#on an unrelated note zora | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

thoughtfullyrainynightmare · 4 months

Note

I know you've said you don't have many thoughts about Revchi but I just wanted someone to rant to since that's apparently what we're doing now and your takes are indeed excellent (shout-out to Neige anon)

I genuinely think he must carry a lot sadness and trauma, that he closed his heart so much. When Gueldre said that all the other Purple Orcas hated him and that's why no one took his side when he got set up, he didn't even deny it or even react. For some reason he won't allow himself to open up to others even when he had the opportunity to make friends. That's totally unhealthy (honestly, the other Purple Orcas probably couldn't be counted on anyway since from what little we see of them, they're the BC equivalent of dirty cops).

I don't know how to word it but there's something so sad about him. He reminds me a bit of Zora in a way, like they both hide their inner pain with cynicism and snark. How he calls himself "just a wretched thief" in the first chapter, the way he somewhat hides his scar with his hair, even the way his speech bubbles are drawn all wobbly??? Someone get that man into therapy asap please

On an unrelated sidenote you've actually made me appreciate Fuegoleon, believe it or not. I used to not care about him at all but now I like him a lot lol

I mean "not having a lot of thoughts" is always relative too. Like, I ended up writing quite a lot for Revchi in that one ask game, which surprised even me. So it seems I had more thoughts than what I thought, but I still don't think it's comparatively a lot if we take into account other characters.

Plus, now that my exams, and this semester are finally over, I have the next three weeks time to do nothing and sleep. Instead of having my braincells running study stuff in the background on an pinned tab, which might affect how many thoughts I have to spare for the fandom. Also, I like having interactions, even if they might be people feeling frustrated over how unloved their borbo is. (Again, as long as it's like constructive; a mandatory side note, because it's a public blog) I know that everyone doesn't want to interact in the comment section or via reblogs, because they don't want to draw that attention to their blogs, which is fine. But these interactions make me feels less like I'm shouting to the wind, and are evoking my love for the fandom again. And I think that the best way to learn to appreciate and get insight of a character is to talk to someone who likes said character (as long as they haven't like... made the character into pretty much just an oc with the same name, y'know the type and issue generally speaking; it happens in every fandom)

ANYWAYS, back on track and to Revchi

I think there are a lot of characters in BC that do that. Close their emotions because showing emotions isn't... allowed in a lot of circles in BC. Just today in our BC dnd campaign we basically concluded "the Magic Parliament, where justice is scrapped and public image is all that matters; welcome to the heart of Clover Kingdom".

Who knows what happened that caused Revchi to get hated like that, but I'd say that when someone is staged for a crime, there is a good chance that they stood in the way of those who ended up setting said person up. So, it's perfectly possible that Revchi was a "good cop among bad ones" and ended up getting hated and isolated by that, probably along with a lot of other things, that essentially just broke his spirit, and caused him to spiral into a "...if being a wretched thief is what's right in this kingdom, I guess that's what I'll be then" or even "they call me as a wretched thief, so I'll show them one". Which is a kind of a call for help, in a way. The man was spiralling. And when he starts to live up to the rumours, and the reason why he was dismissed, he's not doing any favours for himself, but by then he was beyond caring about it.

Why he won't open up, could be a case of being stabbed in the back, figuratively. So, maybe he trusted someone in that squad, maybe even went to Gueldre, thinking that he could trust a Captain of Clover Kingdom, and Gueldre just threw him to the wolves. I mean... if that doesn't shake your belief into the justice system of Clover, what would?

There is a tragedy in there. He's just a guy who tried to do good (as a headcanon, because all of this is purely speculation ofc), and ended up thrown into the mud.

He doesn't believe in goodness of the world anymore. Or that there can be such a thing as "justice" in Clover. Which is very similar as to what Zora feels. Actually. For Zora it's just about what happened to his dad, and for Revchi it's about what happened to him.

I imagine the wobbly speech bubbles to be a kind of a voice cracking up. Because, deep down, he didn't want to do what he did. But he was in too deep in his own head, the cynicism. Because no one would care. It wasn't the kind of a world where people would care, in his mind. The line between a hardened criminal and a knight was a line drawn in sand on a beach.

Who knows, maybe he even thought that stealing a couple of grimoires and selling them in the black market might earn him the trust of the Orcas again. Revchi just might be yet another character that Clover Kingdom failed.

#black clover #black clover revchi #anon flamelets #I'm also really happy to know that you grew to appreciate Fue because of my silly lil' posts #he's my sexy lamp

10 notes · View notes

asksidon · 3 years

Note

Omg yessss more confession hc?

A confessing headcanon

Realizing he wishes for a simpler life

Sidon sipped his tea, staring blankly ahead of him as he sat in his weekly audience with his father, in which a sore subject had come up.

"Well?" King Dorephan asked, a note of impatience in his voice.

The prince placed his cup down in the saucer and set it on the table next to him. "No, Father. I have nothing to report on that front. I'm sorry to disappoint you again."

"Sidon. Son." Dorephan gave him that critical look that told Sidon he was in for it. "It's not just about offspring and continuing our line, you know. It's about . . . about you being happy."

"I am reasonably content," Sidon replied.

Dorephan voiced a small noise of impatience. "Then why do you take to your rooms alone so often? Why do you insist on working through meals? Why don't you try talking to those poor girls in your fan club?"

Sidon made a face. "Father . . . no. Please." He sighed as he saw from his father's expression that Dorephan was unrelenting on that subject. "They're nice enough, and I do talk to them, but not like that. I don't think of them that way. I just haven't felt those sparks with anyone except . . . well. And that was a long time ago, I know. These things simply cannot be rushed."

"Strapping young lad like you should have someone by his side. Me? I'm alone, have been for a century, and I've come to like it that way." Dorephan raised his arm in a half-shrugging gesture. "Although, I admit, when matters of state become burdensome, I have no one to confide in. No soft touch to give me comfort. No reassuring voice to tell me I've made the right decision. I . . . I worry about you in that position, my son."

The prince dared not speak the word on his mind. Abdication. But he wanted to. He wanted to shout it at the top of his lungs. He wanted to live in a small cottage by the Zora River. He wanted to grow a garden and spend each day tending to it. He wanted to invite Link for tea without worrying about anyone thinking it strange. He wanted to be out of the public eye. He wanted to wake up without a box of papers waiting on him. There were so many things he wanted, and yet, he felt he could have none of them.

"It appears I will never be able to convince you on this subject." Dorephan never admitted defeat for long. How many times had their meetings started this way now?

But each time, the look of disappointment became more deeply etched in his father's features. Sidon hurt when he saw it. "I'm sorry," he answered, genuinely meaning it. "I think perhaps this would all be easier if I weren't a prince." It was the closest he could come to admitting everything to his father.

King Dorephan studied him and said nothing for several moments. Finally, he answered, "But you are."

Sidon nodded, accepting his own defeat.

"Now then, shall we discuss a plan for the dwindling population of Staminoka Bass in our waters?" Dorephan asked, moving on to the next matter of business.

Relieved to be off his least favorite subject, Sidon agreed and settled to work.

#confessing headcanon #headcanon #abdication #botw sidon #some hints of sidlink #it turned into more of a drabble than an hc oops

33 notes · View notes

fictionkinfessions · 3 years

Note

whats up anyone else ever suddenly kin shift and then spend 20 minutes at 6:27 am on a wednesday in the shower looking at ocarinas online because you are so desperate to feel whole again and you remember so vividly thinking over life playing zeldas lullaby in the zora domain when sidon was asleep and you couldn't bring yourself to fall asleep. anyways on a completely unrelated note how's everyone's wednesday going?

-link (botw) #🦂🩸

#fictionkinfessions #fictionkin #🦂🩸#linkkin #botwkin #legendofzeldakin #memories issue #mod party cat!

11 notes · View notes

just-char · 4 years

Photo

I very much enjoyed @mistxmood ‘s ‘Half-Life But the AI is Self-Aware’ AU. My friends allowed me to watch it with them just last week or so and it was a great series that I enjoyed even more due to the mental replacement of the actual characters with Epithet Erased characters I did after seeing their AU. An apology and explanation for my absence beneath the cut that is entirely unrelated to Zora-Benrey. Hello. I wanted to extend an apology for my slow writing process– unfortunately, the Percy and Ramsey story is taking a lot longer than expected to write, and I am very stubborn and would like to reference it in Homeward, and as such it needs to be written first. Fortunately, I have recently finished other creative projects and college is done for the summer, so I have much more time to work on them. I am absolutely not giving up on this project (it is very dear to me and I am always working on it in the back of my head.) On another note, and I apologise if you are uninterested in advance, I am compiling a ‘Google Doc’ for all of my incredibly extensive and over-thought and elaborate Epithet Erased alternate universes. When I finish it, is that something people would be interested in reading? It goes into a lot more detail than the Steampunk post, and that was basically a novel. (Exaggeration, of course, it was not at all a novel.) Please let me know. :] Have a nice day.

#zora salazar #epithet erased #mistxmood #:]#my art

73 notes · View notes

blackcloverdatabase · 3 years

Text

Some Rambling (& Gratitude)

So far, I have committed sins against two Black Clover characters:

I called Leopold “Leonardo” in one of my earliest translations. In my defense, I knew his name was Leopold, but I was so used to typing “Leonardo” because that was the name of a main character from another work I’ve translated, so I typed it in without thinking.

Somehow, when I looked at Tabata’s top 5 most loved by animals, I mistook Henry for Vetto? I saw the spiky light hair and thought “Ah yes, Vetto. Of course he’d be #1 on the animals list”. But no, it was Henry the whole time! I’m sorry Henry! I will draw you someday to make up for replacing you with Vetto (I don’t regret drawing Vetto though). Now I wonder how he wasn’t on the list when Zora was (I don’t regret drawing Zora either, though).

I’ve been in this fandom for almost a year now, so if I keep my sin committing to about once a year, I guess I’m in pretty good shape.

****

To pivot to a completely unrelated note, I have to thank everyone who has left nice comments in the hashtags or directly in their reblog when I draw something (of course, likes and reblogs in general are always appreciated too). I always, (and I mean always ⊙_⊙) check the reblogs on my notifications for my art, so if you have ever left something nice or added your own headcanons to my crossover pics, I’ve seen it, and it made my day! This month ended up being... a bit rough because of a few unfortunate events, so this month, especially, I want to thank all of you Black Clover nerds for nerding out with me!

#personal

12 notes · View notes

epitheterasedgen · 4 years

Note

HCs for if Sylvie tries psychoanalyzing Zora, and her getting REALLY DEFENSIVE/PISSED OFF when he starts revealing the truth? (Bonus point if it’s in front of everyone, like over a game of chess on game night. Y’know since Sylvie already tried psychoanalyzing Ramsey over a game of chess, so maybe that’s his thing, though Zora would probably be more of a checkers gal.)

ooOOOOOOOOOOOOH

this is some SERIOUS fic potential right here lemme just— jot down a little note for myself, entirely unrelated—

#ice-the-irken #submitted headcanon #zora salazar #sylvester ashling #sylvie ashling #cowgirl and shepard #submitted fic idea

68 notes · View notes

wildshero · 4 years

Text

My Interpretation of the Linked Universe

I want to say this this is inspired by the linked universe fics and art and such. I cannot take credit for that. However, I do deviate from the way Wild is portrayed in such for various reasons that I will explain as I go through this headcanon. Second this is not technically a post about the verse but it might as well considered that.

So to start out where is Link in his own adventure, has he completed it or not? And the answer is no. When the linked universe happens he has completed most of the shrines, leaving shrines such as Eventide Island left undone. He does not yet have the Master Sword, thus those shrines are also undone, and let me tell you, he was on his way to get the master sword when the portal opened up. He needs inventory space guys. He needs to visit Hestu. Link has completed all the Divine Beasts, and has completed all of the Champion’s ballad except for Urbosa’s part. He completed the beasts in the original order of Ruta, Medoh, Rudania, Naboris, and in the Champions ballad he did it with Medoh, Rudania, and then Ruta with intentions of doing Naboris last again.

He has not completed his adventure, and is worried for the Zelda he is beginning to remember. He has not collected all the memories. He has collected most of the memories. He is lacking the two memories in Central Hyrule, and Blatchery Plain Specifically. He has the other memories, not including memories that go with certain quests and coming to certain places. He still feels that he failed because he hasn’t even finished his quest. He has not helped Zelda. He is not hurrying.

So moving on lets talk about breaking the weapons. Yes Wild’s weapons break. However most of his weapons are also over 100 years old. And the ones that aren’t are more sturdy and take a longer time to break. I have talked about Wild’s strength in a different headcanon, but this Wild can straight up stop a charging Lionel with a well timed parry. That has nothing to do with the strength of the shield. Link is strong, like Steve Rogers screaming in Thanos’ face strong. The weapons break because they are not strong enough to match Link’s own strength.

This brings me to the master sword. I see so many things saying Link breaks the Master Sword, and I cannot stress enough the Master Sword is the only weapon in the game that does not break. It looses its strength before the Trial of the Sword, yes, but it is never broken, it just becomes weak when Link has not fully powered it, even when fighting against Ganon. I will also say in my world the Hylian Shield also does not break, but that’s neither here nor there.

Link for the most part is a lonely dude. As much as I love Wolf Link, I don’t have that Amiibo because Wolf Link is not a canon thing in the game, you have to have the Amiibo. So I know in this universe Wild has Twilight in wolf form. I fully accept that, but for the most part, Link is lonely. Wolf Link is a great fighter, but not so much there for conversation. So Link’s fighting for the most part is not team based.

This brings into combat in general. Wild is one to charge into battle and not stop until he is dying. This is literally canon. Mipha’s Grace is a thing, just as the rest of his champion’s abilities because I have never found it fair to take away a core of Wild’s story from him simply because he is with others. Link relies on the Champions abilities to help him fight and to help him get around Hyrule, this is especially important when we consider Link’s own champion’s ability of slowing time.

But going back to combat, Link is an archer first then a sword fighter. His time slowing ability is easiest seen when doing archery, before doing flurry rushes. Also the fact that every enemy camp essentially has a monster you are supposed to take down with an arrow. Wild’s whole thing is fighting alone, so to expect him to do well in a group is not something that he adjusts well to.

But with the fighting alone thing, he doesn’t mind help, however the other Links need to listen to him. Yes he is young he’s like 19. Of course its hard to take a 19 year old seriously, but the issue is that in fanon the Links often don’t trust Wild when it comes to discussing monsters in Wild’s Hyrule. Most of the time when Wild is hurt is because he is distracted by the other Links or the other Links don’t listen to him about the monsters in his Hyrule. I literally read a fic where the Links yelling at Wild to look out ended with him getting trampled by a Lionel.

Its hard to trust a nineteen year old but doing so in Wild’s Hyrule is imparitive. Additionally when he is not listened to its a bit of an insult. Link has spent much of his life, not that he remembers, not being listened to. Just because he doesn’t remember does not mean that that the feelings are not still there. Link was knighted young, and then became Captain of the Royal Guard before he became Zelda’s personal Knight. He may not be Warriors, but he was in a high ranking position, he knows how to behave around royalty and dignitaries, His best childhood friend is literally the Princess of the Zora, he views the Gerudo Chieftain as a mother figure. He knows how to behave around nobles. Yes he is “Wild” but he’s not fucking unhinged. He’s not so much as a Gremlin at least no more than the other Links. The first Link game you literally burn forests down trying to find that one fucking cave.

Wild having that moniker is great, its fun to poke fun at his more wild ways. However it also stands for his mastery of the wild land that is his Hyrule. Think about what he has to do in order to get his green tunic and gain the name “Hero of the Wild” because up til then he is the Hylian Champion almost exclusively. I’d argue a better name for him is Champion. But that is neither here nor there. Link has wild behaviors he jumps of cliffs, uses a paraglider, rides Lyonels and bears and shit. But that is not out of character for Links, but because BOTW focuses more on Zelda than Link that is what people focus on.

I know we all love Wild and Twilight stuff. But the amount that I see Warriors judging Wild is insane especially when Wild has a rank of equal power to Warriors. Like how could they not get along. How could Wild and Sky not get along with the sailcloth and paraglider, and the Sheikah technology. As much as I love Twi and Wild, I feel like the relationships Wild could have with the others is a bit shafted, or portrayed in a way that I don’t always agree with as I’ve stated.

And on a final unrelated note, I do keep Link’s hair at its normal length because he is picked up mid adventure, but his hair when its down its a pretty good length and its a good length to not get in the way when fighting and such. And yes he does wear his hair down, some armor requires it.

So yeah, that’s about where I differentiate from the traditional Linked Universe, and my justifications for why. So yeah that’s all I got for now. I just wanted it all in one place.

#headcanon: memories of the past #i have thoughts and feelings

1 note · View note

ryanmeft · 5 years

Text

Us Movie Review

Every year brings many horror films that provide the basics, and very few that rise above them. Get Out was widely praised as one of the latter; I disagreed, one of my more contentious opinions on movies. To my great satisfaction, the issues I saw in Jordan Peele’s first directorial effort are almost entirely absent in his second feature. If it just avoided doing things wrong, though, it wouldn’t be as good as it is. Whereas Get Out was content to insert some heavy-handed social commentary into a traditional formula and call it revolutionary, Us truly brings fresh ideas to the genre.

Much as Get Out was essentially a horror twist on Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner, Us brings another outside plot to the genre, this one from superheroes: the heroic team who meets their evil doubles. We start in 1986, in a visually stunning sequence: young Adelaide (newcomer Madison Curry) is neglected by her dysfunctional parents (it is notable that we never see their faces for long) at an amusement park at Santa Cruz, so she wanders off. As a storm rolls in on the beach she makes her way to an abandoned hall of mirrors, complete with a scary pop-up owl and a fake-out for an exit. There, she encounters a well-worn horror trope: her reflection behaves differently than she does.

The movie cuts to the present day, and adult Adelaide (Lupita Nyong’o), who has returned with her family to their vacation house near the same beach (note that the family appears reasonably well-off, though not rich, a rarity for horror films; just last year, the entirety of the last Purge movie took place in a stereotypical “hood”). Her husband Gabe (Winston Duke) is a lovable oaf, brave and protective but not in a “grunt grunt, man tough” way. He’s assigned the job of doing some of the dumb things horror movie plots require to function, but because his character has already been presented as both loving and slightly dim, we mostly overlook these lapses of judgement. It helps that they do not occur with anything like the frequency they typically do. Daughter Zora (Shahadi Wright Joseph) is on the verge of true teenagedom---she doesn’t want to hang out with the vapid twin teens (Cali and Noelle Sheldon) belonging to her parents’ sniping and materialistic friends (Elisabeth Moss and Tim Heidecker), but she’s also getting a bit too old for her younger brother Jason (Evan Alex).

Peele spends enough time on family dynamics---the pranks played by the siblings on each other, a hopeful lovemaking session between parents thwarted by pesky feelings, the singular joy of your kids not getting an old song that is just the greatest thing ever---that by the time we get to the scares, these people are well-established for the genre; in another twist on what is usual, it is the white characters who are bare outlines thrown in just to have someone to kill off. The Wilson family, on the other hand, are strange and complex people by the time their copycats show up on the front walk. They appear in red jumpsuits, holding hands, are unresponsive to Gabe’s commands, and quickly launch an invasion of the home. Once they have the family at their mercy, Adelaide’s double---named Red in the credits, though like most of the doppleganger names I can’t recall this ever being mentioned in the film itself---proceeds to tell a macabre tale I won’t reveal here. She then initiates a game, which is where the superhero comparison comes in. The doubles have come prepared, with a strategy to exploit the weaknesses and personalities of their prey; much of the rest of the film is a game of cat and mouse as each tries to outwit and overcome the other. The body language of these beings, which is meant to mirror and exaggerate the worst traits of their heroic doubles, is incredibly unnerving; physicality is too often overlooked in modern horror, though the template of the genre, The Exorcist, excelled in it.

There’s no attempt on the part of Peele to disguise the fact these things are some sort of dark copies of the heroes; it is explicitly revealed in the trailers and in the film’s title. It is a rather masterful bit of slight of hand on his part. We think the duplicate angle is the point of the film, but at the very beginning there is some seemingly unrelated text about there being vast lengths of disused tunnel underneath the United States; I held this in my mind through the first act, but such is the tension of the second that by the time it becomes important to the story, I had nearly forgotten it. Those tunnels turn out to produce an apocalypse, and end up providing a thrilling third act that grants us a great, unexpected mercy: something different for horror. I don’t dare discuss it in detail, for in it Peele’s script and direction, Nyong’o’s stunning ability to act convincingly while playing dual roles that are both fighting each other, and the incredible camerawork of Mike Gioulakis come together in a way that, by itself, may cause me to go see the movie twice in theatres, a rarity. Suffice it to say the dopplegangers are flesh and blood, and that the resolution does not feel like cheating. The final twist could be seen coming a mile away, but it is at least well-earned, and notably more morally ambiguous than how it is usually used.

The visionary elements of Get Out whose visionary-ness I questioned were mostly concerned with the supposedly deep subtext of the film. Some saw endless layers of meaning concerning the place of African Americans in our society; I personally thought the “slavery is still a thing, guys” point was incredibly obvious. Us eschews direct 1-to-1 metaphors in favor of a few different possible interpretations, all of which could be true at once. To a history buff like myself, the idea of our doom coming from underground places we’ve forgotten of course recalls the old adage about those who fail to learn from the past. Masks are employed to suggest the ways we hide ourselves, while an excess of rabbits seem to represent a cycle of life, suggesting the film’s antagonists devour other life the same way they feel they themselves have been devoured. I could discuss this all for some time, but the reason the movie works is because, whereas taking Get Out’s metaphors away would leave the film toothless, this one is excellent even if you completely overlook them. It functions as a film first, and doesn’t need to sermonize on society to grip and terrify us. That it does that, and does it effectively, is evidence of Peele’s creative evolution.

Verdict: Must-See

Note: I don’t use stars, but here are my possible verdicts.

Must-See

Highly Recommended

Recommended

Average

Not Recommended

Avoid like the Plague

You can follow Ryan's reviews on Facebook here:

https://www.facebook.com/ryanmeftmovies/

Or his tweets here:

https://twitter.com/RyanmEft

All images are property of the people what own the movie.

#jordan peele #lupita nyong'o #movies #us #horror #winston duke #elisabeth moss #get out

10 notes · View notes

jet-bradley · 5 years

Text

i wish we got to learn about the more regional spirits and gods/goddesses that are worshipped in the zelda universe. like it’s offhandedly mentioned that like, the zora worship their own deities, but we never hear about them! i want to learn more about hyrule as a polytheistic society!

yeah the hylian gods are PROBABLY the most important to us as a player, considering link and zelda are reincarnations of hylia that are destined to fuck with someone hylia didnt fuck with well a while back, but that doesn’t mean the three ancient goddesses & hylia are the only deities out there, or the only deities people worship!

idk i just would like to read more about this stuff, and it makes me kinda sad that nintendo never rly developed that other stuff. i think it would be cool if there was a game where link (the hylian chosen one) and, like, a chosen one from another region’s religion have to work together to battle demise’s latest fuckening... kinda like twilight princess, except they’re both in hyrule proper and blessed with powerful weapons from separate deities.

on a completely unrelated note, there’s concept art for link with a robot arm that morphs to form what would be different “items” like a hookshot, crossbow, etc. and im kinda sad that nothing came out of that. nintendo whyyyyyyyy

4 notes · View notes

tshirtfashiontrend · 5 years

Text

Meet Lena Dunham’s Podcasting Partner, True Crime Zine Queen Alissa Bennett

Link Buys Now: https://kingteeshops.com/meet-lena-dunhams-podcasting-partner-true-crime-zine-queen-alissa-bennett/

Meet Lena Dunham’s Podcasting Partner, True Crime Zine Queen Alissa Bennett

“You know what rich people love? Fucking Egypt,” says Alissa Bennett, director at Gladstone Gallery, zine queen, Lena Dunham’s newly minted podcasting partner, serial muse to artists like Alex Bag, ex-model, and ex-ex-wife of Banks Violette, the bad boy breakout artist of the early aughts. (They married and divorced, twice.)

Gesturing at the majestically tacky granite sculptures of sphinxes flanking the entrance, Bennett murmurs in her wry deadpan, “I can’t believe no one leaves this bitch any flowers.” We’re marveling at the hulking Egyptian revival mausoleum of Barbara Hutton, famously dubbed “Poor Little Rich Girl” by the press for throwing a deb ball at the Ritz during the Depression that would have cost $842,000 today. (Within a few years, Woolworth Girls—the little-appreciated cogs in the machine that was Hutton’s father’s well oiled fortune—would lie in wait outside hotels to throw eggs at her.)

I’ve tagged along to Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx for Bennett’s annual pilgrimage to celebrate the socialite. Bennett dedicated one of her zines about bad behavior to Barbara Hutton, out of reverence for the heiress’s belief that money should be spent, and happiness can be bought. The grave’s opulence mirrors its inhabitant’s distaste for boredom and being scaled, and highlights her yen for exoticism, largesse, and trinkets. For one wedding—she married seven men—Hutton demanded Cartier make her a “Balinese wedding tiara of tortoiseshell, with a diamond pattern identical to the blossoms of her wedding veil.” (Later, she bought Catherine the Great’s jewels.)

This isn’t Bennett’s first time in a graveyard. In fact, most of Bennett’s interests start with a dead body. As a young fashion model with bleached eyebrows, she was locked in Père Lachaise, in Paris, after drinking too much champagne on Chopin’s grave with “two boys, one of whom was later hit by lightning and died.” She remembers, as an ex-model, “hauling my gigantic pregnant body past 29 Avenue B” to see the building GG Allin died in. When that baby was in elementary school, she guiltily stalked a memorial using her “young child and his poor skateboarding skills as a means of moving closer to the gathering in the park.” (The next day her anonymous sources at the memorial clandestinely sent her the “holy grail” of postmortem ephemera: “A link to a 13-page typed transcript of the seven eulogies delivered at the funeral.”)

I should mention that—besides having a rolodex of people who want to talk about dead people—Bennett is whip-thin and translucently white as a ghost. And that her dear friend, the artist Bjarne Melgaard, put a picture of her brushing her teeth on the cover of a book called Alissa Bennett: Laying the Ghost? And that we were originally introduced, one person removed, by a decorator who selected rosewood closets for Larry Page’s house, only to get an irate call that the scent was “killing him.” (The decorator has since died, unexpectedly, of unrelated causes.) And that she’s published an entire series of zines about criminally-minded fuck-ups, many of them now deceased, with the cult avant-garde publisher Frank Haines, a psychonaut from Florida who moonlights under an alter ego anagram of Ted Bundy.

This year, she launched The C-Word with Lena Dunham, a podcast that trawls through binders of dead or forgotten women dismissed by society as crazy, cataloging crimes and misdeeds, from murder to merely having once been alive. The opening line of the podcast? “I’m internationally reviled celebrity Lena Dunham, and I’m Alissa Bennett, historian of bad behavior.” Who better to talk about women society hates—from Judy Garland to Johnson and Johnson heiress, Casey Johnson—than a celebrity we all love to hate, and a woman who dedicates her free time to stalking dead people?

The podcast is a savvy marriage of Dunham’s mood—the distillation of years watching people online say she’s nuts—and Bennett’s life’s work, a series of true crime revisionist zines: Dead is Better (2016), Legalize Crime (2016), Bad Behavior (2017), I Expected Something Nice (2017), and Pretend You’re Actually Alive (2019). I say revisionist, because Bennett plays a sympathetic graverobber of sorts, retelling the stories of those who have been subject to the “drive we have to exsanguinate public women.” It might be more accurate to call Bennett a eulogist gone off the rails, in that she addresses the dead directly. She’s written “short devotional texts” personally addressing Michelle Carter (the teen who texted her boyfriend to kill himself), Anna Nicole Smith, Heidi Fleiss (Hollywood madam), and artist Theresa Duncan (“You began attending 9/11 truth movement meetings…people still wonder if we will ever get to read the 27-page legal document you were preparing for your Scientology lawsuit”).

Bennett takes a non-consequentialist tack in writing about her heroines’s tragedies. She appreciates, above all else, a story girded by a kind of tragic, even poetic, optimism. “I appreciate your commitment to the idea that a new life is just a Greyhound bus ride away,” she writes. “Oh I have dabbled in reinvention myself—I have pretended to be studious and organized and ‘engaged.’” Activities someone else might write off to derangement, Bennett celebrates as creativity: “Your interrogation tapes are incredible…You used the euphemism ‘nose job’ to describe the initial gunshot to Ryan’s face.”

It’s important to note that she doesn’t frame anything as a cautionary tale. They’re more like sendups, as if she’s submitting a post-mortem application for her subjects’s icon status. Of Elizabeth Siddal—the 19th-century artist’s model who miscarried “rowing a boat around a lake at night and writing a poem to the dead baby” inside her—Bennett writes, “I understand why you finally had enough and overdosed by your fireplace with a note pinned to your nightgown.” Her subjects aren’t A-list celebrities, or rarely. “There are always going to be people who are interested in investigating culturally significant people. I’m more interested in failure. I relate most to disappearance,” she says. Spectacular failure, really, is her subject, and it throws her into a “death obsession lustmord.” (Of Peaches Geldof: “I read that Reddit feed about the time she did heroin with a stranger and then took him to the Hollywood Scientology center where they took tons of Niacin and sat in the sauna…”)

Much of Bennett’s scholarship occurs in semi-abandoned corners of the internet flat with the dust of understimulated hit-counters. She scours websites like Bestgore, Websleuths; FindaDeath.com (“Amanda [Peterson] you are special to me as the only celebrity I ever commented on in a public forum. I would call this forum a must read.”); dead people’s mother’s blogs; even self-published, unauthorized, fan-written scandal biographies. In Bad Behavior, she addresses “Call Girl Killer” Alex Tichelman, the woman who accidentally killed a Google executive: “In my experience, the parents of murderers are not reliable judges of character, so I felt very lucky when I stumbled upon a 46-page-long Topix forum… One of the most remarkable things about these comments is that almost everyone who knew you as a teenager uses exactly the same word to describe you, and that word is off.” Bennett happily watches YouTube tapings of 48 Hours, Dateline, Hard Copy, Dr. Phil, E True Hollywood Story; Nancy Grace; Lifetime re-enactments of crimes; Candice DeLong’s “Deadly Women”; episodes of Unsolved Mysteries. She sources National Enquirer post-mortem photographs; she reads non-fiction books like Mike Sager’s Scary Monsters and Super Freaks and Suicide in the Entertainment Industry (which she read while attending “a pathetically produced murder mystery weekend in Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania”); and pornography forums.

She notes that a Yahoo group dedicated to Brittany Murphy claims that she picked up her Vicodin under “Lola Manilow,” and uncovers a website Murphy’s ex created after her death “where he posted a lot of horrible photographs that he took of you [dressed] as a clown.” She finds someone selling the handles from Judy Garland’s casket.

At the end of the day, though, the most interesting person in the zines, again and again, is Alissa herself. Like most obsessives, she’s worth obsessing over. It’s hard not to view her as a little touched. A snapshot of her 20s (I’ll let you find out about the rest of her life in the zines): Seventeen-year-old Alissa follows an older man to New York from Rhode Island after high school. He dumps her, so she rents an apartment in Brooklyn with the money she steals from her cashier job at a hair salon downstairs from the Saint Mark’s Hotel. (“A real loser job for 1996.”) Within a year, she’s discovered by a model scout, who cuts her hair and sends her to London to meet Edward Ennufil, who books her for two shows on the spot: Junya Watanabe, and the now infamous Hussein Chalayan “Burka show,” with models dressed in successively diminishing fabric. (“I was the cut-off before Zora Star showed full bush.”) She’s twenty years old. Steven Klein starts booking her for dozens of magazines. She moves to London, where lands the cover of i-D, and Dazed and Confused, and Juergen Teller includes her in his famous Go-Sees portrait series. She meets her future ex-ex-husband Banks Violette, the catalyst for an epiphany that “this guy is so smart and I’m like a stupid idiot.” This is the kind of epiphany, for a normal person, that would lead to a new hobby, or something.

But Alissa, incapable of doing anything halfway, quits modeling and moves back to New York to become a “passionless shop girl at If Boutique.” It’s just more dignified. For a few years, she actually believes this. She marries Banks, and gets another shopgirl position. But watching people spend money all day is demoralizing. Her whole life was suddenly demoralizing. (Banks was getting “really, really famous and I’m like, I’m just a loser who works at the Alexander McQueen shop.”) In a fit of panic, she applies to college at the New School, where she…meets a virginal 18-year-old Lena Dunham, crying in a bathroom stall after their Fashion and Identity Formation seminar. (Lena transferred to Oberlin soon thereafter, but their friendship was clearly written in the stars.) She graduates, and Banks gets her a better job, working at the gallery Luxembourg/Dayan. They divorce, remarry, and divorce again. She’s still in her twenties, by the way, and coming to the only worthwhile lesson from that decade: it’s just easier if you make something of yourself than to be somebody’s +1.

“Not only did I feel contaminated by the failure of a marriage that I had been counting on to save me from ever having to accomplish anything myself, but I also suddenly understood that I’d been foolish to believe that a rich person could like me on my own now that I was without an art-star husband,” Bennett writes in her newest zine.

It makes sense, in retrospect, that someone so committed to seeing herself as a loser, a word Bennett uses a lot to describe herself—despite everything always being, in my opinion, kind of glamorous—would become a historian of fuck-ups and bad behavior. (For the record, Bennett remains in the art world to this day; she has the same job as Jennifer Lawrence’s fiancé.)

No one tell her she’s cool; the work would suffer.

#Meet Lena Dunham’s Podcasting Partner True Crime Zine Queen Alissa Bennett

0 notes

kingteeshops · 5 years

Text

Meet Lena Dunham’s Podcasting Partner, True Crime Zine Queen Alissa Bennett

Link Buys Now: https://kingteeshops.com/meet-lena-dunhams-podcasting-partner-true-crime-zine-queen-alissa-bennett/

Meet Lena Dunham’s Podcasting Partner, True Crime Zine Queen Alissa Bennett

No one tell her she’s cool; the work would suffer.

#Meet Lena Dunham’s Podcasting Partner True Crime Zine Queen Alissa Bennett

0 notes

acedesigns · 7 years

Text

The Archaeologist - Chapter 9

“He is just using you, you know?” Ahura glanced towards the surrounding shadows. “Once he’s done with you, he’ll dispose of you. Kill you, probably in the most painful way possible.” Dark’s hands placed themselves on Ahura’s shoulders. He wouldn’t allow her to turn around and face him directly.

“Let me go,” Ahura growled. Her eyes narrowed as she glared ahead of her.

“If you can’t fight me off, how do you even plan on fighting him off?” Dark leaned in towards her ear and whispered, “If you want, I could protect you. I could make sure he won’t hurt you. You’ll just have to be mine.”

Ahura jerked her shoulder away from him. “Let me go!” She flung her head backwards and made contact with his nose. He screamed and disappeared into a cloud of smoke. Ahura turned around and looked around for him to reappear. Her eyes landed on a larger log. With both hands, she picked it up. Before she could prepare it to swing at anyone, a sword was pressed against her neck.

“Do not do that again you wretched Hylian,” Dark growled viscously. “You do not want me to be your enemy.”

“It looks like you already are.”

Dark pressed more pressure. Blood started to run down Ahura’s neck. She winced and froze. Her breathing stopped as she waited for him to kill her. Without warning, he disappeared once again. Ahura fell to the ground and felt her neck. It was a small gash, not enough to kill her.

She rose back to her knees and made her way back to camp. Her hand still applied pressure to her neck to both stop the bleeding and to try and prevent others seeing what happened. Any inter conflict could only slow down her efforts of stopping the genocide.

Ahura ducked behind a tree. Her eyes glanced both ways. No one was there. Quickly, she darted to her tent. Upon opening the flap, her eyes rested on two figures. She gulped and tried to make her way in as quietly as possible. Both men didn’t pay attention and kept their backs to her.

Ahura opened her bag and took out some bandages while wrapping it around her neck. Her pointed ears twitched towards the two’s conversation.

“My lord, may I ask what will you do when you overthrow the Royal family? The other races can only be useful for so long. And might I remind you that all of them turned their back when your people were being killed. It was only my people that stuck by you.”

“What do you suppose I do when and if I become king, Dark?” Ganondorf stood up straight from his position of hunching over a map. “I have no people left. Your people are in an entirely different realm, of which the bridge between here and there has been destroyed. A king is nothing without his people.”

�� Dark glanced over to Ahura and smirked. “And what of the Hylians? They’ve turned their backs against all races of Hyrule. Surely they will be eliminated.”

Ganondorf remained quiet for some time. Ahura tensed and looked over at him. She questioned if Dark was right, if the Sage of the Water Temple was right in his warning. She began to tremble. Fear, anger, sadness, confusion. All of those emotions were pulsing through her.

Suddenly, she stood and ran out of the tent. Ganondorf turned, but Dark held a hand out and urged the Gerudo to focus on planning their next stage of infiltrating the Forest Temple. Ganondorf sighed and turned back towards the map, tracing out the winding maze of the forest.

“Ahura?” a Sheikah questioned and watched as the Hylian ran past. Quickly, the Sheikah stood up and followed. “Ahura, wait!”

Ahura slowed in her tracks and hung her head. Her hair covered her face. The Sheikah caught up and place a hand on her shoulder. His eyes traced to the bandages covering her neck.

“What happened?” he questioned softly.

Ahura looked up at the Sheikah man. A mask covered the bottom portion of his face while his hair covered his left eye. He was on the thinner side, like most Sheikah. He wore a stealth suit with bandages wrapped around his calves, head, forearms, and chest. Multiple knives were hanging from his waist.

“Who did this to you?” he asked referring to the bandages on Ahura’s neck.

“No one,” Ahura stated quickly and avoided eye contact with the red eyed Sheikah.

“Don’t lie.” Ahura sighed and a hand raised up to the cut on her neck. “I don’t want there to be fighting among us. Tensions are already high, and….”

“I won’t tell anyone what happened.” The man swore. “If you tell me, I can do my best to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Was it Ganondorf?”

Ahura shook her head. “No, he hasn’t hurt me.” Not physically.

“The Dark one?” Ahura hesitated before nodding. “Never liked that creep. Did he hurt you anywhere else?” Ahura shook her head. “Good.” He stood up straighter and put his right hand out. “My name is Sheik, it’s nice to properly meet you, Ahura. I just wish it was under better circumstances.”

Ahura shook his hand. “It’s nice to meet you to.”

“Dinner’s almost done, would you like to eat with the rest of us? I may be overstepping my bounds, but I believe it would be better than being locked up in a tent with those two men.”

“Sure, thank you.”

Night quickly settled throughout camp. The embers of the fire flickered in the air, almost like the fireflies dancing around in the trees. The grasses danced gently with the soft breeze. Sheikah were dancing, singing, and laughing around the campfires scattered about the camp. The few Zoras that were there watched on in mild amusement. Some even joined by playing the instruments they managed to bring. These people may be refugees, but they would not let that fact crush their fierce spirits.

Ahura sat next to Sheik and Impa, watching the festivities carry on. While a soft smile covered her face, her mind was reeling in thoughts of why Ganondorf didn’t say what he would do with the Hylians. If he started a genocide against Hylians, then nothing would have been solved. She dragged her knees up to her chest, questioning if she would be the first Hylian Ganondorf killed.

Ahura took a deep breath before rising from her spot on a log. “I think, I’m going to turn in. Good night.”

“One minute,” Impa spoke. “Those bandages on your neck, Ganondorf gave that to you, didn’t he?” Ahura stared at the Sheikah for a moment before speaking, “No, he didn’t. Good night.”

Quietly, Ahura entered the tent she slept in. Her eyes met Ganondorf’s and Dark’s figures. They were still crowded over the map with strategical pieces. She quickly ignored them and turned her back to them before falling into a hesitant sleep.

A flute sounded in the darkness of the night. Ahura stirred for a moment before opening her eyes. The lamp that was previously lit to illuminate the map was out. Ahura sat up in the tent and looked around, but she couldn’t see anything that would indicate a flute playing. Carefully, she stood from where she was and exited the tent. The campfires had simmered down. As far as she could tell, there was no one awake besides the possessor of the flute.

Silently, she began to follow the melodious notes. They danced through her ears and lured her into a trance. Her eyes hazed over and her feet ghosted over the blades of grass. Her breathing slowed as the notes grew louder and louder.

“Stop,” a voice demanded and a hand firmly grasped Ahura’s wrist. Ahura blinked, her vision came back. She looked up at the figure holding her back from the forest. He glanced down at her. “The Skull Kid is already aware of our presence.”

“Skull kid?” Ahura questioned.

“If you fall for his trap, you will die.” Ganondorf glared into the woods. He turned his back and begun to drag Ahura back towards the camp. “Come.”

“Let me go.” Ahura yanked her hand free from Ganondorf’s grasp. He turned around with a small hint of shock. He stared down at her impatiently, waiting an explanation for her defiance towards him. “What are you going to do to the Hylians when all of this is over?” Ganondorf remained silent. “Are you forgetting that I am a Hylian? Are you going to kill us? Kill me? Why wait? Why not kill me now and say that the Skull Kid did it? This is the penrfect opportunity to do it, Lord Ganondorf. Or do you want to make me suffer?”

“Enough!” Ganondorf demanded with a roar. Ahura flinched and took a step backwards. “Enough,” he repeated, softer this time. “I have seen your people be consumed by hatred, greed, lust, envy, wrath. I have seen your people kill the other races without a moment’s hesitation. But I have also seen your people filled with courage, wisdom, generosity, and kindness. If I were to slaughter your people, like your people slaughtered mine, there would be nothing learned. Just more hatred! Do you not understand what I am trying to get away from?”

Ahura stared up at the man. The man that was cursed with an unrelenting amount of hatred. The kind of hatred that eats away at a person until there is nothing left but a hollow shell. It was the type of hatred that left a person with nothing. And when this person had nothing, all they could hate was themselves.

Ahura stepped forward slowly. Hesitantly, she reached a hand out and placed it on the side of his face. She looked up at him with sadness. He closed his eyes and stilled his breath. The man didn’t want her pity.

“I will do everything in my power to break your curse, Ganondorf.”

His eyes shot open. He stared at her for a few moments before turning away from her touch. He began to walk back towards the camp. “You can try, but nothing will come of it.” Ahura watched his imposing figure shrink with the shadows. Her hands developed into fists. She would try. She would die trying.

#The Archaeologist #Legend of Zelda #LoZ #Fanfiction #Fanfic

0 notes