#but something altogether different

[assorted-aesthetics]

like i want to write a fic where england executes eleanor and her ghost claws it's way back to nassau but someone already made that and it's called black sails seasons 3 & 4.

[houseswife]

I love how neferiously hugh laurie delivered his lines in that 5x1 scene where house is blackmailing wilson. because the dialogue could’ve been conveyed in a manner that was obviously facetious and unserious (like the way RSL was playing the scene: “You’d jeopardise a patient—? 😒🙄) but he literally chose to go “If it keeps you here😈👹” in the most deadass, diabolical tone. so the result is that we have house sounding like a genuine psychopath as he threatens to let a woman die and then wilson proving he’s an even BIGGER one by responding with, like, mild exasperation at best. 10/10 dynamic no notes

[snakesinsocks2005]

New York's not-completely-lineless Line-up!

[oddestishottest]

[mbat]

jews: this thing in fiction feels jew coded to me, this character/group has several parallels to jewish people and i see myself here :)

non-jews: nah, that aint right, its clearly coded to be this other thing/youre stretching so hard to find a connection that isnt there

jews: this thing in fiction falls into antisemitic tropes, this character/group has several common antisemitic tropes that have a long history of being used against my people, and i think we should really consider not using these tropes anymore/consider if theres a better way to go about making the same point without doing it in this specific way

non-jews: nah, that aint right, its clearly coded to be this other thing/youre stretching so hard to find a connection that isnt there

just something ive noticed

[a-s-levynn]

"A taste of the divine" A Series of Small Offerings - IV/2 - day34

[witsserviceablesubstitute]

Loving Anders and Fenris means I'm trying to enjoy two similarly flawed characters whose trauma shouldn't have been used as a weapon against each other, nor as a weapon against the entirety of DA2's plot. At least, not the way it was. Their respective stories needed a lot more empathy and nuance. Some of that was DA2 being a rushed rough draft, but there are still certain choices that the player makes with both of them that exist as pointlessly cruel, racist, and abelist and therefore shouldn't have been options at all.

Ultimately DA2 is a story that handled both Fenris and Anders contextual oppression and meta creation poorly enough that sometimes all I see is a reproduction of their reductive feud, but in real life. I understand why someone would dislike one but not the other (and people should feel free to), I even agree with an interpretation of Anders as this particular type of biased white leftist. However, years of their constant reduction has only led to a dismissal of what they represent. The exploration of which being DA2's whole plot, the execution of which being fundamentally flawed, and the divisive reaction of which being inevitable. They needed care, basically.

The story was damagingly irresponsible in how it went about pitting their two biggest in-game marginalized identities against each other, one an allegory for queer oppression and mental health issues, the other for colonialism and slavery. It has gotten to the point where I believe fenders (or rather the hopeful romanticization of Fenris and Anders) has the better idea in how to manage their mishandling than discussion that reduces them to their worst selves, dehumanizes them altogether, or dismisses their textual metaphors. Because they are flawed but sometimes all I see is a recitation of their flaws used to dismiss all they represent rather than discussion on how DA2 could've handled their themes respectfully.

This, again, is me navel-gazing. Not on the attack. Please be free to disagree, just not abusively so. Different interpretations of a text and characters are unavoidable, especially for these two (who people feel a strong personal affinity for) and in a game like DA2 (a story within a story). This is just how I feel.

[nightingaletrash]

Chasing away the dark by frolicking in the light

[theophagie]

I generally don't find it useful to use personal feelings or experiences as basis for character analysis or commentary because there's a tendency to just Leave It At That ("Jakey does X because he's Y. I know because I'm Y and I do X too" ‾~‾ ) but just this once. Just this once. From a bailer about a bailer. It's so weird to me that some people don't like that Stolas didn't drop the L bomb on Blitz after giving him the crystal when that was one of his good calls in that mess of a conversation...... the way someone doing that with me would make me bolt out of there in .1 seconds (and the way Blitz did bolt out of there and nuke that bridge when someone else did say it to him), like I was relieved that he didn't do that. for Blitz!!! lol

I feel that in part it's because people mistake Stolas' inexperience and obliviousness for naivety, in the sense that yes he often doesn't think things through and is blind to how his actions affects others (in multiple ways), but when it comes to Blitz and feelings he'd been kind of slamming against a wall for a while (with the events of s2ep4 being a wonderful cherry on top), so like. Yes he had a script and a specific vision in mind, but to say that "he expected everything to go according his plans" or that he had no inkling that things could go wrong......... Is it not the point of Look My Way and the second half of When I see Him that he's both hopeful but also very much insecure and kind of dreading talking to Blitz

^ also not how you would find me if I was completely convinced that everything would be fine and just like in my romance novels, js

[the-magpie-archives]

You know when you've been thinking something for ages and it feels normal and then you say it out loud and it sounds so odd and unbelievable that you physically wince but you have to keep going because it'd be embarrassing to backtrack at that point so you just speak it into being normal again?

Yeah I think that's what the supplementals were like for Jon.

[utopia-and-broken-cynics]

So. Since you've properly read Pinocchio now. What are your thoughts on how the book was adapted into Cedar and her dad in EAH

I need everyone to look me dead in my eyes, okay? I love Ever After High. I love Pinocchio. 

No matter what I say later, you have to remember I love Ever After High, okay? Got that? Good. 

That being said, Pinocchio and Cedar in EAH don’t really seem to be based on the book, as much as the Disney movie (I know, I know, booo and all that), in the way that most modern adaptations of Pinocchio are based on the Disney movie. Cultural phenomena and all that.

I would like to break down some points of Pinocchio, link them back to Ever After High, and then explain what this means to me later. Okay? Let’s go!

[Please note that I make points in the order they came to me and NOT in the order of how they reference each other. This isn’t a professional essay, and nobody is allowed to grade me. Also, this is purely from memory, so if I’m wrong, I’m wrong.]

What it means to be good (obedience, honesty, school/hard work)

The story of Pinocchio deals a lot with what it means to be good, a concept that does mostly carry over. Usually, good means honest, right?

Being good in the book means a lot of things. Pinocchio is often scolded and punished for being lazy, for being disobedient, and, yes, for being dishonest. He’s a complainer, he’s greedy, he wants to get rich fast without doing any of the work, and he loathes the idea of going to school. Classic little kid things, really.

School is the biggest one. As soon as Pinocchio is up and moving (and, y’know, after Geppetto gets out of prison— long story—), he is told he has to go to school. And he immediately, and I do mean immediately, skips. He sells his school book to go to a puppet show.

Later in the book, the reason the Blue Fairy plans to make Pinocchio human is because he did well and was diligent in school for a good part of the year.

Hard work is also a big one. After Pinocchio and Romeo get turned into donkeys, Pinocchio is sold to the circus, and is forced to do tricks and stuff to earn his food.

In the very end, to show he is good, and ultimately deserving of being real, he does hard work to earn money for his ailing father, and the Blue Fairy once he becomes aware of her being in a poor state. He grows from being an undeniably bad child, to being a good one.

Pinocchio lies to get out of trouble, more often than not. He lies to the Blue Fairy about being sick, about what happened with the Fox and Cat to get him hung from a tree, and about skipping school. 

And eventually, he just. Stops. He must have figured it was more harm than it was worth.

Blue Fairy

The Blue Fairy is a pretty big part of the book, something not reflected in EAH.

She starts off in a little sister role, getting Pinocchio brought down from where he’s been hung from a tree. Then he gets out of jail (long story) and finds out she is dead.

Then she comes back, transitioning into a mother role as Geppetto has had an… unfortunate accident at sea. The Blue Fairy is a fairly forgiving figure in Pinocchio’s life, giving him numerous opportunities to prove he is good, and that he is worthy of being human.

The Blue Fairy is so so so patient with Pinocchio, and sometimes he doesn’t deserve it. And I love her for it.

All that being said, Farrah should have been way more important and involved in Cedar’s life, ESPECIALLY since Cedar has already lost a Blue Fairy.

 Do you think I forgot?! Hell no! Did y’all forget that Cedar’s Blue Fairy went poof?

Considering how important the Blue Fairy is to Pinocchio (how they live together for a good while before the Donkey-ing, how quickly he mourns her), there is no doubt in my mind that Cedar’s Blue Fairy was very important to her.

We don’t know how she felt about the poofing, and we don’t know how their interactions went pre-poofing.

But this is about Farrah.

If Farrah is truly gonna take on the Blue Fairy role, they would have to do more than just say it. Let them hang out in the background, let them talk a couple of times.

I just think they should have been more of a Thing, y’know? The Blue Fairy is too important to the story for Farrah taking over to not be a Certified Big Deal.

Danger

According to my partner @the-lavender-creator and my good buddy @rarepairqueenmochi, the fox and the cat that appear in Darling’s horse’s tragic backstory would hang a child if it made them money. I would like to believe that it’s a point towards the fox and cat being very similar to their book counterparts.

Which means that maybe all the other super dangerous stuff that happens in Pinocchio could also happen in the Ever After High Universe. For example, Pinocchio almost gets battered and pan-fried at some point, could that happen in EAH?

What about the hanging? What about when the Black cat tries to stab Pinocchio? When he spends a little time drowning as a donkey?

I don’t know, and you don’t either. Moving on.

Pinocchio as a Character

Pinocchio starts off the story as a sort of gullible miscreant. He gets warned by numerous characters that “if you do this, things will go wrong” and he does it in spite of them. For goodness sake, he kills the Talking Cricket with a hammer because the cricket calls him an idiot for thinking he can lounge around and have fun all day. (The cricket kinda deserved it, tbf. Don’t call him an idiot. That’s a kid.)

Pinocchio is also (sort of) a sweet boy. He wants to do the right thing, but he also wants to do the easy thing, the fun thing. 

Why go straight home to his father with five gold coins and go to school the next day like a good boy, when he can go with these two people he just met and make way more money really easily?

Why go home to the Blue Fairy when Romeo’s promising him endless fun?

What you have to remember is that during the story, Pinocchio is (to my knowledge) between the ages of 6 to 10, and it shows.

We don’t know a lot about Pinocchio in EAH, unfortunately. We know he was friends with King Charming and Goldilocks in high school, and that he’s notably a wooden boy still.

I don’t think teenagers can really go through the plot of Pinocchio (not saying that teenagers can’t make the decisions he does, just that they are older, more informed, and likely more cautious. It takes more effort to get a teenager to bury money in the hope that it’ll grow a tree, for example.), but that’s just me.

Cedar as Pinocchio

Cedar is not a gullible miscreant. Cedar loves her father too much to sentence him to two years in a stomach.

Cedar Wood wants more than ever to be human, and able to lie. I love her so much; she would never recover from going through book Pinocchio’s shenanigans. If we assume that the Legacy system will go through the same beats and lessons, despite prior personality and values, then she’s, quite frankly, fucked.

Cedar doesn’t need to learn the lessons book Pinocchio, or even Disney Pinocchio needed to learn, about honesty, hard work, and accountability.

Maybe she can learn about the divide between wisdom and age, which would lend itself well to the whole Rebel cause that Cedar aligns herself with. Being that she’s willing to call out Milton Grimm for lying, though, she probably doesn’t need to learn that one either.

—

Okay, now that I’ve gotten all of that out of my system, let’s talk about what that all means.

Nothing, really.

Ever After High, for better or worse, doesn’t dig into the fairytale theme as much as it could. This means that we never get a full picture of the exact version of the story most characters are being prodded towards. They mention that the stories have changed over time, but how.

Cedar and the story of Pinocchio are no exceptions. Many of the details can be inferred, but many are just hopeful guesses on my part. 

However, while trying to tell a story about Legacy, they could have utilized elements of the story to add a little specificity to the nuances of Cedar advocating for choice.

It would make sense, given how the story of Pinocchio goes, that she wouldn’t want to go through with it, but she has to to get to the ending. The happy ending probably cancels out all the stuff she has to go through in everyone’s eyes, but it doesn’t to me.

Cedar will make choices that go directly against her personality, against her and her father’s wellbeings, and she will have to be okay with that when she becomes human. How does that make her feel as she heads towards her story? How does that make her feel as her friends choose not to follow their destinies? Does she decide to change how the story goes?

TLDR; it was adapted fine. I personally wish we had more Pinocchio themes and aspects referenced and mentioned by Cedar and her father, but considering how little Cedar is the main focus/a major character, I probably shouldn’t be picky. I’m just happy she was on screen/on the page.

[weaversthread]

Some companions 🌟💧🌒

[s-talking]

46 - on a tranquil beach at sunrise.

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐕𝐀𝐒𝐓 𝐇𝐎𝐑𝐈𝐙𝐎𝐍 𝐄𝐗𝐇𝐈𝐁𝐈𝐓𝐒 𝐀 𝐍𝐄𝐀𝐑𝐋𝐘 𝐅𝐀𝐔𝐋𝐓𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 𝐒𝐊𝐘, like a handful of caradonna petals smeared across the empty space just above the ocean, leaving only the most beautiful gradient of lavender & pink to usher a new sun. it slowly rises over the glistening waters, spilling the first beams of light athwart the golden sand towards which he now walks, stepping onto the beach as though stepping into a memory.

it feels... familiar.... yet also nothing like the monochrome shores haunting his dreams. envy has never witnessed something so genuinely enchanting before, so picturesque, that he fails to even remember as to why he came here today to begin with until a shadow is spotted ahead, a motionless figure laying in the sand. ❝ . . . . ? ❞ slowing his already nonchalant pace, envy stops right beside what appears to be a young unconscious woman, dressed in the most elegant & unseemly attire he'd ever seen; a long, white gown adorned with golden laces; an actress, perhaps?

tilting own head ever so slightly, the young serial killer continues to loom over her almost like an angel of death, with a pale face & dead black eyes leering down from above. cold. so very, dreadfully, cold. ❝ . . . . . . ❞ it'd be just so easy to kill her. a single cut across the neck & there would be no more pain, confusion, or sorrow, only an eternity without the physical shackles we call ' a body ' & yet, & yet... he eventually descends not to kill or take, but to touch her beautiful face in a gentlest manner possible ── his senseless yearning, so sweetly hushed by the lull of the ocean waves.

[carriehobbs]

"go to mouse settings" i don't know what that means. i've never been there before. hold my hand and explain this like i am a child

[canary-song]

One of perhaps the silliest things that bothers me to this day about EWAF is that the sandman felt cheap. Like. No proper intro, bland explanation for his name, and like practically all but Doc Oc - a permanent sendoff that means no future reappearances.

C'mon man, give him something fun to work with! Like, how about, if you wanna keep it truly dark in tone, what if he buries people in sand? Or if you wanted less of a set-up for his violence, chloroform or some sort that he'd use to knock out opponents - then his inhuman strength would be a perpetual but rarely used threat that holding your breath would earn you a taste of.

[driftingballoons]

I hope you don't mind me asking two thing back to back, but for the reverse unpopular opinion ask game.

What piece of PMD lore/story just doesn't sit right / doesn't make sense with you?

Not at all! Love getting asks, thank you! :3

The one piece of lore that’s always bothered me a bit is how they handle humans in the series. Imo it’s just a little confusing and odd. Now for the positive! By leaving it vague, it really hands over the lore to the fans—how do humans live in this world? Are they common, or are you one of/the only one left? Do they tend to live side by side with pokemon, or are they more separate than in the main series? Where did Hero come from? What happened to their family? Etc etc. Plus, in Explorers, the idea of there being humans around, but you not seeing ANY in the Dark Future really adds to the oppressive and heavy nature. It helps show it’s such a harsh world that only the most feral of pokemon can truly thrive.