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classyklancey · 4 years ago

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White Magnolia

Pairing: Keith Kogane x Lance McClain Genre: fluff (pining idiots) Warnings: Keith is so in love it’s gross Summary: Lance convinces Keith to go on a road trip with him to California. Keith struggles to hide his pining Word Count: 3.5k words A/N: this was supposed to be posted for Lance’s birthday but oh well-

Keith doesn’t know why he decided to indulge Lance in such a crazy fantasy. One minute Lance is just rambling about what he misses about Cuba and the next, Lance is driving them both from Texas to California in his blue Tacoma. Keith really can’t find it in him to complain though with the way the sun is shining on Lance’s beautiful bronze skin and the wind is blowing through his brown, curly locks.

What Keith can complain about though is Lance’s terrible taste in music. For some reason, Lance’s road trip playlist—which is mysteriously called ‘Not a thing to do, but talk to you. WE'RE ALL ALRIGHT! WE'RE ALL ALRIGHT! HELLO WISCONSIN!’ and no matter how much Keith asks, Lance refuses to tell him why it’s called that—is mostly consisted of 90s songs. Being the pining idiot that he is though, Keith can’t find it in him to do any more than light teasing in Lance’s direction as he screeches all the lyrics at the top of his lungs.

One song does however catch Keith’s attention, especially since Lance immediately tries to skip it. “What was that?” Keith asks, smashing his pointer finger against the back button on the radio to bring it back to the song that Lance is currently blushing over.

“Nothing! Stop hitting the back button!” Lance screeches as he keeps trying to skip it only for Keith to hit the back button. They do this three or four times before Lance reaches his right hand over to smack and hit Keith. Keith grunts with every hit that Lance lands, not even noticing that the song he’s been trying to skip is finally playing.

When I first saw you, I saw love And the first time you touched me, I felt love And after all this time You're still the one I love, mmm, yeah-yeah

Keith starts to blush along with Lance, his hand smacking Lance’s away and finally bringing the brunette’s attention back to the song playing. Lance hurriedly skips it and looks at Keith out of the corner of his eye, but Keith pretends not to see as he looks out the window. Keith just assumes that Lance is embarrassed for having such a lovey-dovey song playing with Keith here, but Keith can’t help but feel that this is their song.

Keith is a stupid man who has been stupidly in love with someone who will never return his feelings for as long as they’ve known each other. Keith instantly took a liking to Lance despite having never even had a conversation together. Keith had always admired that Lance was so outspoken and friendly with everyone he met.

Well, except for Keith.

No, you see, Lance had somehow decided that Keith was his rival and that Lance would take him down. First, it was little things, like Lance trying to do better than him on quizzes and he’d brag each and every time he’d even get one single point more than Keith. That was annoying but it wasn’t too bad, Keith could handle that. It slowly began to escalate though over time until it turned to them yelling in each other’s faces and having to be pulled away from one another before it got physical. All that ended up doing was causing Keith to shut him out and pretend he didn’t even exist despite the fact that he could barely keep his eyes off of the blue-eyed Cuban. They ended up getting into the same friend group though since Hunk is friends with Lance, Keith is friends with Pidge, and Hunk and Pidge are friends with each other. It didn’t take them long to bring Keith and Lance together, even though it did take a long, long time. The duo eventually started to see each other as friends and became as thick as thieves.

Keith always craved for more though.

Keith is knocked out of his reminiscing when Lance curses because he missed a turn, his frown instantly becoming a smile when one of his favorite songs comes on. Lance goes back to screaming the words which causes Keith’s grey eyes to roll towards the back of his head. Despite his supposed annoyance, his heart is doing tricks in his chest whenever Lance grows focused on driving, which causes his screeching to become light, melodic singing.

Keith is starting to believe that this is what heaven would be like.

Keith’s eyes focus on Lance’s right hand that rests on the gear shift, his fingers tapping along to whatever annoying song he is playing. Keith suddenly has the urge to reach out and tangle their fingers together, to compare who’s hand is bigger and how their skin tones contrast beautifully.

This all repeats for a while, along with occasional chatter, for about eight hours before Lance grows too tired to drive on anymore. They have about twelve more hours to drive and Keith offers to drive while Lance sleeps, but Lance has an odd reaction. He claims he doesn’t trust Keith to drive ‘his baby’ but something Lance doesn’t know is that Keith has become a bit of a Lance expert. If they’re getting food and Lance says he doesn’t want any, what he really is saying is he doesn’t want to make Keith pay since he forgot his wallet. If Lance seems off and says he’s fine when Keith asks about it, what he really means is that he’s not okay but he wants to appear strong in front of everyone.

So, when Lance says he doesn’t trust Keith to drive his car, what he’s really saying is that he wants them to enjoy the ride there together. ‘It’s called a road trip for a reason, Keith.’ Keith doesn’t fight him on it and offers that they get some food before spending the night in a motel.

After getting some extremely greasy fast food and talking until really late, they finally head into their crappy and very worrisome motel. They both stop in the doorway when they find that there’s only one bed, making both of them stare at it in silence.

“I can sle—”

“I don’t mind tak—”

They both go quiet again when they both talk at the same time, both of their bodies turned slightly away from each other. Lance sighs and places his bag onto a small table by the door, starting to unzip it to pull out all his nightly routine items. “Look, why don’t we just share the bed? The floor is absolutely disgusting and I’m afraid one of us would catch something if we even tried sitting on it,” Lance says as he pulls everything out and begins heading for the bathroom. He makes a face when he walks inside of it before turning to smile at Keith and shooting him his signature wink.

Keith sighs and sets his bag on the chair by the table, deciding that he really didn’t want to sleep on the gross floor nor did he want to make Lance do it. Lance would probably complain about it through the entire night and all of his life if he ended up sleeping there anyway. Keith changes into his pajamas right there seeing as how Lance has seen Keith shirtless many times. Not that he ever seems to notice Keith’s shirtlessness…

The same doesn’t go for Keith though. Oh, no no. Keith has become the master at staring at Lance without getting caught. Well, sometimes he does and each time he’s caught, his face erupts in color. Lance always just assumes it’s from their recent workout or being out in the sun too long. Keith thanks God every day for Lance’s obliviousness despite the fact that he’s not religious. Keith catches himself staring at Lance more than the Cuban man does. He can’t help himself though. Lance has the looks of a god, what with his smooth, caramel skin, thick, curly hair, mesmerizing blue eyes, perfectly straight, white teeth, and the list goes on. Keith’s pretty sure he could write a whole book—no, a trilogy—on Lance’s perfect body. The thing Keith hates the most about his stupid crush though is that it’s not just his body that he likes. No, that would make Keith’s life easier and he’s pretty sure that the universe is out to spite him. No, Keith has to like all of Lance. His bad puns, his stupid finger guns, his cheesy pick-up lines, his corny sense of humor, his everything. Keith wants all of him more than he’s ever wanted anything in his life.

“Alright, bathroom’s yours!” Lance calls as he walks back over to his bag, smiling when he sees that Keith is wearing the pajama set that Lance had gotten him for Christmas one year. “No way!” Lance shouts in glee before rushing to his bag to pull out his matching pair. Keith sighs down at his red pajamas before looking at Lance’s blue pajamas.

“Don’t make me regret this,” he grumbles as he walks to the bathroom to brush his teeth.

“I’m not doing anything!” Lance huffs as he starts pulling on his own pjs. Once they are all ready for bed, they stand at the foot of it in another silence.

“So, uh, what side of the bed do you want?” Lance mumbles. Keith shrugs, not really caring either way what side he gets. “Cool, can I get the left side then?” he continues, already moving onto that side of the bed before Keith can even reply. Keith huffs a laugh through his nose before crawling onto the right side. Both of them lay on top of the covers, too scared of what lies beneath the covers to let their skin touch it. Good thing Arizona is such a warm state cause Keith would think he’d freeze otherwise. Guess it also helps that their AC unit doesn’t work anyway.

Unlike Lance, Keith has always been an early riser, so he’s not surprised when he wakes up before the brunette. What he is surprised to find though is that Lance is laying on his chest softly snoring away. Keith’s arms are wrapped around Lance’s torso and he can’t help but to squeeze him a little tighter, hoping that this isn’t a dream. Keith then finds that the still snoozing dork is sweating buckets, if Lance’s semi-damp clothes are anything to go by. Keith’s nose wrinkles at how gross they are but, of course, Keith’s poor weak heart starts beating faster at the fact that they’re cuddling.

And maybe Keith’s wildly beating heart is what causes Lance to stir and to slowly blink his eyes open. He’s letting out a yawn and beginning to stretch before halting in the middle of it, his eyes growing as wide as plates. He suddenly jerks away from Keith, doing so in such a harsh way that it causes him to tumble to the floor with a scream. Keith laughs and sits up, crawling over to Lance’s side of the bed to look over the edge at him. He finds Lance frowning and glaring up at the amused look on Keith’s face.

“It’s not funny,” he grumbles up at Keith, his frown turning into a pout as he sits up. Keith helps Lance up before offering Lance the bathroom first. Lance’s face warms as he stares at where he was once laying, Keith’s brow-raising up at him as he just stands there gawking. He then clears his throat and forces out a bad joke before scurrying to the bathroom.

They both take turns showering and while Lance is taking his, Keith lets his mind wander while he lays on the stiff bed. Keith’s stupid heart makes his stupid brain wonder what it would be like to wake up beside Lance every day, seeing the dried drool on the corner of his mouth and witnessing his sleepy blue eyes come to life the moment they see Keith.

Keith snaps out of his daydream when the bathroom door swings open and reveals a glistening Lance emerging with rolls of steam curling around his body. Keith recognizes the hypnotizing smell of Lance’s vanilla shampoo all the way from the bed, making his heart flutter with the familiar scent.

After Keith takes a brisk shower, they are on the road again. They stop to get breakfast at a diner before leaving the town that they stopped in. It isn’t until they’re in California that they stop again, this time pulling over onto the side of the road. Keith is about to ask why Lance is pulling over when Lance leans against the car and just looks out in front of him. Keith finally takes his eyes off of Lance to look at what Lance has stopped to admire.

When he turns his head, he sees just what Lance is marveling at. Before them are dozens of white magnolia trees that Keith begins marveling at right along with Lance. Keith slowly gets out of the car and leans against it beside Lance, his eyes finding the side of Lance’s face every few seconds. Keith’s eyes widen when Lance suddenly grabs his hand and begins tugging him towards the trees. “Lance! What are you doing? What about the truck?” Keith hollers. Lance just laughs and continues dragging him along without a care in the world, smiling when they reach the sweet-smelling trees.

Lance starts to hum a song as they weave their way between all of the trees, Keith’s heart threatening to beat out of his chest with the way the wind is blowing some of the petals and flowers off of the tree and onto Lance’s hair. They spend quite some time there, their hands still clasped together as they wander around. Keith and Lance end up racing from one tree to another and arguing about who clearly won. Once they settle on that it’s a draw (even though it most definitely wasn’t, Lance), they sit down beneath one of the larger trees to escape the unforgiving sun. They lean against each other and talk about any and everything, Keith’s heart threatening to pop out of his chest when Lance keeps mindlessly playing with Keith’s hands. Lance stops telling a story of something that happened last summer mid-sentence when a whole magnolia flower lands in his lap.

“These are edible, you know,” he says as he picks it up, studying it like it’s one of the greatest wonders of the world.

“What?” Keith asks, not being sure if he should trust Lance or not. This could be revenge when Keith told him that a flower he found on their weekly hike was good and tasted like cinnamon. Lance had been suspicious but ended up going for it anyway and immediately regretting it. Lance just about strangled Keith but Keith had laughed so hard that tears were falling down his face. It made Lance’s job of strangling Keith easier though since his body was so weak from laughter.

“Yeah. They’re actually pretty good. They have a mild ginger taste,” he explains. Before Keith can tell him to prove it, he’s already taking a bite. Keith watches with wide eyes as he chews and swallows, a soft smile coming to his face. Either it’s actually good or Lance is an amazing actor. He offers the flower to Keith and Keith decides to go for it just as Lance went for it when their situation was reversed. Keith found that he was, in fact, not lying.

When Lance finally decides they can leave, Keith stops him with a soft smile. He reaches up, tugs one of the flowers from the tree, and then faces Lance, finding his perfectly waxed brows furrowed together. Keith’s smile grows more as he tucks the flower behind Lance’s ear, causing the Cuban’s face to erupt with color.

Keith has changed his mind. This is what heaven must be like.

Lance finally lets Keith choose some music to play once they continue driving, his hand always coming up to tuck the flower back down behind his ear whenever the wind threatens to blow it away. When Keith plays some of his music though, of course Lance complains about the songs. Keith can tell he doesn’t have any malice behind his words though.

“Do you listen to anything that isn’t loud and dizzying, Mullet?” Lance jabs, turning to look at him with a crooked smile when they come to a stop at a light. Keith scoffs and turns his gaze away from the many shops lining the street to face Lance.

“Do you listen to anything that isn’t repetitive and annoying?” he fires right back with his usual smirk. Lance scoffs just like Keith did before turning his eyes back onto the road, his fingers going back to tapping on the gear shift, which brings Keith’s gaze back to his hand.

When they finally reach their destination in California, the sun is slowly starting to sink towards the horizon. Lance rushes out of the truck stop that they had decided to stop at when he notices it. “Mullet! C’mon! Hurry up! We are going to miss it!” Keith can’t really take him seriously when he’s wearing dollar sign shades that he bought in the gift shop. He’s sure he looks just as ridiculous with his alien eyes shades.

“Miss what?” he asks as he follows Lance at a much slower pace to his truck. Lance doesn’t reply though. Instead, he rips them out of the parking lot before Keith even has his door shut, making Keith screech and holler at him to slow down despite his laughter. He realizes why Lance was in such a big hurry when Lance parks and then flies out of his truck. Keith follows Lance down to the beach, a soft ‘wow’ leaving him when he sees the pretty blue water reflecting the sun that has just touched the horizon. Lance doesn’t seem to think Keith is going fast enough though, seeing as how he snatches his hand up and once again starts dragging him towards the coastline.

When Lance’s bare feet touch the water—wait, when did he take off his shoes?—the biggest smile that Keith has ever seen spreads across Lance’s face. Hunk wasn’t kidding when he told Keith that Lance belongs in the water. Keith smiles and gives his hand a squeeze before turning to look at the setting sun, not even caring that his boots are getting wet right now.

When the sun is gone behind the ocean’s waves, Keith notices they are facing each other with their hands tightly grasped together. Keith isn’t sure how they got into this position but what he is sure of though is that he’s never wanted to kiss Lance more than in this very moment.

“Keith…” Lance suddenly interrupts the peacefulness with a whisper, his eyelids seeming to grow heavy the longer he stares at Keith. Keith is momentarily shocked into silence when Lance uses his name instead of ‘Mullet’ but quickly recovers when he notices Lance slowly getting closer to him.

“Yes?” he whispers back, his voice refusing to get any louder in fear of shattering the dream-like state that they’ve created within the last few minutes.

Instead of verbally replying, Lance leans forward until their noses bump together and their breaths begin to mingle. Keith can taste the spearmint gum that Lance got from the pitstop on his breath, the smell becoming Keith’s favorite scent, second to Lance’s vanilla shampoo. Keith’s heart halts in his chest before going into overdrive when their lips finally touch, Keith’s breath stuttering. As their lips move against each other’s, Keith vaguely listens to the sound of the waves crashing and the seagulls squawking.

Keith is once again corrected. This is what heaven would be like.

Keith is knocked out of their blissful kiss when a bigger wave suddenly washes over their feet, causing water to spill down into his boots. He pulls away with an aggravated grunt, looking down at the saltwater that is now brimming his shoes. “Lance,” Keith growls despite the fact that it wasn’t necessarily Lance’s fault. Their dumb banter comes more naturally for them than anything else.

“What?” Lance crows with a look of indignation on his face, his arms letting Keith’s cheeks go to cross his arms over his chest. They fall into the usual repartee despite the fact that now their arms are wrapped tight around the other and refuse to let go. Well, that is until Keith goes ‘too far’ and makes Lance splash him with water. Keith glares at Lance like a murderous wet cat, his claws and fangs starting to show. Lance lets out a squeak before taking off down the coastline, his laughter deafening the sound of the waves that still lap at their feet.

Keith catches up to Lance with ease, seeing as how the tanned man isn’t actually trying to outrun his new lover. Keith wraps his arms around Lance’s waist and snatches him back, making Lance’s laughter cut off with a squeal. Keith spins him around which just ends up bringing Lance’s melodic laughter back.

Keith sets him back down and Lance immediately spins around to face Keith, setting their foreheads together. “We should go on another trip soon, Samurai,” he whispers before connecting their lips for another kiss.

⊱ ────── {⋅. ♪ .⋅} ────── ⊰

MASTERLIST

More with Klance

⊱ ────── {⋅. ♪ .⋅} ────── ⊰

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ultraviolet-ink · 3 years ago

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How do you feel about Miles Edgeworth? He might be my fav so I like to hear other people’s opinions!

He's definitely my favorite! I enjoy writing him a lot (As seen on my Ao3 haha) I really find his arc to be interesting; you see this asshole in Turnabout Sisters and you think "God, why does anyone like him?? he's a huge dick!" and then in Turnabout Samurai when he turns on Dee Vasquez I lost my shit! I think that's why I actually really enjoy Turnabout Samurai, it's when I really started to get into the game and I think it's really when Edgeworth's redemption arc starts, he could have totally won that case (even by a slim margin) and put Wright back in his place but he saw that something was weird and despite his own philosophy, he opened that window so that the truth could be exposed. I can't mention Turnabout Samurai without talking about "unnecessary feelings", I am a NaruMitsu shipper after all, the Darcy energy is strong in this one XD. But shipping goggles aside, I think this is a really interesting insight into Edgeworth. He willingly lost the case this time and there's a lot going on inside. The previous defendants were innocent, they were villanized by the system, the culprits took advantage of the three day trials and status quo of the Prosecutor's office... how many OTHER defendants were actually innocent, and conversely, how many CRIMINALS walked free, which brings me to my next point... Ofc, Turnabout Goodbyes is my favorite case of all time, Edgeworth is one of the characters I like to put through the angst wringer, prime hurt/comfort material (hence why I have a tradition of writing about DL-6 every year lmao). This is definitely one of his lowest points, the moment he's forced in the hot seat, especially under the eye of his mentor, he is forced to see what he put countless others through for his "perfect record"-- he's also forced to see what he COULD have become had he kept going on his path, and he was ashamed (extra angst points if all he could see in the mirror was von Karma and he was terrified to try and face his father~). RftA is also a really good case that gives me a lot of fodder for Edgeworth characterization. He's trying to get back to his old life pre-Goodbyes, get back to some semblance of normal. I like to think that the King of Prosecutor's award was some kind of practical joke that was particularly scathing-- oh, how the oh-so-high-and-mighty Edgeworth has fallen, especially with von Karma's name appearing so many times. I feel like there was a lot of bitterness in the Prosecutor's office at that time and it was only a matter of time before they tried to put Edgeworth back in his place. Edgeworth finding out the truth of how they were able to pin Joe Darke, finding out that he unknowingly presented falsified evidence and sending a man to his death, that was just the final nail in the coffin. Considering everything that had happened in AA1, I truly think that "Prosecutor Miles Edgeworth Chooses Death" was legitimate. The rest of the trilogy doesn't really go into the rest of Edgeworth's character arc as a primary detail. It's still there (with a banger theme), especially in Bridge to the Turnabout when he and Franziska face off against each other, but I think all of his characterization is masterfully built upon in the Investigations duology, but mostly in AAI2. I truly love AAI2 so much, the fan translation is so good and I also got to take a picture with ProZD last fall at Youmacon, and he signed a picture of Gregory and Edgeworth for me! ANYWAY, back to Edgeworth, I found a really amazing meta post by blogalias here! I think that AAI2 is one of the strongest games in the series because of how it tackles Edgeworth staying a prosecutor despite the corruption and his own errors in the past. He makes it his own, and that there are two sides in court; the defense, to protect the people, and the prosecution, to bring charges to light. They are both necessary in the court system and SOMEONE has to weed out the corruption, and it might as well be the Demon himself. I have a lot of thoughts lmao

#I have a lot of thoughts and Tumblr is yelling at me to stay in the limits lmao #ace attorney #aa #ace attorney meta #gyakuten saiban #miles edgeworth #mitsurugi reiji #I have so many thoughts and its rude that Tumblr is telling me to cool it XD

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mandoalorian · 4 years ago

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Return of the Jedi [Max Lord x gn!Reader]

Summary: You and Alistair are heartbroken when you find out opening week tickets for Return of the Jedi have sold out. So Maxwell calls an old friend and organises a special surprise for his little family.

Warnings: food mention

Word count: 2000>

Author’s note: I received a request to write a Maxwell Lord x neurodivergent!Reader from @smoldjarin . They provided me with so much information in regards to autism, stimming, hyperfixations and more. I had so much joy writing this and I hope you find joy in reading it too. I couldn’t have done this without Melissa. I just hope I done it justice. (PS— I wanted to include Melissa’s love for Star Wars in this. I think we all, as Pedro stans, love Star Wars).

Maxwell wanted to pull his hair out. He had no idea what you and Alistair were yapping on about, but, evidently, it was something you both felt very passionate about. He’d seen you enthusiastic like this before, sure, but this was the first time he’d ever seen Alistair so hyped up. His brown eyes were gleaming as he hopped up and down.

“He literally said ‘I am your father!’ you laughed and Alistair let out a long groan.

“Yeah but he’s the bad guy! And the bad guys always lie,” Alistair explained — and that statement alone was enough to make Maxwell frown. ‘The bad guys always lie’ ... Ironic, to say the least. But, Alistair did make an excellent point. “I don’t trust him.”

You giggled and pulled Alistair into your lap. You’d never found it easy, touching people and being so close to them, but Alistair has grown to be an exception. He was like a son to you.

“Well, I suppose all will be revealed next week.” you told the ebony haired boy, pressing a kiss to his forehead.

You and Alistair got along really well, and Maxwell couldn’t be more grateful, but it was the moments when you both babbled on about Star Wars that had him feeling the most clueless. Granted, he hadn’t found the chance to sit through the movies, but he wanted to because he knew how much it meant to you and his son.

He was also made blissfully aware that the third and final instalment of the trilogy was being released next week, because you and Ali couldn’t stop talking about it. Even in the moments when Alistair wasn’t there, you expressed your excitement to Maxwell. He found it endearing though. He loved it when you talked about your interests and current hyper-fixations. Which is why his heart broke when you read the Friday morning paper and found out all the tickets for opening week were sold out.

Max, despite having no interest in Star Wars, was devastated when he saw the look on your face. He especially didn’t want to be the person who had to break the bad news to Alistair.

“I was really looking forward to it.” You mumbled sadly, your eyes fixated on your cereal. You only had a little left to eat, but truthfully, you’d lost all appetite. These movies and this franchise meant the absolute world to you, and now no doubt you’d have the final movie spoiled for you at work or by the television.

“Oh darling,” Maxwell hummed, wrapping his strong arms around you and holding you tight. You relished in his warmth and found yourself getting lost in the comforting scent of his sweet musk cologne. “I know. And I’m sorry,” the silence between you both broke his heart. “Don’t worry honey, I’ll fix this.”

You weren’t sure how he could possibly fix this. There were simply no more seats available in the movie theatres. He couldn’t just spawn in more seats. What Maxwell Lord did have though, was power, influence and money— and when he put his mind to something, he was sure to get it done. You had never met anyone more determined than him.

He didn’t want to leave you that morning, but duty called and he had to go to work. You tried your hardest to push through the day, ignoring this morning’s revelation. You opted to meet up with a friend at the park, and got ice cream. But when you’re friend told you they’d got tickets, you couldn’t help but feel a pang of jealousy. You deserved these tickets. It just wasn’t fair.

Maxwell was struggling to focus on his work too. He was running out of bright ideas, but he didn’t just want his statement from this morning to be another empty promise. He actually wanted to fix this. He’d do anything to make you and Alistair happy.

Then it struck him. If his life was a kids cartoon, an illuminated lightbulb would’ve popped above his head. He buzzed his assistant, Raquel, into his office.

“Mr. Lord?” she smiled, walking towards his pine wood desk. Maxwell combed his fingers through his golden locks of hair and looked up at the blonde girl.

“Do I know anyone who is in the uh— the new Star Wars movie?” He inquired.

Raquel was expecting some question about the latest oil numbers, or a request for more supplements — so to say she was taking aback by her boss’ query was an understatement.

She thought for a moment. “Well, Harrison Ford has been a long time investor for Black Gold. He attended last year’s charity gala. Do you remember?”

Of course Maxwell remembered. How could one forget about being in the presence of Hollywood A-Lister Harrison Ford? “Harrison’s in Star Wars?” Maxwell quizzed, trying to hide his piqued curiosity. “Bring me his number. I have to make a call.”

———

Maxwell was so excited to get home and share the good news with you and Alistair. You greeted him just as you normally did, with a loving embrace and a gentle kiss.

“How was your day sweetheart?” your boyfriend asked, smoothing out your hair.

You shrugged. “Fine I s’pose,” you told him. “How was work?”

Maxwell’s grin only grew. “Bring Alistair in.” he beamed.

You called for the boy who had been playing with his action figures in his bedroom. His mom had dropped him off about an hour before Maxwell got home. You and Ali snuggled into each other on the crushed velveteen sofa as Maxwell paced backwards and forwards. It wasn’t nervous pacing though, he was bubbling with anticipation.

“I hope you’re all excited for tomorrow night,” Maxwell began, before flashing three pristine Return of the Jedi tickets before yours and Alistair’s eyes. “Because I met with my good friend Han Solo for lunch and he has given us access to a private screening on Sunday night. So we get to see the movie before the rest of the world.”

You felt like you were in a dream. He’d done it. He’d actually fixed it. You didn’t know how and you knew better than to question him, but it didn’t matter because he somehow managed to fix this and it was all to you and Alistair. You’d found it so hard to find someone who loved you for you, who didn’t mind your stims and who encouraged your hyperfixations. But Maxwell was that man and you couldn’t believe how lucky you had gotten.

Alistair bounced up and jumped on his dad, almost knocking him over in the process. Maxwell wrapped his arms around the six year old and picked him up.

“Daddy! Thank you thank you thank you!” he squealed, unable to contain his ecstatic grin. “I had no idea you were friends with Han Solo!”

Maxwell smiled. “Oh yeah, me and Han go way back. I used to co pilot with him on the—“ Maxwell paused for a second as he tried to recall what Harrison told him. He had to get this right. “—Millennium Falcon?”

Both yours and Alistair’s jaw dropped. Gods, he was good at this. Maxwell may have been a brilliant businessman but he was an even better father.

“Does that mean you know Luke and Leia too?” Alistair asked.

“Oh yes.” Maxwell nodded, despite having no idea who Luke and Leia were.

“And Chewbacca?”

Chewbacca? Maxwell thought. What kind of name was that? Never the less he smiled and nodded. “Absolutely.”

“And Artoo and Threepio?”

Maxwell blinked. “Yep.” he replied through gritted teeth.

“Wow daddy,” Alistair hummed, snuggling into his dad’s chest. “I’m so excited.”

Maxwell dropped Alistair the ground and kneeled to his level. “You should put on your jammies and have an early night. That way, tomorrow will come around quicker.”

“Okay!” Alistair agreed enthusiastically before running back into his bedroom.

“And remember Ali!” Maxwell called. He cleared his throat and pointed his finger. “I am your father.”

That was it. That was the last straw. You’d tried your hardest to hold back your laughter as Max humoured his son, but seeing your boyfriend do a Darth Vader impression was something else.

Max sighed and sat down next to you, pulling your body into his lap. “I love you so much, my dear.”

You grinned and pressed a kiss to his lips. “I love you too. I can’t believe you did all of this.” you revealed.

“I always keep my promises.” he replied with the most genuine smile.

———

The movie was a success, and even Maxwell enjoyed it, which was very unexpected.

“I can’t believe Darth Vader was telling the truth,” Alistair sighed, exasperated. It had been a long day for sure, and his cheeks were still rosy with excitement. “I’m so glad Darth Vader isn’t my dad.”

Maxwell tutted.

“But he turned good in the end,” You smiled, taking Ali’s hand. “He saw what truly mattered. He had to save his son.”

Yeah, the parallels between Vader and Luke and Maxwell and Alistair were interesting to say the least.

“Daddy, who was your favourite character?” Alistair asked.

Maxwell thought for a moment. “I liked that guy in the green armour, he was cool. He sorta reminds me of, well, me.”

“Boba Fett?” Alistair quirked an eyebrow. “Oh daddy, no one is as cool as Boba Fett.”

Maxwell feigned a gasp. “Not even your old

man?”

Alistair giggled and rolled his eyes. “I liked the Ewok!” he announced and then tugged on your hand. “Who did you like?”

“I like Leia,” you beamed. “She’s strong and beautiful...”

“Just like you.” Maxwell whispered, brushing his

lips against yours.

The night came to an end and you couldn’t have been happier. As you lay in bed, you thanked Maxwell for all he had done. He was truly the best boyfriend in the world. He loved you so much, and he swore in that moment, as you fell asleep in his arms, that the next promise he’d make would be a promise to himself.

He was going to marry you.

———

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spencstan · 4 years ago

Text

Six of Crows re-read

(i also did this for the shadow and bone trilogy so read that if you want to)

spoiler alert obiously

i'm SO EXCITED FOR THIS this is my comfort book (with crooked kingdom of course)

JOOST HI

oo fun fact this was my first grishaverse book and i read it with no context whatsoever except that the mc is an emo boy and morally grey

so IMAGINE my pure confusion when JOOST appeared

i was like ?????? weird take on morally grey character but ok

joost trying to figure out how to flirt with a girl is a mood

anyone wanna teach us how to???

i kinda wanna skip this part so i can see the crows..

but i won't don't worry

(won't I?

"I think Yuri may be quarantined"

aaaand?

so are we you are not special

i feel like it's very important for me to mention that i read this book in spanish first

and then i got into the fandom and i was like who the fuck is the wraith? i only know El Espectro

Heartender who??? ooo you mean Cardio

Tidemakers? nope, i only know Maremotores

for real i was so confused i had to re-read it in english (not that i mind tho)

say whatever you want about the spanish version but we have to agree that this design is pretty af

another one yay: "Retvenko was a Squaller" vs. "Retvenk era un Impulsor"

(should i also say that in my pfd english version the book is 294 pages long and in my pdf spanish version its 532????) (i think it's because in the english one the speces are way less like the lines are so close together wtf

i've decided that i'm bored so i'll be skiping this chapter

anya is super badass tho

skdgfalsdgfliaysvfascvhjl yesssssss inej

Kaz Brekker didn't need a reason.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

KAZ

INEJ

I MISSED THEM

omg now i can picture amita and freddy SDJGKASKGLASG THIS IS AMAZING

we interrupt our regularly scheduled program to watch the shadow and bone trailer once again to hear freddy's beautiful voice

ok moving on!

now hear me out i'm giving you all permission to make fun of kaz for this one: Dirtyhands = Manos Sucias

hello i am Kaz Manos Sucias. nice to meet you!

AAAAA

AAAAAAAAAA

JESPER FAHEY

JESPER LOVE HI

SJDGHFKAHSGDLAJSDFSJ,AHFLHDSGF

I MISSED HIM OMG

OMG NOW I CAN PICTURE HIM AS KIT

can you tell jesper is one of my favourite characters?

i really love the fact that kaz is pissed about the murder of that ambassador ONLY because he can´t figure out how it happen

he´s such a nerd

i can't believe one of the firts things we hear jesper say is threathen to kill someone by writing "forgive me" with bullets

AND HE CALLS HIS GUNS "BABIES" OMG

picture saying hi baby and wylan thinkin he's talking to him but actually jesper's talking to one of his guns

Jesper rolled his eyes. "It's about sending a message. What's the point of a dead guy with forg written on his chest?."

"Compromise," Kaz said. "I'm sorry does the trick and uses fewer bullets."

ooo thank god we have kaz to come up with creative solutions /j /s

honestly i love how they talk about kaz's cane like it's the scariest weapon ever (which it kind of is)

nothing will ever disappoint me more than finding out that in english their gang name is "the Dregs". like i don't even know for sure what that means

in spanish is "Los Indeseables" (the undesirables?) which sounds a lot more badass

no hate tho i like the dregs

but i was confused af bc i expected it to be sometihng like "the undesirables" or"the unwanted" or whatever

and it said "the dregs"

which in the translator means something like shit or something

anways moving on:

If he'd (kaz) ever been a little boy

i love how lowkey all the crows think he was just born exactly like he is now

imagine a baby kaz all dressed in black and threatening people

cute

"No mourners," Jesper said as he tossed his rifle to Rotty

"No funerals," the rest of the Dregs murmured in reply. Among them, it passed for "good luck".

YES

YESSS

i wonder what wylan's doing right now :))

i can't wait for the next book where he has a pov

the first time i read this book i literally looked at the title of every chapter to see if he ever got one (i was disappointed to say the least :((((

Besides, she was the Wraith - the only law that applied to her was gravity, and some days she defied that, too.

ma'am

marry me please

i'm gonna cry so hard once the show is out and we get to see inej omg

me simp

That Kaz had chosen Jesper to be one of his seconds was no surprise. Twitchy as Jepser was, with or without his revolvers, he was at his best in a fight, and she knew he'd do anything for Kaz.

idk why but i just love it every time kaz implies or shows that he cares or trusts jesper

it makes me soft

But every one of Inej's senses told her that was not how this was going to play out. Her father would have said the shadows were about their business tonight. Something bad was going to happen here.

underrated saying from Inej's father right there

"I'm a business man," he told her."No more, no less"

"You're a thief, Kaz."

"Isn't that what I just said?"

i see no lies here

not to be annoying but i hc jesper as adhd (i mean is pretty much as canon as wylan's dyslexia) so i'm gonna write here every time i see evidence :)

jesper with adhd part 1: impulsivity

Jesper snorted. "Stomach, spine. What's next, spleen?"

"Shut it" Oomen snarled. The rules of parley dictated that only the lieutenants could speak once negotiations had begun. Jesper mouthed "sorry" and elaboratedly pantomimed locking his lips shut.

he know he couldn't speak but couldn't stop himself from making a comment (i relate way too much to that lmao)

hoestly poor jesper he had to watch hid friend get shot and kaz do nothing about it

i would've been mad too

"I like it when men beg," she said. "But this isn't the time for it"

KAHGFAHLGSFGASFLGSAFS

this is one of the best quotes in the book by far

YASSS KAZ POV

Kaz could have tol Jesper that he knew he wasn't dirty, reminded him that he'd trusted him eough to make him his only real second in a fight that could have gone badly wrong tonight.

cute

but kaz is petty af

he didn't even have a reason not to tell jesper that!

i love that kaz knows inej is following him but doesn't say anything because he wants to wait until she's ready

i LOVE the scene where kaz in in the van eck mantion /srs

idk why but it's so good

And, of course, there was the mystery of Van Eck's son.

wonder what that could be!!! /s

He grinned at her (...)

"Hmm." she said noncommittally, pretending to examine one of her knives, determined to ignore that grin.

KANEJ YESS

HE'S BASICALLY SHOWERING IN FRONT OF HER OMG

this is so funny poor inej is getting flustered

"And I'll need Wylan waiting at the Crow Club tomorrow night."

YES WYLAN OMG

One minute he made her blush and the next he made her want to commit murder

happens to the best of us :/

"Please, my darling Inej. treasure of my heart won't you do me the honor of acquiring me a new hat?"

if kaz doesn't say this on the show we riot

agreed?

it's so amazing how nina found a way to use her powers to get money instead of having to like steal and murder like the rest in the gang

NINA'S POV YESSS HIII

nina and inej omg

their friendship is just perfect

POOR MATTHIAS HE HAS TO FIGHT THE WOLVES

i would straight up cry

Matthias was dreaming again. Dreaming of her

i'm gonna cry damn it

this is the enemies-to-lovers we all needed

jesper has adhd part 2:

"Jesper was supposed to wait until three bells." said the pale boy

"It is three bells, Kaz." replied a small girl (...)

"Since when is Jesper punctual?" the boy complained with a glance at his watch

the time blindness come one

(btw i love the fact that kaz plans around jesper's time blindness instead of like threatening him to be on time)

i really love how every one feels the need to take the time to say/think that the masks are ugly

its so unnecessary lmao

yessss inej is a badass that kills monster we stan

and matthias is lowkey impressed lmao

as he should

"Thank you, Jesper," said Nina

"You're very welcome, gorgeous. See, Kaz? That's how the civilised folk do"

THESE TWO OMG

JESPER IS THE LOML

INEJ OMG LOOK:

She stepped aside as if she's known he was coming, languidly hooking her heel behind his ankle. Matthias let out a loud grunt as he landed on the stones

(...) "Clumsy, this one," the bronze girl said impassively.

that's what happen when you underestimate her bitch

AAAAAAA

PEOPLE

TIME TO FREAK OUT

WYLAN IS HERE

AND HE'S DOODLING STOP IT'S SO CUTE

ok jesper has adhd part 3 i think:

"Just how crazy is he?" asked Jesper, fingers drumming on the pearl handles of his revolvers.

ok first of all: stimming

second of all: hyperactivity

i rest my case

ok 2 or 3 things here

"I believe you know Nina," Brekker continued. "The lovely girl freeing you is Inej. (...) and this is Wylan, the best demolitions expert in the Barrel"

"Raske is better," Inej said

The boy looked up, ruddy gold hair flopping in his eyes, and spoke for the first time. "He's not better. He's reckless"

"He knows his trade"

"So do I"

ok 1: kaz calling inej lovely omg kanej

2: YES WYLAN STANDING UP FOR HIMSELF

2.5: kaz calling him the best cute af

3: honestly why do people think wylan is like an innocent soft boy or whatever. he's in a room full of murderers and thieves and the first thing he does is correct them and stand up for himself

like i wish i could do that

i would be crying like a bitch

AAAAAAAA

"Meet Wylan Van Eck"

KHDSGFALSGFIASGFAL

HI WYLAN BABY

YESSS JESPER'S POV NOW

I'M SO HAPPY also look at this it's the first thing in his pov

Jesper stared at Wylan

do i sense some wesper?????

ok everyone is being so mean to him right now

they are aclling him useless and an idiot and other shit

poor boy honestly he had to deal with this + taking part of a heist he is definetly not ready for + he has to hide the fact that he can't write or read

it so distrubing that kaz is literally the nicest one to wylan right now

"See that? Hidden depths." (...)"He's good enough at demo, and he's got a fine hand for sketching, thanks to all those pricey tutors."

(...)

"There you have it," Kaz said to Jesper. "Marketable skills. Wylan is watching you, Helvar"

GET READY

ARE Y'ALL READY?

OK THEN:

"Scheming face," Jesper whispered to Inej.

She nodded. "Definetly."

THEIR FRIENDSHIP OMG

AND THIS QUOTE

I NEED IT ON THE SHOW THEY BETTER GIVE IT TO US

"Who's Mark" damn wylan (but pretty good comeback to jesper tho)

"What's the easiest way to steal a man's wallet?

"Knife to the throat?" asked Inej.

"Gun to the back?" said Jesper.

"Poison in his cup?" suggested Nina.

"You're all horrible," said Matthias.

tag yourself i'm jesper

KJSFGAL kaz just told wylan to tell him everything he know about his dad's company

and he said he doesn't know and kaz was like "and you never looked trough his documents????

AND THEN HE GOT SAD AND SAID HE HADN'T (and kaz believed him this is sad)

AND NOW JESPER CALLED HIIM USELESS

ok you know i love you jes but if you keep this up

idk i can't do anything you're a sharpshooter

but stiiiiiil

LMAO MATTHIAS ACTUALLY THOUGHT HE COULD BEAT KAZ

nice try

demjin

*insert spongebob voice* demjin

WE'RE GONNA TAKE A MOMENT NOW TO APPRECIATE INEJ GAHFA

BECAUSE KAZ DOESN'T

The heart is an arrow. It demands aim to land true.

*ugly crying*

Many boys will bring you flowers. But some day you'll meet a boy who will learn your favourite flower, your favourite song, your favourite sweet. And even if he is too poor to give you any of them, it won't matter because he will have taken the time to know you as no one else does. Only that boy earns your heart.

*uglier crying*

TANTE HELLEN IF YOU DON'T GET THE FUCK OUT OF HERE

SOMEONE PLEASE STAB HER FOR ME

jesper has adhd part ?? (i have dyscalculia you can't expect me to remember the number):

That sound - the swift, shocking report of gunfire - called the scattered, irascible, permanently seeking part of his mind into focus like nothing else.

do i really need to explain this?

ok just in case.. an adhd brain doesn't actually have a deficit of attention(the name just sucks) it's problem with controling that attention. the brain is always looking for new sources of dopamine which is why it shifts its focus so much

i love that jes thinks of matthias as "tha giant"

like sir

have you seen yourself?

you're tall af

HE GOT SHOT

WHY DID I FORGET JESPER GETS SHOT IN THE LEG HERE

"Close your eyes!"

"You can't kiss me from down there, Wylan"

"Just do it!"

i love the energy BUT NOW IT'S NOT THE TIME JES

YESS WYLAN SHOW THEM THEY WERE WRONG CALLING YOU USELESS

inej just stabed some guy int the d

good for her!

KAZ YESSSS HI

AWWW SHE'S WORRIED HE DOESN'T HAVE HIS CANE

KANEJ FOR LIFE

oh no wylan got shot too???? (just barely but stilllll por baby)

my Wraith omggg

ok 3 things about this:

Without another word, he tipped Oomen into the sea.

"No!" Wylan shouted, leaning over the railing, his face pale, stunned eyes tracking Oomen in the waves. (...)

Jesper set his hand on Wylan's shoulder. "Let it go."

"It's not right-"

"Wylan," Jesper said, giving him a little shake."Maybe your tutors didn't cover this lesson, but you do not argue with a man covered in blook and a knife up his sleeve"

1. wesper yasssss

2. wylan just argued with a mant hat had just tacken the eye out of someone. he literally called him out for being an asshole. like damn wylan is brave af i love him

3. do you think seeing kaz trow the guy out of the boat reminded wylan of when the same thing happened to him???? this makes me sad

he's brave and a good person and i just-

"Man with a knife, remember?" he said over his shoulder.

"Man with a gun!" Jesper called after him

this had no right being so funny

AND THEN KAZ GAVE HIM THE MIDDLE FINGER STOP I CAN'T

nina is the biggest kanej shiper no one can tell me i'm wrong

unrelated but if jesper had gone to the Little Palace and had studied there with nina they 100% would've had a crush on Zoya and bonded over it

like you can't tell me those two bisexual disaster wouldn't be absolutely in love with Zoya

jesper has adhd part ??:

Jesper scrubbed the back of his neck, touched his hands to his gunds, returned to his neck. He always seemed to be in motions

hyperactivity right there

and restlessness

"Do you know the best way to find Grisha who don't want to be found?" (...)

"Seems to be if they don't want to be found, you should just let them be" (jesper says this)

this conversation must be so stressful to him omg

LMAO JESPER CUT MATTHIAS HAIR THIS IS SO FUNNY

AND HE SHAVED HIM

ok you all know i love all of them but they can be sooo stupid

like wylan wrote no names on the drawing and he's excuse is that he doesn't know fjerdan?

AND THAT'S NOT EVEN TRUE he literally said he learned school fjerdan which means he should know how to write it too (we know why he can't but the tohers don't)

and even then like the excuse doesn't make any sense. why would having the original name be usefull if no one can fucking read it????

the worst part tho? NO ONE QUESTIONED HIM

THEY WERE LIKE "yup makes sense" AND WENT ON WITH THEIR DAY

i wondered how they didn't figure wylan's secret sooner but now i now

it's because theya re idiots

"I'm just doing my job. Stop glaring at me"

wylan baby let's not make the gigant mad

Jesper knocked his head against the hull and cast his eyes heavenward. "Fine. But if Pekka Rollins kills us all, I'm going to get Wylan's ghost to teach my ghost how to play the flute just so that I can annoy the hell out of your ghost."

Brekker's lips quirked. "I'll just hire Matthias ghost to kick your ghost's ass."

"My ghost won't associate with your ghost," Matthias said primply, and then wondered if the sea air was rotting his brain.

i had to put this here i don't want to get murdered by the fandom

jesper, inej and nina have the BEST friendship

I CAN'T WAIT TO SEE JES AND INEJ TOGETHER ON NETFLIX

"I know some people don't understand, but Kaz told me ... he said it was my choice, that he wouldn't be the one to mark me again."

i love this because it happen when they had just met

he did it because he understands her trauma and he respects her not because he loves her (i doubt he did at the time)

Kaz had been impressed with the sketches. (...)

"Just learn to take a compliment. Kaz doesn't hand them out often."

I'M SO PROUD OF WYLAN

and yess kaz only compliments wylan (and inej but that's sarcastic so it doesn't count) because he's a proud dad

"And you don't belong here, either."

"I beg your pardon, merchiling?"

"We don't need a sharpshooter for Kaz's plan, so what's your job - other than stalking around making everyone angsty?"

He shrugged. "Kaz trusts me."

Wylan snorted and picked up his pen. "Sure about that?"

DAMN WYLAN DESTROYED HIM

also

"If you aren't born with every advantage, you learn to take your chances."

"I wasn't-" Wylan left off and set down his pen. (...)

aww cute neurodivergent boyfriends bonding

Wylan had turned back to his work, his disappointment obvious. For some reason, Jesper felt disappointed, too.

ajgflasjgfjagslfiuusgflgdfsgdflasdgfsd

wesper

aww jes checks on inej every morning and every night i love him

"Thank you for keeping me in this world when fate seemed determined to drag me to the next. I owe you a life debt."

Nina blushed deeply. "I was teasing, Inej"

LJFGALKGFALGA another cute friendship right there

(and i can see why people ship them romantically)

STOP INEJ AND JES ARE BONDING SO MUCH (page 127 so i can go back and read it lmao)

Van Eck writes to Wylan every week, and Wylan doesn't even open the letters

"They just said the same thing again and again: If you're reading this, the you know how much I wish to have you home. Or I pray that you read these words and think of all you've left behind."

should i kill him? anyone want to join me?

Inej bumped her shoulder against his."Then at least we're both the same kind of stupid." (...)

"You're too good for him, you know?"

"I know. So are you"

jes and her bonding over their stupid crush on a white boy

Because I've been looking for an excuse to talk to you for two days.

jfsfdajdhmgkfutdjrgsg ok i can't blame them for having a crush on him anymore

this chapter is full of kanej i love it

"What do you want, then"

You, Inej. You forever.

jksdgfoagsdfgsdgfklasgdflaghsldfgksdgfkahgsdfghjlkf

kaz's backstory makes me sad

"When we get our money, you can burn kruge to keep you warm," said Kaz. (...)

"I´m gonna pay someone to burn my kruge for me."

Kaz fell into step beside him. "Why don't you pay someone else to pay someone to burn your kruge for you? That's what big players do."

"You know what the really big bosses do? They pay someone to pay someone ...". Their voices trailed off as they tomped ahead, and Matthias and the others followed.

JES AND KAZ HAVE THE BEST CONVERSATIONS

i can't believe we get to see nina and matthias meet and their whole backstory in less than a month omg

"It's not natural for women to fight."

"It's not natural for someone to be as stupid as he is tall, and yet there you stand."

QUEEN

YOU TELL HIM

oh no the dead grisha

this part breaks my heart every time

"Do you have a different name for killing when you wear a uniform to do it?"

.....i'm just gonna leave this quote right here

anyways acab

stop nina tried to kill the survivor so they wouldn't suffer but she couldn't do it

and jesper did it for her without hesitation i wanna cry

and inej didn't want to do it either i want to hug them

"Because our crime is existing. Our crime is what we are"

..........

i'm gonna leave this here again

do with it what you will

"Don't mock what you don't understand."

"My mockery offends you? My people would welcome you laughter in place of this barbarity"

i- this conversation is so important

AAAAA JES AND WY ARE A GREAT TEAM I LOVE THEM

WYLAN TROWS BOMBS TOGIVE JESPER TIME TO GET READY TO SHOOT

INEJ AND KAZ ARE A GREAT TEAM TOO

THEY LITERALLY DID THE SCENE LIKE IN THE AVENGERS (but without the shield WHICH MAKES IT BETTER)

Jesper shouldered his rifle. "Wylan earned his keep."

Wylan gave a little jump at the sound of his name. "I did?"

YES BABY YOU DID GREAT

kaz getting self-conscious for his hair is pure comedy

but nina how can you say that have you see his hair on the show???? it's perfect

"Remeber our friend Mark?"

HELP I CAN'T

"Any other impossible feats you'd like us to accomplish?"

The bearest smile flikered over Kaz's lips. "I'll make you a list."

once again jesper and kaz being besties

unrelated but nikolai and jesper would love each other

the amount of sass they have between them it's unparalleled

"Mmm," Inej murmured, taking a sip from her mug. "Maybe you're just not enough."

DAMN

ma'am marry me please

kaz fainted damn poor boy

unrelated unce again but this is so much betetr than shadow and bone

like you can tell leigh improved so much

her characters are better and their arcs are better developed

the writing itself it's better

or maybe i'm just biased because i love soc so much but i think she definetly improved

INEJ IS TRYING TO GIVE HIM SPACE EVEN WHEN SHE'S TRAPPED AND LOCKED ON THE WAGON

I JUST - THEY KNOW EACH OTHER SO MUCH

Though he'd trusted her with his life countless times, it felt much more frightening to trust her with his shame.

Inej had once offered to teach him how to fall. "The trick is not getting knocked down," he'd told her with a laugh. "No, Kaz," she's said, "the trick is in getting back up"

inej is smart af

Kaz was usually unshakeable during a job, but now he was on edge, and Jesper didn't know why. Part of him wanted to ask, though he knew that was the stupid part, the hopeful farmboy who picked the worst possible person to care about, who searched for signs in things that he knew deep down meant nothing - when kaz chose him for a job, when Kaz played along with one of his jokes. He could have kicked himself. He's finally seen the infamous Kaz Brekker without a stich of clothing, and he'd been too worried about ending up on a pike to pay proper attention.

ok i got a couple of things to say about this part

first of all it makes me so sad that jes cares so much for someone who dosn't deserve him. because no hate to kaz but they would never work as a couple and kaz already treats him like shit most of the time

i think this part shows who a lot about who jesper really is. a boy that grew up having to hide parts of himself, who thinks he's worth nothing but it's smart and capable, who's loyal and brave and caring but doesn't even know it himself. he's someone who feels he doesn't deserve good things and thinks he's not good enough, and that's why he unds up in all the wrong places with the wrong people. he left uni bc he fell in with the gangs, because he didn't think he was smart enough or even prepared to be in studying in the university. jesper is constantly hiding behind a mask or running from things because he's scared of not being enough

an kaz is everything jes in a way wishes he could be. kaz is secure in himself (at least on the outside), he's stable, he's smart, he's "unshakeable". and most of all, he doesn't care about others (we know that's not true but that's how he presents himself)

and that's the thing that causes jesper all his problems. because he's insecure because he thinks he's not good enough for the poeple or things he cares about. and he's always trying to do what's best for his loved ones: he went to the ice court to pay his debt for his father, he follows kaz everywhere beacause he cares about him, he offered to read to wylan (knowing it wouldn't be easy for him to be still that long).

and yeah it often doesn't work out becuase he's messy and he has problems but he tries. and he hates that. he hates that he cares so much about people because at the end of the day, that's what makes him feel like he's not good enough

one more thing and i'm done i promise

unpopular opinion but i love that leigh made jesper have a crush on kaz. 1 beacuse it's refreshing to see someone not get otgether with his first crush. and 2 because i love that it shows that we sometimes get attached to people that are not good for us, but that we can learn to move on. jesper ended with wylan who respects him and values him, unlike kaz

ok i'm sorry that was probably all bs

oo one more thing, jesper definetly has rsd (rejection sensitive disphoria), which is something most poeple with adhd have

"My father used to take me everywhere with him"

this is so sad. bc they probably had a good relationship when he was little. and then they figured he coudln't read and now his father treats him like shit

it's even worse than if he haf been horrible from the beginning because wylan knows he can be a good father. and so he thinks it's his fault and he deserves to be treated like that. i hate van eck

"You're cuter when you're smart"

(...)

"Definitely cuter when you're smart"

wesper yesssss

i love them so much

ok but why do people think jesper is stupid. like the boy just made a bunch of criminals pass out by mixing some chemicals

and he was going to the university at like 15

AAAAND NOW THEY KNOW HE'S A FABRIKATOR

amazing plot twist

also:

Wylan coughed. Flirting with him might actually be more fun that annoying him, but it was a close call.

oooo come on jesper we all know you just love getitng him to blush

and you love him

who said that? definitely not me, nope

awwww jesper misses being around animals that's cute

imagine him coming home to wylan one day with a puppy because he just couldn't resist

cute

Better terrible truths than kind lies

just leaving here more of inej's wisdom

ok this may be a reach but jesper has adhd part ???

Yellow Protocol? Red Protocol? He couldn't remember which was which. (...)

"The alarm was Yellow Protocol, a sector disturbance."

Jesper pushed at his temples. "I don't remember what that means"

a bad working memory? sounds familiar

kaz loves puzzles

it's canon

"I love puzzles. Trickery is just my native tongue."

this part where wylan and jesper see the banner made with grisha's kefta kills me every time

I would have worn purple, Jesper thought, if I'd joined the Second Army. (...) He'd beenwilling, even eager to risk capture and execution as a thief and hired gun. Why was it worse to think about being hunted as a Grisha?

this makes me want to cry so much

another thing super sad: the fact that since his father is Kaelish and had some supersititons towards grisha, jesper grew up wondering if his own father was scared of him. he had to hide his powers and he was almost taught to be afraid of them

"Is it safe to leave them, you know-"

"Alive? I'm not big on killing unconscious men."

"We could wake them up"

WYLAN

damn the boy needs therapy

it's amazing how nothing went like they planned

not a single thing

PEOPLE GET READY

ARE YOU READY?

NEITHER AM I BUT WHO CARES

"What do you like?"

"Music. Numbers. Equations. They are not like words. They...they don't get mixed up."

ok dude the clues are right there he's basically saying it

"If only you could talk to girls in equations."

There was a long silence, and then, eyes trained on the notch they'd created in the link, Wylan said, "Just girls?"

Jesper restrained a grin. "No. Not just girls." It really was a shame they were all probably going to die tonight.

wylan really said a straight man?? couldn't be me

this is the definition of bi panic "jesper restrained a grin" bitch we saw that

btw i love the slow burn

like they hint something here but they don't actually start liking each other until much later and they don't get together until almost the end of ck

i also love that the fact that they both like guys is like out in the open now. bc i'm not a fan of when queer characters have a crush and there's the whole thing of "are they queer too or not?"

like they both know htey are queer. but they don't get together right away bc they have to start liking each other before. they don't get together bc they are the only queer mlm characters

matthias fake betrayal killed me

i tought it was real

I have been made to protect you. Only in death will I be kept fom this oath.

this is just-

also foreshadowing?

YAYY KUWEI HI

There was no part of him that was not broken, that had not healed wrong, and there was no part of him that was not stronger for having been broken.

She's laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and got drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.

if i ever have a s/o and they don't tell me this at least once i don't want it

He needed to tell her... what? That she was lovely and brave and better than anything he deserved. That he was twisted, crooked, wrong, but not so broken that he couldn't pull himslef together into some smeblance of a man for her

THIS

THIS IS LOVE RIGHT THERE

they are the only straight couple that matters

everyone else go home

Wylan had scratches all over his cheeks and neck. He was beaming. Inej grabbed his hands and sqeezed.

so cute omg

"You can explain why our illustrious Shu scientist looks like one of Wylan's school pals along the way"

KAZ

i mean it's true but you didn't have to say it

KAZ IS SMILING OMG

EVERYONE FREAK OUT WITH ME

HE'S "grinning like and idiot" STOP I LOVE HIM

"We are all someone's mosnter, Nina"

"I will have you without armour, Kaz Brekker. Or I will not have you at all"

this part breaks my heart and i love it

"Stay," she oanted. Tears leaked from her eyes. "Stay till the end"

"And after," he said. "And always."

i just- helnik is perfect

AWWW JESPER MISSES WYLAN

my daily dosis of wesper :)

ok but in like 2 pages jesper tought of wylan like 10 times bc he's sad wy isn't with him

Jesper scanned the empty deck. He's assumed Wylan would come up to see them off. (...)

Jesper knew he was being selfish and stupid, but some petty part of him wondered if Wylan had deliberately kept away from him on the journey back. Maybe now that the job was complete and he was on his way to his share of the haul, Wylan was done slumming with criminals.

*charles boyle's insinuating voice* and why do you care so much???

btw YOU ARE WRONG. HE'S LITERALLY GOING OUT OF HIS WAY TO BE WITH YOU EVEN THOUGH HE CAN'T SPEAK

this scene where we find out the truth about wylan hurts so much but it's one of my favourites idk why

I LOVE THAT EVERYONE IS AS MAD AS I AM ABOUT THE LETTERS NOW

"Your're a fool," Jesper snarled. "He smarter than most of us put together, and he deserves a better father than you."

YES TELL HIM

the fact that wylan just heard him say that omg

"Deserved" amended Van Eck. He blew the whislte twice.

SOMEONE BETTER GRAB ME BEFORE I KILL HIM MYSLEF

THAT IDIOT

I HATE HIM SO MUCH

I'M GONNA CRY CAN SOMEONE KILL HIM FOR ME

Jesper screamed in rage and raised his guns.

YES EXACLTY WHAT I MEANT

JUST KILL HIM RIGHT NOW

"I'm not big on bludding, am I Inej?"

"Not as a rule"

Van Eck's lip curled. "And why is that?"

"Because he'd rather cheat," said the boy who was not Kuwei Yul-Bo in perfect, unaccented Kerch.

THIS WAS PERFECT

THE BEST WAY TO REVEAL THAT

(...), and Jesper flinched

baby he recognized wylan's voice

The Shu boy held out a hand. "Pay up, Kaz"

BITCH THIS IS AMAZING

THIS BOY MADE A BET WITH A CRIMINAL THAT HIS OWN FATHER WAS GOING TO TRY TO KILL HIM

AND HE WON THE BET

A nearly perfect replica of Kuwei Yul-Bo stood before them, but he had Wylan's voice, his mannerisms, and - though Kaz could see the fear and hurt in his golden eyes - Wylan's surprising courage, too.

i love it when they compliment him

my boy deserves all the compliments ever

AND KAZ IS PROUD OF HIS SON WE ALL KNOW THIS

Wylan cuold draw a perfectt elevation. He's made a drill that could cut throu Grisha glass from parts of a gate and scavenged bits of jewellery. So what if he couldn't read

this is taking me to some real places

i may cry you've been warned

WYLAN DIDN'T CARE THAT HE MAY BE STUCKED LOOKING LIKE KUWEI

this is making me cry

"A fool would have been waiting to be smashed to bits on that ship. And as for "traitor", you've called me worse in the last few minutes alone."

EXACTLY

YOU TELL HIM WYLAN

Instead, in that moment of threat, when he should have thought only of the fight, he looked at Inej.

BABY

i would've done the same tho she's pretty

amita is sooo pretty i'm gonna die when the show comes out

Jesper was staring at Wylan, his eyes roving over the black hair, the golden eyes. "Why?" he said at last. "Why would you do this?"

nothing to say here except: wesper

You... how many times was it you standing beside me on the deck at night when I tought it was Kuwei?"

"Every time."

i want to cry so bad

"Why does it matter?"

"I don't know!" Jesper said angrily. "Maybe I liked your stupid face."

a very staright and platonic thing to say of course

i know jes we all liked his stupid face

"Jesper made a mistake," said Wylan. "A stupid mistake, but he didn't set out to betray anyone."

YES WYLAN DEFEND YOUR BOYFRIEND

And maybe he'd kept him in the dark about Wyllan because he wanted to punish him a little

even kaz know they like each other come on

Jesper sat with elbows on knees, head in hands. Wylan deside him wearing th face of a stranger.

wylan give him a hug fro me please

he needs it

"Scheming face," murmured Jesper.

"Definitely," agreed Wylan.

i miss inej already

And I'm going to get my girl. Inej could never be his, not really, but he would find a way to give her the freedom he´d promised her so long ago.

i'm ugly crying and so what?

and now we're done....

i want to read this book again omg this is unhealthy

#shadow and bone #s&b #six of crows #jesper fahey #wylan van eck #kaz brekker #grishaverse #inej gahfa #matthias helvar #nina zenik #freddy carter #kit young #amita suman #soc #helnik #kanej #wesper

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rantswithhannah · 3 years ago

Text

The Shadow and Bone Trilogy

my first thoughts after finishing the shadow and bone trilogy. (ps I wrote this with the intention of being the only one to read it, I’ll try to make my next few thought posts more organized).

I’m comparing this to throne of glass - I can’t not, it’s the same genre (adventure fantasy YA fiction) - and I think the one thing it lacks is character povs, throne of glass does this really well. But also, it’s a lot less dramatic, in a way that I’m not sure is better? I like it a lot though. It’s so good. I like how the plot starts off slow and slowly builds to a fast-paced one. I really like Mal, and his character development. I love LOVE Alinas character development - the writing style changes with her changing, the narration starts off timid and bland, focused only on Mal, filled with unconfidence and insecurity, but then it grows as she uses her power, and it really fleshes out who she is as a person. I like the devolving of her and Mal’s relationship - it mirrors Calaenas and Chaols but in a better way, it’s done more gradually and with a lot less drama. Aelin, of course, was super dramatic, and powerful, but there were times where I was annoyed with her. Alina isn’t annoying, she’s kind of a reader insert character at the start, but then she develops a lot better, you get to understand her need for power in a way that doesn’t make her seem like a bad person, just someone who’s been downtrodden all her life and finally has something to live for, to breathe with, to fight back with. I like the development of the characters around her - they’re not flashy and dramatic and witty like the Throne of Glass ones, but more realistic, and there’s a lot less fan service (which I didn’t really like in Throne of Glass. There was too much fan service). I have to say, this makes it a lot less likely that the reader will fall in love with your characters, but it makes for a more realistic read. The politics are real, and aren’t as confusing and easily won over by a fight like in Throne of Glass. In terms of pacing, there are parts that are skimmed over where I feel like there could’ve been developed, but I think that since this is a trilogy, it did really well with the spacing out of events so the important ones are highlighted. I really like the world building, and the aesthetic of a bleak world overrun by this Shadow Fold. I like that Alina isn’t overpowered, and that she’s confused and needs someone to help her, but she’s also amazing and she gets jealous and she’s strong at the same time. I like the character of the Darkling, and Nikolai, but I especially like Mal. The boy best friend trope - one that everyone else is drawn to - really speaks to me. I like his development along the series as well. It makes sense, and just ughghghg, I love reading so much. Also, I like how three “love interests” are introduced without making it seem too forced. I feel like they all like her for different reasons (childhood friendship, like calling to like, a sense of camaraderie and heroism). I think that this definitely could’ve been stretched out to make it more in-depth, and it’s definitely not as traumatically dark and flashy and dramatic as Throne of Glass, but it’s got a subtle dark and defeated tone to it that I like. If throne of glass was about fire and rage and explosions (basically Aelin as a character), shadow and bone is like Alina - subtle anger, and darkness and light shining through. When Alina gets dark, it’s in a low key way, not like Aelin gutting and quartering people, but more like a breaking down of who she once was as a person. Also, I like how she’s very anti-confrontation, and unlike Aelin, who makes friends with everyone she meets, Alina has about three friends, the tentative allies that she feels responsible for, but also would fiercely protect her, I think it’s more realistic. The dilemmas it mentions - people following a false god, worshipping the wrong king, looking up at something with power with idealism - all make sense and I love how it’s tackled.

Overall: 8/10

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theoriginalcarnivorousmuffin · 4 years ago

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ohh i saw your answer about the sequels of star wars. id love to read you tear through the whole trilogy

Well, I’ve avoided this ask long enough. Part of the reason is this is really a huge topic, far too much for one ask, so I’m going to have to do this at a very high level.

In short, the Star Wars Sequel Trilogy is what one gets when you slap together the goal of selling merchandise and making tons of money, being as risk averse as humanly possible, adding a handful of warring directors with incredibly different visions, and having virtually no imagination when it comes to the imagining and writing of characters.

And we get this beautiful, awful, franchise that for reasons beyond me people seem to actually like (though interestingly, no one seems to like all of it, they may actually like one or two of the films, but no one says all three are actually in any realm of good).

With that, let’s begin.

The Force Awakens

For me this is easily the most tolerable of the sequel trilogy: it’s not great, it’s not terrible. It’s thoroughly watchable, you can be taken along for the movie’s journey and not raise your eyebrows too much at the action and leave the theater feeling this maybe wasn’t a complete waste of your time.

There’s a good reason for that. That reason is called the most blatant form of plagiarism I have ever seen in cinema in my life.

“The Force Awakens” is just “A New Hope” wearing a mustache. Only, it’s one of those cheap mustaches you get from a party store that, if you stare at it too long, just looks like the most false and awful thing you’ve ever seen. The mustache actively makes it worse. “The Force Awakens” is “A New Hope”, but worse.

Seriously, every major character, every major plot point, every major scene I can go directly back to “A New Hope”.

Our story begins when the Resistance, at great cost to our valiant heroes including torture at the hands of the Emperor’s second in command, sends a file out into the wilderness to be received by his people. This file contains plans for the Death Star.

The film then focuses on Luke, er Rey, getting involved in the Resistance, boarding the Death Star, and successfully destroying at the same time even at the lost of a beloved mentor that she just met (trading in Obi-Wan for Han Solo).

Our evil empire is run by an evil emperor who is so evil he sits in a chair, is served by very Moth Tarkin-esque human storm troopers, and has a second in command who revels in the Darth Vader get up (for no other reason that it makes him feel cool but we’ll get into this).

It’s “A New Hope”. Rey is Luke, Han Solo is Obi-Wan, Poe is a kind of Han Solo, Kylo Ren is Vader, Snoke is Palpatine, Hux is Tarkin, BB-8 is R2-D2, etc.

“But that’s not terrible,” you say, “I liked A New Hope?”

First, it is terrible, it gives a very bad sign of where the sequel trilogy is headed and is just lazy writing. It means that those who produced this franchise were so terrified of taking risks, of possibly ending up mocked as the prequels were, that they will deliver exactly what the original trilogy was. And what’s that? Uh, evil empires, scrappy desert kids, AND MORE DEATH STARS!

That brings us to point number two, the world of Star Wars after the events of the original trilogy shouldn’t support such things. And, if it does, my god what a bleak existence this place has turned into.

The First Order being able to rise easily from the Empire’s remains means that Luke accomplished nothing. Anakin sacrificed himself and had his moment of redemption for nothing. There was no happy ending to the Original Trilogy, our heroes failed miserably, and there is no indication that our new band of heroes can possibly succeed in their place. (More on this as the movies progress).

We now are in a galaxy where this new Republic is so pathetic that Leia doesn’t even give it the time of day and builds her own private army to battle the Empire. The First Order is able to not only rebuild a massive army by raiding villages on many different worlds and stealing children and do so successfully for at least ten years but is able to build a Death Star bigger than any we’ve ever seen before.

And the movie tries to convince us these are completely new problems, that Luke Skywalker is a hero (remember this is TFA, not TLJ yet), and that somehow these things just sprung up out of nowhere. BUT YEAH, RESISTANCE, WOO!

As for Rey, she’s like... a worse version of Luke. Her only motivation through the entire series is her trauma at being abandoned by her parents. That’s it, there’s nothing else to her, nothing else she ever wants or feels conflicted by. She struggles with the dark side because... the dark side? Genetics? Unclear? She’s absurdly, ridiculously, powerful in a way that’s acknowledged but never that acknowledged (we’ll get into this) and the movies just fail to sell me on her in any way.

Honestly, an easy fix for me would have just been making Rey a much younger character. I could believe a fourteen-year-old having stayed in the desert, scrounging for scraps, believing her parents are coming back every day now. As a twenty-something year old... It starts getting hard to believe she never left. (Also, this gets the benefit of getting rid of Reylo, which is always a plus for me).

As for Kylo Ren, I legitimately walked out of TFA thinking he was supposed to be comic relief. He’s what happens when someone desperately wants a likable, redeemable, villain and we get... Well, as a reminder his opening scene is one of genocide: he pillages and destroys a town with no regret and brutally tortures a man for information. We’re told he’s like this “because evil evil Snoke” and that may well be but throughout the film (and the series) it becomes clear that Kylo Ren’s main motivation is he deseprately wants to be cool. He wants to be a badass like Vader, he dresses in Vader cosplay (either ignoring or not knowing that Vader only dressed like that because his body was completely destroyed), he has these huge temper tantrums and nobody respects him because he’s a toddler in a Vader suit.

He murders his own father, his parents who (at least in the films themselves) show every willingness to take him back and forgive him what he’s done, so that he can fully embrace his own “evilness”. In other words, he commits patricide to feel cool about himself, then it doesn’t work.

And the movie series really banks on me feeling conflicted about Kylo Ren or at least wanting him to be redeemed. Granted, the wider internet seems to love him, I just can’t.

Oh, before I forget, the other thing I love about Kylo Ren is that the movies insist he’s a) strong in the Force b) is equal to Rey. Rey consistently beats the shit out of him with 0 training. Kylo Ren has been training in the Force for years. Guys, they are not a Dyad, Rey is far far far stronger than he is and for whatever reason the films never want to admit it. Because I guess we like things coming in pairs now.

But yes, “The Force Awakens”, at a distance not great nor terrible, but a rip off of a movie we’ve already seen that left me going “Welp, the next one’s probably The Empire Strikes Back then I guess we’re getting Ewoks”. I was sort of right on that and sort of wrong.

The Last Jedi

So, JJ Abrams clearly had a vision of where he wanted this sequel trilogy to go. He set up these big questions such as what’s up with Finn, who are Rey’s parents and why was she left on this nowhere planet, will Kylo Ren be redeemed and how, who is Snoke, etc.

Now, I’m not saying these aren’t stupid questions. To be frank, they kind of are. Finn being Force Sensitive was the most inconsequential thing I’ve ever heard of, Rey’s parents should not have been used to drive the plot the way it was, as spoken above I’m clearly team gut Kylo Ren, and that Snoke was actually just Palpatine being the world’s largest cockroach is a beautiful but hilarious answer.

That said, what Johnson did was he decided, “You know what, I’m going to take every trope of Star Wars and completely flip it on its head and absolutely doom the sequel to this movie.”

And by god, he did.

We get a weirdly pointless movie in which Poe, SINGLEHANDEDLY, completely obliterates the Resistance. He first obliterates their bombers by failing to follow command, then goes and bitches about how he’s not put in command when he clearly shows no ability to understand how a military works, actively subverts orders which in turn obliterates the entire Resistance fleet until the only survivors can fit on the Millenium Falcon. They have no ships, no weapons, barely any people, and are ultimately doomed doomed doomed.

We have Finn’s weird subplot with a suddenly introduced character Rose in which the pair aid in Poe’s blowing up the resistance (they send sensitive information using the communication equipment of a guy they do not know, who fully admits to being shady and out for his own skin, and are flabergasted when he betrays them).

Rose herself is this weirdly sweet person who seems forced into the plot to a) provide a love triangle for Finn and Rey b) provide this forced sunny outlook that I didn’t really need in the film.

We get Rey never really being trained, going into the Cave of Wonders for a few seconds, falling in love with Kylo Ren over weird Force Skype calls (where I did not need to see him shirtless, thank you film) and being horrifically betrayed when Kylo Ren turns out not to be a great guy. Never saw that coming, Rey.

As for Kylo Ren, well... God, we get Emperor Kylo Ren. Kylo Ren, the Emperor. I’m not even that upset about the anticlimactic murder of Snoke (that was kind of funny, especially in the context of Palpatine going, “Bitch, please, you’re in my chair” immediately in the next film) but just Kylo Ren being emperor. And also that the Resistance only escapes at all because he’s so dumb he made their dumb plans seem smart (i.e. concentrates all his firepower on an illusion for ten minutes while Hux goes, “Emperor, sir, we could actually destroy the Resistance right now.”

Now, you’ll notice I didn’t complain about Luke. A lot of people are upset he became a grumpy, miserable, old hermit who sits around waiting for death. Frankly though, in this universe, that’s exactly where he is. He left “Return of the Jedi” thinking he’d saved the world, he’s resurrected the Jedi Order, and all is well. Only a decade later, his students are all murdered by his nephew, the Empire’s back, and he accomplished nothing. He’s an utter failure as a Jedi (though Luke never realizes he knew jack shit about the Jedi Order and was in way over his head but I guess that’s beyond him). Why shouldn’t he go sit on a rock and wait to die?

Now, did he have to drink that blue dinosaur milk? Well, I guess it was funny, gross but funny so... Sure, I guess he did. But I do like that he gave Rey 0 training, they had one meditation session and then he whined about how Obi-Wan was such a stupid asshole. And then Rey ran off to be with her boyfriend, who then told her that her parents were gutter trash (which again, was funny, but I don’t think that was supposed to be funny).

Of the characters introduced in the movie, the only one I really liked was the hacker, and it was for the actor/the beautiful way in which he gracefully exited stage left with zero shame going, “You all knew I was going to betray you!” You beautiful man, you.

Rise of the Skywalker

First, when something is called “Rise of the Skywalker” you know you’re in for a rough time.

But anyways, TLJ was filled with a controversy Disney didn’t want (half their audience hated it, half loved it, but at least they sold those penguin dolls) so they desperately get Abrams back. Only, what he clearly wanted from his series has been shot to hell, and now he’s left with Emperor Kylo Ren, a completely obliterated Resistance, a dead Luke, a love interest he never planned to introduce for Finn, Rey’s parental crisis being solved with trash people, Snoke just suddenly dead, Hux planning revenge, and then some.

And so, Abrams goes the brave and hilarious route of shouting “PRETEND THAT LAST MOVIE NEVER HAPPENED”

We open to a fully functioning Resistance (their bomber fleet is back, their fleet period is back, they have all their fully trained personnel). We have Rey getting the Jedi training she needed this time from Leia, who is now a Jedi, because yay feminism rammed down my throat to make the audience feel better. Rose says “It’s cool guys, I don’t want to join the adventure this film, I’m going to stay here and work on robots” so that she can gracefully exit the entire plot. Kylo Ren is demoted from Emperor in two seconds when we discover that a) Snoke was apparently Palpatine b) for unexplained reasons Palpatine’s alive (and I am now convinced that man will never die). Kylo Ren tells Rey at the first opportunity that he lied about her trash parents AND REALLY SHE’S A PALPATINE! THIS WHOLE TIME, REY! THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT. I’M SUPER SERIAL THIS TIME, REY.

Basically, in the course of an overly long movie, Abrams desperately shoves in everything he was trying to get out of the series, while sobbing, and sobbing even harder when things like Finn being Force Sensitive or Lando having a secret daughter get caught. I actually agree with the Producers on this, by the way, the Finn trying to tell Rey something scenes were weird and indicative of a love triangle but him being Force Sensitive instead... It says a lot that the movies did not change when it was removed, at all. And Lando was just this strange cameo who was in the film to make us feel nostalgic.

And this isn’t even getting to the ridiculous 24 hour time limit (which made me think there should have been some video game style clock in the corner letting us know when Dawn of the Third Day is coming), Palpatine’s other secret army on a secret Sith planet that can be easily taken down by taking out one navigation tower, Rey’s hilarious struggle with the dark side in which she has a vision of herself in a cape hissing, Kylo Ren’s hilarious redemption in which the movie in the form of Leia and Han Solo says, “Alright, Ben, it’s time to stop being evil” and he says “okay”, the fight with Palpatine in which I’m supposed to believe he dies for reals because... I have no idea why I’m supposed to believe he’s dead. The Reylo, god the Reylo, and Kylo Ren’s tragic, hilarious, death.

And then, of course, the ending where Rey decides she’s a Skywalker now.

I actually did laugh all the way through “Rise of the Skywalker”, you can’t not, I mean it’s a hilariously awful movie. The only thing that might have made it more hilarious was if we actually did get those Ewoks.

TL;DR

They’re all bad movies, if you want more specifics than this, you’re just going to have to ask me questions.

#ask #anon #anti star wars sequels #anti rey #anti kylo ren #anti reylo #ah what beautiful awful movies #i look foward to the characters being shocked and appalled when yet another evil empire arises in five years #i look forward to them being even more shocked when palpatine's still not dead #that man will never die

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wondereads · 3 years ago

Text

Personal Review (09/19/21)

Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo

Why am I reviewing this book?

I first read this book in freshman year when it was the only book my entire book club liked. Now, it's really grown in popularity and a TV show has come out, so it seemed like a great time to reread it (because I didn't remember a thing) and finally finish the duology.

Plot 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Six criminal teenagers pull off a heist to break someone out of the most secure prison in the world for a prize that could solve all their problems. They are lead by Kaz Brekker, a thief so ruthless he verges on urban legend, and consist of Inej, an acrobat-turned-spy paying off her indenture, Jesper, a sharpshooter with a gambling addiction, Nina, a heartrender who'll flirt with anything with a pulse, Matthias, a disgraced witch hunter in it for a pardon, and Wylan, a demolitions expert with no field experience.

The plot is so incredibly fast-paced. Even at the beginning, when the scene is being set and they're just preparing for the trip, gang stand-offs and long-standing grudges keep the story moving. The heist itself is one of the most ingenious, chaotic things I've ever read, and then it ends with a horrible cliffhanger that will make you instantly pick up the next book. In case you can't wrap your mind around it, the Ice Court Heist is so clever it takes me a moment to understand how the characters get from Point A to Point B, and yet I never once stopped in confusion because things were explained as they went.

My only complaint is that it relies a little heavily on the worldbuilding established in Shadow and Bone. For example, Nina's powers, while exemplified throughout the book, are never really explained. I remember when I read it for the first time that I had no idea what a Grisha was, and I kind of just had to pick up context clues because there is no definition given.

Characters 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

The character development in this book is impeccable. Each of the six gets their own arc (complete with a tragic backstory), and their development is worked into the plot, which forces them to face their troubles straight on. Buckle in, this is a long section.

Kaz, everyone's favorite, heartless, teenage mob boss, who starts off so unemotional at the beginning, gradually begins to allow himself to feel again. It's only for Inej, not everyone, but it's a start. His backstory is absolutely horrific, and, even though he is the self-titled Bastard of the Barrel, you find yourself rooting for him.

Inej's revelation in the incinerator shaft (yes, that is an actual part of the book) made me want to cheer. After so many aimless years, I was so proud of her to have established a clear goal for herself, and such a badass one too. I also appreciated that she set some clear boundaries with Kaz since a lot of YA romances tend to just throw away those sorts of reasonable concerns in favor of ~true love~.

Jesper makes me hurt. I really feel for him; he's the prime example of a kid in too deep, and I think if any of them got their money I would want it to be him so he can fix his past mistakes and start again. Besides that, he's a funny character that isn't reduced to comic relief, and I like action best from his perspective.

Nina is a walking easter egg for fans of Shadow and Bone. I didn't realize it my first go because I hadn't read the original trilogy, but the number of times she name-drops a character or event from there...I loved it. She's a levelheaded, badass woman who's comfortable in sexuality but not oversexualized. I do wish she'd gotten some more attention here, but I do know that the bulk of her arc is in Crooked Kingdom.

Matthias grew on me. I didn't like him much, but he presented an interesting dilemma–loyalty to love or loyalty to home. I liked watching the struggle between his beliefs and what he's been taught and the new friends he's made and their contrasting lifestyles. I also appreciate that he is the #1 simp for the girls in the group.

Finally, Wylan is a bit tough. There are no chapters from his perspective in the first book, which makes sense because he's got some information that would spoil everything. Still, he was absolutely hilarious in my opinion and his gradual corruption through his time spent with the crows was great. I mean, this fifteen-year-old kid wanted to wake up guards so Jesper could kill them guilt-free.

Writing Style 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

The writing is really good. It shifts nicely between the more serious and humorous scenes. I think the romance is written very well. There's quite a bit of it and yet it never overpowers the plot. I never had a moment of "please dear god we get it you're in love let's move on now", which is something that plagues YA.

As for the humor, it was really good in this book. There were points I had to hold back a snort because I was in class, and each of the characters, even Kaz and Matthias, got a chance for a fun one-liner or sarcastic quip. "My ghost won't associate with your ghost."

Meaning 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 N/A

Be gay do crime. I'd say I'm just kidding but this book pretty much says breaking into a prison for a bounty is okay if you and your friends really need the money.

Overall 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

This book was great the first time and amazing the second time. It was well written, it was fast-paced, it was funny, it made me feel, it was all the things a good book should be. It's probably one of the best YA adventure books out there, and any adult would probably be able to read this and enjoy it. There's a reason it's so popular! I would recommend this book to people who enjoy heists, three-dimensional characters, and morbid humor.

The Author

Leigh Bardugo: 46, Israeli-American, Jewish, also wrote Shadow and Bone and Ninth House

The Reviewer

My name is Wonderose; I try to post a review every two weeks, and I take recommendations. Check out my about me post for more!

#books #reviews #six of crows #leigh bardugo #grishaverse #fantasy #ya

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loving-barnes · 5 years ago

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TED MOSBY – THE ONE (1)

(A/N): I needed a change and I have decided to write a HIMYM fanfic. This might have two or three parts. I have been watching the whole show again and honesly, I am obsessed with Ted. So... if you like or love HIMYM, this one is for you. Also, this is around season 5 mixed with an AU.

Pairing: Ted Mosby x reader

Warnings: none

Words: 2013

TED MOSBY – THE ONE

After all the break-ups and girls, he was ready to settle down. Usually, when he found a girl and started dating her, he would tell his friends that someone new came into his life. Maybe because of that his relationships didn’t work out. Maybe… This time, he decided to keep it as private as possible and not tell them about the new woman in his life until they were ready. It was a mutual decision. She was glad that he proposed the idea because she was only in one relationship before Ted and so, she wanted to take things a bit slow.

They would hang out together when Ted’s roommate was away or they would stay at her place because she lived alone.

“My friends come and go into our apartment, so it’s better we are mostly crashing at your place. And besides, I love it here,” said Ted to Y/N when they spend their three-month anniversary at her place. It was a simple Chinese takeout night with Star Wars. Ted wanted to watch it, just to be sure she loved the movies as much as he did.

“This is my favourite part,” she squealed excitedly.

Ted’s eyes widened and he looked at her. He stopped breathing for a moment and just stared at her face, noticing how her eyes were sparkling and he just knew that she was the one, at least the one worth saying those three powerful words.

Y/N turned to him with a smile. “What’s up?” she asked.

“I love you,” he said – simple, short and powerful.

Her hand reached for the remote control and she paused the movie. After that, she put down her plate with food and again turned to him. “Really?”

Ted nodded, still smiling. It was a genuine smile that she loved so much. “I mean it. I love you.”

And then she was on him, kissing him deeply. Then she realised one unpleasant thing. She pulled away from him. “I’m so sorry, my breath after the spicy chicken…”

“That’s alright,” he leaned to her again, capturing her lips with his.

After the kiss, she curled to his side with a plastered smile on her face. “I love you too, Ted.”

In the end, it was a good thing they decided to keep it low-key. This way, they could enjoy their time together and cherish their moments without being interrupted by Ted’s friends, mostly Barney.

Even though Barney had a thing for Robin, he would hit on Y/N a lot – Ted was sure of it. Deep down, he was scared to introduce his new girlfriend to Barney.

“Ted?” Y/N asked him the next morning when they were having a very early breakfast before work. “If you agree and if you want, I would like to meet your friends. I think I am ready,” she said.

As much as it made him happy that she wanted to meet the people he considered as family, his gut was telling him to wait a little more. “Uhm-“ he started slowly, carefully considering his next words. “About that,” he took a deep breath. “I am so glad you want to meet my friends, but could we wait a bit more, please?”

She put down her mug with coffee. “Sure,” she didn’t know what to think. “No rush. Can I at least know why? Should I be worried or scared?” she kinked a brow.

Ted took a deep breath. She needed to know some information about his friends. “They mean well, I know that, but sometimes they can be either overprotective or make everything to make fun of me. I don’t mind the second one it’s just… it might scare you off.”

She laughed a little and bit her lower lip. “Go on,” she goaded him.

“I will come clean with you. There is this girl in our group – Robin – and we used to date for a year. I don’t have any feelings for her. She is just a friend and a family, nothing more. Lily, she still thinks I might have feelings for her. I don’t. The only feelings I have are that I love you.”

“Alright,” she nodded.

“Doesn’t that bother you?”

Y/N shook her head. “Honestly, maybe a little but overall, no. I would be more worried if you met someone after me. That I would be more worried about,” she admitted. “Anything else I should know?”

Ted was pleasantly surprised that she was fine with it. “Uh, Barney, he is a womanizer and a sociopath. In the end, he is a very good friend of mine. I just want to warn you that he might hit on you, a lot.”

“And the one named Lily?”

“Right, Lily is married to Marshall. We studied at the same university. Marshall is my best friend. Lily occasionally wants to meddle in someone’s business or relationship. Usually, it is not a bad thing.”

Y/N laughed. “Seems like you are trying to say all the negative things about your friends so I wouldn’t be too shocked.”

“Pretty much,” he nodded. “So, would you still like to meet them?”

She stood up from the chair and went to him. Without a word, she sat on his lap and gave his lips a peck. “They are your friends. I want to meet them. If they don’t like me, there is nothing I can do about it.”

“God, you are amazing,” he kissed her one more time. “How about Friday night? I will come for you and we will go to McLaren’s where we hang out most of the time.”

“Sounds like a deal,” she accepted his idea.

…

He hadn’t seen the gang for over a week. When he was done teaching architecture, he went straight to the pub where his friends would already be. And he was right. They were all sitting in their usual booth, drinking beer.

“Well, look who decided to show up,” said Lily when she noticed him coming towards them. “Where have you been most of the time? We barely have seen you this century.”

Ted took a chair and sat at the head of the table. “Sorry guys, I had a lot to do at work,” he said it as if it was true. “Sometimes, it is not easy to be a teacher.”

“Seriously Ted, what is going on?” Marshall asked him.

“Nothing, really.”

“Where’s the poop, Ted?” Lily questioned.

“There is no poop, Lily. I had to create several tests for my students, prepare the lectures and had a meeting with the school council.” He said it while directly staring into her eyes.

They were quiet for a moment until Barney decided to open his mouth. “Alright, since you are here, we shall play our favourite game to get you laid.”

“Barney, no.”

“Come on, Ted. We haven’t played it for months. FOR MONTHS, Ted,” he stood up from his seat with his scotch in a hand.

While he was babbling about it, Ted’s phone vibrated in his pocket. He received a text from Y/N.

Hi, I am passing by your street and I was wondering if you would like to hang out or something?

As much as he tried not to smile, he failed, and Robin was the one that noticed it. “Ted Mosby smiling at his phone? Something is definitely going on.”

I’m inside McLaren’s with the gang. Come here and meet everyone, if you like.

“There definitely is a poop. Spill it out, Mosby,” Robin mocked him.

He kept his mouth shut, not telling them anything. “Oh man, what did you do?” Marshall was concerned. “Ted, tell us. You have never been this silent. What happened?”

“Wait a minute,” Barney sat down and pointed at Ted’s face. “I know this face.”

And before he could say that he might meet a girl, a young woman approached the table carefully. “Ted,” said Y/N softly.

He turned his head and smiled at her. He stood up, helped her with her jacket and offer her his chair. Afterwards, he grabbed himself a new one.

“Y/N, this is everyone. Everyone, this is Y/N, my girlfriend.”

Barney almost choked on his drink and thus sprayed it on Marshall and Lily who were sitting opposite them. “What? No, no! You are supposed to be my wingman. You are not supposed to date anyone for at least five years.” He left the booth and went somewhere else to cry.

“So, I guess that is Barney,” said Y/N while looking into Ted’s eyes.

“Exactly,” he nodded.

Lily was the next one to finally speak. “Hi, this is a surprise,” she stuttered. “Honestly a big surprise. I’m Lily and this is my husband, Marshall,” she pointed at the tall man next to her. “H-how long have you been together?”

“For over three months,” they said simultaneously.

“You kept it a secret for over three months? How? How did you manage to keep your mouth shut for that long?” Marshall couldn’t believe it.

Y/N was glad for a second that she was not the centre of the attention. They were bombarding Ted for trying to keep this relationship a secret. In the meantime, she ordered herself a beer.

“So, Y/N, tell us something about you? Or better, how did you two meet?” Lily turned her attention to her.

Y/N shrugged. “Honestly, there is nothing special about how we met. We simply bumped into each other on the street when suddenly, everything was on the ground and Ted was apologizing,” she smiled at the memory. “I was running to an important meeting and Ted was late for class.”

“After that, we met like a week later when I happened to be at the right time in the right place,” he looked into her eyes. “Some of my students told me that there was a reading in the library after class. I was not interested in going at all,” he admitted. “Then, they showed me the leaflet and there she was.”

“There I was,” she repeated almost inaudibly.

Barney came back to the booth with another scotch in his hand. “Traitor,” he said it out loud. “Marshall, you are my new and only wingman.”

“In your dreams,” he declined.

“Just wait, Mosby. This thing,” he pointed between Y/N and Ted, “will end soon and then you will be begging to be my wingman.”

“So, what do you do for a living?” Robin tried to turn the conversation where it was before Barney interrupted them.

“I am a writer. I wrote the Noble Blood trilogy and am currently working on another fantasy book.”

“I love the Noble Blood series,” Marshall almost scream from the sudden excitement. “You are Y/N Y/L/N. Holy crap, I can’t believe you were able to get her, Ted. Finally, someone normal.”

“I’m glad you like the books,” she smiled at him.

“I love them,” Marshall continued. “They are written for both boy and girls. What inspired you to write something like that?”

“Star Wars,” she said simply.

“She loves Star Wars?”

“She loves Star Wars,” said Ted.

“She loves Star Wars!” Barney exclaimed. “You just went from a 7 to solid 11.”

“Thanks?” Y/N was a bit offended and confused.

Robin joined the conversation. “Hey, I work for Channel 12 and I would like to make an interview with you.”

“You work for the news channel? That is so cool. I would love to. We should arrange something,” Y/N happily accepted. “One question, though: Is Sandy Rivers still there and being such a pig?”

Robin nodded, immediately annoyed by that man. “Sandy Rivers is a pig, but he is not working with me.”

“S-so, you’ve seen my show: Come on, Get up New York!?”

“Surprisingly yes. When I had to leave for Europe to promote the book, I would watch it while packing or getting ready for the flight.”

“My girlfriend is just awesome,” said Ted triumphantly and he quickly kissed her cheek.

“Alright, next round is on me. I am so happy to meet you. Really,” she gave them an honest smile and went to the bar.

#Ted Mosby #Ted Mosby x reader #HIMYM #How I met Your Mother #Ted Mosby fanfiction #HIMYM fanfiction #fanfiction #How I Met Your Mother fanfiction #Ted #Lily #Marshall #Barney #Robin #enjoy

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popculturebuffet · 4 years ago

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Ducktales Final Four: The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck Review! or The Batman Trial Episode but with Ducks, Sharks, And the Fonz

Hello all you happy people and welcome to the penultimate Ducktales review... for season 3 anyway. I still have most of season 1, all of season 2 (I did cover one but I’ll probably redo it), the tie-in comics, the 87 series, and even then i’ll never really be done with ducks between all the scrooge comics and other duck related shows like Darkwing Duck and Quack Pack. But as far as covering the show as it comes out as i’ve done for the past year, that’s’ts almost done. It’s honestly just starting to hit as I type this: this is the second to last episode. After next week while there’s always fan fiction (And I certainly aim to contribute to that), a possible Darkwing Duck Reboot under frank (though that’s in doubt) where they could show up, and a movie down the road given what we saw with Phienas and Ferb and the show’s popularity it’s still not the same as getting these well animated, well crafted adventures every week with breaks or the ocasional entire week of them. The show won’t go on, and whatever happens with the property next is a mystery no amount of ducks can solve.

So with all that in mind naturally this episode is a breather episode: It’s not unimportant: like the rest of the season it ties off a lot of loose ends, adds in some stuff we didn’t know we wanted, and in general feels necessary like every episode this season. It’s something I credit the season for immensley: They knew this would probably be it so while they had more stories to tell, they made sure if these were their last, to leave no loose ends. And outside of ones they just never wanted to address in the first place like “What happened to Donald’s parents”, “Why was every trace of Della missing despite Scrooge’s search for her having just ended”, and “What did Della thing of the decades long seperation”, they’ve tied up pretty much all of them except for FOWL and what Beakly was lying about, and I feel both are about to ducktail into one another int he finale. Could be wrong but I applaud them for tying off almost every loose end and character arc by this episode that isn’t related to FOWL in some way. Not every show can do that: She Ra was a masterpiece but still had a few things like Scorpia and Catra’s broken relationship, Hordak’s reformation and Adora’s Parents just left up in the air due to time constraints, Steven Universe ONLY got to go back and answer a lot of questions because they were lucky enough to get an epilogue mini series, and Star Vs... was not as good as either show by the end and by the finale about 80% of things it’d brought up all had the following answer:

My point is it’s VERY hard, even when you know the end is coming to tie everything up in a neat bow. And I can’t know how good the finale be or how satsifying it will be but given how well this season’s wrapped everything up so far, i’m betting on immensely. But we can talk about that when it finally comes around next week. For now we have a trial episode to talk about that’s mostly good.. mostly. See why the mostly under the cut as I discuss and recap the episode with full spoilers. Count it down!

We open in the Mansion, where a bunch of tribble like Fuzzy creatures are running amok. Unsuprisingly, Scrooge bought one for Louie as a pet to teach him responsiblity.. again. And once again he instead turned into a get rich quick scheme, didn’t read the manual and now they have an infestation.

ONCE AGAIN, Louie is written like he’s barely changed at all in the past three seasons. Anyone whose been following my reviews regularly knows this has been a pet peeve of mine for the entire season. Despite having an ENTIRE arc about Louie growing as a character and learning the human cost of his scheming and to use his angle seeing talent’s wisely, the writers keep writing him as if he learned nothing. I went back to track it and while not as often as it felt I noticed a few things. The first is that it WASN’T like this for the first half of the season. No really. He even learns brand new lessons in The Trickening and Louie’s Eleven. Granted he also exploits his uncle in Louie’s Eleven but that’s mostly played for laughs.. still not a great bit but not a major part of the episode.

So he was fine for the first act of the season... but then for whatever reason from Let’s Get Dangerous onwards (Again I don’t count the Christmas episode as both of those are meant to slot in anywhere and chronologically take place before this season for the timeline to make any sense), he’s just...

He’s utterly insufferable in his small parts of the first half of Let’s Get Dangerous! as he berates Huey for daring to look a gifthorse int he mouse.. even though everytime he’s seemingly got something for nothing or minimal effort it’s backfired and it’s something that seeemd to stick with “The Richest Duck in the World!”. He’s fine in Impossibin and alright in split sword as while he clearly hadn’t learned lying isn’t the best policy we at least got a good story out of it. He then went right back to obnoxious with New Gods on the Block where he, EPISODES AFTER THE SOLEAGEO FISACO again thinks an easy way out is the right way, and has NO guilt over possibly killing a bunch of people with his gold powers and in fact is disapointed he dosen’t get to keep a living being turned to gold!. He spents all of Fight for Castle McDuck being a huge dick to Huey AGAIN iwth no lesson, and now has yet another family endagering get rich quick scheme he feels no remorse about.

I will admit when I”m wrong and I DID think it was in way more of the season than I thought. And let’s face it in real life personal issues don’t just go away and you can sometimes slide back, i’ve done it way too many times and i’m not proud of it. We’re only human. But this isn’t real life, this is cartoon ducks. And cartoon duck wise most character development has stuck or if a bad trait’s come back it’s been in a new way. Webby is still trusting, but knows how the world works now and while idolizing scrooge dosen’t think he’s perfect anymore. Huey is no longer a skpetic towards the super natural and hasn’t forced a party on anyone. Dewey hasn’t craved other people’s love or thought he needed to earn his mom’s love again. And that’s just the other kids. They aren’t the same people theyw ere going in, neither is Louie. So it’s grating when an episode acts like h’es exactly the same, let alone almost a fifth of the season.

What makes it even worse though is that he had an ENTIRE STORY ARC dedicated to learning some of these lessons already. With the others if one episode were forgotten i’d let it slide as it happens with tv, i’m used to it. It’s not a great look but it happens. Mistakes happen again we’re all human. But you can’t act like an entire arc of a series didn’t exist. While they ignore Della’s history somehow being hidden for the rest of the show they don’t ignore that Dewey spent a whole season looking for her, as he never hides something like that from his brothers again nor do they, and he’s out of them the biggets mama’s boy. While they did take a while to adress Lena, partly because the episode got pushed back, they didn’t act like season 1 never happened and she was still working for her aunt. Della still isn’t on the moon and Owlson still isn’t working for glomgold. Actions. Have. Consequences. That’s the whole point of this episode, but they act like none of it got through to louie and it makes his arc feel like a giant waste in hindsight. This episode even feels like it was SUPPOSED to be in that arc: Louie is back to his season 2 characterization, Scrooge is actively trying to mentor him again.. it just feels really out of place as our second to last episode in that way and drags it down a bit.

Thankfully after Scrooge bars the door, and possibly leaves everyone to their deaths but he presumably has enough faith in the kids, the twins and Beakley to take care of it, he gets a summons to court.. and gets kidnapped. He and Louie are whisked away to a mystic court presided over by a giant statue of justice holding scales, that judges someone based on Karma. Scrooge’s foes have brought him to court, blaming him for being evil and if he looses he looses EVERYTHING. And their proscutor?

Sadly not Droopy, maybe next continuity, but searing the same Hannibal-Esque Getup is Doofus Drake to Louie’s horror. As for why he’s like this.. he thought iht was fun. Great gag.

After the credits we find out why he’s doing this: He’s still pissed about Louie taking half his inheritance and giving it to his family, so he’s going to take LOUIE’S inheritance. It’s.. honestly a great setup: Doofus was already a villian I liked, being a nice weird evil mirror dewey instead of a walking fat joke like last series. So I was glad to both see him pop up one last time to make it a full trilogy of apperances as an angonist and to see him take a step up from his passive roll in the past: in his first two apperances while he was evil and abusive, and still is, his evil was mostly due to his own warped logic, feeling he could put shock collars on and control people and that Louie lying to him was enough to warrant making him into a pinata. He’s still a bad person mind you: kid or not he ensdlaved his parents, tried to enslave louie and goldie and in general REALLY needs some help empathizing with people. But my point is that before he didn’t come after anyone.. so it’s a nice capper to have his final turn as antaognist be him going after our hero.. and at his most dangerous. Before someone would’ve come for Louie eventually in Doofus’ first apperance and Goldie would’ve found a way out or Scrooge, despite grumbling about it, would’ve helped.. if nothing else than to lord having to save her from a 12 year old over her. Here if he wins the family is out on the street and three of their greatest enemies are now infinitely more well funded.

So while naturally unnerved by his rival Louie offers to defend Scrooge who denies it despite the fact that Louie is REALLY good with words, and Scrooge, while not bad with them, can’t stop shouting and keeps pissing off the baliff, played by my boy Henry Winkler whose done a lot of voice work and also played Fonzie on Happy Days, is currently on the HBO series barry and in general is just a fucking delight. The irony is also not lost on me that he’s not playing a lawyer here despite being one on arrested development.

We get our first witness: FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD. Hell. Yes. It’s nice to see him in his full glory one last time, as I don’t know how much he’ll be in the finale. Scrooge blows of the Duke Baloney thing, which is fair given that while Scrooge screwed up there, Glomgold still stole money from him right after and then spent his whole life trying to one up him. But Glomgold has a different tale in mind as he stole something else from him: the limelight.

It was 1980-something and Glomgold was a bonified celebrity in Duckberg for his hot dogging, grandstanding and treasure hunting loved by all and took Baba Wawa, a nice mix of Barbra Walters and the parody of her on SNL by the late Gilda Radner, to a shark shaped cave to get the gem of the shark god, a ruby tooth at the end of the cave. Naturally Scrooge popped up and easily made his way through and stole the spotlight. As it turns out he wasn’t always well loved and it makes sense: he dismises Baba asking him about how disliked he is, and dosen’t care and even in the current story, or rather season 1 of it, he dismiseed PR entirely in Jaw$. He was rich enough and enough of a job provider he just didn’t see the need for fame or glory, that just came second so it’s logical no one liked him. Fortunes naturally reverse as you’d expect though: Glomgold dashes forward and ends up putting Baba and her camerabird in danger and being Glomgold he irrationally assumes she’s working for Scrooge and leaves her to die. Scrooge however, after getting the rock, goes out of his way to save her because it’s the right thing to do. He can be selfish at times, and as we’ll see monstrously so, but at his core Scrogoe is a good man who will do right when the chips are down. So this leaves Glomgold trapped and Scrogoe getting his good press instead and realizes he likes the attention.

As the flashback ends Glomgold fills in the gaps, pointing out he was stuck with the sharks for days, but slowly bonded with them learned from them and they became family, helping him with traps, joining him for thanksgiving and even getting a heart taatoo with a shark on it. Awww. Look I didn’t really need to know where Glomgold’s love of sharks came from, nor that he had some weird tarzan origin story with them.. but my life is 100% better knowing all of this so thank you Frank and Matt. Thank you. I’m also entirely convinced the two have had this whole part of his backstory ready to go for three seasons and were waiting to use it, along with the other two bits we’re about to get to. This episode as you can tell is also a vingette episode, but one where the wraparound is way more improtant than usual.. but it works given the setting and allows the stories to be as long as they actually need to be, and it addds some nice stakes instead of just having Scrooge’s villians gripe about him.

Scrooge protests and the Bailiff puts a clamp on his beak, so he has no choice in the matter when Louie steps up for the defense. Louie also proves that irresponsible he may be.. he’d be a damn good lawyer, as he easily picks things apart, pointing out Glomgold was ALREADY bad by then, Scrooge had no intent to steal the spotlight and Glomgold is currently planting dynamite under his chair, with predictable and hilarious results. So he gets put on the “good” side of the scale. Next witness.

Next up is Ma, and I was delighted that as I’d hoped and theroized this episode wrapped up one little plot point that while not major, was something I was curious about: Ma’s claims Scrooge stole Duckburg from her family. This was also likely the backbone of the episode at one point as Frank pitched a beagle trial episode at one time, but Disney nixed it. Likely the magic stuff was added both to justify it better and to distract Disney Channel’s higher ups because they constantly underestimate what a child will like. It was for the best though as the beagles are just a bit weaker here: While Character Actress Margo Martindale is a delight and was specifically cast for the role, overall it just feels like they ran out of ways to make the beagles a big threat and releigated them to muscle when needed, to the point they only appeared in one episode besides this one this season as with FOWL about, they didn’t really need villians of the week and what ones they did use like Glomgold and Mark were far more entertaining villains who needed a coda to their stories.They aren’t bad characters, but in a series where their breaking into the bin or mansion wasn’t a story the crew was interested in they served no real purpose.

So we finally get answers about the whole Deed thing: It was sometime in Ma’s childhood, good look guessing when, and the Beagles owned Duckburg having clearly overwhelmed Fort Duckburg at some point in history between Clinton’s defense of it and now, with Grandpa “Pa” Beagle finally making an apperance. In the comics he was basically what Ma is to both series: the scheming brains behind the beagles who showed up on occasion and it was a good idea to use him as the past version of her.

Scrooge naturally comes a calling and unsurprisingly Ma was lying: Scrooge offered to buy the place first from Pa, he refused outright, and then when Scrooge showed off the money he was offering, Pa bet the deed for it in an arm wrestling contest. Not only that but as Scrooge finds out as he almost looses, Pa was cheating having a smaller beagle boy operate pull a lever in a device attached to his arm to give pa extra force. Scroooge simply dropped a few coins to distract the guy and claimed victory and the deed.

Little Ma is left dejected though and Doofus claims he ruined his life, but Louie steps up, at this poitn Scrooge has learned to reign himself ina nd accepted Louie as his defense without saying anything, a nice subtle bit. He probably realized that while irrepsonsible.. Louie has everything to loose her and no reason to slack off and dosen’t even relaly have to lie for his uncle to get him off: he’s simply using his ablitiy to see all the angles to poke holes in their story.

Case in point, he orders the “tape” to continue and finds Little Ma berating her dad for his failure and forcefully taking control of the family. LIke Glomgold, Scrooge may of cost her something.. but it was something she and her family hadn’t earned and they were still on a bad road. Scrooge just made it worse.

But suprisingly, its MAGICA, who we’ve established is an uncaring monster, who has a story Scrooge genuinely feels bad about. Like the rest she was not a good person: Long ago she and her brother Poe were extorting a villiage, and lording over it as gods, changing the population into goats, toads and other things. The only diffrence from what Magica would do to the blot and presumiibly others later, is that Poe reigned in her manical tend ices, trying to get her to think things through. The goat transformation was so they’d have milk and at least get something out of it and as to not waste all their slaves. Poe is voiced by Martin Freeman of The Hobbit and Black Panther fame. Great actor, does amazing work here. So like the others Scrooge changed things, and fought someone with bad intentions for his own self. He talked Magica into fighting him with both amulets by playing into her ego and Poe trying to talk her down, and easily deflected her bolt with the dime to turn her into a crow with her own spell. So far it’s just like the other tales in a nice mirror.. it’s what comes next that makes Scrooge into a bad guy too. Not as bad as Magica and Poe.. but sitll not good. Poe dives selflessly in front of the coin.. and shockingly while she cared nothing for Lena.. that wasn’t the case for Poe. Magica is truly devastated, desperatly trying to put the amulet back on and begging scrooge for help while he just ignores her and fills up his sack. And while they both deserved it... Scrooge and Louie both recognize he was wrong as the flashback ends with Poe escaping and Magica sitll haven’t having found him to this day. And props to Catharine Tate here a she takes a normally hammy terrible person who was wholly unsympathetic and manages to make her painfully human.

What makes the act so terrible is not who it happened to, they both desrved it, but Scrooge’s attitude, utterly callous to magica’s pain with not a drop of sympathy. While she deserved it as did Poe.. he’s not doing this to her as some justice for her crimes, or because she did something horrible to him or any valid reason.. he’s doing it because he’d rather get more of her and poes gold than lift one finger to help someone who had , for all his evil, selflessly sacrificed himself for his sister. For all Poe’s evil and tyranny.. there MIGHT of been a good man in them, in both of them.. and Scrooge could’ve cared less. He shut the door on Magica ever becoming a good person, ever getting her brother back to line his own wallet and to satisfy his own ego. See that’s the true mark of a hero: how they treat others, even the worst of them. And in his lowest moment Scrooge could’ve cared less about anyone but himself.

Scrooge feels bad and Louie does finally get the responsibility thing and this is where things start to go off the rails: he apologizes to Doofus and admits he dosen’t want an enteral rivalry and h’es sorry for any pain he caused. The off the rails part is because Doofus is genuinely not a good person, ahs done very bad things and is trying to bankrupt Louie for the crime of “taking half your fortune after you used it to torment and enslave your own parents’. It just.. dosen’t play as well as they’d like. That said I DO like both Louie deciding to bury the hatchet instead of just avoiding him and Doofus showing some nobiity in accepting it. Maybe he’ll change.

He goes off into the night, and Scrooge genuinely apologizes and accepts repsonsiblity... and here’s where the plot finishing going off the rails and into someone’s living room: the bailiff AWARDS THEM SCROOGE’S FORTUNE BECAUSE HE ADMITTED SOME CUPLABLITY AND WAS HUMBLE.

This just.. it makes no sense, it will never not baffle me and it hurts my brain> Yes he admitted some wrong doing and apologized for it.. but it was also THROUGHLY proven the other two weren’t his fault, and he was simply being a good man which should get him some good. Thankfully the conclusion is a bit better, as Louie points out while they made him, he made you so who made who, who made you... okay i’m getting into the AC/DC of things point is these incidents all shaped Scrooge into a better person. His mistake with Magica. is clearly learned from. He’s stopping a group of bullies in Ma’s story and saving a life without a second thought in the second. He learned to value others, to value family all because THEY showed him what happens when you don’t. By seeing the worst person he could be.. he became the best. So the trial’s thrown out his assets are returned, and their teleported out before magica can hit them with lighting. Lesson learned.. well kinda Louie tells scrooge to do it because he got the pet.

Final Thoughts for The Life and Crimes of Scrooge McDuck:

Great title aside.. this one is a mess. It’s not a terrible episode: the flashbacks are genuinely engaging, each one helping flesh out the villians and in Ma’s case pulling one last dangling plot thread. Glomgold’s was just entertaining , clevelry using his 80′s origns for an 80′s style news special and giving us the origin to his love of sharks that we didn’t know we needed., Ma’s tied up a loose plot threat with a fun flashback and Magica’s was genuinely heart wrenching and did the tall task of making us feel for someone that terrible. The wraparound.. was a bit weaker. Doofus was the best part, playing an excellent manipulative bastard lawyer, and being a genuine threat and his walking away peacefully was a nice touch, and Louie having to defend scrooge was great and showed him off better than ever. And Louie did get some moments to shine.. it was just wierldy bookened with him acting terribly AGAIN, in a way he should know better than in an episode where he acts fine for most of it and even then he thinks lying to a judge is a good idea! I know he’s 12 but he’s not this stupid and while as I made very clear i’ve seen this shit before, I haven’t seen it flip flop in the same episode. Louie deserves better than this.

But it’s also in service to a responsiblility aseop that just.. dosen’t work as presented. Yes you should take responsiblity for your past, yes you should learn from your mistakes and own up to them, I have, and yes it’s all too easy to slide back> That’s all fine.. but him apologizing to Ma, whose family was terorrizing a town, and Glomgold, who he did nothing to, and having Louie apologize to Doofus, who while he tried to exploit him still enslaved his own parents and deserved to loose half his fortune AND loosing half his fortune wasn’t even the main thing Louie wanted to do as his main goal was getting BOYD a loving family.. it’s bullshit. Just pure Grade-A bullshit. Why are you booing them their right. It’s a good idea for a moral but it’s executed so overwhelmingly poorly it bogs down what was otherwise an exceptional episode, into just passable. It’s just mind numbing and saddening to know the next to last episode wasted so much good ideas on a clumsy moral. Thankfully I have hope the finale will be better, and again at least we got some good out of this one.

Next Time: Endgame Baby! Clan McDuck and their Amazing Friends Vs F.O.W.L. for the fate of adventure itself! One last ride! I can hardly wait!

This week on the blog: Ducks Ducks and more ducks.. and a top 12 list of my faviorite superheroines later today’s for international women’s day. But after that we have more of the Della arc, the last step in the Lena arc before Shadow War next week, and the 87 ducktales pilot treasure of the golden suns!

If you liked this review, share it around, follow for more, and you can comission your own for 5 dolalrs an issue or episode, or kick in some money on my patroen, link on my blog. Even a dollar a month helps and my next stretch goal is 5 dollars away and if we reach it i’ll review both the super ducktales mini series introducing gizmoduck AND a darkwing duck episode a month. Until the next rainbow it’s been a pleasure.

#ducktales #the life and crimes of scrooge mcduck #scrooge mcduck #louie duck #doofus drake #magica de spell #poe de spell #FLINTHEART GLOMGOLD #ma beagle #the beagle boys #disney channel #disney #ducks #uncle scrooge

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helgisaldo · 3 years ago

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NOTES ON MASC II MASC

Few things are more obnoxious than artists writing about their work, but here I am. These are my thoughts on co-writing for Rene Köster's solo performance "MASC II MASC", sequel in a planned trilogy to his 2017 performance "MASC" in Kanuti Gildi Saal.

After writing some texts for Rene and Carmel Köster's alternative musical Veenus.me, Rene asked me if I wanted to write his next piece together. He had some movements, ideas, sketches in mind and compiled a list of scenes which included four interrogations. My first task was to write them. The overall structure he presented was a very conventional one, with a clear target to end on a Russian prison song, a confessional.

The main character is a man sentenced to a life in prison. In a world where prisons can be profitable and murder mysteries sell, I liked the idea of making the audience believe the main character is wrongly convicted. The first draft of the interrogations was then the police trying to get a false confession out of an innocent man. Except we knew he wasn’t — the crime from the first "MASC" performance was the one we were referencing and dissecting throughout.

"Do you like puzzles, buddy?"

The first episode of the trilogy finds the main character meeting a masculine, powerful and dominating side of himself; it ends up with him killing (and consuming) someone he has sex with. For the second performance, the arc was inverted, and the key was to find power in the feminine. The central question for me became: why did he eat the victim? Was it symbolically an act of nourishment? Perhaps even an act of love?

As with all my first drafts, it was shit. When the rehearsals started and I saw the context of the interrogation more clearly, I realised none of what I had written was working. Writing a police confession tape needed more time and nuance. I shifted gears, deciding to go with more of an internal monologue, a shame tape of a man who doesn’t remember a crime he allegedly committed. This became the central mystery.

The interrogator in the performance, a character voiced by Rene I called “The Man”, became somewhat a joke; a parody of an interrogation even, least not because he channeled his inner Nixon. The more the rehearsals revealed where Rene's ideas were going, the more we shifted the text around. After every rehearsal I kept cutting it down, because it felt too unnecessary. What I felt obligated to keep were the bits where we may feel an ounce of sympathy for the prisoner as a potential victim of abuse. The prisoner never confirms or denies this ever happening, but having that idea out there reflects a side of the "masculine experience" I feel we have to hear more about.

"I will not apologise for my testosterone."

Rene had come up with three set pieces or dream sequences — the painting, the tango and the Britney — which slowly had to start bleeding into the prison reality and collapse it. Every now and then a box would fall from the ceiling to give us a glimpse of the world beyond the prison cell. I will admit the falling boxes as a device seemed a bit of a deus ex machina, but with all the symbols of boxes and gods and machinery, there has to be a justified pun in there somewhere.

Every time the prisoner violated a gender norm in a dream sequence, the live tattooing scenes would “put him in his place”, with set designer Pavel Ivanov performing as the manifestation of a grotesque hypermasculinity. In the tattooing scenes channeling conversion therapies, a set of mantras or "commandments" of masculinity were repeated. I wrote the initial “commandments” for masculinity inspired by memes, redpill pages and of course, the Bible. The commandments were finalised as a team effort by the performers.

"I killed a man and I liked it."

The dream sequences where the prisoner’s femininity is banished to, end up visually retelling one potential story of the crime he has forgotten, and also expand on the ideas of the first MASC using vocals and lyrics — “Fuck me, daddy!” — not present in the original. They also become the emotional core, a lifeline reconnecting the prisoner to what we consider feminine. In there, he finally accepts his power and the crime he committed.

I wrote a (tacky and poetic) version of the confession song for Rene’s consideration, but he asked for something more stupid. I offered he could do a riff on the Katy Perry hit “I Kissed A Girl” and he ran with it, creating my favourite track in the whole performance.

Hopefully the final chapter in the trilogy will confidently move beyond the binary, expand the notion that power and love are inherently without gender, and as shamelessly tackle these issues within a broader queer framework. Photos by: Alan Proosa

#articles

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author-a-holmes · 4 years ago

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Yooo, for the writer asks: 1, 21, and 23? :O

Evening darling, thank you for the asks! ^_^

Answering asks 1, 21, and 23 from this ask list.

1. Is there a story you’re holding off on writing for some reason?

Yes, actually! Right now I'm holding off on completing my Stolen Stories.

In the previous ask I mentioned that I completed the first draft of Book One in my Stolen Stories series between May and October of 2020.

My plan was to continue with that series and write Book Two while doing the first round of edits on Book One, so that I'd be writing Book Three while sending Book One out to Alpha/Beta readers. There's a full 6 books planned for that series, so I wanted to overlap them all slightly, and then eventually publish Book One sort of around the time I started writing Book 4.

But...

When I started looking into the publishing side of actually being a self published author, the reality of the process kind of hit me a little harder than I expected.

The first time you do something, anything, you're bound to make mistakes. I only have to look back at my first story to know that and, for all my years of writing practice, I've never hit the publish button on a book.

And 'Stolen' is my baby, for lack of a better term. Stella Korazon and Reilly Mosswolf are the darlings of my heart. I'd die for them, I'd kill or them. I do not want to "practice" the art of publishing a book with their story.

So Stolen, and it's sequels are currently on hold, and that's why I'm working on the Fey Touched novels right now. That's not to say I love Lizzy and Andric and Booker any less, but I have to split my mind into author and self-publisher. As an author, I love Fey Touched just as much as Stolen, but as a self-publisher a trilogy of 90k books failing is better than a 6-book series where each book is 140k+ failing.

Fey Touched is where I will hit publish for the first time and, hopefully, discover all the mistakes I'll inevitably make so that I can more effectively promote and market Stolen, when that monster of a series is ready for the world at large.

21. What do you think when you read over your older work?

That entirely depends on how old the work is :D

If it's something I've written within the last 1-5 years, then most of the time my reaction is something along the lines of;

"Oh wow, that's pretty good."

"Damn, that's an evocative line. Did I actually write this?"

"I FORGOT ABOUT THAT PART!!"

If, on the other hand, it's something like my first manuscript from when I was age 8 or 9, my reaction is usually something closer to;

"Oh no... that's... oh dear."

"Oh gods, please tell me I didn't say that..."

"Umm... That word doesn't mean what I thought it meant..."

"Bloody hell, I'm glad no one else will ever read this."

Having said that, @faelanvance takes great delight in digging through my old manuscripts and reading them back to me aloud for my ultimate mortification :D

23. Any obscure life experiences that you feel have helped your writing?

Probably too many to fit into a single tumblr post, honestly.

I'm constantly drawing from my own life experiences to put my readers into my characters positions. I can take pain and terror or Joy and Laughter from one set of experiences and then Copy/Paste it, for lack of a better term, into a different situation, but that direct knowledge lets me bring the descriptions to life for the reader. At least, I certainly hope it does!

As for specific situations that I feel have helped my writing... Let me just pick a couple.

(A) My Terrible Health

I mentioned in the previous ask that I was born with congenital talipes. Anyone can google it if they want more information, but it's also known as club foot. As a child, all this really meant to me was that I was constantly in and out of hospitals for operations and physiotherapy and that I wasn't physically able to run, jump, climb trees, or even walk long distances without my feet and legs hurting.

Also, because of the operations I spent a great deal of time in bed, or sitting in wheelchairs, while I recovered.

None of this is said in a negative light, in fact, in terms of my writing I'm rather grateful for all that free time to sit and think and imagine. I was and am a voracious reader. I was reading Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, and David Eddings' The Belgariad by myself at the age of 7 and 8. If I was only going to be allowed one book in hospital, I was going to make sure it was the longest book I could lay my grubby little hands on.

I could lay for hours on the children's ward while other patients yelled and fought over the single playstation or the jigsaw puzzles, and I could create entire worlds in my head. I could bring to life characters that could explore Middle Earth or go on adventures with Belgarath, and I only needed myself and my mind.

Books were a popular gift for me, because I was physically restricted, and then once I began picking up a pen, notebooks, journals, and fancy pens were quick to follow.

I think I would still have found writing, I can't imagine what my life would be like if I hadn't discovered this passion, but I'm not 100% sure I'd have discovered it as early as I did if I'd not been forced to stay still for so much of my childhood.

(B)

Another specific scenario that I feel really helped my confidence in my writing was my High School English teacher, Mr Reck.

I was bullied through most of my schooling, mostly for being on crutches, but this really didn't bother me. I just ignored them.

But one day we had been given a task in class, and I'd already finished, so as I usually did I pulled out my notebook and started writing a story while I waited or the next task.

One of the students thought to get me into trouble by telling Mr Reck that I wasn't doing the work. He came over, looked at my completed work, looked at what I was actually doing (writing an original story), and then told me that if I ever wanted someone to read over my writing and check it, I could always leave it on his desk during lunch... and then he calmly walked away.

This was, for 14-15 year old me, mind blowing.

I didn't care about the bullies, they really didn't bother me. I also wasn't self conscious about my writing, both my parents are and have always been strong supporters of my creative work. The reason this stood out to me at the time, and continues to stand out to me as one of the defining moments of my high school life was because it was the first time someone outside of my immediate family not only read my work, but thought it was good enough to actively encourage.

Mr Reck also got me into a writing workshop that year, that was only supposed to be available to graduating students. I've no idea how he managed it, but he did and I'll be forever grateful to him. I intend to add his name to the dedication page of the first book I publish, and I'm in the process right now of trying to track him down to send him a copy.

I think I've found him, I've just got to get the nerve up to send a private message to confirm!

If there are any teachers out there reading this though, please take note of this final story. I don't know that some teachers realise just how important one, single, non-family member showing a genuine interest in a students work can affect that students entire life.

#Ask Game #Ask Answered #Writer Asks #Ari Speaks #Blindthewind

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redhawtriot · 5 years ago

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Master List✨✨✨

This master-list is a directory (of sorts [look, I tried my best]) of the all of the stories/head canons posted on this page!

SFW=👌

NSFW =💞

Fluff=❤️

Angst=😭

Humor=😂

💞 😂 Endeavor Suga Baby Series: Oneshots and shit posts about being endeavors suga baby lol. (Enji Todoroki x Reader)

Part1 Part2 Part3

👌😂❤️ Crush Journal: How tododeku (separately) would confess to their crushes. a.k.a. Izuku takes notes on how to be the perfect SIMP (Deku x reader Todoroki x Reader)

👌❤️ Bunny: Read this if you have a thing for being called bunny (Todoroki x reader, Bakugou x reader)

👌😂❤️ Art and Oreos: How our two top students deal with having a civilian girlfriend (Bakugou x Reader, Todoroki x Reader)

👌😂❤️ Problem Child: After the cute stage every parent has to eventually deal with a shitty teen. BNHA characters as parents (Midoriya, Shinsou, Bakugou, Iida, Kirishima)

😂 What up my name’s ‘Gerund’ I’m 19 and I never FUCKING learned how to read. Lord, bless this mess (Kaminari x Reader)

👌😂❤️ Koala: You don't want your bed to get cold a.k.a. Todoroki with a clingy ass significant other (Todoroki x Reader)

💞 😭 Nobody’s Hero: Ground Zero saves you from being mugged one night and can’t seem to let you go. Warning: slight non/con (Yandere Bakugou x Reader)

😭 Mirror Images: Warning: mentions of still birth. (Bakugou x Reader)

👌😂❤️ Missed Call form Blasthole: Your first time being invited to spend the night with your boyfriend (Bakugou x Reader)

👌😂❤️ Shinsou Shits: You and your husband, Bakugou, are tasked with babysitting the twin seeds of Satan (Bakugou x Reader ft.Mina x Shinsou)

👌😂 Wanna Win?: Kirishima asks for Bakugou’s help to find the words to tell you that he loves you, but things don’t exactly go according to plan... (Kirishima x Reader ft Kiribaku)

💕😂 Operation Unvirgin: Bakugou never bothered with girls. He’s got too much shit to deal with; however, he finds himself in a world of cognitive dissonance when he hears that his rival is about to lose “it” before him. hWHAT? That loser is gonna beat him in something?! He thinks that FUCK NOT. (Bakugou x reader)

👌😂❤️ Whose Manz is this?!: You get a box of chocolates and a love note from a little broccoli head boy and let’s just say... it truly does take a village to raise a child. (’Izuku Midoriya being wing-manned by class 1-A’ x Reader)

👌❤️ Grey Area: You are beginning to feel a little jealous over Todoroki, but it shouldn’t matter because you're just friends... right? (Todoroki x Reader ft TodoMomo)

Valentines Weekend: Just random, unrelated short stories, headcanons and drabbles for all your loving needs. (BNHA x reader [Look. there is over 23 “x reader” pairings in this! I cant name each one])

Part 1: type (HCS) (👌😂❤️)

Part 2: food play (💞)

Part 3: Things my boyfriend has said to me (👌❤️😂)

👌😭 Two Birds on a Wire: Hawks unexpectedly finds himself falling for love with a villain during his time as a double agent. How will he handle having to betray the woman he loves? trilogy (Hawks x Reader feat. Shigaraki, Dabi, Twice, and minor OCs)

Part 1,

💞😂❤️ Deprived: They fucked up and you take it upon yourself to teach them a lesson in the coldest way possible: putting your body on lock down. How the hell are they gonna survive? (Todoroki x Reader, Bakugou x Reader, Midoriya x Reader, Iida x Reader)

👌❤️😂 Curly Hair Headcanons: (HCS) Let’s see how these boys do with a girlfriend who has curly hair... (Todoroki x Reader, Bakugou x Reader, Kirishima x Reader)

👌❤️😂Plant Daddy: Bakugou with a significant other who is obsessed with plants-- fragile, defenseless plants… I am sure nothing will go wrong there. (Bakugou x Reader)

👌😭When Cheated On Part 1: Shinsou finds out that you have been cheating on him. (Shinsou x Reader)

👌😭When Cheated On Part 2: Bakugou finds out that you have been cheating on him. (Bakugou x Reader)

👌😂❤️Tinder Games: You like to play tinder for fun, and it is all fun in games until a certain someone swipes right for you… (Bakugou x Reader, Iida x Reader, Todoroki x Reader, Midoriya x Reader, Kaminari x Reader, Kirishima x Reader)

👌😂❤️Drunk in Love: New Years Eve Special! Can any of these messes properly handle their liquor? Find out! (Bakugou x Reader, Midoriya x Reader, Yaoyorozu x Reader, Todoroki x Reader, Kirishima x Reader, Shinsou x Reader)

👌😂❤️Bad Dreams Fluff n Stuff: You wake up from a bad dream crying and Bakugou has to unclog his emotional constipation to support you. (Bakugou x Reader)

👌😂❤️Holiday Edition: Christmas with your boyfriend’s family is always a spectacle… (Bakugou x Reader)

👌😂❤️Holiday Edition: This is the first time you met Kaminari’s family! You gave him one job to prepare for the event…. One job... smh… (Kaminari x Reader)

👌😂High school: (HCS) Gender neutral Reader is just tryna make it through a school day after Sero smoked them out (ft. Bakugou, Midoriya, Jirou, Iida, Aizawa, Kaminari, and Todoroki)

👌❤️😂 How to Stop Liking a Stoner: Bakugou can’t help but falling in love with your delinquent ass, but that doesn't mean he is gonna fall quietly without a fucking fight. (Bakugou x Reader)

👌😂Tectonic Plates and Platonic Dates: You and Kirishima are platonic buddies that secretly watch romantic comedies together. Everything is chill until your hot-headed twin brother finds out! (Kirishima x Reader ft. Bakugou, Kaminari, and Sero)

👌😂MHA Charecters as Candy: (HCS) What was that? What candy would these MHA characters be!? Wait... oh… You never asked? Oh okay… I guess I’ll just leave this here anyway… *sniff-sniffle*… (Bakugou, Midoriya, Kirishima, Kaminari, Mineta, Monoma, Yaoyorozu, Sero, Shinsou)

👌😭❤️The Same Side of Anything: Dabi is totally a Todoroki in this. Romeo and Juliet did it better probably, but I love the idea of star-crossed lovers. Read this if you’re into mediocre poetic themes. (Dabi x Reader)

👌😂Crackhead Post: Reader regrets letting the three stooges into their life (ft. Kaminari, Sero and Kirishima)

👌😂 ❤️ Soft Dad Moments: What would prompt some of the MHA dads to buy their children a plushie? Warning: Some of these dads are so sweet that you might need to see a dentist after. (Bakugou x Reader, Kirishima x Reader, Dabi x Reader, Shigaraki x Reader)

💞 😭 Baby Boom: You end up prego after a one night stand and Bakugou learns how to be a decent human being (Bakugou x reader)

Month 1, Month 2, Month 3, Month 4

Interactive Series (You voted on the outcomes):

💞😭 😂 ❤️Sole Mates: Your every day life as a business woman is rudely interrupted by an explosive hero’s name being painfully imprinted on the sole of your foot, bounding the two of you’s pain, emotions and thoughts. (Bakugou x Reader, past Izuku X Reader)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3

💞😭Caught in The Act: You find out that your fiancé cheated on you, your grandmother’s dresser is ruined, Kirishima is a precious gift from god, and… wait, when did Todoroki get so hot? (Bakugou x Reader ft Todoroki, Kirishima and a few minor OC’s)

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5 Finale

Sequel (just a lil writing experiment. pay no mind if you like the original ending): Part 1

Tsugi No Hero Academia: a Next gen AU me and my crackhead friends conjured up feat. Bakugou’s son as the MC

#masterlist #whips with inhaler in hand #i finally did it #on my death bed

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oneweekoneband · 4 years ago

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meet me behind the mall!!!!!!!!!

youtube

I don’t know why Taylor Swift thinks that teenagers drink wine, and I don’t know why she chose to record and release a wistful high-school-other-woman song which left me feeling naked as a frog and therefore furious. Some questions we ask only so as to be soothed by the familiar sound of our own voice, still there after all. The answers are not coming.

The Taylor Swift Teen Love Triangle Triad of “cardigan”, “august”, and “betty” is the part of folklore that makes me most bullish about where Taylor is going as an artist. A turn away from writing songs which are intentionally meant to appear confessional and toward, instead, songs which reveal the personal as refracted through fictitious circumstances and made-up characters is a better use of her big, weird brain, and allows that brain to be unleashed on a broader plain of experience. It’s incredibly embarrassing to be an adult woman with my own problems to manage and to have living in my head Taylor Swift’s demented YA fiction, but it’s an embarrassment that feels appropriate, like I could never really have escaped this fate. On “betty” she gets to play-act as a contrite teen boy who knows he’s done wrong, and while obviously the most charming thing about the song is Taylor saying “fuck” (and also her giving us a little of the ol’ razzle dazzle by way of some light twang), her experiment with imagining what it’s like to be a skateboarding kid who hates dances, trying on an imagined teen boy interiority as a costume, is effective too.

“cardigan” is more removed, less plaintive and shouty. This is a song from adult Betty’s perspective looking back on this period in her life and in her relationship with James, who the song seems to imply she is still with now. While—full offense—I believe marrying your high school girlfriend or boyfriend is a disorder which should have its own listing in the DSM, restoring order by putting the original couple back together so as to make the story one of true love triumphing over adversity, rather than a series of sketches of kids doing fuckup kid things just because it is not easy to be alive and to be alive alongside others and with gentleness, least of all when you are very new at it, is the only conclusion this saga could ever have reached with Ms. Swift at its helm, and I do appreciate the consistent, if baby-brained, internal logic. I’ve never known a teenage girl whose signature garment was a cardigan and, frankly, this Betty sounds like sort of a self-absorbed drip (I do love, love, how Taylor’s own voice comes through so clearly on the lightly threatening, smug lines, “I knew you’d miss me once the thrill expired / And you’d be standing in my front porch light” !!) so I’m not totally surprised she got cheated on, but that’s very uncharitable of me and probably comes from the same meaty polyp in my brain that is responsible for my still loving all the hilariously mean-spirited, woman-hating songs on Speak Now.

“august” is about the other girl. The “her” in James’ rather pathetic defense, “slept next to her, but I dreamt of you all summer long”. “august” tells a story that brings to my mind another story. It is a story I won’t belabor because it is neither exciting nor unique. It will not illuminate an unexplored human experience, as it is, in fact, incredibly boring, regular, an incident which would be at home in any normal Tuesday, ordinary as meeting at the mall. This is a million years ago and there is a boy whose basement I go to sometimes after swim practice. We have matching team sweatpants with our names embroidered above the pocket at the right hip and I like to switch pairs. I’m you and you’re me and when we have pushed and bent the tiredness out of our muscles together, making experimental declarations in hushed voices down there while the furnace groans, well, then I’m you and me and you’re you and me and we are we are we are.

One February day at twilight I bound out of the school building with wet hair and a fleece jacket, but his car is already gone. No worries. Standing at my locker the next afternoon like in a movie he will say, easy as anything, that he has a girlfriend, a family friend, two towns over, she goes to private school. You’ve probably met her, he says. And right then I remember that I have. Last year I did her zipper in the bathroom at a dance. We were fighting but we never really broke up, he says. For months you’ve been fighting? is all I say back. Fighting since October? As if that matters. Like that’s the point. My voice is pinched and ugly and I know I’ll hear that sound forever. Well, anyway... I feel bad. He doesn’t clarify for whom he feels bad. He’s got one sneaker toe working against the other one atop the tile floor that’s the murky green of sea glass. He looks at my St Brigid’s cross necklace, at the blue Masterlock hanging open like a broken jaw, at someone in a hoodie who punches his shoulder as they walk by. Nothing personal, he says, and there is a tiny smudge of cafeteria pizza at the corner of his mouth that I hadn’t noticed until that second and a day ago would’ve reached up and wiped away with the pad of my thumb, laughing. I get it, right? Oh, sure.

The worst of it was not skipping pre-calc to cry in the bathroom, since, I mean, I couldn’t actually do pre-calc and would never learn how, but was inspecting my soul in the dark when I couldn’t sleep that night and finding part of me had known this all along, had chosen to pretend, wanted the wanting so badly I’d knocked from my brain the truth of how it was going to end. This would not be the last false love from which I’d find myself unceremoniously discarded, and in time I’d learn to be the liar myself, too. It’s unseemly to pathologize bad decisions, to take on poor impulse control or self-destructive patterns as an identity, but I do think that just as some people are born serial monogamists, part of a twosome forever with very little mess in-between, some of us were built from the very first cell to live like a pool ball struck and banging teeth first into the wrong mouths and hearts. I can examine my romantic history and tap my finger against the obvious errors, the times I chose what I knew would hurt me, when I ascribed hope to situations where it did not belong, when I, like the narrator of “august”, regarded someone as not mine to lose but still put myself in the position to be harmed by the losing, yet I can’t produce alternative choices that feel realistic. If you are in love and it doesn’t work out, there is mourning, there is pain, but there is all the while a record which shows something happened, it was real. “august” stands somewhat apart in the Taylor Swift catalog as a song neither about the glory of true love or the heartbreak when it’s over, but about the small, paper cut heartbreaks that are inescapable during each day of an untrue love. “It was never mine”. When it turns out you were wrong the whole time, fooling yourself, then even remembering that you’d been happy in the lie is like being trapped in a fun house, body bent and broken in the mirror, a thing not built right for this world.

“august” is about the girl who James was with over the summer, the girl he leaves to return to Betty. Taylor said it’s the first of the three that she wrote, and I fear this has warmed me to her in some new and unsettling way. I fear this means she’s matured as a person and writer, capable now of a more expansive view of situations, to be generous. It’s like how you shouldn’t feed gremlins after midnight; there is no telling what new and more dangerous creature this woman might turn into if she’s suddenly been taught empathy. When Taylor-as-James in “betty” sings, “Would you trust me if I told you it was just a summer thing?” in his effort to woo Betty back I hate him a little, that thoughtless child undeserving of the kind of adoration in lines like, “your back beneath the sun / wishing I could write my name on it.” I try to extend grace to this fictional boy, but I think of the “Do you remember? in “august” and I feel a little sick from being so certain that no... No, he doesn’t. Not really.

“Back when we were still changing for the better / wanting was enough / for me it was enough”. I’d like to think there is no last chance to change for the better. I’d like to think wanting is enough so long as you want the right thing. I’d like to think that God made sure Taylor Swift became a singer instead of a young adult novelist because the absolute last thing this world needed was this freak joining the circus that is YA Twitter. Most of all, I like thinking that Judy Blume knows that her beautiful, searing, devastatingly romantic and also textually gay 1998 novel Summer Sisters is the only important book that has ever been published, and, further, that the world will show me the respect of understanding and accepting that “august”, when removed from the context of the Swiftian child romance trilogy, sounds as if it were specifically written in homage. Taylor, I know I’ve accused you of at least fifty crimes this week alone, but if you want to talk about Summer Sisters, please get in touch.

#taylor swift #folklore

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aboveallarescuer · 5 years ago

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GRRM interviews about (or mentioning) Dany - Part 1

I went to So Spake Martin and collected excerpts of GRRM's interviews that talked about Dany in some way. Some observations here:

I didn't have access to broken/unavailable links or newspapers that require subscription.

I didn't get video or podcast interviews, only ones that were written down.

I also added some excerpts about how he enjoys grey characters or how he wants to be "realistic" and other topics that may relate ... not necessarily to Dany's character, but to his writing in general. It may be useful for some metas, even if they should not be divorced from the actual text.

I didn't mind collecting interviews about the same topic.

Maybe I did a poor job collecting these interviews or the SSM is incomplete, but, in any case, there are still several key interviews missing; I couldn't find the ones about how GRRM relates to Dany's character or how he wishes the Targaryens were black, for instance.

Even with these limitations in mind, there is still quite a bit to dig into here.

November 1998

The Targaryens have heavily interbred, like the Ptolemys of Egypt. As any horse or dog breeder can tell you, interbreeding accentuates both flaws and virtues, and pushes a lineage toward the extremes. Also, there's sometimes a fine line between madness and greatness. Daeron I, the boy king who led a war of conquest, and even the saintly Baelor I could also be considered "mad," if seen in a different light. ((And I must confess, I love grey characters, and those who can be interperted in many different ways. Both as a reader and a writer, I want complexity and subtlety in my fiction))

December 1998

Was it a conscious decision to paint things in grey, killing off good guys, etc.

Definitely a conscious decision. Both as a reader and a writer, I prefer my plots to be unpredictable and my characters to be painted in shades of grey, rather than in blacks and whites.

July 1999

Just out of being curious how a writer goes about his work -- do you generally write a certain POVs chapters in batches? Or are Dany's chapters, given how generally unconnected they are to the rest of the books as she goes along her own plot thread, easier to do that way? I suppose the momentum can help with a tough character.

Yes, I generally get in a groove on a particular character and write several chapters or chunks of chapters at once, before hitting a wall. When I do hit a wall, I switch to another character. Some characters are easier to write and some harder, however. Dany and Bran have always been toughest, maybe because they are heaviest on the magical elements... also, Bran is the youngest of POV kids, and very restricted as well because of his legs. At the other end of the spectrum, the Tyrion chapters often seem to write themselves. The same was true for Ned.

Jon was not born "more than 1 year" before Dany... probably closer to eight or nine months or thereabouts.

November 1999

Also, just how much impact did the Rhoynar have on the modern customs of Dorne? Beyond the gender-blind inheritance laws, the couple of Rhoynish gods that smallfolk might have turned into saints or angelic-type beings, and perhaps the round shields, that is. In particular, given that Nymeria was a warrior-queen, is there a certain amazon tradition?

The Rhoynar did impact Dorne in a number of ways, some of which will be revealed in later books. Women definitely have more rights in Dorne, but I would not call it an "Amazon" tradition, necessarily. Nymeria had more in common with someone like Daenerys or Joan d'Arc than with Brienne or Xena the Warrior Princess.

September 2000

It has been my intention from the start to gradually bring up the amount of magic in each successive volume of A Song of Ice and Fire, and that will continue. I will not rule out the possibility of a certain amount of "behind the scenes" magic, either. But while sorcerous events may impact on my characters, as with Renly or Lord Beric or Dany, their choices must ultimately remain their own.

November 2000

This third Targaryen might very well be -not- a Targaryen, to quote his exact words... "Three heads of the dragon... yes... but the third will not nessesarily BE a Targaryen..."

He mentioned his frustration that Tranter books don't have maps since Tranter tends to describe journeys using ALL the available landmarks (I also stupidly complained about there not being a map of the landmass Dany's on in the books, and he VERY politely pointed out to me that there was one in SoS [O the shame!]).

December 2000

NG: A Song of Ice and Fire undergoes a very interesting progression over its first three volumes, from a relatively clear scenario of Good (the Starks) fighting Evil (the Lannisters) to a much more ambiguous one, in which the Lannisters are much better understood, and moral certainties are less easily attainable. Are you deliberately defying the conventions and assumptions of neo-Tolkienian Fantasy here?

GRRM: Guilty as charged.

The battle between good and evil is a legitimate theme for a Fantasy (or for any work of fiction, for that matter), but in real life that battle is fought chiefly in the individual human heart. Too many contemporary Fantasies take the easy way out by externalizing the struggle, so the heroic protagonists need only smite the evil minions of the dark power to win the day. And you can tell the evil minions, because they're inevitably ugly and they all wear black.

I wanted to stand much of that on its head.

In real life, the hardest aspect of the battle between good and evil is determining which is which.

NG: You've frequently expressed admiration for Jack Vance. How Vancean is A Song of Ice and Fire in conception and style? In particular, does the narrative thread featuring the exotic wanderings of Daenerys Targaryen function in part as a tribute to Vance, to his picaresque inventiveness?

GRRM: Jack Vance is the greatest living SF writer, in my opinion, and one of the few who is also a master of Fantasy. His The Dying Earth (1950) was one of the seminal books in the history of modern Fantasy, and I would rank him right up there with Tolkien, Dunsany, Leiber, and T.H. White as one of the fathers of the genre.

All that being said, I don't think A Song of Ice and Fire is particularly Vancean. Vance has his voice and I have mine. I couldn't write like Vance even if I tried... and I did try, once. The first Haviland Tuf story, "A Beast for Norn," was my attempt to capture some of Vance's effects, and Tuf is a very Vancean hero, a distant cousin to Magnus Ridolph, perhaps. But what that experiment taught me was that only Jack Vance can write like Jack Vance

NG: Three more volumes of A Song of Ice and Fire wait to be written. What shape do you expect them to take, and are their titles finalized as yet?

GRRM: Yes, three more volumes remain. The series could almost be considered as two linked trilogies, although I tend to think of it more as one long story. The next book, A Dance With Dragons, will focus on the return of Daenerys Targaryen to Westeros, and the conflicts that creates. After that comes The Winds of Winter. I have been calling the final volume A Time For Wolves, but I am not happy with that title and will probably change it if I can come up with one that I like better.

You tend to write protagonists with strongly negative personality quirks, people who certainly don't fit the standard mold of a hero. People like Tuf in the Tuf Voyaging series, and Stannis and Tyrion inSong of Ice and Fire. Do you deliberately inject your characters with unattractive elements to make readers consciously think about whether they like them and why?

Martin: [Laughs.] Well, I don't know that I'd choose the word "unappealing," but I look for ways to make my characters real and to make them human, characters who have good and bad, noble and selfish, well-mixed in their natures. Yes, I do certainly want people to think about the characters, and not just react with a knee-jerk. I read too much fiction myself in which you encounter characters who are very stereotyped. They're heroic-hero and dastardly-villain, and they're completely black or completely white. And that's boring, so far as I'm concerned. It's also unreal. If you look at real human history, even the darkest villains had some good things about them. Perhaps they were courageous, or perhaps they were occasionally compassionate to an enemy. Even our greatest heroes had weaknesses and flaws.

There seem to be two different styles competing throughout the series: historical fantasy in the Seven Kingdoms series, and a softer Roger Zelazny/Arabian Nights style for the scenes abroad. Is there a conscious split between the two for you, or is it just an aspect of the setting?

Martin: I try to vary the style to fit each of the characters. Each character should have his or her own internal voice, since we're inside their heads. But certainly the setting has great impact. Dany is moving through exotic realms that are perhaps stranger to us than Westeros, which is more based in the medieval history with which we're more familiar in the West, so perhaps those chapters seem more colorful and fanciful.

You do tend to be very brutal to your characters.

Martin: Well, yes. But you know, I think there's a requirement, even in fantasy--it comes from a realm of the imagination and is based on fanciful worlds, but there's still a necessity to tell the truth, to try to reflect some true things about the world we live in. There's an inherent dishonesty to the sort of fantasy that too many people have done, where there's a giant war that rips the world apart, but no one that we know is ever really seriously inconvenienced by this. You see the devastated villages where unnamed peasants have lived, and they're all dead, but the heroes just breeze through, killing people at every hand, surviving those dire situations. There's a falsehood to that that troubles me. A writer can choose not to write about war. You don't have to write about war if that's not a subject that interests you, or you find it too brutal. But if you are going to write about war, I think you need to tell the truth about it, and the truth is that people die, and people die in ugly ways, and even some of the good guys die, even people who are loved.

June 2001

I'm a bit concerned about Dany's skills as a commander. To succeed with the invasion of Westeros, I believe she will need a lot of sound military advice (both tactically and strategically). What's your thoughts on this issue?

She will need counsel, yes... she will also need to learn to tell the good counsel from the bad, which is perhaps the hardest task of all.

Was it difficult to you when you wrote Dany's scene with the slavers in SOS? Was that one of the moments where the character spoke to you and changer their direction? Cause for me that act of Dany's seemed out of character. I know she dislikes slavery, but she must have killed an awful lot of innocent people there, plus her motives to me seemed suspect. Yes she freed the slaves, but she also got a large army for nothing. And right after she left the slavery started up again.

Dany is still very young. She has lessons to learn. That was one of them. It is not as easy to do good as it might seem, no matter how noble your intentions.

February 2002

1. Was Mirri Maz Duur telling the truth when she told Daenerys Targaryen that the latter could never have children again?

I am sure Dany would like to know. Prophecy can be a tricky business.

3. Is Daenerys Targaryen or anyone in her entourage able to tell whether her dragons are male or female? (Is the question relevant to dragons?)

Not yet.

4. Daenerys Targaryen believed that her brother Rhaegar loved Lyanna Stark. Does she also believe that Lyanna Stark returned this love?

Dany is not sure what to believe.

5. Since all of their mothers died, who gave Jon Snow, Daenerys Targaryen and Tyrion Lannister their names?

Mothers can name a child before birth, or during, or after, even while they are dying. Dany was most like named by her mother, Tyrion by his father, Jon by Ned.

March 2002

3) Is your world round. I mean if Dany traveled far enough east couldnt she come to the other side of westeros?

Yes, the world is round. Might be a little larger than ours, though. I was thinking more like Vance's Big Planet.... but don't hold me to that.

Oh, stupid fan question. I've been trying to get a visual of what the Quarth look like in my mind. In terms of what race they might be in our world. Tall and pale but I don't believe their hair color was mentioned. Would they be Western European looking? Slavic? Whenever their culture is mentioned I always think of either Persian or Indians.

I have tried to mix and match ethnic and cultural traits in creating my imaginary fantasy peoples, so there are no direct one-for-one correspodences. The Dothraki, for example, are based in part on the Mongols, the Alans, and the Huns, but their skin coloring is Amerindian. The Qartheen are an even more exotic hybrid, and offhand I don't recall where I got all the cuttings.

April 2002

[Shaun] How do you view Dany's place in the series. She seems an heroic character to me, but the writeups on the back covers always speak of her as a villain...

[+GeorgeRRMartin] to shaun ignore the blurbs on the back cover and make up your own mind who is the hero and who is the villain

[Erix] Dany will be betrayes 3 times. Did ser Jorah betray here once for money? so does this make it 2 betrayels so far?

[+GeorgeRRMartin] to erix no comment (twice!)

He said that in his original plan (when he wanted to write a trilogy) the Red Wedding would take place in book one, and Dany's landing in Westeros in book two. Now he says that Dany's arrival in Westeros will take place in book 5, A Dance with Dragons.

December 2003

Shaw: You created Jon as a bastard and an outcast from the get-go. Yet he's also one of the most attractive characters. Did you choose to make Jon a bastard to make him more attractive as an "underdog," or was his bastard birth central to the shaping of his character itself?

Martin: Almost all the characters have problems in some way. Very few of my major viewpoint characters have all the answers or have an easy path through life. They all have burdens to bear. Some of them are women in a society that doesn't necessarily value women or give them a lot of power or independence. Tyrion of course is a dwarf which has its own challenges. Dany is an exile, powerless, penniless, at the mercy of other people, and Jon is a bastard. These things shape their characters. Your experiences in life, your place in life inevitably is going to change who you are.

Shaw: As the novels unfold, Jon becomes increasingly identified with the northern cold and ice, just as Dany is closely tied to the southern heat and fire. Will these two ultimately embody the central image of the series, Ice and Fire?

Martin: That's certainly one way to interpret it. That's for my readers to argue out. That may be one possible meaning. There may be a secondary meaning, or a tertiary meaning as well.

Shaw: Are all the Targaryans immune to fire?

Martin: No, no Targaryans are immune to fire. The thing with Dany and the dragons, that was just a one-time magical event, very special and unique. The Targaryans can tolerate a bit more heat than most ordinary people, they like really hot baths and things like that, but that doesn't mean they're totally immune to fire, no. Dragons, on the other hand, are pretty much immune to fire.

February 2004

Jon and Dany will be the two focal characters of AFfC (in the sort of way in which Ned was the focal character of AGoT).

May 2005

He doesn't feel that it's fair to call his work gratuitous. He wants the reader to live vicariously though his books (a function of fantasy writing), feel the characters emotions. If a character is at a feast, he wants the reader to smell the food, experience Dany's discomfort at being served an unappetizing dish. The same with the sex scenes-he wants his readers to feel like they are there.

Another bit of information that I found interesting- we *WILL* hear about the POVs who will not have front stage as it were, but will have it in ADwD. The reports of those chars will be somewhat garbled and messy as can be expected from any news that has travelled that distance and is that important. ex) Varys' manipulation of the Dany information, or Theon's skinning of the miller's information (we didn't know it wasn't Bran and Rickon until later). *THOSE* are the kind of reports we will see in AFFC about the missing POVs. We will get information on them, but have no idea which parts, if any, are correct.

I have some more things to add about things I asked, but I will probably trickle out things as I sober up and recall them. :p

The following will show up in ADwD:

Arya, Bran, Jon, Dany, Tyrion, and Asha (she will be in both books, as she gets involved in affairs of the North)

[Note: Spoiler POV redacted] has the most number of chapters in AFFC, while Dany has the most in ADwD. Also, the number of Tyrion chapters is going up from 4 to 7 in ADwD (his storyline is basically beinbg expanded).

GRRM said Dany and the Wall is excluded. That removes Dany and probably Tyrion plus the Wall which presumably means Jon and Davos.

Dragons will deal with Daenerys and the North. He decided to split by character, rather than in the middle of the story, as he wanted a complete book, rather than FfC part I and II.

This is no hoax.

I swear it by ice and fire. I swear that I will never post again should this prove false. I swear I will never touch wine again, if it is not true.

George said it is done.

But he had to make a major change. It had grown too large.

Daenerys will not appear. There will be little if any action in the North. Those chapters will be moved into the next book, which should come out shortly thereafter.

AFFC will be the size of AGoT.

The next book will still be called aDwD. (Dany will be in it after all).

That being said, Dany will be presented with a map of the world from a fellow whose name I cannot remember because the pronunciation was very odd indeed.

There was some talk about the Targaryen bloodline and how it worked when there weren't enough siblings to marry. Uncle might marry niece or aunt, nephew. There were also cousins in that family at one time.

Dany has more chapters than anyone. He also said that Dany's love life is going to become "extremely complex"

Parris has proclaimed that Arya cannot die! (No, she wasn't there :( but he mentioned it when someone said that he's not allowed to kill Dany)

So yeah, in short, book not done but soon, lots of Dany, the Ironborn, and the Dornish, and Renly and Loras were INDEED knocking boots.

October 2005

The main point of discussion was the reason for the five-year wait since A Storm of Swords. I'm sure most of you know this already but, briefly, he wanted a 5-year gap between ASOS and ADWD to allow the kids to grow up. Some characters, mainly the children and Daenerys, really benefited from this, but most of the other characters suffered and the book was degenerating into a flashback-fest. After about a year he decided that wasn't working, ditched everything, and started again.

November 2005

His analogy is that the series is a symphony and each book is a movement, and explained that he likes each character arc to have some sort of finale in each book, whether it's on a cliffhanger, or a completion of some phase of the character's story arc (or death hehe). Ultimately, he decided to divide it geographically as you all know, since Dany's story is taking place in Martinland's China, and the rest is taking place in Martinland's England.

One man asked whether George ever learns of people naming their kids after his characters. He pointed the guy to his website, where he even has baby pictures of Sansas, Aryas, even a Daenarys, Nymeria, Eddard, Bran, Chataya, and several Cerseis. He won't take credit for the Jons, though (hehe). It was great; someone in the audience made a crack about Cersei, and someone else said "as long as they aren't twins"). He mentioned meeting a little girl whose parents had named her Daenarys and he made a joke about how she was really going to hate spelling that when she gets to first grade. He also once got a letter from a 23-year-old girl named Lya whose mother said she was named after a character in one of his stories (A Song for Lya) and wanted to know who the heck Lya was. George sent her a copy! Hehe. He said he finds it flattering overall, but thinks it's a bad idea when the story isn't done yet and some of the characters will come to a bad end, and then those parents will be pissed with him!

He was asked or mentioned most of the stuff that's already been covered, but one thing he talked about that I found particularly interesting was Romanticism. He said that he is a romantic, in the classical sense. He said the trouble with being a romantic is that from a very early age you keep having your face smashed into the harshness of reality. That things aren't always fair, bad things happen to good people, etc. He said it's a realists world, so romantics are burned quite often. This theme of romantic idealism conflicting with harsh reality is something he finds very dramatic and compelling, and he weaves it into his work. Specifically he mentioned that the Knight exemplifies this, as the chivalric code is one of the most idealistic out there, protection of the weak, paragon of all that is good, fighting for truth and justice. The reality was that they were people, and therefore could do horrible cruel things, rape, pillage, wanton killing, made all the more striking or horrifying because it was in complete opposition to what they were "supposed" to be. Really interesting stuff.

At the San Diego signing, I asked GRRM at the Q&A, "Besides Dany's dragons, have all the Targaryen dragons been descendants of Aegon the Conquerors three?" GRRM answered "yes".

And that one of the things he regrets losing from the POV split is that he was doing point and counterpoint with the Dany and Cersei scenes--showing how each was ruling in their turn.

Q: 5-year gap?

A: It worked for characters like Arya and Dany but not so much for the adults or those who had a lot of action coming. He was writing chapters where Jon thought, "Well, not a lot has happened these past five years, it's been kinda nice." And Cersei chapters where she thought, "Well, I've had to kill sooo many people the last five years." So he ended up dropping it. He said he would have done it sooner if he hadn't told so many fans about it. And there is no gap anymore. "If a twelve-year old has to conquer the world, then so be it."

(Petyr is just Peter, for example.)

Some he did say during the course of the evening:

Cersei = Sir-say

Jaime = Jamie (I think that was obvious but just in case)

Sansa = Sahn-sa

Tyrion = Tear-ion

Arya = Ar-Ya (Ex, Are ya?)

Daenerys = Dane-err-is

TARGARYEN KINGS

SUBMITTED BY: AMOKA

[Note: The following information was sent to Amok for his contribution to the Fantasy Flight Games artbook.]

These are all Targaryens, of course, so there should be a strong family resemblence from portrait to portrait. All of them (except as noted) will have the purple eyes and silver-gold hair for which House Targaryen is noted. All of them should be wearing crowns... the same crown in many of the pix, though it will change once or twice along the way, as noted.

The hard part will be making each of the kings an individual, despite the similarities, and evoking each one's character through facial features, pose, clothing, background, and other elements in the portrait.

Here's the lineup:

DAENERYS I. Daenerys Stormborn. No description necessary, I assume. Show her wearing the three-headed dragon crown she was given in Qarth, as described in A CLASH OF KING. Might be good to include the three dragons in the picture. Show them very young, as hatchings, one in her lap, one wrapped around her arm and shoulder, one flying just above her.

January 2006

He repeatedly emphasized that he prefers to write grey characters, because in real life people are complex; no one is pure evil or pure good. Fiction tends to divide people into heroes who do no wrong and villains who go home and kick their dogs and beat their wives, but that reality is much different. He cited a soldier who heroically saves his friends' lives, but then goes home and beats his wife. Which is he, hero or villain? Martin said both and that neither act cancels out the other.

February 2006

NAERYS TARGARYEN

SUBMITTED BY: AMOKA

[Note: The following continues GRRM's series of descriptions of notable Targaryens (and Targaryen bastards) for Amoka.]

The sister of King Aegon the Unworthy and Prince Aemon the Dragonknight was beautiful as well, but hers was a very fine and delicate beauty, almost unworldy. She was a wisp of a woman, smaller even than Dany (to whom she bears a certain resemblence), very slender, with big purple eyes and fine, pale, porcelain skin, near translucent. Naerys had none of Dany's strength, however.

July 2006

George regrets that Cersei and Dany will not be contrasted directly. I told him of how some dedicated boarders try to defeat him and piece together a timeline. George replied that he tries to keep it vague.

He likes the extra breathing room to flesh out the characters. Bran didn't have any chapters and Dany's ending was different. Now he likes the way she ended. I think he actually may be doing more with Dany.

SPOILER: Possible for ADWD

The second Dance of Dragons does not have to mean Dany's invasion.

Geroge stopped himself short and said he shouldn't say anymore. The response came because of my question of whether the dance would take place in ADWD because AFFC and ADWD parallel. So now my friends, speculate away.

February 2007

Some other bits of info from Q&A: In Song, he considers Bran the hardest viewpoint character to write, while Tyrion is the easiest. The Red Wedding was partly based on a historical event in Scotland called the Black Dinner. His biggest lament in splitting A Feast for Crows from A Dance with Dragons is the parallels he was drawing between Circe and Daenerys.

E. His dragons have no front limbs -- just rear legs and wings. He said that although the traditional depiction of dragons as six limbed creatures has become a staple of fantasy -- the fact that no animal in nature has ever evolved in such a way always bothered him. As a sci-fi writer originally, he insists on the depiction of the dragons with just four limbs. I never heard that before and though it was pretty neat.. In addition, he said that although AsoIaF dragons are intelligent, they cannot speak and will never evolve into the sort of dragons we see in Tolkien or Le Guin. Specifically he said’ Drogon is never going to share witty aphorisms with Dany. The Targaryens rule by Fire and Blood and that is what the dragons represent in the story". I guess the power icon is more Nedly for them than some of us thought when they were first rolled out back in AfoD.

F. Cersei and Daenerys are intended as parallel characters --each exploring a different approach to how a woman would rule in a male dominated, medieval-inspired fantasy world.

May 2007

GRRM: Well, the next book out is A Dance with Dragons, of course, and that's the fifth book of the series but in some ways it's really 4B, as those of you who follow the series knows that A Feast for Crows got so big I had to pull it in half. I split it not by chopping it right in the middle but I split it by characters. The one I'm working on now is going to have an awful lot of the characters that that aren't in A Feast for Crows, it's going to have a lot of Jon Snow, a lot of Daenerys, a fair amount of Davos, and it's going to have have a lot of "me" -- Tyrion, who is your favorite, and my favorite, so I'm enjoying writing a lot of those right now.

And you know I got phone calls from people at the studio afterwards saying, "There is a way to make this as a feature. There's a way to do it as a movie. You could just take Jon Snow and Daenerys and just concentrate on them and get rid of some of the minor characters." And it just, it was kind of appalling because, much as I love Jon Snow and Daenerys, I didn't want to lose the other characters. I mean this is an epic and the only way we could conceive of doing it properly was to tell it as a series. And you can't do it as a series where's it interrupted every twenty minutes by a commercial for toothpaste. And you can't do it where I'd have Tyrion saying the things he says and doing the things he says, all of which network TV would have had a huge problem with.

So we really felt from the beginning that the best way to do this was on HBO or possibly Showtime.

August 2007

Just because I still love Popinjay and the Turtle and my other Wild Cards characters does not mean I have stopped loving Arya and Tyrion and Dany.

April 2008

BERBERS AND DANY

[Did the unrest during the transition between Arab and Berber rule inspire Dany's storyline?]

No. Sounds fascinating, but I'm afraid I don't have enough experience with the Berbers or their history to draw on them for inspiration.

July 2008

GRRM was asked the typical question, of where the idea for ASOIAF had come from. He replied that in the summer of 1991, when he was working as a Hollywood screenwriter, in a gap between assignments he began work on a new novel, a sf novel called Avalon ( personal note, no I would not swap it for ASOIAF, but I would have loved to have read it), set in his future history universe. And somehow, he found himself writing the first chapter of AGOT, about the direwolf pups un the snow. And after that came a second chapter and pretty soon he spent the whole summer writing AGOT.

From there he started to plan a trilogy, since there were 3 main conflicts ( Starks/Lannisters; Dany; and the Others) it felt it would neatly fit into a trilogy (ah!), but like Tolkien said, the tale grew in the telling.

April 2010

GRRM said he regretted mentioning the eye color of any of his characters. He also noted that as a brown-eyed person, he finds it annoying that brown-eyed characters are always portrayed as ordinary, while the doers of great deeds always have blue or hazel eyes or something - he notes that he himself was somewhat guilty of this with the violet eyes of Dany or the red eyes of Melisandre.

(25) Any particular storyline he is enjoying right now?

He said that Dany's storyline is emerging in increasing importance. But he is struggling with the Meereenese Knot. So he can't say he is enjoying it. But he is really enjoying writing Arya's story. He could write an entire novel of it. He could write an entire YA novel about her...(at this point the audience starting clapping and calling out YES! DO IT!)...but her entire story isn't part of the greater novel. He has 12 novels worth of info for this book and its hard to fit it all in.

February 2011

Sam Thielman: So, why did "A Dance With Dragons" take longer to write than the other books in the series?

George R. R. Martin: Well, you know, that's a good question and I'm not sure I have an easy answer for that. #1, none of the books have been exactly fast, I mean, I'm a slow writer, I've always been a slow writer, and the books are huge. I mean, they're three, four, five times the size of most novels being published. And they have extremely complex interweaving storylines. I remember back when I did the first book, 'A Game of Thrones,' Asimov's Magazine wanted to publish an excerpt and I pulled out the Daenerys storyline from the first book, and they published that as an excerpt, and after I pulled out all the Daenerys chapters and put them together for Asimov's, I did a word count and discovered, technically, I had a novel, just about Daenerys. I'm never gonna be one of those writers who has a book a year, or two books a year like some of my colleagues do. I simply can't write that fast. I do a lot of polishing and revising, and it's a big task.

July 2011

Tad: Question: Do you purposely start a character as bad so you can later kill them?

GRRM: No. What is bad? Bad is a label. We are human beings with heroism and self-interest and avarice in us and any human is capable of great good or great wrong. In Poland a couple of weeks ago I was reading about the history of Auschwitz – there were startling interviews with the people there. The guards had done unthinkable atrocities, but these were ordinary people. What allowed them to do this kind of evil? Then you read accounts of acts of outrageous heroism, yet the people are criminals or swindlers, one crime or another, but when forced to make a choice they make a heroic choice. This is what fascinated me about the human animal. A lot of fantasy turns on good and evil – but my take on it is that it’s fought within the human heart every day, and that’s the more interesting take. I don’t think life is that simple.

Tad: All of us work with multiple viewpoints – I hear this next question a lot: with story-driven plots, how do you decide which character viewpoint to write from – do you write several characters, taste them, then decide?

GRRM: No, not several, at least not intentionally. I had more choice early in the series, I frequently had situations where 2 or 3 were present at the same time. But as it’s progressed they have dispersed, so I need to be in the viewpoint of whoever’s there. There are some cases when I have a choice and in that case, I weigh which one. Without talking exactly about "The Mereenese Knot" – I’m not going to talk exactly about it, but but [there was a time when] a number of viewpoints were coming together in Mereen for a number of events, and I was wrestling with order and viewpoint. The different points-of-view had different sources of knowledge and I never could quite solve it. I was rewriting the same chapter over and over again – this, that, viewpoint? – spinning my wheels. It was one of the more troublesome thickets I encountered. There’s a resolution not to introduce new viewpoint characters, but the way I finally dealt with things was with Barristan, I introduced him as a viewpoint character as though he’d been there all along. That enabled me to clear away some of the brush.

Tad: Question: do you choose characters because they will provide you with a viewpoint or something characterful?

GRRM: Actually, no. I try to give each viewpoint character an arc of his own, and ideally I would like to think that you could pull the material out – in the early books I was able to pull out the Daenerys chapters and publish them separately as a novella, and I won a Hugo Award for that. It'd be great if I could pull out each [character-arc] and it would resemble a story. In some cases a character died and that was a very short story. My prologue and epilogue characters always die but even then I try to give them a story.

Your books, especially recently, are full of women trying to exert power in a male dominated world who have to compromise themselves along the way. Are you trying to make a feminist statement?

You could certainly interpret it that way. I don't presume to say I'm making a statement of this type or that type. But it is certainly a patriarchal society, I am trying to explore some of the ramifications of that. I try to write women as people, just as I try to write any other characters. Strong and weak, and brave and cowardly, and noble and selfish. It has been very gratifying to me how many women read my work and how much they like at least some of my female characters.

The one thing I must confess to being frustrated by is the first Tyion chapter where you set up this expectation that he’s going to meet Dany, and I got excited. Then about 600 pages later I’m realizing, “OK, that’s not gonna happen, at least not in this book.”

Yeah, it’s the “kind of bring ’em together but don’t give them the confirmation.” In some ways it’s not so different than the sexual tension in TV shows — are Catherine and Vincent [on Beauty and the Beast] finally going to kiss? Same philosophy. This is the kind of stuff I wrestle with. I could have ended the next chapter: Tyrion gets off the boat and there’s Dany. But the journey itself has its own interest.

There’s a point in the series where you feel like you’re reading a bunch of separate stories. Toward the end of Dance, you feel the threads starting to come back together. Is that accurate?

That’s certainly the intent, and always was the intent. Tolkien was my great model for much of this. Although I differ from Tolkien in important ways, I’m second to no one in my respect for him. If you look at Lord of the Rings, it begins with a tight focus and all the characters are together. Then by end of the first book the Fellowship splits up and they have different adventures. I did the same thing. Everybody is at Winterfell in the beginning except for Dany, then they split up into groups, and ultimately those split up too. The intent was to fan out, then curve and come back together. Finding the point where that turn begins has been one of the issues I’ve wrestled with.

There was a fair amount of explicit sex in the series and some fans of the books were taken aback.

One of the reasons I wanted to do this with HBO is that I wanted to keep the sex. We had some real problems because Dany is only 13 in the books, and that’s based on medieval history. They didn’t have this concept of adolescence or the teenage years. You were a child or you were an adult. And the onset of sexual maturity meant you were an adult. So I reflected that in the books. But then when you go to film it you run into people going crazy about child pornography and there’s actual laws about how you can’t depict a 13 year old having sex even if you have an 18 year old acting the part — it’s illegal in the United Kingdom. So we ended up with a 22 year old portraying an 18 year old, instead of an 18 year old portraying a 13 year old. If we decided to lose the sex we could have kept the original ages. And once you change the age of one character you have to change the ages of all the characters, and change the date of the war [that dethroned the Mad King]. The fact we made all these changes indicates how important we thought sex was.

References the chapbook with the first three Dany chapters from 2005 and that it offers insight as to how much the book has changed since then.

There's been an interesting discussion on our forum concerning "orientalism" as it's expressed in your work, and one question it's led to among readers is whether you've ever considered a foreign point of view characters in Essos, to give a different window into events there.

No, this story is about Westeros. Those other lands are important only as they reflect on Westeros.

Part of the difficulty of this particular novel was what you called the "Meereenese Knot", trying to get everything to happen in just the right order, pulling various plot strands together in one place, and part of the solution was the addition of another point of view character. Was this something where you tried writing it from a number of different point of views before settling on a new one? Did you actively resist adding a new character?

The Meerenese Knot related to everyone reaching Dany. There's a series of events that have to occur in Meereen, things that are significant. She has various problems to deal with at the start: dealing with the slavers, threats of war, the Sons of the Harpy, and so on. At the same time, there's all of these characters trying to get to her. So the problem was to figure out who should reach her and in what order, and what events should happen by the time they've reached her. I kept coming up with different answers and I kept having to rewrite different versions and then not being satisfied with the dynamics until I found something that was satisfactory. I thought that solution worked well, but it was not my first choice.

There's a Dany scene in the book which is actually one of the oldest chapters in the book that goes back almost ten years now. When I was contemplating the five year gap [Martin laughs here, with some chagrin], that chapter was supposed to be the first Daenerys chapter in the book. Then it became the second chapter, and then the third chapter, and it kept getting pushed back as I inserted more things into it. I've rewritten that chapter so much that it ended in many different ways.

There's a certain time frame of the chronology where you can compare to A Feast for Crows and even A Storm of Swords and figure out when they would reach Meereen and the relative time frames of each departure and each arrival. But that doesn't necessarily lead to the most dramatic story. So you look at it and try and figure out how to do it. I also wanted to get across how difficult and dangerous it was to travel like this. There are many storms that will wreck your ship, there are dangerous lands in between where there are pirates and corsairs, and all that stuff. It's not like hopping on a 747, where you get on and then step off the plane a few hours later. So all of these considerations went into the Meereenese Knot.

Then there's showing things after [an important event], which proved to be very difficult. I tried it with one point of view character, but this was an outsider who could only guess at what was going on, and then I tried it with a different character and it was also difficult. The big solution was when I hit on adding a new point of view character who could give the perspective this part of the story needed.

March 2012

If you listen to the CBC interview which you'll see the link for under General ASOIAF, much of what he said was repeated tonight. He admitted Tyrion was his favourite, and if he was having dinner with 3 characters, they would be Tyrion, Maester Aemon and then he thought of Arya, but feared she would throw food at him, so he'd go with Dany, because she's hot!

June 2012

Near the end of the signing, a man presented Martin with two books and his daughter. “This is Daenerys,” he told Martin, “I sent you a letter about her five years ago.” Daenerys, a squirmy blonde in a pink jacket, looked about five years old. “Hello there,” Martin said, “do you like dragons?” She nodded, and they made room for the next fan.

Now that we know how the "Meereenese knot" played out, what was the problem with this? For example, was it the order in which Dany met various characters, or who, when, and how someone would try to take the dragons?

Now I can explain things. It was a confluence of many, many factors: lets start with the offer from Xaro to give Dany ships, the refusal of which then leads to Qarth's declaration of war. Then there's the marriage of Daenerys to pacify the city. Then there's the arrival of the Yunkish army at the gates of Meereen, there's the order of arrival of various people going her way (Tyrion, Quentyn, Victarion, Aegon, Marwyn, etc.), and then there's Daario, this dangerous sellsword and the question of whether Dany really wants him or not, there's hte plague, there's Drogon's return to Meereen...

All of these things were balls I had thrown up into the air, and they're all linked and chronologically entwined. The return of Drogon to the city was something I explored as happening at different times. For example, I wrote three different versions of Quentyn's arrival at Meereen: one where he arrived long before Dany's marriage, one where he arrived much later, and one where he arrived just the day before the marriage (which is how it ended up being in the novel). And I had to write all three versions to be able to compare and see how these different arrival points affected the stories of the other characters. Including the story of a character who actually hasn't arrived yet.

October 2012

What's exciting to me about this session is that in this conversation, Martin talks at length about craft. He's been in the business of telling stories for many decades -- as a television writer and as a writer of fiction -- and he has a great deal to say about what works and what doesn't in different mediums. How is information conveyed to the audience (or the reader)? How do you keep sophisticated audiences on their toes? How do you create worlds in which most characters have to choose between the best of many bad options? How do you examine power from the perspective of outsiders, rejects and those who are constrained by conventional wisdom? Martin shared the insights of someone who has been contemplating these questions -- practically and philosophically -- for a very long time.

About midway through the podcast, there's a interesting discussion of his use of "close third person" narration and why that's effective in the creation of memorable characters. It's also interesting to note that he doesn't write the chapters in the order in which they appear in the books, and that he may write four or five Tyrion chapters before stopping and switching to another character. (Another fun fact that emerged -- and I'm sure hardcore "ASoIaF" fans already knew this -- Martin originally signed a contract for a book trilogy. I'm betting his publishers aren't sad he's now working on the sixth book in that "trilogy.")

Eventually, Martin zeroes in on his least favorite thing in any story: Predictability. But he admits that it's "very hard" to shake up the audience, which has grown more sophisticated with every passing decade. When he was writing for the revived "Twilight Zone" in the '80s, for example, network executives wanted the producers to end episodes with a twist of some kind, as the original Rod Serling series had often done. But the audience "could see all these twist endings coming a mile away," Martin said.

He also spoke about his fascination with power and with hierarchies that appear stable but are actually anything but. He mentioned reading a history of Jerusalem in which a mad ruler began killing dozens of courtiers and ordering the hands chopped off the women of the court.

"Why doesn't the captain of the guard say to the sergeant, 'This guy is [expletive] nuts?'" Martin said. "'We have swords! Why don't we kill him instead?'"

But loyalties -- clan loyalties, family loyalties, strategic alliances -- are powerful influences in the lives of Martin's characters, and their personal desires and their traditional duties or roles are often in conflict. And those kinds of unresolvable dilemmas are at the heart of what makes his stories resonate with those of us who didn't begin fighting with swords as children.

Paraphrasing Faulkner, Martin said "the only thing worth writing about is the human heart in conflict with itself." And that's a scenario that is very familiar to anyone who's ever visited Westeros, either as a reader or a viewer of the HBO drama.

Is A Song of Ice and Fire a parallelism or a criticism to our society?

No. My work is not an allegory to our days. If I wanted to write about the financial crisis or the conflict in Syria, I would write about the financial crisis or the conflict in Syria, without any metaphor. However, it’s true that in my novels appear several elements which we can find in world history. Things such as power, sex, pain… I have grown up as a science fiction reader, and it was my first love, even before fantasy. But science fiction, then, presented an idealistic world: the space, a bright future, but unluckily that optimism disappeared very quickly and the future wasn’t as good as we had expected. Nowadays, science fiction is very pessimistic and talks about dystopias: about a polluted world, about a rotten world… Of course I would prefer to be part of another world; a better world, but I can’t. Perhaps winter is not coming only to Winterfell, but in the real world.

March 2013

The readers are unhappy with leaving out the five-year gap?

Well no, some of the storylines from Feast for Crows. I get complaints sometimes that nothing happens — but they're defining "nothing," I think, differently than I am. I don't think it all has to battles and sword fights and assassinations. Character development and [people] changing is good, and there are some tough things in there that I think a lot of writers skip over. I'm glad I didn't skip over these things.

[For example], things that Arya is learning. The things Bran is learning. Learning is not inherently an interesting thing to write about. It's not an easy thing to write about. In the movies, they always handle it with a montage. Rocky can't run very fast. He can't catch the chicken. But then you do a montage, and you cut a lot of images together, and now only a minute later in the film, Rocky is really strong and he is catching the chicken.

It’s a lot harder [in real life]. Sometimes in my own life, I wish I could play a montage of my life. I want to get in shape now. So let’s do a montage, and boom — I'll be fifty pounds lighter and in good shape, and it will only take me a minute with some montage of me lifting weights and running, shoving away the steak and having a salad. But of course in real life, you don't get to montage. You have to go through it day by day.

And that has been interesting, you know. Jon Snow as Lord Commander. Dany as Queen, struggling with rule. So many books don't do that. There is a sense when you're writing something in high fantasy, you're in a dialogue with all the other high fantasy writers that have written. And there is always this presumption that if you are a good man, you will be a good king. [Like] Tolkien — in Return of the King, Aragorn comes back and becomes king, and then [we read that] "he ruled wisely for three hundred years." Okay, fine. It is easy to write that sentence, “He ruled wisely”.

What does that mean, he ruled wisely? What were his tax policies? What did he do when two lords were making war on each other? Or barbarians were coming in from the North? What was his immigration policy? What about equal rights for Orcs? I mean did he just pursue a genocidal policy, "Let’s kill all these fucking Orcs who are still left over"? Or did he try to redeem them? You never actually see the nitty-gritty of ruling.

I guess there is an element of fantasy readers that don't want to see that. I find that fascinating. Seeing someone like Dany actually trying to deal with the vestments of being a queen and getting factions and guilds and [managing the] economy. They burnt all the fields [in Meereen]. They've got nothing to import any more. They're not getting any money. I find this stuff interesting. And fortunately, enough of my readers who love the books do as well.

And meanwhile, you've got Daenerys visiting more Eurasian and Middle Eastern cultures.

And that has generated its controversy too. I answer that one to in my blog. I know some of the people who are coming at this from a political or racial angle just seem to completely disregard the logistics of the thing here. I talk about what's in the books. The books are what I write. What I’m responsible for.

Slavery in the ancient world, and slavery in the medieval world, was not race-based. You could lose a war if you were a Spartan, and if you lost a war you could end up a slave in Athens, or vice versa. You could get in debt, and wind up a slave. And that’s what I tried to depict, in my books, that kind of slavery.

So the people that Dany frees in the slaver cities are of many different ethnicities, and that’s been fairly explicit in the books. But of course when David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] and his crew are filming that scene [of Daenerys being carried by freed slaves], they are filming it in Morocco, and they put out a call for 800 extras. That’s a lot of extras. They hired the people who turned up. Extras don't get paid very much. I did an extra gig once, and got like $40 a day.

It's probably actually less in Morocco since you don't have to pay quite the same rate. If you're giving 800 Moroccans 40 bucks each, you're not going to fly in 100 Irishman just to balance the racial background here. We had enough trouble meeting our budget anyway.

I know for some readers, they don’t care about this shit. But these things are about budget and realism, and things you can actually do. You are shooting the scene in a day. You don't have a lot of time to [worry] about that, and as someone who has worked in television this kind of stuff is very important to me. I don't know if that is answer or not. I made that answer, and some people weren't pleased with that answer, I know. They are very upset about that.

August 2013

Amid reports of a dramatic uptrend in babies named “Khaleesi” and tourism to Dubrovnik, Croatia (aka King's Landing), we're guessing George R. R. Martin doesn’t need much of an introduction.

AC: How do you decide what you're going to work on, whose voice you're going to work in today?

GM: Well, I don't write the chapters in the order in which you read them. I get into a character’s voice. It's always difficult to switch gears, actually. When I do make that transition from one character to another, I usually struggle for a few days trying to get back the voice of the character I'm just returning to after some hiatus. But once I get into it, I tend to write not just one chapter by that character, but three or four. So I'll be writing Jon Snow chapters, and I'll carry that Jon Snow sequence as far as I can. And then at some point, maybe I'll get stuck or not be sure what I should do next, or maybe I've just gotten way ahead of all of the other characters in the books, so I need to sort of rein myself in and make myself switch from Jon Snow to Sansa or Daenerys or somebody like that.

November 2013

We can't leave Martin without pressing him for his thoughts on which of his characters keeps the best table. Would it be the wealthy, sun-loving Martell family with their Mediterranean-leaning flatbreads, olives and spiced snake? The sensualist Tyrion Lannister? Or the moveable feast of the court of Daenerys Targaryen with its duck eggs and dog sausage?

"Oh, Illyrio Mopatis, the magister, no question. Just watch out for the mushrooms."

March 2014

Was it a big shift for you, when you were writing the scenes that take place at Winterfell and suddenly you have the Daenerys scene, with an entirely different location?

Pretty early on, in the summer of ‘91, I had the Daenerys stuff. I knew she was on another continent. I think I had already drawn a map by then – and she wasn’t on it. I’d just drawn the map of the one continent that would come to be called Westeros. But she was in exile, and I knew that, and that was sort of the one departure from the structure. It’s something I borrowed from Tolkien, in terms of the initial structure of the book. If you look at Lord of the Rings, everything begins in the Shire with Bilbo’s birthday party. You have a very small focus. You have a map of the Shire right in the beginning of the book – you think it’s the entire world. And then they get outside it. They cross the Shire, which seems epic in itself. And then the world keeps getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And then they add more and more characters, and then those characters split up. I essentially looked at the master there and adopted the same structure. Everything in AGame of Thrones begins in Winterfell. Everybody is together there and then you meet more people and, ultimately, they’re split apart and they go in different directions. But the one departure from that, right from the first, was Daenerys, who was always separate. It’s almost as if Tolkien, in addition to having Bilbo, had thrown in an occasional Faramir chapter, right from the beginning of the book.

Although Daenerys is hooked into Winterfell, because we hear talk of her family, the Targaryen family, early on.

You see overlaps. Daenerys is getting married, and Robert gets the report that Daenerys has just gotten married and reacts to that and the threat that it poses.

Fortunately, the books were best sellers, I didn’t need the money, you know, so I could just say no. Other people wanted to take the approach of, there are so many characters, so many stories, we have to settle on one. Let’s make it all about Jon Snow. Or Dany. Or Tyrion. Or Bran. But that didn’t work, either, because the stories are all inter-related. They separate but they come together again. But it did get me thinking about it, and it got me thinking about how this could be done, and the answer I came up with is – it can be done for television. It can’t be done as a feature film or a series of feature films. So television. But not network television. I’d worked in television. The Twilight Zone. Beauty and the Beast. I knew what was in these books, the sex scenes, the violence, the beheadings, the massacres. They’re not going to put that on Friday night at eight o’clock, where they always stick fantasies. Both of the shows that I was on, Twilight Zone and Beauty and the Beast, Friday night at eight o’clock. They think, "Fantasy? Kids!" So I wasn’t going to do a network show. But I’d been watching HBO. The Sopranos. Rome. Deadwood. It seemed to me an HBO show, a series where each book was an entire season, was the way to do it. So when I sat down with David and Dan at that meeting at the Palm, which started out as a lunch meeting and turned into a dinner meeting, and they said the same thing, then I suddenly knew we’re on the same wavelength here.

June 2014

Q: What can you tell us about a warg dragon rider?

A: There is no history/precedent for someone warging a dragon. There is a rich history of the mythical bond between dragon and rider. There have been instances of dragons responding to their riders even from very far away (hmm) which shows it is a true and very strong bond. We will learn more about this. Keep reading (we hear “keep writing” from the back of the room).

Q: What is your favorite line in ASOIAF?

A: I can’t single out one line but my favorite passage is Septon Meribald’s speech about war in… what was it? (crowd yells out Feast for Crows).

November 2014

For people who are not familiar with your work, the series takes place in an imaginary world. There is a struggle for control of the kingdom. This dynastic war is essentially one of three main plot lines. There are the other plot lines involving these sort of superhuman characters, and then there’s the exiled Targaryen daughter who seeks the return of her ancient throne. Why those three main plot lines?

Well, of course, the two outlying ones — the things going on north of the Wall, and then there is Targaryen on the other continent with her dragons — are of course the ice and fire of the title, “A Song of Ice and Fire.” The central stuff — the stuff that’s happening in the middle, in King’s Landing, the capital of the seven kingdoms — is much more based on historical events, historical fiction.

Pop culture has grabbed “Game of Thrones.” It’s been featured in “The Simpsons” and “South Park.” What goes through your mind when you see these references?

Well, I think it’s tremendously cool, of course. It’s nice to be doing something that everybody is so aware of and that has entered the cultural zeitgeist in that manner. The only aspect of it that really astonishes me is not that the characters and the story is being parodied or referenced in these various places but the extent at which I personally am. I mean, when I see myself as a character on “South Park” or I see Bobby Moynihan imitating me with the suspenders and the hat on “Saturday Night Live,” when I see companies selling Halloween costumes, not Halloween costumes to be Jon Snow or Daenerys but Halloween costumes to be me, that’s pretty freaky. That’s something I could never have anticipated, and I just don’t know what to think of it.

May 2015

Still, it’s only natural that there’s a few characters Martin would have liked to have seen on the show that did not make it in.

“Strong Belwas, who was part of Dany’s entourage,” Martin said. “I understand why he was cut, but I kind of miss him.” In the books, the massive eunuch warrior is a former pit fighter who joins Dany in Qarth. Belwas’ story elements have essentially been combined with the character of Daario, who is arguably more essential to Dany’s journey.

June 2015

I explained that in my own head, Yandel is in King's Landing, clutching his book, showing up each day for an audience with the king... and each day being told perhaps the next day. Except on those occasions where, you know, they tell him the king's getting married today, and then whoops, Joffrey is dead, etc.

I also noted that of course, given how he wrote about the reign of Aerys and and the rebellion, that if Aegon or Daenerys take King's Landing he may indeed end up having his head chopped off... George seemed interested in the idea, I think. :P

May 2016

4. GRRM and Picacio both made the joke about "you need to pay the artist" and such regarding general fan fiction. And then GRRM said he has issued some sub-licenses to things like art and games, etc. GRRM also mentioned that HBO owns the rights to the exact likenesses of the tv version of the story, meaning, no art can be made where Dany looks like Emilia. He was very careful in avoiding a real link in feeling between him and HBO even though he was asked about it twice. Then GRRM mentioned, and Picacio joined in, how GRRM knew the show would overtake the books. Not too much new.

Reactions after the episode

c. Dany on Drogon seemed random and a repeat of previous seasons.

d. Others loved Dany on Drogon.

December 2016

And the most revealing: he said that for Winds, Winter is the darkest time 'where things die' and many characters will go dark places.

At last I was able to ask him the question I had sent for the tombola. I have always been fascinated by how ASOIAF embodies the theories put forward by Acemoglu and Robinson about countries with extractive institutions (which hamper development). So my question was: Why do you think the political institutions in the Seven Kingdoms are so weak? His answer: the Kingdom was unified with dragons, so the Targaryen's flaw was to create an absolute monarchy highly dependent on them, with the small council not designed to be a real check and balance. So, without dragons it took a sneeze, a wildly incompetent and megalomaniac king, a love struck prince, a brutal civil war, a dissolute king that didn't really know what to do with the throne and then chaos. Interesting answer.

July 2017

To a certain degree, also, it’s so intertwined, tragically and unfortunately, with the character histories. Daenerys doesn’t get to where she is unless she’s sold as a child bride, effectively a slave.

And I should point out, and you probably know this if you’ve read the books and watched the show, Daenerys’ wedding night is quite different than it was portrayed in the books. Again, indeed, we had an original pilot where the part of Daenerys was recast, and what we filmed the first time, when Tamzin Merchant was playing the role, it was much more true to the books. It was the scene as written in the books. So that got changed between the original pilot and the later pilot. You’d have to talk to David and Dan about that.

I had all these meetings saying, “There’s too many characters, it’s too big — Jon Snow is the central character. We’ll eliminate all the other characters and we’ll make it about Jon Snow.” Or “Daenerys is the central character. We’ll eliminate everyone else and make the movie about Daenerys.” And I turned down all those deals.

When you’re walking down the street in Santa Fe, do new character or historical details just pop into your head?

Sometimes it happens to me on long-distance drives. When I was younger I loved to take road trips, and get in the car and drive for two days to get to L.A. or Kansas City or St. Louis or Texas. And on the road, I would think a lot about that. In 1993, I think it was, I visited France for the first time. I had begunGame of Thrones two years before in ‘91 and I had to put it aside because television was happening. And for some reason, I had rented a car, I was driving all around Brittany and the roads of France to these little medieval villages and I was seeing castles, and somehow that just got me going again. I was thinking about Tyrion and Jon Snow and Daenerys and my head was full of Game of Thrones stuff.

You’re in unusual territory, with your characters very much still in your hands but also out in the world being interpreted for TV. Are you able to have walls in your mind such that your Daenerys, say, is your Daenerys, and Emilia Clarke’s Daenerys is hers and the show’s?

I’ve arrived at that point. The walls are up in my mind. I don’t know that I was necessarily there from the beginning. At some points, when David and Dan and I had discussions about what way we should go in, I would always favor sticking with the books, while they would favor making changes. I think one of the biggest ones would probably be when they made the decision not to bring Catelyn Stark back as Lady Stoneheart. That was probably the first major diversion of the show from the books and, you know, I argued against that, and David and Dan made that decision.

In my version of the story, Catelyn Stark is re-imbued with a kind of life and becomes this vengeful wight who galvanizes a group of people around her and is trying to exact her revenge on the riverlands. David and Dan made a decision not to go in that direction in their story, pursuing other threads. But both of them are equally valid, I think, because Catelyn Stark is a fictional character and she doesn’t exist. You can tell either story about her.

Is there anything we didn’t get to talk about?

I suppose there are issues we could have explored more with the whole question of sexual violence and women — it’s a complicated and fraught issue. To re-address that point a little, I do a lot of book signings, and I think I have probably more women readers than male readers right now. Only slightly, but it’s probably 55 percent, 45 percent, but I see women readers at things and they love my women characters. I’m very proud of the creation of Arya and Catelyn and Sansa and Brienne and Daenerys and Cersei and all of them. It’s one of the things that gives me the most satisfaction, that they’ve been so well-received as characters, especially by women readers who are often not served.

August 2017

- My question about Daenerys was chosen as the third question (I was lucky!) but he refused to answer it lol … I asked “How old was Daenerys when she left the house with the red door, and was it located close to the palace of the Sealord of Braavos?” (thanks Butterfly for suggesting it to me) I don’t know why he refused to answer about her age, but about the house with the red door he said there will be more revelations about it in future books.

- He was asked to comment about the differences between the book and show characters, particularly Daenerys. GRRM ignored all the other characters and talked only about Daenerys - he said that the show one is older because there are laws in USA that prevent minors from having sex scenes so the decision was made to age Daenerys. Otherwise, book Daenerys and show Daenerys “are very similar” and “Emilia Clarke did a fantastic job”. (I guess he can’t really say negative things about the show, can he?)

- “Will Jorah ever get out of the friendzone?” (side-eyeing the person who asked this). GRRM: “I would not bet on it.”

August 2018

Q: if you did have a child what would you name him or her?

A: “I don’t know... probably Not Daenerys”

November 2018

“I have tried to make it explicit in the novels that the dragons are destructive forces, and Dany (Daenerys Targaryen) has found that out as she tried to rule the city of Meereen and be queen there.

“She has the power to destroy, she can wipe out entire cities, and we certainly see that in Fire and Blood, we see the dragons wiping out entire armies, wiping out towns and cities, destroying them, but that doesn’t necessarily enable you to rule — it just enables you to destroy.”

[...] “If you read Fire and Blood, you’ll know there’s definitely a bond between the dragons and their riders and the dragons will not accept just any rider,” says Martin. “Some people try to take a dragon wind up being eaten or burned to death instead, so the dragons are terribly fussy about who rides them.”

[...] The prince defeated the threat in the North by driving his sword through his wife’s heart. Will Jon have to do the same to Daenerys? Or is she the prince, Azor Ahai, reborn? Martin suggests all may not be as it seems.

“The Targaryens have certain gifts and yes, taking the dragons and dragon riding and dragon breeding was one of them,” he says. “But the other gift was an occasional Targaryen had prophetic powers and could see glimpses of the future, which they didn’t always necessarily properly interpret because, you know, they were fragmentary and sometimes symbolic.

“But to what extent did they share those gifts, what did he see, what prompted him to do all this? These are things I find really interesting to ponder.

What was interesting from The Guardian interview you did, is this book — as daunting as it would seem for most authors to attempt, and as tough as Winds has been for you — this was curiously easy for you to write. Yes. Partly because it’s linear. Although it covers 150 years or so, it’s very straightforward — here’s what happened in the year 30, here’s what happened in 25. In Winds, I have like 10 different novels and I’m juggling the timeline — here’s what’s happening to Tyrion, here’s what’s happening to Dany, and how they intersect. That’s far more complicated.

August 2019

On the fame thing, does it ever feel surreal to stop and think about the reach that your work has had? I mean, couples meet through Game of Thrones, there are Thrones-themed wedding ceremonies, and babies are named after your characters. Is that something you ever dwell on and think to yourself 'God, my work has had this massive effect on people?'

It's very gratifying when you get letters, emails, and hear stories like that. They definitely do name children after my characters and send me pictures of their babies.

People also name their dogs, cats, iguanas, after my characters. Sometimes, it’s a little surreal. I often wonder about all the young Daenerys’ out there because kindergarten teachers will hate me because they have to spell it!

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