#saving the damsel

[curlysgirl0202]

Writing a Damsel in Distress:

We all know this theme began before any other, and we also know this theme exists in every generation; the idea that a beautiful woman would call a man's name when his nemesis tries to mess with his girl. So a few things to consider about writing a damsel in distress:

* Our damsel should possess the ability to fight off enemies for the most part. So, if we're writing about a damsel, we must arm our character with certain skills that demonstrate an ability to hold ones own.

* Damsels don't need to be delicate. A damsel simply means that a woman needs assistance. However, just because she requires her hero to untie her, that doesn't equate that she cannot hold her own. She's just used to men behaving like men.

* Our damsel can become the hero. Sometimes our hero becomes the target of the antagonist and if this occurs upon her release, a truly grateful damsel would push back against the enemy.

* Remember that our male character desperately wants to save you so he can show you his soft and kind side and in addition, that our hero is patient.

* Damsels in distress are just so damn sexy! Women who fall victim to a known villain seem to have a certain vulnerability about them that comes across as sweet and endearing. So when they're kidnapped by the villain, of course our hero feels the need to come to her rescue. And why not? Our damsel will shower her hero with gratitude.

* A damsel in distress doesn't equate to a wimp! We all need assistance some time, right? Our damsel character can be the target of a kidnapping, but she can still hold her own! She may still require her male counterpart's intervention and so what? Look at what she's been through!

*Men love the damsel in distress. She's appreciative and responsive and allows the main protagonist to rescue her.

*Some memorable damsels:

**Remember when Perseus rescued Andromeda? She was a strong and capable woman, but was overwhelmed by a vengeful goddess. Andromeda couldn't defend herself against an angry goddess and a giant sea monster so she needed her hero, Perseus. To find a way to destroy the beast that includes killing Medusa would prove challenging to anyone. And Perseus had a group of several strong men to aid him. That doesn't mean Andromeda was a helpless victim.

**If you watched Pirates of the Caribbean On Stranger Tides, you'll recall how Syrena was abducted by Blue Beard. As a mermaid, her tears were powerful and could transform old into new. Syrena certainly could defend herself. She was surrounded by pirates who wanted to torture her so she would cry tears for them. When she's tied to a tree and left to drown, Philip comes to her rescue. She returns his devotion by saving him and even cries tears of joy just for him! Syrena didn't expect Philip to save her and didn't have a sense of entitlement about the matter. Sure, she was a damsel in distress, but still showed she was strong and brave.

**Ann Darrow from King Kong. One of the original damsels in distress. But she also could survive on her own and participate in the adventure of it all. Before being sacrificed to the overgrown ape, she sang and danced and entertained. She wasn't a delicate lady whining about needing a man. When she was tied to the altar, she was truly helpless and in need of rescue.

***It's ok to have a character who exhibits the signs of requiring rescue. A damsel in distress doesn't have to equate to an inept girl. We need more stories like this. Daring rescues of women who are already strong makes for a great story. Chivalrous men and women who appreciate the masculinity of their hero.

[sunderwight]

Thinking about a crack SV AU where Shen Yuan transmigrates into a horse.

Luckily he is not a normal horse, no! He is a spiritual stallion, a character that was mainly a joke about the novel's genre in PIDW, originally bred on Cang Qiong's beast tamer peak but not actually encountered until Luo Binghe's "raze cultivation society to the ground" phase. At which point there was a subplot about him finding the stallion and letting it loose to run free, as like, an allegorical reference. Occasionally Binghe would find other horses across the years that were obviously descended from that one, as more jokes, until Airplane forgot about the reference and never brought it up again.

Shen Yuan, of course, was always Big Mad that Binghe never got to actually ride this super magical mystical horse, and never got the horsegirl arc he deserved! Where is the man's companion animal? How can someone with nine billion wives and even more nameless underlings be fated for a life of perpetual loneliness??

Naturally, the first thing Shen Yuan does upon figuring out that he's this magic horse is break out of the beast peak and make for Qing Jing. He's not necessarily planning to go bond with the protagonist or anything, but he's not particularly keen to live out his fate as some feral horse that fucks other horses either, and he's extremely valuable so it's unlikely anyone will kill him even if they catch him again. So, might as well take the opportunity to clap eyes on his favorite character before he's doomed to a life of eating hay and whatever, right?

Horse SY manages to arrive on Qing Jing Peak right before the start of the skinner mission, though, just as Ming Fan is telling Luo Binghe that there aren't enough horses. Ning Yingying points out SY and is all oh look, one of the stable hands must have realized the error and brought another, and everyone else is kind of like "uh that is... not a normal horse...?" but then Shen Qingqiu gets impatient and snaps at them to get a move on, and fear of their mercurial shizun overrides everything else to the point where Binghe just clambers desperately onto this mystical saddle-free horse.

Airplane borrowed kelpies for his demon beasts at some point and they are pretty common, so it occurs to Luo Binghe only after he's climbed onto the strange and definitely not normal Horse SY that he might be on the verge of getting carried off and drowned. But SY just kind of rolls with it, and falls into line with the other horses.

Hey, it's an excuse to leave the sect! And practice doing horse stuff! And also, he's not going to buck Luo Binghe off of his back!

Of course as it happens, the specific kind of magical horse that Shen Yuan is comes with a specially bred-for trait where they only bond to one rider. They're usually bred for like, kings and emperors and other highly important figures as status symbols, like magical companion animals but ones with perfectly mundane utilities. He's also got Shadowfax-like stamina and speed, meaning that Airplane can treat this kind of horse as interchangeable with a motorbike, and of course the capacity to cultivate. Which means that when the party finally arrives at their destination, everyone suddenly realizes that Luo Binghe has unwittingly bonded with a horse that's worth a fortune and won't ever let anyone else ride it now.

Shen Qingqiu flips his shit, Shen Yuan bites Shen Qingqiu, Luo Binghe hyperventilates, Ning Yingying gets kidnapped, and the situation basically resolves with Shen Yuan kicking the shit out of the skinner demon in defense of his new BFF the baby protagonist.

Well if he's going to end up letting anyone ride him for the rest of his life, Luo Binghe would be his first choice.

Anyway they get back and Shen Qingqiu is still spitting mad and offers Luo Binghe's head on a platter to the lord of the beast peak, but Beast Peak's people are actually kind of pleased. Like sure it's a little inconvenient, because Luo Binghe is a Qing Jing disciple and not one of theirs, but they were honestly beginning to worry that this stallion wouldn't bond with anyone! It's really hard to manage them when they don't! And SY in particular comes from a long and illustrious lineage that has nearly died out a few times, so they were never planning to sell him off even for a high price anyway. With a rider chosen, the odds of them getting him to cooperate for breeding purposes are a lot higher, plus it will be much easier to take care of him now! Though they will be taking Shen Qingqiu up on his offer of Luo Binghe's time, since "punishment" for this transgression will involve splitting his time between the peaks in order to help take care of SY (all the beast peak disciples are super relieved, apparently before Shen Yuan transmigrated, the horsey original goods was extremely prone to biting and kicking...)

Shen Qingqiu basically tells Luo Binghe not to bother coming back, which fills Binghe with despair, but he gets over it eventually. The beast peak is nice! They give him a cultivation manual as well, in order to help him understand what they do, and it seems that Binghe can understand it a lot better than his QJP one. The peak lord gives him permission to use the dorms as well, since there will probably be times when he has to stay overnight, and no one says much about it when Binghe basically moves in full time. On the books he's still a Qing Jing disciple, but functionally he's a transfer student now. He even sits in on classes and lectures, and a lot of the peak are just under the impression that he was transferred over to their peak in full.

Shen Yuan considers this a big improvement, and expects Luo Binghe to enjoy running around with all the pretty girls on the peak. But Binghe mostly seems to spend his time with him, in fact, asking questions upon questions not only about Shen Yuan's breed, but about his specific background and lineage. The beast peak is overall pretty nice, although sadly it's not full of cool monsters and companion animals as Shen Yuan would have hoped. Mostly the peak specializes in the cultivation world's equivalent of livestock and work animals, training beasts like spirit eagles and horses like himself, and raising animals prized for their meat, organs, bones, or other parts for medicinal, alchemical, or culinary ingredients, or sometimes components for weapons or other spiritual tools. They work the most closely with Qian Cao, Wan Jian, and An Ding.

Being a horse is honestly kind of boring for Shen Yuan, although running is fun, and he at least gets plenty of time to work on his cultivation.

By the time Sha Hualing's invasion happens, he's gotten pretty comfortable in his new state of affairs. Binghe has even figured out that he likes being read to, and has started reading aloud to him from various texts in the evenings! So far no good novels, or even bad trashy novels, but it's better than nothing!

Binghe also takes him for a lot of rides around the peaks (not Qing Jing) which is how they end up caught on Qiong Ding when the rainbow bridge goes down. When Shen Qingqiu tells Luo Binghe to fight, Binghe doesn't even have a weapon at hand.

Actually, he doesn't have a sword at hand.

Turns out having your magical horse kick a demon to death is still pretty effective!

Shen Yuan even manages to avoid getting poisoned too. Rather, Elder Hammer threatens to poison him and Luo Binghe charges at him shouting "stay away from my horse! I'll kill you!" and etc, and does get nicked by the thorns, but only Binghe and Shen Yuan notice and of course the poison doesn't work on Binghe, congrats for unlocking a new hint as to Luo Binghe's mysterious origins!

Yes, Horse SY shows up to help Binghe in the Dream Demon event. He still looks like a horse for it, but it also marks the first time he's able to speak to Luo Binghe, which successfully distracts Luo Binghe from a lot of the tormenting visions of his past because talking magic horse friend has a way of doing that.

So the Dream Demon is like, that's not a normal horse, and Luo Binghe is all "stay away from my horse! I'll kill you!" and Shen Yuan gets knocked out of the dream as usual. Wakes up to Luo Binghe rushing to his stall to check on him and prepare him some nice warm congee and double-check that he can't talk for reals (only in dreams for now, alas).

Anyway Luo Binghe has no reason to hide his demonic cultivation practice from his horse, so Shen Yuan gets to sit in on it as Binghe tries to put Meng Mo's teachings into practice, which he finds super cool. Binghe's normal cultivation also progresses quite a bit, but he's still very much disadvantaged there because the beat peak is only giving him like, half-assed guest disciple status lessons, no personal one-and-one tutelage, and he's unofficially banned from Qing Jing and wouldn't get any help there anyway (apart from Ning Yingying). The beast peak lord isn't really his shizun and Shen Qingqiu isn't going to take Binghe to do things like claim a sword from Wan Jian, either.

Luckily, Binghe can now confer with his horse in his dreams! Shen Yuan has such helpful ideas as compelling various hall masters and combat teachers to dream about their lessons, so that Binghe can insert himself into the form of their students and supplement his tutelage with nighttime training from all around the sect. And also stealing some blank documents from An Ding and forging paperwork to turn over to Wan Jian to make it look like Binghe has permission to claim a spiritual sword without Shen Qingqiu's approval.

What a way to pass the time before the Immortal Alliance Conference!

Horse Shen Yuan would like very much to just carry Luo Binghe away in the opposite direction, thank you, but he does have a system and it is still holding a metaphorical gun to his head about this. Still, there's no force in the world that could keep Shen Yuan in his stable when shit starts to go down, or that could stop him from kicking the snot out of Shen Qingqiu when he tries to throw Binghe into the Abyss. (Binghe's thoughts on the fight: "stay away from my horse! I'll kill you!")

However, Binghe does still get thrown down, and Horse SY runs off whilst weeping crystalline tears of dismay as his mane whips in the wind, imagining a future where a blackened Luo Binghe returns for his revenge arc and symbolically sends his beloved horsie companion away forever to go frolic or some shit, which Shen Yuan is not interested in!

But what can he do? By the time Binghe gets out of the Abyss, his need for a horse will be decidedly minimal. It already went down a bunch when he finally got Zheng Yang (that Binghe somehow almost never flew anywhere on, surely for reasons unrelated to his bond with SY), and with Xin Mo and all his OP talents, even if he did keep Shen Yuan, wouldn't he become as much of a useless background character as countless auxiliary wives in his harem?

No! He won't stand for it! There has to be a way for him to convince even blackened Binghe that Shen Yuan is still the best ride in town!

Luckily, Shen Yuan knows where there are some power-ups that might be able to help him. While he won't touch anything that would be vital for the protagonist, he's more flexible on screwing over random future harem members or side characters, especially when it wouldn't even really harm them all that much. So while Binghe is going through his gauntlet of horrors in the Abyss, Shen Yuan embarks on his own level-up quest to dramatically increase his cultivation, and become more capable of keeping up with Binghe.

When this leads to Shen Yuan being able to take on a human form, he gets really excited, but that's mostly for personal comfort reasons. He can finally hold books again! And talk to people! Who cares if he looks like someone's ponysona gijinka, he can walk over to a stall and order meat buns!

Unicorn form is next, and it's... meh? Mostly it's a boost in his cultivation. The horn looks fun but doesn't really do much.

When he upgrades to being able to take on a pegasus form, now that's really cool. He can fly now! Not only is it crazy good fun, but it also increases his mobility exponentially. Surely riding a flying horse would be more comfortable than balancing on a sword, too?

But that's not enough for his actual goal, he needs to keep going until he finally finds the right bullshit mythical item that will do what he hopes:

Turn him into a dragon!

Unfortunately said bullshit item is in the demon realms, which are a fairly difficult place to navigate as either a horse or a human. Beefing up for the trip takes Shen Yuan just about two years, and requires all of his other upgrades. But he does it, he gets to the demon realms, eats the creatively named Dragon Fruit Plant, and... gets... stuck???

In his new dragon form???

WTF this didn't happen to the random ox that Luo Binghe fed the fruit to in order to create a suitable beast of burden to impress the husband of Wife No.666! Although, thinking about it, maybe it did because it wasn't like the ox ever turned back into an ox afterwards. But Shen Yuan just figured that was because it was a simple beast of burden and saw becoming a dragon as an overall upgrade, why go back? He honestly hadn't really thought about it!

Cue Luo Binghe getting out of the Abyss only to shortly find that a random dragon is following him around. Maybe that just happens here? It doesn't attack him, at least, and he has no time to deal with it (or to sleep) because his first order of business is establishing enough of a foothold in the demon realms to regain access to the human ones, and find out what happened to his horse. And then kill Shen Qingqiu. In that order.

[ruubesz-draws]

Legend of Link looks nice

From:

[dobythealpaca]

thinking a lot about tf2 but eviler and gayer and made these two,,,

only a few sketches as of rn but there WILL be more cuz i am ill and its become its whole own thing now

[ruporas]

kiss the pain away

[itsonlypolite]

What is your favorite vessel/princess?

It's so hard to choose, I love them all!! But when I first read this, two vessels popped in my head right away because they feel like they're straight out of my nightmares: The (Deconstructed) Damsel and the Drowned Grey

The metaphors! The visuals!! The horrifying tragedy of it all!!! <333

[emblazons]

"that's what heroes do. they save people."

Cloud Strife & Tifa Lockheart in Final Fantasy VII (Remake)

[shorthaltsjester]

tlovm percy’s “so what if i am” when cassandra calls him smitten 🤝 c2 fjord’s “what? i’m mad for her” after kissing jester in front of a shocked veth

[fairsweetlonging]

even though shen yuan disdains wife plots, i feel it's because they're often so contrived and the wives are always damsels in distress, and when the system puts him in one it's against his will and he has no control over it, BUT, i think if he makes the choice to put himself in one on purpose and with a plan, he would excel at it, he would play into it so hard to get what he wants, he'd see it as his opportunity to cheat the system (pun intended!) and farm easy points

[softer-ua]

Izuku 🤝 Ochako

Thinking their creepy af, crazy af, blood thirsty blonde counterpart is the cutest things in the whole world

[avengerdaisy]

Emma Swan and Killian Jones in OUAT, 3x22 There's No Place Like Home

[shrimparts-blog888]

She s so so hard to draw y'all and i don't even know if i got the colours right 🥲

And don't get me started on apple white cuz i just had a small mental breakdown we'll see how it goes ✌🏻✌🏻✌🏻

[bi-writes]

STFU about how people write their readers. damsels in distresses, hardasses, fighters, lovers, scaredy-cats—if you don’t like it, write it yourself, i’m sick of people getting angry about how a writer purposefully writes something.

[originalartblog]

(*actual results pending)

I know we want them to save each other but how funny would it be if the prison break ends with both of them face down on the floor

also what's up with the fact that Dazai is currently in front of the water quality control department

[cumforts69]

I just realised that the true damsel in distress has actually been Mu Qingfang all along. He got kidnapped multiple times by BOTH Bingmei and Bingge, in their respective universes

[dubiousdisco]

It's cute that when you finish story mode with kenshi you get

The cages did not forget 🕶👍