#and is frustrating to watch because it's not even consistent with the internal logic of the show

[porchtart]

i gotta be real, the biggest hurdle i've been facing with writing open arms is not trying to make terry and tory make sense as a ship, but rather trying to make the actual canon events of season 5 make sense, even completely removed from any shipping context.

[jungkoode]

hi! this might be totally random, and of course i don’t expect a reply—especially with the sheer amount of asks and notifs you must get on the daily (not to mention you’re out of town this weekend, i hope that’s going well btw!)—but i really needed to share this thought spiral with you. it hit me out of nowhere and honestly i haven’t been able to shake it off, and it feels important. so i hope you receive this simply, and read it when you can. no pressure, just—this one’s been sitting in my chest all day and it’s your fault (in the best possible way).

so. i was watching one of those short-form chinese dramas that tiktok loves to throw at me—something light for a saturday morning after walking the dogs. the premise was peak melodrama, which, fine, love that for them: emperor disguises himself as a homeless man to find a wife, a princess drops the satin ball (we’ve all seen this plot), and he catches it while in disguise. the court and her family are scandalized. but of course, our girl doesn’t care about wealth or appearances (because obviously—god forbid a female lead has material standards lmao). anyway. it was campy, it was dramatic, it was something.

but the more i watched, the more i started to unravel. not because the drama was particularly intense or bad, but because it made me realize something very specific about why your writing hits so hard. see, the show had all the beats of a classic story—conflict, betrayal, stakes. and yet… i couldn’t take it seriously. i was angry. i was bored. i was waiting for nuance that never came.

like—the protagonist’s parents were just cruel. unrelentingly, senselessly cruel. there was no arc, no remorse, no deeper motivation—just this weirdly flat, endless loop of them hating their daughter and loving the one who married rich. they threw handmade gifts in her face. the sister literally made her walk barefoot over burning stones. like?? is this tragedy or satire?? because it had none of the emotional grounding to justify the former, and none of the self-awareness to pull off the latter.

and that’s when it hit me. i’ve seen this before. i’ve felt this frustration before. but it’s only after reading your work that i could name it.

you write with coherence.

i mean that in the most jaw-droppingly sincere way. you write with intention. the drama in your stories never exists for its own sake—it comes from the characters themselves. their backstories. their fears. their desires. their specific, recognizable humanness. and it’s so seamless that you almost don’t notice until you do, and then you start seeing everything else fall apart by comparison.

because here’s the thing—it’s easy to create a hook. to throw conflict into a story and let it spiral. but it’s hard—insanely hard—to create tension that matters. to make a reader feel like every moment is inevitable and surprising. to have them see the betrayal coming, and still gasp when it happens, because it makes so much sense. and you do that. consistently.

your characters don’t just act—they behave. they respond in ways that feel psychologically sound, emotionally layered, real. and when something hurts, it hurts because it was earned. because it’s not just shock—it’s history. it’s logic. it’s everything unsaid coming to a head. and that’s the difference.

that’s why your writing is revolutionary, actually.

not because the stories are wildly experimental (though some of them are, like 25H—i’m still not over that), but because they’re honest. grounded. you’ve set a new standard for what “good storytelling” actually means, and i think a lot of people are slowly starting to realize that. it’s not about originality—it’s about authenticity. about the care you put into making sure everything lines up: motivation, arc, internal logic, plot. even when things break, they break with intention.

i’ve seen people in your asks saying you’ve ruined other fics for them—and i get it now. because once you’ve experienced storytelling where characters fall in love for a reason, where their wounds and fears and decisions are in character, where the plot grows organically from who they are… you can’t go back. you notice when something is lazy. you feel it when a choice is unearned. and it’s jarring.

so yeah. this ask is long and maybe dramatic but i needed to say it: you’re doing something quietly, devastatingly brilliant. and even if not everyone can articulate why your writing hits the way it does, i promise they’re feeling it. subconsciously, absolutely. because once you read something like this, you change. you start to expect more.

thank you for ruining bad writing for me. sincerely. i wouldn’t have it any other way.

What. The. Fuck. :(((((

I read this in one breath. I think I forgot how to blink. My chest physically hurt a little from the recognition in it. I don’t even know where to begin except just—thank you. Thank you so much. This is not just “feedback.” This is like… the anatomy of storytelling reflected back to me in full color. ☹️

What you said about coherence—about the emotional grounding and behavioral logic—I think that’s it. That’s exactly what I lose sleep over trying to get right. I genuinely believe stories don’t have to be shocking to be shattering. They don’t have to be cruel to be compelling. They just need to make sense. And “sense” doesn’t mean clean. It doesn’t mean likable. It means: can I trace this decision back to who this person is, what they’ve been through, what they’ve internalized, and what they’re afraid of?

And when you said they don’t just act, they behave—I don’t know if you realize how rare it is for someone to see that. Like truly see that. That language means so much to me. Because I think often people read behavior as just noise or mistake or messiness, when really, it’s patterned. Even when it’s self-sabotaging. Especially when it is. And you named it. You named the pattern. That’s so rare.

You said it wasn’t dramatic, but this ask is honestly devastating to me in the softest, most humbling way. It means more than you know that you noticed. That something I built with a trembling hand and a hundred second-guesses managed to sharpen your sense of what matters in a story. That you now expect more. That you want reason. That it jarrs you when it isn’t there. That… woah, it means the world to me. Really.

This… message is something I’ll carry with me. For real. It’s not just kind or generous—it’s sharp. It’s incisive. You didn’t just compliment the fic. You named the standard. And I feel honored (and a little terrified??) to be the person you held that standard to.

Also—your read of that drama?? How it collapses under its own weight because it lacks the emotional logic to stand up straight—is exactly the thing that makes me want to write at all. That ache, that hunger for sense, for truth, even in the most heightened, fantastical settings. Especially there. Because when a story asks you to suspend disbelief, I think it owes you honesty in return. And when it doesn’t—when pain is used cheaply or people behave like plot puppets instead of humans—it’s not just frustrating, it’s alienating. It makes you feel like your own depth of feeling is too much. Like you’re wrong for wanting more.

So to hear you say this—to feel like someone else sees the intention, the spine under the story, the why behind every moment—god. It matters so much to me. Not just as a writer but as a person trying very hard to make sense of her own world, and finding shape and safety in fiction first.

And the fact that this all began with a Tiktok drama and a satin ball and a barefoot girl on hot pebbles. That’s poetry. That’s meta. That’s you, already thinking like a writer.

Thank you. For real. Thank you. I’m saving this in ten places and reading it when I doubt myself. Because this isn’t just kind. It’s true. And I believe in truth over praise every time.

Come closer next time. I’ll make you tea and cry with you in the corner.

And then maybe talk shit about the emperor’s wig. (Maybe he should’ve been bald.)

[fairyleiii]

ྀི ۪ ׂ. ૮ ๑• . •๑ ა ۪ ׂ. ꒰ 𝐀𝐂𝐀𝐃𝐄𝐌𝐈𝐂 𝐑𝐈𝐕𝐀𝐋𝐒 !! ꒱

ღ. requested ; yes

ღ. synopsis ; xavier is your academic rival, but when he gets sick who takes care of him?

ღ. pairing ; xavier thorpe x reader

ღ. notes ; i live for academic rivals

⊹˚.⋆

Y/N thrived on pursuing her goal to be better than everyone else; perhaps this was because, no matter what was put in front of her, she could master it in the same time it took for her to sign her name. However, there were just one elusive person who managed to best her at almost every turn, constantly sending her into a state of extreme frustration.

xavier thorpe.

It has been test after test, assignment after assignment, esoteric research project after obscure test to show this seemingly faultless monster that you are better in comparison to him, yet you have consistently fallen short by a single point.

Your professor declared their team the winners of the debate as you watched fuming and glared at the towering brunette as he quickly offered his counterargument. When you heard footsteps coming your way and saw his well shined shoes approaching, you huffed while packing your bags and the hairs on the back of your neck stood up.

"well hey, better luck at the poe cup tonight's maybe you'll get second? again." xavier chuckled at the murderous glare that adorned your face as you watched his own smug smirk.

however, your stare down was cut short by a sneeze from the boy in question. drawing your attention to his previously forgotten red nose, stuffy, and cracking voice and his pale complexion as he placed a hand on your shoulder for balance while fighting against a coughing attack directed into the arm not holding your own.

xavier never ever got sick.

he had an excellent immune system, he ate well, was relatively active, and slept his full 8 hours.

so when he began to lose his voice, constantly sneeze and sniffle, felt dizzy and looked paler than his usual healthy shade, xavier was pissed, and ignored it, he had an annoying girl to beat, and a poe cup to win.

"uh xavier? you sound a bit.. si-"

"no! no i don't, just need some water! okay!" xavier's words were barely intelligible to you due to his continuous and brash coughing.

"you sound like a tuba xavier, go to the nurse."

that was the first and last time you ever thought he would require you to give him any sort of serious and slightly friendly advice, yet later that night he still showed up at your dorm, accompanied by that same coughing and a fever.

and slurred words, due to his choice of medicine. that being 6 shots of tequila.

"what- kind- of- hggfh- logic! is that xavier thorpe!" you spoke, with paused between so you could wack him with your pillow, as you tugged on his clammy hand to pull him to rest on your bed.

"well i thought that y'know it would work okay!" xavier was a surprisingly sensible drunk, just so sick he could barely stand.

seeing your questioning look remained, he fought his sickness to explain himself, still trying to seem smarter even with the amount of alcohol in his body, and the fever running through it.

" m'thought i could drown the sick out with drinks.. clears surface wounds s' why not internal?"

despite his current state of sickness and drunk, you couldn’t withhold the boisterous laughter from hearing his reasoning.

xavier didn’t appreciate being laughed at, eyebrows pinched, tone sharp,

“and why are you laughing at me?”

"because that's dumb."

"you're dumb."

xavier continued his insults despite you attempting to lull him to sleep in your own bed, "you're stupid,"

the insults kept flying out of his mouth,

“stupid pretty" he seemed to have changed his tune, head lolled to the side on your pillow, facing a funny angle as he dopely reacher out his lanky arm to poke his finger at your face repeatedly, muttering assorted compliments and insults.

"no hey hey hey!" xavier protested way too loudly as he saw you begin to set up sleep for yourself on the floor.

he tapped the snug spot beside him in your single bed, signalling you to join him. you sighed, knowing that fighting with xavier, drunk or sober, he always gets what he wants.

and right now he wants you.

[rotzaprachim]

so just... chewing on maarva and cassian’s relationship (like many people i think this is where most of my biggest discordant notes of season 1 struck) and how i don’t think the way it’s... handled is even particularly internally consistent within the season. much about the circumstances of it - i.e. her straight up kidnapping of him - are kind of left on the table without much unpacking, although i think with some individual nuances. one thing that strikes me is the scene at the end of episode three, which almost made me cry both times i watched it, as the sun goes down on ferrix and paints cassian’s face, and young kassa’s face, in gold. it’s beautifully shot but also explicitly contrasts kassa and cassian’s repeated forst exile, how cassian is having to flee and being again taken from his homeland by circumstances beyond his control. and that sunrise looks an awful lot like his face being lit on that beach in scarif. it’s not a happy motif, to me, too see his waking up on the spaceship painted in this light. even if maarva is outlined in gold, she’s taking him into something that is being visually compared to death. 

and there’s another thing that really struck me with the long episode 7 sequence between cassian and maarva that the AMCA guys were later talking about that i WISH the finale had dug more into, which is this: cassian has become, for whatever intents and purposes, maarva’s son. he’s living to be what she raised him to be, in a life very similar for the most part to her own. Maarva for the most part isn’t a rebel. She probably isn’t aquiescent, fully, but she and klem were drifters living off taking bits off other people’s spaceships, or downed craft, and bouncing around and living on it. When we see Cassian hustling around for the starpath unit, he’s basically just continuing in the family business, something further confirmed by his memories of Klem in the season finale teaching him to clean rust from scrap. And this adds all these complex, fucked layers to that episode seven exchange. Because maarva wants to rebel, now. she wants to join the rebellion. but she’s older. she probably has a lot of ideas about the end of her life. And she has this absolute condescencion and frustation about what Cassian is and what he’s doing. How he’s off with His Women, how he’s Gadding About or Doing Things she doesn’t like him doing. and it IS complex, on screen, beyond what the show later treats their relationship as. 

but i really, really think there was more room here to represent the more complex dynamics of a working-class parent whose been struggling their whole lives essentially taking their frustration at their own life and how it was lived out on their son for doing the same thing, rather than the kind of Saintly Mam Figure In a Chair and her Lowlife Washup Useless Son Who’se Failed Her. cassian being the younger mirror to maarva that she doesn’t want to see is a much more interesting dynamic. she’s angry with him for not being the rebel she never was. considering uh actual stuff fiona shaw has said... i really wish there’d been more space to unfurl maarva’s frustration with him in a more complex way. i wish cassian had more love and rage and frustration with her all mixed together. one part that struch a wierd note with me in the finale is “i love him more than he could ever do wrong” because it’s like... even after death, maarva’s love is still swirled in with her judgement of him. it’s that i love you unconditionally EVEN if you’re bad logic a lot of parents have and it’s fucked. 

 i wish she’d been cassian’s messy older mirror rather than ultimate paragon. he doesn’t live up to her image, he does the work she never did. 

[sweetestlamb]

The Greatest Show

Summary: Come on, get into it. 

Author's note: I haven’t been inspired to write for this fandom in a while because honestly the writers are doing amazing, everything I think of is pure filth because I am eagerly awaiting their next kiss. But episode 17 broke my brain with their squash the rumor scene, the growling and grunting that So-Bong was so unaffected by. These two need a tent, desperately. Enjoy my royal pervs, here is my offering. 

p.s. picture borrowed from @tomorrowsdrama- thank you for the screenshots of this amazing moment! 

He's doing what he must to survive, that's all. End of sentence. He takes no pleasure in slamming the King into the closest surface and rubbing their body against him like a cat in heat, not in the slightest. Rumors are weeds, you have to rip them out for flowers and crops to flourish. That's all they're doing, weeding the garden of Joseon so it can flourish for their future child. 

That's what he tells himself as they cross paths in the royal hall, the King is flagged by the entire royal court animatedly discussing something of seemingly vast importance if their volume suggests anything. As he takes a step forward, Court Lady Choi seizes their hand halting them in place.

"Your highness you just not approach the King when he is with the Royal court. It is not proper. We just simply bow as they walk by."

But he doesn't care about propriety or appearing decent and well-behaved in front of these corrupt old bags, they are simply larger weeds that need to be disposed of. Smirking at their potential outrage, he grins evilly letting that fuel him even more before pulling up their dress to run over to their Cheoljongie. He looks bored out of his mind so it can also be considered a good deed, he's such a giving wife.

"My King!" Her voice rings out as he calls to his husband, who immediately looks over at them warmth filling those expressive eyes. Without hesitation the King bounds over to them happily, his movement only slightly faster than his usual glide ever the diligent King.

"My Queen, I have missed you."

The members of the backstabbing clan look disgruntled at the King's sudden departure, grumbling and pointing at them as if they have committed the highest crime.

If they think this is inappropriate then they're in for a huge surprise.

Looking down demurely, he thinks of his younger days when he was a junior understudy for the school play his acting prowess would come in handy now.

"Not as much as I have missed you, my love." He whispers the word of affection, reaching up to caress the King's cheeks softly making sure to appear infatuated. He has to force that after all because he doesn't do that naturally, despite what the royal maids claim. They are just confused, So-yong has a soft face that appears adoring at time despite his true emotions. 

With a soft whimper he throws himself into the King's arm, feeling those strong arms encircle her small waist, lightning zips through their veins but he ignores her bodily reaction.

We're just acting, take the memo! He internally berates the other inhabitant of this hormonally charged body.

But when Cheoljong strokes their neck and easily lifts them off their feet, he gasps loudly clinging to him harder for balance and because her knees suddenly feel weak.

"Your majesty, we do not have time for such....improper dalliance. You must not do this in such a public venue." One of the old farts stage whispers sounding positively scandalized and it revs him up even further. As he feels the King starting to retreat he jumps forward, wrapping their body around the King's like a limpet.

Cheoljong's eyes sparks to life the new position placing them eye to eye, panting softly onto each other. The air between them is charged and thick like a bowl of porridge. 

"Your highness, I agree you mustn't do this." Court lady Choi pleads with her, averting her eyes away from the tangled couple. 

He looks over Cheoljong's wide shoulders to see the Royal court affronted and wide eyed and Court Lady Choi with a similar expression, Hong Yeon is trying desperately to smother her smile as she averts her eyes. Sending her a secret wink, he pulls the King's head forward staring hungrily at his lips.

"I cannot resist, seeing him awakens such deep passion inside of me. Just one?"

He looks at her dazed, as if he's forgotten everyone surrounding them.

"Just...one?" He questions, confusion morphing into sudden realization as he watches them slide their tongue across plush lips.

"Oh."

Ignoring the cacophony of voices around them, he closes the miniscule space between them puckering up and kissing the soft skin of the King's cheek. Cheoljong tries blindly to catch her lips when they retract but he places a slim finger on his pursed lips.

Shaking their head lightly, he starts to slide down the King's hard body feeling the tight muscles even through the layers of fabric.

"We must save the rest for later, my heart. Come and visit us soon." He rubs at his stomach fondly, staring up into Cheoljong’s red face, he looks good enough to eat.

Wait what. Who thought that? No, it's the baby talking I'm just hungry, that's enough of a show.

Bowing deeply at the men, he steps around the King who is still frozen in his spot. Gathering himself he turns to the royal court with an innocent smile, "I apologize, I could not control myself. I will take a long walk to reflect on my behavior."

They collectively stare at her with gaped mouths as she walks off regally, shoulders straight as if nothing happened. After a few steps he turns around, calling over their shoulder, "Don't keep me waiting!" And then to add the proverbial cherry on top, he curls their finger before letting out a roar to which everyone jumps looking bewildered, except the King whose eyes could pierce a hole through their face.

He looks like a starved man. Maybe they should make him some more ramyeon?

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

To say he's flustered is a bit of an understatement considered the problem in his pants. Logically he understands the Queen's actions earlier, she'd merely been doing what they had both agreed to feigning affection to dissolve those erroneous rumors that were circulating the kingdom. But he would be lying if he said he wasn't enjoying this immensely.

His Queen was an enigma he had even up on fully understanding, instead choosing to accept her and all that came with her. And her feelings for him were part of his confusion, she seemed to fluctuate between her emotions without rhyme or reason. He never knew which version of her he would be receiving at any given moment. So having her acting the way he'd only imagined in his dreams was both satisfying and unsettling.

It would be most difficult to go back to their normal, he wanted her in his arms always. Desperately yearned for intimacy that didn't dissipate when the sun peeked over the horizon.

Pushing his work to the side of the table he sighs leaning back into his seat thinking about his Queen.

"Why must she be so confusing?" He groans to myself thinking about their first night together, how passionate she'd been his ears burn remembering the sharp pain of her teeth sinking it. He had bite marks in... interesting places from that heated encounter but her behavior after had been consistent only in it's in inconsistency.

Running away from him, even going as far as hiding. Then just as suddenly she stopped avoiding him and they settled into comfortable nights together. However, they hadn't been intimate since despite his many efforts, he just wanted a kiss those plush pink lips were so tempting and today they'd been so very close. He needed that kiss like he needed air, he didn't care who was around. If she had kissed him he wouldn't have controlled himself, he would have hungrily devoured.

"Your majesty it is getting late, we must leave now if you wish to see the Queen." The head eunuch interrupts his inklings, bowing low in respect.

Is he ready for this? His control feels paper thin at the moment. But he did promise and they have an image to uphold.

Gathering his strength he rises, "Alright, let us take over leave. I shouldn't keep my Queen waiting."

The walk to Daejeon Hall is short but it feels like he's traversing miles, despite his previous concerns he is now eager to see the Queen. Her face is gorgeous at all hours but there's something about her face lit with candlelight, knowing he's the only one who is allowed to see her at such hours.

Accelerating his feet, he almost races to her ignoring cries from the head eunuch in the distance. Every second not spent in her company is a second wasted.

The Queen's Court lady announces his arrival before they all bow walking backwards out of the room before sliding the doors shut.

"You took your sweet time, I told you not to keep me waiting." She glares at him, pouting slightly bringing all his attention to her mouth.

"I apologize my Queen there were pressing matters to deal with." He lies easily no attention of clarifying his meaning, she doesn't need to know that dousing his arousal was the pressing matter at hand.

"Whatever. What's more important than me?" She scoffs looking offended turning away from him.

He lowers down into a crouch, crawling across the room until they are side by side. The Queen gasps at his unexpected closeness, staring at him with wide eyes and open lips.

Grasping at her hands he stares deeply into her gorgeous eyes solemnly with no humor in his voice, "Nothing. You are most important to me, both of you." Reverently he reaches out a hand to palm at her still small belly, impatient to see her round with his seed.

Her face slowly softens as he rubs her stomach and then she places her hand atop his, no longer resistant to these fleeting moments of intimacy.

Instinctively he starts to lean forward, laser focus on her lips as he inches closer to her. When he's close enough to breath into her mouth she snaps from her haze, moving back marginally he almost growls at her he's so frustrated, he's barely able to swallow the sound.

"What are you doing? There's no one to put on a show for."

He peers at her searching her face, her pupils are dilated and he can feel how fast she's breathing each puff landing on his face, her expression near identical to their last night together. But she's stopping him. Even though she clearly desires this too.

He thinks back to her behavior earlier too, she was brazen then comfortable climbing him in front of so many others all in the name of squashing the rumors.

She needs an excuse to do this.

He should feel offended by this epiphany but instead it brings him resolve, she clearly still hasn't fully let him into her heart but she feels something for him she's more than proven that to him. If she needs to draw a line to be with him then so be it for now, he will prove himself to her everyday.

"There are several court maids and servants outside your room, they are pretending they are not listening but they are. Sometimes your imagination can be even more powerful than reality."

She looks towards the door, eying the shadows through the thin covering before turning back to him and nodding in understanding.

"Okay. Let's give them a show."

Without warning she knocks a marble vase to the ground, the loud crash filling the room as it makes contact with the floor.

Then she moans. Loudly. A suggestive gasping moan that goes straight to his chest before zinging lower, tucking at his loins.

She pushes him when he sits silently merely staring at her, "You need to play along too. Come on, get into it."

There's it is again. That damn phrase.

Get into it.

If only she knew how into it he truly was. Grabbing at her ankle and tucking her underneath him, he slams his arms on either side of her head before groaning deeply, "My Queen, please."

Pride explodes in his chest when he sees a deep blush glide across her face. Not unaffected.

"Am I getting into it enough for you now?" He whispers darkly, itching to lower his weight and kiss that delicious look off her face.

Surprisingly she stutters out, "Ye-a-ah. You seem very into it now, nobody can see us though. We don't need to be like this." She motions between their bodies, unable to meet his gaze now. She motions between their bodies, unable to meet his gaze now. She's right but he also knows that he can't miss this chance, he has her right where he wants her and besides squirming distractedly she hasn't shown any desire for him to move away.

"Do you want me to stop?" When she doesn't immediately answer he begins to move backward giving her space but she latches onto his forearm, tight.

"Wait! Maybe we should commit even if they can't see us, it'll help us play our roles better." She reasons and he smiles, razor sharp. She wants this just as badly as he does, he's studied her long enough to read between these lines.

Swiftly he rolls them over so she's on top, pressed together from shoulders to feet her long braid swinging over and brushing against his cheek. Gently wrapping it around his hand he uses it to bring her closer, her breath hitches seductively and he whispers, "Louder. So they can hear you." Without waiting for a reply he tugs at her hair again harder this time and the sound that escapes her lips is orgasmic, a high whining moan that sets his skin on fire. Emboldened and aroused he grabs her neck, speaking into her opened mouth "Do you like that my Queen?" Her eyes are glazed over as she sways as if intoxicated by him.

"Cheoljong, kiss me."

It's too quiet for anyone's ears but his and that makes him even hotter, this wasn't part of the show. This was just for him, just for them.

Always one to seize the moment, he yanks her down to meet his eagerly waiting mouth swallowing the moan that rolls off her tongue. The kiss escalates immediately with both twisting and licking, wet sucking noises soaking the room as they bring apart to gasp for air and crash back together, chaotically and perfectly. When he feels a wondering hand graze his groin he can't resist the urge to thrust up into her touch. Wrapping his arms around her waist and pulling her even closer, although there is no space between them.

When he pulls back, her eyes remain close as she licks her lips as if chasing his taste on them. His cock jumps jealously.

"I want you." He admits, wanting to make it clear if his intentions are not already crystalline to her. He wants no room for misunderstandings tonight.

She stares wordlessly before reaching across his body and then he sees the oil in her hand, he hadn't noticed its presence next to them but he eagerly takes it from her.

"Are you comfortable?"

"Don't go soft on me now, bring back the guy who was pulling my hair. Do you want me to call you Daddy too?"

His breath hitches at the word, he doesn't understand why but hearing her makes something dark coil in his belly. She lifts an eyebrow at his heavy silence, "You're so kinky."

He stares confused again, nothing new to him but he stores the word away for further inspection of its meaning. "Is kin-ky bad?" He asks reaching down to lower his pants and cover himself in the thick oil coating each inch of the hard pole.

She doesn't answer right away, avidly watching him stroke himself to fullness before rubbing at the bulbous deep scarlet head, serving to make him almost painfully turned on. "No, kinky is good. I like kinky." She tugs her skirt up and his eyes bulge when instead of seeing the various layers he should see there is only bare skin.

Had he been seduced? It feels as if he has been but he doesn't care enough to question her or pause this for a second. He would happily be her fool.

Gripping at her hips he rubs against her, groaning when her wetness smears across him obscenely. She grinds down onto him meeting him head on, they are definitely on the same page now.

Unable to wait for even another second, he envelopes her in his arms before sliding into her smoothly her natural moisture and the oil easing the way until he is completely encased. She moans long and wailing as he slides to the hilt, he groans loudly joining her as she scratches roughly down his back even through the sturdy material he can feel the burn. Absently he considers gentling his moves, she is pregnant and more fragile after all. But she must read his face and be vehemently against his plan because suddenly she rises up, slipping off his hardness before slamming back down the loud smacking of skin filling the room.

"It's time for the main event. Don’t stop now.” She challenges him, squeezing around his erection. 

Pushing his reservations to the side, he gets into it full heartedly thrusting hard before capturing her mouth in a harsh kiss, hissing when he feels her teeth tug roughly at his bottom lip, his lioness has returned. He teasingly roars into her mouth and she laughs around his tongue, breaking free only to latch on his neck sucking hard. He hopes it leaves a mark.

Her laughter causes her to tighten around him and he groans at her vice like grip on his cock, he can feel himself nearing the end. Recalling their first night he suddenly grabs her neck, squeezing lightly and when she whines in a broken gasp he tightens his hand and delights as she melts slowly limp in his hold, he supports her weight easily bucking into her tight heat. When he thrusts up a second time he feels her wetness gush around him before he loses himself, his climax tensing his body as he slowly falls apart.

The entire kingdom will surely be in an uproar tomorrow.

He's looking forward to it. That will teach them to spread rumors about their intimate affairs. 

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In the hallway, Hong Yeon brings her hands to her hot cheeks feeling overheated from the King and Queen's boisterous gathering. Every court maid is blushing as they look discretely at the door with every moan and groan that escapes. She hopes this will qualm the rumors in the kingdom, she cannot take this for much longer. Court lady Choi had left to retrieve water after their first moans and had yet to return, she surmised if the Queen were not already with child she would have been impregnated again going by the sounds they were making. It was all too obvious to her, despite the Queen's strange behavior at times, they were desperately in love with each other. She'd never seen two people who were more crafted for the other.

Anyone who thought otherwise was a fool. 

[mimeparadox]

Alias vs. Nikita: Sydney Bristow and Nikita Mears: On Ethos

It took Danny for Sydney to even consider that SD-6 was not what it claimed to be.  

All told, the core premise of Alias is not one that stands up to scrutiny. In order for SD-6 to successfully fool nearly its entire staff into thinking that it was legitimately part of the C.I.A., the organization would have had to be either identical to the C.I.A., which presents myriad problems; its members would have had to be not nearly as innocent or patriotic as Alias pretends they are; or not nearly as perceptive or paranoid as spooks are required to be.

Unfortunately, there is ample evidence that the latter (*1) is true. Consider, for example, how the existence of the Alliance is common among SD-6 members. Somehow, despite the fact that the cartel is precisely the sort of threat a group like SD-6 would be designed to handle—“the very people I thought I was fighting against,” Sydney claims—nobody ever finds it weird that SD-6…never actually fights it. More relevantly, there’s the fact that SD-6 had a policy of eliminating security threats, which agents knew about and apparently considered to be part and parcel of what it meant to work for the C.I.A. If anyone had doubts or suspicions, they were more than happy to set them aside as they did crimes. And Sydney was no different—until Danny.  

Danny Hecht’s murder was the first crack in the mirror; Daniel Monroe’s was the last straw. His death may have led Nikita to escape Division, but as the story makes clear, she already had an established history of questioning, and even covertly disobeying, her superiors. What’s more, it was not personal tragedy that led her to seriously question Division, but rather, the things she was asked to do. Therein lies the first key difference between Sydney and Nikita: they view the world through drastically different prisms.

For much of Alias, Sydney approaches the world through a tribalist perspective, dividing the world into two: those who are with her, and those who are not. Us vs. them. Right and wrong are determined not by the morality of an action or the contexts under which it is performed, but rather about who does it. Espionage is good when performed by the United States, but not when performed by an enemy. Lying to one’s friends and attempting to undermine their life’s work is forgivable when she does it, but not when someone like Lauren does.

For much of Alias, this binary thinking undergirds Syndey’s entire moral philosophy. There was nothing objectionable about SD-6 until it stopped being her tribe, after which she comes to hate it without qualms. The C.I.A. may be just as bad as SD-6 (or it would be, in a show more determined to explore its premise and or show the U.S. in a more critical light), but its actions can reflexively be excused away or forgiven. A.P.O. is as clear an illustration as one can get of this dissonance: explicitly designed to mirror SD-6, it is an admission that Sydney’s problem with her former employees had less to do with anything they actually did, but with which team they played for. Conversely, her loyalty to the C.I.A. has less to do with what they do and more what they do for her: while Sydney will likely never outright turn against the United States, she’ll bite back when she thinks they are a threat to her or her loved ones, without ever considering it to be a betrayal of her beliefs—blackmailing and extorting the  government are okay when she does it.  We see this in a smaller, more personal level with Sydney’s parents, whose actions Sydney considers unforgivable until she is convinced that they were done for her benefit.  Once this happens, their many crimes prove very easy to get over. 

One could argue, correctly, that Nikita is also all about doing the most for her loved ones: more than once we are shown that she is the sort of person who chooses her family over the world. However, her ethos is ultimately and fundamentally non-tribalist, and it is precisely this quality which led to her turning against Division. While Percy and Amanda and Michael did their damnedest to make sure their agents’ first priority was Division itself—us vs. them—Nikita never bought into that narrative, continuously choosing others—Ramón, Alex, Stefan and Ari Tasarov, Daniel, herself—over the organization.

Additionally, one of Nikita’s trademarks is the ease with which she makes allies, and her willingness and ability to work with others, even when their agendas do not align. The fact that Michael and Alex were working for Division did not stop Nikita from assisting them when necessary.  Similarly, Owen joining Gogol frustrated Nikita, but it did not cause her to turn against him. It’s why she was able and willing to rejoin Division, once Percy and Amanda were driven out: just because someone is against her doesn’t mean she can’t work with them—there may be an “us” and a “them”, but not necessarily a “vs”. For Nikita, the world is complicated and requires compromise: purity is a good way to get jack squat, and condemning people for making those compromises when she herself has done the same would require condemning herself.

If only Sydney thought the same.  Shockingly for someone in her field, Sydney is consistently terrible at working with people if they’re on her shit list. And while she might argue that this is merely a refusal to compromise her principles, it’s not about that at all: it’s about a desire for simplicity where it does not exist.    

One of the chief features of tribalism is that it is not concerned with logical or moral consistency, and we see this quite a lot with Sydney’s behavior, which at best lacks self-awareness, and at worst is plainly hypocritical.  Consider how many times Sydney goes rogue, disobeying, lying to, extorting or undermining her superiors, and how it results in lasting consequences for her, precisely zero times. Consider how she spent SEVEN YEARS as one of the top agents for an international criminal organization, and how little this ultimately matters (seriously, no one ever ever ever brings it up as a potential reason why she shouldn’t be trusted, which is appallingly stupid). Another person might notice this, realize how much they’ve benefited from others’ sympathy and understanding, and treating others similarly, but Sydney, not so much. Irina turns herself in, doing the same thing Sydney herself did a season earlier? She is the worst—a traitor, even though she never claimed to be loyal to the United States. Sloane claims to have reformed? Not on her watch. Perhaps most egregiously, when it is revealed that Lauren is part of the Covenant—the group which kidnapped Sydney and brainwashed her in order to turn her into an assassin—at no point does Sydney consider that the same might have happened to her.  And not only is this mindset hypocritical, especially when she turns around and conditionally lets bygones be bygones, it actively makes her a worse spy. Because she is so often invested in not understanding her enemies, she often misses opportunities to see them as potential tools (*2). Additionally, she is often at sea when those same antagonists choose to use her.

Had Sydney persisted in her tribalist outlook throughout the series, Alias would not have worked. Fortunately, she did not, and her transition into the sort of person who could work with Sloane or embrace Rachel, who was partly responsible for Vaughn’s death, allows her story to follow a concrete emotional arc.  It’s largely accidental, but the growth is there. Ironically, Nikita’s journey goes the other way, as circumstances lead her to adopt Division as her tribe, and to take morally corrosive measures she had once condemned in order to protect it. It is only circumstance, in the form of the Division mutiny, that prevented her and her friends from becoming the very thing they’d sought to escape. And in the end, she chooses to set aside tribalism: after Ryan is killed, she chooses the world over herself.  

What is particularly interesting about this divergence in worldviews is that it’s largely unintentional: while Nikita is precisely who the showrunners designed her to be, Alias’ writers surely did not intend Sydney to be as morally vacuous and un-self-aware as she is. Even so, both characters’ ethos make complete sense, given what we know of them, and in the next part, I’ll be talking a little bit about how both Sydney and Nikita were shaped by their pasts.  

----

Footnotes!

*1: Technically, the former is also true, insofar as, if we discount the security section shenanigans, we don’t really see SD-6 or its members do the work of an evil organization. The missions Sydney and Dixon are sent on are identical to the sort of missions the C.I.A. will send them on, which suggests something rather different from what the show thinks it suggests.  

*2: Case in point, Simon Walker. While he never draws Sydney’s ire the way someone like Sark does, that she never considers cultivating him as an asset despite the fact that he likes her and his relationship with the Covenant is entirely mercenary is one of the more frustrating things of that arc.

[norahastuff]

I'm just so sad ;( I really wanted Cas to hear he's loved from one person at least before the show ended. I didn't even care if Dean added BuddyBroPal after saying he loves him. Its just one thing I wanted from SPN's final season and I was so sure we'd get it cause Dean's been holding it in from s8. Now there's no more chances left...

Dude trust me I feel you. It’s all I wanted too. Just some kind of acknowledgment of any kind from Dean. The thing is we’ve gotten it in the past many times. Dean has shown us how important Cas is to him. We’ve seen him worry, struggle, grieve, lose all hope, not to mention, regain hope when Cas comes back to him. We’ve seen him react differently than Sam because Cas means something very different to him than he means to Sam. We’ve seen Dean question why exactly that is, why it’s different with Cas, he just never got to answer that question. Dean didn’t get to answer any questions in the finale because he was reduced to being a supporting character with no internal sense of self whose personality reverted to loving Sam. And sure that was a big part of who Dean was, but it definitely wasn’t all of him. 

I genuinely think that’s where almost all the problems stem from. If they were going to end the show with, Sam and Dean only care about each other, the end, they were invariably going to stomp on a lot of character development, because that’s not who these characters had become by this point in the story. There had been a lot of painstaking work done to show who Dean really was, what he wanted and the relationships he had built outside of Sam, primarily with Cas, and by erasing Dean having any kind of reaction or feelings to the monumental sacrifice Cas made for him, as well as the things he said before he died...well it just felt very disingenuous and not at all like the Dean we’ve been watching on our screens for so long. 

Even if they didn’t want to be explicit about Dean’s feelings and even if they wanted to keep the rest of the episode as it was, it would have been so easy to have a moment that acknowledged how Dean felt. Have him pray to Cas when he’s on that long-ass boring drive in the forest. He knows Cas is there, and he literally has nothing else to do. Just a basic “Cas have you got your ears on?” It could even be a silent prayer that culminated in Cas showing up with a “Hello Dean!” Just a moment with Cas where they both acknowledge that he matters and is important to Dean. I know I’m using the word “acknowledge” a lot but honestly, that’s because that’s all I really expected from the finale when it came to their relationship, and we didn’t even get that.

It just feels particularly frustrating because of how much Cas’ arc is tied to love. Learning how to love, expressing that love...I mean Cas has told everybody that he loves them. Repeatedly. Mary, Sam, Jack, Dean, he’s told them all. And yet out of all the main characters, he’s the only one who never heard it back. That felt like a deliberate hole in the story, that by the end of his arc would be fixed. Especially when you couple it with his final little speech to Jack when he told Jack he mattered and that they all loved him because of who he was as a person and not what he could do for them. Cas never got to hear anyone say the same about him. 

I wish he had. 

Now with all that being said, let’s look at Cas’ story as we actually got it. The angel that fell from grace, the one with too much heart, the one with a crack in his chassis that had the potential to be something so beautiful. A crack that he healed with love. Cas’ story has always been about love. About learning how to love, about understanding his own capacity for love and the power that it can have. 

I know there was that crack post going around about Dean stabbing Cas in 4x01 and the gif from Fleabag of her saying “This is a love story,” but honestly? I always thought Cas had a very similar story to Fleabag. Spoilers for that show follow, so if you haven’t seen it, I beg of you - go watch it now! It’s phenomenal.

Fleabag’s arc was to stop hiding from her capacity for love. Like her father told her “I think you know how to love better than any of us, that’s why you find it all so painful.” The culmination of her arc came when she was able to tell the man she was in love with that she loved him. His response wasn’t the point. She actually stopped him at first when he tried to respond. She just needed to say it. She needed to acknowledge what she felt, to accept it. Only then could she be truly free. 

That’s exactly what happened with Cas. He accepted himself and how powerful his love could be, and that’s beautiful, I truly think it is. The problem is, there were two more episodes after Cas had his epiphany and spoke his truth. There was another main character involved that was inextricably linked to his confession. Logic and cohesive storytelling dictate that there should be some follow up to such a major moment. Since there wasn’t, it’s hard to feel satisfied with Cas’ story because it just feels unfinished. And yet at the same time, he’s the only one whose characterisation and story stayed consistent until the end.

He lived for love, he died for love, he was resurrected for love. Even though the finale seemed completely uninterested in really addressing it, he was in heaven with his family and Dean, a heaven that he helped to create because of all he learned from Dean. The implication being that they would see each other again and Dean would inevitably have to face Cas and address all of this.

I only wish we’d gotten to see it.

[jcogginsawriter]

Hand to Hand: Mark Waid’s Flash

I have been a fan of comic book characters for a long time. I started with the cartoons, and as I got older, I began doing deep dives into wikis, reading fanfiction, and participating in that shallowest of internet past times, the vs debate. I dabbled in writing fanfic for myself, but I spent far more time thinking about writing fanfic instead. I would come up with all these ideas about what I would take from the various different versions of the characters, and don’t get me started on the idea of Crossovers.     The point is, I knew a lot of what happened in the comics, but I never read many comics. I didn’t know where my local comic shop was, and even if I did, I wouldn’t have had the money to spend on them. The comics that I did read were usually fan translations of manga. I did read a few comics, big name stories like Death of Superman or Crisis on Infinite Earths, but they were few and far between.

Recently, I’ve begun to change that. I now follow several comics as they come out, most notably the current X-line. This change sprang in part because I began reading a lot more comics criticism. In particular, I followed the blog of a certain Superman fan, and began to eagerly digest his various takes. I wanted to be able to ask him questions about new comics without looking like an idiot (This is how 90 percent of my interactions on comics twitter go, BTW) and that was a kick in the pants for me.

After getting into a steady habit, I decided to look into reading some of the classic runs I’d read so much about throughout life. To go from knowing them second hand, to knowing them first hand. After a bit of hemming and hawing, I’ve settled on Mark Waid’s legendary run of Flash Comics to start off with.

(Spoiler Warning for some 30 year old comics, by the way)

As of this writing, I have read up to the final issue of his story arc Dead Heat, wherein Wally does battle with the speed cultist Savitar. Before we get into things like plot and characters, I want to discuss the art, because no discussion of comic books is really complete without talking about the art. Unfortunately, the art in this run hasn’t done much for me, but that’s not really it’s fault. I read this comics in manner that they were not created to be read, digitally and zoomed in. These comics were drawn with physical issues in mind, and I don’t doubt that they’re good in that format. It also doesn’t help that I’ve read far more manga than I have American comics. American comics have never clicked with me the way manga does. Even now, I still find the layout of manga more legible than the layout of an American comic. That’s not a value judgment, it’s just my personal experience.

I do distinctly recall thinking that the art was better up to issue #79 (The conclusion to the Return of Barry Allen storyline), than it was after. I prefer the less exaggerated character designs, and lighter inks, though it could very well be a case of me having gotten used to the initial style and not liking the change. One thing that thing I can say about the art is that it helped me grasp how Wally’s costume differed from Barry’s. Before this, I was incapable of separating them in my mind, but seeing them side by side made it clear to me how different Wally’s Costume was colored and shaded.

Now, onto the writing of the run, we’ll start with the lead, Wally West. My previous touchstone for Wally was the Justice League series from the DCAU, which I watched a lot as a kid. The Wally in these comics comes off as more serious that his DCAU incarnation. Not too serious, he still cracks jokes, but he’s more on the ball. He takes his adventures as seriously as any hero would, rather than the more carefree attitude I recall his DCAU version having. This is not unsurprising, Wally here is the lead whereas there he was part of an ensemble cast, and here we get his internal monologue which gives us a much more thorough sense of his headspace. Not to mention, the DCAU version was voiced, so we know with no ambiguity what tone his dialogue’s in. In text, tone is more up to interpretation.

Perhaps the biggest thing that set Comic Wally apart from DCAU Wally is that the Wally in the comic was more consistently angry and frustrated. While his DCAU incarnation had hidden depths, I can’t recall a time when he got seriously angry. This Wally is frequently irritated, usually by things which are enitrely understandable. On occasion, his irritability causes him to be rougher with the bad guys than he could be, and that feels uncomfortable sometimes, though thus far he hasn’t gone too far.

Going into this, I knew that one of the issues that Wally had to overcome was his mental block about surpassing Barry, and to my surprise, it wasn’t as much of a through-line as I expected. I was expecting it to be a reoccurring issue that was solved by the Return of Barry Allen storyline, but in reality there are only one or two times something like it comes up, usually in the context of him not being able to do the vibrating through walls trick. In the Return of Barry Allen, it feels more like an issue introduced in that story than a long running plot line. Granted, it may only feel this way because I’m solely reading Mark Waid’s Flash. I didn’t read the issues prior to his take over, so that storyline could have been more apparent there for all I know.

Moving on, starting with Waid’s run had another knock on effect, that being that the character introductions aren’t introductions. I came into this expecting to see when Wally met Linda, when he met Jay Garrick, when Pied Piper redeemed himself, but all of that happened before Waid took over the book, so they’re already part of the cast from the start. Again, not a flaw of the work, it’s just a result of my personal experiences. Now, let’s take a look at some of these characters.

I’ve heard a lot about Linda and Wally’s romance, and so far it’s not bad. I wouldn’t rate it as one of the best of all time, but I haven’t gotten to most of the major moments yet, so that’s not a huge surprise. One thing that’s very apparent is the Lois Lane DNA in her character. Some of that is to be expected, which the love interest to your superhero is a reporter, but I see a lot of similarities in their personality as well. There’s a lot of the same fire in her. Fortunately, the fact that Wally’s identity is public lends a very different arc to their relationship than what you see with Lois and Clark, so Linda doesn’t come off as a Lois rip-off. Linda’s concerns that there’s no place for her in Wally’s wild superhero life is the kind of relationship hurdle that isn’t present in Lois and Clark’s Relationship.

Next, let’s take a look at the first Flash, Jay Garrick. Within this series, Jay is perfectly pleasant, and by no means unlikable, but he also comes across as...kind of superfluous? There are three elderly male speedsters in this comic, and of all of them Jay is by far the least defined and has the least role. Max Mercury is the Wally’s mentor in the ways of speed, the one with the most knowledge of the Speed Force. He’s basically what I expected Jay Garrick to be going into this. The third of the group is Johnny Quick, a speedster who is the father of another speedster, Jesse Quick. Jesse is also very skeptical of Max Mercury’s teachings, which veer from the scientific into the mystical.

Because Johnny takes the role of skeptic, Jay is left without a role in the narrative because being the nicest of Wally’s friend group. Veering over to Hollywood for a second, whenever a book gets adapted into a movie or TV Show, minor characters get lost in the transition. Either they get composited with other characters, or they get cut entirely. Game of Thrones is the most prominent example in recent memory. I bring this up because, if Waid’s Flash were to go through that process, it’s hard to argue that Jay wouldn’t get the ax. Despite being the most important of them in the context of the universe at large, Jay is the least important Speedster in this narrative. Of course, Jay’s importance in the context of the larger universe means that in this hypothetical adaptation, he probably be composited into either max or Johnny. More likely Max, since mentor is the logical position for the first Flash to take in the Third Flash’s narrative.

I mentioned Jess Quick there, so let’s talk about her. Thus far, her most prominent role in the narrative has been to call Wally out and be his critic, though she does have very good reasons to be angry. In the Terminal Velocity storyline, Wally believes he’ll die soon, and tells the Flash Family that Jesse will be his successor, but it turns out to be a lie in order to motivate Bart Allen to take things more seriously. Jesse has remained angry with Wally since then, though it hasn’t seriously impacted her hero work. That’s good, because her continued competence lends legitimacy to her anger within the narrative. She’s not being punished for being mad at Wally for mistreating her. Hopefully it stays that way going forward.

Now let’s take a look at the character Wally chose over Jesse, Bart Allen AKA Impulse. I’ll say up front that I’m not reading Bart’s solo series during this read through, as I didn’t want the hassle of going back and forth between books. As such, the only issues of it that I’ve looked at are the ones that tie into the Dead Heat arc. I feel it’s important for me to say this, because I’m basing my opinions of Bart primarily on his showings in Wally’s book, not his own. In Wally’s book, Bart’s character flaws are more on display.

Bart is a character deliberately designed to be obnoxious, and such characters are a hard tightrope to walk in fiction. Gotta be annyoing enough to get the point across, but not annoying enough to turn people off from the work. Bart in Wally’s book isn’t perfectly balanced, and tends toward the too much pile. Not to an egregious extent, but a little bit. I found myself echoing Wally’s frustration with Bart more than a few times. In Bart’s defense, Wally does share some of the blame here. He doesn’t do a very good job as a mentor, and handing those duties off to Max is probably for the best.

I find it interesting, that a character like Wally who is so defined by inheriting a legacy is a poor mentor, to both Bart and Jesse. He makes different mistakes with both of them, but he still fails both of them. I’m eager to see how that plays out in the future issues.

Now that we’ve discussed the supporting cast, let’s discuss some of the book’s villains. We’ll start with the one who is most infamous, Eobard Thawne. Thawne’s spends the majority of his time in this book thinking he’s Barry Allen, and if I’m being honest, he’s more effective under that guise that he is as Eobard. The scenes where what appears to be Barry Allen turns evil out of jealousy of his successor are powerful, more so than the more traditional villain Eobard displays after the reveal. Not that it would have been a good idea for it to actually be Barry, of course. Much as I prefer Wally to Barry, having Barry go full supervillain would have been very out of character. In any case, this run had a profound impact on Eobard’s character going forward, solidifying him as an agent of toxic fanboyism, making him a dark mirror of Wally West.

The next major villain of the run is the cult slash terrorist organization Kobra. That might bring thoughts of GI Joe to your mind, and you honestly aren’t far off. So far as this run goes, the biggest differences between DC’s Kobra and Hasbro’s is A) DC’s version prefer green over blue, and B) Hasbro’s version has more in the way of distinct characters. Kobra thus far is more of a plot device than  anything else. They’re generic terrorists with little to make them distictive. Their storyline, Terminal Velocity, is more notable for it’s introduction of the Speed Force, Wally preparing for his upcoming ‘death’, and Linda going on a revenge quest after said ‘death’. All things that Kobra is incidental to, any villainous organization would have sufficed.

The final, as of my current point in the run, major villain is Savitar. Savitar was formerly a soviet test pilot who gained a connection to a the speedforce, gave himself the name of Hindu god, and started a speed worshipping cult. It says a lot about my mind that my immediate thoughts upon reading Savitar’s origin were. “Huh, an AU where Hal Jordan became a Speedster the same way would be neat.”. Savitar is in some ways an improvement on the Kobra Cult from Terminal Velocity. This time the Cult has a more direct connection to the Flash and his mythos. Dead Heat is by no means a retread of Terminal Velocity, but if you wanted to mesh them into one story, it wouldn’t be hard. And it’d improve on both, in some ways.

One of the things I like to do in my fanfic ideas is connect the other speedsters to Thawne’s theme of Toxic Fandom, and it wouldn’t be hard to do that with Savitar. His entire motivation is to deprive those he considers unworthy of their speed, and that can easily by played as a metaphor for gatekeeping.

Over all, while the run is far from perfect, I must say I’m enjoying these comics a good deal, and if you’re like me and have read a lot about comics without actually reading them, I don’t think you’d regret jumping into them.

[astrologysvt]

Chart First Impressions: Joshua

For more SVT astrology posts, follow my blog! Check out my masterlist to see all the readings I’ve done so far and what I’ve got coming up! 💫

This is just a very general reading of the member’s charts — the parts that popped out to me, things I personally liked, things I thought were interesting or contrary to the image I have of them. I’m not looking at anything in particular with each reading. Some of their readings may be more aspect focused, where some may just focus solely on their personal planets and their signs. If you have any questions on specific aspects or want to request a more specific reading, feel free to send me an ask!

damn, that moon.

that moon is roooough. 

lmao, this moon is a lot to unpack so it’s gonna take up this entire reading i’m sorry

with such an earthy and logical chart, it’s almost a good thing for him to have such an afflicted moon because otherwise the emotional and feeling part of himself would never be challenged or explored (unless imposed onto him externally) 

but based on his chart, I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s had a hard time understanding himself emotionally.

also considering that capricorns have a rep for being prone to difficulties with processing emotions healthily and consistently, I’m sure this is an area he has struggled with in some way shape or form.

or, if anything, an area in his life he has often had to take into extra account.  

with so many hard aspects, confronting this part of his life is almost unavoidable if not the epicenter of his own personal development.

anyway, his moon square mercury & moon square uranus are constantly making him doubt his emotions. Not only does he struggle to understand them, but there is an inherent distrust of his emotions that he may struggle to overcome. 

there is a constant questioning on whether to trust the mind or the heart. 

inversely, his moon TRINE jupiter gives him a super bleeding and generous heart while his moon square neptune also makes him incredibly perceptive, sensitive, and intuitive. 

moon in hard aspect to neptune not only heightens the intensity of his emotional responses, but he may experience a sense of delusion. He may struggle to understand what he’s feeling vs. what is actually happening. furthering this sense of emotional distrust within him.

additionally, he reacts intensely and notices so much, but his first reaction may be to invalidate. 

his mind can’t trust his own intuition, while his intuition is skeptical of his mind’s pure logics. 

his moon is square venus which would make it hard for him to understand how to express his affection, as well as figure out how to get his need for affection met. 

this can manifest for a lot of people very differently. 

sometimes that’d mean they seldom express affection as there simply isn’t a path for these feelings to be released. 

with joshua, he may still express affection, it may just be a bit awkward, random, or forced sometimes. mainly because, again, it doesn’t just flow through him like it does for others and he may struggle in identifying when it’s needed. 

other more emotionally intuitive members like wonwoo and dk may find themselves moving to comfort without even realizing, simply because they’re so in tune with the others they are just drawn to where their attention is needed. 

more logical and practical members like joshua are still capable of offering this comfort, it just goes through a much more intellect driven filter. “is that person acting weird? why would they be upset? does that make sense? what could have happened? should i leave them alone? should i comfort them? hmmmm maybe I should ask. maybe i’m making it all up.”

and for joshua in particular, learning how to shorten that process is a mixture of getting to know the people he loves and studying their habits, as well as learning to trust his gut more and more. 

his moon square venus also creates a conflict between his own emotional needs, and the needs of others. this can make him a people pleaser, a yes-man, a serial romantic. 

he may struggle to identify when a situation is no longer serving him and when to step away. 

in different stages of his life he may struggle to leave or move on from relationships, and on the other side of the spectrum he may find himself being that “serial romantic.” this can greatly depend on how his other aspects manifest.

his taurus moon square capricorn mars also heightens his emotional responses and could potentially lead to boiling/explosive anger. 

this would simultaneously trigger his softer, sensitive, nurturing parts of himself that would hate those reactions while further fueling his self-distrust. 

we can also look at this in the more literal aspects of these planets. 

his desire to act (mars) is fighting for dominance with his emotions (moon), which can very unevenly distribute the emotionally-charged and turbulent energies that can arise in moments of discord. 

both his moon and mars are in earth signs which can mean he experiences long periods where he is totally fine and very reasonable. they’re both very stable, down-to-earth, and mellow signs and can often find areas of understanding and agreement with each other even though they’re in this hard aspect.

a taurus moon seeks comfort and familiarity which keeps his cap mars in a easy place where it isn’t challenged very often. 

the issue is, is that taurus can be much more easily provoked than a cap mars can. a cap mars can be cool and collected, even in moments of anger where as a taurus moon can 100% blow up if pushed too far, made too uncomfortable, or are challenged too much.

where taurus may decide “that’s enough i’ve had it” a capricorn may simply file it away to be attended to later and more strategically.

and with that, his cap mars HATES being at his taurus moon’s mercy when provoked. this is something that his cap influence would be very frustrated with as he’d much more comfortably depend on his own internal stability than external forces while his taurus moon can’t help but feel flustered by certain things. 

this is why the members consider him a TERRIFYING person to see angry. 

he is so calm and collected for so long thanks to both of these signs, but this aspect creates a tension where his capricorn mars tries to censor his taurus moon and which further activates his taurus moon’s super indignant and headstrong attitude/frustration. 

and once his cap mars decides he’s had enough i can see it playing out in one of two ways. 

1) he’s trigger happy, super frustrated and cannot hide it. either he becomes visually upset or he starts getting short with people over the smallest things

2) he continues to boil until one person steps out of line, and from there you get a perfectly compiled list of reasons why you shouldn’t have done that specific thing and also what everyone else is doing wrong. 

but to put it simply, i watched a lot of joshua angry videos and compilations and i didn’t see even a hint of ACTUAL joshua anger (at least what i’d expect from his chart)

he’s super controlled with it on the day to day and is incredibly composed, which is why he is such a scary guy if you piss him off. it’s so unexpected and sooooooo much more deeper and intense than you ever could have predicted. 

this can tend to be a very discouraging habit for him as he has two parts of his personality that intrinsically HATE when he has outbursts or even feeeeels anger to that degree. 

one being his earth and cap influences that hate the feeling of losing control. 

and two being his softer aspects i mentioned before like his moon trine jupiter and moon square neptune. 

because he has this super soft and empathetic side to him, he probably feels immense guilt in the aftermath of his outbursts and can create this series of events where he finally gets these things off his chest, and then immediately backs away from them because, once the negative feelings have been released, his resolve dramatically lessens. 

not only that, but his judgement on when and when not to act is inhibited due to this moon square mars so he may end up getting mad at the wrong people at the wrong time. 

and the unfortunate thing about all of this is that joshua really doesn’t have a clear path of expression in his chart when it comes to the more turbulent and moody aspects of our personalities thanks to this afflicted moon.

these emotions boil inside of him, both good and bad, and they go every which way to try and find some kind of release.

often times, especially when he was younger, he may have found that he wasn’t comfortable expressing them in any specific way so eventually they’d just explode one way or another. 

this may have made him appear much more unpredictable, impulsive, and hot-headed than he actually inherently is. 

so if you had told me he had a rebellious streak as a kid i’d totally believe you.

often times earth signs with this kind of energy end up doing some stupid things as kids simply to exert control over themselves to counterbalance the instability they may be experiencing internally. 

if you know someone similar who has mellowed out over the years, that’s because they had gotten to know themselves and found different ways of expressing their emotions and exerting control. 

but this is were i really really gotta put a huge disclaimer because i don’t know joshua, i can only look at his mannerisms, the things he says, and generally just try and read his energy through videos and how he acts in a group. 

i think these are fun things to consider but i would never treat this reading as fact unless he were to, for some wild reason, validate it. 

but lets wrap this up because this is getting long.

the funny thing with moon placements is they all kind of hint towards a strong influence on the part of a mother or a nurturing “motherly” figure in general. 

the nature of the influence can be determined based on if the relationship with this mother-figure is either good, bad, or absent (though we know it’s not absent and is pretty clearly a positive influence for him). 

if it’s bad, he may resent this part of himself that’s so hyper aware of his emotional shortcomings. 

if it’s good, then these aspects are far easier to deal with and — in certain situations — can be entirely nulled. 

but most importantly, if neither of those, he’d at least be able to find value in them.

obviously these things are more nuanced than that, but these are some of the few ways you can interpret such a strong emphasis on the moon. 

so many hard aspects in his moon have activated and created awareness of himself that may have remained dormant and unexplored.

i’m only using depression as an analogy (I don’t know joshua’s life) but it’s very similar to explaining your depression to someone who has had similar experiences before vs someone who hasn’t. 

sure, someone who hasn’t can understand the gist but they wont understand the severity and they wont understand the nuance. 

thanks to Joshua’s afflicted moon, after a lot of growth and time, he will inherently be able to understand the nuance of other people’s emotions as well as his own. 

[snicketsleuth]

Slackin’ with the Sleuth: reviewing Netflix’s “The Penultimate Peril”

One of the difficulties befalling any adaptation of "A Series of Unfortunate Events" is that you're actually putting three stories on screen: there's the conflict between Olaf and the Baudelaire orphans, then there are the obscure, offscreen manipulations of V.F.D. in the background, and finally there's Lemony's own past which is only alluded to through brief glimpses in his narration. We saw that the Netflix series, particularly in Season 2, sometimes extended the V.F.D. subplots at the expanse of the main Baudelaire story. Fortunately, the long pay-off of Lemony's elusive past is considerably more well-handled as it comes to a close in Netflix's version of "The Penultimate Peril". Let's analyze the writers' best effort under the cut.

The chronology of "A Series Of Unfortunate Events" is, to put it simply, a mess. Part of it is the consequence of Lemony's deliberately opaque style which makes it difficult to determine which characters he's really talking about, or when and where each event of his past is supposed to happen. The datation of Olaf's parents' murder, for example, has been a topic of contention for years amongst fans. Streamlining the entire sequence of his life into something more straightforward is far from a bad idea for this adaptation. "A Series Of Unfortunate Events" wasn't written to be read, but rather to be re-read. Understanding the bigger logic of the books' subplots is a reward for the more careful, compulsive readers. It's essentially marketed to bookworms and people whose idea of fun consists in literary commentary. But while readers alays have the opportunity to put down their book and search for earlier passages in order to understand his ramblings, the framework of a Netflix television show doesn't really lend itself to that. While it's always possible to binge-watch and rewatch, searching for individual scenes is more of a chore. In order for viewers to even engage with Lemony's complicated backstory, a more accessible timeline was essential. From the reactions of several watchers who have not read the books, the Netflix show is succesful in this attempt. Most show-only fans agree that the late-series are interesting and make mostly sense. Their experience is definitely less frustrating than the readers' post-series backlash a few years prior.

The opera house sequence is the series' most ambitious scene yet. It combines a great number of separate events into one: there's the obvious murder of Olaf's parents, of course, but also the theft of Esme Squalor's sugar bowl, Kit's romance with Olaf, Esmé' and Olaf's start of darkness, Lemony's decision to flee after being framed and his break-up with Beatrice. All of which happened at different in the books' timeline. It's a simplification but it's a highly effective one (as show writer Joe Tracz explained (Link), Bertrand was left out of the scene as it already had too many characters).

Ambiguity and unknowability are essential themes in the original series, but this vagueness came at a cost, namely that of character development. Even if these mysteries are mostly treated as jokes and McGuffins, the fact remains that many important characters (Olaf, Kit, Dewey, Esme, Lemony, etc.) make their decisions based on the answers to these mysteries. So it's difficult to empathize with them when we can't understand them. The chase for the sugar bowl is absurd, and therefore their actions are absurd. This, we think, is the real reason why the end of the series displeased so many fans. Not because it left us with mysteries, but because some of these unsolved mysteries actively removed us and disengaged us from the narrative. Why should we care about Lemony's tragic devotion to the woman he loved when we don't event know why the break-up happened? What are we even supposed to think about Esme's character when she won't reveal why the sugar bowl is important to her? How can we make our own opinion of the Baudelaire parents when we don't really know why they killed, or hat kind of persons ther victims were?

The Netflix series elegantly solves these issues in short scenes. There's still enough ambiguity here; Esme's personality can be interpreted in different ways, for example. On one hand, fans could say she's a shallow, materialistic woman who genuinely refuses to let go of a sugar bowl on the basis that it's hers, hers, hers. On the other hand, one could say the sugar bowl is just a totem, a symbol: what Esme is truly mad about is that people dismissed her as an idiot who couldn't take care of the sugar bowl properly, that her friends distrusted her and betrayed her, and that Beatrice/Lemony despised her enough to try murdering her. Same goes for Beatrice: sure, the death of Olaf's father was a tragic accident, but she still tried to kill another person. She can't reasonably be called innocent. So in that respect the writers gave the characters enough reality to flesh them out while preserving the moral ambiguity of their backstory. On that aspect, we do have to admit that the series is truly superior to the books. It's just as thought-provoking, but also more humane.

Less succesful is the writers' decision to give a resolution to the mystery of the sugar bowl. This is not a mystery which particularly needed solving, because it's not rooted in the characters' actions and motivations. All we really need to know is that the sugar bowl is "the most important thing in the world", and that's it. People want it for different reasons which are theirs and theirs alone: once you possess "the most important thing in the world", all your dreams can come true. As we've seen, the character who wants it the most is Esmé, and understanding her motivations does not necessirally require us to know what's inside it. Fear of abandonment, feelings of betrayal and pettiness are enough to explain her obsession. It's not the sugar bowl, it's what it meant to her.

More irritatingly, I very much doubt that the answer given in the series came from Daniel Handler himself. We have to remember he was "fired" from the staff of writers on Season 3, something he was oddly nonchalant about. This is strange considering he's spoken at length about his (understandable) bitterness after being fired from the writing staff of the 2004 Paramount movie. It's becoming clearer and clearer that somehow the decision suited his own purposes.

My own hypothesis is that Daniel Handler actively wanted to detach himself from Season 3 and that the "firing" was more of a mutual decision. We can only surmise what happened, but it's very probable that the other writers wanted to solve certain mysteries he preferred to leave ambiguous. The fact is that, if the author had wanted to give a clear-cut answer to the sugar bowl mystery in the books, he would have. He had a choice between resolution and ambiguity, and he made it. Though he revealed that he had his own opinion on what the sugar bowl really was, and that "one fan a year" usually finds the "real" solution, the mystery was written in a deliberately ambiguous way which allowed a multitude of answers. The author enjoys fans ho find the "real" solution and fans who come up with their own unique, personal ideas equally. It's his idea of fun, because literary analysis should be fun, and if there's one thing he enjoys, it's literary analysis. He doesn't want the conversation to end. So although he'd be willing to recognize that he kind of messed up by not developing some characters enough, it's extremely unlikely to us that he would write an obvious answer to something that he himself aknowledges as a MGuffin. Hence his decision to leave the writing staff after Season 2, as a way to disengage himself from whatever the writers wanted to include, and to preserve the intended ambiguity of the books' ending. It was also a tactful way of not throwing his fellow writers under the bus, as he respected their personal intention to solve the mystery. A clear case "I'm not going to stop you, just please leave me out of it and we can remain friends".

[Update: Liam R. Findlay from 667 Dark Avenue mesage board talked with show writer Joe Tracz (Link) and confirms that Daniel Handler never told the other writers if their solution was the correct one. It's a reliable source, though by no means official]

[Update: Here’s an interview where series showrunner Sonnenfeld clarifies that the solution given in the show was not confirmed by Handler (Link)]

The question remains: did the writers ask Daniel Handler what the sugar bowl contained, and did he even answer? We personnally doubt it. The canon of the series has been entirely reworked at this point. It's faithful to the books when it comes to themes, emotional resonance, political messages... but it's UNBASHEDLY unfaithful when it comes to plotting. Take Jacquelyn, who's revealed to be the infamous Duchess of Winnipeg. Now, in the books, the first name of the Duchess of Winnipeg is an unsolved mystery. Did the series solve it? No, because fans of the books know that canonically Jacquelyn was only created for the Netflix show and that the first name of the Duchess starts with an "R." It's show-canon, not book-canon. By that standard, we shouldn't trust the show to give us any supplementary information on the books. The show did not solve the sugar bowl mystery any more than it solved the mystery of the Duchess' first name.

On top of that, the explanation given in the show is not even that good from a purely internal perspective. If Beatrice wanted access to the hybrid, why couldn't she just steal some sugar from the bowl then give it back to Esme? If Kit had a cup of tea seasoned with the hybrid at the opera house, shouldn't she have been immune to the mushroom when she arrived on the island? Knowing Esme had tried to immunize her, what did she have to lose by drinking it? And if Beatrice succesfully managed to replicate the hybrid, why is the capture of the sugar bowl still so important? Its content could have been replicated by everyone! The idea that the sugar bowl contains an antidote to the Medusoid Mycelium is a popular hypothesis amongst fans, but a very flawed one. It's of course possible that Daniel Handler committed bad writing and that his own solution to the mystery is full of plotholes. But it sounds more likely that the Netflix writers just looked at a page of popular fan theories and just picked the one they liked the most. What tips it off for us is that supporters of this theory usually posit that the sugar bowl contains a bitter apple core hich was used to replicate the hybrid... while the show writers complicated things by saying it contained sugar made from the apples. This sounds more like another fan theory which proposes that the sugar bowl is a decoy used to deceive the other side of the Schism and that it only contains bland, normal sugar. So what we're dealing with here is probably the awkward combination of two popular fan theories which don't really make sense when taken together. Why would the writers choose to do that? My personal guess is that Handler truly didn't tell them and that they tried to combine the two most popular fan theories in order to please a maximum number of people. It's not a case of show canon extending book canon, it's fanservice. Not that fanservice is necessiraly bad, but you have to aknowledge it at what it is. We just wish the writers had integrated it a little better within the canon of the show's universe. It's possible they argued about which theory was better, just like the fans. And instead of a Schism, they had to settle for a compromise.

Speaking of compromises, the Netflix writers also decided to stop all pretense concerning the identity of the mysterious taxi driver. It's probably a good call, as they had already shown Lemony's face throughout the entire series. It's too difficult to engage viewers for hours of content if the "voice" of the series is faceless. An actor like Patrick Warburton was desperately needed to elevate the deadpan narration of Lemony Snicket. The grounbreaking, surreal nature of the encounter is intact as we get to see fictional protagonists (the Baudelaire orphans) suddenly interact with their equally-fictional author (Lemony). But this time, the writers make up for the loss of ambiguity by bringing something more to the table as replacement. We get to see a young, unaware version of Lemony speak with his sister Kit, and later Justice Strauss. These scenes include some of the series' best writing and will produce a lot of waterworks for sure. It's the perfect way to explain why Lemony decided to dedicate his life to the Baudelaire chronicles: it emerges diegetically from the onscreen plot itself. Justice Strauss passing down the torch of chronicling the Baudelaire orphans' lives to Lemony makes perfect sense: if there's someone who tried to shed some truth and justice on the Baudelaire case, it's her.

But as we approach the end of the Netflix series, we must look at it as a whole: was the denouement of this penultimate episode sufficient for the emotional pay-off of “The End”? More on the next review.

[bi-lullaby]

No one asked

And I should be studying, but here are some thoughts for season 16 so far:

(SPOILER WARNING, OBVIOUSLY)

1 - Merluca and it’s parts: COUPLES FIGHT STOP PREDICTING THE WORST OK. They’ve been completely adorable so far, but this is what someone said in a interview: “This is the after in happy ever after” (or something to that effect). They’re gonna fight and them they’re gonna make up, I hope. As for their fight: They were both in the right imo. Yes, Meredith is being inconsequent and it must be so frustrating for Deluca to A)Have her continue risking her career and license and freedom when he went to such lengths to help that, B) Be crapped on constantly bc of something your girlfriend did. Yes, Meredith is completely right in fighting the system that is so throughtly broken, and yes, coming to apologize to her mentor and longtime friend was completely the right thing to do. I wanna see merluca wedding and marriage! Maybe (since there are two pregnant people in this season already?) next season will be Mer and Jo? One can dream! For them individually: Poor Mer, she has bitten more than she can chew but she is ready to take on this fight! Imma love to see her as auntie mer! I mis merjolex so much tho, I know she’s been busy and all but they seem to forget she is a important part in their support system. Andrew has been all over the place. I love his confidence, but in the ep where he literally screamed at Bailey over her trying to teach an intern? And called her out bc she was using a different material than Mer? I was a bit off-thrown. But he’s still a great character I enjoy watching. Hope they find the balance between confidence and arrogance for him, and develop him even more!

2 - Amelink: AAAAAA. They’re so amazing and perfect and sweet and I wanna hug them both. Link is everything you could wish for, Amy is adorable as ever. If they lay a finger on either them as a couple, them as individuals, or their baby, imma kick some asses. I don’t think they will tho, Amy is been through SO MUCH already and she deserves a breath.

3 - Bailey: OMG SHE IS PREGNANT AAAAAAAA. I’m so happy! Ben is already a great dad, this will be so fun to watch! Hope they don’t put her through the ringer with a difficult pregnancy or a sick child, she does not deserve this! She already nearly lost her first child while giving birth in a bomb-y hospital while her husband had brain surgery NEXT to the bomb. Enough pregnancy drama for a lifetime. As for her actions: I’ve said before: I’m pissed, yes. She’s acting way too harsh and taking it out on people and more importantly (as I’ve touched on in my female grey’s characters ranking post) she’s out of character. Where is the Bailey that went around the hospital runnning after the attendings and kicking their asses into signing her proposal for a free clinic? And gave them a speech on how they had failed her and she needed something to believe in in medicine? She was one of the first characters to point out how broken the system was, to take direct action to try and fix it. Sure, she likes to try and work within the rules as much as possible, much she is not adverse to breaking a few of them if she thinks it’s necessary (hello deactivated HIV inside a young boy’s body without parental consent! Hello changing the date on a surgery which is also insurance fraud!)! If she thinks it’ll save a life! But also, she’s not completely wrong: Meredith did commit a crime, as good as her intentions were; As her boss, firing her was the only logical decision. She thought her hospital (which she dedicated a good half of her life to) was being attacked by someone she trained into the surgeon she is, ofc she’d be mad as all hell. Quadri was disrespectful, not doing her job well, actively getting in the way of her superior doing her job, screaming at her boss in the middle of the hallway about how she didn’t want to work there - firing her was a tad extreme (specially for a charact who has never, herself, had any qualms ahout mouthing off to her own superiors when she didn’t think something was right) but not completely out of nowhere. I hate hate hate how they’ll probs throw a “oh she was being crazy bc pregnancy hormones!” line after seeing how her actions have been badly perceived by people (like there isn’t enough a stereotype that women can’t have positions of power because hormones make them crazy) instead of “hey this character was put in extremely uncomfortable and tough positiona after extremely uncomfortable and tough positions and came off as harsher than necessary while trying to balance a world-class hospital crisis”. Ugh.

4 - Jackson: Ok so the last few eps have rekindled my love for him and I’m relieved! There’s the good, kind, funny and smart guy I like! I was mad bc of the whole Jaggie drama, but hey, shit happens! If they will be better apart, then I’m happy! (Ok 50% of this is because of what he said to levi! Stanning Meredith Grey + dorky Harry Potter reference? Yes!!!!). I hope this season will be kind on him, that he and Vicky work out well (from what I gathered about it, she has also been through a lot) and that we see more Harriet!

5 - Maggie: Baby girl. I love that they’re consistent that she has a jealous streak but is also a very good person who is always trying her best. Plus, official womb secret bearer is the best title omg! Maybe she should change from cardio to obgyn, lol! Plus, the sisters are everything to me! She instantaneous knew Amy was mad! She stood up for Mer! Aaaaa I love them!!!! Hope this show ends with all three of them happy and loved and badass as always!

6 - Others: Tom has been an.... Interesting piece. I love him, but his antics are almost caricature-esque now and it’s getting on my nerves. He was detestable in exploitating that family’s pain but also, the hospital did need a pr boost or it’d be in even hotter waters! The restraining order on Owen was a tad much bc it got in the way of patient care, but also he did get electrocuted in a very sensitive area by someone who had just gotten together with his ex - I’d be a little suspicious that it was 100% unintentional tbh. He’s power drunk and needs to be turned down a notch. Schmit and Nico and adorkable as always and I loved Nico’s speech about demanding more of himself - That’s one of the biggest traps of low self-steem and Imm glad it’s mentioned. I’ll miss Quadri. Helm being a MeredithGrey stan first and person second is still me lol. I loved how this last ep showed how much of a family they are - all the connections and shared pasts and references to relationships and what not. The “bird” storyline was so cute! Pac North seems so promissing and I’ll cry ugly tears when my baby Alex turns that ish around and shows everyone who’s boss!!!! The whole “the world is broken” theme of the season is my jam! Sadly, irl that handful of people are not gonna turn it around, but I want to see it happen on my screen! The medical system being fixed! As a future doctor (I promissed myself I’d not be the person who brings it up in every opportunity but lol here I am) it’d make me so happy! Against my better judgment, I’m liking Towen! They are trying, they’re really trying! Owen has done nothing wrong so far (besides offering to milk teddy which was just dumb, not malicious) and has been great at stepping down from his job so she could work! And him at Pac North will be great tbh - as much as I didlike him, he is an excellent doctor and strategist and he was a great chief at GS (until the last bit which was just gross negligence). From the promo for next ep: I don’t think they’ll make Webber cheat again. It’d be predictable and cheap and I’d be so mad that we’d have another round of acting like he’s a saint with a tiny issue of being a cheater. What I theorize is: He’ll have lunch with his friend, and either A) She’ll be friendly at the wrong time and Catherine will walk in and then think he’s cheating and it’ll be a mess, or B) Gemma is gonna try to get him back to drinking (Or maybe C) She was telling him to stop being bullheaded and fighting with his wife when life is so short). Cristina reference in the text omg, my heart!

Sorry for the long rant!

[theonyxpath]

Matthew Dawkins here, with Meghan Fitzgerald’s Maa-Kep draft for Mummy: The Curse 2nd Edition! Enjoy!

Maa-Kep

Shadow of Pillars

Spies, Junta, Dapifers

We would never say we know better, of course. It’s just that not taking our advice would be a mistake.

I listened closely while he spoke. The people would love him, he said. They would offer their loyalty gladly, and in exchange they would gain power over their own fates. All it would take was a revolution, guns and fists raised high in silhouette against the orange blaze that would light up the night and banish tyranny. I could see his passion, his dedication. His logic was sound. His preparations were prudent. Even now, I laud his efforts.

He looked up from his maps and schedules to beam a smile my way. He cut a handsome figure, there in the candlelight, and I admit his plan had merit. It was a temptation, as surely as any convincing bait ever is. I smiled, too.

“So,” he said, “what do you think? Will it work?”

“It would have,” I assured him. “It would have worked very well, were it not for one fatal flaw.”

“What’s that?” he asked, concern writ plain in his bright eyes.

“You told it to me.”

Tradition of the Amulet

The relics of the Maa-Kep are protective talismans, badges of office, engraved emblems that declare something to be true, and unobtrusive seals that can hold back power, carry it, or transfer it from place to place. Worn or mounted, they passively soak in magic and secrets. Like their amulets, the Maa-Kep are subtle protectors and preservers of ideas and ideals, those who quietly move power from hand to hand or rein it in when it needs limiting for the greater good. They serve quietly but never let anyone forget how important they are. They absorb information, only doling it out when and to whom they believe it’s warranted. They’re the secret police of the Arisen, and the beat they walk is all of civilization. They shepherd ideological purity; sometimes those ideas come from the Judges, sometimes from the mortals the mummies guide, and sometimes from their own meret’s priorities.

Magnanimous in Victory, Blameless in Defeat

Maa-Kep rarely take the spotlight themselves, instead gathering information and then reporting it to someone else who will do the forward-facing work for them. This is partially because they believe to take credit is to disrespect their place as tools and useful right hands, passed down to them from the Judges and the Shan’iatu. It’s also for plausible deniability in case something goes wrong. It’s not that they throw their friends under the bus, it’s just that it’s easier to smooth things over later when they’re not the ones catching the heat. They’re loyal to their leaders but unafraid to speak truth to power — if only behind closed doors. They shape civilization around them by forever making corrections and adjustments to everything and everyone, whether with one quiet word or with a brute force tool — like a fellow mummy or a well-armed cult.

Foundations

In Irem, the Dapifers were originally a collection of middle managers — slave drivers, overseers, and convoy masters. They gradually made themselves indispensable, demonstrating their dedication to making sure Irem’s caravans ran on time and their understanding of the inner workings of empire. The Shan’iatu eventually recognized the guild’s potential to be so much more, and elevated the Maa-Kep to act as secret police whose true purpose was hidden from the other guilds. They preserved the ideological purity of Irem, making sure no one strayed from the path to glory and conquest in the gods’ names.

The Wheel Turns

The guild’s secret duty didn’t stay hidden forever; by the time of the Rite of Return, the others knew why the Spies had been chosen. Their fellow mummies don’t always remember it, though. Having a Maa-Kep in the meret is a slow pendulum swinging between trust and suspicion, as her comrades rediscover her covert goals over and over again; but by the time they remember, she’s always made herself too damn useful to ignore. To this day, it’s gauche to talk about it in polite company, and usually the meret’s cults other than the Maa-Kep’s itself aren’t in the know even once the Arisen remember. To those who don’t, the Junta are valued advisors and scouts, playing the roles of coordinator, majordomo, surveillant, appraiser, and yes, spy — it’s just that few realize this spy is always a double agent, even if it’s for their own good. (Usually.)

Maa-Kep are kingmakers and internal affairs agents, watchdogs and stewards. They are project managers who support their merets and cults, rooting out incompetence, corruption, and untrustworthy sorts. They watch over their allies but also constantly evaluate them. To those who do remember their purpose, a Dapifer is all those things as well as the conductor who guides the meret’s train along the rails and keeps everybody else in line. Some appreciate it; some resent it; and many feel differently depending on the Descent.

The Maa-Kep’s cults are extensions of themselves by way of surveillance, information gathering, and spreading out like a web of eyes and ears with the mummy at its center. The Junta are men in black and spymasters, but also keen investigators with cults full of detectives and journalists, and mysterious strangers who waltz into someone’s life, help him out for no apparent reason, then vanish into the ether — arranging people and events on a grand scale humans can’t see. They’re not the ones who give a man a fish; they’re the ones who teach him to fish by writing the manual and having minions leave it conspicuously on his desk without ever talking to him, watching him from across the street with binoculars while he reads it, and then expecting him to do it right.

Once, the Dapifers weren’t the ones with the big picture vision, instead enforcing that of the Shan’iatu. They were content with that… but the Shan’iatu aren’t around anymore. The Maa-Kep view themselves as the Shan’iatu’s true successors because they enshrine Irem’s highest ideals. They know how things are really supposed to be done, and how to make sure they’re done that way. The less they remember or care about their original mandates, the more they build their own versions of the grand vision in their minds and enforce those. They insist it’s what the Judges want — who better to keep the seats warm for the great sorcerers than the ones who stood by their right hands so long ago?

As Sothis Ascends

A Maa-Kep deals with immortality by resting assured she can rely on her powers of observation and knowledge-gathering to catch her up on anything she forgets or misses, and by staying focused on the minutiae. She can’t contemplate the existential dread of knowing she’ll probably outlive the human race if she’s busy micromanaging everyone else and poking her nose into their business 24/7. She might miss old friends, but at least she got to know them better than anyone else did — probably better than they knew themselves. Thus, they live on in her.

The patterns the Spies see and perpetuate in the world are those of behavior, relationships, and philosophies. They track the principles every society values and how it maintains its high road, or falls from it into a subversion or even perversion of its purported ideals. They understand how civilizations rise and fall by the integrity of their beliefs, their dedication compared to their hypocrisy, and how well their people work together.

Starfall

A Junta turns her back on the Judges because she sees what she believes is a flaw in the gods’ plans or comes to believe that something has corrupted even those lords of Duat. Those who grow to resent their servitude don’t do so because they hate the concept of serving, but because they feel they’re not being utilized to their full potential, they’re being ordered to uphold an impure idea, or their elegant work is stymied by frustrating obstacles beyond their control. Others fall to corruption themselves, losing faith in their purpose after standing vigil for so long or craving the spotlight after lifetimes of hiding in the shadows.

Vessels: Amulets

Who We Are

Internal affairs officer in a metropolitan police department, monitoring society’s dedication to its ideals through its law enforcement

Deep-cover espionage agent, collecting intelligence about cultures and nations around the world and only reporting back what will push her employers to act the way she wants them to

Project manager at a large company, raking in money so the cult can donate large sums to ideologically desirable groups

Butler and house manager for a rich and bustling estate belonging to another Arisen and consisting of generations of a dynasty cult

Trusted advisor to an influential politician or crime lord, whispering and nudging to influence governments, underworlds, or both

Beyond the Shadow of Pillars

Mesen-Nebu: You make an excellent vanguard, even if your materialistic streak makes you a bit of an embarrassment. We’d never say so to your face, though.

Sesha-Hebsu: Without you, many valuable secrets would be lost. Without us, your judgments would ring hollow.

Su-Menent: Curb your worst impulses, my friend. Your work is important, but not as important as you think it is.

Tef-Aabhi: It’s an intricate dance we weave, isn’t it? We both have long memories, but yours are so much more reliable. Pity, that.

Wadjet-Itja: One day, we’ll dig up the secret of how you managed your chicanery, and on that day, you’ll wish you never pretended at immortality.

[deathbyvalentine]

DuD Prompts

Astrid + Shirts

He woke up slowly. One arm slung over her hips, one still holding his dataslate. They had fallen asleep watching some naff training videos, the type you take seriously as cadets and laugh at as officers. Astrid was still asleep in his shirt, eyeliner smudged, small frown still painted on her face. He shifted, brushing some of the blonde hair out of her eyes. There had been less of these nights as of late. She had had more with Esme, he suspected, when not working a ridiculous number of hours. Carefully, he swallowed that bit of anger at the rules back, It wouldn’t help.

Anything that effected her tended to make his not-so-good tendencies worse. Anything that hurt her, he wanted to hurt a hundred times worse. Anything that made her angry, stirred his rage. Anything that thought they owned her, he wanted to correct. Sometimes he wondered if he was actually capable of loving anything properly. All signs very much pointed to no. The closest he came to it was with her and his fighter. They both were his. Isn’t that what love was? Something having you completely and you having them right back?

Idly, he wondered whether she loved Esme. Surely she wouldn’t be quite that stupid. Love between anyone else was for fools. It made you do stupid things, it left you riddled with weaknesses, it was agonisingly human. They were better than that, the same way they were better than everyone really. They didn’t do shit like that. 

Lance thought of every person he had ever fucked, ever dated, ever said I love you to. He had felt nothing towards them generally but lust or novelty, and when that wore off, it was on to the next thing. The constants had been Astrid, flight and Anoretta. And he wasn’t even sure he knew Anoretta anymore, if she stirred the same feelings she once did and if he even wanted to find out what he was to her now. He had honestly assumed Astrid had been the same with her dalliances. 

Maybe he was wrong.

Swagger

He looked at the demon. The demon looked at him. The slight shimmering of the Warp lay between them, looking for all the world like oil lying on top of water. He kept his fingers by his side, not giving into the urge to trace his fingers through it. Around him, people were murmuring or whispering in fright. Everyone was wearing serious expressions, everyone was at a loss. Bridge looked as serious as he had ever seen him. He knew logically he too should be afraid. But he wasn’t.

It wasn’t that he felt nothing. For once that was not the problem. Instead he was feeling a rush of absolute contempt, a desire to show this fucker exactly who he was dealing with. The Gardener was nothing. Something that could be crushed under his heel, outwitted easily, made to disappear. Easily.

He took a breath, eyes flickering to the small figure curled up at his feet. That was a shock that was sorely needed, dampening down the arrogance that tilted his head up and painted a smirk on his face. He didn’t want to leave them there. Nobody deserved that, or so he was told. He hadn’t yet been in the warp after all. His fingers twitched. He took a breath. Resisting temptation once more.

_______________________________________________________

Father

There was a grief too big to name, sitting in his chest. It sat there for several minutes, dominating every thought, every feeling until there was nothing but the sensation of drowning. So he did what he could. What made sense. He turned it off. He didn’t turn it back on. Not on the Chaser, not when writing the letters he needed to write, not when alone in his room. 

It muted everything. He worked steadily and perfectly, didn’t lose his temper, eat and slept and drank. He fucked around the expected amount, frustrated that it didn’t help. Neither did drinking or smoking. Neither did socialising or isolating. The only thing that broke through the ice that had crept over him was the Lightning and the Spiderwidow, who both clung to him tighter than before, as if sensing the fracture lines within him.

The next time he had leave, he would not go home to his father. He wouldn’t embrace him. He wouldn’t make him proud or disappointed or make him feel anything at all. He wouldn’t take his advice or his teasing or see his gentle smile. That possibility felt like an open wound. 

He didn’t even have the refuge of memories. Because when he allowed his mind to wander, he couldn’t uncomplicatedly remember the man who raised him. Instead he saw the shadows, the moments where the dark crept in. The constant lies. The manipulation. The bits where his father’s memory seemed to fail that now were obvious symptoms of a mindwipe. 

Nothing stayed good in this sector. Nothing. Not even the past.

_________________________________________

A Dance With The Ex

This was simple and uncomplicated. Not for Gabriel obviously, but frankly he could go fuck himself. It was simple for Lance. He was being held by a gorgeous man who definitely wanted him but ran no risk of catching feelings. There was music playing and amasec in his system, he didn’t have to care about anything. The only way it would be any better was if Purge would actually fuck him. Unfortunately he seemed to have developed something like a moral compass in their time apart. Like every other fucker he had met recently.

 Idly he wondered if Charity was in his league. She seemed to have changed not at all. She still had claws, still liked playing games. She wouldn’t make him think about his immortal soul. It would be a welcome break. He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want to have to try to be good. He wanted to be selfish and unkind and hedonistic.

He rested his head on Purge’s shoulder, feeling the muscle there, the warmth. He wondered if it would help, actually having a partner. It seemed to be helping Astrid in some ways, but not others. Someone to fawn over you, unconditionally. To love you in all your stupidity. Was he supposed to want that?

He didn’t know what he was supposed to want.

________________________________________________

An Old School Friend

She loved watching her in battle. She had a ballet dancer’s grace, making the act of killing into an art. She staked across the battlefield, armour glistening with blood, hair stained with it and never looking better. Anna was not usually the type to admire violence. It didn’t disgust her either - she was a Sister after all and a hospitalier at that. But she never had thought it something that could be beautiful until she saw Serene in the midst of it.

They had known each other for what felt like forever but was closer to a decade. They had met in the schola, fierce rivals and best friends. Their dorm room kisses didn’t fade away, meant more than just exploring and fun. It carried on, a thread of consistency as they moved planet to planet, training then fighting then fighting then fighting.

Anna knew Serena’s body as well as her own, through a mixture of sex and medicine, though rarely at the same time. She had sewn her up, held her feverish hand, nursed her, shouted at her, loved her. And Serena defended her, spoiled her, rolled her eyes at her and trusted her. They were not just a team. They were a whole. The only thing they loved more than each other was the God they both served. And that was one priority Anna was okay with being behind.

______________________________________________________

“How about something like watching the sun set across the waters /an 'observer watches the world and reflects' piece.”

Cal trailed their fingers in the golden river, though that was a loose term. Because in this space it wasn’t precisely like they had a body and river was simply the nearest approximation their mind could find to the existence they were experiencing.  Whatever their fingers touched, they felt. Slices of people’s souls, contextless and isolated. Flashes of feeling, good and bad. Love. Hate. Temptation. Prayers. Cal knew what these emotions were, faintly, as though from a great distance. They were small feelings, unoccupied by the balance of chaos, the love of the Emperor, the fabric of the sector. They were beautiful feelings. Small was not the same as unimportant. Cal could see now what their lover cherished so much about humanity. They admired the species so much it almost broke their heart.

Occasionally there was a tug in the back of their mind, like they were supposed to be somewhere. Like someone was calling their name. It was devastatingly easy to forget all about it, to just enjoy the feeling of being home.

__________________________________________________

Negotiation Buddies

They made a worryingly good team Lance realised. She stood at the front, resplendent in her gorgeous machinery. She cast an intimidating shadow, the walls of the cave dancing in the light of just a few lanterns. Lance was pretty sure he could never get tired of admiring the gleaming metal and dangerous blades. He kept remembering having the honour to work on it, lowering the internal temperature. Ave Omnissiah.

He was playing blithe. These were heretics, but human ones. Human wasn’t always Mitra’s strong point. So he asked stupid obvious questions, voice friendly and kind, making her the absolute authority, never making her lose face by having to lower herself to the obvious. He approached them unarmed, a move that seemed to never fail to wrong foot people during negotiations. It immediately gave him a safety that even a written document wouldn’t have effected.

He moved back after each statement, listening from the back and whispering orders to the others on the mission. He heard Mitra finishing up and gave his goodbyes to the hereteks. And as him and Mitra walked away, steps completely in step. “So we’ll kill them all later right?” “Of course Lance Durovera.” “Knew we were on the same page.”

______________________________________________________

Leadership

Maybe it was the recent shifts in command structure. Maybe it was the fact he could feel his insides rotting, Maybe it was the fact he was trying to run a field hospital when he learnt first aid approximately two weeks ago. But he felt utterly out of his fucking depth. Sister Anya would be better at this than him. She was better at this than him.

A small bubble of self-loathing appeared in his chest. If he couldn’t perform his job competently, he really did have no redeeming qualities. The one thing he could always take pride in was how fucking good he was at his work. But he couldn’t cure these people, got a backseat exorcism from Bridge, had his wounds crippling him, and his triage was...fine. Fine. Not brilliant. Not great. Adequate.

There was no glowing praise like there was on the sinking ship, no people thanking him. If he had not been here, the result would have been the same. He had saved nobody, achieved nothing. On the plus, he hadn’t died, nor had anyone on the team. 

It didn’t make him feel less fucking awful. The bare minimum never helped. _________________________________________________

[spiders-hth-is-an-outlier]

Okay, this won’t stop bugging me, so I’m going to take a run at why 14X07 got under my skin so damn bad.  I have to start by laying out a thing that’s going to sound like I’m complaining about it, but I’m actually not complaining about it, I just need to establish it as a fact before I go on to the thing I am complaining about.

When Dean is stressed and his emotions are sliding out of his control, he reacts by lashing out angrily, and he’s scary, and he scares people.

This is the part that isn’t a complaint.  This is a character flaw, but I LIKE characters with flaws.  Dean’s flaws are totally consistent with everything we know about Dean, including his mundane background as The Kid Who Wanted to Be John Winchester When He Grew Up and his metaphysical background as the Michael Sword.  I LIKE that he doesn’t defeat his inner demons once and done forever; that would be stupid.  These are long-term patterns, and it’s a long-term struggle for him, and that’s great.  That helps make him an engaging character.

I’m literally just observing right now that this is a thing he does, repeatedly and consistently.  And I’m not going way back into the archives here; I can think of, off the top of my head, four times since the beginning of s13 that the narrative has made a point of this.  The therapist in “The Big Empty” calls him out specifically on the way he does it to Jack, and the way Jack is visibly terrified of him.  He does it to Kaia in “The Bad Place” and to not-Kaia in “The Scar,” and in that latter case, again, the writers specifically take time out of their day to call attention to it in so many words.  It’s not verbalized at the end of “Bring ‘Em Back Alive,” but you have to be really committed to not understanding how acting works to miss the fact that when Dean lashes out physically in his frustration, Sam is visibly afraid of him. (Note, I’m not saying that Sam is logically or rationally afraid of him; I’m sure it never crossed Sam’s mind that Dean was likely to harm him at that point, because obviously he wasn’t, but it’s pretty common for people with PTSD or even a lower-grade history of being exposed to violence to react with instinctual fear around people who are losing their temper, and that’s obviously what was playing out there.)  So that’s four episodes out of the past 30 where the show has *focused in* on this pattern of Dean’s, and I’m compressing all the Jack stuff into one “incident,” even though it’s obviously not, just for convenience’s sake.

So fine, like I said, I’m okay with that as a character thing; Dean has some great qualities, and he has some besetting Achilles’ heels.  We all have our stuff.

Here’s my actual complaint.

This is obviously intentional; they keep drawing attention to it. But for whatever reason, the only consequences the writers are ever willing to let Dean endure for being a guy who scares the people around him when he’s upset are strictly internal.  Dean feels badly.  Dean’s self-esteem suffers.  “Dean can’t forgive himself.”  Everyone watching is urged to feel badly not because Dean makes other people feel badly, but because it makes Dean feel badly that he makes other people feel badly.  That’s...not a call I would make as a writer, because even though I’m sure they do it unintentionally, they’re playing straight into a real-life abuse trope, where abuse victims are constantly encouraged to forgive their abusers because they feel so badly about it.  I’m not saying Dean is manipulative in the way that many abusers are; I truly believe he does feel badly.  I think this is a genuine problem for him, and he genuinely struggles with it... but that’s the thing.  When you write that story, you’re subtly reinforcing the idea that it’s everyone’s job to empathize with, understand, and forgive Complicated Men who do anti-social things.  And a lot of that really happens in real life, to devastating consequences, and I would really rather they didn’t lean so hard into it on this show.

So fine, they’re already taking a likeable character played by a tremendously charismatic actor and using him to play out all the greatest hits of everyone’s real life abusers, from “he had an abusive childhood himself” to “this is just how he learned to vent emotions” to “he knows it’s wrong and he feels so badly.”  It’s not a great look, but okay.  What upsets me about THIS episode is that THIS time, there actually is an obvious and natural way to assign a genuine consequence for this behavior -- not to “punish” Dean, but to acknowledge the reality of, you know, this is actually what happens to  guys like this.

If you’re a guy like this, and you deal with your problems by throwing your weight around and scaring people with the ferocity of your anger, you know what really happens in real life a lot of the time?   It damages the relationships you want to have.  Your bad mood passes, but that’s still how people remember you, and who they think you are.

It would have been EASY, and it would have been really powerful, to play this out in Dean’s relationship with Jack.  Dean changes his mind about Jack, and now Dean doesn’t want Jack to be scared of him anymore, now he wants to be the Cool Dad who takes him out joyriding in his Cool Car while the boring responsible parents are trying to do actual work.  And the most natural thing in the world would’ve been if Jack -- just didn’t want that from him, because the Dean that he’s been able to see is a jumble of naked threats and grudging tolerance and occasional off-handed praise, and he’s never really been warm toward Jack, and he’s NOT the guy who protected Jack and watched Beastmaster with him when Jack was scared and alone, and the dad Jack actually wants to be with is the one he associates with kindness.  So then the story would be more than just “Dean feel bad afterward.”  It would be “the way Dean functions puts him on the outside of the trusting relationship Sam and Castiel have gone out of their way to establish with Jack.”

That’s a cost that would actually matter; Dean has always wanted fatherhood, and he’s already lost a child he wanted to be a father to.  Realizing he’s jeopardizing his second chance by his inability to change this dysfunctional pattern would be a GOOD STORY, and it would be honest, and it would make Dean’s flaws actually matter.

It’s appalling to me that they chose instead to have Castiel and Sam sit around exchanging dialogue about how this is hardest on Dean.  And then the total fucking audacity of putting words in Castiel’s mouth -- Castiel, who risked EVERYTHING to save Kelly and Jack, and who was out there again in this episode doing the actual work of tracking down a cure -- about how Dean’s eleventh-hour decision to take a fishing trip was really the Very Best Thing anyone could have done.  It’s just infuriating to me, because it doubles down on the show’s complete commitment to making sure that we only ever view ANYTHING through the lens of whether it makes Dean feel happy or sad, and that we are expected to view even Dean’s deliberate character flaws as troubling primarily because they are a burden on Dean.  Hasn’t he suffered enough?

[micronecro]

The Vicious Cycle Of Simkjrs

One of my favourite parts about Simkjrs’ MHA fics is probably how every iteration of Izuku will always follow a pattern,whether it’s the vigilante AU, runaway AU, villain AU, or villain AU but with funnies. I like to call this pattern the “vicious cycle of Simkjrs”, or in layman’s terms, “trauma be like that sometimes”.

(Contains a low simmer of spoilers for Simkjrs’ fics, obviously.) 

It goes a little like this:

1. Izuku accepts unacceptable circumstances. This is a thing everyone does because of how human brains work — we are pattern-seeking creatures. If someone parks a tank in your idyllic small town, you’re going to react first, but after a while, you’ll get used to it being there, and may even welcome a second one. It’s a normal glitch in our perceptive abilities, and thus a great jumping-off point for internal tension. 

This is OPM!Izuku allowing himself to be emotionally abused by Bakugou, MSA!Izuku accepting that no one is to be trusted and he has to live in squalor to survive, afo!izuku thinking he has to undercut AfO’s entire organization, etc etc etc. 

2. Izuku’s mental state decays. Even if izuku perceives his current circumstances to be normal, they’re more often than not extremely harmful and unsustainable -- that is to day, ‘unacceptable circumstances’. This is where a lot of the meat in Simkjrs’ prose comes from; the internal tension where Izuku has normalized his own suffering, but experiences steadily escalating levels of distress anyway, and doesn’t know how to deal with it.

This is OPM!Izuku’s distant attitude, MSA!izuku’s frustrated and angry episodes when pressured, AfO!izuku’s lack of direction after he’s Done The Deed.

3. Izuku breaks. His circumstances were unsustainable, and his ability to deal has been exhausted. He snaps back to Unacceptability, but with added stress on top. Izuku experiences a sudden surge of distress, and often lashes out.

This is OPM!Izuku being forced to confront the need to cut out a massive portion of his life (Bakugou), MSA!Izuku cutting himself off first after the temple event in his childhood and again after Kamino Ward, and AfO!izuku continuing to destroy everything by himself.ffffff

4. Izuku recovers. A light in the dark. No matter how drastic the Break, it gives him the clarity to actually act on his anxieties and find happiness and recovery. It’s what makes Simkjrs’ fics so cathartic to read; Izuku is constantly entering these periods of severe development, with releases as dramatic as the tension preceding it.

This is OPM!Izuku meeting Shinsou and trying to repair his friendship with Mitoki and AfO!Izuku allowing himself to trust other people with his objectives.

But wait! Where’s MSA!Izuku in that example?

Oh.

Uh-oh.

Know What I’ve Made By The Manic Episode On My Hands

MSA!Izuku seems to follow the same structure of internal conflict the other fics do, but instead of finding new footing every time he hits a break, MSA!Izuku will ride out the break as far as it will go, and his trust issues prevent him from diversifying his outlook. His circumstances thus get worse and worse with every single one of these cycles he experiences. Every time he approaches the “Recovery” section, he aborts it, causing twice as much suffering.

Thus when he severely undercut himself after getting caught, that bad decision was intensified by his reluctance to undergo the “recovery” stage, and true to narrative consistency, he suffers twice as much; he has his bodily autonomy violated, harshly, both body-wise and soul-wise.

Normally, this would be a very strong, robustly written tragic character, with airtight internal logic, but here’s the catch:

Eri.

Izuku, against everything he beat into himself after having his ability to hit the “Recovery” stage ripped away from him again and again, begins to reach out. At first it wasn’t much, just trusting Kirishima to respect his obsessive need for privacy, but when he meets Eri, he lets himself make a huge risk with her spirit.

And it’s euphoric. 

After the constant reminders of how often Izuku has been deprived of his Recovery stage, how often his choice to distrust has been reaffirmed, how we see how this exact situation could go wrong, and if you’re a fan, the complete cycle Izuku has been deprived of that you know really clenches a Recovery Fic, he gives himself away and gets rewarded for it. 

He shows kindness and openness and experiences this rush of working together with a spirit, and the sheer height of the reward compared to the amount of suffering he had experienced was a rush, it was sheer release, so dense with catharsis that you kinda wanna scream “FUCK YEAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” at every little good thing that happens.

I think the way these patterns are set up and executed indicates an instinctive understanding of how internal conflict in storytelling and tragic characters work, and being able to watch this coherent, well-framed tragedy unfold and have that happy ending to shift the crushing direction of the story is why Know What I’ve Made By The Marks On My Hands is my favourite MHA fanfiction.

[upstartpoodle]

@taimproblem replied to your post:

Oh, right, for some reason I thought you'd read the books. Sorry! ^^; But yeah I agree that the writing doesn't feel entirely internally consistent, and certain characters don't get the development that would seem logical because the show wants to keep George as a "villain" and Ross as a "hero"...

Don’t worry about it, it can be difficult to remember who’s read the books and who hasn’t sometimes. :) And yeah I definitely agree that one of the show’s main problems in the recent series is the pushing of the hero vs villain dynamic between Ross and George. Both of them are very flawed characters, albeit in different ways, so to direct people to see one as a villain and one as a hero is inevitably going to end up alienating sections of the audience and creating inconsistencies in the narrative. Ultimately it doesn’t do the show any favours, nor George or Ross for that matter, since keeping them in the narrative roles assigned to them, in many ways, prevents both of them from growing and developing as characters. It sent George’s character off in a slightly weird direction--logically you’d expect him, placed in a new situation with a new family and no longer living with his uncle, who we’ve seen plenty of times is a bad influence on him, to perhaps soften a little and have an arc focused more on his relationship with those characters, but if anything he ended up losing a lot of the more human side of his character for no reason, as far as I can tell, other than the narrative’s need to have someone for Ross to be morally outraged by and be shown as superior to. Ross, on the other hand, can’t grow as a character because the narrative’s constant need for him to be heroic and in the right never allows him to reflect on the worse of his actions and change his behaviour, or even feel the consequences of them for any significant length of time. Even when he admits to wrongdoings, he is, more often than not, quickly forgiven, no matter how bad his actions, and so there is rarely time for him--or us as the audience--to consider how he might develop and improve as a person. Tbh, I think that if Debbie stopped trying to push them into these roles and keep them there, their dynamic in the last two series would be much more interesting to watch, instead of being repetitive and kind of frustrating, as I’ve come to find it.