#but irs also undeniably canon

[winter-kh-sideblog]

Kingdom hearts really made a character and said “hi this is naminé, she’s a sweet little girl in a bad situation and basically she’s made out of… she’s what would happen if you had kairi’s heart in sora’s body” and then they LATER came back and said “actually she’s not made of kairi anymore, she’s her own person. She has her own heart. But like. In riku’s body. In a body made to look identical to riku” and it is so funny to me that no one noticed she was transgender because they were too busy crying over kingdom hearts lore. Anyway go namine ,,, trans rights

[saintsenara]

Idk, Remus was this kid who knew nothing but prejudice and isolation before Hogwarts, my lukewarm take is not that he was in with the prank nor that Sirius broke his heart and trust forever for revealing his secret.

I think young and dumb teenage Remus, riding the high of his young and dumb friends already overlooking the gravity of his condition by hanging out with him as animals, was dumbfounded by the fact that someone thought little of his condition to think the whole thing would be a funny prank. Maybe, in a backwards way to process the whole thing, he also chose to believe it was just that.

Deep down I’d guess the self-hatred only grew, and the same way Snape was scared of him, he was scared of Snape - in SWM, he’s not just ignoring James and Sirius tormenting Snape, he’s paralysed). SWM has got to be after the prank, since he was still talking to Lily when it happened.

I think adult Remus sees things differently, the thing about the prank discourse is there is no resolution. Would Remus ever have apologised sincerely, for dismissing Snape’s pain to defend his friends? Would Snape ever have accepted his apology? Can we admit that, tho Snape was undeniably a victim, he also fostered an unfair bias towards werewolves that can also justify Remus’s bitterness (a bitterness that he’ll forever try to hide).

Idk, just rambling. I’ll be a minority here, defending Lupin, but could be worse, I could be defending Sirius.

i'm not sure i back this - although you and i are certainly aligned on not thinking that the prank ruins lupin's relationship with sirius.

[and also in thinking that his incredibly strange upbringing needs to be taken into account when dealing with his various... idiosyncrasies.]

i just think that the idea that he was afraid of snape - even if only as a teenager - doesn't really stand up. my reading - not only of snape's worst memory but of lupin's assessment of his youth in prisoner of azkaban - is that his self-loathing is connected to two divergent things: the first, that he likes james and sirius' cruelty, recklessness, and danger - and the fact that they go out of their way [literally becoming animagi!] in order to allow him to participate in this - and is ashamed of himself as an adult [after 1981, when james' recklessness gets him killed] for this; the second, that he dislikes james and sirius' cruelty, recklessness, and danger, but is ashamed of himself for never confronting them over their excesses [worried as he is - i think there's a strong case to be made from canon - that james, the man he thinks of as his best friend in the whole world, would side with sirius against him].

he behaves the way he does in snape's worst memory because his friends are - as harry puts it - humiliating someone in the middle of a crowd of onlookers for absolutely no reason. the decent thing to do in such a situation is to try and stop them - but that requires a willingness to risk the ire of one's friends which someone with lupin's life experience [the isolation of his youth making him desperate to cling to any friendship he's offered, no matter how unsuitable - which is very like snape...] doesn't have.

i don't think - to be clear - that lupin's actions are unforgivable. indeed, i think far more of us would behave like him in an equivalent situation than we'd like to admit, and that's something always worth being aware of. but i think that the other side of that coin is that it's fine to state frankly that he acts like a coward when it comes to snape's worst memory. there doesn't need to be a deeper interpretation of his behaviour which makes him appear more sympathetic - he's frozen because unfreezing would mean having to involve himself against james and sirius. and that's something he simply doesn't want to do.

i'm also unconvinced that snape's attitude towards werewolves is unfair. it's striking in prisoner of azkaban that - while snape is terrified of lupin due to his lycanthropy - his primary concern is that lupin is aiding and abetting sirius [who he believes is the death eater who sent voldemort to kill lily - there is no suggestion whatsoever that he knew wormtail was the real traitor] while in human form. he leverages social prejudice in order to bring about lupin's dismissal from his job - since dumbledore doesn't take his concerns about human!lupin seriously - sure... but one of the circles the canon text's worldbuilding never fully squares is that this social prejudice is... completely legit.

lupin is the series' one "good werewolf" - who embraces the "civilising" influence of the wizarding world's social conventions, and is the only werewolf in the series harry, from whose perspective the narrative is written, likes - and so the prejudice he experiences is something the text views as cruel. the prejudice experienced by werewolves like fenrir greyback, on the other hand, is something the text sets up as entirely justifiable. after all, werewolves are dangerous and the mechanisms which exist to reduce that danger are relatively new [lupin says in prisoner of azkaban that the wolfsbane potion is a "very recent discovery"] - being afraid of them is an entirely sensible position, even if one has never almost eaten you.

[which is why jkr's lycanthropy-as-aids metaphor is complete and utter bullshit - and is one of the long list of things she ought to have shut her mouth about.]

[balanceoflightanddark]

I've read several Azulaang AUs where Aang gets Azula to open and master all of her chakras. Each with their own take on what's blocking them.

What do you think is blocking all of Azula's chakras? What's your take?

Well, I'm not a huge expert on chakras, but I can think of a few things that might be interfering with Azula's if you want to go that route. Course this is gonna take a little bit to go through each and every one of them, so get comfy.

Earth: This one should be fairly easy. This chakra deals with survival and is blocked by fear. Fear and Azula go together like bread and butter. Sure, many people think of Azula causing fear, but you also have to remember that Azula is terrified herself. Particularly of failure and the consequences of failure. Especially poignant since...well, the price of failure could possibly be maiming or even worse. A very real possibility with Ozai as your father. Hell, in the novelization of Sozin's Comet, we get this particular scene:

Overcoming and opening her Earth chakra means overcoming her fear of failure. Which would be difficult, but also a major step since that means overcoming Ozai's conditioning.

2. Water: Another fairly obvious one. This deals with pleasure and is blocked by guilt. People often accuse of Azula of having no guilt for a lot of things. Which in many ways isn't entirely inaccurate (I mean, you can't exactly feel guilty over something you do that for your entire life is told to be correct). However, we do get a good idea of what might be blocking this particular chakra in the mirror scene.

We see in this scene that Azula admits that she did treat Mai and Ty Lee poorly, but also said she didn't have any choice because...well, fear is the only reliable way in her mind. Hell, she wouldn't be reacting this way if she didn't have any guilt over the whole mess. Even though, again, when you grow up under Ozai's shadow, that screws up how you view the world. Coming to grips with how wrong her worldview is and forgiving herself for how bad things got with some of the only positive relationships in her life can help unblock this chakra.

3. Fire: Driven by willpower. Blocked by shame. Azula has a determination that puts a lot to others to shame. To be the best firebender, the perfect daughter, the embodiment of what the Fire Nation should be. And her success was driven by that will (and less luck as Zuko puts it), particularly with firebending and being able to bend blue fire.

Unfortunately, the shame of her humiliating defeat at Sozin's Comet probably shattered that willpower. And I could see it affecting her firebending if she's as shaken as she was in canon about what happened. Learning that her loss doesn't necessarily mean she's a failure and learning to fall in love with firebending outside of the context of combat and competitiveness to just firebending for firebending's sake, to appreciate the effort it takes to be so good can go a long way to unblock this chakra.

4. Air: Embodiment of love. Blocked by grief. Azula and love...yeesh. What a complicated history that one is. Azula is undeniably capable of love, and did have love for her family members. She wouldn't have hallucinated Ursa and been shaken by her rejection if that weren't the case. She did care about Zuko enough to bring him home with his honor intact while warning him about visiting Iroh. And her love for Ozai is undeniable.

And they all left in the end. Ursa neglected her. Zuko took everything from her (taking one of the few genuinely compassionate acts she did and throws it in her face). And Ozai abandoned her to the wolves. Not to mention her ruined relationship with Mai and Ty Lee, and she's more than wracked with grief. Again, she wouldn't have broken down if she didn't love them. That is the meaning of loss and grief.

5. Sound: Embodiment of truth. Blocked by lies.

...

Yeah that goes without saying that Azula is a knack liar. More importantly, even to herself. Azula's convinced herself that she's some irredeemable monster. That her only choice is to play with the cards given to her and embrace that notion of being a monster.

Thing is...she isn't. As proven before, she's NOT a monster. She is capable of showing compassion and love. Even if she's bad at showing it, she's not the callous, heartless demon she tries to present herself as. Unblocking this chakra means accepting that her lie is exactly that: a lie. And embracing the truth that she is indeed capable of so much more than what Ozai or herself have taught her to be.

6. Light: Embodies insight. Blocked by illusion. We've talked about lying before, but this particular one can also mean her regards to the Fire Nation in general. Azula, like so many others, was raised with the belief that the Fire Nation was the superior nation. That fire was the superior element, and that their way was justified.

But just like Azula's lie, the illusion is just an illusion. The Fire Nation isn't inherently better than the others, and their drive, their cause was built on the ego of the Fire Lords and a misguided attempt to bring about a world in their own image. If the previous chakras are about breaking down Azula's self image and her relationship to Ozai, then it sets the bedrock for unblocking this chakra and discovering just what the Fire Nation truly has done.

7. Thought: Embodies pure cosmic energy. Blocked by earthly ties. This one is...unique. The others are at least defined by something concrete. Pure cosmic energy is something that's a bit more abstract. Azula's earthly ties are easy. They're all the blockages that we've just mentioned and shaped her as a person. And we've just talked about how she can overcome them.

The final step would be to finally break ties from them. To accept that no, she's NOT defined by Ozai. She's NOT a monster. And she can be more than what Ozai or the previous Fire Lords had wanted her to be. This is the critical point. It's accepting that she can be good and do the right thing no matter where she came from. Thus, coming to terms with her past, and choosing to move on and forge a new future for herself. At least how I'd interpret this.

So...yeah. This is how I'd view Azula's chakras, what's blocking them, and what can be done to clear them. It'll take time, but I do believe she's capable of it. I mean, she has addressed some of the issues herself. Now it's a matter of capitalizing on what she's learned and putting them into practice.

Thanks for the ask, anon! This was actually a bit of fun. Maybe this can be a sort of roadmap for anyone interested in writing an Azula redemption fic or something.

[teaveetamer]

Something among others that bothers me in this fandom is how many blame Rodrigue for anything and everything while saying that Felix is blameless in their issues. Like how when Rodrigue dies, they blame Rodrigue for never reconciling with Felix first when irs Felix who pushed away his dad for years and Felix who never wanted to reconcile. They act like Rodrigue is a dick to focus on Dimitri while dying when he literally died saving Dimitri and Felix isn't in that scene. (Part 1)

Now I'll admit, I think AG handled Felix and Rodrigue 10x better now. Because Rodrigue is playable, he has support, he interacts with Felix more often, and this Felix is more mature too. But simultaneously it does seem to be fixing the issues I had. In the alt path where Rodrigue dies, that cutscene is everything I wanted from AM: Rodrigue even focuses on both Dimitri and Felix, too, while Felix speaks to his dad before Rodrigue dies. AG does both characters very well IMO (part 2)

Oooooh yeah that one always rustles my jimmies. I did a whole post about it awhile back.

TL;DR: While yes, Rodrigue is the adult in this situation, there is still only so much he can do if Felix isn't willing to meet him in the middle. He can't force Felix to be okay with him, and trying could potentially drive the wedge between them further.

Also the argument that Dimitri "stole" Rodrigue from Felix is completely ridiculous on his face. It is 100% undeniable directly stated canon that Dimtiri hasn't even seen Rodrigue in two years when 3H's academy phase begins.

And no, even before that he didn't "steal" Rodrigue. He committed the heinous crime of... checks notes... being a literal child who was traumatized by the massacre of his friends and family and then traumatized again by being forced to witness the genocide that followed (which, despite his best efforts to stop it, he was only able to save one person).

You can argue that Rodrigue should have paid more attention to Felix after Glenn's death if you like, but you are a monster if you genuinely argue that Rodrigue should have just completely ignored this 12/13 year old he viewed as a second son after Dimitri experienced an assassination attempt, dozens of people he was close to (including his own father!) being murdered in front of him, being orphaned, and then a literal genocide... all because Felix had his feelings hurt over the Faeghus equivalent of "he's in a better place now". Is it valid for Felix to have his feelings hurt and be grieving his brother's death? Absolutely. Does it make Rodrigue a bad person to look at Dimitri and say "you know what, this kid needs me right now too"? No, it absolutely does not.

Additionally, Felix's issue with Rodrigue is never about how Rodrigue treated Dimitri after Lambert was murdered. It was entirely about what Rodrigue said to him about Glenn's death. Similarly, Felix's issues with Dimitri are never about Rodrigue. I don't even know how people twisted it so that Felix just hates Dimitri for "stealing his dad". Felix's issue with Dimitri is completely separate from Rodrigue.

And yeah, his death scene in AM has problems... but that's 100% a consequence of permadeath needing to permadeath. Can't have Felix in the scene if Felix is dead (and lol you think they have the budget to make two of these CGs and record an actual meaningful difference in the dialogue? Nah, nah, we had to put that budget into tea time).

I haven't seen the alt path of AG where Rodrigue dies for myself, but I think his relationship with Felix is handled fairly well in AG. I think it does at least demonstrate that Felix needed to grow up and mature a bit before he was in a place where he was able to understand where Rodrigue was coming from (and forgive him). Even though I don't think it was handled perfectly, it was definitely handled better.

[im-the-punk-who]

I was thinking about when Miranda said how great men are made great by the relentless pursuit of a better world and the ending of black sails, how James actually stops the war to be with Thomas (it depends on how you see the after canon but still) and I wanted to know your thoughts about this (if u have any). Sorry for the bad english

Oof okay...so. Uh. This is actually something I feel really strongly about! Please don’t take any of this as like, a negative/takedown thing, but I disagree with the basic premise you’re working from. Nothing personal! Just, that’s not how I see the finale.

So the basic premise of “Flint chose-” in regards to the finale is not true to me. 

Flint didn’t ‘choose’ anything. His ‘choices’ were death, or giving in. At the point which Silver leads him into the forest, the war is already over.  Without Silver, and especially with his active opposition, the war has no chance. We see that Silver is able to convince the maroons and the pirates(presumably over Madi’s objections) that the war is not worth fighting. We also know that Silver holds a lot more sway with the men at this point than Flint. And, Silver has a gun pointed at him and very clearly says “If you don’t accept this outcome I’m going to shoot you. I will stand here for however long it takes you, but your options are giving in to this, or a bullet between the eyes.” Because Silver knows that what Miranda said is absolutely true. Flint is not ever going to give up the fight. He has internalized this relentless pursuit of a better world as a way to memorialize Thomas, yes, but he also truly believes in it. It’s why I assume Silver didn’t just have Thomas brought to Nassau. If he truly thought that all it would take to calm Flint’s ire was to have his love back, why not just set Thomas up somewhere with a house and a cow and give Flint a map and say ‘go find your husband’ ? 

It’s because he knew that wouldn’t work. He knew that Flint, for all that he would dither about it, would not choose Thomas over the war; just as he expected Silver to choose the war over Madi. This becomes doubly true if it wasn’t an active choice of ‘the war or Thomas’ death.’ 

People give a lot of credence to when Flint says ‘I don’t know that I wouldn’t have done what you did’ as a support for him actively giving up the war, but that’s not comparable to his choice in the finale, because Thomas is not in active danger from him continuing the war. Madi’s survival depended on the surrender of the chest in Silver’s mind - and Flint still expected him to choose the war. 

And remember he already knows Thomas is alive. 

If at that point, again, Silver truly thought that Thomas would be enough to stop Flint, why not tell Flint Thomas was alive, watch him leave, and then surrender the chest to secure Madi’s freedom? 

Because he knows that’s not a choice Flint would make: 

I think if he knew how close we were to winning this war he gave his life for, he wouldn’t want me to.

(And oh, what a nice parallel we have there for Madi and Thomas!)

What Flint might do, though, is choose Thomas over death.

Silver doesn’t want to kill Flint. We can argue from dusk until dawn over the reasons, but that much is undeniably true. Some would say it’s because he loves him, I argue it’s because he doesn’t, as Max says when she tells him about the plantation “want to live with it.” 

Silver has always insisted that guilt goes away, that one’s past has no prescience, but he knows that is not true, and he also knows that if he kills Flint, Madi will absolutely never speak to him again. (I hope she never does anyway but it’s a surety if he kills her partner.) 

So anyway, Flint knows this when Silver points the gun at him. 

“So, what decisions have you made, about what our tomorrows will be?”

He knows he’s been outmatched. He knows that Silver has outgunned him. He knows that the war he and Madi have given so much for is dead because of Silver’s lack of faith and ability to see something through to the end. There is no fight, after this. 

And it is into this context that Silver has given him the choice - one in which Silver expects him to choose death unless he presents James with an alternative. 

Silver knows about Thomas. He knows about Miranda, about how suicidal Flint has been the entire time Silver has known him. He knows that death does not scare Flint. You point a gun at the man and he just shrug emojis like ‘well if there’s nothing I can do you might as well, both the people I love are dead.��

And that’s why he tells Flint about Thomas. Thomas is his ace in being able to convince Flint he maybe doesn’t want to die. To convince him there is a second option.

But again, the war is already over. Flint was not given the choice of 

Continue the war

Get Thomas back

The choice was 

Go to the plantation and be imprisoned there with Thomas

Die

(This is also why I have a huge problem with Silver’s story to Madi, because he is seeing this as a choice - just as he sees his staying on the island as a choice for Madi. He ignores the fact that a) ‘reorienting’ to the daylight is literally him forcing Flint to reassimilate into British society and b) there IS no returning to who Flint was before ‘the nightmare started’. For him, he might think that’s possible. Hell! HE might even wish it. I think he truly does. But for Flint? Who defines himself by his history? This is not a victory, or a happy ending, or a gentle waking. And for Silver(and fandom) to assume it is, erases everything we know about James Flint and again takes any sort of responsibility to atone off of Silver. Which, I suppose, is the point, as in order to paint him as the kind of villain we know in treasure island, you have to.) 

[gusu-emilu]

mdzs/untamed figure skating AU where the names of their signature skating programs are the names of their weapons.

wei wuxian names his performance ‘suibian’ (’whatever’) and maximizes points with dangerous stunts that push as close to breaking the rules as possible. he skates with wild, unconventional style that is bursting with raw energy and is exhilarating to watch, making him an audience favorite. he is the highest scoring competitive skater in the country, but his arrogance and tomfoolery rouse the ire of both his peers, who admire and envy him, and his coaches, who implore him to take a step back before he hurts himself.

lan wangji names his program ‘bichen’ (’to avoid worldly matters,’ literally ‘to avoid dust’) and focuses on clean, graceful, steady movements to the sound of the guqin. his bright bluish-silver costume with perfectly matching skates is instantly recognizable. in ‘bichen,’ he illustrates the concept of achieving strength and power through tranquility. as a critics’ darling with impeccable form, lwj is second only to wwx. their rivalry is milked by the media and is a staple of the figure skating scene by now, although the other skaters would tell you that despite their radically different ideas and frequent bickering, they are always in each other’s company at competitions.

jiang cheng performs a thrilling routine called ‘zidian’ (’purple lightning’). its concept is the search for one’s soul. the gentle, stately first half of the routine explodes into a fast-paced, technically challenging performance with an astounding number of spins. jc is known for his unique style of dancelike arm movements between jumps. jc and wwx are like brothers. since they were toddlers, jc and wwx have been coached together on the yunmeng team by skating power couple jiang fengmian and yu ziyuan. however, rumor has it that the coaches shamelessly play favorites among their students, with the most prominent example being jfm’s subtle bias toward wwx and yzy’s outspoken preference for jc, resulting in an unhealthy amount of pressure on the two young men.

jiang yanli skates to the program ‘lianhua’ (’lotus flower’) because yes, lotus pork rib soup is her canon weapon. if yuri katsuki could be a pork cutlet bowl that ensnares men, jyl can be powerful too. anyway. the theme for ‘lianhua’ is eternal consolation and comfort, and her skating style is choreographed with sweeping motions to radiate warmth onto the skating rink. according to the wishes of her coach, jyl is thinking about switching to a pair skating routine with jin zixuan (more on him later). wwx and her brother jc are currently begging jyl to continue her solo career instead. at the same time, the two are investigating, interrogating, and intimidating jin zixuan in case the partnership does happen.

known as the venerated traid, lan xichen, nie mingjue, and jin guangyao all came from the same skating school but ended up on different teams. still, they remained best friends and help with each other’s training, although the relationship between nmj and jgy has become a bit strained. famously, the venerated triad designed their routines to have complementary themes (explained below).

lan xichen’s program is named ‘liebing’ (’cracked ice’). it portrays the restoration of harmony to a world that is falling apart. lxc skates to a piece of music with a prominent flute part. his style is similar to lwj’s but gentler. together, lxc and lwj are known as the ‘twin jades’ of the skating world, both coached on the gusu team by the notoriously strict lan qiren.

nie mingjue performs ‘baxia,’ named after a mythological dragon with the shell of a turtle. the program’s theme is carrying the weight of the world. many criticize nmj for his choppy form, but it is inevitable with his routine being one of the most physically demanding in figure skating history. when he is not training, he drops in as a qinghe assistant coach to his younger brother nie huaisang, who scrapes by at the very bottom of the professional skating scene with lackluster bird-themed routines, more well known for his aviary, art collection, and party attendance than for his skills. although he doesn’t seem to care much about his own skating career, nhs is undeniably nmj’s biggest fan.

jin guangyao names his program ‘hensheng’ (’hating to be born’ or ‘hatred of life’). its theme is survival when the world turns against oneself. in this performance full of angst, jgy’s skating style emphasizes physical flexibility and emotional expression over power. although jgy used to be unknown and does not score very high, his popularity skyrocketed after he exposed the doping scandal of his own team, led by wen ruohan. in a viral interview, he told the story of how he was bullied while on the qishan team. once he became so popular, the lanling team snatched him into their ranks.

jin zixuan calls his routine ‘suihua’ (’the passage of time’). this ambitious program is divided into eight equal-length sections, each representing a different generation of his family, telling a story of wealth and success. his performance, albeit gaudy, is high scoring. along with jgy, he is from the lanling team, which is lavishly funded and grants him access to the best resources. one of his coaches, madam jin, is enthusiastic about planning his partnership with jyl. in fact, she is already working on the choreography. however, jzx is hesitant to give up his solo career, especially as his scores begin to approach wwx and lwj.

[little plot idea]: after a nearly-fatal injury caused by his reckless techniques, wwx must spend a year in recovery. when he is cleared to skate again, he is warned that he cannot attempt his old style of skating without exacerbating the injury. with the help of lwj, wwx readapts his style and returns to the ice with a new program called ‘chenqing’ (’setting forth one’s thoughts,’ ‘explaining one’s actions’). it is about finding beauty in darkness. his movements are aggressive yet elegant, chaotic yet balanced. he seems to have finally found a way to calm his style while maintaining his characteristic edge.

i don’t know how or when to work it in, but because it’s so beautiful and needs to be included, later in their careers wwx and lwj perform a pair skate called ‘wangxian’ (’forgetting envies’). credit to @wackopig​ for this stunning idea.

(after i finished writing this post i got curious and found wip figure skating AU fics that i haven’t read but now NEED to, one by @zizzani​ who has a figure skating fic on AO3, and Rinnoa’s fic on AO3. kudos to y’all doing the lord’s work)

i don’t have the discipline to write a full-on fic and I know nothing about figure skating lol. but i want to do a post for fun with plot ideas later. wen ning and wen qing show up as owners of a small skating rink and hot spring while raising a-yuan, in the way that @wackopig​ made up that i love so much. i think it would be interesting if wn and wq are disgraced members of wen ruohan’s team who got banned from skating due to the doping scandal, but they were forced into taking the drugs against their will and never got their names cleared. also there’s likely a lot of jin ling because i want him to perform his late father’s routine. wwx and lwj coach both lan sizhui and jin ling. also thinking about how to get the yi city folks in here too, because who doesn’t want to see a songxiao pair skate and xue yang doing a murder-themed performance called ‘to cause disaster’? anyway if you have any ideas for plot hmu!

[coruscantguard]

The Unkindness of Nothingness

@loving-fox-hours - Fox Week - Day 1 - Mind Control

Commander Fox, Commander Wolffe

Warning for mind control, the aftermath of canonical character deaths, grief/mourning, self-destructive thoughts, and suicidal ideation

(Ao3 Link)

1.

A mind trick is a Force ability that lets it's user control the actions, thoughts, and beliefs of another being.

This is what Fox will not remember:

His gun is set to stun.

Can't say I blame you, for wanting revenge on a traitor, his brain hisses at him as Rex rounds on him in the warehouse. But the second half of the statement never comes. General Skywalker is furious and self-assured in a way that reminds him all too much of Chancellor Palpatine's rare moments of rage, but he never pulls his lightsaber, never moves towards arrest. He doesn't need to, though. He has the Chancellor's ear. That's as good as a death sentence for anyone who's foolish enough to earn his ire.

And considering the expression on General Skywalker's face, Fox thinks it's safe to say that he's earned the man's ire.

She's killed three clones, he had said, back then, and his voice hadn’t wavered, steadfast in his knowledge and stance. Now Rex is saying something— yelling it, but no, not Rex, he's never needed to yell, he's just speaking— and he's killed a brother. Oh, kark. He's killed a brother.

Fox looks down at his gun. It's set to stun. He knows it is, he had checked it before entering the warehouse. He’s not a cadet.

But—

Hut-uun, his brain whispers. Coward.

He closes his eyes, runs his finger over the switch and— there. There. His eyes may deceive him, but his hands do not, and his gun is undeniably set to kill.

There's no use denying it. What could he even say? I didn't mean to means nothing when there's a dead body on the ground, I thought it was on stun is nothing but an excuse.

He feels... disconnected from his body, almost. Like he’s not quite all there, like half of him is floating in the wind, and the other half just doesn’t exist anymore. He might be in shock. He knows that his skin feels clammy, and that his breathing is going too fast. He knows that his heart beats, and it’s beating too quickly. That... sounds like shock. Probably. Maybe. He sways, and—

Fox just killed a brother.

Oh, Force, he just killed a brother.

Kark.

2.

However, beings that are particularly defiant can oftentimes resist mind tricks.

Three weeks later, Wolffe comms him when he’s sitting alone in his office, reviewing Scipio for what feels like the thousandth time, but is probably only the sixth.

He can decline the call. He should decline the call. He has work to do, he always has work to do, and he knows that putting it off will cause him more stress in the future. He can talk to Wolffe later, he should choose his work, choose the closest thing he has to a life, push down the ache in his heart and do his karking job.

But he can also accept the call. He can slack off, ignore his own responsibilities just because he’s having a bad day, and take a moment for himself. He can do what his mind is saying is weak, do what he shouldn’t do, take a break despite the fact that when he last took a break he got Thorn killed—

(The break had been something more akin to Naia finally losing her ever-present calm and ordering him to stay in medical for 48 hours, or so help the Force, but... semantics. It’s a good thing that Naia had made him lie down, anyway, the timing was just less than ideal. Still, it could have been prevented if he hadn’t decided to forego his own functionality, and that’s what really kills him about the whole mess. He shouldn’t of needed to take a break, but he did, and Thorn died because of it.)

His choice here is accept or decline. His choice here is between doing what he knows Thorn would want him to do, and listening to the part of his mind that’s crying out at him that he must pay some kind of penance for his rapidly multiplying number of sins. He can think of the flames he’ll most likely die in, think of the fate that awaited every brother before him, or he can think instead of the water they came from and the stars that await them. He can bypass the wishes of a dead man, or listen to the whispers of the stars, the voices of those now gone.

He can accept the call, or he can hit decline.

“Commander Wolffe,” Fox greets, when Wolffe shows up on the holocomm. “Well, you’re looking better than last time.”

3.

A powerful Force user can oftentimes make a defiant being to bow to their will by using more invasive techniques to get inside their victim’s head.

Fox used to know Wolffe like the back of his hand.

They’re batchmates, of course he used to know him so well. They’d grown up at each other’s side, butting heads at every turn and sneaking around Kamino together. At one point in time, he and Wolffe had been so in sync that they were oftentimes (mistakenly) thought to be twins.

They haven’t been that in sync for years now, though.

Still, he knows that Wolffe used to like the color red, but doesn’t anymore. He knows that Wolffe is a menace when it comes to hand-to-hand. He knows that he’s got one of the best Jedi Generals in the entire kriffing GAR, knows that the Wolfpack wears grey for mourning, knows that Wolffe wants to protect, knows that he’s good at protecting.

But with the way the war is going, with how little he’s gotten to see Wolffe these last few years, he doesn’t know much else.

He does know Wolffe, though. And Wolffe knows him. Wolffe knows him infuriatingly well. He’s annoyingly good at seeing through Fox’s bullshit, which is probably why he ended up accepting the call instead of hitting decline.

Wolffe greets him with the curt reminder that, “last time I was in a hospital bed.” He follows that up with, “And I can’t say the same to you. Fox, you know you look like osik, right?”

“I’m aware, yes, thank you.”

“Osik that got kriffing stomped on, ground into the dirt, and left out to get stomped on again? ”

It’s, hands down, the bluntest, rudest thing a brother has said to him since the warehouse, and Fox finds his lips twitching up despite himself, despite the fact that he really should be offended, or at least annoyed. “You kiss your mother with that mouth?”

“Oh, go kark yourself.”

4.

Concussions and similar head traumas are known to increase a being's susceptibility to mind tricks.

“I meant to do it,” Fox says, insists, when they finally get around to broaching the topic. He says it because that is what he knows, that is the only thing that he knows, that is what he’s been clinging to to keep from drowning. “I meant to kill him. I know that.”

Wolffe’s expression is unreadable, but he thinks there might be something akin to concern in his eye, which is just weird. “How do you know that,” Wolffe demands, and the lack of inflection makes it sound more like an order than a genuine question.

“I don’t— ” Fox breaks off, looks to the side, because Force, he’s tired, and where’s that silver tongue now, Commander? You know what happens to clones that falter. “I just do, okay? I do. I can’t put it into words, but...”

He can see Wolffe’s eyes narrow through the comm, practically feel what Fox would bet is a combination of disbelief and disgust, and wants to both back away from it and submerge himself within. All he’s gotten from Stone recently is worry, and all he’s gotten from Thire is a mixture of caution and avoidance. He feels like he’s walking on tiptoes around the entire Guard now, like they’re just waiting for him to crack and lose it.

Honestly, they probably are. Fox certainly is.

“And you’re okay with that?” Wolffe asks icily, because that’s how Wolffe cares, how he worries— with a sharp edge masking it. Fox knows what he’s really asking, anyway.

Are you really okay with not knowing why? With having no context for this bone-deep certainty you have regarding your intent? Are you really okay with just nodding and believing?

“I have to be,” Fox hears himself admit, and it’s distant from him in a way that it shouldn’t be, uncomfortable on his tongue in a way that it can’t be. He doesn’t know how to explain to Wolffe that if he doesn’t have this, he has nothing, not his life, or his name, or his job, or his brain. “There’s nothing else.”

...And Force, that’s depressing to think about.

“Really?” Wolffe asks, and his judgement is clear in his tone. Fox almost wants to sob in relief when he hears it, because finally, finally, there’s a brother that’s not treating him like he’s glass that's about to break.

(Rex doesn’t count for that one. He made his thoughts on their status as brothers pretty clear back in the warehouse. Fox might not be the best at letting things go, but even he can admit that pushing Rex any further with this one is a monumentally bad idea.)

(Torrent is currently deployed, anyway. It’s physically impossible for him to randomly run into Rex and act on that bad idea, say something that’ll earn him a punch in the face, even if the self-destructive part of himself kind of wants to.)

“Really?” Wolffe demands again after he lets the silence stretch on for too long. Fox blinks at the question, then blinks again. Right. Answers. He should answer Wolffe, probably. There's got to be a suitable answer to that question somewhere in his brain. He just has to find it.

He just has to find it.

5.

It's also been theorized that being in a state of shock can increase a being’s susceptibility to mind tricks, but this has not been confirmed by any studies.

“If I’m not—” Fox finally makes himself say, but he then breaks off, not liking the way the words curl up in his chest, the way they taste bitter in his mouth. It takes a few moments to force himself to start again. “If I’m not okay with it, if I start to doubt it, then. Then that entire day is a haze. That’s the only part of it that really sticks out. That, that I really remember.”

Wolffe’s eyebrows scrunch together. Fox continues. These words aren’t the right words, but they’re the only ones he’s managed to find, so they have to be the right words.

“I think I may have dissociated during it. I mean, I know I was in shock afterwards. But. But the entire day feels just... wrong, when I think about it.”

“Have you—”

“And if I’m dissociating badly enough that I’m losing whole days, and people are getting killed because of it,” he says, cutting Wolffe off, because he has to say this all at once, or else he’ll never say it. He knows that, knows himself, knows that he’ll tuck it away in a corner of his brain and leave it there to rot, because he’s karking scared of it. Because he doesn’t want to admit this, doesn’t want it to be true, doesn’t want to put it into words and confront it. “If. If I’m doing that. Then it’s my responsibility to report it. And to step down from the Guard.”

“Fox—”

“If I can’t control my own mind, then I can’t be the Commander of the Guard. If I can’t control my own mind, then I’m defective. And I won’t put brothers in undue danger just because I don’t want to be—” decommissioned, reconditioned, “— removed from my position. I already have enough blood on my hands, Wolffe.”

He can tell, instantaneously, that Wolffe wants to deny it, wants to argue with him, is about to argue with him, but... they both know he’s right. They both know that Fox is speaking the truth. If he’s a danger to his own men, he has to stand down before he gets any more of them killed.

“You should visit the Healers at the Temple,” Wolffe finally says, and he looks troubled, which is worrying all on it’s own. Wolffe has two facial expressions, and those facial expressions are annoyance and anger. Troubled is not one of them. Troubled has never been one of them. “They probably could help. They’re not the aiwha-bait, at least, so you shouldn’t just disappear into a deep, dark hole if they find something interesting.”

“Yeah, maybe,” Fox makes himself admit, because Wolffe does have a point, and he doesn’t want to go to Kamino, but... the Jedi Temple isn’t just somewhere you can walk into without scheduling an appointment. And there’s something in his mind, some memory just out of reach, that’s telling him not to record his movements, something that’s warning him not to leave behind a trail. Which makes no sense, because the best defense a clone has if they’re accused of something is an airtight alibi, and the easiest way to have one of those is to have a record of all your movements.

“Could the Guard manage, if you had to take a leave of absence?” Wolffe asks, and the answer to that question, at least, is a no-brainer.

“Absolutely,” Fox replies, and there’s no hesitation with it, no need to stop and think. He’s been preparing for the eventuality of his death for years. The Guard will be able to stand without him. “Stone could do it in a pinch, if worse came to worst, but he shouldn’t need to, because Thire is trained to do it, and he’s good. He’s really good.”

That is both true, and an incredibly large understatement, because Thire is good. Thire is fantastic, and he’s achieved so much more than Fox could have ever predicted. There’s a reason he’s never regretted putting his cards on the too reckless, too self-sacrificing Lieutenant all those years ago. “But Thire is still new to being a Commander. And, he was supposed to have both Stone and Thorn there to support him. I really rather not just abandon him to, uh, to the wolves, now.”

Wolffe glares at him for that, which is fair, and Fox cracks a half smile, mostly because he doesn’t want to think about the fact that Thorn should be here, and if he’s needling his batchmate for his name, he’s not thinking of who’s marching far, far away. If he focuses hard enough, he can almost pretend that they’re cadets again, that they’re on Kamino and that Ponds is about to snicker at the utter disgruntlement on Wolffe’s face.

If he focuses hard enough, he can almost pretend that he didn’t outlive his best friend.

“Go to the Healers.” Wolffe says, “They'll be able to help, and if you go to them, you won’t have to abandon your Commander to my pack.”

He rolls his eyes in response to that one, because it’s better than admitting that he’s pretty sure no one can help him, not even a Jetii. But he nods anyway, because Wolffe will get insistent if he tries to sidestep it, and he’s always been a good liar. "I'll think about it,” Fox vows, and his voice doesn’t waver, but Wolffe sends him a disbelieving look anyway. “I will, I promise.”

6.

Due to their innate malignant nature, these techniques are used almost exclusively by those who wield the Dark Side, such as the Sith, or Dark Jedi.

After ARC Trooper Fives was killed, when Fox was still reeling from what occurred that day, and it was only a combination of muscle memory and sheer determination that kept him functioning, the Chancellor summoned Fox to his office.

This is what he does not remember:

“You intended to kill ARC-5555, Commander Fox. You know why your gun was not on stun. It was because you knew that you had to kill him to ensure my safety. There is nothing more to the story.”

“I... I intended to kill ARC-5555. My gun was not on stun because I had to kill him to ensure the safety of the Chancellor. There is nothing more to the story.”

[vantablade]

【 🌌 MYTHOPOEIA V. 】

TLDR: A lore/world-building headcanon that focuses on the chronology (in this case, Epochs or definitive eras) of the in-universe of Nocturne’s canon. Also has some information, vaguely, regarding the mythology of divinity and important figures.

An era is defined by the most significant factor of its time. While planets and countries may have their own eras, defined by the reigning monarch or a particular age of change, the Bright Star System, as a whole, follows the timeline of Epochs, which denote significance of a grander scale. As of Nocturne’s position in the chronology, we are in the Sixth Epoch, which would be known by her people’s descendants as the Age of Anarchy. In-universe scholars will argue about the true beginning of the Sixth Epoch, as they argued about the Fifth before it, and the Fourth, and so-on; it is the Epoch’s nature to be debated, discussed, analysed and re-interpreted to fit whatever narrative is best to be served. Epochs are not limited by a particular stretch of time—there is no mandatory “limit” of days, months, years or centuries that permit a new Epoch being determined. Rather, it is determined by a time of significant change that alters how the denizens of Bright Star understand or adapt to their environment. For example, while the Genesis Migration was a significant cross-system event, it did not, on its own, cause enough of a cosmic upset to earn an Epoch-level importance to begin an era. Rather, it was but a mere instrument in the grander scheme of the Age of Champions, the Fifth Epoch.

This headcanon exists to give a context towards the chronology and a greater understanding of the world Nocturne is a mere part of. There will be references towards the in-universe mythology and other significant events that took place far beyond our hero’s birth, but there will be no in-depth description of those events, as I want to keep everything that could reveal too much—or is unnecessary in understanding Nocturne—under wraps. However, hopefully there will be enough information to provide a better grounding of the world Nocturne lives in, particularly if you are interested in combining universes or developing deeper threads with her character.

Despite the fact Nocturne exists in the Sixth Epoch, truthfully there are Seven; the first of all Epochs is known by scholars as the “Zero Epoch”, a time before time, a space before space, where the original Primordial first willed itself into existence. Here is where Essences, the foundation of all life, magic and matter in the Essential Universe, first came into being. It would not be until the First Epoch that actual physical space began to take form, as the Ancients—Gods comparable to the Titans of Greco-Roman mythology, who were more a physical embodiment of the things they ruled over and interpreted to be “carriers” of the Primordial’s divine will where it could not directly enact on its wishes—came into being. These Ancients are also comparable to the incomprehensible deities of the Cthulhu mythos, with titanic, unbearable bodies and minds so alien to us that they evade description or empathy. They are more like machinations of cosmic law, unkillable and undestroyable, for on their shoulders rests the entire Universe.

The Second Epoch is when the Divines, Gods who created “bi-essences” that combined the Primordial Essences into Lesser Essences, came into being as “children” of the Ancients that possessed a sentience closer to the realm of comprehension. They are capable of whimsy, of want, of ire and of fondness. Here, they would be most comparable to most pantheons of deities, with inter-relationships both within the circle of the Divines and with their creations, the Kinetics, pseudo-mortals who co-existed with the Divines and were taught their magic in return of being subordinate with them.

The Third Epoch is the first Epoch marked by a war of tremendous proportion, that resulted in the death of Divines and the weakening of magic that is still felt to this day. Here, the Divine Nolu, the God of Secrets and Mystery, prompted the Kinetics into rebelling against their deities by telling them forbidden secrets of mortality, encouraging them to upheave the heavens and take their power by storm rather than tolerating watered down lessons that kept them under their benevolent Gods’ thumbs. Nolu would abandon the Kinetics during this war, leading to slaughter on both sides, only to return at last moment to assure the death of all Divines—aside from themselves. The Third Epoch was solely this war, though the duration of it is unknown, and the true extent of the damage and knowledge of what the pre-Divine War world was like is knowledge lost, perhaps for eternity. All that is known is that likely it was a time of Edenic bliss, where magic flowed like wine and mortals were cared for by Divines. After the trauma of the War, the Fourth Epoch was birthed: the Age of Ruin, the Age of Loss, the Age of Abandonment.

Kinetics, now scorned by the Ancients whose children they had revolted against and punished by the Primordial who hosted them, suffered the punishment of agelessness. They were removed from the life-death cycle that promised reincarnation and forgiveness of the soul, forcing them to live an eternity of repentance and grief as they watched the world they knew rot into a mere husk of its former self. Magic weakened with nobody there to teach them, and without Divines to create Kinetics with such innate skill, they were condemned to physically reproduce until there were only Mortals.

Mortals lacked the intimate tutelage that gave Kinetics their mastery over the Primordial Essences, or the Divine Essences, and so their powers weakened too. Magical knowledge was not lost completely, but it would take lifetimes to achieve a level that most Kinetics had earned in adolescence. Over time, the era of bliss and magic that had once been an undeniable reality would fade to myth across the Cosmos, with the division of the New Way (the belief that all of this was purely mythology) and the Old Way (the belief that all of this was fact) separating mortals across the Universe, severing some from their magical heritage entirely to make way for man-made scientific advancement devoid of spiritual attunement.

The Spider Star System was a System that followed the New Way, forcing the less-magically repressed mortals—known as Undanes—into hiding lest they be rejected or destroyed for their absurdities. This System would also become the grounds for one of the greatest calamities recorded, with the Genesis Collapse marking a potentially unrepairable wound in the very fabric of reality whose effects are still present today, giving way to the Paroxysms that blight the Bright Star System in the Sixth Epoch. The Bright Star System followed the Old Way, however, and magic is still understood and studied with varying levels of skill and mastery across the System. It was the Genesis Migration that introduced the Genesse people, Undane and Mundane alike, to the cohabitation of magic-repressed and magic-expressive people, though not without duress. It was this discovery for the Mundanes that contributed to the genesis of the Ametsuchi, forged out of hardship, exile and sacrifice brought on by a primal rejection of this magical nature.

The Genesis Collapse was the locus of the Fifth Epoch, the Age of Champions, where it became apparent that Divinity could be reached by mortalkind should the Primordial bestow upon them the capability. The nature of Champions is debated among scholars; some argue that Champions, of which there is only one certainty and one other heavily contested, are the Divines reborn, returned from their celestial graves, while others argue that the Champions are entirely new in spirit as it would be disrespectful to the Divines to ignore the devastation they had suffered at the hands of men. Unfortunately, the effects of the loss of Divines is still felt to this day, as the sole Champion of the people, Genevieve (the sacred figure of the Holy Order), is absent. Whether she perished after the Genesis Collapse or otherwise went to another System or was killed by the Goliath in some unseen battle of tremendous proportion, is completely unknown. Mortals can only emulate what they think she would have done, such as the Divine Right of Kings applied to the Boucher imperial line on Neo, or the Holy Order’s fight against Paroxysms.

The Fifth Epoch is potentially the shortest of all Epochs, having spanned only several generations, perhaps not even a millennium.

The Sixth Epoch, then, is the playground for the plot of this blog and its attached extended canon. It is the Age of Anarchy, the Age of Monsters, of all things Eldritch. It is uncertain when the Sixth Epoch came into play, for some argue it was with the formation of Spider’s Eye as it tried to awaken the Spider-God Goliath, the destroyer of Genesis and the foe of the Champion Genevieve, or with their first use of Chaos manipulation and Paroxysm invocation as a weapon in the assassination of the Green-King Eoin of Namana. It is potentially even incited by the Ametsuchi Massacre, which was tied to the actions of Spider’s Eye and the High King Kazumi Ametsuchi, resulting in Chaotic manipulations and mutilations of all remaining Ametsuchi. The onus of the Sixth Epoch may be debated, but the end of the Sixth Epoch is entirely unknown: some fear that it may never end, others fear that it is the end, but hopefuls pray for a better, kinder Seventh Epoch, just on the horizon of what may be the most horrifying Epoch to exist in.

[sarah-writes-stories]

Prologue: The Well

A Post-Canon Inuyasha Romance/Adventure Epic

Also find it on: Fanfiction.net / AO3 / Wattpad

Words: 2,961

Full Chapter List & Description is here.

Prologue  •  Chapter 1  •  Chapter 2  •  Chapter 3  •  Chapter 4  •  Chapter 5  •  Chapter 6  •  Chapter 7  •  Chapter 8  •  Chapter 9  •  Chapter 10  •  Chapter 11 •  Chapter 12  •  Chapter 13

⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯

It was late. He should've been at his castle, in his bed, if not sleeping then at the very least meditating to prepare for what was to come tomorrow.

But he could not. He was simply too restless.

And what better way for an Inu-daiyoukai to relieve his restlessness than to let his demon loose to hunt and relish in a kill?

Decision made, Tōga had flown for hours seeking a suitably powerful opponent to vent his frustrations upon. Until finally, he'd been drawn here to the meadow he now found himself in. He could sense that whatever power it was that had drawn him here was close...

Yet even as he moved towards it, his thoughts turned back to the source of his restlessness.

He did not really want to take that female as his mate tomorrow. But if he did not, he could not guarantee the security of his position in the West. The Inu-daiyoukai Kingdom of the Sky was too powerful. Their armies too unreachable, fortified from above as they were. It was their undeniable advantage, which meant that if he wanted his new Kingdom in the West to remain on good term with the Sky Pack he now called allies, then he had to cement their treaty by taking the female as his mate.

He thought again about her prideful eyes and the derisive way she'd looked down her nose at him all those years ago when they'd first been presented to one another during the public announcement of their betrothal. The memory of it made his eyes flash with fury once again.

Who did that woman think she was?! Did she not know who he was?! He was Tōga! The great Inu no Taishō! He had carved a bloody swath through Japan in a mere few centuries, claiming a vast territory in the West for himself and his Pack. He would NOT be looked down upon by some crescent-moon bitch!

And yet still he had to take the Sky hime to mate.

Hence his current restlessness. The situation was unpleasant, to say the least, but by all the Kami, he was determined to beget an heir upon her as soon as possible, cementing his undisputed position of power.

These were the thoughts that plagued him as he made his way across the meadow. Whatever this strange power was, it was even closer now, yet he couldn't quite pinpoint its source.

He stopped. Silver-white hair blew gently in the midnight breeze as the landscape glowed under the light of an almost-full moon. Tōga closed his eyes, allowing his demonic senses to reach out. It did not feel like the youki of a demon and yet…

He lifted off the ground, floating up into the air to better survey his surroundings. In the distance, across the nearby river, he could see a small human settlement. It was nothing more than a few scattered huts. He took no notice. It was beneath one such as he to take notice of things like anthills, or beehives, or human settlements.

Instead, he focused his senses on the hum of power that he could feel emanating from somewhere nearby.

And then he spotted it. A faint glow coming from further across the meadow, closer to the river. He swooped lower, hovering above the glow for a moment, before landing in the grass beside what appeared to be a well of some kind.

He could hear the faint trickling sound of water coming from within. Stepping forward, he looked down inside. The water at the bottom of the well was glowing a curiously phosphorescent blue-green.

He blinked a few times. The well appeared to be empty, and yet he could not deny the thrumming power that emanated from its depths. Curiosity piqued, he jumped lithely over the edge, seeking out the source of this strange power that called to him.

But Tōga's body hadn't even entered the well before a flash of light blinded him and a pulse of power sent him flying out of the square wooden frame and into the sky.

He hovered there for a moment, growling low to himself, allowing his eyes to readjust to the darkness after the light subsided.

Still, Tōga was not prepared for what he saw next.

Rising up out of the well, standing on a sparkling column of blue-green water, was a woman.

She was dressed in an iridescent shift-like gown, the fabric clinging to her as though it dripped with water. Her hair was a soft silver-blue colour that cascaded down her back and over her shoulders like waves on the ocean. Pointed ears were decorated with gems of different colours and thin strands of silver and gold chain adorned her neck and chest.

The woman looked up from her perch upon the column of water, locking eyes with Tōga. He unsheathed his sword, So'unga, and hovered, prepared to strike but waiting to see what would happen next.

He did not have to wait long.

"Come, come now, Tōga, Lord of the Western Lands. There is no need for that."

Tōga's eyes widened a fraction at her use of his name. "Who are you?" He asked.

"Me? In many lands I have many names… Amphitrite, Nephthys, some simply call me the Lady of the Lake… But you, Tōga, may call me Lady Nimue. I am the Kami of this well."

Tōga's eyes widened further still. "Kami?"

As powerful as he was, Tōga knew not to challenge a Kami in her own domain. To trifle in such matters was to court the unknown, and no ruler worth his steel would jump into a fray without first assessing his opponent.

Nimue did not answer his question. Instead, she said, "Come down here, Tōga. I would give you a gift on the eve of your mating."

Unwilling just yet to discount her claims of godhood, Tōga slowly lowered himself to the grass of the meadow, settling a few feet away from the well. He didn't yet sheath his sword, though. Instead, his stance remained predatory.

"Come now, puppy," Nimue said. "Put that thing away! What I have come to give you is too important for such nonsense."

Tōga felt the growl forming in his chest. How dare this woman call him a puppy! He didn't get the chance to voice his displeasure, however, because suddenly there was another blinding flash of light.

Blinking away the momentary blindness, he found himself seated on a plush stack of furs and cushions, So'unga sheathed and laying in the grass beside him.

Nearby, Nimue sat on her own plush pile, and a small fire now crackled just to his left, illuminating the slight greenish cast of her skin.

Tōga could not understand what had just happened. "How—?"

She cut him off. "For one such as I, time has no meaning. And yet, we haven't the time to waste."

From the corner of his eye, Tōga looked the Kami over with a wariness akin to respect. "What do you want of me?"

"Tōga, Tōga. Always so direct. Your question is not a difficult one, though you may not like my answer." She paused. "What I ask from you is no less than your life."

Tōga stiffened at her words, instinctively reaching out his hand toward So'unga.

"Stop, Inu no Taishō. I mean you no harm. Moreover, the war to come is not one that you can win by blade alone."

"A war? What mean you by these words? Is the Kingdom of the West under threat?" His voice rose with the repercussions of her words, eyes narrowing to dangerous slits at the idea.

Nimue laughed then. A lilting sound, like water trickling over the pebbles of a creek.

"No, no, my darling pup. The West is quite safe... For now at least."

Tōga was quickly losing patience. He felt the restless ire that had brought him to this meadow returning in full force.

"For now? What does that mean? You speak in riddles!"

Nimue did not answer. Instead, she cocked her head to the side, peering at him. "You dislike the path you are set to embark upon tomorrow."

It was a statement, not a question. Tōga said nothing, but his silence was confirmation enough.

She continued, "Would it soothe your soul then? To know that, for the safety of your kingdom, what will be MUST come to pass?"

Again, Tōga did not like the hidden meaning he felt hung in her words. The idea that his kingdom was under threat while he lounged beside a fire did not sit well with him.

"If you know of a threat to my power you must tell me!" It was a steely command, spoken in a tone that brooked no dissent.

She laughed again. "But of course, my Lord. Did I not tell you that I had a gift to give you?"

He merely glared at this woman who claimed to be a Kami. Kami or not, he did not like being toyed with.

Seeing the fire in his eyes, Nimue's face turned subtly contrite. She sighed. "Tōga, the gift I would give you bares a heavy burden, but for the sake of your kingdom… of your Pack… of so much more… I would see it given to you. It is not a gift I can force upon you, though. You must accept it of your own free will, knowing that from this day until your last, nothing will be the same for you again."

If Tōga had been anyone other than the Inu no Taishō, he may have squirmed uncomfortably at those words. Instead, he turned to look her fully in the face before asking, "And if I refuse your gift?"

"Then your sons, and the sons of your sons, and all youkai from now until the end of all days will perish."

Tōga inhaled sharply, his eyes widening in shock. After a moment he exhaled slowly, disbelief warring in his mind with the magnitude of the words this woman had spoken.

"How do you know this?"

"Puppy…" Nimue's eyes meet his. In a sad but firm tone, she continued. "Have I not just shown you that for one such as I, time has no meaning?"

Tōga's gold eyes shifted between the liquid blue of each of hers. Staring into them, he tried to assess the truthfulness of her words. Finally, as if in acceptance, he spoke again. "And this gift you wish to give me, it will protect my heirs from destruction?"

Nimue clarified, "It will set them upon the path. There are limits to even my power. What you do with the gift I give you – what they then do after that – will determine the inevitability of their fate."

Tōga turned his head back towards the fire, staring into the flames for a long moment. Calmly, he finally spoke. "I care NOT for lesser youkai, nor anyone else for that matter, but if your gift will ensure that my line will continue on… then I accept."

This time her laugh was a rueful one. "Very well, my Lord. Regardless of your reasons, you have accepted and so I will give you what it is I have come here to bestow."

Tōga glanced back at her then, looking from her hands to the furs and cushions around her. "I see nothing. Where is this gift you speak of?"

A soft smile pulled at the corners of Nimue's mouth. "The gift I would give you is two-fold. Come, sit closer by me. I will need to place my fingers upon your brow."

Reluctantly, Tōga shifted himself closer to the Kami. He watched her hand as it rose toward his forehead, stiffening slightly as her fingers crept closer.

Nimue paused just before touching him. In a voice barely above a whisper, she spoke again. "Remember, Tōga, you have accepted this two-fold gift of your own free will. And, as I said before, naught will be the same for you after this."

Tōga blinked once, then gave a slight nod. "I still accept."

Her cool fingers touched his brow and his body was instantly paralyzed. Unable to process what was happening, Nimue's blinding light enveloped him again as his mind tumbled over the edge of itself.

Everything that Tōga was and everything that he would be – his very soul – was suddenly filled with flashing images of things to come.

Memories he had yet to experience. Faces he had yet to know. He saw his life… and his death.

Yet still, the flashes continued as he witnessed the battles that would be fought long after he was nothing more than a towering pile of bones.

Amongst it all… He saw his sons.

In waves, emotions rose up and crashed over the daiyoukai's unused heart. They stole his breath as the visions unfolded further and further into the future, showing him the utter destruction and devastation that would come should his gift not be heeded.

It felt like a lifetime – ten lifetimes – had passed while he watched the flashing images play across his mind… And yet, he knew it was over in an instant.

When the Kami's fingers left his forehead, Tōga fell forward on his knees, hands in the grass, bracing his panting body.

Somewhere in the back of his awareness, he registered that the furs and cushions, even the small fire, were all gone. And from his position on the ground, he could see Nimue's bare feet walking away towards the well.

"Wait…" He whispered on a jagged breath.

Her small feet stopped their forward motion. He looked up at her then and saw that she was looking back at him from over her shoulder.

Tōga tried to find words to make sense of what he had just seen. The horrible gift he had been given. "If I… Can they... Can we be saved?" He found his breath again, composing himself enough to sit back on his heels and look up at her.

She was quiet for a moment as if pondering his question. Finally, she spoke. "As I said before, I can merely set you on the path. What happens next…" She let her words trail off before whispering "I will do what I can to be of aid, as I know there will be… others… who would wish to see our efforts fail."

It was all she was willing to offer him, he knew, and she turned away once more, continuing her slow pace back to the well.

Tōga felt weak and lightheaded. The emotions that had erupted within him during his powerful vision had not subsided. It was as though his chest had been cleaved in two… and yet what she'd originally promised him bubbled back up to the top of his mind then.

"Lady Nimue," he called her out by name for the first time. She paused as she reached the edge of the well, waiting for him to continue.

"You said this gift was two-fold. Yet, beyond these visions, I know not what else you have given me."

Nimue stepped up onto the wooden edge of the well and then up again onto her luminescent column of water. Only then did she turn around, the same blue-green glow of the water now emanating from around her, as well.

Finally, she opened her mouth to speak, and the reverberating tone of her words made Tōga feel weak all over again. He finally comprehended the full power of the being whose presence he was in.

"Great Inu no Taishō, strongest of all daiyoukai, Lord of the West. To you I have granted that which you will need most, to ensure that your steps do not falter on this path that you will walk."

"What...?" He could not finish his words.

She spoke again, softer then, yet still full of power.

"I have granted you the gift of compassion."

And with a final flash of blinding light, she was gone.

Tōga knelt in the grass for a long time. He wondered if it had all been a dream, but the visions in his mind did not fade, and the well too remained where it was in the meadow near him.

Finally, he rose from his knees and walked carefully over to the edge of the well. Peering in, he saw that it was now empty. No trickling noise. No glow. No water at all, in fact. Nothing but a bare patch of dirt remained at the bottom.

Dawn was beginning to lighten the eastern horizon. He scrubbed his hands over his face and went to retrieve So'unga from where it still lay in the grass.

The Kami had been correct. Nothing after this night would ever be the same. The mighty Inu no Taishō allowed himself a rueful smile then. He had accepted this fate and walk this path he would.

Knowing that his mating ceremony was scheduled to begin with the rise of the full moon this coming evening, Tōga lifted himself into the air.

But he did not head west.

Instead, he raced towards the barren wasteland that the weapons-master, Tōtōsai, called home. He needed to commission the creation of two new swords first.

⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯⋯

A/N: I do not own Inuyasha nor any of the characters created by Rumiko Takahashi.

This is my first ever fiction – let alone fan-fiction – and it's going to be long and epic. So strap in, enjoy, and leave me a comment to let me know what you think!

[iightwoodbane]

reacting kinda late but i've seen the posts regarding Kubo's sh*t, the part it was intentional in his part to end Bleach in a certain number and the possibility he no longer love Rukia as he used to, and also ppl (i//h) praises him for not portraying IR as platonic when its obvious, he's not actually shipbaiting but genuinely did so (coz he enjoyed it?).. I kno there's conspiracy but Im really convinced Kubo, more than ever, he got shitty attitude towards his work

and tbh I just cant put my finger on it but I feel liked his soul has been sent into Soul Society and he's just being destructive?? Like he thought its cool of him to make an ending that will obviously broke the hearts of many because he thought its cool not to make IR canon and to rub the salt in, have the delusional ships be acknowledge, because its his idea of being a cool mangaka? like he could've done it, if done properly but its like presenting an artwork you did

and being pretentious of how valued you art should be when clearly u didnt put effort, time and skills on it. I hope u wouldnt be too confused but what im trying to say is that Kubo is really acting silly, quite pretentious and forever mad in his inability to stand by for his work, just running in circles. Like wth is even Burned the Witches?? Is he really trying to drive away ppl even further. He's just creating mess to cover up his mess

Also, I will be forever sad that he never really labelled IR as an actual legitimate couple but well their actions have spoken so much there's no platonic explanation. But Im more angry by the fact he made R;R//I;H as if he's arrogantly spiting on us and give them basically the right to question our undeniably good OTP. The only silver lining is that there's no actual good, compelling and logical development so we could easily deny the existence of 666 (i forgot the actual chapter)

sorry for answering this so late! i just...don’t listen to anything kubo has to say anymore tbh. imo the more he talks about the ending (and how he supposedly planned it since the beginning) the more it shows that he has no idea what he’s doing. i’d rather enjoy my ships and favorite characters in peace than have to worry about what piece of canon that man will retcon next for the sake of trying to look like a decent writer when he’s not.

[fyeahbatcat]

Batman Annual 2: A Romantic Opus About the Transcendence of Love

This past Wednesday, DC Comics released the highly anticipated Batman Annual #2, by Tom King with art by Lee Weeks and Michael Lark. The issue, which promised to “see the early days of the Bat and the Cat”, went far above and beyond a mere Batman and Catwoman date night tale. A story that is less dense in plot but rich in narrative with truly amazing art and breathtaking coloring, the Annual is an emotional game changer that easily inserts itself as one of the greatest Batman and Catwoman stories of all time and opens the door for much broader implications for the future of Bat and Cat.

The Rebirth of the Bat and the Cat

After more than half a decade spent on the back-burner (the way back-burner) writer Tom King has spent much of his eighteen month tenure as the Batman head-writer reestablishing the relationship between Batman and Catwoman. He made it clear that the relationship would be a major focal point in the Batman books, rather than the standard obligatory romantic subplot when he made the surprising decision to have Batman propose to Catwoman earlier this year. Perhaps even more surprisingly Catwoman accepted Batman’s proposal after a long wait. 

The relationship between Batman and Catwoman is long and ever changing. It began in Batman #1 in 1940 as flirtatious frenemies and was established as a canon relationship during the Bronze Age under the tutelage of Len Wein. The relationship broke out of the comics in the 1990s and went on to become one of DC Comics’ most recognized and popular relationships. Having been featured in two live-action television shows, three movies, countless animated series, and thousands of comics the romance between Gotham’s hard line crime-fighter and most infamous femme fatale endeared themselves to fans and writers alike and the relationship was allowed to be pushed forward. In 2003 during the Hush storyline by Jeph Loeb, in a demonstration of trust Batman revealed his identity to Catwoman for the first time. During the time that followed the relationship received more focus and development than in previous eras. However, by the time the Pre-Flashpoint era ended in 2011 things ended between Batman and Catwoman in the finale of the Gotham City Sirens series where it usually ended: in limbo. 

Unfortunately, the succeeding era, New 52, saw a baffling destruction of DC’s legacies. Legacies were eliminated, histories were changed, and some characters were erased altogether. Romance was hit particularly hard and nearly every DC relationship was eradicated. Superman and Lois Lane’s fifteen year marriage was wiped out and Lois was virtually exiled from the Superman universe. Green Arrow and Black Canary became strangers and remained that way much to the ire of fans. Although Wonder Woman’s original love interest, Steve Trevor, returned to the comics more prominently than he had been in the previous era, Wonder Woman was quickly shuffled into a relationship with Superman. 

In an embarrassing episode in 2013 DC made their new stance on romance abundantly clear when Batwoman writers, W. Haden Black and J.H. Williams III, abruptly resigned from the critically acclaimed, best-selling series after DC refused to allow the titular character to marry her longtime partner and other instances of editorial interference. DC Comics was accused of homophobia and many fans vowed to stop reading the comics. Responding to the controversy, Co-Publisher Dan Didio, said in no uncertain terms that marriage was forbidden at DC Comics. 

They put on a cape and cowl for a reason. They’re committed to defending others — at the sacrifice of all their own personal instincts. That’s something we reinforce. If you look at every one of the characters in the Batman family, their personal lives kind of suck…Tim Drake, Barbara Gordon, and Kathy Kane — it’s wonderful that they try to establish personal lives, but it’s also just as important that they put it aside as they know what they are accomplishing as the hero takes precedence over everything else. That is our mandate, that is our edict, that is our stand with our characters.

Batman and Catwoman absolutely languished during this time. Their relationship which had previously been loving and trusting was reduced to an insulting cross between virtual strangers and friends with benefits. For five years DC Comics seemingly did everything they could think of to avoid the relationship and fans took notice. In 2015 after a series of failed relaunches, a two year sales low, and an increasing market lag behind Marvel it became clear that New 52 had failed to attract and sustain the audience that DC had hoped for in 2011. With the DCEU taking off, mediocrity was no longer an option. In 2016 DC announced Rebirth, yet another relaunch, this time promising for a return to the old and in many ways it did. Superman and Lois Lane’s marriage was restored and a son, Jon, came in addition. Steve Trevor was once again a prominent supporting character in Wonder Woman as well as her main love interest. Even Midniter and Apollo made a comeback. 

Batman and Catwoman did not reunite as instantaneously as many had hoped. They were featured in a series of poorly timed variant covers at the start of Rebirth but Catwoman had yet to make any appearances. Relatively new DC writer, Tom King, was announced as the Batman main writer and at New York Comic Con he teased that Catwoman was to become the co-lead of Batman. Catwoman’s eventual debut in Batman #9 as a mass murderer facing the death penalty did not warrant a positive response and diminished the hopes of many fans that Rebirth would be a kinder era to Catwoman and Batman and Catwoman’s relationship. Although it was expected by many that this newest revelation was likely a red herring, after five years of New 52 their patience was wearing thin. 

Meanwhile Batman and Catwoman teamed up to invade Bane’s sanctuary to kidnap Psycho Pirate, an encounter that cumulated in the Rooftops arc. Catwoman’s innocence was finally revealed, and for the first time since Heart of Hush was published nearly a decade prior Batman and Catwoman declared their love for each other. While the jury is still out on King’s execution he has undeniably reestablished Batman and Catwoman as a canon romance. His tale is of two lonely, damaged orphans who see and accept the best and the worst in each other who despite their shared traumas find hope and happiness with each other. 

All of them can laugh. Mother. Father. Him. The whole world. They can see me in this idiocy and they can laugh and laugh and laugh. But you. Selina. Cat. You wouldn’t. Because you know. You know what this is…And you, Cat. You know. Because if you’ve made that choice, you can see it in another. You can see it in me. I can see it in you.

- Bruce Wayne to Selina Kyle in Batman #12

King’s interpretation of Batman and Catwoman’s relationship differs from almost every other writer’s interpretation because he doesn’t bog the relationship down with the will they/won’t they trope and hyper focus on juvenile sexual tension at the expense of substantial development. Rather than portray Batman and Catwoman as opposites that attract, he understands that they’re similar. 

They’re missing pieces in a puzzle and they understand each other in ways that other people can’t. “I need you,” Batman says before proposing to Catwoman for the first time in main canon history. 

Batman Annual #2

To appreciate the Annual is to appreciate Tom King’s Bat and Cat. The former half of the issue reiterates King’s consistent interpretation throughout his Batman run. Batman and Catwoman are orphans who see and understand each other in ways that other people don’t and are bonded by their trauma. 

Where King separates himself from other writers and takes his interpretation even further is in the second act of the book. An aged and married Bruce and Selina are living a happy albeit seemingly unextraordinary life retired from crime-fighting, and they even have an adult daughter who is operating as Batwoman. Things take a quick, heartbreaking turn when Bruce is inflicted by a nondescript illness. He’s dying and there’s plainly nothing to be done. Mortality is unavoidable. Bruce lived an extraordinary life and died a natural, ordinary, human death. 

The tragic part of Bruce’s death isn’t even the fact that he dies. What’s sad about it is how much Bruce and Selina don’t want to leave each other and how they try to stay strong for one another. Even though he is dying Bruce’s only concern is that after he passes Selina will be okay, and that she won’t be lonely. They both muse using magic and time travel to try to cheat death just so they can stay together. 

There are those who abhor what King has done to the Batman books by portraying a Bruce that is more vulnerable and driven by things other than crime fighting. Everyone has a favorite version and preference, but it’s baffling as to why anyone would think that something like marriage would take something away from who Batman is as a character or why anyone would think that Bruce is better off as a loner. To quote another blogger, “Geez, what do these people want for Bruce, anyway? For him to die alone and clinically depressed, his body marred and broken from decades of fighting Gotham’s never-ending crime wave?”

I always use the animated Batman Beyond as a litmus test for how Bruce ends up (Does this version of Bruce Wayne end up like Bruce Wayne in Batman Beyond?). In Batman Beyond he ends up a lonely, bitter old curmudgeon who all of his former partners despise and avoid. This is not the ending that Bruce deserves. The Annual portrays a Bruce who breaks the wheel of this portrayal. He dies a natural, wholly unremarkable death surrounded by love after living a long, happy life. It’s what he deserves. It’s the best ending any of us can hope for.

So how did a comic where nothing remarkable happens plot wise illicit such a strong emotional response from readers? It’s because of it’s simplicity that makes it so impactful. For nearly 80 years fans have been told that a simple, happy life for Bruce was asking too much. To finally get to see it happen feels like an affirmation. There is, however, more than enough evidence to indicate that this story is not a telling of Bruce and Selina’s ultimate ending but that this story features a Bruce and Selina of a presumably different universe. 

C’mon guys. Tom King made us wait four months just to find out if Selina said ‘yes.’ Did you really think he’d just tell us their entire life story in one issue? 

An Alternate Universe? 

There is an abundance of evidence within the Annual and the fact that it has been published concurrently with other major DC time altering events to deduce that this story is an AU in some form or another. 

The biggest clue to indicate this is a comment Bruce makes after learning that he his illness is terminal. He tells Selina to find Barry Allen (The Flash) and find another version of him that never marries to take care of her after he’s gone.  Probably the most well known modern Flash story is Flashpoint, where Barry Allen alters events and timelines by traveling back in time and changing history.  This allusion was intentional.  

One of the biggest themes of Rebirth has a whole is the idea of merging times and universes. Remember how New 52 Superman was killed off and replaced with a different version of himself? This is also coinciding with Doomsday Clock where Doctor Manhattan has essentially been experimenting with different realities and universes resulting in a merge of timelines, which published just one week before the Annual. This is not a coincidence.

The second clue is the appearance of Helena Wayne. 

As you we are all probably aware Helena Wayne is Bruce and Selina’s canonical daughter from Earth-2 who operates as the Huntress during in the Pre-Crisis and New 52 eras. Helena was last seen in Earth-2 Society, which ended publication in September, taking up the Batman mantle. Helena Wayne has never been part of the main universe, although many have hoped that she one day would be. This could just be a glimpse of things to come, but the appearance of any characters that are not from the main universe should raise red flags. Which brings me to the next clue. 

When Bruce is on his death bed he is seen surrounded by his loved ones. Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon, Tim Drake, Duke Thomas, even Gotham Girl are all there. Damian Wayne is noticeably absent.  Damian was a pretty big factor in Bruce’s decision to seek happiness as he wanted to set a better example for his son as mentioned in The Button, which was also written by Tom King. Bruce even mentions to Thomas that he has a son (singular). He made it a point to single out Damian so it’s very doubtful that Damian being excluded would’ve gone unnoticed here.

In addition to Damian being nowhere in sight: don’t you think it’s a little bit weird that Damian isn’t there, but Carrie Kelly is?

Carrie Kelly, a prominent character in Frank Miller’s Dark Knight AU series, is a famously non-canonical character. As stated before the appearance of characters that are not from the main universe should indicate that things are not likely what they appear, especially when they are there in the absence of main universe characters. 

Annual issues are really a grab bag of canon. Sometimes they have an impact on the main stories going forward; sometimes they’re standalone stories. It all depends on what the writer wants to do with it. King has been mum about revealing what the Annual will mean for the future of the Batman books, but he did imply that some parts of the Annual will impact the story in the main universe. 

What Does This All Mean?

I seemed to have struck quite a few nerves when I pointed out that the Annual issue features an AU version of Bruce and Selina. I suppose some people were disappointed to realize this and felt like I was ruining the experience. With that said: the Annual issue features an AU version of Bruce and Selina. I do not say this to hurt anyone. I say this because well, for one thing that’s what the evidence indicates. Secondly, to ignore this misses the point of what the Annual is supposed to mean. 

To just accept that the Annual is just a quaint glimpse into the future where Bruce and Selina grow old together in some ways reduces the story to fluff that happens for no other reason than to make the readers feel good, which is the conclusion drawn by a few of the negative reviews. We as readers want to take comfort in knowing what the ultimate ending will be but that misses the point of the Annual entirely. Much of what King has done during his time on the Batman books is vitiate what we’ve come to accept as the status quo in regard to Batman and Catwoman’s relationship and the Batman books in general. 

Here’s what King said about changing the role of romance in the Batman books:

EW: In comics, there’s this general idea that superheroes shouldn’t be happy. We’ve seen this in Spider-Man, Bat-family, and other places. How did you pitch this story to DC Comics? Was there any pushback?

TK: No, because what you’re talking about is looking at happiness as the end of conflict, right? This idea that if a character is content, then there’s nothing dramatic about them and you don’t want a cliffhanger and you don’t want to turn the page. That’s my whole point as an artist — I’m trying to get you to turn a page. But what makes Batman unique is that happiness is, instead of being the end of conflict, the source of conflict. It’s something you haven’t seen before. You throw sadness, you throw depression, you throw horror at Batman, he’s like, “yeah, yawn, I’ve done that.” You throw happiness at him? That’s something that riles him, that’s something that he’s not used to. That’s throwing gas on a fire, and that’s always how I pitched it. This is not the end of something. This is the beginning of something.

Notably when King was asked how he would picture Batman and Catwoman’s marriage he gave a sincere response drawing inspiration from his own marriage rather than relying on the usual excuses for why the relationship wouldn’t work out that writers seem to default to. Compare that to Scott Snyder who said that Batman’s story would always be a tragedy or Dan Didio who said that superheros should be unhappy and issued a departmental ban on marriage.

Batman and Catwoman’s relationship has only marginally progressed in fifteen years. So many writers have hit the exact same rut when attempting to develop the relationship. No matter what the story, no matter who the writer, for one reason or another the relationship just doesn’t work out in the end and they’ve had to invent reasons for why. Batman is too immature. The Joker turns Catwoman evil. Because…reasons. We’ve accepted this as just how things are supposed to be for almost 80 years. If creators are unable to see the relationship beyond everything that’s already been done, then the relationship will never go anywhere. 

The Annual is intended to show us the type of life and relationship that Bruce and Selina can have if everyone abolishes their ideas of the relationship they’re expected to have. King is subverting the expectation of what everyone says their relationship must be like. “Batman and Catwoman can’t be together.” “Batman is only dedicated to his mission.” “Catwoman isn’t suited for married life; she’ll just get bored.” He is showing us that this type of life is possible for them. They can have a long happy life together, and the barriers that have prevented that in the past are simple imaginary.

The point King is trying to make is that even though this isn’t necessarily Prime Earth Batman and Catwoman’s story it still can be.

“I’m not sure it’s 100 percent out of canon,” King said. “…To me and to my Batman, this is a story that’s certainly possible. It’s something I think that could and may come true.” 

Even if this isn’t main universe Bruce and Selina’s story per se that doesn’t mean that it won’t be. This still very well might be their future. That door is not only still open; it’s probably been opened for the first time ever. 

The Timeline

Going by what was indicated in the Annual and by Rebirth’s theme of timeline and universe meshing my prediction is that it will be revealed that the current Catwoman of the main universe is actually from a different timeline or universe or something of the sort. For those who are perplexed by the idea of Selina being from a different universe I’ll remind you that the current Superman and Lois Lane are both versions from a different timeline.    

Some initial reactions to this prediction were quite negative with many believing that this somehow changes things. My question is why? In many ways this would seem symbolic of the longevity and range of Batman and Catwoman’s relationship. They have been and continue to be featured in every form of media for nearly eight decades, including a myriad of alternate universes. They were married on Earth-2 which is a version of them that DC Comics thought was within the realm of possibility but couldn’t quite commit to in the main universe. 

The fact that Bruce is confident that Selina would be happy with another version of himself shows that these versions of fundamentally the same and their feelings for each other never change. Bruce and Selina’s feelings for each other are authentic and that wouldn’t change. It shows that their love for each other transcends all time and space. 

In short Batman Annual #2 is likely to be remembered as one of the greatest Batman and Catwoman stories of all time. The positive response from fans and critics proves to DC Comics that there is a market for this relationship and they can strive for more than what’s already been done. The massive commercial success will hopefully convince the editors that the direction Tom King has taken the book and the characters has been long overdue. Beyond the romantic narrative the Annual opens a world of exciting opportunities for the Batman books. What will occur is yet to be seen and Tom King isn’t saying, so we’ll have to wait to find out. 

Reflecting on the Annual I’m reminded of a quote from Kiersten White’s The Chaos of Stars that have been used in a number of fandom edits, that I myself used once. I’ll quote it here because no matter what will come to be I think it fits very well: 

I’d choose you; in a hundred lifetimes, in a hundred worlds, in any version of reality, I’d find you and I’d choose you.

[your-modern-shakespeare]

Fanfiction Recommendations

4/26/17: Hey guys! So I know that I am actually the worst, but school is currently ruining my life and I have two weeks worth of finals to get ready for (like my finals week has been split into two). Also I know that I have been out for a while now and I have tried to update things but I have just designed the costumes for a show here at school and it has literally caused me to be at school 14-15 hours a day, for the past three weeks. SO I am mentally and physically exhausted. So what does this mean? I am taking some time off from writing (just until the 10th of May). That being said I will try and post a weekly fic rec list so that you guys can enjoy the awesome blogs that I read from every night before I go to bed.

As you will notice, I’m a binger and love reading series. Also, for some reason I don’t have a lot of Marvel reads, which means that I am slacking on the following of marvel blogs. So if you know any I would love some recommendations. (I promise that these are things that I have been reading for a long time, the next list will probably be much shorter)

Dean x Reader

Imagine Sam and Dean Finding Your Daughter Trying to Make Breakfast by @teamfreewill-imagine

Lies and Family Ties (One-Shot) by @greezyscumbag - Mary tells Dean that the reader cheated on him to stop him finding out about her (Mary) stealing from Ramiel. 

Time for A Wedding (One-Shot) by @effie-w - You’ve hunted with the Winchesters since practically all your life, which makes you a co-protagonist in the supernatural books. There aren’t too many problems with that until you find out that Becky ships you and Sam together. And she’s loud about this particular hobby too, so loud in fact that your longtime boyfriend Dean might not stand her very much. But, whatever, right? Ships are harmless, or they are usually. They’re not anymore when she decides it’s time for hers to become canon, with a long-awaited (in her opinion) wedding

The Prince and the Huntress (Series) by @skymoonandstardust - so I just tagged her masterlist because she’s amazing and for this recommendation specifically, it’s a prince dean!AU, you can’t go wrong with that.

Sam x Reader

Imagine Sam waiting to hear you made it out of surgery okay… by @plaidstiel-wormstache

Imagine your daughter asking you about Sam’s scar by @teamfreewill-imagine

Castiel x Reader

All of Me (One-Shot) by @webcricket - “1st Cas-iversary Celebration drabble request by @ire-art-blog – “I was thinking of a drabble it can be smutty or nah but a castiel x reader where the reader has tattoos or even kinda goth.” Did you read my mind? Cause I’ve had a wing tattoo idea fluttering about my skull (and inspiration pics cluttering my desktop) for weeks! It’s pure fluff.“

Just Shut Up and Kiss Me (One-Shot) by @casbabydontgoineedyou - a super cute kissing Castiel blurb

Jensen x Reader

Undeniable Heat (Series) by @katymacsupernatural - You’ve just gotten a job as one of the makeup artists on the set of Supernatural. Nervous on the first day, you become completely awkward, winning the affection of the divorced Jensen Ackles. You try to fight your desire for him, but he thwarts you at every turn. Will you be able you separate work and play, or will you let Jensen win? 

Forward (Series) by @blacktithe7 - Being a single father was never Jensen’s plan, but when his wife unexpectedly passes away just months after giving birth to their little girl, that is exactly what he becomes. His life has been about nothing but his daughter for years. Now Gen and Jared think it’s time for him to move on, and they may know just the right girl to help him do it. Jensen is not so sure. Will he give it a shot? Or will the ghost of his dead wife make him ruin what could possibly be the best thing to ever happen to him and his family? 

You’re Not my Wife (One Shot) by @bringmesomepie56 - drunk Jensen one shot

Out of the Park (Series) by @iwantthedean - Seventy years after the initial opening of the All-American Girls’ Professional Baseball League, several MLB team owners have invested together in a tributary women’s league. The deal is for one season, but hundreds of women across the country are vying for the sixty-four spots available. Jensen Ackles was a star player in the MLB, until a cheap move by a base-runner landed him on the DL. Always arrogant and slightly cranky anyway, his new assignment as coach for one of the women’s baseball teams is not an idea he is fond of. Can you take a chance and make a lifetime dream come true? Can Jensen stop fighting against the path his life is taking? Will leaning on each other lead to relationship neither of you wanted or planned on?

Jared x Reader

Love Triumphs All (Series) by @katymacsupernatural- Jared and Gen have split up, but are still friendly. You, the Reader have recently started acting on Supernatural, and have fallen in love with Jared. Both of you get hate due to the fact that you are much younger than he is. 

The Contest (Series) by @winchesterprincessbride - To celebrate Supernatural’s 15th season, the producers have decided to hold a contest to cast an unknown in a recurring role as Sam’s rumored love interest. They are doing open casting calls all over the country. Your best friend Nikki wants to go and she drags you along. 

Misha x Reader

Love at First Video (Series) by @katymacsupernatural (If you haven’t caught on I love this blog)- You were a babysitter, but you wanted to be more. Deciding to create a cooking video, you were shocked when it garnered the attention of a well known actor. Soon the attention becomes something neither of you can ignore. 

Mark x Reader

Your British Knight (Series) (I just found out there were other parts!) by @nothin-after-79 - Is still seriously one of my favorite reads but now with a summary: Thanks to an embarassing accident at the gym, the reader meets Mark Sheppard. Despite a stalker ex and her crazy family, he becomes her knight in shining armor and he falls in love with everything about her including her drug fueled and not so easy past. A story loosely based on the author's real life.

Bucky x Reader

P.S. I Love You (Short Series) by @kittenwritesstuff - When your husband, Tony, dies, you are convinced that your life ended along with his. On the day of your 30th birthday you receive a surprise from Tony and with every letter from him, you start to learn how to live on your own - based on a plot of ‘P.S. I love you’ for @stories-from-stark-tower‘s 3K Celebration Movie AU Challenge.

Chris Evans x Reader

First Steps (One Shot) by @thing-you-do-with-that-thing - “This is my entry for @paigeinastory’s Country Song Fic/Sentence Prompt Challenge. I had two prompts. The first was the song Dan + Shay - From the Ground Up and the other was the sentence: “Would you like children someday?” 

Also, if you want to read anything written by me here is my MASTERLIST. The last two fics that I have written may not be on here, but if you have a problem finding anything just let me know. I LOVE YOU GUYS SO MUCH!

[saranel]

thesplendidangharadd replied to your post “That's why I didn't understand your logic. While you admitted that...”

I know you hate it when I kinda " hijack" your post but seriously I couldn't stop myself on this one . Kubo did "show" us several times ichigo had latent feelings for Orihime . The lust arc ? The grimmjow fight ? The way he reacted when she was taken to hueco Mundo ? All of this happened around chapter 200 /300 it's not the end of the story . The fandom went out of its way to prove those moments meant nothing and IT DID . The thing is that

all those ichiruki moments you think Kubo "showed" can be interpreted as a strong platonic friendship . Ichigo's showing his feelings for orihime though ? Can only be interpreted as romantic . It's the peak of mauvaise foi for you to show us yoruichi telling ichigo to say something nice to orihime and not show those like 6 panels of him blushing out of his mind just because orihime wore a revealing outfit which was the " show" part of " show don't tell"

Kubo did not separate ichigo and rukia in order to push for ichihime . He separated them because from a story telling point of view their relationship reached its narrative end at the end of the fullbring arc . Ichigo doubted rukia was still his nakama because she did not come to see him while he was powerless but when she came back to gave him his powers he understood the bond he had with her was unbreakable which made him understand the bond he had with his other frien

friends ( who were under tsukishima influence at the time ) was also unbreakable . Showing scenes of them together had no point because the readers knew where they stood , their bond didn't need further developemment . Ichihime did and renruki though and that's why there is more of it in the last arc . Bleach was not a victim of ichiruki chemistry but of the ichiruki fandom who had a frienship who could be interpreted as love for the first 100 chapters and clung to it

for the other 580 chapters of the manga blindly refuting what was irrefutable proof that the manga was going in the ichihime direction

*sigh* You do realize that the reply feature is meant to be used for short messages? Save your interlocutor the trouble and hit ‘reblog’ pls?

(putting this under a cut because I care about my fellow man and their dash)

I know you hate it when I kinda " hijack" your post but seriously I couldn't stop myself on this one

Er... When have I ever said that...? I’m not even sure what you mean by ‘hijack’? Replying to/reblogging a post is not hijacking.  I can ignore your rebuttal if I so wish and if I didn’t want people to react to this post I wouldn’t have made it (though I’d blame the requester for the impetus, I was just replying to an ask).  S’all good 👍 

I’ll tell you what I do dislike, though, since we’re on the subject (hate is a pretty strong word): people who reply to a post in underhanded ways.  Liiiike, say (and this is completely off the top of my head, totes random example) taking screenshots of a post (not even in its entirety), then uploading them to their blog and going off on a rant the OP will receive no notification for and thus cannot respond to unless they stumble upon it by chance. Which of course allows them to be as unpleasant as they like before their audience of sycophants and call the OP names without fear of them actually weighing in.  

Wouldn’t happen to be familiar with a class act like that, would you? :) Just curious!

And yeah, I bet you couldn’t help yourself.  It’s, like, so harrrrd to stay out of the tag of your NOTP.  It’s not like you want to stir up trouble, no siree, not you, not ever.

The thing is that all those ichiruki moments you think Kubo "showed" can be interpreted as a strong platonic friendship . Ichigo's showing his feelings for orihime though ? Can only be interpreted as romantic

[...] Showing scenes of [Ichigo and Rukia] together had no point because the readers knew where they stood , their bond didn't need further developemment . Ichihime did and renruki though and that's why there is more of it in the last arc .

I’m confused.  If the only way to interpret all of Ichigo’s interactions with Orihime is under a romantic light, then why did IH and RR need further development? Weren’t the endgame pairs perfectly clear?

Also, both those points are in my original post.  I do mention the platonic aspect of IchiRuki and I do say that IH and RR needed a lot more development.

It's the peak of mauvaise foi for you to show us yoruichi telling ichigo to say something nice to orihime and not show those like 6 panels of him blushing out of his mind

Mauvaise foi??? Are we talking about the intent to deceive here, or Sartrean existentialism?????? Because either way, how on earth does it apply? Did I maliciously neglect to show some sort of huge moment in IH development? Because let me tell ya, Ichigo blushing at the sight of Rukia’s ass doesn’t really rank high in a list of top IR moments, either. I’d be surprised if it even makes the top 20.  It’s little more than icing, because the rest of the cake is already there.

Ichigo blushing at the sight of Orihime’s outfit isn’t exactly the best pro-IH argument, because this isn’t the first time he’s blushed at the sight of a pretty girl/woman showing some skin:

If blushing is meant to be interpreted as a surefire sign of actual affection and not the result of being a 17-year-old boy in the presence of sexiness, get ready for IchiRukiRanYoruHime, y’all. And they say Harem Anime is unrealistic.

But you know what?  The Orihime moment is unique in a very obvious way: Ichigo didn’t even notice Orihime’s outfit until Chad brought it to his attention, which is precisely the point.

You’ll notice I didn’t use the panel of Ichigo looking at Rukia’s ass and juxtapose the two in my original post, because that would’ve been pointless.  There is a reason I chose that panel of Yoruichi and it’s two-fold: 1) the post you read was the third response in a series of asks I got about Ichigo being teased about Orihime, and 2) the Yoruichi incident, just like the Chad incident before it, is an example of ‘telling.’

Ichigo’s friends need to constantly draw his attention to Orihime because he’s not doing it on his own.  If he was in love with Orihime, he should have been paying attention to her without anyone having to pester him into it. Up until the final arc, Ichigo is completely oblivious to her and her feelings unless they’re the only two people in a room or she’s directly talking to him (the scene where she heals him in SS and tears up comes to mind, or the one directly post the Aizen fight before he collapses).  

And it shouldn’t be this way for a guy who’s in love with a girl, even if he doesn’t yet realize it (since you mentioned ‘latent’ feelings).  She should be the first person he notices in a group, the person he singles out.  That would be showing.  The only time this ever happens is after they meet up with Ishida and Ichigo notices Orihime crying.  And it’s too little too late by that point for someone who, as you claim, has liked her for a while now.  If you want to argue that Ichigo has only just started falling for Orihime around chapter 661, that I can understand and get behind, even though I’m not a fan of the ship. 

I never claimed all those moments you talk about in the Lust arc are meaningless.  I can’t speak for the bulk of the fandom, but I’ve always believed Ichigo cares deeply about Orihime.  That much is undeniable.  But the reason I never thought of this affection as romantic is because it’s not followed through in the story until the very end.  Ichigo would die for every single one of his friends; his rushing to HM to save Orihime has no romantic connotations (just like the act of his rushing to SS to save Rukia is not romantic when examined in a vacuum).  But every time Ichigo and Orihime had a moment in the series, it wasn’t ever shown to change his feelings.

I mean, hell, when he carries Orihime in the HM arc, her ass is literally next to his face and there isn’t a blush in sight.

Have fun trying to picture Ishida in the exact same scenario, guys.  I know I did

Orihime, who actually, canonically likes Ichigo, is blushing like no-one’s business, while Ichigo is all: “Bruh, this is the quickest way.” He just casually picks her up like it’s no big deal, when before he rescued Rukia in SS, the friggin’ dork just stood there with the flames of the Sōkyoku blazing behind him, grinning at her like an idiot and trying to look cool. Which is exactly the kind of crap teenage boys pull to impress the girls they like.

Even after that moment in the Lust arc of Ichigo being brought back by Orihime’s voice (which I know is very big with IH shippers) nothing changes in the way Ichigo sees her.  When he activates his Fullbring, Rukia is still the person he singles out, even after he literally rose from the dead to save Orihime.

This is what I mean by “Show, don’t tell.” In a properly developed romance, the climax of the Ulquiorra fight should’ve been the start of Ichigo at the very least starting to pay more attention to Orihime.

We get all this panel time of Orihime thinking about Ichigo, talking about her feelings for Ichigo, but nothing on his side.  He’s the friggin’ protagonist.  He should’ve spent at least some time thinking about Orihime without anyone having to push him into it.  It wouldn’t even have to be explicitly romantic like it was with Orihime, all Kubo needed to do to show his changing feelings was to occasionally show Ichigo thinking about her.  The only time I can ever recall him specifically doing so was to point out that her powers had grown and that was always after either talking to her or watching her in action.

You said it yourself: IH and RR needed more development.  And that’s the problem right there.  Ichigo and Rukia could’ve jumped straight into a romance almost immediately post Yhwach fight and even people who don’t like the pairing couldn’t have claimed they needed more development.  Even in the RR novel, Ichigo and Orihime don’t get together until 3 years post war.  

I can picture Ichigo and Orihime growing closer and Ichigo falling in love with her at some point after 684.  What I don’t see and never have is evidence of that romance from his side in the manga. The fact that they got married isn’t in itself proof of Ichigo having been in love with her from the start, it’s proof that he’s in love with her now and has been since whenever it was they started dating. 

Kubo did not separate ichigo and rukia in order to push for ichihime . He separated them because from a story telling point of view their relationship reached its narrative end at the end of the fullbring arc .

Oh, that is complete bullcrap and you know it.  Setting aside pairings for a moment, can you honestly tell me that when you thought of the final showdown in Bleach you pictured Ichigo, Aizen and Renji with a dash of last-minute Ishida thrown in?

I’ve seen posts from IH fans rejoicing in “Kubo trolling the IR fandom” and talking about how he deliberately kept Ichigo and Rukia apart, or made certain choices just to spite the fandom.  You can’t have it both ways, claiming that Kubo merely followed the narrative one day, then saying he did it on purpose the next one. It’s one or the other, can’t be both.

Kubo himself called Rukia the protagonist of the Shinigami side and she wasn’t there for any of the confrontations against Yhwach.  Orihime, at least, fought alongside Ichigo in the first one, but Rukia was completely sidelined.  ‘From a story telling point of view,’ she deserved to be there instead of Renji, but since Kubo was pressed for time, he had Renji join Ichigo on his own so they could have a talk on the way there and cement RR.  Renji literally did nothing in the final battle, unlike Aizen and Ishida.  It could’ve been anyone but Ishida in his place and the result would’ve been exactly the same.  There was no reason for him to be there on his own other than to talk about his reconciliation with Rukia.  Which was a lovely moment, but it could’ve happened at literally any other time.  Orihime wouldn’t have been left alone, either, if Rukia had joined them: the Fullbringers were all there to stay with her.

Kubo didn’t have the time to do a full-on nakama fight, so he gave Orihime her moment earlier on; shat all over Chad; shoehorned Ishida in because this was kinda his arc after all, oopsie; used Renji as canon fodder, and devoted a full chapter on Aizen swinging his dick Kyōka Suigetsu around.  But no Rukia.  

Because you know, just as well as I do, that if she had been there for the end, fighting alongside Ichigo (since a group fight wasn’t feasible), the negative reaction to the ending would’ve been ten times as bad.   

[captainharunanase]

When you justified with the term fanart, that you can basically do whatever you want, I agree with you. BUT the recent new stalker *cough* cozy-hovel *cough* commented more than one IR fanarts with very piss-weak comments like "you're delusional" or "not gonna happen". Not worth this person's time but keep a look out, I got the receipts and I've counted.

Very true. I have seen that particular idiot call anything IR-oriented as “delusional” but here’s the kicker–all those IR moments are legit scenes from the manga. How can any IR scene, that Kubo himself drew, be delusional? Despite how people interpret them, an IR moment is STILL an IR moment.

Long-ass post under the cut because I want my IR lovelies to enjoy the tag and not have to be bombarded with my super long semi-meta post.

Anyhoo, a few examples here just to make my point.

Ichigo went to SS to save Rukia himself–no one forced his hand. And regardless if it’s “seen” as romantic or not he still saved her AND thanked her for stopping his rain (i.e. depression). Orihime even admits Rukia changed his world and is his most important person. That’s legit there no matter how you translate it.

How is that delusional? We all read it. Saw it. Heard it from Ichigo himself. Major IR moment.

Ichigo feels down about his inner hollow and all that jazz until Rukia shows up and literally cheers him up. Doesn’t matter if it’s romantic or not. It happened. It’s there. Even Orihime is grateful to her for doing something even she could never do. That’s an IR moment.

How is that delusional? Kubo showcased it in full view. No tricks, no double-meaning. It’s right there.

Ichigo saying goodbye to Rukia at the very place he gained his powers from her when they first met. His and hers facial expressions displaying such sadness and melancholy over their farewell. How their humans friends were also sad for the both of them in seeing this happen to them.

How is that delusional? It’s right there. It’s an IR moment that Kubo took the time to draw with such great emphasis and detail there’s no way people can mistake it as anything but a semi-private sad goodbye moment between them.

And when Rukia returned at Ichigo’s lowest moment in FB Arc? Where Ichigo was in the very pinnacle of despair and desperation and fear and hopelessness? Where every single human bond (minus his dad and Uryu) he had in his life had been utterly ripped apart and distorted and used AGAINST him to show how weak and easy it was to turn on him and betrayal him? How even though Uryu and his father hadn’t betrayed him–he still DOUBTED them at first until he was reassured by them that they were on his side?

Yet the moment he saw Rukia–even with a blade stabbed through his chest FROM BEHIND–he automatically trusted her? Was fucking relieved to see her? Didn’t doubt his Shinigami friends when they appeared to aid him? Or that moment where even Byakuya, having gotten cut by Tsukishima’s blade, still was on Ichigo’s side because of his faith in him–through all of the actions Ichigo’s done for his sister and Soul Society? How Ichigo finally regained his resolve back from her, again, and literally showed Ginjou that his despair had changed into his strength through her? And the very fact Rukia would have died for Ichigo–again–when Tsukishima tried to kill him from behind? The look on his face when he saw it about to happen?

How is any of that delusional? We saw his depression after losing his powers. We saw him try to find a way to get them back. We saw him struggle with his Fullbringer so he could try getting his Shinigami powers back. We saw his human bonds break and his doubts against everyone until Rukia showed up. He didn’t question her. Kubo literally wrote “these bonds will never break” about IR. This is literally a fact from Bleach. There is no bias or twisting the truth.

Romantic, platonic, and so on does not matter here. Kubo made that moment important to the both of them and ONLY them. That is the truth. There is no asspulling or imagining it. This is literally not up for debate. It’s literally a highlight to illustrate that his bond with Rukia will never break despite the ending.

Yet Kubo not only tried to dismantle and discredit 15 years of buildup between IR through the last arc, but in trying to do so made the ending seem extremely OOC and off-putting to the majority who expected actual substance not shallow and hollow imitations of what they once loved and cared for for 15 years. I’m not talking about ships. I’m talking about the 180° character assassination and the horrendous gaping holes in his story. He had 10 more years left for Bleach. What he does instead is a 10 year jumpskip with literally no explanation of any major plotlines except Rukia being captain and some characters are around and about but who the hell knows what they’re even up to because it was wasted on ships of a future generation Bleach never once hinted on or was expected to be about all…along?

If Kubo wanted to pull a Naruto he should have actually read it because Kishimoto definitely talked nonstop about past, present, and future generations so much I’m surprised few people find THAT ending odd yet say Bleach was always supposed to end this way? Really now? I definitely know people that think that way only cared about ships and not the integrity of Bleach.

I don’t care about canon ships or if Ichigo somehow fell in “love” with Orihime 3 years later after the final arc. Same thing with Rukia to Renji. What I care about is facts and evidence supporting it.

Which there literally is none in the manga.

The only evidence that Ichigo felt for Orihime had only ever been friendship. What she felt for him was more than that–that is a no-brainer. Her feelings for him is a fact. His feelings for her? Never saw romantic proof. And I didn’t ship IR or any ship seriously until the FB arc. But even I knew, if Ichigo had to be with someone based off who he was closest to in terms of who actually understood him best–I assumed it would be Rukia. It made logical sense based off all the mutual compatibility and the semblance of how Kubo was always furthering their bonds and demonstrating their importance to each other through not only other characters but through Ichigo’s and Rukia’s actions for one another.

Even when he was trying to separate them in the end you could tell how he had to actively alienate them to even give a small glimmer of hope to make the canon ships somewhat passable. But all he did–since he never properly handled IH/RR correctly with equal mutual reciprocation from Ichigo to Orihime and Rukia to Renji–is make the majority of his audience feel dissatisfied with how strange they were acting. He had plenty of time to make those ships important but he chose not to. It wasn’t until he was getting the plug pulled that he suddenly cared about them. Yet in doing so was too little too late. He was reaching the end of his serialization and instead of closing all the loose ends and trying to end the final battle as best as he could. He chose to focus on a faulty shipping path instead of the story’s own dire need of a proper closure.

Rukia ignoring Ichigo? Renji giving him a speech to lift his spirits that he’s never done before? Tsukishima giving him powers? Rukia and Ichigo barely interacting or even acknowledging each other? So on and so forth?

That is actually also not delusional. We don’t deny it happened. It’s there. We see it. Those are moments meant to dissolve IR importance at the last second. This is Kubo stating if Bleach ends so does IR.

But it really didn’t. He never actually goes through with it.

Ichigo and Rukia still are the same when they are together. Albeit still not IC fully yet it’s undeniable that while 686 spewed some ooc talk about courage–IR still had a moment. They are still the definition of Bleach regardless how you see them as.

That is fact. That is truth. It’s there. Kubo made sure to remind us. Even with all he’s done, Kubo still had to make IR important because it started with them and now ended with them.

Lil Kaz and Lil Ichka didn’t change that even if they “inherited the love and destiny” their respective parent had for each other to them. If anything I don’t hate or blame the children for that. They are merely the byproduct of a man who has been proven to have lost Bleach’s true purpose and integrity years ago and now has nothing left to show for it.

This is not a delusion or made up. This is fact. It happened. It’s there. We all universally read the death of Bleach together. We saw how it failed to capture the essence of what made Bleach–BLEACH. The ending IS a failure. The sales project it, the Japanese fans express their displeasure, the negative reviews and reactions received are not made up or imagined, the daily fact Kubo has yet made a formal interview or even attempted to write a post-script to answer our questions is proof he no longer wants anything to do with his own work.

He was coerced to draw for his own post novels and he even stated he wanted no part in them. All talks of post Bleach is done by third parties and any small snippets of him are done by others literally quoting what he’s told them–not to us his fans. The "bonds" we see in the newest novel? He literally stated they were "never seen in the original manga." Antis say he didn't have "time" because of the cancellation but he had 15 years for IR yet no time for the "intended" ships he apparently wanted? What an asspull and last ditch effort to screw himself over.

That is definitely not delusional. Never in my years of being a part of this world of manga and video games have I ever heard of a creator taking such great lengths not to address or even talk about his work post-conclusion. Kubo is not talking and will most likely not talk about his thoughts on his direction towards the end of his series for a good while.

And to all those that actually enjoyed the ending, despite evidence to prove how much of a complete debauchery it made the characters out to be and the storyline put into utter jeopardy and disrepair, congratulations you’ve played yourselves.

You’ve literally proven not only do you not care about the foundation of what made Bleach what it used to be (the characters, the story, and even the bond between IR–honestly don’t care if you ship them or not) but also the very fact you rejoice in the thought that IR has "sunk" (uh-huh yeah sure) simply because it THREATENED your ships. You only care about how much of a hassle their bond was that you knew the only way Bleach would be great TO YOU is if IR was destroyed in every way, shape, and form. Regardless whether it was Kubo trying to ruin any potential romantic bond or even their platonic one–you are HAPPY at the thought Kubo tried to disprove them in any way you think he could.

Now that’s delusional. It actual never came to fruition or able to stop IR from being IR. Kubo literally could not be bothered to care to try and go through with even that. He tried, yes, but he took it all back at the end with his. “Thank you Ichigo and Rukia…” and his “won’t this make you cry if you’re a fan of Ichigo and Rukia?” These tidbits he insists on saying over and over are facts.

Your positive reactions of Kubo trying to disassemble IR and how you all have in turn tried to dissuade us to stop criticizing Bleach is as transparent as your blatant hate for Rukia and her importance to both Ichigo and Bleach.

The truth is you all would gladly sacrifice the whole essence of Bleach if it meant IR was never meant to be. That is literally how far you antis have gone. You all would gladly see Bleach fall than admit without IR your ships would sail worry-free.

In truth, it’s not even the real IH/RR fans that are delusional it’s the anti-IR fans that are severely misinformed and delusional.

They see any IR moment and have to assume it’s unimportant because it threatens them. They need to assume it’s only platonic and can only be seen that way because it makes it easier to then steal IR material for themselves and call it romantic for their ships. They believe in their minds that IR fans are delusional because we hated the final arc of Bleach over ships and nothing else. They wholeheartedly think we are all inherently wrong because we didn’t read Bleach “right” and we’re the delusional ones.

All of these assumptions and accusations of IR fans are ironic as fuck because there had been nothing but proof and receipts from our side proving how insecure and pathetic their attempts at garnering our attention and their need for us to validate them since August of last year.

They want us to feel threatened by this ending, by Kubo’s attempts to assassinate his own series, and by admitting somehow and in some twilight zone that their way was the true way.

Their delusions are grand I’ll give them that but their transparency and smell of desperation reeks of instability and fragility.

I have never felt threatened by IH/RR or by any ship for that matter. We all know IR is the pinnacle and definition of Bleach.

Love them, hate them, and ship them or not there is no delusion about them. When you think of Bleach they are the sum of it. They are what made Bleach great. And through them, we had many other great things and characters born from those two’s interaction that fateful night 15 years ago. That is fact. It happened. We all read it. No denying the two main characters of the story creating the very basis and foundation Bleach once stood upon proudly. Now? All we remember is the horrible ending of endless loopholes, incomplete retcon plotlines, MIA characters, OOC overturn of remaining characters, and still underdeveloped half-sided ships meant to take seriously with a finale of two small children that somehow was the conclusion needed to finish Bleach in all it’s now faded glory?

The delusions pro-ending fans take to ensure they are proven right with as little to no evidence as possible to dictate this is how we all as a collective whole must see it as is anything but delusional.

Now, if Kubo cared and catered to the ending correctly by talking about it and making interviews and just admitting the truth “yes I wanted everything to happen EXACTLY like this for x and y reasons because this and that.” Then yes we’d all would have seen it. It would have happened if he did it. We couldn’t have denied it even if we tried.

But no, we get nothing but vague “I intended it from chapter 1…” and “I only wanted the kids to meet…” the “it” in question is vague and had been never clarified so anything we assume ranging from ships to just Ichigo losing his powers and staying in the human world can be what he meant. The kids bit is also strange because while he states he wanted the kids to be a part of Bleach (how? Well not sure except from what we got in 686 obviously) but he doesn’t specify WHY he wanted the kids to meet.

As a roundabout way for IR? To illustrate the IR bond through mini IR 2.0? To show the love IR had for each other through their kids? Wanting them to go through the same trials and tribulations IR did for some sadistic twist of fate? To try and do a failed Boruto rehash? To try and save his series? To make the kids the ones to break the tragic love stories by ending up together whereas all the other romances didn’t? He didn’t specify and I honestly doubt he ever will.

Nor do I honestly care about him or his lackluster post ending bullshit.

I care about Bleach in its entirety. I care about each and every character–even the ones in the last arc. I care about the narrative and what used to be the true purpose of Bleach in Ichigo’s incompleted Hero Journey. I care immensely about the dishonor he has done to Rukia and her shinigami world. I care deeply at what he’s done to both IR and even Orihime and Renji. I care ferociously about Uryu’s mistreatment and isolation. I care strongly about Chad’s lack of importance in the end and how much disrespect Kubo has done to the rest of his characters and story.

I will always put Bleach first and IR second. Good thing they are at times one and the same when it comes to their tragic fall from grace.

Give me true mutual 100% irrefutable fact that I’m wrong about both Bleach and IR and maybe MAYBE I’ll reconsider my analysis and interpretation of this major work I’ve literally been a part of since the very beginning 15 years ago when I was a preteen. Tell me, my understanding was always wrong when I didn’t even fully ship IR because I believed with my whole being that IR is just IR any way they wanted to be for Bleach didn’t need ships to make it great so long as IR’s bond pulled through.

Tell IR fans how delusional we are when the jokes on you antis on how shallow you have been proven to care about Bleach where even tons of non-shippers like I used to be can see through your bullshit and has since joined sides with the anti-ending fans as well as IR fans on criticizing the fuck out of this shamble of what used to be a great top 3-tier manga.

So yes, Anon-san that anti fool can crosstag and complain and whine about how the majority of the Bleach fandom is “delusional” and “salty” and etc.

Doesn’t change the fact that the majority of the fandom is pissed and will always be outraged and feel betrayed over the disaster that Bleach has become and no amount of bitching insignificant, incompetent, disrespectful crosstagging little shits will ever find the validation they so desperately crave from the majority that will forever loathe both them and the ending Bleach never deserved.

But thanks for keeping track of their actions, it’s great to know how much they prove their own stupidity while we continue to simply bask in all of Bleach–both good and bad parts.

Sorry for the long length. But it’s just irksome to see assholes like that one pretend to care about Bleach and call us fake fans.

How delusional can they be, amirite? Guess we’ll just have to keep our epic-ness at full blast per usual to spite them since they just can’t help getting their arses roasted every time they try to use their emotional opinions as facts while we just drown them with contextual evidence as truth and just sip our deliciously hot scathing tea in the aftermath.

Because I do love me some tea after a good roast. Don’t you? Good bitter pity and disgruntle pettiness from their end is always great in my cup after washing my hands of their tears.

Oh, no I just realized I might have offended crosstaggers with my “delusions” of grandeur!!! *fake gasp*

Oh wait!!

I also just realized I don’t fucking care. Whoops~

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[cleopatrarps]

Exiled in the U.S., a Lawyer Warns of ‘China’s Long Arm’

From his suburban home in New Jersey, Teng Biao has watched in frustration as what he sees as the apologies to China from Western companies have come fast and furious this year.

First, there was the hotel chain Marriott International, which apologized to the Chinese government in January for having sent out a customer survey listing Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau and the self-governing island of Taiwan as separate territories, a violation of the Communist Party canon that raised the ire of some Chinese citizens.

Then there was Gap Inc., which posted a message to the Chinese apologizing for a T-shirt with a map of China that ignited similar criticism. And in May, Air Canada on its website began listing Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, as a part of Communist-ruled China, which the Taiwanese reject.

For Mr. Teng, one of China’s pre-eminent civil rights lawyers, it all amounted to craven behavior from Western companies trying to stay in the good graces of Chinese officials and citizens to maintain access to the enormous consumer market in China.

“For the past two or three years, I’ve been paying attention to self-censorship by Western scholars, institutions and companies,” Mr. Teng, 44, said one recent afternoon in a cafe in Midtown Manhattan. “It’s urgent. China’s rising threat to international freedom and democracy has become a hot topic.”

Officials and political analysts in Western nations have indeed spoken up in the past year about what they call China’s “influence operations” or “sharp power,” how it coerces foreigners to bend to its point of view, or to self-censor in return for favors or access to the Chinese market.

Since 2013, Mr. Teng has spoken about these concerns four times to groups in the United States Congress and he has given lectures on university campuses on the same topic. He said he plans to write a book on it.

“I felt it’s high time to change the West’s policy toward China,” he said.

Mr. Teng has embraced this new role partly out of necessity. Under increasing harassment by the Chinese authorities, he left China in 2012 to spend time in Hong Kong and the United States. He does not dare return because of an official crackdown in recent years on rights lawyers that has landed many of his friends in prison. He now lives with his wife, Lynn Wang, and two daughters, ages 10 and 12, in West Windsor, N.J.

Mr. Teng’s interest in putting the spotlight on what he calls “China’s long arm” comes from personal experience. In 2016, he clashed publicly with the American Bar Association over its decision to rescind an offer to publish a book by Mr. Teng on the history of the lawyer-led rights movement in China. Mr. Teng said the group did this because it did not want to jeopardize its operations in Beijing. The Bar Association denied his accusation, saying the offer was withdrawn for economic reasons.

“The cross-border repression of which Teng Biao himself has become a victim has become this whole new complex set of issues,” said Eva Pils, a scholar at King’s College London, who once directed a center at the Chinese University of Hong Kong that hosted Mr. Teng. “I’m wary of how repression crosses borders, and I’m wary of how China is changing norms.”

Mr. Teng and his family also ran into financial difficulties in the United States after his wife was dismissed from her job as an international representative for a Chinese technology parts company — a move that he said had been forced by Chinese officials. His wife had worked for the company for 17 years.

“The Chinese government put pressure on that company,” Mr. Teng said. “The company said that because of me, they couldn’t sell their products to Chinese agencies and the military.”

Mr. Teng grew up in a village in the northeastern province of Jilin. His father was a painter and held a low-level official post related to education and culture, while his mother worked as a farmer. He received a slot at prestigious Peking University and decided to study law, eventually earning a doctorate in law in 2002.

While teaching at the China University of Political Science and Law, he became involved in the case of Sun Zhigang, a migrant worker killed by the police while in detention in the south. This started Mr. Teng and other lawyers on the road to activism, leading to their harassment by officials.

Mr. Teng and his wife watched with growing anxiety as President Xi Jinping tightened control over civil society after taking power in 2012. Mr. Teng already had been detained repeatedly and beaten by police officers, with his family illegally kept in the dark as to his whereabouts for weeks at a stretch.

He went to the Chinese University of Hong Kong as a visiting scholar in 2012, then flew to the United States with his younger daughter two years later after getting an invitation from Harvard. By then, his wife and elder daughter had been barred from leaving the mainland, but they fled through Southeast Asia in 2015 with the help of smugglers, at one point riding on the backs of motorbikes through the hills of Thailand.

After Harvard, Mr. Teng was able to establish affiliations with New York University and Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study.

At Princeton in 2017, he collaborated with two other liberal Chinese to found a nonprofit group that aims to promote democracy in China by holding local gatherings, publishing books in Chinese and running online courses. Mr. Teng said the site for those courses is largely blocked in China.

Mr. Teng helped organize a march in Washington last July to call attention to China’s crackdown on rights lawyers, which officials began in earnest on July 9, 2015. About 50 people took part in the march, and Mr. Teng plans to hold another one next month.

This April, Mr. Teng wrote an essay for ChinaFile, a website run by the Asia Society in New York, arguing that “Xi Jinping’s new totalitarianism and Mao’s old style of totalitarianism don’t differ by all that much.”

“I think there must be some leaders, even top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, who have ideas of liberal democracy,” he said in the interview. “But they don’t promote democracy. The first thing is they’re too scared. The second thing is they don’t want to lose the benefits they get from the system.”

One afternoon in March 2017, at a student-organized gathering at Princeton, Mr. Teng debated China’s future with Sida Liu, a professor from the University of Toronto who was also a visiting scholar at Princeton that academic year. Mr. Teng took a harsh view of the party, saying it would never change, while Mr. Liu was more circumspect.

In an interview this week, Mr. Liu said exiles like Mr. Teng have had to take a new approach to activism because of the crackdowns under Mr. Xi and the constant detentions.

“When I was in Princeton, Teng Biao was busy helping victims and families of the crackdown get out of China — to flee rather than to put in resources into China or support the next waves of activists,” Mr. Liu said.

Mr. Teng has warned that some Chinese nationals in the United States try to monitor the dissenters in exile and report back to Chinese officials. He pointed to the 150 or so campus chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, where some members maintain contact with Chinese diplomats and try to quash talks at universities that clash with the official Chinese view.

Ms. Pils said while it was important to look at these influence operations, Westerners need to be careful about assumptions they make about Chinese living abroad.

“I think it is absolutely undeniable there is a problem, and we must study it,” she said. “But there’s a risk of returning to Cold War ideas. It’s important to be clear about the dangers of that. One risk obviously is that we end up replicating what the Chinese government says about people from the West — that they’re subversive and that they’re here to undermine the system.”

Nina Sheridan contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Exiled in the U.S., a Lawyer Warns of the ‘Long Arm’ of China. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post Exiled in the U.S., a Lawyer Warns of ‘China’s Long Arm’ appeared first on World The News.

from World The News https://ift.tt/2HUmQmR via News of World

[dani-qrt]

Exiled in the U.S., a Lawyer Warns of ‘China’s Long Arm’

From his suburban home in New Jersey, Teng Biao has watched in frustration as what he sees as the apologies to China from Western companies have come fast and furious this year.

First, there was the hotel chain Marriott International, which apologized to the Chinese government in January for having sent out a customer survey listing Tibet, Hong Kong, Macau and the self-governing island of Taiwan as separate territories, a violation of the Communist Party canon that raised the ire of some Chinese citizens.

Then there was Gap Inc., which posted a message to the Chinese apologizing for a T-shirt with a map of China that ignited similar criticism. And in May, Air Canada on its website began listing Taipei, the capital of Taiwan, as a part of Communist-ruled China, which the Taiwanese reject.

For Mr. Teng, one of China’s pre-eminent civil rights lawyers, it all amounted to craven behavior from Western companies trying to stay in the good graces of Chinese officials and citizens to maintain access to the enormous consumer market in China.

“For the past two or three years, I’ve been paying attention to self-censorship by Western scholars, institutions and companies,” Mr. Teng, 44, said one recent afternoon in a cafe in Midtown Manhattan. “It’s urgent. China’s rising threat to international freedom and democracy has become a hot topic.”

Officials and political analysts in Western nations have indeed spoken up in the past year about what they call China’s “influence operations” or “sharp power,” how it coerces foreigners to bend to its point of view, or to self-censor in return for favors or access to the Chinese market.

Since 2013, Mr. Teng has spoken about these concerns four times to groups in the United States Congress and he has given lectures on university campuses on the same topic. He said he plans to write a book on it.

“I felt it’s high time to change the West’s policy toward China,” he said.

Mr. Teng has embraced this new role partly out of necessity. Under increasing harassment by the Chinese authorities, he left China in 2012 to spend time in Hong Kong and the United States. He does not dare return because of an official crackdown in recent years on rights lawyers that has landed many of his friends in prison. He now lives with his wife, Lynn Wang, and two daughters, ages 10 and 12, in West Windsor, N.J.

Mr. Teng’s interest in putting the spotlight on what he calls “China’s long arm” comes from personal experience. In 2016, he clashed publicly with the American Bar Association over its decision to rescind an offer to publish a book by Mr. Teng on the history of the lawyer-led rights movement in China. Mr. Teng said the group did this because it did not want to jeopardize its operations in Beijing. The Bar Association denied his accusation, saying the offer was withdrawn for economic reasons.

“The cross-border repression of which Teng Biao himself has become a victim has become this whole new complex set of issues,” said Eva Pils, a scholar at King’s College London, who once directed a center at the Chinese University of Hong Kong that hosted Mr. Teng. “I’m wary of how repression crosses borders, and I’m wary of how China is changing norms.”

Mr. Teng and his family also ran into financial difficulties in the United States after his wife was dismissed from her job as an international representative for a Chinese technology parts company — a move that he said had been forced by Chinese officials. His wife had worked for the company for 17 years.

“The Chinese government put pressure on that company,” Mr. Teng said. “The company said that because of me, they couldn’t sell their products to Chinese agencies and the military.”

Mr. Teng grew up in a village in the northeastern province of Jilin. His father was a painter and held a low-level official post related to education and culture, while his mother worked as a farmer. He received a slot at prestigious Peking University and decided to study law, eventually earning a doctorate in law in 2002.

While teaching at the China University of Political Science and Law, he became involved in the case of Sun Zhigang, a migrant worker killed by the police while in detention in the south. This started Mr. Teng and other lawyers on the road to activism, leading to their harassment by officials.

Mr. Teng and his wife watched with growing anxiety as President Xi Jinping tightened control over civil society after taking power in 2012. Mr. Teng already had been detained repeatedly and beaten by police officers, with his family illegally kept in the dark as to his whereabouts for weeks at a stretch.

He went to the Chinese University of Hong Kong as a visiting scholar in 2012, then flew to the United States with his younger daughter two years later after getting an invitation from Harvard. By then, his wife and elder daughter had been barred from leaving the mainland, but they fled through Southeast Asia in 2015 with the help of smugglers, at one point riding on the backs of motorbikes through the hills of Thailand.

After Harvard, Mr. Teng was able to establish affiliations with New York University and Princeton University’s Institute for Advanced Study.

At Princeton in 2017, he collaborated with two other liberal Chinese to found a nonprofit group that aims to promote democracy in China by holding local gatherings, publishing books in Chinese and running online courses. Mr. Teng said the site for those courses is largely blocked in China.

Mr. Teng helped organize a march in Washington last July to call attention to China’s crackdown on rights lawyers, which officials began in earnest on July 9, 2015. About 50 people took part in the march, and Mr. Teng plans to hold another one next month.

This April, Mr. Teng wrote an essay for ChinaFile, a website run by the Asia Society in New York, arguing that “Xi Jinping’s new totalitarianism and Mao’s old style of totalitarianism don’t differ by all that much.”

“I think there must be some leaders, even top leaders of the Chinese Communist Party, who have ideas of liberal democracy,” he said in the interview. “But they don’t promote democracy. The first thing is they’re too scared. The second thing is they don’t want to lose the benefits they get from the system.”

One afternoon in March 2017, at a student-organized gathering at Princeton, Mr. Teng debated China’s future with Sida Liu, a professor from the University of Toronto who was also a visiting scholar at Princeton that academic year. Mr. Teng took a harsh view of the party, saying it would never change, while Mr. Liu was more circumspect.

In an interview this week, Mr. Liu said exiles like Mr. Teng have had to take a new approach to activism because of the crackdowns under Mr. Xi and the constant detentions.

“When I was in Princeton, Teng Biao was busy helping victims and families of the crackdown get out of China — to flee rather than to put in resources into China or support the next waves of activists,” Mr. Liu said.

Mr. Teng has warned that some Chinese nationals in the United States try to monitor the dissenters in exile and report back to Chinese officials. He pointed to the 150 or so campus chapters of the Chinese Students and Scholars Association, where some members maintain contact with Chinese diplomats and try to quash talks at universities that clash with the official Chinese view.

Ms. Pils said while it was important to look at these influence operations, Westerners need to be careful about assumptions they make about Chinese living abroad.

“I think it is absolutely undeniable there is a problem, and we must study it,” she said. “But there’s a risk of returning to Cold War ideas. It’s important to be clear about the dangers of that. One risk obviously is that we end up replicating what the Chinese government says about people from the West — that they’re subversive and that they’re here to undermine the system.”

Nina Sheridan contributed reporting.

A version of this article appears in print on , on Page A9 of the New York edition with the headline: Exiled in the U.S., a Lawyer Warns of the ‘Long Arm’ of China. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

The post Exiled in the U.S., a Lawyer Warns of ‘China’s Long Arm’ appeared first on World The News.

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