#and i like to exaggerate certain things for sake of character. like the stubbornness and the fighting

[pankomako]

shipwreck doodles that are somehow mostly food related i didnt intend that but i guess that's today's theme

[phoenixtakaramono]

Does Bing gē Have Descendants in ‘The Untold Tale?’

This topic has come up a few times since The Untold Tale takes place in the PIDW universe (post-Bingge vs Bingmei extra), I figured I might as well compile and archive my official answer here for me to refer my AO3 readers to in the future for convenience’s sake. I hope everyone doesn’t mind. :) I’m always happy to answer questions!

TL;DR

Q: Will we see Bing gē having fathered children with his harem of 600 or so wives in TUT?

A: For TUT, the answer is a definite “no.” There were a lot of factors which’d contributed to my decision. I’ll try to explain my reasoning down below.

Context

In PIDW, it is canon that Luo Binghe has a bountiful number of descendants with his harem of 600-or-so wives. It is a detail that has been mentioned even in ch1 of SVSSS and in ep1 of the donghua.

(SVSSS Excerpt - ch1)

(SVSSS donghua - ep1)

I like to plan things ahead of time. So from very early on, I knew this would be something I would have to decide on whether or not to address when I’d finally decided to expand TUT from just a prologue into a full-blown story. And after contemplating it, I decided against adding children into the story. It is because 1) it would make the situation more complicated, and 2) it would take TUT in a different direction that wouldn’t be fun for me to write.

I’m a very decisive writer, meaning when I make my mind up about something, chances are I won’t change my mind. This is because I would have already planned it into my plot outline, which means changing a decision would require me to change other details in the other chapters I have planned for that story. (I’m typically not a spontaneous writer; I try not to write spontaneously because when you’re a writer who rotates through multiple WIPs with different characters across different genres or writing styles, you inevitably have writer’s block because you probably won’t remember all the ideas or the direction you had whenever you return back to a different WIP. To reduce this shortcoming, it helps me personally to have a plot outline. This way I can return to any WIP, read my notes and then transcribe them into legible paragraphs, find a way to transition between the story beats I have to hit for that chapter, and then eventually post the final draft to AO3 when I feel it’s ready.)

Having made a decision, I knew I had to set it up in TUT and give a “reasonable explanation in-story.” Hence, in ch2, we see:

(Excerpt I - ch2)

Basically the set-up is TUT takes place post-Bingge vs Bingmei, but between “the third or fourth book” of the hypothetical PIDW webnovel series aka before Airplane wrote the fanservicey chapters where the luckier of LBH’s wives give birth to children during the harem drama plots and the children are probably rarely, if ever, mentioned again in the story as a lot of stallion novels tend to do.

(Excerpt II - ch2)

(Excerpt III - ch2)

Contrarian Tendencies

You know the saying: Monkey see, monkey do? In my case, it’s monkey see, monkey do not do.

A little fun fact about me as a writer: if I have already seen a fanfic where someone has already written a concept or idea into their story, chances are I will just avoid it entirely in my own stories. I don’t know why this aversion exists, but I’m assuming it’s because of my counterculture hipster inclinations and an intrinsic fear of plagiarism which has been beaten into all of our skulls since adolescence. There’s nothing wrong with being inspired by other people’s works. Technically everything’s been done before in writing so, as a writer, a good rule of thumb is to always try to give it your own unique spin on things. So for me, my brain somehow interpreted this a step further. This is a reason why I try to avoid reading stories from whichever fandom my WIP is from during the writing process of updating a fic, because this is how I get influenced. Once I see an idea or interpretation from another fanfiction, it influences me to not want to write it into my own. This is a very strong unconscious impulse for me. I guess this is just the neurons in my brain’s thinking that this way, it won’t be something my readers will have read before and the story idea will come across as different or fresh, and mine. In a way this is also how I show respect for fanfiction writers in the same fandom—by being inspired to not be inspired, ha. I like to think every story in the world serves a niche audience, so seeing a diverse range of originality and interpretations in a fandom is a good thing. This is also how I feel when I am able to identify certain popular tropes or depictions or patterns in a fandom; 99% of the time, it makes me feel a compulsion to “go against the grain” or write the opposite. For example, you have no idea how long it took me to come around the idea of incorporating the fanon “A-Yuan” into TUT. However cute it is, the moment it dominated the fandom (well, “dominated” is an exaggeration; it’s more like I’ve seen enough, especially in the Original LBH/ SY | SQQ tag), my gut reaction was to nope out of using it. But after seeing a lot of comments in my inbox with readers affectionately calling SY “A-Yuan,” I’d contemplated it for a long time and it wasn’t until ch4 that I decisively decided that yes, I can have Bing gē calling SY “A-Yuan” in TUT—but it has to be at the right moment for maximum dramatic and emotional impact. (See this thread that started it all. And this is the small sneak peek I wrote where LBH will call SY that for the first time.) <- This is the rare 1% where I actually conformed to what’s popular.

In this case, when I finally decided to expand the prologue into a full-blown story, coincidentally I had just recently read a good Binggeyuan (Bingyuan) fanfic which featured a kidnapped Shen Yuan interacting with Bing gē’s harem and LBH’s children/descendants. I’d liked their portrayal and even thought the children were cute. <- However, with me having reading this, the problem came up: I felt the familiar stubbornness in me rearing its head. So knowing myself, if I had included children, it is very likely the direction that I would have gone down for TUT would have been the opposite. To further complicate matters, you have to keep in mind the kind of writer I am. I tend to like grounding stories with a semblance of realism, no matter if the genre is pseudohistorical fantasy, romance, sci-fi, etc. And this writer has seen and read quite a few harem and palace intrigue Chinese dramas/ premises.

For further context, in those types of “historical” C-dramas^, in that sort of environment which fosters scheming, competition, jealousy, etc, it is almost expected to see heirs aka children aka descendants harmed along with the women. Innocent parties are often victims in these sorts of cutthroat premises, to underscore the underlying message the show or novel wishes to present. (See Ruyi’s Royal Love in the Palace. See Yanxi Palace. See The Legend of Haolan. See Nirvana in Fire. See The Rebirth of the Malicious Empress of Military Lineage. Etc.) And me being me, this would be the direction I would take. Remember, while TUT is meant to emulate a legitimate danmei C-novel reading experience in a fantasy world, I do drop pseudohistorical and cultural Easter eggs into the story. So trust me when I say you would not like the direction TUT would have gone down in, had I made LBH have children with his harem. I mean, theoretically yes, we could’ve seen endearing children characters from me, but you would have also seen me addressing a lot of the baggage that comes with (see Comment III Excerpt down below).

The situation with dissolving Bing gē’s harem is already complicated enough. As his romance with Shen Yuan develops, I didn’t want to have an additional headache thinking about how to address the issue of LBH having children already. Divorces in a pseudohistorical context is already a heavy topic—even more so when it’s divorces with children in the mix. Naturally I will still have SY and LBH eventually discuss the matter of legitimate heirs since LBH will essentially become the Sacred Ruler of all Three Realms and it’s a traditional precedent for an emperor to bed his empress, noble consort, and imperial concubines until he has his heirs (plural, because the rate of mortality was high in ancient China). In TUT’s case, at that point in the story SY will remind LBH that he’s essentially an immortal sovereign so there isn’t any need for an heir unless he wishes to retire. Furthermore, he will inform LBH that he could set a new precedent since he’s already different from the other emperors from history (with him being of half-Heavenly Demon and half-human cultivator lineage); as long as LBH is fully aware of all perspectives of the situation, he doesn’t necessarily need to conform to all traditions if this is something he really feels strongly about. But this future conversation(s) is likely the extent of it.

But wait, you say, what about a certain someone who’s going to be transmigrated as an imperial crown prince? Isn’t he going to be in that sort of vicious upbringing? <- Yes. But that’s an entirely seperate matter. In a way, since I’ve decided Bing gē will not have had any children or descendants in TUT, with Airplane, this now presents an opportunity for me to show the consequences of being one of the many children of an emperor with a harem of women vying for one man’s attention—and the power struggle that’d ensue in this kind of environment. It’s an interesting What-If parallel, if you think about it.

AO3 Comments

Although these are just small excerpts from replies I’ve written before, it’s nice and orderly to just compile them here for everyone since these will be buried underneath all the comments as TUT updates:

(Comment I- ch3)

(Comment II- ch4)

(Comment III- ch4)

Because of seeing comments that have asked me for my thoughts on whether or not I will include LBH’s children, I’ve had so much fun seeing theories thrown around: from LBH’s blood parasites being able to control conception, to someone’s headcanon about LBH being a hybrid and all that entails scientifically (think: mules). I will say in TUT, it’s more the former since in PIDW he’s supposed to have descendants; we’re pretending Bing gē doesn’t have any yet (and now definitely won’t, especially after having heard SY’s “prophecy”) because he subconsciously does not want children due to certain fears, trauma, etc. And his Heavenly Demon’s “blood parasites” (blood manipulation) is a convenient story device to explain why no wife has gotten pregnant yet.

I hope this explanation makes sense! Mainly I just wanted to have this archived on tumblr so that I have this post to refer to moving forward.

On a side note: especially since ch4 had been posted, quite a few people have actually mentioned they’ve read my replies to other comments and/or I have seen different people having hopped onto other readers’ comment threads (for example, imagine my pleasant surprise when I saw a reader you lovely person, you helpfully jumping in to respond to another reader’s questions about TUT, and their answers were actually aligned with what I would’ve answered!), so it’s always such a thrill whenever I see this level of engagement happening. I can’t explain why, but seeing this happening is just so cute to me. It really makes this writer feel so warm and fuzzy inside!

[bluehhj]

listen to me — chapter 28

LISTEN TO ME — 0028

listen to me masterlist;

WORDS: 1.6K

Jisung barely took the key out of the ignition after stopping the motorbike in the parking lot of the college and was already approached by Woojin in a not inconspicuous way. Hyunjin and Yoorim were getting out of the car further ahead and, consequently, were drawn to Kim's too much energy at that time of the morning.

"Look who's here!" — the phrase of the oldest of the four made Han roll his eyes as he got off the motorbike. — "I didn't know you were the type of guy who sneaked in to kiss someone in the dark, that's more like me."

"Who did you kiss in the dark?" — asked Yoorim, one of her well-made eyebrows being arched. Though aware of the answer, Heo wanted to hold the smile for a few more seconds and be genuinely curious.

"Isn't that obvious, guys?" — Woojin took the word again, sending Han a look that blended pride and presumption. — "Even the hand on Jinah's ass he put."

"That's a lie," — Jisung finally pronounced, even though he might have given a little squeeze into that inviting ass by pure indirect encouragement from the girl herself. — "And you have to stop being so inconvenient."

"My prayers were heard." — Hyunjin had a silly grin on his face and a stupid gleam in his eyes. — "How did that happen? Or rather, it was the first time that happened, right?"

Han moistened his lips and passed them, then starting to walk in an unsuccessful attempt to escape an answer that would probably be his decline of the day.

"Han Jisung!" — Yoorim scolded and followed him along with the other two. — "You hid something like that from us, you can't do it!"

"I thought we were friends." — Hyunjin made drama.

"And we are, but I knew that, if I told you, you'd start acting the way you were acting fifteen seconds ago."

"Of course, that's what friends are for," — retorted Yoorim. — "I'm disappointed in you, oppa."

"Who are you to say something?" — Jisung frowned and turned his face toward the girl. — "When I found out that you and Hyunjin were dating, almost two months had passed!"

"It was different."

"No, it wasn't."

"The main thing is that soon Jisung will have a new girlfriend" — Woojin returned to the subject's focus. — "If he doesn't already have and we still don't know."

"Don't exaggerate, hyung," — Jisung murmured. — "It's just a few kisses from time to time, no one spoke of any label."

"But you feel something for her, don't you?" — Hyunjin asked hopefully. — "Even if it's just a little bit."

It was true that, at the time when they were becoming more than friends — although he couldn't really define what that relationship was — Jisung stopped thinking about Chaerin so often, even because who began to occupy the other half of his thoughts were Jinah. It still hurt the memory of being cheated on and dumped before the wedding, but not as much as it had been weeks ago. And it was also true to say that, in one way or another, Jisung had grown accustomed to Jinah and liked her as much as he liked what they were experiencing, he just couldn't tell what level that "liking" was, but it was clear the feeling existed somehow.

"If I answered you guys would become the most unbearable people in the world."

And Jisung was absolutely certain of his last statement from the moment the three of them started shouting, albeit modestly, and made him go through a little embarrassment in the middle of the campus.

Friends.

                                ♡˖°

Jinah was going through one of those extremely busy days when everything seemed out of place, including her neurons.

She had to pay attention to the class, but she couldn't stop thinking about the seminar she would have to present next week, the book that she hadn't yet read a third and the fact that she had to leave the last class in half because she had received a call from her work asking her to start earlier, since Sorn was ill and couldn't attend that afternoon. On the bright side was that she would get the next day off, but the downside was that she'd miss some important explanations that would certainly be charged in the evaluation. And there was still the damn final paper in the next period.

"Unnie," — Jade called softly after hearing the second sigh of pure frustration from Choi. — "I know it's hard to control stress at this stage, but you think everyone here is in the same boat as you. If you freak out is worse."

"I just wanted a vacation," — Jinah replied in the same tone. — "Life of a poor college student is a hell."

The american giggled, she couldn't disagree: — "You'll survive."

Taking a deep breath — an act that, sometimes, prevented her from committing madness that she'd come to regret at the last second —, Jinah tried to focus on the next classes and deprived herself of the break time to start writing a review her professor had requested last week. Jade insisted that she should leave it for another time, claiming that Choi should feed herself and take care of her health first of all, but Jinah didn't care and continued to do what she was doing. The last thing she asked the american was to tell Jisung that she was only too busy, since it had become routine to meet in the cafeteria and, when that didn't happen — like the time Jinah woke up in a bad mood and didn't wanted to talk to anybody —, Han noticed her absence, and maybe cared a little bit about it.

And there was also the fact that the girl wanted, more than anything, to exchange that fucking review for Han's company, but, sometimes, a few priorities should be imposed.

Having the last class of the day right in the middle of it, when Taeyeon sat at the table to correct some exercises, Jinah collected her few materials and left the room, not before hearing Jade saying that if she didn't have lunch, the two would have to solve things at the base of the slap when they got home. She hurried across the campus to the main gates, quickly greeting the Agronomy students who were already in the bar in front of the college, though it was morning, but Jinah didn't have time to discuss the others' level of alcoholism.

Her way home would have been quick and uninterrupted, as she wanted and imagined it to be, however, as soon as Jinah turned the corner and came across an extremely tall and unwanted figure, she knew that day couldn't get any worse.

"Look" — pale skin, dark hair scraped at the sides thanks to the beautiful jovial hairstyle, small eyes, lips proportionately full and rosy with a piercing attached to the lower, well marked jaw; this was Kim Minhwan. — "You didn't even wait for me to at least look for you."

"Oh, God, give me strength..." — Jinah muttered to herself, not sure if she wanted the strength to endure that situation or to simply punch that person. — "Look for me for what, man?"

"It's always good to see important people again," — Minhwan was offended. — "I thought you'd be happy."

"I would if you were really important and not an annoying one, now get out of the way I have more to do."

"You were more fun before, what happened?"

Patience, God, patience is essential.

"I used to like seeing your face," — Jinah explained. — "Today I want to hit your face."

"So, hit" — provocative, Minhwan leaned his face slightly in the direction of Choi. — "If you want to reverse roles, go ahead."

"You're the most disgusting person I've ever met."

"And you're the most stubborn person" — recovering his posture, Kim got a colder look. — "Did you have to leave the city like that?"

"And did you have to follow me here as if we were still in those days?"

"I couldn't be without you any longer, Jinah," — the girl laughed, wryly, but Minhwan really meant it. — "You know you're the only one I've ever loved in my life."

"Oh, for God's sake, you call that love?" — Choi hitted her hands in her jeans. — "No one loves like that, only you, in that sick head of yours."

"I'll do differently this time."

"No, you won't, because you're not good and this is the only certainty I have in my life" — Jinah, then, walked past him and tried to continue her way, but a hand on her forearm prevented her. — "Let go."

"You can't forget that, no matter where we are, your heart will still be mine," — Minhwan stated firmly. — "But, unlike you think, I'm not going to do it like the other times and make a presence in your life twenty-four hours a day. No, I'll wait for the right moment. A moment when you're happy and think nothing more can mess it up" — he smiled little, but it was a smile that shivered Jinah. — "After all, what happened years ago won't pass in vain, and everything that goes around, comes back. I hope you're aware of that."

"You're crazy."

"I am" — Minhwan nodded and released her arm from the slight squeeze. — "But it was you who left me like this; it's your fault."

One last stunned look of bad feeling from the tall boy and Jinah turned away, not bothering to respond. This was a conversation she'd, surely, take off before bed.

(a/n: guys, how do you imagine minhwan? since i started writing this au i thought of him as mingi from ateez, but i was a little hesitant to put this baby as a character, it got worse when i became atiny, cuz i realized the baby he actually is, but his image didn't come out from my head and i just managed to change the name lskskj anyway, imagine him how you want, but i'll leave a gif of mingi for those who dont know him and want to follow the same line of reasoning as mine)

(gif aint mine)

stan talent stan ateez guys, stream these icons

[theculturedmarxist]

So I’m looking over

https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vladimir_Lenin

There are a couple entries which bear some amount of alarm, though divorced from whatever context they were found in which might mitigate their apparent meaning.

Use both bribery and threats to exterminate every Cossack to a man if they set fire to the oil in Guriev.

As quoted in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (1996), p. 69.

Treat the Jews (express it politely: Jewish petty bourgeoisie) and urban inhabitants in the Ukraine with an iron rod, transferring them to the front, not letting them into the government agencies (except in an insignificant percentage, in particularly exceptional circumstances, under class control).

As quoted in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (1996), p. 77.

It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must) carry out the confiscation of church valuables... I come to the categorical conclusion that precisely at this moment we must give battle to the Black Hundred clergy in the most decisive and merciless manner and crush its resistance with such brutality that it will not forget it for decades to come… The greater the number of representatives of the reactionary clergy and reactionary bourgeoisie we succeed in executing for this reason, the better.”

As quoted in Richard Pipes, The Unknown Lenin: From the Secret Archive (1996), pp. 152-4.

I don’t figure Lenin as a saint, but I’m immediately suspicious of this kind of content because the character assassination of Communists by taking them out of context is old hat for the bourgeoisie and their minions. That they’d do so on his quote page is completely unsurprising. That each quote comes from the same source makes them even more suspect in my opinion. Lo, a short search later:

Reichman on Pipes, 'The Unknown Lenin:  From the Secret Archive' 

Author: Richard Pipes Reviewer: Henry Reichman   

The Unknown Lenin might better better be titled "the well-known Richard Pipes."  The book contains 113 previously unpublished documents attributed to Lenin, mostly brief memoranda and telegrams, or on which the Soviet leader penned marginal jottings, or, in a few cases (e.g., Lenin's 1886 Patent of Nobility), simply materials, largely ephemeral, concerning Lenin.  Nine additional documents, mostly telegrams to Lenin by other Bolsheviks, are included in an appendix.  Only a handful of the materials, encompassing altogether perhaps thirty or thirty-five pages of the text, can reasonably be considered substantive.  In a significant number of items Lenin's only contributions are often cryptic marginalia, sometimes simply the notation "into the archive."  A few documents are merely trivial, including an order for medications from the Kremlin pharmacy. With the major exception of one important and revealing text of a speech on the 1920 Polish war, virtually the entire substance of the book lies in editor Richard Pipes's tendentious introduction and interpretive commentary and notes, which imply if not argue that these newly released materials must alter previously indulgent (if not favorable) views of Lenin.  Since Pipes has spent nearly half a century berating the Soviet founder as the evil genius of our century, the book is hardly a surprise. 

It is hard to imagine that much documentary material by or about Lenin had not already been published by his Soviet successors, if not in the five editions of his Collected Works, the last of which numbered 55 volumes and included more than 3,000 publications and documents, then in the long run of Leninskii Sbornik, a pedantic and largely inconsequential journal of Leniniana.   Nonetheless, some Lenin materials (although apparently no true "works") were withheld from publication because either in tone or substance they tended to show the founding Communist in a harsh light or, apparently, because they were deemed too revealing of foreign policy formation.   Whether these brief materials, which in English translation here cover in totol just slightly more than half the book's 204 pages, are adequate to prompt even a minor reassessment is, at the least, problematic. Pipes acknowledges that "it would be naive, of course, to expect [these documents] to alter in some fundamental way our perception of Lenin's personality or his politics."  However, they do, he continues, "cast fresh light on Lenin's motives, attitudes, and expectations" (p. 6).   Pipes claims that these materials reveal Lenin to be "a heartless cynic, who in many ways provided a model for Stalin" (p. 1), and "a thoroughgoing misanthrope" (p. 11) with a "policeman's mentality" (p. 12), who "for humankind at large ... had nothing but scorn" (p. 10). 

Taken as a whole, the documents show no such thing.  The brutal rhetoric found here, especially in some Civil War-era telegrams, certainly reconfirms Lenin's ruthlessness, but this has hardly been hidden, even by Soviet censors.  Even when read in isolation the documents do not prove, nor sometimes simply suggest, all that Pipes implies they do.  A few cases of inflated and bloodthirsty rhetoric in the midst of an extraordinarily brutal civil war, some anti-clerical rantings by a professed and passionate atheist, and pompous self-deluding declarations of faith in world revolution do not prove that Lenin pursued violence for its own sake, sought to annihilate believers, or, in Pipes's most outrageous charge, plotted "the invasion of Germany and England" (p. 7).  Taken out of the context of Lenin's enormous ouevre and divorced from his life and work, these materials do little more than provide additional illustrations (and by no means the most interesting or revealing ones) of the Soviet founder's distinctive and remarkable combination of stubborn dogmatism with tactical flexibility verging on opportunism, cemented, to be sure, by a certain cold-blooded utilitarian idealism.  Pipes, it seems, confronts these hitherto secret materials like a Vichy policeman who finds gambling at Rick's Place.  He is "shocked!" 

Here and there, of course, the documents do add to our knowledge of Lenin's career and early Soviet history.  Two documents suggest that Allied landings in Murmansk in early 1918, which began over foreign military involvement in the Russian Civil War, were approved by Lenin and Stalin.  That the Bolsheviks received German money even after 1917 is apparently confirmed in a note from August 1918: "The Berliners will send some more money: if the scum delay, complain to me formally" (p. 53).  Several documents shed additional light on Soviet intentions and plans for the 1922 Genoa Conference, although it is by no means clear that these show how "Lenin deliberately set himself to 'wreck' Genoa even before the conference had even convened" (p. 6), as Pipes overconfidently declares.

Additional materials add support to interpretations already held by most historians on the basis of other, and often better, evidence. Transfer of the legacy of the Bolshevik sympathizer N. P. Shmit through the false marriages of his sisters to Bolshevik activists, which stirred a ruckus with the Mensheviks and in the International, is documented, although nothing new is added to our knowledge of this affair.  Lenin's intimate relationship with Inessa Armand is hinted at in four letters from 1914 and four others from late 1916 and 1917.  His peculiar tolerance of the tsarist agent and Bolshevik Duma deputy Roman Malinovsky is shown to have continued well into 1917.  Several notes, letters and telegrams to other Bolshevik leaders suggest that Lenin did not hold many of his comrades in the highest regard, although these are far from indicating even signals of the kind of paranoiac megalomania associated with the behavior toward subordinates of Stalin and Mao in their later years.   Indeed, one genuinely interesting revelation is how much Lenin concerned himself with the health of his fellow revolutionaries, often ordering scrupulous obedience to doctors' orders as well as rest stays in dachas and spas.  Other documents suggest that, as most historians have already come to see, Stalin played a greater role and was closer politically to Lenin than early historians and most contemporaries acknowledged.

Pipes's commentary occasionally misinterprets or often unjustifiably infers too much from specific documents.  Lenin begins a letter to Armand in July 1914: "Best greetings for the commencing revolution in Russia."  According to Pipes, this "reveals that Lenin saw the outbreak of the First World War as inevitably leading to a revolution in Russia" (p. 27).  Perhaps.  It is equally if not more likely, however, that Lenin's confidence stemmed from that month's general strike and street fighting in St. Petersburg and accompanying Bolshevik gains in the trade union movement, if it was not simply a formal declaration of standard revolutionary optimism. Pipes produces a four-page memorandum by Trotsky from October 1919 criticizing a Central Committee decision on military operations against the White general Denikin.  Lenin's sole contribution to this document, one of the longer ones in the book, is a brief appendage:  "Received 1 October. Lenin: (nothing but bad nerves; [the issue] was not raised at the plenum; it is strange to raise it now" (p. 73)  From this notation alone Pipes somehow concludes that "Lenin's cavalier dismissal of his advice indicates that he did not hold Trotsky's military abilities in high esteem" (p. 70), a possibility, to be sure, but certainly a highly exaggerated and unjustified inference from such spare evidence. 

And then there is the letter to foreign commissar Chicherin of August 1921 in which Lenin urges collaboration with "those Germans who want to overturn the Versailles peace" (p. 132).  Here is Pipes's interpretation: "The letter makes explicit Soviet Russia's policy of secretly collaborating with those elements in Germany which wanted to 'overturn the Versailles treaty,' that is, the Nazis and other nationalists" (p. 131).  The document, of course, makes no mention at all of the Nazis, who were then an infant sect probably unknown to Soviet diplomats, much less to Lenin.  Indeed, no mention is made of any extra-governmental nationalist grouping, including not only the Nazis but the then far more numerous and influential Freikorps.  What is articulated here is an example of Lenin's well-known strategy, given full implementation at Rapallo in 1922, of playing the imperialist blocs against each other.  Elsewhere Pipes writes that "the Soviet strategy of destroying the Versailles treaty by forming an alliance with right-wing German elements ... was consummated two decades later in the Hitler-Stalin pact" (p. 95).  This crude attempt to lay responsibility for 1939 on Lenin would be laughable if it were not such a clear example of biased scholarship. 

Perhaps the most egregious example of how Pipes reads into documents conclusions that they do not necessarily support, is his contention that Lenin denied requests to intervene against anti-Semitic pogroms perpetrated by the Red Army on its retreat from Poland.  On October 1, 1920, the Jewish Section (Evsektsiia) of the Central Committee reported such attacks by units of the First Cavalry Army.  The report, included by Pipes (pp. 116-17), was forwarded to the Central Committee eighteen days later and to Lenin in mid-November.  Lenin's only contribution to this document was to scrawl on it "into the archive," which Pipes construes to mean "that no action was to be taken" (p. 10).  One wonders, however, what action Lenin could have taken six weeks after the fact.  Moreover, the significance of the notation "into the archive" is hardly clear.  Indeed, elsewhere Pipes reproduces a note from Trotsky with Lenin's "into the archive" annotation (p. 136) as evidence of action that WAS taken by Lenin. There are several other examples as well of documents marked "into the archive" by Lenin which Pipes uses to illustrate how Lenin concerned himself with the issues they addressed.   [Lenin's November 1919 draft theses concerning policy in the Ukraine, however, are another matter.  Here Lenin proposes to "treat the Jews and urban inhabitants in the Ukraine with an iron rod, transferring them to the front, not letting them into government agencies ..." (p. 77). This certainly evidences at least a pandering to the presumed anti-Semitism of the Ukraininian masses, although not necessarily blatant anti-Semitism of Lenin's own.] 

One document in the collection surely does highlight the calculating brutality that emerged in Lenin, especially in the wake of the Civil War.  In a March 1922 letter to Molotov on policy toward the church, Lenin writes: "It is precisely now and only now, when in the starving regions people are eating human flesh, and hundreds if not thousands of corpses are littering the roads, that we can (and therefore must)  carry out the confiscation of church valuables with the most savage and merciless energy, not stopping [short of] crushing any resistance.  It is precisely now and only now that the enorous majority of the peasant mass will be for us or at any rate will not be in a condition to support in any decisive way that handful of Black Hundred clergy and reactionary urban petty bourgeoisie who can and want to attempt a policy of violent resistance to the Soviet clergy.  We must, come what may, carry out the confiscation of church valuables in the most decisive and rapid manner, so as to secure for ourselves a fund of several hundred million gold rubles (one must recall the gigantic wealth of some of the monasteries and abbeys).  Without this fund, no government work in general, no economic construction in particular, and no defense of our position in Genoa especially is even conceivable ...  All considerations indicate that later we will be unable to do this, because no other moment except that of desperate hunger will give us a mood among the broad peasant masses that will guarantee us the sympathy of these masses or at least their neutrality" (pp. 152-53).

This document, with its chilling rhetoric, is not new, however.  As Pipes acknowledges, it was smuggled out of the Central Party Archive in the late 1960s and published in 1970 in Paris.  Its republication in the official Izvestiia TsK in 1990, however, dispelled skepticism about its authenticity.  More important, it cannot stand on its own as evidence of Bolshevik policy toward the church or even of Lenin's own views.  These were much more complex than this collection or Pipes's explanatory material will admit.  Moreover, it certainly cannot be said to evidence a POLICY of callous disregard for famine victims, since it is contemporaneous with Soviet efforts to involve both Russians and foreigners in relief efforts. 

Surely the most useful materials concern the 1920 war with Poland, although Pipes's contention that some documents indicate that the Soviets planned an invasion even before they were attacked by Pilsudski's forces cannot be supported by the extremely thin and murky references offered as evidence.  In particular, the stenographic record of a speech delivered by Lenin to the Ninth Conference of the Communist Party in September 1920, which as the longest document in the collection occupies twenty pages, is of special interest.  It provides crucial insights into Soviet foreign policy and the attitudes toward world revolution of the Bolshevik leadership; both diplomatic historians and students of Leninism will find it indispensable.  Again, however, Pipes draws unfounded and extreme conclusions. 

To be sure, several documents show that Lenin's optimism about the potential for revolution in the West was stronger and lasted longer than many have believed.  But Pipes's contention that Lenin's speech "indicates that the invasion of Poland had as its objective not only the sovietization of that country but also an immediate advance on Germany and possibly England" (p. 94) is totally unsupported by the text.   Certainly Lenin tells his listeners that the advance on Warsaw was linked to rising hopes of proletarian upheaval in Europe, including Germany and England as well as Poland, but that is quite a different matter from planning an invasion, and certainly not of England, to which there is absolutely no conceivable reference. Lenin was undoubtedly a fanatic, but there is no evidence here or elsewhere that he was a madman.  Indeed, he was very much the realist; the thrust of the speech was to acknowledge "the main and dismal point," which was "that a mistake has undoubtedly been committed" (p. 106). 

The speech also includes a valuable discussion of the Communist attitude toward the Versailles system.  As previously noted, Pipes emphasizes Lenin's recognition that German nationalists and Soviet Communists could make common cause against the peace treaty, and he contends that this portended future developments in Soviet policy, not simply Rapallo but 1939 as well.  Lenin's discussion of the "unnatural characteristic bloc" (p. 102) between right-wing German patriots (he calls them German Kornilovites) and Bolsheviks emphasized, however, the temporary and strictly informal nature of the alliance, warning clearly: "If you form a bloc with the German Kornilovites, they will dupe you" (p. 103). 

One could cite numerous additional examples of largely irrelevant documents and tendentious editing, but I have already spilled too much (cyber)ink on a book about which one wonders why it needed to be published.  Those few documents, such as the speech to the Ninth Conference, that genuinely reveal new information could well have appeared in journals, since they will mainly be of use to scholars. The remaining materials simply reinforce common interpretations and impressions of Lenin's politics and character.  Clearly, the book's editor had a purpose of his own.  In an acknowledgment at the opening of the volume, Yury A. Buranov of the Russian Center for the Preservation and Study of Documents of Recent History, which furnished Pipes with the documents, emphasizes:  "The interpretation of the materials is a matter of the creative and scholarly assessment on the part of the American editor."  It is this interpretation that in the end holds the book together--and it is this interpretation that makes the book a one-sided example of how NOT to read documents. 

A bourgeois minion out to slander a Communist revolutionary by willful distortion and outright fabrication. Goodness, can you believe it?

[marvel-lous-things]

Frost Giants and Frozen Things

Words: <3k

Pairing: nothing romantic. Irondad. Accidental and unwilling Loki + Peter friendship. Thor being an annoying older brother. Pepperony and Thruce mention, because I am trash and couldn’t help myself.

Description: Loki doesn't want to watch a stupid movie made for midgardian children. Peter thinks he should. Especially because the movie in question involves ice, siblings and a happy ending. And some kick ass songs, damn what the critics say.

A/N: Welp. As promised. A 12:00 am idea brought to life. Hope ya’ll like :D

I spent three hours on this sksjksjs

#############################

When you get to be about 1500 years old, there isn't really much you can say you haven't done.

Take Loki, for instance.

If one were to ask the right people, one would receive (in frightening detail) about 3 million different anecdotes of Loki doing things that nobody in their right mind would ever do. Ever. Never ever. Even if they were paid for it.

But Loki had done these things, and oftentimes, for free.

A certain endeavour with a horse comes to mind. And one with offending the dwarfs. And dressing Thor up as a bride to get his hammer back. And- well, you get the idea.

And yet, while it would be easier to list the things he hasn't done than things he has, watching a Disney movie (surprisingly) landed on the former list...

...A goddamn travesty that one plucky kid from Queens intended to fix as soon as possible.

Which is why Loki found a very excited Peter Parker stuck to the outside of his bedroom window, one fine Sunday afternoon. And drew the curtains immediately over his face, much to the teenager's chagrin.

Peter, however, was not one to give up easily. And so began the insistent knocking on the window. And the subsequent yelling.

"MR LOKI SIR?"

Damn it.

"I WAS WONDERING IF YOU'D WANT TO WATCH A MOVIE WITH ME."

Ignore him, Loki told himself, ignore him and he'll go aw-

"I KNOW YOU'RE STILL THERE."

Damn it. He wasn't going to go away upon being ignored. Loki tried another approach.

"Leave, Parker, before I tell Stark about your algebra test."

"My what?"

"Your algebra test."

"I got 99% on it? And I told him already?"

Oh.

"Your chemistry test?"

"96%"

"Physics?"

"100%"

"Geometry?"

"92%"

"Trigonometry?"

"97%"

And that was the end of the list of all the subjects Tony cared about. Peter could've failed in the others and Tony would laugh and buy him ice cream to cheer him up. Tony had gotten into trouble with May, once, when he let Peter stay over time as a reward for getting 69% on his German test. So Loki threatening Peter about his other scores was pointless.

God damn it. Why was this kid so smart.

"I'm not interested. Go. Away."

Peter didn't go away.

"I THINK YOU'LL REALLY LIKE THIS ONE, SIR. IT'S A STORY OF TREACHERY, LOVE, AND SECOND CHANCES."

That caught Loki's attention, for a few seconds anyway. "Treachery, you say?"

Treachery was always fun.

"YEAH. ALSO THE MAIN CHARACTER IS REALLY COOL. I MEAN LITERALLY. SHE HAS ICE POWERS. AND SHE-"

The curtains opened suddenly, startling Peter enough for him to nearly lose footing and fall. Loki was disappointed that he didn't.

"Ice powers?"

"YEAH!" Peter was getting more and more shrill by the second. "SHE'S BASICALLY FORCED TO HIDE THEM ALL HER LIFE UNTIL ONE DAY THEY JUST COME OUT AGAINST HER WILL AND-"

That piqued the trickster God's attention. "Was she, by any chance, adopted?"

"WELL IT ISN'T MENTIONED EXPLICITLY BUT I THINK SHE WAS ‘CAUSE-"

"You don't have to yell."

"-Because her parents and her sister have brown hair but she's blonde! Also she's the only one in the family who can do magic! Mr Stark says I'm reading too much into a movie for kids. But I think there's a lot of subtext in there."

Loki raised a well groomed eyebrow, staring at Peter in careful deliberation. The plot of the movie being described to him hit closer to home than he would like to admit. Was it possible that it was, somehow, based off of him?

Of course, It was highly unlikely that humans would celebrate the life of someone who tried to enslave them by creating a motion picture in his honour.

But then again, humans were stupid.

He didn't realise he'd been staring too long (and too intensely) until he heard Peter clear his throat nervously.

"I really think you'd enjoy it. But if you don't want to-"

"No." Loki said definitively.

He watched as Peter's face fell, triggering the slightest hint of guilt in him. But he wasn't going to waste a few hours watching something that he doubted he would even like, when he could spend it on practicing his skills with a knife instead. It had been a while since he'd stabbed Thor. Loki didn't want to lose touch.

He closed the curtains once more, and began to walk away. Peter, however, gave one last, valiant effort towards his cause.

"The songs are great too, you know"

What the hell?

The kid was as stubborn as his father (Tony insisted he was simply Peter’s mentor, but he'd seen the way Tony looked at the kid).

"You're still here?"

Peter marched on, unperturbed. "They're deep. I especially like this one song about letting go of your past?" He cocked his head to the side, trying to peer through the small slit in between the two pieces of fabric shielding the room from his vision.

"It's about how she lived in fear and anger but finally managed to leave it all behind her. I thought you would appreciate that, Mr Loki."

Loki would, actually. He had been, after all, shunned by almost everyone for being different during his childhood. For not being the strong, valiant prince everyone expected him to be. Because he’d found comfort in magic and books, rather than in swords and armour, unlike his beefy blonde counterpart. 

But a watching a kid's movie? With this little twerp, no less?

Thor would ensure that Loki would never hear the end of it. But then again, when was the last time Loki let Thor's opinion stop him from doing anything at all?

"All right," Loki sighed, pretending to act defeated rather than interested, "I'll watch it if you'll get off my back."

"AWESOME!"

"I suppose so. Now go home."

Silence followed. Until Peter spoke again.

"Actually, I was hoping you would let me in?"

Loki groaned. "What now?"

"I'm sorry sir, I just left my homework in Mr Stark's workshop. Three days ago. And it was due yesterday. May will kill me if I don't submit it tomorrow, so if I could just go get it-"

"Then perish."

"Okay, that was absolutely perfect, and I wish I'd caught that on camera but I've really gotta-"

The window suddenly opened inwards, causing Peter to land facedown on the floor with a soft "ow". Loki hid the smirk that momentarily flitted across his face, and watched in amusement as the kid stammered over an apology and quite literally ran towards the workshop.

He hoped for Peter's sake that the movie would be good.

#############################

Monday, 6:00 pm.

After giving Peter’s words some careful thought, Loki actually found himself looking forward to watching the movie, unwilling as he was to admit it. And besides, even if he did admit it for some godforsaken reason, no one would actually believe him. Loki “I would rather spend time with a horse than you” Odinson, spending time with anyone, let alone Peter Parker, was unheard of.

Elsewhere, Tony was having trouble believing this exact thing.

“It’s okay, Pete,” Tony sighed, the sound very obviously exaggerated, “I understand if you don’t want to spend time with me. Just don’t lie about the reason.” 

Tony, however, sounded so unbearably dejected that Peter nearly burst into tears then and there. Tony had just been trying to get a rise out of Peter. Unfortunately, he’d been a little too successful.

“BUT MR STARK I LOVE SPENDING TIME WITH YOU, I SWEAR I JUST-“

“okay.”

“ HE’S NEVER WATCHED A DISNEY MOVIE BEFORE SO I THOUGHT-“

“uh-huh?”

“HE WAS MISSING OUT ON SO MUCH, I JUST-“

“Relax, I’m just messing with you. Go on your date with MJ or Ned or whoever the lucky kid is. I promise I won’t tell May,” He winked.

“I’M NOT HIDING A DATE! LOKI REALLY WANTED TO WATCH-“

“If it’s all the same to you,” came a very annoyed voice from the doorway of the workshop, “shall we commence our movie session? Or may I retreat to my chambers?”

Loki stood there, arms crossed and leaning against the wall, glaring at the red-faced teenager and the rather surprised man standing next to him.  He watched as Peter slowly turned to tony, triumph written all over his boyish face. Loki rolled his eyes.

“I mean, if you’d rather continue yelling at your father, I could just-“

“He isn’t my son-“

“Yeah, yeah. Save it.” He turned to Peter. “well?”

Peter nodded hastily, immediately running up the stairs, towards the living room.

Tony just stared after him in confusion. He still wasn’t sure what exactly he should be believing. On one hand, Loki himself seemed to be admitting that he was going to watch a Disney movie with Peter, but on the other hand,

Loki? Disney movie? What?

The only time those words could possibly go together was if Loki stabbed someone with a shard of the lion king DVD tony had lying around somewhere. Or something to that effect.

His internal war, however, was cut short by Loki turning on his heel. “I suppose I’ll be borrowing him for about two hours” he said, with an (attempted) air of mild contempt. Just before he disappeared up the stairs, however, Tony caught the unmistakable hint of a smile playing on the god’s lips.

Which, of course, just left the genius more confused than ever.

#############################

Loki did have to admit that the premise was more interesting than he’d expected. 

The humour was childish at best, but considering the fact that Peter seemed to very nearly choke on his popcorn every time they made a sad attempt at a joke, he decided to hold his scathing remarks back.

For now.

But apart from that, the plot was far too familiar for comfort. He had been reliably informed that the movie was not, in fact, about him (which nearly made him change his mind about watching it). And yet, here he was, the beginnings of tears building up in his eyes. The last time he’d felt such emotion was while watching a play based off his own supposed death. Thor hadn’t really appreciated it, though.

He let his mind wander a little, reminiscing on the plays he and Thor had watched as a child, recreating them in the comfort of their own home when they were left alone, with nothing to do. when they grew up, however, Loki started spending lesser and lesser time with his brother. he wondered if Thor felt the same way the younger sister in the movie- Anna, was it?- did. Hoping in vain for his brother to come out and talk to him.

He turned his attention back to the unnecessarily large TV screen when it showed the younger princess- Anna, he reminded himself again- agree to marry a man she’d just met.

“Well then,” Loki shook his head disapprovingly, “she and Thor would get along, wouldn’t they?.”

Peter knew that Loki was probably referring to Thor and Jane’s whirlwind romance, but he didn’t say anything. Heimdall could be watching. And while Bruce and Thor seemed to be very happy together, he wouldn’t take kindly to Peter dissing his former paramour. And the last thing Peter wanted was to get Thor mad.

The odd pair sat in silence, Loki giving each and every word uttered on screen a lot more thought than anyone would have deemed necessary. He hung on to every scene, every second of music, all of it gluing him to his seat. Peter excused himself to go to the bathroom at one point. Loki simply scoffed at the inefficiency of human bladders, and didn’t bother to budge until Peter came back from his short break with a refill of popcorn.

And then came the song Peter had no doubt been waiting for. Loki could tell Peter loved it because he began singing along, albeit agonisingly off-key. Loki rolled his eyes in second hand embarrassment, but again. Didn’t say anything. He liked to think that his mother would have been proud. Childish as that sounded.

Eventually, Loki began humming along too. Except less off-key, of course. He couldn’t help it. Replace a few words of the song with his own, and it could very well have been about him. Also, it was catchier than he would like to admit.

Just then, Loki heard the sound of approaching footsteps, stopping somewhere in the room. Loki frowned a little. The only reason anyone would stop would be to either talk to him or Peter, both of which annoyed him. He didn’t want pointless conversations interrupting his entertainment. If he wanted that, he would’ve just watched the movie with Thor.

“Having fun?” came a feminine voice from behind the sofa.

Loki didn’t bother to turn around. Whoever it was could wait.

He only recognised the voice as Pepper’s when he saw her ring-adorned hand affectionately ruffle Peter’s hair.

“Yes, miss Potts.” Peter smiled, not turning around either. He seemed to somewhat agree with Loki about interruptions, but was too polite to ignore Pepper.

“May dropped off some cupcakes for you, but I accidentally left them in Mr Stark’s workshop, so I would hurry if I were you.”

Pepper sighed, thanking him as she left the room, her footsteps echoing crisply on the marble floor.

Only then did Loki turn away from the screen, his eyes landing on Peter. He marveled at how the kid seemed to be comfortable with everyone around him. Of all the people who came by the tower- Steve, Bucky, The bird guys, Black widow, hell, even the pizza delivery guys- all seemed to enjoy being around Peter. Loki noted, with some jealousy, that Thor enjoyed the kid’s company more than his own. He would never tell Thor that, though.

In all honesty, Peter seemed to have simply walked out of a Disney movie himself.

Loki felt a keen twinge of regret that he’d become estranged from his family until it was too late to rectify it. He pushed the thoughts away, however, choosing to not deal with them at the moment (or any moment, for that matter). He had a plot to follow.

And that he did, just as closely as ever, until the treachery Peter had mentioned occurred.

And when it did? For the first time in years, Loki, calm, eloquent Loki, stood up and screamed at the top of his voice.

“WHAT THE FUCK?”

Peter was startled, although he completely understood Loki's reaction.

“Mr Loki please sit dow-“

“WHAT THE FUCK WAS THAT?

“I know, I hate Hans too, but please si-“

“HE SAID “IF ONLY THERE WAS SOMEONE OUT THERE WHO LOVED YOU”? THAT’S THE WORST FUCKING PLOT TWIST I’VE EVER SEEN.”

“I agree, but-“

“DOES HE DIE IN THE END? DOES HE FUCKING DIE IN THE END?”

Peter didn’t reply. He wasn’t about to spoil it, oh no. He didn’t put all that effort into getting the arrogant god to sit down and watch this with him only to spoil the ending. And no doubt have him leave before watching the whole thing.

“You’ll find out” Peter smiled innocently.

Which, of course, only made Loki want to choke the answer out of him.

He quelled his urges, however, and sat down, heaving a sigh of relief when the character with the unfortunate sideburns (Loki refused to address the bastard by name) did in fact die, and all was set right. 

Loki got the happy ending he was promised.

He also got tissues for Peter, because the kid wouldn’t stop bawling his eyes out, no matter how many times Loki threatened to strangle him until he stopped. Sure, the ending left Loki’s eyes a little misty as well, but this?

Loki awkwardly left him there on the sofa, hoping someone would else would find and deal with the sobbing mess of a teenager instead.

He had other things to do. Like look up more movies to watch.

#############################

 “So, brother, I heard you spent some time with Stark’s son?” Thor said, amusement (and chocolate syrup) plastered across his face.

“He isn’t my s- why do I even bother?” Tony sighed, tossing Thor a washcloth to wipe the sticky mess off his majestic beard. Someone really ought to teach him to not drink the syrup from the bottle.

“That, Stark, I do not know.” He grinned, turning his attention back to his irritated brother.

“Well?”

“Well what?”

Thor rolled his eyes. Loki could be so difficult sometimes. 

“The movie, dear brother! Did you like it? I know I did!”

“He pestered you into watching it too?”

“Pester me? Of course not! I’d seen posters of it the last time I’d come to earth, so I asked him about it, and we decided to watch it together.” Thor shrugged, like it was obvious. He omitted the part where Peter nearly tackled him to the ground in a hug.

“Peter told me you liked it. And I think you would have too, considering…” he gestured vaguely towards Loki's…entire body.

Loki frowned, “Considering what?”

Thor fidgeted with his mug of hot chocolate. “Don’t be daft, brother. You know what I’m talking about”

“No, really, I don’t”

Thor was getting more uncomfortable by the second. Loki reveled in it.

“No, I just- I thought you’d relate to her- her struggles, and- The ice-“ Thor stammered, before Loki put up an impatient hand.

“I was joking. And yes, the movie was…tolerable” Loki lied through his teeth. He’d absolutely loved it, but the day Thor finds that out is the day Loki stabs him in the face. Again.

“Just tolerable?” Thor yelled, incredulous. “That movie is the best damn thing I’ve watched in years! Way better than your stupid little overly dramatic plays! I knew you were haughty, brother, but to this extent-”

His voice got even louder, prompting Tony to awkwardly scurry out of the kitchen, 50th coffee cup in hand.

“If you don’t take your words back right now, Loki, I SWEAR TO VALHALLA-“

Loki cringed. “Okay! Fine! I liked it! There, you happy?”

Thor beamed, taking a big swig of his hot chocolate. “Absolutely.”

“Good,” Loki smirked in response,

“Now let it go”

  #############################

Somewhere in the vents, an excited squeak came from the boy who’d heard the obvious Frozen reference.

He pulled out a crumpled list titled “People who haven’t watched frozen” and a badly chewed pen from his pocket, crossing out Loki's name with a smile on his face.

Up next, Anthony Edward Stark.

#############################

A/N part 2: HELLO!! THANKS FOR READING IT THROUGH!!! YOU HAVE NO IDEA HOW MUCH IT MEANS TO ME!

tag list: @roanoaks @thefandomforme @shattered-shadows @queenofalotofdifferentworlds @advocateofathena @satans-poptarts @uselesspileofstressandsadness @melodielgrace @victoritris @marvelficwriter

“Hello You’re My Friends And If You Could Validate Me That Would Be Great Thanks” tag list: @spoopy-marvel-bean @marvel-or-not-to-marvel @gumgamug @cosmic-disasters @spiderboiii @windexnoises @animewhispersdreamland @anxieteaandbiscuits @persepumpkin @my-babies-are-ash @dexpoolb @anoptimisticdevil @asaelia

[desertbroad]

kaj + (inverted) tropes: part two! * * i don’t know all the actual Official TM names for these tropes, so most are made up. also, you might notice the regular trope list (part 1 of this headcanon) is significantly longer. this is because kaj has a few main inverted tropes but tons more regular ones, since tropes are like atoms: they make up everything. i just wanted to focus on the few inversions that created her character and let the rest come naturally! under a read more for length. ** also as of 7/6/19 part one isn’t done yet. yes i know please don’t shame me ok IM GETTING TO IT

fridged woman (aka back from the dead)—

for this one i took inspiration from laura moon from american gods, with a few tweaks (love neil gaiman, but some of the things about her character are...a bit squicky). unlike a good number of women in media, kaj isn’t shoved over gently and pronounced dead so that a man can grow from her pain. in fact, she’s shot in the head twice, pronounced dead, & buried. while her “death” means more pain and character development for the characters surrounding her, it means pain and character development for her, too. truth be told, she survives a hell of a lot more than any average person should, especially one with her low luck stat. half of this is the fun and wacky way new vegas’ world works (obviously, no real person could survive all this), but also because of her good ol’ courier determination. things that should’ve fridged kaj but haven’t include: two shots to the head, numerous combat scrapes, being stabbed, having her brain/heart/spine removed, having a bomb collar attached to her neck, killing an entire fortification of trained legionnaires, stepping on landmines, etc etc. the courier is pretty much the bruce willis of fallout.

world ending vengeance—

specifically applies to certain characters. while most others who piss kaj off get the full brunt of her wrath (see: caesar, mr. house, elijah, general oliver, ulysses), benny, along with dr. mobius & the think tank & mcnamara*, get a pass. in fact, she lets him go not once or twice, but on three separate occasions, even knowing he’s likely to betray her again. the reason why? not even kaj knows. some people speculate it’s because she likes him / slept with him (incorrect; she liked house to a degree, and slept with caesar); others speculate it’s because they’re so similar (also incorrect; she shared an alarming number of similarities with ulysses & elijah). the theory that comes closest to the truth is that she pities him. it fits in line her past behavior with mobius & the think tank, who were physically unable to see the effects of their actions and thus were spared a horrible fate. likewise, kaj seems to have judged benny to be innocent in her own personal court, and though he continues to be a thorn in her side again and again, she refuses to “sentence” him for anything. it helps his cause that his plan helped her take over vegas, and he created yes man, one of the only living beings she’s ever fully trusted. also a slight inversion of kaj’s maneater / black widow trope; the one person she truly should seduce and kill, she doesn’t.

that said, benny doesn’t get away from their encounters without any punishment—after narrowly escaping being crucified, both kaj and benny have matching rope burns around their wrists. it’s her morbid idea of a joke.

*mcnamara doesn’t fit within this trope, but kaj spares the bos for veronica & christine’s sake, despite yes man’s warnings. also for the off chance that they might convert to being her allies (they don’t, and this choice helps lend itself to more BOS trouble all over the wasteland).

white man cowboy—

kind of a simple inversion that’s been done before, but an important one and one that i like a lot. for starters, the “john wayne” cowboy is a bastardization of a history that was made up of ethnic minorities and whitewashed for hollywood aesthetic (also fuck you john wayne). while none of my research has come up with anything about women of color or nonbinary people in the western scene, only moc (whether this is intentional or not, i’m not sure), i still wanted to write kaj as non-male. frankly, this is because i wanted her to be an inversion of tired tropes, and that included being a debonair, byronic woman / non gender conforming hero (think gentleman jack) instead of a debonair, byronic white dude. we’ve got 20 of those for every fleshed out woman/enby on screen, lbr. kaj is also a femme fatale, but only by coincidence; she’s more of a wandering heart breaker than a necessarily dangerous woman, much like many of the heroes on screen.

i also find that non-men of color are one of the most underrepresented minorities in fiction—even media that celebrates diversity simplifies them down (hamilton), or centers their narrative and entire purpose around a man (hamilton, again). nevermind nonbinary people / trans folk. for that reason, i wanted kaj’s story to be about a woman of color / someone who doesn’t conform to expectations and doesn’t allow herself to be put in the sidelines for a white person or a male to lead her life. and regardless of whether a woman filling this swaggering, womanizing cowboy role is accurate to history or not, fallout’s setting lends itself an air of exaggeration, so i felt it was appropriate to include her here, instead of arguing with people over whether someone like her existed in actual history (my suspicions say yes, and that these people have simply been erased from the narrative for the convenience of certain people’s feelings, but still).

smarter than you look / deadly doctor (this one actually has a tvtropes page! look it up!)—

from the deadly doctor page : ‘ surely the ultimate example of the morally ambiguous doctorate. one reason for this is due to all his/her training : while having advanced knowledge on the human body can be used to save people, it also gives all the knowledge on how to injure and kill people with minimal effort by knowing all the body's weak points. some more sympathetic examples equate to the medical version of a well-intentioned extremist, who may certainly have good (or at least sympathetic/understandable) intentions but ruthless medical ethics. ’

one of the most important things kaj took from her thorough education is medical training—unable to depend on anyone after being traumatized, trusting any doctor who happened along to treat her illnesses was out of the question. she was also smart enough to know the original kaj wouldn’t be around to heal her up forever. thus, she began her training as a self preservation instinct; but over time, as she grew and relearned how to be compassionate and empathetic, she decided to use healing for good, too. trained as a young girl by the original kaj, and then later trained officially as a combat medic by the ncr, kaj has spent a countless amount of hours inside army tents, healing wounds and assisting doctors with tough cases. she even keeps a medical bag on her person for exactly that sort of situation (especially since supplies in the mojave aren’t exactly easy to dig up). though she’s a big scientist in general (the big mt saw to that), medicine is her specialty. she’s even stitched up her own wounds, though it’s not something she particularly enjoys (it takes a lot of whiskey and something for her to bite down on).

for reference, consider this scene of anton from no country for old men (TW: he’s performing self surgery, so it’s pretty gruesome). though both anton and kaj’s lifestyles are rough and even sadistic at times, they both still have medical training—if not to protect others, then to at least protect themselves. and like anton, it shows kaj’s inability to trust anyone with her most important commodity: herself. this makes her surgery in the big empty doubly as horrifying, given she took specific pains for something like this to not happen. it’s why she refuses to leave without all of her organs (also, stubbornness). all of this is just one of the ways kaj is way more ... well, everything than she looks. which leads into...

underestimate me if you dare, aka femme fatale (sort of?)—

though fallout prides itself on being a soft reset on the world, people’s perceptions of minorities are still ... iffy, due to real world influences by the creators. thus, the people around kaj often jump to assumptions about her based on her identity—mostly, that she’s weak. once, it offended her, but now it’s a perception that she encourages. after all, she’s not flat out strong like your usual hero, but is more of a hamlet-type; smart, perceptive, fast, and willing to strike from the shadows. it’s hard to do any of that if you’re putting on a big performance about your power (though admittedly, she’s been known to go big or go home if she’s planning on killing everyone; if she’s not faking nice and telling you what you wanna hear, trouble’s ahead).

of course, the reality is that kaj is a powerhouse. but these perceptions about her supposed weakness are why posing as a legion member is so easy—those who think she’s weak underestimate her or keep their distance, which gives her leave to do what she wants. she’s viewed more like a pet than a person by most, and though it frustrates her at times to pretend, it also gives her leave to do more, than if she were to simply pose as a man.

all that said, kaj doesn’t exactly qualify as a femme fatale. most of her lovers are just information givers, and they escape from their interaction unharmed. kaj killing her bed mates is actually less likely than her just sparing them and letting them go, none the wiser. of course, you kill one tyrant (maybe two or three) and suddenly you’re a black widow—

[hamsandlich]

On Steampunk

I’ve been trying to get into Jim Butcher’s Aeronaut’s Windlass, but I just can’t. I can tell from the first few chapters that i’ve already read it before, or I may as well have.

Lately, when I try to read steampunk stories, I have trouble investing myself into the story, because there’s a trend in the modern steampunk genre(moreso in the short stories than the novels) where the story and characters have become secondary to the superficial trappings of steampunk. Needlessly large brass gears everywhere, mustaches, excessively long vaguely British names, and tophats. So. Many. Tophats. There are steampunk stories where the genre has become an over the top parody of itself (similar to what happens sometimes with cyberpunk and the concept of grimdark). And I think this is a problem, steampunk isn’t about the superficial trappings of the genre: the clockwork robots, the sci-fi weapons made of brass and wood, the airships, these things are good in small doses, but they’re just set pieces, that is the absolute upper limit of their potential, they exist for characters to interact with, but often times, I see steampunk stories where the set pieces are a sizable chunk of the narrative. And no matter how good with imagery an author is, I guarantee you that you can’t make a story out of adjectives and descriptors alone, not in print format.

Continuing this, if a good chunk of your story is little more than airships, robots, and lightning guns, why is it a steampunk story instead of a science fantasy or high fantasy story? What about it mandates that your story be steampunk if its all about flashy toys and action, other than the fact that you like the aesthetic of brass gears and tophats? Think about how advanced technologically(or magically) your setting would have to be to necessitate those things being common place, how those advances could be applied to society outside of action scenes. If you ignore this too much, it becomes science fantasy or high fantasy at a certain point, and there’s nothing wrong with science fantasy or high fantasy, just don’t classify it as steampunk.

The thing is, a lot of science fantasy (and thus common steampunk) tropes are just versions of pre-existing technology and concepts that have been simultaneously simplified(the science aspect) and exaggerated(the fantasy aspect). And that’s not good, because the setting can often become too fantastic to be relatable to. When we read fiction, we do it partially for escapism, but we also do it to find relatable characters and experiences.

I think a lot of the potential of steampunk has been buried under the superficial trappings, the social and intellectual aspects of the genre have been buried under all the brass gears. Most steampunk evokes the late 1800s and early 1900s, particularly Victorian Britain and the Wild West. Cowboys, Gunslingers, Explorers, and Nobility, etc. These are the standard steampunk characters for most stories and very rarely does the aspiring steampunk author think to go outside this comfort zone. Maybe there’s a working class hero every once, but their story is often simplified into a caricature for the sake of impressive set pieces or obvious aesops. 

When I think late 1800s and early 1900s, I think Victorian Britain and the Wild West, but I also think the of Industrialization(on the East Coast of the US and throughout other parts of Europe), the ascendancy of reason and science, the formation of the German Empire, revolutions in Latin America, and the rise of Meiji Japan. And I think of all the horrors that went along with them: the abuses of colonialism, aristocracy, and business interests; the decline and humiliation of Imperial China and other nations; the corrupting influences of racism and laissez-fair capitalism on intellectualism; and the backlash against various forms progress by luddites and regressives smart enough to understand that their livelihoods were at risk, but too foolish or too stubborn to realize that the wheel would turn eventually, whether they liked it or not. This is the essence of steampunk, the story of mankind. Steampunk, and all forms of fiction, serve to provide a lens through which we can view society, science, and all the works of mankind and how we react to such things. And steampunk(and dieselpunk) lets us do this for both the past, the future, and the present, because its ultimately about reaching across time and bringing the traits and developments of different eras together. Its not about swashbuckling, clockwork robots, and airship fleets. And its definitely not about tophats.

For me, gunpowder fantasy(like The Shadow Campaigns[don’t spoil, i’m not caught up]  and The Powder Mage series) does a similar job of what steampunk is supposed to do; its often low magic, which cuts back on the fantastical elements and allows authors to prioritize characterization and narrative; and it often takes a closer look at examining the social developments of the time periods that it borrows from.

[capbuckybuchanan]

The smile that adorned her lips

Steve Rogers x Reader

Word Count: 1927

Warnings: I don’t know, maybe sad crying Steve…

Author’s Note: Hey guys. So I was looking at my old one shots that I’ve wrote for my old blog posts and I found this one. It’s one of my favorite Steve one shots so I decided to repost it. I made a few changes to it, adjusting it to the way I’ve been writing lately so I hope you guys like it. Oh and I’m opening requests again so if you want one, just send one in (read information first please. I have some rules there.)

(I don’t own the gif. All the rights go to the rightful owners/creators.)

She was curled up on the bed, a bag of popcorn in her lap while she directs her attention to the movie that she was currently watching. Her cheeks were damp from her tears, her eyes wide upon seeing the lead characters romantically kiss in the TV in front of her.

Her hair was tied up messily in a high pony tail, her body covered by one of Steve’s sweaters, a Kleenexes packaging right beside her. It was almost night, the sky showing beautiful colors from orange to pink. She directed her attention to the sky for a few seconds, admiring the peacefulness of it all.

The tower was in almost complete silence, sometimes it was possible to hear Tony talking with F.R.I.D.A.Y. every time he walked through the corridor.

She had been feeling the need to relax for just a bit for days. Being around people all the time and training constantly was tiresome so, today when she finished her training alongside Natasha, she decided that she would just watch a movie and try and relax for the rest of the day.

Cleaning her nose with a pink tissue and sniffling ever so slightly she chewed on another popcorn, entranced by the beautiful romantic scene of one of her favorite movies. She had tried to make Clint watch it one time, but the archer just rolled his eyes and flee from the living room with the excuse that Bruce needed him for something.

While taking a sip of her iced tea, she heard the bedroom’s door opening, Steve emerging and sighing softly to himself, removing his jacket and living it on the back of a chair.

She frowned pausing the movie and waiting for Steve to look at her. She could see that he was tired, he was always like that nowadays. Everyone really. With all the missions they’ve been having, sometimes they would were gone for months, the tower’s only visitors being Pepper and Dr. Cho.

Steve looked at her, giving her a tiny smile and laying himself down on the bed, closing his eyes for some minutes.

“You’re okay there Stevie?” She asked softly, turning her body on the bed and facing him – the bag of popcorn forgotten in the bedside table. Her hand reached for his face, palming it softly, the light stubble beneath her fingers, caressing her skin.

Steve just looked at her, an adoring look on his face.

“I’m just tired sweetheart. That’s all. No need to worry that pretty little had of yours.” Steve murmured, his hands reaching for her and embracing her body, his face nuzzling her neck, while her flowery scent invaded his nostrils calming his mind.

“You’re sure? I would like to say that I know you pretty well Mr. Rogers, so if you don’t to talk about it, we don’t need to. But if you want I’m here to listen and to help the best way I can.” She whispered, kissing his cheek lovingly before resting her head again in the white fluffy pillow.

“I’m just tired doll,” Steve said, his voice a mere whisper while looking at her. Seeing her all relaxed and comfortable in one of his sweaters, fuzzy socks and a messy hair, for Steve she couldn’t be more beautiful than in that moment.

“Did something happened in the gym?” She questioned eyebrows raised in confusion.

“No doll, nothing happened there. It was all good. I’m just so tired of being always the strong one.” He said, closing his eyes, throat dry, “Since I was young, I always thought I needed to do something more with my life. My need to enter the army was not just to prove to others that I could help my country too. That I could protect it. I wanted to prove it to myself that I could do something right. I always had so many health problems. A frail body, the asthma.” Steve murmured, caressing her arms with his fingertips,

“I joined the army and then the serum came and I thought – now nothing will stop me from protecting the ones that need protection. And Bucky was there you know? For some, the way I worry about him may be a little exaggerated, but he was the one always there for me when I was being beaten up in the dark alleys, when I was surrounded with problems, when my parents died. He was always there with me.

Than he fell of that train and I felt alone once again. He was my best friend, my annoying older brother. And then all the problems that emerged from that, me going into the ice and along with that losing Peggy. When I woke up, I thought I had nothing again. In a strange decade, with people that I didn’t know.

I joined the Avenges, a group of people that wanted to save the world just like me. That wanted the people to know that someone was there for them. But sometimes it’s too much pressure in everybody’s shoulders.” A silent tear run down his eye, damping his cheek making her reach for it and whipping it away knowing that he needed to get that out of his chest.

“I try to help everyone the best I can, sometimes I know I can be stubborn. I know I can have a different opinion from other colleague, but at the end of the day, they’re my family. I don’t want to disappoint them when they look at e and search for guidance. I don’t want to disappoint you,” Steve whispered looking at her eyes, seeing her eyes full of tears but for his sake, he knew that she was trying hard not to cry. Caressing her face, Steve kissed her lips softly, making her know it was okay. He had her to ground himself. Like an anchor, that wouldn’t let him sinking the in the darkness of his feelings.

“I try to have always this brave façade all the damn time and it’s consuming me. Because I want to help Bucky restore his mind again and making sure he’s okay. I want to help Sam on the grieving of his friend, showing that it’s not his fault. I want to help Natasha and Wanda, making them see that sometimes it’s okay to show emotions, you don’t have to be strong 24/7.

I want Bruce to accept his Hulk side, making see that he can control himself and be the hero he is. I want Clint to annoy everyone with the countless pictures of his kids and although everyone grumbles about how annoying he’s being but will always have a smile on their faces because they’re just so happy for him. I want Thor to feel that Earth is his home too just like Vision who is always so respectful and tries so hard to understand the human world.

I want Peter to know that he’s a hero with or without his suit. His heart it’s what counts. And I want Tony to stop blaming himself for things sometimes don’t working out like he wants them too. He pressures himself too hard. It’s okay to fail sometimes, it’s okay to show vulnerability. It’s okay to stop with his usual responses – I’m always okay guys, I’m just a playboy rich guys who is funny all the time. He’s more than that. Every one of them are more than that.”

She hold him tight to her, his words being caught in his throat, tears rolling down his cheeks, making her heart ache for him. She wanted to say something. She knew how stressful it must be. Although she worked with them, she didn’t went on missions, but she knew how all of them wanting to help the world. Making it a safe place.

She knew the weight of Steve’s shield that he wore all the time on his back. But sometimes he needed to breathe, be just Steve Rogers, the man who likes to draw on napkins and not Captain America – the Hero, the indestructible soldier everyone knew and loved.

Steve suffered like everyone else. He had experienced loss, pain, rage and fear. Sometimes Steve was the one who forgot that he’s just human like everybody else, a man from Brooklyn who just wanted to save the world alongside his best friend since childhood. The tiny Steve Rogers that faced any bully that he came across. He may be different physically now, but every time she looked at him, she could picture the tiny man that ran across a training field and laid his body on top of a grenade, the courage being the fire that fed his veins and heart.

He was a hero to the world and especially to her. Not because of the physical strength, not because of his height or the way his body was ripped with muscle beneath his smooth skin.

But because of his heart.

“Baby, I know how difficult this must be. I can only imagine. I don’t have the notion of what that pressure can do to someone. But one things is certain: I know how strong you are. And like you said before, it’s okay to show emotions and weakness sometimes.  That only makes you human.

You have a beating heart, you’re not a robot and I’m sure all of our crazy friends know how much they mean to you. They know you have their backs on and off the battlefield. People change, things change, the world is always changing either we like it or not. All we can do is try our best. No one expects you to be always the fierce commander. Even heroes bleed sometime.” She murmured against his lips, kissing him tenderly, feeling his cheeks damp from her words and his emotional stress.

Steve pulled her against him, almost covering her body with his needing her around him. Needing her warmth. Steve’s tears stopped gradually and he looked at her in amazement making her blush, her cheeks a tinge of red. Steve always thought that after Peggy he wouldn’t find someone that could understand him or what he did for a living.

But there she was, that amazing woman, holding him and comforting him every time he needed. He loved her with all he had and he knew that no matter what, she would always be there for him. Guiding him through his fears, sleepiness nights tossing and turning in bed, incapable of resting his mind and body because of nightmares. She was the only one who could erase the pain buried deep in his flesh.

She was there to kiss his tears away, to hold his hand and complain when she wanted him to stay a bit longer in bed, to yell at him when he was being reckless, to smile, laugh and blush at his outdated flirting that would always making her heart flutter. But more importantly she was there to love him.

Didn’t matter if she said it out loud or just by looking at his eyes, while sitting next to him on a winter’s night, curled up on the sofa, munching on chocolate and watching old movies. He knew what she felt for him just by looking at her.

To him, she was the real hero, not him. Because every time Steve looked at her and saw that the smile that she adorned on her lips, was directed at him, Steve could feel that he waited all his life for that moment.

His heart was whole again.

Tags: @psychicwitchphilosopher @papi-chulo-bucky @bovaria @capsbuchanan @anaboo96 @the-avengers-assembling

[the-science-of-evidence]

Reaction to Sherlock Fandom Reaction

Honestly, okay, I get it. I’ve been a fan since Series 1 and have patiently waited for the following the following seasons. I’ve converted people into the Sherlock fandom, written Johnlock fanfictions, made fanvideos, and well, bottomline–I’ve done enough to prove loyalty to this fandom.

It surprises me to see so many issue arise from this last season. And honestly, beyond the loopholes that I’m sure some of you have practically made a thesis out of, it was a good season for me.

So going to the issue, do the creators really deserve such hate? I understand the disappointment Series 4 brought to most. Truly. But can’t we all, as dedicated fans, do this in a more reasonable way instead of throwing a tantrum against every “flaw” every episode has? We have better ways of self-expression. And being offended by a tweet from sue just because she debunked the “fourth episode theory”, saying as to how she is mean doesn’t really cut it. After all the rude criticism and sometimes irrational hate posts this season has gotten from the fans, do we really deserve another episode just to burn it down?

The following are my opinions upon the matter:

Johnlock: Yes, the ship didn’t sail, hearts were broken, time were wasted watching and waiting for the ust to finally be resolved–but this ship? This ship was not meant to happen. Sherlock and John have a relationship that transcends friendship and beyond any type of label anyone could say. And that’s what makes them special. Caging them, this wonderful duo, into a clichéd romance is not the solution to a better series. It could limit the potential of this series. Well, ffn could say otherwise, but that’s it, ffn remain a fan’s fiction. Johnlock was never promised, love comes in all sorts. Implied love was what they always had, they never called upon it, everyone knows this. So why are some fans still so adamant on it being called onto the series when it’s already undeniably there?

OOC: Alright, honestly, this is one of the best seasons to appreciate John, Sherlock and Mary’s dynamic characterization. It makes them more three dimensional. We’ve always seen them as people, stuck in a specific set of case-based characters. But in a certain perspective, the change means well.

John, as many have sincerely been disappointed in his sudden change of character in TST (I, too, was disappointed), where his infamous loyal self has suddenly gave into temptation of cheating. But well, TDL responded well in that case. But just to point out, Dr. Watson did have a history of being quite a ladies man. His inability to say no is something that can also lead him astray, which probably why he said yes to responding to Eurus. He longs for a life of excitement, he searches for it. No typical man would say “yes” to living with Sherlock Holmes, why would it be so far fetched for him to say “Yes” to something that, in a certain level, is just as thrilling? Also, It’s no shock on how he became such a dick towards Mary’s death, he married her for goodness sake. And he cheated on her. Grief, guilt, anger, inner turmoil and confusion leave him messed up. Sherlock was there, and he never really did like sherlock all the time, there were days when John himself could definitely not stand his flatmate’s eccentricities and obnoxiousness. And adding that to the dilemma and having someone to blame at that moment, Sherlock was his safest bet. But then TLD happened and well, you see John in Mary form. And see that he is still “trying”, that he knows. Without Mary and all the shit that happened, there would be no heart-wrenching scene as that. It is what it is, guys.

Mary, oh and how I have loved Mary in this season because we get to unravel her more. Mary Morstan has been a character I never truly liked until series 4, she was someone I claimed to have stolen John away from Sherlock, someone who lied to John, and hurt Sherlock. She has a long list of reasons to be on our blacklist yes, but she has just as much to be on our good as well. She loves John. She loves Sherlock. She gives way for John to be with Sherlock. She never allows the duo to be in harms way without going through her (literally and figuratively). Sherlock himself has taken a liking on her. Mary seems to be constructed in a way that she fits effortlessly with Sherlock and John and not between them. I mean seriously, she makes effort and she trusts John with everything. She’s exposed to so many bad but she just wants that ordinary life, she wants to leave her past behind and that stupid USB. But some things just don’t work out, especially with a history such as that. She leaves videos with questionable goals, but it worked out for the best in not the best way though. But if any of you thought how John, stubborn and determined army doctor John, would end up hugging Sherlock (minus Johnlock please) and going back to the dynamic duo that they are, I’d be happy to hear them out (plus those would be amazing plotlines for your own ffn). And certainly, the value of her life now lies in Sherlock’s hands, and well it remains to be a currency Sherlock still does not know how to spend.

Sherlock, constant exposure to John, surely becomes more human. His thoughts are more attuned as his moral compass constantly, prior John’s married life and even beyond that, have always pointed Sherlock in the right dimension. And maybe, his sudden deflation in intellect and skills of deduction is ultimately a surprise to me as well. So yes, Sherlock was very human in TFP and have been uncannily haphazard with his deductions in all the three episodes of S4. There were poorly written areas which led to plot holes I cannot deny. There is a sloping criteria in context of the plots and certain discrete yet relevant details. Or the first few episodes were just an exaggeration of what he could do to give the viewers a gist of what he does–meaning, all this time Sherlock had limits of what he could do. And going through the seasons, the appeal of his deductions died down because it’s something usual and no longer spectacular as it seemed to be. That now, we realize, even Sherlock makes mistakes in his deductions. After all, Mycroft was always better and with Eurus in the picture, well, it’s no wonder Sherlock would be the black sheep who took in friends.

Other issues will remain brewing in my head for an indefinite amount of time. If there’s anything you wish to debate about, argue, agree, disagree, feel free to message me or reblog or whatever you wish to do.

I am open to your responses. Thank you.

Sincerely, the-science-of-deduction

P.S. Sherlock wears no wedding ring in TFP as he hands over Rosie to John.