#for her character development specifically

[glowettee]

Study Like an It Girl: Paris Geller Energy 📚✨

If there’s one fictional character who embodies the ultimate study grind, it’s Paris Geller from Gilmore Girls. Her level of ambition? Unmatched. Her drive? Relentless. And while her methods might sometimes verge on chaotic (okay, very chaotic), there’s so much we can learn from her approach to academics. I'm gonna break down how you can channel that Paris Geller energy while keeping your sanity intact. 🌸✨ (hopefully...)

1. Set Clear Goals (Be as Extra as Paris)

Paris didn’t just want to do well; she wanted to be the best. While you don’t have to make your life a competition, having clear, specific goals can give you direction. Instead of saying, “I want to study more,” try:

“I want to get an A on my next chemistry test.”

“I’ll complete three hours of focused study for math every weeknight.” Specificity helps you stay on track and keeps your energy focused on the right tasks.

💡 It Girl Tip: Create a vision board for your goals, Paris-style. Include dream colleges, career aspirations, or anything else that fuels your ambition. Keep it somewhere you can see it every day—manifestation meets motivation. (digital or IRL is good, USE PINTEREST!)

2. Romanticize Your Study Environment

Let’s be honest: Paris wouldn’t study in a messy, uninspiring room. Your study space should feel like an aesthetic haven. Think:

A tidy desk with your favorite stationery ✏️

Soft lighting (fairy lights or a warm desk lamp) 🌟

A pastel mug filled with tea or coffee ☕

Background music (try classical, K-Pop or lo-fi playlists for the ultimate vibe) 🎶

You’re the main character of your life!!

3. Be Aggressively Overprepared, But Aesthetically So

Paris Geller never walked into a study session without knowing everything. Her energy was all about overachieving to the point of intimidating her competition. You don’t need the rivalry, but you do need the prep.

It Girl Twist: Gather extra resources and organize them beautifully. Think color-coded binders, pastel-highlighted textbooks, and aesthetic digital flashcards.

Why It Works: When you know more than what’s required, it builds confidence. That’s Paris power.

💡 Mindy Says: “Overprepared = unbothered queen vibes. Let your notes be so cute they could double as Pinterest posts.”

4. Master Controlled Chaos

Paris’s intensity could sometimes spiral into chaos, but she always managed to pull through. Instead of avoiding stress, embrace it as a sign you’re pushing yourself—and learn to channel it constructively.

It Girl Twist: When you’re overwhelmed, do a quick brain dump into a journal or planner. Write down every single task, no matter how small. Then organize it into bite-sized chunks.

Why It Works: Getting everything out of your head and onto paper clears your mind and gives you control.

💡 Mindy Says: “Your chaos is part of the process, babe. Just make it chic— glittery gel pens and mood-boosting playlists.”

5. Develop an Intimidation-Level Vocabulary

Remember when Paris dropped SAT words like confetti? It wasn’t just for show; she knew that language was power. Building your vocabulary can make you feel (and sound) unstoppable.

It Girl Twist: Learn one new “power word” a day and slip it into casual conversations or captions. Bonus points if it’s super niche and makes you feel like a literary goddess.

Why It Works: Knowledge isn’t just for exams—it’s for life. Plus, it’s fun to impress people with words they have to Google.

💡 Mindy Says: “An eloquent queen is a glowing queen. Vocabulary flexing is the new subtle flex.”

6. Treat Every Day Like It’s a Debate Prep Day

Paris’s debate skills were unmatched because she thought critically about everything. Adopting her mindset means questioning the world around you and staying curious.

It Girl Twist: Pick one topic you’re passionate about and research the heck out of it. Pretend you’re preparing to debate Paris herself (but in a cute, less intimidating way).

Why It Works: Critical thinking is a muscle—flex it daily. It’s also a low-key way to keep studying exciting.

💡 Mindy Says: “Be curious. Be informed. Be iconic. Channel your inner Paris and make intellectual sass your superpower.”

5. Take Pride in Your Ambition—Unapologetically

Paris never dimmed her ambition, even when people found it “too much.” Embrace that energy and stop apologizing for wanting more—if it’s higher grades, dream schools, or a future as the CEO of your life embrace it!

It Girl Twist: Write a “brag list” every week. Note down everything you’ve accomplished, big or small, and let yourself feel proud of it.

Why It Works: Celebrating your wins keeps you motivated and reminds you that your hard work is paying off.

💡 Mindy Says: “Being ambitious isn’t extra—it’s iconic. You’re not ‘too much,’ babe. You’re just enough to glow brighter than everyone else.”

✨ Final Thoughts:

I hoped you girlies loved this blog post. I wanted to try a different style. If you all noticed the "Mindy Quotes" they're all words by me! I'm Mindy/Glowettee! I wanted to give you personal words of encouragement! Love you all!

[batboopp]

@lesbianbarbaragordon Batman: The Ultimate Evil is one of my favorite Martha Wayne centered stories, mainly because she impacts both Bruce, his character growth, and the actual story so much without actually being there. you should 100% read this if you want a good grasp of Martha’s character. Batman: Family (v2) isn’t as focused on her (she’s only briefly mentioned in issue 1, 7, and 8) but she’s still extremely important in the progression of the story. Also it’s just a great read anyways, it takes place after No Man’s Land so a lot of different characters are in it. Batman: legends of the dark knight (Halloween special 2) shows Martha influencing the way Bruce thinks and reacts to his trauma in a way I think is very notable to both her and Bruce. Batman: Death and the Maidens is more centered around Bruce and his current/developing relationships and conflicts with the Al Ghul family (with a main focus on Nyssa, Ra’s, and Talia) then it is with his parents, but his mother is prevalent in issues 1, 4, and 5. Thomas also shows up in issue 6-7 but be warned, he kind of sucks. Batman: the Return of Bruce Wayne, issue #5 is an elseworld where Martha Wayne is murdered, and Bruce is the detective who attempts to figure out who did it. You don’t actually have to read this to understand who Martha was as a person because it has nothing to do with the main continuity, but she does technically build the story Bruce works in. (I’m not gonna include any more elsewords, just wanted to put this one here because it talks about Martha’s family.) In Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?, Martha Wayne appears during Batman’s final moments. There isn’t much about specifically her outside of Bruce’s childhood, but I do think it means something about how Batman imagined his mother of all people when he was dying. Also, it’s just a great read in my opinion :) unfortunately I don’t know any other stories where Martha Waynes actual life is explored outside of small references or straight up hallucinations or out-of-body experiences, but she does make many small appearances that further explain who she was as a person. I’ll just put them here so people don’t have to read entire storylines just for like one panel of Martha.

(detective comics #935)

(detective comics #978)

(Streets of Gotham, issue #14)

(Batman: The Knight, issue #10)

(Batman and Robin v2: Annual 1)

(Batman: Family mini adventures)

Legends of the Dark Knight v2, issue #8

Batman: Dark Age, issue #5

Poison Ivy: issue #25

theres way way more than just these btw. the great thing about being famously, mysteriously dead for centuries is that people still remember and talk about you a lot :)

I think the correlation between batman and his mother needs to be talked about more. they both devoted their lives to fighting crime with a whole secret identity. and they were both willing to die for it, and one of them did in the end. both of them are established to be mentally ill in some capacity. both of them generally had the same interests. they were both seen as dumber and simpler in the public eye (Martha being “just a housewife” and Bruce being just a himbo playboy) both considered Alfred to be their safe person, the one person they could talk to about anything. they both have the same handwriting for gods sake. Martha isn’t brought up a lot in comics unless it directly correlates with batman himself, but when she does, she is literally his carbon copy. hello does anyone hear this.

[raayllum]

An interesting thread in S7 that I noticed:

You are destroyed by the things you create.

The first time we see this kind of thread (at least I think, I might've missed something) is with Kpp'Ar and Viren in season 6. Kpp'Ar takes Viren on as his "most eager student" and teaches him much in the ways of dark magic, even eventually handing over the position of High Mage. And even once acquiring said position, Viren betrays him in order to take the Staff of Ziard, citing:

Then you have Viren being destroyed and creating the exact circumstances he didn't want. In corrupting Lux Aurea, he expelled the Sunfire elves, leading to Karim's increasing fanaticism, power struggle, and usage of Sol Regem. This led indirectly to Sol Regem bringing Viren's worst nightmare down upon Katolis.

We see this more directly with Aaravos as well, as he created Sir Sparklepuff and had Avizandum specifically summoned back from the dead in S7, both of which have a hand in his demise:

This also ties into Aaravos' desire to destroy the Cosmic Order, as they created the circumstances that led to his anger in killing Leola, and therefore his violence and great machinations:

This "you are destroyed/defeated by what you create" is also one of the things that won me over when theorizing about S7, as I thought that if Callum used dark magic to defeat Aaravos fully (rip Rayla's positive character development theorized there too), while it might have felt a bit thematically muddied, would've had a great layer of irony: Aaravos, being imprisoned/defeated by the very thing he created. Close, but no cigar!

Then, for the core protagonists, to a certain degree we have this theme with Viren and Claudia. Viren realizes his horror at what Claudia has become, as well as the path that he's pushed and led her down by example. This doesn't literally destroy him, but it does emotionally devastate him, and does end up destroying their relationship in a lot of ways.

Even Claudia gets a bit of this, as she stabs her mother in the back—a daughter killing her own mother—just as Soren stabbed Viren in 3x09. Children killing their own parents, even as illusions, fits the theme, don't you think?

Ezran also gets interwoven into this idea in a few interesting ways in season 7. In creating the circumstances that led to Ezran being king, and thereby creating the child king and his rage, Runaan could've become a victim of it, and indeed nearly was (7x01, 7x02).

The second way this could come to a head for Ezran is Project Ruby Fire, though we'll have to wait for future seasons. While the project is his and Aanya's brainchild to keep Katolis (Evrkynd now?) safe and safe from the threat of dragons in the future, it's unlikely that these weapons of destruction will stay unused, and could possibly lead to devastation and loss in their kingdoms and/or of their friends (Zym).

Last but not least, we have Callum and Rayla. While not a literal destruction (but close to), they were prepared to sacrifice everything for one another. Callum's death would've made Rayla an assassin, hardening her heart further than it already is; on the other side of things, Callum became a mage and a dark mage because of her (2x07, 5x08): "If you love her, you'll be the you who can save her," even if that means demanding she'd become the her who can kill him, and save him / the world from a fate worse than death.

At the same time, Callum only begins doing the dark magic spell because he trusts Rayla to be his safety net. I can see solid arguments for whether she would've actually gone through with it on either side, but it led to Callum re-corrupting himself and opening himself up to Aaravos' possession in the future either way.

Like with Ezran and Project Ruby Fire, I expect this plot thread to be more of a beat in Arc 3 / future seasons, but am still deeply interested to see how it may all come to pass - and how there could be more consequences (the Nova Blade?) even from trying to do good.

[pigswithwings]

mirage ultrakill is sort of... a representation of how it feels to not do anything, ever. you go to school and feel nothing. you dress up and feel nothing. you act rude and tell people to fuck off and still you feel nothing. you're late to school and you couldn't give any less of a damn. i don't think that mirage developed the idea that being alive is pointless because she was actually frightened, i think she developed the idea that life is worthless because she simply felt nothing and she needed to explain it all away. she goes to school and she learns all these concepts, she explains huge concepts to you as if she's trying to teach you. i think it's indicated that this is how she views the world, like an analysis rather than an experience she's involved in.

but its clear that she isn't totally set in her ways. hell, if you (the player character) are able to convince her to look upwards so quickly then she probanly wants someone to help her and listen to her and argue with her. she needs something to push against after so long of just falling. i cant say anything on whether mirage experiences depression specifically (cause i don't know enough abt that) but i do think her nihilistic outlook resonated with so many people because it feels like a real thing someone tells themself. you need a reason to justify your suffering, so you invent one. but really you want someone to tell you otherwise - there has to be some end to it, right? and there is. the sky opens up. because of you, you did it. i love mirage a lot

[exhelluvafan]

I will never NOT be pissed about the writing of Stella, just to make Stolas look good. The abuse angle thing was only ever told and then just...brushed away. Then she gets sidelined for her brother, when she could have done basically everything he's done.

She can be dead for all of it matters for her character, because Andrealphus is now the one wanting everything from Stolas. Go ahead and write Stella out entirely from the show, have Andrealphus be the one to have hired Striker.....and nothing changes.

The 'abuse' thing was only to ever absolve Stolas from the cheating and everyone should realize this, not good writing sorry and it STILL amounts to nothing because Andrealphus takes the spotlight!

DING! DING! HELLO PEOPLE, S1 is POINTLESS REALIZE THAT!

I agree with you, Anon, the "Stella abusing Stolas" plot point was actually added in as a way to justify and excuse Stolas' cheating, ending up not being either an excuse or justification because cheating is unforgivable no matter what, even if Viv believes otherwise.

And also, you're right as well, Stella could be easily written out of the show and nothing would literally change as Andrealphus could easily take the place of Stella, since Andre is the supposedly cunning and actively malicious one, while Stella was dumbed down to a screaming, annoying one dimensional bitch.

Man, I miss the Instagram era of the show, since Instagram Stella was shown to be a deeply complex character and not a bitch that was born evil, she actually was nice and more pleasant than the Stella we currently have and even showing how the cheating had hurt her specifically, but since Viv cannot allow any nuance to her female characters, all that development went straight to the trash.

And lastly, while I enjoy Helluva S1, I do agree that it became pointless since S2 retconned EVERYTHING that S1 had established, but at the same time, S2 makes references to S1 sometimes which is so confusing since S1 could be easily considered not canon at this point, but despite that, Viv and co. keep making references to it.

At least that helps to keep a canon divergence between S1 and S2, since these two seem from two different shows, one that was decent and the other that became a fanfiction of a show that doesn't exist.

[theredpharaoah]

Reading comprehension is at an all time low. You way too in your feelings over my lil Merthur post. Fanfiction wasn’t part of my argument brain trust. I brought that up in regards to her finding out about Merthur from TikTok. I never said anything about fanfiction providing evidence for this ship in the show. No one knows their character better than the actors and they interpreted their characters as being attracted to one another. The writers also interpreted it that way. Where was I nasty to Gwen? I’ve never had a problem with Gwen. I’m a fem black individual myself - I loved Gwen. I wanted them to do more with her and they did not. I literally stated that just as Merthur is the dominant ship in the fandom, Morgwen is right there next to it.

Ok, let’s talk about Gwen and Arthur’s marriage….it ain’t shit to say cuz it gave nothing. It was boring, stale, and Arthur never seemed to care for her as much as he did Merlin. And I never said Gwen and Arthur’s relationship was fake. The OP said that BOTH Merlin and Arthur liked Gwen. Which is why I specifically said that Gwen and Merlin’s little bit of attraction in season 1 gave “girl falls in love with gay boy because she thinks he’s sweet and charming”.

Pump the brakes. Who the fuck is going ”uwu”? I am not one of these lil smol bean bitches you used to dealing with on this app. We could meet up in real life and see what you really about, trust. You have a difference in opinion and that’s fine, but you ain’t have to come up in here being disrespectful. Furthermore, I didn’t diminish, replace, insult or ignore Gwen. But if I wanted to do that, I damn sure would do that and ain’t shit you could or would do about it. Know that.

Now on to the next one:

Nobody ever said or thought “Arthur was just using Gwen for her womb”. Please keep your assumptions and bullshit to the people you know and not me. I never said the authors didn’t write that they were in love. They TOLD us that on multiple occasions. But when it comes to writing it’s better to show and not tell. If you have to do the latter then usually there’s something wrong with the writing. The subtext(because yes, that does exist. Shocking I know.) reads Merthur. And that makes sense since that was what the writers intended. There’s some shit on one of the Blue rays where a writer literally says it’s a love story between two men. It’s as platonic as Xena and Gabrielle. I said Gwen doesn’t have chemistry with anyone and I was mostly talking about Merlin and Arthur. But no I don’t think she had much chemistry with anyone because I don’t think her character was ever developed all that greatly to begin with. She’s a side character. This whole conversation is hilarious because you two are both working off of these crazy ass assumptions. The main one seems to be that I’m some white person when I’m not only black and fem, but an anthropologist and philosopher who primarily studies race/gender and spirituality religion - specifically in relation to black peoples mostly. My entire life revolves around me being black and fem. So go on ahead and miss me with all this “all the white boy characters are just so lovable” shit, cuz that was never in my thought process. Again, never stated that the Merthur subtext was diminishing anything. I simply stated that it was clear that Merthur was the ship of the show. And again, the writer and I believe Katie said on the season 5 tape that the show was a love story between Merlin and Arthur. I never lied about the canon material. I stated how I saw Merlin and Gwen’s relationship in season one. You are attributing a bunch of shit to a short and quick post that was never even stated. Again, where is it even implied I said omegaverse fanfiction was canon? I specifically brought that up in relation to her saying she learned about Merthur from TikTok. It was the usual “Yall wasn’t there in the trenches with us” type of statement. Both you sorry ass hoes need to learn how to read. Maybe print out the post next time and annotate it or something. Idk. Yall are referring to a bunch of shit that was never said by me. Both of you are working entirely off of assumptions about me that are not at all true. The first fool said some “uwu ships wars are dumb” shit and you over here talking about white boys and “we gays”. Keep it cute cuz I’m definitely the bitch to make it ugly. I am NOT one of them smol bean bitches. Metaphorically speaking; the only trigger warning you gon get from me is the sound of the bullet firing.

You started with a good premise but now I think you’re actually insane. Merlin and Arthur had tension from day one. I was a child and I knew they were gay for one another. Gwen didn’t have chemistry with anyone - least of all Merlin. Merlin wasn’t interested in Gwen at all. Season 1 read as when the girl falls for the gay boy cuz he’s so nice and sweet. The actors shipped Merthur. The writers shipped Merthur and they wanted the fandom to ship Merthur. The only reason they probably didn’t explicitly put it in the show was because of the time we were in. The writers and fandom have always been gay af. Because right next to Merthur is Morgwen and after that, Gwen/Lancelot. This is not at all an example of what you’re talking about. Also, TikTok? Did you just start watching the show? Watch it again please. And then watch it another time. Like we were reading/writing Merthur fanfic in 2008. I was on mf livejournal reading A/B/O dynamics Merthur fanfics. Hello??!!! Like maybe it’s because I’ve been in this fandom for over a decade - Merthur was my first fandom - but I’m literally so affronted and flabbergasted. How do you even-

[waywardwhispersblaze]

about Vi's ending

So, I get that a lot of people are unsatisfied with Vi's story arc in Arcane. I feel unsatisfied too. Here are some of my reasons. I wrote this as a response to another post initially, but I wanted to elaborate a little bit more.

So we know that the question the writers had for Vi was "what would happen if Vi had no one left to protect?"

"she would fall in love" is a lovely answer. I don't hate it, but it does feel like the bare minimum they could come up with... and even that had to be stripped for time. For instance, what does she want to do for a living?

That's not a random question. Her lore in the game tells us that she ends up working as an enforcer. Arcane makes it difficult for her at the beginning (you know, the enforcers-killed-my-parents thing), but we all expect that it's coming regardless.

I know a lot of people here never liked the idea of Vi becoming an enforcer. Not me. Give me Enforcer!Vi! Just make it a story, instead of skipping over it.

They had her join the enforcers in s2 act I for all the wrong reasons (guilt + fear of losing Caitlyn + thinking violence is the answer to her problems), which is not a bad thing, that's expected at this point of the story. They did skip over her motivations and left a lot to read between the lines, and that's frustrating in itself but that's not the problem. My problem with it is that it doesn't go anywhere. How does she feel about working with them in the end? Now that she's no longer blinded by her rage towards the Chembarons and Jinx's actions? Is it really just for Caitlyn's sake? Is there room in there somewhere for wanting to be a protector to the city, like Grayson did, if she even cares about that at all? (it makes sense that she doesn't in Arcane, but what about in the future? she's still a protector at heart, even if she has no family left) If she does, how does she reconcile that with what the enforcers are to the Undercity, does she genuinely think she can do some good? I could answer some of these with "oh well, she does end up as Caitlyn's partner so I'm just gonna go with 'yes' for convenience". But I wish Arcane had answered this for me.

What about the enforcers, how do they feel about her? Do they respect her? How would she interact with them in the future? Her only friend there, Loris, died at the end of S2 (I'm annoyed about that. not mad, not sad. Just annoyed), so she's effectively alone.

I suppose the root of the problem is that I watched Arcane with the expectation that Vi would end up as a Piltover champion by the end of it. That's not an unreasonable expectation considering her lore, but I can accept that Arcane just wasn't about "ending" character stories or bringing them to their lore counterpart. That's fair. Even within the story of Arcane though, where she ends up isn't fully satisfying. She's physically in Piltover, but mentally she's in a place where she doesn't really belong anywhere except with 1 (one) person, and we still have no idea what she wants to do with her life (outside of banging Caitlyn that is). Don't get me wrong, I love caitvi! I love what they did with them as a pair! But I have so many questions about Vi specifically that are unresolved.

Maybe that's the point. Arcane's ending is an open ending after all. But Caitlyn had a story arc outside of her relationship with her. Jinx had a story arc outside of her relationship with her. Even if their overall stories are not over, the Arcane story does leave them both in a place where they have grown from what they went through and even if we never see them again, we can feel like their story had a proper conclusion. Arcane doesn't leave Vi with a conclusion outside of her romance arc. Or to be fair, maybe it is a conclusion, just no one that I like / was hoping for. I sort of get that her not being able to grow was the point (to further Jinx's development. A lot of their scenes together were always more about Jinx's development and framed from Jinx's POV, which is a different complaint and an entirely different post). Not having agency at all was the point. But where does she go from there? Genuine question. Her character arc doesn't feel finished.

A lot of my frustrations would be soothed over if we had the certainty of having spin-offs. But 1) nothing is ever certain, 2) if something's coming, it's probably far in the future, 3) if and when it does come, there's no guarantee that Vi wouldn't be more than a background character.

Unfortunately, the general feeling I get from the writers' interviews is that they do feel like they really did get her where they wanted, so I'm not particularly hopeful that they have more stories to tell with her. Outside of being Caitlyn's partner that is.

(no, I don't think they "don't care about" or "hate" her character by the way. That's twisting their words beyond recognition)

So that's why I can't feel fully satisfied with Vi's story. I still love Arcane. I'm still looking forward to seeing more of the Runeterra universe. But as someone who really liked Vi's character from the start, I'm left with crumbs. Hints of what could be, but never the full picture, and more questions than answers. And that's disheartening, to be honest.

[agenericplaceholdername]

Gotta be honest I really do not understand the “Kai is overprotective of Wyldfyre” headcanon (it most commonly appears when discussing Wyldfyre/Roby as a couple but could exist anywhere).

It seems like a parallel to Kai being overprotective of Nya back in S1 — but that was presented very clearly as an incorrect belief, disproven by Samurai X. I don’t get the benefit of regressing Kai to relearning the same lesson he learned a decade ago (in and out of universe).

He also was never overprotective of Nya’s dating life— at all? It’s honestly quite refreshing and I’ll actually give the writers some credit here.

Both in-universe and especially in fan discourse, Kai is like a big brother to Lloyd, so it’s a little strange that over-protective Kai never appears during the whole Lloyd/Harumi nightmare. Applying this conception of Kai only to the women in his life seems pretty odd, to say the least.

With Wyldfyre specifically, Kai is never over-protective of her in the show (I think the only thing that could remotely be construed this way is him telling Wyldfyre not to join them when her leg is broken, something that makes total sense, is backed up by Rontu, and ends up being the lesson Wyldfyre needs to learn). So I don’t see the purpose of a headcanon that undoes character development, is arguably sexist, and does not fit into actual show canon.

Thoughts? Maybe I’m off base here feel free to lmk.

[sufferu]

the characters are being way too protective of subaru( and he isnt too self destructive that fate was averted in arc 4 where he grew past that) I feel someone in the camp should flat out say no we know him for longer then you did in between arc 4 and know we had a year to bond with him. subaru isnt self destructive subaru knows what it means to be a knight and what happened in arc 4 shows him growing passed the mindset and pointing out that what you are doing what you are trying to do is damaging his mental health and risking him reverting ( we should not change how we treat subaru ) other then possibly trust what he says more if he were to warn us

…Okay, so, first of all, regressions are almost always a realistic possibility — is what I would say even if this wasn’t the case, but we also have an actual, massive, in-canon example of Subaru actually fully regressing: Arc 8. The existence of Natchuki Subawu is proof enough that Subaru is perfectly capable of regressing in terms of his self-destructive tendencies. And also that line in Arc 5 where he very nearly regresses as he chokes out for Capella to just kill him already. And also his canonical self-harm habit that literally nobody but Beatrice knew about despite the fact that it was continuing throughout the entire year between Arcs 4 and 5. Machines complete levels and are one-and-done, but human psychology is rarely that simple.

On knighthood: unless you are Ferris, being a knight in the world of Re:Zero very explicitly means physically protecting your liege lord. And in the worst case scenario, this means dying in their place. That’s just — the job. Julius even refers to the soldiers dying in the first fight against the Witch Cult as them “fulfilling their duty as knights.” Furthermore, in Arc 8 Priscilla refers to Subaru’s actions as Natchuki Subawu (including All That, and it was A Lot) as him being “a brilliant knight.” If being a knight does not mean being prepared to defend the lives of other people (especially the ones they serve), often at great personal cost — then I have no idea what else the job title is supposed to entail, lol. Emilia does not want Subaru to die for her, and Subaru has mainly internalized his role as her knight as him standing by her side as a loyal confidant — but he HAS still been training to fight for her sake, and I think it’s pretty clear that he’s prepared to die for her sake if need be. —And it REALLY says something that the version of Subaru that gets referred to as “a brilliant knight” is SPECIFICALLY Natchuki Subawu at the end of Arc 8 (or at least, Subaru gets called a brilliant knight in explicit reference to the actions he just took as Natchuki Subawu).

And then — like, how would YOU react to learning that someone you knew had apparently died SEVENTEEN TIMES behind everyone’s backs? And not just learning about it in the abstract, but actively watching it happen? Often in very brutal and nasty ways, sometimes involving torture, sometimes involving people that he now calls some of his dearest friends, sometimes involving him apparently being arguably incapable of recognizing danger on the same level as other people? And also now he has developed a self-harm habit that he has managed to keep almost entirely hidden from the people who were supposed to — and have already pretty much completely failed in — looking out for him? I think being overprotective — especially in the immediate aftermath — is a pretty understandable reaction to something like that.

[b-skarsgard]

Exclusive Interview: Bill Skarsgård On Making Orlok His Own In NOSFERATU

Bill Skarsgård has been in the Nosferatu loop since writer/director Robert Eggers first began conceiving it almost 10 years ago. This was before Skarsgård had his horror-star-making turn as Pennywise in It, so initially, he auditioned for the part of Friedrich Harding, friend of central couple Thomas and Ellen Hutter. Then he read for and landed the part of Thomas before the project fell apart. Nosferatu, in fact, went through a few stops and starts before finally coming to fruition, with Skarsgård ultimately taking on the titular role of the hundreds-of-years-old vampire Count Orlok.

Eggers’ reimagining of the 1922 silent landmark gives Orlok a new look but the same goal: to possess Ellen (Lily-Rose Depp) and drain the life from those around her. The film, which also stars Nicholas Hoult as Thomas, Aaron Taylor-Johnson as Harding, and Willem Dafoe as occult expert Professor Albin Eberhart Von Franz, presents Orlok as a resuscitated, centuries-old nobleman driven by obsession as much as bloodlust. (You can read more of this interview in FANGORIA #26, on sale very soon.)

read at the link or under the cut

Do you happen to know what Eggers’ change in thinking was, from seeing you in one of the heroic roles to playing the villain?

I don’t know if there are any heroic roles in the movie [laughs], apart from Ellen, in a way. I don’t know what changed in him, but that’s just how it ended up. At one point I was devastated because when it did finally look like Nosferatu was coming around for the third time, he was looking into other actors for Thomas, and then I heard that Nick got the part, and I was like, OK, what about the Harding role?

I also once read for that one. And then Aaron got it, and I was like, OK, I have to divorce myself from the idea of being part of this movie now, even though I felt so, I don’t know, destined to be a part of it. So it was a surprise and shock to me when he approached me with Orlok. In a lot of ways, it was a much more daunting task to undertake as an actor. It was as terrifying as it was exciting.

This is obviously a very different Orlok than we saw in the previous versions of Nosferatu. How did you view the character when you first took the role, and how did you develop him with Eggers?

Robert had obviously done a lot of thinking about what his Orlok would be like. And when he reached out to me about the possibility of playing him, I think he was a lot more confident that I could do it than I was [laughs]. But I was so thrilled for the opportunity, and I told him, “OK, now we’ll have to convince everyone”; we had to submit to the studio and whatnot.

We had this kind of 10-day workshop where he shared with me a lot of the material he had used for inspiration—different performances in different movies, what Orlok would have been like when he was alive, all that kind of stuff. And also how he saw Orlok’s look, which was quite specific. Then I started working on it.

I began with voice memos, and then I would send little clips of myself doing certain things. This was all before the actual screen test; it was all during COVID. Those 10 days were a very deep dive into the process of developing this guy, and proof for myself that I could do it. It was a great sort of dating phase with Robert as well, to see how we would collaborate. Auditions are usually horrible, but with this particular way of doing it, it was quite creative.

Then the movie fell apart again, so when we actually got to shoot it, I believe it had been two and a half years since I did the tape. So I almost had to restudy what I did for the tape in order to start re-prepping for the movie because, at that point, I was at the same place of, how the hell did I do this, or can I do it? I had to go through all that again, you know?

What were some of Eggers’ specific inspirations for Orlok that he shared with you, and were there any you came up with yourself?

There were a lot of different things. There was a Bulgarian movie called Time of Violence—a great movie, over four hours long, set in Bulgaria in the 17th century. And there’s this guy, the antagonist of the movie, taking over a village and forcibly converting Christians, and it’s incredibly violent and horrible. That performance was something Robert talked a lot about in terms of who Orlok could have been when he was alive. We talked about that one a lot, and various different things—little snippets from here and there.

But that was during the very early stages. Once you start delving deeper into a character, hopefully, you start getting inspiration from whatever it is you’re actually working on, and that creates seeds that come out of it. Robert also wrote a backstory for Orlok, just a few pages, that he shared with me, which was also very helpful.

You said before that there aren’t many heroes in Nosferatu except for Ellen. Would you consider Orlok a villain, or do you see him more as a tragic character?

He’s the romantic lead, isn’t he [laughs]? Yeah, it’s tricky. Is he a villain? Yeah, of course; I mean, he’s Nosferatu, he’s Dracula, he’s one of the most, if not the most iconic horror villain there is. But I think the script has nuances that make it more complex, more layered, in the sense that the movie is sort of a love triangle with Ellen in the middle. She’s torn between a good, stable, benevolent, loving husband and something that is very powerful, very destructive, but also very alluring to her, and you watch her being torn between these two forces.

How was it working with the heavy prosthetics that transformed you into Orlok?

David White did the prosthetics and the design, and he’s incredibly talented. And Stuart Richards and his wife were the ones who applied it on me every day. You tend to become very close to those people, because they’re the ones you spend the most time with when you’re playing a character like this. Just immensely talented, and very, very sweet.

And then there’s the process of getting it on for the first time and you’re like, OK, what works and what doesn’t work? How do my face and my expressions translate onto this new face that they’ve glued on top of mine? It becomes a whole process where you need to familiarize yourself with how your performance is being translated through the prosthetics. But I never felt like Orlok without the makeup, so the prosthetics and the costume were all pieces that I needed to perform him.

Since you were attached to the role for a few years, did the concept of Orlok change at all from the beginning to what we see in the final film?

Actually, not too much. Robert shared with me, when I was being considered for the role, a digital drawing he had made of Orlok, and that was pretty close to what he ended up looking like in the actual movie. Obviously, there were little changes here and there, but the essence of it, the mustache and so forth, stayed pretty close.

A lot of the character’s look is, what did a Romanian or Hungarian nobleman look like in the 16th century? As you probably know, Robert does extensive research and tries to be as historically accurate as possible in anything he does. So, the look is a representation of that. It’s a historically accurate Romanian nobleman [laughs]. And the same with the costumes. It was pretty specific, and what Orlok looks like in the movie is pretty close to what Robert initially envisioned.

Can you talk about working with Lily-Rose Depp?

It was an absolute pleasure working with Lily. I haven’t seen many people with such raw talent as she possesses, and how much she gives to the movie. It’s not an easy role at all; it was so emotionally demanding, and the way she could just turn it on every single time, take after take, was awe-inspiring.

The first few scenes I did with her, I wasn’t even acting; I was just a shadow hand behind the camera. And I could just see how gifted she was, and the nuances she brought. Then once we started doing scenes together, I couldn’t appreciate it as much because I was also performing, and we were dancing together. But she’s incredible, and an undeniable force in the movie. •

[itsscriptory]

Another Post About Showing and Telling

I feel like it’s a rite of passage for a writing blog to talk about show, don’t tell, so I’ll take a crack at it. 

First of all, to get it out of the way, show, don’t tell is good advice for specific situations, but it’s been taken to mean always show, never tell and that’s not helpful. If you really want to paint with broad brushstrokes, then the better advice would be: Show more than tell. Showing and telling should both be tools in your writer’s toolbox. 

But why should we show more than tell? Because showing is the key to the reader's emotional experience with your story. There are many posts and books out there that go over how to turn your telling into showing (like using active verbs instead of passive, for example, or using concrete, specific details in your descriptions), but I think it’s important to fully digest why we’re making those changes and why the reasoning will push us to become better writers. 

It all comes down to emotion. Writing For Emotional Impact by Karl Iglesias encourages writers to start thinking to themselves: “I’m in the emotion-delivery business, and my job is to evoke emotions in a reader.” Dialogue, theme, setting, pacing, character development, word choice, structure, POV, showing and telling. These are all tools a writer uses in varying proportions to best manipulate a reader’s emotions. The good news is that when a reader picks up a book, they’re willing to be manipulated. In fact, they hope to be. The tough news is that you have to deliver on a sentence by sentence, paragraph by paragraph, scene by scene, and chapter by chapter basis. But that’s okay, because you’re a writer, dammit, and this struggle is where the art of the craft is. 

Showing is where the emotional complexities of our characters, theme, and plot can be revealed gradually without giving too much away too early and robbing engagement from the reader. Showing is what makes the resolution and the journey satisfying. So you can see how much weight it carries and why we want more of that than telling. We’re trying to evoke emotion from the reader, not talk at them like we’re recounting a dream we had last night (yawn). And it’s easier to evoke emotion if we keep them curious. Engaged.

Part of revealing the story gradually through showing is planting evidence for a conclusion that you leave the reader to make themselves, or a conclusion that you will reveal later. Donald Maas in The Emotional Craft of Fiction writes, “The ingredient behind effective showing can be summed up in this word: subtext. When there’s a feeling we’re not being told, but it is evident anyway, that underlying feeling is the subtext. It’s the unspoken emotional truth.” And then a fandom is born and continues to thrive for decades after the show ended! Really, though. Subtext is an ingredient in showing, which fosters engagement, which makes the reader feel something. Sometimes passionately. Every story I love and keep coming back to in one form or another has that special place in my heart because of how it made me feel.

I’ll try to give a simple example here to illustrate subtext and reader engagement at work. Using setting and a couple action beats as an opportunity for subtext, let’s say a character and her sister arrive at their grandmother’s house. Character A remains standing in the corner when invited in, hugging herself, frowning at the green knitted blanket hanging over the couch that looks like the color of nausea. Character B walks easily into the living room, running her hand over the green blanket that reminds her of nature and wellness. In Character B's perspective, she admires her grandmother's craftiness. But it's only in Character's A perspective that we notice the store tag on the blanket. Who do we think has the better relationship with their grandmother, given the evidence? Which one seems more naïve or eager to see her grandmother in a certain light? What assumptions can we make about the grandmother? Might she be putting on a performance of being grandmotherly? The mental work the reader does here would be completely thwarted if the scene had started with “Hannah didn’t like her grandmother because she valued material wealth and appearances over forming a genuine connection with her family.” We can show that instead over time by filtering the world through the perspectives of our characters, and even making it pack an emotional punch if we’re strategic about it.

But I had mentioned that contrary to what show, don’t tell asks us to do, telling isn’t something we should throw away. It can be a tool in its own right. 

Telling is explaining, and explaining keeps people distant from what’s happening in the story. How many times has an “I love you” felt kinda meh in a story because that character hasn’t earned that confession by showing their love through their actions or making some sort of sacrifice? How many times have your eyes glazed over while reading the fourth paragraph of an info dump? How many times, when talking about a book you just read, have you said “well, the first 80 pages were slow…” because it was all backstory? Or maybe a story is entirely forgettable because the telling leaves nothing to the imagination. Donald Maas writes, “Put on a page what a character feels and there’s a pretty good chance that, paradoxically, what the reader feels is nothing.”

However, telling has one thing on showing: efficiency. If a book only showed, then it could go on forever and ever. So a writer has to learn how to weave both showing and telling into the story to control the pacing and delivery of information. If you want subtext or you want something to be vague on purpose, then you’ll probably want to show. If you want to deliver information quickly and with clarity, then you might want to try telling. Does it need to make logical sense to understand the upcoming scene? Maybe tell. Is this transition unimportant to the story and you don’t want to linger? Try telling and see how it works! Ask your beta readers how it worked for them. Of course, if you’re writing in the literary genre, you might be doing a whole lot of telling because what propels the reader to the next page and the next chapter is the form, the prose, and the sheer depth of the exploration of flawed characters. 

It’s all about balance. And practice. Next time you read a book and you find yourself moved, try to figure out how the author just evoked that feeling from you. Was it stated plainly, or was it shown through action? Was it stated plainly after a whole book’s worth of setup through subtext? Was it unexpected? What was the balance of showing and telling that led to it? Or, if you find your focus trailing off, try to figure out why. Then, when you’re editing your own work, you’ll have the tools you need to identify the weak points and make revisions. And it’s okay (even expected) if the perfect balance of showing and telling doesn’t occur in the first draft. The Artful Edit by Susan Bell (highly recommended) talks a lot about the revisions that went into The Great Gatsby. You'll find that his writing struggles are comfortingly familiar. Luckily, he certainly had a wonderful editor :)

For further reading/watching: 

[VIDEO] ShaelinWrites—Show, Don’t Tell | what it means and how to use it

[BOOK] Showing and Telling in Fiction by Marcy Kennedy [BOOK] A Writer’s Guide to Active Setting by Mary Buckham

[hootshooch]

For Alias, anything related to The Urge is obvious—but something more specific to her would probably be related to her being a living construct and not actually human. Of course she doesn't remember that when they meet Ethel, but she still feels distinctly inhuman in a way that she can tell there's a rift between her and other humans (like Wyll and Gale). Ethel would be able to sense they're a construct regardless and would poke fun at it in a way that makes them feel like they're a monster.

"Fancy yourself a hero? You're more like me than you are like them!"

"You think you're human? Ha! Even your name is fake!"

Muldred is a less developed character only because I haven't really played as them yet, but they're a tiefling because their father was the architect of Moonrise Towers (Morfred/the Infernal Mason) and was born shortly after he made the pact with Raphael to defeat Ketheric. Everyone in their family aside from their uncle (Halfred) died to the Shadow Curse or passed on soon after escaping, and Morfred never told anyone the details of the pact he made, so all they really know is that whatever made them a tiefling is connected to the Curse somehow. They carry a lot of grief and unconsciously shoulder some of the blame for it even though they can logically reason that they've done nothing wrong.

"Aw, is someone afraid of the dark?"

"Do you miss your daddy? I'll send you right back where you came from so you can burn in the Hells together!"

anyway. rotating them in my brain

Ethel has personalized vicious mockeries for our companions. for example - Is there still rat stuck in your teeth, slave? for Astarion, Why would Shar love you when no one else does? for SH and etc.

What would a personalized mockery intended for your Tav/Durge sound like?

[nelithic]

nasturtium :   describe your muse’s relationship with their birthplace ,   or homeland .

▀▀ 　BOTANICAL HEADCANONS　₊　

despite what she would have you believe considering she betrayed sombron during the war a thousand years ago and turned her back on gradlon, ultimately nel is ambivalent, leaning lukewarm.

i consistently find it telling that ( as far as i'm aware; i definitely haven't seen all of her potential post-battle lines, etc. yet ) you never actually see nel speak poorly of sombron or of her experiences growing up in gradlon. as the player, you assume it must have been terrible because of the distress she shows during the flashback sequences in the fell xenologue and the fact that she escaped from it eventually. but nel herself never says that she had suffered there or that she's personally glad to have left it behind; the times she does mention gradlon or anything related to fell practice, she just tells it like it was and doesn't seek to either apologize for it or justify it.

looking at her diamant C in particular:

nel: you are no doubt aware that i am a child of the fell dragon sombron. despite our differences in heritage, you are also a child of royalty. we have this in common. i never understood my father. i thought perhaps you could share some experiences with yours.

right off the bat, nel relates herself to diamant as both being royal children, and the only difference in circumstance she sees is that she's a dragon and he's human. nothing about sombron being a known tyrant and force of evil; there's a notable lack of anything resembling "i know what sombron did is evil / i'm not trying to liken him and your father at all", anything to indicate a moral judgment or even personal desire to un-associate herself with sombron. if anything, she follows it with "i never understood my father", and is asking for diamant's insight in hopes that she might understand him better.

after diamant expresses surprise and says that things are done differently in brodia, she says:

nel: i see. unlike your father, lord sombron preferred to silence all dissent with execution. to object to his decree was out of the question. to survive, there was no choice but to obey.

nel is naturally pretty monotone in her delivery usually, but i think it's still worth noting that there's a lack of anger, frustration, or even particular sadness in her explanation of how things were done in fell!gradlon.

in the end, it's diamant who makes the value judgment:

diamant: i can't even imagine living under such a vile dictatorship. i'm so sorry.

to which all nel has to say, still without much emotion, is:

nel: there is no need to apologize. that is all in the past for me now. hearing your experiences has taught me a great deal. i hope we will speak again soon.

it's left unclear exactly what diamant's perspective has "taught" her in this exchange, though it can be argued, based on the trajectory of their supports later, that it's the beginning of nel understanding the importance of objective third-party observation and assessment on the nature of someone's character, particularly leadership in their specific case.

given that nel spent a war and some time with the fell!cast of engage in her own world after betraying her father, it's unlikely this is the first time she's heard value judgments on sombron's rule and gotten a sense of what other people feel about him and his leadership style outside of the gradlon bubble. i think we do see an objective acknowledgement of that difference in perspective in this scene, particularly in her final "that is all in the past for me now". there does appear to be a recognition that there were elements that could be considered cruel where she had come from. but between this support and the fact that she continues to never speak ill of gradlon or sombron throughout the rest of her in-game dialogue, it feels as though that way of seeing it is something she only became aware of through hearing what other people had to say about it, rather than coming from herself and how she felt about it.

i think her absence of value judgment is particularly apparent when considered alongside rafal, who actually does have lines ( i think it's one of his post-battle lines but i'm not remembering exactly where off the top of my head right now ) where he casts aspersions on sombron.

i could keep going, but it'd probably just be additional discussion around the same point, which ultimately is: nel has since recognized after the fact, after seeing more of the world and realizing how different it is outside of gradlon, that her homeland is a brutal, and even possibly terrible, place. however, i don't think she necessarily feels that way herself fully. for nel, who was surrounded by that consistent environment growing up and saw it as normal, she approaches it more with a " it just was what it was " kind of lens. she sees it as neither good nor bad, sometimes one or the other.

it's notable that, though she aligned herself with the divine dragon's goals eventually, the reason she originally left gradlon at all was because life there threatened the person she wanted to protect, not because she necessarily hated it there or wanted ( initially ) to bring down sombron.

[apollos-boyfriend]

this is like. all fully speculation. but i was rewatching some of jaiden’s nuzlocke videos, and them combined with a recent clip of hers i saw talking about how she’s not even sure why quackity chose her for the qsmp made me connect why he might’ve picked her. because like. i think nearly everyone was a bit shocked, if not confused, to see her on the lineup. despite having been in the scene for a while—her first public animations were for ihascupquake, after all—jaiden isn’t your first thought when you think of minecraft youtubers. as far as i’m aware, she was on one smp before the qsmp—epicsmp, and we all know how that ended.

no, jaiden isn’t who you’d think of when you think minecraft youtuber. but she is who you’d think of when you think storyteller. which, yeah, is kind of obvious. there’s a whole subcategory of youtube for animated storytellers, and jaiden’s been one of the front runners for years now. but the thing about jaiden specifically is that she doesn’t just tell stories. she shapes them. you can really see that the most with her animated nuzlockes. she’s given scenarios and events that are largely random and arbitrary, fully just game coding and out of her control, and she turns them into her story. her platinum nuzlocke specifically highlights this with the giratina, two jaidens storyline she creates to explain her resetting the run and attempting the elite four again.

live mcrp HEAVILY relies on having to go with the flow of the game, and learning to work around in-game mechanics and limitations to create a storyline out of. things that are story-important, like pets or npcs, are fragile and can be taken away at any moment, be it by a mob, glitch, or player error. you have to be able to think on your feet to not only work around it, but create a narrative to explain that decision fitting into the canon and story instead of just taking it at face-value. and that’s exactly what jaiden’s been doing for years now with a lot of her gaming-based content. quackity would need people accustomed versatile storytelling as much as he’d need people accustomed to survival minecraft itself, and jaiden is nothing short of an expert at her craft

[silverspleen]

STUPID SHIP MEME DRAWINGS.

I just think they should kiss maybe?

Obsessed (positive??) with the dynamic of guy who betrays his country so he can run off with the militia he's been working with because he gets a case of loyalty feelings so bad he goes and blows himself up X morally upstanding traumatic backstory woman having the worst fucking time of her life (again) who really just needs someone to be as fanatically loyal as possible to her, as a person who is really into the inherent eroticism of the hierarchical military power dynamic focus on loyalty and the use of "yes ma'am" as I love you.

Obsessed (negative) with the propaganda implications that we seem to have ignored of the fact that the three most important people in an arabic woman's life are 2 (two) white guys and her brother, who betrays her and becomes a villain in the later games, and the fucking insidious-ass narrative choice of placing one of said white guys in said militia as like, the tacit fact that this organization is ok only because the western white guys are cool with it. Stop introducing more ULF people just to kill them!!! I SEE YOU WRITERS!!! YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM ME!!!!!!

because, once again, the character dynamic? I am sick for it. He dropped a building on himself for her and then came back???? He came back???? He could have gone anywhere but he came back to her???? I'm unwell. I think I have covid. I need to go lie down.

Anyway my city now my characters now smashing them together like barbies watching that .gif of them staring at each other eighty times reading all the fanfiction goodbye

you shouldn't blow yourself up in the furnace I want to blow myself up in the furnace for you as my own personal choice and you should order me to do it because you're such a good leader what is wrong with youuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgh *gnaws on furniture*

WE DON'T EVEN GET TO SEE HIM COME BACK TO HER. THANK YOU FIC WRITERS YOU KNOW THAT REUNION MUST BE SO ANGST THE COMPLEX DYNAMIC OF SACRIFICING YOURSELF FOR SOMEONE AND MAKING IT OUT AND BACK TO THEM AGAIN!!!!!!! THE GUILT! THE YEARNING! THE LOYALTY! I AM GOING TO EXPLODE.

[kurithedweeb]

Mother called him zvanyalken, demonblood. She called him enkyaiken, Enki’s blood. She calls them livyahken, frostblood.

“You are Travis, son of Elsbeth,” Mother told him when he was young. “You are a son of Gal’ruk, and one day you will protect its people from the forces of the Warlock Valkrum as I have been, and you will be one of a long line of warriors.”

Travis ran his hand over his mother’s embroidery project. This one was a new quilt for his bed. His old one didn’t cover him completely anymore and blizzard season was coming. He liked the blizzard season. Mother didn’t go out imp hunting as often, so she didn’t get hurt as often. He liked watching her work, her stitches were so neat and straight.

“Was he always bad, Mother?”

She added another stitch to the arctic fox running across the hem. “I’ve never known him not to be, but there was a time before I knew him,” she said. “I thought he was a sweet man when we first met, but that wasn’t really him.”

Travis was zvanyalken. He was a shape-changer, a skin-shifter. He was born with horns, with fangs and claws. He spent most days squishing his insides into human-shapes. He spent most days trying to look like Mother for as long as he could.

He did not look like Mother that day. That day, he had horns and fangs and claws. The points of his teeth caught on his lip when he spoke, his nails tore through his mother’s beautiful stitches like a knife if he wasn’t careful, if he didn’t dull them down.

“Was he a different person in the skin you knew?” Travis asked.

“No, no. I don’t think he was a different person at all. He was only pretending to be someone else.”

Mother set down her needle and embroidery. She tipped his chin up and ran a hand over his hair. Over one of his horns.

“You’re not a different person when you shift skins either, Travis,” she said. “No matter what form you take, snowflake, you are still Travis, son of Elsbeth. You always will be.”

His lip bled when he smiled, caught on a fang. It was healed by the time he licked the blood away.

“Come sit with me, snowflake. I’ll teach you how to make a fox.”

She guided his hands through embroidering a smaller, much worse fox trailing after the first. The conversation drifted from his mind, and when he woke up one day soon after in the skin of an arctic fox, she brushed his coat until it shined and made him a nest in front of the hearth until he shifted back because he wasn’t big enough to reach his bed.