#but their souls get jammed into a seed that then gets taken to [checks notes] notably night elf land The Dragon Isles

[lathrine]

thank u for reblogging this and reminding me how the treatment of night elves in canon makes me absolutely blind with rage

i know people are sick of nelf players whining about how we cannot get a win, but as someone who has been a nelf fan since the ripe old age of five i promise you this:

not only can the night elves not get a fucking win, but blizzard has intentionally made choices every step of the way in every expansion that systematically erase night elves off the face of the fucking planet.

its not just that night elves cannot get a win, it's that they only lose.

they lose land, their lose homes, they lose deities, they lose people and culture. they are not allowed to win. anything that looks like a win (hyjal regrew) came with a caveat (neutral territory, not nelf controlled) about how it isn't really their win.

the night elves had something like 90% of their entire existing population wiped out in the War of Thorns, and when the night elf leader responded with appropriate blood lust? the narrative not only punished her, but it punished her people as well.

the narrative said that if you want to see justice for a horrific wrong done to you, you are just as dangerous as those who hurt you. the narrative said that if you want vengeance then you quite literally cannot be saved (unless you relinquish your want for vengeance).

every single night elf deity is dead. all of them. and a few got super ultra killed so they can never return.

every single night elf ruler has, in one way or another, been put in a position where the narrative can point and say "see how pathetic they are? see how unstable?"

their literal introduction to the orcs, by the way, is the orcs aghast at how """"savage"""" these strange elves are (and then murdering cenarius).

AUGH i dont even remembering where i was going with this. just. this is exhausting. it's exhausting to be constantly punished for literally playing the game as a core player race. this is like if every time i played a sorcerer in DND the campaign book had a side bar for each chapter that said to just start nuking class features at random, but only for the sorcerers.

[baronessblixen]

Tiny

This is a sequel to William wearing Mulder’s sweater fic “His Father’s Son”.

Day 6 for @thexmasfileschallenge: snow globe. Also tagging @today-in-fic

"No, mommy, no!" William stomps his feet. He's standing in front of her, his face red as big, angry tears roll down his cheeks.

"William, we can't just tell grandma we're not coming for Christmas." Of course William would have a meltdown the night before Christmas Eve. She should have known. She should have seen it coming. She crouches down and her knees protest. She reaches for William, but he flinches away from her touch.

"We can't leave, mommy," he sobs loudly, "Daddy doesn't know! We have to be home when daddy comes back." His cries tear through her soul and make room for her own hurt. This time when she reaches for him, William comes willingly into her arms. He's crying harder against her, the pain rattling his small body. As she holds him, strokes his back, she tries to keep her own tears at bay.

"Your daddy knows where grandma lives, baby," she whispers into his damp hair and straightens a stubborn curl, "He knows we'll be there." She crushes hissmall body against hers praying that her love for him makes up for Mulder's absence. She's tried. Ever since he left, she's done nothing but try. Try to keep William's belief in his father intact. He loves his son, and her, and that's why he left them in the first place. She's tried to believe that, too. The longer he's gone, though, the less she believes. She hasn't heard from him in over three weeks. It's time, she thinks; time to stop.

"William, your daddy…" The words get stuck in her throat. She can't do this. She can't shatter her son's hopes, take all of this away from him. For the past two weeks, every night, he would sit in front of his window, stare out, waiting and hoping. At first Scully thought he was waiting for snow. He shook his head when she asked him about it. 'Waiting for daddy', he told her, the ghost of his father's smile playing around his lips.  

"He will be home for Christmas." William, defiance in his voice, sobs against her shoulder.

"How about a compromise?" The boy loosens his grip and blinks at her needing an explanation. "Remember how I said you could wear daddy's sweater at home but not at church?" William nods. "That was a compromise. You know, grandma is really looking forward to seeing us tomorrow and so are your cousins, your aunts and uncles. We'll leave a note for your dad, all right? So if he's late and we're already on our way, he'll know where to find us. What do you say?" He thinks about it a moment. Uses the sleeve of Mulder's sweater that he's barely taken off for weeks to wipe at his red-rimmed eyes. A shaky sigh through his sniffling nose and he finally nods. Scully kisses his warm, sweet smelling skin. Another crisis diverted. She's not sure how many more she can take. This, she knows, is only the beginning. What will she do, what will she say, when Mulder doesn't return? Not for Christmas. Not at all.

"Time for bed now, young man." Scully finds her voice again, as strange as it sounds in her own ears, and just this once William doesn't complain. He pads into his bedroom and Scully follows him. He grabs the snow globe Scully had to buy for him the other day and crawls on the windowsill. This time Scully joins him. Together they stare outside where the streetlamps throw yellow and orange light cones onto the pavement. William, not taking his eyes off the window, absent-mindedly shakes the snow globe. Scully watches the tiny flakes swirl around the glass and settle peacefully on the ground. William persuaded her to buy when they were out buying Christmas presents for the rest of the family. The day had been, like all of them lately, stressful. William kept asking her if he could have it and she should have told him no, should have told him Christmas was coming, but she didn't. She told him yes, paid for it, and reveled in the pure joy she found on her son's face. She never once looked at the snow globe. She does now. As the last flakes fall down, she takes in the simple scenery. A house, unremarkable, a dog and a boy. And there, a few steps away, in each other's arms, are two people, the parents, just watching. Tears cloud Scully's eyes as she stares at the tiny still life in her son's hand.

"Don't be sad, mommy," William tells her, jolting her back to this life, the real one, "Daddy will be here. He will come home."

After William falls asleep, Scully wraps the last of his presents. She checks on him one last time, makes sure he is fast asleep, before she grabs her keys and takes the bags full of gifts to her car. The trunk of her car is jammed once again; it's been happening a lot lately and it gets worse with the cold. She makes another mental note to have it checked as soon as this crazy season is over. She groans as it refuses to open. The cold is gnawing at her skin and her cold hands sting as she pushes at the metal.

"Do you need any help?" His voice is a rush of warm air against her body. She whirls around feeling dizzy and there he is. She hasn't imagined what it would be like when he came back. Part of her convinced that he never would. Now there he is. His hands deeply pushed into his pockets, his head tilted slightly he looks almost shy, uncertain if he's still wanted here.

"Scully, it's me." But she can't find her voice; words fail to come to her. She stares at him, not believing. She's never been a believer. "It's me." He repeats with a lifetime of memories shimmering in his eyes.

"It's you. Mulder…" But that's all she can say before she finds herself in his arms. He is warm, he is solid; he is every piece of her that's been missing these last few weeks. "You're here. It's you."  

"It's me and I'm never leaving again. This is it, Scully." She brings distance between them and feels cold air slash at her. She shivers glancing up at him.

"What did you find?" He shakes his head.

"Nothing, Scully. There is nothing to be found. This… all of this is no longer my life. You are. You and William. Leaving you was the biggest mistake of my life."

"Mulder…"

"You don't believe me," he says, nods, "I don't blame you. I will do everything in my power to earn back your trust and your love. This was the last time, Scully. I promise you. I'll show you."

"I don't want you to-" Scully starts and Mulder puts his finger against her lips. A tiny spark that sets off a whole firework inside of her.

"My life is here, Scully. Wherever you and William are is where I'm supposed to be." One of his hands leaves her body and reaches into his coat pocket. He takes out a small snow globe and hands it to Scully. "It's funny how epiphanies come about. I went into a shop to buy sunflower seeds. That's all I wanted but there was this family. You know, a mom, a dad and two little girls. One was crying and the other one snuck away to look at these snow globes on display. She must have heard a noise or startled and the globe slipped from her hands and broke. I wanted to go over to her and console her, but I stopped. That wasn't my daughter. I didn't know her at all. Instead I watched her parents come over and comfort her. Once they were gone, I picked up one of these snow globes myself. It's silly, I know that, Scully, but look at this," he touches her hand that's holding the globe and shakes it gently, "I saw us. A house, a kid and a dog. I realized that was all I wanted. I no longer cared for anything but coming home to you and to William."

"This is crazy." Scully whispers staring at the toy much like she did earlier. She's seen the exact same picture in William's snow globe. The same house, the dog and the boy with the snowman, and the parents. It's all there. She shakes it again but the image remains.

"I know it's crazy, but-" Scully doesn't let him finish. She kisses him, tries to kiss away the weeks without him, the pain and the anger.

"Welcome home, Mulder." She whispers against his lips before she leads him inside.  

[acsversace-news]

Showrunner Ryan Murphy decided to start The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story with the titular designer's death. For the first eight minutes of the show, there is minimal talking. We hear only the greetings as Versace (Edgar Ramírez) encounters various characters at the start of his day and the screams of Andrew Cunanan (Darren Criss), who was in the midst of a killing spree targeting gay men. What overwhelms our senses are the sounds of "Adagio in G Minor," a haunting piece of baroque, Italian composition that we've all heard on screen many times, from Flashdance to Casanova to Manchester by the Sea. Though effective, it is not a particularly original choice. But, another layer is added to the story ACS: Versace is telling us if you explore the murky history of this piece of music.

"There were a couple of others we were trying, all in the same classical, Italian landscape," the show's music supervisor, Amanda Krieg Thomas, told Refinery29 on a recent phone call. Murphy, who directed the first episode, chose to set the sequence to a single piece of music and had the show's composer, Mac Quayle, record a new version of this song to picture, so the arrangement matches up perfectly with the action.

There is a duality to watching a man who will lie, steal, and kill to serve his own ends execute another man in a moment scored by someone who perpetrated the most significant scam in classical music history. A musicologist named Remo Giazotto claims to have discovered the adagio, circa 1949. Giazotto was writing a book on the 18th-century Venetian master Tomaso Albinoni and said he had found this fragment of music in his archives, consisting of six bars of a melody. Giazotto took the liberty of finishing the composition, and the "Adagio in G Minor" was born. Except that Giazotto's story wasn't true. There is no proof to support that Albinoni wrote that fragment of music. Giazotto retracted his story later in life and took sole credit for the piece.

When it comes to pop music, of which the show has an abundance, powerhouse female vocalists from the late '80s and early '90s are the stars in ACS: Versace. "It’s different from The People Versus O.J. Simpson in every way, but that show was a snapshot of the period, and that’s what we did for it musically as well. This season, the vision from Murphy was more focused on Cunanan and the type of music he would have grown up with; songs that would have been around him and in the places he went to that he’d be listening to," Krieg Thomas says. The universe of ACS: Versace is aurally made up of women: club and radio jams by Lisa Stansfield, La Bouche, Indeep, Soul II Soul, and Jocelyn Enriquez all make appearances. And, of course, Laura Branigan whose cover (with its rewritten English lyrics) of "Gloria" became a hit in 1982. Her take is revived in episode 2, when Cunanan blasts it while he sings along in a stolen truck, taken from a man he killed.

"Murphy is such a fan of music, and for many of the moments, he knew what he wanted. 'Gloria' was one of those; he’s a big Laura Branigan fan," Krieg Thomas said, which is probably not something anyone has said in decades. Her assertion bears itself out, though; the show uses another Branigan track, a No. 1 hit that has been all but forgotten in modern times, "You Take My Self Control," in a future episode. "It works really well on many levels — it’s so incongruous with what just happened, he’s murdered people, he’s driving, and we hear this happy, upbeat song," Krieg Thomas continued. She noted that the lyrics speak to what is happening: "Gloria, you're always on the run now / Running after somebody, you gotta get him somehow" and "Gloria, don't you think you're fallin'? / If everybody wants you, why isn't anybody callin'?"

A checking of the boxes (fits the show's aesthetic, lyrically speaks to the scene) is noticeable at numerous moments in the first two episodes alone. "Last Night A DJ Saved My Life" plays when Cunanan meets Versace in a club in San Francisco, letting us know something is afoot. "Be My Lover" plays while Cunanan fruitlessly searches for Versace in a South Beach club in a fit of desperation. It's a sickening foreshadowing when Phil Collins & Phillip Bailey's "Easy Lover" plays as Cunanan ties up and dominates a john. Under the Miami Vice aesthetic of this '80s hit lies a cautionary tale about a lover who will leave and deceive, giving you nothing but regrets. As for talk that it might be an homage to American Psycho, Krieg Thomas said, "although it's pulled from the same easy listening palette, it wasn't a reference point."

In episodes 3, 4, and 5, the soundtrack pivots to speak to us about the other men Cunanan killed: Lee Miglin (Mike Farrell), Jeffrey Trail (Finn Wittrock), and David Madson (Cody Fern). With Lee, it's a resetting of the aesthetic by using songs coded for older gay men; where Doris Day and Astrud Gilberto play on the hi-fi. With Trail and Madson, the work is largely done by the show's score, which sets a mood of horror to match the change in cinematography to the darker, harsher tones of Minnesota sunlight and Madson's industrial loft. In episode 4, the foreshadowing is heavy when Madson and Cunanan are in a bar listening to Aimee Mann sing the saddest version imaginable of "Drive," a morose uber-hit for the Cars in the '80s. Madson's tears along with the lyrics, "Who's gonna pay attention / To your dreams? / Who's gonna plug their ears / When you scream?" let us know that there was no escape. Not to the outside world where gay men were vilified, and not with Cunanan on a Bonnie and Clyde-esque murder spree.

The show uses music to tell us about Versace, as well. His South Beach soundscape is not so different from Cunanan's, full of club music and dance hits but with flourishes of Italian classical dropped in to remind us where he comes from. In episode 2, there was a moment where the real Versace spoke. In another theme for this show, that of cover songs, they lifted a track that Versace used in his final fashion show for the scene with Donatella (Penélope Cruz), dropping the Lightning Seeds cover of "You Showed Me" in after their big fight over models and how to build a fashion brand. Reports have the siblings fighting quite a lot at the time, with Donatella trying to find her place in the house of Versace after her brother's return upon his recovery from an illness. The use of this song in his real life may have simply been reaching for what was in the air at the time — it was the height of Britpop, and in his other shows he had used adjacent tracks like "Wonderwall" by Oasis. Or, it might have been a carefully constructed message to his sister. That we even ask the question, however, is entirely thanks to its presence in the American Crime Story universe.