#(especially in comparison to a certain other children's author)

[kooldewd123]

At the start of each Animorphs book, before the first chapter begins, there is a page. On it is a simple acknowledgement. Two names. The first name is Michael - Katherine Applegate's husband and co-writer on the series. The second name is that of a boy. This name belongs to their son. Or, should I say, belonged to their son. Because they don't have a son anymore. They have a daughter. Every time I pick up an Animorphs book, I can't help but linger on this page as I quite literally hold her deadname in my hands. It's a peculiarly beautiful feeling. Peculiar because the context behind that name makes it seem all the more personal. I feel like I've violated her privacy simply by knowing it, even though it's openly out there for anyone to read. But beautiful because dammit, doesn't this represent this series's relationship with the queer community so well? Animorphs is often regarded as a queer (and especially trans) narrative, despite the fact that such subtext was completely unintentional. Applegate did not write Animorphs to be queer media, but she's embraced the fact that it has became so in the hands of the fans. How perfectly fitting is it, then, that she unknowingly dedicated the entire series to a trans woman?

[ladythornofrivia]

Lady with Teal Eyes || Aemond x Aunt!Hightower Reader (Part Three)

word count:

author’s note: I’m writing the last chapter! Woo!

warnings: incest, cockwarming, teasing, sucking, p in v, rough play, flirting, wholesome moment, jealous aemond, possessive, roughness, mild manhandling, mild degradation, unprotected vaginal sex, oral sex, second hand embarrassment, dark content, mentions of su*cide, Aemond being too touchy with his aunt, degradation, humiliation.

summary: Aemond meets his aunt for the first time, and there’s more than meets the eye. (there will be three parts…jk…I’m going to add two more chapters)

Three weeks has passed since you have kept yourself and your affairs in secrecy in the Red Keep. Needless to say, it was evident that you have found peace within yourself. Or rather with the one-eyed prince, who would not stop touching you in all places of your body.

His secret—his own holy sept—spilling each other’s fantasies and interests alike. From night until dawn, everything was accorded.

Each time you spent hours with Alicent and her other Green children in a summer daylight, you felt like a cumbersome and sinister virgin committed a crime to your precious sex. Thankfully Gwayne and Criston or the Cargyll twin, even Harold weren’t there to witness the guilt and arousal you’re trying to hide from a tempted imagination.

In the midst of vipers and ambitious alike, you found solace of writing the accounts on your diary. Entries on the pages filled with thoughts—daily and private—one which you know more than anyone else.

The prayers of the Faith of the Seven has been all but a fever dream. What was the religion’s purpose other than a guidance to those who are lost? You were lost once, but no doubt that your prayers were ever answered. You prayed to the Gods that you wanted to know your origins, of how you came to be as the lady with teal eyes, a daughter of Otto Hightower, but the Gods never gave, so you surrendered your faith at the age of seven, but masking it, pretending to be faithful in order to persuade your father and the Hightowers to achieve their good side was nothing more than an act.

And useless, more like.

An illness poisoned in your old wounds again. What does guidance do other than supplanted the seed of greed, selfishness and lies and pettiness to save themselves from others while the innocence tainted like a wounded womb?

Otto was nothing more than a heartless man served to the likes of his greed for the Iron Throne, the Red Keep, and above all, to Alicent.

Has he accepted you like he does to Alicent, there would be no consequences of silent hostility between two factions and conflict within.

Souls like them are already tainted.

But in a way, you’re glad; being in the same room as Otto would be as consequentially stupid as an untrained eye.

In the latest days in King’s Landing, your adoration for the city has grown less, but the sea and the gardens are the only things that could make you relish the taste of small life.

Aemond had taken you to the gardens, of course, and there you raced with pearly silks of ruffled gown and pearls adorned the neckline, hair fumbled in the wind as you looked back at the one-eyed prince with a gleaming smile.

Thin rays of light cascaded down on your winsome manes and the sparkles of your pearl gown.

On the midst of your white-pearl, there’s a necklace, adorned in large white pearls and a sapphire on the center. Aemond gave you a gift before the day of your nameday.

You were not a type of noble who celebrates nameday, especially if you consider yourself to be in a lower rank in comparison to Queen Alicent or the Targaryens.

Oddly, it has been tranquil since the day you arrived King’s Landing, but the days where you spent your days in your room, the gardens and library, as if nothing special occurred. That is until Aemond caught a certain subjects that caught your eye.

But Aemond is more fascinated with your enamored beauty gleaming like a flower blossoming into the sun and wind.

His hands never stopped roaming to your body.

“We’re in the gardens, my prince,” you reminded, giggling.

Aemond hummed as he plunged a kiss and undo his breeches, but before he does, an attendant arrived and announced that Alicent wanted a discussion with Aemond. With loving eye, Aemond bid his goodbyes and left, and within each breath you drew, it leaves you wanting more.

Each day, you and Aemond spent days into each other’s company, but it wasn’t enough. There are times at night is where the thrill accelerated. Nights dawned with passion and blood engulfed with desire.

Aemond thought of no consequences as he pounded his long cock into you—bed creaking as the skin slapped with his.

“My sweet, my love, my muse,” he said, rasping, his head threw back, drawing a feral growl, hips throbbed and rushed. His mind reeled to a thought of you, healthy and glowing with a rounded belly. He wanted to touch you, but in a public, Aemond would be in jeopardy, but since he’s the second son of the ill king, Aemond laid his hand on your thigh, brushing his whole palm, rising and falling motion, no care for consequences.

He could heard your breath hitched, but kept your composure—entertained your guests and family members. Surely it appears friendly and cordial on the outside, but underneath the table was nothing more than a filthy naughtiness arising from the stroke of his hand. His young and rugged, cold hands. You loved his cold hands. He recalled of your face flushed and in heat. Although he preferred heat, the dragon prince reconsidered it on making his hands cold, to pinch and flick your clit and pushing his lithe fingers in your warmth sounds as tempting and pinched the your taut nipples.

The curtains on your four-post bed swayed, and you found yourself moaning aloud, but his hand covered your mouth. His body pressed against yours and his mouth leaned onto your ear.

“You’re taking my large cock so well, my sweet princess,” he told you. “But you must be quiet for me. Can you do that?”

You nodded.

And his thrusts were twice as powerful, until he spilled every last drop of his semen into your soaked walls, and sweat on your flesh cooled from a plundering breeze.

“My good princess.”

Gevie, he thought, as he watched your sleeping body, your tangled locks, and your face leaning on his neckline for warmth, arms enveloping around his lean frame.

~~~

There are nights where you cannot sleep well. Nights about your dreams terrorizing you. The screams of a woman, calling out to you. Then you saw Alicent. Then your father; Otto screamed at you; His eyes were glowing in the dark, telling you how much of a disappointment you are and how everything wrong in his life, the burdens fell onto your shoulders.

Rumors of you, a mythical creature hissed in the dark. Until you found yourself on a high tower, falling, drowning, then nothing…

You woke up crying, and not long, Aemond awoke with concern, and held you in his arms, whispering sweet words into your ears, High Valyrian, telling you that there’s a light at the end of the tunnel.

You have never heard of High Valyrian before. His voice is music to her ears, and found her gaze locked to his as you both initiated a long feverish kiss. It was the first time that you felt at peace, where you didn’t need to cry on your pillow.

“I love you,” you told him.

“I love you more, my sweet.” He kissed atop of your head.

Dreams have subsided but it didn’t mean it went away completely. Something was calling out to you. The one-eyed prince remedied with his presence.

And for that, you weren’t in fear of the dreams, of the dark.

As of late, the shared passion between you and Aemond has come to a stop. You awaited him in nightly hours and yet the cold air swept in for an one-eyed prince to come and rescue you.

But he never did.

Could something happen to him? You wondered what was the cause. And you hadn’t known, that is until Aemond stormed into your royal apartments, fuming of the announcement of your betrothal to the Martell.

“I command you not to go,” he forewarned.

Confused, you said, “What are you talking about?”

Aemond prowled, fists clenching, his brows furrowed. “You’re marrying a Martell. You’ll be sent away to Dorne, without ever so telling me. What causes you to drive yourself further from my sight, my love?”

You gulped. “No one ever informed me of the marriage!”

His one eye beamed with glare. “I overheard that you’ll be wedded off soon.”

“I didn’t know of this. I didn’t know any of this!” you protested. “I have never done any errors, Aemond. I will never give you any reason to hurt you.”

Aemond’s hands clutched your arms, near to your shoulders. His knees bent and dropped down, and his head bowed and fell down onto your lap. “So…no one told you?” he said, his voice muffled.

“No one told me,” you said gently. “I’ve been in my apartment to repair the new dress you gifted me.”

“Grandsire told me so.”

You heart stopped.

“He agreed to the terms to Dorne, to win their favor.”

You felt numb at the moment.

“My father,” he bitterly said, “wanted alliance with Dorne for some time, but due to his illness, he was powerless. His mind already rotten, as you saw him before.”

“I have.”

“Why in the Seven Hells my grandsire do such a thing?”

“And you thought I was betraying you? You think I would go behind your back and agree to the terms that no one informed me of? I spent my days on my duties, waiting for you to come back. I tried to find you everywhere in the Red Keep, and nothing, you were nowhere to found. What am I wasting my time for, then?”

Aemond looked up with his good eye gleaming. “I apologize, my lady. You’re the woman I want.”

Your eyes glazed in hot tears; his hands brushed the sides of your waist, his forehead leaned against your stomach.

“I must speak to Alicent of this matter.” Then you got up and left.

But, instead of seeing Alicent, Otto was present before your eyes at Alicent’s apartments. Your chest tightened at the sound of his voice.

The Lord Hand awaited.

You took a step forward.

“Father,” you began, wondering if he’s willing to change his way.

You guessed it wrong.

“I never thought I took you for a fool,” he began. “Coupling with a one-eyed prince for whatever how long, and you decided to act immoral ways against the Faith of the Seven. You are a disgrace to House Hightower. Harlot as your mother ever was. What will Alicent ever think of you, my sweet child?”

But you heard the story wrong; there are rumors years back that your father, the Lord Hand, had an affair with a woman after Alicent’s mother has passed—when Alicent was just an toddler. As much as he grieves for his late wife, he needed someone to warm his heart, but the result began clear when it’s only temporary. And you don’t recall whether Otto treated you fairly.

“Alicent may not know this, but I do know. These walls have eyes, my dear girl. And if you ever lay a hand on any other members of the court, you’ll be sentenced mercifully to death.”

His soft tone never caused a shiver down your spine.

“You’re nothing but an enigma to my existence. You have soiled yourself, soiled my name,” he continued. “You must pray for forgiveness, and your desirable sins will be set free.”

“Where’s my mother?” is all you said.

Otto silenced.

“Where is she?”

Then a small smile crept upward on his lip. “You’ll never meet her. Perhaps you will, if you rid of yourself, I care not. We Hightowers thrive and survive, and you will not; you will rot to despair.”

Alicent’s children will reign Seven Kingdoms, and you will not.

For all these years, you have yearned affection and acceptance was nothing more than a pathetic attempt to injure your pride.

This was all you needed to hear from Otto—the ugly truth.

The comforting lie is just as ugly, like a gown wore on a rotten corpse.

“The Martells will attend here at the Red Keep. Best sure to be on your good behavior. Or you will pay the price by the repent for your existence.”

Maybe the comfort offering from the dead and living can be as painful.

~~~

At dinner, with the Martells involved, you shot a benign smile at the prince, but Aemond is saddened by the outcome. But in the midst of a chatter, you chose to stay silent and play an act of a nice lady. Smiling and nodding is all you could do. But on the inside, you want to thrash everything and burn the lives of those who wrong you.

But you’re only a lady, not Visenya Targaryen.

The Martell prince has been extended his kindness to you, but, afar, unbeknownst to you, Aemond paid attention to you. The glistened of your eyes—your teal eyes—dwindled and empty. And your smile is just as coiled and unnaturally unnerving. While you’re unseen to everybody else, only Aemond’s eye to you are well-known and heard.

No matter how much you tried to look up and glance another’s person eyes, the soul of your happiness is nowhere to be seen.

He has never seen you like this, aside from the tears and pain you have shared. Knowing why, Otto had the upper hand. A child-like state you shared with Aemond has stiffened to adulthood.

It was him, and Aemond knows it so. Otto was just as calculatingly obvious. Aemond urged to take you away and fled to the Free Cities, but his duty, he cannot afford to make a ruckus mistake like last time. Not that he’s ashamed of jabbing his grandsire at supper duration of Viserys’s nameday—he felt proud, but to his own end, his own calculation should’ve been more precise and less obvious.

The Martell prince offered you to take his hand for a night stroll, but you lead yourself back to your room, by excusing yourself.

Not long after, while the guests and his family are occupied by the Martells, Aemond slipped past them and met you back in your room, tackling you with a kiss and an embrace, leaving no breath in your chest.

Within your kiss, you cried, but Aemond had other plans on taking you back, to remedy his careless encounter he had with you this morning.

He took and soiled you again on your pristine bed.

“My father will have me killed if we keep doing this,” you warned him, stroking his glossy hair.

“I shall feed them to my dragon—of those who wronged us, if it comes to that. I care not of my grandsire,” he replied. “He’s as stupid as a boar.”

“What shall I do?”

“Let us make our vows to the Godswood,” he suggested, rather bluntly and more urgent; urgent because his anger was rising against of his grandsire.

“He knows about us, my dear nephew,” you said, tears trickled.

His thumb swiped your tear aside.

“We’ll find a way.” Aemond kissed your head, then onto your lips, after a prolonged of a ragged breath settled down from a torrid consummation, thinking about how he should’ve eaten you at the feast, your legs open and spread across the table, but he shall do that the next time someone tries to outsmart him, even if it’s a family member.

And there, you shared intimacy with a prince once more.

For now, assurance is all you needed.

~~~

In the midst of foggy, cold evening, with you asleep, Aemond managed to find the Martell prince and slaughtered him, tossed him at the highest tower of Red Keep.

The people in King’s Landing will take the Martell’s death as a suicide, but within the eyes of the Gods of Old and New, they knew that the one-eyed prince ended the Dornish prince.

~~~

The next day, the bond between you and Aemond mended and resumed, never minding of the misunderstanding, in your ivory gown with embroidered white roses and teal and green jewels sleeved your shoulders as Aemond in his violet and gold attire. You and Aemond are happy; sent to each other’s arms and the kiss became ardent. The love in between the curtained trees and shadows and thin ray of lights. You felt lighter, and so does he. But the struggles between politics and greedy desires from the people won’t end. But the one-eyed prince beg to differ.

To be continued…

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[wisteria-lodge]

Can you talk about the cursed child?

I have two main questions when it comes to The Cursed Child. The first is... why was this project made? Because it wasn’t for the money, and it wasn’t for the fans, so I have to assume it was for JK Rowling herself. And my second question is - who is Jack Thorne????

Because he wrote it. John Tiffany is a director who works with Thorne and it's based on a “story” by JKR. But Jack Thorne is a kinda highbrow, kinda indie English playwright, and he clearly wrote most if not all of it. The biggest thing he had done at the time was a stage adaptation of indie Swedish vampire film Let the Right One In, so back 2016 I was asking myself - why is he attached to this project. (Is he related to JKR? Did he win a contest? Is he just that charming?) 

But now I’ve got a theory. See, Jack Thorne has one other very important credit. He is the showrunner and head writer of the well-regarded HBO His Dark Materials TV show adaptation… AND that TV show and Cursed Child were in production at the exact same time. There’s no real way of knowing which project came first - they were both announced in 2015, and Cursed Child was announced first, but then a stage play needs a whole lot less pre-production than three seasons of a prestige television show. 

What I think (but cannot prove) is this: JKR got wind of the His Dark Materials HBO TV series, and thought ‘I want one of those too.’ Especially because she is now in the process of getting exactly that.

I can’t actually prove that JKR is even aware of the His Dark Materials franchise… but I very much suspect that she is. Northern Lights/Golden Compass was released two years before Philosopher's Stone, and… a British author, YA , fantasy, seems like you’d want to read that for market research purposes alone - or at least keep tabs on it to make sure it was doing well. I also think there’s a similar vibe to the worldbuilding, a certain kind of ‘urban fantasy, but make it pre-industrial revolution’ that you don’t get with like, Edith Nesbit, the fantasy writer JKR most often credits as an influence.

Now His Dark Materials was a failed film series. They made one in 2007 with plans to make more, and it didn’t really go anywhere. I was a huge fan of both HDM and HP at the time, and I liked the film… but even then I thought it was hurting itself by trying so hard to be Harry Potter, when the tone of HDM was always darker and more sinister. It was nice to watch the HBO show treat the source material as basically a gritty adult drama (which it always was, just told through an intelligent child’s POV.) 

Marketing of movie vs marketing of TV show: 

Movie Lyra vs TV show Lyra:

HOWEVER. I think it would be very easy, if you were JKR, to see the new series as an adaptation of a children's book (comparable to Harry Potter), only marketed to adults. And you might think... that's kind of a cool idea. So I don’t know who approached who. But I do think that at some point Jack Thorne and J. K. Rowling were in the same room, and someone suggested… why don’t we give Harry Potter a little bit of the His Dark Materials treatment.

Because both vibe-wise and theme-wise, there are A LOT of comparisons you can make between the HBO His Dark Materials and The Cursed Child. They’re both fantasy with a kind of gloomy and oppressive feel. They focus a lot on bad parents, especially parents unable to communicate with their kids. They both feature alternate universes as a major theme, and the main plot of both revolves around a (doomed) attempt to resurrect a sacrificed innocent, and various adults attempting to separate a pair of friends. (The relationship between Albus and Scorpius is easily the best part of Cursed Child. Especially Scorpius, who is lovely.) But like… no one wanted a version of Harry Potter that felt like a knockoff version of His Dark Materials.

To me, Cursed Child feels less like an adaptation, and more of an attempt to recontextualize the original Harry Potter books into something more serious and more impressive. Cursed Child reframes Harry’s whole deal as being caught in a cycle of abuse due to the Dursleys… which the show frames so much more threateningly than the books ever did.

This play also does not frame Ron/Hermione as the best marriage... which makes me think of the when JKR told the Sunday Times

I wrote the Hermione/Ron relationship as a form of wish fulfillment. That's how it was conceived, really. For reasons that have very little to do with literature and far more to do with me clinging to the plot as I first imagined it... if I'm absolutely honest, distance has given me perspective on that. It was a choice I made for very personal reasons, not for reasons of credibility.

And then Cursed Child gives us a little Hermione/Snape, and we know how JKR feels about Snape. We revisit a lot of Slytherin characters actually, and it turns out they’re not just bad guys! Albus is in Slytherin (even though the end of Book 7 was written in a way that REALLY heavily implied he would ask to be Gryffindor just like Harry did.) The ‘all Slytherins are baddies’ thing seems to be an aspect of the worldbuilding that JKR is attempting to retcon. The earliest example of this is the 2008 interview where she talks about “Slughorn galloping back with the Slytherins [to rejoin the battle of Hogwarts] but they’d gone off to get reinforcements first,” which… does not happen. That is not a thing that happens in the book. Slughorn comes back with reinforcements, but the Slytherin students spend the battle locked in the dungeon. JKR was was also okay with the last three Potter films framing Draco way more positively than the books do, a trend which continues into Cursed Child. Draco’s easily the best parent in the whole thing.)

And (possibly the most important bit of recontextualization…) I think Cursed Child was supposed to make the Epilogue seem good, instead of something that all her fans either made fun of… or completely ignored. 

In a lot of ways, I think JKR is doing a George Lucas, but instead of going back and re-cutting, re-mastering and adding to the original work the way he is - she’s writing more and more sequels (and more and more additional material) in an attempt to make  the problems of the earlier books go away. 

I could talk for a very long time about The Cursed Child. Yes, everyone is out of character, yes it’s world breaking, it contradicts the original series all the time, it doesn’t work structurally, it doesn't work that the villain is Voldemort's secret daughter Evil Tonks, and it reads like fanfiction (in the sense that it uses tons of fanfiction tropes, often not super well.) I probably will talk about that stuff more eventually, but first I wanted to make sense of why it even exists, in the first place. 

[allgirlsareprincesses]

Hi. Not sure if you've answered this before, but do you have a list of books to recommend on fairytale/mythic analysis?

So I finally have a real response to this question, but it's LONG, be warned:

First, it depends what you want to get out of your folklore study, what lens you'd like to use for analysis. And second, it's important to know that the practice of folktale analysis has changed over time, especially in the last ~15 years or so as the scholarly consensus has evolved toward decolonization.

For example, the common historical starting place was Bruno Bettleheim's The Uses of Enchantment. Candidly, I haven't read it yet for a few reasons: 1) It focuses fairly exclusively on Western European fairy tales like those of Grimm, Basile, and Perrault. 2) It assumes the primary audience for such tales are children. 3) It's a white man's perspective, and there are already enough of those to go around. That said, it's considered a foundational text for folklore study, so I'll probably get to it eventually. There are some modern authors who might be considered scholarly successors of Bettleheim, like Maria Tatar. I haven't read her books yet but I know she's also a powerhouse of Western fairy tale analysis.

Some other popular perspectives include the works of Carl Jung and his protégés in psychoanalysis, Marie-Louise von Franz and Erich Neumann. These are wonderful sources for learning about depth psychology and the universal unconscious which causes certain motifs to recur in storytelling across the globe and over centuries. Another popular author in this field is Robert Bly, who dove deeply into the concept of the Shadow as it appears in folk tales.

But for me, my favorite sources have been a collection of feminist authors who were active in the late 80s and early 90s, notably Barbara Fass Leavy and the incomparable Clarissa Pinkola Estes. While their work is pretty firmly grounded in second-wave feminism and therefore not very intersectional as we understand it today, they were the first to begin exploring interpretations of folk tales outside of a patriarchal context. I personally refer to Leavy's In Search of the Swan Maiden and Estes' Women Who Run With the Wolves more than any other books.

A lot of the most current perspectives are only accessible via blogs, like Jeana Jorgensen AKA The Foxy Folklorist, who often explores fairy tales through a Queer lens. Another brilliant voice working today is Helen Nde of Mythological Africans, who is doing the long-overdue work of decolonizing African folklore.

And while all these sources will help you develop a framework for analysis, still one of the best things you can do is read the tales for yourself. One of my favorite series is that of Heidi Anne Heiner of Sur La Lune Fairy Tales, who has amassed impressive collections of folk tales of the same type from around the world, making comparison easy. She also provides excellent footnotes that offer context to the versions and translations she's selected, and every tale has a source.

Outside of that, I like to read regional collections from indigenous scholars and native speakers: some editors will even include a copy in the original language along with the English translation, thus allowing others to "check their work." One of my favorite folkorists like this is Inea Bushnaq, who collects Arab folktales and again provides accessible cultural context. It's important to remember that most oral folktales which are now available in English were first recorded by colonizers, so the versions we have may be edited, mistranslated, or even maliciously altered to suit Western tastes. This is why seeking out versions from actual members of indigenous communities is critical.

Right now, I'm reading The Japanese Psyche: Major Motifs in the Fairy Tales of Japan by Hayao Kawai, and I'm next going to try Oral World and Written Word by Susan Niditch. I tend to just go where the spirit moves me, journal a bit, go down a research rabbit hole about a particular topic... it's fun. But whatever you're looking to get out of your folk tale study, rest assured you will never run out of material!

[bizhubnews]

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On the surface, chemical cleaners may appear more cost-effective due to their speed and potency. A single application can often do the job of several natural cleaning rounds. Nevertheless, natural solutions like baking soda or vinegar are easily accessible, affordable, and multipurpose, offering long-term value for cost-conscious households.

However, Klean Dry—recognized for delivering elite tile & grout cleaning in Albequerque, NM—emphasizes that improper use of any cleaner, whether natural or synthetic, can lead to grout erosion, discoloration, or tile damage. Thus, consulting with professionals is always advised before attempting DIY methods on delicate surfaces.

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[lunarsilkscreen]

How to Read the Bible

Books that were around when the Bible was written... Were written a certain way. A certain way that most if not every church these days doesn't acknowledge.

Whenever a story gets translated between formats, not just languages, ex; from spoken word to Book or Movie.

The context changes; especially in text which may require the text to be spoken to fully understand it.

It may even require a lot of life experience and social interactions to make sense.

The Bible itself spread faster than teachers who knew how to read it. Which means a lot was lost before we can even talk about translating between languages.

However; the words in books like that; they're written to be as widely understood as possible.

See; early authors had a bit more understanding on how language forms. They were living it after-all; spreading new words and understanding between tribes of people.

So it's written as simply as possible for those who may not be able to understand complex concepts in words.

An early tool that functioned at a snails pace in comparison to google-translate today.

When you're reading the Bible, you need to go slowly, verse by verse.

And you need to add and change context each time you read it.

You need to build onto the story with other people.

A literal game to played to help language and literacy grow.

But we don't do that these days because of how it was stripped of context and given a "Professional" gaudy appearance.

*THAT* is what created the Dogma.

The Bible was written for the equivalent of an Autistic Millenials to role-play which allowed them to become teachers of literature and language.

And so it can only be understood if you start reading it after around your mid-twenties. Not a hard rule.. just an average.

Is Children who grew up in the church not understanding, left the church because of that, and then read the Bible with a new outlook on life and contextual understating...

We were raised in that way. The Authors of the Bible even said it; "They don't know what they're teaching, they don't know what it means, they're just reading it. So listen now; and it will make more sense much later in life."

You ever have your grandparents play a prank on your parents with you? I imagine that must be what it's like.

As the authors of the New Testament are giggling to themselves thinking; "I wish we could be around to see this play out; it's gonna be HILLARIOUS."

The most Epic of Trolls; Jesus Christ.

May we live up to his imagination.

[wonkixo]

GOOD GIRLS — y. jungwon

pairing badboy!yjw x goodgirl!fmr genre situationship to lovers (?) synopsis jungwon is your getaway from your highly adorned status as your parents' perfect little girl. warnings suggestive, v rushed angst, fluff (kind of), mentions of sex (although there is no actual smut), mentions of alcohol/drinking, grownup adults being strict/have high expectations?, not proofread :p

AUTHOR'S NOTE one of my favorite tropes ever tbh except i did nawttt do it justice :// i kinda wrote this sporadically as i just wanted to try out a written fic lol. i promise my next written work will be better 🫡 ofc inspired by good girls by 5sos :3 (listened to that banger at least 10x while writing this) likes n reblogs would be greatly appreciateddd <3

"We apologize YN could not make it to tonight's dinner. She informed us late last night that she was unable to make it due to a prior commitment with her tutoring job."

Your parents were ecstatic to be speaking so highly of you to your father's coworkers. Tonight's dinner was intended to honor your father's promotion at his work, but all your parents could speak about was you.

As their only daughter (actually, their only child for that matter), you were their pride and joy. The end of your senior year of high school was approaching, and you were set to attend your top university on a full ride scholarship. Your parents could not have been any more proud of you.

"That's no problem whatsoever. It's lovely to hear how dedicated your daughter is to her studies. It's quite a shame to admit that such children like yours are rare nowadays." Your father's boss chimes in, smiling softly at the two parents.

Little did they know that the little girl they were speaking so highly of, was off somewhere in the backseat of a certain somebody's car.

Your parents left you home alone, anticipating that you would drive yourself to your tutoring session moments after they left. However, there you were in the backseat of Jungwon's car, who had picked you up and drove to an empty parking lot by a nearby beach.

You sat prettily atop his lap, quietly kissing at his Adam's apple while his one of his arms circled your waist with his other hand holding a soju bottle. "You know I love you, right?"

You pulled away from Jungwon, staring at him with adoration after his statement. "Of course I do, and I love you more." Jungwon responds with a small smile, showing off his dimples, before taking a quick swig of his soju.

With the way Jungwon was acting tonight in comparison to other nights, as he was acting less feverish and more so solemn, you knew something was up. "You look like you have a lot going through your mind, pretty boy. What's wrong, Won?"

He slid the soju bottle into the side compartment before resting both his hands on your waist. "Don't forget about me when we graduate."

You tilted your head in confusion. "Why would I ever?" But you knew more than anyone why, especially now, he would be doubting your relationship... if you could even call it that.

For one, there was no clear label between you two. You were not boyfriend and girlfriend. Heck, students around you at school do not even associate you together.

You two ran in different crowds — Jungwon was apart of the popular kids; constantly getting into trouble at school (and occasionally with the law), while you were considered a student of poise and leadership with your top grades and excellent extracurriculars.

The only reason why you two even got to know each other in the first place was truly because of fate.

You two had been assigned as chemistry laboratory partners your junior year. Although your dynamic started off sour at first for obvious reasons, having spent more and more time together brought you two closer.

Restroom breaks during class became steamy makeout sessions in the janitor's closet. After school study sessions turned into having sex in the backseat of his car or in his bedroom.

All that aside, you knew Jungwon was doubting your relationship now because your time together was coming to a close. With graduations came goodbyes, but neither of you wanted to think about leaving each other just yet.

But Jungwon knew you had a bright future ahead of you and he did not want to get in the way of that. "YN, we're graduating soon. You're going to be so successful. You don't need me anymore."

You shook your head in disagreement, placing your forehead against his while you cupped his face in your hands. "Respectfully Jungwon, shut the fuck up."

Your blunt honesty brought upon a slight chuckle from Jungwon and you smile to yourself for lifting up the mood at least a tiny bit. "Jungwon, I couldn't care less as to how my future plays out. All I care about is that you are apart of it. You are my present and you are my future."

Jungwon heard the pure sincerity in your voice and his heart could not help but flutter. "Let's just enjoy each other right now, in this moment. Okay? We'll figure out all our shit later. We'll figure it all out together, Won. I love you."

"I love you so much, YN." In response, you kiss both of Jungwon's cheeks, then his lips, then you reattach your lips to his neck. You suck at his skin harshly, bringing out a moan from the boy under you.

"You're such a vixen, pretty."

"Hmm, you think so?" You pull away from him, admiring the mark you left as the moonlight hit against you two perfectly.

Jungwon turned his head to you and kissed your lips, giving you a taste of the soju's green grape flavor. "You're my vixen though." He mutters against your lips, before pulling you in once more.

The kiss quickly became hot and needy, with the way one of Jungwon's arms wrapped tighter around your waist while the other reached up to your neck, where his hand applied the slightest amount of pressure.

You responded to the gesture with a light moan against his lips and your hips began to move against his. "I want you so bad." You mutter against lips as your hips moved faster against him, indicating your desire.

Jungwon pulled away from your lips and began to trail kisses against your jaw. His hands moved underneath your shirt and as his hands began to play with the clasp of your bralette, your phone loudly dinged. You groaned as you pulled away from Jungwon and took your phone out your pocket.

Mom <3: Hey sweetie! Sorry to bother.. Are you still tutoring? Wanted to let you know Dad and I will be home soon.. Love you ❤️

"That was your parents, wasn't it?" You nod as you returned the phone to your back pocket. Jungwon's hands returned to your waist and began to fiddle with your belt loops.

"Let's get you home, pretty. We can't let your parents find out just how bad my good girl is." Jungwon looked at you with starry eyes, which were quickly taken aback as you suddenly grabbed his hands on your waist and placed them above his head. "How about no?"

You felt Jungwon shuffle underneath you, clearly turned on by your assertion of dominance. "Good girls are bad girls that just haven't been caught anyway." You gently whispered into Jungwon's ear before your lips reattached to his and your hands made its way to the button of his jeans.

[theweirwoodfiles]

Youre welcome, although your last line in your paragraph confuses me. I reblogged you with polite disagreement and curiosity, that is why we are having this conversation. Although if you don't wan't to have this discussion, you are more than welcome to block or ignore me. I just wanted to know your thoughts on the actor's interpretations, because as I said, I do feel they hold more authority than ours. They work closely with the writers and directors, and they have to keep in mind not only their characterization, but the other character's as well in order to properly act out the scene.

I think that is very fair to trust only the writers or directors. I haven't looked too closely at what they say, since its mostly the actors who get interviewed.

Yes, most of the fanbase or general audience views Rhaenyra as the protagonist and "good side" in the show. This is where it gets tricky, because those with fandom bias are going to feel a certain way of course, and then you have general audiences who likely really only know three character's names and everyone else is "the brother" or "the son", so they are only going to pick up basic traits for characters on the side they prefer. That's another reason why I personally tend to listen closely to what those involved in the show have to say.

Now onto the mushroom debacle, I'm personally from this point in the conversation going forward only going to use show canon, as it is the most relevant and recent canon. The book and show are just completely two separate entities at this point. I'm not going to get into a who has the better morality when it comes to the tb vs tg children, you have already admitted Aegon is worse than the other kids, and it's also not where my curiosity comes from. What I am curious about and trying to understand is does the tb kids level of morality prevent you from liking them? Are you unable to get past the way they treated Aemond (again, I am only using show canon for this), or is this just a case where you simply don't click with them or care about them, because thats why I brought up the scale of morality.

There is no such thing as a "pure bean" in awoiaf, unless you are like, under the age of 10. Personally, I think your interpretations and criticisms of these 4, especially Rhaena, are a little harsh, but it is pretty impossible to be completely pure in a cruel medieval world during a time of nobility and dragons. While I can't speak for every single team black fan, I think I can safely say most team black fans see these 4 characters as fairly good, or as good as you can be, espeically in comparison to others around them. And that's why you see a firm defense over them, especially when its's in response to a take about them being evil or bratty, or awful, or however you wanna call it.

Anyways, that's why I opened the conversation, I was just curious and interested in discussion on your position is all.

Every time Team Black stans talk about Rhaenyra’s bastards and the Dragon Twins as if they’re blessings upon this earth, an angel loses its wings.

Like, okay. They’re children, I’m excusing all of them up to a certain point. But they’re some of the most vicious, aggressive, cowardly, snotty brats we’ve ever seen in this franchise and pretending that they’re not is so foul.

Lucerys is a hypocritical twat that bullied the boy he grew up with because he didn’t have a dragon, but then he’s totally okay hanging out with Rhaena who doesn’t have one either. And then he pulls out a knife and blinds Aemond for no fucking reason, after his gang attacked him first, and faces zero consequences for his actions. He eventually grows up to become an even worse person by literally laughing in his cousin’s face, whom he disabled. And then he tries to boss lord Borros around by telling him that he’s obligated to ally with Rhaenyra even if there isn’t anything in him for it.

Jacaerys is also very two faced for the exact same reasons as Lucerys, with the addition of having anger management issues. Like, remember how he beats the living shit out of his little brother when they’re training at the beach, kicks him to the ground and grabs him by the throat because he is upset their uncles are better warriors than them? That’s the good future king you’re all talking about? He is already obsessed with the idea of becoming king, to the point that his own mother has to remind him that she’s actually alive and well and he would have to wait a good fucking while before his dreams come true. That’s actually so sick on his behalf. Not to mention that he very likely married Sara Snow, betraying his fiancée, in order to gain the Starks’ help, which is very dishonourable. At least Lucerys told Borros he’s betrothed and refused to marry one of his daughters to get his support, I’ll give him that.

Baela is a deranged evil girl who was ready to throw hands on sight, too. And have we forgotten that she becomes a drunkard and whoremonger who spends her money gambling in the rat pits, the places where children fight one another in King’s Landing, once she grows up, or is it wrong only when Aegon II does it?

Rhaena is an aggressive coward who seems more preoccupied with the acquisition of a dragon than her mother’s death. She didn’t have the guts to go and claim Vhagar, but she feels powerful enough to confront Aemond when she has three people backing her up.

Finally, even without taking all of their problematic traits into account, these people are so severely uninteresting and unimpressive. Lucerys does not convince Borros to side with his mother and drops dead like a fly. Joffrey gets shrugged off by Syrax and plummets to his demise. Jacaerys is immediately killed during his embarrassing attempt to fight the Triarchy, not to mention that he was the reason his youngest half siblings were captured and nearly killed because he had the brilliant idea of sending them away. Baela loses the only dragon fight she was ever part of to Aegon II and Sunfyre who were very injured by a previous fight already! And Rhaena is just… there. Doing nothing. Never avenging her husband’s death, eventually marrying a Hightower. Yikes.

Are there much more ill behaved children in ASOIAF? Yeah, for sure, but we actually acknowledge that children like Aegon II and Joffrey Baratheon are pieces of shit. But if we could like, stop glorifying these four mediocre and borderline malicious kids solely because some of you feel the need to ride the dicks of everyone who is part of Rhaenyra’s crew, that would be great. They might be children, but they’re children with shady, putting it mildly, personalities, wielding new-clear weapons of mass destruction who actively participated in a war, especially Jacaerys and Baela. They sure were victims of the world they were raised in, but they were aggressors as well. And like, this is the ASOIAF universe, nearly all of our protagonists are children. We can’t constantly apply modern day morals and coddle them forever because “OMG, they are just babies!”, unless we are ready to apply the same logic on the Targtowers, who were basically the same age as Rhaenyra and Daemon’s children.

[aegor-bamfsteel]

What do you think about the book 'A Caution for young girls' written by Lady Coryanne Wylde?

Nope, anon, I don’t like it.

I feel that some feminist critics talked to GRRM about the lack of known female authors in Westeros as compared to the real life European Middle Ages; women—often of the cloth—were writing since at least the 8th century about their relationships with G-d, medicine (particularly related to women), advice on rulership, plays, biographies/pilgrimages, rules for their monastery, philosophy, fantastical long poems, both plainchants and polyphonic music; it’s estimated that 10% of all troubadours may’ve been women. The first autobiography written in English is supposedly Margery Kempe’s, dictated to a scribe in about 1440. In Westeros, until the release of Fire and Blood, all known authors were male (with the exception of Daenys the Dreamer, who wrote the lost book Signs and Portents) and there were only a handful of professional female singers (it’s unknown if they wrote their own songs). However, as I’ve explained in another post about GRRM going out of his way to mock certain American feminist iconography in Fire and Blood, he introduces 2 alleged female authors with Coryanne Wylde and Rue, both allegedly septas…and they write about 1) her alleged “erotic adventures” including being sold into sex slavery or 2) a supposedly inaccurate and sexually-charged biography of a great man who was probably her lover. What variety, especially compared to real life female authors.

I’ll mention that the bulk of “A Caution for Young Girls”, while allegedly written by Coryanne, probably wasn’t. The first copy appeared in 90, about 40 years after she’d disappeared in the Disputed Lands. There are four versions of it around, and the first shorter one that says she was the handmaid to a queen (Alysanne) and paramour to a young knight (Howard Bullock) who fled to Essos at least match up with what we know of her life. The others are longer, since apparently mummers decided to add more erotic incidents to the story, probably those after she’s been abandoned in Myr and seemingly enslaved. “A Caution for Young Girls”, like the famous 1936 film “Tell Your Children” (better known as Reefer Madness), belongs to the genre of faux-morality exploitation; allegedly being a warning for young women to not engage in intercourse with married men or else facing terrible consequences; however, considering Baelor ordered copies burnt and it’s more popular with brothel people and mummers than the pious, it’s really a series of titillating (or, considering it’s known for depravity, possibly including disgusting or anatomically impossible sex scenes ala Marquis de Sade’s 120 Days of Sodom) “adventures” that allegedly (but probably not, if you think about it) happened to one woman. And just like Reefer Madness, which is laughably inaccurate about the effects of marijuana, “A Caution for Young Girls” seems to gloss over the real horrors of slavery in Volantis, Lys, Qarth, and the Basilisk Isles in favor of eroticism. Considering slavery is a huge part in the main series, and a lot of Book 5 is devoted to how cruel and unstable it is, with enslaved women treated as sexually expendable trash…having one of the few female writers mentioned in the series seemingly make light of it isn’t that amusing to me. Yes, cruel reality being made palatable into songs is a big part of the series, but Fire and Blood isn’t written in a way that makes us empathize with Coryanne’s pain or struggles the way it does the sympathetic characters of the main series.

That the first English autobiography by a woman involved visions from her faith, her struggle with postpartum depression, meeting with other great Holy Women (Julian of Norwich), getting tried for heresy due to her faith multiple times but managing to be acquitted each time…there’s no comparison between Kempe and GRRM’s alleged female autobiographer. Kempe is her own person; Coryanne is a vehicle for sexual adventures (most of which are probably made up by people unaware of the reality of slavery), just like Rue is the scribe writing about the sexual adventures of Alyn Stu Velaryon. GRRM could’ve taken more from history and had in-universe female authors write about their visions (not just Daenys), music, plays, woods witches writing down medical knowledge, rules for motherhouse living, advice on government, etc; it would’ve gone a long way to convincing me Alysanne actually made positive lasting change for women, had she patronized female authors or artists (why is Coryanne the only one of her companions who wrote anything when most of them were septas?)

I can’t help but feel that some feminist critic complained to GRRM about no in-universe female authors, and he wrote Coryanne and Rue—known for highly inaccurate sexually charged biographies—to piss them off. Between the Maiden’s Day Cattle Show, the watered down versions of famous historical women (Eleanor of Aquitaine got imprisoned for 16 years because she encouraged her sons to rebel against their father, contrast Alysanne Targaryen; Mathilde of Boulogne rescued Stephen I’s cause by raising an army to chase Empress Matilda out of the city, then exchanging Stephen for Matilda’s strongest supporter, contrast Helaena/Alicent; Joan of Arc led the French to victory within months and defended herself Heroically on trial for heresy, contrast Jeyne Poore/Jonquil Darke), then naming an incompetent easily fooled knight who got brutally killed after the creator of Wonder Woman (Professor William Moulton Marston)…GRRM just showed how little he cares for the historical tradition that have inspired Western women for generations. Coryanne’s “writing” is just one example of that mockery.

[nordleuchten]

ok, I was thinking, people back then had some nicknames for Laf as well?? like, his friends (or even enemies, in a derogatory way) called him by some?? Thank you!!

And I hope you're having an amazing day/night wherever you are :)

Hello msrandonstuff!

Thank you for the question. The Marquis de La Fayette was a man of many nicknames.

There were the “private" nicknames, the ones used by family and close friends. “La Fayette” can be counted as a nickname for it was his title, not a part of his for- or last name. Sometimes “La Fayette” was shortened to “Fayette", we see that for example in some of Alexander Hamilton’s letters. Washington, but others as well, called him “(my dear) Marquis" and later in life he was often simply refereed to as “General". I would say that these three names were used the most commonly, especially “La Fayette” and “General” were widely common in France as well as in America.

During the War of American Independence he was sometimes referred to as “the Boy” or “the Boy General”. Coming from an American, these names were almost always meant in an endearing way, coming from a British it was meant to be less endearingly.

His children called La Fayette “Papa” and I do not think we know what Adrienne called him in private. But somebody please correct me if I am wrong on that one. I would love to know!

La Fayette’s most prominent nickname was for certain that of “The Hero of the Two Worlds”. Now, there were other historical persons who were given such a nickname (or at least a similar one) and the origin of this name is rather self explanatory. Europe was considered “the old world” whereas America was “the new world” - from an European point of view at least. The Americans considered La Fayette a hero and his conduct in the War of Independence, including his injury during the battle of Brandywine, helped to promote his status in France as well. By the time of his return to France the people at court were even willing to overlook his “country origin”. Shortly before his first return to France, his wife Adrienne was attending a private social gathering held by the Madame de Choiseul. Among the people in attendance was the renowned French philosopher and writer Voltaire (born François-Marie Arouet). He expressed his desire to meet Adrienne, stating that

“I wish to make my obeisance to the wife of the Hero of the New World. May I live long enough to salute in him the Hero of the Old.”

That however did not happen for Voltaire died prior to La Fayette returning to France. Bummer.

But La Fayette had another nickname who was quite popular at the time of the French Revolution but is almost forgotten today. That of “General Morpheus”. Morpheus was the Greek God of sleep and dreams – now, how did La Fayette got himself this name?

On October 5, 1789 something between six-or ten thousand angry women (and men) were marching on Versailles to protest the high price of bread and the Kings absence from Paris. La Fayette tried to calm them down and to keep them from leaving Paris but there were to many and his National Guard wanted to join them. The guard was close to mutiny and some guardsman actually threatened to kill La Fayette if he would try to stop them. So La Fayette had to accompany these angry Parisians in order to guide and control them on their journey and to prevent a mutiny – it was also a face-saving move. They needed until midnight to reach Versailles and La Fayette had dispatched couriers prior to warn the royal family. After the journey and what happened in Paris La Fayette had to explain the situation to the King, again prevent a mutiny, secure not only the royal families but also their bodyguard’s safety and so on and so forth. In the wee hours of October 6 he went to an apartment complex his wife’s family owned in Versailles and tried to find some sleep. He had been up and going for roughly twenty hours, twenty very long and eventful hours, was chilled to the bone and filthy because it had been raining during their march. When on the morning of the sixth around five o'clock some members of the mob broke into the palace, killing some of the royal bodyguards and threatening the Royal Family – La Fayette needed to be woken. After he was woken and informed of what was happening he jumped into action immediately and everything was safe and sound again at around eight o'clock. Still, many members of the court begrudge him the few hours of rest he got, stating that he should have been there to protect them and prevent the intrusion ... and with thus, the nickname General Morpheus was born.

The court sometimes also referred to La Fayette as “Cromwell” or “the French Cromwell” but that seemed to be meant more as a comparison than a actual nicknamed.

The French revolutionary author Jean-Paul Marat referred to La Fayette in his paper L’Ami du peuple almost exclusively by his actual last-name, Motier. However, he spelled “Motier” as “moitié” (which translate to “half”) or something there in-between. Charming.

I hoped that helped and I hope you have/had an amazing day as well! :-)

[alliluyevas]

You don't think George wrote his characters as them just being born bad but just look at his writing of Cersei in comparison to the writing of her siblings...They were all raised by a narcissistic parent but she is the one that kills a girl at age 12 (i'll even let the abuse of Tyrion slide) while describing Jaime and Tyrion as pretty loveable children. This is not a case like Tyrion in ADWD that lashes out after decades of abuse and his family literally trying to frame him for murder.

Okay, first of all, I just want to start off by saying that from a real-world perspective I genuinely do not believe that anyone is born bad and it contradicts with my moral/spiritual/theological/whatever worldview and also with my personal experience. So, perhaps naturally, I don't really find that compelling from a storytelling perspective either.

I definitely think Cersei is written as less morally gray than either of her brothers. I also do think she's intended to be sympathetic as well, even if she's not redeemable. I've gotten pushback for this statement in the past but I view her as sympathetic and I do think she was intentionally written as such. I think some of the nuances in her character are not always portrayed 100% effectively, but they're still there and I think that's a deliberate authorial choice. (I also do think you can critique the choice to have the least redeemable/most morally dark Lannister sibling be the only female one, especially coming from a male author, but I'm not sure how relevant that is to the current discussion).

WRT Cersei and her brothers and what we see of their childhoods, I don't personally interpret that storyline as suggesting that Cersei was somehow born evil. I don't think we can separate the way eight-year-old Cersei treats and talks about baby Tyrion from the way that their adult father treats and talks about Tyrion. The language little Cersei uses in Oberyn Martell's memory--Tyrion is a monster, Tyrion killed her mother--is an exact copy of phrases that Tywin uses to describe his son in the present day and presumably did when he was a newborn as well. I don't read that situation as Cersei being inherently evil but as Cersei being an angry little girl who just lost her mother and does certainly have a capacity for cruelty who is mistreating her small, vulnerable little brother because she's mirroring her only living parent and because the larger cultural environment dehumanizes Tyrion because of his disability and makes him a more acceptable target. And, yes, Jaime doesn't react that way to Tyrion, because she and Jaime have different personalities and react differently to their mutual family environment, but I don't think it's as simple as Jaime being the good twin and Cersei being the evil twin or whatever.

I do think that oftentimes people have certain character traits that come more naturally to them than others, but that doesn't mean that nurture/experience don't shape those traits in some ways, and I also think it's a big leap to go from "some people naturally incline towards x personality trait" versus "some people naturally are evil". I think Cersei was always going to be more assertive than her twin, and I also think Jaime's natural character is more caring/empathetic than hers, as the anecdotes about their early childhood attest, but I don't think you can separate her behavior from being raised in a toxic environment by an abusive parent.

I think it's a lot more compelling and textually sound to view the Lannister family dynamic as being about cycles of abuse and multigenerational familial dysfunction than about bad genes or certain people being born evil or whatever.

[dwellordream]

“…If the crusades were primarily military expeditions, and women were not expected to fight, we might first ask why they were present in significant numbers. What motivated their involvement? The answer to this question is not easily discernable since there were women from all classes of society present on crusade. Moreover, historians have no way of knowing for sure how many women and other non-combatants actually left with the crusading armies. The sheer length and size of many campaigns meant that for any medieval army to function effectively, it required many non-combatants – engineers, bakers, artisans, tailors, squires, prostitutes and so on – in addition to the presence of fighting men and their commanders.

Numerous women formed a part of this retinue; however, the vast majority of women were poor and, in comparison to the knights, foot soldiers and other male warriors who set out alongside them, militarily unsuited to the task of conquering the Holy Land. Many of these women came alone or unmarried, while others had left their homes to come on crusade with their whole family in search of a better life, no doubt influenced to some extent by the enthusiasm and excitement which greeted the whole concept of a holy war. Other factors probably also influenced their decisions to leave for with the crusade army. The fact that certain celestial phenomenon such as aurora and comet sightings around the time that the First Crusade was being preached auspiciously coincided with the end of a long French drought in 1096 may have prompted some women to leave with the crusade army, although it is hard to know for certain.

Moreover, there is also the possibility that, for those who wished to make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem, the prospect of travelling with an armed force who could protect them all the way appealed to unarmed female (and male) pilgrims. One eyewitness to the preparations for the First Crusade, Bernold of Constance, even recorded that ‘innumerable’ numbers of women disguised themselves in men’s clothing, possibly because they wished to actually take up arms against the enemy. This suggestion is supported by the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, which asserted that ‘women and children’ were amongst those who ‘wanted to war against heathen nations’. Furthermore, we cannot discount the spiritual incentive of simply going to the Holy Land, which undoubtedly would have also helped motivate the masses of men and women to leave on crusade.

In some cases noblewomen also left on crusade, usually in the company of their husbands or other male relatives. Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marie of Champagne, Marguerite of Provence and Eleanor of Castile are all well-known examples of women who followed their husbands on crusade to the Holy Land. Once again though, the motivations for noblewomen who went on crusade are not easily ascertained, although the length of the crusade expeditions (which could last for years) probably had something to do with it, especially for couples who wanted to stay together. Other women appear to have acted fairly independently: around the time of the First Crusade, Emerias of Altejas took the cross by herself, but was persuaded by the bishop of Toulouse to endow a monastery instead of leaving for Jerusalem.

Alice, countess of Brittany, took a crusade vow in the 1260s, and, after her husband died in 1279 without fulfilling his vows, left for the East – specifically the city of Acre – in the late 1280s. On a broader scale, Kedar has drawn attention to an extant passenger list of a crusader ship in the mid-thirteenth century that had 453 passengers on board, forty-two of which were women, and of these women twenty- two were travelling with no male companion. Whatever their motivation, the fact that certain lords and their wives had to consider such decisions at all helped differentiate the crusades from other, more localised military escapades fought on a smaller scale that did not involve the same prospect of spiritual reward or the same possibility for material gain (at least early on) in the form of land.

Clearly, then, there were women from a range of different backgrounds present on crusade, for a variety of different reasons. The support which they rendered to the fighting men, however, was primarily indirect and auxiliary regardless of their social rank, and included such tasks as washing, cleaning clothes, cooking, gathering supplies – even picking lice and fleas off the men’s bodies. They might also provide comfort to the men (through prostitution), or when new territory was conquered they could assist with and become a part of settlement plans within that territory. In another sense, however, women could provide spiritual support for the men, encouraging them whilst they fought and praying for God’s favour.

The medieval poet Baldric of Dol, for instance, in his account of the First Crusade, noted that women and other non-combatants were an integral part of the spiritual side of the crusade and prayed for the men whilst they were fighting. Although this may not sound like a particularly useful form of ‘support’ to those living in the twenty-first century, spiritual supplication was still important since the crusades were a holy war and it was believed that God was on their side. Prayer thus helped ensure God’s favour and consequently the likelihood of military success.

The provision of supplies to the fighting men, most notably water, was another basic but essential form of support women rendered to men on crusade. Describing the female presence at the battle of Dorylaeum, one anonymous chronicler at the scene notes how ‘[t]he women in our camp were a great help to us that day, for they brought up water for the fighting men to drink, and gallantly encouraged those who were fighting and defending them’. Likewise Margaret of Beverly, whose brother recorded her experiences in the Holy Land around the time of the Third Crusade, recounted how she put a pot on her head for protection and brought water to the men on the walls during Saladin’s siege of Jerusalem, being injured in the process by an enemy projectile.

Oliver of Paderborn, whose account of the Fifth Crusade is one of the most detailed and important sources available, also recalled a similar form of female support during the crusaders’ attack on Damietta in Egypt, when he mentions that ‘the women fearlessly brought water and stones, wine and bread to the warriors’. Not long afterwards, during a skirmish between crusaders and Saracens at a castle south of Damietta, he mentions women carrying and distributing water to clerics and foot-soldiers.

The Fifth Crusade also offers examples of how women might assist an army with other supplies besides water. Powell has documented how women were said to have helped grind corn for the Christian army whilst it was besieging Damietta, how they were in charge of the markets selling fish and vegetables to the crusaders, and how they helped attend to the sick and needy. Most notably, Powell notes that women even acted as guards in the crusade camp and were assigned with weapons to prevent desertions and maintain order while the army prepared for a fresh attack against the city.

Joinville too, in his chronicle of the Seventh Crusade, described women who ‘sold provisions’ raising a cry of alarm when the Count of Poitiers was captured at the battle of Mansourah (February 1250). These examples suggest that women could be of definite help on a military expedition, and whilst we should not generalise and assume that women fulfilled the same logistical roles in every crusade or medieval military campaign, it is important to be aware of the different ways they might have rendered basic support and provisions to armies on campaign.

At the same time, however, women sometimes did become much more involved with military actions and appear to have actually used weapons themselves on the enemy, though not specifically in hand-to-hand combat. During the second siege of Toulouse in 1218, for instance, women from within the city supposedly operated the mangonel or perrière (a stone-throwing device) that killed Simon de Montfort, leader of the Albigensian Crusade, just as a Frankish woman ‘shooting from the citadel’ with a mangonel was said to have destroyed the Muslims’ mangonel at Saladin’s siege of Burzay in 1188.

Acting in a similarly defensive manner were the women who helped repel the French attack during the siege of Hennebont in 1342 by throwing stones and pots of chalk from the walls onto the enemy at the urging of Jeanne de Montfort. Likewise, in 1358 women also played an important role in defending the French township of Senlis from an attack by French nobles during the short-lived but violent peasant uprising known as the ‘Jacquerie’. In this case, the townsfolk were forewarned of the attack and had their women stationed at windows ‘to pour great quantities of boiling water down upon the enemy’ while their men-folk fought off the attackers.

…Nevertheless, there are accounts of women who dressed in armour and who may have physically fought the enemy. In studying the evidence available, though, we must be very careful in accounting for possible bias in the sources, particularly in accounts where the author’s ulterior motive may have been to portray the enemy in an unfavourable light and especially when it comes to descriptions of actual female combatants. Hence we must treat as suspicious a passage by the Byzantine chronicler, Niketas Choniatēs, about mounted women bearing ‘lances and weapons’ and dressed in ‘masculine garb...more mannish than the Amazons’ on the Second Crusade. According to the modern translator, this passage was assumed by Steven Runciman to refer to Eleanor of Aquitaine and her retinue, despite the fact that her name was not specifically mentioned. While Eleanor was indeed present on this crusade, the passage makes more sense, however, if it is understood as an attempt to criticise the Franks as uncivilised and even barbaric compared to the Greeks, because they allowed their women to don armour and unnaturally fight as warriors.

In the same way, Muslim chroniclers’ descriptions of Frankish women who supposedly dressed up and rode into battle at the siege of Acre ‘as brave men though they were but tender women’, and who were subsequently ‘not recognised as women until they had been stripped of their arms’ – as well as another Muslim account of a Frankish noblewoman who allegedly fought at Acre alongside 500 of her own knights – must be treated with caution. As Nicholson has noted, for both Christians and Muslims ‘it was expected that good, virtuous women would not normally fight...in a civilised, godly society’. By depicting Frankish women as warriors, therefore, the Muslim chroniclers could illustrate the barbarous and heathen nature of Christian society and contrast it with the properly ordered Muslim society where women knew their place. Thus, while we cannot rule out the possibility that some women at Acre may have actually dressed up and fought, the Muslim accounts are certainly questionable.

Likewise, other accounts of female combatants and women in armour that do not appear to be influenced directly by religious bias must still be carefully evaluated. In France, Orderic Vitalis recorded how Isabel of Conches rode ‘armed as a knight among the knights’ during a conflict in 1090 between her husband, Ralph of Conches, and Count William of Évreux. Although Orderic remarked on her courage among the knights, he says nothing about her subsequent actions, and thus we have no way of knowing if she actually fought. In a similar vein, the English chronicler Jordan Fantosme, writing primarily of the rebellion against Henry II by his son Henry ‘the Young King’ in 1173-1174, asserted that the earl of Leicester had his wife, Petronella, countess of Leicester, dressed up in armour and given a shield and lance before the battle of Fornham in October 1173.

According to Fantosme, Petronella encouraged the earl to fight the English, but fled from the battle while it was in progress and then fell into a ditch where she nearly drowned. Fantosme, however, was the only chronicler to describe Petronella’s martial deeds, and Johns has argued that he was clearly trying to portray Petronella in an unsympathetic way in order to emphasise that women should not be involved in military affairs. Fantosme wrote to entertain, but also to instruct moral lessons and highlight divine law; Petronella thus served as an example against women’s involvement in war and the follies of accepting female advice. Nevertheless, Petronella must have been present or involved in some way since other sources do mention that she was captured after the battle along with the earl and that she was present with him on campaign in England.

Further afield, in the Holy Land, William of Tyre contended that in the first crusade army’s excitement at the imminent capture of Jerusalem ‘even women, regardless of their sex and natural weakness, dared to assume arms and fought manfully far beyond their strength’. His account, however, cannot be verified as no eyewitness accounts of this siege actually describe women acting in such a manner. Likewise, although the memoirs of the twelfth century Muslim nobleman Usāmah Ibn-Munqidh mention several female combatants – a female Muslim slave who rushed into battle ‘sword in hand’; a Frankish women who used a jar to try and help fend off an attack on Frankish pilgrims; a Muslim woman in Shayzar who captured and had killed three Frankish men – it is important to be aware that Usāmah was recalling these anecdotes sixty years after they supposedly took place.

…It is because of this need for more defenders that other accounts of female combatants may be considered more reliable. For, even though Muslim writers are our source for the story of a female archer at Acre who, in defending the city, ‘wounded many Muslims before she was overcome and killed’, it is quite possible that in the heat of battle, when manpower was necessary to fight off attackers, this woman was forced to draw a bow. Equally plausible are these same Muslim writers’ astonishment at finding women amongst the dead on the battlefield after a failed Christian attack on Saladin’s camp, though this revelation does not tell us that these women actually fought.

Then there is the case of Christian women who executed the crew of a captured Turkish ship at Acre. According to the Itinerarium Peregrinorum, ‘the women’s physical weakness prolonged the pain of death, because they cut their heads off with knives instead of swords’. Again, although the women were not actually fighting in battle, it is quite possible that this event did occur given that the men had been defeated already and the women were perhaps motivated by thoughts of revenge. As Evans points out, the passage still displays ‘a gendered approach to weaponry’ in that the Muslims’ death at the hands of women is emphasised as ‘humiliating’ and reference made to women’s weakness – implying that the women were acting in an unnatural way.”

- James Michael Illston, ‘An Entirely Masculine Activity’? Women and War in the High and Late Middle Ages Reconsidered

[spaceecoffe]

LUZ ISN'T THE PROTAGONIST OF THE OWL HOUSE

Okay, so here are my thoughts after s02e07 (there will be spoilers probably!) and also after reading some of yours posts about series. I will make a list because I hate lists but I can't cope without them.

1. Let's start with the types of some basic narrations

1st Person narration - the one were we see everything from narrators point of view, we usually now their thoughts, the example could be Percy Jackson and the Olympians series

3rd Person narration - in this type we may or may not know character/characters thoughts and also we can follow actions of only one character or jump from one point of you to another. Harry Potter series is an example of following one character while in Game Of Thrones or The Heroes of Olympus we change a character in every chapter.

This is one way to distinguish types of narration. We can also do this by saying which type of character in our plot is the narrator:

The Protagonist - our narrator is also the hero of our story, just like Percy Jackson

The Secondary Character - our narrator is someone who is close to the hero of a story, for example a friend just like in The Great Gatsby or My Friend the King

The Detached Observer - we don't know who narrator is, we never hear his thoughts or opinions, there is never "me" or "I", we can see this type in Harry Potter or GONE

The Commentator - he doesn't take a part in the story but he puts his comments and thoughts to it, I think we have this one (unless something changed in later books) in Series of Unfortunate Events

We can probably add more to it but I think we don't have to do this in this post. What I want to tell is that we always naturally assume that Narrator (or character he follows) = The Protagonist unless we are informed at the beginning that things are different. Usually the author informs us at the beginning if Narrator is The Protagonist or no. It can be like in Series of Unfortunate Events where Narrator tells that this story will be about someone else or like in The Great Gatsby where we can assume this only by title of the book.

But all of this works perfectly in books while in movies/series it is harder to show us the Narrator. Usually we don't think about Narrator when we watch something. We think that no one has to tell us a story when we actually can see it but this is only an illusion. There always has to be a narrator and creators of the movies/series always thinks about this. There are some movies where we get to know who is narrator like The Great Gatsby (I'm sorry, I just love this movie not even for the plot but for its narration which is just so amazing) or in the Series of Unfortunate Events.

In The Owl House if we want to guess who is the Narrator it is Luz. She is the perfect character for it: she doesn't know the Boiling Isles just like we so we get to discover it with her. It is the easiest way for author to show readers/viewers new world. If you think about it authors usually create narrator characters like this because it's the most natural way to show new world to other people. Harry Potter was a part of New World, Magic World, but he didn't know it because he was raised in Muggle World. The same thing goes for Percy Jackson. In Lord Of The Rings narrator isn't any character but we usually, especially at the beginning, follow Frodo who was raised as a Hobbit in Shire so he doesn't really know the world outside. It is not always done like this. In Game of Thrones we are tossed to existing world, we follow characters which knows how this world works and, for me, it was really hard to catch up on events for like first hundred pages. It just didn't felt so natural like when you get to know the world with the character you follow or The Narrator. It can also work with showing as The Protagonist, like in The Great Gatsby, Nick is someone new in his life, so we get to know Gatsby with him.

So, it is natural that in The Owl House Luz is The Narrator. This way Dana could easily show us her world. But that doesn't mean Luz is the real Protagonist of the story.

2. Luz could be The Protagonist

Luz could be The Protagonist. She is new person in Boiling Isles, she changes it just because she is in it, but... That is not all that is needed to be the protagonist. Protagonist isn't the only person who can have an influence on the story. The presence of Nick in Jay Gatsby's life changes somehow his decisions, but it doesn't make Nick The Protagonist. It is still Gatsby, although Nick has an influence on his character.

I fill like in TOH is similar. Luz has an influence on the events but that doesn't mean she has to be The Protagonist.

3. Eda is The Protagonist

Why Eda? Here we will have some subsections (list in a list my dears)!

3.1 We get to know Eda more then Luz

Oh, but how? I've seen posts saying that people don't understand why we doesn't see any of Luz's memories from before Boiling Isles, even little flash backs. It's because she is only The Narrator, we don't have to know her full story, we only need to follow her in the New World to see what is happening in story and to get to know this world. But we get A LOT of Eda's memories. We've seen her nightmares of being cursed, we've seen her memories with Lilith when they were children, we've seen memories of her curse revealing at the fight with her sister, later we get the memories about how her mother tried to cure her and in last episode we see her story w Raine. That's a lot of flash backs. None other character had so many. The only other character that had some flashbacks was Amity and Willow in one episode and King in his episode this season. But it is not as much as Eda gets. And Luz? We didn't see any of Luz's memories!

3.2 Eda is one of the characters with biggest growth while Luz's growth is small

I also saw posts about how Luz is the only character that doesn't change through the series. It isn't totally correct. She changes. She becomes more certain about the fact that she isn't a freak. I mean, okay, she knows she is still kinda freak (for human standards) but she started to love that part of herself. In this season she also learns that she is not the one who is responsible for everything and that she shouldn't blame herself for every bad thing that happens around her. But in comparison to Eda or Amity it is not so apparent.

Eda went from being an outcast, scared of some parts of herself (cursed ones) to the person who accepted her nature. She isn't outcast anymore. She accepted people's presence in her life. We see this in last episode when she tells herself that just when she got used to people being in Owl House they all leave. Sure, at the beginning she had King, but she didn't talk to Lilith or her own mother. Through the series she opened her heart for other people and now she has so big found family. Not only Luz, King and Hooty. She has great connection with her sister, she started to talk normally to her mother. She met Raine and was so open for them. She is even now friends with Bump and helps him in school which she hated! And also I am sure that she really like Luz's friends.

And the curse. She always played cool about it. "Nah, it just happens!". But we could see that she was actually really scared of it. She hated this part of herself even if she was telling Lilith or their mother otherwise. But in one of the episodes of season two we see that she finally accepted this part of herself and fought back with the curse. And this is such a BIG GROWTH WHICH I LOVE SO MUCH. And yes, this is because of the parallel to mental health illness, that you can't get rid of but you can learn to manage it in proper way. And I love that elixirs didn't helped her to handle it, they only helped her to "keep the curse quiet". The moment she started to manage it was when she stopped it by her own. Just like with mental health problems: meds won't help without your own work.

So yes, in comparison to Eda's character growth Luz's is small, but if she is The Narrator she doesn't have to change a lot. In every story it is The Protagonist who changes most, because stories aren't only about how Protagonist has influence on the world and events but, and I think it is even more important, how events changes The Protagonist.

3.3 Eda is connected to everything that is important for the plot

If you think about this, Eda is the only character that is connected somehow to every piece of plot. And here comes subsections of subsections! (yes, I'm practicing before writing my BSc which I should write RIGHT NOW but Eda is now more important for me, sorry my dear archaea and proteins)

Wild Magic - this one goes for Eda and for Luz but the way it connects with them is very different. Eda chose to not go into any coven. She never wanted to gave most of her magic away and that is why she wanted to go to Emperor's Coven. But when she was forced to fight her own sister I think she started to understand how sick covens were. So she decided to not sign to any of them. She decided to become outcast, out of the law, just so she could still have her Wild Magic. In series she looked so cool with this decision, but that is how she is, she always seems cool but we know that it is not always how she really feels. And I think that decision about being "out of coven" was really hard for her but at the same time she knew that it was only way for her and she was ready to do everything to stay with her Wild Magic. And with the years she never changed her decision. While for Luz Wild Magic used by the glyphs is a way to make her dream come true. It is also important, going with our dreams is one of the most important things in our lives, but for the plot I feel like Eda's connection is more important.

Portal - this one goes for the Eda and Luz too, but again, not in the same way. Both of them found portal by accident but! Eda found it in the way that you could think it was waiting there for here. Like, it literally lied in the mud on her way. While Luz found it because of Eda and Owlbert. Without Eda having it, she would never found Boiling Isles. And here comes third thing.

Luz (and Human Realm) - yes, she is also really important for the plot, although I think she's not The Protagonist. But still Luz has a big influence on events and as I said before, if not Eda she would never come to Boiling Isles and would never had a chance to change anything.

Curse - we know that curse she has is strange. No one on Boiling Isles knew this curse, but somehow Lilith bought it at the night market. Just like with Portal, we can think that it was just meant for Eda to get this curse. Like, it was just lying there and waiting for Lilith to buy it and curse Eda with it. I am sure that it is also connected to the Wild Magic.

King's Father - same story as before, she was running away, found a safe place on some island that no one knows about, in some ruins and by accident found King there. We know that before King hatched he heard a roar, probably his father's. We can also believe that his father was mighty. I think that he could be connected to Wild Magic somehow and that is why someone tried to do something to him. But I think that he is also important for the plot, we just don't know how yet.

Lilith as a head of Emperor's Coven - and here we go to some important point. We know that Lilith became head of a coven just so Belos could get to the Eda and her portal, and Belos is this one important point.

There is only one person who has (or can have like with King's father) connection to all this things and this person is Belos, the main Antagonist. He is fighting with Wild Magic, which apparently made him Cursed and because of this he was looking for Portal to go to the Human Realm, but for this he needed Lilith to get to Eda. So Eda is a key to everything that Belos wants and she actually always stands against him. She is not fighting with Wild Magic, but uses it, she is Cursed but she accepted it and she can manage it, she has/had a Portal but never used it for anything bad. She also has a connection tu Human Realm because of Luz, the kid that she loves, and the only reason she would want to have Portal again is to help Luz, and she also never wanted to actually fight with Lilith while Belos made her to do many times. So she is in natural opposition to him and that is also what makes her The Protagonist of main story.

3.4 We know that Luz doesn't have any "big fate" on Boiling Isles

At the beginning I wrote that we usually know that The Narrator isn't The Protagonist because author shows it to us. But we also know that Dana loves to play with us and she loves to hide informations (even with colour coded scenes) and I feel like she did the same thing with The Narrator - The Protagonist thing. Second episode of the series, Witches before Wizards shows us Luz who tries to find her special fate on Boiling Isles. She thinks she is there because of some grater powers of fate but we learn that this isn't true. We always thought that this is about breaking the stereotype of Protagonist being The Chosen One (like in Harry Potter or Percy Jackson) and I love this idea, but what if it was about showing us that Luz is not The Protagonist of a story? Because for me, everything that happened to Eda: the course, finding portal, King and Luz, looks like to many accidents for one character to be just accidents, more like something (maybe fate) or someone (maybe the Tytan himself because he is trapped somehow by Belos) tries to give her every piece she needs to stand in opposition to main Antagonist of Boiling Isles.

4. Summary

This is only my little theory, I don't know if I am right, but I feel like it can be another Dana's game with stereotypes/archetypes, I'm not sure how to call it, with traditional writing, keeping your Protagonist hide until the very end. And if it will turn out like this I will be really amazed. I would love to know what you think about this! And I also really need to start writing my BSc instead of these analyses but this is SO MUCH MORE INTERESTING.

[todoscript]

10, Tamaki Amajiki, fluff or smut

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prompt: 10. “You really shouldn’t touch that… I told you.” genre: fluff.  pairing: amajiki tamaki x fem!reader word count: 2.0k+ warnings: mentions of insecurities.

author’s note: This is longer than a drabble should be but I couldn’t control myself. Also, this is my first time writing for Tamaki so I hope I did well portraying him. Big thank you to @burnedbyshoto for being my beta reader as well as recommending the title for this work!

Tamaki Amajiki has experienced an extraordinary amount of circumstances in his life so far that not many boys his age could even imagine to go through. He’s fought crooks, robots, supervillains, hell even the yakuza, and has managed to come out in one piece every time and claim victory. Of course, he has his training and studies from a prestigious hero school to thank for equipping him with the tools he needs to combat such peril. However, no amount of training or experience could truly prepare him for this new, menacing adversary.

A classroom full of school children.

Being a trio backed up by the honorable title of The Big 3, Mirio, Nejire, and Tamaki were given the opportunity to represent U.A. High School as they speak to classrooms of elementary students next week. This was a chance to talk with the younger generation and encourage them to think about a possible career as a crime fighter, while also ensuring that their futures were in safe hands thanks to heroes like them.

As a shy, introverted person whose solution in these social situations is to envisage everyone in the form of vegetables, Tamaki was not keen on this idea. Kids were boisterous and contained way too much energy in their little bodies to handle, making it much harder to conjure them as potatoes in his head. Not only that, but these days they’ve grown judgemental and full of themselves. They boast about their newly developed quirks amongst each other at playgrounds, already comparing their abilities at such an early age. All in all, his fragile spirit cannot handle interacting with these miniature monsters.

Nejire and Mirio seemed much better suited for this task. They glowed with charisma, and their energetic personalities naturally drew people to them. No doubt, the kids will especially be fond of how receptive they are to their young and frisky attitudes. Tamaki felt he just paled in comparison behind their light; however, his two friends would not allow him to deem himself that way.

“C’mon Tamaki, you have so many things going for you!” assures an optimistic Mirio during lunch as Tamaki sulks in the thought of meeting the kids. “You have an amazing quirk! I bet if you show it off, the kids will love it.”

True, the ability to manifest certain animal attributes depending on whatever he digests could tide the youngsters into liking him. But at the same time, would they really be captivated that easily? Aren’t kids at that age more into flashy things like lasers and explosions? No one wants to see him with cow hooves and clam hands, not with Nejire spiraling concussive vitality from her palms and Mirio shooting right up out of solid ground.

“I… I don’t know if the kids would be into my quirk…” he murmurs, eyes averting to his twiddling thumbs beneath the table.

“Amajiki, if you’re aiming to be a Pro Hero, you can’t let a bunch of ten-year-olds deter you!” chides Nejire. She forks a bit of her strewn pasta.

“Easy for you to say, Hadou. You’re bubbly and approachable. Everyone always comes to you. Meanwhile, the freshmen were intimidated by me before I even spoke a word.” Tamaki broods at his plate of food that grows colder during the conversation, but he can’t muster an appetite to eat it. “I can’t imagine how the kids would feel.”

Nejire chews on her noodles with a pitched hum. The trill ceases the moment her eyes light up, an idea flickering in her head.

“Say, how about you visit ____ at support during hero training today? I bet she can hook you up with some flashy gear that they’ll like.”

The utter of your name sends Tamaki’s body rigid.

“Oop, I think you touched something you shouldn’t have, Nejire,” Mirio gestures to the steely expression written over their friend’s face.

Dealing with children was one thing, but you were another matter entirely.

Being enrolled at U.A. since their very first year, the senior students of the hero and support departments coincided together. They drew out each other’s potentials—whether it was fighting on the battlefield or producing new innovative gadgets in workshops. Naturally, within that time, Tamaki developed a fondness for you.

You were a spirited individual driven by your passion for creating and bringing out the very best out of everyone you worked with, which included himself. With him, you were patient, never one to discourage or berate him despite his nervous and awkward nature that he viewed as probably a displeasure to work with. You took all his strengths and weaknesses to heart, and created the right tools to make him shine in triumph.

If Tamaki is the dead night, then you are the moon and stars that lit up his dark twilight, enlightening the world with his true potential.

However, the boy has never brought up his feelings to you, driven back by the thought you didn’t reciprocate, or wanted to focus more on your future as a craftswoman rather than prattle with romance. To bring you up in his dilemma of having to interact with mere elementary school kids is the last thing he wants to do.

“I don’t—”

“C’mon Tamaki! This is the perfect opportunity to kill two birds with one stone!” Nejire enthusiastically waves a finger ready to describe her expertly thought-out plan. “You come to ____ asking for some of her gear, the ordeal brings you closer together, and then boom, you naturally confess your feelings and then impress those kids next week!” She sits with a proud, lifted head and hands on her hips after explaining her master proposal.

“Hm that’s quite an ambitious plan, Nejire,” chuckles Mirio.

“Way too ambitious if you ask me,” Tamaki scowls, uncertainty forming in his features.

“Confessing to someone you’ve liked for so long doesn’t come that easily…”

Nejire pouts, spinning the last remnants of her pasta around her fork. “Well I say you should still think it over! If anything, the new gear could help.”

And so he does. Lunch soon passes in the next flutter of an eyelash. During an academic class, Tamaki ponders the idea a bit more until it’s eventually time for their hero training course.

Lo and behold, he’s standing right outside the development studio with wickedly narrow brows and contemplating eyes, acting like if he glared at the door hard enough, all his problems would be solved. With his feet cemented into the ground, he doesn’t budge for the next couple of minutes. His mind bounces between his predicament and the possible solutions at hand, reaching to a standstill. Ultimately, he knows nothing will come out of not making a decision, so after another second of thought, he decides to progress.

The steel door jars open at a slide of the handle and Tamaki ganders at the messy workspace before him. He navigates through a mess of gizmos and gadgets with careful hesitant steps.

“____? Are you in here? I, um, need your help with something,” he calls, tentative voice drawing out across the room.

“Tamaki? Is that you?” He hears the distance between your voices, “Sorry, I’ll be with you in just a minute…”

He nods to no one in particular, standing in place as his fingers play with the hem of his white, hooded cape. Too late to turn back now, he thinks. While he dawdles, he can’t help but let his eyes wander around the room, eyeing the vast amounts of meticulously crafted contraptions and accessories all developed in a high school workshop.

The support course sure is something else, Tamaki regards the creativity such students have, being able to construct so many complicated gadgets. He doesn’t know how you do it, but supposes that was another charm about you that he admired so much.

Suddenly, a whirring noise catches his attention, and he turns in its direction. He spots a device flaring in place on a table across from him, the widget shifting and flashing into an assortment of colors that isn’t comfortable for his liking.

“Uh… ____… C-Can you come out real quick? I think there’s something wrong with this thing,” he warns, tone rising with every dissonant sound the device continues to resonate.

“OK Tamaki, I’m done. What do you need— Whoa!”

Your words are cut off by Tamaki, pulling you to him using vines sprouted from his fingers, thanks to the vegetables he managed to eat today. Confused, you brace against his chest as the evident droning whir increases in volume. Tamaki holds a wavering hand over the device.

“Ah wait, Tamaki, you really shouldn’t touch that!” you cautioned. However, Tamaki’s entire hand transforms into a giant clam that quickly envelopes the contraption just as it flares and reaches its peak. He contains the small burst of energy within his shell with a wince, preventing any catastrophe from befalling on both of you and the work studio.

“Hehe, told you,” you shakily laugh off which makes him sigh as he releases you from his steady grasp.

“____, you could’ve gotten severely hurt,” he chides.

“But I didn’t because of you, so thank you very much, Suneater,” you say with a grin. Tamaki slightly tugs his hood down to obscure the growing blush on his cheeks that threaten to expose his flustered reaction to your gratitude.

“It... It was nothing,” he manages. You nod in response before approaching the faulty contraption, shifting your gaze side-to-side to inspect the damage.

“Sorry about that, I think this is one of Hatsume’s inventions from Class 1-F.”

You toss it into a pile of other defective equipment, relaying in your mind to reprimand your junior later.

“Anyways, is there anything I can do for you, Tamaki? You said something about needing my help?” Ah, right, he nearly forgot. He slowly nods.

“I need some new gear…” he admits. A light of passion infused with curiosity dazzles in your eyes.

“What for? Going to face a new powerhouse crime organization next week? Ooh, maybe another gangster threat in the criminal underground? Or perhaps you need something to combat a future natural disaster?” you surmise, but Tamaki only avoids your gaze at all your grand guesses when comparing it to the true reason:

“I need something to impress these kids I’ll be talking to next week…” he mutters under his breath, as if embarrassed.

“Huh?” You knit your eyebrows, muddled by the answer. Tamaki’s head imbues with self-conscious, anxious thoughts about what you must be thinking. However, your response to his predicament is one that leaves him more perplexed than you are.

“Why? You don’t need any gear to impress anyone. You’re fine the way you are,” you say without a single pause or hint of doubt in your tone. Tamaki pauses, grabbing his bearings at your statement before eyeing his spread out hands, unsure.

“But I’m so plain, not flashy or charismatic like Mirio and Hadou… Would kids like me the way I am?” he urges the question with uncertainty, keeping his stare on his calloused palms.

Would you like me the way I am?

You reach out for his hands, holding your own over them and bringing his wavering gaze to peer into yours.

“Tamaki, the kids will like you for who you are as long as you’re passionate about what you’re aiming to do. And that’s to save everyone and become a hero, right?” you assure, slightly tilting your head.

“You protected me without even a thought in your mind just now. That makes you heroic and courageous,” you continue, “Your nervous and shy personality are just small little quirks about you that make you who you are. You don’t need to change that.”

A smile of pure adoration forms on your lips. “Plus it’s what I like so much about you.”

Tamaki’s eyes lift in realization at your statement, his hands slowly gripping yours from below like he may not have heard you correctly.

“You like me?” he repeats, and you nod your head.

“I’ve liked you since our first year, silly.” You giggle at the stunned look etched on his face.

“I…” his words are caught in his throat for a second over the growing developments, but with every ounce of his being, he musters them out, his tone laced in only warmth and affection for you.

“I’ve liked you too, ___, I-I always have. You were so dazzling that I couldn’t help but let these feelings for you grow, and now, I’m glad I got to say them to you.” He finally admits to all the emotions stirred inside him for the past three years, and your smile widens. You inch forward, planting a small peck on his cheek that renders him a flustered mess from the surprise.

“Alright, go show those kids who Suneater is next week!”

Nejire’s plan was a success, after all.

[maldito-arbol]

Let’s talk about the GP zodiacs (Part 2)

HOLSY HSIT I LOVE THE GP KIDS SO MUCH AND THEIR SIGNS ARE SO INTERESTING

Thank u to puff-poff for shooting me with an ask about the gp kids, I think our brains just assimilated

One more note: I should’ve mentioned this in my last post but compatibility between signs doesn’t only apply to romantic relationships, it applies to any kind of relationship like friendships, family relations, etc. It’s just that when it comes to more platonic relationships, wholly incompatible signs are more likely to be able to work something out together. As an example, I’m a Gemini, and I’m about 300% certain I could never ever in my life date a Pisces, but I do have a few Pisces friends that I get along well enough with.

Okay same drill—sign, element, infodump, GO

Violet

Birthdate: June 12th

Sign: Gemini

Element: Air

Overview: SQUEALS GUYS ITS VIOLET MY BELOVED. WE’RE BOTH GEMINIS THEREFORE WE ARE THE SAME PERSON. I’m kidding but no, Violet being a Gemini makes her 100x easier to project onto. So I mentioned before that Air signs are the least in tune with their emotions, are the thinkers before they act, are horribly indecisive, and these very much apply to Geminis as well. However, the most iconic trait of a Gemini is the ability to switch personalities at the drop of a hat whenever it services the group of people they’re in—what most people call the ‘two-faced’ part of Geminis. Hey, I promise you that being two-faced is actually a pretty cool and useful asset when in the hands of a decent human being. It means we get along well with a lot of different people, and if we don’t, we can act like we do as if it’s nothing. This asset, however, can turn into a curse of sorts in that a lot of us have...NO IDEA what our actual personality is. We reshape and remold ourselves and copy traits from other signs to fit in so much that we lose sight of who we are as an individual, and therefore we have a very hard time figuring out what we truly want. This is where the indecisiveness comes into play—ask a Gemini what they want for lunch and you’ll get a “what? Huh? Oh, you pick. I’m fine with whatever.” I know Geminis best because I am one, pls forgive me for rambling so much more about them than the other signssss.

Okay so first of all, let’s talk about Violet adapting to other characters to ‘fit in’. It’s not as obvious because Violet DOES seem to have one very fixed personality, but Violet prefers to speak through actions rather than words, so I would call her following Emma to help the children at GP a Gemini move. She could’ve simply dragged her to Lucas—she’s probably strong enough to do so, but instead she decided to go along with her. This isn’t to say there’s no pushback of course, as Air signs Geminis aren’t idiots, so they’ll often try to reason with others (particularly fire signs cough cough) to try to bring logic and critical thinking into the conversation. However, when that fails, they can still be counted on to support their friends even if they disagree. This is why Geminis and Leos are soulmates you heard it here, the stars said Violemma is the way. BUT ALSO CAN WE TALK ABOUT HOW VIOLET’S THE ONE ADAM LISTENS TO DURING THE LEUVIS BATTLE. YOU WANNA TALK ABOUT BEING ABLE TO GET ALONG WITH A LOT OF PEOPLE, THERE YOU GO.

Anyway it’s also very much worth noting that while Violet can seem very harsh at times (bc Geminis will put you in your PLACE), bringing her logical kind of advice into conversations can be a very helpful comforter.

On another note this scene is so gay?

Compatibility and ships: hellooooooo Air sign Violet you are compatible with other Air signs (Aquarius, Libra, and Gemini) as well as Fire signs (Leo, Sagittarius, and Aries). Usually you’ll see Aquarius and Sagittarius as the most compatible with Geminis but I disagree with that because I have never met a Sagittarius I like so I’m still pointing fervently at Leos and the fact that Emma is a Leo. Listen. Violemma is the way. I am determined to convert all of you to Violemma if it’s the last thing I do. Geminis simply cannot help themselves around Leos they fall like a fucking anvil for that bright, golden-hearted dumbass energy. If there’s any Leos in the tpn fandom let me know I might just propose to you.

Oliver

Birthdate: October 25th

Sign: Scorpio

Element: Water

Overview: the first time I looked up Oliver’s birthday I went “Scorpio???? REALLY????” but then this is another case where the more I think about it, it does indeed make sense. If Leos are the natural leaders of the Fire signs, then Scorpios are the natural leaders of the Water signs. Where Cancers and Pisces will often lose themselves to their emotions, Scorpios have a very strong handle on them. I mentioned before that Water signs are at the highest emotional level, but Scorpios are a bit of an interesting case because you oftentimes won’t even notice that they’re very emotional people. They try to act like Air signs in that way, but their true colors are always there, waiting to be coaxed out.

For Oliver, you can clearly tell that his emotional bond with his friends and especially with Lucas is very high—but even so, he doesn’t let his emotions cloud his judgment or his ability to adapt to the situation at hand. Where earth signs are very fixed and difficult to move, water signs are always moving and changing to find solutions best suited for new circumstances. The best example I can give is the part where the music plays early, and despite internally panicking about it, Oliver is the one who naturally steps up to calm everyone down.

Scorpios are great at handling others’ emotions as well as their own, which makes them marvelously empathetic leaders. We stan.

Compatibility and ships: as a Water sign, Oliver is compatible with other Water signs (Cancer, Pisces, and Scorpio) as well as Earth signs (Taurus, Virgo, and Capricorn) so speaking broadly that makes him compatible with Pepe (a Pisces) and Zack (a Cancer) but narrowing it down, Scorpios are usually best with Tauruses and Cancers. Idk if I’m the only one who ships Oliver with Pepe but I know there’s a few people who ship him with Zack—so congrats to you guys, you won the stars’ approval.

Lucas

Birthdate: November 28th

Sign: Sagittarius

Element: Fire

Overview: yall,,,, when I found out Lucas was a Saggy Titty I legitimately guffawed out loud. Lucas and Sagittarius is so funny.... because it’s so wrong. Saggy Titties are the definition of chaos, they’re brazen, impulsive, and constantly changing. Like think of a frat boy in a house full of beer and pool tables and hot girls and you get Sagittarius. This is why I have never met a Sagittarius I like—because they have frat boy energy, and even non-male Sagittariuses require wayyy too much energy for me to handle. I guess the only time Lucas really does act like a Sagittarius is in his childhood with Yuugo, and the way he’s a lot bolder and outgoing versus the quieter older Lucas we have now.

It is important to note that Lucas has been through a lot of trauma and lost a lot of comrades which could very well change the a person’s entire outlook and turn their personality 180 degrees—that could be a large factor, although on the flip side, Yuugo still fits his Capricorn sign even after going through what he’s been through. Different events affect different people differently. Lucas was most likely knocked entirely off his Sagittarius high-horse very quickly when he arrived in Goldy Pond. But if I had no prior knowledge of who he was beforehand, I very well might’ve pegged him a Leo like Emma or even another subtle Aries like Norman. So yes, he does indeed have fire energy, it’s just generally very lackluster and farrrr away from Sagittarius’ level.

Compatibility and ships: okay so I know the only Lucas ship with any weight to it in this fandom is Yuucas, and here’s the thing,,, A Sagittarius and Capricorn combo is the most horrifying fucking couple imaginable and I’m stan so hard. Realistically speaking, your Capricorns would try to put a leash on their Sagittariuses because man. I forgot to mention how childish Sagittariuses can be (though the frat boy comparison should’ve been a clue), and holy shit that poor Capricorn is gonna get ripped to shreds by their Sagittarius. Imagine like a super pompous cowboy trying to ride a furious bull that’s trying to buck him off like there’s no tomorrow. Capricorns are people who want complete control over themselves and their partners, while Sagittariuses,, Saggy Titties just want to see the world burn. Put them together and you could probably cause the End Times Apocalypse. But you know what? Good for them. I think Yuugo and Lucas love each other enough that the toxicity that comes with typical pairups with these two signs is about nonexistent between them. But I fully believe they could still destroy an entire planet and that’s valid of them to do so. Anyway moving on!

you wanna talk about another Sagittarius that makes absolutely no sense?

Paula

Birthdate: December 9th

Sign: Sagittarius

Element: Fire

Overview: My authors I am begging you, stop putting character birthdays in the Sagittarius zone you clearly don’t know what a Sagittarius is.

Since I refuse to acknowledge Paula as a Sagittarius, let’s talk about what sign she actually acts like because I said so. Paula’s a Virgo. Fight me Shirai. (Also im sus that shirai is virgophobic because where the fuck are my virgos. There’s like zero major characters that are virgos, and the characters that ARE don’t even act like virgos. I’m coming for your small intestine Shirai) so as earth signs, virgos are generally pretty resourceful and of course level-headed. They’re kinda shy and reserved, but they’re also very hard workers you can count on when you need to get a job done. Nary will you find a Virgo that procrastinates or attempts to weasel their way out of a mission they’ve been given. The unmovable earth in virgos shows through in how committed they are, and we can see all these traits in Paula. Though she’s a quieter member of the GP resistance, you can tell just how much of an asset she is to them. She doesn’t run, doesn’t lose her cool, and she’s good at pointing out important details.

Pls let me decide your characters’ birthdays for you Shirai I promise I am good at it.

Compatibility and ships: I guess, astrologically speaking, as a Sagittarius, Paula does fit pretty well with Sonya because she’s a Gemini. I actually know next to nothing about Paula ships but I do know she’s lesbian and her and Sonya are cute but I also ship her with Barbara because reasons don’t ask questions I WILL bite you anyway they’re compatible too because barb’s also a Gemini.

Lot of Geminis, don’t you think? Yes I do. Let’s talk about them.

Sonya and Sandy

Birthdates: June 3rd and May 22nd respectively

Signs: Gemini

Element: Air

Overview: these two are what I call the gemini twins bECAUSE THEYRE ALWAYS HANGING OUT AND ITS SO TRUE GEMINIS LOVE EACH OTHER BUT ALSO ITS SO WEIRD THAT WE GET ALONG. imagine like two of those one way mirrors facing each other where it just goes on and on and on for infinite mirror and that’s what two Geminis hanging out is like. Look, they’re literally thinking the same thing and it’s so great

Anyway there isn’t a whole lot of Sandy and Sonya content to go off of in the first place, but them being Geminis seems reasonable to me—at the very least they are indeed meant to get along well and they’re so in sync I could cry. Plus they’re pretty intuitive and able to think right on the spot as they’re facing Nous and Nouma (at least at first) My man Shirai also.. really likes Geminis for some reason because they keep popping up. So instead of one Spider-Man meme it looks more like this,

Compatibility and ships: not gonna dwell too long on this section because from previous ones you may already recall they’re compatible with each other and I guess with Paula as well as I must begrudgingly accept the fact that shes canonically a Sagittarius.

Pepe

Birthdate: February 19th

Sign: Pisces

Element: Water

Overview: so I mentioned before that water signs are at about the highest emotion level, which makes Pisces a very sensitive group like Cancers. But Pisces in general are known for being the kindest and most accepting people as well, which means they’re able to make a lot of friends very easily. They’re basically that one person you sat next to in class who started a conversation with you just to be nice. Now again, there’s not a whole lot of Pepe content to go off of, but we can tell he’s kind and loving to his friends and the other kids in GP. One thing I can mention is that Pisces usually are the one of the nosiest of the signs, and they get very bothered by lies and secrets (this is true for a lot of water signs, but Pisces are the worst in my experience) so we got this single piece that may have a little bit of the Pisces in Pepe showing:

Compatibility and ships: So as a Pisces, Pepe is only compatible with Oliver and Zack considering they’re also water signs. Everyone else is Fire and Air, funnily enough, but the Pepe ships with those two are super cute I think so it’s ok.

Zack

Birthdate: July 7th

Sign: Cancer

Element: Water

Overview: so do I think Zack fits his sign? Yes, in a way I do. I already went into Cancers when I explained Don, so quick recap: Cancers are some of the most sensitive and empathetic, so their loyalty to their loved ones is pretty close to on-par with an Aries. And while Zack isn’t as outwardly emotional as someone like Don, the Cancer in him shows up well in that he’s constantly taking extremely difficult missions he doesn’t want his friends to risk, and he shrugs off any injury to himself.

This might just be a me thing but almost every Cancer I’ve met has a habit of doing That. I am so concerned for their safety. I guess though, if I hadn’t known his sign beforehand, I 100% would’ve pegged him an Aries.

Compatibility and ships: I already went over this with Pepe, but Zack is compatible with Pepe and Oliver. Y’all ok listen to me. OT3. Make it happen. Between them they have every sign in the element of water. They’d be unstoppable.

Gillian

Birthdate: September 30th

Sign: Libra

Element: Air

Overview: here’s a fun one. So as I previously stated, air signs are usually out of tune with their emotions, but where that causes Aquariuses and Geminis to repress or hide them, Libras,,,, just dump them everywhere. Listen I know Libras are supposed to be the sign of the balance scales and they have a thing about the world being perfectly balanced which makes them more prone to revenge bUT ALSO. MY first and foremost takeaway from Libras is that they all suffer from Rich Bitch syndrome, in which they obsess over material items and every Libra has a thing about cute girly stuff change my mind. HOWEVER, they’re often very chaotic as well, the kinda Sagittarius of the Air signs. So like a super cute and seemingly fun girl who will probably murder you in your sleep.



I’m sorry I can’t take it I’ve been laughing at this for the past fifteen minutes it’s too funny. Anyway, Gillian’s Rich Bitch Syndrome appears through her fashion statement. Her PINS. omg. Gillian your Libra is showing.

Compatibility and ships: as a Libra Gillian is compatible with other Air signs (Aquarius, Gemini, Libra) as well as Fire signs (Aries, Sagittarius, Leo) but she’s most compatible with Aries and Sagittarius so—— Paula yes, but also Nigel because he’s an Aries! Speaking of Nigel,

Nigel

Birthdate: March 27th

Sign: Aries

Element: Fire

Overview: Aries Nigel doesn’t come as a surprise, let’s be real here. I delved into Aries before with Norman, so just as a recap: Aries are so intensely loyal to the ones they love and would do absolutely anything for them even at the cost of their lives, and this can make them prone to outbursts of anger and/or impulsivity. Here’s your one image of Aries Nigel, I don’t even have to explain:

Compatibility and ships: so I already said this but Nigel is at his most compatible with Gillian. Are there other Nigel ships?? Pls let me know I’m very curious.

Aw, it’s over now :(

I loved talking about the GP kids they fill the void in my heart. Now to move onto talking about the demons because the silliest idiot requested it and I am beyond ecstatic to spout pure headcanon bullshit. If you’re feelin excited then feel free to keep sending characters my way I will be happy to ramble about their canon zodiac or my headcanon for their zodiac

Edit: i forgot to link part 1 to anyone who wants it and doesn’t want to stalk my profile to find it

[linkspooky]

Annie vs Mikasa: Round 2

They don’t actually fight, I just couldn’t think of a good title for this post. Annie and Mikasa are a set of foils. At times their similarities only serve to irritate one another. At other times, their differences are complementary. Just like Eren / Reiner, and Bertolt / Armin, Annie and Mikasa can become each other’s worst enemies and yet at the same time offer a unique understanding to one another. Here’s an analysis of their foiling as of the latest chapter. 

1. Lost Girls

Mikasa and Annie have been opposing forces in the manga ever since Eren saw it fit to compare them. If you look at them from Eren’s point of view they’re incredibly, superficially (on the outside) similiar. Both of them are the only girls in a group of two boys. Both of them are the physically strongest member of their group, and also the most confident in themselves. Annie, just like Mikasa has the ability to quickly act, and she doesn’t hesitate like Bertolt and Reiner are prone to. 

Eren is someone constantly fighting against his own weakness, and that’s what causes him to trip up and hesitate. He’s always battling against the idea that he’s mediocre, that he’s all talk, that he’s unable to be strong enough to make the grand promises he makes. As a person he feels lacking, inferior. He lacks the self confidence simply to act. Which is why he gravitates towards people like Mikasa and Annie who just ACT without hesitation. He wants the single-mindedness that Mikasa and Annie have, just by being the people they are, because Eren is riddled with self doubts. Annie and Mikasa both have the strength and self confidence that Eren wants, but they don’t really care about being strong. 

Eren would love nothing more than to be able to shut his brain off and become a soldier the way Mikasa and Annie seem to be able to do so flawlessly, but neither of them really want to be this way. The reason that Annie and Mikasa are able to shut their brains off and just fight, is because they see themselves as having fought to survive their entire life, having lost everything else. 

They are both girls fighting to survive and find love in a world that they no has absolutely no love for them. They’ve both lost their places in the world, and any and all connecction to the world (except for one person) and because of that they’ve become so desperate that fighting is all they can do. 

I bring up the Eren comparison because Mikasa’s been shown to be jealous of Annie in the past whenever Eren gravitated toward Annie. I don’t think Eren had any kind of romantic interest in Annie, I think he just admired her. In a way since MIkasa and Annie are so similiar, Eren can see all of the parts of Mikasa he admires in Annie (her strength, her independence) but none of the parts of Mikasa he dislikes (her codependence, her habit of always following him around). 

In the female type titan arc Annie and Mikasa are characters who are incredibly similiar on the outside, especially in the way that Eren perceives them, but we learn the difference between them in their actions. 

Mikasa is loyal, Annie is not. And I don’t just mean that Mikasa is loyal to the scouting corps whereas Annie is a spy. I mean, even to their small group of friends Mikasa is someone who is fiercely protective of both Armin and Eren whereas Annie will always run away from Bertolt and Reiner to protect herself. Mikasa clings to Armin and Eren as her place in this world after having lost her original family, whereas Annie completely refuses to get close to Bertolt and Reiner in the same way. 

There’s also a certain irony in the way Eren perceives Annie. I mean like I said, he gravitates towards Annie because it’s all Eren thinks he admires in a person, Mikasa’s strength, but without the part of Mikasa that always clings to him. Mikasa’s loyalty towards him has always bugged him but it’s also something that Eren has also always taken for granted because look how hard he freaks out when Annie turns out to have an agenda of her own. He practically begs, and begs her not to betray the scouting corps because he can’t handle the person betrayal. 

Anyway this is how we are initially presented their characters, two people incredibly similiar on the outside, but Mikasa is loyal, and Annie disloyal. Of course this is deconstructed in later arcs but we gotta get out of Eren’s POV first. 

2. Lost Girls, Found

I set up their foiling in the female type titan arc to show how it’s subverted this arc. A lot of ideas set up in the female type titan arc are now being inverted in the final arc. First we learn a little more about Annie, and how even her circumstances are incredibly similiar to Mikasa. 

Mikasa lost her place in the world when her family was killed. Annie never had  a place. They are both girls who are incredibly unconnected to the world around them. Annie an orphan with Eldian blood, Mikasa an orphan with Ackerman blood, and the last remaining person of Asian descent inside the walls. They were also marked as different from the world around them because of their birth. 

They both have an adopted family member they fixate on, because that person is their sole connection to the world around them. For Mikasa it’s Eren, and for Annie it’s her father. Mikasa’s goal is ultimately to protect Eren because by his side is her place of belonging in the world everything else comes second. Annie’s goal is ultimately to return home to her father because he is her place of belonging in the world and everything else comes second. 

Both girls are incredibly, aware of the cruelty of life and how easily people can die and it can all be lost. A dead insect is used to symbolize the revelation in both cases, a dead beetle for Annie, a dead butterfly for Mikasa. For the both of them they also came to this revelation at an extremely young age. 

This makes them even more desperate to protect their small place of belonging in the world. Which is why they have the same selfish habit. They will forget about everything else, and run off to protect that safe place when they are pushed against a wall. Mikasa will always drop everything to run after Eren, even if it leads her to doing soemthing stupid or disobeying orders from a superior. Annie will always follow her father’s words and protect herself because she doesn’t care about the mission or the outside world ultimately. 

Annie says she’d trample over other people, Mikasa doesn’t listen to Levi and charges straight at the female type titan because it’s the shortest path to Annie. It’s the same behavior, the outside world stops existing to them. Mikasa and Annie both have a small and fragile world that consists of one person they’ve decided is their family. They’re scared of the world at large, because they think they have no place in it. 

The story has been gradually challenging Mikasa again and again, to care about the world outside of Eren. It starts in Trost where Mikasa realizes she can’t let herself die just because Eren died because she wants to keep his memory alive. Hange tells her that she might lose the person most important to her in the world, but she has to keep moving forward with that loss. 

Mikasa became the first to let go of Armin, when Eren didn’t give up on begging Levi to revive Armin, even though Mikasa had always been the most fiercely protective of their little group beforehand. Floch even points out, that Mikasa is the closest to maturing because she was out of the three of them the only one able to let go. I know Floch is wrong a lot, but Floch tends to talk in theme. I mean he’s not really a character in his own right, he just… talks about the themes of the story. He’s a mouth piece for the author to make obvious comments on the themes of the story, like when he goads Jean into just quietly accepting that the world might end outside of Paradis island. If Floch says something it’s probably a theme of the story. 

Mikasa has been pushed over and over again to let go of the person that is her place of belonging in the world. The way she does this is one, realizing how Eren’s actions affect others and two, learning to move to protect people outside of Eren. 

It’s Mikasa who calls out Eren for hurting children, and it’s Mikasa who moves to protect Gabi, even knowing that Gabi was the one who killed Sasha. Why? Because Mikasa herself is a lost girl. Because Mikasa knows what it’s like to lose everything as a child. 

Mikasa wants to gain the strength to protect someone, because she knows what it’s like to lose everything and doesn’t really want to inflict that on someone else. However, it turns out she’s been protecting the wrong person all along. What’s she been doing then?

For both Mikasa and Annie their wish to have a family, and have some connection to the world isn’t selfish at all. In fact they can be incredibly soft and kind people to those they consider family. However, they have a tendency to tunnel vision and act selfishly when the chips are down. Mikasa enables the worst parts of Eren because she’s so codependent, and Annie is so independent she’s entirely forgotten about the world around her. 

Mikasa is slowly learning what Annie already knows, her independence. 

Mikasa has slowly been learning there are other things besides Eren that connect her to the outside world, whether it be her sympathies with children like Gabi and Falco who are so much like her and Eren, or her double heritage to both the Ackerman clan and her connection to Hizuru. 

At the same time this latest chapter has been showing Annie the opposite. The personal connections to people that Mikasa has always clung so tightly to, and Annie has eschewed are what is slowly coming to matter more to Annie.

When Annie loses all hope, it’s her brief conversation to Armin that almost pulls her back from the edge. In fact the reason she didn’t lose her mind all that time in the crystal is because Armin kept talking to her. Mikasa needs to lose her connections to other people to learn to function on her own, but Annie needs to let other people connect to her.

It’s Armin who pulls her back and grabs her hand when she just wants to avoid others. It’s Armin who counteracts Annie’s long held belief, that the great big world is scary to her. Annie can’t begin to accept the idea that the world might be kind too, unless she learns to accept Armin’s optimism, and his point of view. Annie needs to learn from Armin, but to do that she has to get close to him. 

So in the latest chapter we see Annie and Mikasa challenging each other again. Annie and Mikasa have asked each other the most important questions they need to answer. 

Can Mikasa actually kill Eren? Can she do what she needs to do? And Mikasa asks Annie the opposite questions? Can Annie follow Armin and be there for him or is she just going to run away again? 

I’d say they are both at this point at the final hurdle of their arcs. Mikasa saying that she just wants the old Eren back is the problem. She needs to learn to accept the old Eren is gone. She can either try to save the current Eren, or kill the current Eren, but both of those means Mikasa has to drop her idealized image of Eren and confront the real one right in front of her. Whereas, Annie’s trying to run away one more final time before the end instead of fighting for someone besides herself and her own survival. 

Mikasa needs to learn to be independent and function without Eren, and Annie needs to learn to let other people be a part of her life. She can’t live in this world all alone. The same way that Eren once told Mikasa how to live in this world, Armin could help Annie find a way to live, but only if she lets him. 

Which is why the connection between these two lost girls is so important. In the Female Type Titan arc we saw them already try to kill each other. However, they’ve always had the potential to help each other find their way so they’ll be lost girls no more.