#but when i think about rebecca i think it definitely applies and makes a lot of sense just like the way she feels emotions

[hecksupremechips]

Rebecca gales has bpd she told me herself

[darealsaltysam]

I JUST GOT BACK FROM SEEING DUNE PART 2 AND HOLY FUCK OH MY GOD HOLY SHIT HOLY FUUUUCK I NEED TO. I NEED TO. I NEED TO TALK SO BAD HOLY SHIT

below the cut because oh boy do i have a lot to say and i dont want my poor followers to suffer when i post this

oh my god okay okay where do i even start

opening with irulan's narration to mirror her notes in the openings of the chapters of the book. oh yeah baby. i ate that right up

watching paul get close with the fremen,,,,, fucking hell that hurts. dune really is a tragedy at the end of the day huh. they go from reluctant allies to friends but the whole time you know the switch will happen any moment now and they will be devotees and he will be messiah and that gap between them will never be as small as it is out in the sand. huddled in those tents. sharing drinks and laughs. im not doing ok

this especially hurts with chani. their love is so genuine and pure and she wears blue for him (which by the way sticks out so much more with how muted the colors of the rest of the movie are... i could talk about this all day) but she can see what he is becoming and he's trying to avoid it for her so hard but there's no avoiding fate. LORD ABOVE!!!!

i loveeee jessica being the manipulator thats pulling all the strings, urging paul towards becoming messiah. rebecca ferguson is such a talented actress she really understands the character so well. also as a hashtag certified alia atreides enjoyer her scheming with her unborn fetus might be the most unhinged thing ever but thats also so fucking funny aka its as dune as it gets. dune is WEIRD and im glad theyre not shying away from that. thank u denis

arrakis looks so much more beautiful in this movie like theres defo been some changes with how its framed and presented it feels so much grander and idk just ??? what it makes me think is that we're not seeing arrakis, we're finally seeing dune. we're seeing the land as the fremen see it as paul becomes one of them. i might be looking too much into it but who cares. god i love this movie

but yes more on the fremen in the first section of the movie. i like how there's this cluster of non-believers almost?? its a nice breath of fresh air. its hard to believe every single person would be just devoted to the prophecy and it adds some depth.

i will say the one thing i didnt like is the way stilgar is characterized?? i dont think he was so blindly devoted to paul in the books, and definitely not alia and leto ii after him as the atreides line went on. he's always been a source of small doubt towards paul but i think they're moving that element of him onto chani, so i think i can let it slide. i'd like to see him question alia more in the future though.

the scene where paul was named muad'dib and usul??? god it was so cute which made it so heart wrenching. all the fremen coming together and welcoming him into their lives. as a brother. as a friend. only for him to turn around and make them all bow before him. ohhhhh i cant do this

OH BOY THE WORMS THE WORMS AND THE WORM RIDING AND THE AHHHHHHHHH OH LORD

jesus christ. what the fuck. how is this allowed on cinema screens how is something so amazing allowed

the tension. the effects. the sound design. the sand rushing past the wind the worm moving forward paul struggling to hold on the fremen all watching and then cheering him on HOLY FUCKKKK HOLY FUCK I WAS HOLDING MY BREATH

all the worm riding scenes were so intense and so well done like. when i first read that stuff in the books i didnt think anything could ever capture how i imagined it exactly and yet. AND YET. DENIS!!!!!!!!

once more dune hits the idea of scale SO well everything is HUGE and they MAKE YOU FEEL IT. that shows especially with geidi prime but ill talk about that in a bit. but yes this applies to the worms too lord above them WORMSSSS ARE HUGEEEE AND I LOVE THEMMMM

rebecca ferguson put her heart and soul into that water of life scene and we all need to thank her for it

the way jessica is so quick to switch up and go all in on the prophecy. it makes me think of leto's "im not asking his mother, im asking the bene gesserit" like. the bene gesserit really come first for jessica and she takes her opportunity to fulfill her duties. to be the reverend mother. to rub it all in the faces of the other bene gesserit. she is the mother of the messiah and by god will she make everyone well aware of that

okay. okay okay. i think i said my peace on the early fremen stuff. i think. okay fuck okay SHIT fuck SHIT

FEYD FUCKING RAUTHA LADIES AND GENTLEMEN

oh my god okay. okay ill admit it. i doubted austin butler. i saw the cast list and i was unsure(tm). i saw him in the trailers and my faith was restored. and holy fucking shit did he DELIVER

stellan skarsgård's baron harkonnen is already such a threatening figure it feels like it would be impossible to make someone even more terrifying and yet. AND YET

just the way he's introduced. killing servants with zero remorse. LICKING THAT KNIFE THE WAY HE DID??? OKAY WHORE. I SEE YOU. GO RIGHT AHEAD. MAKE IT SLUTTY IN HOUSE HARKONNEN. I RESPECT IT

when the arena doors open and that loud ass fucking music BOOMS. makes the room fucking SHAKE. thats a PRESENCE right there. THATS how you introduce your antagonist.

the music playing as he fights being as fucking deranged as he is. chaotic and weird and unsettling. just. oh my god feyd had such a presence from the moment he showed up and he did not lose it for a single second. you could feel him LOOMING over the movie the whole time just as he looms over the whole book from his very first scene. oh my goddddd oh my godd

GEIDI PRIME. THE ARENA. THAT MASSIVE HARKONNEN PALACE. oh my god. once more. that sense of scale. the harkonnens love to flaunt their wealth so ofc they have huge fuck off arenas and castles where everything and everyone feels so SMALL in comparison.

dont even get me started on the black and white. the way it accents those coal black teeth and mouths. the way it makes everything look so much more inhuman and clinical and PERFECT because harkonnen power is so absolute and ruthless.

and the way the baron sits so so high above watching the fighting. literally impossible to picture his elevation above his people above the rest of the universe. the way feyd looks to him for approval after every movement. even as his uncle is trying to kill him they exchange those little looks and feyd knows hes getting his chance to show off while the baron gives him his "gift" what a fucked up family what the hell

speaking of fucked up family! wow! they are SO fucked up! there is something seriously strange being hinted at with feyd and the baron! feyd making his own brother bow and kiss his boot! those constant threats of death against rabban as if theyre nothing! this family is capital f FUCKED up. they hurt each other as much as they hurt everyone around them. theyre made of violence and blood and they could never show each other kindness because they dont know such a thing

what can i say about the feyd/margot scenes that hasnt been said already. like wow just unpack the boy's trauma like that. use him and then throw him to the wolves. once again the bene gesserit make it so clear this is THEIR empire and THEIR bloodlines and THEIR messiah. too bad jessica doesnt see that collective "ours" and instead settles for "mine" when it comes to the messiah

special shout out to dave bautista before i move on. just cause. his rabban doesnt get enough love. he really sells that balance of ruthless power but also incompetency compared to his brother so well. can you guys tell i REALLY like this cast

WE ACTUALLY GOT TO SEE GURNEY PLAYING THE BALISET WE FUCKING WIN Y'ALL

the paul/gurney reunion being the last shred of the old paul. how he gets so happy "i recognized your footsteps, old man" shoot me in the fucking brain stem it would HURT LESS

a bit off topic and it happened earlier (sorry my thoughts are so all over the place) but i like how they actually showed the process of how the water of life is made. it was actually exactly like how i imagined it when i read the books so thats neat !!

anyway. back to the horrors.

i already talked so much about feyd's presence so just another small note. that scene in sietch tabr. he is a MONSTER and i am EATING IT UP

i cant even begin to explain. how much it fucked me up. when paul took the water of life. i knew thats where we were going. i knew it was unavoidable. and yet still. when chani bent over him and screamed at everyone for making him follow this prophecy. when she was forced to shed tears to save his life. when she got him back only to realize she lost him and he wasnt the person she loved anymore. it broke me

chani's utter hatred for the prophecy and what paul is becoming added to it so much. i know some people are unhappy with how much shes been changed from the books but i think its elevated her character and all these scenes so much. and oh my god does zendaya DELIVER when the spotlight is on her. i never doubted her for a moment but all those changes to chani really allowed to let her shine. thats that euphoria acting coming out baby !!!!

SPEAKING OF GOOD ACTING

TIMOTHEE

FUCKING

CHALAMET

listen i hate the fact that he gets cast in everything these days as much as everyone but hes such a talented actor and i cant deny this anymore. the water of life scene really sold it for me.

he was such a perfect paul already in the first movie but this was the moment it really came out. the way he wakes up so calm and collected. lifeless. monotone. theres nothing theres literally nothing

paul atreides the boy who became duke far too young is dead usul who was the lover of chani is dead muad'dib the fedaykin fighter is dead only the kwisatz haderach remains and thats what the prophecy was always leading us to and yet the moment it happens its so haunting

like i cannot say this enough. that complete switch is so sudden but so subtle at the same time. its still paul technically but hes so different

what makes dune's weird concepts so easy to take in once you get into the book is all that internal monologue that really leads you through these complex concepts slowly. and yet in a few shots and a few lines of dialogue timothee chalamet somehow manages to express the idea of "i just learned the secrets of the fucking universe and im about to start a holy war" ???? HOW DO YOU EVEN DO THIS???? HOW ARE YOU THIS TALENTED???? OH MY GOD!!!!!!!! IT WAS A FEW LOOKS A FEW MOVENTS JUST THE RIGHT TONE OF VOICE AND THATS HIM!!! THATS HIM BABY!!!! THATS THE KWISATZ HADERACH AND THE UNIVERSE IS FUCKED !!!!!!!!!

also. anya taylor joy alia. we only had you for a split second but i cannot wait for you. im sure youre going to completely slay the third movie. give us our beloved tragic meow meow. alia is my fave character so i will be JUDGING HEAVILY. she better bring her a-game istg

when paul storms the war council and just completely takes control of the room so easily. thats the bene gesserit conditioning giving him his pedestal and he is making the most of it. he knows exactly what the fuck hes doing. and once more oh my goddddd all that shouting all that emotion and yet a complete lack of it. timothee spare a crumb of talent for the rest of us

also the way in that scene gurney is hesitant about it all until paul proclaims himself the duke of arrakis. and suddenly gurney has house atreides again and he doesnt care what chani does anymore. hes a follower to paul just as everyone else in that room. nothing changes. fuck me man i cant do this anymore

have i mentioned yet im so excited for chani in the next movie. her arc is so interesting. children of dune is defo not happening with the way chani has been set up so i doubt we'll see leto ii and ghanima but. lets hope we still get all the cool stuff wit alia at least. and maybe chani can be the one who leads the charge against her

okay i need to really fucking. get along with it im dragging this post on im so sorry this movie is eating my brain alive

chani still wearing blue during the final fight. im not saying more than that i might cry if i think about it too much

THAT. FINAL. FIGHT. OH MY GODDD OH MY GOD

IT ALL CAME TOGETHER SO SO WELL

THE WORMS

THE SENSE OF SCALE

THE FIGHT CHOREOGRAPHY

THE MUSIC HOLY FUCK THE MUSIC HANS ZIMMER YOU OUTDO YOURSELF EVERY TIME

THE SOUND

EVERYTHING FLOWING TOGETHER SO WELL

the way the fremen fight for their messiah but still fly the atreides banner. the way paul leads them as their messiah and as a "fremen" but always proclaims himself duke of house atreides first. oh lorddd im unwell

every time paul menacingly emerged from fog/sand/smoke my life was extended by like 10 years thank u denis

gurney killing rabban with as much ease as he did cleared my skin and watered my crops <3

the way the baron was literally dying and still crawling towards the throne.......... the way at the same time feyd ignored him completely and looked towards the doors reveling in the fight ahead..... if that doesnt tell u everything you need to know about house harkonnen idk what will yall

i also love how no one intervenes as paul walks in and kills the baron. not even feyd. feyd looks like he was a little TOO into it as paul killed him tbh. feyd u little freak. austin butler you talented talented man. im unwell

i AM sad we didnt get to see baby alia stab him but ah well. we got a bunch of other weird dune shit so ill let this one slide. the psychic toddler may be too much even for denis and everything he did give us. we'll always have our 1984 alia <3

OHOHOHOHOHOHOH. OH. HERE WE GO

HERE WE GO YALL

THE SCENE IVE BEEN WAITING FOR SINCE READING THE BOOK

THE SCENE THEY SHOWED BITS OF IN THE TRAILER AND THE SCENE IVE BEEN NON STOP YEARNING FOR SINCE!!!

THE DUEL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

oh my god oh my god oh my goddddd where do i even start

okay so. the way theres no music. no fancy cuts no slow mo no over the top effects. its just the slashing of the blades and those BEAUTIFUL shadowed shots with the setting sun in the background. this really is the sun setting on the peaceful universe. just pain and suffering ahead marked with the blood spilled from the two who were meant to produce the messiah but who both got thrown off this path by the greed and selfishness of their forefathers. guys im normal about paul and feyd. definitely. i definitely have very normal thoughts about how they are foils and yet two sides of the same coin. yes guys

paul making the emperor kiss his ring is already such an insane fucking scene and it translated to the screen so well. amazing performances all around

i didnt talk much about florence pugh's irulan but she really didnt have much time to shine. im excited to see where she goes next and i definitely think shes a great fit but i need to see more of her to really be able to say more

i will say this. the way chani, irulan and jessica are the only ones who dont kneel for paul. the three most important women in his life who give him his power, everything he has. jessica made him and she made him the messiah. chani opened her life up to him, helped him become and in turn control the fremen, and she shed her tears for him and fulfilled her role in the prophecy against her wishes. irulan is his path to the throne, his key to being emperor. and none of them bow before him because why would they bow before a power they are responsible for, a power they own, a power they gave?

but for chani its different ofc. she also refuses to bow because she despises everything paul stands for.

oh my god i could say so much about the last scene being chani. not paul reveling in his victory. paul leaves for his next bloodshed and chani is left behind crying for the person she loves who she knows is gone. crying for her people, again enslaved. crying those same tears that brought the messiah back into this world.

theres a lot to be said about the role of gender in dune and how it hangs over every facet of this world but thats a whole separate analysis post to be had so ill just throw it down here in this little point

another thing chani does very well in the movies is she really makes paul's villainy explicitly clear. SO many people read dune and completely misunderstand it and walk away from it concluding its a "white savior narrative" and nothing more which. yes!! yes it is!!!! but thats not a good thing!!!! its never stated to be a good thing!!!!

this movie is not gonna let you misunderstand the message of the story no matter how blind you try to be to it. paul is not a good guy. hes never been the good guy. hes the protagonist, but hes not the hero. and chani allows that to translate from book to movie very well. have i mentioned yet i love movie chani

chani fills in the holes left behind by the narration and internal monologues of the book and, bonus points, she holds the people who dont understand what dune is about by the hand and tells them explicitly "PAUL IS A BAD GUY!!! DONT IDOLIZE PAUL!!!! DONT WALK AWAY FROM DUNE THINKING ITS PRAISING PAUL'S ACTIONS!!!"

i think thats pretty much all i had to say. i might reblog with additions as they hit me but yeah i. i enjoyed the movie. so so much. i think i might watch it again sometime soon while its still in cinemas.

sorry for being unhinged hope u enjoyed my rants. kiss kiss night night <3

[sagevalleymusings]

Ted Lasso is an extremely subtle and nuanced show that we don't deserve and I'm going to defend a character I hate to prove it

So the series finale of Ted Lasso aired last night and I went out of my way to watch it even though I don't have a Hulumaxflix plus account, because I have utterly adored this whole season. I have seen a lot of disappointed fans and negative takes, even outside of the "it's woke now" brigade, and I disagree with pretty much all of the analyses I've seen so far. People are disappointed at the Tedbecca tease that never panned out, they're disappointed Jamie is talking to his dad again, they're disappointed all this stuff they wanted to happen didn't happen, tale as old as time. But I think the issue here is that Ted Lasso is written in the style of a daytime tv comedy while actually being an extremely heartfelt and pained letter to an abusive father that one of our writer was never able to send.

Co-creator and star Jason Sudeikis has gone on record saying the show is about bad dads. And we see examples of this all over the place. Some are more subtle than others.

But the problem with subtle shows is that you have a very wide audience to appeal to. I have seen and dare I say it even enjoyed both Primer and Groundhog Day. But trying to apply the time travel logic of the former to the latter just because they're both time travel movies would be folly. And this is how I feel about Ted Lasso. It has a lot of similarities to a style of show which is usually nowhere near this deep and it makes people expect something of it that it isn't providing. 

How do you know I'm not talking out my ass? Jack Danvers.

I hate Jack Danvers. We get a fucking lesbian for a change and she's an abusive cowardly closeted slut shaming piece of shit.

I love Jack Danvers. Because I knew she was 1) Keeley's financer and 2) a lesbian in under ten seconds of meeting this person, having seen only her shoes.

Jack is quiet and possibly even a little uncomfortable chatting with Keeley in the bathroom. But Keeley's so charming and open that you can't help but appreciate the quiet bonding moment it turns into.

But I've definitely been there. Women are so comfortable talking to each other in the bathroom and it makes me so uncomfortable. There have been so many times I have been made to feel unwelcome in this space and you want to have a chat...  Please go away.

Once it's revealed this is in fact Jack, it comes as a minor shock that Jack is a woman actually. Why is her name Jack if she's a woman?

It's because "my father wanted a boy."

Jack is one of Jason's "bad dad" characters. Which means her actions are a reflection of her childhood environment in a very pronounced way. Slowly but surely, we learn that Jack believes love is conditional.

Jack introduces us to the concept of love bombing and I think because the relationship progresses past that point, the audience is encouraged to forget this, but… love bombing isn't just new relationship energy. It's an abuse tactic. And we're told pretty explicitly that it's an abuse tactic because the person telling us about it is Rebecca, regarding her shitty and manipulative ex husband.

That Jack's relationship starts on this beat is noteworthy, because it sets up the dynamic that Jack believes she can only retain Keeley's affection if she buys it. Why does she think that?

Moving forward, we start to lapse into a false sense of security as Jack loudly proclaims their love in front of the whole office and is planning on showing Keeley off, only to have the rug ripped out from us the second something even slightly bad happens. 

But it isn't Jack's decision to make Keeley read out that apology and then pull funding when she refuses. Not if we're to believe Jack's word on it at least. It was "the board" whoever that is.

Jack peaces out to Argentina before the final shoe can drop, and it displays lastly an absolute cowardice on her part that she didn't even give Keeley the satisfaction of a break up. 

All of this combined makes me realize though that the sudden scrambling retreat is literally the other side of love bombing - we didn't drop that plot point just because we stopped talking about it. The motivations for both actions come from the same place. Jack believes love is conditional. She feels that she must earn Keeley's affection, and sees nothing wrong with withdrawing her own if Keeley doesn't do the same. And also, the actions of her partner reflecting negatively on her means that love can be withdrawn *from her* if she doesn't bow to pressure from those whose respect she's trying to maintain. 

The coming out moments in parallel with this lens are stark. Coming out to the office wasn't just about being open -it was about speed running earning Keeley's love and trust with grand acts of affection. And there are no consequences to coming out to people that far beneath you socially. Jack owns the HR firm that KJPR… might not have? Meanwhile her old college friend does matter. And when Keeley was a successful business woman to show off, that would have been fine. But now that she's part of a scandal? They're just friends. It serves her to come out to the firm in the interest of gaining Keeley's love, and it serves her to keep it hidden from her college friend, to avoid messy questions later that might make her look bad.

With her very name, Jack has been taught that there's a version of herself other people want her to be that she's incapable of reaching. And absolutely nothing we see from her suggests she's worked to unpack that trauma.

Jack is a minor character - a brief love interest in Keeley's life. But her decisions are deliberate and weighty. The good and bad moments are both informed by the same parental trauma, and the writers stick to it. They're true to character, even if it's "bad representation," even if it's not what fans want.

So let's talk about Tedbecca. I will reiterate that this show is about "bad dads" and more broadly about the ways in which who our parents are and how they raised us results in intergenerational trauma that's difficult to disrupt.

Ted and Rebecca are foils for each other. They both have absent fathers (eventually even they both have dead fathers) and they both have emotionally controlling mothers (more on that in a moment). They both are starting a new chapter in their lives because of a divorce, and family is an important component of that divorce. 

And they are both responding to their trauma, especially in early episodes, the way they've always been taught to respond to that trauma. Rebecca schemes vengefully while pretending everything is fine on the outside because she's been taught that the people in her back will not support her. Her mother put up with shitty behavior from her father for years. Then when her father left, her mother turned into a flighty unreliable hypochondriac. She doesn't want to allow Rupert the same power over her, so she reacts like a cornered tiger.

But at the end of the day, what she wants is a family, and in a lot of ways Ted can't give her that. Is Ted going to have one child in America and another in Britain and split his time between the two? Does that sound like the kind of thing Ted would be willing to do? Nor do I think it's what Rebecca really wants because her desire for family isn't just about having a child, but having a stable family unit to come back to, one she didn't really have growing up. Maybe you could see them hooking up, but by the time their relationship has progressed that either of them could have, they've both grown past the desire to do so. Tedbecca isn't endgame because Rebecca needs someone calm and warm and relaxed to come home to, in contrast to her childhood being a parent to her mother, or the cat and mouse dance with her ex husband.

But Ted isn't much better. We see that his father's suicide soured their relationship, but holy crap do I want to talk about Ted's mom.

In every single scene that Ted and his mom are interacting in right up to the blowout fight, she is guilting him into behaving a particular way. She says he "was born nice" but in reality it's obvious that he's extremely used to having to guess at what someone wants and bend his life around that. Ted's mom wants to visit him so *waits around his apartment* until he notices and offers her a place to stay. Ted's mom wants to sleep in the bed while insisting otherwise (but immediately starts having specific plans about what that means re: suitcases don't go on the bed). Ted's mom wants to go to the game and Ted doesn't insist she go, so she sends a text saying she wishes she were there. It is a relentless barrage of emotional abuse.

No wonder Ted is so sensitive to the lies she's telling people, also the whole time. How many fights have they had where he's done something because she asked him to, only for her to turn around and say "I never asked for that" and have that technically be true? And in fact we are explicitly told in the blow out that she responded to her *husband's suicide* by pretending everything was normal.

And then, finally, we get the truth. She's not there because she wanted to visit London (a thing she said explicitly which turns out was also a lie). She's there to guilt Ted into coming home by using his guilt over leaving his son. Is Ted… also a bad dad?

Ted's entire generous, forgiving personality was shaped by these two parents. One, who was a good man despite making what I would say is the only unforgivable act of selfishness, and the other, who is a manipulative woman who demands generosity from the people around her despite never overtly saying such.

Ted isn't just forgiving of Beard because of the guilt and anger over his father's death. He's also willing to go the extra mile for people because he thinks it's his job. 

Ted leaves for Richmond because his wife wants space, but in a lot of ways it's also an act of selfishness. After all, his ex wife says that she didn't want them to take a break, she wanted to know that Ted would fight for their relationship. And he doesn't - in fact he does the opposite. We now have context to know that asking for something without really asking for it explicitly is a trigger for Ted. So he sees what looks like the emotional manipulation of his mother coming from his wife, panics, and runs as fast and as far away from the situation as he can.

That Ted could never be in a relationship with his boss. Tedbecca isn't endgame because Ted needs a relationship where he can be selfish. 

And I think, genuinely, that all of this is intentional on the part of the writers. A relationship with Ted and Rebecca could never have been healthy, because they are the same character, but one of them is fight and the other is flight.

This show is so, so smart. And I think it's absolutely tragic how much of that smartness is missed because we aren't used to shows with this level of carefully crafted nuance. My god, the scene where Nate comes out of his room and the first shot is an all white hallway with absolutely no distinguishing features? My god. The flex of having the characters singing, and you can hear them walking off, Dani is literally getting louder as he gets closer to the camera! That's studio audio because their breathing doesn't line up with the dancing, but it sure sounds like it was recorded on a soccer pitch. I looked up the name of Keeley's form because I distinctly remember the last scene *not* saying KJPR and turns out in a blink and you'll miss it moment, she changed the name to KBPR to honor the fact that Barbara stood by her when Jack pulled funding.1

I could go on and on and on. There's so many moments where the writers just jam packed meaning and nuance to bursting in this show. 

In the "morning after" scene in the series finale, Ted is wearing a KC shirt, specifically a KC Current shirt, which is a women's professional soccer team. That says a lot all on its own for that being the shirt

In fact, Ted wears a lot of KC shirts on the show. He wears Richmond shirts… when he's at work. 

There's a lot more I could say, and maybe even will. I want to give the jamie/keeley/roy OT3 another look from the top at some point. But I just wanted to get something topical out quickly, because good shows deserve to be showered in praise, and I really think the negative publicity on Ted Lasso specifically is an absolute crime. We can't expect to see writers take a chance on something this detail oriented and nuanced again any time soon if we just skip all the nuance and get mad they didn't doll smash our favorite characters together.

[signalwatch]

G Watch: Godzilla vs. Kong (2021) Watched:  12/23/2023 Format:  4K disc Viewing:  Second Director:  Adam Wingard This is the first Monsterverse movie that finally understood why people show up for a Godzilla movie.  That seems remarkable given the money spent, audience participation in prior films, etc...  This was maybe the first one not made for the edgelord 18-24 y.o. market in mind.   Way back in April of 2021, Godzilla enthusiast Stuart and I discussed the movie for the podcast.  I invite y'all to listen to that podcast at your leisure. On a rewatch, and knowing what I was getting into, it's still a fun watch.  I don't know if I'd say "this is a good movie" because it's definitely YMMV territory.  It's big and ridiculous, and, arguably, there's way too much continuity in these films and not enough "hey, a new monster for Godzilla to fight".  Like, Godzilla existed over at Toho for decades and decades just showing up from time to time, and no one was trying to worry about 10,000 years of Titan history.  Godzilla just was, and everyone had to deal with it. But when I get to see Kong slug Godzilla across the jaw while both are standing on an aircraft carrier, I almost want to stand up and salute these filmmakers for giving me the thing I did not know I needed to see in a movie, but had waited my whole life to see.   This movie seems to also be aware that by this point, you're winning over 12 year olds, but the odd seriousness with which adults were suddenly watching Marvel and DC movies in the 2010's was not going to apply here the same way.  So, let's just make it for that younger audience, make it ridiculous and fun-forward, and by that virtue, everyone else will just come along.  And I think it works better than anything we saw in prior films. There's a lot of ridiculous pseudo-science thrown around, so much that they almost choke on it from time to time, but the movie is about BIG IDEAS, so, yeah, an Astrodome that houses Kong?  Why not.  A single scientist at Monarch authorizing moving Kong and a fleet of naval ships?  Why not. What is important is that we play by 1970's comics rules, and the two heroes will fight until a bigger threat emerges, and then they'll team up.  And, wow, does that work.   The human stuff is nowhere near as tedious as the two previous films.  MBB's story is limited to her becoming a conspiracy nut and dragging her funny friend along as they team up with a grown man whose backstory is on the cutting room floor, but they all wind up neck deep in the action of the movie.  Meanwhile, Rebecca Hall is a Kong-Scientist for Monarch and is talked into taking him to test a Hollow Earth exploration theory by Alexander Skarsgaard, who is employed by the shady APEX Corp.  Hall is also shepherding an orphan from Skull Island who has taught Kong sign language.  It is a really neat idea. There are, technically, a few things that this movie does that the prior Monsterverse G movies didn't do, that Kong did do well.  1)  They show G and Kong in full daylight, fighting and otherwise.  2)  They lit the night scenes in Hong Kong in the most fun and exciting way with all that neon.  3)  They clearly used motion capture for the characters, getting quality movement surpassing Man-in-Suit, but making it feel organic.  4) They know where to place the camera.  It's not the same terrifying impact as G Minus One, but it's right for this movie (I loved the wide shots and then the inside-the-vehicle POV shots). Anyway, there's like an hour of conversation on the podcast, and I welcome you to give it a listen.     https://ift.tt/NM0WXkJ via The Signal Watch https://ift.tt/1lYMw5y December 25, 2023 at 11:06PM

[bexstevie]

bechaeyeon​:

chaeyeon waits for his response with her arms crossed over her chest, one foot cocked to the side with its toes tap-tap-tapping. she isn’t really able to keep up the fussy little act for long though once he starts talking. her feet come together, and her head relaxes to one side inquisitively. she’s not really anywhere near as pissed off as she looks. it’s more that she’s curious – what exactly happened with this guy? job hunting, applying for shows – is he seriously just throwing his hat into whatever ring he comes across? she supposes she can’t blame him for that. it’s hard to make your way in this world.

what else was he supposed to do? chaeyeon barks out a laugh and shrugs. “well, i don’t know. but tell me, was she as mad at you as she was at me? no… she didn’t actually know you, so i definitely got the worse ear bend.” it’s kind of freeing to be so completely unmasked around somebody. she doesn’t really know him, but he’s already seen her at her worst at the salon – miserable, closing up for the night, and desperately seeking something (anything) above her station – so chaeyeon feels free to be a margin less put together. she tosses her hair over her shoulder. “whatever. you were better off not taking the job anyways. that place was a hellhole.”

he stumbles over her name, and chaeyeon raises an eyebrow at him.

“chaeyeon. or rebecca.” though no one’s called her that in a long, long time. it feels unnatural to include it in her introduction, but again, somewhat liberating. maybe it’s because she’s gotten to dance and sing and practice so much lately, but the need to act has been weighing a lot heavier on shoulders as of late. she notices it now, meeting and talking with someone new, someone who wouldn’t have much to go off on her, but maybe it’s been becoming more apparent with others too. she’ll have to keep a close eye on her behaviour going forward… oh. maybe this is what her grandparents meant when they told her she seemed differently recently. “i won’t hold it against you,” another toss of her hair, back over the other shoulder. “but did you end up finding anything?”

his head tilts to the side, eyes blinking as he hums in thought-- trying to remember. stevie doesn’t really remember the boss being mad at him. maybe a little stressed and defensive, but she softened up pretty quickly; maybe it was the puppy dog eyes and apologies he ended up resorting to in order to lay the please don’t yell at me on thick enough. 

“she wasn’t that bad.” he admits, rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly. he wasn’t around long enough to really see if it was bad as she says-- but if she’s saying it, maybe it was. maybe that’s why she’s...kinda scary. 

her eyebrow raises and stevie can only widen his grin further, chuckling nervously as he waits for her answer. his head cocks back to the side at the option of names, blinking quickly as he lets out an interested oh! “rebecca?” he repeats curiously. “and chaeyeon. okay. can i call you ‘becca?” he asks curiously. “i think nicknames are fun.”

at the mention of finding anything, stevie frowns, and shakes his head. “i’m still looking...trying out more places, seeing how it goes...” he shrugs a shoulder, shifting his balance from foot to food. “this time with a resume like, with me. i’m prepared.” there’s a playful quirk to his smile; sure, it’s not much of a resume, but at least he’s got it on him. that’s improvement if anything! “how uh, about you? you left that place-- so wherever you’re at must be loads better, right?” 

[proserpina-magnus]

If you do nsfw alphabets, can you do one for marlene (if not that’s completely okay!)

Hi! Sure you can, I hope you like it (it’s not the best but oh well). Mwah.

Marlene Mckinnon NSFW Alphabet

Reader: described as fem (or with female genitialia) since Marlene is hc’d as a lesbian in this.

Warning; pure smut Headcanons. oh and this isnt checked for spelling.

A = Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)

Shes prettty sweet, definitly helps you out of any bounds or restraints if they were used during sex, she likes to play with your hair (or style it). She would possibly read you a chapter of your favourite book or tell you the latest gossip. She will most definitely run you a bath (and that would probably lead to another round), and she would even wash your hair or draw little shapes on your shoulder blade.

B = Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)

Her favourite body part on herself if her shoulders, she’s always been a bit insecure about them (since they are a bit bigger) but once she began playing quidditch she really started to like them.

Her favourite body part on you is probably just your entire body, she enjoys running her hands almost every wear and gripping the flesh (bonus points if you have doughy and bigger potions, eg hips, thighs, stomach).

C = Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)

She loves pussy eating for this very reason of getting to watch and taste you, it’s basically her favourite activity and she’s always fantasizing about it.

D = Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)

Her first time was with Mary in fifth year, it wasn’t even supposed to go that far. They began kissing just to try and you know the rest. There weren't any romantic feelings between them and they agreed to never talk about it again. But she sometimes really wishes it would become a regular thing.

E = Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)

She’s pretty experienced with her own body, so she uses her own knowledge and applies it to you. She asked quite a lot the first few times, what you liked and didn’t. But now she’s an expert at pleasing you.

F = Favorite position (this goes without saying)

Most likely when you’re on top, especially because she gets to lay back and watch you (which is her favourite thing to do). She loves to hold your hips, guiding your pace and smiling if you get frustrated.

G = Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)

It depends, she definitely makes more teasing comments but they aren’t really funny (well atleast not to you). Sometimes though, something just happens (either “embarrassing” like a sound or movement) and you both just kinda burst out laughing. Your first times together was more light hearted, but as you go on it get more serious.

H = Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)

She is pretty well groomed, she trims it more often than goes completely bare, for friction reasons. She just prefers to be well kept, but she doesn’t care if you are or not.

I = Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)

She’s very caring sometimes, even if she’s teasing. She’s always shushing you gently with a grin, and she loves to stroke your hair when you’re just about to cum. She doesn’t really realize how intimate she is.

J = Jack off (masturbation headcanon)

She loves it, obviously she enjoys sexual moments with you but she also likes time to herself and loves exploring new things (like toys). She doesn’t do it as often when you both get together, but she still does it occasionally.

K = Kink (one or more of their kinks)

She has many, but she doesn’t always do them at the same time. She likes to branch out and try new things. Definitely dom and sub roles is a huge part (she’s a switch, but probably prefers dom). She loves hair pulling and spanking, along with dress up ( she fucking loves lacy lingerie sets or when you wear her clothes).

L = Location (favorite places to do the do)

Her dorm, though she prefers in the shower or bath. She really likes those quick fucks in a closet, or in the locker rooms.

M = Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)

Short skirts or whenever you give her fuck eyes, she loves it when people look completely vulnerable sexually. She especially get motivated whenever she teases you and you go bright red (or at least flustered, like mumbled stuttering).

N = No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)

She won’t do anal, she’s never really been a fan of it (except for spanking, she loves that shit). But she will never do anal play, it actually sorta freaks her out.

O = Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)

She prefers if she’s given it, especially when she gets to sit on your face and sorta just completely suffocates you. She doesn’t mind going on you, she enjoys it, but she much rather be the one receiving it.

P = Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)

She’s a mix of all, it depends on her mood. She typically can go fast and sensual, even though she likes to take her time. It’s an odd combination, but that’s what works for her. Can you imagine fast and rough

Q = Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)

Absolutely, she loves ‘before games’ quickies in the dorms or changing rooms. Or between class fucks, she will take it anytime she gets.

R = Risk (are they game to experiment? Do they take risks? etc.)

She is really risky and will most definitely do it anytime and anywhere, but she prefers places she used too. She is constantly wanting to try new toys or new positions. Her middle name is experiment, of course she would only do things that aren’t crossing your boundaries.

S = Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)

It depends, she can get bored of the same stuff so it depends if you guys have time to explore new things. She can go a good few, like 4, since she is athletic and has good stamina, but she definitely needs a break in between.

T = Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)

She owns many variations from dildos to vibrators. She uses them quite a lot, since it’s easier. She’ll use them on herself and you, but of course she will wash them and properly take care of them. She’s quite skillful with and without them, so whether you both use them or not, you’re definitely having the time of your life.

U = Unfair (how much they like to tease)

She’s always a tease, whether it's leading her hand up your thigh in class, wearing short skirts or no bra, whispering dirty things, it happens on a daily basis. She gives you yearning looks during class, smirking. It’s 50% sex and 50% taunts and teases.

V = Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)

She’s not that loud, she swears more often than actually groaning. She sometimes does those small whimpers if you’re leading (which only happens in a blue moon), but she isn’t actually quiet; she talks to you.

W = Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)

She would definitely want Lily or Mary to join, or she would love to go to one of this girls sleepover party’s and it ends up being a sex-a-thon orgy. She isn’t into men, so if ahy threesome’s where to go down it would be with girls.

X = X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)

She has perky breasts, they're small but she likes them and her confidence makes you like them as well. Her strap is around 7 inches, but it’s more girthy.

Y = Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)

Pretty high, she can go any time and where. She’s always thinking about sex but she is never actually horny most times, when she is horny she can go for hours on end.

Z = Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)

She actually has a very high stamina due to quidditch, so she has built up a tolerance to stay awake after a ‘workout’. There for, she can stay up for hours after sex and will probably spend her time taking care of you.

--

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[mbg159]

What Your Favorite Yu-Gi-Oh DM Girl Says About You

[Main Girls Only] [GX]

Anzu Mazaki/Tea Gardner (reposted): Decades of her being called “the friendship slut” have hardened your skin into diamond armor. You’re something of a purist for DM, and have almost definitely read the manga. You probably enjoy shipping her with some stripe of Yugi or Atem. You’re very prideful of the fact that she technically has a perfect win record, and mention this fact at every opportunity whenever someone makes fun of her. You have a wary relationship with yaoi shippers.

Mai Kujaku/Mai Valentine: You are very defensive of Mai's win record. Mai is the coolest and nobody else can fight you on this. Whenever she's mentioned in post-DM material, you feel an immense sense of vindication. It sometimes gets on your nerves that she's the most overtly "sexy" character in the original series, but you've learned to live with it. You have very complicated feelings about the Doma arc. You are probably a Polarshipper, but you can go a lot of ways.

Ishizu Ishtar: You think this show about Egyptian stuff needed more Egyptians and consequently were very happy. You either really like or really dislike Kaiba, but no matter what, you definitely laughed when she pushed his shit in. Mostly, you just think she’s really pretty. Someone put the brainbug of her ending up with Mai in your head and it won’t leave. You appreciate a character who acts like an adult, and really want to give her a hug. 

(Note: all of the above also applies to Isis, except you also like Millennium World.)

Shizuka Kawai/Serenity Wheeler: You empathized with her a lot growing up. You actually like the filler arcs, but you weren’t big on the love triangle subplot. You’re very angry when people dismiss her. There’s roughly a 70% chance you have considered Silentshipping at some point. You’ve created some very elaborate AUs. You were very mad when you discovered the scene where she dives into the ocean was an anime addition.

Kisara: You desperately want to know her real backstory. You’ve read and watched her scenes exhaustively to work out every minor facet of who she is. You sometimes pull up artwork of her and just... stare at her. You wish Millennium World had been about twice as long. You’re very insistent on the differences between Blueshipping and Mizushipping. You’ve read or written at least one fanfic where she shows up in the modern day.

Mana: When the truth came out that an actual, human version of Dark Magician Girl existed, you were giddy for about a week. You know she’s not around a lot, but you don’t care. You really wish Millennium World hadn’t been cut short, because you want to know the deal with her getting the Millennium Ring was. You’ve read or written at least one fanfic where she shows up in the modern day.

Miho Nosaka: You are a Toei/Season Zero purist without shame. You heard that there was a whole other girl character in the show, and your head danced with possibilities, and then you found out she was an airheaded, childish mess of a person, but that just made you love her more. You know that 40% of her reason for existence is to be a girlfriend, but disagree on whose girlfriend she should be.

Aileen Rao: You are to Miho fans what Miho fans are to everyone else. You heard there was a cool Indian lady villain and that was that. You’ve talked someone else into playing Raijinhai. You are probably very happy I acknowledged she exists.

Rebecca Hopkins/Rebecca Hawkins: You’re not too happy that her first appearance gives a lot of people the worst impression of her. You’ve had to defend the later DM filler arcs on a number of occasions. You’re not against her and Yugi, but you really wish that the love triangle had been left out. You find American characters in anime really funny. 

Vivian Wong: You know she makes people mad, you know she’s arguably the least popular girl, you don’t care. In fact, that drew you to her out of spite. You really like Chinese girls and martial artists in any media. You saw that the final shot of the anime’s last ending is her and Mai teaming up, and a thousand fanfics danced before your eyes.

Sera: You read the absolute hell out of Transcend Game before DSOD came out, and actually understood what was going on. You’re disappointed she wasn’t in the movie that much, and that her badass avatar didn’t stick around. Still, anyone who tries to beat up Kaiba inside his own brain has your vote. You were immensely happy when she showed up in Duel Links.

Dark Magician Girl: You made up a whole personality in your head for her, and weren’t satisfied by Mana. You really liked the Doma arc. Even you aren’t sure how it works when you ship her with Yugi, but you don’t care; you’ve had a crush on her since February 8, 2003, and it will never die. You own at least one copy of her card in real life.

[chainofclovers]

on linear canon and non-linear fandom :)

Been thinking a lot about how shipping and other fannish activities are non-linear and/or do not rely on a linear experience external to the fan. (Last September, I published femslash about a movie that came out in 1980.) Also thinking a lot about how the act of watching canon unfold is inherently linear. (New episodes drop Friday at 12:01 a.m.! Binge the new season on Netflix in October! Coming to a theater near you this Christmas!) There's no getting around the collisions. The suspense of your linear story-viewing experience includes suspense about ship outcomes or other fannish commitments to the story. (Suspense as in "what is going to happen?" as opposed to suspense as in "something scary lurks around the corner." Or suspense as in both!) Lots of fannishness is anticipatory and reliant on the progression of time. BUT. Inevitable collisions notwithstanding, I think people would be a lot happier with all the parts of the experience of being invested in a story if we could be more comfortable with the fact that our brains are engaged in linear and non-linear activities simultaneously, which is kind of a wild thing to do?! When a canon closes, there's a bittersweetness because it becomes rooted (or even stuck) in the time it aired and the memory of watching it unfold in that time, but the closure of canon also releases it from linear constraints and to me that has always felt more purely sweet. Even before the close of canon, though, I believe it is possible to lessen the stress associated with the suspense by considering the ways fandom doesn't have to abide by the same linear milestones that creators on a production schedule do. Anyway, I think that sometimes people get so absorbed in either the linear parts or the non-linear parts that the wires get crossed. Like, when characters on a show get together in some capacity, that's not a new ship sailing (non-linear) or an old ship dying (non-linear); it's a group of writers and directors and actors and editors making an addition to the storytelling (linear). And then people are free to apply that new information to their relationship to the fandom. Or not. I saw someone post online (peering at Twitter with one eye open? or maybe a tumblr comment somewhere? or maybe this is just a squishing together of shippy posts I've seen?) about the latest storylines in Ted Lasso, and how someone had been a Rebecca/Ted shipper but now that Rebecca/Sam is happening in canon, the joy is gone because the show creators had clearly sunk the Ted/Rebecca ship to sail the Sam/Rebecca one. But it sounds so exhausting to stuff non-linear shipping and fannishness into the constraints of a linear story! Not to mention the fact that we're in the middle of a messy story that doesn't feel even a fraction as definite as a ship sailing or sinking.

Experiencing media that way ("I guess I was wrong to ship this, but I hate the thing I'm supposed to ship, goodbye to this show!") makes both the unfolding linear story and the fannish experience feel worse, I think. You miss out on some of the interesting things about the story someone else controls and you lose the joy of participating in the story you control. You end up potentially assuming a writer endorses or supports a certain set of character decisions (like they are marketing a ship) instead of taking in the bigger picture of what they are doing (telling a complicated story that includes romantic and sexual connections). And it doesn't even seem possible to find out you were "right" or "wrong" to ship something, whereas it is possible to find out you were right or wrong or not-yet-right about the plot of a linearly unfolding story. And of course a lot of fandom is dependent on outcomes in canon. My experience certainly is. The disappointments, hopes, excitement, etc. can be intense, and it's natural that we feel the impact of the stories being told and the impact of how they are told. And since it definitely does not feel possible or even like a good thing (for me at least) to divorce my experience of canon from my experience of doing fan activities like writing fic and meta and talking about media with people, the thing that helps me the most is remembering which parts are linear and which aren't. (Also! To my Ted Lasso + Hacks + shipping anon, if you are reading this...! Your ask is part of what got me thinking about all this stuff. I will answer your ask as soon as I can! I just needed to get these more general thoughts out first.)

[love-takes-work]

Steven Universe: End of an Era: Outline & Review

I wrote this review in October but never got around to posting it here

Steven Universe: End of an Era is far more than an art book–it’s also a collection of behind-the-scenes material, stories about the experience of working on the show, planning documents and associated background info, and both older versions of developed concepts AND concepts that never made it into the show. It's a huge fusion of all those elements, and it's definitely an experience!

Some low-quality images are included with my review just to give you an idea of what’s there--it’s not a good substitute for getting your own copy, but here’s a tour!

Like the previous concept art book, Art and Origins, I'll be giving you a description of the structure and overview, while also collecting notable information for fans. Obviously just about everything is "notable" once again, but I'll aim for unique insight or perspective on the main source material, keeping the screaming about everything new to a minimum so you can also enjoy something for yourself if you pick it up. My low-quality photos should prevent people from feeling like I'm reproducing the book in any capacity. Please grab one while you can and have your own experience!

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

OVERVIEW

The book is titled "End of an Era" for a couple reasons--obviously because it is released after the show has wrapped, but also because Gem history recently ended its "Era 2" and began Era 3--an age of prosperity and peace. The author--the person in charge of adapting all of this information into this slick, readable package--is Chris McDonnell, whose work was previously applied on the Art and Origins book.

The foreword is by N.K. Jemisin, a well-known science fiction author who's a huge fan of the show (and wrote a really excellent series that also has a weird geological connection, by the way).

And the cover, like its predecessor, is shiny and decorated with a beach scene featuring minimalistic characters--this time it's the Gems at night in front of the Temple, and on the back cover is a big pink leg ship in a cross-legged pose.

The interior covers are decorated with tons of amazing sketches of Steven and Connie on the front, and a bunch of Gem sketches on the back. Every interior page that most would leave blank is highlighted with some kind of sketch art or character exercise--it's so much to look at, so much to absorb.

The book is dedicated "For Eddie."

Its organization is different from the previous book in that it shares applicable work in chunks associated with groups of episodes rather than pertaining to different aspects of building the show.

FOREWORD

N.K. Jemisin gives us such a great introduction to the book--apparently understanding very well that the audience of this book is full of animation enthusiasts and adult fans more than it is full of kids, and explaining that bewildering journey some adults had from blowing this show off as a silly kid thing to falling in love with it hard and fast.

The important thing, Jemisin says, is being able to trust a storyteller with your heart. And it was clear to her that Rebecca Sugar knew what she was talking about and was saying important things about identity and the radical power that comes with accepting it and demanding respect.

Important also is how we handle heroes and who gets to be one in fantasy. That's part of the reason Steven Universe speaks to so many--because we see ourselves here, and know stories can be about us. Acknowledging the power we all have to MAKE THINGS BETTER with what we fight for is so important--especially if we're going to speaking to the next generation about it.

Highlighting Rose Quartz as a "born leader" who failed and Steven as a relatable scamp who did what she couldn't, Jemisin asserts that we can save the world.

1. END OF AN ERA

We start with an appeal to the audience to think about identity and the formative parts of our childhood--and how different it is if who you are and who you become is restricted, mocked, erased, or Not Allowed. Most people, if not ALL people, can relate to this, but for those of us with a special relationship with Steven Universe because of queer identity, this hits hard.

But it doesn't have to be anything grand to be something we respect--this show's authenticity comes largely from how personal everything is, drawn from real-life experiences and incidental truths from each artist's perspective, leaning hard on childhood and formative experiences.

Rebecca Sugar offers some interview bits to discuss writing philosophy and why "writing female characters" was difficult for a nonbinary person who'd been socialized as a girl and a woman. Rebecca has spoken before about how frustrating it is that marketing for cartoons was SO gendered when she was growing up (and to some extent still is).

The Gems in the story are all "she/her," but on their planet they're defined by their work, not by emotion or relationships (unlike women in our society), so having them be socialized opposite to how she was and be able to claim those emotions through choice and NOT as just an expectation "as women" was revolutionary. Rebecca wants her show to tell all marginalized people that they don't deserve to be in the margins.

Weighing in on other aspects of the show were Ian Jones-Quartey, Joe Johnston, and Miki Brewster. Ian describes feeling like at first doing SU was a thrill ride that meant they'd finally get to do all the cool stuff, but it quickly became a responsibility that he took very seriously--the need to tell a good story now that he'd been given a megaphone.

Promotional art, planning documents, character sketches, and concept art from the lighthearted to the stone serious is included, along with some very cool (sort of famous) timeline charts that track major characters' developments. It's emphasized by Rebecca that the developmental materials ARE NOT CANON (and especially are not MORE canon) compared the final show.

There are concept sketches alongside final art for Aquamarine and Topaz in "Wanted" (with Topaz labeled "Imperial Topaz"), the Zircons in "The Trial," Blue and Yellow Diamond, and the Off Colors (including Pink Lars).

And there's also a spread of "the two sides of Steven's life: Gem Magic and Rock N Roll" featuring Sadie Killer and the Suspects (referred to as "Buck's band")--as well as a cool "Crew Cameos" key and some concepts for short-haired Connie.

And then there's some more "finished" art with stills alongside concepts, including some background art, revision, and really cool "fairytale" art from some of the shadowplay storytelling bits. We get "Lars of the Stars," "Jungle Moon," and "Can't Go Back."

2. THE BEGINNING OF THE END: A SINGLE PALE ROSE

In discussing the huge reveals and Gem mysteries in the show, the pacing is examined, and emphasis is put on the intended "slow burn." One of the most difficult things in the show was to strategize so that every piece that was needed to support another piece in the future was placed properly to seed what it was supposed to.

Some of the ideas they developed were more of a group effort and were fit together collaboratively (like Amethyst's being younger than the other Gems and Jasper being from Earth), while others were intended from the beginning based on Rebecca's vision (the fundamental idea of Pink Diamond's true identity, for instance, as well as Obsidian's design and sword and our Pearl not being Pink's first).

The writing process gets a great deep dive here, including fun tidbits like how the orb in the moon base was inserted by Joe Johnston and they literally had no idea what it was for when they wrote the episode. They repurposed it when they figured out what they needed.

Rebecca credits her detailed timelines for helping keep the order straight, and discusses how other artists are sometimes flabbergasted that a storyboard-driven show can have this much detail and continuity and yet not get wrecked by the free non-scripted boarding process. But Rebecca and the Crew valued that approach and loved the way fresh eyes would handle an idea, making it come back alive, entertaining, vivid.

Several Crew members weigh in on the writing process. Lauren Hecht refers to making lots of incorrect guesses despite being on the inside. Joe Johnston recalled getting briefed on his first day and getting so excited to start working on this massive project.

Miki Brewster remembered being told Rose Quartz is Pink Diamond and being shocked--and also confused about why Ruby and Sapphire would need to be married if they're already basically married. Drew Green talks about being brought in late and getting to watch unaired episodes and a rough of the movie while eating cereal.

Ian Jones-Quartey complains about Pink Diamond's real jester-like form being leaked to the internet through a Hot Topic shirt. Rebecca piggybacks on that and says it was upsetting that the wedding was leaked because of toy fair keychains featuring Ruby and Sapphire in wedding attire. They'd always be worried about leaks, and sometimes Rebecca struggled not to talk about the reality of Pink Diamond before the reveal because she knew it would make so much more sense once the truth was out. And everything associated with Rose makes more sense once you know she's Pink--especially what happened with Bismuth, considering what we know about how Pink Diamond has a habit of treating anyone who no longer serves her interests.

When it comes to visual cues, Rebecca also talks about intentional designs to create a feeling of unity between concepts, like the flower shapes on Pink Diamond's palanquin lining up with the poofs of Steven's hair and the star imagery of the series. Steven Sugar and Mary Nash discuss how the Human Zoo incorporated this imagery, trying to look like Homeworld with a Pink Diamond touch.

Steven Sugar, as a game nerd, liked to throw in video game references from old and modern stuff to feel like he's inserting what he's enjoying and who he is from moment to moment, while Mary Nash, who related to Sadie as a basement-dwelling young person with cult interests, liked to include stuff from MST3K and cult movies. Pearl's hand gestures get a spotlight too--her reflex to cover her mouth when Pink Diamond was being discussed was analyzed here.

A "Top Secret Visual Timeline" from 2016 is included which tells us some Diamond history. It has an earlier version of Pink Pearl's fate and does not include Spinel since the movie hadn't been greenlit. The timeline includes the birth of the Diamonds, the emergence and major story beats for each major character, and some philosophy of the driving force behind each.

We're told that Pink Diamond straightened up, behavior-wise, after she lost her first Pearl, and that Yellow and Blue wanted to give her a planet but White only agreed to it to prove she would fail at managing a colony. Pearl, meanwhile, is so confused to have a Diamond who keeps asking her what she thinks when she doesn't believe she should have opinions.

And when Pink moonlighted as Rose to start conflict, she found herself leading an army to fight Pink's troops--then Yellow's, and eventually Blue's too. Lapis is said to be waiting for the conflict to end on Earth so she can terraform, but she gets trapped instead.

Pearl's love story with Rose is described as "an endless honeymoon" where she's free to love her, while Rose's is more like "I'm now the head of the family and I'm going to give everyone what they never had, so everyone is super special!"

Jasper is described as "adopted" into Yellow's army as the only successful Beta Quartz. And White Diamond knew that Pink Diamond was not dead--she thought she was just running away from home like a brat and would eventually be back.

3. THE HEART OF THE CRYSTAL GEMS

Now we discuss Rose Quartz--the original Pink Diamond. How she was selfish and selfless, never enough and always too much, and how Greg was her first partner who "challenged her" to be an equal. Rebecca describes Rose as being delighted by the idea that both she and Greg reinvented themselves, but when that leads her to want to share her past, Greg isn't interested--he only wants to know who she is now, and doesn't consider the old her to be her.

Rebecca likes Carl Jung's concept of "enantiodromia," which is the idea that extremes lead to their extreme opposite. This is demonstrated in all of the Diamonds. This narrative is interspersed with drawings of Greg and Rose being cute.

But another "heart" of the Crystal Gems is its relationships--particularly, Garnet, the fairy tale romance embodied. More psychological theories are discussed with regard to differentiation in a relationship making the relationship stronger, and how they made sure that happened for Garnet during the appropriate arc. Rebecca has struggled with the idea that she, like Ruby, went straight from a "family" group to a living-with-others situation and never lived by herself. But she also learned that you can in fact develop as a person in the context of a relationship--you don't have to be alone to do it. Ruby learned that too, and chose on her own terms to be with Sapphire.

The wedding made so much sense to Rebecca and the crew that they couldn't imagine a wholesome couple like Ruby and Sapphire not having a wedding episode. They wanted it for years: The wedding concepts always included the tuxedo for Sapphire and the wedding dress for Ruby.

But pushback (often blamed on the conservative standards of the international market) led to negotiations trying to keep Ruby and Sapphire's relationship from being explicit. Rebecca and the Crew were very tired of this double standard, and they were especially irritated by attempts to claim a wedding wouldn't be well received by a core demographic or wouldn't make sense for Steven's character. But other shows had done weddings and Steven had been established to love weddings already.

Rebecca kept adding more elements to the wedding episode to answer all the concerns, but she didn't want to back down from explicit marriage between these characters. They deserved it. And the audience deserved to see this as wholesome, like any other cartoon wedding. Eventually they got their way and were allowed to have the wedding. But the ordered episodes were also coming to a close without promise of more, so Rebecca had to request more episodes to be able to wrap up the storyline!

And of course, there is Steven, the true heart of the team. A very interesting aside discusses Garnet's leadership and how the network pushed the Crewniverse to acknowledge Steven as the leader. This was successfully resisted throughout as well--because Garnet is the leader (unless she's incapacitated, of course). It's fantastic that this concept was preserved because too often a young male chosen one is elevated above people with more experience and knowledge because of that chosen one tradition, so it's really nice to have a show acknowledge that team leadership is more appropriate for an adult.

4. ERA 3

Beginning with a discussion of the Diamonds, this chapter deconstructs the dysfunctional "family" of the Diamonds (who are said to be based on tropes about evil stepmothers and stepsisters), with the thread of dysfunction originating with White Diamond.

Yellow is physical, Blue is emotional, White is judgmental, and Pink is impulsive. Some philosophy on why Pink is naturally manipulative and why she clashes so much with White is offered.

White believes her identity is to be imposed on all because she is the pinnacle of what should be--and therefore, she has the right to make decisions and statements about and on behalf of everyone. But her secret is that she can't do what the others do--act or feel or want. In trying to be everyone, she is no one.

And this becomes very important when she confronts Steven about his identity and turns out to be wrong. The triumph of Steven being totally, fully himself is a beautiful, simple revelation that's described as far more satisfying than the theories about Pink living inside him or Rose returning from his Gem.

Also discussed is Gem architecture. A lot went into this idea, and Steven Sugar weighs in to say he had to think of what it would mean for a world to have buildings but serve no human needs. That's why it's mostly focused on transport and storage. Even the broken planet is meant to indicate a place stripped for its resources, and everything serves a function that is meant to avoid looking like the human equivalents.

And there's another layer, too: a difference between Era 1 and Era 2. Era 2 became more functional to hide Era 1's broken bits, and older Homeworld buildings still have some "ornate and ancient" feel to them. And the fact that props, tools, and even walls and doors could be living was taken from a concept Rebecca thought was horrible from old Busby Berkeley movies, where people were inanimate objects and it was portrayed as lovely. Tom Herpich helped conceptualize these living objects.

Steven dealing with "princess tropes" is discussed here too. The Pebbles (worked on with Pendleton Ward) were sort of his Cinderella's mice, and all the locked-in-a-tower, having supportive tiny friends help you, getting princess clothes made, attending a ball, having to mind your manners stuff was intentionally related to fairy tales.

The point of doing that (besides fun) was to easily invoke the feeling that Steven was being made to be someone he's not, and that he was being treated like THIS is who he really is when it isn't. White Diamond as the "evil stepmother" is discussed with regard to her detailed features and massive scale. They generally didn't put fingernails and eyelashes on characters (especially not to indicate that they were women or girls!), but they decided White would get all of these feminine markers for tradition's sake.

Rebecca also invokes several other references that were included and describes the princess tropes as "chipping away at his integrity" setting him up for the final challenge with White.

There is again tons of concept art: Homeworld architecture, Pebbles, Diamond diagrams, background Jades and Lemon Jade Fusion, Comby, Diamond extraction chambers, and White Diamond.

5. CHANGE YOUR MIND

Now we finally begin to discuss Steven's identity. The "Perfect Steven," discussed in several interviews before this book's release, was an idea back in 2013; the "ultimate Steven," beefed up and shonen-looking, was far from perfect because OUR Steven is perfect, while this alpha hero Steven idea (used in Steven Universe Future) didn't belong being idolized in such a show.

They thought about having Steven fall apart into organic half and Gem half early in the show (during "Giant Woman" after a successful fusion and unfusion, even!), but they didn't try the concept until the last episode. They didn't want the "Pink" Steven to be portrayed as "better" even though he would be more powerful, so they decided he isn't whole without his organic self and he's just as much of a shell as the organic half. They absolutely did not want any ending that required Rose to be inside him or waiting to come back. But the debates were fierce--what DOES it mean to have Rose's Gem?

Ian Jones-Quartey brings in an anecdote about his own family to emphasize some of the immigrant themes that inspired aspects of the show. He had a brother who reinvented himself elsewhere away from family without resolving issues, and all the ramifications of that were explored in the show through Rose Quartz. (He is careful to say he doesn't think his immigrant experience is like being from another planet!) But he did say you can hurt your old family even if they were toxic or didn't know the real you, and you can hurt your new family by hiding your past. The Pizza family of course was also a more direct reference to Ian's Ghanaian family.

In talking about the new Fusions from this episode, Sunstone is largely described by Miki, who also got to board the Sunstone section. Sunstone was described as a cool 1990s character and the evolution just continued into making them a fourth-wall-breaking PSA dispenser. Obsidian is also discussed, with their sword being an early concept. Steven Sugar said they totally knew it would be forged in action. Obsidian being similar to the Temple design is of course another very early detail.

The story of how James Baxter got involved with one of the final scenes (Organic Steven and Pink Steven fusing in front of White Diamond) was shared. His family was fans of the show and Rebecca Sugar took the time to drive to a birthday party for his daughter and give her a drawing. He then owed her a favor, and this was it.

Concept art is again included, this time with sample boards, promo images, a Diamond fight concept, costume design changes for the Gems, new Fusions, the so-called "Mega Diamond" ship conglomerate, some scenes from the White Diamond confrontation, Pink Steven, multiple pages of James Baxter animation, corrupted Gems and their healed selves, and photos from the "Change Your Mind" premiere and some awards. The show has won one design-related Emmy, a Peabody Award, and a GLAAD award.

6. STEVEN UNIVERSE FUTURE

The book doesn't cover the movie because it got its own book, but dives right into Future. Ian Jones-Quartey emphasizes that the movie and Future are separate and different from the original show, which ENDED. After all, after that, Steven has a neck!

Some new names are invoked now: new writers Kate Tsang, Jack Pendarvis, and Taneka Stotts. They were excited to have Steven make HIS OWN mistakes instead of trying to clean up someone else's! Now, instead of doing the usual shonen anime thing and having the final battle be a big physical rumble, Steven has to make peace with himself and take an active role in coping with what all the fighting has done to him and what effect it's had on who he is (and who he wants to be). There is no sudden "I love myself!" answer, either. It's always a process.

Drew Green and Maya Petersen, who came on board as storyboarders officially in Future, also weighed in on writing for a "mature" show, how to deal with Steven being a "moral compass" while being sort of unreliable, and what they learned as Crew that they didn't know as fans. Drew didn't know Garnet never asks questions. Jack didn't realize the show never deviated from Steven's point of view. Taneka was nervous but excited to collaborate. Kate was worried about how established the show was and what to do as a new writer to contribute appropriately.

Maya was on the old Crew but not as a storyboarder, so felt like some of the "old" ideas ended up not being appropriate for the "new" Future in an embarrassing way--and dreaded the idea of dealing with Steven's emotional problems when they were similar to stuff she'd been through. She also was personally behind the idea of Steven wanting to dump his problems by becoming Stevonnie, and got to work with Etienne Guignard on inventing the Pearl creation backstory with Volleyball.

There's some discussion of "depression hobbies," stress, and the show's pacing. And they say Etienne was entertaining at pitches. There's even some discussion of how Greg is taken off a bit of a pedestal because his terrible restrictive life in the suburbs sounded wholesome to Steven and Greg presented it negatively.

And then there is some information about how the Crew felt behind the scenes due to fan reactions and negative press. Ian discusses feeling offended when the Black characters are described as bad examples, as if their cartoonized but realistic-in-context features are automatically caricatures.

Rebecca Sugar felt beaten down by some of these narratives and began to access mental health services, inspiring some of the content of "Mindful Education." A long reflection from Rebecca discusses people's infighting about her show and what she had a responsibility to show or not show in the story. She learned a lot about bullying from Cartoon Network's anti-bullying program and learned that bullies thrive on whatever attention you give them--unless it is made clear to them by a peer group that no one is impressed by their cruel actions. Also, not all negative feedback is bullying. Constructive criticism is different. Self-awareness can help you avoid internalizing what bullies might do or say to you.

Segueing from the discussion of how people are affected by and connect with the show, we then discuss how they chose as a team what should be covered as the show came to a close. They didn't have time to do quite a few stories they wanted time for, like a Rhodonite story, a Lars side story, and Diamond "prehistory" and religion; all of it was put aside for the main arc with Steven.

They thought people would find those stories about Homeworld and Off Color history very interesting, but so much of the show had been about Steven's Gem adventures, so keeping him mostly on Earth seemed appropriate. The acknowledgment of his battle damage, of his trauma, was necessary and real, and helpful in an important way to the core audience.

Oh, and there was some stuff about a cheeseburger tree. Don't ask.

In discussing the "reverse escapism" of the original show (Gem aliens are intrigued by everyday human culture, and realism is necessary), Rebecca says her views have changed on escapism and gets why some people want a soothing feel-better show. She acknowledged also that her own escapist dreams-come-true fulfilled in the show didn't feel like escapism because they were givens to the majority of mainstream culture, but were never guaranteed to marginalized people.

Rebecca ties in her several-times-told story about "Love Like You" and how the middle bit was when she didn't feel she was worth looking up to, and the realizations she had to tie the beginning to the end. Feeling like someone will like you less if they know you more is terrible. So sometimes a show like this can be helpful in telling people that they belong when their fantasies are things like "I want to be loved" and "I want to know I exist."

In Future, Steven has to connect to who he is and love that person--and understand that person enough to finally feel that even if he's not fixing their problems or saving their world right this second, Steven deserves his family's love and support, and they WANT to give it to him.

There's a huge amount of supplemental material in this section so there's no way I could name it all. The charts for Future's timeline are pretty straightforward, though a few episodes like "A Very Special Episode," "Why So Blue," "In Dreams," and "Bismuth Casual" aren't specifically represented and a couple are in a different order ("Prickly Pair" was conceived as happening after "Fragments" and "Homeworld Bound").

Steven feeling like a monster, having intrusive thoughts, having not forgiven the Diamonds, and getting help/moving on--it's all there.

We have keys, color scripts, and boards for the new opening and some various backgrounds and storyboard art from episodes. Model sheets for Shep, Nice Lapis and Mean Lapis, Jasper, Steven Tag Gems, Pink Steven Powers, Monster Steven. New house concepts, Era 3 Homeworld concept art for the Diamond environments, and background art for the Reef.

New Connie and Greg designs. Concepts for Mega Pearl, the Rose Quartzes, Bluebird, and Morganite (who didn't get used). And there are some photos from recording and the conference room. There are even some extras from "Crossover Nexus," the crossover with OK K.O.!--including an unused cut scene that included Ruby and Sapphire fighting. The rest of the book is a bunch of adorable Crewniverse art--extras, blog drawings, promos, and gifts to each other.

NOTABLE

1.

The first timeline chart in the book features a cool sketch of the original Off Colors, which at the time this planning document was drafted included unused Off Colors Flint and Chert.

We knew of their existence already because of an episode of the podcast, but these two unexpectedly appeared as incidental characters in the Steven Universe Future episode "Homeworld Bound," identified only in the credits. Sad to think that instead of banding with the Off Colors, these two were probably shattered for their crime (being Quartzes who don't want to fight) and that's why we see them being repaired in this episode. Later, there's some brainstorming for types of Off Colors and "a Ruby that wants to wear limb enhancers" is mentioned as well.

2. 

It looks like there was also originally more juice to the story of tracking down the events of the war culminating in Pink Diamond's assassination.

One of the timelines talks about Steven thinking it makes sense that Pearl can't talk about her involvement because she might have been a double agent, explaining why Rose Quartz always knew what Pink Diamond was doing. It seems like that bit was supposed to be included in Garnet's version of the story she believed in "Your Mother and Mine." Seems like they originally conceived Garnet's story to inspire the Off Colors to become pirates and freedom fighters, though in the show's canon this storytelling happened after Lars had already reinvented himself the way he did.

Sadie was also supposed to be sending letters to Lars via Steven, which is funny since the "Letters to Lars" episode is just a montage Steven letter. And of course it's specified that Steven was supposed to get Pink Diamond flashbacks by going to the Palace on Homeworld.

3. 

The second chart in the book makes references to Sadie's reinvention of herself as a parallel to Lars, Greg, and Pink Diamond all doing the same thing, and how positive it is to embrace such a thing--a version of yourself that YOU create.

I love that Yellow Diamond's arm ship arm-wrestling the Cluster was always part of the plan.

There's some more explicit direction to have Connie help Steven understand the Diamonds as "strict parents," and a lot more emphasis on everyone realizing Rose had been inspired by THEM rather than them all following her.

White Diamond is presented here as if she thinks of Pink Diamond as a "daughter" (whom she now understands she has "lost"). There are notes on how the Diamonds have a responsibility to their children and should attend to it before just continuing to make more.

4.

One of the concept art images for the Off Colors features Rhodonite crouching by Padparadscha saying "Don't worry, I won't let them hurt you." It's very interesting because she DOES seem to protect Padparadscha in the show, but doesn't seem confident about it in her final version, even though it does seem like she'd be "programmed" to guard aristocratic Gems because of her Ruby and Pearl makeup. Cool.

5.

A "Crew Cameos" spread was included, which is of great interest to some of us who loved seeing the Crew insert themselves into the show. Not every SU Crew person who's been represented in a crowd was there, but this crowd included Amish Kumar, Kat Morris, Amanda Winterstein, Angie Wang, Lamar Abrams, Emily Walus, Mary Nash, Joe Johnston, Christy Cohen, Danny Cragg, Hilary Florido, Danny Hynes, Matt Burnett, Ben Levin, Elle Michalka.

6.

The official national flower of South Korea, Hibiscus syriacus, is the name of Pink Diamond's flower.

7.

One of Steven Sugar's comments about the silhouette difference between humans and Gems points out that humans have ears. This seems to be pretty good confirmation that they are not supposed to have ears, despite that sometimes we'll see ears drawn on them in some frames.

8.

Rose Quartz/Pink Diamond is characterized in this book as "self-hating" in a really interesting way, saying that because she believed she was not capable of compassion, she practically worshiped those who demonstrated that ability and thought they were so much better than her--which is described as "intoxicating" and resulted in others being drawn to her. How interesting is that!

9.

Timelines reveal that early plans for Pink Diamond's first Pearl originally had her getting destroyed by Pink during  a game, and then her destruction was rewritten as a punishment from the Diamonds after Pink Pearl defended Pink Diamond to the other Diamonds. They went back to the idea of her getting hurt by Pink for the final version, though the cracked face and control by White Diamond was not on the agenda until they started writing "Change Your Mind."

10.

The approximate ages of the major characters, based on emergence, are revealed on these timelines. It begins with a cracked-planet-looking graphic depicting four tiny Diamonds emerging at 20,000 years ago. Some suspicious "blacked out" redacting surrounds a long timeline tail that goes back before that, which may mean there are secrets they still don't want to reveal. But the dates go like this:

20,000 years ago: The Diamonds emerge.

11,000 years ago: Pearl is custom-made for Pink Diamond.

8,000 years ago: Sapphire emerges (on Homeworld).

6,000 years ago: Ruby emerges (on a colony).

5,750 years ago: Garnet is formed.

5,600 years ago: Lapis is poofed and put in the mirror.

5,200 years ago: Jasper emerges (on Earth).

5,050 years ago: The Cluster is planted.

5,000 years ago: Amethyst emerges (on Earth).

4,500 years ago: The Crystal Gems found Amethyst.

3,000 years ago: Peridot emerges (on Homeworld).

40 years ago: Pearl found Lapis's mirror at the Galaxy Warp.

And of course we know 14 years ago Steven is born!

11.

Originally the Diamonds were based on a quartet of themes: Love, Fear, Pride, and Sorrow. It got too complicated to keep and it was abandoned, with Pink's identification of "love" being described as "particularly outdated."

12.

Notes on a sketch say that Pearl was inspired to become bold and unashamed because Pink's questions drove her to have opinions, and it's said that Rose "fell in love" with her boldness.

13.

Rebecca tells the story of driving off a ridge and getting stuck in the desert, comparing this to Ruby's tumble during her Wild West adventure and using it as inspiration. She's told this story before but here it is in print. She also included the story about using the flowers from a friend's wedding to put in Ruby's hair.

14.

Rebecca describes having to "fight" notes she was given when it had to do with Ruby and Sapphire's relationship. One she describes as NOT fighting was for a signing card depicting Ruby and Sapphire dancing. It was called "too romantic" and she decided not to worry about it since it wasn't the actual show content.

She was also scolded over her book The Answer because the powers that be expected her to downplay that relationship. She always argued that queer youth deserved these things.

15.

Tom Herpich describes being inspired to name Blue Diamond's comb "Comby" because he was watching the news about Comey getting fired from the FBI. It's also a mineral-related term and I always assumed that reference was intentional, but maybe it's not and this is the only intended significance to Comby's name?

16.

Rainbow Quartz 2.0's design is not discussed, though the other two new Fusions from "Change Your Mind" (Sunstone and Obsidian) were. RQ2 has some sketches included, but no accompanying narrative in the text.

17.

A sheet of corrupted Gems and their healed selves is offered, though it doesn't appear to be final. The obelisk in "Serious Steven" is labeled Albite. The unnamed Worm Monster, Desert Glass, and Watermelon Tourmaline are included. An unnamed birdlike Gem represents the Big Bird monster from "Giant Woman." The crab monster from "Arcade Mania" is labeled Blue Chalcedony. The Tongue Monster is drawn uncorrupted but not named. The Flower Monster from "Back to the Kindergarten" is labeled Grossular Diopside or Titanite. The invisible monster from "Island Adventure" is labeled Moonstone. The Lighthouse Gem is labeled White Topaz. A form for Larimar that was used in "Change Your Mind" but changed in Future is there. The Slinker is listed as Chrysocolla. And the Crab Monster is listed as Aventurine.

On the next page, this is changed to Bixbite (as it was in Steven Universe Future), and we then also have Lace Amethyst, Blue Lace Agate, Crazy Lace Agate (Fusion), Ocean Jasper, the Mother Centipeetle Nephrite (Facet 413 Cabochon 12) and three other Nephrites, Angel Aura Quartz, a hooded Jasper, Zebra Jasper, Biggs Jasper, Watermelon Tourmaline (labeled as Fusion of Gem * Onion--huh?), Snowflake Obsidian, "Little" Larimar, and Orange Spodumene (who was the Worm).

18.

The Rhodonite side story would have been about the love story of a Ruby and a Pearl working for Morganite. Images of Morganite and her servants, unfused, are in the book. We do not get this additional information, but Rebecca said in a panel shortly before the book's release that Rhodonite's story would have been about finding out that she had been Rejuvenated 17 times because her components kept falling in love and needing to be reset.

19.

Referring to the Diamonds on one of the charts, Steven's perspective is "I can't believe I helped these" and then there's a censor bar. Welp.

20.

Some included art by Hilary Florido features Kevin with a souped-up Koala Princess car and another where Kevin is staring at himself in the mirror in front of an altar to himself.

21.

Rebecca's sweater collection is included in the Crew art.

[SU Book and Comic Reviews]

[kaizokuou-ni-naru]

The Voyage So Far: Wano (Part One)

east blue (1 | 2) || alabasta (1 | 2) || skypiea || water 7 || enies lobby || thriller bark || paramount war (1 | 2) || fishman island || punk hazard || dressrosa (1 | 2) || whole cake island || wano (1 | 2)

shirahoshi seeing the sun for the first time is really a relatively minor and understated thing, among all the chaos and revelations of reverie, but it strikes me as one of the most meaningful little moments in the arc. 

i LOVE the luffy fanclub. i love that a meeting of the world leaders winds up being a who’s-who with assorted friends of one of the world’s most notorious criminals, and it brings me SO much joy to see them meeting each other and being able to connect. i feel the same way about coby and rebecca meeting.

in general, and i think i said this at marineford too, i love that the one piece world is developed and interconnected and alive enough to allow for these sorts of interactions. 

fucked up that this was almost a hundred chapters ago and we still have no clue what the fuck was up with this, isn’t it? 

i do find the introduction of im fascinating. up until this point we’ve had two presumed final villains- blackbeard and akainu- who were first established pretty far back at jaya and enies lobby (in robin’s flashback) respectively. meanwhile, im isn’t even seen until chapter nine hundred and something. it feels very late-game, but at the same time, their existence doesn’t contradict anything previously established, and in fact jives pretty well with a lot of information more recently revealed in dressrosa. 

in any case, when in doubt i do trust oda knows what he’s doing when handling his story, and i’m very excited to see what he does with this.

wano is SO PRETTY. i mentioned this before in fishman island, but i think wano is definitely the prettiest setting in the series to date. i think it’s obvious oda was both very excited to draw it and put a lot of work and research into his depiction of it, and wow does it pay off. wano is so bursting with life and detail, and frequently looks like an ukiyo-e painting come to life, and just- wow wow wow.

i love zoro and luffy’s reunion so much... i love how happy they are to see each other. it’s only been, what, a couple weeks in-universe? but luffy is pulling the full tackle-hug like he did for sabo at dressrosa. i love them.

i really like the outfits in wano, too!! zoro’s ronin look in particular i think suits him very well, and i also love luffy’s patchy yukata and robin’s geisha getup and they’re just very cool. this also applies to the non-strawhat wano characters, for the record, and kind of ties back to what i was just saying about wano being so full of detail. it has a very specific look, and everything from the outfits to the way things like the fire and the waves are drawn folds very neatly into that aesthetic. 

as i’m writing this i just finished on the paramount war posts, so with that fresh on my mind, i have to say i really like the way ace (or rather, his memory) is incorporated into wano. he’s not really a major presence- that is, the fact that he was there before luffy has no real bearing on the plot. but there are people who knew and cared about him and remember him fondly, tama and yamato, and it just really helps add to this feeling that ace was a person and his life and death had real and lasting affects. 

and it adds, too, to the fact that even if it took ace way too long to realize it, he was so thoroughly loved everywhere he went. 

i have a lot of thoughts on the intersection of food and heroism in one piece (i keep trying to compile a coherent meta post on the subject and mostly failing). but i’ll settle for saying that in wano luffy is a hero by his own definition, as someone who shares food with others, and i doubt he realizes that, but i think it’s really interesting. 

i know luffy’s fight with kaidou is kind of controversial in fandom but i love it, personally. it feels like a logical outcome for luffy to get his ass kicked the first time he tries to go up against a yonkou singlehandedly! he got wrecked when he tried to throw down with a shichibukai the first time, too, and this is just the next logical step from that. 

luffy’s always been an underdog starting from nowhere and working his way up and up and up, and i love that for him. of course he’s going to get messed up the first time he tries punching an entire order of magnitude above his weight class. and then he’s going to get up and try again, and again, and again until he wins. 

the act structure of wano is really neat, i think. it helps such a long and complicated arc feel a lot more structured and less interminable than it might otherwise, and it also gives specific breaks where we can cut away to the story happening on the outside world. 

honestly i really like the whole udon prison segment. it’s fun! i like it for similar reasons i like the colosseum mini-arc in dressrosa, honestly, which is that there’s no real stress because we know luffy is the scariest person there by a country mile so we can just watch him go ham, and that’s fun. it consistently cracks me up that absolutely nobody is worried luffy’s in jail. they’re all just like “yeah, he’ll be fine.” and they’re right! he’s having the time of his life!

wano’s cast is fascinating, because almost nobody is who they first appear to be. almost everyone is wearing masks, whether literal or not- fitting, for an arc structured after a kabuki play. everyone is playing roles, from hiyori to denjirou to kanjurou to yasuie, and everyone lies. 

this entire sequence at orochi’s party is one of my favorites in the whole arc- in fact, it was my favorite, until we reached a certain part i’ll get to in the next post. everything from komurasaki standing up for toko and slapping orochi to denjirou “killing” her to robin getting caught by the oniwabanshu and dissolving into petals to nami calling down a massive lightning bolt to cover their escape- it’s really good. 

i’ve written extensively before about the smile fruits and the themes of smile and laughter in one piece and how important the freedom to feel and express emotion is. suffice it to say that for all the atrocities orochi commits against the people of wano, it’s feeding the smile fruits to the people of ebisu town that is his greatest crime, and the revelation of just what happened to those poor people ratchets up the tragedy of wano tenfold.

i do think it’s interesting to think about how if denjirou had been just a little less committed to his role, zoro would’ve killed orochi right here. it really drives home that orochi is nothing- he’s weak, he’s cowardly, he’s just lucky and clever and cruel enough to be able to get much more powerful people to do his work for him. 

it’s infuriating that someone like him has been able to hold such power over the lives of the people of wano and ruin them so thoroughly, and that’s exactly the point. 

wano is the arc where oda says you Will care about the supernovas and i’m like yeah

hey, another of my all-time favorite luffy panels!! i honestly just think this one sums him up as a character in a line more than almost any other- “i’m always free.” 

just look at the detail on kidd’s metal hand holy shit holy shit. on occasion certain panels jump out at me that remind me that oda really is just, a genius at drawing on a technical level, even setting aside his writing and storytelling chops, and this is one of them. 

oda is really, really good at creating the sense of a darkest hour- a time when all hope seems lost. the other best example in the series is in water seven, when the crew seems to be falling to pieces, merry is marked for death, robin’s gone, and the aqua laguna is coming. here, too- nobody comes to meet the akazaya nine, and the one chance they’ve waited twenty years and staked their lives on seems in danger of slipping through their fingers-

but the point of making it so all seems lost is so that when hope does appear, it shines all the brighter, and feels all the more triumphant. it’s always darkest before the dawn, and we all know how wano has been waiting for the dawn. 

[tirsynni]

Okay, keep in mind I’m going to start my RE6 watch in, oh, fifteen minutes and haven’t seen it yet, so this bit of Leon flailing is based on what I have seen. This also relies on both the games and movies (and ignores the books and other bits of canon/pseudo-canon).

Under a cut because this went longer than planned and I think I forgot what I was going for after a bit due to Leon flailiing.

We meet our intrepid hero in RE2 (and technically, RE2 Remake, as they provide different bits of background on Leon). In the original, Leon was late because his girlfriend broke up with him, he got drunk, and overslept. In the remake, he was deliberately told to not come because the outbreak had begun and ended up going to Raccoon City when he couldn’t get a hold of anyone (I think that’s what it was). For the sake of argument, we’re combining the two. He had a girlfriend, she broke up with him because he had this crazy idea to apply to a police officer position in another city because he wanted to investigate insane murders of all things, dealt with the break-up by getting drunk, but was late going to the city because he was told not to come. In at least one RE universe, it’s established that drinking is a possible coping mechanism for him. No further details given.

So we have an inclination there but no further evidence of use. Not yet. In RE2, he still pretty optimistic, helpful, compassionate, and people-focused. Honestly, a pretty sweet guy who just wants to help people (and not be turned into a flesh-eating monster). By the end of the remake, we have some foreshadowing after Ada falls when the shadows fall over him and his face is grim. We have a hint as to what he could be.

The end of RE2 is full of betrayals and pain. He learns about Ada. He is horrified by Annette’s attitude toward the virus and her dismissal of her role in it. He is kidnapped by the government who, instead of helping him and Sherry, threatens her life to force him to work for him. The scene ends with him still bloody, hunched over, and shouting that she is just a child. Fucking ow.

His next bit is in Darkside Chronicles. Still pretty sweet, pretty optimistic, a trained fighter not flinching when attacked by monsters, and there’s a nice contrast between him and the more grizzled Krauser. Krauser is more cynical, more ruthless, not a bad guy (not yet), but unlike Leon, he tends to judge things in certain categories, like victims, weapons, etc. The most interesting bit of contrast between the pair is that Leon is far calmer about the monsters than Krauser, who is terrified and, between that and his career-ended wound, sees the viruses as weapons which can be utilized. At this stage of the game, Leon’s big concern remains helping people, as seen in his defense of Manuela. Even after his betrayal by the government, he looks at Krauser and never thinks of the man betraying him or hurting him. He fearlessly extends his hand to Krauser.

In DC, when the final scene of RE2 is referenced, he never mentions the government’s threats or his own forced employment. There is no canon reference to him telling anyone ever.

RE4 is just... fucking trauma. He deals with it with quips and puns and bad humor, but you can tell he’s frustrated and angry. He’s furious with the bad guys and how they treat Ashley and Krauser. He’s betrayed by Krauser and is confused by how Krauser chose his path (which hurts a bit, honestly). How Saddler uses the parasite to control and hurt him. Confirming Ada is alive and the betrayal inherent in that. There’s just... a lot going on for him in RE4. Still! He maintains his sense of humor, keeping Ashley’s spirits up, and flirting with Hunnigan at the end. He’s still holding on.

ID takes place after RE4. For the first time, he references his horror at how the government destroyed Raccoon City without trying to help survivors. He references his horror about the nightmare that was surviving in Raccoon City. He is, again, betrayed. He, once again, has the nightmare that is his own government thrown back in his face.

Still, he’s hanging on! He’s trying to be optimistic, but you see him faltering when Claire is angry with him at the end. Hell, I swear you see him trying not to cry at certain scenes.

Again, no reference that he’s tried to explain anything to Claire, and... yeah. I can see her trying to fistfight the government over all of this, and Leon repeatedly, desperately hopes to end these horrors without accidentally creating more.

Still holding on, though! Still hanging in there!

Damnation, in my opinion, is when we really see him start breaking for the first time. By the end of that movie, he’s realized how thoroughly the government has manipulated and betrayed him. The government couldn’t act in that country, but they knew he could and would and set him up. He just had to shoot a man to save him. He has Hunnigan, someone he trusts because Leon trusts easily and gets attached to people easily and she’s been working with him for years, insisting that she knew nothing about it. He’s exhausted, hurt, betrayed again, and with Sasha and later by himself, you see him drinking, the former with a flask used by yet another person he wasn’t able to save. No sign of optimism. No joking. With Sasha, he gives the suicide speech which could easily have been intended for both of them: you can’t eat a bullet not because life is good and worth living but because you chose to serve others when you picked up that gun and now you need to live for them.

RE6? More horrific betrayals. More... everything. It starts terrible and then keeps going.

By Vendetta, he gets vacation time and slinks away with a bottle. There is no indication that even by then anyone has any idea how terribly the government has betrayed him, and he’s stuck with them. When he wants to lick his wounds, he doesn’t go to anyone for help. He claimed vacation time, hid himself away, and pulled out a damned bottle.

So we’ve had hints from the start that alcohol was an acceptable coping mechanism in his head, even if we didn’t see any signs of self-medication until the end of Damnation. The guy also hides and tries to treat his wounds by himself. He never tells anyone about how much the government has fucked him over. He does try occasionally to reach out -- to Luis, to Krauser, to Jason -- and it didn’t help any because they all ended up dead

It makes me curious about what would have happened if Chris and Rebecca hadn’t found him in Vendetta. When his vacation was done, would he just have taken a deep breath, trashed the bottles, and greeted his co-workers with a dad joke? It’s also interesting that one of the few times we see him that hostile toward an ally is when he does take that time to tuck himself away and engage in behaviors we don’t see him normally display around others. He’s the guy who either breaks the tension or, if he’s fucked up, just withdraws. I don’t see him as an alcoholic, although that is a popular fan headcanon. That would take it more out of his control, put it more into the public arena. He keeps pain and unhealthy coping mechanisms private, with Chris and Rebecca literally having to hunt him down in a random location when he tucked himself away to drink.

Through his timeline, we see the ongoing betrayals and hits take their toll on him, we see him using humor less and withdrawing more, we see when he picks up that bottle in Damnation.

But we also see him pick himself up in Vendetta when needed and take to the battlefield and stagger to Chris and Rebecca after getting his ass kicked by Arias. By that time, he’s definitely no longer the bright-eyed rookie in RE2, but his core remains the same. 

If Chris could just give him a hug instead of a bottle after Vendetta, I would appreciate it.

[luxe-pauvre]

I have found that using the term “mansplain” is likely to cause at least one person (usually a male person) to get rather wound up, but I usually think that is more evidence that we need to continue using it. Mansplanation is not just when men explain things to women in a patronising way. This is a false equivalence. Mansplanation is in fact when a man explains something to a woman despite the fact that there is strong evidence that the woman already knows it, and a man is ignoring this evidence as part of the systemic societal assumption that men know more things than women, whether or not he is consciously applying that bias in this particular case. This happens to me a lot, for example, if a man explains something very basic about infinity to me despite the fact that I have written a book about infinity. Rebecca Solnit coined the term after a guy explained her own book to her, after she mentioned having written a book on the subject. He did it to show that this book was much more important than hers, apparently without ever considering that it might be hers. Sometimes it happens that someone explains your own area of expertise to you, so the evidence that you don’t need the explanation is in the fact that you are an expert. But sometimes the evidence that you don’t need the explanation is that you already said the very thing yourself. The assumption of the woman’s ignorance isn’t just generally patronising, it is specifically part of a broad pattern in society of men undervaluing or neglecting the contributions of women. Because this contextual aspect is built into the word “mansplain”, it is by definition not something that women can do. The frequent straw man argument is that “women mansplain things too”. I would say the straw man in this case is misrepresenting the argument as claiming that only men explain unnecessary things in a patronising way. While in my experience it is almost always men who do that, that is not the point. The point is that when men do it, it is part of a society-wide assumption about women, and that is why it is so aggravating.

Eugenia Cheng, The Art of Logic: How to Make Sense in a World that Doesn't

[aquietwritingcorner]

Writers Month Day 23: Truth/Arranged Marriage Word Count: 9084 Author: aquietwritingcorner/realitybreakgirl Rating: G/K Characters: Riza Hawkeye, Alex Louis Armstrong, Roy Mustang, Olivier Mira Armstrong, General Grumman, Philip Gargantos Armstrong, Mama Armstrong, Scar, Edward Elric, Rebecca Catalina, Jean Havoc, Heymans Breda, Vato Falman, Kain Fuery, Sheska Warning: Summary: The Grummans were once a powerful family in Amestris. With the knowledge of who his granddaughter is becoming known, he sees a path back to social and political power. Not everyone is on board with this plan though—especially when they weren’t informed they were part of it. Notes: Based off a headcanon slinging session with @canisfuria and it blew itself up into this! One day I’ll go back and do this properly. AO3 || ff.net

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 Truth/Arranged Marriage

Riza glanced over to where Fuhrer Grumman and Alex Armstrong’s parents were talking. This was the third time this month she’d been drug here by Grumman, and then shunted to the side and expected to spend the entire time talking to Alex. She eyed them. They seemed to be deep in conversation about something, and she had no idea what it might be, but she was suspicious anyway. She felt like a child who had been told to go play while the adults made plans, and it ate at her. People making plans for her had never ended well.

“Are you alright, Miss Riza?” Alex’s voice, gentle and kind rumbled next to her.

She turned her attention back to the large man and gave him a smile. “Yes,” she said. “Just distracted. And suspicious.”

Alex looked over at his parents and the Fuhrer. “Yes, well… I can’t much blame you there. More tea?”

“Yes, thank you.” She waited a moment while he poured her tea. “You know you can just call me Riza in moments like this, don’t you?”

Alex smiled at her as he put the teapot back down. “Yes, you’ve told me. But it isn’t considered proper. If I remember correctly, your grandfather wanted you to learn the social graces.”

Riza made a brief face. “Honestly, all of these high society rules are for the birds. No offense, Alex, but it just isn’t for me.”

“No, I understand.” He sat down next her on the small couch. “It can be stifling. Sometimes I think that’s part of the reason Olivier got out and stays away.”

“That… makes sense,” Riza said. She took a sip of her tea and looked around them. “To be honest, it’s hard to imagine her in a place like this. She’s always been General Armstrong to me.”

Alex chuckled. “I can see why that would be hard. But my big sis can be just as terrifying in a ball gown and sharply applying the social graces. I sometimes think that if she had stayed, she would be the most formidable woman high society has seen in quite some time.”

Riza’s lips tipped up at that. “Somehow, that last part doesn’t surprise me. Still,” she sighed. “I don’t think this is the life for me. It’s definitely not how I grew up or been part of my plans for life.”

“It was quite a surprise when Fuhrer Grumman was revealed to be your grandfather,” Alex said. “I can see how that and the introduction to high society would be jarring.”

“It was a surprise to me as well,” Riza admitted. “It raises a lot of questions. How long he’s known, why my mother left, why he didn’t try to find her, why he didn’t tell me…” she shook her head and looked over at them again. “The tricky old coot won’t tell me anything,” she scowled.

Alex chuckled again. “True as that may be, it’s probably best that you don’t refer to the Fuhrer that way in front of people.”

Riza snorted lightly. “Well, I can’t bring myself to call him ‘grandfather’ so I suppose just ‘Fuhrer’ will have to do.”

Alex opened his mouth to say something else but was interrupted by the sound of his father calling out to them.

“Alex! Miss Hawkeye. Please come here a moment.”

“Of course, father,” Alex said, sitting his teacup down.

Riza had already sat hers down as well, but Alex stood and politely offered her a hand up. Riza took it, as, she had learned, was polite, and then the two of them made their way over to the three older individuals in the room. The three of them looked quite pleased and happy, and Riza was sure that she could see tears the elder Armstrongs’ eyes. Grumman looked far too pleased with himself, and Riza was immediately suspicious.

“Alex, son, we have been talking,” Philip began, “and observing, and I think we’ve come to an arrangement that is most agreeable for all parties.” He reached out, and took Alex’s hand in his, and then reached for Riza’s putting the two of them together. Genevieve Armstrong let out a sniffle. “A marriage arrangement between the two of you has been set. Congratulations!”

For a moment, there was a silence in the room, the only sound Genevieve’s sniffles as she cried at the occasion.

“What?!” Riza’s voice broke the silence, and she wrenched her hand free of the hold it was in. “What do you mean, a marriage arrangement? I didn’t agree to this!”

“We have the blessings of your grandfather, dear,” Genevieve said. “He is, of course, the head of your family, as you have no other living relatives. He’s within his rights to find and provide for you as best he can.”

“I don’t care about that!” Riza snapped out. “It isn’t his decision to make!”

“It is, actually,” Grumman said. “Once you were declared my heir, legally, this is something that I can arrange.”

“I refuse,” Riza said.

“Now, now, Alex is a smart match for you,” Philip said. “We’ve been watching you two. It’s obvious that you get along quite well. It would be advantageous for both families.”

“It would provide you with money and social clout. With just a word anything or anyone you support would have backers behind him.” Grumman said.

Riza stared at him for a moment. She understood what he was saying. If she married Alex, then she could catapult Roy to the top. Fury filled her as she swept her eyes over the three conspirators in the room, and then she switched her look to Alex, demanding to know if he had anything to do with this. He looked just as shocked as she did and shook his head a small amount.

Rage filling her, Riza stood stock still and straight, and then she turned on her heel and began walking away.

“Where are you going?” Genevieve asked her. “There’s still the meal to celebrate.”

“I’m leaving,” Riza said. “I’m going back to the city.”

“That’s a long walk,” Grumman said. “Wait until after the meal, and then we’ll—”

“No.” the word was spat out. “I’m leaving, even if I have to walk the whole way.”

And with that, she made her way out of the door, leaving them all behind.

Alex looked over at the other adults in the room and made a decision himself. “Riza—Miss Riza, wait!” he took off after her, leaving the three behind.

Riza was, it seemed, fast and had a good memory. She had already found her way outside and was going down the steps of the front door by the time Alex caught up with her. She was clearly angry and clearly determined. She reminded Alex so much of his sister in that moment. A strong, beautiful woman rejecting the decisions others had made for her. He admired that about both women, just in different ways.

He caught up with her as she walked—practically marched—down the long drive, her heels in her hand, pantyhose stuffed inside them, walking barefoot. “Please, Riza, wait a moment.”

She didn’t slow. “Did you have anything to do with this,” she demanded of him.

“No! No,” he said quickly. “I knew my parents were looking for a match for me, but I didn’t expect this.” He shook his head. “If this had been an option, I would have approached you beforehand to make sure that you were receptive to it. But I would never ask this of you.”

“Why not?” she demanded again, “This society seems dead set on making decisions for me.”

“Because I see what you and Roy Mustang have, and I would never ask you to give that up.”

She startled at that, and looked up at him, shock on her face as she paused. He held out a pair of shoes to her.

“Please,” he said. “Will you put these on? It will be better than walking in your heels or barefoot all the way back to your apartment.”

She sighed, and then reached for the shoes, sitting down on a small wall to put them on. “…I’m sorry for being angry at you,” she said as she pulled them on and adjusted the ties. “This was just… very unexpected and not at all what I wanted.” She looked up at him. “You’re a fine man, Alex. But you’re not the man for me.”

“No,” he said, “I’m not. That man is Roy Mustang, and Fuhrer Grumman knows it as well.”

Riza sighed and stood back up with the new footwear on her feet. “I need to tell Roy. And we need to make it clear that this idea of a marriage between us is not happening.” She started walking again.

“There may be ways around it,” Alex said. “I can do some research and we can talk to them.” He began walking beside her. “Tomorrow we can plan more. I will find a way out of this for us, Riza. It isn’t fair to you to be thrust into this world and its expectations and rules.”

“We’ll find a way,” she said. “I don’t want to take away your shot at happiness either.”

He rumbled an agreement, and the two kept walking, discussing what they might do in the next couple of days to end this before it became a problem.

They were not fast enough. News of their engagement was in the papers the next morning and announced on the radio as well. It was, naturally, the talk of everyone. Riza couldn’t take ten steps without someone congratulating her or questioning her. By the time she arrived in the office, her face was thunderous, and she still had her team to deal with.

As soon as she entered all eyes were on her. No one said anything for a moment.

“…So…” Havoc said.

“It was not my idea,” she spat out. “And no, it wasn’t Alex Armstrong’s either.” She marched over to her desk and all but slammed her bag down. “It was Fuhrer Grumman’s—apparently, my dear grandfather,” the words were spit out with more sarcasm than anyone in the room had ever heard her make, “can make these kinds of arrangements for me, seeing as I’m his heir or something because of some arcane law.”

“Wow. That’s… messed up,” Havoc said.

“What are you going to do about it?” Breda asked.

“Well, I’m not marrying Alex,” Riza said.

“Obviously,” Breda replied.

“What does he think about all of this?” Fuery asked.

She sighed, a little of her anger melting. “He was blindsided by it too. Neither of us were expecting this. He has more knowledge of high society and its rules than I do, so he’s going to look into what can be done. We just didn’t expect the news to drop this soon.”

“And Mustang?” Havoc asked.

“I told him about this last night,” Riza replied. “So, he’s not unaware. But this whole thing is a mess.” She stopped and let out a sigh. “If this is what Grumman was like as a father, I think I understand why my mother ran away.”

“Well, the boss wanted you to go in and see him as soon as you got here,” Havoc said. “He called for Armstrong too.”

Riza sighed. “Right.” Straightening her back, she went into his inner office.

This was going to be a long day.

Needless to say, the day did not go well. There was no easy way out of this that would not end badly in some way shape or form. Grumman had, as usual, played things to his advantage. If Alex refused the arrangement, he was bringing shame on his family, his parents, himself, and the Armstrong name. That would impact the influence that he was bringing to the restoration of Ishval. If Roy pressed or made some sort of big deal out of this, it would hurt his standing with the public and with society, which would negatively impact his chances for Fuhrer and the restoration of Ishval. For Riza to back out would bring shame to her, make her seem ungrateful, and bring negative consequences as well. Riza and Roy running away together, as her own mother and father did, wouldn’t bode well either.

They could take it to the courts, but by the time anything as far as Riza’s legal standing as Grumman’s heir was concerned would be resolved, the wedding would have long since passed. And, unfortunately, there were legitimate benefits to Riza marrying Alex, namely in the influence she could bring to Roy and to his causes. And, of course, it sent Grumman back into high society himself.

By the end of the day, all three were worn out and stumped.

“I think,” Alex said, “We need to talk to Olivier.”

Roy groaned from his chair, his head on the desk. “She hates me.” He lifted his head. “But do you think she would help Riza?”

“Yes, she would,” Alex said. “She likes Riza. But more than that, she hates the idea of anyone being forced into something they didn’t agree to.”

Riza let out a huff. “Isn’t that what arranged marriages are all about? The fathers get together and pick out where the girl should go—like she’s a prize or something to be given away.”

Alex shook his head. “I can understand why you feel that way, but it is supposed to be a much different than this has turned out. The idea was that loving parents would find someone for their child that would love and protect them. The children trusted that the parents would have their best interests in mind and would give the other person a chance. Even if there wasn’t love to start with, many of these marriages, when done the right way, have worked out wonderfully. The problem is, of course, when the system is abused.”

Riza shook her head. “Perhaps you could trust your parents that much, Alex, but I’ve been used too many times by people that were supposed to look out for me and didn’t. I’m not giving up my agency.”

Alex looked at her, compassion in his eyes. “I understand. And I believe Olivier will as well.”

Two days later they managed to get a hold of her. Alex, Riza and Roy gathered at a small cottage on the Armstrong estate, one far enough removed from the main house that no one would bother them. It took some time, but they did eventually get Olivier on the line.

“Took you long enough, Alex,” she said into the phone. “I assume Hawkeye and Mustang are there with you.”

“Yes, Sister,” Alex said. “They’re here as well.”

“Good.” She paused. “I read about your engagement in the newspaper. I wondered how long it would take for you to come to me.”

“Is there anything you can do?” Riza asked.

Olivier paused again. “It is… a difficult situation,” she finally said. “Our parents are right—It’s a smart match. Hawkeye is a decorated war hero, helped to save the country, is known for her intelligence, high level of skills, and is beautiful. Her connection to the Grumman name is also a boon, as it brings in more family ties and money to the family. Alex is now seen not as a disgraced soldier, but as one who tried to speak out in Ishval. He was heavily involved in saving the country as well. He’s strong, capable, intelligent and considered attractive. The Armstrong name is a boon in and of itself and would definitely bolster the faded Grumman name. As an added bonus, the two of you are already familiar with each other and get along. Logistically it is a good match.”

“I don’t care if it’s a smart match,” Riza said heatedly, “I’m not marrying Alex!”

“Yes, I assumed as much,” Olivier drawled. “Everyone knows you and Mustang are in love.”

“You’re the head of the Armstrong family, though,” Roy said. “Can’t you do something about it?”

Olivier snorted loudly enough to be heard over the phone. “All that grifting, and you still don’t understand high society.”

“Arranged marriages are a norm,” Alex explained. “They are something that parents are allowed to set up for their children.”

“It goes back to a very old law that was never changed,” Olivier said. “Most of the members of high society never saw any reason to change it. There’s very little recourse to it.”

“So there’s nothing you can do?” Roy asked. “Even as the head of the family.”

“Can you tell them that you don’t approve of the match and end it there?” Riza asked.

There was silence from the other end. “That… is tricky. Typically, the parents or guardians are the heads of the families so there’s no conflict. This situation is a bit more difficult. I am the head of the family, which means I have the final say in many things, and that my opinion carries a lot of weight. However, our parents are the ones who get the final say in these matters, unless they are declared incompetent or give up this right.”

“Isn’t there anything you can do?” Riza asked, desperately. Roy reached for her hand, and she held it tightly. “Or anything I can do?”

“I can contest it on the grounds of not being informed as head of the family. That will give us a review period that will delay things,” Olivier said. “It’s only a delaying tactic, though. I’m having Falman do a review of the law to see if there’s anything we can take advantage of.”

“I’m having Sheska do the same,” Alex said. “Ross and Brosh are helping her out.”

“The team has been seeing what they can find out or do as well,” Roy said.

“Rebecca is making waves where she can as well.” Riza said.

“Good,” Olivier said. “The more people working on this the better. If public tide can be turned against it, that will help as well. Hawkeye.”

“Yes, sir!”

“I don’t like people being manipulated like this. We will find a way to help you.”

“Thank you, sir.”

Olivier did as she promised, and any further announcements or celebrations were put on hold. That didn’t stop Grumman from assigning Riza and Alex to work together on things, nor did it stop them from being pushed together in high society moments. The tabloids were all over this, managing to grab pictures of private moments between them. The moments, in full context, weren’t romantic, but that didn’t stop the tabloids and papers from spinning them that way. Alex and Riza were seen together more and more often, and they were quickly becoming the media darlings that the country had been hoping for.

It wasn’t going much better in the legal department. There was a chance that the mess could be untangled in the courts, but it would take years, which was something that they didn’t have. Olivier even came down to make the case against this to her parents, but they would have none of it. It was looking like there was no choice but to either go along with it or run the risk of disrupting everything that had been worked for.

At least, until one day when Falman, who had come along with Olivier, and Sheska came running into Mustang’s office. They had a nervous but excited energy about them. The team, Olivier, and the Elrics, who had come when they heard all that was going on, were in the office, trying to brainstorm.

“Sir!” Falman said, “We might have something.”

Everyone sat up straighter.

“You do?” Mustang asked.

“Well, maybe,” Sheska said. “We’re not entirely sure, but it might work, if everything lines up correctly.”

“For lack of a better word, we’re calling it the ‘truth clause’,” Falman explained. “It basically boils down to this: have you ever told the truth about your love?” Falman asked.

Roy and Riza exchanged looks, but Olivier was frowning. “That sounds too easy. If it were as simple as that, hundreds of arranged marriages would have been absolved. What’s the catch?”

Falman and Sheska exchanged looks.

“There are conditions,” Sheska said. “It has to have been a declaration of love to someone else that’s not part of the marriage arrangement within the past three years. It had to have had witnesses, clergy is especially encouraged, and been proven and shown to be true again and again before, during and since the declaration.”

“Sirs, if I may,” Falman said, “we’ve seen evidence of how much you love each other for years. No one who knows you doubts it—including, I’m sure, Grumman himself. The main question is, has there been a confession.”

“And were there any clergy involved.” Sheska added.

Edward perked up. “Alright, problem solved,” he said, and then blinked when everyone just stared at him.

“What are you talking about, Brother?” Alphonse asked him.

Ed swiveled his head back around to look at Roy and Riza. “…Are you serious? That whole business in the tunnels underneath Central on the Promised Day? Did you forget that?”

“We could never forget that,” Roy said.

“But what does that have to do with anything?” Riza asked.

“Geeze, look, if that wasn’t a love confession in your own weird way, then I don’t know what was.” Ed said. “You two weren’t even pretending anymore.”

“Wait wait—what went on in the tunnels?” Havoc said. “I’ve not heard this.”

“Well, he,” Ed pointed at Roy, “was chasing down Envy after Envy confessed to killing Hughes. Only it wasn’t to bring him to justice, it was in vengeance. Hawkeye caught up to him just before he was going to kill Envy and held a gun on him. She pleaded with him to stop, reminding him of some sort of promises they had made to each other years ago and saying that she would take care of Envy for him. It didn’t seem to do anything, and Scar and I put in our two cens as well, not that it made much of a difference.  Hawkeye pleaded with him again, only much more personally, as if they were actually a couple. He asked her what she would do after she shot him, and she said that after the battle was over, she’d kill herself because she had no intentions of going on alone. He surrendered to her after that, saying that he couldn’t lose her too, and apologized her hurting her again. They both lowered their weapons and sat down right there together. It was practically a love confession.”

“Woah.” Most of the individuals in the room looked at each other in shock, even while Roy and Riza looked at each other, clearly wanting to say more.

Olivier, however, was looking thoughtful. “When the sacrifices caught up with the rest of us again, the way the two of you addressed each other was incredibly informal—as one would address a longtime lover, or a spouse, not as a subordinate and commander. That too can be taken as proof.”

“Edward,” Sheska said, “You said that Scar was there, didn’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Isn’t he a priest or some sort of clergy of Ishval?”

There was a moment of silence before the room went wild.

“Wait, wait!” Falman said and waited until everyone had calmed down. “There’s one more thing. It has to be public. The declaration didn’t have to be, but the acknowledgement of it does.”

A hush fell over the room.

Roy and Riza looked at each other.

“What would that mean for us working together, sir?” Riza asked. “I made a promise to you.”

Roy looked at her, and then reached over for her hand, intertwining their fingers. “I know. And I made one to you. We’d have to figure it out.”

Olivier looked from them to Falman and Sheska. “What do the fraternization regulations say about two people who are in love?” she asked them.

“Oh, it says nothing about them being in love,” Sheska said. “It talks about romantic relationships and marriage. Love is implied, but not specifically stated.

Olivier nodded. “Are you two in a romantic relationship?”

They both shook their head. “Until our work is done, we’ve denied ourselves that. It’s more important than us.” Riza said.

“Then by the letter of the regulations, you should be fine.”

“…You know,” Fuery spoke up, “I still have friends at Radio Capital. They let me do a show there every so often or fill in. I’m sure they’d love to interview the happy couple of Alex Louis Armstrong and Riza Hawkeye. Especially as an exclusive.”

“If we can get Scar to agree to be on the show—” Roy said.

“I’ll be a witness,” Ed said. “Maybe Al can talk to the chimeras.”

Al frowned at his brother’s choice of words but nodded. “I’m sure they’ll want to help.”

“I can find the Central soldiers who were there,” Rebecca said.

“I’ll call my men from Briggs who witnessed your reunification,” Olivier said.

“You’ve also got all of us to give you a hand about the past,” Havoc said.

Riza looked around the room at them all. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you all so much.”

It took a couple of weeks for all of the plans to fall into place, but that gave Radio Capital time to promote and advertise. It was the talk of the country and by the time the day came, nearly everyone was tuned in. Everyone wanted to hear this interview.

“And now the interview everyone has been waiting for. In the past months an engagement between Alex Louis Armstrong of the Armstrong family and Riza Emmaline Hawkeye, who was recently revealed to be our Fuhrer’s granddaughter, was announced. It was unexpected and caused quite a stir, especially since no interviews or further announcements were made. All the public had to go off of were the pictures that tabloid photographers managed to take.

“But the couple has agreed to give Radio Capital an exclusive interview on how this engagement came to be, what the future holds, and the thoughts and opinions of many of their family, friends and coworkers. We’ve got a high-profile line up for you tonight, so hang on, folks and stay tuned in!”

“Alright, welcome back from the commercial break, folks. With us here to start off are Lieutenant Colonel Alex Louis Armstrong and Captain Riza Hawkeye. Tell us, how did you two meet?”

“The first time we encountered one another was in Ishval. The interactions were brief, as I was a state alchemist, and she was a sniper.”

“I see. So, you didn’t really get to know each other there, then.”

“No. And our tours didn’t overlap by much.”

“That’s right, Lieutenant Colonel. You were sent home early. The common belief was that you cracked under the pressure of war. That is obviously not true.”

“It is, in a way. When I saw the atrocities committed there, I found that I could not stand the thought of being party to them any longer. Unfortunately, instead of standing up for what I believed in, I ‘cracked’ and allowed myself to be removed from the battlefield. It’s one of my biggest regrets, that I didn’t do more to speak up then.”

“But if you had, would it have made a difference?”

“I don’t know, but I do know that I should have tried.”

“I see. Now, Captain Hawkeye, I’m told your experience on the battlefield was different then the Lieutenant Colonel’s.”

“Yes. I was pulled from the academy to serve as a sniper on the front. Snipers are solitary creatures, so we don’t interact much with other soldiers or make many friends. Compounding that, to survive the war with my sanity intact, I pulled my emotions back and built-up walls. Not many people managed to get close to me.”

“Not many. But there were a few.”

“Yes. Most notably was then-Major Mustang. He and I had known each other in the past, but we managed to find each other on the battlefield. He introduced me to Maes Hughes, and he became a friend as well. We grew close, and that closeness remains to this day. I’m certain that if Hughes were still alive, he would be close with the both of us still.”

“Interesting. So, when did the two of you really get to know each other?”

“…I suppose it was just from all of the times working together.”

“Did that happen frequently?”

“Brigadier General Hughes was my direct commanding officer in Investigations. We did a lot of work with General Mustang’s unit when we were in the East.”

“Hughes used to say that Roy attracted trouble like a magnet.”

“That he did.”

“So, you two got to know each other over the years. Was there any time there seemed to be more frequent encounters?”

“Hm… I suppose in the year before the Day of the Eclipse. Roy—that is, General Mustang—had been concerned about a plot in the military. That only grew with the passing of Maes Hughes.”

“I was brought into the fold mostly because of Hughes, as well as because of the Elric brothers. I was more fully inducted after Mustang supposedly killed Maria Ross, who was one of my subordinates.”

“But he didn’t.”

“No, it was all a ruse, and he found a way to let me know.”

“In the planning leading up to the Day of the Eclipse, Alex became a point of contact for many things, mostly because of the connections his family had. It was after that, when we started to become more friendly. When it was revealed that I was Fuhrer Grumman’s granddaughter, Alex helped me negotiate my way through high society.”

“I couldn’t leave Riza to navigate that minefield alone. I knew I could help her.”

“I see. And that’s when romance began to bloom.”

“No.”

“No.”

“No?”

“There’s nothing between Alex and myself but friendship. I value and cherish that, but there is no romance here at all.”

“Surely there must be. You two are engaged, after all.”

“It was the idea of my parents and her grandfather. We were not consulted on the matter at all.”

“Not at all?”

“Not one bit.”

“That seems… unreasonable.”

“I thought so as well.”

“It’s a fairly common and well-used method of high class. Most marriages are arranged. I expected something similar to happen to me one day. However, I did not expect for myself and the potential bride to be completely excluded from the process.”

“Is it common for the children to be involved when the parents are arranging these marriages?”

“It’s typical that the children know and understand that the parents are actively considering someone as a potential partner. Even though there were meetings and outings, neither of us were aware that they were to see if we were a good match.”

“I see. Captain, this must have all be quite a shock to you.”

“Yes, it was.”

“Were you aware of this custom of arranged marriages?”

“I come from a very small town in the east. As a child, I remember marriages being arranged between daughters and sons, but it was a dying way of doing things. Most of the time, if a boy and a girl showed interest in each other, the parents would get involved, just to make sure that the children would be able to work well together and take care of each other.”

“Did you ever expect anything like that to happen with you?”

“…I was unsure, truthfully. My mother passed when I was young, and my father was too focused on his work to care much about me. I was never sure if he would have just ignored me or if he would have married me off to get me out of the way. However, he passed when I was sixteen, so I suppose I’ll never know.”

“It doesn’t seem like either of you are too excited about this engagement. Do you think it was rushed into, and that you won’t work well together?”

“It actually is a smart match on the part of our elders. I am very fond of Riza, and she has said that she feels friendship for me. It’s obvious that we get along, and we have enough common ground that we can work well together. The tying together of the two families and what could be done with that power and influence is also a great boon to either of us. The marriage would be advantageous, and I believe that we would get along.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“She’s in love with someone else.”

“…that does change things. Do your elders know about this?”

“I believe that my grandfather does, yes, although I’ve never said so directly to him.”

“I see. Is this a new development for you?”

“No. I’ve loved him for years.”

“If you’ve loved this man for that long, why haven’t you married him?”

“Our positions wouldn’t have allowed for it, not if we wanted to keep moving forward with our work. Married couples aren’t allowed to work under each other due to fraternization regulations. As much as we loved each other, we felt that our goals were more important.”

“I see. And what were these goals?”

“To make sure that another Ishval can never happen again. To keep power in check so that no one man or group of men can order the murder of innocents again. To rebuild Ishval and do all that we can to pay back the harm and pain that we caused.”

“Captain… with what you’ve said here, it sounds like…”

“Yes. I am in love with General Roy Mustang. I have been for years. Even if I can’t marry him, I’m not going to betray that love by marrying someone else.”

“Does he love you as well?”

“Yes. He does.”

“And you’ve always kept this hidden?”

“No. There are people who know—people who have seen our confession to each other. People who have seen our actions towards one another. People who have heard our words to each other. It isn’t well-known, but it is known.”

“….well, with that listeners, we’ll go to commercial break. But expect more when we get back!”

“Welcome back, listeners! We’ve given the Lieutenant Colonel and Captain a bit of a break after the last segment, and now we welcome two more guests that know them well. First Lieutenants Jean Havoc and Heymans Breda. Both have worked under General Roy Mustang for quite a while, and, going along with that, Captain Hawkeye. Tell me, boys—were you surprised at all by the captain’s confession a few minutes ago?”

“Naw. We all knew that there was something between them for a long time.”

“They’re not as good at hiding their past as they think they are.”

“What made you think that?”

“There were these little things. Looks, the way she’d indulge him, the way he would give into her… I mean, it was clear there was some kind of a past there.”

“They kept it professional, though. They didn’t do anything romantic in sight of anyone.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“There was never any hand holding, sweet words, talks of plans together. While it was obvious there was a history there was never any solid clue as to what kind of a history. They could have been childhood neighbors.”

“Yeah, but after the Day of the Eclipse, things changed. They were, I don’t know… more touchy? Although the General was blind for a while there, so he kind of needed touch so that he could get around and—"

“Please hang on viewers, someone is pounding on our glass—it’s a woman. She’s coming in now and—”

“Jean Thaddeus Havoc! You take all the romance out of everything!”

“Aw, Bec, come on. I was just saying—”

“I’m sorry, who are you?”

“Rebecca Catalina, Captain Riza Hawkeye’s best friend. And honestly these two don’t know how to tell a good story—especially a true one.”

“Catalina, we really don’t need—”

“Don’t you start in with me too, Red! Alright, let me tell you how this really goes. Riza and I, we were roommates at the academy. I didn’t get shipped out with her, but before that we were roommates, and after it too. Let me tell you, that girl is good at holding her emotions in. Fortunately, I’m good at noticing them anyway.”

“Please go on, Lieutenant.”

“I’m pretty sure that Riza and Mustang knew each other beforehand. But after Ishval they started working closer together, with her as his adjunct. I knew from the get-go that there was more to these two then met the eye. Oh, of course it wasn’t romantic at first, but there was a connection of some sort there. Over the years I saw it develop into fondness, and then to outright love.  Yes, they both dated others—Mustang more than Riza ever did—but they always ended up back with each other again. Riza would never tell me who she was in love with, but I know a woman in love when I see one! It didn’t take me long to figure it out. And after the Day of the Eclipse, it was even more obvious.”

“Oh?”

“I’m not entirely sure what happened in the tunnels below Central, but I do know that some sleezebag tried to use Riza against Mustang by slitting her throat open, and that whatever it was he tried to force Mustang to do didn’t work. I’m so glad that little pink princess from Xing was there to help them out! She saved Riza’s life! What I do know is that when I saw Riza again, the doctors were trying to keep her from bleeding out again, and one of the first things she did was ask about Mustang. She wouldn’t settle down well until after she had found out that he was alive and relatively okay. When I found Mustang, he wouldn’t settle down until he was sure she was alright. They both had to know about the other first.”

“That wasn’t anything new.”

“Hush you! I’m telling a story!”

“Please go on, Lieutenant.”

“Anyway, they were just worse in the hospital, always asking about the other until the staff finally got tired of it and just put them in a room together. I mean, Mustang was blind, it wasn’t like he could see anything anyway, and Riza—yeah, yeah, Riza, I see you threatening me through the glass, you know you love me—would be able to rest her voice more if she wasn’t constantly asking about him. But honestly, whatever happened down there, it changed them. They were both more driven, but also more open with each other and themselves. To anyone who knew them before, the way they look at each other, the way they talk to each other, the way they support and care about each other—they might as well be confessing.”

“Interesting! So, you three say that you know without a doubt that Mustang and Hawkeye are in love?”

“Oh yeah.”

“Yes.”

“Definitely.”

“Alright, well, we’re up against a hard break, but when we come back, let’s hope we can hear more about what happened in those tunnels!”

“Welcome back, listeners! We have quite a treat for you! Sitting before me are two people who I never thought I’d have sitting in my studio, much less together! The Ishvalan known as Scar, and the former Fullmetal Alchemist, Edward Elric! Welcome, both of you.”

“Thanks.”

“Thank you.”

“So, my producer says that you two know what went on down in those tunnels?”

“Yeah, we were there—although I wasn’t there for all of it, because I didn’t see the part where Hawkeye got her neck sliced open.”

“I witnessed that.”

“So was there something else that happened in those tunnels? Something before then?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you tell us about it?”

“…You heard Hawkeye mention Maes Hughes earlier, right? Well, what she didn’t say was how close he and Mustang were. When Hughes was murdered, it set him off. He was determined to find Hughes’s killer. The individuals in the conspiracy tried to pin it on Ross, but Mustang saw through that and saved her instead. But he kept looking for the killer. Down under Lab 3, he found the killer, who confessed. Mustang then set out after him—but not to bring him to justice. It was vengeance, plain and simple.”

“Vengeance?”

“It was. I saw it on the Flame’s face when he had captured his foe.”

“Scar’s right. It was obvious to all of us, but especially to Hawkeye. When Scar and I got there, the suspect had already injured Hawkeye, and Mustang had started to take his revenge before Hawkeye stopped him. I took control of the suspect then, getting him away from Mustang. Mustang demanded him back, and I refused. He threatened, and that was when Hawkeye started talking to him.”

“Oh? What did the captain say?”

“That’s the thing. It wasn’t just what she said, but how she said it. Hawkeye and Mustang had always been incredibly formal around me—around everyone. She always called him ‘sir’ and by his rank, and kept her tone very professional. Mustang called her by her rank and last name, also, professional, usually. But it was like at that moment, they dropped all pretense. They spoke to each other like… like…”

“Like a wife to a husband, like a husband to a wife. They spoke as equals who loved each other deeply and were hurting each other deeply.”

“What do you mean by hurting each other deeply?”

“Captain Hawkeye was pleading with Flame not to kill the individual that we held captive. She said that she would take care of it, but that she couldn’t allow him to walk down the path he was heading. He refused to listen, and Elric and I both spoke up. Elric told him to take a good look at his face, and I told him I had no right to tell him what to do. Captain Hawkeye then pleaded with him again. She spoke of promises made—promises, I could tell, that were as deeply held as any marriage vows.”

“It’s the only time I’ve seen Hawkeye’s hand shake while holding a gun.”

“Flame asked her what she would do after she shot him. The pain that crossed her face was deep and grief-stricken. She replied that she had no plans on going on without him, and that after the battle she would end her life. Flame let loose with an explosion down a side tunnel, and then turned to her. He declared that he couldn’t lose her. They lowered their weapons and collapsed together after that. It was an intense moment of confession between two people who share a deep love.”

“That sounds like an incredible moment you witnessed.”

“Yeah. I don’t think I’d ever seen two people show that kind love and devotion.”

“Was that where the captain got her throat slit?”

“No, because I was still there. It happened after I was separated from the group.”

“I was there, though.”

“Can you tell us what happened then?”

“We were captured. A man demanded that the Flame preform human transmutation. When he refused, the man had one of his subordinates slit the neck of Captain Hawkeye to ensure that Flame would perform it. She encouraged him not to give in. In a display of strength, he honored her wishes. I believe that she somehow knew that there were allies waiting for their chance and somehow communicated that to Flame. It was shortly afterward that these allies dropped from the ceiling. As soon as there was an opportunity, Flame was rushing to her side, ignoring all else. I could hear him calling to her. Mei, the Chang Princess from Xing, was able to do something to help stabilize her. When the battle was over, Flame was holding Captain Hawkeye closely. The tenderness was obvious.”

“So you’re saying that you have no doubt that they were in love even then.”

“They were clearly, deeply in love, and confessed it in front of me.”

“Have you seen love confessions before?”

“Yes. Before the destruction of Ishval, I was a priest. I saw many love confessions while serving in the temple. Since returning back to my roots to restore and rebuild my people, I have, again, taken up some of my duties. What I witnessed was as clearly a confession of love as anything I have ever seen.”

“What an incredible story, folks. But hang in there. More is to come!”

“Alright folks, we’ve heard from Alex Louis Armstrong and Riza Armstrong themselves about the way their engagement came about, and why they don’t want to go through with it. We’ve learned that Captain Hawkeye and General Mustang are in love and have been for years. We’ve heard about the way they’ve treated each other over the years from various coworkers, about the confession they had in front of Scar and Edward Elric, about the way they addressed each other as lovers on the Day of the Eclipse from Briggs soldiers and civilians who were involved, about how they loved each other early on from the wife of a close friend, and many others. Now we’re going to hear from the head of the Armstrong family herself, Lieutenant General Olivier Mira Armstrong. General, we’d love to hear your opinion on all of this as the head of the Armstrong family. Were you aware of this? What are your feelings on the matter?”

“This is a complicated situation, mired in old laws and societal rules that are, quite frankly, outdated.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. As my brother stated earlier, arranged marriages are common in high society families. I understand why, in the past, they were common. It was a way for families to ensure that their daughters would be well cared for in a world with limited options, as well as to strengthen ties between families. Ideally, the parents would also be looking out for the children’s best interests as well, including if the partner would be a good one.”

“I see. So, you don’t approve of arranged marriages then?”

“I neither approve nor disapprove of the practice in general. It’s the execution of it I often take issue with, as well as the legally binding ways it can entrap people—especially women—in a day when there is no need for a woman to rely on a man, especially not a woman like Riza Hawkeye.”

“Do you approve of the match between your brother and Captain Hawkeye?”

“I think it’s a smart match. Hawkeye is smart, capable, sharp, and independent. She would be a good compliment to my brother in many ways, and I think that she would adapt quickly to high society life. She would be able to live well and, if I am honest, I wouldn’t mind having her for a sister-in-law. Alex would, in turn provide and care for Hawkeye, and treat her exceptionally well.”

“So, you’re for the marriage then?”

“No. I’m against it.”

“But you just said it was a smart match.”

“It is. However, it isn’t something that both parties want. Hawkeye is clearly in love with Mustang. To force her into a marriage that she does not want would be cruel and would take away her autonomy. My brother would never want to do that to her, or to any woman. He is not willing to marry a woman that does not want the marriage.”

“I see. So, are you absolving the agreement then?”

“I don’t have the authority to do that.”

“But you’re the head of the Armstrong family.”

“Yes, I am. However, arranged marriages fall under the purview of the parents or guardians of the individuals in question. Usually, the parents and heads of family are one in the same, so there is no issue there. The Armstrong family situation is unique.”

“So, you’re saying that both your brother and Captain Hawkeye are trapped in this engagement? That has to be difficult.”

“I’m certain it is. This is why I would encourage more communication before such arrangements take place. There are only two ways to absolve the engagement in a lawful and honorable manner at this point.”

“Oh? What would those be?”

“One would be for the parents or guardians to absolve it themselves. However, neither the Fuhrer nor my parents seemed willing to do that.”

“What’s the other way?”

“For there to be a history of one of the parties being in love with someone else. There has to be evidence of it, a confession, preferably in front of clergy, and a public declaration of the matter.”

“….you mean such as coworkers who have worked with the individuals for years speaking up about it, and Ishvalan priest seeing the confession and it being broadcast on the radio.”

“That would be an acceptable manner in which to do it, yes.”

“So does this mean--?”

“This means that legally, according to the law, my brother and Captain Hawkeye are free to absolve their engagement.”

“Folks, you can’t see this, but through the window to my studio, there are a number of happy people out there. I think this is a good time to take a break. But stay tuned. We’ll have more on this when we return!”

“Alright folks, in studio we have Lieutenant Colonel Alex Louis Armstrong, Captain Riza Hawkeye, and General Roy Mustang. It’s been quite an evening for you all! An engagement, a confession, and now a broken engagement. Tell us, General—do you really love Captain Hawkeye as she loves you?”

“I do. I have for years.”

“How did you feel when you found out about the engagement?”

“Riza called me the night it happened. She and Alex were going to work on ways to quietly try to break it off. Unfortunately, the announcement the next day made that difficult.”

“I can imagine! How do you feel now that the engagement has been broken?”

“Relieved.”

“Captain Hawkeye, how about you?”

“It’s as if a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders.”

“You weren’t happy being engaged to Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong?”

“Alex is a fine man and will make a wonderful husband one day. But he’s not the man to be my husband. I hold no ill will towards him. Instead, I’m grateful for all that he did to try to help me out of this situation. He respected my own autonomy, and for that I will be eternally grateful.”

“As will I.”

“Lieutenant Colonel, how are you feeling about all of this?”

“A marriage will not work, arranged or not, if the people in it do not want to be in it. While I will always cherish the friendship that Riza gives me, I am more than happy to help her find her way to her happiness. General Mustang, I know that Riza can take care of herself. But now as this is over, I am entrusting her care to you. I know that you two will take care of each other.”

“Thank you, Lieutenant Colonel.”

“Thank you, Alex.”

“I feel it’s time for me to take my leave of you then. I hope all of your listeners have a marvelous evening.”

“Yes, thank you for your time, Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong. Lieutenant Colonel Armstrong has left the booth and now I’m here with Captain Hawkeye and General Mustang. So, after this confession, do you think you’ll be allowed to work together?”

“We should. The regulations only speak of marriage and dating relationships, not of people in love.”

“So, you two aren’t going to get married?”

“Not at this time. There’s just too much work we need to do and need to get accomplished.”

The door to the studio closed softly, and Alex Armstrong walked over to stand next to his sister. The murmur of voices could still be heard through the window, and Roy and Riza could be seen, hands intertwined as they enthusiastically talked about their plans for the future and for the rebuilding of Ishval. Olivier was standing to where she could look into the window, observing. Behind them, the murmur of other guests could be heard, all of them excited about what they had managed to pull off. Olivier wasn’t celebrating with the others. For a moment, they just stood there.

“…you would have loved her, wouldn’t you?” she finally asked him, speaking too softly for anyone else to hear.

“Yes. I would have given her the world.” He replied.

Olivier hummed. “But the world wasn’t what she wanted.”

“No. All she wanted was him. And so, I found a way to give him to her instead.”

Olivier said nothing, but just stood there. Finally, she let out a sigh so soft that Alex almost thought he imagined it. She turned, pausing to put a hand on Alex’s shoulder.

“You’re a good man, Alex. One day the right woman will come along for you.”

Alex said nothing for a moment, and then only responded with “Thank you, Sister.”

Olivier didn’t acknowledge his words, just walked away, and that was good enough for Alex. He didn’t need any more than that anyway. With his own internal sigh, he turned away from the window, determined not to let Riza know how he truly felt about her.

Before he could go too far, though, something ran into his leg, and he looked down to see a ball, with a little pigtailed girl running after it. Elicia Hughes.

“Sorry, sir!” she said. “It got away from me.”

“It’s alright,” he said, kneeling down. “It’s not the first time a ball has run into me.”

“Elicia! I hope you’re not bothering the Lieutenant Colonel.” Gracia hurried up to him.

“Oh, no, please, it was no bother at all.” Alex said.

“Still.” Gracia looked at her daughter. “You must be more careful. Especially if we go to the restaurant.”

“Restaurant?” Alex questioned.

Gracia nodded. “They’re talking about a celebration at a restaurant. It’s just been decided.”

“Oh! Sit with us!” Elicia said. “Please?”

“Elicia!” Gracia scolded again.

Alex smiled. “I would be honored to.”

Gracia looked up him and smiled herself. “Well in that case, you’re welcome.”

Alex glanced back at the window, and then back at Gracia.

Even if he didn’t have love, he at least had good people in his life. And that would be enough for him.

[borkthemork]

Color Symbolism - How Steven’s Shirts Portray Different Portions of His Life

A quiet musing from last night had me thinking about this and I knew I had to do a bit more in explaining. But basically, throughout the three main SU mediums — the main SU show, the SU movie, and SU Future — we all know the main color schemes Steven adorns himself regarding his star shirts. We have salmon pink, bright blue, and the heavy black he likes to tow around, but looking into the way these colors were implemented is what we will dive into.

Color themes and symbolism are very potent with Steven Universe. From the use of pinks, yellows, whites, blues, and the menagerie of other colors we could think of, Rebecca Sugar and the crew put a lot of deliberate thought into the design, especially on a thematic level.

For Steven, not only do his shirts represent a very iconic symbol towards the show as a whole, but it represents the main arcs and emotional statuses of our main character throughout the show’s running.

Edit (11/30/19): For sourcing, I’ll be putting the links to stuff I’m referring to in my reblogs. However, my post already got hit off the radar because of Tumblr’s broken algorithm, so if you liked this post then I would be grateful if you could help reblog and spread the word as well!

And with that, let’s begin.

Pink - The Arc of Innocence and Nurture

Pink harbors a lot of connotations regarding femininity in Western culture (and even a good load of masculine connotations in Eastern tradition) but it has a lot more than that under its belt.

It represents tenderness, cultivation, gentle love, nurture, safety, optimism, strength, but most importantly the color itself is seen as non-threatening, calming to one’s eyes, inviting to people.

But with this optimism comes the consequences of lack of awareness or vision. How do you think the concept of rose-colored glasses ever came about? It’s always the idealism or ignorance of the person that allows them to not see red flags or the reality of it all.

And with that, we could start connecting this to Steven Universe.

Throughout the five seasons, this boy always had this priority of being involved with the people and figures in his life as a therapeutic role model. He wants to heal the corrupted gems; he sees empathy and nuance in people’s struggles, and this mindset definitely kept going up to the point of CYM and onwards.

He sees the best in people and wants to encourage them to get onto the path of improvement and healing. There’s definitely innocence at the start, even if his life and the show’s antagonists challenged him to the brink.

However, the lack of vision could be found way back to the start of episode one. Season one was a slow burn of information since the POV showed that his family dynamic was never challenged to him because y’know, it’s his family, they’re gems, and they fight monsters. It portrays his mother as an amazing person to his parental figures, a martyr who loved everything and everyone. There doesn’t seem much for him to challenge at the start because that’s what his reality is, his status quo. He never questioned it. Why would he challenge something that he believes is the norm?

Of course, this illusion of a perfect family does get chipped away. With each episode that showed his family as flawed — with the world around him starting to expand more with information, his understanding towards the severity of the situation and what his status is gets questioned.

Steven will continue to keep his cheerful paradigm, but weariness has implanted a seed into him (among many other emotional issues from upbringing, but we’ll talk about that farther along).

Blue - Stability and Tranquility

The contexts for blue could vary a lot. Very polarizing definitions such as the relation to inebriation, water, and everything in between could dampen the straight-forward process on how to analyze the color associations further; it makes sense for this polarization since the use of it in the ancient and contemporary world isn’t rare, particularly in its application towards clothing, art, and other forms of creation.

But what we’re going to focus on is the sky (or light) blue, the one that Steven tows around before and amid the SU movie. It’s a color that’s mainly associated with the sky, hence the listed qualities found.

”Light (sky) blue: peace, serenity, ethereal, spiritual, infinity (The origin of these meanings is the intangible aspects of the sky.)” -Color Matters

Jill Morton, a color psychologist, also states that the color has a connection to conservatism, passivity, security, and introversion (which are important for later).

For now, let’s talk about Steven and his main goals.

Steven, throughout his two years of intergalactic diplomacy, became focused on bringing about a new form of Homeworld, cited in the game as him deteriorating the former authority doctrine and allowing people to do activities that aren’t limited by their former caste system. And with this, he brings forth the aim of peace and tranquility.

Cue the events of SU the Movie. Now at 16, Steven has been hinted to have never had full-on rest for the past two years he’s been doing his duties to the Era 3 reformed Homeworld. In his announcement, he declares that he wants to finally go back now that everything with the former empire is stable enough for them to function without him.

His main goal now is to relax, have time for himself, and gain his “happily ever after”. And we all know that this attachment to this idea will be played out for much of the storyline, to where it becomes one factor for him in a whole slew of others that prevents him from channeling his gem capabilities.

The catalyst towards him returning is through the concept of change, the ability for him to grow and adapt even throughout the trauma and pressure; Steven, in this movie, however, didn’t realize this because he was already at a state of his life where he just wanted a break from the morphing status quo. He wants a moment to himself, away from the anxiety of responsibilities placed on his shoulders at the age of bloody 14, and overall, just allowing himself to be a kid again.

Yet, even with him helping Spinel and returning life back to the Earth’s poisoned areas, Steven admits to the prospect of never having a happily ever after, and that he’ll “always have more work to do”.

This is where the color of his shirt changes, and with it, the break of Steven’s ideal stability.

Black - Aggression, Power, and Death

But with the expectation of stability for Steven’s life crushed after the events of the movie, I found it very interesting that his blue shirt wasn’t seen or even used anywhere from the stills and trailer shots we’ve seen.

This could be a deliberate usage on Rebecca’s part to discern SU Steven, SU Movie Steven, and SU Future Steven, but I’d like to believe that in-universe, Steven’s wanting to change into black-colored apparel is a mental choice on his part. For black, in color psychology, is a color that protects...and conceals.

“In color psychology this color gives protection from external emotional stress. It creates a barrier between itself and the outside world, providing comfort while protecting its emotions and feelings, and hiding its vulnerabilities, insecurities and lack of self confidence.” -Empoweredbycolor

A great deal of SU content creators have pointed out that Steven, for the entirety of his own life, has been brought up with the idea that emotional vulnerability, no matter how potent or minuscule, can become a weapon or a pain for not only their own being but for the people around them.

I can’t delve too much into it, sadly, but I will link to posts that commentate more on this in my reblogs.

His upbringing has brought him to the paradigm of repression, where his own priorities and needs are swept to the side for other people — even extending to the whole body of Homeworld because of the way he handled his diplomacy. He had to solve other peoples’ problems; he placed himself rock bottom in importance, and now he’s suffering the consequences for it.

Out of all the pieces of symbolism here, black is the most void and mysterious because of its absence of color. It’s used a good amount of the time as a motif of authority, power, and fear, but the ones I’d like to hone in on are death and the concept of being overwhelmed.

Now, we have no clear indication over how the series will go but hear me out. I don’t think a physical death would apply in this situation but more of a metaphysical death — a death of one’s current self.

We find Steven at a crossroads: it will bring his personal imbalance out in the worst ways, and through the fact that the sypnosis foretells of him handling powers uncontrollable by his cognition, then we know that this is a force that’ll bring him into strife over who he is and what he wants.

What does he truly want for his future and how will he come about it?

In Joseph Campbell’s template called The Hero’s Journey, a hero’s death has to come about by a new revelation, a new form of meaning and objective than what they originally intended. The death of one idea will then lead to the true answer, something new the character hasn’t explored but wants to explore since the concept’s been there from the beginning, yet needed a push for it to be unveiled.

”Black is the end, but the end always implies a new beginning. When the light appears, black becomes white, the color of new beginnings.” -Empoweredbycolor

If Steven has been chasing for a happily ever after for most of his life, then a paradigm shift will have to occur.

He must face the brunt of his problems, and in this, he’ll find the answer.

[cattles-bians]

exes au part 14

post directory

obsetress:

obsetress: viola

em: holy shit

em: i think viola could hold a truly ridiculous number of things in her hands

em: danis like i have a little fanny pack right here- and violas like (turns up nose) absolutely not

obsetress: pre therapy viola during her relationship w dani: buys dani a birkin too, is like "here baby, so you don't have to use that fanny pack"

obsetress: dani's like "oh. i, um. like my fanny pack"

obsetress: viola therapy era after her relationship with dani: buys her a hermes fanny pack instead

obsetress: jamie rolls her eyes but dani is literally

em: i think a lot abt viola offering solutions completely unprompted n then being really offended when ppl dont take her up on it

em: pre therapy obvs

obsetress: SAME

obsetress: oh link is gross

obsetress: cost is grosser

obsetress: but viola lloyd dropping $2550 on a fanny pack for her ex gf? chefs kiss

---

obsetress: ok just remembered viola slouching or leaning or w/e n like

obsetress: brain practically applying that to exes au and imagining when and where she'd slouch n everyone's reactions to htat

obsetress: bc like she has perfect posture but when she chooses to do it it's a power move

obsetress: and i. hm

em: yeah

obsetress: viola sitting up stock straight when they first get to brunch and as soon as she's ordered her bloody mary shes pulling off her sunglasses and dropping them on the table and just sinking back

em: how to phrase this w/o sounding too much like a whore

em: actually no way to say this but like i feel v strongly abt the way we make women take up less space wrt to knees together calves touching type deal and i think maybe

em: maybe viola can manspread a bit as a treat

em: hate that term but i cant think of a better one

obsetress: nah she does n it's hot

obsetress: just had this image pre divorce of viola and arthur at marriage counseling on opp ends of the couch n arthur's sitting v tight close and vi is just

obsetress: leaning and spreading a lil

obsetress: the first time jamie sees her do it she's so taken aback

obsetress: because she's NOT expecting it

em: jamies like ah ok late in life lesbian deal and then jokes on her viola is fluent in dyke slouch

obsetress: jamie immediately trying to suss out just how long viola has been fucking women

obsetress: she says to dani later "i thought she was all proper like" and dani's like "she is" and jamie's like "so wot was that then" and dani's like "well, people are gay, jamie,"

em: ghfjhgljkJFDASJKKJFGA

em: jamies like so wait how long HAS viola been

obsetress: jamie: so you were vi's first serious girlfriend right? dani: dani: jamie: right???????

em: violas been fucking women longer than jamie has lbr

em: i mean shes clearly only 35, jamie,

obsetress: jamie: so... vi... viola: hm? jamie: you're, uh, gay, right? viola: obviously jamie: right. well dani told me you've been dating women since–– viola: since i was 15, yes jamie: but you married a man

em: violas like u went to jail everyone does stupid shit occasionally

em: jamie: so how long have you been dating women viola: since i was 15 jamie: no i meant like. in years viola raises her eyebrows and jamies just like haha nevermind fuck

obsetress: she tried!

obsetress: she tried

em: jamie on her 35th birthday pencilling 'many happy returns' into violas ????th 35th birthday card

em: yknow i think

em: i think something's afoot

obsetress: jamie, giving up on the direct approach

obsetress: slipping in next to rebecca at the wine bar

obsetress: "becca"

obsetress: "hi, jamie" "hi. how old is your girlfriend"

em: am fucking losing it thinking abt jamie like. realising how much gay energy viola has

em: like taken ABACK

obsetress: fksljfLKSDJFLJ

obsetress: just like

obsetress: why are jamies reactions to viola so funny

obsetress: montage of jamie realizing how much gay energy viola has

obsetress: jamie watching viola sitting

obsetress: jamie watching viola pick up a variety of glasses and mugs

obsetress: jamie watching viola compare hand sizes with dani, jamie's girlfriend and viola's ex girlfriend who she dated for literal years and whose hand size she definitely already knows

em: NOT THE HAND SZIES

em: they go for a walk and viola immediately complains about the sun and jamie's like

em: i have a spare hat but ur not gonna like it

em: its a snapback that says daddy or smthn in gold, owen got it for jamie for her bday, jamie Loathes it

obsetress: BYE

obsetress: viola looks better in it than jamie does

em: jamie has that

em: am i attracted to viola? moment

em: it passses

em: she has already compartmentalised the weird psychosexual power play

em: queen of compartmentalising

obsetress: jamie: had another one of those moments today dani: what moments? jamie: where i thought i might be attracted to vi dani: well, you did let her fuck you... what was it, four? times in one night, so

em: jamie; yeah but like that aside

em: jamie 'thats neither here nor there' taylor

obsetress: she is the queen of compartmentalizing tho

em: i was gonna be like. 'jamies like wait i dont remember saying four' but. i think she would tell dani

em: because the flip of that is dani callin up vi n i dont think she would necessarily

obsetress: i think she would and dani would make her anyway

obsetress: well make her is harsh but

obsetress: dani would very curiously ask in very convincing ways

em: lovingly coax it out of her

em: dani: what if i fucked you four times in o

obsetress: dani: let me do five

em: viola probably wears so many rings jamie doesn’t even clock the ever present thumb ring

obsetress: jamie just. writes it all off

em: am laughing abt like. viola v meticulously taking off every single ring and putting it in its proper location before...

obsetress: there is something. so hot about that

obsetress: im gonna scream i think

em: i was just meming and now im thinking abt it and

em: truly played myself

em: actually this is me refusing to unpack whatever the hell theo crain gloves made me feel

obsetress: sdkfmsldjfa

obsetress: fair

em: sublimate it into rings

obsetress: i just like um

obsetress: thinkin about when she and dani are together and like

obsetress: it's intentional and everything has its place but vi also makes a show out of it

obsetress: and like

obsetress: she's SO painstaking about it and definitely makes dani wait a little bit and

em: helps dani outta her big ass earrings

em: i mean dani doesnt even Need the help

em: viola meticulous lloyd

em: i mean she just wears so much goddamn jewellry

obsetress: she can tell when dani's getting impatient and goes even slower

em: viola has like

em: viola is one of thos ppl thats really into expensive watches

obsetress: !!!!!!

obsetress: yeah

obsetress: nice lil canon nod too

em: she drags dani to antique auctions n danis like i cant. actually tell the difference between the real and the forgery and violas like (passionately explains it for like 30 minutes) and dani is

em: like shes mentally checked out but also v intensely watching violas hands as she points to the parts of the watch

em: rebecca gets it tho

em: rebecca Gets It

obsetress: dani shoving vi into the bathroom at the auction house and tugging vi's hand between her legs v rebecca grabbing her own auction paddle and bidding against viola for the same watch

obsetress: (rebecca n vi fuck in the car on the ride home)

em: dani grabs a paddle n mimes spanking viola n then the auctioneer is like '$250 to 201' and danis like aw Fcuk

em: violas like i cant take u Anywhere

obsetress: dani gives her the 🥺😌and viola's immediately over it and pulling out $250

obsetress: dani: i didn't even want it, i was just–– vi: i know dani: what am i even gonna do with a–– vi: i'll sell it for $500 at a private auction next week dani: so technically i'm making you money dani, grinning: it's like i'm your employee dani: do you have any more assignments for me, boss? vi: dani get your hand out of my pocket i need to focu––

[jesterwife]

Gutrot Flower, Frostwort, Solar Vine, Star Bramble, Sweetroot, Candle Kelp, Frozen Tuber, & Pulpy Roots for Leon ~ rebeccaselfships

aah yes!!

gutrot flower - what was your first impression of your f/o?

“THAT’S the champion? 😳”

frostwort - what’s you and your f/o’s idea of a perfect date?

something private, honestly? i love going out with him, but it's kinda hard to enjoy a date when fans are always coming up to him wanting a picture or an autograph--and then there are the fans who aren't at all respectful of our relationship :/ a perfect date would probably be cooking dinner together and maybe having a pokemon battle!

solar vine - what’s your morning routine with your f/o?

on his off days this man STILL gets up so fucking early…then he goes to the GYM…i used to think it sounded awful, until he convinced me to do it with him one day, and it’s actually kinda nice? we’ll get coffee and some breakfast after the workout, and then we have the rest of the day to ourselves 💖

star bramble - what do you consider each other’s best quality?

my favorite quality of leon’s is how he always takes everything in stride! he doesn’t let fear or anxiety control him, and i really admire that—i think he’d say my best quality is how supportive i am of him. he has a crazy busy life, which can be a double edged sword, and i’m happy i get to be there for him in the best and worst of it!

sweetroot - what is the nicest thing your f/o’s ever done for you?

before we were together he snagged me a vip seat to one of his matches against raihan, fully covering the cost of admission/concessions/souvenirs himself. i told him it was way too generous and offered to pay him back, and the only thing he said was “if you promise to cheer for me loud and proud during the battle, we’ll be even for the cost.” he’s really too charming 😭

candle kelp - what’s your favorite scene of your f/o in their source?

in twilight wings he meets one of his biggest fans, john, a chronically ill boy who dreams of being a trainer. leon takes john into his stadium, and tells him he’s going to be an amazing trainer, then challenges him to a battle the next time they meet. it’s just,,,so sweet? you can tell how much leon genuinely believes in john and i love how encouraging he is, it just melts my heart 💞💞💞

frozen tuber - what does an average winter day look like with your f/o?

leon hates winter. he’s a human furnace, but still such a baby about the cold 😭 he’ll probably want to stay in, bundle up in blankets and make some hot chocolate. lots and lots of cuddles too!

pulpy roots - what narrative tropes apply to your ship?

for my s/i and leon, they’re childhood friends! so i guess friends to lovers too? not many but those two definitely

thank you SO much for all these prompts rebecca!! it was so fun to answer these, and i hope you’re having a great day with your f/os!! (also, happy belated birthday to miss mirko!! 🐰)