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[mathmusicreading]

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-kun 2024 Dates

Again copying wingg in order to track Tsubaki publishing and Yen Press translating and again comparatively my record sucks, so give wingg love in order to receive more detailed information on GSNK!

January 25, 2024: Chapter 154

February 29, 2024: Chapter 155

April 4, 2024: Chapter 156

May 16, 2024: Chapter 157

July 4, 2024: Chapter 158

August 9, 2024: Japan volume 16

August 22, 2024: Chapter 159

September 17, 2024: US English volume 15

September 26, 2024: Chapter 160

October 24, 2024: Chapter 161

November 28, 2024: Chapter 162

[mathmusicreading]

Blog(ger) Shift

I am, so weird and bad about original posting and about reblogging and about saving things on Tumblr and that's why my blog has been mostly inactive or the lurking consumer type. But I don't want my fears about putting myself out there, being seen and known, articulating myself well vs. having been told my whole life I'm too wordy and opinionated vs. not managing to articulate myself well enough to justify being verbose and passionate, etc. to continue to control me so much.

So for my new specific-interest sideblog that I'm not locking, I hope it being themed will help me with making more original posts and reblogging, and I'm publicizing that here to push myself and also welcome interaction.

RIP to my other public specific-interest sideblog and the fandom sideblog I took over for someone that I didn't take further and to my private sideblogs that were meant to make me reblog and save and say stuff because they would be personal and just for me. I still would like to make those happen and reblogging and posting things that matter to me here, and oh my heart for the content ideas I haven't been working on, but they're pipedreams with how I'm (not) managing my life and I keep kicking those cans down the road.

To the person who I developed a real relationship with as a beta but who by now I probably count as having disappeared on with how long it's been and my not coming back to explicitly say I still can't help and don't know when I can, I am so sorry. I'm being a coward languishing in hoping I can tell you soon that I can get back into beta-ing for you and talking, but that's turned into me not talking to you because I'm waiting to be able to say something positive. Hopefully my vaguing here can help push me into talking to you, or at least this is here for you to read if you happen to see it; and I want you to know you absolutely can talk to me, can call me out, and if you're so gracious as to still want to be friends with me and just chat despite my dropping being your beta, I'm here for you and still want to be your friend even if I don't know if I'll have the spoons to be a good one and I know my saying that preemptively isn't apology or justification enough.

Honest assessment, I'm going to curse and say my living situation and work have both become even more of a shitshow, and with those things in mind I can't begin to imagine handling a real project until basically literally a year from now.

Which segues back into the main topic of this post. My goal isn't to have my new sideblog be like an active mainblog nor to abandon this blog—people interested in that blog can and should still interact with me here given how primary vs. secondary blogs on Tumblr work, and in terms of using that blog to help make me be a better Tumblr user, I think I should make certain original posts here and reblog them there as opposed to them being original there. With my mental-emotional and time resources, I want that blog to be "active" for a given definition of active, but really I think I should see my objective as "clear out tabs and likes and photos and lists and notes and drafts, etc. from the last four months" by saving stuff there, as opposed to my goal being the original posts I want to make there, and actually my long-term goal should be to use that momentum to do the same for older digital and physical storage that hasn't been lost or stolen. In my failure to be an interesting person, do I at least manage to be fascinating as a basket-case? Ha. But, also, as expressed above the Read More, the exercise of my danmei/Chinese sideblog is supposed to be a foray into me allowing myself to be an interesting person.

[mathmusicreading]

@yummysuika @ospreywhite I really appreciate your translation work; can you explain more about shichen timekeeping to me? Because I know a tiny bit of modern Mandarin Chinese, but I can't recognize the shichens as the zodiac animals:

Zi (I don't know "rat", so I actually can't make any argument here.)

Chou (I don't know "ox", but I reasonably could have expected "niu" for "cow".)

Yin (I know "tiger" as "hu".)

Mao (I don't know "rabbit", but to me "mao" is "cat".)

Chen (I know "dragon" as "long".)

Si (I don't know "snake", but now I find it interesting that it sounds like death, like snakes could be seen as evil in Chinese culture similar to how they are seen in the Christian world.)

Wu (I know "horse" as "ma".)

Wei (I know "sheep/goat" as "yang".)

Shen (I don't know "monkey", but I would have expected "Sun" or "Wu" or "Kong" because of "Monkey King".)

You (I know "rooster/chicken" as " ji".)

Xu (I know "dog" as "gou".)

Hai (I don't know "pig/boar" unless "pork" and "pig" are the same "siu".)

I tried asking my parents, but they just starting talking about how the Chinese zodiac is actually a 60-year cycle with the 12 animals and the 5 elements. So are these shichen names the "Pre-Han dynasty semi-descriptive terms"? Is it kind of like the difference between "midday" and "noon" in English? The former is a "descriptor", the latter is a "name", but they "mean" the same thing?

(I tried checking the etymology for "noon" on dictionary.com, so to be fair "ninth hour" is a descriptor, but in Modern English it's not really recognizable as such and so for the sake of my shichen question, I'm calling "noon" a "name".)

Or is this another language/dialect or due to the evolution of language (changing words and pronunciations)?

I was also looking up the Dragon Boat Festival being on the unluckiest day of the year, and it says, "The Chinese name of the festival is pronounced differently in different Chinese languages. Duanwu (端午) literally means 'starting horse'—i.e., the first "horse day" of the month according to the Chinese zodiac." so I was able to get the exact character for "wu". I think it's interesting that Wikipedia says "literally ... horse" but putting 午 into Google Translate yields "midday, noonday, seventh earthly branch, 11 a.m.-1 p.m." It's unfortunate that Wikipedia only says "different Chinese languages" for "Duanwu" instead of specifying them or time periods, but I appreciate it listing different romanizations by country for Cantonese.

Would you say there's any pattern to Chinese writers or English translators using the above terms vs. using "hour/time/head/body/tail of the (insert zodiac animal here)"? Like if one sounds better for a historical fantasy setting, or choosing to use the pinyin in English instead of translating to not be translating literally? ETA: I should have gotten onto a computer sooner. I asked my parents and then you guys because searching "shichen" in Wikipedia just resulted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_units_of_measurement. But further digging took me to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traditional_Chinese_timekeeping. I'll probably get answers there (Maybe I'll even be able to explain to my dad why he was thinking of ten stems and not matching mathematically with "60 is from 12 times 5, not 10 times 6" when he was trying to lecture on the 60-year cycle for the Chinese zodiac, lol.), so my apologies for bothering you. I'd still appreciate your thoughts on what was formerly the last paragraph about writing and translation choices!

[mathmusicreading]

Xiè Lián: My surname is Xiè, my first name is Lián. Huā Chéng: You can call me your third husband. Xiè Lián: What happened to my first two husbands?!

I learned Huā Chéng was having Xiè Lián call him "husband" from Ty the Canasian on Kictor's YouTube, I found this when I was trying to corroborate the linguistics, and I indulged and bought the official Seven Seas Entertainment (translator and editor are on Tumblr!) English translations of the books so here's further confirmation from Volume 1:

ETA:

I made this post private because I was unhappy with it (misspelling/misformatting Wúmíng, knowing I wouldn't have good reach for larger and less biased sample size even if I could have tagged better for the fandoms and characters if Tumblr organized by more than the first five tags), but I'm making it public again since it finished and so did the similar poll that fun-mxtx-polls was kind enough to make for me.

Not to bias towards the first option, just to explain it, the first option and why I wanted this poll come from the naming pattern trivia for MXTX's love interests/male leads/gongs, which I think you can best read on Huā Chéng's page on the Heaven Official's Blessing/Tiān Guān Cì Fú wikia. I'm just using that as my citation given:

I'm not sure if MXTX has discussed this meta in-joke somewhere and if so, where.

The SSE Glossary: Terminology note (all volumes of all three MXTX novels) only explains the second and third gongs, and implies MXTX is doing this purposefully. Lán Wàngjī's wikia page explains only the three published gongs, and implies this started from fandom phenomena creating a proto-stage pattern (if you subscribe to "one is chance, two is coincidence, three is a pattern"). Huā Chéng's page linked above is the odd man out and so probably incorrect about Lán-èr-gē vs. Lán-èr-gēge, but it goes above and beyond by explaining the fourth gong, and it uses the most neutral language regarding this trivia.

I think citation is unnecessary for "gē" (哥 | 哥) meaning "big brother" and in certain contexts having the connotation or meaning of "eldest brother" (admittedly my unverified inference), "èr" (二 | 二) meaning "two", and "sān" (三 | 三) meaning "three".

I actually like so much because I like to think if it could use more wordplay and less literalism. Please forgive me for being a poor reader not remembering exactly, not buying the TGCF raws yet, not being able to buy the SVSSS and MDZS raws, and only being able to find old fan translations/interpretations of MXTX's fourth novel preview, but let me explain:

I believe Luò Bīnghé isn't being called "Luò Bīnghé-gē" (or rather "Bīng-gē" since I think? it's more usual to use the suffix with the single/first character of a person's given name, not with their full name, especially when the full name is three (or more? some of my reading has mentioned two-character last names but I didn't find if culture was strict about then making the given name be only one character) characters) for the usual reasons to address someone with "gē", but actually the PIDW!Luò Bīnghé is being called Luò Bīnggē (or "Bīng-gē") because he's more aggressive than canon/SVSSS!Luò Bīnggē who when being differentiated gets called Luò Bīngmèi (or "Bīng-mèi"), and I love that "very fitting reasoning for the naming, not strictly literal and not so bound to literal".

Then with Lán Wàngjī, I see the opportunity that his nickname could have used the natural naming of "erhua is used as a diminutive suffix", and the "er" would have been homophonous with "èr" (二 | 二) for "two" for him being the second gong, and homophonous to the potential "proper address for him as the second Lán son/brother".

In the most literal sense, you'll notice that the gongs so far have had their nicknames be using "(big) brother" and Huā Chéng's uses láng (郎 | 郎) "son" (his stated meaning, although it can also mean "man" and "husband" and the latter is how we can interpret he wanted it to be when coming from Xiè Lián). There's nothing wrong with that and the numbers are perfectly probable, and would still be so as they grow, but also they could feel more like "contrived" coincidence, which is part of my wanting to get away from literalism a little bit, not just my loving clever wordplay. With Huā Chéng, I don't have a homophone I can use for punning like with Lán Wàngjī, or really the "cultural language use where literal suffixes/honorifics get used figuratively for XYZ purposes", but I can make it fit with character interpretation. To me, Sān Láng doesn't have to be "Third Son" because "he has two older brothers" and in fact we aren't sure that he was telling the truth about that—instead, I think Huā Chéng could be being clever with not just getting Xiè Lián to call him (Third/surname "Three") Husband but in saying his name is "Third Man" because this is the third alias he gives Xiè Lián. (Some additional feels this gives me: It's like he's saying he's the same person Xiè Lián met before, that they shared all of that experience and it mattered, that he's the final form of that person wanting to be with Xiè Lián, that he's like a fairy-tale character with many names and forms and a true name and form and all along there was a trick or thread to follow in knowing and identifying him.) It just works out so perfectly because of the third way he introduces himself to Xiè Lián matching him being the third gong, and also the fairy-tale significant number of "three".

Finally, with the fourth gong, I've looked at Suika's TGCF Afterword translation, a NovelUpdates MDZS spoilers forum post by K.san crossposted to the Grim Reapers Have No Days Off spoilers forum by alexfilia, a reply to this post in r/tianguancifu by u/chenmochou, and also this post in r/tianguancifu by u/Loud_Daikon6167 which cites a TikTok I can't see either because of TikTok's thing about opening to a random page/the homepage or I assume the TikTok being removed or locked. Given the first NovelUpdates post maybe having more of a direct translation compared to the first Reddit post, it's still not definitive to me whether this is "actually more of a fandom thing, with MXTX acknowledging and participating in it enough to help make it possible" or it's "MXTX doing this on purpose with her name choices and character traits, whether she meant to have the pattern from the start or later, and yes could have been influenced by fandom" because I think "Other: 四少" is probably about the male lead(s) compared to it following "Protagonist: the uke's name is not determined yet" so it doesn't seem like the fandom came up with a nickname out of whole cloth. "Four young masters" is perfectly probable and could be equally reasonable, and "four ikemen" could even follow in reasonability; in fact it could be more likely and realistic since this is a modern setting, which would have different use of "young master" to me, and because we believe the gong to be the regular human and the shou to be the grim reaper. But for the wordplay, I would have liked it if the gong were the grim reaper and the "four theme naming" came from the famous "sì" (四 | 四) meaning "four" is homophonous with "sǐ" (死 | 死) meaning "die/death" and the latter being used in the Chinese for "grim reaper"/"death god".

[mathmusicreading]

Sign the petition calling on Danaher and Cepheid to lower tuberculosis test prices in impoverished communities:

https://timefor5.msfaccess.org/?recruiter_id=127

Social pressure has made real change on this issue (look up Johnson & Johnson's patent extension), so it's worth it to sign the petition!

[mathmusicreading]

Gekkan Shoujo Nozaki-Kun Dates 2023

Copying wingg in order to track Tsubaki publishing and Yen Press translating. Comparatively my record sucks, so give wingg love in order to receive more detailed information on GSNK!

January 26, 2023: Chapter 144

February 23, 2023: Chapter 145

March 23, 2023: Chapter 146

April 27, 2023: Chapter 147

May 25, 2023: Chapter 148

August 10, 2023: Japan volume 15 and volume 15.5 (booklet with art club girl (Ch 9, Ep 7) and Nozaki Mayu instead of Kashima Rei)

August 24, 2023: Chapter 149

September 19, 2023: US English volume 14

September 28, 2023: Chapter 150

October 26, 2023: Chapter 151

November 23, 2023: Chapter 152

December 28, 2023: Chapter 153

[mathmusicreading]

Currently thinking about the title of Supernatural season 4 episode 1 "Lazarus Rising". It's so simple and so evocative. I think I get something extra from it because I love Terry Pratchett, Discworld, Hogfather, Discworld's Death, and the quote "where the falling angel meets the rising ape". (Do the Destiel shippers go wild with this? The Cas fans supporting his love for humanity and even creating free will? They should.) But just on it's own, it's referencing coming back to life and the phrasing has connotations of ascension and empowerment. It also avoids connotations of zombies or likening Dean to Jesus Christ.

On that note, I wonder how much Supernatural meant to parallel Dean Winchester to Lazarus of Bethany, and Castiel to Jesus for that matter. (With how little I engage with Supernatural canon, I think my thoughts on Chuck's relationship with Castiel are mixed and not set, but for fun right now: Castiel is Chuck's favorite angel, and Chuck hates it and hates him for it!)

Dean was dead for four months, much like Lazarus was dead for four days. (Dean was also in hell for 40 years, a significant number and amount of time in the Bible. And moving away from the Christianity angle, four is a fitting motif with Dean's death given "four" sounding like "death" in Mandarin Chinese.)

Dean is "the righteous man", while part of the title with which Lazarus is venerated is "Righteous Lazarus".

If "risen dead" evokes zombies and "risen from the dead" invokes Jesus, then "Lazarus rising" conveys that the subject of resurrection is a normal human, and the key is that they are resurrected by a great power who is good. Specifically, Lazarus is resurrected by Jesus, the Son of God, and Dean is resurrected not by a necromancer or demon, but by the angel Castiel, sent on a holy mission.

Jesus did not immediately save Lazarus, rushing to heal him upon hearing of his illness, but waited two days before traveling to and resurrecting Lazarus after he died. I can't help but feel like this is similar to Castiel's not rescuing Dean until 40 years into Dean's sentence in Hell, after he had broken on the rack and become a torturer shedding blood in Hell.

Jesus did not merely heal Lazarus when he was sick, but resurrected him after death, for God's glory and that people might believe in Jesus' own coming resurrection. (God resurrecting Castiel, anyone?) I think Supernatural canon is not explicitly clear, and it may be widespread fanon or a popular fan head canon that Castiel was sent immediately to rescue Dean, but wow the similarity to Jesus and his mission if Cas couldn't reach Dean or wasn't sent until after Dean broke because of heaven's ultimate plan to carryout the apocalypse, rescuing Dean not being about saving a righteous man but about breaking the first seal to Lucifer's cage.

Not full of meaning, but Jesus resurrected Lazarus in his tomb and still wrapped in his grave cloths. So for the people jokingly asking why Castiel left Dean in his coffin, six feet under, instead of zapping him out, it's because we're really leaning into the Jesus angle. (Is Cas lobotomized Jesus?!)

And the kickers now that we've gone through all that: Jesus wept. He was moved with compassion for Lazarus' sisters and friends. He mourned Lazarus' death even while on the way to resurrect him. It was well known by all that he loved Lazarus. Take that how you will and run with it, Cas fans and Destiel shippers!

Last thing not being included with the rest because you can't as easily get it just from reading John 11:1-44 or doing an internet search for Lazarus. DiscIaimer that above, I got the title with which Lazarus is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox Church from Wikipedia, and so too the following Biblical interpretation/theological commentary.

The miracle of the raising of Lazarus is the climax of John's "signs". It explains the crowds seeking Jesus on Palm Sunday, and leads directly to the decision of Caiaphas and the Sanhedrin to plan to kill Jesus. Theologians Moloney and Harrington view the raising of Lazarus as a "pivotal miracle" which starts the chain of events that leads to the Crucifixion of Jesus. They consider it as a "resurrection that will lead to death", in that the raising of Lazarus will lead to the death of Jesus, the Son of God, in Jerusalem which will reveal the Glory of God.[17]

Dean's resurrection led to Castiel's death. Castiel died because he saved and loved Dean. When Castiel first laid a hand on [Dean] in Hell, he was lost! Castiel died because Chuck is a Pharisee that can't accept his manly everyman main character (sorry, Sam) is bisexual instead of straight. Chuck can be bisexual, but the manly everyman main character has to be straight, and so he killed Castiel for it. Dean too if you believe Chuck won.

And if the point of Lazarus' resurrection is Jesus' divinity, then the point of Dean's resurrection is that the angel is gay and Dean is bi!

[mathmusicreading]

More Drama Than I Had Realized

So I just checked and Chloe and Zoe are half-sisters through their mother, and they're only a year or two apart in age if we go by their only being a year apart in school and say their school years aren't misaligned from each other and their ages by differences in French and American education or skipping/repeating school years. Even if Zoe was a premie and Audrey's pregnancy with her was shorter and later, Audrey fell pregnant with Zoe by Mr. Lee not long after she had Chloe with Andre Bourgeois. I'm actually impressed Audrey was around for Chloe's childhood before whenever she left.

[mathmusicreading]

Grey by Valinde (Valyria) https://archiveofourown.org/works/978693

Does anyone know of any soulmate-AU fanfic where Dean doesn't have a soulmate because Cas doesn't have a soul?

[mathmusicreading]

#A Song of Ice and Fire was trending at #4 (with #ASoIaF trending under it) and #Game of Thrones was trending at #8, then half an hour later it was just #ASoIaF trending at #7.

So what's going on in ASoIaF related news? I checked the tags and it just looked like general posting, and I didn't see bombshell News search results for those or George R R Martin or HBO.

I searched House of the Dragon since I'm willing to count news for that as being as big as news for a different spin-off making real progress, and there is recent news for HotD, but it could be bigger.

I'm kind of amazed at the separate trends though since Tumblr implemented tag bundling a while back for trending tags. The separate tags implies separation between ASoIaF and GoT fans and that both groups are large and active. Kudos to GRRM that ASoIaF was trending above GoT since doorstopper reads are less accessible than prestige TV that was a global phenomenon. And just for fans of both outlasting the awful TV series finale. I get that the different names helped keep them more distinct, and the divergences in the adaptation even more so, but still it's interesting that the groups would be so distinct and so large.

[mathmusicreading]

@dark-angel-7 I think you have that unsearchable Tumblr blog setting turned on, so hopefully manually linking and tagging you in a reblog makes a mention show in your activity or you’re tracking your tag. I widened my search and unfortunately the only Pirate AU I found was left at the first chapter and hadn’t reached the pirates yet. https://www.fanfiction.net/s/10157596/1/Come-Sail-Away I’m new to the fandom and not very social, so it’s possible #3 you’re looking for was taken down and I just haven’t come across people discussing it; good luck! 

For reference, I looked at the spreadsheet https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SWRvyj4DIAGGfo04_ba8LaDsJmlIfSxb2fn9TtqnlYM/edit#gid=0 for The Destiel Fic Archive Project and their chatter on commercially published titles https://www.tumblr.com/destielficarchive/tagged/the%20destiel%20fic%20to%20original%20fic%20pipeline, and I tried ao3feed-destiel and ao3feed--destiel, but I didn’t try any rec blogs or newsletters on Tumblr or elsewhere because I’m not familiar with them and I did Google searches (I also did DuckDuckGo searches because I’ve made that my default search engine, but I think older fandom activity skewed towards Google and I think that it’s managed to give me search results for locked fic on AO3 and dead links for deleted fics when they were popular enough, so I try to use Google as a last resort) for Tumblr, AO3, LJ, FFN, DW, Wattpad, and even Blogspot along with searching on those sites when feasible.

Group Ask, # 208

Relevant links to find lost fic

previous group asks - feel free to browse them!

spnstoryfinders

Guide to Finding Fic

Guide to Finding Lost Fic

PSA - Save Your Faves!

Lost and Found fic posts - when mods knew the answer!

when looking for fics similar to the ones you have read, check out our Fics like X Reference Post and Fics like X Tag

Before sending in a lost fic ask, please check out our Tags Page and see if the fic in question could be found under some plot/ trope/ pairing related tag! Big thanks to all followers who do check the tags before sending in the ask!!! Our anon is switched off for good but you can always ask for your url to be withhold either on the lost ask or the answer re fic.  <333

And even bigger thanks to all folks who help us to find lost fics! You guys are the real MVPs!!!

Ask #1 (@ goshawk): there’s this fic…# 1

hi! i’m looking for an omegaverse fic where cas and jimmy are brothers, but jimmy died in part because he and castiel were raised in a creche and there was some genetic engineering to make sure jimmy was an alpha? cas has issues with his alpha identity as a result

Ask #2 ( @cuddles90902): there’s this fic…# 2

So no one can find this one and I fear that it may have been deleted. It was lowkey kinda like Tarzan? Winged creatures they didn’t know existed and then he sees cas and cas sees him. They mated as well, had sex also Cas has no control over his wings If I remember correctly. I remember one part where Cas has backed against a wall because he can’t control his wings and they want dean. Pretty sure the wall was a cave wall. he basically apologized saying dean im sorry I can’t control them they want to touch you. It’s completed, they do have sex lol. It’s not under the midnight sun, Angels wild, molting expectations. It’s rated E it’s above 10k words.

Ask #3 ( @dark-angel-7): there’s this fic…# 3

Hello, I hope you are doing well. I feel like this is going to be a tough ask but I was wondering if you can help me, at the very least, confirm a once existed Pirate AU Destiel fic that was titled under the following: “Come Sail Away”. I just only know the title (have no clue who the author was) as I managed to save the supposed link under my favorites in my IPad. I’m still interested in reading the fic and I was saddened to see the link no longer working. I also, unfortunately, don’t remember the summary/ what the fic was entirely about (as I saved the supposed link 2 years ago) so I can’t provide any more information that can be helpful to the search. I’m really sorry about that.

Ask #4 ( @pinkpeanutbeard): there’s this fic…# 4

I’m hoping you can help.  I read a fic a while ago and didn’t bookmark.  Summary is that Cas and Dean were a couple. Cas breaks up with Dean because he thinks Dean will break up with him since he is going to be playing baseball professionally.  Cas still loves Dean.  They are in college.  One Night Cas sees Dean and his new girlfriend at a bar.  He and Dean are making small talk and then Dean calls the girl sweetheart and Cas runs out crying because he was always Dean’s sweetheart.  I’ve been searching for it and so far nothing.  Thanks!

Ask # 5 (@ loveagoodstory2) Looking for a missing fic!

Hello I was wondering if anyone has any resent information on Author Taybay14 there is a fic called Sleeping With the Enemy by this author. I was wondering if anyone knows of it and is it abandoned this fic is wonderful. I’ve read a few times before I lost it i finally found again but it’s still unfinished. I was wondering if anyone knows if maybe they changed their name or have just stopped writing Destiel completely thanks in advance

Ask #6 (@ sjxndjsmx ) Looking for a cool crossover!

Hello, I was wondering if you know of any fics where Dean is Peter quill and Cas is Gamora from guardians of the galaxy? I feel like the characters and story are very similar… Thank you!

PSA

Our blog rarely comments on political situation of the US since we prefer to stay out of current events with our little fanfic recs but sometimes we gotta do our part. We were asked to post information about internet censorship bill, Kid’s Online Safety Act (KOSA)  for our followers. Please see this post with more information about the bill and link to the website where you can vote against it. And here’s TeenVogue article about why and how KOSA if passed will be harmful to LGBTQ youth. 

If you live in the US, I encourage you to seek out more information and educate yourself about KOSA bill, and see in what kind of actions you can take part. 

[mathmusicreading]

@goshawk I guess I didn't tag you in my original reply, so in case the reason destielfanfic didn't edit the post to say Found is because you didn't see and confirm it, I'm 99% sure #1 you're looking for is A Hole in the World by AnnelieseMichel. Chapter 41 https://archiveofourown.org/works/849926/chapters/4047825 has the theory Jimmy died due to the genetic engineering to make him an alpha since he was meant to be an omega, "crèche" is used throughout the fic, and Cas has non-traditional views on being an alpha such that he not only treats omegas with respect but that he gets politically active to help them receive equality.

Group Ask, # 208

Relevant links to find lost fic

previous group asks - feel free to browse them!

spnstoryfinders

Guide to Finding Fic

Guide to Finding Lost Fic

PSA - Save Your Faves!

Lost and Found fic posts - when mods knew the answer!

when looking for fics similar to the ones you have read, check out our Fics like X Reference Post and Fics like X Tag

Before sending in a lost fic ask, please check out our Tags Page and see if the fic in question could be found under some plot/ trope/ pairing related tag! Big thanks to all followers who do check the tags before sending in the ask!!! Our anon is switched off for good but you can always ask for your url to be withhold either on the lost ask or the answer re fic.  <333

And even bigger thanks to all folks who help us to find lost fics! You guys are the real MVPs!!!

Ask #1 (@ goshawk): there’s this fic…# 1

hi! i’m looking for an omegaverse fic where cas and jimmy are brothers, but jimmy died in part because he and castiel were raised in a creche and there was some genetic engineering to make sure jimmy was an alpha? cas has issues with his alpha identity as a result

Ask #2 ( @cuddles90902): there’s this fic…# 2

So no one can find this one and I fear that it may have been deleted. It was lowkey kinda like Tarzan? Winged creatures they didn’t know existed and then he sees cas and cas sees him. They mated as well, had sex also Cas has no control over his wings If I remember correctly. I remember one part where Cas has backed against a wall because he can’t control his wings and they want dean. Pretty sure the wall was a cave wall. he basically apologized saying dean im sorry I can’t control them they want to touch you. It’s completed, they do have sex lol. It’s not under the midnight sun, Angels wild, molting expectations. It’s rated E it’s above 10k words.

Ask #3 ( @dark-angel-7): there’s this fic…# 3

Hello, I hope you are doing well. I feel like this is going to be a tough ask but I was wondering if you can help me, at the very least, confirm a once existed Pirate AU Destiel fic that was titled under the following: “Come Sail Away”. I just only know the title (have no clue who the author was) as I managed to save the supposed link under my favorites in my IPad. I’m still interested in reading the fic and I was saddened to see the link no longer working. I also, unfortunately, don’t remember the summary/ what the fic was entirely about (as I saved the supposed link 2 years ago) so I can’t provide any more information that can be helpful to the search. I’m really sorry about that.

Ask #4 ( @pinkpeanutbeard): there’s this fic…# 4

I’m hoping you can help.  I read a fic a while ago and didn’t bookmark.  Summary is that Cas and Dean were a couple. Cas breaks up with Dean because he thinks Dean will break up with him since he is going to be playing baseball professionally.  Cas still loves Dean.  They are in college.  One Night Cas sees Dean and his new girlfriend at a bar.  He and Dean are making small talk and then Dean calls the girl sweetheart and Cas runs out crying because he was always Dean’s sweetheart.  I’ve been searching for it and so far nothing.  Thanks!

Ask # 5 (@ loveagoodstory2) Looking for a missing fic!

Hello I was wondering if anyone has any resent information on Author Taybay14 there is a fic called Sleeping With the Enemy by this author. I was wondering if anyone knows of it and is it abandoned this fic is wonderful. I’ve read a few times before I lost it i finally found again but it’s still unfinished. I was wondering if anyone knows if maybe they changed their name or have just stopped writing Destiel completely thanks in advance

Ask #6 (@ sjxndjsmx ) Looking for a cool crossover!

Hello, I was wondering if you know of any fics where Dean is Peter quill and Cas is Gamora from guardians of the galaxy? I feel like the characters and story are very similar… Thank you!

PSA

Our blog rarely comments on political situation of the US since we prefer to stay out of current events with our little fanfic recs but sometimes we gotta do our part. We were asked to post information about internet censorship bill, Kid’s Online Safety Act (KOSA)  for our followers. Please see this post with more information about the bill and link to the website where you can vote against it. And here’s TeenVogue article about why and how KOSA if passed will be harmful to LGBTQ youth. 

If you live in the US, I encourage you to seek out more information and educate yourself about KOSA bill, and see in what kind of actions you can take part. 

[mathmusicreading]

"yes, even when you put slashes between the letters — that makes it clearer that you’re using it in the fannish context, not as a racist slur, but it doesn’t really obscure the word itself."

Hi, I'm just curious, is the slur pronounced like an abbreviation of aboriginal or like an acronym? I've been assuming it's the former and so the latter should come off enough as a different word (which is how I read it and say it with the slashes), but I understand if you're saying it's still really loaded and triggering in the former case and not just "especially so because the usage of the slur is the latter case (or is mixed), so the slashes don't make a real difference".

You make a good point with "slashes between the letters of the abbreviation wouldn’t actually help hide the antisemitic slur or make me feel much more comfortable with it, and I think a lot of us would not be thrilled if it were slurs we’re more familiar with!" so if this is really how Australians feel then I appreciate you helping get the word out!

I’ve seen more and more people, Australian and not, pushing back on this the past couple of years, and I think most of my followers already know it, but since I just ran into it, it seemed worth mentioning: generally, if you’re discussing alpha/beta/omega tropes or fic or dynamics, it’s best to either write it out fully, as alpha/beta/omega, or call it omegaverse. or A/O, or A/O/B, or…almost anything else, really. the commonly-used abbreviation/acronym for “alpha/beta/omega” is a very offensive racist slur in Australia. (yes, even when you put slashes between the letters — that makes it clearer that you’re using it in the fannish context, not as a racist slur, but it doesn’t really obscure the word itself. I know for me, if a new AU concept took the world by storm, a criminal AU where the possible roles were, say, killer/investigator/kidnapper/executioner, slashes between the letters of the abbreviation wouldn’t actually help hide the antisemitic slur or make me feel much more comfortable with it, and I think a lot of us would not be thrilled if it were slurs we’re more familiar with!)

I’ve been seeing “omegaverse” used a lot more recently, and heard more people mentioning it in general, so I think this is catching on. but I just opened a silly little uquiz and then immediately closed it because the very first question used the abbreviation, so for people who might not have heard this yet, now you know!

[mathmusicreading]

I have been blessed with so many frogs today thanks to @edwardspoonhands who understands statistics, audiences, and discourse and engagement!

[mathmusicreading]

Antisocial bees share genetic profile with people with autism

Castiel?!

[mathmusicreading]

My knowledge of Supernatural comes from gleanings from Tumblr and fics, slowly working my way through some SPN podcasts (basically I'm still in the early seasons, with some listening regarding Season 15), and checking out wiki pages, so I'm sure that skews my thoughts on Supernatural.

In-universe, Chuck refers to Castiel as the Angel of Thursday and we don't get exploration of his identity as Shield of God or Angel of Solitude and Tears. Angel of Thursday to angels must mean Angel of The Fourth Day of The Week, rather than meaning Angel of Thursday, Angel of Thor's Day the way it does to me as an English speaker, and I'm having thoughts.

I don't know how disrespectful it is to think of Norse mythology as just being mythology and not religion in the modern day, and that's not even taking into account Christianity creating the term "pagan" and having such a large, purposeful impact replacing and stamping out other religions. But as someone for whom that's not my religion, my feelings on the archangel Gabriel being Loki are generally acceptance because it isn't personal for me, because it's just fiction and also I believe in fiction being able to play around and express different things, and because to my ignorant self who thinks of Odin and Thor as being the most important Norse gods, it was respectful because it wasn't the furthest step over the line and immediately raising flags of sacrilege and blasphemy. So with those immediate thoughts about Gabriel and Loki, it's just a neat coincidence to me that Castiel has a tangential connection to a Norse god too in Thor because of Thursday.

But I like thinking about etymology and identity, and I've read that in real life some consider Castiel an archangel (but that was like the sum total information I found), so that makes it more fitting to me that Castiel's connection is with a greater Norse god, and also more appropriate for me to want to take Fourth Day of The Week as Fourth Day of Creation because of its greater significance and religious weight. In Christianity, the Fourth Day of Creation is the day God created the Sun, the Moon, and the stars, and I really like the idea of connecting Castiel to that because it's so celestial; it's poetic to me because of his identity as an angel and it's romantic to me because it's the Sun, the Moon, and the stars. My etymology and identity loving self should really try to read about the alternate interpretations of Castiel as an archangel and with the Cassiel and Qafsiel spellings.

It's interesting how meaning is taken not just from names, but from stories and specifically how stories are told. Gabriel first appears on Supernatural as an unidentified trickster god/demigod, and is referred to as "the trickster". Grammatically, in-universe the other characters mean " the" as in "the one we're dealing with". But the way storytelling and audience interpretation work, the weight of his role as a returning character and the lack of other trickster gods ever appearing on the show (Mercury is described without the trickster title, and for this I'm counting Loki as one with Gabriel) make it like "The Trickster", like he's the paragon of trickster gods, the most significant and powerful one.

If you just know that and that he's also Loki, that's like a compliment to Loki and to Norse religion/mythology. But there's more to how the storytelling affects the evolution and interpretation of the character. Gabriel's appearance as an anonymous trickster is in Seasons 2 and 3, and the revelation of his identity as the archangel Gabriel is in Season 5. That reveal without further explanation or backstory creates the assumption that Gabriel either created a random trickster identity, created that particular trickster god's identity and that trickster god is invalid, or stole a trickster god's identity (possibly having killed that trickster god)--and the assumption that all trickster gods are lesser to him and lesser to Christianity. To be fair trickster gods were already described as being like demigods, but still it hits different. These are kind of insulting to Loki.

Specifically, Gabriel's (archangel) identity is revealed in early/mid Season 5 and he's identified as Loki, specifically, as a trickster god in late Season 5 and then in Season 13 actual Loki appears and it's revealed how Gabriel came to take on his identity. Having Gabriel's trickster persona identified as Loki without further explanation or backstory for so long, that storytelling leaned into the audience interpretation that Loki might be invalid as a Norse god or that Gabriel might have harmed him when stealing his identity. That origin story finally comes out and it turns out that Gabriel helped Loki and was allowed to take on his identity with Loki's permission and to mutual benefit, but still the (lack of) storytelling up to that reveal is disrespectful to Loki. The actual storyline with Loki also doesn't treat him great.

But it's not just about how the storytelling's pacing influenced audience interpretation of Loki, it's about how it influenced the audience's interpretation of Gabriel. For so long the audience knew Gabriel with Loki's face and characteristics, and so that's how he is to the fandom. I could just be wrong because my Season 13 knowledge is so sketchy, and I don't really seek out Gabriel content so probably I just haven't encountered other people asking these questions and posing these ideas: Is Gabriel actually like Loki's trickster persona? Did Season 13 establish that that coincidentally helped with Gabriel taking on Loki's persona? Or does fandom just run with that characterization because that's so much of how they know and like Gabriel pre-Season 13 and they know so little of authentic Gabriel even post-Season 13? Where are the posts reconciling headcanon by saying Loki was a good identity to fake because Gabriel already had a trickster-like personality and liked sweets, or that Gabriel became the mask? I love the idea that Castiel came to identify with Jimmy Novak's appearance as his vessel as his own human appearance, but what about Gabriel? He doesn't even have his vessel's appearance to latch onto and identify with; he's been using Loki's visage the whole time. What are Gabriel's feelings on owning Loki's appearance as his own when he's always kept it packaged with acting like Loki (unlike other angels who separate appearing as their vessels and still being themselves) and given his not modifying it as the secret of his identity has come out and there's been less point keeping up the ruse? (Admittedly, when his true identity as Gabriel was revealed, it was on a small scale and: there was still worth in not dropping the Loki persona for his own sake, he needed to preserve appearances for Loki's sake in their mutually beneficial deal, and until he killed Loki he had the option of fully taking on Loki's identity. (In fact, he still had that option after killing Loki, it just wouldn't work with the people who knew he killed Loki.))