blood red.
cw. mentions of blood/wounds, swearing.
fangs bared and flaring tempers. animosity in every look, an intensity that bubbles from just being in the same room. hate burns red, but then again, so does love. after all, isn't hate still an emotion of passion?
king is annoyed. he's pissed off, irritated – maybe even angry.
he drums his fingers against the fabric of the armchair. there’s a rip in his shirt, his hair is a mess, and – worst of all – his helmet is broken. he pushes his hair out of his face, irked that he can’t tie it up.
the bane of his existence walks in with a first aid kit. he sighs, loudly and obnoxiously, and you glare at him as you sit down.
“don’t make this any more difficult than it has to be.”
“who’s the one that made it difficult in the first place?”
without missing a beat, you simply state, "that would be you."
you carry on, unwrapping bandages, as king merely gapes at you. ever since kaidou placed you under his supervision, you have been nothing but disrespectful, disobedient and disruptive to what should have been an otherwise simple job.
"i'm not the one who tried to climb out a 10-story window," he hisses. "i should've let you fall straight into those thorns."
"no one asked you to help," you reply coolly.
the absolute gall of you.
"believe me, i don't care if you die," he squirms in his seat, biting back the sting of his cuts. "but kaidou wants you alive."
"as if i care what kaidou wants," you mutter as you cut away at his shirt. when he pulls away, you hold down his arm. "stop moving."
the idea of some brat ordering him around makes his blood boil, and if it weren't for the fact that he'd likely start bleeding again, king would love nothing more than to put you in your place.
"i'm not the problem," you continue, ignoring his death glare. "you're the one that's been hissy this whole time. you must be nothing special if your only responsibility is babysitting."
at the attack on his pride, his last thread of patience snaps. "you annoying brat! can't you just fucking cooperate?"
"fuck you!" you finally crack, a fierce anger taking over. "you want people to cooperate then maybe don't lock them up!"
"i wouldn't have to lock you up if you weren't such a pain in the ass!"
"i wouldn't be a pain in the ass if you weren't being an ass to begin with!" you grab his arm. "now fucking hold still!"
you slap disinfectant on king's bloody gash, and he howls at the sting. "that hurts, dammit!"
he glowers at you, seething at the pain. you tell yourself that he deserves it, but – to your annoyance – you can't bring yourself to relish in his suffering. unfortunately, you're not nearly as heartless as king is.
there's a twinge of guilt as you take in his dirty clothes and blood-stained skin.
he wouldn't be in this mess if he didn't rush to catch you.
to king's surprise, you don't make any sort of retort or taunt at his outburst. instead, you press your lips into a thin line and start wrapping his cut in silence. you apply the bandage firmly, but gently, and it doesn't go unnoticed by king.
too angry and proud to say anything else, king merely looks away as you finish dressing his injuries.
"don't move," you deadpan when you're done. "raising your arms will only open the wound."
"fine," he grits. he shakes the hair out of his face, growling in irritation when it don't move the way he wants it to.
you watch as he sighs in resignation, and that stupid voice inside you tells you to do the right thing. you curse your guilty conscience.
"here, let me help."
you stand behind king, carefully gathering his loose curls together. the air is thick with awkwardness as your gentle hands betray the hostility that you're both used to. you start tying his ponytail and take a deep breath.
"thank you," you say in a voice barely above a whisper. "for saving me."
king stills, at a crossroads for how he wants to handle this. it takes this small admission of your gratitude to make him stop and realize the gravity of the situation.
he did help you.
king – one of the all-stars of the beast pirates, right-hand-man to kaidou – showed you mercy when he had no reason to.
and you – captive of the beast pirates, prisoner against your wishes – showed him a grace that he doesn't really deserve by tending to his injuries when you had no reason to.
still staring at the wall, he mutters,
"you're welcome."
like it or not, the two of you are stuck here together – and maybe with some time and a little bit of kindness, you could learn to like it.
part of my (ongoing) character + colour series!
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Okay, returning to (animated) Beauty and the Beast, I want to talk about the servants getting turned into furniture. Again, I've seen takes like "omg that means the fairy was evil and the prince was a victim :(". Not to be unkind, but that is a basic, literalist take that fails to interpret the story as . . . a story.
A major message of the story is that unkind people--especially if they are in a position of authority--don't just cause problems for themselves: the people around them suffer. That's why Adam is a prince, not a hermit or a merchant. He is responsible for his subjects and his decisions affect them.
So, that's why the narrative makes the servants suffer. "It's unfair!" Yeah, it's unfair in real life too, but it happens all the time. The story doesn't care about the enchantress' morality because the point is she wouldn't have Happened to the kingdom if the Prince had even the tiniest bit of empathy.
Let's imagine a world where the old beggar WAS just an old beggar, not a magician. Would that be a happy ending? Where Lumiere and Cogsworth have to scrape her frozen corpse off the doorstep? The Prince was going to make his servants miserable whether they were furniture or not.
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basic fucking take and i mean real basic like literally everyone does the whole beauty and the beast reimagining thing but nevertheless!
i want a fuckin lesbianistic beauty and the beast adaptation where at some point the beast kinda accepts that this isnt going to work. maybe the curse never specified it had to be a mans love that would save her but isnt it implied? isnt it always implied, if not stated outright? but she doesnt care anymore. she was so angry at first. she felt cheated, and perhaps rightly so, when the merchants only son turned out to be a daughter. at the same time however without the pressure to win his love and break the curse she was able to be more open with her than she maybe would have otherwise, and quite without meaning to, she found a capacity for love within herself the depths of which she'd never known. it was a thing that had always been denied to her. men called her frigid and her woman friends found her incomprehensible but in becoming a beast she's become somehow unalike either, ungendered by her monstrosity. in a sense, made free. she doesnt care anymore. even if she cant love her, if the beauty can only endure her presence, she can endure the rest. even if she can never move freely in ordinary society again, could she ever really? this is as fitting a fate as any, and despite it all, a happier one than she envisioned for herself.
and then idk maybe she breaks the curse regardless but gets the ability to switch forms at will i always thought that would be a cooler ending.
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When you remake something and make changes, you’re basically saying that you either want to say something different than what the original said because what it had to say was stupid—
—or what the original said wasn’t already said perfectly, and you could say it better.
I’ll give you an example.
Donald Glover, who voiced Simba in the remake of the Lion King, openly said that the message of the new Lion King was different than the old one. And that’s easy to see. The old message was something like “Remember who you are: Don’t run from your responsibility.” The new message is “Don’t be ashamed of who you are.” They communicated that change with subtle smaller changes, because although most of that movie was a less appealing shot-for-shot remake, Simba said little things like “I’m not like you,” instead of saying, “I’m not who I used to be,” to Mufasa’s ghost. Or he replied to Scar’s bullying, “I’m nothing,” rather than the emphasis being placed on him insisting that he’s “not a murderer.”
That’s saying, “yeah the old message was great but we’re going to take the award-winning songs and characters and story and make it say something else.”
Which is like trying to use a recipe for brownies to describe your chicken salad. You might as well just make an original movie, so the characters and pacing and music all fit that message more appealingly.
Here’s a different example.
The new Live Action Little Mermaid has lots of thematic references to understanding and finding one’s own voice, which, on the surface, sound like they’re exactly what the original animated classic was saying.
But they make little changes, like having Ariel make the decision to go to the surface for the first time just before she meets Eric, or big changes, like having her be the one to kill Ursula. The problem is, both of those story elements in the first film were used to drive the main message home: “True love is understanding and sacrifice.” So when you change those elements, but claim you’re still saying the same thing, all you mean is “What you said was good, but watch me say it better.”
That would be fine, if it actually worked. But it doesn’t. The Lion King (2019) is worse than the original because it’s characters are bland and lean more toward annoying or weak than they did in the original, thanks to small changes. Now Simba doesn’t look like the irresponsible runaway who needs to remember that he’s the son of a king and has responsibility. Now he just looks like a sad boi with trauma. Now Ariel doesn’t look like a real, relatable teenager who recklessly goes for the things she’s passionate about. Now she just looks like every other near-perfect heroine who’s circumstances determine her struggles instead of her own character flaws determining her struggles.
I’m tired, but I’m appreciating the originals.
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Ok ok ok but hear me out.
Yeti/Beast Kakashi is a sweetheart but he was 11 when he was changed and no one knows how he has aged. What does he look like? is he handsome? ugly? mid?
and then Gai declares his love for Kakashi and breaks the spell, leading everyone to being returned to their human forms (just a bit older) and not only does Kakashi look good
he's hot.
really REALLY hot.
Everyone is staring. Gai, some of Kakashi's old friends who have also just returned to human form, some of the villagers.
And then there's Kisame/Madara who has always been the hot guy of the village. The one everyone swoons over, and he has to see everyone starting to swoon over this dude who was JUST a beast and he was already so mad
now he's livid
he wanted to kill Kakahsi before, now he wants to destroy him, but instead he finds himself being blocked by everyone. Including people who had just been standing side by side with him ready to kill the beast.
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