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elephantinparis · 4 years ago

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A Sky beyond a Storm Review

If I could give this book -∞ rating I would. This review won’t be spoiler free, so if you haven’t read the book don’t read further. Now that that’s out of the way let’s get into it.

First of all, I want to start by saying how sad and angry I am to be writing this because this series had become one of my favorites and it completely disappointed me in the end. I’m not sure disappointment is even a proper word for what I’m feeling at this point. I also want to mention that yes, I am a huge fan of Nightbringer, but I wasn’t expecting a hea for him. What I was expecting was an arc true to his character from previous 3 books. Instead, what I got was a complete character assassination. It all started from the very first chapter–Nightbringer kills a small child, but at that point I was still trying to defend the book and genuinely thought: yes, it fits his character since he despises scholars. So even though I didn’t like it I understood. But then the complete character destruction started. First, we had a moment when he saw a happy family and went: yeah, I’ll kill the mother and the kids out of nowhere because they remind me of my family and if I can’t be happy no one can. Now, let me explain why this is ooc behavior: The Nightbringer as we knew him always had a beef with scholars only. The family he randomly kills are not scholars. Another thing: why would he put someone through the same agonizing pain when he is always specific about the deaths having meaning to him and that he doesn’t kill in vain(scholar killings are not in vain for him) other people, however, don’t fall into that category. Another ooc behavior moment was when he put one of his jinn in chains (yes only for a second and yes the jinn tried to use her influence on him), but the Nightbringer I know would never put his people through that after them spending an actual millennia in a prison. He spent so long trying to get them out, he would never put them in chains again. Then the cherry on the top of the cake was that all throughout the book the author tried to drive it home how much Nightbringer wanted Laia dead and how much he wanted, and I quote: “Open her up.” Another inconsistency since in Reaper he saved her more than once and completely let her go (because we know he loves her). Yes, he wanted to know what magic she possessed since the moment in Torch, but he had multiple opportunities to kill her and he never did. But in this book, he more than once physically assaults her when she’s in no position to truly hurt him and from his previous behavior that’s ooc actions. And you can come and say: but wait a minute Laia is a real threat now and that’s why he wants to kill her after he “opens her up” and I’ll point you to the chapter where he finally learns of his wife’s betrayal and understands what magic Laia possesses. And what does he do? He walks away. The man who spent the entire book hunting her down has her vulnerable, alone, he finally figured out the mystery of her powers and I am to believe from all his previous actions that he’ll kill her, but he DOESN’T. Because, of course, it’s not in the nature of his character to kill someone he loves even if they’re trying to stop him. So, which is it Sabaa? The inconsistencies are jarring. It just drives it home how his actions in this book were character assassination. The final nail in Nightbringer’s metaphorical coffin (because of course in the end he gets no funeral, no established peace, nothing. Unlike Keris…but I’ll get back to that later) is the fact that his evil villain plan is to literally end the world…I’m sorry WHAT?! So, in the span of this book he went from wanting scholars dead, then wanting all humans dead and then wanting the whole world to end which would result in his people dying, too. What in the actual hell is this?? So many possibilities could’ve been taken with this character, even if the author didn’t want to give him a redemption arc, he could have been a much better villain with a good goal. Instead we get this. Please someone try to explain WHY would he do this when he just freed his people? They would suffer just as much from his plan, so it makes no sense at all. His entire character was about protecting the jinn, giving them a safe space once he freed them. Another thing I noticed is that in the previous 3 books Nightbringer was very much humanized, embers and torch focused on him feeling again, his growth once he fell in love with Laia and even in Reaper his actions were tied to her, but in this book it’s completely forgotten. He does monstrous things to other people who aren’t scholars which was never his goal before. He had a millennium to set his anger and hurt on others, but he focused on those he felt were responsible for his life being ruined – the scholars. And yes, he was wrong to try to take revenge on people who didn’t do anything, but the point remains the Nightbringer I knew would have never done anything to jeopardize the jinn’s safety. Even as a villain his story went in a very cruel direction. I never praised Leigh Bardugo’s depiction of her villain Darkling, but maybe I should’ve since she gave him the bare minimum and Nightbringer didn’t even get that. Funny that the author has said on more than one occasion he was her favorite character. I shudder to think what she would’ve done if she disliked him.

Another character who was treated with cruelty all throughout the story is Helene. Now I’ve got to give credit where it’s due - Helene grew a lot throughout the series: she shed her prejudices, finally acknowledged she had been protecting the wrong people and that martials need to change, she also grew as an incredible leader and a warrior and when the people chose her to be their Empress I was so proud, but then…she made her vow. To never marry, to never have children (which is totally fine since it was even mentioned she didn’t want them earlier), to completely give herself to her duty to the empire. It rubbed me the wrong way immediately because a big part of her arc was love–love for Elias who rejected her, love for her family–who got slaughtered before her eyes, love for Avitas–who also was killed for no real reason other than to make her suffer even more. And what does this show? It shows to Helene that love isn’t her friend because it only brings her pain, she lets people in, loves them with every part of her soul and they end up dying. So, at this point we have a young woman who started the series thinking she wasn’t worthy of love end up thinking love itself wasn’t worth it. How messed up is that? Still as cruel as this arc was it was at least consistent or that’s what I thought. In her very last chapter, it’s heavily alluded she might have something with Musa. And if it was written as just two friends grieving their lost loves it wouldn’t have bothered me at all. But there were clear romantic undertones and then I was left thinking: what? I thought she chose only her duty. And though Avitas was barely a few weeks in the ground at that point I couldn’t even fault Helene for wanting to move on because I just wanted her to be happy again. But at the same time, I cannot ignore the inconsistencies. The cruelty she experienced was too much.

It’s ironic how two of my favorite characters got the short end of the stick.

I don’t really have much to say about Elias since he didn’t really have his own plot, he was just inserted into Laia’s. His ending was by no means earned and I know it’s hard to say that because he had gone through so much in the first 2 books. But ever since Torch he made a conscious choice to become the Soul Catcher. Sure, he only did it to save Laia’s brother, but he made a vow to serve and he completely disregarded his job after the fact. I think if the ghosts that got out in Reaper didn’t hurt anyone, he would have continued to ignore the duty he himself chose. Now in this book he could’ve had an interesting development since he didn’t remember his past life, but this was resolved in the very beginning when Cain somehow gave the memories back. Then in the very end for a quick resolve someone just took over his job and Mauth was okay with it. The person who took over was just brought back for plot convenience and it makes me so mad. He didn’t earn the freedom…

Then we have Laia. The problem I had with her character in general is the fact she disregarded her past with Nightbringer. She can be in love with Elias and acknowledge what she felt for Nightbringer. Alas, she only sees a monster, shows no compassion once she learns of his story and since she spent all the book trying to kill him and not just stop him the very end felt hollow when she suddenly starts showing compassion to a suffering Nightbringer. Laia from Torch showed compassion and understanding in her own way toward Nightbringer and now it was just gone. She was still conflicted and in this she’s completely closed off. I don’t think her romance with Elias would’ve suffered if her very real past with Nightbringer was acknowledged properly.

I also want to talk about Rehmat (Nightbringer’s wife). We learn that she had a gift of seeing the future and once the war started and she lost their children she saw what Nightbringer would become. So, what does she do? Does she go to her husband and tell him what she saw, tries to change the future, show him that even when she’s gone, he can go on and be who he was always meant to be? Beloved. Hell no she goes to humans and uses blood magic to extract her essence and be put in the progeny of a random tribe. Then waits a millennium to kill her husband. What in the world is this?? The reason why she does this is never addressed. So, as a reader I must make assumptions that she never loved him. That she didn’t even try to change anything. She also could’ve told him of her plan so he could’ve found someone to awaken her sooner so they could once again be together. He was deeply hurt and alone without their people and she left him too. Tell me how you bring in this new force and you don’t even explain her actions? How is this good writing?

Now I want to talk about the death count and if the deaths had any meaning. Got to start by saying that only supporting characters were killed. First, we have Darin. Killed by Nightbringer because he wanted Laia to kill him for his plan. See, the thing is Laia already wanted to kill him throughout the book, she got the weapon and she came there with the goal of killing him. Nightbringer didn’t need to “encourage” her by killing Darin. So, in my opinion the death was pointless and served no great purpose. It was a way to make the reader hate the villain, sympathize with the heroine and was done for shock value. Livia was another character to suffer a pointless death. She was the only person Helene had. There was no reason to do it same with Avitas. I guess for Avitas I could try to excuse it by saying it’s war and he did die on the battlefield. Keris had always been a great fighter and even Helene couldn’t take her on. But she already lost Livia and now this?? Too much. Too cruel. Livia’s ending could’ve also been written off as a war casualty, but she wasn’t actively participating in the war. Sure, she was the Empress Regent, but to me it’s just too much after her family. Both deaths only caused Helene pain and she didn’t gain anything profound from those losses. Lastly, I truly hated how the author tried to humanize Keris Veturia. And when I say tried, I really mean it because at least for me it didn’t work. The author suddenly had her saying she couldn’t kill Elias when time came even though she already had. She poisoned him and he died because of her. That woman first abandoned him, then tortured him throughout his time at Blackcliff and then in the end cost him his life. And Elias mourned her…She also had a lovely send off in the Waiting place where she found piece with her mother. So then if this villain deserved peace why didn’t the other one? At least Nightbringer had his reasons. We never knew hers.

In conclusion, I don’t understand how the story could’ve gone so wrong. As always everything you read is my personal thoughts and my humble opinion.

Tagging: @nightbringer @bookittothelibrary we suffered so much...I can’t.

#a sky beyond the storm #an ember in the ashes #a torch against the night #a reaper at the gates

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watchinglikeafangirl · 3 years ago

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Tagged by @shortpplfedup because I thought it would be fun

1. Your all time favourite BL and why?

I told sunset about you

Everything about it. It does everything right. The script, the directing and the acting, it's all on point and makes this whole show special to such degree that you just can't get over its story. Everytime I go back, I know why I love it so much. Everytime I think about it, I want to cry. Because I told sunset about you is so beautiful it hurts and the nostalgia coming along with it is overbearing.

What I loved most is the cinematography because there are so many details to discover. The scenery often says what's not spoken alound, so the audience always understands the emotional conflict without being told. Every show and movie that works like this is good when it comes to carrying the atmosphere. But it's not only the composure of the scenery, it's the story, the characters and the acting. Teh and Oh-aew are pretty complexe characters and even though they are introduced as being nearly the same person when it comes to goals and choices, you more and more get how much they are actually not alike and rather complete each other than being the same. So, their lovestory makes sense, nearly feels like destiny and Billkin and PP portray them in a very lovely way.

Yeah, I LOVE this show but only ITSAY deserves my whole heart. IPYTM didn't pull me off my feet at all and it didn't even get close to anything ITSAY-related, in my opinion.

2. The one BL that scared you for life

Tonhon Chonlatee because how badly can you mess up?! It was scary how quickly things crashed down because it started of at being ok and went down the hill completely. Tonhon was the worst character. He was homophobic and everytime he made Chonlatee uncomfortable or me in front of the screen wanting to vomit, was explained with him actually liking Chonlatee in secret? Sorry, but I didn't buy it. He was a disgusting and horrible person, made everyone scared to show they're gay and didn't ever see his faults. Yeah, this show scared me because it was toxic and went down the hill so fast and so deep that I couldn't even realize what happened.

3. Is there any BL that made you feel very single?

Gameboys because they deeply care in a different way than friends do and when watching I craved for something like that.

It actually felt like true love and even though they only knew each other via screen mostly, their bond was so strong and it made me feel a bit lonely and yes, very single.

4. If you could change one thing from a BL, which one would it be?

The non-existent relationship in 2gether. This sounds a bit harsh and their relationship wasn't non-existent but it wasn't show that much either. Sarawat flirted a bunch of times and they said they love each other and it was all pretty wholesome but at some point, I really wondered if they even moved to the next level. Tine stayed shy around Sarawat the whole time, they never kissed except at the very end and I wished for a bit more than flirting only. There wasn't even much physical contact. They looked just like close friends to be honest. If they didn't want to insert many kisses, that's fine, but they hugged for like one time and never held hands. For me, their relationship was a bit unbelievable.

5. That one BL you detest

Theory of love looks like something I wouldn't like but I haven't seen it, so we stick with TharnType - especially season 2.

I still don't know why I watched this til the end without skipping. My internet was too bad to skip but boy it was hell to endure. Season 1 was a guilty pleasure but season 2 messed up in so many ways, I can't count. Everything went down the hill and the only thing keeping it alive was MewGulf's real chemistry because not even TharnType had good chemistry but at least the actors were comfortable with each other, so it looked okay between them. But oh boy, this show was terrible. Terrible writing, terrible directing and partly terrible actors. The whole concept was bizarre and dumb. I felt like my IQ dropped from watching because of all this inconsistency.

6. Your top 5

I told sunset about you

Cherry Magic

Gaya sa pelikula

Gameboys

We best love: no 1 for you

7. That trashy BL you lowkey like

History 4: close to you even though it had many problems. I managed to look past them and quite enjoyed it then but the second the final was over I started laughing at myself in surprise how I could've looked past every wrong thing they did. But I did it and enjoyed the good moments, let the bad ones wash over me.

8. Your favourite korean BL

Light on me because it had all the fluff and complexe characters. The love triangle was written in a realistic way and everything about this show was right. The side characters had proper screentime and I cared for them all. Some choices were a bit frustrating but they were teenagers and teenagers just act stupid sometimes. The accuracy of the life of teenagers hit way too close to my life, to my school.

9. Season 2? Which one?

Definetly Gaya sa pelikula. There are so many things left unsaid and so much Karl needs to discover.

10. A bunch of BLs will air soon, which are you the most excited about?

Probably KinnPorsche. The teaser looked so epic and it's a lovestory with a bodyguard which always catches my eyes. Don't know when it will air but I hope soon and I'm afraid I am too excited... but well, it can only be better than golden blood because that one was something else.

I tag everyone who feels like it

#tag game #bl quiz #this was fun

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matt0044 · 4 years ago

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Ninja Steel is Fun Actually or How I Learned To Stop Worrying & Love Victor Vincent.

1. The season seems keen on chilling out for most of its run with a dash of goofiness, each episode being its own adventure with the thinnest of Myth arc sown together. The Ninja Rangers themselves don’t have to answer to any higher power aside from the semi-sentient Nexus. No Zordon and especially no Gosei. They feel like high schoolers who choose for themselves to be heroes.

This is honestly my favorite kind of team similar not unlike with Lost Galaxy. They’re not Rangers because they were bestowed these powers by somebody but because the powers deemed them worthy. While Mic plays mentor, he and Redbot are mostly two Alphas working as one. It feel like an unofficial after-school club down to how their base is located in the high school ala Fourze.

Mic Kanic was a fun character, owing to Kelson Henderson’s being able to show his on-screen chops after being on voice-over duty. He’s the one who dispenses the moral of the story not unlike with Keeper, illustrating his points through reverse engineering them not unlike... a mechanic. Damn, that’s good.

Unlike with Keeper, he doesn’t feel as though he’s “there” for the sake of moralizing. He’s the one forging the Ninja Power Stars whenever the Prism displays a new weapon to wield along with Redbot. He doesn’t pretend to be smarter than the others, he’s just helping teens out in his own weird way. Not that his shape-shifting couldn’t have been played with in more episodes IMO.

2. The episodic nature feel far more like a feature than a flaw. In addition to the Rangers being high-schoolers, we have ourselves a light-on-plot format not too dissimilar to Mighty Morphin’ way back when. Now as an anniversary season. this can feel like a problem when many expect it to be “Go big or go home.” I get that yet... I also enjoy how one could go back to any episode in isolation.

That’s not to say that I don’t feel like it can’t feel held back at time in adhering to this format. I can say that giving each Ranger more pronounced character arcs while maintaining this structure wouldn’t have been impossible with a bit more focus on Story Editing. Preston reconciling with his father could’ve been set up if Marcus Tien had more of a presence up to that episode for one thing.

3. Victor and Monty. Where do I even begin with these two goobers? Chris Reid and Caleb Bendit go absolute ham with their characters ever scene they get. The latter is an over enthusiastic nerd who I swear has the hots for Mr. Vincent. The former has such a flare to him in bringing this young Gaston to life with such delicious arrogance.

Now... I get why they’re (charitably speaking) not exactly fan-favorites. Their C-Plot antics can feel divorced from the story compared to a lot of Bulk and Skull’s escapades way back when. To say nothing of some of their... bowel-based comedy routines.

Yet for me, there was just an unabashedly enthusiasm to their wacky hijinks that I could never hate for the life of me. They could be so juvenile yet did it without ever feeling an ounce of shame. Even their fart jokes don’t just settle for less.

One episodes they’re cocooned by a spider monster and float into the sky in their inflated wrappings. Another they try to turn the entire class into one big Dutch Oven to avoid a test they didn’t study for... only for the teacher to pass out gas masks. The cherry on top? They don’t get any.

It leaves me in a sense of “Oh my god,” but in the best way possible. I shouldn’t like them. I really shouldn’t but... I’m too much of a late 00s kid to grow out of it. Go ahead and call out my bad taste, I don’t care.

Now this isn’t to say that there were things that couldn’t have been improved upon from small adjustment to pretty major tweaks that I’ve often pondered.

1. The villains were a tad hit or miss. Odious was a good Star Scream in how she schemed behind the scenes and got the likes of Ripcon to take the fall when her fake Aiden plan didn’t precisely go as planned. Cosmo Royale is a huge ham in the best way as Galaxy Warrior’s host, playing up each monster of the day.

That said, Galvanax and Ripcon were the weaker of the lot. The latter could’ve had more of a rivalry with Brody. Maybe as a former master who gave him the skills his father couldn’t, leading them to clash when out in the field. It would help him stand out as a villain.

The former should’ve been less of a gruff brute like Sledge and more watching from the shadows ala Doctor Claw, stepping in when stuff got real like the season finale. The camera could hide him from view until he stepped into the fray. He could also do with a smooth yet menacing voice so to speak. You know, hype up his final showdown in the end.

2. Brody’s time is space could’ve been expanded upon. Perhaps a few of Galaxy Warriors’ contestants crossed paths with the young ninja and are in a conflict of interests. Be it a noble warrior or a former foe. Again, Ripcon could sort of be the Shadow Weaver to Brody’s She-Ra of sorts.

Wait... does that make Odious Catra?

Um...

Additionally, maybe show how out of touch he is with Earth customs due to living on an alien ship for a bit of comic relief. Think Super Sentai’s comedic Reds but more chill and far less obnoxious, being a good leader even with his eccentricities. You could have him be the ones to weird out Victor and Monty.

3. Sledge’s crew should’ve been a rival to Galaxy Warriors in Super Ninja Steel as they catch onto her ruse and return. You could actually have him bring over the Galactic Ninjas with Fox Bots replacing the Viviks, making them more of a big deal.

Odious would go along with it to boost rating for the show and attract more warriors for her benefit. She could try to play both side leading up to the finale with Badonna as a spy so to speak. She has magic so while not let her shape-shift.

4. I get the sense Dane Romero was meant to be dead but it was deemed a tad dark and brought back since they had three Akaningers to adapt. He could’ve acted as a secondary mentor for the Rangers as he caught up with his sons and taught them more advanced skills.

Despite this, Ninja Steel was a fun ride even if it was a touch mellow. I feel like some of the hate is a touch overblow for the sake of hyperbole but I don’t fault anybody for finding this to not be their cup of tear. The anniversary element is another post entirely so I’ll save that for later.

Alright, guys, tear me apart.

#Power Rangers #power rangers ninja steel #power rangers super ninja steel #ninja steel #super ninja steel #ninja rangers fear no danger

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fourteenaway · 4 years ago

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Little Lion Man | The Story of Cary / Part III

tw: rape, infidelity, pregnancy, stepcest

Exactly at seven-thirty that night, the door chimes sounded, punched by an impatient finger, forcing Caren to hurry lest the man waken Cary who hadn't liked being put to bed at such an early hour.

If she had taken pains to look her best, so had Harry. He strode in as if he already owned the place and her. He left behind a drift of shaving lotion with a piney forest scent, and every hair on his head was carefully in place, making her wonder if he had a thinning spot. She figured she’d find out for herself sooner or later.

She took his coat and hung it in the hall closet, then sashayed over to the bar where she busied herself as he sat down before the log fire she had burning nothing had been overlooked; She even had soft music playing.

By this time Caren knew enough about men and the ways of pleasing them best. There wasn't a man alive who wasn't charmed by a lovely woman bustling about, eager to wait on him, pamper and wine and dine him, if you asked her.

“Name your weakness, Harry."

"Scotch."

"On the rocks?"

"Neat."

He watched her every movement, which was deliberately graceful and deft. Then, turning her back she mixed a fruity drink for myself, lacing it lightly with vodka. And with her two little stemmed goblets on a silver tray, Caren seductively ambled his way, leaning to give him an enticing view of her braless bosom. She sat across from him and swung one leg over the other to allow the long slit of her rose-colored dress to open and expose one leg from silver sandal midway to the hip. He couldn't take his eyes off it.

"Sorry about the glasses,” Caren said smoothly, well pleased with his expression, "I don't have room in this cottage to unpack everything I own. Most of my crystal is in storage and I have here only wine glasses and water goblets."

"Scotch is scotch no matter how it's served. And what in the world is that thing you're sipping?" By this time he'd shifted his gaze to the low V of her gown.

"Well, you take orange juice freshly squeezed, a dab of lemon juice a dash of vodka, bit of coconut oil, and drop in a cherry to dive after. I call it A Maiden's Delight."

After a few minutes of conversation, they drifted to the dining table, not so far from the fireplace, to eat by candlelight. Every so often he'd drop his fork, or spoon, or she would, and both of them would go for it, then laugh to see who was fastest. Caren was, every time. He was much too distracted to spot a missing fork or spoon when a neckline opened up so obligingly.

"This is delicious chicken," he said after demolishing five hours of hard labor in about ten minutes. "Usually I don't like chicken-where'd you learn to prepare this dish?"

Caren told him the truth, “A Russian dancer taught me, she was on tour over here, and we liked each other. She and her husband stayed with Leeland and me, and we'd cook together whenever we weren't dancing or shopping or touring. It took four chickens to feed four people. Now you know the nasty truth about dancers; when it comes to eating we are not in the least dainty. That is, after a performance. Before we go on we have to eat very lightly."

He smiled and leaned across the small drop-leaf table. Candlelight was in his eyes, sparkling them devilishly.

"Caren, tell me honestly why you came to live in this hick town and why you've got your heart set on me for a lover."

"You flatter yourself," Caren said in her most aloof manner, thinking she was very successful in appearing cool on the outside while inside she was a web of conflicting emotions. It was almost as if she had stage fright and was in the wings waiting to go on. And this was the most important performance of her life. Then almost magically she felt she was on stage. She didn't have to think of how to act or what to say to charm him and make him forever hers. The script had been written a long time ago when she was hidden and first found out her mother had married him.

"You're not being honest with yourself," Harry said softly, "You know better than anyone where that missing piece is, or I wouldn't be here."

His voice was so low and seductive as he stood and took her into his arms to dance.

Caren put her head on his shoulder as they went on dancing, "You're wrong, Harry, I don't know why you're here. I don't know how to fill my days. When I'm teaching class and when I'm with my son, then I'm alive-but when he's in bed and I'm alone, I don't know what to do with myself. I know Cary needs a father, and when I think of his father I realize I've always managed to do the wrong thing. I've read my reviews that rave about the potential I had... but in my personal life I've made only mistakes, so what I accomplished professionally doesn't matter at all."

Caren stopped moving her feet and sniffled, then tried to hide her face, but he tilted it upward, then dried my tears and held his handkerchief so she could blow her nose. Then came the silence. The long, long silence. Their eyes met and clung and her heart started a faster thumping.

"Your problems are all so simple, Caren," he began, "all you need is someone like me, who needs someone like you. If Cary needs a father, then I need a son. See how simply all complicated matters are solved?"

Too simply, she thought, when he had a wife and she was discerning and cynical enough to know he couldn't possibly care for her enough.

“You have a wife you love," Caren said bitterly.

Caren shoved him away. She didn't want to get him too easily, but only after long and difficult struggles against her mother, and she wasn't here to know.

"Men are liars too," he said flatly, with some of the zest gone from his eyes. "I have a wife and occasionally we sleep together, but the fire has gone out. I don't know her. I don't think anyone knows her. She's a bundle of secrets, wound up tight, and she won't let me inside. It's gone on so long I don't care to be let in now. She can keep her secrets and her tears, and eat her way out of her anxieties and whatever it is that makes her wake up in the night and go and look in that damned blue album! Now she's overweight and she's written she's just had plastic surgery, a face lift, and I won't know her when she comes back. As if I ever really knew her!"

Caren panicked inside, he had to care! How could she break up a marriage that was already coming apart? She needed to feel she'd accomplished this against overwhelming odds!

“Go home!" Caren said, pushing at him. "Get out of my house! I don't know you well enough to even listen to your problems, and I don't believe you. I don't trust you!"

He laughed, mocking her, aroused by her puny efforts to push him away. His libido was fired and it flamed in his eyes as he grabbed her upper arms and drew her hard against him.

“Now you come off it! Look at the way you're dressed. You had me come here for a reason. So here I am, ready to be seduced. You seduced me the first time I saw you, and for the life of me it seems I've known you much longer than I actually have. Nobody plays games with me, then calls it a draw. You win or I win, but if we go to bed together we might wake up in the morning and find out we've both won."

Red lights flashed, Stop! Resist! Fight! Caren did none of those things. Caren beat on his chest with ineffectual small fists as he laughed and picked her up and threw her over his shoulder.

With one hand he gripped both of her legs to keep them from kicking, and with the other he turned out the lamps. In the dark, with her still beating on his back, he carried her into her bedroom and threw her down on the comforter. She scrambled to get up, but he came at her fast!

There wasn't a chance to use the knee she had ready. He sensed her dancer's ability could defeat him so he lunged, caught her about the waist so they both tumbled to the floor! Caren opened her mouth to scream, but he clamped his hand upon her open lips, then pinioned her arms with his iron strength and sat on the legs that tried to kick herself free.

“Caren, my lovely seductress, you went to such a lot of trouble. You seduced me long ago, ballerina. Until the week before Christmas you are mine, and then my wife will be home-and I won't need you."

His hand eased away from her lips and she thought she would scream, but instead she bit out, “At least I didn't have to buy you with my father's millions!"

That did it. He crushed his lips brutally hard down on hers before she realized what was happening. This wasn't the way she wanted it! Caren wanted to tempt him, set him on fire, make him chase her, and give in only after a long and arduous pursuit that her mother could watch and suffer through, knowing she could do nothing or she'd talk. And yet he was taking her heartlessly, more ruthless than Leeland at his worst!

Savagely he bore down on her. He squirmed and writhed to grind in, even as his hands ripped and tore off her clinging rose dress. All she had on then was pantyhose, and soon he had those pulled down so her silver slippers came off and stayed inside of them.

With his lips still crushed brutally hard on hers, he carried her resisting hand to his zipper and squeezed until her knuckles cracked. It was either tug it down or have her fingers broken! How he managed to wiggle out of his clothes, even as he held her naked beneath him, she’d never know.

When he was naked, but for his socks, she kept on wiggling, writhing, squirming, butting and trying to scratch or bite while he kissed, fondled and explored. Caren had her chance to scream several times—but she too was breathing fast and hard, and jerking upward to force him off. But he took this as a welcoming arch of invitation. He entered, and had his too quick satisfaction, then pulled out before she had any.

"Get out of here." Caren screamed. “I'm calling the police! I'll have you thrown in jail, charged with assault and rape!"

He laughed scornfully, chucked her under the chin playfully, then stood up to pull on his clothes.

“Oh," he said, mocking her with an imitation of her own voice, “I am so frightened.” Then his voice was deeply earnest.“You aren't happy, are you? It didn't work out the way you planned it, but don't you worry, tomorrow night I'll be back, and maybe then you can please me enough, so I'll feel like taking the time to please you."

"I've got a gun!" She declared thought she didn't, “And if you dare set foot in this house again you're a dead man! Not that you are a man. You are more brute than human!"

“My wife often says the same thing," he said casually, zipping up his trousers shamelessly, without the decency to even turn his back. “But she likes it just the same, just as you did. Beef Wellington, you can have that tomorrow night, plus a tossed salad and a chocolate mousse for dessert. If you make me fat, we can burn off the calories in the most pleasant way possible,and I don't mean jogging."

He grinned, saluted her, put one foot behind the other to turn in a smartly, military fashion, then paused at the doorway as Caren sat up and clutched the remnants of her gown to her breasts.

“Same time tomorrow night, and I'll stay the night-that is, if you treat me right."

He left, and slammed the front door behind him.

Caren began to cry, not from pity for herself. It was frustration so huge she could have torn him limb from limb!

She’d lace the beef wellington with arsenic.

A small timid sound came from outside her door then.

“Mommy... I'm scared. Are you cryin', Mommy?" Came Cary’s soft voice.

Hastily she pulled on a robe and called him in, then held him close in her arms. “Darling, darling, Mommy is all right. You had a bad dream. Mommy isn't crying... see?"

Cary peered into her face worriedly, he heard too much, not that he understood it all. Cowering in his bed scared, before he finally got up and got to his mother’s door.

Caren brushed away the tears, for she'd get even.

Three dozen red roses arrived while Cary and she were eating breakfast, he long-stemmed variety from the florist.

A small white card read: I'm sending you a big bouquet of roses, One for every night you'll have my heart.

No name. And what the devil was she supposed to do with three dozen roses in a matchbox house? She couldn't send them to a children's ward; the hospital was miles and miles away.

Cary decided what to do with them, "Oh, Mommy, how pretty! Uncle William's roses!"

For Cary she kept the roses instead of throwing them out, and in many vases she scattered them throughout the house.

He was delighted, and when she took him with her to dancing school he told all the students, roses were all over his home-even in the bathroom.

After lunch Caren drove Cary to the nursery school he so loved. It was a Montessori school that was inspiring him to want to learn by appealing to his senses.

Already he could print his name, and he was only three! He was like Daniel, Caren told herself, brilliant, handsome, talented, oh, her Cary had everything—but a father.

From his bright blue eyes shone the quick intelligence of someone who would have a lifetime curiosity about everything.

“Cary, I love you."

"I know that, Mommy. I love you too," he said before he waved good-bye as she drove off.

Caren was there to meet him when he came from his school, his small face flushed and troubled.

"Mommy," he said as soon as he was beside her in the car, "Victor Harding, he said his mommy slapped him when he touched her there."

And he shyly pointed at her breast, “You don't slap me when I touch you there,” Cary whispered.

"But you don't touch me there, not since you were a little baby and Mommy nursed you for a short while."

"Did you slap me then?" He asked, looking so worried.

"No, of course not. Babies are meant to suckle their mother's breasts, and I would never slap you for touching there, so if you want to try me, go ahead and touch,” Caren said.

Cary lifted his small hand and reached out tentatively while he watched his mother’s face to see if she'd be shocked.

Oh, how fast the young learned all the taboos, Caren thought.

And when he'd touched and God's lightning hadn't struck him down, he smiled, very relieved.

"Oh, it's just a soft place," he laughed at the pleasant discovery he made before he threw his arms his mothers neck, “I love you, Mommy. Cause you love me even when I'm bad."

"I'll always love you, Cary. And if you're bad sometimes, I'll try and understand."

Yes, she was not going to be like her mother. She was going to be the perfect mother, and someday he'd have a father too.

How was it that little children, such young ones, would already be talking of sin and being slapped for only touching?

Caren stopped to buy stamps before she reached home, and left Cary dozing on the front seat.

Harry was in the post office, which was no larger than her living room, buying stamps too.

Charmingly he smiled at her, as if nothing untoward had happened between them the night before.

He even had the nerve to follow her to her car so he could ask how she liked the roses.

"Not your kind of roses," she snapped, then got primly into her car and slammed the door in his face. She left him staring after her without a smile-in fact, he looked rather miserable.

At five-thirty a special-delivery man brought a small package to her front door. It was certified so she had to sign for it. Inside a larger box was another box, and inside of that was a velvet jewelry case which she quickly opened while Cary watched, all eyes. On black velvet lay a single rose composed of many diamonds. Also a card with a note that read, ‘Perhaps this kind of rose is more to your liking.’ She put the thing away as a trifle bought with her mother’s money, so it wasn't really from him, no more than the real roses.

He had the nerve to come that night at seven-thirty just as he'd said he would. Nevertheless, she readily let him in, then led him silently to the dining table with no to do about cocktails or other niceties. The table was set even more elaborately than the night before. She'd hauled out some boxes and done some unpacking, and on the table were her best lace mats and covered silver serving dishes.

Neither of them had as yet spoken. All his forgive-me roses she'd gathered together and they were in the box near his plate. On his empty plate was the jeweler's velvet container with the diamond rose brooch inside. She sat to watch his expression as he put the jewelry box aside casually, and just as casually moved the flower box out of his way.

He reached for the domed silver lid, ostensibly hiding the Beef Wellington underneath. His gaze lowered to stare at the huge platter that held one hot dog and a small dab of cold canned beans.

The disbelief in his eyes, his utter offended shock gave her so much satisfaction she almost liked him.

"You are now gazing upon Cary's favorite menu," she said, gloating. “It is exactly what he and I ate tonight for dinner, and since it was good enough for us, I thought it was good enough for you, so I saved some. Since I've already eaten, all of that is yours alone, and you may help yourself."

Scowling, he flashed her a burning, hard look, then savagely bit down into the hot dog which she’d sure had grown cold as the beans. But he gobbled down everything and drank his glass of milk, and for dessert she handed him a box of animal crackers.

First he stared at the box in another expression of dumbfounded amazement, then ripped it open, seized up a lion and snapped off the head in one bite.

"I take it you are one of those despicable liberated women who refuses to do anything to please a man!"

"Wrong. I am liberated only with some men. Others I can worship, adore and wait on happily.”

"You made me do what I did!” he objected strongly. “Do you think I planned it that way? I wanted us to find our relationship on an equal basis. Why did you wear that kind of dress?"

"It's the kind all chauvinist men prefer!"

"I am not a chauvinist, and I hate that kind of dress!"

"You like what I've got on better?” Caren sat up straighter to give him a better view of the old nappy sweater she had on. With it she wore faded blue jeans, with dirty sneakers on her feet, and her hair was skinned back and fastened in a granny's knot. Deliberately she'd pulled long strands free so they hung loose about her face, slovenly fringes to make her look more appealing. And no makeup prettied her face.

He was dressed to kill.

"At least you look honest and ready to let me do the pursuing. If there is one thing I despise, it's women who come on strong, like you did last night. I expected better from you than that kind of sleazy dress that showed everything to take the thrill from discovering for myself.”

He knitted his brows and mumbled, “From a damned harlot's red dress to blue jeans. In the course of one day, she changes into a teenybopper."

"It was rose-colored, not red! And besides, Harry, strong men like you always adore weak and passive stupid women, because basically you're meek yourself and afraid of an aggressive woman!"

"I am not weak or meek or anything but a man who likes to feel a man, not to be used for your own purposes. And as for passive women I despise them as much as I do aggressive ones. I just don't like the feeling of being the victim of a huntress leading me into a trap. What the hell are you trying to do to me? Why dislike me so much? I sent you rose and diamonds, and you can't even comb your hair and take the shine from your nose."

"You are looking at the natural me, and now that you've seen, you can leave."

Caren got up and walked to the front door and swung it open. “We are wrong for each other. Go back to your wife. She can have you, for I don't want you."

He came quickly, as if to obey, then seized her in his arms and kicked the door closed. “I love you, God knows why I do, but it seems I've always loved you."

Caren stared up in his face, disbelieving him, even as he took the pins from her hair and let it spill down. Out of long habit she tossed it about so it fluffed out and arranged itself, and smiling a little he tilted her face to his.

“May I kiss your natural lips? They are very beautiful lips."

Without waiting for permission he brushed his lips gently over hers.

Why didn't all men know that was the right way to start? She wondered. What woman wanted to be eaten alive, choked by a thrusting tongue? Not her, she wanted to be played like a violin, strummed pianissimo, in largo timing, fingered into legato, and let it grow into crescendo.

Deliciously she wanted to head toward the ecstatic heights that could only happen for her when the right words were spoken and the right kind of kisses, given before his hands came into play.

If he'd done for her only a little last night, this night he used all the skills he had. This time he took her to the stars where they both exploded, still holding tight to each other, and doomed to do it again, and then again.

He was hairy all over. Leeland had been hairless but for one thatch that grew in a thin line up to his navel.

She turned off her mind, and gave in to her senses and to this man who was now treating her like a lover.

But he didn't love her, she knew that. Harry was using her as a substitute for his wife, and when she came back she'd never see him again. She knew it, but still she took and she gave until they fell asleep in each other's arms.

When she slept, she dreamed. Leeland was in the silver music box her father had given her when she was six. Round and round he spun, his face ever turning toward her, accusing her with his jet eyes, and then he grew a mustache and was William, who only looked sad.

She ran fast to set him free from death in a music box when it turned into a coffin-and then it was Daniel inside, his eyes closed, his hands folded one over the other on his chest. Dead, dead.

‘DANIEL’, she shouted.

She awoke to find Harry gone and her pillow wet with tears.

Why did her mother start this, perhaps had she not, maybe she would have found Daniel right away, and before anyone else. She would have fallen in love with him with no revenge to carry out or repayments to deliver. But then she wouldn’t have Cary. But perhaps she still would have found Leeland and maybe he would have been what she wanted had she not had so many other priorities and he would have been good to her too.

Holding tight to her son's small hand she led him out into the cold morning air on her way to work.

Faint and far away she heard someone calling her name, and with it came the scent of an ocean breeze.

‘Why don't you come, Daniel, and save me from myself? Why only call in your thoughts?’ She thought.

Part one was done. Part two would begin when her mother knew she had Harry's child.

Harry and her didn't have to sneak around furtively to meet.

The houses where he lived were far apart and no one could see them when he came to her through the back door that opened out into a yard with a fence. In back of that was a country lane, shrubbed, and made private by many trees. Sometimes they met in a distant town and their lovemaking in a motel room was wild, sweet, tender, erotic and altogether satisfying, and yet she froze when he told her at lunch, “She called this morning, Caren. She'll be home before Christmas."

"That's nice," Caren said and went right on eating her salad and anticipating the Beef Wellington that would show up soon.

He frowned and his fork loaded with salad hesitated on the way to his mouth. “It means we won't be able to see as much of each other. Aren't you sorry?"

"We'll find ways."

"If you aren't the damndest woman!"

"Don't get so worked up over nothing. All women are monsters to men, and maybe to ourselves. We are our own worst enemies. You don't have to divorce her and give up your chance to inherit her fortune. Though she could outlive you and have the chance to buy another younger husband."

"Sometimes you are just as bitchy as she is! She did not buy me! I loved her! She loved me! I was crazy about her, as crazy for her as I am for you now. But she changed. When I met her she was sweet, charming, everything I wanted in a woman and wife, but she changed."

He stabbed the salad fork toward his mouth and chewed viciously, “She's always been a mystery-like you."

“Harry, my love," she said, “very soon all mystery walls will crumble."

He went on, as if she hadn't interrupted, “That father of hers, he too was a mystery; you'd look at him and see a fine old gentleman, but underneath was a heart of steel. I thought I was his only attorney, but he had six others, each of us assigned to different tasks. Mine was to make out his wills. He changed them dozens of times, putting this family member in, and writing another out, and adding codicils like a mad man, though he was sane enough right up until the very end. The last codicil was the worst."

Of course, no children for him, ever, she knew.

"Then you really were a practicing lawyer?" Caren asked.

He smiled bitterly, then answered, “Of course I was. And now I am again. A man needs something meaningful to do. How many times can anyone tour Europe before boredom sets in? You see the same old faces, doing the same old things, laughing at the same jokes. The Beautiful People what a laugh! Too much money buys everything but health, so they have no dreams left to purchase, and no aspirations, so in the end they are only bored."

"Why don't you divorce her and do something meaningful with your life?"

"She loves me.” That's the way he said it. Short. Sweet. He stayed because she loved him, forcing Caren to say, "You told me when we first met that you loved her, and then you say you don't which is it?"

He thought about it for a long time.

"Honestly, ballerina, I'm ambivalent and resentful. I love her, I hate her. I thought she was what you seem to be now. So please, smother that bitchy side that reminds me of her and don't try and do to me what she did. You are putting a wall between us because you know something I don't. I don't fall in love easily, and I wish I didn't love you."

He seemed suddenly a small boy, wistful, as if his pet dog might betray him and life would never be good again.

Caren was touched and dared to say, “Harry, I swear there will come a day when you know all my secrets and all of hers, but until that time comes say you love me, even if you don't mean it, for I can't enjoy being with you if I don't feel you love me just a little."

"A little? It seems I've loved you all my life. Even when I kissed you the first time it seemed I'd kissed you before, why is that?"

“Karma," she replied and smiled at his baffled expression.

Harry spent more time at her small home than at his huge one. He piled her with as many gifts, as he did Cary.

He ate his breakfast, lunch and dinner with them on the days he didn't spend in his office, which she privately believed was more a facade for appearing useful than a functioning law office.

Her dancing school suffered from his attention, but it didn't matter. She was now a kept woman. Paid to be his mistress.

And Cary was delighted with the little leather boots Harry gave him.

“Are you my daddy?" asked Cary, who would be four in February, "No. but I sure wish I was and I could be,” Harry answered.

It was only second before Cary was out in the yard, tromping around and staring down at his feet that fascinated him now that they wore cowboy boots.

Caren and Harry lay entwined after their lovemaking, listening to the wind blending with Cary's shrill laughter, racing after the poodle, Rainbow, that Harry had given him.

A few snow flurries were beginning to fall. She knew she had to get up soon so Cary wouldn't run in and catch them, just to tell them it was snowing.

He couldn't remember other snows, and barely would the ground be sugar-coated than he'd want to make a snowman. Sighing first, she kissed Harry, then reluctantly pulled from his embrace. She turned her back to pull on bikini panties as he propped up on an elbow and watched.

"You've got a lovely behind," he said. She said thanks, "What about my front?" He said it wasn't bad and she threw a shoe at him.

"Caren, why don't you say you love me?"

Caren whirled about, startled. "Have you ever said it to me and meant it?" She asked as she snapped on a bra.

"How do you know I don't mean it?" he asked with anger.

"Let me tell you how I know. When you love, you want that person with you all of the time. When you avoid the subject of divorce, that alone is an indication of how much you care for me and just where I belong in your life."

“Caren, you've been hurt, haven't you? I don't want to hurt you more. You play games with me. I've always known that. What does it matter if it is only sex and not love? And tell me how to know where one ends and the other begins?"

His teasing words were a knife in her heart, for somehow, without meaning to let it happen, she'd fallen madly, idiotically in love with him.

According to Harry's enthusiastic report, his long gone wife came home from her rejuvenation trip looking smashingly young and beautiful.

“She's lost twenty pounds. I swear, that face lift has done wonders! She looks sensational, and damn it, so unbelievably like you!"

It was easy to see how impressed he was with his new, younger-looking wife, and if he was only trying to take the wind from her too confident sails, Caren didn't let it show.

Then he was telling her she was just as necessary to him as before in a tone that said she was not.

“Caren, while she was in Texas she changed. She's like she used to be, the sweet, loving woman I married."

Men! How gullible they were! Of course her mother was sweeter and nicer to him now that she knew he had a mistress who was very accessible, and that the other woman was her own daughter. She'd have to know, for it was whispered all about how much Harry’s mistress looked like a younger version of his wife.

"So, why are you here with me when your wife is back and so like me? Why don't you put your clothes on and say goodbye and never come back? Say it was sweet while it lasted, but it's all over now, and I'll say thank you for a wonderful time before I kiss you farewell."

"Well," he drawled, pulling her hard against his naked body, “I didn't say she was that sensational looking. And then again, there is something special about you. I can't name it. I can't understand it. But I don't know if I can live without you now."

He said it seriously, truth in his dark eyes.

So she'd won.

Quite by accident her mother and her met in the post office one day. She saw her and shivered. Her lovely head lifted higher as she turned it slightly away, pretending she didn't know her.

She would deny her as she'd denied Cassidy, even though it was so obvious that they were mother and daughter and not strangers.

But Caren wasn't Cassidy. So she treated her as she treated her, indifferently, as if she were nobody special and never would be again.

Yet, as she waited impatiently for her roll of stamps, she saw her mother dart her eyes to follow the restless prowl of her young son who had to stare at everything and everyone.

He was a handsome, graceful, and charming boy who drew the eyes of everyone, who had to stop and admire him and pat his head.

Cary moved with innate style, unstudied and relaxed, at ease wherever he was, because he thought the whole world was his, and he was loved by everyone.

He turned to catch her mother's long stare and he smiled.

"Hello," he greeted. “You're pretty-like my mommy,” he told her.

Oh, the things children say! What innocent knowledge they had to see so readily what others instinctively refused to acknowledge.

He stepped closer to reach out and tentatively touch her fur coat. “My mommy's got a fur coat. My mommy is a dancer. Do you dance?"

She sighed, and Caren held her breath and thought, ‘See, Momma, there is the grandson your arms will never hold. You'll never hear him say your name. Never!’

"No," she whispered, “I'm not a dancer,” and tears filmed her eyes.

"My mommy can teach you how,” Cary smiled.

"I'm too old to learn," she whispered, backing off.

"No, you're not," said Cary, reaching for her hand as if he'd show her the way, but she pulled back and glanced at Caren reddened, then fumbled in her purse for a handkerchief.

Cary frowned slightly and went on unperturbed, “Do you have a little boy I can play with?" He questioned concerned to see her tears, as if having a son would make up for not knowing how to dance.

"No," she said in a quivering weak whisper, “I don't have any children.”

That's when Caren moved in to say in a cold, harsh voice, "Some women don't deserve to have children."

She paid for her roll of stamps and dropped them in her purse, “Some women like you, Mrs. Walters, would rather have money than the bother of children who might get in the way of good times. Time itself will sooner or later let you know if you made the right decision."

She turned her back and shivered again as if all her furs couldn't keep her warm enough. Then she strode from the post office and headed toward a chauffeur-driven, black limousine.

Like a queen she rode off, head held high, leaving Cary to ask, “Mommy, why don't you like that pretty lady? I like her a lot. She's like you, only not so pretty."

Caren didn't comment, though it was on the tip of her tongue to say something so ugly he would never forget it.

In the twilight of that evening Caren sat near the windows, staring toward her mothers house and wondering what Harry and her mother were doing. Her hands were on her abdomen which was still flat, but soon it would be swelling with the child that might be started.

One missed period didn't prove anything except she wanted Harry's baby, and little things made her feel sure there was a baby.

She let depression come and take her though. He wouldn't leave her and her money to marry her and she'd have another fatherless child.

What a fool to start all of this, but she'd always been a fool.

And then she saw a man slipping through the woods, coming to her, and she laughed, made confident again.

He loved her! He did and as soon as she knew for certain, she would tell him he was to be a father.

“Caren, you told me there was no need for precautions!"

"There was no need. I want your baby.”

"You want my baby? What the hell do you think I can do, marry you?"

"No. I did my own assuming. I presumed you'd have your fun with me and when it was over you'd go back to your wife and find yourself another playmate. And I'd have just what I set out to get, your baby. Now I can leave. So kiss me off, Harry, as just another of your little extramarital dalliances."

He looked furious. They were in my living room, while a fierce blizzard raged outside. Snow heaped in mounds window-high, and she was before the fireplace, knitting a baby bunting before she began a bootie. She was getting ready to slip a stitch then knit two together when Harry seized her knitting from my hands and hurled it away.

“It's unraveling!” Caren cried in dismay.

"What the hell are you trying to do to me, Caren? You know I can't marry you! I never lied and said I would. You're playing a game with me."

He choked and covered his face with his hands, then took them down and pleaded, "I love you. God help me but I do. I want you near me always, and I want my child too. What kind of game are you playing now?"

“Just a woman's game. The only game she can play and be sure of winning."

“Look," he said, trying to regain his control of the situation, “explain what you mean, don't double talk. Nothing has to change because my wife is back. You'll always have a place in my life/"

"In your life? Don't you mean more correctly, on the fringes of your life?"

For the first time she heard humility in his voice, "Caren, be reasonable. I love you, and I love my wife too. Sometimes I can't separate you from her. She came back different, as I told you, and now she is like she was when we first met. Maybe a more youthful figure and face has given her back some confidence she lost, and because of it she can be sweeter. Whatever the cause. I'm grateful. Even when I disliked her, I loved her. When she was hateful, I'd try and strike back by going to other women, but still I loved her. The one big issue we fight over is her unwillingness to have a child, even an adopted one. Of course she's too old to have one now. Please, Caren, stay! Don't leave! Don't take my child away so I will never know what happens to him, or to her...or to you."

Caren laid it out flat, “All right, I will stay on one condition. If you divorce her and marry me, only then will you have the child you always wanted. Otherwise, I'm taking myself, and that means your child too, far away. Maybe I'll write to let you know if you have a son or a daughter, and maybe I won't. Either way, once I leave, you are out of my life for good.”

Before the fireplace he stood with his arm up on the mantel, then he rested his forehead on that and stared down at the fire. His free hand was behind his back and clenched into a fist. His confused thoughts were so deep they reached out and touched Caren with pity. He turned then to face her, staring deep into her eyes.

“My God," he said, shocked by his discovery. "You planned this all along, didn't you? You came here to accomplish what you have, but why? Why should you choose me to hurt? What have I ever done to you, Caren, but love you? True, it started with sex, and sex only was what I wanted it to stay. But it has grown into something much more than that. I like being with you, just sitting and talking, or walking in the woods. I feel comfortable with you. I like the way you wait on me, and touch my cheek when you pass, and rumple my hair and kiss my neck, and the sweet, shy way you wake up and smile when you see me beside you. I like the clever games you play, keeping me always guessing, and always amused. I feel I have ten women in one, so now I feel I can't live without you. But I can't abandon my wife and marry you. She needs me!"

"You should have been an actor, Harry. Your words move me to tears."

"Damn you for taking this so lightly!” He bellowed. "You've got me on a rack and you're twisting the screws! Don't make me hate you and ruin the best months of my life!

With that he stormed out of her home, and she was left alone, ruefully regretting that she always talked too much, for she would stay as long as he needed her.

#i hope harry walters sr burns in a fire....oh wait...HHAHAHHAHAH #you should have been an actor harry - son is an actor #cary: musing #harry: musing #caren: musing #cary: story

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csykora · 5 years ago

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hey i was reading your post about evgeny kusnetsov and alexander semin (the friendship necklace one) and i got into hockey somewhat recently but i've heard/read some things about sasha and i was wondering if you could give me a rundown/what your perspective is? you mentioned cultural assimilation, but also social class, ethnic identity, ability, neurodiversity, and trauma and i was really curious what exactly you were talking about??

First, that’s cool you’re getting into hockey! How’s that going? I hope you’re having fun. Second…thanks for making me reread my old writing as we come up on the New Year ;)

That was one of my very first posts, and I think it reads like it—I definitely wasn’t much of a sports writer back then, and (I don’t think) I tell stories quite the same way now.

I don’t think some of those words I used mean much, except that I was angry. So I’d like to spell out what made, makes, me angry. The first half of this is stuff I’ve said before, more organized, with jokes. The second half is not fun, but it’s also something I think NHL fans have a duty to think about. So I want to try to talk about Lokomotiv.

Sasha Semin is the star and captain of a quite good, more fun KHL team. Today he was named to the All-Star team, actually. KHL All-Stars is a magical place where the players sing acoustic covers and routinely set things on fire, so hopefully they’ll let him bring his sword.

(I love the KHL)

Before that, he was the cool big brother of a generation of Russian stars. In the early 2000s the first post-Soviet young players were coming of age and working out what post-Soviet, now-Russian style hockey was going to be. In that moment we got two spectacular players: Sasha from Siberia, and Sasha from Moscow.

The Soviet style of play was supposed to be egalitarian—players skated the opposition sick and pass-pass-passed, always giving it to a teammate instead of taking chances, until whoever happened to have it had a sure shot. The Alexanders grew up in that style, and they grew up fuck-off strong. They started feeding off all their teammates’ passes and beginning to gun down goalies with one of two shots: Alex Ovechkin had the one-timer, and Alex Semin had the best wristshot in the game.

Did you watch Vegas’ magic season? Pull some clips of Wild Bill Karlsson. Imagine if he had upper body strength but was just as light on his feet. That’s how inexplicably electric young Semin was.

His and then Ovi’s performances at World Juniors were so explosive they convinced American businesses to risk money on something new. Semin was oldest, and the Capitals kind of sucked, so they got him first. Then a few years later they still sucked, so they got Ovi too. Then the two of them got Nicklas Backstrom and matching line promise necklaces and played really good hockey together for a number of years.

(If anyone would like 3,000 more nicer words about the above subjects, @ me)

A couple things shaped what happened after that:

▪ Semin’s unique wrister, twisted to be almost as hard as a slapper, is like spending every night downing jägerbombs with a shot of carpal tunnel. He seems to have chronic wrist and hand problems from inflammation, with apparent flare-ups that sometimes got rest and sometimes didn’t. So that’s a factor—not the only, but a—in why he had periods of poor shooting.

▪ Either because he never really went to school or just because he’s wired that way, Semin seems to suck at math.

▪ Ovi’s hot stick and the Sid Incident (Sidcident?):

In their first interview together, Ovi described him and Sid as “partners”, and Sid asked for Ovi’s shirt. But over the first few years the League swung from branding them as buddies to making money off a rivalry, and Don Cherry started a string of bitter conflicts with Ovi.

Local journalists who knew him wrote about seeing Ovi flinch in interviews. They described him starting to hesitate, pale, tired, doubling back over answers to make sure they were watertight. We now know from Tatyana Ovechina that he was spending a lot of nights on the phone back home with her, asking if he was letting everybody down.

Sasha, who’s basically that guy on twitter who found kittens in his sock drawer and adopted them all, but with little brothers, got protective. He told Russian media that he thought Sid was a good player, but not his favorite, and said that the way the League was pushing media attention could make someone a ‘star’ even if they weren’t that good. The phrase he used means “dead wood”, or boring, useless person. The grammar he used means something like “even if he were (ie, he isn’t)”.

I think this was objectively very funny. And I still hold that anyone saying the level of exposure Sid endured was good for him or anyone sounds like the stage parents on Toddlers & Tiaras.)

But people get protective of their person, and most won’t stop for a grammar lesson before deciding what they think something meant. There was a media blitz, mostly accusing Sasha of wanting the attention Sid got, which made sense, if you didn’t know Russian or two things about him—that he’s best friends with Alex Ovechkin, and that he’d only just started to practice English with local reporters after several years. If he were an egomaniac, he was bad at it.

From his reaction it seems like he hadn’t thought his comment was that wild, and wasn’t prepared for the backlash. Next time he talked to local reporters, he brought the translator back. Asked routine questions he’d been getting for a couple years, he flinched and turned to them to rehearse every word of his answer. Asked what was up with the translator, he said “I just don’t want to say the wrong thing.”

Although teammates like Mike Knuble, Jeff Schultz, Backstrom and Ovechkin kept talking about his personable, joking side, and we’d see it plenty in practice, he started insisting to reporters that he didn’t know English and that he was boring anyway, claiming “I’m just an ordinary person, just like everybody else. The only difference is I’m out there on the ice and that’s it. I’d just rather talk about hockey.”

–> Without math or English, Semin’s career depended on his agent, Mark Gandler.

Try not to depend on Mark Gandler.

As the Globe and Mail put it, “to many Canadian hockey fans, Mark Gandler is nothing less than the Prince of Darkness.”

Mark Gandler’s business was based on presenting himself as a friendly face to young Russian athletes, and pissing of NHL franchises. I’m pro-pissing off the NHL in general; my problem with Gandler is that if he was sincerely trying to get the best deal for him clients, he was bad at it..

When anyone talks about something Semin decided, they’re talking about what Gandler decided for him. Semin was honest with the media that he had no fucking clue what Gandler was asking for in negotiations. The Caps and Gandler couldn’t agree on anything, so while Ovechkin was locked down for life, Semin was only ever signed to one and two year bridge contracts, constantly up, his performance a constant subject of discussion and every wobble obvious.

Note: the following is the bit where I got angry and A. asked why the hell I was looking at photos of this and told me to go lie on the floor and do my butterfly exercises for a while.

One year Semin’s game really sucked. It didn’t help that Ovechkin was sucking too—they both got benched, Coach got fired, and still the Capitals just kind of sucked. Around the league, Russian stars were mostly fizzling. That was the 2011-2012 season.

On September 7, 2011, the airplane carrying the Lokomotiv Yaroslavl team, coaching staff, and four youth players had overrun the runway, struck a signal tower, crashed, and caught fire moments after takeoff. Every member of the team onboard was killed.

I can’t understand, so certainly can’t explain, how that day changed the community. I’m not trying to speculate too much on anyone’s personal situation, but to point out how much more profound it was than just some other league’s trivia.

I don’t think there’s a mainstream North American parallel for the hockey community in Eastern Europe. Players are raised in a small number of hockey schools, often at that time in dormitories like the one where Semin lived in Chelyabinsk. While young North Americans are quite strictly separated by age, the Russians are growing up with older and younger kids from the same school all around them. Older teens are encouraged to mentor younger ones—Kuznetsov’s attachment to Semin is endearing, but not really so weird. Stanislav Yarushin is several years older than Sasha, and he befriended him, and then down to Kuz. In a community like that, any one person is intimately connected to the others.

From the coaches to the rookies, someone from three generations across nine nations was killed in the disaster. Each of them was connected not only to their peers, but to players older and younger than them, and to the city that raised them. Every Russian, Czech, and Slovak in the NHL lost at least one person they knew deeply.

Just that spring, Kuznetsov won gold at World Juniors with a little clique of friends. Vladimir Tarasenko, Artemi Panarin, and Dmitry Orlov are stars now, and two of the others are dead.

Kuznetsov is the one draped in the flag. #14, with the awesome hair, smiling, is Danylo Sobchenko. #12, reaching up towards the cup, is Yuri Urychev. Urychev had been injured, and supposed to stay home the day of the disaster, but he asked to be allowed to fly with them, so he could cheer for his friends.

Tarasenko himself was born in Yaroslavl, and his father played for Lokomotiv; he knew even more of the team, and if he’d taken a hometown offer instead of signing with Sibir, he would have died that day too.

The thing about a loss like this is that it keeps budding with new losses. It hadn’t been a problem with the plane, or a freak accident. Over the following month a miserable investigation revealed that the airline had fudged documents, and the pilots just didn’t know what they were doing. So as well as losing friends, the younger players lost any trust that people in authority were going to keep them safe in the future.

After the disaster, Ovechkin, Semin, and Malkin had to hold their phones waiting while Alexander Galimov (a friend from nationals) was found with burns over 80% of his body, stabilized, transported, placed in a medically-induced coma and ventilated. He finally died five days later. The day he died Tarasenko and Kuznetsov and all the others got back on their own planes and kept playing, so the NHLers just had to keeping waiting up for them, too. Now Tarasenko and Kuznetsov have little brothers on those planes. They’re better fucking planes now, because the disaster changed Russian law, but they’re still not great.

In a grim way, Semin and Ovechkin were lucky, because they had each other. At the time almost no NHL team had as many Eastern Europeans as the Caps, meaning almost all the others were alone.

Of course it just wasn’t possible for the North American public to grieve with them the way that Europe did, but how quickly it was boxed away and forgotten as a factor in players’ lives just…sucks.

You don’t just grieve somebody when you lose them; people who aren’t sure what to say will say it fades with time, but what it really does is rise and fall in waves. You grieve them when you lose them, and again when you’re as old as they were and realize how insufficient it really was, and again, when you’re older than they’ll ever be, when you’re old enough to see children their age. Like injuring your wrist, you can get back to work, but never back to exactly what you were before.

Five years later, when Tarasenko scored his 100th goal, he dedicated it to Sobchenko and Urychev.

Most of a decade later, Alex Ovechkin wears the Lokomotiv crest on his chest protector, over his heart.

So if we know all that, we can start to imagine why they sucked at hockey.

Actually, after a slow start to the season, Sasha sucked the least of all the Capitals. Always a stronger possession player than Ovechkin, Sasha actually recovered after the Caps brought in Dale Hunter, who ripped up the Goals First, Goals Always game plan and tried to make Ovi play defense. Sasha ended the season with the best possession metrics on the team (yes, including Nicke Backstrom).

His goal-scoring didn’t recover, but that was because Coach Dale was basically treating him like Ovi’s security blanket, putting him on the second line with Mojo so Ovi couldn’t cuddle him until Ovi backchecked. Mojo (this is a Science fact) is not Nicke Backstrom.

The reason the Capitals traded Semin is they desperately needed to trade someone to make up for the team’s collective failures that year, he could be traded due to his shitty contracts, and he was worth trading.

I’m not actually angry the Caps traded Semin. It made sense. I am mad the Habs did, because it was one of many decisions made by Marc Bergevin coughing up a heavily-gelled hairball on a depth chart, but hey.

Sports is hard. I don’t mean that teams should keep players who aren’t playing the way that team needs them to out of sympathy. I mean that it’s possible to say that Semin or Ovechkin sometimes play badly without saying they don’t care. It’s possible to name a practical problem without making it a moral one.

Because when we see someone not doing what we want, and we make it moral, we say, “well gosh, I can’t imagine a reason why they aren’t jazzed to do what I want right now, so there can’t be a reason, they just suck,” we’re always wrong, because we miss shit!

In 2011, the common complaint that Russian players “don’t seem to care” went from boring to breathtakingly cruel.

It’s a collective failure of empathy, where a lot of us didn’t even know that empathy’s needed. How many NHL fans don’t know Lokomotiv existed? If we don’t even know what weight another person’s carrying, we can’t possibly judge them rightly!

The athletes we’re watching aren’t just cartoon characters for American consumption, who always act and react in easily-readable ways. They’re people with beliefs, behaviors, and problems which might be meaningfully different from what we’re personally familiar with and really hard to sympathize with.

But when we see someone struggling to do what we want them to, we have to wonder why, and look around to learn more about moments like this, and then offer empathy. I believe that if we have information, most people use it to be kind. So we really fucking need historical information.

I’m back on the floor and don’t have a closer, so here’s a picture of a cat with big mitts like Sasha. His name is Peppers.

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ailinaline · 4 years ago

Text

The Untamed: unsorted

Well... I am nothing, if not eccentric, after all. Why not publish a huge post all of a sudden? :)

The Untamed (СQL) is an abyss, and I am still falling, grasping at some scattered thoughts... that tend to arrange themselves in equally chaotic blocks of thoughts, which, in turn, multiply questions successfully.

Spoilers ahead, I guess...

The timeline of СQL is more than a little blurry, and when I try to calculate, how old Wei Ying was, when he died, I come up with the sorrowful conclusion he couldn’t be more that 21, probably younger. Which, in turn, means that the post-time-skip Sizhui is, actually, of the same age or even older than Wei Ying and Lan Wangji were, when they did a lot of things I honestly can’t imagine the new generation pulling off, even physically/magically, let alone psychologically (although I wouldn’t go as far as to call young LWJ and WWX mature - they clearly were not, and that was a huge part of the tragedy foundation, in my opinion). The young disciples are referred to as ‘children’, and they truly are. Compared to 16-17 year old LWJ and WWX, they are very, very young, inexperienced and not especially capable – while still being quite skilled and smart. And it’s both fabulous and painful to watch. Fabulous because it’s a very vivid and authentic demonstration of how exceptionally gifted LWJ and WWX are (and were); and painful because, unfortunately, not all of their greatness comes just from inborn talents.

II.

I am easily charmed by languages, but СQL, being the third Chinese dorama I have ever watched, is still the first one to so profusely tempt me to learn Chinese – in order to translate the songs and to understand the subtleties of the dialogues.

III.

I can’t get rid of the impression that the concept of rules/order breaking and punishment/atonement is fundamental for СQL (and its world). As far as I am aware, the Chinese culture does tend to be quite severe in this regard, but right now I am considering the symbolic layer of the process rather than the harm/good/efficiency of any particular method. And I wonder, whether I am imagining things or Wangji’s history of ‘transgressions’ and punishments within his sect is really openly symbolic and not merely coincidental.

My interpretation certainly lacks some special cultural insight because I can’t help being of European origin, so I read all the codes as a European would, first, and only then make an attempt to switch lenses and decipher the message, taking into account my scarce knowledge of the Chinese (and Asian) culture.

And yet...

The first time (drinking) Wangji is not only completely innocent, but also a ‘victim’ of Wei Ying’s careless (and questionable) mischief. They share the punishment (and we encounter the number 300, by the way), but Wangji is obviously (and rather fiercely) on his own here, and evidently by choice, despite Wei Ying’s sincere efforts first to exclude and then to include him. Wangji, just as obviously, truly believes he deserves the punishment – not for drinking as such, I think, but for lowering his guard and being not attentive enough: internally, he substitutes one transgression with another, and the equation works for him (actually, it might be unfair, but quite fortunate for their future relationship that Wangji blames himself or, at least, blames himself more than Wei Ying). To put it in a nutshell, for Wangji, the system and order are intact and non-contradictory: he is understandably upset, even angry, but hardly shaken, and simply intends to do better than that in the future, so to say. It’s hard to speculate, if this is Wangji’s most unpleasant experience so far or not, but in any case, the psychological pressure is minimal and reproach is rather mild (and I am really surprised, Lan Xichen didn’t find all that story highly suspicious… or was it his indirect method of showing WWX that he hadn’t been told on?..)

The copying of the rules happens after a considerable amount of… experience, if not time. And the transgression is not specified, but hinted at very heavily. I also wonder, if Lan Qiren realized an additional message he conveyed through his choice as well as through his general treatment of his nephew during that meeting: a strict reminder that, a war hero or not, LWJ is still too young to have an opinion. Wangji accepts the book of rules reverently, accepts the punishment… the word, that springs to mind is ‘habitually’: he doesn’t disregard it, per se, he doesn’t devalue the fact his uncle is not happy with him, he still wants to do better, but… there are things of greater importance to him now, and LWJ is so focused on them that he makes the request about the restricted books at the least suitable moment, really. (And I believe this dismissal does cut him rather deep.) The system still works, but the seed of the conflict is already planted.

The third episode seems pivotal in itself: we actually don’t know, what the punishment for letting WWX and the Wens go was, except for having to kneel, while being lectured, but this time this is a result of a conscious choice to do something that definitely wouldn’t be approved. And I can’t remember a single second of the screen-time, when Wangji would look repentant: conflicted, upset, slapped (when Lan Qiren mentions his mother), stressed (his uncle uses some pretty cruel techniques that border on manipulation, to my mind), but not sorry at all – not for letting the fugitives go, at least. And comparing the shades of Wangji’s silence here and on the previous occasion, this one seems somehow more determined. And closed-off. And there is no intention to do better, in regard to this transgression: the alternative he is being pushed to is unacceptable.

Kneeling again, for the whole day, in the cold, lifting a… what is it, as a matter of fact? It does look like a slightly smaller version of ‘the discipline whip’ we’ll see later, and if it is really so, then it’s beyond prophetic symbolic – it looks more like a promise on Lan Qiren’s part. :/ Anyway, my impression is that, for the first time in the series, LWJ is actively absent from the scene of his own punishment: he doesn’t reflect on it (I think he expected something like that), he also doesn’t mentally substitute one transgression with another to restore the balance (his inability to help Wei Ying is not something to atone for by kneeling). He simply endures. And thinks. And feels. Just not what he is expected and obliged to be thinking and feeling at the moment. And through all of this, Wangji is utterly, hopelessly and stoically alone and unaccepted. His concerns have been dismissed and care rejected by Wei Ying. His actions and decisions have been castigated by a significant authority figure (whom he loves and respects). If I am not mistaken, in the special edition Wangji’s loss-and-loneliness are somewhat artificially heightened through the pseudo-contrast because his moments are mixed with the moments of Wei Ying’s drinking with his new family, who values and appreciates him. (In reality their situations are just the same: they are both in anguish and feel helpless to change things they wish to change.) And, a cherry on top: we don’t know, what has been said initially, and by whom, however, we see that Wangji is released not by his uncle, but by some adept (or disciple). It might be a normal procedure, but it completes the picture of being unequivocally separated from any supportive figure and hints at a lack of closure, in a way, as there was no forgivenes-and-reconnection after the punishment.

I am struggling to verbalize, why exactly, but to me, this scene is, in a sense, more bitter than the next one, despite the circumstances.

During the next punishment Wangji is as actively present as he was absent during the previous one. And if then he was frozen in sadness, now he is all fire (fueled by grief, and guilt, and fury, and despair, yes, but fire, nonetheless). And the system and order get burned down: what Wangji re-builds during his seclusion is his very own set of rules. They do coincide with the Gusu Lan set, but not fully. And this is a point of no return because, filtered through Wangji’s own system of values, now they are more than just the elders’ lessons learned and tested – they are the only valid reference point for recognizing transgressions and ‘living with no regrets’.

(On another level, I am more than a little puzzled by several details here:

1) linguistics: do they really call this thing a discipline ‘whip’ in Chinese?

2) cultural message: as literally nothing could get in the way of filming a beating with an actual whip, the type of instrument has to make some sense, doesn’t it? (For now, I can’t think of any reason to choose this tool, though. Except the number 300 as 300 lashes are hardly survivable, even with a golden core.)

3) application: I can understand, why Wangji has his shirt on (although this is a more dangerous and torturous option: such a thin layer is no protection at all, but it will be hell to clean the wounds afterwards), but why is his hair down his back like that?..

4) consequences: the scarring looks rather odd, considering. (And again: it was definitely not a problem to paint whatever they had to, so – why?)

The only (and vague) explanation I can come up with is that the type and form of the tool is not important at all: it’s the intent and sentence that count, so the wounds and pain would be the same, even if the instrument looked like a rod or a cane. (Still doesn’t explain the hair, though.) And as for the scars, perhaps, not all of them have to stay forever, especially if the cultivator is very strong.

Well, no: unsatisfactory...)

IV.

I wonder... My first impression after watching the scene, where Lan Wangji cuts off Jin Guangyao’s arm, was that he was actually saving him from Baxia, separating Guangyao from the mark on his hand. And the only reason, why the spirit of the sword attacks Jin Ling next, are the drops of the bad/damned blood on the boy’s shoulder. But after the special edition I am not so sure.

Lacunae and plotholes (or what I subjectively perceive as such) are extremely challenging and thought-provoking in this series. Right now, I wonder about the Wens: Wen Qing clearly stated she had asked one of the clansmen to look after WWX, so not all of them were going to surrender. Could it be that they were attacked at the Burial Mounds, when seeing the siblings off, and taken away by force?

...Enough. For now.

#the untamed #lan wangji #wei wuxian #suddenly #questions and more questions #just thinking

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snowflake-of-destruction · 4 years ago

Note

would you ever uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh write uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh monster scarf

Take what I wrote before getting distracted by something shiny. I’m not going to proofread it or attempt to remember how this came to be. Read more because 1) length 2) suggestive themes in one part. Warning: It’s dumb, but, I mean the whole premise is crack

It was all because of Roxas.

Those words were a perpetual reoccurrence in Axel's second life. The reasoning behind countless life decisions, good and bad, but predominantly the former since he couldn't bring himself to consider even the ones with heavy consequences if they involved the man that had breathed life and love back into his existence. In particularly romantic times, the fiery keyblade wielder would claim that it was because of Roxas that his lungs filled and emptied and he continued to exist, every exhale a tribute and whisper of the blonde's name. Such claims though were usually met with rolled eyes and uneven blotches of red that looked more like hives or fever than blushing and were all the more endearing for it, paired with a grumble that he shut up and stop being so cheesy from the object of his affection himself.

They were also paired with less life and death actions. It was all because of Roxas Axel got his head stuck in between the slots of the banister in Elsa's ice palace and had to be carved free and then wait for the remains to melt off him. It was all because of Roxas he had to keep buying new clothes, and not just because of tears and popped buttons that were casualties of overeager fingers but because ice cream once a day and sometimes more, replacing meals, was not something he could sustain and remain a rail now that he was fully human without the magic metabolism of a Nobody perpetually in his ideal state (Roxas had crowed that Axel may one day even have an actual ass to speak of, and after the redhead's subsequent, calculated pouting had been forced to show him how he appreciated what ass Axel did have now). It was all because of Roxas and his insistence on buying what was on sale, and that he knew best and paint always ended up more faded when applied to large areas than on paint chips that the walls of their apartment were such a very bright green that it scared Xion's dog, Dinah. Though it was Axel's fault partially for not questioning Roxas's knowledge when he knew full well that he'd once had to teach Roxas and Xion what paint was.

This time, it was all Roxas's fault that the scarf collection began.

What was Axel supposed to do but add a new ever present accessory to his wardrobe when Roxas ran over to a stall in the Agrabah market without even being summoned by the ever present yelling of one of the vendors trying to entice passersby and only managing to produce an intimidating cacophony of conflicting overzealous squawking that tended to repel Axel for one ( though he supposed it had to work on some people if they kept doing it) and ran back with a stretch of silken material in brilliant emerald interspersed with gold swoops and coils and clutches of blue and red flowers in busy bunches trailing through the air behind him like a banner?

"It's the color of your eyes!" Roxas had exclaimed in explanation, throwing the prize around Axel's neck, smiling brighter than the glaring sun, intensity enough to cast away every bit of grating sand and even more grating annoyance that Yensid had sent them to the desert world for the fourth time that month when he knew for a fact Sora and Kairi were both available but kept getting assigned new worlds, and keeping his hands twisted in the ends so he could use the scarf as a yoke to pull Axel's head down in order to kiss him without the need to stretch or press himself close enough enough that a simple kiss would lead to distracting thoughts and temptations not fit for a public marketplace.

Warmth settled in Axel's chest beyond even the usual warmed caramel slow melt that Roxas tended to inspire as the redhead reached up and pinched the water soft material of the scarf between two fingers and slid the calloused pads of his fingers along its coolness. "Thank you, I love it. I used to wear scarves a lot back in Radiant Garden before...." his smile turned sheepish and slightly pained in the way it still too often did when speaking even of happy memories from his first life as Lea. "Well, before." When Roxas let go, he looped the scarf a few more times around his neck, pulled to make the loops loose, and tucked the ends under. "Looks good," he said with far too much confidence for someone without a mirror and wearing a yellow and orange kurta and pants to blend in with the locals that didn't as much compliment the colors of the material circling his neck as directly contest them.

"You don't match," Roxas had done his part to inform him. The scarf would bring a pop of color to Axel's usual wardrobe of mostly black.

"I know," Axel seemed to relish the words, a smile crinkling the corners of eyes that lit in a way that Roxas could only compare to the times Axel greeted friends after long absences.

It became a self-perpetuating cycle. Axel would wear scarves because Roxas would buy them and look so immensely pleased with himself that his partner was surprised he didn't start humming. Roxas continued buying them because Axel looked at each one like it completed him.

Then it carried beyond that. Far beyond.

Roxas slacked to just taking pictures of interesting scarves he saw and sending them to Axel's gummi phone. Twilight Town hardly ever dipped below temperate, and even though many of the scarves Axel now owned were pure fashion statements, most were thicker and several of the infinity scarves were now part of woven together, braided scarf trios that increased their thickness as well as their propensity to clash hideously with whatever Axel wore, something he seemed to consider a bonus instead of a deterrent, ever the enigma, the man who considered walking outside without making sure his winged eyeliner was perfectly even a crime and was occasionally known to vainly fuss over his hair as if tending a firstborn child, but now took glee in mixing stripes with checks. Besides, Axel now owned scarves in the double digits. Roxas felt silly carrying on with impulse buying. They could be a fun fallback birthday or holiday gift now, but how many scarves did Axel really need?

The answer to the question Roxas luckily hadn't asked aloud was answered after he came home one night to see Axel cooking dinner with a scarf knitted to look like a giant strip of bacon that he hadn't seen before.

"New present from Namine?" After the artist had spent a month with Rapunzel, Eugene, and Cassandra (an event that caused the Guardians of Light to start taking bets on whether the handmaiden had influenced the length of her stay until Namine had upset all assumptions by announcing she was moving to Todayland and then proceeded to spam Kingstagram with pictures of her with Wilbur Robinson) she'd come back with several new talents she now was very likely to send examples to her friends. They'd already been sent matching knitted beanies in sea salt blue and a set of looped potholders.

"No, I've had this for a bit," Axel had answered vaguely, and Roxas had accepted it, easily distracted by the fact that the bacon scarf and a novelty apron with a racing ketchup and mustard bottle and the caption "I relish the fact that you mustard up the will to ketchup with me" was all Axel was wearing to cook dinner.

"Xion isn't home?" he asked unnecessarily.

One burnt dinner later, Roxas found himself with his wrists tied together with the bacon scarf, whining in protest as Axel pulled away and left him lying alone and terribly neglected on the bed, muttering under his breath about blindfolds as he searched through his top dresser drawer.

"Your scarves are hanging up in the closet. Remember? I got you that scarf rack to hang them all off of." It technically had been advertised as a hanging tie rack but a tie rack wasn't something they needed.

"Those are only some of the ones from you, a few everyday ones and ones I want to display," Axel tossed out casually like the sentence was perfectly normal as he slid open the second dresser drawer down--the one Roxas knew to skip over when he was putting away clothes after his turn doing laundry because Axel had started using it for overflow from the memory boxes of old papers, WINNER popsicle sticks, and the like he kept on the top shelf of the closet--only to have it explode with multicolored material that had apparently been shoved into every nook the dresser drawer had to offer, compressed until it became spring loaded. Axel did not appear to be bothered by the comical display. "My less important scarves are in here. Might need another drawer soon." It's said absently, the blissful unawareness of the hoarder who doesn't see a problem.

Roxas constricted the muscles of his stomach in an attempt to sit up without use of his arms or hands and turned toward his boyfriend, amused. "You have been hiding scarves?"

"Not hiding," a slip of defensiveness entered Axel's voice. "The box in the guest room is just because I haven't gotten a chance to unpack the ones Isa sent from Radiant Garden yet."

"Your old scarves?" That changed things in Roxas's eyes. He wouldn't make fun of any attempt of Axel's to regain and reclaim a happier past.

"No, the Restoration Committee had a town garage sale as a community event. I told Isa to buy me any interesting pieces and send them with the next gummi ship. I think he threw in a couple he bought too." Axel faced the bed with a bright red woolen scarf with white reindeer and snowflakes in one hand and a flimsy thing with cherry blossoms that had probably started its life as a woman's shawl in the other. "Is the mood still on or do you want me to help you out of that knot?" He gestured toward Roxas's tied hands with a flick of the hand that sent a waterfall ripple down the cherry blossom scarf.

"Mood's a little off," Roxas wriggled his wrists to keep feeling in his hands. "But nothing that can't be reclaimed. One question first though. There's a whole box in the guest room....besides the drawer and the scarf rack?"

Axel shoved scarves back into the drawer by the handful, only keeping out a thin black and blue striped fuzzy cashmere. "Nobody's using the third bedroom since you moved into mine. I don't see a problem. I'll move the box in here."

"The problem isn't cluttering the bedroom," Roxas trailed off as Axel approached the bed.

"Then what's the problem? They make me happy."

"...Then I guess I'm happy."

The decision that there was no problem just added to it. Scarves no longer confined to hiding spots were now found draped over lamps like decoration, hanging from fan blades like streamers, discarded on chairs when ones that were worn were taken off under the excuse they were just forgotten when the truth, that space to put them away neatly was limited, was apparent. They multiplied as if breeding. Roxas feared he'd have to host an intervention. Xion, for her part, was ready to co-host, insisting that Axel's collection wasn't normal. "I have a seashell collection. It doesn't take over our whole apartment!"

Intervention proved not to be necessary though. Axel got the situation under control on his own, after a fashion at least. It started with losing control entirely, and before that, a trip to Monstropolis.

[And then Axel buys a scarf that turns out to be alive and have a mind of its own. Whoops. It plays nice and docile for awhile but then starts strangling him or jumps off his neck to strangle someone else when it becomes enraged seeing so many of its fellows lying “”dead”” around the Sea Salt Trio’s apartment. They would make quick work of the scarf but it has many, many places to hide in camouflage and proves able to swap its pattern with another scarf if it touches it. Thus the hunt begins. But who is hunting who? ]

#borndeaddd

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ceaderblocks · 5 years ago

Text

The Devil’s in the Detail’s Ch. 5

Chapter One // Chapter Two // Chapter Three // Chapter Four //

On A03 here

Join our discord here

made alongside @thematrixmutual

Scar woke up.

He was no longer in the dark space that tore at his lungs and dismembered his thoughts. He was home, tangled in his sheets with Jellie sleeping at the foot of his bed.

Did any of that even happen? Scar thought to himself, sitting up slowly. His muscles were still tender, but if it was from filling in the Cherry hole or the Vex incident, he wasn’t sure.

“Hi, Jellie.” Scar murmured, and the cat stretched, chirping as she settled in his lap, purring loudly. “Yeah, it’s been a weird week. I hope it’s over.”

Scar’s communicator pinged, and he reached to the bedside table to look at it.

Grian: Cool build Scar! Looks awesome!!

Grian: Fits in nice with the aesthetic of the nether portal

“What?” Scar said, his stomach dropping. He hadn’t built anything lately, especially not on Black Sands Island. Jellie meowed at him, rubbing her cheek against his communicator.

Panic raced through Scar’s mind. The Void version of himself, the time in the endless expanse, it was all real. What did he build? Throwing off the covers, Scar stumbled to his feet. He reached for his jacket, but it didn’t hang on the back of the door like usual.

“No,” Scar said staring at the empty hook before throwing open the door and fumbling with fireworks and his Elytra. “No, no no no! This can’t be happening. This- it- it can’t be.”

Finally managing to light the firework, Scar took off, clipping the side of the volcano in his rush. He saw the build as soon as he flew past the tip of the volcano. A pure black column, the size of a chunk, was rooted right beside Black Sand Island, the bottom extending and swallowing part of the island. The rest of the column went into the sky to build height, and Scar could only assume that it also went to bedrock. Grian was on the base, hopping from block to block and examining the base of the pillar. Scar landed on the sand beside it, his legs shaking.

“Scar!” Grian called out with a smile and a wave. “This is amazing! How in the world did you get bedrock into this build?”

Scar didn’t answer, instead covering his mouth in shock. The build was formed of various black blocks, like coal, concrete, concrete powder, obsidian and bedrock. It was imposing, looming over everything and making panic rise in Scar’s chest.

“Scar?” Grian asked, hopping off a block of bedrock to walk to his friend’s side. “Are you alright? You look pale.”

Scar just shook his head, unable to form a coherent thought. Panic buzzed in his veins and blurred his thoughts. Oscar had done this in a day. What else had he done? What were his plans? He felt weak. How had he gotten bedrock? What else could he do?

“Do you need to sit down?” Grian asked, already helping Scar onto the soft sand. “Do you want me to get Cub?”

“No,” Scar said, remembering Oscar’s threats. His fists clenched around the black sand. “I just… didn’t build this.”

“Wait, really?” Grian asked, looking surprised. “I thought I saw you working on it yesterday. Are you pulling a joke on me?”

Scar bit his lip. Did he tell Grian? He didn’t want anyone to get hurt. He opened his mouth to say something, but the whooshing of rockets interrupted him. Xisuma landed on the sand nearby, taking off his helmet and staring in awe at the pillar.

“Isn’t it stunning?” Grian asked with a wide smile and gestured to the pillar, oblivious to Scar’s panic. Xisuma frowned and looked at Scar.

“Did you build this?” Xisuma asked, looking at Scar, worry crossing his face. Scar shook his head and looked at the ground, nervous.

“Hey Grian?” Xisuma asked.

“Yeah?”

“I need to talk to Scar for a bit, if that’s okay?”

Grian smiled, looking more concerned. Taking the hint, he said: “Sure! I’m working on Sahara today anyways, so it’s time for me to go. See ya!”

Xisuma waited until Grian had flown far enough away, before sitting on the ground in front of Scar. Scar hugged himself tighter. Even if Xisuma was a Void Walker, both the Void and Oscar made it clear that he couldn’t tell anyone what was going on.

“Hey,” Xisuma said softly. “I wasn’t talking to you yesterday, was I?”

Scar hugged himself tighter, looking away from Xisuma’s soft gaze. He bit his lip, refusing to answer.

“The Void was different around them,” Xisuma continued. “It was colder than usual. You’re also not as rude.”

Scar snorted a little at that, but still said nothing. Oscar was very rude.

“Scar, I don’t know what’s going on with the Void or the other you, but I want to help-”

“I can’t tell you what they’re doing.” Scar said, tears slipping down his face despite his best efforts. “They said they’ll perma-kill whoever I told. I can’t have that happen to you. You can’t help me.”

Xisuma said nothing, simply moving closer and wrapping Scar in a big hug. Scar froze, then fell into Xisuma’s embrace, clutching onto the Void Walker with desperation.

“You don’t have to tell me anything,” Xisuma muttered, and Scar shoved his face deeper into Xisuma’s shoulder, touch starved. Xisuma hugged back, a solid foundation as Scar simply ignored everything that had happened that week and savoured the moment of support.

“Thank you,” Scar muttered after a few minutes and let go of the hug, sitting up on his own. He wiped a stray tear away and smiled. “Really.”

Xisuma smiled back. “Any time. Can I ask a favour of you?”

Scar frowned a little. “I can’t do much,” he admitted.

“That’s okay. I was hoping for company while working on some server issues,” Xisuma said, “Can I stay with you while you build?”

Can I stay and make sure you’re okay? Was what Xisuma was really trying to say, and Scar smiled.

“That would be great.” Scar said. “Can we go to Cherry? I need to rebuild shop.”

“Of course.” Xisuma said.

The bedrock in Scar’s inventory was heavy. His chest felt lighter, however, knowing he had a friend to help him if anything went wrong.

The grey mask in Cub’s hand was hot. It buzzed with magic and burnt against his skin. Vex whispered around him, swirling in his head in an unpleasant tickling manner.

Where is he? The Vex demanded. He hasn’t answered our calls.

“I don’t know.” Cub responded, his own mask already on his face.

He needs to come. The Vex snarled. Blue lit up his vision, and Scar’s mask grew hotter in his hands, glowing with untapped magic. Cub’s mask was cool against his face.

“I know.”

Bring him to us. He is not answering our call. He needs us.

Cub sighed. The Vex were always so impatient. Scar had been avoiding the call all week and that was a dangerous game. If the Vex called, you had to answer. Cub didn’t know what would happen if they didn’t. He didn’t want to find out.

“He’s been avoiding me.” Cub admitted. The Vex hissed. Cub placed the mask on the table. It shook with untapped power.

“Me? Never.” A familiar voice said.

“Scar!” Cub said, and turned his own mask to the side, blinking the blue tint out of his vision. He smiled upon seeing his friend leaning against the doorway. Scar’s jacket was cloaked on his shoulders, and he tipped his hat in greeting.

The Vex screamed louder, seeming to be in outrage. Cub ignored this, overjoyed to see his friend.

“You changed your hair,” Cub said, and gave a little tug on the ponytail his friend now wore. Scar’s smile didn’t quite reach his blue eyes.

Blue eyes? Cub thought for a split moment. Must be leftover tint from Vex. Scar has green eyes.

“Needed a change of pace,” Scar said with a light laugh, and embraced his friend. “I thought my hair was a good place to start.”

“It looks good.” Cub smiled. He had missed his friend. “And you’re still my friend, pigtails or ponytails or no tails at all.”

Scar laughed again. “Glad to hear it. It would be so tragic if a ponytail ruined our friendship.”

“Maybe now you’re going for ponytails, I can start doing pigtails.” Cub gently split his beard into two sections, mimicking the pigtails Scar usually wore. “What do you think?”

“I think you better stick with a normal beard. Those pigtails might drive us apart.” Scar nudged Cub in a teasing manner. Cub rolled his eyes while smiling.

“Anyways,” Cub said, and held out Scar’s Vex mask. “I’m assuming this is what you came for?”

“You bet.” Scar said, a wicked smile overcoming his face. He looked at the mask greedily.

Cub frowned, suddenly uneasy. The Vex, instead of calming as they usually did when the two answered their calls, screamed louder as Scar grabbed the mask. Cub winced at the unintelligible noise, growing steadily the longer Scar held the mask. Scar didn’t seem bothered by the noise. It was almost if he couldn’t hear the Vex screaming at all.

“Is something the matter, Cub?” Scar asked, looking worried. His blue eyes met Cub’s brown.

Scar doesn’t have blue eyes. Cub thought. Scar doesn’t wear his hair in a ponytail.

“No,” Cub said.

“That’s good,” Scar said, and donned the Vex mask. “I wouldn’t want any problems.”

The mask slid easily over Scar’s face and for the first time in a very long time, Cub couldn’t hear the Vex at all.

---

Xisuma watched from the sidelines of the Cherry shop as Scar built. He had command screens open, but there really wasn’t anything to work on. He was there to keep an eye on Scar, and both of them knew it. Whatever Scar was building, it wasn’t Cherry.

The dopplegänger from yesterday had made quick work of their pillar, but Scar worked slow and thoughtfully. Even when forced to build something under ransom, Scar was the only person Xisuma knew that would still take his time in making it look good. He watched Scar hum and haw over placing a block of obsidian or bedrock.

“Maybe another block of coal?” Xisuma offered.

“Yeah, that’d look right.” Scar agreed and gazed into the distance for a moment before pulling coal from his inventory. “Thanks!”

Xisuma didn’t ask how Scar had bedrock or seemingly endless supplies of black materials. He knew the Void provided it to him, and if there wasn’t a need for conflict with the Void then Xisuma would rather avoid it. He wasn’t sure what It was up too. He had never known It to force players to build before, and certainly not to replace players.

A cold feeling crept into his chest, and Xisuma stood, startled. The Void was contacting him? Now? The Void never contacted him while he was with people. To speak to the Void was sacred, and It usually called out to him when he was alone.

“Hey Scar?” Xisuma called out, and Scar turned around. He was about 50 blocks into the air on his tower, the walls made but the middle hollow.

“Yeah?”

“I’m going to pass out for a couple of seconds, okay?” Xisuma’s breath was short, the cold overriding his lungs and spreading into his veins. He’d fall unconscious to speak with the Void, and he didn’t want to scare Scar.

Scar looked distressed. “What?”

“The Void. When it speaks, it usually knocks me unconscious.” Xisuma said, his head buzzing. His joints ached with cold, and he winced as he called out, the freezing burning his limbs. The Void didn’t wait. Despite his best efforts, Xisuma curled in on himself, the pain overriding his determination to seem fine. Gasping for air and trying to hold onto consciousness, he didn’t hear Scar land beside him.

“Xisuma? Xisuma?” Scar’s panicked voice reached his ears, but it was too late.

God, he hated this part of being a Void Walker. The pain that came with speaking to the Void was unbearable. He felt himself slump against Scar, and suddenly he was surrounded by darkness.

Floating in the emptiness, Xisuma took a deep breath, placing his head in his hands. He had probably scared Scar senseless. He didn’t know what the Void wanted, and Its recent actions towards Scar scared him.

I̡̩̼̻͉͇ ̰̥̪̻̜̙͕n̲̰̲̕e͜e̸̤̺̜̜ḓ̖͙̫͇͇̪͠ ̤̜̣̹̱̻̙y̡͇̰̬̬̥o͔u̘͉̪̜͞r͏͇̰̫ͅ ̦̟͕͍h̹̦̜e̵͔̥̞l̤͖̮̮̹̺p͎̭̳̠̣͚̺͠.̼̜

“What?” Xisuma asked, surprised, lifting his head. The Void neverasked for help. It simply told him what to do.

Y͉͍͉̺͙o̪̭̳͉̺͔̪̅̑̑ͫͣu̖̭̬̭̝͇̓̏r̓ͤ̈ ̖̙̰͂̏ͯ̌w̻ͤͨͭ̇̑ͯo͕͛̋̀͗ͮ͊ͅr̃ͧl̩̹͒d͈̤͎̟̳̙̙ i̜̓̉͂s͚͓ ͓ͥ̈i̳̗ͦ̿n̘̏̚ ̘̘̣͓̯̌̆ͬͤ͆̑t̖̘̭̲̹̔ͩͦ̈̿͆̅r̠̯͙̓ͨo̜̥̞̔u̳̯̯̞̤̺̞̎̅̃͌̀̓b͕͎͕̭̿̔l̮̞̝͋ê͉̠ͮ̾͑͐ͯ.͕̺̩ ͬ̈́S̤̞̯̜o̳̣̬̭̍̎̏̆̂͂ͥm͙̫͙̠̌ͪ̍e͓̞̲̦ͮ͛͐̄̏͐͌t͎̮̝̠̰̻̿ḥ̙̺ͬ̓î̳͙̭̲̝̦͌͆ͤͫ͛̎n̺͓ͅg͕͙͓̐ ̩̯̫̜͔̗ͥ̿ͪ͊̍̊ẖ̺̙͙̝̦̾̆͐̆ͭ̀̌a̞̠̪͇̩̥̗̒ͣ̆̇̌͗ͧs ͕ͅc̭̻̳̯͙͚̟͆̏h̤̼͊̿ͬ̍ͧ̽a͎͈̤͚̻͕͎n̈ͨg̘͙̺̯̯̒̎ͨ̿̄̚e̠̬d̝̝̭͔̜̞̜̈́ͦ͊,̪͓̘ ̤̙͓̰̫̒a͋̀̄̌ͧ̚n̮̣̬͇̜̟̱̐̈́͂ḍ͔̙̆͗̋̃̌̆ͤ ̭ͭ̄I̜̹̫ͧ͆̐ͅ ̬͓̟̥͚͇͋̃c̤̏̃̓͊ͮ͛ͮa̬͎͉͓ͫ̽͊́̀n̥̜̺̲̖͔͈ͥ̓̓̈́̒n͖͚̜̩̹̆ͥ̈́̍ͫ͐ọ͖̖̗̼ẗ͈̟͎͇̜͋͛ͣͤ̀ ͧf̱̯̤̹̤̘͛͐ͪ͌i̻̹̦̻͈͔ͬ̉ͧx̲̤̦̞ͬͣ̈́̆̐̔͋ ̥̘̮͖̝͇͆̋i̝͓̜̿ͧͦ̀t̙̖̐ͬͩͨ.̥̬̞͒ͤ͆́ͬ̒

“…You can’t?” Xisuma frowned. “Is this to do with your threats to Scar?”

T͉̮̩͉͙̀ͪͪḫ̭̌̔͋͑̋̈́o̥̗̥͍̟̺ͪ̐́̉̐ͅs̖̖̳̞̫͎̋ͯ͐̓ͫ̋̈́ͅe̥̫̓̈́ͨ ̘̳̟̊͂̑̊ͅa̪͚̟̣̾̓̌͛r̟̦͒ē̮̣͎͍̐̇ͭͮ̃ ͚̭̫̤͙̣͓̏ͦ̐̃̃̏ͧn̠̾͌͌̋͌̐͊ọ̪̻̻̣̫͍͂̏̅t̰̹̘̦͍̽͂ ̝̩͓͍̗͑ͮ̏m̹̮̩̼͙̈́ͣ̃̒̉̑̀y͇̻̻͍̣̯̋̽ ͨ̀̆ͦ͛ț̤̘͍̺͈̓̽ͥ̒h̫̪r̻̜̘͖ͭ̈́̍e̋͂̑̑ầ̰̩͇͂͊̈͐̚t͓̅s͕̱͙͌.͔͖̦͍͚͉̈ͪ͌̀̈̉ͪ ̮̮͊̋̅̓͆

The Void snarled, and Xisuma winced at the burning in his head that followed with it.

Ḿy p̛u͠ni̷sh͘me͢n̛t͟ ̴f͟o͢r ҉t̛he̕ Vęx t҉ram͜p͏l̀ing͝ ͘on͏ ́m̛y҉ ͘r͞e͘alm w͡as ̨to̵ r͠em̵ơv͢e҉ them f̸rom̧ ́the̛ir ̀Ho͏st ̸for ́à ̧w͘h̀i̷le̵.̀ The͡ Vex̷ ̀se͝paŕa҉ted̢ t̕hemsęlves͏ ̛an̷d̵ inf͞u͢s͡ed ̛t҉hem̵s̷el̀v͝es ͟w̡it̀h͡ ̢my ҉m͢a͡gi͘c̕. ҉That̡ ͏is̡ w͏ha͝t p̷l͢agués̶ you̢r͜ frie̵n͠d.͘

Xisuma’s head spun. “But… the towers…? The perma-death…?”

Th̴ę ̶f̛alse V̶o̢id ͟h҉as ͞i͘mm̧ęn͜se power̨s҉.҉ ̧Ţh̷ey͠ a͘re ͠t̛he͘ cḩi͝l̡d͡ ̷of pa͞i̕n̸ ànd̵ ḑesper̴atio̴n ̷and ͘the ̀spli͢t͜t̢ing of̡ the V̡ex ̛and̛ t̴h͢é ̀Ho͟st. ̸T͞hey ha̷ve t̴a̛k͜e̵n͜ ͏t̛he͝ir ow̸ǹ ac͜tio̡ns,͞ a̷n̡d ͞I ̵canno͠t́ stop ́the͘m.̸

“That would be like killing yourself.” Xisuma realized. Scar’s dopplegänger was the result of the Vex trying to control the Void and failing. The Void couldn’t destroy Itself.

The Void was silent.

“You need me to kill the other Scar.” Xisuma said softly. He had never killed someone before.

I n̴e͜e͢d y͜oư make the͏ ̕H̴os̀t̀ ͞ki̸ll t̴h͘e͏ ̢Vex C̀hild. To brin̶g ͠t́hemse͠lve҉s̸ b̵a̛ck͝ to̡ ͝one ͘b́e̵in͡g.̶ Or ̢the͡ V͞e͟x C̷h͘il͟d́ ̕w͘i̶l͘l͟ ͜destr̢oy ́th̛e̕ ̶un͘i̧verse҉ ̀ùnd͟e͞r ҉my ͏na͘m͡e̸,͝ ̷a͠n͘d̕ your ͢f͢rien̷d̕s w̵i͡l͘l̢ ̷d͜i͡e a̛long͘sid͡e̡ ͜i̷t.̸

“But how do we kill something that’s Vex and Void magic?” Xisuma asked.

Y̗̥͍̕ou̷̦̻͎̟̱ ̲̦͓͇m̫͓̤̻̬̕ụ͘ş̱̙͎̤t̷̥-̵--

A sudden burst of magic tore Xisuma from the Void, and he screamed the cold searing his limbs and burning his lungs and he was being torn to pieces atom by atom and he wouldn’t survive this he w o u l d n’ t-

Xisuma’s eyes flew open, and he saw Scar hovering over him, blue eyes filled with concern. Xisuma rolled onto his side, coughing and gasping for air as the phantom pains of being torn from the Void wracked his body. He clumsily tore his helmet off his head, tears leaking from his eyes as he pressed his forehead to the Endstone, trying to find some grounding.

“Oh my god,” Scar said, relief overcoming him. “Thank goodness you’re awake. I was so worried.”

Still wheezing, Xisuma winced at the sickly-sweet stench of Chorus fruit. He tried to focus on Scar and rolled back onto his back to face his friend.

“Scar,” Xisuma said, and Scar looked at him, concerned. “Scar, I know what to do.”

“And what’s that?”

“The Void doesn’t want you to build those pillars, it’s the dopplegänger. You have to kill him before he ruins the server.”

“Correct.” Scar said, impassively.

“…What?” Xisuma’s heart sank, his heart pounding in panic. Why was Scar so calm?

Xisuma sat up, leaning heavily on the Endstone beside him.

Endstone? Wait. That’s not right. He was just at Cherry and-

“Fuck,” Xisuma said, putting the pieces together. Oscar smiled, leaning over Xisuma, who was too exhausted to defend himself.

“I’m part of the Void, remember? I can sense when you’re speaking to it. I knocked Scar out, got Cub to move you here under the guise of a prank, and now you’re stuck.”

Xisuma didn’t answer, instead attempting to pull up his admin screens. Typing in the first command he thought of, Xisuma cursed when it didn’t go through.

[ COMMAND NOT RECONIZED. ]

“You didn’t really think I was that stupid, did you?” Oscar rolled his eyes, standing and pulling up his own admin screens.

“Oh! Look here! It seems the only admin on the server is…. BadTimesWithScar! Good news, Xisuma! No one can interfere now.” He snarled.

Xisuma’s heart sank.

“Wait, do you know what you’re doing? You’ll ruin everything, including your chance at living here. It’ll all be gone!”

“I know.” Oscar said. “I’ll see you in Hell when I get there.”

Xisuma scampered to his feet, reaching for Oscar, but he teleported himself outside the iron bars that surrounded Xisuma’s prison.

“Please, you can’t do this!” Xisuma called out, holding onto the iron bars. “We can work something out, just listen to me! Everything will be gone!”

Oscar looked up from his admin screens, uninterested. Instead of responding, he gave a mock salute and disappeared, teleporting to who knows where.

Xisuma was left in the End, abandoned.

#goodtimeswithscar #xisumavoid #grian #hermitcraft #cubfan135 #ditd #olivewrites #badtimeswithscar #badtimeswithscar au

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whatthefoucault · 6 years ago

Text

A Chronological List of Works by me, whatthefoucault: the Everything Edition

So it turns out I’ve actually written a very good number of words. Almost all of the superhero things I’ve written fall into the same timeline/continuity, which I like to call Earth-212, adjacent to a few canons and then sort of also has a life of its own. I wasn’t sure how best to organise this, but here’s an attempt at placing all of these works into a vague chronological order, though almost all of them can be read independently and the reading order doesn’t really matter. Largely stucky, with some other Cap Fam shenanigans, and also a lot of entries for frostmaster and other Revengers business, some Hawkeyes, and various others. Heed the tags in each fic, but bear in mind I’m here for softness, recovery, finding one’s place in the world, and that’s largely what I’m here to write about. If this list of everything-in-chronological-order is overwhelming and you want to get more specific, here’s:

Cap Fam

Revengers

Miscellaneous

The Stargazer’s Field Guide To Constellations

By the time Bucky happened upon him, doubled over on the front steps of the library, Steve was already as green as a plate of creamed spinach.

And My Heart Beats So That I Can Hardly Speak

Steve doesn't dance, but this was a special occasion.

(A Few Inches Too Far) Underneath The Mistletoe

It was purely by chance that Steve happened upon a scruffy little sprig of discarded mistletoe on their way back from dinner with the Barnes family.

So Take It From Me, Captain America

"Ok, Captain America PSA number four, take one, and... action."

Sextown, U.S.A.

The message was vague on details, but the urgency in Wade’s voice told Steve it was serious, and that he should come alone.

“Help me, Steve Rogers,” he pleaded. “You’re my only hope.”

Steve had to admit that that got to him.

(It would be three months before Steve would see Star Wars for the first time. Needless to say, he was not amused when he did.)

... In which two supersoldiers form a very special bond across several time zones, many states, and more all-you-can-eat breakfast than anyone should ever eat in their life.

Advanced Seminar In Postmodern Cultural Analysis, Lesson Five

In which Steve Rogers and his very good friend Wade Wilson hang out.

The Sand And The Sea

Clint and Kate have not talked about that thing that happened.

Bring Your Silver Arrows

After that thing that happened with Kate, Clint's going through some stuff.

Continental Breakfast Not Included

Sam had definitely asked for separate beds, but they had been driving since before sunrise, and it was almost midnight.

This Is Going To Make For An Interesting Expenses Claim Form

The scene before him as he rushed to the bathroom door, one pant leg still flapping awkwardly underfoot, would have to anyone else been highly out of the ordinary, but they were superheroes, after all.

The Season For Plums

One day, a man went to the market to buy plums.

Notes From A Dirty Attic

I don't know what I'm doing.

My name is Bucky. I come from Brooklyn. I died in the war.

Particle-Wave Duality

While Bucky is napping, Steve reads to him.

Blackout Nights And Tight Spaces

It was cold, then sleep, but it was different this time. He was dreaming.

Caprine Management

In which Steve meets Bucky's new friends.

Everyone’s A Winner

Little did the Grandmaster know, when he settled in by the pool, that his evening was about to become much more interesting.

The Art Of The Co-Operative Endgame

The Grandmaster surveyed the board as Loki prepared to make his move, and - oh, this was interesting, he thought - there was a very good chance indeed that Loki might actually win.

Moonshakes

"Hey Scrappy," said the Grandmaster, "what do you think of the new guy, uhh, Loki?"

Gamalost

In which the Grandmaster has found the right companion with whom to share one of his very favourite things.

When Loki falls out of the sky and into the Grandmaster’s lap, he gets everything he hopes for and more. The more comes in the form of cheese. A lot of cheese.

Two Seat Sofa, Hensta Light Brown

"So..." Steve hesitated to finish the question, "are we dating?"

(In which Steve and Bucky come home.)

I Guess That This Must Be The Place

He closed his eyes, and prayed his words would project over the distance, somehow:

Count down from a hundred, and then come and find me, my sunshine.

... in which the Grandmaster embarks on an intergalactic road trip in search of his love.

A Constellation Of Sunlight, Beneath The Cherry Tree

It was well into the night when they lay together, but it was not until the morning that they made love.

Rugbrød, Fløtemysost, og Molter

There were some things the Grandmaster needed to know about Loki, and it seemed, from the shift she felt in her bones as she awoke, that this was the morning to address them.

No Less Than Three Kinds of Cheese

The sun was out and the park was beautiful, but it was still too cold for a picnic.

Sugaring

Every morning, Steve sets out from the little cabin to tend to their maple trees.

Solskinnsboller

The fact that no bakery in the entire staggering metropolis he currently called home had ever so much as heard of solskinnsboller was tragic, but Loki was nothing if not resourceful. He would just have to make them himself.

Butter, Sugar, Flour, Eggs

"What was my grandma's name?" asked Bucky, apropos of nothing.

Syzygy

It was cloudy enough that most people chose to forego the beach that Tuesday, but such things would not deter the Grandmaster and Loki from a day out.

American Globs

Objectively, he knew everything was fine. He knew they were fireworks, and that they were beautiful, and back in the day, he and Steve used to sit under the stars together and watch them light up the sky with wonder and delight.

But time had passed since then.

It’s Like Right Now

Nat and Sam visit a street food market.

Me And My Baby Gonna Touch That Leather

"I think we should fuck," said Bucky, as Steve began climbing back under the duvet.

Say The Magic Word

"Hey, if you're going past the kitchen, do you think you could get me another coffee?"

Two Brooklynites and One Big Apple

“You did good out there today,” Captain America said, brushing a layer of detritus from his unfathomably broad shoulder. “I’ll see you around.”

“Not if I see you first,” replied Miles, fingergunning with one hand as he sent a web rope fwipping off into the distance with the other, catapulting himself away at tremendous speed.

… in which two superheroes battle with bad guys, embark on community art lessons, and a friendship forms along the way.

The Nemophilists

“Conspicuous,” said Steve, apropos of nothing. Bucky was putting away the last of the clean dishes.

“Conspicuous?” asked Bucky, nesting the heatproof glass bowl precariously in a short stack of significantly smaller cereal bowls.

“Yeah,” said Steve, scooping last of the leftovers into a container that, it turned out, was a tablespoon too small. “I’m.”

Nemophilist: (n.) One who is fond of the forest.

The Shape Of A Snake In A Defensive Coil

In which Loki's not very well, and the Grandmaster volunteers a solution.

Long Hair Problems, And How To Outsmart Them

“So I guess we’re not getting up early to line up for brunch?”

The End Of A Century

This is the story of a sister and her brother.

As the shadow of the war fades and gives way to new conflicts, Becca Barnes battles the constraints of the twentieth century: an education, a marriage, a career, with the ghosts of her youth never far from her memory. As the twenty-first century barrels on through its awkward teenage phase, Bucky Barnes builds a new life, with new friends, and a burgeoning relationship with his lifelong companion Steve, the erstwhile Captain America, as they struggle to find their place in the world. The last time Becca saw her brother was on the eve of war; neither of them expected, some seventy-something years, a hip replacement, and one new arm later, to be reunited.

This is a story about family.

And Our Dreams Are Making Us Nice Stories

Steve had been adamant that a party was unnecessary; however, his friends had insisted, bundling into his little Brooklyn apartment with pizzas and a selection of local microbrews and seven-layer taco dip and two dozen supermarket cupcakes emblazoned with the most neon buttercream he had ever seen piped into the stripes of little American flags.

A Ghost That The Others Can’t See

"What'd you tell her about me?"

"Only the good stuff."

From the Mighty Forest of Vacherin to the Belegen Fields

When it came to special events, the Grandmaster did not do understated.

The Littlest Balsam In Brooklyn

In which Bucky and Steve get a tree.

When Life Gives You Limoncello

In which Bucky has baked a pie.

Blessings

At last, the shape of life after everything had begun to come into focus. Bucky and Steve consider the next steps, and some friends come to visit.

Kinugoshi

When the Grandmaster had suggested somewhere special for lunch, Loki was not expecting a small, four-table restaurant in an unremarkable suburb of Kyoto, but there they were.

Stargazing

"You know what? Let's get out of the city," Steve suggested after dinner.

(In which Steve has a very quiet birthday.)

The Mighty Hrothgar

"Uhh, I dunno about this place, stardust," the Grandmaster said to Loki, his tone hushed. "I've introduced myself to, like, five dogs, and none of them have said a word. Why don't they like me?"

The Fundamentals of Sciurine Linguistics

Sam Wilson was sure about three things: the words Captain America were enough to nab a table for two at the most popular noodle bar in the East Village on short notice, everyone loved a good noodle bar, and ramen was up there with corn on the cob and chicken wings as the worst possible food choice for a first date.

Eight Evenings In The Kitchen

The Barnes-Rogers Hanukkristmas season was always going to be one spent almost exclusively in the kitchen.

Light Showers And A Gentle Breeze

They had been under no illusions that there would be a guarantee of snow, but nothing could have quite prepared them for the abundant, relentless sprinkle of rain.

In which Bucky and Steve go somewhere quiet for Christmas.

Nine And Three-Quarters

"I don't get it, stardust," puzzled the Grandmaster. "It was supposed to be right here. Between Platforms 9 and 10."

Strollin’

"Hot dogs?" asked Steve.

"Hot dogs," agreed Bucky.

The Greatest Thing

In which the Grandmaster plays an early afternoon slot at his very first Midgardian jazz festival.

On A Quiet Morning In The Last Forest In Brooklyn

“We said we wanted to keep the guest list short,” protested Steve. “Just close family, and close friends. Nothing expensive, nothing... tacky.”

“As if you’re one to complain about tacky,” countered Tony. “I got my invitation by group text. Who does that?”

...in which Bucky and Steve get married.

The Witches Of Føroyar

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, nestled in a little cottage just beyond the rocky shores of a tiny, windswept island, lived two very special people indeed. The green witch drew his power from the moon and the stars and the deep, dark night sky; while the gold witch shone with the power of the sun, dazzling and bright. They loved the island and the mountains and the stormy sea, but most of all, they loved each other very much.

#stucky #frostmaster #clintkate #ironstrange #samnat #samsquirrel #thorbruce #hawkpool #cartinelli #writings #masterpost

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seenashblog · 6 years ago

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Nash Watches & Rates Cheesy Hallmark & Lifetime Winter Movies So You Don’t Have To

a.k.a. - Nash Records Her Viewings Of Hallmark & Lifetime Winter Movies, which are fanfic in visual form & are gold. And yes, it’s a apparently a legit sub-genre. Best I can tell, if it’s not Christmas or Valentines, and there’s snow, then it goes. Spoilers abound.)

Note: This adventure has been moved to here from my main blog @seenashwrite, so my SPN peeps can rest assured they’ll not be exposed to this any longer - I have a feeling I’ll not be done purging my soul for a while yet #bless my heart

As per last time during the Christmas round-ups, 4 and 5 stars mean the best of the lot, 3 stars means it’s not necessarily a waste of your time, 2 stars is up to your discretion, and 1 star means it is time you will never get back.

Winter's Dream (Kristy Hot Damn Swanson, Dean Mothafukkin' Cain - Hallmark)

With it packing this level of stardom, how can it go wrong? Understand that I can take or leave Dean Cain, but Kristy Swanson is the shit.

The official summary/another summary from somewhere:

When a former ski champion re-enters the competitive world after a 16-year-old downhill racer asks for help, she finds a new love and reawakens an old passion.

Former pro skier, Kat, is asked to coach a younger skier, named Anna, and finds love with the girl's widowed father, Ty.

These are both kinda garbage summaries - I mean, they're accurate, but it doesn't paint the whole picture. There's nothing really to spoil, and though it hits a couple things on a winter bingo (still forthcoming), they're more the Hallmark staples, such as the kid (in this case, a really great teen gal who's a good actress) who brings people together, and that the lodge/the resort is in danger of being lost, and somebody teaches somebody else how to skate, and that shit, but the bottom line is it's a fine watch. It's not spectacular, but it's not dipped in cheese, and there's some really pretty shots of the skiing (especially something they do at the end), plus kudos for the body doubles (the ones doing the actual skiing) were spot-on, and the teen actress did an impressive end-of-run stop at one point, you know it's her because she immediately whips off her mask.

Bottom line, this movie woulda been ass if not for Swanson and Cain, who didn't have greeeeat chemistry, though they made it work. In any event, the script was solid - like I say, not a great deal of cheese and any lines that were aren't sticking out to me because they were delivered so well - so I'm actually gonna rate this one decently high.

4/5 stars

Love on the Sidelines (this dude who's been in three movies I've seen so far, John Reardon, and some basic blonde chick who is vaguely familiar - Hallmark)

This isn’t technically a winter one, I don’t think, but it’s on, so it counts.

So they try to throw you from the get-go with "Is injured dude gonna be the love interest which is totally inappropriate since he's her boss and clearly got about 12 years on her and has made multiple patronizing comments to her, about how physically strong she is and about her classic car and about her abilities in general, or is it the other dude on the team who took an immediate interest in her and has thus far been polite and respectful and friendly and flirty?"

(By the way, main dude has cock-blocked his friend, but he has a model girlfriend [who is styled to be a stereotype from extensions to heels] and it's also shown he has no idea about stuff she likes/is into, such as her favorite flowers - but chick knew because she had 'em out for their romantic dinner. That's right, it's part of her assistant duties - and she's supposed to be helping him with activities of daily living stuff - is to prep his bone zones.)

If they make dude #2 turn out to be a douche and that main dude is somehow awesome underneath all his shit----- what am I saying, of course they are. The latter, that is. You know I'm right. Hundred percent.

People are like losing their chickens over this jersey she's tailored to be a "girl fit" - you know what I mean, it's not a box with sleeves, there's tailoring to it, so the sleeves aren't so ginormous and it's tapered on the sides. This jersey's been the topic of about three interactions thus far and we're only 40 minutes (so 30 mins airtime) in. They're all "Wow!" and "This is so creative!" and "My wife would love that, where'd you get it!" Y'all, google for this, that type of jersey, I mean. [pause] Nevermind, here:

I put in the mystical combo of "women's NFL football jersey".

THIS IS REVOLUTIONARY

Hey, and heh-heh.... quick bonus....

WHYENNE!!!! THAT BITCH IS EVERYWHERE

But hey, how else would we know that fashion design is her passion? Scriptin' be hard, yo. Speaking of her clothes skillz - "I think there's more to him," she says to BFF, whose wedding dress she's fitting. First, *eyeroll*. Second, if your friend is trying to watch a football game and learn the basics, don't let them fit you for your farging wedding at the same time. Which is what is happening.

There's twinkly magical music when his hand runs over hers when they're both searching under the couch, feeling around for his dropped cell phone.

*more eyeroll*

I do like the car, it's a red Mustang.... early 70s, maybe?.... but I can say I don't care for the shade of red, it's a little too cherry popsicle or hooker scarlet lipstick.

(My dream car is probs a Mustang muscle in black, but as far as zoom-zooms go, I tell ya, a friend of mine had a Porsche Boxster, and What. A. Ride., and he'd offered to teach me how to drive stick on it - not a euphemism, I swear, I was 16, my dad was his mentor, he's like the child my father never had - I'M A HUGE DISAPPOINTMENT OKAY - so like my big brother, and anyhow, it was so beautiful I gasped at the very thought. But sweet babby jeebus, those suckers are smooth rides. None of this matters.)

Anyway, she keeps having trouble starting it, and I can tell by the sound it isn't the alternator, nor is it the battery, nor is it a belt, nor is she flooding the engine. I know fuck-all about cars as a general rule, but I know those sounds because I've experienced all of them. It has now gone to commercial, as he's just looked under the hood and announced after 3.8 seconds "Yup, I think I see your problem." He must have x-ray vision. I am on pins-and-needles, shivering with anticipation.

Back from commercial, he's shutting the hood and she's saying "Wow you did it!" and wiping grease from his face. He's got an absolutely wrecked calf/ankle/foot (and straight up, they've done a good job making it all seem legit, props to... well, props... and make-up), but you're telling me he was standing and bent over long enough to get all greasy, and he's supposed to be - most of the time - either sitting or standing with that bitch elevated. This was stupid. This was a stupid, wholly unnecessary scene. Oh except we find out - because it's visible in the back seat - that she's read his children's book.

That's right. He's written a children's book.

Dude's mom: "I think he's dating the wrong type of women". Subtle, screenwriters, subtle. Now he's sneaking and working out. I really hope they show his ankle buckling out at a wicked angle. I'm gross like that. Twinkly music plays as she waits for him in the locker room while he's in with the sports trainer because he shouldn't have been working out.

Forgot to mention there's an awesome dog, this really beautiful Dane, and of course it loves her and hates Stereotype, because reasons for him to go ga-ga. She's honestly not bad, I have zero issue with the actress, nor with this actor, they're actually both good, but between the music and this script, I'm fighting over what rating to give it. (Checks clock) Welp, the next 45 minutes should tell me. It's dragging ass, I'll tell you that, though.

Like, nothing's happened. Nothing. He has an injury, she's his new personal assistant. I can list traits they each have. I've seen groups of moments. I don't know what the story is. Is it just "they get closer and fall in lurve"? That's... not a story. That's a series of facts. People meet their partners/spouses via the workplace all the time. What's the plot? What's the conflict? The obstacles? The tension? The OOMPH, I'd call it, is missing. This is what kills me about most fanfic - they just tell me stuff, they aren't showing me a new perspective or a twist or a unique take or differing interpretation that's still supported by canon, or an inventive plot that or what-the-hell-ever. Dean and Whyenne were in the bunker and they researched and they cooked and they talked about Cas and Sam, and they argued about her going on a hunt, then they kissed, the end! That's not a story, that's a daydream. I've digressed.

Now he's texted her "the emergency code" while she's at her best friend's wedding, and turns out it's because he's cranky because his sister said he's got to learn how to not be the center of attention. And she - I am proud to say - lets. Him. Have. It. Part of what she says is - Can you do *anything* for yourself?! And he goes - This! And he kisses her, and it takes her off guard, but then they go for it, and I am actually happy for them.

Shit. I still hate that this isn't a story, but holy hell the difference when some conflict is introduced. Ahhhhhmazeballs. Conflict, however minor, is what shows us who these people we're watching/reading really are - and no, conflict does not mean angst, nor does it mean some sort of heart-breaking, can't-take-it-back fight, nor does it mean life-and-death, just divergent paths or opinions is all it takes. I've digressed again.

My interest is piqued because we have a half-hour to go, and typically this is how Hallmark blows their wad in the last fifteen.

[time passes]

Okay, a couple things turned out decent. Y'all will *love* what the best friend pulls at the end, and she and her hubby have been great throughout, but this one particular thing was clutch. And everybody had chemistry, family and friends and romance alike. It just can't help the lack of story, and I really detest the manner in which they made lead dude a jerk - there's other ways to do that besides going the lazy route, a.k.a. being sexist. It's not as bad as a two (a.k.a. - this is a matter of taste), because there's some objectively good stuff.... on the other hand, my lord is dragged. So I'm going with a three, because it's a toss-up as to whether you're gonna really like it, or think "Meh".

3/5 Stars

One Winter Weekend / One Winter Proposal (Taylor Cole, some other people - Hallmark)

So the former was in last year's winter line-up, the latter in this one. Taylor Cole played Sarah Blake on SPN. I see she's also on deck for some detective thing on Hallmark Movies & Mysteries.

And.... that's all I got to say about that.

I genuinely tried to watch these. They played them back-to-back, and speaking of backs, mine was acting up so I was laid out, and I thought - all right, this'll kill some time. And I fell asleep at 6 p.m., y'all. I took ibuprofen, I was not getting liquored up, I slept plenty the night before, and I fell the fuck to sleep. These movies are boring as fuck.

I saw no sparks, and there were two couples from which to divine said spark. The co-lead chick was incredibly annoying, she plays everything too perky, and it's really evident in scenes with her romantic interest, who is a good actor and came off completely naturally. Actually, he should've been the main-main male lead, I bet he'd have had great chemistry with Cole, who's a better actor than the dude they had her paired with, but I say all that to say, the script was... meh. The pacing of both movies was weird, and the conflicts that were in them (see above for discussion on what conflict in stories actually is) were nothingburgers. It was stupid. Don't waste your time, seriously.

1/5 stars

We interject for a non-review that needs to be mentioned. Oh, Lifetime. Holy shitsnacks.

Double Mommy (I... I don't know... people... - Lifetime)

This is the synopsis:

Ryan discovers his friend Bryce is the father of one of his girlfriend's twin babies and that he date raped her at a party over the summer. With college looming over Bryce's head, he will stop at nothing to make sure that he clears his name.

Because the guys' feelz are what's important, here.

The Birthday Wish (Jessy Schram, who only acts one way and that is coked-up squirrel with blonde barrel curls - Hallmark)

This is the official summary, and it should let you know how pleased I was to watch this:

On her birthday, a woman who desperately wants her boyfriend to propose to her wishes for the opportunity to see into the future, with surprising results.

'Cause I love seeing "desperate" and "woman" in the same sentence about my main character! This was precisely what you think based on the summary - though I will say Schram doesn't play it "desperate" so that was kind've a weird word for them to use - she somehow has these premonitions (it's never explained) and the boyfriend's a dick and she ends up with her co-worker who's a great guy. The end.

1/5 stars

Once Upon A Prince (Megan Park, who is familiar though I don't know how, and a quite charming British fellow who isn't really, he's actually from Canada by way of New York but sounds really damn convincing - Hallmark)

Also unsure this is “winter”, but it’s worth talking about. Seriously. Still, let's get the shite - and it's minor! - out of the way.

First complaint: they blew their wad in the title. Not that we don't get the scoop fairly quickly, but... welp, no we don't, the beans aren't spilled for a while - they *easily* could've skirted it, and they HAVE, it's very nicely and smoothly done, I mean, you can divine it but it's not plot anvil'd, his situation unfolds gradually across the first act, which is so refreshing. Whoever titled it was the screw-up. I'm looking at you, Hallmark execs. All their titles spoil.

Second complaint... despite the adept nature they handled main dude's backstory, there's a really bad clunker of an anvil in that first bit - we know exactly how he's gonna propose to her in the end because they shoe-horned in really abrupt and almost non-sequitur dialogue for her wherein she tells him her dream proposal not terribly long after meeting him. It was weird and awkward. I mean, the fuck. I get she was still rattled as her longtime boyfriend with whom she had both business and personal futures planned out breaking up with her in the prior scene(s), but shit. They do recover a bit by having our dude - and damn, I love him, I genuinely do - comment something to the effect of "Well oftentimes it's easier to tell a stranger things we can't tell the ones to whom we're close". My point is, they knew it was a dog of a line, but I thought of three options to get the topic out there over the course of them getting to know each other just while I’ve sat here typing this recap - hell, they revisit the damn location later, when they are friends vs. strangers! It was bad writing.

Third complaint... y'all know by now: I hate the fake made-up countries. And this one is (wait for it) Cambria. Google Cambria. Go ahead. I'll wait. [pause] Nevermind, I'll just tell you, and this isn't because I have some bizarre encyclopedic knowledge of the way-back-when in Jolly Ol', it's because - well - I'm a reformed dinosaur nerd, and that overlaps with having an understanding of geology, because fossils. There, I said it. There were charts and sketches and stuff of the various periods of dino development from National Geographics on bedroom walls. I had it bad. For the record, I loved the book Jurassic Park, and the first movie was great, and the rest are good for laughs. The last two are good for mocking. I probably would've been a paleontologist, except for when my Christian father, who at the time I thought was the smartest man in the world (and he is objectively intelligent in many ways) told me God put the dinosaurs in the earth, that there's no way the earth is as old as science proves. (I say proves, he said claims.) 'Cause, y'know, an almighty being is totes into pranks. Ha ha. Ha ha ha. Funsies. I've digressed.

The quick-and-dirty is that the Cambrian is the geologic period that's from around 550 million years ago. (Okay this part I'll look up, because I'm so nerdy.... yup, I see it's 542-488 mil.) Anyhow, the dude that coined the name found the goods, the exemplars that proved this stage in earth history/backed up earth's age in Wales. And the area now known as Wales used to be called Cambria a way long time ago. Not millions time ago, of course. Trilobites and whatever can't speak... THAT WE KNOW OF. So I don't know if somebody was just like "Oh, that sounds like it could be a country" or somebody was being cute, thinking Cambria wasn't real, like it was something akin to Camelot, I've no idea. Who cares, it's stupid.

However.

Guys.... y'all.... my peeps.... um.... this'n is a keeper, so I'm not going to break it down and spoil it. It is very much worth watching, if you're into these types of movies, because it differs in a huge, very positive manner. Here's why this movie is above average for Hellmark: there's legitimate conflict (see above, re: what that means), and - most importantly - they are friends. They are buddies. They genuinely like each other. This isn't just about romantic love, this is about two people who care about what happens to each other. They care that the other person is living a life in which they are happy.

There's also some realism here, not because it's an identical situation (it is not, trust) but in the broad strokes, I think of the Prince Harry-Meghan Markle situation. Middleton is uppercrust Brit stock, if memory serves (I'm not looking it up) with some sort of pseudo-distant-whatever royal line connection. She was gold for William, she's a good option for a queen (I mean, I'm sure there's duchesses out there, but that ain't who Wills loved). Now, Markle? So far from what would be called uppercrust. So, so very far. And yeah, yeah, I get that it's not as big a deal since he's not direct but more adjacent in line to the throne, but c'mon. It was a big deal. And you know all the ways why, I won't go through them here. My dude broke about a bazillion years' worth of tradition, and good on him.

And at the end of the day, that's what this movie is about - making your own way, creating your own traditions, adapting the old traditions, having confidence to do the things you're good at, the things you believe you're meant to do, and doing them the way you think is best. Is this a deep movie? No, it's fucking Hallmark, haven't you been paying attention? You think they let us escape without a super-rushed, wrap-it-up-in-the-last-five-minutes ending? You know better. I'll tell you this, though - it may not be deep, but it ain't shallow. And it's the best royal movie we've had so far, despite the too much haste with information-giving in the beginning and with the title and, as you'll find out, a really bleh last line... and of course with him being king of Fossilville. (I'm not letting that go.)

You're going to love him, he's a doll and classy and darling the entire time. You're going to love her, she's self-assured and fun and mature and hard-working. And you're really going to love John the valet. We find ourselves at ratings time and, somewhat shockingly:

5/5 stars

Past entries below

Winter Castle (people you’ve never heard of - Hallmark)

Holy shit, cliché on parade and nobody can act?! Jack-friggin’-pot. Zero chemistry amongst anyone, from family to friendship to romance?! Hot damn.

So they’re all at this place for a destination wedding (a.k.a, Selfish And Life-Disrupting And Huge Expense For Guests Thing And Oh Here’s Our Registry Too, come at me brah), and everyone is staying in a hotel. HA! KIDDING! They’re all in this giant faux igloo, and by “faux” I mean there are these church-esque doors in what is, I guess, a specially-flown-in iceberg on land. Google tells me it’s an actual place.

Anyway, through the doors you’ll find hallways (that have people carved into them, not creepy at all) which are lined with rooms. Suites? I never saw a bathroom door, doesn’t damn matter, nobody poos in Hallmark’s world. Oh, also, for lighting, we have Target pillar candles, then everything’s backlit in ‘80s neon:

Are they shitting me?

But that’s beside the point. Point is, it may be pretty to look at but in execution, it’s stupid. No way people haven’t had to peace out and find a new joint to stay in because of near or actual hypothermia. Based on the warm, cozy, wood-floored, windowed, staircase-and-balcony-having rehearsal dinner area in a large building with stone wall exterior, this hotel actually has some, y'know, hotel to it. Lodge? Who cares, but I bring it up because of the standard precocious child who is there to bring everybody together whilst turning into a popsicle.

The poor kid is bundled within an inch of her life, dumb bunny-eared toboggan to puffy jacket, and is burrito’d in a sleeping bag, with a quilt on this bed that looks to be carved out of ice, as well, and I say “as well” because our leading lady is shown frequently perched on what looks to be a chair carved out of ice (fur puffy thing for ass protection) with her laptop on a table carved out of ice when she’s face-timing her Not Gay Male Best Friend in a bow-tie and sweater vest back home, and - bonus! - he doubles as The One Person Of Color. Now, if memory serves, legit igloos made by actual First Nation(s) folks (meaning both Canadian and American - specifically, Alaskan - and probs any groups that found themselves in the way-way-North in the way-back-when and had to come up with this genius or, you know, die) are actually pretty damn warm once the fire gets cranking. Not to say you don’t keep some fierce socks and gloves on, that’s plain smart, but enclosed space with heat is enclosed space with heat - just don’t lick the walls. That’s good advice, igloo or otherwise.

On that topic, via the article linked above, says one of the actresses:

“It’s like an igloo,” Mullen told the Standard. “The further you go into the hotel, it gets colder and colder. As you walk down the hallway into the different rooms, it’s just getting into your bones.” She said every time they called “Cut!,” everyone would put on jackets to warm up.

She’s incorrect - that’s not like an igloo. It’s too big, that’s why it doesn’t stay warm. I have *zero* desire to go to this place. That sounds like Dante’s Frosty The Snowman circle of hell. I digress.

I say all that to say, this movie is straight dumb because the script is basic bitch, they were leaning on the location and hard. It gets a star because they tried in the sense that they did use a unique setting, but the rest was neglected (the story and the casting). Everything else was so blaaaaaand, and the acting was so stilted and unnatural, and they cast the mother with someone who looks the exact same age as the lead gal/her sister (the bride), and then there’s this one chick character who was so pathetically desperate, and the leading man was such a pussy who wouldn’t make a fucking decision, and they had our leading lady be all *sniffle* and tolerating that shit AND SHE JUST MET HIM BY THE WAY, and I just…. ugh.

1/5 stars

Royal Matchmaker (Bethany Joy Lenz - Hallmark)

This isn’t an “official” Winter '19 jam, google tells me it’s from the '18 spring movies, but everybody’s bundled up, so I’m calling bullshit. It ain’t half-bad, despite the fact that it’s a “royal” one, who’d-a-thunk? There was one over Christmas that got a 4 (see link up top), and I never would’ve predicted it. But that was an oldie-goldie, this is now. This one has the traditional royal romance beats and, no shit, the sidekick is the same one from another “royal”, the absolutely horrid “Christmas At The Palace”, from Christmas ‘18. I cannot reiterate how bad that movie was - not ”My Christmas Love“ bad, but bad.

All right, so - she’s a matchmaker from NYC, which is at least a new take on what’s coming next - and you guessed it, a prince HAS to get married or some reason, even though it’s mentioned they are under a Parliamentary system and not a monarchy, but he still has to because it’s the 17th century, oh wait no it’s not. The king, who is from a random made-up locale (*sigh*) has hired her (and said partner) to find a suitable wife for his son, who’s presented as the typical eligible rich bachelor, and “presented as” is the key phrase. It’s one of the things I like about this plot, but it doesn’t outweigh the bleeeccchhh.

For one, it wears me out, the making-up of countries. It’s distracting. If you’re gonna do royalty, the right move is to have the royal not be a king/prince but make it a duke/duchess jam, refer to the locale vaguely as a duchy in England or Ireland or Scotland or Sweden or Norway or whatever Americans will fall for, 'cause as a rule, Americans aren’t typically hip to other countries’ jams. Hell, say someone is a prince/princess, but it’s more in inherited title only - that’s what the 4 from the Christmas list did right. Nobody called him “Prince Whatever”, he wasn’t presented as this hot commodity, it was a nothing burger, we didn’t even find out that he had the title til near the end of the movie. I’ve digressed, back to this flick.

I detest the royal garb they’ve got lead dude in at the conclusion, it looks like you or I waltzed into Party City and slapped down $30 and walked back to the set. It’s ill-tailored and in too-bright colors and is, again, something utterly distracting that could’ve been avoided, and same with the king’s, too-small jacket to too-long length of slacks. All the women, including our main gal, are in prom dresses straight off the rack from Sears and J.C. Penney’s. This is not praise. The men are all in identical rented tuxedos with clip bow-ties. Thanks, I hate it.

I mean, and I hate that there’s a ball at the end at all, but it goes hand-in-hand with the core premise, which is that they’re on a tight schedule - ol’ Bethany has 4 weeks. They, of course, fall in love with one another, and props to casting because these two look good together and have decent chemistry, but that could be because Lenz knocks these movies out of the park - this is the third… maybe the fourth… that I’ve seen with her - she elevates everything she’s in. When I mentioned her to a friend, I was told she also elevated some shitty TV show that I never watched, so perhaps you are already familiar with her.

Anyhow, once again there’s too much filler and the ending draaaaaaags and then BOOM it’s done in the last three minutes, which is standard for these movies (both Lifetime and Hallmark), I’d say, about 95% of the time. The story was good in that the prince wasn’t a typical playboy and he kept his philanthropic side a secret because he didn’t want press invading these small villages and whatever he was helping rebuild - he genuinely likes getting his hands dirty and he actually knows how to do shit, he fixes a radiator at a community center at one point. Eh. I dunno. It had such potential in the front half, then just shit the bed in the back half, so it was half of a waste of my time. But you may dig it. It’s far from the worst of Hallmark’s offerings but, again, I think it’s because of Lenz, she’s the only thing getting it up from a 1/5.

2/5 stars

Oh… oh mah… what the… we interrupt the winter fare for what looks like a rando that’s snuck in and christ on a cracker, no. No. No. NO. The summary:

A woman begins an online relationship with a famous photographer, not realizing that she is actually communicating with the man’s young son.

This caught my ear because as I was sitting here writing up the last movie, it came on, and I hear this woman’s voice, her typing (so it’s her voice in her mind), then a man’s voice (as she’s reading), and I looked up when the man’s voice started switching to a kid’s (boy’s) voice back and forth every sentence or so - and then I looked at that summary, and….

"Chance at Romance”, it’s called –> 0/5 stars, I don’t even need to watch it, what a stupid garbage fucking premise, and it’s gross, and I hope that shit kid gets punished, like as in, no computer til he’s old enough to own his own home and pay for his own internet, because scumbag kid. If he has the balls to pull this catfishing shitstorm on a fucking adult and gets away with it, what the fuck will he do to manipulate girls his own age? Gross. IT’S A GROSS PREMISE YOU GREETING CARD FUCKTARDS

Love On Ice (Andrew Walker, who’s in every fourth movie, and the lead chick’s familiar her name is Julie Berman - Hallmark)

Former pro skater, now teaching - don’t worry, it’s not the aforementioned “Christmas At The Palace”, despite the similar M.O. - and decides to go for one last run at regionals because the new coach in town who’s teaching the next big thing is like “You used to be the next big thing, why don’t you undo eight years of not training aggressively in, like, a couple weeks and compete against the girl I’ve been hired to make a winner, and I’ll coach you both, because I have a boner for you and your shitty blonde extensions! No, that’s not what he says, but that’s the deal, yo. The next-big-thing’s got an overbearing mother and, once his boner gets found out, here comes a new coach that used to be the former-next-big-thing’s coach, and she’s a horrible actress, she can’t play sneaky-evil to save her life. I liked the two leads, and they did a better job than the other ice skating scenes/movies with concealing the real skater actors, but overall this was as boring as watching paint dry, I just wanted it to be over.

1/5 stars

The Perfect Catch (Nikki DeLoach and… shock of all shocks, no not really… our old buddy, Andrew Walker - Hallmark)

I swear, I don’t know if Andrew Walker is on some mission from god, or being punished by him. I’m in the same boat, so I empathize. At least I’m not contracted. I can’t speak for him, but I remain happy for DHJ, that he’s escaped this purgatory, and is safe on the shore… at least, at present.

In any event, this one doesn’t seem like a "Winter official”, but there were jackets and no definite spring or fall standards (pastels or orange leaves), and it’s airing now, so here we are. It seems to be baseball season, so I know they mean for it to be spring, but they are wearing coat-coats, not it’s-still-kinda-chilly light jackets. I don’t fucking care, I watched it, so I’m reporting on it.

It ticks many boxes on the Winter Fanfic Bingo card (forthcoming), specifically the ones that are carryovers from Christmas and will be carried over to all the Hallmark/Lifetime movies regardless of time of year. Because being formulaic, when playing the long game, is cheap and efficient, and in the restaurant business, or products made on a factory line, or in healthcare standards, things of that ilk, you want streamlined coupled with the trieds-and-trues. In writing? Not-so-much. It’s lazy.

And speaking of restaurants, that’s the first box that got ticked - our leading lady owns a restaurant and, next box, it’s in danger of being lost. Other boxes include: our leading man is famous; he’s the character that comes back home, leaves/might leave, then changes mine/comes back, and it’s to stay!; adorable child who ideally will bring everyone together; a character’s parents are dead. Blah-blah. Blah-blah-blah. Blah-blaaaaah-blah-bleh. <—- that had more variety than this flick. I mean, there’s nothing wrong with this movie. It’s vanilla. It’s white bread. It’s mashed potatoes with no salt or a touch of sour cream mixed in, no loading with shredded sharp cheese and crumbled brown sugar-and-cracked-pepper bacon and the barest touch of chives. I’m hungry, shut up.

It doesn’t just get 1 star because it’s not bottom barrel - everyone’s competent in their acting, there’s nothing outlandishly stupid about the script, it’s not shellacked in Velveeta. I will say that they pull a little teensy, micro-twist with how they resolve his balancing a primo offer that in no way should he pass on career-wise fairly realistically. The very last scene is, of course, stupid and embarrassing.

2/5 stars

The next movie has palm trees, so officially not Winter. But oof…. it’s got Kelly Rutherford and Cameron Mathison, both of whom are ringers. Hmmm. Yeah, I still ain’t subjecting myself to more than needed for this adventure. Oh, and they continue to play the basic-basic-BAAAAASIC-boring “Hope At Christmas” on Hallmark Movies and Mysteries", if you’re interested. It is a mystery to me as to why they continue to do so. Anyhow, there’s apparently 3 or 4 more brand spanking new offerings from Hallmark for the next several weeks.

More to come. I’ll reblog this with every new entry added to the top, so you can always just keep this post URL bookmarked if you think you missed it. Send an ask if you want to be tagged.

#Nash Watches And Rates #Cheesy Winter Movies #so you don't have to #Cheesy Movie Talk

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arkus-rhapsode · 6 years ago

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Why do some people hate Erza from FT?

Okay, wow. Loaded question right there. I’m going to assume you’ve read the entire series of FT because explaining this is kinda hard. In fact, describing how one feels about characters is difficult in the sense we all have varying reactions. Like there’s no checkbox list for good character that everyone has and abides by, but I will try and give you the general reasoning. I use a general reasoning because there is literally no way for me to send a survey to potentially millions who have read FT and ask “what is your opinion on Erza and why?”

Now to describe the reason why one might not like Erza it goes back to her introduction. Erza came in the series and was much beloved by almost every reader: she had a badass looking ability and attitude, she had a very appealing design, and in critical sense she brought something to the table of FT and that was she was conflicting to the guild. Her personality and way of doing things conflicted with the others and it made her more memorable in how she handled herself and in guild interaction. It also helped that she was a strong female because FT came out around this golden age of manga: age of One Piece, Bleach, and Naruto all running, Toriko, etc. FT was the only one to introduce a female character that seemed to be treated as on the same level as the males in a mainstream shounen series.

She then proceeded to have one of, if not the best, arc in FT, the tower of heaven arc. At this moment, Erza is at her pinnacle of character and we the audience are ready to see here it goes and it goes… Nowhere.

Yeah the first, and probably the biggest thing with Erza that people hate, and something that a lot of other characters with FT had, was she never developed post her time to shine. She has no goal, so there was journey. She doesn’t make like an endearing vow post tower of heaven. What she ends up getting is Jellal. Like in terms of character, the thing that only actually seems to change and effect her is whatever long distance relationship she had with Jellal. Another was in terms of character she just kinda stopped being consistent.

Now some would cite that they still lover her. “So what if her personality doesn’t change. I like her like that.” Well there isn’t anything wrong with a character like that, but as I said, no development (Beyond Jellel). When a character doesn’t seem to be changing then it actually causes the story to meander and causes one to question why is she even around. Eventually at the last arc Erza meets her mother and they have a big,confrontation and it result in nothing for her character. Like after the fight Erza isn’t changed on her opinion of like Dragon Slayers or Alvarez. During the fight she doesn’t say anything the is new, “You might be my biological parent, but my real family is Fairy Tail!” Yeah, no one saw that coming. And then the revelation of Wendy and Erza having a close, sisterly bond of Wendy wanting to protect Erza, not only comes out of nowhere (seriously, I think Wendy would be saying this to Natsu, but hey then we couldn’t have naked Wendy hugging naked Erza) which is referenced before the war, is not a focus until the fight with Irene, which is then dropped.

But hey, some don’t even care about the story, some just care about the Jerza ship. Fair enough, you like your ship to want more moments for it gives you an excuse to keep looking for new material. But then at the end Jellal and Erza don’t get together. That’s right, all this time spent on Erza being her most relevant thing to the plot aside from being, the strong one, which was her romance, didn’t get together. Oh I remember the day that happened. Tumblr filled with rage.

So that goes for character development. Well what about power? She’s still a badass female anime character? Wellllll… Erza came onto the scene strong with a few cool fights and even somewhat lost to Jose early on. She also probably has one of the best fights in the series when she faced Midnight. But a lot of that was early on and as more time went on people began noticing a certain pattern to how Hiro wrote not only her fights, but a lot of characters fights. Eventually I’d like to say around Tenrou (I honestly have no cool about fan reception around edolas) people notice Erza stopped winning fights because she was just that bass or she came up with a unique strategy using what skills she’s had at her disposal. No, she won by nakama power.

Now power of friendship can be a tricky thing. When done well it can convey a strong emotional bond that pushes one to push past their limits. But with Erza and Hiro, it literally became a tangible power. Her power increased and she made her way through combat situations with no actual strategy or reason, just having friends made her feel really strong inside and then plow through opponents. It didn’t help that in context that all these fights she had and extreme issue of being so thoroughly trounced that when she gave the patterned friendship speech it actually seemed like reality warpped to give her the win.

Erza vs Azuma? After he matched her blow for blow then detonates a massive tree bomb on her while she has no protection, she gets up cause she thinks of her friends and the symbolism of drawing energy from them manifest literally as now it so strong to cleave through Azuma and a massive tree root with no issue. Erza vs Minerva? First has a fight with Kagura, then proceeds to lose to a persona who has all of space at her beckoning and then new armor out of nowhere (and don’t second origin. why does she even own it in requip if she never had the strength to use it). Erza vs Kyoka? Kyoka is growing perpetually more powerful and then robs Erza of all five of her senses and increases her sense to pain. Erza wins with just her bare fists and the reason this is all possible is because, as Happy, says, “She’s Erza!”

“She’s Erza” quickly became a meme and go to phrase for an undeserving victory that seems to defy logic and only makes sense of why the character won was just because “she’s Erza” and nothing else. This would describe other anime characters to, even if they didn’t actually power of friendship their way through. I remember reading Tokyo Ghoul re and around the time Arima had fought against Sachi, a martial artist ghouls who when introduced beat the shit out of kaneki. And in their fight, Arima kills Sachi almost like its nothing.

It did help that with this friendship speech power Erza really stopped using her moveset to its fullest and uniqueness. Now, I’ve made a whole post on Erza’s powers before and I implore you to check it out. But in short, what happened was basically, Erza’s moveset involved her mixing and matching of different armors. But then eventually she just started to use the clear heart clothing or Samurai Pants more and more. And armor who’s sole purpose is to raise only attack and sacrifice all defense. I was then no surprise when it seem Erza got beaten up or wounded because for a mage whose magic was armor she seemed to completely forgo it and use a more whose whole thing is higher attack. She also seemed to use it with this cherry blossom katanna that is suppose to be more powerful the more magic a user pours into it, but there is never any indication of that. (Like nothing visually to symbolize her putting magic in it. Nothing like a glow or aura. Not even the handle starting crouch up on her arm to symbolize how it eating her magic. Nothing.)

Now Erza was S-class, so of course she is suppose to be strong. But in this world your power comes from your magic. Like Laxus is S-Class and he isn’t going in and fighting bosses with just his bare fists, no lightning. SO watching her not utilize her powers became inheriting when more and more villains she fought had these insane gaps in magic power to her. It seemed like this shift to clear heart clothing was more of a way to retroactively make Erza come off as this swordfighter similar to Kagura, but we were both introduced to her as, and for a while I might add, her weapon was also her armor and what power extended from it. All this was then compounded in her last real fight of the series where a samurai pants Erza is swapped by Irene’s dragon paw and breaks all of the bones in her body minus her arm, then value herself in to sky while proclaiming friendship, radiating magic that who’s origin is never explained, and cutting a meteor in half with only her clear heart power. Then falling to the ground where she fought with a still completely shatter body for a bit.

Now I’ve heard the defense of many for Erza fights. A lot of Erza fans will try and justify any of her wins, with the reveal of Irene being a dragon being what is sited as why Erza is so powerful, because genetically she’s the descendant of a dragon. But we have two problems with that, the first being Irene stress that thanks to her enchantment, Erza is still in her womb as still a “human child.” The second being, Erza never shows any indication beforehand that her strength is similar to a dragon. Like she doesn’t grow like scales or something dragonic like during a fight, but we’re suppose to take her as being this powerful and just looking completely natural.

But then there’s the fan who is like, “Pfft, what do I care about fights? I read FT for the story and character. All y’all getting to hung up on the wrong thing.” Well that is a fine stance to take, I mean a lot of FT fans love the characters of the series. Well as I pointed out the issues one might have with how Erza developed. Then there’s the excuse, “Rhapsode, stop holding her to the standard of males. As a man you have no right to judge the development of a female character.” (I’m serious, someone used this argument on me) Well first off, Mashima is a man, and he created and is writing Erza. Second, for this strong female, she then got really really demeaned in fanservice.

Look, there isn’t anything wrong with fanserivce or ecchi. I’ve defended it a great number of times and can be seen as the just a necessary of the industry trying to appeal to young boys. The problem with Fanservice is when it starts to demean a character or ruin the weight of a moment. Erza became hugely fanserviced in scene like her torture scene where an emphasis was put on titillation than actual horror of the scene. But you can combine strong and sexy in a character. Like Erza’s Heaven’s Wheel against Eisenwald. Sure it was was cleave exposing a maybe not the most practical looking thing, but attention wasn’t draawn to that. Attention was drawn to how she cleaned house against the thugs. But then it became progressively less so, not just in terms of the armor’s appearance, but also how Mashima laid out panels seemed to exist more to heighten the sexy even if they didn’t actually make sense. Erza’s armor against Irene was literally a bunny girl suit and with the instances of her fighting there are scenes of her downward slashes that literally are angled so the audience can see less of the action and more Erza’s thonged behind.

Like for a female character put on the same level of males, she sure does seem to get exploited more than the males. But again, people will still not have a problem with this and will hide behind the excuse of something like “Its ecchi!”

It also doesn’t help that around the time of the GMG, many turned on FT and by extension Erza. It was then in Tartaros with the she’s Erza moments, many high followed reviewers and internet critics of anime basically blasted her and that earned her a spot on the not liked characters list. With many following that same feeling.

But as you can see, my running point is that all of the examples I give for why people might dislike Erza, there is still numerous people who will find a way to defend Erza and love her. Whether its through conjecture of her personality and feelings, whether its justifying how she wins her fights, or whether its claiming that fanservice doesn’t detract to them.

And then there are some who are like, “I know Erza’s flawed, but I still like her in other people’s head canons.” Which nothing is wrong with that. And then there are those who have opinions of her that won’t change because they are holding on to their love for the Erza at the beginning, or Erza in a way had an effect on their life. But all and all, if there is one thing to take away from this is its that Erza is flawed. Not a flawed character like Shaiapouf from Hunter x Hunter or Oedipus from Oedipus. And its because of those flaws that some do not like Erza and if we are being honest, even my enjoyment of the character became stifled thanks to a lot of the writing for it.

#erza scarlet #hiro mashima #fairy tail #jerza #jellal fernandes #tenrou island arc #gmg arc #grand magic games #tartaros #grimoire heart #azuma #wendy marvell

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psychic-refugee · 6 years ago

Text

Anon Question re Descendants

“The Great Uniting happened because London is the ONLY place with modern tech while everyone's in the dark ages, you don't see Rome or all the other Islands of Greece where the Pantheon is now, and Frozen Fever explicitly had a VERY different world map that shows no place for the Southern Isles, and a different topography in general at that.

Also, it's JUST Bayou de New Orleans on a map. Where's the rest of America if they weren't transplanted there...?”

I got these two questions, I assume they are from the same Anon.

The simplest explanation is that Disney is greedy and has really lazy writers, so they just kind of mish mash whatever they have copy rights to into Auradon and called it a day. There is not going to be any clean perfect fit theory to explain all the inconsistencies.

The first novel can’t even decide if it’s United Kingdoms of Auradon or United States of Auradon.

“Once upon a time, during a time after all the happily-ever-afters-, and perhaps even after the ever-afters after that, all the evil villains of the world were banished from the United Kingdom of Auradon and imprisoned on the Isle of the Lost.” De La Cruz, Melissa, The Isle of the Lost: A Descendants Novel, Prologue 3, Disney-Hyperion, 2017.

“Meanwhile, across the Sea of Serenity, which separated the Isle of the Lost from the rest of the world, lay the USA—the United States of Auradon, a land of peace and enchantment, prosperity and delight, which encompassed all the good kingdoms.” De La Cruz, Melissa, The Isle of the Lost: A Descendants Novel, Chapter 5 at 48, Disney-Hyperion, 2017.

Within the SAME book, there is conflicting statements of the proper name of Auradon. I think this is a good example of how much they don’t care about their content.

I’m not saying the interdimensional displacement theory is impossible, the franchise is so terribly written that literally anything can be possible. I’m mostly saying there isn’t anything to back it up. While cherry picking countries from other dimensions would explain the time/technology difference, it also brings in more issues and plot holes than it would solve.

1) The first question is why? If each kingdom was from a separate dimension, why steal others and bring their problems (villains) into your own? Why go through the hassle? Who has anything to gain from it? If they wanted more people and land to rule, wouldn’t it have been easier to just create the land and tell people you already rule to just have a ton more kids?

2) Yen Sid and Fairy Godmother (“FGM”) are from different dimensions under this theory. FGM is from Cinderellaberg and Yen Sid is from Fantasia, a yet to be placed area in Auradon. If Fantasia is in one of the fairy tale lands and not its own, then it’s probably in Charmington given the wardrobe and originally the Apprentice was supposed to be Dopey. Either way, those are two different dimensions. So how would FGM and Yen Sid have known each other in order to bring these countries together? What would motivate them to seek each other out? Again, their villain problem had been solved. FGM didn’t even have a real villain to contend with, Lady Tremaine was just a bitch. FGM was also the most powerful person in Cinderellaberg, why take in a powerful evil Fairy like Maleficent to her world?

3) How do you get 18 Kingdoms from different universes to not resent being brought together against their will? Or to “vote” to one sovereign ruler right away? In order for Auradon to be as peaceful as shown, then the 18 Kingdoms are a) at peace with the idea that they are in a different dimensions, b) get along with the other kingdoms despite the vastly different cultures and probably religion, and c) were able to agree upon not only to unite under one ruler but that raising dead adversaries and banishing them to an island was a good idea. I’d be pissed as all hell, especially if I was a king or queen. Who is anyone to not only steal my land and my throne, but to raise dead adversaries that I risked my life to defeat? How could they have gotten along so quickly and kept peace for twenty years?

4) If interdimensional travel, along with merging lands, is possible then why bother with an island so close to the Mainland? Why not banish them to an inhabitable planet that doesn’t have magic? Seems simpler and safer than having them in your proverbial back yard. At the very least put them somewhere further than what a bridge could span.

5) Interdimensional unification is a rather significant occurrence. I’m pretty sure that would have been mentioned on top of unifying kingdoms.

6) If interdimensional communication is possible (That’s how Yen Sid and FGM got together) then why would they say “Our villains are dead and we’re our own sovereign nation…but I feel like combining with 17 other interdimensional kingdoms and giving up my own power…also, lets bring back the villains that almost killed us and put them on an island…for funsies you know? I’m totally sure we’ll all be super cool with each others religion, customs, and taboos. It’s not like people go to war over this stuff...Furthermore, villains only account for like .0000001% of our population, that’s totally worth giving up our sovereignty and displacing every other citizen, right?”

I’m sure all of this could be answered, but I doubt with canon. Nothing in the movies, what I’ve seen in Book 1, or researching online suggests interdimensional displacement.

But to answer Anon’s questions and assuming a) the princess/Disney movies’ timeline and whatever happened is absolute and unassailable and b) what happens in the Descendants franchise is also absolute and unassailable.

For both the Disney princess movies and Descendants, everything is taken at face value and literal.

So to answer your questions,

1) London is the ONLY place with modern tech while everyone's in the dark ages

2) you don't see Rome or all the other Islands of Greece where the Pantheon is now, and

3) Frozen Fever explicitly had a VERY different world map that shows no place for the Southern Isles, and a different topography in general at that.

4) Also, it's JUST Bayou de New Orleans on a map. Where's the rest of America if they weren't transplanted there...

Answers

1a) We do not know the exact structure of Auradon, such as how far each kingdom is away from the other. I’ve seen maps, but most seem to be fan made and not canon. The map shown in the first movie can’t be to scale. So I’m going to assume there’s no reliable map in existence.

If London has 1950’s technology such as cars, radios, and phones then perhaps London is so isolated from the other kingdoms that it went on its own technological evolutionary path. Real world example, United States of America has cars, computers, etc…there are tribes in the Amazon that have literally no modern technology. These are two independent entities with vastly different levels of technology existing on landmasses that connect. Depending on how far or isolated London was in relation to other kingdoms, I would say it’s possible they had this technology that the other kingdoms hadn’t invented yet. One explanation could be that Cruella’s story never had magic, so by extension maybe London was the only place in Auradon that was magicless by nature. Not having magic could have spurned their technological revolution while others lagged behind because magic made up for the lack of technology.

There’s also the instance of Camelot Heights. According to the internet, King Author “dislikes” the idea of modern technology and there isn’t any in Camelot Heights, so they’re still technologically in the dark ages. It’s possible other kingdoms had followed suit pre-Unification. A real world example of this is parts of the USA have groups that shun technology, such as Mennonite and the Amish, it’s an example of two groups having vastly different levels of technology by choice.

2a) There’s nothing to suggest Rome would exist in Auradon. While in a Whole New World we see roman columns, it’s not explicitly said to be Rome (not to mention how fast they would have had to have flown in order to get there in one night from Agrabah and back) and they could have very well been Greek columns as Greece had originated that architecture. To explain the Greece and the gods pantheon, I would say it’s coincidental that part of Auradon is named Greece. The fact that Hercules was trained by Phil the satyr, and not Chiron the centaur would suggest these are different but coincidentally named people. Also, real world Zeus is the worst, while Disney Zeus is a loving faithful father. Real world Hades is rather chill, considered boring, and is happy to stay in the Underworld, Disney Hades is a hot tempered villain. Real world Hercules went insane and killed Megera and their children, Disney Hercules gained and gave up immortality for Megera. I would definitely be comfortable saying these are all completely different people, and that Auradon’s Greece is divorced from real world Greece.

3a) There’s nothing to suggest Frozen is part of the Descendants universe, at least nothing I’ve come across says any of their characters have shown up. So until a book or movie suggests otherwise, I think we can say it doesn’t exist in the United States/Kingdom of Auradon and it might be one of the few Disney kingdoms that was able to keep their own sovereignty and Arendelle is a separate country somewhere, or doesn’t exist at all. I don’t necessarily think it could be assumed that if Disney made it, it’s in Auradon somewhere. We haven’t seen any references to the Lion King, Duck Tales, Brave, etc...

4a) I would say the USA doesn’t exist as the movie only ever mentions a place called New Orleans, Louisiana and a kingdom called Maldonia. New Orleans, Louisiana, United States/Kingdoms of Auradon is coincidentally named the same as New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. If people insist that it’s in the USA, then where is Maldonia? The existence of Maldonia suggests to me that Bayou de New Orleans can’t be in the USA or from our world at all.

Do all of these fit perfectly and make 100% sense with no need to suspend belief? No. Do they make more sense than interdimensional displacement? I think so. Is interdimensional displacement canon? I don’t think so and so far, no one has put forth anything to convince me it is.

If it is canon then I still say it’s problematic for all the reasons I’ve listed and would never be part of LOE.

#author's commentary #Legacy of Evil Fanfiction #anon questions #answering anon #disney descendants

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