This would be so much easier if Obi could forget that he’s responsible for all of it. It’s been over two years now that he’s been by Shirayuki’s side as her bodyguard, and everything he thought he knew about what makes a worthy love interest was wrong.
In fact, he wouldn’t make a prince a love interest again, if he has to be honest. Raj can stay, the useless royal parasite learning to have some ambition and respect for the role makes for a good side character, but responsible princes?
They are too damn busy.
Not that his protagonist is any less so. She’s not too busy for anything the greenhouse asks of her, not too busy for lectures or investing days into learning to make a new medicine, but the moment she needs to answer a letter her calendar is full. Zen is very lucky that Obi’s willing to take dictation and Obi’s lucky that she doesn’t care that he adds local color to the letters. He’s not a writer here, nobody knows that side of him, so he gets his creativity in where he can.
He’s a regular Sheherezade in the evenings, trying to peel Shirayuki out of the lab, but if that’s what it takes to get her to eat dinner, he’s not above embellishing his experiences a bit.
He just doesn’t expect to have to do it all over again in the middle of the night. It’s late and it’s cold and yet the lights are still flickering in the lab. Obi trudges up the stairs, expecting to roust one or more fixated pharmacists from their notes and shoo them off to bed before he can drop into his own at last. The last stair nearly defeats him, chilled muscles only just starting to thaw and leaving behind heaviness, but as he swings the door open he’s met with smiles.
“Come in!” Shirayuki grabs his hands, her own nearly scalding against his skin. “We made soup!” And sure enough there’s an aroma in the air almost like home, a memory of comfort and warmth that pricks at his eyes. Cursed temperature changes, making him tear up like this.
Ryuu lasts just long enough to see him settled with a bowl before drifting off right there on the table. Shirayuki sighs, and pets Ryuu’s hair, and the longing that Obi lives with wraps around his chest and squeezes. He’s always assumed that they needed to finish the story. Shirayuki needed her happily ever after with Zen, and the wedding on the last page of the romance would be what it took to send him home.
So he’s helped, with letters and advice and whatever he can. He knows just what it takes to be a plucky side character, an enabler or a doubter or a tease as the protagonist requires. He’s not there to drive the plot, just to help her-
And yet no matter what he does, every arc drives them further from a wedding. The world opens out before Shirayuki as the restraints of position close around Zen, and Obi can’t let himself doubt. It’s a story, a sweet one, and he can bask in the warmth here around a table in a lab in the middle of the night. Maybe what he used to be doesn’t really matter anymore. Ryuu snores like a kitten and Shirayuki giggles quietly, and Obi scrapes the last of the soup from this bowl.
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"You're smoking too much weed," says the guy who got addicted to manosphere podcasts on his orb and started a fascist militia with a side hobby of deliberate environmental destruction. Started cutting down trees to own the woke elves.
Several times on here I've seen the take "I know local theater is bad and cringey, but you have to support it anyway!" And while I understand what they're getting at, I'm always like, why do you assume it's going to be "bad" just because the artists are members of your own community? I just saw a local production of The Importance of Being Earnest and it was HILARIOUS. Everyone was DELIGHTFULLY funny and we thoroughly enjoyed it! There have been so many times I've been greatly moved by "amateur" or student art, and if you can't allow yourself to appreciate anything but "the Best" (and who decides what "the Best" is anyway? This production of "Earnest" was way funnier than the version that Judy Dench and Rupert Everett were in, as deservedly "famous" as they might be) then you are just being a joyless snob. There's beauty and talent all around you. And if that makes me "easy to please," then well... That means I'm pleased more often! And why should I want to apologize for that?
Your local or high school production of beauty and the beast is far more likely to have painted backdrops and hand stitched costumes than the national tour currently running on projections and vibes. That’s value for your money right there. And the actors don’t just stagedoor; there’s an ihop meet and greet after.
The stagehands in their mismatched black clothes roll the squeaky library set onstage while the piano vamps. A book falls off a shelf; the lanky Beast picks it up and presents it to Belle with a gruff and panicked flourish. She smiles because he loves her and it doesn’t have to be perfect; he just has to try.
High schoolers giving their all to heathers or ride the cyclone. The backstage TikToks and videos where everyone is in character and being silly.
A fifty year old hamlet crying over his thirty year old dad after ‘remember me- I have sworn’t’. After some time, Horatio, an eager lad of sixteen, pulls him from those treacherous cliffs and mouthes the cherished lines to his sweet prince where he thinks I can’t see. Word perfect for the rest of the night. I still don’t know if this was stage business or a missed cue but it was beautiful.
guys busting out of fishnets and glitter makeup and having a ball bc they’ve got their whole family seated front row throwing toast at them for rocky horror.
Every little shop of horrors with big lunged urchins who can’t blend and a gigantic plant puppet that knocks the rest of the set over
I’m in the splash zone for swan lake. The music is tinned and it’s raining. This will never happen for me again
An ebullient four year old giving extra pizzazz and inner life to the role of ‘tree’ in the wizard of Oz
Hermia and Helena are making out a lot more than Shakespeare thought they ought in the fifteenth dream you’ve seen this midsommar. And yep! It’s set in a cult, we’re all outside and I’ve been given a pie to eat.
When the stage manager turns the house lights back on, Cinderella’s rags will be transformed.
I remember seeing my brother in a pretty low rent Our Town (cast bc he was tall) and stunned at how he was holding back tears by the end. He didn’t want to say goodbye yet and it was closing night.
You don’t often get that connection at the pro level. You don’t get to see people you love like that all the time.
It doesn’t matter who corpses or who blanks or who misses their cue
you have to go and be open to whatever happens.
Sometimes fireflies, sometimes fire alarms. Sometimes snoring audience members. Sometimes you are the whole audience. Sometimes Sondheim. Somehow Strindberg? Just go!
and EVEN WHEN things were more muted/neutral, the neutrality was OFFSET by ACCENT COLORS and HIGH CONTRAST between the wood tones and everything ELSE
ALSO AMERICAN COLONIAL INTERIORS POPPED OFF, Y'ALL (IN TERMS OF COLOR/COZINESS)
PEOPLE USED WHITEWASH AND COLORFUL TRIM OR EVEN JUST COLORFUL FURNITURE IF THEY COULD AFFORD TO DO SO
AND DON'T GET ME STARTED ON FRENCH AND BRITISH AND AMERICAN WALLPAPERS
"ELIZABETH" YOU CRY, "WHY ARE YOU BEING SO EXTRA THIS MORNING?! IT'S MONDAY"
Because, my friend, my war on GREIGE will NEVER end.
Historic interiors were filled with LIFE and LIGHT and COLOR. ALWAYS HAVE BEEN.
Part of the reason we don't see a lot of textile art is because, frankly, textiles tend to degrade over time - especially ones that had utility! And yes, pigments and weaving and dying all boosted the expense of things, when we were finally reliably block-printing fabrics and broad reams of paper, it was no longer just the wealthy who could afford pretty patterns!
In the Americas, a far wider variety of pigments also became available because of the abundance of... well, a shitton of flora and minerals, some of which weren't as common in Europe.
WHY THE HIGHLIGHTER COLORS? you ask.
CANDLES.
Those colors reflect candlelight and natural sunlight REALLY WELL.
Humans LOVE bright colors, it's NOT just a thing for kids. We live in a brilliant, vibrant, multifaceted world. We ALWAYS have.
(STOP MAKING YOUR HISTORIC SIMS 4 BUILDS BE BLAND. STOP IT.)
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Your dialogue is stiff because everyone is being too honest
Great dialogue can come from radical emotional honesty. But in most real conversations, people
dodge questions
answer indirectly
lie (badly)
change the subject
crack jokes to avoid serious answers
lie (convincingly)
say half of what they mean
tell the truth but get so anxious/angry/defensive others now think they're lying
If your dialogue feels unnatural, it might be because everyone is saying exactly what they think, or articulating their thoughts too well. Try letting characters hide things instead.
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canon is what happens in the text. e.g. merlin tries to poison morgana
a headcanon is a fact that you have personally made up as an elaboration of canon. it is your invention. e.g. i think morgana and gwen had a teenage lesbian situationship before the events of canon. or, i think modern morgana would love evanesence.
an interpretation is how one reads the existing text. it is not an invented fact nor is it a headcanon, it is a reading. e.g. i think merlin tries to poison morgana out of misplaced self-hatred. or, i think that one line was delivered with suppressed malice and shows a nuanced relationship.
fanon is the general fandom’s accepted headcanons and interpretations that elaborate or recontextualize canon. e.g. merlin is a badass waif and morgana is a bitch.
these are all different words with different meanings.
Obi lies on his side on a soft castle bed. Outside the window the stars wheel silently overhead, the moon casting a softly knowing glow. He can still feel the warmth against his fingers of a figment of his imagination.
It was just supposed to be a sweet little romance between a sweet, smart woman and a handsome prince. A short little wish-fulfillment shojo thing, maybe a couple of volumes, something to keep food on the table while he finished the pitch for the story that was supposed to be his real job. He was going to get his ninja drama established in a major shonen magazine and it would run for at least ten years. It would make his career.
It would have. He has to believe that. Because someday people are going to realize he has no idea how romance works beyond the most basic of fairy tales, and they’re going to metaphorically ride him out of town on a rail. He is not qualified for shojo.
He’s lost without a map, writing by the seat of his pants. And yet right now even that is not his most pressing concern. That would be the fact that his heart is beating out of his chest. He didn’t know you could even have a panic attack inside a hallucination, or a dream, or whatever he’s been stuck in. He’s a side character in his own story, they’ve passed up all the plot he already wrote and have moved on into the unknown, and he can’t deny any longer that he’s fallen in love with his own protagonist.
He’s such a cliche, and it hurts too much to even be offended about it.
The balcony scene could have been perfect. Out in the beautiful moonlit scenery, she would pine for her distant royal love. Her prince, of course, would be pining under the moon for her as well. A symbol of love, binding them together from miles apart- the symbolism would have been fantastic. And the shading, the delicate outline of her profile backlit by the moon- But no, every beautiful image has been wasted on an upstart nobody who wasn’t even supposed to be there. He had to have his existential crisis on the same balcony, and instead of pining for the one far away, she reached out her hand to the one who was there.
She’s supposed to be in love. She’s supposed to be focused on that. She’s not supposed to be so caring, and thoughtful, and earnest- He’s never even thought about what his ideal woman would be like, and only now does he realize he’s been writing her all along.
So he’s the one who needs to focus, to keep his eye on the prize and not let himself be distracted by impossibilities. As long as the prince keeps his hand on the leash, they can keep this plot on track. And maybe when he wakes up from this long, long dream, he’ll have another arc or two to keep it running.
He just has to remember this all when he wakes up. Maybe he’ll even throw in a ninja as a second love interest, just to keep the prince on his toes.
Maybe it's naive of me, but whenever I see portraits like this, with just a father and daughter, it restores my faith in humanity a little. Because people seem to love this idea that fathers never loved their daughters in the past and only saw them as bargaining chips for marriage or whatever, but look at the guy in the first portrait on the left, he loves that little girl! And the dad trying to do his work while his daughter bothers him with an Old Timey Barbie. The man teaching his daughter geography, his expression is so soft! The way the man in the last portrait holds the little girl's hand! And none of these are incidental, these aren't photographs, someone (probably the father) paid good money and sat down for hours so that they could have a painting of themselves and their daughter. Probably because they loved their daughter.
From left to right: 1795 Michał Jerzy Mniszech with his daughter Elżbieta - Marcello Bacciarelli; Christopher Anstey and his daughter Mary Ann by William Hoare 1776; A Musician and His Daughter by Thomas de Keyser 1629; The Geography Lesson (Portrait of Monsieur G. and His Daughter), 1812; Jean-baptiste Isabey And His Daughter; Portrait of a Young Girl and Older Man by William Harrison Scarborough
(this is probably somewhat related to my other favourite genre of painting, Husband With Multiple Kids Making Come Hither Eyes At His Wife)
oh I love those! People being people is one of my favourite kinds of paintings and an important reminder that people in past times were not all that different. There were dads who loved their daughters fiercely. There were fathers who happily looked after their babies too. The German reformer Philip Melanchton for example had a cradle in his office. His wife was busy organising a household for 20 people- she was out and about, he mostly worked in his office, it made sense for him to look after their babies too babies while she dropped by at snack time.
in fact often if it was kind of safe dads had the babies in their workshops for just that reason as we can see in these paintings:
The left is “the busy father” by Theodore Weber, the right one is “At the china repairer’s “ by Wenzel Tornoe. All dads who are actively involved in childcare and a painter who thought it was a cute topic rather than anything ridiculous.
That ‘comment on your a03 work’ email hits like a line of cocaine every time. unmatched dopamine increase. shoutout to everyone who leaves a comment on fics. you deserve the world
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man sometimes friendship really is just "I saw this and knew it would give you psychic damage. please respond with agony" and then they do. and it's great
