#first time i wrote fiona in general

[bittrlys]

The Dragon Prince season 6 is like watching people write themselves into a corner in real time. Exciting! Massive spoilers ahead, of course.

THE GOOD

Opening on Aaravos crying was a very strong choice, this is the actual 'Mystery of Aaravos' type content I've been waiting for

Terry picking up Viren while they're excited about him being alive is very cute

As ever, Terry being extremely ride or die is 👍

Terry taking care of Claudia was very sweet; Terry cutting Claudia's hair and Claudia's new haircut in general. Cute.

Viren and Claudia on the beach, "No parent wants their child to suffer for them." Oof.

In general, I was quite happy with everything Viren, Claudia, and even Soren, and I actually wrote a note of "i hate soren" at the start because I thought we were gearing up for another season of him just being a bad joke machine with no real character or feelings to speak of. But then they gave him, like, actual pathos! They let him interact with people in a way that feels human! They let him be resentful and complicated! Wow! Magefam is so back baby!

Viren trying to reconcile with Soren and be a better example for Claudia really got to me. His final sacrifice (OMG CRIMINAL BY FIONA APPLE JUST CAME ON SHUFFLE.......WHAT I NEED IS A GOOD DEFENSE CUS I'M FEELING LIKE A CRIMINAL.......AND I NEED TO BE REDEEMED TO THE ONE I'VE SINNED AGAINST.....) is tied so strongly to his children and that feels like a natural place to leave his character. Now, I've been saying forever that he was going to get a redemption via death, and figured Aaravos would be the one pulling the trigger, so none of that surprised me, but I thought the actual execution was generally good. I do have some more negative thoughts but I'll save those for later.

Viren is very good at justifying himself, and I like that you see him falling back into that, at times struggling with it, at times not even catching himself doing it. It feels very real. At the same time, I don't think he's ever seen himself as a hero, so it was interesting to let him go out on such a heroic note.

Viren's kind of abuse-coded (not actually abusive, IMO, but I understand if this makes people uncomfortable in a similar way) act of forcing Lissa to cry into the vial is interesting. It echoes him taking Sarai's last breath.

Him writing out his whole confession on this subject and then burning it because he realized it was only going to do him good was also very nice.

Though I wish Claudia had stuck by her 'I'm going solo' guns a little longer, I still think there's something to how she is so incapable of being alone, of thinking for herself, and desperately seeks direction. She is literally just like her dad, and it makes them both easy targets for Aaravos.

Like, Viren being such a force that Claudia easily followed him, then Claudia being such a force that Soren and Terry both easily followed her, and Aaravos being a supreme force Viren and Claudia both easily follow because at heart, they're more followers than leaders despite the force of their personalities and ambitions -- it's interesting.

Aaravos using Sol Regem to casually destroy a kingdom and kill Viren just as a small step in his plan is pretty fun. We love a grandiose villain!

Looking forward to Claudia and Aaravos. She's in some ways even more unequipped than Viren to handle Aaravos's manipulations, but at the same time, she's a lot more unpredictable than Viren. If this leads up to a confrontation between them, I think that could be really cool.

Aaravos tragic backstory with deleted child was really not on my bingo card at all -- I never thought 'noble revenge' would be his motivation. I like how this parallels him to Viren.

Aaravos crying enough to fill a sea is great imagery

The lore of the startouch elves being actual stars that descend is SO COOL. This is like, the first bit of worldbuilding in this show that's actually seriously impressed me. I love it.

Actual lore as to why humans don't have magic. Well. Not entirely. But it's better than what we had.

I liked Amaya and Janai's wedding looks. Cute.

Janai like Ehe I'll bring out my armies after I get married 😜 is funny. She isn't a very good queen but she is the moment! The gossip blogs would love her.

Ezran eating shit and not having his """diplomacy""" work out. LMAO.

SOL REGEM DOWN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

Kinda getting a y'know vibe from Soren and Corvus. I wouldn't mind that. I like that Corvus feels a little more tolerant of Soren than everyone else. It's funny Soren is like finally I'm away from my shit family but his new friends don't seem to care about him at all. Go and be totally free of all this, dude, or get a boyfriend.

Runaan back just when I was starting to think this show really hates gay males.

Rayla correcting her assumption about the sex of the diary's author was cute with the voice over changing. (cont...)

THE BAD

(... cont.) Did unfortunately then make it feel like "Had to be a woman because the author will be pining for a man."

Why is Zym STILL just a dog. Bro. It's like if all through Avatar you had to be aware Appa was going to be king someday. STOP BARKING.

Waiting for the whole cast to become vegetarians and somehow I suspect that will not be happening

When Claudia is listing the spell ingredients she could harvest from that cat thing I was just desperate to have Terry go, "Well, some of those could be ethically harvested, right?"

I find prophecies fairly corny as a writing tool and I get why they're going there -- predicted futures are the source of the anti-human oppression -- but still, I sighed.

Luna Tenebris putting a collar on her pet feels like, weird, right? Right? Right? She's not human and dragons otherwise seem so Respect all magical creatures. (Allegedly.) What is the uneven treatment of animals in this universe.

Naming your episode Red Wedding and I don't see a bloodbath ... oh, come on.

That ramble about ships from Caleb. Shudder.

Jeez, who is Rayla going to save? Her uncle who is an actual character or her backstory parents who are obviously happy and at peace? God forbid one of our main heroes has an actual hard choice to make.

Related: Caleb's 5 second rehab from dark magic.

Making his inner truth being about one other person is ... well ....

Cutting from Viren's rapidly cooling corpse to Lujanne receiving a sensual back massage was certainly a Choice.

Viren missing his wife THIS MUCH when he's barely mentioned her up to now was a little weird. I honestly think they saw the homoerotic interpretations of the very intense dynamics he had with Harrow and Aaravos and have been steadily backpedalling from that. Don't get me wrong, I can believe he loved her and he misses her, but the degree of it feels totally unearned.

I get children's media will have mascots for the children, normally I don't mind them, but dear god this show is hitting critical mass on annoying sidekicks (Zym counts as a very big one and he's already nigh unbearable.)

THE UGLY

I can imagine that the descendants of the human children Leola granted magic to are now able to do magic naturally and this could be the lore behind either Caleb or Ezran's abilities. I actually don't mind this as finally being in-universe explanation for this disparity that isn't just 'they want it more' or whatever, but it doesn't help this show's "Better People Are Born Better" messaging. Now, in that vein ...

King Ezran is a KING. Have we mentioned this? He's a king. He's divinely ordained to be above everyone else. You must show him respect because he's KING. Even Rayla emphasizes what a KING he is. BOW BEFORE HIM.

Ezran's idea of """diplomacy""" is just going "Be nice, please." (Followed by a threat LMAO.) "Go live somewhere else." WHERE. What if they try to occupy territory that isn't theirs? Xadian society seems quite separated and territorial. Ezran doesn't consider this. He doesn't consider anything. He has no actual diplomatic skills because he never offers anything, he just expects people to listen to him because he's KING.

You know in Parasite when they're like Of course the rich people are nice, they can afford to be? When Ezran was going I'm a king and I can choose kindness I was like, You're king because of an accident of your birth, and all your privilege and people looking out for you allows you to operate the way you do.

(Janai having an evil brother who is Not The True Heir To The Throne and Trying To Steal It is just part of the show's overall obsession with this narrative -- see also Viren coming from a less privileged background.)

Of course it's still funny to see Ezran be continuously characterized as So Compassionate, So Loving but when it comes to say, Not burning his own people alive or Extending the hand of kindness to one of his oldest childhood friends or her father, he just turns that shit off. This could be interesting hypocrisy if I thought the show was trying to intentionally paint him this way, instead of just wanting him to not be a total pushover because he's THE KING!!! ALL BOW BEFORE THE KING!!!!

The unbelievable frustration caused by a scene where Claudia is begging to not have to use dark magic -- Terry coming in and saving the day with natural magic -- Claudia staring at the peaceful solution and realizing she needs to change -- BUT IT'S STILL A FUNDAMENTAL DISPARITY IN HOW HUMANS CAN EXIST IN THIS WORLD? Is Claudia supposed to die because dark magic is too wrong to use? Now we have the reveal that humans are being actively denied magic I'm hesitantly hopeful they may get some justice in this regard, but it doesn't change the reality of humans right now. What are humans supposed to do? Rely on others for help? Oh, sure, most of the elves and dragons we meet now are just so nice and helpful to humans, because of the show's 'bad apple' approach to prejudice I've mentioned before, but we know that wasn't always the case.

Like, this actual reminder that the difference in power between a single dragon and a human settlement, and unlike the last time we're on the side of humans this time so you can better appreciate the horror of it ... it's depressing to feel like "Only by grace of your betters do you survive." It's echoes of Janai's 'forgiveness' of the human who put out the fire of that elf who assaulted her. "Aren't you lucky we're so NICE?"

This is all compounded by what I meant at the start of my review, that they've written themselves into a corner, especially wrt dark magic. In universe Soren sees no choice but to ask his father to do dark magic, something all the characters scold each other for constantly. Out of universe, the writers had a huge fuck off dragon come along to commit genocide against the humans and the only realistic solution is .... having Viren do dark magic, something the narrative constantly reinforces as bad. They ultimately frame this act as heroic, and according to a writer (I believe) on the discord, he speaks the spell forward to represent how this act of inherent good overcomes the "inherent evil" of dark magic (quotation marks theirs, interestingly.) I think the writers, for the most part, clearly like Viren and Claudia a lot, and like giving them 'big moments' with dark magic ... but this is part of the reason why the show has continuously reinforced a NEED for dark magic without giving any viable solution for the average human who doesn't have natural magical powers or is friends with dragons and elves like our main heroes. Ultimately, it feels hypocritical of the show to keep going on about the evil of dark magic (now very firmly an addiction metaphor) while having no solution for humans in tricky situations that aren't "magic you and only you can do, for some reason" or "queen dragon who somehow still isn't dead dear god coming to save you" or, y'know, "dark magic." Only one of these is really viable for the average person.

Like, you make it an addiction metaphor, but where's the alternative? Vampires need to drink blood to survive but vampire series often show vampires refusing to drink human blood as an addiction metaphor ... they drink animal blood instead, or something, and you get the metaphor. Right now, in TDP, it's either, do dark magic and suffer, or don't do dark magic and ... suffer more? Okay. I'm not saying life has to be fair or that there isn't value in accepting loss, but when Viren scolds Kpp'Ar for having all his fun with dark magic and then very callously dismissing Viren's fear for his son, I felt that. Viren isn't begging for a beer here. He's begging to save his son. Addiction metaphors need to match the scale and reality of what is being shown to you.

Sorry, I'm now going to harp on more about the Your Betters Are Born Better stuff now because I was actually enjoying (you know, tearfully so) Viren's death until his final lines. WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I GASPED!!!!!!!! HOLD ON!!!!!!!!!!! Like, let me get it out of the way, I get it echoes his last exchange to Harrow and his loyalty to Harrow is tied to his loyalty to Katolis, and they're saying "He was power hungry but now he is acting in a way that is purely, totally selfless for maybe the first time in his life," which is fine. The problem is, I have sat through six seasons of this show kissing royal ass. I have seen Aanya (shudder) mock him for not being a real noble-born ruler. I have seen Ezran's divine authority be reinforced time and again, and seen Viren throw himself submissively before his King to submit to his judgement as King, not as someone he once hurt. I have been reminded time and again that less privileged people who want the power necessary to succeed in a world biased against them are power-hungry lunatics unless they submit themselves enough to the Supreme Order of the world. So to have Viren's last words be him reinforcing that the most heroic thing he can ever be is A LOYAL SERVANT is just ... horrible. If they'd just kept the framing of Viren's death on his love for his family, it would have been way, way better.

Altogether I uh guess the season was mostly fine. They actually did a better job tying disparate narratives together with common themes which I appreciate. I liked the magefam stuff. I hope Soren eventually learns the stuff Viren chose not to tell him. I hope there's realistic forward growth on the attitude towards dark magic and why humans feel they need it, like some acknowledgement that Katolis was only saved because of Viren (make that two nations he has explicitly saved.) Maybe even Ezran can take a break from being unbearably sanctimonious to properly acknowledge his sacrifice. That would be nice!

I really hope humans get some justice for how they've been actively denied a valuable resource. It seems a self-fulfilling prophecy (they punished Leola for giving humans magic, this made Aaravos go darksided, Aaravos gave humans dark magic, humans are very set against the magical community for the way they've been treated so they're more callous about using dark magic) so I hope the ultimate lesson won't be "humans don't deserve this" but "humans only ended up here because they were treated like they don't deserve it, but they do, by right of existing as beings in this world." If Callum (+ Ezran) end the series as the only or some of the only humans with magic powers, I'm going to eat drywall.

[xviiper-rents-houses]

can I please request yandere romantic headcannons of scourge and sonic with incredibly smart reader? like, really really cunning and observant. thank you in advance!

Of course! Man oh man am I excited! Thank you for the requests you guys! I looked at both of the requests and an idea popped in my head— the most clever one I have ever had (joking)— what if I combined them together?

A smart reader with two smitten hedgehogs fawning over them is a brilliant mix of unknown chaos and adventure! (And of course, danger). I sure do like the concept of a competition between hero and villain, a trope used since the dawn of time. I wasn't able to elaborate much on freedom fighter stuff because, no matter what I wrote, I just didn't like it lol.

Also, I made art for this! Looks a little cringe but, I couldn't help but try something new! Y'all can use them as pfps or whatever if you like them a lot but, please credit me! (Sonic's came out a little....interesting lol. I keeping on thinking of those Snapcube dubs omg).

Reader is gender neutral and uses you/your pronouns!

TW: cursing, physical harm (not to you but, definitely to Sonic and Scourge) blood, yandere shenanigans: stalking, possessiveness, obsessiveness, murder, sabotage. Another note! Sonic thinks about putting you, the reader, in danger.

Is it proof read? Sorta, not as much as I like to! School's getting busy and fanfiction is helping me survive! Figured if I was able to post this, then I am able to do anything that school has me involved in!

For Sonic and Scourge, it would be incredibly difficult, basically impossible for you to be shared with either one of them. You wouldn't get much down time with these guys around, constantly following and pestering you about: "Who's the better hedgehog?" Your life, Anons, will be a living Hell. Prepare for a game of tug-of-war between two idiots!

Let's start with talking about Scourge.

Scourge would be very adamant on trying to get you to join his team. You're smart and he knows this, much more clever than his compatriots and his now ex-girlfriend, Fiona. He's so desperate for your attention, picking fights with anyone who gets in the way of talking or being by you. And here's where the first problem comes from: you're on Sonic's team. You. You are a part of the Freedom Fighters. And that pisses him off.

Why are you wasting your talents on a bunch of babies? Scourge doesn't care if he has to travel across the zones to find you and take you with him. But, he doesn't count on you being much more smarter than he thought. In the midst of a battle with Egghead's badnicks, Scourge appears out of a portal to try and snag you away. He launches across the greenery, grinning madly. He's finally going to get you and—

Scourge could've sworn that his jaw was dislocated and then broken. It throbbed furiously and he struggled to gather his bearings. His head spun violently. You saw him coming from a mile away, despite his quills supposedly blending him in with the environment. That damn jacket of his gave him away. His prized possession! (Aside from his crown and you, of course). You sent a hunk of Dr. Robotnick's heavy machinery straight at him, letting the robot do the work for you and send him flying away. He was way too dizzy, blood dripping from his nose and a possible concussion. Hell.

You spared him a moment's glance and then took off to help Amy clobber some more tin heads. By now, Sonic had noticed Scourge and was already working his way over in record time, something even Scourge wasn't expecting. The expression on Sonic's face warned of a promised beating and perhaps, even worse, death. Scourge staggered to his feet, turned heel and bolted as fast as he could before he got a generous pummelling from the Blue Blur. He soared into the portal just in time, avoiding a nasty fate. Scourge hit the ground with a bone rattling thud, cursing when he bit on his lip too hard.

He's angry, oh yes he is but, he had to admit, he kinda liked that. Scourge hates to say that he did. You have the same quality that drew him into Fiona— your mind. It's really unfair that you're on Sonic's team though. Now he has to figure out how he's gonna come back, not get his ass beat and take you home with him. You're much smarter than he was anticipating. Scourge that night decides to spare no time for sleep, mind hooked on how you looked at him. How you outwitted him, not even using your own fists to take him down.

Scourge stares at a cabinet in his castle, pondering. Gutting Sonic doesn't sound like half of a bad idea. With that idiot out the way, Scourge gets to have all of your attention on him. The Freedom Fighters though...those mutts are still going to be in the way. Scourge has been itching to become the one and only Sonic, even if he liked the attention he was getting from the rest of the crew, Scourge needed to be in charge of things here. He's gonna figure out how to worm his way into your life and force you to work with him.

Now, what about Sonic?

Sonic loves your intellectual prowess, constantly checking back with you. He wants to hear more about your ingenious creations, (maybe he can even use them to his advantage!) and in general, have you speak to him about everything you come up with. Sonic does not want to share you with your friends though, as much as he likes how they positivity impact your mind, he feels that he should have sole possession of your heart. (He might just go and take it anyway, don't worry, you'll have a mechanical heart to keep you alive!) Instead, Sonic encourages you to hang out with his friends. With you being around his friends, Sonic doesn't have to worry as much.

Whatever your brain delves into, Sonic wants to hear all about it, as said before but, reiterated. (Y'see, this is a really important point). Now, Sonic knows that another hedgehog, specifically the embodiment of a snotball, is also after your affections. He's not going to let that bully get any of your time, always being the first to rush towards Scourge and hit him with the old sucker (his fist). Sonic will do anything to get that vermin off your tail, even convincing Shadow and Knuckles to help him out. Now depending on whether Shadow and Knuckles are yandere will also determine on how much they're willing to help Sonic out. Either way, thanks to Sonic's undeniable charm, he is able to enlist assistance to fend off Scourge. Sonic is even proud of beating Scourge up.

And to make matters worse, Sonic will boast about beating up Scourge at every chance he gets. Now, that being said, it's not out of character for Sonic to gloat over his victories, especially bullies but, he goes further into detail. Sonic is happy that he gave Scourge a well worth punch to the snout to think about. And if Sonic hit Scourge hard enough to the point that Scourge was bleeding—he's ecstatic. From then on, Sonic will constantly bring up the subject of hitting someone so hard that they started bleeding. Sonic uses this as bragging rights and also, a not so well hidden reminder of how strong he is. You belong to him.

Sonic cannot help but replay that day over and over again in his head. Scourge slips through the portal, laughing out loud and being an overall idiot. Scourge's first move is to find and capture you, even stating it out loud. That was his first mistake, giving him right away to Sonic, who started hitting heavier on badnicks. Sonic remembered that he felt panicked, that he wouldn't get to you in time to save you. But, as it turned out, you didn't need any saving. You were just fine on your own. In fact, you had the time to set up a little surprise, just for Scourge.

Shock was an understatement to describing Sonic's face after your clever trick. Instead of fighting tooth and nail to get away from Scourge, (you didn't even have to worry about stepping close at all, due to your ingenuity) you had sent the biggest badnick catapulting at Scourge, hitting him smack dab in the face. Sonic was sorry that he wasn't able to catch up to Scourge, to give him a nice little beat down. That factor made him rather pouty for the rest of the evening, however, that didn't stop Sonic from singing praises about your smarts. He acted like he couldn't believe that you were able to do that. It almost felt like Sonic was being condescending. That you should have been captured, only for Sonic to save the day.

That day, Sonic sat out on the beach, daydreaming about the many different ways that he could save you. From that fight, he learned that you wouldn't actually need him and that fact hurt Sonic more than he liked to admit. Yes, putting you in a dangerous situation might be the trick to get you to fall even more in love with him. But, that could also mean that Scourge would be there to save the day instead. And knowing Scourge, he would definitely out Sonic for his actions, just to win your favor. Sonic had to think carefully on how he was going to handle this.

[youcouldmakealife]

Fic snippet, Fiona&Holden(/James); from the series that never was

So one of my favourite things is when characters twist out of my grasp and announce themselves to be something different than I initially thought they were. I absolutely love it. The moments I'm aware that I am not in control of the story are some of the very best ones as a writer, because I don't know what's coming, and that's exciting.

But it's also annoying as hell. Because everything I've written that comes next? Yeah, it's not canon anymore. Of all my series, Cards on the Table had the most material already written before I started to post the series, some of it occurring significantly later in the narrative, because Holden came easy, but James was proving recalcitrant, so I wrote a lot of scenes, mostly dialogue (dialogue almost always comes first for me), trying to get my finger on his pulse.

And not a bit of it is canon anymore, even though it's still the same Holden, and mostly the same James (I think the biggest pivot point was when I realized that at his core, James isn't driven by anger, as I originally thought. It looks like that on the surface, especially at the beginning of the series, but it's not anger, it's irritability from being constantly fucking overstimulated and exhausted. He's Fed Up. And okay, yes, angry, but that is a Holden Chase specific trigger he's responding to, not his general state of being.)

ANYWAY.

This scene was jossed a long time ago, but I held onto it, because some scenes you're just fond of. And I'm sharing it for the same reason.

I meant to post this after the 'Fiona knows' reveal but it completely slipped my brain until now.

This is completely AU, thanks to James pulling a Bryce on me, but in another universe, just slightly different, Fiona still makes sure her knowing is a mic drop moment.

(Context for the scene, he has told her he's been fucking a teammate, because he's the same as he was from the start, and so is his brain-to-mouth filter, but he hasn't identified who)

(Forgive me, this preamble is longer than the fic snippet)

“How long did we go out, exactly?” Holden asks.

Fiona’s quiet. “Uh,” she says. “Let me see, it was right before prom—“

Holden winces. She forgives, but she does not forget.

“Six months?” Fiona says. “Give or take?”

“Okay,” Holden says. Still his longest relationship, then. He’s got time.

“Share with the class?” Fiona says.

“Can’t,” Holden says.

“Oh, it’s mystery man,” Fiona says flatly.

“Sorry,” Holden says. He really would tell her if he could.

“Minnesotan Mystery Man,” Fiona says.

“Yeah, I—“ Holden says. “Wait, what?”

“Captain of the Whalers Mystery Man,” Fiona says.

They actually only have one Minnesotan, as far as Holden’s aware, so she made her point the first time, but he does appreciate the commitment to the bit.

“How’d you know?” Holden says.

“Babe,” Fiona says. “You are not a subtle person.”

“I think I’m very subtle,” Holden says, but he can’t even finish the sentence without laughing at himself.

“And you stopped complaining about Erickson right around the time you started fucking a teammate,” Fiona says.

“I still complain about him,” Holden protests. “Have you known this whole time?”

“Pretty much,” Fiona says.

“Well,” Holden says. “Fuck.”

[danjaley]

Music I associate with the McCarric Series. A playlist in prose.

A wish of @nocturnalazure Thanks to you and everyone else for smoothing my ruffled feathers yesterday!

The founder, Fergus McCarric the elder, was named after the Irish song "Carrickfergus". Specifically after the arrangement in my flutebook, which is the saddest tune I can play on the flute. He died within the first chapter of the series, which was of course a sad fate, but we didn't really get to know him. It's no coincidence that I named Fergus the younger after him.

If the series had a theme song that would be played at the beginning of each episode, it would be "A night in Summer Long Ago" by Mark Knopfler. It has just the right feeling and a touch of bagpipes too. (When I first thought of the family and started the series, I had just gotten all the albums by Mark Knopfler. It still shows).

For the Scottish feeling in general I like "Bonny Glenn Shee", "Scottish Solder", "Skye Boat Song", "Loch Lomond" and "The Minstrel Boy". "Auld Lang Syne" of course, preferably the version from the Putumayo World Music Celtic Christmas CD. And Scottish dance-music in general.

Also the Scotland theme from an old horse-videogame's soundtrack - that's the only one for which I undertook the most dreadful venture of linking it on Youtube, because I don't know how to describe it otherwise.

Mayrose's song is "Love and Happiness" by Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris.

William and Dan make me think of Irish rebel- and military songs: "Whiskey in the jar", "Gentleman Soldier", "Inniskillen Dragoon", "Wild Rover". Alasdair will probably follow in their footsteps. With regard to the future, I might also mention "Done with Bonaparte" here (Mark Knopfler).

Two songs I associate with Andrew losing his son and Fiona fighting for hers are "I've been waiting for you" and "My Love my Life" both in the text-versions from Mamma Mia 2. It was in the cinemas when I wrote Season 2. Also "All that matters", again by Mark Knopfler.

Although there hasn't been a son lost in the war for quite a while, there's this song by Loreena McKennitt, which I think is called "Breaking the Sword". But that album was released with mixed up track-numbers, so I've still saved it as "A Hundred Wishes", which is also a good title.

For the present characters I don't actually have very strong music associations. For Matt maybe Mark Knopfler's "Get lucky" (the title may give a wrong impression, it's the wry assessment of life in it that reminds me of Matt). In general also "The times they are a-changing" (Simon&Garfunkel). That sums up the situation pretty accurately.

[kurokmask]

now that we are on Link topic. do you have any other hcs that you've not included in the fanfic? like extra info and stuff?

sorry for the late answer, college blah blah blah

there's lots that haven't made it in explicitly, but they're all still swimming in my head when im writing him. this is gonna be disorganized, sorry!

Link likes being told what to do. secretly he likes having other ppl’s expectations on him bc it gives him security, so he doesn't have to think about who he is

not Link, but every version of OoT Zelda I write is transmasc, whether thats something Zelda is truly aware of or not.

again not Link but Cremia was supposed to have a hot Gerudo pirate gf 💔 sorry girl

I kind of regret not doing more with the Ocarina of Time, and time travel in general. Like, towards the end, Link would definitely try to use it, right? I think I'm going to do a major overhaul of the Termina arc soon.

Link can cannot write more than his name.

Link was originally going to be very open about his past adventures. But i decided bottling everything up and feeling ashamed about it and letting it fester like a rotting wound would be sadder :)

sexuality was going to be a concept i explored in the fic. ultimately i wanted to keep it a T rating so i didn't do this, but. it was definitely a thing! cut things include lotsssss of Sheik baggage, boyish feelings about Kafei, weird fierce deity sex dreams and um. remember Javert?

Javert and Link wereeee... supposed to fuck! I even wrote a before and after scene LOLLL. Javert was going to play a more important role in general, being a semi-reoccurring character. He was planned to be Link's kind of """only friend""" in Castletown. Link was drawn to him because of how much older and experienced he was, and Javert took pity on Link, both in a sort of genuine but also kind of overbearing way. ultimately Link got annoyed by him pretty quickly and once he started to get to know Malon he basically ghosted him. another example of how Link struggles to balance relationships, especially those who really care for him. obviously i. didn't go further with this. but it was planned for about a year before I scrapped it. But i hope you reread their scene together to pick up on some vibes.....

since im already being disgusting um. bottom. praise kink. but he never really finds this out. how sad.

when i was first conceptualizing his character, i was actually going to write link as bipolar. I ended up writing him more adhd/autism as thats closer to my own personal experience. but its still in the back of my mind, and it definitely manifests more as he gets older. but this man has so much going on please project anything you want on him and its real he has it

OoT Link is the only Link i hc as cis bc only a cis man would fumble the bag THIS bad. put those tights on boy

i have a weird hyper-specific modern au where he's living in 1998 germany with his little brother (whos just young link). they play ddr together, he goes to acid techno raves, and dresses like this

again, in a modern au, Link would be a total audiophile. his favorite musicians would be Kate Bush, Fiona Apple, Talking Heads, the Prodigy, Devo, the Mountain Goats, Modest Mouse, Nirvana, Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, Bjork, the Magnetic Fields-- ok ill stop

if he was an Animal Crossing villager he'd be a gold wolf with the Jock personality

that's all i can think of right now, I'm sure more will come to me and I'll write them here. thanks for the ask, thanks so much for the interest!!!!!

[jlf23tumble]

I haven’t watched The Idea of You yet, but it’s interesting that you found the music lacking. Did you see the interview that Savan Kotecha and Carl Falk gave to GQ about writing the music for the movie?

https://www.gq-magazine.co.uk/article/the-idea-of-you-songwriters-interview

Oooh, thanks for this link, it actually explains some of the problems I had with the music, especially with how bland/dated it sounds. Arguably the best song, Guard Down (which should be the title, I cannot for the LIFE OF ME, get the movie title right first time), sounds like an AI version of Bruno Mars/Locked Out of Heaven. The rest of the songs just sound [to me] like the fake music you'd see in a Hallmark movie or Disney channel show where they don't want anyone to sniff a song that sounds like some other song, yet also very AI-ish, soulless, not created by human hands. But getting back to that dated sound, it also underlines the weird timeline disconnect I had with this band in general (are they the biggest band in the world? why are they at coachella at this stage in their career? who's their audience? pick a goddamned lane or hire a beta reader, lmao). That article, though, okay, GOT IT, some dudes wrote it, some dudes who had their heyday 10-15 years ago and phoned this in, but whither the female pop songwriters? This movie managed to get the rights to a Fiona Apple song AND a St. Vincent song (and Annie H), but they couldn't ask Amy Allen to crank something out for this fake boyband? Because I think that would have been way, wayyyy better

[whumpy-wyrms]

are u in any fandoms? what are ur interests besides whump? u don’t have to answer i’m just curious!!

someone’s asking me about my interests i can’t NOT answer

this got a bit long tho so i’m putting it under the read more for people who don’t care/are only here for the whump

OKOK. so i’m kinda in the starkid/nerdy prudes must die fandom rn but i know for a fact if i finished adventure time and started watching fiona and cake, that would quite literally become my entire personality for the next 3 months because simon and prismo (and marceline and princess bubblegum and all my other favorite characters) make me insane. but i haven’t done that because well. i’ve gotta write tllr yknow..

anyway, my absolute most favorite pieces of media of all time are undertale and deltarune guys. i cant put in words how much those games mean to me holy shit. as i’m writing this i’m sitting next to my jevil and sans and spamton plushie and they are saying hi. anywayyy yeah i was in the deltarune fandom for a bit it was fun. spamton is silly fucked up creature. jevil is my all time favorite tho

AND THE MAGNUS ARCHIVES… my favorite thing ever fr. y’all. LISTEN TO TMA SERIOUSLY YOU’LL PROBABLY LIKE IT!! it’s a horror podcast and it’s seriously the best fuckinf thing ever it’s so amazing seriously. it’s a bit hard to get into at first because season 1 is less story driven BUT HOLY SHIT. AHHHH ITS SO FUCKING GOOD. jon is one of my favorite blorbos ever and so is michael because he’s a silly distortion guy. just trust me and listen to TMA it will actually change your life.

also i love the amazing world of gumball so fucking much. i wasn’t allowed to watch cartoon network as a kid (idk why??) so i first watched tawog last year and holy shit holy shit it’s my favorite thing ever. rob. ROB!!!! ROB IS MY ALL TIME FAVORITE CHARACTER. SO IS MR SMALL. AHHHH!!!! anyway i love tawog i’ve drawn a lot of fanart and even wrote a 60k word fanfiction (about what happens after The Inquisition because that ending fucked me up) that i’ve Never and will probably never show anyone because it’s probably Not that good. but it was sooo Important to me back then. tawog just means so much to me it :))) it changed me as a person. nobody’s a nobody and everybody is weird like you and me.

i also really like hollow knight! i haven’t played it in a while but i was at 111% completion on one of my playthroughs (CURSE YOU PANTHEON 4). i’m also super fucking excited for silksong obviously and i will say this now: WHEN SILKSONG FINALLY RELEASES… i will probably go on hiatus here LMAO. sorry but guys. SILKSONG…. honestly same for new deltarune chapters. the second chapters 3, 4, and 5 release it is sooo over for me. i probably won’t post much here for a few months during that. but that’s fine!! i’ll never abandon tllr but sometimes some things are more important to my silly little brain :3

gravity falls quite literally changed my life in 2018. like i can’t even explain it, but it’s how i was introduced to online fandoms and fanart in general. dipper LITERALLY made me trans (not literally but pretty much). it’s how i started watching other amazing cartoons and series i love, it’s literally what made me get into drawing art and writing and stuff. it’s what made me start making ocs. it literally made me an artist guys. which is how i started writing. without gravity falls and it’s effect it had on me, this account might have never existed?? i’m being super dramatic but wowww. i was so autistic about that silly cartoon

minecraft i love. i’ve been playing minecraft for over a decade and won’t stop because it’s like, probably a special interest of mine? i’ve watch minecraft youtubers forever too, hermitcraft and the life series are my favorite. i’m a huge grian fan too, been watching him since the evo days. anyway if u play minecraft and wanna play with me sometime, feel free to ask!!! :D i love making new friends and playing video games with people!!! let’s make a world together!!!

also i like terraria and stardew valley, and animal crossing new horizons but i haven’t played that in a few years. hmm other games i like are oneshot game, NITW, omori, celeste, cuphead, fnaf (although i’ve only played the first 5 games and am super super behind on the lore), ori, dead cells, untitled goose game (this is for u anon), and probably more i’m forgetting! feel free to recommend me some video games and we can even play together :3

other series i love are the umbrella academy. soooo autistic about this show it’s fucking AMAZING!!!!!! klaus is my favorite character. anyway i also like what we do in the shadows. it made me super autistic about vampires (before i watched this show i kinda thought vampires were cringe IDK WHY I’M SORRYY). the netflix show lucifer made me insane a few years ago and is what probably indirectly inspired me to give Dew wings. i also like our flag means death, breaking bad, moon knight, and camp here in there (another podcast i HIGHLY HIGHLY recommend, will wood made the soundtrack!)

i LOVEEE FINAL SPACE!! avocato has been my pfp on this account forever and now i feel like i can’t ever change it (i don’t want to). final space is seriously amazing!!! but it was cancelled and basically got fucked over by the networks- infinity train style. idk, stuff happened and it was removed from hbo max so there’s not really anywhere to watch it (legally) except for netflix international iirc? but it’s getting removed from that too i think. super fucking sad :( it ended on a huge cliffhanger too BUT there is a graphic novel being made!!!! super excited about that!

other cartoons i like are over the garden wall (dressed up as wirt for halloween last year), the owl house, adventure time, regular show, steven universe, infinity train, bojack horseman, rick and morty, mlp, the midnight gospel, and so much more i’m forgetting. OH anime i like are death note, demon slayer (haven’t caught up yet on the latest seasons tho), and MOB PSYCHO 100!! vampire in the garden on netflix is really amazing as well.

this is sooo long but now i gotta talk about my favorite music artists. WILL WOOD (AND THE TAPEWORMS) IS MY FAVORITEEE. I ALSO LOVEEE JHARIAH!!! AND HARLEY POE!!!!! top three of all time. i also like toby fox obviously, and glass beach (LITERALLY GOING TO SEE THEM IN MARCH AND I AM SOOO EXCITED!!!), mcr, shayfer james, weezer, mitski, lemon demon, set it off, tally hall, gerard way, and probably more i’m forgetting. i also like musicals!! (i was in the spongebob musical earlier this year for school! i was larry the lobster :))

so guys. GUYSSS. IF YOU LIKE MUSICALS, GO WATCH NERDY PRUDES MUST DIE!!!! OR JUST WATCH THE ENTIRE HATCHETFEILD TRILOGY!!! WHILE UR AT IT, WATCH ALL THE STARKID MUSICALS ACTUALLY!!! this is my current hyperfixation. the lords in black are amazing, npmd is amazing. i love everything about it. go watch it seriously, it’s fucking awesome and the soundtrack is AMAZING!!!

i think this is it. this got super long but i’m super passionate about my interests so yeah. this is pretty much everything. one very important thing (literally my special interest) that i didn’t mention are my other ocs. i have wayyy more ocs that are completely separate from the tllr ones. i don’t wanna post about them here though, cuz they’re not whump related and i want to keep my main account separate from this account. but they’re my favorite blorbos in existence so…

if u WANT to know about my other ocs, u can feel free to dm me for the username of my other fandom/oc account. that’s where i post other stuff that i don’t post here, like my fanart and my other oc stuff. i don’t post writing or anything like that there, so ur not missing out on that.

anyway those are most of my main interests! things i didn’t mention that im also really interested in are reptiles (snakes specifically), and animals in general. i have two leopard geckos named Lars and Alphys and i reallyyyy want a pet snake but my family hates snakes :(( anyway i’m rambling

thanks for the ask!!

[rotisseries]

ASKING U ABT CIRI WITCHERS BOOKS? TELL ME MORE

OK SO. the fun thing about the witcher books is that they were written by a Man In The 80s. so you have moments where it's like. oh how unexpectedly progressive of you!!! (very cool pro choice scene) and other moments where it was very much Written By A Man In The 80s. so. miss cirilla fiona elen riannon is actually a PERFECT example of this duality because she is fundamentally a joint main protag like this series is just as much about her journey as it is about geralt's and she's a teenage girl written with a lot of depth and care and compassion. and also sometimes it's just fucking weird. like this series encompasses a large span of time so while she starts the series at like. 12. a large portion of her story happens at like. the 15 to 16 range. so there's like. the occasional weird shit and then there's generally too many. threats of sexual violence against her like I cannot overstate that. a main plot point is that elves want to impregnate her because she has special elven heritage or something idfk I need to reread. BUT. MOST MEMORABLE OFFENSE IN MY MIND. IS THE FACT SHE'S CANONICALLY SAPPHIC (yay) AND IT'S WRITTEN FUCKING WEIRD (nooo) SO. there's an arc where she gets separated from geralt for awhile and he's trying to find her (with a fun little found family btw. while she's like. having the greatest suffering of her fucking life and she's ALREADY lost her grandmother to war and fire atp) and it's the first time she's truly been on her own. she's 15 she's been hanging with him since she was 12 he's been her gruff dad for several years now. so this ends up as kind of a very dark point in her life she first has to survive through this desert and then she gets attacked by bandits??? I think??? older men though which is the main threat. and she's captured and scared and then!! she gets rescued by this teenaged bandit group and this is where it's a dark point in her life bc they are a very toxic friend group for her it's not good these aren't really like. moral bandits like overall her time with them isn't great for her BUT. the first night she stays with them one of the boys in the group tries to assualt her. gently of course. 🙄 but the other girl in the group, (I REMEMBER THIS BITCH'S NAME. FUCKING MISTLE) runs him off but then she ALSO makes sexual advances on ciri SHE LITERALLY DOES THE SAME THING THE BOY DID and CIRI GOES WITH IT BUT IT'S LIKE. THERE'S NO ENTHUSIASTIC CONSENT HERE OR ANYTHING SHE'S UNCOMFORTABLE SHE'S NOT READY I THINK SHE CRIES HANG ON IT'S REALLY BAD LEMME SEE IF I CAN FIND IT LIKE I CAN'T OVERSTATE THIS ENOUGH IT'S TEXTUALLY SEXUAL ASSAULT

look at this shit.

"but rori," you may say, "this is awful, but why point to this as canon sapphicness? rape is not representation" and you are RIGHT. SO TRUEEE. unfortunately. ciri continues to date this bitch. they have an extended romantic relationship for months. or longer. while ciri rides around with them harassing random villages. SO. CIRI'S ONLY CANONICAL SAPPHIC RELATIONSHIP. WHICH IS MEANT TO BE HER BEING SAPPHIC BTW BC THE AUTHOR SAID SOME SHIT IN AN INTERVIEW OR SMTH ABOUT WANTING TO GO AGAINST STEREOTYPES OR WHATEVER WHERE THE PRINCESS ALWAYS ENDS UP WITH SOME MAN. KEEP THAT IN MIND BTW IT'LL BE RELEVANT AGAIN. BUT ANYWAY. ONLY CANONICAL SAPPHIC RELATIONSHIP AND CANONICAL EVIDENCE OF CIRI BEING SAPPHIC AND IT'S. IT'S FUCKING. IT FUCKING STARTS WITH A RAPE. ANDRZEJ SAPOWSKI I WILL KILL YOU

and then. AND THEN. even better. actually objectively a better situation than this one but it sours it further to me. so she's like? technically bisexual I think? in the sense that she has a female "love interest" and later a male one. but it's just. it's not anything specific but the way it's written is just like. it feels more like he wrote her as a lesbian and then just changed his mind at the last book. because the final book is her telling this man she meets about the shit she went through (this is well after mistle btw like I think it's been a few years) and then they like. leave somewhere together at the end of the book? and it's not really romantic but it simultaneously reads like maybe it's supposed to be (AND OH HEY REMEMBER THAT BIT ABOUT NOT WANTING THE TROPEY ENDING FOR THE PRINCESS WHERE SHE ENDS UP WITH A MAN??) and if yes then it's weird as bisexuality rep because it actually just reads like he wrote her as a lesbian during the worst time in her life and then after she got better and got through it her happy ending is with a man. so. bit weird bit odd. and then the game witcher 3 gives you the option to say she's not in to guys. but also the option to romance a guy. so who even knows. ciri's possible lesbianism/bisexuality is the sexuality schroedingers cat. lmao

[rivergraceful]

Beautiful Sadness; A Commodity?

Introduction:

Have you ever taken a selfie while you were crying, then decided to delete it because you felt like you weren’t pretty enough, or, have you ever been having a pretty decent day, saw a row of 5 depressing tiktoks, then all of a sudden, you're crying too? Something I have been noticing recently, especially since the rise of TikTok during the lockdown, is an influx of just, depressing content to say the least. Now by depressing content, I don’t mean to say that venting is something that should be shunned, instead, I mean to open the conversation to analyzing the seemingly recent oversaturation of often, romanticized, aestheticized, and commodified sadness, in our media. 

Emotion isn’t raw anymore:

Emotion isn’t raw anymore, it seems like it is, but it's not. Maybe it never was? With just a quick scroll through social media, specifically TikTok, the rise of the “sad girl/sad aesthetic” is at an all-time high. Most commonly, the “sad girl/sad aesthetic” is most rampant within the venting/trauma dumpish/”the world is absolutely terrible and there is no fixing it,” Tiktok posts, which are often accompanied by a pretty girl or feminine presenting person, and or, an “aesthetic” sad song. This specific trend, or should I say culture, is very common, and the comments are often filled with people agreeing with the creator.  Another trend that fits into the “sad girl aesthetic” includes images of usually conventionally attractive celebrities/characters looking sad, often while also abusing a substance of some kind, behind a text that discusses mental illness. Lastly, a trend that also fits into the “sad girl/sad” aesthetic is the trend of “female rage edits” that usually include just clips of conventionally attractive white characters screaming, (with the exception of TikTok editors who made a primarily white edit, added Katherine's speech about how she was dealing racism in the movie Hidden figures, and then wrote it off as just a female rage edit, yeah that really annoyed me), accompanied by music like Ethel Cain, Lana Del Ray, Phoebe Bridgers, Fiona Apple, Mitski, Black Box Recorder, or other “sad girl” dubbed artists. 

Now you might be wondering, “How is this an issue?” Well, I'm here to tell you that this trend, is not just an issue, but it’s an epidemic. Not only is TikTok an app that is used by two-thirds of the US teen population, (according to Time Magazine), but it is also used often constantly by youth. I mean, think about it, it's an app that allows for the extremely rapid spread/influence of information and trends to occur, how could the rise of an aesthetic that romanticizes sadness, not harmfully affect, not only youth but social media users in general? What scares me about this aesthetic, is that venting turns into encouragement, trauma dumping turns into mass hopelessness, and spreading awareness about your eating disorder turns into a “How-to.” And the thing is, oftentimes, it's not intended. In a society where wages are low yet food prices are high, the globe is being warmed, celebrities don't want to stop flying their jets to lower carbon emissions, economic crisis strikes the world, the most “progressive” countries reverting back to systematic bigotry, and capitalism becoming increasingly more evident but seemingly more unstoppable, humanity is seeking for a way to cope, and social media is an easy gateway to detach.

 However, the issue with everyone wanting to detach through social media, is that it's sort of something that takes but doesn't quite give. For example, you're taking in the slight relief of romanticizing your depression, eating disorder, and or substance abuse, however, you're contributing to the mass oversaturation of romanticized, too perfect to be human, sadness, which is going to harm people in multiple ways.

The first way it harms us is through body image. Constantly using actors and models, made up to look the best when told it’s their worst, is only going to push the idea that “We're just not doing sad right.” I can assure you if you are a POC, an unconventionally attractive person, and or LGBTQ person, only seeing sadness or women's issues being discussed when its a romanticization using only a rich, conventionally attractive, cishet, celebrity, woman, isn’t going to help. It's usually not relatable and it's usually just influencing people to not try and get better, but instead just become beautifully perfect while they're sad. 

You can’t show raw emotion without it being primmed, cut, refilmed, edited, romanticized, and aestheticized before it's posted. Emotion is no longer raw but pampered, you aren't allowed to just be human anymore, instead, you are forced to compete in the beauty Olympics of sadness. Social Media has made Sadness an accessory and status symbol, akin to basic outfits: it's only praised when it's on a beautiful girl. 

The commodification of sadness, is it the result of Capitalism?:

Now more than ever, we have access to knowing every bad thing, happening in any part of the world, at any time. That aspect of our new technologically advanced world alone, is a significant causation of society's mass depression, alongside our heightened awareness of ourselves, insecurities, capitalism, and how the world works. However, let's focus more on the topic of insecurities, specifically, the beauty standards, women, insecurities, and capitalism’s relation to them.

 If you're not familiar with the terms “Individualism” and “Collectivism” I'll explain them to you. An individualistic country is one that praises the individual, being unique, standing out, and being the best. An example of this is how being unique, and coming up with the best plan to become a billionaire, (even if that includes exploiting other people) is praised in America. Subsequently, a collectivist country is one that praises community, being uniform, and fitting in. An example of this is how in China, having a “respectful” attitude, appearance, and career is a reflection on your family and community. The way America operates, (which is mostly, if not completely due to capitalism and colonization), is to praise uniqueness and or anything that gives money to capitalism. This is the cause of hustle culture, a job’s salary determining your worth, a 9-5 till you die mentality, the reason people feel the need to change their entire self to fit into an insanely niche, aesthetic subgenre, and the commodification of women. 

Interesting fact, underarm hair as an insecurity used to not really exist, well, until razor companies realized that they would make way more money if women bought razors as well. Therefore, companies started putting advertisements out there to make it seem unfeminine, and thus another woman targeting insecurity was born, or should I say, constructed. This is an example of an extremely common case of beauty companies making insecurities for women to endlessly buy their products. In the end, companies use extremely beautiful, often photoshopped, often surgically enhanced, women to advertise their products, (usually products that those women did not even use), and accompany that advertisement with a beauty standard that they know naturally, you can never achieve, and will forever chase, while buying their products. Similar to the commodification of women’s insecurities, through social media filters, trends, and aesthetics, trans women, cis women, and feminine presenting people, are seemingly unknowingly, participating in the oversaturated and aestheticized, romanticization of women’s sadness, pain, and issues, which in turn, will water down our movements, contribute to the system that we are trying to fight, prevent people from wanting to get better, and will make sadness an aesthetic, not a human emotion. 

Sources:

[swiftfootedachilles]

I love the Ghost Hunters AU and I really want more of Salem. Especially Salem with the Milkovich siblings.

🥺🥺🥺🥺🥺 thank you. ive always wanted a black cat named either princess or salem and i thought it would make sense since its a ghost hunter au (even tho i skipped over all the ghost stuff so my post wasnt a million words long) with terry not around i feel like the milkoviches would love playing with animals. Salem is a very adventurous, people-loving cat! you know, the kind of cat people say were a dog in their past life. of course she loves the gallaghers too! even carl makes a point to be nice to her (after, when she was a kitten, ian beat him up for making a joke) but the milkoviches dont really get to show affection ever, so they love getting to play with her and scratch her lil belly and give her treats they stole from the pet store. they all adore her but ofc after ian and mickey get together and he comes over to the gallaghers a shitton, mickey becomes her 2nd dad. he goes to the top of her favorite people list. nobody else plays with her the way he does! hes not afraid to get a little rough, but he knows whats signs to look out for when a cat is not playing/irritated. shes still young and she loves playing!! imagine toddlers who like getting thrown around because its fun, shes like that. she gets kicked out and put in a different room when they fuck, and she uses this time to get in as much trouble as possible, knock shit over, and annoy anyone else in the house. ALSO she LOVES liam!! they literally grow up together and fiona teaches him how to treat animals so by the time hes like 5, she moves from sleeping with ian to sleeping with liam

i imagined ian and mandy meeting at the same time, so when salem is 2 that would be s3 ish. when he first found her, ian had just started his job and scrounged up every penny he could find to take her to a low cost clinic to get spayed and vaxxed. other than being skinny and dehydrated (and ofc separated from her mom as a kitten) she was in surprisingly good shape! now shes so used to being spoiled by everyone! ian LOVES taking care of others and being of service so he really found a home in Salem, treating her like his kid and giving her the best life possible. i definitely think once he gets diagnosed with BD, he pays (with mostly mickeys money lbr) for her to be his emotional support animal and takes her to as many pet friendly places at possible!

like i said she becomes kinda the mascot of the ghost hunting youtube channel they eventually start. its not something they see as a career or anything, they do it as a hobby, but they gain decent attraction and make extra money on the side from ads and a few brand deals. ofc Salem is the reason everyone watches the channel 🙄 she's in pretty much every video, and they chose her as their icon bc 1. black cat spooky duh 2. she brought them together 🥺 3. she really does show up A LOT in videos, especially when they're not urban exploring/hunting and at home recording the historical backgrounds and debriefings for each location. also yes they do urban exploring as well, thats mainly mickey and mickey and whatever milkovich wants to tag along and graffiti an abandoned building. imagine a combination of The Watcher and Dan Bell (omfg now im imagining them doing Another Dirty Room???? 😭 they would be so offended at paying money for rooms worse than their own back in the southside) but with less production value

ok omg i wrote so much im gonna stop now before i go off the rails again. how did i fall in love with this random ass au from a trope generator. reminder that i accidentally deleted the og post so it wont turn up in searches unless youre on my blog or the blog of anyone else who rbed it :)

[aberooski]

fanfic ask: 5, 13, 21, 24! 💫

Yay! I love answering questions!! 😆

5) Do you prefer to read/write long fics or short fics?

- in terms of writing, I prefer to write long fics. I tent to lean towards doing the most approximately all of the time when I write, and it makes it very difficult for me to write short fics. And honestly I wish it didn't but long fics are the way for me baby.

- reading though, I think I tend to lean more toward short fics. If I'm just looking for something casually to get my fix, I find myself engaging with more short fics. But on the flip side, I write long fics so I love them, and if I come across one that piques my interest and really grabs me, then man I'm hooked and it will consume my life akskskk but generally speaking I find myself reading more short fics than long ones. I think because I have such a hard time writing them, I'm drawn more to shorter ones when I read. Or something like that I guess?

13) What are some of your writing/reading pet peeves?

- Y’know I haven't really thought about this all that much before. Of course the standard mixed up spellings of there/their/they're and your/you're because good lord people it's not that hard 😭

- I also fuckin hate the trope when like a character is captured and they make friends with the guard or whatever and they like turn good and shit ugh 😭 or when there's a fuckin self insert that's a bad guy but makes friends with the good guys and turns good no. No. I don't mind oc's, I've had some in fics, I mean Angel's Tears and OUAD have Fiona and her crew as minor antagonists, and OUAD and SBH have Mrs. Rhodes and Mrs. Princeton. But the thing is they're just kinda there. They don't overstep in their roles. And when I was like 12/13, I 100% wrote self inserts too because everybody does at some point in their lives and that's normal and fine, and they don't really bug me all that much. But let bad guys just be bad guys sometimes 😭 I want the actual characters to save each other and have that satisfying reunion 😭 Ireally don't know why that makes me so angry but it does aksksk

21) What are your top 3 fics you've written and why?

- oh boy this is such a loaded question akskks 😅 Now we all know I'm of the opinion that favorite and best are not inherently mutually exclusive, so this changes they way I think about it a bit.

- so in that event, I think I'd say my top 3 fics would be: Once Upon A Duelist, Sons of The Stars, and Salt In the Wound.

Honorable mention goes to Sustained by Hate (Abby's version)(from the vault)

-If I had to explain why, well I think we might have another novel of an answer on our hands but I'll try to be brief 😅

- OUAD I've said before is my favorite fic I've ever written as it stands right now, and also just so happens to be the one I feel is my best. I think it has the most solid plot I've written in a long time, even if you ignore that it's a Sleeping Beauty adaptation so the plot was already there to begin with. But only with the basic plot line, everything I did to put my own spin on it worked really well, and it's the best executionl of a romance plot I've ever done aksksk 😅 and there's just some fuckin bangers of dialog and character interactions in it that make me giggle and kick my feet in the air like a school girl and also sob my eyes out.

- Also y'know, it gets bonus points for being a Sleeping Beauty adaptation which is my favorite movie of all time, and Aurora's my favorite princess and I've been in love with Phillip for as long as I've had conscious thought and memory so having Chazz and Atticus in their roles was the best ever 😭 plus Slade and Jagger actually die which is what I want for them. Perfection.

- Still really wanna do an OUAD 2 but really gotta clear some stuff from my WIP list first 😭😭😭

- Sons of The Stars, of course my 136k GX fantasyish au I built from the ground up. I'd love to say it's my magnum opus, but it really isn't. But I love it so much, it's very important to me. Ironically it is also the only fic I've done where Chazz and Atticus have 0 interaction because they're never in the same room at the same time. And when they are, they don't interact on screen 😭 of course I wrote it before I knew I shipped them but I digress.

- There's a lot of elements from season 3 in that fic where the plot is concerned honestly, Yubel wanting to combine all 12 dimensions which would destroy everything, Axel's entire storyline is a parallel of his arc in the survival duel arc, Jaden and Jesse being not at all straight, and so on. Honestly there's probably ploy holes and stuff and some stuff that's confusing that I don't explain well or whatever, but the general plot I think is so cool and interesting 😭

- Not my best execution of a romance plot but it also was the first time I actually tried to do that at all so I give myself a little grace for that. Also I did refer to Yubel as she/her throughout the fic like they do in the dub because that's what was just how I was introduced to that character and that became default in my brain. But eventually I will get around to going back and fixing that I promise I have so many fics to write right now 😭

- But also what I love about that fic is the wardrobe I designed for it it's so good 😭 I've shared drawings of that before for anybody reading this who hasn't seen those asksks and I did that just kinda for fun since I was in high school when I started planning and writing that fic and I just kinda started drafting up wardrobes in class instead of working 😅 but after designes and redesigns and all that I fuckin love the wardrobe for this fic and it was such a fuckin awesome creative outlet that I needed.

- also some of my best chapter titles are in the fic bro, like some of them are so fuckin good 😭 Skyfall, Secrets of Ages Past, Fragility of The Heart, Purity of The Heart, and Confessions of The Heart (the trinity as I affectionately call those chapters) among others. I'm not good at fic titles but dammit I'm good at chapter titles sometimes 😤

- and real quick before I move on, the entirety of Chazz and Alexis's relationship in this fic. She's all kinds of messed up emotionally in this and she's grown jaded and cold, and she hated him at the start. She hated him when they met when they were kids and she never let go of that or let him change in her mind all those years. But Jaden gets her to think that she's wrong, and when they meet him after they rescue him for Crowler, she accepts that she was wrong, but she's still cold to him. Alexis likes Chazz, not like likes him but she's endeared by him, but she doesn't like that she likes him and she ends up staying cold to him for a while. They argue like a married couple the whole time, and in Fragility of The Heart when she's overtaken by the influence of the darkness seeping out of the core of the 11th dimension because of Yubel, she's not in her right mind and she says a lot of harsh things and makes accusations she shouldn't be saying. And Chazz has to reveal to her the scars he's gotten from his brothers and brings her back down to earth and grounds her back into reality. He heard her crying to Atticus earlier in chapter 12 so he knows he's the only one who can get through to her then, and when he does she softens up on him from then on. And all of this ends up leading up to Alexis turning to Chazz to be her shoulder to cry on at the end of the penultimate chapter. The first of now 2 times they've had that FF7R Cloti moment.

I love the evolution of their relationship on her end especially, she grows the most throughout the entire story of everyone I think, and it just makes me feel good inside.

- and my number 3, Salt in the Wound.

My aftermath to episode 95... I've ranted enough about this, but it's just such a cathartic fic for me. One of the free short fics I've been able to do, and I just love the actual writing. So much of it was stream of consciousness, and I cried a lot working on it. I'll come to Sy's defense at any time anywhere and against anyone. Especially his own brother. He's my favorite character, he's also me in more ways than I care to think about sometimes. I love that fic so much, but it's also really hard to read sometimes. I know I'll write things that hurt me more, I know I will. But right now that's the one that hurts me the most. After everything Zane did and how far he'd fallen, Syrus still cared about him. Syrus still loved him and wanted his brother's acceptance. And writing that just hurt my heart in an entirely different way than anything else I've done before. But the whole experience like I said was so cathartic and I needed it. So it's one of my favorites.

24) If I could tell my past self something before I posted my first fic, I think I'd have something to say at various points in time. Like my first grade school fic, middle school fic, and high school fic eras. Nothing from before high school exists anymore, but no matter what specifically I might think so say to each of those past mes, I think the same thing that would be said to all of them would be not to ever for a second forget to have fun. And to tell myself that you're gonna feel like a failure sometimes. Your stuff won't take off right away, you're gonna feel burnt out, you're gonna feel bad. But you're also gonna love it. You're gonna feel the best you've felt in your life when you write. And don't worry, there are gonna be people that love your work.

I'd tell myself to just sit back and enjoy it. It's all gonna be worth it. You're not wasting your time. You're only gonna get better. I won't say to change anything I've written, I'd let myself write the crap and the actual flops and things I'm embarrassed by how bad they were when I look back now. Because that's what led me here. That's how I learned. That was me being an authentic kid.

I'd tell past me to smile and be proud of herself.

[x----tine]

Cristine Brache’s poetry collection Goodnight Sweet Thing delves into the secret lives of Playboy Playmates, possessed nuns, and Brache herself

Brittany Menjivar

June 14, 2024

It's here, everything - Everything anyone ever Dreamed of, and more. But love is lost:

The only sacrifice To live in this heaven, This Disneyland Where people are the games.

Thus begins Goodnight Sweet Thing, the sophomore poetry collection by multimedia artist Cristine Brache. The epigraph—a poem by Dorothy Stratten, a writer and Playboy Playmate who was tragically killed—is the perfect way to introduce the themes of fame, fantasy, and objectification that underscore the book. Throughout her oeuvre, which includes paintings and films as well as written work, Brache has zeroed in on women who have been uniquely subject to voyeurism and scrutiny. In Goodnight Sweet Thing, she studies how performing for the male gaze (or any gaze) can be a prison or a power play, employing case studies that range from Girls Gone Wild to seemingly possessed nuns.

Recently, I had the chance to chat with Brache over the phone. Not only did we discuss her book—we also talked about its recent theatrical adaptation, which brought her words to life through rather avant-garde staging. Read on for Brache’s musings on everything from JC Penney catalogs to Fiona Apple to Jell-O wrestling.

Coveteur: Your book begins with a poem written by Dorothy Stratten, a Playboy Playmate who was murdered by her estranged husband and manager. Her ghost haunts much of your work: she’s alluded to by name in your poetry, and some of your recently exhibited paintings feature Playboy Bunnies. How were you first introduced to her story, and what is it about her that intrigues you?

Cristine Brache: “I found out that she wrote poetry maybe a year ago, and it really made me feel sad that it took me so long. I’d seen so much media about her—like, I saw Star 80, which is a biopic about her, and some documentaries—but nobody ever mentioned it. Thinking about Star 80 particularly, it would have been so much nicer if they had shown her writing poetry in the movie and given her a little bit more depth, because I don’t think her character was portrayed with an immense amount of depth in that movie.

Because I write poetry, reading her poetry was all it took for me to really get over the edge with my obsession. Her poems were so sad—especially the one that I have as the epigraph for the book, where she talks about this sadness and disillusionment with Hollywood and what her expectations were.

In my work, I’m generally looking at ways in which people perform, mask, and unmask themselves, for society, for culture, or for relationships. It’s not a criticism of performance in general—I understand why we do it. It’s more like an observation of it. Knowing what was going on behind the scenes with her and seeing how she was always smiling in front of the cameras, and then reading her poetry… That kind of duality [she exhibits] is really compelling to me. Aside from that, I think about this false promise [women are presented with]. I think about shows like Mad Men where all the female characters are “meeting their end of the deal” in terms of gender roles—like, “If you make the house and you look pretty all the time and you’re always there for me in whatever way I need as a man, then you will be taken care of and you will be rewarded.” But none of the women in Mad Men were rewarded. They were always let down. And it was the same, I feel, with Dorothy. Like, “If I check these boxes—I’m a beautiful woman, I can get on Playboy—I’ll just be sorted.” You have this expectation of safety financially, or in whatever way one might look for safety and security—but she didn’t get it. She died. As you become more successful, you realize that thingsare still hard and these kinds of expectations and promises are not what they’re cracked up to be.”

Absolutely. Even if you ascend in fame or wealth or status, you can’t escape these societal trappings.

CR: “Yeah. And it’s not to diminish the things that one does get with success, but I feel like it’s never exactly how it seems.”

You mentioned Mad Men, and you weave references to various TV shows, movies, and videos throughout the book. I was most interested in your series of poems called “Girls Gone Wild,” which make references to fame, objectification, and their relation to suffering and violence.

CR: “I think that young women, in particular, are often left with this quiet understanding that if you objectify yourself and you’re hot, you’ll be able to get by in life or get further in life. It’s, again, a false promise. Those Girls Gone Wild commercials were around when I was a teen, and it was so bizarre to me that it was ok for them to be on TV. The early 2000s were such a different time, so misogynistic to women in media—I think of Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan. Girls Gone Wild… I feel like it’s the crux of that, it’s so abject. [In the videos], it’s in plain view, this way in which young women can be exploited and how women willingly participate knowing that. I can’t speak for all women, obviously, but from my own experience of being young and attractive, there’s this feeling that if you perform, you’ll get security or safety.”

On the note of performance, I noticed that you, Cristine, appear as a named entity in many of the poems. I’d love to hear more about your attitude toward representing yourself in your work—is there a concerted effort to build a character that is Cristine, or are you simply translating your inner monologues when you address yourself?

CR: “I feel like it’s a bit of both. Poetry is probably the most unmediated way that I express myself. It does feel like a diary in a lot of ways; it’s very confessional. But there are a lot of poems in the book that are not at all about me—that could seem like they’re about me but they’re just not. Sometimes I’m writing about some kind of abstract person, but when I’m using my name, that’s very much me referring to myself at some moment in time. Sometimes my poems are like photographs of feelings or experiences or moments—like a documentation of my interiority in an instant. Sometimes the feelings are so strong that I just have to write them down. I try to remain playful about it. I think that the book is kind of funny—I hope it is. (Laughs) I’m never overly serious about myself. [The book is] self-aware, and I sometimes poke fun at myself and play with a lot of the complicated feelings I have about existing.”

Do you enjoy the public side of being an artist, or is it more of a challenge or frustration for you?

CR: “It depends. With the kind of work that I make, I’m not overtly public. I get to mediate my persona on Instagram or however else—it’s always mediated. If I were a live performer or something… That’s just a whole different thing when you’re performing with your body. But my work is not my body. It’s writing or artwork, so I can watch people watch it behind the scenes. I feel like I’m behind the curtain watching people even when I am public—there’s some separation between my actual person and what’s seen in the book. I don’t know if I enjoy it or not; I feel neutral about it.”

Many of the cultural references that appear in your text have been subsumed into buzzword-y “genres” spawned by social media. Fiona Apple’s songs have been referred to as “sad girl” music or “femcel” music; “Gone Girl” is often described as a “female rage” film. I’m curious about how you respond to phrases like this entering the popular lexicon—are they helpful heuristics, or do you find them useless, maybe even detrimental?

CR: “I just like to play with these tropes that define us culturally. A lot of it feels like an exorcism for me. Gone Girl, in particular… There’s this idea that there are so many movies about men being serial killers and psychos and doing really terrible things, but there’s no Gone Girl equivalent for a man. But in the movie, Rosamund Pike is very much just acting like a man. And then it’s like we’re going to demonize this character and give it a whole category for a woman in culture… That’s a bit frustrating. You referred to the poem 'Gone Girl Summer'; there was that trend online where it was 'Something Girl Summer.'”

It started with “Hot Girl Summer,” and then it spiraled out of control.

CR: “Yeah, yeah. I thought it would be funny to write about “Gone Girl Summer” in that context. It made me laugh, but also, why not let it be a Gone Girl Summer? (Laughs) Hot Girl Summer is cool, hot girls forever, but I think Gone Girl can be hot too.”

Representation for Gone Girls.

CR: “(Laughs) I get it! I get the need to want to be a Gone Girl.”

Totally, and that’s why so many people online have built this ethereal genre around it—they want there to be a cinematic universe.

On a very different note, religion is another thread that runs throughout the book. You talk about a “mystical experience with Mary Magdalene” and also describe the alleged possession of Sister Jeanne des Anges. As someone who grew up Catholic, I’m always curious when I see religious themes in another artist’s work—how did notions of spirituality influence the book? CR: “I was raised Catholic, too. I’m not a tradcath or whatever; I was raised Catholic, so these kinds of images are imprinted in me. The possessions—I’m obsessed with that case. It was a famous case in France, the Loudun possessions, in the 17th century. Sister Jeanne de Anges—Joan of the Angels—supposedly made a pact with the devil and the grenadier of the village, and I guess they had some wild sex, and she got possessed and went back to the convent, and all this hysteria manifested and the whole convent of nuns became possessed and were acting hypersexual. Around this time—I think it was 100 years before the Salem Witch Trials—there were a lot of epidemics of nuns getting possessed in France. [When writing the poem], I was thinking about ways people codify their behavior and present themselves in a socially acceptable way when ways in which they want to express themselves are not acceptable. In this case, I imagine that Jeanne, as a nun, wasn’t allowed to have sex, so naturally, she would have all this sexual energy that wasn’t going anywhere—and what’s a logical way for a nun to be sexual? It “makes sense” for her to be possessed—then she can excuse her sexuality without it being a problem. It was much easier for people to say, “She’s possessed, that’s why she’s acting like this,” instead of, “She just wants to fuck.” If she just wanted to fuck, that would be way more problematic than if she was possessed by the devil.

Also, I see her as a huge icon because exorcisms were an early way that tattooing existed in Europe. The demons would exit through a certain part of the person’s body, and the priest would tattoo that part of their body with the names of the saints that assisted during the exorcism. And so she has a list of four or five names on her hand, right by her thumb, where the demons left. They were called “exit wounds.” Because Catholicism forgives as long as you repent, she was able to tour around Europe to show off the exit wounds, the tattoos, and she was getting paid for that. And she rode to one of the highest levels of Catholicism. She was revered. So she hustled this whole situation, she created this whole spectacle and scandal from the possession, and the grenadier got burned alive or some shit. She got away with it, scot-free. She became a celebrity in the Catholic circuit at that time. I admire her because, considering the context of the time for women, it seemed like a smart strategy to give yourself some power or make yourself feel free without being bad under the eyes of the patriarchy or however you want to say it. It was a socially acceptable way for her to be crazy because if she actually were just crazy and free as a woman, that would have been way more threatening.”

Let’s talk about the physical book as an art object. The images on the front and back covers of the book are striking: we see various men and women pouring water on each other. There’s an interesting reciprocity in that both man and woman get the chance to be the recipient of the action. I’d love to hear more about how you created these images. Did you take the photographs yourself? How did you come up with the concept?

CR: “I designed the cover; my friend Manon did the typesetting and everything on the inside. The images I generated with AI. They took me a very long time, and I had to feed the AI reference images. The whole front cover design and back cover are inspired by old JC Penney catalogs. I don’t know if anybody now knows what those things are, but when I was young, they were thousand-page catalogs. Imagine if a whole store website had a print [catalog] of every single thing they have on their site. [That was] early department store culture in America. You could get these catalogs from Sears, JC Penney, a bunch of places, and my mom used to get them. I was fascinated with the imagery inside of them because they looked uncanny. People almost looked like mannequins… again, it’s this feeling of performance, this ideal of being a human, an American, a woman. This allure to this ideal way of existing. Something about that is so charming to me and bizarre and uncanny. I was obsessed with the images in a way I can’t articulate clearly right now. I wanted to make my own version of those images. I tried to capture the uncanny delight of these references. I thought it would be funny if they were pouring water or tea on each other. (Laughs) I guess it’s more overt uncanniness. The men are in suits, and the women are in dresses… So much of my work is about power dynamics and gender roles, and I thought it was a nice visual way to highlight that aspect of the book, this dynamic where they’re giving each other water more than pouring it on each other—giving and receiving water. And AI generated it. I edited the images in Photoshop as well. The back cover is like a catalog spread in a JC Penney catalog, and the front cover has the same font as the JC Penney logo.”

I’m guessing that you were inspired to use AI because you wanted to go for the uncanny, dreamlike effect?

CR: “It’s a combination of that and just not having had the resources to stage it myself. I do like AI a lot; I think of it as a tool. It has so many different uses that are not the overt uses that people think about or are concerned about. As a person who uses Photoshop a lot, the Adobe AI does stuff that I’ve just been dying for Photoshop to do.”

Speaking of different types of art, you recently adapted the book into a play starring Emily Allan, Betsey Brown, and Joshua Weidenmiller. It was advertised on Instagram with the tagline “Jell-O, Wrestling, Mesmerism.” I need to know what happened in that theater.

CR: “When I was making this book, I was like, I don’t think anybody has ever adapted a book of poems to the stage. I was like, I wanna be the first to do that. And I was thinking, What would that look like?What does my poetry look like visually? I had this image of women mud wrestling, and then Victorian, Freudian female pathologization. The medicalization of women’s emotions—that is another part of history that I’m also obsessed with. I was also thinking about mesmerism, which was very popular then. I love the idea of mesmerism or hypnosis; I think it’s very beautiful. There’s this idea that you’re being puppeteered or guided by somebody else; that you can just give your will to somebody else, that someone’s kind of masterminding you. There’s also a lot of fetish-type stuff of women being hypnotized, like, What are they gonna do when they’re hypnotized?(Laughs) I had all those images in my head, as I thought that’s what my poetry looked like. All of that, for me, is this exorcism that I keep describing. You mentioned earlier spirituality in the context of Catholicism, but there is spirituality in the book where I’m thinking more existentially about the meaning of life. There’s also this stuff about aging, as a woman in particular. I started these poems during Covid when I was thinking about death in a way that I hadn’t before. I was thinking about love, because I feel like love is what gives our life meaning, and how we reflect onto each other and how we connect.

Anyway, I wanted to adapt the book. I feel like performance art is the poetry of the stage, so I thought about making it a performance art piece. I worked with one of my favorite performance artists, Sigrid Lauren, who co-directed and co-adapted it with me. We wrote it together, and she did all the choreography. It was a kind of happening, and it had three acts, and the first act was this Jell-O wrestling situation. Betsey Brown starred in it with Emily Allan, and Joshua Wiedenmiller was kind of like the referee. Betsey played this character called Nothing Girl, and Emily played Mary Magdalene. All the lines of dialogue were just lines of poems from the book contextualized into the setting of the performance piece. [The characters] were speaking lines in a way that was appropriate for their setting, but the lines themselves were very poetic… they made sense, but not in a linear way, how we’re talking now. There was also a live score and sound design by Ryan Woodhall, and we used a lot of AI voices, too, which I use in a lot of my video art. We had an AI commentator mimic the voice of a WWE announcer and speak my poems as if it were announcing a wrestler coming to the ring. The Jell-O wrestling match is very slow motion, very choreographed, and it translates to this shrink-patient dynamic where Betsey’s character is being analyzed by the referee, who becomes a therapist… I saw Betsey’s character and Emily’s character as two parts of the same mind—the part of yourself that does perform dutifully and the part that is crippled by the performance because it’s betraying you.

In the third act, they go into this hypnosis thing while they’re in therapy—and they have a tantrum and they have to assume [certain] roles. At the end, [they reconcile with the fact that] they have to perform. There’s a radical acceptance of these roles they have and the kind of freedom that there is in radical acceptance, where if you give yourself fully to something, even if it is not something you want to do, there’s some freedom in that space, even if it feels extremely controlled. There are some poems in the book that are about this—[for example], “Feudal Mutations and Meditations” is about how music offers one of the few freedoms we have left. And for me, that’s what the book is about and what the performance is about. We’re really controlled in a lot of ways, but parts of your headspace can’t be colonized.”

[drawingconclusions]

THE TRUMP VERDICT

I'm sure you've heard by now about the guilty verdicts lodged against Trump last Thursday. And in case you haven't heard, President Biden's son Hunter is facing one of his trials this week. I wonder if there'll be wall-to-wall media coverage as there was for the cases against the former President...

But before going on, let me say the following: During a brief news clip showing a few demonstrators in the aftermath of the case, I saw a person holding a banner displaying the phrase "Trump or death". Perhaps it was their attempt at a witty slogan echoing the historically well-known saying "Give me liberty or give me death". Perhaps it was a motto generated by an AI chatbot. I have no idea. And I just heard that someone had doxxed Michael Cohen's wife and child in apparent retribution for Cohen's part in the trial. But as I wrote in my post years ago, "Has Politics Become Your Religion?", I implore everyone who chooses to demonstrate or to protest to do so peacefully. And I'm not a fan of Michael Cohen or his behavior; even during the trial, the defense proved how compulsive of a liar he is. But now people are publicly posting the private info of his wife and child? Come on, I don't need to tell you how unnecessary and cowardly that is.

I bumped into an article by the Associated Press the other day, one that quoted Fiona Hill as stating that Trump's denigration of our justice system in light of his verdict actually works to help Russia's Vladimir Putin! And I seriously thought the article was some kind of April Fool's joke! In the midst of these trials, you have all kinds of people warning that it's taboo to utter a phrase against America's legal system, and that argument to some degree employs flawed logic. I'm all for showing the proper amount of respect for authorities, but our democracy in the U.S. was founded on the principle of protecting freedom of speech, and the three branches of government (including the judicial branch) were intended to employ at least a semblance of checks and balances. Our founding fathers instituted such safeguards to prevent government overreach and abuse of its citizens. So this idea that "We the People" shouldn't be able to respectfully comment on, evaluate, or even criticize our government is absolutely ludicrous! And authoritarian or communist governments like Russia or China will always find some way to take advantage of current events in order to try present their system of government in a better light. But no matter what kind of false propaganda those countries spew forth, their citizens do not enjoy the freedoms that were enshrined in our Constitution. Just ask Russian citizens who dared to speak out against the invasion of Ukraine. Or why don't you look up how China punishes its dissidents. So I strongly disagree with those who forbid criticism of our government here in America. Such backward thinking is likely how our governing bodies have devolved into such a sorry state in the first place.

At times, it's insightful to see who responds and how they do so when a person is down on their luck, so to speak. In this case, among the individuals who cheered the verdict against Trump was Congressman Adam Schiff (who was censured by Congress for his deceptive role in the false "Russia collusion" accusations against Trump a few years ago), Senator Tim Kaine (who previously praised the Biden administration's withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, even as disastrous as it turned out to be), and Congressman Jamie Raskin (who eagerly defends any Democrat or Democrat agenda with little regard for inherent merit). And I could go on and on, listing the character (or lack thereof) of the politicians and media figures who have applauded the charges against former President Trump. But as you can begin to see from the very brief list above, many of these individuals are highly partisan and some of them clearly have a severely misguided moral compass. Should we really be relying on their judgment for an ethical evaluation of the fairness of this verdict?

And of course, it seems whenever Trump faces potential trouble, it's intriguing how opportunists like Hillary Clinton or Asa Hutchinson somehow make their way back into the public spotlight. Whether their behavior stems from pure hatred for Trump or a desire to re-launch their own political careers, I'm not sure. But especially in light of the haphazard legal precedents set by this verdict against Trump, I wouldn't be too eager to be so visible to the public if I was in Hillary Clinton's shoes. Which brings me to my next points.

In recent days, many Democrats have echoed one of their favorite (and almost laughable) mottos in response to the Trump verdict: "No one is above the law." We hear that time and time again when indictments or investigations are brought against conservatives, and yet we see the exact opposite of this principle being applied to bona-fide criminals such as murderers, rapists, & thieves when they're continually given a free pass despite their serious crimes. As a result, repeat offenders go on to brazenly kill police officers during traffic stops and to harass, assault, or murder innocent civilians who are simply trying to live their lives in peace. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg has been noted for allowing such a revolving door of justice in his district, despite his claims to a blind application of the law and his more recent statement that he does so without "fear or favor".

However, as many legal experts have stated, the unusual workings of the latest Trump case have the potential to lead to a slew of reciprocal indictment & verdicts against Democrats. Thanks to the precedents set by the likes of Attorney General Letitia James, Judge Arthur Engoron, Judge Juan Merchan, and District Attorney Alvin Bragg, misdemeanors can now magically be converted into felonies, there is no such thing as a statute of limitations for a crime (or a perceived crime), judges with an actual or perceived conflict of interest won't have to excuse themselves, convicted liars/felons can be accepted as star witnesses, and change of venues to prevent a biased jury pool will most certainly be denied. You can call all this a slippery slope or the opening of Pandora's box, whatever you please. But the long and short of it means that several Democrats will likely face a litany of legal & criminals convictions in the short and long term as a result.

And this includes Democrats such as John Brennan and James Clapper who have lied to Congress with impunity.. Former FBI Director James Comey, who divulged (classified) documents to his professor friend in a rush to share them with the public. And some ambitious prosecutor will likely determine to hold Hillary Clinton accountable for the debacle at Benghazi, as well as for destroying physical evidence when she used an offsite unsecured server (reportedly located in a bathroom) to conduct official government business & messaging. And for her involvement (and the involvement of her lawyers) in paying for the Steele dossier that was central to intiation of the false "Russia collusion" accusations against Trump. (Need I go on about Clinton?..) Alejandro Mayorkas will likely be sued by families who have lost loved ones due to the fentanyl streaming across the highly porous southern border. Many members of the FBI would have to be convicted of election interference, as well as quite a few tech company CEOs and employees. And it's almost a sure thing that someone somewhere will find a way to bring charges against President Biden once he leaves office. (And all this with a jury selected from deep within GOP territory...)

Look, if you've read my previous posts on the trials of Trump you know I wasn't for this. I lamented the potential chaos that would result from using our justice system to attack, harass, and imprison political opponents. Take a look at what Putin did to his political rival Alexei Navalny. Navalny was imprisoned for years solely for challenging a dictator's reign and in the end, he breathed his last breaths in a near arctic dungeon. (Does anyone really believe that Navalny died of natural causes?...) Is that really the grotesque standard we want to follow here in America? There's so much work to be done in our country, and yet I'm concerned that we'll spend far too much time figuratively at each other's throats from now on as a result of these verdicts.

In closing, I intended to be much more frank in these posts. For years I've been warning about the highly partisan & corrupt environment that has overtaken every level of government, down from the local level up to largest federal agencies. Yet most of our representatives failed to do a single thing to address this. Instead, many weak Republicans have been handing over even more powers to the so-callled deep state (the re-authorization of the FISA powers is just one example). And it's concerning how so many of America's law enforcement agencies seem intent on circumventing the Constitution (including the 4th Amendment) in their endeavors: Agencies sidestep the need for warrants by obtaining information from data brokers, police are enthralled with installing networks of live feed video cameras across neighborhoods, which is another form of warrantless surveillance, and some in the military & DNI don't even feel the need to obtain a warrant for their surveillance activities against America's populace. There are people in government who violate the Constitution on a daily basis, and there should be severe legal, criminal, and career penalties for that. If the framework of the Constitution isn't what government workers are adhering to, then what does serve as the foundation for their actions? The answer can verge on something frightening in a democracy.

And yet there is a glimmer of hope. I just heard that Congressman Jim Jordan intends to present an appropriations bill that would severely limit the prosecutorial abuses we've seen in the past several months (these "lawfare" political tactics, as some call it). I was about to recommend even stricter penalties, but I'll hold my tongue for now. Maybe tying judicial & prosecutorial behavior to the financial aspect can be a good place to begin. Of course, there's always the chance that his appropriations bill doesn't pass, and then we're back to square one. And I'll likely be back here again to comment.

I appreciate those who have patiently waited me to finish this extremely long post today. Again, it was hastily written and there are likely a few spelling and grammatical errors, but it is what it is. I realize some of you may think I want a job from Trump or something, but I don't.

(...Hello again surveillance plane flying overhead, LOL!...) There are issues involved in these verdicts that can potentially affect everyone and can further deteriorate our democracy. Whether an individual is a Democrat or a Republican, they deserve the utmost fairness from America's legal system.

[esta-elavaris]

Flufftober 2022 - Day 7 - Movie Marathon

[Eddie Munson/OC]

Can be read as a standalone, although it technically includes my OC in my fledgling of an Eddie fic. Also slight modern AU. May or may not be inspired by the time I got high at uni and spent three consecutives episodes of The Tudors staring at the detailing in their jewellery and not listening to anything to do with the plot.

This one is sheer dumbassery, very low effort, I just liked the idea so I wrote it quick. 

When Eddie’s uncle announced that he’d be gone for the whole weekend for work, Eddie and Fiona did what any healthy young couple still firmly entrenched in the honeymoon phase would do. They declared no pants zone, dragged his mattress from his bedroom into the living room, constructed a blanket fort, and readied their provisions. Provisions in this case being an ungodly amount of weed, beer, pizzas more suited to ten people than two, and Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy - extended edition, because they weren’t savages. 

“Soon as we get our own place, it’ll be this every day,” Eddie hummed happily

“Every day? We’ll never get anything done.”

“Every other day,” he amended “Maybe just weekends. And Wednesdays.” 

“To break up the week a bit?”

“Exactly,” he nodded, gesturing between their heads with a couple of fingers in the universal sign of you get me.

Fiona smiled “A studio apartment negates the need for a fort, though.”

“Mm-mm, we need at least two bedrooms. One for, y’know, a bedroom. The other-”

“If you say sex dungeon, I’m running.”

“That’ll come when we can afford a place with a basement,” he didn’t miss a beat “The other can be for all of your art stuff.”

“Not all your equipment?”

“Nah. I like playing guitar in bed. Anything more heavy duty and we just use Jeff’s garage anyway. Once Corroded Coffin make it big, though? We’ll have the works. A studio each. Bedroom. A living room and a kitchen in separate rooms. Sex dungeon.”

“Perfect,” she snickered.

The day wore on lazily. There was the general assumption that they’d end up fooling around at some point or another. It wasn’t often that they had an empty place to themselves, so it’d be downright wasteful not to, really, and Fiona’s place didn’t count because it was an apartment, so there was always some neighbour or another there. But they weren’t in a rush - and at first there was pizza to graze on and a joint or two to smoke - but then they ran into their big obstacle. 

A hint of it first arose almost an hour into the first movie, when Eddie’s fingertips began to gently drift up her inner thigh…only to be interrupted by one of Samwise Gamgee’s all time best lines. I haven’t been droppin’ no eaves, sir, honest! They’d had to pause and snicker at that, getting drawn back into the story quickly after, Eddie’s hand laying forgotten halfway between her knee and her hip. 

After that, they were lost in the events of the movie right up until after Gandalf and Saruman’s big wizard showdown, by which point they agreed that there just wasn’t time enough for anything between then and Aragorn’s introduction - and what kind of philistine would willingly miss that? It would be downright disrespectful. And then, once again, they were completely wrapped up in Middle-earth all the way through til the end of the first movie. Only a sociopath could get in the mood during Boromir’s death scene, anyway.

The second movie, and a renewed high to go with it, brought their interest back to each other for a good while, the television all but forgotten as Fiona kissed her way down Eddie’s neck, pausing only to divest him of his shirt so she could continue her way downwards. Until the bracing, brash strings signalling the appearance of the Rohirrim blared out of Eddie’s improvised surround sound set-up. That prompted another pause, during which Eddie pondered over whether it would be a copyright issue if he incorporated a guitar lick inspired by the music into his next song, and Fiona dutifully pointed out which actor broke his toe in an emotional helmet-kicking accident not long thereafter. 

Fiona would later note that the problem was a simple one. In their excellent taste, and their enthusiasm for the trilogy, they’d forgotten just how damn good the movie were…even upon the thousandth watch. There was always some part of the soundtrack, or a line from the script, that Eddie wanted to wax poetic over, and when that wasn’t the case, Fiona was making him pause the screen so she could take a photo of a specific piece of scenery or still-frame, so that she might later paint it. Sure, it would be no small thing to leave it paused for a bit, have their fun, and then resume the movies…however that would ruin the pacing, and seriously impede the likelihood of them getting all three movies watched today.

By the time they hit Return of the King, the fact that the day had been delegated to one of cuddling was cemented when Denethor’s tomato eating killed any semblance of a mood stone dead. 

Later, when they were too full of pizza to even consider moving, Eddie would mumble into Fiona’s hair “Tomorrow, we’re doing this again but with the Star Wars prequels. We won’t watch a single damn scene.” 

[aevus-blogging]

The LS Police Commissioner walks into the interrogation room and drops a Manila folder on the table, inside the folder is a myriad of photos of the Fakes all dead in various ways; Trevor on a beach, a large shark bite taken out of his side, crimson blood staining the white sand; Jeremy with at least a dozen bullet holes in his chest; Gavin with his throat slit from a joke mugging gone horribly wrong; (1/?)

(Sorry the second part of this took a bit, my train of thought derailed on me) ...Michael surrounded by a pool of blood, a crashed Oppressor nearby in flames; and many, many more. "You and your crew have been shot, stabbed, poisoned, run over, fallen from planes and just in general *died* more times than anyone in this city can count, yet somehow you *Cockroaches won't. stay. down.*" The commissioner seethed (2/?) (Stuff between ** are emphasized since I can't really do that in an ask)

"But now, there's nowhere for you to run," he continued "and no way the rest of the Fakes can bust you out of here, so, Kingpin, *Geoff* you and I are going to sit down and have a nice long chat about *how* exactly you bastards have cheated death itself." (The fic can start before this prompt and explain how Geoff ended up in such a mess, and use the prompt in the story itself or after and Geoff tries to explain why/how the FAHCs are immortal) -😼

Quick Warning that the second paragraph has descriptions of death/dead bodies

The commissioner, a highly praised and decorated police officer, walked into the small interrogation room. He kept his head held high as he looked at the man before him. This was one of the most dangerous men in the city, one of the most elusive as well. Of course it had only been a matter of time before he was caught, people like him always got caught in the end. The man before him was shackled to the table, unable to leave. The Commissioner couldn’t help the smug grin that danced on his lips for the briefest of seconds as he looked at the criminal before him before returning to a sneer. He still had things to

The Commissioner tossed a manilla envelope onto the table as he sat down across from the fake, a few of the pictures inside spilling out. All were gruesome deaths of the other’s crewmates. Collins sprawled on a pristine beach, minus the red dyed sand surrounding him from the torn off leg. Rimmy Tim riddled with bullets lying on the cold hard concrete after a heist gone wrong. The Golden Boy slumped against a wall, throat torn out from a mugging gone wrong, blood coating his much too expensive clothes. Mogar surrounded by the twisted wreckage of an oppressor. Patillo shot clean through the head at the controls of a falling helicopter. The Sauce with a jagged piece of metal going straight through his chest, surrounded by the red that once was his blood. The Phoenix, a charred mess after getting too close to one of Mogar’s explosions. The Vagabond a crumpled mess on the roof of a car, parachute failed to deploy after jumping from some sort of air vehicle. And finally the Kingpin himself, slumped at a card table, mouth frothing after drinking some sort of poisonous liquid.

“These are only a sliver of the recorded deaths of your crew. Yet somehow each and every time one of you die you don’t. The next day you pop back up with some new brand of mischief. Time and time again this city has watched you all die, yet like the cockroaches you are you just don’t say down.” The man sneered angrily at the Fake in front of him who seemed no more interested in any of this then if he were reading the dictionary.

“But right now we have you locked up here, no chance for the rest of these cockroaches to get you out. So you’re going to tell me Ramsey how exactly you’ve cheated death so many times.” He growled out.

Geoff looked up from his finger nails to stare impassively at the man before him. Commissioner Hyerty, a man who had been obsessed with capturing the fakes at all costs. He was a father of two with an estranged marriage, his wife cheating on him with a member of the Vegas, the man possibly being the true father of the Commissioner’s youngest. Geoff was no more afraid of him than one was afraid of a moth. If Geoff was honest the Commissioner was more of an annoyance than anything else.

“Hm. Would you believe me if I said I sucked off Thanatos?” Geoff asked, tone casual as he watched the man’s face turn into a brilliant red shade.

“This isn’t a fucking game Ramsey! You will be going to prison! Your crew will fall and one way or another your death defying secret will be revealed.” He said, Geoff just outright laughed at that. His family wouldn’t fall apart as easily as this man thought.

“This is no laughing matter!”

“Oh but it really is. You think you’re the one with the power here, I’m only still here because I haven’t actually cared to try and escape.” Geoff said, tone cocky as he smirked at the Commissioner. This just infuriated the man even more.

“I’ve been alive longer than your family has been in America. You don’t scare me more than a kitten scares me. I’ll be here long after you die. You are nothing to me.” The Immortal said, leaning back in his seat. If this pitiful man thought Geoff would spill his secrets then he was dead wrong. Not that Geoff himself even knew how immortality works. The just died and then woke up back in a relatively safe spot in a brand new body.

“Listen here you piece of shit. Right now I’m-“ Hyerty’s speech was cut off by a knock at the door. He let out a string of curses as he turned to the door.

“Who the fuck is it.” He shouted, the door opening up to reveal a demure light skinned african american. She was staring at the floor, her short hair hanging to the side of her head.

“Commissioner Hyerty, you’re needed at the front desk.” The woman said, keeping her voice low.

“Tell them I’m busy.” The commissioner huffed out.

“They said to tell you it had to deal with the Vagabond’s whereabouts.” The woman said. The man lit up at that, immediately standing up, chair abruptly falling behind him

“You should have led off with that!” He snarled at her, turning back to Ramsey

“We aren’t done here. Though if we have your lapdog you might be more willing to speak.” The man said, hurriedly leaving, not paying attention as he left, practically running over the woman. Or that she stayed behind with Ramsey, arms now crossed.

“You owe me a fucking suped up Deluxo Ramsey.” The woman huffed, the meek demeanor gone.

“If you can manage to get me out of here Nova it’s all yours.” Geoff agreed, a wide grin stretched across his face as Novaheld up a key ring, pucked off the commissioner as he oh so rudely bumped into her.

“You dare doubt me Geoff? Maybe I should just leave you here.” She said, going to leave.

“Fionaaaaaa. You can’t leave your boss in here to rot.” Geoff whined out causing Fiona to huff.

“I mean you could spend a day or two in here.” She ribbed as she turned around, walking over to Geoff to free him.

“But then I’d be out of a Deluxo.” She said as she freed his wrists. Geoff rubbed his wrists as Fiona undid his leg shackles.

“What you said about Ry?” He asked.

“Well, the boys are getting ready to give the station a gift or two.” She drawled out with a smirk on her face. Geoff laughed at that as he stood up. Leave it to his family to bring the fight to the station.

“We’ll be going out the back. Should be less guarded as most focus will be on the front.” She said, giving him an ear piece. Immediately he slipped it on. He saw Fiona pull out two semi auto pistols from god knows where exactly, one finding its way to Geoff’s hand.

“Geoffrey! You’re alive!” Came the voice of one Gavin Free.

“Of course he’s alive idiot. We’re immortal.” Michael bit out and Geoff could just imagine Gavin’s pouting face.

“You know what I meant boi.” Gavin whined.

“Of course Gavin,” Geoff said with a huff of amusement, “status of that Gift Fiona mentioned?”

“Arrived and waiting for the signal.” Michael answered.

“Well then, why don’t we get this show on the road?” The moment the word’s left Geoff’s lips an explosion rocked the building. The chaos was instant, the people in the building flooding to either leave the building or rush to the sound of the explosion. The duo slipped out of the interrogation room to make their grand escape. With the room already being towards the back, they managed to get to the back door without much fuss. Of course there were men guarding the back exit, but they never stood a chance between the two fakes. From their it was a quick jaunt to where Jack was waiting in the getaway car.

“So about that Deluxo.” Fiona said as soon as they were speeding off to safety, causing Geoff to laugh.

“What color?” He asked her.

[flightless-rising]

Made a new Flight Rising iceberg and also wrote an explanation.. man, this took way longer than it should have.

Anyways, I hope you enjoy :D

Iceberg explanation

( If there are any mistakes please let me know and I’ll edit this asap. Also, English isn't my first language so please forgive me for any grammatical errors)

EDIT 28/06: Added some new info! Thanks to everyone who tagged and responded with new stuff to add, I really appreciate it!

The Sky

Naomi

Back in the day, whenever you bought or sold something on the auction house a message would show up in your inbox confirming the transaction. These messages were sent by one of the dragon couriers: Pearl, Spitfire or Edgar.

On January 2016, a strange glitch occurred that replaced the images and names of couriers with the ones of a female fae named “Naomi”.

It goes deeper than that, though: if you looked up her name in the user search menu, a clan would pop up with over 15 million dragons.

It was quickly discovered that all exalted dragons had somehow become part of her clan. Naomi herself apparently didn’t exist, and clicking on her page redirected to an error page. This was later fixed and the original Naomi page can be now visited.

What exactly caused this glitch is still a mystery and today Naomi is still a well-known piece of Flight Rising history.

Missing Tidelord

In the official lore, the deity of the water flight disappeared in early 2018, as described in the short story “Hear Today, Gone Tomorrow”.

In the follow up story (Mixed Elements) posted in April of the next year it is confirmed that the Tidelord is still missing, but alive. This coincides with the fact that the Tidelord account hasn’t made any forum posts aside from festival announcements.

Emperors

Emperors are a type of unobtainable dragon that are formed when several Imperial corpses are left in close proximity to each other, which then fuse forming a multi-headed chimera.

Emperors are described in the lore as having an animal-like behavior and destroying everything in sight. They are extremely difficult to kill, which is the reason why in-universe Imperials have such strange burial rites.

An emperor named Luminax is first described in the Raising a Family short story, and their sprite can be seen walking around on the world map.

The Surface

Old color wheel

Originally, there were only 67 available colors for dragons. On June 8th 2016, 110 more colors were added, meaning that currently there are a total of 177 colors available.

When making a custom progenitor dragon, it is only possible to choose among the 67 original colors because it would be otherwise unfair for those who made their account before the new colors were added.

Imperial breed scrolls

Imperial breed change scrolls are one of, if not the most, rare type of item on the site. They were given only to those who pledged 30 dollars or more on the original Flight Rising kickstarter.

At the time, this was the only way of obtaining an Imperial dragon, which meant that the breed as a whole was pretty valuable. Now that Imperials are abundant this is no longer the case, but First generation Imperials are still extremely sought and probably the most expensive type of dragon on the site.

There were also other items that were only given to Kickstarted backers, namely Skycats, Bonefiend, Golden Idol and Cogfrog familiars, and those are also pretty much impossible to obtain.

Baldwin breed change

When Baldwin was introduced in 2015 he was originally a Pearlcatcher. On September 14th of 2016 however his site art started to gradually change, until his transformation was completed five days later.

In-universe, Baldwin started to change after a lightning strike hit his cauldron during an experiment, which made him slowly mutate into the breed we now know as Bogsneaks.

Trans Fiona

When Fiona was added as a trading post dragon people speculated that she was trans, because the female pose for Skydancers only displays two antennae, while the male one has four.

Since Fiona has four antennae in her site art, many wondered whether it was an oversight or actually intended. Aequorin later confirmed in a forum thread that Fiona is indeed trans.

Boolean

Speaking of rare items, the Boolean familiar was only given to a handful of Flight rising beta testers and as such is extremely rare and valuable.

Plaguebringer coli team

On the Plaguebringer’s page she is listed as being part of a coliseum team.

As of now we have no clue as to why this is, and even more strangely she is the only deity that does this.

Boston & Hope

This story is a bit complicated. I’ve scoured the forums in search of info but it seems like there are still some pieces missing. I’ll try my best to explain anyway.

So, for a long while the Lightweaver was the only deity that had other dragons aside from herself in her lair: these dragons were a Spiral named Boston and a Tundra named Hope. Strangely, they were both Earth dragons and apparently have been there since the beginning (?). When asked why (this happened back when deities would interact on the forums) the Lightweaver responded that they were having a dinner party together.

In August 2014 during a pretty heated dominance battle between Shadow and Light Boston and Hope disappeared from the Lightweaver’s lair.

The Shadowbinder now had them, and both their elements were alsochanged to Shadow. The two deities acknowledged this and changed their broadcast messages accordingly.

If I had to guess this was some kind of inside joke that the admins had, although some people got angry that the Shadowbinder now had both Hope and Boston. Some time later(?) Boston was returned to the Lightweaver and for some reason his element was changed to wind.

I don’t have any more info on the matter but if some of you do I would appreciate it if you tell me.

Shallow Waters

Eyepocalypse

On June 8th 2018 eye type variants were introduced. This update was pretty controversial for a bunch of reasons, and the topic is still discussed today. The majority of people(?) seemed to be upset by the fact the “best” eye types (primarily goat, primal and multi-gaze) could only be displayed on dragons that were born with them, and the fact that every dragon born prior to the update couldn’t have these eye types at all displeased a lot of users.

Another problem was the fact that most of the non-special eye types (i.e the only ones that could be applied to already existing dragons using a vial of Scattersight) were not clearly visible on the grand majority of adult dragons.

A smaller(?) complaint was that two of the primal eye types, Shadow and Plague, were seen as kind of disturbing by some people.

Three years later staff attempted to fix this issue by adding Eye type vials for every available eye type. This resulted in a market crash for special eye typed dragons, as now these eye types could be applied to any dragon. The value of Scattersights also tanked, and the people bought them and hadn’t used them yet lost money as now they were infinitely less useful.

EDIT 28/06: Goat isn’t actually obtainable via breeding, faceted is. Bad mistake on my part.

Also, Scattersights were given away freely by Galore on Flight Rising’s fifth anniversary in 2018 and could not be bought afterwards. I admit that I thought people could be able to buy Scattersights due to how upset people were that the value went down, but whatever.

Courier Breed

The courier dragons (Edgar, Spitfire, and Pearl) are part of an exclusive dragon breed that is currently unobtainable. Even though their eye color still reflects the flight they were born in, in-universe they are considered to be “neutral” and they are granted free access to all domains. This raises the question as to which deity created them, as every other dragon breed (Bogsneaks being the only exception) has been created by one of The Eleven.

Multiaccounting

According to the site’s terms of service, no one is allowed to have more than one account. This is pretty standard for pet sites, as having multiple accounts grants unfair advantages and can mess up the site economy. This doesn’t completely stop people for having more than one account, and the practice as a whole is called “Multiaccounting” or “having multis”.

Some people only do this to have multiple clans or reboot their account without deleting their old one. They mostly do no harm but it is reasonable that the site wouldn’t allow this because of how easy it is exploit.

The real harm of multis comes from a practice called “funneling” which is when someone creates multiple accounts only for the purpose of giving items to their main account. This practice violates the game’s rules and can result in a ban. Funneling is not limited to multiaccounting though, and having an account only to feed another is against the site’s rules whether or not the account in question belongs to another person or not.

Some people fear of being banned for multiaccounting even if they haven’t done so, especially if they share a computer with other people.

Purble

“he purble” is probably among the most famous Flight Rising memes.

In 2016(?) a rant was submitted to the original Dramarising blog by a very angry user that wanted to buy an XXX Purple Ridgeback back when triples were pretty expensive, but got beat by someone else.

I’m not going to copy paste it here because in my opinion it’s one of the funniest Flight Rising related posts ever and I don’t want to spoil the experience of reading it for the first time. You can find it pretty easily by searching it up.

Tert Picking

This is something that refaced recently, even though I’ve seen people talking about this for a while. Some people vividly remember being able to pick their custom progenitor’s tertiary color, even though the developers have made it clear that such thing would be impossible. This is without a doubt just one of those weird situations where a lot of people somehow remember the same thing wrong.

Still, it’s fascinating just how many people claim to remember doing picking their tert.

Swiftwings

Swiftwings were a dragon breed that was scrapped in development. The design was rejected because it didn’t fit the 2 arms 2 legs 2 wings format that every dragon design had to follow before the introduction of ancient breeds.

The reason for this rule is that otherwise it would mess up apparel placement. Although the concept was scrapped, echoes of the design were scattered throughout the site: for example, the empty dragon slots that were present prior to 2019 had the silhouette of a Swiftwings dragon. They are also mentioned in the April Fool’s update of 2018.

“Real” Lore dragons

Most people don’t know that some of the dragons featured on the lore stories are actually real, and you can visit their pages. This is the case for Tetra, Cracklinne, Velya, Liefa, Garote and Mirth, which are currently chilling in Aequorin’s lair.

All of the other dragons in the developers’ lairs are not canon and are used to test bugs and features on the site.

The Middle ground

True deity names

When the site first started the deities used to have actual names instead of titles. Some of these names were based off of the site founders’s usernames on other sites.

The names are the following:

Amogayvhi - Gladekeeper Xhaztol - Arcanist Rhenik - Tidelord Akiri - Flamecaller Thrage - Stormcatcher Undel - Shadowbinder Jhortanas - Plaguebringer Ghurab - Windsinger Artaios - Earthshaker Rhiow – Lightweaver

As you can tell, Xhaztol, Akiri, Thrage and Undel are the usernames of some of the admins of the site, and the flight they are a part of corresponds with the previous name of their deity.

No leg coatls

On January 16, 2015 an iconic thread was posted in the flight rising discussion forum, which displayed a photoshopped image of a coatl with its legs removed. Quickly the thread devolved into a general photoshop thread were people took official site art of dragons and modified it.

The thread was eventually locked due to spam and quote pyramids, but spiritual successors of the original “phoatlshop” thread still exist today.

Dress slot unlocking

A thing that a surprising amount of people don’t know is the fact that when buy an additional apparel slot, the slot opens for every dragon in your lair and not just the one you bought it on.

This is something I also discovered very recently and it’s kind of funny that so many people that have been on the site for very long don’t know this.

Clanbound scatterscrolls

I think the wiki explains it best, so I’ll just copy paste this here:

“Tri-Color Scatterscrolls suffered from an issue where they would only scatter a random range from colors 1-47 (white through sunshine) rather than 1-67 (white through rose). They have been fixed and are now functioning correctly with a random range within the 67 color set. The affected timeframe was from August 15th, 2013 until September 22nd, 2013. The admins allowed users who were unsatisfied with their bugged Tri-Color Scatterscrolls to receive the same amount of them back in the form of Clanbound Scatterscrolls to try scattering their own dragons again with the full color range.”

Beta Mirrors

Ever wondered why they’re called Mirrors?

According to Undel, the main artist of Flight Rising, mirrors originally were supposed to have every part of their body “mirrored”, meaning they had two sets of eyes, two pairs of wings, two tails, and so on.

This design ended up being too cluttered and looked weird shrunken down. The name was kept the same, even though the only mirrored part of the design are the eyes.

Dragons are evil

If you read the “Beastclans on the rise” lore bit, the dragons come across as… very evil, stealing territory from the beastclans when they have been living on Sornieth way longer than the dragons have and killing them for loot.

Furthermore, in the Bounty of the Elements lore bit the Beastclan rebellion guided by Talona is seen by the dragons as unreasonable and wrong even when in canon Beastclans are framed as the innocent party.

The Depths

Scroll of Divorce

In the alpha stage dragons were supposed to be monogamous and could only breed with the dragon they were “paired” with. To break their bond you had to use an item called “Scroll of Divorce” which even featured broken marriage rings in the art.

If I had to guess, this item and the concept as a whole were scrapped because the idea of dragons having “weddings” and needing to divorce before breeding with another dragon felt kind of weird, especially in a game targeted towards teens.

First Festival

The first Holiday festival in Flight rising history was the 2013 Brightshine Jubilee. The items that were available for this festival only are incredibly rare, particularily the Light Sprite which is one of the most valuable items on the site. Apart from that and the fact that the skincent contest only had 6 winners, not much is notable about it.

Offsite drama

Flight Rising has had its fair share of drama both on and off site, but due to the fact that it’s against the site’s rule to discuss user drama on the forums most of the notable drama happened off site (mainly tumblr).

Egg rot

Egg rot was a very early mechanic that was pretty quickly removed from the site. If you forgot to incubate your eggs, they would “rot” and no longer hatch.

It’s the reason why in the nesting grounds the text reads “Eggs healthy” and also the reason why on the stats section of the Account settings it says “Eggs discarded”. The mechanic was removed because it heavily punished casual players and the frequent downtimes of the site meant that even if someone logged in every day they could still have their eggs die.

Also, the images of egg rot look extremely cursed.

Pablo

From what I could gather, Pablo is a dragon which became somewhat popular after user “Desmondtiny” wrote a very long and detailed backstory of them being the Arcanist’s lost boyfriend.

I’m pretty sure it gues deeper than that but I couldn’t find any further information. As usual, if you know something more let me know.

Latest News

On November 12, 2014, a glitch(?) occurred that let anyone post in the Announcements thread. Anything that was posted went directly to the front page, which resulted in quite a bit of chaos.

This was fixed only half an hour later, but the screenshots people have from that time are extremely funny.

Lameforger

On the 2014 Flameforger’s festival announcement Undel accidentally misspelled “Flameforger” as “Lameforger”, which prompted the official account of the Flamecaller to respond aggressively. Lameforger is still jokingly used by users, even after the typo was fixed.

Festival of one (1)

On the first day of the 2014 Greenskeeper Gathering a glitch occurred which switched the site banner for the Starfall celebration banner instead of the Greenskeeper one.

It didn’t end there, in the coliseum Magical shards dropped instead of Bladed Flatleaves, even though skin chests dropped as normal(?).

The weirdest thing about it all was Joxar’s Space inventory, which didn’t display any items at all and had glitched dialogue.

The event was nicknamed by the fanbase “Festival of 1” and even the deity’s official accounts acknowledged the incident.

Vape Juice

As far as I know the original forum thread as been lost, but the vape juice fiasco will always remain cemented in Flight Rising History.

A company called Vape Daugz was making vape juice with Flight Rising dragons plastered on their packaging, completely violating the site’s policy.

The company’s site still exists, and browsing through their products I found that the products that previously had Flight Rising dragons on them still exist, but now feature completely different packaging.

I have no idea whether they changed the packaging spontaneously or staff did something about it.

I think there’s a potentially interesting story buried down there, but we’ll likely never the truth behind the Flight Rising vape juice.

The Abyss

Humans

There’s been some speculation over the years as to whether or not humans are canon in the Flight Rising universe. Some people believe that the “Mages” of the second age in the official lore are actually humans, but we can’t be sure because they are depicted with long robes that cover their whole bodies.

The idea of humans existing in canon has spawned a couple of memes, most infamously Thomas.

Plague healers

Again, I think the wiki explains this one better:

“According to Aequorin, Plague healers are an interesting bunch because rather than administer treatments that counter illness, they use a mixture of magic and contagion that stress the affected dragon further, allowing them to reach a stronger, healed, and resistant state faster than other elements. Plague healers will treat physical injuries with sutures, bandages, and braces, but they won't clean the wounds or apply ointments."

Akitla

As described in the original thread, Akitla was a dragon that user “qunii” saw on the front page, but noticed that she wasn’t accompanied by the username of the person owning them.

After clicking on her, an error page loaded. It was discovered that putting her color combination or ID in the search bar would result in an error page. This was later fixed, and both Akitla and her mate were now displayed as being exalted to the Arcanist. T

here are some theories as to what happened to the Akitla’s user, some think that she belonged to a deleted account, others that it was the result of an incomplete account creation.

As with a lot of things on this iceberg, it will likely remain a mystery forever.

Arcane sprite book

“what is the arcane sprite reading??” is probably one of the oldest still active threads on the forums.

On September 25, 2013 user “Kaadashi” started a joke thread were they wondered what exactly is the arcane sprite reading, and playfully suggested that it could be erotic fanfiction. People went crazy of course, and started to wonder what kind of juicy secrets were hidden within the pages of that book.

I don’t want to say too much because I really don’t want to spoil the experience of reading through this very cursed tread.

Sunshine

Sunshine is one of the most… interesting lairs on the site, and certainly one of the most well-known.

They(?) have a lair (almost) completely full of triple basic sunshine dragons, most of which are Tundras. So far they have collected about 320 triple hundred Sunshine dragons, almost all of which are also named “Sunshine”. They’re not all the same, some of them have apparel, some of them are gened and some have unique art and descriptions.

They’re dedicated and I respect that.

EDIT 28/06: Apparently some people seem to think that the sunshine-dedicated lair is based on a meme concerning the announcement of the color wheel expansion, which became so discussed that the itself site broke. The two things are unrelated however, as the Sunshine lair has been around for much longer.

The announcement of the color wheel expansion was cryptic, with only a few post showing off differently colored coatls and then 3 pages of reserved posts, with no explanation whatsoever.

Simple Farmer

Another very famous thread is the “I am but a simple farmer” thread started by user “someKindOfGenius”. It’s not really about anything specific, it’s just a rather silly thread were people photoshop flight rising dragons onto various crops.

Still, this thread is iconic so I had to include it.

Dragon Deaths

Way back in 2014 former flight rising programmer Thrage revealed on a forum thread that way back before the beta, dragons could actually starve to death if left unfed.

Yep.

Obviously they had to remove this mechanic because it would have been extremely harsh to casual players and make people frustrated with the game.

Zalvador

User “manojalpa” became fairly well-known for the extremely dark lore they(?) had written for their Clan, it was so dark in fact that every single one of their dragon’s bios had to moved to their tumblr where they couldn’t be easily seen by the site’s mainly underage usebase.

Their lore centered around their progen dragon, a tundra named Zalvador, which behaved and had the same powers as a flight rising user: buying dragons off of the action house, having “breeding projects”, exalting dragons, etc.

These things seem pretty normal when done by a player, but when taking them as actual real things that happen in universe… yeah, it was way too morbid for the site.

The Pit

Black linen neck wraps

For some weird reason, the apparel piece “Black linen neck wrap” when put on a male pose Coatl wraps around the dragon’s throat instead of it’s neck. It’s kind of subtle and hard to see, but if you compare it with the female pose the difference is clear. This is probably just an art error, although it’s weird that it hasn’t been fixed yet, since linen wraps are a very old piece of apparel.

Another weird thing about linen wraps in general is that the wing wraps just sort of… go through the membrane? This is not possible. These dragons are in pain.

Icewarden ears

Another very remarkably popular thread is the Icewarden ears thread.

In 2014 user “Llanai” simply makes note of the fact that the Icewarden has teeny tiny ears.

As we have come to expect from these threads, it quickly devolved into nonsense.

Forbidden Snapper lore

Snappers used to have a way different lore section that was changed because it deemed too similar to the lore of another petsite.

This is what the original section read:

"Snapper dragons do not sleep, but exist in a constant state of reverie. They receive and catalogue all experiences and stories told within their dreams. This persistent state of awakened dreaming awards them the longest memory of any dragon species. They are living encyclopedias, and any dragon who is seeking difficult-to-obtain information will have the most luck unearthing it from a Snapper clan - provided they have the patience for it. If you want two dozen quick answers, talk to a spiral. If you want a fully developed answer, camp out around a Snapper. These dreamers move at their own pace, which varies from dragon to dragon. For some, the awakened dream can prove to be more interesting than their surroundings. This leads to a focus upon the dream, and the waking world as filtered background noise. Interacting with these sleepwalkers can be a trying and repetitive task. Other Snappers may be fairly lucid, with a focus upon their surroundings and the constant hum of the dream pushed aside."

Bee movie script

I’ve seen this story around the forums a few times but I’ve never been able to learn the details.

From what I’ve heard someone copy pasted the entire bee movie script into their clan bio in a drop down text format, which completely broke the page for anyone who visited it. This was fixed, apparently, although I have no clue as to who this user is.

EDIT 28/06: Zeus

Zeus is an XXX gold g1 permababy imperial that used to belong to user "happywing".

Their account is now locked because Zeus was created with the use of a duplication glitch on an imperial breed change scroll, which is obviously not allowed (although I've heard some people say that the dragon was hacked in altogether). Before the account was locked, people speculated that Zeus was the most valuable dragon on the site, because an XXX g1 imperial is impossibly rare.

Wegg shaming

On July 2017 user “Dreamnorn” made a thread were they(?) claimed to have a dream where everything was the same except people used the term “wegged” when two dragons would lay only one egg in a nest.

Ex. Aw man! I’ve been wegged again! = Aw man! I bred two dragons and they only had one egg!

The dream ended up being prophetic, as the term catched on and people started to use it unironically.

The practice of “Wegg shaming” I think refers to the trend of people posting pictures of the dragons that “wegged” them in order to “shame” them.

Plague nest skull

The site art of the plague nest features an unique dragon skull that doesn’t match with any currently existing dragon breed or creature: It appears to have two sets of eyes, like a mirror, but also long and curled horns.

It’s probably just for decoration and it likely doesn’t have any significance whatsoever, but personally I believe it would be pretty cool if when they eventually release plague ancient it at least somewhat resembled this skull.

EDIT 28/06: On second thought, the skull doesn’t seem to have two pairs of eyes, It just has the generic shape of a carnivore.

Rock bottom

CAPTAINPLANET

…this is CAPTAINPLANET. Somehow, user “Decres”' managed to overlay a Fae skin on top of a Tundra, creating this horrifyingly fascinating abomination.

I have no idea how she did this, and she seems pretty adamant to tell.

EDIT 28/06: People have pointed out that this skin overlay glitch was actually somewhat common (although I still haven't found another dragon like CAPTAINPLANET). What you had to do was breed change a dragon while attaching a skin to them in another tab.

This glitch has been patched and such thing is no longer possible.

Lair 46264

A cursed lair.

Dreams

I’ve seen a lot of people, both on forums and on Tumblr, sharing dreams they had about Flight Rising.

A lot of people dream of just being on the site, while occasionally weird things happen.

I’ve read of people who dreamed the distribution of a new breed, buying an exclusive item, a new Fiona feat or Swipp trade, or just browsing the forums.

The most common type of Flight rising-associated dream I’ve seen however is being caught multiaccounting and having their account banned.

I’m no psychoanalyst, but I think it’s pretty clear that these nightmares stem from the paranoia of being banned from their beloved petsite instead of showing any actual intention of doing the “crime” in question.

Anyways, I think it’s fascinating how so many people dream about this site, and it reminds me of the dreams people claimed to have about Mario 64 where completely new levels were added or a scary monster appeared.

Dragon Slime

Dragon Slime was an infamous thread which was supposed to be start off point for an ARG.

It was deleted because it was considered too “spammy” and also because ARGs are banned from the forums. The thread has been lost, unfortunately.

EDIT 28/06: Thanks to @randompurple-fr for providing screenshots of the dragon slime tutorial! You can find them here

Cucumber

Cucumber is the only dragon ever to have been exalted with a skin, which is something that should not be possible. This raises some questions as to what exactly did the person that exalted them do to achieve this, but we have no way of knowing who Cucumber belonged to.

EDIT 28/06: Actually, we do know who used to Cucumber belonged to! Its owner was Osiem: an official flight rising artist. I couldn’t find the thread where they(?) acknowledged the glitch though, if someone has it please let me know!