#the whole thing is a reference to the source material

[divorcedtom]

daniel molloy version of k3nd4llr0y’s logan roy rollin with the lgbt edit

[squorttle-pox]

Roland Barthes' lesser-known sequel The Death of the Author II: Actually Murder Them

gun to my head i would rather die than read this fic. what the fuck are you even doing at this point. whats the fucking point?

[thankskenpenders]

Thoughts on Sonic 3!

On December 10th, 2018, I was on the last day of a trip to Milwaukee. The night before, I'd attended the wedding of one of my best friends, Jake, who I've known since high school. Even though half of us were sick the whole trip, it was a great time. Derek had asked the wedding DJ to play "One Week" as the first request of the night, and proceeded to lip sync the entire song on the dance floor. On that cold winter morning in a hotel room hundreds of miles from home, Derek and I groggily checked Twitter on our phones and saw the shocking news: Paramount had teased the design for Sonic from their upcoming live action film. Even in silhouette, the shape of his face and the realistic curvature of his limbs made him look like a grotesque little homunculus. This movie was going to suck.

Six years later, I've now seen the third entry in what's become a hugely successful Sonic film franchise. It features Keanu Reeves as the voice of Shadow the Hedgehog in a fairly faithful adaptation of his story from Sonic Adventure 2. At the time of writing, it currently sits at a whopping 86% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, vying for the title of the best-reviewed theatrically released video game movie of all time. Critics are saying nice things about the emotional journey of Shadow the Hedgehog. Never in a million years did I think I'd see this day.

I, too, have now seen this movie, and... yeah, it's pretty good.

I'm gonna get deep into spoilers here, so I'll just say up front that I liked the movie. It feels like just about the best possible execution of this version of Sonic. But that's also damning it with faint praise, depending on who you ask.

If you're a fan of the games who didn't like the second movie, you probably won't get much out of this one, either, unless you just really love Shadow so much that nothing else in the movie matters to you. It doesn't reinvent the wheel for this film series. It's still got a heaping helping of broad comedy, cheap pop culture references, bad one-liners, and characterization that diverges greatly from the source material. This is not high art, nor is it a direct adaptation of Sonic Adventure 2. If you're the kind of person who hates this portrayal of Sonic and Eggman, or a lore nerd who'll hate that they let Shadow do Chaos Control without an Emerald, then just don't bother with this.

On the other hand, if you did enjoy the last movie, then you'll probably have a fun time here, too. Shadow is very cool. The action is the best it's ever been. There's a bit more focus on characters from the games, and less on human characters invented for the movies—with the exception of Agent Stone, who's in this a lot because everyone likes him. There's a lot of SA2 fanservice. They even play "Live and Learn." It's a fun time! Be sure to stick around through the end credits.

And now, to dig deeper, let's get into the spoilers! I'm gonna jump around a lot and talk about different aspects of the movie, spoiling everything along the way.

Shadow and his reams of lore

Here's the main thing you came for: Shadow is great in this! They really did him justice. Keanu Reeves is extremely solid in the role. He can be a bit flat as an actor sometimes, but I think he did well here. He can be tough and menacing, but he can also be earnest and emotionally vulnerable. Good casting call. Excited at the prospect of seeing more of him in the future.

Really, as a Sonic Lore Nerd I'm most interested in discussing the changes they made to Shadow's backstory. I'm sure there will be many fans upset with the changes, but for the sake of streamlining a complicated backstory that was subject to a bunch of retcons and multiple layers of amnesia and fitting it into a 110-minute movie, I think they generally made smart choices.

For one, Gerald didn't create Shadow using Black Arms DNA, because Gerald didn't create Shadow at all! Instead, Shadow arrived on Earth inside a meteor, and Gerald was merely the prominent GUN scientist who studied him after he was captured. (That meteor does have very strong Black Arms vibes, though, so I wouldn't rule out the possibility of them exploring that stuff in the future.) This simplifies things a lot and allows Shadow to be a direct foil for Sonic, kind of a version of our hero who was treated as a lab rat and lost the only human he considered family instead of finding happiness like Sonic has. Then later Shadow hurts Tom and Sonic wants revenge, and it mirrors Shadow's feelings about Maria, and after they fight they can empathize with each other over this, Shadow sees the error of his ways and helps save the world, yada yada yada. You get it. People predicted 95% of this movie's plot from the trailers, but it's effective.

Likewise, all of the stuff about creating Shadow as the ultimate life form who's immune to all disease to cure Maria's illness is completely cut out. Shadow's still called the ultimate life form, but he's treated as more of an energy source than a genetic research project here, playing off of the stuff about Eggman wanting to harness Sonic's natural Chaos Energy in the movies. The original intent behind the ultimate life form project was always hard to explain in the games and doesn't even come up that much, so I don't blame them for cutting it.

Because Gerald isn't doing genetic experiments and creating artificial life, the Biolizard also doesn't exist. It does, however, appear in an old monster movie Shadow and Maria watch in a montage, with Shadow later commenting that he worries he's a monster like the one he saw in the movie. That's a clever way to include it, I think.

The ARK sort of exists. There was no space colony back in the '70s, all of the events of Shadow's flashbacks just took place at a secret GUN base on Earth. Fair enough for a version of the story ostensibly set in the real world. The big space laser in the third act of the film is obviously supposed to evoke the ARK, but it's referred to as simply the Eclipse Cannon. It's still not a full-blown space colony, just a weapon of mass destruction Gerald designed for GUN in exchange for his release (while also secretly planning to use it to blow up the planet in an act of revenge). I am, however, pleased to report that the Eclipse Cannon still has a giant Eggman face on it.

And as for Maria: I like her in this! She's obviously not going to get a ton of screentime, and she's always going to be a very straightforward character, but she's more playful and lively here. She teases Shadow for being grumpy and plays with him a lot. She feels less like this perfect embodiment of everything good and pure in the world and more like an actual kid. She's still not a complex character, but it works.

And the most important question: do they show a child getting shot and killed by the military? The answer is almost. In the flashback, GUN soldiers chase Maria, Shadow, and Gerald and ready their guns, but the young Commander Walters (who's in his 20s rather than being a kid) grabs them and tries to stop them from firing on a child. In the chaos, a soldier fires, missing Maria but hitting a generator that then blows up and kills Maria. So, y'know, close enough I suppose.

So, yes, many of the details change here, but they captured the gist of Shadow's story from SA2. The emotional core is there. I will say, though, I almost feel like Shadow isn't in this movie as much as I thought he'd be? I think he's used effectively in all of his scenes, and they make room for his backstory, and BOY does he get to kick ass in his fights, but for much of the middle part of the movie he's overshadowed by Ivo and Gerald. Though this might be a compromise to leave more screentime for...

Tails and Knuckles

I'm relieved to report that Tails and Knuckles both get a good amount of cool stuff to do in this! They don't feel like an afterthought.

I was worried that Tails in particular would completely fall by the wayside, since even his debut movie didn't entirely know what to do with him. But he's good here. He pretty much just feels like the Tails from the games at this point, especially since they dropped that fawning admiration he had for Sonic with that running gag of him going "Only Sonic the Hedgehog could do that!" He often chimes in as the one who wants Team Sonic to stick together when Sonic and Knuckles bicker. He particularly gets to shine in the Mission Impossible-inspired heist sequence at the GUN headquarters in London that serves as the climax of the second act, which feels like it was tailor made to let him shine as the tech guy of the team. He also gets several opportunities to swoop in and catch someone for a save in an action scene. He's good in this!

Knuckles is... fine. He's definitely fallen into the role of the comic relief dumb bruiser since joining the good guys, but he's at least a little better than he was in his own streaming show. The jokes lean more into him just being really brash about his strength and skill, rather than him being this archaic warrior who doesn't understand anything about the modern world. He also gets a few more serious bits in the back third of the movie where he gets to shine a little more, so overall it evens out to him being fine. They could've done way worse.

As for the relevance of the Knuckles show: Knuckles is now said to be the guardian of the Master Emerald, like in the games, though with no Angel Island this amounts to him hiding it somewhere for safekeeping. It's eventually revealed that he just gave it to Wade, who gets exactly one scene (sorry, Wade-heads) for a joke about him using the Master Emerald as a hockey puck. So, the miniseries explained why Knuckles has a connection with Wade. That's it! Also I think Knuckles might use the Flames of Disaster a bit in fights, but they never called the technique out by name, so I never really thought about it. So, yeah, the six-episode streaming miniseries about Wade bowling has zero meaningful relevance to the Shadow movie. Who could have seen this coming?

Miscellaneous humans

For that matter, the human supporting cast is MASSIVELY downplayed in this one. Tom and Maddie are there for two key sequences (the beginning of the movie and the GUN HQ heist), but otherwise they disappear for long stretches of the movie. They don't go to Japan in act I, nor do they go to space in act III, and there's no subplot for them during those periods, either. There's nothing like the wedding subplot in Sonic 2 where they'd constantly cut back to Hawaii for comic relief with the humans and only reveal why this was relevant to the plot near the end. (There's also no random dance battle in Siberia.) If a human character is here, it's because they have something to contribute to the plot right away. Most people will probably consider this an improvement, and I'd certainly say it makes for a much tighter script, though I have to remind everyone that I thought the wedding being a GUN sting operation was such a funny twist that I'm a defender of the Hawaii subplot.

On the subject of Tom, something funny I've noticed is that they've just completely downplayed the fact that Tom and Wade are cops. Tom being a cop never comes up once. Wade being a cop only gets referenced via the fact that he's practicing hockey on the roof of the police station in his one scene, but he's not in uniform or anything. They clearly got the memo that we don't want Sonic to hang out with cops.

Here's something else funny: Rachel and Randall got character posters, but they're actually not in the movie! Not technically, anyway. During the heist sequence at GUN HQ, Tom and Maddie use some gadgets Tails invented to holographically disguise themselves as those other characters. But the real Rachel and Randall never show up in the flesh. It's a very odd way to shoehorn the actors into the movie. (Jojo is also absent. They did not give her Amy's role of being the girl who reminds Shadow of Maria. Instead they just let Sonic have the big heart to heart with Shadow that makes him switch sides.)

You know who IS in this movie? Krysten Ritter. Not as the voice of Rouge, as the fandom once hoped, but as a director for GUN. She gets like three scenes and she feels completely checked out the whole time. Can't say I blame her! She's not really a character, just a plot necessity. Commander Walters dies in Japan but gives Sonic one of two keycards needed to activate the Eclipse Cannon, and then Ritter's character assumes Sonic stole it and labels him a bad guy. So that's why they have to break into GUN HQ in the second act instead of just talking things out with them. Still, I am at least relieved that Sonic doesn't work with GUN for most of the movie.

I gotta be honest: when Walters pulled a credit card-shaped object out of his pocket, I thought he was about to give Sonic another Olive Garden gift card as his final act before dying. Part of me wishes that happened.

The supporting human character in this who really gets to shine is Agent Stone, which I'm sure most fans will agree was the correct choice. There's a LOT of Agent Stone in this. He's good. I don't have much to say about him, but he's fun as usual.

But, of course, the ones who steal the show are Jim Carrey, and his costar Jim Carrey.

The Robotniks

I've gone back and forth on whether or not I can actually see movie Robotnik as Robotnik. I think with this third and final entry in the Jim Carrey Robotnik Trilogy, I've landed on... yeah, that's just Jim Carrey playing a Jim Carrey character. He's absolutely having fun with the role, and I enjoyed watching him, but I think a lot of that comes down to the fact that I'm a millennial who grew up watching Jim Carrey movies. If you didn't like him before, this movie will probably be nails on a chalkboard to you, because now there are two of him.

Ivo's arc here leans very heavily into the fact that he grew up as an orphan and never knew his family, a thing offhandedly mentioned in the first movie that's never been a thing for any other version of the character. Here, he learns that he has a living grandfather who's also a mad scientist, and it feels like a hole in his heart has been filled. It certainly makes sense for a place to take this version of the character, and it fits with the movie's themes of finding and losing family, but the cartoonish, childlike affection Ivo feels towards Gerald and all the scenes of them frolicking and dancing together have basically nothing to do with the characters from the games. He's a fun villain for this movie, but he's overwhelmingly used as comic relief this time rather than as a serious threat. He doesn't particularly feel like Sega's Dr. Ivo Robotnik, the arch nemesis of Sonic the Hedgehog who'd take over the world with an army of robots and a fleet of airships in the span of a day if Sonic wasn't around to stop him. He's a guy who lives in a big crab robot and has some drones. He has more in common with Carrey's depictions of the Grinch or the Riddler or Count Olaf than Dr. Eggman. Though he does, at least, finally get his outfit from the games by the end of the movie. So that's something. And also he's in a fat suit now. They only make jokes at the expense of his weight a little. Hooray...?

Gerald, meanwhile, is... largely the same character as movie Eggman, but older, so they can make jokes about him having saggy flesh and smelling funny and needing dentures. (Also, his voice kind of sounds like Homer Simpson sometimes?) To his credit, Carrey absolutely nails the handful of more serious scenes Gerald gets, whether it's Maria's death or his sinister turn when he reveals that he actually wants to destroy the Earth. But then it's right back to goofs about there being two of the same guy. Even the final battle features a lot of slapstick shenanigans with the two Robotniks fighting each other. I was able to enjoy the absurdity of it all, but if the humor doesn't land for you the dual Jim Carrey schtick is a hell of a lot of the movie. I wouldn't be surprised if there was more Gerald than Shadow in the movie, when you go and tally up their screentime. I was able to enjoy the sheer absurdity of it, but your mileage will vary.

I will, however, say that the split screen stuff they do with the two Carreys is EXTREMELY impressive, from a filmmaking perspective. They were absolutely flexing with their ability to pull the effect off. They don't rely on cheap tricks like cutting a lot, or having shot/reverse shot scenes where you're looking at the back of a body double's head. Instead they have a lot of long takes where the two Robotniks are talking to each other, you can see both of their faces, and they'll even hug and touch each other a lot, and the whole time the conversation maintains a natural pace like it really is two actors playing off of each other. It's really well done. It's an incredibly silly idea, but boy did they commit to it.

Sonic

I've hardly said anything about Sonic himself in all of this. It's his movie, isn't it! Well... I don't know, he's fine.

I feel like movie Sonic is a known quantity at this point, and either you like this take on the character or you don't. There was some speculation early on that this was supposed to be a younger Sonic who would grow into being the character we know from the games and comics, the one who's still got lots of quips but is also kind of aloof and cool, a free spirit who goes where the wind takes him, a figure the other characters look up to. And... no, that didn't happen. Once again he gets more serious as the stakes are raised, and he's totally badass when he goes Super, but the rest of the time he's still a little goober with tons of generic one-liners who learns schmaltzy lessons about the importance of family. He's still constantly going to undercut the tension of most scenes by cracking a pop culture reference that will make the average American parent go "haha I've heard of that." I don't think they're ever gonna change that. I think this just what the writers think Sonic is like.

And, again, for what it is, it's fine. He's a little annoying. You already know how you feel about movie Sonic. This third entry won't change that. But they do, at least, have him say "Talk about low budget flights, no food or movies... I'm outta here!" before jumping out of a helicopter. As my thoughts on the climax will show, I am not immune to fanservice.

The climax

God, the climax is SOOOOO fucking good. It's fantastic. Easily the best action these movies have ever done.

Rather than saving Super Shadow for the team-up with Sonic at the end, they have both of them go Super to fight each other first, and they just go full DBZ with it, fighting across the entire planet. It absolutely rules. I think this is the new coolest fight the two of them have had in anything ever. And then they have to stop the Eclipse Cannon together, and sure, there's no Biolizard. But Gerald DOES release a swarm of GUN Hunter robots, and the ensuing space battle turns into some Gundam shit. It's good! It's so good!!! The movie's flaws kind of melt away for me here when I'm watching Super Shadow take out an army of robots with Chaos Spears on the big screen. What a timeline we're living in.

And yes, they play "Live and Learn." They had to. They knew the assignment. They actually play a slight remix, but it's still got the original vocals, so it's perfectly recognizable. Actually, the tune of the song is used as a leitmotif for Shadow throughout the movie, first introduced via an acoustic guitar version played by Maria, and I really love that. I've been begging these movies to use more music from the games the whole time, and I'm glad they finally did so here. (They also use the traditional level clear jingle early in the film, and Eggman's theme from SA2 is very briefly used as a ringtone.)

... Anyway, uh, meanwhile Eggman, Tails, and Knuckles straight up just kill Gerald to save the world? They unceremoniously knock him into an energy field at the end of their slapstick fight aboard the Eclipse Cannon and he disintegrates like he hit a bugzapper. It's over in an instant. It's not graphic or anything, but it's, like... I didn't expect them to show it, or for it to be such a casual murder! Eggman has one quip about it and then immediately moves on.

Shortly after this, Eggman and Shadow sacrifice themselves to stop the Eclipse Cannon. Shadow's sacrifice doesn't stick, obviously (he's revealed to be alive by the end of the second stinger—pretend to be shocked), but Eggman's probably dead dead. I seriously doubt Jim Carrey's gonna come out of retirement for these movies again. His final moments before the big explosion are also SO dragged out and belabored. He has a dramatic final line like ten times in a row. It really just feels like the series saying goodbye to Carrey. And, again, it feels like a fitting enough end for this Eggman's arc, but it's an odd adaptation of the character from the games.

And so, that's what we're left with. This is far from Sonic Adventure 2: The Movie. It's not that, though there are many, many references made to that game in particular. It's a sequel to the film Sonic the Hedgehog 2 that has a similar tone and style, but Shadow and Gerald are in it, and Shadow gets some really cool fights, and there's a liiiiiittle more focus on stuff from the games than last time, and the script's a little tighter. If that sounds fun to you, you will have fun with this. I know I did. If it doesn't, you're probably better off waiting for them to inevitably do an animated reboot whenever this live action series runs out of steam.

It hasn't quite run out of steam yet, though...

The post-credits scenes, and the future

One of the big questions going into this was: what's next? How do they top a Shadow movie with heavy Sonic Adventure 2 overtones, in terms of hype for the fans? How do you fill Eggman's shoes after Carrey retires, for real this time? There are still more fan favorite rival characters to get through, but how many movies in a row can they introduce a furry foe for Sonic who inevitably turns good and helps him stop a larger threat by the end? And when the hell are we gonna see the girls?

Well, we now have our answer, and it's one I'm cautiously excited for: a whole army of Metal Sonics, and Amy!

Yes, Amy! Finally!! It's an absolute crime that we've gone three whole movies and a streaming miniseries without including the female lead of the series. I've complained about this ad nauseum (and also the fact that they cut Rouge from the story). But at least now they're finally doing something about it.

But now the question is, how will they characterize Amy? Sega's struggled with her for years, and there's a million different directions you can take her. Her one scene here has her smashing a bunch of Metal Sonics and wearing a cloak for the sake of a dramatic reveal, which gives her the vibes of a mysterious, badass action girl. This is, of course, completely different from how Sonic and Amy met in the games. What will her personality be like? She doesn't speak here, so who will they get to play her? Where did she come from? Will she even have a crush on Sonic? All of these have yet to be determined. So, like, I'm hyped to finally see Amy, a character who should've been in the movies from the start, but they could so easily end up playing it safe with an incredibly boring girlboss version of Amy who's no fun at all. We'll have to wait and see.

(My prediction: they're going to try to cast either Zendaya or Ariana as Amy.)

Metal Sonic, likewise, is very exciting, and he looks perfect. He looks just like the design from the games. But the question is: what will they do with this army of Metals? Will they be lead by one main Metal Sonic, perhaps Neo Metal Sonic, who gets to be a proper bad guy? Will they take some cues from Sonic CD, Heroes, and the OVA, or do something completely original? Where did they come from? Were they activated as a failsafe after Eggman died? Did they and Amy come from some sort of bad future, riffing on Sonic CD's time travel? Will they explore the fact that Metal wants to be the one and only Sonic? Or will they just be an army of disposable robot grunts for Sonic and friends to mow down like it's a Dynasty Warriors game, while some other villain takes center stage?

It could go so many different ways, and some prospects are more exciting than others. I mean, the Knuckles show had endless possibilities for what it could do with him, and none of the options on my bingo card were "Pachacamac's ghost tells him to help Wade win a bowling tournament." And while I'm a sicko who thinks it's funny that the Knuckles show is what it is, forgive me for keeping my hype about Amy and Metal Sonic in check here until we learn more.

Regardless of what they do, it'll still be hard to top the hype of Shadow, and it'll be hard to fill Jim Carrey's shoes for general audiences. So despite this clear statement of intent, I have no idea what the future of this film franchise holds. But regardless of what they do, I can say one thing for certain: the kids in my theater were hyped as hell for it. They popped off over Metal Sonic, and they were screaming their heads off with excitement over Amy. I heard a teenage girl on the opposite end of my row of seats say "finally!" over Amy's reveal, verbalizing my exact thoughts. She also said that this movie was "peak," though it diverged from the games, and she hoped they'd do a movie with Silver and Blaze someday.

The kids are gonna be okay.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

Oooh! A great Gavin Finney (Good Omens Director of Photography) interview with Helen Parkinson for the British Cinematographer! :)

HEAVEN SENT

Gifted a vast creative landscape from two of fantasy’s foremost authors to play with, Gavin Finney BSC reveals how he crafted the otherworldly visuals for Good Omens 2.  

It started with a letter from beyond the grave. Following fantasy maestro Sir Terry Pratchett’s untimely death in 2015, Neil Gaiman decided he wouldn’t adapt their co-authored 1990 novel, Good Omens, without his collaborator. That was, until he was presented with a posthumous missive from Pratchett asking him to do just that.  

For Gaiman, it was a request that proved impossible to decline: he brought Good Omens season one to the screen in 2019, a careful homage to its source material. His writing, complemented by some inspired casting – David Tennant plays the irrepressible demon Crowley, alongside Michael Sheen as angel-slash-bookseller Aziraphale – and award-nominated visuals from Gavin Finney BSC, proved a potent combination for Prime Video viewers.  

Aziraphale’s bookshop was a set design triumph.

Season two departs from the faithful literary adaptation of its predecessor, instead imagining what comes next for Crowley and Aziraphale. Its storyline is built off a conversation that Pratchett and Gaiman shared during a jetlagged stay in Seattle for the 1989 World Fantasy Convention. Gaiman remembers: “The idea was always that we would tell the story that Terry and I came up with in 1989 in Seattle, but that we would do that in our own time and in our own way. So, once Good Omens (S1) was done, all I knew was that I really, really wanted to tell the rest of the story.” 

Telling that story visually may sound daunting, but cinematographer Finney is no stranger to the wonderfully idiosyncratic world of Pratchett and co. As well as lensing Good Omens’ first outing, he’s also shot three other Pratchett stories – TV mini series  Hogfather  (2006), and TV mini-series The Colour of Magic (2008) and Going Postal (2010). 

He relishes how the authors provide a vast creative landscape for him to riff off. “The great thing about Pratchett and Gaiman is that there’s no limit to what you can do creatively – everything is up for grabs,” he muses. “When we did the first Pratchett films and the first Good Omens, you couldn’t start by saying, ‘Okay, what should this look like?’, because nothing looks like Pratchett’s world. So, you’re starting from scratch, with no references, and that starting point can be anything you want it to be.”  

Season two saw the introduction of inside-outside sets for key locations including Aziraphale’s bookshop. 

From start to finish 

The sole DP on the six-episode season, Finney was pleased to team up again with returning director Douglas Mackinnon for the “immensely complicated” shoot, and the pair began eight weeks of prep in summer 2021. A big change was the production shifting the main soho set from Bovington airfield, near London, up to Edinburgh’s Pyramids Studio. Much of the action in Good Omens takes place on the Soho street that’s home to Aziraphale’s bookshop, which was built as an exterior set on the former airfield for season one. Season two, however, saw the introduction of inside-outside sets for key locations including the bookshop, record store and pub, to minimise reliance on green screen.  

Finney brought over many elements of his season one lensing, especially Mackinnon’s emphasis on keeping the camera moving, which involved lots of prep and testing. “We had a full-time Scorpio 45’ for the whole shoot (run by key grip Tim Critchell and his team), two Steadicam operators (A camera – Ed Clark and B camera Martin Newstead) all the way through, and in any one day we’d often go from Steadicam, to crane, to dolly and back again,” he says. “The camera is moving all the time, but it’s always driven by the story.” 

One key difference for season two, however, was the move to large-format visuals. Finney tested three large-format cameras and the winner was the Alexa LF (assisted by the Mini LF where conditions required), thanks to its look and flexibility.  

The minisodes were shot on Cooke anamorphics, giving Finney the ideal balance of anamorphic-style glares and characteristics without too much veiling flare.

A more complex decision was finding the right lenses for the job. “You hear about all these whizzy new lenses that are re-barrelled ancient Russian glass, but I needed at least two full sets for the main unit, then another set for the second unit, then maybe another set again for the VFX unit,” Finney explains. “If you only have one set of this exotic glass, it’s no good for the show.” 

He tested a vast array of lenses before settling on Zeiss Supremes, supplied by rental house Media Dog. These ticked all the boxes for the project: “They had a really nice look – they’re a modern design but not over sharp, which can look a bit electronic and a bit much, especially with faces. When you’re dealing with a lot of wigs and prosthetics, we didn’t want to go that sharp. The Supremes had a very nice colour palette and nice roll-off. They’re also much smaller than a lot of large-format glass, so that made it easy for Steadicam and remote cranes. They also provided additional metadata, which was very useful for the VFX department (VFX services were provided by Milk VFX).” 

The Supremes were paired with a selection of filters to characterise the show’s varied locations and characters. For example, Tiffen Bronze Glimmerglass were paired with bookshop scenes; Black Pro-Mist was used for Hell; and Black Diffusion FX for Crowley’s present-day storyline.  

Finney worked closely with the show’s DIT, Donald MacSween, and colourist, Gareth Spensley, to develop the look for the minisode.

Maximising minisodes 

Episodes two, three and four of season two each contain a ‘minisode’ – an extended flashback set in Biblical times, 1820s Edinburgh and wartime London respectively. “Douglas wanted the minisodes to have very strong identities and look as different from the present day as possible, so we’d instantly know we were in a minisode and not the present day,” Finney explains.  

One way to shape their distinctive look was through using Cooke anamorphic lenses. As Finney notes: “The Cookes had the right balance of controllable, anamorphic-style flares and characteristics without having so much veiling flare that they would be hard to use on green screens. They just struck the right balance of aesthetics, VFX requirements and availability.” The show adopted the anamorphic aspect ratio (2:39.1), an unusual move for a comedy, but one which offered them more interesting framing opportunities. 

Good Omens 2 was shot on the Alexa LF, paired with Zeiss Supremes for the present-day scenes.

The minisodes were also given various levels of film grain to set them apart from the present-day scenes. Finney first experimented with this with the show’s DIT Donald MacSween using the DaVinci Resolve plugin FilmConvert. Taking that as a starting point, the show’s colourist, Company 3’s Gareth Spensley, then crafted his own film emulation inspired by two-strip Technicolor. “There was a lot of testing in the grade to find the look for these minisodes, with different amounts of grain and different types of either Technicolor three-strip or two-strip,” Finney recalls. “Then we’d add grain and film weave on that, then on top we added film flares. In the Biblical scenes we added more dust and motes in the air.”  

Establishing the show’s lighting was a key part of Finney’s testing process, working closely with gaffer Scott Napier and drawing upon PKE Lighting’s inventory. Good Omens’ new Scottish location posed an initial challenge: as the studio was in an old warehouse rather than being purpose-built for filming, its ceilings weren’t as high as one would normally expect. This meant Finney and Napier had to work out a low-profile way of putting in a lot of fixtures. 

Inside Crowley’s treasured Bentley.

Their first task was to test various textiles, LED wash lights and different weight loadings, to establish what they were working with for the street exteriors. “We worked out that what was needed were 12 SkyPanels per 20’x20’ silk, so each one was a block of 20’x20’, then we scaled that up,” Finney recalls. “I wanted a very seamless sky, so I used full grid cloth which made it very, very smooth. That was important because we’ve got lots of cars constantly driving around the set and the sloped windscreens reflect the ceiling. So we had to have seamless textiles – PKE had to source around 12,000 feet of textiles so that we could put them together, so the reflections in the windscreens of the cars just showed white gridcloth rather than lots of stage lights. We then drove the car around the set to test it from different angles.”  

On the floor, they mostly worked with LEDs, providing huge energy and cost savings for the production. Astera’s Titan Tubes came in handy for a fun flashback scene with John Hamm’s character Gabriel. The DP remembers: “[Gabriel] was travelling down a 30-foot feather tunnel. We built a feather tunnel on the stage and wrapped it in a ring of Astera tubes, which were then programmed by dimmer op Jon Towler to animate, pulse and change different colours. Each part of Gabriel’s journey through his consciousness has a different colour to it.” 

Among the rigs built was a 20-strong Creamsource Vortex setup for the graveyard scene in the “Body Snatchers” minisode, shot in Stirling. “We took all the yokes off each light then put them on a custom-made aluminium rig so we could have them very close. We put them up on a big telehandler on a hill that gave me a soft mood light, which was very adjustable, windproof and rainproof.” 

Shooting on the VP stage for the birth of the universe scenes in episode one.

Sky’s the limit 

A lot of weather effects were done in camera – including lightning effects pulsed in that allowed both direct fork lightning and sheet lightning to spread down the streets. In the grade, colourist Spensley was also able to work his creative magic on the show’s skies. “Gareth is a very artistic colourist – he’s a genius at changing skies,” Finney says. “Often in the UK you get these very boring, flat skies, but he’s got a library of dramatic skies that you can drop in. That would usually be done by VFX, but he’s got the ability to do it in Baselight, so a flat sky suddenly becomes a glorious sunset.” 

Finney emphasises that the grade is a very involved process for a series like Good Omens, especially with its VFX-heavy nature. “This means VFX sequences often need extra work when it comes back into the timeline,” says the DP. “So, we often add camera movement or camera shake to crank the image up a bit. Having a colourist like Gareth is central to a big show like Good Omens, to bring all the different visual elements together and to make it seamless. It’s quite a long grade process but it’s worth its weight in gold.” 

Shooting in the VR cube for the blitz scenes .

Finney took advantage of virtual production (VP) technology for the driving scenes in Crowley’s classic Bentley. The volume was built on their Scottish set: a 4x7m cube with a roof that could go up and down on motorised winches as needed. “We pulled the cars in and out on skates – they went up on little jacks, which you could then rotate and move the car around within the volume,” he explains. “We had two floating screens that we could move around to fill in and use as additional source lighting. Then we had generated plates – either CGI or real location plates –projected 360º around the car. Sometimes we used the volume in-camera but if we needed to do more work downstream; we’d use a green screen frustum.” Universal Pixels collaborated with Finney to supply in-camera VFX expertise, crew and technical equipment for the in-vehicle driving sequences and rear projection for the crucial car shots. 

John Hamm was suspended in the middle of this lighting rig and superimposed into the feather tunnel.

Interestingly, while shooting at a VP stage in Leith, the team also used the volume as a huge, animated light source in its own right – a new technique for Finney. “We had the camera pointing away from [the volume] so the screen provided this massive, IMAX-sized light effect for the actors. We had a simple animation of the expanding universe projected onto the screen so the actors could actually see it, and it gave me the animated light back on the actors.”  

Bringing such esteemed authors’ imaginations to the screen is no small task, but Finney was proud to helped bring Crowley and Aziraphale’s adventures to life once again. He adds: “What’s nice about Good Omens, especially when there’s so much bad news in the world, is that it’s a good news show. It’s a very funny show. It’s also about good and evil, love and doing the right thing, people getting together irrespective of backgrounds. It’s a hopeful message, and I think that that’s what we all need.” 

Finney is no stranger to the idiosyncratic world of Sir Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman.

[novarex]

Drow Reference Material for your OC and Fanfiction Purposes

This is not a complete list, but here are some references I use often when trying to write thins that are somewhat lore accurate.

This is one of the coolest books I have in physical form. Fortunately for you, you can get the whole book for free in digital form here. I used this CONSTANTLY when writing fics or formulating OCs.

Published in 2012, the same year the Legend of Drizzt book Charon's Claw released, it goes into INCREDIBLE detail about drow culture and the city of Menzoberranzan itself. 10/10

Published in 1992 , Menzoberranzan City of Drow, has a lot of interesting information, but some of it might be old and out of date. There are a few things I noticed that have been changed. This is still a great source of more drow information.

There are two Drow of the Underdark books... this one is for the Forgotten Realms setting and in 2e. The 2007 one is more for other settings as was pointed out to me.

Drow of the Underdark 2e - link in case the one below doesn't work on mobile

Published in 2007, Drow of the Underdark provides more insight into drow culture. There are, however, aspects of this that are outdated. I take some of these older books as if they were written by a person who was observing the drow as an outsider with their own prejudices and preconceived notions.

Demihuman Deities has a ton of text on lots of gods. Good reference for drow gods and just about any other god you want more information on.

Drow language translator - I don't know how accurate this is, but I use it for fanfiction writing anyway.

Excellent resource for Legend of Drizzt and related Forgotten Realms books. Timeline is very valuable when writing fanfiction.

CLCIK HERE TO GO TO REDDIT POST

DO YOU WANT TO TALK ABOUT DROW? COME JOIN MY DISCORD SERVER! Due to the nature of drow works and culture, this is an adult level server. Thanks!

[emily-escott]

Jedi Master Lene Kostana

I’ll admit, the format of Dooku: Jedi Lost was really hard for me to engage with. Because it reads like a script, it felt to me like all the characters were going 😐 at each other the whole time. I know I probably should have listened to it to get the full effect, but I have a really hard time locking in for audiobooks, even if it’s a whole production ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ it’s one of my flaws. But anyway! Lene is so fascinating to me because she really is cut from the same disaster cloth as Yoda’s lineage. Almost every decision she made had me going “why would you do that” or “thats just going to make things worse” but we really do love to watch someone who’s technically not wrong about the fate of the galaxy continuously make questionable choices that harm the ones they care for and undermine their reputation with the Council. It’s an age-old tradition.

Here’s my headcanons for her -

- After getting to know Thame Cerulian through their shared interest in the Sith, she initially viewed him as an irritating, pseudo-intellectual bother. His belief that the Sith could return comes more from a place of (by her estimation) frivolous academic conjecture rather than actionable concern. However, when he’s offered a seat on the High Council, she realizes it could be advantageous to involve him in her research. He is incredibly knowledgeable, and as long as she puts up with him, he can intercept most of the prying questions from the Council. (To be clear, I don’t ship these two - Thame likes guys)

- She watches as Dooku, Sifo, and Jocasta all develop a big stupid crush on each other and goes out of her way to foster whatever that is. She does this largely because she thinks it’s cute, but also to confuse Thame and spite Yoda. Thame isn’t sure why these boys are always hanging out in his apartment, but he doesn’t really mind. Yoda knows exactly what’s going on, but is frankly relieved Dooku even has friends.

- While training Sifo, she quickly learns her words carry a lot of weight and anything she says could potentially end up being extremely impactful to her apprentice. This is advantageous most of the time - Sifo only needs to be told something once for the lesson to stick, and it warms her heart to see him basking in her praise, even over something small. The downside? Lene is horribly foul-mouthed, and Sifo is a sponge.

In terms of visual references, there’s obviously not much to go on. The book basically says she’s purple, she’s got a shaved head, and she has a curl of hair behind her right ear… The lil baby version of her in that one comic I haven’t read at least shows what the species looks like. @ junchan_nyan_art has a couple gorgeous drawings of younger Lene on insta, and @bolithesenate more or less captured how she looks in my mind! idk what the curl of hair behind her left ear is supposed to mean or look like. So I’m giving her a sick faux hawk. idc. I was pretty much happy with her design right off the bat, it just took a few drawings to really nail her features. What do we think, is this something?? I feel so late to the party. She’s been on my to draw list foreverrrrr but I just wasn’t getting around to reading the source material 💀 we’re really in serious blorbo territory now, this ain’t an entry level Star Wars blog anymore, if it ever was

[study-diaries]

How To Self Study

This is coming from a girl who spent her fresher and sophomore year studying at home and yes, I got good grades. So, here are some tips that I followed for studying by myself without depending on any teachers.

So, let's get into it!

Gather and organise material

This is important, why? What are you going to study if you have absolutely no idea what your syllabus and study material is? By materials I mean:

Textbooks (If you have any)

Practice papers

Previous year papers

Extra reading materials/ Reference books

If you don't have any textbooks. Go through the topics that you have and gather resources from different sources.

Tip: Have at least 1 extra reading material for every subject/paper. It helps you understand some topics that are explained in a complex manner in textbooks which is almost all the time.

Don't depend on your teacher

Teachers are good. Seriously. But their attention will always be shifty. They have a lot of students to teach, from many other classes so if you depend only on your teachers for clarifying your doubts or being at the back of you to study then newsflash, its going to be hard. Rather, be your own teacher. Don't go "I'll ask this to her/him tomorrow after class" because that will be your answer every time you have even a small question which can easily be solved by a simple search. You're saving your time and theirs.

Tip: If you're someone like me who gets distracted when you take up your phone even for a second then write down all your questions in a paper and search them later after your study session.

Make notes

I usually say this because notes help you understand topics. There are many methods of taking notes. I usually don't follow any structure for note taking, I just read and write keywords under the topic name, linking a few things here and there.

Tip: Notes need not be aesthetic. Seriously. You can be as messy as you can.

Watch videos related to concepts

This helps and I know most already do this.

Tip: When you finish watching a topic, close the video and write down what you understood and then play the video again, fill in the gaps that you missed and watch it again.

Study in chunks

I always believe that whatever you do, you should do in chunks. Instead of doing one chapter, divide it. Into small bits. I'll tell you, you'll see the difference. I don't usually recommend Pomodoro since it doesn't work for me. I don't keep a time limit or a set number of breaks. I finish a chunk and if I am tired, I take a break otherwise i continue.

Tip: Self quiz yourself after each chunk and then take a break. Then after you finish the chunks for the whole chapter with the self quizzing then self quiz yourself randomly for every chunk. Here's an additional tip. Take 20 second breaks.

Period of deep work

This is not a new concept, i didn't realize i did this at first. Basically, when you start your work. You do nothing but work. Like nothing else. No phones. No snacking. No unwanted thoughts. Just nothing but what you have to do. That is to study.

Tip: It is difficult to implement this right away especially if you have a habit of it getting distracted easily so i just suggest => Start smaller. One topic with full concentration. It would usually take you 20 - 30 mins to get immersed in the work. 40 mins if it's something you don't like but once you get the momentum? An unbelievable achievement really. And then, change your environment.

Quality > Quantity && Consistency> Cramming

One hour of productive studying is better than nine hours of useless studying. I feel like it's better to study 20 mins everyday rather than the whole night before an exam. It just causes stress.

Tip: Start early. Your teacher is on chapter 5? And you still don't get chapter 1, it's fine. Start learning. Seriously, it's okay to be behind. You just have to stick. Do it everyday and you'll see results that is better than those who are just keeping up with the teacher.

Deadlines Are Mandatory

Have deadlines. There are a number of ways to do this. I'm a person who is really lazy and a weird soul who would never complete their to-do list for the day if they write it down. It would always be left unfinished. So i just keep a mental time limit and the thing i have to get done.

Tip: Overestimate your deadline. Like, let's say i have to complete around 15 lessons that week. I keep my deadline to around 25-30 and i eventually complete 15. It's about adapting to what works for you. Just change according to what works for you.

Practice questions / Previous Year Papers

I can never emphasize this enough. The best way to prepare for any exam is just do practice questions or previous year questions. You will learn a lot of things. The topics that are important or repeated. The topics that are never asked.

Tip: Grade yourself on each paper. Circle the questions in your textbook while you are studying and practicing. Then when you have to actually study then you can actually revise the topics a bit more thoroughly. If you want to know more, click here.

It's okay to be behind in class

During my first term in senior year, the whole class was around 5 chapters ahead for every test and exam while me? If they were on chapter 12, i was in chapter 4 or 5 but i understood the concepts and took my sweet time with each chapter. Because the more time you take for a chapter, the better it stays in your memory.

Tip: Here is where active recall comes handy. When you revise one chapter, take a 2 day break and study another subject and then go back to the chapter and answer the practice questions. If you're able to do them, great! If not, revise more and then look at it after 3-4 days. Repeat until you have no mistakes in your answers. This helps in long term retaining.

Make It Interesting

How do you study boring subjects? You adapt. Mind maps don't work for me. Neither does flash cards. So, i found something that did. Storytelling. Take your most boring subject, turn it into a story. Make it bearable.

Tip: Tie it somethings that you like. For example, business studies was the most boring one for me so obviously, every topic was a story for me. HR Theories and Processes? ==> An office romance story. Management Principles? ==> A fantasy story where a group goes on a quest. Make It interesting. Make it gripping. And let me tell you, this actually works because our minds grasp stories better than just normal theory jargon.

Difficult Topics Are Only Difficult Because You Think They Are

This was something that i learnt the harder way. Everything looked difficult at the beginning. Everything. But the most difficult paper was maths. Because i had no teacher. Literally. I was learning from YouTube, searching different sites for tips and tricks. I thought it was too difficult and then i was like "i have to do it anyway no matter how much i brood" so i started from scratch like 3 months before my exams.

Tip: A mind set change is everything. If you think it is easy. The topic will be more bearable. If you think it's tough, it's going to be more tough. If you want some more tips for complex topics, click here.

Hope this helps !!! :)

[year2000electronics]

Bill & Ford & A Book, Oh My!

DISCLAIMER: The Book of Bill has Bill Cipher serving as an unreliable narrator. If we go out trying to say something is "definitively a truth" or "definitively a lie", we're going to keep arguing about it until the heat death of the universe. This is just my own personal interpretation of the source material. If you don't agree, that's fine! Also TBOB spoilers abound.

So it's no secret that interest in the dynamic Bill & Ford have (enemies, platonic, romantic, formerly romantic, whichever way) has really skyrocketed since TBOB's release. Of course, there are the 'easy' culprits to point towards, with Mabel referring to Bill as 'being like a needy ex', and the whole O'Sadley's fiasco (Him literally crying over losing Ford and going "one Sixer, please"? Messy. Messy behavior. Still, I think it goes so much deeper than that.

Bill, being the unpredictable chaos entity that he is, also serves as the main antagonist for a show about family and having close bonds with each other. We don't really need to look into his inner psyche that much, because that's just not what he needed to be doing at that point in the cartoon. He's meant to be a way to divide the Pines, really. And a silly little guy. A silly little obstacle. So, naturally, when it came to Bill's arguably "closest" relationship to someone in the show (Ford), it was very easy to interpret it as Ford being tricked by a completely apathetic Bill, who was just using him as a rung on the ladder. And I do want to stress that Ford and Bill's physical actions remain fairly consistent throughout interpretations, and focusing on the fact that Bill badly hurt Ford is important, so if that's how you still see it, then fine by me! No harm no foul!

But I think the relationship, their story, their tragedy just becomes so much more interesting with the lens The Book of Bill has presented. We’re finally able to see Bill’s perspective as a “protagonist” of sorts in a medium where he’s not just something to defeat- and that’s something we’ve never gotten before, so it’s shedding light on an area we didn’t know about for sure! Again, Bill is lying to the character of "the reader", so we can't trust it as a completely unbiased source. But we can speculate on where the "truth" is between these lies.

First of all, Bill's backstory was that he destroyed his home dimension- we knew that already. But now, with the extra content we have about it, we see something interesting- that Bill's backstory mirrors Ford's to an uncanny degree.

Both of them champion their intelligence, although they highlight how it set them apart from others, as well as highlighting their own 'rare mutation/birth defect'.

Again, with this self-isolation already spurred on from their "weirdness", but also as a little aside, I would also like to highlight that Bill being 'ready to be one', looking up at the stars, striving to 'reach' them, is a shared motif he has with Ford, who is also associated with space, the stars, and reaching them.

Bill's 'trying-really-quick-to-convince-Ford' fantasy sequence even has him in a field of stars as a sort of "ultimate wish fulfilment". Remember, this is Bill showing Ford something he thinks would win Ford over, at least a little.

(And I'll take a quick time out for this train of thought to point out- hey! Bill admits he sought out most of his other victims, but Ford summoned him, and it took him by surprise! That adds a fun little layer of complexity to everything, don't you think? Another little layer of humanity for this whole mess- Bill didn't expertly seek out the 'perfect victim' or anything, it was just... luck. Some twist of fate.)

Anyways.

Obviously, the intro page to the 'Sixer' section has a ton of red flags galore (I mean, poor guy's literally depicted as a hapless puppet. C'mon, Bill. Not to mention the "OH BOY HE'S ALREADY SO ISOLATED, IT'S PERFECT" thing.). This guy is kind of a terrible companion no matter how you slice it. He's terrible to everyone close to him, because he's a deeply traumatized character who refuses to heal. BUT, the wording here is kinda deliciously intriguing to me. All of humanity is Bill's puppets, his future victims, but to me, it's clear that he holds a fondness for Ford. From "This is what a partner looks like", to "Me and Sixer could be the perfect team", to "He had what I always wanted- fingers" (drawn to his strangeness, maybe?), "He was destined for so much more", "I looked at his futures and giggled", and most stand-out to me, "Society calls these people freaks, I call them Henchmaniacs!"

Going back to the pre-Book of Bill era I was talking about, Bill's offers for Ford to join him were always in a sort of murky territory for interpretation. The first offer could definitely be read as mocking, with the line "WITH THAT SIX-FINGERED HAND, YOU'D FIT RIGHT IN WITH MY FREAKS!" in particular making it seem like Bill was only saying that to rub Ford's strangeness in his face, and the second offer to join Bill being under a new circumstance- that now Bill is desperate and believes Ford is the only one who can help him. But the Book of Bill mentions the idea of Ford becoming a Henchmaniac more than once, and also has Bill upset at losing Ford and claiming "he'll be back", as well as Bill seeming to use "freak" more like a badge of honour, and having previously complimented Ford's six fingers (In the Sixer intro page, he highlights Ford's fingers as a quality he likes, and in the pages about bodies, he states that "humans should have more fingers". To me, that first offer reads more now like Bill being genuine about finding Ford a place among his misfits. ...Although, the moment Ford says no, he does zap him into a statue. So. Y'know. He's still got issues.

(Yeah, again, red flag city. "Just hazing"? Bill, none of what you were doing over there was okay! You might have suppressed everything traumatic that happened to you, but that doesn't mean you can go around traumatizing everyone! Good lord.)

Bill has already been imply to like other characters because they remind him of himself. Pointing towards a connection with a character Bill DOESN'T have a weird undefinable ex-partner thing with... Mabel! Alex has says in multiple official media and interviews that Bill sees a lot of himself in Mabel, and essentially, that he thought Mabeland was the perfect prison because if HE liked all that awesome, uncontrolled chaos over any family or friends, why wouldn't SHE? And we see that again in TBOB. So basically, what I'm saying is that we have two characters to back up the fact that Bill seems gravitated towards humans or other living beings that he views as being 'like him'- beings he can relate to! So, y'know, what does that say about Bill and Ford?

There's also Bill's plans for the reader and "Weirdmageddon 2.0", where he portrays the reader as getting to, like, perch on his arm like a little bird and get their own little crown? And specifically calls out Ford for not going through with things?? Okay, Bill??

AND Ford not only being the only human mentioned on the list of people he "definitely doesn't miss so stop asking", but also having his own category? Alright, man.

Of course, another point to the 'Hey, maybe Bill can actually feel emotions towards humans besides complete and total apathy' club is this page here, which has ALSO been hotly debated! Certainly, we know he's telling the truth about his home dimension being destroyed, and we know that he's lying about the 'monster', but some interpret this scene as Bill not being remorseful at all and playing his reaction up to earn Ford's sympathy. And me, personally, I dunno if I agree. I feel like the specific inclusion of Bill "looking distant, more distant than I'd ever seen him" (Mirroring the fact that he keeps blacking out when thinking about all his large-scale massacres) and him "laughing joylessly", I think this sequence is meant to tell us that Bill actually is being vulnerable with Ford here, it's just hidden under layers and layers of deceit, whether towards himself or Ford or both.

And finally for my Book of Bill collection stuff, there's the stuff that could be read as more romantic in nature. In the 'love' section, Bill claims he doesn't love anyone, but, like-

Come on. You can disagree with me that it's Ford, but he does have exes. And he's clearly not over them. Shrimpy little liar. And then there's the fact that a lot of his hokey 'advice' is stuff he ends up directly doing to Ford.

These rats.

The Love Cage.

The Book of Bill really outlined all that in bold, but in my opinion, it was never an entirely new revelation! Bill seems to hold a preference for Ford over other humans in the show. He shows up in Ford's dreams just to say hi, tease him, and gloat (Mabelcorn) unlike the other two dream appearances he's made (Dreamscaperers, Sock Opera) which were exclusively for business purposes. Unlike every other character that gets exclusively one nickname for their zodiac sign, Ford gets multiple (Fordsy, IQ, Sixer, smart guy, brainiac, the list goes on). Bill asks Ford to join him TWICE, whereas anyone else who tries gets their face rearranged, put in a cage and made to dance, frozen in stone, etc etc. And finally, I think, the most emblematic of Bill's weird, specific relationship with Ford, is that whereas everybody else gets turned into stone, Ford got turned into gold.

Which kinda sums up their whole thing up pretty well? Bill gave him special treatment by turning him into a golden statue (similar to yellow ha ha), always holding him close, but, like... Dude. You still kidnapped a man and turned him into a statue and then threatened to kill his niece and nephew. I don't think it will change his opinion on you if he's the Most Pampered Hostage, Actually. I just don't think that we need to explore the relationships between characters as simply "Well, this character hurt the other one, so we shouldn't really think about why or what they feel personally, because what they did was bad, so there".

Bill & Ford interest me because they're a tragedy in motion. We can see that Bill and Ford mirror each other in a multitude of ways, and we can see that they both do have positive feelings towards each other at the time they meet, and we see that Bill very desperately wants Ford to be just like him in the unhealthy ways; the ways that make Bill destroy entire universes and compartmentalize it all, because maybe then, he can finally have the companionship he so deeply aches for. Bill and Ford both had tough, lonely upbringings, but Ford moved on from that "I don't need you" mentality. That's what saved him. Bill didn't, and that's what got him where he was in the end. I feel like that's just so much more interesting than Bill just being a flat entity that makes abuse Happen to Ford, just as another Event in his life. I mean, isn't it just SO much more interesting that Ford humanizes Bill, in a way? That Ford makes him- in Bill's own words- "sentimental"? That a chaotic dream demon has regrets and loves and favourites and connections? It's the same thing with Fiddleford & Ford, although, obviously, to a MUCH lesser extent than Bill & Ford. But you get what I mean, right? You know that Fiddleford and Ford are going to undo each other in the end, and the path to that downfall is... it's telling a story! I like the story of it all! I think that's what I've been invested in and intrigued by all these years- the story, the tragedy of Bill and Ford. No matter what form it takes.

(Plus, as tumblr user fordtato pointed out in their own essay (not tagging because this post is messy enough as is oh god), hey, Ford now has two incredibly queer-coded narratives, with one of them being about how he recovered and was able to heal from an abusive relationship. And, well, I think that's just neat.)

Anyways, that's the end of the post. Thanks for reading this long!

[august-anon]

Could we please have a fic

Where Tim is still adjusting to being a lil bro and he's still a bit nervous around Jason because the RH incident and Jason is fully aware that his lil bro is scared of him, and then Dick, (very purposefully) tells Jason that Tim is ticklish. Jason decides to use this information.

editing? who's she? (aka i was too lazy to edit a 5.5K tickle fic i just wanted to post it jksdhsdjfh)

also, seeing as my life is consumed by DC/esp the Batfam right now i was compelled to actually do my research for this fic and i went and found teen titans volume 3 #29 and looked through their fight. and dont get me wrong i love a good titans tower fic, tim drake is The whumpable character ever, but it is SO FUNNY to me the way fandom has apparently blown this so out of proportion because skimming that fight between the two it was literally like. the vigilante equivalent of squaring up behind the Waffle House at 3am while Jason is wearing a Party City Robin outfit sdjfhdsfj it was so unserious, he was definitely a theater kid lol, Tim wasn't even busted up that bad the worst he had was a bloody nose and maybe a concussion from the final blow lol

so i leaned more into the canon energy of it (snarky Tim who held his own decently well) because i think the whole fanon "he-almost-murdered-me-and-i'm-traumatized-and-terrified" energy leans into a fear dynamic that i am not necessarily comfortable exploring in a fluffy tickle fic? so i hope that's alright and that you still enjoy this fic even though i didnt full lean into that "scared of jason" energy i think you were looking for!

_______________________

Brothers Forged in Laughter

Fandom: Batfamily (no specific source material/continuity -- though i do briefly reference Teen Titans volume 3 #29)

Ship(s): Gen!!! Platonic!! Familial!! No batcest here

Characters (lee/ler): Lee!Tim & Ler!Jason (plus a very brief Ler!Dick)

Word Count: 5623 words

Summary: Tim wasn’t Jason's little brother, not really. Just because they got taken in by the same rich asshole did not mean they were related. But, well, the kid was kind of asking for it at this point. Maybe getting tickled to tears on the training mats by your asshole predecessor would become a Robin right-of-passage.

[ao3 link]

_______________________

Developing an unspoken sort of truce with the Bats had not been on Jason’s to-do list when he returned to Gotham, especially after his little trip to Titan’s Tower or the explosive confrontation between him, Bruce, and the Joker. Really, Jason blamed Dick. He was like a leech, it was impossible to shake him once he got his teeth sunk in.

Still, it had its benefits. He didn’t have to worry about getting arrested and thrown in Arkham anymore, for one. Not to mention, the Bats left Crime Alley well alone now (bar an Arkham breakout), leaving the neighborhood to Jason’s expertise. But most of all: access to the Batcave.

Jason didn’t necessarily enjoy his visits to the Cave, but there were things that Bruce’s money could buy that Jason had difficulty getting his hands on. For instance, the state-of-the-art lab that was hooked up to the Batcomputer and all its insane processing speed. 

With Batman publicly off on a JL mission and no risk of running into Bruce, Jason didn’t hesitate breaking into the Batcave (was it really breaking in if they never deactivated Jason’s codes in the first place? Jason liked to think so) to study a concoction from his latest Scarecrow copy-cat that thought Crime Alley made a great testing ground. It was just his luck that the little replacement Robin happened to be down in the Cave at the same time, drowning in an oversized hoodie and staring down one of the Batcomputer’s monitors with bloodshot eyes. One of his arms was in a sling, but Jason didn’t keep track of the Bats’ cases enough to know what had caused the injury. He was more wilted than the oregano plant Jason had forgotten at one of his lesser-used safehouses. And, more importantly, he was in Jason’s way.

“Pretty sure little birdies are meant to be resting when their wings get clipped,” Jason called out as he walked up the steps toward the Batcomputer.

The line of Tim’s shoulders went taught as his head snapped around to glare at Jason. “I’m pretty sure zombie crime lords are supposed to stick to Crime Alley.”

Jason held up his sample of knock-off toxin, shaking the liquid inside. “Wouldn’t exactly be here if I didn’t have to.”

Tim’s lips pressed into a thin line as he huffed a breath out through his nose. “Fine.”

Jason rolled his eyes as he turned toward the mass spectrometer, fumbling a bit to set it up properly. It’d been a while since he’d had to use one, and the one in the Cave was a lot newer than the one he’d used as Robin. It didn’t help that the back of his neck burned from the eyes boring into it.

“Don’t need a babysitter, y’know.”

“Like I’m leaving you in the Cave unsupervised.”

Jason scoffed. “What am I gonna do, poison your juice boxes?” The machine finally started running rounds of analysis, so Jason spun around to lean against it, locking his eyes onto Tim. And the stack of soda cans next to him. “Or your Zesti, apparently. Alfred lets you drink all that shit?”

Tim stayed silent, narrowing his eyes.

Jason lit up. “He doesn’t, does he?” He laughed, eyeing the pile of empty cans again. “Maybe we should call him down right now, what do you say?”

Jason started towards Tim and the Batcomputer, only meaning to ruffle his hair, maybe tease him a bit more about his serious sugar addiction, but he came up short as Tim slipped a hand against the underside of the Batcomputer’s desk, fingers subtly searching. Jason knew there was a panic button under there, even though he’d never had to use it during his time as Robin. It would send alerts to Alfred, to Dick, to every device of Bruce’s – hell, it might even send alerts to Clark or Diana at this point. Jason really didn’t need Superman busting in with a disgruntled Batman in his arms while he was trying to get work done.

So he backed off, raising his hands in mocking surrender as he leaned back against the machinery behind him, playing it off with a sarcastic, “Damn then, Boy Wonder, keep your secrets.”

The rest of Jason’s visit to the Cave was spent in tense silence, only broken in brief intervals to discuss the specifics of Jason’s case and the results of the toxin analysis. Turns out it was developed from an older strain of Crane’s – the most current fear toxin antidote could wipe it out no problem.

It didn’t leave him as satisfied as it should have, feeling all off-kilter as he mounted his motorcycle and started his drive back to Crime Alley. He couldn’t shake the hard look in Tim’s eyes as his fingers searched the bottom of the desk. It was fucking infuriating. What should he care if the newest little Robin was scared of him, after all? He and the Bats weren’t a team, and Robin certainly wasn’t his responsibility.

Maybe Jason had inhaled a little of the toxin when running the analysis. That was all.

*     *     *

Scared wasn’t really the right word, Jason realized over time. Because Tim was very obviously not afraid of him. He would poke and prod at Jason, even outright mock him sometimes. His glares were fierce and intense, his tone short and snappy. At times, he almost seemed to be seeking out a fight, like he wanted a rematch, to prove the words he said back at Titan’s Tower.

“Do you think you’re that good now? Do you really, Tim?”

“Yes.”

Wary seemed more accurate. He wasn’t frightened of Jason, but he was mostly certainly on edge. Even more so when Jason started visiting the Manor itself, finally giving in to Alfred and Dick’s invitations (though he still staunchly refused the invitations for family dinners – no way in hell he was being civil with Bruce for that long.). Tim would eye Jason like one would a particularly reactive dog – cautious and ready to act, but without any outright fear or anxiety.

And Jason… he could live with that. He didn’t particularly enjoy it, but it’s not like they were family or anything. Just because Bruce took in the kid didn’t make them brothers – and it wasn’t like Bruce was his father anymore, anyway. The itch that grew under Jason’s skin when Tim would look at him like that was purely from having eyes on him, that was all. And he didn’t feel guilty for making the kid feel like that, thank you very much – that lingering weight in his chest was just a perfectly normal reaction to Dick’s puppy-dog eyes every time he and Tim sniped at each other. 

Seriously. No grown man should be able to make that expression. It was unnatural. 

He was so used to Tim’s cold shoulders that when he arrived at the Cave one afternoon, he almost fell off his motorcycle at the bright, cackling laugh that echoed across the stone once he cut his engine. It was boyish, childish, happy – all the things Robin should be. For a moment, it made old bitterness crawl up the back of his throat like bile, but he just as quickly swallowed it back down. He’d already taken out enough on the kid.

The laughter grew louder as he climbed the stairs up to the Batcave’s main platform, growing squeakier or snortier or gigglier in various intervals. By the time he made it up the stairs, Jason had a pretty good idea of what was happening. Turning away from the Batcomputer and towards the training mats easily confirmed it.

Because there was the Boy Wonder, in all his red-faced glory, cackling up a storm as Dick tickled the absolute shit out of him. 

At least Dick had someone besides Jason to take all that tickle-monster energy out on, now.

Dick’s head shot up as Jason’s boot scuffed across the stone, and he shot Jason a grin. “Hey, Little Wing!” Tim’s laughter lightened, growing more giggly. Probably Dick lightening up his attack in case he wanted to participate in the conversation. “What brings you here?”

“Came by to hack into the computer.” Jason jabbed a thumb over his shoulder. “Got some CCTV to look into, and the setup is better here than in any of my safehouses.”

Dick nodded, and Tim’s laughter jumped in pitch again.

“Jesus,” Jason said. “You trying to kill the kid?”

Dick laughed himself and finally let up, leaving Tim to roll onto his side and catch his breath. 

“Nah – but I think I might’ve finally found someone more ticklish than you, Jay.” He gave Jason a meaningful look, winking when he was sure Tim wasn’t looking.

Jason scoffed. He would not be filing that information away for later, thank you very much, because Tim was not his baby brother. “Yeah, whatever. I grew out of that – Lazarus Pits and all.”

Dick narrowed his eyes, a disarming smile on his lips. “Oh, really? That’s too bad. I’m sure you wouldn’t mind, then, if I–”

Jason swiftly backed away from the mats. “Yeah, no. I’m busy – came here to work and all. Try to keep it down, will you?” He managed to catch Tim’s eye for a second. “Try his thighs,” he advised. “Or just under his ribs. Makes for great revenge.”

“Wha– Jason!”

Jason turned his back on them, not wanting to unpack the narrow-eyed look Tim gave him. Not even moments later he heard Dick yelp.

“Oh, no you don’t – you’ll regret that!”

And the Cave was quickly filled with laughter once more, two sets of it this time. Not exactly the quiet environment Jason had hoped for when he came by to work, but he would deal. The Batcomputer had high-quality headphones for a reason.

And, privately, Jason thought those two could use more opportunities to smile.

*     *     *

Over time, the uneasy truce settled into something more comfortable. There were times it still chafed, itching at Jason’s skin until he felt he needed to claw it off, but things were rarely so tense anymore that Jason expected to be cut off like a necrotic limb. Hood still handled Crime Alley, the Bats tackled the rest of Gotham, and sometimes, if the cards fell right, they were able to work cases together without any casualties.

Cases like this new up-and-coming gang. They’d spread outside of the Alley, maneuvering in areas where Hood didn’t have as much reach or authority, but they were still spreading through his own territory like slow-acting poison. There was only so much he could do, and so when Dick offered the Bats up to help, Jason agreed with only minimal bitching. 

Which led him to this warehouse rooftop, going on three hours crouched uncomfortably next to Robin, the irritation of a failed stakeout grating against his ribs and skull. The established gang these newbies were trying to ally with hadn’t even shown, and even the newbies were starting to pack up shop, wanting to get back to base before dawn broke. The newest little Robin, however, didn’t seem to be getting the memo that this was a bust.

“Kid,” Hood all but growled. “Let’s go, there’s nothing more for us here.”

Robin scoffed, still laying on his stomach and not bothering to drop the binoculars to have a conversation with Hood. “Something might still happen. I’m not going to drop this just because you’re getting impatient.”

A flash of irritation bubbled up in Hood’s chest, frustration coiling hot in his stomach. The gang was leaving, Hood was starving, his knees ached from crouching on this roof all night, and he really should’ve told Dick no when Robin was offered up to help with the stakeout. But of course, the Bat himself was too busy with some last-minute JL business, and Nightwing had his own problems in Bludhaven to deal with. The worst part was that Robin was right, something could still happen, but Hood sincerely doubted it. They hadn’t gotten any new or relevant info in the past two hours, and Hood was ready to stuff his face with some greasy fast food and pass out for the next six hours.

And so as the newbies finished loading up their vehicles and driving off, Hood reached over to snatch the binoculars from Robin. Somehow, even with his face buried behind the plastic, he knew Hood was coming and shifted out of the way, thrusting a foot into Hood’s chest to try and hold him back. Hood’s height was an advantage here, but Robin still refused to let go of the binoculars, staring after the newbies’ vehicles as if they held the answers to the universe. 

And Hood, overtired and ready to be out of all this goddamned armor and in bed, let his instincts take over again. He jabbed one hand up under Robin’s arm, poking and prodding at the softer spot in the armor designed for mobility. Robin made an awkward squawking sound, his arm shooting down to protect the vulnerable spot and cutting the grip he had on the binoculars by half. Hood easily wrenched them from his hand after that, tucking them into an inner pocket in his leather jacket.

“Come on,” Hood said, standing and brushing himself off like nothing happened. “Batburger, I’m buying.”

Robin scowled at him, eyes unreadable behind the white-out lenses of the domino, and slowly rose to his feet. “Fine. But I want Jokerized fries, and I don’t care how you feel about it.”

*     *     *

Jason had to wonder if the kid ever slept. Every time he came by the Cave, Tim was there too – training, running samples, working cases on the Batcomputer – no matter what absurd hour he arrived. Jason let out a loud, long, obnoxious sigh as he cleared the stairs to the main platform of the Batcave, and Tim immediately whipped around and glared at him over the back of the desk chair.

“Can I help you?” Tim snapped.

“I need the computer.” Jason kicked the base of the desk chair as he approached, propelling it several inches to the left. 

Tim’s scowl deepened, and he rolled the chair back into position. “Well you can wait. I’m busy with a case.”

Instead of arguing further, Jason opted for the quickest route of success. He grabbed the back of the desk chair, spun it around so Tim was no longer facing the desk, and unceremoniously dumped him out of the seat. Tim squawked as he stumbled out of the chair, but regained his footing quickly and immediately trying to bolt back into the seat. Jason smirked and yanked it away, sending it rolling a few feet behind him.

“Whoops.”

Tim pursed his lips. “Real mature.”

Jason laid a hand over his heart and cocked his head to the side. “Ouch. You wound me. Truly.”

Tim glared at him, but his eyes flicked towards the desk chair behind Jason. They burst into motion at the same time – Tim lunging towards the chair, and Jason lunging towards Tim. After a brief tussle, Jason yanked Tim into a headlock, and for a brief second the two of them went eerily still. Jason loosened his grip, making the hold easy to break, but didn’t let go. Tim stayed frozen for a moment longer before tilting his head up, giving Jason a challenging look.

Jason’s mind warred with itself for a few moments. Not my little brother, one side of his brain said. Isn’t he, though? another replied. He had, unfortunately, filed away that information Dick had given him, as much as he tried to ignore it. And, well, it wouldn’t be the first time, would it? He didn’t think he’d even given Tim back his Bat-noculars.

A moment passed, and Jason suddenly lunged, latching his free hand onto Tim’s side and squeezing away. Tim jerked in his grip, squealing as a smile forced its way onto his face. One hand went towards prying Jason’s off his side, while the other came and clutched at the forearm around his throat for stability. Jason grinned and allowed the hand to crawl up Tim’s side, carefully keeping his headlock loose so that Tim wouldn’t really feel trapped. The second Jason’s fingers touched his ribs and a real laugh jumped out from Tim’s throat, he was out of Jason’s grip in seconds. Tim stood across from him, giving him another one of those uncomfortably calculating looks, though the blush rushing to his cheeks diminished it slightly.

“Fine,” Tim said eventually. “I should head up and get a snack anyways.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. 

“But I’m coming back down in two hours, and I will be getting back to my case. Whether you’re done on the computer or not.”

Jason snorted. “Yeah, sure thing, Timberly. Whatever you say.”

*     *     *

Jason was at the Manor for family dinner.

His skin itched at the thought as he sped into the Cave on his motorcycle – he never entered through the Manor proper, not in all these months, something about that just made it too real, too raw – and threw his riding gear off. Bruce was going to be there – not Batman, Bruce, and he hadn’t really interacted with the man outside the mask since he came back – but so were Dick and Alfred. And so was Tim.

Bit by bit, the kid had been relaxing around him. They worked cases together (and with Nightwing) when Hood needed a Bat, or when the birds needed his help instead. He didn’t tense whenever Jason came through the Cave anymore, didn’t eye Jason with suspicion when they crossed paths on patrol. He still stared a lot, but it’s not like Jason could blame him. He had attacked the kid, and even if he didn’t leave him with more than a concussion and some bruises (and Jason with a grudging sense of respect for the brat, as he walked away with his own array of bruising and a busted nose), the kid was well within his rights to keep his eyes on Jason’s movements.

But still, the progress they had made was, well, nice.

Speak of the devil — the Cave wasn’t empty. Tim was in the training area, dressed in basketball shorts and a t-shirt, running his bo staff drills with a single-minded focus that could rival even Bruce. Jason almost would’ve thought that Tim didn’t realize he was there, but Tim’s eyes flicked his direction as he approached the edge of the training mats. Tim ran through the move he was doing a few more times, making minute posture changes each time until his form was perfect, before dropping out of his stance and facing Jason.

“Not bad,” Jason said.

Tim ticked up an eyebrow. “Thanks.” His gaze trailed over to the stairs. “Alfred’s still making dinner, and Bruce is up there brooding and fussing over everything until it’s perfect. You probably wanna stay down here until the food’s ready.”

The skin around Jason’s eyes tightened as he suppressed a wince. “Yeah, thanks. Where’s Golden Boy?”

The corner of Tim’s mouth twitched up. “He got saddled with ‘distract Bruce’ duty.”

Jason matched Tim’s half-smile. They lapsed into an awkward silence. Jason shoved his hands in his pockets to resist the urge to fidget. Tim stared.

“Let’s spar,” Tim said suddenly, turning on his heel to set aside his bo staff.

Jason stared at him, incredulous. “What?”

“Spar. You and me.”

“Are you sure about that, kid?”

Tim shot him one of those calculating looks over his shoulder. “Do you have anything better to do?”

Jason pursed his lips. “No.”

“Then let’s spar.”

Palms sweating, Jason kicked off his boots, shucked his leather jacket, and set aside the weapons he’d hidden on his person. He set himself up opposite of Tim, lowering his body into a fighting stance.

“Ready?” Tim asked.

“Yup.”

The word was barely out of Jason’s mouth before Tim lunged, immediately going in for a grapple. Jason almost laughed — he far outclassed the little Robin in both weight and strength — and quickly sent the kid sprawling to the mats before backing away. Tim was scowling when he stood up.

“Don’t go easy on me.”

“Don’t worry, Boy Wonder. I’m just getting warmed up.”

Tim lunged first again, feinting left before trying to circle around to Jason’s back on the right. Jason whipped around and blocked the incoming blows, jabs that would’ve left his arms numb and tingling for hours had they landed. On one block, he snagged Tim’s wrist and used it to twirl him halfway around. He shoved Tim forward, harder than he meant to, and let him stumble a few feet as he retreated again.

The spar went on like this for a while, Tim attacking and Jason blocking and retreating. Tim’s scowl got deeper and deeper, and the careful control he usually held in his movements started slipping more and more. After the tenth time Jason knocked Tim’s attack away and retreated, Tim finally snapped.

“Stop babying me! I can take it!”

“Tim—“

“No.” Tim fell back into a ready stance, face red and splotchy from frustration and exertion. “I know what it looks like when you’re fighting for real. So fight me.”

Jason pressed his lips into a thin line. “Fine.”

Jason rushed first this time, and Tim met him in the middle. They exchanged a series of blows (though Jason pulled his punches — this was a spar not a brawl, and he kinda thought Tim had enough of Jason punching his lights out by now), and Tim held his own well. He’d gotten some good hits in during their confrontation at Titan’s Tower, but it was clear he had improved since losing to Jason back then. If Tim had been in a better state, he might’ve been able to hold out against Jason’s onslaught for a while.

As it was, Tim had clearly been training for a while before Jason had come in and had already been fatigued, and his lingering frustration from Jason’s kid-gloves was obviously making him sloppy. With Jason’s bulk and sheer strength, he had Tim pinned to the ground in minutes. Tim grunted and growled and struggled under him, trying to free himself, but Jason had both his arms pinned above his head and had settled his bulk over Tim’s thighs so he couldn’t flip their positions or kick Jason off.

“Satisfied?” Jason asked dryly.

Tim didn’t reply, twisting his wrists to test Jason’s grip.

“Ready to hit the showers? Alfred probably won’t be happy if we come to dinner all drenched in sweat.”

Tim twisted his hips, trying to throw Jason off but unable to get the leverage to move his considerable weight. “No, fuck you.”

Jason’s eyebrows shot up. “Damn, Timber, you kiss Alfred with that mouth?”

Tim paid him no mind, continuing to hiss and spit under him. Honestly, it reminded Jason a lot of when he was Robin. Whenever Dick beat him in a spar, he would hiss and spit and carry on, trying to break the hold until Dick got sick of his whining and—

Ah. So that was why Dick had been tickling the kid to tears the other month. 

Jason gave Tim a considering look. For a moment, he wondered if he really had the right. Tim wasn’t his little brother, not really. Just because they got taken in by the same rich asshole did not mean they were related. He’d been telling himself so for months, even if there were moments of doubt. But, well, wasn’t Tim his little brother? They snarked and tussled over the computer and helped each other on cases, and Jason was here to eat family dinner with him for God’s sake.

And hey, maybe getting tickled to tears on the training mats by your asshole predecessor would become a Robin right-of-passage.

Amidst Tim’s struggling, Jason managed to wrangle both his wrists into one hand and pin them firmly above his head. Then, making sure Tim was watching, he hovered a hand over Tim’s stomach and slowly started wiggling his fingers.

Tim gasped and froze. Then, just as quickly, his struggles started up again with a new desperation.

“You wouldn’t.”

Jason grinned, lowering his wiggling fingers another inch. “Say uncle, Timmy.”

Tim narrowed his eyes, dragging his eyes away from the ticklish threat to meet Jason’s own. “Do your worst.”

Tim’s mouth clamped shut tight just as Jason’s lowered his hand and touched down on Tim’s stomach. Tim squeezed his eyes shut and squirmed, going pink in the face as he tried not to laugh.

Jason laughed for him. “Come on, TimTam, we both know you’re ticklish as shit. No point in not laughing.”

Tim shook his head, trying unsuccessfully to worm away to the left as Jason’s hand traveled to his right side.

“No, it doesn’t tickle? Are you sure?”

Even though his eyes were still closed, Tim turned his face away from Jason, trying to hide behind one of his biceps. Jason grinned wider and jumped his hand over to Tim’s other side, delivering a series of nibbling pinches without warning. Tim squeaked, like the little baby bird he was, and jolted to the right to try and get away.

“I dunno, Baby Bird. Seems like it might tickle.”

Tim made a growling noise in the back of his throat, and Jason couldn’t help but laugh again.

“No? Maybe we should make sure all your nerves are working right, then.”

Tim’s eyes snapped open at that, glassy and watery from the effort of holding back his laughter. Jason made sure to grin at him, smug and toothy and all evil-big-brother, just like Dick used to do to him.

“Tell me, can you feel this?”

His hand shot up and skittered calloused fingertips and blunt fingernails against the exposed side of Tim’s neck. Tim’s head snapped to that side with a muffled squeal, his smile fighting to become open-mouthed and toothy, forcing Tim to bite down on his lip to keep his reactions at bay.

“Hmm, seems promising. How ‘bout here, can you feel that?”

Jason shot back down and vibrated his hand into the center of Tim’s belly. Tim tried to jackknife to protect himself, but with his wrists firmly pinned and Jason’s considerable weight on his thighs, he was forced to stay flat against the mats. He chose to toss his head back against the mats instead, shaking it back and forth furiously.

“No?” Jason asked, voice dripping with faux-concern. “You can’t feel it?”

Tim let an annoyed little groan, but quickly cut it off as it started to take on a giggly tone. Jason was being deliberately unhelpful in the matter, poking his index finger into various spots of Tim’s stomach and vibrating it.

“Right here, can you feel this? What about over here? And here? Come on Timbit, work with me here.”

Tim flinched and twitched at every prod, trembling with suppressed giggles. Jason’s own cheeks hurt from smiling — he could definitely see why Dick tickled the snot out of him so often when he was a kid. This was adorable and hilarious. But he still had yet to make the kid break, which was kinda annoying. Like, hello, how was Jason supposed to tickle the snot out of him if he wouldn’t even laugh? Jason paused for a moment, letting Tim catch his breath as he planned his next attack. Now where was it that made Tim shoot out of his arms the other week…

Oh, that’s right.

Jason put on a mournful look, shaking his head. “Starting to get real concerned here, Timbourine. Maybe we oughtta do a full injury check.” Jason rested his fingers on Tim’s lower ribs. “What do you say?”

Tim gasped, shuffling as far away from Jason’s hand as he could, but Jason followed the movement easily.

“Jason—“ Tim started, but cut himself off, pressing his lips together again.

“What is it you said to me, again? Do my worst, was that it?”

“Jason, I’ll— I’ll buffer Bruce for you tonight. I’ll take on your caseload. I’ll clean your motorcycle, I—“

“As tempting as that all sounds,” Jason had to raise his voice to be heard over Tim’s rambling. “You know what I wanna hear. Admit you lost.” 

Tim’s mouth clamped shut. Of course. How could the latest model not come with that patented stubborn Robin pride?

Jason shrugged, tapping his fingers threateningly against Tim’s ribs, making him squirm. “Suit yourself.”

Jason wasn’t the greatest at picking apart Tim’s expressions, but he’d say the smile forcing its way across Tim’s face was almost giddy.

He started off with a typical injury-check touch, a light press and slide against the individual ribs, just to really play into the game he had set up. Tim’s face scrunched up instantly, obviously trying to hold back his reactions, and his body started squirming with a new fervor. 

“Nerves working here, Timmers?” Jason tickled his middle ribs a bit more deliberately, making Tim’s face spasm. “Seems to me like you might be feeling something. Does it tickle?”

Tim shook his head. Jason sighed.

“You leave me no choice.”

Jason released Tim’s wrists and latched onto either side of his ribs with both hands, tickling mercilessly. Tim’s eyes bugged out of his head as he let out a laugh bordering on a scream. His legs scrambled on the mats behind Jason, searching for leverage or freedom. As Tim’s laughter fell into desperate cackles, Jason couldn’t help but laugh along with him.

“Jason! Jay!”

“You know how to make it stop, Timmy.”

Even with his hands free, Jason was discovering that Tim was absolutely useless when he was tickled. Jason attacked lower on his ribcage and Tim’s hands latched onto Jason’s wrists in a feeble, laughter-weakened attempt to pry him off. That only opened up the rest of his ribcage and armpits to attack, which Jason took great advantage of. Tim’s laughter would get more panicky, more shrill, the higher Jason went, but his brain didn’t seem to know how to defend itself — seeing as his hands stayed latched onto Jason’s to try and pull him off.

“Jesus Christ, Baby Bird — how do you even live when you’re this ticklish?”

“Asshole!”

Jason raised an eyebrow, though he wasn’t sure Tim could see it through his squinted, teary eyes. “Be nice. I could make this so much worse.”

“No, no!”

“That’s what I thought.”

Of course, Jason still made it worse anyway. There was a particular spot towards the back of Tim’s ribs, right between the top two on either side, that sent Tim spasming like he’d been electrocuted. Jason laughed as he prodded at the weak points one at a time, watching Tim toss himself in the opposite direction of the ticklish jolts. Finally, he gave Tim a breather, resting his fingers against those spots on his ribs just to keep him giggly and twitchy.

“Last chance for mercy,” Jason said, just barely twitching his fingers to watch Tim jump. “Alfred’ll send someone down soon.”

Tim’s teary eyes went wide. “Wait, Jason, come on–”

“Damn stubborn little Robin.”

Jason dug his fingers in, torturing those little tickle spots as best he could.

“Fuck!” Tim practically screamed before breaking into laughter that would give even the Joker a run for his money. Surprisingly, the hysterical tone of it didn’t even make Jason’s skin crawl. “Uncle!” Tim cried out, and his laughter went silent.

Jason eased up, redirecting his attack lower on Tim’s ribs, though still vibrating his fingers into the nerves mercilessly. “Hm? What was that?”

“You win! Uncle, you win! Jason, come on!”

With a chuckle, Jason heaved himself off of Tim to sit on the mats next to him, ruffling his hair as he caught his breath.

“Fuck you,” Tim said, closing his eyes and relaxing bonelessly into the mats.

“Hey.” Jason raised his hands in surrender. “You could’ve stopped that at any time. Not my fault you’re a stubborn little bitch.”

“I’ll get you for this.”

Jason raised an eyebrow. “I’ve got, like, a hundred pounds on you and I’m twice your height. How do you think you’re accomplishing that, shrimp?”

Tim peeled one eye open to glare at him. “I’ve got Dick.”

Jason froze. Oh, shit.

“That he does,” a cheerful voice chimed in from the direction of the stairs. Dick strode towards them, a slightly feral smile on his face. “And I would be more than happy to help. We never did test your claim about the Lazarus Pit taking away your ticklishness.”

Oh, fuck, actually. Maybe he shouldn’t have told Tim about Dick’s thighs that one time.

Dick’s smile shifted from feral to innocent in the blink of an eye. “But maybe later. Alfred sent me to get you for dinner – and I know he wouldn’t appreciate your B.O. stinking up the dinner table. Hit the showers.”

Jason groaned as he got up, pretending to crack his back even though he wasn’t the slightest bit sore from their sparring or impromptu tickle attack. Then, he reached down and hauled Tim to his feet, shoving him in the direction of the Cave’s locker room ahead of himself. Just as he went to follow, a hand on his shoulder stopped him.

“Good job, big brother,” Dick said, his voice low enough that it wouldn’t travel through the echoing cave. He gave Jason’s shoulder a squeeze.

Jason looked away and scoffed. “Yeah, whatever. Little shit was asking for it.”

Dick laughed and dropped his hand, shoving Jason toward the locker room much like Jason had shoved Tim. He tried not to think about it too hard, instead focusing on how carefully he’d have to watch his back in the future.

No way he was letting Timmy and Dickhead take him down without a fight.

[yiddishknights]

you seem like the right person to ask about jewish knights and judaism in general in arthurian legend

Hello! Apologies for how long it has taken me to respond to this! Throughout the Middle Ages and the early modern period, there were a number of Arthurian texts written by and for Jewish people in Jewish languages. The one I specialize in is an Old Yiddish text called Vidvilt, which is part of the Fair Unknown tradition and based off an earlier German text called Wigalois. This text was super popular in the Yiddish-speaking world for about three centuries or so and was reworked and reprinted a number of times. I already discussed some of those adaptations a while ago in response to this ask.

Predating Vidvilt, there was a Hebrew Arthurian text written in the 13th century which is now commonly known as Melekh Artus. This was based on Old French sources and tells the story of Arthur's birth and Lancelot's affair with Guinevere before breaking off unfinished. The most common edition of the text used today is the one by Curt Leviant, though I just read a fascinating article in the latest issue of the Journal of the International Arthurian Society calling into question some of his transcription choices and the conclusions he draws in his analysis of the text.

I also recently read that a fragment of an Arthurian text in Judeo-Catalan was recently discovered, but I'm afraid I don't know much about it as yet other than that it's apparently a late medieval adaptation of Jaufre.

Chivalric romances of both Christian and Jewish origin were extremely popular among medieval and early modern Jews in general. There were a number of non-Arthurian knight stories that were very popular as well; for example, the most famous and influential work of early Yiddish literature was a chivalric epic called Bovo d'Antona, and a survey I read of the literature in Jewish households in early modern Italy shows that the most popular non-religious work among Jews at that time was Orlando Furioso.

It is worth noting that, even though some of these texts were written by and for Jews, that doesn't necessarily mean that the characters in them were Jewish. Jewish writers generally tended to modify their Christian source materials by gliding over or obscuring references to religion, rather than depicting Judaism directly (the reasons for this are complex and could constitute a whole paper, so I won't get into it here). That being said, medieval Jewish knights did exist in real life, too! There are a few medieval historians who do research into exactly when, where, and under what circumstances Jews were allowed to bear arms, but it definitely wasn't exclusively a literary thing.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Rhetorical Devices

Some Examples

Anacoluthon - Syntactical inconsistency or incoherence within a sentence, especially: a shift in an unfinished sentence from one syntactic construction to another. ("you really should have—well, what do you expect?")

Anadiplosis - Repetition of a prominent and usually the last word in one phrase or clause at the beginning of the next. ("rely on his honor—honor such as his?")

Analepsis - A literary technique that involves interruption of the chronological sequence of events by interjection of events or scenes of earlier occurrence; flashback.

Antiphrasis - The usually ironic or humorous use of words in senses opposite to the generally accepted meanings. ("this giant of 3 feet 4 inches")

Apophasis - The raising of an issue by claiming not to mention it. ("we won't discuss his past crimes")

Aporia - An expression of real or pretended doubt or uncertainty especially for rhetorical effect. ("to be, or not to be: that is the question")

Chiasmus - An inverted relationship between the syntactic elements of parallel phrases. ("working hard, or hardly working?")

Dysphemism - The substitution of a disagreeable, offensive, or disparaging expression for an agreeable or inoffensive one. ("greasy spoon is a dysphemism for the word diner")

Epistrophe - Repetition of a word or expression at the end of successive phrases, clauses, sentences, or verses especially for rhetorical or poetic effect. ("of the people, by the people, for the people")

Hypallage - An interchange of two elements in a phrase or sentence from a more logical to a less logical relationship. ("you are lost to joy for joy is lost to you")

Hyperbaton - A transposition or inversion of idiomatic word order ("judge me by my size, do you?")

Pleonasm - The use of more words than those necessary to denote mere sense; redundancy. ("I saw it with my own eyes")

Syllepsis - The use of a word in the same grammatical relation to two adjacent words in the context with one literal and the other metaphorical in sense. ("she blew my nose and then she blew my mind")

Synecdoche - A figure of speech by which a part is put for the whole (such as fifty sail for fifty ships), the whole for a part (such as society for high society), the species for the genus (such as cutthroat for assassin), the genus for the species (such as a creature for a man), or the name of the material for the thing made (such as boards for stage).

Zeugma - The use of a word to modify or govern two or more words usually in such a manner that it applies to each in a different sense or makes sense with only one. ("opened the door and her heart to the homeless boy")

As with all fields of serious and complicated human endeavor (that can be considered variously as an art, a science, a profession, or a hobby), there is a technical vocabulary associated with writing.

Rhetoric - the study of writing or speaking as a means of communication or persuasion, and though a writer doesn’t need to know the specific labels for certain writing techniques in order to use them effectively, it is sometimes helpful to have a handy taxonomy for the ways in which words and ideas are arranged. This can help to discuss and isolate ideas that might otherwise become abstract and confusing.

Source ⚜ More: Notes & References ⚜ Part 1 ⚜ Writing Resources PDFs

[chuplayswithfire]

So this honest to god essay of a response was originally sparked in conversation with someone else about my thoughts on the ways that the Sailor Moon manga (and it's author, Naoko Takeuichi) engaged with the subject of gender norms, gender expression, and specifically how that's expressed in the casual and comfortable ways that various women in Sailor Moon engage with themselves and others.

The conversation I had with that person ended up more heavily focused on other things, but I really like the writing I did here, and really, what is Tumblr for, but sharing the unnecessary essays you wrote for no other reason than because you had so many thoughts and not enough time to express them all?

The conversation that sparked this essay started with the other party sharing that they felt the manga's decision to have Usagi and Minako use their disguise tools to transform into men was playing into 90s era gags about gender, that Haruka was a Takarazuka Revue reference and nothing more, and that the manga's portrayal of the Starlights was rooted in Naoko's hatred for the idea of boys being Senshi. I disgareed with all of those sentiments… and thus was the essay born.

So here it is!

One thing I feel is pretty important is that Sailor Moon as a series has been rooted in conversation about and regarding gender norms and societal pressures placed on women in Japan from the beginning - it's a conversation that many Mahou Shoujo series engage in, and I see a failure to understand that conversation in this summary of events, which may explain why what the manga represents as at times casual but always whole-hearts explorations of gender and sexuality, could come across as dismissive gags or shallow references to someone unfamiliar with the source material. Assuming that there's no greater thought to any of this, however, is more dismissive than the series deserves.

I could - and almost did - write an entire treatise, running through the various ways that Sailor Moon as a series exists to combat and rework gender stereotypes, starting with the fact that in 80s to 90s Japanese culture, Usagi Tsukino was not the most feminine lead, with interests that marked her as boyish (enjoying video games and comics, a boisterous love of eating and a large appetite, rather than having a dainty diet) that were embraced as part of the characteristics that make Usagi who she is, rather than being used to put her down. That's not to say Usagi's some huge tomboy - she's not! But she was not the ultimately girly girl protagonist either, and as far as the time period went, she was fairly evenly mixed on having "boyish" and "girlish" interests.

It's not the most obvious place to start with Sailor Moon's conversation about gender and girlhood, but it ''is'' part of the conversation, just like the decision to have Sailor V/Minako Aino and then Sailor Moon/Usagi Tsukino be ''warriors'' was a decision made with thoughts towards gender as well, because the Senshi are warriors who are girls, and they are celebrated for it. Made at a point when the majority of Mahou Shoujo series were still more comedic and based more in helping around the community rather than fighting evil, Sailor Moon is generally regarded as the series which that combined Magical Girls with the sentai-style formula that had already been popularized by series like Kamen Rider and Super Sentai - both series predominantly featuring ''men'' who save the world (though Super Sentai teams usually have at least one woman on the team).

The conversation extends further than just being girls who fight crime with magical transformations, though. Even the fact that in Sailor Moon, the Senshi's transformation phrases involve the words "Make Up" is about gender, and femininity, and expressions of womanhood as a form of strength. Because make up and the wearing of it for personal enjoyment and beauty was seen as either a frivolity or a silly girly thing, having it be a part of the Sailor Senshi's power was reclaiming that and centering the having of power as feminine. Everything about the Senshi's designs was both based in what Naoko personally thought of as cute and in conversation with Japanese views on gender and society.

So with all that said, to address the idea of Usagi having been disguised as a boy once only for the sake of a one-time gag:

Usagi uses the disguise pen to become a groom (a groom who is a man, specifically, rather than a woman who claims for herself the title of groom) in the Sailor Moon manga in chapter 5, when Makoto is introduced. It is not as a gag, because a gag by definition requires something to be comedic.

There is nothing comedic about Usagi's transformation into a groom - in fact, it is played in full seriousness and as a rescue of Makoto's heart as much as her physical self. In the context of the manga, a youma has been disguising itself as a bride to capture, control, and drain men, as well as using those men to lure in women for capture. Makoto and Motoki are the victims of the day, with Motoki being brainwashed by the bride youma and Makoto falling under his influence - Usagi becomes a groom, not as a gag, not as a trick, not as a trap, but to come to Makoto's rescue in the same form that she's been manipulated in, restoring the romantic fantasy while also rebuking the bride youma.

It's a very short appearance - two pages - which is how most of the manga's uses of the disguise pen function; they are short-lived disguises for a specific purpose. In Usagi's case, it is to specifically take on the male form to rebuke the bride youma for manipulating others with beauty (the beautiful bride monster vs the handsome groom that is Usagi) and the sweet murmurs of love. Motoki, under the influence of the youma, told Makoto that he loved her, that he was waiting for her, answering all her girlish dreams. Usagi, as the groom, is stepping up to counteract the destruction of those dreams. Again, it's a short-lived moment, but it's not a gag. There are very few gags in the manga over all, because it's not a comedic series, it's a dramatic one, an action focused one, a romance one, but not a comedy, and this isn't one of those few gags.

I mentioned Minako transforming as well and I assume the same view that saw Usagi's transformation as a gag would would interpret these moments as a gag as well, so let me be clear - neither of those moments are a gag either, and it's not treated as a funny haha thing that Minako has done. She does it twice, both times comfortable transforming her gender to complete missions - the first time is in Codename Sailor V Chapter 4, in which a different youma is attacking and kidnapping male idols. Minako uses her disguise compact to become a male idol and infiltrate the area the youma is expected to appear again, both to avoid detection from the police, and to lure the youma in to revealing her position so she can be defeated.

Minako's transformation into a boy is treated as a utilitarian disguise, yes, but it's also clearly shown that she is indeed a "pretty boy idol" who is also Minako Aino. As a pretty boy idol, Minako maintains all usual personality, and expression but is very distinctly and visibly a cis male, in the same way that she is usually a cis girl, exemplified by a flattened chest and pectoral muscles. Once the youma has been lured in, Minako transforms into Sailor V - just as Usagi transformed into Sailor Moon - and rebukes the youma for turning innocent men into her slaves and being a disgrace to women.

In her second transformation into a boy, in Sailor Moon chapter 29, Minako transforms into a male student of Mugen Academy so she can sneak into Mimete's concert. It's also not portrayed as a gag - Minako could transform into a female student if she wanted to, something we explicitly know because Usagi has transformed into a female Mugen Academy student.

She ''chooses'' to become a male student, by which I mean Naoko chooses to write her as becoming a male student, and Minako is treated the exact same way as a male student by the narrative as she's normally treated when she's female, hanging out with other students, enjoying the concert, acting utterly normally. It is clearly not a big deal for Minako to be a boy or a girl.

All three of these transformations are treated casually, which I suppose could come across as trivializing to some, rather than as some deep personal struggle, but this is something that people have related to for thirty years. Thirty years, of people recognizing themselves in Usagi and Minako's easy but brief and comfortable existences as boys, because that is how many people - including myself! - experience being genderqueer - an equal comfort in existing as a woman or a man or as both or as neither, and in all cases an equal recognition of the self. These are brief appearances; everything in Sailor Moon's manga is brief, strung together moments that come together for a whole.

But Usagi becomes a boy effortlessly to protect Makoto's heart and Minako becomes a boy effortlessly to defeat a youma, to infiltrate Mugen Academy, and they are both casual and honest reflections of them being another gender, while being themselves. In a time where gender transformation was often a joke,

Looking outside of our heroes, we'll see other times in Sailor Moon where characters are comfortably presented as engaging in transformative gender expression: in the Nephrite's Shadow is represented as a woman, with no apparently discomfort or comedy for him; there is again, no specific reason that Nephrite's own Shadow is a women, except for Noako's consistent genderplay and interest in exploring gender as something beyond a binary of those are men and those are women.

Likewise, Zoisite disguises himself as a woman in his primary appearance as well, again, not something he has to do. The persistent appearance of characters choosing to express themselves as another gender, in non-comedic fashion, shows that this isn't something that Naoko did as a one-off thought, but builds into her overall presentation of gender and sexuality as the series goes on.

Now, address your second point: Haruka is modeled after the takarazuka revue. I can't say that there's no influence there - Haruka was in fact originally envisioned as being part of Takarazuka theater, playing a male role - but that's not *all* Haruka is. The Sailor Moon anime made the decision to establish a sharp gender binary with Haruka and Michiru, with Haruka as the masculine butch and Michiru as the femme, but in the Sailor Moon manga Haruka is presented in both highly masculine attire and highly feminine attire, preferring to wear the male school uniform but wearing very feminine outfits, and Usagi outright asks her if she is a man or a woman, because she wears both roles extremely well.

The manga doesn't use the language of nonbinary because Japanese doesn't ''have'' that language - a lot of terms for beings transgender and having different gender roles are loanwords borrowed from English. But Naoko has stated that Haruka has the heart of a man, that she likes to wear mini skirts and daisy dukes. Usagi's narration regarding Haruka states in chapter 29, "this person looks like a man and a woman". This is in fact the same chapter where Minako again becomes a boy, and I don't think its unintentional that in the same chapter that Usagi is questioning and understanding that a person can be both a man and a woman, Minako is choosing to again present herself as a boy while on a mission.

In chapter 30, Usagi asks Haruka outright, "Haruka, are you a man? Or are you a woman?" To which Haruka responds with "Man, woman. Why would something like that matter?" And then pulls her in as if to kiss her - this was the 90s, almost a decade before Tokyo Godfathers, another critical piece of Japanese media that talks explicitly about trans people by having one of the main characters be a trans woman - would come out. Neptune, speaking of Uranus, says in Chapter 32: "Uranus is like a man and a woman in one. She has the strengths of both genders, it is her special advantage as a soldier.

Sailor Moon was not the only series to explore gender and sexuality but it was one of the pioneering series' to explore it in teen/young adult media in Japan. Haruka is not someone who can be minimized as a tarazuka reference, she is as explicitly nonbinary as it was possible to be, with the language and information available at the time. The manga is in conversation with gender and stereotyping and societal pressures the entire time.

It's also not a coincidence that this is in the part of the manga that Usagi and Mamoru are having relationship troubles, struggling with the thought of attraction to other people, attraction to each other. This is the portion of the manga where they mature as a couple and have sexual activity for the first time, though of course its not specific and vague about the actual physical intimacies. Naoko was very intentionally having a conversation with the manga, one which explored what it means to be a woman, to grow up, to be in a relationship and mature and grow and ''be'' in the world.

Now, we get to the last part of the initial question, "As for the starlights, apparently Naoko hated the idea of boys being senshi, so instead she walked it back to standard gender bending of the time."

I've kept this assertion from the original conversation intact because this idea is one that exists outside of this conversation I had, and it's completely factually incorrect.

Naoko *created* the Starlights. She *created* their characters, and did not walk anything back.

In fact, the original anime is the one who made the Starlights into the example standard gender bending of the time - the classic 90s anime is what created the idea of the Starlights transforming from men as civilians and women as Soldiers. This was a choice they made that did not match Naoko's vision of the characters. When she spoke about the Starlights in interviews, it was to say that Senshi are always girls - which was a statement made in 1998, at a time when women's rights were still being fought for in both Japan and the United States (where she made the comment! She was in California at the time). Having the heroes of her story, the soldiers, the fighters, be ''women'' was a statement about protecting her brand and series as primarily for girls, about girls, with girls.

And in her series, girls can become boys. Girls can have the heart of a man. Girls can be both men and women. It's a limitation of language and the era that we have to remember, looking from 2024, at a manga started in the early 90s and finishing its run in the late 90s.

In the manga, the Starlights are always women, but they wear masculine attire as civilians, while their senshi forms are not especially feminine, but rather make it clear that they have the physical traits associated with women, are fairly femme as soldiers. In other words, they're butch in their civilian lives, but they aren't men. They are girls who can be masculine. They are women who can present as men. They are a continued exploration of Sailor Moon's on-going discussion of gender. It was about girls getting to be the warriors who save the world, women getting to be the centerpoint on which the universe turns.

It was the original anime that would rather portray Seiya as a man when he's trying to flirt with and woo Usagi, rather than keep Seiya's original presentation as a woman who presents masculine at times.

There are so many more points or characters I could have talked about, but in general, the entire manga factors into the question of gender exploration, particular in regards to what it means to be a girl, what it means to express gender, what it means for Sailor Senshi to be girls, and what being a girl means.

Sailor Moon's manga has many themes but one that consistently comes back is the gender play, and the way that Naoko expresses gender in characters.

[breelandwalker]

Snow Moon - February 2025

Boots and mittens on, witches - it’s time for the Snow Moon!

Snow Moon

The Snow Moon is the name given to the full moon which occurs during the month of February. Despite what certain groundhogs will tell you, February is the month that sees the highest rates of snowfall across much of North America, according to the National Weather Service, and many alternative names for the moon and the month in which it falls reflect this.

As with many full moon names, we find the roots of the Snow Moon among the indigenous peoples of North America. In this particular case, a colonist explorer noted in 1760 that the Naudowessie (Dakota) people called this month Snow Moon specifically due to the tendency for snowstorms to come during that month. Some other indigenous names for this moon and month refer to commonly-sighted animals. Some examples include Eagle Moon (Cree), Bear Moon (Ojibwe), Groundhog Moon (Algonquin), and Goose Moon (Haida). Another notable example is Hungry Moon (Cherokee), denoting the scarcity of available food in deep winter.

The moon will be at peak illumination at 8:53am EST on Wednesday, February 12th. It will be below the horizon at this time, meaning the moon may appear to be full on the 11th and the 12th, depending on where you live. It should be highest in the sky around midnight EST on the 12th - the perfect time for magic!

What Does It Mean For Witches?

February is a month of change and transition. Though winter still holds on, many places may be showing early signs of spring. Little buds may be coming out on the trees, certain species of birds are beginning to migrate back, and hibernating animals start to wake up and reappear.

As we begin to turn toward the end of our long winter’s rest, it’s a good time to think about how we prepare for oncoming change and how we care for ourselves and our practices during times of stagnation.

We might also contemplate the concept of distance and stasis as it relates to our practices, be it keeping long-distance bonds fresh, doing things remotely either alone or as part of a larger group, or feeling distant from your craft or your deities. And yes, such things are normal and cyclical. Our inspiration and motivation wax and wane just as the moon does. If it feels like you’ve been far away from your craft for too long, perhaps it’s time to bring it back into your orbit.

What Witchy Things Can We Do?

Gather fresh snow or icicles for moon water, or make your own moon ice by leaving a bowl of water out overnight to freeze, if the temperature drops low enough.

If it snows in your area, you can wish upon a snowball. Grab a handful of powdery snow, whisper your wish to it, and throw the whole thing up in the air to release the wish into the universe

With winter scarcity in mind, practice creating a minimalist spell as an exercise. Create a workable spell with as few components, words, movements, or ritual elements as possible. This is more of a challenge if you’re used to using material components or rituals in your spellwork. Many witches cast spells with focused thought or energy work alone.

You can also try creating a spell with only components and materials that you already have on hand. Explore your home and see how many items you can identify a magical purpose for and brainstorm different ways they could be used in your craft.

Explore the concept of self care as magic. Use your routines to create moments of rest and harmony, make a point of being kind to your body and your mind, and cultivate a more positive relationship with yourself - it’s the only one guaranteed to last a lifetime.

Connect with your local biome by looking for any early signs of spring in your area. Feed the returning birds and identify the plant and animal species you see around you as they appear one by one.

Happy Snow Moon, witches! 🌕❄️

SOURCES & FURTHER READING:

Bree’s Lunar Calendar Series

Bree’s Secular Celebrations Series

Snow Moon: Full Moon in February 2025, The Old Farmer’s Almanac.

Snow Moon: The Extraordinary Full Moon of February 2025, The Peculiar Brunette.

Witchcraft Exercise - Home Brews, Bree NicGarran. (Masterlist here)

Moon Info - Full Moon Dates for 2025

Calendar-12 - 2025 Moon Phases

Everyday Moon Magic: Spells & Rituals for Abundant Living, Dorothy Morrison, Llewellyn Publications, 2004.

(If you’re enjoying my content, please feel free to drop a little something in the tip jar, check out my monthly show Hex Positive, and find my published works on Amazon or in the Willow Wings Witch Shop. ����)

[zeldaresourcesforlufans]

Hero of Hyrule

The Legend of Zelda (1986)

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1987)

As always, credit to Linked Universe

Let's kick things off with our favorite Traveler! Read on for a synopsis of Hyrule's background according to the Zelda canon.

Hyrule's games kicked off the Zelda franchise back in the 1980s. Although simple by today's standards, the games were groundbreaking for their time in that they introduced mechanics like open-world exploration, inventory utilization, a health meter, and the ability to create save files.

Although the concept itself is simple, the gameplay can be pretty punishing and these games are often described as difficult, especially Zelda II.

The Legend of Zelda (1986)

The story for the very first Zelda game is also comparatively simple. Princess Zelda - this one referred to in the Linked Universe fandom as Dawn - splits the Triforce of Wisdom up into 8 pieces and hides them throughout the land to keep them from Ganon. Ganon, predictably, is not happy about this and imprisons Dawn. Hyrule's goal is to gather all 8 pieces to be able to defeat Ganon and save Dawn.

Zelda II: The Adventure of Link (1987)

The story for Zelda II is a bit more fleshed out. Six years after the events of the first game, Hyrule is called to adventure again by the mark of the Triforce appearing on his hand. He learns that ages ago, another Princess Zelda - this one referred to in the Linked Universe fandom as Aurora - refused to give up the location of the Triforce of Courage to her shifty brother. Enraged, the brother had Aurora cast into a deep sleep. She can only be woken by reuniting all three pieces of the Triforce, which is the goal of this game. Hyrule does eventually succeed and gains the Triforce of Courage, therefore reuniting the full Triforce and waking Aurora from her magical slumber.

Linked Universe Commentary

The official story of Zelda II states that Hyrule is 16 at the time of that game, and that it has been 6 years since his first adventure. That means that Hyrule was only 10 years old when he first set out, making him one of the youngest if not the youngest Link at the onset of his first adventure. Beyond that, Hyrule is never really given any kind of backstory by Nintendo; he is simply described as a traveler, and his first game just begins with him walking into a cave and receiving a sword from an old man. Because of this, the Linked Universe fandom as well as the Zelda fandom as a whole have created some delightfully elaborate headcanon content based on the few scraps of information we have about him.

Despite the popular headcanon that Hyrule comes from a blighted land, there really isn't much evidence to support this. I think that this headcanon likely came about in large part because of the simplistic style of his games (which of course are due to technology limitations of the time) and the punishing gameplay in which monsters are everywhere, items are rare, and health is hard to come by. If Nintendo's promotional materials are anything to go by, though, Hyrule's world is actually rather pretty!

Another popular headcanon is that Hyrule is part fairy. He does have a spell in Zelda II which allows him to turn into a fairy, so the source of that headcanon is obvious.

Hyrule's blood curse comes up often in Linked Universe fan material. It is true that in Zelda II, Ganon's minions believe that spilling his blood over Ganon's ashes will revive their master, and therefore monsters do flock to Hyrule while he's traveling throughout the land. However, the exact mechanics of how the monsters are able to track him are never really explained, hence the blood curse headcanons.

Do you know any additional information about Hyrlule from his games that you think others might find interesting?

Do you have questions about Hyrule's past for other LU fans?

Feel free to add them by reblogging or replying - this resource is meant to grow!

Stay tuned for more Zelda Resources for Linked Universe Fans coming soon! Next up: Legend!

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Useful Regency England facts I learned by reading annotated editions of Austen novels

During the early part of the covid pandemic I read/re-read all of the novels Jane Austen completed during her life in the editions annotated by David M. Shapard. Of everything I learned, the following were useful enough for understanding her work that they really stuck with me. (That said, I may have forgotten others that were at least as useful!)

from morning to supper

In Austen’s time and for some time afterward, “morning” lasted until the hour when people ate supper. So if you read in an Austen novel that a character did something “all morning,” they did that thing until the early evening. It's a small thing in a way, but this information really changes some significant moments in her novels.

purposeful gossip

Before reading Austen with Shapard's annotations, I always wondered how all the characters in her novels seemed to know the (more or less) exact yearly income of the single men they encountered, despite living in a time when it would have been utterly impolite to discuss these things openly. Shapard gave me the answer: servant gossip. I don't mean random idle chitchat, either. I mean that it could be a tacit (or perhaps even acknowledged) part of a servant's job description to broadcast important facts about their employer to the necessary people and/or to receive such information and pass it along to their employer.

the four percents

Speaking of income, I also wondered what it meant that these idle rich gentlemen received a certain amount of money per year. These figures couldn't be salaries since they didn't have jobs. I could imagine them being based on the proceeds they received from their estates being farmed and so forth, but some prominent Austen characters are said to have a certain amount per year when we know they don't own an estate. (For example, the whole reason the Bennet family meets Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy is that Bingley rents an estate in their neighborhood, Netherfield, while he looks for a suitable one to purchase.)

What else could those figures be based on? Again, Shapard came through. Apparently these numbers did sometimes represent the expected proceeds of an estate, in whole or in part. But the sort of default option was for them to represent dividends that a person received from government bonds. The most widely-used type of government bond in England at this time were permanent bonds that didn't mature on a certain year or whatever, but just released dividends indefinitely. (They're sometimes referred to in Austen's novels as "four percents," though that wasn't always the exact percentage of the principal that holder received in dividends.) So it's almost certain that a man like Bingley had a large sum of money invested in bonds in his name and the yearly amount Mrs. Bennet learned was based on how much money those bonds paid in dividends per year.

windows and manservants

Some lines from certain novels made more sense to me after learning about some specific tax policies of the time that Shapard outlined. Again, P&P references are the ones that come to mind most readily for me. Remember when Lady Catherine was fussing about Elizabeth traveling home from Kent without an older person or a man along? Elizabeth told her that her uncle was sending a manservant to be present when they changed horses and Lady Catherine was pleasantly surprised that he had one. This is probably because there was a special tax households had to pay based on the number of manservants they employed (no such tax applied to women servants). Lady Catherine probably knew that Elizabeth's uncle was in trade, so she may not have expected him to be able to afford a manservant, including the cost of the manservant tax.

At another point, the number of windows in Lady Catherine's house is remarked on as if it’s a big deal. This isn't just because they looked nice, or were expensive to source materials for and install. There was also a tax on windows, based on the number of windows in one's home. If I remember correctly, this wasn't because of any intrinsic quality of windows or anything, but because the more windows a house had, the more likely it was to be large and grand.

servants and dresses

Have you ever thought it was weird that Austen characters who were supposed to be down on their luck financially still had a bunch of servants? I mean, I always chalked it up to the fact that everything is relative, so going from having a whole staff of servants to just a few would have been a big, scary change. But sometimes these characters really were stressed about money in other respects. Take the Dashwoods, for example. Marianne fretted about not having enough dresses to make certain that Willoughby doesn't see her in the same one twice, because she can't afford to buy a new one anytime soon. But the Dashwoods still have three servants (and one of them is even a man!).

The reason for this is the fact that compared to the present day, in Austen's time the cost of goods was much higher and the cost of labor was much lower. Think about it this way: if you could hire someone to do your housework for a week, maybe even a month, for the amount you'd pay for a fast-fashion dress, but to get a new dress you had to pay bespoke prices, you'd be more likely to do the former and less likely to do the latter. So much financial stuff in Austen novels makes more sense if you keep this in mind, so Shapard explains it at least once per novel.

engagement rules

There were conventions about engagements and how/whether they could be broken off that are hinted at or implied at times in Austen's work but not explicitly stated, assumably because readers would've been assumed to know them already. These help to explain some important plot points in a few of her books.

It was a man's role to propose marriage, of course. This is still a pretty prevalent convention today, so that's hardly surprising. But in Regency England, it wasn't socially acceptable for a man to break off an engagement once it was formed. So if he regretted making a proposal, he was out of luck—unless he was OK with being a total pariah. If I remember correctly, there may have been potential legal consequences as well. Men also internalized the idea that for a man to break off an engagement was dishonorable, so men who held themselves to high standards would have felt shame at the prospect. Women, on the other hand, were allowed to break off an engagement. If a woman were to do this repeatedly, people would start to look at her askance, but otherwise she'd be fine socially, and even a scrupulous woman wouldn't be likely to reproach herself about doing it unless there was something specifically sketchy about it.

Some specific examples of how this plays out:

This is why Edward Ferrars can't cut ties with Lucy Steele, but she dumps him easily when the chance to marry his brother comes along. (Lucy wouldn't have scruples about honor, but she cares about other people's opinions.)

It's also the reason Captain Wentworth sticks around while Louisa Musgrove is convalescing. While he hadn't proposed, others had decided they were practically engaged because of how openly he had seemed to prefer her. This was almost as binding, socially, as a real engagement. He still kept his distance, though, in the hope that she'd lose interest in him. Thankfully, it worked.

At the same time, not only is it socially OK that Anne broke off her first engagement with Wentworth, she concludes after they reconcile that she acted rightly under the circumstances.

When Frank Churchill quarrels with Jane Fairfax, he hurts her with his comments about men who regret their engagements during the Box Hill fiasco. He may just have been trying to hurt her, but one could argue that his comments were intended to bait her into breaking off the engagement herself.

Jane may have viewed it that way, which would be one more reason for her to break up with him (as she does, completely within her rights, until they reconcile).

That's everything that came to mind for the moment, but if I think of any good additions to this, I'll reblog with them. Others are encouraged to do the same. I checked a few things online as I was writing but a lot of this is from memory, especially the plot details. So apologies if I flubbed something, and feel free to let me know.

I strongly recommend reading the novels with Shapard's annotations, by the way! His notes are thorough and accessible and the details they explain contributed a lot, even more than I expected, to my understanding of the books.

(tagging @vital-information as discussed—this took forever because I wrote most of it, tumblr ate it, and then I was too annoyed to re-write it for a while, but here it finally is!)

[genericpuff]

Hey Puff,

I'm someone who has always struggled with how to do research "correctly," but have lurked around the community enough to know RS had a real tendency for… not doing enough. Do you have any recommendations, not necessarily specific to Greek mythos, on how to just do research? Is Wikipedia even a good jumping off point?

Thanks!

Biggest thing, at least for me, is being thorough! The reason a lot of folks tend to side-eye Wikipedia as a "source" isn't just because it's relatively easy for anyone to edit, but also because Wikipedia itself is a library of sources and not the source itself.

Wikipedia can be a perfectly acceptable jump off point, as long as you're actually jumping to the places it can lead to - and you can do that through References.

Let's use the Wikipedia entry for Persephone as an example.

Sourcing "improperly" through Wikipedia would be to simply source directly from one of the sentences listed here and calling it a day. No further digging on where the excerpt comes from, no cross-referencing with other material, just reading the part on Wikipedia that says she was a vegetation goddess, slapping it into an essay or adaption or whatever, and then not confirming it further or picking apart the why of her status as a vegetation goddess through extended research.

Sooo what do we do to find that info? Let's search the word 'vegetation' and see if anything else comes up.

There we go, that has a bit more detail. And from here, we can click the little '19' at the end of the paragraph, which will take us to the References section at the bottom of the page.

Aaaand boom! Now you've got an actual source that you can dig into further, if you so choose. There isn't a whole lot that I can access of this sourced book online, but I was able to find an excerpt where the author sourced Cicero, a Roman poet and philosopher (among other things) who lived during the rise of the Roman empire:

That said, sometimes these sources aren't quite so easy to track down. That's where cross-referencing can help - but that means leaving Wikipedia!

Where this concerns a Greek goddess, let's see what we can find on Theoi, another great resource specifically pertaining to Greek / Roman / etc. deities, stories, and customs.

Though it's not quite as clickable as Wikipedia, Theoi also does a good job at outlining sources in their descriptions. Though Bennett isn't mentioned here, Hesiod and Cicero are, and wouldn't you know it, they're sourced on Theoi as well.

So there you have it! Even though Bennett is from the early 2000's, he did his own work to outline and source poets and academics whose work he was now documenting himself. This means the odds of Bennett simply making shit up are low because he sourced from the preserved works of the era he's speaking on and those works are referenced again through other resource libraries such as Theoi.

What ALL that helps with at the very least - aside from the opinions one could have about the sources themselves (Ovid 😒) - is to legitimize the research. We know without a shadow of a doubt that Persephone was attributed to vegetation and the harvest because there are so many sources across different cultures and backgrounds and generations stating it as such. It thus makes the conclusions a lot more credible, even when they're coming from a more modern source, because that source was built on their own research and sources from the Greek/Roman/etc. documents that have been preserved (and there's still new stuff being found!!!)

Obviously there are always arguments to be made about the material itself, especially when it comes to the debates over translations and cultural contexts, but actually following up on initial searches with referencing and cross-referencing is a lot more reliable and credible than simply taking something from Wikipedia and saying "I read it on the Internet."

As much as the effectiveness of Google and Wikipedia as legitimate research sources is frowned upon, they are incredibly effective, you just need to know where to look and how to find it, and most importantly - how to verify it.

And that's just the online stuff! Libraries are still alive and well! Many universities contribute to search engines like WorldCat which are designed specifically for research papers, published articles, and textbooks! Point is, the world around us is full of knowledge and resources, so the key is to learn how to navigate it so you can get the most out of it!

This is ultimately why it's so important to not restrict yourself to the first Google result - I know it's "easier" due to the convenience of it all, but you're also robbing yourself of the opportunity to really expand your knowledge beyond the summary of a targeted first result, and it runs the risk of sourcing from illegitimate sources or sources that are controlled by Google's own self-interests (protip: have a very specific problem but Googling it just gets you a bunch of automated sponsor posts and completely useless results? add 'reddit' to the end of your search, you'll get human answers from real human beings and there's always at least ONE other person who's had the same problem and posted about it to reddit LMAO seriously this one's saved my skin so many times)

And when you learn to do research the way that works for your brain? It's really, really fun. A lot more fun than public school led many of us to believe. If you learn best from talking and engaging with people, then go talk to people! Participate in groups and forums that are dedicated to the topic you're researching! If you learn best from listening to audio material, then try out audiobooks, they can often be found online through various means (🏴‍☠️) BUT ebooks and audiobooks are stocked at libraries too!

But of course, that leads us to what makes for bad research, and I obviously can't use any other example in this context than Rachel herself, whose "research" is evidently often the first recommended result that pops up on Google. And yes, I can say evidently because we've proven this when she tried to source the term 'xenia' into LO as a definition. Not only was it copy pasted to the point of still containing typos, but it was sourced plainly from a Princeton study guide that is now severely outdated - not the work that that study guide was sourcing from in and of itself.

(notice how she just sourced it as "princeton.edu" and not the specific URL that it came from)

If she really wanted to sound well-researched with the cheeky insert of the definition of xenia linking to a smart-sounding location (we're gonna ignore that it ruins the flow of the comic) then she could have sourced it from literally any of these:

But instead she did the equivalent of an 8th grader copy pasting a sentence from Wikipedia and calling it "research". It's not research. It's a lazy shortcut and it doesn't facilitate any real learning.

This can be seen in other instances as well, such as Metis' design:

As well as Leto, who I kinda think Rachel mixed up with the Full Metal Alchemist character of the same name when googling her because I can think of no other explanation as to why she's a sun goddess in LO when she has zero affiliation with the sun in the myths aside from being Apollo's mother-

(I can't prove that this is what happened but it's hilarious to think about; I'm also low key suspicious that Rachel accidentally mixed in some sources of the Métis people because Metis' design is very... Indigenous-coded 🤨)

^^^ This. This is all bad research. It's not a bad thing if Rachel's interest in Greek myth started through works like Hercules or other creative adaptions, that's actually how it starts for many of us. Where she failed was by trying to sell herself as a "folklorist" and her work as a "retelling", without actually following through in her research. She would often only do just enough to make herself seem well educated on the subject to anyone whose knowledge was as basic - or less - than hers, but not enough that it could actually hold up in a real discussion about Greek myth with other people who are more read up on it than her. Rachel's self-proclaimed "folklorist" title is only validated by the lowest common denominator of readers, who 99% of Lore Olympus ended up being made for in the end, while those who actually understood the myths deeper than their Wikipedia summaries pulled their hair out in frustration every time Rachel tried to make some sly reference to a myth or attempted to speak about it in interviews.

Comparisons aside, the best part is that this research process doesn't have to be exclusive to studying historical stuff! Writing a story that features a disabled character, but you yourself are not disabled and are worried you're going to misrepresent? Search up articles and posts that pertain to the specific disability you're trying to write; I guarantee you that there are people living with that disability offering up that information completely for free because they want to see more representation for themselves in media. Trying to learn how to draw characters of different body types / skin colors / etc. from your own? Seek out the works and advice of those who do have those physical differences and learn from them.

It's about being thorough. It's about opening yourself up to things you may have been blind to before. It's about embracing the learning experience as a positive sign of growth, not a negative sign of failure. It's about taking the opportunity to learn every time it presents itself, even if those opportunities are small and passive. A person who doesn't know is just a person who hasn't learned yet (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و