It speaks with a fine, posh accent, and it peers down at him with what might charitably be called disappointment.
"It's true," says Florian. "I'm not a princess."
"I will have you know," says the dragon, and winds its snaky neck down so that its great, golden eyes are on Florian's level, "that I am far too clever to be taken by the lies of some tiny slip of a human."
Florian, who has always been slight for his age, feels his cheeks burn a mottled red. "I'm not lying, either."
The dragon snorts, and the sound of it comes with a rush of breath that's as warm as the air piped through the palace vents in winter, heated by magic, perfectly primed to battle against the chill of the snow out beyond the stone walls. It might almost be pleasant, if Florian could stop wondering how many people the dragon has roasted when that mellow heat becomes much, much warmer.
"How many girls," says the dragon, primly, "do you think have tried that line on me, my dear?" It blinks slowly, like a cat, and then it edges its voice upward, perhaps to imitate a human. "Oh, I'm not a princess, goodness no. My mother was secretly a milkmaid! I was kidnapped by the palace when I was but a child! They've swapped me for the princess's maid-in-waiting and hoped you wouldn't notice!"
Florian thinks this over for a moment. Probably he shouldn't poke the dragon, so to speak, but he's here already, isn't he? It's not as though his circumstances can become much direr. And besides, he does want to know.
"How do you know they were all lying?" asks Florian. "What if one of them really was the princess's maid-in-waiting?"
"Because I," says the dragon haughtily, "am a dragon."
Which, of course, answers nothing at all.
"You do know," says Florian, "that that answers nothing at all."
"Silence!" says the dragon in a roar, and it is frightening — truly it is. It rattles the stalactites in the dragon's cave, rather. But it's frightening in the way the palace librarian is, more be-quiet-because-people-are-trying-to-read-you-silly-boy-no-one-cares-to-hear-about-your-linguistic-studies and less I'm-going-to-roast-and-eat-you.
Thankfully, Florian knows how to handle that first kind of frightening.
"Yes, of course," says Florian, and then he falls silent.
Those wide, golden eyes blink at Florian.
Florian blinks back.
"In any case," says the dragon, at length. "You're not fooling anyone. You have the fine fabrics, the powdered cheeks, the hair like spun silk. You even have a circlet, Your Highness."
"Well, yes," says Florian. "But the circlet is from my mother." He pauses, fidgeting with the embroidered sleeve of his gown. "And the fine fabrics. And the powder. I enjoy wearing them, you see."
"What sort of princess," demands the dragon, "does not have her own things?"
Florian clears his throat, delicately. "The sort that's a prince."
The dragon blinks at him again.
"Nonsense," says the dragon. "You're far too pretty."
Florian feels his cheeks begin to heat. "Thank you."
"You think I don't know a princess when I see one?" demands the dragon. "I've met dozens. Twenty-four, to be precise, from all around the world."
"You must be very well-traveled," says Florian, politely.
The dragon narrows its eyes, peering down at him.
"Lift your chin up," the dragon demands.
Florian does. He reaches up, helpful, to undo the lace choker fastened into a neat bow at the back.
"Bollocks," says the dragon.
"Yes," says Florian. "I'm afraid so."
"Well, what am I going to do with you?" says the dragon, crossly. "You're no good to me at all."
"You'll find that I can do everything a princess can, really," says Florian. "I can hold court with the king and queen. I've given knights my token in the form of quite a lovely flowered handkerchief." The dragon still looks unimpressed, so he offers: "When I sing, the birds in the garden come down to land on my hand."
"What use have I for little birds?" grouses the dragon.
"What use had you for a princess?" counters Florian.
"I needed your hair," says the dragon. It sounds as though it's sulking, rather.
"My hair?" says Florian, and reaches back to touch the silken strands of it, dark as night, brushed smooth as velvet.
"As a component for my transformation spell," says the dragon. "Twenty-five strands of hair, from twenty-five different princesses. It is the final thing I need."
Florian blinks up at the dragon. "What is it that you're hoping to transform?"
"Myself," rumbles the dragon.
"Yourself," says Florian, dubiously.
"I am not," says the dragon, "a dragon."
"You do know," says Florian, "that that answers nothing at all."
"Silence," says the dragon, but without the cave-rattling roar, this time. It sounds a bit sulky.
On an impulse, Florian reaches out to pat at the dragon's scaly shoulder. He can just reach, if he stretches up on his tip-toes. "If you're not a dragon," says Florian, "then what are you?"
"I'm a prince," says the dragon, still decidedly sulky. "Prince Clemence the third, of Wyseria. Or at least, I'm meant to be. I was, until a wizard cursed me to this form."
"That seems rather mean-spirited of him," says Florian.
"Exactly," says the dragon who is not a dragon, in a huff. "So now here I am, kidnapping princesses for ten years, trying to come up with enough hair for a blasted spell!"
"That does sound trying," says Florian.
"Not every kingdom even has a princess," says Clemence. "And the ones that do get so alarmed about it. Ooh, the dragon is going to eat our daughter!"
"Don't you?" says Florian, curiously.
"Of course I don't," says Clemence. "I take a few pieces of hair from them and send them on their way, but it is such a dreadful trial to get them in the first place."
The dragon-prince huffs again, that same burst of too-warm air, and then throws himself to the floor in a rather dramatic fashion, the way a young man might throw himself upon a divan if he were all in a snit. Florian hides his smile behind one manicured hand and tries not to find it terribly charming.
"Well," he says, when he is no longer in danger of giggling at the poor not-a-dragon's expense. "Perhaps I can help."
Clemence slits open one of his large, golden eyes. "Oh?"
"I've studied a bit of magic," says Florian. "May I see the spell?"
"Over in the corner," says Clemence. "In my hoard."
The prince's hoard, as it happens, is comprised of a very old sofa, several overstuffed pillows, a sprinkling of gold, perhaps just to stay true to form, and an absolute mound of books.
"Why, you have practically a whole library," says Florian, and begins sorting through them.
"It is dreadfully boring, being a dragon," says Clemence. "Nobody wants to talk to you, on account of them thinking you'll eat them."
"That seems rather unfair," says Florian, sorting through dusty books. "Especially as you seem so accommodating to guests."
"That," says Clemence, sounding decidedly vindicated, "is precisely what I said!"
The grimoire is the second book from the bottom, and Florian eases it out carefully, delicately brushing dust from the cover. He pages it open and hums softly in consideration. The spells are written in an arcane dialect, circa three hundred years ago.
Thankfully, the laws of the land that he studied at his mother's knee were written in precisely the same dialect.
His eyes flicker over the pages, skimming for the transformation spell.
"Page seventy-two," says Clemence, helpfully.
"Thank you," says Florian, and skips ahead.
It is not a terribly complicated spell, all told. The moon doesn't have to be at a particular fullness, nor does the casting need fall on the eve of the winter solstice, nor even does it require a terrible amount of peculiar components, princess hair notwithstanding.
And the best part about that is —
"Aha!" says Florian, brightly. "I think I've found your solution."
"There is none," says Clemence, glumly. "There's not another princess to be found. You were the last, the whole world through, until some other king and queen decide to have a daughter."
"But you don't need a princess," says Florian, and taps at the line. "There. You see? In the old dialect, there was no distinction between prince and princess. They were the same word."
"They what?" says the dragon, eyes going very round indeed.
"There was no distinction until perhaps a hundred years ago," says Florian, "when the term princese split into two different forms, prince and princess, the way we use it today."
Clemence is staring at him, darkly scaled snout slightly agape.
"It was the same for a great many nouns in the old dialect," says Florian, warming to the subject. "Lord and lady, father and mother, hero and —"
"Then your hair," gasps Clemence.
"Should work just fine."
Clemence leaps to his feet with a cave-rattling crash. He is, Florian notes with a certain amount of affection, wagging his tail.
"Well, what are we waiting for?" says Clemence.
"Nothing, I suppose." Florian approaches to stand beside him, carefully inclining his head.
"Be still now," says Clemence. "I would not want to slip."
Then he reaches out his massive claws, delicate and precise, and slices through a lock of Florian's long, dark hair. It is so gentle, so very careful, that Florian does not know he has finished until he says, "That's all."
"Shall I help you arrange the hair?" says Florian. "It seems rather intricate work, for claws."
Clemence's tail swishes. "Do you mind?" he says. "I have chalk in the hoard."
He does have chalk in the hoard, and Florian sets about availing himself of a piece. He draws out the magic circle, with precise strokes; magic has always been an area of interest for him, much as languages have, and he is pleased that he knows each of the sigils that make up the array to get the spacing proper. On the end of each spoke, he draws a small diamond, and in each diamond, careful, he places the hair of a different princess.
In the twenty-fifth spot, Clemence adds the lock of Florian's hair.
"Well," says Florian. "That should be all."
"Yes," says Clemence. "Yes, I suppose it should."
They stand there for a moment, staring at one another. Then Clemence says: "Would you stay? Until the spell is done?"
And Florian, unaware that he'd been hoping to be invited until the words hang as an offer between them, says, "Yes, of course," so quickly that the reply comes out all in a muddle.
Clemence knows the words to the spell without consulting the grimoire. He's had ten years to study them, by his own admission, and he speaks them now, crisp and precise, though his voice wavers somewhat in the recital. Nerves, Florian supposes.
But the more he speaks, the more the circle that surrounds him begins to glow, bright and then brighter, until the entirety of the cave fills with a beautiful, golden light, so all-encompassing that Florian has to close his eyes against it.
When he opens them again, the light is gone.
So is the dragon.
In its place, there in the center of the circle that Florian drew, is a handsome young man with skin the same ebony of the dragon's scales and eyes the same gold as the dragon's eyes. He is well and truly naked, and Florian feels his cheeks begin to burn.
"Goodness," says Florian, softly. He takes off his mother's silken cloak and steps forward to drape it over Clemence's shoulders, to cover him.
Clemence seems hardly to notice his own nudity. "It worked," he keeps saying, over and over. "It worked!"
"It did," says Florian, and finds that he is smiling, as well, caught up in Clemence's elation.
Clemence laughs, bright and delighted, and the sound of it echoes through the cave. He seizes Florian by the waist, impulsive, and spins him around in a celebratory twirl, heedless of the way it makes the cloak fall open. Florian flushes and tries not to look.
"This is brilliant," says Clemence. "I can go home! I can see my parents. Why, if I fly at full speed, I —"
He trails off to silence — blinks down at his arms, and then twists around to peer at his back, decidedly wingless. "Bollocks," he says again.
"Is your kingdom very far?" says Florian, brow creased in concern.
"Across the Gray Sea," says Clemence, softly.
And, well, there's only one thing to be done, isn't there? Florian reaches out to set a hand on Clemence's shoulder, warm as dragon breath through his mother's cloak.
"Come, then," says Florian. "Come home with me, to the palace. We'll be able to arrange for a ship, surely. Trading vessels leave from the port for a great many distant shores."
When Clemence smiles, Florian finds, it is a dazzling thing. It dimples his cheeks and crinkles the corners of his eyes, and Florian finds that he's growing warm again, even his ears beginning to burn.
"I would be forever in your debt," says Clemence. "Truly."
"Well," says Florian. "You didn't eat me, when really you might have. So, shall we call it even?"
He holds out his hand, in invitation.
In answer, Clemence reaches back, as delicately as he had with those wickedly curved claws, and places his hand in Florian's own.
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He should convince the clown authorities (the people who run clown school, set clown code, oversee the clown make up egg system) to put a hit out on Joker at Deathstroke prices.
He should kidnap a bunch of Gotham’s most crooked cops, dump them on an island and tell them only the survivor will be allowed to leave. Afterwards he’s just like ‘i don’t know man, they just started killing each other, it’s a beautiful paradise island, what’s wrong with them?’
When his family have had enough and are getting too suspicious he should get really into fibre arts. Really elaborate crochet patterns that they are convinced are some kind of code system and he’s systematically distributing it across certain parts of Gotham to certain criminals, who all happen to have worked for riddler at some point in the past but they all went to the same elementary school and have middle names starting with S.
None of it means anything, he’s just filling time.
He should secretly go to law school then bring a case against Bruce Wayne for the cover up of the murder of one Jason Todd, proposing that the famed philanthropist was in fact covering for the joker.
He should build a fleet of blimps and market them as Gotham’s new ride share system, uber but with dirigibles, partly to keep batman on his toes when he’s hiding on rooftops and partly to help modernise Gotham’s public transport situation.
it’s wild to me how there is literally ZERO correlation between what a piece of media is like and what its fanworks are like. 2014 captain america fans were out there writing poetry and full-on academic papers inside of their fics. sonic the hedgehog and my little pony fandoms are both famous for drawing fetishes you’ve never even heard of. les miserables fans spent most of their energy on college aus. there is literally no consistency or observable pattern and it’s incredible
#my theory is that fanworks reflect what people found missing in the canon#so like. sonic and mlp. obviously#les miz want les amis to be happy and alive and goofing around#and uh. mcu fans want the mcu to be well-written (via dicaeopolis)
HBO Harry Potter is going to set records on an astronomical level, and I imagine more than half the people reblogging you are performative cowards and will watch it anyway directly on HBO. (I say that as anti HP and JKR). Pretending like it’s not going to be the most successful show in HBO’s history is insane and really underestimating it. Boycotts are not going to work because it is a tiny blip of people willing to do so. What do we when it is mega popular and people continue to love and enjoy her work?
So I wouldn't even answer this ask EXCEPT it's a fantastic example of someone who hates you and wants you to undermine your cause pretending to be on your side, so let's go through the points.
1.) Makes the assertion that you've already failed eight months in advance. Wants you to give up and give in because you think the cause is already lost.
2.) Implies that everyone else is secretly gonna do it, so you may as well too. Wants to chip away at your resolve.
3.) Claims to be on your side and therefore a trustworthy source.
4.) "Boycotts don't work." Demonstrably they do, as long as people are organized and persistent. Look at how Target and Starbucks are sweating and begging people to come back. Boycotts work.
If someone comes to you doing this shit, they are not your ally, they're trying to mess with you. They want you to fail. On the bright side, they're also often an indicator that your cause has gotten big enough that they're worried enough to go about it all underhandedly, so yay?
I have seen so many people saying "ohhhh but HP is SO popular, it will always be that way, we'll can't fight that." Buddy, I am nearly 50 years old. The number of things that I have been told that about, truly worldwide phenomena which were everywhere for what felt like an eternity, which, if I bring them up to anybody under 30, they've never fucking heard of them, and if they've heard of them, they definitely haven't seen or read them? And then the stuff from my parents' generation that I only know about bc my dad told me about them?
Nothing is immortal. Nothing lasts forever. Y'all will quote the Ursula K. LeGuin thing about capitalism and the divine right of kings and then unironically say that the shitty racist wizard books by the terrible TERF just can't be fought against. It's so fucking weird.
Harry Potter is the most painfully Millenial thing on this Earth and, as a generation, we are at peak uncoolness right now.
HBO, the dragon-fucking, mobster murdering, gang cussword network does not have a lot of play with parents, or the general public. At best, they're third fiddle to Disney and Netflix, and HP is an obvious play for them to steal market share and shed their historical perception (see also: Sesame Street)
Production is clocking in around $100 million per episode. This thing is primed to be a failure. If it does anything less than the absolute best numbers of any TV show in the last decade, it is a failure.
A huge portion of their built in audience has less than zero interest in supporting this project, and will actively shit talk it to whomever wants to hear.
Again, Harry Potter is so uncool right now. I know it's been 30 years almost since the first film, but it's been less than 20 since the last one, not counting the Fantastic Beasts. It's only been four years since a Harry Potter was released! We've had, on average, one film every two and a half years.
There are few things in human history that are going to eat as much shit as this series will. They're making a thing that no one asked for, marketing to a demographic that doesn't give a shit, whose built-in-fanbase harbours the kind of hatred for the IP that only betrayal can forment, and they're going to spend more money than even God has bringing it not to the silver screen but some dogshit third-rate streaming service at a time when folks are truly and utterly sick of streaming service bullshit.
In the spirit of "my uncle who works at Ninetendo", I have a ... let's say friend of a friend? ... who used to work at WB. And oh, honey. The TEA.
So a number of years ago, this friend was on the team tasked with figuring out whether a new HP series was financially viable. They had the ACTUAL streaming numbers, the subscriber data, the parks stuff, all the shit companies don't release. Their job was to gauge the popularity of HP, break it down by what does and doesn't make money, and determine whether new HP was worth the investment (because it would NOT be cheap).
The numbers, my loves, were catastrophic.
Yes, HP makes WB a lot of money. But it is NOSTALGIA money. MILLENNIAL nostalgia money. The people buying house scarves and theme park tickets are reliving their own childhoods, and we're not making any more 80s/90s babies, are we? No, we are not. And millennials' kids want nothing to do with this shit, and most millennials don't have as much money as you'd expect to spend on nostalgia in the first place. The only people engaging with this shit are the hardcore fans (a shrinking population due to JKR's shit parade) and people who might buy a Harry Potter chocolate bar on clearance because it's cheap chocolate. The hardcore fans already have their streaming subscriptions, and the cheap-chocolate crowd aren't going to get them for HP. There is also the very real chance that a shitty remake will tarnish memories of the original films, thereby reducing THEIR value. It was concluded that the best strategy was to shut up and keep profiting off the old stuff.
So why, I asked friend-of-friend, is a new series coming out now?
Now, FOF no longer works there. They are not privy to the inside scoop on this series. They told me so. And so I asked them to speculate, on the basis of zero inside knowledge: why now?
They started snickering.
And they told me that anyone who's worked anywhere near David Zaslav is convinced that this series only exists because he wants his name on an HP thing. That's it. This is a vanity project for DAVID FUCKING ZASLAV. It's going to fail, but it'll fail with his name on it, and that's all that matters. Its whole purpose is to buff Zaslav's ego.
I'm going to enjoy watching this clown car burst into flames from a great distance.
Hua Cheng is probably the funniest mxtx love interest to me because despite being written when mxtx was much older than she was when she wrote sv and mdzs he's literally just peak YA novel teenage love interest material. Yess my awesome immortal ghost oc born under a cursed moon with heterochromia and a cool eye patch and he always wears wedding robes and carries an umbrella because he can summon crimson blood rain and also he has silver butterfly familiars that sparkle and explode into glitter and also he's an amazing artist and he singlehandedly beat up 37 gods
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I just had the best encounter with a child at Kmart. I was in the aisle shopping, and this girl and her dad come around the corner. The girl sees me and excitedly exclaims “There’s a human here!!” to which the father replied “Yes, there’s humans everywhere.”
Literally me!!! Little girl!!! That was me!!! (I’m a guy now but that was me!!!)
Okay for context, long story short,
Our family is really weird. Really weird. We’re not aliens (at least not that I know of although it’d explain some things) and yet I was a weird kid. Normal autistim child. Mom says that I called everyone ‘humans’ which is really funny — shes always told me that humans are humans, and yet you dont have to be human to be a people (example: cats, bunnies, dogs, et cetera — not human, but still people). Aka mom never corrected me because i was right. Of course she also calls humans humans because we are. I still call people humans but yes. Back to story. Went off topic there.
A long while back, like maybe five years ago, I asked mom if I’m anywhere on the Internet, because given how weird our family is, that wouldn’t be surprising.
She replied that yes, she believes so, because she found a tumblr post that happened earlier that day mentioning an alien encounter in K mart. This exact post.
When she saw it, she was really confused, because wait. My child. With my husband (who transitioned a few years back so is now my other mom!!!). Earlier today. At K mart.
She checked with mom and yes, that interaction did happen, they laughed about it and went about their day. When she told me about this a few years back, she didn’t remember what store, only that it doesn’t exist.
Finally, it recently circulated in conversation again, and since mom remembered the name I have found the post!!!
The Shojo Main Chracter was designed to be a self insert for the audience so in all fairness me hitting them with the Non-Binary and/or Transgender Hammer is well within the intended interpretation of the wor-
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Could be me overthinking things. But I feel like there's something to be said about the fact that Iana so deeply admires Konoha Magnolia: the main character/self insert she created back in middle school. To the point of seeing her as perfect and mentioning how much she wishes she were more like her.
To the young Konoha Satou writing her, Magnolia was seemingly this perfect ideal that she imagined herself as and strived to be more like. She wants to be like her but it's not who she really is.
Despite sharing her first name, the character took on an identity separate from her and, full theory cap on here, I think that's why Satou didn't reincarnate as her but instead as Iana: someone who, within the narrative her younger self wrote, could never measure up to the perfect character she saw Magnolia as.
Iana will never be the perfect ideal she pictured for herself in her youth. And I can easily see that fact being the grounds for some deeper struggles further into the story. She'll never be perfect... but maybe she can still find happiness in that. With Sol because I like that ship the best.
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You know what. I'm gonna shill an anime for a minute.
If you've followed me for more than a month or so, you probably know I really like isekai anime! And if you didn't know it, hi! I like isekai anime!
I have to say that while I enjoy them in general for being fun and entertaining, not a lot of them get me feeling overly wholesome. I can enjoy them plenty without that feeling but I do want to say The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess is hitting all my needs. It's incredibly charming and wholesome in a way most isekai can't get. And why's that?
She's reincarnated into her own fictional setting.
That is absolutely charming to me? Like you get people reincarnated into games they love and see characters they adored in most, you see another with a guy who simply hates the entire world he's been reincarnated into and it's all fine and entertaining but the LOVE that they convey in The Dark History has me so overjoyed.
You get scenes and characters that she considers cringe and she's mentally embarrassed by it, sure, but then you immediately get hit with her realizing "I love this character I made as a person" and ya know? That is something I think a lot of OC creators can relate to. You put them in horrible situations, give them tragic pasts, it's all fine in fiction. And then you get The Dark History where a woman gets isekai'd into what she wrote and she sympathizes with her characters! She loves them so much! Sure they're characters she wrote in grade school or middle school and are kind of cringe but she LOVES THEM.
It's only got five episodes out right now and as an OC maker? Gotta say it's been super fun to watch and it feels really refreshing in terms of isekai anime.
I know it won't be for everyone but I just wanted to point out it's really good so far in my opinion and the characters are silly and charming and I love learning about them and it just feels so wholesome as it goes on.
the worst part of the live action one piece is that it's making me ship things. i'd love to read some fanfics, but i don't actually want manga/anime spoilers, so i sit here with my feelings about these characters suffocating me.