#but also call to question again the age old debate of what is art and what isn't and why some art is and why some isn't

[wachi-delectrico]

Tbh i don't know what to think of AI art anymore. I don't find any utility, personally, in centring the discussion on law and copyright; there are far more interesting things to discuss on the topic beyond its use as a replacement for human artists/workforce by the upper class

[harpagornis]

Minoan Gods

Decided to take an old article and repackage it for the tumblr audience.

The double-edged axe or labris, likely the least controversial thing written here.

To honor the latest release of Minotaur Hotel I decided to do an article on what is known of the Minoan deities.

Known as the “first European city-makers” and a distant precursor to Greece, what is called the Minoan Civilization after King Minos of Crete was a mysterious Bronze Age nation that governed Crete and neighbouring parts of the Aegean. Its age, likely influences over posterior Greek (and by extension western) culture and unique art has long made it a subject of mystique and intrigue. Whereas it’s the several still undeciphered scripts and languages or the fact that it seems to have a rare genuinely matriarchal society, it seems the countless research and academia only raises more questions than answers.

One such well documented but ultimately unsuccessful endeavour is identifying the pantheon these people worshipped. It is strongly speculated that Minoan Crete was theocratic (Kristiansen & Larsson, 2005, among several others) and several art either represents cultic activities (such as the famous bull leaping) if not gods themselves, but in the absence of the proper written word this is beyond impossible to ascertain. The implications of understanding Minoan religion are very clear, as beyond offering a snapshot to the lives of these people it also bears the potential implication that many Greek gods and mythological figures ultimately had their origins here.

To completely compile, summarise and synthesize all that has been written on Minoan religion is a task far too vast to implement, so here are some of the most widely agreed upon gods.

Queen of the Gods

Snake goddess figurine by C messier. The most well known Minoan possible religious artifact, it’s still not clear if these figurines represent a goddess, multiple goddesses or human priests.

By far the most well kown figure attributed to Minoan religion is the Queen or Mother goddess, sometimes known as “Snake Goddess” due to an abundance of figurines depicting women holding snakes. Perhaps surprisingly (or not given the second paragraph), she’s not actually attested anywhere, given that Minoan scripts haven’t yet been deciphered, but her existence can be inferred due to a variety of factors:

Female figurines are by far the most common representation of what could be interpreted as a god in Minoan sites. Chief among these are the aforementioned “snake goddess” figurines. While there is considerable debate on whereas these truly represent deities (plural or singular) or mortal priestesses, they are comparable to apotropaic depictions of surrounding cultures, most notably those of the latter Athena Parthenos which similarly is associated with serpentine iconography as controlling these forces of chaos (Ogden 2013).

The fact that Minoan society was matriarchal in nature, which would lend credence to the supreme being in their cosmology being feminine in nature. While a dominant female deity does not always correlate to a matriarchal society (i.e. Amaterasu, Virgin Mary, et cetera), the opposite, a matriarchal society with a masculine supreme god, is yet to be documented (though see below).

Several Greek mother goddesses such as Demeter and Rheia are thought to have a Cretan origin (Mylonas 1966, Sidwell 1981 among several others), so it’s not terribly hard to see them as “descendents” of this Minoan deity.

The Philistines, contray to biblical assertions on Dagon worship, seem to have favoured a goddess as their primary deity (Schäfer-Lichtenberger 2000, Ben-Shlomo 2019). The Philistines, through genetic legacy and material culture, are now understood to have had an Aegean origin, so again seeing this as a continuation of a Minoan goddess is plausible.

Several names have been speculated for this deity, usually along the lines of the author’s interpretation of Minoan scripts (which should be noted, are not only undeciphered but very likely don’t mention deities at all, since all we have seem to brief texts likely attributed to tax reports). The name “Rhea” doesn’t seem to be of Indo-European origin (Nilsson 1950, Sidwell 1981), making it very likely that this is a theonym with Minoan origins. The same applies to Ariadne (Alexiou 1969) and possibly also Athena (Beekes 2009). Conversely, the Philistine goddess is possibly attested as “Ptgyh” (Ben-Shlomo 2019), a name that is speculated to be related to Greek “Potnia”, “mistress”. In all likelihood, such an important goddess likely was known by a variety of epithets.

Fertility is naturally considered a major function of this mother goddess, but perhaps in ways one might not expect. An emphasis on solar worship has been noted due to temple arrangements and material objects such as “frying pans” with solar iconography (Ridderstad 2009), suggesting that, rather than an earth goddess as one might expect, this was a solar goddess. Solar goddesses are known from a variety of Near Eastern cultures such as Egypt (Sekhmet, Hathor), Anatolia (Arinniti, Istanu, Estan, Wurunsemu) and Canaan (Shapash) so a solar interpretation of the Minoan supreme goddess isn’t unusual. In particular, this might imply a more “chthonic” interpretation of the sun than the Classical “object in the sky”, due to temple angles tressing sunrises and sunsets (Ridderstad 2009), whch is consistent with the Hittite notions of the sun goddess ruling the underworld. Regardless, as noted below in Talos there is also possible evidence for a Minoan male sun.

More unambiguously, this goddess had a civil and possibly domestic function. As noted above snake goddess figurines might be apotropaic in nature, used to ward off evil spirits or more mundane threats like snakes. If Athena is derived from this goddess then a role as the protector of the palace is also implied given Athena’s role in the Mycenaean era, and both Ariadne and Athena are associated with weaving. Conversely, so are solar goddesses in other places, like the Baltic Saule or the Turkic Gun Ana, as the rays of the sun are easily linked to threads, further suggesting this role for the Minoan goddess. Both Rhea and Demeter are also associated with lions, animals that not only are symbolic of the sun but also of a notable sun goddess across the sea, Sekhmet.

The fact that the Minoan ruling goddesses was the possible genesis for several Greek goddesses like Rheia, Demeter, Ariadne and Athena suggests a rather extensive and important function in ancient Cretan religion. Conversely, it might also suggest that what we might attributing to a single goddess was in fact several different deities, but as deities overlap and flow into one another it is possible that these goddesses were either seen as one or acquired independent identities several times throught Minoan history.

The Bull God

Bull-leaping fresco. A stapple of Minoan art.

The bull is extensively depicted in Minoan art. Most common are bull-leaping frescos depicting youths of both genders leaping or interacting with bulls, suggesting this was a common Minoan sport and perhaps even a religious ritual. But bulls are depicted in many other contexts as well, and as such the existence of an actual Minoan bull god is frequently speculated upon.

In Near-Eastern cultures, bulls are both solar and lunar symbols. On the one hand, the bull’s horn/s resemble/s a lunar crescent, and indeed not only are Middle Eastern male moon gods like Nanna and Suen associated with the bull but even the Greek Selene is described as having a chariot pulled by bulls, suggesting that not even a shift towards a feminine moon deity erased this iconography. On the other hand, a bull is a powerful animal and thus worthy of male solar gods, most notably the Mesopotamian Marduk (literally “calf of the sun”). Sometimes both interpretations show up in the same culture: in Egypt the Apis bull is associated both with Ra and with Osiris as Yah (the moon). Perhaps the same applied to ancient Crete (again, see Talos below), but a lunar bull would certainly be a vivid symbol contrasted against the sun goddess.

The bull is associated with Dionysus which otherwise is mired in more “exotic” symbols, suggesting that the putative “Minoan Dionysus” might be the bull god. It has long been speculated that the bull god is a male youth and son and consort to the queen of the gods, though women are also depicted bull leaping.

The Greek minotaur has long been speculated to be a remnant of the Minoan bull god, not without reason being so throughly linked with Crete as a concept. In this case, the monstrous depiction is either fully discontinuous from older practises or defamatory, with my personal two cents that it is also a jab against the bull gods of the Phoenicians, accused at the time of human sacrifice by the (infant killing) Greeks. Asterion is said to be the birth name of the minotaur by Pseudo-Apollodorus, but I wouldn’t read much into this since this name (literally “starry one”) is a common Greek name for many figures both historical and mythological, and at any rate a recent Indo-European name at odds with the most likely Pre-Greek Cretan languages.

“Dionysus”

“Prince of the Lilies” fresco, often but by no means universally interpreted as a male youth figure.

There is extensive evidence of wine cults in Minoan Crete (Kerényi 1976). This, combined with the Mycenaean depictions of a bull-horned Dionysus (or “di-wo-nu-so” as it is) seems to point to a Minoan origin for this god. “Dionysus” is an Indo-European name connected to Zeus and other sky father figures but the actual character of the god is not easily identified in the PIE world, suggesting a Pre-Greek, local origin. A possible exception is the Lusitanian god Andaeico (Teixeira 2014) which might resemble the putative “flower Dionysus” (see below), but this deity is himself not well understood and might be from an ancient Iberian stratum in Lusitanian culture.

The Mycenaean Dionysus is a figure with stronger ties to death and rebirth than revelry necessarily but the evolution from “eldritch god” to “party dude” might not have been as linear (geddit) a concept as one might expect. Male figurines thought to represent a young god increase in popularity in later stages of Minoan history (Vasilakis 2001) as do male youth figures often identified as “prince of the lilies/flowers” which alongside the wine cults is closer to the Classical Dionysus than the Mycenaean or later Orphic one. However once more in the absence of deciphered scripts it is impossible to say for certainty that these figurines represent deities let alone are Dionysus. Hell, the “flowery figures” have even been interpreted as female at times.

If an actual god, the “Minoan Dionysus” might very well be identified with the bull god, as the bull is a rather odd symbol for the “exotic” attributes the Classical Dionysus is associated with. Ariadne in Greek myth does get hitched with Dionysus; an imbalanced, reversed remnant of the male youth/Minoan queen goddess pairing perhaps?

Talos

Talos by laura Jastrow.

Perhaps the only Minoan or at least Cretan god we may truly known by name is Talos. In Greek myth Talos is best known as the strange automaton made by Hephaestus, but it was also the Cretan word for “sun”, analogous to “Helios” of mainland Greece according to Hesychius of Alexandria. Zeus was worshipped in Crete as Zeus Talaios, who was associated with the sun, and the Tallaia was a spur of Mt. Ida associated with sunrise rituals (Nilson 1923).

This association of Zeus with Talos is as peculiar as it is extensive. Zeus, a god whose origins are well documented to be Indo-European in nature, is held in Greek myth as born and raised in Crete, and Cretan depictions of Talos differ from those of mainland Greece in having wings. Further, the seduction of Europa by Zeus as a bull links the Classical Zeus to Crete in a very fundamental way. This seems to indicate a rather through syncretism between the Greek/Mycenaean sky god and this indigenous Cretan deity, which in turn implies a rather relevant role to the Minoan Talos.

Conversely, outside of Crete Talos is an enigmatic figure, as noted by Pausanias himself which seems more confused than anything. Certainly, the story of a pre-sci-fi robot is weird, let alone how it relates to an ancient Cretan god, linked to the supreme god of all Greeks down to his very birth.

Talos is truly an anomaly. A solar god which was important enough to warrant syncretism with Zeus, in a matriarchal culture where the sun seems to have been traditionally the supreme goddess herself. Crete was likely never a monolith even at the height of Minoan rule, but all current signs point to Talos being an ancient Cretan deity from before PIE influences in Greece, and he seems so out of place.

My personal two cents is that Minoan cosmology was similar to that of the Hittites and other Anatolian cultures, where the sun is male during the day as it travels through the sky and female at night where it rules the underworld. Talos’ syncretism with Zeus therefore would be derived from representing the male, skyward aspect of the sun, corroborated by worship at the Tallaia. In the original Minoan religion Talos was probably lesser compared to his female aspect (which even as a chthonic deity would easily be accepted as the supreme power; even Mycenaeans favoured the chthonic Poseidon to the celestial Zeus after all), but his roled ensured syncretism with the king of the gods once Crete was conquered.

Britomartis

Candiacervus by Peter Schouten.

Britomartis is possibly another deity we might know from a genuinely Minoan or at least Cretan name. Solinus claims it is “sweet virgin” in Cretan and the name doesn’t seem to have Indo-European roots. If true, I’d imagine this theonym is more due to syncretism with the Greek Artemis if anything as I doubt ancient Minoans cared much about virginity as a concept, though Artemis herself may be derived from this deity. Some archaeologists have further suggested that it is an euphemism for the deity’s actual name, since being a goddess of the wilds saying it might have been unwise (Ruck 1994). Another name attributed to her is Diktynna, “hunting nets”, or simply Dicte/Dikte (unsurprisingly, she named said mountain, and was likely its spirit). I’ve never seen the etymology of this name tracked, so I can’t say for sure if it is Greek or Pre-Greek in origin

Britomartis is in Greek myth a mere oread or mountain nymph, said to have invented hunting nets. She is said to have fled Minos’ lust, a tale that even Siculus expressed disbelief at due to her divinity. Thus, although greatly diminuished by Hellenistic times, she was still clearly held to be a deity, and still seems to have been worshipped in Crete during Classical times, frequently appearing in coinage as a winged figured. She is equated to Artemis, a goddess associated with the wilderness and mountains, and it can be assumed she represents a similar “lady of the beasts” archetype. Artemis herself has a name of unclear etymology, and could be of Minoan origin, being perhaps another name for Britomartis.

Some authors tempt to lump Britomartis with the Minoan mother goddess, but to me these seem like clearly distinct figures. Whereas the queen of the gods is a civic, fertility and possibly solar figure, Britomartis is alcearly a goddess of the wild places, perhaps even more specifically the embodiment of Mt. Dicte. Of course, overlap between these two goddesses likely happened at several points in Cretan history.

And that’s it for now.

Other Minoan gods have been positted, including a sea one (naturally), but they aren’t sufficiently supported by everyone in the field at large, so I won’t bother.

References

Kristiansen, Kristian & Thomas B. Larsson. The Rise of Bronze Age Society: Travels, Transmissions and Transformations. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005.

Ogden, Daniel (2013). Drakon: Dragon Myth and Serpent Cult in the Greek and Roman Worlds. Oxford University Press. pp. 7–9. ISBN 9780199557325 – via Google Books.

George Mylonas (1966), “Mycenae and the Mycenean world “

Sidwell, R.T. (1981). “Rhea was abroad: Pre-Hellenic Greek myths for post-Hellenic children”. Children’s Literature in Education. 12 (4): 171–176. doi:10.1007/BF01142761. S2CID 161230196.

Christa Schäfer-Lichtenberger, The Goddess of Ekron and the Religious-Cultural Background of the Philistines, Vol. 50, No. 1/2 (2000)

David Ben-Shlomo, Philistine Cult and Religion According to Archaeological Evidence, January 2019Religions 10(2):74, DOI: 10.3390/rel10020074

Nilsson, Martin Persson (1 January 1950). The Minoan-Mycenaean Religion and its Survival in Greek Religion. Biblo & Tannen Publishers. ISBN 9780819602732 – via Google Books.

Alexiou, Stylianos (1969). Minoan Civilization. Translated by Ridley, Cressida (6th revised ed.). Heraklion, Greece.

Beekes, Robert S. P. (2009), Etymological Dictionary of Greek, Leiden and Boston: Brill

Marianna Ridderstad, Evidence of Minoan astronomy and calendrical practices, October 2009

Kerényi, Karl. 1976. Dionysus. Trans. Ralph Manheim, Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691029156, 978-0691029153

Monteiro Teixeira, Sílvia. 2014. Cultos e cultuantes no Sul do território actualmente português em época romana (sécs. I a. C. – III d. C.). Masters’ dissertation on Archaeology.. Lisboa: Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa.

Andonis Vasilakis, MINOAN CRETE: FROM MYTH TO HISTORY Paperback – January 1, 2001

Nilsson, “Fire-Festivals in Ancient Greece” The Journal of Hellenic Studies 43.2 1923

Carl A.P. Ruck and Danny Staples, The World of Classical Myth [Carolina Academic Press], 1994

[wedoartblog]

HAND JOB Artworks by Emanuele Taglietti, Maestro of erotic covers

This exhibition presents the work of Emanuele Taglietti and looks back at his career as a church decorator, set-painter for Federico Fellini or Ettore Scola and, of course, at the most provocative phase of his 70-year career: the years between 1973 and 1988, when Taglietti painted over 800 colourful covers - somewhere between erotic, dark and kinky. Maestro Emanuele Taglietti is one of the most important representatives of a generation that shaped a genre that in retrospect is called “Sex & Horror" or “Fumetto Sexy".

In a time before there was photographed and filmed porn, a large industry served a worldwide market for adult comics. Especially in Italy, with its long tradition of painting and craftsmanship, many thousands "Fumetti" were painted, printed and distributed by clever publishers like Renzo Barbieri . Of course always with the warning: "Solo Per Adulti" - "No children please".

The demand for adult comics boomed, hundreds of painters, authors, graphic designers or printing technicians produced on an industrial scale what today's customers find somewhere between HBO and Youporn.

Most artists who worked in this industry were often quite young and the workflows were not ideally planned, everything also took place in semi-darkness - because these comics were taboo. This created a space - and a need - for improvisation and free working. And so a unique visual-aesthetic language emerged.

Talents like Milo Manara, Alessandro Biffignandi, Averardo Ciriello and Emanuele Taglietti mastered the centuries-old technique of tempera painting from an early age, working as art teachers or for cinema before dominating the sexy comics market worldwide for more than a decade. After about 15 years, the boom was over and the industry changed. With the rise of VHS cassettes at the latest, painted sex no longer attracted anyone.

Over the years, Emanuele Taglietti has experienced several phases of public opinion about his work. Years when Barbieri's comics were at the front of the shop window and the more prudish years when the Fumetti could only be sold in opaque bags. Perhaps again, somewhere in the country a local state prosecutor felt provoked, reported a complaint and the comics had to be scrapped. Individual covers were sold freely for years when suddenly a church representative from somewhere reported to his superior and again there was trouble. Again and again, Taglietti picked up finished panels in Milano to edit them for the reprint. Maybe put on a bra? Would that do? Didn't the church's indictment decidedly address the frivolous attitude, the dirty disposition of the protagonist? What would a bra change?

In addition to the question of censorship, Taglietti fits very well into our times: if it succeeds in provoking, it can be a step towards a debate about the representation of sex, feminism and the image of women, the question of male-gaze. Topics to which Taglietti - and we as recipients - may contribute a little. Is it actually eroticism, seduction, the game between lovers, that plays on an ideology-free ground?

Those who do not feel provoked by the works can hopefully enjoy the technical mastership - and Taglietti sees himself as nothing else: an artist - but also a diligent craftsman who can paint things that many people like to see. He does not shy away from debate and he emphasises his firm feminist position. The female attributes, no matter by whom they are represented, should take a much more important position in our world!

Short film about Emanuele Taglietti: "Hand Job"

Emanuele Taglietti Instagram

[sineala]

How would you say fandom culture has changed over the years? What are some differences you notice between older and younger fandom folks?

I’ve been thinking for a while about how to answer this, and I’m not sure I have a really good answer, but I’m going to try.

I’ve been in fandom since approximately 1995. Maybe 1994. At that point, the world wide web was a relatively new part of the internet, and the fandoms I was in had most of their activity on privately-hosted mailing lists (predating eGroups/OneList/Yahoo Groups) and on Usenet newsgroups, with fiction beginning to be available on websites as part of either fandom-specific or pairing-specific archives as well as authors’ individual pages. Fanfiction.net did not yet exist. LiveJournal did not exist. AO3 definitely did not exist. If you wanted real-time chat, there was IRC. I was coming in basically at the tail end of zine fandom; zines were no longer the only way of distributing fanfiction, as fandom started to move online. So I have a selection of zines from 90s-era Western media fandoms but even by then zines weren’t where I was doing most of my reading.

I think in terms of generally “what it was like to be in fandom,” the big-picture stuff hasn’t changed. Fandom still produces creative fanwork and likes to, y’know, get together and talk about fandom. Also, almost every fight or complaint that fandom has about something is a thing that has been going on for actual years. People complain that, say, the kudos button is ruining comment culture because back in the LJ days the only way you could comment on a story was, well, by leaving an actual comment, or sending an email on a mailing list, and this might mean that people who would have otherwise commented have left a kudos instead. But back in the LJ and mailing list days, people were complaining that commenting was going downhill since the days of zines, when in order to comment on a story you had to write a real paper letter and mail it and because you had to do that, the quality of feedback was so much better than you got nowadays because people could just dash off a quick email or comment. You get the idea. Top/bottom wars are not new either. Pairing wars are not new. If you’ve been in fandom a while, you will pretty much have seen all the fights already. I think one thing that is new, though, is the fandom awareness of things like privilege and intersectionality and various -isms, as well as things like “providing warnings might be nice” (do you know how much unwarned deathfic I have read? a lot!) and I sure won’t say we’re perfect at any of this now, but I think fandom is trying way way more about all that stuff than it used to.

There are some fights we actually don’t have anymore, as far as I can tell. I feel like it’s been years since I’ve seen the “real person fiction is wrong” battle, but also I don’t hang out in a whole lot of RPF fandoms, so it’s possible that’s still going and I just don’t see it.

There also used to be a recurring debate about whether gay relationships that were canonical were slash or not. When slash started, obviously this wasn’t a question because there weren’t canonical gay relationships in fandoms, period. But as gay characters began to appear in media, people started to wonder “does slash mean all same-sex relationships, or does slash mean only non-canonical same-sex relationships?” Now, you may be reading this and think that sounds like an incredibly weird thing to get hung up on, but that’s because what appears to have happened is that the term “ship” (originally from X-Files Mulder/Scully fandom) has, as far as I can tell, come up and eaten most of the rest of the terminology. Now people will just say, “oh, I ship that.” For any pairing, gay or not, canonical or not. Fandom seems to have decided that for the most part it no longer actually needs a term specific to same-sex relationships as a genre.

Similarly, there are a few genres of fic that we used to have also pretty much don’t exist anymore. There are also plenty of genres that are well-entrenched now that are also extremely recent -- A/B/O comes to mind. But there are some kinds of fic we don’t write a lot of now. Like, I haven’t seen smarm in years! I also haven’t seen We’re Not Gay We Just Love Each Other in a while. There was also a particular style of slash writing where you’d basically have to explain, in detail, what made you think that these particular characters could be anything other than straight. You’d have to motivate this decision. You’d have to look at their canonical heterosexual relationships and come up with a way to explain why all those had happened in order to reconcile how this one guy could have romantic feelings for another guy. When had he figured out he wasn’t straight? Who might he have been with before? How does he interact with people in ways that make you think he’s not straight? That kind of thing. You had to, essentially, show your work. And these days a lot of fanfic is just like, “Okay, Captain America is bisexual, let’s go!” It’s... different.

Fandom also used to skew older, is my sense. A lot older. I don’t know, actually, if it really was older, but I get the sense now that there are some younger people who are surprised that adults are still in fandom. I have seen people saying these days that they think they’re too old for fanfiction because they are not in middle school anymore. And I think a lot of this has to do with the fact that the barriers to access fandom are a lot lower than they used to be. You used to basically have to be an adult with disposable income (or know an adult with disposable income who was willing to help you out; but even then if you were reading explicit fiction you also had to swear you were 18+, usually by sending in an age statement to whoever you were buying the zine from or to the mods of the list you wanted to join, so a lot of fandom was very much age-gated). Internet access was not widely available. Even if you had internet access, you maybe didn’t have your own email address, so you couldn’t sign up for mailing lists; free email providers didn’t exist. If you wanted to buy zines, you had to have money to buy them. If you wanted to go to cons, you had to be able to afford the cost of the con, travel to the con, et cetera. If you wanted to have a website you had to know HTML. Social media did not exist. You want to draw art? Guess what, you’re probably drawing it on paper! You might be able to upload a picture to your website if you have a digital camera or a scanner, but both of those things are expensive, and also a lot of people don’t have the capability or the money to download pictures from the internet (some people have data caps with overage charges, and some people have text-only connections!), so they won’t get to see it. Maybe you can sell your piece at a con! You want to make a fanvid? We called them songvids, but, anyway, you know how you’re doing that? You’re going to hook two VCRs together and smash the play and record buttons very fast! If you want anyone else to watch them, you are either making them a tape personally and mailing it to them or bringing your vids to a convention. Maybe you can digitize them and upload them, but it’s going to take people hours to download them!

(Every three hours my ISP would kick me off the internet and I’d have to dial in again. If it was a busy time of day, it might take me 20 or 30 minutes to get a connection again. And that was assuming no one else in the house needed to use the phone line. Imagine if your modem went out every three hours now.)

And now, for the cost of my internet connection, I can read pretty much whatever fanfiction I want, whenever I want it. I can see all the fanart I want! I can watch vids! Podfic exists now! Fanmixes exist! Gifsets and moodboards exist! If I want to write fic I can write it with programs that are completely free, and as soon as I post it everyone in the entire world can read it. If I want to draw or make vids that may require some additional investment, but I may also be able to do it with things I already have. Do you have any idea how good we all have it?

There are a couple of kinds of fan activity that don’t seem to exist anymore, though, and I miss them. I know that roleplaying still goes on, but I feel like these days most people who do real-time text roleplay have switched to things like Discord. I know that in the LJ days, RP communities were popular. But I really miss MU*s (MUDs, MUSHes, MOOs, MUXes..), which were servers for real-time text-based RP with a bunch of... hmm... features to aid RP. There were virtual rooms with text descriptions, and objects in virtual rooms with descriptions, and your character had a description, and they could interact with the objects as well as with other characters, and you could program things to change descriptions or emit various kinds of text or take you to different rooms, and so on. Just to, y’know, enhance the atmosphere. It was fun and it was where I learned to RP and I’m sad they’re pretty much gone now.

I also don’t think I see a lot of fanfiction awards in fandoms. Wonder where they went.

Going back to the previous point, the barriers to actually consuming the canon you are fannish about are way, way, way lower now. You can pretty much take it for granted that if right now someone tells you about a shiny new fandom, there will be a way to read that book or watch that show or movie right now. Possibly for free! Of course you can watch it! Why wouldn’t you be able to?

This was absolutely, absolutely not the case before. I’m currently in Marvel Comics fandom. If there is a comic I want to read, I can read it right now on the internet. I have subscribed to Marvel Unlimited and I can read pretty much every comic that is older than three months old; the newer ones cost extra money. But I can do it all from the comfort of my own home right now. I was also, actually, in Marvel Comics fandom in the nineties. If I wanted to read a comic, I had to go to a comic book store and hope they had it in stock; if they didn’t, I had to try another store. Not a lot of comics were available in trade paperback and they definitely weren’t readable on the internet. I used to read a lot of Gambit h/c fic set after Uncanny X-Men #350. I never found a copy of UXM #350. I still haven’t! But I did eventually read it on Unlimited.

Being in TV show fandoms also had similar challenges. Was the show you were watching still on the air? No? Then you’d better hope you could find it in reruns, or know someone who had tapes of it that they could copy for you, otherwise you weren’t watching that show. It was, I think, pretty common for people to be in fandoms for shows they hadn’t seen, because they had no way to see the show, but they loved all the fanfic. The Sentinel had a whole lot of fans like that, both because I think it took a while for it to end up in reruns and because overseas distribution was probably poor. So you’d get people who read the fic and wrote fic based on the other fic they’d read, which meant that you got massive, massive amounts of fanon appearing that people just assumed was in the show because it was a weirdly specific detail that appeared in someone’s fic once. Like “Jim and Blair’s apartment has a small water heater” (not actually canonical) or “Blair is a vegetarian” (there’s an episode where his mother visits and IIRC cooks him one of his favorite meals, which is beef tongue).

Like, I was in The Professionals fandom for years. I read all the fic. I hadn’t seen the show. As far as I know, it never aired in the US, and it certainly never had any kind of US VHS or DVD release. I’d seen a couple songvids. I eventually saw a couple episodes in maybe 2003, and that was because my dad special-ordered a commercial VHS tape from the UK and paid someone to convert it from PAL to NTSC. I didn’t get to see the whole show until several years later when I got a region-free DVD player someone in fandom sent me burned copies of the UK DVD releases and then I special-ordered the commercial release of the DVDs from the UK myself. But if I were a new fan and wanted to watch Pros right now? It is on YouTube! For free!

I think also one of the things about fandom that’s not immediately evident to new fans is the way in which it is permanent and/or impermanent. There are probably people whose first fannish experience is on Tumblr or who only read fanfic on FFN and who have no idea what they would do if either site, say, just shut down. But if you’ve been in fandom a while, you’ve been through, say, Discord, Tumblr, Twitter, Pillowfort, Imzy, DW, JournalFen, LJ, GeoCities, IRC, mailing lists. And sure, if Tumblr closed, it would be inconvenient. But fandom would pack up and move somewhere else. You would find it again. It would, eventually, be okay. Similarly, if you’ve been in a lot of fandoms, if you’ve made a lot of friends, drifting through fandoms is like that. You’ll make a friend in 1998 because you were in the same fandom, and then you might go your own ways, and ten years later you might be in another fandom with them again! It happens.

But the flip side of that is that I think a lot of older fans have learned not to trust in the permanence of any particular site. If you like a story, you save it as soon as you read it. If you like a piece of art, you save it. If you like a vid, you save it. Because you don’t know when the site it’s on will be gone for good. I have, like, twenty years of lovingly-curated fanfic. And I feel like people who have only been in fandom since AO3 existed might not understand how much AO3 is a game-changer compared to what we had before. It’s a site where you can put your fic up and you don’t have to worry that the webhost is going out of business, or that the site might delete your work because they don’t allow gay fiction or explicit fiction or fiction written in second person or fiction for fandoms where the creator doesn’t like fanfiction, or whatever. Because all of those things have absolutely happened. But, I mean, I still save pretty much everything I like, even on AO3, just in case.

So, basically, yeah, fandom is a whole lot more accessible than it used to be. I think fandom is pretty much still fandom, but it’s a lot easier to get into, and that has made it way more open to people who wouldn’t have been able to be in fandom before. There is so, so much more now than there ever was before, and I think that’s great.

[robininthelabyrinth]

LXC is the legal guardian and adopter for LSZ or LJY, and NMJ has questions.

part 2 of the LJY-adopted-by-LQR fic (now also on ao3)

-

“So, did I knock you up before I went to war or something?” Nie Mingjue asked. “Because I feel like you should’ve mentioned it if that was the case. Possibly in a letter.”

Lan Xichen was so tired that it took him a solid minute to parse what was wrong with that sentence and how to respond, and it was not by following his first instinct to apologize that he should’ve written better letters.

“Stop making fun of me,” he said instead, groping towards some measure of dignity.

Sadly, dignity was in very short supply when you were taking care of babies. Multiple babies. Well, one baby and one toddler, which was somehow worse?

Lan Xichen was pretty sure they’d figured out how to time their crying off each other.

“I would never,” Nie Mingjue said, like a liar, and then he picked up little Jingyi and – Lan Xichen simply cannot find another way to put it – shook him, in a manner not unlike testing a melon for freshness.

For some reason, this made Lan Jingyi stop crying and start making snuffling little giggles instead.

“How did you do that?” Lan Xichen asked, eyes wide.

“Do what?” Nie Mingjue tucked the baby into the crook of his arm and scooped up some food off the table, offering it to him, and Lan Jingy actually ate it. “Xichen, are you feeling all right?”

“Shhh!” Lan Xichen hissed, eyes fixed on the baby, which was neither spitting up everything nor wailing as if his heart was broken. “No unnecessary noise during meals.”

Nie Mingjue snorted in amusement. “Sure,” he said amiably, in the tone Lan Xichen had long ago learned meant ‘nice rules you’ve got there, it’d be an awful shame if someone found a loophole in them’. “This isn’t a meal, though; it’s just a snack.”

Lan Xichen eyed the still-not-crying Lan Jingyi and decided that now was not the time for a spirited debate on the virtues of discipline and fulfilling the merits rather than the word of a rule.

“Where’s monster number one gone?” Nie Mingjue asked abruptly. “He must be very good at hiding, because I looked away for a blink of an eye and he was gone.”

Lan Xichen’s eyes slowly dropped down to where a cloth-covered lump was not-so-sneakily edging towards Nie Mingjue’s foot.

Nie Mingjue was one of the foremost front line fighters of their generation, and possibly the previous one as well. His physical ability was matched only by his incredibly keen senses.

There was no way he was not aware of the lump.

“It’s a real shame, too,” Nie Mingjue continued. “I was planning on doing a test of how far you can throw children, but I think monster two here’s a bit too small to make the test worthwhile. But I guess it just wasn’t meant to be –”

You can’t throw children, Lan Xichen was about to say, except Lan Sizhui was tearing off the tablecloth and jumping up in excitement, shouting, “Here! Here! I’m here! I’m big enough! You can throw me!”

“Why does he want to be thrown,” Lan Xichen murmured, bewildered. He’d never wanted to be thrown around as a child. Had he?

In fairness, he wasn’t sure. No one had ever offered.

Apparently, though, Lan Sizhui did very much want to be thrown around, and Lan Jingyi even condescended to allow Lan Xichen to hold him while he watched.

“Higher! Higher!” Lan Sizhui shouted.

“Really? Is this high enough?” Nie Mingjue held him up at eye level.

“Higher!”

“Like this?” Above his head.

“Higher!”

“You sure?”

“Yes!”

“All right. How about –” Baxia slithered out from her place by the door, zipping over until she was right in front of Nie Mingjue, allowing him to step onto her like a stair, and then zipping upwards to about hip-height, lifting Nie Mingjue and Lan Sizhui with her. They very nearly hit a tree branch with their heads. “– this?”

Lan Sizhui shrieked with laughter.  

“It’s too early to introduce them to flying,” Lan Xichen objected, because it was. “Mingjue-xiong…”

Nie Mingjue hopped down with a laugh. “All right, one last toss,” he told Lan Sizhui. “Then you nap. Okay?”

“Okay!” Lan Sizhui, who had never once willingly succumbed to naptime in the entirety of the time that Lan Xichen had known him, promised earnestly.

Back into the pile of soft grass he went, giggling the entire time, and amazingly enough he really did fall asleep afterwards. Lan Jingyi, too, had fallen asleep at some point.

“I’ve decided that your brother needs more experience running a sect,” Lan Xichen told Nie Mingjue, who raised his eyebrows. “Starting immediately. I promise to allow you to leave when Jingyi is, oh, shall we say five years old..?”

You could reason with a five year old. 

Nie Mingjue laughed.

It was a type of laugh that suggested that he thought Lan Xichen was making a joke. This was incorrect.

“You’d be amazed at how serious I am,” Lan Xichen told him threateningly, “I’m sect leader here, this is my territory, I can have you arrested any time –” but by that point Nie Mingjue was already bundling him off to bed, too, combing out his hair and plying him with snacks and –

This was not helping his argument that Lan Xichen should be allowing him to leave rather than keep him trapped in the Cloud Recesses as a babysitter-slash-love-slave. 

Well, he wouldn’t really do that, of course. He’d let him go. Eventually.

It’d probably be good for Nie Mingjue’s stress levels, honestly.

“Seriously, though, how did you do that?” he asked, his head on Nie Mingjue’s lap. “They didn’t cry once.”

“I’m good with kids,” Nie Mingjue said, his fingers digging into Lan Xichen’s scalp in just the right way. “Now can you explain to me how exactly you ended up with them? Two, no less?”

Lan Xichen groaned and covered his eyes with a hand. “Sizhui’s Wangji’s,” he explained. “Not biologically, but he’s put his name down in the family register under his own. But, you know…”

“I know.”

Lan Xichen appreciated that he didn’t need to go into it. The doctors had estimated that Lan Wangji would regain full mobility within three years, so that was the period the elders had mandated for his so-called ‘seclusion’, but with Lan Wangji being locked away like that – even with visitors, even though he was trying his hardest to care for the child from where he was – meant that someone had to care for the child’s day-to-day life until his brother was ready to resume the role.

“Jingyi is a cousin, I think,” he continued. “His parents are dead, and uncle accepted guardianship for him…I think he’s going to adopt him, actually.”

“Then why is he with you?”

“I volunteered.”

“Xichen, I say this with a full heart of affection and tremendous respect for your capabilities,” Nie Mingjue said. “But why in the world would you go and do a stupid thing like that?”

Lan Xichen sighed. The worst part was, he couldn’t even argue that it wasn’t stupid – he was, quite obviously, terrible with children.

“Uncle’s still injured from the war,” he admitted. In fact, his injury was probably even older than the war, dating as far back as the burning of the Cloud Recesses – his uncle had never been much of a fighter, his impressive cultivation strength stemming almost entirely from gentler arts like music and learning and meditation, but when his home and his family and his students were at risk, he’d fought, while Lan Xichen ran. Not just fought; he’d kept fighting long past the point that his body allowed. It only made sense for the bill to need to be paid. “He had a recurrence of an old complaint, not long ago; he started coughing up blood. The doctors insisted that he try to avoid anything that might cause him  stress.”

“Stress. Like, say, a rowdy infant?”

“Exactly like a rowdy infant,” Lan Xichen agreed, glad that Nie Mingjue did not mention that what had happened with Lan Wangji was also likely a source of stress. At least the two of them had slowly started to repair their relationship recently – the heartbreak would kill their uncle sooner than anything else, and Lan Xichen might be weak, but he really couldn’t tolerate the idea of suffering any more loss.

And also, if Lan Wangji could see his way to forgiving their uncle, he might one day agree to forgive Lan Xichen, too.

“I see. So you ended up with the little one, too.”

“Yes. And they hate me.” Nie Mingjue coughed a little. “No, don’t deny it. They clearly hate me. They always cry and spit and yell -”

“They’re children, Xichen,” Nie Mingjue said. “Traumatized children. They do that.”

Lan Xichen didn’t need to open his eyes to know that Nie Mingjue was frowning in memory of pain long past. Lan Xichen remembered, with painful clarity, how young Nie Huaisang had been when Lao Nie had died, how badly he had taken it.

There’d been a lot of crying and vomiting and yelling there as well.

“You’re good with kids,” Lan Xichen said instead of commenting, trading delicacy for delicacy; he would not touch Nie Mingjue’s still-bleeding wounds just as Nie Mingjue avoided his own. “Very good.”

“Well, I like to think so, anyway.”

They remained in blissful, comfortable silence for a while.

“How would it have even worked?” Lan Xichen finally asked. His eyes were still closed, Nie Mingjue’s fingers running through his hair; he never wanted to move again.

“Hmm?”

“If you knocked me up before you went to war. I mean, they’re not even the same age.”

“Well, one of them’s from the affair, obviously.”

“I’m sorry, am I cheating on you now?” Lan Xichen opened an eye and pinned Nie Mingjue with a fierce look that instructed his lover to reconsider.

“Of course not,” Nie Mingjue said, mock-solemnly. His eyes were dancing. “You were so distraught after receiving incorrect news of my untimely demise that you conducted a ghost marriage with my spirit, and then went and had a child to continue my name.”

“…they’re both surnamed Lan.”

“So what? Are you saying I’m not good enough to marry into your sect, is that it?”

Lan Xichen’s cheeks were hurting from trying not to laugh. “I wouldn’t dream of implying such a thing.”

“There you go, then.”

“Can I ask why I felt the need to have a child to continue your name if I had one already?”

“…well, fuck,” Nie Mingjue said. “I’ve got nothing.”

Lan Xichen burst out laughing.

[true-blue-megamind]

FAN THEORY SUPPOSITION SUNDAY: The Warden

SPOILER WARNING!  It’s still a thing, and, if you haven’t yet, you still need to watch Megamind.  (If you have seen it already, however, you need to see it again.  Because it’s awesome.)

Yes, yes, the post is three days late this time.  Real life has to take priority and such. So sue me.  (Don’t really do that.  LOL!)

For that same reason—or more accurately because this week has exhausted me—I will attempt to make this post shorter than usual.  We’ll see how that goes.  My money is on “not well.”  LOL.

Anyway, today we’re going to look at a subject that often divides the Megamind fandom: the Warden and his relationship with Megamind. There are several fan theories—I mean, suppositions—surrounding this, but I’m going to be focusing on a few of the main ones.

The first of these is that the Warden was actually a father figure to Megamind when he was young, allowing him to be raised in jail not out of cruelty or disinterest, but because it was the only way to keep him safe from shadowy government agencies that otherwise would have performed all sorts of experiments on the blue alien.  This both accounts for why a child would be allowed to grow up in what is clearly a high-security prison for dangerous adult criminals—something that, admittedly, needs some sort of explanation—and fits with widely accepted sci-fi and comic book tropes. (From Area 51 to mysterious “Men in Black” type organizations, fiction is full of government agencies created to study extraterrestrial life and technology.)  Some even go so far as to suggest that the Warden may have tried to adopt Megamind officially, but was blocked from doing so by these same entities. On top of this, such an idea also offers room to re-imagine the Warden as a much more interesting, complex, and sympathetic character.  Indeed, there has been some excellent fan fiction written about this pseudo-parental relationship.

Art: Fathers And Sons Day by tabbydragon

There is some evidence to support this.  The first is that, although the Warden behaves harshly toward Megamind in the “jail-break” scene near the beginning of the film, Megamind himself seems to be trying to engage in a playful exchange: pranking the older man, wishing him a good morning, and even teasing him.  While some say that this is simply Megamind’s personality as well as his determination to always appear indominable, others suggest that, perhaps, the blue man is trying to recapture a lost amiability between himself and the prison Warden.  It is possible that, when he was younger and less villainous, Megamind might have exchanged friendly jokes and greetings with the man in charge of the jail he called home.  It has even been suggested that the Warden is so hard on the blue man at the beginning of the film not because he hates Megamind, but because Megamind’s life choices have hurt and alienated his father figure. This idea finds some support in the facts that, when Megamind leaves jail to confront Titan, the Warden wished him good luck, and at the end of the movie, that same man seems genuinely happy as he watches the television broadcast of his one-time prisoner being named Defender of Metro City.  Finally, there is some evidence from the comics which, although not truly considered canon, as I’ve mentioned before, do offer some material for fan theories.  In the “episode” entitled Bad Minion! Bad! Megamind runs into the Warden in a bar, and the latter offers the former advice.  There is certainly a somewhat fatherly feel to the scene.

The second theory is exactly the opposite: that the Warden either did not care for or outright disliked the former supervillain.  Unfortunately, as fun as the Warden/Father Figure concept is, this second, darker idea has far stronger evidence to support it in the film itself.  (Try not to hate me, everyone.)  These clues range from the obvious to the subtle, but there are quite a few of them to be found.

During the first scene in which we see Warden interact with Megamind, he doesn’t behave like an angry, disappointed father—at least not a good one.  He isn’t merely surly toward Megamind; he is absolutely nasty. The Warden verbally condemns the alien, telling him that he’ll “always be a villain,” and essentially steals what he believes is a gift for the blue man, even taunting him by saying: “I think I’ll keep it!”  This hardly seems like the actions of someone who once felt any sort of affection for the extraterrestrial.  That same portion of the movie holds another clue as well: the screens monitoring Megamind’s brain activity.  Indeed, in original concept art for the film, the system appears both more invasive and more nightmarish.  It seems that, far from protecting Megamind, the Warden may have actually allowed him to be experimented upon.

Next, there is the newspaper article at the beginning of the title sequence, which bears the headline “Hometown Boy Makes Bad.” It’s hard to see what the paper says, of course, even if you bother to really notice it, but luckily for us Liz (Demishock) wrote a wonderfully thorough blog post which, among other things, provides a transcript of the “news story.”  In it, the Warden is quoted as referring to young Megamind as a born villain as well as abnormal.  

You don't know this kid. I've watched the little criminal since he was in diapers. This kid is just a bad seed. I've got experienced, hardened criminals in here who are afraid of him - I mean, have you seen the size of his head?…  It's not like he's a normal kid… I mean, have you gotten a good look at his gigantic blue head? I don't know where you come from, but where I come it's just not right.

Granted, there seems to be some truth to what the Warden is saying, as the article also mentions that Megamind, who can hardly have been more than seven years old at the time, has basically been put into solitary confinement for the safety of other prisoners following an unnamed incident, adding that the other inmates “refused to point fingers for fear of retaliation.”  (This fits with the fan theory that young Megamind would have had to both fight and develop a fearsome reputation in order to protect himself. You can read more about that in the post How Strong is Megamind?) However, the Warden seems to dwell a lot on the fact that Megamind looks alien, and he displays an obvious dislike for the young boy.

Finally, there is evidence hidden in the school scene, although it’s easy to miss. In an amazing two-part video series, Megamind: A City of Deception. YouTuber The Theorizer illustrates several hidden clues about Megamind’s early life and how it it led him to embrace villainy.  (I will very likely write another post going into more detail about that at a later date.)  One thing that The Theorizer discovered is a seemingly innocuous detail in the background during the popcorn scene.  Take a moment to examine the images below.  Look closely at the blackboard and you’ll see a paper cut out of a school bus.  Look even more closely at that and you’ll find something odd: the bus is full of crayon-drawn children except for one figure: an adult male, riding in the back of the bus, who looks suspiciously like the Warden as he appears at the beginning of the film. 

In a movie where so much attention is given to small things—I mean, seriously, the animation team actually went through the trouble to write a news story for a paper that was on the screen less than ten seconds—this cannot possibly be a coincidence.  (You can learn more about the artists’ amazing dedication to detail in my post What’s Hidden in the Animation?)  Although it is vaguely possible that Megamind, painfully aware of how much his appearance was despised, chose to draw the Warden’s face instead of his own, most fans believe there is a darker reason for this oddity.  

Think about it: the Li’l Gifted School for Li’l Gifted Kids is built close by a jail with a strangely similar name: Metro City Prison for the Criminally Gifted.   It’s clearly a small academy, yet the only two known aliens in the city���who, by the way, have extremely different social backgrounds—both just happen to attend there.  And now the prison warden appears to be somehow involved with the elementary school?  It’s bizarre.  Add to this the fact that the young alien adopted by a privileged family—a boy who possessed super-strength and laser vision—seemed inclined to be a bully, (as is made obvious by the kickball scene,) and a disturbing fan theory emerges.  Adults realized that Wayne Smith, the child who would eventually become Metro Man, might prove dangerous if left unchecked, and came up with a plan to turn him into a hero instead.  Wayne was showered with praise, conditioning him to seek public approval, but a superhero needs a nemesis.  The strange-looking, unwanted blue boy who’d already been labeled a criminal would have seemed like the obvious choice.  If this is true, then Megamind was purposefully, albeit covertly, groomed to become a supervillain from a young age, and the Warden played a major role in doing that.

So there you have it.  Two competing fan theories concerning the Warden’s connection with Megamind.  Both have some evidence supporting them, and there are fans who are firmly dedicated to one or the other.  Which is true?  Did the Warden care for Megamind like a son but distance himself when the boy turned to villainy?  Or did he judge and despise Megamind but come around to liking him when he finally realized what sort of person the blue man was deep down?  The fact is that those questions can be argued for hours on end.  No matter which of these suppositions you prefer, however, the mere fact that even a minor supporting character is complex enough to offer room for this debate speaks to the impressive amount of work and devotion that went into creating this amazing animated film.

[regina-del-cielo]

I was thinking about Copley’s Murder Conspirancy Board (mostly to deal with the absolute rage that the scene with Andy Copley and Booker gives me because ‘UGH THESE MEN ARE SO S T U P I D’), and... I may have a Theory about it - which mostly delves into how much Booker and Copley were in actual contact with each other before the events of the movie.

TL;DR: the Murder Conspirancy Board was built with a contribution of Booker’s information, and Copley was Very Confused on the workings of the Guard’s immortality

(the Essay(TM) is under the cut)

This excellent post expounds on how these two Grieving Dumbasses Definitely Did Not Think Their Plan Through, but still what little they did plan was not done in two days. And I would like to think that Booker would have required more than One (1) Persuasive Speech to get him to potentially get his family outed and put in danger for the (tiny) chance of getting a cure for their immortality.

So they’d been in contact for a while, possibly for almost the whole ‘break year’. Copley has lost his wife two years before the movie, so when he and Booker met again he’s one year into mourning. If Andy needed a break from their jobs, I can’t imagine in what mental state Booker must have been.

Copley probably started looking into the Guard because man, that Surabaya mission was a masterpiece, and how come these guys aren’t mercenary superstars? But they’re like ghosts, and the IDs don’t really match their supposed ages... and dealing with his wife’s death made him go into a Nerd Spiral. And then he finds Booker.

So this is how I think it went: they meet again. They talk. Copley is a grieving widower, Booker goes ‘man don’t I relate’. Booker is probably drunk a lot of the time (maybe so is Copley, misery loves company and all that). They enter a positive feedback loop of sharing grief over lost loved ones. Copley probably spills that he knows something, that they’ve done great things and they have a gift obviously. Booker probably answers along the lines of ‘fuck the gift, it sucks. Didn’t save my children when they needed it’. Copley goes ‘well, medicine is much better today. What if you could do it now?’ And the rest is history.

A) Booker ‘helped’ with the Murder Conspirancy Board

We know for a fact that the Conspirancy Board contains information about the Guard ‘from the last 150 years’ which is, approximately, the time photography’s been around. And it makes sense - photos are pretty easily accessible, and Copley knows their faces. He probably scanned them from one of those fake IDs and then used a facial recognition software to find them in historical photographic archives. But we know (and by the end of the movie so does he) that the last 150 years is a nothing in their lifespan. And while going backwards Copley may have found Booker’s original birth and/or marriage records, nothing of the sort would exist for Joe, Nicky and Andy.

Despite how much we joke about the Guard’s faces being Everywhere in museums and art galleries around the world, we can assume that they wouldn’t leave so many traces of them behind. The two known art pieces representing Andy in an obviously recognizable manner, her portrait with Achilles and the Rodin, are in the cave in Val d’Argent. I don’t believe Nicky and Joe wouldn’t have similar storage places, especially for Joe’s own art. Without photographic evidence and before newspapers, trying to pinpoint the three of them across history would be harder than finding a specific needle in a haystack of needles... unless someone tells you where to look. 

When Andy enters Copley’s living room, he calls her ‘Andromache the Scythian, the eternal warrior’. But how could Copley have known that Andy’s “real” name was Andromache? It’s not on her IDs, and it’s not the top choice for a full name that has Andy as a nickname. It’s a literary name, of course it would appear through history in poems or plays or novels. And how could he have associated Nicky and Joe precisely to the Crusades with what he knows of them from the last 150 years alone? For all he knew, they could have been as old as the Punic Wars, or as young as the Battle of Lepanto. Assuming he’d actually caught on on them being together together.

Well, I think Booker told him. Maybe just a thing here or there, while Commiserating on How It Sucks being an Immortal, like ‘Andy’s been around for so long she doesn’t even remember her true age, that’s exhausting’ or ‘Joe and Nicky are ridiculous for two people whose first meeting consisted of killing each other during the fucking Crusades’. And Copley fell into another Nerd Spiral that brought him to understand that holy shit these people are much older than I thought what the fuck.

B) Copley is Very Confused on How Immortality Actually Works

Copley talks to Andy by calling her ‘eternal warrior’ and talking of her immortality as if it was some kind of gift that can somehow be transferred from one body to another (debatable, but... ok). But he’s also flabbergasted by her not healing from Booker’s shot, and later with Nile he says ‘but then why would the immortality leave?’, which is... well, it makes it sound like he thinks the immortals are some sort of Chosen Ones.

Which means that Copley knows nothing about Lykon. He had no idea that at some point the Guard will stop healing.

But why would he not know, since I just conjectured that Booker told him enough about immortality for him to pinpoint the origins of the eldest members of the Guard? Why would Booker not have told him such a central detail of their “power”? (Booker obviously knows about Lykon. We see Andy telling Nile, and you can bet that ‘is this thing permanent?’ is probably the third question Booker ever asked when he met the others. He can’t not know)

I think it’s because despite having bonded over their grief, they are approaching this ‘discovering what the fuck is up with immortality’ from two extremely different sides. 

Copley wants to know if there is some biological aspect to their immortality that may be ‘transferred’ or ‘activated’ in any random human being. He’s gotten into his head that their regenerative powers can end all diseases. Which. I could probably write another entire separate post on how this is far-fetched at best. Point being, Copley never thought his endeavour as taking the immortality from the Guard to give it to someone else. He thinks Andy and the others are going to live forever and ever.

Booker knows their immortality is not forever and ever, theoretically. He knows that at some point, in the future, he’s going to stop healing and die. But he Wants to Talk to the Manager about it, damn it. He wants his death to be a certainty he can quantify, not something that may happen in another five thousand years based on the data he’s got at his disposal. He wants to have the choice to end it tomorrow or in fifty years - if discovering what causes his immortality saves other people, well that’s an undeniable bonus, but it’s not the focus of his motivation.

Just like Booker and Copley didn’t cover all the potential ways in which Their Plan Could Go Wrong (and honestly, has Booker not learned yet just how fast they revive on average? He tells Nile that ‘big wounds take longer’, and still he revived from the grenade in three/four minutes!), I think they also didn’t Delve into their motivations for seeking that knowledge. Booker probably thought that Copley knowing of their immortality being relative was irrelevant, because of course the doctors will find something (the thing that makes them stop healing), and then he’ll die anyway, so who cares? 

And Copley... Copley was probably Convinced that the Guard was a group of superheroes that just needed to be suggested a new investment plan for using their powers, because saving individuals during wars and natural disasters is very noble and good, but come on, it’s inefficient as hell, they can do much better!

(It absolutely sends me that Copley saw the kind of accomplishments reached by the people that the Guard saved, or by their direct descendants, and STILL it didn’t occur to him that there was a pretty decent chance that sometime in the future they would save someone that would find the cure for ALS and/or other shitty diseases! HE’S LITERALLY HINDERING THEM!!!) 

[lunar-magnolia]

IT'S TIME TO GO ON A SPECULATION JOURNEY @l-tachi​

It's true we don't really know Hua Cheng's past before he fell into Xie Lian's arms as a child, but we do have some things that could help make up a little picture of his human life. I might leave out some things and take them for granted, like his transformation from simple fire ghost to savage:

*putting a read more because Long and spoilery

He was a citizen of the Imperial Capital of Xianle or lived in the vicinity of it. It's possible that he lived outside the walls, because of what Feng Xin said about knowing all the children who lived in the poorest part of the Imperial Capital. He said he had never seen little Hua (or Hong-er) around.

Because of his cursed eye that he kept covered, it's possible that his family was cast out of the city when he was born. Maybe they did live inside the city, but once little Hua came around and voice spread about his curse, they might have been kicked out.

It's also possible that only his mother loved him in the family, and the fact that she wouldn't give him up and doomed them all could have been cause of fights in the household. Thus we have little Hua lying about having parents and refusing to go back home.

It's also possible that he truly doesn't have a name. Hong Hong-er is the way his mother called him, and sounds more like a cute nickname that referred to his red eye (it means "little red"). He never gives Xie Lian a proper name, neither when he's a child nor when he was in his Wuming form. This is completely debatable tbh

However, when he meets Xie Lian again after 800 years, he does give a name that he says he prefers: San Lang. In the notes of the book it says that it indicates the third son of a household. This made me think that he probably had at least two older siblings when he was human. Which is nice, but all things considered he probably didn't have a good relationship with them.

CW: death, suicide mention

It's unclear if he jumped or just fell from the wall during the festival as a child. There's a high chance that Xie Lian is an unreliable narrator and Hua Cheng never told him why he was in such a dangerous position in the first place. It's however safe to imagine that he was going to jump, but seeing the parade he stopped himself. He was either pushed or he slipped.

I say it's kinda safe because of the infamous scene where little Hua is pleading to Xie Lian to tell him why should he continue living when he really doesn't want to. His life has been too hard on him and he wants to die. Xie Lian tells him to live for him if he can't find anything else worth living for. So yeah.

The guoshi of Xianle mentions that the kid Xie Lian had brought to the Royal Pavilion centuries ago was cursed and he probably never lived past 18-20yo. We know that up until 14 years old he was alive and well and in the army, fighting in the name of the Crown Prince. We also know that after the Land of the Tender accident he was booted from the army. At some point after the fall of Xianle, he died.

We see him protecting one of Xie Lian's temples when people wanted to burn it down. It's possible that he died doing exactly that, when he was around 18/19 years old.

In fact, Hua Cheng mentions that dying in Xie Lian's name is the greatest honor for him. And it already happened twice: when he was a human and when he sacrificed himself as Wuming.

Also another possible indicator of the age he was when he died is the age he has in his Hua Cheng form. He is described as a youth in his 20s.

After his sacrifice as Wuming, his soul still refused to leave the mortal realm and dissipate. We can imagine that after that episode mount Tong'lu opened and he went there as a fragile soul to regain his power and become at least a savage again. He knew he needed to become strong again if he wanted to protect Xie Lian, so he risked it all.

We know that while journeying towards the kiln, he gained enough power to have a "physical" form and gauge his own eye out to forge E'ming in a desperate situation. Plus, at the exact same moment, the heaven sent a heavenly calamity and he ascended as a ghost. But since Xie Lian wasn’t there and he had lots of beef with the heavenly officials, he immediately jumped down and continued on his path to become a supreme.

He stayed in the Mount Tong'lu zone for 10 years. In these ten years it's highly probable that he slew as many ghosts as he could to gain as much power as he could get. He also spent his time exploring the ruins of Wuyong and honing in his art skills in the Cave of Ten Thousand Gods.

When he entered the kiln, it's unclear if he found other powerful ghosts to fight inside it or not. In any case, once he was done and still inside, before escaping he carved the giant Crown Prince statue that we see in book 5.

After escaping the kiln, he had all the "physical" strength. But we know that he's also extremely knowledgeable, and that when he challenged the 35 heavenly officials, some were civil gods and he beat them in debates.

So it's possible that after becoming a Supreme, he started his journey to gather as much knowledge as he could. During the years he gained fame and his Crimson Rain Sought Flower title.

With his status and skill, he eventually founded Ghost City and started building his own wealth too, thanks to the Gambler's Den.

It took some time, but when he was positive he could take all the 35 heaven officials down at their own game, he went and became the infamous Hua Cheng, the Crimson Rain that sought the flower.

I think it's important to mention that the guoshi of Xianle also said that the people cursed like Hua Cheng had the worst luck. Instead, we see Hua Cheng being possibly the luckiest person on Earth. This is probably the consequence of Xie Lian changing his fate and giving up all his luck (per the cursed shackle). Among everything, in fact, guoshi said that to survive the curse, fate must be changed.

I think Xie Lian altered Hua Cheng's fate both when he was a human and held onto little Hua when everyone else told him to let him go, and when he gave up his luck just after Wuming's sacrifice. Xie Lian, in fact, says that luck will be transfered to people who lack it. And Hua Cheng, who was in the vicinity, was probably the most unlucky person present. I think he absorbed most of Xie Lian's luck, and that also impacted his fate.

Another possibility is Hua Cheng gaining luck after he forged E'ming. If his eye was the reason why his luck was so terrible, removing it and sealing into a spiritual device could have been the catalyst to his apparently infinite luck.

I think he also spent his time looking for Xie Lian, but the world is vast and he lost track of him after the Wuming arc. So he focused on improving himself to be worthy of one day approaching Xie Lian.

I guess he came to know Xie Lian's whereabouts when Xie Lian ascended for the third time. It's possible that he got word of it from Black Water, and then the rest is history.

Akdhskfhjd I might have skipped some things, please feel free to ask more questions if something is unclear or doesn't make sense. All of this is pure speculation based on the information we have from the book and it's all debatable. Still, I had fun thinking about it! Thank you so much for the prompt!!!

[web1995]

Look upon my Works, ye Mighty: The Colossus of Garfield

Fig. 1

Surely our readers will need no introduction to The Colossus of Garfield, tenth wonder of the world. A much-favored subject of Art, Poetry, and History, the Colossus continues to preoccupy our collective imagination, as it captivated the artists who hewed his hulking body from the mighty pliant rock. Babel-like, he looms as testament, monument, and warning— for the Colossus is the folly of a long-since fallen empire, attempting to immortalize their king— and yet, how his image immortally endures! 

Historians place the construction of the Colossus variably, but without a doubt before our millennium. The earliest historical references to the Colossus are roughly contemporary with ancient California. For centuries upon centuries, he has been a site of pilgrimage and tourism, similar to the (likely fictitious) ruins of the Colosseum (Fig. 2) as described by authors in the ancient world, which drew thousands of visitors curious to witness an immense historical object. The Colossus is one of the largest and most magnificent ruins standing today, and unlike the Colosseum, there is no doubt about whether it really existed. 

Fig. 2 [ Artist’s reconstruction of the apocryphal Colosseum ] 

Today, there are many historical depictions of the Colossus of Garfield, all worthy of examination, and it is our hope that whether you come to our little book as a scholar of the Colossus or as a reader who knows him only as the tenth wonder that you will find something of note or amusement here. 

Let us return to Fig. 1: 

In this oil on canvas painting of the Colossus, by an unknown artist in the 17th—18th century WX, little room is left for the sky. The Colossus and the vast plain of the rocky beach upon which he sits are the overwhelming focus, massive waves breaking upon his placid visage, walls of foam several feet in height building up around his immovable bulk. Bleached by sun, sea, and storm, the Colossus basks unperturbed. In the background, indistinct buildings larger than one might easily comprehend rise upon the sea cliffs, works of the mighty empire following the collapse of that which crafted the Colossus. 

The painting evokes a distorted sense of time and a distorted sense of scale, juxtaposing old and new, centering the Colossus despite its weatheredness, and even taking particular care to render that weatheredness with something like love. New climate data has determined that the seas were already receding significantly in the 17th century WX, suggesting that the artist, having visited the Colossus, wanted to reach back into time to when the sea had broken daily upon its monumental little paws. It was a time long ago— a time when the Colossus was already ancient. 

Fig. 3

In Fig. 3, we see another stunning oil painting of the Colossus by another unknown artist, probably dating from the First Modern Desert Age, though the possibility of the artist depicting an earlier time, like the painter of Fig. 1, cannot be discounted. Likely painted during the 2nd century RYE, here the Colossus sits among endless dunes. The desert takes on a naturalistic, bluish hue in contrast to the garish orange of the Colossus, somehow scarcely diminished by hundreds of years. The Colossus appears to offer some shade, but the unseen overhead sun fills the canvas with a palpable heat. 

Art historians throughout the centuries have disagreed as to whether the Colossus was originally built to stand at the sea’s edge, in the water, or on dry land, and who can blame them? The effect of the Colossus remains transformative regardless of where it sits. Perhaps its builders even knew that the Colossus would endure longer than the sea or sand upon which it originally was hewn into the shape it continues to hold today. 

Fig. 4

Fig. 4 is an oil and acrylic painting which likely drew upon the Desert Colossus (Fig. 3) for its composition. Probably dating from the 9th century RYE, the artist portrays a partially submerged Colossus in much the same style as the Desert Colossus, with influence also taken from the Sea Colossus (Fig. 1). Here the focus is on the shallow seas surrounding the Colossus nearly as much as on the Colossus itself, following the lead of the Desert Colossus. A sense of barrenness pervades the Submerged Colossus, no living things visible within the frame. The Desert Colossus by contrast is suggestive of perhaps some vegetation, perhaps some fungus, while the Submerged Colossus emphasizes a true sense of loneliness: the observer is alone with him. 

Fig. 5

In this engraving, from the Second Modern Desert Age, by the anonymous historian and physician known as The Anonymous Historian and Physician of the Second Modern Desert Age, we see documentation of how the eyes of the Colossus were mined for old materials for use in weaponry in the Fourth War. When the seas around the Colossus receded yet again, this time leaving behind a rocky bed, it became a simple matter to access the Colossus. Clearly, the urgency of the Fourth War took priority over preserving what was left of the Colossus’ original state. Decorative parts of the Colossus which can be seen in previous depictions are missing here, likely also mined for old materials. 

However, the Colossus certainly survived the Fourth War, and still remains standing after the Seventh War, his expression scarcely altered by the loss of his eyes. Perhaps it would have even brought his creators some pleasure to know that the Colossus played a role in wars so long after their deaths. 

For the Colossus must depict a Soldier Emperor, some have cried— a man in the form of an unknown beast, prepared to pounce. Others have argued that the Colossus is at rest, that nothing about his posture indicates a thirst for battle. Indeed, the Colossus cannot even be said definitively to represent a man, though the rulers he is believed to possibly depict are largely men. 

We have seen the Colossus itself throughout time. But just who or what is the Colossus? The question has vexed scholars for nearly as long as the Colossus has stood. We call him “Garfield” because some ancient texts do, not because we have any idea who this “Garfield” was or what he meant to his people. 

Fig. 6

Another tremendous monument which still stands today is that of the Sphinx, sometimes informally referred to as the Garfield by scholars of the Colossus (though this is an error, as the Sphinx pre-dates the Colossus by at least a century). In Fig. 6, we see a tempera painting of the Sphinx in which its similarity to the Colossus is undeniable. Could the creators of the Colossus have been imitating the Sphinx? The Sphinx is believed to be a representation of a ruler as a mythological being or a God, and perhaps the Colossus is similar.

Fig. 7

But what if the Colossus is meant to represent an animal? The animal is unidentifiable, and likely to be mythological in nature, though it may be a stylized depiction of a living animal. Scholars have debated endlessly which animal the Colossus might depict, with recent arguments being made for the Colossus perhaps depicting a member of the same or a related species to the unidentified animal seen in Fig. 7, a “photograph” from the 20th or 21st century AD, when the art of photography flourished briefly before being lost and the famed photographer Leonardo da Vinci captured this image. 

Fig. 8

And if we turn to other ancient art? Believed to also be a portrait of “Garfield” (which is to say, the person or animal portrayed by the Colossus), dating from a similar timeframe as the Colossus, Fig. 8 is likely a funerary inscription. Here, the figure depicted is a sort of guardian, perhaps looking over the deceased. 

Fig. 9

Another piece of ancient art, Fig. 9 was created by an artist known only as “MarkVomit” and has been the subject of much debate. Is it meant to reaffirm Garfield’s power, to remind the viewer that they are not immune to his propaganda? Or is it meant to protest Garfield, to subvert and challenge the propaganda that this ruler must have utilized to maintain his rule? The answers are lost to history. 

Fig. 10

Fig. 11

Fig. 12

Other sculptures appearing to depict the same figure exist, though none on such a monumental scale as the Colossus. A frequent theme seems to be his ability to control time, as seen in Figures 10–12. Was this what inspired the creators of the Colossus to build him so enduringly? 

Fig. 14

One of the more outlandish theories regarding his nature is that the Colossus is meant to resemble a cat (see Fig. 14 for a hyperrealistic painting of a cat for reference) but this has largely been discredited by modern scholarship. If the Colossus is a feline, certainly his species is different— simply observe the difference in ear shape, eye shape, and gait. However, certain cats do carry a gravitas reminiscent of the Colossus, which brings the question again to mind— could the Colossus have been an ordinary domestic shorthair all along? 

The identity of Garfield, if there is a historical “Garfield,” remains a tantalizing mystery. Here we have such a tangible piece of history, and we are so unable to comprehend him! In another sense, though, perhaps the Colossus has taken on its own significance, and may represent something far beyond the man he once symbolized, the God he was built to honor, or the animal he commemorated. For who in our modern world has not gone to see the Colossus and found themselves moved? His place as the tenth wonder is well deserved. 

Perhaps new understandings will come to light regarding the nature of the Colossus, and perhaps not. Either way, he will remain until he is entirely unmade, his old materials bit by bit chipped away by the hands of humans and humidity fluctuations, the silent and sole guardian of his secret knowledge. 

In closing, let us visit two pieces of poetry composed about the Colossus of Garfield (the first of which only survives in this single fragment). 

[love-dreams]

pairing: hoshi x fem!reader

content: based off of the netflix show, the queen’s gambit, with different character names; drug abuse and overdose; lots of chess terms

wc: 3454

note: I FREAKING LOVE THIS NETFLIX SHOWWW!! this is a character study i’m trying to do to make my female y/ns less.. idk meek? wimpy? it’s such a writing pet peeve of mine and i absolutely loved beth harmon’s character so here it is :))

the queen’s gambit masterlist: 1 2

It was quiet in the orphanage basement. With the exception of the dull thumping of childrens’ feet on the basement’s ceiling. Pensive, and tense, the air felt pregnant with strain. 

Your eyes flitted back and forth, from black to white and then back again. They went over the ridges of the standing pieces, and down the curves until it met the checkered board. A criss-crossing maze full of infinite possibilities for strategy. 

Finally, your delicate, little fingers wrapped around the stem of your rook, pushing it so it slid all the way across the board. 

“Check,” came your raspy voice. 

The janitor’s bald forehead creased into more folds, and he raised up a finger to push up the frame of his glasses. “Not anymore.” His voice was rough, like gravel scraping against concrete.

The young girl’s brows furrowed, “Wait, how can you do that? You never taught me-”

The buff man stood up suddenly, interrupting her rhetoric. “That’ll be for next time. Clean up the board now and get to class.” 

“Wait-” you stuttered, feeling confused and cheated, but Mr. Lee's back was already turned on you, already moving in between the aisles of paint. You sighed, letting her gaze brush over the stationery pieces on the chess board once more, before sweeping all of them off into a velvet bag. 

The school bell rang shrilly.

Soonyoung liked to win. Even at the young age of five, he liked crushing his opponents with a gummy smile on his face and curved crescent eyes. 

They called him lots of names: the best chess player in the country since Yoon Jeonghan, the chess champion, etc. 

But he figured he liked the title “Innocent Tiger of the Chessboard.” Soonyoung thought it made him sound powerful and glorious. He used the name “Hoshi” a lot after the Times magazine coined him that way.

“You’re all a bunch of-”

A girl, whom you did not know, was getting dragged from the cafeteria. A teacher yanked her forward by her long, curly afro harshly. One hand held the girl’s hair, and the other hand, you barely noticed, was holding a yellow-tinted soap bar. 

You walked into the cafeteria, naturally standing at the back of a long line of orphaned girls. She moved forward, hesitantly, taking the spot in line from the previous girl. You looked up at the male vendor with large, unblinking eyes, expectantly. His eyes held a glint of remembrance, and slid a small, white paper cup toward you. 

Your fingers reached into the small cup and grabbed the object inside. Small, oval shaped pills rested at the bottom of the paper cup. 

“Ooh, those ones are best saved for the night. Don’t take ‘em all at once, either. Save ‘em.” You turned around. It was the black girl from before. “My name’s Ruth, by the way. You’re new here, right?” Ruth’s voice was sultry and teasing; her brown, chocolate eyes hid a twinkle of mischief that you could already tell made her a troublemaker. She had her own matching green pill in between her large hands. “You’ll see what I mean.”

Then, she walked right back into the cafeteria with the other girls. 

The room where you slept was also occupied by the dozens of other girls in the orphanage. It had large windows with thin curtains, and stone ceilings and floors. The beds were identical with small dressers on the side of them. 

Because the curtains were thin, they didn’t do much to keep the silver beams of moonlight from filtering into the room and onto the beds. 

Your eyes were wide open, staring at the green pill twirling in between your fingers. You debated yourself internally for a few moments, before swallowing it in one gulp. Your eyes felt heavy with sleep, but your mind was as light as feather, swirling and swirling with thoughts. You finally cemented on one event in her day, zeroing in and latching onto it with no mercy.

The chess game with the orphanage janitor. 

As the event seeped into the cracks of your skull, your eyelids slowly opened until you were faced with the dark, blank ceiling above you. 

A spot appeared. Then another right beside it.

Then two more around those, and then more and more and more. They were alternating spots, some dark and some light.

You gasped, pushing herself to a seated position.

It was a chessboard. 

The pieces slowly materialized on the ceiling. You could make out the distinct shapes of the king, the rook, and the many other pieces that she didn’t know the names of. You knew of the pawn, pieces with a rounded sphere as its head. Mr. Lee had taught you about them the first day she played chess with him. 

“The opening,” he had called it. “Openings are the first moves of the game. Learn some.”

The pieces flickered on the board, teleporting from place to place, mimicking a real chess game. 

You almost overslept for breakfast the next morning.

The teacher paused for a moment in her lecture, her hand moving automatically toward the chalk erasure. Her fingers brushed metal and her eyes saw an absent seat.

“Check.”

A piece moved. 

You let out a breath.

“Checkmate.” 

Mr. Lee leaned back in his chair, his arms crossing over his bloated stomach. He said nothing, instead pulling out a rectangular box from his back pocket. 

“I know all the pieces now.” You stood up, your arms bracing yourself against the table. “And how they move.”

Again, he refused to answer. His muscled, long fingers nimbly hooked under the latch on the cigarette box. You watched as Mr. Lee lit the cigarette and turned away. 

Your internal question remained unanswered.

“Tomorrow,” he finally replied. “Tomorrow, I’ll properly teach you how to play.” 

Your breath hitched in excitement, “Really? You’ll teach me-”

“You should learn the Sicilian Defense,” came his gruff voice. His back remained turned on her. You stood as well, seriousness filling the gap between the two of you. 

Mr. Lee finally turned. 

“To tell you the truth of it, child…” His lips curved upward. “You’re astounding.”

It was the national championship. Reporters and news outlets were crawling around everywhere, shoving their microphones into every chess player’s face. Soonyoung smirked in amusement, letting his gaze drop back down onto the chessboard in front of him.

“Oh, you moved already?”

Chan huffed, “It’s been two minutes, you’re gonna run out of time at this point.”

Soonyoung chuckled, sliding a piece away from him. His aura remained confident and unsettled by Chan’s warning. “I’d be more worried about yourself, brother.”

Chan’s eyebrows furrowed as he analyzed the board. At first glance, he noticed nothing out of the ordinary. All of his pieces were set in motion and Soonyoung- 

His eyes snapped open. Soonyoung was already one step ahead of him. Except this step was a mile in front and already at the finish line.

“H-how did you-” he stuttered in disbelief.

Soonyoung interrupted Chan, “Next move is Anderssen’s mate.” His eyes held a small twinkle of triumph, but anyone who had played Soonyoung before knew that he was never truly surprised about the outcomes of games he played. 

Chan let his head hang low in defeat. “Alright, then.” His hand reached up to knock over the long column of his King. “You win.”

A crooked grin spread across the face of the young champion. 

“Don’t worry!” He smirked. “You’ll always have next time.”

You had been falling behind in math class. You hardly ever paid attention when you were in class, and when you were out, math was hardly even at the back of your mind. Mr. Lee had gifted you a book to read called Modern Chess Openings. Soon enough, you had mastered not only all of the openings in the book, but also the art of hiding a book under your desk and reading.

One day, Mr. Lee had a visitor in the basement. Another man, leaner and taller than the janitor. He was dressed formally and wore a hat. 

“Beth,” Mr. Lee greeted her. “This is Mr. Choi. He’s a representative of the chess club I play at.”

You stared at the stranger, unmoving and unresponsive.

“Hello, (Y/N),” he said, smiling. Mr. Choi was a friendly looking man, youthful too. “Would you care for a game of chess?” He took the chair next to Mr. Lee, long fingers already moving the pieces to their correct positions. His poise was confident and his eyes were shrewd. A completely different player from Mr. Lee was in front of you. 

You won in three moves after the opening. Quick and precise, with no room for error. Mr. Lee looked on from the side of the table. His face showed neither surprise nor pride, but his eyebrows stayed furrowed. 

“Well,” Mr. Choi raised his gaze from the board, turning his head toward the elder janitor. “She’s exactly how you described, Jihoon. I’m certainly impressed.” You waited patiently, unaware of the relationship between the two men. He turned his attention to the young girl in front of him. “(Y/N), how old are you?”

You answered mechanically, without any hesitation. You remained unfazed, an almost bored tone in your voice. “Nine years old, sir.” 

Mr. Choi leaned back in his chair. “Nine years old, huh,” he echoed in disbelief. “That’s amazing. Say,” Mr. Choi reached down beside him. “(Y/N), would you be interested in competing against some other people?” He straightened himself, this time holding something in his hands. “I run a chess club at a high school near here, and I’d love to have you come play with us.” 

You stared at him, shock and curiosity filling your gaping mouth. “Me?”

Mr. Choi chuckled, finally bringing up the object in his hands for her to see. “You can think about it for awhile, I’ll also be in contact with your headmistress. In the meantime, here’s a prize for your win. Nine year old girls like dolls, right?” 

Your mouth refused to answer. You looked helplessly at Mr. Lee, but his gaze was fixated on the ending board pieces. 

“Well then,” Mr. Choi breathed. “I’ll be off.” 

You watched as he grabbed his leather briefcase and his hat, then strode straight in between the shelves and up the wooden, creaky stairs. Then, you turned your attention to the doll in front of you.

You hesitantly grabbed the plastic body, running your thumbs over the cheap polyester clothes. 

Then, you promptly threw it in the trash.

The next time you saw Mr. Choi was not in the cold basement, but instead, in the headmaster’s office. The headmaster was a bitter woman with strict ideals that were brittle and unbending. You had only met her once, and you had hoped that they would never come so close again.

“Well, Miss (Y/N). Is what Mr. Choi telling me true?” Her wintry voice chilled you down to the bone, leaving your head numb and you palms overheating. Without waiting for a response, Headmaster Kim turned her attention back to Mr. Choi. “Mr. Choi, we appreciate the offer and would love for the orphanage’s many talented students to compete with others, but going to a school by herself? I worry for the child.” 

Mr. Choi nods, compromising with a soft tone, “Of course, I will be with her at all times.”

“Hm,” the headmaster pondered. “I’d rather her go with another girl actually.”

He relented immediately. “Absolutely.”

The Headmaster stood up from her seat. “Well then, it’s decided. Young (Y/N) will be accompanied by a fellow student from the orphanage.”

Mr. Choi complied calmly, leaving without another comment. Quietly and rapidly just like the first time you had met him. Your nerves spread out like spindly branches of a tree, bumping against each other until it filled the entire room.

“(Y/N)?” 

It was only until the Headmaster called your name that you realized your gaze had dropped to the floor. 

“You’ve been playing chess in the basement, I hear.” There was a pause, and you quickly recognized that the woman expected a response. You dipped her head slightly into a nod of acknowledgement. “I must say, playing chess in the basement is highly irregular.” Your heart rate jerked upward. Would the Headmaster forbid you from playing chess? A sense of dread pricked her heart. “Ask Mr. Jun for a chess board from the game closet, I’m sure we have one or two. You can play out in the open from now on.” 

A wave of relief crashed over you. “Really?”

The Headmaster dismissed you, “It’s lunch time now. Hurry back to the cafeteria, Miss (Y/N).” 

You left without any refusal, your steps hurried and rushed as your shoes clicked against the cement floors.

The cafeteria had its usual vibrations of friendly chatter, and the line to the pill vendor was just as long as the day she arrived. Inching closer and closer to the vendor, you buzzed with anticipation for your daily collection of green pills.

The man slid the snow paper cup toward you, and habitually, you looked inside for the strange green pill among the scarlet ones. 

It wasn’t there.

“Where’s the green pill?” you asked, bewildered. 

The vendor sighed, clearly annoyed and frustrated with you. His voice was thin and gruff, an unattractive timbre. “New state laws, kid. No more tranquilizers. Now move on, more people waitin’ behind you.” 

You furrowed your brow, but moved aside regardless. 

That night, you counted the leftover tranquilizers you had saved up. There were only five left. You’d have to ration them and not take them frivolously. 

The ceiling remained a blank canvas without its usual checkered illusion projected.  

“Chess is getting kind of boring,” Soonyoung noted one day. He was 18 at the time.

Chan glared at him from his peripheral vision. “God damn it, Kwon. Maybe you need to get a life or something.”

He laughed, sweeping the plastic chess pieces off the wooden board. “Are you suggesting a get laid, or that I go on a date? Because both are well within reach.”

Chan grinned cruelly, “Like hell they are. The only thing you’ll ever love more than yourself is chess. As if a girl could even compare.”

Soonyoung rubbed at his nape sheepishly. “Maybe if she was a girl who played chess..”

“Well then you’d just see her as another bad player who couldn’t beat you.”

“Jesus, Chan. Way to make a guy feel motivated,” he sighed. “I guess I’ll just have a steamy date with my chess books instead.”

Chan huffed in annoyance and turned his attention away from the other male.

The drugs didn’t last you until the chess match and you began to feel the effects of it. Or rather, the effects of not having them. You mind would wander during class and you felt sluggish and tired. Ruth noticed. 

“What’s going on, cracker? You don’t look so slick.” 

It was true. Your hair was unkempt, your eyes were sunken and bruised from insomnia, and you no longer had the energy to hold up a conversation. Ruth sighed and moved closer so that your elbows were brushed up against each other. “It’s because of those green pills, ain’t it?” When you didn’t respond, Ruth huffed. “Alright then, I was gonna help you out with that by sharin’ some of mine, but if you’re gonna be so rude, then I guess I won’t!”

Your head snapped up. “You still have some?” you whispered. 

Ruth smirked, her large lips parting to reveal bright white teeth. “Sure I do! Started savin’ these babies up a long time before you did.”

“Can I have some?” you hesitantly asked, your voice was low and soft. It was only a day before the chess game with the high school team and you were slowly going psychotic without the tranquilizers’ help. 

Ruth denied you a verbal cue and instead, moved closer to slip two pills into your dress’s pocket. 

It was your first time leaving the orphanage ever since you entered through the black, metal gates. Thus, when you, accompanied by Jamie Park, ambled through the high school halls, along with Mr. Choi, you were noticeably a little startled. It was noisy, crowded and ever so chaotic. Kids of all sizes were ravaging the school, lockers were haphazardly open and some closed, there was no sense of the eerie order at the Methuen Home orphanage. 

You found that you didn’t mind the disarray much after all. 

Mr. Choi led the duo into an empty classroom filled with desks that had been arranged into a circle. Only a few kids lingered in the room. You could count the amount of girls with your fingers. He directed you and Jamie toward the edge of the room. 

The pair watched as student after student filed into the room in a steady stream of people, like tap water flowing out until only the last few drops fell. 

Mr. Choi stood in the middle of the classroom and spread his arms dramatically. “Welcome, everyone! Today we have a very special guest,” he announced. Mr. Choi motioned toward you. Feeling compelled, you shyly stood and walked forward. “This is Miss (Y/N). You all will be playing a simultaneous against her!” He paused. “Please take your places.”

The students shuffled amongst themselves, the sound of feet thundering crescendo-ed until all of the seats were filled. You looked around at all of the male students seated in front of chess boards, a somber expression pasted on each of their faces. Some even had smirks. You looked up at Mr. Choi, who had a smile on his face. 

“Mr. Choi?” you questioned. 

He nodded, ushering toward the first board from clockwise motion. 

You stepped forward in front of the first board and looked down at the colored pieces in front of her. You took a deep breath, then moved the first piece. 

It took only eighty minutes to win every single board, even the high school’s best chess player.

When you returned to Methuen, you first celebrated with Mr. Lee. The janitor had prepared a small treat for you when you returned. To the normal eye, Mr. Lee looked neutral and maybe even a little irritated, but to you, the pride in his eyes were as clear as the squares on the chessboard.

“Honestly, I was most surprised about how bad they are. I mean, they made the most basic mistakes.” You paused to swallow a lump of dark chocolate. “Doubled pawns, queen trades, all of that. It was honestly kinda embarrassing to play against them.”

Mr. Lee didn’t interject your rant, watching as brown spread across your lips to your cheeks. He handed you a napkin and stayed quiet. 

“Well,” you stood up, straightening our your skirt. “I’m off now.” The janitor nodded, eyes fixated on the chess pieces on the board as if they were moving by themselves. You looked down at the board and a question naturally floated to the top of her mind. “When’re you going to teach me end game, Mr. Lee?”

Mr. Lee looked up at the nine year old. 

“Soon.” 

Soonyoung was only 10 when he won his state championship. He won the country’s championship when he was 14. 

He lost it when he was 23. 

You ran out of the green pills in a day after the chess tournament. Once again, your body was thrown into withdrawal. It felt like a constant yearning for water. Every single day your gaze would linger on the glass jugs of pills behind the windowed divider. It became tantalizing. Each night you would salivate at the thought of breaking in and shoveling those pills into your mouth. It was a heavenly dream that nudged you closer and closer to reality.

It was during class that you found herself passing the open door of the cafeteria. The cafeteria room was a desert and the oasis was straight in front of your very own eyes. Self-control was a feeble wall that disintegrated under the wave of pent up yearning. 

Your fingers trembled as you undid the lock, yanking it off and sliding over the divider. It was too easy. 

Your heart pounded against the confines of her chest. The adrenaline rushed through your veins and your vision quickly became dizzy. 

The second your fingers reached the pills, you were gone.

All those nights of dreams finally came true. You couldn’t even stop her hands from shoveling those pills into your mouth. 

You couldn’t even stop as your fingers twitched on the ground, your body pressed against the cold tile floor.

“Rumor has it you were drunk while playing Minghao.”

“It wouldn’t have mattered if I was sober anyway.”

next part: here

tag list: @haotheheckk​ @svtantalizing​

[thejustmaiden]

Heyo, fellow Inuyasha fans! Happy Friday! This particular blog will serve as a collection of random thoughts I’ve been mulling over lately. Hope you’ll consider giving it a read. By the way, it’ll specifically pertain to the Sessrin ship. If that’s not something that is of interest to you, then no need to read any further. Whatever happens, I wanted to get this out before the sequel. Alrighty, let’s go! 

I’m not sure many of us realize just how much fiction sparks public dialogue and shapes culture. There have been countless studies and research done to prove it, therefore this really isn’t up for debate. What the real question here should be is have we taken the time to fully contemplate and assess just how much fictional experiences are able to change or influence our perspective on real, everyday life? The visual arts are just one of many evolutionary adaptations that serve to give us more insight into one another’s mind. If our outlook on fiction contrasts with said insight, then perhaps some re-evaluating is in order.  

Powerful works of literature such as 1984 and the beloved Harry Potter series are just two examples. George Orwell’s book contributed strongly to how readers viewed government and politics during that time, and to this day it’s a book that resonates with many. As much as Harry Potter is cherished all across the world, there are religious and academic institutions that condemn it or have even gone so far as to ban it. I may not agree with the extreme measures taken, but it’s fascinating nonetheless to witness the extent to which fiction can move and mobilize people for a cause.

The takeaway is that indicating fiction doesn’t have the power to create change in our everyday lives is misleading to say the least. So how exactly then can fictional stories that are, after all, completely made up affect society in such profound ways? It all lies in the power of the psychology of fiction. According to cognitive psychologist and novelist, Keith Oatley, who’s been researching the psychological effects of fiction for over a decade, he states that engaging with stories about other people can improve empathy and theory of mind. When we identify with these characters’ struggles, we begin to share their frustration for societal problems that plague them. These types of stories tap into our emotions more so than- believe it or not- nonfiction, and thus their effects inspire us and even have the ability to alter our worldviews. 

I’ll be returning to that specific topic a bit later, but moving on for now!

It’s safe to say that I speak on behalf of the majority of antis. That being said, I first want to add that we are aware that sessrin shippers claim to agree that there was nothing inherently romantic that took place between Rin and Sesshomaru during their travels together. The thing is we have trouble believing you guys when you time and time again provide contradictory statements to defend your stance.

Voicing things like, “all signs point to Rin” and “it’s been foreshadowed” sends the exact opposite message of what you supposedly stand for and, if anything, confirms that you’ve had romance on your mind long before it would’ve been acceptable to come out with openly. You can’t just go along with what we say when it’s convenient to your argument and then back it up later with “who else but Rin.” How can the relationship you’re imagining be so obvious if they didn’t hint at it for the whole duration of the original series like we agreed upon? Elaborate on how we could’ve possibly come to such wildly different conclusions when we started AND left off with the same views for and throughout the series. 

On top of that, making the excuse that we don’t speak for adult!Rin and that she has the right to make her own decisions once she’s old enough is a weak defense. Firstly, because we haven’t even met her. Secondly, because it’s unfair of you to assert that you know what’s best for Rin and then say we’re not allowed to just because it doesn’t align with your beliefs. I get that you feel protective over her character, but do recall that this adult version of her none of us have actually met yet. We have no idea what kind of woman she’s become, what her dreams or aspirations may be, and whether she’s married or even wants to be. I’m not against the idea of her falling in love, I just don’t think it’ll be with Sesshomaru. I guess I’m also a fan of the idea of her following in Kaede’s footsteps, because if anyone can grow up to be an independent, trusted, and wise leader of the community like her it’s Rin.

To make matters worse, way too many of you continue to celebrate the drama cd and profess that it was sweet that Sesshomaru basically promised he’d wait for Rin all while somehow ignoring the glaring grooming implications. Why do you only see what you want to see and fail to acknowledge that actual child grooming scenarios do in fact play out like this in real life? A high percentage of people who have been victims of grooming can attest to this. If Sessrin does go canon, all the sequel succeeded in doing to avoid the direct correlation with grooming was skip over the more questionable and dodgy portions of it. Take out the time jump, however, and you no longer have a loophole to cover up the scary unmistakable truth, which is that Sessrin and grooming are essentially one in the same.

No one case is identical to another so please don’t come to me with your “but how is it grooming if Sesshomaru didn’t manipulate Rin” refutes. Nobody knows what the hell went on during those years between The Final Act and this upcoming sequel. Based on everything exhibited so far- that is if we decide to recognize the drama cd like so many of you choose to do- Sessrin’s dynamic is eerily reminiscent of real life child grooming. Why else do you think a lot of us fans have a huge problem with it? It’s triggering for a reason. 

Let’s be honest, Sesshomaru’s supposed love confession could’ve just been the first of many gestures like it. Who really knows, right? According to you shippers, a major shift in their relationship took place sometime during this critical period none of us got to watch unfold. I’m sure you all have explored the various ways this would’ve gone down in fan fiction and through other creative means of expression. Not to spoil the fun, but all I can’t help but wonder about is just how many of those supposed “cute moments” would’ve been as creepy and cringey as that proposal. Hundreds of thousands (possibly millions?!) of fans would undoubtedly agree with me, too. It seems to me this ain’t due to a mere difference of opinion. Taste is one thing, ethics a whole other. 

By the way, in case you didn’t know, groomers don’t necessarily need to plan out every single move in order for their behavior to constitute as grooming. What we should be paying attention to instead is the fact that Sesshomaru made a conscious decision to act on his own selfish desire for a young girl who couldn’t have possibly known in that moment the magnitude of what he was asking of her. Why is it that a vulnerable Rin is put in a position that forces her to be the one responsible for making such a big, life-changing decision for the both of them? Yes, Sesshomaru gave her the choice and, yes, she doesn’t have to make it till later, but why on Earth is he coming to her with this well before a child her age is ready and mature enough to handle it? Even if his intentions are good (broadly speaking of course), his what you shippers probably call “innocent acts” are incidentally coercing Rin into reciprocating his feelings. Whether he planned for that or not, he’s at fault. Period. 

That’s one way the power imbalance works. A child wants nothing more than to please the adult they look up to and adore, because they’re impressionable like that. Maybe Rin processes this like she’ll want whatever he wants, so that’s what she trains herself to believe- either right then and there or over time. Plus, if you really think about it, why wouldn’t she trust him if in her eyes he’s been nothing but good to her and that’s all she’s ever really known? (Psst! Charm is integral to the manipulative nature of grooming so it’s deceiving AKA manipulation can come off as praise or flattery.) Bottom line is that Rin is too young to have to think about this kind of deep stuff at all, and Sesshomaru shouldn’t have taken advantage of the power he had/has over her to influence a decision she was by no means prepared to hear about much less decide on. Your headcanons seem to imply that she’ll eventually have to choose though, and Idk about you but I rather not push my own fantasy agenda onto a underage girl regardless of how much I want it. Idc if she’s fictional, it wouldn’t feel right so why would I want to see that? My principals couldn’t ever allow for it.   

Even if it wasn’t an official proposal, per se, it’s still disturbing to me that so many of you find joy in the thought of a grown adult male essentially waiting for a young girl HE KNEW to become old enough before pursuing her. I know this drama cd ain’t technically canon, y'all, but since this is literally the only source we have that may foreshadow a potential Sessrin to come, and it’s referenced a lot, I figured it still should be called out for exactly what it is- Grooming: 101!!!!

Just as I demonstrated above, fiction has the ability to make even the most inappropriate and uncomfortable situations be viewed in a favorable light when you put the right spin on it. *cough* Lolicon culture, need I say more? *cough* Despite what you may believe, the strategies fiction utilizes to explain themes/concepts can genuinely lead to how we perceive them, and ultimately to how we come to make sense of a similar event presented to us in real life. Especially if we have no prior experience with any of it and have nothing to compare something to, these perceptions can be dangerous yet still persuasive to certain fans- young ones in particular. The more narrative consistency across stories and different mediums, the more likely they’ll influence social beliefs. Minors don’t possess the same capacity as adults to think critically about the content they consume, and if we aren’t more careful about what we put out there then all of us will continue to face serious repercussions.

This is precisely why it’s crucial we persist in our fight against the rabid phenomenon of glorifying young girls in every sexual context imaginable. Just look at what something as seemingly harmless as fiction has the power to do. The scope of fiction is broad and far-reaching, and it’s about time we stop denying that fact and actually do something about it if we have the means to.

The truth of the matter is that we’re in desperate need of proper education and training programs on this issue in our communities. Families need to ensure their children have access to the necessary resources, but it isn’t just on them. ALL of us gotta do our part and ALL of us should be up for the task. It takes a village, right? If we do not properly discuss and address child sexual abuse (CSA) with our children and in public forums, including the internet, then we’re ultimately accepting incidents of CSA should they arise. Consequently, that also translates to indirectly accepting that the predators among us stay untreated and/or unpunished. That’s how the generational and societal aspect of the abuse can continue, and we must do everything in our power to secure our children’s future. Yes, even when it comes to fiction.

If you still somehow don’t think the Sessrin pairing has anything to do with grooming, allow me to break this down for you one more time:

1. If some of your fellow sessrin shippers say that a relationship like this in real life is harmful, then that should be pretty telling in and of itself.

2. Piggybacking off #1: if your only defense to that is “well it’s just fiction,” then you should ask yourself why you can’t ever come up with better reasons. Same goes for history and culture, so please stop using those to justify this relationship. None of the above can or should be applied since it’s already been established that fiction pervades our lives and vice versa.

3. If fellow shippers who are victims of grooming say they are drawn to Sessrin because it allows them in a way to “take back control” from their abuser so that they can better cope with past traumas, then they’re inadvertently admitting that Sessrin does possess qualities associated with the past child sexual abuse they underwent. AKA Sessrin is relatable for its abusive dynamic.

I have to ask by the way, but why do you get so offended when we don’t support your ship anyway? Is it because we interpret it to be controversial and you don’t like your ship getting a bad rap? Is it because it would be insulting to admit that antis actually have a point in it being problematic and you rather double down instead? Or is it because you’re projecting yourself onto Rin and prefer to not go into detail about why that is? Maybe it’s too personal, or maybe it’s because deep down you’re ashamed. Of course that doesn’t mean you’re bad people, but suppressing these kind of negative emotions can’t be healthy for anyone. A little awareness and self-reflection on your part can benefit not just you but all of us in the long run. Cognitive dissonance can suck, but it’s also part of being human. 

I recently came across a comment I’d like to share with you. Unfortunately, this is not the first time nor will it be the last I see the likes of it. Anyway, in it a fan stated how embarrassing it must be being an Anti in this fandom when an episode like “Forever with Lord Sesshomaru” exists. Guys, this shipper and all those who liked their post are showing their true colors. Perpetuating and/or anticipating these sexualized images of young girls is a grave issue in both our society and media alike. I think we can all agree on that, or at least I hope so. It’s remarks like these that prove we still got a long way to go in terms of progress, and if we ever hope to effectively reverse some of our backwards way of thinking. So serious question for ya in regard to this: Why is it too much to ask that grooming be portrayed for what it is? Grooming. To clarify, grooming is bad and needs to be painted in a bad light. It’s as simple as that. If only we could all acknowledge it for what it is, we wouldn’t be in this predicament. 

Historical accuracy and cultural differences aside, it appears the crux of the matter between Sessrin shippers and Antis is our acceptance and/or denial of fiction’s influence on real life. If we can’t agree on this, then we’ll never agree on anything else. As mentioned earlier, there is more than enough evidence to support the idea that fiction impacts our lives in extraordinary ways. I, for one, believe in the transformative power of stories. I think they do more for us than many of us give them credit for and/or are inclined to admit. 

This is partially why I believe that the majority of sessrin folk are missing the point most of the time. All they do is focus on insignificant and irrelevant information that accomplishes nothing but more gaslighting and strawmanning. Whether it be an intentional or unconscious decision, whatever we argue goes right over their head. All they do is throw around deflections and antagonizing remarks that serve no real purpose other than to make Antis out to be the unreasonable and irrational ones. Making connections between our own lives and our stories is a completely natural and normal occurrence. If those particular shippers insist on denying just how interconnected real life and fiction both are, what that tells me is they’re either out of touch with reality or deliberately choose to be.

Just to be clear, I am of the opinion that most if not all antis aren’t real life predators. If they say they aren’t, I honestly take their word for it. Speaking to Sessrin shipper directly: We know it’s not Sesshomaru you want to be but Rin. No, we’re not calling you pedophiles or groomers. None of us think you are using a fictional ship to attract underage fans to be the Rin in your life or anything of the sort. We are well aware that many of you are self-inserting yourself as Rin, so please don’t feel the need to tell us yourself because that would be stating the obvious.

I learned from a few of you since this sequel was announced that the Sessrin relationship isn’t just a ship but an opportunity for you to confront the person who used and abused you. So there’s two issues with this I’d like to raise. (Sorry if I’m repeating myself, but it’s urgent I stress this again!) This is what I have to say:

If fiction does not affect real life or have the ability to normalize anything as you claim to believe, then why does “fixing” what happened to you via your preferred choice of coping associated with these two characters in the first place? Why bring your past abuse into this at all if at the end of the day it’s “just fiction” and nothing more to you but a source of entertainment?

By confessing that you use Sessrin to cope with your past trauma, you therein reveal that Sessrin does in fact resemble an adult-child relationship with a grooming dynamic. So why then would you want other fans to be exposed to a pairing that brings to mind the very abuse you endured? We’re supposed to stop this toxic cycle- NOT find more ways to manifest and relive it, much less subject other fans to it. 

You may think that Sessrin doesn’t fit the textbook definition of what child grooming is, but that’s not to say it doesn’t embody it or that it doesn’t at the very least have traces of it that stand out. 

“Antis are miserable people who don’t know how to enjoy a good story. It’s just fiction, stop ruining it for other fans!”

Well, no, it’s not just fiction or just a story. Some of you evidently went and proved that yourself, and without my help, by revealing how you relate Sessrin to your own life and apply it to cope with past abuse. Past abuse or not, as far as I can tell we’re all equally invested in these characters. That speaks volumes and just goes to show that fiction touches our lives in long-lasting ways.

I have something I want to say concerning some of who believe that it’s inconsiderate of antis who have been victims of grooming or another form of child abuse to tell other victims who ship Sessrin how they should cope with their trauma. Now as much as I respect the various means victims discover to deal with their painful pasts, there’s always an appropriate time and a place for these things to occur. We must seek out better ways to safely cope with the abuse we lived through (if any) without running the risk of hurting and endangering others. 

There are plenty of fans in other fandoms who don’t try to defend their ships going canon, because they’re able to recognize an unhealthy or toxic pairing when they see one and won’t try to justify it. A Sessrin romance simply does not belong on a show geared towards teens, and I really don’t need to go into detail about why we shouldn’t support it, at least canon-wise. Shipping Sessrin is your right, but if you don’t keep it to yourself and your corner of the fandom then you really shouldn’t be surprised by the opposition. All we ask is you respect that their specific dynamic falls under the category of child grooming (or very close) and should be treated as such in public. The world of fiction may be wider than the world we live in, but that doesn’t always mean “anything goes.” In the creative spaces our minds occupy we must still adhere to the same fundamental and moral guidelines we live by in life. There’s nothing wrong with exploring new terrains and experimenting with ideas, but we must also remember that our stories are all about communicating and connecting with people. So let’s please be more mindful of the sort of messages they’re sending. 

Besides, this isn’t only about you and what makes you feel safe, it’s about all of us. I don’t know how much more I can stress that really. How can thoughts endanger our children, you ask? Well, it’s not like we’re suggesting that our thoughts can jump out of our tvs, materialize themselves, and place kids under mind control. The forces behind fiction are a lot more complex and nuanced than a “monkey see, monkey do” approach, so don’t waste any more time trying to  describe that to us. You’re taking this argument in the wrong direction. 

Take the “violent video games breed killers” theory. I’m afraid you’re misconstruing what we’re saying and then taking it quite too literally. Please stop twisting our words, because nobody on our side is saying that just because you play violent video games that you’ll become a violent person. The Sessrin equivalent of that would be if you ship them then you must be a pedophile or turning into one. *sigh* I know you guys are feeling attacked, but I’m afraid your defensive nature is keeping you from thinking straight. Clearly, there are always exceptions (I’d recommend reading up on the Slender Man case), but Antis aren’t saying you’re one of them.

You see, it’s not so much about the content as it is the notion of the content. Kids and teens who are playing these video games have been informed that killing is wrong, because they grew up learning that early on like the rest of us. No sane person would advocate for violence and nonsensical killing in real life. Since they fully understand the severity of the consequences of killing a person in real life, they are able make a clear distinction between the two. When it comes to killing there is hardly any ambiguity. Sadly, that is far from the truth when it comes to sexualizing girls. It should immediately be perceived as wrong leaving no room for interpretation, and yet here we are still putting up with these inaccurate and demeaning female representations.

Most children who have been groomed don’t realize it till years down the road. If they aren’t ever taught the telltale signs to properly labeling grooming situations, how do you expect them to make sense of and relate to a fictional version? Let’s think of about it from a child’s perspective. Yes, this includes teens who rely pretty heavily on adult guidance and the content we put out there for them. Put yourself in their shoes for a moment and picture that you’ve never had child grooming explained to you (because that’s just the reality for so many unfortunately). Wouldn’t you say it’s possible for them to deduce that what they see on their screens is how they come to discern something in real life, especially if they have little to no experience with it? Perceived realism is plausible, y'all.

What it comes down to in the end is that the ideas and emotions we cultivate behind these stories leave an impression on others. Impressions are capable of influencing the way we see the world, which in turn affects us and beyond just our imagination. The way I look at it, stories contribute to how and why we normalize certain beliefs and trends. If fiction reflects real life like most of us tend to agree, then wouldn’t you say Sessrin is a (in)direct result of this world’s tendency to place young girls in overly sexual or romantic environments? Where do you think fiction draws its inspiration from? Sure, some of it originates from our imagination, but most of what drives us to create these stories is the real world and the people who live in it.

Fiction is meant to mirror reality, but it’s ridiculous to suggest that it’s only a one-way street. That fiction in no way, shape, or form influences our reality? Or that it only works the other way around? With all due respect, that’s simply not true. No productive discourse can be had if we choose to ignore the truth and don’t come together (at least halfway) to tackle the real issues at hand. 

Okay, I think I’ll leave it off there! Thanks so much for reading. I expect this to be my last blog on any topic regarding Inuyasha in the near future. As much as I’ve looked forward to answering all of your asks and writing all the blogs I have over these past almost 5 months, I think it’s best if I spend some time away for now. With the sequel fast approaching, I’m doing what I always do: hoping for the best and preparing for the worst. I’ve met some amazing people along the way, that’s for sure. And who knows, maybe you’ll see me active in the tags sooner than we think. Until then, it’s been an absolute pleasure! Enjoy the sequel, all of you. 💜

[ambivalentmarvel]

so the story behind this is that @sreppub​ arrived in my dms saying “sitcom starring two uppity, former rich guys and a regular poor college kid who follow up an online ad and become roommates” and i said something along the lines of “your MIND” and here we are. she does the art, i do the fic, and we both yell a lot along the way. read it on here or ao3 and enjoy!!

The Sitcom Supreme

If Peter or Stephen were around to hear Tony tell the story of how they all ended up rooming together, they would have plenty of objections, to which he would call them both dirty liars, to which they would gang up on him because they’re terrible and like that, to which he would probably throw up his hands in exasperation and/or make the mistake of engaging them in a debate, to which they would grin like wolves because, once again, they’re terrible and like that, but Tony’s the asshole who put up the Craigslist ad, so he gets to start—because he’s terrible and like that.

It’s a common trait amongst the three of them, what can he say?

The beginning of the story does not involve either of the other two, however. It begins with Rhodey, who is only occasionally terrible and like that. Rhodey has been Tony’s best friend since the tender age of fifteen. Considering Tony at age fifteen was a greasy little douche bag with too much money and a whole bunch of daddy issues that were somehow more obvious then than they are in the present, this is an impressive feat. 

Where things start, Rhodey and Tony are roommates at MIT, which is Howard’s school of choice to shove his problem child onto. Tony is supposed to get a single dorm room, but there’s a cockroach problem in that building. Administration has to get creative, which is how Rhodey, fresh out of boot for the fall semester, gets saddled with approximately one hundred and fifty pounds of neglected teenage boy who has only kind of gone through puberty.

The first words out of Tony’s mouth are blunt: “Any chance you have plans to drop out?”

And Rhodey looks at him with a raised brow, efficiently unpacked and totally unimpressed with the enormous stack of Tony’s things wavering in the doorway. “You have any plans to quit being annoying?” he retorts, which set the tone for their entire relationship.

Tony loves him to pieces. 

He’s the older brother he never knew he needed, yanking him by his collar from frat parties on the weekends and to his house for holidays because getting swamped by Rhodey’s six younger siblings is infinitely better than having to wear a suit and tie for Christmas dinner with six CEOs and maybe some senators, depending on the year. In return, Tony sees him through every finals week of his collegiate career, during which Rhodey gets so nervous he usually pukes at least daily and pulls so many all-nighters Tony memorizes the exact shade of red his eyes are at the end.

So, it’s safe to say they get along well. They get along so well, as a matter of fact, that when they stare at each other after their graduation ceremony for their Masters—a two-year process for both of them, and Rhodey receives two degrees to Tony’s four—surrounded by Rhodey’s family and Jarvis, Tony’s lips curl in a smirk Rhodey knows spells the best kind of trouble. “What do you say we keep the roommate streak alive, yeah? Howard’s building an office in New York, and I’m thinking of doing a doctorate at NYU.”

Rhodey’s brows raise, but he’s grinning, so Tony already knows his answer. “Depends. Are you still gonna’ snore?”

“Are you still gonna’ have a stick up your a—”

Mama Rhodes shoots Tony a look from where she’s trying to corral the rest of her kids.

“—butt?” he finishes with a sheepish glance her way.

Rhodey does not even remotely have a stick up his ass, but of the two of them, he features in tabloids far, far less, which Tony somehow uses to his advantage.

“You know it,” Rhodey replies, and so they find a fancy penthouse that Tony mostly pays for, with the excuse of Rhodey satisfying his part of rent via generally covering Tony’s ass to the best of his ability. And he has a lot of ability, honed from years upon years of Tony self-destructing at the drop of a hat, but there’s only so much he can do, especially as his military career just keeps flying higher and Howard just keeps pushing Tony harder.

A few sex tapes, especially wild benders, and crashed cars later, when Howard cuts Tony off and tells him, quote, “I won’t speak to you until you learn to do something other than disappoint me”, Rhodey very gracefully still shacks up with him in their considerably less fancy apartment.

This is all important to know, contrary to what someone whose name may or may not rhyme with Tephen Trange might say about Tony’s “long-winded” and “overly-complicated” storytelling tendencies because it explains exactly why Rhodey is a traitor.

Is Carol a very cool lady who could kick Tony’s ass? Yes. Is she sickeningly cute with Rhodey and not just because a smile from her makes him melt into a pile of fucking goo on the floor? Also yes. Does it probably make more sense for Tony to find roommates who will actually be around to monitor his—allegedly—poor mental health and self-care habits? Okay, fine, yes, but the bottom line is, Rhodey is moving in with Carol and abandoning Tony, and nobody said he had to like it.

(This is not strictly true, what with the approximately ten conversations Rhodey and he have had about his happiness and how, if Tony needs him, all he has to do is say the word and he’ll be back, but Tony has always had a flair for the dramatic.)

The whole idea is that Tony will find someone gone less than Rhodey with all his military business to enjoy having around the apartment. It’s technically a three-bedroom, but he and Rhodey use the extra one for storage. Fortunately or unfortunately, that storage area has become a lot of junk they go through before Rhodey makes his grand exit, and Tony suddenly has the option of having two roommates.

The ad is a low point, he can admit that, but there is a flaw in what Tony loudly calls Rhodey’s master plan to leave him alone to wallow in misery: Tony doesn’t exactly have a lot of friends, nevermind people who he’d want to live with.

“Rhodey. Honeybear. Platypus.”

“The nicknames are old, and you need to stop using them around Carol. She called me Platypus last night during sex, and it ruined the whole mood.”

“You poor thing.”

“She thought it was hilarious.”

If Tony has to lose Rhodey to anybody, by God, Carol is his first choice by a long shot.

“Anyway, as I was saying, Sourpatch—”

“I hate you.”

“—how am I supposed to find someone else to live with?”

Tony is thirty-two and regularly speaks out with all of four people: Pepper, Rhodey, Carol, and Happy. Unfortunately, Happy works in Stark Industries’ California branch and has stated rather firmly that he’s not interested in transferring to the city, Pepper wouldn’t live with another person for love or money, and the other two are spoken for.

It’s a terrible situation to be in, honestly.

“Craigslist,” Rhodey deadpans, fighting with some packing tape.

Tony feels his heart stop beating in real time from his place folding some of Rhodey’s clothes into a plastic tub. His head snaps up, and his jaw drops, absolutely affronted. “You would suggest that I, even disowned and stripped of my former glory—” Tony has several million dollars in the stock market, but that’s neither here nor there and isn’t much compared to the fact that he was supposed to be a billionaire. “—would stoop to looking for live-in friends on Craigslist?”

Rhodey looks up to meet his eyes, unfazed. He’s used to Tony’s antics after nearly two decades of friendship. “Well, I’m not moving out until you have at least one person guaranteed to take my place, so unless you have any better ideas, yeah.” He shrugs—just shrugs, as if he isn’t advising Tony to scrape the bottom of the fucking barrel in terms of reliable people to regularly fall asleep around.

It’s insulting.

“I’m not putting out an ad for a roommate on Craigslist,” he protests, shoving the next horribly colored polo into the tub with disdain.

That night, he tears up thinking about stopping Rhodey from being happy with Carol, and the post is up by the time Rhodey gets up—stupidly early, like normal—for his morning run. Along with his contact information and a few blurry pictures of the place, it includes a blurb about the circumstances.

Best friend moving out. Need a roommate or I will die of Sadness. His girlfriend is cool but hewas mind first. Carol, I am watching you. Two rooms open for business. But not sketchy business. You can just lve there. Current resident (me) is cool and very charming. I am a man. No dumb fuck offers. Thanks.

It could use some work, but Tony’s never been great with words, even less so when he’s crying to rock ballads at two in the morning. He edits it when he wakes up, and by noon that day, it’s looking better.

At seven o’clock that evening, he receives one of two messages that actually work out.

Enter the first offender: Peter Parker.

Peter, Tony will learn, is nineteen, attending NYU—like Tony did, which is a sign, really—for a double major in biochemistry and physics, and has the worst luck of anyone Tony’s ever met.

Rhodey’s moving out in a week—he’s been putting off finding a roommate for a while, alright—and Peter has to legally be out of his dorm in three days. That is quite the predicament, and Tony, by nature, is a curious creature. He is not, however, one for beating around the bush. That results in a text that reads exactly this.

Tony: What the hell did you do?

He could hack through the university files, but explanations are always more fun with a personal touch that’s lacking in, say, an incident report. Tony watches a bubble with three blinking dots for a long, long time, and the reply is surprisingly sparse—sparse enough, in fact, for Tony to have more questions than answers when he receives it.

Unknown Sender: theres been a few things but the kicker was the fire

Tony: The fire?

Unknown Sender: i tried to make popcorn and the microwave blew up

Now that is some problematic behavior Tony can get behind. He amends the kid’s previously non-existent contact information.

Tony: How can they kick you out for that? That’s not your fault.

Roommate (?) Peter: it blacked out the power on the entire first floor

Tony: And?

Roommate (?) Peter: last month i got the blame for contaminating half the campus water supply

Roommate (?) Peter: so i was already on thin ice

Tony: Accidentally?

Roommate (?) Peter: idk sometimes things just happen to me

Tony doesn’t know how to respond to that. If Rhodey knew, he’d never let him live it down. He can hear his annoying laugh in his ears like a premonition—“Hah—Tony, speechless?”—but then there are the dots again and a simple message to follow the last, a touch pathetic.

Roommate (?) Peter: please let me move in

Tony likes him.

Peter shows up on the stairs of the complex thirty-six hours after Tony posted the ad with a backpack and a meager total of six beat-to-shit boxes. The backpack holds nearly all of his school supplies, which makes Tony, in retrospect, genuinely fearful for the integrity of his spine, and the contents of the boxes are sorted, as Tony will learn, into three categories that each have two boxes in them. The categories are fairly simple—clothing, necessities, and whatever other shit he could fit from his dorm—and leave Peter with thrilling possessions such as an entire collection of truly atrocious shirts with science puns on them, a gallon of hand soap, and any food he had in his cupboards.

Thankfully, Rhodey is out furniture shopping with Carol when Tony goes out to meet him, which solves the problem of Rhodey going into overbearing caretaker mode at the sight of a beanpole of a kid failing to manage their life successfully. As someone who has been made many a you-haven’t-eaten-a-meal-in-two-days-and-I’m-secretly-a-panicking-mother-hen casserole, Tony counts his blessings.

Tony waves. “Peter?” he asks, reluctantly changed out of his pajamas for the day.

The kid nods. “That’s me. And you’re Tony?”

“Guilty as charged. Want a hand with those boxes?” he asks, watching Peter lift three at a time.

“No, I got it,” he insists, and then the box on top slides out of his grip and onto the sidewalk.

Peter stares at it for a second before he lets out a long-suffering sigh.

“Maybe I could use some help,” he admits, and with much struggle, the two of them, each with three boxes, waddle inside. There is a moment and only one moment where Tony thinks that it might be nice to have some extra assistance, but with another thought of the things Rhodey would do at the sight of a woefully inept college kid, Tony decides it’s for the best.

Tony leads the operation, considering he has the key and also knows explicitly where they’re going, and he would have to say his biggest complaint about the ordeal is that Sam, who lives in the apartment below Tony and Rhodey with Steve and Bucky, happens to open his door as they walk by.

Being an asshole, he has something to say about it. “Need some help, shellhead?” he crows.

Tony wishes he had a free hand to flip him off.

“Watch your back, Wilson,” he growls in return, a continuation of the beef the five of them have maintained since they met approximately seven years ago, when they all moved in on the same day and kept knocking into each other’s shit in the halls.

When they reach the top of the next flight of stairs and Tony starts to fumble with the key, Peter asks about it. “So—uh—who was that?”

“That was Sam. Part of the deal with moving in is that you harass him and the other two idiots who live with him. He also responds to jackass, douchecanoe, or birdbrain.”

“Birdbrain?”

“It’s an old joke. He had a rather—” Tony grunts, forced to set down his load to unlock the door, “—spectacular run-in with some pigeons a few years ago.”

“Oh.”

“They shat on him. A lot.”

“Oh.”

“It’s a good nickname,” Tony assures him, throwing open the door with his arms flung wide for dramatic flair. “Welcome to Casa Stark. I mean, I guess it’s Casa Stark-Parker now, but if we’re hyphenating, my name goes first because I lived here first.” He holds up a finger as if to stall Peter, who has yet to speak from where his mouth is decidedly blocked by the aforementioned three boxes he is carrying. “And I know what you’re going to say—that Parker-Stark works better because it’s alphabetical—but that is where you are wrong because letters have no place in this house. Numbers are much preferred, and we play by seniority here, anyway.”

He gives Peter a meaningful look that he cannot see because, once again, boxes.

“More on that, by the way—”

“Hey, Tony?” 

He cuts him off which is, objectively, rude, but Tony rarely gets along with people who aren’t a little curt with him from time to time. This is a positive sign, really, so he allows it.

“Yeah?” 

“This can be Casa Stark-Parker, but can we get to somewhere I can set these down? My arms are, like, going to give out on me.”

Not even ten minutes in, and he’s already learned the art of bargaining. Tony’s proud, and he ushers him inside without any more monologues and a grin stretched across his face.

Peter, by virtue of moving in before Rhodey is out, ends up with the room that is no longer being used for storage. Tony has several questions for him, beginning with the fact that, despite the six packets of instant noodles he bothered to bring, he does not appear to have a mattress. Or a desk. Or a dresser. Or anything that’s supposed to go in a room.

His solutions for Tony’s concerns are as follows.

In place of a bed, he has two blankets, one to put on the floor and one to cover himself with. He was planning on sitting on the floor to do schoolwork instead of using a desk. And finally, he was going to leave his clothes in the boxes.

This is all relayed to Tony with an earnest gleam in his eyes and a smile.

Tony blinks in disbelief. Then, very eloquently, he says, “Kid, that is the saddest shit I have ever heard. Aren’t your parents helping you with the move to an apartment?”

The kid shifts from foot to foot, shoving his hands in his pockets and glancing to the side.

Tony’s eyes narrow. As someone who is extremely well-versed in avoidance tactics, he feels very confident in saying that is definitely a fucking avoidance tactic.

“About that,” he begins, “first of all, I’m an orphan.” Jesus Christ. “Second of all, my aunt doesn’t exactly—uh—know I got kicked out of the dorms.”

That is all interesting information, to say the least, but luckily, Tony thrives under pressure.

“Alright. I can respect that.”

It’s not like he never hid anything from his parents. Evading his aunt is Peter’s problem, not Tony’s. None of this is Tony’s problem, really, except then he looks around the room and wonders which of Peter’s boxes are holding his two blankets.

Tony was concerned about Rhodey, but he can’t stop himself.

“But I’m also gonna’ level with you—you’re not sleeping on the ground. You can take the couch.”

The until I get you a proper bed frame and mattress goes unsaid, but sometimes things like that are better as surprises. It’ll be a fun housewarming gift, Tony thinks, and by the time the shipment from IKEA arrives containing both of those things and the aforementioned missing dresser and desk, there will be a third roommate to help put it all together, not that either of them know it yet.

That night, Rhodey and Carol show up with enough ingredients for lasagna to serve four, and Tony delights in showing off Peter as they cook because now he has a “super cool roommate too! Take that, Platypus.”

Rhodey glances to Peter. “If you’re being held hostage, blink twice.”

“Hey!” Tony protests. He is a perfectly lovable roommate, thank you very much, and he’s so offended, he’s not even going to let Rhodey know about his mission to furnish Peter’s room.

God bless her, Carol just laughs.

The four of them get along with surprising ease, considering Peter’s only been around for a few hours. Peter even tries to help with the lasagna, but Tony has a near-photographic memory and has not remotely forgotten the popcorn incident, however vaguely it was described.

“You just sit there and be a nicer person than Rhodey,” he urges him, and Peter nods, hiding his grin behind his hand at the argument that starts.

Once everyone is done, he and Rhodey get suckered into dish duty while Carol spirits Peter off to the living room, claiming she has to warn him about what he’s getting into. Tony doesn’t care enough to complain, and when her back is turned, he splashes a plate of suds onto Rhodey’s front. 

Rather than rise to the bait, however, he raises his brows, slipping into what Tony affectionately calls his big-brother-giving-a-stern-talking-to mode. “You have to be a good example for him, Tones.”

Tony blinks. “I’m sorry, did you just say—”

“I’m serious!” They keep their voices mostly down, but Rhodey’s rises a bit with the declaration.

“He’s nineteen—an adult, in case you forgot. He signed the lease all on his own and everything,” he hisses back incredulously.

He thought he dodged the bullet by not disclosing just how underprepared Peter is to live in an apartment, but Rhodey’s head dips. Tony braces himself for the part of his big-brother-giving-a-stern-talking-to mode where he tells Tony he’s making a bullshit excuse and needs to get it together. “Don’t give me that. He’s a baby adult at best, and you know it.”

Yep, there it is.

“That’s still an adult!”

It is! Tony was on his own way earlier than nineteen. This is not a big deal, no matter how outlandish Peter’s circumstances are for moving out of NYU’s dorms.

“Watch his back.”

Tony scoffs. “It’s not like I was going to feed him to the wolves. I’m barely thirty—I’m not his dad.”

“Tony.”

Ah, the final, crushing blow of this version of Rhodey: his name—but with emphasis.

Tony sighs. “Fine,” he acquiesces. “I solemnly swear I will not let him get up to no good.”

A beat. Rhodey squints at him, slowly lowering the plate he’s holding into the sink. “You told me you refused to read Harry Potter.”

Shit.

Back when the books were first coming out, Rhodey was insufferably obsessed with them, and Tony loves him, but emotionally, he couldn’t handle having Rhodey think he was willing to discuss anything having to do with the series for longer than thirty seconds. Thus, he read the books—everyone in the world was doing the same, okay, and he cannot stand being out of the loop—but lied to Rhodey about it.

And now, he’s been made.

Rhodey and he launch into a very spirited discussion that draws Carol and Peter back to the kitchen, and despite the vein throbbing dangerously in Rhodey’s forehead, the promise has been made.

The day after Rhodey moves out, he and Peter manage to flood the bathroom.

In Tony’s defense, he only promised to look out for Peter. He said nothing about curbing his own dumbass tendencies, and it’s not like Bucky’s bedroom is all that damaged by the leak that Tony fixes before it’s really even a problem.

He and Peter settle into a nice sense of camaraderie, and Tony, content with his situation, forgets to take down his Craiglist ad that, logically speaking, someone would have to dig to find at this point, over a week after initially posting it.

Then, he receives a text that is as simple as it is effective: Is there still an available room in the apartment?

Enter the second offender: Stephen Strange.

Ahem, Doctor Stephen Strange, technically, but Tony has six PhDs. Nobody sees him going around making people call him Doctor Stark, and that’s because it makes him sound pretentious and stuffy, both things Tony prides himself on not being. However, Tony likes to push buttons, and very little gets Stephen worked up as fast as someone ignoring his credentials.

It’s a fun set-up, really, but annoying the piss out of Stephen is something that comes a little later—Tony’s not there yet in the story.

He humors the text, and after getting a read on things, he bursts into the living room, startling Peter nearly off the couch. He’s been doing his homework there and on the coffee table in front of it because the Swedish have many things but fast shipping is, apparently, not one of them, not that Peter knows there’s anything to be waiting on, but he’s getting off-topic.

Peter lets out a short yelp and presses a hand over his heart, both things that Tony ignores.

“We have a situation,” he announces.

“I swear I didn’t do it,” Peter defends pleadingly.

Tony is trying to teach him that messing things up is expected and, especially in particularly magnificent cases, admired in Casa Stark-Parker, but it’s a work in progress.

“I know you didn’t—don’t be ridiculous,” he waves his concerns off. “We are talking bigger than setting things on fire by accident. I bring you, my young protege, the proposition of—” A pause for dramatic effect. “—another roommate.”

“Ooh,” Peter says appropriately, setting his textbook down to examine the texts Tony brandishes. He begins to scroll, but while he does, Tony figures he can go ahead and fill him in on the essentials. It’s a very juicy situation, after all, and he can’t help himself.

“His name is Stephen Strange. He’s a neurosurgeon, but he got into a pretty bad car wreck that messed up his hands. He’s trying to save money while he goes to physical therapy—he apparently has a chance of recovery, but it’s a ways off—and that includes downsizing on where he lives.”

“I mean, yikes, but that’s an oddly specific backstory.”

“I’m glad you think that too, but I am intrigued. I looked him up, and he’s a real person—has a basically flawless reputation, or at least he did before his accident. Thoughts?”

Please say yes, please say yes, Tony thinks. The chance of a competent human—not including Rhodey, who looks more put together than he really is next to the chaos Tony perpetually dwells in—choosing to live with him is too fascinating to pass up, and he needs Peter to see that too.

Peter shrugs. “I’m down if you are. How old is he?”

Victory!

Satisfaction floods Tony, but he tries to maintain his cool.

“Thirty.”

Peter blows out a long breath, tipping his head back to look at the ceiling. “I didn’t anticipate moving into a nursing home,” he remarks dryly.

What a little shit.

It’s worth noting half the reason Rhodey left so easily is because he said he trusted Peter to keep Tony on his toes. Then again, that Tony likes being snarked at is a large part of why they get along so well despite only knowing each other for a matter of days.

“You’re the worst, Parker. I’m going to feed you to the hooligans downstairs. Steve has a monster appetite, you know.”

Peter hums, picking his textbook back up. “Not if I feed you to them first. And, Tony?”

“What?”

“Only old people say hooligans.”

Tony thinks about that one book, Give a Mouse a Cookie or whatever. Except in his case, it’s Rent a Teenager an Apartment, and Tony doesn’t have to adhere to the literary equivalent of a G-rating.

His response to the dig is creative and colorful, and Peter laughs.

Four days and a brief conversation at a coffee shop later—a formality he and Peter did not do and probably something Tony should’ve thought of as the older adult before giving him the address—Stephen’s team of movers invade the apartment.

The man himself stands like a drill sergeant at the last flights of stairs it takes to get to the apartment, arms crossed, beard wild, conducting activity.

Peter and Tony share their evaluations, peeking their head out from the doorway when it’s unoccupied by movers and Stephen isn’t looking their way. This involves quite a bit of ducking, but they are very careful not to be caught.

(Someone’s whose name may or may not rhyme with Tephen Trange later informs that “they were not at all subtle” and “were, in fact, very embarrassing”, but that’s how things with the three of them generally are, so Tony figures it was a good crash course to how life together goes.)

“He’s kind of scraggly,” Peter whispers, his head under Tony’s because he’s the shorter of the two of them, something Tony delights in refuting Peter’s quips about his age with.

“Kind of? He looks like a hobo.”

It’s true, okay? Facially, at least, the guy is a wreck. He’s not quite to Einstein levels of bad hair day, but he’s getting there.

“Be nice,” Peter chastises him. He’s gentler than Rhodey when he does it, but considering neither of them ever shut the hell up and they have thus bonded very easily over the course of their short relationship, it’s gotten to feel as natural as most of their interactions.

“All I’m saying is that I am happy to retain my place as the most attractive person in the apartment, okay?”

They’re forced to retreat from the entryway as another load comes through, and Peter looks at him disbelievingly. “Dream on,” he replies bluntly.

Tony gasps in offense.

Peter shrugs. “Look, I’m just gonna’ say it—you knew Rhodey before me, and now that I’m here—” he trails off, looking at Tony in faux-sympathy that doesn’t match the mischievous glint in his eyes.

While it is true that Rhodey is a fine specimen of a man—yet another reason Tony can’t, in good conscience, be truly angry Carol mooched him away from the bachelor lifestyle—Tony can’t cede that easily for the sake of his pride, and he scowls. “I am going to pretend you didn’t say that.”

They’re still bickering as the movers finish up and Stephen enters the apartment, dressed in what Tony recognizes as the latest from Armani and Tom Ford.

He may not get invited to fashion week anymore, but he still has taste, alright, even if Rhodey limits him to one designer purchase a month.

(Rhodey isn’t around to see what packages he orders now, Tony thinks but shelves the thought for later.)

Tony and Stephen met over coffee, and all three of them said hi to one another before the moving business officially began. However, there is a little stiffness in the air, make no mistake. It’s not Stephen’s fault, exactly, because he’s just kind of a foreboding guy, but still.

It figures that Peter would break the ice. As Tony’s found and will continue to discover, Peter is just as talkative as him. Granted, that trait usually appears in the form of rambling about something from class, but it’s not surprising that his natural passion for life comes through with someone about to be very, very involved in it. 

“Hi!” he begins. “Are all of the movers gone now?”

Stephen raises an unimpressed brow. “Yes.”

His reply is seriously lacking enthusiasm, but Tony isn’t allowed the opportunity to jump on that as Peter keeps going. 

“Sweet! Okay, so welcome to Casa Stark-Parker.”

Woah, woah, woah—timeout.

Tony frowns, raising a hand in a motion for Peter to stop. “I thought that was my thing?” he interjects.

“Well, it has my name in it, so it gets to be both of our things,” Peter replies, then furrows his brow, looking to Stephen. “Actually, since you’re here now, I guess it’s Casa Stark-Parker-Strange. Order’s based on who got here first, sorry,” he explains with a smile that Tony, now familiar with the fact that Peter has more to him than meets the eye, notes is a touch impish.

Tony is pleased to see, despite his generally wholesome appearance, the kid has at least picked up on the power of staking a claim.

Stephen blinks. His hands, Tony has noticed, don’t stop shaking, not even when he folds his arm across his chest, like a physical barrier between him and Peter’s excitement. “Okay?” he drawls slowly, confusedly.

“Tony’s rules, not mine,” Peter assures him as if he doesn’t just want the satisfaction of having his name not be the last in the line-up.

Tony scoffs. “Oh okay, so now we’re throwing me under the bus?”

“You have to take responsibility for your actions, Tony.”

“Oh, sure thing,” he replies, tone betraying that he does not, in fact, think any responsibility is at all necessary. He looks to Stephen, rolling his eyes. “Can you believe what I have to put up with? And it’s barely been a week.”

Stephen blinks again. “I see it’s a lot,” he says measuredly.

Peter gasps, unaffected. “Oh my God, we should make a sign for it,” he enthuses. “We can put it up on the door, and we’d be so much cooler than Sam and them.”

To say that Peter rose to the challenge of bothering their downstairs neighbors with zeal is something of an understatement. 

Tony is, honestly, a fan of the sign idea, especially if it were to light up, but that is where Stephen cuts in, his hands still trembling as he gestures. “Can we slow down for a moment?” He looks carefully from Tony and Peter and back again, bearing the appearance of a man in the throes of realizing he has made a bad decision. 

Tony knows that look well. It usually shows up when Rhodey agrees to one of Tony’s ideas and doesn’t realize just how badly constructed it is until it’s too late.

“First of all, I am fairly certain my car is parked illegally, and before we get too far, I need to fix it before I get towed. And secondly,” Tony watches Stephen’s lips curl in a self-satisfied, I-totally-think-I’m-better-than-you-even-if-I’m-not-technically-saying-it smile, “I am not here to be part of any Casa. I am waiting for physical therapy to work for me, and then I will be out of your hair. I appreciate being able to live here, but—”

Yeah, Tony’s had enough of that. Personally, he would like to thank Rhodey, who, in a way, begins and ends the story, and truly is the greatest best friend a man could have for teaching him how to properly deal with pompous rich people.

“Nuh-uh, none of that. If you’re living here, you’re a part of Casa Stark-Parker-Strange whether you like it or not.”

Stephen looks downright appalled that someone would dare to interrupt him, which, Tony knows from experience, is exactly the kind of shock rich people need to go through. He splutters for a second before he manages to get out a reply, “That was not in the lease.”

Tony spreads his hands as if to say what can you do? “And you didn’t mention in your texts that you were going to try to be a bump on a log, but here we are.”

Perhaps sensing the mounting animosity in the room or maybe just as excited as Tony to have someone to bother, Peter takes advantage of Stephen’s overwhelmed and bewildered state.

“First day with all three of us!” he shouts. “Picture!”

And before anyone can protest—including Tony, who would prefer to be documented in something other than a Black Sabbath tee and his work pants—Peter leans in with the camera on his phone ready to capture the moment.

In the resulting photo, Tony looks vaguely alarmed, Stephen looks pissed as hell, and Peter wears a grin that stretches across his whole face. The whole thing is blurry, and they eventually get it framed.

It’s a beautiful and fitting start to their time as roommates, and in the humble eyes of the asshole who posted the Craigslist ad, that is how the story of how they came to live together went.

[omgkalyppso]

ok a few questions about the ot4 kids!

What is the birth order? which sibling do each of them like the most? Are there any sibling rivalries? Who's each one's birth parents (sorry if this question is offensive, i realize all 4 are their parents, but i'm curious who inherited what from whom)

and lastly do they have nicknames? :D

asdfhaksk Thank you for the ask! I only didn't Really specify some of these things since they're included in stuff on my ao3 and I worry about boring people by being repetitive, but I'm So Happy to talk about them.

But uh. I also can't shut up, so here's another cut. (Extremely long, you have been warned)

So. Lorenz and Hilda have been married for 7 years by the time they start becoming romantically entangled with Fae and Claude (then married for some months, nearly a year). Hilda and Lorenz already have Halvard (the eldest) (nickname Hal) and Lorencia (nickname Lori) by then. Fae and Claude have their twins next, Nader and Geralt.

I debated for a long time after this about whether the next child I wrote would have Claude and Hilda as bio parents. At the time, I was still relatively alone in polyshipping in this fandom, and I was too afraid to follow through. I was picturing what people would say in-universe and to me specifically when I was already liberally using the block button for other nonsense; but there's someone who ships byleth x claude x lorenz x hilda making art in the Lorenz zine of them and all their fankids and it's SO FUCKING CUTE. I don't regret my family interpretations, but I am envious that they have that.

Anyway! After the twins, Fae and Claude conceive again, Sadaf, and as I've given Fae the capability to tell relatively early if they're pregnant (Byleth / My Unit having no heartbeat. I've written Fae as being shocked and Aware when suddenly they have one), when Fae and Claude tell Lorenz and Hilda, they readily conspire to have another child, to bring their families closer together, assuming having children so close in age would have some effect on this, similar milestones and just the means and desire for this sort of love. Also, I just picture Lorenz as the sort of only child who wants a larger family. So that's Baldovin (bullied with the nickname Baldy, until Sadaf starts calling him Vinnie).

Ten years younger than Fae and Claude's twins, they conceive Simon. He's unplanned, and Fae's 46 by then. He's a little sickly as a child. Spinal problems through life. And the only one of the kids in post-canon who grows up with four parents. When he's 11 years old Halvard is 27, and taking over as head of house Gloucester so that Lorenz is being (forcibly, but he's fine) retired to the palace in Derdriu as Advisor to the Crown; Hilda's held a title at the court in Derdriu for far longer than this though, because in her and Lorenz's paired ending it talks about her setting up trade schools? Because of her crafting? But I like her illustrating Seteth's children books and being Aware of what Cyril went through and instead name her as Minister of Children and Youth Services, and having helped establish something like a school board; which is hilarious that we all want something like this — smiled BIG about this part of your big bang piece for Yuri.

All together the kids look like:

Halvard is about 3 years older than Lorencia.

Lorencia is about 3 years older than the twins.

The twins are about 2 years older than Sadaf.

Sadaf is about 2 months older than Baldovin.

Baldovin is about 7 years older than Simon.

I actually have a fic titled Headcanons and Extrapolations where chapter 2 is art of my fankids and chapter 4 is my timeline: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20658107

Three bullet points in this fic read:

When Halvard was twelve, he accidentally caught a glance of a stolen kiss between Claude and his father. When he approached him on it, Lorenz was at the same time grateful and resentful that he was alone to have to try and have this conversation with his son. He did a surprisingly good job of it. A few months later, Halvard approached the monarchs and his parents to say they should be less subtle about it. They crowded in on each other's space far more in the company of their children afterwards.

It’s not one conversation that the ot4 has with any of their children afterwards which attempts to explain the nature of their relationship, but rather several conversations over the course of their lives. By the time Simon is an adult, however, it’s barely even a conversation. He sort of has to come into himself raised by four parents, and the sight is no longer striking to the royal attendants or the people of Omoya.

There have been rumors about the Monarchs and their indiscretion and perceived promiscuity since before the birth of Sadaf. They never figured out how to address them, but when Lorenz and Hilda eventually moved into the palace in Derdriu, they finally took Halvard's advice, practically daring anyone to bring attention to the affection they shared (just casual pda, like hand holding, a chaste kiss goodbye, etc.).

Also uhhhhhhhhh Omoya is the name I gave to the allied lands of Fodlan and Almyra (and technically Brigid who joined their whole Thing like 13 years after the initial political mess).

Halvard is a little too old for rivalries with his younger siblings, so he tells himself; his time at the academy would have been Before them. I actually picture him having a rivalry with Ashe and Caspar's daughter, Keegan.

Lorencia would have been riddled with anxiety about going to the Academy, but by the time the twins are going at age 17, she's encouraged to join them. Nader and Geralt are more "partners in crime" than rivals, but their relationship would go through rough patches of aging and differences at the Academy, and Lorencia being more prepared than she thought she was would frustrate Nader who'd have a harder time with the studies that she'd excel at.

Sadaf and Vinnie are friends — they're siblings — who stand up for each other and goad each other on. And Vinnie finds a rivalry at their time at the Academy in Sylvain and Felix's adopted daughter, Elspeth.

Simon holds himself to too high of standards, being so much younger than the people he loves and looks up to. He wants to be Ready and Capable and is eager to prove himself. He grows out of it.

I'm not sure what you mean when you ask who has favorites. There are certainly siblings they get along more strongly with: the twins, Sadaf and Vinnie, Lorencia and Simon, Halvard and Lorencia. But I wouldn't say that any of them like one more than the other, either between them or from the perspective of their parents. aksdfkas

Also I didn't know where to fit this in there but like the rest of my oc's, my ot4 kids are bi unless stated otherwise: Geralt is a gay he/they.

Have some more kids from their setting. (I have given these kids far less thought. They don't have siblings, you just get to see a young and then Academy-age version of themselves.)

Keegan is Ashe and trans Caspar's daughter. She's a menace and keeps Halvard on his toes during their time at the Academy. Halvard is not as sheltered as Lorenz was, but he's still a little proper for Keegan's taste.

Dimitri is alive and well though the Kingdom has been dissolved and believes him to be deceased. He married Marianne under an assumed last name, and this is their son Blythe. He is polite and awkward and is at the Academy at the same time as Lorencia, Nader and Geralt.

Fernan is Mercedes and Dedue's son (t4t powercouple). He's soft spoken with a big smile and a bigger heart. He's also at the academy at the same time as Lorencia, Nader and Geralt. He and Geralt can have a little romance, as a treat.

Elspeth is Sylvain and trans Felix's adopted daughter and goes to the Academy at the same time as Sadaf and Vinnie. I figured between Sylvain, Miklan, Annette and Gilbert, red hair was a fair choice for a Faerghan. She's a Fraldarius (and in line to be a duchess). Because of recurring, I feel like this says a lot about her. asdkfjhgasdjkhfg

[likeholymary]

— one with the force

the phantom menace i: 1.8k words

AU: What if the Clone Wars never happened, but instead Darth Sidious cast aside the Rule of Two, forging a new way for the Sith and began amassing an army of Sith warriors to overthrow the Jedi and the Republic?

A/N: hello friends! so, i actually posted part one for this series a few days ago, but ultimately decided it wasn’t how i wanted to start this series. i also just don’t want to have to write for the entirety of the phantom menace, lol. however, Rhea’s story will still be the same, a young padawan just abandoned by her master, Dooku, who has left the Jedi Order to chase his families fortune. she still grew up with Obi-Wan, and hopefully we will delve some more into their past together as younglings soon:) this chapter will take place towards the end of the phantom menace, so we will be quickly be on chapters with bearded Obi-Wan!! please comment any thoughts or ideas you would like me to incorporate into the story! reblog if you’d like, and comment below if you want to be added to the tag list i will be starting very soon! again, thank you all for reading!

warnings: angst. mentions of abandonment.

She had once had such future, such promise, and now, she felt as though she were nothing. Being abandoned as a padawan was not something many Jedi experienced often, if at all, and yet here she was, the third padawan of her master, abandoned, alone.

Master Dooku had left so quickly that twenty-one year old Rhea did not have much time to process what the cause could be. She supposed she should call him Count Dooku now. Her nose wrinkled at the thought. What was once a great Jedi Master, was now a man who had wealth beyond measure and power that was rarely attainable.

Had it been her fault? What had she done to have failed him, to cause him to leave the Jedi Order he so dearly loved? She asked the question so many times, but she knew it was better to not reflect on the situation so selfishly.

Surely, it could not be entirely her fault. She recalled how he seemed to wane in the Force, his light turning into a flickering speck over the course of the past few years she had known him. What power he had as a Jedi that once blazed soon became disillusioned, something she could feel each time they spared or sat on the brig of their ship while on mission. He had retreated, growing into something she no longer knew, and when he left it should not have come to such a shock.

But she could not forget the fatherly affection he had for her, the kind eyes he would spare her in the library while she studied tirelessly over the Jedi prophecies and scripts of old.

She could not forget his encouragement, nor his sarcastic tone, nor the way he would lift her up and direct her in the ways of the Force so brilliantly so much so that she felt like some chosen creature, blessed to be taught by such a master.

She could not forget the attachment she held to him, and how it was slowly severed as he began to drift away from the Jedi.

And now, it had ended. Now she knew why the Jedi did not allow attachments.

Rhea Illyria tried to catch her breath but the brilliant purple lightsaber of Master Windu came rushing towards her head, and she quickly had to block it from severing it off from her shoulders.

“Concentrate, Illyria! Your heart betrays you. Let go of your attachments. Focus on the present or fail.”

With her lightsaber still above her and blocking Windu, she closed her eyes, breathing through her nose. Focus on the present or fail. Let go.

Releasing the breath through her mouth, she pushed forward with her saber against Master Windu’s, watching as he stumbled back a few steps before raising her blue lightsaber once more to clash with his.

Master Mace Windu was to train her for the foreseeable future until she was to have her trials. Despite her feelings of confusion, she actually hoped that this could mean her trials would come sooner, that she was one step closer to becoming a Jedi Knight. After all, she had been practically born in the Jedi temple, having no home of her own, having only been a babe who was dropped off on the steps of the temple on a summers day in the pouring rain. The Jedi were the only family she had ever known.

As the new master and apprentice continued to spar, Mace’s comm link beeped, signaling a meeting with the council.

“Jinn and Kenobi must have returned from Naboo. Our lesson is done for the day, my young apprentice.”

Rhea bowed her head respectfully, but also to hide the growing smile on her face. She was glad to see Master Windu jog out of the training area, as he grin began to stretch at the thought of seeing her old friend Obi-Wan Kenobi.

She and Obi-Wan had been in the same youngling clan together. The spent time together, side-by-side training in the art of the lightsaber, meditating on the mysteries of the force, sneaking off to steal baked goods from the pantries, and had lived life together as the best of friends. However, this did not mean that the two were entirely the same, and in fact they often got in trouble for causing trouble, often bickering with one another or just creating some sort of ruckus.

This quickly changed when they became padawans.

Although in his youth a willful-rebel, Obi-Wan quickly became disciplined, determined to follow the rules and make his master proud. Rhea, already a force of nature and dutiful, was placed with Master Dooku, who guided her more deeply in the knowledge of the Force.

Rhea was elated, and could not wait to see the boy from Stewjon, who she could not recall the last time she had seen, but the presence of who she could always feel.

She slowly began to make her way towards the Council’s chambers, crossing through the temple gardens and through a case of stairs, hoping to make it just as the meeting concluded. Rhea made her way through the hall, before nestling herself between one of the pillars close to the doors.

Rhea could feel him in the Council room, the anxiety rolling off of him at his masters words. Something about a boy... Whatever it was, she could feel him growing more tense and frustrated as the situation progressed. It only lessened for a moment, and it was almost as if she could feel him breathing beside her.

It was then that the Council doors swung open and Qui Gon Jinn exited with his padawan trailing behind him. They talked in hushed voices outside the doors, slowly walking in her direction. Moving from behind the pillar, she nodded at Master Jinn as she came into their view.

“Master Qui Gon, I am glad to see you returned safely from your mission.”

“Young Rhea, it is good to see your face once again. I am sorry to hear about our Master,” He commented lightly.

“Yes, it was quite unexpected but I suppose it was the will of the Force.” She paused, taking a silent breath before asking, “Could I perhaps speak with Obi-Wan?”

Qui Gon was not surprised in the slightest. He remembered on the night of his padawan’s Initiate Trials how closely he was to a small girl with brown pigtails and olive toned skin. He remembered how fierce the girl was, how she never once faltered in the ways of the Force. And how she surpassed him as their Master’s apprentice, something which shocked him, considering how he assumed Dooku would never take on another padawan. But he seemed to have a special interest in this youngling girl, whereas Qui Gon soon began to feel weighed down by the ways of his padawan. Obi-Wan was his complete opposite in every way, and did not have the same relation his former master and he had.

“Go on, young ones. Obi-Wan, I will see you later this evening at the Council meeting.”

“Yes, master.”

Rhea and Obi-Wan began to walk side by side down the hall, as Qui Gon went the other way. Taking a look behind their shoulders and seeing that his master was gone, Obi-Wan turned to Rhea and engulfed her in such a warm embrace. The girl sighed, taking in the scent of his freshly washed robes as well as the warmth emitting from him.

“I missed you so much.”

Obi-Wan pulled back slightly, giving her his signature cheeky grin. “Oh really? Are you sure? Because I quite remember you saying you couldn’t wait for me to leave on my next assignment the last time we saw one another.”

She playfully shoved his shoulder, and began to walk away, but he simply began to follow in step, slinging an arm around her shoulder like old friends do.

“It’s not my fault you can be so aggravating. Especially when you’re being competitive.”

“Hey, I totally won that sparring match!”

“You cheated! We agreed not to use the Force, simply testing our abilities with a saber.”

Obi-Wan shrugged. “I would have beat you either way.”

“And why do I highly doubt that?” Her eyes looked up to meet his, an eyebrow raised in a cocky attitude, but she couldn’t help the smile that creeped upon her face. A friendly silence sat between them.

“Care to take a stroll in the gardens, old man?”

“Only with you, dearest.”

Rhea let out an airy chuckle at that. It was the nickname he had so kindly doted upon her as younglings, he at the tender age of twelve and she at the age of eight. The two were bickering about something, who knows what now. However, in the heat of the argument he groaned in frustration when she compared them to sounding like some old married couple.

“Well, fine then, dearest. Why don’t we end this nonsense and retire for the evening?” It had only been three in the afternoon, causing the two to burst into a fit of laughter which ended their nonsensical debate.

The garden looked exceptional that warm afternoon, the sun shining above, casting rays of light that in turn cast shadows from the leaves through the branches. Rhea took in the meadowy scents from the flowers all around them, smiling at the willow tree that they would always sit beneath, either talking or laughing, sharing tears or a stolen pastry. It was peaceful. It was home.

“Why did Master Dooku leave?”

Obi-Wan was never the type to sly away from the obvious. He could feel Rhea’s fear, her confusion. It was a ripple in the Force, growing as each day passed and something he no longer could ignore. It was always so strange how easily he could feel her emotions from parsecs away, but in an even more mysterious way, he felt comforted knowing how his dearest was doing.

Rhea shook her head, turning away from him to stare at the starflowers nearby. “I-I don’t know. I’m so unsure of what reason he could possibly have to leave the Order. It was his life. He was one of the most brilliant Jedi I ever knew, and he abandoned it. He abandoned—”

“He abandoned you.”

She only nodded in response.

“Rhea, look at me.”

When she did not turn, he gently grabbed her chin and turned her face to look in his cerulean eyes. “It isn’t your fault. You didn’t fail. If anything, I believe Dooku failed the Order and himself. But most importantly he failed you. He left you at the height of your training. You are no less worthy of becoming a Jedi because of his failures and weaknesses.”

And she fell right into his arms, silent tears pouring down her face. “Thank you, Ben.”

Although she couldn’t see it, Obi-Wan was glad his face was tucked into her dark hair, so she could not see the blush that boomed across his cheeks at the mention of her coined nickname for him. Instead of being like hers, his was only used between them in moments like this, moments of honesty, kindness, friendship.

But to Obi-Wan, it always felt like something more.

[kaetastic]

PRINCE CHARMING

pairing: Luca Changretta x Reader

summary: Luca brings the Reader to a fancy family gathering, except, he can’t take his hands off of her when she’s in a fiery red dress, displaying her tattoos  [requested: @supermegapauselouca​]

word count: 3.4k (oop)

warning: slightly ??? nsfw lol couldn’t help it (’m horny for the man), a lot of interruptions

note: i’m so sorry this took long! i had to finish up history unfolds and was writing trouble on the side. bless you and your freaking amazing ideas 🥰 i hope this is alright :) also, i wanted to post this for my 2,000 post but nvm lol

Chattering and stifling of expensive giggles swirled in with clanking of metal on ceramic. Shufflings of polished shoes paced on the marble floors which had been drowning in shimmers of iridescent glimmer from the dancing flames huffing from the candles. The ball of hovering fire resided on the stick of wax. Beads of sweat poured to puddle on the silver tray.

With a smile, Y/N incessantly nodded her head at the woman who had been persistent on firing up a conversation. The mirror dangling from her neck blared sparkles of cerulean blue and innocent white under the howling moonlight. Although her mind directed to flickers of other thoughts, the hostess couldn’t help but stand and entertain her guest.

The woman had been rambling on and on about the origin of the diamond necklace that was up for display on her neck as if a museum. The gem was colossal, almost inhumanely possible to be sold as a worn necklace. The hostess wasn't uncomfortable with the elderly woman's declaration of the necklace's background which sounded it had a more complex, entertaining past than Y/N. It was slightly embarrassing. Every time her head had pulled her out to the abyss, the woman inquired questions like: What do you think about it? or What gem looked good on me? It felt like Y/N was tugged back to school. The elderly woman would raise her arm into the air, sparkles from the gold rings wrapped around her arm sung a choir of clanking with every jab of muscles. The amount of gold she had worn was enough to halt worldwide human hunger for at least a month.

“Zia Gianna,” The familiar English interjected the conversation. Luca’s voice was mellow honey poured over a freshly plucked out plump peach. The viscous sweetener glistened over the fruit, seeping into the minuscule pores to branch valleys of the sticky liquid. However, the Italian in his voice embedded a piercing gem on the peak of the fruit. Well, that was the popular comments quirked up towards the Italian, all sourced from his Italian family members.

Although most of the males did not bat an eye at the slightly toned-down accent, it did not pass the females without them darting a glance. His aunts were the one quirk up the English poking from his Italian. Even though he hoped the two aunties from his father’s side were the last ones to comment on his accent, hope was not enough as it went on with the night, “I see you’ve met my wife. Are you pestering Y/N about the necklace?”

The woman let out a laugh, causing her head to be thrown back, her neck nearly snapping in half. With her white silk-gloved hands on her chest, the elder woman grinned of glee after she recovered from his words. A charmer even towards his family members. Luca’s arms snaked around his wife's waist to brush his thumb gingerly over her hip as if she was a fragile plucked out flower. With the signature quirk of his lips, his pearly white teeth shot a sparkle towards his aunt, “Oh, Luca, of course. I will never stop talking about it until I die.”

The Italian shook his head, “Zia Gianna, you live under the same roof with Zio Giovanni, you’ll surely live longer than I will.”

Grinning from the mention of her hard-working (maybe over-working) husband who sacrificed his sleeping hours for the late-nights for the organization, the elderly lady clasped her hands to gawk at her nephew as if he was a hero who had saved her life, “Thank you for giving that man a day off. You don’t know how many times I've annoyed him to eat dinner at home.”

“Now I just need to give Gabriele vacation,” Gianna bopped her head, nodding in agreement with her nephew’s words. Although the woman had familiarized herself enough with the infamous mafia, she never had her sweat coated over the organization. However, the woman with prominent wrinkles can approve of the recent bustling days which was a fluctuated period of time since it was just a calm breeze before. Overhearing her working sons and husband during their rare days of consuming breakfast at home, she had picked up enough information from their ranting. Some problems that were rising in some ports had caused a rattle in the foundation of the business. “Well then, I’ll steal my wife back.”

“Of course, congratulations on the wedding once again and remember Luca,” Dragging her silk glove-covered index fingers down her cheeks, she flicked it in his direction, “Don’t lose her.”

A flicker in the aunt’s eyes was shot at the man before she left the room, strutting out of the main room to converse with her other cousins. 

“I like that,” Y/N mumbled, fingers furled around her husband’s arm, clumping up his suit while he guided them out of the crowds. The scent of lingering wood and expensive whiskey swirled into her lungs, the odour that smeared over their bedsheets. She continued. “You calling me your wife.”

“Yeah?” With a clench of his fingers, she jumped back at the abrupt feeling. A satisfied smirk sported on his lips, happy with her reaction. “Get used to it.”

Rolling her eyes, Y/N couldn’t believe this was the man she ended up marrying. Although the pair had been together as couples for a long while, nearly three years, it wasn’t until he had brought up the ring. Which then led to the necklace wrapped around her finger, its diamond sparkling under the chandelier light. The wise man who was in his late thirties believed they should see how well the boats rock over the raging waves. 

After caressing his eyes over the party, he craned his neck down, hot lips puffing warm air into her ears as his eyes darted onto her inked skin that always managed to quiver his knees. A powerful woman with painting over her skin (even though he believed he could make better art on her), “Remember what you told me before?” Slightly confused, the quirked up eyebrows loosened once she understood what he had meant. Y/N couldn’t help the appearance of the satisfied smirk plastered across her face. A coquettish hum echoed into his ears. “It’s true?”

While his close cousins paced past, Luca gave a silent bop of his head as an acknowledgement of their presence. The woman peaked on her toes, whispering over the cross on his neck, “Why don’t you find out?” 

Tongue grazing his bottom lip, Luca's eyes beamed at his wife. The strings of wanton mumbling stood on the tip of his tongue, ready to flick into her ears. All that clogged in his head was pictures of her bare. His fingers trailed down, further from the appropriate position that was on her hip; down, closer towards her bare legs. 

“Luca!” The Italian yanked his hand back in a snap, fingers scratching the nape of his neck while he cleared his throat. Approaching the pair of the night was his uncle whose hair twinkled of stardust, neck drooping with the hefty golden chains that were the size for docking boats. An amused giggle brushed her lips. It was always amusing to see Luca get riled up even though she had to face the consequences which were then followed by days of resting. 

“Zio Federico.” The curled up corner of Luca’s lips etched a barely noticeable twitch, one only his wife could see. The dancing wine lapped against the glass flute as the middle-aged man hopped towards the married couple. Y/N wasn’t sure if it was because of the incessant amount of chains he dragged upon, but the head of Luca’s uncle shot forward, shoulders too slow to meet a middle-ground.

There was one thing Y/N had learnt during the ride with Luca’s life, well, more like inspect. It would be the first thing for eyes to graze upon but their lips would be sealed shut. And now that she was officially Luca’s; it will always be the elephant in the room unless there was no article of clothing on him. Every man in the party wore suits. A fortune for those outside of the blood pool to purchase. A walking advertisement for those who wore it. The grey-blue of his waistcoat contrasted with the dying black jacket, his tie of a peculiar dotted pattern that nearly resembled that of a canvas painted by birds shit.

Trekking with a slimy gait, Federico’s arms were wide open for the boy, well, man. Even though they work in the same organization, the elderly man was positioned on a different station, somewhere lower of New York. Not so secretly, Federico had a soft spot in his heart for the youth, his nephews and nieces. It felt like days ago when Luca was no more than a 12-year-old boy. Visioning it wasn’t hard as Luca had been one of his favourites (also not a secret because it had been pointed out by nearly everyone) since the boy never matched up with the rest of his troublesome cousins. The man still remembered when the meddling boys sneaked out of their classes while Luca had remained, completing the whole school day. He was much easier to control. Well, Y/N wouldn't be able to agree.

“Ciao, Luca,” He let out a boisterous cackle, yanking the taller man by his neck to smack his lips, cheek to cheek. “Look at you, married.”

With a quivering smile, Luca became the temporary slapping victim for his uncle. The once grimacing clapping of skin died down when the man had enough of his teasing, “Said it yourself, wasn’t rowdy as Alessandro.”

“That boy will never settle down,” Inhaling in the liquid, Federico shook his head at the issues riled up by his nephew. “At least Alessandro didn’t get her first.”

Y/N wore a tight lip as Luca’s frigid hands rubbed her bare skin. Although slightly debatable, she was sure the creeping smirk on his lips was not because of the amusing rumours spiralled by his cousin but because he noticed the bulging bumps and her shuddering, “At least Alessandro didn’t get her first.”

“We’ll catch up later, I’m sure you two are busy. If you want to see Luca baby photos in his diapers, I can pass ‘em around.” With a wink, the elderly man stomped away from the pair to boisterously yank his cousins in a hug.

A sigh fell of Luca’s lips, fingers pinching the bridge of his nose at his uncle’s antics. Although he was annoyed at the man, Y/N couldn’t stifle her amusement at the thought. Luca Changretta in diapers? She will need to see that.

“Were you in baby nappies?” Y/N whispered as giggles weaved through her words. While pacing down the long side of the table, she shot a sparkly smile towards one of Luca’s many aunts who returned the same gesture. Arms locked tightly, the pair sauntered around the room, gazing over the party with hidden pride flared in them.

Humming at her words, Luca halted once they were in a dim corner before his fingers found its way up her neck. All he needed was to get the idea of his uncle introducing his wife to the embarrassing childhood pictures of him out of her head and out of her creative thinking. A shudder zipped down his body at the thought of her seeing him in the train-patterned pinned diapers. Oh, he could only imagine the days of her taunting. The area of skin his calloused fingers trailed over bulged with bumping hills at the cooling sensation. To be a mafioso, Luca’s hands were often smeared with a frigid kiss of a gun’s metal. Something she had grown to adapt to.

“Luca,” Y/N hissed at her pesky husband. With a hum, his fingers laid on her cheeks, his lips were nudged to the crook of her neck, nose swirling in her intoxicating scent. “Your family’s here.”

Another hum rumbled from him, albeit, it was just to give an indication of acknowledgement. Even though her fingers were clutching onto the lapels of his jacket to nudge him away, her staggering exhale said otherwise, “How ‘bout I check now?”

With no reply but faint moans, Luca’s fingers descended at a languid pace. Caressing his skin with frigid kisses was the silk fabric of her dress, “Fuck. How can I keep my hands off of you when you look ravishing, especially with this?”

Gently nipping his teeth on the smeared trail of a slithering snake tattoo, all he could imagine was ending the party so they could get out. A dark smear hazed over his already dark iris when he couldn’t feel the usual presence of the garter. Before he had the chance to inquire her, she exhaled an explanation, “Took it off before we arrived.”

Luca’s jaw clenched, teeth grinding over one another at the thought of her bare, ready for him, “All I can think about is just having you on the desk,” Luca mumbled. While the words puffed over her neck, the flesh of his warm lips caressed her with ever so feather touch. “Can you imagine? If we were at home right now? I would just tear this dress apart.”

A gulp plunged down her throat, warmed by her deadly acid. Luca was a tease; unfortunately, she had to learn it the hard way, “Are you wet?” 

He was so close. So close to dragging her out of the party to validate it himself, but, of course, what better night than a family gathering. After his name was once again called out, he reluctantly sauntered away.

As the night aged, Luca had been yanked into countless conversations, hurling him from one side of the room to the other as if he was a throw pillow. He could feel the gurgling acid ascending his throat at the dizzying motion. However, there was one thing his mind couldn’t wipe off and that was his wife. People were rambling on about work or meeting again at a café, but his focus was not set on them. Y/N was in the same room as him. He couldn’t help his mind but divert to the silk red dress she wore. Occasionally, his eyes would steal discreet glances across the room where she would be accompanied by an aunt or his. 

He wouldn’t snap his neck towards her direction if he didn’t know what laid under the sheer fabric. The dress she wore was the exact colour of the brassiere and lace garter she wore. Well, had worn. The Italian knew this because she walked in his studies while he was finishing up some papers, in only the two undergarments. If only they hadn’t have to be rushed. And fuck was it difficult for him to maintain his twitching. Despite them being the couple of the night as they were the one to host the party, the two barely spent time together while she was dragged into gossiping about God knows what.

Cutting off the water supply with a squeak, Y/N paced out of the powder room after she was satisfied with her fixed appearance. Even though her locks of hair had been poking out of its usual, organized manner, the absence of her comb gave her only one option and that was to tolerate the mess throughout the night. As she sauntered into the empty hallway, the sharp clicking of her heels resounded off the brick walls. A buzzing sang from the flickering lights who was starving for electricity. The location of the party might’ve been in an exquisite ball but the powder room had to be underground.

Y/N knew everyone was busy munching on the meals that were being served; however, she felt eyes brushing over her figure. Having ties with the mafia was one thing, married to a mafioso was another. There had been instances where she had let her guard down at situations like this. Thankfully, Matteo or Frederico had been present. It never ended without a smear of blood on her dress. No one could get in, right? The whole mafia was present in the building. As she sauntered down the dim hallway, her shoulders were tensed, eyes set only onto the open arch that led to the ascending stairs.

Steps after steps, she could hear her breathing overlapped by her thrumming heart. A few more and she could glide over the shimmering stairs. Just a few more.

As a chilled hand slammed over her hands, the scream she stressed clogged in her throat. Thrashing in their grip, faint slamming of her unsuccessful attempts to produce at least frantic clicks of her heels whispered. Her clenched arm was ready to plunge her prodding elbow into the figure. That was until a familiar musk trickled into her head; the familiar fabric of a suit made way into her peripheral. With a toothy grin, Luca craned his neck down. Y/N didn’t feel the same way. 

After a smack to his chest and an amused chuckle, his arms wrapped around her waist, pulling her body onto his, “What're you doing?” Y/N hissed, annoyed at the stunt he just pulled.

“You were gone for too long.” He mumbled as his fingers gripped on her waist. His lips pressed chaste kisses on her neck. 

“I was gone for five minutes..” The woman stammered as the frigid bricks kissed her back. Luca’s mouth rested on the spot he knew too much of. The area of her sensitive skin he loved to mark. All she could see was a white haze smeared over her vision at his teasing pecks. Neck angled for better access, the Italian grazed his teeth over the tattoos trailing on her skin. Fuck. If there was one thing that can ruin Luca Changretta, it would be his woman and her tattoos. Too indulged in the ticklish feeling of his kisses, Y/N didn’t notice his hand lowering until it slipped to squeeze her inner thigh.

“Luca...” Y/N moaned, lips pressing one another as she tried her best to suppress the wanton sounds. There was one thing she didn't want. And that was to not be caught by a family member of his in such a public place. Chuckling at her bucking of hips, Luca retracted his fingers. An exasperated sigh brushed her lips, head slamming into the wall at his antics. Eyes blurred with the smeared scribble of his cross tattoo, her breathing puffed over the sole patch ink. At an agonizing pace, he pushed his fingers up. Heat radiated over his skin. Oh, he was close to the mess she had created.

A clearing of a throat trickled into their ears, snapping through the warmth that was shared between the two. Pulling away with flushed faces as if teenagers who had been caught, Luca feverishly sleeked his hair back. Still in shock, Y/N’s cheeks were smeared pink at the sight of her mother-in-law. 

“I know I said I want grandchildren, but I didn’t mean to conceive the poor soul at a family gathering.” Even though her words weaved with disappointment, there was a glint of amusement flickering behind her eyes. After her soft voice seeped through the cracks of the walls and she was no longer in sight, Y/N finally realized what had just happened.

Luca chuckled, head shaking before he burst into strings of laughter. He didn’t know what was funnier, the fact that his mother had nearly caught him fucking his wife or his frozen wife who had still yet to regain from her rigid stance.

Yanking down the hem of her dress, a frustrated groan brushed over her lips. Y/N shot irritated glares at her husband who was in a spell of laughter. Audrey Changretta just saw the hands of her son in her daughter-in-law’s dress, “What?” 

After a faint smack against his chest, Luca noticed her furrowed eyebrows and narrowed eyes, “What?” The woman hissed, mocking him as she clawed through her hair with her fingers in a makeshift comb. “Your mother just saw your fingers in me.”

“Well, technically, it wasn’t in yet,” Another chuckle fell off his lips when she slapped the same, sore spot. Y/N rolled her eyes. “What was I meant to do?”

Having enough of Luca, she let out a huff bnefore stomping away from the scene, “Luca!” The Italian grinned at her squeak once a boisterous smack of his hand against her back echoed through the tranquil hallway. Y/N didn’t even bother to shoot a glance at his words. 

With a matchstick dangling on the corner of his lips, he yelled out as she faded away, “Don’t get too tired, Amore! We’re not done!”

[springfieldblues]

my long ass review for S32E03 Now Museum, Now You Don’t

warning: LONG because i rambled about history more than i thought i would

id been looking forward to this one because i like art history, especially after seeing how they tried their best to stick to historical accuracy in the previous episode I, Carumbus. this time however….they didnt try that hard. i dont know why i thought theyd go through that sort of trouble again LMAO

but its okay, i dont really expect the simpsons to be the paragon of historical accuracy or anything. especially in anthology episodes told through a particular character's lens (in this case, lisa, whos already feverish so whatever)

first i just wanna say that this is, i guess, less of a review and more of an accidental list of history fun facts. so im just gonna get my general thoughts out of the way first.

the episode was fun! to me at least haha. i mean it got me to think and do a lot of research on my own so that must count for something. besides a couple of really weird ones, the jokes were good. anthology episodes tend to be….not that good but i thought this one was one of the better ones so far. idk.

anyway on to lisanardo da vinky its the renaissance! jesus christ the italian accents in the beginning of this segment were annoying as hell but i also feel like that was the joke lmao. ill be real i kind of tuned out for a second there when grampa started rambling so idk what he said.

i told myself i wouldnt get nitpicky with historical accuracy if the jokes were funny (final edit: so that was a lie) but this meh bit with the pizza guys and mascots was really not worth ignoring the fact that its impossible for italy to have any tomato-based food in the 15th century (tomatoes were brought to europe from the americas in the 16th century, and pizza as we know it today—flatbread, cheese, tomato—originated in the late 18th century)

oh this next part was kind of legit tho. lisanardo, like the real leonardo, became andrea del verrochio's apprentice at his workshop. i loved this next bit:

"Whoever paints the sweetest cherub will have the honor of having MY name signed on their work. That's what great artists do!"

SO YEAH as it turns out, lisanardo painted the sweetest cherubs. the painting here is called The Baptism of Christ, and the real leonardo assisted verrochio in finishing it. specifically, he painted the cherubs in the corner.

this causes verrochio to quit and go someplace with less talented people: a music school (yes, verrochio did quit painting after getting owned by young leo and his mad angel painting skills. he never did anything with music tho, he was more of a sculptor)

alongside lisanardo, in mr largo-verrochio's workshop we have barticelli (botticelli bart), dolphatello (donatello dolph), ralphael (raphael...ralph) and mediocrito (no one that i know of. sorry milhouse) (and kearney i guess but they dont refer to him by name). botticelli and donatello are said to have also been apprentices at verrochio's workshop, but raphael came a couple of decades later so he couldnt have been there. and donatello was too old so that claim is a bit questionable. but anyway

it IS true that leonardo's peers envied him, to the point where he was anonymously and purposefully accused of being gay (a major crime punishable by death in 15th century florence) while he was still working at verrochio's workshop

we are then treated by what im pretty sure is the fourth time the show has used 'at seventeen' by janis ian, this time sung by a dejected lisanardo (man they really do keep making yeardley sing these days huh) who only wishes to be appreciated and not envied.

"I'll show them all! I'll show them all in a secret diary that no one will decipher for 400 years!"

some of lisanardo's future inventions. who wouldve known

so after barticelli, for some reason (revenge??? or something?? what was his plan here idgi) steals lisanardo's diaries full of blueprints of her inventions and takes them to mr burns who i have to assume is pope alexander VI here, they decide to use her inventions for war.

"With these, we can kill the most evil people in the world!! ....Slightly different Christians."

leo actually did this of his own accord. im surprised this is what they decided to do with lisanardo instead of talking about leo's love of nature and vegetarianism (not a single mention of that in this episode? come on...) then again, trying to do good only to end up indirectly making things worse is a very standard lisa storyline. i guess they didnt want to miss the chance to have evil pope burns (very fitting, especially for that era since they were all about money and controlling the people)

so lisanardo decides to leave for france, unlike the real leonardo who was more or less persuaded by his ultimate fanboy king francis I to move to france.

"Lisanardo, I have many questions. Why are you hitting yourself? A nerd says 'what'? And how is it possible that I am rubber and you are glue? Et cetera, et cetera."

that line may seem a little random, like hes just nelson saying nelson things (and i mean, obviously he is) but the real francis also "had an unquenchable thirst for learning, and Leonardo was the world’s best source of experimental knowledge. He could teach the king about almost any subject there was to know, from how the eye works to why the moon shines." so yeah, he did have many questions and lisanardo, finally being appreciated for her intellect, was happy to answer them all. its very interesting how lisa assigned this role to nelson in her retelling of da vinci’s life :^)

and so she lived the rest of her days in france, nat king cole's 'mona lisa' plays because duh, and they make a da vinci code reference because duh. and the segment ends. and not a single time did they show the actual mona lisa painting. the fuck?

(ngl i was fully expecting bart to say 'leonardo da vinky' for a second here)

so this next segment is about french impressionist painters, most likely the batignolles group, a name adopted by the early representatives of impressionism. its much more vague than the lisanardo segment since no one here is referred to by name (except moe, more on him in a sec) but i dont feel like it really matters in this case. bart is prrrrooobably claude monet but its hard to say, this segment is kind of a mish-mash of a lot of things. also i gotta say i really liked how lisa introduced the story to bart with an 'if you hate the formal study of art' and not 'if you hate art' because thats exactly my headcanon. i LOVE the concept of artist bart and whenever its referenced it just makes perfect sense to me.

anyway the segment opens in 1863 at the école des beaux-arts (back then it was actually known as the académie des beaux-arts), preserver of traditional french art styles. skinner reviews his students’ paintings one by one. praises the plain, unimaginative paintings depicting your typical european countryside landscapes. very run-of-the-mill (haha get it...cuz theres….a windmill) (although the real académie didnt approve of such basic stuff, they wanted artists to draw epic historical and mythological scenes) then he gets to barts painting and he gives him an F- because the painting made him think.

(the paintings in this scene arent real famous paintings as far as i know but they are inspired by real paintings enough to get the point across)

in comes barney dressed as bacchus as a model for the students to sketch, which i just loved:

barney: “You prefer robe open or robe off?” skinner: “Just cover your privates with this walnut shell.” barney: “Whoa!!! So roomy!”

skinner gasps in horror at bart’s sketch, which “looks nothing like him” and bart explains that “it shouldn’t; we’re making the art that we feel because we can’t compete with a camera.” damn, you go bart. take that, realism. draw what you feel!!

(also no, you didnt need to hold still for 17 hours for a daguerreotype. 30 min tops.)

nelson haw-haw of the week: FOIE-gras!

so here they are at the moulin rouge (“enjoy it before baz luhrmann ruins it” hey shut up. i love that movie), which wouldnt be built for another 26 years, but it is the most widely known gathering place for bohemians in the public consciousness so i can understand why they went with the moulin. nelson delivers this anachronistic line:

“This époque keeps getting beller and beller!”

which alludes to la belle époque, the golden age of france usually dated from 1880 to 1914. made me snort so ill let that slide

and heres moe! as henri de toulouse-lautrec, who was actually born a year after the year this segment is set in. yo moe szyslak he was just 1

toulouse-moetrec introduces himself as the chronicler of the demimonde (not an actual job). an iconic figure associated with the moulin rouge (largely due to his affinity for alcohol and prostitutes), toulouse-lautrec was also a painter, having illustrated a series of posters for the moulin himself. he simply had to be in this segment, anachronisms be damned, just because they decided to include the moulin. cant have one without the other.

and yes he did have a walking cane where he kept his liquor.

i love how everyone drinks absinthe in this place. theyre bohemians what else would they drink

toulouse-moetrec points out that barts paintings are the greatest thing hes ever seen (and hes seen like five things!) and that hes a genius. milhouse realizes that they should stop doing what the teacher says and use their own minds to instead...start doing what bart says lmao. to the easels!

next we have skinner hyping up chalmers about the art his students made for the salon de paris, an art exhibition that the emperor of france will attend. he assures him that none of these paintings will encourage debate, provoke thought or be out of place at a dentist’s office. when they unveil the art, theyre both SHOCKED at how scandalous the paintings actually are.

this reaction was kind of accurate. impressionism was severely rejected at the salon de paris, due to paintings not looking finished enough to them, they thought they were ugly and vulgar for depicting nudity in a contemporary setting (historical and mythological nudity was fine). these impressionist paintings were sent to the salon de refusés, which is. yeah. the place where they sent the rejects. the salon de refusés does not make an appearance but this scene makes a reference to it when the artists get expelled from the royal salon. also:

“What about our student loans?” “Oh they’ll be refunded. We are not barbarians, I mean, come on.”

(god if only)

so the painters are down because they want the emperor to actually see their paintings. toulouse-moetrec pipes in once again with an idea.

“There is one thing the emperor loves more than anything.” “France?” “No, he hates France.”

apparently the emperor really loves cheese, which makes sense since its napoleon III (who loved cheese) and homer (who loves cheese.) so the painters roll into the salon inside a giant wheel of cheese (obviously.) as lenny said, “Eh, you know French cheese. Very runny.” napoleon III chases after the wheel into a room, where the wheel falls apart after getting chomped on by the emperor. now that they got his attention, the painters proudly show the emperor their impressionist art, which he couldnt be more indifferent about because he just wants to eat his cheese dammit, and he awards them with the royal medallion just to kind of get them out of his way. skinner immediately starts kissing ass (as he does) until marge’s like ‘hey wait a minute. you expelled these students from the royal salon’ and an executioner immediately starts ominously measuring skinners neck.

“Uh, sir...is your tongue sticking out because you’re dead or because you’re mad at me?”

and thats the end of that lmao (gore in this episode, gore in the last episode, and next week we’re getting gore too cuz its THOH, what the hell is goin on)

we get a short intermission with maggie, who wants a story for her too! lisa tells her that renaissance artists loved to put babies in their paintings, especially baby angels.

here she is showing her The Triumph Of Galatea by raphael:

King David Playing The Harp by peter paul reubens:

and a very simplified version of pretty much any depiction of hell by hyeronimus bosch lmao:

not much else to say about this one, really. but i really liked that sky!

the last segment is about frida kahlo and diego rivera. or as bart puts it ‘the one about a fat guy whos wife is too good for him.’ i was REALLY looking forward to this one because i love frida and i thought itd be a cool opportunity for animators to go bonkers and do really cool shit with her art as inspiration…..but the segment is not about frida, its about diego and his selling out to capitalism. and its also yet another story with homer and marge drama. no funky cool animation here. sigh i guess i’ll take it

the story begins in 1929 at la casa azul, frida’s home (now museum dedicated to her life and work.) frida and diego are getting married. this courtyard definitely did not look this way yet back in 1929. also theres something very cringy yet funny about lovejoy saying spanish words the way he does, i honestly cant decide how i feel about that one

the writers know theyre being cringy with their gringoness so they go along with it.

moe: “Spanish for ‘best wishes’!” mel: “Spanish for ‘congratulations’!” bumblebee man: “Spanish for ‘muy bueno’!”

OH YEAH BUMBLEBEE MAN this is his new voice actor, eric lopez! hes not mexican but its still great to finally have a latino actor voicing a latino character and hes very excited to be part of the show so i hope to hear more of him!! im rooting for him

el barto/zorro makes an appearance which i am very confused about. he has jack shit to do with frida and diego and mexico in the 20s-30s. el zorro was set in the spanish california of the early 19th century. their use of the original theme song makes me think they just wanted to flex their disney privileges tbh

lets not talk about that that whole scene was bad

anyway diego announces he and frida are going to new york, without even asking her first. frida is obviously pissed.

“Don’t worry, as a woman, you’ll be treated with much more respect in America.”

so in new york, diego is having a bit of a business meeting with mr burns as one of the members of the rockefellers, who is commissioning him to draw a mural for the rockefeller center. its kinda funny how he refers to him and frida as socialists even though they were very much communists lmao its okay you can say it. ok so far, but then frida says ‘yes, we hate the capitalists! right now, a young socialist is being born who will take them down! mr. bernie sanders. i hope hes quick about it’ and that was a simple enough joke and couldve been left at that but then its immediately followed by this weird as fuck family guy-esque cutaway gag to bernie as a baby:

“Getting a cootie shot should not cost your lunch money. And if you don’t listen to me, listen to the Bernie Babies! What? Everybody’s got goons.” *larger babies start beating up this other baby* “I disavow that, and welcome it.”

this confused me so much that i had to ask one of my american friends to help me understand, but even she was like ‘uhhh yeah thats a weird joke,’ especially now that hes been out of the race for months (then again these episodes take almost a year to produce. i guess they couldnt be bothered to replace it with something more relevant.) whatever that was weird and confusing and unfunny moving on

frida is pretty irked that diego is going through with this deal. after all, it goes against everything they believe in. im not sure how the real frida felt about diego doing the mural, but she did feel a bit of rage during her visit to the united states, especially the obvious disparity between rich and poor. she hated having to interact with capitalists and found americans very boring. in this segment, frida seems to be acting more like the american communist party, which diego got kicked out of for accepting commissions from wealthy patrons. in any case, frida is pretty upset about this whole thing.

and finally we get the first and only kind of surreal frida moment. kinda. maybe. its more cartoonish than anything but im desperate ok

interesting how they felt like they had to add a “don’t smoke” in big letters after showing patty and selma flying away on their giant cigarettes. i wonder if this is something theyre making them do now? i remember hearing something about them toning down patty and selma’s smoking

diego comes home to frida, drunk as hell, followed by the marx brothers. i cant believe they didnt make a marxism joke come on it was RIGHT THERE. THE MARX BROTHERS. KARL MARX. COME ON

frida paints her feelings.

this makes diego realize that frida is a genius and he is not half the artist she is. he proclaims he will now show his awe of her by sleeping with other women, starting “an hour ago.” to which frida replies, “and i will start sleeping with other women, starting two hours ago.” yes this was pretty much their relationship. though im just wondering how the hell did diego not know frida was this kind of artist until now? i know homers an idiot but jeez. art was how frida and diego met, diego knew from the get-go that frida was an incredible artist. i guess the fame got to his head or something. again, homer just being stupid.

“well enough already, while the art is still deco, okay?”

its time for the mural diego painted, Man At The Crossroads, to be unveiled:

rockefeller examines it. good and great so far, and then...uh oh

“Who’s that fellow…? With the beard, and the bolshevik smile…” “That’s the founder of Soviet Russia, Lenin!”

“B-b-but he’s a communist!” “Oh he just attended a couple of meetings.”

rockefeller will not have this communist in the temple to capitalism that is the rockefeller center, so he orders diego to paint over it. diego stands his ground and refuses. despite rockefeller’s threats, diego says that theres only one person he wants to be proud of him no matter what and in true homer & marge fashion, frida is touched by this. they happily leave the rockefeller center.

now, the real story of Man At The Crossroads and the rockefeller center was actually not that different. as soon as the rockefellers found out diego had snuck in a portrait of lenin into the mural, they ordered him to paint over it, to which he refused. diego even offered to include abraham lincoln and even american abolitionists in the mural as a compromise, but the rockefellers simply did not want any references to communism whatsoever. they did not complain about the hammer and sickle, though. yes, they did know diego was a communist and hired him anyway. what did they expect? lmao. diego said:

"Rather than mutilate the conception [of the mural], I shall prefer the physical destruction of the conception in its entirety, but preserving, at least, its integrity."

so they decided to destroy the mural before it was even finished and they never talked to each other again.

diego then repainted the mural at the palacio de bellas artes back in mexico, this time known as Man, Controller of the Universe. this new version included even more communist leaders and a depiction of john d. rockefeller jr. drinking at a nightclub, right underneath a depiction of syphilis bacteria. cue nelson haw-haw:

this was the version they used in the episode also, since the original was, well, never finished and also destroyed. only a black and white photograph of it exists, taken by diego before it was destroyed so he could remake it.

right so, homer!diego then pulls a Barthood and finishes the episode with a large mural summarizing the entire episode. he says some rick and morty thing i didnt get because i dont watch the show idk idc

the end

ALRIGHT NOW ITS TIME FOR THE STORY OF VINCENT VAN MOE