Rambling Down the Boulevard,

notasupervillain  was asking about technologies that led to social justice and cmcmck  offered the bicycle as an example which I +1’ed. That would have been the end of it except I was thinking about the Wizard of Oz for some reason and I couldn’t connect the thoughts but knew they were related.

Thanks adhd.

Thankfully, I put together this morning, and think it’s interesting enough to share. I think the Miss Gulch was put on a bicycle deliberately in the Kansas sequence as a visual shorthand for the sort of woman who rides a bicycle- nasty threatening spinsters. We see her on the bike before she ever opens her mouth and wonder if that was signaling to the (1930s) audience what sort of person she was supposed to be.

During the twister we see Miss Gulch transform into the witch of the west and the bike transform into a broom, which visually links the two. It makes some sense, both are means of transportation for independent women but guess I’m wondering if that coding was deliberate? Any thoughts?

( bonus round )

So staranise has a fabulous take on how to fix the princess bride which corresponded to a lot of my frustrations on Buttercups writing; though I tended to approach it from the other way round. I posted a short version of this in the comments on that post and went back and reread it this morning. Said, no wait I can do better, which is what I hope this post is.

I was always so frustrated with how flat Buttercup was but I approached it from the other way round. The Princess Bride is a pastiche of fairy tales, so my thought experiments in it have always leaned towards what if Buttercup was genre savvy? The world she lives in runs on fairy tale logic and Buttercup has always been good at identifying the stories she’s surrounding her. 

We could have examples of that- Buttercup refusing to go to the well on Wednesday because that’s when the old woman from the woods (a Good Neighbor) comes out and sits by it and Buttercup doesn’t have it in her to be polite to her. A boy from two farms over offers her the beans he got trading away the families last cow and she tells him to go home and plant them instead. A frog asks her for a kiss and she sends him over to poorest family in town, whose daughters are notably kind; next thing anybody knows they been whisked away by a prince in disguise whose fallen madly in love with the youngest. All of those would establish Buttercup as both competent, clever, and (relatively) kind. 

When she was young, Buttercup thought she knew what story she was living in. She and Wesley had True Love and he would go off and have adventures and come home wealthy and rescue her in some way and then they would live Happily Ever After. And then she gets the news and she realizes must have been wrong. Buttercup doesn't know what story she's living in, but she knows now it’s not a happy one. 

She emerges from her year of mourning the Most Beautiful Woman in the World and flattened by grief, chronically depressed, knowing that she will never love again. So when Prince Humperdinck rides up to her and orders her to marry him she says, "I will marry the man that brings me the head and the heart of the Dread Pirate Roberts and no other." Because being the Most Beautiful Woman in the World means she can say things like that and people will listen. Beautiful women handing out impossible quests for their hand is a staple of fairytales. She can act within the constraints of her role. 

Prince Humperdinck does not say, “as you wish,” but something about the way he nods his head in acquiescence drives her back inside for a week. 

Word of her proclamation spreads and wealthy men flock to her. They gift her with jewels and silk, dance attendance on her, brag of the ships they have hired to hunt down her pirate. She eats little and smiles less but the more men look upon her the further her challenge spreads. Buttercup becomes a wealthy woman on their gifts and that spreads her legend even further. The Most Beautiful Woman in the World has a certain amount of reach but a wealthy beautiful woman has even more.

And Buttercup is willing to use every inch of it. Grief makes her cold, and she knows what happens to women who don't marry their True Loves in this world. They are not the heroes of anyone's story. 

The Dread Pirate Roberts, on his new ship, notices an increase in people refusing to surrender. Eventually he starts asking why. 

The first man, a sailor in the prime of his life, tells him about a beautiful women and they say, you murdered her brother and she cannot eat or sleep while you still walk the earth.

The second, a noble, greedy and grasping. What’s does it matter, he says, she wants your head and your heart and will marry the man who brings it to her.

The third, a midshipman with stars in his eyes says, they say you murdered her One True Love and she’s sworn to never love again but she’ll marry the man who kills you. 

We can still have the kidnap plot, one of her suitors getting impatient maybe? Hell, it can even be the six fingered man so we can still get get Inigo Montoya and I want my father back. But this time when Roberts catches up to her, he says "I have brought you the head and the heart of the Dread Pirate Roberts. I believe you've made promises to that effect."

Buttercup doesn’t try to push him off a cliff, she tries to stab him. Then he reveals himself and it turns out Buttercup was right about the kind of story she was living in originally. It just took them more pain than was necessary to get there.

They don’t need to go on the run (unless they want to) because Wesley filled the terms of her challenge. They can retire on her money and live Happily Ever After. 

Got a comment of history's longest suicide note pointing out that coffee drinking is anachronistic and I figured I'd write some meta on it. 

+

SO I did actually consider throwing in a line about a speaker caravan having carried it back from the east and Sypha getting into it then but decided not to for two reasons. One is the handwavey something like 50% of castlevania is anachronistic, do not get me started on Trevor’s short sword it makes me want to tear my hair out, and therefore other anachronisms are more or less acceptable. 

Two, though, is the one I actually thought about, so hold on to your socks. So my theory of the castlevania world is that it doesn’t track with our historical development for three reasons.

1. Vlad Tepes the historical figure was born between 1428-1431 and died between 1476-1477. The action in the series kicks off with Lise’s appearance at the castle in 1455 and Dracula is explicitly stated as having been hundreds (if not thousands) of years old when he meets her, which means who knows what else they’ve messed with. 
2. Magic! They have magic that allows people to farsee, to teleport, and as sypha demonstrated the ability to use magic to clear land. Extrapolating from that I suspect they have lots of mundane uses for magic (building roads and house, creating timber, heating water, etc.) Because of those two factors I suspect that Castlevania’s world in 1475 was much smaller than ours was at the same time period. 
3. They clearly have some concept of globalism. Dracula’s generals are supposed to represent, as far as I can tell the Viking/Celts- Godbrand. India/Pakistan region- the female general in the headdress and sari? I think it’s a sari and the male general in turban. Hector is greek and Isaac is african. I personally like the idea of Moroccan!Isaac but I’m open to arguments there, and wiki tells me the disappearing female vampire’s name was Cho, which is a Korean surname. So I fall on the side of the argument that they haven extensive land networks. (And the reason that there are no New World Vampires is that they can’t cross the ocean to get there.) 

So I decided that Sypha as a nomad would have encountered coffee either through her own travels or be trading with another speaker caravan. Alucard, I decided was introduced to it by his mother, who got addicted when she first starting living with Dracula and he refused to tailor his hours to a human. So Lise discovered coffee as a way to make it through all the all-nighters she had to pull- Dracula’s Magical Kitchen has Everything, and never quite kicked the habit after. (Her pregnancy incidentally was the Actual Worst because she went eight months cold turkey. Her first request after naming Adrien was for a cup.)

My headcanon for Trevor is that after the Belmont Estate went up in flames, he did the whole soldier of fortune thing and never had the money for coffee and the few times he did, he spent it on booze instead. So Sypha and Alucard are both a little addicted and expect a cup in the mornings and Trevor takes good care of his husband and wife team by providing it to them. 

*rolls up to this fandom with coffee, two to ten years late depending on your perspective*

So you know what just occurred to me, watching this show? Elena is the heir.

• Clay’s a strong right hand, useful and willing, but not a leader of men, not an organizer. His perspective is too limited, he doesn’t think long term. (It might have been him, before Elena. But Jeremy is too pragmatic to not recognize the way things change. Clay proved his unworthiness when he chose to bite her.)
• Antonio was too weak and proved it when he stepped aside for Jeremy. He’s a good advisor and a loyal friend but he refused power when it was offered. He knew it would slip out of his hands if it was given to him.
• Nick is Antonio’s son with all his weaknesses, magnified in some ways, minimized in others. He’s charming, good with people but he’s Clays friend first
• Pete doesn’t want it. He never has and even if he did the years he spent outside the pack and his experiences have made him an outsider. He couldn’t hold the Pack if he led it.
• Logan could. Theoretically, maybe. He’s the got the history, a trueborn son of the Pack, grown among his brothers. He thinks in the ways Jeremy approves of. But in a challenge (and it would come to a challenge because Logan’s spent years baring his throat to Clay) he would lose. And every member of the pack knows it.

Now Jeremy thinks he’s got time enough. Jeremy at any given moment has at least three backups in motion. He’s not an old man, he could still get an heir. But the ruthless bit of him whispers- here she is. He’s not immune to the awe a female werewolf causes.

Jeremy watched his father murder his mother, once she had ‘served her purpose’. He was certain then that there had to be a better way. Thirty years later he’s still certain, still searching. (This, incidentally, is the reason Jeremy doesn’t have a blood heir.) In between he had Clay, his son in all but blood and he thought for a while that that would be enough. Clay would be a tyrant but he would see the Pack safe, their enemies conquered.

It hurts Jeremy when Clay doesn’t out grow his impulsiveness. When Clay can’t make himself fit.

And then- Elena.

Elena is the culmination of his failure and the proof of thirty years of conviction. There’s a better way.

She’s it.

Alya runs the definitive Ladybug site. She’s the first call for Ladybug interviews (and if Chat ever gives one she’s likely to be his first choice too- a. Because he trusts his lady’s judgement and b. Because he knows her.) Alya is, in fact, the only member of the media we’ve seen Ladybug speak too.

Ladybug literally leaps right past the camera crews to talk to Alya in the mime episode.

So she has exclusive content, is basically guaranteed to be right on site when an attack breaks out (I have theories about that too but that’s a whole ‘nother post) and runs a site specifically for her content.

Alya Césaire is absolutely internet famous. Full stop.

The Ladyblog is not something she really expected to take off. (tbf Alya never expected to be living in a world with superheroes in it.) But she was on site when the first attack happened and a child of her generation and a reporter to the bone- so she’s got the best angle when Ladybug appears and shouts at “Lucky Charm” to the sky.

She ran a blog half heartedly before Ladybug and the footage of that fight, the first fight, is the post with the single most comments, reblogs, likes. She turns off her phone that night because it won’t stop buzzing as notifications come in. The conversation that comes out of it, the speculation, it’s better than fandom for her. She’s deep down the rabbit hole when the next Akuma strikes eight blocks down from her apartment. Alya runs towards the fight.

The Ladyblog is created the next day. It’s a mix of exclusive footage, speculation on origins and identity of their hero, and squee.

She’s there two weeks later when Chat Noir joins the fight, already recording, and he has to haul her out of the way of a plasma blast. She gets the first interview either of them ever gives that time.

It’s willful the way she throws herself into danger after that.