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minimag1c · 1 year

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Shit I forgot to post this-

Limb Go Chop Chop

Tw : mention of genocide, gore (explicit, well king of-), blood, racism and mention of Leopold II

➪the historical accuracy would be mainly around the Congolese persecution during the time of Leopold II, not about how old Free Congo or DRC are. This one is completely inaccurate.

➪I know that DRC adapted the name "Zaire" in 1971 but I couldn't find a proper appellation for him during that time-

➪it's relatively short, sorry-

Proceed with caution.

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Free Congo groaned in pain as he coughed up the blood that started to come out from his mouth and teeth. The white colon in front of him started at the Congolese with disgust and hatred, as if the personification was just a mere and useless object rather than a living being.

The pain was so much more intense and powerful than last time that Free Congo couldn't help but fold himself in half and held his bloody and bruised stomach and fell on the ground, trying his best to not let his tears fall. The white man was about to hit him with the already worn out whip until another white man, probably his friend, put his hand on his shoulder, signaling that it would be probably useless at this rate.

A little iffy, the one with the whip raised an eyebrow but shrugged and started to talk about something in French before heading away with his friend, leaving Free Congo on the cold and dirty floor, still clenching tightly his stomach.

Soon, a young boy who looked like the other native congolese people in the country slowly peeked out from his hiding spot, his eyes filled with worry as he looked at the older man.

Free Congo seemed to notice the little boy and tried his best to smile through the pain but he dropped it when he felt another wave of ache on his stomach, making him grunt.

Upon seeing this, the little boy automatically ran to Free Congo as the latter tried his best to maintain his balance when the younger lad practically jumped onto his arms, tears peeking up from the corner of his eyes. Free Congo tried to hugged him back, softly patting his back, comforting him.

"Shhh it's going to be alright, I'm okay..." he softly said, rubbing circles on the boy's back. "I'm okay Zaïre, everything is okay, I'm alright..."he tried to reassure, feeling guilty for lying in the last part.

Of course nothing was okay.

Currently, Free Congo was under the tyranny of Leopold II who was, for the Congolese, the devil himself. He never saw him in real life but every time he would get beaten or tortured by those damn belgians, he would always hear them praising the monarch about his ways of "taming" him and his population from his "savagery" and "bestial education". He never saw him face to face but just seeing him on the photos as well with how Belgians praised his unhinged mindset made the Congolese feel a burning hatred and animosity toward the monarch.

The young boy Zaire, upon hearing that, couldn't help but stop the hug and looked at Free Congo with disbelief, his vision already blurry from the tears that hadn't spilled yet.

"wait what do you mean you're okay? I-I saw those weird men hitting you on the stomach, and you ev-even crouched down...!" he stammered, already feeling the knot inside his throat when you tried your best to not cry.

Free Congo looked pained, even more than when the white colon hit him with the whip, when he saw that his lie didn't worked on Zaire who seemed more traumatized than ever.

Ever since Leopold II was the one who owned and controlled his land, massacre, torture and persecution has never been so common. Many native from Congo have either died or got killed by the horrid conditions they lived or the martyrs made by the white Belgian colons. It was now a routine for him to go out of his prison that Belgian call "home for people like him" and at least three or four people's corpse laying limply on the ground, either died from exhaustion and/or hunger and in the worst case, suicide, if their masters would even let them do it.

He came back to reality when he felt a small drop of water touching his shoulder as he realized that Zaire was actually crying but still tried his best to not let any of his tears fall, which was now impossible.

"Zaire, what's wrong?" Free Congo asked as the young boy violently wiped the tears in his eyes, probably ashamed of crying in front of the older personification.

"I-i don't know..." Zaire said, because in reality he knew why he cried but he didn't wanted to admit it however, Free Congo was not that kind of person who would shame a young boy for showing.

"Zaire, please tell me..." he said, getting more worried. The young boy gulped.

"I-it's just.... I'm scared, I don't know why... As if I shiver every time I see... Them..." Zaire chocked out, as if saying the white men's name was forbidden.

"Zaire... Tell me, why are you scared?" of course, Free Congo knew what the boy feared but he still wanted to hear it from the mouth of the concerned.

"T-them... Those weird person who arrived here! Ever since they came and settle in our home, you looked so hurt and you have so many bruises a-and even blood!" Zaire nearly screamed before putting his hands on his mouth and apologized. "Sorry for yelling, I didn't wanted to...."

"No need to apologize Zaire." Free Congo reassured. "I understand that you feel scared but... I'm fine, really. You already know it I'm strong and it's not going to be some people with whips that will break me in half" the older said, trying to sound confident but it seems that it didn't worked on the younger lad. He sighed

"Look, what I'm trying to say is that... I'll be okay, you don't have to worry. I know that everything is getting hard now but we will go through this. I will never flinch upon them or let them near you." Free Congo said. Zaire's eyes lit up, hopeful, for a small moment before getting replaced by worry.

"Are you sure?" he asked, trying to shallow back his tears, making sure that he doesn't cry again. Free Congo held him more tightly, ignoring once again the pain that only got harder on his stomach.

"I am, I promise."

And on that, they hugged each other one more time, to reassure the other.

●══════⋆☆⋆══════●

"DAD!!!" Zaire screamed as he struggled to escape the firm grip of the Belgians soldiers, their face remaining blank and emotionless.

On the other hand, Free Congo tried to also fight back the men who wanted to pin him down and immobilize him, making the pain on his stomach that still didn't healed from the hit he took worse.

"Make sure that this thing doesn't struggle! " one of the white men commanded as the one who held the Congolese man pressed him even more on the ground, making the victim groaning in pain, closing his eyes to make sure that he doesn't get any rocks or other small things inside.

"Pull up his arm."

"NO PLEASE STOP!!" Zaire pleaded but he only got shut when one of the soldiers kicked him in the stomach, making him puke and cough a little bit of blood as he fell on the ground. The one who gave the kick looked at the young boy with a disgusted face and called him with a racial slur and spit next to him.

The one who pinned Free Congo didn't hesitate and harshly pulled the other man's limb, almost breaking it as Free Congo yelped in pain, feeling his own bone cracking and his muscles turned upside down. This reaction only delighted his torturer, who couldn't help but eerily giggle a little at his failed attempt to keep his pride.

The one who got pinned down still didn't listened to them and even struggled more as the white man pulled even more out his arm. At first, Free Congo wanted them to know that he didn't wanted to listen to them, thinking that it was one of those days where they would only beat him until he fainted.

Until he felt something sharp pressing on his arm.

And that's when he realized what they were going to do.

"NO PLEASE STOP I'M BEGGING YOU!"

Those were the only words the personnification heard before feeling an unbelievable and immense pain. He felt so much suffering that he couldn't help but scream at the top of his lungs as the knife - or whatever what that is - dig itself even more inside his skin, already making him loose too much blood. He breathed heavily as he gritted his teeth, trying to not scream once again because his throat already felt sore.

But that pain was nothing compared to what happened after, as the weapon cut through his bone.

At this rate, he shook in pain and used all of his last strength to try to get away from their grip but it seems that the more he tried to get away, the stronger they held him or maybe it was because they were literally cutting him.

His vision started to get even more blurry when the paint became unbearable and all of his energy got drained do rapidly that he was even tired to scream.

He wanted all of this to end, sadly they didn't finished as his vision started to get darker and darker until he didn't move anymore.

●══════⋆☆⋆══════●

Everything free Congo heard was all foggy and distorted but he didn't really cared.

All of his body hurt, mostly on his arm that felt like burning and aching. It got even more intense when he felt someone shaking him and screaming something distorted, making it more disturbing.

However, it was obvious that the voice belonged to Zaire, making Free Congo feel guilty once again.

Once again, he had lied to him.

Once again he broke his promise.

Once again he had made Zaire cry.

And it was probably his fault.

Oh he wanted so much to close his eyes and "sleep" forever but the elder one knew that it would be selfish from him to Zaire defenseless, mostly with those horrible white Belgian men. No, he couldn't bear himself to do that, it would be the worst thing and he would never be at ease if it happens.

But at the same time he was never in such pain before. Ever since the belgian came here, he had never flinch upon their torture and brutal way to kill his people, making them know that his pride would never be broken but now everything hurted so much, to much to handle. All he wanted to do was to collapse and died on the spot but he knew that he couldn't because he needed to stay alive, stay strong for Zaire.

At least staying alive enough time to make sure that Zaire would be safe, not hurt.

Speaking of the latter, he kept shaking his father, tears rolling down in his cheeks, fearing that he died even if he opened slowly and painfully his other eye. His blood was soaking his knees and clothes but the young boy was ignoring it, focusing on waking up the elder one. He didn't wanted him to die, to leave him alone in the filthy hands of those horrible Belgian peoples, Free Congo was the only hope left for him to end this calvary.

But seeing how barbaric they were to him, cutting his entire arm and leave him bleeding to death he knew that it wouldn't be long before the Congolese man lost hope too and he didn't wanted that. He needed someone else to believe in a better future, a better conditions and a better fate for their people.

Because, Zaire knew, it was only the beginning.

----

Wattpad version

Archive of our own version

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Tip : don't write when half of your Braincells are awake

Trust me-

Posted : 19/04/2023

-Miranto

#Countryhumans #Countryhumans free congo #Countryhumans drc #Countryhumans democratic republic of congo

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youareunbearable · 3 years

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Headcannon that Celebrimbor and Thranduil were childhood Frenemies because I don't like how the Mirkwood Elves were left out of everything that happened so pls enjoy this fliclet

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Once the Feanorians touched down in Hithlum, Thingol sent his younger brother's brother in law Oropher to be his ambassador. Oropher, of course, brings his son Thranduil along because this is a great chance for diplomatic training

Maedhros, this is during the time Morgoth is sending his own persistent ambassadors, thinks it would also be a great time to start Celebrimbor on diplomatic training, because before this he was just in the forge with Curufin and Feanor. And it doesn't look like the rest of the Sons of Feanor are going to have kids so he'll be inheriting the crown one day.

So Celebrimbor and Thranduil are pushed together on children "play dates"

They hate it, they always fight with each other and have competitions and as soon as they see each other they will throw down and scream new insults they learned since the last time they met. Sometimes they spent entire visits only speaking to each other in their own native tounges and mock the other for not properly understanding what they are saying. This particular game didn't last long, but Tyelpe did become the first of the Noldor to speak Sindarin fluently with no accent and Thranduil enjoys the annoyed tick in Galadriel's typical serene expression when she hears him speak flawless Quenya with a Feanorian lisp

Oropher is concerned, being the youngest of 4 he never had an antagonistic relationship with any of them. But Maglor (the new depressed Noldor High King) just gives a small smile and shrugs. He grew up with 6 brothers and even more half cousins. Little Tyelpe and Thrandy are just playing like boys and future best friends do

And they keep up this frenenimes relationship even after Curufin moves them to Himland. When it gets sacked during Dagor Bragollach and Curufin, Celegorm, and Celebrimbor all flee south to their cousins home, Thranduil sends them some relief supplies. When Celebrimbor disown his father, Thranduil comes to visit and generally be annoying until Celebrimbor can stop feeling like shit

When Thranduil, his parents, and their people leave eastward after Thingol's death but before the second Kinslaying (for Oropher is older then the Sun and Moon, he is not about to be led by a boy not even in his 30th year, Maiar blood or not, and many Sindar agree with him) Celebrimbor travels with them and secures them safe passage through the Blue Mountains.

They both grieve when they hear of the Second Kinslaying, then the Third, and then when the East sinks under the waves. Not many in Lindon support Celebrimbor wearing the eight pointed star again, but Thranduil just rolls his eyes and tells him red looks dreadful with his complexion

During the Second Age when Thranduil gets married, Celebrimbor is invited to the wedding and vis versa when Celebrimbor marries Narvi

(Both marriages involve lots of teasing over their partners of choice. Thranduil laughs over the fact that of course a Noldor would marry a Dwarf, they are basically the same, what with their love of rocks and metal work. Celebrimbor rolls his eyes and snorts that he's surprised Thranduil didn't end up marrying an Ent, what with his love of trees, but he supposes that marrying a lady named "tree maid" is close enough. What next? Will he name his children "sapling" or "twig" or "leaf"? Thranduil shoves him off his chair, spilling wine all over the table and floor and growls that at least his children will have original names, and not share a name with two of his forefathers like Men)

They visit each other a lot during the second age, and Thranduil tries to help him as best he can during the fallout of Narvi's death, and when Celebrimbor is designing his rings of Power with that suspicious Maiar of his (who Celebrimbor SWEARS is helping him craft to work through the grief he has no other intentions) he had Thranduil (or Oropher) in mind when he created Vilya

When Thranduil heard about what happened to his friend and his land during the War of Elves and Sauron he grieved deeply. The only thing he had to remember his friend by was some forgotten blueprints of unfinished jewelry, an Age worth of letters (mostly written in Quenya, he of course had replied in proper Sindarin), a clumsy eight pointed star he laughingly embroidered onto the breast of Thranduil's favourite robe, a set of Sindarin long knives overly embellished with Noldorian swirls, and a box of white gems Celebrimbor hand crafted and left with a promise to come back once he finished his rings and use them to make a matching crown set for Thranduil and his wife to wear whenever he inherited the crown

("There may be even enough left over for a third crown. For your 'little leaf' to grow into whenever you two get around making one." Thranduil's wife laughed with Celebrimbor and sent her husband a leer that set his ears ablaze and Tyelpe's laughter began anew)

And enough regrets to haunt him for Ages. It seemed like bad things always came in three. Celebrimbor, his father, his new homeland. Thranduil led his people north, away from everything he had loved, and kept what remained close to his chest. After his wife was slain shortly after the birth of his son, he refused to lose anyone else. Greenwood the Great began to mirror his grief and became Mirkwood

It was almost another another Age before he decided to commission the Dwarves of Erebor to turn those precious white gems into the crowns Celebrimbor intended. Not for him and his now dead wife, but maybe for Legolas and his future partner. (His little leaf, he could hear Celebrimbor's laughter every time Legolas calls himself "Legolas Greenleaf" with that cheeky grin of his) And if Celebrimbor couldn't make them himself, he would be happy to let his Dwarven friends do the job for him

Thranduil almost burned down the mountain himself when they withheld those gems and one of the last pieces of his dear friend from him

Under the bone deep fear of watching a dragon from his nightmares sack the kingdom, he was a little pleased. Jewel thieves get their due

(He knows that Celebrimbor never swore his grandfather's Oath, but sometimes late at night he wonders if he still carried the curse of it. If that Oath and the Curse of Feanor are the reason his dearest friend died that awful way he did)

It was the beginning of a forth age when those sparking white gems were finally turned into the crowns they were destined to be. And Thranduil could almost hear Celebrimbor's delighted laughter as he watched his only son and heir, his little leaf, marry a dwarf.

When it came time to sail, Thranduil stayed with his people, he has coveted them for so long he now refused to leave unless he was forced too. Legolas, who had somehow made a small boat that could barely withhold the waves of the Western Sea, was greeted with a welcoming and joyful embrace by the Elf he only heard stories about

"Hail Celebrimbor, Lord of Eregion, Crafter of the Rings Of Power, Husband of Narvi son of Vilarvi of Durin's Folk, and most importantly, the dearest friend of my father!" Legolas greeted in flawless Quenya with a very noticeable Feanorian lisp. The gathered crowd twitched a little and Elrond (who was hoping of news of his sons) gave a sigh. "I have much to say, and so does my husband Gimli, but first I must give you my father's message!"

Legolas cleared his throat, and then with mock superior expression, one that made him look just like Thranduil, he said: "Celebrimbor you Spider Spawn of the Shadow, if you worked on my crown instead of those thrice damned Rings like you said, my son would never have married a Dwarf. Once I am reborn you better start running because I am going to burry you in my forest and chop down the tree you become with my anger alone!"

There was a startled gasp of silence on the shores of Valinor, before Celebrimbor burst into peels of joyful laughter. Legolas smiled at his honorary uncle and laughed with him

"As you can see, father missed you very much"

#celebrimbor #thranduil #legolas #lotr #silmarillion #tolkien #gigolas #oropher #while i was writing this i looked up Diors age and homie was 22 when he married his wife and died at 30 #how did any of the elves take him seriously??? he was an infant!!!! Who let this Infant Elf have kids???#absolutely wild i can see oropher being like This is my new king?? I think not and peacing out with most of their people #which is why the second kinslaying went the way it did #anyways enough about dior he was just a bad PR move #I think Thrandy and Tyelpe were best friends your honour #Celebrimbor would have loved legolas and been his biggest supporter in marrying Gimli #if he was let out of Mandos Halls by the time the two of them sailed he would have laughed and adopted Legolas on the spot #Celebrimbor for Best Uncle

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lightrises · 3 years

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"Only in allowing her to pass..." — Hornet, The Radiance, and the means by which Hallownest turned its victims against each other

A quick note: I read Hollow Knight as an anti-colonialist text. As such I'll be touching on topics related to colonialism as it's depicted in the world of the game, and said analysis will reflect both a sympathetic take on The Radiance and a critique of The Pale King that won't pull its punches. If this sounds up your alley, hello and thank you for the read! Let us be sad about these bugs together.

———

So!! A while back I realized something about pre-canon that felt rather... "curious" is one way to put it, I think. To wit: for all the effort and scheming and determination The Pale King poured into trying to get rid of The Radiance, neither of his plans involved directly killing her.

Was that his long game? Well, sure, that seems clear enough. His tack changed from luring the moths away from their god and creator to a more literal form of incarceration once the infection became a factor, but at its core the end goal never really changed—The Pale King very sincerely wished to destroy Radiance via obsolescence. The Seer lends us foreshadowing to confirm as much:

[Image descriptions: Two screenshots from Hollow Knight, showing the Seer and Ghost in the Seer's alcove at the Resting Grounds. Across both screenshots, the Seer tells Ghost the following: "None of us can live forever, and so we ask those who survive to remember us. Hold something in your mind and it lives on with you, but forget it and you seal it away forever. That is the only death that matters." End description.]

(Which, by the way and given the context, talk about an extremely unsubtle allusion to cultural genocide huh!!! Whew.)

In any case, we're left with a whole bunch of machinations which build up to... well, two very roundabout attempts at committing deicide. That's kind of weird, all things considered! Why not just do the deed in one fell swoop and get it over with?

This could be for any number of reasons. Maybe the king was devoid of the means to instantly kill another higher being. Maybe his personal sense of scruples stopped him short of signing off on MURDER murder (although, y'know, the aforementioned genocide + eternal imprisonment = still cool and copasectic apparently!). Maybe the long drawn-out cruelty was the point. Maybe the idea of playing fuckign 4D chess with the circumstances was too delicious for him to pass up—that man did love to tinker and stick his claws where they sure as hell didn't belong—or maybe it was a little bit of All The Things. Who knows!!

But interrogating The Pale King's methodology on this count isn't what I'm here for, at least not really. The main reason I raise this question at all is that in her own way, Hornet did too.

"I'd urge you to take that harder path... "

See, going by The Pale King's actions and what The White Lady explicitly says, they both foresaw two outcomes wrt the infection: it can be allowed to spread, or it can be contained. At Teacher's Archives, Quirrel acknowledges the fact that Ghost is expected to do... something about this, but he doesn't elaborate on what HE thinks that's supposed to be apart from the obvious "Gotta bust into Black Egg Temple first". Hornet is the one person who presents to us—to Ghost—what's framed as a third option: confront and destroy the infection at its source.

And she doesn't bring it up like it's just another tactic for Ghost to consider, prim and indifferent to what they would do. She nudges them towards it, actively, up to the point where she throws herself into the fray against Hollow at a juncture that's uniquely dangerous to her and her alone just to make that option feasible.

Even when she's couching it in disclaimers that this is still Ghost's decision to make (and let's be fair, she's extremely not wrong about that lol), no one can pretend Hornet is unbiased. It's obvious in that buttoned-down Hornet kind of way that she is way the hell done with the increasingly tenuous stalemate that's kept Hallownest's desiccated corpse from collapsing in on itself. Personally it's hard for me not to read some Toriel Undertale-esque "My father was too entrenched in his own foolishness to pursue any course of action that would have DEFINITIVELY ended this" shade into her stance here, regardless of whether that's strictly true in canon.

And that bit—Hornet's hopes for an end to Hallownest's stasis, moreover her grim calculation of what needs to be done to get there—that's the bit I find super interesting but likewise tragic and depressing as shit, on multiple levels. In no small part because a) canon itself gestures towards Hornet feeling conflicted about the very plan she's pushing, and moreover b) she has at least two (2) damn good reasons to feel that way.

So, what do I mean by that? Let's look here first:

[Image description: A screenshot from Hollow Knight, of Hornet and Ghost inside the Temple of the Black Egg, standing in front of the unsealed egg itself. Hornet has been struck by the Dream Nail and her dialogue is displayed as follows: "... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?" End description.]

As the curtain is about to drop on things one way or another, Hornet thinks,

... Could it achieve that impossible thing? Should it?

Now, looking at that last bit it's easy to go "Oh no, Hornet's worried that Ghost won't survive killing The Radiance!" And I do think that's part of it: Hornet is, categorically, not her father. By endgame it's clear she's not content to view her Void-borne siblings as tools to be used then disposed of. She's also well aware that as a healthy autonomous Vessel amongst the countless dead, Ghost is the only person left alive who has a fighting chance against The Radiance. Knowing someone is the only qualified candidate for the job doesn't make encouraging them to embrace a probable death sentence any less of a bitter pill to swallow, though. And odds are on that this sentiment extends to Hollow too, who IS going to die no matter what happens here. To put it bluntly, it's more than reasonable to conclude that Hornet hates the absolute fuck out of this.

But I don't think that's all there is to it either. Remember what I said earlier about The Pale King's bids for genocide? Well, it's not like the man deigned to limit his efforts to just the moth tribe.

"We do not choose our mothers... "

On top of everything else—an infected Hallownest being all she's ever known, the fact that she only exists because of the infection, the list goes on—Hornet has spent her life wedged into a position that's been uncomfortable and terminally unglamorous at best: she is both a daughter of her father's kingdom and of Deepnest.

Deepnest, which like the moths and many others was here long before the wyrm and his lady wife swanned onto the scene and the God Become Bug laid claim to everything the Light touched plus a considerable amount of change. THAT Deepnest, which has fought claw and thread to retain its sovereignty against same-said settler king, and for which Herrah not only surrendered her life but also agreed to bed her worst enemy, all in hopes of securing a viable future for her people (put a pin in that last part by the way, I'll come back to it soon).

Two Worlds, One Family (Ft. An Indigenous Woman Trying Her Damndest To Work With What She's Got Versus An Imperialist Who Only Signed Up For This Because He Needed The Political Favor THAT Badly, So It's The Height Of Dysfunctional Actually). Fun times!!!!

The baggage this entails for Hornet is gnarly enough without implications made by The White Lady and the pre-canon timeline of events and even Team Cherry's dev notes that the king may well have looked at baby Hornet, gone "YOINK", then ensured she spent the lion's share of her childhood reared within the pearly auspices of his Pale Court*. That would be rather advantageous for Him Specifically after all, the potential to mold a born foe into a future ally and even have her trained in combat under the same tutelage as her doomed sibling. And far be it from him to stop a grown Hornet—his own flesh and blood too!—from making Deepnest her forever home if she so pleased. He totally wouldn't be reneging on his "fair bargain made" by doing this one simple thing until Hornet came of age, not t e c h nic c a l l y.

If that is indeed the case, there's a non-zero chance Hornet's formative years were a hot mess of cultural alienation and being a good deal more privy than most to just how much of a bastard her father could be. There's an equally non-zero chance that at some point she stood or sat within earshot as The Pale King finally, finally dropped all pretense and euphemism to name the Light for precisely what (for who) it was.

See, in conjunction with the question that started this whole dang train of thought I've been asking this one too: Does Hornet know? When she speaks of confronting "the heart of [the] infection" does she know she's talking about not just a literal person but someone very specific? The Radiance, who god though she may be shares skin in the game alongside Hornet as a native woman screwed over by the same settler king, likewise deprived of her kin and saddled with a life gone horrendously pear-shaped?

I'll assume for the sake of exploring the possibility and because I think it's a likely one anyway that yes, Hornet does know. She knows, and despite everything can't help empathizing. She might even look at Radiance and see bits and pieces both reflected and slightly inversed in her own mother: Radiance was forced to the sidelines while her people—her children, the brood she was meant to lead and care for—died out under The Pale King's rule, and it's no stretch to assume she's at least as upset about that as she has been about everything else; Herrah too took drastic measures for her people's sake, trying to head off annihilation by relegating herself to the sidelines in an act that was as much calculated risk as an attempt to find wiggle room and leverage in the face of a nasty proposition.

A calculated risk that, if things continue as they are, might well amount to nothing as the rest of Deepnest gets eaten alive by the infection. It survived The Pale King's advances for so so long, only to fall here. Herrah's sacrifice would be for naught; the other tribes—themselves the king's victims—would keep succumbing to the infection too.

And this is where things fall apart.

"... or the circumstance into which we are born."

Let's be clear: I think Hornet is wise enough to know what's what here, that all the carnage and suffering falls on her father's head for starting this slow-motion trainwreck in the first place. Hallownest wasn't always Hallownest. This domain was Radiance's home first, along with many others. It was the worm-turned-king who rolled up on the scene unsolicited and decided this was a ""'problem""" that had to be """solved""".

But the fact of the matter is that he's gone and The Radiance is here, raging, seemingly inconsolable. Above and beyond being Deepnest's rightful heir, Hornet isn't in a position to countenance more splash damage even if the grief and fury fueling it makes perfect sense. She can understand without ever bringing herself to love Radiance, and she can bend her knee to practicality even if she hates the everloving shit out of it because the fact that it "has" to end this way isn't fair.

This lends itself to one last awful conclusion: that Hornet has probably considered and (rightly or wrongly) discarded the possibility that Radiance can be saved, at least not without dragging more collateral along for the ride. If even her mother and every other enemy to the king seemed to dismiss talking Radiance down as an option way back when... well. Why should Hornet hope for any better after things have escalated so far?

Again, it's practical. A practical net good is what Hornet strives for. And again, it fucking sucks.

For extra tragedy points, this makes Hornet's extended crypticness around Ghost followed by her last minute casting about for a reason to tell them "Wait, don't; not just yet" that she never voices even more of a gut punch. She can't bring herself to burden Ghost with the context that haunts her so, least of all when it might weaken their resolve to go through with what (she thinks) needs doing.

It's the "same song, different verse" which led to the mantis tribe and Deepnest being pitted against each other: Hallownest rigged the game so that two women who could have been powerful allies—who have a mutual vested interest in driving out settler rule—wound up poised as enemies instead. And how awful is that? The king for all his being extremely fucking dead still gets the last laugh, because outside of a miracle the game never manifests Hornet can salvage what her mother started and look forward to a future where Deepnest pulls itself back from the brink if and only if The Radiance dies.

Resolution comes at the price of a completed genocide. Add two more dead siblings to the unconscionable pile thereof, while we're at it. That's what it boils down to whether or not Hornet can bear to articulate it as such, and there's no grace or even a properly bittersweet ending to wring from this clusterfuck. And that is rough.

———

* This has been better explained elsewhere, but a quick rundown: The White Lady tells Ghost that Hornet and Herrah "were permitted little time together." On its surface this can be taken to mean that Hornet was still very young when Herrah was shipped off to Eternal Dreamland—except this doesn't jive with the fact that we meet Hornet as an adult. If the stasis kicked in once the Dreamers went to their rest, which in turn halted the aging process for every living bug in Hallownest, AND before all this Hornet experienced little by the way of quality time with her birth mother... I think you can see where I'm going with this.

To top it off we've got Team Cherry weighing in ominously from their dev notes on Herrah: "As part of the agreement for her alliance and her role as a dreamer, King gave her a child (Hornet). Was she allowed to keep this child or was she taken away?" This isn't confirmation by itself of course, but given additional canon details (see above): Can I get a "yikes" in the chat fellas.

#hollow knight #hornet (hollow knight)#hornet hollow knight #hk hornet #the radiance #hk radiance #herrah #hk herrah #hollow knight meta #sup folks it's been a minute since i dropped a whole dang essay but Here We Go!!!!!!

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mudaship39 · 2 years

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Heart of Fire Dragon, Soul of Flame Phoenix and Sea Fairy Ocean Blood

A Spoken word poetry book about being an asian native pasifika, a qtipoc or queer and trans native of color, & a displaced disconnected diaspora

Chapter 7: Verse 1:

A Scream and Roar of Fire and Flame of Resistance, Resilience, & Defiance:

There is a reason why I as a Vietnamese and Chinese person of color fear the ocean

There is a reason why I as a Polynesian Tahitian Indigenous Pasifika love the ocean

There is a reason why I as a Kinh Indigenous person have a healthy fear and respect of the ocean

Do you know how many first world countries didn’t accept Vietnamese refugees

Who banned the boat people coming over to their shores

Boats brimming with so many human life seeking new homes

After their Indigenous Kinh land and seas were defiled and desecrated by the Chinese, the French, the Japanese, & the Americans!

Torn apart by their colonialism, imperialism, neocolonialism, & occupation!

Who left seeking new homes after their homes were destroyed by colonizers and imperialists!

Displaced disconnected Indigenous Kinh diaspora

Survivors on wooden boats like Noah’s ark searching for a new home

Do you know how many first world nations refused them

Hundreds of thousands of us died in the pitch black cold ocean

A giant blue graveyard that was the open sea

That was our tombs as we were taken into the afterlife

That surrounded four hundred thousand dead bodies of the boat people

Like a motherly embrace...

After several so called developed countries refused to give us sanctuary as war refugees!

They treated us like some sort of fucking disease or infection!

Neighboring governments of the South China sea in East Asia and Southeast Asia refused us asylum

The moment the dead bodies of Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous children!

Orphaned boys and girls washed on their shores!

That they those children fucking cursed them from beyond in the afterlife!

Because I know the Ocean Mother did

They look away in shame knowing damn well

That all of those kids died because of their heartlessness and apathy

I say stare and look at what you fucking did

You claim your Christians

I say that you are all fucking hypocrites

They say they loved Noah and the story of the ark

Who saved every single animal with his giant boat

Yet they damned four hundred thousands of war refugees

Of innocent men, women, & children on wooden boats to die!

They say they love Jesus

Wasn’t Jesus a brown skinned refugee who fled to escape persecution when that king massacred every single baby boy?!

You raped and pillaged my home!

My Vietnamese or Kinh Indigenous people searched for a new home

After your countries defiled and desecrated it with your colonialism, imperialism, neocolonialism, & occupation!

Our people fled to escape Vietnam when they knew the Viet Cong was coming to slaughter every single one of them!

Viet Cong were going to execute everyone of them!

Men, women, children, the elderly!

They claim to love Moses

Didn’t Moses lead an exodus of his people searching for a new home

Our people went to their new homes in the United States, Europe, South America, the Middle East, Polynesia, & the rest of Asia

Yet experienced anti-Asian racism, anti native racism, and xenophobia when they came to their new homes

So when you claim to love Christian biblical stories

But hate refugees of war

Refugees that are caused by your colonialism, imperialism, neocolonialism, & occupation!

Please go fuck yourself!

The Ocean Mother of Polynesian indigenous Pasifika myth she wept as she took in dead children from another Indigenous diaspora!

She saw as thousands of fire dragon, sea fairy, & flame phoenix hybrid children cry

Their flame phoenix and fire dragon tears weren’t extinguished and withstood even her ocean water!

She saw as hundreds of nations let innocent lives of men and women drown in her ocean water!

Till this day her ocean floor is still littered with our bones made out of jade...

The bodies of sea fae, flame phoenix, & fire dragon hybrid children…

Did those bodies later grow and become white lotus flowers that symbolize death, purity, & the end?

She grieved and mourned each one of them!

She tried to save every single one of them

I know she did but even she couldn’t

She cried as she watched the Goddess of the Night take all of these now orphaned children in her arms!

Because it happened when the cold blue sea met the dark black sky!

It was in the open ocean where you couldn’t see any land!

It was where the only thing you can see was the cold obsidian sapphire sea and the charcoal night sky!

So the Goddess of the Night’s reach was all encompassing

The Goddess of the Night’s embrace was warm and nurturing

But her cold arms were also a tomb as she embraced us into the darkness!

Those men, women, & children all died with eyes wide open...

Shocked at the inaction, apathy, & indifference of so many nations

The Ocean Mother she closed each of their eyes herself with her hand made of ocean water...

The Ocean Mother and the Goddess of the Night were the only ones that welcomed us with open arms

Even if it was to welcome us into the afterlife…

To give us a mother’s touch one last time!

To save us from Southeast Asian Thai sea pirates who assaulted and raped Vietnamese girls and women!

To save us from Vietcong who killed war refugees and left their children without parents!

She adopted some of these orphans before they died

So I wonder if I go to the afterlife will I see some of my Vietnamese and Chinese ancestors...?

Will I see the sad smile of the Goddess of the Night and the Ocean Mother?

Is this why she wanted a child born of fire, flame, & water

With a fire dragon heart, with a sea fairy aura, & a flame phoenix soul

But with a body of earth, ocean, & sky?

With bones made out of jade

With roots made out of white lotus flowers and hibiscus plants

To make up for not saving enough Vietnamese children in the future...

So the ocean she felt like home to me as a Polynesian Tahitian Indigenous Pasifika

My people are descended from fire dragons, flame phoenixes, and sea fae water spirits!

This is why those that survived

We were phoenixes that were reborn as displaced diaspora across the world

Our roots of white lotus flowers came with us

When we were reborn in the streets of America, Canada, South America, the Middle East, Europe, Oceania, & the rest of Asia

I am a human with a body made of earth, made of ocean, & made of sky

I am human born of fire, born of water, & born of flame

I am human with bones made out of jade

I am human with roots made out of white lotus flowers and hibiscus plants

I am human with the blood of the cosmic and ancient sea fairy, the heart of a stellar and celestial dragon, & the soul of a divine and heavenly phoenix

#Native Art #Native Artist #Native Writers #ndn #ndn art #ndn tag #polynesian #oceania #spokenword #poetry #indigenous #indigenous writers #indigenous art

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titleknown · 3 years

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It was the reasonable thing to do, we thought, the reasonable place, there for the taking. Who gave a shit about some fucking lizards in some fucking jungle. Who gave a shit if that... thing came out of the darkness, out of the pit after we corralled the SUBJECT, just as long as we could keep it out of us and ours. It was for the greater good, they all said.

Our boss sure believed it. I think. God only fucking knows, I was never sure if she believed in the project or just the boot stamping a human face forever. But good god, god damn, I look at the nightmares we’ve made, the ground dead and barren, the nightmares made and yet to come, and I think, good god, what was this all for? Is this the world we wanted to make? Death machines from dying earth?

Oh well. It won’t matter anyway. Not when HE is here. I suppose it is appropriate.

I feel the eyes of God watching me, but I cannot look back. The face from somewhere else, in that pit, looks upon me. And I know it is what I deserve...

-Suicide note by researcher at MECH, burned by Karen Sullivan.

-------

Who is this supreme monstrosity? Their name is Tsarex, more on them past the break!

The dirty little secret of MECH, amongst all the other dirty little secrets, is that the... process they used not only created ecological devastation by the black stones, not only did it seal away the near-finished Great Crystal Pyramid of the natives, who’s purpose was known only to them, not only did it create a spatial hole, but, in their process they... they let something out.

All the kaiju running away from the Jungle, chased into the wider world, were due to the unleashing of this thing. Korangu held it back, but they could not fight forever.

And when the great blue ape bled upon the earth, near dead and fallen, it simply... walked out. To the edge of the world its cry was heard. Strength beyond strength, speed beyond speed, eyes blazing with hatreds beyond time that burnt wherever their gaze touched.

MECH’s creations that faced it were crushed, even the great Futura Concorde was gone. And the kaiju that faced it barely fared better. Those that did not fall to its power were enslaved by the crystals, plunged into their back like daggers as its further crystals were plunged into the earth. We have seen one with such a crystal once before, somehow immune, and strangely absent.

Its powers of light were like Narlyquin, but that was akin to comparing a fire with the sun, for it did not control it, it simply brought it, its nightmare waves, its roaring armies refracted through thousands of seeds, a bacchianal sabbat of light choking like darkness.

There were kaiju still fighting against the shining lights and army of the possessed, Zipacky, Bidoll, Jiira, Viroko, Bigendonn, Lagalle without Guwagh, Protaox without Kiyaara but it was a war of attrition. As it walked, things died, and all hope was lost...

If you wanna catch up on the previous history of this setting, here’s Year 1 and Year 2 archived on the Wik for the newbies!

And, as per usual with Kaijune, this ecological nightmare is free to use as you see fit under a CC-BY 4.0 license so long as I; Thomas F. Johnson, am credited as their creator!

And, if you wanna support me, maybe check out my Patreon, or even just send a Ko-Fi my way! Every penny is appreciated, and I am eternally grateful for those who donate!

Or, if you wanna commission me for a pic like this, my commission info is thisaway!

...So, that got darker still! Yeah, this is my homage to the notorious Dinosaur Satan (AKA The Supreme Monstrosity) from Dinosaurs Attack.

Shoutout to Adori_A because without my conversation with 'em on that (They'd never heard of 'em before I mentioned 'em) I probably wouldn't have gotten the inspiration to make this!

I gave them eagle-heads because I am not subtle in regards to symbolism (Note how Futura Concorde was subtly meant to be a "mecha" version of them), and the two faces because I was going for an Imperial Eagle, but I kinda ended up with something more like King Pandon or, if you want to get even sillier, Twin Beaks...

#kaiju #kaijune #dinosaurs attack #dinosaur satan #eagle #homage #horror #suicide mention #my art

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watusichris · 3 years

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Rock Gunfight in the Antipodes

Listening today to the hot new Grown Up Wrong! comp by Sydney’s Lipstick Killers, whose lone officially released single was produced by Deniz Tek of Radio Birdman, it occurred to me that my old Music Aficionado faux faceoff between Australia’s pioneering bands of the ‘70s (all of which I dearly love) has disappeared into the online ether. It’s time to bring it back.

**********

By Chris Morris

The mid- to late ‘70s were fertile days for rock ‘n’ roll in Australia. Here and there across the vast but not terribly populous island continent, fires were started by several attitude-filled bands bent on doing things their own damn way. They all managed to make their way off the island, but if they hit the American consciousness, it was for little more than a nanosecond during their heyday.

Who were the truest Rock Wizards of Oz? For this Down Under face-off, I’ve selected three contenders: the Saints, Radio Birdman, and the Scientists. All of them had fairly slim discographies; ironically, the act probably least known in the U.S., the Scientists, recorded most prolifically, with their core line-up producing several magnificent albums and singles during a productive four-year stretch in the early ‘80s. But none of these bands ever stayed together long enough to make a deep impression among the Yanks.

So where’s the Birthday Party, you ask? There are a few things to consider. First of all, though the band and its precursor unit the Boys Next Door were in business from 1976 on, they didn’t release their first LP until 1980. Also, Nick Cave is well known enough that more (king) ink needn’t be spilled on him. Finally, I still resent the fact that Cave stole PJ Harvey away from me, so it’s personal.

On with the showdown…

HIT ME LIKE A DEATH RAY, BABY

The Saints, founded 1974 in Brisbane

The prime movers of the Saints were a pair of literal outsiders: vocalist Chris Bailey, born in Kenya to Irish parents, and guitarist Ed Kuepper, raised in Germany. Thus the otherness of their work is no surprise.

With schoolmate Ivor Hay – who over time would play drums, bass, and piano with them – the pair founded a combo originally known as Kid Galahad and the Eternals (borrowing their handle from a 1962 Elvis Presley picture), but they swiftly renamed themselves the Saints and began playing in their hometown on the northeast coast of Australia.

Listening to their records, which were made in something of a cultural vacuum, it’s difficult to get a handle on where the Saints’ distinctive, aggressive sound came from. To be sure they were aware of such homegrown precursors from the ‘60s as the Master’s Apprentices and the Missing Links (whose 1965 single they covered on their debut album). It’s safe to assume they were conversant with the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, and Lenny Kaye’s 1972 garage rock compilation Nuggets. Yet they bred something utterly their own in the ocean air of Brisbane.

With Hay on drums and Kym Bradshaw on bass, Bailey and Kuepper mounted noisy local gigs that swiftly attracted the antipathy of the local constabulary; they wound up turning their own digs into a club to play shows. In 1976, they recorded and issued a self-financed single featuring two originals, “(I’m) Stranded” and “No Time.” These dire, ferocious songs were distinguished by venomous lyrics, unprecedented velocity, and guitar playing by Kuepper that sounded like a (literal) iron curtain being attacked with a chainsaw.

The record died locally, but a copy of its U.K. issue found its way into the hands of a critic at the English music weekly Sounds, which declared it the single of the week. This accolade got the attention of EMI Records, which signed the band and financed the recording of an album, also titled I’m Stranded, in a fast two-day Brisbane session.

The album, which was ultimately released in the U.S. by Sire Records, blew the ears off anyone who heard it, and it landed with a bang in England, where punk rock was lifting off in all its fury in early 1977. It was hurtling, powerful stuff that stood apart from punk in several crucial ways: While some of the songs were clipped and demonic in the standard manner, the Saints proved they could take their time on expansive numbers like the almost Dylanesque “Messin’ With the Kid” and the sprawling, hellriding “Nights in Venice.” And one has to wonder how British p-rockers took to their perverted take on Elvis’ squishy “Kissin’ Cousins.”

Made by musicians who never considered themselves “punks,” and who in fact abhorred the label, (I’m) Stranded is nevertheless one of the definitive statements in the genre, and it has maintained its force to this day.

Settling in England for the duration, the Saints decided to throw a curveball. One could not find a more profoundly alienated album than Eternally Yours (1978), a series of yowling protests, twisted prophecies, and savage put-downs, including the snarling second version of the single “This Perfect Day.” But, though the record was loud and for the most part swift, the group applied the brakes to their sound somewhat, and a couple of songs, including the caustic album opener “Know Your Product,” were dressed by a soul-styled horn section. Punk loyalists ran for cover.

By the time Prehistoric Sounds was issued in late ’78, the dejected Bailey and Kuepper were moving in different directions, and you can hear it in the grooves. The record is slow, almost listless at times, and its logy originals are complemented by incongruous Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin covers with none of the energy of earlier Saints soul-blasts. It is an album primarily for loyalists, and by then there were few in that number.

Kuepper exited the band on the heels of the third album’s release and returned to Australia, where he enjoyed a long career as leader of the Laughing Clowns; Bailey continued to perform under the Saints mantle with a shifting lineup that at last count numbered more than 30 players over the course of 37 years

Bailey and Kuepper reunited for one-off gigs in 2001 (at the ARIA awards ceremony) and 2007 (at Australia’s Queensland Music Festival).

THERE’S GONNA BE A NEW RACE

Radio Birdman, founded 1974 in Sydney

People who toss the “punk” handle around often throw Radio Birdman into the mix, but the sextet from Australia’s Southeast Coast may be best referred as the world’s youngest proto-punk band.

Its mastermind was guitarist, songwriter, and producer Deniz Tek, a native of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who emigrated to Sydney in 1971 to study medicine. As a teen, he got a chance to witness Detroit’s most explosive pre-punk bands – the MC5, the Stooges, and the Rationals; he would later wind up collaborating with important members of all those groups.

After apprenticing with and getting bounced from a Sydney band called TV Jones, Tek formed Radio Birdman (its name a corruption of a lyric from the Stooges’ “1970”) with singer Rob Younger; the lineup ultimately solidified with the addition of guitarist (and sometime keyboardist) Chris Masuak, bassist Warwick Gilbert, drummer Ron Keeley, and (on and off and then on again) keyboardist Pip Hoyle.

Rapidly acquiring a fan base made up of some of Sydney’s lowest elements, including members of the local Hell’s Angels, Radio Birdman ultimately took over a bar, re-dubbed (in honor of the Stooges, of course) the Oxford Funhouse, as their base of operations. The band’s severe Tek-designed band logo emanated fascist-style vibes for some; at a co-billed appearance in Sydney, the Saints’ Chris Bailey remarked from the stage, “We’d like to thank the local members of Hitler Youth for their stage props.”

Despite much antipathy and some attendant violence, the band maintained a loyal local following, and in 1976 it issued a strong four-song EP, Burn My Eye, via local studio-cum-independent label Trafalgar. This was succeeded the following year by a full-length debut album, Radios Appear.

Anyone looking for something resembling punk will likely be disappointed by that collection. The band wears its all-American hard rock/proto-punk influences on its dirty sleeve. Radios Appear is dedicated to the Stooges (whose “No Fun” was the lead-off track on the Aussie issue of the LP), and a song co-written by Tek and Stooges guitarist Ron Asheton, “Hit Them Again,” was cut during sessions for the record. Tek pays deep homage to MC5 guitarist Wayne Kramer with his playing, and blatantly cops a signature lick from the 5’s “Looking at You” at one juncture. The album title was lifted from a Blue Öyster Cult lyric, and the Tek-Masuak guitar-bashing bows to their multi-axe sound. Finally, in both Younger’s sometimes Morrisonian vocalizing and Hoyle’s Ray Manzarek-like ornamentation, homage to the Doors in paid in full. Given that Sydney is a beach town, there’s even a frisson of surf music in the mix.

Bursting with power-packed originals like the apocalyptic “Descent into the Maestrom,” youth-in-revolt anthem “New Race,” the cryptic, insinuating “Man with the Golden Helmet,” and Tek’s autobiographical “Murder City Nights,” Radios Appear was a power-packed set that established Radio Birdman as Oz’s leading rock light.

However, renown did not equal success in Antipodean terms. In 1978, the band cut its second album, Living Eyes, at Rockfield Studio in Wales; it was a solid effort that included remakes of three Burn My Eye numbers (including the wonderful Tek memoir “I-94,” about the Michigan interstate) and excellent new originals like “Hanging On,” “Crying Sun,” and “Alone in the End Zone.” But, with success seemingly within their grasp, Sire Records – their American label, and the Saints’ as well – switched distribution and cut their roster, leaving their new work without a home. Within months of this catastrophe, Radio Birdman disbanded.

The principals scattered, to Younger’s New Christs and Tek and Hoyle’s the Visitors; Tek, Younger, and Warwick Gilbert later joined MC5 drummer Dennis Thompson and the Stooges’ Ron Asheton in the one-off New Race. Tek also later recorded with Wayne Kramer and Scott Morgan of Ann Arbor’s Rationals in Dodge Main.

Radio Birdman’s original lineup reunited for a 1996 tour; in August 2006 – after four of the original sextet regrouped to record a potent new album, Zeno Beach – the band played its first American date ever, at Los Angeles’ Wiltern Theater. Your correspondent was there, and it was freakin’ incredible.

IN MY HEART THERE’S A PLACE CALLED SWAMPLAND

The Scientists, founded 1978 in Perth

Among the important Aussie bands of the ‘70s, the Scientists were among the first to be directly influenced by the punk explosion in New York.

As guitarist-singer-songwriter Kim Salmon – the lone constant in the Scientists’ lineup during their existence – wrote in 1975, “Reading about a far-off place called CBGB in NYC and its leather-clad denizens, all with names like Johnny Thunders, Richard Hell, and Joey Ramone, got me thinking…I immediately went searching for Punk Rock. What I found were The Modern Lovers and The New York Dolls albums.”

Salmon first dabbled in the new sound with a band bearing the delightfully punk name the Cheap Nasties. Cobbled together in Perth – the Western provincial capital of Australia – from members of such local acts as the Exterminators, the Victims, and Salmon’s the Invaders -- the early Scientists were as derivative as one might imagine. Their early songs, heard on their self-titled LP (the so-called “Pink Album”) and an early single and EP, sport original songs authored by Salmon and drummer-lyricist James Baker, the backbone of shifting Scientific crews through 1980. The tunes range from straight-up Dolls/Heartbreakers rips (“Frantic Romantic,” “Pissed On Another Planet,” “High Noon”) to buzzing romantic pop-punk in a Buzzcocks vein (“That Girl,” “She Said She Loves Me”).

Not terribly promising stuff, but, after the departure of Baker for the Hoodoo Gurus in 1981 and a brief stint in a trio called Louie Louie, Salmon assembled a new Scientists who would prevail for nearly four years. That outfit – Salmon, guitarist Tony Thewlis, bassist Boris Sujdovic, and drummer Brett Rixton – promptly relocated to Sydney and started making the noise they are noted for.

By that time, Salmon had begun cocking an ear to the Birthday Party (and no doubt paid careful attention to the sordid noise on the Melbourne group’s 1982 album Junkyard), had discovered the miasmic voodoo of the Cramps, and started grooving to the dissonant, slide guitar-dominated racket of Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band. In short order, he would also absorb the bluesy downhome assault of Los Angeles’ roots-punk outfit the Gun Club.

The Sydney-based Scientists hooked up with indie label Au Go Go, which issued a devastating run of careening, mossy records by the band in 1982-83 – the vertiginous singles “This is My Happy Hour”/“Swampland” and the corrosive “We Had Love” (backed by a faithful cover of Beefheart’s “Clear Spot”), and the heart-stopping mini-album Blood Red River, which bore the churning “Set It On Fire,” “Revhead,” and “Burnout.” Others were essaying a similar style, but the Aussie youngsters were beating their elders at their own game.

Eying the big time, the band moved to London in 1984. Some opportunities presented themselves initially: The band got European tour slots with the Gun Club and early Goth act Sisters of Mercy. But their deal with Au Go Go fell apart acrimoniously; while they made a pair of fog-bound albums, You Get What You Deserve (1985) and The Human Jukebox (1987) for Karbon Records (and a set of re-recorded songs, Weird Love, was issued in the U.S. by Big Time Records), they scraped by in Britain.

Defections from the ranks commenced in ’85, and by early 1987 the depleted Salmon used money from a housing settlement to move back to Australia, where he founded a new band, the Surrealists.

Still valued among the cognoscenti, Salmon, Thewlis, Sujdovic, and latter-day drummer Leanne Chock appeared, at the invitation of Seattle’s Mudhoney, at London’s All Tomorrow’s Parties Festival in 2006. Earlier this year, Chicago-based archival label the Numero Group issued a comprehensive four-disc box of the band’s original recordings.

So, at the end of the day, who is the all-time champeen of ‘70s Oz rock?

Scoring on points, the Saints are tops for Being Punk First with additional wins in the Pure Noise and Weltzschmerz categories, Radio Birdman takes the Technical Ability and Old-School Attitude slots, and the Scientists prevail in the Loud Young Snot and Grunge Thug division.

And the championship belt goes to…the Saints!

Of course, that could all change tomorrow, but that’s rock ‘n’ roll for ya.

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chainsawcorazon · 4 years

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On Yamihime & the Politics of Toxic Loyalty

I think about Yami’s history and his struggles, and wonder just how deeply Julius’ arrival affected his psyche. Here’s a man who collects squad members like they’re Pokemon, and has no problem giving them a home and a military title because, quite frankly, that’s what Julius did for him, and because Julius gave him a reason to live, then maybe the people Yami collects will also find their will to live.

Except Julius didn’t pick him off the street because he felt bad for him; he took him in because he had magic power, and magic/mana is what makes the man in Clover Kingdom.

It’s not to say Yami doesn’t know he’s a cog in the greater Clover military machine; I’m sure he does! I just think it’s important to note that even though Yami is aware he was brought in to be a tool, he has no problem making others tools as well, because his perception of loyalty and service is inherently warped. For Yami, it’s OK to give your life for someone, no matter what kind of person they are, if you owe your loyalty to that person. It’s also probably why Yami, despite being so perceptive and intelligent, has never questioned Julius’ authority, even though the kingdom is a shitshow from the capital all the way to the boonies.

Asta is critical to Yami’s narrative because Asta, despite being a magicless manlet, is also the only person in the Black Bulls who doesn’t come into the squad looking for comfort, family, and a place to belong. Asta already has all of that. He has comfort in the fact that he’s an ambitious little fuck, he has a family he’ll literally die for, and his home is Hage. The Magic Knights are a path to his goals, not the goal itself. This is a clear opposite of the Black Bulls at large, who are mostly depressed, prone to loitering, and have no motivation to heal and improve their magical abilities because they’re all suffering from depression, anxiety, etc., and the Black Bulls and Yami are really all they have, because they have nothing and no one else.

Prior to Asta’s arrival, the Black Bulls were largely fractured, and barely functioned as individuals, much less a team. Yami did nothing to foster camaraderie. He didn’t have to! They didn’t have to be loyal to each other, only Yami, because it wasn’t a brigade, it was a halfway house, and he was house master. Again, it’s not to say Yami willingly fostered toxicity in his ranks, but he definitely let it fester for so long that it took a whole arc for them to come together as a cohesive unit. And why? Because Asta was the only one well-adjusted enough to recognize his squad’s potential as a whole, versus Yami who wanted them to surpass their limits individually.

But through Asta, I truly believe Yami learned the meaning of family and individual agency in ways Julius could never teach him. I don’t see Yami as a father figure for the Black Bulls at all. In fact, if there’s anyone I think Yami resembles the most, it’s Rukia from Bleach, and that’s as a mentor, a friend, and an ideal to be achieved. Yami is someone who, despite fundamentally being a good person, is bound by his toxic loyalty to his king, wrapped in politics beyond his comprehension, and ultimately a tool who’s been sacrificed time and time again to keep up appearances. The Black Bulls are some of the strongest people in the realm, and led by the King’s ward himself, and yet no one respects the Black Bulls, and no one looks to or respects Yami as ward of the King. He’s treated like garbage despite the military clout. He’s a monster to be feared, when he could have been a beacon of hope for other immigrants, but in the greater narrative of Clover’s military, that just wasn’t possible, and so Yami’s dignity had to be sacrificed in order for him to coexist with the natives.

And now that he’s literally about to be sacrificed, I think it’s poignant that Yami smiled one last before his transformation into Yamihime. It’s his way of apologizing for his shortcomings as squad leader because, in a way, he knows it’s his fault Vanessa, Finral, Grey, Gauche, and Henry still aren’t emotionally well enough to duke it out in tough spots, and Asta can’t save them at the end of the day because Asta is but one human. Yami knows he fucked up, and that he should have tried harder, but he didn’t. Of course we know that it’s not Yami’s fault he got snatched up, but for Yami, it’s a culmination of all of his shortcomings, so he has to smile at the end, because he needs the Black Bulls to understand that it aint their fault. AKA, if we follow through with the Bleach parallel, then the Black Bulls are mini-Ichigos, with Asta being Alpha Ichigo.

The power structure that birthed the Black Bulls can’t be allowed to continue, because how many others like Yami are serving the Crown while willfully ignoring the injustices happening to the civilians? How about the crimes against military personnel? How many more Zara Ideale’s are there? How many more Vanessa’s, and Finral’s, and Henry’s? More than enough, probably, but they’re stuck in this hateful cycle because they have a central figurehead willing to sacrifice them to keep the institution running. That’s why Julius has to die, not because Julius is inherently evil (he’s not), but the institution he serves, upholds, and strengthens is corrupt and fundamentally evil. It’s the same institution that carried out a genocide, and created the tragedy of Yamihime and those like him, those who were sacrificed one way or another to keep the Crown looking pretty.

So why the wall of text? Simple. I feel like Yami’s one of those characters whose physical appearance is a reflection of his deepest insecurities. Here’s a guy who’s three hundred pounds of pure muscle and bulging neck veins, but not only is he objectively ugly, he also has the social skills of a wet leaf. He doesn’t know how to navigate socially, can’t read the room, is crazy intelligent and observant, but too damn stupid to catch a cue. And it’s not his fault! He’s dumb! Lonely! He wants friends, but he’s bad at it! So what does he do? Overcompensate with his muscles and emotionally detach himself enough that his squad members can’t get too close to him, so then he becomes more of an ideal than a person.

With his transformation into Yamihime, I think Yami is finally in a place where he’s finally humanized, not only to the Black Bulls, but to the audience as well. Now we know that despite three hundred pounds of muscles, anyone can be a victim. Despite being a physical representation of oozing masculinity, anyone can be harassed, hurt, and victimized by violent predators like Dante and Zenon. The transformation into Yamihime thus serves as the critical juncture where Yami is now a person rather than just Julius’ tool, the Black Bulls’ idealized leader, and Charlotte’s love interest. Yami is now a deeply flawed human being who has his own shortcomings and insecurities, recognizes these issues, and who has accepted his failure in order to emotionally relieve his squad of having to feel the guilt of losing him. I know I joke about the Yamihime a lot, but it really is a powerful tool when used properly, because Tabata didn’t fridge Yami, he made Yami the very human being Clover refused to believe he was.

And his rescue now is staked on his humanity, because Yami is a friend and a potential lover, and not just a monster, or a captain, or the dude who’s made of three hundred pounds of pure muscle. And with Yami’s transformation into Yamihime, it comes time for Julius to be removed from the narrative as a proponent of the old Yami and all that he stood for, because Yamihime can’t be the tool of the state after this. Yami can’t uphold the dirty institution after this because the institution has spent this whole time stripping away Yami’s humanity, so for Yami to return to Clover as Julius’ soldier does nothing to reflect the change that’s necessary for the story to further develop as a whole.

See with Yami’s humanization came Julius’ breakdown as a figurehead. I now understand why Tabata had to deage him. If he’d killed him off during the elven invasion, then he would have died a martyr and thrown the country into a civil war with a Spade invasion on its heels. No - Julius needed to be deaged so that it would be much easier for both the audience and characters to consume his true death because it’s easier to woobify a thirteen year old babie than a forty year old man. Because despite how kind Julius is to Yami, he’s still a propagator of violence and a leading figure of a corrupt institution. For Yami’s sacrifice to even make a modicum of narrative sense, Julius must die. The civil war, which has been brewing since the first chapter, is practically imminent.

tl;dr: Yamihime is an excellent developmental point for Yami, Julius needs to die in order to start the Clover civil war, Jack the Ripper is Renji Abarai and will rescue and eventually go onto marry the Yamihime, and Henry’s bussy pops SEVERELY. No, I will not be taking questions.

#yami sukehiro #julius novachrono #black clover #asta #jack the ripper #jack x yami #real talk

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amandlas · 4 years

Text

almost gone (in these little moments get your cards out)

tfota | jude x cardan, she doesn’t come back au, no smut, hurtful and punishable tbh (ao3)

entry to jurdan week 2020 by @jurdannet - day 7: wild card! a what-if au had jude tried to make a new life in maine (don’t worry, cardan shows up). heaps of angst. little payout. sorry in advance. trigger warnings: violence, guns, shooting, and death mention.

[canon divergence from twk ending. title from “lay your cards out” by poliça]

gone. she’s gone. avulsed from her land, never hers, and her lover, never loved. the mortal world welcomes her with wide arms, arms that are shorter than she remembers, a little less homely, much less magical. after all, how can the ordinariness of television, powder tea, and surround sound compare to the true magic of faerieland?

vivi says it will be well. of course she does. why wouldn’t she, with her strong blood and pointed ears.

jude stares and stares at the tv. at the window. at the door. she’s not so stupid as to believe it will allay her want, but like programming, she follows the routine nonetheless.

two months. oak is recalcitrant to her teachings. vivi is buoyant in her obliviousness. they do not see her. she cannot see herself. the closest thing she has to a mirror is miles away, attending a new husband and parading with stars dangling from rounded ears. if taryn were to come, jude thinks she wouldn’t recognize either of them.

she is ashamed to watch her pillowcase blotted with tear stains at nightfall.

it’s more embarrassing than waking up the first time to menstrual blood staining her sheets, two stories up in madoc’s estate, knowing not what it meant or what to do.

jude duarte avoids as superfluous emotions as sadness or hopelessness. being a mortal in faerie, those sentiments would wash her out of focus, riddle her with doubt, and with a certainty would so far as kill her.

but, she thinks, i am not in faerie anymore. i am no longer in a place where blood is a better find than tears. where eyes are dry and swords are sated by throats and bellies.

perhaps in her native world it is safer. that’s what jude wanted this whole time, was it not? safety. if she were meant to feel relief, she should feel it now.

survival feels wet against her cheek.

he keeps slugging his damn arms. jude tugs oak roughly to her, fixing his stance, and urges him to strike.

“will i still be king someday?”

as per usual, he tries deflection to talk out of a combat lesson. jude is unmoved. “yes.”

“are you sure?”

she shifts her weight to her other leg. “there is no other way.” his form is poor. she identifies his weaker side and rounds slowly to it. “the crown answers to blood. raise your elbow higher. protect your face.”

oak listens for once. his voice is shrill still. “so there is no one else?”

of course there’s someone else. another bearer of the crown, another royal to lead their nation. but jude grits her teeth and resorts to her best asset: lying. “no. no one else.”

her little brother pauses, their lesson half-present in his mind. intrigued, she watches the scrunch of his brows as he formulates a thought. “unless cardan has a child. then there would be another.”

if he sees her freeze, he doesn’t mention it. the scenario turns her thoughts errant, threatens her with a conniption. some sick part of her wishes to linger on the possibility, but with oak before her and posed to fight, she cannot allow herself that masochism.

oak stands expectant, his arm growing weary and slouching. the least she can do is not lie.

“i suppose.”

he remembers none of the stance the next evening.

“no word from dad. taryn either.”

jude lifts her face to catch vivi rummaging through envelopes of mail. “what, were you expecting miracles? a shift in the weather?” she scoffs, coming back to her task. counting money. hard-earned cash from late shifts of all services and flavors. espionage, theft, the occasional sparring match. the underground fae crime ring taints the soul, but it pays in fifties.

vivi interrupts her quick fingers. “he liked you best, you know. dad always gave more of himself to you than to me or taryn.” she notices her brother sitting at the couch, leans in to rumple his hair. “or oak.”

jude shoots vivi a cruel look, an exasperated look. “what good that did to me.”

her sister’s eyes are fierce as a growling cat where they pin her in place. “quite some good, your highness.”

jude does a fucking great job at not screaming.

she hates to think of the name.

what could his true name be, she wonders? if she commanded it, before the brokering of their epically failed marriage for his release, jude asks herself if he’d given it. if he’d hated her that much more.

her mind swirls with reminders of midnight black eyes, of fingers against her lips and the abstruse feeling of possession by another being.

she won’t think of it. she won’t dream of it. she won’t aerate the two syllables in a whisper of dark sky. she certainly won’t be pelted with the scariest word, the four letters she refused since childhood to allow a place in her. the word that died with a blade on its back as it ran to the kitchen. the word that meant a certain foolishness, a certain danger. she won’t. it’s her new mantra: she won’t, she won’t, she won’t.

falsehoods have always been her strongest asset.

“we shouldn’t be watching this shit,” heather sighs between mouthfuls of red licorice.

they’re leaning on the couch, lined up like soldiers catching their breath amidst pilgrimage to battle. the television blares high. jude notices heather has shifted her free hand to cover oak’s eyes.

she inspects the playing show more closely. one second there’s a wide shot of scenery, familiar in its medieval setting, and the next there’s a person. a striking young woman with silver hair like new iron falling in tresses across pale shoulders.

the figure is so intimate it nearly makes jude jump. “a princess,” she murmurs.

heather shakes her head. “no. oh no. well, sorta.” oak squirms in her hand, breaking free of her hold, to which she sighs and acquiesces. “sure, i guess, but more than that. it’s complicated.”

from her place next to oak, jude nods. “royals tend to be.”

her sister’s lover, or ex lover (certainly an ex something), barrels on. she uses hand gestures to further her explaining. “her father was the mad king, but she was only a baby when he got dethroned. she was exiled from her home, far across the sea. then she married a powerful man, leader of a tribe, and sorta grew into herself. after he died, his rivals and his people tried to disbar her. turns out she had more in her arsenal than was believed.” heather wags her eyebrows at the show.

jude couldn’t be more confused until a huge, black winged creature crosses the screen. “are those…”

“yup,” heather confirms. “the mother of beasts. and her husband’s people, they followed her. even though he was gone, and was their real ruler, and it was unacceptable that she rule on the basis of who she was, they still accepted her as leader.”

jude stiffens. “really.”

they made it seem so close, so easy to reach. the princess-who-wasn’t-a-princess straightens her spine, amplifies her voice. when she speaks, people heed.

heather slices her reverie. “because she has magic.” she points to the overflying monsters. “badass.”

ah. because. she. has. magic.

a non-magic girl slouches back in her non-magic couch, watching a non-magic box, consumed by baneful imaginings.

unprepossessing. that is what they called her. ugly, if wine or fury loosened their vocabulary. how had i let someone who called me that touch me at the collarbones? kiss my throat? call me his sweet villain? jude has no answer. she replays and loops the plethora of adjectives her dear husband and company had called her. wormfood. unsightly. repellent. direful. unbecoming. synonyms alike to the same derivative, final word.

mortal.

the circle of worms, she and taryn. daughter of dirt.

she wishes she were nobody’s daughter.

it takes her three nights after that to realize now she really is nobody’s daughter.

her exile hits the half year.

bride of faerieland. the mortal queen.

a fugacious dream, she finalizes. no more than a fleeting child’s wish. had she remained at home, no, in faerie , she’d never have been queen. not without the people’s approval and not with her mortality. a hollow crown, a fool’s wreath.

she cements it into her brain, sears it to memory. she never. would. have been. a true. queen.

oh, but what a vision they would’ve been. jude, stiff boned with graying hair, and cardan beside her, youthful as ever and tethered to her with ball and chain. unescapable. a fresh minted prison for him. he’d be gagged to ask for her kisses, much less beg for them. when her skin sagged and time plundered her heart, how quick he’d be to run from her. a bat out of hell.

when it processes that she’s thought of his name, written it to existence in the myriad of her thoughts, she breaks into a cold sweat.

she won’t call her exile a blessing. there’s many descriptors for the singular event that redefined the last leg of her fleeting teenage life, and blessing won’t cut it. recently, however, jude has had the chance to add timely to the list.

jude kills a troll. he’d been preying on humans the same time as her abscond to the human realm. this particular troll began his horror streak after developing a taste for the helpless glaze in their eyes at final moments before teeth sunk into shoulders, the way they rolled back or if the occasion came up that the eyelids would fall crookedly. the funny look of a drugged, passed out, mindless loon. except these were dead loons, victims to the desire of a beast. these humans had been lured into the abandoned subway tunnel, but jude had strolled there all on her own.

“that bitch carries the devil,” commented one of the fae. gathered in a ring, stealing glimpses of her over their shoulders.

waiting for her pay, jude kicked the tip of her boot into the solid ground, arms crossed. “that bitch can hear. i may not have fae hearing, but i’d abstain from testing me were i in your shoes.”

the fae she had spoken to was of the sea, and was barefoot. irony not lost on her.

sooner than expected, jude duarte developed a reputation. successful runs, frightening recounts of what she did to earn her money, it swiveled up and circled around her like a tornado. some fae considered testing if the legend was bigger than the person, and some fae had lost the use of a limb. she knew she’d been strong before, but this new world taught her what an unstoppable force she was. had always been.

they give her a nickname. fearful of evoking the name given to her at birth, though being human it had no effect on her. still, shadows shivered at her wake, watching, consuming jude duarte’s trail of defeated foes. in the damp, cold streets of maine, in a world she long since had cut true tethers from, she’s reborn as the wrath.

in her mind, somewhere in the bowels of the elfhame palace, the court of shadows laugh up a storm.

oak grows less querulous and more capitulant to his role. jude in turn decides to do the same with her old-but-now-new home amidst mortals.

she watches tv. repaints her bike. buys new clothes. eats toasted waffles with peanut butter and honey.

when heather mentions a museum across town, jude no longer stares at her blankly. she doesn’t fumble or grasp for words. her foot’s planted on the ground, steady and strengthening.

she becomes inclined to music. an old trait, now in a new ambient. vivi glamours money to grant her a gift, a small excuse to cheer her up. the gadget fits most of her hand, sensitive to her tact and bright during the darker hours. heather hauls her laptop once in a while to upload new songs onto it, teaching jude how to sift through the list.

music player in her hand, jude sheepishly assembles a queue of songs that she likes. tunes that have replaced bards in taverns or notes plucked from lutes.

an aggressive song by a vexed wife goes first, the one with words that hit jude harsher than she wants to admit, the title saying not to hurt yourself. another one called once upon a time. a wedding song turned rock, a “strong electric guitar” according to heather, the singer belting about being loved tenderly. paint it, black by the stones that roll. where once her fingers would’ve stumbled over the gadget’s buttons, today she masters with ease.

the stunted child, the wraith of a human girl she once was rears her head in jude’s dreams. she gains color with each passing day.

by the time her exile hits eight months, jude begins the transition. she intends it to life, gives it air to breath.

i, jude duarte, will be happy in the mortal world.

she wills herself to change on a molecular level. when the desire of faerieland hightails back, she slams it to the back of her mind. she transforms the pain into power, into will. the scar left behind from her banishment becomes fuel for her new life. for the transformation into who jude could truly be in this wide, marvelous, enormous human world.

they don’t want you. they have not once wanted you.

he doesn’t want you. not like you do him.

doesn’t

want

you.

move on, she begs herself. move on. move on. move on. stop chasing after ghosts.

the wrath is elbow deep in a goblin’s guts. he swindled bryern a bagful of gold coin. it came down to her to rescue it back, and assure the impediment of a repetition. that’s when she met her.

“hnnnnggg…” moans a figure across the room.

jude ignored the drugged out junkies on her way in, leaving them in the back burner while working through the bulk of her job. but the turncloak goblin is dead, and was that noisy mound moving?

“help…” she hears.

jude rarely considers herself so altruistic. but the meekness of the plea pulls her across the room, tugs her legs to the sprawled person.

human. a girl, dirty blue hair all too reminiscent of nicasia, but not so polished as to pass for a sea princess. no, this girl appeared on the edge of a precipice, thin coat of sweat across her body.

“more,” the girl begs.

like clockwork. jude squats down to get closer. “want me to get you out of here?”

weakly, the girl nods. “she’ll find me.”

“what’s your name?”

the stranger smacks her lips, eyes rolling in her head. “lolli.”

lolli turned out to be an easy haul but a terrible map. jude exasperatedly dragged her through alleys and corners, hearing the laments of her companion through the journey. lolli got sidetracked from her ride-or-dies, see, shot up a bit too much powder - something she called never - and had an urgent need to return to the clan.

jude’s self-preservation rang high when she knocked on the selected door and met a fae two heads taller than she. his red skin shone bright in the doorway, his glamour invisible to jude’s geas.

“thank you for bringing pop back to us. i’m qylin” he says across from jude, having invited her in and given her a once-over. “uh, you mortal?”

she’s declined a drink, but accepted a chair. “as they come.”

qylin moves closer. “and you took out melbor? pop’s supplier?”

“is pop meant to be lolli?”

“her full name’s lollipop.”

“oh. i see.” a red flush runs across her face. “melbor huh? didn’t catch his name. i did catch both his kidneys though.”

qylin whistles. “damn. a mortal.” he pronounces it with wonder. nothing like she’s used to. it falls with disbelief in her ears.

“that’s quite a might you got in you. here.” in an outstretched hand, jude finds a tiny acorn that no doubt has a message inside it. “if you ever quit meandering for coin and want to run with the real wolves, i’ll answer.”

wolf. she’d been a girl and she’d been a mortal. then she’d been wormfood and after that she’d been a queen. couldn’t say jude once considered herself a wolf, or imagined running with them. then again, she had become so many things far from her imagination.

the ward. the mortal. the queen. the wrath. her list of faces ran endless, each mask pressing heavier and heavier on her fragile composition.

in the beginning, vivi congratulated her like a preschooler with a trophy. “look at you, making an effort. i told you home wasn’t so bad.”

months later they’ve turned to “you are too far out” accompanied by the tapping of her foot, a face riddled by concern. “you’re jumping into danger again.”

vivi didn’t know how jude missed being afraid.

if she dreams of cardan, the sting pulls her awake and breathless into the chirping crickets of the dark hours.

ninth month. her exile is a baby somewhere, born and breathing. a marking reminder of her incipient rule cut short.

jude duarte makes a decision. she steps outside of the girl she used to be, the teenager latched to a world that had not once been hers.

the acorn is light in her hands. she splits it open, unrolling the paper inside, and when she sees the address and phone number it takes her a total of eighteen minutes to pack.

saying goodbye without telling them it’s goodbye cracks a new wound in her already shattering heart.

oak thinks she’s going to the gym. vivi thinks she’s babysitting oak. heather might’ve had a clue, but she kept silent while jude hugged her, muttering a quick thanks for watching her brother while vivi came from the post office.

it appears, after years, she’d learned to say farewell to all things that were close to her.

qylin refrained from asking questions, just as jude liked it. she watched, studied, learned, kept to her rank while scheming for more. the room and cot qylin offers is as home as any she’s had.

when she urged cardan to inveigle the princess of the undersea, it led them to a hidden alcove draped with vines, to a couch where she’d bared more of jude duarte than she had in her entire life. the memory is both a memory and the dream that recurs most in her sleep. their tryst, their unculminated tumble, their fumbled connection, whatever people would want to call it. in her sickest hours, jude allowed herself to think of it with a tender gaze, with a pink shiny filter, with the dreaded word she’d been on the run from for years.

that you hate me. tell me that you hate me.

“i hate you,” jude whispers. “i hate you and i married you and i hate you.” the two phrases weren’t mutually exclusive.

lollipop has been gone for weeks, but her junkie spirit is alive.

the wrath evaded nevermore like cats did water, but the gradual acclimation to qylin’s ring fills her with misplaced ease. it took them damn near six months, but jude finally surrendered her arm.

it pricks, the needle, like the pinch on her finger when cardan stabbed her for the salt in her blood. for the antidote to faerie fruit.

she’s high. she’s at a revel in new york and she’s vulnerable and she’s high.

it doesn’t take long for jude to cement her decision to never do drugs in her natural life again. but once that’s been engraved in her think tank, the world turns mellow and technicolor. it tells her to enjoy while it lasts.

she’s surrounded by leaves, platter of fruit, dancing pixies and slender fae. painful reminders of the home she direly tries to forget.

in a mirage, she pictures black curls under a golden crown of flowers. cruel lips forming a smile.

as if underwater, ears plugged with chlorine liquid, jude hears a seductive voice to her side. “what a pretty thing.” a woman. tall and thin, fae ears and slit green eyes. eyes that fall down to jude’s chest. “busty.”

not all quite there, jude struggles but succeeds in recognizing the tone coming from her courtier. and before she can respond, to her surprise, a second woman emerges from the back of her new companion.

she’s got beautiful straight teeth and straighter talons. “careful. saphine can bite.”

after being called hideous half a life, this come-on douses jude awake like a bucket of water. she studies the two girls and the raking nature of their eyes. she thinks perhaps if she paid more attention she could’ve recognized that in cardan’s eyes. could’ve told it apart from the hatred, the arrogance and the disgust.

without preemptiveness, without pause to think it over, jude tugs both girls to her. her body busts in sensation.

she remembers cardan in a maze, draped in languor and gold faerie drug and girls. black shark eyes watching her while horned girls had their way with him. one kissed his neck, she remembers, and another his knee.

“here,” she scoffs, pushing down sapphire or whatever’s head to her knees. “above my boot.”

a chuckle. “feisty, huh?” she hears, and she truly doesn’t care.

next, jude unceremoniously pulls the second girl up to her neck, leading them exactly where and how she wants them. she’s a constellation of heat and brief spikes of libido.

does cardan think of her? when he’s in bed or bedding someone new, whichsoever activity he performs at night, does jude cross his mind? does he remember her? sometimes in the ridiculous seclusion of her mind she thought cardan would be faithful to her once upon a time. she could slap her own cheeks for such foolishness.

his face appears stark in her memory. deep hollows on his collarbones, raven black hair and eyes devouring her like fruit. his lips, they’d been so soft.

jude leans her head back and laments her ghosts. she inhales sharply.

after the hot spell passes, after jude feels the trickle of tongue make its way up to her thigh and another down her chest, she pushes them away.

why? she doesn’t know. jude is only sure of the fact that she’s tired and doesn’t want this and instead wants a glass of water then maybe a bed.

saphine tilts her head, rolls her eyes, and waves her off, moving along. jude is thankful, for the first time, at being so easily discarded.

a month later makes two years since her infamous exit.

“unless cardan has a child,” oak said. many moons past.

the memory of him brings upon a dream. the opposite to her listless, watered-down dreams she grew used to having.

she sneaks through the palace, it’s name near forgotten to her, crawling against walls or chasing shadows.

he’s there. he’s in many of her dreams and he’s there in this one. hair astray. tilted crown. reclined on a couch, his tail freely swishing left and right.

if he remembers their pact of marriage, he doesn’t bother to show it. no mourning, no sadness, no desperation. unlike the other dreams of him, in this he’s placated. joyful, even, in a way so seldom his character.

jude’s understanding is little.

something squirms in cardan’s arms. when she gets closer it nearly takes her breath away to a fault, threatening to kill her. it’s a baby. older than a newborn but small enough to fit in his arms, to paw at his chin and gargle.

no test could prepare her for this sight.

and cardan. he’s absolutely changed. reinvented in the light of this babe, this creature jude hasn’t seen the face of. because that is his spawn, the tiny tail swishing from its rear indicates as much. that, combined with the black tresses, leaves no doubt that she is looking at a king and his heir.

in the depths of her shriveled dignity, jude duarte senses another break, another disgusting branched crack.

her husband is inconsolable in love. his bright smile slashes wide across his face, softening his sharp cheekbones. he lifts the baby to his face, pressing their noses together, cooing. she hardly recognizes him. but she recognizes the lack of a need for her.

this was a nightmare.

cardan lets the child descend, adjusting them in his lap with heartbreaking gentleness. to her horror, the toddler turns and pierces jude in place with raven black eyes.

she runs cold all over. the child has the look of a girl.

her coloring is unique, darker than cardan’s and any fae’s. it’s closer to… jude’s own. and below the black curls, which she realizes now is actually dark amber brown, there’s ears. rounded, untipped, human ears.

jude is utterly unmoored. the scene melts. she wakes up to hands descending upon her, to frightened questions of why she was screaming and that she’s woken up half of the gang. they cannot get a straight answer from her, and after plowing her with cups of water and aspirins from a quick run to the mini-store, the most they get from jude duarte is a somber face and a fall into her pillow.

jude becomes a gallery of girls. she’s judy, and she’s martina, and she’s amelie with the occasional latika. running in qylin’s underworld gang requires her to. police don’t catch her, fae detectives don’t either, and if by chance she needed to run an errand the name she gave was one of a basinful of fake i.d. cards.

“i once had a twin,” she offhandedly told someone.

“what was her name?” they asked.

jude slurped from a tall gas station soda cup. “doesn’t matter.”

three years. the earnest smile she’d lost a number of winters ago returns tenuously but surely. as a sliver, as a tiny reminder, as a planted seed showing the very smallest evidence of root.

a pixie joins their ranks. young and limber. her cerulean skin reminds jude of a blue court under the sea.

“fand,” she greets the mismatched group. “newborn nomad.”

jude welcomes her by the form of a nod, turning back to the display of headshots splashed on the table, organizing it into a semblance of order.

she feels fand dance around her, suspicious to her presence. she thinks for a hot minute that fand might want to cause trouble. jude focuses her attention to the knife hidden between her breasts.

the pixie stares at her, unabashed, and right as jude thinks to reach to her chest, fand grows the courage to ask. “you. do i know you?”

the question falls flat. “i don’t believe so. there’s little chance our paths crossed.”

fand squints. “well, i’ve just left elfhame. finally broke from that unruly mess.”

lightning forks in jude’s chest, attacking her nervous system. an old phantom possesses her body, causing her to still.

the pixie moves closer, inspecting. “your look, it’s so familiar.”

jude understands in a minute.

taryn. fucking taryn. always, forever, impossible-to-be-rid-of taryn.

summoning years of falsehoods and acting experience, jude breaks eye contact to laugh and feign offense. “all mortals look the same to fae, i’m sure.”

that is not a lie. she learned that from the wickedest prince himself.

when fand slips away from the gang two nights later, jude forces herself to block it from memory.

she’s almost twenty-one. in faerie she might have died since she was eleven.

here, she’s got a family. a rough knit circle of confidants, people she rarely thinks twice about trusting anymore. her music keeps her company, and her growing arsenal of skills, of wins, it warms the smallest piece of her soul.

how could she have hated such a place?

“counterinsurgents. we calculate two dozen below the bridge,” jekka, qylin’s second, explains over a map.

jude’s focus is precise, uninterrupted.

the years, the lack of practice from a simple lack of need to, makes it so that she doesn’t religiously check the perimeter, doesn’t spot a green face. his dark tuft of hair and hooked nose, spying from the window, hidden among leaves and wind.

if she had seen him, she might’ve remembered her old friend. if she’d seen him, she might’ve broken down in tears, or begged for a word, or done none of those things to help jekka figure out their positions for the next day’s raid.

“watch for the sniper!” one of her gang yells.

jude ducks, experienced muscles leading her across the space, the shielded street with broken streetlights. abandoned houses repurposed for criminal night creatures sprawl one after the other. they’ve chosen one a stone throw from the river, so close they could taste the salt while counting bloody fae or human scalps.

five, six, seven leaps and she’s out of shot, crammed into a wedge in the building. she took down three counterinsurgents already. the wrath ran rampant today.

another figure jumps out the window, two yards from her, and takes off running through the backside of the house, the one facing the water. swift as the wind, jude pursues in fervor.

bam.

first the noise like thunderclap. then the pain.

oh.

when they screamed sniper, she expected an arrow. she expected a taut bow and a sharp, easily removed tip of metal. not a bullet.

in the end, jude has been a galaxy of abridges.

she’s had abridged parents, gone before her eighth birthday. that led to an abridged innocence and an abridged life in their rudimentary home in maine. she’s had an abridged relationship with her sisters. an abridged sense of belonging.

she had an abridged romance with a prince and king. that chapter being severed short was, as they all were, not her fault.

she had an abridged marriage. an abridged kingdom rule.

to be culminated in an abridged life. thin and meager.

she hopes no matter how small her garden has been, that each poison flower and cherry blossoms she’s sowed has done its best to enrich the tiny piece of universe allotted to her.

she should’ve known when she saw the river.

in water all began, and in water it ends.

there are no screams. no chaos. the gang has left her, chasing their foes further up the street, looking to corner them. jude? she’s going for a dip. a passage to the next life. she’ll float to it. gargle on the last of life.

“huh,” she whispers.

the ache is pungent in her back, the bullet hitting close to the spine but not quite. deadly, though. deadly for sure.

she wasn’t queen of nothing. she was queen of death, the hierophant of misery. her whole life has been a string of it. well, no longer.

jude duarte reaches the water’s edge, using each fiber of her strength to not fall in quite yet.

in the haziness of all that she’d done and all that she’d run from, he comes to her. in dream, in flesh. she’s not yet in the water.

“jude.”

this has to be the mark between. the straddling line of life and death. because somehow, impossibly, she hears him.

“jude!”

or?...

her brows scrunch in confusion, a naked toe in the river already. she wants to turn, but the seeping life at her back won’t allow it.

she doesn’t need to. long arms surround her, someone moving in front of her to read her face, to see what lies there.

it’s him.

jude’s lids droop. her back is on fire, and she burns in the flames. he’s barely changed. matured into his looks, if she had to put it into words. his tar eyes, slender lips, pointed nose and legendary black curls suddenly remind her of being seventeen.

there’s so much in his face she can barely read any of it. “is it you? is it really you?” he demands.

she’s always been jude. who jude became, that was a different question. one she no longer cares to ask.

“i found you. i finally finally found you.” his voice is incredulous.

is he the harbinger of the beyond? was that his role to play this entire time? her thoughts eddy and murk the more time passes with a hole in her back.

it is an arcane thing, in truth, to be held by a creature she’s craved and despised. her body responds on its own by pressing closer, seeking warmth.

he might be crying. could also be the angle of the sun.

“please,” he whispers.

she hasn’t said his name in years.

“cardan.”

his eyes fall closed.

her mouth repeats the motion, recognizing the familiarity of his name. cardan. once her king. her husband. the sight of him brings forth a wave of emotions, cascading through her like a waterfall.

cardan tugs her close to a punishingly tight degree. “i thought you dead.” he speaks into her ear. “we searched for years. i thought you were gone. gone, jude.”

the word pulls her back, creates distance between them. jude lets herself get lost in his eyes, those splendid eyes, bottomless and infinite, a serene look on her face as she responds:

“almost.”

the fractious prince too arrogant to be a ruler does not stand in front of her. this man is similar, but a sense of strength she hadn’t seen is forefront and shining. jude wishes she could appreciate it.

if only this weren’t the last time.

“so it is you.” she says it with wonder, with a detachment that lets her turn away from his arms and face the river.

cardan’s intake of breath indicates he has finally seen her wound. he twists his neck, shouts to someone far back, hidden in the houses. “shes hurt! SHE’S HURT!” his voice is raw and desperate.

jude walks into the water.

a hand at her arm stops her, keeps her in place, but she shrugs it off with newfound confidence and turns around. cardan’s incredulous face sparks memories of faraway lands and kingdoms.

“what are you doing?” he demands.

jude’s lips break into a smile. how she missed his voice. she walks back until water reaches her waist, then her chest, then the crown of her head.

“stop!” she hears.

the layers of the girl she was, who she is, who she could’ve been, they merge. yes, she had missed faerie. yes, she had wanted cardan. yes, she had wept tears of rage at knowing she could not have either of them back. if she cried now, her tears would turn to river water, melding into the beautiful greater whole.

a hand grips her chest. another tugs on her neck, urging her up, up, up.

air. sweet air in her lungs.

jude gasps, her plans interrupted. the bulletwound at her back sears at the salt water, the sensation so intense it actually numbs her and leaves her feeling very little.

cardan presses her flush to his body. he raises her up, and his face is marked with horror and betrayal.

“how could you?” he weeps. his features are anguished, desperate. he’s shaking her by the shoulder. “how could you?”

jude smiles a wet smile. “remember when you pushed me into the rapids? and you forced my twin to abandon me and kiss your cheeks? i can’t remember a time when i’ve been warm since then. the water, it was cold. like a leech.”

“the roach is gathering for a salve. jude, you will be okay. you need to get out now.”

she realizes there’s something wrong. “wait. no. that’s a lie. i am a liar.” she tilts her face to his, eyes meeting. “you were warm. behind the throne room and in your bed. you kept me warm. but you ripped me from my home and i've been cold since.”

cardan does something she didn’t imagine him capable of. he didn’t do so when balekin beat him. he didn’t do so when his family was slaughtered. he did so this moment, with her encircled by his arms. cardan sobs.

maybe this is when he understands he’s been forever her herald. the marker of her death. their destinies, interlinked, but only for this.

as he bares himself open, jude candidly studies his face. there’s freedom in allowing herself to admit she missed him. missed all of it. her kingdom that never was.

“i’ll heal you,” he implores. his hand runs down wet and shakingly down her face. “you’re my queen. we’ll use our magic. we will, jude, if you stay with me. don’t you get it? the exile was fake. i never meant for you to vanish. i’m begging you, please, help me heal you.”

her forehead falls on his. waist-deep in water, she feels his short breaths fall on her cheek. “you held hatred for me once.”

slowly, miserably, cardan shakes his head. the motion makes her pull away but he doesn’t let her, staying together. “love. i held love, jude.”

love

four letters.

years of running. and it caught up to her all the same.

his words hit her worse than the sniper did. she staggers in his embrace.

“hold.” he says the word with intensity. “i hold, jude.” cardan refuses to let her go, won’t let her fall. “you walked away with my heart.”

thoughts swirl in her head. they swim around like the fish crossing in between their legs.

“hold,” she says weakly.

hold love. he loves me.

impossible. and true.

“huh.”

“hold me,” she asks him. and he does.

he does.

he appears vacillant to his actions save for holding her.

jude can’t remember a time when she wasn’t running. from her parents’ demise. from madoc’s threats. from the cruel fae. from her sister’s betrayal. from cardan’s torments and, apparently, his ministrations of love. from her own shadow.

they haven’t moved from the water. it’s been a minute. it’s been four years.

jude feels her body slag, the water making up for the new deadweight.

“i wish you’d never left me,” he murmurs.

gratingly, she lifts her hand to trace a finger along the hard, straight line and point of her husband’s ear. “cardan, are you here to ask me for a divorce?”

his face breaks. she’s fully leaning on him, his long arms cradling her to his chest. amidst their soaked clothes, she feels the thudding of his heart against her cheek.

jude’s eyes flutter open and closed. “i want to tell you i will. i want to tell you i’ve waited for it. i - ah…” a jab of pain causes her to pause. “i want to tell you it hasn’t been eating me alive to be apart from you. i want to tell you… so… many… lies.”

through her misty vision, she sees cardan shake his head. “you are not leaving me.” the conviction in his voice draws a laugh from her.

“oh, cardan.” it’s the last good breath in her lungs. in the distance, she feels the ripples of someone entering the river, racing towards them. she sees only pitch black eyes. “i already have. i already have.”

they are esoteric, rendered in numinous light. from their entwined bodies in the water, there grow white flowers at the riverbed, their petals straining for the sun.

#jurdanweek2020 #jurdan #jude duarte #tfotaedit #cardan greenbriar #he's kinda scattered in this fic tbh but i promise there is SOME sort of follow-through to the angst #if you survive getting there #this took me all night and now its 9am HELLO THANK YOU FOR THIS MADNESS HOLLY BLACK #note: this will be my last tfota fic fellas #nicky writes #mine #mine:tfota

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bigpandahero · 3 years

Text

The f***king world

it’s a work about rochu,I am sure few people would read it so I didn’t examine the grammer mistakes carefully.Whatever,English is not my native language.Anyway,if you are reading it,I hope you would enjoy this work:).

--------------------are you ready?-------------------

Although my accomplice Andre explained many times that we were not the kind of barbarians, we were just taking money To save people from disaster. I do not believe this set, because I still keep reason and conscience, take these eight words to sum up simply The lack of virtue we've done is ridiculous and disgusting. Andre flew the leaves beside me, and I looked at him with my cheeks. The man is hopeless. But I'm not saved, what is redemption for us? I've never been to church since I started this line, partly because I don't think I deserve it, but also because I don't I don't think the guys in the church deserve to be asked to sing hymns with me. But I bought a Jesus crucifixion like hanging around my neck, and Andre looked at me and laughed and said Ivan you were too Nausea, killing also requires our great Heavenly Father to appreciate. I beat him up, and then he muttered and cursed on the ground The world full of holy shit. I looked down at the statue on my chest and covered his eyes and ears. Then I found a white cloth strip that covered his head. This f**king world.

In the end, however, everything changed. One day I just finished my work, looking at the extra money in my wallet, I blew a whistle and went to buy a bottle of wine, Leaning on a park bench, drinking the spicy liquor like a donkey. I don't like drinking, but I love the drunken world, my dreams. There were no bodies, no blood, or anything else I dealt with every day. There is light, warmer than moonlight, gentler than sunshine. Maybe that's the light of heaven, the light of my salvation. But today my light of redemption is half gone, and someone wakes me up. I'm mad -- I have a bad temper, especially after getting drunk. And then the guy beat me to death. I fell to the ground, unbelievable. Then Yao told me that he beat me to death that day in part because I robbed him of the seat he was used to sitting in But mostly because I jumped up and shouted to him thinking he was a female. I was silent for a long time and told him that luckily I thought he was a woman, if I knew he iwas a male with long hair, he would kill me. Yao is smart, like a little black cat, and will be alert to back off when you dry his fish, and then take advantage of you Take it away and run away when you don't pay attention. So when he heard me said this, he soon realized what I meant. "Do you still think I'm like a female?" He lit a cigarette, took a sip, and then threw the smoke all over my face. I had to say he was doing so badly that I was so snorted that he laughed beside him. Maybe someone else would fan him if I did, but I thought he was sexy. "Of course not." I got close to his ears, and I liked to do so, so that I could see his sagging lashes and golden eyes like cat's eyes. And the red-hot tip of his ear that I exhaled. "Now I feel like you are my God." He smiled and his eyes squinted like a fox. "I'm garbage." Yao, like me, spent most of his time as an unemployed traveller. There are only two differences between us. First, I can still take some work, to ensure that I do not starve to death at the same time there is a little money. And he had little income, and fortunately grew up well, sometimes he moddled those poor artists. When I asked him why he didn't get a job, he smiled and told me he didn't have a legle account so there was no evidence that he existed Legitimacy, no one wanted him. Only later did I knew the truth. Second, I am in good health, but he is often in a state of sickness. I guess it has something to do with his irregular diet. Oh, maybe it has something to do with his bad childhood. The scars on his body were innumerable, mostly by his drug-taking and gambling parents. Then his father and mother died. He shouldn't tell me where they live. I threw away the statue I used to regard as a treasure -- I didn't need it any more. I wrote down a few words in his father's blood: I am sorry. Then I went away, found him, and held him without talking. He said you had a bad smell of blood, it was disgusting. Take a bath. I smiled and said, leave this alone, thank me for what I had done for you. He seemed to guess something, and I heard his unsavutable sigh. "They didn't deserve it." I was a little disappointed that I didn't understand what he was saying at first. I thought he'd know I had something to say, but he didn't even give me a kiss. After that ,I finally knew he was terminally ill All I noticed was that the smell of smoke was getting heavier and heavier, occasionally accompanied by blood. "You should give up smoking.That's bad for your health. "I always can't help but persuade him. Instead, he smiled and said nothing, asking me if I wanted to drink. I told him I had given up drinking. He continued to smoke and did not speak. Andre said he had a strange smell on him, I don't believe it, damn it, he's always fragrant, like an angel. He always said he didn't deserve anything, so I told him, what doesn't deserve it, slug. He spits smoke on my face again, this time without a playful smile, but with a full-eyed despair. I couldn't see him such a looking the most, so I hugged him and closed my eyes -- it made me feel like I was really loving someone, and I was really loved by someone. He is thin and out of touch. I cried. He cried, too. We are the two poorest and luckiest people in the world. A month later, he died. hepatocarcinoma. He died on December 25th, Christmas Day. We've known each other for 13 months.

-----------------------------

"Is this the guy who shot 13 people in a row on Christmas Day and ended up killing himself?" "Yes." he said. "I didn't think you had such a friend, Andre. It's disgusting that he smells of wine. Let's go, go to the next one. ” There is nothing in the sky. It's cloudy today. ----the end---

#hetalia rochu #hws rochu #aph rochu #rochu #Axis Powers Hetalia #world stars hetalia #hetalia world stars #hws hetalia #hetalia #APH China #APH Russia

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elfyourmother · 4 years

Note

7 & 14 for the fanfic writer asks?? 🙂

o hai! welcome to the blog ❤️

7. What story/headcanons do you feel the proudest of?

Since I mentioned the Emet fic already I’ll just plug A Warmer Hearth again because that’s the other XIV fic I’m really proud of. It’s set in the immediate aftermath of the Bloody Banquet in Ul’dah, when the remaining Scions have fled to Coerthas to seek refuge at Camp Dragonhead, and is essentially the story of how Gisele and Haurchefant first became lovers against the backdrop of her and the Scions trying to seek asylum in Ishgard.

But I’m really proud of that story for a lot of reasons. It’s emotional hurt/comfort at its core, done really well. I think it’s some of the best smut I’ve ever written. The way Haurchefant just desperately wants to take care of her, how they both confide in each other without fear. The domesticity of it, and a little uncertainty. Some of the imagery still stays with me too--the picture in my head of Gisele standing on the parapet of the fortress looking out and waiting for Haurche to come home, this one spot of warmth and color against the stark white and grey landscape of Coerthas. I think I really captured the essence of Gisele and Haurchefant’s relationship though, which is one of profound trust and love and comfort. It’s very easy reading that fic to think, “these two will definitely get married one day”, and that’s what I was really going for.

As far as headcanons go, honestly the entire foundational premise of Gisele’s story as Warrior of Light, because I’m not sure I’ll ever top that tbh. I joke around a lot about my crack ideas being my best ones but it really is true...and it’s honestly wild how well it ended up fitting. Not since I made my Shepard in Mass Effect a Kemetic Pagan who specifically was dedicated to Isis and Osiris did I come up with something that turned out to be a ridiculously well suited happy coincidence (I went into ME blind and had no idea Shepard dies and gets resurrected at the start of the second game). Gisele being a canon immigrant from DA was fun and meaningful before Shadowbringers came out. But when it did, and suddenly an ex-Grey Warden was fighting what is tantamount to a palette swapped version of the Blight? By tainting herself with the dangerous energy in question? Too perfect.

Of course I would be weird enough to make a crack crossover universe as my main interaction with a thing but tbh? I don’t think Gisele’s story would be nearly as impactful or meaningful to me if she were a straightforward Warrior of Light that was native to Eorzea, instead of a canon immigrant who got yeeted there. It’s not just that I’m a sucker for fish out of water stories, though that’s a significant part of it. But also because her being a canon immigrant from Thedas, having gone through all the events of DA:O, colors damn near everything in FFXIV and adds a richness and a depth to the story that I think is sorely needed specifically in ARR. It adds all kinds of layers to her relationships too. And it retroactively makes her DA:O story richer too, if that “Spirit of Love” was actually Hydaelyn the whole time.

To bring it back to A Warmer Hearth, the Monetarist coup is a prime example of this to me. Yes it’s brutal for any WoL to go through, but a WoL who was once the fledgling Grey Warden that survived the slaughter of her order at Ostagar only to be framed for the murder of her King? Holy shit. Even smaller things like Ysayle’s dialogue after the time you fight her at the Amphitheatre are so much richer. I’m paraphrasing here but Ysayle says something like “you of all people should know the cost of war”, and while that’s certainly meaningful for any WoL, it just hits different for the woman who lived through the Fifth Blight, knowing that Ysayle has probably quite literally seen Gisele’s past with the Echo at that point. And there’s some eerie parallels to a similar conversation with Loghain in DA:O.

Everything just hits different with a WoL who was the Heroine of Ferelden, in the best possible way, and it’s the most fun I’ve had in years tbh. At this point what started as a crack crossover AU feels like the real story, and her original mainline DA story where she lived to become queen etc feels like the AU. Also I grew up with Final Fantasy quite literally from game 1 (I’m old!) and it’s always been my favorite gaming franchise and my “home” as it were so it means a lot that my comfort OC has become a Final Fantasy protagonist in that pantheon of legends with Firion and Cecil and Terra etc. Being so steeped and influenced by FF, it definitely played a subconscious role even when I first created her years ago in DA:O on PS3, and because of that, if I’m honest she’s so much better suited to a Final Fantasy universe than Dragon Age. So I feel like I’ve come full circle in a sense and she’s home. We’re both home.

14. How do you feel about your older work?

Eh...ambivalent? There’s some older things I’m really proud of (most of my Mass Effect work holds up pretty well, I think). Others not so much. But it’s hard to look at these things objectively because of my self-esteem issues and rejection sensitivity. My inner critic is brutally unfair and downright cruel. I’m trying to work on her, but it’s hard.

#askbox memes #writer memes #really though thanks for the ask #and thanks for following!#I hope you enjoy my content #rhapsodyinsapphire #ask bisho

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gothamcitystories · 4 years

Text

Submitted by Al Reinman;

Transcribed by Carter Albrecht

Like most GC natives, I hate this damned place in a special way only a Gothamite can. I grew up here. It’s gross, smells like a tire fire, the rich live in their high towers looking down on us all, I can’t walk to the corner to pickup a pack of smokes after dark, unless I’m packing at least my mag light(we’ll get to that), and we’ve got a new freakshow causing chaos every week. Don’t even get me started on the public transportation.

That being said, Gotham is MY town, y’know? Some out-of-towner says any of what I just said, I’m as likely as any Gothamite to knock their teeth in. See, I love this town as much as I hate it, in that special way only a Gothamite can. It’s hard to explain that to someone who isn’t from here.

So anyways, I work in sanitation. It’s not bad work, all thing considered. I do third shift tunnel walking. It’s a newer thing. See, after that Rat-King business, when that guy was kidnapped homeless people and forcing them to build something or other in the sewers, few years back, the city assigned Sani workers to do regular patrols to make sure nothing hinky is going on, y’know, like wannabe gangsters or shit like that.

Most of the guys hate tunnel walks. And I mean, that’s fair, there’s more of a chance to run into that big ass crocodile guy, or any of the other bozo’s Arkham can’t seem to keep ahold of. Of course I never saw the guy. Never saw much of anything, except a few teenagers playing thug. So I volunteer to do most of the walks. Got me one of those big metal flashlights, my mag, because you can bust a skull with those things, if you need to. I also have a piece, but we’re not supposed to carry while we’re on the job, so I usually don’t, unless one of the loonies is loose. This wasn’t one of those time, just so you know.

It was this past Halloween. I was kinda pissed because one of my buds was playing a show at The Hole, that dive over on Park. Well, I clocked in, and my super asked if anyone wanted to take the Walks tonight. I figured eight hours strolling was as good as I was going to get. My hand shot up, and into the tunnels I went. We’re not supposed to, but I like listening to podcasts while I walk. Vicki Vale’s Gotham Report is a favorite of mine. So I pop a headphone in, only one, I’m not stupid, and I start off into the dark.

Tons of concrete and steel kills any kind of cell signal, so I download my podcasts before I head down. This episode was an exciting one for me, because she was talking about an old Gotham legend. So if you grew up in GC, you were probably raised on stories about Solomon Grundy, who would emerge from the swamps to the north to gobble up kids who misbehave. Well, if you’re old enough. I hear kids nowadays are treated to threats of the Batman coming through their windows. Not sure which is a worse prospect.

Anyways Vale goes into the founding of Gotham, and the Five Families. Every kid learns about them in grade school, Alan Wayne, Theodore Cobblepot, Edward Elliot, Jeremiah Arkham, and Ezekiel Kane.

So story goes that the founders had contracted a cousin of Wayne, a guy by the name of Cyrus Gold. Gold was a merchant of some influence. The stories vary on the why, and the how, but some how, Gold was murdered, and his body dumped in that section of marshlands to the north, Slaughter Swamp.

So according to Vale, Theodore Cobblepot was into shady stuff way back when, and he had his eyes on Gold’s businesses. Old Theo was a cold dude from reports. His daughter, Millie Jane, she was fond of nursery rhymes, so old Theo would make men who crossed him recite them from memory before he wacked them. So Gold gets walked out to Slaughter Swamp. He’s blindfolded, and he’s reciting that old one, Solomon Grundy. Y’know, born on a Monday, etcetera etcetera. Theo pops him, plants him, absorbs his business.

Jump forward. The urban legend starts up, based on that version of the story. Kids say that if you say the rhyme in Slaughter Swamp on Halloween night, he’ll rise from the swamp and get you. You know how all those old stories, they never say what the ghosty or ghouly is gonna do, just that he’ll get you. I remember taking my first girlfriend out to Slaughter Swamp to summon Solomon Grundy. Lots of teens did it when I was in school, but no one I knew ever saw him.

Anyways, the route I took that night had an old disused outfall into Slaughter Swamp. Bruce had it redirected when he took over Wayne Enterprises a few years back, but the outfall is still open, and it’s a good spot to stop and have a smoke, about halfway through the route, so when I got there, I stepped out and had me a smoke.

I was on the phone with this girl I’d been chatting with, she does maintenance on the electricals running under the city, so we see each other at work sometimes. Anyways, I made this joke about being in Slaughter, and trying to summon Grundy. Just being funny, y’know. She’s loving it. She’s a Gotham Girl herself, but she never got taken out to Slaughter, but she’s egging me on, so I go for it.

It’s a simple rhyme:

“Solomon Grundy,

Born on a Monday,

Christened on Tuesday,

Married on Wednesday,

Took ill on Thursday,

Grew worse on Friday,

Died on Saturday,

Buried on Sunday,

That was the end,

Of Solomon Grundy.”

I wait. I say nothing, she says nothing. I’m hoping to build the tension and scream, give her a scare, y’know? Only, about the time I’m planning on screaming, my mag goes dead, so does my phone. Now the phone doesn’t surprise me. I carry a portable power bank for that, but with the concrete, you don’t get a lot of signal, so it doesn’t do much good, so I hadn’t hooked it up to charge. But the mag? Those batteries were brand new at the start of the shift. I always change my batteries before I go into the tunnels. Anyone who works underground will tell you there’s nothing more important than your light, y’know? And I always carry plenty of spares. Nobody wants to be down there in the dark. I always, ALWAYS put new batteries in before I start my shift.

There on the outfall, you get a bit of moonlight. More than in the tunnels. I’ll admit, I was spooked a bit, I should’ve had more than a few hours left on those batteries. So I was kinda rushing to get the old ones out and a spare pare in, and yeah, I let the old ones roll off into the swamp. I mean yeah, I was jumpy, but I wasn’t jumping at shadows, y’know? I’m a GC native. We’re tough stock, and hard to actually scare. Like really scare, y’know?

So the batteries roll off the concrete block in front of the outfall. Plop plop, into the swamp. Suddenly it gets real quiet. I mean dead quit. The owls, y’know, the ones on that preserve out there? Quiet. Bugs and night birds? Quiet. Hell, I don’t think I was even breathing, y’know? Just felt real tense. Your eyes play tricks on you at night. In the dark, you see things different, and out by the outfall it’s real dark, forest dark, y’know? Even with the super moon we had on Halloween this year, it was stupid, mind tricking dark out there. But I swear to you, there was fog rising from the swamp. And it wasn’t there before my light went out. Thick shit too.

Then I heard the splash. Like something big coming out of the water. I’ll admit that I was spooked. But I didn’t run or nothing. My eyes were adjusting to the dark, enough to make out the big shape moving towards me. I managed to fumble the new batteries into the mag about the time I asked:

“Who’s there?”

Thinking I’d stumbled on some teens playing a prank, y’know.

I got my light on right before the thing responded. Damn thing must have been nine foot tall, and wide as a truck. Dressed in the ragged, rotten remains of a suit. Sonovabitch looked like a jacked albino Frankenstein, like all rotted, deep sunken eyes and hollow cheeks, lumbering like it had a bad leg, skin and hair were bleach white, and the fingernails and teeth were all yellow and sick looking. And it spoke. Sounded about like rocks rubbing together. The thing lumbered towards me, hands outstretched, reaching as if to grab me, it rasped:

“Solomon Grundy, born on a Monday.”

I booked. I mean, I think it took me fifteen minutes to reach city limits? And I didn’t go back underground for months. It took me awhile to work up the nerve, y’know? But I’ve been thinking about it, and all the stories say Grundy only comes out on Halloween, right? So I should be fine as long as I’m not down there by Slaughter Swamp on Halloween, right? I should be fine.

Right?

#dc #gotham #gotham city #Gotham city stories #solomon grundy #batman #batman fic #batman fandom #batman fanfiction

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thebibliomancer · 4 years

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Essential Avengers: King-Size Annual Amazing Spider-Man #16: “Who’s That Lady?”

October, 1982

In case you wondered why I would keep titling my posts Essential Avengers: Avengers its because sometimes the thing after the colon won’t be Avengers.

Maybe I should have titled this liveblog something else but I’m in too deep.

This sure is a fun, striking cover featuring an all-new, all-different, and all-terrific Captain Marvel.

Memorable.

You may not remember who Captain Marvel is. He has come up a couple times in Avengers but in modern times, ‘he’ is not going to connect intuitively with Captain Marvel, especially now that Marvel has won the long tug-of-war with DC.

Here’s some courtesy links to the time the Avengers crossed into the Thanos War storyline from the Captain Marvel book.

But the long story short is that Captain Marvel was invented to trademark squat the name Captain Marvel, was a Kree captain who went against his people to help Earth, became a super saiyan, fought Thanos a bunch, got cancer, and died. In fact, he died February 1982 so its fairly recent that Marvel killed him off but since they still want to trademark squat, they need another Captain Marvel.

Hence, this.

And I’m very excited about this hence.

So, I’ve read a couple of Spider-Man annuals included in trades or as singles over the years and its interesting how often they are used to promote a new character. Spider-Man is the ultimate hype man.

So the ultimate hype man is at a bus station as the captions tell us how amazing he is, when his spider-sense goes squiggle lines to a perfectly normal woman walking past.

And the issue title and Peter are both like “Who’s That Lady?”

Peter’s second thought is how hot she is because... eh, he doesn’t get married until 1987.

Peter Parker: “Wow! I’ve never seen anyone like her before... not in the port authority bus terminal! She’s... stunning! Yeah... so why am I getting a spider-sense tingle from her? I can’t believe that she’d present any sort of threat... but my spider-sense never reacted to out-and-out beauty before!”

And since he has fifteen spare minutes until his Good Pals Liz and Hary Osborn’s bus shows up, he decides to stalk her a little. Y’know. For the public safety??

Geez.

He also sees that she’s going into a Bad Neighborhood and throws in a little victim blame, why not.

Peter: “Whoops! She’s definitely an out-of-towner! Native New Yorkers know better than to stroll through this neighborhood -- especially dressed as well as she is! She’s practically asking to be mugged!”

But since (and this may come as a surprise to you) mild-mannered Peter Parker is in fact, the Amazing Spider-Man, he darts into an alley to change into his spider-jammies and play guardian angel.

Of course, the instant he goes to change clothes is the instant that a pair of individuals accost the mysterious woman.

The one who looks like Kisuke Urahara fallen on hard times grabs her purse and runs off. Mysterious Woman gives chase because hey, that’s her purse you creep!

But it was a weird ruse to lure her away to a more secluded area and guy two grabs the Mysterious Woman.

So she flips him over her back and hits the purse snatcher with him.

I’m liking where this is going.

Guy Two, aka Mojo but not that one, decides maybe a knife will make Mysterious Woman be more pliant.

So Mysterious Woman dodges the knife thrust and then kicks the shit out of Mojo.

I’m continue to liking where this is going.

Guy one (Scud) decides that not getting beaten up is the better part of valor and takes off.

Right into Spider-Man’s fist.

Ah, excellent. Every uppanced has come.

Spider-Man notices that Mysterious Woman is making his spider-sense buzz harder than ever and decides that instead of lurking, he should just come right out and ask her deal.

By which he means jump out from behind her and suddenly start talking because taking people by surprise is always a good idea.

Anyway, the Mysterious Woman assumes that Spider-Man was Scud and on instinct swivels around and does him a shove. A really hard shove into a pile of garbage that knocks him senseless.

“It happens in a split second! Even before Spider-Man’s feet can touch the ground... even as his special senses tell him that he’s made a serious mistake... a sudden burst of pure force sends him flying.”

Goes to show. Don’t sneak up on people? Yeah, probably.

Mysterious Woman is like oh shit I just knocked out Spider-Man god damn I gotta get my power under control.

Then she CHOOMs her pantsuit into oblivion and reveals that she was dressed in layers with a more super-something outfit underneath.

Which is impressive considering that her outfit has some kind of wings/cape that go from the back to the arms that would not have fit under the pantsuit jacket. And also the boots probably wouldn’t have fit under the heels.

All in all, this may be the greatest display of power so far.

She does have to put on the mask/cowl and gloves because there’s not much of a way for those to have fit underneath.... her skin?

The wing/cape also has a pocket which means its also practical.

Nice.

So Spider-Man comes to musing that maybe he shouldn’t leap right at someone his spider-sense is telling him is dangerous.

And then the Mysterious Woman takes off from the alley with a KLA-BOOM - seemingly turning into a bolt of lightning and lighting up the sky over the Empire State Building.

Spider-Man: “Who am I up against here? And do I really want to find out?”

That’s a pretty striking costume.

The white and black contrast nice and the nova burst icon looks rad.

Not a fan of masks that don’t cover up much of anything. At that point you may as well not wear one? And the cape doesn’t make much sense for her powers? But it also has a pocket for her keys so and cash which makes it practical so I guess it balances out.

But overall its striking and memorable.

So up on the Empire State Building, this Mysterious Woman introduced as Captain Marvel so I can drop the pretense and start calling her Captain Marvel and hey wait the cover said Captain Marvel too, I’ve lived a sham.

But Captain Marvel muses about how big New York is compared to New Orleans and leans right into the flashback zone, because its time for the all-new all-different all-terrific Captain Marvel’s entire origin.

Just jammed right into the middle of this annual.

Lt. Monica Rambeau worked as one of New Orleans’ harbor patrol.

And in this flashback zone, she was just passed up for promotion and is unhappy about it. According to her, she was better than any of the people chosen and thinks that she was passed up because she’s a woman.

The Harbormaster says that Actually Its Because You’re a Loose Cannon and Doesn’t Do Things By the Book and also how dare you accuse him of sexism, gtfo of his office.

Harbor patrol is basically like boat cops, right?

At least he didn’t ask for her gun and badge.

Monica stomps back to her office, which I guess she has despite being a lieutenant. Good on her!

Professor Andre LeClare, a war buddy of Monica’s grandfather, is waiting for her in her office to ask for help.

In the advanced physics field Professor LeClare is considered a bit of a crackpot and only one man ever listened to his theories. A Generalissimo Ernesto Ramirez, a South American dictator.

In hindsight, LeClare acknowledges that maybe he didn’t do due diligence before accepting a job from a dictator but he was the only one who offered to fund his research.

Professor LeClare had discovered a way from drawing energy from other universes and dimensions (which I vaguely remember as the plot of an Asimov novel) but whoops, the actual dictator wants to weaponize it.

LeClare flees the Vague South American Country after failing to dissuade Ramirez but the dictator is undaunted and gets LeClare’s former assistant Felipe Picaro to continue the work on an old oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico.

Professor LeClare told the American government but nobody believed him. But if the weapon is completed it “will make the atomic bomb look like a wet match.”

Which: good lord.

Monica can understand why its hard to believe because she can barely believe it herself.

She’d also like to know what the professor even expect from her.

Professor LeClare: “Frankly, I’m not sure. I was hoping you could think of some way to convince the authorities. I had heard that you tend to approach things in a less orthodox manner than most.”

Monica, toasting with her Monica mug: “You’re not the only one who’s made that observation. Hmm... maybe I can think of something. After all, I have tomorrow off... and it is the least I could do for an old friend of the family.”

Seriously, that’s a cool mug, Monica.

The next morning, Monica takes LeClare out on a borrowed boat to go investigate the oil rig.

She’s going to investigate while the professor, and she is very clear on this, stays hidden on the boat.

Monica is a bit out of her depth here (nautical pun) because she doesn’t actually believe the professor, doesn’t have any jurisdiction out in the middle of the gulf, and even if she did doesn’t have any official backing from her boat cop boss. But she figures it won’t hurt to humor the old man.

Said old man also salutes her and calls her “mon capitaine” when she tells him to hide on the boat.

When she boats up to the oil rig, many armed guards politely tell her that this is private property and she needs to kindly gtfo.

But Monica has a secret weapon. You may have heard that she’s unorthodox and doesn’t do things by the book.

Her secret weapon is a winning smile but also a bikini.

Not only are all the guards ready to go ‘hey security isn’t as important as a woman in a bikini’ so is Dr. Picaro, the guy in charge on the rig.

Lets see Genis manage that.

So she manages to get a picnic with head honcho Picaro. Although he’s a creepy and stares a lot. But when she’s trying to sweet-talk him into spilling many of the beans, an intruder alarm goes off.

Guess who didn’t listen to the explicit instructions to stay on the boat, snuck onto the oil rig, tried to sabotage the project, and got caught?

Did you guess Professor LeClare? Because it was Professor LeClare.

Picaro is tickled to see his old boss here.

LeClare: “Picaro, you mustn’t use this device! You don’t understand the forces involved!”

Picaro: “I understand perfectly, LeClare! My energy disruptor, powered by the fruits of your theory, can totally obliterate any city within 200 miles!”

This shit is why Reed Richards is useless. You invent something useful like a device that steals energy from another universe and some asshole rolls in and goes ‘okay but can I make people explode with it?’

Wakanda invents the cure for cancer in a widely unpopular move, looks at the Marvel universe, and goes ‘someone is definitely going to try to turn this into a weapon, smh.’

Picaro is so drunk on his own hype that he decides he might as well do the first test here and now. And by here I mean Fort Benning, Georgia and by do the first test I mean wipe it off the map.

I feel like even if you had a new super-weapon effective enough to make the atomic bomb look like a wet match, this isn’t a very strategic way to use it.

But that’s why they call it mad with power, not reasonable with power.

Monica has bit by bit started to believe the professor and at this point it doesn’t matter whether she thinks any of this is possible as long as Picaro does.

So she elbow shoves him out of the way and punches the machine to death.

Because Monica Rambeau.

Of course it explodes.

That’s the natural reaction to being punched by Monica Rambeau.

Good thing this wasn’t an active oil rig!

Back in New Orleans, a streak of light strikes a wharf and turns into Monica Rambeau.

She staggers around the wharf in a daze, dizzy and finding it hard to think, but knowing she has to find help for the professor. Who may or may not have just been in an explosion.

She bangs on a... I don’t know. Some kind of storeroom or something. And bangs on the locked door, looking for help. She feels that she needs to get inside.

And the next thing she knows she’s somehow inside, without, to her best knowledge, interacting at all with the door.

Kinda mysterious. But she explicitly decides to worry about that later. She spots a radio and decides to broadcast a mayday on naval frequencies.

She doesn’t notice that the radio is unplugged and not really connected to anything.

And in fairness, reality doesn’t notice either.

Some energy suffuses the microphone and broadcasts her mayday message to a boat out in the Gulf of Mexico. The radio operator acknowledges the mayday and wonders what kind of power the sender was using because it came across too loud too clear.

Hmmm. What a mysterious happening.

Could Monica have, through being caught in a lab accident, gained amazing and spectacular powers?

Why, of course!

What genre do you think you’re reading?

With the message sent out, Monica spares some time to worry about what the heck that happened to her and realize that wow its cold in here in just a swimsuit!

Luckily, the random building is a storage warehouse with racks of costumes left over from Mardi Gras! What luck!

Of course, Mardi Gras. Most of it is less than she’s already wearing.

But she manages to combine parts of several outfits into one combined outfit. And even puts on a mask to spare herself the embarrassment of being spotted dressed like this!

I like that her costume is literally just something she threw together. Although I now have to wonder what the original outfits she scavenged from were like.

Actually, what I really like is that her original goal was to find something warm to wear. But she has superpowers now so has a superhero brain and superhero brain says ‘costume.’

So Monica puts on a superhero costume, even though she just wanted some pants.

Now dressed, she wanders out into the wharf and notices bolts of energy shooting up into the sky from the direction of the oil rig.

Worried about the professor, Monica manages to transport herself in a bolt of light to the oil rig.

These are some user friendly powers.

When Monica arrives she finds a bunch of already unconscious guards strewn about the landing pad.

She runs into the oil rig just in time to see Picaro shoot the professor.

Dang.

Picaro: “This is your fault, LeClare! You must have sabotaged my disruptor panel! It was perfect... you hear, perfect!!”

Well. He was trying to sabotage it. You might have a point.

Monica kicks Picaro to get him to drop the gun and then rushes over to Professor LeClare.

She wants to get him to safety but LeClare tells her that no place is safe now.

LeClare: “Felipe... wouldn’t listen! The power was too unstable. Energy is flooding in from another universe. Breaking down the wall between worlds. The hole in the air... is getting bigger! Within a day, it will be planet-sized! And then, both universes will smash into each other. We are doomed!”

Monica wonders whether this would have happened anyway or whether, y’know, punching the experimental physics machine had any negative effects.

Who can say!

Monica ponders how you plug a hole in nothing. Right before the space-time hole sucks her in and jams her in like a cork in a vacuum cleaner.

But its working, somehow, for some reason! The hole is sealing up around her! Science!

Hurts like the dickens though.

And its probably going to crush her as it closes. Which isn’t ideal.

It’d create a time paradox, for one thing. We’re in flashback country still.

Picaro decides that with a strange woman stuck in a space-time whatsit, now is the best time to shoot the professor AGAIN just in case he wasn’t bleeding to death hard enough.

Monica rushes to stop this. Turning into energy quick as lightning and intercepting the bullet.

She can do this.

And blasting free of the dimensional hole also sealed it shut.

AND she disintegrates Picaro’s gun, shocking him senseless in the process.

That’s what I call a win-win-win. Good job, Monica!

She decides to leave him and the others on the oil rig to international law when the navy arrives. She grabs the professor and takes him away to get patched up.

One of the soldiers, barely conscious mumbles something to himself as he watches them go.

Soldier with a mustache: “<Captain? H-he called her his captain! But she saved us... hah-ha-ha... saved... hah-ha... all of us!> Capitan est maravilla... est maravilla! Capitan est maravilla!”

Do you remember the first rule of superhero names? I’ll remind you in a bit.

Two days later, Professor LeClare visits Monica at the Harbor Patrol HQ.

He has run Science! tests that have proven conclusively that Monica’s body “was transubstantiated by the dimensional interface!”

And Monica is like ‘english pls’ so LeClare explains “what it means is you can change your body into any form of electromagnetic energy! You can actually become a sentient packet of radio waves, light, even electricity! You can go through solid objects as x-rays! You can travel at the speed of light! What’s more, you can release a small amount of energy as a blast of pure force, with no appreciable loss of body mass!”

Blasts of pure force from the pure force dimension!

So basically, Monica can become any kind of energy and go pew pew. I think she became Green Lantern energy once, that time the Avengers and Justice League crossed over.

LeClare also brought a gift.

He had a copy made of Monica’s scavenged together mardi gras outfit costume. Which is sort of a ‘thanks?’ gift because maybe she wanted to design a costume that wasn’t a hodgepodge. But LeClare’s version is also made of unstable molecules.

You can just buy those, apparently.

But, if you can just buy those, apparently, then you definitely want to because they’re pretty durable and put up with all kinds of nonsense. Although, Monica’s random outfit could turn to energy and back already.

Monica is like ‘thanks?’ because she doesn’t know if she ever wants to use these powers again.

LeClare: “We all have a destiny to fufill, mon capitaine.”

Monica: “Will you stop calling me that? You know darn well that I’m only a lieutenant!”

LeClare: “Oh? Not in the eyes of some!”

And he pulls out a newspaper, in case she hadn’t seen the newspaper.

The headline is “Who is Capt. Marvel?” because when the navy arrived at the oil rig, they found mustache soldier hysterically saying “the captain is a marvel!” (or possibly “captain is wonderful”?) and not bothering to have learned Spanish, the navy assumes that he was saying Captain Marvel.

Anyway, remember the first rule of superhero names?

The first thing someone randomly shouts about you becomes your codename so I hope you like it.

Monica lucked out. Captain Marvel is a pretty sweet name. So sweet that she’ll have it stolen in like three different ways by other people. Poor Monica.

LeClare: “Monica, you can do things no man has ever dreamed of doing! Two days ago, you told me you took this job ‘to serve and protect’. Much good can be done with your powers... Captain Marvel!”

So then we get Monica quitting the boat cops, tossing her gun and badge on the harbormaster’s desk and telling him where he can shove it.

Monica: “I don’t need your little ranks or your little minds any more! I’ve already made captain... on my own!”

Monica’s ex-boss, presumably: ‘What a cryptic thing to say.’

LeClare asks if she’s sure about quitting. I assumed he was suggesting she quit when he was encouraging her to become a superhero but I guess not.

Monica says that she’s been wanting to quit for years because as long as that ‘tyrant’ was in charge what with his wanting to do things by the book, Monica was limited in what she could accomplish.

Ha ha ha oh thats a bad take thats a bad take on reasons why to quit being a (boat) cop.

‘If only it weren’t for all these RULES and PROCEDURES -shakes fist-’

So Monica walks off with LeClare, to a bright new beautiful tomorrow as a superhero.

Anyway, that’s the end of the flashback zone so now we’re back on the Empire State Building zone where Monica has been reminiscing this whole time.

Apparently that enormous flashback all happened only a few short weeks ago. She’s had a long and entirely off-screen superhero career in those weeks, probably.

But she needs SCIENCE! help and Professor LeClare has scienced as hard as he can already.

Captain Marvel Monica is suffering from energy buildup and she’s afraid she’s going to become as big a threat to the world as Picaro’s machine. If she doesn't’ consciously hold it in check, it would overcome her.

I imagine she hasn’t been sleeping much.

But this is New York and SCIENCE! help is visible on the skyline.

Meanwhile, Spider-Man has finally made it up the Empire State Building.

So that’s really why the flashback was so long, to give Spider-Slowpoke time to catch up.

Spider-Man: “There she is, bold as brass! I’ll slap a little webbing on her, and see what’s shaking! Or should I? What if she’s a good guy, and I’m misreading my senses? I’d look like a fool!”

Truly, social shame is the best reason not to sneak attack someone.

Spider-Man: “Naw, if she’s a good guy, she’ll understand that I couldn’t take any chances! Besides, my chest still smarts!”

... Dammit, Peter.

But when he shoots a webline, she ZOOMS out of the way. Coincidentally. She never even noticed he was there. Monica just found where she needed to head and headed there in a flash.

Spider-Man tries to find where she went by checking the binoculars she was using but the seeing-stuff expired and Spider-Man doesn’t have a quarter. He doesn’t even have a pocket.

A tourist child comes up to the viewing platform and asks who Spider-Man is.

Spider-Man: “No need to panic, kid. I’m Spider-Man.”

Tourist child: “Who’s panickin’? Besides, there ain’t no Spider-Man... my dad says he’s just a hoax the media barons cooked up to sell papers!”

Spider-Man: “I don’t want to argue, but I am Spider-Man. And I need a quarter -- it’s important!”

Tourist child: “I may be from Council Bluffs, but I’m not stupid! If you want a quarter, prove that you’re Spider-Man!”

Is Spider-Man desperate enough to perform for a child like a trained monkey?

Yes. Obviously.

Thankfully, all it takes is climbing up the wall and standing.

He gets his quarter and it didn’t cost too much dignity.

Spider-Man feeds the binoculars a quarter and sees what building Monica was looking at and decides this means trouble!

And swings off.

Leaving tourist child to tell his parents about this.

Tourist child: “Mom! Dad! I just met Spider-Man! Wait’ll I tell the guys back home! No, really, dad -- honest!”

Tourist dad: “Dougie, look out that door! Do you see anything? No. Spider-Man is just a creation of the Eastern establishment!”

Tourist mom: “Harold, I told you we shouldn’t have let him go out there! The air this high is too thin for a growing boy!”

Tourist child Dougie: “Aw, mom!”

Oof, that poor child.

But where is Monica and, much more slowly, Spider-Man heading?

The Baxter Building!

Fantastic Four guest star role?

Mmm, one-quarter of that.

When Monica arrives, the place looks like its been torn apart by some sort of Terrax because that’s what happened. Monica doesn’t know that it was specifically Terrax but she certainly guesses that some kind of battle-axe was to blame.

Only Ben Grimm is present and asks her who the heck she is.

Captain Marvel: “I... I’m Captain Marvel.”

The Thing: “Not unless ya came back from the dead by way of Denmark, ya ain’t! Marv died months ago. ‘Sides, he was a blond.”

Captain Marvel: “There was another Captain Marvel? I - I’m sorry... I didn’t know.”

The Thing: “Aw, don’t sweat it... Marv probably wouldn’t mind. I probably ain’t the only Thing in the world, either!”

I guess Captain Marvel wasn’t a very well-known superhero. Then again, maybe superheroes aren’t very well known outside of New York?

The tourists from Council Bluffs thought Spider-Man was a hoax and Monica was only aware of Spider-Man in a very vague ‘oh right I read about him’ sort of way.

Guess the Avengers and the Fantastic Four are the exceptions.

Anyway, Monica explains the situation to Ben that she might explode like a 1000 megaton bomb.

And unfortunately, Reed Richards Is Useless. Although in this case because he’s off on vacation with Sue at Martha’s Vineyard and there’s no way to reach him in time.

Ben comes up with another idea. Maybe the Avengers can help! Because he knows this is an Avengers liveblog and I need a certain amount of Avengers content or I wouldn’t be here.

Although really its because he has the vague sense that the Avengers seem to have a lot of science savvy.

When Ben punches up a call to the Avengers, Captain Marvel is like ‘kthx’ and zips along the transmission because time is very much a factor here!

Unfortunately frying the radio in the process because it wasn’t intended to take a whole energy person through it.

Spider-Man arrives just after Monica leaves (because see also: Spider-Slowpoke). He asks Ben if he saw her and Ben makes a statement that could, on its face, perhaps be misinterpreted.

The Thing: “See her? She just fried my radio! Dangdest thing I ever saw! She changed into a buncha radio waves and headed for Avengers mansion! I hope they can handle her before she explodes!”

Spider-Man: “Explodes? She explodes too?! She’s more of a menace than I thought!”

Hey. Hey, Peter. I don’t want to hear that from you. There’s a hilarious irony to you saying those words that I don’t think you grasp.

And he swings off to Avengers Mansion to go help deal with this cough menace, not hearing Ben trying to tell him he’s got the wrong idea.

The Mighty Marvel Misunderstanding fight tradition trumps sound waves.

Meanwhile, at Avengers Mansion, Iron Man is sitting down on a nice monitor duty, probably just enjoying the quiet when he receives a priority signal from the Fantastic Four.

SURPRISE ITS MONICA

I think what I like most is that Iron Man has apparently had to tell the FF to stop calling about Galactus.

The Avengers’ systems are also unable to handle the sudden energy discharge of an entire person, so Monica’s arrival messes up the mansion security systems and also Iron Man.

Whoops.

The security stunulators, that the Avengers totally have, suddenly start shooting at Jarvis. So you know they’re messed up because who would want to hurt that delightful man?

Captain Marvel is dismayed to find that bad things have happened because of her and Iron Man is like hey if that tone is sincere, maybe help me out? I’m stuck in my bricked armor, not naming any names, but a tiny spark across the chestplate will reset things.

Except, Captain Marvel can’t exactly dial back that much and that exactly so Iron Man is just stuck waiting for help.

Jarvis arrives to report on the security system and finds Captain Marvel standing over Iron Man. And Monica makes an admission which could, on its face, perhaps be misinterpreted.

Jarvis: “Master Iron Man! We’ve lost power all over the building and... what on Earth?!”

Captain Marvel: “My... my powers shut down his armor.”

Jarvis: “Shameless trollop! The other Avengers will not let this attack go unanswered!”

Geez, Jarvis! Rude!

That is a very impolite thing to say to someone!

Jarvis then runs off to try and find some other Avengers.

And he runs right into Spider-Man who has just arrived (and had to dodge past a crowd that assumes Spider-Man is somehow to blame for whatever is going on. Sucks when people assume the worst of you).

Jarvis doesn’t like to trust Spider-Man, knowing so little about him, but decides he doesn’t have any other choice.

Meanwhile, Captain Marvel is wandering through the hallways of Avengers Mansion. Since she couldn’t jump-start him, Iron Man suggested she lock herself in the adamantium containment chamber that the Avengers totally have in their lab.

Just in case she really does happen to explode.

Good ol’ Iron Man, thinking through the angles. Huh. I wonder if that chamber later gets repurposed into the Zero Chamber that brought Jack of Hearts so much misery before he too exploded.

Spider-Man sneak attacks Captain Marvel, finally getting to web her up. But with a mighty WOOMPF! she blasts free of the webbing.

Spider-Man: “You... you stretched my webbing! Even ripped it in places! But no one this side of the Juggernaut can do that!”

Captain Marvel: “Look, I’m sorry I blasted you earlier! If you want, we can settle accounts later... but not now! My time is running out!”

She does the Solar Flare, like a Goku, but Spider-Man uses the secret move of shutting his eyes. And then grabs her by the upper arms.

This might end the fight against some opponents but not the all-new all-different all-terrific Captain Marvel.

No, the fight ends two panels later. Monica turns her body into electricity so Spider-Man knocks her unconscious once she unzaps.

Hm. Considering she has enough power to blow up a city, she kind of has a glass jaw. Then again, she’s conspicuously trying not to explode. Doesn’t leave a lot of concentration for taking a hit.

Which was heckin’ rude of Pete.

And it happens that aside from being a dick move, this was also a very BAD thing to have done. I’ll let Iron Man sum it up.

Iron Man: “You young fool!”

Hah.

Hooo. Spider-Man is not coming off well in his own dang book, is he? Guess that’s part of being the hype man.

So, off-screen, the Wasp jump-started Iron Man’s armor with her Wasp sting. Because it’s bio-electricity, some of the times.

Iron Man: “The woman you K.O.ed came for help, not as an enemy! Now that she’s unconscious, she could explode any second -- unless we can leach off her excess power.”

Iron Man tells Spider-Man if he wants to make amends, to rip some cable out of the ceiling because of course the Avengers Mansion is riddled with high-induction cable.

Since the only thing they have immediately available that can handle the kind of power they need to siphon is Iron Man, he has Spider-Man wrap the unconscious Marvel in the cables and webs them to Iron Man’s iron nipples, or whatever those lugnuts are for.

In fact, since the webbing is non-conductive, he has Spider-Man cover him in it head to toe except for raised hands.

The Wasp: “Iron Man, are you sure your armor can withstand the stress?”

Iron Man: “No. If this doesn’t work... it’s been nice knowing you, Jan!”

And now Spider-Man, realizing that he triggered this by knocking out Monica and that Iron Man may possibly die from this, feels like a real asshole. A complete kneebiter.

Spider-Man: (Some hero I am! I try to stop what I think is a menace, and wind up causing something even worse. If they die...)

The Wasp: “Uh, Spider-Man? We really should get out of here -- just in case Iron Man can’t contain Captain Marvel’s power.”

Spider-Man: “Captain... Marvel? Did you say Captain Marvel?!?”

The Wasp: “No relation to the old one!”

Spider-Man: “Oh, that’s just dandy! I may have doomed a new Captain Marvel! Wasp, I feel like a total clod!”

And prepare to feel worse, Spider-Man! Because while you were feeling sorry for yourself, the energy has built up so much that there’s no time to actually get to a safe distance!

Spider-Man spins a web-barrier for himself and Wasp but echoes Iron Man’s “nice knowing you” when Wasp asks what happens if it doesn’t hold.

Lotta fatalism on this page.

Within the web cocoon, Iron Man shunts the energy from Captain Marvel into his own armor. And specifically into the repulsor ray generators.

Which is to say that he releases the excess energy by blasting two giant repulsor blasts through the mansion ceiling and into the sky.

I like this plan because its ridiculous.

I mean it works really well. Everybody is alive. The city didn’t explode. But it hinged on Iron Man blasting holes into his own house and into the sky. Today, it was he who was the sky light column as seen in movies.

The Thing finally arrives via cab, expecting that everything has gone to hell if Spider-Man got involved.

And to be fair, he’s not wrong, just arriving at the wrong moment to see the gone to hell. The Avengers have tidied up the hell by this point and are having a hangout sesh.

Everyone is hanging around to meet the new Captain Marvel. Its turned from a calamity to a “Sunday social” to quote Hawkeye.

I like that Captain Marvel and Captain America are shaking hands. And that he calls her captain.

I don’t remember who (probably Hawkeye? Or maybe Wonder Man? Some dick) in a later baseball game crossover between the east coast and West Coast Avengers where whoever refuses to call her Captain because only Captain America is captain in their mind. But Cap is just like ‘hello there fellow captain.’

I see that She-Hulk is back in her Iconic tm Duds of the white torn dress. Artists that weren’t working inside the actual Avengers book just had no idea what she was wearing. I think I can conclude that from a cover, a filler issue, and another book all depicting her in the Savage She-Hulk outfit.

Also, I don’t get the joke she’s making. Anyone have any idea?

Captain Marvel even covers for Spider-Man. When Ben asks her if she got her exploding problem sorted, she thanks the Avengers and Spider-Man.

Spider-Man: (That’s one I owe you, C.M.) “Why so surprised, Benjy? I’m always happy to help out another super-star!”

The Thing: “Well... I guess there’s a first time for everything!”

Time reminds Spider-Man that before this Avengers plot fell into his lap, that he had a Spider-Man plot going on.

Remember?

Harry and Liz arriving by bus?

So he rushes back to the bus stop and finds that nobody has paged Peter Parker while he’s been gone. He figures that Harry and Liz must have gotten tired of waiting and ditched.

But actually, their bus was delayed and they’ve only just now arrived. The timing worked out pretty well actually!

This is one time where, at the end of the day, things worked out for Peter Parker!

I mean. He had to be an asshole to drive the plot but that’s the Peter Parker experience to be honest. He does that sometimes. And today, his making things worse powers were used for good to hype up a new character.

But you can see from that next time box why I needed to cover this issue. Because Captain Marvel is going right from here to being in the Avengers book and this annual is the circumstances for how that happens.

You’re welcome.

I quite like Monica Rambeau. We don’t see a lot of her powers here aside from NYOOM and we don’t see her interact with the Avengers much aside from Iron Man briefly so that’s what I’m looking forward to. More of her become any energy powers and what her dynamic with the Avengers will be like.

I’m hype.

As an intro to her, I’m torn. Her origin was pretty cool. But the present day adventure didn’t let her be as cool because she was just trying not to explode. She did accidentally punk Spider-Man a few times and got the best of some muggers. Its fine.

It just feels like there’s a sudden, jarring shift between the triumphant new hero new powers new costume and even a supporting character and ‘actually i’m going to explode whoops.’

Follow @essential-avengers. I’ve caught up on reposting by now. You could follow without ever having to interact with my Dark Crystal stuff or my many reblogs of cat stuff. But also maybe like and reblog.

#Avengers #Spider Man #essential avengers #essential marvel liveblogging #Captain Marvel #Monica Rambeau #Iron Man #the Wasp #the Thing #spidey graciously gives like 90% of his annual to the new avenger #uh spoilers she's going to be an avenger #anyway very nice of him

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melindaleehaha · 4 years

Text

Before the Spring

Title: Before the Spring

Paring: Jonerys

Notes: This is the continuation of my other fic “All the Ashes in the World". it's a post reverse version of S8 where Jon and Dany' arc in that season were reverse. I write this months ago and finally finish translate it. After this I'm probably done writing anything season 8 related. I'm not a native English speaker so pls be gentle.

Summary: After Daenerys Targaryen killed Jon Snow also known as Aegon Targaryen because of the mass murder he committed in King’s Landing and stopped him from burning the whole world, she took him to Volantis to be resurrected.

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27775432

—

“I love you, you are my aunt, my blood, but in the end you lied to me, stabbed a dagger in my heart. Just like what those night's watch did to me, killing the father of our child. And then all of a sudden you change your mind when you find out you're with child, what do you think I would think? All you do is prove to me time and time again that you don't love me and you don't want me.”

“I ....That’s not true!” It stunned her to hear those words. How could he think so low of her? “I thought I was helping you. Putting our duties first. I assumed that’s what you always prefer so I tried my best to do the things right.....But it doesn’t matter now, everything went wrong anyway. And you don’t have a choice? You could have spared those people. Show mercy. You could have gone straight for Cersei and Euron and I wouldn’t even give a damn. Yet you chose to destroy them!”

“Aye, it’s easy to say it when you’re not the one that lose everything,” He said, almost like a scoff, “Arya died, my little sister, the only one alive in that traitorous family who truly cares about me drew her last breath in my arms protecting me because I saved you, Ghost died, Tormund beheaded like how they treated a northern savage because I wanted to protect you and fight for your wars. Where is mercy for them?You only care about putting me on that damn chair. All I want it’s a little peace from you but when I begged you, you looked at me like I’m a.....”he trailed off, looking so hurt, “ Like I’m a fucking monster. ”

“.....You are not a monster, I’ve never think of you that way.” Daenerys closing her eyes, felt her rage begin to subside, the familiar, intense guilt returned. It’s hard to hear those harsh words from his perspective. It hurt her greatly to know that how much he had lost for her. How painful her previous silence and distance had made him felt. She never thought her worrying for him would give him that false impression.

“But I am. They were right about me,” He gave her a bitter smile, “Do you know I don’t have to sleep or eat for weeks if I want to?” He walked closer to her, made her almost falling backwards, “Do you know I used to dream about cutting off my older brother Robb’s head and taking his place? Every path I chose it’s a wrong path. I chose duty, duty condemned and cost me, I chose love, love abandoned me. So why care about anything anymore? I thought I could destroy everything and be the one the others hated me for, I thought I could hate you. But I couldn’t. The moment I saw you I’m doomed. I could never hurt you. Because it is the curse for a bastard like me to want or love something I shouldn’t and be killed by it.”

"It's not true...I never want you to feel this way. I never want any of this to happen.”

"Then what do you want? What is real? "

—

(click link to read more)

#jonerys #daenerys targaryen #jon snow

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yeahwellyourface · 4 years

Text

MOVIE REVIEW TIME!! A Little Chaos and Far From The Madding Crowd

I had a Matthias Schoenaerts weekend cause the boy can get it. Both of these movies were already on my list, but when I realized he was in them, they jumped to the top. So, here we go.

A Little Chaos

Available on Netflix. Directed by Alan Rickman. Stars: Kate Winslet, Matthias Schoenaerts, Alan Rickman, Stanley Tucci, Helen McCrory, and Jennifer Ehle

IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2639254/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

This one has been on my list for awhile but I really wasn’t in the mood for a depressing period piece. FYI, it is not a depressing period piece. In fact, the word I think works best for describing it is “cute.” It is not a great film, but it is very enjoyable. I smiled through most of it and then when I turned it off, I realized I was still smiling.

The basic plot is that French king Louis XIV is building Versailles and his head gardener, Andre Le Notre, is hiring different gardeners to do different parts of the whole since it is a whole lotta shit. Against his original idea, he hires Madame Sabine de Barra to create a section of the garden that will basically be an outdoor ballroom. She doesn’t do well at court, but some people still like her, some don’t. Given that there is an actual outdoor ballroom at Versailles, I don’t think I’m giving anything away by saying that she eventually builds it (although in actuality, it was not built by a woman…unfortunately). But that’s it. It is a very simple little movie. It is full of tropes and could be quite stupid but the amazing cast makes it charming instead.

So, the fantastic cast…everyone is basically doing exactly what you want them to do. Kate Winslet as Sabine de Barra plays a woman who has been through some shit but is gonna get things done her way and it is no use to try and stop her. She is better than you. Just accept it. Matthias Schoenaerts as Andre Le Notre is mainly there to look pretty (difficult with that horrible hair, but he can do it) and worship de Barra as she deserves. Alan Rickman plays Louis XIV because why the fuck not. Stanley Tucci plays the king’s outlandish bisexual brother who adores both his wife and his young lover. He was in the movie for like 10 minutes and was the best thing ever. Seriously, we need to protect Stanley Tucci at all costs. Helen McCrory is Madame Le Notre and is a bad bitch as only she can be. I bow down to her. Jennifer Ehle plays against type as the flighty mistress to the king. I thought I was going to hate her because the character was supposed to be annoying at first, but I ended up loving her too.

So, yeah. Not a movie to go nuts over, but if you are curled up on the couch one afternoon and want something light and sweet, this will do the trick.

Far From The Madding Crowd

Available on Amazon (but you have to pay for it, even with prime). Based on the novel by Thomas Hardy. Directed by Thomas Vinterberg. Stars: Carey Mulligan, Matthias Schoenaerts, Michael Sheen, Tom Sturridge, Juno Temple.

IMDb: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2935476/?ref_=nv_sr_srsg_0

This is another one I’ve been considering for awhile. See that bit above where it says “Based on the novel by Thomas Hardy?” Yeah….that’s why I was putting it off. Now, it’s not that I dislike Thomas Hardy. I actually enjoyed Return of the Native…kinda. But his stuff is very much overdramatic, windswept English countryside. And damn, if that is not something that I am always willing to go for. But I’d do it for Matthias Schoenaerts. So I did.

So, here is the basic plot if you’ve never read the book (and I actually haven’t, but I’ve read about it…does that count?)…young woman, Bathsheba Everdene, with a middle-to-upper class education lives with family on a farm because her parents died. She meets a young man, Gabriel Oak, and then enjoy hanging out and working on the farm together. He has land that is almost paid off and a bunch of sheep. Her aunt owns the land that they live on and work. He falls in love and asks her to marry him. She says no, she doesn’t want to get married and be tied down to a husband. Immediately after, their fortunes reverse. He loses all his sheep (and it’s kinda horrible and depressing, so if you need to look away, I understand) and his land. She inherits a pretty nice farm and is no longer dependent on family. He’s wandering looking for work and accidentally stumbles on her new farm and gets a job as a shepherd there.

Now that she is moving among the landed class, she meets the next door neighbor, Mr. Boldwood, who falls in love with her (the way that happens is she plays a prank on him and is generally an asshole and hurts him and damn, woman, wtf, that was mean…but she does apologize). He asks her to marry him. She says she’ll think about it.

Mixed in with this, we see a side story about an army sergeant and his pretty sweetheart, who used to work at the Everdene farm but ran away to be with the guy…never a good move. They were supposed to get married, but she went to the wrong church. By the time she gets to the right church, he thinks she stood him up and has left. She is now destitute since she left her friends and family. This was another scene where I couldn’t bear to watch. I knew what was going to happen and seeing them both so happy getting ready for the wedding just broke my heart, so I fast forwarded. Sue me.

Anyway, army sergeant Frank Troy is now wandering drunk around the countryside brokenhearted and literally runs into Miss Everdene. She thinks he’s cute and decides to meet up with him. He shows off flashy sword moves and then kisses her and pulls a trump and then runs off. Because we do stupid things sometimes, she is completely charmed by him and runs away to marry him.

Now, through all of this, Mr. Oak has worked for her and been there for her and tried to help her and give advice. He points out that she was an asshole to Mr. Boldwood and she gets pissed at him for telling her because she knows she was and she doesn’t want to be told. He knows that Sergeant Troy is an asshole and tries to convince Miss Everdene to stay away from him but she doesn’t.

Literally at her wedding dinner with Sergeant Troy, Miss Everdene (Mrs. Troy now) realizes that she married and asshole. But she’s stuck with him.

If you really want me to tell you the rest in detail, I will. But basically, she has to deal with an asshole husband, a rich neighbor who is still in love with her (and kinda off his rocker about it), and the shepherd who has loved her for years and been there to support her even when she was an asshole to him. I wonder who she will end up with?!?!Okay, now for the movie. It was just okay. Like, I’ve read the first couple chapters of the book and there is SO MUCH INFORMATION that cannot be put into a movie. There is just not enough time. This is the problem with turning a book into a movie. They have to skip so much that they can end up leaving a lot of it flat. We see Miss Everdene be a good person several times. But we also see her be an asshole. I wish we had been able to see her more indepth. But there wasn’t time. I never felt fully connected to her. When she was being good, I liked her. When she was being an asshole, I disliked her. There was no continuity between those feelings. The movie never gave me a chance to feel conflicted over her. It was all surface feelings. Carey Mulligan does a good enough job for what she is given. But the best relationship is between her and her companion. That’s the only string that carries through with that character.

Matthias Schoenaerts is beautiful, of course. He is the solid character that all the others are whirling around. He is a big man, much bigger and taller than Carey Mulligan and Michael Sheen, but you can see how he curls his shoulders down to give the two of them more power as he is lower class than they are. There is a scene between him and Michael Sheen near the end where he straightens Sheen’s tie, and I think that is the only moment between those two where Schoenaerts stands up straight, as for a moment, they are almost equals. However, by the end of the scene, he is curled in again. It’s really interesting on the choices made there. Because when he is not in a position where he is “under” them, when he is working and being damn good at his job, he is standing up straight. It’s fascinating to see the difference between the two sides of this character.

Michael Sheen. Oh goodness, Michael Sheen. He did so much better for this character than this movie deserved. I love this man and he is so good as an actor, but this character is a bit out there. I wonder how much of his bipolarness is in the book. Cause the character is all over the place in the movie. He goes from one extreme to the next. And yes, some of the plot points are definitely from the book, but the in between stuff….is he really like that? So, Sheen does a great job with what he is given, again. But the character is just so weird and again, very little continuity throughout.

Tom Sturridge plays Sergeant Troy. This character is a huge asshole and Tom Sturridge plays him perfectly. If I met Tom Sturridge on the street, I would want to slap him because I hate him. That is a good sign for an actor.

Juno Temple…another one I love. She is slowly becoming a bigger name, but deserves so much more. In this, she plays Fannie, Sergeant Troy’s first sweetheart. He didn’t deserve her. And I love Juno Temple, so she can do no wrong.

Overall, it’s an okay movie. I won’t pay for it again. I rented it and I’m glad I didn’t buy it. But if it comes on tv, I’ll watch it. If you want to watch it, you won’t hate it. But I don’t recommend running out and grabbing it any which way. The cinematography was BEAUTIFUL. The way they used light was lovely.

So, since I mentioned Matthias Schoenaerts as my reason for going ahead and watching these, lemme talk about my feelings for him in these. He is very strange. Watching interviews with him and seeing his artwork, he seems to be a ball of chaotic energy, but in both of these movies, he is the calm figure that the others bounce around. I watched the beginning of Rust and Bone, but then my internet went out and I wasn’t able to finish it without paying for it again (which I intend to do). And of course, I ADORE The Old Guard. That’s another one where he plays against what seems to be his personality type. I also love The Drop (seriously, one of my all-time favorite movies and if you haven’t seen it, go watch it NOW). That character seems to be a bit more on his level with the chaos, but I hope not with the assholeishness.

Either way, he was stunningly beautiful in these movies. Kate Winslet adored working with him and says that he was so sweet about their sex scene because she was pregnant and felt like shit. His hair is awful in A Little Chaos, but I’ll forgive him, this time.

Anyway, watch A Little Chaos at some point. And I guess you should watch Far From The Madding Crowd at some point too, but don’t pay for it if you don’t have to. Go watch The Old Guard and The Drop RIGHT NOW. Those are much better movies of his. Go watch Rust and Bone and I will watch the rest of it soon.

In A Little Chaos. Seriously....why would they do this with his hair.

And in Far From The Madding Crowd. See....much better. And I see you, dude in the background looking at him. I agree, he is definitely a snack.

#matthias schoenaerts #movie review #a little chaos #far from the madding crowd #long post #something about his face makes me want to sit on it

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