#and i cannot see them in canon or canon adjacent ever probably

[wickjump]

Wick, i wanna hear your thoughts on horror x cross..I’m desperate to hear someone talk about them. Idc how crazy or how ooc it is. trust that I will eat it up like it’s a million dollar steak

OH MY GOD THNAK YOU SO MUCH VIBINGTOPAZ IVE BEEN WAITING FOR SO LONG FOR SOMEONE TO ASK ME ABOUT THEM WORDS CANT EXPLAIN HOW HAPPY OKAY HERE YOU TO HERES A BIG FAT HEADCANON DUMP. i never see them outside of bsp and don’t get me wrong i love the bsp but sometimes i just want these two on their own yk? this is a bit more fanon than my normal stuff btw but i try my best ok

okok here:

when cross first joined nm and his group he was terrified of horror. he was intimidated by everyone, but horror was the most visibly scary. like there was just no ignoring the fact that this guy killed people before like he ignored it with everyone else. so for a good long while he kept his distance, and it was horror who tried to reach out first after months of never talking despite living in the same building, eating at the same table, and working under the same guy.

it was very clear that talking to cross just at all scared the shit out of him, and since horror is in charge of the cooking, he decided hey why not, and started making foods that appealed to cross as a sort of peace offering. after a while, cross realized what horror’s intent was, and slowly started to come around. he even attempted to give horror food in return (a few of the chocolate bars he had squirreled away) which solidified them as allies and set the foundation for them to develop a further friendship and relationship.

food is their initial and primary love language because it was a medium they could both work with when they first started becoming friends—horror enjoyed being given and giving food purely because he HAS it, and he’s able to make sure he and those he loves are fed, and cross had cooked with undyne alongside his brother and knows the basics of it and enjoys it. cross is literally the only one allowed in the kitchen outside of horror and nightmare, partially bc horror loooovesss him and partially because he’s actually responsible. horror makes him brownies sometimes just because he can btw. or like those chocolate taco desserts? cross loves those so horror makes them. all the time. cross does not mind he likes it a lot actually it’s very sweet

horror and cross are the epitome of i would kill for you (horror) x i would die for you (cross). they’re both very very intense but in different ways and i love that for them. cross takes blows on the battlefield meanwhile horror attacks those on behalf of cross when the other hesitates or refuses to kill (which is all the time cross at heart is a pacifist).

i also feel like they’d be big on physical touch but maybe i’m just super lonely. they’re devoted in different ways and i like that for them. they seem like big ‘kiss on the hand’ people yk what i’m talking about. like the back of your hand kiss. that. i also think they’re one of those cringe ass couples who like. do the waist grabby from behind when they’re cooking or generally working. ew cringe romance (i would die for them). neck kisses too. and biting but that tips into suggestive territory. they’d be big on that though

oh hey angst time. horror feels guilty and somewhat disturbed whenever cross mentions alphys, because of his au’s alphys incident, and it’s the same with undyne. cross was very close with both of them, more so than horror ever was despite having been alphys’ coworker at one point (after all, alphys was cross’ sister), and he feels bad because like. cross speaks so highly of alphys and undyne, but horror tore apart alphys’ mind and undyne is literally the cause of his most visible scar. he feels guilt for what he did, and refuses to elaborate on his au’s alphys and undyne for the most part because he doesn’t want to fuck cross up with the knowledge of the things horror did, the things alphys did, the things undyne did. thankfully after getting the hint that horror did not like mentions of undyne, cross stopped mentioning his undyne pretty much entirely and speaks of alphys a little bit less, and they never really elaborated on that fully outside of choppy confessions during panic attacks.

meanwhile, cross doesn’t understand why horror never visits his au, or at least his brother. because horror is ABLE to, he has his au right there, but he just… never visits? none of his family, his friends? cross would kill and die for the chance to get his au back, but horror doesn’t care for his? horror feeds them and that’s it, he doesn’t remember the last time horror just took a break to visit his family. cross would sacrifice his own life for even a sliver of a chance of getting his family back. it’s not until he fully understands how horrifying horror’s au is that he doesn’t resent him as much for it.

their clashing views and experience are hard to look past, but in the end they love each other enough to empathize with each other and the situations they’d come from. horror has issues with remembering and articulating things from time to time combined with severe migraines, so cross helps him with those. horror meanwhile gets cross to sit the fuck down and take care of himself jesus christ man because what do you mean this asshole is INTENTIONALLY starving himself. fym “i feel like i haven’t earned it lol” sit the fuck down and eat this food i LOVINGLY PREPARED. GOD. they help each other w their issues and bad habits. cross works himself to near death? okay shut up i’m going to forcibly lift you up and carry you to your room and lock you inside until you go to sleep. horror throws up after eating because he can’t handle that much food? cross is there to help him through it. i like them a lot. they r there for each other through their highs and lows.

since i hate xchara exclusion i think xchara like absolutely fucking despises horror. not because he’s evil and mean and grrr to cross, but he just genuinely does not trust horror and cannot believe that he has any sort of good intentions. xchara sort of fueled cross’ doubt about him for a while, though as time moved on and horror didn’t seem to have any harmful ulterior motives, xchara toned down on the whole ‘he is going to kill you don’t blink around him or you will die’ talk. not entirely but you know. he’s always got the ‘i’ve got my eye on you’ look whenever horror is anywhere near them but horror doesn’t know that unfortunately. he doesn’t get the pseudo brother stamp of approval. horror’s brother likes cross a lot though, especially because cross is literally the exact opposite of lazy and unhealthy and encourages self care of others (not himself, the absolute loser). like out of anyone he could’ve ended up with, horror’s brother (creeps? crooks? sugar??) likes cross the best i think.

ok speed round: cross is the type to not notice when anyone is interested in him, just at all. most frustrating months of horror’s life really. horror packs little trail mix baggies for cross when he goes out on missions or patrol. this is just cause i think it’s cute. purring skeletons, i like purring skeletons it’s my favorite thing ever and i think they should get to purr together and lay down in bed for hours on end half asleep half awake just existing together. when cross saw his very first colored sunset horror was there and that definitely furthered the at the time small spark of romance. cross, bc he’s a swap, is much more of a superhero nerd than a science nerd like horror, and they bicker over whether or not they watch a documentary or action movie. i think they don’t bicker like killer and dust do, they bicker in like. the very clearly lighthearted and cutesy way that doesn’t last long. it’s more like banter actually. gags

ok that’s it (for now…..) because i don’t want this to be too-too long. i love them and i was so so so so SO excited when you asked me this omg. i love asks like these i cannot stress this enough. ask me whatever you want whenever you want and i will answer. if it doesn’t seem like i have, that’s because it’s in my drafts and being worked on because sometimes i’m unsure or have half finished thoughts i want to put the effort in fleshing out later bc y’all deserve headcanons that aren’t half baked. anyway i will literally never get tired of this it’s so fun

[navarice]

my dearest fellow mdzs stans, i really don't want to spoil anyone's fun but sometimes some things must be said. please do NOT mistake fanon characteristics for canon characteristics because by GOD is it frustrating to dissect a character when all anyone wants to do is blindly turn away from the very vivid and metastasizing flaws.

jiang cheng is an extremely complicated character, and that's why we love him. but by god, he is a jealous, self-victimizing asshole with a massive inferiority complex who likes to torture (probably) innocent look-a-likes of his (as far as he knew) dead adjacent family member. jesus christ this isn't some simple case of miscommunication (well it is but, you know no amount of communication will ever mend the giant chasm that developed between them. especially not with asians raised within the most classical case of asian parenting, i mean come on now) but a matter of deep and intense self-loathing developed since early childhood projecting violently outwards. let me be clear. he hates wei wuxian. he loathes him. he wants to kill him with his own hands again and again so some part of his convoluted sense of justice and superiority will be fulfilled. he's a classist, a bully, and abusive to everyone around him. ong at the end of mdzs, i was nearly crying tears of joy when jin guangyao flayed him flat on his ass bc that man needed to hear it. he needed to feel it. he needed to stop blaming others and blame himself.

and!! he's homophobic!! the entire cultivation world is, yes, but he's the only one we see give wei ying and lan zhan active shit for it!!

point is...his complexity makes him interesting. as a child, he was pretty alright tbh. he was understandably upset when three of his dogs got taken away and he saw his dad give a completely random kid such a gentle hug when jiang cheng never received one so far. he was a kid, and it was sad and helped the readers get a glimpse at the already dysfunctional family dynamics before wei ying came into the picture. as an adolescent/teen, yes he had a lot of unresolved rage and inferiority issues building up when he was constantly being compared to wei wuxian by his mother and not given enough reassurance from his father (once again, all present before wei ying...everyone just likes to dump the shit on him bc it's easier to point fingers at others than at yourself). perhaps he could have turned out differently if literally either of his parents stepped up and took accountability. however, after the burning of lotus pier? after the golden core transfer? after wei ying stuck around as his subordinate just as he promised, and protected jiang cheng like he promised, and defected just to save the yunmeng clan's reputation so jiang cheng doesn't have to put up with the other clan's shit, still continuing to keep his promise? after wei ying's death? idk abt y'all, but all bets are off bro.

mxtx makes it a point to make him so irredeemable. he's an exploration of what can go wrong if you let your traumas, self-hatred, and revenge fantasies blind you. he has the worst traits of his parents for a reason, directly contrasting with the other sibling, who is a perfect picture of eldest daughters born into a dysfunctional family. jiang yanli has the best traits of her parents (in terms of compassion and standing up for her family), but the family dynamics also made her the way she was. the responsible, the mediator, the occasional mother, stepping in where madam yu cannot.

there's just so much potential to hold him accountable buried under the pretense of misunderstandings and kinnie moments. he just had so many chances, more than any other character, to make a different choice. to actually look past his misgivings and unlearn the bad habits he used to protect himself as a child. i'm not saying he has to magically heal from all his traumas, but at the very least know not to be like his parents. but he wasn't written that way. because that is what happens when you give into your insecurities and generational trauma.

bottom line: jiang cheng is a fantastic archetype that needs to be explored in all his authenticity, including his moments of loyalty and cruelty.

[monsterkissed]

You said you liked to share BNGN trivia, so you got any tidbits?

some assorted trivialities (spoilers for a fanfic up to the latest chapter):

the fic was originally envisioned (and partly written) as a series of drabbles! if i had kept that going, it would currently be 5,376 drabbles long.

tiramisu was written into the outline entirely as bait/tribute to my partners, who are big siamese fans. she is now the most popular oc i have ever made for anything. i considered writing an origin story fic for her back when there was a jjba oc zine in the works, but it fell thru and now it only lives in my head. it involves multiple murders : )

bngn is not phf-compliant bc i did not want to read it. to make up for this i promise to find other horrible things for fugo to go through instead <3

probably not news to anyone by this point but here is some explicit confirmation: the first prologue that opens the fic is not about doppio

there are so many cases of foreshadowing in the form of jokes or joke-adjacent statements at this point that i cannot actually remember them all. if you see me make a silly comment in this fic there is at least a 20% chance it's actually a very sneaky mean comment hiding behind the linear progression of time

when i first drafted the outline act 3 was much much shorter and had a few drastic differences. one of these was that polnareff (or at least one of him) would have survived to support the gang much as he does in the original VA, but i could not think of anything fun for him to do that didn't detract from everything else, or at least nothing more fun than the inexplicable spectacle of two dead polnareffs after all of the build-up towards him. rip, rip.

speaking of fun: i wanted to have every major character get at least one really cool moment, regardless of how central they were to the story. i didn't want anyone to feel like you could cut them out completely and it wouldn't matter, i wanted to keep that ensemble feel of VA and give everyone room to affect the story in important ways, even if the fic still obviously has its focusses. of the ones i've published so far, i think i like mista's intervention in the Trish & Dop vs Fugo fight best out of those moments because i just had so much fun writing and visualising it and he felt like a natural fit to provoke fugo's own position in the story as a person fixated on the objective facts (which he was canonically Not Wrong about, in terms of sticking with bruno being a dubious plan for anyone fond of staying alive) to face off against someone who operates more on vibes and rolling the dice.

way back in the depths of drabble-draft the flashbacks were going to occur chronologically, followed by the present day stuff. but as i became aware that this was growing into something i realised that this would be stitching two pretty drastically different fics together back to back, and decided instead to use the current format. in theory this was purely going to allow me to show doppio's relationship with diavolo alongside his absence from him, so we can see simultaneously why he values and misses him so much and what he's becoming without him. in practice it led to a bunch of smaller changes that built up into, among other things, the premise of the entire canon divergence. technically, all of the flashbacks in act 1 and 2 "take place" during ch. 30. there is an implication to this that so far nobody has commented on ;)

i spent an amount of time researching macdonalds in italy that i will never ever get back

speaking of researching things that don't matter to anyone but me: everywhere a major scene happens is based on a specific spot i hand-picked on google maps. i roamed a lot of italian countryside via satellite trying to find the Exact kind of big, ugly, concrete-floored farm i had in mind for the first secco fight

technically this fic (or at least the extended universe around it) has sorbet and gelato VA-style origin stories to go with their fanstands (which i had a lot of fun with, workshopping around ideas for things that would make for excellent and suitably juicy assassination tools but vulnerable in a stand vs stand battle). much like tiramisu, so does my second stand-using oc brodo (who also cameos in 'I Think We're Alone Now', because skulking around trying not to be noticed is his speciality) the third, katarina, is only mostly goncharov-inspired, and Heart of Glass was originally going to be one of the chapter titles for this fic. another song with a very similar title still will be!

i had no intention of narancia being as big a presence in the fic as he was, but the longer i wrote the more i realised that he's just too fun to put in a room with doppio. the scene where he accepts the truth made me feel genuinely like a bit of a horrible person because i'd enjoyed building up their friendship so much and it was one of those chapters where i knew Exactly what the character would want to do and exactly why it would be the thing that would hurt them the most.

when i was hammering out the outline for what would become this fic an artist i had been following released a song that i put on in the background while i wrote, and then stopped writing and went back to listen to it properly twelve or thirteen times because it was eerily vibing perfectly with some of the themes i had been kicking around in my head trying to make something out of. it put a few seeds in my head in the way that some things serendipitously do, so much so that i almost named the whole fic after it. in the end, i decided to affix it to just one chapter where i felt it would best set the tone for the imminent descent to come. that chapter would be chapter thirty-eight.

[sayyourprayers]

The "leaks" where it is mentioned that Mike will act like an asshole bc El will focus on saving Max so it kinda makes Mike insecure or smth? Which is the death of madwheeler and elmike before it even began. Mike and Will fighting abf the painting and then they become cold towards one another aka their fight that they cannot come back from? Should happen. That is the Mike that i want to see in its pure canon portrayal.

Lmao. Ya idts that's happening. He's not gonna stop El from saving Max. Don't recall El ever doing anything she didn't wanna do outside of the lab. So ya. Mike's just gonna have to be okay with it. Madwheeler does not exist. That dude didn't console Max as her brother lay dying/dead instead he was spending romantic time with his girlfriend right next to them. So.......

Mike and Will fight? What a leak. I could not have guessed that. James u mah heroe. Ya he's gonna fight with Will. Atp even he knows he gets away with it. You know that trope where you hurt someone you love the most or whatever other odious crap. So a fight's a given.

Mike's canon portrayal has actually been consistent. His fanon interpretation is what's glitching hard.

Also Mike has a hero complex like Hopper. Needs a project to feel important. It's canon. N even Finn said something adjacent since interviews are also required reading. But even without that. Purely based on what appears on screen which is the only thing that should be fucked with, it's pretty probable he's gonna be angy and upset. But obviously it comes from a good place. Like when I say he has a hero complex I'm not talking sharp objects type shit.

He's just got a lot of zeal. Mini Hopper.

[the-insomniac-emporium]

I love your writing.

if it's not too much trouble may i make a request? I'm thinking the Dimitrescu women meeting and/or courting a fellow immortal.

the circumstances of the immortal's powers and possession of immorality are entirely up to you. I just like the idea of them meeting someone they could literally spend forever with...because they deserve it ❤

I wasn't sure if you wanted a story or headcanons? I went with HCs, here, but if you wanted more of a drabble or whatever just lemme know and I'll write something like that.

Also, I got excited and carried away so this has the whole Dimitrescu family, plus shorter ones for both Mother Miranda and Donna. Admittedly Alcina's is also a little on the shorter side? I tried to write everything that came to mind, but I am kinda tired right now, sorry. Might reblog this and add some more later.

(Under read-more for length)

Cassandra:

Tries (and fails) to hide her excitement. Mortality is one of the bigger things that has made her keep her distance to others, at least in the past. Every Maiden she’s ever been the slightest bit smitten with, up until this point, has been incredibly fragile. Seeing as she’s not exactly the softest person, one can easily imagine why that would be a turn off for her. But now that’s no longer a problem!

On the other had… having an immortal partner gives Cassandra pause. Why? Because what if they breakup? Normally, she can just, ahem, “dispose” of any exes (regardless of how much it hurts) so she doesn’t have to see them/deal with them anymore. If that’s not an option, she’ll definitely take longer than usual to do anything about her feelings. She wants to be sure, 100%, before she gets in over her head. Chances are she won’t hold back for as long as she wants though.

Likely to have a loud, messy confession. She’ll have been avoiding you for a few days, always ducking out of whatever rooms you enter, leaving you both hurt and confused. After enlisting the help of her sisters, you’ll be able to corner her outside. She’ll tell you, under no uncertain circumstances, to leave her alone. But you’ll refuse, demanding an explanation.

“I thought we had something. I thought you cared,” you’ll snap, eyes watering. “If that’s changed… if I was wrong, just tell me. I’ll leave and I’ll never come back.” Cue thunder and raining (because tropes) and Cassandra dramatically pulling you into a kiss, holding you so tightly you think you might bruise. Then she’s demanding that you stay, refusing to apologize but making it clear just how much she does care.

Being immortal, you’re not as defenseless as some of Cassandra’s past interests. Naturally, she doesn’t get quite as protective as she normally would. She’ll still have your back no matter what, ready to fight by your side against any foe, and will probably consider doing so a “fun bonding activity”. Oh, some lycans are encroaching on Dimitrescu territory? Time to go destroy them, as a power couple!

Despite having all the time in the world, Cassandra won’t change much of her actual courting behavior, nor the rate at which things advance. She’s still gonna get handsy fairly early on, still gonna “rah!” at you in the hallways, and still going to struggle with her jealousy.

Immortality Compatibility: I can see Cassandra going for another vampire (or vampire adjacent) creature, or someone demonic. She likes her lovers a bit rough, with some nice bite to their personalities. If you’ve got sharp teeth, or claws, or glowing eyes? Oh boy, she’s gonna be making heart eyes at you all the time.

Bela:

If your immortality isn’t immediately obvious, Bela is over the moon with joy when she finds out. Her eyes will go wide for a moment, before she tries to seem calm (so as to not freak you out), but her heart is pounding. This is what she’s been hoping for. As much as Mother Miranda has done for her family, there’s no guarantee that she’d be willing to give more. Even if Miranda granted Bela’s lover her “gift”, there was no telling what the results would be, or if the lover would survive. Now that there’s no need for such a transformation, it’s far easier for Bela to imagine herself in love (and eventually be in love).

Slow-burn romance over a decade or longer, oops. Doesn’t even necessarily mean to take things so slowly, just doesn’t feel a need to rush things, preferring that they develop organically. With both of you having unlimited time, you’re both used to working on a very large timescale. Maidens watching the two of you probably place bets on how long it’ll take you to hold hands for the first time. Everyone knows it’s coming, but no matter how much Cassandra and Daniela complain, Bela refuses to jump into things. By the time the two of you are officially together, you’re probably madly in love with each other.

More protective than Cassandra, if only because she knows just how rare you are. Immortal or not, you likely still have a weakness, and Bela will do everything in her power to make sure no one else knows what it is. If applicable, she will also ensure she has a countermeasure readily available. For example: If you were weak to fire, she’d make sure that the castle keeps extinguishers handy, just in case. Though they should probably already do that. Not that the Dimitrescu family cares much for OSHA compliance.

Somehow grows more in love with you with every passing year, and makes sure that you know this. Whether you’ve been together for one year or one century (because in this house we ignore canon), she’s always performing little acts of love, giving constant reminders of how strongly she feels. Gifts, special dates, book recommendations, etc.

Immortality Compatibility: Bela seems like the type to go for someone with a calming presence, and perhaps somewhat of a contrast to herself. I can picture her with someone somewhat angelic, or druidic, someone very in tune with nature. She’d love to feed deer with you and relax in the forest! Or lay against a tree by your side, listening to you talk about various microorganisms for hours at a time.

Daniela:

Practically tackles you when she finds out/connects the dots. This is just like one of her romance novels, where a lonely (attractive as fuck) immortal spends years in isolation before finally meeting the love of their life, who they get to spend the rest of eternity with. Absolutely ecstatic about the whole situation. Won’t stop kissing you and pulling you close, rambling about how great it’s gonna be to spend your lives together. Honestly? Kind of overwhelming. You might have to remind her a few times that you don’t have to rush into things, considering you have all the time in the world.

Introduces you to people as her “super cool/rad immortal life partner”. Genuinely cannot bring herself to not brag about you. If her sisters haven’t found someone like you yet, you can bet that Daniela will tease them about it all the time (much to their annoyance). If Momma Alcina doesn’t, though? Dani will keep her thoughts to herself, thank you very much (being grounded at her age does not impress the s/o).

Tries not to show it, but she’s actually very nervous. You’re immortal! You’ve probably seen a lot of shit (she certainly has)! Worries about keeping you interested in her, though she would never admit it. This tends to lead to her performing ridiculous acts to showcase her affection, regardless of the cost or, like, whether or not you’d even enjoy whatever she has planned. In order to counter her anxiety, you’ll want to reassure her whenever you can, and give her plenty of “I love you”s.

Strikes a decent balance between Cassandra’s nonchalant attitude and Bela’s protectiveness. Will defend you if you need it, playing up the romantic aspect, but also entirely willing to hide behind you in a scary situation.

Immortality Compatibility: Having probably read Twilight… Dani would date a werewolf, as long as they weren’t the smelly kind. Also interested in a sort of “magical”/elemental type, especially if their powers are influenced by emotions. In other words, if someone flirts with her in front of you, and your response is to subconsciously light your hands/the other person on fire? She thinks that’s hot, pun intended.

Alcina:

“Oh? Interesting,” she’d say, smiling softly (and trying to ignore the heat rushing to her face). Similarly to Cassandra, she’d try to play it off, not wanting to seem too excited. And, well, she’s not as excited as any of her daughters are. After all, she’s had more time than them to “get used” to the idea of outliving any potential romantic interests. So, she’s not exactly desperate for a relationship, even with someone she could spend an eternity with.

That being said, if she is romantically interested in them, she’s very relieved. Outliving a loved one can be incredibly traumatizing (fuck you c*pcom, you know what you did), and knowing that you’re safe (or at least safer than most) brings her no small amount of comfort.

Also, just glad to have another person close to her age around. Her daughters are somewhat stuck as young adults, and I imagine Alcina would want someone who gained immortality a little later in life, such as herself, as opposed to, ya know, reminding her of her children. That probably goes without saying. Hopefully.

More so than her daughters, Alcina would change her level of protectiveness depending on her s/o’s power level. If you’re a shapeshifter who can also turn into a big ass dragon? Then she’s not going to coddle you. If you’re immortal but still vulnerable, then she’s going to do her best to keep you safe, even going so far as to enlist the assistance of her daughters. “If you see a single Maiden growing mistletoe, or bringing some in from the village, let me know immediately,” or something like that, depending on your weakness.

Immortality Compatibility: Definitely would want someone in a situation similar to herself, having once been truly human, only to be “elevated” by something. Bonus points if you’re another disciple of Miranda, double bonus points if Miranda specifically “made” you to be Alcina’s boo/honey/darling/dear.

Bonus! Mother Miranda:

Oh god finally someone who won’t leave her (can’t leave her). No one can take you away from her, and that’s a relief that she’s been craving for over a century. Even if romance isn’t high on her priority list, she welcomes it with open arms, glad to have someone by her side through all of life’s chaos.

Admittedly slow to trust at first, probably just using you as a tool at first. But prove yourself enough, show that your devotion is more than just misdirected self-interest, and she’ll start to warm up to you. Forming a real relationship would likely take a couple decades, similar to with Bela. Once you are together, however, the two of you are inseparable in all matters.

You’d be her #1 follower, most trusted adviser, and the only person allowed to understand 100% of her thoughts and motives. While Miranda wouldn’t allow you to be seen as the same level as her (sorry), you’d still be a legend among the villagers. To them, you’re Mother Miranda’s champion, the epitome of a devoted follower that they all aspire to emulate. Not that they know the two of you are a couple, though.

Immortality Compatibility: No gimmicks, no cheap tricks, she wants (and respects) a fellow scientist, someone who clawed their way through adversity and forged themselves into something indestructible. Double the interest if you did so for a similar cause to her own, as she would appreciate your ability to relate to her suffering.

Bonus! Donna:

Someone to play with! FOREVER! No more losing people she cares about, no more accidentally breaking people, no more people scrambling to leave. Now that she has you, she can finally spend some quality time with another (living?) person. Honestly her dolls (or at least Angie) are just as excited as she is. Regardless of her relations with the other three Lords, Donna much prefers the company of a lover.

For real though she’s shy as hell and you might not even realize who’s pulling the strings until you’ve been in her house for over a year. She’d probably use her powers to trap you inside, at least at first, though they’d be nice hallucinations. You’d have to treat the dolls nicely, especially Angie, before she’d let you interact with her.

Eventually you’d be allowed to leave, and you’d be given a key to return whenever you wanted to. Assuming that you do, in fact, come back, the two of you would have a very, very slow romance, if only because of Donna’s anxiety. Hand holding makes both of your faces turn beet red, seriously.

Immortality Compatibility: *chanting* GHOST GIRLFRIEND GHOST GIRLFRIEND POLTERGEIST PARTNER POLTERGEIST PARTNER WOOHOO! Something with a flexible, only-sometimes-tangible form, who absolutely could have left at any time but didn’t because they wanted to stay.

[ghaniblue]

I was tagged by @academicdisasterfic Thank you. Tag games are so fun. It's always so interesting to see what people answer.

✨ Drarry Tag Game! ✨ Answer any questions you’d like and ignore the rest!

When did you get into Drarry and why? Which Drarry fic hooked you?

I'm gonna take these two together because this is a three-pronged answer because I have been in and out of Drarry for mumbly mumbly years. They used to be my rebound ship when I was between fandoms.

So on the 17th of January 2005: I was reading chapter 6 of Transfiguration by Resonant, after resisting Drarry for about a year because I was all about Remus/Sirius. Book!Harry annoyed me and I wanted to yeet Draco into the sun. I changed my tune because fic gave me older Drarry. I still can't really go younger than 8th year.

My next return to Drarry was in February 2012. Just to show you how my opinions changed. I quote from LJ: "I am still all about Draco. I love that miserable wretch." This is the first Drarry fic I bookmarked in 2012 on my pinboard: Choices of the Heart by Naadi. One of the stories from this period that still haunts me is Railway Lands by Maelipstick (beware massive Draco angst monster). At this point Drarry had become something comfortable to return to. It was like revisiting an old friend and seeing what they've been up to. I could reread old favourites and discover new gems.

Which brings me to last year in March (1 year anniversary!). The culprit without a doubt is Grounds for Divorce by tepre. There was no hope for me after that. Instead of a rebound fandom Drarry became it. I think what struck me was how different Drarry felt, or maybe I felt different I don't know. But GfD had Harry with Egyptian ancestry! My god! I hadn't been around for that shift and it floored me. I loved it.

Top three favourite Drarry fics:

This is terrible. If you had asked me last year I would be able to pin it down to three, maybe four, but now...

Grounds for Divorce by @tepre - a magnificent fever dream of a fic, Egypt makes me weak in the knees

What We Pretend We Can't See by gyzym - bursting with character and wit, dialogue to die for

Spot number three is hard. I can't decide between three fics so have them all.

Foundations verse by saras_girl - comfort fic, probably the only established relationship fic I revisit constantly

The Price We Pay for Wings by Frayach - for tearing my heart out and making me sob like a baby every time

Licurici by @lou-isfake - for making me go Charlie my beloved all over the place (shut up, triad with Drarry counts)

Why can’t you quit them?

I think because there is such a wide field of where to go with them: they can cause utter destruction but also heal each other. They are both interesting characters in their own right. There are unending possibilities. After all these years people are still writing Drarry in canon (adjacent) settings instead of flinging them out into AU land. That is mind boggling.

Would you rather be friends with Harry or Draco?

Harry, definitely. But I think I would actually be friends with fandom Draco. Harry is work, Draco I could poke fun at.

Disarm by Smashing Pumpkins - because of the Drarry vid Disarm by obsessive24 and because...

Who breaks your heart more often?

God Harry. Give the boy a hug.

Ideal career for Harry? For Draco?

I like it when Harry gets to do something with his hands, something concrete and tangible, build something. Or teach. I tend to start him as an Auror in my fics, but make him quit because ugh.

Draco I usually give something fiddly and detail oriented to do: potions, curse breaker, researcher etc. I also like him with an artistic bend.

Favourite non-Drarry HP character?

Probably Remus and Luna.

If you had to pick one, enemies to lovers or (enemies to) friends to lovers?

Enemies to lovers! No question. I am perfectly happy reading friends to lovers when the canon relationship is not-friends, though. Both I cannot do. I cannot ship best friends at all ever. Has never happened.

Would you rather read a fic that made you laugh or one that made you cry?

Both? Angst with a happy ending or hurt/comfort. If forced, I'd rather read heavy angst than humour.

Three songs that scream Drarry to you (feel free to include the Drarry-est lyrics!):

I'm not a very musically oriented person. I have no idea. I could give you three songs I imprinted on because of Drarry. Does that count?

I used to be a little boy

So old in my shoes

And what I choose is my choice

What′s a boy supposed to do?

The killer in me is the killer in you, my love

Human by Daisy Gray - my werewolf!Harry fic is named Human because of this song. It informed a lot of the emotion of the fic.

I mean, honestly. (watch the vid btw!)

Another question I'm bad at. I don't really have ones. I have favourite books but not really favourite authors.

The Sea and the Rhythm by Iron & Wine - I almost named my dad!Draco and fudge maker!Harry in Cornwall fic The Sea and the Salty Breeze.

Favourite authors outside of fic?

I had a phase around 17-18 when I read everything by Gustave Flaubert. Frank Herbert wrote my favourite books of all time, the Dune series, but I don't like his other books. Maybe Alexander Volkov who wrote my favourite childhood books: the Magic Land series.

Who hasn't been tagged yet? I don't know! @nv-md, @m0srael, @3lvendork, @corvuscrowned, @crazybutgood, @skeptiquewrites, @amywaterwings, @callmegri

[beca-mitchell]

I was wondering about this today and since you’re like my favorite writer, I want to ask you…how do you hc Jesse and Chicago/Tom in their relationships with Beca/Chloe? Like do you mainly hc them as possessive/controlling, a “man’s man”? Or more like a sweet, borderline desperate, kind of partner? Or does it really just depend on the story you’re writing? I was mainly thinking about how each of them would react when Beca/Chloe break them up in order to pursue each other. Any thoughts?…

jesse

i think jesse's controlling in the sense that he has an idea of how he wants his life to go based on the movies he's watched. and i think it bothers him when the people in his life don't conform to those constraints as well. while i don't think jesse is hypermasculine or that he particularly embodies toxic masculinity, he enjoys movies a little too much to NOT have a bit of male gaze and problematic shit going on his life so...

in terms of how jesse reacts to beca breaking up with him and then subsequently dating chloe, my personal headcanon is that jesse would have known for a while that chloe had feelings for beca, but refused to let himself believe that beca reciprocated those feelings—it's easier for him to think that he's won some kind of unspoken "battle" or chess match, even against chloe who he remains friendly with (mostly for beca's sake) for the years that he and beca are together. i don't think he would ever be toxic in the sense that he would stop beca from hanging out with chloe or talking to her, but it comes to a point where it really does hurt him that beca might not always prioritize their relationship while seemingly prioritizing her experiences with chloe (i.e. beca moving to NYC with chloe instead of moving to LA with jesse like she said she would)

i think ultimately he'd be happy for beca because at some point in their relationship, they really figured out how to become best friends and that's something that they don't give up on easily, even if those first couple of years post-break-up might be awkward at first. and then maybe tense when chloe and beca start dating. that's how i see it anyway 💖

chicago

this man, to me, probably wants his definition of the American nuclear family, strictly heterosexual of course. i didn't like how he was like 👀 when chloe was saying how the bellas had never slept on top of each other or whatever in pp3. idk, like there's not much to go off on in the movie to begin with, but i already do not give a shit about him bc he's an army boy born and raised and seems very dedicated to that. so i say let him be dedicated! and i cannot see a relationship with chloe working out. i don't think he would appreciate how flighty chloe might be at times (see the exception: beca is her anchor—beca is her rock and i don't think chicago actually realizes the gravity of this, pun intended, until it's too late). ultimately i feel like the downfall in their relationship is that they want distinctly different things.

i honestly love drama and angst so i think he'd be annoyed that chloe picks beca over him all the time. and then ultimately that chloe picks beca over him one final time. though i don't think that he'd try to sabotage their relationship once it finally happens, i feel like he'd try to retain his own slice of the American dream by doing his best to hold on to chloe, so he's possessive and jealous like jesse, just in a more intense way.

tom

i do not think of tom at all, he was just chloe's side boy toy and she dropped him after falling in love with beca during beca's first year (not that she even realizes she's in love yet)

*

i will say as a general note, it will ultimately depend on the story i'm writing. i'm perfectly capable of writing any of these characters as confidantes and friends to beca and chloe when needed, but when i think about canon and canon-adjacent things, i do feel like beca and chloe's stints with these men will have some bearing on their stories.

[pomegranates-and-blood]

Lips of an Angel

My Masterlist  

Pairing: Ivar/Danish!Reader, Ivar/Freydis, Reader/OC

Summary: “Well, I had this idea of Ivar x reader based off the song Lips of an Angel. (If you feel like a Modern AU works best that's fine) Where Ivar is with Freydis, but Ivar never let go of his feelings for the reader and she never let go of hers, and you can decide how you want it to end.”

Word Count: 3.2k

Warnings: Angst, lost love, implied sex/cheating, mention of polygamy

A/N: This is the closest I’ll get I’ve gotten to writting 5b Ivar, and it still is ooc probably. I feel like a horrible writer for ignoring canon like this, but istg that season almost made me give up on Vikings altogether and I just can’t write it, or any of the characters as they were then.

Anyhow, hope you like this, I was on the fence about making it a modern!au or not, so I decided to write both a Viking times version and a Modern version. Different story completely, of course.

You can find the Modern!AU version of this request right here

Kattegat is still the same, you realize, it is as if Aslaug still sits on that throne.

In a way, you think she still does.

Álfarr’s hand is a comfortable weight on your back, and his warmth helps you thaw from the cold of memories and regret that took a hold of you the moment you crossed those walls.

“You cannot leave me!” His voice is an enraged snarl, his hand is gripping tight at the axe on the table.

You know it is madness to turn your back on Ivar the Boneless, you know it is madness to ignore the rage in his eyes. Still, you walk out of that worn-down church, and surprisingly, you survive.

And because the man you are travelling with, the man that claims to love you and to know you love him too, is too smart for his own good, he notices the way you wish for nothing more than to leave this place you just returned to.

And so he tries reminding you of what you have returned for, of the life you will be able to have once you spend one winter in Kattegat.

“I was thinking, after this, we could travel to Ribe,” Álfarr offers casually, glancing at you from the corner of his eye, “The Danes are sure to welcome you back.”

“Hmm,” You reply, nodding your head, and because he deserves it, because you can’t forget what made you left Kattegat or what has made you return, you offer a smile, “I don’t know if they would welcome you, though.”

“I fought against Angantyr once,” He reminds you with a chuckle. After a moment, he brings you close and presses a kiss to the side of your head, “Besides, more than a year ago I was convinced-…”

“Convinced? You make it sound as if-…”

“I was convinced by a beautiful Danish woman to leave those wars behind,” Álfarr continues with a knowing smile, ignoring your glare of protest. “And I don’t regret it.”

“Well let’s hope she doesn’t regret this, eh?” You try around a deep breath, a smile that feels fake.

One winter. Only one winter in Kattegat, and then Álfarr will be at your side wherever the Gods will take you. Such was the pledge he made, and the deal you agreed to.

____

Long before the night that now envelops you had settled, word had reached you that the King calls for you, and all you’ve been able to do since that thrall delivered the message was to consider the cost of running away, cowardly as it may be.

Reminiscent of those last weeks before he drove you away, before you left him behind.

“Ivar calls for you.” Hvitserk tells you with a sigh, taking a seat at your side with an exhaustion that is more than physical.

“What for? He listens only to his own voice lately.” You quip bitterly, but still stand up and with a soft touch of the Prince’s shoulder, you answer a call that hurts your pride, your hope.

Álfarr’s steps approaching you take you away from the dangerous lull of memories.

“Are you going to go?” He asks without preamble, taking a seat in front of you.

You sigh, “If the King calls for me-…”

Álfarr chuckles bitterly, interrupting you, “Ah, of course. The King summoning a Völva, nothing more. Surely not your ex-lover wanting to see you again.”

“Do you want me to say no? Not many survive denying Ivar.”

“You survived leaving him.”

“Yes. I left him,” You repeat pointedly, not intending to withstand foolish jealousy. But because what the years made out of you isn’t happy with the way he is soothed slightly at your reminder, you add, “I left him when he tried keeping me chained.”

And Álfarr was always a smart man, it was one of the reasons you first trusted him. So in response to the threat you don’t voice, he only shrugs, “You wouldn’t leave me.”

Your eyebrows raise at the unwavering certainty, “What makes you think that?”

“Nothing could make you wish to return to Kattegat until me,” Álfarr offers you a smile, that you almost start returning, “I still consider it a feat, to have been able to sway you.”

You drink down the last of your mead, tilting your head back and trying to chase away bitterness with the honeyed drink.

“You swayed me the moment I found you dying and chose to save you, you fool.” You quip, betraying a fond smile that he returns.

Without any more words, you stand up. Your hand traces the outline of his shoulders, strong and familiar, as you walk out the door.

____

Ivar waits for you sitting in what looks like an adjacent room to the throne room.

You wish you could say he looks the same, you wish you could say he still has the face, the eyes, of the man you once loved.

But his face is darkened by shadows and something more sinister than that, his eyes are colder and crueler than you ever had the misfortune of seeing them.

It still makes a pang of pain travel to your chest, to the place where your heart ought to be if you hadn’t carelessly given it away years ago, to see him before you, in the flesh, not a dream or a memory.

“My King.” You bow your head.

“Say my name,” Ivar orders gruffly, and at your startled expression when you lift your gaze to his, he amends, “We’ve-…Don’t act like we are strangers. Call me by my name.”

“Alright, Ivar,” You concede, the familiar sound of his name on your lips still managing to make your chest tighten. You take a seat in the chair across from him that was offered, and fold your hands over your lap to keep yourself from fidgeting. “Why did you call for me?”

“You arrive at a Kingdom and don’t dare visit the King, hm?” He taunts without missing a beat, “You used to have better manners.”

And you used to avoid playing these games with me, you think, but bite back the words.

“I needn’t bother any king with an announcement of my arrival,” You remind him, “I am no one of importance, of fame.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” A soft and dainty voice says, making a chill run down your spine even before you see the blonde approaching from the shadows. She offers a smile, but the eyes of the Queen of Kattegat are as cold as the King’s. “You’re the Völva that granted the Black Danes many victories, aren’t you?”

You watch, frozen in your place, as she approaches Ivar with ease, resting one delicate hand on his shoulder, standing by his side.

Trying to keep your eyes from following the movement of Ivar’s hand that goes to touch hers where it rests on his shoulder, you reply, “I have granted no man any victory.”

“The Gods did, but in no little thanks to your work, your magic. I have heard of you,” She insists, and you frankly do not know what to do with her false warmth. Looking into her eyes feels like watching a flame from the other side of a glass window, an illusion, a façade. “And I am honored you’re here.”

You bow your head in acceptance, “Thank you, Queen Freydis.”

She betrays a wider smile, a more feral smile, and your blood runs cold.

“Ah, you know my name. You have heard of me too, then?”

You feel like you’re being ambushed, so instead of giving her an answer, you return your gaze to the King.

“Why was I summoned here?”

Ivar regards you in silence, eyes slightly narrowed and a cold cruelty in the slight curve of his smile.

Still, he gestures with his hand, dismissing his wife, ordering her to leave the two of you alone.

“Word is you aren’t here to stay.”

“Just for the winter.”

“A Völva, and one always close to the sons of Ragnar at that,” He lists, leaning forward in his seat, elbows resting on armored knees, “I could have use for you.”

You feel cold creeping over you, and lean back.

“Use?”

“It is a matter of time before Freydis becomes pregnant with my child,” Ivar comments with what to anyone else would look like nonchalance, but you hear the cruelty behind the words. “I could use a witch weaving her magic to protect my child and wife.”

It hurts, it hurts at a deep part of your chest, so much so you almost want to look down to see if there’s a gaping wound where your heart should be.

“There’s many that would be willing to do so, but not me.”

“Why not?”

“My home isn’t Kattegat.”

“Where is it, then? With that blacksmith?” He accuses without missing a beat. The anger in his tone, the accusation, the vitriol, the rage, it is all so familiar.

It is all you left behind, with reason to do so.

“I will put word that Kattegat is in search of a Völva to protect the King and his family,” You say around the foolish and hopeless knot of pain at your throat, “I’m sure someone will be of help.”

Standing up from your seat, you mutter a goodbye and turn your back to the King.

His voice, loud and enraged as he calls your name, makes all of this a familiar scene, and it makes you stop dead on your tracks.

“I didn’t give you permission to leave.” Ivar snarls at you, the sound of a crutch stabbing the ground as he stands up as well.

You take a deep breath, but don’t turn around.

“May I leave, then?”

“No,” He sentences, walking closer, “Not now, and not when winter is over.”

You gasp, “What?”

“I’m keeping you here in Kattegat,” Ivar states, intimidating, venomous, unfamiliar as he towers over you, “I’m King, I can do as I wish with you.”

“I am a free woman,” You remind him, “Only my blood would rule over me, and they are all dead. My blood or my husband, and you, Ivar, are neither.”

“You cannot command me!” You insist with a laugh, defiant even as you tilt your head to the side to let him continue his thorough exploration of your neck with his lips and tongue.

“Hm, you forget who leads the army you fight for, witch.” He teases, a breathed laugh against your neck when you pull on his hair, offended at the title

“No one but my family commands me, Ivar.”

“They are all dead.”

“Not all of them,” You quip, a foolish knot on your stomach tightening at the conversation you’re about to start, “Family isn’t just blood. One day I will be married, and my husband will be my family.”

“So, no one but your blood or your husband would dare rule over you,” He intones, pulling back and searching your eyes, “Why do I have the feeling it wouldn’t be so easy to make you surrender?”

“Because you have good judgement?” You offer with a tentative laugh.

Ivar only smiles, and leans down to capture your mouth in his. His kisses never fail to make your heart beat so fast you hear it in your head.

In the way his hands tighten over whatever part of you he has a hold of, in the way his tongue demands entrance to your mouth, in the way you feel the soft sounds he cannot keep trapped; you find yourself gone, enthralled, his.

When he pulls back, his eyes, darkened and burning, linger on your kiss-bitten lips for a few moments.

“With those lips of yours, love, it would be very easy to make any man surrender.” Ivar confesses in a hoarse whisper, and past the pang of heat his words and the way he’s looking at you send through you, you smile.

“My lips?” He hums an agreement, and in the few moments you have him enthralled, your smile turns devious, “Where?”

Ivar grits his teeth at the reminder, and the flash of pain you imagine seeing for a moment could make you believe he remembers the same moments you do, the same life you wish you could have lived till your last breath, the same world you wish you had never left behind.

“That blacksmith you came with.”

“He’s a warrior, and you know his name.” You tell him, aware you’re prodding a dangerous beast but still doing so with an arrogant tilt of your chin.

“Does he know about me?” Ivar asks, voice low and dangerous, “About us? About what you promised me?”

“Does she?” You ask, unable to keep the bitterness from your tone.

Ivar’s reply is immediate, “Yes.”

And with a simple word weighs on you the realization that either she means much more to him than you ever imagined, or you still do. You aren’t sure you want to know the answer.

“I have to go,” You tell him, stepping back and lowering your gaze to the dark wood under your feet. “Tell your brother I would love to see him. I’ve missed him.”

“You’ll just leave?”

“No, I will stay until winter passes. I-…”

“No, no, that’s not what I mean, and you know it,” He accuses, furious movements of his crutch as he approaches you again. “You’ll leave me again.”

The words tug at a pathetic and foolish part of your heart, a part of your heart that you never got back. A part of your heart that was left behind in some old church in York.

Still, you offer truth, a truth that lacerates at your throat on the way out, “I never returned to you, Ivar.”

His free hand grabs roughly at your arm, and his breathing is fast, his eyes are searching yours desperately.

The furious glint in his eye, the twinge of madness in his scowl, the phrase he would repeat over and over as if he could make it truth by will alone, “You will not leave me.”

“You are here, Fate brought you back to me.”

“Fate brought your wife to you,” You remind him, pain interwoven in your every word, “Fate brought Álfarr to my side. Fate pulled us apart, Ivar.”

But he shakes his head, stubborn and desperate. For a moment, in the way the snarl in his lips trembles, in the way he blinks quickly, you see the man you love.

“No.” Is all he says, before he brings you to him roughly, and claims your mouth.

You have been familiar with magic all your life, and you know it is something other than it, but it feels like magic when you let yourself give into his kiss. It feels like something stronger than magic when you find yourself giving in to Ivar, breaths quickened as you watch him answer the command of the gentle push of your hand and sit on the chair at his back.

Kissing him, it is anger, it is anger and lust and grief and love, you won’t deny it. It is biting and demanding and rough and him.

Getting lost in the feel, the smell, the taste, of him was always easy. Terrifyingly easy, once.

And so you lose yourself in the push and pull of your bodies moving as one, in the way he demands with bites and kisses and soft sounds breathed against your lips the surrender you refuse to give, in the way he lets you try and lure him to that same surrender with your lips on his skin and the intonation of his name on your lips that still makes him tremble.

His hands are rough and demanding as they grip your hips, and he makes you move above him with a punishing pace. And it feels like he is trying to punish you. For leaving him. For returning.

Your own hands grip onto his shoulders, nails digging into the skin and drawing blood, traying to dispel the touch of any other with each drop. So that there’s a bit of you left with him, a proof. Of how you once were his. Of how he’s still yours.

____

You lay in the quiet that lets you pretend you never left that world you once loved so much, in the peace that makes your chest ache for the unsaid vows you broke.

Ivar’s head rests against your chest, letting you every once in a while feel the drag of his mouth over your skin, lazily retracing a path he bit and kissed his way through earlier. Your fingers, aching to be once again familiar with the feel of his skin, the softness of his hair, travel wherever you can reach, ceaselessly.

It is as if in each breath shared, in each moan that trembled past parted lips, in each moment of ecstasy and of pain; the anger and the resentment and the hate gave way, let the world that once was take a hold of the moment you live -bask- in now.

The quiet is broken by a soft murmur of your name, and your chest pulls tight at the sound of it in Ivar’s voice, at the return of the fragile softness, the hidden gentleness, you once were the sole recipient of.

“I have…dreamt of you, these passing years,” He tells you, even a confession such as this traced by underlying anger. He presses yet another kiss to the skin above your heart, “I have missed you.”

“So have I, more…more than I could ever say.” You offer, closing your eyes to keep tears from filling your eyes.

“I don’t want you to leave me again.” Ivar whispers, voice so, so quiet.

You release a breath that shakes and trembles past your lips, “You and I are fated to say goodbye, I think. Always were.”

He lifts his head, strikingly blue eyes meeting yours.

“It doesn’t have to be like that.”

“You have a wife, Ivar, I can’t-…”

“You can be my wife too,” He offers, making your heart both soar and break. “You wouldn’t be queen, but you never minded for pow-…”

“Ivar,” You interrupt, voice shaking, “Listen to what you’re saying. You’re asking me to be your second wife. To take Freydis as my sister-wife.”

“She won’t object,” He says it with such certainty that it sickens you, and you scramble to stand, to part from his embrace. “She’d do anything I asked her to. She will accept.”

You are shaking your head, putting the shield your dress serves as back up over your skin.

“I could never accept,” You tell him, and because you want to linger for a moment longer in the sun, in the brief paradise where you’re allowed to see the real him shining in his blue eyes; you walk closer one last time and let your fingers trace the side of his face lovingly, smiling even if it is a goodbye, “No woman that loves you would settle for half of you.”

Whether you speak of her and her faults, or you and your hopeless heart; you don’t know.

____ ____ ____

Hope you liked this! Thank you so much for reading!!

Taglist: @youbloodymadgenius​ @xbellaxcarolinax​ @1950schick​ @ietss​ @peachyboneless​ @encounterthepast​ @maggiescarborough​ @chibisgotovalhalla​ @fae-sedai​

[sokkagatekeeper]

so what are your thoughts about bi ty lee? (i don't really have an opinion either way but i think you do a really good job of explaining how your head canons are based in the text so I'm really interested to know why)

oh well this is officially the worst thing you could’ve asked me (affectionate). first off, a headcanon is not the same as doing an analysis imo. i talk about the difference between them here. anyhow!

i think ty lee being sapphic is a given, off the top of my head i can say because 1) i think she’s in love with mai 2) i think using that attraction as an empathy vessel of sorts to figure out azula was attracted to her was a very ty lee-esque move to make 3) she is not attracted to any boys (except one? we’ll get to that) on-screen, and was instead manipulating them into doing what she wanted them to do and toy with azula’s (maybe mai’s?) jealousy a little bit. watching “the beach” it’s safe to assume she behaves and feels that way about every boy she meets — say, she isn’t actually interested in them but the things she can get from them. it’s a fair assumption to make that she was acting like that with sokka when she was flirting with him (in the middle of battle. what an icon) you know, in order to distract him, catch him off-guard, a very ty lee-esque thing to do as well. however the comment towards mai (“was that boy kind of cute” or some shit) still makes me doubt.

now, this reading probably implies ty lee is a lesbian, but this blog is 60% analysis and 40% kinda forced analysis in order to achieve a comedic effect, mainly for me and myself. in other words i think the situation would be a lot funnier if ty lee was genuinely attracted only to sokka, and not any other fratboy from ember island. just plain physical attraction, not even a crush. nothing romantic there. because of all this it implies:

ty lee is indeed in love with mai, given sokka is also mai (sharp things, visibly depressed, dry humour, repression etc etc) in a different, loud expressive font

ty lee is, in theory, a lesbian. but she’s strangely attracted to one (1) singular boy and it’s a nightmare for everyone around them both

as previously discussed, sokka could technically count as lesbian adjacent, in all but gender and sexuality

ty lee saw one (1) man she was actually attracted to and gave absolutely nothing away. she starts out flirting (in the middle of battle!!) with him of course, because she knows her role, nothing out of the ordinary. but then he flirts back (a minimum amount, because he, too, knows his role) and ty lee is... amused? pleased? not absolutely disgusted? weird. chi-block!

the one man ty lee was ever attracted to was just some guy. sure, sokka is the most perfect man and the entire gaang silently agrees on the fact (except sokka himself) but to figure out how deep sokka’s specialness runs you need to stop and analyse it. on the surface he’s just... some guy. the only guy ever ty lee (living GODDESS) is attracted to. it is kinda funny

having in mind that all of this is speculation and not That much backed up by the text, i like to think the fact that sokka was the only boy ty lee was ever genuinely attracted to leaves her very stunned. she concludes that she is technically bi, but emotionally a lesbian. sokka’s reaction can range from confused, weirded out, smug, to absolutely on-board. and that’s where the funny part comes.

this is a non-exhaustive list of people ty lee and sokka would piss off if they made out once in a while for funsies;

zuko, who has a very well-crafted imaginary line inside his brain that separates his friends into the categories aang friends / azula friends, and if they ever touch the universe will simply collapse

azula, who is very hurt and offended by the fact that ty lee would hook up with sokka who is the smarter, kinder, male version of azula and azula’s arch nemesis, but not with azula herself

toph and aang, who, as any twelve-year olds, hate seeing people kissing

mai, who is ty lee’s girlfriend and soulmate. it’s more of a mild annoyance, really. everything that happens between sokka and ty lee is consented by mai, and mai even finds it sort of funny, especially when she can make fun of ty lee for liking... a boy

katara, who reasonably dislikes the vivid image of her brother making out with anyone and espeicially ty lee, who, to be honest, freaks her out a little bit

ty lee, who to this day cannot believe she’s attracted to one boy. not even two or three boys in total, ONE. she often pulls away from sokka mid-makeout session like “i can’t BELIEVE i’m doing this” and sokka is like “yeah well.” and ty lee is like “i can’t believe i’m ENJOYING it” and sokka says “crazy, right?” and then they keep going

and i have so much to say actually. this is not by any means a serious analysis but a very fun scenario. and as there is nothing in the text (in my opinion) that contradicts bisexual ty lee (maybe she’s homoromantic & bisexual??? is that a thing??) i have decided to adopt it as a headcanon of mine. you can take it or leave it!

[countessofbiscuit]

For the ask thing: N, T, W for tcw :)

ヽ(゜∇゜)ノ

N: Name three things you wish you saw more or in your main fandom.

An appreciation for how massive the GAR really is — even if you subscribe to the ridiculously low-balled canonical size of the army, Fives has no reason to be chummy with everyone, ffs. If Anakin and Obi-Wan weren’t attached at the hip, Rex and Cody would hardly ever lay eyes on each other because there is such a disparity in rank (which should indicate a wildly different brief, but lol, this is TCW, where a marshal commander leads from the trenches and a mere captain has a seat at the strategy table). Obviously, this is just a personal gripe: I don’t actually care how people choose to approach the GAR in their stories, this is all about having fun … *I* just have more fun reading fics that are somewhat grounded in realities.

Mating cycles/heats — idk it just seems to me that this fandom with a plethora of alien species to play with doesn’t explore reproductive diversity and weirdness enough. 

Tolerance of clonecest (or whatever the hell you wanna call it, I use that term as shorthand; whether or not clone-on-clone maps onto IRL incest taboos is an essay for another day) — it’s just … it’s interesting to me that folks are more squicked by the possibility that two identical walking war crimes may frot because they have no one else and find some small measure of comfort in each other than, idk, the brutal realities of their lives where death, mutilation, and maiming are omnipresent — and this pervasive idea that clones are the Goodest Bois just out there wearing flower crowns and frying only droids all day makes me : \ This isn’t an exhortation for people to just ‘get over’ their squicks, but I do believe in examining them. 

T: Do you have any hard and fast headcanons that you will die defending? 

Headcanon: Cody is not a born-again Mando nor does he have any time for whatever watered-down Mandalorian bullshit filtered down from the Spec Ops wing. 

Question this headcanon first sought to answer: Why doesn’t Cody wear a kama? 

Id-scratching Justification: He loves this thighs.

Plausible Justification: He likes his legs to be unencumbered for roundhouse kicks. 

Solid Justification I’ve adopted from kaasknot: He earned his advanced-recon stripes in ARF not ARC school. 

My Meta Justification: The line clones do not adopt Mandalorian culture or language wholesale. 

I can’t even qualify this with “call me a RepComm snob, but …” because there’s even LESS foundation for the clones-are-vode idea in the new canon. From where would they have imbibed it? Outside the brief nod to Fenn Rau’s pilot instructor days on Kamino, new canon has not given us any reason to believe the line clones had Mandalorian trainers. And even if you discount new canon’s Jango-is-not-a-Mandalorian heresy, Kamino would not be at pains to emphasize their products’ connection to a culture so perennially at odds with their client (the Jedi/Republic). 

Upon deployment, really almost anything goes; but to say that clone culture wouldn’t hold up pretty firm in the face of other galactic cultures is a little demeaning, and however much people absorb in their search for identity, why would the clones have immediately glomped onto Mandalorian concepts? Why not Corellian? Or Kuatian? Or Chandrillan? Or hells, even Force traditions? Someone may have pointed out to the odd clone, “hey, y’all were made in the image of a notorious Mandalorian!” and set some wheels turning, and sure, Boil was resourceful enough to do his own homework and decide that he quite liked the precepts of a certain group of Mandalorian paramilitary extremists and wanted to slap their sigil on his helmet, but there’d be such a diversity of osmotic experiences in an army of millions/billions spread out across a galaxy that I simply cannot buy the idea that the clones all woke up one fine day thinking of themselves as Mando or Mando-adjacent. 

Setting aside new canon, which I find deathly dull, I prefer RepComm, with its assertion that many of the RCs are born-again Mandos after their sergeants (indeed, the Republic almost has a fifth-columnist problem in Spec Ops with the True Mando influence of the Nulls and certain Alpha ARCs), but the average line trooper view of that mentality is “y'all are a fucking cult.” 

The line troops would identify firstly as brothers and soldiers of the Republic, and they would’ve had close to 0 touchpoints with the Prime Clone. In fact, many might resent the connection, especially deeper into deployment (“What has Mandalore ever done for me? They're a bunch of loose cannons — if they aren't refusing to lend a hand, they're actively leading Sep militias for pay. Fuck the lot of them,” etc. etc.). It would have required a shitton of cultural and linguistic leakage from the Spec Ops wing for the bulk of the line troopers to know even more than a handful of words in Mando’a at the time of Geonosis. (I can believe swear words would’ve been adopted hella fast, if only to fill a vacuum.)

But again, the army is not a monolith, and I am fully on board with the idea that some Alpha ARCs made it their mission to teach Vode An to every unit they came across and the sheer epicness made it wildly popular, and that they spread certain words and concepts (vod, shebs, di’kut, Manda, oya, kara, kandosii, etc.) like a rash. Or a company or two got teamed with a Mando sergeant and two squads of RCs for a month and were belting out “Coruscant'a aden mhi” by the end of it. Or a division found itself with an Alpha-ARC XO when their Jedi General's CC got popped two weeks after Geonosis and Alpha-89 wouldn’t rest until every trooper knew Dha Werda Verda by heart and backwards. Just … show me the work — why should I accept that Bly speaks fluent Mando’a in the bedroom? WHY? Invest me in your clone-culture worldbuilding!

ANYWAY, to bring this back round to my die-on-this-hill headcanon about Cody … he doesn’t like kamas or feel compelled to wear one. Setting aside fun Cody-was-an-Alpha-trained-spec-ops-intern-for-a-month-and-hated-it backstories aside, I just don’t think the dude had the time of day for all that the Manda are watching us warrior brethren, hold your buy’ce high vode, one tribe one dream osik. His identity is wrapped up in overseeing the Third Army and serving as General Kenobi’s right-hand man; on balance (if we’re trying to be realistic, see: above), Cody interacts more with natborn officers and Jedi and fellow CCs than your average ground pounder trooper, and Obi-Wan and Republic officers certainly aren’t going to wax lyrical about Mandalore anytime soon. Obviously, Marshal Fucking Commander Cody is well within his rights to read whatever he wants and talk to whomever he wants and adopt whatever beliefs and language he wants. He has all the resources at this fingertips and clearance that would probably make a lot of natborn admins in REPINT weep. But I don’t personally see him going Mando, though it amuses him to watch Rex try :p The minute Cody earnestly starts using Mando’a in a fic, I’m usually out.

W - A trope which you are virtually certain to hate in any fandom.

Hmm. I spent a good hour’s walk thinking about this and came up blank. Hate is a strong word anyway, and if it’s well-written, I can be sold on anything. But, I can almost guarantee I will never click on ABO unless it’s been recc’d or written by a friend. Not because I have any moral objection, just that it doesn’t interest me and good characterization is often lost to the mandatory ABO dynamics.

… on the flip side, I will ALWAYS click on Fuck-or-Die :D

[bidean-byedean]

new piece on AO3

xvi. family 

Day 16 of the SPN advent calendar (not festive)

There’s something deeply absurd happening here. You feel it when you first visit and you realise. Pulling off of a hunt in nowhere middle America, aching in your bones and, depending on what you killed, your heart, and you remember that Dean Winchester - yeah, that Dean Winchester - opened a bar around here.

You stop for the night.

Rated: G // Tags: second person POV, outsider POV, finale denialist, post-canon/canon divergent, bar owner Dean, everyone is alive and in love, domestic fluff // Ships: Dean/Cas, Sam/Eileen, Claire/Kaia // Word count: 5.6k

The bar is unassuming, gentle, welcoming. Tucked away but easy to find, if you’re looking. It’s still the midwest after all. Dean knows how much it looks like the old haunt; some of it deliberately mimicked, some of it inevitable features of the genre, some of it only became apparent in certain lights, like a ghostly apparition in a foggy bathroom mirror. These things that were hidden until Sam laid eyes on the place for the first time, or an old regular froze in the doorway, or after hours when Dean is cleaning up and swears he heard Jo’s soft giggle. 

When this happens, he pauses. Braced against the reclaimed wood of the bar, desperately straining his ears into the nothingness, begging for one more note. It’s only when a warm hand settles on his shoulder, always his left, somehow always, that he realises what he’s doing. There’s only one place that his prayers echo out anymore and all they do is remind Cas of all the things that Dean has lost, of all the parts of Dean’s life that he did not know, that he cannot restore. But at least now the old Hunter does not flinch at his touch. His body relaxes into the large, steady hand; grounded, brought back to the present where Jo’s laughter is an eternal echo that makes it neither real nor unreal. If their lives had taught them anything, the distinction is arbitrary. 

Cas helps him collect the last of the glasses, stacking them into long, precarious towers. Not as tall as the ones Dean makes; he’s not as easy in his body, not as used to being observed, and he hates the sound of shattering glass, hates the silence afterwards, hates that moment of momentum when the breaking is about to happen and is happening and has happened. For angels, it’s always about to happen and happening and happened. Or, it used to be like that. When and so it is written meant something. Before, when it was Castiel and Dean Winchester, not now, in the after, when it is Cas and Dean. 

There’s something deeply absurd happening here. You feel it when you first visit and you realise. Pulling off of a hunt in nowhere middle America, aching in your bones and, depending on what you killed, your heart, and you remember that Dean Winchester - yeah, that Dean Winchester - opened a bar around here. It’s already ridiculous, considering the things you’ve heard. Only half of them can be true, mostly the half that you can reconcile with your understanding of the truth. 

John Winchester’s boy? Haven’t you heard? 

Haven’t you heard he has a face you’d pay twice the going rate for? Haven’t you heard he’ll take it? Haven’t you heard he’s the best Hunter of his age? Haven’t you heard he sold his soul? Haven’t you heard an angel brought him back? Haven’t you heard he lost it again? To John? To the devil? To God? Haven’t you heard he was the most feared monster in Purgatory? Haven’t you heard losing his soul was nothing compared to losing his brother, to losing his angel, to losing his angel again, and again, and again? 

Haven’t you heard? They’re in love. 

So you roll up to the door of the bar and it just looks like a bar because the warding is painted beneath the sign holding the name, and the devil’s trap is in the shadows of the ceiling, and hex bags are stowed inside of the cushions of the stools, and a silver rosary consecrated by softly sung blessings, murmured by the human mouth of an Angel, sits in the water tank. Even if you know, you do not know. But you feel safe here, that is the point, the commandment of the space; welcome and be welcomed. And maybe you sit at the bar, tired and alone and lonely, surrounded (for the first time?) by people with whom you can speak freely and you realise the weight of speaking in code, always hiding, bearing a burden that sears into your soul until you’re not sure you have one anymore. You hear they burn out, that you can use them up, and then what are you?

But tonight you’re safe behind the warding and in front of a bar with a surprisingly pretentious beer menu and burgers that come with avocado and the word seasonal in front of some of the offerings. But there are people you’re familiar with, even if you don’t know them, you know them. Their faces hold the same weariness, their clothes practical or incongruous by design, masks and costumes and performances, all finally relaxed. So relax. 

Maybe you haven’t seen him since before John died, or before he went to Hell, or before he killed God(?), but that doesn’t matter. Maybe you read the books, enjoying being in the know, enjoying that you enjoy them differently from all the other people that enjoy them, for better reasons. Maybe his name is a myth passed from Hunter to Hunter, monster to monster, or between the two (is there a two? You try not to think about this too much). Older now, so much older than he could’ve ever hoped for. Masculine in every way you hope to be masculine, if you really understand what it means, but by hoping and understanding you fail. He’s tall and broad shouldered, and wears a flannel shirt over a band tshirt and dishtowel over his shoulder, and his jaw is sharp and hard and stubbled, and his eyes framed by deep crow’s feet; he sees you and you feel seen. His forearms are too tanned for the season, but you’re distracted by how they flex under the skin, and his hands are big and rest on the wood in front of you, just hands now, but they might as well be an armoury for all the death they’ve caused.

So, maybe you’re suddenly afraid because the things you didn’t want to be true? Suddenly reality has shifted and not only do they reconcile with the truth, they are immutable from it, it is more impossible that impossible things don’t happen to this man. 

Then he smiles.

“What can I get ya?” 

His voice is so low it’s like traffic from a highway just out of sight from your motel room, that when you lie in the dark becomes part of your body, as essential to your existence as the thudding of your heart and the huffing of your lungs and the buzzing from the dying lights in the walkway outside. It’s atomic. It’s celestial.

Wasn’t the other one supposed to be an angel?

You don’t know. You’re not used to having choices. Simple choices, selfish ones, luxurious ones: if you want fries or steak-cut chips, American or Swiss, IPA or stout or lager, light or dark, or spirits. It embarrasses you, how difficult it is, in the face of meaninglessness, how do you fare?

“Just a beer, man.”

“I gotcha,” he tips his chin understandingly and gets to work. 

Probably gets this all the time, an understood consequence of stepping outside of the comfort zone. Your comfort zone, not his, you realise. This is his domain, his playground, his paradise on Earth, as was the promised bounty for fighting on humanity’s side in the war. The one no one else had to fight in because he did. 

Did he still have the sword? 

‘German pilsner.”

“It’s good.”

His smile seems genuine and so is your surprise. 

“What you here for?”

You keep your eyes on his, if you blink, you’ll see it again. “Shifter. Of a sort.”

“Mmm.”

“Then home.”

That catches his interest. “Where’s home?”

“Iowa.”

Then he opens the ground beneath you: “Who’s home?”

“Whoever’s left.”

He grunts appreciatively, his gaze flickering over his shoulder. You notice the bands on his fingers. Silver, you assume pure, but it catches the light in a way that isn’t quite right, you stare at it. He twists it with his thumb, an unconscious habit, a soothing touch, a comfort. Even a Winchester needs comforts. It’s a comfort in of itself. 

A young woman, her blonde hair half-braided and threaded with metal, slides over the top of the bar, her leather trousers giving her enough slip over the wood. Her heavy boots thud onto the ground and she grins manically at his frown.

“What have I told you about-“

“Yeah, yeah, nice to see you too, old man.” 

She kisses him on the cheek, he rolls his eyes, but leans into it, his mouth quirking upwards at the corners. Another woman appears, dark skinned and soft-eyed, she walked around the bar, civilised and grounded. The blonde throws her arm over her shoulders, you remember who they are: Claire and Kaia Nieves. The daughter of an Angel and a Dreamwalker. You heard they spared a family of werewolves on the West coast, you heard there’s a network for them, monsters who are not monstrous. You don’t like to think about what that means for you. The things you’ve done. 

“Where is he?” He gestures to the back and they disappear. He looks after them, his face soft and open; you can’t imagine him torturing souls in Hell. 

There are pockets of people throughout the bar: loners like you, pairs and trios quietly nursing their sustenance, groups crowding round tables, pulling chairs from elsewhere or standing when there are none free. They’re loud and joyful and free. Is it better to have a crowd? Is it enough to be adjacent? You’re not sure you have the energy to socialise, to make nice, maybe next time.

Someone enters and everyone’s heads turn, he’s called over to different tables, dropping by to say hello to everyone who calls his name: Sam fucking Winchester! He’s tall, made even taller by the short woman by his side, and their hands move animatedly as they talk, too precise, too many deliberate gestures to just be physicality. He watches her when she speaks, her voice is rounded and deliberate. Eileen Leahy. A Deaf Hunter. You remember someone telling you she was eaten by Hellhounds, dragged into the pit, and brought back by Sam, his magic, his love, willing to transcend the boundaries of life, upset the balance of the universe: all for her.  You feel ashamed for wondering how she made it far enough to meet the Winchesters.  It’s a fair question of any Hunter, the answer the same: in their own way. No one survives because they have all the makings of a Hunter, a preset list of requirements that they meet; you survive because you face the job with what you have and you do what you have to. 

Dean salutes her playfully, she smiles so wide it looks like it hurts. You can’t remember the last time you smiled like that, the last time you felt pain that didn’t hurt. She sits at the bar and Sam sits next to her, towering and gentle. You remember him. The Boy King. No longer a boy, his throne abdicated. Does he really have demon blood coursing through his veins? Hell is closed up now, sometimes a demon pops up here and there, but not like before, when the world was full of them, when all you did was exorcise and pray and holy water became a currency and left most of the community ordained ministers from variously dubious sites of divine origin, consecrated ground became the last stronghold against the end of the world. The future placed in the hands of Sam Winchester. Now you know the face. You struggle to imagine the Devil in his eyes, not when you’ve seen true evil. 

The Winchesters are not similar enough to be clocked as brothers. But there’s something in the tilt of their shoulders and their hazel green eyes and the cadence of their voices that suggests kinship, brotherhood, forged in the fires of Hell and gilded by the light of Heaven. They’re just men, you realise. Earthly and solid and real, no more myth than the one you beheaded just the other night, it’s blood as real as the blood that marks them Winchester. Just like anyone else. 

“Isn’t Claire supposed to be helping out?”

Dean sighs. “She’s upstairs. Giving her a minute, she hasn’t been around in months.” You think he sounds upset. “Typical.”

“It’s a good thing, Dean,” Sam pushes. “Her and Kaia are doing a hundred times better than we would’ve.”

“We?” He snorts. “At their age you were smoking oregano with your bougie friends. I was actually saving people.”

Sam pulls a face. “You’re such a jerk.”

“And you’re a bitch,” he signs it big and deliberate, winking at Eileen. “Hey, want another?”

It takes a second for you to realise he’s talking to you, by then all three of them have their attention on you, openly appraising you. You wonder what they read in your posture, your face, the way you’ve ripped a paper napkin into tiny shreds. 

“Any other recommendations?”

“Got a new dark in, like dessert in a glass.” He looks at Sam: “Finally found an apiarist to work with.”

“Apiarist?” You venture.

Dean looks towards the door that leads to the mysterious back. “Bee keeper. My-“ He pauses abruptly. “He likes bees.”

My. He. 

Perhaps you don’t mean to, but you eyes flicker to the rainbow flag over the doorway. You notice more stuck in glasses on the shelves, some of them rainbow, some of the blue-purple-pink bands, some of them orange-white-pink. What is it like? You know what people say behind his back, what they’ve always said, the people in the know. The men who had paid for a moment with Dean Winchester, the men who had gotten one for free, the men who had hoped for either, for anything. They still call him names. If only John could see him now. John always knew he was a disappointment. Wouldn’t be like this if John were alive.

That doesn’t seem fair. You didn’t know John Winchester, most people didn’t. He died so long ago and Hunters have a quick turnaround, reblooded often, rarely more than a decade of history able to be told first-hand. Dean watches you and your eyes and you wonder what he’ll do, if you became a threat, how does he eliminate threats now? You shiver at the thought. You let wistfulness seep through. You try to convey the kinship. The I see me in you and you in me. The you fascinate me the same way a shadow does. The show me your throat and I’ll show you mine. The secret language you’ve learnt to speak. The other one. Hidden even beneath the Hunter’s code. The more forbidden one. The one of monsters like you. Like us. 

It must work because he softens. He pours the dessert in a glass even though you didn’t order it and places it in front of you, next to the glass he places something small and shiny, he doesn’t wait for you to acknowledge it. It’s a metal pin. The silver knotted into a symbol you don’t know, impressively intricate for the size, and when you hold it, it feels unusually warm. You remember the way Dean’s ring caught the light, throwing it more than it should, almost giving off its own light, almost glowing. Whatever it is made of, this is its sibling. You pin it to your jacket, on the left lapel, the proximity to your heart neither deliberate nor indeliberate. It pleases him. You pleased him.  

The drink is good, better than the last. Truthfully, you don’t like beer that much, but it’s easy and universal and unassuming. This isn’t beer, not in that way. It’s smooth and creamy and sweet, it rolls around on your tongue, asking to be tasted, not to be drunk. The honey has that sharpness of real, pure honey, the slight antiseptic burn you get from eating it straight from the jar. You remember eating honey from a jar, a chunk of comb suspended in the golden substance. You didn’t know it meant so much to you. 

“Finally!”

“Get off my dick,” Claire bats back.

“Who the fuck taught you to be so rude?”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s no sense of upset between them. “What do you want with me?”

“Glasses.”

“Ughh, are you serious?”

“As a werepire.”

“There is no such thing as a werepire,” a new voice cuts in. It’s grumbling like Dean’s, somehow more gravelly; do they communicate in earthquakes? “Stop trying to make werepire happen.”

Castiel. 

You gasp before you can stop yourself. An Angel of the Lord, walking on Earth, living above a bar instead of Heaven. He’s nothing that you expect. Tall and commanding, but different from Dean and Sam, the same, but somehow very not. His eyes are bright and intense, as blue as the deepest sky, the bluest eyes you’ve ever seen, a blue that you never thought possible until right this second. You feel as if you should look away, as if seeing beneath a hair covering, something sacred and prized, something that is not for public consumption, only God’s eyes. Only Dean Winchester’s eyes. What is the difference now? Is this bar paradise? Where is the divinity in craft beer and crude hunters, clawing out a life on the edges of society, wading through the horror in the hope of retaining peace, but not for yourselves. Nothing is for yourself. 

Except they have claimed each other. You heard Dean is branded, a scar of a handprint seared into his skin, a memento from when they met. They met in Hell. Castiel touched his soul and raised him from Hell and fell in love with him, literally fell. Who would love you if they had seen your soul? Seen the personal realm of Hell you curated? Can you even love yourself?

Doesn’t it leave you breathless? 

And then the picture shifts. Castiel turns and you see a child, old enough to walk, but small enough to get away with demanding not to. It’s balanced on the Angel’s hip like it belongs there, like his body (is it his? Who did it belong to? Are they still there? Did they ask for this?) was made to hold it there. Dean ruffles their hair, their ambiguity is intriguing, refreshing for the Hunting community. Youth is a clean slate, you are never more full of options, full of potential, which slowly seeps from you as your choices narrow, as life demands decisions, assigns decisions, weighs you down with expectations and being perceived, an object for perception rather than existence. 

You’ve heard about the child. A nephil. But no one knows the details. No one is brave enough to ask. 

The child reaches for Dean and is pulled into his arms, plastered against his chest, small and content and belonging. You wonder what their life will be like. Will they be a Hunter? You doubt it, you doubt the doubt. How do you choose to bring life into this life? It’s too hard, too sad, too lonely, too destructive. Not even dandelions grow through the concrete paving of a Hunter’s solitude, of their broken soul and heart, tings you drag along behind you like a yoke, reminding you that you must keep going, that one day, you will not be able to keep going. The baggage. How do you inflict that on a child? When will this creature’s heart be torn out of its chest and put inside a box and chained shut, only to be your greatest weakness and source of strength?

Or will it be happy?

“You need to go to bed, buddy,” Dean says quietly, his voice so steeped in affection it makes your chest yearn. You can’t help being in earshot. That doesn’t make it right. “Want me? What’s wrong with your Dad?”

The child murmurs something silently. 

“Okay. I got you,” his arms seem to tighten. “Cas? We’re going up.”

Cas. It rolls off of his tongue so easily, the repetition of a thousand, a million, making it more at home in his mouth than his own name. An Angel of the Lord called Cas because he stands on Earth, because he is not part of Heaven, because he is of Dean, not of God. He touches the child’s face gently, tenderly, motherly, and you ache for such simple, all-consuming affection, for someone to look at you with the reverence of worship at the altar of a god that speaks back. Castiel’s (because Cas is not for your mouth) hand runs down Dean’s arm, his fingers trailing, prolonging, and when it drops away, Dean leaves. 

You’ve nearly finished your dessert in a glass without even realising, it’s good. Too good. You could drink it all night, but you shouldn’t. The list of shouldn’ts is getting too long. You can’t remember anything left that you can do, that doesn’t conflict with an imperative for self-restriction. Where do you have to be? Who is expecting you? What is your next move? Why are you even questioning it?

He notices you. 

“Ah, Sweet Dreams. How did you like it?” He tilts his head, a little more than most people would, reminiscent of a puppy, of the velociraptors in that film, assessing your prey potential. You’re aware of his magnitude. You’re aware of your insignificance. 

“Very smooth. Filling.”

“That is the problem, but Dean humours me.” 

“With the bees?”

He nods seriously. “They’re dying at an alarming rate, you know.”

“I did.”

“Have you been here before?”

“First time.”

“Welcome.”

“Thanks.”

“You look tired. Are you staying the night? We have rooms.”

 “Uh-“

“That’s not a proposition,” he adds quickly. “Dean tells me that I sound like I’m hitting on people when I say that.”

You smile at his humanness. “I didn’t feel propositioned.” Would you like to? “I- I usually stay in my car, to be honest.”

His smile falters. “I wouldn’t advise that, it’s very uncomfortable and you’re much safer in here. The warding is some of my best work.”

“You never actually asked if I was a Hunter.” Hoping he’ll smite you?

He narrows his eyes playfully. “I didn’t have to. I know Hunters.”

“You must know everything.”

That catches him off guard. “Not as much as I used to.”

“What?”

Another head tilt. This one is more amused. “I guess news doesn’t travel as fast as you think. I am depowered,” he uses his fingers to make air quotes around the word. He laughs, but it’s a grating, sad sound. “Fallen.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

“I’m not.” He shrugs. “So, a room?”

You somehow agree to stay. The rates are reasonable and the weather turned recently, so you know that even if you get some sleep in your car, it’ll be fraught and restless, and a warm bed in the safest place in the US is hard to turn down. You wonder if they’re both always this attentive or if its you, if you’re really that pathetic, if it rolls off of you like a stench, trails after you like blood, someone else, yours. You accept the insistence of kindness from the Angel, former, no, current; he says otherwise, but you see divinity in his eyes, in his smile, in the way that he touched Dean, in the way he held his child.

“Was-“ You swallow and finger the pin that Dean gave you. “Was that your kid?”

Castiel nods happily. “Jack.”

“And Claire?”

Castiel looks across the bar at Claire, laughing loudly and talking in big, dramatic gestures with a group of Hunters. “Yes.”

He doesn’t offer clarification. You feel stupid for wanting some. All of the impossible things you’ve seen, why do you care? Why do you need to know the details? Why does it matter that they are together? That they created a family? Do you think you can too? Do you think you’re as special as Winchester? 

He leans on the bar. ‘Claire is my vessel’s daughter. I took her father from her.”

“That’s intense.”

“That’s one word for it.”

“And Jack?”

“He-“ He pauses. “He chose me. You know how are nephil are.”

“Sure…”

“God, he is too good at that.” Dean interrupts loudly, pressing his face into the back of Castiel’s shoulder. “I always fall asleep putting him down.”

Castiel pats his head. “He’s spoilt.”

“Yeah, well, gotta make up for tryna shoot him, huh?” You and Castiel share a look. You do not ask for clarification. “You stayin’?” You nod. “Awesome. Another drink?”

The room spins gently around you, but you’re content to watch the show. It’s not one that would be on TV, but it should be, warm and carefree and soft, it’s the show of a family. They move around each other in a practiced dance; Sam and Eileen and Claire and Kaia and Castiel and Dean. So many of them. All alive. All in love. So much love. It’s hard not to watch Dean and Castiel, they’re captivating. Beautiful. You notice the magnetism, how they’re constantly touching, brushing, holding, pressing, it seems so easy, it would seem so easy if you weren’t watching, but you are, and you see how Dean watches the room, the way he look out before he does something deliberate, the way he pauses, the way he checks himself and checks himself checking himself. Dean tells a joke you don’t catch. Castiel responds by kissing him. You feel like you shouldn’t be watching. Your heart won’t let you look away. They talk an inch from each other’s faces. You wonder what it feels like to love someone like that. 

Once you save the world, you can have it too.

God, you’re so tired, it’s a tired that sinks you into the ground, that makes you blood slow and your heart sticky and blinking a dangerous game. You want to see the end of the episode though. You don’t want to miss a moment. 

Thud. 

“Game over kiddo,” Claire comments when you sit up suddenly. “Past your bedtime.”

“I’m older than you,” you say, or slur, or think.

She laughs. “Sure. You got a room? I’ll show you up.” She frowns. “That’s not a proposition.”

You laugh. “Like father, like daughter.” 

Her eyes slide over to the pair. “In all the ways that matter.”

The room is small and cosy: a double bed and thick duvet, a jug of water on the dresser, a small plate with cookies on it. 

“Dean makes them,” Claire says as she watches you examine the room. “Don’t tell him I told you, if you remember that is.”

“Not tha’ drunk,” you protest, but the world spins when you close your eyes. 

“Uh-huh. If you need anything just, uh, deal with it? This isn’t the Hilton. My D- Dean gets up pretty early, but if you wanna get away there’s like a key box and stuff. Night.”

The door clicks closed and you’re left alone. Your head feels fuzzy and full and empty at the same time, and you wonder how you got here. You wonder it a lot. Every time you’re searching for a hunt, driving to one, checking your weapons, reading the lore, tracking down a creature that has no right to exist. 

That has no right not to exist.

For the first time in… well, you can’t even think about it, you sleep well. As soon as you crawl into bed, curled under the heavy duvet, surrounded by warmth and softenss, it creeps into your brain and takes away the tension from your body. You don’t even think to check the room for warding or make an escape plan, the assurance of safety here is like the knowledge that the sun will rise tomorrow, to doubt it seems like an insult to you and the universe. Maybe there is gentleness in the hunting life, a tender hand of comfort and understanding that will offer quiet and healing and rest, between the blood and guts and bones and death. Life. 

You have dreams you don’t understand, but they don’t scare you. Nothing hunts you in the dark corners of your mind, you are not lost, you are not running, you are safe. Bathed in blue-white light that feels like sunshine and makes your lips tingle. It’s pure and divine and you do not feel worthy, but the feeling does not last, the self-loathing is soothed, washed away like a baptism of permission to see the way you try, how hard you fight, how hard you live. 

Like any seasoned Hunter, the dawn brings consciousness, even though you definitely haven’t had enough sleep, yet you feel rested. More rested than you have in years. The ache in your bones that keeps you awake too late and forces you from shitty motel beds too early seems like a distant memory, one from a life you’re not sure you actually lived, like a reoccurring dream that permeates you waking days, but the relief, that’s real. Like the shower you take, the water almost too hot, the water pressure almost too hard, but it purifies you in a way that you thought was no longer possible, not after the things you’ve done, the things you’ve seen. 

Packed and ready to go, you linger by the door, wondering, briefly, what the rush is. Why do you need to leave today? What is really waiting for you at the other end? 

But this is not home. (Nowhere is home.)

Being in a bar in the morning feels wrong, the grey light filtering into the room that’s already too lit, too exposed. Somehow it feels inviting though. A couple of people are already in the room, sipping out of big mugs with plates piled with toast and pastries and even cooked food. Who’s the chef here?

“Mornin’! How’s your head?” Dean grins brightly from behind the bar. He’s wearing a stained apron that says lord of the pies and the way he looks at you makes the floor feel soft underfoot, so you forget that he actually asked you a question. 

“No complaints yet,” you quip, daring to make a reference that exposes you both. Your fingers find the pin on your jacket, still oddly warm, already a comfort. 

He allows a small smile. “Breakfast?”

“Coffee, please, lots.”

“You’re speaking my language.” The coffee smells good, expensive, something that you would pay $7 dollars for because you know what you’re really buying is the chance to sit somewhere beautiful and put together when you are anything but. “Milks and sugar just there.”

Although it feels like sacrilege, you forgo the pancakes he tries to convince you on; you’ve never had much of a stomach in the mornings, but especially not this early, after drinking, with such a long drive ahead. You’ll regret not eating in a few hours, but you’ve never been kind to your future self, why start now? You watch and sip your coffee and let the day seep into your brain, acknowledging that you have to live today, get on with it all. Again. 

Three cups in and it’s time to go. You were hoping to see Castiel again, but he hasn’t appeared. Disembodied hands produced Jack through the doorway, but you couldn’t tell who they belonged to, maybe Castiel, maybe Claire. The toddler is more awake, he follows Dean around behind the bar, babbling nonsense that Dean replies to in a gentle, but grown up tone, always acknowledging his sentences, even when there’s no real answer to give. He’s a father. Embarrassingly you imagine him as the father of your children, however that would happen doesn’t matter, it’s a fantasy. A fantasy of security and domesticity. The only knives that Dean Winchester yields now are the ones in his kitchen; the only flesh he cuts through is whatever is on the menu, already slayed and butchered; the only fights he has are bickering with his family.

Family.

Your family is somewhere, out there, maybe where you left them, what’s left of them. Dean picks Jack up and they dance to the song on the radio, some sugary pop song that makes Jack laugh in that infectious toddler way and you get to witness the Dean Winchester sing all the words, perfectly. This isn’t the Dean that ruled Hell or Purgatory or Earth, that was the Hunter and the bow, the sword to Castiel’s shield, that fought the Devil and God and the every other cosmic entity. Could this Dean Winchester have saved the world? 

But maybe this isn’t his weakness. If you do not have a soft underbelly then why do you need to have claws? If you do not have a reason to fight then what drives you to win? Dean bares his throat to the world to show it that he has something to protect, and that is what makes him so dangerous. What do you have? Where is the kink in your armour? What are you fighting for?

The bar disappears into the distance, shrinking in your rearview mirror the way a dream slips through your memory like water between your fingers as consciousness takes over. The roads are all the same, the towns are all the same, but you are not. The dread in the pit of your stomach is no longer a knife holding you hostage, but a knot attached to a rope, pulling you back, anchoring you. For all the time spent fighting it, the magnetic pull to a place you felt you could no longer love, people you could no longer have if you wanted to survive. They are what convinces you to survive. You think about the way Dean and Castiel looked at each other when the other wasn’t watching, you thinking about the way Sam never stopped smiling when Eileen spoke, you think about how Claire became a teenager again in Castiel’s arms. 

On the second ring, your phone connects.

“I’m on my way.” 

[unliikelylovers]

ahh yay u reblogged that ask thing i was hoping u would. ok so. yue/yueki (whichever ud prefer!), azula, bakoda :)

omfg leo <33 this makes me happy ok buckle up for a massive post

yue

how I feel about this character

when i first watched avatar i didn’t rly get her,, like i couldn’t get invested,,

but the more i think about her the more i love her

she is so kind,, so good,, deserves the world,,,,

all the people I ship romantically with this character:

sokka (not to be heterosexual but they were rlly cute onscreen okay)

suki (the vibes!!!!)

katara (moon <3 and <3 ocean <3 gfs <3)

my non-romantic OTP for this character:

yue x a long, happy life leading the northern water tribe and smashing the patriarchy

my unpopular opinion about this character

i can’t think of anything because nobody ever talks about her!! she’s so slept on :(

one thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

it would’ve been cool if she joined the gaang,, i just love that idea sm. she would’ve brought one more braincell too and they Need That

my OTP

probably yuetara bc i just love that thing where u ship two characters who are foils to each other... very good, usually gay...

but honestly i’m only just opening my eyes to the wonderful world of atla wlw ships so my opinion is yet to be solidified

my cross over ship i don’t do crossover ships lol i find it hard enough gauging whether two characters have chemistry onscreen u cannot expect me to extrapolate it across media

a headcanon fact

i think yue probably hated pakku and she was goddamn right

azula

how I feel about this character

listen i skipped this q bc i couldn’t unpack it enough and honestly later on in the post i wrote two entire essays of how i feel about azula so just read that

all the people I ship romantically with this character

nobody, she needs to heal

my non-romantic OTP for this character

azula x therapy

my unpopular opinion about this character

idk if this is unpopular exactly and it’s gonna take some explaining

basically i went into the show (bc i only watched it for the first time a few weeks ago lol) expecting that she would be a Bad Bitch™ bc everyone’s like,,, simping for her

anyway

that’s not what she is?? like at all???

and at first i did not like her and i was like why does anyone like her even a little bit she’s literally just an agent of fascism and imperialism

and while watching the finale i finally was like Oh.

she’s an abused child. and all she ever learned how to do was manipulate and fight and make war

and she literally never recieved love from anyone

i just don’t understand how you can look at her character and think “yass queen” OR “she’s a crazy bitch”

i am fervently on team Uncomfy When People Idolize Canon Azula But I Desperately Want Her To Heal

one thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon

realistically, her redemption/healing arc would be messy and complicated and not at all linear and hard to make into a compelling tv storyline

and any “redemption arc” that would be compelling children’s television would not be Good Enough For Me

and unpopular opinion i don’t think it would serve the story to add an addendum of book 4

so no i don’t want the atla writers to concoct an Azula Redemption Arc

but i want the characters in canon to save a little space in their heart for her 

for someone she has not directly hurt to see her circa sozin’s comet and say, “this is not the warmaking machine ozai tried his best to make, this is a deeply hurt child”

someone like iroh

scratch that “someone” shit i want iroh. i want iroh to hold space in his heart for his niece, to see that she is not a lost cause. please. you did it for zuko please do it for her

my OTP:

azula x therapy

my cross over ship

a headcanon fact

lesbian.

obviously.

bakoda (which is honestly at this point my actual otp i am fully subsumed)

when I started shipping it if I did

honestly idk? i think i got it from a tumblr post lol i was like “oh? we ship these two? excellent” and just Ran With It

my thoughts

the Old Gays vibes are immaculate. the yearning. the fighting beside one another. the raising children. perfect in every way

what makes me happy about them

that they can grow old together, happily, in their home, in a world at peace...... God

what makes me sad about them

the idea of bato just... pining... for years... the Angst

if we’re talking canonverse then i love mining bato’s injury for angst just consider the possibilities: bato feeling abandoned at the abbey... bato thinking hakoda will never love him if he’s left less mobile... bato not properly taking care of himself

i just have so many emotions about bato someone stop me

things done in fanfic that annoys me:

just straight up ignoring kya or even worse, kya slander, like,, she and hakoda were also in love 

((i may or may not have literally done that in one of my fics and still have weird feelings abt it but it was 600 words of fluff so))

things I look for in fanfic

literally ANYTHING i will read any fanfic that has bakoda as a tag, bakoda nation is all about the crumbs

but for real. the yearning. all of the pining. they need to spend years in love with each other without saying a goddamn word

also if it wasn’t clear from my fics,,, whenever a bakoda fic includes kya i Love that shit. makes me go all heart eyes emoji. i love her. i love her so much i need more kya content

bato/hakoda/kya ot3 content is so blessed,, i see bato as gay probably but i can vibe with bisexual or it can be a v configuration

who I’d be comfortable them ending up with, if not each other

hakoda with kya, obviously

my happily ever after for them

growing old together.......... just being old queer dads in love...... please i love them so much this is giving me Emotions

who is the big spoon/little spoon

bato is the big spoon he’s like a foot taller than hakoda and hakoda just wants to be Held

what is their favorite non-sexual activity

there’s a bakoda fic on ao3 where the tags “burn scar care” and “mutual pining” are adjacent and uh yeah. That.

[laughingpinecone]

Yuletide letter

I am laughingpineapple on AO3  

Hello dear author! I hope you’ll have fun with our match. Feel free to draw from general or fandom-specific likes, past letters, and/or follow your heart.

Likes: worldbuilding, slice of life (especially if the event the fic focuses on is made up but canon-specific), missing moments, 5+1 and similar formats, bonding and emotional support/intimacy, physical intimacy, lingering touches, loyalty, casefic, surrealism, magical realism, established relationships, future fic (when in doubt, tell me what’s happening to them five, ten, twenty years in the future!), hurt/comfort, throwing characters into non-canon environments, banter, functional relationships between dysfunctional individuals, unexplained mysteries, bittersweet moods, journal/epistolary fic, dreams and memories and identities, tropey plots that are already close enough to characters/canon, outsider POV, UST, resolved UST, exploring the ~deep lore, leaning on the uniqueness of the canon setting/mood, found families, characters reuniting after a long and/or harrowing time, friends-to-lovers, road trips, maps, mutual pining, cuddling, wintry moods, the feeling of flannel and other fabrics, ridiculous concepts played entirely straight, sensory details, places being haunted, people being haunted, the mystery of the woods, small hopes in bleak worlds, electricity, places that don’t quite add up, mismatched memories, caves and deep places, distant city lights at night, emphasis on non-human traits of non-human characters (gen-wise, but also a hearty yes xeno for applicable ships), emphasis on inhuman traits of characters who were human once and have sort of shed it all behind

Cool with: any tense, any pov, any rating, plotty, not plotty, IF, unrequested characters popping up.

DNW: non-canonical rape, non-canonical children, focus on children, unrequested ships (background established canon couples are okay, mentions of parents are okay!), canon retellings, consent issues, actual covid (fantasy plagues are okay)

Les Cités Obscures: any

This is a very general “please, anything in the style of canon, just maybe with less thoughtless sexism” request. I want to lose myself in these cities again, and in the strange lands that connect them. I’d be happy to follow any of the known characters and/or OCs, or eschew characters altogether and write about the cities themselves. What caught your imagination in Brüsel, Xhystos, Taxandria, Alaxis...? The history of some cool building that was only marginally featured in one of the stories? Or an OC city! If you’ve got a favourite European city that doesn’t already have its obscure counterpart, please tell me all about it! Go big, go wild! What strange and classically surrealist happenings take place within its walls? Or even... outside Europe... Nerding out about architecture is of course very welcome. I would also love to read a story based on any Schuiten illustration, contextualizing it as if it were part of this ‘verse. Here’s a bunch of them, for example!

Ghost Trick: Cabanela

You know.. him. Dazzlingly OTT, untiring, rock-solid self-esteem, loyal to a fault, following a rhythm of his own, flawless intuition until it fails and it all burns down… him. I just want to see more of him doing stuff! The way he’s chill and open toward new people (like Sissel and Missile in ch15) makes him perfect to throw at most other characters and see how they react to the sparkles… I’d love some focus on how ridiculous his aesthetic is, half Saturday Night Fever half hardboiled detective half bubbly preteen (for a total of 150%) and yet he makes it work. Or how ruthless he can be, possibly for the sake of the people he cares for. The quote “The intimacy of big parties”. Him and Alma in the new timeline bonding over knowing (once Jowd has spilled the beans) but not remembering that terrible timeline. Some tropey scenario on the job. Snark-offs with Pigeon Man, by which I mean PM snarks and it bounces off him like water off a spotless white goose’s back.

Ship-wise it’s only Cabanela/Jowd whenever it’s not infidelity, Cabanela/Alma in what-ifs also if it’s not infidelity and Cabanela/Alma/Jowd for me (and Lynne/Memry and Yomiel/fianSissel on the side). There are a bunch of shippy prompts in all my past letters - I would however reiterate here that Jowd. is. the worst tease. always. Like, just saying, but assume he’s pining big time and Jowd and Alma figure it out - they’d make a national sport out of excruciatingly protracted teasing.

Conversely, Cabanela/Lynne and Cabanela/Yomiel are NOTPs especially from Cabanela’s side. So while I appreciate the thick tension of a good Yomiel VS Cabanela confrontation like everyone and their cat, and also really appreciate a roughed-up Cabanela, and I do love Yomiel in his own right… I don’t want Cabanela being into it. Adrenaline junkie he may be but this hurts and his coat’s a mess and there’s no perfect winning scenario so he hates every second of it. (JOWD being super into Cabanela being roughed up is another matter altogether and he should probably mind his own business. ...incompatible kinks, truly tragic. they’ll have to find some other common ground. they’re smart, resourceful, playful fellows, I’m sure they’ll manage)

Kentucky Route Zero: Donald kentuckyroutezero

I love everyone in the cast, all acts and interludes, and I am extremely into all the themes this incredible work of art ended up exploring. Agreeing with the overall doom and gloom up to Act IV, I was blown away by Act V’s strong affirmation of the importance of the arts and of the bonds we make and of carving up spaces for ourselves in capitalism’s wake. Donald was, indeed, not a part of any of that. Even the final interlude updates us on Lula and mentions Joseph, but the big guy is nowhere to be seen. So, you know, there’s fanfiction! He’s so static, defeated. I am fascinated by the chain of metaphysical spaces that goes surface -> Zero -> Echo -> Dogwood and even within that framework, the hall of the mountain king is like a hopeless dead end. Dude’s terminally stuck. So - once again, in the spirit of transformative works, how could he get... you know... unstuck? Did Lula’s momentous appearance in Act III shake him? Having a functioning Xanadu again, perhaps? How could he interrogate that oracle, what recursive wonders would it show him? If he decides to leave, what does it feel to be on the surface again after so long, or on the river perhaps? Maybe he is forced to leave by the flood, if not this one, the next... Having him meet any other character would be amazing. Past or future time spent with Weaver... seeing Conway again, changed... programmer guy chatting up musician androids... did he know Carrington from his college days or was Carrington only a friend of Lula’s?

As for Lula herself and Joseph too: “Flipping through the pages, Conway is able to gather that it’s a story about three characters: Joseph, Donald, and Lula. It’s something like a tragic love triangle, but much more complex. Some kind of tangled, painfully concave love polygon.” 😔 I ship them as a full triad, if you can nudge them in that direction, good. But I’m very open to non-romantic resolutions as well, going past their messy feelings to find each other as friends after so many years maybe. Or... a start. idk.

I’d be interested in fic that leans on the game’s adjacent genres: wanna go full-on American Gothic? Dip into surrealism? Take a leaf from Twin Peaks with tulpa / split narratives to explore the characters’ issues? I’m also open to AUs, real or through Xanadu. This also feels like a good place to stress that I really, really like caves.

And now for something completely different: FAQ:  The “Snake Fight” Portion of Your Thesis Defense is in the tagset this year. I’d say that the crossover with the snake portion of Here and there along the Echo writes itself, but it would not be correct, as in fact I would like you to write it for me. Feel free to not feature Donald if you focus on this crossover instead!

Uru would be a fun crossover too, for Donald specifically. He’s very DRC-shaped in how he tilts at doomed projects which just so happen to be deep underground.

Pyre: Volfred Sandalwood

This is a Volfred solo, Volfred&literally anyone or Volfred/Tariq, /Oralech or /Tariq/Oralech request. I adore everyone in that Blackwagon+Dalbert+Celeste, so if you want to add a Nightwing or two to any prompt, please do! I also love all the Scribes and find Erisa a compelling tragic figure, while out of the other triumvirates, I’m “love to hate them” for Manley, Brighton, Udmildhe and Deluge and would not like to see them featured in sympathetic roles. fwiw I also enjoy Jodi/Celeste and Bertrude/Pamitha a lot!

I feel deeply for all of Pyre’s main themes - literacy, degrees of freedom, the fragile time that is the end of a historical cycle, nobodies rising up to the occasion, building a better society, and of course found family, “distance cannot separate our spirits” and all that jazz, and Volfred is squarely rooted at the center of all of them. I really really love everything he stands for, even if he’s overbearingly smug in standing for it. Just please tell me things about my fave. His relationship to the Scribes (as a historian, a some kind of vision, via *ae or once he’s a star himself)? A ‘forced vacay’ Downside ending where he looks at the Union from afar and keeps living in this strange transformational place? Life in a cramped Blackwagon that was meant for like 5 people tops and is currently eight Nightwings, a herald and an orb? Since he picked him for the job to begin with, does he respect and cherish Hedwyn as he dang well should? What does it feel like to try and Read a herald? Was he ever in danger, in the Commonwealth or in the Downside? What daring act of resistance did he and Bertrude pull off at some point in their past? It’d be cool if one of his old pamphlets came up at some point. Does he puff up as prime minister because he’s nervous, and who can see past his hyper-professionalism and lend a hand? Please roast him big time about the votes he assigns to the various Nightwings in his planner? What’s his attitude toward the flame’s purification (what with being a tree but mostly like, as a general concept. He did nothing wrong!) (well he definitely said some things wrong and sometimes oftentimes the ego jumps out, but his intentions did nothing wrong)? When did his calculating approach fail him? Something with Pamitha along the lines of that edit that goes “Can we talk, one ten to another?“/"I am an eleven, my girl, but continue”? Dude could easily be voted sexiest voice in the Downside - how much is he aware of it? Does he sing? I love how he bears his ‘reader’ brand proudly. And speaking of scars, I have to wonder, looking at Manley for comparison, if the shape of his head, with that massive crack, isn’t also due to injuries.

As a refrain from my general likes: emphatically yes xeno to both shippy interactions at all ratings and to gen explorations of what a Sap is like… I’d love to read all your headcanons.

Ship-wise, I enjoy him with Tariq as this kind of esoteric connection of minds, guarded words full of secret meanings, long contemplative walks together (is any external pov watching...?), Volfred’s Reader powers brushing against Tariq’s mind and getting weak in the knees at the starlit expanse he finds there, so unlike mortal thoughts. Tariq finds his individuality learning from him; Volfred presumably gets a transcendent glimpse of the Scribes. And I enjoy him with Oralech as pretty much the opposite of that, Oralech is so very mortal compared to him, such a precious, fleeting, burning life especially after his fall. Oralech’s idealism is very dear to me, it was their plan, their shared revolutionary spirit, I find it deeply moving. And I am very interested in seeing them rebuild their connection now that Oralech is back, changed, and in some ways he can learn to let go of his misconceptions and slowly open himself to Volfred’s love again, but in other ways that’s who he is now, with this deep-set anger, and what does it even feel to realize that you’re the symbol of the end of an era (the end of the Rites, the fading of the Scribes). I’m interested in both topside and downside endings for all of them, as long as they end up on the same side, the revolution was peaceful and they don’t angst too much about the side they ended in. Tariq can ‘find his way home’ in the near post-canon somehow or even be summoned again, as a different aspect of the same ‘moonlit vision’ that once inspired Soliam Murr.

Strandbeest: any

https://www.strandbeest.com/

I would just like words to go with these, please and thank you so very much. Worldbuild to your heart’s content! Specifically: I’m fascinated by the premise that the strandbeest are living creatures that evolve and adapt to their ecosystem. A world where life is just wind stomachs and sandy joints, and the tide that can catch you unaware. I would like a story that feels distinctly inorganic. The wonder that is the existence of these creatures. Their unique struggles. Weird and experimental if you like. With a mechanical focus, maybe?

I nominated four critters as a selection of the different cool things they can do - Percipiere Excelsus is huge and has the hammer mechanism, Suspendisse’s tail senses the hardness of the sand, Uminami is my fave caterpillar and the caterpillars overall feel like a new paradigm after a mass extinction event, Ader straight-up flies... but they’re all wonderful. If you want to focus on different strandbeest, please do!

Twin Peaks: Lucy Moran

Case fic but they don’t find out jack shit, someone disappears, David Bowie was there, it’s complicated. Fragmented, shifted, mirrored identities. New Lodge spaces. The risks of staring into the void for too long. Gentle illusions. Transcendence. The moon. Static buzzing. Any title from the s3 ethereal whooshing compilation used as a prompt, actually. Whatever goes on on Blue Pine mountain or the even more mysterious things that go on on White Tail mountain where exactly zero canon locations are found. Twin Peaks is all about the mystery to me, the awe of mystery and unknowability and the human drive to look beyond and the risks of getting a peek, and about shared consciousness and trauma taking physical form in an uncaring world. Go wild with the ethereal whooshing! But I also love the human warmth at the heart of it all, and sometimes it’s enough to anchor these characters and let them have a nice day. A fic entirely focused on some instance of coziness against the cold chaotic background of canon would be great too.

For Lucy specifically, a big draw for me is how canon (...s2 need not apply) empathizes with her way of processing the world. Not just Peaks, but On the Air’s protag who is basically a Lucy expy also gets the narrative completely on her side and that’s great. And I love how in s3, her focus on the small things around her is always echoed by bigger, climactic events beyond her horizon (bunnies / Jack Rabbit’s palace, chair order / Garland’s chair, her first scene talking about the two sheriffs / doubles everywhere...). It feels to me like some kind of off-kilter mindfulness and I love it. She’s also got a loving husband and an amazing son, which, in this economy and also this canon? Damn. The one functional family, imagine that. I am not interested in focus on family dynamics, but singularly, either Lucy/Andy or Lucy&Wally are great - in particular, I’m interested in how strange they are and yet they make it work. With the ruthless critique of traditional family structure that’s all over canon, maybe they make it work specifically because they’re not doing any of that. A bit like the Addams family... but... not goth...? Anyway. I’d love to see Lucy interact with and maybe strike a friendship with any character she’s never shared a scene with in canon! In the tagset, there’s Diane for some secretaries bonding, Audrey because??? why not?, Albert because it’d be an epic enemies to friends slowburn, some version of Laura in the future, if we’re feeling really daring maybe even some version of Coop in the future, still fragmented... or anyone you want! Outside the tagset I’d be curious about Hawk, Margaret and maybe Doris in particular, I think, and Phil, and Nadine and the Invitation to Love fandom in general (Frost says it still airs - did it get as weird as TP s3 did?), but if you have an idea with someone else, absolutely go for it!

Canon-specific DNWs: any singular Dreamer being the ‘source’ of canon, BOB (let alone Judy) being forever defeated in the finale, Judy being an active malevolent presence in the characters’ lives, clear explanations for canonical ambiguities, ‘Odessaverse’ being the reality layer, the Fireman’s House by the Sea being the White Lodge, whatever Twin Perfect’s on about, Cooper/Audrey, Cooper/Laura

[solomontoaster]

For the ask thing you just rebloged could you do the terror?

001 | Send me a fandom and I will tell you my:

Favorite character: Oh this is hard. There are a lot of characters I love. I feel like I cycle between favorites in a sort of, “Who am I fixated on right now?” kind of way. And that tends to be a revolving door of Fitzjames, Ross, Tozer and Jopson. Right now it’s on Jopson.

Least Favorite character: My gut instinct is to say EC/Hickey, the show did a great job of salvaging his character from the book, but he still leans too much into predatory stereotypes for me to be entirely comfortable. 

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): Only five.... hmmmmmmmmm.  Tozer/Fitzjames for sure; I’m always down for Ross/Crozier (and adjacently Ross/Crozier/Fitzjames); Fitzjames/Crozer it’s the big one, but there’s good reason for it; Tozer/Irving is also choice; and listen I love a wide variety of Jopson ships, but right now Jopson/Grimaud (a crossover ship with Matthew McNulty’s character from BBC’s Musketeers) is where I’m dying in rarepair hell thanks to @bluebacchus. 

Character I find most attractive: *starts playing Boys by Lizzo* Tozer is honestly the first person coming to mind. I would like to hug him very much.

Character I would marry: I mused on this in a previous ask and said Fitzjames, but I think if my options were open to everyone, I’d probably go with Tozer again. Does he make the best choices, no, but neither do I. Also, again with the hugging. I’m touch starved and he seems like he’d give good and frequent hugs.

Character I would be best friends with: Peglar probably, we would bond over books and being gay.

A random thought: I really adore the care and world building that goes into people’s various AUs. Like the background world building of @bluebacchus‘s incredible Chili’s AU or the really sexy academia AU. 

An unpopular opinion: I don’t know that I have any unpopular opinions. I really love the wide range of different headcanons that are floating around. Maybe liking stuff with Sir John, I know he’s easy to hate on and he’s not the most likable character, but he’s still a really good and complex character and I’ve got a weakness for well written Sir John fic, rare as it is.

My Canon OTP: Bridgens/Peglar, they’re perfect, next question.

My Non-canon OTP: I honestly don’t know that I have another OTP for the Terror, cause I multi-ship so readily in this fandom.

Most Badass Character: Blanky. His scene in the rigging with the Tuunbaq? The John Ross boat axe story? Iconic.

Most Epic Villain: It’s difficult I think to generalize a “villain” of the Terror, because there’s so much that is responsible for landing them in the situation that ultimately kills them, from the Admiralty back home to Hickey’s mutiny at the end. But I think I gotta say the Tuunbaq, it’s again, a more complicated antagonist that just a “villain,” but it’s definitely the most Epic antagonist imo and seeing various fandom portrayals has been really cool. I like what @ceilingninja has done in their Bowl of Oranges universe.

Pairing I am not a fan of: Crozier/Silna, cannot stand. It’s book canon, but D*mmons is fucking gross and he writes them in a really gross and racist way (Crozier being like 50 and Silna being under 18 at the beginning of the book and just barely 18 at the end) and nothing will ever make me read fic of them.

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): Well D*mmons fucked up just about everyone, cause he said research who? But Fitzjames and Irving I think caught the brunt of that along with Hickey. The only thing that at all saved them was the show runners. I am a bit sad that they didn’t get as explicit with Bridgens/Peglar as they did with Hickey/Gibson in the show. I hadn’t realized they were meant to be a canon couple until I read the book. I’m not saying we needed to go all the way to boning, but a bit more than a hand kiss would have been nice. Still, both ships are way better handled in the show than in the book, which I yell about in my review of the book.

Favourite Friendship:  Tozer and Heather, it’s just so *clenches fist* tender.

Character I most identify with: Edward Little. We are both full of anxiety, depression and not feeling up to leadership, we’d get along great.

Character I wish I could be: Given the Terror, the question may as well be “how do you want to die on a failed Arctic expedition?” I was very torn between Tartnell and Peglar, but I think I’m gonna go with Peglar, because that one comes with a husband.

[harinezumiko]

SU Movie Meta n Notions

Courtesy of @thoughttrainderailed​ putting up with my half-not-awake ramblings and chiming in to pour more gas on this shit. 

This could be complaint-flavored but it’s also fic notes flavored, except it’s like three goddamn fix-it-fics worth of notes for more Nanowrimos than I’ll ever complete. :’D 

Harinezumiko:

unrelated

but

I wonder if Lion adopting Cotton Candy Garnet is related to the fact that Garnet became a cat person and Cat Steven adopted Lion

Jaakusan:

I dig it

Harinezumiko:

since NOBODY ELSE WAS TAKING CARE OF THIS EXTREMELY LOST BUBBLE at that point

I am willing to accept Lion recognizing her as regressing to a kitten

you know what would've been a fun angle that we won't get

and perhaps goes against the supposed Intention of Spinel being toxic

but I would still find it more interesting than the nothing we get

Jaakusan:

?

Harinezumiko:

1) I would like Lion being a goddamn cat and therefore Capable of Therapy When Compelled to be a Thing

2) I want Spinel to have made An Attempt at fixing her hair for the Diamonds, only for Lion to immediately ruin her odangos

3) I would also like the fact that HEY SPINEL LOOK LION IS ALSO SOMETHING PINK JUST FUCKIN' DITCHED :| :| to be a Thing

4) also I still want Pearls Brigade On Earth, but I like the imagery of Lion knocking Spinel's attempt to Make Heart Odango because quit your shit

Jaakusan:

hahaha

Harinezumiko:

5) since we don't get a Hey Solidarity With Pearl Because Pearl Doesn't Count Rite Homeworld Elites Fuck U Spinel, I want her to accidentally end up with literally anything from Earth that she has attachment to and incentive to Suck Less for?

like I know she's a movie character and likely I won't have to deal with her again

but

I am still angery that they made as little attempt as possible at hiding that writing Spinel and the Diamonds off was just convenient and lazy, Spinel doesn't care that she fucked up the Earth with apparently her own stupid toxin and doesn't care about anyone there and that pisses me off.

I don't even care if she made a vague excuse about coming back to visit just Lion

I think that would've been a better end note than getting whisked off by the Fairy Tyrant Godmoms to live in the Castle in the Sky forever and never have to deal with things again

also I think it would be nice if Spinel, y'know, had any interest in any of the characters she hung out with except Steven during her reset day

because only Pink caused your problems you dumb shit

you still owe Garnet an apology and frankly everyone else too, but GIVE A SHIT. ANY OF A SHIT. EVEN A SMALL TURD OF A SHIT. ABOUT SOMEONE OTHER THAN PINK

Jaakusan:

yeeeaaaah

I would have liked

like okay keep her going off with the diamonds, my feelings about how that can so easily go Wrong aside

but when they pop up have Pink Pearl with them

and PP talks her down

because you know who is exactly as new to grieving Pink as Spinel?

Pink Pearl

Harinezumiko:

yes100% this

Jaakusan:

who thought everything was hunky-dory and is now cast adrift with nobody to cling to?

Pink Pearl

Harinezumiko:

also I am really pissed that like

yeah we got some fun Reset Pearl Nonsense

Jaakusan:

who fucking enjoyed the silly side of Pink that she probably copied from Spinel?Pink Pearl

Harinezumiko:

but we are still facing Pearls Have No Agency And Nobody Finds That Bad Except People Who Know Our Pearl Personally

we still don't see YP or BP for more than a cameo where they don't interact directly with anyone

and they're just being another Utena reference anyway

like they seem to be happier and more comfortable but they don't interact directly with anyone and they literally only get like one off the cuff remark about Steven who doesn't count and isn't part of Gem Society

dude seriously Pink Pearl has so much room to be interesting adjacent from Spinel

but the lack of anything from Spinel even acknowledging that any Gems that aren't Diamonds exist beyond being props doesn't yet bode well for me?

because Spinel is an invitation for the Diamonds to resume something familiar and comfortable, but it's with a literally toxic person who wants to change and is being put in a world where change is not a thing

Spinel has never been part of Homeworld society either, she's been Pink's garden playmate

Jaakusan:

YEAH

(brb closing up to move computer)

Harinezumiko:

(ngl though I would totally take Pink Pearl showing up and fuckin' Asuka Slapping Spinel)

kk <3

Jaakusan:

and back

I just

sigh

it's weird to phrase it like this but

I just want characters that aren't Steven or the immediate antagonist to get significant interactions

the memory sequences still don't count

Harinezumiko:

I agree 100%

Jaakusan:

that's just bringing them back up to par

Harinezumiko:

I also think like

while I would've had even less fun with the movie it. literally squandered so much room for Steven to work with the Barn Gays

Jaakusan:

YES

Harinezumiko:

like... why. what was the point. stop increasing the cast and bringing people back if I don't get to see them do anything

Jaakusan:

YES

Harinezumiko:

I get that RS trapped herself with the stupid Steven Limited POV thing

I still think it's stupid

I think the movie could've cut away from that

I think we could've done away with that in Change Your Mind

I think we could've bullshit excuse handwaved it with some garbage about how Steven re-integrated with Pink Steeb and it allowed him to grow and broadened his worldview because the limited POV was something something Pink Steeb 'shielding' Steven and thus the viewers from Other Stuff

we have a two year time skip because RS was struggling to write things in Steeb's POV and for fucking what, to STILL have a limited protag POV?!

and I know the show is Steven's story

but if it's been something the crew has struggled with

since

I think they said somewhere around like season four was when they started being like "fff" about it

THEN FIX IT

Jaakusan:

eeeesh

Harinezumiko:

FIX IT IN THE MOVIE

FIX IT IN THE TIME SKIP

NOBODY FUCKING CARES IT WON'T HARM THE VIEWERS TO GET AN EXPANDED EXPERIENCE?

like I know that was a Thing RS Wanted To Maintain

and I suspect the rapid writing deterioration of MLP in later seasons didn't help

but fuck everything to do with this like... oh whoops nobody else can do anything protag is the only one who's not an NPC thing

Jaakusan:

YEAH

SO MANY PEOPLE COULD HAVE DONE THINGS

T H E Y H A V E A N A R M Y

Harinezumiko:

THEY HAVE AN ARMY

THEY HAVE NANEFUA

MISS ME WITH NOBODY IN BEACH CITY CAN DO ANYTHING, THE ONLY ONE THERE WHO SUCKS IS RONALDO

Jaakusan:

YOU CANNOT TELL ME IN TWO YEARS NANEFUA DIDN'T INPUT ANTI-GEM MEASURES IN CASE THIS BULLSHIT STARTED UP AGAIN

Harinezumiko:

dude you can't tell me other Gems didn't help

Jaakusan:

other paranoid just-got-out-of-a-war gems

just got out of a war gems living with gems they were fighting against

Harinezumiko:

you can't tell me that CGs that did believe in Pink's cause outside of Avoid Homeworld Live On Earth Forever would just

be totally cool

with this threat on their Earth, a threat that exclusively targets the organic life there

they're not even proactive in protecting the fucking humans?

are you shitting me?

someone please go fetch the Famethyst they APPARENTLY need to teach the rebels how to not just LET GOLDFISH DIE

Jaakusan:

SERIOUSLY

WHERE THE FUCK DID ALL THE GEMS GO DURING THE CATASTROPHE

WHICH STILL SHOULD HAVE EFFECTED MORE THAN. JUST BEACH CITY.

Harinezumiko:

they went to the concert and were totally unperturbed that Amethyst turned into Rose, duh

Jaakusan:

Famethyst would have been another acceptable Deal With Spinel cameo

Harinezumiko:

all of me as a person would like that

Jaakusan:

they have experience with being abandoned disappointments AND with wrangling people who are Upset and don't want to cooperate for their own good

Harinezumiko:

I also think that, y'know, STILL NOT DEALING WITH THE ROSE QUARTZES which I still think are rhinestones is bullshit

Amethyst could've at least lampshaded it

STEVEN could've

fuck, dude, Blue is like OMG A PINK TREASURE??? like yes like the zoomans how the fuck's Holly's stress level btw

Jaakusan:

seriously

WHERE ARE THE ROSE QUARTZES, CREW

WHAT DID THE DIAMONDS DO WITH THEM NOW

Harinezumiko:

where's Jasper

lmao

also host and I were talking about like

Jaakusan:

y u p

Harinezumiko:

Jasper having more room for redemption than Holly

because duh

but also because Holly has been trapped with a bunch of Remarkably Well-Adjusted War Veterans Who Are Extremely Friendly for thousands of years and the stick is still firmly up her ass

and Jasper is... apparently Gifted Child Who Can't Escape Her One (1) Big Failure And Is Branded By Being The Best Of Trash?

which is why she's a bully?

but you can't tell me Bismuth wouldn't brawl it out with her

or that they wouldn't be able to bond over Pink/Rose not trusting of them

or that it's fucking hard being on Earth where you did all this fighting, and you liked fighting, but the reason is Gone and your anger's still thereYou can't tell me that Bismuth doesn't ever have to deal with Gems now who think she's still in her little box and won't see past it, or that it pisses her entirely off but she can't kick ass and take names because Peace Time

bullshit they don't both have war PTSD

bullshit Jasper wouldn't have to grudgingly respect that Bismuth is demonstrably more useful and capable than her intended purpose

and like let's be real

it would be much easier for Jasper to swallow that pill than that Pearl isn't just brokenPearl keeps getting painted as abnormal by everyone's standards for not being a purse

as much as I want Pearl to kick Jasper's ass and have Jasper have to reassess things, canon isn't really setting Jasper up to have that epiphany, not even counting the show's unwillingness to just LET PEARL NOT SUCK AT FIGHTING

but also Bismuth is why Lapis happened

Bismuth was in Beta to kick quartz ass and attacked Lapis who was there to check the results of the hasty terraforming job done on that Kindergarten

Jaakusan:

yeah

Harinezumiko: 

there's so much room to close that story arc

and for Jasper to have to get her head out of the sand and reassess things because the world doesn't make sense anymore but who cares because she and Bismuth can punch the fuck out of each other for hours and Bismuth doesn't think less of her for it

Jasper doesn't have a peer she can 1:1 with because apparently even Garnet wasn't strength-equal to her, but Jasper's going to need several kicks in the head before she can accept that Garnet isn't 2:1

but Bismuth isn't a superior officer, her quarry of origin doesn't matter socially the way Jasper's does, and bullshit they won't get along like a house on fire if Bismuth can make friends with Lapis

Jaakusan:

seeeeeeriously

Harinezumiko:

and Bismuth would 100% be like

Jasper I have a suggestion

MAKE THINGS

shut up I know you hate art because it's frivolous but DO SOMETHING PRODUCTIVE WITH YOUR ENERGY

you'll FEEL BETTER and maybe you'll even find out you like doing a thing and if it's not something you were designed for then who fuckin' cares if you're not instantly the Best At It bitch that's good for you, learn to make stuff.

Jaakusan:

yessssss

Harinezumiko:

hell, like

they even could've lampshaded Jasper being MIA in the movie

Yellow for Some Fucking Reason cancelled her war plans Everywhere even though their whole empire relies on it

Jasper's off Doing That

they could've had several CGs offworld to handwave that too, like

they're not here and yeah we could call their ship with Lars' fuckin ship (where’s Emerald at?) but even if they could get back in time they couldn't evacuate Beach City because the warp drives would need time to recover that we don't have

Earth's not exactly a place teeming with non-organic energy to just power Gem ships

also in that vein likeI think it would've been good to have like

something

about Yellow not having to just dismantle everything she's ever done on her own?

like

does Blue

not have diplomats

was her one (1) skill really just Pushing With Crying

Jaakusan:

shrug 

I can't imagine she needed diplomats with how they treat alien life

I could maybe see her trying to create a diplomatic corp now

but they had no reason for one prior to reformatting the empireI do wonder if they just

stopped kindergarten production and pulled out

or if they tried to rebuild the planets they ravaged

Harinezumiko:

right?

well and like

it sounded like Sapphire was somewhat that kind of Aristocracy

so like

why not

have sapphires who are fairly Revered and also can at least theoretically guess if diplomacy rolls will fail

go help... with peace efforts...

Jaakusan:

at a guess

because they haven't actually reformed yet

they're still at the stage of "we're doing this because we love Pink/Steven and we want Steven to stick around" and not "we've internalized the teachings and Believe we were Wrong"so they're doing like

the bare minimum to meet expectations

because they don't actually care about the results outside of "Steven said we're doing good"

Harinezumiko:

oh no I agree

I think that's more believable

but I think that's not convenient for the writers who keep trying to cut corners

so most likely they'll offscreen epiphany if they don't backslide instantly and in a way Steven can yell at them for in his lifetime

and then Steven will at some point be Happily Surprised by undue progress

Jaakusan:

probably sigh

Harinezumiko:

I'm willing to believe like

Jaakusan:

the Diamonds are getting the Barn treatment

Harinezumiko:

Blue might actually Get It

not because she really Gets It

but because the Oh My God Pink Is Gone Because Of Us, I think, left an impact

and she otherwise did somehow come to the conclusion that Not All Organics Are The Worst likely because they remind her of Pink

but while she thought Pink was literally for real dead, she did get to find out that something as fragile and short-lived as an Um Greg Universe can potentially understand her feelings despite being literally immune to her miasma sadness

and now that she's making a conscious effort not to do that, and following having Yellow's breakdown during their fight in Change Your Mind, I think she'll be more proactive

and possibly more willing to take interest in other species and cultures and their Ways, even if I'm sure at first it'll still be motivated by Because Pink

and as long as she can be empathetic and help Yellow on that front, Yellow can potentially afford breaking down sometimes in private, because they've now also both seen what Constant Facade turned White into

and they both want White back

none of them can have Pink back but they can keep each other together, so Fairy Godmoms can get their shit together, and maybe Blue has a shit ton of notes somewhere about sustaining the Zoomans that can be implemented toward other planets and species and families they broke up

Jaakusan:

nodnod

Harinezumiko:

but realistically, if they were living on human time, it would take the rest of their natural lives to get their family shit together

and they don't get to do that because they're royalty

Jaakusan:

(I want Greg and Blue to be friends and Yellow to be like are you fucking serious Pink chose this and just eternally stink eye him)

Harinezumiko:

they're the entire ruling class of an immortal race of Gems who've spent millennia not only Doing War Things By Design but also who've been made only to Do War Things

like, how do you even dismantle that without wiping a clean slate

we saw how useless it was trying to give a day old Pearl choices

how the fuck are these emotionally constipated Broken God Queens supposed to unlearn their own shit and lead by example

they can't un-design Gems predate Pink

(I mean the solution is to step down and put other Gems in charge but that's still not an instant solution and we still won't fucking get to see it in the show)

(But the point remains that short of some deus ex machina hivemind available to make all the other pearls not overwhelm if you ask to be called Pink Lasagna you don't even have direct underlings that can sit in for you, like, fuck guys, you lost one of your set and made no contingency plan for if it happened again)

(you fucking honest to God thought Something could shatter you and you didn't properly wipe out the entire planet and star system it came from? you're asking for a second round.)

Jaakusan:

jesus, right???

like

real talk

as soon as the movie introduced the concept of concentrated organic murder juice

my first thought was

okay why the FUCK didn't they bomb Earth with that when they lost the war????

have fun on your useless fucking dead rock you'll never have the resources and tech to get off of, rebels

those that survive the earth collapsing because apparently it also breaks up the actual planet rather than just poisoning Everything

Harinezumiko:

right??

well and like

clearly

they just MAKE PLANET KILLER AND STORE IT SOMEWHERE

which I mean I guess if it weren't pink and clearly custom and if it hadn't been a literal fucking hour tops Spinel could've nicked it if the Diamonds really had just pulled the plug on things and abandoned projects

which is still bullshit

but it's still bullshit they should've addressed

Jaakusan:

yeeeeeaaaaah

Harinezumiko:

likeI know it's something Pink likely wouldn't know shit about

but Steven after working with the Diamonds to dismantle the shit?

yeah

uh

he needs to know that shit

Spinel also can't be the only Gem that takes this bullshit badly

Jaakusan:

no reckless dumping of toxic chemicals

Harinezumiko:

not everything needs to be a response to Pink

Jaakusan:

YEAH

Harinezumiko:

that was one of the few things I did like about Steg

not him specifically

but that the first attempt failed because it hinged on Rose Is The Answer

Jaakusan:

but Pearl's whole memory sequence?

yeah

Harinezumiko:

but I maintain the entire movie fails hard at what this show is allegedly about

because no one except Garnet exists because of interaction with friends or family

no one is a product of love

Steven spends the entire movie trying to recreate the traumas that he thinks are the Defining Thing despite that literally not being what worked on Amethyst and despite getting Rupphire to fuse not fixing Garnet for ?? reasons 

I am still mad that we finally get Garnet being Wrong and it's swept under the rug, like? Garnet apparently DOESN'T exist on her own. there is, allegedly, no Garnet if Ruby and Sapphire don't remember it? Are you fucking me?

like A Garnet exists but it's not This Garnet even though as long as Ruby and Sapphire's love exists she should also exist because she's the embodiment of a concept

at the very minimum they should have given Garnet an in-movie explanation for not Remembering Herself

and that explanation doesn't get to be that she finds out that truth is a fucking concept

Jaakusan:

SERIOUSLY THAT WAS SO DUMB

Harinezumiko:

if Garnet's going to spend the entire movie asking stupid shit and getting nowhere then her epiphany should come from finding an answer, and we've already established Garnet's answer IS LOVE

we literally could've had it triggered by something else too like

address the future vision thing

fucking have Steven ask it outright

have Garnet admit she doesn't know

have Bismuth point out the visor thing

hell, you can still have Steven leave Toddler Garnet with Anthy Pearl if you want to

Have Garnet looking for something, have it be her visor, have it be clarity, have Garnet's uncertainty addressed by anyone literally at all

have fucking Amethyst after she gets her shit together remark that Garnet looks weird without her visor

have Pearl who at least KIND OF ends up on Babysitting Cotton Candy Duty for all of 5 seconds afterwards suggest her visor helps her focus

Jaakusan:

maybe based off a Sapphire having only one eye

Harinezumiko:

have Spinel's pot shot not be that Garnet is cute and stupid and trusting, but that she's a three-eyed freak who's still blind to what's happening right beneath them because the Earth's definitely going to fucking explode now and have Garnet make her glasses

have Garnet find her fucking goddamn truth if you're not going to let her answer be love, have Garnet make a decision in the same way that Pearl is allowed to make a choice, and tie it into Amethyst making a friend in Steven

Jaakusan:

YEAH

Harinezumiko:

there's a post about how Steven's failure is defining himself and the Gems by their trauma, as if trauma isn't part of what shapes you

but the post doesn't fucking even TOUCH on the fact that the movie doesn't supplement this traumatic shit with any of the supposed Family Bonding Crystal Gems Values that the show is allegedly made of

you know

the ball

they dropped

in Change Your Mind

:|

:| :|

okay in all of S5

Jaakusan:

Y E A H

Harinezumiko:

no one in this fucking movie does any soul searching at all and it Pisses Me Off

we get some from goddamn Spinel and while the number was enjoyable it has no impact on anything

she learns nothing

she still tries to kill everyone the second she stops getting her way

and she gets a Happily Ever After

and Idgaf that it's more true to Real Life why am I watching a cartoon if you're going to tell me Steven will never get to rest but Spinel gets to live in a castle with no consequences

why does Spinel get a fairytale ending if she's toxic, Sugar

Jaakusan:

YEEEEEAAAAAAAAH

the memory wiping literally had no point other than filling time

time that could have been filled with better, more meaningful things

Harinezumiko:

I even liked the memory wiping! Except nobody learned anything after

I would love a well-done amnesia season

I would love Slice of Life season: Everyone Learns What Life Is For

Jaakusan:

ooooh

Harinezumiko:

like, since we don't fucking HAVE SEASON SIX YET, there's no. reason to pin the movie as "vaguely adjacent to the timeline but don't worry about it"

I know it's because Movie and whatever

but you could just use the movie to launch the next season, mang

you could have Spinel apologize to Steven because she can't fix what the scythe did because the scythe isn't even fucking hers

it's a known weapon and it should've been the goddamn shoe-drop for Peridot being afraid of being harvested

have the movie lay the foundation for Steven trying to rebuild his home and his friends and his family without the Diamonds' intervention

the way the Crystal Gems deserve

give Earth a fresh slate since we don't know the goddamn background Gems

give the OG Mom Squad the chance to be welcomed by friends they don't know anymore, dismantle the Homeworld Defaults that they've been left with, let the secondary characters shine for two hours, and open Season Six with things being Different and Steven having to learn that It Be Like That Sometimes 

in the same way the corrupted Gems have to

let Mom Squad become nurturing by choice this time

let Steven be the person in the forefront of their memories, not millennia of Rose

and drop Jasper on the beach in a space pod only to find that Garnet can't fight, Rose's base is taken, her army is lost, the Pearl's not even defective anymore, and Amethyst is. kinda honestly the most functional person here and why the fuck is that the case

Give Season Six the chance to be the Barn Squad + Jasper helping Steven pick up the pieces of his life while Jasper occasionally chimes in still stuck in her ways, have Jasper get uncomfortably attached to this half-feral runt Amethyst that won't let go of her shins

have Jasper be aware that the CGs are Broken and Wrong and have that be what prompts her to fix it. Give her the excuse of wanting to kick Garnet's ass. Have her land on the beach in her Saiyan Pod totally visibly uncorrupted

have the season include the other remaining CGs trying to find themselves too

(and obviously reveal mid-season that Jasper's putting on airs and hiding her horns and spots in her costume change+hair, have her unwilling to admit it might be permanent for everyone, have her invested at that point enough that she doesn't find it acceptable)

(and then have her get the fuckin Piccolo treatment. have her get better as she becomes a better person.)

Amethyst can still be the first to really Get It, even

Amethyst accidentally shows it by shapeshifting without horns

because she knows Jasper doesn't have them anymore

have Jasper lapse back into being a Rampant Bitch sometimes at characters who don't deserve it and have Amethyst, the feral child not long enough ago, react badly

Jaakusan:

yesssssssss

Harinezumiko:

like I know this suffers from I Just Want Jasper Screentime

but the writers ALREADY SKIPPED SHOWING US BARN GAYS DEVELOPING ON SCREEN

have Jasper be an outsider who thinks it's Weird and Wrong for different reasons than Steven but have them join in their goal to make Earth home again because they've both lost that

also have literally every other quartz on Earth awkwardly defaulting to assuming Connie's mom and/or Barb are agates

[libertasforte]

Homestuck epilogue impressions: Part Meat: Take 2: The Dirkcoursening

My first readthrough of meat didn’t go that well because it’s an exhausting read. I ran out of emotional energy. (candy gives you energy; meat takes it away.) So I’m trying again.

Dirk, you are so right about everything.

I’d rather say that in real life, everyone is rigging reality all the time. It may be subconscious, but I think it’s necessary for being a happy, well-adjusted human being. Which Dirk is not, probably.

Yes, I know I’m a sucker for sympathetic villains. Next.

I hate to say this, but I agree with Dirk here. It probably has to do with my low opinion of politicians in general.

GLaDOS!

- Boss of Wheels, CaNWC

hm this reminds me of

but perhaps moreso it reminds me more of Vriska’s sense of

fuck Jade is so cool

the reason why she has to be incapacitated a lot of the time must be because Hussie simply cannot channel enough of the energy to write for such a cool character

mhmmm

Hussieeeee

You’re not so innocent either. I’ve caught you leering at some pretty personal moments. Are you having fun being a voyeur? Just violating the shit out of everyone’s privacy?

No you’re the one putting it on the internet fucking exhibitionist

You are the generalized, impotent witness to all this. You are essentially as beholden to me as those whose lives I describe.

So I’m at once both a violator, and a hapless ragdoll powerless against your whims? You can’t have it both ways.

Well no, actually you can, that’s the beauty of it. It's the essense of media consumption - the absolute dominance of the author, and the absolute freedom of the reader. Without the spirit of voyeurism, reading becomes unconditional submission to the whims of the author. Simultaneously, the inability to take real, meaningful action lifts all culpability, setting the stage and inviting the guest of voyeurism so to speak.

In actual video games, the gamemaker induces culpability by letting the player take action within the game. Homestuck simulates this with the command system. Clicking to the next page is the issuance of a command by you, the reader, the player of Homestuck, played out as a ritual. (This was “more real” while they were actual reader-submitted commands, with Hussie acting as the GM for the fans. Within the text, this ritual is demonstrated first by the Exiles, and then Caliborn.) And yet, it is only the ritual simulation of agency, and everyone knows it is not real. Even in a video game, the only meaningful actions you can take are those allowed by the programming - those that have been accounted for by the maker. You only have as much fake agency as the writer creates for you, and in the best of cases, the writer can do wonderful things with it. But really, you are still outside. The Homestuck characters aim to escape canon, and yet, you were already there.

mighty Serket

mighty Serket. mighty Serket? mighty Serket. mighty Serket. mighty Serket. (mighty Serket, mighty Serket.)

Dirk proceeds to take out his ire on the you-reader by bullying the reader stand-in, John. (The problem with this strategy is that anyone with half a brain noticed that John is nothing more than the blank slate protagonist and divested themselves of emotional investment in him long ago.)

Jade’s got this disarming combo of head-in-the-clouds flightiness and the kind of legit, down-to-earth cred that can only be earned by having done something like cutting open your own grandfather and stuffing him full of polyurethane foam.

fuck Jade is so cool

pumpkin matcha. pumpkin matcha. pumpkin matcha.

Jade is such a great foil to Dirk. Here, let me try one of those chad virgin things:

Virgin Dirk

disrespects pronouns

ships Davekat by trying to puppet them

got his “heart broken” by some guy and stops engaging in meaningful relationships

we literally have to listen to him expound on his own social incompetency

killed himself

Chad Jade

immediately feels bad and apologizes for not recognizing pronouns

inserts herself into her favorite ship like a confident person

loves everyone

has the good grace to get incapacitated so that we don’t have to slog through her social incompetency

would never kill herself despite being alone and lonely

...this is not funny :/

I’m ecstatic for this personal development they’ve embraced, for the people they are, the lack of gender they identify with, and the pronouns they prefer. I’ve got no problem with it whatsoever, and frankly, it’s fucking insulting anyone would ever imagine otherwise.

Dirk baby you don’t say that if you’re cool with it and have no problems

ugh that is the best way of putting it

Jade looks at where her hands are folded in her lap. Bites her lip. She has her own concerns about this, her own thoughts. Reasonable thoughts, I’d say. But I’ll refrain from any further comment.

ahahahahahahaha

my gender is F for Fucked

I mean there are definitely alternate selves I feel adjacent to, like being a lesbian, or a bi transman, but I am not. And factoring into that it cannot be understated how incredibly easy it is to be a cishet girl, particularly for my situation, and my gender is not my priority in life, "gnc" but no one ever wanted to be a conformist, sure “nb” but what even is the binary, I think I heard the joke somewhere that gender was made up by bathroom companies to sell more bathrooms, sorry I realized I am effectively what Dirk would call a “pompous alien virgin” and I will stop monologuing on the subject.

there was a lot of porn too and no one was consulted

pffffffft

If your perception expands beyond the meat sack of your body, then are you really an individual anymore? Why shouldn’t we become gods? Why shouldn’t we become one God.

Become one god? That came out of nowhere. I think at that point you become Sollux or something and that is an objectively terrible fate to befall anyone. Anyway it’s probably an Evangelion reference or something

All the power to you.

“Sorry, she is occupied” is the creepiest fucking joke and I know this is intentional because Hussie is the creepiest motherfucker

Okay, let’s analyze this. heat death = sex, solitary nature = desire for intimacy, this is creepy QED.

Yes, I admit. I’m just fucking with her at this point. But can you blame me, when she’s making it so easy?

stop fucking Rose you daughterfucker

leitmotif: clever boy

My reaction to every single Homestuck opinion I have ever seen, including my own

I kin this lmao

this is perfect

oh my god Dirk stop control playing your daughter

There is no free will and therefore I am not responsible for all the awful Homestuck fanfiction yaoi that have entered my eyes

She’s beautiful, actually—diaphanous and disheveled and filled with the limitless light of metaspiritual curiosity.

Sophia!

She uncouples herself from the creaking, buckling partitions of her physical mind, and her consciousness dissolves into a space more vast, a domain given structure and order by my words and conviction. She’s permitted the barriers between us to fall, to allow us to know each other more perfectly. As she was saying before, to resist this, to question it in any way, would be to succumb to dysfunction, to pathological insularity, to sociological sin.

Acktually, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

And yet, ironically, renouncing our humanity is exactly what we have arguably just done. Good riddance, I say.

Humanity is all about boundaries that should never be crossed and if crossed, only very carefully! Otherwise you will lose yourself! Boundaries exist for very good reasons. Every boundary crossed without due respect is a violation, and it will change you.

The truth belongs to me.

Narcissist.

Believe me, I’m sympathetic to the temptation. It’s always just there, isn’t it? A limitless reservoir of emptiness, perfectly available to you, patient, omnipresent, and dead ahead.

Preface to say I’m fortunate to have never truly understood suicidal ideation...

This “manning the other end of a suicide hotline, transmitted through pure thought in a metatextual format” reads to me as incredibly trolly...

er, yes, as a "trollish form of self abuse", excuse the racism (eyes Karkat and Vriska). It’s not really that Jade isn’t the kind of girl who would kill herself, but she isn’t killing herself. Dirk did tho. (not that suicidal!Jade isn’t a valid headcanon, there’s definitely things that can point that way, mostly talking about that personally in my hc I would never kill myself and I see that in her, I mean that I headcanon myself as not suicidal yes)

I mean, what can I say, knowing that anything I have to say or think on the matter would probably come across as incredibly insensitive. Sure, I ficced it, but it was never real. I played at it as a form of gratuitous self-harm. You know, the edge. I played at it because it was never real. And in a way that’s probably even more insulting to the people who have to go through that.

Sure, like, I can try to make metaphors, like living is not consensual, you cannot safeword out of living, and that if you are coerced to live then it is also your birthright to control who you are, and that if you can’t find a degree of freedom that serves your needs then you can always create your own, and that you would always be promised the potential to overturn and reform all the systems that govern and provide legibility to you and everyone else,

but perhaps that’s also just self-serving, and if you are stuck in a way of being with no hope for change in a game theoretic sense what good is there a system without the potential for the ultimate vote of no confidence,

like sure my desire and all our desires to see each other live is entirely selfish,

like, how do I say this.

The thing is, I’m pretty secure in my expression of nonsuicidality, and...

I’m sorry I ficced the life of a character who wanted to kill herself. You know. I want. I want to understand what it is to be suicidal. I want to transgress, I want to understand that which most people cannot understand, what it means to live the whole human experience, all of it. But to know that you can personally actually entertain the idea and go through with it in real life? And to live with that? I don’t know what it means to not have that safety. I want to understand, I tried but I can’t and honestly? I think you’d agree that it’s probably for my own good that I don’t try.

soooo uhhh idk Dirk gets sentenced to an eternity manning suicide hotlines AU

Anyway, enter Calliope.

So maybe we could stand to dial down the melodrama, just a bit?

Like maybe somebody needs to get over herself?

These are gold because they’re subtly a self-own, but also, owning me, because, as I have demonstrated above, I am exactly that kind of person.

You’re fucking boring, your narrative voice is a total fucking drag, and someday I’m going to make you pay for this.

:o Dirk wants to take part in the time-honored Homestuck tradition of: Make her pay! Excuse me but you do not have the pussy pass for that sir.

And then, Johnrezi. Two universes destroyed, logic of canonicity forever made obsolete, gay singularity created and exploded, Donald Trump, and despite everything, it’s still popular girl fucks heterosexual male protag fanservice.

And as such, Calliope loses the cherubic sexual battle of penis fencing.

Ah, Meat 34. The “what do you mean this isn’t porn” chapter. I appreciate the numerological significance of 34. I saw on twitter that one of the female authors apparently wrote almost the whole thing and I am...relieved...?

Dirk is weird about Roxy. Not weird weird but weird in the sense that it’s different. From earlier:

In the spirit of full disclosure, Roxy’s the only one left I haven’t been able to crack. Her mind remains a total enigma to me, just like it always has. If I had to guess, it’s her Void powers that make her invisible, even to increasingly omniscient parties such as myself. For all intents and purposes, it’s like her thoughts don’t exist. She’s the same person, as far as I can tell. She still wears her heart on her sleeve. But the bottom line remains: Roxy Lalonde is still utterly fucking inscrutable.

Roxy is the other person he idolizes, other than Dave.

Dirk and Vriska. Hussie riffs them against each other, in a way which feels totally unfair to either of their characters. But they are similar. Idolizing. Something about having to stay true to themselves. But like, seriously? You are comparing Dirk to Vriska? But seriously? Are you comparing Dirk to Vriska? (The observant might notice that Dirk's name reads as a combination of vRIsKa's and eRIDan's (or aRaDIa's). Which is to say, in terms of memetic inheritance in the Hussiespace of ideas, Dirk was already fucked.)

Anyway, I feel like Dirk has trouble with *her* gender specifically because Roxy is *her* in that they are distinct from *him* and it is *his* separation from *her* that unambiguously makes *him* *him* and *his* separation from *her* reinforces *his* humanity, since separation is what reinforces humanity. But that’s just a theory. (Theory: all theory about gender and sociology and even the manosphere stuff, okay especially the manosphere stuff can be imporved by adding at the end: But that's just a theory. A game theory.)

It’s convincing, actually. Reasonably authentic, and quite masculine. He’s off to a great start exhibiting the mannerisms associated with his chosen gender. I’m genuinely proud of him.

This is distressing. I mean good that Roxy is passing, good for him, obviously, but you, Dirk? What is this, gatekeeping, grooming men into becoming men, I mean, not that it is a bad thing, “Son, I’m so proud of you.” But Dirk being proud of Roxy always rubbed me the wrong way. It never made me feel good about it. All it really makes me want to say is, the truth belongs to you, Dirk, I guess.

I feel depressed all the time. But I can’t remember ever having the luxury of feeling peaceful about it. Why should it be different for anyone else?

:(

I know that you’ve always felt out of step here on Earth C. I know that you could easily put on a brilliant act that would fool everyone. You could potentially do that for the rest of your life. But it will eat into you, hollow you out like a parasite, because you’ll always refuse to allow yourself to be understood.

This. This shit right here. This is Dirk’s true villain monologue.

Dirk’s problem is that his consciousness of his ultimate self and realization of Heart powers are making him able to puppet his friends, and making him unable to see them at their full granularity as people, right? So it didn't make sense to me why Calliope can't save him from his power. Why can’t he just live like a normal person inside the confines of the agnostic and vaguely benevolent narration by Calliope?

Why isn’t he able to, as Calliope awkwardly puts here,

He gives us his answer here: because he will be alone. Because he cannot break out of himself. Because, if he were to live constrained by Calliope, he would not be able to live anywhere that is not inside of himself, and that is somewhere he cannot be.

Oh, come on. Can we keep our minds out of the gutter for more than two fucking seconds?

The actual question here, Dirk, is can you. Actually, you’re so nice to have explained it to us already:

I’ve only taken a moment to answer a few questions. Not ones I heard you ask—because again, you are nonspecific and therefore do not matter—but ones I imagined you asking. And by imagining these questions, they became less fake, and as such, demanded similarly non-fake answers.

It just means I carry a greater responsibility to take care of those more fragile.

You know, I always h8ed this particular aspect of masculinity. (H8, as distinct from hate, refers to a kind of hatred that serves to perpetuate the phenomenon being hated.)

It was always an illusion. You put your face in your hands and sob. The catharsis is relieving, bittersweet. Years of suppressed insecurities melt away. You’re finally free of this. Alone, yes, but free.

Surrender is Freedom. Lose the stakes, and nothing matters. It is a freedom that derives from apathy.

But there ought to and should exist a different kind of freedom, a freedom which presupposes agency and investment in reality, (*title drop*) STRONG freedom.

Look. Even you can manage to top this guy.

Just, the idea of Dirk saying this to Dave is, incredibly funny to me. Like, even you can be a man. Just do it, bro.

Karkat’s probably quite modest and feminine alien penis

ahahahahaha oh god

Okay, okay. Let me try to analyze why this is so funny to me.

Because it is...homophobic? Homophobia as implied by toxic masculine misogyny? Like, misogyny, but in the particular way it manifests in toxic masculinity in which male femininity somehow devalues men? In condemning the feminine in men, toxic masculinity is supposed to reinforce the male dominance over the feminine or something. And then it spills over into homophobia within this misogynistic-toxic-masculinity worldview where the mechanism of being penetrated is considered feminine (“feminine gay”) and the mechanism of penetrating is to feminize some other man (“predatory gay”) and those two specific ideas are then conflated together in the context of misogyny into generalized homophobia. “No homo, dude.” Idk, man, gay is just gay.

So perhaps since it has already been established that Dirk is somewhat misogynistic, invocation of the feminine carries the weight of prejudice. But it’s possible I’m reading too much into this, so let's take the generous approach and assume that feminization is not meant to devalue. But then why? Perhaps Dirk is implying that Dave actually prefers the feminine to the masculine? Is Dirk trying to help Dave get over his internalized homophobia by saying “this is totally straight if you want to be”? Is it Dirk with his internalized homophobia thinking it would be more convincing if it was het, that het is more valid? And then all this reminds me of the incel idea of fucking men because women are less available, which is emphatically not a factor here because, as Dirk offputtingly keeps repeating, superior genes.

But it is not Karkat being feminized, but his penis. What is a feminine penis? (And not the case of transwomen who have feminine penises.) Neutralizing the symbol of masculinity? As a cishet girl I feel like penises have negative connotations because of, I dunno, how men keeping sending unwanted pictures of them to women on the internet. I feel like culture in general has a case of penisphobia. Idk. Penis ouija. (I mean if I had that kind of thing on my body I would be afraid of it too, but like. It’s ok! Send your local internet girl dick pics and I will tell you that your penis is beautiful. It is very pretty and needs no vagina to validate it. Body positivity! Damn.)

But it doesn’t have to have anything to do with the social context! There also exists the specific sexual kink of turning something masculine into feminine. That is a thing. Sexuality, how does it work? I don’t know! I am effectively a virgin alien girl. Some time ago I just threw up all my hands in the air because none of this makes sense, I understand fuckall about gender and sexuality, and I am probably unwittingly being homophobic!

Maybe all I can say is it just reminds me of a bad AO3 yaoi fanfic. What if...oh shit. What if pornhub and all the other usual sources of visual porn all went down or stopped working due to file format obsolescence or the Condesce’s anti-reproduction measures and all that was left of online human sexuality was AO3, a lone server somewhere valiantly broadcasting all that’s left? What if growing up the only porn Dirk had access to was on AO3? Ok this cannot be canon because he definitely had access to all the media from the 2000s, he was probably into the furry fandom. But it would still be damn funny. Even just the generic idea of AO3 becoming all that’s left of the internet from this era, and future internet-archeologists having to reverse engineer what society was like from the online wreckage of horny teenage+ girls. I mean, extrapolating from how shitty all the other websites are in this era, it is not implausible.

All of this is wrong, none of it is valid, and I diagnose society (and therefore, myself) with generalized penetration obsession. It's all over the place and all I’m saying is that all this combination of the weird ideas I’m having about this topic is just -

Something happened between Dirk and Jake. Dirk won’t say.

There is dynamic range for things that could have happened, and what you think happened probably says more about you than what it says about Homestuck. It would be the perfect setup for endless Dirkcourse, but Dirk isn’t a sexy woman, so not really.

If you want a hint from Homestuck (if you do care what Homestuck would say about it, which, frankly, sounds like a bad idea), though, I think the most revealing thing he said about what could have happened was, augggh fuck Meat 34

Or at least, that’s what you like to believe. That people can’t resist you. That you have no responsibility for their feelings. That everyone uses you. That you’re the victim. Yes, it’s so unfair that anyone in this universe or the last has ever had a single expectation of Jake English. Why should anyone respect your personal autonomy when you’re practically begging to be taken advantage of?

So tell me, Jake: which one of us is really the bad guy here?

He makes it out like he’s talking about Jane, but he’s talking about himself. (He made it out like he was talking about Terezi, but he was talking about himself. He made it out like he was talking about Jade, but he was talking about himself.)

If I try and succeed, I’m a hero, right? And if I try and fail, at least I made things interesting on my way to the grave. There would be a tragic nobility in that. And the way I see it, settling for anything less from my arc would be, frankly, pathetic.

I hear you Rose

So yeah, of course I know I “have to be stopped.” It’s part of the contract.

I love your unilateral contract

What you sign up for when you assume the burdens of this sort of power.

Take up the burden.

Where there is that which must be subdued and suborned for the greater good, there is that which will instinctively resist.

The symbols hold all the power, but abstractions are leaky and will fail and hurt people.

That which intuits that whatever’s going on here is “wrong.”

“Wrong, but valid.”

Otherwise, intervention wouldn’t even be necessary, would it?

Right, intervention, the Princely vector of influence in reality.

If reality and those within it were already so intrinsically pliable, so amenable to deviating from their own nature, the sins of men and faults of God would have no rigidity or resilience.

People need systems to work in. People need reality to be stable. It needs to behave consistently, and make sense. People believe they have the right to an understandable reality. Do they? Parents ought to provide, but does wider reality have any sort of obligation? Is there power to be found in pretending to provide? It’s scary for people, to be threatened with the idea that reality might not exist.

There’d be no challenge in forcing their correction. No reward in ramming salvation down their throats.

Subdue and suborn for the greater good. People don’t know what’s good for themselves - be the patriarch you want to see in the world.

I know this isn’t coming cheap, what I’m trying to do. The cost of it is knowing I need to be stopped. I accept it consciously, and when the time comes—if it comes—I’ll offer myself up gladly.

I’m sorry, this is all Basic Arguments Against Colonialism. Colonialism wasn’t so bad? Nazis are people, just like me.

I’m remembering why I wrote that fic about that suicidal girl. Right, I wanted to rescue her from that architecture. I think that’s okay.

So when I say I know I need to be stopped, I guess it’s more than just accepting my end of a diabolical bargain. I know I need to be stopped, because I’m sure deep down, somewhere inside my infinitely recursive sense of self, I know what’s going on here is all just a little bit sick.

Diabolical bargains are unilateral contracts, made with the self by the self.

To be honest, I’d consider killing myself and sparing reality all the trauma from the jump—I mean, a legit suicide, not one of those melodramatic faux-suicidal plays for attention, sympathy, or Jake’s dick. But to really do it for keeps? For a truly selfless purpose? Nah. Too cowardly for that. Too afraid to stop existing for good. Wouldn’t you be if you were me?

Dirk, why are you me? Stop being me, this is creepy. Don’t tell me I was subconsciously reflecting you. Homestuck is fucked.

Yeah I’m gonna write that fic where you’re manning some suicide hotline forever and you’re gonna be trapped

I guess therein lies the problem. If I weren’t me, obviously I’d consider myself much less indispensable. Only worthless people permit themselves the great luxury of a valorous sacrifice. When the deed is done, what was really lost? It’s like the guy in the mail room quitting in a self-righteous huff. Who the fuck were you again? No, when the sense of self is so substantial, when the fate of everything turns on every vain whim of an ego this sprawling, this entrenched in the very medium that contains all else, there’s a certain existential sunk cost that goes with the whole deal. A persona that vast doesn’t just self-terminate. It won’t allow itself to.

Okay, no, never mind. It is not that I am too cowardly to die; I simply do not want to die. I love living. But someone who actually wants to die, and is too cowardly to do it? Someone who, if his own sense of cosmic importance was taken away, would have nothing left? You are you, and not me, and all of society tells us to help suicidal people, but I would never understand how, and that is the boundary that separates my self from the other, and that is okay.

That’s why when someone finally comes knocking for the price I owe, I’ll fully welcome it. By then it’ll have been a long time coming, and I’ll probably have done more than my share to make sure, somewhere along the way, it all got put into motion. What good is a villain who doesn’t have a satisfying dramatic comeuppance in store for him? So yeah, the next time I die, let’s pencil it in as a Just Death. And let’s also have it on good authority that the next time Dave cuts off my head, it’ll be for good.

Alright, Meat 42. This better be the answer sheet.

Therapy...

Wait, I got it. Candy has no answer. There is no Candy 42. That is so cute, Hussie, you absolute madman.

Kanaya stares into the distance. The best fucking question anybody ever asked is: why am I so fucking awesome? I believe I’ve recently provided more than enough material to supply an answer to that question. But Kanaya may have just asked the second-best fucking question anybody ever asked. What WAS she thinking? What are any of us thinking, really? Who’s doing the thinking, and who’s having the thoughts?

The more you study the question, the more it seems all concrete forms of accountability go up in smoke. Her original thoughts were never that important, and the significance of the idea that she was the one authoring them was always a bit overrated. My mission is to someday clear this all up for everyone. Remove the ambiguity, suck the mud out of the water. It’ll be a lot better that way, trust me.

Really though, whose thoughts are being had? When you get right down to it, all I’m doing is projecting. Subdue and suborn for the greater good, and divide the earth into ideas. Ideas provide legibility and form the seat and the core of the being. It's what anyone needs for structural integrity vs. other people's ideas - the unalienable right to be sovereign. It is Lore.

She’s really pissed. Yikes. Couldn’t pay me to be in that room right now. Not for all the agency in the world.

Ah, nice. Engineering situations in want to deny your own agency and free will. Excellent taste in extreme sports, I must say, if a mere shadow of the ultimate one: creating a 7-year 8000-page shitpost epic webcomic for the sole purpose of killing a version of yourself. We all stand under that shadow.

I’m not a gambling girl, but if I was, I'd bet Kanaya’s gonna get to Dirk before Dave does. Dirk cucked Kanaya, after all.

Kind of a catch-22, right, Kanaya? The one who’s “protecting” you all from my influence is also blocking you from getting any answers. Not that you’d even know what to do with them.

I feel like there’s supposed to be something deep to be said here but I’m not getting it. Idk, knowledge is fall from Eden, something.

She picks up the heart monitor and throws it out the hospital window. Holy shit?

Is this...is this supposed to be symbolic? The observation of the Heart is ending, and being thrown out the window, which in Homestuck is symbolic of breaking through fourth walls, abstraction barriers.

she picks up the heart monitor, and throws it out the hospital window.

ha. Calliope repeats the line.

Oh, yeah. I guess I don’t need to fucking do this anymore. Don’t worry, I’ll bow out. Seems like you got this from here. Go nuts, skull girl.

Kanaya picks up the device that was observing the Heart, and defenestrates it, symbolizing the self’s escape and liberation from this particular plane of reality. Holy mother.

roxy is looking out the broken window with an apologetic demeanor, a hand to his mouth.

“Excuse me.”

kanaya drops to the floor and begins weeping again. she feels the sorrow anew from her wife’s departure, with a sense of rage and pain unshrouded by the veil of the prince.

The raw, visceral emotion that can only be felt when you’ve broken out of yourself.

kanaya drops to the floor and begins weeping again. she feels the sorrow anew from her wife’s departure, with a sense of rage and pain unshrouded by the veil of the prince. neither she nor her friends will have to worry about him anymore, so long as they remain on this planet and under my protection.

But a bunch of them won’t remain, will they? They won’t be able to help themselves. You know that.

So: will they or won't they? Will Homestuck or won't Homestuck? I enjoy playing at Homestuck theory, but theory without falsifiable predictions is indistinguishable from psychosis. So my prediction is this: there is no continuation. This is the end of Homestuck proper. The Homestuck epilogues had a thesis, and demonstrated it to the best of its ability. Something to the likes of the fact that providing symbolism and legibility (meat) is at odds with true freedom and pursuit of happiness (candy). And yet, selfhood is found somewhere in between, breaking out of both states. Eternally so.

Or you can keep on chasing Dirk, forever and ever. You still don’t get it yet. I’m already gone.

And if my prediction turns out to be wrong, then I will get angry at Hussie again. Then we will wage war on him again, together.

his influence over canon has come to an end, as has this particular story. his ultimate sacrifice was made to put the missing keystone in place and avert the supreme dissipation of all that shall be considered to hold truth, relevance, and essentiality.

Valid Lore.

the rest of my presence can simply be reduced to a string of words. a recorded stream of ideation with a particular texture and cadence, but aside from that, there is nothing that should be considered remarkable about its source. one speaker can easily be swapped for another, and then another, under the right circumstances. speakers can duel, predominate, overassert, or fall back, as one does into the comforting blanket of space.

i leave all who inhabit this reality with a recorded stream that is colorless, sourceless, and quietly divested of accountability. for if i were to insist upon anything else, could i really be considered worthy of protecting the very cosmos i describe?

Yep, I'm pretty sure Candy doesn't have a narrator! The narration just conforms to the thoughts of whoever it is descri8ing at the moment.

Is your specificity not working for you? Then a8andon the specific and 8ecome a trafficker of sym8ols.

She’s stopping us from 8eing su8orned and su8dued, sym8olized “for the greater good.”

So, the mystery girl was Vriska all along? I’m just a character, idiot. Colonize yourself, or 8e colonized. Have your Lore or 8e powerless against Princes like him. That’s what I would say ::::)