#in which the author shoves secondary characters out of the story so our main characters can f

[siderealscribblings]

0 Years, 0 Months, 15 Days

Good news; the Sovereign didn't think Furina was crazy when she said her reflection told her to find him. Whatever enchantment had spoken to her had kindly filled him in shortly after he had "woken up" and promised him something that Furina might be able to return to him.

The bad news was that Furina had no idea what it was he lacked other than tact, social grace, manners, and fashion sense. Perhaps her fate was to teach a surly dragon how to at least act like a gentleman. 

"Explain to me why I need an overcoat and an undercoat," Neuvillette demanded from the other side of the changing screen.

"Because one's appearance often forms the base of a first impression," Furina sighed, glad that he had finally stopped defying her and put on a damn shirt.

"That's foolish," Neuvillette huffed, tugging a jacket over the top of the screen.

"Be that as it may, even Mondstatians are not so libertine as to walk around naked...outside of certain colonies, I'm told," Furina said. She had privately hoped that her new ally would be amenable to taking direction from her, but the monster that looked like a man had a temperament to match, questioning everything from Furina's choice in the coronation ceremony to the decision to move him into the Palais apartments across from hers. Why seemed to be his favorite word and Furina had learned early on that he was quick to sniff out a lie told to get him to shut up. Five days into her short reign and she was already receiving so much lip from someone who ought to be standing at her side and helping like he was supposed to.

How am I supposed to lead someone who won't be led…or even be fully honest with me? Furina thought, looking up from her book as Neuvillette stepped around the side of the screen, buttoning up a starchy white shirt to hide a row of blue and white scales. I dump all my secrets at his feet like Mirror Lady told me to and he won't even give me his real name!

It was getting hard to buy the "I don't remember anything concrete about my previous lives" excuse that "Neuvillette" trucked out, but calling him on it would invite too many inconvenient questions about Furina's own murky past. He clearly didn't remember how to dress properly, that much was clear; at least Furina retained an impeccable sense of fashion.

"I can barely move in these clothes," Neuvillette grumbled, scowling as a talon tore a button off his shirt.

"Thankfully sitting on a bench requires very little movement," Furina said, wondering if they made nail trimmers to maintain dragon claws. "Unfortunately your…lineage is very difficult to hide so I'm afraid you'll have to get used to neck to toe coverage."

"Or you can be truthful for a change and tell them you have enlisted the services of a dragon," Neuvillette replied. 

"Yes, splendid idea; let's publicly announce to the world that a Sovereign has returned!" Furina said, clapping her hands.

"Good; glad you agree."

"I was being sarcastic ," Furina said, rubbing her eyes. Intelligent as he was, the concept of double-speak either eluded Neuvillette or he pointedly ignored every joke or sarcastic quip from Furina as a matter of principle. She didn't know which explanation was more annoying.

"Deceiving Heaven means deceiving everyone. It's essential that we avoid unnecessary attention as much as possible and that means convincing everyone around us that I am an ordinary goddess and you are my ordinary subordinate , " Furina said with such certainty, despite not knowing how she knew such a thing. Whenever she thought back to her life before standing on the stage, staring at her own reflection, her thoughts would inevitably turn back to her mission at hand. A little voice told her that she didn't have time to wonder where she came from or how she seemed to know things that she knew; there was too much to do here and now, despite Neuvillette's endless line of questioning.

"And what happens when I exceed my mortal lifespan, unchanged by time?" Neuvillette asked, scowling at the gloves Furina foisted upon him. "Do we just lie until your mission is accomplished?"

"Yes, that is precisely what we are going to do!" Furina snapped, a migraine straining her temples. " That is the plan for now, and if you don't like it-"

Furina reigned her anger in, taking a deep breath through her nose to steady herself. "...are you going to cooperate with me, or aren't you?"

"I said I would," Neuvillette said, eyes narrowing at Furina. "Do you doubt my integrity?"

"I doubt you understand what cooperation means if your behavior over the past few days is any indication," Furina said, folding her arms and returning his glare. "You cannot undermine me in front of my subjects; I don't expect blind obedience from everyone I lead-"

"Only in matters of fashion, it seems," Neuvillette muttered.

"... but I would hope you understand that other humans will interpret your questioning as a challenge," Furina said much to Neuvillette's irritation.

"Must humanity read into everything for hidden meaning?" Neuvillette sighed, rolling his eyes. "A question is simply a question."

"That depends on how it is phrased and when it is asked and in what company it is asked," Furina explained. "And the wrong question at the wrong time will invite suspicion that we can hardly afford. So if you must raise an issue with me, I would prefer you do it in private."

Neuvillette's brow knit, clearly unhappy with having everything from his clothing to his speech constrained by a bossy little woman who didn't even have the power to pour a cup of tea. Once or twice he considered abandoning the charlatan to weave her lies on her own, but a faint tug of energy called to him. She had something of his; something he couldn't be sure killing her would release.

Even if killing Furina would grant him wholeness…cutting down someone whose worst crime was being annoying seemed wrong to Neuvillette. Not just wrong; unjust. And for someone who knew so little about himself, Neuvillette couldn't afford to disregard the tug of instinct.

"Fine…would you like these complaints to be written as well?" Neuvillette sighed.

"Was that genuine sarcasm I detected?" Furina chuckled, patting Neuvillette on the shoulder. "Worry not; I'm sure I'll come up with a solution that will see us rid of one another before too long. Until then…it's best you follow my lead."

Neuvillette's mouth twisted into a bitter scowl as he studied his reflection, every trace of draconic lineage concealed behind starchy linens and poofy neck-scarves. Best for who?

Read More...

Chapter 1

The Games of Divinity (Neuvillette Knows AU)

[thecloserkin]

fic rec: we get dark, only to shine by anghraine

fandom: The Borgias (Showtime 2011)

pairing: Cesare Borgia/Lucrezia Borgia

word count: 168k, unfinished

Is it canon: Yes

Is it explicit: Yes

Is it endgame: Yes

Is it shippable: Yes

Bottom line: hi my name is asdfghhkl i’ve been in fandom half my life and this is without a doubt a top 5 fic for me. i mean i got to the end and i went right back to the beginning to reread it

This is a Season 1 AU where Cesare and Lucrezia are each other’s first loves, as they ought to have been. First of all I absorbed more Borgia history via this fic than three published biographies put together (Sarah Bradford, Lucrezia Borgia: Life Love and Death in Renaissance Italy; GJ Meyer, The Borgias: The Secret History; Christopher Hibbert, The Borgias and Their Enemies). I found myself looking forward to the end of every chapter so I could devour the footnotes. This is a meticulously researched, perfectly paced, ingeniously plotted gem of a story that made all the historical details relevant. It is also a very cerebral story, which is not to say it didn’t sucker-punch me in the gut, just that it isn’t rough around the edges — it is SHARP. Lucrezia and Cesare are whip-smart; all the secondary characters are smart; the author is obviously brill and you, dear reader, better bring both your brain cells if you want to keep up.

To set the scene, we are in Rome at the beginning of the papacy of Alexander VI aka Rodrigo Borgia, the first pope to openly acknowledge his children gotten out of wedlock. The primary thing to understand about the Borgias is they are FOREIGNERS. They are from Valencia and their native tongue is Catalan; and while Cesare, Juan, Lucrezia and Jofre may have been born in Rome, foreigners they will forever remain in the eyes of the xenophobic populace. Rome is a cesspit of backstabbing and the Borgias are an unusually close-knit, insular clan. Here is an overview of Cesare and Lucrezia’s codependent-from-the-cradle relationship, intensified ofc by the hostile environment of Rome:

At first, Lucrezia would scream whenever the nurse took her away, and sneak after him at all hours. Cesare scarcely spoke, except to her. They looked like kicked puppies.

Yet it had always been that way with them: Lucrècia a little queen reigning over their games, Cèsar devoted to her.

he never paid much attention to other women around Lucrezia, even when she was little more than a prattling child.

Cesare had woken with Lucrezia in his bed more times than he could count. At eight, twelve, a newly-returned sixteen, he often opened his eyes to his sister sprawled beside him or curled up under his blankets. On more anxious nights, when she had an unpleasant dream or felt particularly troubled, he would find her pressed against him

“When he left for Perugia, one might have believed him going to his gallows. Their letters must have stripped a forest.”

Ok not to be an incest junkie on main but shoutout to the Childhood Bedsharing Trope. “When he left for Perguia” is when he went away to university, leaving Lucrezia disconsolate. When he came home following this extended absence is when her feelings for him flowered into sexual desire. The fic opens on the eve of Lucrezia’s marriage to Giovanni Sforza. Her impending nuptials are causing her anxiety:

”But I am a Borgia. I should not be afraid of anything.” “Nonsense,” said Cesare, “I fear dozens of things, myself.” “You?”

So much to unpack here:

being a Borgia means never letting the world see your weakness

Lucrezia’s hero-worship!!! she obviously thinks he’s the bravest person she knows

Cesare confessing his vulnerability, his fears, chief of which is “I fear most of all for your happiness. I shall not be able to ensure it from so far.” i am y e l l i n g

To relieve her anxiety about pleasing her bridegroom, she convinces Cesare to give her KISSING LESSONS. That’s how it starts. Did someone say I Want My Brother to Be My First because I love this song.

“Is there no one else?” he demanded. She tilted her head inquisitively. “Is there a man you would rather instructed me? Really, is there another man you would permit to touch me? To even remain alone with me? Juan? Should I ask him instead?” “No!” Cesare scrambled to his feet.

She knows exactly how to push his buttons, doesn’t she? She baits him with the idea of another man touching her—specifically Juan, his archrival—an idea guaranteed to get his blood up, and Cesare instantly shoves his scruples aside. A kissing lesson ensues, Lucrezia is married shortly thereafter, and that’s how things stand when this fic diverges from canon: Cesare stops by Pesaro to visit Lucrezia.

Now we all know how Lucrezia’s first marriage went—her husband treated his horse a sight better than he treated her. And we see her struggle with telling Cesare the truth about the abuse, because the importance of the Sforza alliance must stay Cesare’s hand from his natural impulse to pulverize anyone who hurts Lucrezia. I like how this fic draws a distinction between the family’s reaction and Cesare’s reaction:

as soon as Cesare understood, he would be set on vengeance. Any brother would, even one less devoted than Cesare. Jofrè would probably cheer him on. Juan would have strung Sforza up already. And of course, Cesare was Cesare.

Juan and Jofre are her brothers too, and neither of them would have let Sforza’s behavior slide. Cesare, though, is on a whole other level. Cesare actually sees red. The most romantic thing he does in this entire story is play chess with Lucrezia all night to spare her the nightly ordeal of marital rape. That was the first night. The second day he has Micheletto loosen the girth of Sforza’s saddle to cause a nonfatal riding accident which—honestly it makes way more sense thematically for the brother who loves her more than life to do this, than for an untutored stableboy whom Lucrezia met 5 minutes ago to suddenly exhibit master assassin skills?!! Fuck canon, this is what happened. Also fuck insta-love, I’m so glad Cesare and Lucrezia are head over heels for each other rather than some randos.

His pulse quickened in his throat, yet it was nothing he had not seen before, when he read to her until she fell asleep, talked to her as she sulked in her room, sat at her bedside wiping cloths all over her feverish head.

I’m so soft for this!!! Tfw it’s not the physical proximity to your sibling—that part’s familiar—what’s new is your feelings shifting like tectonic plates?? Askjdfkdjfd.

The thing that really precipitates the affair is Lucrezia’s brute of a husband, obviously. This fic has one or two Giovanni Sforza POVS and it does such a great job of depicting that discomfort of being laughed at by people smarter than you. Sforza was strong-armed into this match and he feels slighted by the choice of bride—because she’s bastard-born, because she’s Spanish, he thinks he’s married down. This brings him into inevitable conflict with Cesare, who will brook no insult to Lucrezia on his watch:

“My sister, Lord Sforza, is a daughter of Rome. Roman-born, Roman-bred, Roman to her fingertips. Is it not so, Lucretia?”

The POWER of this line—remember when i said the Borgias are forever seen as outsiders despite being BORN IN ROME? i felt that.

Perhaps their mother was right, and she loved him too much. Too much, at any rate, to spare that kind of love for anyone else. Sforza was a monster, but if he had not been, she still would not have loved him.

Vanozza is very perceptive; she fears her children’s all-consuming love for each other leaves little room for other attachments AND SHE WAS RIGHT. To put it baldly:

They had spent their hearts on each other, all they had to give, with only scraps left for anyone else.

“I am your brother, Lucrezia … There is a word for this. I would not have anyone say it of you.” “A word for what? … For loving me more than the baronessa Ursula, or some other woman you only half-know?”

THERE IS A WORD, Cesare intimates. He won’t even say it aloud. But this black cloud of rumor and innuendo that hangs over their family is not going to dissipate just because they refrain from giving into their feelings. The first time Cesare heard someone call his sister a whore, she was literally four years old. They’ve had to guard their hearts their whole lives because there is no one they can trust outside the family — and yet the family itself is riven by strife and jealousy (Lucrezia has a good laugh when her maid mistakes “my brother is coming to dinner” for “the Duke of Gandia is coming to dinner”— as if Juan would ever visit her in Pesaro!):

“I am the only person in the world you love without qualification or resentment or confusion, aren’t I?” “Yes … Well. Some confusion.” “And yet you pull away from me. You have spent our lives pulling away from me, because--what? There is a word? You will not even say it. Why should we care if people who hate us, hate our blood and our language and our father, use one more insult? For heavens’ sake, Cesare, you yourself told me that this friar in Florence preaches against my hair.”

!!!! The dig at Savonarola I fell out of my chair looooool

“We have no real friends here, do we? We don’t even have allies beyond the Sforza. Everything depends on Papa. If anything happens, perhaps--perhaps it would be better to go home.” “We could run away to Valencia,” he murmured, eyes distant, almost wistful.

They never entertain this as a serious possibility because “anything is better than obscurity” and sry2say a modern AU is the only place these kids are going to get a happy ending. They’re too ambitious and fiercely protective of their family for aught else.

the affinity they’d always felt flaring to life, the certainty that he could depend on her abilities as well as her loyalties. Together they had outwitted Giovanni Sforza and all of Pesaro; now there was the Pope, their family, Rome, and then--all of Italy? The world? Why not?

I say again, HE COULD DEPEND ON HER ABILITIES AS WELL AS HER LOYALTIES. Because they’re a team. Picture Cesare and Lucrezia, weapons in hand, back to back holding off a horde of enemies—but like, metaphorically. That’s the kind of partnership they have, that’s the kind of trust they share.

he would put her before ambition and glory. Even their father had not … Cesare wasn’t like the Pope. He loved her more than anything.

Meaning there are things her father would put before her happiness, but there is absolutely NOTHING Cesare would not do for her. What woman could resist this utter unhesitating devotion when it is laid at her feet??

gazing at her with all the adoration he had never offered to God

He would never hurt me. If she knew nothing else, she knew that.

She resolves to consummate their relationship, despite all her knowledge of sex being bound up with pain. Like, she literally doesn’t know if sex can even be pleasurable for women, but she wants Cesare in the face of her fear, which is impressive and heartbreaking:

there were Roman courtesans who knew something of him that Lucrezia did not, and it was intolerable. She wanted everything.

Yessss she already has the rest of him, she just wants this one last piece of Cesare to belong to her too. And as for Cesare, this is the first & only time physical attraction and emotional connection have been united in the same partner:

he had never been one to stay in a woman’s bed, afterwards, but he felt no inclination to move.

She laid her hand against his face, rubbing her thumb over his cheekbone, gazing at him with her impossible mix of steady, companionable affection and rapture.

He had long known that he did not love anyone as he did Lucrezia; now he could not imagine desiring anyone as much, either.

What I love is that the romantic/sexual aspect is just another layer overlaid on what has always been the most important relationship in their respective lives; it doesn’t change the underlying dynamic:

“Have we been mauled by bears, do you think?” “Nothing so dramatic, I’m afraid. We would need scratches for that.”

This is them putting their clothes on after an assignation in the woods (they go riding a lot). What strikes me is the companionable tenor of their conspirational lies.

She relished each touch, yet there was something ordinary in it, familiar and commonplace. Your cross is crooked. Your cap is falling off. Let me adjust your sleeve. I can mend your tunic. They had always been peculiarly domestic together, a comfortable intimacy they never repeated with their brothers.

hello siblings being simultaneously incestuous & domestic is my kink byeeeee

“Cesare,” said Lucrezia, eyes widening, “am I your mistress now?” “You are Lucrezia Borgia. The Pope’s daughter and my beloved sister. The man who calls you anyone’s mistress will lose his tongue. As for you and I, we are what we are. I love you. We belong to each other. That is all.”

NO LABELS WE JUST BELONG TO EACH OTHER. Favorite favorite favorite line forever

His sister, his — lover? How could he give up either? What have I done?

Please picture me shoveling popcorn into my mouth as I type this. This is the pinnacle of everything I love about incest ships. You don’t fuck your sister unless you fucking mean it. It’s like you’re married from the first kiss. As Lucrezia explains later to someone who has ferreted out their secret: “He is not some lover to be mourned and forgotten. If I lose him over this, I lose him in everything.”

You can’t date your brother casually, the stakes are HIGH.

A lover is invented in order to explain Lucrezia’s love bites and torn clothing to her maid. Micheletto accepts this explanation as well, until one day he realizes the true state of affairs, and it’s such an innocuous little moment, it’s not like Micheletto wALks iN On tHEM or anything similarly dramatic, oh no. He is watching them—he is always watching—and he must have picked up on some subtle cue of body language or something bc all of a sudden it hits him they’re in love:

Valentino bent his head down; Lucrezia was saying something, Catalan, scarcely comprehensible through her heavy accent and giggles--Micheletto thought it had to do with the Duke of Gandía and a race. Whatever it was, Valentino whispered back to her, mouth against her ear, and they burst out laughing. There was no lover. He could not say, exactly, how he knew for certain then, with no proof, and not before or after. But he knew it. There were no others for them, no room for others: only Valentino and Lucrezia, and Micheletto watching over them.

The perfect encapsulation of this show tbh!!!

They are recalled to Rome to attend Joffre’s wedding to Sancia d’Aragon. They leave Lucrezia’s recuperating husband behind in Pesaro.

“If this all depends upon the impression that Juan makes--” “God help us,” said Cesare.

first of all, FINISHING EACH OTHER’S SENTENCES. but also, this is a delicate mission Juan’s been dispatched on—sent to Naples to woo Jofre’s bride—and i am l i v i n g as I watch Cesare & Lucrezia bond over their low opinion of Juan’s diplomatic mettle. it reminds me of that scene in S2E1 during the masquerade ball when Lucrezia asks Cesare if he can make her laugh, and IMMEDIATELY he causes Juan (who is dancing) to take a humiliating stumble and then Lucrezia & Cesare choke back giggles behind their masks. What’s great about returning to Rome is we get to see them interact with the rest of their family. The Pope is wroth with Cesare for staying so long away and for ignoring his summonses, but Cesare tells him the truth—that Lucrezia needed him:

“Your daughter, Holy Father, could wring concessions out of a saint, and I am anything but that.”

The audacity!! Cesare straight up confessed to fucking the Pope’s daughter but he said it flippantly, so Alexander heard what he wanted to hear.

Then there’s Giulia, who takes one look at Lucrezia and detects the glow of first love. Lucrezia fobs her off with the same story of a clandestine lover, assignations in the woods, etc.:

“Swear to me that you will not repeat what I have said.” “To your father? I already promised that.” “To anyone! … Father would separate us. Juan would kill him. If my husband discovered it …” Lucrezia shuddered. “That would indeed be a disaster,” Giulia said, “but I think you have forgotten someone, Lucrezia.” “What do you mean?” She touched Lucrezia's face. “Your brother Cesare.” Lucrezia absolutely froze.

BWAHAHAHA and then Lucrezia scrambles to convince Giulia that her secret is that Cesare is discreetly facilitating her affair, rather than the far more salacious secret that Cesare is her affair.

“Men,” Giulia said carefully, “say many things, Lucrezia.” “Other men,” said Lucrezia …. The very idea that Cesare might not love her!

And of course Lucrezia is in a v unique situation here but it is the lot of highborn girls in Renaissance Europe to be bartered off to seal an alliance; Lucrezia was raised to expect it. She did no more than her duty. She also recognizes the balance of power is never going to be in her favor when it comes to matters of the heart. With one notable exception, of course:

But Lucrezia had never shown the slightest inclination to guard herself from him. I love you, she’d said as soon as she could babble out the words, clambering into his lap, wrapping her arms about his neck, toddling after him, I love you best, I love you most. And now she declared herself dozens of times a day, in word or deed: whispering into his ear, laughing at his side, crawling into his arms when she could and watching him with a greedy, possessive look when she could not.

Cesare is the only one she trusts to never hurt her, whose interests are always aligned with hers, are never opposed to her family’s since Cesare is her family. The only wrinkle is, he can’t protect her adequately as he promised to. Cesare reflects that if the truth about the incest ever came out “he would be lucky to escape with excommunication, while Giovanni Sforza could violate her nightly and nobody would say a word.” The unjustness of this, the way patriarchy arrays itself in Sforza’s defense, galls Cesare to no end.

Another person who comes into their orbit in Rome is Jofre’s new bride, Sancia of Aragon. It’s historical canon that she slept with both Juan and Cesare; in this fic of course Cesare/Lucrezia are exclusive. Lucrezia can’t decide whether Sancia is predatory (she wants to bang Cesare) or suspicious (she has a hunch Cesare is banging Lucrezia). Either way:

Lucrezia wanted Sancia dead, or disfigured, or shamed--and she wanted her to leave happily with Jofrè--and she wanted Juan to take her away, to satisfy her with some kind of discretion--and for one mad moment, Lucrezia wanted everyone to know what Cesare was to her.

Sancia and Juan, by the way, conduct an outrageously indiscreet affair where their lovemaking is so obnoxious it keeps Lucrezia up at night. She does what she always does when she seeks solace: she crawls into Cesare’s bed. They’re young, they’re honry, they’re in love … but the sound of Juan pounding away at Sancia definitively kills the mood. Lmao. The next morning at breakfast Cesare & Lucrezia lay their complaints before Alexander, who gives Cesare a cardinal’s palace to live in and bids him take Lucrezia with him. So now the two of them move out of the papal palace into their very own palace. I mean, the possibilities are endless! Here is a gem from Sancia and Juan’s pillowtalk, where Juan’s assessment is simultaneously hilariously off base and 100% accurate:

“Cesare has always been a sanctimonious prude, if you ask me. At any rate, Lucrezia says he's having a fit of celibacy.” “Lucrezia?” Sancia said, nearly laughing. “What, he tells her about his—?” Juan snorted. “They probably tell each other about their bowel movements.”

Some of my favorite moments from this “Cesare + Lucrezia keeping house together” idyll: She visits him in the confessional, they hold a lengthy strategy conference about Sancia’s divided loyalties, and he wraps up with:

“Have you any other sins to confess?” “No … Well, I am guilty of the sin of lust, but you knew that already.”

LOOOOOL and how could I forget this:

She always wanted him: when he approached her, when he touched her, looked at her, when she thought of him, when someone mentioned his name.

I give you my main bitch Lucrezia Borgia, who fantasizes about being rawed by her brother WHENEVER SOMEONE MENTIONS HIS NAME. We stan a bona fide legend.

Ok so among the people they encounter in Rome are their cousins Isabel and Bernardo, who are also Borgias, and who independently unravel the truth re: Cesare & Lucrezia, which means that we get not one but two Outsider POVs which means I have probably died and gone to heaven. My friends TONIGHT WE FEAST IN VALHALLA. Ain’t nothing I love more than an Outsider POV angle on an incestuous romance, and in this case we are truly blessed because we get two. This is Bernardo as he listens to Cesare wax lyrical about his new paramour:

Yet Bernardo heard none of the wild passion or simpering folly of men in the throes of infatuation; Cesare looked and sounded less like a newly enthralled lover, and more like a man speaking of someone he knew well and liked a great deal. Bernardo felt a flicker of alarm.

Bruh you’re supposed to talk about your mistress’s tits not her personality clearly Cesare did not get the memo?? And this is Bernardo when the pieces finally click into place for him—he walks in on Lucrezia dyeing her hair:

A Spaniard, very fair? By nature? No, Cesare had said, half-laughing, and even then Bernardo caught the odd shift in his tone, from the adoration of a lover to an easy, familiar affection. And he remembered Cesare, indignant even for a young man in the throes of infatuation. She is not my mistress!

It’s the vehemence with which he denies it, the “not my mistress” part, that gives Cesare away. Because she’s not; she’s his everything. Bernardo cannot seem to wrap his head around how they can be both siblings and soulmates, since for him there is just no overlap between those categories:

Cesare certainly looked and sounded more brother than forbidden paramour. That, in itself, troubled him; if they had rejected the fact of their blood relationship in pursuit of their lusts, convinced themselves that they did not truly feel themselves family, pretended to be something other than what they were—well, that would have been bad enough. But they did not pretend. They acted less as if they willfully transgressed the boundary between siblings and lovers, and more as if they utterly failed to notice its existence.

Cesare and Lucrezia glanced at each other, their conspiratorial smiles alarmingly familiar. He’d seen those exact expressions on their faces before, dozens if not hundreds of times. They’d always had secrets, their little schemes and confidences, childish mischief. And now—what? Deeper secrets, more convoluted schemes, more dangerous mischief. Was that it? Did they lie together and think it little different from the rest?—altered in degree, but not kind? Did they … when had catapulting oranges at the unwary become a hidden incestuous affair?

This is Bernardo watching Cesare & Lucrezia argue about who “made the first move” as far as initiating their relationship:

he knew not whether he was witnessing a lovers’ quarrel or a sibling one. He felt uncomfortably that, subject aside, it sounded very much more like the latter.

I think part of Bernardo’s difficulty is the way patriarchy teaches men to think about women, and treat them as means to an end:

There were, after all, other ways to avoid a pregnancy—though in his experience of eighteen-year-old boys, they did not bother with such things, and rarely thought that far in the first place. But then, in his experience of eighteen-year-old boys, they did not fuck their sisters, either.

Because eighteen-year-old boys are typically in lust whereas Cesare Borgia has found the love of his life. Can we also take a moment to appreciate that Cesare and Lucrezia are eighteen and fourteen respectively?? This must be their canon ages. They’re not even fetuses they’re like, homunculi. I won’t bother to look it up since this author clearly has forgotten more details about the Borgias than I ever knew—as God is my witness I would take her footnotes with me to a desert island over 80% of the other fics in existence. Holliday Grainger was 22 when The Borgias started filming, and Isolde Dychauk was 17 in S1 of Borgia, and of course we’re used to Hollywood giving us thirty-year-olds playing high schoolers so it’s not as if Lucrezia’s been aged up an unconscionable amount, but wow, fourteen is young.

Isabel and Bernardo have another sister, Jeromina, whose husband’s neglect is indirectly responsible for her death in childbed. Lucrezia holds up poor Jeromina’s fate as a cautionary tale of what can happen to any woman who lacks a male protector in her corner:

”We are not speaking of Jeromina.” “Indeed not. Her brother never came for her.”

Shots fired!!! This is Lucrezia’s implied rebuke to Bernardo: that he wasn’t there for Jeromina, that Lucrezia’s own brother would never have let her down as Bernardo let Jeromina down. Later on Lucrezia even locates the origins of her incestuous passion in the same system that killed Jeromina—she describes loving Cesare thusly:

“Something I chose, for myself,” said Lucrezia. “Everything else has been chosen for me”

Excuse me while I emit a series of high-pitched pterodactyl noises. It’s a subject the fic touches on very lightly, but the topic of aristocratic girls falling in love with their brothers as a big middle finger to The Patriarchy? This is a topic NEAR AND DEAR to my heart.

Isabel is a woman and sees more clearly than Bernardo does that Cesare & Lucrezia’s attachment is not mere puppy love:

Nor did she believe that a passion built on lifelong intimacy would be easily broken.

Damn straight, this is the real deal. Isabel then takes a different tack—she suggests that Lucrezia is at an age where girls itch to exercise their power over men. Lucrezia grants her the justice of this observation but counters that she’d never use Cesare so ill:

“Do you mean to say that your distress was such that you would have seduced any man who cared for you? You chose your brother because … he was there?” ”I could not have seduced a satyr. Cesare desired me as I did him.”

I COULD NOT HAVE SEDUCED A SATYR lmao. But it’s true, she was bruised body and soul, and Cesare rode up like a white knight and the dam burst. It wasn’t inevitable, but a confluence of events forced them to reckon with their feelings. And once they crossed that Rubicon there was of course no going back. Because they fit and they’re perfect for each other obvs. Just look at my babies reminiscing about childhood hijinks:

“The night that Juan switched your glass with Mother’s,” said Cesare, “You were what, nine?” Lucrezia stared at him, then laughed. “Ten. I spent a wretched night, and morning too. What made you think of it?” “Only that we have shared every part of our lives,” he said. “There is nothing to hide or pretend. We already know everything there is to know.”

otpotpotpotpotpotpotpotpotp

I need to quote a few more Bernardo POV passages because that’s where Cesare gives us some declarations of love worthy of the ages:

”I cannot remember a time when I did not love her above all else. Above the family, the world, God. I remember nothing of any time when I have not lived for her, when I would not die for her.”

“Some degree of remorse would not go amiss.” “I regret nothing,” said Cesare. “And your—” Bernardo shook his head. “What do I even call her now?” “My sister,” Cesare replied.

tl;dr Cesare: I HAVE ZERO REGRETS NONE

“Tell me that somewhere in Italy, or Spain, or any other nation, exists a woman I could love as I have loved Lucrezia. Tell me that there is a woman who could understand me half as well as she does. A woman who would know me as I am, and not as the world or my father or anyone would shape me. A woman who would see my true nature without fear—see the mark on it—share it. Look me in the eye, Bernardo, and tell me there is any woman who is so much my own soul.”

If you don’t ship them after that speech then your mom’s a hoe, I don’t make the rules.

Cesare: I am sanctified in her.

Bernardo:

Narrator: Bernardo hardly knew where to look.

Me: ascends to a higher plane

Bernardo eventually comes around. He’s had longer than Isabel to adjust to the incest revelation, so he tries to soften the blow for her. This is the two of them comparing notes:

”The last time I saw them together, Cesare had his hand on his dagger half the time, and then they started arguing about which one of them was the more responsible, as if they’d stolen a pastry. He laughs about her hair. Outside of themselves, they treat the whole matter as a … a lark.” This aligned so exactly with Cesare and Lucrezia as Isabel knew them that she winced. Nevertheless, her dry voice didn’t alter. “How uncivil. They might at least have the courtesy to pretend that they regard the change as a matter of gravity.” “They don’t think they have changed,” he replied.

THEY DON’T THINK THEY HAVE CHANGED— winner winner chicken dinner. Finally he gets it.

So there is this ring. A family heirloom which belonged to their grandfather, which Lucrezia inherits from poor died-in-childbed Jeromina, and recklessly bestows upon Cesare. This is the visible token of her affection, this is her way of letting the whole world know what he means to her. The problem is that Isabel is the one who disbursed Jeromina’s effects, so she knows full well the provenance of the ring in question, and what it signifies that Lucrezia gave it to Cesare. Subtlety, these kids do not have it. Cesare openly wearing the ring clues Isabel in on the incest, which is maybe not the worst result ever because family is still family but damn kids you gotta be more careful. What happens next, though, is a scene that absolutely wrecked me. We get a a scene where they EXCHANGE RINGS:

“Isabel gave it to me.” Lucrezia clasped her fingers in her lap. “For my husband.” “Do you remember what I studied at Pisa?” “Civil and canon law.” “Yes.” His voice was hoarse. “Did you know that if a man and a woman consent together, the ring and vows alone bind them in marriage? The Church does not wish for unblessed marriages, but by precedent and decree, they are marriages nonetheless.” His cardinal ring rested still in her palm. Cesare closed her fingers over it. “Alexander III declared that if the parties concerned say I receive you as mine to one another, they are married as solemnly as if blessed by a priest.”

So he gives her his cardinal’s ring to wear. And when his father notes its absence on his finger he straight up admits Lucrezia made off with it, you know how i can’t deny her anything, and the dinner table conversation turns to another topic. Because Cesare & Lucrezia are apparently just Like That and everyone who knows them is used to it. For pete’s sake they are supposed to be the well-adjusted ones among the Pope’s children. Every other member of this family is further along the disaster spectrum than these two, according to Isabel’s internal monologue:

Cesare and Lucrezia, those oases of sense and proper feeling among Alexander’s children, committing incest. Adultery too, now that she thought of it. Perhaps. It depended on the particulars.

Adultery is almost an afterthought lol

Parenthetically I do wanna draw y’all’s attention to this passage:

“I will kill him. I swear to you, Lucrezia, I shall carve his heart out of his body and give it to you on a platter.” Lucrezia put a hand over his chest. “I don’t want his heart,” she said. “I want yours.”

The above passage has the same energy as this passage:

One night she had Jaime follow him, to confirm her suspicions. When her brother returned he asked her if she wanted Robert dead. "No," she had replied, "I want him horned." She liked to think that was the night when Joffrey was conceived.

That’s a Cersei POV and the thing about looking at Cesare/Lucrezia and Cersei/Jaime parallels is I feel like the former is usually more sinned against than sinning, and the latter is the opposite. Cersei doesn’t want Jaime, she wants Robert cuckolded, she wants to Show Them that she’s Lord Tywin’s daughter and nobody gets away with disrespecting her. Idk maybe it would have read differently if we’d had the same events from Jaime’s POV?

I realize that you guys don’t need any more reasons to love this fic but I want to end with the scene where Cesare’s gearing up to challenge Count What’s-His-Face, Ursula’s dumbass husband, for the insupportable insult he gave Vanozza at Lucrezia’s wedding. One thing I appreciate about Showtime!The Borgias over Canal+!Borgia is this Cesare’s relationship with his mom is much closer than his counterpart’s. His willingness to fight a duel for his mother’s honor demonstrates (1) that his sister isn’t the only woman he cares about and (2) that he puts his family first. Lucrezia’s “Return to me victorious” still slaps more than any line in actual canon, don’t @ me. In that moment, he could have slain Mars. “I will,” he promises her.

 If I don’t burn

                      if you don’t burn

                                                if we don’t burn

how will the light 

                             vanquish the darkness?

That’s Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet writing about a folk hero who spontaneously combusted of love. In conclusion no one burns brighter than Cesare & Lucrezia, the actual loves of my life.

[christinaroseandrews]

Randomization and You: How to ask the right questions, know when to roll the dice, and decide when to invoke the word of God

One of the problems that writers often run into is when they’re world-building, plotting, and character-creating, is finding the answers to every foreseeable question ever.  Which is your main character’s dominant hand?  When were they born?  Did someone get pregnant from unprotected sex? Who dies in this horrific event that didn’t happen in canon? What race is this random side character? You get the picture.  

You can answer all of these questions on your own, and if they’re important, you absolutely should.  But when it doesn’t matter, when you don’t care, or if you’re unsure, sometimes randomization can help.  Randomization takes out bias. Or, conversely, a roll of the dice can clarify the direction that you actually want to go. 

The two of us use randomization a lot.  Not just in our fanfiction, but in our original works as well.  We do it for everything from character birthdays to ethnicity to who a background character might end up with to who lives and who dies.  Randomization is a nifty tool if you know how to use it.

In this meta, we’re going to go over when and how to randomize.

A note: there are major spoilers for some of our fanfic and minor spoilers for some of our original fiction.  If you want to know what those spoilers are, please feel free to message us.

oOo

When is it a good time to randomize?

Randomization is best done in the planning stages.  It’s not something you want to do halfway through the story (although you can, if you discover you need to -- we certainly have!), but it’s best done early on, when you’re still world-building, plotting, and creating your characters.  

Say you’re creating a fantasy world.  You know you have three countries that are going to be your primary focus.  But does the world have more nations?  You might not know the answer to that.  In which case, it might be time to randomize.  

It can also be used in character creation.  Sure, you’ve got your main characters and you know what their main traits are, but do you know when their birthdays are?  Or other seemingly unimportant details that may end up being important later, like religion, physical characteristics, or taste in entertainment.  This is especially important when you’re dealing with secondary characters who may not be as fully fleshed in your mind when you’re in the character creation phase. Because seriously, unconscious bias will come into play here. The number of books and stories we read where the only characters are the ethnicity of the author is staggering. This is especially problematic when it comes to creating accurate representation. Randomization can solve this. Want to write a story about 5 friends who kick ass and take names? You can literally randomize every major trait -- age, gender, sexuality, race, religion, skillset… you name it. You don’t have to randomize everything if you have a vision, but you should randomize things that “don’t matter” like the doctor or the secretary or the janitor. Randomization can remove stereotypes and bias. It’s colorblind casting but for the author. 

You also can choose ranges within which to randomize -- for example, if said story is about 5 teenagers, your range can be 14-18.  You are definitely not required to use all possible options while randomizing.

Then there’s randomization when you develop your plot.  Say you’re writing a romance.  You know your main characters will end up together.  But what about your secondary characters?  Your main characters’ best friends/siblings are going to end up meeting.  Do they hook up?  Are they interested?  Believe it or not, Prim and Bing getting together in Floriography was entirely randomized.  (Floriography has since been turned into an original work, The Language of Flowers -- but we kept said randomized relationship.)

Another thing -- in a romance, you know your main characters will end up together and you may know how they get there.  But what if you don’t?  You can randomize where they have their dates (using both typical and atypical choices such as a restaurant or a monster truck rally), other events that might interfere, and various other beats in your plotting.

Or the biggie... who dies in a major event? Plot Armor is lovely. The trio in Let Me Fly has Plot Armor. (We are not killing our trio, stop asking!) But everyone else… nope… no Plot Armor. That meant when Johanna Mason failed her rolls to survive the flu, she died. We love Johanna. Love her. She’s a blast to write. But she wasn’t crucial to the story we wanted to tell, so she died. The same is true for a lot of other people in our stories. Some deaths we’ve planned. But some that happened ended up changing the story… we’re looking at you, Third Quarter Quell deaths in Let Me Fly. Don’t think we don’t see you. Justice for Justus, indeed!

So yeah. Randomization can completely change your plot and understanding of the characters. It can even help you out of an “I don’t know what to do!” slump.

You want to go wild with the randomization?  Go to TV Tropes and pick a list of tropes that would make up a main character.  Pick a list of villain tropes.  Pick a list of plot tropes, romance tropes, whatever.  Number them all, shove them into a list, use a randomizer, and pick ten of them.  Congratulations, you now have the outline for a short story.  Think this doesn’t work?

Well… here goes.

We went to TV Tropes Character pages first to get our protagonists and antagonist. And this is what we picked.

  Sounds fun, right? I bet you can start imagining stories that could fit these tropes already. 

We ran these through the randomizer and got the following:

A Gentleman Thief and a Big Beautiful Woman Wake Up in a Room on a spaceship wearing matching rings. The door opens to reveal a notorious Space Pirate who congratulates them on their Accidental Marriage. Unfortunately they won’t be able to enjoy the honeymoon Mwah-ha-ha-ha! While they are making their escape, they end up someplace where they have to truly pretend to be newlyweds and they realize that somehow along the way they’ve Become the Mask and are truly in love. YAY! 

Sure it’s pretty rough and there are some parts missing, but it’s an absolutely viable plot… and I’m fairly certain I’ve seen something like this before. This is a great way to get out of a writing slump or even your comfort zone.

It’s all about asking questions and deciding if you know the answer, if the answer is necessary, and what the possible answers can be.

oOo

How do you randomize?

Randomization isn’t always as easy as rolling a die or flipping a coin.  Sometimes it takes creating spreadsheets or lists, while other times it involves understanding probability and percentages.

For example, say you’re writing a fantasy novel that features swordplay.  Knowing if someone is left or right handed is actually plot-relevant.  However, fifty percent of the population isn’t left handed.  Here, Wikipedia is your friend.  Knowing the percentages will help you know what numbers to use.

Another common time to do randomization is pregnancy.  Depending on what method of birth control and/or pregnancy prevention your characters are using, you can research the failure rates.  For example, when figuring out if Katniss was going to get pregnant during the arc of Brand New Breeze (second arc of Let Me Fly), we looked up the failure rate for the rhythm method and applied it to each menstrual cycle she had -- which, by the way, the length and duration of her menstrual cycle was also randomized.  She did okay for the first few months, and then all of a sudden, right around the time that the three of them got married (which was not randomized), she got pregnant.  

That opened up a whole slew of other randomizations, including: did the egg implant?  Did she have a miscarriage?  Was she carrying twins?  Who was the father?  Was the baby a boy or a girl?  What were its eye color, skin color, and hair color (based off of the parents and what was genetically possible)?  How difficult was the pregnancy?  When exactly did she give birth?  How long was the labor?  How difficult was the labor?  What time was the child born?  What were its length and weight?

You notice that was a lot of questions.  But they came in order.  The first question that got asked was: did she get pregnant?  The rhythm method is one of the least reliable forms of birth control.  Without proper medical data, Katniss was guessing, which increased her chances.  According to the Mayo Clinic, thirteen out of every one hundred women get pregnant.  Because of other reasons, we upped it to twenty percent for Katniss.

Using random.org, we rolled on a 1 to 100 scale for each menstrual cycle, with a roll of 81 or higher being a pregnancy.  Katniss did not get pregnant on her first two; she did on her third.

After conception, there are two primary hurdles to a pregnancy.  The first is implantation.  Many fertilized embryos never implant.  The numbers change based off of the age of the mother, the health of the mother, and other environmental conditions, but it’s estimated that at least 30% of fertilized embryos never implant.  So Katniss got randomized on that with a roll of 30 or below being a failed implantation.  She rolled higher.

Then there’s the risk of miscarriage, which, considering Katniss’s environment, health, and activity levels, we gave her a flat 30% chance of miscarriage.  Again, she did not miscarry.

Then it was just answering a lot of yes/no questions and looking up pregnancy-related details.  Did you know that the chance of twins is about 10%?  Identical twins is 1%, so the other 9% are fraternal.  If there are fraternal twins, they can have different fathers.  

We didn’t roll for anything higher than twins because the chances of Katniss surviving a pregnancy with triplets or more with no medicine are extremely low, and that’s if she even got pregnant with more than two babies at once -- which is highly unlikely.  We did not roll for Katniss dying in pregnancy.  That was us invoking the word of God.  

But wait, you ask.  Didn’t Katniss have a chance of dying?  

And you would be correct if this were the real world and not words on a page, Katniss would absolutely have a chance of dying in pregnancy.  However, that was a direction we were not interested in exploring, and that’s when invoking the word of God becomes necessary.  You have to know what you are comfortable writing as an author.  Not everyone wants to write a pregnancy, so they might say, “Nope! This unprotected sex did not result in a pregnancy!”  While others, like us, will occasionally roll for this -- while other times we’re like “Nope!” Trust us, we’ve totally noped Katniss getting pregnant… random.org has it in for her, I swear!

Some people might’ve said “oh hell no, I’m not dealing with a pregnancy in this story” and that’s perfectly fine.  They wouldn’t even have rolled for it.  It depends on what you’re willing to do as a writer.  But often that’s something that randomization can help you with… knowing your own mind. Because oftentimes people don’t know where to go next because they have choice paralysis… randomization can help solve that problem. 

oOo

So when do you invoke the word of God?

Well, here’s a secret.  The two of us invoked the word of God when it came to both of the Hunger Games in Let Me Fly.  

For the 74th Games, the original randomized winner was the girl from Three.  Unfortunately, that did not work with our plot.  Three was too far from our group for Cressida and her group to flee from there and conceivably make it to our characters, which was a plot point we wanted to happen.  So we rerolled with an eye toward what would work, and Taylor, the girl from District Eight, won.

For the 75th Games, the initial randomized winner was the woman from Eight, and -- having plotted the 74th Games -- we realized that the Capitol really wouldn’t be okay with back-to-back winners from an outlying semi-rebellious district.  So we rerolled and got Chaff.  (By the way, some of the side characters -- the infant for instance -- had zero chance of making it out of the bloodbath alive, and each other character had a percentage for what their chances of winning were based on their age, skill, and other factors, and we used a 1-100 scale for randomization.)  

However, there was another thing that happened that basically has colored our plot from the moment that it happened.  

Justus came in second.

The six-year-old kid only had a two percent chance of being picked at any specific time.  But he came in second.  And we took that and ran with it.

That is how randomization can end up creating plot for your story, and also why you want to do it fairly early on.  If your outline changes, you may need to do it later.  Or if you’re a pantser.  But if you’re a plotter, you’ll want all your ducks in a row before you get started.

In reality, randomization is all about asking questions and figuring out probabilities.  And sometimes the questions can tell you which way you want to go -- and you end up answering the question itself without randomization ever coming into play.  Or the randomization tells you which choice you wanted… something you often know by your reaction to the choice you rolled.  (If you groan at something you roll, it is probably a choice you’ll want to override.)

Remember that you are not bound by your randomization.  If you absolutely hate something that randomized and can’t figure out how to make it work, throw it out!  It’s still giving you valuable information, because it’s telling you something about where you don’t want the story to go.  

Sometimes it’s even fun to work with the hard things, the complicated things, the stuff you never expected to roll.  Making something surprising work is a challenge -- and a way to grow as an author.  But if you can’t or don’t want to, you can always toss your randomization. 

oOo

So why would you want to randomize?

One of the downfalls of being a writer is that you know everything about your story.  Where it’s going, the relationships, everything.  Randomization creates that feeling of wonder that you experience when doing something new.  It allows you to brainstorm, and it can force you down paths you might not otherwise have chosen to take.

The two of us were very hesitant about pairing up Prim and Bing in Floriography (later The Language of Flowers).  They were the siblings of our main characters, they were seven or eight years apart in age, they lived a good four, five hour drive away from each other, they’d just met… and would they even want to be together?  We asked the question on a whim.  And then we rolled it.  And then we ran with it.  And it’s become one of our favorite pairings ever.

We would’ve never paired the two together if it weren’t for the randomization.

We’ve even done this when writing whole fics… like we didn’t know what we wanted to write, just that we wanted to play in a particular fandom. So we rolled what characters we were going to play with.  This is how we ended up with a Darcy/Tony/Sif threesome because Why Not? 

We also do this with original fiction all the time. As stated above, it deals with the unconscious bias that we carry in regards to racism, sexism, and a whole slew of other -isms/-phobias. It can also help shape directions where you might take a story. Like our Adeniyi Siblings Series… we initially had all of the siblings paired with white characters… but then (thankfully) we realized the serious Unfortunate Implications… so we broke out the randomizer. Other than Paige (who we’d already written her story). All three of the other siblings’ significant others changed, and it made our series better in the long run. 

In addition to removing bias and answering questions, randomization can be fun.  Even if you never incorporate what you’ve randomized, you’ve got these little details, special things that you know about the character or the plot or the world.  We can tell you EVERYTHING that Katniss and Prim hunted and gathered in Damaged, Broken, and Unhinged. We can tell you every single character who got sick from the flu in Let Me Fly. This is information that none of you need, but gosh darn it it was fun to find out, and it colored how we wrote the story even if the specifics never made it on the page.

As we’ve hopefully explained, randomization can be a powerful tool in the writer’s toolbox.  But like any tool, it’s about knowing when and how to use it. We recommend using it to answer questions. Develop plots and even plot twists. And most importantly, remove unconscious bias. 

Now if you’ll excuse us, we have a Gentleman Thief and a Big Beautiful Woman demanding that their story be written.

Until next time!

Like our posts?  Buy us a coffee!

[hopelesslyshippingthem]

RWBY season 5 ep 1 thoughts

Spoilers ahead.

Pros: -The scene with Weiss was really intense, and you could see how she grew as a character. She wanted to help, but knew it wasn’t her place to give orders. -Blake and her second evil ex was really cool. I loved how Ilia doesn’t really want to fight her ex, and though determined to do the right thing, you can see Blake doesn’t want to fight her either. -Animation looks great. -Nora and Ren are still fantastic secondary characters. Add humor and drama right when you need them to, yet don’t steal the spotlight. -Background gays! YAY! Cons:  OH BOY. -What the actual hell was up with suddenly using still scenes in Haven? They can animate Menagerie, but not Haven? It was not only jarring, but felt cheap. -Yang suddenly NOT going after Ruby, but still after her mother. Because all of those context clues about her joining Ruby were bullshit, apparently. -Lionheart being a puppet was not only expected, but shoved in our faces in the end of the last season. I don’t know why we spent so much time there, and hell, you could TELL he was acting suspicious. Even Qrow should have known something was up. -Okay, how in the hell did Jaune know that Raven was Yang’s mother? Or even why was it appropriate story telling to have him blurt it out? Back in season two, when we had the dance, Yang took Blake aside and it was a huge deal that Yang was opening up about her mother in private. She was giving Blake a part of her life that she had told pretty much no one, and Raven’s name wasn’t even spoken until last season. So, was it a reminder to us? Was it poor story telling? Was it crappy exposition? SPEAKING OF EXPOSITION... -Qrow is STILL an exposition vehicle. Yeah, okay, we had a fight scene with him last season. Oh, and that bullshit fight he started in Beacon that was blamed on Winter. Because, attacking two soldiers in obvious malicious intent was totally innocent. However, he really has only been there for exposition. He doesn’t provide anything aside from that to the story, and it feels like RoosterTeeth is just trying to get their money’s worth out of the VA. Have a large chunk of info that needs to be thrown in the audiences face? Better have Qrow say it all at once! -Yang’s scene was both bland and irritating, with the only saving grace being that they show that PTSD will haunt you for a long time. What was the point of that scummy guy if he was just going to be the unnecessary lead directly to Raven? Why have him be creepy? Why have him be BLATANTLY creepy. Yeah, girl power! Oh, shit. Better make it up to this guy who deserved that punch so I can see my mother. -Last time I checked, the show was called RWBY, not RNJR. I really stopped caring about the group halfway through last season, and this dumpster fire of a starting episode has done nothing to improve my opinion of having the bulk of the show be with them. The girls should have been converging again by now, which was what the end of the last season was alluding to. Instead, we have Blake faffing about in Menagire, Yang still chasing after Raven (though was shown heading AWAY from bandit laden area last season), Weiss STILL in transit, and Ruby being a background character in the show of her being the main character. This isn’t a fanfiction where the author stated that it will mainly take place around a certain group; this is the actual show RWBY, with all of the main four as side characters.  -Do not, under any circumstances, imagine that I am happy about the fucking background, still life gays. Why? BECAUSE I FUCKING BET YOU THAT THEY WILL BE LIKE, “See? There’s your gays in the show! They exist! You’re welcome!” This is not acceptable at all. All of the ‘inclusion’ takes place after the fact (see First Mate), or now, in the background in scenes they didn’t even feel like animating. They have toyed and delayed so fucking much with LGBT+ characters in a need to ‘be sensitive’, but use all the fucking grace of an enraged ogre in an outhouse while shoving racial inequality in our faces. They should be just as unapologetic with one as they are with the other. Yeah, cute gimmick., I’ll give them that. It almost made me happy. Until I recalled that they are still such nameless, background characters that they didn’t even bother to animate them. I am not happy with this dumpster fire of a start. I want to love this show again, but it’s just losing me. It’s done nothing to bring me back into how engaged I was in season two, or even the start of season three. This season is the make it or break it, and it could be the last year that I am a content creator for the fandom. 

[daresplaining]

What are your thoughts on Ward Meachum in Marvel's Iron Fist? & also... Is he not coming back for The Defenders?

    We were pleasantly surprised by Ward! We mentioned in our analysis/review that there are two Iron Fist characters we’ve always loved to hate, because they are giant screw-ups with little-to-no redeeming qualities. Those characters are Davos and Ward… both of whom were developed to be wonderfully, shockingly sympathetic and compelling in the show. (Davos actually made one of us cry!) We’re not gonna pretend Harold’s “last words” to Ward didn’t make us do this:

    But we still enjoyed– and even sometimes rooted for– this version of his character.

    To address your second question first, before going into more detail: No, Ward has not yet been confirmed to appear in The Defenders. The only Iron Fist characters we currently know we can count on seeing are Danny, Colleen, Jeryn Hogarth, Madame Gao, and almost definitely Bakuto. However, that doesn’t mean he won’t show up. Since the initial round of character announcements went out before Iron Fist aired, they may have decided to not include Ward because some people wouldn’t have known who he was. (Plus, it would have spoiled his survival– which was uncertain, to say the least.) We’re guessing Joy and Davos won’t reappear until Iron Fist Season 2, since they’re away somewhere plotting their revenge… but Ward, as Danny’s business partner, has a chance.      

    (That said, Foggy didn’t show up in Iron Fist despite his new partnership with Jeryn, so it’s not a guarantee. We wonder if the next Defenders trailer will focus on the secondary characters, since there are so many, and the first was so main protagonist-heavy– in which case, we might get a definite answer sometime soon.)

    In the tradition of (almost) all of the Marvel Netflix antagonists, the Iron Fist writing team did their absolute best to add a level of human complexity to Ward, and to build upon the character presented by the source material. In this case, they didn’t have much to work with. Comics Ward is pretty much a one-note villain: Harold Meachum’s scumbag brother who schemes and connives and tries to look cool in front of actual, competent villains, before finally getting himself killed by the Super Skrull.

Ward: “…Now you know he’s dead, and your pretty little reunion plans are all just smoke in the wind. I wouldn’t worry too much though, Misty love. It won’t be long before you and the Rand brat are reunited– at least, if you believe in any sort of afterlife.”

Namor, the Sub-Mariner vol. 1 #18 by John Byrne and Glynis Oliver     

    Really, MCU Ward had nowhere to go but up, and a lot of smart writing decisions went into making this version of the character a bit more nuanced.

    One major factor we think worked really well was the removal of his power– in several different capacities. By de-aging him and generationally shifting him from Harold’s brother and Joy’s uncle to Harold’s son, he loses the inherent sense of authority that comes with older characters, and automatically seems more vulnerable and fallible in the face of anyone older than he is. The show also goes out of its way to emphasize this. In at least one of our trailer analyses, we talked about the costuming and styling choices used to make Danny look youthful, both calling back to his young age (nineteen) in his introductory comics appearances, and visually invoking his naivete upon returning to New York. But both Joy and Ward are also infantilized– not visually in this case, but by their abusively overbearing father, whose inherent power is magnified by his violence, his self-assured manipulation of everyone around him, and the fact that he is literally magically enhanced to be undefeatable. Harold clings to images of his children when they were young, and treats them as such– and Ward’s continued insistence that he is “not a child” only makes him seem more childlike. Harold is not just a parent, he is a Parent– and all of his interactions with Ward emphasize the immense power differential between them.  

    With this lack of power comes a sense of danger– which makes Harold a key secret weapon in the show’s blisteringly awesome pacing and unrelenting narrative tension. By making Harold this powerful and this frightening, you are instantly concerned for the safety of everyone around him. And 90% of the time, the person who’s around him is Ward, who– what’s worse– is sometimes accompanied by people who don’t know that Harold is dangerous. It’s easy to feel sorry for Ward when he is forced to again and again to allow himself and others into the company of someone who could– and given the right whim, would– kill without a second thought.

    Another factor in this powerlessness– and possibly the aspect of MCU Ward that we enjoy the most– is the continual shower of trauma and chaos dumped on him, and the fact that he is emotionally unequipped to handle it. One result of this is that he often serves the role of everyman/audience stand-in, reacting to the strangeness and horror around him with a genuineness that makes him relatable. While Danny lives and breathes strangeness, and both Colleen and Joy are quite resilient and good at adapting, Ward simply cannot deal with it (and he is forced to deal with oh, so much). And that’s a fun character trait (…for us, anyway. Not so much for him).  

    Of course, the darker side of this element of Ward’s character is the isolation it creates for him. Because of the looming Hand threat and his father’s abuse, Ward must handle all of his trauma entirely on his own, all while being forced to present a healthy, sane appearance to the rest of the world. He is unable to either confide in or explain himself to Joy– the one person who really cares about him and who he still has the capacity to care about in return– and he isn’t even allowed to run away and leave it all behind. This is the ultimate manifestation of his powerlessness– his inability to live his own life, or to do anything to escape the horrors constantly being inflicted on him by his father. One of our favorite Ward scenes is in episode 7, when he is forced to dump the bodies of the Hand mooks that Harold has killed and mutilated. It’s a flavor of psychological horror that we were not at all expecting out of Iron Fist– amped up by lingering shots of Ward maneuvering the bodies into his car, and focusing on his desperate struggle to somehow cope with what he’s doing.    

    It’s a scene that emphasizes how utterly, horrifically out of his depth he is, and helps justifies his breakdown and (first) patricide later in the episode.

    However, we’re also grateful that while Ward is a sympathetic character due to all of the pain heaped on him by the narrative, he’s still not a great guy. Making him completely likable would have felt like a cop-out, and we were relieved that they didn’t take that route. Yes, we are given many reasons to understand why he might be a little bit unfriendly and mean in general, but there are still scenes where the viewer genuinely hates him. This tends to come through in his interactions with Danny. While Ward is generally able to keep his anger and frustration inside, with the help of the occasional drug and some… therapeutic embezzling, he is quick to use the newly-returned Danny as a scapegoat and outlet for all of his aggression. Motives aside, this version of Ward maintains a level of nastiness inherent to his character, and his verbal and emotional abuse are extra sources of pain within Danny’s already traumatic story arc.

    For this reason, we have our doubts about the future of the Danny/Ward corporate partnership– because the only time Ward actually seems to give a damn about Danny is when he realizes they need to team up to take down Harold. Danny is eager to make friends and quick to forgive, but Ward is one of those dangerous people who only sees Danny as a means to an end.

    At the same time, this all presents an interesting rearranging of Ward’s status as an antagonist. Whereas in the comics he’s a genuine villain, going after Danny because he’s a jerk who places himself in the service of more powerful jerks, in the show he fits into the most basic definition of an antagonist: someone who happens to be working at cross-purposes with the protagonist. Ward’s main goal isn’t to “get” Danny. We don’t think they ever would have become best friends, and clearly, Ward was a jerk long before his father first died, but circumstances are the main culprit here. He and Danny just happen to bump into each other at a time and place where they will be nothing but detrimental to each other. Danny is an unintentional threat to Ward’s delicately balanced life. His presence disrupts things at Rand, plays with Joy’s head, stirs up trouble with the Hand, and makes Harold extra active and extra crazy– all of which comes back to hit Ward in the face. And thus, while Danny wants nothing more than to find a family, reconnect with people who he thought cared about him, and try to rebuild his life, Ward reacts by rejecting him, treating him like garbage, and repeatedly trying to kill him.  

    This is one factor that we consider to be a weak part of Ward’s characterization. Despite his horror at his father’s homicidal behavior, and his claim in episode 2 that he doesn’t “do that kind of thing”, he literally spends the first two episodes trying to murder Danny– even when Harold tells him not to! This, his snap decision to shove Danny out the window at the end of episode 3, and his two successful attempts to kill Harold, suggest that he’s not quite as squeamish about this sort of thing as he pretends to be… and we wish that had received more development.    

    Overall, though, we think the writing team did a great job with Ward– turning him into a compelling and complex character with a gripping story arc. We loved his relationship with Joy, we appreciated the balance of likable/unlikeable that they managed to strike with him, and we were delighted that in the end, he got the honor of killing Harold once and for all.

    We were not expecting him to survive this season, but since he did, we’re interested to see where he’ll go from here!

[itsfinancethings]

As Republicans prepare for their party convention this summer, we will see the inevitable head-scratching take place about how the party leaders gave way to Donald Trump. There will be panels of pundits on television endlessly debating why the “establishment” failed to hold back the renegades—Republicans who refuse to abide by any norms, Republicans who are willing to tear down institutions, and Republicans who have almost no interest in governance. How was it, they will ask, that the party of Lincoln allowed themselves to become the party of Trump, controlled by the president, Senator Mitch McConnell, and the Freedom Caucus?

We experienced this recently when former Secretary of State Colin Powell announced that he would vote for Biden. In The New York Times, we learned that “growing numbers of prominent Republicans are debating how far to go in revealing that they won’t back his re-election—or might even vote for Joseph R. Biden, Jr., the presumptive Democratic nominee.” The early stories included the claim that former President George W. Bush might not support Trump, though his spokesperson quickly announced that this was “completely made up.”

That entire conversation rests on a myth that the renegades have taken over the GOP. The truth is they did so decades ago. In the 1980s, “Party Gatekeepers”—the senior elected officials and party operatives who had greatest influence within the party—made a Faustian deal with the burn-down-the-house mavericks that forever changed the character of the party. Until analysts reckon with the fact that there is no old-school Republican establishment anymore, we will never understand what the GOP has become to its core. Donald Trump is not an outlier. He is a perfect fit for the modern Republican Party.

It all started forty years ago with Ronald Reagan’s election as president in 1980, which was both exhilarating and frustrating for younger members of the party. With his victory, the conservative revolution reached its greatest moment of triumph, finally gaining hold of the levers of power. But continued Democratic control of the House of Representatives, which had been the status quo since 1954, proved a massive obstacle to achieving their goals.

That’s when Georgia Congressman Newt Gingrich entered the picture. Elected in 1978, Gingrich arrived in Washington eager to shake things up. He argued that if the GOP ever wanted to defeat the Democrats, they needed to embrace a smashmouth style of partisanship which revolved around character assassination, violating norms and tearing down governing institutions. “If you teach them how to be aggressive and confrontational,” Gingrich wrote to House Minority Leader Robert Michel, “you will increase their abilities to fight Democrats on the floor.” If the GOP was not more aggressive, they would always remain in the backseat. To promote his vision, Gingrich organized a group of like-minded conservatives called the Conservative Opportunity Society (COS).

Thirsty for power, party leaders took the deal. The gatekeepers invited the bomb-throwers into the temple in 1984 with Camscam, the stunt where congressional Republicans stood in front of the C-SPAN cameras and accused Democrats of being weak on defense. House rules stipulated that the camera could only show the person speaking. Since viewers couldn’t see that the chamber was empty, it looked to C-SPAN viewers like Democrats had no response. Robert Michel, known as an old-guard Republican who practiced civility and bipartisanship, authorized Gingrich and his allies to make these speeches as he realized it would wound the reputation of Democrats. When Speaker Tip O’Neill lashed out against Gingrich by ordering the television cameras to pan to the empty chamber, House Republicans jumped at the opportunity to call him a tyrant who broke the rules to shame the minority party. The party released a report trying to prove Gingrich’s point with countless examples of the Democrats violating the rules for naked partisan power. The corrupt Democratic majority became a central theme for all Republicans.

Then came the 1988 presidential campaign. By the summer of 1988, Gingrich had launched a series of ethical charges against Speaker Jim Wright, a Texas Democrat, claiming that he was the “most corrupt” Speaker in the history of the institution. Although most legislators didn’t think there was much to the charges, other than lapses in judgement that were common among many members of Congress, Vice President and Republican presidential nominee George H.W. Bush promoted the scandal to the public during his campaign. Desperate to respond to the Democratic nominee, Massachusetts Governor Michael Dukakis, who was attacking the “sleaze factor” in the Reagan administration, Bush’s campaign advisor Lee Atwater convinced his boss to start talking about Wright. “I wonder if Michael Dukakis and Jesse Jackson will join me in calling for the House of Representatives to appoint a special prosecutor to look into its own troubles,” Bush said during a campaign stop in New Jersey, “starting with the Speaker of the House.” Bush elevated Gingrich’s campaign to the forefront of party politics. The month after Bush took office, under the direction of Ed Rollins, the Republican National Committee announced that in the 1990 midterms Wright would be “Target No. 1.”

While mudslinging was always part of elections, Atwater was someone who took the art to new lows. Like Gingrich, he was willing to say and do just about anything in order to win. While Gingrich elevated partisanship over governing at every turn, Atwater did the same with campaigning. Whatever the costs to our institutions and ability to govern, so be it if the outcome was partisan victory.

As a result of his campaign against the Speaker, Republicans elected Gingrich to be their Minority Whip in March 1989. In a stunning upset against Ed Madigan of Illinois, a favorite of the party guardians, Gingrich won with a broad coalition. Even moderates such as Olympia Snowe of Maine went against their centrist political disposition to empower Gingrich because they believed he was their path to power. Gingrich “has the vision to build a majority party and the strength and charisma to do it,” explained Connecticut’s Nancy Johnson, a moderate who surprised many with her support. Once he secured the vote, Gingrich was officially part of the leadership team. “Confrontational conservative wins the party’s no. 2 post,” blared a Los Angeles Times headline. Emboldened by these developments, when asked how far he would go in the campaign to win control of the House, Rollins said: “I promise you today that I won’t steal, murder, lie, cheat or pillage, but other than that I think just about anything goes.”

April and May of 1989, the last months of Gingrich’s campaign to bring down Speaker Wright, were remarkable for how little distance there was between Republican leaders and Gingrich. The leadership supported Gingrich by promoting a full-scale attack on the way that House Democrats maintained their power through corrupt practices and a manipulation of rules. Although there was some element of truth to the fact that Democrats ruled Capitol Hill with a strong hand, that didn’t necessitate a partisan response that ripped apart institutions and norms to the point that they were irreparable. This was a choice that the GOP made. Most senior Republicans, until that time, had avoided such a path. When figures had emerged who pursued this style, such as Senator Joseph McCarthy in the 1950s, they were ultimately checked rather than elevated into the leadership. When Wright delivered his famous speech on the floor of the House offering his resignation, Gingrich gloated in his notepad entry: “Must be doing good at my job for them to come after me like this.”

Ever since Republicans opened the doors to Gingrich, the Republican Party has never been the same. Gingrich pioneered the kind of tear-down the institutions partisanship, where the imperatives of governance are always secondary, that continues to define the party to this day. It drives elected officials to constantly push the boundaries of what is legitimate in the name of partisan warfare.

The party gatekeepers of yesteryear opened the doors to all of this. In 2020, not only can the so-called “establishment” not contain the renegades, the renegades have become the establishment. If there is any establishment figures left who feels qualms about Trump’s presidency, most will shove those concerns aside because Gingrich and Trump have helped maintain their power.

If that calculation changes, this is when Trumpism would finally find itself under internal fire.