#and instead I’m being subjected to the psychological torture that is familial interactions

[grimmradiance]

Close to Me: How the Hollow Knight's Fighting Style Reflects Their Trauma (and the Radiance's as well)

So I've been trying to actually beat the Radiance, which means I've been fighting the Hollow Knight. A lot, as a matter of fact, since I'm beans at this game sometimes. I've also been thinking about @lost-kinn's meta about how fighting styles are how Vessels, especially the Little Knight, communicate.

In trying to apply this to the Hollow Knight, I've been coming to some very interesting conclusions, especially taken in context of...Everything Else in the lore, and Everything Else implicated in this by the psychology of it.

There's a lot to cover here, and it tracks through a LOT of different places, including trauma psychology, the relationship between chronic stress and lifespan health, and shape symbolism. Two warnings first:

One: this essay is gonna get heavy. It includes fine-grained discussion of the Hollow Knight's trauma, including discussions of the real-life machanics of psychological abuse, as well as the Extremely Concerning Implications of them harming themself during their boss fight. please read with caution and when you're in a safe emotional place to do so.

Two: This post is not a place for justifying the Pale King. If you read this essay in its entirety and still want to do that, please make your own post; my relationship to the Hollow Knight themself is deeply rooted in my own experiences, so in the context of this discussion I can't promise I won't take it personally.

With that out of the way, let's talk trauma and fighting styles:

We know that the Hollow Knight is trained to be a paragon of fighting skill, through the Pure Vessel fight, and this gives us a fantastic way to compare what they were like before they were made Government Assigned Radiance Jail, and after. Or, in other words, we're given the perfect opportunity to see what the Radiance is doing (i.e. context effects), and what Hollow is (i.e. what we can conclude is reliably consistent as a part of them). Listed here, for reference:

Hollow's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Radiant Shade Soul, which launches a volley of Infection blobs in arcs

A Radiant Desolate Dive, which produces pillars of entwined Void and Light at random intervals

The Infection bursting out of them in random arcs, covering a significant amount of the aerial space of the arena

The Radiance ragdolling their body around trying to hit the Knight

Contact damage from them stabbing themself and falling over atop you

The Pure Vessel's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Pure Shade Soul, which launches a volley of nails in straight lines

A Pure Desolate Dive, which produces nails at specific intervals

A Pure Focus, which causes circular explosions across most of the aerial space in the arena

Lashing out with a Void Arm (word choice intentional)

I've highlighted attacks from each battle that are different, since those are our points of interest here. In addition, both the Pure Vessel and Hollow are exceedingly fond of teleport-spamming in a way that is usually reserved for a specific group of bosses.

Another very important distinction between these two fights: the Pure Vessel doesn't scream. Well, they certainly try to, but no sound comes out. No voice to cry suffering, after all. All of these points have a lot to go into, so let's address them one at a time.

All That Remains: Theoretical Background On The Significance Of Constants

Making comparisons across time is important specifically because humans (and human-like bugs) change. Most personality traits aren't set in stone--they exist as an interaction of someone's internal tendencies, their experiences, and their environment. Speaking of those last two points, not all experiences and environments are created equally. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs for short) are known to have lifelong implications for a child's health, both physically and mentally. These are events that are so stressful or stressful for so long that they exceed a child's ability to cope and become toxic stress (yes, that's the term in the literature, because it actively damages your organs). They compound, as well--the stress of one ACE makes it harder for a child to cope with another, especially if they overlap.

Some examples of ACEs? Being exposed to physical danger or the threat of physical danger, deprivation of normal social relationships with peers of a similar age, being forcibly seperated from family members, witnessing a loved one being hurt or killed, chronic illness in oneself or a family member, neglect of a child's emotional needs....

Poor fucking Holly. It's a miracle they didn't disintegrate under the pressure. The only other option is that they bent and adapted under that much stress--in other words, most of their personality has been forcibly reshaped by what they've gone through. Anyone who has up-close experience with parentification or complex child abuse already knows: this was by design. I'm not saying the intent was to traumatize the Pure Vessel past several points of no return, but the intent definitely was to reshape their personality for the purpose of being The Vessel. We only see them (the Pure Vessel) in battle after this process is mostly or entirely complete, but we do see them a few times beforehand. I'd like to draw attention to the Path of Pain cutscene right now.

I've seen people talking about the look the Vessel and the King share as a sign that TPK really does love his child. That might be true, but it's definitely not relevant when it comes to how abuse works. This is, in fact, exactly how the cycle of abuse uses affection as a tool. Long periods of abuse or neglect, smoothed over by small periods of affection that placate the survivor? That's textbook love bombing, the kind that forms stubborn trauma bonds and facilitates unhealthy dependency. Forgive me for not giving the Higher Being of knowledge and prescience the benefit of the doubt on that one. (/s)

Team Cherry knows about the importance of parallels and dissonance. There's a reason the music in the second phase of the Hollow Knight fight plays in the Path of Pain. There's a reason it cuts out the moment the battle with the Kingsmoulds is over, instead of at the room transition. There's a reason it doesn't cut out in the Black Egg. Actually, there's two potential reasons, which could also coexist: either little Hollow trusts the Pale King to keep them safe, even after the borderline torture that they were just subjected to, or big Hollow is so hypervigilant that they're in full functioning-through-trauma mode even while they're at death's door.

If you don't see how much the Pale King scarred his child at this point, I'm not sure we were playing the same game.

Walking the Straight Line: How the Pale King's Teachings Show In the Pure Vessel

The Pale King loves order and control. Everything about the White Palace and every decision we see him make implies this. Everything is spotless white walls and well-maintained gardens; the only signs of disorder are hidden away, either in his workshop or in The Pit™. This also reflects in the Pure Vessel's title--pure as in holy, but also pure as in without flaw. Considering the Nailsmith's emotional state after completing the Pure Nail, TPK's fate with his Perfect Controlled Kingdom, and the Godmaster ending as a whole, attaining perfection is not a good thing in any sense.

We know the Hollow Knight isn't perfect--that's the whole catalyst for the plot. But considering their upbringing and their fighting style as the Pure Vessel, their imperfections absolutely kill them emotionally. I'll spare the lecture on how perfectionism affects neurodivergent kids even more severely than neurotypical kids, if only to keep this post to a reasonable length (look up "twice-exceptional children" if you'd like to know the theory I'm glossing over in more depth). But, in essence, the deck is doubly stacked against them--they have a higher goal to reach, and far more obsctacles in their path, including their own emotional scars.

I've already discussed how Hollow isn't meant for this kind of stress in a physical sense in other posts. They're not prepared for it emotionally, either--the Pale King wants perfection, and they can't even stand up straight (every spoonie in the audience already knows how exhausting people's obsession with Standing Up Straight is). There's another page on their stack of emotional baggage, even BEFORE you consider that the Pure Vessel knows their perfection is what bought them a ticket out of the Abyss.

Bringing Teleportation To A Sword Fight: Where The Pure Vessel Reveals Their Fears

How else are they going to cope with that need for perfection, that need to prove themselves worthy of the reason their life was spared, by being flawless in any way they can? Being a mechanical, flawless fighter puts so much pressure on them, both literally (repetitive strain injuries fucking HURT) and figuratively--if you're predictable, the only sure way to win is to mop the floor with your opponents before they figure you out. Hell, that's the way most people play their first run of Hollow Knight, by throwing themselves at the bosses over and over until they figure out the patterns. That strategy is inherently going to fail against an opponent that's, say, an immortal higher being.

There's no way that the Vessel didn't figure this out, and yet none of their TPV specific attacks are positioned randomly--the nails are always evenly spaced, and the Focus explosions are always in a specific height region of the screen. That's clinging to survival strategies even when they become maladaptive in its purest form.

Another dip into psychological theory: let's talk about disorganized attachment. Attachment styles describe how someone's relationships to their main caregiver(s) influence their understanding on relationships in general. Disorganized attachment is a result of an upbringing of inherently unstable parent-child relationships, where there's no way of a child predicting whether an adult is going to be delighted to see them, ambivalent, upset, or otherwise. If my parent woke up some days saying "all right my child, time for the Infinite Buzzsaws Obstacle Course," I'd be the same way. In adulthood this manifests as an inability to form a stable sense of self-concept as well as concepts of others. Mission accomplished, TPK, there's no will to break if you broke it yourself.

This is where the fighting styles as communication comes in--Hollow needs to keep Ghost at a distance to fight, but also wants to be closer to their sibling (the only being who has a chance of understanding what they've been through), BUT also has a trauma-rooted fear of attaching to people, as their experiences with attachment are inherently unpredictable and dangerous. Hence, both the teleportation that doesn't seem to match their fighting style any more reliably than "aim at the thing attacking you" and the second attack unique to the Pure Vessel--they're quite literally lashing out in pain to push people away. There's a reason that attack is so reminiscent of the Thorns of Agony.

Of note is that Holly does seem to teleport like the bugs of the Soul Sanctum do (favoring the edges of a screen, rather than going wherever like Dream Warriors do), which makes sense--they're the most obvious answer to the question "how did they learn how to teleport, anyways?" However, Sanctum bugs have abilities designed to capitalize on this, like homing spells and slashes from above. I can only assume this means that someone saw Holly's proficiency with the nail and assumed it translated to other forms of combat, and didn't feel the need to give them at least a bit of a primer on how to make the best use of it. There's another tally for the Hollow Knight as an autism metaphor.

Trauma Bonds: How the Radiance Speaks Through Hollow

Now, we're back to the Black Egg, and two people stuck in the same sinking ship. The thing that makes this hurt so badly is that Holly and the Radiance are at complete cross purposes here, and yet they both want the same thing:

They both want out, no matter the cost. For the Radiance, this means forsaking the pacifistic nature of the moths and nuking Ghost personally.

For Hollow, this means forsaking the way they were raised and everything that was bludgeoned into their personality: the only way out is to fail, give up control, and trust that Ghost will do what needs to be done.

Imagine how much pain they're in to actually go for it. Going against a literal lifetime of conditioning is something that takes the average person years to even consider, let alone go through with. It's a form of learned helplessness--if you try to break free and fall, again and again, it actively discourages further attempts. Breaking through learned helplessness is an interesting process, because it generally involves re-establishing a sense of control by recalling previous events where the person was able to change their situation.

Which, as far as we know of, are nothing but traumatic memories for Hollow. It's very unlikely that they'd break through it on their own, but we know they have by the time we see the second phase of their fight. This is them at their most desperate: the same music as the Path of Pain, the way they let, or can't stop, the Radiance throw their body around, the way they actively try to let the Radiance out by stabbing themself.

You'd think that giving up and learned helplessness are inherently compatible, but when giving up both goes against your core personality, and involves your active participation, they're in direct opposition. So either Holly was able to process all their trauma by themself (which I doubt, judging by how much effort the player has to go through to even see Ghost's and Hollow's traumatic memories), or someone gave them a nudge or three in that direction.

Considering that there's been someone living in Holly's head who has a vested interest in them Not Doing Their Duty, I think we know who. And the thing is, I think we watch Hollow have this breakthrough during their battle. Imagine for the first time in decades, at least, you can move. You're in pain from being in the same position, probably hallucinating from sensory deprivation, with an infection sucking at what strength your body has left. And there's this little creature who looks ready to fight you, who seems to have let you go for that exact purpose.

And you look down, and both you and the Radiance recognize them from a place rooted deeper than consciousness, in the murky depths of trauma. You see the other Vessel who just as easily could have been you, and who looks so much stronger for not being you, for being an imperfect, willful creature. And the Radiance sees history threatening to repeat itself, another one of the Wyrm's cursed children seeking to lock her away once more.

What else do you do when you're triggered? You scream, and you go on instinct, and you retreat into your head. Those first blows, with the epic music? That's the Vessel the Pale King forged, the fighting machine that will endure unimaginable stress because it knows no other way. What snaps you back out of dissociation? Usually, either the passage of the triggering stimulus, or an even more relevant stimulus (severe pain from getting beaten up by a nail, for example).

The tragedy is this: we know this isn't a triumph. I think most of us went into that fight the first time, knowing we'd be putting the Hollow Knight out of their misery. The music turns tragic, Hollow screams, and then we see the Radiance and Hollow themself break through: the Radiance trying to fight Ghost directly with the resources she has, and Hollow trying to help her along.

For what it's worth, Hollow even had the right idea, when it came to letting themself rest while helping Ghost stop the madness their father started--they were just digging for the Radiance in the wrong place. The dynamic between the Radiance and the Hollow Knight is something I could write on for pages and pages, but this has gone on for long enough. Tune in next time, where I'll presumably talk about this same topic but in reverse with regards to the Radiance.

[mybg3notebook]

Astarion and Power - Part 1

Disclaimer Game Version: All these analyses were made up to the game version v4.1.101.4425. As long as new content is added, and as long as I have free time for that, I will try to keep updating this information.

Additional disclaimers about meta-knowledge and interpretations in (post)

The number between brackets [] represents the topic-block related to (this post), which gathers as much evidence as I could get.

Before talking about Power, Cazador, and other details, I would like to quickly gather what little we have about Astarion’s past. 

Backstory: Mortal Astarion.

About his past we have little information, mostly given by Swen in interviews with game magazines or via his on-live demonstrations of the game early in 2020 before the release of EA. All this information is subjected to changes, of course, so we should take it with a pinch of salt. 

As a mortal, Astarion was a corrupt magistrate who judged criminals he later sent to the local vampire coven of the Szarr family as food. After a while, his greed got the best of him and started to sell those criminals into slavery as well, having a double profit from this. This movement brought the fury of the Szarr family upon him. 

From this short story we can infer that there was a high probability that his judgements were unfair, condemning criminals who needed a death sentence to lighter ones (this is related to his strange comment of “death is a harsh sentence” in Arabella’s scene, see the post Astarion's Standards and Manipulation) while condemning innocent ones; all with the goal of having a decent amount of living creatures to offer to the local vampire or to the slave traders.

We also know, by his own words in game, that when he was turned into a vampire, he had been the victim of an attack of thugs/Gurs (he says this information in different moments of the game, changing details. I don't know if this is on purpose to show Astarion’s manipulative nature depending on your reaction to Gandrel, or it’s a consequence of unpolished details during EA). What we know for sure is that these Gurs/thugs were angry because of a judgement he had previously made. It’s easy for us to infer, using the info above, two situations:

Astarion may have condemned some isolated Gur to an unfair trial who ended up in a slavery network, being discovered later by their Gur fellows who simply avenged them in Baldur’s Gate. This theory has been developed as a way to see fit the concept of Maiden Fel.  If Gandrel dies and Astarion performs a Speak with Dead, he will reveal that Maiden Fel is the head of his tribe who asked him to return with Astarion “unblemished”. Digging for more details about who Maiden Fel is, Gandrel says she is the “reason even monsters have nightmares”. Walking on the speculation ground, there is a chance that Maiden Fel could be a nightmare Hag, since Gurs consider hags as “wise women'', and unlike the rest of the humans, they respect them a bit more than common folks.

Or the whole setting was done by Cazador, who plotted this ambush to make it look as an act of barbarism using furious Gurs (which attack could be seen as an obvious reaction since Gurs are despised everywhere due to their nomadic lifestyle and all the stigmas they carry) as a way to punish Astarion for trying to outsmart him.

Among the many conclusions that we can draw from here is that, if Astarion’s backstory is not retconned and rewritten later in the full game, we can be almost sure he was an Evil-aligned character as a mortal. We can’t say that vampirism twisted his morals; they were rather poor in the first place. 

Astarion, the Vampire spawn

After the bite scene, Astarion presents himself as a vampire spawn, a creature lesser than a slave for his master, since Cazador’s commands are impossible to resist. He explicitly says that his body always reacts to Cazador’s word and for two hundred years he was tormented by him. Thanks to datamining information, we know that Cazador performed an infernal deal, and part of the contract is carved on his back. 

Due to datamining information as well, we know that the first dream that Astarion experiences may not be the one related to the tadpole dreams mechanics since he dreams without having made use of the tadpole powers yet. I prefer to suppose that this dream is product of his own psychology, or even it could be an effect of Cazador’s power on him (maybe he can’t dream of anything but of his Sire, considering how possessive Cazador is)

As I said, this is not a dream of power and desire in the same way that the other companions or Tav have, and for this reason I’m inclined to say that the vampiric power of Cazador is the one making an effect instead of the tadpole (or simply Astarion’s trauma showing). This dream looks like a reminder, like a reiterative dream for Astarion about Cazador’s rule, which are:

rule 1: he will not drink from thinking creatures.

rule 2: he will obey him in all things.

rule 3: he will not leave Cazador’s side unless directed.

rule 4: he will know that he is Cazador’s proprietary.

Most options end up in the similar idea of: “Free? Lie to yourself, boy, but not to me. You are mine, forever.”

Cazador and Astarion

[Astarion has just related what Cazador made him eat] “Flies? What did you do to deserve that?”

“I existed, that was enough for him. He revelled in having power over me, because those with power can do whatever the hell they want.”

If we are going to talk about power with a character as Astarion in mind, we need to talk first about Cazador. Let’s start with the way Astarion describes him:

“The biggest threat to a vampire is another vampire. They're scheming, paranoid, power hungry beasts. So why would any vampire give up control over a spawn to create a competitor? Trust me, it doesn't happen.”

“Cazador Szarr is a vampire lord in Baldur’s Gate. The patriarch of his coven and a monster obsessed with power.(...) Not political power or military power. Power over people. The power to control them completely. (...) He turned me nearly two hundred years ago. I became his spawn and he became my tormentor.” 

“He had me go out Baldur’s Gate to fetch him the most beautiful souls I could find. It was a fun little ritual of his—I’d bring them back and he’d ask if I wanted to dine with him. And if I said yes, he’d serve me a dead, putrid rat. Of course if I said no, he’d have me flayed. Hard to say which was worse.”

“Cazador liked to make them art, spent all night with a razor, drafting a sonnet on my back. (Puppy eyes) Apparently the more I screamed, the more mistakes he made. And the more editing was required.”

“It was a group of Gur/thugs that attacked me that night in Baldur’s Gate. I would have died had Cazador not appeared and saved me. (...) He chased them off and offered to save me. To give me eternal life. Given that my choices were “eternal life” or “bleed to death on the street”, I took him up on the offer. It was also afterwards I realised just how long “eternity” could be.” 

“Cazador likes to toy with people. Let them think there was hope right until the end. Until he snatched it all away. Creatures like them don’t play games unless they know they’ll win.” 

(About Raphael’s encounter) “All that 'take your time. I'll wait' nonsense? He's playing with us. It reminds me of Cazador, taunting his slaves with hope when he knew the game was rigged. "

Tav: “Would he send another Gur to capture?” / Ast: “Yes, he probably thought it was funny.”

(“We can kill him.”) “No, you don't understand. You don't know him. Just trust me when I say we need to be careful. He'll send more lackies – he has plenty of souls to command. We just have to be vigilant. Keep our wits about us. And kill any monster hunters on sight. We can probably make an exception with Wyll... Probably.”

>>So far we know that Cazador has a particular pleasure for control, especially the one related to people’s will. With the nightmare information, we know he has powers related to mind control. He has many slaves, and enjoys cruelty, humiliation, and torture. He enjoys making Astarion eat putrid animals, carving his back with an infernal contract, and playing psychologically with him. He also likes to give false hope, making his victims believe that there is hope, removing it right in front of them. 

I want to highlight that this twisted way of giving hope just to offer a perverted solution to a person’s problem, and enjoying the pleasure caused by the break of the hope, can be seen in Astarion during EA: in the approval that Astarion gives to Tav when you revive Connor, and that pinch of hope in Mayrina turns into horror when she sees Undead!Connor. For Astarion this situation is “funny”. Similar can be said when he approves telling Arabella’s parents that she will be released after the end of the ritual, when she is in fact dead. 

Astarion describes a bit more what power we should expect from a Lord Vampire:

Shapeshift: turning into mist.

Calling wolves to do his bidding.

Shrugging off blows.

He “could walk into our camp tonight and kill you with his bare hands.”

Astarion and Slavery

One of the characteristics that so far in EA has got my attention was how little conflict Astarion has with slavery, despite having been his former condition. 

He is apathetic to slavery in the best case, or even supporting it in the worse case. Proof of this can be found in the Myconid Colony, when interacting with a duergar slave. He speaks as if it were a totally useful tool that inspires little sympathy in him, since they don't have consciousness. However, he leaves a quite open question when finally adding “Or maybe not”.

But this “maybe not” is not left to speculation, we can see what Astarion truly feels with a non-Gur human slave in another part of the game: in the Zhentarim hideout. This can be checked with Oskar, the painter slave.

You can free Oskar using persuasion with his kidnapper (Astarion keeps neutral, he doesn’t approve the freeing). Now, if you can buy Oskar by paying the gold directly or by using intimidation to lower the price, it would keep Astarion neutral until the moment of the payment is stated, which he disapproves. At first I thought it was because he was truly against slavery of thinking creatures... but it was not. It was because you are paying a lot of money (we need to remember Astarion is greedy [1] as well, he wouldn’t be a vampire if it weren't for his greed). 

Once bought, if you keep Oskar as a slave, and you demand him to keep silent because "you want your slaves silent unless they are spoken to", Oskar will think it's a joke, and you, again, can use the option "I don't joke with my slaves" and then Astarion will approve. None of these options is under any tag to make them believe they are part of a preformative act to prank Oskar. And this is key... this is not a joke. They are used as your real sentiments and intentions, and Astarion approves them.

These reactions are not random, they make sense with his—until this moment unchanged or retconned—backstory, where he had no problem trafficking with criminals as vampire food and later as slaves to have higher profits. So, these two aspects remain in his vampire nature unaltered: the most important thing is always to have profits, and his relationship with slavery is absolutely fine as much as it gives benefits, it’s useful or at least, gives him some entertainment.

The tadpole

We know the tadpole has a particular effect on Astarion. Unlike the other companions, Astarion doesn’t dream of a person who represents to him both desire and power. Power? undoubtedly, but desire? It’s hard to say. The implied, vague concept that Astarion has been sexually abused by Cazador is there (because we know these dreams are about “sensual” desire as well). 

It’s maybe a consequence of the vampirism and, by extension, of Cazador’s power, that makes Astarion unable to dream of anything else but his master. From the datamining information about the non-tadpole dream of Astarion, in which Cazador lists four rules, we know that the fourth one is about never stopping to be Cazador’s propriety, unable to be free, not even in dreams. Maybe Cazador’s effect also applies to Astarion’s dreams as well (but this is a mere speculation, there is no real proof of it on EA or datamining info so far). 

So when Astarion awakes in the beach and sees that some rules of his vampiric nature have been changed, he gets excited about the tadpole, and unlike the rest of the companions, he doesn’t want to get rid of it. He wants to master it, to have control of it. However, when the opportunity of controlling the tadpole appears with Raphael encounter, Astarion is one of the few companions who is completely against it at first. 

“Raphael is playing with us; Cazador liked to toy with people too. Let them think there was hope right until the end. Until he snatched it all away. Creatures like them don't play games unless they know they'll win.”

In that moment, he claims he won’t change a vampiric master for an infernal one. However, when the first use of the Tadpole causes the first symptoms of transformation evident, Astarion falls in despair: he is scared and, calling for Raphael to take him from the camp, he says a curious phrase: 

“I would choose servitude over oblivion any day”

So, after this moment, he is not completely convinced that Raphael is the true solution to his problem but he is more open to keep him as a plan B if anything else fails. Later he claims that it doesn't matter to be a servant of a devil, because he knows Cazador, and he wants to get rid of his power for good. 

“I won't lie, it's tempting. If I keep the tadpole, I risk transforming into a grotesque monster. If I lose the tadpole, Cazador has control of me, body and soul, and I return to the shadows. It's grim either way, so why not sell what's left of my soul to a devil? Better he has it than cazador. Whatever it's coming we need to have our options open.”

Astarion’s process of seeing the potential of the power of the tadpole increases along the game. It gets higher and wilder. The first instances of the tadpole use are about Astarion discovering how much this tadpole gives him powers he can barely understand. 

“The tadpoles are not so bad at all. (...) First I can walk in the sun, then make people dance like puppets? *laughs * I've certainly had worse days.”

He is not an idiot, he knows that, without control, they will end up turning into mind flayers, so he needs to find something powerful that can give him control over his tadpole. This is the reason why he encourages the use of the tadpole after knowing about the netherese magic containing the transformation via Omellun or Ethel.

Ethel explains that the tadpole had been tampered, so the dialogue goes:

Tav: “It's giving us more time, sounds good to me”. 

Astarion: “Perhaps. And who's to say it can't be tampered with further?” (She said it was netherese magic) “it must be powerful magic to stop the parasite in its tracks, I wonder what else it could do?

At that point in the story, he knows that the netherese magic is powerful enough to contain the transformation: so he is now sure that there is more time to use it. So he will end up being the only companion in EA who encourages everyone to use the power:

“What's not to enjoy (with this tadpole)? I can walk in sunlight, trespass upon any home, manipulate minds – I'm the most powerful vampire in the realms. Granted, the looming doom is an issue, but why not enjoy the benefits while we can?

Despite the nightmares happening after every use of the tadpole powers, Astarion doesn’t want to stop. At this point, he is the only companion who doesn’t want to. 

“The power to twist a mind to your will is worth some nightmares.”

By the end of the game, we are sure that Astarion wants this power without doubts. He revels in the power of mind-controlling people, ironically, despite having suffered so much of it under Cazador’s control. If we see all the situations where Astarion’s mind is controlled, or violated, his reactions will be extremely more aggressive than the other companions. He has suffered it a lot, but by the end of EA he is enjoying being on the other side of that power. 

This post was written on April 2021. → For more Astarion: Analysis Series Index

[notmyrick]

Also long side note/analysis:

In s4e10, Rick was part of the resistance against the Galactic Federation in his 30's which he said he grew out of.

In the comics (#34) while he was in the band The Flesh Curtains (which some sources say started in his college years, not sure when it ended though) , he also was starting off as a weapons dealer and got his first client/ friend Krombobulous Michael (Mike). After making the deal, in the following panel, Mike goes off in a killing spree and if you include the initial gun, and assume he got all his guns from Rick, he has a total of 4 guns, which at max means he met Mike 4 times to deal him weapons. At least from the first deal. Then we see another deal with Mike and Rick, this would be the 5th transaction, which this is where Rick confesses he fell in love. He has shorter hair, looks happy, and has the vibe of slowly becoming simple Rick as he even tells mike that he should fall in love. Same comic, when mike meets his wife amy they have a love montage where in the end they got married and surprise surprise, Rick is there with his iconic flask drinking as one of the groomsmen or as the best man wearing his common getup.

So this gives us a rough timeline that by the 5th transaction, Rick met his wife Diane when he became a well known weapons dealer and by the time Mike got married to Amy, he either had problems in his marriage or Diane already divorced or died. Most people married around their late 20's and early 30's and assuming Rick did the same maybe on the late side. He was also still part of the resistance against the government.

Also in Rickshank Redemption, does "weird" Rick give off any I'm against the Federation vibes? Like the outfit has the same feeling of space Beth? Anyone?

At the ending of Auto-Erotic Assimilation beth says:

And I know I sound like mom but I can't sacrifice this whole family's safety just because I'm afraid you'll leave again, 

So this is something Diane would say, maybe not word for word, but certainly the same tone, vibe, and message.

This begs me to question how did Rick threaten his family's safety? For the smartest man in the universe, you would think it be easy to slip under the radar of the government considering that Earth wasn't really under the Galactic Federation until Rick was in his 60s/70s(his current age) in Rickshank Redemption. Sure they sent a couple spies, but they didn't give Earth an olive branch to join anytime prior to this episode. To me this means that Earth was under watch, but they werent worth much of the Federation's time. So Rick could be considered "not a threat" in his 30s (debatably). Also in this episode, it shown during this time (also debatable) that he was trying to figure out interdimensional travel. So breaking down the jobs Rick had, he was a weapons dealer, he was still part of the resistance against the government, he may or may not be working on earth to bring money to the family, and he was an at home scientist. That's a lot. It's nice to note that Diane was supportive of Rick's science endeavors although she might not know much. It looked like the family didn't have much conflict, at least in the early years of the marriage.

So what was Rick doing that was threatening the safety of his family? From Diane's/Beth's words, he was always leaving and the threat always starts when he left. So here is my 2 scenarios.

The Citadel of Ricks. When interdimensional travel becomes a Rick thing, they created a "clubhouse" or government where only Rick's exsist. But since this is an earlier time, it can be assumed that the Citadel was very "primitive" at this time. Sure there are a bunch of Ricks and a group of geniuses can achieve a lot, but not nearly the end product we see in the show. Rome wasn't built in a day and most definitely the Citadel wasn't either. Maybe a day and a half at best lol. Anyway, I just dont think that the power the Citadel has now, is what they had back then. They can be threats individually, but not a threat as a whole, at least not yet. And since a lot of non cooperative Ricks view this as a clubhouse or party, it could be safely assumed that it was used as such initially.

The Galactic Federation. In his 30s he was still part of the rebel alliance. Which one can assume, he was still a rebel during his marriage. Now this I see much less of a threat. As shared previously, I believe that Rick can go under the Federation's nose and stay hidden. As a matter of opinion, if the Galactic Federation knew where Rick was, which presumably he was soely labeled as a criminal instead of the smartest mammal who discovered interdimensional travel, they would've already threaten/take over his home planet and more specifically threaten his family to get him to concede. Which I believe is not the case because Diane couldn't sacrifice this whole family's safety which implies the threat was more looming and mental, than it was physical and present.

In Diane's case the Citadel of Ricks, yes can threaten the safety of the family despite being Rick, knew and are aware of Diane and Beth. They even have the advantage of portal tech and know the dimension they come from. Diane and Beth are essentially sitting ducks in this scenario and this can be a looming and mental threat compromising the safety of the family. However there are two caveats.

Beth's adoration

Rick's presence

While the Citadel is a threat, it would be more of a threat to Diane than Beth. Both caveats are linked to Beth. They can psychologically torture Diane with multiple Ricks. As a spouse, you hope the person you love comes back, but with the interdimensional travel the person who comes back may not be the person you married. In addition, this doesnt threaten the safety of the whole family, it only threatens Diane. And it seems to me as along as (a) Rick is cordial and father like to Beth, she would be willing to suffer the mental abuse of multiple Ricks. This is assuming that the threat came to them and as stated before, I'm less inclined to believe this because while yes it is a looming threat and definitely a mental one, it is also a physical threat because there is an actual entity invading and I don't think there was any physical factor when Diane spoke these words. Not only that, but it has to threaten the life of one Rick sanchez along with the rest of the family.

The term "losing you" can be interpreted in a lot of ways, but the most common I think of is death. If the Citadel was threatening another version of himself, then it would make sense that they would target the Sanchez family when they are together. And the only way to threaten Rick is to kill his family, and the only way to threaten the whole family, is to kill everyone. Which again I think, the threat should be more psychological and mental, than having an actual physical threat. This also contradicts that the family's safety is threatened when Rick leaves. For Diane, this is an inescapable scenario where safety is never guaranteed. Either way it should have enforced Rick to stay by his family's side instead of leaving.

Which brings me to the second point: Rick's presence. If they did torture Diane with multiple Rick's that wasn't her Rick, to Beth's childhood, her father would have more presence, even if he tried to sneak around the child (I'd like to think that Beth was like a bloodhound when it came to her dad). Also in her words, "I'm afraid you'll leave again" implies she constantly saw her father leave her mother, herself, or both.

With the Galactic Federation, I can see a little more meat to this. If Rick was still a rebel and actively participated in the front lines, Diane is essentially married to a solider, who has a very realistic possibility of dying on the battlefields. In addition if Rick is the weapons dealer and if he is as infamous as he claims to be, then he paints, not only, a target on his back, but his family's as well. Assuming his world state is similar to ours with the exception of us not having a Rick, then Rick is the first and only human to interact with other intelligent, sentient life forms. To Diane, Rick is easily recognizable. So a psychological looming threat is possible and can even manifest into something worse due to imagination. Even if the truth says otherwise, as long as Diane wasn't aware of it, she would just think the worst.

Now moving on to Diane and Beth. Don't take this to heart bc Diane had no speaking lines only rare appearances and mentions here and there, so I'm taking a few liberties with Diane. You could say these are a few headcanons I had of Diane (subject to change). Beth said she "sounds like mom" which I translate Beth is bringing up common issues or problem arguments they had when she was young. Essentially her argument is very reminiscent of the missing/late Mrs. Sanchez whether it was tone, topic, or opinions. So instead of word for word of what Beth said I made Diane say: I can't risk our family's safety just because I'm afraid of losing you. Which, like beth, sounds like an ultimatum, and to further emphasize that point I made her say in addition to that: Choose Rick, come home or stay out. In the episode Rick essentially implies that the creation of Portal tech is what caused the divorce or death of Beth's mom. Although there was a fabricated backstory, the show also implied that what was out of the shoneys were real. And we have a real memory of Beth and her mom standing infront of Rick's green portal in between Rick's favorite sports blooper and where he was in 9/11. To me there must be a connection with the portal and Rick's wife. So here is where the headcanon or possible backstory of Rick's marriage. I believe that Rick was still part of the rebels against the government during his marriage, that the federation was the looming threat that may compromise the safety of the Sanchez family. I believe that Diane was supportive, but was always frightened when Rick would be gone days at a time without a single word. So Diane actually proposes that Rick call her whenever he was in trouble. Depending on the Rick, he either calls her constantly to the point where he abuses it and depends on her to get him out of a sticky situation or he doesnt call her at all to the point where she is informed by a close friend of Rick because they were worried for Rick. Either way, it stresses Diane out to where she is jaded and worried at the same time. In this scenario, she saved rick from gods know what and essentially snaps. She confronts Rick to either come home or stay away because Diane realizes he's no good trying to protect the galaxy and being a father/husband, but he could excel if he focuses on one or the other.

Anyway this is merely for me of I ever wanted to explore this concept of Rick X Diane, or do like a one shot of this exact scenario.

[goldenkamuyhunting]

Do you think Sugimoto will get any significant character development? He's my favorite character and I worry that he'll be stuck in the same place as he always has been by the end of the series.

To be honest...

I’m also among the many people who hope Sugimoto will change and who worried a lot when The report of the Golden Kamuy staff talk event 19 April 2019 came out.

That’s because in it “Noda-sensei told Geno Studio that Sugimoto was already a completed character, so they didn’t need to think too much about his growth.”

On Discord we’ve been worrying a lot if this means that Sugimoto won’t get character growth, or psychological healing or whatever.

As we don’t have the exact Japanese sentence we can’t know if it can be subjected to nuances or interpretations so we’re only left with the translation which might not be litteral.

Long story short, the translation isn’t really reassuring.

So I’ve been trying to see how other characters develop, to get some sort of reference for Sugimoto.

From what I can see it’s not like Sugimoto or the others never changed but Noda actually went at it in a much more realistic way than many other stories do.

There are assorted types of changes in a character behaviour in Golden Kamuy.

The easier to spot are the ones caused by trauma and they’re often the most drastic type.

Almost everyone in this story has a trauma that changed him or her.

Even in the last chapter we saw how Ueji transitioned from a normal kid who wasn’t good at school or particularly social and liked to play with his dog whom he deeply loved but was also hurt by his relatives pressures to the man covered in tattoos who enjoy disappointing others and who murder kids after torturing them and buries them in his garden.

The pressure, coped with the trauma of the loss of his dog, whom he believed to have been murdered by his father due to Ueji shattered him and turned him into a different person.

There are however also changes in behaviour that are spurred by facts that aren’t that terrible in nature but are actually caused by positive experiences.

Koito discovers his father actually loves for him and this pushes him to realize his own worth. He likely stopped thinking he had to die heroically to gain value in his father’s eyes or that his father would have preferred for him to die instead of his brother, and starts devoting all his efforts in the Army Academy instead than in the Naval one.

There are changes caused by the relations that the characters form.

Shiraishi originally was a selfish person who prioritized himself... however he slowly developed tight bonds with Sugimoto, Asirpa and Kiro. Even through he used to insist people have to escape alone, when he believed remaining with Kiro was dangerous he wanted to escape WITH HER and remained with her when she refused to escape. While he shrugged Kumagishi’s death off and the same is true for Nihei or Henmi, with whom he seemed to have good relations, he cried for Kiro and buried him on his own despite always attempting to skirt hard labour before.

There are changes caused by a growing awareness of the situation or, more simply, by learning something.

The story starts with Asirpa sure that she doesn’t need the gold nor does the Ainu so she can let Sugimoto first and then Shiraishi also have it all. Then Kiroranke teaches her of the situation of minorities and she realizes the gold could become a powerful toll to use to help her own people.

Koito also worshipped Tsurumi at the start of the story and pleasing him was all he cared about but then he learns Tsurumi deceived him and his father and loses that blind worship. He still trusts him but no more blindly, he wants to be sure what Tsurumi pursues would sit well with him also.

There are changes merely caused by... well, growing.

Cikapasi at first tails after Tanigaki and Inkarmat mostly because he hoped they would become his new parents. We see the way he interacts with them, he’s very much the child he is, playing and asking for money to buy sweets and depending on them to solve situation. During the travel to Karafuto he takes a more proactive role, protecting Enonoka from the wolverine, helping her to retrieve the dog, taking part to the circus act and so on until he manages to let go of Tanigaki and Inkarmat and decides to stop where he thinks he belongs. While he still has a long way to go, he has grown a lot from where he started.

Note that, except when trauma is involved, those growths don’t turn a person into another overnight but it’s a slow growing process (and even when trauma is involved they still have a transtioning time).

So, Sugimoto and his possible growth.

We know that in his past he did some changing due to trauma, one time when his family got sick and consequently died and his own village ostracized him and another when he went to war.

Even though we don’t know much about Sugimoto prior to all this, it’s clear pre-war Sugimoto is someone who likely never killed a soul and wouldn’t have been capable to think ‘I’ll kill and skin 24 convicts to get money’.

This however is the past and I’d like to think he won’t receive further traumas.

Sugimoto is an adult, so he clearly won’t get a growth caused by merely growing as, although he might underwent some more.... let’s call it tuning, most of his personality and mindset are already well shaped.

It can be that’s this what Noda means when he says he’s a complete character.

In fact Sugimoto's behaviour has changed due to relations.

When the story started he was okay with involving Asirpa, a child, in a bloody gold hunt. When he grew fond of her he tried to keep her out of it, first leaving her behind then trying to entrust her to Tsurumi.

We saw that he wasn’t really paniched about her when Tamai and Co hunted him even though Tanigaki went after her. He even paused to watch the scene and talk a little with the cub bear. Compare this to how nowadays, as soon as he’s parted from her and the situation is somewhat dangerous, he run after her screaming ‘Asirpa-san’.

But on the other side it’s possible Noda doesn’t see this as ‘personal growth’. Sugimoto might have been a person who would always react this way for the people he really cares a lot.

So what changed isn’t Sugi, it’s just his relationship with Asirpa.

What we see now when he interact with her isn’t a Sugimoto different from the start of the story, it’s just a Sugimoto who acts accoding to the deep caring he had developed. If Umeko had been there at the start of the story, we would have seen him acting with her the same he does with Asirpa.

Sugimoto’s behaviour has changed also due to awareness of the situation.

When he was told Kiro has betrayed him, he switched by being on friendly terms with him from deciding to murder him.

When Hijikata revealed his plans for the Republic of Ezo he went from desperately wanting to murder him to grudgingly accepting to cooperate with him.

But again, this is not personal change, it is adapting to the situation.

We also saw how, when he got lost, he knew what to do in order to survive out there in the wilderness because... he had learnt it from Asirpa.

So again, although he acted differently, he wasn’t a different person, just someone who knew what to do.

What I think many people would want through, is for Sugimoto to either psychologically heal or try to fix some of his character flaws.

Now... I expect Golden Kamuy to cover 28 volumes and we’re at around the ending of vol 26 so there might be not much time for Sugimoto to do either.

However I like to think there could be the possibility that Sugimoto will, at least, gain an awareness of his own problems, along with the will to try to fix them or improve himself.

This would be a giant size step for him and one that could bring him to evolve, to improve himself.

There’s who managed to get awareness of his own problems, like Inkarmat who got aware of how ‘obsessed’ she was with Wilk and unable to let him go (even though in Abashiri she still was unable to move on... but whatever, now she’s with Tanigaki and she can try doing so one step at time).

Shiraishi might have realized his goal of living life as it came, merely enjoying it, was a bit shallow and might aim for something more fulfilling.

Koito too decided in life he had to adopt an approach who was less ‘accepting blindly’ and more ‘making sure things were right’. Koito is trying to be less prejudiced and blind in his views (through Koito’s change was prompted by various things combined together an not just by self reflection).

As for Sugimoto, I think the character flaw he should correct is his overconfidence in his own opinion. Suzukawa too pointed out how when Sugimoto gets persuaded of something he brushed away everything else.

This often leads him to make mistakes.

If he could learn to reconsider his opinion or ask for other people’s input instead than just taking a decision on his own and take everything inside himself, I think for him things could improve.

He could learn for a start that the ones who love him don’t think he’s doomed to hell because he killed people in war, that they would accept him anyway, that they would go to hell with him... but also how if no one does something it’ll be impossible for Asirpa to keep her lifestyle so just telling her to turn her gaze away and go on with her life doesn’t help.

At least that’s what I hope for him.

But for now we can only wait and hope as the final part of the story unfold.

Thank you for your ask!

[whumpster-fire]

Harry Potter and the False Double Standards

You know, I hate to get involved in Fandom Discourse or anything, but I’m getting really sick of reading people’s takes bashing Harry, Ron, and Hermione because of various actions throughout the series, and the latest is someone claiming the fandom is judging poor little Draco unfairly and calling him evil because he didn’t like Harry Potter when the trio were actually just as bad.

Okay, I’m legitimately pissed about this one because of how ridiculously far off the mark it is. Let’s tally their main sketchy actions throughout the series, shall we? Long wall of text ahead. In this essay I will

Harry and co, year 1: Assorted sneaking out at night, mostly looking for information or to try to stop a mass murderer from returning to life. One count of dragon-smuggling… for the purpose of putting that dragon in the hands of a professional dragon-tamer who was equipped to care for it properly. Hermione lit a teacher’s robes on fire… during a Quidditch Match where Harry’s life was in imminent danger due to a broom that was very obviously being jinxed and said teacher, who had a history of abusive conduct towards Harry, was very obviously doing some sort of magic targeted at Harry. Hermione also hexed Neville, which is way more questionable, but again the trio had a reasonable belief that Snape, who at the time they still had good reason to believe tried to murder Harry, was trying to bring another person who had tried to murder Harry and successfully murdered his parents and many many other innocent people, from returning to life. I’m putting the blame for this squarely on the entire Hogwarts staff, especially Dumbledore, for never communicating with the three 11–12 year old children, who had already been put in a life-or-death emergency just two months into term (troll incident), at ALL about someone trying to murder Harry. Snape’s role in the order had to be kept secret, I know, but Dumbledore literally just let Harry and his friends believe that a person in a position of supposed trust and authority had tried to murder him and that no one was going to believe him or do anything to protect him.

Draco, year 1: Tries to befriend Harry, is told to fuck off because he can’t go five minutes without being a classist asshole. Proceeds to be a complete asshole to… it sounds like pretty much every Gryffindor in his year, special mention to bullying other students for poverty (Ron) and possibly having a learning disability (Neville).

Harry and co, year 2: Harry and Ron start the term with the admittedly extremely stupid and irresponsible theft of a car. There was kind of a precedent set when said car had to be used to literally break Harry out of his abusive relatives’ home because he was being imprisoned and nearly starved. Next comes the big incident everyone loves to rag on the trio, especially Hermione, for: stealing potions supplies and tricking a “teacher” (airquotes because it’s Lockhart) to make a restricted potion to spy on other students… to investigate a series of racially targeted murder attempts against other students, and a group that Hermione’s part of.

Draco, year 2: Steps up his bullying to throwing around racial slurs. Turns out not to be behind the attacks, but he was cheering them on. When he had a sympathetic audience he was saying he hoped his schoolmates would be murdered.

Harry and Co, year 3: Assorted petty sneaking around, physically attacked a teacher… who was about to kill a potentially innocent person. Used a time travel device in a questionable way to save an innocent person and animal from being killed.

Draco, year 3: Intentionally disobeyed a teacher’s safety instructions, got hurt, milked his injury to try to get the teacher fired because Draco was racist against said teacher.

Harry and Co, year 4: Don’t remember anything particularly irresponsible they did… oh, I guess Hermione imprisoning and sort of blackmailing Rita Skeeter into... stopping slandering her and Harry.

Draco, year 4: Vocally supported the racist hate group attacking a sporting event and assaulting people, vocally hoped for Hermione to be sexually assaulted. Proceeded to spend half the year helping slander Harry and Hermione, tried to suckerpunch him with an unknown spell, and in the immediate aftermath of the return of a mass murder and one of his schoolmates dying, again vocally supported the terrorist group and mocked his fellow student’s death. This was literally the equivalent of a school shooting.

Harry and Co, year 5: Started a secret club to teach students to fight because the DADA “teacher” was literally refusing to do her job, the government was covering up the fact that there was about to be a war and literally torturing Harry and trying to have him assassinated for speaking out. The trio were also at this point semi-inducted into the grown-ups’ secret resistance organization. This cannot be emphasized enough. Marietta Edgecomb wasn’t a normal schoolkid ratting troublemakers out to the teacher situation. Umbridge was dangerous. Hermione should probably have warned people that they’d be hit with a massive fucking curse if they betrayed the DA, and made it a little bit clearer that this wasn’t some fun after-school club and ratting them out to the enemy wouldn’t end well, but fundamentally the curse was a result of Hermione treating a situation that was really on the boundary between a school and a war zone at that point like an actual war, and branding a traitor as a traitor.

Malfoy, year 5: Is somehow made a prefect, proceeds to abuse his power against younger students. Also cozies up to Umbridge, and ramps his classist bullying against Ron WAY up when he makes the Quidditch team.

Harry and Co, year 6: Harry panicked and used an unknown spell marked “for enemies” in self-defense against a death eater who was attempting to use an unforgivable curse on him. Note: Malfoy had already started the year by curbstomping a paralyzed Harry and throwing the invisibility cloak over him so he wouldn’t be found. Malfoy came damn close to murdering him by causing him to choke on his own blood. Harry also knows exactly what the Cruciatus Curse does. I wouldn’t have judged Harry even if he did know what Sectumsempra did.

Malfoy, year 6: Again, Malfoy’s little nosebreaking stunt could EASILY have been fatal. He left someone who was paralyzed and unable to move lying on the ground, bleeding heavily in his fucking airway, and actively hid him from view to prevent him from being seen and receiving medical attention. Harry is expected to have figured out what Sectumsempra does from the Latin, but I guess nobody expects Draco to be aware of, like... Step 1 of first aid for someone who’s unconscious being turning them on their side for this exact reason. Anyway following this, Malfoy has at this point kind of been roped into trying to murder Dumbledore, and in fairness he gets cold feet once he’s actually expected to help commit the Death Eaters’ atrocities instead of just being in the cheerleading squad, and it seems like he might have changed.

Anyway, getting to my point: Is Draco Malfoy a product of his environment? Yes. Is his portrayal somewhat biased because the books are from Harry’s perspective and... no, NOT because Harry hates Draco, because Harry only really pays attention to Draco when he’s being an asshole, which seems to be every single time they actually interact.

But you can’t say he wasn’t a terrible person throughout the events of the series. Maybe he changed afterwards, but there’s not really much shown of it other than him becoming a functional adult and being somewhat civil towards his former enemies. Which I guess isn’t that different from James and Sirius. But even they were... they were total assholes, but again, Malfoy was a racist who was vocally cheering on murder attempts and later an actual murder of his schoolmates. That’s at another fucking level.

And there’s also a MASSIVE difference between their actions. Prior to sixth year, there’s a very clear pattern. Harry, Ron, and Hermione frequently break the rules and do things that are stupid, irresponsible, and occasionally hurt people, while trying to protect themselves, their loved ones, or other innocent people. And while the effects of the traumatic events they’ve been through aren’t always that obvious, I really do think events like that very first Quidditch match had a serious long-term psychological impact: their ability to fully trust adults and authority figures to have their backs or even look out for their physical safety was severely damaged from their very first term at Hogwarts. Malfoy hurt people, intentionally, for his own amusement from the very first term. Not to mention that he was almost always “punching down.” Prior to Sixth Year, pretty much every single person he targeted was based on institutional power dynamics: Ron was poor, Hermione was Muggle-born, Neville was possibly disabled (and it turns out actually insecure due to being abused), and the one person in any position of power over him he really started shit with, Hagrid, was subject to institutional discrimination for being a half-giant and Malfoy used his rich family’s influence against him. Again, as opposed to Harry and Co who most of the time were actively defending themselves or fighting back against their abusers, and the only real power dynamic that you can really say they had working in their favor was Harry and Hermione being scarily good at the kinds of magic that can fuck people up compared to any of their social peers.

But you know what? There is one similarity between them: things only escalated to the level that they did because every single supposedly competent teacher at Hogwarts (i.e. not Snape or every single DADA teacher except Lupin) didn’t do their fucking jobs.

In the trio’s case, by (a) not doing jackshit about Snape’s behavior, and (b) keeping the kids in the dark and not even bothering to come up with a plausible cover story for them and just letting them think a teacher had tried to murder Harry and nobody was doing a single goddamn thing about it. Harry. The kid who already had serious issues with trusting authority figures because of the horrific emotional abuse he was subjected to since infancy which the multiple Order members in Hogwarts Staff had also been completely negligent about. And, y’know, Hermione, who was nearly killed by a troll her first year and saved not by a teacher but by her fellow first-years, then nearly killed by a basilisk her second year after several months of the staff failing to figure out the string of hate crimes against muggle-borns like her, and only surviving because she, the second-year starting from a massive disadvantage in terms of general cultural knowledge of things in the wizarding world, was the only one who did the research and figured out what the monster was, and only survived because she came up with looking around every goddamn corner with a mirror. And Ron, whose sister was possessed, kidnapped, and nearly killed, and the only adult who was supposedly “helping” him and Harry tried to put him into a vegetative state and only failed because of Ron’s shitty broken wand (which had been causing problems all year and the same staff that bought Harry a top-of-the-line broomstick last year spent the entire term doing absolutely nothing about the fact that one of their students was failing due to having to use a wand that was literally taped back together). How the fuck was it surprising to anyone when these teenagers continued to take matters into their own hands in increasingly dangerous ways?

In Malfoy’s case, because his bullshit should’ve been nipped in the bud way, WAY earlier. He should not have had the opportunity to do any of the shit he did in Year 6 because he should have been expelled long before that instead of the teachers letting him bully and abuse other students and basically do the equivalent of having a Hitler poster in his dormitory for five years.

[disregardcanon]

important modern westeros headcanons concerning the extended stark clan for my own modern au 

important details to know 

married couples: brandon and barbrey, ned and cat (duh), rickard and lyarra, hoster and minisa, brynden and unspecified beautiful man, and edmure and roslin

the starks, as we know them, are not The Starks Of Winterfell, they’re like their sixth cousins who live in winterfell the town (not the castle). they still have some runoff money from being related to them but they’re not the absurdly old money that The Starks Of Winterfell TM are. rickard and lyarra and then brandon and barbrey are at the cusp of between upper and upper middle class and then ned, lya, and benjen who didn’t go into the family business are towards the bottom of upper middle. 

rickard stark is a shrewd and calculating businessman. he doesn’t ever coast through deals on the stark name, but he doesn’t like. avoid using it either. out of all his children, legal or good, he gets along the best with barbrey, brandon’s wife. rickard sent all of his children to a upper crust southron boarding school over the school years and then the “summer” (i don’t know how westerosi school years would work yet okay but imagine an equivalent of an american summer vacation) he sends brandon to stay with some friends in barrowtown, where he ended up falling in love with barbrey ryswell. he dies around the same time that bran is born of cancer. 

lyarra stark, nee flint, is dedicated. she’s the one who kept up her husband’s squeaky clean public face, and she was always doing double time for brandon. when lyanna ran off with rhaegar and then came back with a baby to live with ned and cat for a few years, she was doing triple time. lyarra has a sharp wit and is very ambitious. she thinks that all of her children but brandon made a mistake when they chose not to go into the family business and she doesn’t let any of them forget it. she loves her grandchildren, even though she dislikes the circumstances of jon’s birth and thinks that ned might not have gone into police work if he didn’t marry a woman who went into law. 

brandon and barbrey stark are the “someone will die.” “of fun!” couple. brandon is big, boisterous, and friendly and barbrey is hilarious, if you have a cruel and biting sense of humor. barbrey is devoted and loving, if you’re her family, and she’s disapproving of anyone who hasn’t earned her love. she and brandon don’t have children because brandon travels so much for work and barbrey doesn’t want them, but they love on ned and lyanna’s enough you’d think they were their own. brandon takes over the company when rickard dies and babrey is a higher up in her own father’s. she and roose bolton are frequent business partners. 

in less fun news, barbrey’s sister, bethany, was married to roose bolton. barbrey and roose remain good friends until she attends the funeral of the man’s other son after he was killed resisting arrest for serial killing, torture, lots of not great ramsayish things because barbrey’s like “well roose is kinda a dick but it’s not like he wanted the kid to be like that. gotta go support the guy so he feels less bad” and gets a really bad vibe about the whole deal. she cuts off contact after that. 

when lyanna stark was young, her mother and father were always talking about different businessmen she could marry and how she could come north and take over her portion of the family business, and lyanna felt suffocated. instead of coming back up to winterfell after her high school graduation, she runs off with her married poetry teacher, rhaegar viserion. it’s about a two year crazy ride of a romance, and lyanna ends up with a baby and the realization that rhaegar is terrible for her. she moves back up north to winterfell with ned, who was in the midst of a falling out with his parents over his choice to forego college and go into police work and his choice to marry so young, catelyn, and their young son robb. lyanna lived with ned for about four years (seeing sansa’s birth) before she died of cancer. this results in a few year long custody battle with jon’s father to keep him in winterfell. the custody arrangement ends up with jon spending major holidays of the seven and summer vacations with rhaegar and his siblings but all the rest of the year with ned and cat. 

benjen made his way north to work for an expedition company north of the remains of the wall. he has not married and does not plan to. he dated a few women back in college, but it wasn’t really his thing. he tried dating a few men later on, but it wasn’t his thing either. benjen’s just kind of a lone wolf. he’ll spend holidays down in winterfell, and sometimes ned and cat spend the children up for a week or so at a time for a little break and because benjen loves his niblings

the tullys! depending on the way that i’m feeling on a given day they might be named tully and just be so distantly related to the tullys of riverrun that they can’t even prove a connection, “blackfish” as the children of a riverlands knight who admired brynden tully, or just “fish” because that’s a real last name and the idea of it makes me giggle. the family grew up in maidenpool.

hoster is a former physician well respected in the communtiy. he and his wife, a surgeon, made quite a nice living for themselves, and now hoster is in hospital administration, running the one at the university of maidenpool, one of the most respected institutions in the country. 

minisa whent met hoster at the beginning of med school and the two have been together ever since. becoming a surgeon was difficult for minisa because of all of the obstacles that were against her, but she never let any of it stop her. she was said to have the “steadiest hands in the riverlands” and her children remember her for competent as a professional as well as for being kind and compassionate as a mother. minisa died in a car accident when catelyn was fifteen, and hoster was never the same since. 

brynden was a college athlete, a pro athlete, and then a sports announcer. when catelyn was seventeen, he and his boyfriend were outed to the world and he became one of the most prominent gay celebrities, paving the way for more openly gay men in sports. he was always exceptionally close to his niblings, and once they had children, he doted on them just the same.

lysa was always a little bit unstable. she spent much of her life pining after petyr baelish, their neighbor across the street who was always in love with cat but never looked her way once. when she tried to talk to him about her affections, he laughed in her face the same way that cat had to him. when petyr moved away to king’s landing for college, he never came back and never spoke to her again, though catelyn apparently heard from him lots. 

she flitted from interest to interest, always trying to find something that she was better at than catelyn. she took up a job at an after school program for primarily underprivileged kids, and while she wasn’t good at working with groups, she found that she was very good at making individual members feel loved and confident in ways that she never had as a child. she decided to start up her own home day care with high rates that only let in a small amount of kids, so that they could have more personalized attention. 

she never had any luck with romantic relationships, but after deciding that she wanted a child of her own, she went through the insemination process and had robin. unlike canon robin, this robin almost never lacked peers to interact with between his mom’s daycare kids, his winterfell cousins and his maidenpool cousins, he never lacked for friends. and between his grandparents, his cousins, and his aunts and uncles, robin ever lacked for family or love. 

edmure and roslin met at college. while hoster had been trying to pressure edmure into medical school, he met roslin in his intro to psychology classes and fell in love with the subject as he fell in love with her. roslin is the daughter of, of course, walder frey, by one of his later wives. walder is like a donald trump figure in all the grossesness that entails. roslin became interested in discovering why people act the way that they do (and why that way is so often Bad) and how to try to help people like, not do that. discovering a man who was so earnest, true, and kind was a breath of fresh air. edmure only completed his bachelors and ended up going into public relations at a company in maidenpool but roslin went all the way to get her doctorate and start practicing psychiatry and helping people that way. they had three daughters, minisa who’s rickon’s age, bethany who’s three years younger, and celia who’s two years younger than that. 

[chrisbbaegopayo]

Hold Your Breath (Stray Kids: Stalker AU) ➻ Chapter 3 (part 2)

....

Genre: Thriller, Angst, Gore, Mystery, Suspense Characters: All of Stray Kids, reader, OCs. Word Count: 2.1k Warning: This story will contain elements of gore, on- and off-screen abuse, torture, mental illness, and stalking. It will feature themes that are not suitable for all ages, readers' discretion is advised. Each chapter will have its own specific warning.

My life got the better of me. More on that at the bottom.

Chapters: Premise | 01 Prologue | 02 Chapter one | 03 Chapter two | Chapter three (part 1) | Chapter three (part 2)

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She desperately wanted to tell him about the letter, and as a result of the internal debate, she brought it up with Jisung. The earlier established relaxed air was out like a candle, as a more serious tone slowly sunk in. Jisung didn’t say anything for a long time, which left her feeling rather uncomfortable—she wasn’t sure whether he had been angry at her or angry in general at the progress of things.

Fortunately, Jisung saved her the trouble by speaking up, asking her whether she had actually submitted the concern request, or complaint, as she sheepishly replied with a shake of her head. Although Jisung had told her before to go through with filing the complaint, she didn’t actually have a lot of time, being the first week of the school semester and all. She did tell him that she would go through with it the next day—she only had one class the next day, which meant she could easily hop on to the administration offices to file the complaint.

Jisung seemed pretty content with that but had her tell him what went on so that he could stop worrying. And she was inclined to do so, as she really felt like her entire stalker ordeal had made Jisung grow grey hairs or something.

Jisung left after a while, and even though she suggested that she should at least walk him out to where the gate was, he told her that he would be fine, and would text her when he had made it home. She nodded and watched him disappear into the sunset through her window while waving absentmindedly in his direction.

But what caught her eye was the little glimmer—she didn’t know what it was, but it was unsettling, and so she closed off her curtain swiftly, opting to look out to the open through a crack through her blinds.

What was that?

Although she felt unsettled by whatever it was out there, her mind raced and thought of Jisung, who was out there, alone. She quickly sent a text to him, asking him to be careful, and he replied back with, “you’re telling me?”

In the next few seconds, another incoming text from Jisung showed up, which read, “ok, I will be careful.”

She breathed a sigh of relief, before sending an outgoing text to him, saying, “remember to text me when you get home!!” And was given a brief response of, “got it.”

Perhaps that eased her heart a little bit. But then again, something Jisung said made her question herself—why would she be telling him about that when she was the one being bombarded with gifts? Surely, the creepy stalker wouldn’t threaten her friends and family, would they…?

She shook her head. The uneasiness that resulted from that inconclusive deduction made her feel as though she should be on her guard, especially with her friends, but…she really needed to stop watching horror and mystery films. It was going to give her a bad case of overthinking and insomnia if she kept on going with thining too much.

She opted for some quiet studying time, and after an hour or two of productive reading, she turned off her lights and headed to bed.

Sometime in the night, the glimmer went away, presumably packed away…

>>>>>

She did end up filing the complaint after her class of the day. It didn’t take her long to make it to the administration’s office, despite being on the other side of the campus. The lady at the counter gave her a strange look, although not entirely skeptical, but more of a worried glance than anything.

She seemed content about her situation, as she handed the slip of paper off to the desk lady, who told her that the complaint would find its way to the security office. She thanked the lady, and walked off, feeling proud of herself.

Finally.

However, when the security officer got in late afternoon, the mountains of papers and previous complaints and piled up so tremendously that her complaint simply got lost in the pile. It was as though the report had never been filed in the first place, and as it got caught with some useless papers on the desk, it was tossed into the shredder without a second thought.

And with that, yn’s attempt to save herself was thwarted by the actions of a careless and overworked security officer.

The day after, she had gotten ready to attend her criminology tutorial, she met Hyunjin standing outside the classroom. She greeted him with a small wave and was given one in return as they briefly exchanged pleasantries before the doors of the class opened, revealing the teaching assistant standing by the doorframe.

She, along with Hyunjin and a bunch of other students waiting outside quickly made their way into the class, where they all found themselves a seat and settled down. She ended up sitting next to Hyunjin, who then looked over at her, and smiled.

“He seems like a pretty friendly guy,” the raven-haired boy whispered, and she giggled in return.

“I hope so,” she whispered back.

Seemed like the teaching assistant had caught a glimpse of their exchange, and smiled confidently at the small group of student.

“Seems like some of you know each other…” He began, although his smile had been upgraded into a small chuckle.

What caught them off guard was the fact that a guy who looked like he was merely in his mid-twenties had the voice of a guy who was in his…40s? Maybe Hyunjin’s initial assumptions of the guy weren’t accurate after all. But the teaching assistant seemed pretty laid back in the way he talked, so…

“I’ll introduce myself first—I’m Felix Lee,” the teaching assistant said. “And I will be your TA for the criminology course tutorial. I have a master’s degree on the subject, and working towards getting my Ph.D., which centers around the psychology of victimhood in criminology.”

He paused, and then started off again, saying, “I know it may be a mouthful, but I assure you that it will get easier once you get into it. My field is the act of victimization of the victim in a crime.”

He received collective “oh” from the class.

Felix laughed and got on with the class. He discussed the material that was covered during the lecture and did an in-depth analysis for those who were still unsure of what was going on. Of course, people still had some issues with certain terminologies, but Felix was able to comb through the confusion with some everyday examples, bringing the class to the same page.

“Don’t forget to review materials beforehand so you’ll be prepared with the questions that you may have regarding the topic of the week,” Felix told them. "If that’s all for today, then you’re free to go—don’t forget that you’re all free to send me an email should you have any problems!"

There was a collective “ok” before they all shuffled their way out the door.

Hyunjin looked back at her, as she grabbed her bag and made her way to the exit. “You have any more classes after this?”

She shook her head. “You?”

He shrugged. “I have a three-hour break before my next tutorial.”

“Oh, that’s cool—what is it for?”

He thought about it, and then responded with, “I think some liberal arts course.”

She laughed. “You don’t know?”

He shrugged again. “It was an elective, they chose it for me, I think. I just got shoved in some random class that was required for my program. The other courses that you must take in order to graduate? I still need some liberal arts credit this year.”

She nodded. “Right, right. I think I have to do that for next year, it’s kind of bad for me to have to push everything to the last minute, huh.”

Hyunjin laughed. “Hopefully not all the time…”

She shook her hands. “No, I’m usually not like this…I’ve been mostly on top of things, although course selection doesn’t always work in your favour, and there is some overlap which causes some problem.”

Hyunjin nodded. “Yeah, I had a problem like that last year, which is why I was saddled with this liberal arts course this year—anyway, do you want to visit the small cafe that just opened near campus?”

She looked excited at the idea. “Yes! That sounds like a good idea!”

The pair made their way to the newly opened cafe, and spread their course material on top of the little table they were sitting at and studied together for a little bit until the conversation veered mostly off course. After talking about courses, they talked about ambitions, future jobs, as well as hobbies.

The conversation lasted a whole two hours—it didn’t really feel all too long. She found out through the exchange more about his parents, his background. When it came to his hobbies, he didn’t elaborate very much, just that he enjoyed reading sometimes, movies, and certainly other everyday hobbies that people tend to have.

What confused her, though, was the fact that he never really branched further regarding those details, merely just ‘I like this,’ or ‘I like that,’ and it threw her a little off. Perhaps he didn’t feel too comfortable sharing so much with her, but then again, it wasn’t really her place to say anything or comment. Instead, she talked about her own hobbies, entertainment preferences, and he listened, rather content with just listening to her talk.

After she went home for the day, and hopped on her couch, intending to relax, she received a text message. She hoped that it would be from Jisung or Sooji, but it was from Hyunjin, who said that he enjoyed their time at the cafe, and looked forward to their next interaction.

Although he didn’t put it like that, exactly. It was more like, “I had fun today, let’s do this again.”

It seemed a lot like the conversation two people on a date would have…

…no no no no. That was embarrassing. She swore she could feel her cheeks heat up, what an awkward thought, seriously.

Furthermore, her stalker seemed rather silent—this meant that she could focus on her work, hopefully. And for the next two months, it stayed like that until she received a text message one evening that made her feel truly unsafe.

It was an image of her—rather, a series of images of her—as they flooded her messages. Each picture was taken in a span of a few days, as it was evident with the clothes she wore, and which path she took to campus. Sometimes she considered herself lucky to live relatively close to the school, but this might not work to her advantage this time around.

She only scrolled through maybe 15 of them when she started seeing other people in the pictures, and most of the pictures that weren’t of her alone were her with Jisung. There were a few with Hyunjin in them, and one with Sooji.

This meant that he followed her. He knew where she lived. He knew which path she took to the university campus. Who she associated herself with, who her friends were.

And if she thought these were bad enough, the pictures she was set later on were even more disturbing. Maybe the creepy stalker had enough smarts to not be identified, but a gloved hand was seen in the ones that were seen later on. She guessed that maybe the hand belonged to her stalker, as they were position in very threatening ways.

When the images finally flooding her phone, she was sent one message:

“Why do you always spend time with them, why, why…I wish I could get rid of them so you’ll only see me…wouldn’t that be nice, yn? If we were the only people left in the world—you would have no one else to hold on to...”

This was the first time her name was actually mentioned in any exchange she had with him. The first one. And somehow, it felt even more personal than before. It was a rude awakening that this had become something far more than she could ever handle.

But she honestly did not know what to do, what else could she do? Create a fortress out of her home? What if her stalker knew how to pick locks? Or even knew how to do things without leaving a shred of evidence?

She thought of calling Jisung but stopped herself before she could dial the numbers. That might cause more trouble...after all, wasn’t her stalker threatening her…?

What on earth did he want…?

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My life got the better of me again, as I’m kinda dealing with some personal issues. I swear to make it up by posting some all the character’s backstories, histories, as well as other things. I also ended up in a rabbit hole of research materials...not a criminology major, so I had to do some extra research for that...as well as future research for other things...I’m basing the course structure on some of the syllabi I was able to find online, taking it mostly from Waterloo U’s criminology intro course...

I am going to be picking up the pace a little after this, as the following chapters will be advancing a much faster rate...I think I got too caught up with the details and I need to stop doing that to myself. I’m also veering off course with my original plot, but I think I need to make some small changes in terms of how things happen and give myself a motivation to write chaptered stories...

If things aren’t consistent...I’m not used to writing chaptered stories...I blame myself for not writing out a clear character profile...

[moonlit-maiden]

On Nico di Angelo, "Pairing the Spare" and How to Shaft a Complex Character in Less Than 500 Pages

This will be long. Strap in. This is long overdue.

So more longtime followers of mine may already know this but I adore Nico di Angelo from the Percy Jackson and the Olympians series. They also know I continue to eastly, to this day, about how he was handled at the end of the Heroes of Olympus series. Now, I've never fully delved into the 'why's and I will do so now as it's probably best to actually articulate it at some point instead of continually lamenting it without presenting rationale.

First: WHY do I love his character so much? It all boils down to shared/similar experiences for social ostracization. Growing up, I was quickly pushed out of social circles due to who my parents were; immigrants. Simply existing with the ethnicity and cultural heritage I had labeled me as untouchable. To sum it up succinctly; white but not the "right" kind of white. Keep in mind this was at the end of the Cold War; attitudes towards Slavic peoples were poor as hell. Fuck, they still are 30 years later! Nico is ousted due to his heritage too; being a Hades child. It's not something he chose nor controlled. He himself did nothing wrong to any of the campers yet when word got out they pushed him away. The same happened to me. As soon as the school kids and/or parents realized my parents were Slavic immigrants they shoved me out. It still hurts to this day. As such, I can deeply empathize with Nico.

Why does this matter? Because that blanket social rejections fucks people up. Nico is shown throughout the series to be distrustful, preferring to isolate himself. He has been shown time and time again he is unwanted due to being a Hades child. Eventually you just... stop trying. When you beat a dog enough times it stops coming around. This is the same thing. In addition, Nico has lost his elder sister, Bianca. The one person he felt understood him because she, too, was similar to him. Now I have Opinions on Bianca that would piss off 99% of the fandom but it's irrelevant here. Her death occurs shorts before or after it's revealed Nico is a Child of Hades. He is 10 years old with no one and the whole camp rejects him. It's a cruel thing to do to someone no matter how much you try and justify it. Rick did an incredible job highlighting how racism, ethnocentrism and bullying harms a child. Nico immediately became my favorite for this and I applauded Rick for having the balls to shine a very uncomfortable light on a situation similar to mine. A situation, I'm very sure many first generation or immigrant kids can relate to.

So where did it all go wrong? To be blunt, Blood of Olympus. Now, the final volume of the HHO series is a hot mess in general. Almost ALL characters get shafted on way or another with mischaracterization, simplification or backtracker on character growth. Not to mention the plot feels very slapdash and messy at times. But again, another subject. We see Reyna and Coach Hedge start to really get to know Nico and realize the extent at how bad his abuse has been at the hands of monsters and demigods alike. Neither feels this is right and shows it as best they can while respecting Nico's boundaries. In the previous book, House of Hades, Jason does the same thing. But then we finally get back to Camp Half Blood and shit falls apart for Nico's arc.

It's plainly obvious to anyone who's ready the series in full that Nico is traumatized, even moreso then most of the cast. He has been physically tortured multiple times, psychologically tortured by the camp and emotionally manipulated by several individuals. Keep in mind, by HOO, Nico is roughly 14. Fourteen. Can you even image how that feels?! He's only just now, after Jason, Hazel and Reyna's persistence that they will not hurt him, that they genuinely care for his well being, that they don't care about his heritage (and don't care about his sexuality, from Jason specifically). And then Will appears and Nico magically forgets 4 years of pining for Percy. It's so jarring, like a screeching record! This is when we enter the issue.

In writing, there are many rules. Like all rules, they can be bent of broken under certain circumstances. The rule in question is the 'pair the spare' rule. The rule states that if the pain cast has paired off, do not pair of the "spare" aka the odd man out unless it's been led up to. Rick chose to ignore this rule and pair Nico with Will, citing that as a canon LGBT character, he wanted to send the message to LGBT kids that they were worthy of love. This in itself is not a bad message. What IS bad is execution. First, Will is a background character. He very much has potential, don't get me wrong! But outside of having a few minor scenes in final volume of the PJO series, Will has only ever been mentioned in passing. From what we've seen, he and Nico have never interacted. On top of that, Will who is a healer, completely dismisses Nico's trauma. This is a very big red flag. When someone is traumatized, particularly psychologically, the absolute last thing to do is to dismiss the experience as "teen angst" like Will does. It shows absolute disrespect for Nico as a human being. And he is a healer. He should know better. In addition, Nico himself is not fond of the dismissive personality Will is displaying, the 'I'm going to tell you what to do' persona because he's a doctor so 'doctor knows best'. And in Nico's POV he says as much in his inner monologue! Yet he's "drawn to him". I'm sorry, but I call bullshit. Nico has been shown in 9 1/2 books to be quite smart, paranoid about social intentions due to past experiences and won't take crap from no one, not even his own father, the Lord of the (fucking) Underworld. Yet he'll just grit his teeth and basically follow Will's lead with little complaint? It's so out of character it's jarring and painful.

We briefly see Nico and Will in the first Trials of Apollo book. They're acting like the normal couple with Nico being the "sassy, snarky" one of the pair. Please note it's been 6-8months since the end of BOO, in-universe. In this one scene it completely erases Nico's trauma, very valid feelings of distrust and hurt, his struggle with both his heritage and his sexuality, his years-long unrequited love for Percy, his grief over his sister and his struggle to make connections with his fellow demigods. Love is powerful but its not a cure-all. It doesn't make the years of hurt and abuse magically disappear (trust me. I know.) and it doesn't change someone's personality to well-adjusted.

Pairing Nico with Will at the end of BOO completely destroys his characterization from a writing standpoint. All the real struggle, grief and unpleasant consequences of abusing and bullying people who are "other" in socially-acceptable ways is wiped away in less then 50 pages. It also send a very VERY dangerous message to LGBT youth; find someone you're attracted to and they'll fix you. That's a toxic message to tell to straight kids so why the fuck would you tell it to LGBT kids!? Unlike most LGBT character in literature that I can tell are shoehorned it, Nico was planned to be gay from the start, I have no issue with this. What I do have issue with is throwing his character out the window so he can chase some cute blond ass. Nico deserves better then that as a character. People who suffered socially-acceptable abuse deserve better then that. Immigrants and first-generation kids deserved better then that. LGBT youth deserved better then that.

THAT is why I keep getting so pissed; Rick took a genuinely complex character and fucked him over so he could lazily pair the spare and not be accused of leaving the only canonically gay character single. But there is a reason 'do not pair the spare' is a rule. It's better to leave a character single then slapdashedly pair them up. This goes double for characters who have trauma in their life and trauma is a serious issue that should be respectfully addressed. Love is powerful. Love helps to heal. But the love of family (Hazel) or budding friends (Jason and Reyna) is just as important, valid and send a powerful message. It sends the message 'you are not alone. You are worthy of love. You are a human worthy of regarding of both your experiences and your fears.' Pairing Will with Nico completely and utterly stomps on this message. It sends horrible signals to LGBT youth and scraps his complex character into the token goth gay boy. And Nico di Angelo deserves better then what he was given.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

[inkfic]

Thematic Musings

CW: This post discuses rape.

When I first started writing ‘frozen heart’, I had some general arcs in mind. I wanted to play with the concept of Windblade having life magic (and just what the hell life magic is), I wanted there to be ‘post’ war politics, I wanted to explore how the political situation in Caminus prepared Windblade--or didn’t--for the life she led as a diplomat, and I wanted to delve into Starscream’s relationship with Megatron in a way I haven’t before.

Starscream did not start the story with death magic. As we progressed, I realized that though it might not make sense that it was Starscream and not Megatron, Starscream had to have death magic. Part of it was to fulfill the dichotomy of Windblade’s power (and to acknowledge that death has a part in life), but also because in this ‘verse, the more power you have, the more careful you have to be with it. Megatron would not have been careful. He would have used it, and often, therefore becoming the kind of figure that Nova Prime was (I tried to imply it, but Nova had death magic too).

But Starscream, partially because he grew up as the heir to a fractured political state and partially because serving under Megatron gives you an entire education, understood instinctively that though he does not view his magic as a gift (or a curse--it simply is, and he’s not interested in probing why he has it), that if he was too careless with it people would have even more of a reason to make him a target. Better to have a reputation for having a silver tongue and a tendency for weaseling out of situations instead of being walking death.

The Caminus arc changed too--initially Starscream was far more creepy and manipulative, but I understand that for a relationship to succeed (or for the audience to want it to succeed), the characters have to be careful of the lines they cross. What lines they do cross have to be forgivable, even if in time. They cannot do something unforgivable. Originally, Hot Shot was just by himself, but it deepened his character and allowed for conflict to introduce his wife, Thunderblast. I know I’ve written her to be a passive-aggressive manipulator, but I’m actually rather fond of her. She has a different way of looking at the Camien royal family. She’s not caught up in the mythos of the family the way Windblade and Lightbright are, and she can see things they can’t.

But what this post is really about is rape.

Some things, timing-wise, are pure coincidence. I started planning Windblade’s encounter with the Autobot army back in--oh goodness, I think it was March or April of 2017. With that much time to spend and lavish on certain character interactions, naturally things changed in development. By the time I started writing it, the Harvey Weinstein scandal had broken but my plotting decisions had been set in stone for at least a month before that. By the time I was actually writing the most difficult scene of that chapter (the attempted rape), Alabama had decided that no, they were not going to send an alleged pedophile to the Senate and for once, I felt a little bit of hope.

Rape has stalked this narrative from the beginning. Starscream was raped--repeatedly--by Megatron, the DJD/Overlord/Turmoil et all all use rape as a control and punishment method. The Wreckers (before they came under Springer’s leadership) used rape as a threat against the populations they were fighting against. Impactor is an opportunistic offender. Whenever there was a siege that was lost, rape and pillaging/looting were the order of the day.

I just didn’t realize until I was plotting Springer’s reaction to Windblade’s attempted rape that I realized this new conflict between Prowl and Starscream turned on the fulcrum of rape.

I’ve read fanfic for a long time. I’ve written it for even longer. When I was younger and a writer would utilize ‘rape as drama’, as long as it wasn’t cringing to read, I generally accepted it if I found the narrative interesting. Now that I’m older and have been exposed to media that depicts rape in good and bad ways (Good: Veronica Mars, Bad: Game of Thrones), I am very picky about what I consume and how I think about characters that are capable of such an action.

For the record, I believe that Starscream-in-canon is capable of rape. In the case of Transformers: Prime, I think he would even enjoy it (it’s very hard to watch some of his interactions with Arcee because of that). IDW!Starscream is, I think, capable of it but only when it accomplishes something. I can’t read things like Spotlight: Megatron or Megatron: Origins and not get the vibe that Starscream was raped often, as punishment and humiliation. For that reason, I don’t see Starscream often physically engaging in the act, but I do see him being generally creepy and manipulative. He won’t touch you, but he will get too close for you to be comfortable.

There are other characters that I think the writers have done their best to say THIS CHARACTER IS A RAPIST without falling foul of moral guardians and too many questions about how Cybertronians would have sex. James Roberts made it as clear as he possibly could (even using objects that have long doubled as visual shorthand for sexual penetration) that Fortress Maximus was raped by Overlord. Overlord himself, despite all the jokes that I’ve seen online, is clearly a sexual predator and sadist. The DJD are a team of sadists, and again, using that visual shorthand, are users of sexual assault and rape. Impactor’s use of Springer’s body to shoot his enemies is a clear violation, especially when it is made clear that a) Springer did not consent to it and b) it has and continues to traumatize Springer.

This isn’t really about a post where I discuss which Transformers characters are made out to be rapists in everything but name in canon or even which characters I do and do not think are capable of such a thing, but I did need to discuss it because while I am not a survivor, this subject is very personal to me. I’ve had friends who had been assaulted and raped, and when they have the courage to tell you, believe them.

Rape has long been used as a weapon of war, going through to the entire history of war. Every single boots-on-the-ground war (and perhaps even the Cold War, although that’s not a history I’m interested in parsing) has had a problem with rape. It’s used for several reasons--rape against native women by the invading force is a way of breaking the backbone of local resistance (women are the creators and generators of community), as well as a ‘reward’ for successful soldiers. There are more reasons, of course--in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun, it’s made clear that the reason a unit participates in a gang rape is to build ties within the unit, but I’m not interested in going into the psychology of war rape.

There are notable examples: the Japanese occupation of Korea and “comfort women” during WWII, the American base in Okinawa, the amount of war rape in the Congo, the rape of Jewish women in concentration camps during the Holocaust, the American invasion of Vietnam, and many more. To list them all would take more pages and emotional fortitude than I possess. The point is this: where there is war, there is rape. Where there are hierarchies that are brutally enforced, there is rape. Rape is a crime of power, not sexuality, and war creates an atmosphere of both clear and not power boundaries.

The conversation Windblade and Starscream have, about which side is guiltier of war crimes, is a necessary one. Windblade comes from a country that has never seen “war” as we would recognize it. (Border raids, yes. War, no). She has very clear ideas about what is right and what is wrong, and Starscream’s moral ideas are...muddier.

I am not defending Starscream’s position. I do believe that war creates an environment that is both psychologically and emotionally unstable and so people in that environment make decisions they would not make outside of it. That does not defend the rape and torture and violence that goes with that environment, and I’m not certain that I, in those circumstances, would commit to those actions, but I can see how they would come about.

Windblade isn’t completely right either--her experience with violence has not, up to this point, particularly state-run or state-organized, so she can write off those experiences as individual instead of systemic. Her worldview needed a little more complication of some very complex issues.

Prowl’s biggest mistake was not in raising the dead (although, obviously, that’s up there because that’s what gained Primus’ attention), but it was in allowing for circumstances that would have resulted in Windblade being raped. Springer knew it was wrong, but Prowl is so caught up in what he considers the ultimate evil--Starscream having any kind of power at all--that he is willing to excuse or allow behavior that would inconvenience or cause harm to that ultimate evil. That is the act that gets Springer off Prowl’s ‘side’ (but not on Starscream’s), and the violation of the protection offered to hostages is ultimately what will fracture the Autobot army.

Please note: if Windblade had been a prisoner and not a hostage, no one (except Springer, but that’s because they would have shared a rapist) would have batted an eye at the attempted assault. But because she was under the hostage protection, to attack her in any way but particularly with sexual violence was anathema.

I really enjoy “Coming to Terms” by biblioteca, and I think that the worldbuilding in it is top-notch (if occasionally taking over the plot at times). But I have to disagree on the premise that the Autobots have a rape culture and the Decepticons don’t. I believe both factions have a rape culture, but the Autobots’ is much more insidious than the Decepticons’.

War is an ultra-violent expression of rape culture. If you don’t understand the term, that’s fine--I graduated with a degree in Women’s and Gender Studies so I got used to discussing it as verbal shorthand. Rape culture is a system that allows for rape to exist and flourish. It starts off small (think of children being told to hug their relations without being asked if they want to, boys tormenting girls on the playground and it being “oh, he likes you”) to bigger things (girls being told to cover up because it tempts the boys, gendered bullying culture like boys-on-girls, tickling without consent) and all the way through from how women and girls are taught to navigate the world (all men are potential rapists until proven otherwise and you have to study their behavior to learn if you could be safe while alone with them, carry your keys in your hand so that you’re not standing at your car for a long time, always park under a light, never go anywhere in the dark by yourself, don’t wear short skirts, don’t wear your hair in a ponytail or braid because that can be used against you, if you are in the position of being sexually assaulted or raped, let it happen so that you can survive) up to rape itself and its punishment (or lack thereof). The bottom tiers support the tallest one--the normalization of rape and sexual assault so that when it does occur, it’s not treated seriously.

How this relates to war is when people grow up steeped in that rape culture along with certain cultural boundaries, when they are put in a place where they are actively encouraged to act on their most violent impulses (there are stories that during the Iraq/Afghanistan war, before soldiers would dropped into a hot zone that they would be made to watch pornography. I haven’t read the sources, but I find it reasonable) and those boundaries are no longer present, you’re going to have rape. It’s even in the Hero’s Journey--women are the prizes of the journey*.

This is also the first time in fiction since I’ve become ‘woke’ that I’ve decided to include rape as a topic and theme. I’ve been leery before, because in the slice-of-life story that was ‘third time’s the charm’ and stories and other, older fic, if I was going to present rape, I was going to do it right. There are too many writers that drop a rape revelation for the drama and then never touch it again (see: Suzanne Collins).

I don’t feel it’s accurate to write about war and not write about rape, but I wanted to center the survivors in the narrative. Their survival is heroic, and the actions they take to prevent further rape cements them as the heroes. The ones who created the rape, committed the rape, or allowed the rape are the explicit villains, because rape is an act of evil. It is, I believe, the only true moral absolute. Thou shalt not rape.

If I sound preachy or angry, good. I won’t apologize for that--because I am angry.

*In 1983, a therapist named Maureen Murdock went to discuss the complexities and limitations of the hero’s journey as it applied to women to the creator of the hero’s journey monomyth, Joseph Campbell. Campbell informed her that women were the prizes of the journey and not the heroes themselves, and Murdock published a book in response to detail the heroine’s journey. The following link is to the heroine’s journey cycle.

https://heroinejourneys.com/heroines-journey/

In relationship to whether men realize that they contribute to an environment where women feel unsafe, starting from the bottom tier of sexual jokes and references to the top tier of actual sexual coercion, the New York Times conducted a poll with 615 men and the results of that poll can be found here.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/12/28/upshot/sexual-harassment-survey-600-men.html

If this is a subject that interests you, I can recommend Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a Small Town. It is not an easy read by any means--some people are fucking evil--but it is hard to put down. 

[marvelandponder]

More Than Half the World Away

Let’s start with another question: How aware was Luna when she was Nightmare Moon? Because there’s two theories.

Both are based on whether or not Nightmare Moon originated from Luna herself.

In the beginning, a number of fans originally assumed it was all Luna, all the time (same Luna time, same Luna channel)! It seemed like a logical conclusion. Nightmare Moon is just a representation of Luna’s depression, loneliness, pride, and jealousy because those were the things responsible for both the her downfall.

The IDW comics, on the other hand, had a different interpretation.

Nightmare Moon as a whole was still meant to represent all those things, but the “Nightmare Forces” instead became a separate entity entirely that Luna gradually let take over her mind.

So, either it was all her fault and she was all there, or she gave into something darker and, it seems, might’ve been a little less so.

Although, even if the latter is the case, we know for a fact that she had some semblance of memory. She wasn’t just straight up possessed and/or unconscious; even as Nightmare Moon, Luna missed her sister, meaning Nightmare Moon had Luna’s memories, emotions, and doubts, along with the jealousy and pride that drove her to villainy.

The first thing Luna says after Nightmare Moon was defeated all the way back in season 1 was:

“I’m so sorry! I missed you so much, big sister.”

So, since we know for a fact that Luna was still there to some degree, that bring us back to the real question!

If Luna was in exile for one thousand years, how did the isolation not drive her insane? Or at the very least leave some brutal mental scars?

The specifics may differ when we’re talking about our favourite magical talking horses, but you’ve probably heard about how extreme isolation can have a huge impact on people, even for relatively short periods of time. Solitary confinement has been known to make people’s minds slip after two months, with auditory and visual hallucinations along with paranoia, obsessions, and delusions to boot. Isolation and sensory deprivation experiments are even worse, leaving participants hallucinating and emotionally distressed after two days.

So, that brings us to the crux of the issue. One thousand years with potentially nothing but you and the dark voices in your head. Even for an immortal character in a kid-friendly universe, that’s a long, long time. How did she get through it?

And if not those thousand years, what about the stress of reintegrating into a society 1000 years ahead of the one you left behind? Even if she’s now found her place in this time period, how hard was it for her to adjust?

Let’s see how Mental Illness Horse managed.

B-Canon or Bust

So, if we’re dividing this up into what it was like for her on the moon and what it was like for her to have to come back, we’ll start with the easy one. If you’ve read the comics (and consider them canon), you actually already have an answer as to how Luna/Nightmare Moon could’ve maintained her sanity all that time.

According to the Nightmare Rarity arc and the Nightmare Moon issue of Fiendship is Magic, Nightmare Moon had little moon creatures to keep her company (and they’re called the “Nyx”... ‘the writers can’t read fanfiction’ my ass).

And aside from them, by the end of the Fiendship is Magic comic, we see that Nightmare Moon gained the ability to create nightmares for the ponies of Equestria. She wasn’t able to torture Celestia anymore, but the ending seems to imply she still very much had access to the rest of the population’s dreamscapes.

So, I mean, she wasn’t having a jolly little romp with some adorable moon friends (but seriously, MoonStuck still holds up so if you haven’t read it I advise you change that), but, hey, social interaction is magic!

Because any kind of social interaction, even if it’s in the form of tormenting others, is still better than pure solitary confinement.

So, that’s how she she didn’t go insane, per se, but I still have to wonder what kinds of psychological stress this put Luna under.

But, thankfully, I don’t have to wonder all that much, thanks to Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?

The Tantabus was a creature Luna created to torture herself every night. Taking her Fiendship issue into account, it’s actually a fitting punishment (too harsh on herself still, but very fitting).

If she spent those thousand years tormenting the ponies of Equestria at random, in a way it’s logical for the punishment she came up with to involve a constant onslaught of nightmares.

Especially knowing Luna. From the way we’ve seen her carefully look after them on a personal basis in their dreams and valued the opinion of the common ponies, we know Luna places a lot of importance on her subjects well-being on a micro level.

Personalizing her nightmares to her own worst memories and fears is fitting of the crime, in a pony like Luna’s mind. If all of them suffered their worst fears and insecurities, she should have to, too. Again and again. Forever.

And to her, I think it’s essentially an eye for an eye. Not just a reminder to never become Nightmare Moon again, but a punishment fit to the crime.

I know because the Tantabus is only held at bay when Luna starts to forgive herself based on what her subjects and friends think of her now. With their help, she can carry the guilt with her, but at a more manageable size.

That guilt seems to be be something she only experienced in hindsight, though. Nightmare Moon herself was definitely never wracked with guilt over what she was doing, so the troubling implication is there were parts of Luna, like her morality, that were lost. If parts of her psyche could be overwhelmed or otherwise hidden, my question then becomes, how did Luna stay Luna?

Back Home

This is mostly based on a small detail that probably means nothing that I still love pointing out.

Okay, so, we know that the entirety of Luna Eclipsed has to do with Luna readjusting to society and society readjusting to Luna after her stint as the sky rock dictator.

The culture shock is a wonderfully in depth thing for a kids show to address, and it’s a fun episode to boot.

What got me on the rewatch, though, was a moment that deals with a part of that the rest of the episode doesn’t: the fact that Luna left ponies behind.

It comes when Twilight first approaches Luna in her Starswirl the Bearded costume, and the scene goes a little something like this:

Twilight: “Princess Luna? Hi, my name is---” Luna: “Starswirl the Bearded. Commendable costume. Thou even got the bells right.” Twilight: “Thank you! Finally! Somepony who gets my costume!”

And that’s when we hold on Luna making this face:

I’m willing to admit I could be reading into things, but it honestly seems to me Luna’s having a moment where she remembers he’s not around anymore.

The fact that ponies could ever not instantly recognize a pony like Starswirl would be baffling in his time, when he was alive and, well, a very important wizard. The comics may have retconned this in Legends of Magic (Still unclear if Celestia was lying about that or what), but in the Reflections arc, Starswirl was still around after Luna was sent to the moon, which sadly means she probably didn’t get to say goodbye when he went missing.

This is such a small moment, but it’s a reminder of what she lost, and that’s a consequence we don’t see her deal with a lot because she felt so isolated and alone from most other ponies when she was young---but it is a consequence.

Even if the show’s canon hasn’t confirmed that she was friends with a ton of other ponies at the time, there were ponies who missed her, and who she missed in turn. And she can never really get that time and those relationships back.

Although, in a way, I think that’s why the parts of Luna’s mind that were hers survived. She missed her big sister.

She just had a good reason to return that kept her going.

This post has a companion! 

Part 1: Nightmare Moon and Part 2: The Royal Family

Here’s a link to all the MLP editorials I’ve done, and just for kicks, have the latest three:

Supporting Cast, Legends of Magic #1,and S7E1andE2 Review

Year of the Pony

Header Image Wouldn’t be Possible Without...

Moon and Earth by Sigmavirus1 Celestia and Luna by JordiLa-Forge

If you’re ever in need of some gorgeous vector art, looks like you’re covered with these two! Browse through their galleries, show them some love!

My Body Feels Young/ But My Mind is Very Old

[avoresmith]

@bigyepper​ put metal gear on my dash and I was reminded all I ever want to do is talk about metal gear.

so here are some RANDOM METAL GEAR THOUGHTS/PROBABLY UNPOPULAR OPINIONS BUT WHATEV

spoilers for whole series!!! stop reading if you care about that shit!!!

Eli basically fits the profile of a child soldier. As in, raised from a very young age indoctrinated to a specific world view that encourages violence and strength and loyalty. But not so stupid that he can’t engage with the world outside this view. Rather, when people show him kindness he has been taught to perceive it as either attempted manipulation or disrespect (because it implies he is weak enough to need it). There is no one in thei game remotely equiped to help Eli, and everyone who tries only makes it worse because they think of him as a kid instead of a dangerous enemy combatant (which he absolutely IS and the game TREATS him as such and he treats HIMSELF as such). 

This also fits perfectly with what we know of Paz’s background, and while Paz wasn’t really 16, her ‘education’ probably began fairly young (tho older than Eli I would think, she seems to have a better grasp on the potential for a normal life).

So basically. Zero just has a history of raising children to be fucked up murder tools is what I’m saying.

to that end, I kind of think the Las Enfantes Terribles project was Zero tried to create the Perfect Soldier via his manipulation bullshit network, fucked up in some way (or someone deliberately fucked it up, since as seen by Skullface Zero doesn’t actually have eyes on everything), so we get Eli, the Better Twin, raised by the Patriots, and then David just sort of dumped into America, kept track of but not deliberately constructed for a specific purpose.

I’ve never really interacted much with the deeper fandom on MGS tbh, but lately it kind of weirds me out that ‘Otacon is definitely a sexist creeper who co-opts the death of women around him into plot elements for his Big Deal Hero Story’ is not a meme that seems to come out of this fandom. Like. He does this CONSTANTLY, and okay at least with Emma and Naomi we can claim a certain amount of relationship there. Though his obsession with Naomi, who he barely knows, is certainly ALSO creeper behavior. But Wolf?? She gave half a shit about him and his response to her death is to treat it like a hurdle in his personal growth whereupon he is now ready to undergo the Figure Out How To Love Again stage of his personal anime fantasy. It’s creepy as fuck. And yes, it’s not how the narrative is intended to be taken but when did we ever let that stop us?  According to the NARRATIVE, Rose is a flawless and caring girlfriend that Raiden is lucky to have (MORE ON THAT LATER). In point of fact Otacon is an entitled weaboo creep who if told Wolf was gay would probably regret having woke up that morning.

WHICH. I am COMPLETELY FINE WITH. It’s good character shit! It fits REALLY WELL with his connection to Huey who is one of the best portrayals of an abuser I’ve ever seen. He grew up with an entitled asshole dad it is no surprise that Otacon, growing up media that ALSO loves to portray and reinforce those entitlements, would also come to see women primarily as actors in the dramatic story of his life.

OKAY ON THE SUBJECT OR ROSE. DO YOU KNOW WHO IS THE BEST? ROSE IS. The girl who got everything she wanted in life with no exceptions! Who was raised by and single handledly manipulated her way out of the thumb of the patriots! Who manipulated her boyfriend into being completely devoted to her, had his son, lied about his death, drove him to alcohol abuse, faked breaking up and moving in with another man. The Patriots have a lot and IMMEDIATE history of stealing babies to manipulate events and she just noped the right fuck out of that and encouraged key players from the sidelines until the bodies that governed her entire life were turned to dust then slid back in with a cute little ‘I lied, =)’ and regained her perfect idyllic family with her hot cyborg badass husband. NAME A SINGLE MGS CHARACTER WHO MORE GOT EVERYTHING THEY EVER WANTED THAN ROSE DID. NO ONE. ROSE GOT EVERYTHING SHE WANTED AND SACRIFICED SHIT (*due to being too crazy to consider the severe psychological harm she did to Raiden as much of a ‘sacrifice’).

Like if Ocelot had dreamed of a happy marriage to a total badass with a kid and a successful career instead of destroying the structures that govern the world to reduce society to a lawless wild west anarchy where his bae would be the biggest badass around, he would basically just have been Rose.

So yea obvs Rose was unironically intended to be a good portrayal of a capable woman in a loving relationship or something. Whatever. I don’t care. Kojima is a sexist trashfire. Correct.

What I’m saying is my love for Rose also makes me want to go down armless and screaming under a beached submarine adorned with the faces of my father figures.

I am STRONGLY of the opinion that Ocelot manipulated Big Boss into abandoning Kaz. In the Truth tapes Ocelot VERY MUCH makes it sound like Kaz is basically aware of and onboard with the general plan, and the ‘plan’ explained to BB is to replace him with a Phantom so he can disappear off of Zero’s radar. So BB has been in a coma for 9 fucking years and when he wakes up the two people most loyal to him in the entire world have been conspiring to do the nearly impossible and make him invisible to the hyper vigilant spy network that manipulates events worldwide. Who the fuck is he to be like ‘nah?’ While ostensibly The Boss, BB has always been heavily guided and influenced by others and fairly amoral. That’s how Kaz was able to manipulate him into starting MSF, even though BB grumbled constantly about having no particular desire to do anything that grandiose. He doesn’t respond heavily to ethics but he responds to empathy (which is why Zero and Kaz use Paz to manipulate him) and REALLY RESPONDS to personal responsibility (why he clings so hard to the Boss but abandons her when he perceives she has abandoned him and all LIKE him, I.E. all of MSF).

So while he is definitely still responsible for Venom, it’s not really any more so than Zero, Ocelot, and Kaz, all of whom knowingly used him.

When Ocelot lights BB’s cigar and sends him off, he has Kaz’s glasses in his pocket ;D He was fully aware Kaz was captured and being tortured and says N O T H I N G, and he KNOWS what effect it would have because he USES IT TO MANIPULATE VENOM. The very fact that this information would motivate Big Boss to save Kaz is pretty undeniable in light of the fact that it is used to manipulate a dude brainwashed into THINKING he’s Big Boss.

What im saying is Ocelot broke up their marriage on purpose and I love him?? Im telling u Ocelot and Rose are soultwins.

I think it is charming that Ocelot likes to pretend that he is not a crazy joyful sadist, but I also like to imagine that he got his reputation as an amazing interrogator by just torturing people for funsies, then pulling out information he already had due to being a super spy.

I headcanon that Kaz’s daughter, Catherine, was an adopted war orphan who he left behind a sizable inheritance of dirty war money which she uses to start an Anti-PMC PMC corp, and fueled by a desire to unravel the war economy her father, if not created, put on a fucking steroids, she funds Raiden in his efforts to murder a shitload of PMC CEOs in Metal Gear Rising 2, the game I will never get because Konami is terrible

[wnnbdarklord]

Dear Trick or Treak 2017 creator

Hi there! I’m so glad you’ll be creating something for me. This is my first year participating, but I’m sure everything is going to go great :D

Below, you’ll find a list of my general likes, dislikes and fandom specific prompts. Happy creating!

General Likes: Polyamory, gen, het, slash, femslash, families of choice, competence, BAMF female characters, angst, hurt/comfort, teamfic, pretty much all the tropes especially if there is a twist, worldbuilding, humor, redemption, for want of a nail AUs, time travel, werewolves, crossovers, non fantasy/SF canons encountering the supernatural/aliens, fix it fics, etc.  

Smut is fine, but I’d prefer that the focus is not on that.

General Dislikes: I’m not a great fan of permanent character death, rape, torture porn, underage stuff, infidelity, humiliation, character bashing, ship bashing, no powers AUs, love triangles, fake married/dating, incest, power imbalances in relationships, hate sex, hardcore kinks, necrophilia, PWP, abuse, fusions, zombies, 1st person POV

Crossovers: I love crossovers! Feel free to crossover any fandom here in any combination. I've elaborated more on crossover specific things in my Crossovering letter, so if you're feeling inspired to crossover, feel free to take a look:

http://wnnbdarklord.tumblr.com/post/163153222375/dear-crossovering-2017-creator

Trick likes: To keep with the theme of the exchange, I'd love to get some darker stuff. Spooky stories, mysteries, horror, body horror, WEREWOLVES (all my love if you get some werewolves in there, whether the canon has them or not), creepy mythology and gods, ghosts, monsters, magic, sacrifices, ancient and abandoned places, grim takes on lighthearted canons or alternately grim events that keep the lighthearted tone of the canon, dark consequences to canon events (psychological or otherwise), dragons, sudden disappearance of the supernatural in fantasy/SF canons and the consequences and the reverse in non fantasy/SF canons, immortality, shapeshifting, apocalypses

Trick Do Not Wants: ZOMBIES. I'm pretty mellow about most things, since my dislikes are mostly covered above. But just...no zombies. Ever.

Treat likes: characters getting along and bantering, OT3s, characters not dying when they were supposed to, healing (especially if the canon is a relentless shitshow usually), happy or at least hopeful endings, found family, exploring the world/universe, friendly encounters with the supernatural/aliens, ancient knowledge regained with a good outcome, people working together, pets, sudden appearance of the supernatural in fantasy/SF canons in a good or funny way, magic returning to the world, rebuilding after an apocalypse

Art: I'm pretty sure I'd love any art! I love sketchy styles with maybe just a splash of color to draw the eye. As for subject matter, I'd love to see any scenes from the fandom specific prompts or stuff from my likes. Characters being affectionate, gentle touches, characters as werewolves, characters in fancy dress/costumes, characters doing magic are also all welcome.

Fandom specific prompts:

Crimson Peak: I am probably one of the few people requesting this fandom wanting happy, hopeful or silly things and completely disinterested in the fucked up dynamics between Thomas and Lucille.

Anything post canon would be great! What happens to the house? Does Edith get on with her life? Do the other ghosts find peace?

Or maybe an AU where Lucille never left the mental institution? What do the other characters' lives turn out like then?

For something more crack, consider this post: http://romanticdaydreams.tumblr.com/post/129166110088/i-saw-this-on-my-professors-door-and-i-cant-even I'd love crack takes on gothic for this fandom! Maybe Lucille and Thomas try to pull of their scheme again, but things keep comically going wrong?

Frozen: Anything based on this where Anna succeeds and Hans falls in love with her: http://deylandisneydean.tumblr.com/post/80038513436/insuffera6le6itch-deylandisneydean-hans (If you can't see the link, it's basically Anna confessing she wants to kill Elsa to rule Arendelle and Hans going 'That's what I was going to say!') It can be crack or taken more seriously. I've just wanted fic of this ever since I saw that post years ago.

Or perhaps a darker take on the trolls in the movie and their actions regarding Anna. Especially considering that creepy song they sang about her and Kristoff.

Scooby Doo: I'd love to see something with a modern take on the Scooby Gang. What would be different, what the same? OT4 totally welcome!

A crossover with Leverage would be amazing! Or even a fusion where the gang turns to less legal methods after discovering not all their masked criminals are so easy to keep in jail after being arrested, if they even are.

Friends: Murder mystery time! Ross gets gruesomely killed and his ghost is haunting the others. Can they discover who his killer is? Or does Ross' frustration at their inability to solve it make him less of a friendly ghost? Bonus points if it turns out it was just a really unfortunate accident that caused Ross to manifest out of the sheer indignity of having died like that.

Or maybe Phoebe actually does have or get supernatural powers?

Star Trek the Next Generation: I have a hard time shipping anyone in my childhood fandoms and STTNG definitely falls under that. I'd strongly prefer gen and (if you must) very background canon pairings only for this.

Anything where Q plays with the crew would be fun. Perhaps he traps them in a murder mystery game or a haunted mansion. Perhaps he introduces them to the supernatural?

I'd always wanted to see the Enterprise crew in something of an apocalypse scenario. Specifically, I think they would be great at rebuilding after something like that, especially with the philosophic underpinnings of the canon in that humanity constantly strives to better itself. It strikes me as a lovely hopeful thing in such a scenario.

Perhaps something in the far future where the Federation is gone, but records (especially of the Enterprise crew) remain and give hope for a better future?

Gargoyles: Anything to do with the Fae, especially Puck. What made him decide to reveal himself to Xanatos? What was he up to during the exile from Avalon?

The end of the show had the gargoyles reveal themselves to the public. What are the consequences of that? I'd love to see something where the gargoyle population comes back from the brink of extinction in the face of a friendlier human populace.

I also love the show's take on mythology where all things are true. Maybe something with Slavic mythology in that setting? More Norse mythology?

Discworld: Anything with Granny Weatherwax, Death or the Nac Mac Feegles. I love this setting, so pretty much anything will be great.

If you feel like writing a crossover with LOTR, I would love love love any of the prompts from this post: http://berry-muffin.tumblr.com/post/160194985845/thebibliosphere-teapotdragon-zephyrantha

Lord of the Rings: For ultimate spooky, maybe something where Boromir and Faramir end up scouting Mordor or are captured in Minas Morgul? How would they escape, what horrors would they see?

Any scenario where Boromir lives would be great. Or Boromir interacting with the elves, especially once he remembers they actually participated and lived through battles he read about.

I have a total inexplicable soft spot for Boromir/Arwen, so something with them would also be great!

Ages ago, I read a fic where elves returned to Earth during the present day. I'd love such a scenario where the magic also returns and so does the memory of starlight in Men.  

Marvel Cinematic Universe: I'm sure my fic and tumblr make it fairly obvious Loki is my favorite character. That said, I am also fond of the other Thor characters, the GOTG crew and the Iron Man crew.

Unlikely team ups would be great, especially between characters that have never interacted before. Characters forced to work together to survive or just stuck together snarking at one another.

Something with Loki's shapeshifting or children would be amazing, especially translated for the MCU setting. Genderfluid Loki is a big plus!

Involuntary werewolf Loki for extra angst to go with his jotun heritage? Yes please!

Maybe the world ends once Thanos gets his hands on the Infinity Gauntlet, but Tony and Loki somehow manage to travel back in time to prepare?

Instead of Thanos and the Chitauri, perhaps the GOTG crew finds Loki? Or the Ravagers?

The Defenders: Anything where Jessica and Matt interact! I loved them in the show. Extra super bonus points for Foggy as well.

Foggy representing Jessica would be great.

Colleen, Misty and Claire mutual admiration society! Maybe the two of them help Misty adjust to her new bionic arm?

Also dragons! Maybe some dragons survived somewhere? How did they even get to Earth? How did the people in Kun Lun discover that their bones can bring back the dead/heal people? I want all the dragon stuff.