#[why can't it just let me live]

[vaguely-concerned]

thinking about how deeply lucanis' life has been defined by a lack of control of that life -- as he himself points out, even before the ossuary went and carved the headline out again with big bloody letters. of course he reacts badly to losing what little control he did manage to construct for himself even within those circumstances.

(namely: experience has taught him that things (caterina, loss, pain, love, all horribly and indelibly intermingled) will happen to him whether he wants them to or not and there's nothing he can do about that... but he gets to decide what's let in or out of his soul as it happens, even if he has to close it all down and deaden and numb himself out in the process. (even if that means he drifts further and further away from illario, who's been desperately reaching out and trying to keep hold of him until he finally gives up completely and tries to cut the bond all at once when lucanis doesn't seem to reach back anymore.) it's such rare well-observed freeze logic solidly constructed from the bottom up, I'm still so impressed with it.

the way illario seeks constant external means to cope with caterina's abuse and importance in his life -- he can't win her admiration or acceptance or warmth (or like. acknowledgement even, at times :') ), no matter what, so he goes out and finds those things in others and then disdains and dismisses it for how easily and falsely it's won from them. he plots, he conspires, he tries to beat her at her own game however clumsily, he tries. lucanis doesn't try things that way. he's not about 'how do I improve my situation' by nature, he's 'how can I stop this from getting worse'. he avoids, he internalizes, he hunkers down and makes himself nothing until the pain maybe ends. he's fundamentally not a plotter, he's a reacter. an expert assassin pantser, if you will, to illario's clear and stated exasperation fhsak. man I love them. illario says 'get us out of here!!! if you loved me as I love you you'd help me get us out of here before it kills us both', lucanis says 'there is no other place, there's nowhere to go, all we can do is endure. and if it kills us... well, that's just family. that's what love is (the way things are headed I'll die first anyway so it's fine I won't have to face losing you)', and they're equally baffled and hurt by each other's POV. but they're both right, and they're both wrong. there's no 'right' way to deal with caterina's treatment of them, or their situation. the house always wins, if you pardon the expression. house dellamorte still stands and that is what matters to caterina in the end more than anything.

it also fits so well b/c like... their core wounds are that illario is the least favourite and is constantly dismissed, so he has to prove to caterina again and again that he matters. not even that he's worth love or respect or warm regard, but that he's here at all and as such should be considered. he has to shout 'in case u forgot I EXIST!!' at the top of his lungs or else be rendered nothing within the family structure (and himself, because it's all about family, that's all that really matters. in some weird twisted way I think caterina openly declaring him before all the other crows to still be of house dellamorte -- and no one from house dellamorte kneels -- is kind of a victory for him, as much as it's also a furthering of a prison sentence and public humiliation. house dellamorte brainfuckery goes hard.). lucanis is the favourite, and it's the double-edged sword that he gets all the affection and attention but also all the control and impossible expectations. drowning under all of that constant stress and close evaluation, his brain whispers 'I don't exist' to try to escape, to hide and hold on to the deep parts of himself that are crucial to life but not part of the perfect grandson caterina demands of him as the price of her love.)

I think a lot about how what seems to disquiet lucanis the most post-ossuary (as it would anyone with that psychological makeup) is the dissolving of internal boundaries and control he's been relying on, which is part of what spite symbolizes. his anger and reactivity has seceded from the union to the point of personification as a little guy (a little guy he resents and fears for his unpredictability and invasions into regions of his psyche he wishes to stay frozen and barren, and yet cares about deeply, loves! and also constantly dismisses and frequently helplessly lets down unless he's helped to learn to do otherwise. does this remind you of another relationship in his life, perhaps. it makes me feel nuts to think about the illario/spite parallels thanks for asking), and now that little guy is out there running the show freely the moment he glances away or closes his eyes. literal nightmare scenario I feel for him so deeply. so much of his coping is predicated on being able to Not do or feel or want certain things, and that's out the window now, Spite has Opinions. Spite refuses to stay wisely in place even if that place is hell on the logic that if you move you could find yourself in a place that's even worse, somehow. Spite actually wants to experience the world, however fucked up and scarring the way he arrived here, not just endure it. Spite means he has to face that maybe illario wasn't wrong all those years, at the same time as having to admit and face what illario has done to him, and figure out what to do about any of it.

anyway. mary kirby ma'am that's some good fucking metaphor work. thank you, and sorry about all the shit that happened

[dewwshi]

The people demand more Minlach. ( please more we are desperate and your art of them is so good 🥺🥺🥺)

🫡

my beautiful yuri... sooo critical to me that minthara 1. fell first 2. fell harder. something abt the idea of this self-avowed villain being utterly and inexplicably smitten with the sweetest nicest golden retriever girl in the world

[lunarharp]

warming back up with 89 feelings

[moonchild-in-blue]

WHY IS HE LOOKING AT ME LIKE THAT. WHORE 🫵🫵🫵🫵

[zvahlne]

headcanon: shadow knights can't cry.

it takes him a long while to notice. he had never considered himself much of a crier. it wasn't that he thought there was anything wrong with crying. he was just one to keep moving, keep doing, show the people around him and under his care that it would be alright, no matter what had happened. some might accuse him of bottling for this, though whether it was selfless for others (so they wouldn't worry; so they could cry while he carried it) or selfish (so he wouldn't have to think about it, wouldn't have to feel it), up for debate. either way, he would disagree, and had whenever someone close enough to him to notice the pattern mentioned it (usually cadenza).

...the last time he remembers crying was with cadenza. it was about joh.

he didn't cry in the nether (no water can last long there; how could he? your eyes could never get wet enough. every blink in the nether is stinging).

he didn't cry when he was brought back, not for his sight, not for ungrth (more surprising, but he was in shock. nothing felt real in those days, and after, he had things to do, people to care for).

it's when he loses 15 years and he comes back to his father's death and can't shed a single tear that he finally thinks he really ought to be crying. but he isn't. he can't?

he goes to ungrth's grave and he thinks of ungrth and he thinks of hayden and he thinks of joh and he thinks of garroth and he grits his teeth, he digs his nails into his palms, he gets a headache from how tight his brows furrow, he feels an ache so intense in his chest he's gasping for breath, but his eyes are as dry as they've since the day he died (he wants to cry, he should be crying, why isn't he crying?).

his life is taken from him, replaced with facsimile. the man he trusted more than himself betrayed him, and is now lost a dimension away. he's lost fifteen years, his father passed without him present, his friend's grave has been desecrated, the places he lived in and loved and protected fallen and rebuilt, all in his absence, all to be discovered all at once. he loses nearly everything, he watches helplessly as he loses even himself. and yet...

laurance can't cry.

[ruby-red-inky-blue]

So, uh, to recap on the ladies of Andor, the pinnacle of progressive writing according to internet consensus:

Bix: After her character consisting only of "good at mechanics", formerly crafty (in the first Ferrix arc) and "traumatised", Bix gains a new character trait this arc - helpless rage and ✨✨✨drug addiction✨✨✨! Goodie. I'm so mad at this arc for her. We never see this woman happy independent of her trauma. We see her make happy for men - the shopkeep, Cassian occasionally, Brasso and co. in the first arc - but the only time we get an unobserved smile is when she gets her big Girlboss Yay Feminism revenge. And the featurette has everyone going "oh this is her moment", "this scene is about her" - IT'S NOT!! It's about Gorst! It's more trauma porn! Her happiness and functionality once again are dependent on men! She couldn't save herself from her trauma - she needed Cassian to help her get the drop on Gorst (and let's ignore how fucking improbable all that is for a moment, how does he even know where Gorst is???), and her happiness is fully dependent on Gorst living or dying. Her character does not EXIST without him this season. Why do we only ever see her take charge of her life to kill her abusers? The only other positive thing she's done for her life this whole season is to clean up the apartment, and she was doing that to *checks notes* hide her drug habit from her overprotective boyfriend. Feminism!! Please don't read this as an indictment of people struggling to cope with trauma, or substance abuse - I'm just so tired of everyone acting like this is such an uplifting, empowering narrative for this character, because I really, really, really don't see it.

Bringing up Maarva and Kerri as people Cassian failed to protect and nothing else is so telling. That's not even what happened! He was abducted as a child, he didn't abandon his sister, and what was he going to save Maarva from? Old age?? But that's their whole narrative purpose to the writers I guess...

Mothma: Well, I know the constant political downward trajectory is her whole thing, but we really spend the whole arc seeing her do nothing but failing to convince other politicians (mostly men) of anything and being made to look like a fool for even bothering. So far all we've given her this season is being too soft and emotional (which, by the way, is why it's a little odd to me they're pinning the same thing on Cassian - why do we need this narrative redundancy here?). And her one "big moment" (read: over thirty seconds of uninterrupted talking) she gets to have this arc is either a front for Kleya's and Luthen's business or a pointless and reckless lashing out at Krennic's overt imperialism and propaganda.

Dedra: Yeah, she's holding all the strings, but in a weird way, her whole narrative is dependent on Syril now, and I have a bad feeling this is all leading up to him being butthurt about being used. It's a great spy storyline, but just like Mothma's part, great as it is, in combo with the deeply uncool treatment of Bix, it starts to feel like an unfortunate pattern.

Cinta: I actually liked her scenes a lot! Especially the scene in the café - it had an interesting ambiguity, for a moment there I was wondering if Cinta was running Vel, getting back with her to keep her on track on someone's orders. I think I may be giving the script too much credit here, given how weirdly stilted the other two romances were handled this arc it might have rather been a case of "the writer really thinks lovers talk that way". But even if it was an accident, I think that would be an interesting feature in the show, because they're the one couple who genuinely seem to be compatible and on the same page about what they want! And I get that they were making a point to get her killed so uselessly, by friendly fire, on accident. But man, this show refuses to give a woman happiness, even for the span of a timeskip. Whenever any of the ladies seems happy or get something she wants for herself, you can already be sure she's about to die or have something incredibly heinous happen to her immediately after. And the execution of that scene pissed me off, because if that scuffle had even just been relocated to the tunnel entrance, I would have bought it. But no, they're in a really wide, mostly empty alleyway, the blaster was mostly pointed at a wall and trapped between the two men wrestling for it, and you don't even see anyone being close behind them, and yet Cinta not only manages to get hit but instantly killed - what are the fucking chances? And yes, it's a metaphor, but again, with the overall bad aftertaste, it feels targeted and cruel at this point. With how little we got to see of Cinta, it really made her death seem like an afterthought. Like Brasso, this could have packed a punch, but we knew so little about her and had seen her even less, so it just fell flat.

My only positives(ish):

Vel: Her character is really growing on me! She has such a nice, well-executed, subtle development compared to most other characters on this show. She's clearly learned from Aldhani, and she's learning from Mothma and Luthen, too, and her resentment at the life she's leading is so beautifully expressed by her last scene: The greatest punishment she can imagine is recruitment to her cause. Because that's what she's doing to this guy. Recruitment. This is on you forever, this is all your life is now, you owe me and everyone whatever you have to make up for this. That's so heartbreaking, and so real. Am I pissed that Vel is constantly and pointedly denied happiness at absolutely every turn? Yeah! But at least for her, it feels like there is a little more agency, because she chose this life, even though she clearly has options. For her, it feels a little more tragic and narratively weighty, and less like a pointless onslaught of misery.

Kleya: I love her so much. And I could (and should) point out that it feels a little shallow to have her be completely reduced to "being the only competent person among men who are losing their shit at all times". We know nothing else about her, other than that she is Girlboss(TM). But, unlike with Bix, we actually see her be outstandingly competent completely on her own merit all the time, and even though the script neglects her, too, there is an implication that she has actively and deliberately sacrificed the rest of herself to be this spymaster - instead of the writers simply forgetting to give her anything more. And I just think Elizabeth Dulau is KILLING IT. In a weird way, Kleya is giving me the power fantasy that most Star Wars gave to little boys. It's not exactly a win for feminism - it's yet another flavour of "women can either be competent and powerful OR express their emotions and be vulnerable with people" - but I do have a soft spot for her, and her moment at the exhibition was the tensest shit I've seen this whole season. Nothing more gripping so far than watching this woman attempt to turn a screw.

[camellcat]

first xander brought her back with human breath and determination... then willow with supernatural power and love.... smth smth two halves to keep their third in balance from drifting too far into either side and losing herself.....

[sillygoofyqueer]

As part TWO of my birthday posts because it's the SECOND of July so you know. I've gotta do it. You can take the silly billy TGCF and MDZS crossover AU! It works either in the context of the TGCF and SVSSS crossover AU or by itself, so I'll probably just go by whatever I'm feeling when I start writing it. After I've finished the other one. Because I have to learn how to focus on one thing at a time. (LH I WILL UPDATE YOU.) ALSO, I completely forgot this but there are TGCF spoilers talked about casually from book four so like do with that what you will. He Xuan will admit to anyone but Hua Cheng that he is moping. Why wouldn't he? He's going through a very...very bad breakup, okay. Truly brutal. Yin Yu dragged him out of his manor because "you can't rot any more, your old body is already ashes", so he now just has to solemnly drag himself through the mortal realm for something to do. Yes, there are rumours of a strange, dark ghost mourning the loss of his beloved currently travelling through towns, but He Xuan doesn't care about such things. He's bored! At least in his manor, there were many different places to sleep away his boredom. In the human realm, people will start screaming if they stumble across him sleeping in a lake because "I thought you were drowning!" They don't appreciate it when he says that he's already drowned, saying something about 'calling cultivators' like they'll be able to deal with him. Yin Yu had told him something about the cultivators becoming more cocky, but he didn't think they would be this cocky now!

He ends up in a forgotten place, a slum compared to the vibrant, bustling towns he has been traversing through. It's not nice by any means, but it is what he has been searching for, the reminder of why he had killed all those people so long ago, why he had ripped Shi Wudu's head off in the culmination of centuries of planning. Humanity is cruel. There may be nice people, or places where society seems perfect, but then there are places like these. Places where all of the dirt and grit that the other parts of society have brushed away culminate together to create the most realistic yet vile parts that people look upon with sympathy and disgust. People starve here. People struggle to stay afloat. They are mean and cruel and they can't afford to care about anyone but themselves and their families. Humanity in its truest form. It's not pretty. Prettiness is just a façade that it puts up to make it seem better, feel better. Feral dogs and starving children and dead bodies with quiet, tired ghosts sitting beside them.

He Xuan lingers here. He doesn't know why, but he does linger. He watches and he sits with the ghosts, not saying anything but just being there. Humanity is cruel, and death can be just as cruel, but he's always viewed it as a comfort as well. Humanity turned away from them, but death and its ghosts will not do the same thing. He tells them to go to Ghost City, because Yin Yu would be pleased with him for doing that, and then he turns to go. Instead of leaving, he's suddenly almost being bowled over by a small, boney child who is screaming in fear while being pursued by a pack of stray dogs whose hunger has left them with nothing but violence on their mind. He gets it. Nobody even turns their heads to see what's going on as they push their wares and steal and fight because it's every person for themselves. Humanity is cruel. Death, however, is not. He Xuan does not look away from the young boy, turning his head to follow the panicked child with his eyes. Death is cruel, but it is also comforting. His feet move and he is following behind the pack of wild dogs before he can really think about what he's doing, the fear of being like those he killed spurring him into movement.

The dogs have cornered this small boy into an alley, and he's sobbing out of terror and pain as blood drips from his arm and down one of his legs, but he clings to the stale and half-eaten bun that must have started all of this. The dogs growl as they slowly approach him, but they don't make it too far before He Xuan is upon them, letting out a low snarl of his own that has them freezing. He picks up the nearest one and tosses it languidly to the side, the answering yelp a clear warning to these hungry dogs. He steps through the pack to reach the tiny child and picks him up without blinking because while this boy is covered in grime and it's smearing onto his robes, he's not squeamish or someone who cares about cleanliness. One of the dogs bites at his ankle but rears back at the poisonous taste of death it finds as its teeth break the skin, leaving him time to kick it aside. The boy clings to him, bones digging into his body and grating against his own perpetually skinny frame with every movement as he carries him out of the alleyway. He's still crying, and he whines softly when He Xuan plucks the stale bun from his hand, throwing it over his shoulder. The dogs wisely don't follow.

He Xuan takes the boy to the nearest food stall, where the seller perks up at the business but wrinkles his nose at the sign of the boy. "What has that rat done now? Is he bothering xiansheng?" All He Xuan does is level him with a similar glare he gave to the dogs; in an ideal situation, he'd turn away and find another stall, but the child is already distressed at the loss of his only food source and probably scared of him for this reason, so he reluctantly orders two bowls of noodles. They don't look appetising in any sense of the world, but that familiar hunger is clinging to him and he would eat literally anything right now, and he doesn't think the child is going to be very picky either, not with how his sobs subside and he eyes up the bowls with such a familiar look that He Xuan's chest aches with it. It's not like he hasn't had that exact same reaction to food - he still does, sometimes. He sits them down on the street near a (clear) alleyway and, in a stroke of what can only be utter madness, forgoes feeding himself first and holds out the bowl of noodles to the ratty boy still firmly in his lap.

Another ache slides through his chest at the awed look the child gives the food, hesitantly whispering "for A-Ying?" All he can really do is clear his throat and reply "yes, for A-Ying." before watching as tiny hands reach out and gently hold the bowl that looks so big compared to him. Oh shit, those hands are dirty, he's still bleeding- He Xuan reaches out just as A-Ying moves to take a handful, hiding a wince at the utterly pained little sound of confusion escaping the boy as he pulls out a handkerchief and wipes those grime ridden hands. A-Ying watches him carefully as he moves, immediately diving into the food the second he lets go, which is...fair. He turns to his own food, making short work of the bowl and only realising that A-Ying hasn't even made it halfway through his food, still staring at it hungrily, after he finishes it off. "What's wrong?" He asks, and the boy looks up at him with eyes filled with such desperate hunger as he beams and says "A-Ying needs to save it!" And oh, if that isn't something he's been through.

He can't help but see himself in this tiny, emaciated little boy who is scared of food being taken, of being hungry again. Before he can think about it, his mouth opens and he blurts out "A-Ying doesn't. This one will feed A-Ying whenever he wants." He doesn't even have a chance to think about the implications about what he's just said and how utterly stupid it is because now the tiny boy is staring up at him with this awed gaze and he has this quietly hopeful tone to his voice as he goes "really?" And what is He Xuan supposed to say to that? 'No, I wasn't thinking'? No. No, he isn't going to be the one to break this little boy's heart and extinguish that little hope in his eyes. He isn't going to fail this boy like humanity already has. "If A-Ying wants, he can come with me and I will look after him. All the food he could want." The utter shock and joy that blooms over A-Ying's face is enough that he doesn't even feel like a fool for saying it. He doesn't know how he's going to go about it or anything - the last child that he ever truly had a hand in raising was his sister and that was centuries ago - but he's going to keep this child safe and alive.

A-Ying tells him that his name is "Wei Ying, but Mama and Baba called me A-Ying!" And He Xuan introduces himself as he finally finds a clean river (they're all so dirty nearby, he can sense the blood and dirt and piss that swirls around in them) to wash the boy and clean his wounds, offering up his own outer robe as a substitute until he can get him some better fitting clothes. A-Ying calls him 'gege', and he doesn't correct him. He doesn't bother going to a nearby tailor for A-Ying's clothes, doesn't bother travelling any longer. He scoops the boy back up and draws up a teleportation array with his foot, not wanting to get A-Ying anywhere near the floor after just cleaning him up, and casually steps through it to his manor. A-Ying is in awe of the place but he's suddenly realising that the place is very dark and gloomy, not conductive for a child, so he clicks his fingers and some angler fish spirits come darting down the hallway, lighting the way while the child gasps in delight at what he's seeing. So happy and bright despite what he's been through.

He Xuan is used to making his own clothes - before Yin Yu, before Hua Cheng, before his death, his mother used to make their clothes and he used to help her because she liked to put a bit of her love in everything she did - so he measures A-Ying up. He doesn't blink at the thinness of the boy, far too used to it all, instead just adjusts his measurements to give him some space to grow into, and then finally calls for Yin Yu to grab some fabrics. While they wait for him to come, He Xuan gives A-Ying some snacks (because he wants snacks and the child deserves snacks) and introduces him to his babies. The large, looming fish spirits immediately take to A-Ying's shining laughter, nuzzling huge heads against his body and letting out little creaking sounds of their own delight. Yin Yu finds them like this, A-Ying wrapped in his outer robe while he holds him close, talking to him quietly about what they like to eat and how they will keep him safe. He doesn't say anything, just raises a brow, and He Xuan can only shrug. He doesn't know why he has A-Ying. He doesn't know why he's saved him. He just has.

[theverumproject]

Guys, how do you format on AO3? Any tips?

I use Google docs and got the whole work formatted in there, but it doesn't translate very well into rich text, since it seems to get confused about bold text that isn't supposed to be there.

This is the second time I upload a book on AO3 and I don't remember having this problem back then.

As a last resort I will have to go through the entirety of 60k words again, just to look for every. single. fucking. word in italics, mark them and then reformat everything on AO3 again, so it doesn't get confused anymore. And that would piss me the fuck off. I don't wanna look at this book no more...

So, how do you guys do it?

:_)

[oceanwithouthermoon]

sometimes i get so irrationally mad that people genuinely don't believe terusai is implied and then i remember that there's still people who think zelink in tears of the kingdom aren't implied...

[saxandviolins77]

Scavenger is extremely self-aware; he knows exactly what's wrong with him and why he does what he does. I think he's so self-aware, in fact, that it goes back to him not just being self-conscious but mastering the art of being aware of how he comes off to people (which also goes back to him being very annoying to be around, because he's a try-hard).

Hook is on the other end of that spectrum. His self-awareness is the size of a mustard grain, but he doesn't know it! So while he can't tell anything about himself beyond "I'm the best and smartest person that has ever done it; I don't have problems; other people project their insignificant problems onto me," he still believes he's super sensible and in touch with himself... until something goes out of his control, then he crumbles.

[silvertws]

My idea of Odysseus and the Odyssey in general has been now clouded by the musical.

It's cool to know what's gonna happen, love having to study that in elementary.

Hey, Odysseus, when are you going to tell your family you're actually leaving again to die at sea? :D

[gideonisms]

fun thing about my own gender is that it is incomprehensible to me and my feelings about it quite literally change based on the weather

[shakingparadigm]

horrendously sick and twisted btw

[alongtidesoflight]

i swear my stepdad is so illogical AND stubborn it hurts

[sweet-cuddlebug]

If my gamtav is not filled with yearning and longing and desiering then i don't want it