#sad quotes royal edit

[krasivaa]

sad quotes royal edit

My edit made by using CapCut 🥲🤎

collab with: @abigaaal 💗

[sohkrates]

The Abyss Stares Back: My Work in Progress List

So @msmcnevertweet tagged me to share my work in progress list (wip) and I warn you I have the distinct good fortune to do this full time after decades of awful customer service work so I've been playing catch up these past few years:

ACTIVE DEVELOPMENT

There are games that I am working on, more or less, right now.

Nostalgia & Dragons 4th Edition. This is a game I'm making for a friend's bachelor party. It's a one-pager that seeks to replicate the experience of 4th ed. D&D with minimal rules and failing forward resolution.

RIG. Mecha souls-like solo game. Based on the Rune system. This is uh... gonna come out sooner than later.

Big Damn Heroes. Classic D&D shit with an irreverent take on western fantasy tropes. Inspired by Blades in the Dark and Slugblaster. (someone please suggest a better name for this I don't want it to be a fucking Joss Whedon quote but it's so perfect I can't think of anything)

Fealty. A collaboration with the incredible Galen Pejeau. Commoners in a monarch's court try desperately to steer the nation. Inspired by the novel Wolf Hall.

The 55. This is my #dungeon23 project. A cyberpunk megatower full of unique locations, corpo suits, and more.

Neon Black version 8.0. The next reincarnation of my cyberpunk forged in the dark game. I have a fairly comprehensive notes document that summarizes all the new changes. I pick at it every day. My goal is to have something that can be tested this fall.

INACTIVE DEVELOPMENT

These are games that have had a significant amount of work done. Some are playable prototypes, some are incomplete but are more than just notes, or at least have a lot more notes than other projects. Not being worked on right now due to time, lack of personal interest, etc.

Stiletto. Single player game set in the city of Doskvol. You play as people trying to survive by themselves trying to make money, dodge the Bluecoats, and their shady pasts. First playbook is playable, but it ballooned way out of scope and I got burnt out.

Kassandra King: Devil's Dice. Single player urban fantasy noir game. Set in the world of External Containment Bureau, and using the same system. This game has had several iterations and is mostly ready for testing. Play as a hardboiled paranormal private investigator trying to figure out why you made a deal with the devil.

Blade Wings. This one is just Band of Blades but in space. You have pilots and ships as distinct playbooks. Options for different campaign types (robots, zerg like aliens, etc.)

Working Stiffs. A redacted materials game about being corporate contractors in space. Inspired by cassette futurism, Alien, Deadspace, etc. Progress determined by how much money you make, light PVP elements.

Untitled PbtA Card Game. Another collaboration with Galen. This one is a year or two old but it still lives rent free in my head. I really wanna get back to it one day.

Glocknights. Over the top epic fantasy. Players wield cursed weapons, IRON, in order to defend the mortal realm from the tyrannical angels that seek to enforce their divine mandate. Started as a collaboration with some other designers but I don't think any of us have touched it in a while.

Die-Atonic. Every see an assassin pursuing their target through an upscale nightclub and thought it was kinda hot? Anyway start the music, take turns asking and answering questions that illustrate the scene, history, and pursuit of two people through a location. When the music ends, the climax begins. Do you die, kiss, or both?

Blood & Tears. Vampire forged in the dark game all about living long and being sad about it. 4 playbooks based on classic humours.

DEEP IDEATION

These are games that exist as just a few notes, one solid idea I like, or maybe a cover page if I got wild with it.

Where We Dropping? A battle royale RPG inspired by the Lumen system.

Alone RPG System. A rough idea for a game SRD that lets you have an interesting and unpredictable solo experience.

Extraordinary Renditions. Y'know how in Horizon Zero Dawn there's that awesome moment in the history of the game where the government is black-bagging people from all over the world in order to get the expertise necessary to save it? What if that was a 2 player RPG?

Prisoners of Light and Matter. Matrix style RPG using the redacted materials system.

Untitled Wargame. I got back into 40k and hated all the rules so I tried to make something simpler. Just enough to maybe test but it's pretty rough right now.

The Gild. What if the slick futuristic data collection and analysis system you see in the new Hitman games fell into the hands of a bunch of rabid socialists?

Fire in the Stars. Revolution and revolt in the alpha centauri system. Had a version that was kinda playable. Spent a lot of time on the fiction, less on the mechanics. If I did this again I might just use the Nasty Brutish and Long rules, that could be fun.

Modern Exiles Hack. You cannot go home again, Night in the Woods-ass RPG. A potential collab. with the incomparable Jex Thomas of Bump in the Dark fame.

Skyscrape/DNGNCRWL. Real basic dungeon crawler where you control a party of characters. Might be cyberpunk, might be fantasy. Don't know yet.

Realm & Write. A roll and write style RPG inspired by my time with Crusader Kings III.

Slugblaster Loot Tables. Literally thought of this yesterday, just a bunch of random loot tables for the Slugblaster RPG. Could be fun?

Ahem...

So yeah that's it.

I'm still settling in here and don't follow a whole lot of active folks in the TTRPG scene so I'm gonna tag @monsterfactoryfanfic cause I really wanna know what they are working on or what their lists look like, be it videos or games or whatever.

[alittlefrenchtree]

Ok I'm sending you some of your own RWRB questions: Number 1,2, 5, 7, 10, 13,14, and 19 (i had to stop myself from sending the whole list lol)

Thank you so much! Maybe I'll end up answering every question on my own anyway but it's nice starting with your selection 🥰

#1 What was your introduction to Red, White and Royal Blue? How did you become aware of it, what was your first impression of it?

I didn't know anything about it until @petitmimosa started rambling about it a few weeks/couple of months(?) ago. I think she saw the trailer on prime, read the book then watch the movie? I was only half listening (she rambles a lot about a lot of stuff) because I was pretty sure I wouldn't be interested at all (romcoms aren't really my thing).

Then FREAKING TUMBLR decided that RWRB would be the only thing I'll be seeing on my dash for days and days. So I'd say to myself, if I'm going to be forced to look at pics and gifs of these two guys AGAIN and AGAIN, may as well know what this is all about. So I've watched the movie and surprisingly had a good time. And since Internet (and algorithms) keeps showering with rwrb content (nothing else is happening in the cinema industry anyway), I've decided to roll with it and enjoy the said content. I read the book quickly after and even if it was fun, I think I like the movie better.

#2 Team Alex or Team Henry? (I know you love them both equally but choose anyway. OR choose depending of the circumstances. Like, "I’d go shopping with Alex but I’d marry Henry. Or I’d hug Alex but I’d go karaoke with Henry. I don’t know. Try something.)

Even if I like Henry and find him very precious, I think I'm Team Alex. I like how refreshing he is. You can't really be sad watching him and not only because he looks cute af. But all love to both, obviously.

#5 Choose one scene from the book to add to the movie.

I'm not sure because I don't know the book that well but I know how I felt reading this

“Dear Thisbe, I wish there weren’t a wall. Love, Pyramus”

and I wish they'd found a way to include it in the movie. Maybe not in the way of the book, because that might have not worked as best as it should but in some way. I don't know.

#7 Tell us something you like better in the movie than in the book.

Oh man, so many things. One of the main thing, I like that Alex is more freaked out by being into Henry that being into guys in general in the movie. There are important scenes following, about owning the term bisexual in front of other people but being into guys feels less a big (and long) deal than in the book for him. Which is good. I feel like the "i'm bi, so what?" is a good mood to put out there in 2023.

I know the point has been quite a debate here and there so I hope I put the right words to express my view on this.

And tell us something you like better in the book than in the movie. 

A couple of things :

I would have liked for Bea to have a bit more substance as a character in the movie.

and, and that could have been an answer to the "share an unpopular opinion", I'm not the biggest fan of the parisian night scene. Not by Taylor and Nick's fault because the shots of their faces and how they acted are very delicate but I'm very not into the directing, the blocking and the editing of this scene. If felt too heavily romcom coded for my taste (and for my french person leaving near Paris' eyes), when one of the strength of the movie (for me) is being fresh and fun with the romcom codes.

10- You’re in a difficult situation where you have only one call to get help (or to save your life), who are you calling? Amy, Zahra or Ellen?

Zahra, every day, everywhere. I wouldn't trust anyone more than someone who reminds me that much of Sam Marquez in the tvshow Las Vegas.

13- A detail you feel like it’s not enough discussed. Whether it’s a scene, a quote, a frame, a piece of acting, a decor…) Time to ramble about it!

Oh I have two actually! The first good thing I have said about the movie is how much I like the opening credits. The music is good, the visuals are good, I like it a lot.

The second has probably been discussed over and over (and my recording sucks) but

I need daily screaming about the softest, smoothest, most determined "no." I ever heard in my entire life.

14- Favorites outfit(s) in the movie? (You can pick as many as you want, from as many characters as you want. But if you reply with a screenshot of a naked person, I’m going to put you in horny jail).

I wrote the question with one outfit in mind

My only regret is that he's not wearing matching pants (there must be matching pants, right?) cause I feel like AGCD wouldn't have shy away from them. And that would have been epic.

Honorable mention for the denim look 💙 that was wasted on Miguel.

#19 is going to take me forever to answer so I'll add something later :)

Thank you again for playing with me 💜💜

All the questions here !

[evolvingbeautyandmess]

USUAL DISCLAIMER: so these posts are dictated via speech to text and due to spoons and the whole vibe of the blog there's really just going to be minimal at best editing. Also I don't know why Google census curse words but here we are

So today sucked and last night wasn't that great either.

But at least I no longer subscribe to this idea rooted in toxic positivity that one should not complain because it could be worse.

Growing up I often heard don't complain it could be worse (when what was going down was very much worthy of saying something) and certainly as I became more visibly disabled in my adult life though looking back on it I was born with s*** but that's a whole other post. I found that there's a certain element of ableism where people expect disabled people to not complain even when we're facing oppression and I mean like full throttle systemic oppression in addition to the social oppression

And that is rooted in the idea that disabled people are less than inferior so we should be happy we get crumbs in the first place.

To ask to be treated as a full-fledged human (which fun fact we are) is often treated like we're asking for too much.

I remember they were times where my brain developed second brain cyst and people were like well at least it's not cancer or they say s*** like well at least you have a roof over your head. And then some would directly say don't complain it could be worse.

And here's the thing that pisses me off about that besides the fact that it really if you internalize that it can f*** you up.

I mean for an example when my brain developed the second brain cyst yes benign but still a f****** brain cyst I was barely sleeping I was in a s*** ton of pain I was not getting help from doctors and my mobility was getting worse and it was scary and I was sad and it was a lot but instead of people allowing you to just be a f****** human being, and just sit with and process etc the weight of all the changes , a lot of people are like well don't complain it could be worse which tacks on even more weight.

And if someone was saying holy crap this is the worst thing ever in the history of all humanity I have the worst nothing in the world can compare to my suffering and my suffering alone and someone responded it will actually ya know it could logistically be worse, that would be one thing.

But that's not what most people are saying and it wasn't what I was saying. I was just saying I'm having a hard time with it I'm struggling. And that's fine to feel that way. Just because you don't have it the worst does not mean that what you're going through is not hard.

And also telling me don't complaining could be worse well now and addition to everything else that's going on in my life I'm thinking about all the suffering in the world. Thank you very helpful kindly f*** off.

There's a difference between finding beauty and finding peace in moments during struggle if you can if that's what you're feeling but this f****** toxic pressure to be positive is f****** ridiculous. It makes it so much harder than it has to be.

And I found a lot of people who say that s*** only say that s*** because they themselves are uncomfortable with their own feelings and thus they're uncomfortable with your feelings. They say s*** like that sometimes because they don't know what to say to you and they don't really know how to help you but instead of sitting with that with themselves they go well don't complain it could be worse.

And so yeah the last 24 hours at times have royally sucked. Not the worst I've personally been through and certainly not the worst that is going on in all of humanity to say the very least, but it has sucked I did not appreciate it I did not order it I could not return it it reminded me of s*** but I did not need a reminding of and it made me question why does my life have to be so f****** challenging sometimes.

But at least I'm in a place now or I don't question if I'm overreacting or if I'm not being quote grateful enough ".

I know that being a full-fledged human being I am totally capable of holding space for its difficult and what I'm struggling with and acknowledging that and sitting with that well also finding certain things in my life that I am grateful for. Those two things can exist and those two things do not negate each other.

And you know what I don't have to always simultaneously acknowledge what I'm grateful for to show that I'm grateful for things. Sometimes things are difficult enough where it feels too big to then have the emotional space and spoons to go but I'm grateful for this. Doesn't mean that you're not grateful for anything ever, it just means that what you're going through is a bit too big in this moment for you to think beyond it. And eventually you will but you're not there yet and that's okay.

And those are some thoughts that I had tonight. F*** medical insomnia which is a whole other post and f*** toxic positivity.

[angelnicknelson]

it would be too easy to say that i feel invisible. instead, i feel painfully visible, and entirely ignored.

[much-brighter-ink]

Sybil: Pride and Joy. Remember? What Papa called us.

Mary: Yes. "Mary is my pride and Sybil is my joy."

Edith: "But Sybil is my joy." I'm sorry. I have to claim the few victories I'm left with.

[meghansbest]

October 2nd 2019 // The Duke and Duchess of Sussex visit a township to learn about Youth employment services in Johannesburg, South Africa.

[lyricsposting]

Teenage Heartbreak Queen // Palaye Royale

[missmeganlee]

Get to Know Me: Young Royals Edition

Just a hodgepodge of asks to get to know your favorites and gush some more about yr (one day it'll be enough right?). share your thoughts dears! Again thanks to @levok for making this tag

Favorite kiss I can’t choose just one! But since I have to I’m going with the first time kiss. After everything they’ve been through it was the moment that was like “yes I like you and I want to be with you”

Favorite hug

It was really hard to choose a favorite, but I gotta go with the hug from behind in the fish scene. And Simon’s little nuzzle into Wille’s neck -ugh- it’s so good.

Favorite forehead touch

The Lucia scene. I love the intimacy of it all and the “I just didn’t want to lose you” ugh. It makes me feel so many feelings.

Favorite hand holding

This scene just gives me butterflies every time I watch it. The hesitancy. Simon’s little encouraging strokes with his thumb. Wille’s smile. Ugh- I can’t. They’re too cute.

Favorite Wille and Simon outfit

Favorite Wille outfit is one that I haven’t seen anyone talk about (probably because it’s in the show for all of 10 seconds lol). But he’s looks so good in it, something about that shade of blue and the untucked shirt tails.

Favorite Simon outfit has to be the purple sweatshirt. Since watching YR I have bought myself not 1, not 2, but 3 purple sweatshirts

Favorite OST song

There is nothing more iconic than Harmony Theme, but I do have a soft spot for Getting Up.

Share a moment that:

Made you cry (happy or sad)

Sad tears: the break up

Happy tears: the football field scene

Made you smile big

We love stolen moments

Made you want to throw your screen against a wall

Just one? Cause there’s a lot and guess what the common theme is? I’ll give you a hint- it’s the worst month of the year 😉

Top 3 moments: Posting the video, Wanting to use Simon as The Society’s scapegoat, and August taking the video in the first place

Fish scene, first time, or morning after

Do I have to choose?! Right now morning after, but for a long time it was the fish scene. Who knows maybe next week will be first time lol

Moment you knew this show was something special

I’m gonna be honest; my memory of my first time watching YR is completely a blur. BUT- I do remember after watching it I immediately went to YouTube to watch all of the behind the scenes content and interview content that I could. This is also how I discovered Omar's music career. I also managed to relate all my major projects for my Queer Fiction class last semester to YR. So I guess my answer is when Wille broke the 4th wall in the last episode.

Quote you love

There's so many.

Obviously: "Everything is fake. Everything in the world is fake. But I like you and that is not fake."

"We didn't do anything wrong."

"Hur mår du?"

"Fuck you August"

Who would you want to be friends with first (or to be bffs) if you want to Hillerska

Felice and her group. I relate a lot to Maddi with her one-liners and tell-it-like-it-is attitude so I think we’d get along well.

Pick a song you like that you feel could be a Wille's, Simon's or Wilmon's anthem

I don't think there's a more perfect song than Revolution. Although I do have 3 YR related Spotify playlists (and I'm thinking about making a fourth). But I will give a shoutout to "They Don't Know About Us" by One Direction and "Secret Love Song" by Little Mix

Show me a scene that when you see it, makes you want to rewatch the show right then and there

The choir scene in episode 1, before anything bad happens to Wilmon; there's hope. It always makes me miss the characters (hi comfort characters lol)

[blazlngblade]

Rosa Rambles about Leon/Elletrix Story Ideas!

This has been in my drafts for the last week and a half or so. I've come back to it constantly to make small edits. But, I think it's time to post it.

I am going to become the CEO of shipping Leon and Elletrix, and nobody can stop me!!

And they will be called "Elleon" as it easy to say, and it puts both "Elle" and "Leon" into it very naturally.

They just look so cool! The awesome seafarer pair! Two beautiful people! I love them both so much! The ex-pirate turned merchant, and the current Grandport Kingdom's lord with the reputation to rehabilitate pirates, it makes for an interesting romance.

I like the idea of their earlier meeting that I wrote up a long while ago, which you can read here.

Just disregard the ending where I said that I don't ship it, I've changed my mind! The chemistry between them and shipping potential is amazing.

So going with that, and expanding on the story ideas in more detail, The idea of Leon still wanting to "make it big" by attacking a Grandport vessel in order to get his motivation back as a pirate is still what would happen. Though, Leon is defeated by Elletrix, so him and his crew are taken into custody by Grandport's army.

No matter how sad he was about Baltazar's passing (or if you're like me and actually prefer the idea he just faked his death, changed his identity, and left to the East to fulfill his dream of becoming a merchant), I can't see Leon wanting to look defeated or show those emotions in front of Elletrix (this would be before she's the lord of Grandport, she's simply just a princess right now). I'm sure there's no a pirate that hasn't heard about the princess of Grandport who can change a pirate's outlook on life just by defeating them. He's pretty prideful and he wouldn't let up so easily, even if he was beginning to doubt things after he lost his friend. We know that he is very prideful thanks to the flashbacks in chapter 3 for Tressa's story.

So after being taken in, I imagine a lot of his crew were pretty quick to just bail out from being pirates, and join the Grandport navy. We're told this is common with pirates she has defeated (mostly because they all love strong women!). Left alone as the singular person who refuses to join her army, Elletrix has no choice but to have him imprisoned. Of course, it doesn't end there, since Elletrix makes it her goal to get this man to change his mind and to walk a better path. I'm sure she likes a challenge every once in a while, as she's the stubborn and strong willed princess, but is in no less a kind person just like her sister.

With that as her goal, perhaps she often visits him, maybe tries to chat, and get to the root of what she can work with. It probably takes a while to make even the smallest breakthrough. This could take months (I'll say about 2-3?), it wouldn't be that easy. After some time, she manages to get the info about Baltazar, whether knowing the two were rivals already and asking herself or he told her himself eventually, perhaps she managed to have him talk about some of Baltazar's last words told to Leon; “Do ye have somethin' precious to ye?”

Now if you read the other post, you would know that I believe that the Eldrite was originally the royal family of Grandport, and the reason behind Elletrix's name. Assuming this is true, that would mean that Elletrix has already met Baltazar in the past, as he was the one who stole it from Grandport, and that he was one of the only pirates to have resisted her forces and successfully steal the Eldrite. With this feat, he gained the title "Baltazar of the Eastern Sea". Whatever her opinion is on Baltazar now, it needs to not overtake her approach on trying to get to the bottom of everything.

Putting it aside, she relates Baltazar's words to her family's quote of "do you have something to protect". She asks Leon this, and which reminds Leon about when Baltazar asked the question, he had no answer for it then or now. Maybe something about this question causes his demeanor or attitude to change and Elletrix notices it. She knows she struck a nerve and it's something to work with. Not being able to give her an answer, they're left in silence. For the moment, she leaves it alone, simply just saying to think about it. The next time she visits, she asks the question again, to which he says, "I don't know". What I like most about Leon taking a bit of time to open up is because we get told in Tressa's chapter 1 and in the Gate of Finis journal for Graham that he doesn't place his trust in others easily. This time she would say that she can help him figure it out, but he has to let her try. Not being able to do much else, and knowing that if both Baltazar and Elletrix have asked him the same question, he finally agrees, knowing enough that it must be important.

At last being let out of the cell, Elletrix decides to take him around Grandport, perhaps down the docks or into the market. She would talk about the benefit of not being a pirate, being able to instead help people than to take from them, probably reminding Leon of his quote, to which she does know. We know in the later parts of life, he dislikes this saying a lot, and I don't blame him. It's a terrible reminder of the things he might have done to other people, likely even innocents.

Perhaps after a long walk around the town, seeing all the merchants selling all kinds of wares and being happy while doing so, Elletrix can point out that people worked hard to gain those things in order to sell them again to customers. They earned their wares through honest means, not through stealing. It could remind Leon of the dream that Baltazar spoke of; the dream of being a merchant. This would help remind Leon that his old friend wanted to do something good despite all the sins as a pirate he might have committed. It gives Leon some food for thought.

Obviously, we can't forget about the fact that Leon is supposed to rebuild Baltazar's ship. We'll get to that soon!

I like to think that after a bit of time and the frequent visits while he is in custody, Leon has decided to actually open up about things with Elletrix. Maybe if she learned about the race between Leon and Baltazar, and how it's assumed that Baltazar had died as his body was nowhere to be found. Perhaps when Elletrix learned this, she told the tale of losing her sister to Edoras, not because she wants to share the story with people, but sometimes it helps to relate to someone's problem or grief by talking about your own. Or at least that's how I've always seen it, I struggle to understand something if I can't relate it to something I know. it would show a growing trust between the two. Elletrix and Leon both cared about their deceased loved ones a lot. Remembering that Leon said he found his friend's ship wrecked on the coast, he thinks about that.

Since the questions of what Leon's precious treasure is, or what he protects have been brought up before, this could be where he decides that Baltazar and his ship are his some of his precious treasures. He decides to rebuild the ship as a major step of his rehab. Elletrix chooses to support this idea, and perhaps after a time, she even helps him rebuild it too. At first, I could see Leon being a bit stubborn to wanting her help, as this is his way to atone and to really understand why this ship is his precious treasure, but after a while I think he would accept her help. She's the daughter of the lord of Grandport and is the captain of her own vessel, so I am sure she knows a thing or two about building a ship. Elletrix is a "hands-on, get-it-done" kind of woman. What better way to bond than to work on a difficult project together? You can work on the ship together and just kind of chat to get to know each other. This project would be the thing that would help deepen their friendship.

Building a ship with very few people would take a long time, so this is something he might have worked on for 7+ years, as well as learning the ins and outs of business to be a merchant. Thanks to being in Grandport and having a connection with the respected daughter of the lord, these things are possible. He was likely very busy in the town, and I know that she was involved with his rehabilitation heavily, and perhaps even tagging a long during the times he was learning about being a merchant, you know, if she didn't teach him herself. Again, daughter of the lord of Grandport, I 100% believe she knows this kind of thing.

And during breaks of rebuilding the ship, I could see Elletrix insisting that he tags along with her on her patrols to protect Grandport from nearby pirates that threaten her seas. If he were to do this, he would gain the trust of Grandport's army, the townspeople/merchants, and Elletrix's father, Lord Benedict. At around this time, Benedict would have also grown sick and would have begun to give his role of lord to his daughter. While she may be busy with that kind of thing, and the trust of the ex-pirate is more apparent to her, perhaps he could offer to step in as her replacement to patrol the surrounding waters?

If Leon has been doing this while she cannot, it could tie in perfectly with Elletrix's Traveler Memory later too. Please feel free to watch it! It's a pretty good story! We loved translating this one!

She might have been busy with lord work while he was out at sea to which he rescued a castaway from pirates. The fact she comes in and already has heard about it means it was somewhat connected to her own patrols out on the ocean. He tells her about the Miedo Pirates (Avery, Gacco, and Wappa) and then suggests she deals with them. Plus, when the idea of a battle comes up, she says, "Battle? Sounds exhilarating!" as if it's been a while of being able to do it herself. The use of the exclamation point and quick response was like, "At last!" She's been busy with lord training, that these moments of excitement are likely rare now.

The irony that Avery doesn't like Leon, but I wonder if he's aware that it was Leon that allowed Avery to meet Elletrix at all? It'd be funny if he didn't know that though, or if people told him, he'd just brush it off as false..

In the Traveler Memory, I'll always love these exchanges. There's something about the way he says "my lord" is great. Some people have pet names, but he just calls her as the "lord" or "my lord".

This one has that right amount of casual humour, something very few would ever be brave enough to do, helping imply that these two are close. Sure, her subordinates have said some things and she normally pays no mind, but that's exactly it, she pays no mind to it., But, in the next dialogue I will share, she does respond.

This one is after she sends her soldiers to go get ready for battle. He comments about her commanding skills as "scary", but it's got that right amount of humour to it. The fact she responds with a "Hm..." and a somewhat half-laugh audio too. <3 She doesn't often laugh or respond to these kinds of comments, but was able to with his comment? It's intriguing. Something about the fact her eyes are closed as well, I'd believe this comment made her smile as well, another thing she hardly does. To be fair though, people think Leon's pretty scary too. If he can make tease her about that, she can right back. Heck, maybe this is how they would flirt...? <3 I've actually been in the process of drawing this scene. <3

Though honestly, given Elletrix's situation in life, I would not be surprised if she didn't really believe in love all that much. Losing her sister, and Ulrica having to marry someone like Pardis III, is obviously not a form of "love" (Elletrix wouldn't know about Rembrandt/Ulrica though, that was obviously more true love), we don't know who or where Elletrix's mother is. Maybe she left her family and husband after Ulrica was given to Edoras...? Making love seem less real from a younger person's perspective. Not to mention the fact that Elletrix's army, almost half of them or more claim they are in love with her, it probably also sullies the idea it's real. As mentioned earlier, she doesn't react to them when they say things like that to her. So then if you have someone like Leon who manages to prove that it is real, seems kinda interesting. Basically, Paramore's "Only Exception" is now an Elleon song.

My brother tells me he likes the idea of them just keeping it more to themselves for a while, perhaps not really sure how it would be taken as a famous pirate being with the new lord of the kingdom. I do agree though, I find it might be difficult for people to process at first. It's very opposite to what a person would expect from her at first assumption. But, that's what makes it so interesting. On the brightside, it's clear that lots of people actually don't know who Leon is. His story tells us that he has done a very excellent job keeping his identity hidden. I'm sure that was also the help of Elletrix as well. I imagine she has the ability to make sure any of her rehabilitees are protected from people's judgement. If anyone's doing the judgement, it will be her if they step out of line.

Having mentioned his Traveler Story now, the possible timing of the story works out. Since it takes place in Grandport, it might be the most recent visit of his. The great thing about when he gets to Grandport is he says that it "smells of treasure... and danger". Let's be real, he was talking about Elletrix. He was likely going to visit his girlfriend, as well as go do some merchant business, but learned she wasn't there (if we're going with the Bestower of All plotline, she's busy helping to save the continent right now!). So instead some other things happen, and he helps out the painter Bastian instead, as well as help deal with the Chimera Pirates while she is absent.

We will have Leon's Traveler Story uploaded in time, so please be patient with us!

As for the current year of the first game. I'll say that the reason Leon was not a part of the Merchant's Fair competition in Grandport was because he was spending time with Elletrix and watching the competition from a more "VIP" area. I'd say that by this point, they're a little more public about their relationship. I'm not entirely sure what Benedict's status is either, but the two of them might be the true standing rulers of Grandport by now.

As for the Eldrite, since I did mention that, but never mentioned it again, and we just brought up the Merchant's Fair. I would imagine that Leon has confessed to her that he as allowed Tressa to keep it. Honestly, I think she'd be okay with that, even if the Eldrite was once Grandport's treasure, and likely the thing she was named after. Over time, just like Leon, she learns that her own treasure was not the gem, but probably the love of her kingdom. She cares about her home a lot, so the city would be her most precious treasure.

I am really thinking about writing this story out.

For a timeline of the events I'd probably write, it'd be like this:

Ages in the first game would be Leon at 33 and Elletrix at 41. There is an 8 year difference between them.

Elletrix (~17) | Ulrica (~20) | Leon (9) | Baltazar (~13) --- 24 years to Present Time - Elletrix loses her sister, Ulrica, in an exchange for "peace" by the kingdom of Edoras. Ulrica marries King Pardis III. - Leon and Baltazar are struggling to live in the old quarter of Victors Hollow. They result to thievery to survive.

Elletrix (~20) | Ulrica (~23) | Leon (12) | Baltazar (~16) --- 21 years to Present Time - Elletrix decides to keep herself preoccupied from losing her sister by head to the ocean to protect her kingdom. She also recruits ex-pirates as soldiers for Grandport's navy. - Leon and Baltazar have chosen to become pirates in order to better support themselves. Stealing from the rich and weak alike.

Elletrix (~24) | Ulrica (~27) | Leon (16) | Baltazar (~20) --- 17 years to Present Time - Elletrix knows of her nieces, Elrica and Araune, and she travels to Cragspear to rescue them and her sister. Ulrica refuses, and Elletrix leaves before the Edoras soldiers find out. She swears she will never forgive Edoras for stealing her sister from her. - Leon and Baltazar have come to be known as the Sea Serpent and Wild Eagle.

Elletrix (~26) | Ulrica (~29) | Leon (18) | Baltazar (~22) --- 15 years to Present Time - - Leon and Baltazar have a sort of on/off "relationship". It's less of a real relationship, mostly just sexual tension. "Rivals", you know. - Ulrica chooses to protect her daughters by ending her own life. King Pardis III chooses to let his kids live. Elletrix hears the news about Queen Ulrica's death, causing her to hate Edoras even more. - Leon hears about a famous ore called Eldrite that resides with the royal family of Grandport. He aims to try and take it, but Baltazar is quicker to action. - Baltazar goes to Grandport and attacks Elletrix's ship. While she's still grieving from the loss of her sister, her ability to defend her treasure is lesser. He comes out as the victor and steals the Eldrite from her. This earns him the title of "Baltazar of the Eastern Sea". Elletrix might have asked him if stealing from the "hurt", making a reference to Pardis III taking her sister, was worth it. Since then he has questioned his role as a pirate, remembering his childhood dream of being a merchant.

Elletrix (~28) | Leon (20) | Baltazar (~24) --- 13 years to Present Time - Since stealing from Elletrix, Baltazar has begun to act different. He acts distant, and Leon has no idea why. Baltazar asks Leon what his most precious treasure is, Leon cannot answer. - The race between them happens, and Baltazar is the winner as his boat made it to the island first, but he is also assumed dead and no body is found. Leon grieves for his lost friend. - Baltazar used the storm as a way to fake his death, and he escapes, hiding away from Leon to one day making his way towards the East to become a merchant.

Elletrix (~29) | Leon (21) --- 12 years to Present Time - Leon's drive as a pirate has lessened since losing Baltazar. He makes his way towards the Coastlands, where he chooses to challenge a Grandport vessel, to which it ends up being Elletrix's. - Unlike when Elletrix lost to Baltazar, she succeeds against Leon. Taking him and his crew into custody, many of his crew choose to abandon pirate life and pledge to join her army. Leon refuses, and is imprisoned. - Elletrix makes it her goal to get Leon to change his mind, seeing value in him, despite his crimes. Stubborn to agree, it takes about 2-3 months to finally accept her offer of help. - Another month passes, and Leon chooses to rebuild his friend's ship to keep himself busy while being reformed. Elletrix supports the idea and chooses to personally watch over his progress herself. Occasionally, Elletrix helps him with the construction, much to his dismay at first, he gets used to it and eventually accepts her help. - During the months of rebuilding the ship, Elletrix and Leon have begun to develop a bit of a mutual trust. Leon tells her about Baltazar's dream of becoming a merchant. He decides he will do it for him. Elletrix offers to have him trained.

Elletrix (~30) | Leon (22) --- 11 years to Present Time - Leon's training as a merchant has gone smoothly, having already the talent to appraise an item's worth during the time he was a pirate. Alongside ship construction and merchant training, he sometimes accompanies Elletrix on her patrols to protect the Grandport seas.

Elletrix (~31) | Leon (23) --- 10 years to Present Time - At the 3rd anniversary of losing Baltazar, Leon requests to borrow a ship from Elletrix to travel to Victors Hollow, so he can pay respects to his friend from now on. Having more trust in the ex-pirate, she lends him a ship and a small crew of her army, giving them permission to cut Leon down if he makes even one wrong move. "Scary as ever, my lord." :') - She uses this as an opportunity to test his morals. Along with his goal of visiting his old town, Elletrix suggests taking this chance to put his business methods to the test. - The journey goes smoothly and he has a toast to his celebrate Baltazar's life, thanking him for the opportunity to become a new man. Before he could travel back to Grandport, he is approached by Graham Crossford who asks to board his ship to reach Bolderfall quicker. Graham's journal is left behind. - Having been gone for ~2 months, he finally returns back to Grandport, Leon reports to Elletrix that everything went well. Since coming back, their construction project of the ship continues, as does accompanying Elletrix's patrols.

Elletrix (~33) | Leon (25) --- 8 years to Present Time - Lord Benedict, Elletrix's father, has begun to grow ill, but he doesn't shirk his duty as lord. However, he begins to make sure that Elletrix is prepared to take the role one day. She becomes less available for helping ship construction or patrolling the sea. Leon offers to take her place.

Elletrix (~34) | Leon (26) --- 7 years to Present Time -Elletrix has been busy with transitioning as the lord, that she sometimes feels "trapped", not being able to go to the sea as often. However, she takes her duties seriously and is becoming a great lord. - The Miedo Pirates have been targeting the Grandport area, taking down merchant ships. Leon hears of it, and reports to Elletrix. Elletrix's Traveler Memory takes place and she recruits Wappa as a helmsman and Avery and Gacco as soldiers.

Elletrix (~36) | Leon (28) --- 5 years to Present Time - At this point, Leon and Elletrix are very close friends. Though Avery is very loyal to his new lord, he is bothered by the closeness that Elletrix has with Leon, especially with all the time she spends helping him rebuild his ship. - Seven years total have past since the ship construction project begun. The ship is completed. Elletrix gives Leon full freedom to travel away from Grandport without her watch. He accepts, and goes on a journey to prove his mettle as a merchant.

Octopath Traveler: Champions of the Continent begins. Major spoilers ahead for "Master of All", "Bestower of Power", and "Bestower of All". This won't be written in full detail, as it will one day be written in the CotC story about Shelby (our story's Chosen One). I still feel the need to summarize events anyway. Feel free to quit reading here!

Elletrix (~38) | Leon (30) --- 3 years to Present Time - The news about Princess Elrica's trial arrives. Not wanting to see Pardis III, Elletrix sends a Grandport official in her place to vote to keep Elrica alive. The Meeting of Kings ends with Pardis III winning, giving him permission to execute his daughter. This refuels her hatred for Edoras. - Being gone for two years, Leon finds himself missing Grandport and Elletrix's company. He makes his way towards Grandport again. Upon arrival, he learns that Elletrix has officially taken the role as the standing lord now that Benedict is too bedridden to continue on. He sticks around to support her as the new lord and helping her get through her father's illness, as well as the execution of her niece.

Elletrix (~39) | Leon (31) --- 2 years to Present Time - The war with Orsterra and G'roha begins. Elletrix is approached by Queen Araune of Edoras to ask for help to defend Orsterra. After a direct attack on her city happens, she accepts to aid Araune. Leon, who has remained in Grandport since coming back, also helps out. - After the war, he decides to confess his feelings to Elletrix, but has a bit of doubt they would be reciprocated knowing her stance on "love". Since almost all of her whole army is in love with her, he doesn't want to come across as "just another one". To his surprise, she tells him she feels the same, and they choose to be a couple, but decide to keep it to themselves while the city is still healing from the scars of war. After the final battle with G'roha, he leaves Grandport again, but promises to come back soon.

Elletrix (~40) | Leon (32) --- 1 year to Present Time - Elletrix is called by Finis to meet with other heroes on the Isle of Orsa to witness the sealing of the Divine Rings with the Chosen One. It ends in betrayal by Sazantos as he wounds Finis, steals the rings aside from the Flamebringer's, and he escapes. Elletrix helps support the Guardians of the Light against Sazantos. - At some point, Leon's Traveler Story begins as he makes his return to Grandport to see Elletrix again. Finding out she's absent, he sticks around Grandport, meeting Bastian, and deals with the Chimera Pirates (as they claim they murdered himself and Baltazar at some point) in place of Elletrix. - With permission from Benedict, if he's not dead anyway, haven't had word from him in forever, Leon tells him that he loves his daughter and would like to ask her hand in marriage one day. Benedict approves, and Leon acts as the substitute lord in her place. - Whatever else happens in Bestower of All, I have yet to learn.

Elletrix (~41) | Leon (33) --- Present Time - CotC plot is over, first game events happen as already written.

If you made it this far, you deserve a pat on the back, because this got long, and I know it's full of rambles!

I've been very "Noelle" in these last few days, I had so much fun thinking about all this story potential.

[therealvinelle]

Hello! Why do you think Carlisle likes Aro? (Love your meta btw!)

This blog lasted 25 days before becoming an Aro/Carlisle blog. The sanity was nice while it lasted, I suppose.

Oh well, I embrace my trash ship.

(Anon is referring to this post)

(This one is also relevant)

So, while on Aro’s end it was a case of “did the gods just give me my very own Enkidu?”, for Carlisle we must look at the circumstances. The Carlisle Cullen who walked into Volterra is not the Carlisle Cullen who works at Forks General.

Carlisle was a demon-hunting priest who brought his religion into his new life. Having no idea what he’d just become, apart from the obvious things like “I desperately want to kill people for their blood” and “I sparkle?!”, many of the things that are obvious to us would not be at all obvious to him. His only experience with other demons was the slum-dweller that killed him. It was brutal, and three other people from his parish were murdered as well. He’d been able to track the vampire down, something I can only take that to mean that the vampire used his parish for hunting grounds. He’s so horrified by what he’s become that he tries to destroy himself. This fails, and instead he finds a way out that lets him live without having to kill, and with that comes to the realization that vampires retain their souls (which is for another post).

My point being, Carlisle wakes up as a demon, and has no way of knowing how any of this works, nor of how to explain the fact that he is able to retain his soul. It’s telling that even after centuries of being a vampire he still thought something might be fundamentally different about him, as he chose to turn Edward by simulating his own transformation, even though it meant more pain for Edward. In other words, Carlisle was not guaranteed that his experience was universal. By the time we meet him in canon he’s wonderfully friendly to everybody regardless of what they eat, but I strongly doubt he got from point “Demons are monsters and I’ll rally a mob to lynch them!” to “Vampires are people who sadly eat other people.” right away.

So, you have freshly immortal Carlisle Cullen wandering around Europe with no way of knowing that other vampires are as (for lack of a better word) human as he is. How can they be, when they choose to eat people? (My personal headcanon is that he went by a Persephone theory, and figured that by resisting human blood he’d remained a man.)

It was this Carlisle who met Aro and the other Volturi. According to Edward (I unfortunately don’t have Twilight with me so I can’t quote his exact words), they were the ones who showed him that vampires can in fact be sophisticated.

Sophisticated. Not just as in Aro, Marcus, and Caius eat their virgins with some fava beans and a nice chianti, but as in they’re civilized and intelligent beings. Carlisle was no longer a one lone freak who somehow retained his soul while everyone else went full Buffy vampire, or any other such theory. I can’t even imagine the impact that must have had on a young Carlisle who would have been even lonelier than the Carlisle who found Edward in Chicago. That Carlisle at least had friends, this younger version had absolutely nobody.

Aro changed that.

More than being sophisticated, Aro turned out to be a kindred spirit, an absolutely brilliant mind and a generous host. Carlisle chose to live with him for decades, leaving only because of their dietary differences. And even if people disagree with me with all of the above, I don’t think anyone can argue that this one isn’t huge.

Of all the people Carlisle knows in canon, Aro is the only one he stayed with just for Aro’s own sake. Carlisle loves the Cullens dearly, but the cornerstone holding them together is their shared diet, and the fact that Carlisle turned four of them, the other two joined. He did not happen upon them and then like them so much that he decided to move in. As for his other friends, he cares for them all, but he didn’t share decades of his life with them.

Regardless of how we’re interpreting their relationship (as in, platonic, UST, or raging homosexual affair), I don’t think anyone can dispute that Carlisle and Aro are each other’s best friends.

But beyond proving that vampires aren’t all sewer-dwelling, priest-eating rascals, what exactly made Aro so special?

I’ll just list his qualities in no particular order.

Sophistication This guy is a lover of the arts and of knowledge. His gallery and library must have been the most extensive and diverse in the world, and it probably still is. I can’t even begin to imagine the wealth of knowledge and treasures that Aro must have collected over the years. If the Holy Grail exists within the world of Twilight, Aro has it. Where I’m headed with this, is that not only would Aro’s collection be the coolest thing ever to Carlisle, but also that this was a time when the number of books and an art collection was a sign of high class, of intellectualism, of all things fine and noble that was considered virtuous. Aro acts very much like wealthy European nobility, he even lives in Italy, the cultural epicenter of the Western world of old. He physically could not have been more impressive to Carlisle.

Kind of a continuation of the previous point: Aro is from Ancient Greece (well, he’s Myceanaean, but same difference to a “You predate Homer?!” starstruck Carlisle). Ancient Greece was the ultimate, perfect, civilization to Europe, and Carlisle got to Volterra just ahead of the Enlightenment. This alone would have made him so unbelievably cool to Carlisle.

Nerd I think this one speaks for itself. Carlisle is an unbelievable nerd, an inquisitive mind who’ll study anything and everything, and in Aro he found someone who also has an inquisitive mind and will study anything and everything. They’re both very intelligent. Carlisle went from being that sad whale that sings on a frequency no other whales can hear, to having someone who just got it.

His gift So you’re all gonna have to stay with me on this one. Aro’s gift is one most people would find very invasive, which as I touched upon in one of the posts linked above must be very isolating. And yet we know from canon that Carlisle has no problem at all with Edward reading his mind all the time, and more, if Aro reading his mind was a problem then Aro and Marcus would both have known, and I doubt their friendship would have worked out. So, I think that Carlisle not only didn’t mind having his every thought read, but that this was an actively good thing. Because what is less lonely than the company of one who knows you as intimately as you know yourself? To be friends with Aro is to be truly understood, known more deeply than anyone else can ever know you. And to someone who seeks companionship as much as Carlisle does, I imagine this is an extremely attractive feature.

Offer of friendship Carlisle would have been hopelessly lonely when he met Aro. And as no one else is mentioned as being close to him, Jane hadn’t even met him which I find pretty telling of how he interacted (or didn’t interact) with the Guard, and he wouldn’t yet have any of his other friends that he later made, he only had Aro.

He enforcers a law that keeps the known world from descending into chaos Human civilization wouldn’t last a day without the Volturi. There would be nothing stopping vampires from taking out entire villages in one go, immortal children would be everywhere, and the newborn armies would spread like wildfire. In the world of Twilight, the Volturi are a necessary evil. And Aro is their leader. The fact that he not only keeps the world together, an ungrateful task with no end in sight, but had the idea to create a law in the first place would make him all the more amazing to Carlisle.

And I’m sure there’s more that is currently slipping my mind.

Just, Aro is on every level the most impressive, awe-inspiring, and dare I say dazzling, that anyone can be to Carlisle. And he came into Carlisle’s life at the best possible moment. If he’d agreed to do the animal diet, Carlisle would have stayed. If he wanted to seduce Carlisle, I think he’d succeed. I also think that their time together was far more formative for the person Carlisle became than anyone gives Aro credit for.

(And if Carlisle had never found anyone who’d share the diet, he would eventually have returned. I imagine Aro thought the same, but that’s for another post.)

Oh, and last bit - in Breaking Dawn we get this beautiful moment where Carlisle learns that Aro robbed the British royal family, and he just goes, “yup, that’s my guy”. Even after Eclipse, he remains fond of Aro. I mean, there’s also the fact that he’s been lugging around this giant painting for centuries, even at a time when he didn’t have a house and I can only speculate as to where he was keeping it.

Of course, over the course of Eclipse and Breaking Dawn everything goes to hell, but that’s for another post.

TL;DR, Carlisle went from a priest’s son to living with an evil vampire overlord for decades because he’s just that great, in the present he keeps a giant painting of him in his office. I feel it’s safe to assume he likes the man.

(Edited on the 13th of April to fix some phrasing and add a link)

[lightsonparkave]

HAPPY TWO-YEAR ANNIVERSARY TO LIGHTS ON PARK AVE! 🎂🎉 In celebration of LoPA’s birthday (August 22, to be exact), all of the prompts from the previous year are up for grabs.

Round 24 will end on August 31, 11:59 PM ET (what time is that for me?).

As always, you’re free to jump in whenever you’d like during the round, a wide variety of work types is accepted, and there are no minimum work requirements. Unfinished works and works for other fandom events are allowed. You can find more information about Lights on Park Ave and the participation guidelines here.

Here are all 149 prompts. Go crazy and have fun! 🎈

ROUND 13: TIME

A quote about being infinite in the present moment from The Perks of Being a Wallflower

“Vellichor,” the the strange wistfulness of used bookstores

“How long is forever?” dialogue from Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

“Time” - Hans Zimmer (Inception OST)

A quote and gifset from Denis Villeneuve’s Arrival (2016) about the nonlinear structure of time

Agnès Varda’s portraits when she was 20, 36, and 80 years old

A John Irving quote about what time does to the people who matter to us

Ten traveling back to see Rose on New Year’s Day in 2005 before he dies and reincarnates in Doctor Who

Future inventions in 2015 as seen in Robert Zemeckis’s Back to the Future Part II (1989)

A quote about what time does for wounds

ROUND 14: LIMINALITY

A photoset of various liminal spaces

Illustration of a black cat in front of a red-lit house with the caption, “They say no one is living here—but the lights come on, once every year”

A photoset of Victorian-era spirit photography, an art form that attempted to capture the ghost of a deceased loved one

Information on the famous Mojave phone booth, a lone telephone booth in the middle of the desert that received calls from all over the world

Rosemary Ellen Guiley’s The Encyclopedia of Ghosts and Spirits Third Edition’s definition of “witching hour”

Illustration of a ghost train on an abandoned trestle bridge in the Pacific Northwest

A quote by Isabel Allende about spirits coming out at night in the library

Gifset of the spirit world in Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away (2001)

Illustration of a neon roadside sign of a motel that only appears at night by a long-forgotten highway

“Pacific Coast Highway” - Kavinsky

A gifset quote from The Twilight Zone (1959)

Scenery from Twin Peaks season 1 (1990)

A quote about something shifting into a strange, new place inside of a person from Her Body and Other Parties by Carmen Maria Machado

ROUND 15: LOSS

A quote about being lost and found by someone special by Sue Zhao

A photo of the Mildred, wrecked off Gurnard’s Head, Cornwall in 1912

A quote about ephemerality and the beauty of it from Troy (2004)

Two paintings of people visiting ruins by Caspar David Friedrich

A quote about desire and loss by Lara Mimosa Montes

A photo of an overgrown, abandoned conservatory

A passage about what disappears and what remains in ruins from Suicide by Édouard Levé

Dialogue about gratitude for people who aren’t meant to stay in your life but shape who you are from BoJack Horseman

A scene from Fleabag where the Priest chooses God over Fleabag and gently tells Fleabag that her love for him will pass before they part ways

A prayer to St. Anthony, patron saint of lost things, people, and souls

Oscar Wilde’s tomb in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris, covered in lipstick kisses from admirers

Photos of a cemetery statue in Austria, wrapped in branches and dead leaves, holding a single flower

ROUND 16: DEVOTION/SERVICE

A gifset of Kevin on the phone, telling Chiron he’ll cook food for him from Barry Jenkin’s Moonlight (2016)

Buttercup’s monologue to Westley about how she would do anything for him from The Princess Bride by William Goldman

Gifs of Merlin saying that he was born to serve Arthur from BBC’s Merlin

An excerpt about giving all of oneself to someone despite what it costs from House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski

A gifset of various times Jaime and Brienne demonstrate their loyalty to and love for each other in Game of Thrones

A gifset of all the different ways Cliff is there for Rick in Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019)

A gifset of Nadia deciding to be by Alan’s side no matter what in Russian Doll

“Devotion” - Ocean Vuong

A gifset of Bond comforting a traumatized Vesper in the shower in Casino Royale (2006)

A gifset of Sookhee refusing to leave Hideko, saying her job is to look after her in Park Chanwook’s The Handmaiden (2016)

ROUND 17: DREAMS

A dreamscape gifset and quote about repressed thoughts in dreams and the Internet from Satoshi Kon’s Paprika (2006)

A gifset of Mitsuha and Taki finally meeting in their own bodies in a dream from Shinkai Makoto’s Kimi no Na wa (Your Name) (2016)

A quote by Tinker Bell telling Peter Pan where he can find her and where she’ll always love him in Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991)

The scene where Keating tells his students that poetry, beauty, romance, and love give life meaning in Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society (1989)

An animated illustration of a storefront called “Hauntings” with a flickering “99¢ dreams” neon sign

Various dreamscape scenes and a quote about ideas being the most resilient parasite from Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)

A quote about how all living beings must dream to survive reality from The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson

A comic about people we love taking turns to visit us in dreams every night

Lovers and Sleeping Couple, two drawings by Egon Schiele

A quote about belief in a better world by Robert Frobisher to his lover, Rufus Sixsmith, in Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell

A quote about the feeling of falling in love lingering when you wake up from a dream in Alexis Dos Santos’s Unmade Beds (2009)

A photo of subway graffiti by an unknown author insisting that they’ll never give up making the world a better place to live in

ROUND 18: PHYSICAL TOUCH

A scene about how to return a stolen kiss from Daniel Ribeiro’s The Way He Looks (2014)

A line about kissing someone the way a flower opens from “I Know Someone” by Mary Oliver

A gifset focusing on showing affection and care through hands from Park Chanwook’s The Handmaiden (2016)

A passage about two people leaving invisible marks on each other through the accumulation of touches over the years from A Single Man by Christopher Isherwood

Two conversations about never being touched before and only being touched by one person from Barry Jenkins’s Moonlight (2016)

Going from yearning to touch someone but stopping oneself to being allowed to touch them from Richard Linklater’s Before trilogy

Moving art of two bodies made of stars and the cosmos embracing

A quote about maintaining sanity by touching someone but being separated despite proximity from The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje

A line about proving that one still exists and is real through touch from On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong

Different touches between Villanelle and Eve expressing violence, threat, sexual tension, comfort, and companionship in Killing Eve

A juxtaposition of two scenes from Wong Kar-wai’s In the Mood for Love (2000) of Su Li-zhen rejecting and accepting Chow Mo-wan’s hand

A compilation of marble sculptures by Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Syd (Chris Evans) trailing kisses down London’s back in London (2005)

ROUND 19: IMMORTALITY

James Baldwin talking about how art helps you discover that people before you have experienced the same thing as you and you are not alone

Dr. Brand saying that love transcends time and space in Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar (2014)

Nadia and Alan meeting for the first time as they’re about to die and relive the same day again in Russian Doll

The loneliness of losing everyone by having a long life as expressed by Ten in Doctor Who

The doomed eternal time loop romance of Simon and Alisha from Misfits

A quote by Edvard Munch about becoming eternal through the flowers that grow from his body after death

Nagai Kei recalling the traffic accident that killed him and triggered his immortality, making him one of the rare persecuted humans to possess the power, in Ajin

A collection of moments from Jay Russell’s Tuck Everlasting (2002)

A quote by Mary Wollstonecraft hoping for something that lasts inside the heart

Various scenes with Jack Harkness from Doctor Who

Aya telling Asou-kun to live on and live forever as she nears the end of her life in 1 Litre of Tears

An excerpt about the immortalization of the self through love from “Love of the Wolf” in Hélène Cixous’s Stigmata

A collection of scenes from the Black Mirror episode “San Junipero”

Naoko telling Toru to always remember her and remember that she existed in Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

Dom explaining to Ariadne that he uses the PASIV to dream as it’s the only way that he can be with his wife and children in Christopher Nolan’s Inception (2010)

ROUND 20: POETRY

“I’m Going Back to Minnesota Where Sadness Makes Sense” - Danez Smith

A line about wanting to forget how much you loved someone and then actually forgetting from Bluets by Maggie Nelson

“Perhaps the World Ends Here” - Joy Harjo

“In Time” - W. S. Merwin

“By Small and Small: Midnight to Four A.M.” - Jack Gilbert

“Magdalene: The Addict” - Marie Howe

“Wild Geese” - Mary Oliver

“Morphology 2″ - CJ Scruton

“20″ from Moscow in the Plague Year by Marina Tsvetaeva

“To Hold” - Li-Young Lee

ROUND 21: LONGING

“I Loved You Before I Was Born” - Li-Young Lee

A poem about longing for someone through worlds by Izumi Shikibu

A gifset of Marianne and Héloïse falling in love from Céline Sciamma’s Portrait of a Lady on Fire (2019)

“Make Me Feel” - Janelle Monáe

A quote about living in longing being better than realizing that longing from 1Q84 by Haruki Murakami

“I Want You” - Mitski

Orpheus and Eurydice in Hades - Friedrich Heinrich Füger

Long definition of the word “saudade”

Definition of the word “hiraeth”

“Something About Us” - Daft Punk

Two lines about burning quietly from the poem “The Pillowcase” by Annelyse Gelman

A conversation about wanting each other after decades of separation from Pedro Almodóvar’s Pain and Glory (2019)

A Hanahaki disease mood board

“Shrike” - Hozier

Two lines about wanting someone to return from Herakles by Euripides

“Love of My Life” - Queen

“Eyes, Nose, Lips” - Taeyang

A screenshot of Kathy and Tommy holding onto each other desperately from Mark Romanek’s Never Let Me Go (2010) and a quote from Kazuo Ishiguro’s eponymous novel

ROUND 22: YOUTH

“Perfect Places” - Lorde

A piece about realizing you’ll never be this young again, but it’s the first time you’re this old by Kalyn Roseanne Livernois

A conversation between Neil and Mr. Keating about Neil feeling trapped and unable to live the life he wants because of his father from Peter Weir’s Dead Poets Society (1989)

An excerpt about being too young to know how to love properly from Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” - Arctic Monkeys

Elio’s father telling Elio not to try to rid himself of his sorrow and pain—and with that joy—which he feels so strongly because he’s so young from Call Me By Your Name by Andre Aciman

A quote about how everything feels final to young people because they’re experiencing it for the first time from Middlemarch by George Eliot

Lara Jean telling Peter that she had to make it seem like she liked him to deal with her love letter fiasco in Susan Johnson’s To All the Boys I Loved Before (2018)

Rue and Jules dancing together and partying it up in Euphoria

“Le Plongeoir” by Laurent Roch

A quote about being pushed into adulthood and not being ready from Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami

A photo of a roller rink illuminated by pink and purple lights

Pastel photo series of Coney Island by Mijoo Kim and Minjin Kang

“Hips Don’t Lie” - Shakira feat. Wyclef Jean

“Young Dumb & Broke” - Khalid

Different moments accompanied by the letter to Mr. Vernon at the end of detention from John Hughes’s The Breakfast Club (1985)

Various scenes and a quote about growing up and realizing life isn’t like a fairy tale from Guillermo del Toro’s Pan’s Labyrinth (2006)

Stills of the young lesbian couple in love from the music video of “You Know” - Jaurim

Lines by Effy about her emotional and mental struggles from Skins

Nathan chiding the group for not taking advantage of their superpowers as young offenders from Misfits

ROUND 23: HEDONISM

A passage about giving into passion and losing control from The Secret History by Donna Tartt

“Thot Shit” - Megan Thee Stallion

An aesthetic photoset of the Greek god Dionysus

A quote about living for ecstasy rather than balance from From a Journal of Love by Anaïs Nin

A photo of an anonymous person in nothing but a silk robe and lingerie

A photo of Donatella Versace lounging in a chair, surrounded by shirtless, muscular men sunbathing around her in Capri, Italy in 1994

An aesthetic photoset based on The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde

The music video for “Heartless” by The Weeknd

A plea for summer to never end from Call Me By Your Name by André Aciman

“Plastic Love” - Mariya Takeuchi

A gifset from the music video of “Blinding Lights” by The Weeknd, a continuation of the “Heartless” music video

“XS” - Rina Sawayama

A gifset from the music video of “Body” by Mino

Photos of people dancing at the legendary Studio 54

Photos and a description of the party scene at Studio 54

Chris Evans and Evan Rachel Wood hooking up in a car in the “Gucci Guilty Black” commercial

[ooc-but-stylish]

freezedive:

I think I said it in one of your other beautiful posts, but I thought I’d mention it again. All of the ridiculous cutscenes did give us a golden nugget of information on Luna that most of us who are brutally critical of her (like you and me), suspected all along: Luna openly admits to Gentiana that she doesn’t think she has anything to offer Noctis outside of being an oracle. And Gentiana makes it worse by speaking in fancy words by saying some bullshit about her being the oracle is her being human or something and that she is fulfilling her true calling and that is what Noctis needs? Idk but it reeked of emotional manipulation. 

I hold little to no regard for Ravus because there’s evidence Luna was being brutally beaten right under his own nose while he was busy being the Emperor’s lapdog thinking it could maybe give him the power to save his sister? The man should have opened his eyes and defended her against the men that kept them jailed

I happened on this reply to roxainn’s post while trying to recapitulate all my other FFXV critical posts and reblogs on the way to making new ones. 

Crawling back to find anything about this point, I find that it was posted 3 years ago. But at least I reblogged the reply to it.... and missed that it was literally @ ME. Goddamn did I slack.

But here’s my reply, 3 years late, which should elaborate on where I stand on this.

Yes, the flashback that gets triggered by a random creepy little girl in Tenebrae is about Luna and Gentiana. Somehow the little girl knew about that conversation even though she wasn’t there to witness it first-hand? Or maybe Noctis was imagining what the conversation would be like between Gentiana and Luna off of the vague suggestion from the girl, and it’s just him telling on himself that his imagination of Luna says all that? Otherwise the not-altogether-tinfoil-hat theory says it’s Gentiana in the form of a little girl, telling Noctis something that IMO should piss him off but just makes him sad and guilty because Luna loved him so much, don’t you see. She loved him so much that after wrapping her entire life around him, she’d just want to keep that going for the rest of their lives!

Gentiana opens the conversation with, “At first, the father had mourned the fate of his chosen son. Yet in Tenebrae, the two found solace. It was not the Oracle who assuaged their fears. But the girl…she holds…the true power.”

Then Luna replies, “I have little to offer a king, other than the voice afforded the Oracle. Nevertheless…” She turns to look at the wedding dress. “And—I’m afraid he might find this foolish… But…to be together with Noctis again, even if only for a short while… It…would mean the world to me. I do not seek to guide him, merely to stand beside him.”

The exchange is all types of fucky.

First off, she was twelve. What comfort could she have offered Regis and Noctis? What comfort was she capable of when Sylva was right there, an adult with experience of an Oracle and a personality thanks to a presumable full life not hampered by grooming of the gods? 

Second, every other scene of Luna as a child is of her telling Noctis his duty, and that it was her duty to see it through. Did that assuage his fears-- the fears he didn’t have at the time since he never knew the entire meaning of his fate and was being told a saccharine, embellished version of it by Luna right there? Did that comfort Regis, knowing a little girl would also die to protect his son if the gods wanted it, but that she wouldn’t have the will to avert their fates whatsoever? 

Third, even she thinks Noctis would think her desire to be with him is foolish. So... was she expecting that Noctis himself didn’t have feelings for her or want to spend time with her of his own volition for reasons outside of her job? She was looking forward to a marriage with no emotional security, where her desires are one-sided and unreciprocated, and the man she cares for think she’s worthless outside of her powers? She would’ve been willing to put herself through that, given a choice?

We know what we know and think what we think, but the fact that this was placed right in the vanilla game and no one thought that was wrong, and instead they doubled down on it in patches, is pathetic on their part.

Moreover, what does The Girl have, that was separate from The Princess and The Oracle? Every facet of her being wrapped around Noctis since age 4. She was nothing but her duty by the time Noctis met her; they had no scenes where they acted as children would. Even supplemental/promotional art for other XV media and related locales cement that. Little Luna serves Little Noctis pastries, she’s not seen eating with him. Luna teaches Noctis how to play piano, she’s not playing with him. Dawn of the Future came out with its own art, and Noctis is afforded the liberty to sit in a chair, and his son(?) sits on his lap, while Luna and her spitting image child(?) are both on their knees, looking up at the dudes. 

In most of their art together, Luna and Noctis are either not meeting each other's gazes, she's bending or kneeling to him, or he's supposed to be holding her close but he hover-hands her, or there’s that one time where they took a selfie and the picture was of their Pocket Edition versions. They’re still not looking at each other in that one. And it’s not canon.

Anyway yeah, any conversation Gentiana has with Luna about Noctis is emotional manipulation on Gentiana’s part, but the writers manage just enough to make everyone involved seem creepy and reprehensible in their own way. 

In DOTF, Luna has a death soliloquy that confirms she sunk into the water at the end of the game’s Chapter 9, but the soliloquy is about how she was prepared to die even at the age of 12, and she put on a smile and resolved to be strong for Noctis’s sake, so that he wouldn’t remember her having a look of despair. There’s a line there about how she would cry herself to sleep but Gentiana would wipe her tears. Gentiana does nothing else except allow her to cry and wipe her tears afterward, and makes no effort to save her from her fate or at least take her out of terrible situations so that she would cry fewer tears. But there is cut dialogue from the game, and used in the novel, where Gentiana revealed herself as Shiva when Luna was <16 (probably still 12 at the time), when she thought she was being held back from forming the covenants, so there’s that. And Luna still somehow ignored that this meant Shiva allowed Sylva to die, and thanked this useless goddess for her nonexistent generosity. 

For whatever reason they had to add a passage where Luna superimposes the image of an eight-year-old Noctis onto the adult version-- quote, "the image of him as a child, burned into my eyelids, overlaps with his now-grown face"-- even though Noctis has canonically sent her photos of him as a teenager (15-16, around the time he met Prompto in high school, see: Brotherhood). Granted, that's a translation from Luna's voice actress reading an excerpt as if it were first person POV. The English version says she sees the child image first, then the adult version is superimposed. Then not much after that there's a passage where Noctis smiles as his child self and it was "that smile she loved that had been in her heart all these years, giving her strength, always and forever".

So she was groomed and turned into a shell since age 4, believes she has no value outside of her job and turned her grooming on a similarly vulnerable child, and her strongest image of him, the one she fell in love with and kept in her heart, is of the helpless boy that promised her the world without knowing the cost. The smile of the carefree boy that didn't know his journey would end with his soul annihilated. It couldn’t have been that hard to have her see an image of him as the 30 year old True King of Light that he would become. At least she'd sound a little less like a weirdo who continually places herself (and is placed by the narrative) as below him, unworthy of him, etc. but also has strong feelings and memories toward a goddamn child.

Re: Ravus: you already got a reply to that, but for real? Ravus was also shafted by the plot and beaten down by terrible, amateur writing. The narrative shits on him as if it’s written by a high schooler or otherwise emotionally arrested adult trying to push a Mary Sue Protagonist. The modus operandi for those stories is that everyone who disagrees with the protagonist in any way has to suffer tremendous humiliation including but not limited to death, because the Protagonist Is Just So Good And Perfect And Always Right. 

Nothing Ravus does justifies his treatment in-game or in-fandom like he’s a one-note out-and-out villain who wanted nothing but to kill Noctis and disrespect his sister, to the point where his corpse is defiled multiple times in Chapter 13 and he’s twisted into a perversion of himself that begs to die.

Chapter 13 has Noctis land next to Ravus’s corpse and all his letters to Luna, and Noctis has piss all to say about it, either out loud or to anyone. He looks at the Sword of the Father, glances at Ravus, and without a word takes the Royal Arm and lets the Magitek arm-- still dripping, still gross-- fall onto Ravus’s body and doesn’t even move it.  

He had no way of knowing beforehand that Ignis and Gladio knew of Ravus being killed. WE didn't even know they saw security footage until Ch13V2 was added in. Noctis happening on his late fiancée's dead bro sounds, I don’t fucking know, like something you’d want to tell everyone else about later. Along with the letters he wrote evidencing that he intended to return the Sword of the Father to Noctis!

An aside: The Letters from Ravus are just weird to behold; it isn't 100% clear whether Luna ever received all of those letters. She had to have received the first one, at least. But the idea that Ardyn intercepted even one other letter so that Luna never heard from her brother between Tenebrae and Altissia is farfetched. He shouldn’t be able to intercept those messages as if they were delivered conventionally. Luna has a pair of magic space-bending Shiba Inu that send letters instantly across continents. If she’s sparing their use to send Noctis one-liners and stickers but can’t afford that for Ravus to send her discrete updates on Noctis’s status, she’s a piece of shit. 

They do meet in Tenebrae as Ravus wanted her to, and they have the conversation where he gets on her case about her “throwing [her] life away” for Noctis. So chances are higher that Ardyn only got a hold of all three letters after Luna received them and no sooner, but then he shouldn’t be tossing letters from Ravus at the dude’s body when it makes more sense for him to toss down letters to Ravus, since the writers wanted to make a point of Ardyn having a vicious streak. It makes way more sense for Ardyn to deprive Ravus of Luna’s writing, then insult him with them post-mortem, unless Ravus’s notes were really all he could acquire, meaning Luna never once wrote back to her brother. 

The Doylist explanation is that the writing team sucks and couldn't be assed to think of anything for Luna to say because they didn't think of her at all. The Watsonian explanation is that Luna’s a piece of shit and that tracks with her in Kingsglaive watching her brother burn alive in response to the Ring, but ignoring him and running to Regis’s aid instead, but then the rest of the plot presents her as morally pure through her white clothing and “unconditional, self-abnegating love” for Noctis.

Back to the topic: I don’t know, maybe I’m being old fashioned, but Noctis should’ve given more of a shit that his dropping the Magitek Arm on Ravus’s body was probably what turned him into a mutated abomination begging to die, and he thought so little of Ravus that the dude isn’t even in the glimpse of "people who helped me get this far" in the Beyond. Ravus doesn’t even get a spot to wish Noctis and Luna well on their afterlife wedding, not that it makes any sense for any of them to have words to say since Noctis is already dead, no one was there with them, and none of the bros expressed any sign that they knew that Noctis was bound to get married after his sacrifice (he sure doesn’t mention it in the final campfire scene and that’d be a better place than any). But anyway, Regis is in the Beyond at Noctis’s side even though he never told Noctis a damn thing and still never spoke to him from within the Ring, but Ravus? Nah, he’s the real asshole somehow and doesn’t deserve any recognition whatsoever.

The only other characters I know of that have a remotely similar dynamic to Noctis, Luna, and Ravus (lovers, but the girl has a straight-edge protective brother working for the bad guys) is Nero, Kyrie, and Credo (see: Devil May Cry), but as much as I think the writing in that series is hokey as fuck, at least the writer(s) for DMCs 4 and 5 had enough sense to make the love story simple and based it from a line from Amagasaki City-- “I love you, so I love the city that you love.”-- and opted against portraying Credo as an outright villain because if Nero killed him, Kyrie would resent him for it even though she knew Credo was working for the same Order that threatened her life. 

Shouldn’t Noctis care about the shit Luna cares about even if he has no personal investment in it or it’s inconvenient to him? Shouldn’t he care about Tenebrae and its prosperity? or about Ravus? Nah, it’s okay, Noctis doesn’t have to respect Luna’s love for her brother or her kingdom because for all intents and purposes, she doesn’t care for Ravus or for Tenebrae as much as she loves Noctis. Her love for Noctis and her looking forward to the wedding is what matters here.

The yaaaas queen vicious clapback from Kingsglaive!Luna about how Ravus is the Empire’s dog is especially rich coming from her when she’s fellating the gods all through the game even though Eos’s equivalent of The Holy Bible says the Hexatheon’s Revelations destroy cities and that undoubtedly means people are killed by the gods, and their summoner is complicit, because there’s no such thing as a perfect evacuation. See: "Revelations left great devastation in their wake, with entire cities being laid to ruin," noted in the Cosmogony long before the True King even exists. 

Luna herself didn’t see a problem with this and helped in the effort, with no regard to the collateral damage she would cause with the summoning: bonus points for the part where Leviathan is hostile to humanity and threatens to eat every living being if Noctis fails! She had even less regard to the damage Niflheim would cause in their attempt to kill the gods even though she was first-hand witness to them sacking Insomnia. Waking and defeating Titan deprived Lestallum of the meteor they derived power from. Waking Leviathan destroyed Altissia. Luna’s refusal to leave Insomnia when told to by Regis led to her being used as bait and taking the whole of the Kingsglaive out of Insomnia in time for their Face Heel Turn and Insomnia being destroyed. Everything else leads to the eventual World of Ruin where people also die. 

All because she killed herself prematurely from the covenants and didn’t hold back the longer nights as she promised to the public’s face and on her honor as Oracle she would do. Her dying words in Chapter 9 were her being completely satisfied with her fate because “[her] prayers were answered, [her] calling fulfilled”, even though the calling requires that she dies and she should’ve known better than anyone that her death, even if it was for Noctis’s ascension, would endanger the rest of the world for 10 years and helped the Starscourge spread. But instead of fighting for her own life to stem the plague for as long as possible, she let herself die under the belief that "Noct can handle this" to give him the chance to be the revered King of Light. She also didn’t make a single appearance on the world of the living in her spirit form during those ten years until Noctis needed help with a piddly imitation of the Magic Wall, only then does she come down in her ghost form with seemingly all of her power intact, and summons five of The Six as if Noctis can’t easily do it himself.

But Ravus is the lapdog? Luna’s the one with her “ends justify the means” behavior and what looks like general neglect for actual human beings.

Anyway, Ravus stabs Caligo in the back and kills him, and that move only makes sense in light of the idea that Caligo was manhandling Luna as seen in the Dawn trailer. Ravus was 16 when Tenebrae was overrun, and there’s no reason to believe he was magically immune to institutional abuse, so there’s a high chance that he was abused by the Empire too, held resentment of that, and waited for the time he’d be able to retaliate with no repercussions. Gentiana as a goddess is 1000000% more on the hook about letting Luna be beaten than Ravus is, since he saw his mother die in front of him while Regis ran away. Regis had the power of the Ring and could have used elemancy to put out that fire, or void magic to banish Glauca and his MT army, didn’t do that, but he totally spares enough magic during the treaty signing to toss around Thunder spells straight from his hand, cast barriers, and summon some Royal Arms straight at Iedolas, and that’s bad enough. Gentiana who’s been the Fleuret family attendant since Luna was born and also is Shiva who can freeze people with her fingertip had even less excuse to let that fire rage, to let Sylva die protecting her son, and to stand by and allow her ward(s) to get thrown around by some random Imperial soldier.

[itmeansapricot]

@sailormeowsblogs:

Why the game of thrones book tho....

Because it's really good?

(For reference, this is about my recommendation of Queenship and the Women of Westeros: Female Agency and Advice in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire (2020), edited by Zita Eva Rohr and Lisa Benz.)

Essentially, it's a jumping-off point for scholars of queens and queenship to talk about their own topics through the lens of the books/show, which can be a great way for people familiar with the series to look at the history behind it. And certain chapters rip apart the ASOIAF series's treatment of its female characters on the basis of GRRM's supposed historic realism, which is always great to read. Here's the table of contents:

Part I Queenship

1. A Game of Thrones in China: The Case of Cixi, Empress Dowager of the Qing Dynasty (1835–1908) James J. Hudson

2. Queen of Sad Mischance: Medievalism, “Realism,” and the Case of Cersei Lannister Kavita Mudan Finn

3. Westerosi Queens: Medievalist Portrayal of Female Power and Authority in A Song of Ice and Fire Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun

4. “All I Ever Wanted Was to Fight for a Lord I Believed in. But the Good Lords Are Dead and the Rest Are Monsters”: Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister, and the Chivalric “Other” Iain A. MacInnes

Part II Female Agency

5. The Peaceweavers of Winterfell Kris Swank

6. Cersei Lannister, Regal Commissions, and the Alchemists in Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire Curtis Runstedler

7. ‘All Men Must Die, but We Are Not Men’: Eastern Faith and Feminine Power in A Song of Ice and Fire and HBO’s Game of Thrones Mikayla Hunter

8. Daenerys the Unready: Advice and Ruling in Meereen Shiloh Carroll

Part III The Role of Advice

9. The Royal Minorities of Game of Thrones Charles E. Beem

10. Wicked Women and the Iron Throne: The Twofold Tragedy of Witches as Advisors in Game of Thrones Sheilagh Ilona O’Brien

11. Afterword: Playing, Winning, and Losing the Game of Thrones—Reflections on Female Succession in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones in Comparison to the Premodern Era Elena Woodacre

For instance, Kavita Mudan Finn's chapter points out the fact that in writing Cersei, GRRM basically takes all of the misogynistic descriptions of Margaret of Anjou and other "bad queens" at face value and combines them into one person, as does Sylwia Borowska-Szerszun's (although the latter also looks more generally at the parallels between different characters and historical queens). Kris Swank looks at the early English tradition of queens as "peaceweavers" and applies it to Catelyn, as well as other stereotypes of the same period. Shiloh Carroll is kinder to GRRM and mainly tears apart the character assassination done to Daenerys on the show.

Some chapters also cite meta on Tumblr, which is pretty cool to see.

This attitude better reflects the failings of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century medievalism than the actual history, as many contemporary medievalists have discussed at length. As Shiloh Carroll argues, building on the work of Helen Young, “readers are caught in a ‘feedback loop’ in which Martin’s work helps to create a neomedieval idea of the Middle Ages, which then becomes their idea of what the Middle Ages ‘really’ looked like, which is then used to defend Martin’s work as ‘realistic’ because it matches their idea of the real Middle Ages.”

(This quote is citing Carroll in Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones, also a good bridge for the current or former ASOIAF fan.)

[jerryslogan]

There are few things in the design that are more important than color. Color can evoke reactions, emotions or even action all without using words. So how do we know which colors look good together? The answer is color theory in graphic design! The color theory describes the use of color in graphic design. Otherwise known as graphic design color palettes. However, it’s not only for artists as people use color theory in their everyday life as well! Whether it’s choosing an outfit or putting together a party invitation for a family members birthday color theory helps you choose a colorful graphic design!

1.The Understandings of Color Theory In Graphic Design

The biggest power behind color is their ability to evoke emotions and make people feel things, but the color meaning in graphic design can seem confusing at first as colors often have different interpretations. Let’s take a look at not only what emotions they evoke but also their symbolism!

Color Theory In Graphic Design: Red

Red is in the “Warm” color family and tends to evoke feelings of passion, both love, and hate! Proven by the fact you can see the color red used in both imagery of Cupid, an angel of love, and demons.

red

As it’s also been associated with power and imagery of fire, violence, and warfare we tend to use red as a warning of danger or even to reprimand someone, like marking things incorrect using a large red “X” mark. However, red can also be seen as a symbol of status like when used at red carpet events or it can make someone think of red rubies.

Red is best used as an accent color, as it can be overwhelming, and even harmful to the eyes if used in large amounts!

Color Theory In Graphic Design: Yellow

Yellow, also a warm color is considered to be one of the brightest and most energizing of the warm colors. It’s commonly associated with happiness and sunshine. However, it can also be used to convey a warning or caution as it’s commonly used in construction sighs.

yellow lemon quote wallpaper

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Use yellow when you want a bright pop of happy energy or to draw immediate attention to an area. Yello is also great to use when creating more industrial or modern designs! If you find that yellow is too stark and bright, try using a more muted yellow.

yellow

Color Theory In Graphic Design: Blue

Blue is often associated with sadness however blue is also used to represent calmness and tranquility. The meaning and symbolism of blue are heavily reliant on the shade of blue. Light blues can be both refreshing and friendly while dark blues are considered stronger and reliable.blue computer science post

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When using blue remember the exact shade of blue you select will matter most with how your design will be perceived. Light blues are often calming, bright blues can be refreshing or even energizing while dark blues, like navy, are great for corporate designs where reliability is a featuring trait.

blue

Color Theory In Graphic Design: Orange

Orange is bright and vibrant and so also gives off an energetic vibe similar to yellow, but is much more subdued in comparison. It’s commonly used in food labels or other cooking-related products (including cell phone recipe apps) as orange is said to invoke hunger in people!

While orange in its purest form is vibrant and bright, more muted forms will give off the feeling of warmth, and remind people of fall leaves. Which can be ideal for designs that want to give the feeling of being “cozy” and warm.

orange flower quote post

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Orange can be a better warm option to use over red as it has all of the vibrancy and energy that the color red has but without the potentially aggressive symbolism.

orange

Color Theory In Graphic Design: Green

Unsurprisingly green, a cool-toned color is considered as earthy and will invoke images of nature signifying renewal and abundance. Alternatively, green can also represent envy and jealousy as seen in the phrase “green with envy”.

Going with the same theme as “abundance”, green can symbolize wealth especially in countries where their currency is green.

green christmas party invitation

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Green has a similar calming effect as blue, but with some of the energizing tones of yellow. The brighter the green the more energizing it will be. Muted and olive greens will work best in designs of nature and the natural world while dark greens are the most stable and representative of wealth.

green

Color Theory In Graphic Design: Purple

Before modern-day dyes were created, purple dyes were hard to find and extremely expensive to make so only royals and the wealthy could afford them. Given this history, dark purples are associated with wealth and royalty.

However, lighter purples, like lavender, are typically associated with softness and a more tender romantic love, as opposed to red which ignites more passionate love.

aesthetic purple cloud wallpaper

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When using purples in design dark purples will give a sense of wealth and luxury while light softer purples are associated with spring and romance.

purple

2. What’s the Color Terminology?

When talking about the color theory you may notice a few key terms pop up quite frequently. That is because describing color is best done by describing it’s hue, saturation, brightness or value. Let’s cover what exactly these terms mean!

Hue

Hue is one of the main properties of color and is the property of light by which the color of an object is classified as red, blue, green, or yellow in the color spectrum.

Green, orange, yellow, and blue — each of these is a hue, a color or a shade. A rainbow shows the melting of one hue into another, from red to violet, and all the shades in between. The noun hue means both a color and a shade of a color. Green is a hue, and turquoise is a hue of both green and blue!

hue

Saturation

Saturation is the intensity of a hue from a gray tone with no saturation, to pure, vivid color with high saturation. High saturation colors will come off more colorful or deep, while low saturation images will come off muted or pastel.

low and high hues

Value

Value refers to the lightness, brightness or darkness of a color. Value in the art will refer to the shadows and highlights and will give your work more dimension. It is especially important in black and white photos, design and illustration as it will separate objects from each other and their background.

saturation

Brightness

Brightness is simply both the hue of color along with the value of the color. It refers to its lightness and its ability to replicate light or reflection. This is also known as “luminance.”

value

3. Color Palette For Graphic Design

Creating a cohesive color scheme relies on one thing: knowing what colors go well together and compliment each other. Luckily there are a number of different ways to mix, match and find the perfect color scheme for you!

Color Wheel

The color wheel for graphic design is a circle with different colored sections used to show the relationship between colors. The typical color wheel includes the blue, red, and yellow primary colors. The corresponding secondary colors are then green, orange, and violet or purple.

color wheel

Secondary Color

A mentioned above, secondary colors are colors that come from mixing two primary colors. There are three secondary colors. In RGB graphic design, the secondary colors are purple made from red mixed with blue, orange made from red mixed with yellow, and green made from yellow mixed with blue.

secondary color

Complementary

Two colors that are on opposite sides of the color wheel are called complementary colors. Complementary colors of graphic designs provide high contrast and high impact color combination. When placed together or next to one another these colors will appear brighter and more vibrant.

complementary color

Split Complementary

A split complementary color scheme involves the use of three colors. Start with one color, find its complement and then use the two colors on either side of it.

complementary

Analogous

Analogous colors are among the easiest to find on the color wheel. Pick any color at any point on the wheel. Now, look at any three colors directly to the left or right of the chosen color. Together, those four are a group of analogous colors. Mixing colors that are adjacent to each other creates a colorful yet harmonious look. When using an analogous color scheme it’s best to choose one main color, using the other three as accent colors. This will help keep designs from becoming too chaotic or busy.

Triadic

Tertiary colors are colors made by combining a secondary color with a primary color. There are six colors considered tertiary. In the RYB color wheel, these tertiary colors are red-orange, yellow-orange, yellow-green, blue-green, blue-violet, and red-violet.

triadic

4. Color Sites for Graphic Design

These sites are the top free to use color guide for graphic designers giving you easy to use tools to create graphic design palettes.

COLOURlovers

COLOURlovers is a creative community where people from around the world create and share colors, palettes, and patterns, discuss the latest trends and explore colorful articles. With more than 4,682,736 palettes, 10,035,451 colors, 5,844,503 patterns in 532,217 templates you’re sure to find inspiration to kick start your creative projects.

triadic colors

Color Hunt

Color Hunt is an open collection of color palettes, created by Gal Shir. Color Hunt started as a personal small project built to share trendy color combinations between a group of designer friends. The collection scaled up and now being used daily as handy resources by thousands of people all over the world.

color hunt

Paletton

Paletton, a design tool for creating color combinations that work together well. It was formerly known as Color Scheme Designer.

paletton

5. How to Create a Graphic Design with Color Theory?

Step 1

First, you are going to fotor.com and choose your template by going to Design and choosing Poster found in the Marketing category.

Choose your template from the side panel, I will be choosing this Black Friday sale poster!

Step 2

Next, let’s customize the design!

First, the text, let’s Click on the title text and change the font face to Alibaba Sans Bold.

I will also be changing the “When” and “Where” to Alibaba Sans Bold.

Double-click on the text to change what it says, I will be changing it to “bikes and accessories”

Now onto the colors. Let’s change the yellow to a more outdoorsy green color.

Click on the yellow header, in the upper left-hand corner choose the pastel green color.

Change all yellow sections to this green color. You can even change the rippled texture in the bottom right-hand corner!

Once done, click on all the text and change them to white using the same method. In Fotor, everything is customizable by simply clicking on it, it’s that easy!

change the color

Finally, let’s use complementary colors to make the bike stand out. In this case, we have a lot of green. The complementary color of green is red! So let’s click on the bike, and choose red for our third color box, changing the frame of the boke to red.

Finish up by changing the rims of the bike to white, using the second color box.

change the color of the bicycle

Step 3

Lastly, let’s save our image by Naming out file, choosing .PNG for out the file type and then choosing High for our quality! And you are all done!

[waywardfangirl]

Both @captain-aralias and @palimpsessed ​did really nice posts to share their fics from this year as well as their thoughts on what they wrote, and I enjoyed reading their posts (and their fics!) so much that I thought I would take them up on their open invitation to do one too! I’m a big believer in keeping lists of your accomplishments to look at on days when self-doubt creeps in, so I encourage anyone else who might be interested to do this too! (All the questions are copied from @captain-aralias)

List of Completed Fics this year:

I wrote ten fics this year, as well as starting a ton of WIPs, which is amazing to me, considering I have only written fic once before in my life!

Slow - General, 3k

We’re Not in Genovia Anymore - Teen, 28k

Promises - General, 3k

A Privilege to Love You - Teen, 7k

Early Riser - General, >1k

Write This Down - General, 3k

As You Wish - Teen, 13k

The View from the Veranda - General, 4k

Down By The Sea - General, 2k

Just Want You to Know Who I Am - General, 1k (written in 2020, posted in 2021)

Total: 10 fics, 67k words, 100% Snowbaz

Pretty good for what is truly the first year that I have been an active participant in fandom!

Questions answered below the cut.

Best/worst title?

A Privilege to Love You is my favorite title, because I think the line is just so sweet, and it makes my heart melt.

We’re Not in Genovia Anymore is definitely my worst title, because that was just the placeholder name I gave the WIP, but then I got so used to it I forgot to change it to something better before posting. I still cringe a bit at that one.

Best/worst summary?

l am horrifically indecisive, so I have a few summaries that I like. Just Want You To Know Who I Am is short and sweet, and I think it conveys exactly what I want it to:

Baz is fine. He's fine. Everything is fine. (It just isn't.)

~A fic about being loved in all the little ways~

But I also really liked the quotes I pulled for The View from the Veranda, As You Wish, and A Privilege to Love You.

Early Riser also has a summary that I let break my heart:

Baz wakes up early now, even though Simon doesn’t.

I does very little to convey what the fic is about, but after reading the fic it hurts like I wanted it to, sooo.....

I think that Promises has the worst summary though:

Inspired by the song "Promises" from the musical Hadestown.

Simon and Baz have spent the last three years working on themselves and on their relationship. Now it's time for their next step together.

Best/worst first line?

Baz says it best to open The View from the Veranda:

I am not a man accustomed to enduring want.

However, Simon deserves an honorable mention for starting us off right in As You Wish:

Baz is such a prick.

As for worst opening lines, I don’t really think I have any. I have some that stand better as an opening paragraph than an opening line, but I place a lot of importance on the first line of a story, so I like to make sure all mine are strong.

Best/worst last line?

I am not going to spoil any last lines for anyone (I cover up the last page of books when I read to reveal it slowly, word by word, so I take last lines seriously!), but I will say that As You Wish has an adorably predictable last line that I love.

For worst last line, I have to say Slow. I liked the line itself when I wrote it, but then I learned later that people were interpreting it in a more steamy way than what I had intended, and because I feel like Slow is such an innocent fic and really highlights how important it is for Simon to not be rushed into every decision he makes, I don’t like that it sounds like he and Baz rushed into something else. (I just meant that they talked and maybe kissed a bit! That’s it!)

Looking back, did you write more fics than you thought you would this year, less than you thought, or about what you predicted?

On December 31st, 2019, I was pet sitting when I came across a prompt for a Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement Snowbaz AU. I impulsively started to write, even though I had only written one other fic in my life (Check, Please!), and I had never written Snowbaz before. I kind of thought that maybe I would write one fic and that would be all, and that maybe one fic is all I would ever write, but I am so happy to have been wrong about that! I wrote way more than I could have predicted, and I even did NaNoWriMo! (I failed NaNoWriMo too, and I’m okay with that, because I want writing to be something I do for fun, not something that stresses me out.)

As a fun side note, Carry On is a fandom that I have returned to many times in my life, and it seems to have a special place on New Year’s Eve/New Year’s Day for me. I was given Fangirl as a Christmas present, and started reading it on New Year’s Eve, only to finish it and realize that the new year had arrived while I was engrossed in the book. I have spent multiple New Year’s Eves since engrossed in a reread of the book, or reading fic, and so it feels really fitting that I got into properly writing fic for Carry On as the year turned over.

What pairing/genre/fandom did you write that you would never have predicted last year?

Literally all of this was unexpected, as I never planned on writing any more fic, but I think I am most surprised to have written multiple songfics. I never read many songfics, and didn’t often care for them, but I wrote Promises off of the song from Hadestown, Write This Down off of George Strait’s song, and then Just Want You to Know Who I Am because Caity got the Goo Goo Dolls stuck in my head.

What’s your favourite story this year? Not the most popular, but the one that makes you the happiest.

My favorite might actually be my most popular, so I’ll go with my close second favorites (it’s a tie)

A Privilege to Love You is a soulmate au, and those are my favorite things ever. I also received some of the best feedback on this one, and I feel like I did a lot of things that worked really well in this fic.

The View from the Veranda is just so wonderful for me though, it combines my love of history with absolute silliness for a friend (I love you Liz!!!), @krisrix did some INCREDIBLE art for it, and I just had so much fun writing it.

Okay, NOW your most popular story.

As You Wish was the most popular, hands down, with more hits, kudos, comments, and bookmarks than any other fic I wrote. It’s also the fic of mine that I reread the most, because it makes me so happy and I love all the silly moments.

Story most underappreciated by the universe?

We’re Not in Genovia Anymore is probably the answer here. This isn’t entirely backed up by metrics, since it does have more hits and kudos than some of my other fics, but for how long it is and the work that went into it, I think it only got a portion of the attention I was hoping it would. That’s mostly my fault though! It was the first fic I wrote for this fandom, and so I have definitely grown as a write since! Additionally, while I feel like it has a lot of great moments and fantastic lines, I have some lackluster bits too, and it really suffered from not having a beta (I was too shy to ask anyone back then). It’s also an AU of a movie that isn’t as widely viewed as I previously thought, so that didn’t help either, and as I already said, this fic could have a much better title.

All that aside though, the people who have read and talked to me about this fic have really seemed to like it, so I’m glad that I did right by my fellow Princess Diaries 2 fans! (and all of the wonderful people who read it and commented nice things having never seen the movie, y’all rock!)

Story that could have been better?

Everything I wrote before asking someone to beta. I just talked about what I would improve in We’re Not In Genovia Anymore, but Promises could use some work too. Having a few wonderful friends help me edit my fics has really improved what I post!

Sexiest story?

Oh gosh, I am not someone who writes sexy things.

Having said that, The View from the Veranda was written in the style of a bodice ripper, so I think that makes it the sexiest story by default. Kris’s art also enhances its sex appeal by at least 200% (I laughed out loud when I was making the list at the start of this post, because I had entirely forgotten that fic is rated G - honestly, that tells you everything you need to know about me, my romance novel fic can be read by children haha) (I might give it a T rating at some point, just because I feel like it should have that)

**I just remembered the bonus chapter for As You Wish.... that might be the sexiest thing I’ve written haha 🤣

Saddest story?

Early Riser - I am a big believer in giving everyone who deserves it a happy ending, but this one is just an interlude of sadness and depression without any resolution in sight.

(If you read it though, please know that in my head they do get therapy and things do get better! Snowbaz always has a happy ending in my fics, even if I don’t write it out fully)

Most fun?

As You Wish - this one to me feels like the happy chaos of running and sliding around a big house in stocking feet, and I don’t have a better way to describe it than that. There’s a tiny bit of angst from Baz, and a little bit of panic from Simon, but I was smiling and having so much fun while writing this fic, and I really think it comes across.

Story with single sweetest moment?

A Privilege to Love You - I’ll let you decide which of the many sweet moments is actually the sweetest ❤

Hardest story to write?

Promises, no question about it. I had written two fics by that point, and people had been so nice, and some of you lovely folks had even started tagging me in WIP Wednesday posts and in Six Sentence Sunday posts, but I felt like I had no inspiration left and I kept worrying that I wouldn’t be able to write again. So, I forced myself to write something, and it felt like pulling teeth (and it honestly wasn’t very good), but I gifted it to the person who had been my biggest cheerleader and who had tagged me a million times, and that’s how @foolofabookwyrm and I became friends. Writing the fic sucked, but her friendship is worth it, a million times over 💜💜💜

Easiest/most fun story to write?

The View from the Veranda. I’m a historian, and I work a lot with primary sources and spend time speaking with others in 18th century language, so once I got into my “work mindset” the words just flowed. This was also a silly, happy story for me, because I included a lot of jokes for Liz, and there are a ton of details that are just hilarious if you work at the same place I do (sorry that none of you do, but let me just tell you, the descriptions of Simon are all based off of my most attractive colleague, and at least 15% of this fic is silly quotes from work). I think this was only supposed to be about a thousand words long, and I messaged Kris multiple times while writing just to tell him that it was getting out of control and I couldn’t stop writing 😂

Did any stories shift your perceptions of the characters?

Writing for Agatha in We’re Not in Genovia Anymore really made realize how much some of her (canon) story resounded with me, and I liked the deeper character study I ended up doing for her. I’m still always going to be the most in love with Baz, but I have a deeper connection to Agatha now too.

Most overdue story?

It’s still overdue. I have so many WIPs, at least seven of which are soulmate AUs, and I just keep starting more. In terms of actual planned release date though? I started writing a The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue AU for NaNoWriMo, with the intention of publishing it in January. It’s already the longest fic I’ve ever written, and I don’t think I’m even a quarter of the way done with it. I wasn’t happy writing for NaNo, because I don’t do well with creativity on a deadline, and I chose to pause work on that fic so I can actually enjoy writing it and end up with something I like once I finally return to it. Apologies to those who are anxiously awaiting the fic, I do hope to finish it this year, and I won’t post until it’s all done, so you’ll get a very rapid update schedule when it does come out!

Did you take any writing risks this year? What did you learn from them?

I signed up for my first fandom event! I participated in the Secret Snowflake event, and wrote Down By The Sea for the wonderful @fight-surrender (and ended up with ideas for some other new fics too)! Even though I was actively failing NaNoWriMo when I signed up, I did manage to complete my fic on time, and I learned that it wasn’t quite as daunting as I was expecting it to be. (My biggest problem was my laptop breaking and having to do almost everything on my phone - I also learned once again just how amazing Liz is, as she helped me format and post to ao3, since I couldn’t do that properly without a computer)

I struggle with being creative on a deadline, but wanting to write a little over 1k in a month was much more achievable than feeling stressed about writing 50k in a month!

This year’s theme and the story that demonstrates it most:

I like the idea of the inevitability of love. I adore soulmate AUs, because I love the idea of a universe where not only does someone have a perfectly matched other person, but that there is a surefire way to find them. Even though I only published one soulmate AU this year, I feel like every time I write Snowbaz I am writing about a couple where love will, inevitably, win. In my mind they are always going to have a happy ending somewhere down the line where they are just purely in love. Even though love doesn’t magically fix everything, it’s still incredibly powerful, and I only want to create stories where Simon and Baz truly love each other.

Of course, with that as the theme, A Privilege to Love You has to be the fic that best demonstrates the idea of inevitable love - it’s a soulmate AU and a universe where Simon exercises his free will.

What are your fic writing goals for next year this year?

Finish and publish my Gentleman’s Guide AU

Finish and publish more soulmate AUs (I have so many WIPs you guys)

Plan more before writing

Work on improving dynamic scenes and the overall flow of my fics - I sometimes feel like I have too many lulls, and I want to write in a more engaging way

Promote my own work more! I am partially doing this post because there are multiple fics that I never shared on here! I plan to make banners for all of the fics I write this year, and to post them on tumblr at the same time I upload them to ao3.

The last few years have been a time of tremendous personal growth for me, and I really feel like I’m starting to understand who I am as a person, settle into myself, and like who I am. I’m thrilled to discover that fandom is still part of who I am and what I enjoy, and that I have more creative outlets in my life now than I ever expected to. My biggest goal is just to keep building on all of that, to use fic to explore who I am, to reflect what I like, make myself happy with my writing, and to hopefully make at least a few of you happy with my stories too!