#because you do have to incorporate still that they had an incredibly complicated history.

[breitzbachbea]

(For that ask game)

I wish you would write a fic where...Sadik and Herakles consider adopting a child

yes this is Exi speaking

You know what, I think I could have Sherlock Holmes'd who this ask is from. It's very on brand. (Also, you don't have to hide behind the little grey face.)

I wish you would write a fic where…

(BTW, I provide the links to the original posts so that if anyone else stumbles over the ask can reblog the post OR send me another one. Doesn't matter if it is an old ask game, I am always happy to share my thoughts and interact with others. Even if I cannot promise a timely answer.)

Ho boy, va be'. If I am fair with you, I'd not even give these who fuckers, out of all the ships, a kid in the Hetaverse. At least not in the interpretation of them and their relationship that I follow. (It's mostly how sadlygrove portrays them in their fics). Now, there is very few people I'd also give a kid in LFLS, even if I might think they'll make great parents in another context. But Herakles and Sadık are near the absolute bottom of the list of people who should have kids together. I'm currently writing the 4th Part of my TurGre Fanfic "The Amulet" and these two can't even keep their shit together for their fellow friends. Not in a million years. It's just not going to work out in a way that'll be healthy and good for the children or anyone involved.

However: They do have children in the "Testa di Moro" AU. Here's the post about that one. Herakles and Sadık are happily married with a boy and a girl in that one - too bad they end up half-orphaned due to Michele's vanity.

I can totally see them adopting kids in my Constantinople AU though. (Here is the post for that one and if you haven't checked it out yet, you absolutely should because I am sooo proud of that one). Some more thoughts on that and parental TurGre under the cut.

The question of succession in that AU has crossed my mind before, wondering if maybe the offspring of the closest relative of Herakles would then be next in line. You know, there would have needed to be something in place if in this AU, gay marriage is viable. Briefly also considered if one of Herakles many, many half-siblings could be electable, but the problem with that is that there's simply too many. So why not adoption?

I have no idea about childhood and specifically imperial childhood in 14th century Byzantium or Seljuk/Ottoman Turks. Since the AU is however Alternate History mixed with some feel good, basic fantasy, I'll just go ahead with the "Parents that love their kids and are intimiately, hands-on involved with them" 18th century middle class idea. (I am not saying that non-Western or prior families do not love their kids or spouses nor that already back then parents huddled their kids that much, but I would say that this modern, classically Western view of the nuclear family has its roots there. Just so we are all on the same page with tooth rotting, anachronistic fluff). Also, I choose Eirene and Theophania, because 1) Their name meanings (Peace and Manifestation of God) are pretty dope 2) Both were names borne by members of the Byzantine Imperial families (Theophanu was also the name of the Byzantine wife of Otto II of the HRE and she's one of my favourite medieval women) 3) Sadık is already on thin ice with the people of Constantinople at times, so to demonstrate some good will, both of the girls have proper Greek names. I suppose both of them are also Greek or at least not Turkish, but who knows. It's politics, ya know.

Sword still at his hips and clothes still dirty, Sadık stepped into living quarters of the palace. He'd have to do something about the dirt before the council meeting later in the day; honestly, after his return from the campaign, he craved a bath more than anything else -- "Baba!" All of his physical aches were forgotten, even the dirt that hung to his uniform, when he heard the excited voices and fast steps of his daughters. He merely had enough time to hunker down on one knee when Eirene and Theopania jumped him. "Hey, hey, girls, be careful with baba's sword," he said and moved th sword a little away from them while they still giggled and squealed into his neck, shoulders and chest. Now he wrapped both arms around them and held them close. "So, how are my girls? Oh, I'm so happy to have you back." He squeezed them, one arm around each one. "We've missed you, baba!" Eirene said while Theophania only buried her face in his shoulder. "I missed you too." He kissed first Eirene and then Theophania on the hair. "My darling princesses." He patted Theophania on the back. "Now, now, baba's still all dirty from travel, get your pretty face out of there." Theophania only shook her head, dug her hands deeper into his uniform and Sadık chuckled. He gently loosened his grip on Eirene to slip one hand each under Theophania's armpits and pick her up to set her on his knee. She immediately leaned her head against his shoulder and buried one hand his uniform again. Her eyes were closed, almost squeezed shut. One arm around each girl's waist, Sadık bobbed the leg Theophania sat on. "Hmm, what's the matter, Theo? What's wrong?" Theo didn't answer. "We missed you," Eirene reiterated and when Sadık looked at her, there was a bright and eager sparkle in her eyes, a whole radiance to her excited face. "You know, we also worried. And, and, you've been gone for so long and we have sooo much to show you. And, we learnt new things with our teachers! So, we started reading this new text and it's really, really old!" She beamed with pride at him. "Oh, wow! What clever girls I have," he said and ruffled through her hair. "What's the text?" "It's uh ... It's ... It's really old and Greek and ... one of those! One of those babás reads! He read with us! He said he's really proud of us and that he's gonna teach us, too!" "Mhm, speaking of that, where's your babás?" He shortly looked to Theophania. She had loosened her grip and half-opened her eyes. "He's in the library, at a council meeting with the officials," Eirene explained. "He said we could go and play as long as he's busy." "Ah, yes." He gently nudged Theophania off his thigh, who seemed real hesitant to use her own two legs to stand on. When she finally did, Sadık knelt and grabbed both of his daughters tight, to stand up with one on each arm. "How about we go into the gardens while we wait for babás to be done with the council, hm? How does that sound, Theo?" "Mhm," Theophania said. "I want to go into the gardens." Sadık kissed her on the cheek. "Good, then we'll do that." "Baba, your beard itches," Theophania mumbled. "Hey, well, I didn't want to waste time this morning getting dolled up when I was so close to getting back home to you," he said and she giggled.

Sitting by a basin in the gardens, Eirene was talking about a trip they had been taken on by Dilan, much to their teacher's displeasure. The story greatly amused Sadık however, who could picture the teacher's upset reaction and reasoning quite well upon his students being taken on an interdimensional trip to the great places he could only lecture about. Theophania watched the fish in the basin. "Timothea said that you would come back when I asked her, but I didn't believe her," Theophania suddenly said and he turned to his daughter. "Huh?" "I asked Timothea and Omar every day if you'd come back and ... and they said they couldn't see the future but ask the Jinns and then they said that everything is okay ... but I didn't believe them, because I was scared that you wouldn't come back." So that's what had been eating away at her. Sadık turned to her and picked her up to sit her on his thigh again. "Hey, Theo, no need to worry about that. Baba will always come back, no matter what. And if Thea and Omar tell you so, you have to believe them. They know stuff, you know?" He poked her nose, but she only looked at him with brows knitted in worry. "But I'm scared that you won't," she said. "Like, they said they can't see the future, so ... what if they don't know? I don't want you to ... I want that you come home." He stroked her hair and pressed her head against his chest. "Oh Theooo, you shouldn't worry about your baba. Fathers are there to worry about their kids, not the other way around. Were you worried sick the entire time I was gone?" "She was!" Eirene said at the same time that Theophania nodded, tears in her eyes. "Hey, don't cry, it's okay ... I'm here ... We're all here, your sister, your fathers, everything is alright, hm?" He kissed her on the hair and let her cry into his chest. It went on for a few minutes. Eirene's tries to cheer Theophania up weren't very successful, so that he told her to simply leave her sister be. "Why don't you go and take a little walk, a little look elsewhere?" Sadık asked Eirene, who kicked the air with a bored pout. "Go visit the new animal that you brought back from your trip. Me and Theo will join soon." "Okay!" Life had immediately returned to the girl and she jumped to her feet before she ran down one of the paths and disappeared behind the bushes. It didn't take long for her to return in company. "Oh, finally done talking, your Highness?" Sadık asked Herakles with a grin. "For now." Herakles carried Eirene on his arm. "Seems like you came straight from the camp." "Well, I've been ambushed as soon as I stepped into the palace, so I didn't have time to change yet." They chuckled together about that. "Mohammed just arrived and I was showing him around the gardens, since there's still time until the next council. He's still looking at the ... peculiar speciman that Dilan and the girls brought back." "Oh, wasn't that what we and Theo were gonna do?" Sadık looked at Theophania, whose tears had finally dried out. "What do you think of that, Theo? You want to tell Mohammed about the animal?" Theophania nodded. She even smiled at him and Sadık smiled back. "Alright." He kissed her on the cheek, which made her giggle and got up. "Baba! Your beard still itches!" "Shut up or I'll kiss you again!" He threatened, which only increased the giggling. "I'm not joking!" "You're still a clown," Herakles said as he slowly turned to go. "If I were you, big shot, I'd also shut up, or you're next," Sadık said and Herakles snorted while they ambled through the gardens, two giggling girls on their arms.

[marzipanandminutiae]

If you ever want to rant (I think you have in the past??) about the specific issues surrounding language in history when describing queer romance (aka Chopin's friend issue) I know I would love to hear it at least

Oh boy. It's. It's a lot.

So, first of all, in case anyone didn't read my blog description or is very very new here, I'm a gay woman. And a big history geek. Which means I really do get how frustrating- even infuriating -the erasure of queer people from history can be. It has been, and unfortunately continues to be, a massive stumbling-block in society's recognition of LGBT identities as an inherent, universal part of humanity.

Moreover, it just makes you feel really, really alone. To think there was never anyone like you before the 1960s...yes, that's incredibly disheartening.

However. I'm also a museum professional. So I also get how careful we have to be when talking about the past.

The terms people use for queer identities have a history of shifting around a lot. And, for a large chunk of at least western history, same-sex attraction in particular was less an identity and more a behavior. Something you did, not something you were. So in expressing these feelings, people might be less likely to label themselves than to just talk about what they were doing. Which means we don't even have preferred labels for them during their lifetimes, much less within the modern framework of queer identity.

Complicating things still further, the old Straight 1950s Historian rallying cry of "FRIENDS WERE MORE AFFECTIONATE BACK THEN!!!" is actually true. I mean, yeah, in some contexts it's a silencing tactic used to erase obviously queer relationships. But it's also just a real fact about western platonic friendships, for a long time. I have seen a lot of 19th-century primary sources to indicate that, yes, a woman could kiss her literal platonic female BFF on the lips and not have it mean anything sexual or romantic. In some eras and places, that applied to men, too. Pointing that out in the proper context is not erasing queer lives, because there are no known queer people involved.

And let's talk about "friend." The r/sapphoandherfriend crowd gets VERY torqued about this one. Let anybody with any hint of same-gender romance/sexuality be called the "friend" of someone they had a relationship with, and the gates of hell are flung wide. Again, this is another one that CAN be erasure, but definitely isn't always.

Straight married couples used to refer to each other as "my friend" or "my dearest friend" or whatever, all the time. Obviously society wouldn't use that term for them, except in poetic descriptions. But if you have a culture where "friend" can have connotations beyond "platonic bestie," you just might get queer couples also applying it to each other. And at that point, it might well be the only term we know for sure a given couple used. So what are we supposed to do but use their terms, describe what they did, and let the reader interpret that information?

"But you can tell what they'd call themselves today!" Sometimes. Sometimes we can't.

Anne Lister, for example, clearly and exclusively loved women. She also incorporated masculine elements into her gender presentation, sometimes used "male" nicknames, and felt strongly about that. We use she/her pronouns for her now, and call her a woman, because that's how she referred to herself. But given the modern spectrum of available terms and identities, would she still think of herself the same way? We don't know. All we can do is use the information these people give us, and their chosen self-descriptors, unless it's EXTREMELY clear-cut.

Finally, as a queer person working in the historical sector, it's incredibly depressing to me to see other queer people talking about how "historians erase queer identity" as a blanket statement. Because we're here! We're real! We're trying our best to uncover and amplify the stories of our ancestors, because we know how awful erasure feels! Don't minimize our work like that.

And don't say you want acknowledgment of queer people in history, then turn around and shit on it because it doesn't always fit into neat, modern Identity Boxes.

[qqueenofhades]

hi hilary! thank you for all your posts about the queen lately - they've been great to read and learn from! I wanted to ask, if it's okay.. there's a post going around about how the queen actually oversaw "decolonization efforts" rather than the opposite, and I'm just really not understanding where that idea came from? I don't think there's any truth there but am I missing something?

Okay, look. I know that attempting to combat malicious misinformation on the internet is like drinking the ocean through a straw while standing on your head in a diving bucket, but as a certified Old, I'm still alarmed by just how goddamn susceptible the younger generations are to straight-up imperialist propaganda, as long as it incorporates some string of socially "woke" buzzwords. Because an internet culture has developed where you have to be the most Progressive! at all times, whether or not you have a fucking clue what is going on or what any of it means in a larger historical, political, ideological, or social context, and where you always have to be Smarter! and More Informed! than the next person, people just... swallow this stuff??? While actually acting like they're doing literally anything except playing into the long-established right-wing psyops that know how to use social justice buzzwords in exactly this way, to get ostensibly progressive-aligned young people to adopt wildly revanchist, semi-fascist positions and call them "leftist." It drives me NUTS.

Anyway, as outlined in my other posts: yes, Elizabeth II was the monarch/head of state at the time where the British Empire devolved into the Commonwealth, and many former overseas colonies gained their independence as formal countries. However, some of them remained within the Commonwealth (still accepting the Queen as titular head of state, including large Anglicized settler-colonial states such as Canada, Australia, and New Zealand), and others were actively bribed and persuaded not to leave, or at least to stay within the remit of British sociocultural (and soft-power political) influence. The claim that because the Queen was head of state at the time this process happened, she was (positively) responsible for encouraging it, is almost a total (and I suspect, either deliberately misleading or actively stupid) inversion of the actual situation, as well as committing the basic logical fallacy that correlation does not equal causation. So:

In my initial post, I discussed (and linked to sources about) the incredibly brutal British concentration camps in Kenya, during the 1952-1960 uprising against British colonialism (and as we all know, QE2 became monarch in 1952, so this is is directly within the period of her reign). In the followup to that post, I pointed out how the sheer scale of unreconstructed, old-school imperialist violence made even its proponents uneasy enough that they undertook "Operation Legacy," which intended to sanitize British actions for posterity. This involved destroying almost all the records of their crimes, which also therefore involved destroying much of the new country of Kenya's physical history and ability to investigate its own past. I also pointed out that in the present day, historians still regularly encounter difficulties in researching what happened, due to the institutional culture of secrecy (and often open distaste/public scorn) that surrounds modern discussion of the British Empire's actual impacts.

Post-WWII British decolonization, especially in Africa, is obviously a complicated subject, but at no point was it the British government's first choice or something that they actively facilitated, rather than being grudgingly forced to accept by a variety of unfavorable (for them) political, economic, and social realities. In "The Imperialization of Decolonization," W.M. Roger Louis and Ronald Robinson challenge the common belief that Britain's destroyed post-WWII economy meant that they just had to let the colonies go without a fight (after all, that would be, theoretically, the time to clutch on even harder). Instead, they point out that even when Britain was previously in crisis, it was able to muster sufficient effort to crush rebellious or nationalist sentiment in their overseas holdings, and that "decolonization" as undertaken in the immediately-post-1945 period was certainly not intended to actually grant full or practical independence, but rather to rearrange British political priorities and frame the now-distasteful language of "empire" in something more modern. After all, having just fought a world war to defeat Hitler and his attempted global conquest, it was no longer acceptable to openly aspire to do the same thing, and the techniques and vocabulary had to change. But that doesn't mean that the now-Commonwealth actually wanted to give up that power, and they were pressed into doing it for different reasons.

The general British colonial policy or "mythology" was an intensely patriarchal, patronizing mindset that admitted some colonies, such as Ghana, were now "ready" for independence, now that the (superior) whites had "raised" the (inferior) Africans like children and thus made them more "civilized." This echoed several centuries of racist polemics and racist pseudo-science that presented slavery, colonialism, and imperialism as actually "good" for non-whites, since it allowed them to participate in "civilization," Christianity, and all the other supposed benefits that Europeans were bringing them. Some of the violence was perhaps distasteful, colonial apologists agreed, but what they were bringing (railways! Correct Government! Massive genocide!) was actually far preferable to the "savage" state that these people would have remained in without the good and generous angels of European colonialism. In other words, the "good" of colonialism outweighed the bad, and it was actually an altruistic project for the betterment of humankind, etc etc. Judging by the response to the Queen's death and the general feeling in the UK about the British Empire really being not that bad, that mindset is still intensely pervasive and damaging.

As I said, at no point did the British government actually attempt to help or encourage genuine liberation, or ever formally apologize for everything that it had done in terms of controlling its colonies. In 2006, Nigerian academic Hakeem Ibikunle Tijani was finally able to get his hands on official Foreign and Colonial Office documents that explicitly acknowledged how the UK power apparatus had actively worked to disrupt and demonize leftist, republican, anti-monarchical influence in Nigeria (another prized British possession in Africa). Tijani also echoes Louis and Robinson's point above about the pragmatic impetus for decolonization, in an attempt to salvage as much of the former arrangement as possible, rather than any attempt for active de-imperialization. As was summed up in a review of Tijani's book, Union Education in Nigeria: Labor, Empire, and Decolonization since 1945:

Chapter 2 details the considerable influence of leftist ideology in Nigeria from the 1920s onward. There was a shift in its public acceptability as post-World War II Nigeria became a significant arena in the battle for the hearts and minds of its inhabitants as Communism emerged as a nascent threat. As a result of this new threat and the increasing popularity of leftist ideology in Nigeria's environment of radical nationalism, anti-leftist measures proliferated as Britain sought to maintain its timeline for Nigerian decolonization. Chapter 3 picks up at this point and posits that Britain's agreement to Nigerian decolonization was not merely a result of the success of Nigerian nationalists. There was also rising pan-African identification, plummeting international favour regarding colonialism, and Great Britain's desire to foster and sustain a "special relationship" (p. 31) with the former colony, which would maintain capital flow and resource exploitation.

As I have pointed out, the "special relationship" that the Commonwealth likes to advertise itself as having with its former imperial territories is built both on previous material, financial, social, and cultural exploitation of those territories, and a desire to put a more socially acceptable public face on it. The recent anti-monarchy protests in Jamaica and Barbados pointed out that this so-called "special relationship" has done absolutely nothing for them; their nations get no benefits from their relationship with the UK, and Barbados recently completed its transition to an independent republic with an elected president as head of state, rather than the British monarch. While there is an obvious element of racism at play in all of these locales (Africa, the Caribbean, etc) the British monarchy also interfered in Australia in 1975 (see this ask) in order to discredit and dismiss a left-wing government that was viewed as having too-republican leanings and might seek to take Australia out of the Commonwealth. So it really was equal-opportunity tomfoolery.

Anyway: the queen was head of state during this whole time, and she was intimately aware of what was going on, due to both her public responsibilities (weekly conversations with the Prime Ministers who all made a point of acknowledging the value of her advice in shaping their official policy; privileged receipt of sensitive/secret state papers) and her behind-the-scenes interference in seeking to maintain a favorable legal climate for both the monarchy and her own private person and family. This included explicitly getting herself and the palace household exempted from civil-rights and anti-discrimination laws, and she never made any formal acknowledgement or historical atonement for the evils of the British Empire (because as noted, huge swathes of British society, especially elite society, still think it was a good thing and feel it was a "tragedy" that Britain was "forced" to let go of it). Britain pragmatically agreed to let go of most of its colonies at least in name, after previously being forced to fight several wars to protect its white settler-colonial interests (such as the Boer Wars in South Africa) and realizing that post-WWII, there was no capability or public desire to do that again. This, however, had nothing to do with a desire for genuine "decolonization" or loss of influence, and mostly involved efforts to rebrand it in a more palatable way, while doing their best to maintain the political interest and material benefits that stemmed from the original colonial power structure.

Tl;dr: QE2 was in no sense of the word a "decolonizer," should not be described as such (someone also tried to call her an anti-fascist because she drove ambulances during WWII against the Nazis, dontcha know!) and this argument relies on a larger and much more insidious strategy to turn ostensibly progressive young people into mouthpieces for right-wing imperialist fascism. Because if you criticize QE2 (bad!) and she was actually a decolonizer (good!) that makes you something something ACTUALLY AGAINST DECOLONIZATION!!! It's an incredibly shallow, stupid, and distorted way to actually look at the serious issues that have been brought up, and which the white supremacist establishment is doing its best to bury under images of the Kindly Old Grandma With Her Doggies. They want to make that the first thing you think of, they don't want you to actually look at the British Empire (including the parts of it that happened directly during QE2's reign) and definitely not to criticize it, and to lean into the Anglo-American "everyone loves the royal family!!!" celebrity-gossip machine that relies on you, again, forgetting, dismissing, or excusing every single bit (and then some) of what I have discussed above.

[beca-mitchell]

hiiii do you have any pp2 fic recs :ppp

hi! so I do and this list ended up being a lot longer than i expected. i apologize for the length of this but there are just so many amazing fics that i felt fit the bill. i was debating going to fanfiction.net as well to try and find more, but i would rather not make an overwhelming list. the fics i included are all written around the PP2 era—post PP2 movie release in 2015. Most of them are based on movie canon and set during the movie canon. Some go beyond movie canon.

Forgive Me These November Days

by @obstinate-questionings​ (12 chapters, 78k words, complete)

Summary: Why Chloe Beale didn’t graduate—and why she finally did—as told through yearly celebrations of Thanksgiving.

can’t hurry love

@backtobasicbellas (5.9k words, complete)

Summary: Every time they win, Chloe celebrates with Beca. Too bad they don’t talk about it, ever.

you will see me come undone

by @paintedviolet (12k words, complete)

Summary: Seeing Chloe’s face drop when she plays the mix at the next official practice is honestly the best reaction Beca could have hoped for. Beca has floored her; she’s totally exposed, having to listen to what is most definitely one of her lady jams and discuss the parts each person is going to sing. All the while pretending it doesn’t have an effect on her at all.

Beca and Chloe incorporate their flirting game into their Bellas practices. One of them has to crack sooner or later.

let’s finish the race (while our hearts are young)

by @chloebeale​ (5.8k words, complete, written in second person)

Summary: Chloe stands next to you, like she always does, and you try not to smile too much, but Chloe has her arm wrapped around your waist, and she turns to look at you, and she doesn’t really say anything. You’re used to being this close to her, and you noticed how blue her eyes were a long time ago, but each time she looks at you like this, it’s like your stomach is learning to do back-flips for the very first time. And you give your biggest smile to the camera as you all shout ‘Bellas for life!’ You may have made the picture your lock screen, but that’s no big deal.

eliminate the distance between us

by @maladyofthequotidian​ (7.9k words, complete)

Summary: Senior year isn’t really going the way Beca thought it would.

notes: established bechloe

When I Think of You (My Best Friend)

by RavenclawGenius (3.8k words, complete)

Summary: This DSM chick is really messing with Beca’s head.

this is not a party (it’s a hurricane)

by tinyheadspace (8.8k words, complete)

Summary: When Beca finally accepts her feelings for Chloe, she learns the hard way that Chloe has been hooking up with Stacie. For months.

(i get by) with a little help from my friends

by @piratekane​ (3.5k words, complete)

Summary: The Bellas are a sisterhood, for now and forever. Her mom told her that she would be connected to these incredible women for the rest of her life. So when they talk, she listens.

or, three times Emily takes advice from the Bellas when she isn’t sure she should (and one time she takes advice when It isn’t given).

when gravity’s pulling (you’re still holding my heart) 

by @piratekane​ (5.3k words, complete)

Summary: Beca isn’t sure how she got here.

Well, she knows how she got here, in this house, with these girls. She knows all about the real estate process too. But she isn’t sure how she got here: Laying on her bed with her laptop in her lap and her legs bent at the knee, feet flat so Chloe can paint her toenails while she goes over the Bellas history with Legacy and answer every question about the Beca-and-Chloe (fake) dating thing.

It’s this part of her life she isn’t so sure about.

i’m a little unsteady (hold onto me)

by @piratekane​ (4.5k words, complete)

Summary: Beca always wanted a pet growing up. There was just too much work involved. But Chloe texts her and tells her there’s a Legacy, a freshman, joining them. Beca can’t take care of a freshman. She just can’t. Most days she can’t even take care of herself.

aka, Five Times Beca and Chloe ‘Mom’ the Legacy.

Mocha

by @asweetmelodytrickling (23k words, 24 chapters, complete)

Summary: Set during The Barden Years: In which Beca randomly kisses Chloe because Chloe jokingly told her to, the aftermath of which is complicated and confusing for both the young women, and for their unfortunate housemates.

You Still Make Sense to Me (Your Mess is Mine)

by @emilyjunk​ (31k words, complete)

Summary: "Chloe fills up all of the spaces inside her that she didn’t even know existed until Chloe was there.“

or the one where it takes a fake-engagement and being domestic as hell for these two idiots to realize they’re in love. Set two years after PP2 and mostly canon compliant. 

Blow a Kiss, Fire a Gun (We All Need Someone to Lean On)

by @emilyjunk (24k words, complete)

Summary: Emily knew that she’d enter a sisterhood when she joined the Bellas, she just didn’t realize she’d gain an aca-mom and an aca-dad too! At least, that’s if Stacie has anything to do with it.

Or the closest thing you’ll ever get to canon lovechild!Emily.Emily’s POV through Pitch Perfect 2. Side Bechloe.

Finding Harmony

by @aliciameade (381k words, 90 chapters, complete, Rated E)

Summary: A confessed regret. A rejection. A conversation that was meant to be private - overheard by the one person Chloe never wanted to hear it. But perhaps - perhaps - it was for the best. Where will the future lead Beca and Chloe? Only time will tell.

Just the Way You Are

by Galpalkru (4.7k words, complete)

Summary: Beca Mitchell definitely doesn’t have feelings for Chloe Beale. Not even a little bit. Best friends sing love songs to each other and cuddle all the time. Right? 

Or the one where Beca says what she should have said to Chloe on the retreat.

It All Started With A Tent

by @rejection-isnt-failure (9.7k words, complete, Rated E)

Summary: So we all know about Beca and Chloe’s unresolved sexual tension… but how much do we really know? It all started with a tent… didn’t it?

aannnnd that’s it for now!

I hope you enjoy! i have so many more i’m sure, but these were ones that stuck out to me. I also had the joy of re-reading them as I was creating this fic rec and it’s amazing what kinds of things people accepted as canon (aka fanon) and what tropes really stood out the most to people. What a time.

[thechildofstark]

Fuck John Walker (and also some other stuff): A Response To Episode Four

WARNING: some bad language, death mentions, violence mentions, blood mentions, racism, spoilers for for ep 4 of tfatws 

DISCLAMER: I have some Opinions about various characters. These do not extend to the actors, who I’m sure are lovely and should be treated with the dignity, privacy and respect that they deserve. 

“Fuck John Walker” was originally meant to be the subtitle. I decided on it when he screwed up the op for Sam. It got ungraded during the final scene, because nothing else could possibly compare as a necessary title to this post. 

Essentially, some (out of order) thoughts on episode 4:

~*Sam and Bucky, working together*~ (pretend this is a musical jingle)

The contrasting ways that they interacted with the displaced

While the incredibly valid argument can be made that Sam is the least privileged of the group (I’ve made it) it is obvious that he has had the most structured civilian life: approaching the people he comes across openly. Yes, he is polite and calm, but the closest thing to this he has personally come across in the past (that we know of) would be the war vets he worked with and the critical difference is that they wanted to be there. From what I remember of Sam’s groups they didn’t seem to be a sort of mandatory requirement: you came because you chose to. Or at least, you came prepared for the situation. Here, Sam is an outsider and an unwelcome threat. These people are not going to open up to him. 

Bucky is quieter, but still quite straight forward in the way he presents himself. I think he may show a little more care for the environment he is in than Sam but that isn’t saying much. Yes, he has experienced much worse things than Sam but we still see his unfamiliarity with this sort of situation paired with some less than stellar social skills really not working in his favor. 

Look, I love both these 2 to death. But this is not what they know. 

Zemo on the other hand quite likely lived in a place similar to this after his family was murdered. He shows an understanding of how this sort of situation would work, going to children who:

a) wont necessarily peg him as an outsider

b) are bribable

also I think he was genuinely super glad to give those kids that candy and money. He would have been such a good dad. now I have Zemo feels. somebody help me.

The inclusion of the Dora Milaje was incredibly awesome, and not just because I simp for powerful women. Narratively, this was the perfect place for them to join the party and assert their right to apprehend Zemo. 

Bucky speaking Xhosa (i think it was?) is very cool

 I would like to take this moment to formally state that Caption John Walker is a motherfucking asshole. 

It was also really nice to see Sam’s therapist skills, that worked against him earlier really help him here. 

I liked seeing that more human side of Karli, and having her interact with the “enemy” and have serious conversation about what everyone is doing.

Until Captain Insecurity has to destroy the op because he doesn’t trust the people he chose to work with, no one has comms or anything I guess?

Also Walker deferring to Bucky for team decisions over Sam, talking over Sam and acting like he knows better than Sam?

I smell racism in this Chili’s tonight

It was also really interesting to get a more in-depth look at how Zemo views supersoldiers. Nearly all the ones that he has either heard of or interacted with (destroyed) had either volunteered for the serum or were so brainwashed that it didn’t make a difference. These people are a dangerous enemy to be eliminated, alongside people like Dr. Nagel. His entire worldview is focused on their destruction that the idea that one of them could be a normal person is impossible to him. The only exceptions acknowledged are Steve (paragon of saintly virtue) and Bucky. 

And the fact that after his family died and his country devastated he would most likely have fixated on both the Avengers and the “concept” of a superhuman being as something to blame for his loss. His refusal to concede his position to Sam isn’t just arrogance, although that seems to be a part of it, but the fact that he has spent so much time and energy in destroying both the Winter Soldier program and most likely other similar operations, along with the Avengers that this hatred and belief in the danger has most likely become one of his core beliefs. To change this would be to question his vendetta against the Avengers, to question his actions against the Winter Soldier program which he knows was a horrible thing, and to question why he has spent the past seven years in maximum security prison. This isn’t something he is ready to do yet.  

The fact that Bucky is a noted exception is something that stands out to me. Zemo knows that Bucky is a good person, regardless of the serum. 

Bucky is also the only main character (that I can think of) that was injected with the serum against his will. The fact that he didn’t seek it out could quite likely be part of the reason that Zemo doesn’t look down on him for it - it is framed that the sort of person that seeks out that sort of strength/power would be a “supremacist”, someone who would use their abilities to harm and subjugate others.

And while we are at the apartment may I say how funny it is to see Zemo just. Literally being Sam and Bucky’s sugar daddy. He transports them and houses them and makes them fancy tea. It’s possible he’s providing them with clothes. Either way, love it. Cannot wait for the boys to work it out.

Sam and Lemar’s responses to being offered the serum are an interesting juxtaposition to how they view the concept of supersoldiers. They have both experienced hardship and survived war but Sam is the one that has gone up against Gods and monsters and he wants none of that, thank you. 

And Lemar is so comfortable with saying yes because it isn’t actually being offered to him. Walker expresses some hesitation in their discussion because for him, it isn’t hypothetical. This is something real that can and will effect him for the rest of his life and he wants to make the “right decision”.

The return of Erskine’s belief that the serum not only effect the physical but the mental, emotional and (possibly?) spiritual. This isn’t something that’s really been touched on outside of The First Avenger and I liked that it turned up here. But the fact that it was the reason Walker felt comfortable taking the serum? Eww

The Dora Milaje kicking names and taking ass is super awesome. They are so incredibly skilled and have such amazing teamwork and are also super beautiful I love them 

Sam and Bucky just. Watching. Enjoying the show. Absolute kings. 

Zemo being the sneaky little sneak that he is :)

One one hand, Bucky losing his arm in the fight was very awesome. One the other hand, he has a long history of complicated bodily autonomy in relation to that arm so........  Neutral opinion it is then 

Karli, honey, I really want to like you but can you please keep the mans family out of it. Okay?

And another thing that this show made me think about: kids left to fend for themselves after the Blip (uuuurrrggh it hate calling it that. stupid canonical name). I think it’s good that at least some people took it on themselves to take these children in, to give them good lives and families.

The way that Sam has incorporated his wings into his combat style is very cool

Okie dokie can’t avoid it forever lets get this over with. 

LEMAR MY BEAUTIFUL SON NOOOO

those fuckers (the writers i mean)

Side note: did they really have to make the first main character death of the series a Black “sidekick” character? No. No they did not. 

Side side note: I understand that this is a perfectly valid way (ew) to “advance the plot” but I can and will be annoyed about it

And now we really get into the shit. But...........................

As much as I absolutely unequivocally hate John Walker I actually like the thematic parallels of how they did this. All throughout The First Avenger Steve is adamant on how he doesn’t want to hurt anyone, he just wants to stand up to the bullies. It’s only after Bucky dies that he says he wants to kill all the Nazis and really get into the horror of it all. The fact that John, who has absolutely been on the edge for the entire episode if not longer, only loses it after Lemar dies?

Because Lemar is arguably meant to be that stand-in for Bucky in the eyes of the public, and they are obviously close friends..........

Just - 

I feel I may have accidentally been slightly nicer than I planned to Walker in this post. I’m not sure how I feel about that. 

But C****** J*** W****** is NOT Captain America. Up until now I’ve been calling him “Fake Cap” in my head and to my family, but he doesn’t even deserve that honor. 

And the blood on the Shield. Dear god that was horrible. 

And the fact that, as it was pointed out in this very episode, this man fully represents everything that is Captain America, to the world. He isn’t only tarnishing his own legacy, he is also destroying Steve’s. And to some extent, Bucky’s. The whole reason that Bucky Barnes is considered a “Superhero” is because, at least in America he is known as “Cap’s Best Friend”. He was marketed that way for over half a century, and after the whole “Winter Solder” thing, goodwill or no, brainwashing or no, this could end very ugly for him. Not to mention that Steve Rogers is most likely to be forgotten to history in favor of this freak. 

And on that note, where the fuck is Steve? This is set only 6 months after Endgame, if he had died we would know. So what the hell is he doing? Because I know he got perpetual brainrot going back in time to be str8 and boring but dear god if the show tries to tell me that he’s just chilling in some senior’s center in Alaska I will actually call bullshit. Steve Rogers would never. Okay this is a whole separate post on my thought on Steve. Watch this space I guess. 

And while we’re all here, Bucky Barnes needs a goddamn boyfriend. I’ve done some thinking, and here is a compiled shortlist: 

Sam

Zemo

De-aged Steve (he would be higher but I’m still mad at him for the whole “vanishing without a word to relive Jim Crow and the Lavender Scare. :/ )

IN THAT ORDER. 

That’s all folks. 

Feel free to send me asks if you want clarification or extra details on anything. 

And finally - 

the thing we all came to see:

FUCK

JOHN 

WALKER

fin

[itsclydebitches]

Welcome back, everyone! 

We’re now on Chapter Eight and once again the story is told from Velvet’s perspective. So our starting question is: why is she getting the most attention so far? If memory serves, the PoV order has been Coco, Velvet, Sun, Fox, Yatsu, Velvet, Scarlet, Velvet again — meaning that in a text balancing eight main characters, so far four of them have received a single chapter, two (Sage and Neptune) zero chapters, and one three chapters. That seems rather imbalanced. I suppose it makes a certain amount of sense if we factor in RWBY viewers’ familiarity with Velvet, but I’d wager we’ve gotten far more screen time with Sun overall. My only point being, why Velvet? It’s not that you can’t make her a focal point of the narrative, I just haven’t seen anything to explain that choice in the first 100+ pages. Her perspective hasn’t brought anything unique to the story, something we couldn’t have gotten from the seven other characters involved in these events… but here we are, back with Velvet for the next six pages.

Yeah, this chapter is short. Silver lining?

We learn that Team NOVA is on their second mission — why bother showing us the first when they’re an entirely new, volatile team, right? That would be silly! — escorting a technician “through the Grimm-infested mountains just outside of Oscuro Combat School.” So Shade students regularly conduct real huntsmen work but throw a fit over having to spar with one another? Interesting. See, if I were a civilian who got even a glimpse of what goes on inside these schools, I would not trust these kids with my life. 

Lo and behold, things go horribly! We learn right off the bat that “The technician had been knocked unconscious in a skirmish with a band of Dromedons.” For those of you with an iffy memory like mine, these are the camel-like creatures that spit acid and… that’s about all we know about them. That’s really all we need for this scene though because this grimm nailed the tech in his leg, a wound which now requires “serious medical attention.” Great. Gus Caspian, who I learn is a younger friend from the previous novel, is trying to treat the wound as best he can, clearly a little freaked out about being here, “but apparently Oscuro teachers didn’t coddle students any more than Theodore did.”

Do you expect them to? Despite Atlas being the only one who combines their academies with their military, we can’t pretend like these schools aren’t teaching teenagers to wield deadly weapons and kill things with them. There’s no institution on Earth (or Remnant) that should “coddle” those looking to take on that responsibility. I mean yeah, we had moments where Ozpin encouraged them to be kids, like after the food fight and during the dance, but he still took a hard stance whenever there was an actual lesson in the works: “No. You will be falling.” Based on the age of the students, the academies are akin to colleges. In real world college if you don’t do your work or don’t pay attention in class, well… nothing that bad happens. This is by no means a call to not do you work, merely an acknowledgement from a formerly grade obsessed student that individual test scores really don’t have the impact on your life that it feels like they will at the time. Trust me on this. So yeah, some leeway is great in the real world… but when the students are fighting monsters and defending others from death? Then the schools should absolutely discourage any slacker-esque attitude. The concept of any institution “coddling” huntsmen is horrifying. 

Note though that the chapter starts after all the action has taken place. We skip the rest of reinitiation. We skip NOVA’s first mission. We skip the attack that landed Velvet in this predicament. It’s not automatically a bad technique provided you’re skipping over boring parts to get to the interesting bits… but this isn’t interesting. We learn almost nothing new from this scene: Velvet misses her old team, her new teammates don’t believe in her, Nebula is mean. Those are the emotional beats here — things we’ve known for at least three chapters now. The only thing that’s introduced is the advertisement on Gus’ scroll, which could have been been added to any other scene.

Let’s revise a bit: 

We get to see the battle against the Dromedons wherein Velvet uses her camera, revealing her weapon to Team NOVA and earning more of their respect. Information about Gus’ improvement is shown through his combat abilities as he’s unexpectedly chucked into this battle (perhaps with him using his semblance to further his growth there too). While taking a hit he loses his scroll, slightly damaging it. In the aftermath Velvet retrieves it for him and finds this ad displayed, growing curious. Over the course of Gus’ explanations the rest of Team NOVA is clued into Velvet’s worry and suspicion. What’s wrong? It’s just an ad. But you’re clearly hiding something… Now, does she tell her new team about the Crown, or keep it silent and risk the tenuous trust they’ve just created?

Why is Myers skipping over all the action and potential growth?

Instead we get the boring stuff. Velvet admires Gus’ uniform because of how it’s built for the heat and recalls that “Coco had been messing around with new outfit designs for Team CFVY.” I swear though, 95% of my enjoyment with this novel comes from the throwaway details. I would actually like seeing how Coco combines her personal love of fashion with the necessity of designing combat gear appropriate for the environment. Maybe they frame it as merely a hobby outside of their huntsmen work, giving them an excuse to keep helping their former teammates. That could be cool! 

Though of course, this is the series where Cinder, Neo, Hazel, and Emerald all walk into the ice Kingdom with skin bared, so...

(You all are going to freeze to death, have fun.) 

“Velvet’s ears swiveled around, listening for danger.” That’s anything detail I like. At the very least Before the Dawn remembers that Velvet is a faunus and frequently incorporates that into her character. She’s on the lookout because other than Gus tending the unconscious technician, she’s alone “on the sidelines.” It’s framed simultaneously as the group rejecting her and as an unavoidable necessity: “it wasn’t like she didn’t have an important task of her own [repairing the relay], one that none of her teammates had the expertise to perform.”

Wait. Why does Velvet have this expertise?

The justification is that she’s “handy with electronics” and “Anesidora was incredibly complicated, and she’d designed it herself,” but that’s like saying “I built a computer so I’ll come fix your refrigerator. That’s easier.” I don’t know, maybe someone with the ability to build a computer from the ground up could figure out a refrigerator on the fly, but they feel like different skill-sets to me. All electronics are not built the same and claiming that because you understand one you automatically understand all others — even supposedly simpler pieces of tech — seems a little suspect. If that were the case, we’d have no need for experts who fix your phone, your television, your toaster, and your watch. Surely if you understand one you understand the others, right? It’s the same assumption here: If Velvet can understand building a hard light weapon, then she must understand relay communications too!

…right.

She even goes so far as to say that they “probably should have left the technician at Oscuro—she could have done this on her own” yet just a few minutes later it’s, “Velvet double-checked everything. She didn’t know what was wrong. She glanced back at the technician, Gus still at his side. The guy was out cold. He’d taken a pretty hard knock to the head. Well, she had tried.” So she’s confident enough to think that the technician is unnecessary one moment and then looking to him for help the next? Which of course isn’t followed by any sort of revelation. Velvet doesn’t acknowledge that her knowledge isn’t as specialized as she had assumed it was, or that huntsmen rely on non-combat experts for other things. She just shrugs and…

…kicks it.

Yeah. Velvet’s skill amounts to kicking the box until it works. Which, of course, it does. 

I can’t with this novel.

More seriously though, that’s terrible characterization. Not only does it undermine Velvet’s actual skill to reduce it to being “handy with electronics” — isn’t every huntsmen “handy with electronics” then, considering they all build their gun/energy/dust weaponry in school? — but it adds another layer of supposed uselessness to the adult professionals around her. Theodore doesn’t teach them anything because, as their headmaster, he’s removed from everyday interactions. Rumpole can’t be trusted now and every lesson she tries to impart is rejected. The unnamed technician who is referred to only by his professional title is deemed unnecessary, knocked out, and then indeed proves useless when Velvet magically does his job for him. So why are any of them in school? Why aren’t they just running the world with their superior knowledge and skill-sets? Every time the RWBY franchise puts its characters in a position where they might actually learn something through failure, it pulls back at the last second. ‘Never mind, they actually knew this all along!’ Or, ‘Never mind, the things they’ve been taught are stupid, so best to forget them!’ I struggle to understand what kind of story I’m reading — or watching — when the characters are already framed as perfect. Or rather, flaws absolutely exist (as these recaps attest), but the story pretends they’re not there. 

I hesitate to use the term “Mary Sue” here due to its origins and history. Meaning, the Mary Sue was conceived of as a parody, a deliberate exaggeration to comment on the types of characters written in the Star Trek fandom. Then people began using “Mary Sue” as a catch-all term for any female character that people deemed too talented (regardless of how talented their male counterparts might be), we started acknowledging the sexist undertones of that, then started reclaiming the term as something to celebrate and embrace… but we haven’t quite gotten there yet. “Mary Sue” is still a pretty loaded name to force on a character and it carries a lot of implications that I absolutely do not want to attach to Velvet. Yet it’s also the closest term I know to describe the act of an author giving a character what feels like a badly justified skillset. Such as “handy with technology” actually meaning “can fix anything powered by electricity or Dust as the plot needs.” 

Velvet is the action movie hacker going, “I’m in” is what I’m getting at. It’s not a compliment lol.

During all this grimm watching and relay fixing, Gus wants to know why they don’t just high-tail it out of there. Especially since the person they brought to do a specific job can no longer do that job. Mission’s a bust. Velvet gives what sounds like a decent explanation: “Retreating from Grimm isn’t an option when you’re fighting this close to a settlement. If we leave without destroying them, the Grimm will just look for another target.” AKA the settlement itself. 

Thing is, by this logic any grimm that are currently close enough to attack them are already close enough to the settlement to latch onto those people as the next target. They’d pick up on the civilians whether Velvet’s group was there to kill them or not. The group is there though, so they feel responsible, but why not just head to the settlement anyway? If the grimm follow you, fine. You can still fight them AND you now get the additional benefit of any other huntsmen/students who might be there. If they don’t follow you, great. If they were close enough to the settlement all along… again, this was always going to happen. 

Which, to be clear, isn’t the worst stance to take. I understand them wanting to avoid any potential risk by leaving/leading the grimm towards anyone else. I only want to point out the additional stupidity of fighting them when you’ve already got an unconscious civilian in your care, a barely trained student, and the whole reason you came out here might now be for naught. Yeah, Velvet gets the relay working with her magic kick and yeah, the rest of the team handles the grimm just fine, but none of them are able to see into the future and know that both these events will occur. Gus’ ‘Why are we staying here? It’s dangerous and pointless’ question has merit.

But of course, no one in RWBY would ever consider retreat. It’s a very iffy characteristic at this point. 

We learn — or at least I learn now — that Gus’ semblance is the ability to enhance others’ emotions, so basically the opposite of Ren’s. That would indeed be incredibly handy provided he has good control over it. We get another reference to Yatsuhashi’s “meditation exercises” that helped Gus’ grandfather in the last novel. Velvet theorizes that his improved memory has more to do with Yatsuhashi’s semblance than any generic meditation: “No one knew for sure what Yatsuhashi had done with his Semblance when he’d tried to heal Edward’s mind … even Yatsuhashi wasn’t sure. His ability was to erase memories, but it was possible that there was more to Yatsu’s Semblance than that.” Um… subtle yikes? Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad things have turned out well for the guy, but if I were the grandfather—or a family member of his—I wouldn’t really want a student messing around with my mind when he “wasn’t sure” what he was doing. Especially when the base skill is to erase memories, not recover or strengthen them. Honestly, I love taking a good look at fantasy series because half the time you realize how horrifying things actually are, once you strip away the common place aspects of these skills. An equivalent third year college student is running around experimenting with peoples’ memories to see if he can achieve something other than erasing them. Great!

The good thing is that Yatsuhashi is just as suspicious of this power as I am. Velvet things that he “hated messing with people’s minds.” Understandable, bud. I’d hate the ability too.

While they’ve got this time alone, Gus mentions that he had planned to contact Velvet soon anyway. Two of his classmates have gone missing and though his school has told Shade about it—there’s at least some of that additional info that Rumpole mentioned—he wanted to let her know too because remember, no one in this franchise trusts the professionals to fix problems. It’s a mindset I’d better understand if the professionals were actually inept. Or the protagonists weren’t training to be those professionals. It’s still exceedingly weird to me that there’s so little respect and trust for huntsmen while they desperately try to become huntsmen…

Something something broken systems, but RWBY isn’t interested in exploring that. 

So yeah, Gus ropes Velvet in with the hope that she can help. He says that they were last seen attending a new club called Mirage that hosts one-on-one fights for a championship title. So… it’s not really a club, right? Sure, sure, we’ve all seen Fight Club, but generally that’s used to describe dancing, not fighting. It’s a rather misleading term for what they were actually looking for. No one else finds this odd though. Nor that the information was sent out to select, powerful individuals. Nothing shady about this, folks! Velvet obviously recognizes all these details—a club, powerful semblances, a crown in the advertisement—and asks Gus to pass it along to her.

Our plot forwarded ever so slightly, their conversation ends as Arslan calls Velvet on the now fixed connection. One of the first thing she says is that Octavia used the other students as bait for the grimm.

At least Velvet shares my reaction: “What?!”

Octavia then takes an already bad situation and makes it that much worse. Listening in, she defiantly says, “That’s right. And it worked. It’s called strategy.” She confirms that the students are “mostly” okay and taunts Velvet about inviting them to her “Baby Brigade and you can all cry about it!” I hope I don’t need to take up precious document space by explaining how awful this is. Overlooking the fact that these would-be huntsmen are willing to put their younger peers’ lives in danger like that—and then mock them for needing mental health resources after the fact—why is Octavia the one pulling the murderous Mean Girl act? Yeah, she was an asshole during reinitiation, but wasn’t the whole point of that to demonstrate that she and Velvet got a little closer? Even if she won’t admit it? She saved Velvet from flying down that hole, but now she risks the lives of students at least three years her junior? If anyone should be this violent and antagonistic towards Velvet, it’s Nebula. The most she’s done for Velvet is offer a hand up, otherwise we just watched her express glee in getting to fight her and mock her for not abandoning Beacon… the same sort of behavior we’re seeing from Octavia now. Does Myers think that these two characters are interchangeable? That he can just pick one willy-nilly per chapter and let her play at being Velvet’s Mean Girl?

As a lovely anon reminded me recently, these are also the girls that were created and backed by fans. If I had put money and creative energy into these OCs, I’d be pretty frustrated with how the RT team has been treating them.

Arslan at least is complimentary towards Velvet for fixing the relay—“Truly, great work today”— and Velvet herself is appropriately shocked at Octavia’s behavior. That’s more emotional consistency than I’ve come to expect of this book, so I’ll take whatever little bits I can get.

Arslan signs off with plans to meet back up soon and Velvet thinks about how “everyone was safe after the mission, which was no small thing.” I’d agree… except for Velvet’s early thoughts about how easy this mission supposedly was and Octavia’s decision to put her teammates in danger. It sounds like if anything did go sideways, it’s in part because you chose to enter this overconfidently and then actively made it more dangerous.

Finally, the chapter ends with Velvet believing that she might be able to make her new team work with time. Our final line, in its own paragraph is: “If they had time.”

Am I the only one who finds this weird? The line reads like an omniscient bit of foreboding. Velvet thinks about how she just needs time and we, the reader, hear that this won’t be possible. Except this chapter is told from Velvet’s perspective. So why does she think they might not have time? Because of the Crown? I assume there will be an attack towards the end of the novel—can’t have a RWBY story without the final, epic battle—but right now Velvet has no reason to believe that an attack is imminent, or that the teams will change back, or anything else that would interfere with her hopes of strengthening this relationship… so why the rather confident sounding pessimism? I don’t know. I don’t pretend to know anymore lol.

At least this chapter was short? As said, silver linings. We’re still treading water though: Velvet’s bond with her new team seems to have regressed after two missions, rather than improved, and Gus didn’t reveal anything we didn’t already know, just further confirmed it. I assume that next chapter Velvet and the others will visit Mirage. Let’s hope something actually happens then. 

See you! 💜

[Ko-Fi]

[introvertguide]

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969); AFI #73

The next film for review is one of my very favorite Western style films, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969). This is an incredible film that is directed by George Roy Hill and stars the charismatic colossi Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and Katharine Ross. The film won four Academy Awards including Best Editing, Best Cinematography, Best Score, and Best Song. The AFI ranked the male duo #20 on the 100 Greatest Heroes list and the movie was ranked the 7th greatest western despite arguably not really being a Western but a semi-biography that is set in the Old West. As American as this film is, it actually did the best at the BAFTAs where it won 8 awards from 9 nominations and swept the major awards including Best Film, Best Direction, Best Actor (Robert Redford), and Best Actress (Katharine Ross). Before singing any more of the accolades for the movie, let me break down the plot. Of course that means...

SPOILER ALERT!!! THIS MOVIE IS GREAT AND DESERVES TO BE WATCHED AND NOT SPOILED!!! STOP READING AND WATCH THE FILM IF YOU HAVEN’T ALREADY!!! IT IS GREAT TO WATCH FIRST AND THEN COMPARE TO HISTORY AFTER SO GIVE IT A TRY!!!

The film is set In 1899 Wyoming, and begins with a quick sepia toned introduction to the characters. The major players are the quick talking Butch Cassidy (Paul Newman) and the quiet and short tempered Sundance Kid (Robert Redford). The color corrects and the two are riding together back to see their gang and it turns out that one of the other men wants to take over. Butch wins in a fight for the gang leader position by cheating along with the help of Sundance keeping the others at bay. Butch retains his job but he does like Harvey’s idea to rob the Union Pacific train. This robbery takes place with a comical interaction between Butch and an accountant/safeguard named Woodcock. The robbery goes well and the two celebrate at a whore house while watching the local sheriff try to enlist men for a posse. 

This is the end of act 1 and it is punctuated by a musical number. This happens throughout the film. Butch rides a bike around to try to impress the lover of Sundance, Etta Place (Katharine Ross), after stealing her away in the morning before the Kid wakes up. It is quite unusual and stands out from the rest of the film as Butch is not the love interest of the woman and the bike does not show up again. The music number is “Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head” by Burt Bacharach with an almost Benny Hill style circus outro. It really exemplifies the experimental nature of the film as the scene would likely have been cut today.

The train robbery went so well that the gang tries it again, but this time everything seems to be going wrong. Woodcock is coincidentally guarding the safe again and one of the passengers starts mouthing off. Butch is able to get into the safe car, but the safe is much thicker forcing him to use a bunch of dynamite to break it. He uses too much and blows up everything sending paper money blowing around in the breeze. To make matters worse, another train pulls up releasing a posse hired by the owner of Union Pacific. This posse kills two of the gang and chase Butch and Sundance into the mountains and the two can’t seem to lose them. They finally are able to jump off a cliff into a river and escape back to Etta. The two are worried that the posse is still coming so they take Etta and go to South America. Cue the end of act 2 so we have a fun musical travel montage. 

This is a travel montage shown through sepia tone still photos of the three going to New York and seeing the town before catching a boat south. Again, the music is far out of place for the genre and only works because of the overall experimental feel of the film. It is a very short interlude in slide show format and carnival music, but it does the trick and brings the group to Bolivia. 

On arrival, Sundance is not impressed at the conditions. They try to rob banks and are at first held back because of an inability to speak Spanish. Etta teaches them and the two men rob banks becoming known as Los Bandidos Yanquis (American Bandits). Here is another music interlude of all the successful robberies set to pleasant choir music that sounds like something out of an industrial instructional film, which tells the audience the mood is again about to change. After a while, Sundance becomes paranoid because he sees a man that looks like the leader of the posse that drove them out of America and the two decide to go straight and get jobs guarding the payroll instead of robbing it. Unfortunately, the are held up on their first job and Butch is forced to kill which he reveals he has never had to do before. Butch wants to have one more big score and Etta heads back north, sensing trouble with a return to crime, while Butch and Sundance complete a “jungle robbery” of the payroll.

The robbery is a success and the two take the money and the mule to carry it. This is a mistake because a local kid recognizes the brand on the mule and tells the police who also inform the Bolivian military. This is bad news for Butch and Sundance as they are pinned down in a small church by what seems to be a hundred Bolivian men. Butch makes a run for the ammo but both are shot in the attempt and it seems there is no way out. The two continue to banter about going to Australia after leaving Bolivia, but they both know they are done. They load up their guns the best they can and run out into the massive volley of fire and the frame freezes not revealing the final fate of the two. Roll credits.

This seems like a strange way to end a movie, but it mirrors the unknown fate of the real Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The whole movie is pretty historically accurate as far as what is known about the lives of the three main characters, but the musical interludes and the quippy dialogue make the film feel much more fictional. The movie is also split into definitive chapters with music breaks so it really has good pacing. Fine visual story telling. 

There is a strong connection between Paul Newman and Robert Redford, which is apparent throughout the film. Paul is the amiable people-person who likes to talk and be friends with everyone while Robert liked to keep to himself and was all business. It just worked well. Director George Roy Hill used this dynamic again when he had both men star together in The Sting, which was even more successful and garnered 7 Academy Awards. A great connection and an example of a cinematic “bromance” in which two lead male characters act almost like a married couple. 

The film seems to be strongly inspired by the works of Sergio Leone like A Fist Full of Dollars; For A Few Dollars More; The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; and Once Upon A Time in the West. It takes the western film and gives a more complicated plot, more stylized cinematography, and great soundtrack. The Leone films were shot in Italy and didn’t have all the restrictions that American films had in the 60s, so Hollywood looked to these films for content ideas when the Hayes code was finally replaced by the MPAA rating system in 1969. The major difference was American film makers had access to big name Hollywood actors and the actual American west. Also, Leone hired Ennio Morricone who used period piece instruments to give each character a theme while Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was scored by a hipster and then shot in a way to try and incorporate the music. 

In American film history, the year 1969 was very experimental with the Civil Rights movement and the “free love” hippies affecting the box office draw at the same time. The former group preferred a more realistic filming approach while the latter wanted a more psychedelic fantasy. Many of the films blended both and America ended up with The Wild Bunch, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Midnight Cowboy, and Easy Rider. It was a year of genre mixing and experimentation that makes for some fascinating film watching. Really embodies the turmoil of the country and the new age of Hollywood films. 

So should this film be on the AFI 100? Of course. It was experimental, influential, fun, and fascinating. It was perhaps the first “bromance” in Hollywood and a well established part of Americana. It also showed that context is completely unnecessary for a song to work in a film. Would I recommend it? How could I not? It is one of the few films that I have seen more times than I can count and still have not had to check the time while watching it. It is fun from beginning to end (sometimes weird, sometimes funny, sometimes dramatic action) and gorgeous to look at. It is a little anachronistic and abrupt with the music interludes, but engaging and enjoyable throughout. Definitely a film on the list that is more than just a time capsule or a lesson in film making (although it is that as well).

[aion-rsa]

How Dead by Daylight Gave Slasher Horror Icons The Game They Deserved

https://ift.tt/35lPcEi

If you grew up a gamer in the ‘80s and ‘90s, buying a bad licensed game was a rite of passage. Sure, even young gamers could detect a bomb like Home Improvement: Power Tool Pursuit! for the SNES from a mile away, but at a time before game reviews were easy to find online, it was natural to hope that the new X-Men game might just be good enough to take a chance on.

The situation was especially rough for horror movie fans. I owned the Nightmare on Elm Street and Friday the 13th adaptations for the NES and at least tried to finish them. It’s not that I thought they were good, but at a time when licensed horror games (not to mention major console horror games) were few and far between, the opportunity to face off against my favorite movie slasher was too enticing to ignore. 

The industry eventually learned to embrace horror in a meaningful way that resulted in some all-time great gaming experiences, but the slasher movie icons of the day remained tragically underutilized. While original horror series like Silent Hill and Resident Evil expanded the storytelling potential of the medium, Chucky was reduced to starring in a Temple Run knock-off. 

In the minds of many horror fans, the hope for a great game starring Micheal Myers, Freddy Krueger, or Leatherface lingered even as passable adaptations of those characters eluded us for decades. Where was the disconnect?

“I think it probably extends from the fact that they are two very, very different mediums and two very, very different ways of telling stories,” says Mathieu Coté, director of Behaviour Interactive’s hit slasher multiplayer game Dead by Daylight. “The reasons why slasher movies are so successful, and why they make you feel the way that they do, are extremely difficult to translate into gameplay mechanics. I think that probably that’s the root of it.”

The earliest examples of slasher movie games certainly support that theory. In 1983, adaptations of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Halloween were released for the Atari 2600. They offered wildly different experiences (Texas Chainsaw Massacre saw you mow down victims for points while Halloween was all about evading Michael Myers), but each was so bad that you’d sooner be caught smoking weed while having sex at Camp Crystal Lake than playing either for more than a few minutes. 

Even as technology and game design advanced past what was possible on the Atari and NES, slasher icons were still being butchered in ways that would make these killers proud.

“It often felt as if [licenses] were either tacked onto an existing product that didn’t fit or it was just shovelware where the attitude is ‘make a thing and put the name on it,’” Coté says. “Oftentimes the people holding the licenses, and again it’s a matter of those two mediums being so different, but the people holding the licenses to the movies, they know about movies. They don’t know about games. That can make things difficult.”

With Dead by Daylight, Coté’s team sought to capture the essence of the slasher movie and translate that into fun gameplay that actually made sense for the genre. The asymmetrical multiplayer title sees one player assume the role of a killer tasked with eliminating four player-controlled survivors trying to escape the terrifying scenario. Since its release in 2016, Dead by Daylight has been embraced as the definitive horror multiplayer experience. 

Given how difficult it has historically been to make a slasher title, much less one featuring licensed characters, perhaps it should come as no surprise that Dead by Daylight’s origins can be traced to a much simpler concept that didn’t even start out as horror.

“There was a designer working in basically a silo somewhere making little prototypes, and one prototype that he made at some point was literally hide and seek,” Coté remembers. “It was one character that’s trying to accomplish a goal and there was another character that was very powerful. If he touched you, you’re dead.”

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An equally simple tweak would reveal the prototype’s incredible horror potential.

“We put cardboard in between [split screens] and went ‘Oh, my God. This is super fun,” Coté recalls. “The idea of creating a game in which you could play the fantasy of being the villain in a horror movie, that’s a longstanding one…if we put that with the fantasy of a villain in a horror movie, we have a winner.”

The idea of pairing the basic structure of hide and seek with a horror movie villain shows team’s vital understanding of what makes the slasher genre so entertaining in the first place. 

“A lot of effort is put into these [villains], so of course they’re more appealing,” says Dead by Daylight creative director Dave Richard. “I think that’s why we started rooting for them, and we have this enjoyment and guilty pleasure of rooting for the villain. I think that we all have this inside of us at different levels. We’re embracing this macabre thing.”

The team’s fascination with the macabre would slowly turn their experiment into a fully-fledged horror game. 

“The original prototypes showed survivors as literally beheaded silhouettes wearing different colored t-shirts with phrases like virgin, stoner, and jock,” Coté explains. “That’s something that Cabin in the Woods did very, very well, and the early prototype was based on those tropes.”

While Coté and Richard reference meta-horror movies like Cabin in the Woods and mockumentary Behind the Mask: The Rise of Leslie Vernon as early inspirations that helped them contextualize the genre’s key elements, they ultimately turned to foundational films such as Halloween, Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre when crafting the game’s environments, characters, and other design elements. In those early days, though, few believed that Dead by Daylight would eventually host some of the stars of those films. 

“There were dreams and ambitions, but I don’t think there were thoughts,” Coté says. “We barely expected it to break even after a couple of months. When it started to really explode in the first month or so, we started looking for opportunities.”

The earliest of those opportunities happened to involve arguably the most important slasher of all-time: Michael Myers.

“We were lucky enough to get in contact with some very nice people who are the owners of the original version of Michael Meyers,” Coté explains. “Being able to get the rights to bring in that character and the original Laurie Strode into Dead by Daylight was kind of a big deal. It set the stage because it legitimized us in a certain way.”

For anyone who has followed the history of licensing rights and copyright law (not to mention the aforementioned history of slashers in games), the fact that the team was able to add Michael Myers as a playable killer must conjure an image of a developer clawing their way out of licensing hell with one hand while holding on to Myers with the other. Yet, it sounds like the process wasn’t all that complicated.

“I wouldn’t call it [licensing] hell,” Coté says. “Most of it is actually super interesting, and most of the licenses that we have…we’re dealing with people who get what we’re trying to do. The people who are, as I was saying earlier, more into movies than into video games, tend to trust us to do the right thing.”

Securing Michael Myers was one thing, but now that they had him, the team was faced with the same dilemma that had ruined even noble attempts at building games around these characters in the past.

“We first had to ask ‘What is the fantasy around that character and what is so interesting and unique about these characters?’” Richard recalls. “Of course, most of them have a weapon and they kill, but what’s their special sauce?”

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As Richard explains, Freddy Krueger has a “dream world” and a “fantasy that’s easier to get.” By comparison, Michael Myers is often portrayed as a guy with a mask and a knife. How do you translate that into a game in a way that makes him feel unique?

The answer to that question came in what Coté rightfully describes as a “stroke of genius.” 

“I remember that meeting where we were talking about Halloween and how to make [Michael Myers] unique,” Coté explains. “They pitched us the idea of a killer that would just watch you. We’re like, ‘What?’ They’re like, ‘Yeah, he’s just going to stand there and watch you,’ because that’s what Myers does in the movies. That’s what he does, but it’s an action game. People want to chase each other…We all thought, ‘Oh, you’re an idiot.’”

Yet, when Coté got the chance to actually play an early build of Dead By Daylight with Myers as the killer, he immediately understood what the team was aspiring to achieve.

“The very, very first version of the prototype I remember playing and repairing a generator and looking over my shoulder, and I see him standing on a hill and just watching me, and I go, ‘This is the creepiest thing I’ve ever experienced in this game,’” Coté says. “It’s super creepy, especially knowing it’s an actual other player right there. He could attack me right now, but he chooses to just watch me…that kind of thing made me realize the liberties we could take with the gameplay mechanics to really create something that would be unique and special.”

For the next few years, that’s exactly what the team did. They bent the rules of the game to incorporate other famous slashers. Freddy Krueger dragged Dead by Daylight players to dream world while Saw’s Amanda Young turned the game’s traps into a gambling proposition. Leatherface’s devastating attacks impacted a survivor’s ability to carry on and Ghost Face’s playfulness and humor distinguishes him from one of his major inspirations, Michael Myers himself. Through it all, the team’s goal was to stay true to the legacy of these characters and give them a proper home. 

“I love Mortal Kombat, but whenever a character gets imported to Mortal Kombat, they all turn into martial artists,” Coté says. “When you put Jason in Mortal Kombat, he becomes a martial artist and he hacks people, and then he does a finishing move and it’s awesome, but that’s it. When you take Michael Myers and put him in Dead by Daylight, he’s Michael Myers.”

Of course, Dead by Daylight’s roster of killers doesn’t just include an array of adaptations. At launch, the game boasted three original killers: The Trapper, The Wraith, and The Hillbilly. The Trapper was, by the team’s admission, based on Jason Vorhees and The Hillbilly certainly resembled Leatherface. It was in The Wraith, a desperate figure whose pursuit of a job saw him become an unwilling executioner, that the team found their first truly great original creation.

“For us, it was important that one of the killers was inspired by more of a cultural idea, and that was The Wraith,” Richard notes. “You don’t see The Wraith archetype in movies. It really comes from horror culture and cultural monsters more than movies.”

That desire to explore every corner of horror rather than just retread film successes is a big part of the reason why Dead by Daylight’s original killers are among its most popular. In fact, the team draws inspiration from such a wide array of sources that it’s possible some players may feel the impact of these original creations more intensely than others. 

“The Huntress is heavily inspired by Eastern European folklore and mythology,” Coté says. “For some of our players, especially Russian and Ukrainian players, they were immediately, completely freaked out because she’s humming a song that their mothers sang to them when they were a kid. It was really like it hit way too close for some of them, and it was great. It made them feel things, but for Japanese players or Brazilian players who had no cultural link to that, it was still an impressive and terrifying character because what scares people is visceral and universal”

While Dead by Daylight’s original killers stand tall against horror’s heavyweights, the game’s most impressive contribution to the slasher genre may just be its emphasis on the personalities and attributes of its survivors. Early builds of the premise portrayed survivors as Merrily We Roll Along rejects wearing self-identifying sweaters, but the game eventually began treating survivors with the same reverence as killers. 

“Survivors have been the learning experience, to say the least,” Richard confesses. “When we created the original characters, we wanted them to have real stories and personalities, but also to be relatable. I’m going to say a word I don’t like so much, but it’s almost like they’re shells that the players can identify with and easily become.”

Dead by Daylight’s emphasis on the unique qualities of its survivors helped it outlive (pun proudly intended) other asymmetrical multiplayer games, but even Behaviour Interactive found itself having to reckon with some of the stereotypes that plague even the best slasher movies. 

“The fact is that a lot of those [early character designs] are stereotypes that convey, let’s say, cultural tropes that don’t need to continue to exist in today’s society,” Coté admits. “For us, it was more interesting to create characters that feel like someone you could stand behind in a coffee shop and not blink because they’re regular people. They’re people you can relate to.”

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While Dead by Daylight’s roster of survivors features a few imports (such as Halloween’s Laurie Strode and Evil Dead’s Ash), the team reveals that “licensed survivors are much harder to find than killers,” largely because they still want the game’s survivor’s to feel overwhelmed by the stalkers. Coté specifically notes that it wouldn’t make sense for someone like John Wick or Arnold Schwarzenegger to be hanging helplessly from a hook. Yet, they also don’t feel like the legacy and value of a horror hero should be defined by their ability to play offense. 

“All of them are serial survivors,” Coté says of the game’s characters. “They continue to win, which is impressive, given the challenges they face.”

Besides, as millions of fans who have shouted at the screen at a horror film can attest to, the fates of Dead by Daylight’s survivors really come down to the players themselves.

“We always wanted to make it so that if you die in Dead by Daylight, it’s because you did something dumb or you panicked and didn’t stick to the plan,” Coté says. “Obviously the killers are extremely powerful, but most of the time [survivors lose] because someone panicked or was careless and got cocky and didn’t make good decisions.”

The ability to test your mettle against a slasher legend is one of Dead by Daylight’s more interesting examples of meta brilliance, but its most notable meta mechanic is the presence of The Entity, the invisible hand that pulls characters from different horror universes into the game. It’s a subtle, yet vital, story component inspired by another horror legend. 

“The main inspiration for The Entity was actually The Dark Tower,” Richard recalls. “Many of us on the team are fans of the work of Stephen King, and when we deep dove into The Dark Tower, it was a favorite. The way every book in the Stephen King universe links together and is tied up with The Dark Tower was the inception of the idea of The Entity.”

The Entity is the core component of the game’s surprisingly strong lore, which not only offers compelling backstories for nearly every survivor, setting, and killer but even adds a few new chapters for licensed universes like the Scream series. 

In many other multiplayer games, that lore would be little more than an easter egg debated over on Wiki pages and fan forums. But in Dead by Daylight, the commitment to meaningful storytelling is a core component of the ambition which defines Behaviour Interactive’s mission. 

“Every time we create more of our lore, we solidify what Dead by Daylight is and the universe around it,” Coté explains. “It’s not just to be able to bring in anything, but to be able to create a universe into which all of these things can exist and make sense.”

While the team’s commitment to lore may help bolster their pitches to rights holders, their commitment to ensuring that Dead by Daylight’s growth adheres to an internal logic also speaks to the team’s confidence that they can give nearly any slasher a home. 

“I’d say that a few [killers] still elude our grasp, and it’s mostly due to the fact that someone thinks they can make a standalone game for them, or they are working on one,” Coté says. “Anybody who’s got a little bit of experience in video games can tell you that recreating the magic of Dead by Daylight and that sort of balanced chaos is a terrifying prospect. It’s certainly not a simple thing to recreate.”

There’s a sincerity to that statement which encapsulates so many of the reasons why Dead by Daylight was not only able to secure slashers and survivors who could easily star in their own games but do justice to them within the framework of an experience that wasn’t designed to accommodate those legends in the first place.

After all, if the bad old days of slasher games and adaptations were defined by limitations and indifference, then Dead by Daylight succeeds because it takes nothing for granted. Its team carefully crafted a scenario that invoked the pure pleasure of the slasher genre and then spent years studying the ins and outs of these characters and worlds in order to better understand what makes them work beyond the superficial pleasure of their mere presence. It’s an involved process that doesn’t work for everyone.

“We’ve had a couple of cases of people on the development team that, maybe after a year or something, they go, ‘You know what? I think I’ve had enough.’” Coté admits. “Especially 3D artists who keep looking at references of grizzly things all the time, and most of them, they’re just having a blast…but I’m thinking of one or two examples of people who were like ‘You know what? I need to go and work on something with unicorns and kittens.’ That’s fair. That’s absolutely fair.”

The amount of work that goes into a game like Dead by Daylight may ultimately scare off other developers who would dare give legendary slashers their own games, but as long as we have Dead by Daylight, at least a few horror icons will always have a home. 

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“It used to be that we were hoping that people who hold the licenses to these legends would allow us to bring them into our world,” Coté says. “Nowadays, the conversations oftentimes revolve around asking them if they’re big enough to make it into the hall of fame that is Dead by Daylight…It’s the place for horror to come by and live.”

The post How Dead by Daylight Gave Slasher Horror Icons The Game They Deserved appeared first on Den of Geek.

from Den of Geek https://ift.tt/2HnrM8R

[finelythreadedsky]

Why is there no Jewish narnia? (As you mentioned in your last post) I have some suspicions, but would love to read your thoughts!

This is a long answer but I wrote a 20 page paper on this so:

It’s essentially because fantasy (mostly high fantasy) as it has developed through the last century is an inherently Christian genre. Works of specifically Jewish speculative fiction tend to be sci-fi, alternate history, or historical fantasy NOT in the vaguely medieval setting common in fantasy. There are Jewish works of fantasy (Maggie Anton’s Rav Hisda’s Daughter, Helene Wecker’s The Golem and the Jinni) and high fantasy (The Princess Bride, Shira Glassman’s Mangoverse), but there is not a fantasy world that is Jewish in the same way that Narnia is Christian (Shira Glassman comes closest, but Jewish theology is not interwoven into her work the same way Christian theology is in Narnia or Middle Earth).

read more for analysis of fantasy’s theological inclusivity, relationship to the past, and tension between nostalgia and modernity!

Modern fantasy as a genre has been largely shaped by Tolkien and Lewis, deeply religious men whose works are infused with their Christianity (arguably also by GRR Martin, who is a former Catholic, but it’s too soon to tell). Fantasy also derives its origins from A Pilgrim’s Progress, a seventeenth century Christian allegory that was incredibly influential for subsequent literature, particularly the idea of a fantasy quest that also prompts a character’s moral/spiritual growth. The quest narrative is inherently Christian in its origins, and its effect of a character’s moral/spiritual development and coming of age is also fairly Christian.

Usually actual Christianity isn’t present in vaguely historical fantasy worlds, but fantasy worlds’ religion/spirituality often vaguely resembles (what the author believed about) Western European pre-Christian pagan practices. Middle Earth in particular very heavily parallels Zoroastrianism and Mithraism. We end up with a world poised on the edge of Christianity, that could easily incorporate a Christ-figure. Essentially because Tolkien and Lewis were really into the myths and cultures of pre-Christian Europe, their own stories reflected an interest in integrating those myths and cultures into their own worldview as legitimate, though incomplete, predecessors to Christianity. Their fantasy pagans are primitive precursors to Christianity, getting a glimpse of divine truth but not yet achieving fulfillment through Jesus. A corresponding ‘pre-Jewish’ fantasy world wouldn’t work or make sense, not only because Judaism pre-dates or is contemporary with most of the mythologies and cultures that interested Tolkien, Lewis, and other writers: Jews don’t have the same theological imperative to reconcile pagan mythologies with their worldview, because that imperative comes out of an understanding of one’s own religion as the only source of truth. Historically Christianity has been very concerned with whether people who were not christian because they lived before Jesus (or before Christianity reached the area they were living in) could still be righteous/saved, but Judaism holds that people who are not Jewish are just fine as they are and so has no need to insist on the partial divine inspiration of non/pre-Jewish peoples as Tolkien and Lewis do for non/pre-Christian peoples.

Likewise there isn’t really a Jewish need to create moral/theological allegories, which is the basis of modern fantasy, from A Pilgrim’s Progress to that bit we all hate with Susan being no longer a queen of Narnia, because Judaism is not concerned with spreading and teaching its values in the same way that Christianity is. Fantasy tends to come out of a Christian perspective on a cosmic battle between good and evil that is also a battle over the individual soul of the protagonist. Will God or the devil, good or evil triumph over Middle Earth or Narnia? Will moral purity and a sense of what is truly valuable defeat the appeal of the present at hand for Dorothy Gale and Bilbo Baggins? The duality of good and evil and pitting them against each other in a battle for an individual soul is a Christian thing. The idea that the fate of the entire world can rest on a single soul? Also a Christian thing.

Tolkien/Lewis style fantasy is infused with an inherently Christian relationship to the past (i.e., return to a prior golden age). Fairly obviously, Jews have a more complicated relationship with medieval and pre-modern Europe, which is the groundwork of a lot of fantasy. The sort of pastoral nostalgia on which fantasy is built doesn’t really work for Jews, who tend not to be so eager to imagine themselves in the past in that way. Hence the preponderance of Jewish sci-fi, which imagines a better future from authors who see the present as better than the past and hope for a future even better than the present. The ability to romanticize the past is a privilege, and it is not one Jews have historically had very often. And fantasy, aside from looking to the historical past for its setting, often takes place in a world that is aware that it has lost its golden age and is attempting to restore it. Middle Earth and Narnia have seen better days but have ‘fallen’ from that temporal Eden through corruption, requiring characters who can vanquish the evil and restore the glorious golden age. Implicit in this is a very Christian perspective of the biblical fall from paradise as an unequivocally bad thing that humans should seek to reverse, as well as the implications of a second coming of Jesus in the restoration of a golden age. Fantasy rests on the assumptions that the past is an authority and something to be restored, historically as well as in-universe, and that the modern age is inferior to its predecessors. Neither of those assumptions work with the experiences of Jews. It’s a Christian idea of the circularity and cyclicality of time and history, where I think a linear perspective is more appropriate to Judaism. And the cyclicality prevents any progress toward modernity— the Narnia books cover two and a half millennia, but the world is stagnant in the Middle Ages the entire time. Jews have a vested interest in progress and modernity that has no place in such fantasy.

(A side note that neo-pagan/anti-Christian fantasy literature from the 60s, 70s, and early 80s is a really interesting contrast to the absence of Jewish fantasy worlds. More than a few authors turned to the same pre-Christian traditions as Tolkien and lewis, but depicted them as wholly un-Christian and explicitly in conflict with Christianity or proto-Christian traditions.)

In doing my research for this I came across A Canticle for Leibowitz, which has the premise that the world is destroyed in a nuclear war but you know what survives and flourishes? The Catholic Church. It consists of three parts, separated by 600 years each, centering monks in the order of St. Leibowitz, an engineer at the end of the world who committed himself to preserving knowledge as it was being destroyed. Question that never got answered: WHY did this 20th century Jewish guy convert to Catholicism and become a priest???? Anyway, the book is Very Catholic. It plays into the Christian cyclicality of history BIG time, which means it hits an interesting place between sci-fi and historical fiction/fantasy, since its 26th century resembles the early middle ages, its 32nd century looks like the Renaissance, its 36th century seems like what someone might have projected for the 22nd century, and all throughout the characters think of the 20th century like we have approached classical antiquity for the past 1500 years. Unfortunately, I did not enjoy it, though there were a few cool bits that dealt with the wandering Jew motif. Not surprisingly, if the premise of your book is that it’s about post-apocalyptic monks, I’m not really into it.

[knifehecker]

undertale day [long post]

it’s the 15th!! happy 4th birthday undertale!!! normally i try to do a little art or something but this year i decided to do something a little different. there’s a lot of content that’s become core tenets of my experience with the fandom -- changed the way i thought about the characters, how i engage with the fandom, opened my eyes to new ways of writing -- and i thought it’d be neat to compile some of those into one post to share with other people. so without further ado!!!

40-minute Deltarune Piano Medley - FaceImplosion [MUSIC]

ok, i know this is deltarune and not undertale, but this medley incorporates songs from both games so i’m gonna say it counts. and honestly, i could say a LOT about this piece!! i’ve watched and listened to a lot of ut/dr medleys, and this has to be the most lovingly crafted of its type that i’ve ever seen. Ever. a lot of care has been put into the order and combination of the songs (some funny, some sad, some mindblowing, ALL amazing) and the art is so good that every time i listen i find myself watching along. there’s a lot of easter eggs, especially for the attentive listener/watcher, and this medley deserves far more than the 6k views it’s gotten so far.

Undertale Album Project - Various Artists [MUSIC]

Songs From Mt Ebott is a collaborative album project that contains dozens of tracks from a score of different artists. i have a lot of favorite tracks from this album, not to mention the individual track art created for each, and if you’ve never heard of this project before, i really recommend giving it a listen! (FaceImplosion also did a piano track for this album, by the way, which i’m linking separately because it’s one of my aforementioned favorites.)

Chara - tigerblossom [MUSIC]

im not gonna lie. this was my favorite piece of fan music for a long time. it’s a medley mashing a few different songs together, short and sweet, but it comes together in such an incredibly heartfelt way at the end that whenever i end up listening to it i find myself wishing the track was about five minutes longer. they also have an underfell version of your best friend that i recommend giving a listen!

Photographs - FuriousPoplar [FIC]

in terms of “post-paci everyone lives au”s, there’s been a lot of ground covered by a lot of different people, and after a while the concept feels almost a bit...same-y? but this fic covers a sorely-needed conversation between an alive chara and asriel in a way that i’ve never seen approached by anyone else before. it’s cathartic, it’s extremely well written, and it doesn’t shy away from the ugly sides of trauma and recovery, which is so greatly appreciated. it also hit me...REALLY hard, which i think is a testament to how amazing this piece is.

Turn Back - foxsgloves [FIC]

i read this one pretty early on in my time in this fandom, and it’s continued to influence me long after. the premise: frisk keeps loading over the brief time asriel has his body in the epilogue, and simply spends time with him as they both prepare to move on towards the end. it’s sad. it’s cute. it’s amazing. it’s something i go back to reread sometimes late at night when i want to reread something friendly and familiar and a little sad. and its been one of my favorites ever since i read it.

You Wear Your Grief Like a Badge - Draikinator [FIC SERIES]

how do you even TALK about ywyglb? do i talk about nate’s impeccable voice in their writing? how true to character they are with the kids? how they set the scene of a post-pacifist world still shaking with the echoes of the past? the series starts with flowey taking frisk’s soul captive while chara and sans form an uneasy alliance in order to get them back, and then spirals into a tense, sweet, funny, awful, heartbreaking experience that reshaped how i viewed the boundaries of my own writing. draikinator’s writing has been and continues to be a huge inspiration to me, and i heartily recommend giving any of their stuff a try.

A Numbered List of Things That Aren't as Badass as They Sound (ex. Monsters, Suicide, Burning in Hell) - rosyy [FIC]

a brief glimpse into chara and asriel just before It Happens, While It Happens, When It Happens. the prose here is the sort of flowery delirious feverdream you’d expect from a kid dying of buttercup poisoning, and i love it to bits. i also want to mention a dr who crossover by the same author, because it has kris as the doctor and frisk as the stray they adopt, and its also the perfect antidote to the angst the first fic provides.

Risen Up (or, Of Fallen Children and Mountain Kin) - paradoxpangolin [FIC]

oh jeezums, how do i even start with this one? post-paci, frisk comes to the conclusion that the best way to ease the tensions between human and monsterkind is to put on a musical about their time in the underground!!!!.....except this leads to its own host of complications, and things get a bit Messy. this fic hasn’t updated in a bit, but it contains so much in its 140k of already published writing that i feel the need to urge you to read it anyway. i’m really partial to autistic frisks, and this fic has what’s got to be my favorite portrayal of that in ... probably the entire fandom? honestly, most (if not all) of the characters in this fic are autist, and it’s just. very good. i love.

you’re like a mirror, reflecting me - batterytriplicate [FIC]

a daemon au exploring what frisk and chara’s journeys might have been like with the extra distinction between monster dust and daemon dust. i completely forgot about this fic until i was trawling through my ao3 history for this post, and i’m really really glad i found it again. i think i was in the middle of trying to figure out this exact au when i first found this fic, and it did everything i was thinking of (and more) so much better that i felt more than content leaving it at that. so if you like his dark materials and want to see a fantastic little daemon au, give this a shot!

soulless-pacifist - vsemily [ASK BLOG]

soulless-pacifist..... if you’ve never heard of this askblog, you’re in for a treat. i wasn’t with it from the very beginning, but i started reading towards the  middle of its main story arc and stuck with it to the end, and suffice it to say, it has to be my favorite fandom askblog to date, purely for how well its written, how well its drawn, and how it’s one of the....only askblogs i’ve ever seen come not only to a FULL conclusion, but to a satisfying one! the mun also worked with a programmer to create a fangame for its final arc, which is so above and beyond that im still kind of in disbelief. in short: this askblog followed frisk and their passenger after the events of a soulless pacifist route, and continues on with them as they grow together and find their place with a whole host of twist and turns in store.                also, memes.

Shine your light with me, chase all the dark away - FancifulRivers [FIC]

this au follows frisk and chara after the events of the game. unlike most post-paci runs, though, chara has their own body back, while they and frisk are hiding back in mt ebott after the monsters have left to avoid the complications of being runaways and also.... incredible guilt and trauma. things don’t really work out like that, though, and i really recommend this read. fancifulrivers has also been an incredibly prolific writer who’s uploaded a lot of really good ut fics, so this is a great starting point to jump off of for their other stuff!

repercussions - proximally [FIC]

this fic... i think this one fic is the one that’s impacted me the most during my early days of this fandom. it’s short, and sad, and is a twist on the soulless pacifist ending that i was left thinking about literally for months after i first read it. instead of saying any more and risking spoiling it, i’ll just leave the author’s desc:  “You made a mistake, and you pay for it with your life. “

The Great Boondoggle - Masu_Trout [FIC]

the premise of this fic is pretty simple. post paci, frisk is walking home. they come across a Bad Guy. hijinks ensue. but what sets apart this fic from others for me is the way frisk is written here. when this fic was published in early 2016, most frisks i came across were the...sweet harmless woobies that were pretty typical from the fandom. this is one of the first frisks i came across that was kind of mean, and a little cold, and had very obviously had a long upward climb to being the sort of person who chose mercy instead of fight. this portrayal is a lot more common nowadays, which i’m super grateful for, but since this is one of the first fics i came across that really nailed this portrayal, i felt i should leave this here. i also recommend their pokemon/ut au, which is toriel and frisk centric and i also love to bits.

and....well, i was gonna say “that’s it”, but i honestly had to cut quite a few things from this list to keep it from stretching the dash too much. there’s been a lot of incredible content created by this fandom over the years, and this is by no means a comprehensive list of my favorites. but these are some of the ones that impacted me in a really special way, and if you were kind enough to check them out and maybe even liked them, please consider leaving a kind comment for the creator! if you’re the author of one of these pieces reading this right now: thank you so much! im looking forward to finding even more favorites in this year and the next.

[tooshytobeabooktuber]

Wonders of the Invisible World by Christopher Barzak Review

Hello lovely people! I know it’s been a minute since I’ve posted, but I’m back with a book review for you. This is my most recent read, and I have a lot of thoughts. I rated it 4/5 stars on goodreads, but I wanted to go into more detail about how I feel on here.

Wonders of the Invisible World follows Aidan Lockwood, a seventeen-year-old living in Temperance, Ohio. When his childhood friend, Jared, moves back to town he reawakens old abilities in Aidan that had been suppressed. The two boys quickly develop a deep relationship as Aidan learns to see the spirit world and about the rich history of his family. 

CW: mentions of homophobia, death of a parent, death of a sibling, mentions and depictions of suicide. 

This book was marketed as Magical Realism, but I don’t think that’s entirely accurate. For one, the author is white (to the best of my knowledge, please correct me if I’m wrong) and this book has no Latin American roots. For two, the typical conventions of the genre are not as prevalent in this book. I think this is more of a Contemporary Fantasy. Also, before I get into my thoughts I want to address something.

I see this book, as well as any young adult book that claims to be “magical realism”, compared exclusively to The Raven Cycle. Don’t misunderstand, I love The Raven Cycle. I think it’s excellent. But, I think we sometimes give Stiefvater too much credit for a genre she did not create. She was not at all the first person to write Magical Realism, or even her heavily anglicized version of it. Did she do something unique in the Young Adult category? Yes. But, to ignore the Latin American roots of Magical Realism is incredibly disrespectful. Maggie Stiefvater didn’t invent Magical Realism, and we should stop comparing everything that could even vaguely fall into that genre with her works. However, I still have mixed feelings about whether or not white authors should write or categorize their works as “Magical Realism.” I’d love to discuss it further!!

Now onto the review

This book had many elements I love: tree lore, a secret family history, a complicated mother-son dynamic, a male/male romance, and ghosts to name a few. Also, the role that death played in this book and the idea of life stories and being true to one’s self were all nice touches. The writing and atmosphere were spot on through the story. I enjoyed Barzak’s style and ability to incorporate weird sh*t that I would never come up with. I did think that Aidan’s headaches were a little on the nose, but maybe that was because it’s an overdone trope in my opinion. Ooooo he has headaches because of his psychic abilities, didn’t see that one coming. 

I thought the male/male romance was really nice, if a little understated at times. It was a tad bit rushed into, and didn’t contribute much beyond some nice scenes. I’m never going to claim that representation is unnecessary in a story, but I do think the subplot could have been more developed. As for the plot, I give it a 5/10. It was a little convoluted, and I felt like there was a lot of filler. This, as a result, slowed the pacing down. However, the ending was satisfying as well as the set up and payoff. 

Overall I think this was a really great read. It was quirky and spooky, with many of my favorite fantasy tropes. The imagery was vivid, the ghost stories were on point, and the mother was by far my favorite character. I recommend giving this a go if any of the things I mentioned interest you. If you’ve read this, I’d love to discuss it further. And if you have anything to add to the magical realism debate, I would love to hear your thoughts!!

Love and light always

Florence   

[nadziejastar]

On Subject X and Lea/Isa friendship. The writers should’ve done more to develop the concept. I think it’s cool that that young Isa/Lea wanted to save someone, but they don’t explore the idea for us to think that they were connected. They mentioned it BBS, a little, but afterwards? No clue. I do like your Kairi theory though.

Thanks! I really like the Kairi theory, too. I have no proof or anything, but it just feels right to me. My gut tells me that since Kairi, Lea and Isa are all from Radiant Garden, the writers wouldn’t have wasted such a perfect opportunity to draw some connections there. And it just fits the story SO much better. 

In KH3, they were clearly trying to play up the idea that Lea and Isa were super close to this girl, as if she was the third member of their trio or something. And yet, if we are to go by their own descriptions…they don’t even know her. She was a traumatized amnesiac girl they met with a handful of times in the shadows. How close could they have possibly been to her? She was NOT their group’s Kairi or Aqua. They didn’t even know her name.

But his voice was still oddly low. Running into Saïx had brought out a different side of him—and that side was a little scary.

“This just doesn’t seem like you,” said Roxas.

“What do you mean?”

Roxas found he couldn’t quite put the answer into words. What can I say…? “You don’t like things to be complicated.”

That was the best he could do. It wasn’t quite right, either…but he didn’t know how to describe this.

If it actually had been Kairi, then they were simply trying to do a selfless deed for a person they had never met, expecting nothing in return for their actions. And they failed miserably, destroying their lives in the process. We know it is very in-character for Lea to want to help “stray puppies”. Despite not getting to learn much about Isa, it fits with his character based on the Reports in KH3, and also his personality based on the Bunnymoon weapon. Also, one of Saïx’s weapons is named Artemis, who was a lunar goddess and a patron of young girl children.

The fact that they never mentioned Kairi in Days would have made far more sense than Skuld, since they were never claiming to be BFF’s with her or anything. Plus, they had their own issues to worry about at that point. They weren’t trying to take over the Organization to learn about Kairi.

It would also help explain Axel’s unconditional love and empathy for Saïx. He thinks Saïx changed from a gentle and selfless boy to the messed-up freak he is all because one fateful day, they tried to help an innocent little girl who was being used as a human guinea pig. Roxas thinks that Axel is a pretty uncomplicated guy. It’s why he and Xion found it so hilarious when Axel expressed his deeper feelings that one time under the red sunset. It felt so out-of-character to them based on the facade Axel puts on. 

The sun sank lower and lower as Axel watched, his mind wandering.

If he stared for too long, the image would burn itself into his eyes, visible even after his eyes were closed.

A phantom sun.

Someone had once told him why sunsets were red… Who was that?

But of course, that couldn’t be further from the truth. Axel is far from uncomplicated. He just keeps his true feelings close to his chest. His feelings for Isa/Saïx were incredibly complicated. I think Axel was thinking about Isa that day while he was staring into the red sunset. He was thinking that he would never see the person he loved ever again.

The person he used to be inseparable from has changed into someone totally unrecognizable to him. Someone who has forgotten all about him, long ago. But, as a small comfort, he would never have to be apart from Isa, as long as he had the memories of him. In his memory, the Isa he loved would live forever, and they would always be inseparable. And that is what put him in such a sentimental mood that day.

In KH3, Axel acts the same way he did in the Days novel. He stares into the sunset with a wistful expression on his face. And who is it that he sees at that moment? Xion. A being made from Sora’s memories of Kairi. That’s who appears, as if to comfort him and offer him hope that the heart’s connections are never truly lost. I thought Kairi and Lea’s relationship was adorable and so sweet. I just wish they had gone farther with it and included Isa, too.

“I just…want these days to last forever,” Roxas murmured, slow and pensive. “Hanging out after the job’s done, eating ice cream, watching the sunset…”

Axel peered at his profile as he did just that. The sunset’s glow touched Roxas’s face and Xion’s with warm red.

I like how the description of Roxas and Xion’s face in the novel is so similar to what we saw in KH3 with the warm sunlight on Xion. I know Axel was thinking about Isa that day. I believe he was thinking about Isa yet again in KH3. He still feels that they are inseparable. And if Isa was still in the Organization’s clutches, then he would never be free either.

“Well, nothing lasts forever,” Axel mumbled, looking off to the side again. “Least of all for a bunch of Nobodies.”

At that, both of their expressions fell.

Seriously, you two? You’re always grinning or getting bummed out…just like real live people with hearts. Axel exhaled and gathered some words. “But, you know, hanging out every day isn’t the only thing that matters. We’ll still have one another, even if that changes.”

“Really?” Roxas perked up.

“Yeah. As long as we remember one another, we’ll never be apart. Got it memorized?”

Roxas grinned. “Who are you, and what have you done with Axel?”“

Hey! I tried, okay?” All that effort to cheer them up, and they just turned it into a punch line. Chagrined, he looked away.

Xion burst into giggles, and then, as if it was contagious, Roxas started laughing, too.“Oh, c’mon, it’s not that funny!” Axel scolded.

They paused, looked at each other, and giggled again.“I don’t know why I put up with this…”

“But, I mean…it just didn’t sound like you, Axel.” Xion could barely hold in laughter long enough to get the words out.

A wish that they could always be together—was longing for the impossible. But at least they could always remember one another.

They teased him about what he said because he never talked about his true feelings. He likes to give the impression that he’s totally carefree, so as not to be too vulnerable. They genuinely had NO idea how much he was suffering over losing Isa. I’m sure they would have felt horrible for laughing at him if they had the slightest clue what he had been through.

Lea: Now that we’re going back, I’m worried about everything.

Kairi: Well, you don’t have to worry alone anymore, Axel.

And that’s exactly what Kairi offered to Lea. Someone to lean on finally. Plus, Kairi is an established character. If it had been revealed that the girl Lea and Isa wanted to rescue had been her all along, the audience would have far more reason to care. With Skuld, since she’s NOT an established character, (at least in this timeline) they really needed to shoe-horn her in by making her Lea and Isa’s supposed long-lost BFF, despite it being incredibly forced and not very convincing if you think about it for more than 5 seconds. With Kairi, that wouldn’t have been the case.

She already had a history with Lea through KH2 and Xion. She develops a bond with Lea and grows naturally closer to him over the course of the story. I also like that it would have given Kairi a much stronger narrative tie to her final battle with Saïx. The man who kidnapped her is actually a body-hijacked version of the guy who simply wanted to rescue her as a child. That’s really tragic. It’s as tragic as Riku realizing the darkness within him was a body-hijacked version of the special boy who bequeathed him the Keyblade all those years ago. Kairi’s reunion with Isa would have been so heartwarming. But just like with Riku learning about Terra, it never happened.

But yes, if they wanted anyone to actually care about this alleged friendship between Lea, Isa and Skuld, then they should have done a much better job actually incorporating it in the story. Of course, I would bet my next 5 paychecks that the reason they didn’t do this…is because they hadn’t thought of it back then. My guess would be that this idea came to fruition circa 2015. That’s when Nomura is on record saying that they were still unsure of where the series was headed in the future.

There was not a single mention of this girl in the novels. Yet there were numerous hints that something was very unique about Saïx—extremely strong suggestions that he was an unwitting vessel of Xehanort. The situation with his heart is mentioned multiple times by Xigbar, it’s brought up by Namine, and even Xion says that Saïx gives off a strange aura, like how Riku does with Xehanort’s Heartless inside of him. Yet, nary a word about anything even remotely resembling “Subject X”. Nothing.

There was a strange material that enabled one to fly through the Other Sky—Gummi blocks, fallen pieces from that meteor shower. And something about women known as the Princesses of Heart. All these immensely important shards of information began to fit together in Xehanort’s mind.

“What in the world were they talking about?” said Even, who had been trying to eavesdrop.

Xehanort ignored him and continued down the stairs to the basement laboratory. He flung open the door, and the others all turned to him at once.

“Aeleus, where is the girl?” Xehanort asked.

“She’s asleep…” Aeleus pointed to the capsule room in the back.

The girl was very particular—unique among people. They had not been able to create any Heartless using her heart. Perhaps because she was too young, or perhaps…

Xehanort disappeared into the capsule room.

But there IS a mention of Kairi in that laboratory. I like how in the credits for BBS both Lea and Isa look up at the sky, like how Kairi did when her necklace glowed. Almost as if it was to hint at their future connection.

Lea said the same lines, “Why do I always get the icky jobs,” and “I’ll always be there to bring you back,” to Xion in KH Days when he brought her back. Does he remember that?

Nomura: The nature of the being known as Xion and all memories to do with her were erased, but he would remember other things.

They obviously had a MUCH different vision for Isa’s character, even at the time that KH3D and KH2.5 came out. They were building up a far different story for his character right up until the release KH3, when they did a complete U-turn. It was incredibly jarring. The secret ending of 2.5 clearly shows Isa being taken away without his consent and the series Memorial Ultimania (released in 2014) states that he was “retrieved” after Young Xehanort was tracking him with the Recusant’s Sigil on his forehead.

The writers obviously thought that Isa was worthy of having Lea use the same words for him that he used for Roxas and Xion. Lea had a dream of Roxas telling him he made them a promise. As soon as he woke up, he went searching for someone, even putting himself at great risk by using the Door to Darkness. Well, he wasn’t looking for Roxas. Roxas was Sora’s Nobody, and Lea gave up on turning Sora back into a Nobody. That’s what his entire character arc was all about in KH2. No, he was looking for Isa.

Yet regarding KH3, here’s what Nomura said according the to the Ultimania translations from this thread:

Saïx rejoined the Organization to atone for what he did in the past. He drifted away from Axel and put Roxas through a lot because of his jealousy and displeasure, but vowed to do good for the sake of both Axel and Roxas.

I swear, the first time I read this, it put me in such a bad mood. Not only was it SO blatantly inconsistent with what we saw in the cutscenes, everything being set up by the story’s morals and themes, and everything being foreshadowed in the novels…but it also felt so…cruel and victim-blaming.

Q: Who are the thirteen researchers of darkness?

A: Thirteen seekers of darkness that share a consciousness and heart with Master Xehanort, serving as raw material for the X-Blade. In this game, they failed in their attempts to make Sora the 13th of their ranks, but who’s to become the 13th in his stead? And who are the six whose identities have not been revealed?

If Isa was indeed made a vessel as a teenager, (and it was HEAVILY implied that he was), why should he have to “atone” for anything? When someone becomes a vessel, their heart is captured by Xehanort. Or “swallowed,” to use another word used in an interview translation.

Q: I want to ask about Terranort. When Ansem SOD and Xemnas were defeated in KH1 and 2, were both Master Xehanort and Terra revived?

A: Ordinarily, Terra should have been revived at that point, but because his body was possessed by Xehanort, his heart didn’t return, and only his body did. That body was used as the vessel for the heart of Terra (from BBS) that was called from the past.

When Xemnas was defeated, Nomura said that Terra’s heart didn’t return to his body; it was still captured and in Xehanort’s clutches. If Isa was a vessel too, then there’s no reason his heart would have returned to his body, either. They can’t have it both ways. They can’t say that Terra had no free will in Xemnas’ atrocities and then say that Isa has to “atone” for what Saïx did. Does Terra have to atone for Apprentice Xehanort and Xemas’ actions? The ultimate question is… was Isa a vessel all along, or was he not? Enough waffling on this issue. Make up your damn mind.

Also the whole concept of joining the New Organization to atone is just utter brain-dead nonsense, no matter how you spin it. How is a person supposed to do anything good when they let Xehanort capture their heart, allowing him to share a consciousness with them? Shouldn’t giving up your heart have… I dunno…consequences?

When someone loses their heart, they lose the ability to feel, to care, to have empathy. Isn’t that the entire reason Axel suffered so much? From not having a heart? He forgot how to feel or experience love. It was Roxas, Xion and Sora who made him feel like he had a heart again. Indeed, they allowed him to nurture and grow a heart again. Besides, just look how Saïx acted when he had no heart! Yet here I’m being told that Saïx is going to “atone” by giving up his heart? LOL, yeah right.

Even if you hypothetically assume he was NOT a vessel, losing his heart made Saïx a sociopathic zombie. That’s supposedly why he “drifted away” from Axel, right? How is he going to do anything altruistic in that condition? Not to mention that Saïx was so utterly miserable without a heart, that I just cannot see him giving it up as soon as he got it back, under ANY circumstances (well, maybe to save Lea). There’s also another issue: the continuity being drawn between Isa and Saïx. The writers went TOTALLY out of their way to make Saïx as villainous and nasty as possible. As a die-hard Isa fan, this is sad for me to admit. But I don’t even think his actions in KH3 made him feel like he really fit in with the rest of the cast during the ending.

And then there’s the revelation that Saïx initially became Xehanort’s lapdog for Skuld. I’m sure she’d be very…touched…to find out that Isa sacrificed his morals, fought his friends and helped a madman usher in the apocalypse, all for her. Such a nice foundation for a healthy relationship. All for a girl he isn’t sure even existed. I won’t mince words. When Lea said to Isa that he thought this was “all for her” it made me want to throw up. That’s how revolting that idea was to me. The idea that “Isa” became “Saïx” for a girl.

That doesn’t even get into the whole Replica Program and what a goofball subplot that was. The Replica Program was not even finished when Vexen was eliminated. Now all of a sudden it can grant flesh-and-blood bodies, as soon as a heart is inserted? Yeah, okay. And Saïx knew all along that Vexen would be perfectly willing to come along and work on these replicas, too? And he also knew that Roxas and Xion could just jump out of Sora’s heart into the replicas? Whatever you say, game.  

And I must say: it was so ridiculous how Saïx is supposed to be “atoning” while he’s beating the shit out of Lea, or at least standing there watching Xemans do it. Why couldn’t Saïx and Vexen atone for their actions as, ya know…regular people? They could help the good guys defeat Xehanort and then worry about replicas. Though I still say Isa should have to atone for nothing.

But why join Xehanort and help him usher in the Apocalypse? Oh right. Because that was the only excuse the writers could come up with to justify Roxas and Xion coming back physically in the plot. The replicas were such a waste of screen-time in KH3. That whole subplot should have been dropped a long time ago. As far as I’m concerned, Isa’s character arc was sacrificed at the altar of shallow fanservice to bring back Roxas and Xion at the very end. They had no business coming back as separate characters from Kairi and Ventus, if that’s the best way Nomura could come up with to make it happen.

In order to bring them back, the following things had to happen in the story:

Isa’s entire character arc and redemption got turned into a sick joke.  

The whole fascinating concept of the Recusant’s Sigil needed to be thrown out, in order to give Saïx enough agency to “atone” and procure the replicas.

Vexen and Demyx have to act totally OOC, join up with Xehanort despite having no good reason to, then complain about getting “benched”. Because they had NO reason to be there other than the replicas.

The entire awesome and dark concept of the Seekers of Darkness being unwilling flesh puppets (”raw material”) had to be thrown in the trash.

It ruined the tension of Organization XIII’s search for the 13th vessel by making Vexen and Demyx “reserve” members

Replicas became a deus-ex-machina for Xehanort to use as his vessels.

Nobody could use common sense and question the obvious connection between Roxas and Ventus, stalling the search for Ventus and the 7 Guardians of Light.

[theguineapig3]

"Snowmelt" Secret Santa Gift for @sagittarian-sketchbook Words: 2401 Pairings: Kratos/Anna, Zelos/Lloyd

Kratos had prepared everything he was going to say to Lloyd in Flanoir. But when he arrived, he found that Lloyd already had someone else to talk to- and that Lloyd already seemed to have connected to his mother in a way that Kratos has never expected.

(You had so many nice prompts, it was hard to pick! I wanted to incorporate both Kranna and Zelloyd into one, and chose the prompt “something cold- alone in the snow,” along with “something that will hurt me.” I hope you enjoy! Have a wonderful holiday season!!)

Kratos didn't do a lot of walking by himself. Now that he was no longer under the pretense of being human, he could use his angel powers indiscriminately. It was how he preferred to move- to appear when he was needed and disappear when he felt it was time for him to go. But today, he needed the walk. It gave him time to think.

He had a lot to think about.

It was early autumn, but the Flanoir continent was already covered in a thick blanket of snow and ice. Only in the height of summer, during the nearly three months of constant daylight, could the citizens see the snow melt away to reveal the permafrost underneath. It was incredible to have seen the millennia of changes in this wasteland, a place unable to support any kind of agriculture. During Kratos' time, there was nothing but a few villages of subsistence hunters along the rocky coast, living off of what the sea could provide. Now it was a resort town, built up entirely off of tourism and the industries needed to support the transient tourist population. The mountain path cutting through to the coastline allowed products to be shipped in from anywhere in Tethe'alla, and today it allowed Kratos a place to gather his thoughts.

It had been a particularly harsh winter in Sylvarant, and the port of Izoold had been completely iced in. Normally shipping slowed this time of year due to ice floes, but a sudden blizzard and influx of sea ice into the little port had brought the entire industry to a halt. Kratos had brought Anna there hoping he could get her on a boat to Luin. But the weather had other ideas, and it left the two stranded in the village. 

Kratos wanted to lie low, knowing how vulnerable they still were, but Anna didn't think there was any way that the Desians would be venturing out in this weather. She helped out as best she could- fixing roofs, moving coal and firewood, and delivering food to those who couldn't leave their homes. Kratos warned her that the more she involved herself in people's affairs, the more they would come to recognize her face and be able to identify her when the Desians came searching. But Anna wouldn't listen. She was underestimating her enemy, and Kratos needed her to understand exactly what she was up against.

So he told her everything.

Everything about the Desians and Cruxis, about angels and Mithos' vision of a world of Lifeless Beings, about the two Chosens and the process of world regeneration, about the development of exspheres and the search for Cruxis Crystals that brought on the Angelus Project in the first place, and about... his own involvement. His history with Mithos, his involvement in splitting the two worlds, and his millennia of servitude to Lord Yggdrasil. 

All this, hidden amongst some of the empty crates at the dock so that they were out of the wind, listening to the noise of the sea ice popping and cracking. Anna was quiet, listening to a particularly loud, low groan as the wind pushed two nearby floes next to one another. As the two finally acclimated themselves to the sound, Anna turned to look at Kratos and spoke up for the first time.

"I never knew that ice could make noises like that."

Kratos stared at her, incredulous. "Did you... did you hear a word I just said?!"

"Of course I heard! The ice isn't that loud." Anna shook her head. "No, I heard what you said. I just don't know what you expect me to do with this information. Like, okay, you're suuuuper old. That, I understand. But that whole shtick about you being dangerous and scary? I don't know about anyone else, but I'm not scared of you."

“B-but you…” For once, Kratos was lost for words. She just wasn't getting it. There had to be a way to make her understand. “The angels of Cruxis are a threat to all life on this planet. We’re horrible, lifeless beings, no longer human or half-elf. We’ve molded the two worlds to our own twisted will. We’re four-thousand years old, Anna! Doesn't that length of time mean anything to you?”

She just shrugged. “I'm still not scared. It's not like you're a zombie or anything. So what if you've lived four times as long as any human should?"

"Fourty. It's fourty times as long as a human should live."

"But you're still alive, aren't you?"

The question gave Kratos pause. "I... I mean, I suppose I am. But it's unnatural, all because of some strange, alien technology that’s built off of the suffering of others. We take people’s lives, Anna. We’ve taken millions of them over the centuries, and if Mithos gets his way, we’ll take millions more-”

“So? Do something about it.”

Her tone was condescending, spoken like she was scolding a child. “Are you crazy? This isn't something a person can just do something about. it’s so much more complicated than that.”

“Maybe so.” Anna leaned back against the crate, pulling her cloak tighter around her shoulders. “But you did something for me. And that wasn't very simple either.”

He had done something for her, hadn't he? He had aided her- an escapee from one of their most high profile projects- in hiding from Cruxis going so far as to give false information to the Grand Cardinals to throw them off her trail. In that way, he’d already begun fighting back. And he'd made a difference to at least one person.

Anna noticed his pensive expression and moved a little closer. It was closer than Kratos really preferred to be with anyone, but he was too lost in his own thoughts to protest. He figured she might be cold and searching for a little extra body heat. Or, at least, that was a decent excuse. Her behavior up to this point had made it obvious that she liked him. Her body language, facial expressions, even just the way she spoke to him in everyday conversation hinted at a fondness that made Kratos uncomfortable in more ways than one. He had hoped that once she knew the whole truth about him, she'd change her mind. But that clearly wasn't the case.

“My grandmother always said that everyone has the power to do good for the world,” Anna finally spoke again. “All the time I was in the ranch, the times it hurt so bad that I just wanted to die, I thought about her. And I realized that I couldn't let myself die until I'd done something good for the world.”

Kratos sighed. “When it comes to death, people generally don't have a say in the matter.”

“Nope! I refuse to die.”

“Anna…”

The snow had started up again, and the wind was growing stronger. Anna stood up abruptly, raising the hood on her cloak back over her head. She reached down to offer Kratos a hand, and while he didn't necessarily need it, he accepted the help anyway. She smiled at him, raising her voice so that he could hear her over the wind and ice.

"That's why you can't die yet either. You've still got good things left to do, Kratos."

Kratos allowed himself a smile. “You really think so?”

“I know so! And I'm going to keep an eye on you to make sure you don't slack off with those good deeds, okay?”

He covered his mouth, fighting back a laugh.

"You know, that fiery attitude of yours might be just what we need to break through this pack ice."

It got dark early this time of year, and the city was already lit up by the time Kratos arrived. He scoped out the inn, looking closely at the windows for any indication of where Lloyd was staying, and finally caught a glimpse of Lloyd’s traveling pack through one of the second floor windows. Kratos waited until the city streets had calmed down, and once he felt he had the courtyard to himself, he was ready to call Lloyd.

A pang of nervousness struck him, and he paused. Was he sure he wanted to do this? If he confronted Lloyd, it might have far-reaching consequences that neither of them could predict. It was something that needed to be done, and yet he found himself hesitating. But he also knew that, if he waited too long, Lloyd might go to sleep. He couldn't let this chance slip away from him. Who knew when he might have this sort of opportunity again? Steeling his nerves, he choked back his nervousness and called Lloyd's name.

There was no answer.

Perhaps Lloyd hadn't heard him. It was easy to imagine that might be the case- especially if Lloyd wasn't expecting someone calling from outside his window. Kratos called again. And again. And again. 

Still, there was no answer.

It wasn't that late. Lloyd couldn't have fallen asleep already. And it wasn't that his voice was too quiet- Kratos had seen a few unfamiliar faces peek out from other windows to see what was going on. No, Lloyd must not be in his room at all. So where was he? Kratos didn't want to be seen, but he figured there was no harm in asking the lobby staff if they'd seen Lloyd leave the inn recently.

"Hmm? A boy in red?" The woman at the front desk didn't seem particularly attentive, but she finally nodded in recognition. "Yeah, he left a few minutes ago. He was with that handsome fellow from Meltokio- the Chosen, I think. I'm not sure where they were going, but if you leave now, you can probably catch them.”

Kratos nodded his head in thanks and turned to leave in a more hurried pace. He knew Zelos' true nature. What the hell did Zelos want with Lloyd? What was Zelos going to do to him? If Zelos had some unscrupulous plan that even Cruxis didn't know about, Kratos wasn't going to let him get away with it. 

But... when he found them, he was surprised. They were just talking. Kratos ducked behind one of the nearby buildings where they couldn't see him, but his angelic senses could still make out the conversation.

"...all my life I've been rejected by my parents, shunned by the church, and viewed as a threat by the royal family."

There was something in Zelos' voice that Kratos had never heard before. It wasn't an act, that much he could tell by Zelos' body language. But if he wasn't trying to trick Lloyd, what was he doing? Fishing for pity points? Trying to butter Lloyd up with his tragic backstory, hoping it would give Lloyd pause when Zelos inevitably betrayed them?

"I just wanted to run away."

"But-" Lloyd broke in, taking a step towards him. "-you're here with us now, right?"

Kratos froze. A voice- one that was still fresh in his mind from reviewing the sound of it in his memory earlier that day- stood out to him.

"But you're still alive, aren't you?"

Zelos, meanwhile, just shook his head. "I dunno. Even now, to tell the truth, I get tired of all the problems. Sometimes I think it'd be easier if everyone and everything were just destroyed-"

The words were barely out of Zelos' mouth when Lloyd jumped in. "Zelos! How can you say that?!"

Zelos seemed genuinely surprised by Lloyd's tone of voice, almost as much as Kratos was. "Did I piss you off?"

"Hell yes! Of course! It'd be a huge problem for me if everything was destroyed."

Kratos had to place a hand over his mouth to keep from making an exclamation of amusement- not quite a laugh, but almost. He couldn't tell whether it was because Lloyd's statement was so obvious, or whether it was because Lloyd was missing the point entirely. It had been so long since he'd heard Anna's familiar technique of saying something so simple and yet so far from the point of the conversation that she might as well have just changed the subject. Kratos had learned that there was no explaining things to Anna once she'd decided to misinterpret it. Zelos, however, didn't seem to realize that yet.

"But think about it!" Zelos explained, "If everything was destroyed, you'd vanish too-"

"I refuse to vanish."

"Nope! I refuse to die."

Kratos placed a hand against the wall to steady himself.

"And so I don't want anyone else to be destroyed. I want you to live too, Zelos."

"That's why you can't die yet either. You've still got good things left to do, Kratos."

It was the same. The determination, the conviction, and the opposing tenderness with which the name was spoken. When Anna had said it, it had made it clear how she felt, and the same was true of Lloyd. Kratos leaned against the wall and placed a hand against his head. “Damn it all, Lloyd, you're just like your mother- including her horrible taste in men. It’s going to get you hurt one of these days.”

"-but if that's the way you feel, I'll be too worried to bring you along," Lloyd was saying. 

"All right, all right, I hear ya." Zelos let out a sigh. "I swear, your fervent enthusiasm is enough to melt all the snow in Flanoir."

"You know, that fiery attitude of yours might be just what we need to break through this pack ice."

Of course. Kratos suddenly realized what he hadn't been considering throughout this whole conversation. It was Anna's kindness and understanding- her 'horrible taste in men,' as he'd called it, that had given him a new lease on life. She'd taken someone he thought was irredeemable and given him a second chance. 

Perhaps... perhaps Lloyd could do that for Zelos.

Kratos had come prepared to intervene, but he left silently to keep from being noticed. The last thing he needed was for Lloyd and Zelos to realize he'd been listening to their conversation. It would make things more difficult for them, and would further erode what little trust, if any, Lloyd had left in him. No, he hadn't gotten the chance to say what he'd wanted about Lloyd's mother. But it didn't seem like Lloyd really needed it.

Lloyd understood Anna better than Kratos ever had. And that was enough for him.

[ask-the-yugoslavbunch]

OC Tag

Tagged by @quiescentwriting ! Like a while back ahahaha

I’ll be talking about all my oc’s here in general when I can, but focusing on Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, and Bosnia.

1) What was the first element of your OC that you remember considering (name, appearance, backstory, etc.?)

Appearance aha I’m a visual person, so first thing I do when creating a character is draw them out and create everything else from that.

Or, well, their country actually??? But appearance was first thing down.

2) Did you design them with any other characters/OCs from their universe in mind?

Well, they are fandom oc’s so yes aha More specifically, I wanted Slovenia to have a connection to Austria to symbolize that long rule (Slo’s purple eyes) and his hair curl mimic’s Slovakia’s, Bos has a skin tone more similar to Turkey for that connection, Cro’s eyes are golden brown and green for his connection to N Italy and Hungary, and within my oc’s Serbia and Voj have always had the same shade of green eyes.

3) How did you choose their name?

Don’t even get me started on how long it took to settle on Serbia’s human name.

First it was Vuk because I liked the sound of it and felt wolf as a name meaning fit real well, but after a bit I was like “hmmm, why does an aph Serbia named Vuk sound familiar’ and remembered Yugotalia. So I changed Vuk even though it was my top choice because I didn’t want people coming in my inbox like ‘WHY U STEALING FROM TIX.’ Sooo, I changed it to something else and used one of the many Vuk-related last names instead. Picked a new name (which I don't remember anymore) but then googled it with his last name and like.....an article in Serbian about a grave robber came up so I changed that name.... Went through two more names I didn’t like before settling on Novak.

Also I 100% did not choose it because of the tennis player. I actually originally actively ignored it and went with Vuk because choosing a name of a celebrity is eh, but I was so fed up trying to find a name that I forgot about him and went with Novak (which sounded good to my ears) and like......2 months later the Olympics happened and I was looking up tennis scores and saw Djokovic’s name and just went ‘GODAMNIT’ But didn’t change it again ahaha

For Bosnia, I didn’t actually want to go with Lejla because I don’t really like choosing the most common names, but Lejla/Layla in all spellings has been one of my fav names since forever so Lejla it is.

Slovenia was a good boy, it didn’t take me too long to settle on Primož.

Cro was almost as bad as Serbia in finding a name. Nothing sounded right to me? And Sounding Right is a big part in choosing names for me so he went nameless quite a while. Eventually settled on Krešimir because it sounded the least bad.....I love it now though, he’s forever Krešo in my head.

4) In developing their backstory, what elements of the world they live in played the most influential parts?

Well. I mean the being countries bit? I’m not totally sure how to answer this.

5) Is there any significance behind their hair colour?

They all have brown hair because that’s the most common color in their countries.

Fun fact for Slo: he originally had a darker hair color, but then I realized that uh.....it was a reallyyyyy similar shade of brown I used for Slovakia and like I’m not that mean, so I lightened his hair.

6) Is there any significance behind their eye colour?

None for Bos, besides it being the most common color. I’m also pretty sure I picked green for Serbia because I wanted him to stand out among the other oc’s as I don't think any other male Serbia has green eyes.

Slo, as mentioned above, has purple eyes to connect him to Austria to signify the loooong time Slovenia was under Austrian rule.

And, again, mentioned above for Cro it’s a connection to both N Italy and Hungary.

7) Is there any significance behind their height?

They’re all really, really tall because this area has some of the tallest people in the world! Slovenia is the shortest of the men because they have the shortest height, but he’s still closer to 6 foot than he isn’t.

8) What (if anything) do you relate to within their character/story?

Not gonna lie, hope I don’t relate much to them because yikes, they are not human beings and have done Some Things. But uuuuh, Serb and Cro’s confidence, Slo’s love of literature, Bos’s fashion sense.

9) Are they based off of you, in some way?

I mean, what oc isn’t really? These guys aren’t based on me much though. At most, I’m super feminine and like super feminine characters being unashamedly feminine and created Bosnia with that in mind when I revamped her as a girl.

10) Did you know what the OC’s sexuality would be at the time of their creation?

Yes/No. I have complicated headcanon’s about the nature of nation’s gender and sexuality in the hetalia verse, so I already knew those, but sexualities in like human au’s is always fluid and changing for these guys. Or in the case of Slo, just straight up doesn’t exist.

11) What have you found to be most difficult about creating art for your OC (any form of art: Writing, drawing, edits, etc.)?

Nothing really? Writing maybe, if I had to pick.

12) How far past the canon events that take place in their world have you extended their story, if at all?

Well. I can’t see the future so not very P:

13) If you had to narrow it down to 2 things that you MUST keep in mind while working with your OC, what would those things be?

Serb: He’s incredibly complicated. Fun, extroverted guy is a cover for all sorts of much deeper inner thoughts.

Cro: He has a quick temper that can get bad, but is usually pretty jovial and joking. He’s more brawn than brains, but is still pretty intuitive.

Slo: He wants what other people have so always acts “proper.” He’s also a bit more mentally young than you would expect.

Bos: She is the gentlest, friendliest person you’ll ever meet. She’s also a simmering ball of anger and resentment deep inside.

14) What is something about your OC that can make you laugh?

They are all dorks so, so much sdhfjksd

Bos totally never had a crush on Turkey nope. Serbia’s secret love of Turkish soap operas. Kid!Croatia being down to fight anything. Turning Slo into a meme every few months on this blog.

15) What is something about your OC can make you cry?

Uuuuuh, all of their histories? And having to figure out how to incorporate that into a single person who faced all that trauma? Not a happy little corner here...

16) Is there some element you regret adding to your OC or their story?

Nnnnnnno. Most of the stuff I would regret, I never officially added to their stories and kept it in my head.

17) What is the most recent thing you’ve discovered about your OC?

Oh gosh. Slovenia, I’ve decided, keeps bees. That’s the only one I can think of at the moment ;;

18) What is your favourite fact about your OC?

Croatia spent a few years as a kid as a pirate.

Slovenia writes poetry but is embarrassed to admit he does.

Bosnia was an absolute little shit as a kid.

Serbia absolutely loves soap opera’s and chick flicks and the like and will do anything to keep that a secret.

[cardshcrp]

ON CHILDREN.

This meta post contains both normal information on Remy’s personal opinions and triggering content thanks to his life experiences, and is under a read more for safety. Proceed at your own risk.

When it comes down to it, Remy has a very complicated stance on children. In general, he likes kids; he does surprisingly well with them. He often goes through the streets and feeds them, gets them to shelters if they don’t know the way themselves, or offers them places in the Guild’s starting crews if they’re interested and ambitious enough. So he does like kids, that’s never really a question. They generally like him, too.

But when it comes to, theoretically, his kids, that’s a complicated question. He honestly struggles with the idea of having a family more than he already has - he comes from a vastly different background than most normal people, you know? Unlike most other heroes, he never really had a regular life. He was raised in the Guild as their weird little demon-eyed messiah - everyone knew his name and who he was. He’s never been out of the public eye or had a completely separate alter ego. He understands the idea of it, but when it comes right down to it, he doesn’t know how to sympathize with people that choose to take the hero life (when they have that free choice, obviously) but still attempt to start a family while knowing they can’t protect them. He’s seen too much shit happen to hero families, and he never wants to have people related to him that can’t protect themselves, especially given how he has both criminal and hero ties. He finds it foolish, even if he’s understanding of the desire to do so.

For that reason, he genuinely doesn’t feel that he has the right to consider having his own family, partner or not. He is (obviously) supportive of adoption, and he’ll generally admit that if asked. It’s also the safer option, given it removes a whole lot of vulnerability if a child is already past infancy and/or somewhat self-sufficient.

Past that, though, he has a whole lot of complicated feelings when it comes to children by birth. There is the basic impracticality of it all - it’s a terrible idea to be put out of commission for long enough to have a baby and raise it, especially since he isn’t really publicly out. It would put him in a crazy uncomfortable position. And then as a trans man, he’s struggled a hell of a lot to get comfortable with his body as it is, but it’s also safe to say that undergoing pregnancy personally would put him through a world of dysphoric hurt. That said, he’s also received so much trauma to his body in general that in most verses he is nearly or entirely incapable of bearing children.

He is technically still capable of child-bearing, with extreme effort, and likely multiple miscarriages, which doesn’t help his mental state or body image any. If he had a stable partner that he felt safe enough to try and start a family with, it’d slowly destroy him to go through that trauma and send him right into a this is what I get for not embracing being a woman spiral that he hasn’t dealt with since his early twenties to a degree never before seen. It’s a very bad idea for him to consider it in most cases and a partner that pushed for it after he expressed discomfort would generally not be welcome any longer.

But as if that weren’t enough, there’s more trauma in his past that makes considering children on any level, especially biological, even worse. He has suffered multiple transphobic assaults, most particularly in his late teens and early twenties, and without getting too deep into detail about those since they really are going to take separate posts, unfortunately more than one heavily featured taunts along the lines of just get a cock / baby in you and you’ll feel like a woman. This was especially scary for him because at varying times in his life he wasn’t sexually active, or was only sexually active with cis female partners and wasn’t using birth control - their threats were a real possibility and it scared the absolute hell out of him. It’s not nice, it’s horrible and shitty, but he managed to get over them and every single person got what they deserved. 

Something he doesn’t really talk about is the fact that once he was pregnant, and he lost the baby. Every time he thinks about having a kid (which is thankfully rare), he has to think about that, and more often than not it’s an instant dream-crusher. He never entirely got over it. 

Thanks to the main verse background building I’ve done with d.eviltoothed, we’ve incorporated a lot of history with Victor and Remy past the already extensive canon, most of it extremely unhealthy for everyone involved on a lot of levels. For this it’s worth noting that when it comes to the Morlock Massacre, I don’t adhere to magical recovery from the brain work Sinister performed on Remy - I’ve had family members go in for neurosurgery with complications, and the recovery process took (and is taking) years of struggle and effort, which I would like to respect and reflect in my writing.

Remy was an easy target for a lot of people at this point. He was disoriented, more than often barely half-lucid, had massive dizzy spells, extreme memory loss, impaired cognitive function, and was dependent as hell on others at times for basic function. He had one surgery, then a major complication in which his skull wasn’t sealed correctly and his brain fluid was leaking, which only made things worse and extended his original recovery - it took a total of about two years for him to be entirely functional again, with the last half year mostly being memory loss and disorientation (which also played a big part in why he didn’t realize exactly what he was being used for by Sinister).

During this time, Remy wound up pregnant. It took him a long time to realize it, especially with constant nausea due to his medications anyway and an already fucked-up appetite requirement his whole life, but eventually it became evident. He didn’t have the presence of mind to be walking around on his own, much less taking regular birth control. Hell, Sinister didn’t consider his hormones to be entirely necessary before, and he couldn’t have them after that little revelation, so he was also dealing with body changes that he wasn’t exactly welcoming.

 He was incredibly conflicted about it, and wasn’t sure what to do. He hadn’t ever planned for kids. His safety was already pretty precarious at the best of times. He didn’t consider an abortion as an option for himself. He was out of the Guilds’ eyes for the time being, and he wasn’t yet affiliated with any sort of hero work, so at the time he was able to drop off the grid if he really wanted to. He was also still a practicing Catholic at this point, not to mention that as an adopted kid he was already inclined to try and give a child up for adoption if possible rather than abort it when it came to his personal choices.

The events of the Massacre happened before Remy decided on exactly what to do, and then Remy got claw-shanked by Sabretooth. That particular injury wound up costing him the child and nearly his life, and was so damaging that it was one of the biggest factors as to why it’s much harder for him to ever have a child again, even if he was so inclined. Victor might not have known what he did, but it definitely didn’t help the already bad blood between him and Remy and really increased the amount of hostility later on.

All in all, it’s a very nasty, unpleasant little cocktail of trauma and body issues, as well as feeling inferior enough that he’s convinced that he should never have a family, whether biological or adoptive.