#Which was unintentional? But kind of an interesting place for it to happen.

[bronzefuryfic]

also chapters and chapters of continuity about Rhae’s injury now being able to payoff in shared experience of recovery with Aemond>>

[pagannatural]

1.21 Salvation

-John finally, after some 22 years, lets his sons in on his plans and shows them everything he’s got on the demon that killed their mom and Jess.

-John is such a good character. I’m not really interested in liking or disliking him, I just love his part in this story. He reacted to an unimaginable situation in a human way. Who among us can say, really, how we would parent two small children if our wife was brutally murdered on the ceiling by a demon who then burned down our entire house? John truly thought the whole world was a war zone so he made his kids soldiers rather than getting them to safety. To understand John you have to understand that Safe and Normal as concepts were destroyed for him. He wanted to protect his boys so badly that he tried to prepare them and toughen them and train them but he also wanted to shield them so he hid as much as he could from them. He taught them that people were dying and they were responsible for stopping it. He put all of that on their way-too-young shoulders all while refusing to trust them or let them in.

Under all that pressure, Sam and Dean created their own world, their bubble of safety with each other. They give each what they need in the most vital and fundamental sense, nourishing each other in a hostile environment. They share something that no one else could ever understand.

So thanks, John.

-“It’s not your problem, it’s our problem” is an objectively kind and supportive thing to say so I’m proud of Dean for managing to shout it angrily at Sam. Such passion such energy

-Sam looks like a little kid this whole scene where Dean and John are arguing about parenting him. Dean stands up to John again and defends himself. He’s Sam’s daddy now (sorry)

-John tells Sam “I want you to go to school, I want Dean to have a home” which is hilarious to me because it implies that he thinks of Dean as a homeless man (which he is).

Dean glances at Sam when John says this and then hangs his head. Sam is his home. And he feels responsible for Sam leaving school (which he is).

-In the car Sam tells Dean “I want to thank you” but the you comes out as “ya”. This happens another time when Sam tells Dean “I still love you” (or something close to that) in s5e11. It’s unusual for Sam. He doesn’t ya his you’s regularly at the end of a sentence. Jared and Jensen both have typical midwestern accents on the show. Jared intentionally changes his speech pattern when he’s possessed, so that words like “wasn’t” or “doesn’t” are enunciated when normally Sam pronounces it like “wud’n” or “dud’n” with a very soft “d.”

Point being, something is causing Sam to shy off of saying these things and making them sound too serious so he says “I want to thank ya” which sounds more casual. When he’s lost in emotion (like later when he throws Dean against a wall and says “don’t you say that”), he enunciates his you’s. I think this is unintentional of Sam and intentional of Jared. Sam’s trying not to scare Dean off or sound too confessional- he’s seen how Dean reacts to that.

-Sam says “even when I couldn’t count on anyone”

Dean gave him consistency and safety and the knowledge that he was always loved. Dean’s his sanctuary.

-Dean says the house is “burning to the ground, it’s suicide”

“I don’t care” “I do”

Sam is reckless. He has a safe place to land, so he often acts without really thinking through the consequences, and Dean is always there for him. This is the THIRD house fire Dean has protected Sam from. Interesting that Sam asked Jessica, his Dean replacement, “what would I do without you?” in ep1 and she said “crash and burn.” Actually that’s what you would do without Dean :)

-Sam says killing the demon is “all we’ve ever cared about” he doesn’t realize that Dean has always cared more about him than about revenge or justice or whatever else. Dean would rather have Sam. Wild that Sam doesn’t know he’s Dean’s top priority yet. I wonder if he knew that pre-Stanford?

-Sam gets angry when Dean says they can’t bring Jessica or their mom back. It mirrors Dean slamming Sam against the wall in ep1 when he told Dean their mom is never coming back. Sam’s anger melts as soon as Dean speaks and he ends up just kind of grasping Dean’s shirt and pressing into him with this desperate look on his face. They look at each other’s mouths.

-Dean is accepting of Sam grabbing him and throwing him against a wall, just like Sam handles it in s2 when Dean punches him in the face. They have no normal way to express how intensely they feel about each other so it comes out as violence or care when one is injured. Love and need and pain are inextricable between them- they love each other in ways that are painful. So they just submit to each other like Yes, finally something that feels strong enough. It’s like it’s soothing to express and receive each other’s needs, even as pain. It has to come out somehow.

-Dean says that the three of them are all he has and “sometimes I feel like I’m barely holding it together” Dean doesn’t let himself fall apart, and he wants to fall apart with Sam here, begging Sam to be careful with his life, to understand that he needs Sam. He’s saying Please don’t get hurt, I need you, I’m falling apart.

Sam could kiss him right now. Dean’s not holding it together enough to try pushing Sam away or protecting him from their feelings.

-Dean says “without you and dad, I-” and I think that Dean obviously loves and cares about John but the real issue is that he couldn’t say “without you, I-” on network television because they would have just made out. The mention of their dad brings Sam back to himself. He turns away from Dean and lets go of him with what looks like some effort. Dean looks lost and he’s also still tilting his head up with his lips parted looking like Sam didn’t kiss him. Sam asks him to call John.

-This parallels when Dean told Sam to call Sarah in 1x19. Dean calls even though he’s still emotionally involved in the conversation with Sam and didn’t finish what he was saying. He’s just admitted something that was difficult for him, and Sam reacted by pulling away, distancing himself, exactly as Dean did when Sam admitted Jessica isn’t the main reason he’s not interested in anyone.

I’m a John-would-kill-Dean truther if he found out about anything untoward going on between his boys, so the mention of their Dad and the fact that he’s in danger would absolutely make Sam force himself away from Dean.

This specific dynamic of Sam pleading with Dean for something and Dean surrendering brokenly to Sam in a Please give it to me Please just take it loop where neither is willing to act makes me want to chew on my own ribcage.

[heyclickadee]

Discussion of possible Bad Batch spoilers under the cut:

Full credit to @eriexplosion for basically all of this, to begin with. They found this article from Collider with another pre-season interview, and it’s kind of interesting It’s mostly about Fives, Echo, and how the writers wanted to include a conversation about Fives between Rex and Echo, but never found a place to put it and so imagine it having happened off screen. And that’s actually all very interesting and kind of what I expected—that they’d thought about it but weren’t sure where to put it. But there is also a segment where they look forward to season three, and in that segment, we get this:

Okay, first off, full credit to @eriexplosion again for pointing out the “or is he?” because I blazed right past that.

Second, Collider has the review copies. The person who wrote this article, Arezou Amin, isn’t the same person at Collider who posted their impression of the first eight episodes on social media (Maggie Lovitt), and may not have seen the review episodes. But Maggie Lovitt, who also conducted the interview on which the write-up is based, has, and she probably involved in at least checking over the write-up, and therefore at least didn’t demand that, “Or is he?” be taken out. Meaning there’s a good chance it’s there on purpose with someone in the know not objecting to it.

Third, “Or is he?” OR IS HE? oR iS he?? Oooorrrr iiisssss hhheeeeeeeeeee I’m chewing on your drywall, Collider.

And fifth, joking aside, I think that this, combined with everything else, and the deleted Joel Aron tweet actually gives us a good idea of where the lines for how people in the know are allowed to talk about Tech are. People at media outlets outside Lucasfilm can say he’s dead outright (whether or not they know for sure). People in the cast and crew can’t say that outright; they can talk about it very seriously and as though he’s gone, but they have to use euphemisms that they don’t have to with other characters, and they always have to leave at least a bit (and sometimes a lot) of wiggle room in their phrasing for him to be alive. Those euphemisms have a pattern to them and a lot of the phrasing makes the most sense if Tech is coming back in a way that severely limits what he can do in the field, if he can be part of the action in the field at all. And people writing the summaries for the Star Wars website have to write the most non-committal things possible, like, “Tech fell from a tram car.”

Cast and crew also can’t outright say that he’s alive, but they can hint at it, and hint pretty directly. Like. Really directly. “Gently cupping the faces of the audience and telling them that it’s going to be okay” kind of directly. And repeatedly. What they seemingly can’t hint about, however, is how Tech might be coming back or where he might be—even IF the hints are misleading or possibly unintentional (either of which which the deleted Joel Aron tweet might have been).

Which honestly just makes me think that the how rather than the if was what the people involved thought would be the center of all the speculation.

Edit: Apparently the official Star Wars website can use the word death in the editorial part of interviews. I should, however, not that the DBB interview that went up today is the only one to have done so, and that DBB himself never said Tech died. What he actually says fits into the pattern of what he’s been saying for months.

[thefearisoneself]

Jax might be one of the creators?

I could be totally off base here but here's some thoughts I've been having

Our first introduction to Jax outside of his place in the intro is him asking Caine "Is this one of your NPCs, or is this a new sucker? Because if it's a new character, we're going to have to redo this whole theme song."

Now first off, since as far as we and assumably the characters know, Caine is an autonomous AI, the question of 'Is this one of your NPCs?' especially in the way it's said strikes me as if there's an oddly familiar relationship between the pair. If Jax did create Caine and this game his particular flavour of befuddlement at Caine's possible NPC generation would make more sense IMO.

Secondly, Jax seems weirdly invested in the theme song's completion? He doesn't seem annoyed they have to do it in general like Zooble, just that they have to do it AGAIN.

Moving away from this initial moment, he's also the one to suggest the adventure for Pomni. While he's annoyed with what the Gloinks end up being, he again isn't annoyed by the adventures themselves like Zooble, which you'd kind of assume a character like him might be, but if he was the one to set up the idea as the game's developer it makes some amount of sense he'd be amused by these antics because he made it like that to some extent, and he does seem to have fun on the adventures once they get into it as well.

Then there's of course him having keys to everywhere when Ragatha suggests he literally shouldn't be able to do that. Silly joke that the asshole character can do basically whatever he wants? Probably, but it could also be hold over from his abilities as the game's developer.

He's also easily the calmest and most put-together character of the cast, going with the flow of everything and having no real urgency to do anything but enjoy the ride and watch the other characters suffer at Caine's unintentional hands.

Somebody else also noted that Jax is weirdly upset about abstracted Kaufmo being put in the cellar. This could either imply they were friends, or that Jax has a personal grievance with what happens to abstracted people. If we assume it's the latter for the sake of this theory, I can imagine it would be pretty frustrating to have your playerbase go through this game-breaking bug and the only way to 'fix' it is just to sweep it under the rug.

Another thing that could easily be a throwaway but for the sake of this theory is Jax' last line in the pilot "Sheesh, lay off it, since when are you an expert on the digital world?" would also make sense if he's the actual creator of said digital world, it would be a personal offence to suggest Kinger knew more.

On top of everything, if we assume that Jax is telling the truth about having been there for years, that implies some interesting things. We know from Goose's Q&As/Tumblr/Twitter that Jax is the youngest member of the cast, being only 22, along with Zooble.

But Zooble is also the most recent character to join the circus before Pomni, while we don't know exactly how long before, it at least exempts them from the weirdness that this timeline creates in terms of Jax.

If Jax was stuck here for any more than 4 years, he wouldn't have even been an adult yet, which seems pretty suspicious given the ages of everyone else when they presumably would've gotten stuck in the program.

Of course headset aside we don't actually know the circumstances of how anyone else got stuck in the game or for how long, but it does give me pause to consider that detail about Jax.

So ultimately I could see it being revealed later down the line that Jax was some kind of tech revolution prodigy who created Caine and this world, but being young as he was had no real idea of the ramifications of what he created or ultimately how to manage it. I have no clue how he got trapped, or ultimately if he even is, but that's theorizing for when we hopefully have more to work with.

Regardless, take all this with a grain of salt, I fully recognize all of this could just be connections I'm making of nothing, but it's something that's been plaguing my mind and I'd be remissed if I just let it sit and never put it out there if it did end up being true in the end.

Hope you guys enjoy my massive overanalysis of Jax' actions in the pilot and hopefully we get to see more from this gang in like 3-6 months' time.

[burberrycanary]

Hi there! I am about midway through reading your story Lost Vocabularies and it is amazing!! The whole series has been so lovely, I’m obsessed with the way you write! The way that you convey the boys complicated emotions and capture all the little nuances of their dynamic has me feral!! Beyond even them the way you inject so much personality into the locations is so good, I feel like I am there!! So thank you for writing this lovely story 💕 I was wondering if you happen to have a list of all the books that Bucky and Steve read? I have been looking up a lot of them and adding them to my to read list bc they sound so interesting lol! On that same note, how did you decide what books to mention? Are they all ones that you have read or did you do research to find ones you thought they would like?

I’ve been coming back and rereading this kind and wonderful comment in my inbox over the last few weeks when way too many massive, stressful, time-sensitive things were all happening at once. 💕 But since I have a little breather between crazy periods, I get to dive in here as a treat.

Lost Vocabularies involved a lot of research, which I hope isn’t apparent because I didn’t want there to be any noticeable difference between the parts of the story that are based on places I’d been, foods I’d tried and books I’d read personally—and what was created purely based on research. Fingers crossed that the seams don't show!

In this series, we see both Steve and Bucky use art to process—helping them understand themselves and connect to the world again. Bucky is drawn to stories while Steve as an artist is much more visual, but the underlying impulse is similar. In the same way that you learn a lot by glancing through someone’s bookshelves, what characters read is interesting to me, and revealing. This version of Bucky is a very private person so these books offer a glimpse into his inner life. And as the POV character we get to experience all these things alongside Steve.

I’m not much of a sci-fi or fantasy reader so some of Bucky’s picks were a real challenge for me. But I wanted these to be grounded in the characters and the storytelling functions, not based on my own taste and opinions, though of course those always bleed through. 

Steve’s Reading List

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Alice Neel: People Come First by Kelly Baum and Randall Griffey

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston, edited by Ann J. Abadie

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 by Jia Lynn Yang

Bucky’s Reading List

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time by Richard Feynman

Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos by Steven H. Strogatz

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

I’ve included some notes and commentary on why I picked each of these works under the cut.

The Same River, Twice (The Man Is Still Left with His Hands)

The Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham

Classic post-WWII dystopian sci-fi that focuses on society collapsing after a series of catastrophes that were unintentional but very much caused by people, which leads to a lot of the population becoming blind. Thematically this work engages with the loss of identity that people, both abled and disabled, face in the process of survival and a dark look at what happens after societies break down. How this applies to Bucky is obvious, but part of the argument of this post-Endgame series is that it applies to Steve, too. 

Also, there are huge mobile carnivorous plants. 

Fun fact: the opening of this novel is said to have been the inspiration for 28 Days Later!

Still Left with the River (The Paradox of Motion)

Alice Neel: People Come First by Kelly Baum and Randall Griffey

Alice Neel’s portraits are extraordinary, almost unnervingly vivid. In this story, Steve is familiar with her work as a fellow New York-based artist active in communist circles in the 1930s. She also worked for the WPA, producing wonderful street scenes that documented New York neighborhoods of the era. 

To be honest, I have so many questions about what Steve was up to in the late 1930s before his war mania of the 40s hits.

One of the core themes of this series is Steve struggling with what his body is for if it’s no longer for violence. Who is he if he’s not a soldier? What is his radically changed body if it’s not a weapon? How do you come home from the war?

In this regard, Steve and Bucky have all kinds of shared life experience.

So thematically I include Neel because of her startling gift for capturing personalities and bodies through a process of frank, earnest, truthful observation of the integrated completeness of body and self: this space that’s you. 

But a book of Alice Neel’s work with her sensitive portraits and fleshy frank nudes pulls him into flipping through page after page of these personalities and bodies, not idealized: seen.

Steve isn’t ready for that when he bumps into this big “impractical” art book in a holdover Barnes & Noble in Brooklyn, not when he’s still so shook up and adrift. But he will be.

There’s such empathy and radical humanism to her pieces. “People,” as she famously said, “come first.” I stand by the conclusion that Steve would love her work.

The Thing on the Doorstep and Other Weird Stories by H. P. Lovecraft

Lovecraft was relatively unknown in his lifetime—he died in 1937—but his stories were published in popular fantasy pulp magazines like Weird Tales and Astounding Stories, which is where Bucky would have come across his work. The fact that Steve recognizes Lovecraft by name means that teenage Bucky must have talked about what he was reading and the pulp stories he liked with teenage Steve, which is adorable—“this Lovecraft fellow, Steve, you wouldn’t believe the stuff he comes up with.” And Steve was paying attention enough to remember two decades and change later without the benefit of his serum-enhanced memory, which hurts my heart a little in the best possible way. 

That’s how Steve all these years and decades later is able to wordlessly toss this collection of H. P. Lovecraft’s stories at Bucky on a hot hazy stumbled-upon beach in northern Florida and watch Bucky’s whole face light up. 

And of course Bucky would view Lovecraft as a great beach read 😂

But this is the basis for something I’ve written into this series: Bucky excitedly sharing things he finds interesting with Steve—wanting to tell Steve first, Steve most. And although Steve is quiet, stoical and very self-contained, he’s paying a whole hell of a lot of attention.

Given that Bucky is canonically a Tolkien fan, I think the imaginativeness and ranging scope of Lovecraft’s complex, often interconnected stories would appeal to him. And, thematically, Lovecraft is distinctive for the era for having characters psychologically fragment when confronting these vast inhuman others. 

“The Call of Cthulhu” opens with:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

Steve and Bucky have each voyaged out a long way.

Trauma, in a way, is a form of terrible knowledge. You can heal but you can’t unknow things. 

Not Language but a Map (The Grammar of Sensation)

A Scanner Darkly by Philip K. Dick

This is the first book in the series that we see Bucky pick for himself. And, wow, he picks a doozy with themes of multiple and unstable identities, invasive surveillance, manipulation, psychosis, and how individuals can get chewed up by larger systems, falling through the cracks of society. Dick was writing based on his own troubled experiences with southern California drug culture of the early 70s, but this work gets at much more fundamental darknesses that I think would speak to some of the horrors Bucky has gone through and won’t talk about, not even with Steve. 

Within the first few pages, we get this:

It was midday, in June of 1994. In California, in a tract area of cheap but durable plastic houses, long ago vacated by the straights. Jerry had at an earlier date sprayed metal paint over all the windows, though, to keep out the light; the illumination for the room came from a pole lamp into which he had screwed nothing but spot lamps, which shone day and night, so as to abolish time for him and his friends. He liked that; he liked to get rid of time. By doing that he could concentrate on important things without interruption.

The Beautiful Mysterious: The Extraordinary Gaze of William Eggleston, edited by Ann J. Abadie

Eggleston was an early pioneer in color photography and that fascination with color is very apparent in his work. I think this focus would grab Steve as an artist who doesn’t take seeing the full spectrum of color for granted. Even in the MCU’s thin action-film scripts, Steve comments on things that offend his aesthetic sensibilities even when that has absolutely no bearing on the situation at hand, from Stark Tower to Lang’s van.

Not even a world-ending crisis can keep Steve from going, wow, no, that’s ugly. I enjoyed running with that 😂

Steve’s view of Eggleston’s photographs shifts over the course of the series, reflecting what he’s feeling, from the fragmented and disconnected detachment—“isolated and off-kilter”— that he sees in them at the beginning that shifts to the passionate engagement in the world he finds in them later. 

Steve looks through the whole book of William Eggleston’s photographs again and at first the colors still roll over him like the shockwave of a distant explosion, all he can focus on. But gradually the subjects and compositions pull forward, too: monumentalized images of the everyday that at first seem neutral, the work of a detached observer. But the off-center framing of ordinary life is so deliberate as though everything might be important and where every detail deserves attention—that’s nothing like neutral. That’s not detached at all. You have to care a whole hell of a lot.

This mirrors the journey this post-Endgame Steve goes on. Because Steve Rogers should be a character who cares a whole hell of a lot, not what the MCU writers eventually reduced him to. And that’s what this fix-it is trying to fix. 

Lost Vocabularies that Might Express (The Memory of These Broken Impressions)

QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter by Richard Feynman

I love writing Bucky as a big fucking science nerd. His last night in New York and how does he want to spend the time? At a science fair with his best friend and a couple of pretty girls. So Bucky reading about quantum electrodynamics is delightful to me. The thing is, though, Bucky is a bright enough guy with a high school education. He’s not a genius—and the MCU is lousy with geniuses. But if Bucky wanted to learn a little more about all this quantum stuff he heard about in passing during some vague and very improbable sounding explanations, which by the way also allowed one of the few people still living who truly matters to him and the closest thing Bucky had left to family to fuck off to the past, well, Feynman’s QED isn’t a bad place to start in understanding some of this quantum stuff, at least. 

Feynman here is very much writing for a popular audience. His writing is conversational—the book is adapted from a set of lectures he gave—and his voice is witty, casual and surprisingly light, but at the same time Feynman is deeply invested in helping lay people understand quantum mechanics. The book opens with:

Alix Mautner was very curious about physics and often asked me to explain things to her. I would do all right, just as I do with a group of students at Caltech that come to me for an hour on Thursdays, but eventually I’d fail at what is to me the most interesting part: We would always get hung up on the crazy ideas of quantum mechanics. I told her I couldn’t explain these ideas in an hour or an evening—it would take a long time—but I promised her that someday I’d prepare a set of lectures on the subject.

I prepared some lectures, and I went to New Zealand to try them out—because New Zealand is far enough away that if they weren’t successful, it would be all right! Well, the people in New Zealand thought they were okay, so I guess they’re okay—at least for New Zealand! So here are the lectures I really prepared for Alix, but unfortunately I can’t tell them to her directly, now.

C’mon! Tell me Bucky Barnes would not be hooked by this opening. 

Thematically, and more seriously, the question of how could Steve do this? has two very different meanings. So far in this series Bucky isn’t ready to confront the harder version of that question which comes potentially with some very painful answers: how could Steve make that choice? Nope, he’s not ready for that. Instead, his brain unconsciously takes the easier way out: trying to understand quantum electrodynamics. 😂😭

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Bucky must have liked A Scanner Darkly, because he went for another Philip K. Dick novel. Today remembered mostly as the source material for Blade Runner, this bleak dystopian novel is set in the aftermath of a devastating nuclear war that destroys most life on Earth. The work has themes around empathy—who feels empathy and for what?—materialism and what really makes us human. 

I find it interesting how Sebastian Stan talks about The Winter Soldier in terms of someone who has undergone a process of total desensitization, which to varying degrees is deliberately part of the training of all soldiers. But rebuilding his core sense of empathy was one of the things Bucky chose to do as soon as he had any agency in that two-year period where he was on the run, which is remarkable. As a person who has been treated as though he wasn’t human and had his empathy forcibly stripped from him, I think Bucky would have a lot of complicated feelings about the enslaved androids who escape but are ruthlessly tracked down and killed. Some of these escaped androids are dangerous and do lack basic empathy—shown in the book by torturing and mutilating an animal—while other androids seem like ordinary people just trying to live their lives. 

I like that Bucky talks about the book with Steve later in the story, returning in my view to a very old habit of bookworm Bucky wanting to share what he’d been reading with Steve <333

“I need to find something to read next,” Bucky says after wrapping up his description of an imagined religion that involved plugging into a box to virtually suffer the existence of a man forever walking up a steep hill while struck by crashing stones. 

“Well, did the androids dream of electric sheep?” Steve asks.

“Who knows?” Bucky knocks into him gently as he takes the bowl Steve passes over. “They just wanted to be free. Though the free people just wanted to own stuff or plug into a box and suffer. So, you know, sort of a grim outlook. ”

“A little light, cheerful reading.”

“Hey, we live in a world where people write ‘Take back what’s yours’ in the streets and then smash up the windows. Dystopias don’t seem so far off the mark.”

Six Not-So-Easy Pieces: Einstein's Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time by Richard Feynman

Another case of Bucky sticking with an author he likes! To me, this implies that Bucky has already read Feynman’s Six Easy Pieces, which explains some of the foundational basics of physics for a very broad and non-technical audience. Six Not-So-Easy Pieces is also drawn from Feynman’s famous Lectures on Physics, focusing here on relativity and space-time, but this work assumes a greater knowledge of math, hence the name. But as a legendary sniper Bucky must have a strong aptitude for math and anyway I just leaned into making Bucky an all-around nerd, because Bucky Barnes, nerd who grew up hot, is delightful to me. 

Relativity, Symmetry, and Space-Time are all on point for a post-Endgame fix-it, which I think should count as a not-so-easy piece in its own right. 

Throughout the series, we see Bucky using physical copies when he reads fiction, more or less from unconscious nostalgia: connecting back to memories of his younger self who was an avid reader of pulp magazines and cheap paperbacks. Once Steve gets him going with that first quietly tossed-over gift, Bucky always carries around a sci-fi or fantasy book in this series despite the limited space in his backpack. And this familiarity wouldn’t just be from his pre-war life since I figure Bucky would have gone for the Armed Services Editions that were distributed for free to soldiers. Bucky likely traded with other soldiers once he finished a book if he couldn’t get a new ASE distribution: trading in his finished novel for a new one is Bucky unconsciously falling back into another old habit.

But for non-fiction, Bucky is absolutely here for the Modern Marvel of being able to carry around as many books as he likes on his phone. I figure Bucky would have used public libraries during certain stages of his recovery when he was homeless and migratory since they are a place to get information that is consistently available in cities; and a warm, quiet place you can go with a minimal number of security cameras. I headcanon a middle-aged librarian who has a few streaks of gray in her dark hair—and who reminds Bucky of someone but he has no idea who—explaining what e-books are to this tall, gaunt, soft-spoken homeless guy with an eye contact problem. And this person who isn’t the Asset anymore and isn’t Bucky Barnes yet has the out-of-nowhere thought: huh, whaddaya know. That’s pretty neat.

Nonlinear Dynamics And Chaos: With Applications To Physics, Biology, Chemistry, And Engineering by Steven H. Strogatz

Isolated systems tend to evolve towards a single equilibrium and these equilibrium points have been the focus of many-body research for centuries. But life is generally not that simple because most systems aren’t isolated. Often the dynamics of a system result from the product of multiple different interacting forces and objects in these systems can change between multiple different attractor wells over time. Or as Strogatz puts it:

As we’ve mentioned earlier, most nonlinear systems are impossible to solve analytically. Why are nonlinear systems so much harder to analyze than linear ones? The essential difference is that linear systems can be broken down into parts. Then each part can be solved separately and finally recombined to get the answer. This idea allows a fantastic simplification of complex problems, and underlies such methods as normal modes, Laplace transforms, superposition arguments, and Fourier analysis. In this sense, a linear system is precisely equal to the sum of its parts.

But many things in nature don’t act this way. Whenever parts of a system interfere, or cooperate, or compete, there are nonlinear interactions going on. Most of everyday life is nonlinear, and the principle of superposition fails spectacularly. 

You can think of nonlinear dynamics as situations in which the sum of the parts is insufficient to understand the whole. This connects to multiple themes in this story as Bucky and Steve try to understand themselves, their lives and each other. But here Bucky is also just continuing to live his best life as a nerd with a strong intuitive knack for math, a high school education, an internet connection and a growing collection of science e-books. Or as Bucky puts it:

“It’s nice, though, like this smart guy is just talking to you but doesn’t assume you’re dumb because of what you don’t know.”

It’s touched on only very lightly in the series so far, but Bucky has a lot of complex feelings about higher education that relate to class, indirectly to sexuality, and go back to the experience of being the son of upwardly mobile working-class immigrants who were very bought-in on a traditional take on the American Dream.

Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert A. Heinlein

I picked this partly because I thought the title would grab Bucky, who has been a stranger in a strange land several times over. Thematically this midcentury sci-fi novel focuses on challenging social norms through having the main character, a human who’d been raised by Martians on Mars, come back to Earth as an adult. A best-seller in its day that was controversial for its rejection of Christianity, monogamy and the nuclear family, the work is very tied to the looming cultural changes of the 60s and 70s. 

The novel’s critical reputation has been steadily in decline for decades, but I think Bucky would find it interesting since he grew up within the traditional early 20th-century culture this novel satirizes and challenges—mores that this story’s version of Bucky didn’t unquestioningly accept but didn’t openly challenge, either.

Having Bucky pick this novel reflects the themes for the last act of this story that focus more on Steve and Bucky's different experiences as closeted queer men growing up in a deeply homophobic society. These experiences continue to shape and impact them and yet are also a past these two are coming to terms with and growing beyond. 

Fun fact: this novel coined the word “grok.”

One Mighty and Irresistible Tide: The Epic Struggle Over American Immigration, 1924-1965 by Jia Lynn Yang

Of all the books featured in this series, One Mighty and Irresistible Tide is my top recommendation. This is an accessible, well-written history of a topic that haunts American history: immigration. The specific focus is the waves of legislation passed in the first half of the 20th century that tried—and often succeeded—in limiting who could legally immigrate based on the racial and ethnic hierarchies that equally haunt American history, right down to the foundation. 

In this series, I wanted to pick up the themes of social justice and immigration that were so vaguely and incoherently included in TFATWS. These themes are inherent in the Snap and Return plotline except that Disney does not want to touch any of these politics with a ten-foot pole. But I remain fascinated by trying to wrap my mind around what it would mean for half the population to vanish and then return five years later, catastrophically in both cases. It’s a huge, intricate, sticky, difficult world-building problem that’s inescapably political. 

Steve isn’t quite ready to dive into facing or helping to fix the problems of the post-Return world that his actions helped to create. But here we get to see Steve’s burned-out passion and conviction slowly rekindle as he reads about the complicated and often ugly history of American immigration—and he gets mad about it. Of course, he gets mad about it! This is my answer to the ludicrous idea that Steve Rogers could quietly sit out the second half of the twentieth century. 

At the same time, I can have compassion for Steve knowing he can’t keep going but not knowing how to help himself, only to be given the cursed monkey’s paw of time travel. And he fucks up. His actions have real and lasting consequences. But that doesn’t make the situation hopeless or mean Steve can’t try to repair the relationships he damaged or work to regain the trust he lost, assuming he’s lucky enough to be given another chance by people who love him but have been hurt by his choices.

One of the greatest challenges in writing this Endgame fix-it was accepting Endgame as the starting point of the story and trying to reconcile a character I love with the choices canon has him make. Over the course of these stories, the central point isn’t Steve coming back to Bucky. It’s Steve coming back to himself. Through a slow and painful struggle, Steve finds himself again—rediscovering his stubborn endurance, his compassion for others and his drive to set wrongs right. Steve stumbled, badly, but he gets back up. Because that’s who Steve Rogers is. 

And because of who Bucky Barnes is—his innate kindness, his warm-hearted generosity and his stubborn loyalty that isn’t blind but runs deep—that’s how these two characters come back to each other, after everything.

Deliberately, this series is the first hard-fought and hopeful glimmer in a long trudging process that can get so heavy to carry forward, day after day, but is shot through with moments of beauty and joy all the same. 

I can't go on; I'll go on.

In other words, to quote one of my favorite poets: what the living do.

[notmoreflippingelves]

saemi-the-dreamer asked:

OTP ask 😉 ! Krisnix: 10, 14, 30, 39, 42 ; Estelanor: 2, 5, 18, 30, 51 please?

Splitting these up into two posts again as I rambled on for way too long. And this way, I can post at least part of it sooner <3. This one is the krisnix one.

Krisnix

10. Describe their first date

They have like three "first dates" lol. The first would be the first time Kristoph invites Phoenix to join him for dinner at the Borscht after Phoenix finishes his shift there (or in-between shifts). Kristoph offers to pick up the check (he will do this on all their subsequent dates as well, and Phoenix doesn't resist in the least). Phoenix *technically* gets an employee discount when he dines at the Borscht but he never uses it with Kristoph--both because he enjoys making Kristoph spend more--and because he knows that Kristoph himself is enough of a snob that he'd hate feeling like a "cheap date" who couldn't afford to pay the proper bill.

Neither of them really expects this to turn into a regular thing. They just happen to be there (either Kristoph was working on a case in the area or purposely sought Phoenix out following the Bar Association's ruling) and be hungry at the same time. So they figure that they might as well eat together and talk through the conversation. And again, both of them are pretty surprised at how agreeable they find each other's company.

Phoenix is much more intelligent and well-read than his unpolished "every man" exterior would suggest--largely due to his time as an arts major. And Kristoph is surprised at how much they have to talk about. He may not be as cultured as Kristoph by a long shot, but he's surprisingly interesting and insightful, nevertheless. And the conversations end up being a lot more stimulating (in more ways than one) and engrossing than Kristoph ever expected.

Meanwhile even though Kristoph Gavin comes across as the coldest, most remote and pretentious person that you've ever met at first (and to be fair, there is a good bit of that in him still), Phoenix is amazed at how full-of-life-and-light Kristoph can be when you catch him on the right topic. He positively gushes about dogs and tells the funniest, warmest stories about Klavier-as-a-small-child. It's rather adorable and super unexpected. He's also surprisingly funny. His wit is much drier than Phoenix's own, and a bit more biting. But still, it's there and it's sometimes irrestitable. Plus, Kristoph is also funny in unintentional ways, given how stiff and formal and seemingly stoic he often is. So much so that Phoenix can't help but look at him and laugh--simultaneously with derision (i.e. "can you fucking believe this guy?") and with genuine affection (i.e.. "it's fucking cute how ridiculous he is without meaning to be.")

Their second "first date" would be the first time that they do something together in a place other than the Borscht Bowl. Neither of them come even close to acknowledging it as a date. This is simply an" outing that we will do together since I enjoy your company and we are sort of 'friends' now." It probably comes about rather organically. Kristoph mentions a different restaurant that he recently tried with Klavier and wonders if Phoenix has ever tried it. (Of course, he hasn't. The entrees cost more than he makes in a given night at the Borscht). Which then naturally extends to Kristoph saying that it's a pity Phoenix hasn't had a chance to go yet, and perhaps, he and Kristoph might go together some evening as friends.

Their third "first date" would be much the same as one of the ones that came before. But with a crucial difference. They are still nowhere near identifying this particular outing as a "date." But since their last "first date," their "friendship" has since extended to include physical intimacy of some kind. Maybe they've had a drunken kiss or two--or maybe they've actually done teh sex. Nevertheless, they are both acutely aware that things are DIFFERENT between them from then on, while also stubbornly refusing to admit to each other that things are different. They know this is a date. They know that they are much more than friends--even ones "with benefits"--but you will never get them to acknowledge this fact. This is just a shared social experience between two men who enjoy each other's company and lips and there is nothing more to it than that. (There is a great deal more to it than that).

Sadly, they never got to the point of a fourth "first date" (i.e. one that they openly acknowledge as a date) in canon, but they still can in my heart.

14. How do their personalities compliment each other? How do they clash?

Both Phoenix and Kristoph are artistically-minded, driven, and very intelligent (albeit in different ways.) As I mentioned in the previous point, Phoenix is somewhat more "cultured" than one would imagine and Kristoph is not *quite* as much of a humorless stick-in-the-mud than he appears. So they actually find that they have a great deal to talk about and can enjoy each other's company. Due to the circumstances that brought them together, there is inevitably a little bit of a facade to their "friendship" but not nearly as much of one as you might think.

In terms of their differences counterbalancing each other, Kristoph's cautious and reserved nature helps reign in some of Phoenix's unhinged impulsiveness. Meanwhile, Phoenix's sense of humor and spontaneity can sometimes force Kristoph to stop taking everything (especially himself) so damn seriously and to open himself up to life outside professional success.

However, it isn't all smooth sailing for them. These same differences can cause friction between them just as often as they smooth it. Moreover, the fact that both men are extremely stubborn also leads to clashes.

As a workaholic and supremely ambitious person in his own right, Kristoph also finds himself frequently frustrated by Phoenix Wright's perceived laziness and lack of ambition. They both know that Phoenix is capable of being more than dubiously sober piano bum and illegal poker player at a mediocre dive bar. So why isn't Phoenix "trying" harder to find something better for himself?

Meanwhile, Kristoph is also trying very hard not to acknowledge that Phoenix's current state is very much Kristoph's own fault. He tries to convince Phoenix to lift himself out of his sorry state, at least in part to ease Kristoph's own conscience.

Kristoph is also very unaware that much of Phoenix's perceived lazy, aimlessness is an act--one carefully tailored to lull Kristoph into a false sense of security so that Phoenix can make his move.

Naturally, the biggest barrier between them is the one that they can never directly acknowledge. Kristoph's role in orchestrating Phoenix's disbarment and Phoenix's complete awareness of this fact. On the rare occasion that the topic comes up indirectly in conversation (ex: any mention of Phoenix's former legal career, Kristoph's Bar Association duties, Trucy's life before Phoenix, media coverage of the so-called "Dark Age of Law,"etc.) things between Kristoph and Phoenix become decidedly more tense than usual. Lots of sarcastic remarks, comments that can be taken in more than one way, and little arguments over matters that would normally not have provoked such a response. Again, they can't ever discuss the real state of things openly so they have their little proxy spats and then quickly try to change the subject.

30. Your OTP gets to pick out each other’s outfits; what is each wearing?

Phoenix loves to make Kristoph dress more casually--both because it's cute but also because he thinks it's mentally/psychologically "good" for Kristoph. He will be more relaxed when he wears clothing that is softer, looser, and/or more comfortable. I think Kristoph probably has a Gavinners-branded hoodie or sweatshirt that is leftover merch from Klavier, and Phoenix is constantly trying to persuade him into wearing it--ideally with jeans instead of Kristoph's normal dress pants. He eventually gives in, partly because Phoenix Wright is unbelievably stubborn but also partially because damn it, the sweatshirt (though far too casual for professional use) is very soft and very warm--and Kristoph has always been the sort of person who gets cold easily. And there is something very relaxing and soothing about letting himself dress for warmth and physical comfort instead of trying to impress people. Also he feels much freer to cuddle with Vongole (which is also psychologically very good for him) when he's less concerned about getting dog hair on his nice work clothes.

Kristoph, conversely, likes to dress Phoenix up. Underneath that dreadful hat and sweatshirt, Phoenix Wright is a rather handsome man with nice broad-shoulders, a pleasingly strong jaw, and bright, twinkling eyes. He really should show off his handsome features and physique. And yet, he hides himself in this loose, plebian garb and two days worth of stubble. (Kristoph is in deep denial about how much he likes Phoenix's stubble. Phoenix is completely aware of the effect he has on the other man).

So Kristoph is always looking for excuses to put Phoenix in a suit or even just a button-down shirt with a tie. And sometimes, Phoenix is willing to indulge him, even if it still feels weird to put on his "trial suit" to go anywhere other than courtroom. But he does like reminding Kristoph (and himself) just how nicely he can clean up when he wants to.

(Kristoph is so lucky that he never got to see three-piece suit dilfnix and his waistcoat of sexyness. He would've died of lust on the spot, and all Phoenix would've done was laugh.)

Another "compromise" is that Kristoph is able to talk Phoenix into a bit more often is a short-sleeve polo shirt. A little more dressy than his normal hoodie but still not properly formal.

(Of course, Kristoph never quite thinks through the ramifications of this. He is Victorian level of repressed-yet-horny. And so the instant, Phoenix's bare forearms enter the chat, kristoph.exe promptly stops working.)

39. Who would rescue an injured animal and nurse it back to health? What would the other think?

Honestly, I think its fairly plausible that either would do this. But honestly, it's much more interesting to think about Kristoph being the one to do it so that's where I'm gonna focus.

This could be a possible backstory for Vongole acquisition. Kristoph's job led him to find the most Beautiful Dog in the World™ left abandoned (and possibly wounded) after her owner died or went to prison. At first, he intends to take Vongole in for a short while until he can find a new home for her. (She's a purebred and a very good girl so Kristoph isn't ready to just dump her in an animal shelter's care and hope for the best). But it's not long until he finds himself just completely enraptured by her and unable to imagine his life without her.

Phoenix, meanwhile, has enjoyed watching this unfold from a bit of a distance. He doesn't meet Vongole officially for awhile, but he notices how quickly Kristoph is completely "puppy-whipped" for her. Kristoph can't stop talking about this "foster" dog he's looking after. He talks about more even than he talks about work--which is saying something. His eyes light up behind his glasses and he can't stop smiling when he's chattering about how SMART and cultured Vongole is, because she sits and listens and wags her tail whenever Kristoph is practicing his violin. And she's so got the most refined palette too. She likes only the best dog food made from the finest ingredients.

It's adorable seeing Kristoph like this, so happy and relaxed and at peace with himself. Even with all the baggage between himself and Kristoph, Phoenix genuinely likes seeing his frenemy in this light and is happy for him.

After a few months worth of Kristoph "fostering" Vongole, he finally announces that he's decided to keep her permanently and Phoenix is all ...

(Phoenix saw this coming about a week after Vongole came into Kristoph's life).

I am also struck by another possible "Kristoph-rescues-a-wounded-animal scenario" as well and would like to discuss it. In this case, I think Kristoph should find and take care of a wounded bird (preferably a baby). I think the most narratively satisfying (i.e. metaphorically resonant) would involve Kristoph having accidentally caused the bird's injury in the first place. Maybe he accidentally hit a passing bird with his car or caused the bird to fall out of its nest and injure itself, while Kristoph was tending to his garden. Kristoph would therefore have to take accountability for having hurt something so beautiful and delicate and would see his nursing the bird back to health as an atonement for his past missteps.

Phoenix, meanwhile, would have very mixed reactions to seeing Kristoph's diligent care for this particular bird. He can't help but feel a little envious seeing Kristoph take responsibility for his harmful actions in this respect, while Kristoph has utterly failed to do the same where Phoenix is concerned. The significance of this being a bird--and Phoenix's own name being a (mythical) bird is not at all lost on him either. But on the other hand, he sees Kristoph being so patient and caring and gentle with this little wounded bird, and Phoenix can't help but love him for it. Can't help but wonder if--if only circumstances were just a little different and if he and/or Kristoph were able to swallow their pride for long enough--maybe Kristoph would have been able to do the same thing with Phoenix after all. But of course, they are doomed by themselves, their anger, and the narrative so this would never happen.

If the bird is unable to be safely released back into the wild after all--or Kristoph is simply unwilling to let the bird go-- it's also possible that the caged blue bird in Kristoph's cell is in fact this very same bird. Which adds some additional metaphorical resonance to the obvious Phoenix-bird parallels. Either Kristoph has already damaged the bird (and Phoenix) so severely and irrevocably that even his most ardent attempts at atonement/undoing the harm are not nearly enough. Or Kristoph has become so mentally and emotionally attached to the bird (and Phoenix) that he refuses to let it fly away from him--especially while Kristoph himself is wasting away in prison.

42. What’s their favorite type of weather to enjoy together? (getting snowed in together, watching thunderstorms, etc.)

Phoenix most enjoys bright, warm sunny days (especially in the summertime). This is more in general than relating to Kristoph specifically. There is so much more to do when the weather is nice--including a few particular things that he enjoys doing with Trucy and often with Kristoph as well. They've gone berry-picking a few times (on Kristoph's dime), something that neither Kristoph nor Trucy had ever done before and something that they are both pleasantly surprised by. They will go for picnics at the park and talk Kristoph into taking Vongole with them. (Trucy enjoys playing several rounds of fetch with her afterwards). Sometimes, when they have a day at the pool, Kristoph will wear a big, floppy hat to keep the sun off his face, and Phoenix can't help but find it rather endearing.

Kristoph, meanwhile, enjoys the rain. Or more specifically, a steady, lightning-less medium downpour that is heavy enough to keep everyone indoors (and prevent Phoenix from leaving too soon) and water the grass, while still being nowhere near heavy enough for there to be any danger of flooding.

He enjoys taking Vongole for walks after the rain and breathing in the fresh, clean scent of the air. He particularly enjoys it when he is able to rope Phoenix (and sometimes Trucy and/or Klavier) into joining him. Especially on the very memorable occasion that they saw a full rainbow just as the sun was starting to set.

[epicfranb]

Rewatching Kino's Journey and I'm like Kino is so non-binary coded. But then episode 4 comes around and it's such major honest to god non-binary coding, I'm not even sure if it's unintentional anymore. So here's my little essay about it, ig.

Fair warning for potential spoilers under the cut! Before reading, I highly suggest watching this anime (it's really good) or just the episode in question. You don't really need any context for this, other than the basic premise of the show: Kino travels with a sentient motorcycle called Hermes. As for where to watch it, I always watch on aniwave.to. Again, this is episode 4, so go watch it!!

Since this is about the non-binary coding, I'm gonna keep the summaries short and to the point. The backstory starts with Kino saying she doesn't remember her past name anymore, but expresses the only thing she remembers about it being the bullying. This moment in itself doesn't have an obvious meaning, it is purely symbolic. The episode starts with her in a field of the flowers she was named after, long after she forgot her name; she is there later as a child, starting a new life with a new name; and it ends with her as an adult, which is the moment that leads to the scene in the beginning, nicely looping back in this circle-like narrative. This has more to do with the general ideas of freedom that the show has, rather than specifically to the topic of this essay. I just thought it was interesting how it explicitly shown that she did not like her birth name.

To avoid confusion from this point on, I'm going to refer to Kino the main character as "this girl". This is because she meets a traveler named Kino. The two spend a lot of time together, and the girl explains to the traveler the tradition of this country. This is that when children turn 12, they get an operation to "become an adult". Children are free to do whatever they like, while adults must work and nothing else, and, since this is such a big burden, they get an operation to always be happy despite it.

The girl asks if Kino has a job, and Kino says that traveling is his job. The girl then asks, "Do you hate your job?" and Kino says "No, I like it." and the girl says "Then it's not a job."

Kino realizes this is kind of fucked up and is visibly conflicted on whether he should leave the place as is, or help this girl he's made friends with somehow. He talks to this girl about the tradition, and this exchange happens:

In a world with such a clear distinction between a child and adult, it is unthinkable to the girl that someone could just be neither. This man is grown up, but he does what he likes. And he doesn't even have an answer for "what" he is. He's just "a man named Kino, that's all. And I'm on a journey."

"Doing what you like to do?" The girl asks.

"That's right, I like traveling." Kino says.

He asks the girl what she likes to do. She says she loves singing! He suggests she then should become a singer. She says she can't, because she has to grow up and take over her family's business. But it's fine, because it's about to be her operation and day and she "will be happy, even if she has to work at the inn".

The next day, the girl is conflicted. She asks her parents if it is necessary to have the operation. "Is there no other way that I can become an adult by just being myself?" Her parents are terrified and very mad at her, and the whole street gathers up to tell her off, calling her a "failure", "defective", "a waste of a girl", which are also common attitudes towards queer people in our world. They realize it was the traveler that planted the ideas in her head. The traveler agrees that each country has its own customs, and the people allow him to leave peacefully... Except the girl will be killed, for "defying her elders". Her father charges at her with a knife, but Kino shields her and dies. at this point, Hermes, the motorcycle, starts speaking to her.

This exhange continues the theme of "the secret third thing" and the freedom of choice outside of defined norms. Within the norms, it becomes clear in this scene that you either become "an adult" or you die; but, just like the traveler Kino was "a secret third thing", the girl can also run away and continue being herself. That is the third choice she gets here. And she takes it.

She rides away, Hermes giving her instructions on how to ride properly, she breaks the country gates and escapes to the grand outside. She stops and falls over on a field of flowers, the ones she was named after. She looks back and whispers "Kino..." but Hermes assumes it was her introducing herself to him. Surprised he referes to her as Kino, she throws away the last part of her past she had on her and accepts her new name.

Now that we're done with the summary, let's dissect this.

First off, Kino in her childhood looks very feminine. She has long hair, wears a pink dress and a pink headband with a cute bow. And, s we know her from the future, she looks very androgynous, her hair is short, her voice is much lower, she wears masculine clothing and an oversized coat that she got from the traveler.

She changes her looks, she changes her name, from one that she did not like to one that reflected her better, which is something that many trans and non-binary people go through. Here, I want to mention that even the traveler she met also looks sort of androgynous, which is also coding in itself, imo.

In the country where she used to live, there were two ways to live: being a child and being an adult. One did not have any sort of choice in the matter, it was decided for you. This is, of course, similar to the way that we get assigned a gender at birth and are expected to pefectly perform that gender, with no option to switch or be something else.

But young Kino meets a person who defies everything she believed in her life. He's free to go and do whatever he likes, he doesn't fit in the binary of this country, and he grew up free to be himself. This is wild to Kino at first, but she keeps thinking about it and realizing she does want to keep doing things she likes. She doesn't want to get brainwashed into doing things she hates with an unchanging smile on her face. She wants to be herself, to be free. She doesn't get that choice, of course, not while she's still in the country. She admits that becoming an adult like them would be as bad as dying; because she would lose all her personality and individuality. That's when Hermes opens her eyes to this: she DOES have a choice. Actually, this is her only chance to take it. She runs away, and she's finally free, and she throws away her past and continues life under a new name.

Even if all this is unintentional, this episode's themes still speak to the ideas and beliefs of trans and non-binary people. It is an episode about freedom of choice, freedom to be yourself despite what your culture may impose on you. This is an episode about leaving your past behind for a better future. So, in a way, this episode IS about being non-binary.

Thank you for reading!! I hope there aren't any major mistakes in here. If there are, please let me know so I can fix it (kindly, please). Like, obviously I said words like "feminine/masculine/androgynous" which are labels which don't always fit everything they get assigned to. I hope that it's clear that I used them intentionally for the purposes of getting a point across. Hope you enjoyed, and I've convinced you to watch (or rewatch) this awesome anime!! Bye-bye ^_^

[thewayuarent]

When things start to fail

SandRay edition

Yes, me again talking about SandRay as I’m their personal therapist good for me I guess. Disclaimer: I do not judge nor Sand or Ray, the most important thing to remember is that all of characters are young stupid insecure boys so everything happening makes a lot of sense. Also let’s remember that it is not about good/bad or right/wrong, it’s about complexity people and their relationships have.

So, this week they’ve reached an interesting point, haven’t they? The point when their mostly surprisingly good communications stars to fall apart. And it was inevitable. Nick and especially Boston don’t minding their own business certainly accelerated the process, but at some point it was going to happen anyway. Because the ultimate question “who are we to each other” been hanging over their heads for some time now and do my boys tried their best to avoid it. But let’s start from so-so good things.

SandRay day together. Ray goes for it like it’s an adventure, not someones real life experience. And of course he is - Ray lives in a different world and Sand’s hardships are not something he’s familiar with. @lurkingshan made a great post about how Ray constantly sees Sand as someone beneath him at well of course he is. And I love what @neuroticbookworm says here that Ray does it unintentionally - that’s just not something he ever experienced in his life. Ray is shamelessly rich and he was like this all his life. I would very surprised if he behaved differently.

That’s interesting tho - I think Ray sincerely enjoys every experience he has with Sand. And in some way he sees Sand as embodiment of freedom. For Ray a lot of it is about wind in a face, and listening new music, and laughing, and drinking, and kissing, and flirting and almost jerking off but no and not thinking about his real problems. For Sand it’s his life. It’s tough and exhausting, but still worth living.

Sand’s 24 hours. I truly appreciate Sand’s approach to life. He tells us that he has 24 hours in a day to work, sleep, being alone and - what I love about him - to dream. And I’m not saying that his life isn’t hard, it absolutely is. But despite that he still has some little things to enjoy. He dreams big. He makes beautiful breakfasts and knows places where to find good music. He has fun in a secondhand store. He finds his happiness in discovering new bands. He allows himself to get drunk and get high.

And I don’t think he never does any of it before Ray. But Ray is important, because Ray is someone he can share all this things with. And while Ray constantly being a bit jerk about that he is really into everything Sand gives to him (subtext here was unintentional but yes, sex is obviously a part of it too). And maybe Ray’s presence allows Sand to let himself go with a flow a bit more. Maybe Ray also symbolizes freedom for Sand.

And I believe that freedom is something both of them desperately need - Ray from his painful past, Sand from his exhausting present. And it all would be so good, it was mostly good for a lot of time, but. Hints were all there since the beginning.

Communication falling apart. So we see them generally enjoying each other. We see them being open and honest with each other. The whole scene where they discuss parents is about trust and vulnerability and it deserves its own post.

Very good-friends-behavior happening here. But also kind of not. And not only because them being ready to fuck each other on a constant basis. Which was hilarious by the way - three attempts to get nasty and all being ruined (1. Thank you Nick; 2. Sand being not so into public sex I guess I don’t believe him for a second he’s clearly into it but whatever; 3. Thank you Nick again and now you bring the whole drama with you good job). But all this cute boyfriends stuff happens left and right? Hugging and smiling on a ride?

Being so into each other that random girl said bye bless you?

Fucking serenade?

Like, guys, you’re not even trying. And they don’t talk about it at all. The last attempt to clarify their relationship was in episode 3 with Sand asking what kind of friends doesn’t stop kissing each other. And than they just. Moved on and never questioned it again?

They are the only couple (of the main three) in the show who doesn’t discuss their status. Even Nick and Boston do it! They are suck at it but it’s at least something. And it’s like Sand and Ray played a bit too much in going with a flow thing.

Sand tells this to his mom

And he seems really upset when Ray says that are friends

And again when Ray says not boyfriend fuck off Nick

And I get it, it really sucks. He is totally in love and his heart breaks a little bit twice in a row.

But it’s Sand who said that

And that

And that one like couple hours ago

So I feel for Sand and I am really sorry for him - my boy fell fast and hard but it’s not like Ray has any idea what Sand wants from him. Oh, wait, he has. Kind of. And he actually tries to make amends and clear the situation. Kind of.

It’s Sand this time who closes up, loosing to his fears and insecurities - and I would guess his last relationship has something to do with this. And of course Ray doesn’t push him into that conversation after one failed attempt. Because he is totally scared of ruining things. And it is so much easier to continue to pretend, for both of them, isn’t it?

It’s also smart thing to not having that conversation before they sober up but will they talk? I doubt it. Also is Ray ever sober, he has a serious problem, my poor boy. Him finishing two glasses of liquor in a row after fight was painful to watch. But I digress.

And the thing is - it isn’t even that tragic. Yes, Ray has feelings for Mew - he tries to move on, he doesn’t expect anything, but feelings (especially so long-lasted) doesn’t go away in a moment. And Ray has a right to falling for Sand while still falling out of Mew. Shit like this happens a lot in real life. It doesn’t mean Sand isn’t special to him only because someone else is.

And I kind of think that they would work it out somewhat fine. Not great, but fine. But here it is, our Boston card. Yes, I blame Boston, that’s my conclusion.

Conclusion. Judging by what we saw in trailer I’m gonna predict that this episode was a start for both Sand and Ray being miscommunication mess. Because both of them are falling for each other. And both are very scared of it.

This is not going to be easy. They will pretend they don’t care for each other and most importantly - that they have no expectations towards each other. They clearly have. We see it with Sand and the moment Sand decides fuck it I’m done we will see it with Ray.

This shit needs a lot of hard work. Will they be able to go for that? Do they even need it? I don’t know. Let’s hope that they will. Or at least that they won’t ruin each other totally over failed relationship.

[dexter-erotoph]

hey i have no idea how dex works n you seem to be a huge enthusiast of their character so can u like.. yap about dexters personality a bit (/nf!!). im trying to work out their personality but im really confused on how to characterize them. so far, ive got some little bullet points. for a little headcanon or whatever ? i think they'd have huge interests that would be seen as a little odd, like, taxidermy or something. theyre like, a freak. (/pos)

also, i think itd have to do more research on with aspd since dex does have thatttt. uuuhm. oh yeah, a good note is that theyre not like. "Evil!! grah!! i kill people because im EVIL" cuz thats not them. they struggle with their emotions, morals, and needs. which i think also goes into the possibility of really bad intrusive thoughts perhaps.

like. they seem to have some of their morality intact (as they dont attack skid n pump immediately) before slowly spiraling and trying to hurt anyone they come across. dex also focuses on animals specifically because they dont believe that they dont feel emotion. they try to justify their behavior through beliefs and desperation to satisfy their persistent thoughts. they also run off the thrill of others pain. and i dont think theyre exactlyyy.. oblivious to the fact that this is a really bad problem, but more that they use being an exterminator to filter their needs into a.. "safer" (and in all honesty, an easier) way.

sorry for the whole ramble, but thats really all i can get so far with their character. also so sorry if this question is weird, but id just like a little input or ur idea of their character lol. no pressure tho ^_^

dont apologise i LOVE talking about dexter it Is really tricky to completely understand him kinda because of how all over the place all the things we have about him are . i was actually thinking earlier about how if sm got like adapted to a show like what happened with dhmis/ maybe we could see more of dexter and understand him better . i think ive talked about this before but i absolutely think theres kind of a thing where people see dexter as WAY more outwardly chaotic than he really is just bc well that’s like 95% of his screentime . how i really think he is is he Can get really easily excited and restless and with a lot of people it’ll drive them away (one of the characters i like to think has this dynamic with him is radford i dont know why i like the thought so much but i do) but he really is just like. hes a sweetheart he loves to draw and make stuff and hes just very smiley and laughs a lot . he isnt afraid to put himself out but he can also get like grumpy and snappy when hes paranoid Thats another thing. ive noticed in pelo’s doodles that sometimes hes portrayed complaining or just like with an irritated expression . i think while he Is a very happy go lucky type character it’s not difficult at all for him to get like . hostile for lack of better word? just annoyed at other people for something that could be really little or unintentional. i have no real point to this this probably will not help you much at all i apologise but the thing is i kinda think there’s No wrong way you can go with dexter in any way. he is such a good character that every aspect of him never feels tired or boring or really wrong to me

But uhh tldr kinda . maybe try to like nail it in that he’s just trying his best. for me thats a really big part of his character just the fact that despite everything that could potentially hold him back he always keeps his head up and just tries to do whatever he can and thats what the focus of his character would be if he wasn’t in a story that had his role revolve around his death. i hope this helps in Some way thank u very much for asking

[coraniaid]

(Answering @badwolfwho1's questions for this character ask game; three of four.)

Cordelia

5 What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

...yeah, this is just because of that scene in The Puppet Show, sorry. But I do think it's kind of arc-appropriate that Buffy's Shadow Self Cordelia sings a song about not wanting to live in anybody's shadow and then (eventually) leaves town.

12 What's a headcanon you have for this character?

Not exactly original to me but I think I am increasingly an ace Cordy truther. 

I know there are other explanations for some of the way she’s written in Buffy and that, in the high school years in particular, the writers really don’t seem to like to suggest that any of the women on the show might have any interest in sex as such (which is probably the real reason Xander spends more time talking about how physically attractive Willow’s boyfriend Oz is than Willow herself ever manages, tempting as it is to think of that as deliberate bisexual Xander / lesbian Willow foreshadowing).  

But Cordelia especially seems particularly confused (and occasionally actively repulsed) by the mere idea of sexual desire (“does looking at guns really make girls want to have sex?” she asks Xander in Innocence, while surrounded by guns herself, “That’s scary.”; “I get it!” she announces while Faith is talking to Buffy about the side-effects of Slaying, before quickly clarifying “Not the horny thing.  Yuck.”) despite the show also being clear that Cordelia has definitely had sex (among other things, there’s the story she tells about “a friend, not me” who had sex in her car and “kicked the gearshift”  in the health class in Bad Eggs). The general impression is, I feel, pretty striking (but, yeah, absolutely unintentional).

20 Which other character is the ideal best friend for this character, the amount of screentime they share doesn't matter?

In canon I really like Cordelia’s emergent friendship with Angel. No offense meant to the Cangel shippers, I just don’t really see the appeal of their relationship being romantic (and, for other reasons, I don't like the seasons where it's suggested that it might be, so it's not a take I'm normally exposed to much).  I said in a recent post that Angel doesn’t really exist in Buffy except as Buffy’s boyfriend (sometimes Cordelia or Faith might express some interest in him, but they are very clearly only doing so because he is Buffy’s boyfriend).  So it’s nice that Angel gets to be something more like a real person in his own show, and to form relationships with people that don’t have anything to do with Buffy anymore.  

(I know that many people on here like to suggest that Buffy and Cordelia would have remained friends after Cordelia left Sunnydale, but canon doesn’t really support that at all and I don’t think I see it either – I think post-high school Buffy and Cordelia would both see each other as representative of an old life they’re trying to move beyond and probably not make any effort to stay in touch -- it's noteworthty that when either of them talk about each other post-Graduation Day, which almost never happens, they do so fairly dismissively.)

Beyond canon, I think Anya and Cordelia would have gotten on well and I think it’s a shame (and slightly hard to explain in any in-universe way) that they never interact after The Wish.  Surely Cordelia is (from Anya’s perspective) the whole reason Anya is a human!  From her perspective, she’s the first person in a thousand years whose wish she was unable to grant, and trying to do so cost her her powers.  The only reason Anya can have for not being slightly obsessed about her is the fact she knows Cordelia is going to be written out of the show soon.  And equally Cordelia, post-Lovers Walk, is very clearly badly in need of a friend: that's why she starts talking to and hanging out with Anya in the first place!  And yet, after The Wish, nothing.  Feels like a wasted opportunity.

[persona5butitsincorrect]

thoughts on shuharu/headcanons?

Its not my personal favourite ship for either of them but it's definitely my favorite for Akira/Ren/whatever you wanna call him x any of the other female phantom thieves. I mean to me she was the only one who seemed like she already liked him during her confidant in the game and they do look pretty cute together as well as seem to have a matching temprement. I also feel like I can acc see a future for them as (at least as for what I imagine for Ren) running or working in a small cafe like Leblanc would suit him. As for what I imagine they'd be like in a relationship here's a couple headcannons of mine:

Lots of coffee dates, Haru would make a point of wanting to discover new obscure restaurants and cafes, and of course Ren will follow suit. Not that he doesn't enjoy it mind.

Mans whipped (😏) and pretty much owns it.

In all seriousness, it's more like he enjoys seeing her doing things that make her happy, since he knows she wasn't for so long.

When it's his turn to decide what that do on dates/days out, it's usually movies or the arcades. They're both surprisingly nuts for horror. And the part timer working at the theatre in shibuya knows their faces by now and always seems slightly afraid.

Same goes for anyone in the arcades, naturally, Haru calls out the most horrendous sadistic stuff like in mementos while they play first person shooters. It's like she forgets she's in public sometimes. Ren finds seeing peoples shocked faces pretty funny.

When Ren moves back home Haru winds up coming to visit for a majority of the summer. Out in the country, she stands out like a sore thumb even more than in Tokyo. She hadn't not been in a city before and seemed to imagine it being a lot more different than it actually is.

His parents though mostly absent are incredibly confused by her sudden surprise arrival in a chauffer, with four suitcases of clothes (she knew she was staying quite a while). Especially as they'd never even heard of her.

Ren hadn't brought her up mainly because they didn't need to know, just like they hadn't bothered to call once when he was in Tokyo, he hadn't bothered to say anything.

Honestly, Ren had very few friends at home, even less after everything that happened. And the people who did still hang around seemed to have an issue with Haru. In general she has this level of unintentional classism-- she just kind of forgets certain things are a luxury and not everyday. And it seemed to be the main thing that was putting people off tho her. It really annoyed him but he didn't really know what to do about it except from distance himself.

It was all making him really regret moving home. So much so he wound up making plans for how he'd move back to Tokyo after finishing his 3rd year of high-school and what he'd actually do with himself once he did. Plans Haru and Makoto helped him draw up.

He, like Haru, wants to run some kind of small private run cafe. Sojiro is mentoring them both. They're heavily considering the possibility of going in on the buisness venture together but it's still very much early days.

Both of them have a keen interest in French literature. Which is part of what got them both talking to eachother outside of the group in the first place. They exchange annotated books a lot - haru using purple post it's and Ren using red.

After her "Relationship" with Sugimura, Haru isn't all that comfortable with physical affection. She especially hates feeling vulnerable. It's a very slow process for her to feel secure again. Luckily Ren is very aware of that and incredibly patient. Partly because he feels the exact same way. After being caught in Sae's palace, battered and dosed up, losing his autonomy and feeling out of control. It all bore on his mental wellbeing a lot. That understanding between them is part of what makes them feel safe around eachother.

Ren has a pretty hard time getting to sleep. He thinks maybe a part of him is Afraid he'll wind up in the velvet room again. Most of the time Haru tries to stay awake with him or offer to stay up so he feels less alone and in danger. But 99% of the time she winds up conking out, of course only after half an hour as incoherent slurred talking whilst she denies she's even tired.

In line with all this, Haru still has moments where she gets incredibly upset or distressed and isn't sure how to communicate it. The way Ren chooses to respond is to give her physical space but stay with her. A majority of the time they don't talk and he just sits by her, letting her come to him if she wants/needs anything (usually a hug once she's calmed down).

There's a lot of hand holding between them. If there sat idly somewhere haru tends to grab Rens hand and trace it's edges with her finger out of boredom.

She's definitely a snorer. But it's a cute snore. Like a little toot noise every so often. That actually does help Ren sleep.

Whilst he already has a pretty good sense of fashion. Harus always wanting to dress him up, and a majority of the time he let's her.

One time Ann suggested she should try and get him to wear a dress, not expecting the fact he was more than happy to. Even more so he pulled it off with way more confidence than anything any of them had ever seen. (Ryuji discovered something about himself that day)

When there together they have this peaceful quiet sometimes, both of them enjoy just stopping and listening to the world around them (which cannot be said for some of their other friends). As well as this they have this way of being able to communicate without words. When they're in group settings it drives everyone else insane trying to figure out what the difference is between their different stares at one another mean and how they developed such a language.

[fluffyhare]

My favorite tickle ideas and tropes 💙

Below are some of my favorite tickling ideas, mostly because I just wanted to get everything in one place for when I'm writing my comics, so this should give you an idea of what I'm planning if you're interested. I also included ones that I don't like at the bottom (please don't take those personally, I'm not here to yuck yums, it's just how I feel). I may add to this as I think of more.

This is sfw but the context is definitely romantic/intimate for the most part, so I'm asking that minors not interact with this, and if I see it I'm going to block you.

Things that drive me nuts as a ler:

- shameless lees

- shy lees

- lees that hold back a bit at first, and then laugh deeply and openly, like they have absolutely no control over how much it tickles and it's all they can do to laugh their heart out

- lees that do what I ask without fuss (put your arms up, put your feet in my lap, etc <3)

- lees that hem and haw about admitting they're ticklish or they want tickles, but not in a mean way

- lees that can say the word, UNLESS the prospect of THEM being tickled comes up, then they clam right up

- lees that laugh uncontrollably just to have fingers wiggled at them, before anyone has even touched them

- lees that blush uncontrollably

- "not there!" (god help me with this one)

- lees that can withstand tickles/stay vulnerable without being restrained

- BOTH lees that are openly excited to be tickled, AND lees that are very shy about it, but want it just as much

Things that drive me nuts as a lee:

- being clothed, but having the ler reveal my spots as they tickle them, especially if it is done SLOWLY, ie: "Oooh, look what I just found~" fhsfhdgfhdhfjdh

- nervous/shy lers who get more confident the more you laugh

- lers who are actually switches, using the teases on you that work on THEM

- verbal teasing verbal teasing verbal teasing

- "This is your favorite spot, isn't it?"

- "Everyone likes it right here~"

- "Not where? Here? Right heeeere?"

- Lots and lots of anticipation/lead up

- Lots and lots of playful banter/teasing outside of a tickling context before tickling happens

- Observant lers who notice things I like/things that make me blush even if I haven't vocalized it (or even better, things I'm trying to hide)

These tropes:

- Lers that use wordplay/idioms/puns while teasing, holy shit

- Lees/switches experiencing tickles for the first time, especially if it is an alien/non-human whatever who really enjoys both tickling and being tickled, bonus if they think humans are just the cutest things~

- Medical doctor/scientist who knows way more about human anatomy than you do (first as a ler, and then unexpected payback after, which they secretly enjoy)

- Unintentional tickles that have to be endured for necessity or social norms (medical exams, massage, etc)

- switches who dish out things they absolutely CANNOT handle and then get all of it back when their lee switches <3 (I call this the glass house trope). Bonus if they get teased mercilessly and are super shy about it.

- Super powerful entities/creatures who are outrageously ticklish, and are strong enough to stop the tickling at any time, but they don't because they like it <3

- Super powerful entities that use 2% of their strength to tickle a delicate, squishy human to pieces

- Intellectuals who think they are above such weaknesses, finding out that they are most certainly NOT

- people being surprised at how ticklish they are

- cheer up tickles

General ideas that I like:

romantic context

loving looks especially from the ler to the lee

candid discussions about tickling that involve a lot of blushing and playful teasing <3333

gentleness

open consent

a mutual understanding of how much each other enjoy the tickling/being tickled

Do not like:

- bratty lees (brattiness doesn't appeal to me at all, in any context)

- sadistic lers

- familial tickling of any kind (trauma, squicks me out very badly)

- non-con of any kind. mild cnc is okay, but I don't like it if the lee seems upset, uncomfortable, or desperate in a bad way, even in a cnc context.

- primarily foot focused

- s3xual tickling

- overwhelm/many spots being tickled at once (I prefer one or two, more is okay, but if it's everywhere, then I don't get a sense of how ticklish each spot is)

[maleyanderecafe]

hi!! i love your blog a lot, youre definitely one of my faves. i found this webtoon thats pretty new called "i'm a villainess but i became a mother", there's only 3 chapters right now but the ml is definitely already a yandere lol. i just wanted to share it! have a good day :)

Haha, thank you! I'm glad you like my blog. I actually did see this one on r/maleyandere (were you the same person who posted there? If not, it's quite a coincidence). It's an isekai story (and I can hear Cherry writhing in the background from another villainess story). It is pretty short so far since it's only three chapters, but the last chapter really dove headfirst into that yandere territory.

The story starts out with Lourie who isekaied into a novel she read. While she was enjoying her rich life, she is suddenly engaged to Calix, the novel's male lead. Upon hearing this she realizes her fate of being cast aside in favor of the female lead (which is... such a horrible thing to do, who throws away someone like that so easily), getting jealous and committing crimes that lead to her death. Upon realization, she attempts to push Calix away. However because he's very charming and very in love with Lourie, the two end up falling in love and basically repeating what happens in the novel. At least until a month before the appearance of the female lead. Upon realization she starts to push away Calix and his gifts, until she goes out to see him in the rain where he's been waiting. Calix is worried about Lourie believing that he did something wrong and tries to push their wedding from two weeks to one week, however, because Lourie is still worried about the future, attempts to call it off. Surprisingly, Calix pulls her in believing that the crowned prince seduced her even calling their marriage "fate". Calix ends up drugging Lourie, even revealing that his kind facade was something he created specificially for her and that he manipulated her by pretending to act vulnerable. He claims that she will be his, no matter what.

It’s kind of interesting in this version that Lourie actually goes through with following the novel’s plot (although unintentional) and doesn’t go through anything that makes it so that she can stop her death. Most of the times the character has to undergo a giant plan to get them to not die, but not in this case. Still I do find it off that Lourie never tells Calix why she wants to break off the engagement anyways considering the two are so close. Even if she didn’t want to reveal that she was actually isekaied into a novel, she could have at least told Calix in a round about way about the female lead that’s coming in, rather than just be unreasonable and cut off the engagement for no reason. I suppose it doesn’t really matter in the end since Calix would have never let go of Lourie in the first place.

Calix as a yandere is very cunning. I’m not sure if this situation was a love at first sight thing or if it might be a generational thing (as in his parents might have traits of a yandere) but he seems obsessed with Lourie from the start. Not only does he modify his personality to fit something that Lourie likes but he also purposefully shows himself in vulnerable situations (such as being wounded or standing in the rain) to gain her sympathy. The way that Calix talks about Lourie is in a way that entraps her claims her as his own, with a lot of symbols of chains and thorns. He also was extremely jealous of the crowned prince and of course ended up drugging Lourie at the end of the latest chapter. It definitely screams of yandere and it’s only been three chapters!

But yeah, I do think Calix is one. The story itself seems to escalate really quickly, so I’m curious to see how the rest of the story plays out.

[pinkkittysaw]

HI I DON’T WANT TO PUT ALL OF THE EMOJIS BUT I WANT TO KNOW ALL OF THEM FOR YOUR ASK GAME THX 🤝

MY DEAREST SAINT ty for giving me the space to be mentally ill about my beloved(s)

i’m answering these for clive since i’m the most mentally ill about him right now 👁️👁️

answers will be under the cut due to length (and some embarrassment)

🥺: how long have you two been together?

about four to five years or so

❤️: any talk of marriage?

not in any official capacity. though vows may have been whispered to each other on a particularly romantic evening. our souls are both intertwined for the rest of eternity ^_^

🕊️: any pets?

TORGAL!!!!!!! the most loyal and fluffy hound in all of valisthea. so warm and cuddly. such a good boy. i enjoy feeding him lots of treats. clive’s heart always aches seeing the two of us snuggled up together napping.

i also have a habit of caring for any strays that wander about

🫂: do you two live together?

yes!

💌: if yes to the last question - how long?

technically we’ve been living in the same place together since he arrived to the hideaway but we didn’t start sharing chambers together til a short while after we starting dating.

💭: where did you two meet?

the infirmary 😭 i was working as an apprentice under tarja at the time and aided in tending to jill when cid brought her in.

after completing my training i started going on assignments as a healer and would often join clive n co. 😌

🥰: have you met their family? have they met yours?

i have!!! i’ve met joshua, jill, his uncle and his mother (unfortunately). did not get to meet his father before his passing, sadly (RIP TO A DILF 😔)

i simply do not have living family in most of my selfships 😭😭 so he has not met any of my relatives

😜: who is the silly one who jokes and laughs a lot?

definitely me 😔 it’s always 50/50 on whether my jokes hit or not.

clive is funny but it’s always unintentional (whereas i’ll put in effort to make people laugh) he’ll do or say something and get a giggle out of me and be like ???

😯: have you two ever taken a road trip/vacation?

not intentionally. we’ve traveled lots of places but never for leisure because we’re both such busy bees. if we’re both not out on assignments we’re usually still working. i spend most of my time in the infirmary than not.

that being said, i do make note of all the scenic places we visit to bookmark them for when more peaceful times come. the first place i’d want us to go to together is the sea. i feel the most at peace there.

😠: what’s the worst fight you’ve had?

we both have a habit of running into danger especially when the other’s life is at stake heh heh i’d say the worst outburst was during one particular scare clive gave me with his injuries.

after patching him up i became sort of passive aggressive towards him and when he calls me out on it i kind of blow up about how he can be really reckless sometimes, that i understand the importance of destroying the mother crystals but his safety will always be most important to me (as selfish as it is) and it ends up with me sobbing in his arms crying about how if anything ever happened to him i don’t know if i could go on.

obviously he’s very powerful but i can’t help but worry!!!!!!

navigating our relationship with our joint trauma sure has been interesting 👍

🤑: who has the worst spending habit?

me 😔

clive is a man of necessity for the most part and while i’m not reckless per-say, if i’m out and have the money to buy a little trinket i probably will 😭

❤️‍🔥: how does your love languages differ?

tbh i don’t know which love language of mine is the one that i need most so honestly idk!!! 😭 i am the most greedy for love angel throughout the heavens

imo, clive is big on words of affirmation. gentle reminders that he’s not actually the big bad monster he often thinks he is. just sticking by him throughout everything means a lot.

😽: who likes pda?

we both do! though clive is more reserved than i. i kinda get in fits where i’m overwhelmed with energy and need to melt into him like butter and crawl all over him. there’s no containing me at that point.

though most of the time in public it’s just me holding him from behind or hugs. his embrace is always really comforting and calming and he always indulges me ^_^

though he won’t initiate kisses in front of others cause it makes him embarrassed. i’m always the one pressing a chaste kiss to his lips after finishing up in the dining hall, leaving him in his flustered state with the rest of our dining companions.

🛏️: who stays up late? goes to bed early?

depends on the day tbh. i’m the one who usually tries to go to sleep early, since i love mornings. sometimes we’re both up late working, or plagued with thoughts of the past. i usually fall asleep before he does regardless of what time it is while he keeps a watchful eye over my sleeping form.

😘: any pet names they call you? you call them?

clive and i are both chronic calling each other by their name type people 😭

but in more intimate settings, he’ll call me angel and i’ll let a baby or two slip out

👄: talk about your first or best kiss thus far

first kiss!! first kiss!!!

okay so it wasn’t long before we started dating. he had gotten injured while he was out and had to visit the infirmary. tarja wasn’t in and i was the only one running things. he had a few gashes that needed to be stitched as well as a few abrasions.

after 13 long years of fighting, i was the first gentle and “loving” touch he had. we’d friends for a short while at that point, some mutual pining going on though neither of us were acting on it.

at that point he was still in the mentality of not thinking he was deserving of any kindness due to what happened in his past. so when i come around gently stitching up his and tending to his other wounds, he’s taken aback. plus i may have been chastising him on being more careful cause there’s people around the hideaway (me) who worry for his safety and bla bla bla.

basically he gets overwhelmed with feeling and doesn’t know how to deal with it other than pulling me for a kiss. (mid stitch mind you!!! he was lucky no further damage was caused)

🖼️: who decorates the house?

both our stuff is has a place in our chambers but i’m the one who decides what goes where

[bookwyrminspiration]

Quill, I am very very very silly. I forgot that Brant died, and when I remembered he did, I thought he was killed by Grady or Sophie. But no, he was crushed to death. I think that decision was very silly.

Like, it is so forgettable? Like, it already has the issue of being In Lodestar, which already is considered to be kind of anti-climactic in general. And then it isn’t even like related to fire at all? He is just crushed to death, and sure it was to save Oralie, but it feels like it should have been fire or murder that killed Brant. I realize that might have unintentional consequences on the plot, but that is just how it feels like.

Anyway, I am inviting you to tell me all of your thoughts about the fact that Brant died, cause I feel like it would be very interesting. It is okay if you do not, but feel free to if you desire.

-⚙️

(P.S I will be sending you an ask telling you about Ninjago soon. If you don’t want me to, please inform me.)

I'm going to discover my thoughts on this as I write it, let's go! It is a rather forgettable death, especially compared to the dramatic and explosive deaths we've seen of other characters. The characters were just informed of it after the fact, they weren't even there.

Okay so first thought. Characters like him, haunted by a past, there's a sort of circularity to it. They're undone by their own mistakes, their own motif or something similar--what you're mentioning with fire would fit that. He brought this pain upon himself however unintentionally with fire, killing Jolie with it, and so joining her in death via fire references that, right? That's the typical pattern we'd expect?

Except that kind of pattern also tends to rely on repeated characters in their life as well, a confrontation with who they've hurt/who's hurting them. And the thing with Brant? We already got that. Grady had his confrontation with Brant--which involved that return of fire and him being hurt by his own weapon, his own conviction! His hand was burned off by his own flame, which fits that pattern. Everblaze (the book) already did it! And Grady moved on. He turned away from it, and he was the biggest driving force of the kind of rage necessary to meet Brant.

Edaline is ignored in this configuration to an extent, as we never see to the same degree how it's affected her. So if she'd been the one to shove the rubble and ultimately kill Brant, it could've satisfied the pattern and her narrative that way. Though the fact it didn't I don't think is necessary a bad thing? It could've been a moment to show Edaline's processing and her closure, yes, but I don't know if that's necessary for her character. She doesn't need to have a big moment to process and move on, and I do think it fits with how she's written that for this she was quieter in her processing.

Which all brings me back to my point: Grady was Brant's main foil, the main conflict, and he wasn't present or emotionally viable for that kind of event. Without that, there's no one to take it up. He's hurt Sophie in the past, true, but so many characters have that being there to witness every single one's demise isn't necessary. Brant's not special to her, he's just another villain. So there's no depth that truly necessitates something dramatic, being present and seeing it happen. What's happening is he's dying. That's it. Compared to what else Sophie's going through, it takes a backseat.

We could take it as a representation of how alone he was. How he was the only one who clung on to himself and his sufferings. Grady and Edaline left him behind, let go, there's no one to suffer his burning grief and rage alongside him. The Neverseen are a conditional place to belong, one that doesn't truly work together but fights, where you have to earn your place, and none of them understand his grief or connect with him. So in the end he died as he lived: alone, haunted by the memory of someone he loved and hurt. And there was no one there to sympathize. No one to care. No one to match his pain and witness. He died desperate and quiet, without fanfare, because he had lost so much and couldn't achieve the fanfare and rawness he reached for.

We could also take it as a form of self destruction. His actions, his affiliations, led to the complete undoing of who he was until he was so unrecognizable from who he was, so detached from everyone and everything around him that all he could do was fade quietly from the narrative because he'd lost himself.

I'm sure there's more that could be said about it, and that there are plenty of arguments to make in terms of both support and adjustments, but since you brought it up these were my thoughts trying to reason it out!

(p.s. you're welcome to tell me about Ninjago. I can't promise I long response given that it's a topic I know so little about, but please feel free to talk about it!)

[noelle666]

Halsin x Tav scene - Removal of "Regret" from the glaive 'Sorrow"

So, as I said earlier I have some thoughts about the "Regret" effect on Halsin's glaive. Long story short: I think it would be very interesting to see a scene with this effect being removed because of several reasons:

Death of Isobel Thorm was not Halsin's fault and Isobel forgives him (prior to the scene);

Halsin finds strenght to accept and forgive himself (he is, I think, very stubborn and kind of got used to carry a load of guilt on his shoulders. He might be scared of changes because they may hurt people around, especially people he cares for, so the druid needs a little help);

Halsin can gain an ability to use glaives;

This scene can be a nice base for the start of Halsin x Tav romance.

So, all what you will read below is a FANFICTION scenario, born by my mind. I will use my Tav as base (her name is Noelle, she is Ilmater cleric, neutral good) but I'll use Tav name anyway, only her abilities will be used (because it is obvios to do such things with character you are familiar with). I'll try to add some notes about how I see some dialogues with different classes though but maybe later. Ok, let's go. Again, there might be some mistakes because I am not a native English speaker, so forgive me. And also, since in is a fanfic/scenario-ish thing there might be some OOC.

I also put a screenshot just for the mood. Yes, it is the scene from Act 3, but ah, never mind, let it be here.

The scene takes place right after the victory on Ketheric Thorm (the end of Act 2). The land and Thaniel are saved. Halsin had a conversation with Isobel, she forgives him for her unintentional death and reasures him she never blamed the druid. Halsin feels relieved, but something still bothers him.

Night time, Halsin sits on a broken tree trunk at some distance from camp. Tav is looking for him and finally sees the druid with his eyes closed - the glaive "Sorrow" is lying on his lap, he is holding it with both hands. He hears Tav closing in, opens his eyes and looks at her.

Tav: I didn't want to intrude. I started to worry when I saw you are not at the camp.

Halsin: Do not worry. I needed to think, to process all what had happened in these several days. So many lives, so many things were involved. Just like in that day.

Halsin welcomes Tav to sit next to him, Tav sits, looks at Halsin and then at the glaive.

Halsin: For all these years I never believed in luck and destiny. I knew "I" had to do what's needed, I knew "I" need to grab every possibility which could help me erase Shadow Curse when I am ready with my preparations. It was my duty, my responsibility, my mistake and only "I" need to set everything right and undone what is wrong. This was the goal of my life. And now, at last, after all these years, my duty is done. What is it if not luck? Or maybe Oak Father brought you to me because he knew you would help me? What is it if not destiny? *Halsin chuckles*

Tav: I was happy to help you. But I feel something still bothering you. Aren't you happy? Thaniel is saved, Isobel is alive and Ketheric got his punishment.

Halsin *looks at his glaive, sighs*: I guess I got used to be guilty. The load was on my shoulders for a century, I knew it was there but after some time I started to realize that maybe I'll have to carry it until my final days and accepted it. I knew even after dealing with the Shadow Curse I will not bring back the dead girl to live, I may only erase part of my guilt. But... she is alive, and she forgave me even though she had all right to not do so. But she said it was not my fault. I thought these words will bring peace to my soul yet I still cannot... cannot forgive myself.

Tav: We cannot change our past, but some things can be seen differently when you learn about different perspective. And that can help in building future.

Halsin *smiles*: Words of wisdom indeed.

Tav *smiles*: I think I can help you a little more. May I? *points at the glaive*

Halsin *looks at the glaive, than at Tav surprisingly, gives her the weapon*

Tav [Cleric of Ilmater] *prays inwardly to Ilmater to help, asks him to help with Halsin's forgiveness, asks him to erase 'Regret" effect. "Regret" is erased* There, take it. *gives the glaive back*

Halsin *takes the glaive, his eyes are filled with even more surprise*: it's... gone. *stands up and swings the weapon several times as if fighting unseen enemy* It is gone! *yells* Ha! The glaive feels much lighter than before! *looks at Tav* How? Why? You...

Tav: You needed this. I just pushed you to the right direction, all of the rest was done by you.

Halsin *puts the glaive on the trunk of broken tree*: But still you helped me again althought you had all rights to not do it. I want to thank you but I am not sure if I could thank you enought.

Tav *stands up*: You don't have to, honestly. But I guess you will not alow me to just leave now. *chuckles* Then... How would you thank a friend?

Halsin *comes close to Tav, embraces her, then gently and closely looks at her while still holding Tav. His eyes meet her eyes, then he looks at her lips, his fingers touch her cheeck*

Tav *allows him to kiss her*

Halsin and Tav *kiss for couple of moments*

Halsin *stops kissing Tav, he looks a bit confused or unsure whether or not his action was appropriate even though Tav was open to kiss him*: I... We need to go back to camp, or others may start looking for us. You go first, do not worry about me.

Tav *nodes understandingly, smiles*: It is alright, I understand. See you tomorrow. *leaves*

Halsin *looks at Tav's silhouette dissapearing behind trees, still in a little shock. He grabs his glaive and comes back to the camp*

Halsin gains an ability to wield glaives.