#and he did have like nuanced takes but there were some like the alpha male shit that were odd😭

[leahcee]

working to unmask and really be myself around my friends and I kinda started today with my two old friends with retail bc one of them texted in our old gc.

[hereticpriest]

Mercy Chapter 6: Desire

Rating: Explicit 18+

MDNI

Relationship: Obi-Wan Kenobi x Reader

To begin with, some warnings about this story: A/B/O Dynamics, Female Alpha, Male Omega, Some chapters may involve messing with the whole 'alphas are always dom and omegas are always sub' because I think nuance exists even in A/B/O dynamics, Fucking with the timeline (this is a blend of Canon, Legends, and original lore), Minimal use of Y/N (Explained in the first chapter), Reader is an alien species of my own creation and thus has a physical description, Familial bonds explored heavily, Clone rights explored heavily, Violence is more graphic than canon-typical however any graphic descriptions will be noted, AFAB reader, Not beta-read so I apologize for any mistakes.

Chapter warnings: This is where the smut begins! Some descriptions of relatively minor injuries, description of a vehicle crash that could potentially be triggering, relatively explicit handjob.

Read on AO3

Masterlist - Part One - Part Two - Part Three - Part Four - Part Five

Chapter Six: Desire

Once upon a time, you thought Anakin was the cause of the constant chaos that Obi-Wan and his Padawan got into on every single mission. Even knowing the menace the Omega had been as a youngling, you were certain that Obi-Wan had matured and become a good, serene Jedi who followed most of the rules. Anakin, meanwhile, had never met a rule he hadn’t bent. Mischief followed in his every footstep, and while he always managed to make it work for him, you knew he was even more of a menace than his Master.

Now, you know the truth. The truth is that they’re a duo of menaces who feed on each other's chaos, and Obi-Wan simply has to be cursed.

As you approach your destination, close enough that the massive blue-hued moon fills your viewscreen, you feel a disturbance in the Force. You lock eyes with Obi-Wan, but before you can say anything, something strikes into your ship like your shields are nothing more than paper. The cockpit seals automatically as the hull is breached, and you feel another thump as your ship is struck again, before it begins to shake as you approach atmo. You enter the atmosphere of the moon as a flaming ball of metal as Obi-Wan fights the controls to try and soften your landing.

It does little. Even Anakin would have struggled.

Aflame, the ship slams into swampland at a speed high enough to slam your head into the back of your seat so hard you black out, but slow enough that the hull protects you from instant death. When you wake up, it’s to a gentle trickle of swampy water on your face, and a searing pain in the back of your skull. There’s something trickling down the back of your neck, your robes are wet and sticky against your back, and the trickle of water slides down the curve of your nose, along your cheek, and down your throat.

“Mercy?”

You groan, trying to peel your eyes open though the effort seems monumental. You can taste iron, but you can feel all of your limbs, and the only thing that hurts badly enough to concern you is your head. Light slides across your eyeballs with all the searing pain of a lightsaber, and you wince away from it.

“Mercy, darling, look at me.” Obi-Wan’s voice begs distantly, his voice thick with concern. He smells sour with distress. You suck in a deep breath, blinking your eyes open to see Obi-Wan crouched over you in the cramped space of the cockpit. You hiss as his fingers prod delicately at the split in your skin, and he smiles when you finally make eye contact.

“Thank the Force - I thought you were dead. It’s only been a few minutes.” He murmurs, taking your hand and guiding it to where your blood flows sluggishly down your scalp. You tilt your head to spit out the blood in your mouth, gently encouraging the Force to heal you after making sure that Obi-Wan is uninjured. Of course he’d get away with minor bruising at worst, but thank the Stars he did.

“Some of our belongings were destroyed. I haven’t had a chance to look yet, but we’re half-buried in a swamp and both of our bags are soaked. Yours is leaking something purple.” Obi-Wan explains, his voice soft to avoid making your head hurt worse.

“S’just a body cream with bacta in it, for soreness at the end of the day.” You murmur as you concentrate on your injury. It takes time before it’s healed enough that your splitting headache fades and you’re no longer in danger of bleeding out, but you’re in no rush to move. Getting out of the mangled remains of the ship will be difficult, and then you’ve got the delights of a swamp to contend with. Obi-Wan crouches by his pack, picking through his belongings and scoffing as he rings out the change of robes he’d brought with him.

“Well, I didn’t bring much with me, but most of it is unharmed.” He informs you lightly, and you hum an acknowledgement as you pull yourself out of your seat with a heaving sigh. You have to use your tail to balance you, but you manage to grit your teeth through the temporary vertigo, grabbing your bag from the back of your chair. Your robes are sodden, and the few jars of skincare products you’d brought with you have shattered. Your medical kit is thankfully waterproof, but your datapad is a crumple of metal and glass shards. You paw at the front pocket of your bag and hiss through your teeth as you come to a startling realization. Your rut blocker pills have dissolved into a swampy mess at the bottom of that pocket, and your scent blocker patches were pierced through by a piece of glass from your jars. The inside of each pouch has gone from a mostly translucent green to a vile brown.

Only feet away, Obi-Wan lets out a whimper and you glance up at him automatically to make sure he’s okay. Similarly to you, he appears to have found his heat blockers and scent blockers destroyed, and his worry is so palpable you can taste it. You stand, dropping your bag into your seat carelessly as you gather Obi-Wan into your arms. He clutches tightly to you, and you shudder as his lips brush your shoulder.

“It’s going to be okay. I swear to you, everything is going to be okay.” You whisper against his hair, “I went on a mission with Qui-Gon years ago, before we had Anakin, where I had to… to follow my instincts as an Alpha. It was difficult, but I made it through without… well, without compromising myself. You’re stronger even than I am, Obi-Wan, you’ll be okay. I trust you… do you trust me?”

Obi-Wan lets you push him back a little so you can look at his face, but you can tell he doesn’t want to. He wants to hide, but you know you need to clear things up now while you both still have control of yourselves. He swallows around the lump in his throat, head nodding as his hands grasp at the sleeves of your robes. You wait patiently but expectantly, and he finally collects himself enough to speak.

“Yes, I trust you darling. I don’t trust myself. I haven’t… I haven’t been an Omega properly in two decades. I’ve never had a full heat. I haven’t gone a day without scent blockers, let alone heat blockers.” Obi-Wan explains, and you grip his shoulders tightly, grounding him in the moment. You can see it take effect just as much as you feel it under your hands as the tension in his strong shoulders eases.

“There is no shame between us, Obi-Wan, do you understand me?” Your voice is firm, unyielding, but you know the concept is difficult for him to fully grasp, “I will not judge you for anything, not just on this moon, but ever.”

Obi-Wan presses his forehead against yours, taking a breath to strengthen his resolve, then brushing his nose against you before he pulls away, “I will not judge you either, darling.”

With a gentle squeeze to his shoulders, you step away from him to check if there’s anything usable left unmarred in the ship, and nearly crow with delight when you find the long range transponder completely safe in a cabinet in the back of the cockpit. Two waterskins and a stack of ration bars lay in the cabinet below, and you breathe a sigh of relief. Moving quickly, you hand your finds off to Obi-Wan, then pull your lightsaber from your hip. It takes a second to cut through the transparisteel, but you make a hole big enough for the both of you, force-pushing it outwards to avoid injury. A simple reinforced leap takes you out into the damp heat of the swamp, and you reach out with the Force to check out your surroundings, sharp eyes keenly looking for any dangers. You find none - there are fish, amphibians and small mammals, but nothing large enough to pose a significant danger. Once you’re sure, you glance down to find Obi-Wan staring up at you expectantly, a cheeky grin on his face. Apparently your display had loosened him up a little.

“Am I allowed to come up now?” he asks playfully, and when you huff and move out of the way, he leaps up beside you. Together, you jump across the swamp to the mostly-dry grass and begin to make your way to higher ground. It’s daylight, thankfully, so you might have enough time to hang your clothes and dry them. You find a suitable place and set up a laundry line, taking off your cloaks to dry as well, and Obi-Wan takes the time to look at your scalp to make sure you did a ‘suitable job’ healing yourself.

“We’ll stink too much like swamp and mud to be able to smell each other at this rate.” You murmur, dropping your head into his lap once he’s satisfied with his inspection, resting in the tall grass while you wait. You both need a momentary reprieve, and the area is safe enough that you can justify it.

“Pity.” Obi-Wan nearly whispers back, brushing his fingertips across your cheek, “I remember you smelling quite nice.”

A breathy laugh escapes your lips, and you press into his touch.

“When have you ever properly smelled me, Obi-Wan Kenobi?” You ask, closing your eyes for a moment as he swipes the pads of his fingers across your lips. You catch one between your teeth, swiping your tongue across his fingertip before drawing it into your mouth.

“Wh-When Qui-Gon returned from his… Stars… from his mission with you. He hadn’t put his robes in the wash yet.” Obi-Wan breathes, pushing down gently on your tongue before swiftly pulling his hand away, “Swamp water, darling girl.”

You shrug to show how little you care about his cleanliness, but you know he’s always been a little more fastidious than yourself, “You smell like star fruit, tea, and honey. And some flower I swear I’ve smelled before but I can’t name it. I still think about it all the time, even all these years later.”

Pink blooms across Obi-Wan’s cheeks, stirring desire in your gut that has nothing to do with instinct and everything to do with how deeply you feel for him. You smile at the sight, sitting up a little to press a feather soft kiss to his cheek. You don’t linger close, crossing your legs and placing your hands against your knees.

“I wanted to steal Qui-Gon’s cloak.” Obi-Wan admits in a rush of breath, clearly leaning into the idea that this moon is your safe place to admit your secrets, “I wanted to knock on your door.”

Stars, he is so beautiful. You forget sometimes, with so much time apart.

“I knew better than to let you in, though I don’t know that it would have stopped me.” You murmur, and Obi-Wan breathes out harshly, leaning his head back against the tree he’s propped up on. You feel his force signature brush against yours, warm and sweet and painfully gentle. You reciprocate just as softly, but neither of you push. You’re still too nervous even as you both do everything but put a name to your feelings, talking in circles around the truth.

The wind picks up, and within only a couple of hours of peaceful dozing, your clothes and bags are dry. You both pack up in comfortable silence, though Obi-Wan does shoot you a glare when he notices you putting more in your bag than his. You ignore him, shouldering your pack and gesturing towards a mountain peak no more than two days walk away. It won’t be pleasant, but you’ve both endured worse.

“Well, let’s get started while the weather holds.” Obi-Wan quips cheerfully.

~

You sleep at the base of the small mountain in an alcove of stone and moss, and Obi-Wan doesn’t comment as you push him further towards the back while you lay protectively at the entrance. At least you were able to find shelter - the weather has held all day, but you know nothing of the wildlife on this moon, and you'd prefer to have some protection. With your Omega safely with his back to the rock wall, pillowed on a bed of moss and robes, your Alpha instincts are practically purring with satisfaction of a job well done. If nothing else, you appreciate your Alpha nature for giving you the ability to sleep so lightly that you feel capable of protecting him while still getting a night’s sleep. Your own bedding consists only of a pillow of your spare undertunic, spartan comfort in comparison to your Omega, but your instincts roar of prioritizing him over yourself. Obi-Wan attempts to protest, but you can feel that deep down, his Omega nature is pleased as punch that an Alpha is taking such good care of him even in a survival situation. He buries his face in the pillow you've made him of your robe, your cloak tucked around his form, and you swear you hear the tiniest hint of a raspy purr.

When you wake the following morning at first light, you stretch like a tooka cat, popping your back and shoulders. You can smell yourself over the now relatively mild scent of the swamp you’d crashed into, but more importantly, you can smell the herbal sweetness of Obi-Wan. Your scents blend beautifully, and you’re genuinely tempted to crawl closer and bury your face in the curve of his pretty neck to waste the day away wrapped up in him. You're safe enough in this little shelter you've found - you could afford to spend the day convincing Obi-Wan that you're the best Alpha for him. As if hearing your thoughts, he nuzzles deeper into his pillow, fingers clutching at the fabric like it might disappear. 

You've never seen someone prettier than him in all your years, even on the millions of holo advertisements across the surface of Coruscant. Models couldn't possibly compare. He's strong, and broad with a slimmer waist and wider shoulders. His thighs and ass are plush from his Omega nature, muscles rippling under skin soft as silk. When you were younger, his chest and stomach were all hard planes of muscle, but now he’s got the tiniest bit of padding to him that you want to sink your teeth into. You love the way he flushes pink with embarrassment or arousal, all the way to the tips of his ears. Freckles dot his skin like stars, more plentiful when he was younger, but still just as pretty. His arms are thick and strong, hidden under wide sleeves, and for the first time in a long time you curse the robes Jedi must wear for hiding his form from your gaze.

“I can feel you staring, darling.” Obi-Wan grumbles into the pillow made of your robes, and you admire the way his ginger eyelashes dust across his cheekbones. His plush, pink lips are pulled into a coy smile.

“You’re beautiful.” You reply simply, getting to your feet and moving away from the alcove to take care of your bodily functions in private. You don't stray too far, protective instincts flaring to life when you get more than a few feet away from the entrance. It's shocking how quickly they've kicked in, overriding your Jedi sensibilities. You blame the particular Omega you're with, certain your teeth wouldn't ache so much if he were anyone else. When you return, Obi-Wan has packed his things and put your borrowed clothing on your bag, but his cheeks are curiously pink. You raise an eyebrow at him expectantly, and he bounces on his heels a little as he considers what he’ll say.

“Can you… would you scent me, please?” Obi-Wan asks, and you break out into a grin, practically springing over to him.

“Of course, dearest.” You purr, taking his hand in yours and gently rubbing your cheek and chin against his scent gland. Obi-Wan's flush deepens, and he cups your cheek delicately.

"I meant my neck, Mercy. If you wouldn't mind terribly."

Your stomach drops and melts deliciously, arousal pooling in your gut. You smell the tang of it from yourself, and an answering whisper from the Omega in front of you, slowly growing stronger. Wordlessly, you grasp his hip in your free hand, pulling him closer to you. He goes willingly, pliant in your grip, his head tipping back to expose his neck for you. He’s so good. He doesn’t even know how good he is - he’s never had the chance to be an Omega before, but it comes naturally. His pupils are blown, turning his ocean blue eyes nearly black, and his sweet mouth is lax with desire. You chuff approvingly and he lets out a soft little whine in reply, one hand sliding into your hair while the other grasps at your back. Dipping your face to his collarbone, you nose your way along his throat, pressing a couple of soft kisses across his skin while he sighs with pleasure. Finally, your lips brush across the slightly raised skin of his scent gland and you feel a flood of tingly pheromones fill your nostrils. There's a deeper sweetness to his scent than before, hiding under the tang of his arousal. You can feel him hard against your hip.

Obi-Wan sighs as you rub your chin across his scent gland, blending your scents together. Forest and campfires blend with herbal tea and that sweet flower to become the smoky smell of rain dousing the last remnants of a forest fire and new life blooming in the aftermath. Cinnamon and vetiver tempered with honey and star fruit becomes a sweeter spice. The hardness at your hip becomes more insistent the longer you scent him, and Obi-Wan shivers as he rolls his hips into yours, testing to see how you’ll respond. You simply hum, licking a broad stripe across his scent gland before kissing your way up to his jaw. 

“Do you want help with that?” You whisper against his skin, “you’ll have to tell me, dearest, I can’t feel your thoughts.”

Obi-Wan grinds against your hip, trembling as he grasps at you for support.

”You could.” He tells you, and then again more urgently, “you could, darling.”

His force signature reaches out with open arms, and you sigh against his skin, but you reach out in answer. The instant you delve into each other, something snaps into place like it had always been meant to be there and it was just waiting on you two to figure out your shit. You feel Obi-Wan’s fear that you weren’t his fading into bright, radiant joy at the discovery that you are. Because that’s what this is. You are his, and he is yours, and the Force always meant for it to be that way.

He feels your reluctance to do this before, flooded with the fear that he might not be yours - that you might have to reconcile your feelings and give him up. Ignorance had felt like bliss until you joined with him in the Force. Now you knew you could have had him all along. As that thought blooms to life in your mind, Obi-Wan clings tighter to you, grinding more insistently. You remember your purpose, finding the thoughts Obi-Wan is projecting towards you, and you grin against the column of his throat.

”Oh, sweetheart, I didn’t know you were so desperate for my touch. Do you want me to take the edge off before we climb the mountain?” You practically purr, digging your thumb into the curve of his hip. He nods eagerly against you, a whimper rising in his throat, and you smile against his skin, “I need to hear you say it, Obi-Wan.”

He trembles, and you stroke his hip soothingly, mouthing along the edge of his beard. You can feel his internal struggle for his normal eloquence, words slipping through his fingers as his desperation spikes. Your charming Omega, The Negotiator, reduced to whimpers. You adore him. You would give him anything.

”Please, darling. I need you to touch me.” Obi-Wan murmurs, and you hum with surprise as he traces his fingers down the curve of your spine to grab a handful of your ass. It’s more bold than you expected from him, but you’re certainly not upset. You press your lips to his in a gentle kiss, learning through your connection what feels good, and how to move. Thirty-three years old and you know through your connection that this is a first for both of you. It’s a soft thing, learning to kiss together based solely on what you’ve seen in holos and what feels right to you both. Connected as you are through the Force, you can feel what he likes, just as he can feel what gives you pleasure. He knows the scratch of his beard against your skin is making your heart race. He knows that every time he touches you, your skin tingles. He knows that every kiss sends a feeling of rightness through you so strong that your body sings with it.

You guide him carefully back into the alcove, moving in sync through your bond in the Force. He lays back on the moss he’d slept on the night before, cloak pooling underneath him as you undo his belt and only break from the kiss to pull his pants down around his thighs. Pink blooms across his cheeks as he’s exposed to the morning air, and you swallow around the lump in your throat as you realize how hard he is. You’ve seen him shirtless before when you were younger, so you know he’s got ginger hair across his chest and down the line of his stomach, but he looks much hairier now. His thighs are thick and muscular, pale as moonlight and covered in light baby-fine hair that catches the sun. You think he’s even more beautiful now than he was as a younger man.

You’ve never seen a man naked before - at least not properly - but you think Obi-Wan must be the most beautiful man in the world, from his lovely adonis belt to the ginger hair trailing down his stomach to a thicker bush around the base of his cock. He was the perfect mix of hard and soft, muscular and strong but plush in the way that an older man often was. You nuzzle your face against his tummy and he gasps, jerking beneath your touch. Laughing quietly, you nip at his hip and finally turn your gaze to the centre of his pleasure. It seems too big, but you don’t have a point of reference. His cock is long, curving up towards his belly and leaking so much precum you’re sure his underwear would be soaked if you checked. Like the rest of him, he’s mouthwateringly thick and you’re not sure how he’ll manage to fit, though you trust you both will make it work. There are several large veins that pulse as you stare at your Omega, and the head is flushed red with need. You lick your lips, and Obi-Wan lets out a groan at the sight, head falling back on the moss below him.

”Stars, you’re so pretty.” You praise as you touch the tip of your finger to the precum beading at the tip. You suck it off your finger, earning yourself another groan as he struggles to stay still. It’s salty, a little tangy, but not unpleasant. The smell of it fills your nose, pheromones blooming on your tongue. Omega slick. Apparently there was nothing else like it, and now you’ve had a taste, you can’t help but agree.

”Alpha, please.” He whimpers, and you finally give in, wrapping your hand around him. Obi-Wan shudders, hips stuttering into your hand, and you watch his eyes flutter closed as he gasps for breath.

”You’ll have to help me, sweet Omega. Let me know what feels good.” You murmur, stroking him from base to tip with a firm but gentle grip. A drop of precum spills over your knuckles and you lick it up, the tip of your tongue sliding over the head and turning Obi-Wan’s moans into a shout of pleasure. His fingers slide into your hair to hold you, and you look up at him through your eyelashes as you experimentally flick your tongue across the head again. Your hand begins to stroke him up and down steadily, setting a pace based on his moans and quiet whimpers of ‘faster’ or ‘tighter’.

You switch hands so that you can lay down beside him, drawing his body against yours so that you can nuzzle against his scent gland. Obi-Wan shudders, and you hum with pleasure as he takes your face in his hands and presses a messy kiss to your lips. Neither of you necessarily know what you’re doing as it's only your second kiss, entirely instinct driven and guided by your bond, but it sends fire through your veins regardless. You stroke your Omega a little faster, thumb rolling across the head to collect the slick steadily dripping from him and use it to ease the glide of your hand. You can feel him getting closer, hips bucking in pace with you, fucking into your hand. When he whimpers and his pace begins to falter, you take over again, urging him towards his completion with gentle praise whispered in his ear or against his lips.

”Good boy. Stars, you’re so good for me, Obi-Wan. Such a good little Omega, perfect, and all mine, aren’t you? I’m such a lucky Alpha to have such a good boy all to myself. To have a strong Omega that can take care of himself… but you’d like me to take care of you, don’t you, dearest? Let me help you, sweetling. Let me take care of my sweet Omega, make you cum in my hand, just a hint of the pleasure I’ll give you for the rest of our lives.”

Obi-Wan shatters in your arms, but you hold him together, milking his orgasm from him with gentle but firm hands. He groans, shouting ‘Alpha’ as he cums across his stomach, thick and sticky and making a mess of the hair on his belly. You can’t believe how long it goes on - you’d always assumed it was a quick thing, an orgasm, but Obi-Wan’s stomach is covered in cum by the end of it, and you’re stunned to find him more beautiful than ever. You kiss his cheek and jaw as he pants for breath, finally letting his cock go as it softens and becomes over-sensitive. You lick your fingers clean while Obi-Wan watches, an anguished whimper falling from his lips.

”What?” You ask, and he scoffs, dragging you in for a surprisingly harsh kiss.

”Licking my cum from your fingers and you ask me ‘what?’ As if it isn’t obvious. You’re going to make me hard again, darling.” Obi-Wan murmurs in between kisses, licking his way into your mouth in search of every little taste of himself on your tongue. You sigh happily into the kiss, languishing in this happy bubble of softness and sated bliss. Obi-Wan reaches for your robes, but you take his hands in yours, kissing his knuckles. That deeper sweetness to Obi-Wan’s scent has only grown since you first caught a whiff of it, and you’ve finally put two and two together. 

“I’m okay for now, dearheart. We need to get going so we can set up the long range transponder and get back down the mountain before nightfall.” You murmur. Obi-Wan raises his eyebrows at you, and you project the honesty of your words to him, “You’re going into pre-heat, Obi-Wan. We need to get back and get set up so that I can take care of you.”

You feel a flicker of fear from Obi-Wan at the idea of his heat that quickly melts into tentative excitement at the concept of you taking care of him through it. That excitement blossoms as you use the Force to pull your bag towards you, swapping out your pants for your spare pair and using the ones you were wearing to clean Obi-Wan’s cum off of his stomach delicately. You’ll need to circle back to the stream you had passed on the journey to the base of the mountain and wash all of your clothes before your Omega’s heat truly settles in, just in case it triggers your rut and you won’t be coherent enough to go later. It isn’t too far, but you’ll have to go after you get back. Together, you pack up the last of your things and start what will likely be a long trek up the mountain, supporting Obi-Wan through his initial jelly-legged couple of minutes.

[kleineshexenkraut]

Character analysis and some headcanons

Let me ramble about Kenpachi Zaraki, his squad 11's top members and their unwritten rules with all their seriously bad or even icky connotations a bit. And also about why I think all of it is part of an actually beautiful plot about acceptance and defying the expectations of toxic masculinity.

Characters who defy expectations the narrative set for them earlier is one of my absolute favorite things! Even if the story or character in question isn't otherwise interesting to me, something like this I will always enjoy! Tite Kubo has my deep respect for all the times he did it (for every character with such moments, really). And while what I think about this particular topic here could obviously be mostly personal interpretation rather than actual intended fact, in my mind this will always stay a very touching and interesting subplot. So apologies in advance for the truly long text, buckle up!

And just in case, major spoiler alert throughout.

TW: bullying; abuse; violence; mention of homophobia

Lets first list the unwritten rules and the other bad assumptions first:

no kido-type swords allowed

no kido learning/use in general

people keep their abilities a secret

only men in the Squad

Squad 4 can be bullied

And now take a look at the people who (seemingly) enforce them, or rather what we are shown at first:

Kenpachi Zaraki – Taller and stronger than most others, described as brutal, murderous, crazy warrior who enjoys fighting more than anything else, who frequently challenges even allies to serious battles. A lot of his design would usually be chosen for villain-type characters, such as the small irises that give him a rather unfriendly glare; a too wide, mad grin that exposes pronounced canines; the large scars; an eye patch and a spiky hairdo that further underline the dangerous appearance. Combined with his general ignorance and lack of intelligence he paints the perfect stereotypical picture of a brutish, toxic alpha-male who doesn't tolerate weakness and oppresses others.

Yachiru Kusajishi - a small, cute girl with light pink hair and a generally sunny disposition who possesses a lot of power and a pretty violent streak. Lives as Kenpachi's adopted daughter until she's revealed to be part of his Zanpakuto's spirit.

Ikkaku Madarame – His design and fighting style most resemble a Shaolin monk, with a bald head and red eye-make-up (because people can argue Ikkaku having markings instead of eye-shadow all they want, it is still very clearly in the style of traditional Japanese, female eye-make-up.) A man who enjoys fighting almost as much as his leader, but with a much more pronounced intent to kill his opponents. He's easily angered and actually enjoys frightening people on occasion by deliberately making a scary face.

Yumichika Ayasegawa – A vain, narcissistic man who's obsessed with looks as much as he enjoys fighting. The long feathers he wears on his eyelashes and brow is one of the most prominent decorative accessory (at least on the side of the good guys). And while Yumichika could be a flamboyant heterosexual guy, I'd say him being homosexual makes much more sense.

And already in these short descriptions we get some breaking up of general stereotypes and it goes on. At a cursory glance Kenpachi is just a one-dimensional, all-brawn-no-brains madman and that's pretty much the impression many of the other characters have. Once you look more closely, though, there's a lot of surprising nuance. Because the brutal, bloodthirsty leader of the fight- and strength-obsessed 11th Squad we were told about, while being all of this, also:

is immediately seen getting lost several times like an idiot for comedic relief

is so lonely that he unwittingly manifested part of his soul into a child, then adopted it to carry it around for decades (The duo resembles the main characters from Lone Wolf and Cub, and I'm pretty sure that was one of the inspirations. Although the similarity ends there, not least because the protagonist in Lone Wolf and Cub follows the Samurai codex and his son is a thousand times more annoying.)

Lets Yachiru pretty much walk all over him, slapping and hair-pulling included, without any retaliation or violence directed at her ever

admires a woman as his idol and describes her as the strongest person he ever met

Has a female sword-spirit (who's in part the small, very girly girl)

Bathes everyday and styles his hair for hours

Has a gay dude and in general the guys with some of the most obvious make-up and fashion accessories as his highest ranking Squad members without giving them flak for it. (Kenpachi looked like he wore eyeliner in the anime sometimes too. He didn't in the manga, but if you look at certain anime-scenes – that's a clear design choice they made there!)

Has no interest in fighting anyone who's clearly weaker than him and does so only if he has to as part of the job or if attacked first. And will complain about it the whole time.

Lets most opponents alone once they can't fight anymore and is even annoyed whenever an opponent doesn't stay down and has to be killed for real. (This is the case with most of the serious fights. Opponents who survived are: Ichigo, Tosen, Ikkaku, Ichinose, Yammy. Nnoitra died, but only after getting the chance to stay down.)

Befriends or admires people who defeated him (Unohana, Ichigo)

Is the only one who didn't subjugate his Zanpakuto-spirit for it's abilities, but got them by being kind and loving for decades instead

is not fighting out of permanent anger, but because he enjoys a real battle like nothing else

With all of what we see from the source materials, be it manga, anime or both (yes, including filler arcs), it makes me wonder how much of the unwritten rules are conjectures done by others made on behalf of Kenpachi. Now don't get me wrong, as stated, the guy lacks self-awareness to a baffling degree and his views do limit his subordinates greatly! Discovering and getting in touch with his own strength and soul is his main character-plotline after all.

However, the question stands. How much of this is people going: “You said A, B and C – so we assumed XYZ.” (?)

People do this all the time. I'm sure we all did at some point, and hopefully were corrected and learned for the future. But that's not what automatically always happens. And the hero-worship that the 11th has for their leader is very expressive and enthusiastic. At times it even resembles the annoying level of obsession Kiyone and Sentarō show towards Ukitake. This seems to get worse after the 1000 year blood war arc. It's not hard to picture them taking Kenpachi's every word as gospel and running with it.

Everything points to captains being able to run their squads however the hell they want, with very little limitations or regard for members. Look at the 12th, Mayuri exploded unsuspecting members of his division without a second thought or repercussions. The way he treats Nemu is highly abusive, yet no one cares. At least not enough to step in or forbid this behavior. So what's not wanting to recruit certain people in comparison? No big deal, that's what it would be. Especially since there are 12 other Divisions people can pick. If these are things the captain truly wants, why are these unwritten rules?

No kido-type swords

Looking at what this does, namely Yumichika hiding his abilities from everyone even at the risk of being killed, makes this the worst one and a key issue. A Zanpakuto and it's abilities are part of a Shinigami's soul and personality. By hiding and denying his powers it's clear from the start that this man lives in an environment that wouldn't accept him for what he is. That he doesn't want to be anywhere else makes changing this issue extremely difficult to nigh impossible with this setup. And since he is depicted as a rather stereotypical gay man, it absolutely very quickly implies that this is the thinly veiled depiction of the struggle of every queer person who fears having their coming out. (Which makes it all the more sad that this hasn't been clearly resolved and might never be in canon.)

And it wouldn't be only Yumichika. Achieving even Shikai is not common and there are constantly new recruits. There will inevitably be quite a few people who discover a non-melee type Zanpakuto in time and be just as tormented about it.

The fighting style Kenpachi loves the most is direct clashing of steel on steel, up close and personal, that's stated multiple times. He can't, or rather doesn't even try to, use kido (until much later). Furthermore a lot of the opponents with kido-type abilities were relatively boring and/or disappointing to him in the end, like Tōsen and Ichinose. Often kido-abilities are distance attacks or support a fighting style that's more covert.

This, combined with the general notion he had before being defeated by Ichigo that talking with and fighting alongside one's zanpakuto is nonsense, could easily have resulted in him saying he doesn't like people having kido-zanpakuto.

On the other hand, what constitutes as kido-sword? The wiki makes the distinction between element and kido as separate types. But during the battle against Baraggan, Ōmaeda says he wished he'd have a kido-sword with flames or ice.

This makes me question whether the element-abilities are actually nothing else than kido. And if that's the case there are multiple examples for incredibly strong fighters, like head-captain Yamamoto or Hitsugaya. No one would call these two weak. His idol, Unohana, has a sword that might have acid-related abilities, which would make it another example, maybe even the most important one. That in turn makes me wonder whether he actually made this rule or whether he said something negative about several former enemies and their abilities every now and then and his Squad interpreting it as: “Obviously our captain hates kido-Zanpakuto! Therefore no one in our Squad is allowed to have one!”

Kenpachi is notorious for having little interest in anything besides fighting and his ignorance toward himself can not be overstated. The man limited his abilities, most of his talent and power unconsciously as a child to the point where he couldn't hear his own Zanpakuto nor recognize it's manifestation, then further impaired himself by adding bells that give his position away and slapping a seal on his right eye (which means no depth perception along less Reiatsu, mind).

Is this a guy one can expect to realize that people make wrong assumptions on his behalf?

Or did it go more along the lines of:

Statement: Kido-swords are lame

Assumption: No kido-type Zanpakuto allowed

Reaction: No one here has kido-swords? Less hassle for me to find people who can help them train with those.

Conclusion: People hiding their abilities

Now, Komamura did say that Kenpachi couldn't look past appearances and wasn't able to see someone's inner strength. That was after Kenpachi tried goading him into a fight, though. Komamura hid his face for over a century because he feared the rejection and enmity of others and understandably was quite vulnerable in that moment. For all that Kenpachi isn't the sharpest tool in the shed on many occasions, he does know how to get under people's skin if he puts his mind to it. But what was said earlier shows that he doesn't care about appearances at all. That he isn't shocked about Komamura's face, because a guy's appearance isn't important in a fight. He has only two criteria:

Are they strong?

Will they fight me?

That's it. Man, woman, child, shinigami, human, hollow, beast, muscular, thin, heavy, big, small, whatever else – nothing matters except these two questions. As long as the opponent actually can fight there's no discrimination because none of it is indicative of abilities. And Yumichika definitely does fight well, he's third seated officer later on with only fighting prowess sans abilities, much like Kenpachi for most of the story.

Does Yumichika really have to fear not being accepted, then?

The most beautiful resolve to this whole issue would obviously be Yumichika somehow being forced to reveal his abilities and Kenpachi just excitedly going: “Interesting! When did you learn that? Lets try it out in a sparring match!” And maybe calling him an idiot for thinking this would ever be a problem after being clued in on the worries. I can see Ikkaku being angry only because Yumichika didn't tell him the very moment he knew. Not only because I love the characters, but I genuinely think this would be most in character for them. It would unravel the awful situation and further flip the stereotypes upside down. As in having the people that were assumed to be the most biased and negative turn out to be the ones most accepting. It would solidify the found family aspect of the 11th so much more as well. And it would be a great metaphor for someone being cherished just as much for who they are after coming out. And there can't be enough of that in any media.

2. no kido learning/use in general

This ties in with the first and is already kind of negated by Kenpachi using flash step later on. If this one was ever really a thing the 11th can take him using it as example to reconsider.

3. people keep their abilities a secret

While this sounds like point one at first glance, especially after the long-ass meta earlier, it isn't quite. Ikkaku is able to use Bankai for years and has a melee-type Zanpakuto, yet still keeps it a secret. There are only a select few who know and his captain isn't one of them.

The reason he gives is that he wants to fight until he dies under Zaraki and doesn't want others constantly asking him to become a captain. While this does make sense in terms of loyalty and admiration towards Zaraki, it doesn't explain why he keeps it a secret from said captain too.

Even with the shortage of captains after Aizen's betrayal it's not very likely to get promoted into such a position without consent. If nothing else, this is a surefire way of getting bad results. So why then? Is it because he fears surpassing his leader in this regard would anger or somehow disappoint him? From everything else we see of Kenpachi there is no indicator that might be a thing. On the contrary, stronger fighters with more abilities mean better fights, even if it's just sparring.

Kenpachi tells Ichinose that fighting people without own goals is no fun and that loyalty is different to relying on people. Then there's the speech he gives to new recruits, more specifically, that he won't restrict any viewpoints nor sanction them. And this isn't just blah, the way members of Squad 11 are shown to act in his vicinity reflects this. People sit or stand when he's around and bow when the situation calls for it, like an enthusiastic deferential greeting, but there's no kneeling going on as far as we can see. And Aramaki is quite relaxed when he speaks with him. (And in the recruitment fair brochure the answer about the atmosphere in the division is: “We get along and have fun.”)

As conclusion, someone who's loyal while having their own goals and opinions should be someone he would value. Ikkaku is almost the definition of that. He's strong, skilled, independent and probably couldn't stand to be anywhere where he had to go against what he believes in. That makes me think, while admiring Zaraki as much as he does, he misunderstands a lot about the man's views.

Another example of this is what happens after Ikkaku fought Ichigo. He apologized to Kenpachi for surviving after losing. Even though the same guy explicitly told him years earlier, after he beat him in a fight, not to ask to be killed. To consider himself lucky, live, get stronger and fight again. In a way that had enough lasting impact on Ikkaku to keep on going, but apparently didn't fully register all the way.

And for all the talking on eye-level people could probably do in the 11th, people will most likely uphold the gap to higher-ups out of habit, respect, and in this particular case sometimes fear as well. Under these circumstances it makes a bit more sense where this unwillingness to show his abilities comes from. But if that's the case it very much is a misconception.

4. only men in the Squad

This is maybe the weirdest one. We don't actually know for certain if there aren't any women in the 11th, but none is ever shown.

Again, the person Kenpachi strived to be like and still admires is a woman. Yachiru (never mind what else she is) is obviously a girl and extremely strong, so her position is warranted and unquestioned outside and inside the division. Then the already mentioned things about how Kenpachi completely doesn't give a shit about appearances, only whether or not someone stands their ground. All of this could point to be the most clear indication of conjecture or a combination of unfortunate circumstances.

We got very little information about the former leader of the 11th, Kenpachi Kiganjō. Shinji describes him as a piggish slacker who never did what he was told, while Ichinose believed he had a deep sense of justice. We have even less about the rules this guy had, but the background characters that can be seen during the flashbacks are also all male. Then we can take a look at the recruitment brochure again where Zaraki's statement is that only strong guys should join. Yachiru however says no weak people should join. As far as I'm aware 'guys' can be used as a universal address for groups of people, women and men. But lets consider what a new female recruit might see/hear, especially given that the inner motivations and believes of characters aren't known to anyone but us as audience, unless explicitly shown or stated.

The Squad is full of brutish thugs who love fighting.

There are no women besides a little girl, who might be related to the leader in some way

The brochure says guys in the address

Everything people have to say about Zaraki Kenpachi - which excludes aaall the nice things we know and leaves them with the picture of the toxic masculine lunatic

Yeah, I wouldn't want to join either... As conclusion, I put this one under unfortunate, completely wrong conjecture, though.

5. Squad 4 can be bullied

We see this happened and it's obviously bad. Given, Unohana stepped in and scared the shit out of the guys who did it on her own turf, but it shouldn't be a thing in the first place. That said, does Kenpachi know about this?

Unohana was the first Kenpachi, she has an iron grip on things, and someone who was on the receiving end of her 'kind' reminder that their lives are in her Squad's hands while they're there will most likely never forget to be polite again. So there's no real reason for her to complain. Apart from that, seeing how Hanatarō said that the 4th is weak and therefore always ends up doing all the chores, like cleaning the sewers, makes me think this isn't just the 11th treating them badly. (Which again, worse still.)

Anyone beside Unohana that we see of the 4th are usually rather timid. Isane has trouble talking to other captains even after she became one herself. So...

Did anyone from the 4th ever dare to walk up to Zaraki Kenpachi to complain about his Squad being mean to them? If that mental image made you laugh even a tiny bit we are in agreement. That probably never happened. He might not know then. The question is how he would react if he found out?

One interesting thing to remember is that Kenpachi has actually little problems with regular people who are weak. Not that he meets many after joining the Gotai 13, but whenever he's around those there's no such thing as killing sprees or bouts of violent outbursts.

The issue is with anything and anyone who should be able to fight, like fellow Shinigami or Hollows, but isn't cutting it – or rather him. He is incredibly bored most of the time. As such his Squad will definitely pick up on his dissatisfaction with 'the weaklings' all around them, which could have turned into everyone is fair game. But frankly, being the power house he is, being weak applies to almost anyone including other captains and the whole 11th. Based on that there's actually little basis for them to look down on other divisions. Conjecture again, then?

We can only speculate what would happen if he found out about his Squad's behavior. He'd probably tell whoever has grievances to grow a spine and just show the ones treating them badly this isn't going to fly. At the worst this would change nothing and stay a problem. But at times he can come up with unexpected insights, especially when it comes to things he knows. More brutal, constant sparring matches with the persons in question that leave them in need of healing from the 4th may work wonders on people's attitudes. But alas, unless we get more material all is just more musings and head-canons.

[davidmann95]

All-Star Superman #3

This is gonna be a tough one.

Not the toughest, mind you - that’s probably going to be #7. But after two issues of establishing the tone, aesthetics, and thematic concerns of the series, this is one of the pair of issues in All-Star that for the most part functions as a ‘normal’ Superman adventure story, though in this case one following up on the themes established by the previous issue, while #7 will set up the one coming after it. It’s also likely the most commonly critiqued issue of the series in retrospect its use of Lois Lane as an essentially passive figure to be fought over, and while her characterization here lends some interesting dimension to that choice, it’s hard to disagree it’s the series’ most unfortunate framing and substantial missed opportunity. None of that however can overrule that on examination, there’s still considerably more going on in here than the traditional tale of Superman beating down monsters and showing up bullies, the harsh slap to the face of reality for Clark after his actions last issue and his redemption in the form of showing what makes him different from his predecessors as the strongman-savior template.

So I haven’t talked the lettering much in this series - it is, they say, the invisible art - but Phil Balsman absolutely kills it here with KRULL WILL EAT YOU!, and the decision on the next page to render the ZEE ZEE ZEE ZEE of Jimmy Olsen’s signal watch in the font of the title pages is absolutely inspired, nevermind what he does with the Ultrasphinx later on. The bombast of the bastard lizard prince of the underworld and his cronies wreaking havoc aside though, what this page succinctly does is set up the entire conflict of the issue. It’s not just a monster, it’s a monster out of the past mimicking the cover of Action Comics #1, and apparently by way of terraforming Metropolis via steam clouds, trying to take control of Superman’s ‘world’. From Krull to Steve Lombard (“You tell me what a spaceman flying around in his underwear can give her that a good old hunk of prime American manhood can’t?”) to Samson and Atlas to the Ultrasphinx, this is a story of Superman up against dinosaurs in his image.

Ironically, however, it’s this Superman vs. Bros comic that has perhaps the most Bro sensibilities in the series. Per Morrison on the subject, “For that particular story, I wanted to see Superman doing tough guy shit again, like he did in the early days and then again in the 70s, when he was written as a supremely cocky macho bastard for a while. I thought a little bit of that would be an antidote to the slightly soppy, Super–Christ portrayal that was starting to gain ground. Hence Samson’s broken arm, twisted in two directions beyond all repair. And Atlas in the hospital. And then Superman’s got his hot girlfriend dressed like a girl from Krypton and they’re making out on the moon.” That’s not unto itself a problem; it’s a precursor to Morrison’s t-shirt and jeans reinvention in that sense (which leapt back from the 70s to the 30s for inspiration), and when Superman himself finally gets his own back here it’s more than deserved. But it becomes a problem when Lois at theoretically her literal most empowered does little with her new powers and is framed narratively as a prize to be won in this ‘game’ of godlings, with Superman literally muttering “What do I have to do to make you keep your hands off my girl?” Morrison seems to be somewhat aware of the problems given Lois’s reasons for playing along (which are actually rather significant to the point of the issue) and her amused distaste at the suggestion of being ‘won’, and the issue is ultimately something of an argument against the macho storytelling tropes that drive that thinking. But it’s a far cry from the nuanced look at her and Superman’s relationship last issue offered, and there’s no virtue in overlooking it. As will be demonstrated again later on in the series in less structurally-embedded but more pointed ways, this was written almost 15 years ago, and mistakes were made.

Now we get to the book’s superheroed-up takes on Samson and Atlas, who are such delightful assholes. Occupying the Mxyzptlk/Prankster/Bizarro-in-his-friendlier-moods role of being the enemies to make Superman go ‘oh god, this guy’ as much as direct counterparts to him, they’re basically fratboys tooling around history and getting into trouble together, and Superman’s clearly had to clean up their messes before. They’re the champions of myth who operate by a morality that in no way precluded thievery, deception, and murder in pursuit of their grand ‘heroic’ conquests, the alpha male swaggering dipshit dudebro operating on Superman’s scale. And as much as they’re a pair of craven dumbasses who literally compare cock-sizes in here who Lois has no real interest in, their appearance is also the first and one of the only times in the series Superman puffs his chest out and does some traditional iconic posing, and he has good reason to be threatened - they’re trying to ply her with gifts and tales of miraculous feats basically exactly the same way he did last issue. He may have started to come clean with her, but he’s still playing his old Silver Age nervous bachelor games, and now that she’s got powers and costume to match his she’s showing him exactly where that bullshit is going to get him, teaching him a lesson just like he tried to teach her so many once upon a time.

As we’re around the midpoint of the issue, let’s talk the art. Quitely and Grant aren’t as showy with the tricks and effects as the first two issues; the one real noticeable structural thing is a consistent rhythm of zooming in-and-out on our four leads throughout the issue to keep a sense of momentum to a story mostly driven by conversation, culminating in the hyper zoom-ins of the Ultrasphnix sequence. But GOD there are so many perfect little details in here. The bow coming undone on Lois’s present, the glow of the super-serum (it feels so right that it literally glows, the ultimate alchemical potion), Lombard’s bouquet for Lois’s birthday party while Jimmy is bringing a conch of some sort as a presumed gift to whoever they’ll be meeting at Poseidonis, Jimmy’s happy-meal looking signal watch WHICH HAS A WRISTBAND SHAPED LIKE AN S, more beautiful Metropolis architecture and a good look at how the Daily Planet globe actually works, poor dopey-lookin’ Krull bursting through the satellite twirling around like a cat in a half-second of freefall, the Chronomobile, the far-off monumental stone towers of the Subterranosauri, the glow of the lava fading out as Samson reveals Superman’s fate, the bioelectric crackle around Atom-Hotep, mermaids waving up at Superman and Lois, and of course the pinup. It’s such a damn pretty book.

Just before the arrival of the Ultrasphnix, we have the mythic architecture of the series explained to us, naturally by the figure out of myth:

As noted by Morrison, the exact nature of the 12 challenges are never explained within the story because it’s only in retrospect that history will declare those specific feats as being of note in light of them being Superman’s last accomplishments before his ‘death’; Superman himself isn’t sure how many he’s done later on. It’s an apt if seemingly out-of-left-field bit of commentary on the way epics of the kind this story itself aspires towards are reinterpreted over time, but hindsight being 20/20? That this is a story of a massively iconic, archetypal take on Superman being brought out of the public eye to his physical and emotional lowest at every turn (hence the ACTUAL structure of the series being a solar arc across the sky, from day to a nighttime journey through the underworld and back again), that is now generally thought of being a fun fluffy story of how great and perfect Superman is, entirely bears it out. The 12 Labors of Superman are what Clark’s roughest year looks like to the awestruck onlookers, both in and as it turns out in large part out of text.

After Samson and Atlas seemingly show nobler colors by offering Superman aid in a genuinely stirring moment before Superman accurately dismisses it as the empty machismo posturing it is, Ultrasphinx - yet another super-champion of the past, this one an amoral god rather than a ‘hero’ on a quest - poses the unanswerable question of what happens when the unstoppable force meets the immovable object with Lois both alive and dead until he does (one of those unions of opposites Morrison loves), basically creating a high-stakes literalization of their relationship. Superman and Lois Lane had been playing will-they-or-won’t-they for almost 70 years at the time this was published (culturally at least), her trying to pry into his secrets while he screwed around with her in turn, running in circles until we finally reach the acidic psychodrama of Superman’s Forbidden Room and something has to break one way or another. And Superman answers that it’s time to surrender. Has he inspired the car ad we see at the end of the issue, or vice-versa? Either way, it’s illustrating by example what the deal is with the super-labors.

Superman, learning his lesson as he has and showing his greater heroism stems from his nobility, intellect, and willingness to transcend his worst instincts, still takes a minute to teach Samson and Atlas a well-deserved lesson (paired with that absolutely perfect shot of the rock cracking on Lois’s head), before taking us to my absolute favorite statement on why Superman loves Lois Lane which also connects back to the idea of surrender, and the iconic moon shot. And as Superman holds her as she falls asleep, his Clark voice in all its vulnerable humanity manifests itself as he tries to propose; the tough guys of the past wanted Lois for a day when she was finally operating on ‘their level’, Superman ‘lowers’ himself to his most human alongside her reassumed mortality as he tries to tell her he wants her for what lifetime he has left. We’re only halfway there at most, he still hasn’t admitted his condition and she still can’t accept that he’s Clark, but this is Superman taking his first step along his quiet character arc.

Additional notes

* Interestingly, the original solicitation for this issue declared “Meanwhile, Lex Luthor's plans simmer as the criminal mastermind exerts his charisma and intellect over the hardcore inmates who share his maximum-security prison.” One of many bits that changed in the process of actually putting the book together.

* Perhaps this story of very manly men out of time doing manly stuff and getting their asses kicked for it across generations is represented in part by Krull being the son of a king whose battle cry is KRULL WILL EAT YOUR CHILL-DRUNN! That might be reading a *bit* much into it though. That Morrison describes Krull in backmatter however as “the living embodiment of the savage, swaggering ‘R Complex’ or reptile brain” definitely plays into the ideas of the issue as I understood them.

* Jimmy’s declaration of “Ms. Grant, Mr. Lombard, I’m taking immediate steps” is a perfect little moment for him - he’s calm and on top of things, but there’s also that little touch of naive ego in thinking that it’s thanks to him that Superman’s going to notice the dinosaur invasion of Metropolis.

* In backmatter and interviews Morrison had substantially further fleshed-out backstories for several of the new characters here. Samson is indeed the original champion, plucked from his era by a pair of foolish time-travelers searching for a savior; instead, enamored and corrupted by future culture he stole their malfunctioning Chronomobile and went on adventures to slake his lust, for fortune, flesh, and adventure alike. Atlas meanwhile is the boisterous yet quietly burdened young prince of the New Mythos, a society of super-godlings torn between New Elysium and Hadia, Morrison’s vision of a Jack Kirby Olympian saga for DC following in the wake of Thor’s Norse myths rather than the full-blown invention of the New Gods. And the Ultrasphinx “is the super-champion of a lost Egyptian Atomic Age in the 80th century BC. When he crashed to Earth his otherworldly science founded the advanced, ancient dynasty of Atem-Hotep [sic], a civilization eventually destroyed by the nuclear war that left Northern Africa a desert”. A. Morrison backmatter rules and you should read it whenever you get the chance, and B. This notion of proto-civilizations mirroring the eventual legends of a mere handful of millennia past is one he followed much further in Seven Soldiers of Victory with Shining Knight and its antediluvian Camelot.

* The main inspiration for this particular story was the frequent use of ancient strongmen as rivals to the Man of Steel in the Silver Age, which Morrison noted preferring to the use of analogue characters like Majestic for their broad cultural standing, culminating in this:

...though with Atlas swapped in, as Marvel already had the definitive take on Hercules in superhero comics (and, one imagines, since putting Hercules in the comic where Superman gets 12 labors would have had to be addressed), though he’d tackle him later on in the...controversial Wonder Woman: Earth One. Morrison’s analysis of this cover in Supergods basically lays out the thesis of this issue quite cleanly: “This was what happened when you couldn’t make decisions or offer any lasting commitment. Samson pounced on your best girl. And for Superman, it was a horrific challenge to his modernity. Was he really no better than these archaic toughs? Or could he prove himself stronger, faster than any previous man-god?” Fun fact: I myself hate this comic because it’s an entirely standard issue that fully returns to status quo by the end, sullying the good name and promise of Imaginary Stories for nothing more than fooling readers into thinking this was one of the issues were anything could really happen. Shameful false advertisement.

* Worth noting this is a rare instance where the glowing-red angry heat vision eyes work for me. Those two were real dicks and had it coming, and for that matter Superman looking for all the world a wrathful god promising banishment to a very different sort of underworld more than underscores his relative position next to the suitably abashed adventurers.

* It’s an interesting choice to use Poseidonis here, the capital city of Aquaman - it’s a sensible place for Superman to travel (though the real implications regarding the Justice League in this world won’t be for awhile yet), but it’s Tritonis that’s the undersea home to Superman’s onetime love, the mermaid Lori Lemaris. Perhaps Morrison just didn’t want a subset of readers in the know and pining after all these decades for Clark to find succor in the arms of his fishy love to dwell on that particular what-could-have-been; either way, Atlantis in general as what sprung up from a devastated ancient civilization is a perfectly logical inclusion for this issue in general.

* Lois’s description of her super-senses is not only lovely, but sets up the victory of #12 right in the first act. Additionally Lois keeping a cactus is such a perfect little bit for her character - it’ll prick ya, but she’s working to keep the thing alive.

* The journeys to the moon and ‘underworld’ for this issue, but in playful and romantic contexts, marks this issue as the (depending on whether you read it as a 4 or 6 issue arc) final installment before All-Star Superman begins its structural descent into the night.

* A very happy birthday to Justin Martin (and a day-before-birthday to myself) with this, annotations of the issue of All-Star Superman about a birthday. Birthdays themselves being a signpost of time and evolution, a forward march, making it a potent occasion to highlight in this series in general and this installment in particular.

[poorrichardslegacy]

Kacxa Week 2020 Day 7 - Return to Braylar IV

SUMMARY: Keith and Acxa return to Braylar IV with their teenage daughters. It is the first time either of them has been back to the planet since their first visit as enemies 23 decaphoebs earlier.

AO3 Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26923546

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Voltron: Legendary Defender Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Acxa/Keith (Voltron) Characters: Acxa (Voltron), Keith (Voltron), Keith's Wolf (Voltron), Original Galran Character(s), Original Characters Additional Tags: Kacxa Week 2020, Family Secrets, Family Bonding, Family Fluff, Pack Family, Wolf Pack, Alternate Universe - Post-Canon

---------------

Acxa looks around the clearing as Keith lands their ship on the surface of Braylar IV.

“Well, that was certainly a much smoother landing than the last time I was here.”

“Mom, any landing would be smoother than the one you made the last time you were here. You crash landed, remember?”

“Actually Cataleya, I try to forget that part of that trip.”

---------------

Disembarking from the ship, Keith sees four Cosmic Dire Wolves approaching. He and Acxa grin from ear to ear when they recognize the lead Wolf.

“Cosmo!”

The three rush forward to great one another. Standing over 8 feet tall at the shoulders, Cosmo bends down and allows Keith and Acxa to scratch him behind his ears.

“Oh, buddy. It’s so good to see you again! How have you been?”

“I am well, Keith. I assume all is well with you and Acxa? And the pups? Cataleya and Mireya? They are well?”

Acxa laughs. “The pups are fine, Cosmo. In fact, they’ve grown up since you last saw them.” She turns, looks behind her, and summons her daughters forward. “Girls, you remember, Cosmo? You were six the last time you saw him.”

“Mom, of course we remember Cosmo!” They rush forward to greet their former companion, who is just as happy to see them.

Keith sees a she-wolf with two pups standing behind Cosmo. He taps Cosmo on his shoulder. “Are you going to introduce us?”

“Of course. Keith, Acxa, Mireya, Catleya…this is my mate Corima, and our pups Tiguan and Merina.”

The Koganes bow in unison at the waist as they greet Cosmo’s family. “Corima, Tiguan, Merina…it is an honor to meet you.”

Corima and her pups bow in return. “The honor is ours, Black Paladin.”

“Black Paladin. That’s a title I haven’t been called in a long time.” Keith pauses and looks wistfully at Acxa. “A long time.” He turns back to Cosmo. “So, it’s been awhile since we’ve been here old friend. How is the pack?”

“The Sonai are well. About two decaphoebs ago, Father was severely injured fighting the Hyenas. They attacked a neighboring clan that was friendly to the Sonai, and he and I went to help them. Corima was a member of that clan. She helped me nurse him back to health and…well, here we are. I became alpha male of the Sonai when father and I returned.”

“Mother and Father are very eager to see you again. Shall we go to the compound?”

---------------

They enter the compound where the entire Sonai clan has gathered to meet them. As is their custom, the wolves bow out of respect for their visitors. Keith and his family return the courtesy, bowing in greeting as well.

Stepping forward out of the crowd with a noticeable limp is Soran. He is followed closely by Ashira, who keeps a watchful eye on her mate. Ashira looks well, but for Soran it is a different story. The decaphoebs have not been kind to the old Dire Wolf. Besides the limp, Soran is considerably grayer than he used to be.

Happy for the opportunity to see his friends again, Keith steps forward to greet them.

“Soran. Ashira. It is so good to see you again!”

“It is good to see you as well, old friend. I knew this day would come. I have been looking forward to seeing you again for a long time.”

“I’ve brought my family with me. I’d like to introduce them if I may.”

Soran looks past Keith and spies Acxa. He moves close to Keith and whispers to him. “So, you finally wised up and claimed her?”

Keith whispers back. “It’s more like she claimed me, but I’m not complaining.”

“It’s just as well, since you weren’t about to do it.”

Keith assumes an air of mock indignation. “And everyone asks me where Cosmo learned to be so snarky…like father like son.”

“Hey, I taught my son everything I know.”

---------------

Acxa shyly says hello to Soran, apologizing for her state the last time she was here. She gives Ashira a warm greeting as well, since Ashira and her sister saved Acxa’s life following her crash landing on Braylar IV.1

Ashira notices the girls. “Tell me Acxa, are these your pups?”

“Yes, they are. Girls, come here and say hello to Cosmo’s mother.” Acxa introduces the girls, who both render the respectful greeting Keith hammered home to them on the way here.

Soran turns to Keith. “So, she claimed you and you got busy. Well done!”

---------------

Keith sets up camp for his family in the cave that he and Acxa used for shelter 23 decaphoebs earlier. They are joined for dinner by Soran, Ashira, Cosmo, and his family. That night, around a campfire in the cave, Soran asks Keith’s daughters if their father told them of their parent’s first visit to Braylar IV.

“Do you know all that transpired in this very cave, young pups?”

“No sir, they mentioned they were here, but they never went into details.”

“Would you like to hear about it? How that rascal of a father of yours saved your mother’s life?”

“YES, PLEASE SIR!”

Acxa shoots Keith a panicked look. There is a part of this story she prefers not be told. Keith nods to his wife, then turns to Soran. “I don’t think that’s necessary. We don’t want to put you out.”

“Nonsense! These pups need to know about their parents before they were mated! It will help them understand who they sprung forth from.”

Soran turns to Acxa, a glint in his eye. “You’re not ashamed of anything I may tell them, are you?”

Acxa gives Soran a deadpan look straight in the eye. “Would it make a difference if I said yes?”

“Nope. I’m going to tell them anyway.”

Acxa sighs and looks to Keith. “That’s what I thought he would say.”

Soran proceeds to give the girls the full unabridged version of Keith and Acxa’s earlier visit to Braylar IV.2 3

Embellished and entirely from his perspective.

---------------

As Soran finishes his exaggerated story of Keith and Acxa’s first visit to Braylar IV, Mireya and Cataleya look at each other then turn to their mother with smirks on their faces.

“Mom…I gotta ask this…how in the name of all that is holy did you and Dad ever get together?”

“What do you mean, Cataleya?”

“Ok. This is what Soran just told us. You and Dad are enemies. You’re trying to kill each other. You fight Dad two planets from here, he cripples your fighter and breaks your arm, then he just flies away and leaves you. You crash land on this planet, you have to fight poisonous Hyenas, one of which poisons you, and you nearly die. All because Dad put you in this position. Not exactly good boyfriend behavior if you know what I mean.”

Keith, hurt by his daughter’s words, speaks up for himself. “In my defense, your mother jumped me at Braylar VI. I was just defending myself.”

Speaking of jumping on Keith, now it is Mireya’s turn to poke some good-natured fun at her father. “So, Dad, let me make sure I understand things from your point of view. You do all that to Mom, then you feel all guilty and decide to check on her. You got Mom naked while she was delirious with fever, yet you were a perfect gentleman and didn’t touch her…well…except for taking her bodysuit off…, you got your butt kicked by Narti and had to get the Sonai to help you beat her, and then you let Mom leave without saying goodbye? Wow, that doesn’t exactly sound like a romantic date to me. It sounds more like a date from hell. Mom, tell us again why you picked him?”

Seeing the hurt behind Keith’s eyes, Acxa reaches out, takes his hand, and whispers to him. “I’ve got this.” She pulls a recording device out of her pocket and turns to her girls. “You want to know why I picked your father as my life partner? This is why.”

Keith goes wide-eyed upon seeing the device. “You still have that thing?”

“Of course, I do, love. And it still plays like it did the day I found it.”

“Mom, what is it?”

“This? Oh, your father slipped this this little gem into my bag before he and Narti loaded me into the shuttle to return to Lotor’s cruiser. I think it’s worth listening to. You girls put an interesting forensic slant on what happened here, but there’s more to the story than what you just heard. You’re missing the nuances and you don’t really know what happened from your father’s perspective. This recording will put Soran’s story in a whole new light. It opened my eyes when I first heard it, so many decaphoebs ago.”

As the girls gather around their mother, Acxa starts the playback on the recording Keith made so many years ago.

“Hey, Acxa, it’s me, Keith. The Black Paladin. The guy you probably want to tear up into a million small pieces right about now. Yeah. But before you do that, let me explain a few things.”

“Wow, Dad, you look so young there. And hunky. I see why Mom fell for you…”

“Wait…Hunky? What does that…”

“SHHH! Dad! We want to hear this!”

“You might or might not remember the first fight against the Hyenas. I came down to help you because…I needed to...it was the right thing to do. One of them got close to you and slashed your right leg. You were injured pretty badly, lost a lot of blood.”

Pausing the recording, Acxa tells the girls about the onset of the symptoms of the Hyena poisoning. The big needle Keith used to inject the medicine that slowed the poison. How he asked for permission to remove her armor to treat her leg. And, how he treated Ashira, who was also poisoned by the Hyenas.4

She hits the play button again.

“I was also the one who called for Narti to come get you. I’d gone to your fighter to figure out your communication protocols, and I happened to see her on radar. I called, she came down, and the rest, as they say, is history.”

“I wanted to tell you all of this to your face, but…you were pretty loopy. You had no idea where you were or who you were talking to you. I don’t kill helpless enemies. But I know, technically, we are enemies. The next time we meet, if you come after me again like you did the last time, I will use deadly force if necessary, to defend myself.”

“I’d prefer not to do that. I had no desire to fight you at Braylar VI, because of our shared experience in the Weblum. I have no desire to fight you now. Not after what we just went through together.”

Mireya reaches in and hits the pause button on the playback device. “Wait…you two met on a Weblum?”

“No dear. Inside a Weblum.”

“WHAT?”

“The second stomach if you want to be precise. That’s another story.”

“Yeah, one that you two are going to tell us on the way back to Diabazaal! Then we want to hear the Androse Campfire story!”

Acxa prepares to restart the tape. “Pay attention girls, this is the important part.”

“I apologize for saying you lack honor. Narti told me about you. I believe what she said is true, and I was wrong to say what I said to you.”

“I also apologize for the pilot taunt. Turns out you’re just as good a pilot as I am. If not better. The skill it took to fly that fighter to Braylar IV with a broken arm and walk away from a crash landing is amazing.”

“Finally, I apologize for removing your body suit without your permission. I know you’ll figure it out sooner or later, so it’s best I admit it now. I mean nothing happened…it’s not like I haven’t seen…well…ok it was the first time I’ve seen…but it was purely clinical. Yeah, that’s it. I mean you were sweating…perspiring…uh…your body suit was saturated. You would have gotten a lot sicker if I left you in it. I did it for your own good. I hope you believe that. Please don’t kill me for it.”

“Wow, Dad…you were quite the smooth talker there…”

“Aww, he was really embarrassed Mireya…I think it’s cute…he tried.”

Acxa smiles and blushes at the memory, and at the sight of a clearly embarrassed and flustered Keith on the video. “Yes he did.”

“In another place and another time, I like to think we could be friends. We seem to have a lot in common. Also, if you ever have a change of heart and want to join the Coalition, you can do so any time. I would welcome you as a comrade in arms. And…as a friend. I hope someday we have a chance to talk when we aren’t pointing weapons at each other. In a selfish way it would be good to talk to you about what it means to be a half Galra.”

“Good luck and be safe, Acxa.”

Acxa carefully stows the recording device and faces her daughters.

“So, you see…your father did say goodbye. All kidding aside girls, after hearing that tape I began to realize that I had feelings for the man who would someday become your father.”

She takes Keith’s hand and looks him in the eye. “He told me decaphoebs later, the first time he said he loved me, that the message on this device was his way of telling me he was interested in me.”

She turns back to her daughters. “But he didn’t have to tell me that. I knew, just by listening to this recording. It only took us just over four decaphoebs to finally get together after we were here. Too long, in my opinion. But…we did it.”

“Thanks for sharing that recording, Mom. And for telling us how you fell for Dad.”

Mireya sheepishly turns to her father. “Dad…I’m sorry for needling you about what you did when you and Mom were here the first time. What you did was sweet. I see why Mom fell in love with you.”

Soran can’t resist on final parting shot at Keith.

“Good, then perhaps you can enlighten me. Because I still don’t see it.”

Keith turns to Ashira, a deadpan look on his face. “Ashira, would you smack him for me?”

Ashira give Soran a sharp whack across the top of his head with her paw.

“Ow!” The surprised wolf turns to Keith. “Why did you ask her to do that?”

Keith laughs. “That my old friend was a love tap to say how much I missed you and your snark. You’re just too tall for me to reach your head myself.”

“Well, if that was supposed to be a love tap, any chance you could let Ashira know the next time you decide to do that? She just about killed me!”

Ashira gives Soran a stern look. “Don’t be so dramatic, you old coot. If I wanted to hurt you, trust me you’d know.”

As the group shares a good-natured laugh, the Kogane girls turn to one another.

“You know, Mireya, this is turning out to be a pretty cool trip after all.”

  1 Return of the Prince, Chapter 11, Cry of the Wolf

2 Return of the Prince, Chapter 11 Cry of the Wolf

3 Return of the Prince, Chapter 12 Riders on the Storm

4 Return of the Prince, Chapter 11, Cry of the Wolf

[things2mustdo]

I went to visit my family for Thanksgiving, and as usual, I was confronted with numerous blue pill beliefs. While I’m no longer annoyed by these things, because I’ve gone through the “Return Journey” phase of swallowing the red pill, I did notice something that was extremely disturbing.

As I grew tired of arguing over basic political, economic, and gender points, I meandered downstairs to my family’s recreation room. There was a group of my younger relatives, aged 16-20, watching some show on Netflix about trans-gendered individuals.

I don’t know what the show was called, but one thing that really struck me was the show’s uncanny ability to use emotionally charged scenes and drama to elicit a feeling of compassion for the characters. In other words, numerous TV shows are now starting to take advantage of our natural empathy, and using it to sway our political and social opinions.

Emotionally Gripping

As I stood behind the couch watching a few minutes of this transgender show, I saw a very heart wrenching scene take place. Although the nuances of the story line were lost to me, I gathered enough information to see what was going on.

Basically, some guy was getting surgery to turn into a woman. As he was in the operating room, something went terribly wrong, and despite the surgeons’ desperate attempts to save him, he ended up perishing.

The following scene was comprised of extremely grief-inducing piano music played to various clips of the man’s children all mourning their loss. While this may seem innocuous, or like it’s just “creative, dramatic television,” I believe that it’s actually something far more sinister.

What’s going on here, is that the elites (because remember, this is a top down operation) are trying to traumatize the average American youth with images of the “horrors that transgender people go through!” They’re using television to create these emotional “triggers,” if you will, that will be ignited anytime someone says something against transgenders.

In other words, the trauma that occurs from becoming engrossed in this TV show (in our example) leaves an emotional residue of sorts, so that whenever the topic of transgenderism is brought up in conversation, the viewer subconsciously remembers the emotions associated with the topic which the TV show implanted into his mind.

Emotional Triggers

This became abundantly clear to me as I was arguing with a friend from the West Coast over transgenderism. I very calmly said that I believe it’s a mental illness, and should be treated as such. I said that these people need help, and we shouldn’t encourage them. I backed my assertion by referencing how the chief psychologist at Johns Hopkins Hospital has vehemently called out doctors who perform transgender surgeries as “collaborating with a mental illness for profit.”

Despite my calm and collected assertions, she grew EXTREMELY emotional and automatically assumed a whole host of things about me:

I’m a disgusting, careless sociopath

I have no sympathy for others’ suffering and I’m a cold-hearted bastard

I vehemently hate anyone who’s different than me

Despite the fact that none of these things are true, it became clear to me why she automatically believed this about me: the TV shows that she watches had been subtly implanting little emotional biases into her brain. This is how manipulative our “real” media is.

What happened, in psychological terms, was that as I was calmly explaining my perspective on transgenderism, her subconscious was flooded with all of the EMOTIONS that she associates with the topic:

All of the pain and grief she experienced from TV shows depicting transgender “issues”

How Bruce Jenner is a “hero,” and how much mainstream “opposition” he encountered when coming out

All of the anger she experienced when the token “anti-transgender person” in each show was a huge dick to the main character (more on this in the next section)

All rational thought was completely stopped, as she had literally been trained to elicit a certain response whenever the topic of transgenderism is brought up. Do you see my point? By repeatedly exposing people to scenes that elicit sympathy for transgenders, the media is engineering a widespread social response in favor of it.

Token Characters

As I alluded to before, another underhanded tactic that mainstream TV shows use is that they never have a rational, level-headed man who supports traditional marriage and normal heterosexuality. Any time someone in mainstream media doesn’t support the main character’s disorder, he’s always portrayed as a complete asshole.

This can take the form of him beating up the main character, bullying the main character, or what have you. I recall several years ago there was ample talk at the work place over some “anti-homosexual” character in glee that smothered a smoothie onto a guy just because he was homosexual, or something ridiculous like that.

Despite the fact that NOBODY I know would do something like this, the elite-sponsored TV utilizes token characters in order to implant a certain idea into our heads—the idea that everyone who opposes deviant sexual orientations is a cold-hearted bully. I recall that this was pointed out to me by a Catholic high school teacher, and it didn’t make any sense to me back then (before homosexuality was normal).

Now, in retrospect, I’m extremely thankful that he planted that seed in my class’s mind. The more that I look at television through this lens, the more I see what he was talking about. There’s never a level-headed, confident, genuine man that has game, either. It’s always either a completely meek beta male, or a chauvinistic “bad boy” Hank-Moody type character (although I do love me some Hank Moody).

This phenomena is taken even further as the transgender or homosexual person in mainstream TV is almost always portrayed as some brave, sweet, sensitive soul, with a hard life. In other words, the elites are engineering a dichotomy as Roosh has referenced before.

The dichotomy is that you’re either a sweet, empathetic, gentle-hearted person who supports transgenderism and deviant sexual preferences, or you’re a complete asshole who bullies and berates people just because “you’re mean.” This use of labeling brainwashes others into IMMEDIATELY putting you into the “sociopathic jerk” category if you don’t support transgenderism, making any and all rational discourse folly.

Subtle Desensitization

Another terrifying event that comes to mind of the media’s disgusting methods was when I was watching a popular kid’s TV show known as “Adventure Time,” a year or two ago. Again, I was with my family for some holiday event (I can’t remember which), and recall some of the kids watching this show.

Despite the fact that it’s labeled as a kid’s show, I saw an insidious little dialogue take place that was meant to desensitize children to pedophilia. In the show, there was some ball going on (I assume it was like a “prom” type deal), and the old wizard was looking for a partner.

He ended up going with some underage girl, who was probably 60 years his prior, and when the main character pointed this out, the old wizard simply stated: “Age…is nothing but a number!” Upon which the characters started dancing and doing comical things to prevent any sort of rational thought occurring after this was said.

After seeing this I became extremely disgusted and turned off the television, but that’s beyond the point. Why is this type of dribble being used to brainwash our youth? Anyone with half a brain can see that the point behind this scene was to start subtly implanting the seeds of pedophilia into a child’s mind.

Again, the words of my wise old Catholic high school teacher come to mind. I’ll never forget when he told me that “in 15 years, pedophilia will become normal.” My entire class was shocked, and couldn’t comprehend such a thing happening. He said this in 2009, and it seems that his prediction is coming true.

“First it will start with the media,” he said. “They’ll have some show where they make jokes about it and they’ll keep the humor very lighthearted, never showing the actual act. They’ll begin the process of desensitizing you, then eventually some politician will bring it up, and it will be an official stance that other politicians will be forced to take. This will begin the process of slowly normalizing it.”

My God was this man spot on, because this is EXACTLY how the media sways our opinions.

Keep in mind that their methods are SUBTLE, and that’s the point—they want to keep it below the level of thought so that you never question what they’re teaching you. Any time a strange or ridiculous belief is asserted, they very quickly move into a joyful scene or celebration to not only prevent you from thinking too much about the ridiculous belief, but to have you associate happiness with it, as well, which brings me to my next point.

Association And Correlation Bias

There’s a very powerful phenomena in psychology known as association; this is sometimes also called the correlation bias, or “Illusory Correlation.” This is basically your mind’s tendency to look for relationships where there aren’t any.

For example, why do you think most modern girls aren’t girlfriend material? Why do you think that the average man is weak, pathetic, and emasculated? It’s because of the media’s tendency to slowly create illusory associations within your mind.

The media causes women to associate happiness and a successful life with the following:

Being a man-hating feminist, who can’t submit to a strong, confident man

Not cooking or cleaning, because that’s “sexist”

Riding the alpha male cock carousel, and not getting married, because marriage is “oppressive”

The media creates a false correlation in women’s minds by constantly portraying bitchy, overly-masculine, slutty women as being empowered, sought-after, and happy. As any man who’s been learning game knows, this is absolute nonsense.

It doesn’t matter, though—once your brain has an association, it’s extremely difficult to get rid of it. This is why so many men are emasculated nowadays. It teaches us to associate:

Being a weak bitch with getting a hot girlfriend

Being a feminist and leftist with having girls think you’re noble and heroic

Courting a slut with being a gentleman

As any modern man who reads the manosphere knows, these are completely fallacious beliefs. Being a weak, low-testosterone man will not in fact land you the girls. Being a screaming leftist who holds those “I’m a feminist because,” signs will not get you the approval of women, and courting a washed up slut does not make you a gentleman (it makes you stupid).

Despite the obvious illogical nature of these beliefs, because the mainstream media has 8 hours a day to indoctrinate us, most men end up buying into them wholeheartedly, and will even berate you for having game when you CLEARLY get more women than them.

“So What Can I Do?”

First things first, stop watching mainstream media. In case you haven’t noticed, the MSM is starting to feel the effects of men waking up; in fact, they’ve recently gone on a long, drawn-out tirade about “fake news,” or in other words, news that is red-pilled.

I haven’t watched mainstream media EVER—the only time that I ever watch MSM is if they’re interviewing a pickup artist, a manosphere blogger, or if I’m trying to debunk their ludicrous reporting. I get almost all of my news from sites like ROK, Danger And Play, Info Wars, Natural News, and the people that I follow on Twitter.

In addition to only consuming a red-pilled information diet, ensure that your children don’t watch TV unarmed. I saw a phenomenal post recently on “How to Raise Red-Pilled Daughters,” and the ROK author talks about how he doesn’t flat out ban TV, but rather teaches his daughters to think rationally and learn to see the foolishness of MSM.

Aside from not watching MSM and raising your family to be skeptical of it, you can also support alternative media sites by simply tuning in. You don’t have to buy any of their products (although it helps); simply giving them your attention and leaving a thoughtful comment or two is enough to generate interest.

All in all, we’re facing extremely tumultuous times. More and more people are starting to break free of the MSM’s grip on their mind, but the men who get left behind end up more brainwashed than ever. Eventually, once the MSM dies, we can begin the long and arduous process of reclaiming our country—and this, my friends, is something I believe is worth fighting for.

Read More: Fact Checking Emotional Propaganda

When I was making a purchase at my local bookstore last week, the cashier solicited me for a donation. This donation was for a charity dealing with sick children or something. I told cashier I came here to buy a book not make donations. I guess she realized I am not one to be guilt tripped into doing things and told me that many people do not have the courage to say no. This pressure to comply due to emotional appeal has run rampant in America. When people make decisions on how they feel or manipulated by their feelings, not many good things can come of it.

Usually I do not delve into the details of the various schemes and manipulations that powerful people do in order to influence people’s behaviors. Someone actually fact checked one sales pitch for the limitation of guns. This exercise in breaking down an argument outside of the emotional shows that emotion is all it has. While the premise is guns, the method is pure emotional appeal.

The Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg has decided to throw his hat in, as well as his capital, in a political fight against the NRA by spending an estimated fifty million dollars to start up Everytown for Gun Safety @ Everytown.org. If you go to his website, one of the articles pops out on the front page is an “analysis” of the over sixty “school shootings” that have taken place since the Newtown massacre on December 12th, 2012.

In this era of political rhetoric and ideological echo-chambers, there is little in the way of fact-checking and realism with statistical data. The media is off  panicking the masses of soccer moms and metrosexual dads that mass shootings are a growing epidemic, apparently none of whom look at the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports of homicides every year. Of the sixty-two incidents on Everytown’s “analysis”, only one can be classified as a mass murder. The FBI is quite clear that a “mass murder” involves the homicide of four or more individuals with no cooling off period between the murders. The article would lead readers to believe that there have been sixty-two incidents of similar scope as the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting. But this is simply not the case.

With a total combined death toll between the sixty-two “school shootings” of 39, it’s hard to match them up to Newtown, which in one incident saw 28 deaths, including the perpetrator, Adam Lanza. Despite what the media might portray for politics, ratings, or profit, such shootings are exceptionally rare. Of course, a large amount of the focus is on the AR-15 reportedly used,the  gun control advocates would like gullible Americans to think without which Adam Lanza would not have been capable of such carnage. But if you remember the Virginia Tech shooting on April 16th, 2007. Seung-Hui Cho managed to kill 32 people, then himself, with nothing more than a .22LR caliber Walther P22 and 9mm Glock 19; the Walther with a magazine capacity of ten rounds and the Glock a bit more at fifteen. There is little discussion of firearms in the Everytown analysis, probably because they are virtually all handguns or the suggested firearm for home defense of Vice President Joe Biden, a shotgun.

Let’s look at that the lack of analysis this “analysis” gives us, as it’s little more than a picture of a crying woman and a list of schools at which a firearm was discharged on or nearby campus grounds since December 2012. Thirty-nine people dead, because of school shootings, between December 13th, 2012 and mid-April 2014. It’s hard to find statistics for causes of death even near that number. The United States averages roughly 51 deaths due to lightning strikes per year, over the last 20 years; according to NOAA. According to the CDC, there was an average of 3,533 unintentional drownings per year for the years of 2005-2009. Yet where is a politically motivated and affluent billionaire to launch a safety campaign outlining the dangers of pools or thunderstorms?

The fact that Mayor Bloomberg has taken Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s now infamous quote “never let a good crisis go to waste” to heart, is no surprise. But who thinks about the political realities of why someone is making moves against one of the GOP’s biggest political lobbies, using a tragedy like Newtown as the crest on their flag; when they are busy being emotionally compromised by the idea of children being gunned down in their school classrooms?

Among the 39 deaths, there is a justified case of self-defense, a possible case of self-defense, and seven cases of nothing more then suicides by firearm. The biggest trend among these “school shootings” is the shooters and victims are young black men. This reality is in stark contrast to the media image of upper-class white elementary school kids gunned down by socially awkward psychopaths with AR-15’s or other “assault weapons”. Few if any of the mainstream gun safety campaigns reflect the reality of gun violence. Remember, you are more likely to be killed by bee stings than you are to be shot on or around a school campus.

In conclusion, this emotional appeal by Mr. Bloomberg seems to be all about coercing a population into following his politics through emotional appeal. His advocacy gives them an audience of motivated people controlled by their emotions. What could a powerful person do with this audience aside from campaign against guns. I signed up at this website to get the newsletter. This newsletter only talks about political activism for those that seem to not be able to make up their own mind. Be aware of those that appeal to your emotion, because they may not appeal to your interests.

Note: The author received help from “Glocktopus”, a member of the notorious “Donk Chat” in writing this article.

[twdmusicboxmystery]

How Emily’s Song Fits into TD Symbolism

Good morning! Okay, so this is something we’ve been keeping an eye on for a while. It’s something @wdway​ first picked up on, and we’ve seen it frequently this season. I’ve been hesitant to actually post about it because we knew so little. I usually try to watch something for a while and gather more info before I post about it, and that was definitely true here. 

Even now, this theory is going to be very sparse, but it’s something I know you guys will like, especially since they used Emily’s song in the show last week. I have lots of people asking me about symbols in the song and how it’s connected (other than the obvious of promoting Emily, which the show is suddenly doing a LOT of; hint, hint 😉)

I’ll talk about this in three parts: Theme, Embodiment, and Proverb.

Theme:

We’ve started to notice a theme in which hearing, seeing, and speaking are all mentioned together It’s been happening a lot this season. And in truth, I think it’s been happening for many seasons (didn’t just start this season) but because we weren’t looking for it, we never saw it. I’ll explain why I think that in a minute.

We think it’s related to the “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” proverb.

Let me give you an example. In 10x04, Michonne and Judith talked on their journey to Hilltop. Judith said she could be an extra pair of EYES and EARS if Michonne wanted to confide in her. At the end of the convo, she asked another question, which Michonne didn’t answer. Judith said Michonne was thinking on it. So she made the classic motion of zipping her lips shut.

So you see what I mean? Eyes, ears, and then no speaking. And we’ve seen these things randomly mentioned in dialogue or shown in some way a lot lately.

The reason I think they may have been around for a long time is because of these pictures:

One was taken during S3, the other during S4, if I remember correctly, and the actors never explained what they were doing or why the took the pictures in these poses. It comes across as they just goofing around on set.

I’ve always personally believed that, even if they don’t ever talk about it, the actors probably know at least something of the symbolism involved. Maybe they don’t know ever nuance of every single thing they film, but we know they’re very invested in their characters and their character arcs, so I can’t imagine they don’t ask questions about some of the random (symbolic) things that get put into the show. So I think they, at least the main characters, actually probably know more about this than they let on.

A good example would be 6x03. Remember Daryl went back to help Rick and then kind of randomly just went back to Sasha and Abraha. A LOT of people found his behavior kind of odd in that episode, and sometime afterward, a fan asked Norman about it. 

He kind of hemmed and hawed and basically said Daryl didn’t go back just for Rick. There was more to it than that and it would make sense later. It never REALLY did. I think that was a foreshadowing sequence and Norman knew that, but wasn’t allowed to talk about it. 

And these pictures (above) are good evidence of it as well. The actors knew this theme was present in the show, and they took a picture to illustrate it.

Embodiment:

So, the next thing we’ve considered is that perhaps this theme showing up so strongly last season and this season has everything to do with Connie and Kelly’s characters and the fact that they’re deaf. (Hear no evil.)

In fact, in 10x04, when the male Whisperer was skinning a walker, Alpha told him to be careful, because the ears are the trickiest part. And that was the same episode where we saw Kelly struggling with her hearing loss in a big way.

But let me back up. Before we knew Kelly was losing her hearing, which we only learned in 10x01, we were really just considering Connie. We were thinking that she could represent hear no evil and speak no evil, because she doesn’t do either (hear or speak, I mean). But she definitely doesn’t represent “see no evil,” because her eyesight is actually stellar due to her lack of hearing.

But.

We’ve long wondered if Beth will have vision problems when she returns. Especially given the “daddy always said bad moonshine can make you go blind” line in Still.

But seeing 10x04 with Kelly’s hearing loss opening sequence made me realize something: I think she’s hear no evil. Connie certainly qualifies since she can’t hear either, but we’re actually watching Kelly lose her hearing. Plus, she can’t really be “speak no evil” because we’ve heard her speak a lot. Connie is the only one whose voice (verbally anyway) we’ve never heard.

So I think Connie is speak no evil, Kelly is hear no evil, and Beth will be see no evil. Which is just more evidence that something about Connie and Kelly will either lead to Beth or cross with her arc in some way.

The Proverb:

Now let’s talk about Emily’s song.

The phrase “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” originates from a Chinese proverb that has to do with three monkeys, each of which represents one of the senses. If you trace it back, it shows up more recently in Japan, but probably originated in China. But the common thread is that it’s a Buddhist proverb.

In 10x04, we saw these little colored flags around Kelly during her opening sequence. I merely commented on the colors, but @frangipanilove​ made the comment that they looked a lot like Tibetan prayer flags. Not knowing much about such things, I googled.

Sure enough, these really do look like (very tattered) Tibetan prayer flags. I guess you often see them strung along paths in the Himalayas. They’re meant to bestow blessings on the countryside and on travelers, and they’re definitely a Buddhist tradition.

So we have the China connection (Tibet), the Buddha connection, and the more general religion/prayer connection.

I would also encourage you to google Buddhism and turtle, because the Buddhist tradition of turtles is very interesting. I don’t think it means any one particular thing, and I did fairly minimal research, but you often see the turtle being wise, surviving by outsmarting those trying to kill it, and sometimes saving others. 

Sometimes it’s a symbol of time itself (if there are any Stephen King fans reading this, think about the end of IT—the book—because I’m fairly sure he took that from the Buddhist tradition of turtles). 

Check out THIS LINK where it’s also associated with survival, carrying the world on its back, and even home.

So here’s how I’m bringing this all together. When Emily’s song came out, even when I first heard the title, I was a bit reluctant to read into it. Obviously there’s the turtle thing, which has long been a Bethyl symbol, but I wasn’t sure what to do with the monkey, and you guys know I’m always cautious trying to read into things outside the show.

This theory has formed very quickly and didn’t truly come together for me like this until we saw the Tibetan prayer flags and then heard Emily’s song in the show.

Bottom line: We think Beth is part of the “hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil” theme. Her song is called the turtle and the monkey. She’s the turtle, and the monkey also points to the proverb. And her song was featured in the show last week.

Between that, all the filming they’re doing at the Grady location, all the publicity the show is giving Emily (she’s suddenly the subject of articles, clickbait sites, and is going to be on the TWD podcast soon) and even that Emily is posting interesting poems and lyrics, one of which mentions “the walking dead,” 

(Thanks to Angela T.B. on Facebook for that 💖) I’m feeling all tingly. I think she’s VERY close.

Going into episode 6, we think there will be a lot of Consumed parallels, so watch out for those.

I also think the three monkeys could double as another example of the St. Nicholas/pickle story, in which three resurrection take place. (Pretty sure I’ve said this before, but I think the three resurrections will be Beth, Rick, and Zeke. Three people who are presumed dead but will all return, alive.)

So yeah. I’m kind of rambling now, so I’ll stop. But super-exciting stuff going on lately! Makes me happy. 😃

[nozomijoestar]

Transcribed and formatted for readability the master thesis between me and @wlwclem​ on the nuances to NaraTrish together and as individuals being why we love it and respect it not being CompHet- we spent way too much Big Brain Energy on it to not share 

tw: brief mention of F-Slur when giving an example on toxic masculinity being bullshit, sexuality is briefly discussed in a non sexualizing way and in no graphic detail

*insert IM TRISH KIN BUCCIARATI joke here*

epickinnienaranciaYesterday at 11:45 PM

JDDBSJDBD YES bc ofc she gotta be Reassuring but at the same time his Himboism Knows No Bounds One of the lines in EoH u can give her is “Go get me an Italian Vogue magazine too while you’re at it” and I’m like. Queen

nozomijoestarYesterday at 11:46 PM

JDHDHDF BDE Narancia whipped Narancia stands no chance

epickinnienaranciaYesterday at 11:46 PM

OH FOR REAL one of HIS victory lines is something about getting all the stuff for her lmao And this is like even if she isn’t in the battle, Always Thinking Of His Queen

nozomijoestarYesterday at 11:50 PM

Trish decides to test the limits of this and his ability to recognize them by asking for impossible or nonexistent items/feats and when he continues to try for her without question she realizes she has too much power and must restrain it fjdjjdjfjf Can't turn into Dad

epickinnienaranciaYesterday at 11:51 PM

JDBDBSJS The color palette changes while she has an inner monologue while she watches him try to make her happy

nozomijoestarYesterday at 11:53 PM

"Oh my god Bucciarati was right...he's too loyal for his own good I need to stop even if it's a little fun"   Meanwhile Narancia: growing more and more frustrated with himself for perceived failure to someone he loves

epickinnienaranciaYesterday at 11:55 PM

She stops for the most part but does it every so often bc it’s cute

nozomijoestarYesterday at 11:56 PM

Lucky to have a freak like dat I feel like the only thing that can counter this self defeatism Narancia can get (bc his younger childhood...ofc he's fucked up and anxious and paranoid abt not being enough or abandoned) is Trish having to open her own repressed self up and love the shit out of himLike those reassuring lines she has in EoH and her moments in the anime/manga Bruno fucking does it as his father figure and Narancia admits it gives him strength

December 19, 2019

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:04 AM

Yes, he feels like he has to prove his worth and like he’s worth having around otherwise he’s useless, i def feel like he would not like talking about the stuff that happened in the past with everyone bc he would feel ashamed and stupid or st, he needs to be told You Are Enough and her to open up too so they can lean on each other

nozomijoestarToday at 12:12 AM

Honestly no jokes for a second I feel like this is also abt breaking toxic masculinity bc it's fucking Italy in the early 00s just out of the 90s...it was RIFE rifer than even now with that shit like in much of the world then too, the idea that a boy becoming a man and men in general need to strictly follow dumbass self harming rules

 especially abt not opening up and only having real priorities for earning money, honoring family, and procreating as much as possible whether it's marriage making a family or "having sexual conquests" in promiscuity, anything outside of this bullshit image can't be tolerated and you might as well be a woman or "a fag" if you don't assert some fictional narrative of trying extremely hard to have power in everything bc that's all that matters is the ridiculous idea of Alpha Males applied to humans 

Narancia being a 80s- 90s kid with the childhood he had did not give him much fighting chance at all in this context and time period  esp just bc he happened to be born with a dick and thus saddled with these harmful expectations society made that could've only further repressed his recognition of not beating himself up and his own emotional needs on top of EVERYONE ever betraying him Where was he supposed to go? He can't go anywhere unless he meets Bruno

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:18 AM

yes i agree..... like, males being looked down upon for opening up, being societally forced to shoulder the burdens and “man up” and just deal with it and fix everything. And then already having a toxic support system with his “friend” betraying him and his dad Sucking Major Ass, all he’s been taught is deal with it but hasn’t been given the tools to know how, and if Bruno didn’t meet him he honestly would be so stuck, what person (esp in that time period) is going to go out of their way to help an uneducated young male?

nozomijoestarToday at 12:20 AM

Even if it tragically ends with his death in canon I feel like the time he spent with Bruno's bois, Giorno, and Trish was huge in making some of that crack little by littleBc he has moments where you see how sweet he actually is, his "real" personality if you will underneath all the unresolved anger when he's with ppl he sees love him and give him hope When Giorno said No One Is Going To Hurt You Anymore that just made me cry harder

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:23 AM

Yes! Like, ofc he gets angry, has unrepressed rage and reactions to things, he hasn’t had any type of emotional support in SO long and it’s not like it’s 100% fantastic in that regard with buccigang (which don’t get me wrong they are family but they are still in an aggressive gang and go off and give each other lots of shit)-YEAH AND THE FUCKIGN PLANT GROWING TOO IM

nozomijoestarToday at 12:25 AM

Trish is legit I think the one person aside from Giorno who would treat him without even the gang's aggressiveness Narancia is my fav in VA even if Bruno is the best written VA character bc he's me, this kind of shit in my life is why I developed PTSD undiagnosed since my childhood that only kept getting worse until only this year have I gotten any true help I know exactly how he feels 

Esp when you think your whole life exists to serve others never yourself NaraGio shippers I see y'all argument even if I don't follow it tbh, Gio was again the only one besides Trish to consistently care for Nara in day to day and when he was in danger and esp during the Clash and Talking Heads fight Gio was the one dude present like No Narancia It's Ok Please Tell Me What's Wrong You're Clearly Stressed

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:31 AM

yeah although i haven’t experienced it i can still empathize and try to understand, i think there’s so many layers of protection and walls that most people never truly look past it to see the root cause or true self YES that fight was so frustrating bc they were all like Narancia stop being an idiot when something was clearly wrong and he was obviously in distress!!

nozomijoestarToday at 12:32 AM

Also Gio was the only one who first asserted that No, Narancia did the right thing in fighting Formaggio

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:33 AM

Yes and with that whole interaction the gang often uses Narancia as the scapegoat essentially and just give him shit for every little thing without trying to understand his POV

nozomijoestarToday at 12:33 AM

The Clash fight tbh I feel was an ass pull set up to give Narancia his big bad ass loyalty proving moment even if it's a great fight that beginning part is...only the Trish and Gio interactions rly make sense fjdjdjI wish him and Giorno hung out more or I guess more like talked more bc you can't rly hang out when you're getting assassinated every day hfgdg

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:36 AM

Yeah hdkdb, even with Fugo, even tho he found him and brought him to Bruno, he still calls him a dumbass, stabs him with a fork and shit, and then with Mista even tho I feel like they are Like Bros, he destroys Narancia’s radio for no fucking reason and also has a pattern of taking shit Narancia paid for without paying him backI def agree with that, I feel like Giorno interactions were lacking in that there really weren’t many one on one meaningful things so it’s hard for me to grasp his personal headspace and relationships a lot of the time

nozomijoestarToday at 12:37 AM

However to be a little more fair to the Bucci gang the manga version has Narancia trying a lot lot more to get their attention in logical ways that unfortunately Talking Heads completely ruins, he tried writing to let them know what was happening and TH warped the text into him saying vulgar things bragging abt his dick being a powerful Stand

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:38 AM

Yeah I was gonna add I wasn’t sure if the manga had other stuff, tbf

nozomijoestarToday at 12:38 AM

I think this is also Shounen Tropes of the 90s at play too the "child" character was often written as the comic relief dumbass Narancia suffers it so it does add a layer of Not Good to his relationships The trope still exists tbh Anime cut out him writing I assume bc it's too sexual It's already pushing it having him whip it out and piss in front of everyone jfhdhd

epickinnienaranciaToday at 12:41 AM

Yeah you right, it’s like the i want it to be that deep meme, like Araki obvi doesn’t have him only as comic relief but if he delved into his character more there would’ve been so much more that could’ve been done and shown YEAH DJDBDJDJF I WAS SURPRISED THT WAS ANIMATED

------------------------[ CUT INTERMISSION ]-----------------------------

nozomijoestarToday at 12:51 AM

Ok but to get back on track with where I was trying to go even opening this all up is how it's critical to NaraTrish in a mutually beneficial way

nozomijoestarToday at 1:01 AM

Nara is no incel he's a King obvs but he is also at heart a confused scared kid uncertain of anything in the world beyond what's closest in his grasp and without someone actively believing in and validating him he can't fully achieve awareness of healthy dynamics and even the problems within the ones he already has with his gang and Bruno- Trish doesn't have to babysit him and be the stereotypical The Woman Only Supports And Gives Up Her Body bc thats never her and couldn't be her and Narancia wouldn't make her that way bc even when he kinda touches on that (giving in a bit to the idea that men are the main protectors of women) when he gets too fixated on wanting what he thinks is for her wellbeing he does snap out and acknowledge he's wrong bc 

Trish by her independent nature and tremendous Will proves those stereotypes are bullshit, not even factoring in their first meeting as already making a huge impression on his beliefs of what girls can do- Trish knowing how to challenge him by staying true to herself yet having the compassion to help someone suffering and with fewer chances from birth than she had would not only win him over but give him something even Bruno can't, self sustaining confidence, bc Trish isn't part of a chain of command, she's just a girl in love with a boy who wants him to be happy and that concept while foreign to him for so long once it kicks in he could actually learn to build himself For himself and For someone who wouldn't use him for some greater schemes or dirty work, 

I love Bruno ok he's one of the best characters in anything ever but his flaw in his ability to help motivate ppl is tied to that fact that he's bringing them into a dangerous strict order of command to Serve not entirely in a place/way that lets them just be themselves and realize organic loving relationships with anyone and themselves SO

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:05 AM

they’re healing...... being shown love without a position of authority or any obligations is so powerful for his growth

nozomijoestarToday at 1:25 AM

That all being said, Everything Trish does he's paying attention to, she keeps him alive during the Grateful Dead fight not because she needs him to serve for a cause ( a cause might I add even Bruno the near saint he is was ready to let Nara go right then and there for bc death is in the job description) but because she doesn't know him well yet and shit he even swung a knife at her when they first met over who was in the bathroom, but he's a person suffering and in pain and to let him die even if it's Expected Of The Mission is garbage to her even if she respects Bruno down the line as a father compared to fucking evil Diavolo,

 Trish constantly goes out her way to do these things for Nara bc Trish instinctively knows he's the most vulnerable mentally and her sense of compassion and justice (likely something Donatella made sure to instill in her before her death by cherishing Trish and spoiling her even as a single mother) will not stand to not help someone when she could've- and he reciprocates it even if in disbelief bc he can tell This Person Is Safety, This Person Is Like Me Yet Not, A Better Me I Want To Be, by the time he's about to die someone with his fragile mind was actually gaining conviction about taking control for himself on his own terms and he would risk even those chances to defend the person who actually helped him arrive there (along with Gio) in the first place, 

I think by the end of his life he rly did love her or start to, it being romantic or not is up to individual interpretation to which you know I'm in the romance camp, point is he found someone who truly taught him strength without him fully realizing it and did so without belittling him, if anything instead treating him only with love and kindness and patience (not being a door mat for him, but like, not treating him like ass like everyone else has their moments of either), I think anything Trish asks of him, this is all why he's so willing to do it on top of feeling deep  empathy, I've written in my character notes as well that like this goes even further to sex being one of the most intimate things there is, like I kno we jest and jape abt Teens Doing Dumb Shit bc we're clowns 

but the sheer vulnerability you have to have esp in a first love situation to be willing to go through with that for the first time ever takes a lot of trust and courage, aspects I think Trish was able to give him and would solidify in asking something seen as so important for many people from him, the headstrong Trish wants to be vulnerable for him and the slowly confidence boosted Narancia wants to accept that faith and trust and love and exchange it with his own of the same for her, it's not horny teens 100% it's two hurt but hopeful kids on the verge of having to be adults wanting to find another piece of identity in how they are with someone else, obvs it will forever be offscreen bc pedos deserve to be skinned alive 

I just feel that the components that would fuel them to do something teens try to do to feel more adult and bc hormones are a lot more based in growing maturity than pure lust, I think this is what I fully mean by Writing About Teens Exploring Love And Sexuality; Not Fetishizing And Reveling In Showing The Act Itself Especially For Disgusting Titillation, I think this and not explicitly writing the sex are the difference between child porn and creating realistic characters

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:36 AM

Yeah, it is going to sound like a dumb take but the topic of sex and sexuality itself is not inherently sexual, by which I meant it isn’t the focus — there’s SO much more to it and in this case especially it can be like the ultimate sign of love, trust, intimacy, compassion, trying to make your way as a teen through a harsh world, like I can go on. Nasties Dont Interact but the shying away from the mere mention of it in a non-sexualized context is unrealistic. 

 Yes The Grateful Dead fight i 1000% agree is so important in both his personal growth and the development of their relationship, I think it’s an important parallel that he is dumbfounded about her going to such lengths to keep him alive without the sense of duty/obligation versus Trish’s feelings and outbursts of confusion on why Bucciarati and his gang even cared about her, protecting her to the point of death being on the line.(edited)

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:44 AM

all these elements of complication and similarities between their characters is why ive gotten so passionate about both them and their relationship (whether romantic or platonic it’s really fucking strong and good), the story of two kids making it through adversity, learning to unshoulder their burdens and lean on others, the Found Family™️, and learning and growing together is just so much more fucking deep and complex than the mainstream bs that exists. 

now im not any type of elitist hipster but esp in male and female relationships portrayed in what feels like basically fucking everything are just like CompHet Bullshit and they’re together bc They Are Just Supposed To Be (not to mention the toxic masculinity culture within that where the women barely have character arcs and are just seen as objects anyways) But what I’m trying to say is that in this the relationship is real and it feels earned in a way that just isn’t there in so much other media out there(edited)

nozomijoestarToday at 1:48 AM

Honestly if we tweak this just a lil more this is basically Guts and Casca One of the greatest and saddest romances ever written

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:48 AM

i still have berserk bookmarked just haven’t gotten around to reading yet

nozomijoestarToday at 1:48 AM

If VA was a Seinen it's p much Berserk In Italy Also big brain...galaxy brain...everything you said was a fact signed sealed and delivered(edited)

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:51 AM

Wow we’re actually in sync and using the brain cell to its fullest extent tonight

nozomijoestarToday at 1:51 AM

When I say she's his world and he's hers this is what I mean, not comphet hdhdhfhYEAH HFHDG

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:52 AM

(also my phone autocorrected “and” to “ANF” bc of twdg..... it also sometimes changes it to “AMD” bc I work in technology. My Phone Knows My Interests Are More Important To Me Than One Of The Main Parts Of Speech. Iconic)YESSSS they’re just SO GOOD there’s so much to articulate!

nozomijoestarToday at 1:55 AM

She was his Queen, and god help anyone who disrespected his Queen

epickinnienaranciaToday at 1:55 AM

JDBDHE SHIT THE FUCK IP DKDBEBDJFBBD

nozomijoestarToday at 1:56 AM

Buy my silence $8000 a month

[quirkycombatants]

🔥

Alright. So... Let’s just jump right into this. 

I really don’t like how the fandom handles Endeavor and Shouto and the Todorokis. 

Bit of backstory. I grew up in an abusive household. I grew up in a household much like Shouto’s, where we were terrified of my father, where my father was single mindedly obsessed with success, where he basically went out of his way to pit us against each other and make us miserable. I grew up in a world where my father convinced me that what I loved I hated, and what I hated I loved, and I literally knew nothing but shame for anything I might show interest in. 

Nor was the whole Toya thing strange to my family either. My uncle died of HIV during the AIDS crisis in the late 1980′s before I was born, and my dad’s family basically made him disappear. You know that burnt mark on that family tree in Harry Potter where they erased Sirius? Yeah that was my uncle for my dad’s family. Supposedly this was to keep us from asking my grandmother and upsetting her, but this persists to this day. My father’s family were ashamed of his sexuality, and made him disappear essentially. Which transferred to him being super paranoid about my sexuality, and trying to force me to be manly. He’s a super a-type personality, very much someone who needs to be seen as the alpha male. I am not. But that conflict very much exists in my family. I was a lot like Shouto, in that I am a passive, rather intellectual sort, whereas my father is more like Endeavor, all about image and appearances. 

I say all this, because I hate the ‘never forgive endeavor’ chorus. 

Don’t get me wrong. There are people who have been abused who cannot forgive an abuser, nor should they be forced to. Everyone has different coping and healing paths. We all decide things on our own. There are people who have been abused, who will never forgive their abusers, and that’s okay. 

But. 

There are a lot of people, who have never been abused, who use Shouto as a way to virtue signal their dislike of abuse in the most absurd, out of character way. They don’t care about how abuse effects people, they don’t care about the complex feelings that an abuse victim feels towards their abuser, especially when they’re younger, all they care about is completely erasing Shouto and Enji’s characters in order to signal how much they dislike abuse.

These are the kind of people who are like ‘well if I was in that situation’ and acting like they’re morally in the right, and that any sympathy or understanding must naturally come from a place where you’re a bad person. It’s the ‘well I would say no to drugs and peer pressure so you’re a bad person for not doing so!’ crowd.

In that world, they strip away all emotional nuance and trauma and weight, and turn the relationship into a morality play where you have to show how much you hate something because any attempt to grasp the difficult emotions that come from trauma and abuse is seen as enabling or apologizing the behavior. 

One of the reasons I like BNHA is because the Todoroki family is so well written. It feels real. From a father who abused his kids coming to terms with the fact that what he did was wrong and accepting that he is not entitled to forgiveness, to Shouto struggling with his feelings towards his father and going from hatred to being able to forgive him so he can move on, to Fuyumi who just wants her family to get along because she feels and felt powerless... it feels real. It feels like how it actually is. And I know that, because I lived it. 

Which is why the virtue signaling and turning Shouto into another character to fit this narrative of what they feel he should act like is so infuriating. What you have is perhaps one of the best depictions of abuse and dealing with it in a family in a major publication, and people want to erase all of the detail and emotions so it can be a good vs. bad PSA. 

Like, it’s one thing if someone has been abused and says ‘I can’t forgive Enji for the same reason I can’t forgive the person who abused me.’ It’s also fine if they say ‘I can’t really relate to Shouto because I can’t forgive the person who hurt me.’ 

It’s another thing entirely to be like ‘well I wouldn’t be acting like Shouto if I was in that situation, and showing any kind of hesitation about the feelings towards one’s abuser is somehow being encouraging towards that behavior, so I’m going to entirely whitewash his entire character to make him a pure character in my eyes.’ 

It’s the same with people who take Enji and turn him into a complete villain with no good points, trying to make some weird moral argument that bad people can’t have likable parts or good parts to them. In fact, most shitty people are well liked. That’s what makes it so hard to deal with them, as anyone who has been abused knows, because so many people struggle to accept what you tell them. They don’t see person x as being a bad person, so how could what you’re saying be true? I’ve been there. I’ve dealt with that. 

One of the things that I really like about Shouto’s development that people who don’t understand abuse erase is the importance of when Midoriya says that it’s his quirk. If you’ve never been in the situation that Shouto is, where a person strips you of all your individuality and makes you think that you are an extension of them and not your own person, you can’t understand the weight of that statement. 

Shouto realizing that his quirk is his and not his father’s is the start of him becoming his own person, deciding what he wants to be and realizing that his destiny is not just to be a tool for his father’s satisfaction. Again, having been born and raised to exist for my own father’s satisfaction, I understand this journey, because I’ve walked it myself. 

That’s why Shouto considering forgiving his father is so powerful. It’s the moment where he decides that ‘i am my own person, and you, my abuser, do not get to decide whether or not I forgive you.’ Because Enji might seek forgiveness, but Shouto realizes that he is the one who ultimately has the power to grant it. And then he has to deal with the question of whether refusing to forgive means that he is still being controlled by who his father was. Because you can be a slave to your trauma as I was for years. And at some point you have to ask if who you were and what happened to you is what defines you, or if you can choose to define yourself. 

And thus Shouto struggles with these feelings, asking himself whether or not he should forgive his abuser and move forward, knowing that there is no right answer to that question. There is only what is best for him. 

Which is why people who remove all of this and make it simply fire man bad are so insulting to me, especially when they make it all about some moral argument. Because it erases his development. It erases the trauma and the struggle that he and other abuse victims go through. And most of all, it removes Shouto’s agency, his ability to decide for himself what he believes. 

And you can’t understand that unless you step out of a moral framework and actually internalize the often contradictory feelings that come with abuse and trauma. 

Which is why I hate so much of the fandom that seeks to erase both Shouto but also Endeavor’s development. 

Endeavor too, is someone who has real growth, but also is someone who understands that he doesn’t get to decide if he’s forgiven. One of the most important parts of this is him saying that he wants Rei to come back and live with his kids, but that he himself won’t live with them, understanding that the one who should decide that is Rei herself. 

Enji, a controlling, angry individual, is forcing himself to relinquish that control, and allow his family to make their own decisions. He’s accepting that what he did was wrong, that he is the one who must atone, but also that his atonement is not in his own hands. The ones who decide this are the people who he hurt. And his acceptance of this is what makes him grow as a person and as a character, and something I’ve seen with my own father. Again, having lived it, I would say so if I thought what was being written was wrong or offensive. 

But again, there are lots of other people who have been through abuse and have dealt with this sort of thing who may had different opinions. And that’s okay. Because they can bring the sort of emotional nuance forward that informs this sort of difficult topic.

But people who try to turn the Todoroki’s into this morality play infuriate me, especially when they try to tar and feather people who like what is being shown as being part of the problem. 

[un-tide]

Rupi Kaur Taught Me DIY

(TW for mentions of sexual assault.)

Last year, I wrote a short essay on why I hate Rupi Kaur. Not just why I hate her work, but why I hate her as a writer. Maybe even as a person. I had never (and still haven’t) met this woman, which should have been my first clue that there was something underlying these emotions that probably wasn’t fair to her. But I was comfortable in my hate, even more so when I could articulate everything that was wrong with her in a way that was logical and academic and had nothing to do with me—so much so that I was unable to see that my disdain for this woman did, in fact, have almost everything to do with me.

Growing up as a young girl whose first love was books, I found myself torn between worlds. On my top shelf, I kept some of my favorite series—Percy Jackson, Pendragon, Artemis Fowl. These were books my parents approved of, holding imaginative, fantastical worlds and morals of bravery and friendship. Under my bed were my other favorites—the ones my parents didn’t approve of—The Clique and The Princess Diaries. These kinds of stories were adventurous in a way that was relatable to me, with the struggles of teenage friendship and the perils of mean girls, but they did skip over many of the lessons I got from my more “gender-neutral” books, and they did not have fantastical or imaginative worlds unless they came with a borderline-abusive romance.

Early on, I learned another kind of lesson: as a woman, I will constantly have to choose between books that tell stories that are inspiring and creative, and books that tell stories about people like me.  

When I first heard about a young, South Asian, feminist, second-generation immigrant woman who wrote openly about her identity and her story, it was if my childhood prayers had been answered. It seemed too good to be true—I am also a young, South Asian, feminist, second-generation immigrant woman. If I was ever going to find a poet I could relate to, Rupi Kaur was it. Finally, there was poetry being written by people like me for people like me, and I didn’t have to choose between quality and relatability anymore. Imagine, then, how it felt to open up one of her most famous books and read this: “how is it so easy for you/ to be kind to people he asked / milk and honey dripped from my lips as i answered / cause people have not /been kind to me.”

I was dumbfounded. Surely I had picked up the wrong book. This was a book of 2014’s 25 saddest tweets, and the #1 New York Times bestseller Milk and Honey was somewhere else. Where was the symbolism? The wordplay? The rhyme or meter? Even the line breaks had no apparent significance. And above those basic elements of poetry—where was the deeper meaning? It’s a sad conversation, but one that, rather than sitting in a book of supposed poetry, would fit better on a teenager’s Tumblr post, or somewhere else you could read it very quickly, frown a little, and move on. And I did just that.

I returned the book to the stack of fifty just like it, and from Rupi Kaur's Milk and Honey I re-learned that same lesson I learned as a child: good books do not tell your story. Move on.

I won’t pretend that my knowledge of poetry comes from more a few college classes, but if there’s one thing I learned, it’s that understanding a poem takes time. Poems hold secrets—alternate meanings and obscure allusions—that you can only discover when you read them again and again. Their meanings can be argued and refuted using symbols and allusions to books written one-hundred years earlier and a comma placed here instead of there. Sure, over-embellished poetry sometimes does hide more than it reveals, especially to the young or less educated reader, but Rupi Kaur’s work strips an idea of all layers beneath its surface.

Some call Kaur’s style accessible, but I call bullshit. Accessibility is about delivering complex concepts while breaking the barriers that typically surround them, whether those barriers be based on education, class, gender, sexuality, or race. Tossing a sad thought you had in the shower to a young audience does not break barriers to feminist or survivor literature of any kind.

On a personal level, I do hold some empathy for Kaur. Her poems attempt to address difficult topics like heartbreak and abuse, and I imagine she has been through some trauma that many women are familiar with, myself included. The meaning of the poem I read in the bookstore was not lost on me: sometimes people are kind because they are already acquainted with cruelty. But simply stating something true or shocking does not make it well-crafted, and it certainly does not make it poetry. Much of Kaur’s success comes from stating the obvious in the most plain way possible, taking a complicated idea and hollowing it out into a pretty painted shell.

To put it simply, Kaur’s work is shallow. It seems to lack effort as much as it does depth, and despite her education, it displays little mastery of imagery or symbolism or poetic style. It is less poetry than it is bite-size food-for-thought possibly conceived in a trendy hipster cafe and posted on Instagram as the caption for an aesthetically pleasing but disappointingly grimace-inducing over-sweet cup of milk and honey. Kaur touches the surface of ideas before shying away like a cat from water, and in doing so fails to teach her audience of young women and girls—many of whom might have fallen in love with poetry had they not been alienated by mainstream misogynistic and white-centric classics—how to analyze and write complex ideas that are pivotal to their recovery, their self-esteem, and their survival.

If my school had taught more female-friendly literature when I was in high school, I wouldn’t have begun to hate reading. The books we read that actually included women were traumatic at worst and voyeuristic at best, and my teachers seemed oblivious, perhaps simply starstruck by the stubbornly unwavering fame and brilliance of the classics. Nevermind that 1984 featured a protagonist with a burning desire to rape the book’s only notable female character. Nevermind that the sexual liberalism in Brave New World had my elderly, white, male substitute teaching us that the World State was—despite its female citizens’ complete lack of reproductive autonomy and a suspicious absence of female Alphas—a feminist society. Nevermind that The Handmaid’s Tale, despite actually being a feminist novel, depicts a misogynistic hellscape a little too realistic for comfort. 

The older I grew, the more it seemed that very few of the classics were written with women in mind, and almost none of them seemed to be written for women’s benefit, education, or—god forbid—enjoyment.

Disappointed by the classics, I returned to popular fiction as a teenager, desperate for a story with a protagonist I could relate to, or at the very least did not want to strangle every time they opened their mouth. At my local flea market, which I frequented every first Saturday of the month, I had come across a well-stocked used-book stall. While making my way through The Princess Diaries series dollar by dollar, I stumbled upon a book that I can only imagine was placed in flea market stall that day by the Devil himself just so he could have a laugh: The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I won’t give away any spoilers, but I’ll give you one guess what happens halfway through. I am not ashamed to say I stopped reading anything other than The Princess Diaries for some time.

I wish I could say my high school experience was unique. There is a profound need for contemporary literature and poetry that not only does not alienate women, but caters to us specifically. We deserve to read books that do not hurt us more than we already are hurting, that address our trauma but don’t weaponize it against us. We deserve to witness other women powerfully and passionately explore and understand our shared experiences and shared pain. We deserve to learn how to explore these ideas for ourselves. The feminist subjects of Rupi Kaur’s poetry deserve nuance, because the more precisely we are able to articulate our experiences and ideas and traumas, the more understood they—and we—become. Much like I was as a young child, the girls devouring Rupi Kaur’s work are still scrambling for crumbs. She had the opportunity to feed a generation of girls starved for poetry free of white men’s hunger, and she didn’t.

Kaur, at first, seemed to me to be nothing new in a world of successful yet seemingly talentless women who continuously fail and profit off of the next generation of starving girls (the Kardashian-Jenner clan comes to mind). But only on my own journey to becoming a writer did I come to understand that Rupi Kaur might be different, that she might actually be trying very hard--that she might be hiding something. As a reader, I never understood that a fact that I am painfully aware of now: writing makes you vulnerable. The more I wrote, the more I began to realize that what I perceived as lack of depth was, perhaps, a terribly relatable inability to be open.

It’s what I hate the most about writing—displaying yourself to the world when your childhood scrapes are still scabbing over and everyone is certain to see under your skin. I’ve never been good at being vulnerable, which makes me a reluctant writer on a good day and a liar on the rest. People do weird things when they’re afraid, like write mediocre poetry or channel all their anger at the world towards someone they’ve never met. I could not do, or at least have not yet done, what I ask of Rupi Kaur. What would I tell her, I imagine, if I ever met her? I could deflect: “Hey Rupi, your poetry about your suffering needs some work.” Or I could be honest: “Please, Rupi, tell my story for me.”

Because isn’t that what I always wanted: a story just like mine, read to me like a mother would read to her child at bedtime, a story about people like me that teaches me I’m not alone. I had waited for representation so long that when it finally arrived, it felt like a betrayal when it fell so far short. I don’t hate Rupi Kaur because her work is bad—I hate her because her work is bad and there are almost no other options. I hate her because she is my generation’s standard for how to write stories like hers and mine, and it does not do them justice. I hate her because I wanted her to do what I didn’t yet have the courage to do myself.

Maybe I’m projecting; maybe Rupi Kaur is exactly as shallow as her poetry suggests and no amount of openness will make it better. It doesn’t change that I expected someone else to be the writer of my story simply because we have a lot in common. I wasn’t fair to Rupi Kaur when I wrote my 300-word-long-rant about theintolerable injusticeshe was inflicting on young women and girls—which I posted, and I’m aware of the irony, on Tumblr and Instagram. I placed the burden of my vulnerability on her shoulders.

I stand by my criticisms of Rupi Kaur, but I also owe her some gratitude, because she taught me another lesson: I can’t rely on other people to tell my story, or stories about people like me. I can’t rely on other people to fill a void in literature or poetry or to fix any other problem I insist needs solving.

If you want something done right, or even done at all, sometimes you just have to do it yourself, even if—especially if—that means opening up about experiences you’d rather keep hidden. If Rupi Kaur is any indication, the bar for young women’s contemporary poetry and literature is evidently on the floor, which, on the bright side, means that any woman who has the courage to openly, honestly, and vulnerably tell her own story—even if she gets ripped to shreds by mean girls like me—will still be doing all of us a favor.

[alexandriteobscuraarchive]

~"You really do come here a lot, don't you Howard?" (For Alpha post s2!!! uwu)

Routine had returned with startling ease: he walked to the same cafe every morning and sat at the same table. He drank the same tea—tea that was now sitting in front of him in a little cup and steaming pleasantly—and he always had a book to thumb through if the local sights weren’t too engaging. Yes, routine had come back and Howard welcomed it. He liked getting out of the house; it engaged his mind throughout the day so that he might (might) think less at night. Routine lent the world some of the normalcy it had lost over the past few months…or at least the pretense of normalcy, for his mind always, inevitably, wandered back to what he’d been through, both here and there. His world. Sometimes it was still too much to absorb, sometimes he wondered if he’d ever truly understand all of it even knowing that he’d made great—some would say even momentous—strides in that understanding.

These thoughts were occurring to him again—on schedule—when a familiar voice addressed him, the sudden break in concentration making him jerk slightly in his seat. Howard’s gaze slid from the book he hadn’t been reading to the person now standing beside him and when he gets a good look at her face his expression borders on shock.

“Michelle!? You’re–”

“—Late, I know. I hope I didn’t keep you waiting long.” She overrides him with a playful tap to his shoulder before taking the unoccupied seat across from him'; looking like she belonged there, like the two of them were just having a friendly chat over brunch that hadn’t quite arrived yet. As she situated herself Howard attempted to compose himself and failed miserably.

“Waiting…?! Michelle you’re not even supposed to be here, you’re a—” a what? A fugitive? A missing person? Any descriptor his mind came up with only made his distress worse and yet she remained unfazed, a half smile slipping across her features suggesting that she knew a joke or perhaps a secret that he didn’t.

When he had stumbled enough Michelle reached into her coat and pulled out a slip of paper and flashed it at him and right away he knew what it was and part of this whole ordeal clicked. The paper wasn’t thin by any means, especially considering it was folded very carefully, but the three stamps pressed into one side—one black, one blue, and one red—were unmistakable: it was a Crossing visa, and he didn’t need to read the fine print to guess who it pertained to. Eventually Michelle carefully put the document back into her pocket and gave Howard another smile.

“A…mutual friend of ours made sure that I was well taken care of. It took a lot of work but for all intents and purposes its completely legal and binding. I generally keep my head down anyways, especially considering the task our ‘friend’ gave me.”

Howard frowned very briefly at her words. She could only mean one person; there was only one person with the connections to pull something like this off, and he found that old feeling of incredibility whenever he was faced with the possibility of that man, his other, being kind or being responsible for others and he swallowed it down. Things were different. He—both himself and his other—were different. There were so many things he’d missed initially, so many nuances that he’d let slip by in the face an overpowering first impression and confusion over the situation as a whole muddle but now…

His expression eased, a sigh trailing the relaxation as another thought–and a rather honest one, at that—came to him: this was something that he would do. Maybe Prime had taken a leaf out of his book after all. Perhaps he’d gotten through to him.

“That was generous of him,” Howard paused, picking his words carefully as he turned the book he’d brought with him over in his hands, but before he could continue Michelle carefully leaned across the table and took the book away from him before thumbing through it herself.

“I haven’t read this in years, it’s a good choice Howard.” She seemed to be skimming a few pages at a time before flipping to another part at random. To anyone on the outside looking it might seem like she was just perusing but to Howard it was meaningful. He’d learned many things on the other side and like it was not (and despite him still not being the best at employing them) he had learned—or at least learned to recognize—a few tricks of the trade. It was this knowledge that told him now that when she handed the book back there’d be something inside; a note, a photo, an invitation of sorts. He could take it if he wanted to. He could step back into that life if he so chose. And why shouldn’t he? What did he have holding him here? If she and his other had found a way to communicate despite the Crossing being closed who’s to say that they hadn’t found an alternate way there? There was a glaring one not twenty minutes from his house, by god. One that he figured most people had forgotten about—or merely pretended to forget about, rather.

But when she extended the book back to him Howard felt himself push it away, letting the book settle back into her hands more firmly.

“That’s alright, you keep it.”

He found himself looking for a sign of disappointment on her face and was pleased to see none. Instead she merely smiled again and tucked the book under her arm. That simple acceptance was all he needed.He wasn’t sure precisely what he wanted to do yet and he was grateful for the time to think about it.

There’s a slight scrape as Howard gets to his feet and watches his friend do the same and, ever a gentleman, he offers his arm towards the hand of hers that wasn’t currently occupied.

“Shall I walk you home? You’ll have to show me where it is, of course. Oh, and is it a new place? There’s furniture I’d like to get rid of.”

The change in tone from something heavy and tension laden to something so casual and friendly made the girl laugh quietly, her free hand winding into the male’s proffered arm.

“You’re too nice, Howard. And yes it’s new and it’s right down there. I’d be most grateful if you walked me home, thank you.”

As she directed him down the street towards her new home—a new home in a brave and somewhat new world; one familiar enough to be welcoming but undoubtedly strange enough that it was (for some) difficult to leave—Howard found himself smiling, There was plenty of time, after all.

[bidrums]

Something about episode 4 that bothered me that I really need to get off my chest

So @strangesurvivals​  has really good posts about this that honestly made me realize that was exactly what bothered me and they are very put-together posts, so if you want something that’s not as rambling as mine, go check it out. Check it out regardless of what I put on here, because it’s a great blog and they deserve love and attention.

Here’s what rubbed me the wrong way: the stupid Warlock school subplot and the concept of the Alpha.

In a post I made with my general thoughts on the episode, I mentioned that I thought it was interesting about the concept of Supreme vs Alpha but followed it with saying I wasn’t about to start discourse.

Well, I retract that statement and am going to start discourse.

I’ll probably be crucified for saying that Coven wasn’t my favorite season, but it wasn’t. I love the concept and absolutely adore the characters and agree that the season kicked some serious ass, but I couldn’t really jam with the plot. I don’t know why, since I’ve watched and read very similar things, but I just couldn’t really get into it. Sorry. Even though it wasn’t my favorite season, I definitely screamed when they appeared and loved all the scenes they were in. Because they're characters that I love and actresses that I love, and I knew that would up the stakes more than they were already upped.

And then the plot happened.

I make fun of the fact that it started out like Harry Potter with Michael being recruited, but then Ryan took the Chosen One concept a bit too far and decided to call it the Alpha. And I just, no. Just no. No, don’t do that. Don’t do that to Michael. He’s already the Antichrist. That’s more than enough of a role to fill, and he doesn't need some Harry Potter/Star Wars magic Chosen One that’s destined to defeat the Ultimate Evil (TM) on top of being the Antichrist. It’s unnecessary and it took away from that subplot for me. It felt lazy, it felt forced, it felt contradictory, it just lessened the impact of the Antichrist plot and Michael’s harnessing of his powers. At least, the way Ryan did it. I’ll get back to that.

So Michael Potter Skywalker is taken to a magic school to develop his Amazing Magic Powers because something happens that tells The Powers That Be that he’s Super Powerful- more than any of them. Only one of those Authorities is suspicious and hesitant to take this person is because he can smell Big Trouble because This Kid Ain’t Right. But everyone laughs off Cheyanne Yoda Jackson because holy fuck he pulled some Exorcist shit then curled up in a ball crying on the floor he must be The One With The Ultimate Power (TM) we must take this emotionally unstable child in and harness his magic because absolutely nothing will go wrong with taking him in and teaching him to control his crazy strong magic that manifests himself in murder. Cheyanne Yoda Jackson is just being paranoid, he only impaled a guy with multiple knives and blew a guys head up. He may have Much Anger In Him and acts in a way that looks like he’s Demon Possessed, but have you seen his Midichlorian count? We have to bring him in because he might be able to destroy the Sith and bring Balance to the Force and finally dismantle the ever-present fear of Voldemort’s Reign of Terror! Stop being a spoilsport and train him like the rest of us, it’ll be fine! Oh, and we won’t help him adjust to his power gradually in order to make up for the years of training he lost in order to give him the same foundation everyone else has and the skills and trust of the System to not be reigned by his unstable emotions and Much Anger In Him. Nah, throw him in the deep end headfirst, he’ll be fine. In fact, we’ll raise our expectations and push him harder than everyone else and tell him his Destiny from the beginning so he has all this pressure on him. There’s no way he’ll lash out and have a sense of entitlement.

Now, who are The-Sith-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named that oppress the poor, defenseless Warlocks? The rest of humanity? That was in Coven, and it would be interesting to have a Magneto-type background that ties into his disgust at humanity and proves his “evil motherfuckers” point. Is it the Humans? It’s not? Who is it?

The Witches, of course! Those Nasty, Horrible Women who use their Superior Woman Magic to press the poor defenseless Warlocks who just want to Be Equals and not be molotov cocktailed after those Stupid Women didn’t have the foresight to the potential consequences of trying to foster good relations with the Muggle World and being open about their Mutant status because they’re Mutants, and they’re Proud! We need an Alpha Male to save us from the Uterus! A Level Four! The Manliest Man in all of Manhood who will put those women in their place and take them down from their High and Mighty Egos. In Coven they had thinly-veiled metaphors for racism by having European vs Voodoo magic fights that tried to make us see that the Poor White Girls are just Misunderstood and Blissfully Ignorant that the Voodoo Community is just as Powerful and Valid as the rest of them! And they still have that in Apocalypse, but now they also have Gender Inequality in it, too! But like, not showing the tired, traditional Oppressed Women narrative that a lot of feminists tell. No, it’s the Refreshing alternate view that maybe, there are areas of life where Men are not on top? And that’s bad for them? It’s daring and bold and no one has ever proposed this idea ever! I’m so creative and revolutionary!!!

The Supreme title was interesting to me because there’s always the Head Witch or something like that. But Ryan gave her the title of Supreme, because the one to master all fundamental areas of magic has Supreme Magic that is more powerful. Which makes sense and is pretty refreshing to me, because it felt like an acknowledgement while over-glorifying the title. Because Supreme also sounds like a threat and a title everyone would fight over, so whoever has that title has to constantly watch her back because other people will try to take that for themselves. The title was forged in blood, and it’s a constant reminder of that. And the show does a great job showing how hard and how dangerous that title is. It shows work, it shows strength, it shows earning the title.

That is the complete opposite of the Alpha role. Level Four. Honestly I hate the fact that they rank the students with 4 levels because it’s honestly unhealthy competition in my opinion. But we’re focusing on the Alpha. It’s a stupid concept, it’s a stupid plot device, it’s a stupid mentality, it’s a stupid rank, it’s a stupid title. “But you’re a Christian, isn’t that hypocritical of you because you’re okay with calling God the Alpha?” Actually, that’s not His full title. The full title is the Alpha and the Omega- which is FUCKING GREEK FOR THE BEGINNING AND THE END AND IS A PRETTY ACCURATE TITLE FOR THE FUCKING CREATOR OF THE UNIVERSE AND DON’T BRING MY RELIGION INTO THIS I AM NOT GOING TO SAY THAT AGAIN

Anyways, the Alpha thing and why it’s hella problematic. Its real-life counterpart is a hideous mentality that really messed-up men have that leads to entitlement issues that lead to violence- usually against women whose bodies they feel they are owed and believe that their superior “Alpha Male” status demands. Just, it doesn’t matter if that’s what he was imagining- which I doubt given the context- or not, the fictional Alpha Male trope and the real-word damage the Alpha Male mentality causes make this fictional title undesirable and uncomfortable. It also doesn’t imply the hard work that the Supreme title does. Like I referenced in my sarcastic rant, it’s why people hated the Midichlorian thing in Star Wars. I actually asked my dad if they were mad because it wasn’t referenced in the original trilogy. He said, and I paraphrase, “Partly. It’s the implications of them not mentioning it in the original trilogy that we have a problem with. When it first came out, the Force was something that everyone had and that some people were more in tune with than others. But it was in everyone, so everyone with the right training could become a Jedi. You might not be as powerful as the other Jedi, but you can be a Jedi or at the very worst, someone with cool Force abilities that can use the Force. Just not at the level of the Jedi. That was awesome because me and everyone else was saying, “I could be a Jedi! I could learn how to master the Force! Then Episode 1 came out and it said, nah, you can’t. It’s twitch muscles. You have it, or you don’t. Your DNA determines wether or not you can actually use the Force. Everyone has the Force, but you can’t be trained to tap into that power. It was like a slap in the face to the people who spent decades with the fantasy of training to be a Jedi. Since you haven’t had the time gap between movies, it’s less of an issue. But to us, it hurts a lot.” And that’s exactly what the Alpha does. It’s not that Michael is powerful and gradually shows the potential to be the Alpha then proves himself to be able to survive the grueling process to earn that status. It’s just that they see that he’s powerful (which I have no idea how impressive that footage is since we don’t have a great example of how weak everyone else’s magic is in comparison, imo) and assume that because he’s super powerful he’s The One. It just wasn’t as compelling to me as finding out about the Supreme. And yes, the witches do inherently have more magic and yes, the Supreme inherently has more magic, but it’s still like the Jedi. Not everyone is Force-Sensitive, so not everyone can be a Jedi; by extension, not all the Jedi can have the highest rank and there are many nuances and strengths of the people’s Force abilities. That’s something that I thought was interesting in Coven and was a bit disappointed that they didn’t play around with it more, but that’s not what this is about. I’m just showing how the Warlocks could have a similar Nuance even with their ranking system and could’ve had more of a parallel with the Witches.

But they didn’t.

Instead Ryan decided to have some weird social commentary about how women could be as bad as men and whenever they have some area where they’re better than men, they abuse that area and twist the narrative to make themselves the victims; in these areas, the men are now the ones who have to fight tooth and claw to get equal treatment. This is the standard “Women can be just as bad as men given the opportunity!” narrative that hurts legitimate activism to get men the same treatment in areas such as domestic abuse, where the statistics of male victims and the numbers of how they receive justice for it are much different than for women. There was a social study where two actors pretended to be a couple having an argument in public that gets violent, with one partner starting to get more and more physical and the other partner getting more and more in danger of being seriously hurt. When the woman was the victim, people rushed to her aid and got in between them and called him out on his behavior. When the man was the victim, a significantly less number of people did that, and most people laughed it off as the male being “whipped”- or, not filling the male role in the relationship. The power balance is suddenly funny when the woman has more power over the women. Now, I’m not going to go into that discourse, and you have my word on that. Domestic abuse is a horrific epidemic that both men and women face, and statistically women are the victims much more than men. But that doesn’t mean that when men are abused, it’s not that bad as when women are. And so when activist groups push for more awareness of this epidemic and trying to change the narrative of what domestic abuse looks like, we should listen and treat it seriously. But when narratives like the Witch oppression of the Warlocks being used to bring attention to “reverse sexism”- which is bullshit, btw- it lessons actual legit activism and make both activism for male issues and activism for female issues seem less important. Less serious. They become more of a joke and people overreacting than things of actual importance. And it’s just bad writing. There are way better ways to have a Warlock vs Witch narrative that Michael is involved in. Way better ways. Way better ways than “oppressed men might have someone who can overthrow the oppressive women because he’s more powerful and men might be able to reclaim their position of power”.

Honestly, I was mostly annoyed by this is that not only was Ryan- consciously or no- even doing it, but he was doing it where the men were just being whiny and had no real argument. They gloated at Cordelia and tried to provoke her by dangling Michael as “The One (TM) who would overthrow the Witches’ power over them” in front of her to try to get her angry. They act like her refusing to put him through the Seven Wonders is proof that she’s scared of being overthrown. Because cowards act like that. And that when she uses Misty and Queenie as examples of how she isn’t all powerful like they believe and to give examples of how dangerous the world of magic is and how just recklessly going forward can land them in trouble, they just scoff like she’s not really worthy of being the All Powerful and can you believe this chick? She walks around like she owns the place but she can’t even save one of her own kind from being perpetually held in Limbo for eternity with possibly thousands of other souls being held captive and suffering unimaginable things. Some Supreme. She can’t possibly think that’s a good reason to not do the test of the Seven Wonders.

Just- it’s really bad. It’s not a good way to even make this lazy writing a passable attempt. Cordelia telling them about how she tried to save Queenie once she found out she was dead in order- this is what I interpreted from that sequence- to help her pass on or come back to life was a great way to show her character. She’s empathetic, she’s protective, she actually cares about the people she’s supposed to be the authority over. And her regret over not being able to save Queenie hurts because she was supposed to watch over her and be able to protect her from something like that, but she couldn’t. And she is heartbroken because people she loves and cares about are casualties of a dangerous world and she’s helpless to stop those casualties. And when she refuses to let Michael do the Seven Wonders, it’s because she doesn’t want an innocent party that is being put on a pedestal to get killed. She fucking says that she doesn’t want to risk him dying and the fuckwads act like that’s a pathetic excuse!!!!! That was so infuriating for me because it was treated like Cordelia was being unreasonable by the characters and Ryan. I mean, in Coven the Seven Wonders was constantly hammered in as dangerous at every level, and as the stakes are raised, the more it’s hammered in, and the more people get hurt. There are actual consequences, and Cordelia witnessed it from the beginning to the end. So she knows that there’s an 87% chance that Michael will die, and she doesn’t want someone else to die in the process that killed her friends. And she gets more and more angry about people talking over her and ignoring all of her very solid arguments against this until she has no choice other than to give into their provocations and get angry, having to firmly shutting it down and ending it before someone gets hurt and when she gets questioned again, she snaps one of the greatest lines in the season and the show: “BECAUSE I’M THE FUCKING SUPREME!” And the men just look at each other like, “I fucking knew this bitch was too scared of being usurped to agree to our very reasonable proposal to take a vulnerable youngster who’s only just started to control his powerful and unstable magic and force him to go through a dangerous test he has a high chance of dying from just to soothe our wounded egos that we’re grooming several impressionable young men to emulate, women are so unreasonable” and I wanted to punch everyone in the face. 

So the thing I mentioned waaaaay earlier in this super-long post: the way Ryan was doing this lessened Michael’s character was done really badly.  Here’s an idea on how to go through a less-sexist conflict between the two covens that actually makes him more powerful:

Michael is powerful- more powerful than they’ve seen. Cheyanne Yoda Jackson still gets to be suspicious, and they are inclined to agree. After some debate, everyone except Warlock Yoda agrees that it’s probably powerful, unstable magic that is being handled by a teen with anger issues and an obvious propensity for violence. They can teach him to handle the magic and maybe to control his emotions. Everything’s the same until they do their tests. It’s still after a month or two, but this time it’s after he’s had time to adjust and had some basic rudimentary training that everyone has when they first start. They explain that everyone is evaluated at the beginning to get a feel for their magic, and Michael already seems to have some control of his powers. Not much, but it’s impressive considering how insane they are. They start with the mirror. He does it, and they share shocked glances. That’s something that a lot of people have trouble with after years of training. So they hesitantly do the teleporting. Flawless passing, more shock. Then they ask him to waterbed snow, and they have their happy moment before they almost freeze to death. They see how freaked out Michael is and tell him that he has super strong magic and when you push yourself like he did, it’ll get a bit out of hand. Just be more careful and they’ll talk about where to put him then get back to him, okay? Then they talk about how freaky it is that he can do this with little training, Magic Yoda is suspicious, they shoot him down with a lot of irony because Antichrist. Then one of them suggests that maybe, just maybe, they might be seeing a Male Supreme. Use the phrase, “Male Supreme”. It’s less stupid and worrying. There’s banter about how there hasn’t been a male version, it’s only been a woman, you know how many powerful Warlocks have died trying to do the Seven Wonders, he can barely control snow, you think he can come back from the dead? But then they agree and call the Council.

Most of the Warlocks’ bitterness towards the Witches stems from two places: 1) Fiona was a bitch and took her Supreme status to exert absolute control of the Council and 2) Cordelia just announced the existence of Mutants Witches and Warlocks without consulting the Council, a decision that they feel should have been unanimous. So there’s some banter about the Seven Wonders and Michael and she doesn’t want to hurt him because of how many powerful Witches and Warlocks have died and he sounds like he’s emotionally and magically unstable and he most likely will die. It also makes more sense for them to be snarky at her because of the above two reasons, and they can invoke Fiona’s name which will make those of us who are familiar with Coven squeal at the mention of Fiona and remember that yeah, that sounds in character, as well as having Cordelia react to the implication that she’s being the same sort of Supreme her mother was. Like, that has waaaaayyyyy less sexism and provides a great conflict between the two schools. It also has a less cliche Chosen One story arc shoved into Michael’s already-established “I’m the Antichrist” story arc and still shows just how powerful and scary he is.

Again, that’s my idea on how it could’ve been better. I just hate that the potential badassery of rivals schools was ignored to have Ryan Murphy pretend to be revolutionary and critical and thinking outside of the box when he’s really condoning a dangerous and sexist narrative that puts characters that are both potentially awesome and badass and established to be awesome and badass into weak storylines that destroy a lot of great character arcs and characteristics of everyone.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk.

[the-100-meta-library]

Dear followers and meta fans!

Today, we present you the first segment of a series of interviews that will feature the brains and minds behind all those wonderful analyses floating around The 100’s tumblr tag.

For our first interview, we are pleased to welcome Elizabeth, also known as the lovely @hawthornewhisperer!

We connected with Elizabeth back in May, before Season 4, Episode 12. So this a little bit of a blast from the past. Read to see how right-- and wrong-- we were about some speculating. 

We’d like to thank Elizabeth again for her time, and the supporters of the Meta Library who encouraged us. Keep an eye out for the next interview!

The 100 Meta Library (bellamysfern):    The first questions are just about some background info. Anything you feel comfortable releasing to the internet. Who are you, what do you do, how does that affect how you write meta (if it has any effect at all), and your level of fandom experience.

Hawthornewhisperer: Okay, well, first of all, thanks for interviewing me! This is an honor and I appreciate you guys doing this.

You can call me Elizabeth, and I'm a writer-slash-historian living in Minnesota. I teach college courses on European history and write romance novels on the side (second one should be out this year!)

In terms of how that influences my meta, I've found that both of my jobs dovetail very well into analyzing the show.  

As a historian, my main lenses of analysis are gender and imperialism so I tend to apply those to the show as well-- in what ways do characters fulfill our expectations of femininity/masculinity, and in what ways do they challenge it? What does that tell us about the characters?  

My imperialist/colonialist focus also helps me sort out what the writers are saying (either intentionally or unintentionally) with regards to hegemonic cultures, etc.

As a writer, I try to think about the choices the writers room is making and what that tells us about the story

Oh, and fandom experience-- I wrote fic for The Hunger Games (Gale/Madge, mostly) but The 100 is probably the first fandom I've been very active in.  But my first true fandom is probably Star Wars.

BF: That's absolutely amazing. I feel like anything with fandom can be trivialized, but so much work goes into writing meta and thinking about the choices made on the show.

HW: Yes, definitely!  

I have very strong feelings about the importance of fandom, particularly transformative fandom (fics, headcanons, etc) as a primarily female space and how important that is to protect and take seriously.

BF: Right. And I know you write fanfic too (very good fanfic, btw).

Do you think writing meta influences how you think about fanfiction? They are two different ways of interacting with a show, but both require authors to really understand the material.

HW: Oh yeah, definitely!  

I see fic and meta as two sides of the same coin-- writing meta

helps me understand characters better, because if I can explain why Bellamy or Clarke would make a particular choice in a particular episode that helps me craft their characters in fics in a way that feels true (or I hope so, at any rate.)

And writing fic helps with meta, because I have a little insight into how writers make decisions.  In particular it makes me slightly more sympathetic to plot twists that seem to have no clear resolution because I frequently write ficlets with cliffhangers and then have *no idea* where it's going after that, because sometimes I just like to raise the stakes for myself.  Of course, there's a major difference in that my fics are only limited by my imagination and can go in any direction I choose, whereas the show has actor contracts, studio pressure, budgets, filming limitations, and a dozen writers working on one story, and they’re getting paid to do this so they should be really be better at it than me.

BF: Is there anything you've ever read (fic or meta) that surprised you? Any interpretation or theory that influenced the way you thought about the show?

HW: You know, most of my favorite metas and theories come from the Meta Station podcast, and I wouldn't say it's *surprising* but I do think my favorite theory this season is probably Erin's suggestion that Bellamy will be key to brokering peace between all the clans.  (I think we got the start of it in the most recent episode, actually, with his faith in Octavia).  It wasn't a direction I'd initially considered for his character, but it fits very well with the story they've been telling thus far this season and I hope we see it come to fruition.

In terms of influence, one thing I really enjoy about fandom is how *collective* it all is-- lots of people come up with complementary ideas that fit together and overlap in really intriguing ways, which makes narrowing down influence kind of difficult.  But on a personal level, I do toss ideas back and forth with @reblogginhood a lot, which probably shows in my writing.

BF: Haha, my fill of meta usually comes from Meta Station too. I just listened to the segment talking about fic and fandom with Chash and thought "Wow, this is great interview prep".

HW: I can't wait to listen to that!  Those are three of my favorite fandom people, talking about my favorite topics, so I'm excited.

BF: I know, I was so excited when I saw the announcement. It was super cute and funny. Anyway, back on topic.

So for you, meta is a more collective thing. Do you have a writing process and need to go through the same steps every time, or does it vary?

HW: It varies, for sure.  Sometimes I realize something and can just throw it all together very quickly, and sometimes my idea is very vague and I have to write and write and write (and talk it over with people) before I really figure out what I'm saying.  But after writing a dissertation I'm pretty used to writing six different versions of the same idea before I feel like I've found it.  I just edit those metas very heavily as no one needs to read four false starts. 😉

BF: So the amount of time it takes to write metas varies too.

Are there any characters/themes that come easier than others?

HW: Oh definitely.  

Bellamy is probably the easiest for me to understand, followed by Clarke. There are other characters that just don't *speak* to me/I have less interest in writing meta on, but that doesn't mean I dislike them.  

Roan, for instance-- he's probably my favorite minor character in the whole show but I don't have too much desire to get into his headspace for some reason.

The-100-Meta-Library (parapluiepliant): We could have had it all. Still in denial about Roan by the way.

HW: I'll always be in denial about Roan, but he will live eternal, shiny, and chrome in all of my fics so at least we have that.

PP: Yippieh! Something to look forward to!

BF: I am still in real actual denial because I thought I saw something about Zach coming back for season five.

HW: I would totally be fine with time travel becoming a thing on the show if it meant someone could go back in time and save Roan.

PP: Talking about time travel: let's go back in time.

I just scrolled a bit through your The 100 meta tag and came upon "Bellamy Blake, Clarke Griffin, and The Iliad". It was one of your first metas, or am I wrong? 

Even though that referred to season 3, would you say that some of it still holds true for season 4?

HW: It probably wasn't my first meta, just the first one I bothered tagging-- I'm terrible about that, and I apologize to everyone for my poor organizational skills.

BF: I'm right there with you with the tagging.

HW: You know, I'm not sure it does hold true for season 4?  The core of the Iliad is hubris, rage, and war between nations being manipulated by the gods, and that doesn't seem to be the story they're telling in season 4.

I will say, in retrospect I do think both Clarke and Bellamy were the Achilles in season 3 -- Clarke for separating herself from the fight, and Bellamy because it was his anger over Mount Weather 2.0 that incited a lot of the conflict.

(But I also doubt they were doing a straight parallel, so take that for what it's worth)

PP: Okay. Just a thought. I am not that familiar with the Grounders (and to the Arkadians to some extent) might still be an entertaining thought.

HW: Ooooh yes, that would work very well, especially since I suspect conflict between Becca and Cadogan is at the root of a lot of problems the societies are facing.

BF: I did find it interesting that the brought the Iliad in so explicitly. And there was a lot of speculation based on it, when maybe so much worth shouldn't have been placed on the Iliad/Odyssey.

But we won't know until the end, I guess.

HW: Yeah, it's tough to know what is meaningful and important and what's just a fun, throwaway moment until you've got a complete narrative to examine.  But I do enjoy how fandom can take something like "Bellamy gets a present that probably just means he's a Big Ol' Nerd" and turn it into a coherent, unifying gloss on the season.

PP: One of the most entertaining and enlightening things in the fandom for me.

HW: Yeah, me too.  

Fandom is such an enriching experience in so many ways.

PP: Another question in that regard: Is there a meta of yours of which you are most proud of? Or which you thought of as the most fun to read/the most clarifying in regard to certain aspects?

HW: I think the one I'm proudest of would be the one I wrote about Bellamy undercutting the Alpha Male trope, because I find "how we perform and understand gender" to be a really interesting topic, and I think Bellamy as a character really complicates our understanding of what it means to be an alpha male.  

And I think some of that is directly intended by the writers, but I also think some of it comes from the performances (Bob in particular, but also Ian, Eliza, and Mike Beach because he's not just reading what's on the page, he's reacting to their performances as well.)

It makes Bellamy into a really interesting and nuanced character in a way that draws me in.

PP: Absolutely! One of the reasons I love him so much.

BF: Do you have a lot of interaction with your meta? Do people mostly reblog or like it, or do you get some conversations going?

HW: I think mostly people just like and reblog posts, but every so often someone will add something to my meta that I hadn't considered/seen before and it'll just blow my mind. I love it when that happens.

And sometimes people send PMs to respond and I end up having long, in depth conversations about characters with people I've never met before, and I *also* love that. I've made some really great friends that way.

BF: Fandom friendships are so interesting that way.

HW: Yeah, definitely.  

I really treasure the friendships I've made in fandom, and I know they'll outlast the show itself, which is wonderful.

BF: Yeah, definitely contradicts everything people told you about everyone on the internet being dangerous. But I haven't met an axe murderer yet.

HW: Haha right?  *fingers crossed*

PP: Who says that I am not one?

HW: Oh no! Haha!

BF: You are on the other side of the ocean. I think I'm good. Well, that was all questioning that I had. Laura?

PP: I would have one last question.

Can we hope for another meta pretty soon and if so, can you already tease it a bit?

HW: You know, there's nothing that I'm currently writing, I think because most of the stuff I'm interested in from 411 (the Bellarke fallout) seems to be on hold until 412, but I also tend to work best in response to prompts/questions.

So is there something you'd like me to talk about/you're interested in discussing?

BF: What’s your Becca/Cadogan speculation?

HW: Oooh, good one!  

I think Cadogan's messed up childhood (Jaha mentioned an abusive father) is going to resurface, and I suspect it was a conflict between him and Becca that set things into motion. I have my fingers crossed for a flashback!

PP: Definitely. Oh, I missed that with Jaha because my stream didn't work properly. I really need to watch it so I can catch up!

HW: The Jaha-Cadogan mention was just a throwaway line, however, so I might be putting too much weight on it. And as for the Bellarke fallout, I do think Clarke holding a gun on him and then being unable to pull the trigger, even though she truly believed the human race might die if she didn't pull it, is going to carry a lot of weight in their relationship.

Clarke has consistently been shown as willing to put her own wants and needs and loves aside in order to save people, and this is one of the first times we see her make a heart choice instead of a head choice, if that makes sense.

But Clarke's decision to not shoot Bellamy was really big, and while I'm disappointed we didn't get the fallout immediately, I think 411 was a really busy episode and I have hopes that it will be addressed in some respect in 412.

BF: Thanks so much for taking so much time to talk to us!

HW: Of course!  Thank you for interviewing me-- this was really fun!

[thesffcorner]

January Wrap Up

January was a great reading month for me; I read 12 books and 2 comics. Weirdly it was also a month of me reading out of my usual zone: I read 3 fantasy books, 1 sci-fi book, 3 urban fantasies, 1 poetry book, 1 contemporary romance, 1 mystery, 1 thriller, and 1 erotic thriller. So without further ado, let’s go from lowest rated to highest:

Corrupt by Penelope Douglas (2 stars):

Corrupt was a book I started in 2018 and finished in 2019. It’s not a book I liked, but I was committed to finishing it (even though it’s 500 pages) for 2 reasons: 1, I wanted to get to the ‘scene’, and 2, I had read 200 pages already and I was too stubborn to quit.

This book is a dual perspective: it follows Erica, a college student who has been in love with her best friend/boyfriend Travis’ older brother her whole life, and Michael, said brother who is a professional basketball player. When Erica was 16 something happened, which sent Michael’s 3 best friends to jail for 3 years; now they are out and plan on exacting their revenge on her, and destroying her life.

Do NOT let the synopsis fool you; this book is not nearly as suspenseful or interesting as it sounds. I have a long-ass rant review on this book, if you want more of my thoughts, but essentially it boils down to this: the characters aren’t actually developed or morally corrupt enough, for the thriller parts to work, and the sex scenes are badly paced and start too far into the book for those who are into this just for the erotica. Throw is some casual homophobia, alpha-male, casually sexist behavior, a passive main character and a basketball player who never plays basketball, and this was the definition of a wasted premise.     

You by Caroline Kepnes (2 stars):

I read You as part of the Biannual bibliothon, but also because I saw that the Netflix show had come out. The first 50 or so pages of this book were very interesting; I really liked the premise and enjoyed Joe’s misanthropic grumpiness. But soon afterwards I found myself mostly bored, and annoyed by all the characters, and like Corrupt before, I thought it was too long, and not thrilling enough for a thriller.

We follow Jo, a man with some trouble with social interaction, who works at a bookstore. When Beck, a pretty young masters student, walks into the bookstore and flirts with him, he begins stalking her in an attempt to become her boyfriend, and we follow his increasingly delusional and even life-threatening attempts to win Beck over.

The main issue I has with this book were the characters; I didn’t like Jo, I didn’t like Peach and I just wanted all of them to choke. I also didn’t find the second person narrative the book dipped into particularly compelling, because I didn’t like or relate to Beck at all; the only thing I enjoyed was NYC, and that one scene on the subway.

Empress of All Seasons by Emiko Jean (2 stars):

Empress of All Seasons was the first proper fantasy I read this year, and it was a disappointment. I really wanted to love it, and like many of the books in this group it started well enough; it was just too short and unfocused to deliver on its premise.

We follow three characters: Mari, a yokai animal wife, whose only goal in life is to go to the royal palace, defeat the four seasonal rooms and marry the prince, then steal his fortune and escape; Akira, the son of nightmares, Mari’s best friend and a half-human, half-yokai boy who gets involved in a yokai rebellion; and Taro, the prince, who has a strained relationship with his father the emperor, and prefers inventing metal companions, rather than spending time with people.

I think even just saying this synopsis, you will probably realize what the main issue with this book is; there is just too much going on and not enough time for any of it. In comparison with the other fantasy I read this month, this book tried to do too much and failed to deliver on most things, with underdeveloped characters, and a plot that felt like you were sitting on the fast forward button.

Binti: Home by Nnedi Okorafor (2 stars):

Binti: Home is the second of the novellas in this series, and it also got 2 stars. It suffers from all the same issues as Empress; too many plot threads, not enough time to develop any of it, with the additional issues of having plot threads left from the previous novella that are left hanging, and a much more confused main character.

We follow Binti as she travels back to Earth, so she can complete a pilgrimage that would make her a full Himba woman, as she’s having visions and experiencing bursts of unfounded rage after the events of her arrival at the university. She takes Okwu with her, as an emissary for the Meduse, but very quickly things start going wrong, when she comes into conflict with both the Khoush, her own family and the Desert people and their most sacred god.

My criticism stands; there is just not enough time to properly develop this plot, so things feel rushed and unmotivated. Binti is a character who doesn’t seem to progress; she’s constantly caught in a loop of self-doubt and self-loathing, which isn’t congruent with both her abilities as master harmonizer and her rebellious streak. Okwu gets no development, and the cliffhanger at the end is the only thing keeping me invested in this series.

Emergency Contact by Mary H K Choi (3 stars):

Emergency Contact was a book that I expected I probably won’t like, and I ended up liking, but only parts of. All the issues I had a feeling I would have I did have, and it was only really the humor and the sheer curiosity to see how the book would end was what kept me reading.

We follow a dual perspective between Penelope, a freshman in college who wants to be a writer, and Sam, a boy who wants to be a documentarian. The two meet in the coffee shop where Sam works, and after Sam has a panic attack which he confuses for a heart attack, Penelope helps him and they become each other's emergency contacts.

The parts I liked from this book were mostly to do with the side characters, Penny’s writing class and story, some of the jokes and writing, but what I ended up disliking were the weird passes Penny gets for her horrible behavior, the fact that Sam doesn’t get a conclusion, his entire subplot with his film and his ex, just… a lot of things. I have a more detailed review of this book, which you can read if you want more of my specific thoughts.

Fierce Fairytales by Nikita Gill (3 stars):

This is a poetry collection, that also includes some shorts stories, most if not all based around re-imaginings of fairy tales. There were some poems I liked, some I didn’t care for and some which I disliked. There was one poem and one short story I really loved too. For the most part, a rather average collection.

Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (3 stars):

This is the first book is a series, which I originally wasn’t going to read, but I kept hearing about how good these books are, and with the fourth coming out and having to do with the Goblin Market, I figured I’d give it a try.

We follow Nancy, a girl who has just returned from a portal word, and arrives at Eleanor West’s home for Wayward Children, to learn how to cope with being back in the real world. In this school she meets others like her, but when her roommate gets killed and her hands stolen, things start going really wrong at this supposed sanctuary.

This got 3 stars, purely because of the characters. I loved most, if not all of them, and I wanted to learn more about the different worlds, though not necessarily go to the worlds. The mystery of the murderer mostly reminded me of the plot with the basilisk in Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, and as such I had a lot of issues with the decisions the adults in this book made. Can’t say I liked this book too much, but I am curious to see if maybe I’ll like the series when it focuses on the portal worlds a bit more.

Red Glove by Holly Black (4 stars):

Breaking in form a bit, so I can talk about this series in order. Red Glove is the second in the Curse Workers trilogy, and I really enjoyed it. I’m weird in that I tend to like middle books in a lot of series, and this was no exception.

In this book we follow Cassel trying to cope with the events from the previous book, when the FBI approaches him, after his older brother Phillip has been killed, to tell him that Phillip had become an informant.  This leads Cassel into making a complex web of deceit and cons so he can protect himself and the rest of his family from the feds and the Zacharovs, while also trying not to fail school.

I enjoyed this book more than the first in some aspects, mostly in how much it expands the world and the politics. I continued to love Cassel as a character, and I even cared about his romance with Lila. Solid second book, and probably my favorite in the series.

Black Heart by Holly Black (3 stars):

This was the third and final book, and unfortunately it wasn't as good as the rest. The ending itself was fine, and there were some very interesting plot points and twists I didn’t see coming. But the middle of the book dragged a lot, and what was up until that point a nuanced view of morality, personal responsibility and adulthood, felt a lot more simplified and black or white in this book.

We follow Cassel, who while stalking Lila with Baron, encounters a death worker who performs a hit for Lila, and pulls Cassel in a complicated plot to transform the Governor of New Jersey. There are a lot of threads in this final book, and Cassel has to pull the biggest con of his life if he wants to survive.

The issue, was mostly with the pacing; there is a whole section in the middle where absolutely nothing happens, and we spend so much time on a B plot that serves only to distract Cassel from the Governor Patton business and to get Sam and Daneca out of the ending. This part dragged the book down for me, even though the ending parts were great. I still recommend the series as a whole, and I’m sad there hasn’t been some kind of spin-off with Gage or even Baron’s FBI adventures.

This is Our Story by Ashley Elston (4 stars):

This was the first proper book I read in 2019 and I loved it. It’s a solid mystery with a great atmosphere and a pretty cool twist and a main character I really enjoyed.

We follow Kate, a senior in high school who interns for the DA in a small town in Louisiana. After a rich, private school student named Grant dies in what appears to be a hunting accident, Kate gets sucked into a mystery of who’d done it, because the DA doesn’t seem to think it was an accident.

I really liked this book; apart from the ending which was a bit over-dramatic, everything was well paced, well written and believable. Kate as a protagonist was great, I liked the love interest, the twists that happen and in general I am excited to see what else this author comes out with.

Check, please! Year 1 and Check, please! Year 2 by Ngozi Ukazu (4 stars):

I have read Check, Please! Before, while it was still coming out as a web-comic; I got to the winter break of year 4 and then stopped. I decided to reread the series and catch up, when I saw that the collected volumes of year 1 and 2 were on goodreads. And it was great decision.

This is just such a heartwarming and entertaining series. It follows Bittie, who at the start is a freshman in Samwell College, a Canadian university which is famous for its hockey team. Despite being more of a figure skater, Bittie gets an athletic scholarship to play hockey, and the the comic follows his 4 years on the team, as well as the many adventures of school, competition, love and adulthood.

Year 1 focuses mostly on the team, and Bittie’s struggle with checking; he has a tendency to freeze and even faint as a response to contact. We also see him develop friendships with other teammates, most notably the captain Jack, who has his own host of issues and baggage, being the son of an incredibly famous and well respected hockey player who won the Stanley cup twice.

Year 2 follows Bittie’s love life, as he develops a crush on someone from the team, and all the heartbreak and joy that come from it. It also sees Shitty and Jack graduate and play their very last college hockey season.

If I have to pick, I’d say I like year 2 a bit more than year 1, mostly because it seems both me and Ukazu got a better grasp on the characters and the style of the comic. The art likewise improved immensely, especially in the facial expression department. It’s a great series and I recommend you read it; even if you don’t want to/can’t support the e-book/physical bindup of this series, it’s all available for free on the website.

Small Spaces by Katherine Arden (4 stars):

I had no intention of reading this book, but I saw it was available, and read it. It was a great decision, because this is a fast paced, entertaining horror middle-grade, with some great characters and an excellent atmosphere.

Olivia, or Olie is a 6th grader, who used to be a great student, well loved on the softball and chess team, and well liked by her classmates, but after a traumatic event, she locks in on herself, and spends most of her time alone, reading books. When she sees a woman, trying to throw a book into a creek, she steals the book, and strange and creepy things start happening as she reads; and they all seem to be connected to the book.

This was just a lot of fun. I loved the characters, I really liked the atmosphere and the horror elements; there were some genuinely creepy scenes involving scarecrows, ghosts, haunted houses and corn mazes. The main villain, the Smiling Man was also creepy and clever, even though it was pretty predictable as to who it was, and I enjoyed the way Olie beat him. I’m so glad this will be a series because I can’t wait to read the rest.

The Boneless Mercies by April Genevieve Tucholke (5 stars):

The last book I read in January, and it was my favorite and the only 5 star read.

The Boneless Mercies follows Frey, the leader of a group of 4 girls and one boy who roam the land and perform mercy killings in exchange for money. After being hired to kill a sick child, Frey decides that she can’t go on with the job, and suggests that her group go and kill the Blue Vee Beast; a mysterious monster terrorizing that part of the land. On their journey, the girls encounter witches, magic and death, and Frey comes to realize that a quest for glory may cost more than she’s willing to pay.

I absolutely loved this book. It ticks all of my boxes; a group of competent and interesting female characters; a melancholic tone; a beautiful, gloomy atmosphere; a sense of a land lost to time, a world after the age of heroes has passed; explorations of death, grief, womanhood; romantic subplots. It’s a book told like an epic tale which makes sense since it’s based on Beowulf, and it doesn’t hold any punches; it’s relentless in the tone and the things the girls have to do to survive, things that haunt them even after the end. If you love these types of books, I highly, highly recommend it.

[askdawnandvern]

A Lamb Among Wolves Ch:12

So unfortunately I didn't exactly hit my goal on the number of chapters built up before starting to post again. I got close, just not where I'd be fully comfortable. As I've pretty much learned the hard way here, writing semi-competently means not trying to force it. When I did, the content was below my usual level of acceptability. And one chapter I was working on had a whole eight pages reviewed and completely re-done because of it. But I'm happy with what I have now, and confident it makes for a good and believable story. Well, as believable as a story about talking animals can be. Going forward, aside from commissions, I'm just going to have to write when the creativity just starts flowing naturally. Setting aside time to focus strictly on writing simply causes me to waste more time that could be devoted to drawing and other works that don't require any deeper thinking than what to depict.

If I should run into any snags, or run out of chapters at some point obviously I'll warn you guys ahead of time. But until we come to that point, if we do rather, just keep expecting Monday chapters. I'd hate to end up having to deprive you at least a weekly fix, but should things reach that point, please don't hate me. I just want my content to be as best as I can do. So let's begin with the second act of the story, shall we?

-WT

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Chapter Twelve: Primal De-scent

"At first glance, most mammals couldn't tell the difference between a wolf of Roaropean descent or a wolf of North Mammalian descent. There is some degree of species overlap despite the continental divide, and even when presented with two wolves who are obviously of the grey wolf variety it's reasonable to assume they could have come from anywhere in the world. Because of reasons such as this, most mammals would also be quick to assume that all wolves are more or less the same. Sharing the same beliefs, social structures, behaviors and so on. But as we discussed previously with the settling of Zootopia, the interactions with the early wolf natives prove such a notion could not be farther from the truth. And upon closer inspection, you will find that many of the differences between native and non-native wolves are as drastic as night and day."

"It was Leif Hunter's notes that gave us our first real look into the society the native wolves had come to build for themselves. But since then the topic has been more thoroughly explored and expanded upon by daring explorers and researchers, as well as expounded upon by defecting "omegas" wishing to leave their society behind."

"There are a great deal of nuances between the tribes scattered across North Mammalia. The number of gods and goddesses across each tribe alone could have hours worth of passages devoted to them. But for brevities sake I'm not going to go over every single unique difference between the known packs. A complete compilation of wolf history isn't really the goal of this book. I am merely trying to present the portions I believe to be pertinent in order to get a better understanding of the motivations of the Bellwethers and Hunters. So you as a reader can better understand the forces that shaped myself and Vernon's lives, however small some portions may be."

"In this instance the most relevant pack would be the remnants of the Redclaws, and the factors that put them at odds with the early settlers and continues with the Roaropean wolves today."

"Despite the numerous gods in the different packs, they did have one unifying source of worship that even they shared with the Norwulves. This was the lunar god, and moon worship. To the Redclaws it was known as 'Pawluuk', and much like their Roaropean counterparts it governed a great deal of their actions and cultural events. Full moons were seen as optimal nights for hunting prey, as well as for ceremonies and mating rituals. Canideans lacked the agricultural systems that their brethren from across the sea had developed, but still observed smaller harvest events of their own. Most of their vegetation was scrounged from natural local outcroppings, but such natural springs were not tended nor fostered intentionally."

"The majority of their diet was derived from prey tribes and packs, from rabbits to rodents. Sometimes they even fed on other predators such as foxes, badgers and so on. These carnivores weren't picky, and weren't very merciful either. They also fed on non-sentient animals such as fowl and fish, and today that is what most tribes have come to rely on rather than their sentient neighbors."

"Canidean wolves also howl, like their Roaropean counterparts. It filled similar roles such as being a form of prayer, solidarity, and emotional expression. However, where they differ is in the development of a form of howl-speech. It was primarily used to measure distance, ready packs for war movements, and signaling positions between members of the pack. However, there are also instances of howl-speech being used playful conversation, mostly to fill in for concepts and things that had no verbal equivalent. Each tribe has their own variant of this language, and the Redclaws were no exception."

"Canadean wolf pack structure, unlike Roaropean packs, became more rigid rather than laxer as the tribes developed. Alpha males, along with the alpha females, lead their respective pack and its communal structure. The position of Alpha was not something relegated to the sire of the pack, but rather it was a position held by the strongest warrior in the tribe. It was also a position that was in constant challenge by the pack Betas. The Beta wolves were normally the enforcers and active warriors in the tribe. When not challenging for dominance they would aide the leader of the pack on hunts as well as reinforce the social structure of the tribal community. They had a great deal of incentive to fight to keep the pack the way it was, because they were the only pack role below the alpha that were automatically given permission to have a mate of their own without any sort of proving right ceremony. Permission to be tithed to a pack female and produce offspring was something that was to be earned by show of strength, and if a male couldn't keep up with the betas he was seen as inferior and would risk never getting pack approval for a tithing rite. Limiting breeding among the strongest of the wolves not only insured a more powerful pack, but allowed the leader to better control the growth and shape of the pack, as well as secure his position at the top. But in this day and age the degenerative effect of this practice on their numbers is reaching a critical point among the remaining clans."

"The lower positions were relegated to the growing pups of the betas in the pack, as well as the occasional stray looking for a new pack to prove themselves in. Adult wolves that didn't fall into the Beta category were usually relegated to tending to the village, and maintaining the order while the others were off on hunts or warring against other tribes to protect the pack from sneak attacks. In order to mate, they didn't necessarily have to reach Beta status, but they had to prove that they were strong enough to be worthy of the privilege of having offspring. This is where the mating ritual of the tribal packs comes into play."

"While Betas enjoyed the automatic approval of tithing to a mate, and the feast that would celebrate it. Those below the rank of Beta would have to go through a trial to prove they were fit to survive, and thereby reproduce. The exact elements of ritual differ from tribe to tribe, but they are almost unilaterally based on sending the prospective couple deep into the woods to survive on their own for one week. They are given nothing, forbade to mate, and in the case of the Redclaw tribe not only were they expected to last all seven days, but return with a number of prey for the tribe as payment."

"Working together to survive as well as meet the goal put forth by the tribe is what makes or breaks a mate. If they succeed it is apparent to the tribe that they are strong enough to survive, and the gods favor their pairing. The leader of the Redclaws then used the load of prey that the couple brought back to hold a great feast celebrating their union."

"But here's where an interesting little caveat comes in amongst the wolf tribes. The existence of a pack class that is simply not in the lexicon of the Norwulves, at least not at the time the tribal wolves were discovered. This is the so called 'Omega' wolves, the lowest caste among the Canideans. Omegas tended to live on the outskirts of existing tribes, usually on their own but sometimes with a small family in tow. They would be tolerated by the dominant pack, but never allowed to enter the main village. These wolves more or less survived on their own, either from scavenging scraps from the dominant tribe or hunting without the aide of an established pack. The hunts often went poorly because even if the omega succeeded in snaring prey, should the dominant catch wind of the successful hunt they would take most of it as payment for allowing the Omega to live so close to them."

"So we arrive at the question, how does a Canidean wolf end up becoming one of the loathed and detested omega wolves? As Leif would discover and write in his notes, becoming an omega could be the result of a number of factors. Any alpha who failed to hold his position against a challenging beta would find himself demoted to an omega and ejected from the pack, along with his female. If he died at the paws of the challenger the Alpha female and her pups would be driven off to live as omegas. Surviving males of village raids would be ousted as omegas for failing to protect the pack. If a couple waiting to be tithed mated during their survival trial they would be ousted. The list went on and on."

"So naturally, Leif Hunter was able to get a great deal of inside knowledge and help when it finally came time to oust the Redclaws from Zootopia permanently. In the end, their strict belief in weeding out the weakest among them lead to their inevitable downfall. In the packs continuing war against Archibald Bellwether, they had cast out more omegas than ever before. This both ultimately decreased their effectiveness as a fighting force as well as made them a great deal of vengeful enemies. Today, the Redclaw pack only exists solely by its omega descendants. The last pure bloods to the north bred themselves out of existence nearly one hundred years ago, but that hadn't prevented them from spreading tales of the treacherous Norwulves, and their crusade against their own kind in favor of lesser mammals. Because of this, most native wolves regardless of tribe have a bitter dislike and distrust of any wolf they perceive to have Norwulff ancestry.”

“Those visiting, or even now living amid the modern mammals of Zootopia still seem to hold this grudge despite their surroundings. Those wolves also still tend to look down their snouts at most prey as well, the superiority complex ingrained in their culture still as vehemently strong as ever. It's reasons like that which lead some mammals to believe that there are still tribes out there that to this day still prey on sentient  mammals when given the chance."

"But where do the native wolves play into the Hunter family now? After all its been close to three hundred years since Leif drove the Redclaws out of the North Meadowlands, and the Redclaw tribe itself is long dead and gone. Well, that lies in the omegas that became official citizens of Zootopia and permanent residents of the Alpine Ridge District."

"It is known that a great deal of the omega wolves came in as the build up to Leif's war lay on the horizon. But after the dust settled and Leif stepped down as the district representative omegas slowly began to trickle in from all over North Mammalia and Canidea. The tales of the Hunter's treacherous attack was also a tale of encouragement for those cast from their respective packs, and so they began to migrate to what they hoped would be a better life. These wolves were eager to toss away the belief system that had short changed them in favor of what they saw as a superior way to live. Within the first three generations after Leif's death, omega natives began popping up on the Hunter family tree. Vernon's great, great grandmother was a native wolf from the west coast, ousted for her lack of hunting prowess from a pack known as the Moonfangs. She had a natural talent for botany, and settled land just on the edge of the Alpine Ridge. It was there she built a modest house and opened a farm."

"At one of the first Harvest festivals she met Silas Hunter, and later tithed to the wolf. Silas took primary ownership of the modest farm and built it into a fine ranch home for their expected family. They would have three children, only one of which would stay to keep the family farm running while the others went on to law enforcement. In the 1920's, the border between the North Meadowlands and Alpine Ridge was redrawn, and the Hunter ranch found itself absorbed by the new North Meadowlands. Vernon's great grandfather would have two sons and a daughter and again only one would stay to keep the farm running. Aldus Hunters took great pains to modernize the current Hunter ranch in an effort to prepare it for his own children. Unfortunately, Vernon's grandfather would have only one son before his mate Allison Hunter passed away. That wolf, Dorian Hunter, had no interest in continuing keeping the Hunter Ranch at all, or so I've been told. I suppose he would have simply left if it hadn't been for Vernon's Mother."

"Audrey Hunter, maiden name Snarllör, is not only the mammal who kept the Hunter Ranch from being abandoned, but ironically is one of the last blood links to the remnants of the Redclaw pack. Her grandmother, Talia Redclaw was one of the last remaining Redclaw families in Zootopia before tithing into the Snarllör family. It's strangely poetic that the pack the Hunters had driven out would end up keeping them from leaving the North Meadowlands."

"AWOOOOoooooOOOOoooo!" Dawn winced as a lone howl echoed through the home, causing the ewe to clamp down on her laptop protectively. After recognizing just what the noise was, the ewe opened her laptop back up. Glancing at the corner clock on her computer, the ewe could see it was just a few minutes after seven in the morning. Dawn outstretched one of her arms as she let out a weak and somewhat shaky yawn.

"Audrey wasn't kidding about waking up early." Dawn mumbled, hitting the save button on her work in progress.

Dawn was rather groggy, the inevitable end result of a rather poor nights sleep. Of course she had expected as much when she had been told she'd be spending the night sharing a room with Vanna. From an instinctual standpoint alone the prospect of sleeping with a strange, massive predator nearby would be enough make an easy sleep a struggle. But Dawn was prepared for much worse, as she was dead set on finding out just how Vanna truly felt about her. For all she had known at the time, the tigress could have absolutely hated her. But for all that preparation and steeling herself, the last thing Dawn could have even conceived was spending the wee hours of the morning singing terribly off-key duets with the massive tigress. Their unexpected shared love of the famed llama songstress Suri Nicks had the pair gossiping and giggling like school girls. Dawn could have never foreseen her first night at the Hunter Ranch ending on such a wildly fun note, and yet it had. In the short span of an hour or less, the tigress had went from a cold stranger to practically a sister, and the ewe couldn't have been happier.

But even with the pleasant turn of events with Vanna, the ewe found herself robbed of a good nights sleep regardless. She had spent the night tossing and turning, waking back up at nearly half hour intervals until about six in the morning. At that point Dawn had simply thrown her hooves up in defeat, and instead turned back to her historical writing in an effort to lull herself back to sleep via boredom.

At first it hadn't been completely clear what was stealing away the ewe's much needed rest. The first suspect was Vanna's humidifier, but turning it off while the tigress slept did little to change her predicament and so she elected to turn it back on as to not risk disturbing her newly earned friendship. After that Dawn suspected it was a subconscious fear of the coming day, and mending the fences with Dorian. But after how things had turned out with Vanna, the sheep was feeling considerably more positive about what lied ahead of her. At that point all that seemed left was to furtively grasp at straws. Was it the strange bed? The foreign smells? The deafening silence outside compared to the hustle and bustle of big city living. The ewe threw her pillows by her side, pulling herself tightly against them when it suddenly dawned on her the true nature of her nocturnal discomfort. There was supposed to be a big grey wolf lying where her pillows now lay in a crumpled heap.

Dawn hadn't realized just how used to the comfortable wall of fluff that Vernon’s inviting pelt provided she had become. She found herself missing the warmth of burying herself into his fur, the low and oddly soothing grumble of his snoring, the familiar earthy scent he always seemed to exude. She also missed the feeling of comfort and protection that came with having his large paws wrapped around her tightly, pulling her in close. It was almost laughable to the ewe. She absolutely hated being reminded of how small and weak she was, and yet here she had been actively pining for the feeling of protection that came from her mates embrace.

Three months of sleeping in the same bed had made her completely reliant, no addicted to the wolf’s presence in order to sleep peacefully. Even the quiet, instinctual fear of wolves ingrained in a sheep had seemingly gone radio silent in Dawn’s head. To the primal animal buried deep inside, Vernon appeared to have become a complete non-threat. His harsh edges and predator features sanded away leaving behind little more than a cuddly stuffed animal. It craved his feel, it craved  his scent, it craved...

Dawn shuddered as she felt a tingle shoot down her spine, a low and lustful bleat involuntarily escaping her throat. The ewe quickly wiped her brow, cursing under her breath as her mind had inadvertently drifted to a sudden, strong desire to mate. Giving a brisk shake of her head, the ewe did her best to cast off the feeling, but despite her best efforts the tingling sensation seemed to linger. It was a different sensation than normal, but still quite familiar to the sheep. Something symptomatic of a condition the ewe was now silently praying wasn't picking this morning of all mornings to start. As if the weekend couldn't have been more of a difficult venture, the ewe seemed to have started suffering the symptoms of remnant estrus early.

"Please don't let it be that, not now." She whined quietly. "It was supposed to start next week." She hissed under breath as she closed her laptop.

Her remnant estrus, a leftover relic from the days of ancient sheep breeding seasons was something she was long accustomed to, but it was never the less an irritant. While mammals had long evolved to desire to mate all year round, many mammals still had retained little leftovers encoded in their DNA, and sheep just happened to be one of those mammals. The thing was, for Dawn at least it had become a highly predictable process. Her semiannual estrus-high that came in the fall and spring was something she usually had down to the day. Thinking back, she had felt some of the early symptoms the day before. But they could have been easily mistaken as simple nervous jitters for the upcoming re-union.

But as she allowed her mind to drift back to her mate she felt a second strong jolt of desire shiver through her. There was no mistaking it now, it was just that much stronger than normal. Dawn wiped the sweat off her brow again. Now she was really feeling the itch, the gnawing desire for Puppy's 'attention'. The only thing the ewe could reason for it's early arrival would be the fact that she was in an active relationship, and thus her body had responded to the frequent 'attention' in kind.

Spending so many years out of a relationship, and her most recent years before Vernon spent in nearly complete isolation had dampened that urge significantly when it reared it's ugly head, but now...

A series of howls echoed though the house, far to many for Dawn to reason it was simply the five wolves she had already met. They varied in length and octave, some deep and bellowing while others high and seemingly gleeful. On top of that Dawn could also hear a strange whooping like laugh that sounded nothing like a wolf.

"ROOOOAAAAAaaaaaAAAAARR!" Dawn jumped as she turned her attention to the tigress across from her. The groggy looking cat had leaned up on one paw, her eyes still partially closed as she snarled. As the roar finally died away, Vanna slumped hard back down against her pillow, dragging one over her head.

"Five more minutes..." Vanna grumbled beneath the fabric.

Dawn's heart was beating at a mile a minute as she clutched her chest tightly. She hadn't exactly been prepared for that kind of wake up call, and was thankful she had already been awake before Vanna's roar. Even so, it seemed that her roar had silenced the other wolves in the Hunter household, so at the very least Dawn had the lingering silence to calm her down.

The ewe scooted off her mattress, opening the nearby drawer to grab her clothes for the day. Dawn grabbed a lavender tinted plaid shirt that she had bought specifically for the trip. It was something Judy had suggested when she had spoken to her over the phone about the coming trip. It had been years since Dawn had been out to the country, and Judy thought it would help her to better fit in among the country mammals. As well as having the added bonus of being a more rugged material suitable for farm work, which it seemed would turn out to be a boon if she actually helped at the stall. The only thing she hadn't listened to Judy about was the jeans. The rabbit said it would be the more durable option, but Dawn simply couldn't do it. The wool on her upper thighs made jeans impossible to pull above her hips without bunching up on her legs.

Dawn grasped a dark purple skirt from the drawer as she made her way over to the corner of the room where a pinkish tinted room divider leaned against the wall. Dragging it out and into place, Dawn huddled behind it and quickly changed into her country dress. It only took a few minutes before Dawn was dressed up and ready to go.

Dawn straightened the hem of her skirt as she glanced at herself in the nearby wall mirror. The ewe took a deep prideful breath as she eyed herself. She certainly looked the part, and she was ready to attack the day. She was determined to fit into her mates pack and at the very least win his Father's respect, or go out trying.

As the ewe strode back to her bedside there was a gentle knock at the bedroom door. Vanna let out a groan.

"Go away..." Vanna grumbled.

"Dawn." She could hear Vernon's hushed whisper on the other side of the door. "Honey lamb, you up yet?"

"Oh Vernon!" Dawn chirped before clasping her hooves to her mouth. Glancing over at Vanna, the tigress remained unmoving. The pillow still remaining firmly clasped atop her head.

Dawn scurried over to the door, gingerly opening it as quietly as possible to avoid drawing any ire from the bedridden tigress. As the door swung open the tall and familiar wolf was revealed leaning against the frame. He was wearing a plaid shirt of his own, a deep blue print with a pair of faded blue jeans to match. Around his neck was the familiar green bandana the wolf seemed to love to wear. Dawn found it sort of ironic that Vernon teased Wade over his faded blue cap, when Vernon seemed to have a similar attachment to the jungle green garment. But she did like the way it made his deep emerald eyes stand out as he stared down at her. The wolf gave her a broad smile.

"Well look at this!" Vernon chuckled. "We match." Vernon brushed a paw down his shirt.

Dawn cocked an eyebrow, placing a hoof on her hip as she flashed the wolf a wry smile. "Well one of us is going to have to change."

The two shared a laugh before Vernon eased into a crouch, placing a soft kiss on the tip of Dawn's snout.

"Mornin' Honey Lamb." Vernon rumbled softly. The low tone sent a shiver down her spine.

"Good morning Puppy Love." Dawn smiled warmly, trying to suppress the tingling that was being stoked by her urges. It wasn't too hard as the ewe was able to focus on the bags under the wolf's eyes. Dawn quickly reached out, giving the soft area below one of Vernon's eyelids a gentle rub.

"Oh Puppy." dawn cooed. "You've got terrible bags, you're all puffy under your eyes."

The wolf wiped his eyes as he stood back up, seemingly desperate to rub the sleep away.

"Y-yeah, yeah." Vernon muttered. "I didn't sleep so well last night."

"O-oh." Dawn said as the wolf leaned in, giving the ewe a more intense stare.

"You don't look like you slept to well either." Vernon said. " Guess the concert kept you up pretty late huh?" Vernon grinned, cocking an eyebrow.

"O-oh...you heard that huh?" Dawn mumbled.

"Not too much, the insulation in this place is pretty thick. But me and Zach recognized the basic tune." Vernon shrugged. "I trust that means things worked out pretty well huh?"

Dawn smiled widely. "Actually yes, we-"

A pillow sailed over the ewe's head and struck Vernon in the stomach before slumping to the floor by his feet. Dawn turned around to see that Vanna's head was exposed, one of her eyes now squinting at the two.

"Please, please go away." Vanna mumbled. "I just want a few more minutes."

Vernon chuckled, flashing the ewe a grin. "We can talk about it on the way down to breakfast. Best to leave ol' miss grumpy puss to herself for a while."

Dawn watched as the tigress stabbed a finger in Vernon's direction despite not raising her face from the pillow.

"Don't act like you wolves are any better with mornings than I am." She grumbled. "Just make sure they save me some coffee by the time I get downstairs." She hissed, burying her head more aggressively into the pillow.

Vernon suppressed a snicker as he reached for the door knob behind Dawn. Taking the hint, the ewe scooted into the hall allowing him to close the door to the bedroom tightly behind them. Now up and about, Dawn was ready to hit the bathroom and fix herself up before meeting the other wolves.

"I do need to fix my wool and brush my teeth." Dawn said. "I can't go do-"

Vernon shook his head. "Don't worry about it Floof's. Most of the mammals downstairs have bed head anyway." Vernon laughed. "We usually clean ourselves up after breakfast."

Dawn shook her head. "Oh but Vernon, I cant go down there like this!" Dawn said, raising her hooves to accentuate her point. "My poof's all messed up and I've got stray wool everywhere. I would make a terrible first impression."

"I think you look real pretty." Vernon smiled warmly, drawing a harsh blush from the ewe. She could feel that familiar itch coming back. Dawn did her best to shake it off, but by that time it was apparent that Vernon could tell something was going on. His ears now stood straight up and sharply pointed. The wolf took a few whiffs of the air before eyeing the ewe curiously.

"D-Dawn," He muttered quietly. "I u-uh...I smell ya." Vernon said.

Dawn gave a meek nod.

"It's really strong." Vernon said, his voice seemed to break slightly. The wolf gave a brisk shake of his head.

"S-stronger than normal. Are you feelin' alright Lamb Chop?" The wolf asked.

Dawn twiddled her hooves together nervously. For a brief moment she wished she could go back to before the wolf was even aware of her pheromones. But that cat was long out of the bag, and now the wolf had become quite attuned to them.

"I-I uh..." Dawn muttered. "I-I think I've kind of gone into remnant estrus early..."

Vernon looked puzzled for a moment before it seemed the realization hit him. The wolf wiped a paw across his brow.

"W-well that shouldn't be a problem for e-everyone else." Vernon mumbled. "I mean I couldn't pick up on that until..." The wolf trailed off, a lurid glimmer forming in his eye. The wolf shook his head briskly in a clear effort to maintain composure.

"M-maybe it is a good idea to hit the bathroom first." Vernon muttered. "Or maybe one of these guest rooms..." The wolf gave a slight whine. " For like five mi-"

Dawn shook her head briskly. "No Vernon! Remember what you told me yesterday!" Dawn crossed her arms.

"S-sorry Honey Lamb!" Vernon yelped, shaking his head. "It's just r-really strong. I-I I'm going to have a hard time keeping my head on straight all weekend if I'm constantly smelling you. You know how well a wolf's sniffer works!"

Dawn placed her head in her hooves. "I-Is it really that noticeable?"

Vernon put a paw to his forehead, a look of concern crossing his face. " To me, yes." He nodded. "And if it keeps up it'll be distracting me all day." Vernon shook his head briskly, stabbing a thumb in the direction of the downstairs. " And that mess down there will pick up on that pretty quick. Especially Yuri." Vernon grumbled.

The wolf dragged a paw across his face, slowly pulling it across his tired eyes. "By the gods, like he needs any more material to harass us on."

Dawn brought a hoof to her chin, scratching it thoughtfully. "Well, if this were normal circumstances there would be a pretty easy way to fix this." Dawn mused.

"How?" Vernon asked quizzically.

"A quick rut would quell the urges for a few days and therefore my pheromone levels would go back down to normal, but-"

"Great!" Vernon interrupted, his eyes seeming to shine with lust. " We'll just duck into one of the guest rooms and-"

"They will hear us!" Dawn yelped. "You said-!"

The wolf shook his head in a clear effort to come to his senses. "Yeah, yeah I know what I said!" Vernon crossed his arms, his muzzle twisted into a snarl as he seemed to curse himself. "This had to happen now." He shook his head. "I mean I can tolerate the usual dose, but if it's going to be coming off this strong-"

"I-I'm sorry." Dawn murmured.

Vernon sighed. "It ain't your fault Honey Lamb. I'll just have to work a little harder to keep it together is all. I can do that." The wolf ran a paw through his hair tuft.

"You make it sound like you're the only one who has to." Dawn smirked. "Considering I know the only one who can give me the 'attention' I need to ease this particular feeling is going to be right next to me most of this weekend."

Vernon chuckled weakly. "Maybe it's for the best we didn't end up sharing a bed."

Dawn frowned slightly. "Y-yeah." The ewe rubbed one of her arms as she looked to the floor. "I did miss you though."

Looking up, she found Vernon dreamily smiling back at her. "I missed you too Honey Lamb." The wolf crouched, taking one of her hooves in his paw. "How do you think I got these bags under my eyes?" The wolf said, pointing to the dark puffs beneath his eyes.

"Oh Puppy!" Dawn was nearly leaned in for a hug before stopping herself. She quickly recoiled, causing the wolf to follow suit.

"Ahem." Dawn coughed, adjusting her glasses. "I should definitely go to the bathroom and cool down for a bit before we face the family."

She watched as Vernon grew a wide and mischievous grin.

"Oh no, no mister." She tutted, waiving a hoof. "You're going to have to wait outside."

Vernon's ears sagged as he grimaced.

"Once I've cooled down, and doused myself with my usual products you won't even smell me. We'll be fine." Dawn asserted.

The wolf eyed her warily, seemingly nervous. " I- I don't know Honey Lamb, I mean-"

"It will work, trust me!" Dawn said proudly as she began to lead the walk toward the bathroom. However, despite her proclamation, worry was starting to build in her mind once again. To Dawn, it was beginning to seem as if fixing one problem only left a spot open for another one to take it's place.

[gwynne-fics]

wei50-blog replied to your post “wei50-blog replied to your post “A Hot Mess – Ye-Sol and Myung-Soo a...”

YS: Would be so happy about any more ficlets for our lovely YoungSang couple in AHM!!! (oooooo, Ji-Hyuk! Hee-Nam!!!! the convo after YD postured for her! (and he will smell her on his bed and ache because he misses her so much!), YD publicly blowing up because he needs to defend ES from his own pack!.... i’ll just stop here! :) ) Two of our couples have had their story, now we just need completion on the other three!!! (at some point in time, whenever that would be!)

The amount of joy you take in figuring this world and story really warms my heart. Thank you, so much, for your enthusiasm <3 <3 <3

YS: YD deserves to be proud of himself! He did really, really good! For both of them, it is one thing to make a full hearted effort to learn and understand each others’ culture. It is pretty impossible to be able to fully understand and completely accept it internally (ie casual sex) because culture is something that you grow up with and into. As long as the willingness and respect exists, though, along with continued deliberate honest communication, they will be ok!

And not to take away some of that praise for Young-Do, because he is crushing his makeup and relationship rehabilitation with Eun-Sang, but it is a little easier for him to figure out Eun-Sang’s culture, because humanity is everywhere. He watches television, reads books, and interacts with humans all the time. He had some of a basis going in while Eun-Sang has had nothing on his. And that’s been part of the problem, because she is trying, but there is only so much she can learn and understand (which I think was part of what you were saying, I’m just reiterating it ^^;;)

AHM: Ok, science question about pregnancy! What happens during shifting for a pregnant wolf mother? Since the wolf doesn’t present until later, would that mean babies stay human even if the mother shifts into wolf?

AHM: A related question about pregnancy! Is there an incompatibility problem between human and wolf during pregnancy when the mother is human? Don’t see it as being a problem when the mother is wolf because she is also a human. Then there is the larger question of incompatibility if a pregnant wolf mother shifts, and her babies stay human?

(I’m a little worried about answering this, only because what if I say something with incredibly weird implications because I didn’t think it through ^^;;; But here I go!)

Since the shifting is a natural physical experience for the mother, it doesn’t have any impact on the fetus she carries. The fetus doesn’t shift into a wolf to match the mother’s outer form. The mother does not shift for long. She goes into the wolf and comes back out within minutes to meet the requirement that she’s in her wolf body at least once during the full moon.

It is also not an issue for human mothers during the full moon because the fetus doesn’t shift. So she’s not in danger of having a ultrasound and seeing little puppies inside her.

Because wolves need to mate with humans or risk dying out or genetic problems due to inbreeding, they are compatible enough that while pregnancy isn’t easy (as if it ever is), the difficulty isn’t because of weird stuff happening inside the uterus.

MY: Is Myung-Soo not getting tired after blue moon linked to What Happened? And is it the first indication of his super humanness? This is something wolves don’t have! Myung-Soo is hiding a lot right now! Yes! I do remember about the mating mark, which was why I was a little ?!?!?!!!!! about it on Myung-Soo! And it took quite a long time to fade too!

Myung-Soo not getting tired is linked to What Happened. Wolves have incredible stamina. Like it takes a lot to exhaust wolves like Rachel and Young-Do. The only indication Myung-Soo had that he was something of a wolf was his long life/slow aging. 

And with a temporary mating mark, the more powerful the wolf it is on, the less time it takes to heal/fade. So there is an indication, at this point, that he might have some healing ability after What Happened >.>

MY: When explained, totally feel for Ye-Sol and her frustration since her wolf mind isn’t able to understand the finer nuances of Myung-Soo’s struggle about coupling with her. I see, thought Yoo-Ra was older because she was coupling with Young-Do regularly.

Yoo-Ra is only a few years older than Myung-Soo and is considered his age-mate because they grew up in the same pile of puppies. She established herself very early as a sexual force inside the pack, kind of the way Ye-Sol did when she was younger. There are these wolves (both men and women) that just pick out powerful coupling partners and it gets to the point that coupling with them is a way to gauge status. They usually do it by coupling with a wolf like Young-Do or Rachel.

One of the reasons Young-Do was concerned about the male members of the pack now that Rachel is in her sexual prime is that her scent can sometimes throw that sexual hierarchy and politics into chaos. He didn’t want a man basically jumping the line because he coupled with Rachel.

Kind of like Hyo-Shin did albeit unknowingly >.>

But also one of the reasons Eun-Sang has a hard time, initially when she starts dating Young-Do, is that she upsets the sexual hierarchy has well. Yoo-Ra is pretty much at the top of that pecking order because Young-Do usually accepts when she fluffs her tail in his face.

So the fact, right now in MyungSol’s story, that Ye-Sol is doing all the right things to fluff at Myung-Soo and a wolf of his status is refusing is something that’s never happened to her before and could be emotionally scarring in the future.

>.>

I probably haven’t clarified this very much and just given you more questions ^^;;

AHM: Glad that the false alpha wasn’t in power for that long especially considering the long lives of wolves. Also glad that the bad elders (who were present before) are gone now, because this allows Rachel to build a better pack.

It was a hard five years but fortunately, just a blip in pack history. Rachel took no chances with the Elders and she knew her father would’ve wanted her to start with a clean slate so she wiped it all up. She’s done a very good job and her pack loves her very much.

MY: Very glad that MS will get some of the recognition he deserves and is entitled to, even though it does bother me that it is because YS wants him! Wolves are definitely snobby. (although, yes, they are super cool!) When YS and MS do couple, though, wouldn’t things become even more complicated? Because to YS, MS is her mate, but he is not allowing himself to be there yet, for good reason. I can see her being very hurt if he is still not there after they couple?

You are right about all of this but I’m going to give you shifty eyes anyway because I know how it goes down >.>

MY/YS: Hmm…. wolf body is not necessary to being a wolf is a very progressive idea? Ties in to Young-Do and Eun-Sang, that being able to assimilate fully within culture can be more important than physical manifestation of a wolf. Also, since true mates don’t happen for everyone, it was fair to think Ye-Sol and Young-Do would end up with each other. Could explains some of the subtle resistance the pack will eventually have about Eun-Sang and Young-Do.

It is very progressive and Rachel’s father was adamant about it. He considered Rachel’s mother a full wolf and gave her that status inside the pack because she accepted and understood his culture. She played with Rachel and Young-Do the way wolf mothers do, she was (according to him and Young-Do’s mother) the epitome of a wolf mate. She embraced every part of being a wolf. Eun-Sang is a lot like her after their divorce because she continually tried to educate herself and accept Young-Do in an attempt to make him come back to her. 

Rachel’s father believed that humans could become true wolves even if they never shifted. Myung-Soo was born towards the end of his life but when Jae-Kyung and her mate brought him before the pack and asked their Alpha to accept him, he did without question. When Myung-Soo’s wolf didn’t appear, he was insistent that he was still a member of the pack.

And true mates doesn’t happen for everyone but Young-Do was holding out hope. He wanted a mate and a family for a very long time but he desperately wanted what his parents and Rachel’s mother had. When he smelled Eun-Sang for the first time, it felt like a gift.

Ye-Sol wasn’t holding out hope. She liked casual coupling and while she enjoyed playing with the pack puppies, she didn’t necessarily feel an urge to have her own children. It is probable that if Young-Do had asked her, she would have agreed, but it never happened so they don’t dwell on it.

Like Hyo-Shin eventually does, Eun-Sang jumped the line, and there will always be people upset about that. Wolves like their hierarchies, boundaries, and rules. Eun-Sang is not necessarily anything special to them. She’s just an ordinary human who runs a restaurant. They don’t understand why their very powerful and strong and noble Second keeps chasing her like she’s fluffing her tail in his face.