#ella no existe

[lany-bae]

Quisiera que ella no existiera,

Pero es tan real como el espacio entre tus manos y las mías,

y yo...

Vivo con la certeza de que

aunque cierre los ojos, ella sigue ahí

Y debo convivir con el eco de su existencia.

[dxckgrxsonx]

one thing i love beyond measure is the fact i know that jason todd adores comfortable silences.

to have you sat together in a room, or tucked up in bed, both of you doing your own things, knowing the other is close by. theres no pressure for conversation. just a grounding reassurance that if either of you were to glance over, you’d both be there. to feel you in the room and know that that’s enough. to maybe have your foot pressed against his thigh, or for jason to have his head in your lap and neither of you share a single word.

to know above everything else that your presence brings comfort. and to be comforted by the knowledge that you don’t have to do a single thing to make him stay other than exist in his space. to know that you are someone who can exist in his space when so many others cannot. to have that concrete, solid awareness of trust and rest and endless love without words. to look at him when he’s in the middle of his own world and know that you are an incredibly important part of it.

to love him quietly and have that come back in equal measure.

[doomedyuri-69]

Head-canon that Ashlynn regularly has Hunter over at her and Briar’s dorm, and Briar fucking hates it. Like her and Hunter have genuine beef.

Like everytime she comes back to her dorm and he’s there she’s just like “oh my fucking god, this guy.. 🙁”

[athena-xox]

Just pointing out that the Princessology girls are paired with guys from wooing 101 and duchess bullies ashlynn into trading to be with daring… maybe it was an assignment guys

[fadeed06]

Tiene un hueco en su corazón y en su alma y por allí transita lo que le doy. Nada guarda. Es un barril sin fondo y en él he depositado mis mejores sentimientos e ideas creyendo que fructificaran pero no lo hacen. Pasan a través y no dejan huella.

Quiero una pareja y no un barril sin fondo y sin centro.

Se merece un sufrimiento igual al que me provoca. Odio y sin embargo adoro.

✨La Fuerza Vital del Cielo Anterior: Jacobo Grinberg

[chromanticals]

the street style? it's immaculate.

[jq37]

Descendants: The Rise of Red is kind of a bizarre movie to talk about critically because, imo, it almost doesn't make sense to talk about it in the usual terms of good vs bad or enjoyable vs not enjoyable when the way more obvious tension is finished vs unfinished.

Because, more than any other movie I've ever seen, it does *not* read as a full movie. And I don't mean in a "this movie has a cliffhanger" kind of way. The Empire Strikes Back and Across the Spiderverse fit that description. They end on big dramatic cliffhangers that point to a resolution in the third installment.

But Rise of Red just sets all this stuff up and then...ends without concluding anything. It doesn't feel like the first movie in a trilogy (or duology). It feels like the first act of a two-act musical. It very specifically reminds me of the end of the first act of Into the Woods where all the main characters sing the song Ever After about how they all fixed their problems with magic and nothing bad will ever happen to them again and then the narrator ominously says "To be continued" before the curtain drops. But in Into the Woods you know there's a second act and this movie wasn't sold as the first act of a bigger story. Like sure, it has the, "You didn't think this was the end" tag at the end like all the other movies, but those movies were complete, self-contained stories even though they had sequels. This was NOT a full story. It's half of one story.

Like, if we're supposed to take this as a full story, there are so many bizarre choices:

Why did they make sure to mention that Cinderella and Charming fell in love at the ball at the top if it wasn't meant to set up Back to the Future style, "Oh no, I accidentally got my mom banned from the ball so she's not gonna fall in love with Dad and I won't be born" shenanigans?

Why did Maddox very pointedly have that bit about "you could lose your mom completely" if that was never going to come into play? Red never did anything to endanger Bridget or endanger her own birth so it doesn't make sense as a warning in that way.

Why was there all this focus on this Carrie on prom night moment for Bridget if we LITERALLY NEVER SAW CASTLECOMING? Why dance around this moment and talk about it all cloak and dagger with no specificity if they weren't building up to some big reveal that it wasn't as straightforward as it seemed? And like, they leaned in HARD with making Bridget the nicest, sweetest, cotton candy princess as a teen so I need WAY more than, "She got pranked by known bullies she's been enduring with a smile very handily up to this point" to buy that she went from that to "murderous dictator". And even if she did become murderous, I find it insanely hard to believe that she'd include her best and only friend on the list of people she wants to suffer unless there was a betrayal. I find it INSANE that there wasn't a falling out scene at any point in this movie with how thickly they were laying on the admiration and camaraderie.

(Note: And adult Cinderella def has guilty vibes re: the Queen at orientation. Which I know I'm not imagining because it's literally spelled out in the Jr Novelization!)

Before the time travel element of the movie started, I thought they were going for something like they go to the past and realize that Bridget was bullied not by the VKs but by the spoiled royals, and Ella ends up joining in the bullying once she gets with Charming, betraying Bridget and justifying her whole "Love Ain't It" philosophy. Or Ella ditching her at the last minute to be with Charming meaning she has to deal with the monster prank alone and it was the being alone rather than the prank itself that hurt her (though that is NOT a good enough reason to go all off with their heads on your subjects). The fact that, as far as we know right now, it literally was just a relatively mild and reversible prank that caused all of this is just, such flat storytelling, you know?

But! All of this makes way more sense if this is meant to be the first act of a single contained story. And I don't wanna be all "Pepe Silvia, secret good 4th episode of Sherlock" about this but I did see this picture:

Which seems to indicate that this was written as a Part One. Which, if so, idk why they wouldn't advertise it that way but whatever. The point is, if that's the case then it means that we're potentially in bad pacing territory rather than straight up bad storytelling territory. Because this isn't a bad place to be halfway through your story:

The heroes, warned that time travel is dangerous, have gone back in time to change the heart of a brutal tyrant before she can stage a coup. They seemingly succeed in their mission and when they come home, everything is great! But then, the side effects of time travel start to catch up with them. Chloe realizes that, in breaking the vase, she prevented her mother from going to the ball and falling in love with her dad (who was conspicuously absent from the final scene btw) which means she's starting to be forgotten and erased from the timeline. And Red realizes that though this new version of her mom is as sweet and kind as the teen she once met, she's a complete stranger to her (fulfilling the Hatter's warning that she could lose her mom completely). So they have to go back in time once more to make sure the Ella and Charming fall in love again, perhaps at the cost of whatever bad thing that happened to Bridget happening again and bringing back the original version of her future self. But, now with more context of how her mom became that way, Red can now talk to her mother and persuade her to give people another chance.

Boom, that gives us time to go back and hit everything we haven't yet hit. We can pay off the time travel tropes that were set up but not explored. We can go to Castlecoming which feels so obviously set up to be the centerpiece of this story (like, come on, Back to the Future literally does the school dance thing. This is Time Travel Storytelling 101). We can actually get info about what the prank was and why it affected Bridget so completely.

(Note: This is a side thing but it really strikes me as so crazy that Bridget would so SUCH a big 180 here. Like, I know the Queen of Hearts is a silly, goofy, campy villain, but she straight up murders people and there's no way to get around that if we're taking her out of the surreal story she comes from and putting her in a (comparatively) grounded story. If I wasn't doing a betrayal plot, I would make the twist that the spell that turned Bridget into a "monster" didn't just have a physical effect, it had a mental effect and it magically twisted her personality to be the way it is now. So they broke the physical half of the curse, but neglected the other half and it's been festering the whole time, turning her as evil as she was sweet. Because like, a simple physical transformation isn't that big of a deal to have such heavy security--Bridget made cupcakes with a transformative effect and that was totally fine. I'm not saying that that's what's gonna be the case. I just think it would be an explanation that makes sense for why she changed so crazy much that makes more sense than a simple prank or even a betrayal. Her mom wasn't even evil! How did she go from zero to murder without even an evil mom to push her onto the path? But I'm super digressing right now.)

(Note #2: OK, one last thing. The trap on the book presumably would have hit the VK's and trapped them in Merlin's office regardless of what Chloe and Red did, right? That's like, net zero influence on the timeline. I genuinely can't tell if that's a straight up plot hole or set up to be like, "Oh no. Actually when she said that she was turned into a monster in front of everyone it was meant in a less literal way." Like she was just made to look bad and that was the real thing that pushed her over the edge. Like idk. It really feels like the only thing they really did that would change the timeline was get Ella banned from the dance and presumably out of the way where she couldn't hurt Bridget. OK NOW I'm done.)

Anyway, my point is that this is not how I would have structured my movie and I think this was a super weird way to go into the second era of Descendants movies, but they can still tell a complete story if that's their plan. I'm genuinely really curious to see if this pans out to be a fairly competently told story that just happens to be split over two movies or a complete fumbling of the narrative bag because it could really be either at this point and it's fascinating to me.

[thelilylav]

Ashlynn and Hunter. Secretly, helplessly in love.

(The Storybook of Legends, Shannon Hale)

[jynjackets]

idk what to do with this information but women i’m obsessed with exchanged dresses recently

[marzipanandminutiae]

since you mentioned loving Ella Enchanted and Fairest (which are incredible pieces of literature) I was wondering if you’ve ever heard of Just Ella. It’s a different take on Cinderella that had a very similar protagonist but keeps to a semi historical feel. It really reminded me of the other books.

so...yes, I have. I was quite fond of it as a child.

and in hindsight, it's one of the worst examples of Historical NLOG in youth fiction I can think of

not ONE of the women at the palace is like. a fully fleshed-out human. except maybe Madame Bisset. they only exist to make Ella look smarter, tougher, and all-around better. I loved this book as a child, but looking back on it, there's a passage where Ella straight-up dismisses out of hand the notion that any of her apparently brainless ladies-in-waiting might have some sort of internal life or interests. one of them is a highly skilled embroidery artist, but that's treated as a surprise, a curiosity rather than a genuine interest on her part. you're never even allowed to think for one second that Ella might be wrong about them or judging them unfairly. the women at the refugee camp have a bit more going on, but even then, they're portrayed as too content with their lot and lacking in Ella's intelligence, drive, and/or imagination

Ella Enchanted never fell into this trap. Hattie and Olive were cruel to Ella in their own ways, but they each had their own things going on (insecurity for Hattie; intellectual disability and loneliness for Olive). there are plenty of other female characters presented, bucking social norms or otherwise, who feel like three-dimensional people: Mandy, Ella's mother, Areida...even Queen Daria, the boarding school bullies and headmistress, and Uaxee the giantess

Just Ella doesn't sit right with me anymore

[souvlakic]

Emily Dickinson. Herbarium.

[dittobtch]

Ella and Sophie T with their yellowjackets characters funko pops

(via their instagram stories on Jan 16, 2023)

[lloydfrontera]

Does the novel make such a big deal out of Lloyd and Javier's looks in the mermaid arc as the webcomic currently is? Sometimes I can't tell if it's taking itself seriously

i gotta admit. that in this one arc yes their looks are very much a part of the plot. mostly javier's. like. this man has so much pretty privilege it actually moves the plot along. it's infuriating. i love him.

the difference between the webnovel and webcomic is that the latter wants you to believe that lloyd is the ugliest guy in the world and javier just happens to be very handsome. while the webnovel really fucking wants you to understand that javier is extremely pretty. like. unbelievable so. he's the most beautiful guy in the whole wide world. and lloyd just has the unfortunate luck of standing beside him while having a plain face.

there's a difference there and i hate that the webcomic went that route but i guess i can see why they wouldn't want their protagonist to constantly be thinking about how fucking gorgeous his best friend is at any moment possible including while he's about to be squashed to death. like. i guess i can understand how that could alienate some of their target audience lol

so yeah, in the novel, particularly in this arc, we hear a lot about how pretty javier is. and not really that much about lloyd's looks. because there's really not that much to say. he's Just a Guy™.

[the-acid-pear]

DAVESPORT (dsaf 3 style) ASS SONG

[stars-and-darkness]

.

[seekanddestroy13]

i get so fucking sad about the loss of incredible performers. i can't believe ella fitzgerald will never sing again but i can hear her voice in my computer. she doesn't know me. she couldn't know in 1958 that almost 70 years later people (me) would still be listening to her long after she's gone.

i feel so incredibly lucky all the time to be born in a time when i get to listen to such wonderful music.