#and it has some REALLY interesting takes on nature vs nurture

[voidcat]

comparing hand-sizes to hold their hand against the other's and then just holding hands + Laios 😭😭😭💞💞💞💞

I can never write Laios like you king but hope you like this Oxy ilyy<33🫶🫶

wc: 703 ; gn!reader

“Hey, so…” a voice interrupts the silence. “What if all those physical differences we displayed weren’t just an effect of changeling spores, more like revealed by them?” Laios asks, looking at his hand deep in thought.

Few groans and hums raise in their air, Chilchuck for one isn’t happy in the slightest for having his sleep interrupted. At least Marcille seems a little interested, or maybe just trying to end the conversation before Laios’ mind can spiral to depths no one wishes to know about.

“You mean the body shaping accordingly to your life style?”

“Yes! But not exactly.” some faces drop as his voice raises a tone higher, whatever remnants of exhaustion wiped off his body. “What if the occupations we would take and the lives we would live were already predetermined by the bodies we were going to inhabit?”

He sounds excited, the heart in the right place but probably not explaining what’s on his mind as he wished.

“You mean like ‘nature vs nurture’?” your voice rings in the air and immediately you can see Marcille’s face dropping. Probably an option she thought of as well, but chose not to voice for the moment.

Meanwhile Laios, more than happy to have someone else join in on his brainstorming, rushes to your side like a giddy puppy, hands up, palms facing you.

“Like Senshi–” “Hmm, he looked quite slender and fragile, even for elven standards when he was an elf himself…” “And and–”he counts every small detail he has noticed and saved into his memory without taking a breath. Happy and in his element, he looks fascinating.

“Despite all that, I’ve noticed hand sizes to not have gone through a drastic change.”

“Oh, really?” you ask, now a little curious. Has he really paid individual attention to each and everyone’s hands? “Yes! I even compared them with mine for good measure.” he says matter-of-factly, earning a snort from you.

“Well, then in this case,” you draw in, “your research is flawed I’m afraid.” Unfazed by your close proximity, he only looks confused at your claim. The ‘how so’ waits on his tongue but you beat him to it.

“I don’t think you ever compared with mine.” he seems relieved, as if letting out the breath he was holding. Taking your words as an invitation, Laios grabs your hands and brings them up, facing his palms against yours.

First thing he notes is how close they are to his in size. Sure, for a tall-man, he is not exactly the tallest but he was told he has big hands. Your fingertips passing his distal interphalangeals barely, his brows furrow without noticing. At his reaction, you stick your tongue out at him victoriously. Unfazed by your reaction he continues to inspect. Staring at your hands against his with fascination, he moves each finger, grazing against your skin as if to test some sort of parameter only he knows of.

What feels like forever passes.the two of you, enthralled in your own bubble now, everyone else busy with something, their attentions diverted.

Laios realizes then, that he has been staring for a while. With this first moment kicks back in his senses; the world suddenly isn’t drowned out, everything but you isn’t covered by a dark curtain– and how painfully warm, and so nice to the touch your hands are.

As if sensing him snapping back into reality, you let your fingers slide across the gaps between his, clasping his hands in a demeanor that mimicked his observant self a while ago.

“See?” you break the silence for the two of you. “Told ya you were missing out on data.” you say with a grin. Finding himself at ease with you, he brings his right hand to scratch his head reluctantly.

He couldn’t possibly be blushing now, could he?

Laios tries to return the smile and still feels his shyness taking over. A breath let out and he allows himself to sit down more properly, letting his muscles relax. Taking out his little notebook to read, he stays, and his left hand drops to the ground, between the two of you, hand still clasped to yours, not letting go until you do.

[hannieehaee]

Svt as tropes

seventeen as tropes

content: crushes, fluff, some of these are idol!aus (as in the member is an idol, not reader), etc.

wc: 884

a/n: these are just tropes that come to mind when i think of each member. i tried to keep it varied and original <3

masterlist

seungcheol -

enemies to lovers - he seems like he can be maybe a lil bit cocky at times (with reason, i mean have you seen him ..), so i think itd be possible to start off the wrong foot with him. he's also pretty stubborn, so pair with him another stubborn individual and you have a dragged out love story that begins with rivals and ends with a very fiery relationship.

jeonghan -

coworkers to lovers - jeonghan seems like an extremely charming and interesting guy who doesnt even have to try. im 100% sure people who work around him fall for him every single day. i think he'd be very entertained by the idea of crushing on a staff member/coworker. it would make him look forward to work and make him always seek you out while on the job.

joshua -

childhood friends to lovers - he seems the type that would keep a special someone in his heart for a very long time, even if it was just as friends. leaving his home country so young, the distance would make him realize his feelings and end up with that one special person from back home.

jun -

arranged marriage - okay not exactly arranged marriage but more so him being with someone his parents introduce him to! he seems to be a huge family oriented guy, so i see him ending up with someone his parents may have thought would be perfect for him. it'd start off as him giving it a chance to please his parents but ending up actually falling for this person.

soonyoung -

sunshine vs. grump - this concept isnt necessarily 100% black and white to me. but still i think maybe he would fall for someone who has a very contrasting personality his very positive and over the top demeanor. he'd enjoy the back and forth in which he'd act ridiculously to get his s/o to react while they pretended to be annoyed by him.

wonwoo -

long distance - idk if this is a trope ?? but i think wonwoo's love absolutely transcends any and every obstacle imaginable. i think he would be the definition of distance makes the heart grow fonder. he would cherish every single moment he got to be with you, constantly yearning for you any second he was away from you.

jihoon -

opposites attract - as someone who seems to keep to himself a lot and is a bit of a homebody, i think he would easily fall for someone who got him out of his comfort zone and got him to discover parts of himself he didnt know about before. would adore an s/o who was louder in nature and livelier, feeling some sort of nurturing sense in him come out whenever he was around them.

seokmin -

friends to lovers - its a classic for a reason! i cant understand how people dont constantly fall for seokmin but im 100% sure that if he had a crush on a friend of his, he would easily be able to charm them enough for them to reciprocate the crush. there would be a period of time of that cute back and forth in which he tried to 'court' them, ending up together in the end.

mingyu -

chance encounter - watching nana tour ive loved seeing how insanely outgoing and likable by strangers he is so i think that he would be the type to incidentally meet a person and subsequently fall for them. however, mingyu is a hopeless romantic so he wouldnt allow for this to be his one and only meeting. he would go to hell and back to reconnect.

minghao -

language barrier - ok ik this isnt actually a trope but i really do see minghao taking interest in a person who doesnt speak his language. i think that if a foreigner (in this case someone who does not speak korean or chinese) caught his attention, he would not be deterred by the language barrier and still seek them out. he would maybe even be more intrigued by the concept of communicating despite the barrier.

seungkwan -

found family - seungkwan is one of the sweetest and most likable people alive. im sure there's tons of people out there who consider him part of their found family. i think he'd be the type to become super close with that special someone (to the point of considering them as precious as his own family) only to eventually fall for them (and have them fall right back bc i mean its boo so how would you not fall for him!).

vernon -

class difference - i really see him falling for someone who's not in the industry. just someone who is an average person with an average life. this would obviously come with its complications, but i think he would enjoy the contrast between your lives and would live a regular life through your own.

chan -

mutual pining - contrary to popular opinion, i believe chan has insane rizz. however! i think he would be the type to have negative rizz when he has a crush on someone. he's still impossible to not fall for though, so this would lead to him and his future s/o to pine for each other for years, not realizing that their friendship could be more if one of then would just step up and confess.

[starry-bi-sky]

I am absolutely loving your Danyal Al Ghul au. While I have a soft spot for the whole plotline of Danny becoming his canon personality almost right after breaking away from the LOA all because of Jazz, I'm just as much for your take in which he goes through the same character development as Damian.

Now I'm curious. You already tackled his relationship with Dani, will you eventually take a stab at when he, Sam, and Tucker meet Gregor? Given that it's one of my hated episodes as I couldn't stand Sam's infuriatingly hypocritical attitude to Danny's suspicions of him, I'd kill to see your spin on it.

Aw, thank you! Danyal Al Ghul aus are what got me into DPDC first, so I have a major soft spot for them. That being said, uh, its exactly that soft spot that causes me to have Many Opinions about the trope you just mentioned. Like the trope is all fine and dandy, i don't blindly hate it, my main issue with it is that most aus i've seen treat his backstory as an ex-assassin more like a pretty cosmetic accessory rather than something that actually should have had an impact on him. Especially if he remembers being in the league.

Like i cannot stress enough the fact that being in an ecofascist assassin cult (regardless of his standing in it) should've left him, in some way or another, screwed up morally and psychologically because that's just how development works. Nature vs. Nurture is like a game of tug-o-war that never ends, where they are constantly fighting against each other and one side usually has the upper hand or greater influence. Children model the behaviors of the adults around them (ex: bobo the clown doll experiment), and what impacts them in childhood can stick with them permanently.

Like how my psychology professor put it: a baby's brain is like wet cement; if you slap your hand on it, it leaves an imprint, and the cement dries that way. The same rings true for small children.

I could go on, but I frankly have so many thoughts on that alone that I would end up completely derailing from the second half of your ask, and I don't want to be more critical than I already have. Especially since you just mentioned you have a soft spot for the trope.

[Okay, hold onto your hats because this is long. Naturally lmao.]

Gregor! Man, I'll admit I last watched the show back in middle school on a dodgy illegal website (it had surprisingly good audio and visual graphics, and full episodes. But really annoying porn ads.) but I only made it to like season 1 before my hyperfixation faded and I lost interest. So I never actually saw the Gregor episode.

But... it is relatively easy to find free websites that stream Danny Phantom :), so finding the episode took me like. Thirty seconds. Plus the Tv.Tropes recap page because my damn earbuds just died and im out in public as of rn.

I'm not sure if I'll write something for the gregor episode like I did with Dani, since Dani's a bit of a special case in that she's a clone and tends to be a reoccurring presence in DPDC, and I thought the new dynamic with Danyal would be interesting.

Plus, I'm not a big amethyst ocean shipper for the pure reason of I'm just not all that interested in it; its kinda bland to me. I'll admit I've entertained the thought in this au due to the whole balcony scene i wrote, but I would've entertained the thought anyways if it was Tucker in that position instead. Big multishipper, me.

But, if I had to make it official? Danyal is not interested romantically in Sam when the Gregor episode happens, regardless of his relationship with Valerie. Who, speaking of I'm trying to think about how that would go, and I'm torn between including him almost-dating Valerie or not.

Because on one hand it helps point out Sam's hypocrisy (and i love her but i am always happy to point out her flaws and address them in au) in this episode in terms of Danny spying on them, but on the other hand I'll want to include a lot of set up in order to make Gray Ghost work in this au and wow will that take a while.

Especially with the Flirting with Disaster episode because it happens due to Technus' meddling, and Danny is, well, the son of the Batman? A trained assassin? An ex-assassin nonetheless, but still an assassin? A prodigy child in this au? He might not have needed to use most of his skills in the last few years, but like... there's just a bunch of 'what if' and 'well technically...' and 'would he? he could, but would he?' things that is getting in the way of my thought process and making my head spin.

.

Mmm. Okay. Flirting with Disaster occurs relatively the same as canon with a few exceptions; like Danyal noticing the strange coincidences, and he might take the idea into proper consideration because Sam has a point it is strange, especially out of nowhere.

However,,, he really enjoys Valerie's company, and he does really like her. He's been adjusting to civilian life for the last four years and while he's made a lot of progress, he's still. an ex-assassin child living like a wolf amongst sheep. This is normal, typical teenager stuff, and usually his friends like to encourage him doing normal teenager stuff.

So he's stubbornly holding out on the thought that this is normal, that ghost stuff isn't interfering here. He's a little hurt that his friends are discouraging this, he's not bothered by the fact that Valerie is a ghost hunter and he a ghost -- his mother is an assassin, and his father is Batman, and they still had a relationship. (Granted, he's not gonna tell them that)

If anything, being diametrically opposed to each other but still being in love is part of the family! Granted, usually both parties are aware of said opposition to each other, but he'll make a special exception this time around.

(And man now that i'm thinking about gray ghost, im now thinking about various like. scenes i could write between the two of them. maybe in a reblog.)

Anyways uhhh things relatively go the same as canon. Yeah. I think Sam still has a crush on Danny and still spies out of jealousy with Tucker.

.

Now, the Gregor episode! With that out of the way; the TVTropes recap for this episode isn't the best because it doesn't go into detail about the entire episode like it does with Flirting With Disaster and Shades of Gray.

(which i looked at earlier because I made a section of this post talking briefly about what changes I'd make to the Shades of Gray episode to help set up Gray Ghost, but ended up deleting because it was kinda irrelevant for the matter at hand.)

So I'm taking in bits of the episode clips at a time, I'll try not to get too nitpicky about how each scene goes because then it's gonna take me a longer time to write this.

But! First thing's first; since Danny is not romantically interested in Sam, he is also not jealous of Gregor. He is however, a bit eyebrow-raisey at him in their first introduction, but that's because Gregor is coming off as obnoxious.

Danny thinks he's kinda annoying, and it doesn't take a genius to see that Gregor is trying to impress Sam. But since they've only known him for five minutes he takes the good faith assumption and assumes that Gregor is genuinely trying to show interest in Sam's interests too because he likes her, so he keeps mum. The fake hungarian accent is weird, but it's overall harmless, so he doesn't point it out.

He does do the spying thing when he starts suspecting that Gregor might be working for the GIW. The episode only has this happen twice, but for the au this happens a handful of more times over the course of the week, with Danyal's suspicion steadily rising more and more each time.

Hah, when he brings up wanting to spy on Sam and Gregor because of this reason, Tucker still does his "woah! you wanna spy on Sam?" thing.

Danny immediately turns to him, completely unimpressed, and crosses his arms. "Tucker," he says, deadpan, "you and Sam spied on me and Valerie."

He uses a combination of his ghost powers and his regular stealth ability to spy on them. He's hiding in a tree when they're skipping rocks, close enough that he can use his powers to hear them talk but far enough away that he has a good view of their surroundings.

He's invisible in the cinema, but doesn't accidentally get in front of the projector. He checks the inside of the room for the GIW, and then waits outside the actual room itself, keeping an eye on the area and occasionally flying in to watch the movie out of boredom. It reminds him of being back on a recon mission with the League, but it doesn't end with him orchestrating someone's death.

Then when they're at the mall he stays in human form, blending in with the crowd. He runs into the GIW there, but realizes that they're not there because of Gregor; they're just shopping. They didn't show up at either of the last two locations, and he follows them to make sure they're not also trying to blend in. But they're literally just there for shopping.

Danny is rather pleased with this turnout; so far Gregor isn't a spy, he's just annoying. The next day at lunch he asks Sam how her date with Gregor went, and that's how she figures out he spied on them, because well, she didn't tell him that.

"Have you been spying on me?"

Danny messes with his food a little bit, and Tucker is sinking into his seat with embarrassment. He frowns, "Only last night. Those incompetent government dodos--"

His lip curls up; he gets all 'Shakespeare-y' (as Sam and Tucker put it) when he's insulting someone, "--kept appearing whenever Gregor did. I followed you and him last night to make sure he wasn't a spy."

A roundabout way of saying, "I was worried".

Sam is, as canon, furious. Danny understands why, he knows generally speaking that people don't like being spied on. But he's confused on just how angry she is, and is a little irritated by it.

"Why would you do that!" She exclaims, "That's way out of line, Danny."

"How? You spied on me when I was going on dates with Valerie." He narrows his eyes, and points his fork at her, "I'm not blind, I noticed."

"That's different, we told you why we were suspicious. And we don't have ghost powers like you do."

"I don't need ghost powers to sneak around, Sam, you've seen this firsthand. And I just told you why I followed you, I thought he was working with the guys in white--"

"So you think someone can only be interested in me if they're after you?" (this is a paraphrased quote, folks ;D)

"No! If that was the case I would have voiced my concern the moment I thought it. I don't get why you're so angry, you spied too."

Iiits.... a mess. Sam storms off with Gregor, Tucker tags along because okay, yeah, maybe Gregor isn't with the GIW, or maybe last night was a fluke. Either way he ends up tagging along. Danny overhears that conversation between the GIW and Mr. Lancer, and maybe he's right, maybe he's wrong; but something is up.

I've gotten to that scene in the locker room where Gregor tells Danny that he knows he doesn't like him, and I've paused at Danny's reply to say this: Danyal doesn't even bother trying to deny it.

"I know you do not like me."

"You're right; I don't."

"Ah, let me finish. I know you do not like me because you want to protect your friend, Sam, and I respect that."

"...That's correct."

"Good! Because I am going to ask her out."

"I had a feeling you'd say that," he stands up, claps his hand tight on Gregor's shoulder, and leans close to him with a threatening smile, "so you understand me when i say; if you break my best friend's heart, you're as good as dead, right?"

"Ah,, yes. I am so glad we got that cleared out of the way, and now I hope after we can.. how you Americans put it, hang out?"

In the episode he hugs Danny and gives him a la bise (which is that french greeting where you kiss someone on the cheek two or more times) after they end their conversation. But here, when he goes to do that to Danyal, Danny leans away, points an accusatory finger at him, and says; "Absolutely not; we are not close."

The next scene after that is like, end of day. Sam, Tucker, and Gregor walking away. Sam looks over her shoulder to glare at Danny, then gets forlorn. Tucker looks back and just looks forlorn.

(When did I start narrating each scene?? Eh, I'm writing this in brief spurts of time throughout the day. Don't fix what's not broke)

After that there's this whole scene with the two GIW agents that have been chasing Phantom all episode. They're there because they have Tucker's PDA that Skulker took, and it's got the information of their purple backed gorilla assignment on it. They've been going around seeing who Tucker associates with in hopes of catching Phantom.

Uhh ahaha and that is where this gets a little interesting imo, and also allows me to mention that im retconning Danyal's (already) redesigned ghost form. Which I've wanted to retcon even before this moment bc it was just too busy. I'll get to that in a moment.

The GIW suspect Gregor for being the Phantom because of his white hair and green eyes, which is all fine and dandy until you remember: Danyal (and by extension Phantom) has that very noticeable, rather identifiable facial scar that goes across the middle of his fucking face. The GIW could easily suspect that Phantom hides his scar with makeup if he's in disguise, but if they meet a kid with a seemingly identical facial scar and similar disposition? Hoo boy.

Solution? I've got two: Gregor is canonically a kid from Michigan who faked everything to impress Sam. Considering he knows she's gothic and knows that she's ultra-recyclo vegetarian? He probably watched her from afar or got information on her somehow. His hair is dyed, his eyes might just naturally be green, but if he notices that she's got a crush on either Danyal or Phantom? A little sfx makeup could help him recreate a similar looking scar.

My second solution that's gonna happen anyways bc its that suit redesign; Danyal does hide his face as Phantom. Ghosts are emotional creatures and its a popular headcanon that their interests, ambitions, etc, influence the way they look as a ghost, not just their death. A big reoccurring theme of my au is that Danyal did not leave the League unscathed, and that being an assassin is an important part of his identity.

So i'm discarding the hazmat suit look entirely and leaning into the 'assassin' thing. But the general (stylized) feel is like, white ribbon/cloth vambraces that he has used as a garrote at some point, a hood, a gaiter scarf-type thing. I'm keeping the cape. I did a doodle a few days back that's not the official redesign, but a redesign for Phantom. I may reblog this post with that attached because it's got the general feel down. There's very little white involved, but the inside of his cape flares out and looks like the night sky.

Now, the hood and gaiter scarf gets rid of most of the problem, but Danny's hood doesn't stay on all the time, so the GIW have likely seen the upper half of the scar. :] Gregor's own drawn-on scar doesn't have to be 1:1, but it looks close enough, right? A small scar cutting through the edge of his brow and ends right below the corner of his eye. A 'cool, badass' one opposed to Danny's 'garish' scar.

But! Back to the episode scene. Canon Danny gets written off as being 'too prepubescent' to be Phantom, and honestly it'd be hilarious if Danyal was written off for the same reason (he's calling them idiots in his head if they do). But instead -- leaning into the GIW's incompetence here -- he gets written off as being too mature or too talkative. Or something equally as absurd.

Sam breaks up with Gregor for canon reasons, but when Gregor does his "i really like you, but, come on-!" and gestures to tucker, he adds on "and that scary friend of yours too, seriously!"

Things go relatively the same as canon after that. Danny does end up apologizing for spying, however. Sam does it first. Sorrows, prayers, all that.

.

Things usually end up changed or different when I actually write it down, so I'd likely add more or adjust different scenes according to the flow of the oneshot. This is just like, a general vibe of how things would go, and where some of the more obvious changes would be if I did write this oneshot.

Hope you enjoyed! Thanks for the ask :]

[real-fire-emblem-takes]

hi to chrom hater anon i'm a professional chrom enjoyer

if you get deranged enough about awakening i think chrom is a very well done character :) he's ignorant but well meaning which meshes in interesting ways. he's not overtly prejudiced to the plegians he knows personally but still *generally* prejudiced because of his upbringing.

additionally in discussions of the ylisse-plegia war he tends to focus on how ylisse came away from it because that state of ylisse is what shaped his formative childhood years (seen particularly in his feelings about emmeryn's early years as exalt). this is UNDERSTANDABLE but still an extremely DEEPLY FLAWED and naive stance when doing politics on a larger scale, which chrom is incredibly ill-prepared for. it's a very childish view of a large scale conflict.

chrom's propensity for violence is a trait that actually deeply fascinates me. he has intense admiration for emmeryn's desire for peace yet he has a very short temper in tense situations (seen in basically all of chrom's interactions with gangrel), and he tends to lash out easily at anyone he views as an enemy. he admires peace but sees no other means to achieve it than violence. isn't that interesting. the implications here. like, he's the inheritor of the falchion, he's the only son in his family, in all likelihood it was expected that HE would take the throne and continue his father's war, but he was so young when the exalt passed that the crown went to emmeryn instead.

it really seems like emmeryn intentionally kept her siblings away from politics, which results in BOTH of them being naive in vastly different ways, with the expectation that she would always shoulder the burden of the crown yet left all the bigger a void when she died.

mind, intentionally being raised to behave this way isn't an excuse either. it's ultimately still something chrom, as an adult, SHOULD examine critically. this is, in fact, a character flaw, and i think its great.

you can then of course do nice little compare and contrast at the shitty dads, i.e. chrom's dad vs validar. robin's first act as an awakened god is murdering validar. robin became the monster everyone saw them as, the one their father thinks they were born to be. it's a neat lil nature vs nurture comparison if you really get into the depths of grima-ology (hi grima ✌️ mutuals).

to dig more into points the chrom hater anon makes.

"chrom is transphobic for killing excellus" do you hear yourself. excellus was an enemy commander. chrom has no personal grievances against the commanders other than they are part of the army with the known intent to raze ylisse.

SAME WITH ROBIN BURNING DOWN THE BOATS. THEY ARE AT WAR. IF ROBIN DIDNT DO THAT THEY'D ALL GET KILLED. they would have to fight the valm forces ON FOOT and BE KILLED VIOLENTLY because they are vastly outnumbered. it would be weird if he WASN'T at least happy about this.

he could stand to be regretful about the massive loss of human life but honestly hashtag robin warcrimes W.

"chrom makes sure to only recruit white ylisseans" i think this is just dev colorism actually. like you know how robin's dad (who is evil) is brown, but robin (who is good) is white? and how that makes no sense and robin should logically also be brown? i dont think chrom would've turned down if like, mustafa joined him. it is simply that intsys was still in their racism era (which is, tbh, only really ended with engage, like, cmon, look at literally all of FE, this isn't a chrom flaw, it's a FE being racist flaw.)

same with the sexism things actually FE is just homophobic and sexist a lot so all the characters are also by extension. this is called doylist analysis

Chrom tells Aversa "One person's life means nothing in the shadow of millions" Chrom is a hypocrite i hope this helps. additionally what aversa is doing is "help the dark god literally causing the apocalypse rn" whereas the sacrifice/save robin choice is "doom people in some hypothetical far off future" which is FAR less personal than "all of humanity RIGHT NOW".

TLDR: the real chrom enjoyers know about his character flaws and love him anyway because it's nice flavor to chew on

also never insult my beautiful daughter lucina ever again. she is deeply compelling even if she is narratively underutilized. anyone who calls themself a chrom fan and hates lucina is a faker and will not survive the winter.

also learn the difference between flaws of the story's writing and flaws of the character otherwise everybody in awakening is sexist.

anon you should read chrom/grima fanfiction unironically we fucking love tearing this dude to shreds for his flaws. this has all been a ploy to say that. chrom is naive and selfish and hypocritical and i love him very much he is my wif e :)

.

[monstersinthecosmos]

kacy i wanna know how much of a perv you think daniel is LOL so much fic centers on armand dragging him through an experience *armand* wants. so like what's the ratio of daniel being a freak in his nature (and knowing this about himself) vs armand nurturing this trait into him?

My friend, I’m so glad you asked.

THE THING IS IVE GIVEN THIS A LOT OF THOUGHT and in some ways it’s like, what all of my Devil’s Minion fics are about LOL. And yet! I don’t have a simple answer to this question, the way real questions of nature vs nurture are complicated in the real world in real people!

But let me sketch out a framework of the way I’ve questioned this, and everyone might come to different conclusions and that’s the fun of fandom, because there can exist several thousand versions of Daniel based on the same text! AND I KNOW YOU KNOW THIS STUFF, I HOPE IT DOESN’T COME OFF AS MANSPLAINING LMAO but I’m excited to talk about this topic. 

Here’s what we know unequivocally from the text:

Daniel is 20 years old in IWTV.

That’s it, that’s the whole list.

And here’s some fanon that people often try to extrapolate from the text: 

💦 That he met Louis at a gay bar. UNCONFIRMED, but I think it’s likely? In the short story the bar is named the Pink Baby, I think that might be a gay bar or a dick reference idk lol. 

💦 Whether or not the Pink Baby was a gay bar, he and Louis essentially cruised each other and left the bar together! Daniel has the excuse that he’s hunting for interviews for his job, Louis has the excuse that he’s an apex predator who preys on people, but ? Take this wherever you need to. (Also blah blah Ricean biting=sex symbolisms.)

💦 Was Daniel bisexual outside of the assumption that most of the VC characters are bisexual/omnisexual? The only clue we get is that when he and Armand practice voyeurism, he hooks up with men and women. There’s a lot of interesting information packed into the voyeurism paragraph, like this line: Yet he lay empty afterwards, staring at Armand, resentful, cold. and I’ve seen the “resentful, cold” comment dissected many times in fandom. Is it the general resentment of their whole relationship? Is it because he wants to fuck Armand and not randos? Is it because he only wants the Blood? Does he not consent to being used like a zoo animal? Is he gay and doesn’t want to fuck women? Is he straight (minus the orientation-defying vampire attraction) and doesn’t want to fuck men? I’ve seen all kinds of takes on this LOL. But still, no real definitive answer about his orientation in the text.

💦 What did the “roaming the bars of the world” comment mean? Sometimes I read Anne Rice’s language as being kinda lofty and exaggerated but was he ACTUALLY traveling the WHOLE WORLD or is he hyping up that he trolled bars in the Bay Area? Is he FROM the Bay Area or was it a stop in his travels? He worked for a radio station (not in the book, but mentioned in the short story + The Vampire Companion and The Alphabettery) so did he live here, even if he traveled a lot? Was he wealthy before vampires if he was traveling this much, if you think he was a traveler?

AND AFTER ALL THAT, here’s some extra questions where Daniel is FREE REAL ESTATE that every fan has the freedom to make the fuck up:

💦 How much sexual experience did he have at 20? Do we assume that by default as an Anne Rice character he probably had ample teenage sexual experiences, and if he did, is there a quality over quantity aspect to consider? Is the sex we have as teenagers like, all that to write home about LMAO. Do we really understand kinks yet, or do we need to grow up and gain some perspective first? 

💦 As an Anne Rice character, by default, do we assume he & everything else is sexually charged LOL, are the interviews and cruising and taking people home a code for bringing partners home? What percentage of his interviews were also hookups?  

💦 When we talk about nature vs nurture for kinkiness, how micro and macro is this? As a fellow Off the Cuffs fan I know you understand the “radioactive spider bite into kink” concept, and some kinks are so specific to our experiences. But BEING KINKY in itself IS nature, isn’t it? I’ve read some sex & kink theory that kink is (psychologically) more like an innate orientation. IE: in the way you can be straight or gay, some people are also by default turned on by being smacked or by whatever paraphilia. Whatever that thing is, the way it takes shape, is the nurture half. But like, many people can have the same experience and 99% of them don’t develop a paraphilia right? So I think that capability exists in kinky folks at all times, especially when so many of the radioactive spider bites are things that people discover in childhood. ANYWAY I RANTED but I say that to say; DANIEL MOLLOY IS A MONSTERFUCKER, IWTV IS THE PROOF THAT HE IS A MONSTERFUCKER. IT WAS THERE THE WHOLE TIME. 

So I bring up all those questions to encourage everyone to make up their own story with this, but I’ll tell you where I personally landed and how I approach it in my fics!!!

The Daniel in MY OWN fics is 20, single child, estranged from his parents, dropped out of college because he didn’t have ADHD support and was struggling, bisexual and promiscuous! I wonder if he went through that like college freshman thing where he got out of his parents house for the first time and partied a little too hard because he COULD! I like to read “bars of the world” as an exaggeration, I like to think he was a normal guy NOT globe hopping, sticking to the Bay Area, maybe he was out there for college, and guess what! There’s a thriving gay liberation culture there, so he finds some safe spaces to experiment with that! 

However, I think the text leaves space to think he didn’t have a lot of close friends, or wasn’t close with his family, due to the way that he simply ✨fucks off ✨ after IWTV. NOW, that’s just me! Because there’s potential here for a TRAGEDY of people looking for him or grieving him! But idk I just like thinking that he was already on the outs and the interview pushed him over the edge.

So I ask like, does the 20 year old have a ton of kink experience? Is he good at sex? WHAT DOES RESENTFUL, COLD MEAN? Was he celibate during the chase years? Are the voyeurism sessions the first time he’s had sex since his old life? Even if he had random hookups during the chase years, was this qualitatively good sex? Can you truly get into good BDSM on a hookup or do you need a trusted partner? (This is subjective, idk, but!) 

Also, how much kink is theoretical and private (to masturbate to) vs stuff you actually try? Especially if we believe that kink is nature, someone isn’t less kinky if they’re celibate, the way someone isn’t less gay if they’re celibate, or even a virgin. As Daniel becomes more and more obsessed with vampires, and with Armand, does it take over how he jerks off? Does he think about getting bitten? HE LIKES SNUGGLING WITH DEAD THINGS.

So like, there IS an element of Daniel being the unwilling witness of Armand’s rapidly shifting hyperfixations, and it’s natural that fandom pervs would extend that to sex acts and kinks. I LOVE IT, yes! It makes sense. 

But when you say like, which one of them is in charge, I wonder if it’s relevant if we assume Daniel enjoys it. (Does he? Would he? Resentful, cold?)

Here’s some points that come to mind when I imagine it as purely Armand’s doing:

💦 People sometimes misunderstand BDSM dynamics when it comes to power and control, because BDSM is a consensual fantasy between two adults. The sub is just as in control, because they allow it. In that sense: Do we believe Armand respects Daniel’s consent? Would he force Daniel to participate if he wasn’t enjoying himself? 

🩸 (How much can we compare this to Venice and how Armand was prepared for vampirism? I’m putting this in parentheses bc I’m putting a pin in this one, I CANNOT ADD A SUB-ESSAY INTO THIS POST ABOUT COMPARING VENICE TO DEVILS MINION but thinking of this too. Returning to the under-negotiated kink in Venice and how much is diegetic to the text, how does experiencing a spectrum of sexuality benefit someone’s last years alive ((sub-parentheses: does Armand flip-flop on turning Daniel as much as Marius did with Armand, does Armand subliminally know he’ll turn Daniel one day, does he go through these experiences as a precursor to turning Daniel eventually?)) are these experiences more for Armand to process the way he was groomed for asexual immortality vs being purely selfless and for Daniel’s benefit?)

💦 Armand uses Daniel as his usher into the modern age, and is it fair to assume he could sense Daniel’s kinkiness and knew that this was the person for him? 

💦 How dubious is Daniel’s consent here? How addicted to Armand’s Blood is he by the time they start fucking around? Is he already within the throes of Ricean Omnisexuality where he’s down for whatever? Does the Blood influence this as well? Is there a secret subliminal violence creeping into your body when you’ve been drinking it again and again? What about less violent kinks, like your feederism fic? Does the Blood encourage all types of excess and consumption??? 

But if DANIEL is the driving force here, I still must consider:

💦 He meets Armand and his life essentially ends when he’s 20 years old. Was he really self-aware of his kinks? Did he know himself very well sexually yet? 

💦 While exploring kinks can be mutually beneficial by sating Armand’s need for WEIRD HUMAN STUFF, maybe it IS something Daniel wants. It’s something he’s missing out on, because he checked out of regular human life when he was 20. Like, everyone’s different, so, I’m not saying that people can’t be sexually articulate at 20, but I know I fucking wasn’t! And I personally never fucked anyone that age who was good at it LMAO. So like how old would Daniel have been before he experimented enough to really know what he liked, and how much of him getting to know his sexuality involved Armand during the next decade?

💦 And this ties into Armand being his sugar daddy! That’s canon! Armand is his sugar daddy! If Daniel, at 28 years old, starts lamenting “I wish I’d gotten the chance to try watersports when I still had a normal life :( “ wouldn’t Armand have arranged that for him? 

🩸 (Again let’s talk about Venice and what did Armand learn there about being the vampire lover, how much does he process and repeat on Daniel, and for whose benefit?)

💦 If Daniel is an innately kinky person, and realizes as he’s approaching 30 that he never really got to explore it properly, wouldn’t Armand usher him through that experience? Even if Armand didn’t plan to turn him, I wonder if he saw the window of Daniel’s mortal experience closing, maybe he worried that this is the type of thing people need to be wild about while they’re still so young. And outside of stigmatizing Daniel's age, it's also about how he was becoming less and less healthy, dying of alcoholism at 32, so there was a small window here for them to have sex adventures.

So basically, I’m saying that the nature half feels very much like Daniel being a monsterfucker, the nurture half is the actual experiences he got to have. And I don’t think he’d be in this situation in the first place if he wasn’t a bit of a monsterfucker, and wasn't a innately into danger and pain. Like, we don’t get a TON of examples but Gretchen and Babette didn’t try to fuck vampires! We know that vampires give humans the heebie jeebies! What kind of sick fuck is into that?!?!?!? 

I don’t really have one single answer here. When it comes to the large library of kinks I think either of them can be blamed, and I also think it 100% makes sense to use Armand as a vehicle to write fic about them as if they’re another collection of human oddities for him to explore. But even using Armand’s weird bullshit to process that doesn’t mean it’s not mutually beneficial, and I think it gets into a fuzzier area that’s up to the writer when it comes to their take on the relationship, how dubious the consent is, how much do they actually like each other and get along? Can it be mutually beneficial in the end even if one person is driving? (see: the conversation about the second whipping scene in TVA and how it works out in the end.) Is it something they have fun agreeing to and negotiating in advance? 

I can totally see how someone might write this as a fun thing that they talk about beforehand as easily as it could be Armand forcing mystery adventure on Daniel and suddenly he’s tied up in some shitty apartment in Hells Kitchen with some man pissing on him, and did he ever even reveal this kink to Armand or did Armand pull it out of his head? 

The ship dynamic is so fucked up and coercive and resentful and toxic, even though there is real love here, so there’s this whole spectrum to use when you build your fanworks and headcanons!!!!!!! AND LIKE

IF IT’S COERCIVE AND FUCKED UP, DOES IT DRIVE THEM FURTHER APART OR BRING THEM CLOSER TOGETHER? IS DANIEL RESENTFUL AND COLD AND DOES THIS CAUSE FIGHTS? IS THIS A WAY FOR THEM TO PROCESS SOME OF THEIR COLDNESS AND RESENTMENT BECAUSE THEY AREN’T GOOD COMMUNICATORS? DO THEY DO BETTER AFTER THESE SESSIONS AND FEEL CLOSER BECAUSE THEY BROKE THROUGH SOMETHING NEITHER OF THEM KNEW HOW TO SAY?

Gosh idk.

Anyway I apologized in the beginning for mansplaining but I also want to apologize for this non answer LMFAO. I hope it doesn’t feel like a cop-out to not have a real answer, it’s just that I think there is such a rich context with a MENAGERIE of possibility !!!!!!! 

[utilitycaster]

My other Worlds Beyond Number Episode 9 thought is that Eursulon and Suvi are extremely similar people. I think this gets lost because the core arguments have been between Suvi and Ame, with Eursulon staying out of it, but we absolutely see it in this episode. Pragmatists working within the system despite complicated feelings about it at times? A mythologizing of long-lost parents? A desire to be treated as important? An even greater desire to handle things on their own, even if their friends are there? True of both of them. The difference is that Suvi's leadership tendencies have been nurtured and she's grown up in a world of privilege and being told how great she is, whereas Eursulon has had to struggle and run, but left to their own devices, they deal with problems in remarkably similar ways.

Ame, on the other hand, won't go off on her own. She would never have ended up in the situation Suvi finds herself in, of having not checked in for weeks. She's taken aback by her friends stepping out for a few hours; it takes the Fox dragging her out for her to pursue what actually interests her. Whereas Suvi and Eursulon see themselves as individuals who can act within the will of a larger institution but can and will serve themselves, Ame sees herself as a community member first and foremost. Suvi (and, in the firesides, Aabria) is right to point that Ame sees herself in this community position not always realizing that she's always occupied the most privileged part of it, as the town's witch apprentice. This informs a lot of her more idealistic tendencies. However, it is still very true that Ame will put, at the very least, what she thinks other people need first.

There's a lot of other conflicts and axes along which Suvi and Ame conflict, with global vs. local being the most significant, and I think part of why Eursulon doesn't pick sides, per se, is that he has Suvi's methodology and even more of her cynicism mixed with Ame's sense of scale and feelings about nature vs. civilization, but his entire, brilliant sequence with Will Gallows cements him as sharing some really key traits with Suvi.

[lizzyscribbles]

Today’s MHA thought is brought to you as I watch the livestream of the Wisdom Saga from Epic the Musical. Go take a listen, I’m sure it’s gonna be great.

Honestly I have no transition into today’s thought so we’re just gonna move along here we go.

Lizzy’s MHA thought of the night: Yoichi and All for One’s relationship and why I think it’s brilliant.

Let it be said, All for One is a fantastic villain. I think he’s well written in the sense that I absolutely, positively, HATE him. He is an absolute asshole and he has very little reason to be. Does he have a tragic past? Ehhh, kind of? But I would argue that he started screwing people over in the womb, so I have a hard time feeling bad for him when it kinda seems like a lot of his issues were his own doing. But that’s why I like him, because he doesn’t have that super sympathetic backstory and he doesn’t have much of a reason to be an asshole other than “I want to win and see people suffer :D”. Now don’t get me wrong, I LOVE a sympathetic villain (see my posts on Touya and Toga) but I also love to see a villain that is just evil for the sake of being evil.

However, I don’t doubt that he probably has some kind of personality disorder, plus he did have to entirely raise himself, and if we pile the theory that quirks influence personality on top of it, you don’t get a pretty picture. It’s an interesting look at the nature vs. nurture debate in a world like this. It was a perfect storm of genetics and circumstances that made All for One, a terrible turn of events to be sure.

And yet, despite being twins, Yoichi doesn’t turn into a psychopathic maniac. It’s honestly wild, and a kind of psychological circumstance that fascinates me. And, let's be honest, it's not out of the realm of possibility that AFO is partially to thank for that. After all, he took care of Yoichi like, straight out of the womb. However, what gets me more is their relationship.

It’s messy, it’s toxic, and it’s a little weird, but it’s so unique because we rarely see it done like this. It’s codependency at its worst, more so on All for One’s side, though he’d never admit that.

It really begs the question, why? Why was All for One SO obsessed with his brother? By all accounts, his brother only ever stood in his way and screwed with his plans. He was a hindrance, even when they were kids, so why keep him around?

To be honest, I’m not entirely sure. I think a part of it is Psychological Reactance (which I talk a bit about in my post on Toga), basically, it’s a common reaction in humans when you tell them they can’t do or have something. It’s often rooted in control, we don’t like to loose control of anything, and so we automatically act out to make sure our control is preserved. It’s emotional and behavioral, and we know All for One LOVES his control just as much as he loves his quirks.

And you know what else he loved? He loved Yoichi, and in a way he could never love anyone else. And maybe Yoichi loved him too, I think he did, but he loved him enough to tell him he was utterly wrong even when his brother wouldn’t listen. So, here’s this one thing he genuinely doesn’t want to loose because it’s the one thing he can never replace and it wants to leave?? Excuse???

Here’s what I think, I think Yoichi was the only thing he ever really lost control of.

Yes, I think his twisted sense of love had a part in him chasing his brother across generations, but I also think All for One could not handle the idea that he lost control of something he actually cared about.

We see in Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs that our most basic needs above physical are relational. Family, friends, safety, belonging, those aren’t things that are plentiful when you’re a dictator. Yoichi was there with him from the beginning, he fulfilled that need in some capacity.

We’re all afraid of losing things, especially those we love the most, it’s human nature. No matter how powerful you are, you can’t substantiate real human connection.

The day All for One lost Yoichi was the day he lost the only genuine relationship he had, it’s not surprising he spent the next few centuries trying to get it back.

…

I had fun with that one! Imma do one one Yoichi one of these days, because I love him and he deserves it, but for now I’m gonna go enjoy the Wisdom Saga and plan out a little Yoichi one shot I’ve had bouncing around in my head for a while.

[lanymme]

Starting to put together the new Kiara information I got, there's a lot of new info that kinda conflicts with what I have believed, and some stuff that comes down to translation, IMO. CW: talking about abuse and CSA. Also suicide.

Off the top of my head: There's very little reference to Kiara experiencing abuse, and particularly sexual abuse, during her childhood. Besides the neglect of people giving lip service but not treating her--the exception being that her father clearly had some fucked up and inappropriate feelings toward her that he seemed not to realize until the end. My impression is that the Eiten-ryu village was a somewhat normal community before she turned it into a living Hell.

This is a departure from its depictions in FGO and even in the CCC manga as a cesspool of human evil where the worst impulses of humanity gathered at her bedside. Interesting to see--perhaps a change in direction over time?

Accompanying this, we've got more on the nature vs. nurture front. I've always understood her to be somebody born with all the qualities and capabilities expected of a bodhisattva

In her SG profile, she mentions reading as one of her favorite activities, especially "recently," presumably now that she's in the moon cell and with Hans as her servant. This is interesting--it's been mentioned in the past she sort of forgot about fairy tales, so did he re-kindle her interest? Could it be that she's just interested in fairy tales, now? Much to consider here. Previously, I had come to the conclusion that she would not have read or consumed much media due to the description in FGO's A Dream from the Cradle CE that she gave up on the words of others. Someone who sees people as insects, insensate creatures, wouldn't be interested in their words, right? But perhaps she would--after all, she's described as addicted to human lives despite viewing them as trash.

Speaking of which, we've gotten in other media, especially by the time in FGO, descriptions of her attitude toward people, and how she uses them up. It seemed in FGO that she would mess with and stimulate people to get a kick out of them and see the depth of their desires and depravity, but then lose interest when it got stale, leading them to kill themselves. However, in the section that covers her past in CCC, it says that she orgasms when she crushes their lives. That's interesting to me. The concept of people with interesting internal lives as more delicious sexual food for her to enjoy in a consumptive way by ruining them gels with the implied storyline of her FGO bond lines. Very interesting.

Her perspective on love! Koi, and its relation to ai! Previously I thought she had just never really considered koi. But apparently she has considered it and thinks it's irrelevant to her and a bad thing! Will have to dig more into this. Does she think it's a bad thing because to her, "evil" means "something that isn't pleasing to Sessyoin Kiara?"

Speaking of which, her attitude toward good and evil was made a lot more clear here--good is what she likes, what pleases her. Evil is what she doesn't. IIRC during her pre-battle conversation in SERAPH she says something to the effect that humans generally take this perspective, and I've had this as a pillar of her perspective for a while. But it's even more clear, and we got some nuances. Will have to probe into those!

As far as her attitude toward mainstream buddhism, I got some interesting info here. Previously, I had come to the understanding that she essentially views traditional buddhist views as a mistake. Now, I'm not entirely sure. There was a lot of "no, but virtue means this [heinous and terrifying thing], right?" that is wholly earnest. And seeing people that she takes no interest in as "Evil"--boring, flavorless priests who have cleansed themselves of desires--wouldn't she just directly see them as evil because of that perspective, rather than an opinion on the doctrinal difference? On the other hand, she went out of her way to break the Eiten-ryu precepts, and she does have some lines that really show a disdain for concepts like no-inherent-self (even if I think the translation kinda butchered it). It's hard to call. Much to look into

And finally, of the things that stood out most to me, is her general attitude and bearing. Her plan is deeply calculated, that much is for sure, but it was hard to get a reading on her, like... level of self-awareness. It sort of seemed like she had a naive and simplistic quality to her deeply twisted worldview, in keeping with the Materials profile that describes her as being like a hungry ghost, thinking unwaveringly that everything she believes is right. Elsewhere, especially in an event like Ooku, she seems to have a wider view surrounding what comes across as a complex and considered but extremely dark perspective on things. She feels... not less intelligent, here, but perhaps less wise. Will have to think on it more.

I'm worried that change in attitude might come down to the translation. I did notice, for example, that the translation for her voice lines for Daizushichi: yakan-po were much more... airheaded and hedonist, possibly as a result of localization efforts, and that the line for Eitenry: Mindful Circumambulation seemed... expanded on? We'll see.

All in all, there's a daunting amount for me to dig into, and it's troublesome to have some of my understandings of her cast into doubt, but I've wanted some of this information translated for literally years and it's SO exciting to finally have all the material I need line up, and to have clarity on what has been presented as canon.

yay! Might add to this as I progress.

[tokiro07]

Undead Unluck ch.188 thoughts

[That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Fencing Prodigy]

(Contents: Apocalypse speculation, lore, thematic analysis - nature vs. nurture)

Huh, so Master Rule VIIII really was Language. Looks like I owe Nico an apology, I wasn't really familiar with your game. This just goes to show how much of a beast Nico was in the last loop, I guess, if he was able to take down a Master Rule 1v1!

Also, evidently, there's been a little update to the terminology - the ten Rules of the Master Room are being referred to here as Superior Rules, which I think is meant to differentiate them from the more generic "Master Rules" term that encompasses all 100 on the tablet. Might send a tweet to David Evelyn for clarification later, hopefully he can help

The big thing for this chapter, aside from the confirmation that Juiz and Victor really did get trans'd at some point down the line, is that we got some insight into Apocalypse of all characters! The first time we met him, he bit off Andy's hands for grabbing him, and yet he just kind of grumbles when Juiz flips through his pages. He even lets her cuddle him! How cute!

Could he have been rougher with Andy because he knew he was Undead and could take it? Is he sweeter on Juiz specifically? Or was he mad at Victor for forgetting Juiz and finding someone else? Or all of the above?

Either way, it definitely seems likely that Fuuko's assessment of him is right and that he doesn't want to see Juiz getting hurt anymore. Perhaps it was the mere exposure effect, and he got attached after seeing so much of her, or perhaps she said something that touched him in an earlier loop. I can't believe I'm saying this, but I hope we get to learn more about Apocalypse through Juiz's arc!

Of course, the thing that's the most interesting about this chapter to me personally is the lore drop! Any new info we can get on the mechanics of the loops is greatly appreciated!

I've always wondered about what happened to Juiz and Victor's families since they've been looping and therefore wouldn't need to be born again, but I never considered the possibility that parenthood was a rule that didn't exist at some point. Were there even people other than Juiz and Victor in the initial world? Were Juiz and Victor Adam and Eve?

It makes sense, then, that if Juiz didn't have parents originally that her soul would need to reincarnate somewhere, so going to a couple that never had children seems like a very elegant solution. On the reverse, this also suggests that Fuuko's parents are still a couple in this world, but never had her at all. That's kind of sad to think about, isn't it? That even with her parents alive again, it's not like they can become a family like before. Maybe she can use Remember, but the ethical implications of going up to a couple and forcing them to realize that they lost an entire lifetime with their daugther AND to remember their horrible explosive death? I'm sure it'd be handwaved away for the sake of narrative catharsis, but putting it in real terms like that is pretty upsetting

Then there's the implications of reincarnation as a concept, but fortunately they're a lot more hopeful than they appear. As Apocalypse says, Julia's name and appearance are dictated by her parents, so for all intents and purposes, Julia is a distinct person from Juiz. However, Julia was never technically supposed to exist at all, this is effectively just a new body for Juiz's soul to inhabit, so as evidenced by her retaining the same non-verbal tics and a talent for fencing, this is most likely the same Juiz in terms of personality!

While her nature is undoubtedly the same, we can't rule out the effects of her new nurturing. What kind of parents did she have? What sort of environment was she raised in? What friends did she make? UU has always taken a pretty hard stance that people are defined by their relationships, so there's almost no way that Julia will behave 1:1 with Juiz, even if the most important aspects of her are retained. How different Juiz and Julia are will likely be an extremely important detail to consider when weighing the options of whether or not to use Remember once all of the Union has been assembled, but we'll likely have to wait a while on that one

Finally, I'm very interested in what Juiz meant when she said there was a way for someone to understand her relationship with Victor without him cheating on her. Obviously I get that Fuuko is the person who understands her, and I know it happened because Juiz used Remember to reset Victor's memories, but is the implication that Juiz was always planning to do that? Or did she have something else in mind that we'll understand better later?

This conversation does paint Juiz and Fuuko's discussion about the Rio mission a lot differently, though. Juiz told Fuuko to fall in love with Andy so she could draw out as much of Unluck's power as possible, but now it seems like her motive was to raise Fuuko to be her successor from the beginning, knowing that Fuuko would be the one who would help the new her reenter the fight without letting Victor keep her out. I really do wonder how many steps ahead Juiz was looking or how many contingencies she was accounting for, again I really hope we get some exposition on that

Tangentially, I'd also like to point to the panel of Fuuko saying she fell in love with the same man as Juiz: look at Gina's smile! She knows she fell in love with him in the previous loop, and now she's absolutely in love with Fuuko too! She knows exactly what it's like to be on one side of a love triangle, and she is sympathizing hard. UU's gonna end up having the best polycule since 100 Girlfriends, just you watch!!!

Until next time, let's enjoy life

[dark-bear-productions]

Writing Discusion: Appearance as a Marker of Virtue

(I WELCOME DISSENT!)

One of the first things I learned as a writer was also one of the most problematic and that's Appearance as a Marker of Virtue; let's call it Amov (the extra a's looked bad, ironically).

You know the thing: Hero's body is entirely "pristine", Villain has some "disturbing" feature like a scar (Blofeld in From Russia with Love), a clubfoot (Larys Strong in House of the Dragon), or albinism (Silas in The Da Vinci Code). They have a "defect", either visually revealing something that broke them, something that happened to them because of their own evil deeds, or some sign at birth that they were "wrong" through and through.

There's an interesting argument to be had about Amov's place in the Nature vs Nurture debate. If Larys had not grown up in a world expecting him to be a brave knight while physically unable to be so, would he have been as conniving as he is? Was Silas always a monster, or was he treated as one for so long he became one? I don't want to suggest that any single author using Amov -- or, indeed, just having a villainous character with some unconventional physical trait -- is problematic. Context is always key.

(As an aside, I've always liked the metaphor that says genetics load the gun, upbringing cocks the hammer, surroundings pull the trigger. You can have the genetics of the most brutal serial killer in history but if the people who raise you do well and you manage to stay in an environment that treats you as a person should be treated, you'll never know what you might have been capable of.)

When you take the body of fiction as a whole, however, I do feel that there's a very distinct pattern of using physical "abnormalities" for shock, horror, comedy, foreshadowing, what have you. It's an old trope, one steeped in religious bias, but a powerful one that we can't quite seem to shake.

(As another aside, the religious bias I'm referring to is the belief that the Devil could take a human form, but never a fully "correct" one, always having some marker such as missing an eye, having a misshapen hand, etc., etc. This was of course fertile soil for ableism, but whether the belief or the ableism came first might be a bit of a chicken-and-egg debate, though that is a poor analogy as the answer to that debate is clearly egg.)

My personal solution is to try and avoid literal physical descriptions wherever possible. If I do mention specific traits, it almost certainly has some relevance to the plot I'm trying to build, or some message I'm trying to slide in. (For instance, a small and slight Master Hunter who easily defeats a Beast five times their size because a Master Hunter has so much skill they don't need brawn.)

However, this doesn't work for every style of story. In From the Bay of Fangs, which is a series of in-world reports of monster hunts written by and for Hunters, it's fine, as the Hunters wouldn't bother writing down what their Siblings look like. In By the Wayside, the upcoming anthology of stories diving into the background and aftermath of the stories in From the Bay of Fangs, the omission of appearance sometimes felt less natural, and I had to pivot to describing vibes, clothing, and character relevant details such as unshaven cheeks or tightly bound hair.

Another sollution I really like is to use abstract descriptions. Calling someone beautiful without describing their specific features works, but describing someone by saying "He looked like a failed soldier. Dirt seemed so worked into him that the lines of his face were like writing." (China Miéville, This Census-Taker) has a lot of impact on me and I think I'm going to experiment with that in the near future.

All in all, I think what I want to say is: don't feel bad for using appearance in your writing, nor even for falling into Amov as it is so very prevalent in our fiction, but inspect why you describe your characters the way that you do and make an informed decision based on that.

(And, to immediately undercut myself: wonder how visual character design, specifically in animation, can overcome Amov without losing the powerful and immediate visual impact that makes animation so uniquely awesome.)

[minorfamilysupremacy]

some scattershot vegas thoughts from discord the other day, collected in case i want to reference them again

(f/ @lu-sn, who’s always up to listen to me ramble)

i think it is reductive and/or a gross simplification to reduce vegas to simple sadism, which may be overeager woobifying but to me it is infinitely more compelling to see vegas as a warped version of a curious and intellectual child who was fascinated with how things worked and could be taken apart, which could allow him to, under the systematic dehumanization of himself and others around him, become interested in how people work and how to take them apart to get the desired result. it could then become a pleasure over the years through the constant repetition and reinforcement that this is his use, to the point where it would be a satisfying job well done to rip out a man’s cochlea. someone can take a clock apart with a hammer to see its inner workings but they will just see broken pieces because there was no care or subtlety taken; someone with specialized tools can see the clock and disassemble it and leave as much or as little intact as they so choose. and vegas would be trained to have no more regard for a person than for a clock to be dismantled, because there wasn’t any use in teaching him that. he has no regard for himself as a person, only as a weapon.



which further is why it would make sense that vegas would want to go into something in his post-minor family era that allows him to work with his hands and take a complicated process and break it down into many steps. he enjoys the challenge of learning new skills and figuring out how the sausage is made and doing something like cooking or gardening is a series of instructions, testing, troubleshooting, and perfecting, just in a less destructive way. the care he takes with bandaging pete is not only the result of so much experience looking after himself, but a step towards learning how to be a fixer and not just a destroyer. cooking for pete is, again, another step on that journey, but it isn’t practical for a weapon to know how to do things for the sheer pleasure or kindness of it, which is why gun reacts so negatively



i think there is absolutely a part of him that is trained to take joy in the pain and that is a direct response to abuse — not just learned behavior from gun, but a desire to have control over a life he has never had control over.


it’s nature vs nurture and i think any joy he derives from pain is absolutely not intrinsically part of his personality but was so deeply instilled he cannot tell the difference and won’t be until he is able to remove himself from that environment and figure out what he truly wants in life



gun is nowhere near capable of doing the minor family’s dirty work, so he has to shape his son into the model necessary to keep the empire going


@lu-sn: yeah!!!!! this is the ultimate question, how much of his glee in the face of pete's pain is learned vs his own


me: i do not think it’s his own. i think he tells himself/convinces himself it’s genuine but i think sustaining it in the face of pete’s refusal to break really demonstrates his core discomfort he strictly refuses to allow himself to access



i think at first he has the rush of power that’s a normal/expected reaction and that carries him through, and pete’s defiance/refusal to break is a challenge that he has to meet. his glee in the face of pete’s pain is knowing that he’s getting closer to breaking pete and thus winning (aka not failing/being worthy of punishment himself and having to deal with the agony of his own mental reactions, let alone gun’s)



which is only true up until gun hits him in front of pete, at which time everything becomes an exercise in desperate bravado and saving face because pete saw his mask slip first. pete heard the scared little boy voice and saw this formerly-terrifying creature cower. it stopped being about pete and started being about vegas needing to run from himself at all costs



which, again, maybe i am woobifying, but the fact that he falls apart into a soggy mess at the slightest bit of kindness shows me that a lot of this is a shield and/or learned behavior he will have to slowly undo over the years. and i think he will certainly have things that will continue to tip over into the sadism side, esp in bed, but i don’t think he is truly the unhinged sociopath that his image presents 
 i think the sadism that feels inherently true to him is the sort of thing that goes more into power, control, and trust. he’s intoxicated by the idea that pete would hand him the ropes and trust that vegas wouldn’t hurt him. at its core, it’s about being treated as enough of a person to have your fearsome image seen through but still bought into to some degree


in other words, i am putting myself in your hands because i trust that you will hurt me only in ways i wish to be hurt and no more

(they’re an exchange of humanity. pete wishes to forget himself and vegas wishes to remember the authentic core of himself)


@lu-sn​: I think there's also a lot of appeal in the fact that pete might react positively to pain. then it's more about giving pete what he wants in the most controlled and intimate manner. but i bet his wires are all crossed about this kind of thing. does he enjoy pain? does that make him a monster? or does he enjoy the act of taking pete apart, bringing him to the highest points of human emotion and sensation, and then putting him back together? (and does that still make him a monster?) pre-safehouse, he definitely wouldn't know the difference



me: absolutely — he wouldn’t even have the language to parse out his own thoughts/emotions

@lu-sn​: he could really benefit from knowing that some of his urges are in fact not that abnormal, even if the depth of the kind of pain he can cause is greater because of his mafia background



re: cochlea extraction me: i think so, so much of it would have to come down to pete learning to speak up about his own wants and to say, yes, i like this but not that



it would be very much about pete submitting and being able to take that pillow princess role, but also being the one who takes the reins as required to reassure vegas that he’s not wrong or bad or freakish and guide him away from a lot of the negative self-talk

@lu-sn​: and as we all know pete is so good about vocalizing his needs



me: but it does him no good to hide from vegas because vegas will reach into the very bones of him and extract what he needs to know



which i think is both terrifying and awful for pete AND satisfying to have someone else do the heavy lifting and to pursue your honesty


@lu-sn​: unless vegas is scared to pursue that honesty inside of pete, because it's a reflection of truths about himself



so sometimes it'll be pete pushing vegas, and sometimes it'll be vegas cracking pete open



me: absolutely. and i think pete knows how to do it in a line


i think pete can call vegas out with pinpoint accuracy BECAUSE of his deep-seated hypocrisy 
 pete can nail vegas’ ass to the wall with one statement and vegas will be so busy speedrunning the stages of grief about this world-upender he won’t immediately peg that pete is speaking from a place of experience



(or immediately be able to turn the tables)


pete sitting back and getting emotional catharsis by watching vegas flounder through his fourteenth mind-bender of the morning: all according to keikaku

@lu-sn​: the constant one-upping on who can expose the other person's psyche first skdkhdldhdlhdkd



me: this is basically what i assume their entire early relationship is like



vegas is a way easier nut to crack bc pete will tell him one (1) mildly nice thing and he’ll have to excuse himself to NOT CRY in the bathroom thank you



but this is what i mean when i talk about psychological vore!! because vegas just wants to entirely consume and dissect and understand this puzzling fascinating enigmatic creature


pete can basically dismantle him on the atomic level with zero effort


vegas has to work harder


[gravecircuit]

5AM headcanons as I slowly get back into Moral-ing

- idk how much from Narcissism the fandom accepts, but it does make me categorize Bloberta as the “prettiest” / most desired woman in moralton based on the fact that she made Putty climax with words alone.

- As goofy as that is it also re-contextualizes a lot. She is “off limits” even in infidelity because she’s the mayor’s wife.

- I also think if Dottie tried her routine on Bloberta, Dottie would end up crying wayyyyyy earlier. Bloberta’s numbness includes an immunity to gaslighting. Also there is one element that actually connects the 2 characters that I wanna draw. Here’s a different scene for now:

Dottie: Can I sit with you Bloberta so our kids can talk to each other and not us?

Bloberta: … you talk to your kids?

Dottie nervously lights a cigarette.

Dottie: I- uh, well I mean-

Bloberta puts out the cigarette by clasping the end with her bare fingers.

Bloberta: If you’re going to do that, I think you should sit somewhere else.

- Blobbie / Censordoll discourse is also interesting bc I think of it as “numb & barren” (ship name maybe?) - things kinda also come full circle. In Help: Bloberta fails to help Fran, feels like she helped Clay and marries him, Orel is born and goes on to be Fran’s main helper in her campaign against Clay, with signs made by Bloberta.

- Gay Clay vs. Bi Clay was a debate brought up in one of my streams and I said my answer keeps changing. There are “tactile” arguments for Bi Clay but they all really start to evaporate for me with the scene in honor. There is no exact science, it is just a uniquely gay anguish confessed. alsogayclayrhymes

- I think about Clay’s rise to office a lot and what exactly enabled him to do so, and I’m beginning to think he may have used his mother’s death in his campaign as he starts to pen her lost commandments into Moralton law. Much to Arthur’s dismay, which only encourages Clay to take things further.

- A newer idea but I feel like Danielle’s experience encouraging Orel might have kindled something, and if Fakey can go from coach to Principal so can Danielle.

- I think now that Bendy is reconnected with Joe, the Fakey situation will actually quickly lead to a restraining order. Since Bendy no longer has to telephone through Ms. Secondopinionson to talk to Joe, Fakey talks to Secondopinionson for updates on Bendy. I think Fakey’s mental state will decline between his ruined marriage and “mistress” cut off, but for some reason I think with Secondopinionson’s infinite patience she becomes a sort of friend + makeshift repressional since Putty’s having none of it anymore. In that circumstance I think Secondopinionson becomes comfortable speaking to him in her natural voice . I think Fakey loses his job to Danielle like above, then idk, gets part time work at Steph’s shop or something.

- The David Tuber interview mentioned that Orel goes goth but also goes atheist, and the blue heron as a symbol of his faith begins to follow him around. I think the “Nature rematch” would be Orel getting Ol’ Gunny with actual intent to kill the Heron.

- Which brings me to the tinfoil hat section. Consider this my “Season 4+”

- By this time Censordoll has a stranglehold on Moralton. With no role models and in complete nihilism Orel kills the Heron in anger. In absolute darkness Orel finds no solace, he then notices the Heron’s nest.

- I have no idea what Steven Universe / Demon Slayer script we’ll need to get to this point but I really think that if Censordoll is the “final boss” of Moralton it should end with her and Orel nurturing the blue heron egg until it hatches, roll credits.

[ae-azile]

I love Progression fic so much and I can't stop thinking about the whole story. The way you portrayed Kim and his inner struggle, depression and low selfworth is so accurate. I know this story doesn't have VegasPete (yet). But I can't stop thinking about the similarities between Pete and Kim in certain ways. I think out of all people Pete would be the only one who could truly get through Kim and truly understand him on deeper level. Because Pete struggled with low selfworth too (albeit a little differently) too, he was invisible and feeling unimportant. And suddenly he got into sexual relationship with very experienced Vegas (it is basically canon that Pete was virgin before and is demisexual or Vegassexual:D). I think Kim could relate a lot to Pete if these two would ever talk intimately. Because Kim's brothers, Chay and Porsche are great support to him but none of them can deeply truly understand some aspects of abandonment, inferiority feels and being demisexual (or something like that) and thus different from his peers. This fic can't leave my mind and I really love what you write, it is amazing.

Hello! I really like that comparison despite their circumstances and backgrounds being different! I think there is a definite parallel there, and it would be interesting to see how the two of them would interact if given the opportunity. I would like to bring Pete in for a cameo or two, and Vegas and Macau closer to the end. I think the main challenge that would occur with making a conversation like that happen would be how guarded Kim is in general. It might take some extensive bonding with the major and minor family for that similarity to come to light.

I also sort of headcanon Khun as unlabeled but possibly demisexual. I wrote Arm as such as well in another story. However, I feel like Khun's would stem more from trauma and would need someone who understands him deeply before taking that step. Kim is similar in some ways, but I also think it's an even "nature vs nurture" result for him. Chay himself was originally set on only wanting to sleep with someone he loved prior to making his body count higher, so part of me feels like Chay and Kim aren't as different as their sexual history make them seem. With Chay, sex provided a distraction from his frustrations and a "goal" to work towards. It wasn't necessarily an emotionally healthy and happy journey for him personally. Sex with Kim is very, VERY different for him, and Kim (despite his inexperience) likely blew all prior sex Chay has had out of the water due to that emotional aspect finally being attached to a sexual relationship, which was what Chay initially craved.

Vegas is...Vegas lol. That being said, I think his relationship with Pete now takes priority over anything else and he is someone who has always craved love (mainly familial, but romantic too after getting a taste of what it could be like at the safe house). I can see him being demiromantic. A relationship is something he mostly avoided or engaged in for his own gain, but Pete became a huge exception and it developed into something all-encompassing and permanent.

I'm so glad you like the story and it is drawing parallels like this. I do hope to introduce the minor family soon and may actually have Pete stop by during the bar visit! This ask sort of helped push me in that direction. ♥️

[golden--doodler]

This is inspired by a conversation I had with @drawthething yesterday, but I decided to make musical theater-related headcanons for all the Belchers:

Linda loves musicals a ton (of course) and has definitely put on some music from Dear Evan Hansen in the restaurant before, especially Waving Through a Window and So Big, So Small, and cried internally. Sometimes even externally, and Bob had to take her outside to calm her down and remind her it was all fictional. She just loves Heidi Hansen and her relationship with Evan so much.

Bob likes the Beetlejuice musical just because Adam and Barbara's relationship reminds him so much of his and Linda's, though he still won't admit he enjoys it. He especially likes the line in Ready, Set, Not Yet that goes like: "To the untrained eye it's boring, but nothing's a chore when you're restoring, apart from frustration, pain, and financial drain". That was extremely relatable to him. He was also not okay when they died at the end of that number--he was relieved when they came back as ghosts but was still upset.

Gene is obsessed with Six and his ultimate goal is to be a Queen in that show one day. He was a mess after listening to All You Wanna Do for the first time, but did not understand the innuendos in the beginning like "plucked my strings all the way to g, went from major to minor, c to d". He just appreciated the music metaphors. His favorite Queen is Anna of Cleves, though, because Get Down, in his opinion, is the most fun, most fabulous number. And because she's so sassy and full of life. As a bonus, Tina's favorite is Catherine of Aragon because she really likes Aragon's scorned lover vibes and No Way is such a bop. Louise's is Anne Boleyn because she gives off a "don't care, just wanna have fun" kind of vibe, and Don't Lose Your Head is such a crazy good time. She also finds it interesting how much of a temptress Boleyn was portrayed to be, and actually read up a lot on the woman after listening to the soundtrack.

Tina's favorite music still comes from Boyz 4 Now, but she enjoys some musicals. She likes West Side Story for the forbidden romance (she likes picturing herself as Maria and Jimmy Jr. as Tony) and the fifties setting is just really cool to her. She also thinks In the Heights perfectly captures the feeling of summer, and likes listening to a couple songs from it when the weather starts warming up.

Louise won't admit she likes a few musicals, but she definitely does. She thinks Wicked is a really interesting tale of a genuinely good person being affected by their environment (I like to think when she's older, she'll use the musical to write a paper on the whole "Nature Vs. Nurture" topic). She also loves Sweeney Todd, but NOT JUST BECAUSE OF THE MURDER SHE SWEARS. She respects Stephen Sondheim as a composer a ton and thinks Sweeney's internal struggle and emotional journey are incredibly fascinating. She definitely dressed up as him one year.

As another bonus, Teddy doesn't listen to many musicals but really likes Cats and will frequently go to war with detractors, and argue about how it's actually a good musical. Sometimes he's way too passionate and some of his arguments are nonsensical, but a lot of the time he actually makes really good, well-thought-out points on why he enjoys it so much.

[lanthanum12]

Hi! Can I politely ask why you like Maeglin? I’m open to learning to sympathize with him but right now I find it very hard to - he’s a stalker/harasser, an attempted child murderer, and intentionally responsible for a massacre. I’m NOT trying to be a hater criticizing you for liking him, everyone is entitled to their opinions - i’m just curious what it is about him that you like.

Hello! Thank you for the ask! I love talking about Maeglin!

Firstly, it's okay if you don't sympathize or like him! It's perfectly fine to dislike a character. I feel like that's something that needs to be normalized in fandom! There's some characters I dislike just because I find them annoying or because they hurt an character I like. However, there are a lot of really good reasons to dislike Maeglin. (Which you listed above) While I will share my opinions, these are just that, my opinions! Yours are very valid.

Before I get into my opinions on why I like Maeglin, I must say, I loath his treatment of Idril and Earendil. That is the kind of acts that are simply awful. I strongly dislike those parts of Maeglin's character.

With that being said, here goes my thoughts: My brain tends to hyperfixate on random characters and I don't have a lot of say in it. Sometimes I will get obsessed with someone and there's not much I can do. Maeglin is one of those cases.

However, there are a lot of reasons I can point to why I like Maeglin in particular.

He's unique amongst elves. Ever since I was young, I've always enjoyed villains and morally grey characters. Apart from the Feanorians, Eol, and Saeros, most of the elves are good people! Maeglin provides such a nice change of pace. I love him because of his treachery, not in spite of it.

In fact I sometimes increase Maeglin's villainy in AUs. My favorite ship is Maeglin + Sauron and I often have them try and take over the world together. I firmly hold the belief that he was not tortured and sold out Gondolin fairly willingly.

I do have some sympathy for Maeglin (which I will get into later), but I also have sympathy for Sauron, the Nazgul, Gollum, Grima, Beruthiel, Azog, Bolg, etc and cheer for the Nazgul whenever I watch the movies. I am a huge villain fan!

With most of those characters, there are fleeting moments that I can point to that I think makes them sympathetic. The same is true for Maeglin. For one, there is the treatment of Maeglin by his dad. Maeglin is an example of how harmful the cycles of abuse can be. I believe he internalized a lot of dangerous behaviors and views from Eol. There's a lot of interesting discussion to be had around nature vs nurture and abusive cycles around Maeglin. I love seeing them explored in meta and fanfiction.

Many people will also point to the fact that he is so young as a point of sympathy for him. I agree with that and I also think his age is an interesting aspect to his character. Maeglin caused a lot of problems for Tolkien with fitting him into the timescales and developing the elven life cycle. He is the youngest elf we know about and there is a lot more detail given into his childhood than most other elves.

I find him relatable. He's a lot more realistic than other characters in the legendarium. (Same with Salgant. I know for a fact I would not fight in any battle) Both him and I sometimes struggle to find words under pressure for example.

His family history (or lack there of) is really interesting. Little is known about where Eol came from but there's defintly a sense that he has an interesting story. (Tolkien had a few versions of Eol's backstory over the years) I love seeing other fans' takes on Eol's history and how that affects Maeglin. It's written in the original tale of the Fall of Gondolin that there were rumors that Maeglin was related to orcs! That is so neat to me! I love the idea of elf-orcs. In some versions Eol and Maeglin were the only Avari who had any development. In others Eol was a thrall of Morgoth. I also see the popular headcanon of Eol being part maia which makes so much sense (considering the talking sword twins and enchanted forest). There's a lot of possibility in making a really interesting family tree for Maeglin!

In short, I like Maeglin because he is evil and treacherous, but there's that possibility that he could have been better and that makes my heart ache for him and his missed opportunities. I hope you and everyone else enjoyed reading this post! Thank you for your questions!

[ahyesmygoodomenssideblog]

During Crowley's love confession he says: "We don't need Heaven, we don't need Hell, they're toxic." which I find very interesting.

There's been a lot of discussion in the fandom about Crowley and Aziraphale's differences as a demon and an angel, talking terms of a chicken and egg situation, nature vs nurture, etc. And Crowley is right. Heaven and Hell are toxic.

But also.

The opening scene of season 2 establishes something very important: Crowley and Aziraphale held fundamentally different views even when they were unambiguously on the same side.

It definitively shows that Crowley didn't develop his pessimist/realist take on the world as a result of his fall. He fell because he was capable of acknowledging problems and willing to call them out.

Aziraphale didn't see these problems from the start. When pointed out, he deflects, admiring the nebula instead. Fine, maybe he was just scared about getting into trouble and not interested in philosophical discussions with this angel he just met.

But Season 2 goes on to make it clear that Aziraphale is very good at denying reality to maintain his cognitive dissonance. Even when confronted with and forced to acknowledge the moral grayness of life, Aziraphale easily falls back into seeing the world in black-and-white.

So it isn't just that Heaven is toxic.

Crowley seems to cling to this hope that Aziraphale's mindset is going to improve without Heaven's influence. But Aziraphale has mostly been living away from Heaven for millennia already. He's been thoroughly cut off for 4 years now.

So what? There isn't really precedence to go on for how he should heal, right? But then Gabriel comes along. I think that was why Crowley seemed so shook by how that storyline played out. Gabriel showed that it can be relatively easy for angels to change, at least in certain ways about certain topics.

Heaven doesn't hold all the blame for Aziraphale's toxic mindset. On some level, it's just Aziraphale. And Aziraphale struggles to change.