#anyway he REALLY ended up looking like a Dio (specifically how I used to draw one variant before I retconned his look) but uhhh

[kalloway]

kinda wish I'd been recording the process of this because it'd make it VERY obvious I don't work smartly at all, and that's why all my rough 'shading' layers are so messed up because I made alterations as I went lol

anyway, another WIP - this time of my OC, Beck (who I have not posted about in ages lmao) from the Android AU Been having Thoughts(tm) about this bastard character of mine and how I could make him even worse than he already is 8) hehe

[xfandomwritingsx]

Being Human - James Vega/F!Shepard

Description: James and Shepard finally stop dancing around each other. AKA; a rewrite of the Citadel DLC.

Warnings/Labels: None really. Some super minor sexual stuff.

Approx. Word Count: 4,500

A/N: Look... this is at best a rough draft that I typed up and didn’t edit, but I will forever be bitter about how they made the Citadel play out with these two. And while I know it won't happen, I really wish they'd fix it in the remaster. I mean if you're going to remaster the games, that sounds like a damn good time to fix anything inappropriate and rape-y right?! I would love to do a whole slow burn of Shepard and Vega spanning from Earth to the end of the game, but if you know me, you know I'm SLOW AS MOLASSES to update and I'm not lying when I say it would take me years to finish. So instead... have a poorly written snippet. I tried to keep it as much in “canon character” as I could. 

Shepard stands on the balcony of her new apartment, mind gently jogging around the events of the last few days which bleeds into the events of the last few years. Resting her arms on the metal railing, she drops her head and sighs, trying to pull herself from the black hole that is her memory anymore. She wants to let it all go, just for a night.

“Hey, Lola,” James calls, pulling her back to the present. She looks up briefly wondering how long he’d been there before she sees the door closing behind him. How had she not heard it? “Nice place,” he comments, looking around the open layout. “Might not look so nice after that party you were talking about.” He walks further in, headed for the stairs to join her on the balcony.

“You wouldn’t trash my new apartment, would you James?” she jokes lightly, pushing herself upright off the railing.

“Me?” He spins a little, keeping his eyes on her as he continued to travel backwards to the stairs. “Nooo. Never,” he draws it out, the sarcasm a little thick. Shepard rolls her eyes at him, but he sees the little smile at the corner of her lips too.

James has always had that effect on her. No matter what dumb thing came out of his mouth, he managed to make her smile. It was something she’d craved over the last few months more than ever. While everyone else gave her pep talks that only managed to remind her how much the galaxy rested on her shoulders, James was more likely to tell her that her pants hugged her curves just right. He let her forget about being Commander Shepard even if for just a few moments.

He whistles as he approaches her side, looking out over the balcony with her.

“Nice view. But this place?” He shakes his head just slightly. “It’s just so... not what I’m used to.” He gives a small shrug, still looking out over the scenery and the lights outside the large windows.

“Which is?” Shepard prods. They don't talk about their pasts very often. Everyone already knew hers and James was never extremely open about his own. He puts his hands on the railing and leans into his arms a little.

“I grew up on the beach in the Pacific,” he shares. “So, you know; water, sand, real air.” She thinks there’s a hint of bitterness in his voice.

“You miss it?” He doesn’t look at her this time and instead she watches as he loosens his grip on the rail a little bit and sighs.

“Yeah. And the people.” She catches the undertone, the longing that implies he’s thinking of someone specific when he says it.

“So, what’s her name?” she asks. She means it to be teasing, but there’s an unexpected pang in her gut that feels all too much like jealousy for her liking and it ruins the lighthearted joke in her voice. She shifts her weight a little and slips a hand into the pocket of her pants.

“No! No.” he clarifies through a bark of a laugh, easing her tension a little. “I stopped... fraternizing when I joined the military. The two don’t seem to go well together.”

“Hasn’t stopped you from being a shameless flirt.” It had taken a short amount of time after they’d first met on Earth for him to relax around her and once he did, the comments, the winks, the innuendos and double entendres never ceased. The only thing he never seemed to do, was be physical with his flirting. He’d never so much as run a hand down her arm or let his hands linger when they sparred. Though Shepard had found herself wishing he would recently.

“Yeah, well... that’s just my way. I don’t mean anything by it.” There’s something in the way that he still won’t look at her that makes her think maybe that’s not all true.

“Too bad.” She drops her tone a little and takes a step towards him. “I wasn’t complaining.” He cracks a smile and lets out another short laugh.

“Who’s the shameless flirt now?” He gives her a single glance and then looks back down to his hands on the railing.

“So you can give it, but you can’t take it?” The flirting had never been completely one sided, but it certainly came heavier from him and it wasn’t uncommon for him to get a little flustered when she returned it.

“No, it’s just...” He releases the railing and pushes away, adding a little distance between the two. “You’re my commander, por dios. I can never tell if you’re yanking my chain.” He looks at her, really looks at her this time and the mood shifts. The air gets thicker, heavier and it feels like an opportunity, one she doesn’t want to slip away again.

“And what if I’m not?” she asks, voice dipping down again. “Not just yanking your chain?” James swallows thickly and there’s a mumble of a noise from his lips, but he doesn’t give a response. Instead, she’s pleased to watch as his eyes travel down from her eyes to her lips, down her neck and through the valley between her breasts that he can see all too well in her black tank top. “Are you going to tell me you’ve never thought about it?”

“Uhhh… I mean you’re one hell of a woman and I’m still just flesh and blood, if you know what I mean.” She can see a bit of redness creep up his neck and Shepard wonders if the implication is just that his body reacts to her or if he’s actually done something about it when his body reacts.

“So am I, James. And you are one hell of a man yourself.” She slips in front of him, putting herself between himself and the railing, all but begging him to pin her there. He makes no move to do so however. Instead, his eyes drop down to their feet and Shepard feels like she’s sinking. “But you’re not interested.” She leans back into the railing, wanting to retreat. James snaps his eyes back to hers and his mouth flops for a few moments as if he’s going to say something, but after a minute of silence, Shepard gives up. She slinks away off to the side and as far away as she can get without feeling too awkward. “Well, now that you’ve shot me down, was there anything else you came here to talk about?”

“Uhhh, yeah,” he stutters, shaking his head. She feels a little bad to have put him on the spot, but she’s just as embarrassed as he is. “I wanted to show you something.”

He turns away from her and pulls his shirt over his head. It takes Shepard longer than she should admit to notice he’s not just showing off the well-toned muscles in his back and shoulders, but trying to show her the new and finished N7 tattoo. He looks at her over his shoulder.

“What do you think?”

“Looks good,” she says honestly. “You’ve earned it.” She sees him smile a little at her approval. She crosses her arms over her chest and tries to lighten her tone. “Though I think it’s a little mean to flaunt yourself to the woman you just turned down.” He chuckles, taking her teasing easily.

“Here I was thought I was being nice giving you at least a little something,” he jokes back before turning to face her, shirt still in his hand. “Thought you liked the show.” She rolls her eyes, but even after him turning her down, the flirting still makes her feel better. “Anyways... Just wanted to show you that bad boy.” He slips his shirt back over his head and she resists the small urge to tell him to keep it off. “I gotta get back to the Normandy,” he says. “Esteban wants my help working on the shuttle.” Shepard shuffles her feet for a moment and then sticks out her hand towards him.

“Thanks for coming by, James.” She uses a formal voice, hoping the gesture and tone will clearly communicate a no hard feelings vibe. He reaches out and takes her hand. The handshake lasts for less than a second before he brings her hand up into a fist grab and pulls her closer. He locks her eyes with his and that tension rises again.

“Lola,” he whispers. “I’m not not interested.” She loosens her grip in his, going from firm comradery to something softer. “It’s just that… you’re Commander Shepard, you know?” He watches her shoulders fall and he knows instantly it was the wrong thing to say.

“I get it, James,” she says, attempting to hide her dejection. It’s the title, the legend that again stands in her way from being a regular woman. So much for him being the person who makes her forget it all. “Don’t worry about it.” She withdraws from him quickly and a little more coldly than she intended. He again opens his mouth, but doesn’t form words. “I’ll see you later,” she dismisses him and he nods. He moves to leave before trying once more to end on a friendly note.

“This is gonna be a perfect place for a fiesta.”

~~~

For a guy who all but told her no, James is sure as shit staring at her an awful lot like he wants to rip her clothes off.

“Is constant staring customary to the human mating ritual?” Garrus teases him as he pours drinks on the other side of the bar. “Because if so, you’re doing a damn good job, Jimmy.” James grimaces and throws a peanut shell at the Turian.

“Shut it, Scars.”

“He’s still convinced regs are a problem to worry about,” Steve chimes in, clapping his friend on the shoulder.

“Regs? Really?” Garrus asks. “You realize breaking regulations is pretty much Shepard’s specialty, right?” He slides the drink towards James who just shakes his head at it and passes it to Steve. “And even if it wasn’t, we’re quite possibly facing the end of the galaxy here. Who’s kissing who isn’t something anyone’s worried about, even the brass.” James mumbles something and picks at the label on his nearly full beer bottle.

He can barely see Shepard at the kitchen entrance from his spot at the end of the bar and every time she moves, his neck cranes to follow her. He’d either purposely or accidentally kept her in view all night and has spent the better part of it kicking himself for not just throwing her against a wall earlier that day.

She catches his eye and he instantly looks away, back to his bottle. She chose to wear a dress of all things tonight. A god damned dress. A little black number that fit her better than it had any right to. The woman was trying to kill him.

“Boys,” he hears her greet them casually, having approached them at the bar while he was attempting to ignore her. “How are things going?” James doesn’t hear their response. He’s too preoccupied trying to keep his eyes off of her chest as she leans her hip against the edge of the bar. “You seem quiet, Vega,” she comments.

“Just enjoying the party.” He shrugs and takes a drink of his beer, thinking about how he could kill Garrus and Steve for the look they shoot each other.

“Steve,” Garrus interrupts. “Let me show you that data pad I mentioned earlier.” Garrus had, of course, mentioned no such data pad in their prior conversations, but Steve agreed eagerly and James really thought about strangling at least one of them when they left him alone with Shepard.

“We good?” she asks him so casually that he almost feels bad.

“Yeah, why?” He takes another drink of his beer and it quickly turns into a large gulp.

“You seem to be avoiding me,” She squints and forces a smile. “And also staring, which is odd. Just want to make sure we’re good.” She takes a sip of her own drink and shifts her eyes to the Turian alcohol bottle, investigating it curiously.

James chews on his tongue for a moment. She wants them to be good. Good means normal. Normal would mean telling her those squats she’s been doing have done wonders for her ass and that was dangerous tonight.

“It help if I tell you that you look damn fine in that dress?” He never was too good at avoiding danger.

“Maybe,” She shrugs and leans forward towards him just a little. “Probably help a little more if you called me Lola.” Damn if her voice didn’t sound husky and smooth. Despite his better judgement, he followed her lead and leaned in as well, lowering his voice if nothing more than to make sure eavesdroppers wouldn’t hear.

“Well, that dress is definitely giving me ideas… Lola.” A smile breaks on her lips and he’s not entirely sure, but he thinks he sees her shiver just the slightest. He takes another long drink, but this time doesn’t take his eyes off her.

“You going to keep a girl guessing or are you going to share with the class?” She takes a step forward, getting close enough for him to notices she actually put on a light layer of perfume too. He chuckles, but curses internally.

“You’re making it real hard to remember why this is a bad idea,” he warns.

He starts listing the reasons in his head. Fraternization regs. She’s his commander. She’s fucking Commander Shepard and he’s just a nobody lieutenant who makes a shitty leader. She’s probably looking for some kind of easy fling. Distracting her like that would be selfish. It’d look bad. The rest of the crew might start to question her judgement. The list goes on and on.

“I never pegged you to be a guy who runs hot and cold,” she says, breaking his train of thought. “And yet today you’ve given more mixed signals than a broken comm transmission.”

“Sorry, Lola.” And he is, honestly. He’s a tangled-up mess of thoughts and emotions and even the little bit of alcohol he’s consumed tonight is making him think with his dick first.

“Want me to put on a wig? Change my name? Maybe lay on an accent?” He can tell by the wiggle in her eyebrows as much as the suggestion itself that she’s had a little too much to drink, but it twists his stomach in a bad way all the same. “I don’t have to be Commander Shepard for a night.” And now he feels guilty, so much so that his neck and his face turn red and he looks down again, embarrassed at himself. She gives a quick pat to his forearm. “Come find me if you change your mind.”

She grabs her drink and leaves to mingle with her other guests, leaving him alone to feel like an asshole. He could never find the right thing to say around Shepard. Not when it came to this. He wanted her and lately he had to admit it was more than just a sexual attraction. He wanted more than that, but the idea of being selfish enough to pursue Commander Shepard was intimidating. Maybe, he admits, he needs to stop separating her and realize that Commander Shepard and his Lola are one and the same. Maybe then he can stop being a dick.

“Fucking pendejo,” he whispers to himself before swiping up that Turian bottle.

~~~

She can feel the headache before she even opens her eyes. Had she really drank much last night? No, she’s sure she didn’t. She even remembers everything, including climbing into her bed after barely having the energy to change clothes.

She throws on her N7 sweatshirt and slowly treks her way to the kitchen, making sure to note all the remnants of the party, including some of her friends scattered amongst the apartment. It makes her smile.

She smells bacon as she rounds the corner and sees James at the stove already in the full throws of making breakfast. He beams a smile at her when he sees her in the doorway and flips the pan a little.

“Lola!” he greets. “Eggs?”

“You’re awful cheery,” she comments dryly, and a little bitterly, as she steps further into the kitchen. She rounds the island the stove is on and snags a piece of bacon from the plate there.

“Been a while since you knocked that many back?” he teases, watching the way her eyes squint uncomfortably. “Breakfast will help.” He shovels some of the fresh eggs onto a plate and passes it her way. She takes them gratefully and reaches for the salt. James’ hand wraps around her wrist, stopping her reach. “You really gonna do me like that?” he scolds playfully. “Add salt before you even try them? That’s my abuela’s recipe. It doesn't need more salt.” She cracks a smile, but doesn’t move her hand away just yet, the warmth of his hand feeling too comforting to pull away from. There’s a gentle swipe of his thumb over her pulse before he lets go on his own. He empties the rest of the eggs on a communal plate before clearing his throat. “Hey, let me know when you have some time,” he says. It sounds surprisingly awkward. “I’ve got something I want to talk to you about.”

~~~

Never being one to put things off, Shepard returned to her room as soon as she’d finished eating and made the rounds to make sure everyone was awake or, at the very least, breathing.

I’m in my room. Got some time. She sends the message before even making it through the door. It doesn't take more than a few seconds for him to respond.

Be up in a minute.

She makes herself busy with her omni-tool while she waits. She feels a bit like a fool, practically throwing herself at him a second time only to be left alone again last night. She wouldn’t blame him if he came to talk to her about how uncomfortable she had made him.

She’s left the door open for him, but he still gives it a gentle knock to get her attention when he arrives.

“Nice room,” he comments, sticking his head over the threshold and looking around. “Bit different than the Normandy. Less fish.” He cracks a smile at her and the simple gesture puts her at ease a little. He can’t be pissed at her if he’s still making jokes, right?

“You’re just jealous you don’t have fish in your room.” She isn’t about to admit that she actually misses the blue glow and gentle whir of the filter when she falls asleep. Not right now at least.

“Yeah, well, maybe we should trade rooms sometime.”

Or maybe we could share mine. Shepard physically bites her tongue to stop herself from saying it aloud. Still unsure of exactly where they stand and just how awkward she made things for him, it is not the time to let the flirtations rise up that quickly.

He takes her brief silence to enter the room and close the door behind him. That makes her a little nervous, but not nearly as much as when he says, “So... we should talk about last night.”

“I owe you an apology, Lieutenant,” she says instantly, nearly cutting him off. The way she snaps back to professionalism with a straight back, pushed down shoulders, and a commanding tone makes him pause for a moment, his eyes widening just a fraction. “I was inappropriate with you and should not have taken advantage of my rank.” It takes an extra moment for her apology to sink in and his brow furrows as he sorts it through his brain.

“What? No!” he huffs and takes two large, hurried steps her way. She must not have held her surprise well enough because he suddenly stops again. “Lola,” he sighs. “I didn’t come here to... register a complaint.” His face crunches up as though he doesn’t like the way the word taste. “I came to apologize to you,” he says firmly. “And hopefully not fuck up my words this time.”

The intensity in his eyes and the way he’s not shying away from her makes Shepard feel like she’s a young girl again. Any and all experience she has with men and relationships seems to just melt away and suddenly she’s got butterflies and a blush. There’s a nervous heat in her stomach that makes it hard to regain her composure.

“Okay,” she says slowly, not completely sure of where he’s going, but hoping to every God in the galaxy that he’s not turning her down again.

“I can’t hook up with you.” The butterflies die and the excited heat turns to an anger.

“I promise you don’t have to reject me again for me to understand.” She says it harshly, bitterly even. She barely manages to contain throwing her arms in the air when she turns away from him, moving towards the desk in the corner as if she has something better to do. She hears him mutter under his breath and while her Spanish is terrible, the inflection makes it sound like a string of curses.

“Shepard!” He follows her footsteps and when she spins to sit in the desk chair, his arm is extended as though he reached out for her just a moment too late. “I can’t hook up with you,” he emphasizes. “I can’t do just one night and that’s what would have happened last night. Would have been a drunken hook up that one of us or both of us would have brushed off in the morning. I don’t want that.” Her anger starts to dissolve and her spine loses some of its rigidness as she slinks back into her chair.

“What do you want then?” she asks, voice softer and quieter now. She’s afraid of the answer. He chews on his tongue and grinds his jaw and she wonders if maybe he’s afraid too.

“You,” he finally says.

“You sure about that?” She can’t help but scoff. “I am Commander Shepard, after all.”

“Yeah, you are.” His sigh this time seems more like a pained groan. Shepard watches carefully as he turns and sits himself on her unmade bed. “Which is why it feels completely selfish and impossible to ask you to commit to anything more, let alone to an insignificant lieutenant like me.”

“Commit?” She suddenly feels lighter again.

“When I go for something, I go all in,” he tells her. “That would include you...this...us.” He waves his hand out awkwardly and avoids her eyes as though he’s nervous. She bites down on her lip to swallow down the smile. She knows it’s not exactly fair to enjoy his nervousness, but at least it’s not just her. She slowly pushes herself up from her chair.

“You’re not insignificant,” she assures him.

“I’m not some hero of the galaxy,” he admits. He doesn’t say it with a self-conscious, but rather states it just as a simple fact. “I haven’t been with you since the beginning like most of these guys.”

“You know that’s one of the things I like about you James?” He looks up at her curiously. “Sure, you’ve heard the stories, but we didn't meet on the ship in the midst of wars. We met on Earth.” She rounds the desk slowly, walking closer to where he sits still using caution in case he backs out. “You didn’t just get to know Commander Shepard. You got to know Jane, to know me. You treat me like I’m human.”

“You are human, Lola.” He’s not looking away from her now and it gives her a little burst of confidence.

“Yeah. What was it you said? Just flesh and blood?” There’s a tease of a smirk on her lips as she comes to stand in front of him, legs stopping just short of slipping between the gap of his spread knees. He chuckles and the weight of everything starts to lift.

“You sure about this, Lola?” He reaches out and curls his hand around her hip. It's the first time he’s ever really touched her and it makes her heart skip just a little. She leans into his touch, pushing her hip into his palm and leans forward to put her hands on his shoulders. He feels solid beneath her and she can’t resist the need to squeeze just a little, to feel the muscles at the end of her fingers.

“I’ve thought about it in great detail.” He cocks an eyebrow at her and tugs her in-between his legs. He watches her with an unbridled desire in his eyes and for the first time in a long time, she feels real excitement. She traces one hand up the side of his neck so she can run his fingers along his jaw. “That party shouldn’t be the last bit of happiness we get to indulge in.”

He moves quickly; his hand on the back of her neck before she knew he moved it, using barely any strength to pull her down to him. She follows him easily, all too eager to kiss him heatedly. Months of suppressed desires pour out into each other and for the first few moments, they merely hold onto each other and soak in the relief of letting go. And then James’ hands start moving, pulling her closer and sliding over the curve of her ass. Shepard is compliant and carefully climbs into his lap, one knee on either side of his hips on her bed. He bites gently at her bottom lip before using a hand on her jaw to tilt her head back, allowing him to kiss down her neck.

Eyes closed and succumbing to the pleasure he’s offering, Shepard is unprepared for when James moves again. He rolls to the side and pushes her onto her back on the bed. She lets out an actual squeak of surprise and James chuckles, still pressing kisses to her skin. With her legs still around his waist, his hips grind almost unconsciously and she doesn’t hold back her moan.

James peels himself away from her slowly, leaving a cold trail of air where his body had been on top of her. She opens her eyes and glares at him, but the smirk still on his face and the bulge she manages to catch a glimpse of through his pants, make sure no fear of rejection rises back in her.

“And where are you going?” she asks, attempting and failing to use her Commander tone. She tries again after clearing her throat and pushing herself up on her elbows. “You’re not leaving this room for a while.” James laughs and flashes her a smile as he keeps walking to the door.

“Is that an order?” he teases, pressing the lock for the door and waiting until it flashes red before turning back to her.

“You bet your ass it is.” She smiles back at him. She could have locked the door from right here with her omni-tool and he knew it. He was just being a teasing bastard. “You’re not leaving her until I say so.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he laughs again before coming back to her.

[gaslightgatekeepgodot]

A (sizeable) rant/essay concerning my experiences in the Tumblr JJBA fandom.

None of you asked to hear this, but I’m getting pretty pissed off at some people in particular (I will not name names, though I may heavily implicate some people) and it’s finally started to kinda spill over. So I’m letting it spill; take it or leave it.

I’m... Fairly irate at the moment, and writing out my feelings does tend to help me calm down in situations like this, so if I was going to put this anywhere the best place for it is probably on the public internet. Again, take it or leave it: this is the internet, you don’t have to interact with me if this concerns you or your ideals. Just click that handy little block button on my profile and you never have to see little Nat mouthing off again.

If you want me to summarise (I know not everyone wants/is able to read a fluffed-up pillar of text) or explain my reasoning behind anything I’ve said below the cut, feel free to direct message me here or on Discord @nati bati yi#1462. Once I get this off my chest I’ll be more than willing to chat to people about it. <3

(Before I say anything else, this is not intended to be a callout in any way, shape or form. I don’t mention the specific names of anybody, and the actions I do mention here will only point to specific people if you know them too. Anyone on the outside should have zero idea of who anyone I bring up is; I do not want anyone to get harassed over this, and I very much do not want to start drama - that’s what inspired me to go off and write this hunk of garbage in the first place. I’m just... Sick to death of the fandom as a whole.)

Anyway. Here we go.

From what I’ve been able to tell, being in this fandom for just under a year now, there are two main halves to it: the gay-hating, stale-meme-parroting dudebro side, who seem to mostly congregate around YouTube and Reddit, and... Whatever the side based on Tumblr (and probably now Twitter) is. I don’t spend a lot of time on Reddit, so naturally I’ve been more exposed to the Tumblr side of the fandom, and after experiencing the ideals some people here want to force on other people I’ve come to the conclusion I’d almost rather be immersed in the bigoted dudebro side. And I say this as an ace-spec/gay trans man.

I’ll start with the blocklist.

I think most of us on Tumblr came to the conclusion that the blocklist was utter bullshit, but I did see a few people in a Discord server I have since left (I will expand on this later) defending the reasoning behind some ships being on there, citing the fact they had been abused in a relationship with a similar age gap. I can definitely see why that would bother a person, and I do not want to erase the fact that people have been and will be abused in similar relationships, but you can’t project your singular experience onto every fictional, non-canon character relationship and every person who ships it. For one, not every relationship is going to turn out the same just because it meets this one criteria of “the age gap is too big”, and, also, you don’t have to write fiction to totally reflect reality. You are in full creative control. Maybe if the characters were real people they wouldn’t click, but if you’re drawing a picture or writing a fanfic you don’t have to go along with that. You can write them so that they’re good to each other, while still keeping it in character. Araki has said that Jotaro and Kakyoin’s personalities don’t work together very well, and that they wouldn’t have become friends or even spoken to each other if Jotaro wasn’t a Stand user... But Jotaro/Kakyoin just happens to be the most-written about JJBA ship on AO3. Me? I love Jotakak. It’s about the only thing I do ship. And I’ve read some quite frankly amazing fanfiction where the two boys are paired and they work together, and it’s still very much in character. Of course, I’m very much against loli/shota content or content depicting characters who don’t look very old- if someone drew Koichi in a sexual situation I would be pissed as all hell, but I don’t have to engage with that content any further. I can just filter out the tag/block the OP and move on. You don’t need to make a fuss and tell/imply to people that they are paedophilic for enjoying well-written content where a 17-year-old is in a healthy relationship with a 22-year-old, platonic or otherwise.

My second point brings in some of the things I’ve learned while studying media this past year. My main point here: not everyone in an audience is the same. There is a reason differential decoding and the uses and gratifications theory exist. The uses and gratifications theory states, at its most basic, that the audience of a media text is active, not passive; i.e. they are not just absorbing every piece of data thrown at them by the text they are consuming, and they are consuming different media to satisfy a need- for JJBA, that need could be entertainment, escapism, identifying with a character similar to yourself or to give you something to talk about with your friends. Differential decoding arises when someone consuming a piece of the media does not entirely go along with the creator’s preferred reading of it- an example might be how a sizeable amount of people enjoy villainous or “disgusting” characters such as Dio, Cioccolata, Stroheim or Melone, when they were clearly written in canon to be abhorrent, unlikable people for varying reasons. I can also say that, because the audience is active, and consume media based on their personal needs, that somebody writing fanfic of a ship you don’t like isn’t going to make incest or paedophilia more socially acceptable. I don’t consume that content, because I don’t feel the need to. Sure, real paedos might, but they’re a minority. Just because a couple hundred people or so read a fanfic on the free web where a grown adult does the dirty with a little kid, doesn’t mean to say everyone in the world will suddenly start thinking it’s ok. Mention it to any sane person in real life and they will not like that idea any more than you do.

And my third point is more a personal thing than anything else, but there is a community I used to be part of (and was part of almost from the beginning) where I didn’t feel welcome because of people causing drama over things like what I mentioned above. I started multiple discourses entirely by accident by saying I didn’t understand why everyone though X ship was horribly problematic and worth getting mad at people over. I still don’t feel like anyone deserves to be harassed over characters and ships they enjoy, but that doesn’t mean to say I support all of it. Along with generally feeling ignored by a lot of the moderators of that server, as well as their friends, I was just sick to death of how they seemed to single out some certain people to say, “hey, don’t do this” when other people seemed exempt. I was verbally warned for posting innuendos in a general chat (but it’s not like I could anywhere else on the server, because I’m not 18 yet), but at least once every day I would see two people flirting in-character in whatever channel they happened to meet in, and it never seemed to be in a roleplay channel- I couldn’t see into NSFW to check if they did it there too, but the fact it would leak out into gen concerned me. They would throw innuendo after innuendo at each other, and they never seemed to stop, or be told to stop. Yes, I could have messaged the moderators to say it made me uncomfy, but one of them was a moderator themselves, so I felt a little out my element doing so. 

Another thing that bothered me is when I tried to join an offshoot of that server for kin, and the admin - I assume - of said offshoot server messaged me (with some other conversation concerning it in between) that, despite the fact I only wanted in to help me figure out what it meant to me, I wasn’t allowed in because somebody was uncomfy with doubles. I completely understand that, but I had spoken to the only person it could have been (I wasn’t given a name, but it wasn’t difficult to figure out who it was) multiple times about that character and how similar we were- hell, we had even roleplayed together as doubles of that character and no problems were ever expressed to me. If anything it seemed like we left off in a spot we could have carried on from later. It might not have been intended that way, but being told I wasn’t allowed in there made me feel excluded from the community nonetheless, especially because I’d had a few people tell me the night before that they wanted more people in there and that I’d be totally welcome. I was also told, before any of this happened, that the same person blocked a friend of mine in another server for going on a small rant about how they didn’t like the way Josuke acted in the episode where he plays dice with Rohan and ends up burning his house down, because they kin Josuke..? At least, that’s what was relayed to me.

But, hey ho, it’s all behind me now. I won’t lie; I don’t really plan on ever going back. I don’t want to engage anymore, because it makes me uncomfortable and anxious thinking about it, so I most likely will unfollow most (if not all) of the blogs pertaining to that community tonight. I do have a few people still there who I miss speaking to, but I’ve DM’d all of them on Discord at least once since I’ve left and talked to them about either how I miss them or something entirely unrelated to the server. I’d like to talk more with them, but DMs are always awkward for me to begin with... I have a feeling they might not want to talk after reading this, and I think I’m ready to accept that? Might be difficult not being able to scream about fanfic as much, but I won’t impose on anyone if my presence makes them uncomfy. I don’t want to be that guy.

I’ll say it again: now that I’ve got this off my chest and subsequently calmed down a lot, I’m more than willing to talk about any of it. Just shoot me a message on Discord and I’ll reply when I’m able and feeling up to talking about it again. For now I’m probably just going to go back to pissing about on Flight Rising or play Smash or something

[stand-infected-jotaro]

(( Lore master-post, first edition, with your friend, The Over Caffeinated Mod ))

(( All of this is Out Of Character, so I’m not gonna be using parenthesis for this entire post. It’s all a mod post of lore and explanation. ))

- Yes! Because of how stands work, they aren’t ethereal normally, which means anyone can see the fact that Jotaro has HUMONGOUS SHOULDER PADS. That’s why “These are my bones, Deborah,” is a joke, because everyone can see those heckin’ shoulder pads, and yes, they are his bones.

- The act stands, the progress of the stand’s effects is set with each act, which means if Koichi used the heck out of Echoes Act I, it wouldn’t further the progress at all until Act II happens.

- Act II is the Mid point, somewhere between Koichi and Echoes, not entirely there, not entirely gone.

- Act III is... Act III. It’s like the opposite of how most stands effect their user, kinda, like the user is in the back of the stand’s mind, instead of the other way around. 

- I also don’t know of any other act based stands, so Koichi’s Echoes is the only example I have.

- Being Echoes is suffering

- Literally every stand user.

- And Hayato, but that’s a special case.

- Symptoms include:

    - Stands     - Urges to do things regarding the power of your stand.     - The appearance of your stand seeping through the more you use it     - Insomnia     - Anxiety, and over thinking anything regarding something your stand can do.     - Blacking out when your stand takes over if you lose control, and not         remembering it     - Overuse of your stand will result in you losing yourself eventually, so don’t         do that. If you don’t have any sort of hobby that gets your mind of your         stand if you do use it a lot, do do that whenever you can, it helps manage         the other symptoms better. It’s why Jotaro still mostly looks like himself,         while others look like they’re really starting to lose themselves to their         stands. Dolphins for the soul.

- Josuke overuses his healing quite a bit because he just wants everybody to be okay, but he’s still there, he just needs to be careful.

- No, because it’s not a cold or a flu or anything, you can’t just contract a stand unless there is something specific regarding the abilities of a stand that can rub off on someone else, like, I think Cheap Trick (the one who is on your back) and Killer Queen, and probably others that I can’t think of right now, or I haven’t gotten to yet.

- I headcannon that there is a ward in the local hospital for stand users run by the Speedwagon Foundation to help them if they can, but not actually quarantining them, if that makes sense. Cause once more, not contagious by normal means.

=================

Random details that I probably won’t be able to bring up normally without waiting forever for the right asks

- Rohan has the worst sleep schedule out of every stand user, because his stand is based in his occupation, which causes him to not be able to stop drawing or writing, and sometimes his creation of manga stops working properly, like sometimes he has one page that has been drawn on 20 times with different graphics overlapping, and all the dialog in it is garbled and impossible to read.

- Bites The Dust puts a little bit of Killer Queen on the person who is being used as the carrier - not sure if that’s the right set of words to use to describe it - but every time The Dust Gets Bitten(trademark symbol) a bit of Killer Queen seeps through the person who is being used for it to activate, AKA, Hayato. I wanna do more with that concept, bECAUSE IT GETS EVEN MORE SAD THE MORE DETAILS GET PUT IN IT

- Healing type stands - because of the fact stands encourage stands kinda thing is a thing for this, if a stand user gets healed, there is a high chance that their stand will take over with a burst of energy. 

- Stands WILL fight until they and the user passes out from exhaustion, unless the stands have a more human conscience, or the hardly have any conscience and it’s the user who is running the show more.

- Echoes (Act III) feels really guilty about Koichi, and Echoes is genuinely nice.

- Hamon is also a self destructive fighting skill as well. Overuse can end up causing the user to spasm, burn up, among other things... like death...

- Dio’s story is... complicated... Needs more detailing.

- The Pillar Men’s story is also.... kinda.. complicated... Also needs more detailing.

- There are treatments that the Speedwagon Foundation has set up to help stand users manage their symptoms more, but there is no cure for it unless somehow you get rid of their stands. 

- Echoes is one of the real anchors that keep The Duwang Gang(trademark symbol) from being too self destructive, because he’s understanding and doing his best to help everybody, for Koichi’s sake.

- Koichi/Echoes always tried to help Rohan get some gosh dang sleep, because he compulsively draws, and between drawing and his stand, he just doesn’t sleep well, so he needs help actually doing that, and is more impulsive than the cannon Rohan because of that lack of sleep, all the time, because lack of sleep does that to you, especially if something is forcing you to stay up until you actually pass out.

- Heaven’s Door is self destructive a bit, the ability of it activating on Rohan a bit because of how it is and how Rohan is anyway in this. A mixture of lack of sleep, lack of control, and Heaven’s Door ends up causing Rohan’s pages to open up randomly, and if he isn’t drawing, or doing something, he might impulsively, or without even really thinking about it, start writing or scribbling on a page. There are a few pages with just... Jibberish written in them. Not sure if they are actually doing anything to Rohan, but they’re there...

- Jotaro accidentally breaks a lot of things because of the extra unconscious strength of Star Platinum. 

- Josuke needs to be careful when healing people, he might just help set the state of someone’s stand while doing it... Stands encourage stands....

- Love Deluxe, Yukako’s stand, right? oh my god yukako... She has to be careful or she’ll turn into a sentient pile of hair. Terrifying, right?

============

End of first edition master post. More lore later on~! I’ll post a story or two now that more things have been elaborated on now!!

[lumiolivierlithium]

The Good Old Days Chapter 25: Mama in Manhattan

A/N: Hi, friends. Here we are. Another week. When For the Family is about to come to an end soon and this is going to be the only thing in that universe going up on a weekly basis. But at least I'll have a little stress off my shoulders. But you guys are worth it. Now, shall we?

Mama in Manhattan was one of my most favorite things in the world. It made her so weirdly happy and sparkly eyed to come here. Because she’d always tell me when I was little that one day, this would be us. We’d be living in one of the fancy ass Fifth Avenue apartments and we’d never have to worry about a thing ever again. If things keep going with the Old Man in the same direction they’ve been, chances are, we’d be in one of those fancy ass Fifth Avenue apartments by the end of the year. I’d love to be able to give Mama the life she always wanted to give us, but it’s not exactly something we can do now.

Besides, I’ve seen the product of that kind of life. It’s not always as exciting as Mama thinks it’s going to be. Hell, I barely liked going to Manhattan. It made my skin crawl. The stuck-up assholes that come out of Manhattan were the same who would give me shit at work whenever I still worked the restaurant. I could guarantee that most of them were from Manhattan. Or tourists. Those were always fun, too. Drove me fucking insane. But I’m not here to commiserate.

I have an engagement ring to buy for the most amazing woman I will ever meet in my life. Other than Mama. But that’s why I brought Mama with me. My girlfriend had champagne tastes and I had a PBR bank account. Although, I might be able to bump that up to Natty Light these days. The Old Man’s paying me nice these days. Vanessa did say she wanted something small and dainty, though. That’s the thing. I wasn’t sure if she said she wanted small and dainty because she knew I was broke as fuck or if that was genuine taste. I’m thinking it was legit. I’ve never seen her wear big jewelry.

“Excuse me…” Here we go. The two worst words in the world to hear from someone behind the counter. Because usually, they think I’m in there looking for a five-finger discount. No, sir. I come by my money…Well…Relatively honestly. It’s there, isn’t it? I’m not fucking stealing, “Can I help you?”

“I’m looking for an engagement ring,” I told him.

“And,” the guy looked over at Mama with an innocent smile on his face, “Is this the lucky lady?”

“Dios…” Mama melted inside, “No, no…”

But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to pick something up for Mama, too. God knows I had the money to do it, “She’s my mother.”

“My apologies…” Alright. He can stay. He’s alright. As long as he’s not my future stepdad, I’ll be fine, “Are you looking for anything in particular?”

“My girlfriend asked for something small and dainty,” I explained, “What do you have in those specifications?”

“Do you have a stone preference or are you going to use a stock diamond?”

“I don’t think she does much for diamonds,” I thought back. Not that I knew of anyway, “She’s a sucker for amethyst, though.”

“We do have something in those specifications!” he brought Mama and me to a different case and I think I might have found it. A little white gold bow. A little amethyst stone in the middle. Diamonds flanking the bow. It’s perfect. He tried bringing out some other amethyst rings, but they weren’t nearly the one.

“That one,” I pointed at that beautiful little ribbon that Vanessa’s going to lose her shit over. She’ll lose her shit over a pen cap if I’m proposing to her anyway, but that…That’s the one. It’s absolutely perfect.

“Are you sure you don’t want to…?”

“I’m sure,” I stood my ground, “That’s the one. I need it in a six.”

“It’s four thousand dollars, sir,” the man waited for me to pay him, “Are you sure this is the one?”

“I can pay for it in full right now, if you’d like me to,” I pulled my wallet out and dropped four grand on the counter, “But I’m sure there’s tax in that, too…Hold on.”

I don’t think he was expecting me to whip money out so quickly. Then again, no one ever does. And that’s what makes the looks on their faces all the better. I threw an extra couple hundred on the counter for tax. And the guy took the cash from me, “You said a six?”

“That’s right,” I nodded, “Thank you.”

“I’ll be back with the box and your receipt…”

Damn right, you will. I rocked back on my heels, waiting patiently with the biggest fucking smile on my face. And Mama took notice, “She’s really the one, isn’t she, Francisco?”

“Absolutely,” I nodded, “I still don’t know how I’m going to ask her. I don’t really want to do anything too public. She wouldn’t want us making a scene or anything like that. Anything that doesn’t require us to draw too much attention to ourselves.”

“Aww…” Mama groaned, “I think it would’ve been poetic if it were in the middle of the restaurant, but that’s just me.”

“The place where I met her mother for the first time?” I cringed, “Yeah, no, thanks. I’ll have to pass. And if I ever step foot in there ever again, Mama, take me out in the alley and shoot me.”

“Never,” Mama wrapped herself around my arm, “If you’re in there ever again, mijo, I’m sure it’d be for a good reason.”

“Or I’d need to establish an alibi real quick,” I laughed to myself, “Mama, if they asked, where was I?”

“You and I were making dinner,” she lied through her teeth, “Like we do every other night. That’s not too suspicious. And I’m sure your brothers would all say the same.”

“Of course,” I love her.

“Here you are, sir,” the man brought me Vanessa’s ring and the receipt, “Good luck. And have a wonderful day.”

“Thank you,” I grabbed Vanessa’s ring and Mama’s hand and got out of there. A part of me wanted to have dinner anywhere else in the city, but Mama insisted on Manhattan. We were already here. Might as well. And I knew there were plenty of good places here. They were all just brutally expensive for the most part. The shit I do for you, Mama. Worth it, though. Just to see the look on her face, it’s always worth it.

There was this incredibly upscale place that Vanessa took me to once that I had no doubt she’d be more than happy to take Mama to. But that wasn’t her place to do that. Instead, it was her loving son that had cash burning a hole in his pocket for the first time in…Possibly ever. And what the hell? Why not spoil Mama every now and then? I couldn’t think of anyone more deserving than her. And as much as I couldn’t stand being in Manhattan, Mama was always the best part of it.

“Francisco…” Mama asked, “Are you going to propose to Vanessa tonight?”

“I don’t know about that,” I admitted, “I might. I could. God knows I could. It’s not like I don’t have her ring already. But…I don’t know. I don’t think tonight’s going to be the night. Or maybe it will be. I just…I don’t know. I very well could. That’s one of those things where we’ll have to see where the night takes us. I just hope you know that if she says yes…”

“When she says yes…” Mama corrected me, “Don’t you dare sell yourself short, Francisco. You know Vanessa’s not going to turn you down. I love her like she was my own. You know that.”

“Yeah.”

“And she’s a very smart girl,” she argued, “Leaving you would be the stupidest decision she’d ever make. There is no way she’s saying no to you. Not to that little face. Hell, I have a hard time saying no to it.”

“You’re also my mother,” I pointed out, “And I’m the only one of your kids that you don’t want to occasionally beat with a frying pan.”

“Don’t tell your brothers,” Mama smiled, “But yes. You’re the only one I don’t want to beat with a frying pan. Or a wooden spoon.”

“Or any other kitchen implement?”

“Si.”

“I need to get going, Mama,” I caught a glimpse of my watch, “I’ll be home later.”

“Kiss Gregorio for me.”

“Mama…” I settled her, “Don’t get me wrong. I love the Old Man dearly, but I’m not calling him Dad anytime soon.”

“Of course not,” Mama promised, “No one could ever replace tu papá. But…I’m still a young, vibrant woman, Francisco. I still…”

“Nope,” I stopped her before I couldn’t sleep tonight, “Nope. Mama, I love you, but we don’t need to go down that road tonight.”

“I understand,” she giggled sadistically, “Go on. Te amo.”

“Te amo, Mama…” I really did. I adored my mother. She’s delightful. She made it hard not to love her. But like I said, I don’t need to hear about how my brothers and I came into the world. And I sure as fuck don’t need to hear how she may or may not want to have a one night stand with the Old Man. That’s between her and Jesus and I’m sure Jesus doesn’t want to hear about it either.

Regardless, Mama went home. I went to the Narrows. Another night at the salt mimes. Home sweet home. I had all the thoughts of my mother and my boss shaken out of my head and all I could feel was the rock in my pocket. I’m still not totally sure if tonight’s going to be the night, but we’ll see. It could be tonight. It could be tomorrow night. It could be ten years from now. But if I’m still with Vanessa ten years from now, I’ll call that a win in itself.

When I got to the bar, I pushed the Old Man’s office door open, practically still skipping, “Where to tonight, boss?”

“Where do you want to go?” the Old Man asked, “The town is your oyster.”

“Really?” I looked at him strange. Usually, I’d get sent out on assignment. I’d be sent to a specific borough for a specific reason, but tonight, I get my pick of the litter? Huh. Weird.

“Yeah,” he nodded, “I don’t have any collections up tonight. There’s nothing to watch over. No shipments coming in. Everything’s great. All’s pretty quiet on the home front.”

“Neat,” I sat across from him, “So, I can basically take the night off and head home then?”

“I don’t think so,” the Old Man laughed, “It’s cute how you thought you could slide out of working tonight, Frankie. I admire that kind of moxie, but not tonight. By the way, what the fuck has you in such a good mood? Ever since you started working for me, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this bright and happy.”

“Well…” I mean, if I had to share it with someone, it might as well be with him, “I went shopping with Mama this afternoon.”

“Aww…” he gushed, “That’s adorable. Did you hold Sariña’s hand, too, or was that off the table?”

“No,” I rolled my eyes, “But the guy behind the counter thought we were a couple, so…There’s that.”

“Eww.”

“You’re telling me,” I grumbled, “But more importantly, it’s what we were looking for.”

I pulled the little purple box out of my pocket and tossed it on the Old Man’s desk. He opened it up and I swear to God, his heart stopped, “Oh, Frankie, this is so sudden.”

“Very cute,” I took it back, “I thought this would’ve been able to go without saying, but that’s not for you. It’s Vanessa’s.”

“So,” he thought, “You’re finally popping the question to Vanessa…”

“That’s right,” I couldn’t wipe the smile off my face if I wanted to. Not even Mama’s off-color comment about her wanting a one night stand with the man in front of me could take that away, “I might as well, right? I mean, we’ve been together for a while now.”

“Since, what…” the Old Man wondered, “March?”

“Toward the end of March,” I confirmed, “The twenty-third.”

“Well, Frankie,” he sat on his desktop, “I’m happy for you. I’ll be even happier for you when she says yes.”

“She hasn’t said yes yet,” I remembered the conversation I had with Mama earlier in the night. The Old Man was no better, “But I’m hoping she will.”

“It’s an awfully pretty ring, too, kid,” the Old Man praised, “You pick that one out yourself or did Vanessa have a say in it?”

“All she told me was something little and dainty,” I told him, “Other than that, the rest was me. And I knew she was a sucker for amethyst, so…You know…Points in my favor.”

“Tell you what,” he decided, “Why don’t you go work legit tonight? It’s not like I got anything for you to do other than to sit and bullshit anyway. Might as well do it somewhere more socially acceptable.”

“You’re coming out in the open?” I gasped, “Old Man, for as long as I’ve worked for you, you’ve hardly ever come out of your office.”

“Tonight’s a new night,” the Old Man shrugged, “Sue me.”

“I can work legit,” I agreed, “That’s not a problem.”

“Good to hear,” he nudged me out of his office, following behind me.

“You know,” I melted inside, “I told Vanessa the other night that I worked legit for you for a night.”

“And what’d she have to say about it?” the Old Man took a seat at the bar.

“She thought it was cute,” I gushed, “Although, I think her exact words were that it was the most romantic thing I could’ve ever done for her.”

“You keep that one, kid,” he awed, “You do not let that one get away. She can put up with your bullshit. You can put up with hers. That’s all love is. You put up with the other one’s bullshit and at the end of the day, if you can still look each other in the eye, you’re fine.”

“Thanks, Old Man,” I laughed a bit, “And how many times have you been married?”

“I’ve never been married, Frankie,” the Old Man admitted, “But that’s because serial monogamy isn’t for everyone. And sometimes, you just get hooked on playing the game.”

“You worry me,” I let that slide, “Really and truly, you do. Especially since you tried playing that game with my mother.”

“I know better than to go after Sariña,” he assured me, “That is territory that shall remain uncharted for me out of respect.”

“Thank you.”

“But if she comes onto me,” the Old Man smirked, “I’m not the one that’s to be held responsible.”

“Jesus Christ, Old Man,” I held my face in my hands, mixing his drink a little strong.

“Even then,” he let it go, “I couldn’t do that to you, Frankie. And how bold of you to assume that I’d tell you if anything did transpire between us.”

“Old Man…”

“Alright, alright,” the Old Man took his drink, “That’s as far as that needs to go.”

“I couldn’t agree more.” Yep. That’s going to be in my nightmares tonight.

As the night went on, I kept shooting the shit with the Old Man, making friends with anyone else that came in. I had a real knack for bartending. And I was working legit. Granted, it’s the Narrows and no one in the Narrows fully works legit, but at the end of the day, that’s exactly what this was. If cops were to come looking for the prick that kidnapped Vanessa Scarlotti, here’s where they’d find him. And he never kidnapped her. He liberated her. He saved her from a seemingly never ending hell and showed her a light she thought never existed. At least not for her. And she’d take that light any day of the week.

The early morning hours soon approached and I hopped the bar, “Old Man, I’m going home.”

“Alright, Frankie,” he let me go, “Hey! Question!”

“What’s up?”

“Are you proposing to Vanessa tonight?” the Old Man asked.

“I’m not sure,” I grabbed my jacket, “If I do, I’ll let you know the results tomorrow.”

“Damn right, you will,” he demanded, “Good luck, kid. See you tomorrow.”

“See you tomorrow!” And just like that, I left the Narrows and started heading home. That’s the other bonus about working in the Narrows. I didn’t have to take the train for half an hour just to get back. Hell, I could see our building from the Old Man’s office window. Which had me a little concerned for when Mama’s home by herself, but at least I know she’s ok.

When I got to the front door, I wasn’t alone. She should know better than to wait outside, but it’s sweet that she does, “Would you look at that? A cute girl on my front stoop, a good night at work…”

“Can we talk?” Vanessa’s voice broke. Oh, shit…

[kierongillen]

Writer Notes: The Wicked + The Divine 33

Spoilers, obv.

I suspect this one may ramble. Or it may not. The odd thing is always when things which have been internally discussed forever end up not needing to be discussed in public. For Journey Into Mystery and Young Avengers, I always had the idea of the essay I'd end them with... but when I got there, I shrugged and did a couple of paragraphs which covered the basics.

(There was a grace note in both, in terms of highlighting a motif – Write Your Own Happy Ending and Be A Superhero. Save The World – but that's really minor detail compared to what I presumed I'd be writing.)

Well... I know it's going to be quite long, as I'm going to include the miniature essay on plot twists I lobbed up to respond to a question, just so I can include some WicDiv specific stuff.

So, WicDiv 33. The “Everything you knew is wrong” issue.

Jamie's Cover

Jamie coloured this himself.

There was a lot of discussion over this, in terms of how to resolve the equation that we'd set up. Where to go after the maximalist nature of Dio's 32? I won't mention the other options, as at least some of them may end up being used down the line. One suggestion I quite liked was doing the equivalent of the ABC Look Of Love album...

...which is this scene of posed romance on the cover, and when you flip the album, you see all the lighting and crew. In some ways, that's what this issue does.

But black makes sense on many levels as well. I suspect the idea of the specific bleakness will confound the expectations a little, but the statement of it is very there. We did say this was our Black Parade too.

Worth noting – first cover without a quote on the back. If we were sure the readers wouldn't have looked at the back cover before reading the book, we may have put Lucifer's “Am I the only one who didn't see that coming?” on there. But we couldn't be sure of that, so we didn't.

Russell's Cover

What Russell and Matt are doing over on Thor is state of the art superheroics. I've loved seeing what Russell's done across his time with Jason, and the idea of him doing a cover was just exciting. It's meant to be the full range of the medium, after all. I was surprised Russell went quite as maximalist as he did, but also pleased. I love this kind of operatic movie poster cover, and it screams Imperial Phase, including all the cast of the main arc. Dio's the hardest one to spot – that would be the black eyes over it.

IFC At this stage in the arc, working out what on earth to put in the synopsis is tricky. You have to throw your hands up to some degree.

The tweaks to the bios are the other thing – clearly we've got to set up the information required to comprehend the issue for those who may have forgotten it, without just saying what the thing is. For the very close readers, even the fact it's changed will be a tell. It was another reason we didn't do a preview for this issue, and even if we did, we wouldn't have released that page. Velocity in reading is key here.

With Woden we restate “She had some mysterious hold over him” rather than specifically talking about the Blakes. With Minerva we remind people that she was tortured on Ananke's machine, and then distract with a :(  emoticon.

Page 1

I believe the script for this page and the next is in the trade as “Making Of” material, which is fun. Chrissy tends to choose pages in terms of what's interesting, especially if we have something else to show. In this case, it's my drawing for the design of Woden's Secret Base.

My basic description for this was the Bat Cave, which is a man cave, if you squint. Having an enormous penny in it could have been a giggle. We had to have a few passes to get the lighting right on this – debating the colours on the bars of the cage was also tricky.

In terms of pulling out a detail, the suit of armour missing a head on the right would be a useful one. Balancing the “making sure it's visible” while not leaning too much into “LOOK AT THE HEADLESS SUIT” is Jamie's storytelling problem here.

The main dialogue problem was balancing the level of Cass' response here with her noise at the end of the last issue. Swearing to some degree is fine, but it has to be a specific kind of fffuuuucccckkk last issue. It couldn't be a swear that promised too much.

Page 2

And it's Pink Woden! But he's blue. Lighting, everyone.

Well... There was some debate on the colouring of Pink Woden, in various modes, and various reasons, not least the slight differences in colouring in his previous appearances.

(Issue 14 and issue 21-22, respectively.)

Have I said Pink Woden is my favourite fan name? We use it all the time internally, not least because Mimir is oddly hard to remember. Also, if we get used to saying “Mimir” we may end up saying accidentally in public.

Page 3

I had someone reach out to me wondering whether Cassandra choosing to gender someone by their voice and physical appearance was off. It's something I was thinking of at the time when writing it, and it's not exactly a line I'm happy with. But on balance, I felt it more likely that Cass would say that than Persephone would say anything.

Cass is imperfect in her language in lots of ways. I decided she's more likely to apologise about it down the line and kick herself, which I may end up working in, depending.

(You could also ask “why have anything there?” and that's only answerable in terms of the flow of information and ideas and conversation across the whole scene. Difficult Difficult Lemon Difficult.)

Lovely expression by Persephone in the background of the first panel – in fact, her conflicted expressions throughout. I especially love the reflection of the arriving Woden in the reflection of Mimir's mask in panel 6.

Page 4-5

The challenge here was always choosing where to put the page turns in this issue. What are the big beats. In my original draft the LITTLE WODEN BOY interstitial was actually on page 6, which would change the rhythm in lots of ways – not least in putting the Falling God sequence on a page turn. In the end, we gravitated to this. I'm much happier with it.

(Little Woden Boy works as a creepier punchline at the end as well.)

Anyway, hello! It's David Blake.

I... I maybe should save writing for the reveals all together. In fact, fuck it. Let's drop the ask essay here and we can then talk about the stuff I don't include in it. I'm asked whether you change something when someone guesses something, or how that feels?

****

Oh, god, no. Never change anything if someone’s guessed something. Nothing good lies in that direction.

Why?

Okay, let’s talk – with no specifics – Game of Thrones. If you go into the depths of fandom, Game of Thrones is – to some degree, in some areas – a solved problem. There’s a good selection of fan theories (some of which have come to fruition) which have so much meat on them it was clear they had to happen, or the book would break its structure and become unsatisfying.

These twists are available to anyone who wishes to google for them.

The vast majority of people don’t. So… why change the direction of the story? What’s the point of fucking over the enjoyment of the vast majority of people (i.e. making your story make less sense, as you’re abandoning the already existing thread) for playing gotcha on a tiny fraction of your audience?

(As a quick aside – compare and contrast theorising in a fanbase with actual events in the text that’s being adapted. Clearly, anyone who is watching GoT could have googled the synopsis of the book. Equally, anyone who’s read the books knows the big beats. Does the adaptation change the big beats? If surprise to everyone in your audience is all that mattered, you would. We don’t.)

It’s also worth noting that, while obviously some complain on the nature of the adaptation, most fans of a book generally complain that they wish it was more like the book. In other words, things that surprised them (i.e. differed from their knowledge of the text) were less satisfying. They wanted to see the big dramatic beats, even if they’re stripped of their surprise.

Surprise only matters the first time you read something. For me, any worthwhile piece of literature exists to be reread, and will open up more upon rereading. In other words, knowing the twist should add to the rereading of the book. If it doesn’t, and renders the story less than it was, it’s probably a bad twist – which is one reason why I don’t tend to call them “Plot twists” to myself. I call them reveals. The plot doesn’t contort. It’s merely revealing something in the nature of the world the reader was unaware of.

(As an aside, this means that someone who has guessed successful the direction of the plot is actually effectively skipping to their second read of the book earlier.)

There’s the other side of this as well – not just whether a plot beat has been guessed, but the almost inevitability of a plot beat being guessed. GoT fans have had twenty years to puzzle this out. In that period, a mass communication device emerged which allowed fans to talk to one another and share ideas. This machine would have torn apart any plot.

No one individual needs to guess anything. People can make one step in a chain, and then that step is exposed to thousands of minds. If even one of them can make the intuitive leap to the next step, then it continues. No one person needs to be clever enough to see the whole thing. The internet hivemind is Miss Marple, seeing through the most contorted of machinations.

(In passing, this is one reason why Alternate Reality Games are hard to do, because the mass hive mind will figure almost anything out, almost instantly. Equally in passing, the failure to understand this is another reason why Ready Player One is bad, but that’s irrelevant.)

In other words, the reason why twists are guessable is the same reason they are satisfying. A twist that isn’t foreshadowed sufficiently to give the possibility of being guessed by someone is not a satisfying twist, as it – by definition – came out of nowhere.

To make this specific to my own work. In the case of the biggest and most intricate of my current books, WicDiv, we sell about 18k in monthlies and sell 18k in trades (in the first month of release). That’s our hardcore devoted readership. How many people of them actually read the essays in the WicDiv tags? I’d say 500 at the absolute maximum, and likely a lot less. So for a maximum of 1.3% of our readership, we’d derail a still effective twist for everyone else? No, that would be a bad call.

Especially – and this is key – the people who have chosen to engage with a fandom are aware that they may figure something out. They are trying to figure something out. Why take that pleasure away from them?

In a real way, I think, in long-form narrative, pure plot twists which no one in the world guesses are dead in the Internet age, at least when dealing with any even vaguely popular work of art. You can do them in short-form narratives (like a single novel, a single movie and perhaps a streaming TV show they drop in one go) but for anything where you give a fanbase the chance to think, it’s just not going to happen. A creator should be glad their work is popular enough to have enough fans to figure it out.

Yes, I may have overthought this.

But that’s only half the question.

How do I actually feel when someone guesses something that’s going to happen? Well, this is long enough already. Let’s put the personal stuff beneath a cut…

*

I’d say you sigh “Oh, poop”and shrug.

And then you get over your ass, because you know all the above is true. Writers are often megalomaniacs who think they can control everyone’s response to their work. We don’t. We can’t control everything. We can barely control anything. We really have to let go. I’ve said WicDiv is a device to help me improve as a person, yes? It would include in this area. I have to learn to let it go, and internalise all of the above. If I can make most of my readership have the vague emotional response I’m looking for, I’m winning.

I’ve mostly succeeded at this. I’m certainly better than I was two years ago.

(I’ll probably write more about spoilers and twists and stuff down the line. I’d note that setting up twists that *are* easily guessable by the hardcore is part of the methodology. Having a nice big twist foreshadowed heavily is a good way to hide another twist behind it. “Hey – pay attention to this less subtle sleight of hand while I perform the actual sleight of hand over here.” In which case, there’s less of an Oh Poop response and more of a cackling evil mastermind response.)

The sigh can occasionally be accompanied with a “Hmm. I wouldn’t have posted that” or – more likely – “I wouldn’t have posted that THERE.”

To stress, what follows isn’t about my work per se, but culture generally, and is very much personal. This is stuff which good friends disagree with me on.

As a fan, I never tweet my own fan theories. I only tweet joke ones. Even my crack theories I don’t tweet, as they’re normally so bizarre that if they actually DO happen, I wouldn’t want to take the thrill away from people. Even in person in conversation I make sure we’re going into a deep fan hole before sharing them, aware that they may be true.

In a real way, the more likely I think something is true, the less likely I’ll say it. As this is my job, I tend to see basic structural ways stories are heading way in advance of most people. I’m a composer. I know how music works. You have a vague sense of what way they’ll go.

(One day I’ll write down my crack theory for the end of the previous Game of Thrones season. Maybe after next season, as it’s not impossible that they may end up doing it, though it’s increasingly unlikely.)

If I had a really good theory I’ve gathered evidence for? You can guarantee I’d put it beneath a cut. That’s the stuff which bemuses me. It’s a cousin of posting major spoilers about any piece of culture the day it comes out. The worst is one regular twitter trope – I’m always bemused when people do a “Calling it! XYZ will happen” tweet. Which strikes me a little like standing up in the cinema 20 minutes into a film and shouting out that you’ve guessed the ending. This ties back to the stuff I wrote above about twists being less effective in the modern age, except in a place where you can control the context and conversation. People may message in movies, but they rarely message everyone in the room.

(In passing, as it’s vaguely on topic – you may remember the research from a few years ago saying people who know a twist enjoy the story more than people who don’t know a twist. Even if this is true – and a single study should always get an eyebrow raise – it strikes me as a confusion over what “enjoy” means. All pleasure isn’t equivalent, and you can only have surprise on your first time through a work of art. That’s novelty. You can have that and then gain the “not surprise” experience second time through. If you spoil a work, it means the “novelty” experience is something you will never have. You may enjoy something more if you know the twist but you can always rewatch it to get that pleasure. If you’re spoiled, the individual specific pleasure of that first watch has been stolen.)

But that’s a conversation of social mores. Really, it doesn’t change anything in terms of how we act… and sometimes, I even grin when someone gets a twist in advance. The machine is working as intended. It’s actually kind of worrying if no one is thinking something is up in an area you’ve set up to be iffy. And… the alternative is worse – hell, there’s buried twists and details in Young Avengers that no one’s managed to figure out yet.

Twist ending: oh, no, I was a ghost all along.

****

I'm pretty sure the asker was asking about the Woden/Blake/Jon twist, and I'm primarily talking in terms of balancing the various needs of the group.

The problem with this twist was less making sure that people didn't get it, but making sure that everyone understood its import. If, hypothetically, I didn't want (barely) anyone to get it, we wouldn't have mentioned Jon after we introduced him in issue 6. Problem being, everyone needs to know Jon is a person who is Blake's kid when they hit this beat. My solution was to just reintroduce Jon hard, and resolve it, knowing that most people would just accept that. Then everyone knows who Jon is, so the father/son switch makes sense.

(In other words, far better some people suspect Woden is Blake rather than everyone going “Jon who?” Especially because the real horror of the Woden/Blake reveal is in its details.)

There's the other aspect to it as well – it's the sacrificial decoy aspect that I mentioned above. Even if guessed, it's a big enough twist to distract people. I reveal this at the start of the issue, so people will probably suspect that's enough big reveals for the issue. Yet no.

(See also: issue 11's dual deaths)

In reality, I was much more worried about the relatively small leap from realising Woden Is Blake And Jon Is Pink Woden to Mimir Is A Head.

But more on that later, I suspect.

Anyway! Storytelling!

There is something incredibly instantly disturbing about Blake without the helmet on, right?

Persephone's line was tweaked a bunch. I cut it as far as I could while still existing. It's a tiny moment of Rising Action, immediately squashed.

The switch to green as the cage goes to full power, plus Matt Wilson's wonderful pixel effects.

Love the Tron-eque light-bike trails seguing into flashback...

Page 6-7

The first date is just before Ragnarock 2013, where we first saw Jon on the stage in Laura's Flashback in issue 6.

This is a “Performance” by Jon, so is presented as such, in the same manner of Persephone's performance in issue 20. Jamie's integrated circuitry design is great, and allows us to go to a limited palette. 8 panel, 8-bit glory.

And Jon Blake.

You write and discover the characters. Jon has barely been in the book – he has a couple of lines of dialogue in issue 14, and that's it. I always knew why Ananke rejects him as unsuitable, but specifically how that would be articulated was something I thought I'd discover on the page. Writing a new character this far into the book is the sort of thing which keeps it interesting.

I was worried it would be hard, or shallow, as surely all the relevant little bits of me are already taken with the rest of the cast? Within a couple of sentences of typing, I knew I had completely forgotten one Gillen archetype.

I realised Jon was a heroic take on Lloyd/Mr Logos.

I laughed. Of course. Perfect.

The 11 days later says so much about how intricate the timeline is around here. It's the day before Baal and Sakhmet made their public debut.

The “She's a fucking weirdo/language” panel is a joy.

Yeah, Ananke really does like hanging around in people's gardens.

I specifically called for Ananke to be in an outfit from a previous God-creation sequence...

Page 8-9

...so Jamie could reuse the masks and only draw Jon transforming, and pull an extra page out of the budget.

The most embarrassing bit here is that I wrote this from my memory of Mimir's legends in the early drafts, and only remembered to actually check my notes at lettering. In fact, I'd got a couple of minor details of Mimir wrong.

(Or rather, didn't grasp the complexities of Mimir – it's very hard to get a take on Mimir, because the main myths we have of him are contradictory.)

Page 10-11

Man, I want to go to Mimir's club night.

In my original draft I wrote it as Jon cutting off Ananke's “Mimir” so that the god name wasn't revealed until the last page of this whole section. As in, it would stop people putting the book down, googling “Mimir”, realising “Heads” and then possibly seeing where we were going at the end of the issue.

I decided against it, in that's only going to be a tiny fraction of readers. If people want to break the flow of their reading to look up facts, I can't control that. Even then, I also knew it would be far from certain that just because they realised Mimir is a head, that they'd then realise others could be a head before the end of the comic.

And NOT including Mimir breaks the flow for everyone else, and is a bit cheap. Better than that.

That knife gets around.

Page 12

First panel: I never get bored of modern blur photoshop to show this kind of effect.

PoV shots are something I adore in comics. The six-panel grid gives it lots of space as well.

Honestly, that last panel with Mimir's own reflection is the creepiest thing in the world, and I love it.

Page 13

Yeah, I'm much happier with the interstitial here. Horrible.

(To state the obvious: Pinocchio reference.)

Page 14-15

I just imagine the tension in this room. Ugh.

I originally had a bunch more written for Woden here, but cut it. It was much better in the silent. He may say some of it down the line, but cutting it right to the basics – the particularly creepy basics – seemed key.

We went with a normal gun. Normal guns were at the start of the story, and have sort of disappeared. Once more we return.

Lots to unpick in all this dialogue, so won't give anything else. I'll say the whole exchange about the machine was as finely picked over to imply the meaning as much as anything else in the book – that's the thing about comics. The flowery fancy stuff? That's great and fun. But the real job is the compressing of precise exact detail, especially in a book which is nothing but precise detail.

I was chatting to Jamie about issue 34 earlier, and Jamie said how much he likes drawing Mimir's helmet. Looking at page 15 makes me see it – the second and fourth panels are just excellent in completely different ways.

Page 16-17-18

Jamie chose the steady angle, I believe, with a background drop, and Matt working the colours to show the emotions.

First panel is where the last of the fun drips out of Cassandra's expletives, and we're just left with something that's really just offensive and ugly. If there's any point where the issue reaches the black cover, it'd be this sequence.

I'm glad they've got here though.

Clearly, this is a Jamie masterclass. Pick it apart, learn. delight. Like – penultimate panel on page 16. The pause, the glance aside. Perfect. Look across page 17. There's a mixture of emotion and sheer dullness and boredom and fear, and how it all pushes and pulls again.

(“And I got it” is something else)

I believe I've said WicDiv contains a recapitulation of basically everything I've ever done as a creator. Mainly the Jamie and me stuff, but basically everything. I realised Laura's arc on Imperial Phase is me reprising what I did in Generation Hope – probably one of my least remembered things, which strikes me as fair – it only landed properly as we inched towards the end of the year. The plot was basically “Is Hope Good Or Bad?” when the answer was “Her Dad died a few days before the issue started. She's fucked up.” Only in mainstream death-happy superhero comics would that work as a twist. This was a bit like that – we distance the reader from Persephone and just show the actions and see what you make of it.

“Try to be kind. You have no idea what people are going through.”

That was the stuff I'd had planned from the start, but it only got more specific as I got nearer it and WicDiv became what it was. I've talked about having mixed feelings about WicDiv's success. Laura's arc is it writ large. I hate that the definitive work of my career is this. If my Dad was not dead I would not have written this book. There is a guilt and anger that is hard to articulate directly there, and is the material I was mining for this.

On a boring technical level, we did a lot of work with Cass explicitly saying facts to ensure that no one in the readership thinks Laura is confessing to killing her family. In an issue as twisty as this, I suspect some people would have.

(The second panel on page 17 is another one – tall enough to have a bunch of half ideas.)

And Laura, after making a breakthrough, immediately crumbles to another mistake.

The “Laura” line is a nod to the song, and one of the lines in the original WicDiv document sheet.

Page 19

I was going to tweak Cass' line – in some myths he's a giant – but that she's musing gives her a little freedom to dance around what we know.

You know, I suspect one reason why Mimir was never brought up as an option connected to Woden is that he's one of the very few Norse myths who've never appeared in a Marvel superhero comic. Or at least I don't think he has.

Normally we'd put something as big as the head remove on a page turn, but it's a physically small beat, so not something you will automatically recognise out the corner of your eye when you're reading.

I love Cass' thinking face in the penultimate panel. Thinkythinkythinky.

Two major beats happening on this page, of course – it appears Mimir is a head (or a robot head, perhaps?) and Mimir thinks the machine does nothing.

And then we hard-cut to what we do, but it's worth dwelling on this a little. When thinking of plot structure, I talk about a few ways to disguise twists. Earlier, I mentioned a Big Twist can make people suspect the twists are over. This is something I tend to think of as a revealed move. As in, you create a machine of logic with a missing part. You add the missing part as late as possible, and then immediately move to what has been concealed before the audience is able to process the new information.

Hence two beats and a hard-cut...

Page 20-21-22-23

Anyway – this clearly had to be a page turn. To state the obvious.

Steady angle shot here, to have the awfulness of it there. I suspect if I’d had space I'd have had the last panel on page 19 be a third of a page, so the two removed heads could mirror one another.

As a minor detail, Minerva's running feet in the second panel of 20 are really good.

Minerva's gesture on page 21.2 is a joy. I know that feeling, Mini.

I really wanted Inanna to be talking from off panel on page 21, but that definitely would give the game away. The problem with distinctive fonts...

And 22 is the reveal on the heads. Probably best not to say much more about this, as I suspect any of the design elements will intersect with what happens in issue 34, so I'll talk a bit about it then.

Tara and Inanna's expressions really are wonderful.

Luci's line came surprisingly late. The “Talking Heads” interstitial came early. The only reason I wasn't going to use it here was in case I wanted to use it later. I decided I didn't.

Okay... twists.

In reality, for me, it's a case of once you've decided that this is the plot, the only way to do it is dovetail towards an issue like this. Any of these individual beats provide too much connective tissue to the other ones, meaning all must be revealed or none.

(You could argue about Minerva, I suspect. Maybe.)

It's been strange writing a book like this – when so much is there early on. Seeing who got what and who didn't, and how people reinforced people has been interesting. That the core WicDiv tumblr community has never really suspected Minerva was off is in some way a surprise – though I've had people talk about that directly and personally. Blake/Jon and Minerva-is-Off-In-Some-Way were the two twists I would guard, but their primary importance was in how they led to the Heads.

When Ray Fawkes told me “There's a reason you're doing all the decapitations, right?” circa issue 2, I suspected that I'd overplayed the hand by having a literal talking head in issue 3... but it turned out fine.

“Played the hand” is interesting phrasing, and telling. Writing something as intricate as this is like doing a slow-motion card trick, in public, constantly. It is a form of constant stress. I have been paranoid of fucking it up in stupid ways, and it's impacted every single conversation I've ever had about WicDiv. Like just writing one name when I mean another or something. There was a hilarious panic when I added ‘Killer Queen’ to the playlist, just thinking of it as a quite funny Ananke song... and then realised there was only one character in the cast with a connection to the band Queen, and that was Minerva. Should I take it off the playlist? No, someone may notice that, and it's against my rules anyway. I quickly added a few other things to camouflage it.

As if anyone is watching that closely, y'know?

That's an extreme example, but an entirely characteristic one. I have lost sleep over it. Even a year ago, I wished I could just get to 33 and not worry about it. When 33 dropped, it was simultaneously excellent (the response was basically what we expected) and an anticlimax (The amount of emotional and intellectual effort you put into doing this is not worth it. It could never be worth it.) I've been telling friends that I'll never write a story that operates like this again. Partially that is because I wouldn't want to repeat myself, and partially because – as I said above – I think twists are less effective in long-form serialised work in 2017, but mainly as I don't think I want to do this to myself again. I'll find some other way to torture myself.

(Spangly New Thing certainly abandons the Scorpion's-Tale narrative model in favour of an intricate character clock of woe.)

Actually, talking playlists...  I have prepared something. There's a secondary WicDiv playlist which I've been using since July for songs which speak to the end of year three and the remainder of year four. I didn't want to add these songs to the main playlist in case a particularly determined WicDiv fan worked out issue 33 from them. This says a lot about the high levels of anxiety I've been running on for the last few years on this topic. It would be terrible to blow it in such a dumb way. Now, those reading in issues know secrets the trade readers don't. So it's going to be an interesting few months.

Here's the playlist. Keep it mum. I'll add it to the main list when the trade's out. Don't shoot me for the first track.

You may have seen us trying to prod people to reread WicDiv before 33. This was partially in response to a friend who read 33 before it came out who said – I paraphrase – “I wish I could tell people to reread the series now, because after they read 33, those issues are gone, forever.” She's right – it's a pure ‘everything changes’ issue, and you can't reread the comic earlier, because everything has transmuted beneath your fingers.

Which is by our design, but is still a grim thing to think about. We've destroyed all those issues on the shelves, and replaced them with a new story. On the bright side, we've given you 35 free comics. I suspect this returns to Jamie’s and my twitchiness over comic prices, and trying to make ours better value, every way we can. In this case, we want to make rereading valuable and exciting.

SIGH! This has been a journey, friends. I'm glad I no longer have to think about any of the above. There's huge stuff coming in the final year, but it's got entirely its own character and momentum. The cards we're playing with have fundamentally changed. There's so much stuff to come, but it builds from this.

Oh – I'm sort of regretting mentioning the thing about the third theme in the backmatter, as it's clearly the sort of thing that's going to drive a certain strata of reader to distraction – especially as if there's any number of other themes in the book. The one I was thinking intersects a little with pre-existing major themes, and speaks to the particular spin on them. We'll get to it eventually. Don't worry.

Anyway, to sum it all up, clearly with four talking heads, WicDiv is four times as good as Sandman. That is a FACT.

Christmas Special shortly, the trade collection in January, the 1923 Special in February and we're back with issue 34 in March, with the new arc.

Thanks for reading.

[utterlypure]

A story for Ariadne

You were born on the isle of Crete in ancient times, in a year when your people still danced in honor of the bull. But for you, there would always be a dark secret behind that dance—

Your trouble must have started with your name. Your parents named your sisters sensible things for princesses: Phaedra, the shining one; Xenodike, justice for the stranger. But you they dared call Ariadne, and what mortal woman can live up to such a divine epithet? "The most holy" — you were born a mere girl. "The totally chaste" — like all women, you were fated to marry someday.

Were you old enough to know what it meant when the beast was born into the world? Surely you were old enough, as time passed, to recognize the shame that Minotaur brought to your family, to your people. What could you do then? You did the most you could possibly have done, princess: you stepped up among your siblings to claim responsibility for tending him.

From the court artificer you learned the secrets of the Minotaur's prison, the labyrinth built to contain him; from your people you learned the sacred dances through that terrifying place; from within yourself you drew the magic to empower them. There in the court of Knossos, you danced to keep the bull sane and contained by the foreign sacrifices to him. For centuries the bards would remember your performances; someday, the singers of the Iliad would recall your mysterious dancing grounds in the designs on the shield of Achilles.

And in your dance alone, you knew you were whole and holy, just as your name claimed.

But you grew older, and your innocence began to fade. You knew what you danced for, and you knew how much blood was shed. You knew your twirling steps through the labyrinth fell to the beat of death. And what mortal girl could live with that? Still you danced, but your heart wept.

When you were a young woman grown, then, a hero came to the island, bright of face and full of hope like the proper servant of the gods he was. He was the prince of a city across the sea, full of sunlight and olive trees, with no dark secret at its center, and he came to put an end to the beast you danced for and save his own people in the process. You loved him desperately.

So for this prince you betrayed your name: you profaned the holy bonds of family and gave him the secrets of the labyrinth which let him kill your brother, the Minotaur; you gave him a magic thread which led him safely to the beast. You betrayed your name twice: in your heart you desired this Theseus, and you planned to throw away your pure maidenhood with him and become his wife.

He slew the beast and he took you away.

But mortal men always make mistakes, and Theseus made the mistake of stopping his ship at the little island beyond the port of Heraklion, Dia; that little island known to be holy to the Nysan god, he of the bull and the vine. You were both tired, though. Perhaps he simply couldn't have known.

And as you slept there on the shores of that isle, exhausted from your adventure, Theseus looked upon you and saw who you really were and where you really belonged. The gods to whom he was loyal whispered dire threats in his ears of what would come if he took you away from your sacred home. So with their blessing, he fled, and he left you there—

When you woke, you saw his ship departing, and you were alone. You raged then in the surf; you yelled curses after him as you saw your love sailing away. You had betrayed your name once for him, but you hadn't even had the chance to consummate it.

Dionysos stole you then. He came to you, dancing as you once had with the joy of his love for you, and so the bull-god offered to take you home as his bride.

You saw in him terror and beauty, and you saw you could love him more than you ever loved a mortal prince, if you let yourself.

In the darkness of Dia, you turned your face away from him, and you did not listen to his pleas.

At last he offered you a gift: a holy crown of laurels, shining as bright as the stars, and he swore to lift you to the sky with its power. He swore to make you a queen among the gods, where you belonged.

So you let him place the crown upon your head, and you let him raise you up to the stars, where you could dance with him for ages to come.

No two ancient sources tell the same story of Ariadne. This is not uncommon; the concept of a single overarching religious canon is a relatively new concept in the West. Some Classical poets attempted to popularize pan-Hellenic versions of myths, but they were not authoritative.

The above is my version of Ariadne’s story in the Homeric through Classical eras — the one that has come down to us from the Greeks. Most of my actual sources are collected here on Theoi.com, but my reasoning for assembling them the way I did bears further discussion.

A number of my ideas come from Károly Kerényi’s (also called Karl or Carl, if you’re looking him up on Amazon) section on Ariadne in his book Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible Life. I don’t take all of his conclusions as gospel, especially given that the author died in 1973 and therefore sadly missed almost half a century of research and discussion, but he had a useful habit of explaining his sources and logic such that readers could follow along and draw their own conclusions as necessary. Combine that with the fact that he is one of the very few Dionysian scholars who even gave Ariadne serious consideration, and he’s an invaluable source to me. The aforementioned book itself was the first major study of Dionysos that I read, and I highly recommend it to devotees willing to slog through somewhat dry mid-twentieth-century academic text and step lightly around some questionable inferences.

Now to address my story.

You stepped up among your siblings to claim responsibility for tending him. There is no direct historical evidence for the idea that Ariadne was specifically the caretaker of the Minotaur, but of all the children of Minos and Pasiphae, she is the one whose name comes up most in connection with her half-brother and his dwelling-place the labyrinth. As I make a point of trying to give agency to Ariadne where the original texts do not, I made this her decision.

The court artificer. A number of elements in this tale are attributed to one “Daidalos,” often identified as a singular culture hero by that name. However, Kerényi devotes some verbiage to discussing how this name originated in a pan-Hellenic title rather than one man’s name. It is likely that the name’s use in Crete predates the concept of Daidalos as a single trickster-hero. To keep the focus of this story on Ariadne, I’ve identified him simply as a fixture of the Knossian court.

The biggest change I’ve made to the common tale was to add Ariadne’s past as a performer of sacred dances. This is, again, an idea I borrowed first from Kerényi, but which I feel suits Ariadne very well. Its usage here in specific may be traced to a single line in the Iliad, as mentioned in the story, where the labyrinthine design on the shield of Achilles is compared to “the dancing grounds Daidalos made for Ariadne.” On its face, this is slender evidence for quite a significant addition. But given the persistent association of Dionysos and the women around him with ecstatic ritual dance, I consider it an important part of Ariadne’s story that should be restored here. I will talk more about the significance of dance to Ariadne and the “Dionysian women” in another post. It’s quite a daunting subject.

The choice to characterize Theseus as a loyal “servant of the gods” comes from another source entirely: Morris Silver’s Taking Ancient Mythology Economically, which mentions that the earliest Linear B appearances of the name Te-se-u describe its bearer as a servant of the gods. The text goes on to speculate that this meant he was a hired worker of some kind, but in later sources, he was definitely a prince, and that’s important to this story, so I kept that part.

It’s common to suggest that Ariadne, like her cousin Medea, was compelled by a goddess to love and assist the heroic prince who came to her land, but I haven’t found many good sources on that. In any case it doesn’t fit with my version of the story, where she falls in love with him because he represents freedom from the darkness of her duties in the labyrinth.

So for this prince you betrayed your name. I have discussed Ariadne’s name before, both in this story and in earlier posts. It’s interesting to note that despite being named as the ultimate holy virgin goddess, she persistently betrays that expectation.

That little island known to be holy to the Nysan god. The earliest sources for the story of Ariadne place her death — and therefore, as I have discussed, her meeting with Dionysos — on Dia, not Naxos. It was probably transferred to Naxos to fit better with later holy sites of the Dionysian cult. I name Dia as a holy island here, rather than just some random bit of rock, for two reasons:

Its name. Dia is transparently a geographical version of the very persistent root Dios, which simply means “god” or “the divine.”

Being the place where Dionysos married Ariadne would probably have conferred some divinity upon the little island anyway, as well as an association with the god himself.

Incidentally, Dia today is an uninhabited national park accessible by boat.

So with their blessing, he fled. The stories do not agree on why Theseus abandoned Ariadne; many don’t even give a reason. But some of the stories say the gods commanded him to, and multiple pieces of ancient art show him being spirited away from the sleeping Ariadne by gods or a god. I take from this the implication that the gods believed Ariadne already “belonged” to another, more powerful entity than Theseus, and as their loyal servant in this story, Theseus would have accepted that judgment.

You had betrayed your name once for him, but you hadn't even had the chance to consummate it. When the Odyssey refers to the story of Theseus and Ariadne, explaining that she was struck down by Artemis on Dia rather than abandoned by her prince, the text notes that Theseus “had no joy of” Ariadne before her death.

Despite the violent undertones to the language casually used by the ancients of Dionysos taking Ariadne as a bride (see my earlier post on the matter), those sources that actually go into the marriage in detail tend to describe him making advances on Ariadne but leaving the decision to reciprocate up to her. The texts repeatedly focus on the presence of the crown of laurels, which Dionysos would later place among the constellations as Corona Borealis to symbolize Ariadne and his love for her, as a bride-gift. It is my final touch in this retelling to cast the crown and the power it represented as the object that swayed Ariadne’s heart — she would return to the home she’d fled from, but only if she could go back with the power of a queen and a goddess.

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Every Ending Theme in JoJo's Bizarre Adventure, Ranked!

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has always been deeply tied to music, with many characters and Stand names being derived from various musicians, song titles, and bands, so it comes as no surprise that the ending and opening songs of JoJo’s need to be meticulously chosen and crafted to match the themes of the JoJo chapters they’re attached to. Danni already did a great job ranking the opening themes, and you can read about that over here  if you like, but today we’ll be looking at the various ending themes and trying to come up with the answer as to which one is the absolute best! Before we get into the individual songs and where they stand in the ranking, I wanted to discuss how I'm going to take a look at each one. I'll be ranking them based on suitability to their JoJo series, overall listenability, and their ability to evoke specific ideas and themes from the show itself.  

      Before we get started, I figured it’s only fair to give an honorable mention to the following songs: "Great Days UNITS" version, along with the "Akuyaku◇Concerto ~Oingo & Boingo~" and "Akuyaku◇Concerto ~Hol Horse & Boingo~" songs. "Great Days UNITS" was an amazing way to end the Diamond is Unbreakable part of the series, but since it is also the opening theme for the latter half of the series as well, it really doesn’t fit into a listing of only ending songs. The two Akuyaku Concerto songs are amazing and definitely worth a listen, but they’re really specifically dependent on those 3 episodes of Stardust Crusaders and don’t have much, if any, bearing on the rest of the series at all. While I love these, it didn’t seem fair to include them in the regular ranking, as they’d just be in the bottom anyway, so I wanted to give them a little attention here and then move on to the real list!  

5) "Walk Like an Egyptian" by The Bangles

Coming in last on the list is The Bangles’s “Walk Like an Egyptian”.  The catchy 1986 pop tune has been a hit on pop and now throwback radio stations since it came out, and the song was highly popular when it came out, hitting the top spots of the Hot 100 in the US, as well as putting out high rankings on UK and US singles charts when released. The album it came from, Different Light, had another hit in “Manic Monday”, which helped secure the band a number 2 spot on the Billboard 200.

The song itself seems to fit into the overall idea of the first half of Stardust Crusaders, in which Jotaro and company are literally trying to reach Egypt, but doesn’t have quite as much of a connection to the themes or mood of the episodes aside from that, as some other songs do. While this choice was a fun one for the series, it doesn’t seem to have as strong of a connection as later ending songs do, and doesn’t quite evoke a sense of excitement in hearing it play as an episode ends, and doesn’t have as clean of a lead in as other songs do either. Although it’s a great bop to nod your head to, there isn’t much else here to it, and the song itself floats a bit more on its popularity and notoriety as a popular song than it does on any other type of connection to JoJo or Hirohiko Araki, although you could possibly argue that the “Walk like an Egyptian” dance in the music video occasionally makes people pose like a JoJo character!  

4) "Freek'n You" by Jodeci

Number four on the list is Golden Wind’s choice of “Freek’n You” by Jodeci. This choice caused quite an uproar amongst Western fans when it was revealed, as many had initially believed Coolio’s “Gangsta’s Paradise” would have been a more fitting choice. Frankly, the content of “Gangsta’s Paradise” doesn’t fit with the series at all, being a somewhat sombre rap ballad about the danger and darkness of living in a proverbial gangsta’s paradise. Instead, the Golden Wind anime features a particularly sensual version of Italian mafia aesthetics, particularly in the Bucciarati group, making the smash hit R&B song a much better selection.

Part 5 breaks from the JoJo norm in a few ways, featuring characters that are less physically threatening, as well as more unique and odd Stand powers, such as Pesci’s deceptively dangerous Fisher Man. I've mentioned before a few reasons why Jodeci and JoJo are a great match, and the R&B group are just as unique and important to music as JoJo is to anime and manga. With that said, you might ask why it seems to be so low on my list, but with only five songs to choose from, it’s less a judgement of quality and more about which seems to match with its particular series best; in that case, Jodeci’s song is a good fit, but a few others really edge it out of my top spots.

  3) "I Want You" by Savage Garden

    The final three slots of my list are pretty close, with each one edging the other out by just a little bit! Third place goes to Savage Garden’s “I Want You”, the 1996 pop-hit that finds a perfect home as a compliment to the 90s aesthetics of Diamond is Unbreakable. Like the other songs in my top three, I felt that this one really meshed with the designs and ideas of Part 4, and it seems that Araki agrees! On his website, Araki wrote that he felt that the song’s unique style and touch of progressive music styles really meshed with his ideas for Part 4.

  I have to say that Araki is 100% right here, as the slow, rhythmic start to the song gives way to a rising change that mixes somewhat soothing beats into a more energetic song is a great fit for Diamond is Unbreakable, which tends to move between small, close comedy scenes and dramatic murder mystery. “I Want You” loses out a bit to the last two songs on my list, mostly due to their overarching thematics to the stories they’re attached to, but this one certainly deserves to be in the top 3 spot due to how fitting it seems to be for Josuke and the gang.

  2) "Last Train Home" by the Pat Metheny Group

    In another world, this choice might have been my controversial top spot, but “Last Train Home” by the Pat Metheny Group certainly takes an easy silver here as our number 2 ending song. While “Walk Like an Egyptian” is a somewhat fun and upbeat song, “Last Train Home” kicks off the second half of Stadust Crusaders with a melancholic jazz melody. For us, this song takes the cake over quite a few others due to the way the song’s melodic theme matches the grim realization of Part 3’s impending end, and is one of the best endings to mix the audio with important visual cues, such as certain characters being positioned in certain ways (across the river, facing away, number of tickets, etc.) foreshadowing the tragic fact that not everyone will make it back alive after facing DIO.

Perhaps even more interesting is the fact that Araki considered the album As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls by Pat Metheny and Lyle Mays to be particularly important to developing Steel Ball Run, Part 7 of the JoJo series, giving this song an even stronger link to the JoJo universe than it might originally seem. The Jazz fusion themes of the song help give it a particularly unique sound and style, making it individually memorable for a song that didn’t have much radio play compared to some of the other selections. Ironically, it shares something in common with my number 1 selection, in the sense that the song is about 5 times longer on its own than it is during the ending sequence of the show.

1) "Roundabout" by Yes

It’s pretty obvious what my last choice is, so without further ado, the number 1 ending song in JoJo is: “Roundabout” by Yes! It likely doesn’t come as much of a surprise that it ended up here, but I'll talk through my selection process. First of all, it’s the only song to accompany two parts of the JoJo series, both Phantom Blood and Battle Tendency, but Araki considered the song one of the influential pieces for his writing process during the beginnings of the manga, and it's a song Araki requested be used in the anime itself. The sound director, Yoshikazu Iwakami, was the one who noticed that the song fit so well with the closing scenes of episode 6, and worked to make it blend into the ending of each episode following it. As numerous memes have since made use of, the classic guitar lead in of the song giving way to the ‘to be continued’ arrow and then the ending sequence became one of the hallmarks of the first parts of the JoJo’s anime.

But I knew why the song would probably get to #1 and why it fits so well, so instead, let's talk about the song itself and what it has in common with JoJo’s. Many of the songs chosen after it were chosen for the fitting musical period and style of the era that the story takes place in, but “Roundabout” ironically doesn’t fit this mold; Part 1 is far too archaic for the song to have existed, and Part 2 is too early for the song as well, with Yes publishing the song in 1972. The link is established more by Araki’s stated influence of the song on his work, and the progressive rock stylings of Yes, that lends to the way JoJo operates as a whole. Progressive rock (or “prog rock") is a style of music that isn’t focused on progressive politics, but “progressing” music by being highly experimental, drawing upon various types of other musical styles, unusual instrument choices, song lengths, and almost any other experimental type of idea that could influence the songs.

Groups like The Beatles, Yes, Pink Floyd, the Grateful Dead, and the Beach Boys were all highly influential prog rock bands, mixing technology and art theories into music which had, to that point, been somewhat simplistic and unchanging. When compared to Araki’s work on JoJo, it is easy to see the connection between progressive rock music and Araki’s unique, flowing art style and aesthetics, the combination of various types of pop-culture into a single title, and even his focus on using musically themed names in his work. While it doesn’t share the innate, timely connection to its parts like other songs, there’s no JoJo song that fits better, and better expresses the concepts of JoJo’s, than “Roundabout!”

And there you have it! As I keep watching Part 5 (and the hopeful continuation into Parts 6, 7, and 8), we’ll see if any new ending songs come out to challenge our list. Maybe in a few years, we can revist this list and see if any song was capable of dethroning “Roundabout!” Until then, I’ll keep rocking that JoJo ending playlist and enjoying the vast and different musical styles that Araki and Lucky Land have graced us with in-between waiting for new JoJo episodes!

  Do you agree with my list? What’s your favorite JoJo ending song? Let us know in the comments!

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Nicole is a features and a social video script writer for Crunchyroll. Known for punching dudes in Yakuza games on her Twitch channel while professing her love for Majima. She also has a blog, Figuratively Speaking. Follow her on Twitter: @ellyberries

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