#really realistic huge statues

[sosilliest]

ILL BE WORKING ON ASKS SOON HOPEFULLY!!

i was out all day and i went downtown! I got some transformers comics at my local comic store 🙏!!!

I also went to a dinosaur exhibit and a war exhibit in the same museum so i was a bit busy today as you can tell HAHA

But yes tysm for ur asks and i’ll be working on them tonight if everything goes to plan!

[siriuslyobsessedwithfiction]

My niche HP theory is that Tom Riddle couldn't give less of a shit about blood purity. He grew up during WW2 and saw both the muggle world's and the Wizarding world's prejudices and since the wizards were even more old-fashioned and disconnected from the muggle world, he decided to use their snobbish views and purebloods' fear of dying out and losing power to Muggleborns. Tom Riddle was an angry young man who saw how blood supremacy and hatred of muggles destroyed his family and left him with nothing. And the uptight filthy rich pureblood pricks got to parade around in his house at Hogwarts acting as if they owned the world? Imagine his fury.

My theory is that Riddle planned the downfall of purebloods at muggleborns' expanse. He promised purebloods to make their wet dreams come true: muggleborns and half-bloods would serve them instead of overtaking their places. He was an extremely intelligent, cunning, talented wizard who had a huge (albeit destroyed) legacy to back him up. A war started, purebloods would never win without Lord Voldemort, but at the end of the day, the majority still knew they served a half-blood with a muggle last name. The irony. He let purebloods destroy themselves - the majority of them died fighting for blood supremacist cause. As for the muggleborns and half-bloods, well, he didn't really care about them. He wanted to rule the purebloods, as he believed was his right, but at the same time, he resented them. There is no way that the orphan who survived the Blitz didn't want to stab a pureblood next to him during lunch at Slytherin table who bragged about his papa's influence on the ministry and made fun of muggle wars. Tom Riddle has also worked in retail.

Additionally, we see on several occasions that Voldemort respects qualities in a person, not their status. He called James Potter brave, even though he thought he was a fool. But openly insulted and made fun of Malfoys during a Deatheaters meeting.

This theory of mine has another one attached to it, which is that after making so many horcruxes, his mind and sanity were severely fractured. That's why he never changed his plans, because at that point, starting a war for the second time made little sense. Voldemort is self-serving and that served no further purpose for him. He just needed to kill Harry to ensure his immortality and let the world know that a child handn't defeated him. The darkest of magic which psychically altered his appearance didn't have any negative effects on his mentality and judgment? Highly unlikely. Which would explain why he wasn't as terrifying and cunning when he came back. Voldemort was a mere shadow of Tom Riddle and couldn't accomplish what he did. If Tom Riddle had stopped at three horcruxes, realistically, he would've won.

[yarns-and-d20s]

I really struggle to understand why people are SO salty over Gale requiring three (3) items. It's slightly more "oh no" in a Gale origin playthrough given that the item that Tara gives you is an entire ring of evasion and if you've long rested before doing much, you may not have any alternatives.

But if and when those conditions are not the case... what the hell kind of dancing lights emergencies are you having in this game that you feel the need to hoard KOMIRA'S LOCKET? Are you that hard-pressed and desperate for gold every second of act 1 that you must sell every magic item that you don't have use for with your party make up? Because lots of those items really are of no use if you don't have certain classes in your party.

As for money--how am I the only player in all the land who waltzes into Rivington for the first time with more gold than I can ever possibly spend in the game even if I buy a goddamn statue?

But as for Hotfix 17 and changing Gale's reaction to not being given items... well, it's not like the man won't BLOW UP A HUGE CHUNK OF THE SWORD COAST or anything. It's not like he's ACTIVELY DYING. It's not like HE'S IN PAIN WHEN THE ORB DOES ITS ORB SHIT.

Like, y'all are salty that you have to give this dude stuff to keep him alive and salty that he doesn't like being in pain.

People aren't necessarily sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows when they're in severe pain.

Ask me how I know.

Gale getting cranky and potentially fucking off make loads of sense. Like, we don't want "plot holes" in our fiction, we want things to be "realistic"... getting angry about being in pain and being refused help is extremely realistic. Not wanting to die and take countless people with you is realistic.

[rallamajoop]

A needlessly detailed analysis of Heisenberg's Conspiracy Board

One of the random details I was most eager to find in the RE8 game assets was Heisenberg's conspiracy board. (It's labeled 'strategy board' in the game files, but I think we all know what we're looking at here.)

The assets consisted of a base layer (below) with separate higher-res photos of Chris, Mia, Rose (with Ethan!) and the other three lords (clean versions of those last three, plus Heisenberg, can be found over here). The actual model is more 3-dimensional than you might think, with many of the photos displayed as separate 'flaps' that stick out from the base board (which does unfortunately make stitching together higher-res screencaps of the full board very difficult).

There are a few reasons why I wanted better pics of the board, but a real big one was catching an in-game glimpse of this one smaller photo on the upper right of some guy in sunglasses and going, wait, is that Wesker?

Having extracted the highest-res version of that photo possible... well, for that to be Wesker, he'd have to have come back to life and aged about 20 years. Which wouldn't entirely be out of character (he's come back from the dead at least once already, and even Chris is looking his age these days) but is really that who it's supposed to be? IDEK, and neither does this one Reddit thread I found discussing the same question.

There are a few other human-faces around the board ‒ mostly some mustachioed dude(s?) ‒ some of them entirely hidden under other photos on the finished board, but none I recognise. Presumably they're meant to be folks who are/were involved with Miranda or other bio-weapons research, past or present, and maybe they're characters set to appear in some future RE installment. But they may just be stock photos, thrown in to fill space.

But having finally posted this thing and come back to it again this morning, I'm looking at that one larger guy in one of those photos and going, wait, isn't that the Duke?

Goddamn, it is, isn't it? You can even see the lapels of his jacket and the curve of the wagon roof over his head. How did I miss that? XD No prizes for guessing why Heisenberg might think he's worth including on a conspiracy board!

Most of the rest of the board is covered with photos of various monstrous bio-weapons. Again, this is probably meant to represent a mix of Miranda's work and that of other bio-weapons manufacturers. Someone more familiar with extended Resi-canon than I am might even be able to identify some of these creatures, but none were immediately familiar to me.

Even the one zombie face below that looks almost exactly like a screencap from that first iconic zombie-reveal-scene from the very first Resident Evil turned out not to be (and yes, I checked both the original version and the remake), though it may still be meant to evoke that moment. The photo behind it, meanwhile, looks to be just a pair of soldats.

The other big 'notice me!' feature is, of course, the big map with 'BSAA Come!!' scribbled on it. The circled target location is the ceremony site, identifiable by the four huge statues, and the date at the bottom (February 10, 2020) is the date of Miranda's planned ceremony (tomorrow morning).

Presumably, this is supposed to be a map the BSAA themselves prepared for troop briefings, but no-one's going to get much out of trying to take this thing too literally. Realistically, the only reason "BSAA Come!!" is written in such big letters here is to let the player know at a glance that Heisenberg is clued in enough to be expecting a BSAA assault.

That's about it for really obvious features. There's not a lot else here that the casual viewer is likely to recognise or find particularly significant. But I'm way past 'casual' in over-analysing this damn game, and I can point out a dozen other features on this board that might (or might not) be awash with implications about all the juicy intel Heisenberg's got his hands on.

Basically, it's time to play my favourite game: Cheaply Reused Asset or Significant Callback?

See, much as I'd love for every last detail on this board to be dense with important lore, the reality is that the player gets barely a few seconds to look at this thing in-game, and so most of what's on it was probably thrown together in a hurry by some overworked member of the asset team without much thought. And nothing demonstrates this better than the fact that two different photo clusters (circled below) from the right edge of the board are duplicated wholesale as you move left across the board.

Someone's just copy-pasted these in their entirety, slightly reduced them in size, and assumed no-one would notice. The asset team is only human, and believes in working smarter not harder as much as anyone.

Then there's the fact that a number of other assets you can find on this board are actually posters advertising fishing equipment, which you can find around the reservoir, near where you pick up the boat key.

Why would Heisenberg include these on his conspiracy board? There's no good reason, they're just a convenient assets to fill in some space.

And then there's my all-time favourite random detail on this board ‒ a completely random photo of a bottle of Dulvey Beer, two bags of Half-Whole flour, and a carton of orange juice.

Now, maybe somewhere in these games, you can find these exact items arranged in this position next to never-before-found coded clue to the future of the series! But more likely, this is just the asset team making an inside-joke about asset recycling, using a picture of some of the most oft-reused assets in the game, on a board that's already covered in reused assets from elsewhere. (Look, I thought it was funny, even if no-one else looking at the board is going to get it.)

So, yeah, a lot of what's on this board means nothing, except that whoever made it had limited time and a lot of space to fill. And That's Okay.

But then we get to the stuff where I do really wanna believe its inclusion means something. For one, the board contains copies of both the mission briefing Chris' team is carrying when they abduct Ethan (the one you find by the overtuned truck), and Rose's BSAA-headered medical checkup report.

I already have this whole theory that that same medical report being leaked to Miranda might just be a major unsung catalyst for how she realised Rose's potential, and thus set all the events of the game in motion. So finding that the same report has made it's way onto Heisenberg's conspiracy board is a lovely bit of potential validation. Similarly, the implication that Heisenberg might have known about Chris' mission to Ethan's home before it even happened has some tantalising implications (or maybe he just found it out by the van where Ethan left it).

Rose's medical report isn't the only BSAA-headered document on the board either ‒ there's another on the top right (outlined in yellow) that doesn't correspond to any in-game asset I can find (presumably it wasn't actually needed for whatever it was created for). There's plenty elsewhere in this game to suggest Miranda has contacts in the BSAA feeding her all their secrets ‒ and whether Heisenberg got these reports from Miranda or independently, the fact he's got them at all suggests one hell of an info-leak.

Speaking of Miranda, you can find a couple of copies of some of her own research notes on Heisenberg's board ‒ this is the same asset used in her lab under the graveyard, where you can find notes about her experiments on 'Alcina D'. So that's another interesting file that it makes total sense Heisenberg might include on his board.

The board also includes a couple of extracts from that issue of The Dulvey Daily from Ethan's home, with the article about the closing of the Baker investigation. Realistically, this is likely to be another case of a random asset being used without much thought, but it does make sense that Heisenberg would have followed that investigation (and I can't help but loved that Heisenberg felt the Horn of Plenty article was worth including in his vast conspiracy-network ‒ I told you they were shady!)

You can find bits of a couple of Heisenberg's own Soldat-x-rays on the board too. Doesn't make a whole lot of sense, but they do look nicely sinister, so onto the board they go! (In multiple places again)

That's about it for assets I could identify. However, there are also a few photos from around the village itself on the board ‒ two of which were evidently screenshots taken from Ethan's own point of view, given that his gun is clearly visible in the bottom left of the screen in customary position. Objectively, this makes no sense, but it sure does add to that "someone's been watching you" atmosphere that any good conspiracy board should aspire to.

(I also feel like I should totally be recognising that doorway in the photo about the 'o' in 'mother', but can't place it.)

And for one final, bizarre detail, you may notice this weird photo of someone's feet appears in a few places on the board. And it's definitely the same photo ‒ the details line up perfectly, right down to the pin and that bit of string. But for some reason, someone's added a lace skirt to the feet in the example on the left.

You can't even see that skirt in the finished board (it's under Miranda's picture), but it amused me nonetheless.

Before we finish, have a few more close-ups on some of the other weird photos you can find on the board.

So, what conclusions can we draw here? There's a ton of detail on Heisenberg's conspiracy board to suggest he (or perhaps Miranda) has access to files from the BSAA and whoever Chris is now working with/for, that he's researched what happened at Dulvey and has certainly helped himself to Miranda's own files, if you'd like to read significance into what was included on the board. But there's also a ton of complete nonsense, so, you know, pretty much just RE lore operating as per usual.

I hope you've all enjoyed my little descent-into-madness while picking this thing apart.

[digitulart]

helluva boss redesigns. i made these a year ago so i cant completely remember my thought process on them, what i Do remember is my ideas for them

blitzo: (currently not renamed) grew up in the circus and still looks back on it fondly, hence his clothing. hes been not only declawed, but the light markings on his fur and horns indicate severe injury. hes not aggressive but he is very fidgety and overexcited, and does not think ahead, which always worries his coworkers. hes also very quick to try finding the "positives" in every scenario, and refuses to accept the downsides. the stress of being a tiny little imp trying to make a living through his assassin job is getting to him. he loves his big wolf daughter also. he loves her a lot. shes pretty much all he has

loona: The Wolf Daughter. renamed Ariel, shes a hellhound with albinism and was adopted by an imp, who arent so respected in hell due to their status and size. asides from her insecurities with not fitting in anywhere, and her teen angst behavior, she is successful in finding few friends and forming an indie rock band titled "Discord". yes she plays the bass. ariel cant say shes not grateful for everything her dad gives her and respects his commitment to his job, but she is a little embarrassed by him. she feels bad that shes ashamed of him, honestly

millie: renamed mimi for now. your average country girl imp. she plays a mean banjo. shes the heart of the I.M.P team and tries to keep everyone in good spirits. shes not above doing dirty work to get by, so being an assassin is more or less her true calling. it was better than her job in the mafia anyways. after meeting her husband, she began to realize she has extreme difficulty showing love in ways other than through service acts, as shes usually closed off emotionally. growing up in a big family, she wasnt given enough attention to really understand love. shes very grounded and a quick thinker, especially in tense situations

moxxie: (also not renamed yet) the actual realist of the team, aka nerd, and the strategist/planner/financial advisor/etc. his dad is a mafia boss, so although he left him many years ago, he also learned a lot from him. and also became extremely anxious and a huge perfectionist over executing any plans. but i mean, who wouldnt still be scared shitless over just about everything due to growing up like that, especially over their dad whos still actively looking for them anyways, even though their mom has tried keeping them from him multiple times until she disappeared, and he eloped with another previous member of the mafia, so now Shes in danger too, etc etc

(moxxie best character so he didnt get any severe changes btw)

(do NOT ask me about my opinions on this show or assume i hate it or love it or whatever i dont give a shit. that means you too viv)

[cl-0v3r]

remember the days when you didn't like ambessa? what changed your mind about her?

HI ANONN , THATS A GOOD QUESTION!

Since the beginning I've always found it hard to trust Ambessa, it's not that I don't believe her experiences, she's one of the smartest characters in the whole show. But It's more about her relationship with Mel, I've always been so unsure about what her true feelings towards Mel are, she is a wolf, but undoubtedly a fox as well. Manipulation is like smooth sailing for her, and finding genuinity in her expressions always came with a little bit of doubt on the side, "Does she actually care? Is she manipulating the people around her -including Mel- JUST to get her way? Is she trustworthy with her intentions and feelings towards Mel?" And etc.

Only a little while ago did I realize that Ambessa is just extremely complex, she has so many layers, to the point where I didn't really have to time to clear my glasses about her character. I hated her for her morals, and i let that affect my interest towards this character as a whole, which is a huge mistake in my book. I also did take her a little personally sometimes, shes really realistic and it scared me a lot.

But ever since riot released the few beggining s2 trailers, I slowly started getting excited to see her. We did not get much screentime with Ambessa in s1, hence why I never felt a close attachment to her, and Mel was another reason on why I didn't like Ambessa because I'm attached to HER the most. Which reflects on my opinions on certain others, sort of like seeing things from her perspective. Mel is basically the base of my opinions on other characters if that makes sense?

Family, especially motherhood tropes are such a weakness for me, seeing her league voicelines and that music video they recently released (blood, sweat & tears) is what tipped the jar completely for me. We never got a clear indication on what Ambessas true perspective was, so finally seeing things from her eyes, hearing what she had to say, seeing how rough her past is made me understand why she became who she is in the current timeline.

And now I feel like I do not need to doubt everything she says, she does indeed love Mel as much as she does kino, she was not telling Mel in episode 9 all those things to weaken her for an open road, no. She'd went through hell and back just to keep her family safe despite how nuanced her actions are. seeing her lore simply made me do an entire 180⁰ turn.

She was going to accept her and her childs death and give in, but instead she chose to fight for her and their lives instead.

Kindred has the Lamb and the wolf. The lamb takes the lives of the dying peacefully, the wolf on the other hand, takes the lives of those who fight for their lives until they're dead.

And I find that interesting, gut wrenching and sickening mentally, thanks riot, good to know Ambessa is locked to the wolf in every single way <333

Thing is, what pains me is that she had no choice, she had to choose to die and leave everyone behind including the unborn child, or become the Medardas dictator, with the expense of her child's inevitable death. (Or perhaps I've taken this wrong)

From my understanding, the MV was more about Kino than it is about Mel, her letting go of the lamb was like handing the lamb for slaughter, a sacrifice, sort of like a "contract". Which lead to Kinos death despite how unrelated it was from kindred (like he didn't die by kindreds hands directly) . Hence why she was crying over the child figure/statue holding the lamb.

And later with the visual presentation of her pain too, someone please take the medardas pains and give it triple the amount to the actual worst fucking person to exist oh my god 😭 😭 😭

To summarize, I just never understood her character properly, I never got myself to do so. and that is a mistake from my side, I am a really visual person and the reason I really love arcane is because they don't really need words to express and show who their characters really are. Theres so many visual secrets and easterggs, expressionism, movements, colors, every single thing matters. And with Ambessa only appearing on the last 2 episodes?? Yeah I never felt like learning about her. But now im slowly starting to do that! She made it from my least character ever to like TOP 5 😭 😭

All of this will not change how horrible she is, she is a painted villain, ambiguous yes, but leaning on the darker sides. But that's what makes her Ambessa and no one else, I will forever hate her morals, I won't defend her actions. but her true intentions are meaningful nonetheless, with all the other characters too.

[joannerowling]

I’m curious - why do you think Fred dying was necessary? I’m not disagreeing but I was devastated so I’m curious what your thoughts are! (Especially after your Percy meta 🤌🏻)

Many reasons! A Weasley always had to die in the last book because, as JKR put it, it wouldn't have been realistic for all of them to survive. They were too involved.

With regards to Percy specifically, well… Percy's return always had to come at a price, to really drive home how poor his decisions were. Percy's arc teaches the reader a lesson about family, and being careful about the sort of wedges you're prepared to drive between them and you, and why, because if you ever change your mind it might be too late, especially in uncertain times. Think about Covid, or the Israel-Palestine war, those are the sort of political situations which can create huge tensions and sometimes tear families completely, and needlessly, apart.

The point isn't really that Percy was in the wrong when he stood with Fudge in OotP, his real offense was his refusal to come back after that. He had ample opportunity to do so – he could have admitted his mistake, apologised, and the family would have forgiven him in time. Instead he wallowed in his pride and/or shame. Then the war truly started in DH and even if he'd have wanted to make contact it became either too dangerous or impossible (as he wouldn't have known where they were hiding). And then right as he finds them back again during the finale battle, right as he's making tentative connections (a joke!) with the member of the family he had the toughest time communicating with, giving us some hope for reconciliation and growth… Nope, it's too late.

It ALWAYS had to be one of the twins because they were the ones Percy had the most volatile conflict with. It could have been Arthur, but Arthur had already a close call in OotP and Percy's emotions over that had already been shown so it would have felt repetitive. Plus, as discussed in the previous post, Percy takes his "big brother" status seriously, so it HAD to be a younger sibling he failed to protect and ever fix his mistakes with.

What makes it worse (and therefore better! :D) is Percy COULD have been close with Fred and George: they are the closest in age after all. But the fact they were twins meant they were always their own little team within the siblings + their personalities didn't match with Percy's + they were all competing for Molly and Arthur's attention. (In fact i think there's a good chance that a young Percy at some point wished he only had one little brother instead of the twins, so it could be Bill & Charlie, Ron & Ginny, and him and whoever would be instead of the twins. Obviously, once one of the twins gets actually killed, it wouldn't have been a great memory. I know, i'm extrapolating a lot here, but some people in this fandom think Evan Rosier was fucking Luna Lovegood's mum so just indulge me lol)

ALSO (i'm stopping after that promise), does Percy's behaviour remind you of anyone? Ron is very Percy-like in DH. But unlike Percy, Ron needed to have a bit of Voldemort's evil soul hanging around his neck to make that kind of choice + he regretted it immediately and tried to come back + crucially he was ready to admit his mistake and work on his flaws. He sought the advice of Bill when Percy isolated himself. That's why Ron doesn't get punished, and also probably why Ron's a main character and hero.

Tl;dr: Fred's death is the inevitable conclusion of the tragedy that is Percy's arc about being too proud to solve minor conflicts with his family until it was too late.

[ape-apocalypse]

Road To The Kingdom - My Planet Of The Apes Retrospective

With the hype for Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes on the rise, I decided to do a bit of a deep dive into the trilogy of reboot movies starring the incredible Andy Serkis and the various tie-in titles.

Why ramble on about a series that most people seem to overlook? Well, I think back to an interaction I had here on Tumblr in 2017, just one week before War For The Planet Of The Apes came out. While scrolling through the POTA tags, I found a post that wondered if anyone was actually excited for the new film or if the studio hadn't gotten the message and was making it for an audience that didn't exist. I responded that I was genuinely excited for the new film, that I loved the motion capture apes and the action scenes and the surprisingly engaging story, and would be seeing it opening weekend. The other person seemed surprised by my honest answer and apologized for their snarkiness (a truly shocking turn of events in the history of the Internet!).

I explained that I'd gone into these films thinking of them like Jurassic World series; I wasn't there for a great story and deep writing, I just wanted to see dinosaurs destroy things. So when I went into the POTA films, just expecting to see fun action movies with monkey chaos and apocalyptic results, I was surprised that I was swept up in the characters and their stories. I loved seeing the life of Caesar from tiny carefree baby to resilient revolutionary to fearsome leader, and the lives of all the humans and apes around him. The other poster said they hadn't actually seen the movies, just expected them to be shallow cash-grabs on reboot nostalgia, but they might have to reconsider giving them a shot after my enthusiastic response.

So if I can sway the minds of anyone who has written off these films, more movie tickets sold might mean more films and other media told in this ape apocalypse world!

And even if you already know and love the films, I also want to give some love to tie-in materials. Books, comics, YouTube shorts, video games; POTA has a surprisingly large catalog of bonus material for a series not considered mainstream like Marvel or Lord Of The Rings or Star Trek. I don't see them get many mentions in the fandom so hope a little spotlight on them can help them shine. They have delicious tidbits of world-building and character backstory, filling in gaps between the movies. I already have my fingers crossed there will be some tie-in material covering some of the huge time jump between War and Kingdom. With three hundred years passing between them, there is so much to learn about the ever growing and changing ape societies. I'm eager for any scrap of info they'll share!

But really, even if nothing I write changes anyone's mind about this franchise, it's still fun to gush about one of my favorite fictional universes.

My brief history with POTA was that I didn't know much about the original films before going into the new Andy Serkis trilogy. I'd heard enough about the original film to know the main beats of the first movie (quotes like 'damn dirty ape', the reveal of the planet being Earth with the Statue of Liberty). I saw the Tim Burton film which didn't leave any kind of impression other than the incredibly realistic costumes/make-up, so much so that I was apprehensive of the CG apes. Since getting into the new films, I've started watching the originals and may cover those just for fun.

So whether you're a long-time die hard fan or a fresh face to Caesar's legacy, I hope you'll enjoy my thoughts on the Planet of the Apes franchise!

Links to all my posts as they are released:

- Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes Film

- Prelude and Contagion Comics

- Motherboard YouTube Shorts

- Firestorm Tie-In Novel

- Fall Of Man Comics

- Dawn Tie-In Comic

- Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes Film

- Revelations Tie-In Novel

- Last Frontier Video Game

- Crisis Video Game

- When Worlds Collide Comics

- War For The Planet Of The Apes Film

- War Tie-In Comic

- Caesar's Story Novel

[vickyvicarious]

Oh man, this chapter was rough for Henry to the point of it being kind of funny. Every two lines he kept trying to flirt but Margaret was just not picking up what he was putting down. Honestly, it's pretty impressive how every single move he makes is immediately countered/shut down by either Margaret herself or the narrative. It's made clear again and again and again that they are not a match:

“Did not I say that I should?” asked he, in a lower tone than that in which he had spoken. -> Henry tries on a meaningful voice, Margaret not only doesn't respond in kind at all but also leaves the room shortly afterwards.

They were a dull list of words, but somehow he liked looking at them. He put them down with a sigh. -> No Margaret here but the narrative itself hinting at them being unsuited, with Henry mostly bored despite his infatuation, and also disappointed in her family's humble status.

He was pleased with everything; delighted with Margaret’s idea of going out sketching together; would not have Mr. Hale disturbed for the world, with the prospect of so soon meeting him at dinner. -> He's all for his solo time with her, but she only came up with it as a ploy to let her mom get the food ready in peace.

When they sit down to sketch, Henry scooches them close together with the excuse of a puddle. Almost immediately, Margaret is getting up to go and talk to someone.

He drew her and says he really likes the sketch. She walks away. This is maybe the most potentially promising moment from his perspective, because she's blushing and he's watching her closely to try and figure out if it's a good blush or bad one. But even here we get an immediate negative, because he's not sure she heard and he regrets saying it because it wasn't planned.

“I should say that a likeness you very much wish to take you would always succeed in,” said Mr. Lennox. “I have great faith in the power of will. I think myself I have succeeded pretty well in yours.” -> Henry says I really wanted to take your likeness but Margaret just keeps picking flowers without seeming to pick up on the line. This leads to another potentially positive moment partially spoiled by his own thoughts, as he seems a little frustrated at her not understanding him even as he's helping her with the flowers and getting matching ones for himself. They also physically part right after when she goes inside.

Margaret leaves to go get the pears for dessert. Henry suggests everyone follow, and watches her while she's getting them together. He's out of sync with both Margaret herself (off doing her own thing getting the food her father wants without thought for him) and her family (making her mother feel awkwardly forced by politeness to go eat outside, proposing a way of eating the pears her father isn't into). Nothing huge but the fact that it keeps happening over and over...

They go for a walk and he tries to praise her home and life. She immediately tries again to be more realistic about it and complains about him having 'scorned' her fondness for her home previously.

The second he starts to propose, the trainwreck gets rapid-fire and worse all around. He gets hesitant and Margaret wishes she were anywhere else. He takes her hand and it's described as "forcing" her stay and listen; he has to try to retain his grip as she tries to pull her hand free. Any "fluttering at her heart" is despite herself and she despises it. He's not pleased that she likes her home because it means she isn't listening to him kindly. He loves her almost in spite of himself. She doesn't think of him as anything but a friend.

He wants to ask her if she loves someone but can't. She wants to shut him down more harshly but restrains herself. He feels snubbed and bitter. She feels guilty and annoyed (both at him and at herself for feeling bad for him when he isn't reacting well to the refusal).

Afterwards they both wish he could just leave. She's sad and pensive. He's acting witty in a cold and snobby kind of way and it rubs everyone wrong.

When he makes one last appeal before leaving, we don't see her reaction. But the jumble of negative is there in his speech: first, she was very firm that she didn't want anything more with him, but he's refusing to give up hope. Second, even as he says he loves her more, he also says he might hate her, both for the "disdain" with which she met his proposal.

There isn't a single potential romantic moment between them that isn't soured in one way or another. Also, this line:

“It was irresistible. You can’t know how strong a temptation it was. I hardly dare tell you how much I shall like this sketch.” He was not quite sure whether she heard this latter sentence before she went to the brook to wash her palette. She came back rather flushed, but looking perfectly innocent and unconscious. He was glad of it, for the speech had slipped from him unawares—a rare thing in the case of a man who premeditated his actions so much as Henry Lennox.

That feels like a huge character moment for him. He plans things out, he isn't spontaneous and he isn't comfortable with the vulnerability that comes with being so. He clearly planned this visit and this proposal, and came armed with plenty of practiced flirtations that would work on the type of women he's used to. Margaret seems pretty uninterested in playing those types of games (at least that I can judge so far; maybe it's mostly just with him), and seems more of a straight shooter.

They both censor themselves around one another. Margaret's willful ignorance of his flirting, his regret of unplanned flirting... During the proposal, he cuts off his request about if she loves someone else and she struggles to phrase her denial of ever liking him and her displeasure at this conversation in a way that isn't harsh.

Quite simply, their personalities aren't a match any more than their financial/home situations are. Romantically, at least. Honestly, he doesn't seem like a terrible guy (with the caveat that I really hope he is more respectful of her not liking him back in the future) and I would like to see them rebuild/continue a friendship. But it's made so very clear in this chapter that they will not be getting together.

(Also, on a meta level, if his feelings are at proposal attempt level this early in the story, the outlook isn't great. We're going to see more of a development throughout the book in any romance. The chapter title feels like a cheeky nod to that as well as to possibly the fact that Margaret will need time to fall for anyone. The quote at the beginning also makes a point of not using "courtship's flatteries" but those are Henry's technique.)

[vivianwine]

"If Rhaenyra comes into power…your very life could be forfeit. Aemond's as well. She could move to cut off any challenge to her succession."

"Then I won't challenge..."

"You are the challenge! You are the challenge, Aegon! Simply by living and breathing! You are the King's firstborn son and what they know,

what everyone in the realm knows, in their blood and in their bones is that one day, you will be our king."

Do you remember these lines? These exact lines are the one of the reason for Aegon to usurp the iron throne. Because whether he usurps the throne or not his, his brothers and their bloodline is the most dangerous treat to Rhaenyra’s bloodline.

If you have a little understanding of medieval politics, you would know that no matter what the green kids do, they wouldn’t be able change the their status as potential treats.

It is truly an unfortunate thing to realm wanting to have a male ruler instead of a women but at that time period no one wasn’t ready for such a drastic change. They first tried that with Rhaenys and that was a big fat NO

And then they had Rhaenyra. People have sworn to her. And she was accepted even after she had brothers. Which is a good improvement on the society’s view of women being on the power.

So as we can see realm would eventually get there but for that to happen in this generation, Viserys should’ve stopped having kids. Even though realm was getting there, it wasn’t “exactly there”

So having her 3 dragon riders silver haired brothers(one of them has the Vhagar) has made things complicated cause just like I said realm wasn’t exactly there (again,unfortunately but again, these things take time) eventually resulted as a civil war.

And also expecting realm them to be there is kinda foolish. Since GRRM is writing his stories rather realistic (people can write fantasy and be realistic) also his writing is actually quite based on the real world’s dynasties and their systems. So in real life these changes took time, it is expected them to take time in also HOTD since Writer is kinda taking examples from real life.

Back to the story: If he were to stop having children and put Rhaenyra on the throne without any challenge in the next or two to three generations later people could’ve accepted their first born as their heir without giving care to their sex.

These kind of things take time. And Dance of the Dragon’s timeline wasn’t ready to accept a women as their queen(unfortunately)

Therefore Aegon had to take to throne because he literally didn’t have a choice. Cause since realm is not ready for this huge change, they would eventually push Aegon or any of his brothers to throne and Rhaenyra would’ve to kill her brothers(rightfully)

So I really don’t understand this hate ontowards to green kids. They were trying to survive.

And I am not being misogynistic just by pointing out this sequence.

I am aware that Aegon being on throne is basically erasing the women’s standing as a ruler HOWEVER him not being on throne also means that he and his almost entire family being butchered. (I empathize with green kids’ POV just like i do with Rhaenyra’s.) So just because Aegon wanted to save himself and his family, this doesn’t mean that he is a bad person (I know he is rumored rapist in the book and I know he is a bad person but not because of him wanting survive. He has so much things to make him a more a bad, I KNOW)

[zahri-melitor]

Some more coherent thoughts about Gotham War, now it's settled on me.

(Spoilers below cut, for length and as it's still only Wednesday)

It's not a huge surprise, but Selina's whole 'train henches to steal from the rich non-violently!' ended up being a complete side issue that only existed to get the plot moving. Nobody's conception of this plot, in two years time, will really include this detail, despite the thousands of words spent arguing how ridiculous it was.

Yes it remains a poorly thought out plan on Selina's part (she's never heard of earning money legally) but the narrative also frames it as long term ineffective from the very first issue and knocks it down on multiple occasions.

DC editorial definitely tried to dress this up as a full family event, but realistically it was a Bruce, Selina and Jason event, written by their three current writers, with solid bit parts played by Tim and Dick.

Vandal Savage remains ridiculous and ready to sacrifice anyone and I appreciate that about him. As a villain he was just the right level of stakes for this event.

I enjoyed getting to see Scandal, even if her fans would say she got done dirty here. Scandal usually has enough sense not to believe anything Vandal says, and I admit I was somewhat waiting for some level of twist here as to why Scandal was all for immortality at this point in time, but it never came.

I still agree it felt a lot like three separate plotlines intersecting, but I think they managed to land the event successfully (while leaving some nice loose threads). I actually appreciate they didn't overreach in their goals.

It still finished out with two separate plotlines: Bruce and Selina and Jason; and Dick and Tim and the rest of the family. Structurally this again reminded me as much of Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul as Batman #138 did; the main plot and then the far more interesting Dick & Tim sideplot which is what I go back to reread. (Chip Zdarsky is clearly also a fan)

Also promisingly for an event yes, it did actually shake up the status quo and push the participants off in new directions.

So Bruce is now doing the Loner Batman thing (in that he's locked out of the fam computers/comm lines), Selina is officially 'dead' (what is with all these fake dead people with titles, Penguin is too right now), and Jason has what's effectively permanent fear toxin response to stressful situations. Also, apparently, we are getting Dick and Barbara back 'running' the Batfam while Bruce is on the outs.

As far as Bruce goes, what has been really notable in this event is how much Chip Zdarsky loves early 2000s Bat comics and their dynamics, and particularly Joker's Last Laugh. There's a lot of structural things about how this event was shaped, what specific characters did, and emotional beats that feel very JLL as someone who's read it at least half a dozen times. It's not the only influence, but it's a pretty prominent one.

Bruce ending the event in a position where he's effectively not working with most of the other Bats actually tracks reasonably well over to Batman & Robin, to my surprise. It makes sense that it's just Bruce and Damian and they're focusing on homelife and domestic relationship details between the two. It gives Bruce an excuse for why he's closely focused on Damian there.

I will admit I have not been reading Catwoman, but from the event it seems they're spinning her off to keep moving her back into a more antihero position. Tini Howard clearly has a direction she wants to take Selina.

I actually think this has pretty interesting storytelling potential for Jason. It means that he has to stay calm, or has to overcome his own fear to achieve things. It gives him a goal? Matthew Rosenberg clearly seems interested in using it for his Jason storytelling and he's got Jason right now, so...

I'm personally delighted by how much Tim Zdarsky wrote into this storyline. He used the space more to show off Dick and Tim's brotherhood and what Tim is good at, rather than push the Tim side of the Zur story we're all expecting to occur (there's that waiting Zur-Robin costume). Means he's planning it for Batman as a title itself rather than getting it tangled up here.

"It was the only way to become the second-best Robin". Yes, this is Tim getting to show off his core competencies - he probably is the only Bat other than Bruce who would have extensively studied all the trophies. Dick would remember a lot of them simply because a lot of the trophies are from old adventures, but pretty much all the others are not particularly retrospective, respect the past sort of members of the group, while Tim has always been surrounded by the shadows of the past. I loved this note.

I haven't talked about Babs yet! She's in green, in glasses, sitting down at her computers with a novelty mug, directing everyone, answering to Oracle. That's her! That's my Oracle!

I do think Bruce expecting Dick to take over running the Batfam right now is a big ask, given he's also running the Titans as the main superhero team on the planet and handling Bludhaven, but Tom Taylor's writing both those books so I don't expect to see the stress catching up with Dick there. Benefits of writer choice right now, I guess. Also personally 'Babs and Dick organise everyone while Bruce has a breakdown elsewhere' is one of my favourite Batfam dynamics so you know, I'm pretty excited if we actually get to see this play out.

New Lazarus Pit in Gotham! This won't be a problem at all.

[greatwyrmgold]

I've been thinking about pacing.

Back when I was posting random thoughts about every new Shonen Jump title, I kept complaining about how they feel the need to cram everything into chapter 1. Premise, worldbuilding, main characters, some of the key supporting characters, primary antagonists, plot structure, tone, maybe a quick thesis statement. Everything gets a little time, nothing gets much development.

Contrast that with Oshi no Ko. The inciting incident is chapter 9. We get a whole chapter dedicated to the inciting incident, and we don't see it until we get eight chapters establishing our main characters and themes. We don't get the premise until the end of chapter 10. A whole volume of almost pure setup.

A slow pace, but OnK wouldn't work without it. Imagine if the 228 pages of volume 1 were compressed to the 50-ish that some Shonen Jump debuts get. Volume 1 is bookended by huge status quo changes—Dr. Amamiya's death and subsequent reincarnation, and Ai's murder and Aqua's revenge.

Realistically, we'd get maybe a dozen pages of Dr. Amamiya and his patients, maybe chapter 1 could end with Ai getting stabbed, and that leaves about 35 pages to tell the entire story of Aqua and Ruby's peaceful childhood. And that would be pretty slow by modern Shonen Jump standards; if we tried to squish Ai's death and Aqua's declaration of vengeance into chapter 1, so the reader knows what to expect and get excited about in chapter 2 (and maybe vote for OnK in the weekly popularity poll so the series doesn't get cut?), there would be less than half a chapter for the peaceful childhood.

Even if you cut Sarina and Ruby, that's not enough time to sell the reader on either Dr. Amamiya's life cut tragically short or the peaceful childhood Aqua lost when Ai was murdered. And for all my criticisms of how Ruby's character arc was wrapped up, OnK would not work without her. She's essential, and so is the time spent establishing the "normal world" before each of volume 1's status quo shifts.

You cannot tell Oshi no Ko under the constraints of a typical Shonen Jump debut. So it's a good thing Aka Akasaka wasn't working under those constraints! For starters, OnK is serialized in Young Jump, not Shonen Jump. More importantly, Akasaka got pretty famous from Kaguya-sama, so readers and editors alike are willing to give him the benefit of the doubt where they wouldn't for the mangaka of those new Jump series.

Shonen Jump puts its mangaka under a lot of pressure. If they succeed, they could become one of the most famous authors in the world, a small step below living legends like Eiichiro Oda. But if they fail—if volume 1 tankoban sales are weak or your weekly popularity poll results start to slump—they might find out they have got a month to wrap up their story before it leaves the magazine. And that includes the chapters they already submitted.

So you can't just tell a good story. You have to convince readers that you're going to tell a good story from chapter 1, you have to explain that story in the first 50 pages; you have to keep convincing readers that your story is worth reading, worth supporting, worth continuing.

You can't write Oshi no Ko under those constraints. In fact, I'm not sure you can tell any story.

I get the theory behind Jump's editorial practices. If you only let the strongest stories endure in your magazine, you'll have a handful of really strong stories plus a constant churn of new ones, good for both novelty and for increasing the odds that one of the new hopefuls will turn out to be one of those strong stories.

But that pressure forces authors to adapt or die, and the adaptations make the stories weaker. They constrain the stories in Jump to premises that can be fully explained in a handful of pages, squeezed between the handful of pages explaining their protagonist and the handful explaining the setting and so on and so forth. They also constrain how those relatively simple stories can be told, making it harder to build on those simple concepts.

And that's a problem Oshi no Ko didn't face. Say what you will about the back third or so, it had a really strong opening, specifically because of its slow pace.

[anonymous-ace72]

Can you tell me the defining features and propogandic elements of busts from the different dynasties of Republic and Imperial Rome? That sounds super interesting and I'd love to hear about it!

Strap in.

Okay so the period that I’m going to be going over is roughly the span of time from the Republic period of Rome, all the way to Constantine, because that was the time frame my class covered. 

So, to keep in mind, all of the portraits of Roman officials, whether they be emperors or otherwise, are idealized. Meaning, they are not true to life representations of these people; this is probably not how they actually looked, and you’ll see this become more prominent when we get into the imperial periods of Rome. What these portraits are in reality, are representations of traits that Romans typically admired and thought to be appropriate for rulers. 

When you look at a lot of portraits from the Republic period, you’ll mainly see portraits of older people. During this time, only older people were allowed to hold powerful positions within the Roman senate, and since these were generally the people commissioning portraits of themselves, this is the bulk of what we see. It was mostly men, but some women were also depicted, which we’ll get to. 

These busts portray older men, but these aren’t entirely realistic portraits, this is probably not what this individual actually looked like.

The official name for this style of portraiture is called verism, and it’s worth noting that it is pretty much a direct response to the style of the Hellenistic Greeks, who’s dynamic, emotional statues were seen as uncontrolled, with rule breaking tendencies. 

These portraits are much older looking, because an older person was the physical embodiment of the kinds of traits someone from the patrician class would favor; traits such as wisdom, worldliness, piety, self-restraint. The wrinkles in the forehead and around the mouth are very pronounced and obvious. The man in this portrait might not have Actually looked like this in real life, but his real-life image did not matter; he’s trying to convey to the viewer that he is wise, and in-control of himself. 

When you look at full body statues from this period, you see a strange mixing of styles, which is not uncommon, and Romans would continue to do this sort of thing in their art pieces. This is purposeful.

We see here, a man with a veristic head and an idealized body. The head is obviously meant to convey the meaning above, but the body is of a much younger man; it’s meant to convey strength and heroism. So, the entire sculpture together paints the picture of a man with the experience and constraint of an older patrician man, but the strength of a hero. 

Portraits of women from this period would also be done in the veristic style, but not as intensely as their male counterparts. You can still see the agedness of this woman, and her distant expression of self-control, and dignity, but her wrinkles are not as deep and defined; she’s not meant to be as worldly as a man. 

Some portraits will have individual elements mixed in with the verism. Take a look at Pompey, for instance.

He’s still keeping somewhat to the veristic style; you see from the wrinkles on his forehead and his mouth that he’s clearly meant to be seen as an older man, but his huge nose, round face and small eyes are personal traits that he really had- you see a statue from this period of time in Rome and you see that nose, there is no doubt that it’s depicting Pompey- but there’s also more to this portrait. 

This is where we see some idealization start to slip back in. Take note of the hair; it’s reminiscent of Alexander the Great’s “Lion’s mane” that he’s pretty well-known for having. Pompey is choosing to depict himself with traits from Alexander, drawing a physical connection between himself and the great leader; embodying these traits and claiming them as his own, basically. He wants the viewer to associate him with Alexander the Great.

You’ll continue to see this with Caesar as well, the veristic style, but also the idealization. The idealization being him having a full head of hair, as he was reported to, uh, be balding, at least. 

When we get to Augustus, he does away with verism entirely and fully embraces the classical Greek style of sculpture. He does this because he wants to connect his reign to that period of time in Greece; so right off the bat he’s making connections to legitimize himself. 

Augustus’ portraits and architectural works are rife with propaganda, so that’s an entirely different beast that we don’t have time to go into, so we’ll just stick with busts and statues. 

The first thing to mention about Augustus’ portraits is that he never ages. He died in his seventies, but he became emperor young, so his portraiture kept up the appearance of him as a younger man; this is part of that classicizing style, specifically the depictions of Greek deities, whom were shown to be eternally youthful. It obviously draws inspiration from Greece, as stated, but it also meant to convey his “godly heritage” due to his descension from Caesar, who was also “descended” from Venus. You can also usually tell when a statue of Augustus was made if you look at the feet. If he’s wearing sandals, it was made while he was still living, but if he’s barefoot, then that probably means it was after he died and was defied. 

His skin is smooth, he has simple, sharp features which came to be associated with the julio-claudian line. These probably are not his true features- that idealization again- but the thing that identifies his statues the most is that lock of hair that looks like a crab claw. Remember that crab-claw. It will be back later.

A lot of his full body sculptures will include these little hints and nods to his heritage, as well as his various accomplishments and inclusions of other deities. These are promises for his reign. You see Tellus a lot, she was the goddess of the Earth, and Augustus used her image a lot to convey the bounty and peace he wanted associated with his reign.

As an aside: These statues were mainly meant as stand-ins for the emperors in question, as a lot of events needed the emperor to be physically present to do, so these statues and busts would be created en-masse and placed in different places so the emperor could technically be present.

Okay, back to it.

Remember those facial features Augustus generally depicted himself with? You should, because they’re gonna keep popping up for awhile.

Throughout the rest of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, every single emperor after Augustus will keep depicting themselves with these qualities. Tiberius, who ruled right after Augustus, did this as well, despite not even being related by blood to his predecessor. 

Tiberius on the right, Augustus on the left.

They’re doing what Pompey did with Alexander the Great in his portrait: depicting themselves with features associated with Augustus to draw a connection to him, essentially drawing power from his influence. 

In order, Nero, Claudius, Caligula.

We see this pattern throughout the Julio-Claudian line in portraits of Caligula, Nero, Claudius as well, though Claudius is unique in the fact that, while still using those features, he also chooses to return to verism in his portraiture, partly because he was older when he ascended, but mostly due to the fact that he’s trying to shake off the immediate association with Caligula by appearing as his opposite. 

We subvert a little bit when we get to that period between the Julio-Claudians and the Flavians, when there were 5 different emperors in one year (which seems like nothing when we get to the soldier-emperors later). It’s a little bit of a return to verism, to try and shake off the chaos that was Nero.

This is Vespasian, he was considered  the “anti-Nero”.

You’ll probably notice by now that a lot of emperors depict themselves in certain ways also as a direct response to their predecessors, basically going like “hey, I’m not like that guy.”

With the Flavian Dynasty, we see a semi-return to verism, the men don’t look as idealized as they were, but the women would continue to appear in that more, ageless, idealized state.

Hadrian comes along later and starts depicting himself with long hair and a beard. Hadrian loved Greek culture, so the hair and beard were meant to connect him with heroes and philosophers from that time, as well as to probably hide the facial blemishes he reportedly had. 

The Antonine dynasty will be dominated by this “Hadrionatic look”, as well as still having that ageless, idealized look to (most of) them. We also see some head movement in these portraits, and the introduction of new, antonine features such as droopy eyelids, and arched brows.

Rinse and repeat, the emperors that followed with this dynasty will continue to use these features to connect themselves with each other, particularly Marcus Aurelius, whom you’ll see his features repeated with Lucius Veras, and Commodus. Commodus also drew inspiration from Hercules to imbue his image with heroic qualities.

From left to right, Marcus Aurelius, Lucius Veras, Commodus

Looks nothing like the Commodus from Gladiator.

 This continues up until Septimius Severus, then gets flipped on its head when Caracalla happens.

His portraits are very militaristic in style, and vastly different from what we’ve been seeing. Short cropped hair and beard; he is also very distant from the viewer. Pretty much all portraiture up until this point engaged the viewer head on, but Caracalla’s neck is dramatically turned, his eyes staring up at the ceiling. He looks very cruel and suspicious, like he does not want you there. Fitting, He did kill his own brother so he could have sole rule. This is the most personality we see in a roman portrait, ever.

This high expressionism will continue for a while with the soldier emperors: this was a period of 49 years where 25 different emperors reigned. We don’t have portraits of many of them, aside from some coins, cause most of them didn’t live long enough to get to that point. 

Most of this emotionalism is fueled by the rise in neoplatonic philosophy, which placed favor on emotions rather than physical characteristics. 

Also, throughout this time we’ll see quite a bit of back and forth, a lot of “I’m not that guy” because soldier emperor portraits generally had 2 modes: either the more emotional Caracalla-esque appearances, or a return to classicism to evoke the feeling of Augustus’ glory age. These were usually used in direct response to the other.

Maximinus Thrax: Mode 1   Gallienus: Mode 2

When we finally reach the Tetrarchy, we are in complete abstractism. There are no more personality defining features, and it’s virtually impossible to tell who is who. Their faces are simplified, the only difference is that some have facial hair, and some are clean shaven; and this is only to identify who is the Augustus and who is the Caesar. We still see the eyes turned away from the viewer, keeping that distance between emperor and citizen. This is purposeful, it’s meant to convey the message that the individual is not important, the position is. All the figures look the same because they’re all ruling as one unit. 

This abstraction is seen in Constantine’s portraits as well, the simplified face, the large eyes, the distant expression, but we see the hair has a little bit of detail, the comma-like look of Trajan, as well as the clean-shaven, youthful appearance of Augustus. Constantine, like so many before him, is drawing connections between himself and these past rulers, making a promise that his reign will be just as successful.

TLDR: None of these portraits reflect what these people actually looked like. They reflected values and traits that they wished to convey to the populace to instill a certain image about themselves and their subsequent reigns. They would even draw influence from past emperors and historical figures to convey the message about themselves that they wanted to convey.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

How much longer do you think the Wizarding World can realistically exist as a society post-canon?

I mean, by the time the audience is old enough to stop seeing "whimsical magic world introduced by ol' whippersnapper Dumbledore" and start seeing "oppressive, decaying dystopia where everyone's each other's cousin, and all the corrupt officials are on a first name basis with each other" You have to wonder how much they can keep up this charade.

All the conditions that propped up Voldemort are basically the exact same, just more people are dead, the statue of secrecy is entirely dependent on personally mindwiping everyone who sees something off, the job market is so bad that even geniuses like Tom Riddle probably only really had the options of working for the Ministry, working for Hogwarts, or owning a store on Diagon Alley.

I mean, I think they can keep it up for a good while, as they have been for presumably many decades from the sound of it.

The most likely cause of them being wiped out entirely, from what I see, is not so much civil unrest but that combined with disease. Everyone's extremely closely related and inbred (yes, guys, not just the Blacks who are marrying blatant first cousins but Molly and Arthur marry and they're cousins too).

In those kinds of conditions, done for many centuries, they could get lucky and be the healthiest people on the planet or be unlucky and all have hemophelia.

If there are bad recessive genes in the mix then those are going to rise to the surface with enough intermarrying making everyone vulnerable to the same kinds of health conditions.

And given the society is so painfully small, they can't survive a huge population dip culturally. (Especially if they already had a dip due to civil unrest).

I could see dragon pox effectively wiping out Wizarding Britain.

[acaribeau]

Levi’s dolls

A little creepy shortfic based in a chat. A little crack-horror fic but it's mostly a hc.

gn!reader-platonic or romantic, SFW, 1.3k words

I went to Levi’s room when he called me. He had asked me to help him move the real size figurine that he had ordered from Akuzon by accident without Lucifer noticing. I knocked his door.

“Password”

“It’s me Levi”

“Are you alone?”

“Yeah”

He opened the door and quickly pulled me inside.

“Did someone see you?”

“I don’t think… Woah! that is huge. It’s over 2 meters.”

“I know! I didn’t see the measurements! My Seraphina looks so beautiful in that hunting pose that I just bought it in an instant”

“It is really detailed… and with so little clothes… So, how are we supposed to move this to the entry without being noticed?”

“We won’t. Barbatos will open a portal in my door in… 5 min.”

“Won’t he tell Lucifer?”

“No, I bribed him… but it cost me extra…”

“Is that possible? How much did it cost you? “ He looked really gloomy. It would have cost him a fortune.

“It wasn’t money… I’ll show you later, it’s time.” He opened the door to show a turquoise portal ”Help me with that side, I’ll guide”

This was heavier than I thought.

“So… *pant* Where are we moving it? *pant* Purgatory Hall?”

“No, Lucifer would know. I’m putting it in my castle.”

“In your WHAT?”

I felt the floor disappear under my feet and the sensation of losing a step in a stair made me jump a little. I put the statue on the floor and looked at Levi.

“Did you say castle? Do you have a castle?”

I looked around. This was like staying in a well illuminated cave, a little chill and the floor was polished directly from the same rock that the roof and walls were made of.

“Yeah, each of us have a castle in their ring. They don’t come often to mine because it’s underwater, who would want to come to this humid and stinky place, right?”

Moments like this remind me that my demons are lords and how filthy rich they are. The room was even bigger than the dining room in the house of lamentation, 5 rows of glass shelves filled with all types of collectibles that I could imagine.

“Your collection is incredible Levi… And this place is so beautiful”

“Do you think?” He was flushed and avoiding my gaze “C-Come on, he-help me put it in its place, the portal will close in an hour and I have to go for Barbatos’ bribe”

We moved the figure to the row closer to the wall, close to another one even bigger than this.

“Wait here, ok? You know my rules, you can see whatever you want, but don’t touch anything”

“I know, I know, don’t worry” I was already looking at all the interesting things. He had 5 katanas!

He jogged to the back of the room, and then he turned quickly.

“Ah! almost forgot. Whatever happens, don’t touch the water!” and then left the room, as if he didn’t just tell me something so ominous…

I continued my exploration. Levi really had one of everything, three of some. Posters, mangas, figurines, he even had a center of entertainment with a gigantic tv and all the consoles I knew in existence in Devildom and earth and some I didn’t even know.

This place was awesome, I couldn’t figure where the lights were, and I felt observed in each step. I supposed it was the little fishes that were swimming in a section of the wall that appeared to be an aquarium without glass.

A little sound distracted me from the colorful 4-eyed fishes

“Hello?” I could just hear my echo… This place was really quiet, even the water didn’t make a sound. Just when I was about to return my atencion to the fishes, I heard it again.

To my left, a little more back in the room, was a heavy orange curtain. Maybe the sound came from there.

When I pulled aside the curtain, I found a couple more statues. An old man with a big white beard that looked from an epic fantasy and a magical girl smiling and posing with her wand. Wow, and I thought the Seraphina was detailed. I could almost see each pore in her skin, her eyes so realistic I felt like she was watching me. The sound began again really close, it sounded… as someone with a gag trying to speak. This thing was definitely moving its eyes!! 

It was looking between me and… something behind me. I turned back…

.

.

.

“Oh! you found my dolls” pfff it was just Levi in demon form “Do you like them?” 

“They are so realistic… Are they enchanted to move?” I could feel a little of magic coming from them.

“No no, the contrary! I have to paralyze them each time I’m out or they cause trouble. I designed her dress myself based on the dress of Yuriko in Magi Magi Police Sun first season. She was the best VA the original series had, her remplacement never got the high notes… Her death was really a tragedy, she got hit by a soup truck. A really ironic death if you consider the mock in chapter 138 season 3… Tho, it was a good luck struck that she decided to kill her best friend for assuring her stellar just a couple of days before the accident… She came directly to my arms as if she were destined to be mine. She is the most valuable anime merchandise I have”

“So… this is the real voice actress?” A chill ran through my body while kept staring at me with her frozen smile. 

“Yeah! If you want to play with her, she could even sing you a private concert! She knows all the routines, even the ones that came after her death, I made sure of that!” 

I saw the curtain that extended through all the wall as far as I could see, a bunch of other “dolls” all in display behind it.

“Are they humans?”

“No no, the correct term is damned. Almost all of them are from my ring, but I traded some. Like this one! He was the author of “The epic of the red goblins”, a classic from the 30’s. I had to fight with Satan for him, but it was worth it! Oh, I could tell you the story of each one of them!... only if you want of course… you don’t find them creepy, right? Mammon says they are scary… as if a normie could understand the passion of an otaku!”

“What is that!?” I was so focused in the dolls that I hadn’t seen before the bright orange thing moving in his hands. It appeared as little tentacles covered in blossoms, its movements were erratic and… a little hypnotic.

“Ah! its Glory coral snake, Barbatos wants to make them tea… It was painful to cut them up, it takes more than 500 hundred years to grow a centimeter… Right! we have to go, the portal will close soon.”

He closed the curtain with his tail and we went to the door.

“All of them are so jealous of you...but… well… who wouldn't? I mean… you are… you”

My sweet snake demon was all flustered all over again. I brushed her cheek with the back of my hand and saw him in the eyes, smiling.

“Come on, you can tell me all about them later, ok?”

He beamed his smile and his eyes sparkled.

“We can begin the anime tonight! You know? Magi Magi Police Sun was the anime's first deconstruction of magical girls and the legendary inspiration for Hana Ruri…”

Bonus:

That afternoon watching Magi Magi Police Sun.

“And what would have happened if I had touched the water?”

“Oh, that would have woken up Lotan”

“Noooo, I wanted to pet Lotan!!!!”

“I already told you, Lotan isn’t a pet. He doesn't want to be petted!”

“Everyone wants to be petted” 😡

I finished a thing!! See guys? and you told me to sleep in the poll... I work better after 20h awake

If you liked my work, please like, reblog and comment. Don't repost please. I'm not native speaker, if you see any typo let me know. My asks and messages are always open for anything!

[wearenemies]

i literally havent stopped thinking about ur peterick college professor AU all day.. its so good

giggles and blushes so sweet of you to say…. if you have any criticism at any point or any ideas of what to do with it i love how you write their dynamic and would be more than happy to sit my white ass down and listen 🫶

i've been thinking about the whole premise a little further and still am not sure whether or not they're going to straight up be married because i think patrick wearing a ring would be a good in for theorisation about his relationship status that would otherwise seem even more unnecessary, but i don't know if p2 marriage is an unrealistic and overly romantic stance to take, especially considering what went on in real life, so i'm still on the fence about that. i might just say they're engaged and leave it at that.... also unsure still whether our narrator would be a student or a coworker of theirs? i think the coworker situation better justifies this guy's interest in the lives of these guys because they'd want to make friends, and there are considerably more situations in which it would be appropriate for them to be interacting (after work drinks, etc. patrick could wear the stupid t shirt pete got him. beautiful world) but i worry that that'd betray to an immersion-breaking degree how little i know about the inner workings of american academia and employment at american universities and whatnot so. another glaring issue. i also realise that the whole keeping-the-narrator-in-the-dark thing might be much less realistic to achieve irl than i make it seem, so i’ll have to employ some serious lampshading + sitcom logic to make it work in a way that feels natural, but i figure that if you’re able to suspend your disbelief enough to imagine patrick pursuing higher education you can believe anything so peace and love.

on that note, the peterick history i’m imagining is that they would’ve been in the band but it never would’ve really gone anywhere because of patrick’s reluctance vocally, so they all (with the exception of andy: with how ridiculously skilled and prominent in the hardcore scene he was it'd be completely unreasonable to assume that he wouldn't have joined a band and made it pretty big at some point) ended up going back to school like their parents wanted. pete was vehemently against finishing his poli sci degree, and his parents decided to allow him to pursue something he actually wanted to do (that being literary analysis and creative writing) on the condition that he’d work as hard as he could and not touch narcotics or whatever, and it was a hard sell but after he graduated he decided that he’d rather be doing that than anything else, and since his parents had the funds to support him and running on mani mostofi’s logic that ‘if pete didn’t get famous, he would’ve ended up in jail’, they considered it a productive and wholesome use of his time, and pete just kind of stayed in academia. i imagine he’s very well known in literary circles because of his general charisma and bizarre angles on things, and i can see him having written several significant (and not to toot his horn too much but pretty great) journal pieces on the works of his favourite writers, and a wider fictional bibliography than just the single weird roman-a-clef that he has to his name in real life.

patrick’s a little more difficult to work with conceptually because he graduated from high school with significantly worse grades than pete in real life, doesn’t have weirdly famous relatives, and is generally not a hugely academically inclined person, so i might just have to gloss over explaining that (maybe he took some supplemental classes and took out a LOT of loans or whatever) but i imagine music theory being a subject of interest for him because of the technical and semi-scientific nature of it as a very trivia-minded (and ‘possibly autistic’. coughs) person who likes the factual nature of natural history. i can see him having work published in the yale-founded journal of music theory, and maybe focusing especially on music theory’s application in the fields of anthropology and cognitive sciences because of the aforementioned natural history interest. i see him and pete having drifted apart a little over the years (maybe they fucked for a while - potentially starting ‘05 - and had a messy ‘friendship breakup’ around 2009?) running into each other at an arts conference in like 2011/2012, ending up both working at the same place in around 2015, and finally getting together as a result of that connection, no unsubstantial degree of nudging from friends, and years of mutual tension.

there’s for sure a huge extent to which you’ll have to ignore how fundamentally the whole academia thing is probably not something they’d do, but i’m begging you guys to let me know if anything seems too egregiously out of character i’ve never written fic before i’m playing with my touys here 👍