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natsubeatsrock · 3 years

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Why I Don't Forgive Mashima over Graytear

Does that title seem hyperbolic?

I mean, Mashima’s done some crazy things within the series, especially with ships. But to not forgive him over one? Especially Graytear? This sounds like the kind of thing I’d make fun of if you switch “Graytear“ with “Nalu“.

And yet, here we are. On Thanksgiving of all days of the year.

Somehow, I’ve managed to avoid not shipping something that doesn’t end up becoming canon in most stories I get into. About the only one I can think of where a ship I’m really gunning for doesn’t happen is Fairy Tail. But I’d like to think I’ve been handling the ship discourse fairly well over the past few years. I don’t think that seeing a ship I don’t like happen is enough to create this response in me.

In fact, this post isn’t about romance. It’s not about how Mashima missed on obvious moments to make two characters I like fall in love and have kids. In a word, it’s about disappointment. Namely, my overwhelming disappointment regarding the canon handling of Gray and Ultear’s relationship.

Before I go further, it's worth mentioning two things.

First, this isn't a strictly analytical post. I'm not entirely sure how much of what I say in this post is tinged by my own disappointment with how what happened in canon played out. None of this is to say that Mashima is a bad writer for doing this, even as I obviously disagree with how he did this. Though I'd like to believe that I'm not the only one who feels the way I do about how Graytear played out in canon, similar to the views I share in many of my other posts.

Second, this post doesn't necessarily take the perspective that Gray and Ultear should have been a romantic couple. Full disclosure, Graytear is my favorite romantic ship for both Gray and Ultear. However, I'm not making the argument that Graytear should have happened in a romantic sense in this post. (That might be another rant for another day.) For now, I'm taking the perspective that their relationship should have been furthered beyond what we got in canon.

Part I: The Unfulfilled Promise of a Bright Future

All ships that don't happen represent missed opportunities. That's not always a bad thing. (No one's arguing Mashima gypped us out of the opportunity for a pedophilic ship by not making Mest and Wendy a thing.) However, it's often disappointing to see that there could have been a great ship idea that wasn't capitalized on by a writer. It's one of the big reasons fanfiction is fun to read and write. (Still feels weird to consider myself a fanfic writer.)

While I don't have too many examples of this for my own ships outside of Fairy Tail, the big one I look to is Zutara not happening in Avatar: The Last Airbender. I'm not personally big on the shipping discourse of the ATLA world, but living with someone who is a big Zutara shipper means I've seen and heard a lot of arguments that make it hard for me to say that there was nothing to the ship. For better or worse, Zutara does represent a lost opportunity for a ship involving one of the most peculiar (I mean this in a good way) relationship dynamics in the series.

Graytear represents a few lost opportunities. The big one involves the obvious connection between each of them and Ur. Gray's life was changed for the better because Ur sacrificed herself for him. Ultear's life, up to their meeting in Tenrou Island, was made worse when Ur gave her up, ironically to save her life. While Gray grew to have a positive view of Ur, Ultear came to have a negative view of her.

Weirdly enough, that doesn't mean they didn't want Ur back in their life. Part of the reason Gray goes to Fairy Tail is to find wizards that would be able to deal with Iced Shell. Ultear's reasoning behind learning Arc of Time is so she would be able to find a time where she could be with her mother. Despite their different views on Ur, they both wanted something similar - a world where they can live with Ur again.

Of course, it's worth mentioning that we know that Gray has a more complete perspective on Ur. Ultear didn't know why Ur gave her up in the first place, took on Gray and Lyon as disciples, or never came back for her. Ultear thought these things happened because Ur didn't want her anymore. In reality, they happened despite Ur wanting and loving Ultear.

During her fight with Gray, she learns that she had the wrong idea about Ur. She gave her up to deal with the balance of magic inside of her. She didn't come back for her because she was told that she died. And, despite having Lyon and Gray as pupils, she still loved her daughter, even though she thought she was dead.

In chapter 43, there's a flashback to a conversation between Lyon and Ur. Lyon questions if he was supposed to replace Ultear. Ur rejects the notion saying that he was never supposed to be a replacement for her. Pity this likely happened before Ur took on Gray and neither of them knew of this moment. However, they both know enough after their fight to come to that conclusion.

During Gray and Ultear’s fight there’s a really cool call back to Gray and Ur’s relationship. When Ur goes to cast Iced Shell, her last words to Gray are words that many Graytear fans may be familiar with: “I will seal your darkness away!“ In its context, Ur is speaking about sealing away Deliora and ending his worries about the beast. Of course, as we all know, that wasn’t a complete sealing and Gray’s arc involves him dealing with this trauma for basically the rest of the series.

But, when Gray is fighting Ultear, he makes the same promise to her. He says that he will seal he darkness away. By this point, we know that Ultear doesn’t have the best view of Ur. However, his hope is to get her to see her mother in a new light. And, by the end of their fight, she realizes her errors and comes to have a newfound appreciation of her mother.

What this could have led into would be the start of a relationship similar to Gray's relationship with Lyon. They're not going to meet each other every arc and I doubt Ultear ever would have joined Fairy Tail. But Gray and Ultear would have much more positive interactions now because they've dealt with much of their Ur baggage. Maybe they could have come have a better, deeper relationship.

Two things happened by the end of the arc that made sure this wasn't going to be the case right away.

The first is Ultear almost killing herself. Of course, Meredy stops her from going through with it. However, she fully intended to make up for her terrible actions regarding Meredy by dying. This wasn't the best sign of Ultear potentially trying to live on and change her ways. But, we'll get to that soon enough.

The second is the seven-year time skip. Gray stayed on the island and missed out on what happened with the world during the seven years. This wasn't particularly in their control and it's not as if their relationship was the only one affected by the time skip. However, it cut a lot of the potential for the relationship to further on, especially considering that, with the formation of Crime Sorciere, their possibilities to interact greatly diminished as Ultear is now actively avoiding being captured.

These things don't necessarily mean that Graytear wasn't going to go anywhere. Up to that point in the series, similar things could have been said about Jerza and they've ended up in a decent enough spot. Of course, that was dependent on Mashima's handling of their relationship during the Grand Magic Games. However you feel about the ship, it's undeniable that this arc set up their relationship dynamic for the rest of the series. Mashima used later arcs to further their relationship, but it’s been built off what happened during the Grand Magic Games arc.

As for Graytear, well...

Part II: The Grand Magic Games Arc Didn't Further Their Relationship

I don't need to say that the Grand Magic Games wasn't as kind to Graytear, as I'm sure anyone who is a fan of Fairy Tail could probably guess that. However, it's worth talking about things other than the one thing we're all thinking about. (Might as well save the best for last.)

Gray and Ultear hardly interact in this arc. Crime Sorciere and the training group Gray is with meet in chapter 263. They go their separate ways in the next chapter. They hardly talk to each other, much less do we see development in their relationship.

I'm not expecting Gray to propose to Ultear. I'd like them to have one interaction at this point in the series that shows something that can positively change in their relationship. Jellal and Erza have half of a chapter to themselves and Juvia and Meredy have their moments with each other.

When Gray mentions Ultear and Meredy potentially being their enemies, she gives an interesting response. She says that she's incapable of making up for the things that she's done throughout her life. In forming Crime Sorciere, she's trying to make up for that by helping as many people as she can.

That sounds positive, right? Ultear recognizes that she’s done bad things in the past and is trying to make up for it now. However, it doesn't seem that Ultear has fully gotten past that old mentality that death is the only way to seek redemption. It doesn’t seem as though she fully believes that she’s a better person because of what she’s been doing.

In essence, her darkness hasn’t been fully sealed away.

And when she leaves with the rest of Crime Sorciere, she tells Erza to take care of Gray. Now, there are a few different ways to read this, depending on how you feel about the various relationships in Fairy Tail. However, it's hard to read this as Ultear expecting to see Gray many more times past that moment.

In fact, they'll only meet two more times past that moment.

For the rest of the series.

To be perfectly clear, this is because of the events of the Last Ages. (And, don’t worry, we’re almost there.) However, Gray and Ultear only interact a total of three times after the Tenrou arc. And one of them is only their technical meeting later in Sun Village. Depending on how you see it, that doesn't count. That Mashima didn't do much else before Last Ages shouldn't distract from the fact that he didn't do much before it happened.

The only other canon interaction between Gray and Ultear past that point in the series is their final meeting at the end of the Grand Magic Games. This barely counts as an interaction as is. Gray recognizes what happened to Ultear and is encouraged not to do anything because of it. I plan on talking about the meaning behind this soon, but consider that, for many people, this will be the last interaction between Gray and his master's daughter. Including their meeting at the beginning of the arc and their two different interactions on Tenrou Island, they only meet each other four times across the entire series.

It's not even as if we don't see Ultear after she cast the Last Ages spell. As I'll get to, she shows up in different forms to a few different people. However, Gray will never see or interact with Ultear past Sun Village and will never see her in person after the Grand Magic Games. No one talks about seeing her again to Gray and he doesn't get the explanation others received regarding her existence. (Though, to be fair, his moment happened shortly after her situation started.)

Well, it looks like we're already there, so let's talk about...

Part III: Last Ages - A Spell Made to Piss Me, Specifically, Off

Yes, I'm devoting an entire section in this post to the spell, Last Ages.

Considering most of the discussion about Last Ages as a spell is positive (up until it’s shown to not actually kill Ultear), I kind of have to.

This moment is held up by many to be an important inspiring moment for Ultear. This is the moment where she's truly able to come to terms with herself. She finds that her life is only worth enough to turn time back by one minute. But, by a twist of dramatic irony, that one minute was enough to save many different lives from death. Most importantly, her sacrifice was able to save the life of Gray after he was attacked by the mini dragons.

Okay, where do I start?

Ultear didn't need to sacrifice herself to stop the Eclipse dragons. Obviously, saving Gray's life, in addition to several other characters, is important and invaluable to how the series could go on from that point. But their lives were not relevant to the success of the Eclipse battle. Natsu’s was and his actions weren't affected by the Last Ages spell. If you think that’s hyperobole, consider that in the anime version of “Sin and Sacrifice”, their fight is quite literally the only thing that happens exactly the same before Last Ages take effect and after it.

I’d like to run a bit of a thought experiment. Imagine if Ultear did nothing. We can deal with the potential ramifications of Gray and so many other characters potentially dying as they come up or change that so they were always going to survive. But as far as getting rid of the Eclipse Dragons and Future Rogue? Natsu would still fight Shadow Rogue, break the Eclipse Gate with his bones, and the future visitors would all disappear anyway.

In fact, that version of events fits the same set of logic that using Last Ages requires of Ultear. Ultear feels that she's irreparably bad because her go-to idea to kill present-day Rogue proves that she can't truly reform. And after going through with the Last Ages spell, she initially believes her efforts to be worthless. If she were to find out that Future Rogue and the Eclipse dragons were defeated without killing present Rogue, that would put her in a position to realize she still has a ways to go before she can change her way of thinking. However, as the person who saved Natsu, she'd ultimately have a positive stake in how the events transpired. In essence, by saving one person, she was able to save everyone else.

Now, if Ultear was simply a one-off case of Mashima having a villain who has a longing for death to be the way they redeem themselves than I might not have as much of a problem with how things transpired. As it stands, she's on the same team with someone who had the same issue in Jellal. Earlier in this same arc, Jellal still had doubts about whether he should continue to live in light of his past actions. He's ultimately brought to think that he should live because of his conversation with Erza.

By the way, she’s also been with Meredy for even longer than that. She’s seen how she’s turned from an emotionless puppet to her own mage. Heck, Meredy should have harbored resentment and hatred over being the one to cause her family and village’s demise. However, she was the one to convince Ultear to keep living as long as she did.

Then there’s Gray himself. As callous as Iced Shell jokes end up being from fans, Gray never seemed to remove the technique from the table of possible abilities to pull from. He even went on to learn a stronger form of the spell. But every time he's gone to use it, he was prevented from doing so because of his friends. Each time, the lesson is that he isn't supposed to recklessly sacrifice his own life, even if it might save the people he cares about.

And it doesn’t stop with them. Fairy Tail is full of characters who start out as serious villains you’d think would never change or be good, have a change of heart, and do good for the world. They join Fairy Tail or other guilds, change their ways, and become better people than they were when we first met them. The arc this happens in involves that on an individual level with Flare and a group level with Sabertooth.

Are you starting to understand why I have a problem with how this played out?

Many things done by Hiro Mashima are the product of his indecision and "free-form" writing regarding Fairy Tail. There are plenty of moments that show where Mashima wasn't exactly fully sold on the thing he'd end up doing just yet. If you read Mashima talk about his writing process, you almost get the sense that he isn't entirely sure of everything he's doing from chapter to chapter.

To be clear, this isn’t to say he doesn’t plan ahead. As he has explained it, while some details are solid in his head, others are a bit more flexible than others. For example, in the last arc, Mashima wasn’t exactly sure about the nature of Irene and Erza’s relationship. Looking back, you can see how that waffling affects how their story is told.

The decision to cast Last Ages doesn't strike me as that kind of move. This feels like an intentional writing decision by Mashima. In essence, he's decided not to go against the grain of characters he's previously written and even some he'd go on to write to have Ultear leave the series as a narrative force.

Or so you'd think.

Part IV: The Post-Last Ages Age

A lot has been said about Ultear's returns to relevance. When she was a part of the battle against DiMaria, I remember people talking about if her return was a cheapening of her sacrifice. I've even talked about her continued relevance as it relates to Gray since Last Ages, including a post for Graytear Week in 2017 about Gray remembering Ultear during the Silver fight.

While Gray's flashbacks to Ultear make sense, I'm kind of iffy on the logic behind Ultear's appearances in Sun Village and Alvarez Empire. We kind of got an explanation behind her existence in Alvarez, being that Ultear can work within spaces where time is messed up. This has been repeated again in the sequel. I don't know that I like the logic behind it, but I also can't say, as some might, that this is Mashima regretting his actions. It’s worth talking about some of the things that have come up through Ultear’s new appearances after casting Last Ages.

For Gray, her sacrifice represents something he should avoid. Almost every time he remembers her, the point is that she made a sacrifice so that he could continue to live. Therefore he shouldn't try to throw his own life away. If you read the post that I made for Graytear week, you know that I like that this theme was reinforced by Ultear's sacrifice.

However, this is a lesson that Gray has already learned. Arcs before with Natsu stopping him in Galuna Island. I even say in that post that remembering Natsu stop him then should have been enough to stop him any other time he used Iced Shell. Especially considering Natsu stopping Gray is remembered every time this theme is brought up. This motif is particularly annoying because, in effect, it makes Ultear's sacrifice a repeat of Ur's use of Iced Shell. Gray even says that he lost both mother and daughter because they were trying to save his life.

In effect, he wasn't able to seal Ultear's darkness away, just as Ur did for him. Ultear saved Gray, but she ultimately succumbed to the darkness in her.

This brings us to the final arc. Her longest post-Last Ages moment is her involvement in Wendy and Chelia's fight with DiMaria. At the end of the fight, she muses about how, if things were different, she could have been just like the two of them. When I first read this, it felt nice knowing that Ultear recognized she could have done things differently. Looking back, it's annoying to see that she recognizes that she could have changed but it would require intervention much earlier on in her life. As if Gray and Ultear's relationship had more of an effect on Gray than it did on Ultear.

Not a whole lot of people seem to talk about how Chelia sacrificing her ability to use for Wendy's safety probably seemed similar to Ultear wanting to use Last Ages. I remember the Chendy shipping discourse when the moment happened in the manga, but I wasn't struck by that alternative until long after I rewatched the events in the anime. I don't buy into the whole "Ultear coming back cheapens her sacrifice" logic that many people have posited. However, the parallel between Last Ages and Third Origin is weakened once you reveal Chelia is still able to use magic after it.

And in the sequel, she appears again to Jellal to effectively telling him to live for Erza's sake. This might be where Ultear's presence makes the most sense. Ultear sees Jellal as someone going to make the same mistake she made and she wants to prevent that. I can’t help but feel annoyed that this was the direction Mashima decided to take this moment in.

I feel that continuously comparing this situation to Jerza makes it seem that I'm bitter against Jerza. However, I actually do like Jerza as it has been playing out in canon, even as I think that Jellal's redemption situation is a mess. It was among the first ships that I came to like within Fairy Tail and I’ve never been able to fully distance myself from it, even as I’ve come to like other ships for both characters (mostly Erza honestly) outside of Jerza. I don’t mean to make these comparisons to seem jealous of a ship I don’t like getting what I want a ship I like to have.

But when there is a clear obvious example of what we could have gotten from Gray and Ultear's relationship in another relationship involving their friends, which also happens to be one of the biggest ships in fandom? It's hard for me not to think that Mashima's doing this on purpose. After the immediate euphoria of seeing Ultear come back washed over me and I thought through this moment again, I was pissed of about Mashima’s handling of Last Ages all over again.

One of the craziest things about this whole situation is that the anime accidentally gave us an insane possibility for Ultear post-Grand Magic Games. If you don't know, when Ultear's backstory was revealed during her fight with Gray in the anime, it was revealed that the lab she was in was headed by Brain, who was the leader of Oracion Seis. I say accidentally because I don't have any proof that Mashima meant for this connection to exist. Nonetheless, if she didn't go through with Last Ages, Crime Sorciere would end up meeting with Oracion Seis.

I would pay good money to see how Ultear would interact with Brain post-Tenrou Island. In one story written by a fellow Graytear shipper, intended to be somewhat of a rewrite of the series, Ultear meets with Brain and kills him, along with a few other members of Oracion Seis. Is this how it would go down in canon? Probably not under Mashima’s watch. Though, the idea is definitely intriguing.

Speaking of which...

Epilogue: How, Despite Hilariously Low Expectations, Fans Disappoint Me

I don't think fans were given as much of an opportunity to believe in Graytear's ability to succeed as other smaller ships in Fairy Tail. Of course, I say this as someone who wishes that they did end up in a deeper, hopefully, romantic relationship and knows people who feel the same way. But, I've joked about how small the Graytear fandom is before.

If you've read some of my recent posts about Lisanna and Nali, you'll notice that I don't have as much of a problem with Mashima over how he handled Lisanna as I do with the greater fandom treatment of her. To be clear, I have issues with how little Mashima did with Lisanna after Edolas and I do wish he did more with her in canon. At the same time, I can understand why we got so little of her, with or without Natsu.

Still, with a ship like Nali, you kind of hope fans take what happened in canon and have fun with the possibilities. While it’s not on the same level as the Big 4, it's not as if it's impossible to find people who like the ship and are making new content for it. I can't exactly blame fans for not doing this with Graytear to a similar degree. But, I figure I should quickly deal with some things I have heard said by fans regarding Graytear. (read: I have nowhere else to put this except the end.)

The worst I've heard many fans over the years is that they're like siblings. Considering Ur didn't see Lyon or Gray as her kids, I can't say that I agree with this interpretation. And considering one of the biggest ships in the FMA fandom is Roy Mustang and his alchemist teacher's daughter, excuse me for not understanding how we got to this take being so popular. (inb4 "Royai and Graytear are different")

Beyond that, there's the take that this isn't the ship that parallels Reina and Musica from Hiro Mashima's other work, Rave Master. However, talking about why it is and why the false comparisons to Gruvia are infuriatingly incorrect would take way too much time and we're already over three thousand words in (read: I made a post about this over four years ago and I’m absolutely working to update it). Suffice it to say, I don't buy that line of reasoning either.

On a related note, there is the notion that Ultear “fell on the sword for Gruvia“. That’s more of a romantically-charged argument then I’m willing to talk about here and may be more suited for another time. However, it’s worth saying now that I don’t know that Ultear thought that much about the specific relationship between Gray and Juvia in casting Last Ages. I’m not even willing to say that Mashima thought about Gruvia that way in his writing of Last Ages, even as I interpret Gray “smiling for her sake” during Gift to be about Ultear and not Juvia.

I want to end this post by saying that I am grateful for the fans who have agreed with me and a shoelace on the merits of Graytear (you either get the reference or you don't). I have a few ideas of how that could work inside and outside of my rewrite universe that I will get to soon enough.

It’s also worth reiterating that this is one of my least favorite aspects of Mashima’s writing regarding Fairy Tail. I don’t feel as strongly negative regarding most of Fairy Tail, even among the things I disagree with most fans about, as strongly as I do this. (read: It’s unlikely I’d write a post like this if Nalu became canon.) I highly doubt Mashima would do anything else with Fairy Tail that would warrant this kind of post from me.

#ultear milkovich #last ages #graytear #gray fullbuster #anti gruvia #actually not really #just want to keep certain people away #happy thanksgiving #don't mean to be salty #i'm just late to posting this #fav

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lifeofroos · 3 years

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Part 23. That I got this far already might be crazy,,,,,,

In short: Nico gets therapy from Dionysus. In recent chapters, Nico has been trying to make amendments with his father. Now, he and Hades decide to go somewhere together, somewhere were Nico has an interesting revelation. The rest of the story is on AO3 and FanFiction.net! (Also in tags like Nico di angelo, fanfiction, trails of apollo etc. and here). This might be crazy: Chapter 23: Black Coffee

‘Hey!’ I screamed as soon as I set foot into my fathers’ palace.

‘Don’t go into the throne room!’ was my the warm welcome I got from my father. Today, I decided to listen to his wisdom. I went to the living room instead. Lo and behold, my father was there.

‘Hey, dad.’

‘Because the last hey was just a general hey, not specifically meant for anyone in this palace where I am alone right now.’

I rolled my eyes. ‘Dad, there are also spirits and skeletons in here. Thanatos might be hanging around as well.’

‘Hm.’ He was sitting on the couch, with some paper. I wondered what he was doing with it. He could be something harmless like making a sudoku, but he could also be writing Persephone a love letter (or at least trying to do so) or counting out how many souls there needed to go to The Fields of Asphodel to hit ten billion residents this year. Alright, some of those things might have been hyperbolic, but he really was doing strange, unforseen stuff sometimes.

‘What is it that you want?’ he threw the papers to the other side of the couch

‘I just wanted to see how my father was doing. Like regular teens do.’

He arched his brow. ‘Regular teens don’t randomly go to see what they’re parents are doing.’ Yes, well dad, good job figuring out that we are not a regular family.

‘Well, I do.’

‘Hm.’

‘So, what were you doing?’

‘Nothing.’ He reached towards the papers and stuffed them under the pillows. ‘What were you doing before you came here?’

Hm. ‘I was training before, until I got some free time. Will was working in the infirmary, so I decided to go see you instead.’

‘Oh.’ He looked at his hands. ‘Ah-ha. Uhm, well, this time I actually have an idea about what you can do.’

I raised my eyebrows. ‘Really?’

‘Yes. We, uh… need special new chairs.’ I did not want to find out what he meant by special. ‘And someone needs to get them from Hephaestus’ workshop. Persephone still has to be on the surface for two months and I need them statt…’

‘We could go get them together,’ I quickly piped in. I was not going to be send out alone.

Hades stared at me. ‘...Yes,’ he answered. I could not make out if it was a ‘yes, I meant that the entire time’ or a ‘well, that is possible too.’

‘Well, then.’ It was silent for a few seconds. ‘When are we leaving?’

‘Right now.’

Less then a second later, before I had even noticed that my dad had teleported us, we were standing in front of Hephaestus’ workshop. Something about the place made me nervous. The doors were humongous, much bigger than any other gate I had ever seen. The doors of death would look like they belonged to a dollhouse compared to this. I heard my dad take a deep breath.

‘You’re not nervous, right?’ I asked. It came out before I knew, but my dad was so caught up in his own thoughts that he hadn’t even heard it.

The gate opened with a creaking sound. The place was even more gigantic from the inside. It was hot and it was cold, it was blinding and it was dark, it was gorgeous and it was horrible. Slowly, and both more than a little nervous, we walked inside.

When we were about ten metres in, my fathers’ voice suddenly boomed through the workshop: ‘Hephaestus! Where are you?’ The sound bounced off from the walls, which amplified it even more. I pressed my hands against my ears. My dad shot a look at me. ‘Oh, sorry.’

‘It’s okay.’

We heard a clicking sound coming from the right. A few seconds later, Hephaestus appeared. I held my breath when I saw him. I’d be used to it in no-time, I tried to tell myself. But he was hideous.

‘Hades.’ He turned his attention to us. I looked at the ground. ‘Who’s the youngling?’

‘My son.’ It felt good when dad said that. He did not say it with a lot of affection, more as a matter of fact, but it felt good.

Hephaestus nodded, with a boording expression. ‘Your chairs are in the back. You can take a look at them.’

‘Nico…’

‘He’s staying here.’

‘What? No.’

‘Hades, this is my workshop. I don’t want your son barging around.’

My father said an ancient curse that I did not understand. He went in the back without giving us another look.

Hephaestus turned to me. ‘I’ll follow him soon.’ His voice was suddenly a lot softer. I looked up at him and forced myself to keep looking. ‘But I need to ask you if you are doing alright. You are the Nico di Angelo, right?’

‘Yes, I am.’ He reached for a thermoscan and a stack of metal cups that were seemingly just lying around and poured out two black coffees. I put my hand against my metal cup (which was just the right temperature, as if it was a metal cup made by a magical blacksmith), but did not dare to take a sip.

‘I heard from my children that Dionysus is helping you with a few problems you have.’

‘Yes, he is… your children?’

Hephaestus snickered softly. ‘After… after the Titan war, and after my son Leo finished his first quest I… I decided it wasn’t enough to help my children from a distance. I…’ he shrugged and gestured at one of the walls, which was covered from top to bottom with crummy and slightly less crummy projects. ‘I have been collecting stuff my kids made forever, but I realised I needed to be there for them in the flesh as well, no matter how difficult it might be. Last time I was at the camp to visit them, I wanted to have a chat with Dionysus, because he is my best friend and I haden’t seen him for some time. That is when my children said he was busy helping you.’ He scratched the back of his neck.

‘Oh.’ Wow. Someone had really been trying to make amends.

‘Eh, but what I actually wanted to say… you can trust Dionysus. He will help you. He won’t tell your secrets to anybody else. He helped me too, when I was wrapped up in feelings of guilt and revenge.’ He patted my shoulder. It felt like I was being crushed under a boulder.

‘Ergh. Yes, I know. Thanks, lord. He is helping me feel better actually.’

‘That is... that is good.’ The blacksmith studied his cup, before downing it all at once. ‘You know...’

‘Hephaestus!’ My dad called from the other side of the workshop. ‘They are good, I guess, but how do I deactivate them?’ Hephaesus stopped talking and stared at an unknown point for some time. Then, he shook his head. ‘Let’s go see how your dad is doing.’

While we were walking to the back, I absentmindedly took a sip of coffee. I just managed to keep it inside. It tasted like motor oil. I much prefered Dionysus’ drinks.

‘So. That has been fixed,’ Hades said, when we were back in his palace. I nodded.

‘Uh-huh.’

He turned around, but did not make eye contact. ‘Uh… I did not plan to take you to Hephaestus’ workshop. I just had to be there, and…’ he shrugged.

I shrugged back. ‘And you did not want to go alone.’

‘I would have gone alone otherwise. Of course.’ He turned back to the chairs. ‘Eh…’ another shrug. So I shrugged again as well. ‘I… you have been coming over more often recently. Is that… because you like it here? With me?’

I stared ahead of me. Suddenly, I noticed that I had never let go of the metal coffee cup. I took another sip and it tasted just as horrible. ‘Well, I have noticed that you want to put in the time and effort to spend time with me as well. And I like some of the time spend together.’

Hades stared at the weird furniture. What did he even need these torturous looking chairs for? They obviously weren’t for visitors or for himself, but he did place them in the living room. ‘So… not all the time.’

‘Some moments have been rough. But… that is only to be expected. The more time we spend together, the better it has become. Today was nice. Weirdly enough, I… I liked going to Hephaestus' workshop.’ Which wasn’t completely because of you, but then again, without you I wouldn’t have been there at all.

‘Eh… me too. I mean I liked spending time with you too.’ He shrugged again. ‘I hope… I hope we will have a relationship that can be called healthy when Persephone comes back. Then we can… adjust to that together.’ I did not fully comprehend the implication. ‘Will you work towards that, with me?’ As if I had not been the person clearly working the hardest. However, the spirit was there.

‘Yes. Of course.’ I got a smirk on my face. Next time we have a father-son appointment we’ll go to home depot.’

‘To what?’

‘Let’s call it Hephaestus’ workshop, but way less cool and for mortal dads.’

‘Yes, well, we’ll think about it.’ So that’s a no. Drab. Oh well, it had been more of a joke anyway. ‘Cool.’ Almost instinctively, I took another sip of coffee. This time, I spat it out. ‘Oh god, this is gross.’

‘Did you get that at Hephaestus’ place?’

‘Yes, but I did not plan to bring it here, or drink even a drop of it for that matter.’

‘I hope so.’ He shifted. ‘Dionysus helped Hephaestus, too, I heard. Eh… perhaps he should also have taught his friend how to properly make drinks.’

I snickered. ‘He should’ve. But then he might have put Dionysus out of business. Hephaestus is clearly much more efficient.’

‘Hm.’ Hades looked like he would not be incredibly sad about that.

‘Eh… but I have to go back to training now.’

‘Okay. You’ll come again, right?’ I looked at him. He wanted me to come back, he really did.

‘Yes, of course, dad.’ I put too much effort into mending this relationship to stop now.

He smiled and patted me on the arm. ‘Bye.’

‘Bye,’ I said, while slowly turning around.

I was smiling when I came into camp. I felt like it was going better. But slowly, I began having doubts. I’d have to talk about those with Dionysus next time.

A/N: When I began this chapter, I did not plan on writing about Hephaestus, it just came to me while writing. Now it seems like the best part of the chapter.

I toyed with the idea of having them go to IKEA, but that seemed out of style. Perhaps in a future chapter, if I get crazy enough (And honestly, this chapter already seemed out of my usual writing style).

I am not sure whether I should have shown some of the harder father-son sessions. Perhaps I’ll do that later. I wanted to do this, I thought it was more fun for both myself and for the people reading this (Who I appreciate very very much).

I am thinking of a chapter where Nico talks to Apollo and where he talks to Hephaestus. But first Apollo needs to become an actual god again I guess. That part will be out in a week or so.

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thefloatingstone · 5 years

Note

Would you please make me a list of your rcommended comics(books or web-series any genre original content or fanworks)

Oh that’s a god one! Thank you so very much 💙 Let me see what I have on my shelf and on my hard drive. (I don’t know if I’ve ever made a list of my favourite comics before or not here on tumblr?)

in no particular order;

1: Usagi Yojimbo by Stan Sakai

I dunno if it ever really shows or not, but Japanese historical settings are something I’m really into! I think it’s one of those dormant interests that flares up every now and then. Anyway. Usagi Yojimbo has basically been tied for my favourite comic for over 10 years now. It’s a series of stories, both short and with longer arcs, following the character of Miyamoto Usagi (roughly based on Miyamoto Musashi) travelling around the country of Japan in the early 1600s as a Ronin after the lord he served was defeated and killed in battle. Usagi, being one of his samurai, is not killed in the same battle which, considering his lord was killed, is a massive disgrace in historical Japanese culture. Basically along the thought of “If your lord died and you didn’t you must not have fought hard enough to protect him.”

Anyway, the comic is both a history lesson on Edo period Japan, a travel diary, a slice of life comic, a Chanbara, an action comic, some times even a horror or ghost story, a tragedy involving unfulfilled love and lost families, a lesson on traditional Japanese Yokai and other mythology, and now and then high fantasy.

10/10. HIGHLY recommend. The author Stan Sakai is also a wonderful person I’ve had the pleasure to meet a few times at Comic Con. And considering he like... remembers who I AM despite being an extremely famous comic artist... I dunno. I have endless respect for the man and he’s shown me great kindness in the past.

Also you know... black and white comics. They’re my jam, yo!

2: Bone by Jeff Smith

I have no idea if I even have to say anything because Bone might just, without hyperbole, be the greatest comic ever drawn.

At 1300+ pages drawn over the course of 10 years, the story starts out as a cartoon, full of hijinks and fun adventures and jokes and very slowly, reality starts setting in, things get more dangerous, the stakes get higher, the bad guys much darker. And by the time you reach book 3 of the 9 book story, you’re suddenly in a story of the “epic” variety. Not in the internet slang term but in the actual definition of the word.

You have massive wars between men and monsters, you have clashing cultures and ideologies, conflicting motivations and goals, and of course saving the world.

And it manages to do so without you EVER feeling “Excuse me but this was a cartoon book about funny jokes. This shift in tone is really weird and doesn’t work with the cartoony characters.”

It just blends and grows beautifully. And has remained as my favourite comic for... *counts* lord... 14 years now.

The book was recently released in a new colour version in case you prefer hat, but I honestly recommend “The Brick” single volume black and white version. It’s cheaper, first of all, but also I cannot express how masterful the blacks and whites of Bone are. They’re essentially Watterson level.

(also Jeff Smith is ANOTHER comic artist who is just like... the nicest person. Like REALLY nice. He’s been kind to me on occasions in that “you really didn’t have to be that nice” kind of way)

3: The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck by Don Rosa

It’s published by Disney officially... but the Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is essentially a fancomic. The only reason its not is because Don Rosa became SO GOOD at making duck comics Disney hired him to make them officially and he was SO GOOD at it became one of the most important Duck artists just after Carl Barks (the creator of Scrooge) himself.

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is a comprehensive biography of Scrooge McDuck’s life, not just made up by Don Rosa, but pieced together from Carl Barks’ own comics where he would have Scrooge make passing mention to events in his past or people he met. Don Rosa essentially took all these passing remarks and mentions and drew out a timeline, starting with Scrooge age 13 leading all the way up to his reunion with his family when Donald as an adult met up with him again.

It starts with Scrooge, from a poor family in Glasgow in 1877, boarding a ship for America to seek his fortune. We follow him through the years as with each chapter, he comes close to being rich and successful, only for it to fail or fall apart at the last minute, until, eventually, we see him catch his break and become the obscenely rich and successful person he’s fought and worked and bled so hard to be.

...and then the comic continues. And we see him lose himself. Greed, the constant need for MORE money and MORE success keeps going. The need to show HOW rich and successful he is takes over, until we see him and his family fall apart. And the comic echoes Citizen Kane as Scrooge realises the best time of his life was when he was seeking riches, not after he finally succeeded.

And then Donald and his nephews appear, and Scrooge’s life gets a second wind. His lust for adventure flares up again, his need to seek fortunes and treasures burns as strong as ever. And he keeps going.

The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck is a story about looking for your place in the world and fighting to create it with your own two hands, but it’s also about how you should think hard where you place your value in life, and it’s never too late to re-direct course and try again.

There is also “The Life and Times of Scrooge McDuck Companion” which is a collection of stories that didn’t fit in with the original comic and would have disrupted flow. Basically like how a fanfic will have oneshots related to a larger story

Also, the producer of the band “Nightwish” created a soundtrack to accompany the original comic as a sort of “What If” in what he imagined the story would sound like if it was made into a movie

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4: Cucumber Quest by Gigi D.G. ( @ggdgart )

A newer comic I stumbled upon which has skyrocketed into being a fave and I can already tell, that’s not a position it’s gonna relinquish. Cucumber Quest is a more cartoony and comedic story than the previous comics on this list. But that by no means makes it of any less value or dulls the moments that this comic decides to punch you in the gut with emotions HARD.

The art and colours are glorious and something I hope to study so I can better my own art hopefully, and the writing and humour is of a calibre that I just know I could not replicate it if I even tried. Full of puns, absurdism, awkward jokes and a whole lot of FEELINGS, It manages to make me both laugh myself into a coughing fit as often as it makes me yell “OH NOOOO!!!” when something dramatic happens.

The story follows our main character Cucumber, a put-upon out-of-his-depth wizard-to-be who is tasked with saving the world from the evil Nightmare Knight who has been summoned from his thousand year slumber by an evil sorcerer who wants to take over the world (as you do). With him is his little sister, the sword wielding Almond, who is WAY more into this “being a hero” thing than he is (and probably better at it too) as the duo make friends and travel to the various kingdoms to defeat the Nightmare Knight’s lackeys, working their way up to fighting the Nightmare Knight himself and sealing him away once more!

That all sounds.... really straightforward, doesn’t it? Well... that’s what everybody else in the comic thinks too. ...Shame that real life is never easy and straightforward.

From evil henchmen that start crushing on cool “Good Guys” with cool swords, good guys who don’t REALLY want to hurt the bad guys because they don’t seem so bad? To cool good guys with cool swords suddenly learning that being in danger is not as much fun as it sounded when they started this. To big evil final boss bad guys who are just tired of all of this...

What’s also awesome is the entire comic... all OVER 800 PAGES OF IT... is completely free to read online! But you can also buy physical copies of the first 4 volumes in book form to support the author!

http://cucumber.gigidigi.com/cq/page-1/

I HIGHLY recommend this one too! It has canon LGBT characters! It has found family plots! It has scary bad guys that just need a hug! It has magical girl transformations! Literally anything you could want is in this comic. Including emotional wrecking angst! Did I mention FEELINGS???

(I couldn’t pick a single page so here are 3 random ones without context. Seriously almost EVERY page is so good I struggled very hard to choose)

5: The Property of Hate by @modmad

Hey. Do you like fantasy worlds made of imagination? How about protagonists with grey morality who act like super primand proper gentlemen when they’re actually huge nerds? How about reluctant “Well I guess I’ve ADOPTED you now you annoying gremlin” adult-kid relationships? How about puns? How about abstract and colourfull character designs? Or saving the world?

The Property of Hate is Modmad’s original comic that they’ve been working on a few years now. it follows our lead character, RGB or “Problematic Mary Poppins” as I like to think of him, as he asks a young child if she’d like to be a hero and help him save his world? When she agrees, he takes her to a fantasy land... completely NOT preparing her for what she’s signed up for. The story then follows the duo through the abstract and shifting world as RGB slowly divulges information on what exactly our Hero has to do to save the world. It turns out it’s a lot more complicated and messy than merely “beat the bad guy” or anything like that.

Not to mention it seems this fantasy world has its own rules of reality and dangers. Emotions and abstract thoughts have real physical form here, and something like an “idea” can quite literally run around and create havoc, while something like dreams can fuel or destroy, and emotions like grief can cause irreparable damage.

Our Hero also learns RGB himself is a lot more complex and messy than he first appears. Seeming to be a good person trying to do good things (despite being a little stand offish and rude at times) but seems to also be carrying a past and the weight of having done some very very bad things “for the greater good”. And our Hero, as well as we, the readers, start wondering how much we should trust him, even though, just like our Hero, deep deep down we just know we WANT to trust him. And maybe he needs saving just as much as the world itself does. Even when he’s at his scariest and... not quite himself.

The Property of Hate is also available online completely for free. Modmad does have books for sale but I believe it’s on-demand or something along those lines. Please feel free to message them here on tumblr and they are happy to chat to their readers and interact.

http://thepropertyofhate.com/TPoH/The%20Hook/1

I think I’ll leave it there despite meaning to do 10 at first because this is already EXTREMELY long.

Hopefully you found something that seems interesting! Let me know if you decide to check any of these out and whether you ended up liking them or not! I’d love to hear your opinions.

And thank you for indulging me <3

(I’m trying to remember to add my ko-fi link to all longer posts like this I make. Especially since I keep forgetting ☕️Buy me a Ko-fi ☕️ )

#lucymelonbun #C-Puff answers #Long post #image heavy #Comics #comic recommendations #comic recs #I added a read more to this post but tumblr ate it so whatever #thank you for letting me ramble about stuff I like #I feel better <3

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momestuck · 5 years

Text

Epilogues: Candy, chapters 6-13 [the rest of Epilogue 2]

I’m told that there are 40 chapters, and a postscript, in Candy - and also that it’s split into 8 individual ‘epilogues’ within that, of varying length. ‘Epilogue 2′ began with chapter 4, featuring Rose and Kanaya. So I kind of cut it off in exactly the wrong place. Oops!

Anyway I’m going to split these up by Epilogue section from now on. This one covers the rest of Epilogue 2, which mostly concerns shipping, and processing of feelings.

Here are the irons in the fire at the outset of chapter 6:

Gamzee is back! he claims to be setting out on a ‘redemption arc’

Terezi is in space somewhere looking for Vriska, but set to return at some point, and not all that happy that Gamzee’s back

Dirk has perceived some bad news. And briefly spoken about it with Jane, though without explaining anything.

But that’s all Epilogue 1 stuff - old hat!

Rose has suddenly recovered from her illness, and is patching things up with Kanaya

Jade has attempted to push Dave and Karkat to admit they’re into each other, but really just made things worse

Jane attempted to run for President of Earth C - to the trepidation of the Karkat, who hyperbolically suggested this would amount to troll genocide - but abandoned the idea

That’s all interesting but let’s talk about money! This is something I didn’t pick up on in the last post:

KARKAT: OK, SO LET ME GET THIS STRAIGHT. YOUR PRIORITIES ARE: NUMBER ONE, THE ECONOMY, WHICH LET ME REMIND YOU IS BUILT ENTIRELY ON INFINITE, FAKE MONEY THAT WE CAN MAKE AS MUCH OF AS WE WANT.

Elsewhere, Jane’s megacorp and stocks are mentioned.

One wonders why, given the machinery to manufacture just about anything by means of alchemizer, the forms of money, stocks, and corporations are retained... what sort of productive and reproductive labour is regulated and mediated by these markets? Or are they merely acting out the vestigial forms of capitalism as a bizarre drama...

As for the consequences of an infinite money supply, let’s not get into the ‘modern monetary theory’ debate on a Homestuck post, maybe.

on to chapter 6+

This is a Jane chapter. It opens almost immediately with economic discussion; Dave apparently once accused Jane of ‘neoliberal corporate welfare’ for trying to bolster the ‘struggling locksmith industry’ rendered unnecessary on a planet without crime.

She’s visiting Jake, who’s probably my least favourite Homestuck character (who’s not an alpha troll). About Dirk... Jake (Jane says) seems to still have a bit of a thing for him, and Jane, meanwhile, still “has no idea why she can’t get [Jake] out of her system, even after all these years.”

The reason Jane cancelled her run was, it turns out, because Dirk said ‘cancel everything’. She gets drunk, very quickly... and hits on Jake, who is completely oblivious to her advances. She speaks of wanting to abandon business to raise a family, which Jake himself notes is something rather new for her (though the whole traditional gender thing she does isn’t lol)

Jake/Jane isn’t a ship I have any sort of opinion about, honestly. Dirk/Jake’s terrible collapsing relationship was kind of interesting but yeah, here’s a thing. What even are heterosexuals though? “I want to clean your giant house and have a lot of children”... incomprehensible!

One thing I will give credit for is the narration: it creates pretty strong images of like, these characters as fully embodied people, being intimate in like, subtle physical ways. that probably doesn’t make a lot of sense... whatever lol. it works

chapter 7

...brings us back to Gamzee. fittingly, i’m listening to the friendsim soundtrack as i read this, and i just hit ‘take me to clown church’.

anyway since this whole story basically seems to be an exercise in developing ships along the lines of ‘A is into B, B is obvious to their advances’... Roxy’s hot for John now I guess? or at least, so Callie thinks. she insists they’re all going to be ‘very, very happy’ despite her disappointment.

anyway, then we get Gamzee saying a bunch of casually misogynist stuff to John about Roxy. in this context, basically two interpretations are shown: a shallow ‘oh he’s redeemed now’ attitude from Roxy and Callie, and a ‘oh god i hate this person keep him away from me’ attitude from John. Gamzee’s repulsive qualities are underlined by the narration (from John’s perspective): he’s unhygienic, he’s casually misogynist (which seems like a new element, and rather out of keeping with the gendered-but-somehow-theoretically-not-patriarchal Alternia)...

chapter 8

Rose and Kanaya chapter. Jane’s possible presidency is once again the subject of discussion. Jane apparently wanted to apply some kind of anti-troll eugenics policy, and tried to bring Kanaya on board - and got told to fuck off for it. Our two good lesbians agree that, if Karkat were president (and Dave running the economy), things might have worked out ok...

We are briefly introduced to a new character, a jadeblood troll called Swifer Eggmop. Her character archetype, we are directly told, is ‘1920s newsboy’.

We bear witness to an egg hatching (in prose, anyway). This particular baby grub out closely resembling Vriska... which Kanaya says is because she comes from a slurry based on the original 12 trolls. Rose notes this would make Vriska the troll’s Ancestor, which raises an interesting question of whether Ancestors still exist as a social concept on Earth C. Anyway, Kanaya wants to adopt baby Vriska, which can only be a fantastic idea...

KANAYA: There Are Two Things Of Which I Have No Doubt

KANAYA: That You And I Are Going To Be Happy For The Rest Of Our Lives

KANAYA: And That We Are Never Ever Going To See Vriska Again

I think we can safely assume that neither of those things are true. The emphasis on ‘happiness forever’, voiced by multiple characters, is interesting... also the turn towards reproduction.

I went to uni with people who have kids now. Heck I have friends who have a child (who they are trying to spare from gender)... but for most of my social circle, which is to say almost entirely 20-to-30-something trans women, even the idea of adopting is incomprehensible? It’s somehow weird to think of ‘wanting kids’ as the narrative of 20-something year olds...

Kanaya is right. Vriska is dead, and despite everything, she died a hero. Vriska was a complicated figure of contrasting extremes; her heroic actions were matched in scale only by her monstrous ones, and since no one had actually witnessed her end, it was impossible to say which side the pendulum swung and judged her death—Heroic or Just.

It would be a fitting memorial for her and Kanaya to raise a version of Vriska who would be given every chance to make good on her noble characteristics. A true, symbolic redemption arc. Something about the thought appeals to Rose’s taste for the dramatic flourish. It would be proof that this was all worth it in the end: the destruction of multiple universes, the death of Kanaya’s friends, the circuitous rites of suffering experienced by the nearly infinite splintered versions of every being to inhabit Paradox Space...

Once again, the notion of a ‘redemption arc’ enters the narrative explicitly, directly echoing fandom discussion. Unlike Gamzee, this is studiously neutral on the Vriska Question: steering exactly between ‘Vriska did nothing wrong’, nor ‘Vriska is a monster’. Regardless... I think it’s probably safe to say that everyone’s prophecies are wrong and we haven’t seen the last of the ‘true’ Vriska.

chapter 9

More of Jade trying very hard to ship her friends, to the discomfort of everyone involved. Jade kisses Karkat, and Karkat explicitly names what she’s doing as sexual assault, a violation of boundaries and consent - Jade attempts to convince him that no, it was really Dave who kissed him!

This prompts a long monologue from Dave in which it’s obvious that he has put some thought into kissing Karkat. Point seems to be: they sure are into each other but Jade’s intervention is not at all welcome. At least I hope that’s the point. I would prefer not to see Jade vindicated by the narrative.

Anyway, other things of cultural note: grub spaghetti is apparently still eaten on Earth C. I always thought it was implied that ‘grubs’ in Troll food were like, actual troll babies, but maybe they’re just ordinary (for certain values thereof...) bugs bc I don’t think Kanaya would stand for that.

chapter 10

The ‘Jane running for president’ subplot has largely disappeared, because what we’re really here for is... shipping! This time, a John/Roxy chapter. I think they call it Roxygen or something? Terezi explains the ‘pair the spares’ logic of the ship (dequirkified):

TEREZI: Um, yeah John.

TEREZI: We are not idiots. We can all do the math on this.

TEREZI: It’s not like you were going to fuck your human mom or human sister.

TEREZI: And you are “not a homosexual,” which takes Strider dick out of the equation.

TEREZI: And Kanaya is the only girl troll left, and she lesbian married one of the two remaining eligible human females.

TEREZI: Oh and Jake is a double threat. A human dad with a human dick!

TEREZI: So by a process of elimination, of *course* you were going to “fall in love” with Roxy.

Equation of ‘dick’ with ‘male’ there terezi but whatever... (god is this fic going to get into the question of what a ‘nook’ and a ‘bulge’ is...)

(lol i’m calling it a fic...)

Anyway, my position on this one is: Roxy/Calliope was a fine ship worth upholding, and I do not see any reason why anyone would be into John. Though I may be biased on that front.

Terezi also brings up the Calliope question. John is trepidatious on that front.

There’s an interesting line from Roxy here, when John tries to assure her she doesn’t have to wear makeup:

ROXY: john...

ROXY: do u ever think about like

ROXY: gender???

JOHN: ???

JOHN: uh. not really, i guess?

JOHN: but i don’t think girls should feel like they HAVE to wear makeup just because they’re girls.

ROXY: lol

ROXY: thats not what im getting at

JOHN: what do you mean then?

JOHN: are you, like...

ROXY: like what

This is where I’m conscious of the ‘trans character’ tag on this one.

They talk about adulthood, as a performance that they do not feel ‘ready’ for. At that point Dave shows up, clearly aflustered after Jade’s intervention:

DAVE: anyone can be a dude if they really want thats part of the beauty of living in this brand new world with none of the baggage our old world had like gender and sexuality and relationships only involving a very specific number of people

chapter 11

So yeah now to pick up the torch on Dave starting to understand he’s gay. here for this

DAVE: theres a metric fucking ton of shit about to come down on me because i dragged my heels on doing some serious self reflection

JOHN: is this just some more stuff about...

JOHN: being gay?

DAVE: maybe yeah

DAVE: ok definitely yeah

DAVE: its 110% about being gay

JOHN: i thought you’d already worked all that stuff out?

DAVE: turns out it takes a long time to figure out your sexuality after a childhood filled with repression and abuse

nice to see it named as such i guess

the dialogue in the last couple of chapters has been really good. i’m getting properly drawn into this, the characters feel extremely well-realised. threads which were long latent are finally being made explicit.

Dave is struggling with very abrupt self-realisation: he definitely has feelings for Karkat, he has complicated feelings for Jade, but the ‘simple’ solution of just entering a non-mono relationship both is not feeling ‘right’ to him. John isn’t really able to help... he’s gonna talk to Dirk.

This chapter does a lot, I really like it, but at the same time I’ve not got a tremendous amount to add to it.

chapter 12

in our latest chapter of ‘homestuck but they fuck now’, Jake and Jane did that - while up on various substances, including at least alcohol and the trickster lollipop. Jake is having second thoughts but when he tries to back out, Jane looks sad, so he decides to go for it. This can only end well.

Also damn I guess someone on the team thought ‘what would it be like to fuck while high on the trickster lollipop’ so uh, that’s a thing now.

chapter 13

Back to the Strider boys. There’s a heavy intro...

Dave and Dirk don’t talk that much about the heavy stuff. They don’t need to. Dave can hear his brother’s voice in his head.

Not, like, literally. That would be insane. But Dave knows what his bro is like. Dirk, or a version of him, instilled in Dave a way of living and thinking that would, for better or worse, persist far beyond the first thirteen years of his upbringing.

Yeah huh.

Can’t believe Rose and Kanaya have the dubious honour of being the most ‘together’ characters in this.

Anyway in this case Dave still feels like he needs to talk to Dirk - who we know has gone awol, for some mysterious reason. He meets... Gamzee, who says some religious clown stuff, and offers Dave a redemption arc (really running this joke into the ground huh), but Dave brushes him off. Then he finds a fembot that Dirk was working on, with a note.

We don’t get to read the note yet. I would guess that’s the end of epilogue 2.

Sure enough it is.

Epilogue 2, taken as a whole

I quite enjoyed this, Gamzee sections notwithstanding. The prose is tight, the dialogue is hitting its flow, and a lot of relationships that were left vague in Homestuck proper are finally being given time to develop.

Obviously it’s kind of risky bringing in explicitly sexual themes, but I think they approach them in the ‘right’ way: focusing on the emotional meaning of relationships that now might - now we’re dealing with 23-year-olds - include sex, rather than just porn lol. It does slightly strain credibility that, in all their time on Earth C, none of them have made any meaningful friendships or relationships outside the core group of 8 kids and a handful of surviving trolls, but I can also understand the desire to focus on the already-developed characters. That’s a common problem for ‘endgame’ ships: in truth dating exclusively within a tiny friendship group is probably a recipe for disaster, but in fiction it makes a work manageable.

I am enjoying just how gay Homestuck has gotten. If Homestuck is the comic for Very Online kids who were around 13 in 2009 when the comic began, it’s somewhat fitting, because our cohort has, at least to a degree, done the same thing lol. Of course, that’s shaped by my personal experience of like, transitioning and moving to a friendship group that’s like 99% trans lesbians and bi women, but I suspect statistics would bear out the idea that more and more people are comfortable identifying ourselves as not-straight in some way. I could be wrong about that though lol.

Of course, it’s too much to hope that this trend - insofar as it exists! - is like, the beginning of the end for Gender as a system of social relations, violent exploitation and coercion - especially since periods of ‘more acceptance’ often seem to precede violent repression (c.f. Weimar Germany and then, the nazis; the period just before the AIDS crisis; much earlier, the construction of colonial/modern gender in the first place on the bones of less rigid gender systems...)

Anyway, let’s see what’s happened to old Dirk. I’m still wondering who the “trans character” is going to be, and how they’re going to handle that. It’s going to be tough to match fic like @rememberwhenyoutried‘s An Earth-Shattering Confession, but we shall see.

#momestuck

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newmannprompts · 6 years

Text

I Can Explain

Prompt: Hermann walks in on Newt about to drift with a kaiju brain. “I can explain!”

AO3 link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15233352

“I can explain!” Newt said, dropping the pons headset he was about to put on his head.

Hermann leveled his most unimpressed look at him and crossed his arms. “Can you.”

It wasn’t a question.

Newt swallowed nervously. “Okay, so, like, I know it looks like I’m about to drift with a kaiju brain that I cloned because the other two brains we used were fried. Looks, uh, a whole helluva lot like that. But it’s not.”

“No.”

“No, it’s…a thing that…good excuse…”

“Newton, I heard a better excuse from you that time I walked in on you trying to safely mix kaiju blue into a smoothie.”

“As I told you before, Hermann, I wasn’t trying to make a kaiju smoothie, I was trying to test the process of detoxifying the blood for the purpose of environmental cleanup after the kaiju were defeated.”

Hermann nodded. “Yes. Exactly that. Completely ridiculous excuse for a completely ridiculous situation and still better than this one.”

“You’re hallucinating! I’m taking photos for a scientific journal! I’m going to be on the front cover of another magazine! I’m making my costume for Comic-Con! I actually wanted an opportunity to destroy a kaiju brain but first I had to make one! I can’t sleep without the sound of the tank! Do you know how much money Hannibal Chau can get me for this?”

Hermann frowned. “Newton.”

“Hermann.”

“Why in God’s name are you planning on drifting with a kaiju?”

“I’m not…”

“Newton.”

“Hermann,” Newt said again, feeling unbearably childish but refusing to listen to the lecture Hermann was sure to give him one second sooner than he had to. He might deserve this. Maybe. Just a little. But that still didn’t mean he was planning on welcoming it.

“I can out-stubborn you, Newton. You know I can.”

Newt couldn’t help a laugh at that. “You? When have you ever out-stubborned me? Like ever? In your life?”

Hermann’s reply was simple. “Munich. When it mattered. Sydney.”

Newt stilled. He forgot, sometimes, because he had the tendency to double down and refuse to budge at the slightest show of doubt or ridicule while Hermann lacked the capacity to care half as much about the various inanities they disagreed with most of the time. Hermann liked to save his moments of extraness for when it really mattered to him and something told Newt this was one of those times. That didn’t necessarily mean he’d outlast Newt, of course, but it would be an out and out ordeal. Hermann’s patience in these situations was a little frightening.

“Don’t you feel you’re overreacting?” he asked instead.

Hermann raised an eyebrow archly. “I haven’t gone and fetched a grenade launcher to fire at that horrible creature and had you involuntarily undergo a psych evaluation so, if anything, I’m dramatically underreacting.”

Newt rolled his eyes.

“Oh, don’t you dare, Newton! Not after you almost died that first time. Those seizures were horrifying and it took you far too long to fully come back to yourself!”

“Well, yes, there was that,” Newt was forced to admit. “But I really think the problem there was my crap equipment and the fact it was only a tiny piece of a brain and I had never drifted before. It went way better the second time when we were able to drift with a full brain and I had the right stuff to use and some idea of what to expect. You were barely even sick and I was just fine which I think really points to the experience I had by then.”

Hermann uncrossed his arms so that his hands could give a very good impression of wringing Newt’s neck. “That’s the key word, Newton. We. That’s why I went with you! Certainly the higher-quality equipment would have helped though I don’t know whether the difference in the brain did. But you would have just ended up getting yourself killed, or close to it, drifting alone a second time in the same night on your own. We needed to share the neural load.”

Newt peered confusedly at him. “Is that your weird way of asking if we can do another threesome right here? Because, I mean, if so this is the most roundabout way of asking I’ve ever heard and – believe me – I’ve heard some indirect attempts to have a threesome before. Even said some of them myself before I realized how fucking stupid and time-wasting they were. But then, I guess if you were going to ask it would figure you’d do it like this. Make it out to be all my idea so you could yell at me afterwards if things went wrong and maybe even fi they didn’t. And speaking of! What kind of person goes around yelling at someone for doing something they’re about to ask if they can do, too?”

Newt didn’t think he had ever seen Hermann look so horrified before. Not even when he realized that Newt’s kaiju tattoos covered not just his arms but his entire torso or the first time he heard Newt call Pentecost a fascist or when he watched Newt drink that smoothie.

“Newton…I…” Hermann broke off, his face turning a funny purple color. “As if I would ever…why in the actual hell would you…of course I’m not asking to drift with a kaiju brain with you! And I’m yelling at you because you are being a complete imbecile and courting death! Either for yourself or this whole planet!”

Newt rolled his eyes again. “And people say I’m the hyperbolic one.”

“You are,” Hermann said. “Given how badly off you were after that first drift and the fact it will be a cold day in hell before I ever drift with one of those monstrosities again, you dying is hardly an absurd outcome. And inviting a hivemind that has been seeking to destroy all life on this planet off and on since the time of the dinosaurs opens up a very real risk of destruction to this planet!”

Newt blew a raspberry at him.

“Very mature, Newton,” Hermann said, rolling his own eyes. Apparently it was okay when he did it. Which was just typical. “Now stop deflecting. Why are you…no, wait, better question. If you do go through with this drift – which you will be doing over my cold, dead body just so you are aware – how many drifts would that make it? Know that I am expecting an honest answer but that every drift over three I will react appropriately to.”

“ ‘React appropriately to’?” Newt repeated incredulously. “You make it sound like you’re going to…to…punish me like a child or something! Or seek bloody vengeance on me!”

“Well you will find out what I mean depending on what your honest answer is,” Hermann said placidly. “Now how many?”

Newt exhaled loudly. “This is just the third, okay? The first one without you and the second one with and this one…well we’ll see how this goes, won’t we?”

“Thank heaven for small mercies,” Hermann murmured.

“Hermann, can I just point out you’re acting like you just found out I’m a murderer but I only murdered one guy instead of more?”

Hermann considered it and nodded. “You may. It’s a very flawed analogy but perhaps the seriousness of it is comparable.”

Newt couldn’t resist. “No animals were harmed in the making of this kaiju brain.”

Hermann gave a long-suffering sigh. “Now that we know this is only the third time and – only the third time, I say, as though that is a reasonable amount of times to be drifting with a kaiju brain – we can get back to my original question. Why are you drifting with a kaiju brain, Newton?”

“Uh…”

It wasn’t that he didn’t have an answer to that. He totally did. And it was a great answer. But it was hard to put into words and it involved a great deal of impulsiveness and he didn’t think Hermann would approve of that.

He struggled to organize his thoughts. “Well there’s several reasons.”

“Regale me with them.”

Newt ticked them off on his fingers. “Well, to begin with, because its super cool and I can which I’ll acknowledge right now is my weakest reason but it’s also like 80 percent of why I do anything. Then there’s the fact that I am a biologist and kaiju have the weirdest and most unique biology that I’ve ever seen. Like, seriously, do you know how long I’ll need to figure out how kaiju that look nothing alike and have different abilities can have the exact same DNA? And you know one of my degrees is in anthropology! These may not be human societies but the precursors are a unique and fascinating – albeit incredibly dickish and genocidal – society we know nothing about even though they’ve been trying to kill us for well over a decade now and we deserve better than that. It’s going to be totally safe to do – well assuming you’re wrong and I don’t keel over which I’m pretty sure you are – because unlike last time the breach is closed so they can’t send any kaiju personally chasing after me and really what does it matter if I feel their creepy little bug eyes watching me for a bit? They can’t do anything about it and a little creepiness is worth what I’m going to get out of it. And finally, and what even you have to concede is a pretty good reason for doing this, we don’t know if they’ll be able to come back some day. We broke the breach, great, but what if they can fix it? Or open up another one? They probably know all about me by now so that’s no risk as long as I’m not developing new anti-kaiju measures, which I’m not, and there’s still so much I can glean from them! The things I get from them could help me figure out a way to stop them if they come back or-or, I don’t know, appease them so they fuck off and just let us live our lives!”

Hermann watched impassively. “Are you done?”

“What? Am I…yes, I’m done! But what is all that? I just through like thirty excellent reasons for doing this at you!”

“It was five,” Hermann said. “And most of them were terrible reasons.”

“You are so judgmental,” Newt sniffed.

“Newton, don’t make me explain to you how a drift connection goes both ways,” Hermann said. “You are far too brilliant for me to have to do that. Not to mention that you only just stopped complaining when Hannibal Chau did just that.”

“No, I know that,” Newt said, narrowing his eyes in annoyance. “That was part of my epic reasoning, if you were even listening. I know they’ll be able to see things, too, but, like, I’m only one person and they’re an entire hivemind. I drifted twice so they probably already know everything about me and if they don’t there’s not much they absolutely can’t know and the fate of humanity depends on it. Sooner or later they’ll know everything about me and I’ll just keep on soaking up fun facts about them.”

“And what about the ghost drifting?” Hermann prompted.

Newt couldn’t suppress a shiver. He really hadn’t liked the way those eyes had followed him everywhere that night. But fortune favored the brave and what was a little interdimensional stalking compared to everything he stood to gain? “It’ll be fine. They’ll get a little bit of manic rockstar in them and I’ll…I don’t know. Go out and try to join things?”

But Hermann didn’t seem amused. “Maybe at first. But the more you drift the more your drift connection grows and your goals you outlined make it seem that you intend even now for this to be a rather long-term project.’

“Well, I mean, how do you expect to become an expert on a foreign culture in one or two or ten times?”

Hermann looked pained at that. “Newton, I saw the look on your face when Marshall Pentecost told you he needed you to drift again. I’ve never seen you look more afraid or more desperate. It’s half the reason I knew I was going to go with you if I was anywhere near you when you drifted again.”

Newt’s eyes went distant as he recalled exactly what Hermann was talking about. It was perhaps the worst he had ever felt in his life and later that night he had almost been eaten by multiple kaiju. “But the second time went fine. And that was my immediate reaction. I knew what I had to do and I did it.”

“I watched your face,” Hermann continued, his voice softening. “I watched how quickly your emotions changed, from stuttering as you helplessly told him that you couldn’t do it again to the intrigue and almost anticipation when you asked if he had another brain. I didn’t understand it then. I don’t understand it now. But a part of you, even then, even shaking and bleeding and in tears, was looking to drift again.”

Newt looked away. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

And he didn’t. He didn’t.

“Newton, what have you gotten from me? After the drift?”

Newt blinked at the unexpected change in subject. “I…you know what.”

“I do. But that isn’t the point.”

“I felt some of your thoughts, more of your emotions. Some of your pain was like a phantom pain. I started organizing things more. I almost bought one of those ridiculous sweaters you always like. My German got better. You know. Things like that.”

Hermann nodded. “And what did you get from the precursors?”

“Eyes.”

Hermann’s eyes were sympathetic. “Besides that. You said those faded fairly quickly.”

If one wanted to count all those hours running around chased by the giant monsters it turned out Raleigh was right about him not wanting to be up close and personal with as ‘fairly quickly.’

“I…nothing,” Newt said. “There was nothing else.”

“There’s always something else.”

“You don’t know that,” Newt argued. “I don’t know that. We’re the only ones who drifted with a kaiju so the studies on what happens for humans may not necessarily apply. What about you? Have you noticed any side effects? You only drifted the once but it was still something.”

“I haven’t been nearly as disgusted by the specimens as I usually have been,” Hermann admitted. “And I have found myself regretting that the brains were both destroyed when we drifted. Unfortunately, I cannot for the life of me parse out whether that comes from you or from them.”

That was…well…fair.

“You can’t possibly be sure, either,” Hermann said quietly. “The best case scenario is all the things that you said. We will learn so much and advance our technologies and sciences by decades. If the precursors come back we will better able to defend ourselves, perhaps if we are invaded by another species this will still give us a needed edge. All the best possible outcomes.”

Newt frowned at him suspiciously. “That all sounds very good but you don’t believe in best case scenarios.”

“True but I need to contrast it with the worst case scenario.”

Newt gave Hermann a very put-upon look. “The worst case scenario being that I’m just going to get myself killed and you would have saved my life for nothing and I’m wasting my potential and what if they come back and I’m not here to save the day. Yeah, I know. I’ve considered all of that.”

“No,” Hermann said, his voice nearly a whisper. “All of that could happen and it would be devastating. I would be devastated. But at some level, that is your choice to make. You are the kind of scientist who always half-expected to die conducting some reckless but brilliant experiment and won’t be disappointed if you do.”

Newt pushed right on past Hermann’s confession that he would be devastated because if he let those words hit him then he might as well just set that brain on fire right now. “Then what is the worst case scenario, Hermann?”

“The worst case scenario is that they can influence you back. Maybe even are influencing you right now. It would have to be subtle, of course. Clearly after one or even two drifts they haven’t managed to secretly take you over or you never would have stopped them and if you suspected something you would tell me. But what if it’s more insidious than that? What if it’s a whisper that you should clone the kaiju? Doesn’t that sound like something you’d already do? You should drift with it. It will be perfectly safe and there’s so much you can learn. And there really is. And the more they drift, the stronger the connection is until they convince you to do more and more for them. Until one day maybe they don’t have to convince you anymore. You’re the strongest man I know, Newton, but you’re one person up against an alien hivemind and I didn’t notice any sign of them coming out worse for the wear after you drifted with them. It’s not an indictment, Newton, one against millions? It’s not a fair competition. But that won’t save you. And if they get you in their clutches, they will eventually be able to reopen a breach and come through and kill us all. Our genocide at their hands delayed a few scant years and for what? Because you decided to invite those monsters back into your head.”

Hermann painted a very vivid picture. Newt would give him that.

“That…that wouldn’t happen. Worst case scenario, you said. You don’t believe in those, either.”

“Not generally though I’m more likely to accept those than the best case scenarios. It’s simply more practical. Safer. Is the potential benefit of the best case scenario worth the potential harm of the worst case scenario? And even if it is something more in the middle, there is a lot of harm that still come from you going through with this. Including your death, Newton.”

Newt swallowed hard. “You’ve put a lot of thought into this.”

“I really haven’t,” Hermann said. “It’s just that obvious to me how terribly this could go.”

“It won’t.”

“You can’t promise that,” Hermann said. “Please, Newton, don’t put yourself at risk like that. Don’t put the world at risk like that. We only just got done saving it.”

“It’s not…” Newt shook his head helplessly.

“Look me in the eye, Newton, and swear to me that you are completely sure that you know why you want to do this and it is your desire and nothing else that has brought you here.”

Newt almost said yes.

He was very nearly certain.

But there was the vague uneasiness he had been feeling. It was nothing, really. It was just a natural caution in the face of undergoing something that had taken such a toll on him before.

He opened his mouth to say yes.

He shut it instead.

“Please, Newton.”

“Can we make it into fireworks?” he asked quietly. He always did love a good explosion.

Hermann’s responding smile was blinding. “I insist on it.”

Newt wasn’t sure at all that this was the right decision. Every cell in his body seemed to be screaming against it. But Hermann was smiling at him like he was a revelation so how could he possibly do anything else?

“You know,” Hermann said, as they headed off to locate some fireworks, “I’m very glad that you’re agreeing to destroy this brain now but since you were able to clone it the first time it occurs to me you may be able to clone it again.“

“Yeah, so?” Newt asked. He put his hands on his hips. “Hermann, are you saying you don’t trust me not to just make another one and drift with it the minute your back is turned?”

“Perhaps not the minute my back is turned,” Hermann said. “Perhaps not for a very long time. But if the precursors still linger in your mind…we really should drift again to find out.”

“Drifting with me to try and see if I need to be rescued? How romantic.”

“I have my moments,” Hermann said dryly. “But either way, how can we really be sure? No, we’re simply going to have to move in together in order to make sure I will be on hand to notice any mysterious cloning going on or you being out all night drifting or trying to end the world or however that would go.”

“Okay, first of all, please. If I’m going to be spending all that time doing secret shady stuff I’m doing it from the comfort of my own home,” Newt said. “Secondly, how can you possibly take something as big and meaningful as moving in together and make it about your weird paranoia I’m being corrupted by the hivemind?”

“It’s called multi-tasking, Newton. One would have thought you’d be quite good at it with the absurdly short time it took you to acquire all of those doctorates,” Hermann said.

“I hate you so much,” Newt grumbled.

“The fireworks can double as a celebration of our impending cohabitation and then afterwards we can go grab a nice dinner,” Hermann said, ignoring that.

“We are buying all of the fireworks they have,” Newt said. His hand was trembling but Hermann tangled his fingers together and it was steady.

#prompt fill #newmann #drifting #dialogue heavy #precursors #submission

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preservationandruin · 6 years

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Oathbringer Liveblog Part Three, Chapters 77-82

Well, now that I’m somewhat recovered, let’s go on. (I wasn’t kidding about the last part upsetting me; I know I’m hyperbolic very often, but I was actually shaking and crying and couldn’t keep reading).

Anyway. That’s behind us and lives only in our nightmares. On with the book.

Kaladin learns more about Highmarshal Azure, who I remain very gay for; Veil attends the world’s least exciting orgy; I create bullshit memes; Kal gains an army, and Shallan gets some much-needed therapy and a heart-to-heart.

Kal is running into a shelter from the Everstorm, making it in. They blow in slower than highstorms, but are less easy to predict. Also, looks like Syl hasn’t given up her old windspren-esque trick of sticking people’s shoes to the floor. He’s meeting up with Adolin and Shallan, and he’s picked up on the fact that Shallan sometimes seems to have a thing for him and other times is totally happy with Adolin.

At some point Shallan is going to have to deal with all this persona shit. Anyway, Kaladin hates being in stormshelters, of course, and we get that Elhokar is working on his plans through the storm. Adolin even notes that he’s doing much, much better than anyone hoped.

I’m...I’m really proud of Elhokar. He’s dedicated himself to something--to reclaiming his city and rescuing his wife and child--and he’s actually managing to pull it off well.

Anyway, Kaladin has learned that the wall guard is somehow producing food, they might have a Soulcaster, and that they seized emerald stores in the city. Also, Kal notes that Azure is “tough to read” and I’m still very gay for them.

(my roommate, summing up my feelings on Azure: A woman who can kick my ass? Yes please!)

Anyway, Kal thinks she might have an honorblade. Adolin is looking at Kaladin’s issued side sword, and we get this:

“Longer...like Shardblades?” Kaladin asked. “Well, yes, they break all kinds of rules,” Adolin waved the sword through a few motions, then sheathed it. “I like this highmarshal of yours.” “It’s not even her weapon,” Kaladin said, taking it back. “You boys done comparing your swords?” Shallan asked.

I....I just.... Listen. What happens here is Adolin takes and expertly uses Kaladin’s sword and then Shallan makes an unsubtle dick joke. Retroactively making the exchange...much more suggestive. I’m just saying that’s literally the conversation.

(sorry, I couldn’t resist)

Anyway, back to the rational analysis. Shallan got a copy of the book Mythica, which attributes personalities to the Unmade. That could be useful. And, although I am attempting to deal with this without screeching, Brandon throws this brick at my head:

Yes, it was uncomfortable to watch [Adolin and Shallan.] Kaladin liked them both...just not together.

I’m JUST SAYING, KALADIN STORMBLESSED IS BI.

Shallan, back with the book, notes that the book speaks of nine unmade, although some sources recount ten. Shallan thinks that two, in fact, might be in the city-- Sja-anat, the Taker of Secrets, who corrupts spren--as we’ve been seeing in the city--and Ashertmarn, the Heart of the Revel.

They’re discussing their possibilities in the city, and Kaladin sees a weird cremling.

It had a multitude of legs, and a bulbous body, with a strange tan pattern on its back.

Me: thinks about Dysian Aimians Me:

Anyway, Adolin and Shallan go on a cute romantic walk...right after an Everstorm, which fucks with the ambiance, but it’s what they’ve got. Adolin was promised a viewing of Shallan’s sketches.

Other Alethi couples kept their distance in public, but Adolin had been raised by a mother with a fondness for hugs.

I’m so glad Adolin kept that quality even after Evi died. I’m so glad he’s remained a soft boy.

Unfortunately, Shallan is considering making a new personality--someone who is “good enough” for Adolin, a “perfect bride.” The idea scares her, and I hope that she doesn’t do it. She’s experimenting with how far she can go with her powers.

Nobody could see her. Had anyone ever seen her? She stopped on the street corner, wearing shifting faces and clothing, enjoying the sensation of freedom, clothed yet naked skin shivering at the wind’s kiss. Around her, people ducked into buildings, frightened. Just another spren, Shallan/Veil/Radiant thought. That’s what I am. Emotion made carnal.

This seems bad. Shallan is losing herself more and more. Could it be the influence of one of the unmade? Sja-anat corrupts men as well as spren.

Vathah, also, seems to have become one of Shallan’s squires--he puts a lightweaving on himself on accident. Vathah is almost overwhelmed by it all. Anyway, Veil is going to the revel, to try to infiltrate. She’s starting to forget that Veil is a persona--she says that it would be easier to discard Shallan than to discard Veil.

She’s heading up the steps to the Oathgate platform.

Anyway, Kaladin is on top of the wall. Usually he likes the air after storms--of course--but this one is all wrong.

More about Azure. She always keeps her gloves on; she looks Alethi, and the knowledge that light orange is an Alethi eye color has opened up whole new worlds of OC creation for me. He goes to sit next to Azure and we cut back to Veil.

I don’t trust when Brandon does quick cuts like this. It means something will go horribly wrong. It means that shit will go down. We’re a ways from the end of the Part, too, which means that a lot of shit might be going down between now and then.

I trust nothing and nobody.

All the people up here on the platform are “reborn,” given new names that they barely remember--Veil’s is Kishi.

A variety of people passed by, occasionally scooping food off the tables with their bare hands. They laughed and shouted. Many had been ardents, marked by brown robes. Others were lighteyes, though their clothing had...decayed? it seemed a fitting word for these suits with missing jackets, havah dresses whose skirts were ragged from brushing the ground. Safehand sleeves ripped off at the shoulders and discarded somewhere.

This sounds like the world’s most dismal feast and orgy.

Veil is hearing the voices again, but Pattern seems to be humming to counteract them. She notices--there are no visible servants. She’s also not allowed to go “inward” towards where the Oathgate control would be.

“Everyone wants to go inward their first time,” he said. “You aren’t allowed. Enjoy this. Enjoy the feeling. It’s not our fault, right? We didn’t fail her. We were only doing what she asked. Don’t cause a storm, girl. Nobody wants that...”

This is...this is the ardent who was supposed to train Pai, isn’t it. Also, this refrain--it’s not your fault, Moash, you only did what people do. It’s not your fault, you were only doing what she asked. It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.

Abdicating responsibility for peace of mind. Abdicating free will for comfort. Partying at the world’s worst revel while the city burns down around you. Nero fiddles while Rome burns and you can see so clearly where Sanderson got his inspiration, can’t you? You just have to look around at people. I’m not going to make this too real, but this apathy and excess--it exists.

I think Shallan’s idea about the Midnight mother is right. I think they were people once, these Unmade. It explains why they’re the things people do and want to do, but twisted even worse.

Anyway, the place that was once a prayer room is now used for “another sort of experience,” and honestly this book has had both Shallan and Dalinar impaled, I think we can say that people are fucking.

Shallan takes a new face--Kishi means mystery. Fitting. She ducks a man going for her safehand drunkenly, and slips into the outer ring and through it, heading inward. I hope Pattern is with her--she sent him off to distract her guard/guide, but it didn’t say he came back. I hope he did.

I don’t want her going into this alone.

Kaladin is sitting with Azure and have I mentioned that I don’t trust when Sanderson cuts between two characters in rapid succession through a chapter because I know what he’s doing here.

Kaladin asks Azure about her Shardblade, why she is so sure nobody will take it. She asks, in return, about his shash brand.

“How did you end up in the city?” Azure said. “Sadeas’s lands are far to the north. There are several armies of Voidbringers between here and there, by report.” “I flew. How about you, sir? You couldn’t have been in the city long before the siege began; nobody talks of you earlier than that time. They say you appeared right when the guard needed you.” “Perhaps I was always here, but merely blended in.”

Also, I love how Kaladin just blatantly tells the truth about how he got in here, but it sounds like he’s bullshitting. I suspect that Azure, too, is telling the truth in a way that sounds like bullshit.

Kaladin looked her in the eyes. “Why won’t you let anyone talk about the fact that you’re a woman, Azure? Noro, don’t faint. You’ll embarrass us all.”

Turns out, the officers came up with that all on their own--so Azure does refer to herself as a woman. Good to know. Also, this is what I suspected. Anyway, she asks if Kaladin was “chasing her” but before he can answer, drums sound. Attack on the wall.

Over to Shallan/Radiant/Veil/Kishi again. This inner ring is...unnerving.

A woman with long hair dragging on the ground looked toward her, grinning with clenched teeth and bleeding gums. She crawled, one hand after another, her havah shredded, faded. She was followed by a man wearing rings glowing with Stormlight, in contrast to his ripped clothing. He giggled incessantly. The food on the tables here rotted, and was infested with decayspren.

Yet again, Pattern has to break her from the thrall of the Revel. She keeps going inward, noting that the voices are combining into a rhythm.

Into a heartbeat.

She stepped between the buildings and entered a moonlit square, colored violet from Salas above. Instead of the control building, she found an overgrown mass. Something had covered the entire structure, like the Midnight Mother had enveloped the gemstone pillar beneath Urithiru. The dark mass pulsed and throbbed. Black veins as thick as a man’s leg ran from it and melded with the ground nearby. A heart. It beat an irregular rhythm, bum-ba-ba-bum instead of the common ba-bum of her own heartbeat. Give in. Join the revel. Shallan, listen to me. She shook herself. That last voice had been different. She’d heard it before, hadn’t she? She looked to the side, and found her shadow on the ground, pointed the wrong way, toward the moonlight instead of away from it. The shadow crept up the wall, with eyes that were white holes, glowing faintly.

That’s in response to literally everything up there. Shadows independantly moving and talking? Heart buildings with veins going into the ground? No! No thank you!

Veil forcibly re-asserts control as the wall drums sound and jumps off the Oathgate platform.

The epigraph notes that the Unmade “can perhaps be captured like ordinary spren. It would require a special prison. And Melishi.”

Who’s Melishi?

Anyway, Kal’s headed up to the wall again.

“Damnation these creatures!” Azure muttered. “I’m missing something. Like white on black...”

Oh my god. Like white on black. The same term Zahel used.

She chose Azure as a name. She has a weird sword. She said she blended in...oh my god. I know who she is.

HELLO, VIVENNA!

Anyway, both Azure and Kaladin yell “Who are you???” at each other and then mutually decide to leave that conversation for another time because oh shit, the Fused. He rallies multiple squads, not wanting to call the screamers with his lashing or reveal his Radiance.

And then one of these motherfuckers tries to lash him.

(my memes are old and my humor is bad, put up with me gang)

Being Kaladin, of course, he’s totally used to directions that are not “the earth” being “down” and reorients himself not to crash into anyone and to be fine. He also manages to time it so he can crash the fuck into the Voidbringer before it attacks Beard and the others.

“Leave. My. Men. Alone!” Kaladin clung to the clothing of the monster, spinning in the air dozens of feet above the dark city, sparkling with the light of spheres in windows or lanterns. The Voidbringer Lashed them higher, falsely assuming that the more height it had, the more advantage it would gain over Kaladin.

Oh, buddy.

He’s pulled out Syl as a knife, but is refraining from drawing in Stormlight, not wanting to give himself away. Kaladin Stormblessed no-powers fighting a Voidbringer in the sky. This is kickass.

And he cuts into its heart, with Syl’s advice, and kills it; the pair of them slam into the wall.

Anyway, he heads down to talk to Azure. He’s sort of taken control of his squad.

He found Azure surveying the Eighth Platoon’s losses near their guard tower. She had her cloak off and held oddly in one hand, wrapped around her forearm, with part of it draping down below. Her unsheathed Shardblade glittered, long and silvery.

I’m in love with her. And she uses another distinct color metaphor-- “I’d bet my red life on it.” It turns out that the Voidbringers used the storm to march their entire army close--they’ll attack before the next highstorm. Kaladin summons Syl as a blade for Azure.

“I’m here,” Kaladin said, resting the Sylblade on his shoulder, “on orders from King Elhokar and the Blackthorn. It’s my job to save Kholinar. And it’s time you started talking to me.” She smiled at him. “Come with me.”

Back over to Shallan, of course, to prolong whatever Azure is going to say. We get an interesting note from the epigraphs:

Ba-Ado-Mishram has somehow Connected with the parsh people, as Odium once did. She provides Voidlight and facilitates forms of power. Our strike team is going to imprison her.

So that’s...interesting.

Veil goes back to visit Grund, the child she’s been feeding--she notes that he’s lying, and neither she nor Pattern can piece together why. She turns herself to look like a market guard and doubles back--and hears two men talking, and one of them hitting Grund.

It turns out that Veil giving food to Grund drew attention. Thugs killed his friends, then made him wait for her so they could take the food. It turns out--this is what’s been happening to everyone she tries to help.

It startles her so much that she falls from Veil into Shallan. She was being played the entire time, causing people pain when she wanted to help. Grund died.

Back over to Kaladin.

Apparently, they lined the walls of the room they use for Soulcasting with “metal”--going out on a hunch here, saying it’s aluminum--from Hoid’s recommendation. Ithi, the soulcaster, and her sister trade off the soulcaster, working constantly. She then demands to know how Kaladin alone is supposed to save Kholinar.

“There’s a device in Kholinar,” he said, “of ancient design. It can instantly transport large groups of people across great distances.” He turned toward Azure and the others. “The Kholin armies wait to join us here. All we need to do is activate the device--something that only a select few people can do.” The soldiers looked stunned--all but Azure, who perked up. “Really? You’re serious?” Kaladin nodded. “Great! Let’s get this thing working! Where is it?” Kaladin took a deep breath. “Well, that happens to be the problem...”

Don’t it always seem to go. Anyway, back to Shallan.

She huddled someplace. She’d forgotten where. For a while she’d been...everybody. A hundred faces, cycling one after another. She searched them for comfort. Surely she could find someone who didn’t hurt. All the nearby refugees fled, naming her a spren. They left her with those hundred faces, in silence, until her Stormlight died off. That left only Shallan. Unfortunately. Darkness. A candle snuffed out. A scream cut off. With nothing to see, her mind provided images. Her father, his face turning purple as she strangled him, singing a lullaby. Her mother, dead with burned eyes. Tyn, run through by Pattern. [...] The lie that was Veil became suddenly manifest. She hadn’t lived on the streets and she didn’t know how to help people. Pretending to have experience didn’t mean she actually did.

It’s all come crashing down at once, hasn’t it. Wit comes to find her with a sphere, sitting in silence. He says that the murderer of the child was seen to; he helped make sure of it.

“You tried to help the people of the market. You mostly failed. This is life. The longer you live, the more you fail. Failure is the mark of a life well lived. In turn, the only way to live without failure is to be of no use to anyone. Trust me, I’ve practiced.” She sniffled, looking away. “I have to become Veil to escape the memories, but I don’t have the experience that she pretends to have. I haven’t lived her life.” “No,” Wit said softly. “You’ve lived a harsher one, haven’t you?” “Yet still, somehow, a naive one.”

I’m--I’m really glad that Hoid seems to have fallen haphazardly into a strange mentor role for Shallan. That he cares about her and will find her when she’s curled up in a building in the middle of a panic attack and help talk her through it. It’s a human side to him that we don’t see often--but he’s had it around her since she was a child and he tried to get her to start Lightweaving again.

I think it might be, in part, because as he’s said--trying to help people is hard. But she’s someone that he can help.

Shallan knows she needs to go back to the shop; she knows she’ll just repress this with everything else she ignores. And Wit tells her a story.

“Have you heard the story of the Girl Who Looked Up?” Shallan didn’t reply. “It’s a story from long ago,” Wit said. He cupped his hands around the sphere on the floor. “Things were different in that time. A wall kept out the storms, but everyone ignored it. All but one girl, who looked up one day, and contemplated it.” “Why is there a wall?” Shallan whispered. “Oh, so you do know it? Good.” He leaned down, blowing at the crem dust on the floor. It swirled up, making a figure of a girl. it have the brief impression of her standing before a wall, but then disintegrated back into dust. He tried again, and it swirled a little higher this time, but still fell back to dust. “A little help?” he asked. He pushed a bag of spheres across the ground toward Shallan. [...] “Hmmm,” Wit said. “Not bad. But it’s not dark enough.” “What?” “I thought you knew the story,” Wit said, tapping the air. The color and light bled from her illusion, leaving them standing in the darkness of night, lit only by a frail set of stars. The wall was an enormous blot before them. “In these days, there was no light.” “No light...” “Of course, even without light, people had to live, didn’t they? That’s what people do. I hasten to guess it’s the first thing they learn how to do. So they lived in the darkness, farmed in the darkness, ate in the darkness.”

He goes on with the story--the girl being told she shouldn’t go beyond the wall or she’ll die. He asks Shallan if the girl is brave or stupid--says she’s both. Shallan says it’s not stupid to ask questions and try to learn things; Shallan asks what he’s trying to teach her, and he says he’s an artist, not a teacher.

“Weren’t we in the middle of a story about a girl climbing a wall?” Shallan asked. “Yes, but that part takes forever,” he said. “I’m finding things to occupy us.” “We could just skip the boring part.” “Skip?” Wit said, aghast. “Skip part of a story?” Shallan snapped her fingers, and the illusion shifted so that they stood atop the wall in the darkness. The girl in the scarves finally--after toiling many days--pulled herself up beside them. “You wound me,” Wit said. “What happens next?” “The girl finds steps,” Shallan said. “And the girl realizes that the wall wasn’t to keep something in, but to keep her and her people out.” “Because?” “Because we’re monsters.” Wit stepped over to Shallan, then quietly folded his arms around her. She trembled, then twisted, burying her face in his shirt. “You’re not a monster, Shallan,” Wit whispered. “Oh, child. The world is monstrous, at times, and there are those who would have you believe that you are terrible by association.” “I am.” “No. For you see, it flows the other direction. You are not worse for your association with the world, but it is better for its association with you.”

I’m taking a break here because--holy shit, gang, this is so important. The world can be awful and brutal and hard, and sometimes being in the world is awful and brutal and hard, but you make it better.

By living, by talking, by making art, by surviving one day at a time, you make the world a better place--it doesn’t make you worse. And that’s true no matter what you’ve lived through or had to do.

“What do I do, Wit?” She whispered. “I know...I know I shouldn’t be in so much pain. I had to...” She took a deep breath. “I had to kill them. I had to. But now I’ve said the words, and I can’t ignore it anymore. So I should...should just die too, for having done it...” Wit waved to the side, toward where the girl in the scarves still overlooked a new world. What was that long back she had set down beside her? “So you remember,” Wit said gently, “the rest of the story?” “It’s not important. We found the moral already. The wall kept people out.” “Why?” “Because...” What had she told Pattern before, when she’d been showing him this story? “Because,” Wit said, pointing, “beyond the wall was God’s Light.” It burst alight in a sudden explosion: a brilliant and powerful brightness taht lit the landscape beyond the wall. Shallan gasped as it shone over them.

So the girl took the light, and brought it back to her people, and it brought the storms--but each storm in turn renewed the light. And people, even though it was harder now, didn’t want to go back--because now, they could see.

Wit makes illusions of Shallan, saying that a lot has happened to that poor girl--Shallan says that other people have suffered more and get along “fine,” which is. God, that’s so relateable. I have to be okay because other people have it worse and they’re fine.

But they’re not, and that’s not what it’s about.

“Poor fool,” Shallan whispered. “Everything she tries only makes the world worse. She was broken by her father, then broke herself in turn. She’s worthless, Wit.” She gritted her teeth, found herself sneering. “It’s not really her fault, but she’s worthless.”

I’m glad even Shallan, even here at her most self-loathing, recognizes that her father was a horrible person. Yeah, he had to go through some shit too, but that doesn’t justify the immense amount of abuse he visited on others.

Anyway, Wit asks about the other illusory Shallan--Shallan says it’s the same, gives it the same memories--and it forgives itself. And Shallan recoils from that feeling of forgiveness as though she was burned.

“It’s terrible,” Wit said, stepping up beside her, “to have been hurt. It’s unfair, and awful, and horrid. But Shallan...it’s okay to live on.” She shook her head. “Your other minds take over,” he whispered, “because that look so much more appealing. You’ll never control them until you’re confident in returning to the one who birthed them. Until you accept being you.” “Then I’ll never control it.” She blinked tears. “No,” Wit said. He nodded toward the version of her still standing up. “You will, Shallan. If you do not trust yourself, can you trust me? For in you, I see a woman more wonderful than any of the lies. I promise you, that woman is worth protecting. You are worth protecting.”

THIS! IS! SO! IMPORTANT!

Accept the pain, but don’t accept that you deserved it. That’s what he leaves her with.

And she walks back, Veil’s outfit but Shallan’s body, and Adolin sees her--immediately hugs her while kind of rambling about how worried he was although he knew better than to be worried because he’s unkillable and have I mentioned that Adolin Kholin is a pure ray of sunshine and light--and then looks at her outfit.

“Nice,” Adolin said. “Shallan, that’s sharp. The red on white.” He stepped back, nodding. “Did Yoska make that for you? Let me see the hat on.”

And, of course, he loves it. Starts offering suggestions. Suggests her wearing a sword with it.

And then Kaladin shows up with, uhhhhhhh, the ENTIRE WALL GUARD.

Adolin sighed softly. “Of course. He’s probably their leader now or something. Storming bridgeboy.”

I love that Adolin is just like well, of course. Leave Kaladin alone for a few days and he has somehow gathered an army who listens to him. Typical. It’s even funnier because it’s honestly true.

The soldiers grew hushed as they saw Adolin, then the king, who was already dressed.

I...I’m dying a little over the fact that the narration decided it needed to specify that Elhokar had clothes on.

Like, we could have probably assumed that, but it’s Elhokar, so it was like. We’d better reassure them that yes, Elhokar does look like a presentable human being.

Well, anyway, they have an army now.

#oathbringer spoilers #stormlight archive liveblog #veil doing ghostthings #to be unmade you have to be made #one does not simply lash kaladin stormblessed

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lizacstuff · 7 years

Text

7x04 Anons

I have a ton of asks so I’ll answer a few under the cut. A lot of them deal with negativity over the ep and season so be warned and don’t click if you don’t want to read that.

Anonymous said:Liza, have you watched tonight's episode? What did you think of the Rumbelle send off? And of Alice being Roger's daughter?

I had zero emotional reaction to Rumbelle’s story in this episode. None. It’s been too toxic and gross and I have never really cared about it so it didn’t make me feel anything at all. I was curious what they were going to do. Now I know.

As far as Alice being WishHook’s daughter. Eh. So they take the only interesting character and now she’s a fake Wish person too? I just can’t with this nonsense. I’m having a lot of problems with WishHook, so I’m not thrilled she’s tied to his story.

Colin is still hot and an awesome human being and a terrific actor, but the plot... it’s a no for me.

Anonymous said:Sometimes I think Adam and Eddy believe they are the most clever people to ever write, and that everyone else are simple minded peasants. Like that one post-7x04 interview where the interviewer asked if Alice is wish Hook's daughter. "You're very perceptive." Uh, no, Adam and Eddy. You just have all the subtlety of a freight train. You had Alice and Rogers play chess. Wish Hook and his daughter played chess. It's obvious. Don't talk to people like they're stupid for figuring the obvious out.

This show has always been pretty obvious about some things, but they used to pull off some twists. I remember a time when fan speculation was way more wrong than it is right.

However, season 7 is just really obvious in terms of some of the “big twists.” Take Alice being the LGBT character, the entire fandom speculated that from the first second she appeared in shooting spoilers based on stereotypes. I have been hoping it’s not her because of those stereotypes, but nope! They had no surprises up their sleeve with it. Then most people immediately assumed she was Roger’s daughter the second we found out he had one... and apparently no twist there either.

I guess the days of the entire fandom being shocked by finding out Hook is the Dark One and Dark Swan did everything for Hook... are over.

Of course we should have known this reboot lost all subtlety in the second episode when everyone and their mother kept asking Henry if he was in love with the random woman he just met.

Anonymous said:I know the promo pics didn't spell anything good for Belle, but I'm still surprised that they actually had her die. I kept thinking that there would be some twist to it.

As I was just saying... no twists, no turns. It’s exactly as everyone predicted.

Anonymous said:I didn't watch the ep, but shit Henry and ivy have so much more chemistry than the other girl. Cinderella I think lol damn talk about epic romance also I saw comments that also agree with the Henry and ivy

If you haven’t watched how do you know they have more chemistry? Seriously, that’s kind of ridiculous. What are you basing that on?

Anonymous said:ouat is a weird show, it requires you to pay really pay attention but not to close of attention or you will notice all the plot holes

100% accurate. This reboot is creating so many more plot holes with all the magic mcguffins that are suddenly in play. I guess you either have to accept it and go along for the ride, or recognize it for what it is.

Anonymous said:hey liza, who are your favourite characters from the new cast? some of them don’t really impress me but i quite like ivy and tilly.

Both of those characters have some interesting aspects to them. It may have a lot to do with the performers. I haven’t been impressed with Gabriel, Dania or Mekia’s choices so far, but Adelaide and Rose have interesting screen presence.

Anonymous said:Drizella really is a Mean Girls version of Regina. I'm between finding her general attitude annoying and finding her somewhat sympathetic considering she has to deal with Tremaine all day.

You mean Regina when she was a girl and under Cora’s thumb? I could see that comparison. Lets hope Drizella doesn’t follow in Regina’s footsteps and become the mass murdering rapist in town.

Anonymous said:Did Rumbelle build the house in Storybrooke?

Um... I’m not sure I understand this question. In the show I believe that Up-inspired cabin where they were living isolated from everything and everyone else (do people really find that a happy ending?) was in the edge of realms.

Anonymous said:I'm almost mad that we got to see more of Belle and Rumple's story than we did of Captain Swan. We all know they are living their happy ending but it would still be wonderful to see a little clip of Emma sitting on the beach with their daughter waiting for Killian to show up and join their picnic. Just some good ole domestic Captain Swan on scene would make me so happy. *sigh*

I have a number of anons like this, and just NOPE.

First, we did not see more of Rumbelle than CS on this show. Rumbelle was a backburner story that was most often characterized as a cautionary tale of abuse and manipulation and the pair were mostly apart and had very little focus through the run of the series.

The showrunners decided that going forward they needed viewers to feel good about Belle and RB so after making them a gross, toxic mess for seasons now (it was just last year that Rumple was fucking the Evil Queen while Belle ran and hid for her life as he stalked and threatened her) they gave fans a bunch of twee scenes of her growing old (a life she lived isolated from everyone but two people) and dying in order to get rid of her and give Rumple motivation for this idiotic S7.

You’re jealous of that? Seriously? Fuck no.

Also you need to understand that 7.02 and 7.04 were very different episodes. 7.02 was still really Henry's story and a moment in time where he called for help and got to see his parents for a few minutes and we all found out that Emma and Hook are doing great and gonna have a baby and living a blissfully happy life together. It was just a check in where it was confirmed for us that Operation Happy Beginning has been a success and things are amazing. Also it spun off WishHook and completely separated the plot of S7 away from CS. 7.04 was 100% Rumple plot and his story. It explained why he's there and what is motivating him in Hyperion Heights. Very different. For 7.02, CS were not the focus because they didn’t need to be. Nothing in S7 requires knowing exactly what is going to happen to them minute by minute. I'll take less screen time and my OTP being completely disentangled from this mess any day of the week.

Anonymous said:Lol my jealousy of Rumbelle having more focus than CS has dropped to 0%, that episode was eh. CS is expecting a baby, and Belle is dead after spending her life trying to fix rumple's. Nice.

Yep. Look, I’m happy for any fans of Rumple or Belle that are happy about this episode and found peace in Belle’s life, but the writers did too much damage to this pairing over the years for me to care about it at all.

Anonymous said:While I can't stand rumbelle I feel for the shippers. They did get some happy scenes but their ship is going to spend the rest of the season apart and in pain until the half alive dies.

Yeah... I would not like that, I don’t think. It’s just kind of creepy and icky and ew-ey. However, to each her own.

Anonymous said:Agreed with that anon, there some good moments, but this was definitely not even close to one of the best episodes of the series. I have to respectfully disagree with Colin on this one. (Actually season 7 in its entirety lol)

Oh dear sweet Colin. Just trying to do his job. So many cast and crew and media have shot their hyperbolic wad with this episode. Calling it the best EVER!!!!! What will they say for the rest of the season? “This is the second best episode EVER!!!!!” Or will they keep one upping every time they have to promote an ep?

No one with an economic interest in S7 can be trusted when talking about the quality of this season (and I include Mitovich and NA in that.)

Anonymous said:I didn't watch the episode but I'm curious: are we supposed to believe that when Belle dies Emma and Killian are old too or was there some timeline glitch and Emma and Killian are still young in Storybrooke at the time of HH events?

Who knows. Belle and Rumple were off living at the Edge of Realms for the last years of her life. Rumple said something about time standing still there except for Belle??? I think. (my mind kept wandering duiring those scenes becuse they were so boring) Then after she died he opened a portal thingy to go to the time and place where the Guardian (the deux ex machina that is going to cure him of the Dark One curse) lives and Rumple was then transported to the newEF (that looks exactly like the old, I mean couldn’t they have given this new storybook’s fairy tale land some stylistic differences???) on the night of Cinderella’s Ball and we see Henry drive by on his motorcycle.

So yes, I think some of the flashforwards could have been from far in the future, and some could have been not all that distant because they were in a weird realm with weird time mechanics.

However, I think Rumple and Belle left Storybrooke well before Henry did (they talk about it at Gideon’s first birthday and Henry still would have been about 14 at that time) so by the time this Hyperion Heights stuff is happening they would have been off in Fairy Tale land “traveling?” (ie living their lives in dusty libraries searching books for a way to cure Rumple.)

It hurts ones head to try to sort it all out.

Anonymous said:After watching this episode, all I think is how sad it is how far this show gone from greatness. Going back 3 years, I would’ve never imagined ouat would be like this now. Sorry for being dramatic, it’s all just so jarring.

I think one of the most unfortunate things about this is that I really think OUAT could have been a valuable and viable franchise for years to come. However, they tried to reboot it too soon. As I’ve said since last spring, I think it would have been much better to let it rest a year or two and then come back with 10-13 episode event series for ABC.

However, this experiment will probably negate any opportunity for that.

Anonymous said:I think it's a little sad that in real time, Belle died like 5-10 years after the s6 finale. I know it was longer for her but to everyone else that knew her, it'd be like she died young.

Yep. I’m not sure if in Hyperion Heights or Storybrooke in 2017 if Belle is dead, dead, or still living out her life at the edge of realms or wherever and Rumple traveled back in time???

I don’t know.

Anonymous said:Do you think killing Belle off is going to decrease the ratings more?

Nope. If ratings do decrease, I don’t think that will have been a factor.

Anonymous said:They lost viewers even with the episode they promoted the most wow

They did and yes, other than the premiere, this has been the most promoted episode. As I’ve said since the premiere, ep 5 ratings should be the most telling. I’m guessing that will be the baseline for the rest of the half season. At that point anyone in the audience who was just curious if they would preserve our favorites happy endings from the first 6 season will know and there won’t be a bump from that. We’ll see.

#ouat negativity #asklizac #ouat 7x04 #ouat 7.04 #ouat s7 #anonymous

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essayofthoughts · 7 years

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I've seen a lot a hate for the ship but not a thorough explanation of why. I wanted to see the pros and cons of them. The effect it has on Wanda in the comics and in MCU, same for Vision. In which scene in the movies made people dislike it and which part in the comics made people explicitly hate. . . I don't think I'm doing a good job explaining why I want a Meta on it. My reasoning looks all over the place to me.

Yeah, I’m not entirely sure what you mean with some of this but as for why people don’t like and why they do, I can do that. I haven’t read enough comics to have a firm idea of the impact in comics, or what scene in the films makes people hate it (though if I had to bet it would probably be Wanda putting Vision through the floor, or like. Generalised fan hate for Wanda due to goddamn fandom misogyny and fucking Tony stans) or what scene in comics made people hate. A lot of those things are seriously subjective and personal and the hate for WandaVision is not just limited to the personal. Anyway.

Main reasons I’ve seen people say they don’t like ScarletVision:

They feel Marvel is pushing it too hard with all their nods to the comics.

They didn’t like the relationship in the comics in the first place.

They think Wanda’s abusive because she shoved (the practically indestructible) Vision through the floor and…

They find it squicky because Vision is technically a year old in CACW.

Now, I don’t mind the nods to the comics too much [1], and sure you can dislike the relationship in the comics, but it was very significant, producing the first incarnations of Wiccan and Speed (before the death, time-jump rebirth and other shit) which drove the House of M plotline, which has had a huge impact on the Maximoffs in general [2], and so… I can see why they’d want to reference so enduring a relationship. You can dislike it if you want, but I don’t especially think there’s a need to hate on it. Find it personally obnoxious, sure. Want to desperately avoid it, sure. But honestly, fandom’s need to try to justify their hatred of something or to be incredibly judgy is something I find deeply grating these days (hence the vagueblog the other day) so I think people need to tone shit down some.

As to the “Wanda’s abusive thing”… Vision did literally lie by omission to her regarding keeping her under house arrest. Let’s look at two other cases where she was lied to.

Strucker and List! They recruited the twins in This Scepter’d Isle tie in prelude comic, and claimed to be SHIELD by speaking of “our Avengers, our Iron Man”. But they weren’t and, as you see, the twins readily abandon them when the fight comes to the castle.

Ultron! “You were supposed to make a better world!” “It will be better!” “When everyone is dead?” And what happened then? She set Helen free from the sceptre’s control, she and Pietro got the hell out… only to return to fight Ultron alongside the Avengers.

Wanda, simply, does not like being lied to. If she offers trust then to betray it is one of the worst crimes you can commit against her. The same holds true of Pietro in comics, it’s the reason for the end of his relationship with Crystal Amaquelin. To break their trust is a surefire way to earn their ire and Vision is clearly very close to Wanda by the time of CACW… and he lied to her.

Besides which, he’s indestructible. From their conversation we see that they’re both very much regarded as Other by the other Avengers and by the public - the android and the witch - and they seem to understand one another’s capabilities. Vision begs Wanda to not leave not to refrain from putting him through the floor. Being put through the floor is easily survivable for him. He is literally made from Vibranium. He can phase through solid matter! He can alter his own density! He’s also an android who doesn’t think like we do, he’s genuinely surprised that he can be distracted because his way of thinking is very very alien to that of a human.

So if Wanda’s abusive, so is Vision. But given their conversation at Leipzig Airport when Wanda finally stops fighting, it seems like they’re generally quite open with their emotions and their thoughts. They each understand why they responded as they did and don’t seem to hold it too much against it each other. So, honestly, I’d say they have a healthier relationship than some (Pepper/Tony has a few problems, so I actually Do Not Judge Pepper taking a break from him in CACW) especially given that Wanda comes out of a codependent bond with her brother because her brother dies. The fact she’s not an emotional wreck and is capable of healthy relationships is amazing. Given a lot of factors… look the relationship - whatever it may be - between Wanda and Vision needs work, but all relationships do. And both of them clearly put a lot of thought into their discussions, with Vision’s awkward hamfisted attempts to make Wanda feel better, and Wanda’s willingness to talk openly to Vision in turn. It’s clearly a relationship based on communication and intellectual exercise, which I think is a decently solid basis? But then again, I’m ace, and of the few relationships I’ve had, one of them involved a hugely manipulative dickhead, so what do I know.

Honestly the squickiness is the one reason I can really see and get behind [3] even though it doesn’t squick me out personally. Vision is literally a year old by the time of CACW. That’s not hyperbole, you can check the MCU timelines on the wikia. He’s very young, he’s still very naive, he still lacks a solid understanding of human nature because he’s very logical and so emotion and ulterior motives sometimes - heck, often - pass him by. He’s seriously lacking in life experience and that makes forming relationships with him of any kind to be very weird.

The way that I find it easier to handle is… well, look at Ultron. Emotionally immature, yes, but intellectually he had a great understanding of things, even if he was an omnicidal maniac. Then, look at JARVIS. We don’t know when JARVIS was made, but he’s existed in MCU canon as a whole and intact thing for years, he’s had plenty of time to mature as a half AI half natural language UI, and then being merged with what there is of the part-sceptre brain of Ultron…. physically he’s a year old, but he’s got more going on in his skull than just that. He may lack a lot of experience and understanding - of course he does, part of him comes from an omnicidal maniac, the other part is a bodyless AI that acted as Tony Stark’s nanny, minder, adviser, best friend and general helping hand. His understanding of a lot of things is very off.

But he isn’t just a year old. He’s also got a lot of other stuff going on.

Honestly, if you don’t like ScarletVision, that’s fine. Its your business, it’s your preference. I don’t get ClintCoulson or Stony or… hell a lot of slash ships these days, if I’m honest, partially due to how they dismiss female characters even when written by female fans, but I’m not going to shit on them. If ScarletVision is your NOTP just block it. There’s no need to go shitting all over it, or trying to justify your hatred, distaste or squicked-out-ness by it. Just say “I don’t like this,” or “It makes me uncomfortable” and leave it at that. You don’t have to justify your personal feelings to other people. You’re allowed to dislike things just because you dislike things. You’re allowed to like things that are ProblematicTM [7] just because they scratch your id.

But yeah. People have their own reasons for not liking ScarletVision and that’s justified. Seeing it pushed in their faces, I can see why someone who doesn’t care for it would come to hate it - I didn’t care about Tony Stark but his stans have made me detest him on principle. But, you don’t need to spew hate everywhere about it, and that isn’t necessarily a personal issue.

That’s a fandom issue, largely due to the purity police, problematic TM thing, the callout brigade and people trying to prove that they are ideologically pure to try to prevent such callouts happening to them. The solution? For people to stop calling out other people or to stop giving a shit if they get called out. For people to stop overusing or misusing callouts to get back at people they don’t like. For people to stop lying with callouts. For people to stop uncritically reblogging callout posts without checking facts for themselves.

This probably isn’t going to happen, not for a while at least. Not before fandom has almost entirely burned itself out, burned itself to the ground and had to rebuild itself from the ground up.

But hey. I guess chewing up and spitting out your friends and companions only to team up again for the sequel is in right now - it’s what’s going in in the MCU.

[1] And hey, if it was nods for BuckyNat you know people would be practically cheering, so I find it kind of weird that this specifically is an issue while people are almost panting for a reference to BuckyNat, just as I find it annoying that people spent ages begging JKR for more information only to turn around and go “why won’t she stop!?” Answer: Because y’all spent years begging her for more. Don’t be bitter because your wish got answered.

[2] Yes there are issues with House of M, yes I know you may dislike it, no, I don’t care right now. Like what you like, dislike what you like, whether house of M was good is not the question, the question is if it was significant and it was.

[3] Being sick of Marvel pushing something via nods to the comics sure, that can be irritating, but there’s a bit of a double standard there because no one minds it for other characters and, indeed, they seem to be begging for it for BuckyNat. They ignore the nod to Ultimates that Clint’s family is [4] just to spit on it because it’s not Clintasha like they wanted or ClintCoulson (how did that ship start, honestly? IT MAKES ZERO SENSE), they hate on the nod to comics for WandaVision, but they seem to keep their eyes peeled for every other Easter egg opportunity, draw wildly out of proportion parallels between comics and MCU [5] and practically beg for BuckyNat [6].

[4] As is like… Clint’s character in this, he’s much more brutal than 616 Clint. MCU Clint is more disaster to humans than human disaster, and that is very Ultimates.

[5] People saying how much of a slap in the face the Raft is in MCU are WRONG because the Raft is new in MCU and has never been used to imprison anyone, let alone villains or heroes, so the slap to the face that it is in comics does not apply here.

[6] I get it, BuckyNat is really interesting and features two people dealing with their differing yet similar traumas from the same source. I’m a sucker for that kind of thing, I get it. But guys, it’s not what’s happening.

[7] Kylux feat. blood and force choking for example. Look I have issues with the shipping of Kylo and Hux but those fics are AMAZING and HORRIBLE and I LOVE THEM, for the simple reason that they are very id-scratchy. Sometimes I like to read about deeply unhealthy bloody relationships or just like. Straight up healthy BDSM. We all have likes and dislikes, but those don’t have to be due to an ideological basis. All things are flawed, some things more than others, but just because you don’t like something doesn’t mean that everyone should dislike the thing [8].

[8] There are, of course, exceptions to this. Nazis and Neo-Nazis, for example, should be universally hated and vilified because they wish to commit fucking genocide. White nationalists should be universally hated and vilified because they want to destroy anyone they don’t see as white, when race is a completely arbitrary construct entirely designed to create social divisions in the first place. But, some things can be problematic without being The Worst And Most Awful Thing Ever and that’s what this post is about.

#wanda maximoff defense squad #wanda maximoff #wanda x vision #scarletvision #mcu meta #ask #anonymous

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thenightisland · 7 years

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you know the drill:

this is becoming like its own series but idk how else to explain this awful year i don’t even feeling like properly linking so here’s just the URLs of the other ones in the series: 1. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/161087786689/explanationsupdates-under-the-cutmore-i 2. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/161920216354/additional-updatesexplanations-under-the-cut 3. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/163767959805/updates-under-the-cutmore-post-one-post-two-on 4. http://thenightisland.tumblr.com/post/164398486219/on-the-fourth-edition-of-what-the-fuck-is

one of the assessors got jumped a while back. she was just walking past a pt in the main assessment dept and he jumped up, punched her in the back of the head, took her to the ground and beat the fuck out of her. she was out for weeks and weeks and had broken facial bones. i can’t believe she didn’t quit.

our nurse executive quit though. not like, went prn or gave two weeks notice, like just straight up was like I’M DONE and walked out which honestly is the closest i’ve ever come to respecting him.

while having more psychologically unstable pts isn’t new, having more medically unstable pts has been a problem lately. like our crash cart is not like a medical hospital’s crash cart it’s like. an ambu bag some iv supplies and a stethoscope no lifesaving medications. when a pt has a medical issue we send them out to a medical hospital because obv we don’t have the resources to treat complex medical issues where we work. which didn’t used to be an issue because you’d used to see maybe two medical codes a year on my unit. we’ve had /ten/ since my last update post /just on my shift/. two of which weren’t even “pt is going downhill fast” codes they were “pt has no heartbeat and isn’t breathing” like we had to fucking bring two people back from the goddamn dead /within ten minutes of each other/. we’re all like we’re psych nurses man if we wanted to do this shit we’d work er. [and the er we’re required to send these pts to is awful like they sent us back a guy who had almost died twice in three days who had an /untreated brain tumor/ bc obv he’s totally fine]. or we’ve been doing mash unit style medicine like the suicidal kid with partial thickness burns all over his chest and neck that literally no one was doing anything about. we were debriding burns with a mixture of different PO IM and SQ drugs to achieve the same effect as IV morphine because debriding is extremely painful but not doing it will just make things worse and no one else seemed to care so we just fucking did it. like we’ve done so much medical nursing lately. like the one with the uncontrolled severe seizures that led to the medical hospital labeling her first break schizophrenia despite no family history of mental illness but /five different medical issues that all cause psychosis/. or the one they let on the unit despite being on the do not readmit who has untreated hiv that he actively tries to give to other people and /active tuberculosis/. or the one with the aneurysm. or the one with severe CHF. and on and on and on. and remember: we’re not the most medically unstable unit in the hospital because we have a 40 bed /geriatric psych unit/ so you can imagine the kind of pts /they’re/ getting. on the plus side, all of our ten odd codes lived.

my personal life is still a goddamn mess, of course, but that’s a given. don’t even know where to begin with all that. and i can’t talk about a lot of it which makes it that much more fun.

i had an entire crisis about the odyssey [which tbh is still kind of going on even after /weeks/] because i’m getting so cagey in memphis because i fucking hate this town. and i just got back from new orleans which is the closest thing i have to an ithaca at the moment and it killed me to come back to this fucking city.

i’m also really paranoid right now because after i come back from vacations, something terrible always happens and i’m not exaggerating it’s like clockwork to the point that the bad things have all happened between friday and sunday after i’ve returned from my vacation, each time, without fail. well that would be this weekend so i am just waiting to see what great horrors await me this goddamn time. [last time, it was the whole coworker killed in vehicular homicide thing]. but i guess paranoia isn’t the right word. you’re only paranoid if you’re wrong, and my life has already set the precedent. so i guess anxious is the better word.

the anxiety is increased given that my mother has been out of work all week because they’ve had trouble regulating her blood sugar and so she’s been really sick and even said so herself she’ll probably end up in the er over the weekend because she doesn’t think she can make it till her next doc appt because she’s miserable, and she’s already been in the er once when this weird shit started happening a month or so ago so the Vacation Curse has me even more concerned than usual, which is saying something.

there’s a new psych doc working now and everyone is really unsettled by him and we’re pretty sure he’s a genuine psychopath like completely without exaggeration and he’s already done a lot of really creepy things to/with staff members and one nurse said in passing “i’ve known a lot of doctors like him he’ll end up fucking a pt at some point” which we initially left to hyperbole but he’s been doing shit like transporting female pts to other units without the staff’s consent in his own car which is like all kinds of not allowed, and the way he talks to some of the staff is just downright rapey honestly. and so we had a rough case this summer who, through the combined efforts of my squad, we got her from a diagnosis of intellectual disability with schizophrenia, nonverbal, self harming all the time, history of physical and sexual abuse, constantly in restraints and on a 1:1 obs level to a new diagnosis of autism spec with ptsd because her “hallucinations” were /flashbacks/ and she ended up very social and verbose and like fucking read william blake for fun and had a great sense of humor and was off all special observations and had a transfer to another facility pending so she could get more 1:1 long term therapy, and the creepy doctor was covering her case while her actual doc was out of town and he rode all the way to the other hospital with her which is another thing you do not do, and we found out from a coworker that she is now a /2:1/ [two staff members within arm’s reach 24/7], self harming again, in full shutdown/meltdown mode, and nonverbal. and it was such a rapid deterioration that all of us lost sleep over the possibility that this creepy doctor might have done something because even after she was at the other hospital and therefore no longer our pt, /he kept going to see her/. which fucked us up a lot because we were the ones who worked so hard for so long with her. like even the thought of it.

recently had 25th birthday so naturally had a crisis about that because i’d always said my goal was to be out of memphis by 25 and yet here we are.

another of our fave pts, esp one of /my/ fave pts, died out of literally nowhere. the day before my birthday. so that was great.

also felt really surreal to see the news about the convictions in the holly bobo case, which i found out about when one of my coworkers was reading the news on his phone during a lull one night i forgot that to him and everyone else it’s a national news story [hell it even has its own wikpedia page] but to me it’s just /holly/ because she was /in the class above me in our nursing program/. my first semester in college i remember seeing her face on missing posters on every building on campus. so it was really a weird moment of dissociation for me. glad the motherfucker was found guilty on all charges, obv.

the tech of mine who got his skull slammed into the floor, the one who’s been out with what can only be called severe psychological trauma, is supposed to be coming back the third week in october. which i just. i mean i’m glad because he’s one of our best guys, but i’m also like /why the fuck would he come back/ because he could be a fucking english professor again. motherfucker spent part of his youth growing up in italy and montreal, lived on the west coast for years, /was/ a college professor, did time as a script doctor in LA, and was a fucking thriller novelist who just gone girled himself for whatever reason and ended up working with us. there’s literally a reddit thread asking if anyone knows what happened to him and i want to be like don’t worry it’s fine he works with me. but so we’re like why would you come back to this place after what happened to you when you have so many other options available to you????? what are you running from that makes you so desperate to keep centering your life around a locked acute psych ward???? why did you gone girl yourself to begin with??? like he was screwed up enough there for a while that he wasn’t even answering his calls or texts and our boss had to send the police to do welfare checks on him because he lives alone so it’s like man why not go back to the life you had before and /get away from all of this/ it’s not like my situation where i’d rather be living a different life but have never done so, he already has the foundation because he’s already lived a different life he has an in that i don’t have and i can’t for the life of me figure out why he thinks working as an acute pysch tech is the better option.

but i mean. we /do/ call our unit the hotel california for a reason.

#karen's adventures in trying to sort her life out #this got longer than i intended whoops

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darkhei-noam · 7 years

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100 Suggestions for Seekers, Spiritual Activists, and Indigo Children

1. Speak to the homeless. 2. Become sensitive enough that you’re overwhelmed with awe when you come upon old bridges and other long-standing architectural elements. 3. Social media fasts every Friday night through Saturday early evening. 4. Simple gratitude mantra recited every morning – whether you mean it or not. 5. Read Alberto Caeiro’s poetry in the moments closest to sleep – especially in the summer months. 6. Stop using the language of “belief” to describe the encounter with God. 7. Don’t employ hyperbolic cynicism on social media platforms. 8. If you earn more than $135k give away all monies above $135k. 9. Keep a small running list of friends who need to be “thought of” and think about them (even briefly) each day. 10. Annual ritual ablution in any natural (or unnatural) body of water for sake of “washing oneself clean” and to reinforce inner-conviction that no matter what we have done, there is almost certainly the possibility to begin anew. 11. Strive to reach hospitality metrics of 180 people hosted in your home (annually). 12. Seekers who are also heavy drinkers should give up drinking. 13. Visit the site of a tragedy or trauma that affected someone else (not you) and sit there quietly, maybe praying on behalf of all those directly and indirectly impacted by the event. 14. Donate (new) toys to the children of immigrants. 15. Don’t worry about what people will think about you if you pause to offer (audible) praise for the food you are about to eat. 16. Occasional genuflection all the way down to the bare earth. Hold for ten seconds. 17. Always greet passersby with a bright countenance and, if appropriate, greetings. 18. Get to the place where sometimes you can transform doing the dishes into an act of divine service. 19. Don’t shirk your responsibility to take care of the people you’re closest to. 20. Silent retreats are not necessary, but honor any rising feeling that you’ve spoken too much. 21. Study the spiritual autobiographies of seekers. 22. Presume that most changes that’ll take place in your life will come about almost entirely by serendipitous or mysterious means and only very partially as a result of your will or intentionality. 23. Cultivate a recognition that you are not actually you but that what you are is 1) Light 2) Compassion raging to break free 3) God’s breath. 24. Abandon spiritual teachers who suggest they have the answers. Seek spiritual teachers who ask the best questions. 25. Don’t worry as much about growing your own food as you do about whether every child in a 5-mile radius of your home has access to fresh food. 26. Resist popular temptations to wear dark sunglasses inside. 27. While there may be social benefits to some types of gossip, seekers should never speak ill of others behind their backs, and should gently redirect conversation if someone else wants to gossip in this way with them. 28. Unless your criticism of another is absolutely centered in a loving desire for that person to grow, do not offer it. And never feign loving desire. 29. Many friends may come to you seeking advice. Your wisdom will be judged by your capacity to ask open-ended questions that invite friends to answer their own spiritual quandaries. 30. Don’t sleep with a phone close to your bed. 31. It’s OK to hang images of saints and other righteous individuals on your walls as long as you understand that these images only represent the inner-saint-and-righteous-individual within your own self. 32. It’s OK not to be a God person but then you must have another spiritual mechanism that reminds you, “You’re not the center of this universe – It’s not all about you.” 33. If a beggar walks into Starbucks and folks are ignoring him or her, calmly greet this person and without any fanfare buy them a cup of coffee. 34. The study of sacred texts is less about acquiring wisdom as much as it is about communing with Wisdom. 35. Blessing and insight are definitely found within the obstacles of the day-to-day and you should forgive yourself for never finding them there. 36. Once a week, stand before a mirror and take a really good look at yourself. 37. When you hear about a wrongful death as a result of police brutality, write the deceased’s name on a piece of paper and go out into a public space and just hold that name up for an hour. 38. If your heart’s in the right place, religious law can be broken. 39. All pop love songs are allegories about God’s love for each and every individual. 40. Reject the commercialism of the holiday season but recognize giving gifts as a vehicle to get beyond your small self. 41. Restrict your consumption of meat to Sabbaths, holidays, and other occasional celebrations. 42. The body is the palace of the soul – not the prison of the soul. 43. In moments of despair: retreat, forgive, and refocus. 44. It’s OK to be a gentle stoner, but anything that gets shot in your veins is a source of illusion and dead ends. 45. Even solitary mystics will someday seek a community of practice. 46. Walk in cemeteries. 47. Never engage in road rage. 48. Make generous exclamations of delight whenever you eat. 49. Light bonfires at the darkest moment of winter. 50. Ensure that every stranger is greeted. 51. Strong coffee, for vision’s sake. 52. Compulsive desire to perform secret acts of charity. 53. Try and learn the personal story of one new individual every day. 54. Always live in proximity to a wooded or wild area such that if the need arose you could be alone in nature within five minutes. 55. Amulets are OK, but should be worn discretely. 56. If and when the challenges that beset you are many more and much greater than you can handle, take a vacation day, get hydrated, and recite: “I know that sometimes we go bankrupt. I know that sometimes we bottom out. Dear God, accompany me and walk beside me. I possess the inner resources to get through this. And if I don’t, that will be OK too”. 57. Wearing a beard is permitted, but the wearer must often joke about being a seeker with a beard and thus reveal certain self-consciousness and self-doubt. 58. Reverent acknowledgement of very old trees. 59. Carry small printouts of powerful texts in your jacket pockets. 60. Be capable of providing a “thick description” of at least one spiritual tradition that is not your own. 61. Over the course of a spiritual journey, there may be moments in which the God you are familiar with, the God around whom your community is built, will appear to you in an unfamiliar guise and perhaps even in the mask of another people’s God. You should be able to breath through these times, appreciating them for their depth and humor. 62. After the seeker has glimpsed a little of what she seeks, the seeker must transmit and translate these glimpses to others. 63. Pay close attention to the deaths of artists and writers. When a writer or poet dies consider for a moment if you have any of his or her books on your shelf. If you do, take one down and leaf through it for a bit. Carry it with you in your briefcase for the day. 64. Gather some of your closest friends and everyone’s children and take a walk down through the woods on a rainy, but not bitterly cold winter day. Go further than you might think appropriate for the children. The walk should feel as much “ordeal” as “outing”. Someone should have the capacity and gear to make tea. 65. Wear clean clothes and brush your teeth a lot. 66. As you walk through the streets on your way to wherever, keep in mind that you might be called upon at any moment to intervene on behalf of another person’s wellbeing and safety. 67. Pray for the repealing of the 2nd amendment. 68. Recite 100 expressions of gratitude and wonder each day. 69. There is something called mindfulness based meditation and then there is something else called mindlessness based meditation. Both are legitimate paths. 70. Travel to distant lands is a vehicle for self-discovery, but so is therapy and true friendship. 71. Your consciousness is the most recent fruit of a billion year evolutionary process. Do not ever forget that. 72. Elitism is not an aspiration. 73. No need to follow a regimented diet as long as you eat simply and with plenty of deep-seated gratitude. 74. Being weird for God is one of the great delights of this life. 75. Living a happy life is not the goal. Living a meaningful life is the goal. And often the pursuit of meaning is very difficult. 76. It’s OK to yell at drivers to slow down as long as you’re only concerned about the wellbeing of children and not taking it as an opportunity to enjoy belittling another. 77. When trying to attend to the question, “How good do I really need to be?” have the chutzpah to insist, “Really fucking good”. 78. Forgive others for whom the trauma of history has impacted their capacity to accept others without bias, but strive to accept all without bias. 79. Make time to mentor others whether personally or professionally or spiritually. 80. Don’t forget the look of your own handwriting. 81. Do not practice a spirituality that has you despair having been placed in this world. 82. Try to undermine your faith in order to stay spiritually limber and soft. 83. Greetings performed with a kiss to each cheek. 84. Spiritual leadership means being able to remain calm in moments of communal crisis and being able to fall apart in moments of personal crisis. 85. For a seeker, the death of a loved one is an opportunity to gaze behind the curtain that is typically drawn over daily consciousness. 86. Transform sleepless nights into experiences rich with the potential for communion. 87. Take great pleasure at the sight of people doing silly things, like a pack of friends all holding hands and walking through the city. 88. Become concerned if your heart is unmoved by scenes of misfortune that get in your way. 89. Some type of religious costume ought to be worn on occasion. 90. Do whatever you need to do in order to beam light from your navel. 91. Be known for zealously seeking to understand what’s going on inside people before judging them. 92. Every once in a while let in the crushing humility that is induced when contemplating the massive scale of the cosmos and time. 93. Speak to God as if you are speaking to a close friend. 94. Forgive crass humor. 95. Be kind to all animals. 96. Get up on a hill and stare at the sun toward evening. 97. Don’t be rough with children. 98. Don’t own too many shoes. 99. Smile often. 100. Always believe there’s more to seek.

— Rabbi Joshua Bolton

#life advice #advice #long post #i love this #i have been saying no 39 for years #but all of these are good #ok to reblog

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thatnewsiesfandomgirl-blog · 6 years

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FTTTO Chapter 4

Authors Note: So this chapter switches point of view a lot. Also this one is very, very, extremely long. Well a little hyperbole never killed anyone, all that aside enjoy.

Chapter 4:Now This is Weird

Mike’s POV:

I woke up before the normal, why? I couldn’t tell you. That’s just what my body wanted to do. Except it didn’t feel like I was in me bed. So I slow got up and rubbed my eyes so that I could see. But what I did see was not what I expected. I was in a large room, that had a large couch and two big chairs. It also had a very big black box, along with a lot of other expensive looking trinkets. I then looked down to see a bunch of my brothers and my real brother all laid about on the floor. But one caught my eye, Spot Conlon. I thought about maybe waking them up, but then thought better of it, because if I did I would have been soaked for sure. So I looked around the room some more. Examining all the little things that were there. I didn’t touch anything of course, i didn’t know what any of it did and I was a bit afraid to find out. I gave up on getting out of this room a while ago. The exits where blocked of. After a while of looking around I saw that Jack was walking out. When he got up and looked around he looked just as confused as I did when I first woke up. When he finally turned around and saw me he spoke,” Do youse have any idea what’s goin’ on here?”

I just shook my head and replied,” I don’t know, but dere’s no way out. At least not that Ise can find.”

Jack went silent, they way he normally did when he was thinking.

“First the strike, den dis. Can anything good happen to us?” I thought out loud.

“ Hey wes won da strike and youse gotta look on da bright side. No one’s hurt,” Jack assured.

“ I guess you right, but-” I started but jack quickly shushed me.

“Did youse hear dat,” Jack looked very serious when he asked me this.

I gave him a confused look.

“ I keep thinkin’ I’m hearin’ people talkin’ “ Jack said.

I didn’t hear anything, but I just went with it. After a while more and more newsies woke up,and they all asked questions similar to the one that Jack asked me when he first woke up. Once everyone was up Jack stood up on a chair and made a loud whistle to get the boy’s attention.

“Okay. So I know youse all are confused as to why wes all here or whats goin’ on,” Jack stated,” and I am too-”

This caused a small panic to erupt, but I had trust that Jack had a plan.

“But youse can bet dat Ise gonna find a way to get us outta here. Actually, dis seems to be someone's house. So someone's gotta come eventually,” Jack assured the group.

“ Youse guessed right,” said a mysterious voice that came from the part of the room where the exit appeared to be.

We all whipped around to find a group of three. A boy how was tall, skinny,piercing green eyes, and had silver colored hair. Which I didn’t know was possible. THen there was a boy and a girl who looked basically identical. Both having light brown hair that appeared to have some gold strands in it, especially near the end. They both had freckles, but they were more noticeable on the boys. They also both had hazel eyes, which also appeared to have gold in them.

Brooklyn’s POV:

To be honest that was probably the best dramatic entrance I have ever made, and I have made a lot of dramatic entrances. Immediately everyone in the room turned around to face us. Although all their eyes very clearly landed on me. I should have figured, I mean I was wear some rather short pajama shorts and a tank top. Which in their time could be considered naked. Fortunately for the boys Austin started talking taking all the attention of me, because let me tell you, if those boy looked at me any longer, someone was going to get a broken nose.

Austin’s POV:

I noticed that Ali was getting angry, then realized that it was most likely because she was wearing pj’s. This could get real bad real quick, so I decided to step in.

“ So as you could have guessed we are the owners of this house, well they are, I’m just visiting,” I say clearly. I thanked god that that got their attention off of Ali. It was at this point that I noticed Davey and Les. Davey had just lightly hit Les. Like in the way mothers do when their kids are misbehaving. God he was so the mom friend. He also mumbled something around the lines of stop staring. To this Les retorted,” But shes got no clothes on.”

If looks could kill, Les would be two times over. I was terrified and she wasn’t even mad at me. So once again I stepped in.

“ Well in our time this is considered decent,” I blurted without thinking. I think only Davey caught on to my slip up with ‘our time’ and was about to say something until Albert stepped up and said,” Well then I’d like to see ‘er in whateva’s considered not decent.”

“ Well I’d like to see youse with a broken nose, but we all can’t get what wes wants. Now can wes,” Ali replied while cracking her knuckles and neck. She started slowly walking towards him. But it was obvious that he wasn’t backing down.

“ Whats a little goil like youse gonna be able to do to someone like me,” he taunted.

She continued walking towards him, her anger almost growing. It was at this point that me and Rocky started to sign for him to stop. Of course he didn’t. Now the two were in each others faces, please don’t kill the kid Ali. I know he was being very disrespectful, but you dont’ have to kill him.

“ God it’s a shame I have to watch another man die tonight,” I say remorsefully was I place my head in my hands. But I took it out and saw that some of the other newsies were now getting scared for Alberts safety. I watched Ali and Albert closely, and then I realized why Ali didn’t immediately swing. She was positioning herself, for what.I don't’ know, but it was bound to be really bad for Albert. I know she has taken like a decade of MMA and fighting classes, so she is capable of causing a lot of pain.

Then with in a blink of an eye she spun him around, pinned one arm to his back, and forcefully threw him on the wall. She got right up in his face and told him that this was just a warning and next time he will end up with a broken nose. She then proceded to walk away calmly, as if nothing ever happened. When she returned to her original spot eh found everyone once again staring at her, except Rocky who was just face palming. Once she took notice she this she angerly spat,” What?” but she also said as if nothing had just happened.

“ Why,” Rocco asked clearly distraught,” why are you like this.”

Ali just shrugged in response.

“ You had one job. Take care of them in case they get hostile, not be hostile towards them,” he added.

“ Hey. I my defense, he was disrespectin’ me. I just defended myself,” Ali said in a defensive tone.

“ Okay would anyone like to explain what is going on here and why you said in our time before this how mess happened,” Davey exclaimed while motioning to Albert, who just stood there in a state of shock.

Rocco’s POV:

Well shit. Now we have to explain, to the best of our ability, because Davey just dropped the question. Now or never I guess. Although I would prefer never.

“ Um… okay. So, um, you may or may have been transported into the future, 2017 to be exact, and before you ask. No we don’t know how this happened. Also we know who all of you are because someone made a musical about the newsboy strike of 1899,” I stammer out as fast as I possible could. Thankfully no looked like they got a word of that.

“ Do you mind repeatin’ dat?’ Jack asked.

“ Ok… so… um…,” I stutter,not wanting to say any of that slowly,” so… you-”

Suddenly I was pushed to the floor and Ali stepped up to take my spot and exclaimed,”Okay dis stutterin’ idiot ain’t gettin’ us anywhere. So youse may or may not have been teleproted into da year 2017. Also don’t ask ‘cause wes don’t gotta clue as to who's dis happened”

Everyone jaw was on the floor. “ Wha … but how?” Jack stammered.

“What did I just say,” Ali retorted.

“ Okay your bluntness isn’t helping,” Austin scolded while helping me up.

“ So yeah welcome to the future, I guess,” I added,” I guess since you’ll be staying here with us introductions are necessary. So this right here is my best friend Austin, but we call him Texas,” I say while motioning to Austin. “ And this is my twin sister, the girl of a thousand nicknames-”

“I don’t ‘ave dat many nicknames,” Ali interrupted.

“ As I was saying, my twin sister Brooklyn, or Ally Cat. Ali for short.”

“ Youse named Brooklyn?” Spot asked.

“ Yeah, but please call me Ali. My actual name brings up some… bad memories.”

“ Okay but if youse twins, den why don’t youse both have an accent,” Ike, I think, asked.

“ Our parents split when we were young, I went with our dad to San Fransisco. Which is where we are from now, and Ali stayed in Brooklyn with our mom.”

“ Wait, so your name is Brooklyn and youse from Brooklyn,” Spot asked.

Ali nodded, and Spot gave her a smile.

“ Of course da strong goil with da short tempa is from Brooklyn,” Race snarked, earnign an elbow from Spot.

“ Wait but if you stayed with your mom in Brooklyn, why are you here now?” Les asked. Davey shot him a look to shut up becasue he was being rude.

“ It’s fine. There was some recent events that occured that lead to Ali having to come here and live with me.”

“ Yeah, and comin’ here was da woist day of my life,” Ali whined,” Especially since I had to give up my crown.”

“ Crown?,” Spot questioned.

“ Oh. It seems that I left out one of Ali’s nicknames,” I said before Ali could respond for herself,” she is also known as The Queen of Brooklyn.”

During this ‘grand’ introduction Ali puffed her chest out and held her head up high.

“ But what’s a queen withouta king,” Spot asked with a smirk on his face.

“ A higher title,” Ali responded proudly, shocking Spot.

“ Back to the introductions,” I’m-”

“ Jack Kelly, and the rest of you are Crutchie, Spot, Davey, Les, Romeo, Specs, Mike, Ike, Race, Albert, and Finch,” Austin stated while pointing at each of the newsies when he said there name.

“ How do you know that?” Davey asked very concerned.

“ We now that because a person made a musical about the newsboy strike of 1899, and the people who portrayed you look a lot like you. If that makes sense,” Austin said.

“ It makes sense, but what’s a musical?” Race asked.

“ It’s like a play, but with a lot of singing,”Austin clarified.

“ Alright, enough with da chit chat. I’m starvin’ can wes go get some breakfast?” Ali begged.

“Well it is the time that we normally eat,” I said. It was already 9 in the morning.

“ And the sun rose this mornin’, are we done statin’ facts.” Ali responded sarcastically.

I rolled my eyes and made my way to the kitchen, and motioned for the boy’s to follow.

Ch. 4 End

#newsies #newsies musical #time travel #spot conlon #jack kelly #romeo #specs #crutchie #albert #davey #les #finch #race #fanfiction

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its-just-like-the-movies · 7 years

Text

September 2017 Viewing List

Damn! Ain’t we back on a roll again?

Ingrid Goes West (17, B): You wanna make Mr. Ripley even more noxious? Swap in a palpably ill stalker. Plaza the exception of a smart cast. - Sept. 1

Death Note (17, F): Awful as an individual property, truly heinous & offensive as an adaptation. How could this protagonist be made so bland? - Sept. 2 (review)

You can palpably feel how much the Death Note people wanted Evan Peters and Emma Roberts for this. Also this is gross as shit.

I’m so fucking mad

John Dies At The End (12, B+): Who needs a budget to make something this fun and trippy? Keeps finding new ways to explore itself. - Sept. 3

Heavenly Creatures (94, A): Mad, yes, but everyone emerges as humans with their own, sometimes terrible wants. Love is in the air, and it hurts. - Sept. 3

That last scene, but especially that last shot of Melanie Lynskey, is gonna haunt me till I die isn’t it?

Citizen Kane (41, A): Hyperbolic sets the perfect living spaces of a man too big and finally too small to properly fill those rooms. - Sept. - 4

Beatriz at Dinner (17, B+): What else would the death of the world inspire but it’s own righteous anger? Why is that always scarier? - Sept. 4

Raising Bertie (17, A-): No tweet, but please rent it on iTunes. - Sept. 6

Modern Times (36, A+): Also no tweet, and streaming on Criterion so. Find it and savor it if you can. - Sept. 6

The Passion of Joan of Arc (28, A+): No tweet. Criterion. Pure fucking brilliance right here folks. - Sept. 6

Little Evil (17, D): Nothing again! But honestly, there’s just so little to say about it. - Sept. 7

Gremlins (84, B+): Amazing that you can be this morbid and this fun without bungling tone. Perfect antidote to all that holiday cheer. - Sept. 7

Is it really kid appropriate> Not sure how much it woulds resonated with my tiny ass save Frances Lee McCain(!!) slaying all those critters.

It (17, B+): So much dread and humor and kindess, in so many stripes. Marvelously made and indelibly cast. Has its kids and eats them too. - Sept. 9

Lady Macbeth (17, B): Impressively constructed as a taut, almost nasty experience, though so much so tough choices wind up easy to suss out. - Sept. 10

It (17, B+): This is such a great movie you guys. So amazingly made. Probably my favorite ensemble of the year. Who else wants to go? - Sept. 10

It’s so incredible that Pennywise and Georgie’s scene at the beginning somehow isn’t (or is it?) the film’s best scene yet fits the tone so perfectly.

I kept thinking of Juliette Lewis’s and Ileana Douglas’s big scenes with Robert DeNiro in Cape Fear. Those actors were amazing together. Fuck

The Conversation (74, A): Amazing that a story of paranoia stars a character so resistant to being seen, who winds up being even less. - Sept. 11

So many contradictions. That calm, maybe too calm score. A crime where every party plays the wrong roles. Spies who keep getting spied on.

Trouble the Water (08, A): Finds two of the best people to lead us through a terrifying, preventable, and poorly handled disaster. - Sept. 11

Get Out (17, A-): No tweet but friends. Romans. Countrymen. See it.Set it again. Or see it three times, like me did. - Sept. 11

Heathers (89, B): Amazing this satire has survived near 30 years of one of the most livewire topics alive. Or dead. You hear how it died? - Sept. 12

(Talking to someone who hates it) I definitely think it could use more punch in editing, acting. Not an all-timer. But I love how ridiculous it makes the school’s reactions.

Even if the suicides were real everyone uses them for personal gain and learns nothing. The onlookers get satirized more than the corpses.

Starlet: A- (17, A-): Plays like watching lives being lived. Funny, deft, and so very substantial while feeling light as a feather. - Sept. 13

Watching Besedka Johnson realize she got bingo was the happiest I’ve felt in what feels like a long, long time. Way to go girl.

*me, every time I watch a film where they look at the sky through gnarly, cool-looking tree branches* the cinnamontography

mother! (17, ??): Mise-en-scene, sound impress. I get the point it’s making but this felt like the ugliest way to do it. Not going again. - Sept. 14

I really liked parts of this. Pfeiffer’s rad. But I didn’t feel good watching this, and practically the whole theater rebelled. Poor Her.

It felt awful watching all that happen to her. And for what? Is this what it means to be with A Great Man? Fuck men! That was fucking gross.

The Big Sick (17, B): The warmest blanket of a movie 2017 could offer in counter to last night’s . . . . spectacle. Ace cast, script. ❤️❤️❤️ - Sept. 15

True Romance (93, B): Super fun! Eclectically and charismatically cast, with a corker of a script. Badlands link weird but hey, it kinda works. - Sept. 15

The Girl Without Hands (17, B): Simplicity of tone and tale is a marvel next to so many modern Grimm adaptations. Art style grew on me. - Sept. 16

It Follows (15, A-): Looking at it one way, getting mono was terrible. Looking at it another way, thank fuck that’s all it was. - Sept. 16

It (17, B+): No tweet, but guys. Go. - Sept. 17

Maudie (17, B+): Colorfully in league with A Quiet Passion for distilling the life of a fascinating artist, with an equally inspired lead. - Sept. 17

Baby Driver (17, C-): The more Baby became the film’s moral center, and the worse it treated the other characters, the less I liked it. Bleh. - Sept. 17

Raging Bull (80, A): This is how you implode over the course of 20 years, and how everyone puts up with the fallout till they can’t. - Sept. 19

The Color Purple (85, B+): Not quite the novel, but stacks up as an adaptation that carries visual and emotional power. Goldberg’s a miracle. - Sept. 19

Agnes of God (85, D+): Actors try, Nykvist goes above & beyond. But script stinks, pacing is off. Flails with ideas it barely grasps. - Sept. 20

Twice in a Lifetime (85, B): Applause for evoking so many points of view with such empathy. More than anyone else, the cast makes it special. - Sept. 20

Ex Libris - The New York Public Library (17, B+): I wish we spent more times in certain areas but there’s no denying how fascinating it is to be in this library. - Sept. 21

Prizzi’s Honor (85, C): I love Hickey’s odd vibe, but be it script, direction, or other performances, everyone’s their own kind of uneven. - Sept. 21

mother! (17, B-): Remember how I said I wouldn’t see it again? Most interesting to me for the wronged wife stuff. And fun to talk about. - Sept. 23 (review)

Would you believe everyone I saw mother! with had visceral, negative reactions to it?

Arrival (16, B): I can’t be Totally There with it, but there’s no denying its ambition, not just with temporal narrative but with sound. - Sept. 25

I think Adams is fine with it, but I kept imagining how well Louise would fit Sigourney Weaver, and especially how interesting Kristen Wiig might be.

Obit. (17, C): Politics and process of memorializing, favorite features of reporters intrigue. Not sure there’s a feature film here. - Sept. 26

The Girl With All The Gifts (17, B): Smarter about unsettling mood, world building, dystopian elements than so many adaptations. A gem. - Sept. 26

The Mist (07, B): Not great with techs, but marvelously realized on a budget, and tight as a drum with story and character. Cast on fire. - Sept. 26

Plenty (85, B): Tracing of messy, self-destructive lives impressive in a film that never shakes the feeling of being an adaptation. Streep! - Sept. 27

Columbus (17, C+): Rapport of mature leads eventually becomes more interesting than lusty affair between the cinematography and those sets. - Sept. 28

Fantastic Planet (73, B+): Style feels a bit cramped, but imagine adapting anything this odd with all its sharp, unusual edges intact. Hot damn. - Sept. 28

Kiss of the Spider Woman (85, B+): I want to talk about its politics, it poignancy. Does so much, I want to make sure I’m not missing a thing. - Sept. 30

Lost in America (85, B+): Sometimes, to reinvent yourself properly, you have to fail at it miserably. Brooks, Hagerty a wonderful duet. - Sept. 30

Don’t forget to check out my horror faves montage and the Supporting Actress Smackdown for 1985! Thanks for checking in folks! Happy October Halloween!!

#my posts #my reviews #month logs #2017

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