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#my favorite band of thieves!!!
millyswinter · 1 year
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will be seated for them and only them!
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shadow and bone season 2 stills
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phantom-kiwi · 5 days
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opposite of a gatekeeper where i *need* NBT to blow up so that their merch is no longer impossible to find and/or really expensive because what do you mean "the tshirt that cost 45 bucks at their concert merch booth was the cheaper option" is a true statement. why are tshirts on their store 40 bucks shipping *not* included. hello. can anyone hear me. i literally just want a tshirt that says hi i love nbt thumbs up emoji. hello.
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ghostsofbeverlydr · 9 months
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listening to dcc now. please be good
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apomaro-mellow · 7 months
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Hospitals still weren't Eddie most favorite place to be, even though they had technically saved his life once. He didn't give doctors the credit though. No, he reserved that praise for his husband who had literally carried him through hell, holding his guts together.
But alas, he was still only human. And thus prone to human ailments. Which was why he was currently in a hospital bed, preparing for a tonsillectomy.
"Steve, my love, my muse", Eddie took his hand and kissed it. "Should I not return from this-"
"Oh shut up. It's a routine operation." Steve could tell he was being dramatic to cover up the fact that he was actually scared. "You'll be fine. In fact, I'm going down to the cafeteria right now. You're not getting just any ice cream. I'm gonna bring you back a whole sundae."
Steve looked to the rest of the band, who had come for moral support. "Watch him please. And don't let him fall to hysterics." He left out, really hoping he wouldn't come back to an Eddie in tears.
"Sooo", Grant started. "If you don't make it, who gets your house?"
Eddie's brow furrowed. "Uh, my husband, duh?"
"Okay, who gets your husband?", Gareth asked.
Eddie saw the cavalry arrive in the form of Steve's true soulmate. "Robiiiiin", he whined. "You have to protect Steve from these vultures", he hissed the last word.
"We're just trying to hash out who has dibs on Eddie's hot husband", Jeff said.
Robin pointed to herself. "I made it clear to Eddie when he proposed that should the marriage end, either naturally or by divorce, custody of Steve would revert back to me."
"Not exactly the answer I was looking for Bucks, but as long as you keep Steve out of another man's clutches, I won't haunt you from the grave."
"Actually, I plan on setting him up with the first wealthy guy he meets", Robin said. "Thanks to your fame, I've become accustomed to a certain lifestyle. And also, Steve doesn't know how to be single."
The other CC boys nodded sagely.
"All the more reason one of us should get him. We can take care of him", Grant said.
"I can't believe this. This is a goddamn coup!", Eddie shouted.
Steve returned, none the wiser to their conversation. "You won't believe this. The cafeteria has chocolate syrup AND nuts? Isn't that wild? You're gonna have the best sundae of your life, babe."
He took his seat right next to Eddie's bedside and kissed his forehead.
"Angel, we're surrounded by snakes and thieves", Eddie said deliriously.
"What are you talking about?", Steve asked.
Having only Eddie in his line of sight, he couldn't see the others behind him. So he didn't see Jeff making kissy faces, Gareth making a circle with his hand and sticking a finger through it repeatedly, or Grant making a V with his fingers and flapping his tongue between them.
"Those traitorous lechers covet what is mine. And not even Robin seeks to protect your virtue!", Eddie said, desperately reaching out for Steve.
Steve kept his voice even and calm, trying to soothe his husband from whatever delusion he was having when the doctor came in. This guy looked like he played a doctor on tv. Chiseled jaw with perfectly manicured facial hair.
"Good evening", he greeted.
"Hi", Steve said, voice a little breathy.
"Oh he's perfect", Robin said, reading her friend perfectly.
"I'm Dr. Morip, I'll be performing your operation today."
"Morip?", Eddie tilted his head.
"Yes, as in 'more ripped than you'." Then he flexed and busted out of his scrubs and swept Steve off his feet, ignoring the cries of the invalid on the bed.
Eddie was tossing and turning even as Steve shook his shoulders to wake him up.
"You were having a nightmare", Steve spoke softly in the dim lamp light of the hospital room. "Was it 86 again?"
"Steve!", Eddie clung to him as best as he could. "You didn't leave me for Dr. Morip!"
"Dr. Morip? Eddie, her name is Dr. Hudson. And she's married and in her sixties."
Everything caught up with Eddie as his brain became more lucid. He'd already had the operation. That had all been a dream. The tension released instantly as he realized he wasn't about to die on the table and Steve would be scooped up by opportunistic friends.
"You're mine, you know that?"
"Really? Is that why I'm hand-feeding you ice cream?", Steve teased, holding up a spoonful to Eddie's lips.
"I love you", Eddie said, voice muffled from the food and a little watery too.
"I know, you dope. Love you too."
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bayothemayo · 1 month
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If requests are available, can I please request head canons for an Akira kurusu with a s/o that's is a persona user but under the terms, of the s.e.e.s. Later on his s/o invites him over to their room then goes out for a bit then finds the evoker??
P.s I genuinely love you're writing .
Akira Kurusu x S.E.E.S! Reader Headcannons
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Warning: Swearing
Note: The reader doesn't know that Akira is a Phantom Thief but has suspicions.
He doesn't know that you were a persona user, due to him thinking that the only way to summon a persona is ripping off the mask and that the Metaverse is the only place where shadows can exist. So he was essentially clueless even if you two dated for a while.
When you invited him to your house to hang out he was excited, he was excited to see what your room was like and to see your personality shine through it.
And indeed it had your personality and your likes slapped all over it. Posters of your favorite band/game/movie and some of the items you own in your favorite color.
You have to excuse yourself to get something you left downstairs, so Akira was left alone in your room.
Akira just stood there awkwardly, he didn't want to snoop around but something caught his eye.
There was a sliver case peeking out under your bed, the blanket almost covering it.
It caught his interest. He kneels down and takes the case out under your bed. He wanted to respect your privacy but curiosity got the better of him.
He carefully open the case, and he immediately saw something that shook him to the core.
A fucking gun.
A unique-looking gun at that. Another thing that caught his eye was the red armband that was sitting there, waiting to be worn again. He didn't want to touch it in case you noticed that it moved once you opened the case. But he can see the letters S.E being shown while the rest of the letters are hidden.
There was something else that caught his eye, but it was a lot more innocent compare to the gun.
It was a group picture with people, a dog, and a robot? that he doesn't recognize other than you of course. The people in the picture were wearing a school uniform. You looked younger in the picture so Akira can guess that this picture was taken years ago.
"Oh shit I can explain!" You quickly shouted when you saw Akira looking at your Evoker case. You thought that you had hidden the case better.
"...Why do you have a gun?"
"It's not a gun it's an Evoker!" You try to explain but it didn't really help with another. You quickly responded, "Look, let me explain, and hope this won't change your opinion of me." You then explain on how you had gotten this Evoker, S.E.E.S the Dark Hour, the shadows, and a little bit of your teammates. You didn't tell him about the more... sensitive parts when you were part of the S.E.E.S. It took a while for Akira to process the information because he was shocked that there were other Persona users and something similar to the Metaverse. Akira did feel bad that you had to explain this to him which is probably one of the most private parts of your life. So Akira spoke up.
"(Y/N)," Akira said softly, "thank you for telling me this. To make things fair, I want to tell you a secret." Akira then mentally prepared himself for your reaction, "I am the leader of the Phantom Thieves."
Silence fills the room. You sigh as you run your fingers through your hair, "I had my suspicions...and I had a feeling that you were more special than others." You put your hand on his cheek, "You are being careful with being a Phantom Theif right?"
"Yes, I am..." Akira put his hand over yours.
You stay silent and then you spoke, "I want to join you guys." Akira stiffens but then slowly nods. Despite him not wanting you to join, you already have experience with shadows. More than him actually. So he reluctantly let you join.
You Had Join The Phantom Thieves!
Akira let you tell the others what you had told him.
When you all got to the Metaverse and started to fight the shadows, he (and the others) got a heart attack when you put the Evoker to your head. He felt a little better when your Persona came out instead of your brain bits.
It is going to take a while for him to get used to it, maybe never.
Despite you having more experience, he is still a little protective over you.
...and maybe gets a little flustered when you are being a badass.
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rawliverandgoronspice · 11 months
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THE GERUDO POST
(aka an attempt at a critique of how gerudos were handled in BotW and before)
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Oh no. TOTK being right around the corner, it might finally be time for the Gerudo Post.
(aka half of the reason why I made a Zelda sideblog in the first place)
So I want to preface all of this by saying that, as you could probably tell already, I’ve always adored the gerudos. They have fascinated my small child brain when I was 7; then the obsession made its comeback when I was 14, and now, here we are, almost 28, and I’m still thinking about the gerudos. I think they might be among my favorite fictional cultures for their potential and their understated storyline. I guess growing up in a very Arabic neighborhood, coupled with being bi-culturally latinx (?? does Brazil count?? you tell me), also always made them feel like home to me –especially when I was very young and there was not a lot of cool female representation flying around that managed to involve fiercely independent PoC women, flaws and teeth included.
This whole weird-essay-thing tries to do two things. First: analyze the place gerudos have occupied in the series, their initial problematisms and their subtextual narrative arc during the Myth Era coupled with their relationship to Ganondorf. Second: tiptoe to Breath of the Wild and poke it with a stick to see what happens –and in doing that, explain why I believe a lot of their characterization was defanged in service of smoothing their past with the hylians instead of deepening the culture on its own terms, and why I’m a little apprehensive about what that might mean for TotK even though I adore seeing the best girls at it again.
Those are the uhh terms of service??
And now, we must go back to 1998.
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OCARINA OF TIME ERA
There’s so many things about the gerudos that are noteworthy and rich, and they’ve made for a complex piece of Zelda lore ever since their introduction –and when I say complex, I don’t 100% mean it as praise. The very racially charged decisions made about their inclusion have been discussed at length by the fandom, especially when it comes to orientalist and Islamophobic tropes being deployed pretty thoughtlessly in Ocarina of Time (their sigil being literally a crescent moon and star originally, the parallels are pretty obviously there).
We’re talking about a band of amazon-like, big-nosed brown women from the desert ruled by a single Scary Evil Man born once every hundred years hellbent on conquering Hyrule who they apparently worship like a god, characterized primarily as thieves, decked in jewelry and orientalist-inspired harem/belly-dancing clothing, hostile to the white good guys of Hyrule (especially men), unblessed by the Goddesses and so deprived of elongated ears (this is true for OoT –we’ll come back to that), also known as a demon tribe with their deity straight-out described as evil-looking by Navi (on my way to cancel you on twitter Navi you watch out), and secretly led by evil twin witches who can turn into a single seductress and, as two mothers, raised their Scary Evil Guy king who happens to basically be the devil.
In so few words, gerudos are the future that liberals want.
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It’s worth notice, also, that Ganondorf’s characterization in this game is… kind of relentlessly uncomfortable to play through, especially before the 7 year skip. The utter assumption of depraved and evil intents from every character surrounded by dialogue that does little to hide its biases in spite of having generally very little proof to back them up –even though, in the game’s context, every character is correct to call his eyes evil and the darkness of his skin a moral judgment in on itself. The scene where Zelda demands that we believe her conclusion that the sole and only brown guy in the entire kingdom is evil and will do harm, and the game straight out refuses to progress until we concede that her dreams are prophetic and that this man must be stopped at any cost even though she has no more proof than her discomfort… hits different on replay.
I’m restating all of this not to pretend I’m making a novel and thought-provoking point, but to bounce back on a tumblr post I saw a while back (that I can’t find anymore!! I’ll link it if I find it again) –and so express what it is that gripped me with the gerudos in spite of their pretty damning depiction… and actually maybe thanks to it.
There’s a surprising amount of texture to Ocarina of Time’s worldbuilding that exists folded within the things introduced and left hanging, or in its subtext –and whether on purpose or not, I believe it is why people keep coming back to this iteration of Hyrule.
What was that about the king of Hyrule unifying a war-torn country? Why did the gerudos break the bridge connecting them to the rest of the kingdom during the 7 year timeskip while still worshiping Ganondorf, and why are the carpenters trying to rebuild it against their apparent wishes? What was that about gerudos imprisoning hylian men trying to force entry into their lands? What was that about the secret death torture chambers right next to the Royal Family’s tomb and connected to the race of people who were, apparently, born to serve them?
Nothing? Oh okay… okay… okay….
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The same can be said about this strange depiction of this hostile tribe, consistently described as wicked yet suddenly friendly once you prove you deserve their respect once you... defeat them, so you now have joined them? Ocarina of Time isn’t very consistent when it comes to characterizing them as their occupation (thieves) or as a proper culture, with a king and a strange system of rulership that seem to involve at least 5 people: Ganondorf, the Twinrova, Nabooru and the unnamed random woman who decides you’re now part of the gerudos because you slashed enough of them with your sword and hookshot, which, uhh ok.
They’re but a ragtag and negligible group when discussed next to gorons and zoras and hylians, but they also clearly have their own religion and at least a 400-hundred years old history (probably far longer than this) and hints of a written language of their own. I’m not sure the game itself knows what it wants them to be, beyond: intimidating and hot and cool, but also wicked and, because of Ganondorf and the way you barge in their forbidden fortress (heh) with the explicit intent to dismantle their king, in apparent need to be saved from themselves.
Speaking of rulership and the Spirit Temple, let’s have a quick tangent about Nabooru: I always found her characterization when meeting with Child Link pretty strange. I refuse to mention the promised reward, which feeds into everything orientalist mentioned above, but I always found her moral compass so extremely convoluted for someone coming from gerudo culture. Nabooru says that, despite being a cool thief herself, she resents Ganondorf for killing people as well as stealing from women and children. Stealing... from women. Nabooru. Why are you this pressed that he steals from women!!! This feels so out of place, that the only girl of that hostile culture that betrays her king and befriends you, is the one that upholds moral values that only a hylian could possibly hold.
Either way: the strange unquestioned contempt of the game for them as a culture, mixed with the occasional bouts of heart, friendliness and badassery, makes it hard not to consider their depiction as pretty biased in favor of the hylians finding them at once exotic, scary and exciting, and could hide a more complex reality you might only get one side of –especially when you know there were originally plans for Ganondorf’s character to be more gray and motivated than what the campy final version ended up being. To be blunt: even in the context of a game for children, and maybe because of that fact, it all reads like a reductionist and imperialist/colonialist reading of a more complex situation.
This might seem like A Lot coming from a game where the actual game writing can be this overall flimsy and simplistic due to the standards of the time (it’s rough, it's so rough). But I would have never dwelt on that thought about a little children’s game if not for the mainline entries that came soon after, because... ooo boy.
The sense you’re not getting the whole story was certainly not helped by the introduction of Wind Waker Ganondorf, and the chilling emptiness of Gerudo Desert in Twilight Princess.
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AFTER THE TIMELINE SPLIT
(I’m skipping Majora’s Mask, not because I dislike them in the game or think they’re not worth talking about, but because it’s a parallel universe and they’re never even called gerudos and their reality seems extremely different from their sisters in Hyrule so I think it’s okay to call them tangential and not dive too deep in this particular depiction)
Here’s something I want to highlight about gerudos and how they were characterized before BotW came along: their absence. Not only their physical absence, the lack of any gerudo character that calls themselves gerudo, but their absence from the text itself.
It’s not that Wind Waker and Twilight Princess retroactively scratch them off existence: we can clearly see Nabooru’s stained glass art in WW as well as recognize them being mentioned in Ganondorf’s final boss soliloquy, and WELL there’s quite a lot to say about their imprint over the world of TP. They are there –or at least they... were there. But nobody ever talks about what happened.
In Wind Waker, there was the deluge. It’s assumed lots of people died then, and those who survived scattered across the Great Sea. Are they sealed under the waves? Have they drowned? Is Jolene, Linebeck’s ex-girlfriend in Phantom Hourglass, a distant relative of one of the rare survivors? It’s unclear, beyond the fact that Ganondorf is the only living gerudo we see in this entire branch of the Timeline split.
In Twilight Princess, the desert which bares their name is empty. The hylians never mention that it used to be the name of a tribe: they’re not even named when Ganondorf is introduced for the first time, reduced once again to a mere band of thieves. We learn his plans to steal the Triforce in OoT were foiled, and that he may have turned to war. Then he lost the war, and was executed in Arbiter’s Ground: a strange structure in the desert, a mixture between a temple, a prison and a coliseum. What looks like gerudo writing coexists with hylian symbols, which often look much fresher. This dungeon is the Shadow Temple of TP: a prison hosting the worst criminals the kingdom has ever known, now haunted and cursed. Besides the locations, the only character that vaguely look gerudo in the entire game besides Ganondorf is Telma, a character with pointed ears that never seems to identify as anything but a hylian. What happened? Who’s to say. Nobody ever says anything. Not even Ganondorf bothers to mention them the way he did in WW –and though the game’s story is quite focused on another exiled tribe seeking revenge and dominion over Hyrule as retribution, the parallel is never explicitly drawn. So who’s to say what happened there. Who’s to say.
And in A Link to the Past and the games forward? The only mention of other gerudo characters are Koume and Kotake, resurrecting their son in the Oracles games through their own sacrifice and failing to bring anything back but a monstrosity incapable of making conscious decisions. Granted, most games in that extremely weird Fallen Timeline predate OoT and therefore had yet to make gerudos up at all. Still: canonically, between the gap of OoT and ALLTP, whatever it may be, gerudos disappeared here as well.
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I think there’s something subtle and a little heartbreaking about the fact that no matter what Ganondorf does, the gerudos always end up dying out. His yearning for Hyrule, its gentler wind and the Triforce blessing its lands always costs him the kingdom that he does have already.
Now, does he care? A lot of people would argue that he doesn’t, that he used them like pawns for his own ambition and saw them as servants more-so than sisters, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it was Nintendo’s official opinion, but… One very powerful thing about most of Ganondorf’s incarnations (focusing on the human ones) is that he never seems to reject his cultural heritage. They could have gone for him wearing more kingly hylian stuff given the whole underlying theme of envy and pride surrounding his character, but never once does he try to look more hylian, beyond the ear situation that seems to be tied to the Triforce of Power? Either way: he is gerudo. Several of his outfits reference his mothers, as well as general gerudo patterning and jewelry. His heritage is something he proudly displays, even hundred of years in the future when there is no one left to remember what it means but him. I think it’s a very potent piece of characterization, an arc that crosses over multiple game and says something pretty intense about this character’s fate and his inherent destructiveness over the things he touches –starting with the Triforce, all the way up to his very own body and mind. His mental breakdown by the end of Wind Waker, when the king of Hyrule himself forces him to give up on the thing he sacrificed everything for, takes a new kind of weight with the whole picture taken into account.
(not to excuse genocide or general egomania-fueled madness and violence, but one thing doesn’t mean the other isn’t also relevant)
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Regardless of whether this is a tragedy for Ganondorf as their uhh complete failure of a king, honestly, it is undeniably a tragedy for the gerudos themselves: a once-in-a-lifetime joyful event turned into a never-ending nightmare from which there seems to be no escape, their legacy now condemned to fade to black, leaving nothing behind but a demon boar forever laying ruin upon the world.
One may say I’m taking on the bleakest explication for the gerudos’ absence when there could be others. It’s true! Perhaps the gerudos are just chilling off-screen, completely fine, not interested in whatever is happening in the kingdom nearby and their disaster child having yet another temper tantrum about not being the Goddesses’ favorite boy. It’s possible! But regardless, what little elements we do possess as players doesn’t seem to support this, even if it remains possible –and regardless of actual gerudo lives, gerudo culture is definitively a goner in every single timeline.
Even if they did survive... Hyrule still won its unification war.
(I won’t mention Skyward Sword as they are not really a thing there, except for a butterfly that seems to suggest the Gerudo Province was a thing before the gerudo people –I don’t know what to do with this honestly– and the whole Groose situation, which, I’m not sure what to make of either beyond the fact that he may have gotten cursed by opposing Demise? And then went on to start the gerudo tribe, which ended up being an all-women group for some reason? Maybe? It’s not confirmed? I feel like it’s more of a fun tidbit than a central piece of the gerudo puzzle, so I’ll leave it there like I would a cool rock I brought back from a walk and that I don’t know where to put in my house)
Then, Breath of the Wild happened and changed things.
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BREATH OF THE WILD
(Additional short note, but: while I won’t mention Four Swords Adventure, since it’s a weird one that almost nobody has played and severely messes with the Timeline, we kind of see the beginnings of what is about to happen in Breath of the Wild in this game –gerudos coming back without much explanation, then distancing themselves from Ganondorf to become friends with hylians because he was too hungry for power and now they are nice and have good reputation because they are our friendsss)
I was actually so happy to learn gerudos were making a comeback in a mainline Zelda game, and this got me more excited about Breath of the Wild than basically anything else the game involved. And getting to explore the Desert once again, meeting this new batch of impossibly tall buff girls, getting more about their language and their culture, Riju and the rest of the little girls are adorable, the grandmas are so cool, the sand seals??? sign me the fuck up??? And above it all, hanging around Gerudo Town at night and feeling as warm and cozy as little me liked to imagine how freeing it would feel, to stay there and watch the desert behind the safety of their walls in OoT… This was great. I loved it.
It was a huge compensation for the criticism I’m about to make, but did leave me with… questions regarding how their culture was going to be handled moving forward.
I’ll start with something small yet deeply revelatory, then work my way from there.
So... gerudos’ ears are pointy now.
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This is pretty significant. Lore-wise, it’s been said that the elongated ears of hylians are there so they can better hear the voices of the gods. It’s considered a sign of holiness in-universe. There's a bunch of really thoughtful analysis on tumblr over that whole Ganondorf ear situation, which is a mess but also very interesting, but the short answer is: I think the absence of pointy ears was a clear design choice to originally signify them as Less Good. Even when Ganondorf gets pointier ears, they never get as long as hylians’. Worth noting: not every non-gerudo character has pointy ears: gorons, zoras and ritos (among others) do not possess this trait, and there are even some humans that have regular rounded ears in the series –though they always seem to be of lesser relevance, if not downright peasants in Twilight Princess. Pointy ears always tended to implied a strict hierarchy in the series: basically, the more pointy, the more Protagonist you become.
(also their eyes becoming green instead of the traditional yellow/golden, which looks more wicked and demonic --and cooler also tbh)
The pointy ears imply two things. From within the game, this could be interpreted in two ways: either that gerudos… converted, for a lack of a better term, and are now considered holy through their worship of the Golden Goddesses and/or Hylia, or that their mingling with hylians through tens of thousands of years had them acquiring this trait out of sheer genetic override (though they have kept their mostly-women birth rates, their big nose, darker skin –for the most part– and red hair). Probably a healthy mixture of both. Design-wise, it signifies something quite simple to the player: they are on hylians’ side now. They are good guys. We can trust them, even if they still have a little spice in them. They aligned themselves with us and against Ganon in all of its manifestations (even if he’s but an angry ghastly pig being parasitic to everything it touches in this iteration). They are on the side of Good, definitively, and will fight evil by our side.
On that note, I think it’s worth bringing out another major change from their initial iteration, which is their overt friendship with Hyrule as a whole, and with the Royal Family in particular. Despite not allowing any voe inside their walls (we’ll come back to this), their relationship with hylians is pretty neat. They have booming trade roads, travel and meet with the rest of the cultures, and are fierce enemies with the Yiga clan, who are renowned for being huge Calamity Ganon supporters. The tables certainly have turned. I want to bring out, in particular, Urbosa’s friendship with the queen and her role as the cool aunt taking care of Zelda and protecting her from evil (to be noted: I am not familiar with Age of Calamity so if I’m mischaracterizing her in any way, please let me know). The gerudo sense of sisterhood has been extended to the royals they used to fight against. I would go on and say the cultures peacefully coexist, but I think that what we’re looking at here is a case of vassal behavior, just like we used to have from zoras (in the non-Fallen Timelines) and gorons. This is a huge departure from gerudos being openly rejecting of Hylian culture in their initial iteration, and something that is worth returning to later.
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Okay. Now it’s time to mention the weird obsession BotW gerudos have with romance. I didn’t take notice of my issues with their writing until I realized how prevalent of a theme that was. Now, the reason given for gerudos to refuse entry to males (of every race) has much more to do with preventing young gerudos to make mistakes than anything else, and is actively being put into question by the younger generations –which would make sense. But the amount of NPCs that either lament their lack of match, talk about their husbands (because they marry now apparently) or are invested in romance, and a very limited understanding of romance at that (heterosexual, closed, etc), makes for much more of the population that I initially expected. There’s no mention of what’s going on with their males, if there are new males being born and either exiled or abandoned, or if Ganondorf being technically still alive have have cut them off male heirs. Either way: no more kings, only girlbosses chiefs.
To have the gerudos so interconnected with Hyrule, not only through trade but through extremely coded romance where they have to make themselves palatable to a future male partner and enforce fidelity, was… a choice. The extremely brief and skippable mention of gerudos sometimes going to Castle Town in search for boyfriends in OoT became half of their personality traits in this game. We went from a race that was fiercely independent and mocking of the unworthy men who tried to mingle with them, to… this. Now I’m not saying some of the sidequests aren’t cute, or that I didn’t like the wedding, or that the grandma near the abandoned statue of Hylia (so she was worshipped at some point) clocking us and talking about her love life wasn’t one of my favorite gerudo conversations. I’m saying that the vibes have definitively changed. For the better? I’m not sure.
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I once stumbled upon an article that said that Breath of the Wild gerudos were a huge improvement compared to their original introduction, because they were no longer presented as evil and hostile thieves groveling at the boot of a single man, but as a full culture allied with the protagonist and actively involved in the story, while still getting their Cool Girl Badass moment (again can’t find it anymore, I’ll link it if I stumble upon it again). I see where this comes from, but I honestly can’t help but consider it a reading that assumes something pretty major (though through no fault of their own, as the games tend to hammer this down as hard as they can), and that being hylians as the unquestioned anchor of Good.
Which, in spite of what the games want me to believe, I… feel uncomfortable taking at face value.
To me, regarding how gerudos are being incorporated in that goodie narrative, this is kind of a case of surface-level feminism trumping over colonialist/imperialist concerns. It becomes more important to perform the aesthetics of being cool and friendly and independent than scratching at any deeper problem that would risk making people uncomfortable. This is kind of Green Skin Ganon all over again: oh wait, isn’t it a little icky to have the evil bad guy being brown while faced by the most aryan-looking ass heroes of all time? Okay, then let’s take the brown guy and make his skin green so we don’t have to feel bad anymore that the conflict has racial undertones!! Solved!! There’s nothing questionable about changing a PoC's features to make it more monstrous and less human, right?
To me, it’s kind of the coward option: instead of accepting the messy reality those initial choices created (and their interesting nuances if taken at face value), let’s just… rewrite the PoC culture’s history to make it feel less uncomfortable for the white heroes. In many ways, it is an extension of what hylians have always done: scrubbing the weird and messy things about the past and shoving them deep down into the spooky well and far into the desert prison and away in alternate hellish dimensions, and then make up a very simple story where they get to feel good about themselves –except this time, it’s the fabric of the games, the literal reality, bending backward to make it happen. Which, in my opinion, makes it much worse than before. Now, there’s no conversation. The fabric of reality is changing their own history so that there is nothing to discuss anymore. Ganondorf was always evil incarnate. He never had any point. It was always 100% his own fault, his own hubris, his own fated wickedness. He was always demonic (and green, very important –having a flashback to people on twitter accusing artists restoring the TotK green skin to the original brown of wanting to make Ganondorf black, and like….. how do I put it gently…..)
And, above all else: gerudo are to distance themselves from his legacy so they can stay in the club of the Good and Just and Holy.
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Because here’s the messy thing: as much as I love seeing the gerudos again in Breath of the Wild and as much I love for them to have survived the Era of Myth (??? somehow ???), this… kind of changes Ganondorf’s character arc. No longer do we have the story of a king who wanted more, either for his people, for himself or both, and led his culture to its destruction in his search for absolute Power, while remaining ironically incapable of maintaining what little he already had. This starts from him kneeling to the king of Hyrule in OoT and leads to the deluge, Arbiter’s Ground, his own mothers dying for the sake of his failed resurrection. Breath of the Wild changes this: now, the gerudo were apparently fine without him? They apparently did their own thing and became suddenly and inexplicably disconnected from his actions? I know it’s kind of implied they side with hylians at the end of OoT, but it’s honestly never really explored why they would cheer for the death of their king while never seeming to resent him before except for Nabooru –there are mentions of brainwashing for those who resist him (as well as “other groups in the desert”, tho they are never mentioned again), but it’s hardly a proper plot point for the majority of the tribe, aaaand they still die by Wind Waker in the Adult Timeline, in spite of their potential alliegance…
(again, this shift towards submitting to Hyrule actually started with Four Swords Adventure, getting crisper with each iteration)
There used to be this polite blur regarding Ganondorf’s relationship to them, how much he used them and how much he acted in their name (with arguments for both sides), and I think this messy and debatable question mark was one of the most compelling aspects of his character. Gerudos rejecting their relationship at a near-cosmic, reality-bending level, removes a huge layer of complexity to both parties… all for the benefit of making hylians come out cleaner out of this whole exchange, their moral grayness barely a whisper in the distance.
I’ll kind of go on the record and say that I suspect the addition of Demise to the canon to serve a similar purpose (at least in part): if Ganondorf becomes but the manifestation of a demonic curse, and is no longer an extremely messy character brimming with agency and drive, forcing the heavens to reckon with said agency in a way he was never meant to access, born from a complex set of circumstances from which we clearly get only a limited and biased perspective, then it becomes extremely clear that he’s a Bad in a way that isn’t worth exploring further. Even if he does have some points, he is a Bad. It’s what matters most. Not to say I even hate what this angle can bring to the table or that I want him to become Good (I don’t –I’ll talk more about why I dislike most takes on him being a helpless victim to the curse), but once again, who benefits from adding another Unquestionned Baddie to the equation to rest upon? Not him, and not the gerudos, that’s for sure.
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So. Why did I, me, personally, like the gerudos in the first place?
Beyond the inherent coolness factor of their culture and the fascinating mysteries of what is merely suggested, I think… I think I loved gerudos because we were obvious outsiders. Because their rejection of Hylian culture was so sharp and extreme, their value system so different, and their writing, their religion, their relationship to power and hierarchy and worth wanted nothing to do with hylians. They didn’t need hylians, beyond them having potential resources to steal. In fact, the threat of hylians influencing their culture was such that the entry to the Fortress was forbidden to everyone (I don’t think men were ever singled out, by the way, even though they are mocked relentlessly). I think there was something inherently hopeful about this semi-matriarchy resisting the outside world, and especially its notions of what girls were meant to be –it was 1998, and every other girl character in OoT, besides Impa and Sheik that?? is another can of worms entirely, is either helpless or someone to save. For them to reject this narrow vision of femininity was, in my opinion, much more radical than what we got in BotW. Less nuanced, more problematic perhaps? But also much more powerful. Gerudo Valley is home, not to a town, but a Fortress.
Hylians were worth being resisted.
In Breath of the Wild, their refusal to let men enter their town is kind of boiled down to a fading tradition over-focused on romance, a meek little game of chase. Their entire goal seems to be finding a hylian to settle down with. Say what you will about the single man and the many girls (never explored and completely open-ended in its implications, btw), but at least it wasn’t… that. At least it opened the way for different ways for people to exist and imagine culture and civilization, outside of the heterosexual couple, the christian-infused patriarchy and its trickling down implications. What I want to say is: let my girls tell hylians they ain’t shit!! That they aren’t the end all be all of reality! This is what made gerudos so compelling in the first place! Where is that bite now? Where is that self-definition?
It’s gone, because hylians need to be Good. So we tee-hee at the creep running laps around the town, we disguise ourselves to breach their trust and infiltrate their town (though there is nuance to be had there, gender be complicated etc), we watch them pine after shitty dudes and take classes to become the perfect approachable woman and make love soups with ?? strange ingredients honestly, and we witness them get very friendly with the Royal Family they used to conspire against, dying to protect the princess against the manifestation of their ancient king reduced to a raving puddle of Bad Boar.
Hyrule, unified against him.
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TEARS OF THE KINGDOM
For posterity’s sake: this post was made before the game was released. I’ll probably update my thoughts on a separate thing later on.
I don’t think gerudos allying with the hylians and burying their own legends about Ganondorf as deeply underground as they can until it blows up in their face is a bad setup at all. It’s actually pretty juicy, and there’s a ton of fascinating stuff that could happen here –even some involving gerudos taking a firm stand against him while still reconnecting with their past and the choices they made once. This is my hope with the title of the game: Tears of the Kingdoms. Let’s examine them all, account for the damage, and decide how we move forward from there with the full knowledge of where we come from.
What I am afraid of (and I already made posts about that) is the scenario where gerudos rallying against Ganondorf, which I expect will forcefully try to take back his place as their king, is used for cheap feminist points that completely fail to examine, well. Everything mentioned above. Where reality bends itself out of the way of the Goddesses, and hylians’ responsibility in any of this mess, so that everything bad is 100% Ganon’s fault and so he must be cast aside and torn away from the Cool Gerudo Girls and this is 100% justified and deserved because we are Independent Women Who Take No Shit from No Men (unless they are the king of Hyrule or any random hylian they wish to marry apparently).
I’ll say this here because it’s been burning my mouth every time I see discourse about Ganondorf and the gerudo: gerudos declared him as their king. To make a really bad comparison that I dislike: he didn’t run around to assemble girls and make a cult around himself, he was born with the cult already formed around him (and it’s not a cult, it’s just a different mode of governance –hylians also revere the Royal Family like gods, don’t they?). This heavily changes the dynamics at play. Not to remove any agency from him to do a little invasion about it, but chances are the ancestors to BotW’s gerudos fully expected him to behave in this way, at least to a degree –in OoT you see very plainly that they value physical prowess, feats of thievery, witchcraft and general violence. It’s more complicated than him being a Bad and making the poor helpless women go along with the plan uwu –even taking the brainwashing into account, AND Koume and Kotake counting as gerudos too, even if they might not be not fully innocent in shaping the culture and the man himself. If manipulation and forced servitude is the explanation given, I’ll be genuinely mad –because, once more, all the nuance and messiness would be flattened for the sake of making Ganondorf Bad and the gerudo Good (= on hylians’ side).
It bears to be said: I think feminism stances that require, not to criticize (which is fair), but to fully dehumanize and bestialize men of color to make any sense are uhhh bad, and it's worth questionning who they end up serving in the end.
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The flip side of this would be to make Ganondorf a poor little meow meow that was secretly controlled by the evil Demise all along, and... I’ll be real. I really don’t think it solves our problem at all. It might even make it worse.
My problem with how gerudos have been handled thus far, being mostly connected to how they behave in relation to hylians Good, is that they’ve been systematically defanged not to threaten the status quo as much as they used to. I think it’s pretty clear why I’m not a fan of Ganondorf being a mere victim of cosmic circumstances; I have a post that goes more in depth about this, but to simplify: my man has legitimate grievances. To make him a mere puppet to Evil Incarnate would, to me, be just another attempt to erase the despotism of the Goddesses, the unjust hierarchy of the world, what hylians have historically done to the races they were in conflict with (looking at the Yiga for the most recent example…)
I’m not saying his fight is clean or even legitimate, that he isn't driven by his own sense of self-importance above anything else, or that he should win (he has no plan beyond domination and victory, that's not a future). But I think there’s something really important about having someone being willing to fully consume himself and everything around him for the simple fact that someone should resist the order of the world. Even if that makes him a heartless, cruel, and egomaniac demon-pig. Even if there’s no Hyrule left to rule. Even if his own people despise him, or are long gone and forgotten.
Is it a little heart-wrenching? Uhh yes to me yes most definitively. This is why Wind Waker Ganondorf hits so hard, and remains (I think) his favorite entry in the series so far. But… I still find this fate of eternal resistance more resonant and empowered, and far less grim, than if Hyrule’s lore absorbs his hatred and rage, gives it to another entity that would be Badder (= more opposed to hylians and the goddesses), and scrubs it off anything icky and uncomfortable, rendering it completely domesticated and non-threatening to hylian domination; rubbed of his skin color, of his complexity, of his own emotions, even made... kind of sexy now, in the same way his sisters have been made before him? I am very, very afraid of him being turned from furious and an unapologetic subject in his own legend to a "redeemed" (according to whom??) and palatable object in somebody else’s, that you now end up having to… save from himself.
Again, I want to trust that Tears of the Kingdom can walk that line and preserve everything sharp and contrasting and profound and thrilling about this fascinating setup. I don’t expect a philosophy course, this is a game for children –but it doesn’t mean Nintendo didn’t do an astounding job with similar setups in the past. Again, I’ll invoke the Wind Waker conflict, but Twilight Princess did a lot of great things as well (Zant’s speech, if you can get past the weird stretches and stumping and NNHYAAAs, is pretty fantastic) –and the subtle writing of Majora’s Mask is also proof enough this series can be complex without being impermeable.
So this is where my hope lies. Not really with BotW’s writing, which, I’m sorry to say, but I found to be below what the series has done in the past (I have no problem with the setup and how the story is explored, I think it was a great idea, but wasn’t ever sold on the actual writing the way I may have been with previous titles –it felt… very tropey to me overall, with a couple of highlights). But Nintendo has shown to know how to write compelling stories for children that know where to sprinkle its darkness and how to preserve its hope, and this is this side I’m relying on for this delicate storyline moving forward.
And now? Now… I suppose we wait and see.
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(thank you for reading my impossibly long essay what the actual hell, at least I got it all out of my system, see you in part 2 for when TotK comes out I suppose aaa)
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I was so ecstatic when I realized a nothing but thieves song was covered on here back in january, they're one of my favorite bands but every time I mention them to someone they don't know who I'm talking about. I love these polls too because I'm being introduced to some banger songs I haven't heard before or have been treated to hearing songs I haven't run into in a while, keep up the great work!
Aww, that's so fun!!! :D 💖💖
I've seen several people mention in their reblogs that they've just discovered Nothing But Thieves through here and stuff like that really makes all the efforts with this blog worth it! 😍
(I didn't know who they were either so big thanks to everyone for having submitted music that was new to me too while I'm at it! :D)
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starlitangels · 4 months
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That’s Mine
Another Guy/Honey ficlet for the girl who can’t seem to write a full fic for these two to save her life
I glanced up from my laptop upon hearing the apartment door open. “I’m home!” Guy called at the same time I heard the thumping of him literally kicking his shoes off at the door.
“Welcome back,” I said flatly, going back to my report.
I could hear him groan with the several popping noises that came with him cracking his back. “I’m gonna shower,” he announced as the front door shut.
“Careful. Kayla left a makeup bomb in the bathroom,” I warned.
“How does she even do that? Like we should not be finding powdered foundation in the bathtub of all places. A little falling off the palette or brush into the sink is one thing but like the bathtub?” He appeared in the doorway of my room and leaned against the frame on one shoulder. “I don’t get it. I’ve worn some makeup in my day but I’ve never been that messy with it.”
I grunted and shrugged.
Guy sighed dramatically. “Not in the mood to talk, honey?”
I shot him a withering glare. “Go get in the shower before I punt your ass into the bathroom and bar the door. I’m trying to work.”
He smirked lasciviously. “If you bar a door that locks from the inside and swings inward, you’d have to be in the bathroom with me.”
I raised a brow. “I’d figure it out. Go away.”
He winked with a click of his cheek and pushed off the doorframe, vanishing down the hall.
I went back to my paper.
Apparently I got really sucked into it because I didn’t even process that I heard the shower start and stop a few minutes later. Hell, I barely even processed Guy singing showtunes while he was in it.
I vaguely heard the bathroom door creak open on that ungodly loud hinge I still needed to oil (the landlords had promised to do it months ago and never had and I was getting sick of it), while Guy continued his one-man-show of Phantom of the Opera. But I ignored all of it. Guy’s singing was a constant in the apartment and I’d just learned to tune it out.
When the essay was done, I submitted it and finally stood up, wincing as my knees popped.
With a heavy sigh, I left my room.
Guy spun around in the kitchen almost instantly. In his favorite hot pink “Kiss the Cook” apron that had been a gag gift from his siblings that he’d actually loved. “There’s my favorite person!”
I grunted. Then froze. “Hang on a second here,” I said, folding my arms. “Hm. Black T-shirt way too long and wide in the arms, logo for a band you don’t listen to poking out from under the top of the apron. Coincidentally matching the one that went missing from my things after a load of laundry a few weeks ago…” As I spoke, I undid the neck loop of the apron and let the top fall away from his torso.
He chuckled nervously, ears and neck turning blotchy and red. “Heh-heh… uh…”
“Guy Erikson, that’s my shirt,” I snapped.
“Whaaat? I don’t know what you’re talking about. Obviously this is mine. See how it just fits me perfectly—ow, ow! Okay okay you don’t have to pinch I get it I get it—damn!” He pouted as I let go of his shoulder. “Can’t I just borrow it for the rest of tonight though? It’s so soft. It’s not my fault that you have the comfiest shirts on the planet!”
“Give it back. Now.”
He sighed dramatically and stripped it off, hurling it at me with all the grace and power of a newly-hatched bird. “Fiiine. You loveless, joyless buzzkill.”
“Thieving parasite,” I retorted, taking the shirt back to my room and chucking it into my hamper.
“Just for that, I’m not including you in my dinner plans.” He whipped the apron back up over his torso and started fixing the neck loop.
“I never asked you to. And I’m going out tonight anyway.”
His head snapped up to look at me. “What?! With who?”
I raised a brow. “Does it matter?”
Guy spluttered. “Oh. Well. I, uh—no, obviously. It’s just—you know what? Never mind.” He turned back to the stove and went back to preparing his pasta.
I snorted. “It’s my stupid reading group for my upper level class. There’s gonna be like five people there. It’s not a date. Don’t wait up for me, honey,” I said sarcastically before ducking back into my bedroom and slamming the door.
I picked the band shirt out of the hamper and held it up to my nose. Curious.
It definitely smelled like Guy.
A small grin tugged at the corners of my mouth. I folded the shirt and set it on my desk. “You know what? I’ll wash it later,” I muttered to myself.
Tag list: @pinksparkl @darlin-collins
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ghuleh-recs · 1 month
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♡ Fandom Faves Tag ♡
Tag 1-3 (or as many as you want) of your favorite creators (writers, artists, outstanding members of the community etc) and link your favorite creation if you can.
Thank you for the tags @midnight-moth and @coffeeghoulie! I'm gonna challenge myself to not wax poetic and keep these extra short and sweet. That way it's not as intimidating for others to participate (hope that makes sense). Oh and I'm not putting a "keep reading."
Witness my faves (ง •̀_•́)ง
@midnight-moth (who started this tag game ♡) drew THE Phantom art of all time and I recently went absolutely feral for:
Buried in Treasure - Dew x Phantom - E, 3.6k
When his eyes roll forward again, he notices more than just the same riff playing over and over. He notices Phantom’s grip on his hand simultaneously go still and tight. He notices the rosy flush on his cheeks, and the tent in his pants that he tries to conceal with the hand holding the phone. It takes more than a few seconds for all of the dots to connect and when the thought is fully formed, Dew grabs the phone and launches it to the end of the bed.
@ramblingoak hey why is there an angel in the satanic band fandom? I created this whole blog so I could shout about:
The Cardinal's Bride - Cardinal Copia x F!Reader - E, 91k (wip)
A Romantic Adventure in the Old West: After being forced into a marriage with Mr. Saltarian by your father you are sent west to his estate in Nevada. Along the way you end up meeting one of the cowboys you have always fantasized about…
@conjuring-ghouls finds the perfect moments and turns them into the loveliest gifs. On top of that she is endlessly kind and supportive. Look at these!!!
@coffeeghoulie is writing the Aeon x Swiss hurt/comfort fic of y'all's dreams and I got to do my first "official" art collab for it yay!!
Eternal Heatstroke - Aeon x Swiss - M, 17k (wip)
For once in their life, Aeon feels lucky. Whoever's opened this portal, whoever's summoning ghouls Up Top, specifically wants a quintessence ghoul. They may not be the biggest or strongest quintessence ghoul, far from it, but they'll do anything this summoner wants if it means they get to live. Or: being Topside is a drastic change from the life Aeon's used to.
@writingjourney truly the kindest soul and an absurdly talented writer. I screenshot Ibi's tags on my posts all the time because they cheer me up so much 🥹🥹
Friday Nights (series) - Papas x GN!Reader - E, 40k
“But to die as lovers may - to die together, so that they may live together.” ― Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, Carmilla Each of these stories features a vampire papa and a gender neutral reader.
@anamelessfool writes some of the best world building and characterizations that I have ever read in fanfiction AND she's a fantastic artist.
Violence & Gentleness - Primo x OC - E, 50k (wip)
You made me forget myself...I thought I was someone else, someone good... LATE OCTOBER 1979 Primo has his work cut out for him as the bodyguard of the beautiful and fearsome Mater Emerita Jocasta. As mystery after mystery unfolds, it becomes harder to remain a honest man in this den of thieves called the Ministry.
@foxybouquet makes wonderful art and her colloquial Italian posts are an incredible resource for the fandom.
@angellayercake has angel in her username for a reason tbh. I'm not exaggerating when I say that I learned important things about myself and my love language whilst reading the brilliant:
Banchetto - Terzo x F!Reader - E, 22k (wip)
Papa Emeritus III is struggling to adapt to his life after the Ghost project but perhaps some good homemade Italian food will do the trick.
(I'm cutting myself off here because I could do this all day. I will probably be making another list in the near future because I love and admire so many of you. 😅)
No pressure at all but I would really love to see this tag game keep going! If you're reading this please consider adding some of your personal favorites to the list! This fandom could use some positivity right about now ♡
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kat--writes · 9 months
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I Can See You is probably Taylor's best music video in my opinion. Yes, it was very satisfying to see an ex involved in some of her re-recordings (Harry next, please, and Joe Jonas on debut) but it's really about how connected you feel to it as a fan.
If you were a Swiftie back during the Speak Now era, this album obviously means a lot to you (It's some people's favorite). It was a turning point for her career and if you liked her DURING Speak Now, you probably were watching her grow since debut.
More than that, though, is the symbolic nature of Lautner and Joey King, who were such big staples during that era, coming together — as a metaphor for the fans, really — to help her "break out" and reclaim Speak Now. There's just something really fulfilling about that.
Just a sense of ... a band of thieves coming together to do what's right? It feels a little triumphant for someone who's been around. And while it IS about Taylor Swift, it's also about this special sense of community. Not that we have with her in some weird parasocial way, but that we have with .... each other.
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ficsbypix · 1 year
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queen of disaster | 1 | j. quinn x reader
TITLE: baby you're the king and i'm the (queen of disaster) (1) WORD COUNT: 5.5k SUMMARY: you're an ex-child star just trying to get through life with your own two-year old daughter, Isolde. life hasn't always been kind to you. men haven't always been kind to you and you've long accepted that you have no space in your heart for any man. no, not even joe-from-the-pub, the charming struggling actor thrust into your life by your so called best friend. WARNINGS: rpf (don't like, don't interact), implied assault, sad girl reader. future smut. this fic joe is enjolras!joe lookswise. NOTES: multi-chapter fic, this is just the first part. i was unsure whether to share this or not or if anyone would be interested in it so please let me know if you would like to see more. TAGLIST: @ceriseheaven @joejoequinnquinn @theoneandlaurie @paranoidmunson @aysheashea @eddie-joe-munson (if you want to be added/removed pls let me know as i'll be using the same taglist for everything!)
Your phone rings on the table for the fourth time in the last hour and you pick it up, looking at it and roll your eyes, putting it back down again. It’s Matt. Of course it’s Matt, it’s always Matt. He’d text you about an hour and a half ago telling you he was going to the pub round the corner with some of the guys he was currently working with. You knew, of course, that it meant that he wanted you to come and meet him.
But, you were pretty sure the majority of the people he’s working with currently are men and as if you’re going to be the one woman sitting at a pub with a load of drunken men, no thank you. Oh, you knew that nothing would happen to you, Matt would never let it, but past experiences have shown that he won’t always be there to protect you.
Your eyes fall to Isolde, your two year old daughter who is currently sitting on the sofa next to your sister, a bottle in her hand as it’s close to her bedtime, her favorite stuffed shark leaning against her and her wide eyes full of determination as she ‘feeds’ her baby. Your heart throbs with love for your gorgeous girl and you disturb her by strolling over and pressing a a big fat kiss to the top of her head. She responds with a happy squeal.
“Who is so desperately trying to get ahold of you?” Janine asks for her position on the couch, she looks away from her niece with a smile and her eyes meet yours, bringing her half-drunk coffee up to her lips and taking a sip, her eyes never looking away from you. “There someone in your life you forgot to mention?”
“Nope,” you say with a sigh, picking up a stray stuffed octopus and stuffing it back into Isolde’s toy box. “The normal bane of my existence.”
“Let me guess,” Janine’s lips curl. “Sweet boy, Matt?”
You pretend to gag at her words, sweet is not what you’d refer to your loud, brash, Northern best friend, by far. You’d met on a film set when you were about twelve-ish years old, it was your first day on your first role and you’d already read far enough into the series to know that Matt’s character would end up your love interest -- if they’d kept making movies that far, of course -- and so your socially anxious ass had decided that was the one that you were marking as yours for the foreseeable future. Luckily, he’d been quite receptive to it and the two of you had been thick as thieves ever since, over ten years down the line and long after the franchise had finished.
Your lives had gone onto very different paths after, both of you played important, but still relatively small roles in the series and still had your own loyal band of fans, your names were forever engrained with the franchise and you still got invited to conventions and the like on a regular basis, but neither of you were as famous as you’d been as teenagers. You didn’t hate that, you liked being able to pick your projects and so did he. You’d both worked steadily, him in mini series for British TV channels and you in small indie movies, a couple of bigger films, sometimes in the UK and sometimes in the States. Yet, the two of you still spoke every single day. Sometimes for hours, sometimes for ten minutes, but he was your constant and despite your sometimes surly mood towards him, you adored him.
Platonically, of course, there was no way in hell that you would ever kiss that man when you weren’t being paid to do it. And anyway, he was engaged to a very lovely woman and was currently splitting his time between being home in London and being in Italy with her and you couldn’t fault him for it. Luckily, she adored you as much as you adored her, which hadn’t always been the case in his relationships -- which was lucky for you, because you were sure for him, this one was it.
It had been the same on you too though. You’d only ever had one actual boyfriend in your life, a guy in a shit indie band who a was far too old to be dating you (he had been twenty-five at the time, you had been seventeen) and you’d stupidly wasted years of your life on him, he’d run up years of debt with his shitty, flop of a band that you’d bought him out of, only for him to turn round and cheat on you with the ex-girlfriend he’d dumped you for in the first place. Matt had never said I’d told you so (Janine had) and had just offered comfort and ‘I never liked him anyway’s’. There had been guys here and there but nothing serious.
And then two and a half-ish years ago,  you’d been hanging around with your friend, E. The two of you had worked together on a film while you were still in the franchise that had been quite successful and you’d remained friends ever since.
Well, you’d thought you’d been friends anyway.
Then one night he’d been over at your place, watching bad horror movies and drinking Tequila and you’d ended up sleeping together. An easy mistake to make, right? It happens all the time. Except you’d found out the next day that the only one of you who had been drunk on Tequila was you and that he’d barely touched a drop. He’d told you you’d wanted it and he’d just given in, but you’d never been attracted to him so this was all a mystery to you. You decided then that he wasn’t a friend and you were cutting ties with him, because it was just a drunken mistake.
Janine had called it another word, but you didn’t like that word and you didn’t want to ‘own’ that word, especially not because of her.
Six weeks after that night, you’d found out that you were pregnant. You’d contacted him, of course, to let him know but he didn’t seem interested, had told you how easy you had been that night and that he didn’t believe it could be his. And so, the last time you’d spoken to him with was a lawyer, where he’d signed over all of his rights to her, you’d spared no expense and made sure he had no legal leg to stand on.
The sickening thing is, his career was going so much better than yours and he was almost a poster boy for indie girls when you do desperately wanted to tell them what he was really like.
“Yes, Matt,” you tell Janine and sweep Isolde into your arms. She shrieks with delight as you kiss her all over her face. “He’s at the pub, he wants me to go and meet him.”
“Well, what time are you meeting him?” She asks.
“Haha, very funny.” You say, shifting Isolde over to your hip. “Oh, for Gods sakes.” your phone starts to ring again and Janine reaches out for it, so you snatch it up before you can pick it up. She really is the worst sister. “Hey Matty,”
“Hey yourself,” Matt’s voice responds. “Did you get my text?”
“I did,” you tell him and Isolde in your arms starts to lunge for the phone, recognising her favorite Uncle’s voice. “And I ignored it.”
“Matty!” Isolde’s sweet little voice yells towards the phone and your ear. You cringe, children are loud when they want to be.
“Is that my sweet baby?” Matt’s voice chimes back at her. “Anyway, come to the pub. It’ll be a laugh, you never come out anymore and you’re allowed to do things other than be a mother, you do know that right?”
“I don’t want to.” You tell him. “Especially not if you’re going to introduce me to them as ‘hey, yes, this is Thingy from the Thing you watched as a kid’ again.”
Matt cackles to himself and he’s already had a few drinks, you can tell. “That was funny as fuck, be honest. And come on, you’ll have a good time. The lads are a right laugh, there’s one I really think you’ll get on with.”
Oh God, was he trying to set you up.
“Matt,” you feel the phone being yanked away from you and look up to see Janine’s taken it in her hand and taken over for you. “Yeah it’s me babe, how you been? Good! Good! So she’ll be meeting you in about half an hour. Oh yeah? You got it? She liked it! Oh great, speak to you soon, babes!” And then she hangs up.
“I’m not going.” You tell her.
“Well, you’ve promised him you’ll go now,” she says with a wave. “So you’ll have to get to it. I’d get changed first if I were you though… and brush your hair, maybe put on a little bit of make-up.” She lifts Isolde out of your arms and cuddles up to her. “We’ll be here just find for a couple of hours, won’t be we doll? Auntie Neen can tuck you up in bed can’t she? Seriously, why are you wasting time? Go.”
“Yeah,” Isolde’s sweet voice joins in. “Mama, go!”
That adorable little traitor.
Janine insists on picking out your outfit, she lets Isolde pick from three, which one she thinks Mama will look the prettiest in and you’re relieved that Janine picked neutral colours because you have visions of having to go to the pub in the one bright pink jumper you own -- you are ‘that girl from that thing’ after all, so you try not to draw attention to yourself too much.
Despite the fact that half an hour ago, she was telling you to go, as you kiss Isolde on the head and hike your bag up on your shoulder as you leave the house, you hear “Where Mama go?” through the open window and you kind of want to turn back, but as if he knows you’re thinking it Matt texts you to ask if you’re on your way yet.
You cross the road onto the main street, about a five minute walk around from the pub now. When Matt’s in London, he likes this pub. He doesn’t get recognised nearly as much as you do -- but he also didn’t have a website counting down to when he was legal, so… -- but you think he sees this specific pub as a safe space as people are used to him there.
You push open the door and look into the pub, Matt’s there in his favorite table towards the back in the corner and he’s accompanied by three men that you’ve never been seen before, they must be working on the mini series with him. He’s talked about it, when he’d called you excited to tell you he’d gotten the role, but you hadn’t recognised any of the names.
It’s as if he’s got a sense for you, Matt looks up and grins broadly at you, waving you over. You want to throw something at him, worried he’s making a scene, all three men look up as well.
Matt hugs you tightly, warmly and asks how your day has been going and introduces you to the guys.
There’s Rob. “Alright?”
Jamie. “Holy shit, you actually do still speak to Melody?”
And Joseph, who doesn’t speak, just gives you a nod and a smile and you sit down between him and Matt. Matt insists on getting you a drink and Jamie quizzes you on working on the series you did when you were young -- turns out he’s a big fan of it, thank you Matt for warning you on that one.
You answer all his questions with a smile, of course, though you’re inwardly wishing he would shut up as you’re feeling really overwhelmed being around new people. Past experiences have led you to have a close knit group of friends and he’s making you feel really uncomfortable.
“Mate, did you remember to go over the revised script for tomorrow?” Joseph suddenly cuts in, it’s as if he can sense how much you don’t want to be bombarded with questions right now. “They’ve changed part of the scene.”
And just like that, the four men you’re with fall into a conversation about their work and how it’s going. It sounds like they’re having a blast, it’s set in France in the past, you’re familiar with the storyline of it but they’ve made some changes and it sounds like it’s going to be really good. You pipe up every so often and soon you’re starting to feel really comfortable within this group, even if the start of it was quite rocky.
Joseph makes it a point to include you in the conversation.
A couple of hours fly by in drinks and laughter and you even feel comfortable enough to share a few stories from on set back in the day with Jamie and they all laugh, apart from Matt, who is normally the butt of these stories.
He watches you as you laugh along with the guys, a small smile on his face.
“What?” You mouth at him, at one point.
“It’s good seeing you smile, you’ve not done it much lately.” He mouths back at you.
You stick your finger up at him, but you’re smiling.
“We’ve got an early morning call time tomorrow, lads.” Rob cuts in eventually and when you look at your phone, you’ve been here a total of three hours, which was a lot longer than you were expecting.
Many grumbles are had and they all agree that it’s time to go, gathering coats and phones and wallets. Matt asks you if you want him to walk you home and you say that you’ll be fine, even if he does frown at it. You thank them all for the nice evening and as you turn to leave you hear your name being called.
It’s Joseph. “We’ll be back here tomorrow night at around the same time, will you come?” He asks with a smile.
“Yeah, probably.” you smile back at him.
When you get home, Janine is sitting on your couch watching TV. “How did it go?” she asks and after demanding to know Isolde was (“fine, she mentioned you once and then went back to playing with her shark. She did bite me when I told her she had to go to bed though…”) you tell her all about it, you notice her smirk getting bigger the more you talk.
“Why are you suddenly the fucking Grinch?” you ask her.
“Did you take any pictures?” She asks.
“What?”
“And then Joseph said this and Joseph said that and Joseph smiled and Joseph really laughed when Matt said this…” she says, in an imitation of your voice. “I wanna know who Joseph is, considering you’ve mentioned him four hundred times in five minutes.”
You feel a flush on your cheeks, you don’t know why you’re blushing because you have no reason to be, Joseph was just the nicest of the guys there and really made you feel included is all. “Oh shut up, he was just a nice guy.”
“Did you get his number?”
“No,” you tell her. It hadn’t occurred to you to ask for it. It hadn’t occurred to you to ask for any of their numbers, they were all nice guys but they’re Matt’s friends, not yours. “Though he did ask me if I’m meeting them tomorrow night…”
“I’ll let Mizuki know I’ll be babysitting again tomorrow and he can put the kids to bed then,” she says, gathering her stuff and she’s out the door before you can even argue with her and tell her you’re not going.
You do your make-up a little bit nicer before you go to the pub the next night. It’s not for any special reason, you just feel like you should make more of an effort when you’re technically on a sort of night out. Janine mocks you and says she knows exactly why you’re doing it. Isolde hits her with her stuffed shark and tells her “Mama pitty!”
You love her a lot.
You end up sitting inbetween Matt and Joe again, sometime between the time you left them yesterday and you met them today, Jamie and his boyfriend had a massive falling out and so Matt and Rob are talking him through that, you did start off listening and trying to pipe up and help too, even though God knows your own love life is miserable.
And then it happened.
“Excuse me,” you look up and see a young-ish girl standing by the table. You half expect her to hit on one of the guys, but she looks at you. “Are you Melody White?” you hear Matt snigger next to you and you wonder if he’s offended that she hasn’t recognised him too, probably not since he grew up looking different and you stayed the same.
“I was,” you tell her. “I mean, I used to play her, yeah.”
“Stop!” she tells you with a huge grin. “I’m really sorry to disturb you, but I love her… I love you… so much. She was always my favorite character in the books and I loved how you played her in the movies and she just meant a lot to me growing up, so… yeah.”
“Thank you,” you smile kindly at her.
“And you were so good in that aquarium movie too, I know it only had a limited release but it was so so good.”
You flush, it always surprises you when someone has seen one of the indie movies you prefer to do these days. “Wow, you saw that? Thank you.”
“Can I get a picture with you? Do you mind?” She asks, her eyes wide. As soon as you smile and nod, she thrusts her phone at Matt with the camera app already open and the two of you pose together. “Thank you so much,” she tells you and she waves to the guys as she leaves.
And Matt, Jamie and Rob forget all about Jamie’s boyfriend and proceed to mock you and the way you had thanked the girl, but you know it’s all in good fun and it doesn’t escape you in the way that Joseph does not join in and for some reason, that makes you happy.
Sorry. Joe. He’d asked you to call him Joe.
And then they go right back to Jamie’s love life.
“Are you okay?” Joe asks. “You look a little overwhelmed.”
“You never get used to that,” you tell him. “I don’t know how much you get recognised, but you’ll never get used to it.”
“I’ve only been recognised twice, for this show I did on the BBC years ago,” he tells you. “It didn’t do great, but it has somewhat of a cult following apparently and both times it’s been because of that. It feels strange, but good, but I bet you’ve been recognised a lot more than that and it must get annoying.”
“It’s not… annoying.” You tell him. “At least not when people are nice, it’s just really weird, some people are really pushy and there’s been a few times where I’ve been out with my daughter and someone has wanted a pic and I’ve had to say no. Someone did call me a bitch on Twitter about it.”
“You have a daughter?” He asks.
“Yeah, she’s two. Her name is Isolde.” You tell him. “She likes sea creatures and asking me to make her waffles every five minutes.”
He barks out a laugh. “That’s a really lovely name. Unique. I like it.”
“Thanks, she picked it.”
He looks at you in confusion. “She picked it?”
“Yeah,” you tell him. “When I first found out I was pregnant and it was a girl, I decided I wanted to go with the name Aurora because I have this really pretty picture in my house of the Aurora Borealis that my friend painted me and I just felt… connected to the name. And I told a few friends and family members that I wanted to name her that and they kept going back to Sleeping Beauty and it pissed me off,” you’re wondering why you’re telling this near stranger this but he’s watching you intently with big brown eyes and he seems interested in what you have to say. “So I was on the phone to my sister one night and I was ranting about it and how I needed a new name and she asked me what other names I liked, so I said Ariadne but she told me I was having a baby not a spider…”
Joe barks out a genuinely laugh. His laugh is quite lovely.
“...And so I said I always loved the name Isolde too and she kicked. And so I said it again and she kicked hell out of me again. So… yeah, I know it was probably a coincidence and she didn’t hear me say the name, but I deluded myself into thinking that’s what she wanted to be called. So that’s what she’s called.”
“I don’t think you’re deluded at all,” Joe tells you. “I think you said the name and she was like ‘yep, that’s me and I’ll make sure you know it.’”
You laugh, it’s sweet he’s playing up to your delusion.
From then on, it’s as if Jamie, Rob and Matt don’t exist and you spend the next two hours talking and sipping drinks with Joe (wine for you, Guinness for him) and you talk all about your careers. You talk about the indie movies you so enjoy doing, he tells you about the period dramas he does to pay the bills. He tells you about the plays he’s done, the school he went to. You tell him little stories about Isolde, about growing up on set. You talk about your families, your siblings and before you know it, Rob is making everyone leave again and you’re arranging to go to a pub a little closer to Joe’s tomorrow night.
Janine asks how he was as soon as you walk through the door.You tell her he was fine and you feel like you’re making a really good friend. And then you ask her to babysit again tomorrow night.
You have to get the tube to the third night at the pub, you’re more in North London and Joe’s in South London and this pub is somewhere inbetween and apparently closer to the hotel that Rob and Jamie are staying at.
Jamie’s made up with his boyfriend.
But… the same thing that happened the previous night happens again, you and Joe find yourselves talking about anything and everything. It turns out that you both play guitar, both were in bands in your teenage years and both have not picked up a guitar for a long time. He asks you if Isolde’s Dad is looking after her tonight, you tell her he doesn’t have one and he doesn’t push it, the look on your face probably giving it away. He tells you he used to skate, you tell him how emo you used to want to be. He’s laughing at your mini rant about how you were never allowed scene hair due to your contract.
And then you hear it. “Mama!”
You look up and see Janine rushing through the door with Isolde in her arms. Your heart drops, is something wrong with your sweet girl? You jump up and meet her halfway, taking your wriggly two year old out of her arms. “What happened?”
“Mizuki’s Mum’s had a fall and he had to rush over there.” she tells you, she looks a little frazzled and panicked, of course she does, she’s worried about her mother-in-law. “His sister is looking after the kids until I get back, but she’s never looked after one as young as Isolde and I just thought…”
“No, it’s okay.” You shift the two year old who is happily waving at Matt. “Thank you for bringing her. I hope ‘Zuki’s mum is okay, please let me know as soon as you hear anything?” You press a kiss into your big sisters cheek and she places one on Isolde’s forehead as she rushes back out again. You wonder why she didn’t just text, you would have gone home. Well, you guess you’re going home now.
You turn and walk back to the table to grab your stuff. As soon as Isolde gets closer to Matt she squeals in delight and starts making grabby hands at him, you’re all but forgotten about. Matt takes her. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, her husbands Mum had a fall and they need to go over there, so she brought her back to me. I’m just gonna go and pee and then I’ll take her home.” You’re more than a little disappointed, you wanted to stay and speak to Joe some more, but you’re not going to keep a two year old in a pub.
“Aww, no. Stay.” Jamie pouts at you. “Filming’s ending soon, we won’t get many more chances to see you. I’m going back to Manchester in a couple of days.”
“Sorry,” you tell him. “We’ll all have to hang out again soon, though.” You cast a look at Isolde who is content talking absolute nonsense to her ‘Matty’ and head to the bathroom to relieve yourself before the train journey home.
You wash your hands, drying them off on the towel and take a moment to look at yourself in the mirror before leaving the bathroom. You know she’s okay, she’s with Matt and she’ll have been fine without you in the five minutes it’s taken you to pee -- she is a weirdly independent two year old after all-- but Janine brining her here like that has sort of knocked you for six.
And you really hope her mother-in-law is okay, she’s a very kind lady.
Your eyes scan the packed pub as you exit the bathroom, back to the table you were sitting at in the packed pub. Most of the guys are there, but Matt isn’t. Your heart sinks. So where is Isolde?
You push your way back to the table, almost knocking the pint out of some poor old bastards hand, the closer you get you can see she’s still at at the table, just sitting in Joe’s lap now. So where the fuck is Matt and why did he think it was appropriate to ass your grumpy child off onto someone else? Someone you don’t actually know all that well, despite the fact you’ve been getting along very well with him these past few nights.
“Matt’s gone outside, Evie was calling him,” Joe tells you as soon as you get back to the table, he must see the panic in your face and honestly, he looks a little bit worried himself, probably because he didn’t know how you’d react to him holding your child. Isolde doesn’t even react to you being back, she’s too busy with her head on Joe’s chest, peering up at him curiously with her massive eyes. Even you find it a little but unnerving and you’re used to her. “Sorry, he just sort of… threw her at me. But she’s been okay, she’s just been staring at me really.”
“Thanks,” you say, because you really don’t know what else to. You reach out for her, he goes to hand her back to you, Isolde has other ideas. She turns to look at you, her massive eyes staring you down now. “No.” she tells you firmly. “Comfy.” and then she lets her creepy gaze drift back to Joe. You go to take her again. “No.” she says, just as firmly.
“It’s okay…” he tells you. “I mean, it’s okay if you say it’s okay. I don’t mind her holding her for a little while. She’s lovely.”
Lovely isn’t exactly what you’d call her right now. Before you can argue though, Rob appears with another round of drinks, including a small juice carton. “I got her a drink,” he tells you smugly. “Guess you need to hang out with us a little bit longer.”
What kind of pub sells juice cartons?
Isolde happily accepts the apple juice though, slurping it through a straw as she nestles into Joe, who has a firm grip on her. Great, it’s already past her bedtime and the sugar means she’ll be up well into the night, leading to her being grumpy tomorrow. But you can’t tell them that, because Rob was only being nice.
Matt comes back in and looks at you sheepishly, wondering how much trouble he’s in. “How’s Evie?” you ask, curtly.
“She’s fine, she’s just making sure I arranged the flight for the beginning of next week.” Oh yeah, so Matt will be back in Italy with his fiancée relatively soon. Leaving you pretty friendless. It’s not that you don’t have other friends, you do - but Charlie moved to Japan to get married and work in the voice acting industry, Anna’s out in LA recording music and Selina’s busy filming… albeit a different type of film to you.
It makes you feel melancholic, that he probably won’t be back for a while. But it’s an excuse to go and see him and enjoy Italy.
You stay in the pub for another half an hour before Isolde falls fast asleep on Joe’s chest and you decide now is the time to swoop in and grab her. You don’t know if you’ll see the guys again, so you say your goodbyes and tell them how nice it was to meet them - you can’t ask Janine to babysit for another night, that isn’t fair. Matt demands you text him so he knows you got home alright and you agree, kissing his cheek.
You’ve only just gotten outside when you hear someone call your name and you turn round. Joe is stood in the doorway, shoving his phone into the back pocket of his jeans. “I’ll come with you to the station.”
Isolde comes round as the two of you walk together, quietly chatting about London in general, she yawns and cuddles up to you again and when she notices Joe is still with you she gives him a little wave. He laughs and waves back.
When you get to the station, you’re surprised when he follows you. “Don’t you live in the opposite direction?” you ask.
“Yeah…” he tells you sheepishly. “I want to make sure you get to your stop alright, after all, you’re carrying precious cargo.” he ruffles Isolde’s hair and she lets out a sleepy giggle. Your stomach feels funny at the thought of him wanting to make sure you get home okay and you agree.
He sits next to you on the train, Isolde falling in and out of sleep at the gentle shakes. He gets off with you too, walks you to the ticket barriers, insisting that he’s just making sure you get out alright. He clears his throat. “I’d really like to hang out again sometime,” he tells you. “I think we’ve got a really nice budding friendship going here and I’d like to spend some more time with you… both of you. Can I get your number?”
You don’t have to reply, because a sleepy little voice next to your ear mumbles “thwee” and you look and she’s staring right at him, holding three small fingers up. Both of you can’t help but chuckle and you kiss the top of her little head.
“Give me your phone,” you hold out your hand and when he hands it over, you save your number into it. “Text me so I’ve got yours.”
“Deal.” He tells you.
“You really didn’t have to come all this way to make sure we got here alright,” you tell him.
“But I wanted to.”
You wrack your brain to find something else to say to him, because you find that you don’t actually want to leave him, Isolde fusses next to you and she really needs to be in her bed, though. “Well… thanks, I guess we’ll see you around.”
“Bye,” he says, making no effort to move until he’s watched you walk about. “Bye Isolde!”
“Bye ‘Osef.” She says sleepily and you freeze, you’re not sure you actually told her his name… she’s only two, surely she can not have deduced that he’s the Joseph that Janine was talking about. Well, unless he introduced himself to you.
You start to walk away, mumbling to Isolde that she’s getting heavy and you can’t resist glancing back to see if he’s gone yet.
He hasn’t.
He watches until the two of you are out of sight.
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Summary: A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers embark on an epic quest to retrieve a long lost relic, but their charming adventure goes dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.
Release Date: March 31, 2023
Directors: Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley
Rating: PG-13
I went in with mid-tier expectations due to the early trailers being meh, but it ended up being one of my favorite films of 2023! There are so many genuinely laugh-out-loud moments, the cast is phenomenal, and it’s wildly entertaining from start to finish. So if you’ve been avoiding this film due to low expectations, I’d definitely recommend checking it out!
reblog for larger sample size :)
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I know this has been spoken about before but lestappen ARE long live (tv)
Like the moment they stood on that podium arms around each other. That moment made me go "and the cynics were outraged claiming this is absurd. Cause for a moment a band of thieves in ripped-up jeans got to rule the world". It was them against all odds looking down at their world.
And every conversation where they're in their own lil bubble with Steve just standing there makes me go "how the kingdom lights shine just for me and you".
This one is a bit more direct. Whenever they're holding their trophies and clapping for one another - "when they gave us our trophies, and we held them up for our town. Especially in Austria because well I think we all agree no matter what Austria is the holy lestappen motherland.
And of course, every time they're together on the track "I had the time of my life fighting dragons with you". I mean I know they're racing against each other, but I don't know why every time they're racing each other I feel like they're racing together. Every move between them is a give and take. It's not max vs charles it's max and charles.
The entire point of long live is the beauty of two people who match each other in every possible way coming together in the spotlight. A world where it's just the two of them. To me, this fights Lestappen's predestined narrative so perfectly. They've always been each other's match, and when it's them, it's them (am I still making sense?).
However, in some ways, I'd say Lestappen transcends long live. One of my most/least favorite parts of the song has always been the bridge because on the one hand its so mature to realize that being on top of the world will inevitably come to an end, on the other hand, I hate the idea that "fate should step in". In the case of Lestappen though, I think the bridge is irrelevant. They've always always always come closer and closer and closer. They aren't momentary like the song suggests. They have been together their entire lives and their names will always be linked. Anyone pointing to the pictures will know it's max and charles.
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sigelfire · 5 months
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Here's an image I've found of an ad for American Express by Diego Luna in 2006:
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(*)
No photos of Diego added, sorry!!! But here's a video with the TV ad ♥
(x)
(*) English translation
My name: DIEGO LUNA
Childhood dream: TO BE A FOOTBALL (SOCCER) PLAYER
Best memory: MY FIRST TIME ON STAGE
Music: BETA BAND
Escape: MY FRIENDS
Wildest dream: TO TRAVEL TO PATAGONIA
Greatest pride: MY DAD's WORK
Biggest challenge: MAKING MY LOVED ONES HAPPY
Alarm clock: I HATE IT, I HATE IT, I HATE IT
Perfect day: A LONG MEAL WITH MY FRIENDS. ONE OF THOSE (LUNCHS) THAT BECOME DINNER
First job: WASHING MY AUNT's CAR
Whim: DULCE DE LECHE (X)
Last purchase: THE NEWSPAPER
Favorite movie: THE BYCICLE THIEVES (X)
Inspiration: PEOPLE WHO LIVE FROM DOING WHAT THEY LIKE
My life: BEING IN LOVE
My credit card: AMERICAN EXPRESS
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of-mutts-and-men · 3 months
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music suggestions? I’m in need of feral ass music, like, Falling in reverse, 3OH!3 or slipknot kinda stuff I just need feral stuff, tyvm luv (/p)
-🐰🐾
Uhhhhm I’m not sure we have similar music tastes lol. My favorite bands rn are Dirt Poor Robins and Peter, Paul, and Mary. For you off the top of my head maybeeee IAMX or Nothing But Thieves?
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phoenixwatchesmovies · 3 months
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2023 Favorites
I'm kinda glad I was keeping track of what I watched, in retrospect, because looking back over my posts this year, I realized I forgot about a lot of stuff. XD After looking over the recaps and excluding rewatches, here's my top ten New Stuff I Watched for 2023:
10. Cabinet Of Curiosities
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Bizarre nightmares unfold in eight tales of terror in a visually stunning, spine-tingling horror collection curated by Guillermo del Toro.
If GDT is your guy, give this a watch. Creature features, cursed objects, aliens, you name it. 8/8 tentacled eldritch abominations.
9. Wolf Creek
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Three backpackers stranded in the Australian outback are plunged inside a hellish nightmare of insufferable torture by a sadistic psychopathic local.
Holy shit, this was intense. And as I said initially, so mean. If you're into Texas Chainsaw Massacre, try this. I'm into franchise bingo, so I'm going to look into the sequels and TV series. 3/3 heads on a stick.
8. Requiem For A Dream
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The drug-induced utopias of four Coney Island people are shattered when their addictions run deep.
I get the feeling this is one of those that hurts so much more on rewatching, so there's that to look forward to. I've also rarely seen movies that do so much harmonizing between the music and the visuals, and it was so satisfying. 4/4 refrigerator jump scares.
7. Evil Dead Rise
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A twisted tale of two estranged sisters whose reunion is cut short by the rise of flesh-possessing demons, thrusting them into a primal battle for survival as they face the most nightmarish version of family imaginable.
This was probably the most fun I had with a horror movie all year, TBH. Horror exploring family dynamics will always be a fave, and this brought plenty of fresh stuff to the franchise while also holding onto the core traits. 5/5 Staffenies.
6. Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves
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A charming thief and a band of unlikely adventurers embark on an epic quest to retrieve a lost relic, but things go dangerously awry when they run afoul of the wrong people.
This was the most fun I had watching a movie all year, period. If you know nothing about DND, it's a good fantasy movie. If you're a DND nerd, the game mechanics are baked into it. If you're a fan of found families, guess what! 6/6 stealth checks.
5. Cowboy Bebop
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A ragtag crew of bounty hunters chases down the galaxy's most dangerous criminals. They'll save the world--for the right price.
I got exactly what I wanted out of this, so haters be damned. The anime is a masterpiece and a classic, but if you're not in the mood for the existentialism and other heavier themes, here ya go. 3/3 shower-bath-showers.
4. The Black Phone
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After being abducted by a child killer and locked in a soundproof basement, a 13-year-old boy starts receiving calls on a disconnected phone from the killer's previous victims.
Near perfect, as far as I'm concerned. The older I get, the more kids-in-danger as a concept fucks with me, making this the most stressful movie I watched this year (though It Chapter One gave it a run for its money, and I still think they would make a great double feature). 5/5 black balloons.
3. Evil Dead (2013)
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Five friends head to a remote cabin, where the discovery of a Book of the Dead leads them to unwittingly summon up demons living in the nearby woods.
It's gnarly. It's badass. I almost puked. I had THE BEST time. The story works as an effective allegory, the effects are gruesomely awesome, and the finale is metal af. Plain and simple. 70,000/70,000 gallons of fake blood.
2. The Crow
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A man brutally murdered comes back to life as an undead avenger of his and his fiancée's murder.
Beautiful, sad, aesthetic for days, hella good soundtrack. *chef kiss* I still haven't seen The Batman, but they seem visually similar, so if you like that, you'll probably like this. For more in-depth thoughts, read my post. 1/1 epic rooftop guitar solos.
1. The Fall Of The House Of Usher
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To secure their fortune (and future) two ruthless siblings build a family dynasty that begins to crumble when their heirs mysteriously die, one by one.
Not just a new favorite Mike Flanagan. A new favorite in general, and my number one for the year. I just screamed about this one last month, and I don't have anything more to add. I've seen Succession comparisons, and while I have no idea how accurate that is, there's my "if you like that, here's this." Holy crap. 7/7 deadly sins personified.
Happy New Year! 🥂
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