#because he cant stand to see his son outshining him

[nonemourn]

actively watching shrek the musical and when the magic mirror asks if he wishes to invite his father (who, by the way, is Grumpy. of snow white fame. you can tell.) to his wedding to fiona, :

F: “My what?” M: “Well your - your father, my liege.” F: “You mean that horrible little man who tried to keep me down my whole life? That mal-tempered monster, that vile grunt who abandoned me in the woods as a child?” M: “Well, he did have his reasons -” F: “Mirror, please. My father simply couldn’t accept that I wanted nothing to do with the family business. That lowly, dirty family business.”

and goes on into a whole song about his daddy issues. full of jokes of course, the farquaad and his father stuff is all largely played for laughs. but you can really tell how much that affected him growing up and how that kind of thing can manifest in negative ways into your adulthood when you can't properly process it or work through it. especially when, like the mirror, people outside of it often want to try and turn the blame on the neglected child and not the neglectful adult. what reason does a father have for abandoning his child? for being distant? especially after the death of his mother? a vulnerable child who needs extra support to work through a difficult time, completely shut out and ignored by someone who is meant to care for them? he's left to fend for himself mostly, he's left to process the loss of a parent alone. he's then left to process the loss of the other as well - a father who barely muttered a single word to him aside from 'heigh ho' before going off to work. of course he has trouble with his emotions and he's got all this rage that boils within him - which is only supported by his father being a constantly angry grump, that only adds fuel to the fire. and while he does feel a grand sense of pride that he's managed to grow up and out of the squalor he was raised in - he's the lord of duloc, his father is still sleeping seven to a bed and working day in and out in the mines - it also still feels like his entire sense of self was built on wanting to prove a point to his father rather than true self fulfillment. does he even really know what he desires? he's just driven by wanting to be bigger than his father and doing whatever is necessary to get there. he's lord of duloc - whats next? being king, i guess. but then what comes after that? whats the end goal? he struggles finding a true identity outside of doing it all for spite. he was still going to marry fiona after the reveal that she's one of those 'horrid fairytale creatures' just to become king and then lock her away! in his ambition to get to the top and send the ultimate 'fuck you' message to his father, he kind of winds up becoming just as bad, if not worse than him. because locking your wife away is just as bad as accidentally being the reason the princess you were married to dies and then internalizing your guilt and shutting your son out. anyways idk where this ramble was going but like farquaad has layers brother, just like ogres and onions do, and maybe things would be different if his mom had lived or even if his father had been anyone but grumpy.

[baevillier]

I guess I was thinking Auston’s sister would be a little younger than 19...but his sister plays on a hockey team that does a few tournaments in the summer and Auston is bringing her and their coach can’t be there last minute so all of the parents ask Auston to coach it but his sister doesn’t like that he’s coaching and they get into a fight mid game

I get what you mean, but for the fact that she was flirting with all stars, I had to age her up because im not writing about a 16 year old flirting with dudes in their twenties. 

anyways i kind of went over bored with this.

When auston had come home to arizona for the summer, Y/N couldnt be more excited- she was going to finally get to play a few games with him in attendance. Of course it was only summer camp games and they didnt really count for anything, but she certainly loved having her NHL brother in the stands. That was until her coach had a family emergency and everyone turned towards Auston to coach. This was supposed to be her area. Her team. She had grown up loving hockey just the same as auston, but he was always the golden boy. So she was looking forward to showing off. But somehow even at HER game, Auston was getting the start treatment. Growling bitterly, Y/N was getting tired of Aston coaching- they had 10 minutes left in the third period and the team was down by two points. As she came onto the bench for a shift change, Auston directed his attention towards her. “You gotta get your head game in the Y/N- We can’t afford to lose this game because you keep getting penalties.” All y/n saw was red. “Are you kidding me? I know that WE cant afford to lose this game- but Youre not even our coach! youre a fill in so dont for a second think that its YOUR team!” she spit at him- a couple of the girls could see that she was getting angry. She always played harder when she was angry so this could work in their favour. “Dont make me pull you.” Auston threatened. Y/N scoffed. “Go ahead! Pull me! Make a big move Auston- because thats what the people want to see! They want to see the fantastic Auston matthew in action!” she growled under her breath. Once the game had ended, Y/N took her time in the locker room, apologizing to all the girls for her outburst, they brushed it off knowing how tough siblings can be, especially when they outshine you. Once Y/N had come out of the room with her bag, she glared at Auston and stomped past him- leaving for him to grab her arm.. “Hey what was that all about?” he asked. Shaking her head, the girl sighed. She didn't want to do this here- they drove home in complete silence and Auston watched as the girl ran up to her bedroom, slamming the door shut. Look towards his mum for help, Ema smiled softly at her son. “I heard that you coached the game and got into a fight with YN...” She sighed softly. Auston nodded and after his mum explained that his sister probably felt as though he was taking the spotlight away from her, he felt kind of shitty about it. Walking into her room, he sat down on the bed and ran his fingers through her hair. “Im sorry- i didn’t realize that I was taking away from something that you loved... i didnt think that people were going to be focusing more on me rather than how hard you and your team have worked this year- im sorry.” While Y/N truly appreciated his apology, it wasn’t like it changed things. People would always know her as Auston matthews’ little sister, not Y/N Matthews female hockey player. Not until she made it big just like him.

[goodlucktai]

a vermilion bird

summary: They represent all the virtues, Kaname thinks he remembers reading. Justice and kindness, loyalty and honesty. They won’t stand to be around a person found wanting. They won’t visit impure or unhappy places.

pairing: tanatsu

x

Kaname wakes up to a tapping on his bedroom window. When he lifts his head, groggily, and squints through the dark, it's to find Natsume's face peering at him from the other side of the glass. For a moment or two, Kaname is suspended uncomprehendingly in something of a liminal space – and then, a heartbeat later, he makes sense of what he's seeing and shoots upright, scrambling across the room.

“What are you doing here?” Kaname asks, once he's slid the window open and warm summer night air has had a chance to stretch its languid fingers inside. He's rubbing sleep from his eyes, more awake with every second, and the massive creature Natsume is riding on becomes less and less defined as he does. Still, Kaname says, “Hello, Ponta.”

Before the yokai can get a word in edgewise, Natsume says, “Come with me. I want to show you something.”

His tawny hair is tousled, and his face is chapped pink from flying too fast against the wind, and his clothes are more ruffled than Kaname's pajamas probably are – but his eyes are impossibly bright in the moonlight, and the curve of his smile is wide and infectious, and when he puts out his hand, Kaname takes it.

(When he puts out his hand, there's nothing else in the world Kaname can think of to do but take it.)

“Just let me get my shoes,” he says.

A flight up the mountain later, Kaname is running through the forest in the dark half of the morning. Ponta is a solid weight on his shoulder, and Natsume's pace is tireless.

“Her name is Suzaku,” Natsume tells him breathlessly. “We met her three days ago. Sensei and I accidentally stumbled across her while she was hiding.”

“Her kind conceal themselves during troubled times,” Ponta interjects, sly in a way that doesn't usually bode well. Out of his periphery, Kaname manages to catch the sharp look Natsume gives the fat calico. “She had sensed a coming disaster, and refused to be budged until Natsume agreed to help.”

“Sensei – “

“A disaster?” Kaname parrots back in disbelief. “What kind of disaster?” And what business did a high-schooler have stopping it?

“There was – um – it's a long story,” his friend says lamely, which really only means 'I did something reckless and it won't make you happy to hear about it.' “Ah, anyway – Suzaku is ready to leave now, but I convinced her to stay long enough for you to see her.”

Kaname swallows back a few biting words, and focuses for a moment on dodging a handful of thick tree roots that jut through the ground ahead. Natsume has gotten so good about telling him when these things happen that, subsequently, Kaname has gotten worse about letting it slide the few times he won't.

A happy equilibrium, Kaname thinks, with a wry sense of humor he has to work to make real. Whatever happened, he can afford to let it go. Natsume is still flesh and bone beside him, and his back was warm against Kaname's chest while they flew, and that uncertain sidelong glance of pretty amber eyes is as disarming as it ever was.

So he says, “Tell me about her.”

Natsume’s smile comes back with all the brilliance of a small star, nearly outshining the moon.

They’re surrounded on all sides by the flickering presence of ayakashi -- a multitude of eager and awed auras that feel a little bit like a crowd of excited children, straining keenly for a peek and knowing better than to press closer.

Kaname doesn’t blame them. 

He’s read about Suzaku’s kind before. 

They're the symbol of the Imperial household, and they were said to appear at the beginning of a new era. According to myth, seeing one was a sign of good fortune, and they used to be used to decorate the houses of upstanding people.  

But for all that Kaname knows a very little bit, he might as well know nothing, because there isn’t a text on Earth that could do Suzaku justice.

She stands as tall as Kaname’s waist, with a serpent-like neck and a crest of feathers on her head that resembles a diadem. Her plumage is a rich red wine color in the shadow of the trees and the heavy overhang of nighttime, and her long tail has a fork at the end like a fish.

She has a voice that Kaname can’t hear, and eyes like a bright summer sky.

“In the daylight, she shines,” Natsume tells him, and Kaname can only imagine. 

Hō-ō, as he learns that night, are beautiful. 

“She’s a brat yet by yokai standards, probably only a century old at most,” Ponta points out, but even he doesn’t sound as self-satisfied as he usually does. There’s something reverent, almost fond, in the way he adds, “Hō-ō seldom talk to mortals, so human speech is something they pick up slowly.” 

“She’s doing a good job,” Natsume protests, kneeling hardly an arms length away from her red talons and curved beak. She warbles at him, and cranes her neck to put them eye-to-eye. Grinning, Natsume adds, “She’s learned a lot in just the past few days. And she’s picked up a few words from sensei that I know her sisters won’t like.”

The phoenix supposedly represents all the virtues, Kaname thinks he remembers reading. Justice and kindness, loyalty and honesty. They won’t stand to be around a person found wanting. They won’t come to impure or unhappy places.

Kaname wonders what the Fujiwaras would say if he could tell them that a phoenix came to their house. It stayed in their foster son’s bedroom, and watched over him through the night while he slept. 

"She has to leave soon, Tanuma,” Natsume says, beckoning him closer. “Come say goodbye.”

It’s two o’clock in the morning, or something close to it, and a school night. Kaname is wearing track pants and a T-shirt, kneeling in thick forest litter halfway up the mountainside, barely a foot away from a legendary phoenix in the flesh. 

It’s a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see something otherwordly. Natsume gave him that. 

And so it’s ridiculous, he knows it is, that he spends most of this limited time in Suzaku’s presence looking at Natsume instead. 

They’re in less of a hurry on the way back, and with Suzaku gone Natsume’s energy begins to flag. His hands are woven into sensei’s thick fur, shoulders canted just a little into a tired slump now that he’s given up whatever mantle that fire-bird had given him.

Kaname wants to ask what the last three days were like. He wants to know what the Hō-ō needed from Natsume, wants to know if this constant worry that lives in the back of his mind is justified in rearing its head this time.

He can’t find the words. 

They’re halfway home when Natsume says softly, “I’m glad I got to show you. Thank you for coming with me.”

And there’s little else Kaname can do but lean forward. He lets go of Ponta with one hand and curls fingers into the back of Natsume’s sweatshirt and holds on. Natsume is quiet, and doesn’t say anything when Kaname’s forehead comes to rest against his shoulder. 

But he doesn’t pull away, either. And when they land in Kaname’s yard, to one side of the pond Kaname can’t see, Natsume slips slender fingers through Kaname’s and pulls him up short before he can so much as think of stepping away or saying goodnight. 

This close, the yokai fish are quicksilver reflections in his eyes. 

“You’re gonna be exhausted during class,” he says sheepishly. “I’m sorry for dragging you out of bed.” 

“Don’t be,” Kaname is quick to tell him. “I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.” 

(He can say it so easily because he knows it for the irrefutable truth. Given the choice between five minutes with Natsume and the whole world for the rest of his life, Kaname isn’t at all uncertain about which of the two he would take.)

Natsume’s expression is affectionate and inviting, his hand in Kaname’s squeezing tight -- and he’s brave in ways Kaname can’t begin to imagine, but in this, at least, Kaname has more courage. He leans in, and down, and kisses him. 

And it’s far more breathtaking than a thousand fiery phoenixes, far more remarkable than a thousand invisible fishponds, that Natsume leans up on the toes of his sneakers to kiss him back. 

[melanatedmoney]

“I’m Better”: Missy’s Black Girl Game of Thrones Survival Mantra

Missy Elliot released her video for her new single “I’m Better” two weeks ago, and while it may have over 9 million views on YouTube, folks have basically been silent about the visual. How, in the year 2017 are we still not giving Missy Elliot her props for these unparalleled, incomparable videos!?!!? In this time of presidential terrorism, political activism, and Game of Thrones – don’t worry, it will make sense later – I had to post my analysis of what I see as Missy’s mantra for Black girl survival.

The video starts with Missy front and center with a platoon of baddies with riot helmets on. The beat drops and is almost as looming as the Black girls in riot helmets, lighting up in tune. This imagery is so piercing. Riot helmets are worn when the cops are ready for battle with large groups of people. Often accompanied by bullet proof vests, shields, guns, and batons, we have seen these helmets much to frequently in the past few years as law enforcement interfaced with Black, Brown, and Indigenous political protesters resisting oppression and affirming their lives. This opening scene of “I’m Better” flips the scene. Black girls are ready for war but instead of full riot gear, you get cutoff sweatshirts and thick thighs. Thighs that remind you simultaneously that Black girls show up ready for war every day without riot gear, donning nothing but their beautiful skin, and of the way Black girls are seen as dangerous. Yet and still, we lit! The light in this opening scene comes mostly from the luminance of the riot helmets and we see only what Black girl lit-ness allows us to see. The entire time, Missy is in the center like a super saiyan, hittin’ every step along with the platoon of baddies.

In comes Lamb, the rapper on the hook that might not be too familiar to you, but whose production work I KNOW you’ve heard. From Beyonce’s “Countdown” to Jazmine Sullivan’s “Need U Bad”, Lamb has had several grammy noms as a producer. Much thanks to his mom, who gave him an MPC as a gift and he’s been making hits since. He’s also not new to working with Missy. What I find interesting about him being on the hook to Missy’s mantra for Black girl survival is that he is obviously here for Black girls musically. This is also his rap debut, meaning buzz around him won’t really outshine the Black girl survival in this video – no shade intended. He is merely the voice amplifying the Black girl lituation –  using his male privilege exactly how privilege should be used! He gives us Missy’s litany for survival:

“Imma start it from the bottom/ Show you how to flip a dollar/ I got food in my dining room/ I’m better, I’m better, I’m better”

And before he can finish the hook we cut to a scene of four Black girls – yall ready for this – HANGING and DANCING! That’s right! These four dancers are hanging from a harness, but on most cuts in the video they look as if they are lynched from red cloths, their hair tied up like trees atop their head. 

I have to admit, here is where I first started screaming “Fuck it up MISSY!” at my screen. Missy Elliott had Black girls, hanging, but surviving. The four of them showing survival in a way black girls always have – dancing their asses off! While the scene is an eerie reminder that Black women too were lynched in America, it also shows a resistance and refusal to die. With Lamb’s “I’m better, I’m better, I’m better” being chanted in the background, you cant help but think about all the hardships Black women have survived, and are continuing to heal from. ‘Better’ also makes the healing active and ongoing – it implies that better is a process composed of all the little moments we heal. The hook continues:

“ It's another day, another chance / I wake up, I wanna dance / So as long as I got my friends.../I'm better, I'm better, I'm better”

Okay yall, here’s where I become the nerdiest Black girl millennial of all time: I legit think Missy is making Game of Thrones references in the rest of the video. I know, I know… you’re probably thinking “get the fuck outta here!” But is it so hard to believe that Missy might be one of the millions of viewers of the HBO hit? I think not! Allow me to pull the receipts…

First, Missy pops up with the feathered cloak lookin’ reeeeal Jon Snow. If you are unfamiliar with Game of Thrones (Imma need you to binge it before the new season!), Jon Snow is the outcast son of high born family who is always being tested, underestimated, and attacked. As Missy stood there like she was guarding the realm from White walkers, I couldn’t help but think ‘This would be Jon Snow if he were a Black girl’. White patriarchal supremacy is always reminding Black girls that they are not considered a source of knowledge, value, or praxis – and if anyone can relate to being told “you know nothing”, its Jon Snow! Then Missy hits us with a line a line about Mexico: “He say I’m pretty, I’m pretty you must be from Brazil you must be from Mexico”. Not only can this line be read as solidarity with Mexican femmes, but also pulls us to focus on Mexico positively at this moment when the federal government of the US is trying to build a wall along the Mexican-US border. Missy is Jon Snow standing on the wall and while she’s cloaked in her black defending home turf – Black girls – she also stands in solidarity with those on the ‘other side of the wall’ like Jon does with the Free folk [insert Tormund shoutout here].

The Black girl survival and Game of Thrones themes don’t stop there! After some fire choreography, the video moves underwater – with each baddie from the platoon falling into deep water alone, only to find each other and Lamb at the bottom of the pool. But something has changed about the platoon: they are White Walkers now!!! Okay, let me attempt to do this without any spoilers… The Black girls ‘drown’ in the scene transition, but we know from the second dance sequence that Black girls will survive! They hit right back into choreo, only now they are dressed in all white with ice blue eyes and white hair. White Walkers!!!!

North of the Wall in Westeros, the White Walkers are the ancient race, birthed from magic. At some point in history the White Walkers break free of being controlled by the magic that created them, making them the most powerful crew in all of Westeros because they (for the most part) cannot die. Folks of Westeros built a 700 foot ice wall to keep them out, and they still slaying (literally). Missy turned every Black girl in her platoon into a White walker! Black girls are magic, hashtags on any social media site will tell you that! The continuous nods to the wall are so telling in our current political moment too – build it all you want 45th, but you will not divide us…winter is coming for that ass! Missy leads her crew of White Walkers in baddie Black girl Night King fashion.

Rocking her “Save the Humans” jacket (because who else would need to be saved if the army of White Walkers was coming…or while the 45th president of the United States is in office), Missy continues to serve us choreography and even has the baddie platoon do a routine on Pilates balls!!! Yall… PILATES BALLS! I can barely sit on one without falling off, much less hit a solid 2 minutes of choreography. Missy harmonizes over the beat:

“He watching my body like he watching Scandal / But I’m just here for my girls”

The scandal line is such a smart double entendre that I had to make the Jaz face at that bar. The obvious read is he’s looking at her the way the majority of us look at our televisions on Thursday nights as Olivia Pope collects our edges. Another read is the hyper-surveillance of Black girls, constantly watched as if they are scandalous simply for being who they are. As the ‘drowned’ dance routine continues, Black girls not only survive by dancing under water, they also swim around overhead staying afloat in deep waters.

Missy’s “I’m Better” reminds Black girls on both sides of ‘the wall’ that we are better every day we resist and transform a world that loves us in theory and hates us in practice. She reminds us of the importance of collective healing as self-care through the visual for the song, and also to appreciate the little things we so often overlook – like having food on our tables or being able to swim. So maybe I am the only one who saw the GoT references, but Missy Misdemeanor Elliott still has me wanting fanfiction in which Jon Snow is replaced by a Black girl!