#and we can extrapolate from that all we want! but he was a real living person and that is ALL that's left of him! he's simply gone

[noknowshame]

an epiphany: Silver does not, and cannot, have a backstory, simply because he is the archetypal pirate. and pirates do not have histories.

I do a lot of research on pirate history in my free time, and one thing that has always really struck me is just how little we have to go off of. We do have primary source records of their exploits - primarily reports from the crews of ships they attacked, and if they were unlucky enough, transcripts from their trials and executions , but as soon as you ask "well, who were they before they were pirates?", almost always, there is simply nothing to draw up, even for the most famous of figures. Calico Jack Rackham appears on the scene in 1718, already Charles Vane's quartermaster, with nothing to say of where he came from. Samuel Bellamy sailed from Cape Cod to raid the treasure-wreck of the Urca d'Lima, but his life in Massachusetts is marred in speculation. Blackbeard made landfall in Nassau soon after the War of Spanish Succession, but so many pirates used pseudonyms that we cannot even be sure that his real name was Edward Teach. All we can say is maybe, maybe, maybe.

so of course Silver, being the icon that we can trace nearly all of our modern conceptions of piracy to, would have no past. the real ones didn't either. As far as written history is concerned, the sea conjured them up. Even if their stories were not unremarkable, they were simply... without relevance.

[caligvlasaqvarivm]

Wanted to ask, is Eridan's relationship with his dad ok? Like when Eridan was learning how to use his harpoon gun he seemed very much distressed and not enjoying any of it

The only real canon characterization we have of seahorsedad is that the version of him that's Cronus's lusus is "stern, fatherly" and that he ditches Cronus for Hussie, although that last one is mostly just a Bit so I don't really count it as characterization. He's also willing to go along with Eridan "doing something ridiculous," though, again, that's kind of a Bit and it's unclear how canon that is.

((cw for abuse and stuff beneath the readmore))

As such, pretty much anything I say is going to be pure extrapolation that serves my characterization of Eridan, and I can't really back it up with hard textual evidence. But, personally, I think Eridan believes his relationship with his lusus is "good" in the way that many children growing up beneath strict, emotionally neglectful, and even outright abusive parents do.

We know that Eridan has very few friends. He doesn't even really talk to half the people in their group chat, and according to Feferi, he's never spent more than a few days underwater, total, in his whole life. Add onto that that lusus murder (and, by extension, the culling of the orphaned troll) has been his duty long enough that he describes it is "the only thing i evver did," I think it's a reasonable assumption to make that he also has no IRL friends, aside from Feferi.

And to give an idea of how old Eridan was when he started having to murder lusii, here's how old Vriska was when she was expected to start feeding spidermom:

This, and the fact that Dualscar was called "Orphaner" because the job of feeding Gl'bgolyb was his even into adulthood (as he lived before the Summoner's rebellion and the removal of adult trolls from Alternia), and the fact that no one, including Feferi, ever shows any gratitude towards Eridan for performing the job, supports the idea that feeding Gl'bgolyb has always been a violet blood's responsibility. After all, Feferi makes overtures about not being better than other trolls, but she sure does revel in being royalty when she can get away with it. It'd be in character for her to not be particularly grateful to Eridan because she sees lusus murder as fundamentally being his responsibility, especially if he started when they were both REALLY young.

In other words, Eridan was expected to start murdering lusii (and by extension, other trolls) from the moment he was old enough to do so, which, judging by how old Vriska was when she started killing trolls for Spidermom, is not very old at all.

Also, given the lifespan of violet bloods, it's entirely possible - and my personal belief - that Seahorsedad was Dualscar's lusus as well as Eridan's. Even without that being the case, since it was always Eridan's job to hunt and kill lusii, the biggest possible culprit for inducting him into his role would be his lusus.

And let's be clear, I think the fact that having to murder lusii/trolls is the biggest culprit for what's fucked Eridan up the most. The pressure of having the safety of the entire race on his shoulders, the fear of Gl'bgolyb and what happens if he ever fails, and the guilt of taking lives (which we do know Eridan thinks about) have left him with genuine struggles caring about other people, a nasty martyr complex (which isn't unjustified), extremely unstable and negative emotions, shattered interpersonal relationships, and a deep, nihilistic sense of resignation towards his place in society. The latter has directly led to him attempting to embrace that place by tricking himself into thinking he believes in hemocasteist, sea dweller supremacy rhetoric - which his actions contradict - because, without the game's intervention, he had no other options available for him but to become a key figure in the imperial army, continue murdering other sapient creatures until he died, and watch all his few friends die before him, either when they got culled, killed on the battlefield, or purely dropped dead of old age.

And, like... a parent who does that to their child, even if we assume the absolute best (that Seahorsedad does genuinely care about Eridan), can't possibly have a fully healthy relationship with said child. And I think it's not unreasonable to assume that the best is not what's happening between Eridan and Seahorsedad, because Eridan's psychological profile is so fucked up that I highly doubt he was receiving much, if any, actual affection or support from his lusus. Personally, I think his lusus was "stern and fatherly" in the worst possible way - high expectations, no emotional warmth, and complete disregard for Eridan's psychological well-being, as long as he was producing adequate results.

Because Eridan craves attention, and has very little distinction between good and bad attention. He's naive and trusting to a fault, hardly ever suspects anybody of lying to him, and has basically no social skills. These all say to me that Seahorsedad is just, like... not giving him any emotional attention at ALL.

And poor Eridan is just 13 years old - still too young to fully realize how poorly he's being treated by people who are supposed to care about him. Like, yeah, he's completely obnoxious and exhausting to talk to, and you can't really blame Feferi or Kanaya for being sick of listening to him, but at the same time, some of the shit they do to him as a result is honestly just mean. Like Kanaya is just actually bullying him- training him up to be a wizard as a joke, shitting on him behind his back with Rose, making fun of him to his face - and yet:

He's just that fucking desperate for people to care about him and support him; I can't help but think he's just not getting that at home, you know?

So I think if you asked Eridan, he'd say that his relationship with his lusus was good, and that his lusus was proud and noble and stoic, and absolutely a great custodian, and there were no problems at all.

But I think if you were to dig deeper into their relationship, you'd start to hear worrying things like that Eridan never got to celebrate Twelfth Perigrees, and was instead dragged out to go lusus hunting because it was particularly easy to do so on that day. Or that his lusus had to pull the trigger FOR him the first time they ever went hunting, because his own hands were shaking too hard. Or that he'd be locked out of the hive every time he cried, until he stopped crying altogether. Or that he thinks he's never been sick a day in his life because he was never allowed to have an off day and not go hunting and now he's just used to ignoring any and all symptoms. So on and so forth.

He reacts EXTREMELY POORLY to Feferi saying she feels like she needed to look after him - more poorly than to the initial news that she was trying to break up with him:

And I think that's because weakness was punished in his household growing up. He wasn't allowed to be weak - he was nobility, royalty. He had duties, responsibilities. If he faltered, their whole race died. And when you consider the fact that "you have to kill things for the good of everyone you care about, all the time, constantly," is the abject lesson that's been hammered into him since he was old enough to walk and talk, the fact that he's so incredibly fucking adamant about murdering angels starts to be a little... sad. He's just stuck in that mindset. He doesn't know how to escape it.

So... yeah. In summary: his relationship with his dad is great!

[cosmicjoke]

The Psychological and Emotional Impact of Levi’s Early Childhood:

I don’t think Levi’s early childhood really gets discussed enough in the fandom, or the ways in which those experiences in his formative years had to have impacted him.  This could be because we don’t really get many panels depicting his childhood.  Just a few.  But those few panels show us enough for us to extrapolate plenty and form a pretty clear picture of what he went through.

First of all, it’s almost a certainty that Levi was born as the result of rape. 

That’s something that I think everyone should let sink in.

He was born in the brothel that his mother, Kuchel, worked in.  And “worked” is a relative term here.  Kuchel was driven into the Underground as a result of persecution by the royal family.  She was undoubtedly very young, she was alone, with no real resources or support or guarantee of safety or protection from anyone, in an environment of criminality and violence.  There were likely very few, if any options available to her in terms of her own survival.  Her becoming a prostitute wouldn’t have been any kind of a choice then, but rather a move made in desperation.  And so I think we can also safely assume that Kuchel’s experiences working as a prostitute were tantamount to forced labor.  In other words, a kind of slavery.  She was almost certainly paid a paltry sum by the brothels owner, evidenced by the sorry, squalid and destitute state we see her and Levi living in when Kenny comes.  She was likely afforded very few, if any rights or defenses against whatever her clients chose to do to her, as also evidenced by the fact that no one seemed to really know or care enough about her or Levi to even realize when she had died. 

It’s impossible for me to define any of what Kuchel went through working in such a place as anything less than rape, then.

So, Levi’s very existence is one that is a literal product of violence.  I’m absolutely sure that Levi himself is painfully aware of this, knowing that he was born out of his own mother’s pain and suffering.  Going into the implications of this on Levi’s psychological health, I think you can safely assume this realization had a very negative impact on his own sense of self-worth.  His mother was the only person in his childhood who we ever saw treat him with any kind of actual love or kindness.  The only person who ever, actually wanted him.  And yet, Levi would have seen demonstrated to him, every day, how his existence in his mothers life placed an increased burden on her, forcing her into increasingly more desperate circumstances, now having to feed two mouths instead of only one, and as a result, likely having to engage in increased, unwanted sexual activity with her clients.  So Levi would be aware that not only was his mother, (again, the only person who loved and treated him with tenderness) being hurt on his behalf, but he also would have been aware, after witnessing the particular ways in which she was being hurt, that he himself was the result of that violence.  Levi would have been shown that his very existence, then, was something which caused immense suffering and pain to the only person in his life who loved him.  I honestly can’t even imagine the negative implications of something like this on a young mind.  Only to say, it must have been horrific and resulted in lifelong trauma.  Trauma which, due to the desperation of Levi’s life afterward, he likely never had any opportunity or chance to even address. 

Now, moving on to something else.  There’s a tendency by many to paint Kuchel as this sort of perfect mother figure.  Someone who, through the power of her love for Levi alone, was able to overcome the trauma of their general circumstances, to negate the negative experiences he would have been exposed to, resulting in Levi becoming the kind and compassionate person he would be as an adult.  But I think this assumption about Kuchel and their situation is not only unrealistic and idealized in the extreme, but also in its way, undermines the actual bleakness of their circumstances.

Again, we have to remember that Kuchel was driven into the Underground, and essentially forced, through lack of any other options, to become a prostitute.  Calling her a prostitute is a nice way of saying she had to sell herself into sexual slavery.  Kuchel’s own psychological and emotional trauma doesn’t often get touched upon or acknowledged when people talk about her and her relationship with her son, nor does the desperate poverty of their living situation.  Kuchel died right in front of Levi, and we can assume with pretty good accuracy that she either died from a sexually transmitted disease, or that she died from malnutrition and starvation.  These weren’t two people, then, who were living a comfortable or secure life.  In fact, the very opposite.  Levi was starving to death when Kenny found him.  It’s easy enough to assume from his state of general neglect and starvation that Kuchel, at the very least, was struggling to provide for him.  Not just food, but any kind of comfort or care.  Clothing, warmth, protection, cleanliness, and very likely even, affection.  This isn’t a knock on Kuchel’s worth as a mother, or her parenting.  She was, undoubtedly, doing the best she could given the circumstances.  But, again, this particular aspect of their lives isn’t touched on nearly enough.  Kuchel died out of neglect, impoverishment, desperation and abuse.  Given what we can assume her day to day life was like, having to let men come and sexually assault her just to keep herself and her son alive, one has to also consider the emotional and mental toll this sort of existence would eventually have on her.  She had to have been exhausted, both mentally and physically.  You add to this the always uncertain and present reality of whether either her or Levi would even be able to eat on any, given day, whether she would be able to keep her son from starving to death, and you can start to form a clear idea of how things like “playtime” or “fun”, or freely given and enthusiastic love and affection, would be, tragically, low on the list of priorities.  Their situation was absolutely a situation of survival, first and foremost.  Luxuries weren’t a part of their lives.  Anyone who’s ever experienced extreme deprivation, poverty and desperation on the level in which Kuchel and Levi were living would know that those material realities absolutely have a negative impact on one’s ability to simply live.  To be happy.  To indulge in fantasy.  To indulge in luxury.  To indulge in any kind of relaxation or ease of living.  It’s nice to imagine that Kuchel was always able to show Levi love and affection.  To always be a kind, caring and generous mother to him.  But that perception of their lives together ignores the bleak and harsh reality of what was really going on.  More likely than not, Kuchel was often too exhausted and in bad, physical shape herself to play with Levi, to pay attention to Levi, to indulge in Levi.  It was everything she could do, after all, to simply keep Levi alive, let alone healthy and happy.  Kenny described Levi, when he first took him in, as the most unfriendly kid he’d ever met.  We rarely see Levi speak at all in those early days with Kenny.  That doesn’t speak to someone who is well adjusted socially.  That doesn’t speak to someone who received a lot of open love and affection in the formative years of his childhood.  Again, this isn’t to criticize or undermine Kuchel’s abilities as a mother.  It’s simply acknowledging the tragic reality, that someone in Kuchel’s position, living the kind of life she was living, wouldn’t have had the luxury of being for Levi everything he needed her to be. 

This also leads me into another point I don’t think I’ve ever seen discussed, and that has to do with Kuchel’s decision to have Levi at all, and how that choice is, simultaneously, both entirely selfless, and entirely selfish. 

Kenny tells his grandfather that he tried to talk Kuchel out of having her baby, trying to explain to her how bringing a baby into the kind of situation she was living in wasn’t viable.  It was only going to make, not only her own life worse, but in turn, the baby’s life was going to be awful too.  We later see, in Kenny’s memories, a scene in which Kuchel is holding Levi as a newborn against her chest and crying tears of happiness.  Kenny recalls this as part of his monologue about dreams, and the desperation of dreams, and the ability of dreams to corrupt us.  This is important to acknowledge.  Because again, while Kuchel’s intentions in giving birth to Levi were pure, and her love for him was absolutely pure and genuine, still, she DID bring him into a situation of extreme poverty, desperation and violence.  In a way, Kuchel prioritized her dream of motherhood not only over her own well being (this being the selfless aspect of her decision), but also over Levi’s well being (this being the selfish aspect).  She knew her own living situation was terrible, filled with suffering, cruelty and pain.  She knew this, and she was aware, from Kenny’s own words, that bringing a child into that situation was only going to make things worse, for both of them.  But she chose to do it anyway.  She chose to give birth to Levi, and to keep him, knowing the sort of deprivation and desperation he would be exposed to.  Knowing the kind of violence and cruelty and ugliness he would be exposed to, being born and raised in a brothel, in which she was working as a prostitute, relegated to a single room with him in it. 

Chances are high, extremely high, that Levi saw his mother raped.  Maybe she sent him out of the room when she was with clients.  But maybe she wasn’t able to.  We never see any evidence of Levi having ever left their single room as a child, and even if he had, the building they were in was a brothel, catering to men seeking and paying for the sexual services of women.  It isn’t an environment that is, in any way, suited to a child, friendly to a child, or even tolerant of a child.  It’s almost 100% certain that Levi was, at one time or another, exposed to sexual violence against women, whether it was his own mother, or someone else.  He would have been exposed to violence in general too, because men who sexually assault women are also very likely to physically assault them.  I don’t think it’s any kind of a stretch, even, to assume that Levi himself might have been on the receiving end of physical violence, at the least, in a place like that.  Men who wouldn’t want some little kid around while they force themselves on the women there probably would have little qualm with hitting Levi to make him go away. 

Again, going back to Levi’s “unfriendliness” when Kenny first takes him in, I think we can extrapolate that a lot of what Kenny was perceiving as unfriendly behavior was in fact just Levi being withdrawn.  He seemed sullen and mute to Kenny.  We see this in children who have been abused.  They tend to go within themselves and make themselves as unobtrusive as possible, not wanting to draw attention to themselves, because whenever they have, it’s always resulted in them somehow being hurt.  Levi’s body language when Kenny first meets him speaks to this as well.  He’s curled against the wall opposite his mother’s bed, literally making himself as small as possible, his knees hugged to his chest, his head bowed close to them, etc...  Like he’s trying to hide.  Again, it doesn’t take a stretch of the imagination to assume that Levi fell victim to the violence of the men who frequented that place.  The Underground in general was filled with violent and cruel men who made a living out of criminality, who in fact wouldn’t think twice about committing murder, etc... 

This is the world Kuchel brought Levi into.  A world of physical and sexual violence, a world of depravity and illness, a world of poverty and starvation.  Kuchel loved Levi with all her heart.  That isn’t for a moment in doubt.  But by choosing to have him and keep him, she also trapped him into a life of pain and suffering of his own.

Kuchel had to know, if anything were to happen to her, that Levi’s chances of survival were next to none.  He was helpless without her, and that too is evidenced by the fact that, when Kenny finds them, Levi is literally starving to death.  He’s just sitting there, resigned to his fate.  There’s no indication whatsoever that Levi ever even left their room to seek food, or help of any kind.  He just sat there, trapped with his mother’s rotting corpse, waiting to die.  And nobody there cared enough to even check on him or his mother in the span of time between when she fell ill and when she died.  Nobody there cared enough about either of their lives to see if they were okay, and we can assume, because Levi didn’t seek anyone’s help, that he didn’t think anyone would help him, which tells us all we need to know about how he and his mother were generally treated in that place.  Kuchel must have known, as she was dying, that without her, Levi was going to die too.  She had no way and no cause to know or think that Kenny would come by to rescue him.  And, indeed, if Kenny hadn’t shown up right when he did, Levi almost certainly would have died in that room with her.  I can’t even imagine the pain this must have caused her, knowing she was dying, and knowing as a result, that her son was going to die too.  It would have been unbearable.  But again, this is also the risk Kuchel took when she chose to give birth to and keep Levi.  She knew this was a possibility.  That her child would die a slow and painful death without her there to protect and take care of him.

So this sort of sunny, idealistic picture that tends to get painted of Levi’s life with his mother seems both unrealistic and unfair to them in terms of understanding their actual situation.  This wasn’t a happy or good life they were living together.  It was a life full of misery and pain.  Levi’s monologue later on to the 104th recruits, about not knowing if you’ll wake up and get to eat that day, or if your friends will still be alive, wasn’t just a reflection on their lives living with the threat of titans.  It was a reflection of his own life living in the Underground, living a life surrounded by poverty and violence and uncertainty.  That was Levi’s existence for the first 25 years of his life.  That was Levi’s childhood.  Violence and starvation, cruelty and deprivation.  Kuchel’s love, as pure and as genuine as it was, wasn’t enough on it’s own to overcome the scars of all that. 

One last note to end this on. 

There’s also a tendency to paint Kenny’s rescue of Levi as this very heroic and selfless act on Kenny’s part.  A moment in which Levi was pulled from the jaws of certain death and given a chance to live by his uncle.  And while, yes, Kenny certainly did save Levi’s life and give him that chance, I think it’s also important to acknowledge that Kenny’s treatment of Levi was abusive, and ultimately caused him more harm than good.  Kenny, we have to remember, went down to the Underground to rescue Kuchel.  He went to that brothel with the intention of pulling her out and bringing her to live back up on the surface, able to do so now that he had ended the persecution of their family through his connection with Uri Reiss.  But by the time he got there, Kuchel was dead, and she’d left behind her only child in Levi.  Kenny could have so easily brought Levi up to the surface with him, the way he’d been planning on doing with Kuchel, and given him a good and happy life.  He could have saved him from the hell of living in the Underground City.  A world of perpetual darkness, a world of constant danger and desperation and illness.  People talk about how Kenny gave Levi the tools to survive in such a harsh environment, and treat this as if it’s something to somehow be applauded and praised.  But Kenny shouldn’t have had to teach Levi to survive in a cut-throat environment at all.  He’d made it possible for those with the Ackerman name to live free of persecution up above.  He could have easily taken Levi with him and given him a good, traditional education, fed and clothed him, given him shelter, given him the chance to grow up in fresh air and sunlight, given him a chance to make friends with other children, to learn social skills and just live a normal existence with the opportunity to actually be happy.  But instead Kenny chose to keep Levi in the Underground, to teach him how to kill, to teach him to be violent, and not much else, before simply abandoning him there and never going back, forcing Levi to survive on his own in the most dangerous place inside the walls.  What Kenny did to Levi wasn’t a kindness.  A kindness would have been rescuing Levi from the Underground entirely and giving him a real life above.  A kindness would have been Kenny giving to Levi what he’d planned on giving to his sister.  But Kenny was too selfish to do that, and that’s the bottom line.  He didn’t want to have to take care of and raise a child.  He didn’t want the responsibility.  Whether that’s tied to Kenny’s own, negative perception of himself or not doesn’t matter.  He still chose not to take Levi with him and give him a real life because actually caring for and raising a child would have been too hard, too much work, too much responsibility.  By leaving Levi there in the Underground, he sent Levi the message, clear as day, that he wasn’t wanted.  And so Levi spent the entirety of his childhood, and a good portion of his adulthood, believing that, and living in the Underground, living a life of violence and desperation and suffering.

I don’t think the suffering Levi went through as a child gets discussed or acknowledged enough, or examined enough.  I don’t think people often look at it with enough objective realism to realize the extreme harm and trauma Levi experienced and was left with.  It’s genuinely a miracle that Levi turned out the way he did.  That Levi is as good a man as he is.  Nothing in his life growing up can really account for that.  Everything in his life growing up would evince that he should have become the sort of man Kenny was, selfish and cruel.  It’s truly against all odds that Levi became the exact opposite.  Selfless in the extreme, kind, caring and compassionate above and beyond anyone else in the series.  Someone who fights for and gives his life in dedication to the dreams and lives of others.

In many ways, Levi is, himself, the greatest miracle of all.

[anarchywoofwoof]

whenever someone wants to start blabbering about how damaging shoplifting and theft is to a business, particularly a place like Walmart, Target or nearly any big box retail establishment, be sure to look up the company's annual revenue.

and when you start playing out the numbers, it gets absolutely fucking absurd real fast.

for example, let's use Walmart.

the CEO of Walmart - Doug McMillon - his net worth is $280 million.

this is a person who made $24.1 million in fiscal 2023 alone.

that's about 933x the median salary of a Walmart employee.

let's have some more fun with numbers, shall we?

if you used only the ceo's salary of $24.1 million per year here's what you could buy in (men's) clothes from Walmart!

300,000 Hanes Men's ComfortSoft Crewneck T-Shirt - Pack Of 5 ($20)

500,000 Athletic Works Men's Crew Socks - Pack of 12 ($11)

250,000 George Men's Cotton Stretch Regular Leg Boxer Briefs - Pack of 6 ($20)

250,000 George Regular Fit Jeans - 1 pair ($13)

250,000 George Men's 38mm Single Loop Casual Belt - 1 belt ($7)

150,000 Athletic Works Men's Banded Jogger Slip-on - 1 pair ($15)

and he would still have $350,000 left over!

mind you - this is only the CEO!

Walmart CFO (Chief Financial Officer) John David Rainey made $39,725,601 during the same time period.

Walmart Chief Technology and Development Officer Suresh Kumar made $16,107,812 during the same time period.

Sam's Club President & CEO Kathryn McLay made $11,934,475 during the same time period.

Walmart President & CEO of Walmart International Judith McKenna made $13,526,160 during the same time period.

collectively, Walmart's Executive Staff was compensated to the tune of $120,900,000 during fiscal 2023.

so you know those numbers up there? all of those clothes that you can now commonly find locked behind glass at your local Walmart that you could buy with the CEO's annual salary?

multiply those figures by five, and now you have what you could buy with ONE YEAR of all of the Walmart executives' pay combined.

that's enough to give everyone in the City of Chicago, IL two free t-shirts.

the name of the game is greed. this is one corporation - albeit a huge one. and just one single solitary fiscal year of earnings.

extrapolate this across 5-10 years. could you imagine the untold number of lives we could change if these executives agreed to forego their insane salaries for a short period of time? it would almost certainly not cause them any undue struggle because of the sheer amount of wealth and resources they have.

it'll never happen, but don't let anyone convince you that it has to be this way. we are being gaslit by people with more money than we will ever see in many lifetimes so that they can live a life of luxury unseen by 90% of the population. stop letting them pull the wool over your eyes and call it what it is: pure, unadulterated greed.

[marie-mcd]

There's a specific concept from Good Omens that I really like (amongst many others), that I was chuffed to also find in a Sandman and a Discworld story!

I love that in Good Omens (both book and TV), Heaven and Hell are presented as mostly redundant and ineffectual when it comes to human morality - and that Hell in particular find some of the things humans do to be pretty shocking, and/or instructive.

Opportunities for humour aside, this idea flies in the face of the common belief that the world's worst ills are the result of outside forces influencing people to do evil (ie the devil. Or ... lizard people etc? I digress). And it's unlike other stories out there that are like, "World War II was actually caused by xyz characters!" or similar. Good Omens doesn't rewrite history like that, or let us - humanity - off the hook when it comes to the big stuff, when it could so easily have done so in a universe where Heaven and Hell are literally real.

The story, of course, also credits human cleverness to humans, and celebrates the things we should be proud of, like art, music, delicious food, craftmanship, invention, etc. And it credits humans for having a propensity for compassion and goodness.

"[Crowley] did his best to make their short lives miserable, because that was his job, but nothing he could think up was half as bad as the stuff they thought up themselves. […] And just when you'd think they were more malignant than ever Hell could be, they could occasionally show more grace than Heaven ever dreamed of. Often the same individual was involved."

I love this concept because I see it as an uncoupling of religion and morality. They can both exist together, but the former isn't necessary for the latter. (This isn't the only possible interpretation; the more literal reading might be more about free will, but this is where I extrapolated it to).

From Sandman: Season of Mists Episode 2 (plot context stripped out to avoid spoilers, but skip ahead to black text if you want absolutely nothing spoiled if you want to read it).

Lucifer: "And the mortals! I ask you - why? […] Why do they blame me for all their little failings? They use my name as if I spend my entire day sitting on their shoulders, forcing them to commit acts they would otherwise find repulsive. 'The devil made me do it.' I have never made one of them do anything. Never. They live their own tiny lives. I do not live their lives for them."

And from Eric, a Discworld book (this one's related to Hell learning from humans, more than morality/free will... I won't spoil the funny by elaborating!):

"Earl Beezlemoth rubbed one of his three noses.

'And humans somewhere thought this up all by themselves?' he said. 'We didn't give them any, you know, hints?' […]

The earl stared into infinity. 'I thought we were supposed to be the ghastly ones,' he said, his voice filled with awe."

Another commonality between these two stories that isn't directly shared by Good Omens (yet...? still have another season coming …) but that I like enough to point out, is the idea that Hell is a place where people end up if they believe they deserve to go there. I like this because a lot of people are influenced to feel guilty about "sins" that are innocuous parts of normal human behaviour, so it's pretty brutal to fear going to Hell over them. There's comfort in this idea, to me. (granted, the following Sandman quote states this less explicitly but I take the same meaning from it … but lmk if I've done a reading incomprehension; I also haven't read all the books yet).

From Sandman:

Lucifer: "And then [the mortals] die, and they come here (having transgressed against what they believed to be right), and expect us to fulfill their desire for pain and retribution. I don't make them come here."

From Eric (partial footnote near the beginning):

"Interestingly enough, the gods of the Disc have never bothered much about judging the souls of the dead, and so people only go to hell if that's where they believe, in their deepest heart, that they deserve to go."

Eric also really leans into the idea of Hell being a bureaucratic, corporate, boring nightmare, also familiar to Good Omens fans, and the demons are so over it. The tone (you could probably guess) is very different from Sandman, and it's one of the earlier, less-serious Discworld books; it's a very fun, absurd ride of a read!

There are a few other Discworld books I'll talk about in a future post, that may also be of interest to certain Good Omens fans (I'm gearing these posts toward the fans who came to Good Omens from the TV show and haven't had the pleasure of discovering Neil's and Terry's other work yet); the ones I have in mind examine religious extremism, and the uncoupling of religion and morality too. A couple of them also have queer themes, if that is also your jam! (Less shipping opportunities but I assume some fans, like me, like the rest of the material in GO in addition to the love story).

I'll end this with a quote from a footnote from Eric that has nothing to do with anything in this post, but which took me by surprise and had me laughing days later whenever it came to mind. It's referring to books in a section of the library:

"Just erotic. Nothing kinky. It's the difference between using a feather and using a chicken."

And another bonus one that I found while looking for the first:

"Rincewind had been told that death was just like going into another room. The difference is, when you shout, 'Where's my clean socks?', no one answers."

I hope this made sense and is maybe interesting to someone ... I had fun talking about this at least!

[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 !!!!!!! 

[crownmemes]

House Sentences, Vol. 5

(Sentences from House (2004-2012). Adjust phrasing where needed)

"Can I ask what he's done to deserve your loyalty?"

"One day, our friendship will break, and it'll just prove your theory that relationships are conditional and you don't need human connection, or deserve it, or whatever goes on in that rat maze of your brain."

"You think I'm a bureaucrat with a badge, following some arbitrary guideline?"

"None of you are innocent. Not one of you."

"A bully's a bully. If they don't get a reaction, they'll lose interest."

"People think you have no inner censor. The fact is, you hold yourself back, because when you want to hurt, you know just where to poke a sharp stick."

"When I see people with their kids, it's so natural. It's like they have an instruction book imprinted on their genes. Maybe I just didn't get a copy."

"I did this to help you!"

"You need to believe that I've got a problem so that your betrayal has the illusion of nobility."

"Being different, you get used to people's idiocy."

"Only an idiot goes to prison for being stubborn!"

"We both know that my pride far surpasses my instinct for self-preservation."

"Normal's not normal if you're not normal."

"You could throw a dart at all the adjectives between arrogant and unhinged and I'm sure you'd hit one that describes me."

"I live in pain. Pain that on good days is merely intolerable and on bad ones will suck the life-force right out of you."

"You're not my mom! You don't have to keep checking up on me!"

"You find fault in everybody because you're afraid to look at yourself."

"You ever trust an addict? You ever give one the benefit of the doubt? How many times did it work out for you?"

"People like you, even your actions lie."

"I'm sorry, but I don't remember you."

"Does your voice always get that high and annoying when you're angry?"

"How can I help you this beautiful morning?"

"You owe me. I kept you out of jail; I can put you back."

"When you entered, I noted your shirt hadn't been pressed; you hadn't shaved in quite some time. I extrapolated you were a person for whom detail is not a major concern."

"You cannot make the uninteresting interesting."

"Why are you wearing perfume?"

"Is this a real case, or one of those imaginary cases that happen when you’re bored?"

"I'll get better. I always get better."

"Stop looking at my ass when you think I'm not looking!"

"Do you put all your patients through this many tests, or just the important ones?"

"I take it you two aren't sleeping together anymore?"

"I didn't realise you were going to get hurt. I'm sorry I misled you."

"No! I’m not getting sucked into the vortex of your insanity again!"

"That’s such a bad idea! There’s no way that won’t cause damage to the large intestine!"

"Are you keeping us here just to torture me?"

"The only difference between me and you is that I made some bad decisions, and you made some good ones."

"I don't like you. Never have, never will."

"I'm not breaking into somebody's house! I have principles!"

"Tone it down or I will hit you."

"I thought this was going to be fun. I mess with you, you mess with me - eventually, you give in. But you've shown a startling lack of humour."

"I approve of your shamelessness."

"Your hair makes you look like a hooker."

[gwenllian-in-the-abbey]

I have seen a post comparing Steven's adoption of Henry II in the anarchy with what the Velaryons did with the Strong boys wanting to justify that their claim is legitimate, but in my humble opinion it is not comparable at all. This situation could be extrapolated to Aegon II having adopted his nephew Aegon (that was the LEGITIMATE son of his political rival) having himself a living son, in addition everyone would know that he is not his son and well in this case it would not be applicable but the adopted heir retains his family name...This is not what happens with the Strong boys, It has nothing to do with the modern concept of adoption that they want to apply. I don't understand why it's so hard for them to accept that these guys had no real claim to the throne. They can continue enjoying their characters accepting that they are bastards in every sense of the word. Do you think they are comparable situations?

I haven't seen this argument myself but clearly those are two completely different situations. Stephen didn't adopt Henry II, he made him his heir as a compromise to end to the civil war. And yes, the clear parallel would Aegon II naming Aegon III his heir over Jaehaerys and Maelor, had they survived. Again, this was part of a peace treaty. Everyone knew who Henry II's parents were, and there was no question of his not being trueborn. Henry II was still Count of Anjou, the title he inherited through his father, and styled himself Henry FitzEmpress in honor of his mother.

To understand why this happened, we need to look at some context. Henry II was only 20 when he decided to re-take his mother's throne, and Stephen was past 60. At that point England had been at war off and on for the better part of 15 years and both the clergy and the lords were unenthusiastic about continuing and forced Henry and Stephen to the peace table after Henry made some early gains in his campaign. Stephen respected Henry, and Stephen's own sons were kind of uninspiring as future kings go. Eustace, the older son and main obstacle, died before Stephen did, and the younger son, William, agreed to renounce his claim. Stephen never really took the throne due to strong personal ambition in the first place, but because he was persuaded by people close to him that Matilda would be a poor choice for queen, both due to her being a woman and due to the influence of her husband, Geoffrey of Anjou, who was pretty well hated in England. Leaving the throne to his children did not seem to be a major consideration for him when all was said and done. Conceding heirship to Henry II meant that the fighting could come to an end, and the country would be in capable hands, but Stephen himself would not face the humiliation and possible consequences of being outright deposed. As it turned out, Stephen died not even a year later, so Henry II took the throne sooner than expected.

Rhaenyra's Strong children are bastards that she's trying to put into the line of succession while claiming they are trueborn. They were not "adopted" by the Velaryons. The medieval world did not have a concept of adoption like we do in the modern world (Rome did, but not medieval Europe). The reason why it is treason to call them bastards is because what Rhaenyra is doing is illegal, and Viserys, Corlys, and Laenor are shielding her from the consequences. I wrote a post here about the whole idea that Rhaenyra's children are not legally bastards, but I have to admit comparing them to Henry II becoming heir after Stephen is a new one!

[pluckyredhead]

Ngl do you think the relationship between Arthur and Garth has anything to do with how often at the time adopted children were and are considered not as “real” as biological children? Especially because the whole nuclear family BS. Not saying that’s all of it but I think it plays a role

Oh, 100%. I mean, look at this:

Arthur is willing to kill Garth to save Aquababy, because Aquababy is his son...with the implicit corollary that Garth isn't. The kid he has raised since, like, age 8, who has been by his side and living in his house all these years, is just...a sidekick.

(I think it's worth noting that Batman, who is not a good father, was once in a similar situation - Ra's al Ghul wanted him to pick whether Tim or Damian should die - and Bruce immediately chose himself. Arthur didn't even consider sacrificing himself for the boys. When you're a worse father than Batman, you know you've fucked up.)

I will say that in the early decades, comics only rarely explicitly referred to heroes and sidekicks as fathers and sons - you don't see it very often with Dick or Roy either. That's why all the sidekicks were wards and none of them were legally adopted. (Dick wasn't adopted until he was over 18; Roy never has been.) This was mostly to keep the heroes seeming young and fun instead of stodgy old dads.

But since the 70s on, Dick and Roy have been very frequently, explicitly stated to be Bruce and Ollie's sons, and the same is true for subsequent sidekicks: Jason was going to be adopted right away, Tim was going to be adopted whether he wanted it or not, Mia is clearly Ollie's daughter.

By contrast, I can only think of two times the Arthur/Garth dynamic has been described as paternal. The first is from Garth's debut:

HE IS SO TINY. Also I can't stop laughing at how Arthur's like "Fuck that noise." TERRIBLE.

I can't remember exactly when the other instance was, but I want to say it was Arthur calling Garth his son in like...the early 2000s? Maybe the Jurgens run? It would've had to have been before the 2003 run, because Garth was not putting up with Arthur's bullshit from 2003 on, and then the New 52 happened.

But yeah, they don't use those words for each other...basically ever. (Lorena and Jackson are also not Arthur's children. To be fair, Jackson has two very alive parents so Arthur being like "YOU ARE MY SON" would be weird and inappropriate.)

I think another factor, though, is that Arthur isn't just Garth's former mentor and guardian - he's his king. A lot of the time, Arthur has very cold, formal relationships with almost everyone in his life who isn't Mera (and sometimes even her) or a literal baby. There's a certain loyalty Garth owes Arthur - or at least both characters seem to feel Garth owes Arthur, whether or not you or I might agree with that - that has nothing at all to do with family.

We also don't really know the Atlantean norms around this sort of thing. Like, we can extrapolate things about Ollie and Roy's relationship that aren't written on the page, but do Atlanteans even have differentiations between ward, foster, and adoptee? Do they differentiate between adoptee and biological child?

And combining both of those ideas, Garth being considered Arthur's son might have political ramifications. Does that put him in the line of succession? The comics have been wildly inconsistent on this (Titans called him a prince this month and I yelled "EXPLAIN YOURSELF, TOM TAYLOR" at the page), but one could headcanon that Arthur has very deliberately avoided formally recognizing Garth as his son for political reasons. (Unless he has and that's why Garth is apparently a prince now, like he was in the Jurgens run but no other time in history. EXPLAIN BOTH OF YOURSELVES, TOM TAYLOR AND DAN JURGENS.)

Anyway yeah, I mostly think you're right that it's just anti-adoption prejudice, but there are some other factors that make this situation unique among the many, many mentor/sidekick relationships in comics.

[lily-orchard]

I'm not even a Belos enjoyer but finale was pretty dissapointing. It felt like Dana just saw that fans hate Belos and decided to not even show a proper flashback for him and kill him in a lame way. Sure fandom loved that he got stomped by Eda King and Raine (for some reason), but I feel like it should've been more like Luz tells Belos that he lost everything because of his inability to change and now he turned into a monster that nobody will remember after he dies or sth and Belos dies while seeing visions of Caleb Evelyn and everyone he's ever killed that don't even look at him so he dies scared with realization that Luz was right. Cuz that "huehue look we are not like the other cartoons our villain is lame and underdeveloped and died by being stomped by Luz's friends huehue AREN'T WE QUIRKY AND NOT LIKE THE OTHER GIRLS CARTOONS" felt lame and cringe like make defeat of a fashist actually worth it bruh

I mean I don't like the Not Like Other Girls'ing of the writing, but I'll be honest I think you're just mad that the Caleb and Evelyn red herrings didn't amount to anything. Those are things that were always afterthoughts and should have been scrapped. Phillip didn't need a secret Cain and Abel backstory to explain his genocide against witches. He was already from a deeply racist and fundamentalist time period.

There's a lot of people who wanted to Caleb to matter and for Evelyn to be a Clawthorne, and the truth is... they don't matter... at all.

I think it would have been worse if they harped on that shit. The time spent particle effect-ing and anime-framerating should have been spent on the main characters, not on the fan theories.

I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but if you really wanted to just drive the spike through Phillip as a last word, what they would have done would have been for Camilla to take Luz by the shoulder and guide her away from him as he rots in the boiling rain, Phillip starts ranting about how the witches aren't people and will doom humanity with their filth, and then Camilla turns her head back and says "Yeah, I've heard that one before."

Because the thing about Belos is that he is fundamentally an invader. He's an invader of the Demon Realm, but he's also a white Christian British man living in America in the 1600's. He's an invader back in the Human Realm too. He came to the Demon Realm at the HEIGHT of his own previous invasion.

His profession is Witch Hunter. His job was never to hunt witches. It was to hunt women and native people and escaped slaves.

Belos' genocide of the witches on the Boiling Isles directly mirror the Salem witch trials, which were little more than a thin veil to persecute women who didn't conform to Christian morals. And they knew this. They knew magic wasn't real. They all of this.

Let's be honest here. Let's be brutally honest here. Why does Belos want to genocide everyone on the Boiling Isles?

He's mad about his brother's hot new gf

They do magic and therefore it is sinful

It is an integrated society that knows neither colorism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia?

It's the third one. Because to a white christian man 1600's US Colonies, that very notion is profane to him.

Hell when he tries to play the whole "I only care about humanity!" spiel to Luz, Luz looks at him like

Luz knows that were they in the Human realm, she would have been the target of Belos' ire in the place of the witches.

Honestly with that kind of background behind Belos that you can easily extrapolate just by knowing what he is and where he comes from, it was always fucking sad that they backpedaled like fucking crazy and pulled this stupid Cain and Abel bullshit in the first place. Like, you had the best foundation for a villain, you didn't have to add all this fandom bullshit.

But that's the Adventure Fantasy death spiral, isn't it? They start with something actually very biting and edgy, the genius of The Owl House in it's early seasons was that it didn't pull it's punches, and then walks most of it back to replace it with safe, santizied fandom mysteries about secret families and hidden identities and conspiracy mongering. Because you can't really pack hidden mysteries in like a pretentious weeby jackass if your bad guy is just a racist white guy.

Because racist white guys are just pretty straightforward.

Honestly, I think Luz just fucking standing there watching him burn away in the boiling rain, lacking any sympathy for him or his bullshit, silently gloating at the fact that she has completely and utterly destroyed his 400 years of work to undo the Boiling Isles and is content to watch him die like the cowardly, snivelling rat he is to be a and extremely powerful and poignant image

A far more meaningful moment than... whatever the fuck you were talking about.

You want the defeat of a fascist to be worth it, making him practically beg for the mercy of a woman who (were they not currently in a place with magic in it) would have been on his hit list and who he only tried to appeal to because she was the closest thing to a kindred spirit for parsecs, and having her look down at him like he is literally muck on her shoe IS WORTH IT.

What you're suggesting just puts the stupid red herring fandom shit at the forefront. Nobody cares about reading Belos a "reason you suck speech." Nobody cares about Caleb. Nobody cares about Evelyn. Nobody cares about any of that shit.

This is the closest thing we get to payoff for all that dragged out angst in the last 7 episodes, Luz getting to watch this man who fucked with her head and manipulated her good nature die begging at her feet, and you want to center the stupid Roundtable fan theories?

That's ultimately my problem with this entire genre. Because even when we get a really good moment like this, there's people like you saying that it should have been different and presenting ideas that all follow the same templates, and are written by TVTropes, and suck, and position white background characters as more important, and suck, and primarily exist for theory youtubers, and suck, and mimic your favourite anime, and suck, and suck, and SUCK SO FUCKING HARD!

What you said should have been done instead... would be shit. It would just be shit. It would be garbage.

I have complaints about Season 3, but this?

This is beautiful.

[2n2n]

I'd like to think a little out loud about Amane's perception of Tsukasa's escape from his boundary, and his possible underlying emotional arc regarding Tsukasa... he's a difficult boy who doesn't talk about most of his feelings, particularly about Tsukasa... so all we can do for now, until he talks, is theorize. But let's go...

Before the shinjuu, Amane ominously speaks in metaphors about the moon, & believing in something being real, even if nobody else does. It's a pretty obvious allusion to Tsukasa. He also mentions forgiving something and someone, even if nobody else could understand or forgive them. Amane is devoted to Tsukasa-- that's the only way I can read this, personally.

Amane in a recent chapter, revealed that his intention with the shinjuu was to save Tsukasa, & allow them to remain together.

we have seen that... perhaps in Amane's boundary, Tsukasa was kept in a stasis, enshrined in sakura blossoms, dressed in his regalia.

Tsukasa could only escape this boundary with the help of Sakura. We know Sumire could not leave her boundary without assistance, either. We also recently hear Tsukasa talk about needing to create your own exit from prison, & Amane... not responding to his cries for help, at some point.

seeing Tsukasa like this makes Amane emotional. With this encounter, Tsukasa believes Amane is happy to see him.

Amane snaps violently & emotionally after this moment, slamming Nene-chan into the ground by her wrists, in much the way we expect him to treat Tsukasa. Was that gesture intended for Tsukasa? We don't quite know what it means, yet. We also don't know what expression Tsukasa sends towards Nene-chan before departing! Mysteries.

Amane is upset as the Mitsuba conflict ensues, & wants to know why Tsukasa is doing all of this-- and presumably, why he's gone through all of the trouble to escape the boundary Amane placed him in (for his own protection?)....

Tsukasa declares that he loved the moment Amane finally stopped holding back, & killed him.

Amane becomes ... overwhelmed, emotional, crying, vulnerable. I do not believe what he is feeling is fear of Tsukasa for being crazy or something, I believe what he is feeling is fear of being seen, fear of discussion & acknowledgement of his grand gesture, fear of addressing feelings he has (cowardly?) avoided (?) by keeping Tsukasa in stasis (?)....

Amane, in response to this, shuts down & doubles down on his bleak belief system: that it doesn't MATTER if Tsukasa loves him, it doesn't MATTER because things can't be DIFFERENT, as a ghost, things can't CHANGE. Whatever regrets he had in life, whatever he failed to achieve with Tsukasa, whatever future he wished for of them... cannot come to be.

Amane & Tsukasa have no future, & nothing can be changed.

Clockkeepers happens, & Amane again doubles down on his belief system, of a fixed fate. There is nothing he can do to save Nene-chan.

By the Hell of Mirrors, I believe Amane .... begins to 'play' with Tsukasa. I personally believe Hell of Mirrors is essentially Amane & Tsukasa messing with everybody-- with Mitsuba & Nene-chan as their respective clowns. Tsukasa has playfully taken the role of Amane's 'rival', despite actually doing everything in service to Amane's wish. Amane plays at being Tsukasa's 'rival' back, and the entire 'fight' is extremely unserious for the two of them...

Let's say, extrapolating, that Tsukasa was a very suicidal person by nature. Let's say, that he never had the will to live, willing to trade his life for Amane's as a child, & willing to come back, knowing his death at Amane's hands is inevitable.

WE now know, Tsukasa has ONLY COME BACK, NOW, this time, in order to once again OFFER HIMSELF as a sacrifice for AMANE'S WISH. However, Amane, at this point in the manga-- volume 7-- doesn't seem to know Tsukasa's plan.

I think at this point, Amane is curious. Tsukasa escaped, Tsukasa is doing a lot of things. Maybe he's doing more specific and involved things than he ever has. Maybe Amane is curious what Tsukasa really... wants to do. Why can't they both be out, messing around, playing?

I don't personally think Amane never quelled Tsukasa out of an inability to OR a fear of him-- we regularly see him thrash, grab, throttle, scream at Tsukasa, we also see him nonchalantly peel the cuddly & clingy Tsukasa off of him without issue. He very clearly isn't actually afraid of being hurt by Tsukasa, and he DEFINITELY isn't afraid of telling Tsukasa what to do! I think Amane ALLOWED Tsukasa this freedom Tsukasa was suddenly inexplicably fighting for.

Picture Perfect rolls around, & Amane & Tsukasa are now blatantly working together, rather than the sloppy & makeshift playsession of Hell of Mirrors. Tsukasa created a circumstance, Amane collaborates with him. The goal of Picture Perfect is to permanently freeze Nene-chan in a painting, to functionally imprison her.

What Amane attempts to do to Nene-chan is not unlike what he had done to Tsukasa, in his boundary. In the name of "keeping you safe" or "saving you", Amane usurps their will, seeks to overtake their autonomy. It's easy to understand why Tsukasa thought this solution might be appealing to Amane... if he wanted to, he could keep Nene-chan in a kind of blind stasis.

I think Nene-chan makes Amane reflect on this impulse of his. I think Amane is scared to see himself... take this sort of path, all over again, with a living girl... with a girl with so much passion, optimism, so much possibility for herself....

.... but I also honestly think... right now anyway... that Amane cannot trust Tsukasa to run his own life. That unlike Nene-chan, Tsukasa had no dream for his future, no wish to grow up, go to college, get married, etc. All he ever wanted was to see Amane, to learn about him, to see to it Amane had a happy future, or at least... had whatever he wanted, whatever that was.... even if what Amane wanted was to throw away his future.

Amane pivots into attempting to add life to Nene-chan's lifespan, something he couldn't have possibly done for Tsukasa.

Now.... I think a terrible sort of miscommunication, misunderstanding... occurs, here, at the far shore. It's still up in the air, but I want to do my best to propose the situation...

Here, Tsukasa once again affirms to Amane that he loved the shinjuu. Tsukasa, who gave up on his life multiple times-- who never seemed eager to live-- relates to Nene-chan's desire to die in the far shore, to forego her future, for Amane.

Tsukasa prods Amane to think about repeating his act of destruction, to once again erase Tsukasa's existence. Amane is seduced by the suggestion, for this moment. It is appealing to him, intoxicating.

Amane understands doing this, would mean dismembering Tsukasa with his own hands.

Tsukasa is surprised Amane apparently already 'knew' about this, had thought about it... even if in the back of his mind. Amane was destroying yorishiro this whole time. Why did he allow that? Perhaps... it was a self-destructive urge of a sort?

I think Tsukasa's glee, his acceptance, his urging for another dose, is.... something Amane is trying to understand.

At this point, I think Amane has every question in his heart: Did Tsukasa understand why Amane killed him? Did he understand the meaning of the gesture? Does he finally understand Amane's love for him? Amane threw away his entire future for Tsukasa. He was deeply devoted to him, & he attempted to show that devotion in the form of the shinjuu. Amane said something like, "if you have no future, then I won't, either. If you don't want to live, then I refuse to live on. I'm going to keep us together, forever; you can't ever leave me. I won't allow my self to have a future without you." with his actions. Amane can't say things with his words, typically. He is really... awful at words.

What could "do it right" mean? Amane was willing to just have Teru blast him to bits in the Far Shore, so obviously, he doesn't truly value his existence, even now. He is our self-destruction boy.

But perhaps Tsukasa and Amane could simply perform shinjuu pt2, but this time, Amane knows explicitly that Tsukasa loves it, loves him, & maybe even this time, Amane can be sure Tsukasa understands what it means, to sink into oblivion together. To not force it on Tsukasa this time-- but-- to have his consent, to both be self-aware, mutually. The commitment, the devotion he attempted to convey... Maybe!!!! MAYBE some tiny part of Amane THOUGHT that was what happened, in the Far Shore. Maybe he thought he could blast himself to oblivion with an elated, beloved Tsukasa who 'gets it', & save Nene-chan's life & future. Maybe HE could finally 'do it right'!

I think at this point... Amane doesn't know why Tsukasa is doing anything. But I don't think that is bleak, I think that is actually exciting.

There is so much left unsaid between them... I think, for a moment, Amane has a shred of hope, that he could learn something new about Tsukasa.... who he's been unable to understand, or do anything for. Tsukasa, who asks for nothing... Tsukasa, who only tries to die again & again, who can't seem to UNDERSTAND, SEE Amane's love for him. Who Amane can't communicate a thing to.

Buuut... I think this flicker of curiosity, hope, the dream of being seen, understood, of communicating together finally, is why Amane is now flipping out, deeply upset & distraught by Tsukasa's same insistence as ever in his own lack of value.

I think that is why Amane is snapping at Tsukasa, saying "I hate you". He feels like Tsukasa is rejecting him, won't let them be together... doesn't WANT to be together! Tsukasa is here, again seemingly only wanting to die, wanting to leave him BEHIND... this time! Is that "doing it right", actually? It's "right" to be separated? You can understand Amane's unbridled agony.... how it turns into pure anger.

Amane's feelings failed to reach his otouto!!! this whole time, I really think Amane feared that, more than anything.

His EXISTENCE-- AS HANAKO-- an existence HE ties exclusively to being with respect to his crime-- rendered meaningless! Confirmed to mean nothing! Tsukasa wants to disappear, and that's that.

The entire point of the shinjuu was missed! His gesture of devotion & love-- was nothing, the past decades enshrining him-- was nothing. Tsukasa thinks you hate him. He's thought you hate him this whole time. You're so cartoonishly far from sharing the beautiful consummation of a second shinjuu together.

You can understand then how the sense of rejection, being misunderstood, contorts in Amane's poor frenzied brain until it becomes his own violently-spat rejection-- "I get it now, you're not even REALLY my brother!!! You're fake!! My little brother wouldn't do this to me!!!! You're not my Tsukasa!!! you CAN'T be!!!"

a very pathetic & childish response to rejection. "You can't reject me-- you're not even REAL! You rejecting me doesn't even mean anything!!! I'll reject your entire existence!!!" oh, Amane....

You can understand how Tsukasa simply watches the response... I think the intensity of it is interesting.

For a boy who likely once doubled down so hard on Tsukasa's authenticity.... it's an extreme 180. It's just a response to pain.

I think.... maybe we now, next, will explore, "what if Amane didn't do the shinjuu at all? What if Tsukasa simply disappeared for good, & Amane was left behind?" in a new timeline. This rejection of Tsukasa is an intense culmination of everything thus far... Amane's built-up curiosity, hope, feeling baited & seduced into imagining something satisfying, only to fall flat on his face. This timeline showed us the insurmountable extent of Tsukasa's belief in his lack of value, a belief so strong Amane cannot pierce it, not even if Tsukasa awakens adorned in silk in a bed of sakura blossoms.

.... but I can't pity Amane too much, because I swear to GOD if you'd only SAY "I love you", he would understand that. I'm sorry Tsukasa can't understand your abstract poetic gestures, Amane!!!!!!!! LOOK, IT'S HARD FOR NENE-CHAN TO UNDERSTAND THEM AS WELL--!

But she's a romance-loving cumrotted girl, she's better at this than Tsutsu.... she can miraculously kind of see through the gestures like , trying to murder another girl for her sake. it's very impressive of Nene-chan... but I think Tsukasa-chan needs you to... like, say it, very directly, okay!! We can't do the indirect stuff!!! I promise your otouto loves you, if you'd only do something like actually beg him to stay with you!!!!! But Amane isn't honest enough to do thaaaat....

in any event, as always, it's very hypocritical of Amane, who continuously keeps trying to leave Nene-chan behind, which often makes her feel rejected or confused. Why is Hanako always trying to leave her?

well, because he believes she couldn't have a happy or fulfilling life with him, who can't offer her anything she wants.

I'm sure Tsukasa feels the same way, Amane! I don't know what he thinks he can do for you! Aren't you better off without him?

Please-- Nene-chan... you have to help them. She has to see how much Amane needs Tsukasa, for herself... then, even if the Yugi can't tell each other clearly, she can tell them herself.

[thecarnivorousmuffinmeta]

Okay so this is my first time actually doing an ask in Tumblr, so apologies if I'm doing something wrong/breaking any conventions but

What if an AU version of Edward who has the same backstory of how he turned a Vampire and the Cullens and and still has an infatuation with Carlisle, but is aware of his interests accepts the fact? Like what change in his personality would cause this, and how exactly would this different Edward act? Would the Cullen family implode any sooner?

The ask is perfectly fine, there's no real set format to these things. Just that if you want to answer please, for the love of god, do not repeat something I've already answered.

That said, you say it yourself anon, this would be a completely different person. If Edward was different he would be different.

This is where we start wandering into write the fic territory because for Edward to do what you say he has to be extremely different in fundamental ways that make it hard for me to extrapolate what happens from there.

(gif credit @franzias-cave)

If Edward is accepting does he accept it as unrequited or does he work to gain Carlisle's interest? Does he still accept Esme into the fold or does he now reject her as competition? If he's accepting is he also open with the fact, the family now knowing and reacting, or has he kept it hidden and how would that inform him and his decisions.

If we do manage to, somehow, get to canon all the way unscathed and Edward's basically the same except "secretly gay and cool with it" then probably we get to this picture.

As remember there are only two doors for Bella Swan where Edward is concerned: he will either eat her or he will turn her into a vampire. He only did the latter in canon because he both had little choice and believed himself to have romantic feelings for her.

The thing about Edward, is even if Bella acts the same canonically to draw in his interest, is he likes the idea of true love and having only one true love. He's very enamored with the idea that Bella alone is the love of his life, he's been waiting for her all this time, and that when she dies there will never be another person for him. Part of this is just being a dramatic teenager having feelings but another part is that he wants to be a person who is very true to his feelings and unfaltering. Those he respects in his family he sees as having only ever loved each other in their lives and never, ever, falling apart for any reasons. His coven is different because they feel love in a way no other vampires can without partaking in the Cullen diet.

Edward doesn't want to be a person who can have feelings, even attraction, to more than one person in his life.

The trouble is here if he's attracted to Carlisle, let alone in love with him, and knows this and admits it to himself...

Then he can't be in love with or attracted to Bella without despising himself for being untrue to his own feelings. Which means... he can't choose the door where Bella becomes the bride of Dracula at the end of the day, can he?

[zxal]

It's always been sort of weird how Young Xehanort is such an unapologetic little asshole the whole time he's time traveling, mocking Sora about his inevitable demise to the last moment as he fades away (while even Xemnas and Ansem get moments of humanity before their deaths). It's notably different from how he comes off in KHDR, where he can be sassy with Eraqus sometimes but is mostly just cool and aloof—more like he's a bit withdrawn than anything else.

The scene that I think connects these different aspects of his personality is his meeting with the Master of Masters, which we see in both Re:Mind and KHDR. Xehanort is playing it cool, but he's also letting a bit of his true feelings shine through: he doesn't quite want to agree with MoM about the idea that there's two types of people—the strong and the weak. He's thinking about the world with nuance.

"And even if I was either type, it doesn't mean that I carry those dark intentions." But then MoM reminds him of his own history with darkness—"Is that what your experience tells you?" That's what MoM seems to be best at—planting a seed of doubt and letting it grow on its own.

And it does. YX goes out and sees the world and become convinced of the conclusion MoM was leading him towards. And when he returns, MoM tells him exactly what he wants to hear: that he's the one who has the power to make a difference. That he's destined for greatness. Xehanort believes, deeply and truly, that he is the child of destiny. He's the chosen one. And if that means he has the power to prevent what happened in Scala from ever happening again, wouldn't he want that?

And extrapolating, I think we can tell that Master Xehanort, his future self, uses the same tactic, appealing to his own sense of exceptionalism. He brings Young Xehanort to the future and tells him that he will fulfill his destiny, everything is set in motion, and he just needs to play his role. "That is my destiny, but it has yet to become a reality." Young Xehanort sees the future and wants to believe so badly that it's the destiny he wants. And how could it not be? It's him.

In KH3, the YX moment that sticks out to me the most is this incredibly odd exchange in the iconic Toy Box scene. YX is his usual villainous self, mocking and monologuing, and then Sora rushes at him and he says this:

And it doesn't sound sinister. It's not a taunt or jeer. He says it hushed and almost hurried, as if afraid someone is listening.

Which could be true. Young Xehanort, weirdly, holds a piece of Master Xehanort's heart in him, doesn't he? I think it got buried in interviews, but recall the YX boss fight at the end of DDD. The reason Mickey reacts the way he does to YX moving during stopped time is because he recognizes that isn't Young Xehanort— it's Master Xehanort, briefly inhabiting YX as a vessel.

He's become a puppet of his future self, an extremely literal self-fulfilling prophecy. It leaves Woody calling Xehanort "hollower than any toy" in the earlier scene ring incredibly different. Did he want any of this? Did he even have a choice?

We still don't know exactly when YX time travels from, but it's got to be fresh off of the events of KHDR. Especially since his dialogue with MoM, which happens one year post-KHDR, seems to imply it's happened already at that point. I wonder if his old classmate rubbed off on him in some way—the theatrics, the boasting and posturing. But that's what it is—he's playing a role. It's the hand he's been dealt. It's all he has. (Which leads me back to thinking about Xehanort & Xion parallels, Xion as the 14th organization member, Xehanort saying "no, wait—fourteen lives", Xion saying "this puppet will have to play her part"...and, interestingly, YX and Xion being next to each other in the Real Organization's hierarchy: YX as no. 12, Xion as no. 13. The lowest among their ranks. The least worthy of respect.)

[ssareiddiculous]

Chapter 1

Warnings: alcohol consumption

"To your new life!" my best friend Amelia lifts her martini glass between us.

I take my drink and clink it with hers: "To my new life!".

We have just finished moving all my stuff into my new apartment and are celebrating at a bar nearby. For the first time in my life, I am looking forward to Monday.

I have spent the past five years working as an undercover agent for the FBI and loved every second of it. I loved becoming another person, assuming the name and life story of a totally made-up human I had to bring to life. I loved waltzing between personalities, cover jobs, passions, and hobbies. What's more, I was doing it to catch the evilest criminals in the world. I lived for the rush I felt every time I was able to extrapolate information or click the handcuffs on their wrists. I loved that I could live in so many places in the world.

For the past year, however, I felt it start weighing on my shoulders more and more. The rush of successfully completing a mission had started to last less every time. When I caught the last criminal a month ago, I felt nauseous at the thought of having to start a new undercover mission. New name. New country. New chase. I used to be so excited about the new possibilities it'd bring, but now I wasn't sure I could do it anymore.

On a cold January night in Prague, Unit Chief Aaron Hotchner from the Behavioral Analysis Unit of the FBI called, offering me a position on his team, and I didn't have to think twice before accepting. I was ready to live a life where I didn't have to constantly look over my shoulder, scared somebody could suspect who I really was. I didn't have to live in a Bureau provided house decorated to the taste of the person I was portraying at that moment. I could finally have my own apartment and decorate it as I wanted, with light-colored furniture and many plants. I was so glad I could finally tell Amelia what my real job was, and I was happy I could live closer to her. I was ready to put down roots. When I landed in DC, I felt like my life was finally going to be exciting again.

"Oh my God, Y/n!" Amelia's voice snaps me back to reality. "I swear what is probably the hottest man I have ever seen just walked in!"

I roll my eyes with a laugh: "You see The Hottest Man You Have Ever Seen-" I draw quotation marks in the air with my fingers-"probably two times a day."

She looks at me with the most serious expression her drunk brain could produce: "I am not kidding. Omg, don't look!". She stops me before I can turn my head completely. "I think they are coming here. Okay, act normal!".

I give her a side look and giggle. It's probably a good thing that I am starting to feel the three lemon drop martinis I have downed so far.

"I just want to be upfront and say that I visually enjoy you."

A tall guy wearing a shirt two sizes too small stretches out his hand to Amelia: "Hi, I'm Derek, and the pretty boy right here is Spencer." His friend lifts his hand to say hi, keeping his lips tightly closed together in an embarrassed smile.

My friend looks at Derek and shakes his hand: "I'm Amelia, and this is Y/n." Derek shakes my hand, too, but he is obviously more interested in Amelia. He strikes up a conversation with her, creating a bubble between the two of them from which the other guy and I are excluded. She seems to be very much enjoying the attention, but I check in on her anyways. She winks at me with a smile. She's okay, so now it's just me and the other guy. The silence is awkward, the music of the bar bumping in my ears. I guess I should probably talk to him. I try very hard to remember his name. Steven? No. Shane? Doesn't sound right. Whatever, I'll make it work.

I turn around and he is still standing exactly where Derek left him, hands in his pockets, looking at his shoes. I run my eyes from his feet to his head. He is tall and lean, with curly hair falling to his ears. He is wearing a slim black suit that looks custom-made, with what I think is a Comme de Garçon cardigan underneath. I can't help but notice the striking difference between him and his friend. Derek is beautiful like a Calvin Klein model, all muscles and cheekiness. Guy is beautiful like snow glistening on a moutain top. He looks like someone who would wrap me in a blanket when I'm cold and make me tea. My cheeks get flustered. He is making me nervous. What is wrong with me?  I hate that he makes me feel like this and I don't even remember his name. I refuse to give in, I'll just try and wing it; it is not like I am ever going to see him again anyways, right?

I turn to him with a smile. "Would you like a drink?" He looks surprised I have even asked.

"Uhm, yeah! I, ehrm, I'll have a Brandy?" His answer sounds like a question, and his cheeks turn red. God, he's so beautiful. I order the drinks and offer him the seat next to me.

"Would you like to join me? It looks like our friends will be busy for a while." I point at Amelia and Derek with my thumb. They are giggling at some joke he made, and their bodies are very close. Guy nods and gives an embarrassed smile, sitting next to me.

I feel rude asking for his name, so I just introduce myself again. "I'm Y/n." I smile and my eyes meet his. I was expecting him to move them away quickly, but, surprisingly, he holds my gaze. Intriguing. His big chocolate eyes are mesmerizing and I feel sweat forming on my palms. Fuck. I give him half a smirk and he breaks eye contact.

"I'm Spencer," he replies with a slight smile. His voice is deep and mellifluous, even if a bit slurred. Oh, so that's what his name was. I like it. I don't know if it is just the alcohol goggles speaking, but he had to barely say a word get me hooked. He clears his throat and takes a sip of his drink and the sight of his lips on the glass is the closest thing to porn I've seen in months, his eyes are on me  when he swallows. I feel very,very warm.

"So, are you guys celebrating anything special tonight?" I make sure to bat my eyelashes. I don't know if I look seductive or absolutely ridiculous, but at this point, I am so drunk I don't care. He fidgets with his long fingers, and I find myself hypnotized by his movements. I can see some of the veins in his big hands and notice he is wearing a watch. I really can't explain it, but wearing a watch is the most attractive thing a man can do. He is a walking jackpot, at least for the night, and I'm all in.

"We were just hitting the bars with our friends. Derek and I were on our way home, but he insisted he absolutely needed another round." He looks amused. "What about you guys?"

"That sounds fun!" I touch his arm lightly. "I actually just moved back to DC, and Amelia helped me with the move. Derek is lucky, she's an engineer and she's really amazing. Anyways, yeah, she lives close by and..." He lets out a chuckle. I realize I have started rambling, which always happens when I'm drunk or nervous, and in this case, I am both. I can't believe that me, the most successful undercover agent of the past five years, known for being a lethal weapon of seduction, is nervous because of a pipe cleaner with eyes. 

"This makes me feel better, I was scared she was gonna be a serial killer preying on hot men." Wow, a joke! It's unexpected and I let out a laugh. If he has noticed my awkwardness, it doesn't seem to bother him. I

 "Why did... hold on, is that a square root of two tattooed on your arm?" He asks, genuinely surprised.

"It is indeed. My favorite irrational number." I take a sip, my eyes studying his face, waiting for the comment about my nerdiness that usually follows the tattoo reveal.

"You have a favorite irrational number?!" His eyes light up, and he seems to get excited. He even stops fidgeting. He has the cutest child-like expression of wonder on his face. I let out a laugh and swing my hand out, faking a condescending tone.

"You don't?" His eyes shine in the dim light.

"Of course I do, It's pi! Wrote my whole PhD thesis on it." 

"You have a Ph.D. in Math? Me too!" 

He moves on his chair, barely able to contain his excitement. "I can't believe it! What was yours on?" His voice raising a pitch, cheeks flustered.

I tell him about my research on Hilbert Spaces, while he stares at me, his eyes full of wonder and, wait, is that desire? My heart is racing faster than Schumacher at the Indianapolis Grand Prix.  

We talk about this for what seem hours, but our brains are so fogged out by the cocktails we've had that we can't keep the conversation focused on the subject. I don't know how, but we somehow morph our mathematical conjectures into full-blown flirting. I guess that's what happens when two nerds meet each other. If I wasn't this turned on, I'd probably find it pretty funny.

At a certain point, I share a theory he doesn't seem to agree with. Suddenly, his tone becomes more authoritative and his voice deeper. I see his pupils dilate, turning in eyes into a midnight. I am attracted to him like iron to a magnet, and I slide closer without even noticing. For what is probably the first time in my life, I don't try to fight his opinion, actually, I am not even listening to it at all.

I absent-mindedly glance at my watch: It's almost midnight and I'm suddenly brought back to reality. I look around, there is no trace of Amelia and Derek, and the bar is mostly empty. I can feel his hand on my knee, which must have travelled there as the conversation proceeded. My skin underneath is burning, and I hope with all of myself that he is feeling the same way. I look at him, and behind his alcohol-hazed eyes I notice lust and a bit of challenge. This cocktail of math talk and lustful gazes is driving me insane. All I know is that he's extremely smart and hot and that I haven't been touched in a while. "Do you want to leave here?" my mouth blurts out before I can stop it. There you go, great job Y/n. Hope you like rejection. I try to fix the situation by looking at him seductively. At least I think that's what I look like. He looks at me with glossy eyes and a huge smile:

"Yes! My apartment is 5 minutes away if you want to go there." He seems surprised by his own words, but excited, and he doesn't stop looking at me. I let out an internal sigh of relief and hope I won't regret this later. I get up and grab his hand, stopping his nervous movements.

" Let's go."

[fruitzbat]

There is this bizarre mischaracterization problem with Kingsley in the CR fandom that I think shows a certain level of contempt for the character himself — and honestly, I think it’s really revealing about a troubling hallmark of conditional support of nonbinary people in real life, which I find beyond hypocritical given…well, let’s get into it.

For starters, I'm not bothering with leaving a disclaimer about how not all fans do xyz or why I think that anyone should listen to me over anyone else. We’re adults here, we should know that things are nuanced by now. I also think talking about my own qualifications here is silly and masturbatory given that this is fandom and I'm very much doing it for free along with almost everyone else, so I'm not gonna waste the space.

Getting into the exceptions and such is well beyond the scope of this post, and I frankly don't think anything I say in this will convince anyone of anything — I just need to get it out there. If any of does change your mind, great! Icing on the cake.

*eyes glowing* anyway,

Given the admittedly considerable amount of work I do relating to his character, I wade through Kingsley's character tag a lot, and in many different places. On here, on Twitter, on AO3, his tag is full to the gills of bits of people writing stories in which he steals up to a certain member of the Nein and showers them with gifts and forehead kisses and...for lack of a better term, 'Mollyisms', and lays there enraptured while they talk about their relationship with Molly — who, obviously, is him. He's called "circus man" and is unbothered by it; it's testimony to the fact that this person and Kingsley have a history that transcends silly things like death.

Thus, the general depiction of Kingsley within the fandom is one that is not unlike Molly's, if not a 1:1 replica: a fun-loving, carefree libertine whose sun often rises at a certain other member of the Nein's forehead and sets are their toenails. He's curious about his past lives, but sees minimal distinction between them and himself.

And that's utter motherfucking hogwash.

The thing is, Kingsley's not an act II of Molly. He’s arguably a very different person from Molly, and the drift in Molly’s canon and fanon depiction is an essay on its own (not to mention the shift in perception in-universe, also brilliant and fascinating in its own right).

And I sincerely want us to think about that oversight in the same vein as if there were a considerable amount of Critters making content about, say, Beauregard Lionett falling in love with a man when she's explicitly a lesbian. Like, to me, it is that dire. And I will explain why that is momentarily: once I finish talking about who he actually is, and one of the principal culprits that I blame for this schism.

"But fruitzbat," some people might cry. "But fruitzbat, we have so little to go on. He's hardly shown himself on stream and he does, in the end, come from Molly!"

To that I would reply "skill issue," because Kingsley very much has distinguished himself from his siblings. Fandoms have extrapolated way more about a character with far less in the past. I didn't live through Superwholock on this website for anyone to tell me that they can't pull a fully-fledged character out of one episode of something. With all due respect, git gud.

Kingsley is a hustler and a cutthroat. He's driven, micro-managey — like, PAINFULLY Type-A, and interested in staying alive and making a name for himself; but in contradiction with this sense of self-preservation, he’s also ready to impulsively give himself up for a greater good and/or "make new mistakes", which can be read as altruistic at its best and unhealthy and self-deprecating at its worst (a trait which he definitely shares with Molly). In commenting on his new outfit, I’ve shitposted in the past that Kingsley is frum, but it's really not that far off. He doesn't like to leave things to chance, and also strongly believes in taking care of his own — he notably takes excellent care of the Nein Heroez’s crew. He doesn't suffer fools, he's snarky (too many examples to list them all, but have a few of my favorites), and also thoughtful and analytical and a skeptic. And most of all, he’s eager to learn and curious — not just about Molly and Lucien, but in general.

He jokes about being Lucien at one point, but makes it very clear that it's not him when people in his life make that slip-up. He's also been making the point that he’s not either of them as early as the campaign finale. And within the special, too, it’s pretty unambiguous. And then there’s Taliesin himself, also making it very clear that he’s a separate animal and on top of that, that he’s an absolute fucking badass.

And as mentioned, it's true that there's overlap with some of Molly's business — he's theatrical and loves fashion, for instance. But honestly, this character has far more in common with Lucien than he does with Molly. Lucien, who spoke multiple languages and lead a mercenary group into Aeor and back multiple times. Lucien, who even the mere prospect of him being resurrected was enough to reassemble the Tombtakers. If that’s not the makings of a Plank King, I’m not sure what would be.

And here's another thing: "Kingsley came from Molly" in and of itself is a misnomer. Based on both the stream and the addendum from the Lucien novel, Kingsley is mostly the reforged soul of Lucien — Molly's soul fragment was reintegrated into the rest of Lucien's. Kingsley is what was born from that fusion. When interceding on the failed Raise Dead spell, Caduceus said "put it back...whoever it was." There's just as much potential to say that it was Lucien's soul returned to that purple body by Melora as it was Molly's.

In all candor, I think it has a good deal to do with how many vocal Molly fans wanted Widomauk to be canon or somehow endgame.

The inherent tragedy of the dynamic between Caleb and Molly is that there is a constant specter of what could have been. Neither encountered each other when they were at a point to pursue their attraction, and Molly was dead before anything could come to pass. As a passive observer, I think that this what could have been has bled into the fanon interpretation of all kinds of purple tiefling content, mostly because there's so little to analyze otherwise. One only has to glance at the tags for the Lucien novel or the Molly origin comic to see what I mean. And I think that this has also significantly impacted the fanon depiction of Kingsley.

I find that this fandom in particular has a huge problem with sacrificing characterization in the name of fanon archetypes and tropes, but due to the distinct nature of Kingsley’s character this can veer into…I mean, pretty ugly territory.

People love the reincarnated lovers trope, and I see that applied here the most, to which I always want to remind people that Kingsley is probably more like a joined Trill. He has these past lives and memories, but just like Ezri isn’t quite Jadzia isn’t quite Kurzon Dax, Kingsley isn’t Molly isn’t Lucien. Ezri didn’t hop up and get busy with Worf, even when Jadzia had been his wife. Far from it, actually. Similarly, Jadzia had an entire exploratory episode dedicated to encountering Kurzon’s spouse and deciding that she (regretfully for lesbians everywhere) felt differently.

It’s true that it’s not completely baseless; I’m genuinely not saying that. It’s true that one of the first things King did was flirt with Caleb when he woke up. And then when he’d come more into his own, there was all that wild talk they had during the…

Oh wait, that’s right. They didn’t speak one on one even once during the reunion. So the argument could easily be made that in the chunk of the stream that showed us the most about who King was as a person, he didn’t touch Caleb with a thirty-nine and a half foot pole. Meaning that at this point in time, the basis of the ship is predominately Caleb’s relationship to his elder siblings.

I don't have time and ultimately have no interest in unpacking that in terms of it being solid foundations for a romantic relationship — we all can read, baruch hashem — and will also assume that there’s content about that dynamic that explores that weirdness with all the complexity that it deserves. But my central point here is that I’m seeing vanishingly little of it, and far more of it being used in a way that denies Kingsley his own identity. The point isn't hating on a ship. Widoking in and of itself is fine, the point is that people aren't actually shipping Kingsley with Caleb. They're shipping him with someone wearing the skin of his dead older brother.

Which brings me to my next point...

I find this aspect to be incredible given the extraordinary way that this campaign explores trans identity and narrative. Plenty of other folks have written about the extent that campaign 2’s focus on identity as a theme has resulted In one of the most comprehensive studies of several different types of trans stories. Like, VETH?!?

BEAU?!?! Not to mention FJORD’S UNRELENTING T-BOY SWAG?!?!?!

And yet.

And, yes, it is that deep. Let me explain.

Molly and Lucien are canonically genderfluid. Kingsley hasn't come out as anything yet, so the jury is still out... though many people, myself included, headcanon that he's some flavor of not cis.

For me, this is because Kingsley’s narrative is arguably more a traditional trans one than Lucien or Molly's: being born with the expectation that he would be one thing, then coming to his family — who hold that expectation quite dearly — and asserting that he is someone and something else completely different from that. Lucien and Molly are trans characters, no doubt, but their stories are not about being transgender. And there is an intrinsic quality to King's that definitely is.

The notion of "trans narrative" is also something applied to someone like Nott/Veth, even in a world where transness is not stigmatized. So while transphobia is not a thing as we understand it in Exandria, that doesn't change that Kingsley “came out” and transitioned in a more recognizable way to us than Lucien or Molly ever had to — in the same light as Veth arguably struggling with her self-image in a way that many trans viewers find exceedingly familiar.

If we can apply the queer critical lens and think of Fjord being a trans guy deconstructing toxic ideas of masculinity, or of Beau being a trans girl dealing with transphobic parents that wanted a son, got one, and cast her aside, we can also use that same level of discernment when it comes to Kingsley. There's precedent.

I don’t mean to get personal here, but the flat out dismissal of Kingsley's identity as an individual and not as the sum of other parts reminds me so much of my own experience of having come out as non-binary and then telling people that I was going to start HRT. The support dried up almost immediately the minute I made it clear I wanted to switch pronouns again and pursue medical transition, though I still conceived of myself as effectively genderless.

So long as you’re fun and funky and trans in a way that isn’t obtrusive, it’s fine. Well, “fine” isn’t the right word, but people are so fucking terrified of you becoming one of “those” trans people and taking the scary hormones and changing your body and getting the surgeries. It's the cousin of that perennial TERF talking point of "why can't you just be a tomboy/effeminate gay guy". As if being a tomboy/fem guy is somehow easier, too!! But I digress. To a lot of folks, Kingsley can be whatever he wants..........so long as he doesn't reject Molly as a foundational part of him, if not the, and heaven help him if he diverges from the mold Molly left for him.

For this reason (and for other transgender reasons that I don't want to get into), that has made engaging with a lot of this faux-Kingsley content difficult. Because Kingsley came out! Kingsley has told everyone who he is and what he's about, and folks are ignoring that in favor of an interpretation that centers a different person's existence entirely. And with this coming from a group of fans that tends to trend towards being trans, too, that's quite the bitter pill.

Creatively, I firmly believe that people can do whatever they want forever. And everyone has the right to make content where their Barbies scissor. I, for one, also am 100% guilty of it in other contexts. That doesn't bother me.

What does bother me is a collective delusion where a significant chunk of the fandom, in missing their tragically dead non-binary character, effectively stuff a separate one that resembles him back into the closet without noticing the cruelty of doing so. In fact, relishing in it.

And while these people are fictional and aren't real and can't feel pain aside from what we inflict on them narratively, it gives me pause about the way this trend mirrors common transphobic behavior I have experienced as a non-binary person myself. Thus, I cannot possibly watch it happen and not feel compelled to say something about it.

In essence, Kingsley has told us time and time again who he is and what he's about. If we say as fans that we respect the narrative integrity of Campaign 2, I think it's important that we listen and honor that.

[thatforgottenbasilisk]

Beat the Dead Horse (You'll Get Red White and Blue Confetti)

fandom: marvel

word count: 3521

(AO3)

Some people say that you die the same way you're born. They extrapolate this point to different ends- alone, the more sheltered or depressed folk say; screaming and covered in someone else's blood, say those with a bit more humor, or else those who've lived violent lives; surrounded by loved ones, say all the civilians who have never and will never go to war, who hope to die old instead of young.

Steve doesn't agree with any of them. He was born on July 4th, amid fireworks and celebrations in the still heat of Brooklyn, with both his parents there and already full of love, just a few short years before his Pops passed on, and quite a few more years before Ma joined him. Now, he's sitting alone in the cockpit of a plane hundreds of miles from Brooklyn- but fast closing that gap- in the sharp cold of midwinter. His closest loved ones are only reachable over radio, not that he wants any of them here with him.

Peggy stays with him to the end. He can still hear her voice as the jet hits the water, and he knows that his own radio cutting out on her end must feel something like the tiny breeze he felt against his hand as Bucky just barely missed it; it must feel like finding out about the 107th when he was still just a dancing monkey for good old Uncle Sam; it must feel like other things, too, but Steve can't really think around the burning cold of the water all around him, flooding the whole jet and swallowing him whole.

---

"Steve Rogers was an American hero, there's no doubt about that. He lives on in comic books and archived propaganda films, in childhood memories and history books alike. Captain America is, some say, more myth than man by now; there has even been some debate on whether or not Steve Rogers's transformation under Dr. Erskine's formula was exaggerated in government propaganda (Rich, 1967), or whether there was even a successful test of the Super Soldier serum that took place at all (Waters & Meyer, 1966); some more contemporary and less mainstream authors have even questioned if Steve Rogers was a real person at all, or merely a government prop to aid in the propaganda effort during a time when morale was at a low (Bouchard & Wright, 1971).

Despite these debates, it cannot be overstated the impact that both Captain America's life and loss meant to the American populace, both during the war and even having a substantial ripple effect to the modern day. How many high schoolers are currently writing essays in their English classes about how this author or that poet uses him as a symbol for war, peace, or hope itself? Depending on which books they're reading, it may even be all three at once; and yet, at the same time, how many television advertisements have you seen today that feature Steve Rogers in support of this or that product, his likeness Xeroxed straight from the comic books for the occasion? The man is everywhere. He lives and breathes in your living room, at your kitchen table, on the radio waves and air waves alike.

It can make you wonder, sometimes, if you love him or hate him. He did nothing to most people who are living now, didn't murder any grandfathers- at least, no grandfathers that anybody would be proud to talk about- and yet you can hear the kids and the talk radio men chattering about him, about his legacy, about how backwards America is because of it. How he's gone from 'hero' to propaganda machine for the more Conservative folk, how he represents all that's wrong with the world today, how he stands up for nothing but racism and war and staying in 1955 for everybody's lives ad infinitum.

It's absurd. It's ahistorical. It's shaping modern culture as we know it."

- Richard Elliot, "A Second Transformation of Steve Rogers," February 1973.

---

The light is bright enough to be seen even through his closed eyelids.

He's not sure of when, exactly, he becomes aware of this fact. For all he knows, the light's always been bright, and he's just closer to the surface than he thought he would end up.

Is he dead? He doesn't even feel particularly awake, so that's not an unrealistic possibility. Maybe he's floating in front of the gates of Heaven, though he honestly feels more like he's lying on an Army cot more than floating anywhere. He'd thought that clouds, especially the Holy kind, would be a bit softer, but maybe there's some divine meaning behind it. There's a divine meaning behind everything, that's what his Ma used to say, and he's not about to question her or her faith now.

It's a long moment before it actually occurs to him to open his eyes and start tuning into the world around him. Everything is syrupy and slow, like it's just a bit too early on a winter morning and he's trying to think through the fog that's accumulated on the horizon and over the river. He feels like his brain's a car engine that's in dire need of oil, and the second he opens his eyes is when a mechanic finally pops open the hood of the car.

The lights are too bright, almost like they're pumping too much electricity into them at once. How much power is this building using? It can't be as much as the lights alone imply, because the bedding and the room both insist that this is nothing more than a military hospital- and they wouldn't waste money on the lights when they could be using that same money for more weapons. He jumps up off the bed, because something isn't right, and either something's happened or he's being played for a fool, probably both.

He looks out the window to see New York, from a few floors up, but it doesn't smell of the usual factory smoke and he can't hear any cars or people on the ground. The skyline looks too flat, and the window is situated such that he can't look down at the city, just at the windowsill. The only sounds that he can hear are coming from the radio, which is tuned to a baseball game that he idly listens to for a few moments as he steps back from the window and towards the bed.

After a moment, he realizes that the game sounds familiar; he remembers sneaking into it with Bucky just before he was drafted, sitting in the back of the stands with a terrible view but a view nonetheless, because they'd both gotten the day off from their respective jobs- Bucky at the docks, and himself at the local grocer's- and they figured it was a decent way to spend the day. He wouldn't forget that game even if they'd cut his head open and plucked the memory out of him.

Somebody's definitely trying to play him for a fool, but before he can think of what to do about it, the door to the room opens. In walks a woman, her tie done up all wrong, and all that he can do is demand answers for where he is, who's taken him, what's happened.

She denies everything, tells him that he's in a military hospital, and he truly commends the Germans on being able to fake American accents so well. Did they recruit a real American, he wonders? No, they couldn't have, because if this woman was truly American, she'd know how to tie her tie in the way that American women are supposed to. She looks like a man tied her necktie, so not American.

He's sick of this already. If he's being taken prisoner, at least respect him enough to tell him that instead of doing a stupid song and dance routine of trying to trick him into thinking he's safe. He moves past the woman and starts running for an escape, barely paying attention to the kind of compound they've put him in, only that there are a lot of windows and a lot of people in black suits. He runs out, hoping against hope that there will be backup, somewhere, or at least some kind of information on where he is and who's found him.

It feels like five seconds and five years before he stops. It's the middle of a busy street, with cars that look like Howard Stark personally engineered each and every one of them, while the buildings climb higher than any he's ever imagined. They're covered in screens, with what looks like hundreds of different colored film reels being projected on every one.

... It's still the same Manhattan, the man he later learns is Fury tells him. Just seventy years after you left it.

---

"Ronald Reagan's economic system is unsustainable, as stated far earlier than this publication by far better economists than I. Since I am not an economist, I feel that I should instead apply my own expertise to our current climate: American Nationalism is now higher than it's been since 1956, and that's not a coincidence.

Ronald Reagan, now famously having played a minimal role in the film, "Captain America: Siberian Takeover" (Russo & Russo, 1954), has become a symbol for both the American Right and America itself- though in a capacity greater than that of the acting President. His liberal use of Steve Rogers' likeness in his campaign makes his platform obvious to those who have studied the man in depth: he's practically synonymous with the caricature "Uncle Sam," and in a time of dwindling faith in the government and in America as a whole, in a time of disillusionment with the establishment, here he- and, by extension, Reagan- is to save the day against the Communists instead of against the Nazis.

So he wins the election, and all of a sudden everything is prosperous and the economy is booming. Everyone's buying cars, everyone's buying houses, everyone's buying everything and the 80's are already a time of hedonism and plenty mere months after his election. Captain America wins again, at least until this bubble pops and we all swing back the other way on the political pendulum."

- Megan Oher, "Reaganomics, Nationalism, and Captain America," December 1983.

---

It only takes two weeks before they need him again.

Two weeks to mourn everyone he's ever met. Two weeks to acclimate to the peace he was assured that he would have, only for it to be torn away.

He didn't miss the military.

---

TOM: Is that- is that the real Captain America? Fighting the Chitauri, there in the video, you see that?

KATIE: I do see it, Tom. I'd heard that they found his body about a month ago, but nothing on if he was actually alive all this time. We'd have heard, we're the number one source of information in New York, there's no way we could have missed this.

TOM: Well, either we did, or they managed to clone him. How long does it take to grow a man in a test tube?

KATIE: More than a month, I think.

TOM: Probably. But modern science is a wonder!

KATIE: I think they might have just figured out the serum from his body and given it to someone else, decked that guy out in costume instead. Seems less time-consuming than an entire clone, and besides, wouldn't a clone of Steve Rogers wind up like the pre-serum guy? He was shorter than me and scrawnier than you!

TOM: Yeah, unless it went into his DNA, they'd waste their money on a clone... the serum sounds about right. Unless it's just a really buff guy they found at some gym.

KATIE: He swears he doesn't do steroids or anything.

[STUDIO LAUGHTER]

TOM: Oh, no, of course not. Totally legit, just as strong as Captain America but completely naturally.

KATIE: Of course, of course.

- Transcript of the talk show, "Ragging On with Katie and Tom," Season 7, Episode 6; October 2012.

---

There's a press conference afterwards.

There are actually several press conferences afterwards, but they all blend together after a while, all the same information to different people and phrased in different ways. Yes, the Avengers are under SHIELD jurisdiction, or Yes, Loki is contained and there is no danger of him coming back and wreaking more havoc on New York or anywhere else.

There are also the fun ones, the ones that he'd thought were public information up until now.

Are you the real Steve Rogers? is a common one. He considers, for half a second the first time, lying and telling them No. He knows that if he's honest he'll never have a moment's peace again, he can never drop the act of Captain America, he'll always be beholden to upholding this title that's grown far larger than he could have ever imagined. His name is in history books, his costume worn by every actor who managed to claw their way into it both on Broadway and in the cinemas, every moment of his life before 1945 dissected and consumed by everyone who's gone through any American History class. He could shuck that weight off right now, he could pretend to be just the latest in a long line of actors and liars alike.

The temptation only lasts for a fraction of a moment, though, and then he remembers himself. Yes, he says, then and every time thereafter. I am Steve Rogers.

---

REPORTER: What is your opinion on Steve Rogers coming back to life out of the ice?

MELANIE: Well, um, I don't- I don't think I like it very much.

REPORTER: And why is that?

MELANIE: I mean, the last time things were so much about Steve Rogers, it was 9/11 and everybody started hating anybody who wasn't the same shade as printer paper, or- or dressed just slightly too masculine or slightly too feminine. Everyone was scared of everyone, and that was already going to happen after all this alien business, but I think the man himself coming back just makes it all worse.

REPORTER: So you think he shouldn't have been unearthed at all? Just left to rot?

MELANIE: I mean- I mean, he's still a person, and of course he deserves to live and all that, I just wish it weren't so public. I wish he just... didn't do all those press conferences, or helped out in New York but not in costume, or lied and said he wasn't really Captain America. It's not even his fault, he didn't even do anything, he's a product of his time and everybody putting his face all over everything doesn't help, but I wish that he wasn't the biggest signal that me and my friends all need to find somewhere to hide. I wish his face wasn't a sign that someone's going to start committing hate crimes against me, or worse.

- Interview Transcript, "Channel 9 News, Chicago," January 2013.

---

Steve doesn't understand why people seem so wary of him.

It's not the same kinds of people that used to be wary of him; instead, it seems to be reversed, with polite society welcoming him with open arms while the people on the outskirts skitter away like rats from a cat. When did it change? Even in 1945, it wasn't this bad, because he still easily got the trust of all the Howling Commandos- though, that might have been aided by his reckless rescue of all of them from Hydra.

Still, the Commandos had thought of him as one of them, an outcast from the military and society same as the rest of them.

Tony says the reason can be found online- or, more accurately, he'd said, Google it, I'm not explaining a half century of history when Wikipedia can do it better. So, here he is, typing away at a computer and routinely forgetting that he can backspace and correct his typos, only to remember when the machine spits back strange answers to his searches.

Everybody seems to think he's someone he's not. Everything he's getting back is telling him that Captain America is nationalism in a nutshell, which was true when he was filming all those propaganda movies and punching Hitler from California to France, but nationalism's come to mean something different now. Nationalism now means racism, means fear, means hate; and, again, it didn't not mean those things seventy years ago, but it's all the more apparent now that this is what he, as a person, has been reduced to.

It all comes back to the root problem: he's not a person anymore, not really, and now there's almost nobody who knows that anymore. There's nobody who hasn't grown up hearing about him, there's nobody around who he can just be any other man with rather than Steve Rogers, Captain America, and all the baggage that that entails. There's nobody he can talk to about Bucky, how they used to be something that wasn't quite best friends and was more along the lines of what he was on his way to being with Peggy after they'd ended that; there's nobody he can talk to about Peggy, either, and she's her own kind of legend, too, untouchable just like him.

Everybody thinks he's someone who would hate people like himself, which is ironic and at least a little bit funny. He thinks Tony would laugh at it, if he didn't hate Steve from the start of all this. Still, he's the one of all of them best acquainted with the future and how to make people think in the ways he wants them to think from a public relations perspective; if Steve wants people to stop associating him with that kind of regressive hatred, Tony is the best man for him to call, and he doesn't hate him so much as to give him bad advice on purpose.

Would people stop thinking that I hate minorities if I tell them that Bucky and I used to go out? may not have been the best thing for Steve to open that phone call with, though.

After quite a bit of coughing on Tony's end of the line, followed by an aggressive line of questions that inadvertently reveal quite a bit about what stories Howard chose to pass along versus what he chose to omit, Steve has his answer of Yes, but the PR people will hate you forever if you don't talk to them about it first. Steve is of the opinion that many PR people would rather he not say anything about that, and it's not really something he feels like bringing up, considering that they'd both broken it off long before he met Peggy or had the serum, but it does seem like an easier bomb to drop on everyone than the other option of insisting that he doesn't agree with the way his image has been used for the past seventy years and very slowly winning people over with that. He'd rather set the record straight immediately.

There isn't an opportunity for a while, and in that time, he finds the word bisexual and thinks he likes it quite a bit- and then he thinks of the irony in the knowledge that many people think he'd hate anyone who likes that word, too. He has to say something soon; immigrants are afraid, every kind of minority is afraid, and the conservative politicians are having the same heyday they've been having for months.

Finally, finally, there's a press conference scheduled by Tony, one that he doesn't tell anyone the purpose of, and for that Steve is eternally grateful. He thinks he's starting to bridge the gap that Howard built between them, constructed of distorted memories and insistence that Steve would have supported this or that when in all reality he wouldn't.

I am Steve Rogers, he says, mirroring the first thing he ever said to this particular public, far removed from his own public in his own time. I am Steve Rogers, and my mother was an immigrant to this country. I am Steve Rogers, and I am bisexual. These things are not congruent with the things that many politicians say that I am, or say that I support. I keep having words put in my mouth, and I am here today to stop it. I do love my country, but I do not love the things that my country has done in my name. I do not support the hatred or the oppressive agenda that my country has used my name to further. Thank you.

Reporters are practically screaming over each other, trying to get their questions answered. The lights are brighter than they've ever been, with camera flashes blinding him better than any fluorescents ever could.

Steve was born again the moment he woke up alone in that too-bright room in SHIELD a few short months ago. Now, in this too-bright room full of a cacophony from far too many people, he's killed something that's been alive far longer than he ever was.