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jav-uni · 3 months ago

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It's already hard for the GP to know who she is, but interesting article though. Thanks, nonnie! //

No problem! Here’s another fascinating read I found — which confirms all that team real has stated during this stunt:

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/uk/love-sex/relationships/a60871843/anatomy-of-a-celebrity-break-up/

Wow, that's a fascinating article! Thanks!

And, you meant to say "team PR", right? 😉, because as you said it confirms what team PR has said since day one.

Edit: Nonnie clarified and meant to say "Team PR" instead of "Team Real"

In case you can't open the link I posted the text of the article below.

The anatomy of a celebrity break-up

Celebrity divorce lawyers have been busy... it feels like there’s new break-up hitting our newsfeeds every week. But as we all become more savvy to the inner workings of the A-list PR machine, how do the insiders keep reputations firmly intact?By Annabelle LeeUpdated: 21 August 2024

Within seconds, the comments begin to pile up. It’s a Friday afternoon and the latest celebrity split has just hit our Instagram feeds. The announcement sets off a ripple effect: celebrity journalists cancel their dinner plans and begin furiously typing their stories. The stars’ publicists are carefully watching the reaction – there are certain details they really don’t want out there (and some they definitely do). As for the celebrities everyone’s talking about? She’s on tour. He’s cuddling up to his new girlfriend. The split happened months ago. It’s only now, after multiple meetings and rewrites of the statement that we get to know about it. Welcome to the wild world of celebrity break-ups...

I’ve been working as a celebrity journalist for more than a decade and even I can’t keep up with how many showbiz break-ups there were last year. Taylor Swift and Joe Alwyn. Sophie Turner and Joe Jonas. Jodie Turner-Smith and Joshua Jackson. Ricky Martin and Jwan Yosef. Britney Spears and Sam Asghari. Even Jada Pinkett Smith recently revealed that, while not legally divorced, she and Will Smith have been separated since 2016. In recent months we've been shaken by the splits of Maya Jama and Stormzy, and Tommy Fury and Molly-Mae. And now, Bennifer have called time on their romance, with Ben Affleck and Jennifer Lopez filing divorce on their second wedding anniversary.

Something is going on in the world of showbiz – and it’s not just the divorce lawyers working overtime. There’s a whole host of publicists and dedicated crisis management teams who hustle behind the scenes to try to make a split appear as rosy as possible.

And while, from my experience in the real world, relationship breakdowns are usually messy, complicated, and painful, in the world of showbiz they maintain a veneer of mutual and loving, with both parties vowing to stay mates. There’s the now legendary “consciously uncoupling” statement from Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin, Reese Witherspoon and Jim Toth said they “move forward with deep love, kindness, and mutual respect”, and Sofía Vergara and Joe Manganiello “love and care for each other very much”. But those statements are hiding a multitude of secrets. Secrets that are carefully controlled by a team of people. So, what really goes on behind the scenes of a split? I dug deep into my contacts book to find out...

It is with great sadness...

Think about your most recent split. You bitched about them to your friends, right? Celebs are the same. Except when they’re bitching, it’s to their publicist rather than their BFF. “As a publicist, you know every detail of your client’s life so you’re one of the first people they call if they go through a relationship breakdown,” says Dermot McNamara, founding director of Candid, a PR and talent management agency. “Then comes the media strategy.”

In other words, it’s not as simple as: break up, make your announcement, move on. Instead, it’s break up, pull together a carefully constructed (and discreet) team to find a way to get the news out that not only makes the celebrity look good but also, if done right, benefits them by promoting whatever work project they have going on. And it all begins with that key statement.

Whether it’s released via a seemingly hurried Notes screenshot or in a polished press release, “they’re usually written in tandem with the celebrity’s publicist”, explains Melissa Morris, a celebrity publicist at Can We Schmooze Consulting in the US, who has advised on some high-profile celebrity break-ups but won’t indulge my nosiness and reveal which. “The content of the statement is carefully crafted to strike a balance between respecting the privacy of those involved and addressing the public’s curiosity.”

“The statement has to strike a balance between respecting privacy and addressing public curiosity”

Publicist Sally Windsor, who has worked at some of the UK’s biggest PR agencies, adds: “Most publicists have a background in media; we know how to phrase statements and word them diplomatically. Sometimes, you’ll have your client in the background saying, ‘He’s awful, tell them he did this to me’, but as a publicist your priority has to be keeping the language neutral.” Yep, as much as the celeb might want to tell the world what their ex did, the statement is not the place to start mud-slinging – that comes later. Particularly as the statement is part of a wider strategy from a celebrity’s team, which is why it can often take weeks, or even months, to plan.

“You look at what is coming up for them. If they have a big project coming up, you don’t want to necessarily announce it straight away so that they’re not constantly asked about the relationship during promotion,” explains McNamara. “But equally some people will want to get publicity and for the news to come out at the same time, so there is more interest in them.” The column inches the break-up provides become the perfect promotion.

Take Taylor Swift: her break-up with Joe Alwyn hit the news just as The Eras Tour was kicking off. What followed was multiple fan TikTok videos of her slaying it on stage, accompanied by captions such as, ‘ways to boss the break-up’ and ‘I can’t even get out of bed after a break-up and Taylor’s on an arena tour’, adding a personal element of intrigue to an already hugely talked-about tour (set to make a record $1bn in ticket sales). It was speculated that this was no coincidence and that the pair had broken up months earlier... This, of course, was never confirmed or denied by Taylor’s team (neither Joe or Taylor have ever spoken publicly on the split).

It’s not just projects that are factored into the timing of the split statement – consideration of the working hours (and press deadlines) of the media is also factored in. I remember when Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux announced their divorce, late one Thursday evening. For those working in weekly magazines at the time, their cover story for the following week had already been written and decided so journalists had to work late, quickly pulling what they had planned to replace it with the news. Some managed, some didn’t – hugely impacting sales on the news stand the following week. This could all have been a deliberate move on the pair’s part.

While the fast pace of the online news cycle disrupts this slightly, traditional print schedules will still be considered. If a celebrity posts their break-up statement on a Friday – they’re trying to avoid coverage. “Journalists aren’t usually looking for stories on a Friday afternoon – they’ll be doing admin and thinking about clocking off for the weekend,” Windsor explains. “And similarly, if I was looking after a celebrity who wants publicity, I’d be putting that statement out early in the week.” Of course, all of this is great if the pair’s teams are working in harmony, and both are willing to ensure that each party comes across well – but that isn’t always the case...

A source close to the couple...

You know the ‘close friend’ or ‘insider’ often quoted on celebrity news articles? They’re usually the celebrity themselves (via their PR) trying to take a swipe or get their side of the story out there, before their ex does. It gives them a chance to potentially sling some mud, have their say, and, crucially, control the narrative after a split to maintain their client’s reputation.

While the statement often appears to show a harmonious, loving split, that’s rarely the case and it’s more than likely each party wants their story out there. “About 70% of what I do is letting stuff out through source quotes,” explains Windsor. “You’d generally always announce a break-up through social media and then the next day get source quotes out there.” McNamara agrees, adding: “It’s a great way to control the messaging. If journalists don’t get their sources from their publicist, they’ll just go elsewhere.”

“Some want the news to come out at the same time [as a big project] so there’s more interest”

This is where things get messy. The world of celebrity has changed drastically over recent years and it’s a lot harder to keep the dirty details secret any more. The social media rumour mill means that bombshell splits that we never saw coming (think Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt) are almost a relic of the past. Publicists are keeping an eye on whisper accounts such as DeuxMoi and, in the UK, Popbitch, if they’re waiting to reveal a split. If the news hits these or people begin to notice that the pair haven’t featured each other on social media in a while, they may rethink their strategy and announce earlier than planned.

“A-listers have a whole team looking after publicity and these sites would definitely be on their radar,” confirms McNamara. “If a rumour ramps up, they want to know about it.” Some of the publicists I spoke to also agree that a celebrity’s team might leak break-up news through sites such as DeuxMoi to help control the narrative in a more natural way.

Social media is also changing the game, giving us normal folk (and celebrities behind the backs of their publicists) the chance to spill some tea. Kiss and tells are no longer tabloid fodder but instead ‘story time’ TikToks, with those spilling secrets on the platform in the name of ‘sharing their truth’ (and racking up their follower counts in the process). Many keep their alleged lovers anonymous, choosing to hint by ‘liking’ the guesses in the comments. Model Sumner Stroh made worldwide news when she alleged that she had an affair with Maroon 5 star Adam Levine on TikTok, with a backdrop of messages thought to be between the two of them – claims Levine denied.

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Then there’s the odd occasion when celebrities will, much to their publicists’ horror, take to social media (seemingly) without having thought their decision through. In a moment where he admits he “just snapped”, Calvin Harris took to Twitter in 2016 to drag Taylor Swift after their split. And lately, we’ve seen Sophie Turner demand “the immediate return of [their] children”, who she claimed had been “wrongfully removed” by Joe Jonas – which he denied. The pair later released a joint statement saying mediation had been successful and they “look forward to being great co-parents”.

It’s never been easier to get your side of the story out there, but, as we’re seeing, when two parties try to control the narrative, it gets complicated very quickly (and publicly). Real Housewives Of Atlanta stars Kim Zolciak and Kroy Biermann filed for divorce earlier this year and the messy details of their split reached the press almost instantly. Kroy requested full custody of their four children, before Kim alleged Kroy smoked weed around them and asked the court for him to be drugs tested. Then he alleged she had a gambling problem and asked for her to undergo a psychological evaluation.

And last year wasn’t much smoother for Ariana Grande, who ended her marriage to Dalton Gomez before (that same week) allegedly falling into the arms of her Wicked co-star Ethan Slater. Rumours then circulated that their relationship began while they were both still married, with Ariana being branded a ‘homewrecker’ and Ethan’s ex-wife, Lilly Jay (mum to their one-year-old son) calling her family the “collateral damage” in the whole saga, adding that Ariana is not a “girl’s girl”. ‘Consciously uncoupling’ suddenly seems a lot more appealing.

“I’ve dealt with my fair share of messy break-ups,” explains a well-known UK-based publicist (who we’ve kept anonymous) who has represented many celebrities over the years. “One of my previous clients was dating one of the biggest reality stars in the country. When they split, he put the break-up out on social media before we’d even had the chance to come up with our approach,” the publicist reveals. “At the time there was a lot of reporting that he had secretly got back together with his ex, and before we knew it both girls were being played off against each other. My client was heartbroken over the relationship breakdown, so I worked with her to give anonymous stories to the press to share her side of the story and build a positive narrative. Then a few months later, I booked her onto a different reality show to share her side once emotions had died down. When it comes to celebrities, I often find the more gushing the statement is, the more insincere it is. ‘We move on with the greatest respect for each other’ and the like is the most disingenuous thing I’ve heard in my life.” But if we start to see a more ‘real’ side to showbiz splits, how will that affect how we view our own relationships?

Love is dead?

If you happened to walk down New York’s Cornelia Street in April this year, you’d have been confronted with bouquets spread across the street and crowds belting out Taylor Swift’s most heartbreaking hits. For a brief period, the street (where she wrote the song “Cornelia Street”, believed to be about Joe Alwyn) became a shrine to the couple’s dead relationship. Teenagers were taking photos of themselves holding roses and crying. One even told a journalist: “I cried for a couple of hours and the next day I stayed in my room all day. It made me believe that love wasn’t real anymore. And I puked.”

This is extreme, but we do get invested in our favourite celebs – and their relationships, too. During my research for this piece, I spoke to lots of people about how celebrity break-ups have affected them and most could see themselves in the celebrity couple they had once so adored. When Jen and Brad announced their divorce in 2005, there was an outpouring of sadness from fans around the world. But that was 18 years ago, and we are still obsessed over their split. One fan told me: “I just loved them together. I felt like I knew Jennifer because I’d watched her so much on TV playing Rachel [in Friends]. When they split, I thought, ‘If they can’t make it, who can?

It works both ways. When Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck reunited in 2021 after their 2004 split, the internet was overjoyed. And, when they revealed they’d got married, every one of their wedding posts was flooded with fans saying, ‘I love your love story because it’s so similar to my own’ and ‘I think her prior marriages never worked out because her true love has always been Ben.’ Cut to now, with the couple having now filed for divorce after giving their relationship another go, these comments are revealed as intense parasocial pressure reveals itself.

This is common, us pinning our hopes and dreams on to celebrities. As well as proclamations of true love being ‘dead’ when celebrities split, there’s also the idea that if infidelity is involved, it means that anyone can get cheated on (the whole, ‘If they can get cheated on there’s no hope for the rest of us’.) But while it’s natural, what we’re actually doing is trying to project ourselves on to a soap opera – something that isn’t real. “Following a celebrity’s love life is like living through them – it’s escapism from your day-to-day. You might think, ‘I wish I had a husband who looks like Brad Pitt’, or, ‘I wish I lived in Beverley Hills’, but a lot of the time, their lives are fabricated stories created by their PR people,” explains psychologist Jason O’Callaghan, who is a former showbiz reporter based in Ireland and now a therapist to many celebrities.

As for their relationships reflecting our own? “It’s actually the opposite. Hollywood stars have higher break-up and divorce rates than the rest of us because of the pressure of being in the public eye,” O’Callaghan explains. A study by the MarriageFoundation found that 40% of celebrities divorced within a 10-year period, yet the UK national average for divorce in the first decade is 20%. Throw in long-distance travel, conflicting schedules, and differing career priorities, and it’s far from a fairy tale.

“I worked with my client to give anonymous stories to the press to share her side of the story”

“There is nothing to suggest that the more attractive you are, the happier your relationships will be,” says O’Callaghan. “Even if you look like a Hollywood star, it doesn’t mean you are immune. Relationships don’t tend to last just because you’re attractive. Infidelity is caused by a number of things, and while attraction is important in a relationship, infidelity and marriage breakdowns are not prevented by being as conventionally attractive as possible to your partner.”

The truth is that looks, money, fame... they just don’t guarantee a happier life. And you don’t need to be a celebrity to know it is hard. out. there – whether you’re dating or making a relationship work. With longer life spans, a growing interest in different relationship models and the fact we’re no longer pushing the idea that you have to be in a relationship to be happy, it’s not surprising divorce rates in the UK rose by around 10% in 2021, with 42% of marriages ending in divorce.

But if celebrity break-ups can teach us anything, it’s that, in the words of Taylor herself, “There’ll be happiness after you, there was happiness because of you, both of these things can be true”. Just because a split happens, it doesn’t mean love wasn’t there. While celebrity break-ups can feel brutal, they also remind us we’ve all been there and we’re never as alone in heartbreak as we feel. Break-ups are messy and complicated, perfectly worded split announcement or not, but life goes on. Even if life isn’t a sold-out world tour for everyone...

This article originally appeared in the Dec 23/Jan 24 issue of Cosmopolitan UK.

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nat-seal-well · 3 months ago

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I would like to know everything about the Marin and Bobby marriage and divorce please 👀 no pressure!!!

Omg hi PD!! Thank you so much for this ask, I saw it when I got up this morning and it made me smile :) And it meant I got to spend my entire shift thinking about it, haha!

After they met in college and got into a relationship, the two of them would have moved in together pretty quickly (u-haul lesbian Marin, rip). Marin would have moved into Bobby’s apartment, because they were (are) broke and refused to accept any help from Rebecca, especially financially. And Bobby lived closer to the college they were going to so really it was just what made sense. (At least, that’s what they said to themselves to rationalize it, lol.)

It was messy, of course. Bobby was Marin’s first partner, and they latched on way too fast, too desperate to be everything they thought Bobby wanted them to be. And, well, we know Bobby. She liked it a lot. It was definitely something she encouraged, but there were times that she was also annoyed by it, which would lead to arguments. Marin was also very insecure; this was the first person who’s ever been interested in them, and they were afraid of ruining it. They projected a lot of their worries onto her, and were far too clingy, so. More arguments.

But at the end of the day, they still stayed together. For the most part. There were times when one of them would get mad and leave, and things were… uncertain. At the end of the day, though, they would always come back. And things would be good for a little while. And then they’d fight again, and so on.

Marriage wasn’t something either of them ever had on the table. They were just together, and sharing a living space. The idea was only brought up one night when the two of them were drinking to celebrate passing midterms. Bobby was the one who brought it up, as a joke, because they were watching a trashy reality show.

“Hey, what if we got married?”

Marin laughed and said yes, jokingly, and they used a straw wrapper leftover from dinner—burgers from some cheap fast food joint—to make a little ring and tie it around Bobby’s finger. Both of them ended up falling asleep together on the couch, shitfaced, and woke up with terrible hangovers. The whole thing was completely forgotten about until Bobby spotted the paper wrapped around her finger, and then she thought about it for real.

“It would just make sense,” she said to them over coffee. “I mean, we’re already living together, so it’s pretty much the same thing. And there’s taxes—everyone says getting married is good for taxes.”

Marin, still a little drunk, just looked at her. And then they said, “Yeah, sure. Why not?”

They went to the courthouse later that week.

It was small, unexciting, and cheap. Bobby threw on a white sundress and Marin dug up a button-down they bought ages ago for a part-time job interview. They bought flowers at the grocery store (and a sheet cake for when they got home) and exchanged rings they bought at a pawn shop, and that was it. They were married.

And, to no one’s surprise, things weren’t any better than they were before. Marin didn’t tell Rebecca a single thing until they got divorced a year later, when (as we all know) Marin discovered Bobby was passing off their work as her own. The fight was already guaranteed to be a messy one, but somehow it managed to escalate past the point of no return. It finally ended with Bobby throwing her ring at Marin and telling them to “get fuck out” of her apartment.

So they threw a couple things into their backpack and left. They stayed with Tina, who was their friend even then, until they were able to get their own place again. The legal divorce came a few months later and left them even more broke than they were before.

They kept their ring, though. At first it was because they were heartbroken, and then it was because they were angry—partially because they hated that they were so upset, and also because of what Bobby did. It was a reminder not to go back to her no matter how much they wanted to. (And they did want to. For a long time.)

Fortunately, Bobby doesn’t know they kept it. If she ever found out, she’d be insufferable. And be even more determined to get back with them again.

(Unfortunately, it’s likely something Nat will find, sooner or later.)

#sealy answers #plasticdodecagon #oc: marin

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viesanterieures · 1 year ago

Text

Locked In Mind

Robert Fischer (Inception) x female Reader

note: Welcome to my third Cillian Character fanfic, hope you like it :) I love plots like Shutter Island and tried to do something similar here & it‘s also a story about parasocial relationships and unrequited love. I think this is my darkest story and the one that stays with me the most, years after I wrote it...

summary: The reader is hopelessly in love with her boss Robert Fischer, but he doesn't seem to be interested in her. By an unexpected coincidence, they meet in the city and his sudden intense affection for her confuses her. The reader begins to suspect that something is wrong, and when she finally uncovers the truth about her encounters with Fischer the heartbreaking reality is revealed to her.

word count: 5000+

Masterlist

warnings: mental illness, depression

you don‘t have to watch the movie to understand the story.

It was just half past seven when she heard the familiar footsteps in the corridor approaching the office next door. A key was inserted into the lock and a moment later the door opened.

Glancing around to make sure her workspace wasn't too messy, she threw an old paper cup into the bin before her boss poked his head through the door.

"Good morning, Miss YN, so busy already?" he asked with a tired smile. "It doesn't reflect well on me as a boss to have my assistant here before me. I'm sorry, Monday mornings are always a bit stressful for me."

"No problem, Mr Fischer. I've already sorted the mail for you, it's on your desk," she said kindly, watching him as he took off his coat and hung it on the coat rack, a little damp from the rain.

"Thank you, I can count on you."

He was a very elegant, handsome man, about ten years her senior, with dark hair, blue eyes, high cheekbones and an elegant black suit. She must have stared at him a little too long, because he turned to her with a questioning smile.

Immediately her cheeks flushed and she turned back to her computer screen, but by then Mr Fischer had already approached her and placed some documents on her desk. "Please scan them all and email them to Mr Parker, he's been waiting for them for days," he said to her. It would be best if we sat down together later and quickly discuss my tasks for today, there is a lot to do. If I'm not mistaken, I have a client meeting at three today.

"At two, sir," she corrected him, handing him a planner with today's date thickly underlined.

He started to grin. "You see, this is exactly why I have an assistant."

Fischer disappeared into his office.

She sighed slightly and went to work scanning the documents. She had been working for Fischer Morrow, one of the world's largest energy companies, for barely a month. Their headquarters had moved from Sydney to London after the death of their CEO, Maurice Fischer. Her current boss, Robert Fischer, was a direct descendant.

She liked Fischer Jr a lot. He was friendly, supportive and didn't get angry when things didn't go to plan. But in some ways he always seemed so unapproachable. For example, he never talked about his private life and YN had no idea who he was outside of work. Then again, he was her boss and his private life was none of her business. But deep down she admitted that she was very interested in him.

The days flew by and she finally felt as if she had been employed by Fischer Morrow for an eternity. But who Robert Fischer really was remained a mystery.

One evening, as she was about to leave, she quietly opened the door to Fischer's office. He was sitting in front of his computer, his chin resting on his hands. "Have a nice evening, Mr Fischer." He jumped slightly, obviously not having heard her come in, but then he smiled. "Thank you, you too."

YN looked at her watch. "It's almost half past seven, don't you want to finish your work soon? Don't you have a wife waiting for you?"

Mr Fischer shrugged. "I've been divorced for a few years now, and I only see my daughter at weekends. The only thing waiting for me is an empty, dark apartment."

YN held her breath. It was the first time he had told her anything about his private life. But in the same second, he seemed to regret his words.

"No one waits for me either," she said. "Except for my cat."

Fischer raised an eyebrow with a smile. "At least that's something."

Finally she said goodbye and left the office. But all the way home, she kept thinking about her conversation with Fischer.

Was he perhaps as lonely as she was?

Tired, YN lay in bed. She didn't even have the strength to change her clothes and remove her make up. Although she wanted nothing more than to get out of that itchy, uncomfortable dress and tights. A soft meow sounded beside her and she felt something soft brush against her arm. Smiling, she pulled the cat closer and buried her face in its white fur.

Since leaving her small home village for London, she had no one to talk to. Her old friends had all left her and moved on with their own lives. Robert Fischer was the only one she spoke to regularly, though it was far from a friendship. With the cat in her arms, she turned to the other side. But what if she had feelings for him?

Maybe she should tell him. But wasn't that too much? He was still her boss, after all, and there were probably plenty of women who were interested in him.

She quickly pushed the thought aside and closed her eyes.

Robert Fischer turned curiously when he heard the quick clicking of heels in the corridor. Panting, his assistant opened the door and dropped her bag on the desk.

"Miss YN, are you okay?"

Her hair was messy, her coat hung loosely over her shoulders as if she hadn't had time to put it on properly, and her lipstick was a little smudged.

"I… overslept," she said, panting. "I'm sorry."

Fischer looked at her with a raised eyebrow. "It's okay. But it shouldn't happen again."

"Of course not, sir," she replied immediately.

He quickly disappeared into his office and returned with a thick stack of papers and a folder.

"Would you be so kind as to sort these documents alphabetically for me? They've been on my desk for days. I know it's not an exciting task."

She nodded and took the heavy pile from his hand. Fischer thanked her and hurried back to his office.

Sighing, she set to work. But with each page, she found her concentration fading and her mind wandering. Her head ached, her eyes burned and she felt incredibly tired. But she tried not to show it, kept working as hard as she could and finally put the sorted file back on Mr Fischer's desk.

Exhausted, she walked back to her office, sat down in her chair and buried her face in her hands. She was shivering and her ears were ringing. Was it because she had forgotten to take her medicine today?

"Miss YN?" she heard her boss' voice.

She turned immediately and forced a smile. "Yes, Mr Fischer?"

"I have an job interview scheduled for ten, would you be so kind as to prepare the conference room for it?"

"Of course, sir."

He stopped halfway and looked at Victoria questioningly. "Are you okay? You look so pale." She nodded quickly, forcing a smile. "Everything's fine, Mr Fischer." Fischer looked at her, raised his eyebrows, then handed her the key to the meeting room and disappeared back into his office.

A strange feeling of dizziness spread through her head as she walked down the long corridor leading to the conference rooms.

What was wrong with her today?

When it started to get dark outside, YN finally turned off her computer and grabbed her bag. The strange dizziness had improved during the day, leading her to conclude that she simply needed a break from work. Fortunately, it was Friday. She knocked gently on Fischer's door, as she always did before leaving, to wish him a pleasant evening. He was sitting there as usual, his chin resting on his hand, deep in thought. He glanced up briefly and nodded politely, noticing her in the doorway. He looked stunningly handsome today, even after this long and exhausting day.

"I didn't ask you how the job interviews went this morning," she asked curiously. Fischer shook his head. "Terribly," he said. "None of these people I'd want in my company." His voice was cold and dismissive, and for a moment she thought he was referring to her, even though she knew he meant someone else. She smiled awkwardly and shrugged slightly. "Well, maybe the next one will be better."

Fischer remained silent.

"Have a good weekend, Mr Fischer."

"You too, Miss YN." He gave her a friendly smile.

"Do you have any plans for the weekend? I know a good restaurant, would you like to join me?" The moment she realised what she had just said, she bit her lip, her face turning red. Had she completely lost her mind? She desperately hoped he hadn't heard what she'd asked, but it was too late. She could see Fischer raise his eyebrows in confusion and stare at her.

"No, Miss YN. I'm not interested. I keep my work and personal life strictly separate." She immediately looked down, embarrassed. Thoughts raced through her mind like a rollercoaster and her cheeks felt as if they were on fire. "I'm sorry, Mr Fischer, I shouldn't have asked you that." She finally grabbed her bag and left the office without another word, feeling Fischer's gaze on her back.

It was drizzling lightly as she walked through the busy streets of London. The cold air did her good and she felt her head clear a little.

Why had she done this? It had been clear from the start that a man like him would reject her. But the words had come out of her mouth as if she had completely lost control. She felt a tear roll down her cheek and quickly wiped it away. She didn't want to have a mental breakdown in public, even though it felt like Fischer had torn her heart into a thousand pieces. Suddenly the strange dizziness returned and her vision blurred slightly. The sounds of London became muffled, as if she were incredibly far away.

Miss YN, wait!" she suddenly heard a voice behind her that seemed to be getting closer.

She turned around. The dizziness had disappeared as quickly as it had appeared. Startled, her eyes widened as she saw the person in front of her - it was Mr Fischer. What was he doing here? Had he followed her? She tried to speak, but all she could manage was a hoarse stutter.

"I wanted to apologize, Miss YN. It wasn't very nice of me to brush you off like that," he said with a gentle laugh. His voice sounded strangely different, softer than usual. Wordless and spellbound, she stared into the pair of light blue eyes before her, apologetic and gentle in their expression. She knew Mr Fischer had blue eyes, but she'd never noticed how incredibly bright they were.

"It's okay, don't worry," she managed to say, her knees shaking with excitement.

"No, no, Miss YN. I'll think about the dinner offer, okay? Just because we work together doesn't mean we can't have dinner together, does it?" Fischer suggested, and she nodded slowly, then smiled.

Why this sudden change of mind?

"Well, see you soon." He waved goodbye and YN, still completely confused, raised her hand in response. But before she could form another thought, he had disappeared into the crowd.

Carefully, YN pressed the shutter on her old camera, focusing the lens on the small lake in front of her. Satisfied, she lowered it. She was confident that this snapshot would turn out well. This park was a place she often visited to clear her head and pursue her passion, photography, as it offered many beautiful subjects. Especially now, in autumn, when the trees were covered with colourful leaves and the silence was slowly descending, with only the occasional pedestrian passing by.

Her dizziness had eased a little, but not completely. Fortunately, it was Saturday and she had the whole day to herself. YN sat down on a bench under a tree that looked to be at least a hundred years old.

She sat there for a while, lost in thought. Eventually she got up and made her way to the West End. The streets of London were noisy and busy as she walked, looking for a warm place in a café and something to eat. Crowds of people rushed past her, music played from somewhere and loud voices filled the air. Exhausted, she rubbed her temples. Maybe she should have stayed home and rested.

Suddenly she held her breath as she spotted a familiar face in the crowd. Dark hair, high cheekbones and piercing blue eyes. Fischer. But before she could think, he had already noticed her and started to smile at her.

"Miss YN, how nice to see you! What a coincidence!"

It was the first time she had seen him in his casual clothes rather than one of his business suits. But this was no less elegant and stylish. He was wearing a well-fitting black coat, a grey knitted jumper underneath, black trousers and leather shoes. It was so strange to see him outside his office at Fischer Morrow Company. Suddenly he didn't seem so unapproachable and distant anymore.

"What are you doing here?" she asked curiously.

He paused for a moment. He seemed to be considering whether or not to tell her.

"I brought my little girl to her friend's house for a sleepover. She's been asking me for weeks because her mum won't let her."

"So you're a cool dad," YN replied.

Fischer rolled his eyes. "I'm the one who lets her get away with everything. We had to turn back twice because she realised she had forgotten her favourite stuffed animal and her toothbrush."

She laughed softly. In a strange way, she enjoyed him talking so openly about his life.

"Oh wow, that looks amazing. It's quite old, isn't it?" Mr Fischer pointed to the camera around her neck. "From the 1960s. But it takes incredibly good pictures for that time," she explained. Fischer seemed genuinely impressed. "Do you have more like it?"

"I have quite a few. From the 50s to the 80s, actually, and of course some modern digital cameras. Photography has been my passion since I was a child," she explained. Fischer looked at her with an interested smile. "So there's actually film in there that needs to be developed?" she nodded in confirmation. "Some photo shops still offer that service, yes."

Mr Fischer seemed genuinely interested in her hobby, asking her questions about it as they walked side by side through the streets of London. She felt incredibly comfortable in his presence and hoped he wouldn't leave so soon. Finally he pointed to the camera again. "Would you take a picture of me, please? I'd like a 60's style photo of myself." YN's heart began to race in her chest. What had he just said?

"Of course, Mr Fischer," she replied nervously. "Robert. My name is Robert," he replied. Suddenly, she stopped in her tracks, completely surprised. No one at Fischer Morrow Ltd called him by his first name, and outside the company she had only heard his uncle, Peter Browning, call him Robert.

"Let's find a nice spot for the photo," he said, letting his gaze wander until it settled on a beautiful fountain.

Carefully, she picked up the camera, took a few steps back and held it directly in front of Robert's face. "Smile, please," she instructed him, finally pressing the shutter.

A pedestrian who had just passed them looked at YN with a confused expression and shook his head. Frowning, she looked after him before carefully tucking the camera into her handbag.

Are you hungry?" asked Robert. "We could go to a restaurant."

Surprised, she looked at him. "I don't know…" she said hesitantly, chewing her lower lip. In fact, she had never expected to be asked such a question.

He looked at her with raised eyebrows and she could see the disappointment in his eyes. Finally, she worked up the courage to say what was on her mind.

"It's just… To be honest, you told me yesterday that you were someone who kept your work and personal life strictly separate. Maybe it would be better if we did. After all, I'm your employee."

As much as she wanted to spend time with him, she was afraid of developing any more feelings for him. Robert nodded slowly and shoved his hands into his coat pockets.

"I really like you. I just never wanted to show it, that's why I was so reserved with you and told you I wasn't interested in you".

She closed her eyes and let out a sigh as a ton of thoughts went through her head. Robert finally nodded at her with a slightly disappointed look on his face and turned on his heel.

"Wait!" she called after him.

He stopped immediately and looked at her hopefully.

"Let's give it a try, shall we?"

YN… is that a French name?"

Robert's voice sounded slightly tipsy as he grinned curiously at her, twirling his wine glass casually in his hands. The plate in front of him was empty and he had now carefully placed the cutlery on it, waiting for a waitress to take it away.

He had taken her to a rather fancy and expensive place, the walls were dark wood panelling, the chairs were covered in red velvet and soft jazz music was playing on one of the radios. Robert looked hauntingly beautiful that night. His skin seemed incredibly soft and flawless, his jawline even more prominent, and his blue eyes shone almost ghostly in the dim light, almost like he wasn’t real…

She smiled, nodded and took a sip from her glass. "My father is French. I grew up in France but moved to England when I was 15."

He nodded with interest, rubbing his chin with his forefinger.

"And you? I heard you're Australian," she asked curiously.

Robert laughed and ran a hand through his dark hair. "Well, my accent makes it obvious."

YN blushed and looked down at her plate. What a stupid question.

But Robert didn't seem to mind too much, because he started talking about his life in Sydney, how he had finally moved to London after his father's death, and she listened with interest.

But suddenly he stopped and looked at her thoughtfully. "But I'm probably just boring you."

YN immediately shook her head. "No, you're not," she told him. "I find it really interesting to find out all this about you."

At that moment a waitress came to their table with a smile and asked YN in a friendly tone if she had enjoyed her meal. But the waitress paid no attention to Robert, YN noticed with surprise. Perhaps she was just being extra polite to the lady.

YN's date pulled out a black leather purse and rummaged through it. Quickly, YN pulled a few notes out of the bag and handed them to the waitress. "Keep the change," she said.

The waitress looked at her with wide eyes, "Thank you, ma'am," she said gratefully, "have a nice evening.

Then she turned and left the table.

"You didn't have to do that," Robert said. "As a gentleman, it's actually my job to pay."

She shook her head in amusement. "I bet that's never happened to you before, has it?"

Robert shook his head and took the last drink from his glass. There was a moment of silence between them.

"All right. So what's the plan for the rest of the evening?"

She looked at him in surprise. As soon as he said the words, she felt a tingle in her stomach.

The church clock struck twelve as she crossed the street hand in hand with Robert. It was freezing, and she had pulled her scarf so far up her face that only her eyes and nose were visible. Her date looked at her with amusement. "Are you going to rob a bank?" he asked, laughing out loud.

"Shh!" she snapped at him, putting her fingers to his lips. "You'll wake up the whole neighbourhood."

Although it was quite dark and she could only make out Robert, she knew that his typical mischievous grin was back on his face. She pulled him firmly behind her until they reached the small white building.

"Is this where you live?" Robert asked.

She put her finger to his lips for a second time until Robert stopped talking and looked silently into her eyes. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she finally stood on her toes, put her arms around his neck and placed her lips on his. Robert returned the kiss without hesitation and gently pulled her into his arms. YN could hardly believe what was happening. It was everything she had secretly wanted for months. They remained like this for a moment before she finally let go of him and reached for her key.

She felt for Robert's upper arm and finally pulled him into her apartment, closing the door behind him. She immediately wrapped her arms around him and began to kiss him again. His lips were a little cold and tasted of wine. Together they stumbled backwards into her bedroom, taking off his coat, which she tossed carelessly to the floor.

Robert's fingers stroked carefully along her hip and fumbled a little with her belt while she was busy planting little kisses on his neck. With slightly trembling hands she pulled his jumper over his head and Robert took her hand.

"Are you nervous?" he wanted to know. She remained silent.

"Don't be," he whispered softly into her ear, taking her in his arms again and pulling her onto the bed. Breathing softly, she clung to his chest, leaned back and finally closed her eyes as she felt his warm skin against hers.

The sun shone through the half-open curtains, creating a narrow, bright streak across the floor. Blinking, she opened her eyes and stretched. But immediately a sharp pain shot through her head again and she held her forehead tiredly. Confused, she sat up and tried to remember what had happened yesterday.

But when she heard soft breathing next to her, she turned quickly and all the events of last night came back to her. Smiling, she looked over at Robert, snuggled up next to her in her beige blanket, sleeping peacefully. Tenderly stroking his messy hair, she lay down beside him again and then began to caress his chest. Perhaps what they had done was wrong. After all, they were two people who should never have fallen in love. But it had happened, and it felt so right. They remained in this position for some time, Robert asleep and YN lost in thought.

Her eyes swept through the bedroom until they settled on a small white box on her dresser. Quickly sitting up, she reached for it and put a small pill into her mouth. Eventually, Robert began to move a little beside her, opening his eyes tiredly. Smiling broadly, she gave him a small kiss on the tip of his nose.

"Good morning," she whispered.

"Good morning," Robert murmured in a raspy morning voice.

"Did you sleep well?" she asked.

"Yes, wonderfully." He yawned loudly and took her into his arms as she laid her head lovingly on his shoulder.

"Wait, what time is it?" he suddenly wanted to know.

"Quarter past ten, why do you ask?" she replied.

"Shit," Robert muttered as he let go of the hug, jumped out of the bed and started to pick up his clothes, which were strewn all over the floor.

"Wait, wait, where are you going?" she asked, looking at him in confusion.

"I should've picked up my daughter by now," he replied, hurrying to get dressed.

Sighing, she pulled the blanket around her a little tighter. "Can't it wait? Can't you stay for breakfast?"

"I'm sorry, but I'm sure she's already waiting for me.“ Robert dodged her questions, grabbing his coat on the floor and sighing when he saw her disappointed look.

He walked slowly towards her, stroking her chin with his finger, and finally whispered: "We can catch up later." Then he put a soft kiss on her lips before turning around and disappearing through the door. She sank back into the pillows and pulled the blanket over her head.

The rest of Sunday flew by. Mostly because her mind was on Robert and she could hardly wait to see him again tomorrow at work. She had probably never looked forward to a Monday in her life as much as she did that day.

The next morning, YN carefully applied her lipstick and looked at herself in the bathroom mirror. She noticed that the collar of her white blouse was a little crooked and quickly adjusted it. She wanted to look her best for Robert today, so he wouldn't change his mind and lose interest in her.

Humming softly, she put on her black high heels and grabbed her handbag. She quickly put another pill into her mouth and put the box in her bag. Her headache was completely gone and her head finally felt clear and light again. In a good mood, she breathed in the fresh morning air and made her way to work.

Her heels clicked on the floor as she walked down the familiar corridor of Fischer Morrow. The lights were on in Robert's office. She ran a final hand through her hair, smoothed her blouse and opened the door to her own office.

The air was stuffy and hot. Coughing, she ran to the window and opened it.

"Good morning, Miss YN, I hope you had a nice weekend," a familiar voice sounded from behind her.

Startled, she turned to see Robert's face as he stuck his head through the door, as he always did.

Why didn't he call her by her first name? Confused, she stared at him, trying to form a clear sentence. "But… But… we spent it together…" her voice finally broke. Her head suddenly hurt again.

He seemed so different again. Not the Robert she had spent the weekend with, not the one who had apologised for being too rude to her, not the one who had made her laugh and told her about his life. He seemed more like the one she had worked with for months, the one who never revealed anything about himself.

"Miss YN? I haven't seen you since Friday, when you left my office after… asking me that question."

Her heart almost stopped. Suddenly her knees gave way and she sank to the floor.

"Are you okay? Are you feeling unwell?" Concerned, he bent down to her. "Do you want to go home and rest?"

She nodded slightly and wiped a tear from her eye, which had turned her fingers black from the carefully applied mascara. Then she got up and left the office.

At home, she lay motionless on her bed, tears streaming down her cheeks. She couldn't think straight and her throat felt incredibly dry. The door to her room, which was only ajar, opened gently and something small and white slipped through. Sniffling, she stretched out her arms and lifted her cat onto the bed.

Everything that had happened that weekend had been fake. She had made it all up. And all of this happened because she had forgotten to take the pills she was taking for her hallucinations. Robert hadn't really followed her on Friday evening; it was all a figment of her imagination. While his real self was still sitting in the office, probably not thinking about her at all. Everything suddenly made sense: why Robert looked a bit different, why his voice sounded different, the waitress who ignored him on Saturday because she couldn’t actually see him, the pedestrian who gave her a confused look because she was talking to herself while taking the photo.

The photo.

She immediately got up, put on her shoes and walked to the photo shop where she had left the film to be developed. Her heart raced as the staff handed her the envelope with the photos. Trembling, she finally grabbed the Saturday night photo, without looking at it herself, and held it up to the staff's face. "What do you see?" she asked.

The young man looked at her in confusion, but remained polite. "The fountain at Piccadilly Circus. Great picture, it turned out really nice."

"Anything else?" she asked.

"No, ma'am," he replied, and it felt like a slap in her face. Fischer had never been there with her. Only her lonely and sad mind had led her to believe that he was interested in her and loved her. Tears welled in her eyes and she left the shop without another word. When she got home, she immediately took the white box of pills from her handbag, rushed into the kitchen, opened the box and poured the pills into the bin.

Crying and with burning eyes, she finally lay down on her bed and buried her head in the pillow as her cat purred softly beside her. She must have stayed like that for hours, as the sun began to set again outside her window. When she finally lifted her head and wiped the tears from her face, she saw a dark-haired man sitting beside her bed, looking at her lovingly with his pale blue eyes. A smile suddenly appeared on her face and she began to laugh, pulling the man into a tight embrace.

some explanations because i know that story is kinda mind-fucking:

• Is Robert Fischer all a creation of the readers mind?

- No he actually exists, he’s her boss and she‘s in love with him, so she imagines dating him.

• When is he real, when is he fake?

- The version Robert Fischer in the office is real, he turns her down when she asks him out, leaving YN heartbroken. The moment she leaves the office, she starts to imagine what it would be like if he apologised to her, so the man who follows her is just her imagination. The real Robert Fischer is still in his office at Fischer-Morrow.

When she visits the city on Saturday and meets "Robert" and goes on a date with him, it's also just her imagination. That's why other people react to her with confusion, because she's basically talking to herself all the time. On Sunday morning, when she wakes up next to him, he's still fake. When she takes her pills, he quickly "disappears" (he says he has to pick up his daughter...) because they stop her delusions.

On Monday morning, when she gets back to her office, the real Robert Fischer is there again, who hadn't seen her since he had rejected her on Friday evening.

When she gets home, she throws away her pills and her hallucination starts again. The man who sat next to her on her bed and comforted her is again the imaginary version of Robert.

#cillian murphy #cillian murphy x reader #cillian murphy fanfiction #cillian murphy x y/n #cillian murphy ff #robert fischer #Inception #robert fischer fanfiction

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pinkest-nekomata · 4 months ago

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A Spellbound brain dump

Sometimes a piece of media is so close to being great and then bungles it at the end in such a strange way that it leaves my brain... itchy. Idk. Like Wednesday, or the Acolyte. Unlike those two, where the analysis seemed worthwhile, my latest brain itch is courtesy of Spellbound, an obviously mid movie for children that is unlikely to be of much consequence. So it doesn't really seem worth analyzing, but given the ambitions this movie had to tell a "real story", maybe it's fair.

So, uh, if you watched Spellbound and care, you might find this interesting. Otherwise, I just need to get it out of my system.

Spellbound is one of those movies where you learn something at the end that changes the meaning of the rest of the plot.

As you watch it, it starts as a relatively straightforward premise: Princess's parents have been turned into literal monsters. It's been a year. They're trying to hide this from the kingdom and it's getting harder. Oracles from the forest finally arrive and inform the princess that she needs to bring her parents to the forest. Via magic, she does so. Then they go on a journey to cure the parents.

This is where things take a turn. Finally, they find the pool of light, but it turns out the parents can only be cured if they admit that they want a divorce. And, in fact, they were only cursed in the first place because they were fighting. This leaves the princess distraught, and the parents are pulled out of their self-centered thoughts to be reminded that they need to assure their child that they still love her. The family returns to the kingdom, the parents separate, and everyone lives happily ever after.

Now, I want to be clear that I am supportive of divorce, and I think a well-executed divorce can be much less damaging to children overall than parents in a dysfunctional relationship refusing to split up ever "for the kids". It is because I am supportive of this that I don't like how the story handled divorce. Notably, I'm also very wary of media that teaches kids is their responsibility to parent their parents. I'm sure this movie doesn't mean to send that message but... it's there.

So with the full context, the events behind this movie are: King and Queen go to the forest of darkness for Reasons (tm) and bicker so much the darkness turns them into monsters. They wreak havoc in their child's life for a full year. The movie is very clear that the princess feels ignored, like they don't even notice she's there, and so in retrospect this is clearly meant to reflect how a child with divorcing parents feels. She takes it upon herself to manage them, tend to them, and believe in them even when the other adults in her life give up on them and her. She then leads them on a magical journey, and is responsible for quelling their bickering to get them that far. Her reward for all this is to be explicitly told her parents are splitting up anyway, and her emotional stress summons the darkness again, threatening to devour her. Her parents telling her they love her no matter what saves her from the darkness, she accepts that life has to change, and that's pretty much it.

I'm at least very glad that the parents admitting wrongdoing was a key part of the plot, and that's why it's clear that the creators don't intend for "parent your parents" to be the final message, and despite the messy symbolism, I don't think most kids would absorb the problematic conclusion. But still, it leaves the brain itch. Much like Inside Out 2, there's a conflict between the genre and the point the movie's trying to make. In Inside Out, Riley's problems have to be resolved internally to give the Feelings something to do--though ultimately (light spoilers) the source of Riley's problem is an adult (the hockey coach) being too strict and cruel to children. Yes that's a common experience, but the movie ends up indicating that kids should be able to figure that out by themselves, vs. leaning on parents for support or recognizing that adults don't always behave appropriately. The movie seems to uphold the idea that strict coaches are good for kids, which I strongly disagree with.

Connecting that back to Spellbound, there's a fundamental mismatch between the genre and the story the movie's trying to tell. A fantasy adventure gives full agency to the main character, in this case a 15 year old girl. But when the main life-changing event is her parents getting divorced, the message starts to get muddied. The movie misses an opportunity to point out how the advisors have let the princess down as well--these are problems adults should have been attending to. It should have been another adult working tirelessly to cure the king and queen. The behavior of the advisors is actually quite grim through this lens--they gleefully inform the girl that her parents are effectively dead, and that it's her job to lead the kingdom now, with absolutely no comparison for her grief.

If it's a silly movie about a silly adventure, such things matter less--but since the creators made this movie very explicitly about parental separation, these other details bear greater weight in the story.

I think comparing to Brave is very illuminating--that's also a story about a child whose parent is cursed to become a "monster", but it succeeds at showing how the adventure ultimately brings mother and daughter closer together and heals the relationship. Merida is eager for an adventure out of her own genuine desire, and appropriately conflicted about being made responsible for her mother. And critical for the genre, the family bonds are restored, and the family is closer than before.

Spellbound tries to convince you through airy, triumphant music that the family is happier than before, but the image of each parent living on polar opposite sides of the city from each other is... kind of grim. It continues to center the parents' dislike of each other, which is odd for a happily ever after. I think there are many, many lived experiences of co-parenting that provide a much better example of prioritizing your child's true needs. Why can't they simply have separate rooms at the castle?

So the movie is unconvincing in its restoration of relationship, meaning it fails to fulfill its genre. A romantic story where the couple breaks up at the end isn't in the genre of Romance, it's in the genre of Love Story. Likewise, this movie fails to fulfill the genre conventions of a hero's journey/adventure story.

In fact, there's a bit of a sad theme through the whole movie where the parents' behavior upends and dictates the details of the princess's life and... she just kind of has to smile and deal with it. All the way through to the "happily ever after". There's some attention paid to that, with her flippantly saying "I have no dark feelings" (which attract the sentient darkness) and then we see two instances of those dark feelings developing, but I have a big issues with the idea of a child's anguish at their parents' selfish behavior being framed as "dark feelings". The "darkness" metaphor is clumsily used--is it an evil force? Is it a personification of anger/hate? If so, why is it attracted to justified grief and anguish? Ultimately, the darkness coming for the princess spurs the parents to act in her defense, so that's good, but the symbolism is still really muddy.

The ending feels very rushed--because it is. The movie treats this reveal as a twist, and though I saw it coming, that has a lot more to do with my meta-experience with these types of narratives, not the movie successfully foreshadowing its own conclusion. From everything we see of the princess and her memories, the family was totally happy before the monster curse. The movie avoids showing the parents bickering for long, which is probably good for a movie meant for young kids, but it also makes the ending bewildering. All we've seen is mild conflicts that would be easily overcome with, like, some light couples therapy. So the parents end up coming off as incredibly flippant and selfish when they deduce that they have to separate. The move has to tell us the stakes, it can't show the stakes, because the stakes of divorce are distressing for children. Perhaps it could have worked if the movie spent longer developing the conflict, but as it stands, it's just this awkward "twist" at the end.

I can see it providing some comfort to a child whose parents are separated, since a little representation can go a very long way. But at the same time, it feels like it trivializes that experience. Parents separating is complex and layered and distressing to a child, even when it's in their best interest. If a movie wants to explore this topic, I think a premise more like Inside Out is a much better choice. You can then explore the complex layered emotions, and validate them specifically, recognizing how hard it is for the kid before ultimately assuring them.

As it stands, the movie seems to imply that as long as your parents say they still love you, then your problems are solved, and you should go back to smiling as your parents divorce. This is really a shame, since the move is so close to providing a really cathartic example of the anguish of wondering if your parents still love you, but then it trips over itself. The song the princess sings when she learns her parents will be separating, "What about me", paints her as menacing and selfish. The tone is more angry than sad, and the emotion most often depicted as "dark"/bad/evil is anger. Her parents still jump to her aid, but she's depicted as being the one to summon the darkness to herself--the source of her own near-death experience.

The princess has clearly been doing a lot of emotional repression, claiming she doesn't have "dark feelings", and ultimately the movie paints this as... a good thing? basically? It's only when she lets slip and gets angry that the darkness comes for her. The movie doesn't do nearly enough to affirm her anger as justified, nor is it clear in showing how her repression interacts with the darkness. Whenever she's pretending to be fine... she's fine. I think there was a huge missed opportunity to have the "darkness" come for her repressed feelings, and illustrate just how much grief and anger she's hiding. Instead, the advisors are kind of flippant about her being a moody teenager, and... the plot kind of supports that.

I think part of why this movie bothered me so much is that so much of my experience has been pretending everything's fine, and having to parent my parents. So to see a movie depict that and be like "yeah it's mostly fine" is pretty deeply frustrating.

Hopefully most people aren't reading into it so much and just stop at the statement of "even if your parents are separating they love you" and "if your parents are splitting up it's not your fault and it's not your job to get them back together because you actually can't". But it's still really frustrating when a story's own symbolic layers contradict the message it's trying to send. And kids pick up on those layers more than we realize, sometimes.

I really wanted to love Spellbound, because the visuals are really charming. I love Nathan Lane, so hearing him as one of the oracles was a treat. The fluffy gryphons, the antelope and kingdom design, the cultural representation of the main cast, it was all really nice to see. So that definitely made it more disappointing when the story's central message was... very confused.

And to be clear, it's just sort of a low-quality plot in general. There are a lot of false starts, and creative decisions that seem geared towards filling time. The musical numbers are forgettable, and there's a few moments where the writing is weirdly cliche and lazy. And maybe that's all for the best--by being a generally "meh" movie, the more problematic elements of the story won't have as much reach.

But I'm still going to complain about them because I need to get this out of my system. (And, as a writer, analyzing what other media gets right/wrong helps me strengthen my own craft.)

The most striking thing to me is that this is a movie of false starts. Our first scene is of the princess flying through the sky on a fluffy gryphon with her friends, a la How to Train your Dragon. But then she doesn't ride a gryphon again or see her friends again until the very end of the movie.

Then, we have one of the more successful musical numbers of the movie, where the princess explains her current life to us (her parents are literally monsters). I don't personally like the way she talks to the camera, but that's a subjective creative choice. Interestingly, during this song, she talks about she'd rather have her parents be human and nagging or criticizing her instead of being actual monsters. This is a bit of a red flag to me--yes it's relatable and how a lot of kids feel, but it's also the basis of a lot of emotional abuse from parents to their children. The child who feels comforted that their parent is angry with them instead of absent is NOT having a good or healthy childhood. This is also a failed opportunity for foreshadowing--if she had said "well I was mad they were nagging me but now I'm sad they just ignore me" we know her life wasn't perfect. Instead, she sings about "the way things were before" in an idyllic way. The reason I was able to clock that the story was ultimately going to reveal that the parents weren't happy was "we can't go back to the way things were before" is such a common framing with grief/loss stories.

Then the advisors get a whole song about how they're going to fix all their own problems--coronate the princess and send the king and queen "to the country". The resemblance to "oh our old dog now lives on a farm in the country" is played for laughs, and as the advisors insist to the princess that the king and queen aren't "in there" anymore, there's absolutely no recognition given to this means that HER PARENTS ARE DEAD??? Like no compassion just "Hey kid, admit your parents are dead and rule the kingdom now! thanks!"

If the movie did more with the parentification/forced maturation of the princess it would be one thing, but it picks up that thread and then quickly drops it, because the princess refuses to believe her parents are gone (OBVIOUSLY).

Presumably, the point of that musical number is to create new urgency around the fact that the king and queen are monsters. But the story already created all the urgency it needed by showing how destructive they are in the previous song, and how hard it is to hide them.

The coronation detail actually ends up being entirely pointless. Because in basically the next scene, the parents escape anyway, creating the actual urgency that the story needed. You could cut straight from the parents rampaging around to them finally escaping and revealing the truth to the kingdom, and the overall pacing would be much better.

And on the flip side, other plot mechanisms don't really get enough flesh on them, leading to things feeling very mechanical. The princess sent for the Oracle of the Sun and Moon ages ago, they finally show up, then they flee, but they've left behind a magical item. The magical item is what allows the princess to get to the forest with the queen and king once they escape. It's all a lot of back and forth that ends up feeling odd for the genre, because it takes so long for the actual adventure to start. There's a lot of arbitrary decisions that seem to serve certain jokes or musical numbers but don't really come together into a cohesive story.

Speaking of jokes, the movie bungles its own punchlines on more than one occasion. The magical item is voice-activated as a little nod to voice-activated universal remotes replacing many separate remotes, but then the writers so clearly didn't want to actually deal with writing logical prompts for the voice activated part. The princess gives a vague command, it has a comedic result, so she's like "guess I have to be more specific" before giving another equally vague command that works this time. After that, the voice control gets passed to her rodent friend, so that the writers don't have to explain what prompts cause certain things to happen.

Once they reach the dark forest, the oracles of the sun and moon immediately know what the solution needs to be. I guess they've had some time to think on it, but it's odd that they go from so frazzled about it in the throne room to having a whole song ready to go about what needs to be done.

It's also the most generic convention imaginable. "This is the dark forest. Follow the light. Watch out, the darkness will chase you." This is another missed opportunity at foreshadowing--here would be a great place for the oracles to conclude that the curse is from the darkness itself, and to theorize as to how the parents picked it up. But they gloss over that entirely.

The trials that follow are relatively entertaining, and there's some real creativity in the rules of the forest. There's a part where sounds gain physical presence and power, and can be damaging when they're spoken with anger--I actually really like that as a symbol of the harm that rash words can cause, but when the princess's frustrated efforts to calm her parents down are painted as just as "violent", the symbolism really starts to break down.

There's also a sand sea, where the sand becomes quicksand when covered in shadow. It's visually beautiful and emotionally compelling, especially when clouds of darkness roll in, and there's adorable baby gryphons involved. Elements like that visual storytelling are what really made me want for the story to work--and made me frustrated when such a strong visual metaphor was so mis-used.

It's a subjective creative decisions, but I also didn't really care for the way the parents slowly regain the ability to speak. It just doesn't work as well as Brave to show the relationship healing, and the main point of it is that when they parents reach the final light, they're lucid enough to realize they need a divorce. It also means they're very childish and simple in the middle, which does lead to some amusing moments, but ultimately really exacerbates the feeling that the princess is needing to parent her parents.

Likewise, there were just some odd creative choices. Like when the sounds have physical power, the positive is that the parents do realize that the cycle of violent words is their own fault. So, to speak a "comforting" word, the first word they say is... "girl". It gets repeated, and it fits the idea that they're recognizing that their daughter exists again, but... it only works in that meta sense. It's really weird in the actual story. "Sorry" would have worked much better, and reflected their actual emotional state better, not to mention emphasizes early on that it's parents' responsibility to apologize and repair. Instead, the child-like first word prompts the princess to be even more parental towards them.

I've gotten this far without even mentioning that the male advisor body-swaps with the rodent sidekick on the way to the dark forest because it's rather baffling and pointless. It adds a second lucid voice to the adventuring party, but that leads more to uninspired jokes than anything that feels important. He does get a long musical number about finally enjoying being a rodent, but because his character development is so inconsequential to the story, it still doesn't feel necessary. It also serves to quickly bypass the story's third trial (a maze), and given that it only has three, it ends up feeling like it really only has two (the embodied sounds and the quicksand). And in the end, the princess ends up having to parent him as well.

Legit the most amusing part of the bodyswap is that the advisor's human body starts acting like a chipmunk and nobody seems to notice that there's anything wrong with him, with the other advisor making a quip about his incompetence. But that's also kind of dark? Like these adults that were supposed to be taking care of the princess are so self-absorbed nobody notices when one of them starts acting like a LITERAL CHIPMUNK?

At a meta level, the purpose of putting the advisor into the adventuring party is to allow for the kingdom's forces to more effectively pursue the princess, king, and queen. (They don't believe the parents can be saved, so they want to exile them.) On the one hand, they want to save the princess, but on the other hand they effectively want to murder her parents so it's also pretty dark? The advisor ends up leaving a trail for the kingdom to follow, which itself is only necessary because the story can't decide how dangerous the dark forest actually is. All you have to do is give the army some fantasy creature with super-smell powers and the body swap is totally pointless.

From there we launch pretty quickly into the final climax, which has some charming moments but also some inexplicably lazy writing?

When the princess, king and queen finally reach the pool of light that's supposed to fix the king and queen, the princess jumps right in and starts frolicking. The king and queen soon see that the light retracts from them, which is what prompts them to realize that they'll stay monsters until they commit to getting a divorce. (This is an absolutely bizarre sentence, right? it's not just me?)

This leads to one of the more baffling lines in the movie. "Come on in! The light's fine!" Given the target audience is children, I don't think they're going to have the cultural touchpoint of "come on in, the water's fine". (Does gen Z even have that? What is it even from?) And then if you do have the touchpoint, it's not funny or charming, it's just... lazy. Like, what? You couldn't think of anything else to say? Even just don't make it a joke and be very literal--"Hey, why aren't you coming in? It feels nice!"--so that at least it's more comprehensible to children?

Then the parents finally announce that they're separating, the princess is understandably distraught, a giant darkness cloud swirls around her (which is bizarrely lo-fi. In movie where every hair is individually animated, the darkness tornado is just a shiny black squiggle. Another subjective creative decision, but it makes the darkness more laughable than menacing). The parents team up (after being briefly and pointlessly captured by the army) to pour the "light" onto the distraught princess, communicating their love for her and calming her down.

But again, being told once that your parents love you doesn't exactly solve the feelings of parental abandonment. Her parents need to show through action that they're still prioritizing her, which the movie does not give them any time to do. (Yeah, teaming up to pour the light on her kinda counts, but there's also a giant swirling darkness tornado so you can't exactly argue they aren't being driven by panic and guilt.) False promises can be one of the most stressful things for a child to experience (whether their parent are separating or not) that solving the conflict with promises (not actions) feels irresponsible.

Then her parents turn back into humans, build new houses on polar opposite ends of the city, leaving the princess with three homes--her old home, the king's mini castle, and the queen's mini castle. Separating is one thing, but needing to be physically as far apart as possible is played for laughs, but is actually rather dark. It's part of the lingering feeling that the whole situation is being trivialized.

As you'd expect, anti-divorce moralists went off in the movies reviews, and I kind of think that's Spellbound's own fault. Despite the undoubtedly noble intentions behind normalizing the experience of parental separation, the movie can't exactly justify that it hasn't trivialized the experience either.

Spellbound almost understands that it needs to give the princess her childhood back--the final scene of the movie is a big surprise party with all her friends for her 16th birthday, making up for the non-party she had for her 15th as a result of her parents' curse. (This is also not really well-explained, but presumably letting the princess have a party without her parents showing up would have given too much away.)

So, Spellbound is mostly bad/mediocre in mostly mundane, unimportant ways. The songwriting is forgettable, the plot is a clumsy concoction of thin tropes, the humor doesn't entirely land--but that's hardly new for kids' movies. Sure, it's billed as having talent from Shrek and Toy Story, but even so, a "meh" kids movie is not usually worth writing so many words about. (God I don't even want to check the word count of this.)

Normally, the elements that shine would do just that--a cute character, a compelling visual--and you'd leave feeling happy those things were there, and not entirely disappointed.

But I think what has given me the brain itch after Spellbound is that the adults in it behave in really awful ways. The advisors that are supposed to be helping support the princess are actually incredibly selfish and cruel to her, flippantly suggesting she accept her parents are dead, and overly eager to put the entire weight of the kingdom on a fifteen year old's shoulders. It would be one thing if the male advisor had a change of heart after seeing how sad the princess truly is, but he doesn't, really. He does say "wow I guess I was wrong" but in no way does this cause him to step up and be a responsible adult in the situation.

Likewise, because of the constraints of the type of story this is (i.e. not depicting traumatic parental fights on-screen) the parents come off as incredibly selfish too. "Hey, kid, thanks for helping rescue us, but I'm remembering how I cannot tolerate being in your other parent's presence for literally five seconds so we are going to chose now, an incredibly vulnerable and inconvenient time, to announce to you that we're getting a divorce. But hey, we said we loved you! So it's all good now!" Within the movie's own logic, there's no reason the parents couldn't have agreed with each other to get a divorce, returned to their human form, reconciled with their daughter first, then weeks/months later sat down with her to discuss changes that need to happen. And, indeed, in a real-life scenario, that is what the parents should be doing. Those are the actions that communicate love to your child--seeing to their actual stability first, and then confronting the more difficult parts from a secure place.

There's a reason most kid stories have goofy villains and plot points that exist purely for comedy reasons. It's fun, it's entertaining, good wins, and you don't need to analyze it too closely. That's not to say that children can't follow emotionally complex stories--I think that both She Ra and Centaurworld are excellent examples of stories that explore complex themes like grief and loss in ways that are accessible to even young children. Notably, these stories are extremely well considered and precise in their messaging.

There's a reason you have to be careful when mixing goofy kids' movie logic with complex, painful stories--when done poorly, as in Spellbound, the movie ends up making a lot of points it doesn't mean to, and getting in the way of its own (well intentioned) message.

To me, the most disappointing failure of Spellbound is painting the princess's emotional repression and Fine Actually. It would be very easy for a viewer to conclude that everything would have been fine if the princess had just continued to repress her "dark" emotions, and to interpret her "letting the darkness in" as a personal failing that causes her to need more support from her already stressed parents. So while we may forgive her lapse in will power, and we appreciate her parents' helping her, she Should Have Known All Along (tm) that they loved her, and a Good Child (tm) would have kept soldiering on without letting such dark feelings get to her at all. A younger me absolutely would have taken this message away, and that's probably why I reacted so strongly to the story as an adult.

On the one hand, children who already have secure attachments to their parents probably won't internalize any of those negative messages. On the other hand, the movie's clumsy message can serve to reinforce abusive/neglectful family dynamics. "See, they said they loved you once. Things are better off when they're separate. You can't complain anymore--if mom and dad are happier, you need to be happy too."

If it had just stayed surface-level and fluffy, it would have been a fine movie. But it's frustrating to see that in an effort to normalize a common childhood experience, it strays into the territory of normalizing some disturbing and rather dark behavior from adults.

And I think that leads me to my ultimately conclusion with stories that deal with dysfunctional parental/adult dynamics--not only Spellbound, but also stories I've loved, like Turning Red or Inside Out 2.

There's a sense that the writers have unresolved parental/authority trauma. They unwittingly infuse their stories with many elements of their trauma, and see these as "relatable details" when actually they reveal the elements of unhealthy dynamics that linger. For example, there is always a strong drive to show that the parents meant well the whole time, no matter how cruel their behavior. "Your parent might have caused you deep harm, but they still love you, an reconciling with them should be your goal" is the message that comes across. Sometimes, this is true. But more often, when the child is experiencing that much anguish, it's a sign that the parent does not have the capacity to reconcile. The parent's willingness and ability to reconcile is ultimately a fantasy in the story, and may serve to reinforce abusive dynamics with children hanging on waiting for their parents to change.

I'm biased, of course--my own parents have proved over and over again that they do not have the capacity to change. Stories of parental reconciliation kept me working hard and pouring energy into the relationship, ultimately resulting in repeated harm. And this experience is not as uncommon as we'd like to believe. Children, as a developmental rule, desperately want to maintain relationship with their parents as a source of safety.

There's a certain line between "relatable family difficulties" and "signs a relationship cannot be reconciled." I think this line is well illustrated by the mother/son relationship in the movie Wish Dragon (which I love). Though there is surface-level conflict between them, her actions always communicate love (she feeds him even after getting angry at him), and she is the first to seek reconciliation when the conflict has gone too far. She is self-aware enough to confess her own struggles, and make clear to her son that it's not his fault.

Contrast this to Turning Red, where as much as I enjoyed the movie and its normalization of puberty/big emotions, I think there is still a little too much leash given to an emotionally abusive mother and emotionally passive father. It's striking to see what is really a quite abusive dynamic depicted as "just how families are", and you can feel the pain of those unresolved traumas clearly in the writing (at least in my opinion). ((Also to be clear, I am reacting to what is depicted on-screen based on my personal experience and research into attachment theory and trauma, doing my best to take the story at face-value. I really, really don't mean to be commenting on East Asian diaspora family dynamics in general, or implying that they're all abusive.))

Works like Centaurworld and She Ra seem to understand the arc of trauma healing from a much more resolved place--they're able to articulate the complexity of the sympathetic ways that trauma arises, vs the ultimate responsibility adults have for how they act. Notably, these stories focus on peer dynamics, since exploring parental dynamics in this way is (clearly) very fraught.

Every story dances this line of "this specific story about these specific characters" vs "something universal you can take with you into life experiences like this". You can say, "well, Spellbound is about this specific family and this worked for them, and that's all their is to it" but again, the fairy tale genre demands that stories have universal elements to them. There's a strong sense of the story communicating "how things should be".

That's what makes stories with abusive/neglectful parents particularly complex. Culturally, parental reconciliation is The Way Things Should Be. Many, many parents (especially boomers) believe that they are entitled to reconciliation no matter how reprehensible their behavior. Likewise, Spellbound accidentally insists that children being easily reassured that their parents still love them, no matter how neglectful the parents' pattern of actions, is The Way Things Should Be. There are no lasting consequences to the parents' selfishness and awful timing, and emotional repression is shown to be Useful Actually.

Because even just taking the story at face value, when the princess's parents start fighting, if she hadn't believe that she could keep them together and restore their humanity, they would have died. Permanent monster transformation where they don't recognize her equals death for all intents and purposes. So even though her hope to return things to the way they were is ultimately proven to be futile, it's literally the only reason her parents are still alive.

Spellbound seems to know what it wants to say, but it really does not seem to be able to organize its myriad disparate, derivative parts into being able to actually say that thing. And like, I'm not going to claim I've never accidentally implied something I didn't mean in my stories. But I am also one person (I edit my own works) so there is always a point at which I'm going to be so close to it that I miss things. But for a full feature film, with multiple writers, a director, story board artists, a whole publicity team, it's definitely disappointing to see something this clumsy.

And it makes me sad, because I liked the setting so much. Seeing fantasy worlds through a more diverse cultural lens is something that gets me really, really excited. And the oracles of the sun and moon were so gay! It was adorable! So it's always a let-down when the other parts of the story just... don't work.

On a broader level, I think I find it particularly disappointing when neglect and irresponsibility from adults is normalized alongside parentification and forced maturation of children. It's not a fun time. Just let me enjoy the fluffy gryphons without getting cPTSD triggered, please. 🙃

#Spellbound movie #Spellbound #media analysis #actually audhd #complex ptsd #emotionally immature parents

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creedslove · 1 year ago

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🌹Anon here! Sadly things with my step sister hasn't gotten any better, she has blocked my step Dad and everyone on his side, so we cannot contact her whatsover. It has been really difficult to navigate, she is only 11, and we can only pray she comes back to us eventually. Sob story aside, could I get some sweet Dave fluff? Him just being a great dad to his newborn baby. A mercernary with a newborn just making pancakes shirtless while carring the baby in one of those fabric wrap slings. Please and thank you ♥️

Dave York x f!reader

A/N: hi my darling 🌹 anon, it's good seeing you here, although the news aren't the best! I'm so sad to know your step dad's and his daughter's situation isn't great that way! It really sucks, she's so young she doesn't even have a clue about how devastating her behavior towards him is, but hopefully things will work out! I hope they can settle things down and work on their father-daughter relationship properly! I'll be rooting for them, and keep us updated whenever you can, alright?! Love you!

• when you woke up, the first thing was to look for Dave on his side of the bed, but it was empty and cold, meaning he had been up for a while; you checked on the clock and of course he's been up for ages, he still follows his military old habits, so you decided to get up

• but before doing anything else, you went over to your baby's room, wanting to check on little Davie, the little miracle that come over to give Dave's life a new meaning, along with you, and of course he couldn't pass up the opportunity to name his baby boy after himself when you offered it, and from that day on, you had your Dave, soon-to-be husband, and your sweet little Davie

• but Davie wasn't really in his crib, so you paid attention to your surroundings and of course you could hear soft giggles and a delicious smell of pancakes coming from downstairs, so you took the opportunity to freshen up in the bathroom and take some time to wake up before going to your family

• and once you got to the kitchen, of course you found Dave still shirtless, messy bed hair, working on his pancakes as Davie watched everything curiously from his comfortable carrier sling that made him look like the cutest kangaroo baby you'd ever seen

• Davie cooed and giggled, amazed at what his daddy was doing, he didn't actually understand, but he liked the sound of it and once you got closer and greeted your boys, you were welcomed by the sweetest smile you'd ever seen

"here honey, let me handle him, so you can make your pancakes"

• you offered carefully, knowing Dave was handy but still worried to have his son so close to the stove, you quickly helped him untangle your baby from the sling and held him into his arms

"are you hungry for daddy's pancakes, baby? Pancakes are his thing, he makes the best ones in the world!"

• and it was true; Dave's pancakes were delicious and he was great at it, there was a time he would make his daughters from his first marriage some every single Saturday morning, and they'd cheer up and talk about how daddy was the best! Unfortunately, that stopped after his and Carol's traumatic divorce and things took a downhill turn and Dave lost that connection once they got too old for that or just didn't seem so interested in spending time with him

• but things changed again when he began dating you: first of all, you liked his pancakes, and you loved watching him make them. He was always so attentive and focused and god, he looked too handsome doing the most domestic things

• and once you got pregnant, Dave noticed you enjoyed his domestic presence even more: unlike Carol who always complained about how his cologne or aftershave made her nauseous, you just craved his presence, you wanted to be all over him the entire time, and Dave loved that, you two bonded during a time he honestly thought couples drifted apart from his experience, it was magical, and luckily to him, that bond didn't break once little David was born, quite the opposite, the three of you became a stronger little family together

• and he couldn't express how much he loved that, how important it was, he still went out, did his dangerous job and went back home with his pocket full of money, but if there was something he would always do for his family, was definitely making pancakes for his beautiful family 💗

____

#pedro pascal #pedro pascal x reader #pedro pascal x you #pedro pascal x y/n #pedro pascal fanfiction #pedro pascal fanfic #pedro pascal headcanon #pedro pascal headcanons #dave york #dave york x reader #dave york x you #dave york x y/n #dave york fanfiction #dave york fanfic #dave york headcanon #dave york headcanons

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d-lanx · 1 year ago

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rewatching wwe punk and his relationships with authority

I've been rewatching old wwe punk stuff and find it very entertaining to watch his relatiohship with authority, cos it's like watching a family dealing with the problem child.

Vince and Heyman are the parents and had a kid: cm punk. Heyman is the proud mother hen and vince isn't happy about that cos they have other kids, too, and he thinks heyman is favouring punk. December to Dismember happens and a spat over cm punk makes vince and heyman divorce.

Punk has to live with vince on smackdown and meets vince's new partner, teddy long. Vince pretty much takes a step back from discipline, sometimes even enabling punk cos he has no idea what teddy is dealing with on a day-to-day basis.

youtube

Teddy and Vince already have a kid: undertaker, and teddy will sic him on anyone who's causing trouble, including punk. but at the end of the day, punk always had a soft spot for teddy and while he didn't like him much in the moment, he would later learn to love him and would miss him.

Punk starts getting a bit too difficult to manage (afterall he did start a cult) and punk gets to a point where he's threatening to run away from home due to vince's favouritism towards his other kid, John Cena. Despite vince's best efforts, Punk runs away and takes a sentimental family heirloom with him to really piss them off.

But like lots of kids who run away, he eventually comes back. At which point vince pawns him off on HHH. HHH is having little luck in discipline, as punk is very good at talking back and pissing him off further. So when nash comes along (HHH's ex) and they get back together, nash tries to take over discipline.

youtube

"You need to watch your mouth", "I need to whatch my mouth? you need to watch the show! I do and say whatever I want to whomever I please."

Punk sees this more as a challenge and is unbothered and HHH doesn't like that someone else is disciplining his kid, especially so harshly and by going behind his back. Hell, this whole video is nash being like "why are you letting your kid talk to you like that??":

youtube

Nash and HHH have a messy break up, and realises that he can get punk to behave when they have a common enemy, at least. He even manages to keep him happy by putting him on commentray that one time.

Then laurinaitis comes along. He's the epitome of the embaressing parent and is absolutely the type to see his kid playing a game and just be like "are you winning, son?" and post facebook minions memes. And punk doesn't like him right from the get-go.

youtube

Laurinaitis tries a few methods to deal with punk's behaviour, like taking away his stuff, and calling his bluff, as well as standard punishments. But then after going on a parenting course (in the show he says he took several "management classes") he tries to bond with punk by taking an interest in the things he likes. But after everything that happened between them, it just makes him uncomfortable.

youtube

I just love the look of fear on punk's face when laurinaitis starts talking about empowering his talent.

Eventually, laurinaitis stops punk from seeing teddy, which really upsets him. But laurentits is also eventually booted out which punk is very happy about.

youtube

Then heyman comes back into punk's life and is once again supporting him, partly out of love, partly out of a need for revenge against his ex, vince.

They cause a load of trouble together until eventually he has enough of punk's bs.

As a last resort, they bring in kane to act as a disciplinarian. He's not part of the family, but like some kind of child behaviour specialist or runs some sort of bootcamp for bad kids. But punk reaches 18 and ends up moving out before they can do much about his behaviour (i.e., he leaves the wwe).

I can't be bothered taking this analogy all through UFC, AEW and the new WWE era. But watching back some of the scenes really does feel like punk is the problem child of an already dysfunctional family, and it's hysterical.

#he's a little shit #but you can't help but love him #cm punk #triple h #kevin nash #paul heyman #vince mcmahon #teddy long #john cena #john laurinaitis #kane #undertaker #punkena

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utilitycaster · 2 years ago

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Top 5 CR ships... I'm choosing violence

So here's the deal. top 4 nonnegotiable in that they are my top 4; exact placement within that top 4 varies. As with a bunch of things, C3 is hard to judge as an unfinished work with all relationships in fairly early stages so regardless of my personal feelings - and there are ships I like and dislike - I'm leaving it out, because like...Caleb/Essek at episode 2x70? barely on my radar, and so it would be unfair to judge against the finished works.

Fjord/Jester

Percy/Vex

Beau/Yasha

Caleb/Essek

final one is the difficult one:

I think Vax and Keyleth are great for each other and supportive and sweet and have a lot of lovely moments. I also rarely have anything to say about them, though? It's like. They're sweet! They are really good partners for each other! That's about all I have to offer in terms of meta whereas the four above all have me eating drywall or whatever the kids are saying.

I always felt the same about Pike and Scanlan as Vax and Keyleth, perhaps more generously so because of Ashley's scheduling, until the TCSR came out - cute, but not a ton to say. The fact that they are divorced FWB is in my opinion a genius move on Ashley and Sam's part and makes them a million times more interesting. However, that's a brief off-camera scene and a lot of headcanon doing the heavy lifting.

This is also true of Kimallura - in my mind, they are, quite possibly, the wlw D&D answer to Jane Austen's Persuasion. My hc is that they were together but had a messy breakup after most of their party died, complicated by the fact that they genuinely wanted different things at the time. After a few years they got over it and became friends again, but they were living so far apart anyway what with Allura on the council and Kima in Vasselheim that it was largely communication by letter and the occasional sending and even rarer teleport. However, Allura couldn't help but be worried with Kima went missing, hence sending Vox Machina after her, and when they were reunited those feelings all started up again, eventually leading to the pair rekindling their relationship during Campaign 1. HOWEVER this is 100% me filling in the gaps.

Loquatius and Laerryn are fantastic but we don't get a ton of time with them either. It makes perfect sense that they reunite at the end of the world; I just wish there'd been more.

Veth and Yeza had limited screentime for him being a noncombatant NPC but the fact is, In Love and War was the first ever CR episode I stayed up past midnight to watch until the break because their reunion was so well played.

So: with that, I think I have to hand #5 to Veth and Yeza.

#answered #minxie-the-sabertooth-kitty #cr tag #top 5 ask meme

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oc3anawrites · 8 months ago

Text

Shattered Reflections

Listening to this while you watch will feed the angst

A/N: Loosely based off of the Marvel Tv Series- MoonKnight. There will definitely be show spoilers but I highly doubt any comic spoilers as I have barely just started reading them. The first few chapters will be used to help the reader understand each character, what they know and don’t in this AU and set up relationships. This is my first time posting a fic and actually letting other people read it so please be nice! Constructive criticism is welcome :) I apologize if it gets slightly boring at some points, I just want to paint a clear picture of what is happening in the story so that no one will be confused on what’s going on or who knows what. As the story goes on you may notice the moonknight boys stray a little from how they are in the show but I tried to keep it as similar as possible while giving differences to create a story that wasn’t just a copy of the show with a different love interest. This fic will have fluff, HEAVY angst, triggering themes, talk about mental health, major character death and contain the relationships marc spector x oc / steven grant x oc and eventually jake lockely x oc. Also it is definitely a slow burn so im sorry. I know a lot of people don't like reading OC's fics so if that's not for you then don't feel forced to read, although you'd be missing out haha. There will be quite a few chapters so I hope you'll tune in. :) also not every chapter is depressing i swear

summary: Amaya Young meets a man named Marc Spector, they fall in love and get married, one day he disappears and a few months later she receives a phone call from a timid british man, steven grant.

please check out my introductory post for my OC, hopefully it'll help you warm up to her. You can find it linked here

Enjoy!

MINORS DNI 18+ !!!! CW- this chapter includes topics such as: toxic relationship, drugs, divorce, alcohol and unaliveing attempt and panic attack

Please read at your own discretion.

Chapter One- The flashback.

10 years ago in Cairo.

The air is cold, silent. The day has been long and boring. Today’s mission of recovering an Ancient Egyptian artifact was a bust.

“This was a waste of time.” Amaya mumbles to herself..

Grabbing her climbing gear, she headed to the exit of what was supposed to be the tomb of Alexander The Great, but contained nothing more than an empty sarcophagus.

“How am I supposed to pay the bills this month? This was gonna be a great score.” She continued mumbling.

As Amaya exits the underground structure, she spots a man standing tall by the vehicle she used to get here.

“Can I help you?” She asks the man.

He stands with confidence showing in his posture. He has dark brown hair with slight curls, messy and covered in sand from the desert. His eyes are dark brown with a piercing gaze. His skin is an olive tone, covered in dirt and grime. His white shirt is stained from the sand. He looks rugged and muscular. He is as beautiful as what Amaya imagined a god to look like.

“Couldn’t find anything huh?” The man replies.

“Bad intel I guess.” She says back, scoffing.

“What’s your name?” The man asks.

“Amaya Young.”

“Hi Amaya, I’m Marc, Marc Spector.”

✦

And that was the day Amaya Young (against her better judgment) fell in love. The relationship had a rocky start as it was clear they were both hiding things but eventually things started to work out.

5 years after meeting Marc, he proposes to her. Another 5 years pass where in that time Amaya finds out about Khonshu and that Marc Spector is his avatar. Over the next course of those 5 years, she and Marc worked side by side to recover ancient artifacts around the world, giving them back to their rightful owners.

Occasionally she’d pocket one or two to pay the bills, each time Marc would give a disappointed scowl but let it happen. Marc randomly disappeared at times for missions, never allowing Amaya to come along. He always stated they were too dangerous.

When Marc worked as Khonshu’s avatar he sported a white, hooded ceremonial suit with a crescent moon symbol on his chest, which added to his mysterious and formidable presence. He called himself Moonknight and said his mission was to “protect the travelers of the night”.

Eventually, Amya and Marc get a place together in London as they were sick of traveling the world, hopping from hotel to hotel. She never found out much about Marc’s past besides that he used to be a mercenary and that he doesn’t have a good relationship with his parents. Marc likes to keep his secrets and while Amaya may not be a fan of it, she puts up with it because she loves him. Their relationship works because unbeknownst to Marc, Amaya has a few secrets of her own.

Besides trying to convince Marc that he should let her go on his missions with him, they are happy, sort of. If only it weren’t for Marc’s ability to do anything but tell the full truth and Amaya’s ability to never let herself be happy. The relationship had its ups and downs but they keep each other grounded.

However, one day, Amaya wakes up alone. Marc is gone. She assumes Khonshu called him for another mission until 24 hours of missed calls and texts passes. 24 hours turns into a week, which turns into 2 weeks, a month, and then someone knocks on her door.

knock knock

“This is for you Mrs. Spector.” The person hands her paperwork as she opens the door. Divorce papers from Marc.

“He didn’t even have the balls to sign the papers?” She asks as she shuts the door.

A few hours later

Amaya stared at the paperwork in her hand, “Divorce? Divorce? First he disappears, let’s me think he’s dead and now he wants a divorce?!” She screams out loud talking to herself as if somehow the louder she screamed, the more it would ease the pain. Amaya clutched her chest, she felt like the world around her was crumbling. She couldn’t breathe.

“Breathe, just breathe.” She said, trying to bring herself back to reality. It felt like the world was spinning around her, her vision cloudy her mind full of a million thoughts at once.

‘Fuck it.’ She thinks to herself. Suddenly her vision is clear and her heart rate returns to a normal pace as she grabs a pill bottle on her nightstand. Sometimes, Amaya felt like the less sober she was, the more it was like Marc was there with her. Like the tingling numbness that rushed over her body was Marc’s soft touch, like her blurry vision meant her ‘reality’ is actually just a nightmare and in the real world Marc was in bed next to her. She proceeded to take a handful of pills and felt the bitter taste in her mouth, gagging so much she nearly puked. She pulled out a bottle of vodka from under her bed in hopes to numb the taste of the pills from her mouth. But before she knew it, the bottle was empty too and she was now on the cold, hard tile of her bedroom floor.

A/N: Posting chapter 2 right after this bc i know this is super short!

read chapter 2 here

#mcu #moon knight #steven grant #marc spector #marc spector x oc #steven grant x oc #jake lockely x oc #oc #original character #moonknight angst #slow burn #fanfic #marc spector needs a hug #steven grant needs a hug

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goblins-riddles-or-frocks · 1 year ago

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@doomsayings I had to make a separate post bc I have too much to say for a reply lmao. But I’M OBSESSED!! I literally only started Housewives to humor a friend but then it got me like immediately lol. I’m not current on either tbh tho. Housewives I’m on season… four? The one where Carlton and Joyce joined. And VPR I’m on season two. I’m trying to watch to keep up with both so that they’re like around the same time ish for any crossover content.

General thoughts, I’m in loooove with Lisa Vanderpump. She’s so sexy 😭😭😭 and she seems like the most genuine and normal of them? Hate that they’re all turning on her rn where I’m at in the season. Like leave her alone!!! She hasn’t done anything wrong ever.

Season one was really funny with the insane Kyle and Camille drama. Probably the only time Kyle has ever been justified imo sjdhdd. It was really cool how Camille turned around and became the least dramaful person over the subsequent seasons tho. Like she ended up leaving the show but Good For Her. It sounds like she had some like capital T Therapy and became way more mature and mellow.

Kyle was fun in like season one? But she’s been kind of pearl clutchy and annoying since idk. It’s good drama ig. But I’m neutral on her. I liked her relationship with Lisa a lot though rip it made a lot of sense why Lisa wanted to step back. And it’s been really funny how Kyle’s legit just acting like a jealous ex over it and being like “but why don’t you love me anymore :C” I was very 👀👀 when they kissed in Paris as a “joke” tho.

Adrienne seemed really chill and level headed at first at least next to the others and then got bizarrely touchy by the end. I love drama but hers seemed really petty all the time, so I was glad she left the show. Also she like transparently absolutely LOATHED her husband from the first episode, so I’m surprised it took her that long to get divorced.

Also past season but the Taylor thing was scary!!! It was insane seeing the “woman yelling at cat” meme in context and it’s like in the middle of her mental breakdown due to her abusive af husband.

I used to like Brandi a lot but she’s spiraled pretty bad? Like on intro she seemed genuinely really nice and just vaguely without a filter (same) and everyone was ganging up on her for objectively really minor things or interpreting her in bad faith all the time. But idk she got genuinely super racist with Joyce. And now she’s being mean to Lisa 💔

Carlton’s fun but insane. Love her weird goth house and how she and her husband are both clearly sleeping with the nanny. Also just all the very gay moments with Brandi and it’s hilarious how much she seems to hate Kyle for no reason?? Kyle could just be like “hi” and she’s like WHY WOULD YOU EVER SAY SOMETHING SO PASSIVE AGRESSIVE?? I’m sad to see her go but also shdhdfd she is just kind of crazy.

Joyce is meh. She’s just kind of boring. But very pretty. I am happy to stare at her. I know she doesn’t last past the one season either.

Yolanda seems deranged in her personal life but the most solid and reasonable in like the friend dynamic and when drama goes down. It’s really insane though how she’ll just say something completely crazy in passing and then gloss over it shdgd I think she also leaves soon? But she’s fun.

Kim’s also eh. She has soooo many issues but she handles them kind of annoyingly. Her life story is so fucked up and interesting though.

Re: VPR Stassi is probably my fave, she’s so messy 😭😭😭 That entire friend group is just awful! The way they have zero boundaries lmao. It’s like sitcom levels where they’re just together all the damn time. It also makes me feel better about adulthood lmao like these people act like insane teenagers!

Stassi is probs my fave. Love her mean girl energy. Scheana is vapid but probably like… the most solid friend? All the others are such assholes lmao. They never show up for each other!

I’m also not like there yet obvs but I have heard of Scandoval. So rn being at the point where Sandoval and Kristen break up (probably for good?) and the initial #vibes with Ariana, loosely knowing how it goes, is insaaaaane.

I also love every time there’s Housewives crossover, and they’re catering a party or something and are like “what the fuck is wrong with these rich people” shdhff like yeah.

So I’m having a great time! I love Mess!

#doomsayings #reality tv thoughts #real housewives of beverly hills #rhobh #dark stories of the north

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hms-tardimpala · 1 year ago

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Hi! Since you were talking about your latest project, for the ship bingo I'm going to ask: John/Dean? (And if you want to do one extra, may I suggest Philes?)

NARA. I should have known you'd come up with the ship that's not talked about in polite company. Thank you so much!

So, for any anti that might have followed me by accident: I think we're about to part ways. John/Dean here refers to John Winchester and Dean Winchester from Supernatural.

Train wreck but I can't look away: whichever way you look at it, whether it's consenting or not, it's not gonna start well, go well, or end well. No amount of great writing will make this relationship stable or fair. It's doomed.

I'm a casual shipper: this isn't my OTP in this fandom (that spot belongs to Destiel), but I multiship.

INTERESTING COMPELLING COMPLEX SCREECHIBG: Dean took on his mother's role in the family in most ways after her death, why not this too? Have you seen the Winchester family dynamics? None of it is healthy, they're violent creeps with codependance issues. These boys haven't been socialized! So yeah, incest, why not? So many themes to explore with this ship. Abuse, masculinity, free will, homophobia, parenting.

Fandom ruining it: not really. There is amazing fandom content for that ship. But the SPN fandom is extremely divided and confrontational, and John's character is a touchy subject. Most people stop at arguing about whether he is good or bad, and are too busy decrying incestuous ships to provide interesting discussion about Dean/John.

Person A deserves better than person B: hey, John Winchester sucks. He's interesting, but he's the kind of character you watch telling yourself "I wish he'd rot in hell" and guess what? He canonically does!

Could cut the tension with a KNIFE: every room John steps into has tension. Things are already tense and intense and electric with his sons (in different ways) in a story where he doesn't fuck them. Imagine if he wasn't just Dean's father, drill sergeant and personal god, but also the man who taught him to have sex.

FREE SPACE: ew ew omg ewww! This hits the tiny mark between "absolutely disgusting" and "so fucking hot". There are days I can't stomach it, but I stand by it because it's extremely compelling.

Thank you a thousand times for giving me the oportunity to talk about them, it was very exciting.

And now, some Philes as a palate cleanser:

Train wreck but I can't look away: their worldviews and morals are too different and conflicting to build a lasting relationship, it's always going to be messy, and I'm here for it.

THAT one scene. You know the one: the duelling scene, of course. Thurston, what were you thinking? Also, the minotaur fight scene when Fetch realizes Niles is sort of a friend, kinda??

INTERESTING COMPELLING COMPLEX SCREECHIBG: It's because they have such different opinions and goals that they are interesting to see interact. For Fetch and Niles to date or fuck, I think Fetch would have to get more down to earth and less absolute about his views, and that would be an interesting growth. Also, Thurston Niles is a great character to explore and make headcanons about.

They are divorced, possibly not for the first time: these guys fight so much. They're used to each other's presence like you're used to an inconvenience or a flaw in the sidewalk. The way Fetch goes to Niles' house for drinks, and Niles doesn't serve him alcohol, and they antagonize each other but still have a decent time is so Divorced to me.

Could cut the tension with a KNIFE: I love to see the girls fightinnnnnggg. I love that Fetch seems two seconds away from imploding when he's in the same room as Niles. What's interesting is that the tension is brought by Fetch and Niles is chill about their situationship. When they meet on a case of Fetch's, sparks fly and that's awesome.

FREE SPACE: I'm using this space to say a trop I love to imagine for them is "ugh, why did it have to be him of all people?". I like to imagine them both inconvenienced by their attraction.

Thank you so much for playing with me <3

#ask game #Nara #fetch phillips archives #philes

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chloeangelic · 1 year ago

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Chloe! I must say that I read ''Ziti'' the day you posted it, but I've been munching on what I wanted to say.

I will start with the smut at the end, because uff!🥵 How Joel finds the reader pleasuring herself, and then she keeps going and lets him see felt so erotic and hot and intimate. They fuck, but with the desire and need they have for each other feels like it goes beyond that. Making it somehow hotter.

With That said, Joel and Ladybug are doomed. It started with mindblowing sex, and the prospect of getting someone to share their bodies and pleasure is a huge bonus, but it's not the only craving. How can they not fall for each other so hard and fast when they have been so lonely and starved of affection? How can they not get addicted to the feeling of simply sharing a meal with real conversation when they're seen and cared for? I can see so easily how messy this will get. How she cannot hide from Joel's careful and watchful eye and how she does without knowing things for Joel no one has done in a long time. The situation is so complex. It would be easy to say ''to hell with everything'' get a divorce, and get together, but it's not that simple. For that to happen, people they love and care about will be hurt, and feelings and truths need to be acknowledged, accepted, and rectified. And I don't feel like they are there yet. Maybe this time together will give them the strength for it. I love how you're picturing all this situation.

I'm wondering about how it will all blow up. I cannot see Joel being able to hide the ''glow''. I wonder if Tommy will be the first to notice the change in his brother as they spend a lot of time together. Or maybe Gwen will surprise us all because despite not having looked properly at Joel in a long time, she knows him, or at least his habits.

I didn't think you could make me as invested as I was with ''Love Me Back'', but it looks like it will be a close match. Thanks for the lovely chapter!♥️♥️♥️

hii! thank you so much!! <3 you're very spot in in your analysis of their connection! i've been very interested in all aspects of intimacy in the last few months, so that's one of the big themes in seeking. them eating together, sharing about their lives, about their relationships, him watching her, the sex itself - those are all different aspects of intimacy and i think people sometimes view intimacy as just sex but it goes far beyond that, and i find myself often realizing more and more examples of intimacy between people.

you'll see how it blows up in the new year :ppp thank you for reading <333

#chloe answers #seeking fic

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mapsofnonexistentplaces · 1 year ago

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mr. bepop or faye valentine for the character asks 😸

putting it under the cut ^_^

MR BEEPO FIRST

favorite thing about them

ahh i genuinely just think hes like. a very stylish character like perhaps derivative of the whole show's aesthetic but yeah. hes just a cool jazz cowboy who can do tricks and shotcha. i think the way his like. carefree nature is challenged by the end of the show is really good also.... like yeah this dude is reckless and youre kind of meant to suspend your disbelief at first just to see him pull cool stunts and shit but by the end its very much commented on as a specific flaw of his and its like. yeah! clever way to show off a characters problems being enabled and made worse to the point of them being visible to others.... its cool its cool

least favorite thing about them

i think his hair looks STUPID in official art often i like it when its drawn as just like. visibly curled or messy i guess

favorite line

guess i shotcha....

but also "whatever happens happens". :+)

brOTP + OTP

compounding these because my answers the same. i think its funny to interpret him faye and jet as just like. awkward situational polycule LOL mostly just because when i was watching the show i kept making jokes like. Yuup. these guys are all divorced to each other without ever having been married

nOTP

him and vicious im just not big on "enemies who want to fuck each other secretly" type dynamics

random headcanon

schizoid guy swag....! and also i just like. randomly headcanon him as latino because i was listening to a lot of volta when i was watching the show and i very quickly associated frances the mute with his storyline hah. so hes very much tied up with that in my mind

unpopular opinion

uhhhh i think hes cool but not in the way weird old anime fans think hes cool. i think his self destructive habits make him very interesting....

song i associate with them

CYGNUS VISMUND CYGNUS !!!!!!! i also do have a playlist for him hehe

favorite picture of them

first ones that came to mind :+)

faye time now.....

favorite thing about them

I LIKE THAT SHES JUST LIKE. very openly bratty and annoying and that she does anything she wants. like i think the flippant way she treats the rest of the bebop crew rules i like that shes very selfish and just puts herself first. makes the few moments when she actually gets worried about the others really poignant....

least favorite thing about them

wouldnt say i completely dislike it because i do think it was handled tastefully but i think the subplot of like. oooh yeah guy who revived her from her cryosleep or whatever being someone shes very romantically into made me roll my eyes a bit. i do think it makes her like. presence during the timeframe of the show way stronger but from a story writing standpoint im just like Bah a bit lame that shes The Woman and shes constantly Romancing men

favorite line

none that come to mind i just like it when shes mean 👍 oh uh not a line but it was cool when she just ate dog food that one time

brOTP + OTP

see above answer for spike hah

nOTP

most relationships honestly....... i think she deserves to have some genuine connections with people and aside from spike and jet she really doesnt have any hah.

random headcanon

she would love shitty 90s era pop songs.........

unpopular opinion

unpopular opinion uhhhh i think she is a cool character who is not just a sex object

song i associate with them

hmmmm ^_^

favorite picture of them

love pics of her and ein HEHE

#ask

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the-jellicle-duelist · 2 years ago

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random movie every week week 2/1498 - The Lobster (2015)

hello, i have a lot of movies and i have not seen that many of them. so every week i will watch a movie at random, and then wright a little blog about it and give it a rating out of 5 stars THE RULES

i can skip any marvel movie i want (because i have seen them and i don't want to watch them again)

i can skip any movie i have seen more than twice (the goal is to watch movies that are new to me, but could be interesting to return to a movie i have only seen once, hence the rule)

ratings are out of 5 stars, with NO HALF STARS. half stars are for babies

If a film is part of a series, i reserve the right to start the film series from the beginning

HERE WE GO

The Lobster (2015)

i had not heard of this film prior to watching it, so i went in not knowing almost anything. it was indeed an A24 film, so i had a certain expectation of like a house style, and it basically met those expectations

the basic plot of the film is in the world, if you are Single for a certain amount of time, at any point, it is illegal. there is a facility which you can go to to potentially meet someone and become married and therefore avoid what seems to be the end result of being single for too long and getting caught: becoming an animal. you do get to pick what animal

the man character of the film (colin farrell; i don't remember his name) is here. he is there for a while, and after getting closer to his scheduled Last Day, he fakes a relationship with a monster of a woman, who forces him to reveal that their relationship is fake.

he ends up in the woods with the Loaners, an equally bad solution to this problem where they live in the woods and they Must be alone, and they Must follow those rules or bad things happen to them.

naturally, colin farrell falls in love with someone, and after that relationship is attempted to be sabotaged by their leader, they run away from the group. if you watch the movie, relationships seem to require a key element that you share, and colin farrell and rachel weisz were both shortsighted. but the leader has her surgically blinded. but they still run away together. colin is about to blind himself in the bathroom with a steak knife, and it is implied he left her in that restaurant because he could not go thru with blinding himself

what i thought:

i was pretty frustrated with this film by the end of it. the film as like Metaphor (how society puts a lot of emphasis on everyone needing to be partnered up, from the way we build our communities to the way we file our taxes, society by and large is designed to support A Couple as a unit, and we are taking this to an extreme.) it mostly works. i see what they were going for. the film's text? the way the film was conveying its themes i felt like it was really messy.

a sticking point throughout was the notion that you cannot build a relationship on a lie. which, yeah that makes sense you probably shouldn't do that. there seemed to be no room for a relationship that you build? together? it seemed so strange to me that at no point two people in that weird facility didn't look at each other and say 'i like you but i can't really pinpoint a singular thing that connects us what if we just say it's racecars and get out of here?"

like is divorce illegal too? can we not just try something out for a while? the definition of relationship seemed pretty defined to the characters, but it was not clear to me, and so therefore when characters made decisions i was just like what the fuck are they doing?

i GET why the facility managers did what they did, and why the leader of the Loaners did what she did: they both wanted to maintain the weird amount of power they had over these people's lives. is that part of the metaphor? are they The Government? are they Society?

the rest of the characters? they way they talked to eachother, and how they interacted with eachother was insane to me. and finally when colin and rachel fell in love, and they almost seemed like they were gonna get out of there, it ends with colin being unable to commit to her even tho now they are differently sighted. and tbh i am not sure how that is supposed to make me feel. and by the end of the movie i basically didn't care.

am i supposed to feel bad for rachel? (i kind of do, she did get blinded against her will.) but also the two of them couldn't not be so incredibly horny in front of the Leader's family? i don't think i do really feel that bad for her. am i supposed to feel bad for colin? sure his brother got murdered in a really disturbing way. but also he was REALLY HORNY. he also said he would be with this girl and now she is blind and alone in a restaurant. am i supposed to hate colin for that?

how the answer to their problem is not 'find something else to bond over, even if it takes times' is so fucking stupid bonkers to me that i can't support what they were trying to get across with this film

i gave this film 2 Stars. it's fine, it probably works for someone. i hate the way the dialogue is written, and it just does not make sense as a film to me.

here is a screenshot of my notes:

Previous Posts Under Read More:

Robocop

#ryan’s random movie every week #2/1498

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thexgrayxlady · 9 months ago

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What I Read in July 2024

The Adventures of Amina Al-Sirafi by S.A. Chakraborty - 4.50/5.00

If you could synthesize a book in a lab, just for me, this would be very close to the end result.

This was a fun, swashbuckling adventure, staring a retired pirate and her middle-aged crew. I love how despite being older, the characters are all still hot messes and absolute menaces to society. Amina, despite trying to reform for her kid, is still an adventurer at heart and you feel how much she loves being back on the sea, getting into misadventures. I was having too much of a good time to take too many notes.

Also Raksh sucks so much. He's just the worst. I love him. I want him to keep trying to serve Amina magical divorce papers forever.

It's really just held back by its ties to her previous series, which is mainly a personal grievance because I'm finding interconnected universes, especially when they don't need to be there, increasingly uninteresting. The part on the Peri's island drags a lot and they take a lot of the tension out of the ending.

The book has a fun, Raiders-esque feel to it. The plot unfolds at a pretty fast pace and I never got tired of the hijinks the characters got into getting the band back together.

Voyage of the Basilisk by Marie Brennan - 3.00/5.00

I'm always weirdly disappointed by these books. Like, they're not unenjoyable, but I always feel like there isn't enough focus on the speculative biology of dragons. The pacing for this book is a lot better than the previous entries, it gets right to business on Isabella's voyage around the world to study dragons. It's very accessible and easy to read. When the dragons are on page, they're really interesting. I really liked the illustrations. Unfortunately, I'm just not terribly interested in the politics of this world.

Wicked Beauty by Katee Robert - 3.50/5.00

I gave Katee Robert another chance and I liked this so much better than Electric Idol. Wicked Beauty made for a fun and easy beach read. The characters are less annoying, except for Hermes and Dionysus, who are, yet again, just so irritating. I hated every second they were on page. Fortunately, there was not very much of them.

I really liked Helen, Achilles, and Patroclus. They had a fun dynamic between them. I appreciate that while they come to care about each other, they have incompatible goals at first and they eventually work to figure out how to make their relationship work. They're all messy bisexual assholes and I loved watching them being messy bisexual assholes.

The ratio of porn to plot was a lot better in this book. The plot is kind of dumb, but it's entertainingly dumb and, let's be honest, you're not reading this series for the plot. There are some things from the plot that I would have changed, one of them is genuine and the other is just a personal preference. I wish that Helen defeating Paris had been from her POV and had more time and weight dedicated to it. It felt like the author was rushing to the end here. I also wish there had been more drama around Patroclus' injuries in the second trial, but that's just my preference. Hiding injuries is my catnip. It was dangled in front of me and then jerked away. Like the football. Jail for Katee Robert. Jail for 1000 years!

Mistborn by Brandon Sanderson - 2.75/5.00

I see the appeal of these books. They do not appeal to me.

To it's credit, it is very accessible. Maybe a little too much so for my taste. I am, admittedly, a pretentious asshole. This could have been a fun book. At times, it is very close to being a very fun book. Unfortunately it settles for being the MCU of fantasy in both a complementary and a derogatory sense.

The language is very simple, to the point where the few times where complex vocabulary was used, it was somewhat jarring. I think I can count on one hand the number of times figurative language was used. Everything is very surface level, if it's what you're in the mood for, I could see it being very easy to turn your brain off and enjoy this and not have to worry too much about missing out on subtext.

That being said, everything is explained so often that you have to ask yourself if Sanderson thinks his readers are stupid. You just want to tell him that yeah, you got the point like three paragraphs ago, just get on with it. The over explanation of the, admittedly interesting, magic, the simple plot, and the beyond simple characters lead to the book feeling tensionless and bloated.

I actually like the magic system. When it wasn't being explained every other paragraph. Learning about Allomancy became very repetitive fast and I think at least half of it could have been kept in the appendix for a much tighter book. And because it was so overstated, I became kind of pedantic about it. The magic system doesn't even go as far as it could with its own logic. Why can they push and pull non-magnetic metals? Why is that road copper when it could be a much cooler magnetic metal? You could have a road made out of cobalt or neodymium or even nickel if you wanted something more mundane. Why is pewter the metal that makes you stronger when it's really soft and malleable in real life?

The world itself feels more like a themepark version of itself than an actual lived in world. I wouldn't care about this so much, but Sanderson gets so much praise for his worldbuilding and I do not get it. This is due at least in part to how flat and lifeless the characters are.

Vin is wildly inconsistent. She says over and over and over again that she doesn't trust people and she expects to betray her. Yet every time she encounters someone betraying someone else and she becomes surprised pikachu. Like, she should not need to have what noblemen do to Skaa women explained to her. She should not be shocked and appalled by it. She grew up with that threat constantly hanging over her head. She should not like or trust the nobility as much as she does, as quickly as she does. From the very beginning, she feels more like a sheltered noblewoman than a homeless orphan who makes a living by stealing.

I've very rarely encountered a character as annoying as Kelsier. You can practically see him tip his goddamn fedora and hear him say, "M'lady." I'm not sure a whole chapter goes by without one character or another extolling the virtues of the goddamn Mary Sue. He has one pretty good moment, when he returns to the Pits of Hathsin, and another when Sanderson has another all too brief flash of really good writing with Kelsier's death. The first is nearly immediately undercut when Kelsier single-handedly destroys the Pits in two pages and meets so little resistance in doing so that it feels like he could have done that whenever he wanted to. If he could so easily do this, why does the rest of the plan even need to happen?

Sazed's the best character and even then, he's still wish.com Alfred Pennyworth.

Because the main characters are so overpowered and the antagonists have very little presence on the page, plot has no tension. Everything just feels too easy for the characters. Everything more or less goes according to plan. And when it doesn't, it doesn't feel like they have to struggle to get things back on track. At the end, I had to ask myself what was the point of 2/3 of the book spent gathering the army when Vin and Kelsier were going to solo everything.

The tension is not helped by calling the oppressed underclass The Skaa.

The logbook bits at the start of the chapters are the most interesting part of the book because they're allowed to stand more or less on their own and they don't tell the reader everything that happens, then explain it in the narration, then have the characters discuss it again just to make sure that the reader knows what happened.

Admittedly, the last fifty pages are a blast, but you shouldn't have to slog through six hundred pages of repetitive, annoying, beige prose to get there. The Lord Ruler's entrance is really cool and creepy. What Vin does with the metal arrowheads is creative and frankly just nifty. Unfortunately, my copy had several misprinted pages right when it was getting good, so I couldn't really even enjoy that.

At the end of the day, it honestly feels like Sanderson would rather be writing manuals for a TTRPG than a novel.

Mirrored Heavens by Rebecca Roanhorse - 3.50/5.00

The cover is less criminally ugly than Fevered Star!

I want so badly to like this book more than I do. Unfortunately, it inherits too many problems from the previous book to land as effectively as it could. The author still has to scramble to move characters into place because of how much time the previous book wasted futzing around.

The whole Teek storyline feels rushed and I feel like Xiala should have gone through most of it in the previous book. If her mother, aunt, and the matrons were given more time to develop, then their massacre would have had more of an impact. The scene on the beach where she starts to Sing is really good and I wish that it had the impact it deserved. That being said, once it gets off of the Teek islands, watching her come into her powers is pretty cool and her storyline moves much more smoothly. Her reunion with Serapio is very cute and I love their relationship.

Naranpa's storyline ultimately feels superfluous and hastily tacked on as the conflict pivots away from the Crow God and the Sun God. At the end of the last book, I thought we would get at least something interesting happening at the Graveyard of the Gods and it just never happens. I feel like you could cleanly excise her parts from the book and very little would be lost. It's ultimately just so shallow and disconnected from everything else that it's hard to care.

None of Balem's flashbacks were needed and just leave the book feeling bloated. Frankly, I don't think that Balem's POV is needed to begin with. You could get just about everything you needed from that with some minor tweeks to Iktans.

Serapio's POV is easily one of the strongest. There's a scene with the man he thinks is is father that's so good. You get such a strong sense of his religious trauma and why he feels like his destiny is his only option. You really understand why he latches so strongly onto anybody who treats him like an actual human, like Okoa and Xiala.

Like. I loved the first book in this series. I love these characters. This is such an interesting world. I know it doesn't seem like it from this review, but I like this book. There's a lot of very good stuff in here. It's just held back too much by mistakes made in the previous entry and I wanted it to be better.

#Gray Reads Stuff #I'm very sorry I'm being salty about Mistborn it's honestly Fine #It is aggressively Fine #It is definitely a put together book product #I'm just very tired about being nice about it IRL because my friend is trying to get back into reading fantasy and I'm being supportive #I couldn't fit in my note about Sanderson also having the prose equivalent of watery plain oatmeal #like please its been six hundred pages at least give me a walnut. I don't even like walnuts but at least it would be more interesting

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