#What Defines Us

[mikotyzini]

A friend pointed me to What Defines Us and I consumed the entire thing in about 2.5 days. What an absolutely amazing ride from start to finish!!

I'm glad that you enjoyed it! And wow. 2.5 days is a lot of reading XD

I'm happy people still read it and like it. It feels so old to me now...

[sam7sparks7]

fanfic author calls me honey in reply to my comment peace and love on planet earth humanity has a chance of survival love is True and real all suffering shall pass and I'm not crying it's only tears in my eyes

[spacedace]

Found this old snippet and don't really remember of the context for it outside of being a joking exploration of how weird the Fenton/Phantom family tree would seem to outsiders (not even getting into how relationships might be classified differently between the human side & the ghost side)

Anyway gonna drop it here as a prompt lol

Mind the quick reference to dismemberment, there's no gore or detailed description and no one is actually hurt, it's more there for comedic effect, but still wanted to give the heads up on it 👍

---

Nomad motioned to the towering, vaguely vampire-looking buff dude with literal flaming hair what the fuck, “Dan, this is everyone. Everyone this is Dan. He’s my…” Nomad trailed off and blinked, a look of confused befuddlement on her face as she let the sentence hang for too long.

“Huh…” She said considering, looking up at vampire-dude, Dan apparently, with a confused furrow on her brow. “You know this is the first time I’ve ever had to try and explain our relationship to each other and I’m drawing a blank and what exactly to call you. Uncle? Dad? Brother? Like, I think you could technically be considered all three.”

What the fuck did that mean??? Kon snapped his attention over to meet Tim’s masked gaze, the look of wild confusion Kon was sure was on his own face mirrored there. Around the meeting room confused and worried looks were being shared by the rest of the League. Which like, yeah, what in the Habsburgs was happening here for all of those terms to be applicable?

“Well, you’re Danny’s Mirror, so if you consider him your dad then it stands to reason I’m also your father.” Dan said, hand coming up to his - literally flaming, how did that work? - goatee thoughtfully.

“Yeah but like, I call Danny dad just to piss Vlad off.” Nomad countered, toying with her severed arm with her still attached hand. Kon didn’t think he’d ever get over how casual she was about being literally disarmed and just…not caring. “And I definitely don’t see you as a dad. Uncle?”

The giant of a ghost shook his head with a frown, “Implies that Danny and I are brothers, which could work but gives our relationship kind of a weird vibe. I feel more like his father than anything.”

“Gramps, then?”

“No.”

Nomad laughed, “Fair, wouldn’t want to take the title of Grampa away from CW. Besides we’re both half Vlad, so I think brother works best here.” She frowned, looking thoughtful, “Maybe half brother?”

Dan considered, “Half-brother could work. Though it gives Vlad more credit than he deserves.”

“Oh come on, can you imagine the look on his face if we went in together on suing him for child support?” Nomad asked, fanged grin wicked. Dan’s face lit up at the idea, and Kon felt like they were rapidly heading towards the two ghosts running off to go and go torment whoever this Vlad guy was rather then them help deal with the current demonic problem at hand.

“Can you please explain what any of that means?” Kon asked, more a squeak than anything else. He was starting to get a headache.

[miss-conner3]

En Español: Aquí

This was going to reference a sibling dynamic meme, but I got too excited XD

Brief context: Height difference in a future where Ando becomes a wandering traveler and the lamb digivolves until it reaches its maximum potential.

Or something similar to that, hehe (ouo)

I hope you like it!

Extra: A little idea regarding my two sheep!

"Forever is a long time, little lamb..."

This is the moment where I comment that I like light angst, but it's rare that I prioritize it, so don't worry (?)

[buggachat]

"augh, this [media] sucks. it's all about shipping"

romance is a genre, harold

[ottern0t]

(Tiny cw- nonsexual nudity) Context: i headcanon all timelords are intersex and ten got human dysphoria from being on earth so long

[butlerkitty-art]

older atreus, baby baldur, & Hel concepts from 2022

[saionjeans]

like it’s actually crucial to utena’s development that she is first presented as someone who is totally independent and refuses to conform to any kind of socially imposed rules. she’s a girl prince, her uniform is completely different, and everyone loves her for her radical swag. but almost immediately utena claims that she is a “totally normal girl looking for a totally normally boy” and that she is engaged to her Prince. and even the intro questions that, is utena deciding to be a Prince such a good idea?

and at first, you assume that the intro is being sexist, and that they’re just undermining utena for wanting to inhabit a Boy Role, which is why she does experience pushback from authority figures who cannot stand that she’s disrupting unspoken social codes. utena is simultaneously resisting gender norms and inhabiting the role of prince to save other girls, and insisting that she’s normal and cis and hetero. so almost immediately it’s like. well okay, what’s going on here.

utena doesn’t seem to want to reject social norms, she just wants to inhabit a role that is generally denied to her. so the constant tension between people undermining utena’s princeliness and trying to get her to inhabit more feminine modes of presentation, and utena herself obstinately insisting that she doesn’t want to be “queer” (and understandably so!!! being 14 and closeted is scary!!! especially when the literal personification of patriarchy is making you constantly question everything you ever believed!) and that she’s “normal, actually” is… confusing.

which is why it’s so important that anthy straight up says “you can’t be my prince, because you’re a girl” because it’s the exact mantra utena has heard her entire life and pushed back against, and in anthy’s case, she’s also stabbing her with a sword (of hatred) as if to emphasize that being a girl means being doomed to suffer. so utena pushes against that, whether because she wants to be a prince, or anthy’s prince, or because she’s not a girl, or a combination thereof. and she manages to do what akio could not because she smashes the rose crest and with it, all its harmful trappings, and reaches anthy in a genuine gesture of love.

and even then, anthy still falls, because the idea that a prince could save someone else from their suffering has always been an illusion. and that’s when utena realizes that she cannot be anthy’s prince, not because she didn’t sufficiently transcend gender norms, or because her heart wasn’t sufficiently noble and true, or because she didn’t fight hard enough, or because she didn’t love anthy enough. no matter what she had done differently, it would have always been futile, because the designation of princehood has always been hollow. no matter how pure her intentions were, she was nevertheless participating in a system that relied on the exploitation and suffering of others to function.

she attached herself to it because it was the only path she had to achieve her goals, but that path was nonetheless chosen for her. even if it seemed radical, she was always emphasizing her normality, trying to impress that despite not conforming to a strict binary, she was still conforming to something. but when she leaves the narrative’s confines, she is also transcending the notion that she can only rebel against certain social codes on other people’s terms. she can define her own terms now, free of impositions. being normal has nothing to do with us.

[mikotyzini]

in “what defines us,” is there any possibility of ruby regaining her memories over time? i loved the fic! it had me crying at 4am LMAO

I'm glad you enjoyed it enough to be reading at 4 am, when you probably (?) should have been sleeping!

As for Ruby's memories...no, she'll never get them back. What she has are more like instincts, habitual reactions, and phantom attachments, but I never wanted to all of her memories to return.

What I really wanted was for Weiss to realize that she's still worthy of Ruby's love even if she's more battered and bruised than ever. Giving Ruby her memories back kind of cheapens this lesson, in my mind.

One of the points I wanted people to come away with is that Weiss and Ruby are meant for each other. Ruby can keep losing her memo, and she'll keep falling in love with Weiss. Weiss could lose her memories, and she would fall in love with Ruby again, too. Soulmates!

[daily-hanamura]

[astrum99]

Welcome to another episode of Procrastinating Painting

[samarecharm]

roughhousin'

[sentfromwolves]

hey writeblr I'm curious: what do you think is the most distinctive trait of your main character/s that your readers will pickup on?

[natjennie]

the fact that from chilchuck's point of view marcille is "falin's annoying friend" is so funny actually. he basically said "reluctantly, my surrogate daughter and that annoying bitch that's always hanging around"

[lovegrowsart]

no matter whether ppl are trying to make zk's canon relationship out to be sibling coded or associative friends or whatever else ppl make up i feel it all comes from this place of people that don't ship it being unable to handle zuko and katara's canonically deep and intimate friendship at the end of show without (whether subconsciously or not) perceiving it as some kind of threat to whatever katara or zuko ship they DO ship (usually either k/a or z/s or m/z)

they don't know how to acknowledge/write zk (and i don't think them being a m/f ship is divorced from this) having their canonically close friendship alongside whatever they ship because that closeness, no matter how platonic, can't supersede the romance of their own ship. so they just lazily write it off as "siblings" or convince themselves they weren't ever that close in the first place or that katara still secretly hates zuko or something in order to get out of the bind of allowing them to be close friends even if you ship them with other people 🤷‍♀️

[anyoldfandom]

I am actually. I am so emotional over the Salazar parents and I need to share this to tumblr too.

A lot of stories where the MC is adopted I feel. Either dismiss the biological parents and the impact they have on the kid's life, or makes them evil and abusive, framing the loss of the bio parents as a good thing, or at least something we shouldn't think about just look at this new family.

But Genrex doesn't do that. From the start, Rex wanted to find out more about his parents - it's one of his primary character motivations, next to helping people. He loves them, even though he doesn't know them.

And the more he finds out about them, the more he realizes they loved him. Rylander is consumed by guilt but as Rex's first connection to his pre-Event life, the first thing he does is hug him. And when he tells Rex about his parents, the two things Rex knows is that 1) they were scientists, and 2) that when he was in danger, they were desperate enough to use their secret, experimental technology to save him. Technology built from their desire to help the world, to save countless lives and end countless suffering.

And then. When he finds out that they were dead, he doesn't stop caring. It'd be so easy, too, to tie it up there - his parents were good people, he got his answer about them, the end. But they don't. He doesn't. Because the show is saying once again that they are his parents. He still calls them mom and dad, even as the show makes it clear Holiday and Six adopted Rex as their son. Even as the show even parallels Six and One with Rex and Six (and I will talk about that more later if I don't forget, trust me), to really drive home how much they're family. Rex even says he considers the two of them family, and later that he considers Noah, Claire and Annie family.

He has new family, the show tells us, but his old family still matters to him. He's upset that he never has the chance to meet his parents, that everything he hears about them, about his time with them, is secondhand knowledge. It tells us clearly that not only does Rex still love them, but that he still wants to know them. And everything we find out about them reinforces the love that they had for each other.

We see Abuela and the family in Mexico, who connect him to his birth family and tell him that he was so loved back then, and still is now. We see their office in Abysus through Rex's eyes. The picture of him and his dad on his desk. The drawing Rex drew, proudly pinned to the wall.

We see it in the familiarity of the drawing. That that robot, that build, was what Rex created when he was lost and scared and alone - that it was made to keep him safe. That it first appeared in his mind in a place he felt safe.

The show says, tenderly and softly, that the love is still there. That the fact these people died was nothing but a tragedy, that their love is a big part of what made Rex who he is today - that every molecule in his body is filled with their final gift to him. That every time he cures someone, every time he uses a build, every time he makes a machine - we see the love that they had for him.

And the way he quietly absorbs his father's face. The way he freezes and whispers "Mamá?" when he finds out Zag-Rs has their mother's voice. The fact that she even has her voice as a testament to Caesar's love, too - that it was meant to bring comfort and safety. The way Rex yells at Caesar when he finds out they have a family property, a connection to their past, the way he fights to protect it.

And, none of this takes away still from Six and Holiday being Rex's family too. None of this removes the work either set of parents did for him, the love either set has - the show says that it was unfair that the Salazar parents were lost. That Six and Holiday are not replacements, that they still love him as parents but play different roles in his life. They can not, and have no desire to, replace the Salazars. But Rex needs parents, he needs protectors, and so they will do what they can for him - at first out of necessity, to keep this kid they barely know safe, but then out of love. They aren't replacing what was lost, but are doing their best to do what Rex's bio parents would do. And they do mess up in it - they mess up in ways Rex's bio parents might not have. Six is clearly bad with showing affection, affection we saw the Salazars give Rex so easily, and Holiday is overworked and stressed constantly, sometimes breaking under the pressure and snapping at Rex and Six, things we never saw the Salazars do.

It's just. It's about how sometimes things will not be the same. They will be different. That doesn't mean the people you lost aren't still with you.