or like a Nymph / Dryad, by her “Tree / Wood / Matter”. And when you kill the Tree / Wood, you kill the Sylph, and vice versa (Destroy the Matriorb, and Kanaya dies; Kill Snowman and you kill the Unvierse; Mindfang was murdered, and her Enlightenment about the Doc died with her).

Prince - Principle / Foremost. “To Postulate” Its the Principle of the matter. For Princes, Principle and Code are key, and they will follow these as a fundamental truth (and be damned to anything else). This is likely what it was meant when they were called a Destroyer Class, because they do tend to destroy all avenues when it doesn’t fit their Principle. A Group of Princes could be called an Argument. For Eridan, both the system he resided in, and his own internal narrative (his Hopes), were his fundamental truths. And in the end, it fucked everything up. For Kurloz, his Belief System and his chosen Lord were his Fundamental Truth (And Rage is about Truths; so this guy didn’t just have a fortified castle, he had an entire armored country) For Dirk, the Character someone presented was the Truth of the matter, and the Character he presented. He believed that all versions of him were Him, and that was his biggest flaw, because they weren’t. AR was no more Dirk Strider than Bro was. ... And unfortunately, one version of him took this very literally (HS^2).

Bard - Barred / Bar. “To Prevent” Bards are quite the Wild Card, because how the hell do you manage destroying stuff for other people’s benefit and it actually ensured that it is a benefit? But from our few examples, Bards do act as great barriers. They keep things on the path because if you didn’t have that barrier, you wouldn’t progress, or you’d go too far too quickly, or things could go out of hand. For Gamzee, he tends to invoke the idea of the Barrier Maiden (He does roleplay a fairy / maid). He can’t die cos he’s a Cosmic Keystone to things happening like they’re suppose to. Paradox Space, literally, cannot let him die because it needs him to complete the Alpha Loop [By extension, no Doomed Timeline ever has a Dead Gamzee, he’s just that important, the stupid fuck] / [consider the theory that he also absorbs his alternative selves to keep his keystone status; like how Rose absorbed her alternative dream self] (Though when you take him from his story / destiny / fate, he’s just another mortal shitty clown). Gamzee prevented Rage, for Homestuck to continue as its intended narrative. For Cronus, his little Hope Quest was a direct line to Lord English (being the evil wvizard in his little Harry Potter fantasy). But this blew up royally, because as it turns out, it isn’t up to the Beforus Trolls to do shit. So just as Gamzee’s crisis of Fate put things back on the Path to LE and prevented catastrophe, Cronus’s crisis caused catastrophe. He prevented Hope for the Beforus Trolls, because it wasn’t their Story. And now for my HC’d Bard of Doom, Clubs Deuce. He does exactly what it says, he Prevents Doom. Inspite of what it appears, he’s highly competent because that prevents things from going to hell. For CD, he prevented Doom, for his Crew, and the sessions he’s involved in. And any time CD tends to disappear from the picture, is when things go to hell fast (For the Crew, Cans showed up; for the Beta Session, he was a mere herald for the doom that was already coming and his death cinched it)

[frankendykes-monster]

Space Jam: A New Legacy is content to be content.

The original Space Jam was a calculated marketing exercise. Michael Jordan was the biggest sports star of the nineties, and Space Jam capitalised on Jordan’s brand potential while also allowing the athlete to refashion his own narrative into a family-friendly mythology. Space Jam packaged Jordan for a generation, smoothing the wrinkles out of his story by presenting a wholesome family man making an earnest transition from basketball to baseball.

It also helped Warner Bros. to figure out what to do with their Looney Tunes characters, which had largely laid dormant within the company’s intellectual property vaults. There had been a conscious effort to revitalised the company’s animation with shows like Tiny Toon Adventures and even Animaniacs, but those classic and beloved cartoons were a merchandising opportunity waiting to happen. So the logic of the original Space Jam was clear, it was an excuse to tie together two potentially profitable strands of intellectual property.

Space Jam itself was something of an afterthought. The movie struggles to reach its ninety-minute runtime. It often feels like the production team have to utilise every scrap of film to reach that target, with extended riffs focusing on Bill Murray and Michael Jordan on the golf course and with a lot of the improvisation from the voice cast included in the finished film. The movie’s ending comes out of nowhere, and Space Jam struggles to hit many of the basic plot beats of a scrappy sports movie.

The movie itself was immaterial to the success of Space Jam as a concept. After all, the film only grossed $250m at the global box office, enough to scrape into the end of year top ten behind The Nutty Professor and Jerry Maguire. However, the film’s real success lay in merchandising, with the film generating between $4bn and $6bn in licensing and merchandising. Key to this was the success of the six-time platinum-certified soundtrack which remains the ninth highest-grossing soundtrack of all-time.

In some to trace a lot of modern Hollywood back to the original Space Jam. So much of how companies package and release modern media feels like an extension of that approach, the reduction of the actual film itself to nothing more than “content” that exists as a larger pool of marketable material. After all, the unspoken assumption underlying AT&T’s disastrous decision to send all of their blockbusters to HBO Max was the understanding that HBO Max itself was often packaged free with company’s internet. Movies would no longer be their own things, but just perks to be packaged and sold as part of larger deals.

In the decades since the release of Space Jam, the industry has become increasingly focused on the idea of packaging and repackaging intellectual property. It has become increasingly common for films to showcase multiple intellectual properties housed at the same studios. Simple crossovers like Alien vs. Predators or The Avengers now seem positively humble when compared to the smorgasbord of brand synergy on display in projects like The Emoji Movie or Ralph Breaks the Internet.

Interestingly, as Disney have steadily securing their intellectual property portfolio with additions like Pixar and Lucasfilm and Marvel Studios and 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros. have becoming increasingly bullish about showcasing the depth and breadth of their bench. The LEGO Movie imagines a wide range of properties consolidated under one brand. Ready Player One depicted a pop culture user space lost in nostalgia for properties and trinkets. However, those movies also managed to tell their own stories, even as they grappled with the weight of brand synergy pushing down on top of them.

Space Jam: A New Legacy has no such delusions. It understands that it does not exist as a story or as a feature film. Instead, it has distilled cinema down to a content-delivery mechanism. The plot of the movie finds basketball star LeBron James sucked into the “Serververse” and forced to ally with the Looney Tunes in order to play a basketball game with the fate of the world in the balance. However, while the original Space Jam ran a brisk and unfocused ninety minutes, A New Legacy extends itself to almost two hours. There is always more content to repackage and sell, after all.

A New Legacy slathers its cynicism in nostalgia, directly appealing to a generation of audiences who have convinced themselves that Space Jam was a good movie and a beloved childhood classic. A New Legacy is built around the understanding that the original Space Jam walked so that it might run, counting on the audience’s nostalgia for the original film to excuse a lot of its indulgences. After all, it would be a betrayal of the franchise if A New Legacy wasn’t a crash and vulgar cash-in. In many ways, A New Legacy does what most sequels aspire to do, scaling the original film’s ambitions aggressively upwards.

As with the original Space Jam, there is layer of irony to distract from the film’s clear purpose. In the original Space Jam, the villainous Swackhammer planned to abduct the Looney Tunes and force them to play at his themeparks. The implication was that the characters did not want to be sold into corporate servitude, stripped of their own identity and rendered as crass tools of unchecked capitalism. The irony of Space Jam lay in the fact that the entire movie was a variant on Swackhammer’s themepark and the Looney Tunes were dancing to that theme anyway as Daffy puckers up and kisses the Warner Bros. stamp on his own ass.

In A New Legacy, a sentient algorithm – Al G. Rhythm – is cast as the movie’s primary antagonist. The film gestures broadly at a satirical criticism of the modern film industry, with Al G. Rhythm shaping and warping the future of movie-making by suggesting things like computer-generating movie stars and producing a constant array of recycled intellectual property. A New Legacy recognises the machinations of Al G. Rhythm as unsettling and horrifying, with throwaway jokes about the theft of ideas and the violation of privacy, but the villain largely serves as a smokescreen to let the movie have its cake and eat it.

After all, A New Legacy revels in Al G. Rhythm’s plans. LeBron James is turned into an animated figure and dumped into classic Looney Tunes shorts like Rabbit Season and The Rabbit of Seville. The film understands that while the audience might be afraid of the algorithm, they also yearn for it. After all, it isn’t Al G. Rhythm who structures A New Legacy so that the film spends an extended sequence touring the company’s beloved intellectual properties.

A New Legacy is really just an investors’ day presentation that celebrates the sheer amount of content that Warner Bros. own. It’s not too difficult to imagine the film screened investors before the Discovery deal, as proof of just how many viable franchising opportunities existed within the copyright of the company itself. It’s a weird and unsettling showcase, in large part because it feels like that warning from Jurassic Park. The studio were so obsessed with whether they could do a thing that they never stopped to consider whether they should.

The film’s middle section includes a whirlwind tour of the properties owned by Warner Bros. After Bugs “plays the hits” with James, the two set off on an adventure to recover the other Looney Tunes from other beloved Warner Bros. properties. Some of these advertisements make sense: Daffy and Porky are living in the world of Superman: The Animated Series, while Lola seems to have found the Wonder Woman from the Bloodlines animated films. Others make much less sense in a movie aimed at kids, like the Roadrunner and Wile E. Coyote hiding in Mad Max: Fury Road or Yosemite Sam living in Casablanca.

Of course, it’s debatable how much of A New Legacy is aimed at kids, as compared to the kids of the nineties. Its target market seems to be kids in the late nineties who never grew up, because they never had to. Elmer Fudd and Sylvester are hiding out in Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me. Granny and Speedy have taken refuge in the opening scenes of The Matrix. While the original Space Jam featured odd pop cultural shoutouts to things like Pulp Fiction, at least that was somewhat contemporaneous.

To be fair, there is no art driving these choices. Many of these references serve to point the audience towards established properties. It is a sentient recommendation algorithm for HBO Max and a handy way of stoking audience interest in upcoming projects like The Matrix 4 (December 2021) or Furiosa (June 2023). It is a helpful reminder that Superman: The Animated Series has been remastered in high definition to stream on HBO Max. Foghorn Leghorn even rides a dragon from Game of Thrones to remind viewers that the show is streaming on HBO Max and that there are prequels coming.

It’s all very bizarre, but also strangely lifeless. The climax of the film finds the inevitable basketball game played in front of a crowd of familiar pop culture icons drawn from a wide range of sources: King Kong, The Iron Giant, Batman ’66, The Wizard of Oz, The Mask and many more. It feels very much like a surreal power play, a company showcasing the depth of its own vaults at a turbulent time in the industry. It leads to weird moments, like Al G. Rhythm even quoting Training Day, perhaps the film’s most unlikely draw from the “Warner Bros. Intellectual Property Vault.”

The most revealing aspect of the movie is its central conflict, with Al G. Rhythm cynically manipulating LeBron’s son Dom. Dom is convinced that his father doesn’t understand him, that his father is unable to see that his skill lies in video game coding rather than old-fashioned basketball. Rhythm is able to create a schism between father and son, using Dom’s code and his anger to attack and undermine LeBron James and the Looney Tunes. It’s a very broad and very archetypal story. There are no points for realising that Dom eventually comes around to his father and accepts that Rhythm is a villain.

However, it signals an interesting shift in these sorts of narratives. Traditionally, these sorts of generational conflicts played out between fathers and sons, with fathers presented as antagonistic and sons presented as heroic. The original Star Wars saga is built around Luke Skywalker trying to wrestle and grapple with his father Darth Vader. In Superman II, the eponymous superhero is forced to confront Zod, a representative of his father’s generation and the old world. Even in Batman Begins, Bruce Wayne is set against his surrogate father figure Ra’s Al Ghul.

The metaphor driving these sorts of stories was fairly simple and straightforward. Every generation needs to come into their own and take control of their own agency within the world. Star Wars: Episode VI – Return of the Jedi ends with Darth Vader dead and Luke staring out into the wider universe. Times change, and each generation has an obligation to try to create a better world than the one left to them by their parents. In the conflict between parents and children, it has generally been children who have prevailed.

However, in recent years, the trend has swung back sharply. It’s notable that the villain in Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens is an errant child who doesn’t properly respect his parents, and that Star Wars: Episode IX – The Rise of Skywalker ends with order restored when the protagonist takes the name of the beloved heroes of the older films. Shows like Star Trek: Picard are built around the idea that kids need their older generation of parents to swoop in and tell them how to properly live their lives.

A New Legacy is an interesting illustration of this trend. The movie ends with a reconciliation between LeBron and Dom, but it is very clearly on LeBron’s terms. Dom is manipulated and misled by sinister forces, and his father has to save him while realigning his moral compass. Father knows best. It demonstrates how the underlying logic of these stories has shifted in recent years, perhaps reflecting the understanding that perhaps the older generation won’t surrender the floor gracefully.

As with Ready Player One, there’s a monstrous Peter Pan quality to A New Legacy. It is a film about how the culture doesn’t have to change. It can be recycled and repurposed forever and ever and ever. At the end of Space Jam, Michael Jordan and Bugs Bunny parted ways. There was an understanding that the two worlds existed apart from one another. However, A New Legacy ends with the collapse of these worlds into one another; the “Serververse” manifesting itself in the real world. As LeBron walks home, Bugs asks if he can move in.

Of course, with HBO Max subscription, the audience can take Bugs home anytime they want

[vidavalor]

SamBucky opinions & things...

I’m not going to say who people should ship as it’s everyone’s own opinions and it’s a tv show/film series so it’s not like this is the most important thing on the planet... That said, I’ve seen a few posts from Stucky people who say they actively want to understand what SamBucky shippers see in the pairing and since I’m gone on these two, here are some thoughts... 

If you take a long view-- which the MCU is having you do now because these characters are outlasting Steve Rogers in its canon-- Steve & Bucky, while fun to play with and full of a lot of really great yearning/angsty possibilities back in the day, are really just the formative chapters of Sam & Bucky’s romance. If we got more Sam flashbacks in the story-- and I really hope we do in his canon in the wake of the end of TFATWS (S1?)/CA4-- a Sam & Riley story would be the equivalent to The First Avenger, in terms of it sets up some backstory that leads to where the story is going, as opposed to is the entire story itself. 

A main factor for me in liking Sam & Bucky over Bucky & Steve is that Sam is a healthy, mature choice for Bucky-- a guy who has gone through a hell of a lot here and deserves all the good things-- whereas Steve, while not a bad man, is a regressive choice. It stems from the fact that Steve was never really comfortable with Bucky’s sexuality-- at least not when it mattered-- and that’s because Steve was not comfortable with his own... or much of anything about himself. This still wouldn’t matter so much in terms of who to ship Bucky with if it weren’t also for the fact that Bucky is perfect *for Sam*, who should get all the good things, and we’ll get into that a bit more below. Have to do Steve & Bucky first because chronology and also because that’s the other ship in question here, really. (Sorry, SteveSam people like if you are asking for stuff too and anyone cares, I don’t think I have enough for a whole meta post on why it’s kinda blah, if full of cute friendship moments, but I touch on it a bit further below.)

The entire plot of The First Avenger is about how Steve is obsessed with being Mr. America 1940-- and how he gets to that point is understandable. He was born with a ton of heart, a truly good man, but he’s small and sickly and he doesn’t love himself. He lacks confidence in himself because he holds himself up to a standard of masculinity put forth by a country on the brink of war-- and then, at war-- as physically strong and very, very straight. 

While Steve is desperate to change how he looks, Bucky hides behind how he looks. Steve might look at Bucky and see a lot of what he wishes he was-- the good-looking soldier with a dame on each arm-- but at some point, he becomes aware of how Bucky is playacting. He’s not as he appears to be. He’s a man trying to survive a world that does not accept him and working to pass in that society, all the while with an eye to the World of Tomorrow. Not just the technology that grips his imagination but the idea that things could improve, things could change and he’ll fight for America because he, like Steve and later, Sam, believes in it but while Steve worships it, Bucky can love it while looking at it critically. It’s not built for men like him. 

Steve never fully understands this because while Bucky is trying to show him some of the World of Tomorrow, he’s off making plans to get injected with super serum to fill in the gaps of what he feels he needs to become the man he is supposed to be. 

The key difference between them is that Steve will do anything to be that man-- and that includes shoving any potential feelings he has for Bucky so deep that he won’t even acknowledge them (if he has them at all). Bucky, on the other hand, even in 1940, had more strength. He wasn’t as tormented by who he was. I’m sure he had some of it at some point but by the time we meet him in the movies, he’s fine with who he is, even if the country he serves and the society in which he lives is not. He could basically give af. He doesn’t think in the ‘40s that he’s going to live to see an America that will ever really accept him and he fights for it anyway because Mr. America is really, fundamentally, more Captain America than The OG Captain America. 

Steve is not a bad man by any stretch of the imagination but it’s clear that, at some point, he began to understand that Bucky liked men and while he didn’t do anything horrible about it-- like have Bucky arrested or told anyone else, both of which could have destroyed Bucky’s life at that time-- he never completely approved of it, either. Guaranteed he told Bucky more than once that if he just stopped, if he just found the right woman, etc-- he didn’t mean any harm with it but he was happy to think the way of his era, whereas Bucky was born ahead of his time. Still, Steve is probably the only person that Bucky knew then who knew his secret and that he protected it earned even more of Bucky’s loyalty and devotion. 

Now, consider what happened when Steve Rogers was pulled out of the ice and found himself living in the literal World of Tomorrow. It’s imperfect, for sure. It’s overwhelming for him, especially at first, but it’s a world that he has to feel the wrong guy from the ‘40s has lived to see. How many times did Steve wish Bucky could see this world? How much was he thinking of Bucky when he met the literal son of the creator of the World of Tomorrow in Tony Stark-- a man who would challenge everything Steve thought was true about what it was to be a man? How guilty did Steve feel when he would sometimes get a little closer to being more open about himself in this world of Tony’s, when he’d think of how there had been a man who loved him in their own time, who was his best friend and gave him an unconditional love, even when Steve didn’t love himself, and how Steve just couldn’t love him like that in return? 

Then, Steve’s journey results in him meeting Sam Wilson. They have some things in common-- they both know war and what it’s like to feel like like they might sink to the floor through a mattress. They both know the solitude of the floor and have not seem to have figured out a way beyond that. They both are runners-- literally and figuratively-- as they try to outrun the men from their pasts that they left behind... the fellow soldiers that didn’t make it home and died before their eyes. Sam is a good listener and Steve is Captain America-- they are able to help one another. Steve needs some counseling and Sam needs to feel a connection to the country he’s feeling has left him behind but that he loves. So, naturally, this is of course when Bucky resurfaces in the story. 

The Winter Soldier’s existence breaks Steve in half because, for the first time, Bucky isn’t the strong one of the two of them. Bucky is in trouble and Steve never saved him. Have you all considered that The Howlies should have known Bucky was missing because back then, you left no man behind and they should have hiked down the hill for his body? If it wasn’t there, they should have realized he was *missing* and not *dead*? But they never did. Because, as crushed as he was by the loss of his closest friend, some dark part of Steve let Bucky be dead from that fall and couldn’t face seeing it for real because he couldn’t look at the unseeing, dead eyes of the man who loved him and accepted him, even when Steve was unable to give Bucky the latter in return. It was guilt and then that guilt pops up right as Steve is in conflict with Tony and has just met Sam not that long before-- these relationships with men in the modern era that challenge Steve to be a better version of who he was and who pops up but Steve’s living, breathing, prowling, raging guilt in human form. 

And, man, is it ever causing some serious havoc...

So, why is Sam ultimately better? The guy who advised Steve that sometimes you couldn’t save them all and Bucky might be gone now and just needed to be stopped? 

Steve couldn’t give up on Bucky because he felt he owed him. He had been on his own journey and realized a lot about how he used to think and act and here was Bucky again and a chance to make it up to him in some way. What’s of note, though? Steve does not act like someone who got a long-lost love back. He’s still running for Peggy the moment he has a chance. He’s still not capable of looking at Bucky as anything beyond his oldest, closest friend. What he wants for Bucky, though, is the World of Tomorrow. 

Suddenly, there’s a chance to give to Bucky the thing he’s been thinking all the time since he woke up-- that this is a world for Bucky Barnes. Steve, out of his sense of loyalty and his decades-long guilt, moves heaven and earth to give Bucky that chance and is grateful when T’Challa will help to bring Bucky back. The irony of all of this is that Bucky Barnes, the man who used to hide his true self beneath an exterior identity, is now a man completely trapped beneath The Winter Soldier and when Steve sees a glimmer of that, he *has* to save Bucky. 

What Sam learns along the way is that he and Steve have some things in common, sure, but he has more in common with Bucky Barnes. Sam is a man who understands what it is to have PTSD and the struggle to overcome it. He used to think he was the Steve of this story-- the one who watched his old soldier friend fall to his death-- but he has quickly realized he’s actually the Bucky... the guy who loved a man who couldn’t love him back and who was lost to him, leaving him spinning. Sam knows what it is to have to act in a different way to try to be accepted by a society that doesn’t have your back, even if you love the country with your whole heart anyway. He knows what it’s like to be a veteran who was left behind and forgotten about, discounted and forced to find his own way. For sure, Bucky has enjoyed more privileges in his day (pre-Winter Soldier) by virtue of being white than Sam has but neither of them are ever going to be what Steve Rogers wanted to be. Neither of them are that outdated ideal of 1940s blue eyed blond Star-Spangled Man with a Plan kind of masculinity. 

Sam is also something Steve still really isn’t, even in the modern era, which is a man who is comfortable with the fact that he is attracted to men. In this World of Steve and Bucky’s Tomorrow that is the present, that is something that is no longer needed to be kept as hidden as it once was. It is not an era of complete change, especially in places like the military and when it comes to celebrity-- the nexus of Captain America’s world, really-- but it is an absolutely revolutionary transformation from when Bucky was last in control of his mind in the 1940s. 

Sam is a quieter guy, even if he’s cheerful and amiable on the surface. He keeps a lot to himself. He’s clearly not gotten seriously involved with anybody in awhile when we met him and hadn’t between then and TFATWS, either, despite being a smart, gorgeous, kind and empathetic Avenger. The one who has caught his eye is the once-brainwashed assassin who keeps showing up to save his life (often from an annoying teenager with webbed fingers, much to their chagrin). It’s Bucky that he’s stuck with and that’s not just because he feels like Steve would want him to. Both he and Bucky think that the other might just be caring because of Steve but they prove to one another that this isn’t the case-- that their instincts that they have something that might be independent of Steve is true. They’re both afraid. They’ve both been through a lot and do not trust easily so it’s a thrill when they realize they really can trust one another-- and that they actually do *see* one another there. They don’t just see Steve’s shadow. They understand what the other needs and get better at it the longer they are together because they are fundamentally more alike and better suited than either of them are with Steve. 

TFATWS has Bucky telling Sam that he and Steve talked about giving Sam the shield and since Steve’s shield in the present was broken in the battle with Thanos in Endgame, it means that Bucky knew the plan in its entirety (which goes along with how he doesn’t seem surprised by it in Endgame as well.) It means Bucky knew that Steve was going to go back to the time they were from and find Peggy after he put the stones back and have that dance. It means that Bucky standing there while Sam spoke with Steve knew he would see Old Steve that day, knew the whole thing. Steve, being the fundamentally decent man he is, had to have offered for Bucky to come with him. He probably really wished he would because he would love to have his friend back then with him for the rest of their lives. It would be a way to do it all over-- to go back to where they began and this time, Steve would try to be more supportive. You know he would have tried to be different, even if he couldn’t feel any thing different than what he did. But Bucky...? 

Bucky had to see a life of more hell in that. What was the plan there for him? He goes back with Steve, they put the stones away, they find Peggy and then what? The rest of Bucky’s life is him married to some friend of Peggy’s they set him up with? Stolen moments with some man, if he was lucky enough to meet one? A family made not from love-- not the kind of love, anyway, that Bucky would like to have? What was waiting for him back then? Nothing. 

Because he’s been through sheer hell but, somehow, he’s been given something he never thought was possible then: the chance to not only see what the future might be like but to live in it, as a part of it. 

For sure, Endgame!Bucky, who had just gotten his mind back not that long before The Snap and just came back from dust to fight a battle and go to a funeral and that’s about it, hasn’t the first clue what the first step he should take to sort himself out enough to figure out how to live again is... but even then, even in that place of nothing but vulnerability and pain, he’s hopeful. He’s strong enough to say that’s what he wants. He wants what Steve wants, in a way-- to live in the time he belongs in and be able to find a life for himself. He wants the love and the family he never got to experience and wouldn’t in the same way in the era he was born in. Staying in the present to work though his pain and figure it out-- to have that choice-- means more to Bucky than following Steve because while Bucky believes in Steve’s goodness and would follow that to the moon and back, Steve cannot give him what he once might have wanted, which is to look at him the way that Steve looks at Peggy. Bucky wants that. Steve might not understand not wanting to live in the 1940s entirely but he wants Bucky to have whatever he wants. He feels uncomfortable not being there to see it through-- hence, that kind of awkward hug before he travels back in time. There are things that Bucky wants and needs that Steve doesn’t fully appreciate but he can appreciate him needing to make the choice to live the way he wants to live and deserving the freedom to do just that. 

Consider the rush for Bucky when he realizes that Steve’s snarky friend might have just looked at him when he thought he wasn’t looking, that maybe that heat between them isn’t one-sided. That they live *now* and while it’s not free of challenges, it’s paradise compared to the 1940s. That maybe, just maybe, he lived through all this hell because he’s supposed to be here now and maybe that also means he’s supposed to be with this man who not only understands him but who is everything that Bucky couldn’t have been in his day-- openly attracted to men? If you were Bucky, there’s no way you couldn’t be entertaining fantasies about being able to take Sam for a romantic walk by the water somewhere and no one calling the police if you were to kiss him at sunset...

Not to mention that if you’re Sam? Who is going to get your PTSD and understand when you get a little quiet more than the guy you met while he fell out of the sky and tried to murder you while brainwashed? Who is so annoying because he’s dryly funny and annoyingly hot and more good than anyone who has been through that amount of hell should have a right to be? Who is enough like you to be made for you but different enough that you’ll never be bored? Who makes you feel safer than you’ve ever felt-- safe enough to give over a lot of the trust you are hesitant to give much of anyone because you know he won’t abuse it? You have to be entertaining thoughts about spending a lifetime making him feel as safe and finding new ways to make him laugh...

Sam and Bucky are the ones that will protect one another’s hearts. Steve is a great guy whose arc with Bucky is about making up for hurting him and growing as a person as a result, not about Steve’s undying romantic and/or sexual love, IMO. Among other things, Sam is the first man Bucky has been able to consider building a life with and I’d wager it actually works in reverse for Sam, despite him being born much later than Bucky-- Riley could have been Sam’s lover but there is enough pining regret there that I think he saw Sam in the way that Steve saw Bucky. There’s enough there to suggest that Sam had not met someone he saw a future with until Bucky, which would also account for the occasional nervousness. They seem like opposites but, in many ways, they’re exactly alike and in the ways that they are not, they compliment one another. Sam and Bucky are each other’s chances at happiness and peace so if you’re still saying Bucky should be sobbing in Steve’s notebook waiting for him to come back from the woman he left him for... why are you wishing such hell on this poor guy? Bucky deserves the smiles and the lightness in his step and the sister and the nephews and the community cookouts and, most of all, *Sam*...

...and Sam deserves the sun, the moon and the stars and seems content having found his way to the shield and to Bucky so let them be happy for the hot minute they will be until their movie conflict. ;) Steve’s getting his dance-- Bucky and Sam deserve theirs, too. 

[fanficparker]

A GAME OF DIAMONDS AND HEARTS // H.O.

>> CHAPTER FOUR

“The life that you seek you shall never find. For when the Gods made man, They kept immortality to themselves.” - The Epic of Gilgamesh

(Frenemies to Lovers! Mob AU! ) Harrison Osterfield x Fem!OC

Word count: 2.47k words

Warning: Swearing, knives, anger issues, guns, handcuffs, kidnapping (kind of?), Harrison Osterfield (Yeah, that's a legit warning)

Synopsis: After the sudden death of his uncle and the eccentric multi-millionaire mafia king Lufian Clarke, Harrison Osterfield’s almost decent life is mostly devastated especially when half of what should be rightfully his fortune is transferred to their immediate rival for reasons he doesn’t know. What’s remaining is him trying to figure out how to deal with this collaboration of two rival corporations that don’t belong together and work on the side of the woman he never knew would ever be referred to as his partner in crime while they are dragged into a mess bigger than what they were trained to handle.

<< THREE [ MASTERLIST ] FIVE >>

Sandhya parked the car at the rear side of an autobody workshop next to a white pickup truck that resembled closer to junk than any actual mode of transportation. It was past ten when she pulled there, and the three people Harrison spotted in the shop were on their way to shut it down for the night's call. He had managed to keep a careful eye at what turns she took as the roads forked or what landmarks she crossed on her way, only to achieve practically nothing. He was a stranger to this place and she being the wicked witch she was, had driven in circles so many times that he was sure, she had managed to complicate the path for him in manners that his head failed to unravel.

"We are here, homies." She announced, yawning at the last part, tapping her palm over the dashboard, tugging the keys from the ignition and then pulling the hand brakes.

Kevin groaned, shuffling in his seat, eyes half-lidded, voice groggy with sleep. The women sitting beside him plucked off her earphones, shutting her laptop. Harrison, on the other hand, chose to inspect the unfamiliar surrounding in the comfort of the car, eyes sceptical and narrowing. He ignored the thud of car doors opening and closing only to be disturbed by a sharp noise of metal keys hitting the window on the other side.

He squirmed at the unpleasant sound and turned to look at the intruder as she leaned across from him, on the opposite side of the car, the neon signboard of the car workshop flashing red light over her face. She looked like an angel from hell.

"Are you moving out? Or should I rather lock you up here?"

Harrison tamped down the urge to roll his eyes and stepped precariously out of the car, rolling up his sleeves and buttoning them near his elbows. He followed the three people as they walk down a slope that connected to an underground parking lot. There were a few cars and motorbikes parked there, most seemed to be in a dire need of repair. It took him roughly two minutes to figure out that it was no underground parking. It was a whole ass hideout disguised on the front with unused motors. They walked into a narrow alleyway, passing through several closed doors of what he assumed were rooms to a living area attached to a kitchen. It wasn't well furnished but furnished enough for a stay. Gray unpainted walls, sofas, tables and chairs, fridge, microwave, a small but flattering shelf full of wine bottles and a CCTV monitor to the top corner that covered the outside of their hideout, all the necessities one needs to survive.

"Hey, we will need your phone and your watch." The other woman he didn't know the name of yet, matched his pace, her laptop tucked below her arm, her green hair shorter than his with a cool undercut to the sides. She looked equally chill and nerdy in her baggy checked shirt, a mixture foreign to him.

He paused on his way, casting her a scathing glare, a bored look wiping over his face the next instant, "And why would I give you that?"

"Because Holly needs to encrypt them," Sandhya replied for her, standing beside the taller girl.

"So that it isn't traceable." Holly reluctantly but quickly added. She was younger than them, probably around Harry's age. Harrison could feel an undercurrent of fear floating through her voice.

"Thank you very much, but..." Harrison replied, not missing a beat, shooting a bitter smile at Sandhya before facing Holly, uttering: "No," his lips forming a proper 'o' as he took a step away only to be stopped by Sandhya's hand grabbing his wrist.

"It's not a choice, Harrison." She asserted.

An order.

Something sour lathered at the back of his tongue. A vein in his forehead twisted. Anger? Resentment? Malice? You just name it. He felt all of them at once.

He jerked away from her grip, releasing his arm. When he turned to face Sandhya again, his entire aspect had changed. His shoulders were square and broad, posture imposing, features stone, eyes icicles. They exchanged a long, threatening glare, eyes never wavering. He took a step ahead, expecting her to step back but she didn't recoil, holding her ground. She had the sort of personality you associate stereotypes with: high cheekbones, tall stature, sharp features but she somehow managed to defy most of them. Without her heels and now wearing some flat running shoes, she barely reached his chin, there was something warm about the softness of her features hidden beneath her belligerent attitude. The little baby fat her genetics had blessed over her face, provided her preys with false hopes of mercy. Betrayal at its finest.

He looked down at her and she looked up at him, their shoes bumping, faces inches apart. Realisation ticks through her mind when she looked a second deeper into his eyes.

He was, perhaps, stalling.

Her neck snapped to the monitor embedded at the top corner of the living space.

Shit.

A car had stopped outside their hideout and two armed men emerged from the car, strolling towards the basement.

She identified one of the men. His men.

"Look ou--" She tried to yell but Harrison didn't allow even an ounce of air to escape from her lungs. He'd grabbed her shoulders swiftly, taking advantage of her diverted attention, squeezing her shoulder blades and twisting her body. Her back flushed against his chest.

Both Kevin and Holly grabbed their pistols, the clicking sound of safety pins dropping echoed in the enclosed space. They pointed the weapon at Harrison but he already had a pocket knife pointed at Sandhya's throat while his other arm was pressed beneath her neck, holding her still.

"Keep your guns down or this floor would bathe in her blood." He warned, poking the tip of the knife into her skin, eyes focused on the pistols.

Kevin and Holly hesitated, their eyes flickering at Sandhya's face. Something passed between their eyes, some sort of permission and they threw their guns down, sliding them away from their reach.

"Hands above your head, quick." Harrison added, "And place them on the wall, face the other side."

Holly and Kevin obeyed without questioning, pressing their palms to the walls, while Harrison bent to pick up their pistols, shoving them at the back of his pants, holding Sandhya on a chokehold.

"I'd warned about your men's involvement in Clarke's murder," she whimpered when he placed the blade near her skin again, getting to his feet, "Yet you let them trace our location," she somehow managed to finish the sentence.

"You speak a lot for someone millimetres apart from dying."

"You won't kill me." She said, gritting her teeth.

"Yeah, but I can hurt you," he whispered near her ear, "And we both know how much I'd like that." His warm breath fanned over her cheek as he dug the pointy edge of the blade to the pulsing side of her neck, pressing not enough to cut her but enough to terrify her.

"Arsehole." She muttered, sucking in a breath.

"Tell me something new." His lips twisted into a devilish grin as he dragged her outside, her loose hair tickling under his chin, his arms clenched so tightly around her that she was sure she would still feel them tomorrow.

"I am telling you..." She tried to breathe and speak.

"Sssh..." Harrison interrupted with a shush, the vibrations moving through her flesh, echoing through her bones.

She tried to ignore the effect of his voice on her spine, suppressing the chilling sensation. "We are on the same team," she whispered softly and carefully as if trying to lull a toddler into handling back their parents' important work files.

"Oh well, then I should be the one giving orders."

They walked to the front of the basement. She could spot the shadowy outline of the two men waiting.

She started trying to resist, wiggling her body in his grip.

"Hey, Hey! Behave. This blade won't spare. Don't blame me."

"Let go, Harrison. Your life is on the edge!" She wiggled harder.

Edge.

He couldn't stop but laugh at the irony in the metaphor she chose.

They reached his men and she stilled in his grip. A white man, she identified as Tom (as Harrison had previously pointed out) and the other man she didn't identify was black and taller than all of them, both standing like soldiers in front of her.

"This is Tom. And this is Tuwaine," he introduced his men.

"This could be dangerous for both of us." She was almost pleading now, eyes pooling with tears of irritation and of failure.

"We don't want to kill her," Tom said, passing Harrison a pair of handcuffs.

And here she thought she had the lead.

"Why do y'll keep telling me that?" Harrison groaned at Tom's advice. He had repeated it over, even Sandhya has said the same thing, twice.

"Do I look like a psychotic killer on a killing frenzy?" He grabbed her wrists, fastening the cuffs behind her back, gripping her upper arm. "I know well who and whom I am supposed to hurt, how and where." He clarified, gently pushing her to sit on the back seat of the car. She obeyed this time, having no choice.

"It's not easy to trust you," Tuwaine added.

Harrison nodded, trying to look offended, "Thanks Tuwaine, I needed that," getting into the car, along with her, keeping a good distance between them. He snorted when she swirled her neck to the other side, refusing to look at him.

Tom settled himself on the driver's seat and Tuwaine sat beside him as the car drove off.

***

The giant gates of the mansion she'd only seen from far away opened like butterfly's wings, welcoming the car where she sat as a hostage.

"Aren't you delighted seeing this place?" Harrison asked in a tone that was closer to mockery than curiosity.

She still refused to look at him yet could hear the smirk in his voice.

"The place you won in the lottery? Or shall I say, cheated--"

"Fuck off." She interrupted but he went on like a guide, ignoring the cuss—

"The second luxurious property in England, just next to the Buckingham Palace."

She chose to ignore too. The main doors to the estate were wide open. Two women came rushing out when the car came to a halt. One of them opened Sandhya's door, pulling her out, holding her forearm, the other pulled a pistol and a knife from her dress.

"Release her," Harrison said nonchalantly, tossing the keys of the cuffs to the first woman. She unlocked the metal and Sandhya pulled her hands from the woman's grip, rubbing her fingers around her wrists.

She walked in, eyes in the front as Harrison and the crew accompanied her.

"Take her to the guest suite." He said and the same woman nodded.

Before she could grip Sandhya's arm, she moved it away, rushing to Harrison, grabbing his shirt collars with both her hands.

"I'd planned everything so intricately and you... You just ruined it all." She spoke with clenched teeth, eyes glistening with emotionless tears. "Do you--Don't understand the gravity of the situation? We are literally playing with fire." She exhaled forcefully.

He chortled.

Playing with fire?

He had committed various mistakes today, more mistakes than he could recount, more mistakes than he could afford. He had let his emotions get the best of him. He had not inspected Clarke's body, then went to beat Dino's men without even being careful of the various other dangers he could cross paths with, then chose to accompany Sandhya alone, got into a life-threatening car chase, had a sniper pointed to his head.

On top of that, he had also failed to consider the disastrous change the mafia world would go through upon the King's death. Damn, he had already played with fire and it was enough for him.

With Clarke's death: The mafia world has never been so free and so trapped. So vulnerable yet so lethal.

Harrison had discovered that for himself. He fucking knew the gravity of the situation! And that's why he chose to take matters into his own hands. He could trust nobody. Especially her.

"You really need to stop with your habit of holding collars." He held her hand in his, thumbs tracing circles over the back.

She continued to search his face, dark eyes filled with disbelief.

"We will work my way. And..." his face hardened at the conjunction, his thumbs stopped their ministrations as he squeezed her hands tighter. "And when I find your involvement in Clarke's murder, I would not hesitate to put a bullet through your skull."

She snorted this time, pulling her hands back.

"This is what you concluded? This? After everything?" She burst out into a peal of bitter laughter, the one that twisted Harrison's gut.

Her eyes hardened again as she jabbed a finger into his chest.

The next words came out as an unchecked storm out of her mouth, "The life you want, you will never get." Her words were merely whispers but worked their way through his gut, burning his chest, crawling through every fibre of his body and she never seemed to stop.

"You'll never be the next Clarke, you'll never even be half of him. Maybe," she hiccupped, "Maybe, he knew that and that's why he chose me, he chose me over you because he knew how incongruous you were."

She took a step forward, her chest pressing against his, standing on her toes, directly meeting his eyes and raising her voice beyond the point of normalcy, "How you were an insult to his legacy!" Pausing to exhale, she continued, her voice back to low, "It was a pity that he gave you half of his kingdom. You didn't even deserve that. You'll never be him. You are nothing like him."

Harrison bit back his tongue, his icy eyes burning from the lack of blinking. The mansion was dead silent, no one had dared to speak or react. He clenched his fists tight, feeling his nails digging into his palms.

"Take her to the room." He instructed, voice barely above a few decibels. He didn't wait for his words to turn to actions, rather he turned on his feet, striding towards his room, jaws tensed, nerves popping through his burning flesh.

His footsteps echoed behind him.

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…TO BE CONTINUED…

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All I See Is You by RebelGeneral 

“Tulips. They symbolize passion... Perhaps your bride would like the same.”

And there it is. 

That sting he’s come to expect every time his mother, ever so casually, decided to bring up the prospect of his marriage. He is very much aware she knows the displeasure it brings him. What motivations could she possibly have that justified torturing him so? Perhaps she believes that one day her remarks might turn him around and he would finally listen to sense. Or maybe it’s her cruel reminder of who can never be his no matter how much he wishes. The fact that she refuses to even mention Siena’s name is enough evidence that she would never even consider her as his choice. And lastly, perhaps she enjoys torturing him so, showing him her tulip design in jest, as if the constant turmoil in his heart and soul was a thing of mockery.

It was sickening. 

He may be the firstborn in a lineage of firstborns. The Viscount. Eldest brother to all his siblings. The man of the house. Leader of their estate and all their well beings. But in the middle of it all, he suspected his mother had forgotten he, too, was her son first and everything else second. He had already lost his father and with every passing moment since that unfortunate day, he feared he had lost his mother as well. 

Goodnight, Mother.

He could not stand there a moment longer listening to her planning things for his bride when she had never bothered to ask him about Siena. She wanted to aid him in his pursuit of love only if the object of his affection was someone she approved of. What he held in his heart now was immaterial to her. So it was best to leave lest he say something he would regret later.

As most nights, it took him a long time to finally fall asleep. It had been getting harder and harder to find that sense of serenity since he had asked Siena to leave his side. That regret combined with his mother’s biting remarks left a mark on him. Alcohol helped matters. And he was glad he had taken its much needed aid tonight.

He knew it wasn’t real the moment he saw it. The moment he saw her. But that didn’t matter. Till his dying day, it would still be the most beautiful thing reality or mind had ever conjured up for his sake.

She was sitting where his mother had been sitting not an hour ago. Her dress was a subtle cream color with the hem and bodice layered with maroon and purple tulips, similar to the ones his mother had shown him. Soft, red lips parted as she smiled at him. Her lush brown curls were partly open, delicately framing her face and slightly bouncing with every movement of her head. Around her neck he could see the choker he was so fond of, except instead of a rose, now a red tulip rested in its middle.

He could feel himself staring as she looked back at him knowingly. His mouth went dry and he tried to speak, but no sound came out.

After what felt like forever she touched his hand as if placing a precious thing in his palm and when he looked down it was the hand of a little girl standing next to her. Same auburn hair and eyes, but her nose looked like his. She was whispering something to him.

Papa! Sing with me.

His voice gone, he looked at Siena helplessly. She smiled and took the little girl with her to the piano forte where two other children were fighting over the keys. One looked tall and older, around ten and the girl was about eight years. The boy looked his spitting image from the paintings he remembered of himself as a child. The same dark curls, austere manner and reserved smile. His sister seemed more openly affectionate and smiled at him with a smile he had only seen on one woman. She was beautiful, just like her mother.

As they started playing the piano forte and singing along to their favorite song, Siena took the lead and sang first while the rest watched her, transfixed by her captivating voice. They copied her as best as they could when she paused. The little one held her mother’s hand and was twirling her around the room, bursting into a fit of giggles every time she got the words of the song wrong, much to the horror of her elder siblings who were trying their best to please mama.

Anthony couldn’t help laughing himself at the absurd spectacle. He realized they could finally hear him when Siena looked up and met his eyes. She had that radiant look about her that she reserved for times when she was completely happy, most of them around him. Her eyes would crinkle up on the sides and her cheeks would slightly dimple and she couldn’t stop smiling even if she wanted to. It was intoxicating.

Before he knew it, he had walked across the room and taken her in his arms, kissing her once and then one more time for good measure. Then bending down he grabbed the little girl who gave an excited squeal. He twirled them both around, one arm carrying his daughter who had burst into a fit of laughter and was telling her siblings she was now taller than them, and in his other arms he held the love of his life. As close as he could.

He leaned down to give his wife another kiss and instantly heard his eldest groan from his seat while his sister shushed him to not ruin the moment. Their kiss inevitably turned into him and Siena snickering uncontrollably into each other’s mouth.

The last thing he heard was his youngest complaining why everyone had started laughing instead of singing and how papa needed to spin her around faster so she could properly get dizzy.

His eyes opened before he could stop them. As soon as he realized he was waking up, he shut his eyes closed again, tightly. But their faces were already disappearing and no matter how forcefully he kept his eyes shut he couldn’t hold onto them any more. Siena’s dress with his mother’s tulips, her infectious smile and the laughter and bickering of his children, he wanted to burn that into his memory. He wanted to stay with them forever. Never had he felt this kind of happiness and peace.

He lay in bed for quite some time before he could come to terms with what had happened. Glancing over the other side of the bed, he caressed the pillow that might have belonged to her. The sheets that lied flat and cold, when all he wanted was to see her sprawled under them, beckoning him towards her warmth and love.

Sighing in defeat, he finally got up and got dressed for the day. He had made his choice and he must live with it. She deserved far better than him. Perhaps one day they could both work their way towards a different kind of happiness.

Before he left the room something caught his eye on his bedside table. It was a similar piece of embroidery his mother had shown him the night before. These were the same tulips, maroon and violet... Siena’s. He smiled at the irony. Coincidence or not his mother had decided that if the reminder last night had not been enough, she would have him reminded of his duty as soon as he woke up as well.

The woman was unlikely to give up any time soon. And after Siena, he did not know if he had any strength left in him to fight it.

If he was wise he would let his mother win and chose his bride for him. Let her adorn her with as many tulips as the Modiste carried. Flaunt this supposed symbol of passion to the ton who would believe anything. And show them he was happy, content and molded into the role society had dictated for him. 

But he knew the price he would have to pay for that. Every time he would gaze upon a tulip hem on anyone else, it would only bring back the memory of his dream crashing down upon him. And all the warmth and sense of belonging he felt when he was with... them. And how he, no matter how much time passed, only cared to see that hem on her and no one else.

Roses.

Perhaps when it’s time he can convince Mother that roses will have to do.