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blackswaneuroparedux · 4 years ago

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Anonymous asked: I enjoyed reading your posts about Napoleon’s death and it’s quite timely given its the 200th anniversary of his death this year in May. I was wondering, because you know a lot about military history (your served right? That’s cool to fly combat helicopters) and you live in France but aren’t French, what your take was on Napoleon and how do the French view him? Do they hail him as a hero or do they like others see him like a Hitler or a Stalin? Do you see him as a hero or a villain of history?

5 May 1821 was a memorable date because Napoleon, one of the most iconic figures in world history, died while in bitter exile on a remote island in the South Atlantic Ocean. Napoleon Bonaparte, as you know rose from obscure soldier to a kind of new Caesar, and yet he remains a uniquely controversial figure to this day especially in France. You raise interesting questions about Napoleon and his legacy. If I may reframe your questions in another way. Should we think of him as a flawed but essentially heroic visionary who changed Europe for the better? Or was he simply a military dictator, whose cult of personality and lust for power set a template for the likes of Hitler?

However one chooses to answer this question can we just - to get this out of the way - simply and definitively say that Napoleon was not Hitler. Not even close. No offence intended to you but this is just dumb ahistorical thinking and it’s a lazy lie. This comparison was made by some in the horrid aftermath of the Second World War but only held little currency for only a short time thereafter. Obviously that view didn’t exist before Hitler in the 19th Century and these days I don’t know any serious historian who takes that comparison seriously.

I confess I don’t have a definitive answer if he was a hero or a villain one way or the other because Napoleon has really left a very complicated legacy. It really depends on where you’re coming from.

As a staunch Brit I do take pride in Britain’s victorious war against Napoleonic France - and in a good natured way rubbing it in the noses of French friends at every opportunity I get because it’s in our cultural DNA and it’s bloody good fun (why else would we make Waterloo train station the London terminus of the Eurostar international rail service from its opening in 1994? Or why hang a huge gilded portrait of the Duke of Wellington as the first thing that greets any visitor to the residence of the British ambassador at the British Embassy?). On a personal level I take special pride in knowing my family ancestors did their bit on the battlefield to fight against Napoleon during those tumultuous times. However, as an ex-combat veteran who studied Napoleonic warfare with fan girl enthusiasm, I have huge respect for Napoleon as a brilliant military commander. And to makes things more weird, as a Francophile resident of who loves living and working in France (and my partner is French) I have a grudging but growing regard for Napoleon’s political and cultural legacy, especially when I consider the current dross of political mediocrity on both the political left and the right. So for me it’s a complicated issue how I feel about Napoleon, the man, the soldier, and the political leader.

If it’s not so straightforward for me to answer the for/against Napoleon question then it It’s especially true for the French, who even after 200 years, still have fiercely divided opinions about Napoleon and his legacy - but intriguingly, not always in clear cut ways.

I only have to think about my French neighbours in my apartment building to see how divisive Napoleon the man and his legacy is. Over the past year or so of the Covid lockdown we’ve all gotten to know each other better and we help each other. Over the Covid year we’ve gathered in the inner courtyard for a buffet and just lifted each other spirits up.

One of my neighbours, a crusty old ex-general in the army who has an enviable collection of military history books that I steal, liberate, borrow, often discuss military figures in history like Napoleon over our regular games of chess and a glass of wine. He is from very old aristocracy of the ancien regime and whose family suffered at the hands of ‘madame guillotine’ during the French Revolution. They lost everything. He has mixed emotions about Napoleon himself as an old fashioned monarchist. As a military man he naturally admires the man and the military genius but he despises the secularisation that the French Revolution ushered in as well as the rise of the haute bourgeois as middle managers and bureaucrats by the displacement of the aristocracy.

Another retired widowed neighbour I am close to, and with whom I cook with often and discuss art, is an active arts patron and ex-art gallery owner from a very wealthy family that came from the new Napoleonic aristocracy - ie the aristocracy of the Napoleonic era that Napoleon put in place - but she is dismissive of such titles and baubles. She’s a staunch Republican but is happy to concede she is grateful for Napoleon in bringing order out of chaos. She recognises her own ambivalence when she says she dislikes him for reintroducing slavery in the French colonies but also praises him for firmly supporting Paris’s famed Comédie-Française of which she was a past patron.

Another French neighbour, a senior civil servant in the Elysée, is quite dismissive of Napoleon as a war monger but is grudgingly grateful for civil institutions and schools that Napoleon established and which remain in place today.

My other neighbours - whether they be French families or foreign expats like myself - have similarly divisive and complicated attitudes towards Napoleon.

In 2010 an opinion poll in France asked who was the most important man in French history. Napoleon came second, behind General Charles de Gaulle, who led France from exile during the German occupation in World War II and served as a postwar president.

The split in French opinion is closely mirrored in political circles. The divide is generally down political party lines. On the left, there's the 'black legend' of Bonaparte as an ogre. On the right, there is the 'golden legend' of a strong leader who created durable institutions.

Jacques-Olivier Boudon, a history professor at Paris-Sorbonne University and president of the Napoléon Institute, once explained at a talk I attended that French public opinion has always remained deeply divided over Napoleon, with, on the one hand, those who admire the great man, the conqueror, the military leader and, on the other, those who see him as a bloodthirsty tyrant, the gravedigger of the revolution. Politicians in France, Boudon observed, rarely refer to Napoleon for fear of being accused of authoritarian temptations, or not being good Republicans.

On the left-wing of French politics, former prime minister Lionel Jospin penned a controversial best selling book entitled “the Napoleonic Evil” in which he accused the emperor of “perverting the ideas of the Revolution” and imposing “a form of extreme domination”, “despotism” and “a police state” on the French people. He wrote Napoleon was "an obvious failure" - bad for France and the rest of Europe. When he was booted out into final exile, France was isolated, beaten, occupied, dominated, hated and smaller than before. What's more, Napoleon smothered the forces of emancipation awakened by the French and American revolutions and enabled the survival and restoration of monarchies. Some of the legacies with which Napoleon is credited, including the Civil Code, the comprehensive legal system replacing a hodgepodge of feudal laws, were proposed during the revolution, Jospin argued, though he acknowledges that Napoleon actually delivered them, but up to a point, "He guaranteed some principles of the revolution and, at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it," For instance, Napoleon reintroduced slavery in French colonies, revived a system that allowed the rich to dodge conscription in the military and did nothing to advance gender equality.

At the other end of the spectrum have been former right-wing prime minister Dominique de Villepin, an aristocrat who was once fancied as a future President, a passionate collector of Napoleonic memorabilia, and author of several works on the subject. As a Napoleonic enthusiast he tells a different story. Napoleon was a saviour of France. If there had been no Napoleon, the Republic would not have survived. Advocates like de Villepin point to Napoleon’s undoubted achievements: the Civil Code, the Council of State, the Bank of France, the National Audit office, a centralised and coherent administrative system, lycées, universities, centres of advanced learning known as école normale, chambers of commerce, the metric system, and an honours system based on merit (which France has to this day). He restored the Catholic faith as the state faith but allowed for the freedom of religion for other faiths including Protestantism and Judaism. These were ambitions unachieved during the chaos of the revolution. As it is, these Napoleonic institutions continue to function and underpin French society. Indeed, many were copied in countries conquered by Napoleon, such as Italy, Germany and Poland, and laid the foundations for the modern state.

Back in 2014, French politicians and institutions in particular were nervous in marking the 200th anniversary of Napoleon's exile. My neighbours and other French friends remember that the commemorations centred around the Chateau de Fontainebleau, the traditional home of the kings of France and was the scene where Napoleon said farewell to the Old Guard in the "White Horse Courtyard" (la cour du Cheval Blanc) at the Palace of Fontainebleau. (The courtyard has since been renamed the "Courtyard of Goodbyes".) By all accounts the occasion was very moving. The 1814 Treaty of Fontainebleau stripped Napoleon of his powers (but not his title as Emperor of the French) and sent him into exile on Elba. The cost of the Fontainebleau "farewell" and scores of related events over those three weekends was shouldered not by the central government in Paris but by the local château, a historic monument and UNESCO World Heritage site, and the town of Fontainebleau.

While the 200th anniversary of the French Revolution that toppled the monarchy and delivered thousands to death by guillotine was officially celebrated in 1989, Napoleonic anniversaries are neither officially marked nor celebrated. For example, over a decade ago, the president and prime minister - at the time, Jacques Chirac and Dominque de Villepin - boycotted a ceremony marking the 200th anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz, Napoleon's greatest military victory. Both men were known admirers of Napoleon and yet political calculation and optics (as media spin doctors say) stopped them from fully honouring Napoleon’s crowning military glory.

Optics is everything. The division of opinion in France is perhaps best reflected in the fact that, in a city not shy of naming squares and streets after historical figures, there is not a single “Boulevard Napoleon” or “Place Napoleon” in Paris. On the streets of Paris, there are just two statues of Napoleon. One stands beneath the clock tower at Les Invalides (a military hospital), the other atop a column in the Place Vendôme. Napoleon's red marble tomb, in a crypt under the Invalides dome, is magnificent, perhaps because his remains were interred there during France's Second Empire, when his nephew, Napoleon III, was on the throne.

There are no squares, nor places, nor boulevards named for Napoleon but as far as I know there is one narrow street, the rue Bonaparte, running from the Luxembourg Gardens to the River Seine in the old Latin Quarter. And, that, too, is thanks to Napoleon III. For many, and I include myself, it’s a poor return by the city to the man who commissioned some of its most famous monuments, including the Arc de Triomphe and the Pont des Arts over the River Seine.

It's almost as if Napoleon Bonaparte is not part of the national story.

How Napoleon fits into that national story is something historians, French and non-French, have been grappling with ever since Napoleon died. The plain fact is Napoleon divides historians, what precisely he represents is deeply ambiguous and his political character is the subject of heated controversy. It’s hard for historians to sift through archival documents to make informed judgements and still struggle to separate the man from the myth.

One proof of this myth is in his immortality. After Hitler’s death, there was mostly an embarrassed silence; after Stalin’s, little but denunciation. But when Napoleon died on St Helena in 1821, much of Europe and the Americas could not help thinking of itself as a post-Napoleonic generation. His presence haunts the pages of Stendhal and Alfred de Vigny. In a striking and prescient phrase, Chateaubriand prophesied the “despotism of his memory”, a despotism of the fantastical that in many ways made Romanticism possible and that continues to this day.

The raw material for the future Napoleon myth was provided by one of his St Helena confidants, the Comte de las Cases, whose account of conversations with the great man came out shortly after his death and ran in repeated editions throughout the century. De las Cases somehow metamorphosed the erstwhile dictator into a herald of liberty, the emperor into a slayer of dynasties rather than the founder of his own. To the “great man” school of history Napoleon was grist to their mill, and his meteoric rise redefined the meaning of heroism in the modern world.

The Marxists, for all their dislike of great men, grappled endlessly with the meaning of the 18th Brumaire; indeed one of France’s most eminent Marxist historians, George Lefebvre, wrote what arguably remains the finest of all biographies of him.

It was on this already vast Napoleon literature, a rich terrain for the scholar of ideas, that the great Dutch historian Pieter Geyl was lecturing in 1940 when he was arrested and sent to Buchenwald. There he composed what became one of the classics of historiography, a seminal book entitled Napoleon: For and Against, which charted how generations of intellectuals had happily served up one Napoleon after another. Like those poor souls who crowded the lunatic asylums of mid-19th century France convinced that they were Napoleon, generations of historians and novelists simply could not get him out of their head.

The debate runs on today no less intensely than in the past. Post-Second World War Marxists would argue that he was not, in fact, revolutionary at all. Eric Hobsbawm, a notable British Marxist historian, argued that ‘Most-perhaps all- of his ideas were anticipated by the Revolution’ and that Napoleon’s sole legacy was to twist the ideals of the French Revolution, and make them ‘more conservative, hierarchical and authoritarian’.

This contrasts deeply with the view William Doyle holds of Napoleon. Doyle described Bonaparte as ‘the Revolution incarnate’ and saw Bonaparte’s humbling of Europe’s other powers, the ‘Ancien Regimes’, as a necessary precondition for the birth of the modern world. Whatever one thinks of Napoleon’s character, his sharp intellect is difficult to deny. Even Paul Schroeder, one of Napoleon’s most scathing critics, who condemned his conduct of foreign policy as a ‘criminal enterprise’ never denied Napoleon’s intellect. Schroder concluded that Bonaparte ‘had an extraordinary capacity for planning, decision making, memory, work, mastery of detail and leadership’. The question of whether Napoleon used his genius for the betterment or the detriment of the world, is the heart of the debate which surrounds him.

France's foremost Napoleonic scholar, Jean Tulard, put forward the thesis that Bonaparte was the architect of modern France. "And I would say also pâtissier [a cake and pastry maker] because of the administrative millefeuille that we inherited." Oddly enough, in North America the multilayered mille-feuille cake is called ‘a napoleon.’ Tulard’s works are essential reading of how French historians have come to tackle the question of Napoleon’s legacy. He takes the view that if Napoleon had not crushed a Royalist rebellion and seized power in 1799, the French monarchy and feudalism would have returned, Tulard has written. "Like Cincinnatus in ancient Rome, Napoleon wanted a dictatorship of public salvation. He gets all the power, and, when the project is finished, he returns to his plough." In the event, the old order was never restored in France. When Louis XVIII became emperor in 1814, he served as a constitutional monarch.

In England, until recently the views on Napoleon have traditionally less charitable and more cynical. Professor Christopher Clark, the notable Cambridge University European historian, has written. "Napoleon was not a French patriot - he was first a Corsican and later an imperial figure, a journey in which he bypassed any deep affiliation with the French nation," Clark believed Napoleon’s relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent.

Did he stabilise the revolutionary state or shut it down mercilessly? Clark believes Napoleon seems to have done both. Napoleon rejected democracy, he suffocated the representative dimension of politics, and he created a culture of courtly display. A month before crowning himself emperor, Napoleon sought approval for establishing an empire from the French in a plebiscite; 3,572,329 voted in favour, 2,567 against. If that landslide resembles an election in North Korea, well, this was no secret ballot. Each ‘yes’ or ‘no’ was recorded, along with the name and address of the voter. Evidently, an overwhelming majority knew which side their baguette was buttered on.

His extravagant coronation in Notre Dame in December 1804 cost 8.5 million francs (€6.5 million or $8.5 million in today's money). He made his brothers, sisters and stepchildren kings, queens, princes and princesses and created a Napoleonic aristocracy numbering 3,500. By any measure, it was a bizarre progression for someone often described as ‘a child of the Revolution.’ By crowning himself emperor, the genuine European kings who surrounded him were not convinced. Always a warrior first, he tried to represent himself as a Caesar, and he wears a Roman toga on the bas-reliefs in his tomb. His coronation crown, a laurel wreath made of gold, sent the same message. His icon, the eagle, was also borrowed from Rome. But Caesar's legitimacy depended on military victories. Ultimately, Napoleon suffered too many defeats.

These days Napoleon the man and his times remain very much in fashion and we are living through something of a new golden age of Napoleonic literature. Those historians who over the past decade or so have had fun denouncing him as the first totalitarian dictator seem to have it all wrong: no angel, to be sure, he ended up doing far more at far less cost than any modern despot. In his widely praised 2014 biography, Napoleon the Great, Andrew Roberts writes: “The ideas that underpin our modern world - meritocracy, equality before the law, property rights, religious toleration, modern secular education, sound finances, and so on - were championed, consolidated, codified and geographically extended by Napoleon. To them he added a rational and efficient local administration, an end to rural banditry, the encouragement of science and the arts, the abolition of feudalism and the greatest codification of laws since the fall of the Roman empire.”

Roberts partly bases his historical judgement on newly released historical documents about Napoleon that were only available in the past decade and has proved to be a boon for all Napoleonic scholars. Newly released 33,000 letters Napoleon wrote that still survive are now used extensively to illustrate the astonishing capacity that Napoleon had for compartmentalising his mind - he laid down the rules for a girls’ boarding school on the eve of the battle of Borodino, for example, and the regulations for Paris’s Comédie-Française while camped in the Kremlin. They also show Napoleon’s extraordinary capacity for micromanaging his empire: he would write to the prefect of Genoa telling him not to allow his mistress into his box at the theatre, and to a corporal of the 13th Line regiment warning him not to drink so much.

For me to have my own perspective on Napoleon is tough. The problem is that nothing with Napoleon is simple, and almost every aspect of his personality is a maddening paradox. He was a military genius who led disastrous campaigns. He was a liberal progressive who reinstated slavery in the French colonies. And take the French Revolution, which came just before Napoleon’s rise to power, his relationship with the French Revolution is deeply ambivalent. Did he stabilise it or shut it down? I agree with those British and French historians who now believe Napoleon seems to have done both.

On the one hand, Napoleon did bring order to a nation that had been drenched in blood in the years after the Revolution. The French people had endured the crackdown known as the 'Reign of Terror', which saw so many marched to the guillotine, as well as political instability, corruption, riots and general violence. Napoleon’s iron will managed to calm the chaos. But he also rubbished some of the core principles of the Revolution. A nation which had boldly brought down the monarchy had to watch as Napoleon crowned himself Emperor, with more power and pageantry than Louis XVI ever had. He also installed his relatives as royals across Europe, creating a new aristocracy. In the words of French politician and author Lionel Jospin, 'He guaranteed some principles of the Revolution and at the same time, changed its course, finished it and betrayed it.'

He also had a feared henchman in the form of Joseph Fouché, who ran a secret police network which instilled dread in the population. Napoleon’s spies were everywhere, stifling political opposition. Dozens of newspapers were suppressed or shut down. Books had to be submitted for approval to the Commission of Revision, which sounds like something straight out of George Orwell. Some would argue Hitler and Stalin followed this playbook perfectly. But here come the contradictions. Napoleon also championed education for all, founding a network of schools. He championed the rights of the Jews. In the territories conquered by Napoleon, laws which kept Jews cooped up in ghettos were abolished. 'I will never accept any proposals that will obligate the Jewish people to leave France,' he once said, 'because to me the Jews are the same as any other citizen in our country.'

He also, crucially, developed the Napoleonic Code, a set of laws which replaced the messy, outdated feudal laws that had been used before. The Napoleonic Code clearly laid out civil laws and due processes, establishing a society based on merit and hard work, rather than privilege. It was rolled out far beyond France, and indisputably helped to modernise Europe. While it certainly had its flaws – women were ignored by its reforms, and were essentially regarded as the property of men – the Napoleonic Code is often brandished as the key evidence for Napoleon’s progressive credentials. In the words of historian Andrew Roberts, author of Napoleon the Great, 'the ideas that underpin our modern world… were championed by Napoleon'.

What about Napoleon’s battlefield exploits? If anything earns comparisons with Hitler, it’s Bonaparte’s apparent appetite for conquest. His forces tore down republics across Europe, and plundered works of art, much like the Nazis would later do. A rampant imperialist, Napoleon gleefully grabbed some of the greatest masterpieces of the Renaissance, and allegedly boasted, 'the whole of Rome is in Paris.'

Napoleon has long enjoyed a stellar reputation as a field commander – his capacities as a military strategist, his ability to read a battle, the painstaking detail with which he made sure that he cold muster a larger force than his adversary or took maximum advantage of the lie of the land – these are stuff of the military legend that has built up around him. It is not without its critics, of course, especially among those who have worked intensively on the later imperial campaigns, in the Peninsula, in Russia, or in the final days of the Empire at Waterloo.

Doubts about his judgment, and allegations of rashness, have been raised in the context of some of his victories, too, most notably, perhaps, at Marengo. But overall his reputation remains largely intact, and his military campaigns have been taught in the curricula of military academies from Saint-Cyr to Sandhurst, alongside such great tacticians as Alexander the Great and Hannibal.

Historians may query his own immodest opinion that his presence on the battlefield was worth an extra forty thousand men to his cause, but it is clear that when he was not present (as he was not for most of the campaign in Spain) the French were wont to struggle. Napoleon understood the value of speed and surprise, but also of structures and loyalties. He reformed the army by introducing the corps system, and he understood military aspirations, rewarding his men with medals and honours; all of which helped ensure that he commanded exceptional levels of personal loyalty from his troops.

Yet, I do find it hard to side with the more staunch defenders of Napoleon who say his reputation as a war monger is to some extent due to British propaganda at the time. They will point out that the Napoleonic Wars, far from being Napoleon’s fault, were just a continuation of previous conflicts that arose thanks to the French Revolution. Napoleon, according to this analysis, inherited a messy situation, and his only real crime was to be very good at defeating enemies on the battlefield. I think that is really pushing things too far. I mean deciding to invade Spain and then Russia were his decisions to invade and conquer.

He was, by any measure, a genius of war. Even his nemesis the Duke of Wellington, when asked who the greatest general of his time was, replied: 'In this age, in past ages, in any age, Napoleon.'

I will qualify all this and agree that Napoleon’s Russian campaign has been rightly held up as a fatal folly which killed so many of his men, but this blunder – epic as it was – should not be compared to Hitler’s wars of evil aggression. Most historians will agree that comparing the two men is horribly flattering to Hitler - a man fuelled by visceral, genocidal hate - and demeaning to Napoleon, who was a product of Enlightenment thinking and left a legacy that in many ways improved Europe.

Napoleon was, of course, no libertarian, and no pluralist. He would tolerate no opposition to his rule, and though it was politicians and civilians who imposed his reforms, the army was never far behind. But comparisons with twentieth-century dictators are well wide of the mark. While he insisted on obedience from those he administered, his ideology was based not on division or hatred, but on administrative efficiency and submission to the law. And the state he believed in remained stubbornly secular.

In Catholic southern Europe, of course, that was not an approach with which it was easy to acquiesce; and disorder, insurgency and partisan attacks can all be counted among the results. But these were principles on which the Emperor would not and could not give ground. If he had beliefs they were not religious or spiritual beliefs, but the secular creed of a man who never forgot that he owed both his military career and his meteoric political rise to the French Revolution, and who never quite abandoned, amidst the monarchical symbolism and the court pomp of the Empire, the republican dreams of his youth. When he claimed, somewhat ambiguously, after the coup of 18 Brumaire that `the Revolution was over’, he almost certainly meant that the principles of 1789 had at last been consummated, and that the continuous cycle of violence of the 1790s could therefore come to an end.

When the Empire was declared in 1804, the wording, again, might seem curious, the French being informed that the `Republic would henceforth be ruled by an Emperor’. Napoleon might be a dictator, but a part at least of him remained a son of the Enlightenment.

The arguments over Napoleon’s status will continue - and that in itself is a testament to the power of one of the most complex figures ever to straddle the world’s stage.

Will the fascination with Napoleon continue for another 200 years?

In France, at least, enthusiasm looks set to diminish. Napoleon and his exploits are scarcely mentioned in French schools anymore. Stéphane Guégan, curator of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris, which, among other First Empire artworks, houses a plaster model of Napoleon dressed as a Roman emperor astride a horse, has described France's fascination with him as ‘a national illness.’ He believes that the people who met him were fascinated by his charm. And today, even the most hostile to Napoleon also face this charm. So there is a difficulty to apprehend the duality of this character. As he wrote, “He was born from the revolution, he extended and finished it, and after 1804 he turns into a despot, a dictator.”

In France, Guégan aptly observes, there is a kind of nostalgia, not for dictatorship but for strong leaders. "Our age is suffering a lack of imagination and political utopia,"

Here I think Guégan is onto something. Napoleon’s stock has always risen or fallen according to the vicissitudes of world events and fortunes of France itself.

In the past, history was the study of great men and women. Today the focus of teaching is on trends, issues and movements. France in 1800 is no longer about Louis XVI and Napoleon Bonaparte. It's about the industrial revolution. Man does not make history. History makes men. Or does it? The study of history makes a mug out of those with such simple ideological driven conceits.

For two hundred years on, the French still cannot agree on whether Napoleon was a hero or a villain as he has swung like a pendulum according to the gravitational pull of historical events and forces.

The question I keep asking of myself and also to French friends with whom I discuss such things is what kind of Napoleon does our generation need?

Thanks for your question.

#question #ask #napoleon #french #french history #history #military history #bonaparte #france #historiography #republic #historians #personal

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bluebellhairpin · 4 years ago

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No More

Fantasy AU!Levi Ackerman X Fem!Reader

Part One - No Feelin’ - Part Three - No Regrets

A/N: SO I wrote a piece for a Discord Event and ummm I wrote a part two? instead of anything else I have backed up? In my drafts? And ask box? Oopsie? - Nemo

Summary: A year past, and word from you has been scarce to none. After leaving Levi high and dry last time, he’d been preparing for your return ever since. What he didn’t expect was to see you so suddenly - sitting atop the throne he was supposed to protect.

Warnings: Violence. Language. Character Death. Blood (I feel I should emphasise this one, it’s... gorey. For me). Mentions of rape. Slight Misogyny. More of my bad poetry. MC says Zeke has a small pp.

Listening to: ‘MORE’ by K/DA (slowed) - ‘When I go it’s for gold yeah, they cool but I’m cold. I don’t fit in the mold, I’m a rebel.’

Series Masterlist

Masterlist

There was something about the eerie silence that followed your first ‘visit’ that set Levi on edge.

He remembered how quiet you were as his subordinate. How you stood back and watched when you could, but managed to surprise everyone when you had to get in and get dirty like all those others training to be a knight. He wondered what he could’ve done to change things, to have stopped you from becoming that monster he fought in the throne room.

He knew there was nothing he could do about that now, but something about those last words you spoke to him - ‘find your advantage’ - they just stuck with him.

He knew the sword he was given was special. That it had abilities that no human blacksmith could’ve given it. It gave him strength. Immunity. It could heal, rebuild, and it gave him the ability to endure. Yours was not like that.

The people the King put in charge of studying it said it was destructive. That everyone who tried to wield it in the past had suffered nothing but pain, and in trying to control the power it held they’d only succeeded in killing themselves.

Levi knew that you were not like them. Not before. Not a year ago. He knew, not now either.

“You’re very diligent in welcoming me back, Little Captain.”

And how he hated it.

He was left frozen in shock, watching you as you sat atop the throne - legs crossed, the fingers of one hand tangled in the hair of the old king’s body-less head, while the other held that damn sword. The crimson of his blood matched your tainted skin, dribbling down your arms to match your bright veins, and the color of your dreaded blade.

It was like the color of corruption was red, and you were so soaked in it that it stained the floor. With that thought he could almost fool himself into thinking it wasn’t the king’s blood at all.

Except for the stench of it. It was like he was punched in the face with the reek.

“Oh don’t look so surprised,” you said, tutting at him and waving the kings head in his direction, “I thought you would’ve been preparing for my return.”

“You weren’t supposed to come back.”

“Oh, but the king was sitting so nicely on his throne just then, I had to.” You said, letting the head drop to the floor. It rolled down the stairs, meeting it’s limp and pale counterpart. “Can you just imagine my joy when he was here to welcome me with a pretty little concubine between his legs. I couldn’t help myself!”

“You’re insane!” he said, taking his sword in his hand and rushing up the stairs to be met with the tip of your sword at his throat.

“Ah ah,” you said, “You pledged your life to the crown, to serve and protect. I killed the old king, now the crown is mine.”

He grit his teeth, cursing himself for not noticing. For not being fast enough. Then, and now.

“Bow. To your new Queen.”

Levi would never admit how easily he obeyed you.

Despite knowing he had the power to over-power you, he didn’t dare use it.

The old King - Fritz - had not been laid to rest. As far as he knew you had him turned to garden mulch. Him and anyone who decided you weren’t fit to wear the crown.

He had to say, the rebellion that broke out once your position was made public - from those that wanted you gone, and those who thought that meant they could break the law because you did - was silenced much quicker than he’d seen a rebellion be silenced in his whole life.

You slaughtered those who stood at the castles gate, pushing those who wanted you gone with a heel to the back of their heads. They who rebelled against you had a choice - die like those who banged on the drawbridge, and have their blood and innards join the muck in the moat, or submit like the knights.

Then you took to the streets and made those who deserved it pay back what they had taken. If they stole from a market stall, they returned with interest. If they decided to rape, their manhood was taken. If they decided to kill, they paid with their own lives in turn.

So despite your aloof yet demanding nature, your lack of empathy, and love of - putting it lightly - a hunt, you made peace reign over the kingdom. That was something all the knights could admit.

“She’s kinda hot though.” His eyes snapped over to a newer knight, Flotch, who was muttering to Jean, who was in turn doing a very good job of ignoring him. “You know, if you take away the creepy eyes, and those nasty veins on her arms. I’d tap that.”

He had to resist from groaning. Of course there’d be people lewding their new ruler - a murderous one no less - and one of such people had to be one of his subordinates.

“Seriously though, look -”

“- Watch your tongue, young one.” A voice said, and Levi did a doubletake to find you behind Flotch with a clawed hand around his throat. “Diminish me to a piece of flesh like that again and I’ll brand your forehead with a big fat ‘M’.”

“W-what’s that supposed to mean?” he slurred, his own grip now ghosting over yours.

“‘Misogynist’.” you hissed, tightening your grip on his throat before withdrawing, leaving dripping red marks behind. He stood still for a few short moments, then doubled-over, clutching his neck and letting out garbled noises of pain.

“Serves him right.” Jean said, stepping past Levi and over Flotch’s legs to follow you as you walked away.

“Something needs to be done about him.” you mused.

“I agree. For once.” Levi said, stepping to his side to face you before mumbling an addition, “I bet his ass looks as hairy as an ape.” You barked out a laugh - loud, and as smooth as whiskey.

“That would account for the little monkey he’s hiding in his basement.” you said, leaning down to hush the comment in his ear. Levi could tell that there wasn’t an actual monkey, nor a basement, and a rushed glance down Zeke’s body also told him it wasn’t entirely true, however you had been everything but subtle about anything anymore.

“Do you want war?” Zeke asked, covered eyes narrowing over at you. You tutted him, reminding Levi about the time you directed such an action at him - taunting with his failure of protecting the old king.

“Would you go to war over a dick joke?”

He wouldn’t. That Levi knew. No one was petty or childish enough to go to war with another whole-ass country just because it’s ruler said your dick was small. But Zeke was unpredictable.

“I’d advise against it, personally.” you said, tapping your nails along the oak table, “It’s so mediocre. If I were to go to war with you I’d do something much more grand.”

“Like what?”

You smiled, wide and wicked, and Levi was reminded again of who you were. You’d beheaded the old king like he was just an unneeded piece of paper. You’d painted the castle moat red. Despite the good that was no doubt still there - somewhere - you were still very much evil.

You were still corrupt.

You raised a hand, performing a universal signal that meant to wait, and then a man came in. Huffing and sweaty, with eyes wide and broken.

“Ze- you highne- Sir.”

“- What?” Zeke asked, turning in his chair. Clearly unimpressed.

“Our capital. They… She attacked it!” Zeke turned back around, now looking much angrier.

“What?”

“Oh, it’s nothing major.” You said, waving him off as if he were just a child complaining about his socks not matching. “But your place of residence might have a few scorch marks now.”

Zeke stood abruptly, drawing his sword, and causing a chain reaction. You mirrored him, drawing your own - abhit longer and glowing red in aggression. Levi drew his, as did the other guards, Erwin and Miche. And the two with Zeke drew theirs as well.

There wasn’t a single person in the room that didn’t have a sword on them, and not even Levi could say he wasn’t on edge. But you? You just laughed, lowering your weapon.

“Okay, this is stupid. Let’s just -”

“If you call burning my city ‘stupid’, then I’d love to know what you’d call me lathering your streets in your blood.”

“Oh,” you cooed, “Looks like I struck a nerve. Or maybe you’re on your period?”

“Quiet!” He yelled, pushing his sword closer to you. “Or do you want me to slice off your tongue.”

“I’d like to see you try.”

He tried.

And much like anyone else who crossed your path, he was lucky to have just left with his tail between his legs. However, him being Zeke, had to leave behind something to be remembered by.

This particular time it was in the form of a huge gash, spanning across your shoulder and up your neck.

Despite your all-powerful nature, the power your sword gave you was not one that could heal. It took what it was given, and it corrupted it. So even if all Zeke gave you was a scratch, the power of your sword meant it took that scratch, and made it into a cut. Oozing blood, and pulsating with a pain that made you wince with every heartbeat.

You skulked away towards your chambers, a bottle of alcohol in your hand, and closed the door behind you.

Levi knew that it could very well kill you. That’s what you were warned of. It would give the kingdom a chance to regain a sane ruler. It would be good if you died.

‘From chaos to healing, is where to gain the sealing;

Where they be kneeling, you’ll have no feeling.’

Those were the words you told him the first time you met. But later, after you started ruling and he became your own personal guard, you told him there was more. There were ruins. Books. A whole civilization even. Those two phrases were just a part of a whole. A whole that you knew.

‘The one who stops the war, to try and reach the core;

Along the gentle shore, they will gain more.’

There was more to that sword than just corruption, and there was more to his sword than just healing.

Leaning against the wall outside your room, he took his sword in his hands, watching as the symbols along it’s blade glowed up at him from the interaction.

He could save you, but would it be worth it?

#fantasy au #no feelin' timeline #levi ackerman x reader #shingeki no kyojin x reader #attack on titan x reader #snk x reader #aot x reader #knight levi

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kareniliana · 4 years ago

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Kol: “I Made Tea”

A//N: Okay for this one Kol will in portrayed as Daniel Sharman when Kol was in Kaleb something’s body. He was a witch! Okay enjoy!

xx Karebear 💛🧸

Your parent’s died a few years back, a newly turned vampire had gone on a spree in the streets of New Orleans. Two of the many dead were your parents. They went out on a date while you worked your tourist store. When you heard the news of a vampire on the loose, killing anyone and everyone, you immediately went to check it out and find your parents. But when you found them, they were drained of all their blood. They were piled onto other dead people. You became furious with whoever the hell called themselves the King of New Orleans. Letting his army kill innocent people, especially your parents.

You went full evil powerful witch on the vampires, killing only the vampire who was responsible for their deaths. Leaving Klaus Mikaelson with a threat, if anymore of your people pop up dead, the nest dead body is his or a member of his profound dysfunctional family. Since that night, he had his sights set on you. He wanted you as an ally, not an enemy. And he made that insanely obvious.

Your family comes from a line a very powerful witches, your ancestors carried a rare type of magic. Immense power get passed on and accumulates, but only once every 20-30 years. You’re not bound to a place, unlike the covens here in New Orleans. If they leave the area, they are powerless.

You worked the store, your Aunt and Uncle becoming owners of the store after your parents. They also became your guardians, you were grateful that you had them. You know plenty of people in the world don’t have the same luxury as you.

The sound of the door opening and sound the bell, sprung your head up. In comes the Kaleb Westphall. When you were still in school, he was the guy every girl wanted and every guy wanted to be. You knew he was a witch, catching him cast a spell on a bully a few years back. But you never spoke to him about it.

He looked around gathering certain crystals and herbs. He went to the counter, dropping his items. “You guys got any vervain? I can’t seem to find it anywhere.”

You looked up at him with a slight smirk, “You must of not looked hard enough.”

You stood up walking around the counter and going back to the table of common herbs, “It was next to the valerian and bee balm.”

“Oh, Yeah. Would you look at that, I must have.” He smiled at you, “Sorry for the waste of time, Y/n.”

You muttered in a rude tone without realizing, “Yeah I’m sure you are...” walking back behind the cashier register, how does he know your name?

His smile fades, “damn, Y/n, I said sorry.” You rang up his items; quartz crystals, vervain, valerian, bee balm and mugwort.

“No, no, I didn’t- I - I just didn’t think you knew my name.” You suddenly became shy, he never spoke to you in high school. You were a nobody.

“What? How could I not know who you are? You’re becoming a powerful witch and my brother is looking forward to you growing into your power.” Kaleb paid for his items and retreated from the store.

You stood there looking at the door in confusion, Kaleb doesn’t have any siblings.

“His brother?” You whispered to yourself out-loud, “Klaus.”

Hours after ‘Kaleb’ left your store, your aunt finally came in to finish off the shift and close. You had cleaned up the shop, restocked, and redecorated the window showcase. Getting a feeling that someone is watching you, you canvas the street, seeing a few locals and tourists. Then you saw him, ‘Kaleb’. He noticed you saw him, turning around and walking into an alley.

You rushed outside, running after him. Waving your hand across, pulling a dumpster to stop him. He sighed in defeat.

“Okay, you caught me. What do you want to know?” He placed his hand on his hips.

“Who are you? And don’t say Kaleb, I know that's a lie.” You didn’t want to be lied to, and wanted to get to the bottom of whatever this was.

“Okay, how’d you know? Was it the powerful witch comment?”

You scoffed, “Everything gave it off. Kaleb doesn't even know I exist, he doesn’t have a brother and Klaus told me the same thing.”

“Said what?”

You rolled your eyes, not wanting to talk about it but, “The night my parents died I threaten him. Klaus. And he said he was looking forward to me growing into my power. Something about how he hasn’t seen one person hold this much potential since that one Bennett witch.”

He chuckled deeply, “Ah yes, the Bonnie Bennett. Now she is a tyrant. And unstoppable force, thank god I never tested her like Nik here.”

You flung your finger at him, thrusting him back against the dumpster rather harshly. “This body doesn’t self heal, take easy love.”

You scoffed, “You’re a Mikaelson, wherever you go pain and strife follow along.”

With that you turned around, going back to the shop. Grabbing your things and walking back out. Making your way to the nearest pub for food, but being delayed when ‘Kaleb’ grabbed a hold of your elbow, stopping you in your tracks.

“How rude? We were having a conversation.” He smirked, walking alongside you.

“I don’t care, get out of Kaleb’s body and leave this place alone!” You shrugged off his hand.

“Mhmm, sorry love I can’t do that. My mother put me in this body, can’t leave until she takes me out of it.”

You rolled your eyes, “What is Kaleb had plans! A future he was looking forward to! You’re taking a portion of his life that he will never get back.”

“This guy is useless, he wants to be a professional race car driver, that's so mediocre and boring. His life is already wasted.” He grabbed your arm again, stopping you from running away from him. “Are you mad at me because of the body I’m in or because of lying to you?”

“Why do you care?”

“Y/n, just settle here for a second. Look, I know the power our hold is immense. If your feeling what I feel just by touching you, then you and I both know if you don’t get your emotions under control. It could be destructive, for you and everyone in New Orleans.” You leaned against the cold building wall.

You sighed, knowing he was right. “Why are you doing this? Why’d you come into my store?”

“Niklaus mentioned you and I wanted to keep an eye on you. Keep you safe, you’re innocent in everything. With your parents, with your magic.” He leaned against the building with you.

“I don’t even know who you really are.” You scoffed a little, almost hating that you’re in a weird position. Kaleb doesn’t deserve to be used like this, but Kol’s genuine care for your well being, made you not care so much.

“Names Kol, it’s very nice to meet you.” He said gently, you smiled at him. Knowing you’re in big trouble now.

“So what was that stuff for?” You asked, curiosity getting the best of you.

“Oh, I made tea.” He smiled at you, earning a burst of laughter from you. He laughed along with you.

#kol mikaelson #kol mikaelson x reader #kol mikaelson imagine #the originals imagine #the originals x reader #the originals #tvd universe #kol x reader

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ordinaryschmuck · 3 years ago

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What I Thought About Loki (Season One)

(Sorry this is later than it should have been. I may or may not be experiencing burnout from reviewing every episode of the gayest show Disney has ever produced)

Salutations, random people on the internet. I am an Ordinary Schmuck. I write stories and reviews and draw comics and cartoons.

Do you want to know what's fun about the Marvel Cinematic Universe? It is now officially at the point where the writers can do whatever the hell they want.

A TV series about two Avengers getting stuck in a series of sitcoms as one of them explores their personal grief? Sure.

Another series as a guy with metal bird wings fights the inner racism of his nation to take the mantel of representing the idea of what that nation should be? Why not?

A forgettable movie about a superspy and her much more mildly entertaining pretend family working together to kill the Godfather? F**king go for it (Let that be a taste for my Black Widow review in October)!

There is no limit to what you can get with these movies and shows anymore, and I personally consider that a good thing. It allows this franchise to lean further into creative insanity, thus embracing its comic roots in the process. Take Loki, for example. It is a series about an alternate version of one of Marvel's best villains bouncing around the timeline with Owen Wilson to prevent the end of the universe. It sounds like just the right amount of wackiness that it should be too good to fail.

But that's today's question: Did it fail? To find out my own answer to that, we're gonna have to dive deep into spoilers. So be wary as you continue reading.

With that said, let's review, shall we?

WHAT I LIKED

Loki Himself: Let's get this out of the way: This isn't the same Loki we've seen grow within five movies. The Loki in this series, while similar in many ways, is still his very own character. He goes through his own redemption and developments that fleshes out Loki, all through ways that, if I'm being honest with you, is done much better in six-hour-long episodes than in past films. Loki's story was already entertaining, but he didn't really grow that much aside from being this chaotic neutral character instead of this wickedly evil supervillain. Through his series, we get to see a gradual change in his personality, witnessing him understand his true nature and "glorious purpose," to the point where he's already this completely different person after one season. Large in part because of the position he's forced into.

Some fans might say that the series is less about Loki and more about the TVA. And while I can unquestionably see their point, I still believe that the TVA is the perfect way for Loki to grow. He's a character all about causing chaos and controlling others, so forcing him to work for an organization that takes that away allows Loki time to really do some introspection. Because if his tricks don't work, and his deceptions can't fool others, then who is he? Well, through this series, we see who he truly is: A character who is alone and is intended to be nothing more than a villain whose only truly selfless act got him killed in the end. Even if he wants to better himself, he can't because that "goes against the sacred timeline." Loki is a person who is destined to fail, and he gets to see it all with his own eyes by looking at what his life was meant to be and by observing what it could have been. It's all tragic and yet another example of these shows proving how they allow underdeveloped characters in the MCU a better chance to shine. Because if Loki can give even more depth to a character who's already compelling as is, then that is a feat worth admiration.

The Score: Let's give our gratitude toward Natalie Holt, who f**king killed it with this series score. Every piece she made is nothing short of glorious. Sylvie's and the TVA's themes particularly stand out, as they perfectly capture who/what they're representing. Such as how Sylvie's is big and boisterous where the TVA's sound eerie and almost unnatural. Holt also finds genius ways to implement other scores into the series, from using familiar tracks from the Thor movies to even rescoring "Ride of the Valkyries" in a way that makes a scene even more epic than it already could have been. The MCU isn't best known for its musical scores, partly because they aim to be suitable rather than memorable. But every now and again, something as spectacular as the Loki soundtrack sprinkles through the cracks of mediocrity. Making fans all the more grateful because of it.

There’s a lot of Talking: To some, this will be considered a complaint. Most fans of the MCU come for the action, comedy, and insanely lovable characters. Not so much for the dialogue and exposition. That being said, I consider all of the talking to be one of Loki's best features. All the background information about the TVA added with the character's backstories fascinates me, making me enthusiastic about learning more. Not everyone else will be as interested in lore and world-building as others, but just because something doesn't grab you, in particular, doesn't mean it isn't appealing at all. Case in point: There's a reason why the Five Nights at Freddy's franchise has lasted as long as it has, and it's not entirely because of how "scary" it is.

There's also the fact that most of the dialogue in Loki is highly engaging. I'll admit, some scenes do drag a bit. However, every line is delivered so well that I'm more likely to hang on to every word when characters simply have honest conversations with each other. And if I can be entertained by Loki talking with Morbius about jetskis, then I know a show is doing at least something right.

It’s Funny: This shouldn't be a surprise. The MCU is well-known for its quippy humor in the direct acknowledgment that it doesn't take itself too seriously. With that said, it is clear which movies and shows are intended to be taken seriously, while others are meant to be comedies. Loki tries to be a bit of both. There are some heavy scenes that impact the characters, and probably even some fans, due to how well-acted and professionally written they can be. However, this is also a series about a Norse god traveling through time to deal with alternate versions of himself, with one of them being an alligator. I'd personally consider it a crime against storytelling to not make it funny. Thankfully, the writers aren't idiots and know to make the series fun with a few flawlessly timed and delivered jokes that never really take away from the few good grim moments that actually work.

It Kept Me Surprised: About everything I appreciate about Loki, the fact that I could never really tell what direction it was going is what I consider its absolute best feature. Every time I think I knew what was going to happen, there was always this one big twist that heavily subverted any and every one of my expectations. Such as how each time I thought I knew who the big bad was in this series, it turns out that there was an even worse threat built up in the background. The best part is that these twists aren't meant for shock value. It's always supposed to drive the story forward, and on a rewatch, you can always tell how the seeds have been planted for making each surprise work. It's good that it kept fans guessing, as being predictable and expected would probably be the worst path to take when making a series about Loki, a character who's all about trickery and deception. So bonus points for being in line with the character.

The TVA: You can complain all you want about how the show is more about the TVA than it is Loki, but you can't deny how the organization in question is a solid addition to the MCU. Initially, it was entertaining to see Loki of all characters be taken aback by how the whole process works. And it was worth a chuckle seeing Infinity Stones, the most powerful objects in the universe, get treated as paperweights. However, as the season continues and we learn about the TVA, the writers show that their intention is to try and write a message about freedom vs. control. We've seen this before in movies like Captain America: The Winter Soldier or Captain America: Civil War, but with those films, it always felt like the writers were leaning more towards one answer instead of making it obscure over which decision is correct. This is why I enjoy the fact that Loki went on saying that there really is no right answer for this scenario. If the TVA doesn't prune variants, it could result in utter chaos and destruction that no one from any timeline can prepare themselves for. But when they do prune variants along with their timelines, it takes away all free will, forcing people to be someone they probably don't even want to be. It's a situation where there really is no middle ground. Even if you bring up how people could erase timelines more destructive than others, that still takes away free will on top of how there's no unbiased way of deciding which timelines are better or worse. And the series found a brilliant way to explain this moral: The season starts by showing how the TVA is necessary, to later point out how there are flaws and evil secrets within it, and ends things with the revelation that there are consequences without the TVA keeping the timeline in check. It's an epic showcase of fantastic ideas met with exquisite execution that I can't help but give my seal of approval to.

Miss Minutes: Not much to say. This was just a cute character, and I love that Tara Strong, one of the most popular voice actors, basically plays a role in the MCU now.

Justifying Avengers: Endgame: Smartest. Decision. This series. Made. Bar none.

Because when you establish that the main plot is about a character getting arrested for f**king over the timeline, you're immediately going to get people questioning, "Why do the Avengers get off scot-free?" So by quickly explaining how their time-traveling antics were supposed to happen, it negates every one of those complaints...or most of them. There are probably still a-holes who are poking holes in that logic, but they're not the ones writing this review, so f**k them.

Mobius: I didn't really expect Owen Wilson to do that good of a job in Loki. Primarily due to how the Cars franchise discredits him as a professional actor for...forever. With that said, Owen Wilson's Mobius might just be one of the most entertaining characters in the series. Yes, even more so than Loki himself. Mobius acts as the perfect straight man to Loki's antics, what with being so familiar with the supposed god of mischief through past variations of him. Because of that, it's always a blast seeing these two bounce off one another through Loki trying to trick a Loki expert, and said expert even deceiving Loki at times. Also, on his own, Mobius is still pretty fun. He has this sort of witty energy that's often present in Phil Coulson (Love that character too, BTW), but thanks to Owen Wilson's quirks in his acting, there's a lot more energy to Mobius than one would find in Coulson. As well as a tad bit of tragedy because of Mobius being a variant and having no clue what his life used to be. It's a lot to unpack and is impressively written, added to how it's Owen Wilson who helps make the character work as well as he did. Cars may not have done much for his career, but Loki sure as hell showed his strengths.

Ravonna Renslayer: Probably the least entertaining character, but definitely one of the most intriguing. At least to me.

Ravonna is a character who is so steadfast in her believes that she refuses to accept that she may be wrong. Without the proper writing, someone like Ravonna could tick off (ha) certain people. Personally, I believe that Ravonna is written well enough where even though I disagree with her belief, I can understand where she's coming from. She's done so much for the TVA, bringing an end to so many variants and timelines that she can't accept that it was all for nothing. In short, Ravonna represents the control side of the freedom vs. control theme that the writers are pushing. Her presence is necessary while still being an appealing character instead of a plot device. Again, at least to me.

Hunter B-15: I have no strong feelings one way or another towards B-15's personality, but I will admit that I love the expectation-subversion done with her. She has this air of someone who's like, "I'm this by-the-books badass cop, and I will only warm up to this cocky rookie after several instances of them proving themselves." That's...technically not B-15. She's the first to see Loki isn't that bad, but only because B-15 is the first in the main cast to learn the hidden vile present in the TVA. It makes her change in point of view more believable than how writers usually work a character like hers, on top of adding a new type of engaging motivation for why she fights. I may not particularly enjoy her personality, but I do love her contributions.

Loki Watching What His Life Could Have Been: This was a brilliant decision by the writers. It's basically having Loki speedrun his own character development through witnessing what he could have gone through and seeing the person he's meant to be, providing a decent explanation for why he decides to work for the TVA. And on the plus side, Tom Hiddleston did a fantastic job at portraying the right emotions the character would have through a moment like this. Such as grief, tearful mirth, and borderline shock and horror. It's a scene that no other character could go through, as no one but Loki needed a wake-up call for who he truly is. This series might heavily focus on the TVA, but scenes like this prove just who's the star of the show.

Loki Causing Mischief in Pompeii: I just really love this scene. It's so chaotic and hilarious, all heavily carried by the fact that you can tell that Tom Hiddleston is having the time of his damn life being this character. What more can I say about it.

Sylvie: The first of many surprises this season offered, and boy was she a great one.

Despite being an alternate version of Loki, I do appreciate that Sylvie's her own character and not just "Loki, but with boobs." She still has the charm and charisma, but she also comes across as more hardened and intelligent when compared to the mischievous prick we've grown to love. A large part of that is due to her backstory, which might just be the most tragic one these movies and shows have ever made. Sylvie got taken away when she was a little girl, losing everything she knew and loved, and it was all for something that the people who arrested her don't even remember. How sad is that? The fact that her life got permanently screwed over, leaving zero impact on the people responsible for it. As badass as it is to hear her say she grew up at the ends of a thousand worlds (that's an album title if I ever heard one), it really is depressing to know what she went through. It also makes her the perfect candidate to represent the freedom side of the freedom vs. control argument. Because she's absolutely going to want to fight to put an end to the people who decide how the lives of trillions should be. Those same people took everything from Sylvie, and if I were in her position, I'd probably do the same thing. Of course, we all know the consequences that come from this, and people might criticize Sylvie the same way they complain about Thor and Star Lord for screwing over the universe in Avengers: Infinity War. But here's the thing: Sylvie's goals are driven by vengeance, which can blind people from any other alternatives. Meaning her killing He Who Remains is less of a story flaw and more of a character flaw. It may be a bad decision, but that's for Season Two Sylvie to figure out. For now, I'll just appreciate the well-written and highly compelling character we got this season and eagerly wait as we see what happens next with her.

The Oneshot in Episode Three: Not as epic as the hallway scene in Daredevil, but I do find it impressive that it tries to combine real effects, fighting, and CGI in a way where it's all convincing enough.

Lady Sif Kicking Loki in the D**k: This is a scene that makes me realize why I love this series. At first, I laugh at Loki being stuck in a time loop where Lady Sif kicks him in the d**k over and over again. But a few scenes later, this setup actually works as a character moment that explains why Loki does the things he does.

This series crafted phenomenal character development through Loki getting kicked in the d**k by the most underrated badass of the Marvel Cinematic Universe. It's a perfect balance of comedy and drama that not every story can nail, yet Loki seemed like it did with very little effort.

Classic Loki: This variant shows the true tragedy of being Loki. The only way to survive is to live in isolation, far away from everything and everyone he loves, only to end up having his one good deed result in his death anyways. Classic Loki is definitive proof that no matter what face they have, Lokis never gets happy endings. They're destined to lose, but at least this version knows that if you're going out, you're going out big. And at least he got to go out with a mischievous laugh.

(Plus, the fact that he's wearing Loki's first costume from the comics is a pretty cute callback).

Alligator Loki: Alligator Loki is surprisingly adorable, and if you know me, you know that I can't resist cute s**t. It's not in my nature.

Loki on Loki Violence: If you thought Loki going ham in Pompeii was chaotic, that was nothing to this scene. Because watching these Lokis backstab one another, to full-on murdering each other, is a moment that is best described as pure, unadulterated chaos. And I. Loved. Every. Second of it.

The Opening Logo for the Season Finale: I'm still not that big of a fan of the opening fanfare playing for each episode, but I will admit that it was a cool feature to play vocal clips of famous quotes when the corresponding character appears. It's a great way of showing the chaos of how the "sacred timeline" works without having it to be explained further.

The Citadel: I adore the set design of the Citadel. So much history and backstory shine through the state of every room the characters walk into. You get a perfect picture of what exactly happened, but seeing how ninety percent of the place is in shambles, it's pretty evident that not everything turned out peachy keen. And as a personal note, my favorite aspect of the Citadel is the yellow cracks in the walls. It looks as though reality itself is cracking apart, which is pretty fitting when considering where the Citadel actually is.

He Who Remains: This man. I. Love. This man.

I love this man for two reasons.

A. He's a ton of fun. Credit to that goes to the performance delivered by Jonathon Majors. Not only is it apparent that Majors is having a blast, but he does a great job at conveying how He Who Remains is a strategic individual but is still very much off his rocker. These villains are always my favorite due to how much of a blast it is seeing someone with high intelligence just embracing their own insanity. If you ask me, personalities are always essential for villains. Because even when they have the generic plot to rule everything around them, you're at least going to remember who they are for how entertaining they were. Thankfully He Who Remains has that entertainment value, as it makes me really excited for his eventual return, whether it'd be strictly through Loki Season Two or perhaps future movies.

And B. He Who Remains is a fantastic foil for Loki. He Who Remains is everything Loki wishes he could have been, causing so much death, destruction, and chaos to the multiverse. The important factor is that he does it all through order and control. The one thing Loki despises, and He Who Remains uses it to his advantage. I feel like that's what makes him the perfect antagonist to Loki, thanks to him winning the game by not playing it. I would love it if He Who Remains makes further appearances in future movies and shows, especially given how he's hinted to be Kane the Conqueror, but if he's only the main antagonist in Loki, I'm still all for it. He was a great character in his short time on screen, and I can't wait to see what happens next with him.

WHAT I DISLIKED

Revealing that Loki was D.B. Cooper: A cute scene, but it's really unnecessary. It adds nothing to the plot, and I feel like if it was cut out entirely, it wouldn't have been the end of the world...Yeah. That's it.

That's my one and only complaint about this season.

Maybe some scenes drag a bit, and I guess Episode Three is kind of the weakest, but there's not really anything that this series does poorly that warrants an in-depth complaint.

Nope.

Nothing at all...

…

...

...I'm not touching that "controversy" of Loki falling for Sylvie instead of Mobius. That's a situation where there are no winners.

Only losers.

Exclusively losers.

Other than that, this season was amazing!

IN CONCLUSION

I'd give the first season of Loki a well-earned A, with a 9.5 through my usual MCU ranking system. It turns out, it really is the best type of wackiness that was just too good to fail. The characters are fun and likable, the comedy and drama worked excellently, and the expansive world-building made me really intrigued with the more we learned. It's hard to say if Season Two will keep this momentum, but that's for the future to figure out. For now, let's just sit back and enjoy the chaos.

(Now, if you don't excuse me, I have to figure out how to review Marvel's What If...)

#marvel cinematic universe #mcu reviews #loki tv series #loki #sylvie #mobius #ravonna renslayer #hunter b 15 #classic loki #alligator loki #he who remains #kang the conqueror #what i thought about

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edith-moonshadow · 4 years ago

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we always have a Billy who just comes in and has it all together. is strong and cool and smart. Which I love. Though it might be cool to have a Billy who maybe had to do something for it. Like maybe in California he used to be short and chubby and made fun of for how smart he was. So when he gets to Hawkings and falls for Steve, maybe he wants all the things that was denied to him. I mean is sacrifice so bad when the person your killing is evil?

Is Billy making another deal with the devil? Or is it the result of Witchcraft?

I'm actually writing a story right now about a Billy who was frail as a child and friends with Steve but he presents as an Alpha and becomes the Billy we all know and love so not 100% the same thing but I do like the idea of a Billy who isn’t the confident, sexy new kid in town and therefore maybe a little more desperate around the edges, his hunger growing insatiable as his frustration grows until he does something unthinkable.

Warning: Mentions of abuse, Murder, Blood, Angst

I'm assuming you mean that Billy has been chubby and smart his whole life, possibly bullied for it in California then he moves to Hawkins and sees Steve and is head over heels in love. Are we talking about Steve during the King Steve era or are we with season two babysitter Steve? Or an AU Steve?

King Steve would never look twice at Billy, he's way too cool and maybe even a little like the bullies that Billy knew back in California but he can sense something good in Steve or maybe overlooks his flaws because he's pretty. I can see him daydreaming about Steve noticing him, if he only got to know Billy maybe he would fall for him too.

If it's babysitter Steve he's a bit more approachable but if we're in canon he's distracted by his relationship woes. Billy might try to talk to him during school, Steve makes eye contact, is listening to what he says but then maybe Nancy turns up to talk to Steve stealing his attention.

Either way, Billy is angsting over the feeling that nobody will ever love him as I imagine that Neil would be even more abusive as his son isn’t what he expected him to be and wouldn’t see much value in his intelligence only on the fact that he doesn’t make friends easily or in his eyes look good. Neil is a person who has managed to get by on his charisma, never had any problems connecting with people at least on a superficial level, he was a mediocre student but he has worked hard at his job and therefore doesn’t think too highly of scholastic achievements and it should be really easy to make friends, why can’t Billy just be normal? He, therefore, gives him no encouragement just points out all his faults.

Billy is hardest on himself but when you have no encouragement it’s very hard to change, he just wants someone to love him. He finds it very hard to keep his emotions in check when he’s having a particularly hard day, maybe he starts to resent the life he has and then a handsome stranger appears, Billy keeps seeing him around Hawkins and he seems to be looking directly at Billy, at first he’s afraid of him but as time goes by and he realises that he’s daydreaming his life away he welcomes his approach. The stranger tells him that he can have one wish, Billy is confused but maybe the man demonstrates his power in a small way and he believes, what would he wish for? What price does such a wish cost? Billy decides that he wants to be big, beautiful for people to like him and the stranger tells him that the price is a life for a life, he has to kill someone and then he’ll get the life he so desperately wants.

At first, he’s horrified he can’t kill someone, it’s too steep a price but later that week he’s in school watching Steve from afar, he knows he’d give anything for Steve to notice him, maybe later that day after P.E he stands in the showers and discreetly looks at everyone else then at Steve with his slim toned body and knows deep down in his heart that someone as beautiful as Steve would never even consider Billy the way that he wants him to. So he returns to the stranger, who does he have to kill? He’s shown a man he doesn’t know, is told that he’s evil, has done terrible things, no one will miss him so he follows the stranger’s instructions and performs the ritual.

He awakens the next day and he’s big and broad when he arrives at school everyone notices him, he feels a little giddy prior to this he’d been a shadow when he was introduced as the new kid in classes he’d seen people’s disinterested eyes slide past him to the clock counting down the minutes until they could leave. Now everyone is fascinated by him, he can feel eyes on him everywhere he goes, the jocks in school are encouraging him to join their teams, girls eyes are lighting up in interest and to Billy’s delight, even Steve Harrington has noticed him.

Steve now feels as though he is within reach, Billy tries very hard not to be too desperate but his need for Steve is so strong, he can’t help himself and invades Steve’s personal space every chance he gets so hungry for the way Steve bites his lip with a gentle flush to his face. He lives for the way that Steve’s eyes slowly roam over his body when he thinks no one is looking but Billy pays attention to every little thing that Steve does.

Finally, he’s at a party at Steve’s house they end up alone upstairs in Steve’s room, they’ve both had a few drinks and Billy’s heart is hammering in his chest as Steve’s interest becomes a little more obvious as his guard is down. They move closer, Steve tilts his head back a little and Billy can’t resist anymore when his lips touch Steve’s he knows that everything he had to do was worth it. When they sleep together he puts on a brave front pretending like he’s done this a hundred times before even though the truth is that he’s never been intimate with another person, it’s only his second ever kiss after a girl at his previous school was dared to kiss him once. After that, they continue a secret relationship until eventually leaving Hawkins together, does Steve ever find out about what Billy did in order to be with him? If he does what is his reaction? Does Billy go on to live a blissful life or does he live in fear that one day the spell will reverse or turn out to be an illusion?

So I’m thinking in terms of the person that Billy killed it could either turn out that they were exactly what the stranger described they were an abuser, a serial killer or if Hawkins lab exists they were someone who experimented on children. Or for major angst points, the stranger lied and the person was a pillar of the community, someone who was kind and helped out a lot of people, a fact that Billy has to grapple with.

If it’s Witchcraft it could either be that he encounters a Witch to help him or maybe his mother was a Witch who taught him all about the craft before she dies/left and now years later he finds her spellbook and thinks about casting a love spell on Steve, he dreams about him looking at him with adoration shining in his eyes but in the end, he would know that it wasn’t real so he keeps looking. Then near the back of the book, he discovers a permanent transformation spell it’s a complicated ritual and requires a human sacrifice, at first he slams the book closed and hides it under his bed trying to push the words from his mind, he could never do that. Then over the next week he has to watch Steve in the halls being incredibly affectionate with Nancy, he watches the way his eyes sparkle, a huge smile on his face as he pulls her in for sweet kisses and something inside of him shifts and he picks up the book once more.

Carefully reading over what he’ll have to do, he finally finds the perfect candidate a man who seems like a great husband but behind closed doors, he’s abusing his wife, Billy starts to stalk him and hiding in the shadows he’s propelled back to his own childhood, his mother’s frantic voice, the hardening of his father’s eyes as the tension in the air becomes like a physical weight until something snaps and the horrible fear that makes his blood run cold. He bides his time waits until the man is blind drunk, his wife hiding at her mother’s, he creeps into the house under the cover of darkness, a knife hidden in his hand, walking very softly on his tiptoes he slides the knife under the man’s throat, his hand shaking slightly then the man’s eyes open and for a moment he sees his own father there and with very little hesitation he pushes the knife into his neck and pulls watching the man’s eyes widen in shock as the light slowly fades from them.

He has a bag with him filled with empty jars that he fills with the man’s warm blood then he takes them home waiting until everyone has gone to bed he lights the candles, prepares the room exactly as the book tells him arranging all the artefacts that he’s spent the past month collecting then he fills the bath with the now cold blood and lowers himself into it repeating the chant as he rubs it into his skin.

He cleans everything up and goes to bed hoping that everything works out, he awakens the next day and his entire body has transformed to the muscular ideal that he always had in his head. Everyone notices him now and he’s delighted when he realises that Steve’s relationship with Nancy seems to be on the rocks, he becomes almost shameless in his pursuit of Steve, ecstatic when it finally pays off and he gets Steve under him in the back of the Camaro, relishing the little whimpers of his name as he slowly takes him apart.

#anon ask #harringrove #top billy hargrove #bottom steve harrington #minors dni #fic idea #insecure billy au

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snusbandxknifewife · 4 years ago

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Sticky Ficky 8

Hello everyone! Since Jurdannet Christmas in July is coming up, I thought I’d celebrate a lil family tradition. In my family, the 23rd of December is Elf Night. Basically, if you’re good, the elves will leave you one gift to occupy your time until Christmas. As it is now July 23rd, that makes this Elf Night in July, and I believe that’s as good an excuse as any for some Sticky Ficky!

So awhile back @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 helped me out with something and I wrote a pillow for hc for her in return and I thought at the time “this has Sticky Ficky potential” so we will now take a break from our scheduled worm chapter to have pillow fort Sticky Ficky! Hope you enjoy!

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Wssssh

THUNK

Jude Duarte Greenbriar, Hugh Queen of Elfhame and wife to Cardan Greenbriar, dove to the side at the very last moment, just barely avoiding the glow-in-the-dark suction cup dart as it flew past her head, sticking comically to the groin of a satyr statue in the office she shared with her husband.

She swerved onto one knee, taking aim directly at Cardan’s pretty black eyes and letting fly a dart of her own, this one pink and with a soft tip. Like most things in her life, she was right on target, her timing impeccable and her aim unfailing.

Why Cardan insisted on doing this when he was so obviously set up to fail always confused her, but she was never one to back away from a surefire victory.

Using the disorientation caused by her near-perfect hit, Jude scrambled to her feet and careened out the office door; headed for their destroyed sitting room. She was out of bullets and needed to restock. Luckily, she knew the sofa fort like the back of her hand, and she had hidden an extra gun in the hollow of the underside of a sofa cushion for just this moment.

But she always underestimated just how fast her husband could move. Cardan was a man well practiced in getting others to forget he could be lethal. Hidden behind the near-constant dullness of intoxication and the ever-present serving of indifference, Cardan always payed attention. He was a dangerously advanced student of the Court of Shadows, and he’d been raised in an insanely cutthroat royal family.

She needed to stop forgetting that.

“Jude, villain and darling,” he purred in her ear as he captured her by the waist, hauling her up over his shoulder and back away from her stash. “Leaving so soon? I was having so much fun.”

“Let go of me!” Jude squealed, going for threatening as she wiggled like a petulant puppy in his arms but unable to hide the mirth in her voice. “I said unhand me!”

Beneath her stomach she felt him chuckle as he ignored her, spinning towards their bedroom and keeping one hand firmly on her ass to make sure she didn’t successfully squirm away.

If their sitting room was a disaster, their bedroom was a war zone. The mattress was completely off the bed frame, angled like a lean-to and hiding a pile of pillows for ample cuddling. The vanity that Cardan used to use as a place to hold his wine was in the middle of the room, hooked to other pieces of furniture by fine silken sheets as they spread across the chamber.

Forts had become a topic of conversation after Jude drunkenly admitted to loving them in childhood. One night, as she and Cardan were deep in their drink and basking in one another’s naked company, she’d gotten to talking about how little Jude had always loved Friday nights.

Friday nights meant no school the next day, no sports and no homework for the following week. Friday nights meant staying up and gorging on microwaved fish sticks with a dessert of cosmic brownies. Friday nights meant reruns of Scooby Doo and pajama parties with her whole family.

Most importantly, Friday nights meant pillow fights and forts in the living room.

Forts in the living room meant family sleepovers in the living room.

Family sleepovers meant she had her parents with her, meant she was safe, that she was nothing more than a child.

A child with no knowledge of real war, of Faerie, of bloodshed and suffering and sacrifice.

Cardan had confessed to her, after she’d described her coveted purple unicorn pajama pants and her favorite mortal soda, that he’d quite like to know what it was like to have a pillow fight and a fort in one’s living room. He hadn’t expected her to follow through. Hell, he hadn’t even expected her to remember. But then, after nearly a week had gone by and he was aching after an infuriating meeting and a ridiculous revel, he’d returned to their chambers to find the sitting room turned over and a pile of sheets by the door.

That night was the first of what would become their weekly ritual. What began as a little fort in the sitting room turned into nerf gun fights and feasting on only the most mediocre of mortal cuisine, sheets hanging from every viable surface in the royal apartments and Homeric descriptions of cartoons from Jude’s childhood, relaxing in one another’s embrace and having a little fun—between, below, and above the sheets.

It seemed like every day they’d find some memento of their Friday nights, a sticky hand that Cardan had used to smack Jude’s ass, a pillow from their bed in their bathtub, or—Cardan’s favorite—Jude’s stash of good wine hidden in the skirts of the dress she was due to wear the following day. Each little thing made them grin and made their hearts go weak with love for their partner.

And that’s what it was, love.

After all this time, after all the teasing in school and the suffering so early in Cardan’s reign, after Madoc and the Undersea and exile, they loved each other. It surprised Jude every day to realize it, but she couldn’t deny it was there. No one who saw the way the king looked at the queen could deny it was there.

Cardan shocked Jude back to reality by none-too-gently throwing her atop a pile of pillow. When she gave him an offended gasp, he turned his nose high and said: “I have no sympathy for prisoners.”

“Am I a prisoner now?” Jude asked, a sly smile overtaking her face as she watched her husband stalk around the room like the cat he just barely wasn’t. Sure, she didn’t have a functional weapon and she was pretty winded from the fall, but she knew she could take him without too much trouble.

He stopped cold, his back turning rigid as he stared at something she couldn’t see. Jude felt her stomach clench and she couldn’t help but wonder if she’d said something wrong. She and Cardan had gotten a lot better at communication over the years, but they still had their moments.

Unable to convince herself to open her mouth to ask what was wrong, she watched in horrified silence as her husband flexed his hands once, twice, three times.

Then, when he turned to face her, something had changed in his eyes.

“Of course you are,” he spit at her with a vitriol he hadn’t used in years. “Isn’t that what you’ve always been? All you’re good at being?”

Her brow furrowed and she felt a furious blush rising to her cheeks, but as her husband fully turned towards her, his boots angled directly at her outstretched legs and his face dark in a way she didn’t like to remember, she couldn’t bring herself to ask him what he was talking about.

Jude was unable to verbally defend herself as he took a step towards her. In fact, she was unable to do anything but scramble awkwardly onto her hands and feet.

“Poor little Duarte, a human child stolen away to Faerie,” he hissed at her, advancing. Jude felt a lump in her throat that she was unable to swallow around and she began to crab-walk backwards as fast as she could. Still, he gained on her.

She successfully dislodged herself from the pile of pillows, the cold stone floor biting into her hands as she continued to move away from her husband. He seemed so angry, so hateful where he’d once been so loving.

“Cardan—“

“Shut your filthy human mouth!” Cardan shouted, so suddenly and so loudly that she couldn’t help but flinch. And then she was against a wall with no way out and he was only fifteen feet from her.

Jude was looking for something, anything to defend herself. She tried to reassure herself that she was the better fighter, that she was protected against geases and that she had the land on her side just as much as he did, but, in the face of that evil look in his eyes, it did nothing to calm her.

“Jude fucking Duarte, the scum of the gentry,” he spit as he tilted his head, inspecting her the same way a troubled child would inspect a beautiful butterfly right before they ripped the poor thing’s wings off. “Did you honestly think you’d ever be anything more than a prisoner?”

She blanched and he was ten feet away.

“Did you think you’d ever stand a chance against a people so undeniably better than you?”

A cold tear dripped down her cheek and he was five feet away.

“Did you think anyone, much less someone like me, could ever love the likes of you?”

He gripped her by the throat and yanked her off her feet, slamming her against the unforgiving stone wall and glaring into her eyes, his nose a hair’s breadth away.

“Jude Duarte, Seneschal to the High King of Elfhame. Jude Duarte, Hugh Queen of Elfhame,” he sneered in a voice so high-pitched that it was obviously making fun of her. “Did you think it ever mattered? Did you honestly believe that those titles made you safe?”

She opened her mouth to try to speak, but she couldn’t force any air out, not with how his long, delicate fingers were so easily crushing her windpipe.

“You were a prisoner to mortality in your childhood,” he leaned forward to whisper in her ear, “and they you were a prisoner of Faerie in your adolescence.”

Her vision blackened around the edges as her mind reached weakly for a memory of when Cardan held her sweetly. She couldn’t quite grasp one.

“You willingly enslaved yourself to my brother and then you went and made yourself into my prisoner when you engineered my rule,” he laughed, pulling away just enough for her to see his cold eyes once more. “Surely you knew that’s all you were? Bound to my word in public and stuck cleaning up all my messes. God, you make a good little servant.”

She tried to kick at him, but her whole body felt week and she wasn’t able to bring her leg up. Panicked, she looked down to where her hands clawed at his and she found that her nails were broken and bloodied, the beds caked with sea salt.

“You were a prisoner beneath the waves.”

Seaweed rose from the floor and wrapped around her ankles, pulling down like it was trying to pull her under the water once more.

“You were a prisoner, bound to the bidding of Balekin.”

She felt the ghost of his lips against hers and she gagged, gasping for air and unable to get any.

“A prisoner to your own desires,” he smirked. “That’s why you stupidly chose my hand over my control.”

She couldn’t get a word in edgewise, couldn’t correct him, couldn’t even really remember why she’d done it. Was he right?

“And now you’re once again locked in the world of the mortals, a prisoner in your little bedroom cell,” he sneered at her. “It’s where you belong, don’t you agree? I’m sure all of Faerie does.”

Memories of exile came flooding back to her. She could see, almost as if she were a fly on the wall, a disturbingly sick Jude. Clothes were falling off her and her normally tanned skin was deathly pale, the only real structure in her life coming from the rat’s nest that has cemented itself in her hair.

“Let me tell you a secret, Jude,” he leans back in, lips ghosting against her ear. “That’s where you’ll stay. In that tiny room in that hellish world, wasting away to nothing and waiting for your inevitable death. You’ll go quietly, without a fight and with no one to remember you. Do you know why, Jude?”

Her mouth formed around his name.

Cardan

But she couldn’t say it.

“I’ll tell you why,” he continued, smirk evident in his icy voice. “It’s because, above all else, you are a prisoner to your own fear. You will always be your own jail cell.”

Tears gushed down her face and she wanted to beg him to stop saying such hurtful things. But she couldn’t, because when Cardan next pulled away, it wasn’t Cardan at all.

One cold, rotted hand gripped her by the throat as she stared in horror at the decaying body of Balekin Greenbriar, fresh blood still oozing from the fatal wound she’d inflicted.

She woke screaming.

Jude Duarte, exiled High Queen of Elfhame, woke screaming.

She didn’t know the day or the time, where she was or why she was there, all she knew is that she could still feel the cold hand of death wrapped around her throat.

Cardan wasn’t there, he’d never been there. They’d never built forts or had pillow fights and they likely never would.

She was blind to the world as she heaved herself out of bed, flying towards the shower to try and wash the stench of death off her skin. She didn’t notice that Vivienne was awake, Oak sitting next to her at the kitchen bar.

The siblings shared a horrified look and Vivi didn’t give herself the time to hesitate. She picked up her phone, dialed, and prayed.

It rang three times.

“Listen, Vivi, I really don’t have the time for th—“

“It’s not about us, Heather,” Vivi rushed to say, taking the sudden silence on the other end as a sign to continue. “It’s Jude. Please, I need your help with Jude.”

More silence, and then:

“I’ll be right over.”

~~~~~~

What? I didn’t say it would be fluffy pillow fort Sticky Ficky,,,,,all aboard the angst train lol

Hope y’all don’t hate me too much I promise I will have more funny/stupid Sticky Ficky but I gotta get this exile angst in!

Tag list: @cardan-greenbriar-tcp @hizqueen4life @slightlyrebelliouswriter23 @thewickedkings @aelin-queen-of-terrasen @cheekycheekycheeks @queen-of-glass @b00kworm @doingmyrainbow @andromeddea @jurdanhell @thesirenwashere @sweetlyvillainous @courtofjurdan @clockworkgraystairs

#tfota #jurdan #jude duarte #tfota fic #cardan greenbriar #sticky ficky #the great sticky hand war #tyrannosaurus lex writes #sticky ficky make it angsty #i PROMISE worms next chapter

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linkspooky · 5 years ago

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Hi, I’m Link and it’s time to talk about my terrible / horrible / amazing taste in men. If you are a bastard who is planning to destroy the world because of your unresolved trauma, please call me. Kiss kiss.

Also I’m tagging @thyandrawrites and @inumaqi who by law have to do this with me.

Shigaraki Tomura - MY HERO ACADEMIA

“What I really despise is everything. Everything that breathes pisses me off.”

I like how Shigaraki is severely mentally ill. He’s one of the most raw portrayals of an abuse victim. He murders his abusive father, and the story takes his side. He develops violent tendencies, he refuses to grow up, he can’t forgive. He’s just holding all of his negative feelings inside of him as he slowly rots inside out, and that’s just great.

Shigaraki is so shaped and moulded by his abuse, but he still chooses who he wants to be. He was literally raised in a basement to be a carbon copy of AFO, and yet he’s so different from AFO it’s obvious he could never live up to his Sensei. He’s too bad of a person to ever be a hero, but he’s also too good of a person to ever be the king of evil and what you get is this really chaotic mess in between.

It’s interested to see who Shigaraki chooses to be, in spite of how much he has been indoctrinated towards a cause and how many choices are taken away from him. Despite being a character with supposedly little agency you can see he always tries to fight for his own agency. Don’t deny me. He can’t be with his family even though he loves them, because they’ll never accept him for who he is. Tenko was a kind boy who played with the bullied kids. Shigaraki fights for the people who would never be saved by hero society because he wasn’t saved. He gives them what he doesn’t have, freedom and a place to belong. It’s an interesting character to see how much of him has become the unpredictable ball of trauma that Shigaraki is, while the core of him Tenko still remains in his humanizing moments of how he interacts with the league. Shigaraki who has so many choices taken from him, chooses to reach out and sympathize with the feelings of others, especially those who have been ostracized the same way he has.

Shigaraki is introduced to us as an inhuman monster, and we see him slowly work his way back from the edge. We see him regain his humanity by coming to care about the people under his wing. It gives you the message that there’s no such thing as a point of no return.

All of the heroes are good people in mha but that feels more like an informed character trait. We’re supposed to root for them because… they’re the heroes, they’re good. They have to look good because they’re the good guys. Shigaraki is allowed to be ugly and unlikable, he gets worse. But then he still always chooses to fight for ugly victims like him. I like both sides of him, I like the volatile explosive bomb that just wants to blow up and destroy others, and the gentle way he interacts with the rest of the league.

Kumagawa Misogi - MEDAKA BOX

“I want to beat them. Even though I’m not cool, or strong, or just, or beautiful, or cute, or pretty, I want to beat the cool strong just beautiful cute and pretty people.”

Kumagawa is aggressively mediocre. He’s a good for nothing. He’s like the embodiment of a bad victim, he blames everyone else, he lashes out. He has nothing but flaws but he still strives to be better than what he is. That’s what so inspiring about his character. Even if you’re miserable it doesn’t mean you have to be having a miserable time about it. Kumagawa will push back against anything, even if the whole world is pushing down on his shoulders.

He has a vibe with his character that even if you’re the worst person in the world don’t run away from who you are. You have to accept yourself exactly as you are without lies or artifice before you can start to improve. That’s why kumagawa tries to accept the ugliness of people.

He’s very sympathetic with other people, but that isn’t there to make him look like a good person. If anything he always sympathizes with the victim too much and encourages their worst qualities. At the beginning of the series hes so desperate to heal the wounds of these traumatized, people he’s taken in he just encourages them to lash out because that’s something. Kumagawa is just this very nihilistic, and fatalist character who is somehow at the same time one of the most optimistic characters ever written. He’s a lazy good for nothing, but he tries hard. He’s fickle and childish, but he never gives up. He might never get better, he might always lose in the end, but he still thinks the struggle to win is always inherently worth it. He gives all of himself in everything he does, and to the people around him. And he always gets hurt because of it, but that pain is just living.

He’s completely insane but he’s also living his life the best way he can. There’s just such a manic, insane, and positive energy to his character. Kumagawa will accept you at your worst, and yet he’ll still encourage you to be better. I also like characters written to represent the ugliness in people, and striving to find beauty in that ugliness rather than characters who are just happy all the time because they’re good people.

Natsuki Subaru - RE ZERO

“You think I’m getting drunk on my own tragedy just so I can shut everyone up?”

like how Subaru is a shitty person but not in a really interesting way, but in a really petty, self absorbed and weak way. I like it because the world doesn’t tolerate his bs, he is continually punished and kicked in the teeth for it. He doesn’t have a tragic backstory before the story begins. His tragic backstory is that he did nothing, made nothing of his life, but he still feels entitled and expects to be rewarded. There’s nothing special about him, but he wants to be treated like he’s special.

I’m usually protagonist-phobic because most stories center around the main character so a lot of the time the world bends to their whims in unnatural ways. Subaru is the main character, but hes not the protagonist, and not even particularly important which is why he’s valid.

Subaru is continually punished for his mistakes and I love the way we see how trauma changes him and shapes him. His narrative reads to me as a metaphor for a mentally ill person with the absolute worst habits constantly struggling to be better despite constant backtracking. That’s why with the constant resets in his narrative, none of his actions ever seem to matter. Even when he makes progress he loses it just as quickly, and the world seems indifferent to his suffering. Because the stroy isn’t actually about the world, it’s about Subaru’s personal journey to learn to be a less shitty person.

Subaru is confronted with the fact that hes a very self important and entitled person and he chooses to grow from that rather than run away. He’s so self aware by this point he knows hes the most annoying human on earth and he owns it.

Doma - KIMETSU NO YAIBA

“From a young age I was kind and clever. I always helped people and made them happy, because that was my mission.”

Doma’s story is hard to empathize with because it doesn’t really look tragic. It’s more like a comedy. He’s smiling the whole way through.

Doma feels like an inhuman monster and he chooses to act that way. Literally everything in this story just tells you he was basically born that way. Doma tells you himself. But like, if you look into his background he was raised in a literal cult. Doma despises the cult, because he could see through it. He could see the adults were using him even as a child. But at the same time Doma’s heart has never really left the cult either. Doma, like everybody else, unintentionally reflects the environment he grew up in.

Doma’s just never been shown real tears or a real smile, so he doesn’t know it. He sees his parents kill each other in front of them, and feels nothing, because they literally never acted like parents to him once. He sees life as empty because to him, it is. And then.

By the time he encounters the real thing it’s too late for him. I just like this part of Doma that’s like, emptily trying to imitate all the other humans around him, and feel the things they feel, and always falling short because of his jacked up sense of empathy. It’s adorable. Doma doesn’t feel human at all. He couldn’t possibly understand what a normal human being feels because he’s never lived that life. He’s a total human failure. Rather than try to be something he feels like he’s not, he decides to embrace his inhumanity.

Iichan - ZAREGOTO

“Nonsense.”

Iichan is a character who doesn’t want to choose, but wants to be chosen regardless. In other words Iichan has a paradoxical way of thinking about his life. He’s not the main character. He’s not important. So therefore, whatever happens around him he’s not at fault. However, he is the centerpiece of a tragedy. He’s still important in the sense that all of this tragic suffering is being unleashed upon him. Being the main character of the tragedy means his suffering is important and meaningful, but none of it is ever his fault, and he can’t help it.

That way he avoids ever having to take responsiblity for his actions, or do the hard work of trying to change as a person. He’s a narcicisst, but he hates himself, and he tries to balance out his total egoism by constantly playing up his own suffering and how much he loathes himself. That’s where the main character of the tragedy complex comes in.

What’s interesting about Iichan is that for all the tricks and avoidance he goes through, he’s very self aware as a character. He knows how deficient he is in comparison to others and how his problems really aren’t as important in the grand scheme of things. That’s why it’s interesting to watch all the mental gymnastics he goes through.

Knowing that the author also knows that Iichan is a tool, and clearly frames him as such, I can appreciate the more positive parts of his character. I can know that deep down, despite everything he does want to become a person that’s capable of making the other people in his life happy. He just doesn’t know how.

Hitoshiki Zerozaki - NINGEN

“What a riot.”

Iichan’s equal and opposite force. His boy on the other side of the mirror. What if your reflection in the mirror could talk, and what if it was laughing at you? That’s basically Zerozaki’s character in a nutshell.

Iichan is a character who dwells on his intense mediocrity and desires to be special because of it. Zerozaki is the opposite, he’s been special all of his life and has no idea what a normal life is even like.

Zerozaki is a murderer from a family of murderers and yet he doesn’t enjoy murder. He doesn’t feel its evil or feel a lot of remorse. He feels nothing at all about killing, he thinks people who kill for pleasure are weird, and kills at random.

What I like about Zerozaki is that he’s way more human and down to earth than his perfect foil iichan even though he’s a murderer. Despite being a psycho killer he makes connections with other killers, his little sister, and ninoumiya. A human failure who’s way too human, and that somehow makes him even more of a failure.

Emiya Shirou / Heroic Spirit Emiya - FATE / STAY NIGHT.

“So as I pray. Unlimited Blade Works.”

Counterfeit. Hypocrite. Holy shit. A fake who knows that his desire to save people doesn’t come from the goodness of his heart, but his own selfish desire to be a hero. Shirou emiya is the only valid protagonist, because he’s an extremely traumatized deconstruction of every protagonist before him. Shirou’s not a good person. Shirou’s barely even a person. He has friends but he doesn’t really feel like he deserves to have them. He smiles, but he doesn’t mean it.

I love how Shirou is so terrible at handling his own trauma that he thinks having a strong sense of justice is a personality. I love how Shirous need to sacrifice himself makes him an idiot and is something his narrative continually gruesomely punishes. He has one of the most brutal narratives ever, and the writing behind his character serves to highlight how Shirou’s bad decision making not only hurts himself, but literally everybody around him.

I love how Shirou has completely emptied out as a person and feels unable to feel basic emotions because its totally relatable. He just copes so poorly, but at the same time there’s something beautiful in Shirous struggle to be a good person. Shirou has completely given up on himself as a person, but he still wants to help other people, and so he keeps trying.

Getou Suguru - JUJUTSU KAISEN

“I hate monkeys.”

Some villains just want to destroy everything for reasons deeply rooted to emotional trauma. I feel like I’m repeating myself here.

I like characters where empathy is a dangerous quality to have. Getou is driven to villainy because he cares, overwhelmingly so. He cares about people’s individual agency and freedom and rights to be happy and sees the world stomp on it. His breaking point was that he wanted a girl who had been raised as a literal human sacrifice for the system her entire life to be able to live out the rest of her life free as a person, and being completely powerless and unable to help her as she was killed. Getou was struck in that moment by the inherent unfairness in the world and it broke him.

Empathy is such a debilitating flaw for Getou that he literally has to decide certain people are human and disqualify others from being human so his brain doesn’t completely break. Being a decent caring guy in Getous world breaks you.

Getou tries so hard not to care, to be the maniacal laughing villain he claims to be, but his empathy is the one part of his brain he can never shut off. Even as the most hated man in the world he protects weak and exploited people and takes them in as a family. He does everything he does to make a better world for the people he cares about, and that’s why he’s so broken because the ones he doesn’t care about he’s completely fine with sacrificing en masse.

Akechi Goro - PERSONA 5

“JUSTICE?! RIGHTEOUS?! KEEP THAT SHIT TO YOURSELVES! YOU AND YOUR TEAMMATES PISS ME OFF!!”

I like Goro way more for his potential rather than what we see in canon, but there’s a lot of strong ideas his character is written with. I love the idea that Goro wants to be a good person, wants to be connected to others, but is far too dmaged and because of that

He can only pretend to be a good person and play people pleaser to others. he’s someone who desires at the core of his being to be righteous, and failing that he becomes self-righteous instead. I just love how thoroughly fake he is as a person, and how that makes him covet the real thing.

I also love the insane, twisted and obsessive part of Akechi. I love how much he hates the world for rejecting him, and how much of his actions are just petty revenge on the world, his father, every single person who rejected him. I love him when he’s at his most desperate, when he’s screaming at the people he’s trying to kill asking them why nobody wants him around even though he’s famous and popular.

Ogata Hyakunosuke - GOLDEN KAMUY

Walk your own wild path. Straight and true.

Ogata is a character that is somehow incredibly complex and nuanced character with tons of carefully written development in story, and also a character you have no fucking clue what’s going on in his head. Basically, Ogata is a masterpiece.

Ogata feels like the other half of the story. Sugimoto acts, Ogata reacts. Sugimoto chases, Ogata evades. We are uncomfortably deep in Sugimotos head, but we only catch brief glimpses of Ogatas moments of Frank honesty. The entire story is about Sugimoto and Ogata chaisng after each other and everything else seems incidental sometime. Ogata’s not the main character, but he’s the other half of the heart of the narrative that’s about these really, really bad murderous men who are deeply broken trying to find a way to live in a world without war.

Its not that Ogata is unfeeling it’s that he never allows himself to feel. What other characters lost during the war, Ogata never had in the first place. He sees himself as deformed and malnourished compared to everybody else. Ogatas always been noticing the difference between - himself and others.Even if he wanted to love his brother he kept comparing himself to his father’s beloved son, and realizing how much he lacked. He just kept being reminded over and over again what a child who was loved could have turned out as. Eventually Ogata convinced himself he was unfeeling. Because somehow that’s easier. He can process everything that happened in his life if he’s detached from it all watching from a tree somewhere. He’s so repressed he doesn’t allow himself to feel guilt about his brothers death because he doesn’t view himself as a person capable of loving another. However, just like Sugis desire is to be saved from the hell of war deep down theres a kid in Ogata who wanted to be a good son

Ogata is basically my main point of investment in Golden Kamuy, I just want to see him unravel like a big ball of yarn.

#shigaraki tomura #kumagawa misogi #subaru natsuki #iichan #hitoshiki zerozaki #shirou emiya #doma #akechi goro #ogata hyakunosuke #suguru getou #spooky speaks #top ten favorite characters

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trashyswitch · 4 years ago

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The Muddy War of The Twins

Young twins Roman and Remus are playing in the mud! It's King against Duke in a War against the Mud kingdoms. Which twin will be victorious? Or, will the twins become one kingdom?

Tickletober day 21: Playing Dirty

“I AM REMUS! DUKE OF MUDDY CASTLE!” Remus shouted, standing on a pile of mud.

“WHAT?! WHAT ABOUT ME?!” Roman shouted, standing on another castle.

“You’re the king, silly! BOW DOWN TO THE KING OF DIRT STAIN!” Remus declared, bowing down himself as well.

Roman giggled and cheered. “Yes! Thank you, thank you all! As your new king, I will give you all farm jobs! So you can become rich!” Roman declared.

“Or, you all can join ME! Where you can become rich, WITHOUT working hard!” Remus declared right after him.

“But- you get to work with animals! What could be fun about NOT doing work? You’d get bored!” Roman reacted, feeling annoyed.

“Not if we have mud wars to start…” Remus replied as he made multiple mud balls. “I DECLARE WAR ON DIRT STAIN!” Remus shouted.

“COME ON, MEN! LET’S SHOW MUDDY CASTLE WHO’S THE #1 KINGDOM!” Roman shouted to his fake audience. Roman and Remus both let out loud war cries and started throwing mud balls at each other.

The creative twins were shirtless and completely drenched in mud! The mud ball war only made their muddy exterior even worse. Roman kept throwing mud balls at Remus’s chest and legs, while Remus was aiming for his chest and face! While Roman was well aware getting mud in the eyes really hurts, Roman was also aware of how strong he was! So, he could handle some muddy eyes!

It didn’t take long for the kingdom leaders to gang up on each other. “Surrender now, King!” Remus ordered.

“NEVER!” Roman shouted back.

“Then I shall unlock my most powerful weapon…” Remus warned.

Roman giggled as he went along with it. “oH nO! It CoUlDn’T bE…” Roman reacted.

“That’s right, King Roman…” Remus said with an evil giggle as he rolled up his mud-made sleeves, “Fear! My! FINGERS!” The Duke shouted.

Remus started squeezing Roman’s sides and tickling Roman’s belly button! “hehEHEHEHEY! NOHOHOHOT THIHIHIHIHIS!” Roman shouted.

“But of COURSE! The most evil of weapons MUST be used to take over your mud kingdom! My weapon? TICKLING!” Remus declared proudly.

Roman squealed and only squirmed around more in the mud. “REHEHEHEHEMUHUHUHUS! IHIHIHIHIT TIHIHIHICKLEHEHEHES!” Roman laughed.

Remus gasped. “WhAaAaAt?! It’s not SuPpOsEd To TiCkLe! It’S sUpPoSeD to HuRt!” Remus reacted sarcastically.

Roman shook his head and tried getting him back. He reached his arms up and managed to give him a hip squeeze! “aaaAAAH! Ohoho!” Remus jumped before grabbing his wrists. “Not happening, bro!” Remus said with a smirk.

In an attempt to get the upper hand, Roman placed both his feet against Remus’s chest and gave his body a push! It actually worked miraculous wonders and managed to push Remus right off into the mud puddle!

SPLASH! Remus went! If he wasn’t covered in mud before, he DEFINITELY was NOW!

Roman quickly crawled himself on top of Remus and started successfully squeezing his hips. “Wahaha-HAHAHAHAHAIT! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! UHUHUHUHUNFAHAHAHAIR!” Remus shouted.

Roman scoffed. “Since when was war ever fair?” Roman reminded him.

Remus guffawed at that statement amidst his laughing. Remus knew very well that Roman had a point. But he couldn’t actually tell him that because of Roman’s constant tickling. “THAHAHAHAT’S TRUHUHUHUE, IHIHI GUEHEHEHESS.” Remus managed to tell him.

Roman smiled and gave Remus a small break. “Glad to know you agree!” Roman reacted.

“Joseph Stalin, tho! He was the most unfair of unfair people!” Remus added.

Roman tilted his head and upper body back and forth in uncertainty. “Eeeehh...Adolf Hitler was also pretty bad.” Roman added.

“But Stalin killed SO MANY PEOPLE!” Remus added. “But someone else managed to beat Hitler AND Stalin COMBINED:” Remus added.

Roman dropped his mudball. “...Who? And how many?” Roman asked.

“Mao Dezong. And 78 million people were killed in 33 years.” Remus replied.

Roman widened his eyes and looked down. “I don’t wanna play war anymore.” Roman told him.

“Those wars happened decades ago.” Remus added, before looking at Roman and noticing his fearful face. “Hey...we can join forces if you’d like. We can be the Dirty Castle.” Remus suggested. “We can be the ultimate duo kingdom! And the best part?” Remus declared.

Roman looked up in hope.

“Little bloodshed!” Remus replied.

Roman smiled and stepped on the mudballs he had created earlier. “It’s a deal, Duke.” Roman replied as he shook Remus’s muddy hand. Remus smiled and made an official shake before taking a bit of mud and rubbing it on his forehead like a type of ritual. “King Roman of Dirty Castle.” Remus declared, holding his muddy arm up. When Remus let go of Roman’s hand, Roman bowed to the new mixed kingdom and put his right hand up. “I, King Roman of Dirty Castle, promise to be a loyal, brave and intellectual leader alongside the Duke.” Roman said to the invisible crowd.

“WHAT IN THE WORLD ARE YOU TWO DOING?!” someone shouted from a few metres away. Roman and Remus looked to the right and widened their eyes:

Patton had found them! And Logan was with them! UH OH!

Logan took off his glasses and rubbed his nose. “Boys, boys, boys...What am I going to do with you?” He asked rhetorically in slight annoyance but mostly amusement.

Patton stormed up to them. “You two are covered in mud! Honestly!” Patton reacted, rubbing the mud off Roman’s forehead. “Some of it is already dried onto you!” Patton added in horror.

“Aww, come on Dad! We were having fun! We were having a mud kingdom war, and we just made a truce when you came out!” Remus reacted.

Patton groaned. “War games?” Patton whined in worry.

Logan nodded his head in curiosity. “Hmm...Sounds like you two signed an Act of Union and became one kingdom then.” Logan reacted. He giggled as he pointed at Remus. “Scotland, I’m guessing…” Logan then pointed to Roman. “And England.” Logan assigned.

“Awww yeah! I’m a SCOTTISH VIKING!” Remus shouted in a mediocre scottish accent.

“And I’m the Biscuits and Tea Country, known as England!” Roman declared in a fairly accurate english accent while lifting his pinky finger up and pretending to drink a cup of tea.

Logan was giggling at the two, before he was elbowed in the shoulder by Patton. “What?” Logan asked.

“We need to get these two hosed down.” Patton told him. “Where are your shirts?” Patton asked.

Roman and Remus both pointed to the car. Sure enough, their black and green costume shirts were laying on the engine hood of the car, slightly wet and dirt-stained. Patton sighed and decided to grab both kids hands and drag them to the water hose.

When the water hose was turned on towards their bodies, Roman full on shrieked and started shivering right away! “IT’S FREEZING!” Roman shouted.

Meanwhile, Remus didn’t mind it and actually tried to drink the water despite the mud from his face running down into his mouth. “Remus, stop drinking the water. It’s not drinkable!” Logan ordered.

Remus just laughed. “Tastes fine to me!” he declared back, sticking his tongue out to him. Logan rolled his eyes and continued to wash the kids off.

When the water reached their bellies however, both of them bursted out laughing and squirmed around like crazy! “IHIHIHIT TIHIHICKLEHEHES SOHOHOHO MUHUHUHUCH!” Roman shouted, struggling to cover up the ticklish spot with his hands. Logan kept constantly moving the hose around, making it almost impossible to cover up any ticklish spot!

Remus had already collapsed onto the ground, and was kitty fighting the air while he flopped around and rolled all over the place. “Remus, hold still!” Patton begged, bringing the hose water to Remus’s legs and aiming at his thighs. Remus went BALLISTIC after that! “NAHAHAHAHAHA! THIHIHIHIHIHIHIGHS TIHIHICKLHLHEHEHEHEHEHAHAHAHAHA!” Remus shouted at Patton.

“I know, but this would go a lot quicker if you stopped moving!” Patton told Remus.

At the same time, Logan was washing the back of Roman’s scalp off. This was making Roman all giggly and super squirmy. “Ihihihihi cahahahahan’t! Tohohohohohoo tihihihicklihihihish!” Roman giggled.

“Funny...Your brother is getting tickled even worse than you. I don’t think you should be complaining, Ro.” Logan warned.

When the kids were hosed down enough, Patton and Logan summoned them some towels and let them dry off. The kids were all giggly and squirmy by the time the tick-I mean hosing down, had finished. Thankfully though, the giggles seemed to die down by the time they got into the bathtub.

Logan and Patton were both washing the twins. Patton was washing Remus’s hair, while Logan was rubbing a sponge on Roman’s back.

Roman let out a relaxed sigh. “I feel like a king.” Roman told his brother.

“Me too, bro.” Remus said, melting from the scalp massages.

Patton rolled his eyes but giggled at the silly kids. It didn’t take long for the calming bath to turn playful as Patton tickled Remus’s neck. “Mmmm...this feels- BAHA! HAHAhahahaha!” Remus said before being interrupted by surprised laughter.

Patton was smirking and scratching at the back of Remus’s neck. “Feeling relaxed yet?” Patton teased.

“NOOOHOhohohoho! Come ohohohon!” Remus begged, reaching his arms up and over his head to grab Patton’s hands.

Roman couldn’t stop the evil snicker from leaving his lips as a mean idea came to mind. Roman poked Remus’s right armpit and scratched a finger on Remus’s left armpit.

“HahahAHAHAHAHAHAHA! ROHOHOHOHO! STAHAHAHAHAP!” Remus shouted to him, dropping his arms down and squishing Roman’s fingers. Remus’s laughter and Roman’s evil giggles echoed through the bathroom more, thanks to the poor soundproof walls. Not only that, but the water was causing the sound to bounce all over the place as well! That just made the room almost chaotically echoey!

“OHOHOKAHAY, OHOHOHOKAHAHAHAHAY! YOHOHOU CAHAHAN STAHAHAP!” Remus ordered. “WEHEHE UNIHIHITEHED, REHEHEHEMBEHER?!” Remus asked as well.

“Oh, I remember. I just wanted to tickle you.” Roman teased before retreating his fingers.

Remus’s laughter slowed to giggles a little and went slightly limp. But the giggling continued to plague him, thanks to Patton’s nimble fingers STILL tickling his neck.

“Okay, Patton. You can stop now.” Roman suggested.

“What if I don’t wanna?” Patton asked.

Roman sat himself up straight and made himself look triumphant. “I, King Roman, order you to cease your tickle attacks on the Duke of Dirty Castle!” Roman ordered proudly.

“Oh?” Patton reacted with a smirk, before looking at Logan.

Logan gave him a smirk back and wrapped his arms around Roman’s bare chest. “Now YOU listen here, King Roman of Dirty Castle! I am a king too! King of this household! And YOU shall bow to me!” Logan ordered, tickling Roman’s upper ribs in the process.

Roman shrieked and bursted out laughing! “BAHAHAHAHA! HEHEHEHEYYY!” Roman laughed, squirming everywhere and splashing water all over the place.

“Goodness gracious! We have a fighter here, Padre.” Logan warned. “Should I cease or continue? If I continue, you may end up getting wet or worse: get your glasses wet.” Logan warned.

Patton bursted out laughing at that and leaned back. “You have glasses too! And they’re gonna get wet as well!” Patton added.

“Well, looks like we’ll both have to sacrifice our sight to conquer THIS kingdom…” Logan decided.

Roman and Remus looked at each other with confident smirks on their faces. “I’ll get Logan!” Roman declared.

“I’ll get Patton!” Remus declared back.

“rrRRAAAAAAAAWWWWWWRRRR!”

The twins screamed to their older sides and started tickling the daylights out of them! Their wet and soapy fingers only increased the ticklish sensations, and made their fingers more slippery while tickling. It didn’t take long for Patton and Logan to fall onto their back, and for Roman and Remus to jump onto them and continue their war against the other kingdom!

Even after being hosed and bathed...the twins never truly forgot about the war games they played. The only difference was:

There were more players! ...whether the adults liked it or not.

#kid creativity twins #kid roman #kid remus #king roman #duke remus #parent logan #parent patton #ticklefic #switch!roman #switch!remus #switch!patton #switch!logan

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mysterious-prophetess · 4 years ago

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Review: Red Shoes and the Seven Dwarves

It’s finally out in my region so I was finally able to get my hands on it to watch without risking my computer.

Not that I would resort to such....less-than-legal means... <.<

Anyway, I’m glad I did buy it officially. It was every bit as cute as I thought it would be after I saw the new round of trailers and comments by others on tumblr.

I’ll give my spoiler free thoughts now and go into more details under a read more.

So first, I have to compliment the animation. It is so beautiful. The characters all looked great and none of them looked uncanny at all. My favorite character design of the humans was Snow sans shoes, but Merlin in his normal form is a close second. It’s their eyes.

My favorite non-human character design was the magic mirror.

The magic effects were also nicely done.

The plot’s pacing was decent. There were times where it almost felt like they had built in commercial breaks for an eventual network airing from how some parts would cut to black and start a new scene. It wasn’t often and it didn’t really detract from the film.

The characters were all consistent and Snow White/Red Shoes was down right relatable for me. Merlin and the other six Princes were fun and played off one another, though the trio of Pino Noki Kio almost felt like they didn’t need to be three characters since they never acted independent of one another. Whereas Jack, Hans, Arthur, and Merlin all had their own distinct personalities.

Even the Evil Queen had some good moments.

Prince Average felt like an after thought.

The moral of the story, while done before and nearly to death, was given a fresh spin in this film.

Over all this film is charming and the marketing team that screwed them over with the fat-shaming like ad campaign should never be hired by these guys ever again. There is no fat shaming in this film directed at Snow White/Red Shoes.

The lesson is instead a good one.

I heartily recommend people watch this movie. There are some semi-Shrek like elements on occasion (like out of place pop culture references) but overall the film has its own identity.

Another nitpick aside from the weird commercial breaks that kept seeming to happen and that’s the over use of the movie’s main pop song. I liked it the first time but after a few other reuses it started to get a little stale.

Otherwise I loved the music of the film.

Snow White’s journey was one that I loved. She had one mission and one mission only: find her father. In fact her desire to be herself contradicted the shoes magic. She was perfectly happy as her normal self and not the magic enhanced version the shoes transformed her into. That’s a powerful message to send to girls who aren’t skinny or traditionally pretty. Though, Snow White is down right adorable as her true self.

I also liked that the perfectly pretty form wasn’t something Snow White necessarily liked but was willing to use to her advantage to help find her father. I also liked that it had drawbacks as Snow White in her normal state was actually a physically strong woman but as a dainty pretty girl all that strength she had and liked having was gone. Furthermore, the movie showed that Snow White was decently athletic as her real self, which was a refreshing take for a heavier character. Large doesn’t equal flabby, weak, or out-of-shape.

Snow White’s struggles with taking off the magical shoes were reflective of the times where she got insecure about herself. Despite loving who she was, she did sometimes accept the pretty dainty form because of how much nicer people were.

The Magic Mirror was surprised she could even take them off because it meant there was something she wanted more than being pretty. The first time, at Risky Rock in the Fearsome Seven’s house, it was her desire to be herself. In the alleyway, it was a desire to escape the goons. In the river it was her desire to save Merlin. Yet, whenever she wanted to take them off other times, things had happened to make her hesitate on giving up the conventionally pretty form that had made it so others would help her.

As someone who is not conventionally pretty and definitely not skinny, I really empathized with Snow White about this.

On no occasion was Snow’s true self ever treated like a joke. There was the scene after she’d taken the shoes off where guards were harassing her where it almost looked like Merlin and Arthur would ignore her peril because she wasn’t her Red Shoes form, but Merlin came back and helped her. He was even kind of nice to her.

Never even when Merlin finds out about the shoes versus her real form does he call her ugly or make comments about her weight despite being still kind of fighting his own ego while learning the lesson at this point.

Speaking of Merlin (and the others of the F7).

Merlin being the main male protagonist does get the most screen time. Arthur get the second most. Then Hans and Jack, and then the Pinocchio Trio.

At first their dynamics were all clashing and Arthur seemed like a bully and Merlin seemed like a very shallow impulsive jerk. Let’s be clear, all the guys are shallow. Even the trio who are more obsessed with their inventions half the movie. It’s what got them cursed by the fairy princess in the first place. Considering it was a fairy they pissed off, being turned into green dwarves when anyone (who isn’t a magical creature) looks at them was actually getting off mild.

I was surprised that each Prince actually has to break their curses one at-a-time. It’s not a “break the curse for one and you save all” which was a new take on a collectively applied curse. Which was why they were every-dwarf-for-them-selves when it came to trying to woo “Red Shoes” and get a kiss from her.

Merlin’s character journey was one that is usually reserved for the curse breaker in fairy tale movies where a curse indeed is in play. In that he was the one who had to learn to look past appearances. I love that Snow White calls him out on that at one point in the movie too.

Merlin learning to let go of his obsession with looks (his own included) was what allowed him to see Snow White as the most beautiful woman in the world (in his eyes) which was what let her second kiss at the end break his curse. Because he saw her inner beauty which mattered more than any physical appearance she had.

The characters grew and them ending up together at the end felt natural and not forced because the time they spent together always felt like they had chemistry which is hard to pull off.

Moving on to other things: Regina, Magic Mirror, and Average.

Honestly? Average felt like a real waste of time. It was through his lines we got the most Shrek-like throw-away references, it was he who had the least impact on the plot, and he who could have been written out of the flick almost all together. Yeah, Merlin recognizing his tree-i-fied form did hint at what Regina had done to others (and it was after he and his two not-the-Stabbington-brothers-goons became evil ents that I figured out King White was that wood bunny because it was large and cute and that was the White Family’s designs overall).

Average was a throw away character. In many ways he wasn’t even mediocre let alone average.

The worst thing about him is he can be easily written out of the movie.

As the stepmother of Snow White, Regina is queen of the kingdom and all the scenes where soldiers go after Snow White and the F7 could have been her sending people to do her dirty work to spare her magic usage.

Average’s two goombas? Hired thugs who’d never seen Snow White before. Take him out, shuffle a few things around, make a captain character be his replacement in the attack on Risky Rock scene, and nothing of value would be lost in his removal. Average is the film’s only major mistake. He was a dead end that could have been easily written around and the screen time would have been better spent on Snow White and the F7 or maybe fleshing out Regina a little more.

Magic Mirror and Regina both played well off one another. Patrick Warburton as any character will always be an excellent casting choice.

Regina’s schemes made sense from a shallow perspective.

I saw someone compare her to Mother Goethel from Tangeled in a youtube comment on one of the trailers and kinda?

They had the same sort of vanity-wanting to keep their youth and maintain their beauty-and their penchant for cloaks was the same but, Regina to me....was more like Mother Goethel and Triss Marigold from Witcher 3′s fusion. Her younger form reminded me WAY more of Triss than Goethel as did her gown. Plus, it’s canonic in the Witcher-verse that sorceresses use magic to keep young. Also, she’s not the first evil queen of a Snow White retelling to even be obsessed with youth to the point she goes to extreme lengths to maintain it. See Snow White and the Huntsman’s queen.

Regina stands out as her own character despite sharing a name and role with Regina of Once Upon a Time. She’s ruthless, and able to manipulate others with either her words or illusionary magic (though it costs her like the witches from Stardust). She’s also absolutely cold. She just kind of falls flat compared to the Magic Mirror.

No offense to the voice actress or the writers, but up against Patrick Warburton’s Magic Mirror/tree character, Regina is a little less memorable to me. He has more sass and more pure threat to him than Regina does. Sure, she has magic that can turn people into strange tree monsters, but it’s the mirror that gives the F7 the most trouble throughout the movie, and they fought off something that looked to be a whole platoon of guards/soldiers armed with heavy artillery (canons). Granted, it was a close call that relied on their wits and other skills, but they still had less trouble with that fight than they did against Magic Mirror.

Some More Things:

The humor was nearly overplayed but they managed to tow the line between going too far and just right. Mostly this was seen with the F7 and their attempts to get Snow White to kiss them and break their spells, especially Arthur.

They did give him more of a character beyond loud bully, which was that he had a sensitive side and a lot of pride (which was easily bruised). In fact, only he and Merlin felt like they had characterizations compared to the other five. Hans was obsessed with cooking and Jack with jewels and the trio with tech but that’s all they got beyond having their friends’ backs whenever it really mattered and being awesome badasses. Since these other five were mostly side characters, this is more of a nitpick than an actual problem since the film was setting up Arthur vs Merlin for Snow White’s affections.

The fact that Snow White brushes all the attempts of flirting off so easily was very amusing to me and a nice way of showing how she was focused on finding her missing father throughout the whole film (despite the fact that she had already found him). Hilariously, in hindsight, she really had seen him in the woods. If she’d been herself, who knows if he’d have even attacked her.

Finally, I’ll end on what had seemed like an inconsistency but now I realize is a loophole because the fae have those in everything. The guys have to be alone or have the person they’re with close their eyes to be their true selves, except Merlin is still his true form even though he’s not alone with the Magic Mirror or the wood rabbit/King, or the three wood bears/children.

Turns out, once I thought about it, the fairy’s curse was if “people looked at them” which meant, the ones doing the looking had to be people and the wood creatures-despite formerly being people-were considered to be people no longer. The Mirror was probably never a person, which mean he’d never counted as a part of “people” so he could look all he wanted (which was his thing as a mirror). It’s an interesting loophole.

Long story short, I really enjoyed this film. It was very cute and it was done so dirty by its marketing three years ago.

Good film. Good messages. Go watch it! It’s not like we’ve anything ELSE to do at the moment (and it’s not like there are any other worthwhile films coming out right now). Support this film, and this studio.

#red shoes and the 7 dwarfs #rsat7d #red shoes and the seven dwarves #red shoes and the seven dwarfs #review #it's a good movie

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howaminotinthestrokesyet · 3 years ago

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Radio Friendly Unit Shifter: The Complete Nirvana Videography

Heart-Shaped Box

Nirvana had originally wanted Kevin Kerslake to direct this video, who had written the initial treatment in July 1992. By the summer of 1993, he had written at least five treatments, which included a shot of Kurt Cobain kissing William Burroughs and another of the entire band hanging by their necks from trees. Yet by the end of August, the band decided to go with Dutch photographer Anton Corbijn. The director seemed initially apprehensive about agreeing to do the video as he had heard Kurt Cobain could act overly detailed in production. He would say, “But then I looked at it and I thought that actually it was pretty good. I was very amazed by somebody writing a song and having those ideas as precise as he did." The video begins with the band standing in a hospital room around an old man receiving an IV drip, then moves to a surreal Wizard of Oz type of outdoor setting. The same old man in a Santa and later Pope hat climbs on a crow infested cross as they sing the song. The video also includes a young girl reaching for fetuses in a tree, while at the same time an overweight woman appears with human organs painted on her chest with a pair of wings. Many of these ideas were actually conceived by Corbijn, not the band as he always came up with the ideas on his own for any of his videos. Upon the promotion’s release, Kevin Kerslake sued the band for copyright infringement, as the case would be settled out of court. Upon its release, the clip became the most played video on MTV eventually garnering two video music awards for Best Alternative Video and Art Direction. Dave Grohl, Krist Novoselic, and Pat Smear accepted the awards as Kurt Cobain had already passed. New Musical Express named it as the 11th best music video of all time, while Time magazine called it the number 10 music video ever saying it was both “beautiful and terrible.” In 2016, Dave Grohl reunited with the young girl from the video, who had this to say about the reunion. “Today reminded me that I peaked at 6 years old but I was the most badass kid on the playground. Today was the absolute coolest. Or in Dave's words seeing each other today was a 'historic moment'! What a legend!”

Sliver

A music video for the song was released in 1993 to promote the compilation album, Incesticide. The video would be directed by longtime collaborator Kevin Kerslake. The clip begins with Kurt Cobain holding his young daughter up behind some cardboard as she dances along to the first few seconds of the track. The video moves to Cobain’s garage, where it shows the band performing the song. Dave Grohl is playing on the drums, even though he never played on the original song. Cobain only sings into a microphone, but he's never seen playing guitar. He is wearing a red mohair sweater that Courtney Love had purchased for him from a fan at a Nirvana show in Belfast, Northern Ireland. His whole garage is filled with toys and decorations the singer had placed in storage just before the release of Nevermind that he had collected over the years. The collection included a Chim Chim toy monkey that was given to him from the Japanese band Shonen Knife.

Come As You Are

This video would actually be the first one directed by Kevin Kerslake, who was hired after such a negative experience with the director on Smells Like Teen Spirit. The concept would be developed by Kerslake as Cobain could not come up with any ideas, so he let the director develop the video. The singer’s only requirement was that some kind of reference be made to the cover of the Nevermind album. The clip shows the band in a dark room as water falls around them obscuring their form. Other images include Cobain swinging from a chandelier, a dog wandering around the room, a baby swimming in a pool, and a pistol falling underwater. The end of the video shows the entire group lying on the ground as Cobain kisses the camera.

Lithium

This video originally had a concept of doing a short animated story about a female girl named Prego. This girl lives in a forest, when she finds some eggs and takes them to a king in a nearby castle. Unfortunately, both Kevin Kerslake and Cobain discovered that it would take four months to produce the video, so they abandoned the idea. Kerslake instead created a collage of concert footage for the video made up of their 1991 Paramount Theater concert and other footage from the 1992 film, The Year Punk Broke. Biographer Michael Azerrad would make this critical comment about the clip. "Although [the video] was enlivened by Kerslake's neat trick of using more violent footage during the quiet parts of the song and vice versa, it was something of a disappointment from a band and a song that promised so much."

You Know You’re Right

Chris Hafner directed this video released in October 2002 to coincide with the single of the same name. The clip shows a montage of The band in either concerts or interviews, but giving the impression that they are actually performing the song. The video would reach number two on Billboard’s music videos chart. New Musical Express would go on to nominate it for Best Music Video in 2002.

In Bloom

Two versions of this video exist. The first one showed clips of the band walking around New York City and performing at Maxwells in New Jersey. In the clip, one can see Krist Novoselic in some shots has hair and others a shaved head. The reason for that comes from the fact that he had to shave it as punishment for a mediocre performance during a show at the Pyramid Club. They made this alternate version for a compilation dvd on the Sub Pop label, Sub Pop Video Network Volume One. The second version, which most people remember is called the Nevermind version. This promotional clip would be directed once again by Kevin Kerslake and released in November 1992. Kurt Cobain’s original concept for it was to tell the story of a young girl born into a Ku Klux Klan family until she realizes the evil nature of her parents, but the concept seemed much too difficult to work out. He then switched it into a parody of 1960’s television shows like the Ed Sullivan Show. The entire video was shot in original cameras of the period in Kinescope, while the band did the entire song without a script. The actor playing the host was Doug Llewellyn, who had worked as the reporter interviewing people after their case on the People’s Court. Cobain wanted to make a funny parody video to show that there was another side to Nirvana. He felt “so tired for the last year of people taking us so seriously . . . I wanted to fuck off and show them that we have a humorous side to us.” The entire band would wear suits during their performance, while the Nirvana frontman had glasses that eventually made him quite dizzy. He would later say in a Melody Maker interview that they wanted to parody groups like the Dave Clark Five, but not the Beatles. He would never mock the Fab Four due to their influence on his songwriting. In the clip, Novoselic is wearing short hair, which he liked so much that he never changed it. They eventually destroy all of their instruments and the stage by the end of the song. In Bloom would go on to win the 1993 MTV Music Video Award for Best Alternative Video.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

This video would be directed by first timer Sam Bayer. The director believed that he actually got hired because the work on his résumé seemed so below average that Nirvana thought that it would represent the opposite of anything remotely corporate. The concept developed by the band was to stage a school concert that ended in a riot. The idea had been based on the films Rock ‘n’ Roll High School starring the Ramones and The 1979 film, Over the Edge. The clip begins with the band playing the song during a pep rally in a high school gym as cheerleaders wearing sweaters with the anarchy symbol on them cheer along. Every so often, the camera cuts to a janitor dancing alongside his broom. The video ends with the apathetic students going from the bleachers to the gym floor in a full-scale riot. The apathy from the students was actually real as they had been sitting on the bleachers all day. Cobain was finally able to convince Bayer that the students should be allowed to mosh at the end of the video. The singer said, “Once the kids came out dancing they just said 'fuck you', because they were so tired of his shit throughout the day.” The Nirvana frontman hated the directors final edit of the video so much that he went in himself creating what became the final version. Upon its release, Rolling Stone’s David Fricke would say that it was “the greatest gig that you could ever imagine.” The video would go on the win MTV Video Music Awards for Best New Artist and Best Alternative Video. In 1999, the video was named the number three music video of all time on a list put out by MTV. VH1 named it number 18 in the greatest television moments in the history of music as alternative music now became a “commercial and cultural force.” At the end of 2019, the video had been viewed 1 billion times on YouTube.

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fatesdeepdive · 4 years ago

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Entry 14: Groans of Increasing Discomfort

Heading back to the castle, it seems I’ve accumulated a ton of new buildings to buy. I can buy a statue of Mozu which probably costed more than her entire village, a ballista and shuriken launcher to use in castle battles, a bunch of puppets to give me nightmares (they fight for you in castle battles too I guess), a shop to buy new units (both generics and clones of the soldiers I already have), and a hot spring. Because fanservice. You can run into other units in there, everyone is in their underwear and blushing, half of the decisions that were made in this game’s development were solely for the sake of horniness, yada yada yada. I actually tried to leave and the game stopped me, because Sakura was showing up and it’s necessary to get that bath time with the teenage girl. The hot springs does have a use, admittedly, but it won’t become apparent for a few chapters.

Support: Lady Corrin/Reina

C: Corrin sees Reina talking to an old man and asks her about it. Reina explains that he reminds her of her parents, who cut her out of their life when she became a soldier. And also, apparently, don’t give a shit about her being the personal retainer to the goddamn Queen. Actually, wait, hold on. Where the hell was Reina when Mikoto got blown up? You know what? Her parents should be ashamed of her, she’s a terrible bodyguard.

B: Corrin tells Reina she should visit her parents. Which makes sense; Corrin points out that she’s an orphan and wishes for any relationship with a parent, no matter how strained. Reina tells Corrin that she became a soldier because she really, really, really likes killing people. Corrin volunteers to find out how Reina’s parents are doing.

A: Corrin tells Reina that her parents are doing fine. Reina retcons the last conversation by revealing that she became a soldier to protect her family’s peasants. Nowadays, though, it’s all about that murder.

Review: This one was fine. Corrin wanting to help Reina is a nice bit of characterization, but there isn’t much more to say about this one.

Now, you may be wondering why I referred to Corrin as Lady Corrin in the last bit. Reina actually has completely different supports depending on Corrin’s sex. Most characters have identical supports with Corrin, or if not that just minor dialogue changes (For example, Camilla and Laslow, off the top of my head). But characters like Reina, who can only support Corrin, get two conversations. I suppose it’s for the best, considering those characters would otherwise be incredibly out of focus as opposed to merely extremely out of focus.

Support: Lord Corrin/Reina

C: Corrin sees Reina carrying an apron, which weirds him out, because of the whole murder hobo thing.

B: Reina reveals her sheltered noblewoman housewife in training turned soldier backstory and says that the apron was a gift from her parents before they cut her out.

A: Reina says that her parents cried when she became a knight and that she keeps the apron out of gratitude for them.

S: Corrin, off screen, goes back to Hoshido to talk to Reina’s parents. Apparently they’re proud of her. And he asked to marry her, which she accepts, because she cannot imagine life without him. Apparently.

Review: So, these are kinda the same support? I mean, the actual words are different, but they cover the same information. It’s weird that they were split into two conversations. Whatever. The second one is better, because it gives this really fun characterization of Reina being a friendly team mom when she isn’t stabbing people so she can hear them gasp their last breaths. Also, it resolves the plotline. On the other hand, the S-Rank is really mediocre. Reina saying she relies on Corrin daily is ridiculous, given what we’ve seen. Overall, the problem with Reina is that she just has these two conversations. And one with Kanna, I guess, but that one is recycled from other characters. If Reina was a more fleshed out character that interacted with other characters, she might work as a character. But, as it stands, all she has is her recruitment and two mediocre supports.

Support: Hinata/Takumi

C: Hinata kicks down the door to Takumi’s room so he can tell him that he’s going to start a fighting tournament so he can beat people up.

B: Hinata beats people up.

A: Hinata reveals that he’s beating people up to cheer up Takumi, because Takumi looks happy when he cheers him on. I feel like he could have, I don’t know, asked Takumi how to cheer him up in advance instead of just assuming and doing something he said he didn’t want, but whatever. The two bond over Hinata beating people up.

Review: I think this one helped me hone in on why a lot of Fire Emblem supports don’t work. Supports are, by their very nature, just dialogue. So, when you get a support like this, that relies heavily on something happening, it ends up as telling not showing. That’s why the best supports rely on dialogue rather than explain something that happened off screen.

Support: Kagero/Saizo

C: Kagero and Saizo get into an argument over how to train royal guards, with Kagero pointing out that Saizo’s hard as nails “be ready to die for the monarchy” speech just stressed people out. Saizo blames the new recruits for being inexperienced.

B: Saizo endangers the life of his men to succeed on a mission and Kagero calls him out on it. Saizo points out that victory requires sacrifice and war is unforgiving. The two of them point out that they’ve had this exact argument again and again, and it’s the reason they broke up when they were dating.

A: Kagero and Saizo win a big battle together and admit that they work well together.

S: Saizo points out that their relationship failed because they kept trying to change each other and forgot that they loved each other. The two of them decide to give it another shot.

Review: This one has a much more solemn and reserved tone than most supports, which helps it stand out. It isn’t great, but it has a good tone and I actually don’t dislike Saizo and Kagero as a couple. Them being a flawed couple that broke up over their differences, then trying it again after maturing and becoming more rounded people is a lot more realistic than most relationships in this game.

Birthright Chapter 12: Dark Reunion

The gang arrives in Cyrkensia, a city in Nestra, a country that I forgot existed because this is the only part of the game where it is mentioned. Cyrkensia is a popular vacation spot with a big opera house that appeared in the intro.

A kitsune named Kaden goes up to the party and explains that he’s in town to repay a favor to someone. This introduction feels like when you introduce a new player halfway through a D&D campaign and they quickly explain their deal after walking up to the party.

Kaden introduces his friend Layla, who explains that she’s a singer at the opera house, but can’t perform tonight because her mother is dying. Also she’s singing for King Garon, the evil king who is on vacation a week after starting a brutal war. Azura volunteers to perform in Layla’s steed so the party can do some patricide. Now, you may be thinking, did the game do the stupid trope of having Azura and Layla look identical? Surprisingly, no, they didn’t. Everything else about this chapter is so cliche I assumed they would, but they actually remembered Zola has illusion magic that the party never uses. Also, because we helped the person Kaden has to help, he now owes us a favor, and will totally kill dozens of soldiers in a war he doesn’t give a shit about if we ask him to.

Kaden

Kaden is a Kitsune, this game’s equivalent of Laguz or Taguel from past games. He wields a special weapon called a Beast Stone that allows him to fight by turning into a big ass fox. His personal skill heals units who heal him. He’s a glass canon who does extra damage to cavalry, giving him an interesting niche. His human design is fine, but not remarkable. His fox design is cool, especially regarding the blue fire that floats around him; that said, the spikes on the legs are weird. Personality wise, he seems to be a go lucky idiot who stumbled into joining us.

When the party arrives at the opera house, Corrin notices Elise, who looks sad. Azura, who doesn’t look like Layla for the player, goes on stage. Azura sings the only song she knows, the magic one that breaks mind control, which makes Garon...groan in increasing discomfort, which makes me also feel discomforted. Also Azura does a bunch of crazy water magic, which is a bit extra.

Garon orders his troops to capture us, because Zola betrayed us. Gasp. Shocking. Zola does admittedly beg Garon to spare us. Garon kills him for even suggesting it, right in front of his young daughter, because Garon is a cartoon supervillain. Zola dies begging Corrin to forgive him and Garon calls Corrin weak for having sympathy. Takumi threatens to kill Garon, but Corrin points out that they need to leave if they want to live. Which is smart; Garon has ridiculously high stats.

This battle sees our units fighting on boats floating in the opera house, which is a cool setting for a battle. On turn three, some reinforcements arrive. Xander, who’s still pissed about the whole traitor thing. With him are Peri, a cavalier with cotton candy hair, and...is that Inigo? That’s Inigo, from Awakening. That’s fucking Inigo! What is Inigo doing here, and more importantly, why is he working for the very obviously evil bad guys?

There’s a Dragon Vein you can use to freeze all the water, which would make this level easier, if it wasn’t already a broken easy level. To beat this level, you need to get Corrin to a specific spot. Corrin can’t walk on water, so you need to fight through an onslaught of tough enemies. There’s just one problem: Hinoka or Subaki can carry Corrin directly to the end. I fought the enemies, because why not, but I didn’t have to.

I ignored Garon because he’s able to one shot literally every unit in my army, but I did decide to take on team Xander. Side note, I looked up Garon’s battle quote after the fact, and he says this to Corrin: “I may not be your father, but I will slap you down like a child.” I take back everything bad I ever said about Garon.

Peri, as it turns out, is a sadistic sociopath, because Nohr. Inigo...excuse me, Laslow, blushes when we stab him. And Xander steals Inigo’s famous crit quote from the Princess Bride.

Peri and Laslow went down easy, but Xander was almost as bad as Garon. Even with his bonus against cavalry, Kaden only did one point of damage per hit. I had to resort to the classic strategy of throwing disposable soldiers at him until he was weak enough for Corrin to Dragonstone.

This was a great map, with a creative setting, multiple ways to approach it, tough bosses, and an exploit that makes it completely skippable. Still, it’s the only Birthright chapter with a creative goal, so it deserves a little credit.

After escaping the opera house, Xander chases after us, despite being defeated ten seconds earlier. Elise gets in his way, telling him that if he’s going to fight someone, he should fight her. As Corrin runs, Xander warns that it is her destiny to fight him.

After escaping Xander again, Corrin finds Azura collapsed on the ground, exhausted. She’s going to die at the end of the game, isn’t she?

#xander fe #azura fe #corrin fe #kaden fe #garon fe #elise fe #takumi x hinata #saizo x fe #corrin x reina #saizo fe #kagero fe #wifi sucks so late

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