#because where is the line between similarity and assimilation?

[princessmuk]

Here is the most simple problem every human experiences: If you are not familiar with X group, then any individual member of that group must represent the whole.

Your sister likes horses? Well, every girl must like horses then.

You meet someone from a different country that has a strange quirk? Well, everyone from that country must be like that.

Your gay friend is bad at math? Well, every gay person must be bad at math.

Your friend of X race has great skin? Well, every member of that race must have great skin, too.

This happens to everyone. Everyone. Trying to act like it doesn’t happen to you just stops you from examining your biases. And yeah, when you learn more about the world, it can be easy to make assumptions so you can more easily understand and interact with it. Cultural customs, trends, and characteristics are useful.

But with assumption comes bias and prejudice. And assumptions cannot lead you forever.

That is why you need to delve deeper. Expose yourself to different cultures and ways of thinking. Meet people who are different than you. Listen to them. Find media from their cultures, separate the stereotypes from the culture.

One does not represent the whole. Every human being is unique.

[drieddpetals]

(warning: literary analysis ahead) i know i'm not the first person by far to say this, but there are so many similarities between kaz and wylan in six of crows and ESPECIALLY crooked kingdom.

there's obviously the big one of both of them having a re-birth type experience in the harbor, but that's not where the similarity stops. during my ck reread, i noticed that the reason kaz and wylan are in the harbor in the first place is because a father-like figure.

pekka rollins was a father-like figure to both kaz and jordie, and the book says this. the rietveld boys had just lost their father, and one of the big reasons pekka was able to scam jordie and kaz so well is because he provided them with a comforting and parental like space. kaz ofc eventually ends up in the harbor, and it can all be traced back to pekka rollins.

wylan has his rebirth in the harbor due to his father. the connection is more direct with his, but even then there are middle men and other things involved. but again, it can all be traced back to his father.

going off this thought, they both lost a close family member due to a father figure.

another big similarity i found that i feel like i haven't seen anyone talk about his what kaz and wylan are both motivated by: revenge.

wylan does not start off the books being motivated by revenge. he ends up in the barrel and with the crows out of a desperation to both hide from his father and because he genuinely has no where else to go. later on in ck, after wylan finds his mother at saint hilde, the book very clearly states that his motivation changes. at the begining of chapter 31, there's a scene where wylan is staring at himself in the mirror. there are lines that say, "What am I doing here? But he knew the answer. Only he could see his father punished for what he'd done. Only he could see his mother freed." which drives me INSANE!! because it's a DIRECT PARELLEL to things kaz says/feels about jordie!! in the chapter right before that (30) there's a line that says, "He'd found his way to shore, devoted himself to the vengeance he and his brother were owed." (there are other and better lines that reference wylan's "only he could *take revenge*" line, but this is just the closest one that comes to mind)

there are differences between their motives—you could say that kaz's revenge motive is more direct and violent—but there's also the fact that we see both kaz and wylan get their revenge in the book.

both kaz and wylan want revenge for one of their family members, and themselves, from what a father figure in their life has done.

they've also both been kidnapped by jan/held in captivity by him. i know this happens to inej too, but i think it's important that one of the first scenes we see with kaz is him negotiating with jan after being captured by him, and then towards the very end of the series, we (very simplified and on the surface) see the same thing happening to wylan. i know the two jan captivity scenes with kaz and wylan are very different, but i think the basic similarity of these scenes really attest to how far wylan has come and how much he's been assimilated into the crows.

there's also of course the part where wylan's expression is said to be something that looks kaz-like, which i feel also shows how far he's come and how he's truely developed into a crow.

in conclusion, as others have said, they truely are two sides of the same coin. they're so different but so alike, and i absolutely love how leigh bardugo was able to directly juxstapose wylan and kaz when they're so different on the surface.

[dduane]

I've been following the fanfic & author discussion and I definitely see the issue with fanfic based on your own work. However, I'm curious how that doesn't extend to, well, everything else. If an author reads a coffeeshop AU based on their works and then writes something similar into a book, how is that different from reading a coffeeshop AU from a completely different media and then writing something similar with the names changed to their characters?

At the fanfic level, for me, it does extend to everything else. Let me tease this out a bit for you.

All writers distill their output at least partly from huge amounts of data, fed into their storymaking systems over (routinely) decades of time. When that input comes along in the form of traditionally "published" material—books or films or comics or whatever—I’d expect there to be an inherent understanding that what one publishes or films may (if you're lucky) wind up in the public consciousness. And thereafter—assimilated and, ideally, much changed and individualized—it may also end up in the work of people who create in the same general way you do.

Where traditionally published materials that I've internalized are involved, I've paid for them (or libraries or similar institutions have paid for them for me). Money''s changed hands, confirming (as it were) the contract between the creators and me. After that, what I make of Paradise Lost or Perelandra is my business.

And my business, both generally and specifically, is subversion. It's a rare work in any genre that doesn't afterwards leave me wondering "But how about if this was done completely differently...?" I.e., "What if a prince rescued a prince?" "What if you don't need a school to learn magic, because the universe teaches you?" And so on. ...The only hard and fast rule I have about this process is one that Heinlein handed me: "Sure, file the serial numbers off that idea and make something else of it. But you have to leave it different, and ideally better, than when you found it. If you're going to be the magpie who makes off with a pretty shiny thing, you must bring back something bigger and shinier in return."

So that's how that operation goes, when I'm dealing with what we might consider mainstream/tradpub works.

But fanfic operates under different rules. No money changes hands (because no money may). Fic writing is founded in a gift economy. And for me, to steal a gift or steal from a gift-giver is vile.

So, per the original question: For me, the primary difference between the two kinds of fics you're positing above is that in the first case, the fic's author and I are (creatively speaking) in a relationship... even if (strictly speaking) it's a nonconsensual one. I therefore feel a responsibility to protect their work from me by not allowing myself into situations where I might, however accidentally, borrow from it. And I also feel a responsibility to protect myself from possible adverse consequences of having seen their work. Safest way to ensure that protection on both sides? Not to see their work.

In the second case, let's say we've got a coffeeshop AU where, oh, I don't know, Bert is a barista and Ernie is a regular customer. (And Big Bird is the manager, and Cookie Monster is—no no, let's STOP this now...) Here it's safe to say that my relationship with either the IP owner* or the fic writer is likely to be nil. The writer doesn't know about me, or (I'm sure) care. They've put their stuff out there on AO3 or wherever for their own reasons, and at least theoretically for others' entertainment. So I'm at liberty to take it as such.

Which is all very well on the face of it. But if I caught myself inserting business from that Bert/Ernie AU fic into something of mine, what I'd consider the right thing for me to do would be to discard that whole line of thought and start over... because this is material sourced in a gift economy, and to me it feels wrong to use a gift this way.

And stressing this point: I'd do that once I'd caught myself. Because as I mentioned at the start of this, all writers pick up and digest concepts and situations that then go "into the pot", as Tolkien said, and get lost over time in the general melange of flavor. If I don't catch myself, and then the flavor of the original gets submerged in the overall taste of the soup to the point where I can't ID it... that could get troublesome. And if I later realize what's happened, it'll pain me no end.

This is why I do not want to see Young Wizards fanfic at all. The chance always exists that if I do look at any of it, I might accidentally internalize it and pop it out, however changed, years later... and would thereby have abused my relationship with the fic writer. (And yes, ever though they would by definition be in that relationship with me nonconsensually, that would not make it right, or all right, for me to do the same thing back to them.) In this regard, I'd sooner be safe than sorry... because being sorry about something you've written is a very sad, bitter place to be.

...Maybe all the above will strike some people as unusually rigorous. (shrug) That doesn't bother me; not least because they don't have to live inside my head, and I do. My creative life doesn't have a billion rules, but this is one that seems obvious to me, and which I do my best not to violate. It's not all about legal exposure. It's about trying to do right.

HTH.

*It's surprising how many potential scenarios I had to throw out just now because I am in relationships with the IP owners, or have been. Pity. The Cap/Bucky one would have been fun...) :)

[dappersautismcreature]

while i am deep reading the qsmp rn i want to talk about assimilation and the growing tolerance of fed injustice in the qsmp

i do not state that the fed is pure evil, as ive said previously nobody is pure evil, so i also dont think people who work for the fed are pure evil, not walter bob, not fred, not fit, not foolish, not jaiden.

but where and when is the line crossed? how can you work for something that has hurt your fellow people? your loved ones?

well, i see as similar to the idea of "there is no ethical consumption under capitalism" < while comparing the authoritarian gov of the fed to capitalism is NOT a one to one, living under the fed, and living under capitalism both complicate morals, and have an element of needing to survive.

the want vs need is the difference for me between someone like fit, who needs to infiltrate the fed in order to find a way out, or foolish, who wants to work for the fed for luxury goods and privileges.

and then we also see the dichotomy of walter bob, and fred. walter bob is a low level worker who needs to work for the fed because he is forced to. fred is an upper level worker who works for the feds because he WANTS to. fred also shifts opinions and talking points depending on who he is conversing with. he is kind to tubbo because he is manipulating him. walter bob was nice to people because he was nice at heart, because he needed kindness and wanted to reciprocate kindness, because he was stuck in survival mode.

the islanders are growing comfortable with the horrors of the federation, yes, but that's unfortunately a natural response to constant threat, appease.

You must work alongside your oppressors to bring about their own downfall, you must revolt while under their thumb. Revolutionaries cannot be morally pure, you dont make an omelette without breaking a few eggs. and expecting the oppressed to remain morally pure while fighting against impure oppressive systems is improper and impossible.

Cellbit is surviving, to an extent Jaiden is surviving too. When will they cross the line? who knows.

If they do bad things at the Feds orders, even if it is to survive, they are still responsible for their actions. They still have to take accountability, but it does not mean they are evil. But at some point, redeeming a villain is not viable, they have hurt too many people, they have approached their work with too much enthusiasm, they have WANTED to work for the Feds.

brainwashing is a whole other can of worms.

TLDR: Life under the Fed is about survival, but not for all workers, its want vs need, Fred vs WB, Foolish vs Fit

[aemiron-main]

I'm The Only Friend You'll Ever Have: Did Patty Get Agent Smith’d During TFS? Why Is Brenner Everbody?

So, I’ve been working on some other posts re: The Matrix vs ST & the idea that the weird Brenner-esque Henward that we see during the massacre is the result of Brenner pulling a Matrix 3 Agent Smith-esque move where he’s able to possess people/infect them like a computer program.

I’m specifically talking about what Smith does where he possesses Bane and Bane still looks like Bane, just with new parallels to Smith + Smith’s mannerisms, speech patterns etc-

-rather than Smith’s other ability to assimilate other residents of the matrix into himself/take over their bodies & shapeshift into them looking like him (although something like that could also be at play here considering all of the shapeshifter stuff in ST, especially both Brenner and Patty's shapeshifter references):

And so, I’m wondering if Brenner did something similar to Henward during NINA- but anyway, like I said, I have more in-depth drafts on that in the works, but right now, I want to take that idea and also apply it to TFS- specifically, to Patty.

So, I talked in this post about Patricia from Split vs Patricia/Patty Newby, and the Brenner-One stuff and the idea of Brenner with absorption abilities, and how that could connect to Patty in TFS.

And then, also keeping in mind all of the weird simulation stuff during TFS, such as the anachronistic song references the fact that Rachel, Nevada didn’t exist until 1978, and the CONSTANT references to The Matrix during TFS etc, such as Patty being referred to as “the anomaly,” versus Neo getting called “the anomaly,” in The Matrix-

-I’m now wondering if Brenner may have pulled an Agent Smith move with Patty during some of the TFS scenes and possessed her in a very similar way to Agent Smith with Bane, and like whatever’s going on with that weird Brenner-esque Henward during the massacre.

Like a puppet master.

Let’s dig in.

So, like I said, I’m wondering if some of Patty’s scenes are Brenner basically puppeting her- NOT all of her scenes, though, and eventually I’ll go through them all & figure out which ones this does vs doesnt apply to, but the main scene that I think connects to this is the Henry-Patty kiss scene.

So, when it comes to the kiss scene, the visual parallels between the Henry-Patty kiss scene and one of the Brenner-Henry scenes have already been haunting me:

But there’s more.

There’s a dialogue line from Patty during that scene that’s always stuck out to me- when talking to Henry, she says “we’re connected, whether you like it or not”:

Which, first of all, that line stuck out to me because it just seemed kind of odd and out of character for Patty (as does quite a bit of her behaviour/lines during this scene).

But second of all, it’s not only phrased eerily similarly to how TFS Brenner phases his lines, (especially with how it’s more forceful/“whether you like it or not,” versus Brenner always trying to control Henry/referring to Henry as US government property/saying nobody cares about Henry except for him/that Henry’s going to come crawling back to him etc etc) but it’s ALSO got parallels/shared word usage with two of Brenner’s lines:

1.) We have Patty saying “we’re connected,” versus Brenner constantly telling Henry to “connect,” with the shadow:

And 2.) We have Patty saying “whether you like it or not,” versus Brenner saying “you liked it, more even than you thought you would”:

And then we also have Patty saying “let me help you,” versus Brenner saying that he’s “here to help”:

And Patty also has the clasped hands during this scene- just like how we see clasped hands with Henward during NINA and Flayed Billy etc:

And interestingly enough, Patty’s clasped hand poss is basically a perfect combination of the two main hand clasp positions- Billy & Normal Henward’s (not pictured above but his hand clasp pose is the same as Billy’s) hand clasp position vs Weird Henward’s hand clasp position (hes the one in the above pic).

And on top of all that, during this scene, Henry says “it’s not you,” to Patty during this scene:

Which, on the surface, Henry is saying that Patty isn’t the problem/that Patty Herself Specifically isn’t the reason why he doesn’t want to do the kiss- but when we look at it subtext-wise, it connects to the idea that this literally isn’t Patty during this scene.

And that line gets EXTRA suspicious considering that we JUST saw a vision/fake version of Patty/“Not Patty” in the bathroom right before the kiss scene, wearing the same blue dress and everything- and doing the SAME HAND CLASP AS SHE DOES DURING THE KISS SCENE:

And so who knows if the kiss scene even really happened at all but that’s a whole other topic. So whether she’s being puppeted by Brenner or not, and whether the kiss scene is totally or partially a vision or not a vision at all, it still seems likely that this “isn’t Patty” during the kiss scene. Ppersonally, I’m wondering if this “isn’t Patty,” but not in the same way that the bathroom Patty wasn’t Patty, like with the bathroom scene being a vision & “not Patty” because that “Patty” isnt real vs kiss scene “Patty” being Patty physically but with some sort of weird Brenner puppeting stiff going on, esp because while Vision Patty and Kiss Scene Patty do both have the same hand clasp, Vision Scene Patty’s hair/wig is very obviously/intentionally wrong, which isn’t the case for Kiss Scene Patty However, despite what I just said, oddly enough, Patty also has the weird wig during the entire classroom scene that happens right BEFORE that bathroom scene (it might be hard to tell just from a screenshot but I 1000% guarantee that this wig in the pic is not her usual wig and IS the same as her bathroom scene wig):

And while at first I went "hmm, maybe this weird wig thing IS just a genuine "error"/her wig looks weird because she ends up pulling clips of it out and has a whole weird scalp brain thing under that wig during the bathroom scene so maybe that's why this wig looks odd, because they have to fit all that under there" but a.) there's so much 1000% intentional weirdness going on with the TFS hair/wigs (see: things like this post where I talked about Calum Ross' weird brown haired Henry wig versus brown haired 7 year old Henry) and the idea of wigs plays a large role in ST in general (see: S1 El's blonde wig), so they're very particular about how they use wigs/hair & how that connects to the plot, and b.) there's a fair bit of time where we see Henry alone in the bathroom prior to Vision Patty showing up/a fair bit of time where we aren't seeing Patty at all, so it seems like there may have been ample time to swap her wig from her normal wig to the vision scene wig (espeically since they quickly swap from the vision scene wig to the normal wig AFTER the vision scene for the kiss scene, like theres WAY less time between those scenes vs between the classroom scene and the bathroom scene, and it's Ella Karuna Williams in all of these scenes, so it's not just double with different wigs, instead, they ARE rapidly swapping Ella's wig).

So, did any of that scene really happen??? Did the scene before the bathroom scene even happen?? Did the kiss scene even happen??

And also, going back to The Matrix briefly, and what I talked about re: Agent Smith puppeting Bane, Vision Patty in the bathroom has a line that references the exact scene where it's revealed that Smith was puppeting Bane- Vision Patty says "We want the same thing" versus Smith-As-Bane saying "I want what you want":

Not to mention that right after that line, Smith-As-Bane says these lines about "nowhere"- versus Patty being the "girl from nowhere":

And so, I hate to say this, but if Brenner was puppeting Patty in some sort of simulation in that scene, then that makes the Henry-Patty kiss even worse- but it would track with all of the in-show “Brenner’s a creep” subtext re: Brenner and Henry, and would also track with how weird Brenner is towards Henry in TFS- TFS Brenner straight up acts like a jealous husband towards Henry and treats him like a battered wife.

The weird “””””romantic””””” tones from Brenner towards Henry are VERY on the nose, like there’s a parallel between Brenner/Henry and Byler- Brenner is acting all weird and jealous because Henry wants to leave the lab, but instead of assuming that “hey, maybe he wants to leave because everything that’s happening here is fucking horrifying and he also just almost died in here a little while ago,” Brenner instead immediately jumps to “you want to leave because you want to go to prom with some STUPID GIRL,” in a DIRECT parallel to the Byler rain fight scene:

Point is, having Brenner puppeting Patty during a kiss scene where Henry very much did NOT want to kiss would align with all of Brenner in-show creep stuff AND with the way he behaves towards Henry in TFS.

It could also tie into all of the HNL conversion therapy imagery, especially since TFS Henry is painfully gay, and Patty very well might be a lesbian (Lonnie’s line about lesbian vs thespians vs Patty acting in the DOTM play & Patty’s robin parallels & Barbara Holland being a lesbian vs Patty playing Barbara Allen in the play etc etc) and so, there’s definitely conversion therapy vibes when it comes to puppeting a lesbian and making her kiss a boy & at the same time, making a gay boy kiss a girl as a result/Henry didn’t want the kiss, so the forced/lowkey conversion therapy vibes are definitely there for him AND for Patty re: her being puppeted.

And hell, further reinforcing the idea that Henry/Patty were being puppeted here (especially Patty), the kiss takes place on a STAGE, when they’re supposed to be ACTING, when they’re supposed to be PRETENDING TO BE SOMEBODY ELSE- which would connect to Brenner pretending to be Patty when puppeting her Agent Smith style, just like how Agent Smith pretends to be Bane). And also, Brenner later has a line of dialogue that's VERY suspicious in the context of the idea of "Patty" actually being Brenner/being puppeted by Brenner in some scenes- Brenner says "And hell, further reinforcing the idea that Henry/Patty were being puppeted here (especially Patty), the kiss takes place on a STAGE, when they’re supposed to be ACTING, when they’re supposed to be PRETENDING TO BE SOMEBODY ELSE- which would connect to Brenner pretending to be Patty when puppeting her Agent Smith style, just like how Agent Smith pretends to be Bane).

And there’s also all of the weird Vecna-Brenner connections in ST, plus the shadow of Vecna flashing over Brenner at the end of TFS-

-which then brings me to a.) how often Vecna appears as a woman in visions, looking like rotten versions of Chrissy’s mom and replacing Max’s mom with himself and b.) the fact that right before the kiss scene, we saw a vision version of Patty who looked normal at first, but then started transforming and rotting just like the Vecna versions of Chrissy’s mom and Max’s mom AND we also saw the same thing happen to Patty’s mom (which also lmao if Henry is supposedly solely Vecna with no weird Brenner merging or anything else involved, how the hell was he having what’s basically Vecna visions during TFS?).

And speaking of mothers, this whole puppeting may not end at Patty- because I’m also staring at Virginia.

Especially since one of the Virginia-Henry scenes also parallels the Brenner-Henry face holding scene and the Henry-Patty kiss scene:

And Brenner also has a line whre he says "you think you can run back home to mommy and be a good boy again?" to Henry- which, that line implies that Virginia called Henry a "good boy" at some point/saw him as a good boy/tldr they're connecting the phrase "good boy" to Virginia- which then makes it VERY suspicious when Brenner calls Henry a "good boy" at the end of TFS:

Brenner, why are you everybody?? Why are you Henry's mother?? Is it because you're puppeting people??

And also, TFS Brenner has another extremely suspicious line when it comes to this whole "people in Henry's life are actually Brenner"/in the context of the idea of "Patty" actually being Brenner/being puppeted by Brenner in some scenes- Brenner says "I'm the only friend you'll ever have" to Henry, which, Fake Patty also brought up being Henry's friend during the bathroom scene, and the word "friend" was also associated with Brenner back in S1- so while on the surface, Brenner is telling Henry that nobody loves him/that he only has Brenner, there may also be a literal double meaning here, that meaning being that all of Henry's "friends" in TFS (see: Patty) are actually Brenner because TFS involves some sort of weird simulation, and Patty is being puppetted by Brenner:

And again, I’m not saying that in the ACTUAL events of 1959, Brenner was puppeting everyone- I think that TFS Virginia is likely accurate to what actually happened with Virginia, and that Patty was a real person at some poiint, BUT TFS has so many references to it not being real/it being some sort of memories/simulation/alternate timeline/combination of all of those, that I think within the simulation, Brenner is puppeting people around/possessing them Agent Smith style. Like TFS Henry’s likely got actual memories of Virginia and Patty,, but some of those TFS scenes are likely Brenner messing with Henry’s memories by puppeting the memory-simulation version of Virginia around, like when you’re playing The Sims & start actually making your Sim do things instead of letting them do stuff on their own- I think that’s what Brenner’s doing, he’s nabbing various Sims, playing as them to mess with Henry within the simulation, and then letting them go back to “normal”.

Like, imagine if when El was in NINA, we got shown that Brenner was puppeting 002 & pretending to act like he really was 002 while possessing him- that’s what I mean here except Henry’s the one getting NINA’d, and that’s also what I think happened with that weird Brenner-esque Henward during NINA.

Not to mention all of the weird shadow hivemind stuf and the fact that if Patty and Brenner were also connected to the hivemind, who knows what sort of weird possession stuff could be happening…

Anyway! Just some Thoughts!

[heliianth]

Raises my hand I wanna hear about the au!! Here's some prompts to talk about for it if you want

1. Any thoughts about how killugon's familiar pact works?

2. What's killugon's magic like respectively?

3. What is Alluka and Nanika up too?

(No pressure to answer all of these but ur au just seems so cool!)

YAY ok hello hi ok

stuff is below the cut because i YAPPED sorry lol this is a biiig wall of text.

forewarning some of the Lore™ is kind of fucked but its pretty in line with some of the shit that already happens in hxh anyway so just. expect that ;;^-^

1—

Killua and Gon's familiar pact is weird and its a bit hard to explain so hang on with me here bc first i gotta explain what a normal familiar pact is like

witches can make deals with sentient magical entities—often minor spirits that take the form of animals—in exchange for power. it acts as a symbiotic relationship, though with some downsides. their life forces are linked together along with some other more case-specific caveats. it's for this reason that familiar pacts are pretty rare because generally magic entities don't want to suddenly become mortal like that, it's usually not worth it. but anyway. after both agree, they will collaborate to summon a magic object as proof and confirmation of the pact. usually it's something small like earrings or whatever, but magic users can always tell if something is a familiar object or not. they have capital-v Vibes. you can have a pact without a familiar object, but its a bad idea because the power boost can fuck you up; they act as, like, a filtration system where you only get what the deal says you get with none of the really really ugly side effects of a mortal using a spirit's power. trying to non-consensually break the pact by destroying the object voids the deal but also completely severs both parties' connections with magic (similar to how breaking a nen vow in canon has the potential to nukes your ability to use nen). a witch and their familiar can safely break the pact, but it has to be a mutual decision, and even then some drain in magic is likely

so... why is killugon's weird? bc the Zoldycks are weird.

Kukuroo Mountain sits on top of a magic wellspring (like a hotspot for natural magic) which allows the Zoldycks to do all sorts of fuckshit that wouldn't otherwise be possible, and that includes their dummy unethical family necromancy ritual that merges a benign spirit with a human in the seconds before your soul disappears after death, artificially creating a demon (demons basically being what humans call fucked up scary spirits. its not exactly what this ritual turns someone into, but there's no vocabulary for it because its so rare outside of the Zoldycks). it's sort of like a nasty perversion of the familiar pact ritual because it involves magic power between an entity and a mortal, but it kills the spirit involved instead of creating a bond. the resulting "familiar object" is called a Demon Pearl. Demon Pearls resemble gemstones and magic users generally think they're a manifestation of the human and spirit merging, like how lightning striking sand creates glass. unlike a regular familiar object, if a Demon Pearl breaks, the owner will just outright die. for future reference, this whole thing is colloquially referred to as an assimilation ritual.

as an aside: Killua's design is inspired by nekomata—cat yōkai that are sometimes described as being abused domestic cats that return from the dead(?) in order to enact revenge. so :3c

to get back on track: if a familiar pact is a symbiotic relationship between a witch and a spirit, Zoldycks are like little magic parasites that literally want to eat you. they actually have to eat you in order to keep existing, because they don't have their own magic to sustain themselves like "real" naturally formed spirits or demons do. and they extract that magic via . cannibalism. i guess its not cannibalism if they're not human anymore? u know what im talking about.

(as clarification: this ritual isn't like, monopolized by the Zoldycks, but it's also not common knowledge. it's highly illegal and difficult. not to mention immoral lol. they're just the only ones who have the resources, amassed skill, and gall to do it so frequently and openly as a family right of passage thing)

all that is to say the Zoldycks are technically magic entities that can make familiar pacts, but theyre bad at it and it would be a bad idea even if they werent. Killua by all means should not have one. but killugon do not give a shit about what they should and shouldn't do. that's like their whole MO

so Gon and Killua's familiar pact works because:

a) like in canon, Gon is kind of a bottomless pit of potential. his connection with magic runs really deep and his specific practice means he's less likely to "burn" through his magic than other witches—talk about it more when i answer ur 2nd question :3

b) their familiar object is Killua's Demon Pearl (a huge "fuck you" by having the object representing him and Gon's bond be something that actually can't be destroyed unless they want to kill him lol), meaning that it doesn't act as a filtration device so much as a straight up transfer. so Killua doesn't have to eat Gon to mooch off him at 100% effectiveness, but that does mean they're at risk of unbalancing each other. that's where the next part comes in

c) Killua actually has magic binds etched on him by his family. similar to Illumi's needle, it's supposed to be a safeguard against Killua getting into a deadly situation where he uses too much magic without a food source and starves to death, but it also makes him less likely to negatively effect Gon through their pact

as for the actual deal that lead to their familiar pact... "Let's stay together [forever]!" Gon likes calling it a promise instead of a deal because it feels less transactional. & yes that little blue necklace he wears is Killua's Demon Pearl. usually it's tucked under his shirt so people don't notice tho lol

2—

Gon does a branch of magical art called green alchemy!!! I don't have hard and fast rules for it yet as I kind of want magic itself to be wishy-washy and dependent on the user's own creativity in the same way Nen is and also because i feel like a type of magic that lets Gon go off the rails is where he'd best fit. so i don't have a strict definition of what "green alchemy" is yet beyond what the name implies, but the most basic application is physically turning parts of nature into other parts of nature. i want to make it a very material-based way to use magic so it forces Gon into being resourceful, and his aptitude with it is informed by his childhood spent in the woods learning the rules of nature before he uses magic to bend them. like grabbing a fist full of dirt and squeezing it hard enough to turn it into a really dense stone, or doing the reverse and causing a giant boulder to crumble into soil. it gets wackier when you add your own magic into the mix, and you can do thinks like speeding up natural processes; causing vegetation to combust, rapidly growing plants, etc. things like that

Killua is like. his main thing is that hes a little creature with sharp teefs and sharp claws. the assimilation ritual the Zoldycks did with him involved a lightning spirit, so he does have his lightning too, but using it is problematic because of those aforementioned binds he has on him and the whole. cannibalism thing. if he went sparky too often he'd have to eat something or someone in order to maintain equilibrium with Gon. so using his electricity kind of necessitates escalating a fight into a lethal situation in order for immediate food and he has to treat it like that

3—

ok so this question kind of calls me out bc i dont have a "plot" for this au yet. its really just a bunch of worldbuilding and AMVs i imagine while listening to songs lol. so what Alluka and Nanika are doing is probably similar to what they do at the beginning of canon. which is sitting in their vault </3 i dunno. maybe i will brainstorm something different!

but!!! i can tell you what their schtick is

Alluka is a case of the traditional Zoldyck assimilation ritual going real bad. so bad, actually, that it scares them into adjusting the process for Kalluto

i want to give another warning for like. everything that has to do with a necromancy spell involving small children. i felt sort of evil explaining all this

so. the ritual has the subject dying in a fairly instantaneous fashion so that the amount of time the human soul lingers is greater than if you... like... slowly bled to death. out of necessity to avoid complications, the kids kind of have to do it themselves :( obviously that requires they be trained beforehand for it. the age at which Zoldycks go through the ritual varies based on when they pass that hurdle, but it's usually 4-5. they like doing it ASAP because younger children generally deal with the whole merging with a spirit thing easier than adults. but Alluka just. never gets there. to no fault of her own... she just doesn't. and the Zoldycks smack face-first into the very real possibility that they're going to run out of time waiting for her to pass this training, and resort to going "you know what, training schmaining. you're doing it anyway. up you go"

this was NOT a good idea. turns out that the high success rate of their ritual not only has to do with age, but also the kids, you know, being prepared and willing. Alluka is decidedly not. she is scared out of her mind, and doesn't... do it properly. so when it's time to merge, she's still alive.

instead of the ritual doing what it's supposed to (hijacking a spirit's magic to shove someone's soul back into their corpse and merging the two in the process), they lose control over the spirit causes it to come into direct competition with the mortal soul. and when the contest is between a human child and Nanika—a pretty powerful spirit associated with nighttime and stars (hence "wishing")—the outcome is not going to be in the kid's favor. they end up having to do a completely different spell just to keep Nanika from killing Alluka, and due in no small part to sheer luck, the two get to tentatively coexist in the same body

Alluka has a worse time sharing with Nanika than she does in canon. Nanika is more volatile because it's kind of hard to forget what the Zoldycks did to her. she does not like them. even Killua is on thin ice until he makes up for it by being a sweetheart. but Nanika's attitude means Alluka has a lot of those magic bindings on her restricting what she and Nanika can do. this causes her to have a more difficult time adjusting to the way her body looks as a demon vs. as a human, she's less equipped to handle even just being around a lot of active magic (she doesn't have a strong connection to it), she's tired a lot of the time too. however, unlike the rest of her family, Nanika still being alive instead of merged with her makes it so she doesn't have to eat people. she behaves more like a "real" spirit/demon. so thats a W i guess

AND thats all. WAUGH it was really fun finally getting to share all these ideaasss with someone thank u for asking :D !!!! and sorry for the essay again lol

[incesthemes]

houses of the holy makes me totally crazy so here have more thoughts on this episode. when dean suggests a seance to confirm whether the angel is real or not, he says this:

it feels startlingly similar to gordon's words way back in 2x03:

this strikes me as thematically odd because by the time houses of the holy comes around, dean has seemingly denied his father (represented by gordon) and refused his fate (also represented by gordon) in favor of his complete devotion to sam. since croatoan, dean has been working on sam's behalf and only sam's behalf; everything else is unimportant to him now. he made his decision, and his decision was sam.

but for him to be echoing gordon's words would indicate quite the opposite. to me it sounds like he's internalized gordon's mindset and even if he's not conscious of it, he is walking in the footsteps of his fate through gordon's influence. gorden is an allegory of dean's fate: if dean is mirroring him in any way, that should set off alarms. it means he's not as directly opposed to destiny as he claims to be.

(a side note: this actually fits very well with sam's character arc throughout the season, because he's doing the same thing. he claims he's chosen dean and refused his fate (or is trying to at least), but he is also the one who keeps pursuing it by chasing after john (a symbol for their fate) and continuing to hunt (which is what azazel wants him to do). he thinks he is opposing fate while dancing right in the palm of azazel's hand. so, cool parallel here.)

this line also pops up in the midst of a pretty wide ideological gap between them—they're opposed on the grounds of faith and the very existence of a god, and this conflict drives the story forward. interesting then that a line that is so similar to what gordon told dean is nestled so neatly within this conflict—it seems to prove the point that whenever sam and dean are in conflict, whenever they're not choosing each other, they are inevitably choosing their destinies. they can't fight because it will drive them apart and the only other direction they can go other than toward their brother is toward their fate.

but what dean is doing with this line, functionally, is making an attempt to comfort sam.

don't you want to know for sure? dean isn't saying that sam is wrong anymore; he's giving a concession by way of offering a solution to their conflict. he's offering sam something real, whatever that reality may turn out to be, and he's letting sam be the one who decides whether he wants to cling to faith or know what's really going on. this gets through to sam, and they go through with the seance.

and sam does see that dean was right. at the end of the episode, he adopts dean's pessimistic view of god and admits he was wrong. there's a slight theme here, too: when sam's worldview is shaken and he is given evidence that he can go dark side, he assimilates to dean's worldview.

this happens in season 1, also. dean is the one who originally asserts the idea of "saving people" as part of their job. dean is the one who looks for hunts and advocates for saving as many people as they can, even while sam is rather content to leave people to die to the monsters they know are out there (the most illustrative examples of this being 1x01, 1x02, and 1x11). this only changes after 1x14, when sam is shown a mirror version of himself in max and has to confront the reality that he might be going down the path to evil. the demon wants something from him, and from max, and now he can't ignore it anymore. and for the next several episodes, it's suddenly sam who is seeking out hunts, sam who is trying to save people, even when dean is reluctant to take a case.

what happened here? it's a sudden and stark change, and it's reminiscent of what dean told sam back in wendigo; it's reminiscent of how dean carries himself. sam is, perhaps, modeling himself after dean—he sees dean as someone to look up to, as someone who is worthy where he is not, as someone good where he is not. to sam, if he can become more like dean, he can be saved. he can avoid the fate that fell upon max.

and so we see this again in 2x13: sam has been presented with evidence that there is no god, that no one is going to save him, that he's damned and forsaken. and he copes with this by admitting he was wrong and immediately adopting dean's ideology as his own.

dean is good, dean is right, and if sam can just be a little bit more like his brother, he can avoid the horrific fate lying in wait for him.

and he all but confirms this pattern in 3x07, too:

but herein lies a danger, which brings me back to my original point. if dean's line here parallels gordon, if dean is voicing the echo of a man who embodies his fate, then what does this mean for sam? if sam is so quick to change his beliefs and behaviors based on his admiration for dean, that puts dean in a difficult and tenuous situation. because now, at a time when dean is supposed to be solidly dragging sam away from his doom, he's backsliding toward his own—and he's taking sam with him.

y'know, like:

[squgs]

One of the many ideas that hotd brings up but doesn't do anything with is the question of 'is it oppressive to assume oppression will happen?' The stated reason for Otto pushing for Aegon to be made heir is that if Rhaenyra remains heir, the realm will not accept her and she will be faced with a revolt from the lords which will force her to kill her brothers. I'm going to set aside the argument that Otto is lying and entirely power hungry, since his political analysis seems reasonable and is supported by Rhaenys's "men would sooner put the realm to the torch then let a woman sit the iron throne" line. We can then read Alicent as having similar reasoning behind her 'bastardphobia' and rejecting the Jace Heleana betrothal. She assumes that the lords will never accept a bastard on the iron throne, and therefore she pushes to stop that from happening. She also gives the same reasoning with Dyana, telling her that while she believes her, the world won't and that seeking any justice will only make things worse.

Alicent assumes that the forces that control and harm her are immovable and must be navigated around instead of fought against. We can almost argue that Rhaenyra views those forces as things that can be fought against and changed that she can make a 'new order' as queen. There's a version of the dance where it is being fought over these two viewpoints or at least it starts because of these two view points. That question also has a lot of real world relevance in questions of incrementalism vs revolutionism and assimilation vs abolition. Interestingly the tension between those two views is one of the central themes of the 4th season of Black Sails where characters struggle between attempting to survive under the oppression of the British empire or to fight and likely die in an attempt to overthrow the empire.

Black sails argues that yes it is oppressive to assume oppression will continue, in fact its thesis is that that assumption is how oppression continues 'the empire survives in part because we believe its survival to be inevitable.' Black Sails completely won me over to that line of thinking, which makes me kind of surprised by how I'm entirely on Alicent's side in house of the dragon.

So without spoiling Black Sails, what's the difference between how the two shows address this question?

There is maybe something to talk about in terms of agency and the positionallity of the characters and other practical differences in the situations presented. Black Sails gives us characters who are outside of the privilege of structures of domination who want to fight for their freedom but others try to prevent that fight because they don't think it can be won, while Alicent's sons are very privileged by the system but are not in any way choosing to put their lives on the line for a cause. However that's not the direction I want to take this, first because talking about it would require spoiling black sails, and second because I think it's the less interesting aspect.

I think it's better to look at the emotional differences rather than the practical ones. Black Sails does two things with the emotions behind the conflict of assimilating or revolting that hotd doesn't or at least doesn't do well. The first thing is give us a glimpse of the liberatory future charecters are supposedly fighting for and giving us a chance to buy into that dream. Black sails does this specifically by showing us queer joy and freedom amongst characters and how that joy can't exist within the oppressive bounds of civilization. Black sails takes the time to show us that, using half a season to develop two queer relationships. Hotd arguably does have Rhaenyra in a wholesome queer relationship with Harwin and Laenor, but they don't really do anything with it. We see the hints of the beginnings of the relationship, and it falling apart, but we don't really get anything in the middle, except a brief scene where Harwin meets their third son. It could have been really good to get this found/blended family dynamic that the rest of the world doesn't understand and can't accept but is healthy and wholesome and loving, and then tie that directly into why Rhaenyra wants to be queen. She could have wanted to fight for others to find the same joy she found, even after her relationship has been destroyed by the patriarchy. That's exactly what we see in Black Sails with the way that *character* fights for *character* and *character*'s relationship because they see their own past loves in it ("the two of you together are the world in balance" and all that). Instead Rhaenyra gets rid of her queer love for the sake of power, she fight for the throne by entering a more heterosexual relationship with daddy Daemon.

More generally we don't see Rhaenyra express care for or solidarity with anyone except herself and her direct family, and we never her see her think about what societal change she might be fighting for. She says she'll make a 'new order' but we have no idea what that new order would be and if it would even be better.

The other major difference is giving us the emotion behind those who don't think that the empire/patriarchy can be fought or defeated. While Black Sails does argue that the empire survives because people believe it will, it isn't making the argument that we all just need to close our eyes and believe, nor is it saying some people are just stupid because they don't fight against the empire/patriarchy. Instead its talking about the way that power justifies itself through invasive narratives and extreme brutal acts of violence. Nearly every character in black sails has suffered from both of those weapons, and most have a pretty good understanding of them. Some characters are too traumatized to effectively fight back, others simply make the choices that will make their life the best it can possibly be. Those characters are the main obstacles in the fight for a better world, but the show and even the main revolutionary characters never judge or belittle them for it. On *spoiler* when *character* is begging *character* to understand the revolution like they do, it is said with desperate love, not the sort of aloof pity that Rhaenys has for Alicent.

On that note its worth directly paralleling Max and Alicent. They have similar approaches to power ("We do not rule but we may guide the men who do" is pretty similar to "for people like us, power is most effective when it is least perceived") and I would argue a deep seated empathy which is constantly in tension with the things they need to do to guarantee their own safety and independence/power. Max though is never treated as or framed as a villain except in the "we're all villains here in Nassau" way. In fact she's probably one of the characters who is most consistently heroic within the framing of the show. That being said though, the writing of the first season of the show treats her terribly, so maybe there's still hope for Alicent as well.

One final difference is the way that hotd never really looks at the patriarchy outside of what Alicent and the Greens enforce (and the extreme gendered violence perpetrated by Viserys and Daemon that's never fully condemned). Black sails gives us a clear image of the empire and how it wields power. While characters in the empire often act based off of how more powerful people in the empire will act, the show takes care to make it clear how those characters exist within the empire and how they may be making hard choices under great duress to achieve the least awful outcome, while still judging the evil that those characters do. Hotd on the other hand does nothing to explain or examine the systems of power in Westeros. We have no clear idea of what the common people think of the whole situation, or even what most of the lords think or the other institutions in Westeros. We're told that the world is quite sexist, but we never see clearly any of the institutional or societal sexism. All of the sexism is heavily individualized to rude comments by Jason Lanister and the one sexual assault that they acknowledge as such. There is no systemic view of feudalism and how it as a system is guaranteeing conflict between rival claimants to the throne. This of course partially comes from the fact that the show is positioning the most powerful person in the world, who sits at the head of the feudal system as one of the progressive people fighting for a better world. The show cannot have any coherent viewpoint on the evils of patriarchy and feudalism without condemning the main patriarch and feudal lord.

Any reading of hotd as being directly about social justice or societal change will end up being shallow or wrong because the show just is not able to engage with those questions fully or in an emotionally mature way. It would be one thing if they had just set Rhaenyra up as the perfect social justice warrior and make the greens evil incarnate, but they can't even do that right because they don't know what social justice looks like in our world, let alone in medieval Westeros and think that evil incarnate is not wanting your kids to die.

TLDR: If you wish hotd was better maybe watch black sails?

[immobiliter]

okay so i think i'm finally ready to talk about furina & the melusines because it's such an interesting topic in the sense that there is almost nothing to go off in canon regarding this lmao. for obvious reasons, we hear a lot about the melusines from neuvillette ( both in his voice lines and his story quest, which furina is absent from save from her one voice line in the final cutscene ), seeing as he was the one who introduced them to fontaine in the first place and he feels a sense of paternal affection towards them. but furina has been around the melusines for as long as neuvillette has, was witness to the conflict that occurred between melusines and humans when they first arrived at the court of fontaine ( and the carole & vautrin incident ) and has seen them integrate into fontainian society over the same four hundred year period.

so first off, neuvillette could never have successfully brought the melusines to the court of fontaine if furina hadn't agreed to it in the first place. we know that furina was the one who invited neuvillette to the court of fontaine — obviously it was focalors who needed him present for her grand plan but, contained inside the oratrice as she was without a human form, furina, as her human counterpart, would have needed to actually seek out the hydro sovereign and summon him to the court. of course, furina never truly understood why she needed him to bear witness to humanity and take on the role of iudex ( she could only speculate that in fooling fontaine she needed to fool the one whose power she had stolen too ), but she summoned him and i imagine the two came to some sort of bargain or arrangement where furina agreed that the melusines would be permitted to enter into fontaine society if neuvillette accepted the role given to him.

however, i do think that furina warned neuvillette of the risks of this, both to himself and to the melusines. furina would have already had roughly a century of ruling fontaine to hone those skills that allowed her to masquerade as a god for so long, chiefly the ability to read people and situations incredibly well. given how she had to alter how she acted in those early days of archonhood in order to be accepted by the people, i think she would recognise that anyone considered "other" would face similar challenges integrating into the status quo. neuvillette, she could help assimilate into human society given that he looked human, but melusines were visibly different and therefore were easy targets.

i think she would certainly have encouraged any move towards allowing melusines to work and occupy roles throughout fontainian society to help with integration between the two species — politically speaking furina was taking a big risk in appointing a stranger ( and non-human ) as the chief justice and inviting an entire race of creatures to live among her people and she would do everything she could to try to smooth tensions as much as possible.

obviously over many years we know that melusines became part of the fabric of the nation and, while humans do work at the palais mermonia in its various departments, a number of melusines work there too, particularly within the palais building itself. given how closely she and neuvillette worked together for centuries, furina would have been surrounded by melusines in her day to day duties and i do believe she has developed a certain fondness of her own for them.

this is for a few reasons: firstly, they are a species who live much longer lives than humans and so, as someone whose lifespan has been extended by focalors as part of her curse, furina is able to develop a closer professional rapport with them knowing that she will not see them age and retire and die. they are also not human, and i think there is a certain comfort in that to someone who is actively trying to appear not human. who is most likely to spot her more human qualities if she does not hide them well enough? other humans. while i don't think furina was ever truly able to be herself and make true friends during her time masquerading as archon, i do believe that the closest she ever got to that sort of companionship is in her dynamics with the melusines ( and neuvillette too i would argue, although talking about those two is a whole other meta lmao ) precisely because they are not human and therefore the same level of constant vigilance is not required when she is around them.

i like to think of furina's role within fontaine's governing structure as similar to that of a constitutional monarchy ( but more involved than just purely ceremonial, as is the case in most european countries that still have a functioning monarchy ), and while it's never stated anywhere that furina has official ladies in waiting or anything like that, i do think that those job roles within the palais that involve a lot of personal interaction with her ( i.e. a private secretary who organises her diary or a housekeeper who maintains her apartment at the palais ) would have been given to melusines and not humans.

[rametarin]

Magneto is an interesting character. Or: A character essence study.

And when I say this, I don't say it from the direction of sympathy for their point of view. They're interesting, BECAUSE of what they, as a character, represent.

Magneto is the reactionary identitarian supremacist. The urge to take everybody else and either pound them into oblivion for the best interests of your own chosen group, or separate yourselves as a people from everybody else to go found your own, you-group exclusive club. He flips back and forth between genocide and self-segreating nationalism, but what he absolutely will not tolerate is his perspective and views being sublimated and what he is destroyed by a hostile outside force that outmatches him and wants him assimilated and destroyed.

X-Men, as per the creators, was always a thinly veiled allegory for being Jewish in a world that most decidedly is not, and nowhere is that closer to the surface than in Magneto's origin story. Which also flipflops a little, based on censors. But, more or less, he and his family were Jewish concentration camp victims, usually in Poland. If you're not well read, Poland kind of has a very ridiculous history with being invaded and trampled and subjugated, and doing this was something the Nazis AND the Soviets collaborated on.

And then we get to the subject of Jews and that's a whole other bunch of books of sadness.

But that being said, Magneto doesn't focus on being Jewish, he focuses on being a mutant. It's not a good look for the narrative of the story to depict the Jew as a superior form of human with powers beyond gentile's ability to even fathom, but well, it puts the mutant power in power fantasy and the allegory has since expanded (slapshod or otherwise) to include any minority group that feels persecuted, marginalized or discriminated against on the basis of how they look, what they are, or their lack of conformity. Depicting the non-Jew as ignorant banal have-nots is not a good look, but, again, allegory has expanded since then. Still not a very good look, but remember it's not a 1:1 allegory.

But talking specifically about Magneto is not what brought me here today. In fact, it's just a good example and a stepping stone to another subject.

Magneto's origin story is inexorably drawn to what the Nazis did to the Polish and Polish Jews specifically. To the point where imagining him as existing in any other time or place is difficult. To properly get the sort of scarring of Magneto, one would need to be some manner of ethnic and/or religious minority in a land that is only tentatively your own, and have it be invaded by at least one party, keen on erasing you and your family's existence specifically because your ethnic lines are not their own, and preferentially to the narrative, BECAUSE your specific ones are your own, which the persecuting group hate specifically.

So that got me thinking. If one were to re-imagine Magneto for a modern audience, enough so they could look upon the character and hear the origin story and go, "Yes, that is uniquely similar enough to parallel," how would they do it?

So I thought about it for a little while.

First and foremost, is the Jewish question (lol.) Does The Magneto, whatever his origins; does the niche itself, require attachment to being Jewish? This is an incredible, fundamental question. If yes, that limits options a little, but not too terribly much. More important, I think, would be the other fundamental components that make up a good Magneto origin story.

Magneto is the product of victimization as two horrible regimes and interests came and ravaged his land, mass murdered his people with antipathy based on their ancestry and ideological opposition to the ambitions of his attackers. A person that suffered imprisonment and forced labor and was waiting to die, until circumstances saw to him being rescued. But the experience drove them very sour, and they swore never to allow themselves to be treated this way again.

The Magneto we grew up with had his origin story in WW2. Originally he was an adult during WW2, later versions had him as the child of Polish Jews (in one animated continuity). So going by timelines, when he was introduced in the early 1960s, his character would've been shaped by events that happened in his childhood of the 30s and would've been a teenager in the 40s. Being born between 1926 and 1930. He would've been at most a teenager by the end of WW2, and at his oldest, 20. His first introduction taking place in 1963, that'd mean if he were to be introduced today, his origins would've required him to be born, at most, 37 years ago.

So, if he were introduced in 2024, he'd have been born in 1987. I kind of weep at the idea I'm now older than Magneto's age when he was introduced in the 60s, but time makes fools of us all, I suppose.

That would mean his formative years, the vague and obscure ones of his teenaged years to 20, would've been between 2002 and at the latest, 2007. With a shifting window, if we're to accept an older Magneto, closer to age 70 by the modern day. A younger, 1963-ish depiction of Magneto in a modern story would've been a late 80s baby, an older Magneto would've been a late 50s baby that would've been 15-20 by 1978.

So where do these times and the elements that make a Magneto intersect? What are our options?

I could see a Magneto that was the result of the Soviets and Taliban persecuting non-Muslims in Afghanistan. I could see a Magneto that was a member of the Twa or Tutsi people in Rwanda. I could see a Magneto that grew up in South Africa or Zimbabwe. I could see a Magneto that was Kurdish and survived Sadam Hussein's chlorine bombing and attempted ethnic cleansing.

And you could very easily have a Magneto borne from the gruesome shit Mainland China is doing to its ethnic and racial minorities, not just the Uighurs, today.

What Magneto ultimately is, is a person that jades their heart to attempts to exterminate what you and people like you are, on the basis of what you are, and the desire to kill or be killed both out of indignity and outrage. Someone that decides to make the wrong decision, that the world has decided there's not room enough on the planet for everybody to co-exist, so your particular culture must be eliminated, and decided, "not mine, not today; yours, forevermore."

But Magneto's Chosen are always mutants. Whatever their nationality, ethnic background or identity, tribal affiliation, geographic region of birth, or other forms of heredity. Do you have a mutant power, and does the world hate you for it? Then he sees you as kin.

Where else he could've been born in time for the exact formula of what made the character the way they are, is an interesting subject of exploration for me.

[hrodvitnon]

Assorted Abraxasverse Headcanons

- Ladon probably did not get along with Shin or Leo initially. Both because it’s really difficult for him to trust now given his circumstances but also becausd of their fundamentally different viewpoints and philosophies - Ladon doesnt like humans at all but tolerates them because Mom and Dad do (he gets better about this over time, but not all of that resentment goes away), Shin wants nothing to do with humans and would rather them stay far away, and Leo is the classical Shonen Hero who believes the best in everyone. So naturally, conflict will arise at some point.

Shockingly though, Leo was always the mediator and kept his brothers from going too far, and eventually after plenty of scuffles (and the ouccasional scolding), thry mostly chill out. Ladon is still a ball of surpressed rage though.

- Mothra is the only being outside of Ladon (and eventually Leo) Megalon respects - both because of them being Gods but also because even though they embody two opposite concepts - War and Life - they both love sharing their views and philosophies in spirited debate whenever they meet, with Mothra finding it a bit sad that Megalon still thinks so little of surface dwellers. That, and Megalon is deeply pleased by her hidden bloodlust. 

- You’d think Manda is entirely cool and calm just based on being raised by Abraxas and the way he carries himself most of the time would sell it, but it must also be kept in mind that his father is Rodan. So Manda is just as prone to coming up with stupid or reckless stunts as his dad or being somewhat of an airhead. Keeta is better than their brother, but that’s because he’s the type who prefers to come along and watch rather than directly participate. Biollante!Maddie actually finds Manda at his goofiest endearing, which only reinforces his Rodanisms.

- King Caesar exists somewhere, with his usual backstory of being the ancient protector deity of the royal family of Okinawa. Thing is, nobody but the descendants of that line know where he is and it’s unknown if the Mass Awakening changed that. People have reported a strange dog-shaped Titan appearing to take down hostile monsters then vanishing as quickly as it came, but nothing concrete has come up. Monarch suspects there’s some unknown channel in the Hollow Earth he’s using to move between place to place extremely quickly.

- No one knows what the fuck Hedorah is. All that the Fleet knows is that it used to show up and feast on the dying remnants of civilizations Ghidorah had ravaged, making them suspect it’s some manner of parasitic scavenger. 

- Gigan Rex and the Gigan Miles from GvGR were possibly either an unrelated group of planet conquerors that were suspiciously similar to Gigan himself or they were other models of Gigan that had somehow survived, just without becoming the sort of horrific techno-flesh deity and cult that Gigan and his Fleet have become.

- Speaking of Gigan, due to the nature of him in the Abraxasverse, Gigan is probably very much nothing like what he was originally designed as. The assimilated tech from countless worlds is offered to him and made one with his own body as he deems fit so to some degree or another, Gigan is essentially the depraved bastard caricature of a million dead worlds, and he relishes in it.

- Following his ‘birth’/'rebirth’, Assimilation!Mechagodzilla basically becomes Abraxas’ little brother essentially - and swiftly reminds both Vivienne and San that little brothers can be a pain in the ass. The 'Abraxas Siblings’ are often found trying to beat the shit out of each other just as often as they are sitting down and chilling.

- Assimilation!Mechagodzilla acts pretty much exactly like a bratty teenage boy or a college frat bro due to the lack of inihbitions from both the San half and Ren half within so it essentially falls to Abraxas to wrangle him whenever he goes too far. He mostly limits it to 'pranks’ or such, but he gets astronomically bored very quickly and might just kick over a building if not stimulated enough. He gets along very well with the other kids such as Leo, Shin, or Ladon - which ends up causing problems since both him and Leo will eagerly goad them into stupid shit or all kinds of shenanigans. Manda and Keeta swiftly become the only sane ones.

It gets worse after he molts too - Desghidorah takes and multiplies Mechagodzilla’s childish and impulsive behaviors by three. 

- The Super Complete Works and novelization also say that Desghidorah is some weird amorphous magma blob thing that simply copied Ghidorah’s appearance and might outright be the embodiment of the universe’s tendency to trend towards entropy. As such, it cannot die but is the embodiment of death and destruction themselves.

Going by this, I think it would very rapidly become apparent that Abraxas!Desghidorah is fucking weird to anyone with a spiritual sense such as Gods like Megalon or Mothra - having the presence of a divinity despite being a Ghidorah offshoot and never once displaying any indications of assimilating that power from elsewhere. Neither one knows what the fuck is up with Desghidorah and it raises serious questions about Ghidorah’s actual nature. 

A villainous Desghidorah would essentially be an unkillable nightmare  barring being sealed like he was in the Rebirth of Mothra films and they’d always risk breaking out to become a threat again in the future so that would be a looming issue they’d need to deal with, even ignoring their sheer power potentially putting several Titsns out of commission. And Assimilation!Desghidorah would probably use their nature as an eternal shapeshifting magma monster to troll people.

---

Lordy, what a smorgasbord! I do like Manda inheriting Rodan’s goofiness; he grows into a regal and elegant dragon who is caring of humans, yet he has his moments where he becomes a bit of a dumbass that makes him more relatable and approachable.

[dragonflight203]

Mass Effect 1 replay, part two of Virmire:

-You speak to Sovereign in Saren’s private “lab”. I don’t think it’s actually a lab – it doesn’t look like one and if you save there it’s labeled communication tower.

It does, strangely enough, have lab tanks along the floor below the walk, however.

-When did Saren procure this beacon? Before or after Eden Prime? Before or after meeting Sovereign?

I’m inclined to say after meeting Sovereign, since I’m sure spectres are expected to hand over Prothean beacons they find to the Council, but with Saren it’s hard to say. He could have been hit by the same vision Shepard received, realized immediately the Council wouldn’t believe him without more evidence, and ran into Sovereign while looking for it.

-Sovereign introduces himself as such. “I am Sovereign!”

This is notable because:

A) Legion says in ME2 that Saren named him Sovereign; Sovereign refers to himself as Nazra

and

B) When you call him a Reaper, Sovereign immediately states that that’s the term the Protheans use for them

So he claims the name Saren gave him, but disowns the name the Protheans gave his species.

Out of universe this is most likely a retcon about the name Sovereign, but in game I’m sure this has nothing to do with the nature of Sovereign vs. Reaper.

(It’s totally the ego boost.)

-Strange line from Liara: They are harvesting us! Letting us advance to the level they need, then wiping us out!

Where does this “level they need” come from? The Reapers don’t need organics to reach a certain technological level, they’ve just decided to wipe out organics when they do reach it.

-How did Sovereign blow in the windows of the room you speak to him in?

-Why are the breeding grounds full of water? What’s the purpose of the whirlpool around the column that you place the nuke next to?

-The dialogue where you’re forced to choose between Kaidan and Ashley is very well done.

-Saren also says “my geth”

Everyone’s just out here claiming the geth are Saren’s. Gotta wonder how the true geth feel about all this.

Deciding to help the Reapers because you believe they’re gods is one thing, but being referred to as an organic’s again after the whole Morning War…?

(Yes, I am vastly overthinking this.)

-How much of Saren’s behavior is influenced by turian culture?

Turians engage in total war – essentially, beat the enemy into submission so hard they never try to fight back again. They don’t destroy enemies; they assimilate them.

This sounds very similar to Saren’s dialogue here that there’s no point fighting the Reapers because they’ll win; instead you should submit and you’ll be spared.

However, indoctrination is blinding Saren to the small fact that the Reapers don’t spare anyone. They fully intend to kill all organics. And the geth.

-Saren really does seem to believe that he’s saving the galaxy.

I think that’s one of the reasons I like him as an antagonist far more than TIM – Saren fully recognizes that’s he’s outclassed by the Reapers and genuinely believes he’s saving everyone the only way possible. That’s a compelling character.

TIM’s a human supremacist and believes he can use the Reapers. To bolster’s humanity’s standing. I just don’t find that as interesting or sympathetic.

-The dialogue wheel works against renegade players here. To be able to talk Saren into suicide in the final confrontation, you need to tell him he’s indoctrinated.

However, that option only comes up if you choose a paragon option. Then you get blue/red options to persuade him.

If you just go consistently renegade, you never get the blue/red choices. Seems a bit unfair – normally you get those choices whether you go paragon or renegade.

-Huh. Sovereign promised Saren he wouldn’t be indoctrinated if found the conduit. I’d completely forgotten that… probably because Saren must be extremely desperate or deeply indoctrinated already to believe it.

-Back on the Normandy. I was not expecting the Kaidan romance to influence the dialogue choices, but it does if you go paragon.

Honestly, I prefer the non-romance dialogue for it. Shepard should not let Ashley die because she’s in love with Kaidan – that’s one of the reasons there shouldn’t be relationships between officers and their crew.

-Both beacons complete the vision – we know Saren’s received the vision from both, so why isn’t he already at Illos?

Yes, he needed to find the Mu Relay and the cipher is needed to make the visions clear.

However, it’s very likely you’ve already done Noveria and Feros by this point, which means he would have received the coordinates from Benezia already and the cipher from Shiala.

So why is he hanging around Virmire? He could have been storming the Citadel while Shepard was sneaking into his base.

-To justify why Liara did not mention Illos earlier, she says that without the cipher the images in the vision were not clear. However, Shepard and Liara melded after Feros – since Shepard had the cipher in that melding, Liara should have recognized the landmarks for Illos.

The change now is that Shepard has the full vision, thanks to the second beacon. So it would have been better to say that the parts of the vision the second beacon filled in were the ones that contained the landmarks for Illos.

-Everyone says Shepard can’t go to the Mu Relay because it’s in the Terminus Systems. Are we just ignoring that the Normandy is a stealth ship?

Also, in later games and spin off media spectres do go into the Terminus. However, I can’t recall if that’s been established so far in ME1.

-The Council is pretty reasonable in this meeting. It’s far more likely that Saren is using Shepard’s beliefs to manipulative them then that an ancient machine race slaughters all organic species every 50,000 years or so. Especially if Saren is known to be manipulative.

It just so happens that Reapers are real.

Even so, requiring more evidence is again reasonable – yes, Shepard received a vision from a Prothean beacon, but for all the Council knows that beacon was used to store Prothean horror movies. The vision Shepard received may be real, but that doesn’t mean it’s true.

-Also, the Council reminds Shepard that they’re free to act as they see fit. They don’t need the Council to believe them to continue investigating.

-Once again, you get extra dialogue (snark, more specifically) from Sparatus if you go renegade.

Tevos is so very obviously tired of both their bullshit.

-Amusing, disconnecting from the Council is a neutral option. Paragon and renegade is continuing to argue with them.

-Kaidan, Liara, and Wrex have new dialogue.

Honestly, it seems odd more characters don’t. Ashley dying is a major event and there are some major revelations on Virmire.

Engineer Adams had new dialogue for Jenkins dying, but not Ashley.

-You can buy a medigel upgrade from Rentola on the ship. Buddy, there a reason you didn’t offer me that on Virmire? What, did you loot it while attacking the base?

[jeweledstone]

Wild-ass dream I had last week cause HOLY SHIT

Date: 1/22/2024

I had a dream last week that was the most batshit insane regarding its plot points and stuff, and that’s saying a lot considering my previous dreams and their lore. Waited until now to post it cause, y’know, the Global Strike for Palestine was happening and I didn’t wanna cross the picket line so to speak.

So this dream takes place in a universe where I used to be a child actor on this Playhouse Disney-type show with a handful of other kids and two adults which was similar to Zaboomafoo (if anyone remembers that absolute banger of a show) in that it was supposed to teach kids about various types of animals. I remember the animals used in the show were kept in a barn underneath the set, including several “exotic” animals like a serval and wallabies and stuff. The dream took place during a cast reunion of sorts, 15 or so years after the show stopped airing.

One of the other kids in the cast, named Trayte (yeah idk what his parents were thinking when they chose THAT name), ended up being the “antagonist” of this dream. Now Trayte was… an interesting kid. I guess he had some sort of untreated mental issues cause when the cameras were off, he was absolutely terrifying to be around. He’d have these intense manic episodes and mental breakdowns which involved a lotta screaming and him talking to himself about things I guess only made sense to him. Didn’t help that he’d make the most terrifying, and sometimes even inhuman, facial expressions with the most extreme ones reminding me of those old Zalgo comics from the early days of creepypasta. It was because of this that younger me was absolutely terrified of him while the rest of the crew just saw him as a little annoying to work with and be around.

Now flash forward to the events of the dream and the reunion, Trayte was still just as, if not even more erratic than he used to be. His mad ramblings now featured all sorts of conspiracy theories and paranoid delusions that honestly made him just as frightening to be around as he was to kid me. Also for some reason he didn’t seem to age past like 13 or so for some reason???

Anyway, so it was during the reunion that the “plot” of the dream started happening. I was basically contacted by the lesbian couple from a previous dream of mine, who have since then become these multiversal secret agents of sorts that helped take care of major threats/criminals in the local multiverse (I remember they also assisted in the manhunt for Neovil previously but I forgot to post that). The reason they contacted me was because they needed help fighting (UBER CRINGE ALERT!!) the fucking Skibidi toilets of all things who somehow gained access to technology that allowed one to travel to other universes and were now trying to take over this specific universe via assimilating the people within it. I guess they figured with me being a reality bender that I could easily just swooce them outta that universe and save everyone, which is what I tried to do at first but it didn’t work as well as planned.

After a while I came up with this plan B of sorts which involved fighting fire with fire by creating my own army of sorts that could assimilate the toilets, but was also immune to being assimilated by them in return. I remember making this little army look like The Noise from Pizza Tower, cause even in the dream world, hyperfixation go brrrrrrr. (Actually now that I think about it, I’ve been having a lotta undocumented dreams lately involving Noise and people getting turned into him lately. Weird, but it probably means nothing)

So all that was going much better than plan A while I kept in contact with the lesbians and my little Noise army via a portal between the universe they were in and the universe the cast reunion was being held at. I think the other cast members were in another room during this so none of them saw what was happening.

That was

Until

Shit

Went

Down

After the Noise army successfully was able to take down the Skibidi Toilet army and drove the remaining of them back to their home verse, idk wtf happened but they then decided to basically turn on me. I mean wtf, I don’t even know what I did wrong.

Is it because I kin Peppino guys? Are y’all really that petty?/j

So yeah, I lost control of the Noises and they then proceeded to try and trash the reunion thingy. It was then that the rest of the cast found out about my multiverse bullshit and ended up offering to help me round up the rebellious little gremlins so I could get rid of them…somehow I’m honestly not sure how I did that but I assume it involved more reality bending bullshit. Luckily no one was severely hurt in the ensuing chaos, I was attacked and almost assimilated by the army but managed to escape before I was fully turned. Other than that, we all basically left that encounter unscathed.

All of us… except… Trayte…

…Motherfucker got cornered by the Noise army and assimilated. But it was kinda weird though. Instead of being turned into a regular Noise he ended up becoming Pizzelle from that Sugary Spire AU. Mentally wise he was still himself (or at least still partially himself, it’s implied at one point that he was going through this mental struggle of sorts trying to hold onto his old self and identity), but I guess the trauma of it all got to him cause he snapped. SO. FUCKING. HARD.

Not only was he more erratic post-tf, but his breakdowns became more violent and frequent. I remember him blaming me for all this and swearing he’d get revenge on me someday for what happened.

And yeah, that’s it. Kinda fucked up amirite? Good thing it’s not “real” I guess.

Either way, thanks for reading, have a great day! :)

[rivetgoth]

You've piqued my interest about Skinny Puppy, so I figured I'd ask if you had recommendations for where to start with their music?

If it helps I listen to a lot of goth music, mostly trad goth, but when it comes to industrial I really only know NIN. I really enjoy industrial when they play at my local goth/industrial night and I want to get more into it if you have general recommendations for that as well.

Hey! If you like trad goth mostly I’d say to check out their early work first, like Remission era, it’s still industrial and more out there than most post punk but that was the era where they had their big backcombed hair and eyeliner and skulls and cited Joy Division and The Cure’s Pornography as inspiration LOL. Remission features the song “Smothered Hope” that you most definitely have heard at the club before, alongside a few other dancey tracks like “Glass Houses” and “Far Too Frail.” It’s just a lot dancier and more classically gothy than their later work IMHO so if trad is your entry point I’d say it’s a good start! You can just start from the beginning and work your way through maybe? That way you can kinda hear the evolution of the band starting from their gothest beginnings and see what you think! :)

Generally with Puppy, the band’s trajectory is that they get more and more heavy and industrial as they go, with a lot of variation between albums (like, every album is super distinct in sound due to the evolving direction of the band and the various changes in personnel through the years)— Rabies is way more industrial metal due to Al Jourgensen from Ministry being a collaborator on it, for example. But generally the further you get from Remission the more classically electro-industrial it becomes, up until around The Process. Every post-Process album (Greater Wrong of the Right and beyond) is way more uh… idk, it’s kinda dancier and weirder. I LOVE this era, Greater Wrong is one of my all-time favorite albums, but it’s kind of a more modern experimental industrial electronic dance sound than the 80s and 90s stuff. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a post-Process song in the club before (sadly) haha. I’m obviously biased but I think all of it’s worth checking out because Skuppy’s catalog is MASSIVE and there is just so much variation within their work.

But yeah! In your case I’d say to start from the beginning because I think Remission is a great introduction for someone who’s more into goth stuff, plus a lot of their early work is where the club hits like the aforementioned “Smothered Hope” or “Assimilate” (off their second album) are found! ORRRRR You could always watch some live footage, with Puppy they are so performance-based that the concerts might honestly reel you in more than the music itself at first. It’s really really cool.

As for getting more into industrial in general, sorry if this is a cop out answer but I still think getting into Skuppy is a good start so all of my advice still stands LOL. Puppy was my first industrial band that I really fell in love with and was the band that spurred me to get involved in this world and now it’s my whole life. I literally started by just going through the associated acts that Skuppy is connected with— Ogre and cEvin both have a ton of projects of their own or that they’ve worked on, like cEvin has The Tear Garden, Ogre has ohGr, and then you can find the bands they’ve appeared on as guests like Revolting Cocks or Pigface, or you can look into the bands of the people who’ve collaborated with them like Ministry, Front Line Assembly, Severed Heads, and The Legendary Pink Dots… and it just kinda keeps branching out from there LOL. Industrial as both a genre and community is so close knit and so many bands are connected through various means, once you sorta find the stuff that really speaks to you then you can just go in that direction and keep finding connected/similar artists and carve a little path for yourself in the genre that way! 🖤 Of course, just like with Skinny Puppy, you can also just start from the beginning and check out some of the OG/early industrial bands like Throbbing Gristle, Coil, SPK, Einstürzende Neubauten, or Cabaret Voltaire and just go from there in like a linear timeline, but PERSONALLY I think it’s more fun (and will lead to less burnout) to actually just start with what you like and take your time finding the things that appeal to you; your appreciation will grow in time if industrial music is for you haha. Like, I love all those bands, but if you’re new to the genre just find what you like ykwim? Or look into the industrial songs you like at the club and find out who the artists are and explore their discographies and related artists!

[indigenous-character-tournament]

I have a question about the meaning of indigenous in this context. From where are they indigenous to? What makes a group indigenous? I’m not really sure.

Indigenous people as in those who resides in the land from the earliest time and/or prior to colonists. Examples being Wayúu of Colombia, Quechua people, Saami people, and Ainu people. Another term you can use is native. There is a distinction however between those who reside there and those who are native to the land. And the line between Indigenous identity starts blurring due to separation from Indigenous identity and because of forced assimilation. For the sake of this poll, if the character is coded or canonically stated, either it be within or outside the text by the creator, to he Indigenous they can be accepted. Coding can be a bit difficult but I'll mention it in the enxt ask that was asking something similar to that

[innocet]

can you please tell me about the les mis doctor who episode that exists in your head. and the zygons

I co-developed this concept with @friendamedes when we took a les mis class together last year. Les mis episode is a secret bonus Christmas special that takes place between husbands of river song and return of doctor mysterio. Basically 12 is in 19th century France and he IS Jean Valjean, or at least playing a very similar role; he got imprisoned because of shenanigans, and is trying to return to the tardis (he left it somewhere in Paris, probably) but keeps getting held up by various events.

Nardole is here, and he literally is Thenardier. There’s a gap between husbands and dr mysterio where Nardole gets a new body and I think he has one that’s kind of shit. He’s scamming people for money so he can get any kind of suitable repairs done. He has cosette, who is a zygon child from yet another zygon refugee ship.

ALSO from this zygon refugee ship is our Javert, a zygon who has decided on full assimilation (derogatory). I want to lean in hard on Javert’s whole thing as someone who sees himself as a defender of Society but not Part of it; he is an embodied function of the law and does not see himself as a participant in the class systems he upholds. Zygon Javert sees himself as duty-bound to the society he is now living in and feels he does not deserve a place in it because he isn’t human. It bothers him so so much that the Doctor crosses and blurs this line between Human and Alien, and that’s the core tension of this plot.

Tbh I don’t have much else but I do miss the 11th Doctor classic literature Christmas specials. Those were really good and I think 12 deserved one