#atla alternative scene

[rifari2037]

Heading back to the made-up Zutara headcanon of Zuko's father being Zuko and Katara's personal common enemy, I imagine that he was the personal enemy of virtually all members of Team Avatar in 2 different ways. Both of which involve a Book 4: Air.

Which one would you prefer and why?

1: Iroh is Ursa's brother and a warmongering tyrannical fire lord/father of Zuko and Azula was written to basically be a combination of all 3 canon fire lords in terms of characterizations, atrocities, lifespans, experiences, attributes, and bending. This fire lord could have Ozai's name, voice, and appearance or Sozin's if it's easier to picture. Season 3 ends with only the final agni kai and the Ba Sing Se liberation while everything else, including the comet's arrival, appears in the finale of Book 4: Air.

Or

2: Vaatu orchestrates the 100-year war through Sozin, the tree of time, the swamp tree, and the summer solstice. He also manipulates Iroh's spiritually attuned mother, Ilah, into getting free, by him fusing with Ilah's astral form and warping back into her body. This resulted in Vaatu's power depleting and being reborn in a human form that's given the name Ozai. Kinda like how Tui and La were reborn as mortal coy fish and how Tienhai took the form of a human after falling in love with a young prince. Aang's year is the 10,000th year and Harmonic Convergence arrives at the finale of ATLA Book 4: Air. Ozaatu battles the Lion Turtle instead of Aang during Sozin's Comet and Ozaatu wins by consuming the Lion Turtle's soul, gaining its abilities.

Either way, if Zutara were to be canon and executed perfectly, it'd need a season 4.

I prefer the second one! There is no specific reason, I just found it more interesting Ozaatu battle with Lion Turtle!

And I agree with you! Even if Zutara canon in Season 3, it would be rushed though not as forced as canon. They need Season 4 to develop their romantic relationship.

[kyuuhinajinchuuriki]

～❝𝒀𝑮𝑶 𝑪𝒉𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒄𝒕𝒆𝒓𝒔 𝑰𝒏 𝑷𝒂𝒓𝒂𝒍𝒍𝒆𝒍 𝑽𝒆𝒓𝒔𝒊𝒐𝒏𝒔❞～

◇ 𝑀𝑢𝑡𝑜𝑢 𝑌𝑢𝑔𝑖 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝑌𝑢𝑘𝑖 𝐽𝑦𝑢𝑑𝑎𝑖 ◇

◇ 𝐻𝑖𝑟𝑎𝑔𝑖 𝑌𝑢𝑧𝑢 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝑇𝑒𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑖𝑛 𝐴𝑠𝑢𝑘𝑎 ◇

◇ 𝑇𝑒𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑢𝑖𝑛 𝐴𝑠𝑢𝑘𝑎 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐼𝑧𝑎𝑦𝑜𝑖 𝐴𝑘𝑖 ◇

◇ 𝑆𝑎𝑘𝑎𝑘𝑖 𝑌𝑢𝑦𝑎 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝑀𝑖𝑧𝑢𝑘𝑖 𝐾𝑜𝑡𝑜𝑟𝑖 ◇

◇ 𝑀𝑎𝑧𝑎𝑘𝑖 𝐴𝑛𝑧𝑢 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝑀𝑢𝑡𝑜𝑢 𝑌𝑢𝑔𝑖 ◇

◇ 𝐽𝑎𝑐𝑘 𝐴𝑡𝑙𝑎𝑠 𝐶ℎ𝑖𝑏𝑖 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝑆𝑎𝑘𝑎𝑘𝑖 𝑌𝑢𝑦𝑎 𝐶ℎ𝑖𝑏𝑖 ◇

◇ 𝐾𝑎𝑖𝑏𝑎 𝑆𝑒𝑡𝑜𝑢 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑢𝑚𝑒 𝐽𝑢𝑛 ◇

◇ 𝑀𝑎𝑛𝑗𝑜𝑢𝑚𝑒 𝐽𝑢𝑛 𝐕𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧 𝐴𝑘𝑎𝑏𝑎 𝑅𝑒𝑖𝑗𝑖 ◇

𝐒𝐨𝐦𝐞 🎨𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝🖌 𝐩𝐡𝐨𝐭𝐨𝐬🖼 𝐨𝐟 𝐞𝐚𝐜𝐡 𝒀𝒈𝒐❢ 𝐜𝐡𝐚𝐫𝐚𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐫; 𝐈🙂𝐬𝐞𝐥𝐞𝐜𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐬𝐞 𝐢𝐦𝐚𝐠𝐞𝐬🖼 𝐛𝐞𝐜𝐚𝐮𝐬𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞𝐲 𝐟𝐚𝐬𝐜𝐢𝐧𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐝🤩𝐦𝐞 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐦𝐨𝐬𝐭💖, 𝐢𝐭 𝐰𝐚𝐬 𝐚 💁🏻𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐬𝐨𝐧𝐚𝐥🧐𝐝𝐞𝐜𝐢𝐬𝐢𝐨𝐧🎩.

𝐂𝐫𝐞𝐝𝐢𝐭𝐬 𝐭𝐨 𝐡𝐢𝐬 𝐚𝐮𝐭𝐡𝐨𝐫：???🤔 🎨🖌

[demaparbat-hp]

For the Spirits—

Chapter VIII: Make You Stay

And I'd do anything to make you stay

No light, no light

Tell me what you want me to say

—No Light, No Light by Florence + The Machine

.

Ming had experienced so many different, wonderful things. She had lived, truly lived, and allowed herself to dream of things that had been impossible back in the Academy. Endless possibilities now seemed to lay gently in the palm of her hand. But she would give it all away to vanish the shiver that tore its way down her spine at Yoi’s words. The Prince has genuinely gone mad. He—didn't you hear?—he insists on going on this mysterious quest on his own.

[tubendo]

Excerpt: The Return (ch35)

Just a small excerpt from the latest WIP chapter of The Return. Apologies, there's no Sokkla stuff in this scene, but it's pretty funny in my humble opinion.

Commander Cheol was clearly fed up with the display of strength from Sokka, as he lit flames in each of his palms and got ready to attack him. "Insolent boy." he defamed him, before shooting two large fireballs into his chest, the first burning off more of his tunic, and the second throwing Sokka back, making him inadvertently trip over one of the guards he had paralysed. Cheol then intensified the flames on his tunic, causing them to spark up over his face, forcing him to close his eyes; Sokka had had enough, and knew that he would need a little support to turn the tide. "Ken!" he called on the guard he knew to be behind him, and when his vision returned, he saw that Cheol's sash had been set alight, and he was forced to take cover by the pilot's wheel. "You really need to get better at dodging." the guard derided his efforts, before offering him a hand; Sokka took it, and got back to his feet. "Now, let's finish this." he declared, throwing his club to the ground as he drew out his bone dagger. "What's that going to do?" the Commander questioned him, his voice sounding confident, though that could have been a farce to try and intimidate Sokka. "What did you say to your little buddy?" he questioned him, spinning the dagger in his hand, "That he could cut off some of my fingers... but not the right hand?" he pressed him, Cheol's glare not weakening. He covered his hands with fire, forming gauntlets that lit up the area around him, "I won't let my honour be sullied by a child... let alone a foreigner." "Eh, I've literally beaten the Fire Lord, you can't be that hard." he acknowledged, and the Commander's eyes narrowed. "Which?" "Two out of three. I think those are some pretty good numbers."

Sokka's getting smug as shit, as to be expected when he's beaten up by (arguably) the strongest bender alive on the daily.

[captainkirkk]

✩ WEEKLY FIC ROUND-UP ✩

All the fics I’ve read and really enjoyed in the past week-ish. Reminder: This list features any and all ratings and themes. Please look at tags and warnings on ao3 before reading.

ATLA

Waiting on that morning sun by DustOnDaydreams

“To the Generals, Admirals, Officers, Soldiers and Sailors of the Fire Nation, Halt your advance. Pull back to your nearest military stronghold, and await further orders. Do not engage any forces unless absolutely necessary for your own defence. Put out any fires you come across. Sign it only with the full list of the Fire Lord's titles."

“Your Majesty, do you not want to put your name to the missive?” A young pimpled scribe squeaked out to the shocked silence.

“No. I want them to obey the order.”

Or Zuko's transition from child soldier to young monarch in charge of a corrupted nation

Harry Potter

The Cloak by MoonflowerMorningGlory

Harry is not going back to the Dursleys. He has been out of the cupboard for a whole year; he's not going back in. It's tricky - he doesn't really want to have to explain to anyone. But he's magic now! He has an invisibility cloak! And he's had a lot of practice lying still and pretending he doesn't exist. So he can definitely hide out and avoid being put back on the Hogwarts Express, right? Nothing can go wrong with an eleven year old by themselves for 9 weeks in a wild, magical castle, can it?

Nine Worlds

East First by fire_eyes_chica

"East first, then west and home"

Before they can settle into their well-deserved retirement, first Kip and Fitzroy need to return to the Palace of Stars for the Jubilee celebrations. It's harder than it seems.

these unfaithful hands by rattyjol

His feet were moving again, though he did not recall deciding to go anywhere. He crossed the room, past his desk, past the plinth with the asymmetrical vase, past the tapestry map and the golden nightingale in its cage. Past the terrace, where he had been pleased to break his fast with his Radiancy—only this morning? It felt a thousand years away.

He was standing before the ivory door to the inner apartments, which he had passed through only a handful of times before. His hand raised of its own accord, and the door fell open beneath it.

He became aware, with a creeping dread like tendrils up his throat, that something was terribly wrong.

The Goblin Emperor

Falling (Please Catch Me) by mabonwitch

Maia gains a wife, a lover, and a dav.

Or: "He needs affection, and closeness. He is all but starved for it, and we would see him glutted on it instead.” She raised her chin. “However that happens.”

The Imperial Salon by mabonwitch

The Imperial salon is full of marnei. Vazhik gets a firsthand look at why that might be.

Alternate Title: The Emperor's Gay Lover

the first long welcome by wizardcake

Just a few little conversations and scenes on the topic of Maia becoming, and being, a parent. Fluff with a couple shavings of angst on top for flavor and texture.

[themousefromfantasyland]

Megalopolis Review, or, Why Nobody Seems to Realize the King is Naked

Brace yourselves, this will be a long post @ariel-seagull-wings @thealmightyemprex @the-blue-fairie @mask131 @tamisdava2

Today I watched Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis and never has a movie made me so frustrated and irritated as I’m now. 

The film is absolutely awful. Not in a so bad it’s good but in a so awful it’s awful. Pardon the language but not even if Coppola broke into my house and shit on my face I would be as angry as I am for him having made this movie. 

But let’s go in parts.

The Premise

The film is a mixture between soft sci-fi and magical realism. We are in an alternate universe where the United States is a direct continuation of the Roman Empire and New York city is instead the capital of the empire, New Rome. 

Cesar Catilina is a brilliant architect and scientist that gained a Nobel Prize for inventing the Megalon, a miraculous substance capable of doing anything. Cesar is a mysterious and lonely genius, with a mysterious past involving an accusation of murdering his own wife and the power to stop time itself. 

He wants to use the metal to rebuild New Rome into a utopia, Megalopolis. Because of that he wages a political battle against the mayor of New Rome, Franklyn Cicero, who wants things to stay the way they have always been. The Mayor has a daughter called Julia, and she falls in love with Cesar. Meanwhile a gossip reporter called Wow Platinum has her eyes on both Cesar and his rich uncle, while Cesar’s cousin, Clodio, a decadent playboy wants to destroy Cesar once and for all.

The Problems

Now that we went into the premise of the movie, let’s see in all the ways this premise falls apart

1 - The Film as a whole makes no sense

Film is art, and art doesn’t need to fit in traditional plot structures or pacing styles. 

But art is about communication. An artist has to communicate ideas, feelings, and impressions to their public. A piece of art that can only be understood by its creator is a bad piece of art.  

A good film, as a good piece of art, has to have the minimum of coherence and cohesion to express the ideas, feelings, and impressions of the filmmaker to their public. If the movie is unable to do that, then the movie is a bad piece of art. 

A good film has to either have coherent story, characters, or at least themes.

Megalopolis doesn’t have either of those.

Megalopolis has a complicated plot filled to the brim with pointless characters and it goes nowhere. Some of the characters are killed off in cut-way jokes and the climax happens in the last twelve minutes of the film. The film lasts more than two hours, and still feels rushed, with scenes that feel missing and scenes that seem superfluous.

It has long surreal sequences that don’t fit the characters, the themes or the story. It’s weirdness for weirdness’ sake. It means nothing. 

The characters are painfully shallow and have nothing to say but famous quotes and juvenile language filled with profanity. 

The film draws painfully long scenes quoting Shakespeare among other writers and philosophers, trying to say something deep about humanity, civilization, politics and the pursuit of utopia, but everything that comes out of it is shallow and contradictory.

In some points Cesar’s desire to build his utopian city is framed as almost an act of anti-consumerism and anti-materialism, vices that are endorsed by Mayor Franklyn Cicero. But then Cesar demolishes several apartment buildings, leaving hundreds homeless and hungry, and the movie almost becomes Atlas Shrugged, where the genius has to rise above the stupid masses that drag him down. 

Cesar’s jealous cousin, Clodio, is built as a Trump stand-in, but then his politics are about helping the immigrants and the poor against Cesar’s plans. And he openly dresses in drag. 

In some way, Clodio is a mixture of Trumpism, Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter in a single character, ignoring the obvious ways these ideologies are completely different from each other.

In the end Cesar gives a passionate speech to the crowds that Clodio aroused, and it’s no deeper than Facebook messages of “We can disagree politically and still be friends”.

The film has a lot to say about culture and politics, but with a simple glance you realize that Coppola doesn’t understand neither politics or culture. 

Megalopolis is a film that has a lot of things to say about humanity, culture, and politics, and almost everything is pure gibberish.

2 - The film is misogynistic, biphobic and a little bit transphobic.

It’s no wonder that Coppola took almost 30 years to finish this film, because the script has the trademarked sexual prejudices of the 1980’s. 

Only two female characters are really important in this story, and they role seem to reinforce the madonna x whore dichotomy that Coppola seems to believe in.

We have Julia, our madonna. She has a Mary Magdalene complex. She’s initially presented as a shallow, decadent socialite, who only knows how to party all day and kiss passionately her female friends. She is implied to be bisexual, but her bisexuality is presented as just another vice of the decadent elite of New Rome.

Then she meets and falls in love with Cesar and becomes nothing more than his love interest. She becomes the one responsible for his moral support. Her bisexuality is stripped away and she is resumed to nothing more than  a supportive wife.

Then we have Wow Platinum, a gossip reporter that marries Cesar's uncle, is interested in Cesar himself, and has sex with Clodio, Cesar's cousin. She is a shallow gold digger and the film uses every chance it has to slutshame her. She is a typical femme fatale without any nuance or complexity, a disgusting sexist and demeaning caricature without any depth. 

And then we have Clodio and his drag scene, and just like Julia, his crossdressing is presented as just another form of the decadence of New Rome.

3 - Vesta

There’s a plot point that comes out of nowhere and goes nowhere. 

New Rome has a pop star called Vesta, and she is meant to mirror the Vesta priestesses of Ancient Rome. She is clearly modeled after Taylor Swift. 

Clodio forges a video of Cesar and Vesta having sex, and since Vesta is a minor, he is arrested. But then Julia discovers that Vesta was lying about her age and is actually a 23-year old woman. After her true age is revealed and after the video is revealed as fake, Vesta reinvents herself as a provocative pop-rock star.

This whole plot point lasts ten minutes and has no bearing on the overall story.

I know for sure that it was written in the late 2000’s, because more than being inspired by Taylor Swift, Vesta is inspired by the transition that Miley Cyrus had from sweet Disney girl to provocative pop star. 

It’s very creepy and off-putting considering everything that we now know about how Coppola deals with young women.

Honestly it just feels like he wanted to fuck Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift back in 2010. 

4 - It’s just a giant ego trip

Only one thing is consistent in Megalopolis, how Cesar is portrayed as a genius that has to fight to have his vision of utopia come to life, and it’s obvious how he is an author self-insert.

It’s so annoying and irritating watching Coppola worship himself for over two hours.

He paints Cesar as this tragic figure that is misunderstood by society and how everyone should just listen to him. How he is a genius that has all the answers to solve humanity’s problems.

It’s the equivalent of watching Coppola masturbating while looking at himself in the mirror for two hours. 

The King is Naked

Listen, I too was at first excited about Megalopolis. I wanted this project to succeed. I wanted to see a creative and bold vision. I wanted to see more authoral cinema. 

But Coppola is just a rich creep with delirious visions of grandeur. 

He used this film to worship his obscene ego and to sexually exploit extras on his set.

And now I see people trying to find excuses for him, or trying to defend this thing.

Listen, if you found something positive about Megalopolis I respect your opinion, but this film is a huge piece of shit made by a more gigantic piece of shit, and his talent and past accomplishments can’t excuse this.

The film is awful, the director is awful, and the king is naked. He doesn’t need protection. 

Can we be totally sincere with this film? At least with ourselves?

I want to see films that are original and take risks, but I want from creators who aren’t megalomaniacs, sexual perverts or that at least can develop coherent ideas. 

[bestworstcase]

I keep seeing fanfic with unserious wish-fulfilly takes on this (not that there's anything wrong with being unserious and wish-fulfilly in fanfiction, but) so I was wondering your take: what do you think would happen re: the overarching plot, the slow pieces moving, the long-term ozlem war, etc. if the Fall of Beacon was averted? Say, Amber survives, Pyrrha survives, Cinder gets her ass beat without Ruby going unconscious, Adam gets his ass beat, Neo, Mercury & Emerald are apprehended in such a way that they are no longer active threats, Beacon is fine, etc. The whole thing. Everyone wins and everyone's happy and the bad guys lose yay.

Whenever I see this in fanfic it tends to really only stretch to v3 narratively as well, and thus any and all plot elements introduced after that are assumed to just not exist, even if they were already there beforehand (like Salem). So say all of that did happen, how do you think the plot would actually go from there? I think it'd be a kind of interesting line to follow.

nobody who writes this kind of ‘v3 good ending’ au engages whatsoever with the fact that ozpin would have been publicly disgraced and removed from his seat of power as headmaster of beacon in the aftermath of a terroristic attack on the vytal tournament and if you’re not interested in that what even is the point.

everybody wins hooray!! except the narrative status quo is shattered nonetheless because ozpin is an international pariah for sitting on his hands and doing nothing for months while ignoring clear danger signs and increasingly urgent warnings from his own advisors and allies, and how likely is it really that the valean council would put his deputy in the head office after she stood by him and backed his decisions without question for all that time?

what i’m getting at here is, beacon’s new head is someone outside the inner circle who doesn’t know anything about salem or the shadow war, whom the council brings in to clean up ozpin’s mess, and that person is going to find a comatose young woman on life support in a machine meant to tear out her soul in the basement of what is supposed to be a college training the noble defenders of the world. what the fuck. WHAT THE FUCK.

the news breaks and warrants go out for ozpin’s immediate arrest and he just fucking vanishes. pyrrha comes forward to disclose everything she was told by ozpin and his inner circle and when they tried to coerce her into becoming a vessel for this woman’s soul and the scandal spreads to atlas. how deep does this conspiracy go? how far does the rot spread? what does ironwood DO if the atlas council tries to force him out, knowing what the stakes are? how do teams RWBY & JNPR react to the discovery that their headmaster was involved in some sort of—shadowy soul-trafficking conspiracy preparing the world for a secret war? how do ruby and yang make sense of their uncle being a part of this?

think about what ozpin’s secrets look like to the world without the context of salem and the relics and the divine ultimatum hanging over remnant’s neck. now think about those revelations coming out in the aftermath of cinder’s attack on the vytal festival, and more specifically that speech she made pointing the finger at ozpin and ironwood as secretive dictators pulling strings behind the scenes. salem planned this very carefully. there is no possible outcome that does not violently explode ozpin’s grip on the world.

alternate universe where the kids get inadvertently swept up on salem’s side of the conflict after the failed attack on beacon disgraces ozpin, and ozpin’s inner circle are reviled fugitives desperately racing to avert catastrophe while the kids try to unravel what the fuck is going on.

[elderwisp]

Outfit Breakdown:

Here's a look into everyone's outfits and makeup! I might break down these scenes in the future as some of them will be incredibly relevant to certain arcs.

✩ Starting with Dan, I wanted to go with a really laidback attire. Dan is seen in a pair of vans, a cropped tank top and loosely styled hair. However! Since she is hosting, she threw on a tie and some slacks to look presentable. Meanwhile with the the makeup, I opted for a 60s style eyeshadow and eyeliner combo, I felt like it brought a lot of attention to the eyes, something I'm sure Ares could appreciate. As for Kai, I kept the green color scheme as I resonate that color with him. His cross is seen loosely around the neck with a nice button up opened just enough to show his chest. As for his makeup, there was some flecks of blue and green sparkles as well as two lines of blue and green intertwined. That was more of a symbolism of him and Atlas being two threads connected. After his evening with Alex, the colors blend to a teal until finally he rubs it all off before his conversation with Taryn.

✩ Gum and Syx's hair colors feel complimentary to one another as one is pastel pink while the other is a pastel blue. Gum really speaks through her clothing as she feels most confident in alternative attire. Meanwhile, Syx dresses in much more pastel clothing, she really likes to show off her fit figure. Gabriel (looks v pretty here btw) came in a comfortable streetwear attire. He likes to save a lot of the flashier outfits for gigs and bar hoping but is typically seen in casual yet stylish clothing. Ares on the other hand came in a very sleek outfit as well as some chromatic eyeshadow to match. Too bad those pockets didn't hold a lighter in there.

✩ BOOF! I opted for warmer colors for Icarus, picking a comfy leather jacket and some broken in jeans. I wanted it to feel down to earth and inviting. Meanwhile for Frances, there were a lot of textures in their clothing as well as sparkles reminiscent of tears on their eyes. Their whole scene in this arc did not go as planned, originally there was supposed to be a misunderstanding and while at the time it worked (their kiss at the arcade wasn't cannon at that point) the more I read it, I was like this doesn't suit them in the state that they're in. I love the way things played out, the more it sat with me, the more bittersweet things felt and I just knew I made the right choice. Icarus throughout the scene tried to help ground Frances in the present whereas Frances felt incredibly overwhelmed by the distress of it all. So I really wanted to reflect that through their clothing.

✩ Ah, hello Rowan. There's a lot of symbolism to Rowan's attire. I'll probably touch base on it more in the future but some key items! He has not kept up with bleaching his hair that stark white he's normally seen with. His charcoal eyeshadow with the two lines intensified his eyes while his clothes had a bit of a mesmerizing patter to it. He understands how to use his appearance to pull people in. Meanwhile, Atlas's was what I like to call fashionably disheveled, his eyes covered in messily applied eyeshadow and glitter. His shirt had pins as if it was barely holding together the seams, sorta reminiscent of his mental state. Seeing Rowan definitely added to that. We probably won't see Atlas for a while as I'm sure he has plenty to think about. Putting the two together, they're incredibly similar with the pallets and patterns chosen. If Taryn and Atlas are two separate, parallel lines, Rowan and Atlas are two people sitting on the opposite side of the same line.

[notmaplemable]

(This is a bit of a quick alternative take on Ruby's ascension scenes, if you want to call it that I guess, from Volume 9. Based on a scene from Turn: Washington Spies, since I thought it worked well.)

Ruby: *Sees Summer standing before her*

Ruby: Mom?

Summer: *Standing emotionless*

Ruby: What is all this? This place? This-This war against Salem? Was I just naïve? Is that what you're trying to tell me?

Summer: ...

Ruby: Mom, please, just tell me.

Summer: ...

Ruby: I've done everything I've been told to. I trained hard with dad and uncle Qrow to be a huntress. I studied harder to be a good leader for my team. I kept moving forward and fighting when we lost everything at Beacon.

Ruby: And now? Everyone looks up to me like I have all the answers, and if I don't... A-and for what?

Ruby: I'm not who they think I am. I'm not you!

Summer: ...

Ruby: Please mom, just say something. *Falls to her knees* Please.

Summer: ...Once again, you ask me what would I have done, and I will tell you what I would not.

Summer: I would never spare any of the scum that caused Beacon to fall.

Ruby: ...

Summer: Nor would I have the arrogance to disobey a direct order that nearly have resulted in Qrow's death in the forests of Anima.

Ruby: ...

Summer: And my actions would certainly have never caused the fall of Atlas and Mantle.

Ruby: *Hangs head in failure* ...

Summer: Nor would I have taken a shattered team and led them across Anima to save Mistral and it's academy.

Ruby: ???

Summer: I would never have been able to repair the divisions in my own team and inspire others.

Ruby: ...

Summer: And I certainly never would've been able to unite the world against the greatest threat it has ever faced.

Summer: But then again...

Ruby: ...Mom...

Summer: *Proud smile* I am not you.

[sveetnemesis]

atlas complex spoilers!!

everytime someone says callum is dead AN ANGEL DIES

olivie blake didnt write "a glimpse of platinum blonde winked before the lens" for yall to say he's dead ; callum literally has a scene of him fucking with the cctv in the beginning of the book. olivie blake didnt add this scene 'just because' — she wants the readers to understand this ability of his + recognise its recurrence

PLUS in the last tristan pov, the first scenario, where callum dies, it says END SCENARIO 1 ; but when the last scenario ends (which we can say is kind of our current timeline ) ; it says scenario SCENARIO 1A-426.02. ; suggesting it was same/similar and then something was altered

tristan literally fixes callums illusions ; the way callum likes it.

tristan calls callum "callums dead body/body" in SCENARIO 1 but in the SCNENARIO 1A-426.02 ; its just callum — callum being permanently dead in the first one but tristan choosing another timeline, where's he's alive, is just so clear

(the fact that this also suggests novacaine happy ending in so many other alternate universes makes my heart happy❤️‍🩹)

im delusional sometimes but I KNOW im really not in this regard; its literally in text you people just have to think

thanks for coming to my ted talk !!

[sregan]

On 'Megalopolis'

I have seen 'Megalopolis: A Fable'. My assessment in one word is that it's 'striking'. It's a striking film - which is not necessarily to say that it is a 'good' film. It may be an 'important' film, insofar as it's likely the last film by the creator of 'The Godfather', 'The Conversation' and 'Apocalypse Now', and self-funded.

It's also a very strange film. In almost every scene there's something bizarre - not necessarily in the sense of worldbuilding but in terms of the directorial choices made.

For some reason 'Megalopolis' was not marketed as a work of alternate history, which I think could have brought in more attention, but a 'fable', with a heavy-handed opening monologue about the similarities between the modern USA and Rome. It's ostensibly set in the 21st century in 'New Rome', a modern city with Roman affectations - though it's also mentioned at times that it's still in the United States of America and that Elvis existed in this reality.

The best analogy I can make is that it feels like one of those adaptations to film of a Shakespearean play but set in the modern day, where much of the dialogue has been updated but the main speeches have been left in the original language (indeed, sections of dialogue from Hamlet and The Tempest appear unmodified); but without the source play.

'Megalopolis' is - though few critics seem to be crediting this - a loose adaptation of the life of Lucius Sergius Catilina, somewhat annealed with Julius Caesar (furnishing protagonist Cesar Catalina as played by Adam Driver). The real Catalina is a rival of Cicero (here Mayor Cicero as played by Giancarlo Esposito), prosecuted for an affair with a vestal virgin by Publius Clodius Pulcher - here Clodius Pulcher as played by Shia Labeouf - and accused of killing his wife in order to marry Aurelia Orestilla, the daughter of the consol (who has been merged with Cicero to create Julia Cicero, the Mayor's daughter, as played by Nathalie Emmanuel). All this happens in the film.

The real historical Catalina, of course, was the mastermind behind the Catalinarian Conspiracy, an attempt to overthrow Cicero and Hybrida and seize power. In the first of many changes, Coppola changes this to make Clodius the leader of the plot and Cesar Catalina innocent. While the historical Crassus uncovered the plot and told the Senate, Jon Voight's Hamilton Crassus is betrayed by his unfaithful trophy wife (clearly a reference to Tertulla) and Clodius in a 'Dallas' spoof sideplot, but eventually gets the upper hand and backs Catalina with his wealth.

At this point we should address the elephant in the room. In 'Megalopolis: A Fable', Cesar Catalina is an architect who wishes to build a new shining city, the titular Megapolis, using a revolutionary new metal he has developed, Megalon. This makes startling sense when you realise Coppola has long dreamed of adapting Ayn Rand's 'The Fountainhead'. Cesar is clearly intended to be a mix of Howard Roark and Henry Rearden from Rand's 'Atlas Shrugged', a visionary steelmaker who has developed 'Rearden Metal'.

However, Megalon may have a dark secret - Mayor Cicero says it's rumoured he used his dead wife's body to manufacture the metal. While the introduction of this rumour is cack-handed (Cicero just whispers it to Cesar at an event), it's at least an intriguing take based on a real historical rumour. This in combination with the source material - a scheming politician who launches a coup - might make you wonder if Coppola is playing Sympathy for the Devil here and will reveal Cesar as a villain protagonist (as far as I can tell, he doesn't intend this).

Cesar also has the ability to stop time. Very literally; he can talk to Time (capital T) and tell it to do things. The first scene of the film - which may be Cesar attempting suicide or testing this power for the same time - sees Driver's character on the roof of the Chrysler Building, teetering on the edge. As he begins to tip forward, he intones 'Time: stop!' and finds his body hovering in mid-air, allowing him to cautiously wuxia-float his way back onto the building (remember this).

This may all sound rather Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, but never fear - this power, which seems like it should be the metaphorical crux of the entire film (timestop as a metaphor for stagnation in a dying empire?), is largely irrelevant other than leading Julia to investigate him and then join his agency.

Oh yes, that's another thing that radically alters the dynamic from a hypothetical Francis Ford Coppola's Fountainhead; Cesar isn't a private architect but the head of a government agency, the Design Authority. We aren't told how he came into this role but he begins the film with his own staff, security, and lavish office, which makes him feel like much less of an underdog.

Cesar's Design Authority is pulling down slum buildings to replace them with his utopian Megalon developments - the plot can't quite decide whether he's doing this inside the law, but the result seems to be people forced onto the street - a clear nod, you might think, towards gentrification, although later plot points make this murkier.

Julia sees Cesar using his time stop ability during a demolition, seemingly to judge whether the collapse is safe (though what he would be able to do if it wasn't is unclear). Frustratingly we never see what this looks like to 'normal' people; Julia is the only person other than him to be able to manipulate time and we only ever see it from one of their perspectives. More on this later.

Esposito's Mayor Cicero is initially introduced as a hollow populist, who wants to use the demolished plots of land for crowd-pleasing moneymakers such as a casino. He shows off a slick model of the proposed pleasure palace, which seems to get the approval of the gathered journalists. Cesar, meanwhile, gives a philosophical speech urging grander ambitions ("Don't let the present get in the way of forever!") and offers to go through his design documents. I'm uncertain whether we are supposed to understand this to be what it looks like - that Cesar does not have people skills and finds it hard to communicate his genius - because Driver is given all sorts of quippy Tony Stark-like lines and business as he arrives to the meeting and otherwise reads as charming and personable.

This scene includes one of the most sophomoric film-school student lines in the film. When Cicero menacingly brings up Cesar's wife's death, he says: "Well, as you were the prosecutor in that case, you know I was found not guilty."

At this point Cesar is involved with Plaza's journalist femme fatale (name, I kid you not, 'Wow Platinum') but - I'm unsure whether we actually see them break up on screen - she falls for billionaire Crassus and Cesar becomes involved with Julia who, after mentioning she saw him stop time, receives work with his agency (much to her father's chagrin).

Before it's fully established that she has fallen for him, she follows him and sees him buy flowers and visit what I think is supposed to be his wife's home; we see him place them by her bedside and stroke her hair - she seems to be comatose rather than dead, but when Julia sees the same scene Cesar is alone, seemingly hallucinating. Julia somehow knows Cesar is hallucinating his wife and whispers "He still loves her!". This is one of many elements of 'Megalopolis' that make me think that despite being a self-funded auteur project, the narrative was muddled in the edit and a more coherent through-line must have existed at some point. If this scene came after Julia and Cesar were an item, it might have some emotional weight.

The chapters of the films are introduced with narration by Lawrence Fishburne, serving as Cesar's faithful chauffeur (an element that, perhaps, lets on that Coppola has been pitching this film for fifty years). The 'Bread and Circuses' chapter sees a lavish wedding for Crassus and Wow (sic.), with a Ben Hur-style chariot race and Pro Wrestling-themed gladiators. The effeminate villain Clodius appears, crossdressing after the style of the historical Caligula.

In a scene clearly intended to take aim at religious right virginity pledges, a 'vestal virgin' pop star is used to raise money by encouraging the wealthy to financially 'support' her pledge of virginity. However, as the bidding reaches 100 billion, Clodius bribes the AV technician to display on the jumbotron (!) a sex tape of the 'virgin' and Cesar, resulting in a scandal.

In a sequence clearly inspired by Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis', an intoxicated Cesar - presumably having seen the jumbotron but it's not entirely clear - hallucinates his arms moving in the shape of a clock. I initially thought this whole sequence (intercut with a gymnastic display which appears to go wrong) was intended to represent the aghast Cesar's powers going out of control and causing mayhem, but that doesn't seem to be the case. Instead his limo is stopped by police and he is arrested for corrupting a minor and statutory rape - a genuinely bold choice of peril for a protagonist and one I don't think would fly in any major studio production post-Harvey Weinstein!

Julia is oddly certain he must be innocent - again, the two are not clearly an item at this point; he's her boss - and investigates, finding that VanderWaal's vestal virgin's birth certificate was fabricated and she was in fact born out of the country six years earlier, meaning she was 23 at the time of the tape, not 17. Interestingly, in the newspaper montage showing Cesar being cleared, a voiceover also mentions the footage was found to be edited and fradulent, begging the question of why the birth certificate was even important - I can only think this VO was added after principal photography and originally the character did sleep with a girl he believed to be underage.

Again, an odd scene order - after being cleared, Julia finds a distraught Cesar on top of an under-construction building (what this is is unclear as none of his Megalon buildings use girders like this but it's a repeated location - put a pin in that). He has lost his confidence in his ability to command time and she coaxes him into regaining his mojo; he is able to stop time again with the formula 'For the sake of Julia, Time, please stop'. Again, this feels like it should have more narrative weight than it does; he 'loses' his powers for all of one scene and it doesn't impact his career or plans. It also feels like it should have come before the formal resolution of his legal woes. The hero losing his supernatural powers at the start of the second act and needing either to regain his confidence to use them or learning he must not rely on them is a well-worn superhero trope and it almost feels like Coppola felt compelled to include it since he had a super-powered protagonist but didn't understand or care to put it to any more significant use.

I forget where the scene takes place where he meets Wow again; she attempts to seduce him and offers him Crassus's bank, which she says she will steal away from him. He rebuffs her and in one of the worst pieces of professionally produced cinema I have ever seen, we fade to and from a closeup of the car's wheel driving over the coat he gives her. It wasn't even necessary to cut in - the coat is clearly visible and the audience expects the action from the way she throws it down - and the cut is executed horribly; it genuinely feels like a mistake, like a misplaced clip in Final Cut Pro.

Shortly thereafter, Cesar is approached by a young boy who asks him to sign an autograph. Utterly bafflingly, Nathalie Emmanuel is given the line of dialogue 'Cesar would never say no to a child'. This is a couple of scenes after he is accused of statutory rape; if it was meant to be delivered with wry humour, no-one told Emmanuel. In any case, the child shoots him in the face, having been revealed as an agent of Clodius.

We then get an abstract montage of what may be Cesar's dying hallucinations, with the repeated refrain (I think I remember this correctly:) "I will not give death dominion over my thoughts". It would not be unreasonable for one of the following to happen:

a.) Somehow Cesar is able to not just stop time but reverse it. We see a flower shrinking back into a bud and I was fully expecting to see the clip of his blood flowing on the street reversing. He has regained his powers and now has new incredible mastery. Or:

b.) The damage to his brain means Cesar cannot use his powers. Julia must step in and make the leap of faith - Cesar is injured now but was not so in the past. 'Time: Heal all wounds!').

Neither of these happen.

Instead, we see snippets of what seems to be a mostly cut scene where Julia and the scientist character replace the missing portions of Cesar's skull and brain with Megalon. This seems to be a triumphant return and we see him awake, bandaged but cogent.

In the next scenes, a slurring and seemingly brain-damaged, still bandaged Cesar who repeatedly shouts "No, no, no!" for some reason forces his way into Crassus's mansion to find out why the billionaire's bank has frozen his accounts. This is revealed to be a scheme of Wow at the behest of Clodius. She once again attempts to seduce Cesar (even after he reveals his horrific transparent gold skull-face) but is forced to stop when Crassus arrives.

After this, Wow turns her seductive attentions to Lebeouf's Clodius and persuades him to get Voight's character to sign over control of the bank in a rather shoddy bathhouse scene that I think is intended to show Crassus having a heart attack and aides rushing to his rescue, but which I initially believed showed him being stabbed by Clodius's accomplices. When Wow seduces Clodius she cuts his hair (something Crassus told Clodius to do) in silhouette which should clue you in she's playing the role of Delilah.

At this point we should mention that Clodius has his own sub-plot where he has been repeatedly seen trying to build cred among the mob protesting Cesar's project. The mob is, I would guess, the ultimate antagonist of the film, and Coppola is strikingly loose with his real-world targets here. The mob resembles Black Lives Matter and anti-gentrification protesters and Clodius says they are 'immigrants' whose vote can be bought; they carry SPQR flags that resemble the hammer and sickle; their slogans suggest far-left sympathies; but Clodius gives a literal stump speech on a tree stump which has been cut into the shape of a swastika (real subtle there) and his minion now has a forehead tattoo of the Black Sun, a real-world fascist symbol (I think he also said something along the lines of 'We will make New Rome great again', though I may be misremembering). You might be tempted to think that, given his historical intrigue with Rand's Objectivism, Coppola views the masses as generically 'collectivist', subsuming fascism and communism. If so, Cataline is a bizarre choice for a hero, as in the real world it was he who whipped up a mob to attack the Roman Senate, and Caesar who led the 'populists', while Cicero favoured the optimates (aristocracy). We'll talk more later about Cesar Catalina's philosophy, such as it is, in 'Megalopolis'.

As New Rome collapses in riots, Crassus, who is revealed to be less senile than previously suggested, confronts his wife and nephew in an absolutely hilarious scene where he lifts his suggestively tented blanket to reveal a tiny bow and arrow, which he uses to kill first Wow in a comedic spout of blood and then repeatedly plink a fleeing Clodius in the backside with arrows; each time it cuts back to Crassus he has another arrow (barely) drawn with no indication where they are coming from, like a YouTube Poop. I think, generously, this was meant to be slapstick comedy, even if the context is very dark (aging billionaire murders his cheating wife).

Mayor Cicero semi-reconciles with his daughter (who has since had Cesar's child) on the train as they are evacuated for their safety.

In the climax - I feel sure it's the climax - of the movie, the mob gathers at the gates of Megalopolis, but an apparently fully healed Cesar appears, projected on the golden leaves of his utopian city, and addresses them. The speech is every bit as dense, philosophical, and frankly unrousing as his opening debate, but this time it wins the crowd around and suddenly they are no longer the collectivist menace but the upstanding majority who are now delighted to live in his city as the gates open.

Crassus declares he is throwing his entire wealth (and 'the patents to Megalon', which I guess he somehow acquired when the bank froze Cesar's funds) behind the project, so all's well that ends well? The mob turn on Clodius when they find out 'he owns the bank' (except that no, we've just established he doesn't) and shockingly string him and his henchman up, Mussolini-style; while the camera cuts away quickly it's pretty clear they have stoned him to death.

As New Year dawns, Cesar persuades Julia to try stopping time herself for the first time. She does so, but surprisingly *everyone* freezes except the baby, who has clearly also inherited the power. The End. Someone in the row behind me chuckled.

To be clear, this lends the plot a degree of cogency you simply don't get in the theatre. It's clear to me much of the movie ended up on the cutting room floor - there are fully acted, costumed scenes with different dialogue that appear in the facets of the Megalon crystal as Cesar works but are not in the movie. I think the order of scenes may have been dramatically changed and possibly the ending altered, which is why Driver's character appears fully healed without explanation but only as a projection in the final speech.

The central conceit, time stop, is not used except indirectly as something one character sees to make her intrigued in Cesar, and later as evidence that he has his confidence back after a single scene where he can't use it. Losing it doesn't set back his plans and we barely get a sense of how he uses it in his work normally. An architect who literally has all the time in the world is an intriguing concept and one could easily imagine eyecatching scenes where buildings seem to erect themselves in a blink of an eye, or where from the perspective of a normal human he flashes around a room, drawing up plans and blueprints at seemingly superhuman speed. Indeed, I was fully expecting at least one scene where Driver appears where he shouldn't be, revealing he has been listening in on a conversation or confronting someone in a secure location, because he can stop time to get into any location or do anything.

But we don't see this - we don't even, unless I missed it, get a line like 'Cesar always finishes his projects ahead of schedule - what's his secret?'. Time stop also doesn't work consistently; the first time we see it, Cesar's own body is part of the timestop; he can seemingly think in normal time but his body is suspended on the brink of falling. But later, it's clear that people who use timestop move normally and are affected by gravity (when Julia drops her purse on the girder it slows and stops when it gets a certain distance from her).

The secondary conceit, Megalon, is barely defined. It's a miracle metal that allows things like flowing moving walkways and roofs that fold in like flower petals when it rains. It also bonds with living cells and is eventually replaced with healthy tissue. It sometimes reflects his wife's face, and in the medical montage I think they put some of the wife's hair into the implant, which suggests to me Megalon *is* partially a ghoulish necromantic substance that harnesses his wife's unquiet spirit - but incredibly this isn't addressed in the final narrative other than a dreamlike sequence where he hears his wife telling him 'Go to her', apparently permission for him to move on. Again, it feels like a late-era MCU production cut to hell by studio interference - except there's no studio.

There's also an ambiguous line where Mayor Cicero seems to admit *he*, not Cesar, killed her - I think the intent of this line is he is willing to publicly admit he tampered with evidence to convict Cesar if Cesar breaks up with his daughter. Cesar later tells Julia his wife killed herself because of his obsessive focus on work and we have no reason to doubt him.

It's all such a weird missed opportunity - clearly you're meant to initially wonder if Cesar did kill his wife. There's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it newspaper headline that says the death was a 'Hitchcockian mystery' - which suggests a locked-room murder. Now, who can enter a room, kill someone, and leave to have an alibi elsewhere, all in the blink of an eye? Surely, surely this was intended to be explored at some point; less Chekhov's gun being visible over the fireplace and more being shoved up your nostril in the first act.

The tertiary conceit - New Rome itself - is intriguing as a stylistic choice. It's overtly a fable so it would seem churlish to ask how this Roman city-state exists in a world where both the USA (of which it's seemingly a part) and USSR existed. The limits of the budget are visible in the lack of stylisation in some areas (extras' costumes, cars, offices) but I didn't find it too offensive. I did notice that the architecture we see associated with Cesar early in the film is clearly Art Deco, but the Megalon structures later in the film are postmodern sweeping leaf-life structures, as though Coppola changed his mind about what the future looks like some time in the fifty years since first conceiving the movie.

The central conflict of the film is thornier. You might assume that Cicero represents populist, 'need'-based politics ("People need help now," the mayor says, objecting to Cesar's grand vision of a better city), while Cesar is a Randian rugged individualist, except that's not quite what we're shown in the final cut.

The Mayor's character isn't consistent - by the midway point he's become a law and order figure while the sleazy collectivist mantle has been passed to Clodius and the anti-gentrification rioters. And Cesar being a government official mixes the message on 'lone genius architect' - where we do get an insight into the philosophy of Cesar Catalina, it's also not especially Randian. The character talks repeatedly about the need for 'debate' - that even starting to talk about what we should do, or agreeing that we should talk, is already utopia. He responds to the Mayor by suggesting that 'people's futures' are as important as their present. I also think at one point he says civilisation was a mistake, which is a startling remark from a protagonist but which seems to be something Coppola has floated in real life (seemingly believing there was a utopian matriarchy before history). So at best I think you can argue he takes a broadly long-term-self-interest rationalist view and is being contrasted with the short-term populist Mayor and the short-term instant-gratification rioters.

He also briefly (as in, a single line) advocates for debt nullification, which was a position of the real Cataline, but which doesn't really seem to gel with anything else in the movie - we never get the sense that Cesar hates Crassus lending money and aren't shown the effects of usury on the people.

The cast of actors - including John Voight, and DB Sweeney who starred in the ill-fated Atlas Shrugged adaptation - makes me think it was sold as a rightish-wing endeavour, but I can't imagine the apparent both-sidesism on display will satiate red-blooded culture war types.

Certain aspects of the film also felt quite dated - the use of sapphism to shock and titilate (and the curious line where Cesar, challenged by a gossip columnist to confirm he prefers women, insists 'Everyone prefers women. Even women prefer women'); contrasted with the effete, crossdressing villain Clodius.

What's most striking (I said it was the salient word) about 'Megalopolis' is how much potential each element has relative to how it's actually used on-screen. Some of this is the tight budget constraints necessitated by Coppola burning through his own money to fund the film - the SFX were generally decent though I noticed at least one truly shoddy effect where characters walk into an idyllic field which is clearly a separate plate, and their bodies are sliding left-to-right as though walking on ice.

How might I re-imagine 'Megalopolis'? Keeping most of the beats and trying to refine the message rather than changing it:

- Cesar as a private architect, not a government agency. Put Crassus in the role of a Gail Wynand; a wealthy man and potential patron.

- Cesar has built a reputation as the man who always has time - he finishes every project ahead of schedule and under budget; his demolitions always proceed flawlessly and his staff have no idea how he does it.

- The Mayor champions sweetheart deals with contractors for cheap, trashy buildings that will fall down in thirty years (this might have been in the script at some point as Cesar calls him a 'slum lord') while Cesar wants to use Megalon to create an Art Deco utopian development.

- Julia sees Cesar stop time and he offers her a job. He demonstrates how when his staff see him flash around at super-speed he is really doing all the laborious work of drawing up plans in real time, totally alone as he previously had no-one who could do what he did.

- The press casts doubt on Megalon, with the unions pushing for proven materials like concrete and steel. A ghastly rumour emerges that Megalon contains human DNA. Cesar gives a speech, asking what would happen if the first architects using steel had faced the same resistance. What about fire?

- Julia proves her worth by securing a contract for Cesar to redevelop a large slum after a devastating fire, elbowing out her father's friends who want to use the same cheap cladding that caused the fire in the first place (anticipates and deflects viewer criticism about safety).

- Romance develops with Julia and Cesar. Scenes where they go out into the city and stop time together. Julia is pregnant.

- Clodius undermines Cesar by throwing red tape in his way. Cesar appears in his home and confronts him, showing a sinister edge, but ultimately leaves. Clodius uses this to deduce Cesar's time powers.

- Crassus's wedding is a huge event with (as in the film), chariot races and gladiatorial games. Cesar, Mayor Cicero, Julia and Clodius all attend.

- Instead of the vestal virgin scandal, Cesar is publicly accused of killing his first wife and the shock causes him to lose his control over time, causing chaos throughout the city. Unable to continue his work he locks himself away in his office.

- Time is frozen throughout the city; Cesar is subconsciously holding everything together so it doesn't change or decay (timestop as metaphor for stagnation!). Time only passes for objects if someone is holding them and if you drop them they freeze in place. If someone dies they freeze in place. We see how the city is surviving in this odd apocalypse.

- Julia investigates with a more murder-mystery focus - it's a locked-room murder and Cesar has an ironclad alibi, but a time manipulator could easily make it happen.

- She keeps digging however and a financial motive emerges for Clodius. She confronts Crassus who admits he covered up for his nephew; everything that looked supernatural about the death was possible with enough money. Facing disgrace he throws himself from the top of his skyscraper and his body freezes on the point of impact.

- Julia finds Cesar who tells her he did use his wife's body to create Megalon but insists that he found her dead. Why? Because love holds everything together (we're leaning into the cheese; amazingly I don't think they try to explain this in the real movie). Having expiated himself, Time once again hears his entreaties and begins flowing normally ("You can move on").

- Julia and Cesar brave the streets to reach the Mayor to clear his name and a mugger shoots Cesar. However, with his new mastery, he is able with a 'kick start' from Julia to turn back time and repair his own damaged brain.

- Mayor Cicero is reconciled to his daughter and meets his granddaughter for the first time.

- Clodius learns of his uncle's death and, blaming Cesar, whips up a mob to storm the construction site, but in a flash of an eye the city is completed before them as Cesar's expanded powers let him include entire construction crews in his timestop.

- Cesar emerges and gives a speech; reflecting that every one of them wanted someone else to provide for them but were ready to use violence to take what wasn't theirs, trusting there existed someone who was willing to be robbed; the city is complete, but none of them will live in it. 'Others, who saw and believed, will come, and they are welcome'.

- Clodius and his most devoted followers attack but the city itself folds in to protect Cesar, showing his wife's spirit in the metal recognises her murderer, and Clodius sinks into the ground.

- New Year's, magic baby, yada yada.

[thatguythatdrawsalot]

You’re No Better.

Okay but what if they confronted the people they’ve hurt/impacted the most? If you got better dialogue or alternatives for this scene let me know! This is just my version, wish I had Adam say more about how Blake just screwed around partying with FNKI than help the Faunus in ATLAS of all places!

Also… yeah I wish maybe RWBY faced WTCH but that would require a full rewrite to make sense. Heaven forbid the main villains interact with the main heroes.

[pinkytoothlesso11]

Hello! Newer to the fandom, but recently I’ve been reading a ton of fanfics and have seen a lot of Jim centric fanfics but was wondering if you knew of any Claire centric ones or ones where she has more povs?

Hi anon! Welcome to the fandom! Sorry for my belated reply, but I know of several fics where Claire gets a decent amount of attention:

I'd recommend most of @avirxy's fics, since almost all of them have Claire as the main, or one of the most focused on characters, most especially:

Tear Me in Two (The Moonlight will Anyway) This is basically a monster Hunter AU with werewolf Claire, very angsty but very original.

First Frost This one has Trollhunter! Claire as well as her being a type of Half troll that changes forms based on changes in weather. Mostly Claire POV.

False as it Can Be A gender swap beauty and the beast with Claire as the beast. My favourite so far!

Trollhunter! Claire AU's:

Claire the Courageous, Part I Haven't read this one, but it's another Trollhunter! Claire AU that is also a bit of a role swap. Unfortunately left orphaned, but it seems popular.

Claire the Kind Another Trollhunter! Claire fic that's pretty popular, and has Claire as a main character.

Alternate Universes

Atlas, Fallen Haven't read it, but it's about evenly split between Claire and Jim as main characters, where Jim is a fallen star.

Both Sides of the Sky Regency AU set in the medieval times, definitely Claire focused.

Friendship, Family, and Other Foreign Concepts Missing scene esque oneshot with focus on Claire and NotEnrique's relationship.

That's most of the good and popular fics that focus on Claire more so than Jim. I'm honestly surprised that there aren't so many Claire focused fics... Considering she's in a lot of fics in general. Hopefully you'll like some of these!

[razorblade180]

Hot Take: If Adam's character wasn't so split between being a toxic lover and a spiteful extremist, but rather focused on one over the other, he'd be several degrees better as a character. Like imagine if in the final showdown with Blake, he said "I didn't pursue you in Forever Falls, I let you leave at the Fall of Beacon. You proceeded to meddle in all my plans afterwards and ruin them all. And for all your preaching about "letting go for my own sake" you seemed to be awful quick to mobilize Menagerie against me. So this time I'll make sure you won't be capable of meddling." rather than centering it on his desire to control her. Alternatively, make his entire arc be about wanting to seize control over her. When Blake describes him at first, have her specifically mention he always wanted control and just pretended to want equality. Give us scenes of him gazing at a picture of Blake, rather than that whole "What about her" when he was told she was at Beacon in V3. Hell make him that much more of a creep with her if his character's gonna be about his obsession to her - he controls a good chunk of the White Fang, have him send people to look for her rather than the plot where he kills off Sienna. He'd be more menacing if the WF Lieutenant mentions she's to be brought alive. If he ignores the students and Atlas Soldiers to search for Blake, and his appearance is him calling out to her rather than just kind of killing random people before she stops him, that'd get the "obsessive ex" angle much better off.

I do and also don’t agree. Personally I think they shouldn’t have made him a toxic ex or have a romantically implied relationship with Blake at all.

For starters, it doesn’t do anything when the point and conflict of Blake’s story was fighting racism. Second, Rooster Teeth never took the time to make a comprehensive timeline of when certain events happened and the ages of the characters; so it always going to be a recipe for disaster for fandom and perception unless has always been no more than a year older than Blake.

Part of what attracted me to RWBY in the beginning was how it felt like they took a few tropes and flipped it on its head enough to be different but address important messages. If they wanted to add themes of toxic relationships, domestic abuse, and important, Cinder’s treatment of Emerald was right there. Not to mention Willow and even Tai could’ve been used. Giving that situation to Adam and Blake just feels like a waste when there’s more compelling drama with a conflict of differing ideologies and perspectives.

[jumpywhumpywriter]

Assassin Rescues Prisoner from Target's house part 6

TW: blood, intense torture, recovery, pain, death, assassination, severe whump, etc.

CONTINUED:

Okay, I had another burst of inspiration so I decided to write even MORE! Muahaha. This is kind of a summary of what happens leading up to a different scene I wrote.--

Two months passed, until Atlas was comfortably walking again on his own without assistance. His real personality started shining through, no longer the cowering boy he used to be, on the brink of death.

Jax had planned to let him go once he was healed... but the kid had grown on him, filling some hollow void of emptiness in him. Fixing a broken part of his soul from when his apprentice had died. He eventually decided to train Atlas, give him skills that would help him defend himself in the future. Teaching him how to hold assassin blades, throw knives. Their friendship strengthened, and eventually they made two formidable opponents.

Jax even trusted him enough to let him tag along on a few smaller missions, as they worked together to take down the lesser evil men tied to Target who had tortured Atlas for so long. He was determined to exterminate everyone who even remotely had a part in the pain Atlas had endured, hunting them down one by one, driven by anger.

Which led him to today, where he and Atlas had tracked down the last man directly associated with Target. Their blades were already slick with the blood of guards they'd killed to gain access to the building their new target was hiding in -- named Markus.

They split up and scouted out the entire building, but there was no sign of Markus anywhere. They met back up in the parking garage... which is when it all went wrong.

Jax and Atlas stood discussing alternative plans, when a single gunshot rang out -- followed by a cry of pain from Jax, who stumbled to the side, clutching at his ribs. Atlas whirled around, blades at the ready, and saw a tall man emerge from behind a parked car, gun still smoking as he kept it aimed at Jax, singling him out as the greater threat.

The man's eyes lit up with sheer delight upon seeing Atlas, and a vicious smile broke out across his face. "Why hello again, Atlas. Fancy meeting you here," the man laughed. It was Marcus himself.

Jax glanced between the two of them from where he stood holding his injury, confusion clouding his gaze. "Do you know him?" He asked Atlas, who had gone still as a statue, face ghostly pale, looking a lot like a deer in headlights.

Marcus tilted his head to the side, cruel amusement dancing in his eyes. "Well, Atlas? Aren't you going to tell him who I am?" He mocked with another cruel laugh.

Jax fumbled out a throwing blade, ready to let it fly, but almost faster than the human eye could track Marcus re-aimed and fired another bullet that grazed Jax's hand, making him drop the knife with a gasp. Marcus's aim was frighteningly accurate.

"If you're not going to tell your friend, I will," Marcus sneered at Atlas. Atlas's eyes were huge as his mouth opened and close, as he tried to speak but couldn't find the words.

Marcus kept his gun trained on Jax as he stalked over to him, and to Jax's surprise... Atlas backed away, raw terror filling his eyes.

Jax barely had time to register it before another deafening bang echoed around the room, and a white-hot streak of agony tore through his thigh, eliciting a scream from him as he fell to one knee.

Marcus closed the rest of the distance between them and shoved Jax hard down to the floor flat on his back, before pinning him down with a knee on his chest.

Jax went for the dual blades sheathed at his hips but Marcus was faster, dropping the gun and whipping them out, holding them tauntingly out of Jax's reach.

Jax's eyes flicked over to Atlas, who still stood rigid and still, not intervening. He couldn't understand it. Atlas had proved himself to be a superior fighter thanks to Jax's training, so why was he frozen? Why wasn't he saving him?

Marcus roughly grabbed Jax's jaw and forced him to look up into his menacing face. "Poor Atlas over there is probably having some serious flashbacks to his time in captivity," he chuckled darkly. "Because while Target was the one who owned him... I was the one who got the fun of torturing him."

The news hit Jax like a truck. So this was the man who had beaten Atlas to within an inch of his life, crippling him over and over again... who had caused him so much suffering. Anger bubbled up in Jax, and he clawed at Marcus, who only laughed at his futile efforts, leaning more of his weight onto Jax's chest until his breathing was strained.

Jax glared daggers up at the menace holding him down, longing to shred that smug smile from Marcus's cursed face. But Marcus only chuckled in amusement at his useless attempts to wriggle free. Then he flipped Jax's dagger skillfully around in his hand, and Jax's eyes went wide as he rested the sharp edge against his ribs.

"Allow me to show you exactly what Atlas went through during our fun sessions together, you pathetic assassin," Marcus hissed venomously, and without warning, he dug the blade in hard, hard enough to easily slice through Jax's assassin leather suit and into the flesh beneath.

Jax writhed beneath him, shouting and cursing angrily, but he couldn't budge Marcus off of him. Marcus had the advantage.

Atlas flinched at every scream that left Jax's mouth, but he was frozen, physically paralyzed with raw fear as he watched Marcus tear into Jax in the same way he had once attacked Atlas. The vivid memories blasted into him, the horrible pain he had endured in captivity. The same pain that Jax was now going through.

Marcus ignored Jax's cries as he opened long gashes along each of the assassin's ribs, staining the floor red with blood as Jax thrashed and spasmed, desperate to escape the agony.

Another shrieking scream tore loose from his chest as Marcus suddenly plunged the blade deep into his gut, so deep it punched clean through him. He was slowly killing Jax, killing him in front of Atlas... and Atlas was too petrified to stop it, reliving memories over and over again...

But Jax... he had to save Jax. The fuzzy thought managed to push through his terrified mind. He had to face his greatest fear and trauma, face Marcus. Steeling himself, Atlas drew his assassin's blade with a shaky breath, his chest tight with fear. And then -- he lunged. In the blink of an eye he was at Marcus's side, whose eyes went wide with surprise.

Marcus had expected Atlas to be too scared of him to intervene -- a fatal assumption. With an anguished cry, Atlas thrust his blade straight into Marcus's throat, and blood sprayed from his mouth. He fell off of Jax, gurgling and scrabbling hopelessly at the blade protruding from his neck in horror. It only lasted a minute before he keeled over, seizing, and then fell still.

Atlas was stunned, he couldn't pry his eyes off Marcus's limp form. He'd really done it. The man who had tormented him for so long was finally dead... Then a quiet groan snapped his attention to Jax, and he dropped down next to his bleeding mentor.

"I'm so sorry, sir! I'm so sorry I let this happen!" Atlas cried, panicked.

"How many times... do I have to tell you... you don't have to call me... 'sir'..." Jax wheezed weakly, smiling even as blood filled his lungs. "You're free... you don't have to follow those rules anymore..." He coughed, blood snaking from the corner of his mouth.

"W-What do I do? How do I help?" Atlas said frantically, pressing on one of the largest of Jax's wounds in a desperate effort to stop the gushing flow of blood.

Jax's smile wobbled, then fell away. The agony spearing his body was unbearable, his strength fading more with each passing second. "There's nothing you can do, kid... I'm sorry..."

"NO!" Atlas shouted, so at odds with his shy personality. "Don't talk like that! You CAN'T die on me! I won't let it happen!" His voice cracked helplessly, and Jax gave him a knowing look.

"Pretty sure... it's not up to you..." He rasped, a final effort at humor. He choked on blood, drowning in it.

"Thank you... Thank you for everything," Atlas blurted. He pulled Jax close, sobbing into his mentor's bloody shoulder and whispering his goodbyes as Jax took one final breath... and let it out with one last shudder, before going limp. A welcome reprieve from the agony he'd been in, as he let the darkness carry his pain away... giving in to the eternal peace that awaited him.

--THE BITTER END.

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[xxsicko-skeletonsxx]

Since I’ve hit 100+ followers here’s a proper intro post!!

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