#i am so sorry...

I- I actually don't know man... I guess its a classic case of coming across a witch? That seems like something the fandom usually settles on?

Stanley is greedy and so they turn him into a dragon, bound to hoard treasures for the rest of his dragon life.

Then again, turning someone into a dragon seems like a too good of a curse? Like "oooh I'm gonna curse you with a million dollars ooooh" so I'm not sure.

Okay... So, I have to preface this by admitting that Bridgerton never has been my great big thing. It's a cake sculpted from cotton candy.

Pretty and sweet, but not much substance. And very much leaning on the "fantasy" so everyone can enjoy the costume romance fun (but it does please me to see my marginalized players, playing well...). -Using an author's works as a base, who not only started with an all-white palette but was flippant and insulting in response to the idea of inclusion... And yet...

I'm just saying, it is something that the woman who walked away from ABC because an exec didn't respect her enough to get a Disney pass for her family, went on to make that lucrative author's uplift deal with, instead of say, Beverly Jenkins. I love underdog romances that aren't the typical het white bread. Give me the canon gays (I never got slash...but I love when it's canon, especially with color), the big girls, the dark brown skin girls, the Black couples, and the interracials, especially when both are BIPOC and there's no lag in charm/looks in the lighter half in some expertly lit, dressed, confection that makes everyone look as gorgeous as they actually are and there's all kinds of soft plotting and chemistry. Bridgerton for all its lazy ways of handling color, gave that. Everybody is hot. And the people that studios have typically just pretended either weren't "invented" yet or were all living horrible tortured lives of enslavement got to get the sweet costumed wooing, will-they-won't-they, ~romance~ treatment. But... being an obscure Black history nerd... I'm neurodivergent, so I have some deep-dive GEMS that I'll mention here that I NEED TO SEE DONE WELL, before I die. FYI I called Dido Elizabeth Belle a good 8 years before that was actually made. It is frustrating to see some of the ACTUAL interesting capacities in which some actual existing Black folks in history who did live interesting, not tragic lives, not given the big glossy budget, well-written renderings they deserve... In lieu of what has now, firmly taken hold as a trend, colorblind casting in known white works. See recent adaptations of David Copperfield, Persuasion, Tom Jones, & Great Expectations,

and now, this The Buccaneers (which like I said, is Dollar Tree, and *worse* the colorblind cast sister Conchita is using her regular-eggular Cali accent and...is not a compelling actress & her man is a jar of mayo) and baby...them costumes are Reign-levels of anachronistic/bad. It's the lazy jump onto the trend Shonda exploded, and Mr. Malcolm's List started (yeah, that short film was put on YouTube a full year before Bridgerton debuted). So, my point... Instead of *just* doing colorblind casting in old classic white period works... I need to see these ACTUAL GREAT stories of and/or written by or about the colorful people who lived in those societies. And this is where it could get long... but I'll do my best to keep it short... EXAMPLES that were gotten right and those *I need to see adapted*: ____

Interview With The Vampire is inclusive color-AWARE casting... The showrunner went beyond and actually rewrote the narrative to make sure the inclusion wasn't lazily done, but actually improved the depth of the source IMO. And I believe the showrunner is a queer white man. It just takes empathy and effort.

Passing... is a moody slow-burn horror based upon an actual work written by a Black woman in that period, and adapted by a white-passing WOC who not only lived the theme, but rendered it expertly.

Belle is often pointed to as a good example, but my nerd-ass knows Gugu's beyond AMAZING handling of the material elevated it.

Too much was changed from the reality of her life (IMO), still...Most period dramas are about as "true" and yall know I was not a fan of Sam Reid's over-dramatic ass in this... (yelling in that damn carriage for what?!) but he is PERFECT in IWTV. Sanditon being made, despite the typical side-character Black character issues...really was a reset because Miss Austen had already envisioned, in her day and above her class(!) a Black heiress as a character getting the Austen treatment, w/o any modifications the salty and ignorant would prefer to think is beyond "true history". ----- I have a little hopeful part in my brain that wishes it had the power to will capable adaptions of the lives of Carlotta Stewart Lai - middle-class educated Black woman who became a teacher & lived an "Anne of Green Gables" type of Edwardian life (more interesting really) surfing, having "bathing parties," and teaching Hawaiians with her Black family, Portuguese, Hawaiian and Chinese friends on the big island... Her life was w/o the stereotypes people assume all Black Americans lived in Victorian/Edwardian "America".

Gustav Badin, a Black man who was "Chessmaster" of the Swedish Royal Court in the 1700's...was in charge of the Royal family's secrets after the Queen's passing, really gives me intelligent queer Black man energy in his portrait and lived out a non-tragic life in a VERY white space many don't know we occupied.

And The Hunters... Who already have a short film and I've posted about it here... but I would LOVE to see an actual rendering of their lives in the Klondike, with their gold and silver prospects and son grandson Buster and daughter Teslin in Edwardian Canada.

(that is Teslin at the highest point in the photo, named after the lake she was born at)

(and the Hunters' grandson Buster ice-fishing)

All this to say... Now, that I've thoroughly veered away from my review of a middling show... I WISH THESE DAMN SHOWRUNNERS used a little effort in research and imagination and gave us more "true to life" renderings of Black life (and life of color, in these romanticized spaces) that isn't tragic nor the patronizin inclusive "fantasy"... That feels like it's smirking at me while saying "we know you weren't ~really~ here, but here! have a cookie!!" These people existed.

You don't have to *just* make inclusive versions of white works with the lie that you have to do that because thee above people ~didn't exist~. Nor do you have to be lazy when you do!! (see: IWTV) Right now, for me... It feels like for the most part we're in a period of very shallow "advancement" in period rep. And I'm saying if little old me can find the actual stories that could make AMAZING true history-based media. Why can't the more powerful people do the same?? P.S.

You already know I'm fresh off being mad about that shitty Bass Reeves show...but I'm even madder because I can't even say, "just make sure its made by Black people," because Jeymes Samuel (AKA Bullitts) gave us skinny biracial StageCoach Mary!!!

---NO!! I will never stop being mad about it!!

DO BETTER!! Have the empathy and care for the material, regardless, and don't rest on "I know what I'm doing because I'm Black" That male gaze won out over truth in The Harder They Fall *smh*

P.P.S I get the feeling the lazy adaptions are about cash-grabbing, what they see as a trend, and being all the ready to jump back into the whitewashed business as usual, that ain't true to *all* actual histories nor (as Austen proved) fictions of those eras or spaces.

Sometimes Romeo tries to remind himself why he need to keep going on.

So... He ends up having his own little theater show. Showing him good moments of his past like his friendship with Carlo or his time with y/n.

It's cheers him up most of the time.

He needs to move on. Play his role as the king of puppets.

Skirmisher!Tartaglia x Skirmisher!GN!reader

WC: 495

Warnings: fighting (not explicit)

Tags: No Archive Warnings Apply, brainrot, No beta we die like hilichurls, unedited, I did this in like half an hour

A/N: this was... just an imagine... then bam!! fic. I am so sorry. I am down bad.