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ruffoverthinksthings · 6 years

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I Am Closing Asks Indefinitely Until Further Notice

I’m pretty sure many of you have realized this was a long time coming with how little I’ve posted or had any sort of activity on this blog, but I won’t be answering Descendants asks anymore, not unless D3 or the TV series somehow manages to reignite my passion in the series.

It’s been a wonderful time, the support and the interactions with my fellow creators and fans have been incredible for my creativity and writing, but it seems my muse has moved on to other matters, and Descendants no longer has the spark it held for me then.

Thank you all for your likes, your reblogs, and your asks.

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ruffoverthinksthings · 6 years

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So it seems so many royals are against the Isle, what royals were for it?

http://ruffoverthinksthings.tumblr.com/post/165255057055/im-so-happy-that-a-lot-of-my-favorite-royals

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ruffoverthinksthings · 6 years

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What villains (adult) u want in Descendants universe (books or movies) they ahven't shown?

Three off the top of my head:

Captain Hook, to have an idea of what the former terror of Neverland thinks about his son currently being second in command to one of his nemeses on the Isle, as Hook and Ursula likely fought for control over the districts Down in the Docks.

Claude Frollo, as I’d really love to see if the man is broken, twisted his faith to fit his new reality, or just completely accepted that he’s a zealous monster than a passionate man of the Faith.

Gaston Sr., seeing as Gil makes mention of him to Ben, to tell Beast that he still considers him his rival. It’s been 20 years, and the man still isn’t over it, I want to see how far he’s fallen (hehehe), or kept roughly in the same shape as always after all this time, especially since he can personally see his archnemesis living it up with his supposed-to-be-betrothed all day, every day, through ANN.

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ruffoverthinksthings · 6 years

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If Auradon held elections after the Vks came, who do you think would become king or queen out if the descendants? You know like an election between Ben, Chad, Audrey, Aziz, Annabelle or any other royals?

I think it’d be a rather huge toss-up with no predictable winner, honestly, as more likely than not, these sort of elections will be completely democratic, meaning that anyone qualified can run, and the constitutional amendment would be written specifically to allow VKs and commonfolk a fighting chance.

The Royal AKs certainly have the upperhand in experience, reputation, and good will with the people, but it would certainly be up in Disney’s interest for both thematic and merchandising reasons to introduce the non-Royal Descendants of side characters, or entirely new characters made just for this plot; it’d be EXTREMELY counterproductive to the idea of “anyone can become King/Queen/President!” theme if the people who were already destined for the position by birth still get it.

Also, I doubt that “King” or “Queen” will be the titles, seeing as they’d be moving away from the royal lineage selection process; it’d be like Vanellope from Wreck-It-Ralph, declaring herself president. There could also be the opportunity of separation of powers, having numerous individuals a council of some sorts, rather than just the one person with all the power.

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ruffoverthinksthings · 6 years

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What if the Aks get tattoos what would they be?

http://ruffoverthinksthings.tumblr.com/post/155366407595/what-about-ak-tattoos-or-those-from-ww-i-could

Provided they lose the taboo of tattoos, or alternatively, they decide to be more daring...

Ben

A half-and-half of a man and a beast, in the middle of a transformation, with either his father or himself as the model. Other, more elaborate ideas consist of a king holding a giant pillow on his back as the weight of his people’s needs and responsibilities push down on him, and a king waving their hand, causing a massive sweep of change and catastrophic results to run over his land. I’d expect him to get quite melancholy about his place in the world and the effects and duties he now has as a king, as glamorous as his life can be, so he doesn’t hesitate to get reminders of that.

Chad

As I mentioned before, a small, non-scandalous crown, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see him tatooing “mementos” of his greater outdoors exploits, like his hunting kills back when they were alive and not either hanging on the Charming family’s trophy room, or donated, consumed, and utilized by the local populace. I wouldn’t go so far as to say he’d get a tattoo of his own face on some large real estate like his back, but he could certainly think of getting an elaborate shield-sword mural there, all decorated in symbols and iconic imagery from Charmington like its state flowers...

Audrey

Lots of elaborate flower and crawling vine designs. Simple affairs, that can be easily hidden by sleeves, or within scandalous areas that she wouldn’t DARE show skin in out in public. I wouldn’t put it past her to have a long, elaborate trail running up one leg or down an arm, across her back, of vines and thorns gradually turning into flowers and blooming butterflies.

Lonnie

Classic Chinese Tattoos all the way! Characters signifying things like “Honour,” “Duty,” and “Highest Virtue,” along with more elaborate designs like dragons and horses, and soldiers riding into battle clashing against foes or looking proud. Back real estate would likely be dedicated to a tapestry of her mother’s famous journey, starting from just above her waist, climbing all the way to the “heavens” between her shoulder blades alongside the emperor.

Jane

http://ruffoverthinksthings.tumblr.com/post/155366532825/on-the-subject-of-aks-and-tattoos-the-person

I also wouldn’t put it past her to toy around with pagan imagery such as dryads, goats, and animal sacrifices with stylistic blood splatter, such as flowers and honey pouring out of a wound to signify the other offerings.

Doug

Simple designs. Nothing like gem stones or anything elaborate, he’d much more likely have symbolic, “earthy” designs such as the pickaxes his father and uncles wield daily, mountains and natural scenes, and if he springs for something super elaborate on his back, it’d likely be a series of track and tunnels, or an image of dwarves hard at work.

He might have a “Heigh Ho!” tattooed on a visible place, to remind himself of the hard work that gets anyone anywhere, during tough times.

Allie

Scenes from Wonderland. The caterpillar blowing bubbles, buttertoastflies, the card soldiers making pyramids of themselves to stack the odds in their favour--go nuts, pretty much everything is possible in the land down the rabbit hole or through the looking glass.

Jordan

Largely temporary, magical, but highly stylized and outrageous affairs. She’d be all for moving designs, and of course, art that literally jumps out at the audience during performances, or much more scandalous rituals like being naked alongside several other dancers to form a moving, living mural, “dragon,” or whatever other scene. She’d likely erase them soon enough, because unlike the rest, her tattoos are never forever.

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ruffoverthinksthings · 6 years

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Yes, continuity is a mess.

I assume that the barrier is only visible from outside or up-close. Having all that golden light above your head can be irritating on the eyes, so the barrier is all but invisible to the Islanders from ground or sea level, until you either try to escape to the limits, or you’re at a high enough vantage that it starts to react to your presence from within and become visible.

I know everyone in the Descendants fandom likes to voice how disappointed they are that the movies don’t take after the books but I was rereading “Return to the Isle of the Lost” and “Rise of the Isle of the Lost” just yesterday and…the lack of continuity goes both ways. Return mentions a few details that don’t match up with the first movie - chief of it being how Yen Sid refers to Maleficent being the one who broke the dome to escape, when in the first movie, it was accidentally Jane with the Wand. And in Rise it alludes to the “invisible” barrier - however in the movies, the barrier dome is clearly visible.

This isn’t really anything important, I guess, and you can ignore this if you want. I just though it was interesting looking through the books and finding out that they don’t match perfectly to the movie before them either.

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ruffoverthinksthings · 6 years

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Because the average life expectancy for most of the kingdoms was around 30-40 years old, and most of the children and people died EXCEPTIONALLY young, and quite often.

It wasn’t unusual for kids to be working in adult jobs this early in many of their time periods, the Medieval Era especially. Things like child labour laws? Mandatory education? 18 years before you were considered eligible as an adult? Almost all of them were modern inventions.

Because it’s only been 20 years and London is a massive minority in all this, I expect that a lot of parents still believe their kids should be marrying and having children at 13-14, and having a lot of them, as there’s this unwritten belief that majority of them will die off because dangers and poor health abounds, not to mention the fact that you should have been working as a servant or an apprentice in some future job so you could support yourself before it was too late, or you’d already been working to take over your family’s farm since you could walk.

I think it’s quite a surprise to a lot of these pre-BGU citizens that they waited until Ben was 16 to crown him, as again, many would have considered him an adult with all the responsibilities and capabilities of one just little after he becomes a teenager in our modern times.

Auradon is an awful kingdom ruled by a boy-king who’s missing. Responsibilty has fallen on a girl-queen. What’s with Auradon and forcing children into stressful and powerful positions?

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ruffoverthinksthings · 6 years

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The Great Uniting is mentioned in the intro of Descendants 1 and the prologue of the first book. Other magicians like Yen Sid were responsible, it was a collaborative effort.

The features and mixed race thing was a misunderstanding. I assumed that it was a pre Great Uniting “this is how we met.”

They weren't colonized, China was willingly entering the alliance and the Huns were brought along for being inside their territory, or more of that Auradon style crime and punishment, China's home realm not wanting the Xiongnu left with them as China leaves for good.

I'd say Northern Wei and Agrabahn heritage should be changed; you'd only have that heritage post Great Uniting, and China was always a hub of numerous expats and passing foreigners.

Author’s Commentary

Fair warning, I’m touching upon race and my deliberative process may ruffle some feathers. I can stand by my work, so anyone who wants to go off on some tirade because they disagree will find me rather unmoved by it.

Unless you have a well thought out and articulate rebuttal, then I’m open.

Why I made Jay’s mother a Hun.

Assuming Jay (the character) looks JUST like the actor Boo Boo Stewart, I wanted an explanation as to why he looks Korean-Japanese-Chinese/Native-Blackfeet/White when Jafar is from Agrabah. While there is no official ethnic makeup of Agrabah or any of the 18 Kingdoms, it’s supposed to be analogous to a generic country/muddling of countries in the middle east. I saw two different references that Agrabah is supposed to be near the Jordan river. So we’re talking about Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestine, and Syria. Wikipedia lists Iran and Iraq as sources of inspiration. The actor who plays Jafar in Descendants (Maz Jobrani) is Iranian. The royal family is Muslim (the Sultan refers to Allah at last once and the palace architecture is clearly Islamic). “Sultan” is an Arabic term. So we get a pretty distinct picture of Agrabah.

Now one could make the argument that we don’t ever get a full picture of where Agrabah is in relation to the other 18 Kingdoms. I can’t even google a map of Auradon that distinctly carves it out, I think most references point to it being way up north, behind “the great wall” like Northern Wei is. So if we assume Agrabah and Northern Wei are next to each other geographically and the rest of Auradon is south, then I could see where Jay would get prominent Asian features and still be considered Agrabi. Think of an area where Agrabah and Northern Wei meet, you’d probably see people who look Nepalese, Bhutanese, Tibetan, and all up and down that general area; where Middle Eastern and Asian features mix in. So we would just have to say that Jay’s mother is from the more Northern Wei-ish part of Agrabah and ka-chow, his features are explained.

Sorry to any reader who is offended by this, I just didn’t think most would really think that deeply about it or even know geography well enough to figure it out and make those connections. So I wanted a more obvious character they could associate these features with, without having to somehow fit into the story where someone or something explained the geographical proximity of Agrabah and Northern Wei and would understand that there is a distinct area where both countries would have influenced the ethnic/racial makeup.

It’s also kind of hard to try to explain why someone from that area would have been banished to the Isle. By all accounts, Jafar was a lone wolf and never had like an army or others to have helped him besides Iago. And he doesn’t look like he has any Northern Wei features, so he’d be from a rather distant area from there.

Shan Yu was a warlord. I’m kind of thinking Attila the Hun/Genghis Khan type conqueror. I could see him having a few loyal camp followers/concubines that would have followed him to the Isle, along with any survivors of the Hunnic war with Northern Wei. That seemed more logical and likely, to me.

I also assume most have this belief that certain countries have a very specific ethnic/racial makeup and anyone who doesn’t have those features is an immigrant and therefore never really part of that country, regardless of how many generations removed they are from the initial immigration.

I recently did a post/reblogged about making Evie black, even though the story of Snow White has German roots. There were some people who were like, what? No way. But there are black people born and raised in Germany, they speak German. Germany is all they’ve known. That makes them German. But not everyone thinks that way, so I do take that into account.

So even if I did try to assert that Jay’s lineage is simply from an area in Agrabah that would have mixed with Northern Wei racially, I just don’t think it would have clicked in readers’ heads as well as: Jafar is from Agrabah, Jay’s mother is a Hun = Jay’s features explained.

Plus I think it’s kind of cool and fun that I created a whole distinct subgroup of Huns that have warging powers. I read that Shan Yu’s eyes (black sclera and gold irises) were supposed to be explained by him having warging powers with his falcon. I expounded that to creating a specific tribe that has these features/powers. This aspect is never verified, at least not by my research, but I think it’s fun so I kept it.

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ruffoverthinksthings · 6 years

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I see two problems with this:

One, Agrabah and Northern Wei were artifically put together by Auradon, Post-Great Uniting. These two were not geographically, temporally, or dimensionally close to each other BGU. To use an analogy, this wasn’t two species of flowers that bloomed in the same rainforest but only in a rare intersection, these were two entirely different, unrelated species of plants taken from different parts of the world and put in the same greenhouse by humans.

BGU, Cinderellasburg, Sherwood Forest, and Auroria were not next-door neighbours, it was only AGU that they were brought together, not to mention connected by the hub that is Auradon City.

Two, there is no reason that the parents of VKs need to have been geographically close to each other to have met and produced children. Regardless of where they were originally from, all the villains are on the Isle AGU. Jay’s mother could have been a working girl from modern day London, a Romanian cutpurse from Medieval France, or from any other time period or location in all of Auradon’s composite states, it doesn’t matter whether or not their home states were neighbours or even in the same dimension and time period, because they’re all in the same place, at the same time, here on the Isle. There’s culture clash, for sure, but like Auradon, it eventually died down as they realized they were all in this hellish shithole together, might as well fight each other for legitimate reasons like someone stealing food.

This explanation WOULD be required if Auradon had always existed, and its geography was natural and came about over hundreds of thousands of yours, and like the real world, some places simply just developed slower, or had different influences, or was so isolated that it was not influenced as strongly by global trends. But again, it’s really not, because all of these people were tossed together on the Isle, and the rest of Auradon was ripped up from their home dimensions and put together like existential LEGO bricks.

Also, why would more Huns be in the Isle? Simple: China sees them as the enemy. Regardless of how the situation with the Xiongnu actually was, Auradon are the “good guys” and are on China’s side; China says that this race of people are all barbarians who would sooner slaughter, pillage, and burn their cities than attempt to reform, and that attempting to change them would be a mistake, and Auradon will believe them.

It’s hard to argue against that from the Xiongnu’s side as the system is already rigged against them, and their attempted conquest of China just happened to have occured just before Beast came calling up, looking for potential allies.