#the sequel is so bad but i can't be bitter about it

[an0nymousmessenger]

For I'll Keep Every Promise

Synopsis: He wakes up. Word Count: 2.4k tags. fluff, angst, happy ending Sequel to 'A Thousand Wishes Unheard' note: I was going to post this later but I think you guys need it. Ao3 Link

Darkness. That was all he could see. He felt nothing– as if he was floating in a neverending void.

He was dead.

He had to be. He remembers the bitter taste of blood coating his mouth– the way he struggled and choked on the very thing that ran through his skin. He recalls the loud ringing in his ear, growing ever louder as his vision faded out.

Well, he supposed he tried his best. Really. He gave it his all.

It just wasn’t enough.

What remained of his heart ached. He supposed he wasn’t able to fulfill his promise to you. He hopes you won’t blame him…he had held on till the very end.

Death wasn’t so bad. Before he went he was able to see his students, laughing and smiling, he even got to hold you close before he had left. Not to mention he even saw his friends again, and he had gotten to say goodbye. 

He had no regrets.

Well…he supposes there is still one that lodges itself in the back of his mind.

It was you.

He had never gotten the chance to…

“Satoru,”

He turned his head to look at you, who was savoring your lollipop as you leaned back on the balcony.

Lemon flavored. The very sour kind.

He had a snide suspicion that it was to keep him away from stealing it…

“Satoruu~” you repeated, drawing his attention again.

“Hm?”

You flash him a smile, the kind of smile that lets him know that you are about to either stir up trouble or say something random.

It was the latter.

“What do you want to do when you're older?”

He snorts, “What kind of question is that? Of course– a sorcerer.” He wanted to add ‘what else?’ but decided it was obvious enough. Adding the last part would also ruin his good mood. His path has already been pre-designed and pre-routed for him. He has no other choice.

“No, what I mean is if all this didn’t exist.”

“Aw~ are you saying you would rather not have met me?” He sings out in a fake-pained voice, knowing that it was not what you meant.

You roll your eyes, having been used to his antics for a few years now, “Perhaps,” you say with a playful smile, “Who knows? Maybe I’ll be better off.”

“Nah, I doubt it.”

You sigh before turning to face him. You widen your eyes when you notice he is already looking at you, but quickly move on, but Satoru doesn’t let the red creeping up on the tip of your ears go unnoticed. “I’m saying if you didn’t have cursed energy and stuff…like normal people, you know?”

He wanted to laugh and point out that it sounded like you were indicating that people like you and him were the odd ones, but he decided to let it slide.

“I dunno, maybe I’ll start a singing career, something like that.”

“Pfft, so what? That you’ll get even more admirers and fans?”

“Exactly! What? Don’t you agree? My face is pleasant to look at.”

Scoffing, you say, “One of these days I’ll make sure to crush that ego of yours.”

He rolls his eyes before looking back out at the school grounds, watching the sun slowly set behind the forest of trees. Although he had said the first thing that came from the top of his mind, he supposed singing wouldn’t be that far reached. 

After all, he excelled at everything. 

"How about you?" he asks. "Do you have something in mind already?" 

Observing the setting sun, you reply, "Mhm, yeah. Something like that." 

"Really?" He sounds surprised, not realizing how seriously you were considering it. "What is it?" 

Hesitating, you eventually respond, "It's... nothing." 

His interest is immediately piqued. 

"Come on! What's your idea? Share it with me!" He playfully pesters you with a grin. 

"No!" 

"You can't tease me like that! I told you mine, didn't I?" He whines a bit more before eventually coaxing it out of you.

It was when he saw you sigh, watching as the tension left your shoulders that he knew he won.

“Fine, I’ll tell you then. But you can’t tell anyone else– okay?”

He makes a gesture of zipping his mouth and throwing the zipper away, his curiosity increasing. It always does when it comes to you.

“I want to be…” you wait a bit, as if for dramatic effect, “...an author.”

You turn to look at him after a moment’s silence before breaking out in laughter.

“Haha- what’s up with your face? Surprised?”

Indeed he was a bit surprised. An author? He had no clue. When it comes to you it seemed as if he's only ever scratched the surface. It made him want to know more, want to ask more.

He never does.

"An author," he echoes thoughtfully.

"Yeah."

He wanted to ask why, but you had already started talking.

“An author. I guess it’s because I want to write stories, I grew up reading them you know? Made me feel safe.”

A hint of melancholy graces your smile as your thoughts drift elsewhere; it's a different kind of smile than the one before–a sadder smile.

"Who knows? I'm sure being a sorcerer has provided ample material for incredible stories. I'll be entirely unique. Maybe I'll even include tales about overcoming curses and how people like us save the day."

"Why not add in a ridiculously handsome guy who defeats all the curses with seamless ease too? Make sure 'remarkably attractive' is emphasized."

Laughing, you playfully smack his arm. "Okay, Satoru. I'll consider it."

He couldn’t help but break out into an amused smile. What an odd dream, he thought. Though he supposed he wasn’t against it.

Satoru Gojo excelled at everything, yet nothing he achieved seemed to measure up to you.

He felt his mind start to drift and fade away, threatening to join the other souls in their lost journey home. Wait…he called out. He didn’t want to go just yet. He wanted more time, more time to replay his memories, to live in them just for a second longer.

“Satoru,”

He could hear your voice, calling him in that familiar and recognizable way that was only special to you.

“Satoru.”

He wished he could’ve told you how much he loved hearing you say his name, it rolls off your tongue so nicely. He was never one to care about names, it never mattered to someone like him. 

All he needed was Gojo – a name denoting his status, lineage, and power. His first name barely held any weight compared to his clan's. No one needed to know who Satoru was, no one ever did…so he couldn’t have cared less for his name- and yet you somehow made him love his name– only when you say it does it sound special– like it’s his name like he is someone.

Someone other than the honored one. Someone other than the strongest.

“Satoru!”

There were a lot of things he never got to tell you, another thing to add to his regrets. If only he had been brave enough…if only he had picked up his courage and told you everything.

“Satoru- please!”

He paused. Ah- what is that feeling? He could feel something wet fall onto his face. Was it raining? How could that be? How could he feel if he was dead?

And yet that warmth around his face only made him more confused. He could feel as if someone was holding them, cupping his face carefully as if he could break.

"Please wake up… Satoru, I beg you…"

His eyes fluttered open, adjusting to the sudden brightness.

The first thing he saw when his vision came back into focus was your face. Your crying face looking down at him with your hands cupping his face.

Then he looked around, realizing that the battlefield on which he had been sliced in half was gone. He was in a room, a hospital room.

He looked down and saw the rest of his body, no longer split into two. Had Shoko done this?

“Satoru!”

He returned his gaze to you. You were smiling, smiling, and crying.

Questions, so many questions flooded through him at that moment, but he decided that he could ask those later. Right now was more important, right now felt like it was all happening inside a dream.

“Hey…crybaby, seems like you you missed me?” He teased with a small grin.

You gave him a look through your tear-soaked face as if you couldn’t even believe what he was saying.

“Y-You! You bastard! You annoying– infuriating- stupid dumbass!”

“Aw, come on…” he drags, “You don’t mean those…do you hm?” Although the tone in his voice is light– playful even as if he hadn’t just returned from death, as if all he wanted right now was to live this moment to the fullest, he was dearly wishing this– whatever this was– to last a little longer.

He slowly brings his trembling arm to hold onto yours, he wanted to hold on to you tight, as if everything he was seeing was about to break, to fall apart for him to realize it was all a dream.

He waited for you to disappear, to return to the part of his imagination that was playing tricks on him.

Instead, you move sideways to hug him, crying onto his shoulders.

"No...no, I don't," you managed through choked sobs.

He hummed softly, "I guess I kept my promise after all, huh?"

You nod into his shoulder, still holding him tightly.

You and him fall into a comfortable silence, he lets you cry on his shoulders just as how you let him hold onto you. 

Several minutes passed before you pulled away, sniffling and attempting to compose yourself while wiping away tears with your sleeve.

Satoru wanted to reach out and wipe them for you, but his newly healed injuries did not allow him to, moving his hand had already been hard.

It went on like that for a while; you sniffling and crying as Satoru stared at you quietly, taking everything about you in as if this was the last time he was going to see you, just the same way he did on that night underneath the torii gate, using his eyes to try to imprint every detail, everything, every aspect of you into his memory.

That night felt like a lifetime away.

He was the first to break the silence, “Where are the others?”

By now you had calmed down, and were able to answer in a coherent way, “Recovering…everyone is- they’re fine.”

Fine. Not good, but fine.

He’ll take it for now.

“We managed to win and…” you give him a look, “you know…the students declared their victory for you,” You say with a smile.

His students. They managed to do it, just as he thought they could. He sighed contently.

You then spend the next half hour going over exactly what had happened after he had passed out, how Kashimo had come out right after him, and how eventually the rest of the students joined in.

In the end, they had managed to pull through, but it wasn’t over. Sukuna had been dealt with, Megumi’s condition was unknown, and Kenjaku was nowhere to be found.

Shoko had indeed been the one to heal him. Immediately after the battle they were able to recover his body and managed to heal him back together just in time.

“We- we almost- I didn’t know if we made it in time or not…” You say, choking up again. He could see the tears you were desperately trying to hold back, to look brave in front of him, trying to break through.

“Hey, I’m right here, aren’t I?” He beckons you to come closer.

He eventually holds you in his arms, drawing slow circles on your back, as he knows it calms you, “Shhh, I’m right here, okay? I’m not going anywhere else.”

You mutter, “Better not,” which causes him to laugh.

He wanted to let this moment drag on forever, just you in his arms, just you and him.

“This…this is real– right?” He says quietly, and in such a small voice he doubted you had heard him.

You raise your head to look at him, the soft kind of smile he’s always known playing on your face, “Yes, Satoru. This is real, as real as it can be.”

He can feel himself start to tear up, because if he had to be honest- he was scared too, he was terrified, but he had no choice. He had to play his role, his role as the strongest.

But now he could just be Satoru, just him holding onto you, keeping you close. 

“Then I’m glad.”

Bonus:

“Gojo Sensei!” Yuji, the always energetic kid exclaimed as he ran into the room, followed by You, Maki, Yuta, Nobara, Panda, Inanumaki, Shoko, and everyone else.

They all had recovered for the most part and seemed to be relatively okay. They all wore relieved expressions as they entered the room to see that their Sensei was alright.

Yuji was the first to arrive at his Sensei’s bedside.

“Hey, kid!” Gojo Sensei waved. He had recovered enough to prop himself up and do basic movements, which to Shoko had been a miracle itself.

Yuji then began launching himself into the things that had happened while Gojo had been recovering, and Gojo returned the energy. Everyone got their turn, talking until visiting times were over and they had to be ushered out.

You were the last to leave. Just before you turned the doorknob Satoru called after you, “Hey- wait.”

You turn around, waiting for what he wants to say.

“When- uh when this is all over and when you have some free time, let me take you out, yeah?”

You barely ever heard Satoru Gojo stumble over his words, and when he did you know it was because he was nervous, and everyone knows Satoru Gojo is never nervous, yet that always seemed to be the exception when it comes to you.

You found it cute, the way he would try to seem aloof as the back of his neck became a beautiful shade of bright red.

“Yeah, but let’s save that for when you recover.”

“Don’t worry! I’ll be up and ready by next week,” he says as if it were a fact, his blue eyes seemed to shine even brighter.

You sigh, even after coming back on the brink of death he still acts like a child, but you smile nonetheless, “Next week it is then.”

[stesierra]

Writeblr ReIntro!

I'm posting a new intro because now that I've been on Writeblr a little while, I realize how much information I left out! Hi, I'm Stephanie, I live in the desert with my husband and baby and three cats, and I'm an ace, bipolar fantasy writer! When I was a kid, they said I had ADHD but then I got my Masters degree in biology, so they claim I can't have it. Online tests say I'm probably autistic.

I used to write sci fi twelve years ago but only low tech sci fi about weird aliens, which nobody likes. Now I write fantasy novels! Lots of fantasy novels! I am beginning to post them on my website so if you want to read them, please keep an eye on this post.

My books often but not always have some romance (either m/f or f/f because I prefer female protagonists.) Since I'm ace (and demiromantic), my interpretation of romance and attraction is not exactly what you'd expect from, say, a romance novel.

I am not going to tell you about all my books! I've written eighteen! Four of them are shelved forever! Here's some recent ones (written or revised since 2018) that I haven't given up on. Please ask me questions about them! I LOVE talking about my books! Also, if you want to be added to my taglist for writing samples let me know! Please also tell me if you're interested in alpha or beta reading and for which book! Mutuals only, please!

My books are beneath the cut! As I add WIP intros, I'll update this list with links.

Cast Out

YA fantasy! On her sixteenth birthday, Zisha is cast out of the Plenary Cities for the crime of being born deaf, like her grandmother before her. In the wastelands, she meets Thesil, a depressed and bitter young woman. Zisha wants nothing to do with her — until she sees Thesil's face in a vision. But before she can find out what the visions mean or reach her grandmother's holdings in the wastes, the plague returns to the Plenary Cities. If the disabled really caused the plague thirty years ago, and were cast out to stop the spread, how can it be back when all of them are outcast?

Status: Finished. Being serialized.

WIP intro here.

Now being serialized here. First five chapters up, one posted weekly.

The Bone Queen

This is my NA fantasy about the aftermath of freeing an undead queen and her skeleton army. They take over the kingdom, of course! The main character, Elise, is trapped in Bandrum palace by Aubrey, the ghost who tricked her into falling in love and freeing him (plus everyone else.) He's an animated skeleton now with plans to marry Elise and force her to carry his children. The bone queen has promised him she'll make it happen. Too bad no one cares what Elise wants. If only she had magic of her own...

Status: undergoing a rewrite after developmental edit. Was 109k before revisions. Not available for beta reading.

Draft number? Hahahaha. It has two complete sequels (The Spellbound King (106k) and The Matriarch's Daughter (96k)) I must also rewrite. This series is going to kill me but I love it. My mom, who loves everything I write, complained that it was weird. I'm very proud.

WIP intro here.

First chapter here.

School of Souls

This is my YA contemporary fantasy about a boarding school in the Bighorn Mountains! It's supposed to be a place parents can send "bad" teens to have their problems sorted out, but secretly the founder is using it to train the kids as sorcerers. Even more secretly, the school devours the souls of the students sent there, and the teenagers who graduate aren't the same as the ones who arrived... Warning: does include teenage addiction to sleeping pills and ghosts and and parental death. It's going to have sequels but I haven't written them yet.

Status: Complete first draft. 83k. Available for alpha reading.

WIP intro here.

First chapter here.

The Many-faced Princess

This is YA fantasy with a historical vibe but set in a made up world. Vaguely inspired by ancient Phoenicia. It's about Princess Ameryi, who was blessed by the genderless trickster god, Akihel, to be able to change her face. If her father the king ever found out, he'd have to execute her, of course. Akihel is just plain evil. All the other gods say so. A daughter who's their champion? Impossible. An abomination. So Ameryi will just have to make sure her father never finds out. That was easier to do before the Asirtinsa Empire threatened to invade and her father sent her to secure an alliance with a neighboring king. She's supposed to marry him. Not steal his face and frame him for murder. But sometimes plans just don't work out.

This book was supposed to be about two lesbian princesses who frame the king for murder so they can elope, but both princesses decided to be ace and there was nothing I could do.

Status: Complete first draft. 83k. It's going to have sequels but I haven't written them yet. Available for alpha reading.

First chapter here.

Map here.

Court Phoenix

This is my NA fantasy! Kerra is a blacksmith's apprentice. Not because she wants the job, but because her mother sold her future to him when she was still a toddler who crawled into live fires and giggled as the flames consumed her clothes. Now she's a woman, trapped by the expectations of her family and her village. Until one day, a phoenix crash-lands and dies in her arms. When it's reborn, it chooses Kerra as its keeper. Soon, her dreary future is swept away. A princess from Skyfire, the moving city, offers her a job in the royal court. How could Kerra refuse? Her family's claims that she'll die if she ever leaves the village are just manipulative lies. Aren't they?

Status: Complete third draft. 104k. Available for beta reading.

First chapter here.

The Revenant Trilogy

Adult fantasy. Solving a murder should bring good fortune, but all it brings Mindral Thideet is disaster. Her fame and peaceful life as head researcher at the city of knowledge end abruptly. In retaliation for her investigation into his crimes, Payar Cheref, the head of the powerful Cheref family, burns her beloved cousins alive and scars her face. The scar marks her as a revenant, a body possessed by a godkin, one of the gods' evil children. Her life as a researcher is over. All that's left is revenge.

No one believes her when she denies that godkins have any power over her. But godkins, real ones, are far closer than she realizes. Tearing down Payar Cheref could destroy Mindral, her family, and the nation itself.

-The Halfway Revenant (rewriting draft 4) 120k. Not available for beta reading.

-The Soul-Seer (draft 2) - 130k

-The Godkin's Gambit (draft 2) 121k

First chapter here.

As Immortality Fades

Adult fantasy. Five hundred years ago, one of the immortal and unpredictable Valteifur visited the kingdom of Kathild and granted the young queen Nelone immortality. But there was a catch. She'd live forever, youthful and strong, just so long as her subjects were happy. For centuries, she's met her part of the deal. But when the Valteifur returns to check on her progress, he grants her a new gift: the resurrection of every single person in Kathild who's died in the last two hundred years. Then he disappears.

There aren't enough houses for them all. There's not enough food. And winter is here.

Status: Complete first draft. 98k. Available for alpha reading.

Bi MC, enemies to lovers.

First chapter here.

Stitches and Memories

This one's adult fantasy. Antea's father ripped her mind apart, left her for dead, and vanished twelve years ago, and she's going to find out why. But when constables try to kill her and strange truth magic grows inside of her, hunting her father starts to look like suicide. Too bad going home isn't an option.

Status: I exchanged this with a critique partner and now it embarrasses me. Fourth draft. 122k. Available for beta reading.

Trigger warning: magic seizures

First chapter here.

WIP intro here.

Triangle Park

Contemporary Fantasy. I have no idea who it's for. An elf exiled to the middle of nowhere ends up stuck with an unexpected child. It's about reluctant parenting and protecting the needy. And elves and faeries slumming it in a mobile home.

Status: Complete first draft. 86k. Available for alpha reading.

First chapter here.

Mud-Child

Adult fantasy. Rebeka has always heard that a woman who goes through menopause loses her spark (the magic that lets her create children). If she's had children, it just makes the neighbors a little more fertile. But Rebeka never wanted a man, and she never wanted to raise a child. Not since her twin sister died and her beloved Suza left her for a man. The problem is, the spark leaves a childless woman differently, everyone says. A bitter hag? She'll curse her neighbors. A sweet dim biddie? She'll give her spark to inanimate objects and create a monster. Rebeka doesn't know which she is, but she believes it's a myth.

That was before the clay in her clay pit woke up and called her mother.

Status: Third draft. 109k. Needs a rewrite! Not available for beta reading.

First chapter here.

WIP intro here.

I GUESS I'M WRITING A NEW BOOK

The Giant's Gamble

First chapter here.

I started writing this on Friday the 13th, 2023. LET'S SEE HOW LONG IT TAKES TO WRITE WITH A BABY.

Short stories

The Unfamous Dead

VERY OLD CRAP

The Scribe and the Sphinx

Adult historical fantasy

Status: second draft. Shelved for good. 85k.

The Adrift series

The River's Drift. 100k.

The Waking Mountain. 106k.

Low-tech alien sci fi. Shelved for good.

My first book whose name I forget. About 50k. Exists only as a hard copy in my parents' house.

Taglist so far (tell me if you want to be added or removed)

Tag list for everything

@harleyacoincidence

@anonymousfoz

@moremysteriesthantragedies

@elizababie

@sm-writes-chaos

@bellascarousel

@the-dragon-chronicler

@teacupsandstarlight

@vorskra

@wrenofthewords

@amostdelectablescribbler

@mysticstarlightduck

@phantommill

@gracewritesbooks

@aziz-reads

@owlsandwich

@symbioticsimplicity

@squarebracket-trick

@koala2all

@rmgrey-author

@atomatowriter

@cheerfulmelancholies

@delusionisaplace

@janec23

@writing-is-a-martial-art

@authortango

Just chapters and snippets

@da-na-hae

For The Many-faced Princess

@deadlyessencewhispers

@serenanymph

The Halfway Revenant

@acertainmoshke

For Stitches and Memories

@space-writes

@acertainmoshke

The Bone Queen

@janec23

@holdmyteaplease

@digital-chance

@thecrookedwriterspath

@tea-and-mercury

@coven-archives

I love you all!

[piglet26]

Reylo Scenes: TLJ

Rian Johnson gets loud vocal dislike for trying to make part 2 to JJ Adams film and his treatment of Luke Skywalker. Now I'm going to be honest..... Star Wars fans complain. That's part of the passion of it all. I guess. One area that he did succeed in was Reylo. He dealt with it with complete mastery. His invention of the forceskype or forcetime which allowed the protagonist and antagonist to actually talk was genius.

To add, I read the novelization which does expand on the story overall and it's great to read. There are comics as well. All which expand on the story.

Rian Johnson also is due a thank you for this moment.

We'll call this no-more-daddies-Ren. That face should not be covered up.

Romance has always been apart of Star Wars. Yet, in the sequel trilogy there was this hyper paranoia of anything feminine and so anyone who sensed a romance happening I guess was just an unhealthy fool.

From a pure storytelling stand point, the dynamic between the hero and the villain is genuinely interesting. The fact that they are Ying Yang, alike but different, bonded yet on opposing sides and they attracted to one another only adds to the drama. It's the richest dynamic of the sequel trilogy.

So to all the Reylo haters

In the first forcetime scene the rules of the forcetime get established. Rey can't hurt him physically (yet) and Ren can't jedi mind trick her.

The production team continued to show their balance yet opposition. When Rey wakes up the warm sunlight is on her face and her smooth cheek. In Ren's scene the light on his cheek is mechanical and the skin is scarred. Rey is surrounded by nature. Ren is surrounded by technology. They both have a childlike innocence to them. Something is happening to them that had never happened before. Something unique even amongst force users. Ren is curious. Rey is just pissed off.

Ren is a man who feels very let down/betrayed by everyone in his life so by the time we meet him in The Force Awakens he doesn't want or need anybody. Within his comic Ben Solo is described as someone that everyone, including his peers, watched for signs of darkness. He's a bitter, hurt and jaded young man.

Rey is the denial queen. She has a childlike way of thinking that is purely optimistic. She latches onto people very quickly Finn, Han Solo, Chewie, Leia, Luke on and on. She understand the stories of the resistance, Luke Skywalker and Darth Vader, but doesn't understand any of the complexities. She's a very 'this is the truth as I know it so it must be the truth' kind of person.

When we arrive at the second Forcetime.

Rey overlooking the ocean. Ren overlooking the first order. Ren begins hearing the ocean waves. Rey begins to hear the snap of electricity. Ren sensing her turns and Rey, sensing him, adjusts and there they are.

Rey, understand that she can't physically act out her anger against, verbalizes it. She's angry, but she wants the anger to be simple and it's not. He is tied to her in a way in some way.

What's interesting is Ren is very open to her in wondering why the force is connecting them. In the book Rey describes his eyes as hungry. Also, Ren wants to be understood by her. He uses this moment to reach her and get someone to understand a portion of how he became the man he is. The audience sees him approach her, get into her space, challenging her emotionally, physically and her ideas about him.

"ah, you do" if it's possible to verbally create a orgasm....Adam driver accomplished it for women. It doesn't hurt that these two seem to always be eye fucking each other. The intensity in which they lock onto each other and don't pay much around them any mind. The actors writers dream of.

The scenes serves a purpose though. Kylo is once again shift from simple bad guy to complicated bad guy/human being. She doesn't know everything. In the mix of all of this is her experience with Luke. She disillusioned and she's disappointed with Luke. Her experience is shifting her to understand Kylo's position more.

Which leads to their third forceskype aka shirtless Ben

Rey, girl, you're not asexual. It's the first where we see she does have a reaction to him physically. She opens herself to understanding. She wants to know if he had a good reason for killing his father. She also expresses her jealousy of him. He has a family, he had a father who loved him. She would give anything for that. Kylo is also expressing his pain and how relates to her. They both feel abandoned by their parents. Kylo wasn't abandoned in the way Rey was, but he feels abandoned. Kylo looks at Rey like 'hey you don't see the similarities between us?". You also being to understand Kylo Ren's need to embrace the dark side because everyone on the light side failed him.

Part of her journey in The Last Jedi is about embracing her womanhood. After the force bond with the shirtless Kylo Ren. She goes to the dark sided vagina cave. She jumps in and when she emerges her childhood hair buns are gone. Rey enters in this vision and looks for answers as to who/where her parents are. Nothing is revealed to her. She didn't find the answers she was looking for and the hope that she will find them goes out of her. In this moment she's desperately lonely. Here our hero spiritually seeks out through the force bond the one individual she feels will relate to her, our villain.

Why do people call this scene "The Finger Touch Love Scene"

Cause the level of intimacy these characters reach without many words and without being lewd. Rian Johnson, bravo!

The way Kylo Ren is just present, reassuring and nurturing as Rey relays her trip into the dark cave. This is a moment where he could stoke her negative emotions to the dark side. He doesn't though. He's completely emotionally present for her. Kylo Ren sits within his ship in a area that's lit with a soft blue light as he reaches towards her he's in the warm of the firelight. Now he is physically present for her.

Rey is completely raw. She's allowing herself to be seen emotionally naked. This is the first scene where she gives him something with free will. She gives him union.

She reaches out from underneath the blanket. He takes his glove off and they slowly, innocently, reach for each other. The eye contact they maintain as the force theme begins, we as the audience understand something profound is happening. Within them, in this moment, there is a balance in the force.

They both have a vision of one another. Ren sees her past. Rey sees a glimpse of his future. This is the moment for Reylo, they both said to themselves "we're never letting this go". Rian Johnson confirmed it's from this moment that Ren decides to kill Snoke because that's the only way to protect Rey from him. Rey shift her belief system to complete Team Ben. She doesn't have a plan when she goes to meet Ben within the First Order. She just has complete faith in him that when the moment matters he'll stand by her.

We arrive at the elevator scene and just prior when she arrive onboard the supreme in a coffin from the Falcon that has his calligraphy on it. It's their first interaction after that intense force bond.

She expresses her faith in him and the possibility of a future. This is the first scene where she walks up on him. She wants that closeness and connection now. He's closed off we come to understand later, he's become he's protecting his mind from Snoke understanding his true intentions. They both express what they saw in their vision and conviction that one will join the other. It's canon that in this moment Kylo Ren wanted to kiss Rey.

Snoke - It's not his story. Kylo Ren looked like a badass killing him. That's all we needed you for boo. However, I did enjoy the internal dialogue of Snoke that the novelization affords. Through the force Snoke can feel Kylo Ren's need for approval which is something that frustrates him. He can feel his conflicted nature for Rey and for the light. He can feel his pain and confusion when Snoke says he bridged their minds (he didn't). That was enlightening.

My favorite moment is right after Kylo kills Snoke and Rey and Kylo looks at each like

"You with me?"

"Yeah, I'm with you"

And they turn to face the pretorian guards. They are with each other, but they do have a misunderstanding on what that means.

The fight scene is great and beautiful. Kylo Ren is a supportive partner to her and she to him. Kylo support her body with his and he takes on the majority of the Pretorian guards. He has a moment when he checks in on her, she get's hurt, he's upset and scared but then centers himself. When he's in trouble she supports him. It's described in the novel that they can feel each other's emotions through the force.

(Couldn't find the gif of her getting cut)

[recreationalfanfics]

Hello!♡

First of all~ I love how you write!💕 You're absolutely talented.✨️ I'm also so in love with your yandere!Loki~ Could you maybe see yourself writing a sequel to this or any other yandere headcanons about Loki in general?

Have a lovely day!♡

OKAY, SO I DEF WANT TO WRITE A SEQUEL I JUST HAVEN'T HAD AN IDEA BUT I'D BE MORE THAN HAPPY TO WRITE ABOUT MY YANDERE LOKI! Just to let you know; I'm not gonna go in too heavy with the punishment stuff just bc I'm not good at writing that yet, lol.

Yandere! Loki Headcanons:

- At first, he's basically like regular Loki except for the fact he isn't afraid to let you know that he's highkey obsessed with you.

- In general, he is a bipolar Yandere.

- He loves you so tenderly and gets filled with these new sickly sweet thoughts of romance that didn't interest him before but now that YOU are in the picture, it makes his heart leap.

- Sometimes he hates you and gives you the cold shoulder, avoiding you and getting frustrated at the mere mention of your name because HOW DARE YOU MAKE HIM FEEL SO WEAK AND VULNERABLE!? THAT'S NOT FAIR. AND YOU HAVE THE A U D A C I T Y TO NOT BE AS OBSESSED WITH HIM AS HE IS WITH YOU? outrageous!

- Other times he's a mix of the two, where he just gives you the cold shoulder and expects you to approach him and when you leave him alone then he gets more annoyed because THAT'S NOT WHAT HE WANTED YOU TO DO.

- Then there are times where he's completely stoic faced and just...watches you. Even when you can't see him, you can feel his eyes burning into him. When you aren't around, he's still quiet and looks distant yet focused on something, nothing can catch his attention for too long and even Thor and Odin are off put by his behavior because, well, he's never like this.

- He'll only react to your name or voice, but if he sees you aren't there or you're talking to someone who isn't him then he gets bitter and goes into his more sour moods. If you are there or you are talking to him directly, then he'll be over the moon and float over to you right away!

- Touchy guy, honestly. It doesn't matter whether you're a God or Human, he doesn't see you as either, he only sees you as his. Something that belongs to him. So he won't, like, full on grope you but he will pull you into hugs, put his arms around your waist and his head on your shoulder, or playing with your hair no matter what length it is and other things like that.

- Sometimes he might touch you more intimately, such as putting a hand on your thigh, cupping your face in his hands, and overall just testing to see how far you'll allow him to go before you get upset and move away from him. Again, he mostly just thinks its funny to make you a little uncomfortable at times.

- You honestly don't know if its lust, love, or hatred that he feels for you and it genuinely gives you a headache just thinking about it.

- Easily possessive and jealous as a Yandere as well. For example, if you were ranting to him about Poseidon being a dick then he'll frown and grab your face and make you look at him and say: "You're talking about him too much, I don't like it." before letting you go, so you just awkwardly change the subject to something else that might keep his interest or maybe make him the topic and he's back to being his jovial and playful self.

- With that being said, if you have someone else you're romantically interested in, KEEP IT TO YOURSELF AS BEST AS YOU CAN. SHOVE THOSE FEELINGS DEEP INSIDE YOU AND LET THEM DIE. Because once Loki finds out, he's outraged.

- If they're human, he will kill them, Ragnarok be damned. If they're a God and they're more stronger than him, he knows he won't be able to kill them but he'll pester them and use his shape-shifting abilities to change into you and make sure they never want to be near you again. He doesn't feel bad when you cry, after all, YOU'RE the one who should apologize for hurting HIM.

- Loki himself also doesn't realize how deep his feelings for you go, he can't process them and it confuses him and frustrates him and excites him all the same.

- He originally thought you were just a passing obsession, that someday he'd get bored of you just like everything else and then leave you alone. But that day never came and it looks like it won't ever happen each day he wakes up and thinks of you as his very first thought.

- Your love, your hatred, your sadness, your happiness. He's a greedy God who wants all of it, all of you. Truly, if you have him obsessed with you, then you just have the worst luck in the universe.

[wrenhavenriver]

Okay I’m not done talking about this actually. Re: the Dishonored series’ attempts to reconcile its critical views of imperialism with keeping the characters who sit at the very top of the Empire likable, I think DH1 is considerably less obvious/glaring about this internal conflict than DH2 because: 1) it’s, duh, the first in the series, and suspension of disbelief comes a lot more naturally the first time you’re told “things will be better now, for real” than the second; and 2) Jessamine’s rule sees so little screentime it’s much easier to portray the miseries of the game as entirely attributable to Burrows’ rule (and the actions of other assorted Bad People™) without directly confronting the imperial system that put them all in a position to seize and promptly abuse power in the first place. Under a read more because I can't shut up, sorry.

Like, say you play DH1 for the first time on low chaos: you get the happy ending epilogue speech, and even if it seems to smooth everything over a little too optimistically for a game that otherwise shows a collapsing society and the corruption that brought it to that state in grim, unflinching detail, well, that’s mostly okay—you maintained low chaos, after all, in essence proving the Outsider’s “Perhaps that’s just the nature of man” theory wrong, and the good effects just rippled outward to a much a larger scale, which was pretty much the point of the chaos system in the first place. If it all sounds a little bit like the happy ending to a parable not particularly grounded in the realities of systems of power that the rest of the game was critiquing, maybe that’s just what happens when an entity as long-lived and far-sighted as the Outsider summarizes a period that is little more than a miniscule blip in time to him. Stand far enough back from something and all the rough edges blur out to nothing.

(Plus it’s a video game after all, so maybe you can suspend your disbelief/any personal political beliefs about real world empires you may have brought with you. Maybe it's nice to imagine that things can change meaningfully for the better for Dunwall and the other Isles simply by plopping a Kaldwin back onto the throne.)

The existence of DH2 makes it clear, though, that the ending monologue to DH1 really is more fairytale than reality (or, you know, what happens when a game gets greenlit for a sequel the devs of three years ago didn't know they'd get). A Kaldwin takes the throne—under the watchful eye and protection of her witchcraft-using Serkonan father, at that, a man with viscerally personal history with the Abbey, the City Watch, and the deeply xenophobic nobility—and despite all those very real family connections and personal reasons to want to reform things for the better, we step into Emily’s rule to see the people of Serkonos being trampled on and worked to death in the silver mines, the Abbey still freely hunting down and torturing or otherwise “disappearing” people suspected of witchcraft, and the Guard casually beating and murdering citizens—in one notable case, by throwing one directly into the same brutal Wall of Light technology mobilized to great effect by Burrows’ corrupt regime and that is still in wide use around Emily’s Empire fifteen years later.

Some of this chaos was instigated by Delilah and her inner circle (especially the Duke) leading up to the coup, but much of it is preexisting corruption that can’t be blamed on her—she and the coven certainly had no reason to prop up the Abbey, for one, and she didn’t have to create the aristocratic bitterness motivating turncoats like Ramsey, only give them an outlet for what was already simmering. Meagan, Sokolov, and Lucia Pastor all make it abundantly clear that this was not a momentary slip-up—Dunwall Tower had been looking the other way while violence and unrest grew for some time, because the human cost of keeping silver flowing was out of sight and out of mind, a function basically built into the system of Imperial rule. Not a bug, but a feature. A tendency toward retaining corrupt institutions, an erosion of empathy, because that’s what keeps the wheels turning and wealth being funneled upward.

So when low chaos Emily professes in mission nine that she’s learned her lesson and that from now on she’ll Pay Attention, really! to the four nation Empire she’s the head of, and the happy epilogue plays and we get another Outsider monologue about the golden age ahead, it just seems…vaguely absurd? Like, we already saw this! Burrows, Campbell, and the Bastard Trio™ of the loyalists were deposed or otherwise gotten rid of, making room for Good People™ with Good Intentions™ to take their place in charge and fix things—you’ve got Emily on the throne with Corvo to guide her; Yul Khulan, a “kind” man and eventual close personal ally of Emily’s, becomes High Overseer; Curnow, widely reputed as a Reasonable Authority Figure and rare man of principle in the Guard, has survived (and presumably still has some years of service as a Captain before the retirement mentioned in The Corroded Man).

And then we fast forward fifteen years and all these groups...still suck? The Empress hates her job and is eating off plates made of silver mined by Karnacan laborers dying hideously of terrible respiratory ailments, the Overseers we see in Karnaca are ransacking homes and torturing Outsider worshippers (a group including such dangerous people as *checks notes* newspaper artists), half the City Guard is on the payroll of the shitty aristocrats supporting Delilah’s coup, and the Grand Guard is passing the time by throwing people into Walls of Light. Emily’s reign began with a veritable A-team of Certified Good People and fifteen years later it's barely made a dent, because the system of imperial rule is built from the ground up to shelter corruption and complacency, to resist change, no matter who’s in charge and whether that person is “paying attention” or not. It’s beyond the power of one sufficiently motivated Empress and a team of well-intentioned people in positions of authority below her.

It’s tempting to say “no, it really was just an issue of Emily not taking her duties seriously, look at Jessamine’s rule, or Euhorn’s before her!” but the thing is Obvious Disasters like Violent Coups Aside we really don’t have much evidence that their rules were all that much better, or at the very least any less prone to corruption? DH1 again has the advantage over DH2 here, mostly by way of omission. We don’t get to actually see what life in the Empire is like under Jessamine, just that tiny sliver of time in the Prologue returning as Corvo to Dunwall Tower, where despite the player being told there’s a deadly plague about to bring the city to a “breaking point,” the scenery is beautiful and calm and the staff are polite and affable. It makes for very compelling contrast when the game fast forwards six months to the dank misery of Coldridge Prison, and then later the grim state of the streets filling up with corpses and weepers.

Mission six completes the comparison with a return to Dunwall Tower, where the courtyard is now brimming with hostile guards and surveillance towers and tallboys, and one lone maid who openly laments Jessamine’s passing. Life under the authoritarian despot who purposely instigated a plague for the purpose of wiping out the lower classes is, obviously, much worse than life under the benevolent Empress who is introduced to us passionately advocating for saving the lives of all of her citizens. But, in the same way Emily and her inner circle of Well-Intentioned People weren’t enough to dislodge the entrenched corruption and brutality—or prevent a new wave of it—Jessamine’s kindness can’t paint over the miseries of the imperial system she presides over. We the players see Coldridge Prison for the first time in the six-months-later flashback of Burrows’ rule, but it existed during Jessamine’s time—guards state explicitly in the DLC that she and Corvo used to come inspect it, in fact. Jessamine wholly loves Corvo, a native of Serkonos, but anti-Serkonan prejudice runs rampant in her court and city. Corvo and Emily wholly love Jessamine too, but the people of Dunwall are somewhat divided on the matter (“Long live the Empress!” “She was a WENCH!” / “Not everyone did, but I really liked the Empress…”). Burrows deceived Jessamine and took advantage of her trusting nature, but he only had the resources to do so in the first place because of the system that promoted him to Royal Spymaster, a position of incredible power and very little accountability.

Euhorn we know the least about, but we are told he enjoyed a “prosperous age”—a sentiment that falls somewhat flat when we learn that he had an affair with a chamber maid (the power differential of which is highly questionable at best), strung along the resulting illegitimate daughter with promises of elevating her to a princess that he never intended to keep, then took his chance when said daughter was blamed for breaking a vase to throw her and her mother out onto the streets, where the mother is brutalized by a prison guard and eventually dies in agony in debtor’s prison, leaving the daughter to fend for herself alone in the world. All of which shows us that the Empire is, in this age of “prosperity,” still a place of extreme power imbalances where the Emperor takes advantage of women in his employ, debtor’s prisons exist, guards can cause fatal injuries to civilians on a whim and face no consequences, and children are thrown with disdain onto the streets to die. Which, on many levels, is not all that different from the ages of other rulers who follow.

tl;dr these games show us over and over again that the Empire is built on a fundamentally broken system that perpetuates corruption and then try to append “but it’s okay so long as the people in charge are good people who are paying attention to their jobs” to the end of them for the sake of keeping those characters likable, and while the first game can get away with this by virtue of being the first game and using Jessamine’s rule primarily as a way to showcase how bad Burrows’ rule sucks by comparison, this falls flat when the very existence of the second game provides ample evidence that the Good Intentions of Generally Good People are not enough to counteract the entrenched cruelties of the institutions that keep imperialism afloat. Okay I'm going to go get another hobby now bye.

[puckpocketed]

“wouldn’t it be cute if you formatted all your gif descriptions the same way” -> I’m breaking down the doors of the california digital newspaper collection with my teeth to find the broadcast date for this documentary -> omg irbe mention <3 -> THEYRE BEATING HIS ASS IN THE PAPERS pipeline is so real and true and beautiful. to me. I love how san jose sharks reportage has never once been regular !!!

highlight from "Irbe struggles, Sharks bomb: double-headed goalkeeper falls flat" By Mark Kreidler for McClatchy News Service. Originally published in The Santa Cruz Sentinel, Volume 137, Page 14, 9 May 1994.

In bold text are my favourite parts. And for future reference, I truly hope Askarov tortures us the same way Irbe did to Sharks Fans of Yore <3

The San Jose Sharks are one man, goalie Arturs Irbe. Arturs Irbe is two players, the courageous, risk-taking shotstopper and the loon In the teal jersey whose neck keeps snapping backward as hockey pucks fly past. Tough combo, the Irbe-Irbe split. And there is your Sharks season, in a wildly frustrating capsule. He was at it again at the San Jose Arena on Sunday, Irbe the evil twin, the sequel. Two days after posting an efficient 5-2 victory over the Toronto Maple Leafs to give the Sharks a 2-1 lead in the teams' National Hockey League second-round playoff series, the Latvian with the generous heart didn't make it out of the second period alive in a mortifying 8-3 defeat. Pucks flew past with a shocking frequency, and they came from everywhere, and they went everywhere, but mostly in. At the end of the second 20-minute set, Toronto had a 6-1 lead, and only a fan base as enthusiastic as the Sharks' would have stayed to the bitter finish, a loss that had "midseason throwaway" smeared all over it.

Even Irbe didn't stick around. Pulled by Coach Kevin Constantine in favor of Jimmy Waite at the start of the third, the goalie had had plenty of time to review the carnage by the time he emerged from a long, long shower. Verdict? "We lose, we lose bad." Ever so true. In playoff life, the Sharks are precisely as they represented through a 33-35-16 regular season: Up and down like the employees' elevator at work, and about as much fun to watch on the downside. And while the routine played decently through the first round, with a seven-game decision against Detroit, the Maple Leafs are nobody's idea of the collapsible Red Wings. Enter Irbe, who knows he is going to have to raise his game to keep San Jose in this playoff. Detroit was one thing, the Red Wings sputtering and misfiring just often enough to give the Sharks and their goalie second life, to say nothing of third and fourth life.

The Leafs? Call them somewhat less forgiving. They took control Sunday by beating up Irbe's teammates, crowding the net, blocking Irbe's view on at least three of the six goals they hung on him. Doug Gilmour just ate them up all the long day. All in all, noncompetitive. "All in all," said Sharks center Todd Elik, "awful." "You can't blame it on Artie," teammate Jamie Baker said. "He didn't have a whole lot of help in front of him. It was a group effort, us getting blown out." But the Sharks are Irbe, for better and, occasionally, for demonstrably worse. He certainly got no help on this day, but then Irbe is the kind of player who rarely helps himself. Seldom has a goalie put so much pressure on himself by leaving the net with such maddening frequency. Irbe's tendency to roam after loose pucks behind the net, out to challenge an oncoming shooter always runs the risk of costing the Sharks a cheap goal, and so it was in Game 4.

A 1-0 Toronto lead in the opening period became 2-0 at least partly because Irbe, regarded as one of the better-skating goalies in the league, left his goal during a wild scramble on one shot and then was prevented by the alert Leafs from getting back into position in time to stop Mike Eastwood's chipper. Two became three a couple of minutes later on a Dave Andreychuk slap shot, a total San Jose defensive breakdown; and after that, Constantine said, "the field of the game was changed." Translation: "We had to open up our offense," Elik said, "and we're just no good at it." That is how games become routs, and how goalies become goats. Irbe, hailed all season as the man who kept the Sharks competitive on nights they otherwise might not be, had no defense against the Toronto attack. He wasn't even close. "Way too many goals for me to say it was all lucky bounces," Irbe said. "I'm fine now. I'm relaxed, calmed down from it … But I have never been happy with my play in the playoffs. I cannot be satisfied with this." This message brought to you by Irbe the Evil. Come Tuesday, Game 5, the other fellow, the -one so depended upon, could fit in quite nicely with a San Jose plan to stay competitive because, as everybody following this team knows by now, there is never any telling what tomorrow brings.

[anotheroceanid]

Hello! I just wanted to share with you my full appreciation of your fic <3 I only discovered PJO with the show (since then I've read all the books except the two last TOA). While I'm multishipping Percy, Perpollo is my last obsession.

I LOVE everything about them, I LOVE dark Apollo, and I LOVE all the angst that could fit with this ship. However, as I've read several of the Perpollo fictions on AO3, some of them did hurt me too much with their angst... </3 For example, I always feel so bad when, in some ff, Apollo ends up killing Percy; so bad it makes me cry and makes me feel kind of sick. Some of my friends told me I'm ridiculous to feel so many things with a fiction, but I can't help myself :(

Your fiction has a fair share of angst, but it's eveything I love and I don't feel like it'll be hurting me in the end. (Or maybe not?) I really enjoy reading Foreboding and WTHB, they're like my confort fics, especially since my life is a little bit hard right now.

I don't know if my comment is understandable, english is not my native language and I had a hard time writing it, but I just wanted to thank you for writing both of these wonderful fictions <3

I hope you have a wonderful day <3

This is so sweet 💕💕💕 thank you

Perpollo is also my obsession, when I first wrote foreboding I considered letting the “who’s the father?” as an unanswered question, but then I realised (at that point I wasn’t aware I’d ever write the sequel, though I had the story in my mind) I wanted us to have a glimpse of them together.

While I also love the darker fics with the sad outcomes, I decided I wanted to go with something different. Yeah, the story is very sad, but in the end everything in foreboding and WTHB is about love and how much we need it. Not even in a cheesy way, we literally need companionship as we are social creatures, loneliness can drive us crazy.

Despite being a Perpollo fic, the themes I wanted to write about (which are the themes I like to write about in general) are family and healing. This also is something that exists in Apollo’s storyline, when we get to his pov. So though I also like dark Apollo, for this fic I wanted them to actually have a nice relationship and a connection. I can’t wait till we get to the flashbacks of their past together.

Though I admit, it’s easy for me to go angsty with PJO fics because these are child soldiers. They have a lot of abilities and none of them are healthy coping mechanisms, I fear. We’ll see that a lot in Annabeth’s chapter, when we get to see the adults that came from these child soldiers.

Her chapters is the hardest to write so far, not only because it’s the first non-Percy chapter we’ll see, but because a lot of things happen, things that impact much more characters than just Annabeth, even if her arc and her bitterness is explained through these many things that happened these past years.

And if it makes you feel better, these are also my comfort fics but in a writing way. My life is a mess rk, and this years was rough. I’m definitely using it to organise my feelings and thoughts and to keep myself as calm as possible. February, when I posted foreboding, was a terrible month, and the only good thing that happened was that I posted the fic and had something else to talk about. So yeah, I want these characters to have happy endings.

Ofc, I can’t promise everyone a happy ending, but the fic will end in a warm way.

And don’t worry, I’m not native neither. And I understood you perfectly!

Thanks for reading and commenting 💕

[earlgodwin]

omg i read blood and beauty and its sequel last week bc it had been on my reading list for months!!!! and is this a safe space where i can just say that it hit the nail on the head for all of the borgias without unnecessarily vilifying one or the other (i mean basically considering how most writers hold some vendetta against juan) and i loved how u could really see lucrezia's growth from her childhood innocence to being forced to mature and grow up AND obsessed w any media that portrays cesare as ferocious and sharp and ruthless and juan finally got his flowers bc they obv showed his flaws but without making him the big bad evil when instead he also started off a kid but ended up being dragged to the bottom of the river by his father's ambitions 😔

i wish the 2nd book had progressed a little further to lucrezia's childbirth bed death so the story could come full circle and sometimes the pov switching was confusing for me but aside from that, the borgias will always be famous to meeeeeeeee and i love a good book that portrays them well!

ive been on the hunt for more borgia-centric books so if u have any recs......... <3

zaynab omg hello!!!!! i was kinda waiting for someone to talk to me about this book because it's my absolute #1 favorite historical fiction book <3

i'm so happy you enjoyed reading it! the way miss dunant brilliantly humanized the borgia family by creating striking and compelling narratives for them was truly *chef's kiss*. it's safe to say that her portrayal of them has even made her my favorite author as well (and made me want to check out her other work, lol). the way she made them so sympathetic is truly admirable to me, which is also a standout aspect of the book as we manage to develop a deep understanding of their motivations and complexities through her nuanced portrayal, you know? i say it could've been done more when it came to lucrezia, as she is truly one of the most compelling figures in history (and my all-time favorite). i'm not criticizing dunant for lucrezia's portrayal!! but it's more like i wished she added more of lucrezia's lore...but alas! other books did her more justice, i must say!

my favorite theme of the book is the immense love the pope has for his children. the way [spoiler] juan was taken too soon from him is profoundly melancholic and it added emotional depth to the story and it highlighted the power of a father's love and the devastating impact of losing a beloved child. also, YEAH, the book felt like a breath of fresh air when it came to juan borgia! he was unfairly demonized with no reliable narrative and mostly used as a prop to hype up cesare at his expense *yawns*… but dunant made him an individual, likable character in the book, countering the unjust treatment he always receives. her portrayal of him allowed us to discover the vulnerability and sensitivity that lie beneath his outwardly arrogant and handsome demeanor. we really can't help but feel deep empathy and pity for him as we read about his inner struggles and emotional depth. he became a truly compelling and sympathetic figure within the borgia family, especially when his death is met with cruelty and brutality. the tragic nature of his demise evokes an even stronger sense of empathy and sorrow in the narrative of juan losing himself and being overwhelmed by the heavy task he was entrusted with…

and cesare, of course, was portrayed as that sulking, bitter, cruel but incredibly intelligent, cunning, and charming guy! lowkey a recurring theme for him, but the flavor in making him extra dark in the slayest way possible made me insane in a very positive way! you should watch "los borgia (2006)" for a delicious portrayal of cesare (and personally, i think it's the most historically accurate).

more books? i'd recommended emma lucas's 'lucrezia borgia' and maria bellonci's 'life and times of lucrezia borgia' - both are biographies btw! their work is a solid read, very unbiased without any manipulation of the letters about/between the siblings to push certain narratives (hello sarah bradford!!), well-researched, sheds light on the family's complex relationships and their rise to power, and is highly sympathetic to all of them. you won't be disappointed!!

for historical fiction, i'd recommend mario puzo's 'the family' ...you will never be disappointed after all it's by the dude who wrote the godfather!

i hope you enjoy them <333 i'll be waiting for your feedback :)

[creative-kny-fics]

ooo, okay could you do lee!obanai and lers!sanemi and giyuu? feel free to delete this ask!

No no! Alright! Remember I made a fic where Obanai was destroying Giyuu and Sanemi saves him? Well, I will say that this will be a sequel because Sanemi didn't destroy Obanai and because Giyuu deserves his revenge.

(TW: Curses)

Lee: Iguro Obanai

Lers: Giyuu Tomioka and Sanemi Shinazugawa

Obanai was cold, he was sure that no one would enter the estate and stop him, but apparently Sanemi would not be happy with the situation and would appear to save Giyuu.

'What the hell Sanemi?!'

'What the hell with you Obanai! Look at Giyuu! You almost killed him!'

'Ohhh I get it! You don't want to be left without someone to fuck, right?!', oh Iguro, I'll pray that Giyuu or Sanemi have mercy on you

Sanemi picked Iguro up and turned him around and climbed onto his back. Obanai glared at Sanemi, if that idiot dared to do it, he was going to kill him no matter what Kanroji or Oyakata-sama said.

'So you like to annoy people, huh? You like to piss them off. Well Obanai, we'll see how long your bitterness lasts after this...', Sanemi was not playing, that imposing tone of voice made Obanai's look of fury turn into one of fear

'*huff* what happened...?' 'Giyuu! You woke up!', so cute Sanemi.

'What the...? Obanai...?' 'Oh, do you want to join? It was just beginning', no, surely Tomioka wouldn't, he wouldn't be able to...

'Of course'

Well Iguro, you asked for it

'I'll let you take his lower back. It's just after what he did to you. I'll make sure it doesn't move'

'IF YOU DARE, PRAY BECAUSE I- NGH!!!', blah blah, Iguro you don't seem to understand that if you threaten someone before they tickle you, the result will be even worse

Don't worry... Giyuu wouldn't be so cruel. Or... would it be?

'DAHAHAHAHAMN!!! GEHEHEHET OHOHOFF MEEE!!!', well it's the first time that Obanai has been tickled by someone sitting on his back. 'Is this place so bad? Too bad for you, uhhhh, low blow for Obanai's pride

'Giyuu! You're doing it wrong!'

'Oh really?'

'Yep! Look, let me show you, I don't think Obanai cares' 'STOOHOHOP TALKIHIHIING LIKE I'M NAHAHAHAT HEREHEHEHEHE', yeh, they don't care-

And well, Sanemi began to calmly explain to Giyuu about how to destroy a person like Obanai, while he, well, begged for his life.

'You see it? Now it's more effective!' 'Ohhh you're right! Thank you nemi!', they are very cute couple but...

'*scream of laughter* S-ST-STA-STAHAHAHAHAHAP!!!! *snort* I-I-I-I!!', Obanai was already at his limit, he was tired, he had tried to crawl and escape, it didn't help much.

The only thing he could do during those moments of torment was beg, hit the floor with his hands and kick in the air or on the floor, anything that would help the sensations decrease, he would do (it didn't help).

'What's up Iguro? It's not so much fun anymore, is it?' 'Nemi! Stop making fun of him! Can't you see he's turning red with shame! Look! Up to their ears!', and yep, they had to yell for each other to hear.

'SORRY!!!!', ummm, I think not-

'Okay, that's enough. I think he's had enough'

'Are you sure? He almost killed you'

'Yes, very sure', come on Sanemi, obey your boyfriend

One way or the other. They both moved away from Obanai who curled up into a ball while having a goofy smile under his mask.

'Are you alright Iguro?', Iguro nodded, he didn't have the strength to speak, but he better gain strength or run faster, because that was only the first round

[wicked-jade]

OOOHHHH for the fic ask: I please? And since it's you, also K :D

Thanks for the asks!! 💖💖💖

I: Do you have a guilty pleasure in fic (reading or writing)?

Hmm, I can't really think of any examples off the top of my head. I'm fairly shameless and don't have much guilt when it comes to liking what I like, I guess. 😂

Does putting Johnny through the emotional wringer count?

K: What’s the angstiest idea you’ve ever come up with?

You know me well. 😂 One of them is already an active WIP: Or Forever Hold Your Peace. Basically, for the uninitiated: Dutch and Johnny are bitter exes that haven't spoken in years, and are reunited at Jimmy's wedding. That one is pretty angsty, because Johnny is just not in a good place. Like, even by my usual standards. I can't really say much about it without spoiling future chapters, but there are hints scattered throughout it about their history, and what went down the night Dutch got arrested that messed Johnny up so badly.

Let's see, what else... At one point, I also considered a 'Bad Luck' sequel where Daniel has a heart attack during class, right in front of Johnny and the kids. It was going to be based on a series of drabbles I wrote for one of the AV100 prompts. But I have too many unfinished sequels in that series already, so I never bothered starting it.

But the absolute angstiest idea was for a stand-alone LawRusso fic. I never wrote it because it features a much darker version of Daniel than I usually write, and I got cold feet. It was going to be set after they lose the All Valley in S4. They lose their dojos, and both of their lives fall completely apart. Carmen blames Johnny for Miguel running off and breaks up with him when he fails to find him. Daniel goes into a downward spiral, much like S5. Amanda leaves him, and the dealership fails despite the Doyona bailout. Silver wins. But instead of going to Johnny for help, Daniel blames him for everything and takes it all out on him. And Johnny feels so guilty/hates himself so much for fucking up everything with Miguel and Robby, that he figures he deserves it and just lets him. Cue lots of dirty/nasty hate sex, with self-loathing, self-destructive Johnny letting Daniel use him to vent all of his pain and rage (while also having feelings for Daniel that he knows are not reciprocated.)

So yeah, that one was very dark. All hurt, no comfort. Just very, very bleak.

[astronnova]

I dont really see the shadowplay as a lie. Wukong was constantly leaving, contantly abadoning, his subjects and macaque for more power. It might have started out as protection for them, but he admits himself he lost sight of that. Macaque abandoned wukong too dont get me wrong, but wukong did it several times. In jttw alone he leaves ffm for years, decades at a time.

Macaque has no right to hurt mk, and his reaction is very bad, but if wukong never hurt or wronged him, then their possible reconciliation just tastes bitter to me. It only works if both monkeys were in the wrong

wukong had left about two or three times pre journey i believe? training with subodhi, then to work as heaven's stable boy, and maybe something else? i can't remember right now (and im falling asleep at my desk LOL....)

yeah, he does admit he lost sight of it! that's very true, and that's important to note that his goal grew to be unclear (as a narrative parallel to azure's conflict during the season and the special). i'm putting emphasis on the fact that wukong says to macaque twice (once directly to him and the other by proxy) that his intentions were overall good.

yes, in the original book he returns to ffm occasionally but then, imporantly, has to return to the journey. if wukong were truly free to make his choice, he could have very much stayed at ffm during the first time he left the journeying group, but he. couldn't do that. the celestial realm needed him to help retrieve/deliver(?) the scriptures and tripitaka still had him trapped with the circlet. and also important to note that in the original jttw, macaque and wukong didn't know eachother.

lego monkie kid is a sequel to the original journey to the west, but it also makes it very clear that lego monkie kid's version of journey to the west is very different from the one we know. claiming some things as canon because it was in the original books (like wukong being macaque's killer) doesn't track with the version of jttw that the show is presenting to us. (not saying this as a way to undermine your point, but more as like a general point that i feel i need to mention).

so, tldr for all that up there that i keyboard vomited is that yeah wukong did leave ffm occasionally but he always returned to ffm & macaque. in shadowplay, macaque's abandonment is portrayed as the time when wukong went off to work for heaven.

in this scene, wukong is dressed in his royal attire (the phoenix cap and armor) while turning around and smirking while joining the figures up in the clouds which is a representation of the celestial realm.

interestingly wukong's also wearing the circlet in this! so this scene can be taken as two things:

wukong leaving to work for the celestial realm as the stable boy (where he canonicaly comes back to macaque and macaque is fine, this is in season 4)

wukong joining the journeying group.

if the second point is what's happening, then macaque fundamentally misunderstands wukong's agency in the journey, since the circlet (aka his punishment/torture leash) took a lot of wukong's own choice out of the matter of if he should go on the journey or not. wukong even wanted to go back to his home when he was freed but had to stick with the journey!

macaque has always been a biased narrator, and that's really interesting to me because he's a trauma dumper too. he constantly tells his version of events without considering another side.

now, im not saying that wukong is an innocent person in their whole *gestures vaguely* situation either, but i am saying that shadowplay is macaque's biased narration that we as the audience can recognize because we know what's actually happening with wukong. the shadowplay is meant to put more doubt into MK and make the emotional rift between him and wukong larger because of wukong's lack of communication skills and MK's easy to influence personality. it's not factually correct, but it gives more insight and helps create more conflict for our characters to face.

i agree! the reconciliation wouldn't be as good imo if wukong had never wronged macaque either. i'm also just saying that objectively wukong has more... concrete? i think thats the word? reasons for doing what he does while macaque's motivations usually revolve around self preservation. its a cool character dynamic (that i am obsessed with)

[powderblueblood]

ohhhh 18, 9, and 2 for your Steve and Eddie (any verse you'd like

interrogate me about my characters

you are FEEEDING MEEEEE i'm sorry this took me like a couple of days my brain had to power back up after the weekend

2. THEIR EMOTIONAL/MORAL WEAK SPOTS

hellfire & ice/sequel!eddie starts off as your garden variety drug dealer and progressively adds a couple more tools in his criminal belt as the years go on and honestly? doesn't really see that much of a boohoo about it. yes, it's what the world expects from all munsons, yes, it's bad bad work for bad bad men but eddie can't see himself working a straight job. ever. he's not equipped for it. and, he's made peace with the fact that he'll never be a rockstar (jk no the fuck he has not he's so bitter) so he's all, might as well make the wasted years i have on this stupid earth a little more interesting. he's got a little bit of a robin hood complex going on once we meet him in his late 20s.

clear cut!steve is also a criminal albeit the smoother kind, and kind of works off a similar thing of i've never been good at anything else, so this might as well be my career. except for steve, it's banking on how far he can get with that tireless, bottomless, all-consuming harrington charm. working in insurance, or whatever the fuck his father did, never quite scratched the itch of bold faced robbery that... well, robbery did. it's funny, though. steve's never had the aspirations towards grandeur that his fellow thieves have had, because he knows what it's like to grow up in a cushy rich household. steve's just doing it for the thrill of fooling everybody. and he is, by the way. fooling everybody. even you. remember that.

9. HUMILIATING MEMORIES

hellfire and ice!eddie, like.... do you mean his entire life up to this point and actually, beyond. he once got so unbelievably fucking stoned that he thought calling a phone sex line was a good idea but then once the sexy operator lady picked up, he got so freaked out that he could only talk in fozzie bear voice and he couldn't drop the bit for 20 minutes. fun conversation with wayne about that phone bill. he's also written so much bad poetry, so many embarrassing near-self insert stories (one of us, one of us) where he romances many a comely elfin lady. he once slipped one of these stories into chess club captain martha peterson's locker in freshman year as, like, an effort at wooing her but then he got pulled into the fucking guidance counselor's office because she said he was stalking him.

old hollywood!steve... again. regrets. humiliations. he has a few. one could be punching bela lugosi out after a stage production of dracula because he thought he was a real vampire (drunk). another could be punching out an extra on the set of the merry widow in 1925 because he was sniffing around mae murray, who steve was also sniffing around at the time (jilted). steve was replaced by 'that rodent-voiced bastard john gilbert' and the extra he clocked? none other than clark gable. among other embarrassments; not securing a finalized divorce from his first wife before he married his second (drunk), the time he fully pissed his pants when buster keaton played a prank on him during a seance (stoned), getting caught wailing for a second chance outside joan crawford's room at the garden of alla hotel (that woman was inside having lesbian sex).

18. THINGS THEY'LL NEVER ADMIT

old hollywood!eddie knows his entire career is based on fluke, but he's too embarrassed to nurture his real talent, which is writing. to be honest, he does stunts because he kind of has a death wish. not being able to express himself was killing him, but he was always too full of piss and vinegar and cowardice to kill himself. but now people see him, or what the studios have made of him, and it's glorious and horrifying and naked and fake and full of possibility that he's too scared to touch.

hellfire & ice/burning up & burning out!steve (moreso sequel relevant, but) has always thought lacy was a fucking weirdo honestly and blames lacy for nancy pulling away from him during his senior year, not like nancy becoming a person was a factor or anything... until they're older and steve and lacy grow increasingly fond of each other. he wishes he took the job that his dad laid out for him on a silver platter sometimes and married someone stable, like tina or whoever. steve's increasingly more anxious socially as he ages, knowing that most people see him as some kind of joke, but he has to put on the face and be the guy, whatever that means to him in 1994. he's terrified that he's built his life around constructs that are flimsy; being independent from his family, following a path when he's not sure of himself as a person, desperately trying to make the thing with nancy work when she's there because he's familiar and he's there because he's afraid.

[fatuismooches]

SMOOCHES. *Slams the door open*

I know. I know that I told you that your writings are like desserts (they still are). But...but Fabulam diu oblitus... was NOT a dessert.

That was an extremely spicy food that was SO GOOD that I would eat it again from time to time but physically painful to eat each time. It feels like my chest is burning.

I almost cried in public bc of it. *Sobs* the sequel is definitely a coffee, both bitter and sweet. 70% bitter btw. I WILL SUE YOU FOR EMOTIONAL DAMAGE /j

It seems like the word "I love you in every universe" doesn't apply to our dearest Raven and his darling. AJSBSHAJABAKAKAOAOAGAGAGAKDJEIEKS

I know that tragic ending will happen, but MAN. Why can't we have nice things?

BUT ON ANOTHER NOTE. I LOVE HOW BOTH OF THEM ARE TOGETHER IN THE END. Instead only one of them has to go.

Oh and the little detail about Columbina's anger at the traveler after "ending her ship".

I also love how Nahida, despite her not understanding the Raven and the Sparrow, and probably dislike them still remember the story. And the Traveler too as they fulfill their small quest from the Sparrow. I think that it's sweet of them.

Lastly AMAZING JOB SMOOCHES. I absolutely adore it, I think I need a few more days to move on from Fabulam diu oblitus bc again, it hurts me so bad (it's a compliment btw all of this ask is a compliment).

I can't wait for more Dottore contents from you <3

Signed, Dessert Anon

AWWWWW DESSERT ANON... THIS IS THE SWEETEST 😭💕💕 I never thought I'd see my writing be compared to spicy food but... thank you, that was funny and heart-warming at the same time.

And yes... the sequel is rather bittersweet isn't it? I was kind of going for that. You two may not have a happy ending in Teyvat, may not have had an easy life, but... at least another version of you two can. You two deserved a better fate but, this will have to do... (They're "i love you in every universe, i lose you in every universe" more likely 😭)

AHH I'M GLAD YOU LIKED THAT DETAIL! I imagine even though Columbina is deeply saddened by the loss of her friend of many years, and even her co-worker... she thinks she made the right choice to help you, because she knows you would have wanted nothing more than to spend your last moments with Dottore. But she still misses you...

And yes!! Nahida doesn't like you or Dottore naturally but, not only is she a kind and loving God, but she also reigns over wisdom. She wants to preserve your story, she doesn't want to forget something she still doesn't understand, as it's her goal to seek knowledge and understanding. Also, she does want to talk to you (kind of want to write interactions between you two tbh) and learn more about you, because historical records talk much more about Dottore than you. She wants to at least try to understand...

Thank you again for your kind words Dessert Anon ;) <33 And once again im sorry i hurt you so bad!! 😭 *hugs you* 💗 i too look forward to posting more Dottore stuff ! 💕

[popculturebuffet]

Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hoole Review (Comission for Rewandemontay)

Hello all you happy owlet's and it's a happy day as I got another new comission person. Welcome Rewandemontay, sorry this took so long as a back injury, stomach issues and other things have taken a hammer to my productivity. Thankfully we're finally here for another look at a creator I think is talented with a fanbase I think is

It's Zack Snyder's Legend of the Guardians: The Owls of Ga'Hool

Guardians comes to us from Animal Logic, a studio I haven't talked about yet. Their a big time effects studio, first hitting it big with babe, who eventually branched into animation, mostly focusing on photorealistic stuff with the occasinal branch out like the lego movie (which still fit to a degree since they wanted it close to stop motion as possible). As you can see by the ENTIRELY ill fitting poster's tagline, this came on the heels of Happy Feet: that film had been a massive success for Warner Bros and they wanted more, aquiring the ya book series legend of the guardians.

Now picking these books.. wasn't a bad idea. I didn't get a chance to read them before this review, so sadly I can't fully evaluate how this works as an adaptation apart from what I could glean from tv tropes and wikipedia, but the basic concept, an epic fantasy story in an owlcentric world that has the owls still function like owls, use owl terms, and fight like them that dosen't sugarcoat the violence.. is an awesome concept. It was also a noble stab to try and make a film that was just straight up an epic fantasy in animation. There's comedy here and a few bits we'll get to that REALLY smack of 2000's animation, but as far as I can remember it'd been a while since someone had done a full on attempt at an epic fantasy story.

Even Zack Snyder was a good choice. As I said in my watchmen review last year he's not a bad director.. he was just a very bad fit for the DCEU, where he just flat out didn't give a shit about the source material. Here while he changed a lot of shit like dc, it's clear that he at least liked the core idea and really showed some reverance to it.

So why didn't we get an epic lord of the rings style trilogy but with owls? Well simple really: from what I can gleam just from an image search and my own memories.. the film was marketed terribly. Besides the very misleading posters for a film that's main plot kicks off with a child kidnapping and quickly gets into child slavery, facisim, race suprmacists, indocrination, the realities and cost of war and death. There are a lot of deaths.

Advertising wise I remember, as I watched all the cartoon channels back then, it being just kind vauge "It's magical, it has owls and some shit, it's from the people who made happy feet". And as someone who really never liked happy feet, I stayed far away.

So the film didn't do great and while a sequel was hinted at in the film and by Animal Logic, it never happened. What's left is a curious piece of a director's filmography and what might of been a hit with better marketing. So come fly with me under the cut as we swoop in and see what this film is.

The film STARTS well. In a land of owls, and a few other critters, a father tells his children Soren, a kind owl and your standard "hero who dreams of something grand" type, played by Jim Sturgess who also did well with a deconscrution of this sort of roll in across the universe, his jealous , bitter and angry brother Kludd played by Ryan Kwanten and his sweet baby sister Eglatine, of the guardians, great protectors who long ago fought a war against the "Ice Claws", who are never really elaborated on but who the guardians beat. But by this time the guardians are a myth: Soren and his dad (played by HUGO FREAKING WEAVING), believie as does his sister.. but Kludd is steadfast it's not true.

Really the family interplay in this first 15 minutes is well done: Noctus soren's dad is fair, kind and patient with soren and kludd. But we also see WHY Kludd is so resentful: Soren naturally takes to flight better and gets his dad's praise.. while Kludd gets gentle reremands for his overconfidence. His dad means well but in Kludd's eye's he's non supportive and his brother being a natural only widens the gap between the two brothers and sets the stage for the tragedy to come. It's also a nice deconstruction of our main hero having natural talent: ti's great and doe shappen and Soren's inexperince and navitie keep him from being TOO sueish, but to someone who struggles to do the same thing it's easy to resent them even if they did nothing wrong. Soren even tries to help Kludd by using a visulasation trick (I.e. thinking of where your going to land. )

The boys lives are changed forever when they acccidently fall out of their tree and nearly die at some wild animals before being saved/kidnapped by Jatt and Jutt, our standard comic relief villians.. who work a little for me. Their banter is fun, yet it dosen't undercut their menance: in fact the fact they are so goofy while being genuinely threatning and kidnapping children makes them more unsettling. The problem is they just don't really fit into the orginzation their in, the Pure Ones. The Pure Ones are our main antagonists, an owl supremacist group who seek to conquer the world and gladly kidnap children to either indocrinate into soldiers or brainwash into soldiers by "Moonblinking" them (forcing them to stare at the moon till their mind blanks out), which trust me is way more horrific than it sounds. The dead eyes it leaves.. truly haunting.

The Pure Ones were the main antagonists of the books, but are given elments of St Aurelious, another villian faction and the ones who kidnapped Soren and had the whole child kidnapping ring int he book. Honestly this change at least makes sense. If it's a good one I can't say but it seems like st auarelious eventually gets overtaken by the pure ones anyway and the children are never rescued. Combining them if your going to try and make three books into one narrative just makes sense.

IT also allows for them to do the other big change and the one I truly love. Again I can't PURLEY judge it as I haven't read the books but apparentlyt here while eventually the big bad, more on that later, Kludd is also just.. evil. He started evil, he sold soren out to the pure ones outright, he's just bad. THat's it. And that's.. boring. You CAN have a character whose just pure evil, but in this context it's just "okay this guy was just always an asshole. "

Here... we actually see Kludd transform from Raph from the tmnt, angry and feeling his father has favioritism but not being a bad sort, to a throughly loyal solider of a facist and racist movement. The film does a really good job showing HOW these movements slowly indoctrinate people: It starts slowly with them encouraging him to not throw his lot in with Soren with soren bravely defends a fellow prisoner.. and gets sent to pick pelets. They then pit the recurits for the pure ones against each other, both feeding into the pure one's apocalypse-esque survivial of the fittest philosphy and into how these sorts of movements breed obidence rather than unity. The focus is on impressing the leader rather than helping each other. The praise gives him what he wanted, while leaving him blind to the fact he's being brainwashed. It's far more compelling ot see clud slowly slide into an all too familiar sort of trap than just be bad

On the opposite ends the owls dig in pellet. Pellets are one of the few things the film goes out of it's way to explain about owls, the rest left to context clues which can be a touch disorenting at first but honestly the film does such a good job using those clues over time you get what this thing is. With pellet's it'd be a bit harder to do that but they simply had Soren and Klud's sister have her first. For the record their basically hard things owls cough up consiting of the exoskeltons and what have you of whatever they ate. It's as gross ass it sounds. And these pellets contain little magnetic bits, which are used for a giant magnet pit that's used for.. something. What that something is I either miss or simply isn't explained in the film version. It IS used for a trap later, but otherwise there's no clear reason for it. THey just have a spooky magical magnetic vortex.

They use moonblinking as mentioned before, but SOren is able to resist simply by closing his eyes when the guards aren't looking. He helps his new friend, the owl he stood up for, Gylfie (Emily Barclay) also avoid it and promises to break them out.

The two eventually get help from Grimble, one of the guards.. who turns out is working with the pure ones under duress. Their allegedly holding his family hostage but they subtly hint he knows by this point their likely dead or brainwashed, and the pure ones are lying to him. So he helps the two young owls learn to fly so they can escape.

This leads to the climax of our first act: Nyra the queen of the pure ones and their real leader (Her husband Metal Beak, while fierce and horrifying, comes off more as a figure head and battle commander while Nyra does all the actual day to day work), played by of all people HELEN FUCKING MEREN. Who does a phnemominal job, of course she does but in a cast that's mostly mid 2000's stars or unknowns, it's weird to see such a huge name plopped in their. Nyra catches them so Grimble bravely holds her and her soldiers off while the kids escape.. and in a heartbreaking momement Soren and Kludd come to a parting of ways as Kludd refuses to leave with him. It's a tense scene that really pays off all the expert build off: Soren is free and can go get help .. but has lost his brother while Kludd's actions prove him to Nyra.. and she manipulates him into falling futher, pointing out his sister to them. What I like though is while what Kludd's doing at this point is horrible.. in his mind.. he thinks it's a GOOD thing. That his sister will be able to grow stronger find the purpose he did... that he dosen't even realize he's handing his baby sister to a CULT.

So our heroes barely escape and soon meet your usual misfits TM , Digger and Twilight, two rapscalions. They also reunite soren with his nursemade whose also a snake, Mrs. Pthiler.. she sure is in this film. Seroiusly she has no real purpose in the plot after this. She facilitates a chase when some ravens snatch her and waste a good two minutes of film but otherwise she contributes not a lot. And that's a problem the film picks up in the middle stretch: it just starts adding characters. I mean the first act had PLENTY sure, but each had a good purpose and reason for existing. After this point they just keep piling characters in like a clowncar who have little to do but fight some bitches later. Digger himself is more there to play off twilgiht's constant love of making songs by dreading it every time. It works. Twilight gets a pass since he DOES contribute. Also he's awesome, adding a lot of fun and helping the heroes simply because he and his friend are lonely and figure why not come along on a grand adventure.

But after a neat sequence of our heroes actually getting to the great tree of Ga'houl and finding the guardians are entirely real, the film just kinda.. stutters It's pacing isn't bad and there's a really good scene with klud after he took his sister, with her wanting their brothe rback.. and klud later being revealed to have moonblinked her in revenge and as bait.

And that stuttering is due to introducing a LOT of characters at once who were likely either filtered in better in the book or simply got introduced in big scenes like this but got fleshed out. It's a problem with the last act of the film: it tries to cram three books woth of stories (going by the outline) into the film and make it one coherent narrative. It dosen't TOTALLY fail at that, the film is still fun to watch.. but it's biggest weakness is one many adaptations before and after it have: it tries to cram in TOO much into one movie. The film would've worked better had it either been JUST the slave camp, which I admit is a hard sell so I get why, or they'd just adapted two books, having it focus on our heroes trying to get to the guaridans. You coudl've even had kludd and some other goons sent after them, so you stil lget that final battle, just with less clutter. You have to pace yourself.

For a contrast I've been reading Pirates: An adventure with scientests, the book that lead to the movie. And while this book is rather short, the movie simply .. worked with what it had: it shuffles things around a bit to give it a more coherent narrative then ADDS some stuff to make it stronger. You can ADD shit. Or you can take shit from later books and put it front and center. Instead it just feels rushed. Like a complete film but still like a film trying to do too much. As such the guardians leaders feel REALLY underedevleoped> Their a king and queen.. for reasons we never get to. Why are they hiding? Why are they just a myth despite existing in large numbers? It's never actualyl explained. The guardians just.. still exist. We also get sam neil wasted as allomere, a traitirous owl whose sent ot investigate soren's claims. And the scene of Soren presenting his case is really well done, and I like how he makes a good case why this isn't a lie: the guardians were a myth. There's also the fact four owls flew all this way to something they didn't know existed. If soren just wanted to join.. that alone would've been enough to get him enrolled as a trainee. He has no reason to concoct an elaborate, easily disproven lie. I mean he's also supposed to be a kid but he sounds like he's 20.

What also drags it is we just get a LOT of compression: we get a montage set to an owl city song which.. just dosen't work. I do like what i've heard of the band, when can I see you again worked great in wreck it ralph. But a pop song. .just.. dosen't fit into this films world at all. IT'd be like if the battle of helms deep suddenly had the simpsons go calypso kick in

They also introduce a love intrest for soren. She sure does exist.

What keeps the film from falling apart and makes the bits at g'ahoul itself work is one man. My faviorite part of the film and a truly awesome character, Lyze, played maginifacantly by geoffery rush. Lyze is a beat up barn owl, our heroes mentor. We get the only real training bit of the film, again it's mostly done in montage, and one I really like. Shonen Anime quailty training exercise. Lyze takes the cadets (our heroes plus love intrest) flying in the rain. Besides building stamina, a good reason in of itself, it's also to help the cadets trust their gut and get used to flying in conditions where they can't see. We get a beautiful sequence where he has soren fly in a current and soren really makes it work. I tonly fails when he can't figure out wether to trust his gizard, a part of bird anatomy tha tI assume helps with flight and navigation, the latter due to later events, and Lyze explains he needs to trust it. We also find out Lyze, who'd been using another name i'm. .just not bothering with, is Soren's hero.. and Soren finds out from his writings the wars his dad told him as fairy tails were bloodier, rougher and less glorious. Lyze himself gives the best line of the film on the subject as he berates the boy for thinking it was that black and white.

"Well fancy it must be hard meeting your hero and seeing he's real and not a myth. What did you expect, some tyto owl with gleaming armor and battle claws with the moon behind him? Well this is what it looks like when you've actually fought in battle. It's not glorious, it's not beautiful, it's not even heroic. It's merely doing what's right and doing it again and again, even if you someday end up looking like this. " That speech. .is so fucking awesome. It's Lyze making it clear what the reality of Soren's dream is, what fighting the Pure Ones, who turn out to have been one of the guardians enemies, REALLY costs... and making sure the boys knows he has that sacrifice in him. Lyze is harsh with the boy sure.. but it's a harshness that's clearly simply to prevent a young idealistic owl from dying needlessly in battle trying to live up to a person who never existed. He has faith in Soren, he belivies in him, as shown with the training.. he's simply being honest. I also like how they explain why lyze has a diffrent name and why no one else needed this told to them: for the former he simply got tired of his old reputation, and for the latter.. everyone at the tree KNOWS who he is, or like Soren find out eventually. The people who NEED to know so he can add in his expertise or fight when needed know. Lyze is a truly awesome character and a large part of why I want to now read the books to see more of him. It's a shame such a great mentor character is packed into such a dense film but he makes the most of it.

So right after Traitor Mc traitorpants returns with two owletts, including Soren's sister. With the threat now clear and totally not a bad guy leading them back the guardians all head back. Soren WANTS to go to free his brother and get revenge but I like how Lyze handles it: he throws soren a weapon, a claw clove that both sides use as their weapon of choice, and not only does the boy not really manage to lift it but Lyze makes a VERY valid if , unsuprisingly, curt point: Soren is better off here watching his sister than dying needlessly as canon fodder.

Of course as I haven't remotely attempted to hide this is all a trap: an earlier scene showed ja'cuse leading two other owls and the other two were implicitly died at the end of that scene. Nyra just has him killed and the guardians are trapped in the magnet thing Thankfully Eglatine comes out of her moonblink int ime to tell the others she wasn't rescued.. they gave her to him, and our heroes head out. It's here where Twilight shows how awesome he is as , being the older and more experinced oneof the group he holds the fucking line while soren risks life and limb to save the guardians. IT's a really awesome sequence. Soren barely manages to save them, their gizzards fucked up by the machine thing but soon fine enough and our epic final battle ensues. I REALLY love how combat is done in this film: tense, brutal and entirely how an owl presumibly WOULD fight.

So while Lyze and Metal Beak scrap we get the REAL main event, the fight this whole film has built toward: Soren, on his way back from the trap vs an intercepting Klud. Soren is horrified to see what his brother's become and tries in vain to talk some sense into him leading to a tense heartbreaking battle that ends with Soren trying to save Klud's life.. only for Klud to pull a frieza (or anakin given all the fire and the fact that if the series had continued he'd likely be the new metal beak as he picked up the mantle in the books) and try to attack his brother rather than accept help and possible redemption. Klud falls into the flames, though given no body is found he's likely still out there.

Soren then joins the final battle, defeating metal beak in one of the weaker parts of the film. I mean thea ctual defeat, impaling the guy, is fucking horrifying and mostly accidental, and Soren's horror after as Lyze tries to assure him, knowing the boys first kill likely weighs on the poor kid despite being self defense, is well done. I just feel metal beak is only here in this film at all because they felt we needed a final boss.. depsite the fact Klud.. REALLY fits the bill better. We see metal beak once or twice scowling and grimacing and what not , but Kludd is the real emotinal throughline and his tragic turn from gruff owl teen to child soldier is fucking horrifying, while it was never in doubt Nyra was the true force behind both. Not having hER die or be truly defeated, as she retreats after her husband metal beak's death,makes sense as they wanted sequels. But you still coudl've had a final fight with her. I guess it's a reason fo rher to retreat but it just dosen't quite land for me. The ending dosen't either as it's all happy and joyful and I like PARTS OF IT, I like sorent elling his tale to new owlets, just as his father had done for him.. but it feels a bit .. happy given Soren just had to kill for the first time and his brother is either dead or out for his blood. HORAY WE'RE ALL SAFE NO WORRIES EVEN THOUGH EVIL IS OUT THERE AND SOREN JUST KILLED AN OWL. YAYYY.

Overall Legend of the Guardians.. is good. It's not amazing, it has the bits I mentioned holding it back, trying to do way too much in one film instead of pacing itself, which CAN work (see scott pilgrim vs the world which while not a perfecta daptation is still pretty great), it just dosen't for an epic fantasy like this where details are important and build up is key. But there's enough great character stuff, breathtaking animation and top notch voice acting to make the film still a joy to watch and an underated classic. It's the best Zack Snyder film i've seen, and while granted that's a small pool (I've seen watchmen, man of steel , batman v superman and the theatrical cut of justice league) where two of them are infamously terrible and one is just.. eh, it's still a really fantastic film that shows off the man's talent. It makes me optimstic for his film Rebel Moon this year.

For now thought his was a treat. Thanks for reading.

[mariacallous]

When I was 12, I was hooked on James Bond, both Ian Fleming's elegantly pulpy novels and the cartoonish movies they spawned. One day, my friend's older brother, who went to Harvard, tossed a paperback onto my lap and said, "Here's the real thing, kid."

The book was The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, the 1963 thriller by John le Carre. I opened it expecting a racier version of what I found in 007 — you know, Asian thugs with steel-rimmed bowlers, gorgeous women as sweetly pliable as taffy. What I got was a dankly bitter tale of betrayal ending at the Berlin Wall. I hated it. It was just too sophisticated for the adolescent me.

You see, le Carre wasn't merely a better writer than Fleming, but a reaction against him. Where 007 fought amusingly acronymed groups like SPECTRE, le Carre conjured a Cold War hall of mirrors in which spy craft wasn't about knife fights and hot sex, but about gambits and machinations in which it was hard to tell the good guys from the bad.

His masterpiece was 1974's Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy — not merely the greatest spy novel ever written, but the source of a 1979 BBC adaptation that's the greatest spy show ever made. In anticipation of a new film version that's coming out in a few weeks — the story, you see, is irresistible — the series has just been re-released on DVD, along with its sequel, Smiley's People. Watching again, I found it every bit as gripping as the first three times I watched it.

The great Alec Guinness stars as George Smiley, an honorable spy chief who's been ousted after a shakeup in British intelligence — known as The Circus. But once it becomes clear that there's a mole, or double agent, high up in The Circus, Smiley is brought back to catch him. He does this in the old school, pre-Google way, by sifting through papers and questioning anyone who might be involved, all in a style that's unsettlingly calm.

Bluntness isn't Smiley's thing. He's like the world's greatest poker player, all quiet observation, laconic dialogue and unreadable reactions. As played by Guinness, a master of the ambiguous smile, Smiley exudes a melancholy kindness that may not be kind, and a knowledge of human frailty that's profound — yet not profound enough to keep his own wife from cheating on him.

When le Carre first became famous, he was celebrated for being so realistic. Yet his fictional world is actually every bit as mythological as Fleming's. It's just subtler. In fact, Tinker, Tailor offers the seductive fantasy of entering a secret world, one imagined with alluring richness. We breathe a conspiratorial mental atmosphere in which Every Single Word might be important. And we encounter an oh-so-proper bureaucracy in which the deadliest snakes aren't the Soviets, but the colleagues slithering around your office. Here, even the most devout patriot will be sacrificed by his own side in the great chess game of Cold War politics.

Like millions of others, I can't get enough of this stuff, but for a while it all but vanished. You see, le Carre's brand of espionage tale was rooted in the Cold War, which offered the neatness of two opposed sides facing off. When communism collapsed, so did the contemporary spy novel. The West lacked a clearly defined enemy.

Happily for spy stories, though not for the world, it has one again in radical Islam. And almost predictably, we've begun seeing le Carre-tinged espionage stories — like Showtime's current series Homeland, in which Claire Danes plays a CIA agent who doesn't quite trust anyone, not even her own bosses, and PBS's Page Eight, starring the wonderful British actor Bill Nighy as a canny old spy who stumbles upon volatile knowledge he'd sooner not know.

I can recommend both. Yet truthfully, neither can rival Tinker, Tailor, an almost perfect fantasy for those of us less thrilled by shootouts or chases on jet-skis than by the exposure of what lies hidden. In fact, what makes le Carre's spy stories so primally gripping is that, at bottom, they're not actually about espionage. They're about secrets and lies and shifting identities — which is to say, they're a metaphor for our own daily lives. Except, of course, that Smiley's story is really, really exciting.

[goddesspharo]

Tagged by @antiquitea.

3 ships: This changes like...all the time. Wave something shiny and pretty and vaguely antagonistic at me and I'm pretty much yours.

I rewatched Top Gun Maverick over the weekend and even though the point of The Hard Deck intro was to establish that they all knew each other carnally, I'm feeling very into Hangman/Phoenix at the moment because who doesn't love a pairing with two extremely attractive people being shitheads to each other while secretly wanting to bone?

I feel a flare up of "why didn't Grace and Daniel make out in Ready Or Not?" at least once a month so that's still a thing, I guess. Adam Brody deserves better than being a second tier character in those dumb Shazam movies.

I miss seeing Kyle Valenti's face every week for two minutes an episode on Roswell, New Mexico so I am still extremely bitter that my garbage CW show got cancelled (except that I genuinely believe the first season was stellar and not just because every music cue was from the 90s) and after four seasons of wanting someone to love Kyle Valenti back, we fiiiiiiiinally got Kyle and Isobel getting together in the last episode after a season of secret and not so secret pining only so they could have...one minute of screen time together in which they...didn't even kiss? THANKS FOR DEPRIVING ME OF ALL THE NICE THINGS. Am I ever going to stop being bitter over not getting to see them date or make out or do all the things that Lily Cowles probably put up on her vision board? NO, I WILL NOT. Get them booked and busy!!!!

1st ever ship: I can't think that far back! I'm sure there were many before this but off the top of my head, my first thought after "I'm too ancient to remember this" was that Tommy and Kimberly in Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers ruled. Remember the proverbial water cooler discussions in elementary school when they introduced the green ranger? SPECTACULAR. Ah, back in the days when we thought some dude using a flute to summon a robot dragon was the height of being a bad ass. (Side note: the Power Rangers movie with Dacre Montgomery and Naomi Scott doesn't get enough credit for being a really good time. They teased a sequel that will never happen because not enough people recognize a good reboot!!!)

last song: Last week, I was inexplicably listening to A LOT of Dave Matthews Band live performances. I guess the inexplicable bit is that last week Spotify's Discover Weekly decided to randomly put a Stevie Nicks cover of "Crash Into Me" on my playlist, which sent me into a DMB spiral - I know this is deeply uncool because anyone who was alive in the 90s heard that song at least once a day for YEARS on the radio so we are all hardwired to roll our eyes at them, but this spiral led me to this (in which the late great LeRoi Moore's sax solo is the closest I will ever come to understanding Damien Chazelle's obsession with jazz) and, even more spectacularly, this, which is worth even listening to in the background. But actually none of that is what I've been listening to more recently. I was on call the other night and the only thing that got me through 48 hours on 4 hours of sleep was Tina Turner, particularly "Nutbush City Limits."

currently reading: Patricia Highsmith's Strangers On A Train.

last movie: I watched Breathe (2014; dir. Mélanie Laurent) last night and it was SO GOOD! Highly recommend! It was also refreshing to watch a movie that wasn't two hours long. Bring back 90-100 minute movies!

currently consuming: I'm drinking black tea with milk.

currently watching: About to watch the pilot of Mayfair Witches even though Alexandra Daddario has the acting range of a beautiful block of wood, but I'm in the intersection of AMC's venn diagram of "bitches who miss Interview With The Vampire" and "bitches who miss Jack Huston's face."

currently craving: Lychees, but they're out of season :(

Tagging whoever wants to do it!