#for both the aforementioned reasons and also because of a certain pairing that is literally impossible to escape

[loveydoveylex]

aaaa I don't like venting here, but is it okay to be a lil salty? this is my safe space so I'm gonna be a lil salty, avert your eyes please 😆

I'm still kinda miffed about the fact that I used to get made fun of for being unironically attracted to ray, which sucked, yeah, but it was in a way kinda comforting cause he wasn't GENERALLY viewed as a Super Sexy Handsome Stud by fans or whatever. there were only a few rare instances where I had to deal with jealousy and such.

but tHEN LASERHAWK CAME OUT. and now EVERY SINGLE POST I SEE is basically just about how hot he is. he's on the TUMBLR SEXYMAN WIKI ffs. can't even gush on twitter anymore without other people chiming in too about how attractive they find him. y'know what? I think I almost preferred being made fun of for it, LMAO 🙃

I'll be fine but I just need to get my pettiness out sometimes

[thefairyletters]

NaruSaku Fanfics

I wouldn't say much – I love NaruSaku and I hate to see great works shadowed behind the piles of popular NS stories that I never have liked as much except for a few, which also I'll drop below in the list.

I'll update this list whenever I come across a story that I particularly enjoy or finds worth spreading word across. So be sure to like and reblog this post so you can revisit it to add new story in your reading pile later.

Also, genres vary and are not mentioned, but does it make any difference as long as the story is good?

Warning: super long post featuring beautiful, beautiful stories that you wouldn't regret reading. I swear. I'm positive. Contains SNS and other side pairings.

Without further ado;

How I fell in love with my best friend: Krapo || ff.net || M || complete

How the little blond boy Sakura had always known had changed, changing as well her feelings. The unfolding of their life, while Naruto worked to become the best Hokage and she faced her own emotions. Growing Love.

(I have nothing but upmost reverence for this story. This author writes one of the nest NS and I have loved all. NS is beautiful and Sakura is badass. Everything we already know is here and more.)

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Dangerous infiltration mission: Krapo || ff.net || M || complete

Naruto and Sakura are send by the Hokage for a difficult infiltration mission. They will have to face more than just the danger itself as they will have to keep their cover to be fake husband and wife credible. how it will impact the relationship between the two ninja. Growing Love. Misunderstanding.

(If you loved the aforementioned story, you'll love this one too. Mutual pining.)

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All over again: Krapo || ff.net || M || post-war || complete

Sasuke come back, Team seven is reunited. But Sakura has lost Naruto. How will she make him fall in love with her again? What other difficulties lies ahead of them?

(Naruto loses memory. SasuSaku angst but not in romantic sense and I loved it all. Misunderstanding and more mutual pining. And I'm in love with this story too.)

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Hit the floor running: Sakurablossom009 || A03 || M (but unnecessary) || Modern Hitman/Robbers AU || complete

Life was going great, Sakura thought. She was penniless, stranded in Europe without a way home, her fiancee had just dumped her for another woman AND her new companion was quite possibly a thief. How could things get any worse? Wait...was that guy pointing a gun at her?

(Now, personally, I don't prefer modern AU, but this story really had interesting characterisation and more character depth. NaruSaku is pretty spot on. It also features SasuHina and bamf!Hinata)

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The greatest pretenders: snowyseas || ff.net || M || Borutoverse || ongoing

Fifteen years is a long time to not talk to someone you consider your best friend, and is made even more difficult when they (and you) are married. The things Sakura should have confronted Naruto about never came to fruition, but as an old saying goes, "the truth will always be revealed".

(Your typical I-made-a-wrong-choice-but-now-can-be-done story but unlike many other stories in this they don't admit their love for each chapter at the first chapter itself. In fact, it feels so canon and you can almost superimpose it upon the canon. Sakura is mentally strong and knows what's right. )

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He was the sun: SavageTrickster || ff.net || T || Canonverse || ongoing

He had come a long way - from a lonely orphan ostracized by everyone to a loved hero. He deserved all these. His Hokage dream to come true. All the ramen he could eat. - Her eyes fell on a certain Hyuuga seated close enough for accidental touches. Her heart sank a little at a harsh whisper of reminder - And a deserving girl...who could give him all her love.

(So far so good. It's ongoing, and is at chapter 3. Sakura leaves Konoha much like how Naruto did, to explore the world aka seeing my headcanon in writing.)

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Wilderness: Kanji no Sakka || M || canondivergent || ongoing

As the war screeches to a temporary halt, Naruto leaves the battlefield on a unique mission only he can complete. Sakura is ordered to go with him. In the days that follow their bond is changed forever.

(Although I hate any explicit stories that involve characters below age 17, I give this a pass because of the uniqueness of plot and characterisation. It has fine lemons that comes with a good plot.)

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How It Should Have Been: OfPaintAndOil || ff.net || T || canon divergent || oneshot

It wasn't supposed to be this way. Sasuke was supposed to be the dark one, the unredeemable one. Naruto was the bright one, the good one. It wasn't supposed to be like this, with blood on his hands and glowing red eyes and a grin. Naruto was supposed to make everything better, and maybe he did, in the end, but Sakura had never expected the end to look quite like this.

(Featuring Yandere!Naruto. It leaves you wanting for more and is a fascinating read. It's dark themed so proceed with caution as your favorite character might or might not be dead.)

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The Best Dates are the Cheap Ones: Shivakashi || ff.net || T || post!Timeskip || Oneshot

The whole point was to get the best date; that meant the richest and classiest guy, right? Sakura realizes what she has taken for granted and Ino learns a lesson in value.

(Sakura learns her lesson and snatches her boy. InoNaru is worth noting. Not the best characterisation of Sakura but bear with her jealousy for that is the reason why NS fluff exists. Story itself is very light and entertaining.)

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mangoes and strawberries: ohthelinsanity || ff.net || T || postwar || oneshot

Sakura Haruno was elbow deep in Naruto Uzumaki's guts when he asked her to marry him. It was so not the right time. But she still said yes.

(This story just screams NS upon every single line. Diabetes warning. Too cute for this world. One of the best NS fluff I've read thus far. It kinda sticks to you forever!)

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18 minutes, 23 seconds: ohthelinsanity || ff.net || T || postwar || oneshot

in which Naruto asks Sakura about that time she literally reached into his chest and grabbed his heart with her bare hand.

(Heartwarming. We all know how Sakura held Naruto's heart on her palms and how we love that moment. This is memory of that moment reminisced by our cutie pies.)

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One Big Uzumaki Family: John Smith || ff.net || T || postwar || Complete

A set of drabbles revolving around Naruto, Sakura, and their children. It turns out that, when the war ends, these two get busy. Real busy.

(IF YOU DON'T READ THIS MASTERPIECE HOW DARE YOU CALL YOURSELF NS FAN?!!! READ!!! This story should be on the top of your reading list.

UNDERRATED AF!

R e a d t h i s s t o r y and cry with me for this should have been canon. 100%)

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My Life Would Suck Without You: peanutbutter126 || ff.net || T || oneshot collection

Sometimes it's the smallest things that matter the most.

(Read this and then One big Uzumaki family. You'll feel super satisfied. I promise.)

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Colors and Carousels: Folle Sakura || ff.net || T || oneshot

She couldn't count the number of times she'd been mistaken for Naruto's girlfriend. Not that she minded. But Naruto acted like it was so… so… offensive.

(No words for this one. Just read and enjoy the confusion.)

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Let's Get Married: luvtoshi || ff.net || M || postwar || complete

It was supposed to be a simple solution to their immediate problems. But maybe they took more than they can chew?

(This is one of my few favorites that is also popular. Spot on characterization and beautiful relationship growth. This is one of the few stories that always stuck to me.)

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Chasing Smoke with Bare Hands: soulaire || ff.net || T || oneshot

"I could have loved her," Sasuke says flatly. "If she'd just given me the chance—" "Sakura gave you all the chances in the world," Kakashi cuts in, stern. "You underestimated her. And you underestimated her ability to walk away from you. At the core of it all, that's where things went wrong."

(This story is for those who loves both SS and NS but thinks Sakura deserves happier life than what she got in canon. Features NS and slight SS.)

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Touch: ohthelinsanity || ff.net || T || oneshot

Kakashi watches as his student grow to be more physically comfortable with one another. He finds it kinda ridiculous.

(Fluff. Feelings. Kakashi's fed up and might have diabetes from all the observation.)

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Moonlight shadows: luvtoshi || ff.net || T || oneshot

Sometimes, the moon brings out hidden feelings to the surface.

(Beautiful literature. NS feels. You can almost mistake it for canon with the way characters are written.)

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Seriously Serious: Damsel in Shining Armor || ff.net || T || modern AU || oneshot

He confessed to her when they first met. He confessed to her years after. He confessed to her almost everyday. Her response was almost always positive... So why the heck was he still single? "I love you." "Love you too. So is Sasuke-kun taken or not?"

(The only reason why I even picked this story is that it is a oneshot. I have very little interest in modern AU. But this one makes another exception. Pining. Love at first sight.)

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It was always you: luvtoshi || ff.net || M || postwar || complete

The war is long over. They have both grown. Now it's time to conclude their story. Naruto and Sakura.

(You know what, all stories from this author are just, Chef's kiss. )

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A Safe Pair of Hands: Kanji no Sakka || ff.net || T || oneshot

Sakura heeds a stern warning to make it clear how she feels about Naruto.

(Feels. You'll love this if you like first person pov. This story told from Sakura's pov.)

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Other Dreams: tricksie || ff.net || M || oneshot

"Naruto, you shouldn't endanger yourself—" "Stop it," he snapped. Dropping his arm to hook under her seat, Naruto pulled her firmly onto his hip, locking her to him. Sakura gasped, suddenly aware of just how very close they were.

(Sexual tension. Romance. Leaves you wanting. Also, high on feels and lust on equal measure.)

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Heaven Unexpected: Folle || ff.net || M || oneshot

Because nothing can happen; it's Naruto. He always comes back. He's practically indestructible.

(Heavy on feels. There are chances that it might rain. Actually there are high chances. But oh well, it's beautiful and one of my favourites so here it goes.)

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Shade of the Leaf: Ravyn || ff.net || T || canon divergent || complete

Sasuke is back. Naruto has joined ANBU. Sakura is spending more time in the hospital than in the field. Team 7 struggles to redefine itself, because sometimes you don't know what you really want after all.

(Featuring Mature but still in-character!Naruto, Badass!Sakura, (Bit)Supportive!Sasuke along with Team 7 friendship. Mutual pining. Ending but with a lot loose ends.)

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Breaking Up Isn't that Hard to Do: Narf-for-the-Garthoc || ff.net || T || oneshot

This is not an epic tale of action, suspense and true love. Yeah, I'm disappointed, too.

(This is pure comedy. With a dash of romance. And insanity.)

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Steamy Encounters: Narf-for-the-Garthoc || ff.net || T || oneshot

A flurry of coincidences and fateful machinations bring Naruto and Sakura together at the local baths. Can they rein in their animal passions? And do you really think that's the kind of story I write?

(Just r e a d. Please.)

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Garden of Sanctuary: Nes Mikel || ff.net || T || Canon divergent || oneshot

An alternate ending to Naruto. The Heavens describe the Garden a peaceful paradise. The Hells describe the Garden a baneful prison. In here... which is it?

(This is part of a series which you can follow from the author's profile. This is the second part, but can be read exclusively. As far as the AU goes, this story and settings is brilliant and heartbreaking. This is told from Naruto's pov. To look at things from Sakura's, read the first part. It is multi-chaptered.)

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Complications: Geno Calamari || ff.net || T || canon divergent || oneshot

While capturing the Kyuubi, Uchiha Itachi finds true adversaries in the form of Haruno Sakura and Uzumaki Naruto.

(Wanna see NaruSaku teamwork? This is it! You wouldn't find it anywhere better. Strong!Naruto, Strong!Sakura versus Itachi Uchiha)

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Life is a waving feather: jusrecht || AO3 || T || AU || oneshot

Everyone thought they were inevitable.

(There's beauty in subtlety and this is that. Also, mentions of character death.)

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Home: kirabook || AO3 || T || AU || complete

Shinachiku finds himself in a strange place with little to no explanation. Everyone he knows is there, but why are they acting so strangely? Why do they seem so different? And where is his home? 

(Cute and heartwrenching at the same time. Cameo Stalker. Read this for NS family feels pre-marriage.)

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Things we never say: thekatthatbarks || AO3 || T || oneshot

She wished she knew how to hold things lightly. There were some things she was terrified of breaking. Whether it be from an honest misstep or simply because she could.

(Reminds you why we love NS so much.)

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Open seasons: sazzafraz || AO3 || T || SNS || postwar || oneshot

The way Sasuke comes home is less myth and more devastatingly embarrassing happenstance.

(Featuring badass!Sakura, obedient!Naruto and normal!Sasuke, as well as Sakura's commentary on her life)

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Five things Sakura will never tell Naruto: sowell || AO3 || T || AU || oneshot

Kunoichi know how to keep their secrets.

(NS relationship analysis story.)

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Artistic purposes: StormyInk || AO3 || M || AU || Oneshot

Sai finds his favorite drawing subjects a bit lacking of late, and he sets a plan into motion to draw his team mates together. Simply for the sake of his art, of course.

(Aka Sai is fed up from seeing his teammates dancing around each other and decides to help them get laid–the story. You gotta admit Sai is the best wingman.)

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I collect my tears (so I can drown you in them): amako || AO3 || T || AU || complete

The hardest thing is letting go. Or Sakura sees Naruto falling in love with Shikamaru a little more every day, and she does the only thing she can think of. Then it's only a matter of learning how to stop loving Naruto.

(Sakura and Angst that has nothing to do with Sasuke. Featuring Sakura-sensei. And Shikamaru. It's a great story if you know when to let go of canon)

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Stranger than the wild: kiddattwell || AO3 || M || SNS || postwar || Ongoing

The war is over and Sasuke is home for good, but Sakura can't choose between the boys she loves. Sasuke still has his demons and Naruto still fights them and Sakura still follows them both, but this time down a path that none of them expected.

(This is canon. It is the best SNS story I've ever read. Story told in SNS POV in rotation. Slow burn, pining and relationship complication. YOU GOTTA READ THIS, I INSIST!!!! Also features SaiIno and InoShika.)

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Bringing Back Sasuke: Blue Jeans || ff.net || T || post war || oneshot

Naruto brings Sasuke back to Sakura. Many, many times over. Sasuke does not appreciate; not the blood and definitely not the angst.

(I've read this story multiple times and it gets funnier and makes your heart hurt and swell simultaneously each time. NaruSaku wouldn't be blissfully happy together without Sasuke thrown somewhere in the mix, that's exactly why I love SNS. This story perfectly represents the dynamic of team 7.)

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Yurei: Kanji no Sakka || ff.net || T || AU || oneshot

The past should stay dead and buried, but it won't if Naruto can't let go.

(Not exactly my favourite story, but I liked the concept. We all know how stubborn Naruto is once decides on something. If he wants to become Hokage, he will become Hokage. If he believes in Sasuke, he will believe in him forever. If he loves Sakura, he will marry her – uh, or should have, very OCC of him that he didn't.)

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Tag NS fan you know so they don't miss any of this!

[matthewtkachuk]

mistaken identity - jj maybank

jj mistakes you for a touron, despite the fact that he’s been copying your test answers for years and pined after you just as long. will you let him take you on a date to make it up to you and win you over?

warnings: none i don’t think

pairing: jj maybank x reader

word count: 1.9k

a/n: hello loves, despite a rude anon’s best efforts i’m still here. wrote this little something on the plane ride home yesterday night to distract me from 1) the terrible turbulence and 2) the feeling of my heart literally breaking. i’ve missed my little klepto baby, hope yall enjoy this cute lil jj fic. also 10/10 i will be calling my future sig other ‘bud’ and yes i literally wrote @girlsru1eboysdroo1into this, sue me or w/e feedback makes my heart happy.

You don’t quite know how it happened. One moment you were just the girl JJ cheated off of in math when Pope wouldn’t let him, a member of the math team and all around nobody at Kildare High. Sure, you had friends you sat with at lunch and no one really had a bad thing to say about you. Though, if one really thought about it, no one really had a thing to say about you at all - good or bad. You were the definition of a wallflower, content to sit on the sidelines, observing but never interacting fully. The next moment, you were somebody.

Contrarily, you know exactly where it happened. The same place where residents of both sides of the island come together alongside the hapless tourists with only a few goals in mind: drink, dance and find a warm body to cozy up to for the night. This location is, of course, a boneyard kegger at the beginning of summer (one of the first in fact), and those activities are, of course, not quite in line with your typical Friday night. 

It’s your best friends fault you’re here, you muse, hand wrapped tightly around a red solo cup containing three quarters of the warm beer you were handed nearly half an hour ago. You didn’t have anything against drinking, or anyone who drank, your parents were just a little more present than your classmates. You were staying over at Pen’s that night, her mom was really cool, but you couldn’t shake the imaginary hand of your parents and found yourself looking over your shoulder, prepared to drop the cup in the sand and run. Pen had been the one who was adamant that the two of you make an appearance, “you didn’t come to a single kegger last summer, and it’s our last summer before college, c’mon live a little!”. She was nothing if not persistent, and so you agreed if only to get her to let it go.

She had promised she would be by your side ‘the entire night’, but of course fifteen minutes in and she was nowhere to be seen. Also suspiciously missing, despite his two cronies still standing within your peripheral vision, was one Rafe Cameron. You didn’t know what Pen saw in him, she was the literal sweetest person in the entire world and he was... well himself. Of course no one is perfect, she did ditch you after all, and no one is entirely bad either. Since whatever was going on between them started, Rafe hadn’t been bothering you at all and you considered that a win in your books. 

Girl code and euphemisms about female friendships being more important than romantic ones aside, you couldn’t stay mad at her for long and wanted her to be happy. For some unknown reason, he made her happy and you had to support that.

You just wish she had supported you a little and been upfront about you. That way you could have been home, maybe with a book, maybe with netflix. Either way, you wouldn’t be sitting alone on a piece of driftwood slowly sipping on a warm beer as some of your classmates chatted up a group of tourons. You weren’t alone long, however.

You felt his presence before you saw him. JJ Maybank of all people sidled up beside you on the log, toe tapping and hand fidgeting with his rings as he sat silently for all of thirty seconds. Having been in the same class as the boy for more than a decade you recognized his antsy antics as ones that he often acted on in class. If you took a moment to think about it, you could admit that he was conventionally attractive, his whole devil-may-care attitude and golden surfer tan only made him all the more appealing. However, you had known the boy (or at least known of the boy) for so long, you never let that feeling grow into anything tangible. Besides, you were going to leave the small island in the fall and you were never looking back.

The silence only lasted for a minute longer before he broke it. “First time in the outer banks?” the messy blonde boy beside you asked, and you felt the scowl overtake your face.

“JJ we’ve been in the same class since the first grade, and you’ve been cheating off of me in math the entirety of our school careers,” you rolled your eyes and downed the almost full cup before throwing it to the sand and walking away. JJ stared after you with his brow furrowed, brain trying to connect the dots and reconcile you with one of his many classmates. It wasn’t entirely JJ’s (or the six beers he had consumed)’s fault, one could also blame his tardiness and absences for his lack of recognition. And of course there was the fact that you had let Pen dress you up, slap some light makeup on your eyes and curl your hair. Ordinarily the only products you bothered with were sunscreen and lip chap and you couldn’t remember the last time you’d worn anything other than a baggy t-shirt over ripped denim. So maybe you should have given the blonde some slack. 

Or not. “Y/n?” Pope asked confusedly as you stormed past him. The two of you weren’t friends, not exactly anyway, but you were both on the math team and that leant itself to a certain amount of camaraderie. At the very least, Pope remembered your name and that was more than his best friend could say. He reached out with a hand to lightly grasp your bicep, pulling you back towards him and scanning your face to see if he could figure out what was going on. “You okay?”

“Never better,” you bit back, feeling bad instantly. “Sorry Pope, your friend is just kind of an idiot.”

“What did John B do now?” Pope sighed. John B hadn’t had a lot of luck in the ladies department lately and Pope was worried about what his latest gaffe had been. Judging by the look on your face it was bad, like call you by the wrong girl’s name bad. 

“Not Routledge,” you rolled your eyes before continuing, “JJ. It doesn’t matter, Pen ditched me and I'm going home.”

Pope let you go this time, turning toward the aforementioned blond who was slowly making his way over to him. 

“Who was that?” JJ asked with narrowed, red rimmed eyes. Pope laughed out loud, knowing his best friend was about to be incredibly mad at himself. 

“How high are you? The girl you just offended was y/n,” Pope told him, causing JJ’s wide eyes to widen even further 

“Wait, y/n y/l/n? The girl of my dreams y/n y/l/n?” JJ smacked his own forehead in frustration. So that’s why you had looked so familiar. He had never seen you look so put together, and he had definitely never seen you at a kegger or under the influence of any substance before. When Pope nodded, JJ patted him on the shoulder before rushing after your retreating frame. 

He called your first name, watched as you stopped walking and stood in the sand with your back facing him. “I’m sorry, let me make it up to you.”

You turned to look at him, resting your hands on your hips. “High schools over JJ, you don’t have to pretend to be nice to me so that I’ll keep letting you cheat off me in trig.” 

“That’s not-“ he paused, eyes downcast before they flicked up to look at you. You took note of his slightly dilated pupils, the way they were rimmed with red and recognized he was under the influence of something. Gathering courage, he quickly spit out “go on a date with me.”

“I-“ you sighed deeply, eyes rolling up toward the night sky as you contemplated his offer, “you know what? Fine, one date. You better knock it outta the park and blow me away cause it’s your only shot.” You began walking away, back turned to him so he couldn’t see the small grin on your face or the way your hands shook a little. Every girl with two eyes and a heartbeat had to admit to at least a tiny crush on the reckless boy, and you had both of those things. To be asked out on a date by him made you feel special, but he didn’t need to know that. 

“Not that I need it, but you don’t believe in second chances?” he shouted at your retreating back. Without missing a beat you turned to look at him over your shoulder, “this is your second chance bud.”

A few days later had you sitting in shock and disbelief as JJ Maybank admitted his years long crush on you. 

You laughed so hard that you almost snorted, stifling the instinct with both of your hands before the sound could betray you. “You’re trying to tell me you’ve had a crush on me since we were kids? And you couldn’t recognize me because of a little bit of eyeliner?” you asked skeptically, brows raised at the boy who sat beside you on the blanket in the sand. 

“Not my finest moment,” he admitted, grabbing a grape and tossing it in the air before attempting to catch it in his mouth. It bounced off his nose and rolled into the sand, causing you to giggle. He brightened up considerably with the knowledge that he had been able to make you laugh, even if it was with his stupid antics. 

“So, your idea of flirting was what? Copying my test answers and never actually speaking to me?” You laughed at the look of indignation on his face. “You’ve got no game, bud.”

“I’ll have you know I have plenty of game, you should hear what the tourons-“ he began to brag, stopping only when you threw yourself at him, covering his mouth with your hands as you had done to yourself only moments earlier. It was only when he shrugged that you pulled back from

his personal space. 

“Pro tip for Mr ‘plenty of game’, girls don’t like to hear about other girls on first dates. Especially not girls you’ve...” you fake coughed and raised your eyebrows hoping he would get the meaning. 

“Right, sorry. You just make me nervous.” He admitted, rolling his pink lips into his mouth briefly. 

“What, why?” you asked, sitting up on your knees and tucking your hair behind your ears. 

“Are you kidding? You’re smokin’ hot and really smart. Like maybe even smarter than Pope smart,” he paused, “don’t tell him I said that.”

You laughed again, face hot from the compliment as you mimed zipping your lips, “Your secret’s safe with me, I’ll take it to the grave.”

You sat in a comfortable silence, staring at his strong side profile before he turned to you, eyes darting down to look at your lips. “Can I kiss you?” he asked, lip darting out to lick at his bottom lip. 

“Depends,” you giggled, sitting up further and wrapping your arms around his neck before whispering into his ear, “Do you remember who I am this time?”

He laughed, cheeks reddening as he returned your whisper, “I could never forget you y/n y/l/n.” 

“You better not, bud,” you replied, grinning up at him before you captured his lips with yours, eyes fluttering shut as you relaxed in his embrace. 

everything taglist: @velyssaraptor @danicarosaline @copper-boom @x-lulu @prejudic3 @rekrappeter @downbytheouterbanks @ilovejjmaybank @bricksatanakinswindow @jellyfishbeansontoast @sunwardsss @rudyypankow @im-a-stranger-thing @alexa-playafricabytoto @hoodpankow @girlsru1eboysdroo1 @sortagaysortahigh @socialwriter @euphoricmalfoy @anxietyandtacos @diverrdown @stargazingstarkey @rae131415 @rafej-cambanks @stfukie @obxmermaid

[bluesakura007]

Undeniable - Chapter 4: Khan’s Past - Khan Noonien Singh x OC

Summary: After storming off following the start of her feud with Bones and Spock, Zinalya seeks comfort with the man who said feud revolves around in the first place, during which he divulges the story of his origins and how he ended up being awoken in the 23rd century.

Warnings: Roughly about half of this chapter is angst, and it includes mentions of the deaths of a parent and a friend.

Zinalya was almost flying down the corridors and then onto the ground floor via a turbolift, filled with her now released anger at Dr. McCoy. He had no right to be telling her how she was allowed to feel about someone, and her blood additionally boiled at the recollection of what she’d walked in to hear Spock saying earlier on before that, about how her plan to get Khan sent away with an exile sentence and go with him - and she guessed that the former also meant this about her feelings for the latter in the first place - would bring disrepute to Starfleet. 

According to Bones, he and the others were trying to help her, but she felt in the back of her mind that this was a lie, as he and Spock clearly didn’t actually care about what she wanted or how she felt because she was obviously the only one out of the three of them who could be bothered to look past Khan’s exterior for what lay underneath. This reminded her of a phrase she’d heard of once: “If you look for the good in people, you’ll find it.”

She was thankful for the fact that Scotty and Chekov were supportive of her wanting to leave with him - further proof to her that, as always, they were good friends - and she knew that while Kirk, Carol, Sulu and Uhura were remaining neutral and hadn’t picked either side of the argument, this could have been worse, due to the fact that one of these two sides they could have picked was to shut down and oppose her plan entirely, like Spock and McCoy. 

In spite of her annoyance at this latter pair, though, she felt the same kind of twinge as she had during her sarcastic remark to Spock when she’d walked in and heard him, which was guilt for the hostile moments of her behaviour just now. Especially for the particular moment when she slapped Bones. But this was only a temporary twinge as, with another surge of her blood boiling, she remembered that, effectively, they’d disregarded her viewpoints in the conversation and insisted on wanting to keep her away from the man she liked.

Within another few seconds, she’d arrived at the place where she’d been heading as soon as she stormed out. The room where Khan was being held in another cell.

The retinal and fingerprint scanners outside this room both recognised that she was indeed lieutenant-commander Zinalya Hamilton and allowed her to enter as a result. 

What she immediately noticed upon doing so was that apart from a few guards near to the door on the outer side, there were none inside the room itself, which she initially found to be a relief because of her wanting to speak alone with him until she found out why: to her right, in the corner of the ceiling above her, was a tiny, spherical-shaped black glass object which could only be noticed if you put in effort thanks to this size. It hardly took a detective to deduce that it was meant to be some kind of security camera.

"Did you mean it?"

She was suddenly snapped out of looking up at the camera by a certain deep and English-accented voice from in front of where she was standing. There he was, in a cell with a large floor-length glass window not unlike that of his previous cell onboard the Enterprise. Even the colouring of the room as a whole was very similar, except this one was slightly more like grey with a blue tint as opposed to pure white. "Sorry, what?" She turned her head back to facing where he was sitting at the back of his cell, looking at her with an owllike unwavering gaze, during which she found her anger from a minute ago fading.

"Did you mean what you said earlier in the courtroom, Miss Hamilton?" The sound of Khan’s voice still gave her shivers despite the amount of times she’d already heard it. "When you declared that you have romantic feelings for me?"

"I did, yeah." She nodded her head and simultaneously walked closer towards the cell. It took that little fraction of less time compared to on the Enterprise due to the room being marginally smaller than this ship’s brig. He now once again had the same look on his face that he’d had before, when she’d made this announcement he was referring to: a little dash of curiosity and slight skepticism but predominantly feeling touched by what she said. "Why do you have those feelings?"

Zinalya chuckled to herself. "I’m obviously not going to catch a break from that question anytime soon." When she saw his aforementioned expression change into one of mild confusion, she elaborated, "Commander Spock asked me the same thing just now."

"And what did you say to him?" Another one of those subtle outward expression shifts happened, this time her sensing slight dislike from Khan towards this half Vulcan first officer.

"I told him that I’m not entirely sure why, but it was partially because I felt like you’d been through an emotional rollercoaster, with all the admiral Marcus business." Zinalya replied, hesitant to bring up this subject. She and Khan were now standing right in front of each other, only about a foot apart on either side of the cell’s glass.

He momentarily laughed to himself through closed lips and craned his head to the side, looking down at the floor. "I take it I’d be right in presuming he and your other colleagues tried to convince you that the way you see me is a mistake?"

"Spock and Dr. McCoy did." Responded the half human-half Trill. "But not all of them were like that; the others haven’t taken a side but ensign Chekov and Mr. Scott are being supportive of it."

"You seem to trust those two a great deal."

"They’re my closest friends." Her inner sensation of gratitude and relief at their support swung into action again, because she remembered that this meant she was at least not fully alone in her plan and in that day’s developments.

Khan looked back up towards her, seeming as if he himself had just experienced a memory recollection of his own. He paused for a beat, and then spoke again, "I’d like you to know I feel the same way, Miss Hamilton; I find you endearing in return."

It was a surprise to her ears, because, after all, she was hoping that her emotions would indeed be reciprocated by him but the prospect of it actually, really happening was unexpected, so now it was her turn to pose the question, "Why?"

"Because from the people who I met and interacted with on your Enterprise, you appeared to be the only one who didn’t dismiss me as a mere criminal." Answered Khan, whose eyes she thought were like that of a snake due to the brightness of his light turquoise eyes, which made his pupils, at some moments, look as if they were slitted. 

She’d additionally used this time where they were in front of each other to mentally take in and properly admire every edge of his tall body and his immaculate black hair. "You only came to speak to me a few times, but during those instances I noticed that you behaved kindly towards me. Apart from this reason however I’m not certain myself: I like you in return for a reason that I can’t put my finger on either."

Zinalya thought to herself deeply about this weirdly complex concept of attraction. "Maybe we’re not supposed to understand why we’ve got feelings for each other. Do you believe in destiny?"

"It depends on the specific context." Said Khan.

"Well I think the bigger reason could be because it’s pre-destined and it literally is what’s meant to happen."

Khan nodded his head, slowly and gracefully, in understanding of this theory. "If we are pre-destined to be together as you say, then I think I should be fully honest with you - I should tell you about how it all began. The events that ultimately led to my revival last year and everything that followed."

"Okay." There came her own nod again. "I do know that at one point back in the 20th century you were a world leader, the head of a large empire, but that's all I know about you, so I would like to learn more." She sat down on the floor in front of the glass, anticipating that what was about to follow might take some time.

Khan quietly took a breath and he, too, sat down, the right side of his body leaning lightly against the glass. "The first four years of my life were rather peaceful - most of the memories I had from back that far became vague over time so I had to find out later on by doing my own research, but I lived during those first years in India, with my mother." He began. "Her name was Dr. Sarina Kaur, a biochemist who had, around that time, been carrying out experiments and investigations into asexual reproduction."

"Asexual reproduction? Like how plants and some insects have children without having to...?" She trailed off at the end, realising how awkward the rest of her sentence was going to be.

"Yes." Khan, luckily, answered what she was trying to query without her having to put in this ending. "I found out when I did my own exploration into the four early years that I was apparently conceived by her via artificial insemination. And it was entirely artificial - she'd managed to perfect her theory of creating a human child from a single parent without the need for a donor of any kind, dubbed the Chrysalis Project. I was born in the year 1970, so this was quite a notable scientific achievement for the time." Zinalya was still listening intently, while he continued, now with a feeling of poignancy shown upon his face, "I was initially conceived as another one of her experiments, which is why she gave me minor changes and enhancements in my DNA that created my different eye colour and accent and my light skin tone, allegedly whilst I was still in utero, as well as a small mental enhancement allowing me to recall early memories more easily. But I still remember clearly that once I’d been born, she was the kindest and most loving person I had ever known."

"She sounds like she was a really sweet woman. I think I would've liked to meet her if she was still around today." The lieutenant-commander opined with a gentle smile, knowing in her mind that based on how long ago the 1970s were, Sarina would have been long gone by that time.

"She was. When I was still very young, she had a pet dog named Cinder, a border collie I believe; he had already reached old age when I was born and he died when I was two years old, but before then it was just me, Cinder and my mother together in New Delhi as a family. And then one day, another two years later, I found out that she died, as well."

"What happened to her?"

"Something went wrong at her laboratory. It caused a fire which she was killed by as she tried to escape." He said. "I'd been out that day, playing in the streets with some of the other children who lived nearby. Her parents lived in Kolkata, meaning there was no one close enough to take care of me, so I spent the next year living on those streets. The first few days I spent moving from place to place with my blanket in my hands and I spent most of those nights crying until I cried myself to sleep." Zinalya felt her chest tighten at the sight of the wistful look in his eyes. "Until I met another boy, Tanvir Acharya. He was three years older than me and was also an orphan on the streets, and was the leader of a small group of others which he allowed me to join. Me and him became friends to the point where we both considered each other as a brother figure, but a year on, we and the rest of the group were taken, among numerous other orphans, for experimentation."

"Is that what made you into an Augment? What gave you all your abilities?"

"It was - there was a total of twenty-four boys including myself and fifteen girls who were subjected to genetic engineering over the course of several years, for the purpose of eventually becoming living weapons. Seven years after our capture, in 1982, Tanvir and I devised a plan to escape and then later come back in the hopes of liberating the others in addition, and we both ran off in different directions. I made it to the Gobi Desert before I was found by Dr. Heisen, the director of the eugenics project responsible for our augmentations, and was recaptured and returned to the research facility by the use of a neural inhibitor in my body, which doubled as a tracking beacon. All thirty-nine of us had each been implanted with one for controlling us with pain if need be." The wistful expression began to gradually amplify itself. "After I was returned, I discovered that Tanvir had also been recaptured, but the use of his own inhibitor had killed him: he was born with a heart defect which was never treated, so the electric shocks from his inhibitor had stopped his heart from beating." 

He remembered how truly awful he’d felt at this moment way back when - a twelve year old boy holding the corpse of his best friend, his older brother figure, in his arms and entering back into what he did during those first few lonely nights on the New Delhi streets, which was crying his eyes out.

"Oh god..." Said Zinalya.

"Three more years on from then, I successfully removed my own inhibitor and those of the others and killed Heisen myself." He moved on from this particular part of the story before he lost himself in the memory, hissing the sentence with a small edge of aggression in his tone. "From there, we escaped and gradually released other eugenics subjects in various countries across the world, and I imagine the rest is familiar to you."

"You set up your empire in the early 1990s and ruled over half of Earth." She confirmed. "Before you escaped the planet with seventy-two other Augments later."

"It was our belief that the rest of the human race couldn’t properly look after itself. Myself and a few others infiltrated world governments in 1990 and established our own, leading to the beginning of the Eugenics Wars in 1992. It was during this time when I did my research into the finer details of my origins, and one of the other things I eventually uncovered was my mother's naming process for me: I was named Khan after one of her grandfathers, she gave me my surname after the 15th century poet Singh el Bashir, and my middle name was after Noonien Prasad, her boyfriend who died from lung cancer while she was pregnant with me. We were attacked during my reign that followed by the non-Augment governments and threatened with nuclear weaponry, but I refused to retaliate with my own."

"I remember; you told me once on the Enterprise that yours was one of the few Augment governments where there wasn’t anything like genocide or the other worst parts of a dictatorship." Zinalya, who was currently leaning the back of her own body against the glass, stretched her legs out so that she was sitting with them in front of her and craned her head around to look at him. "You had the threat of total destruction over you and you still stood your ground without using the same weapons..."

"At one point, me and my own followers were also attacked by another Augment leader, although as you can see I was the one who won the battle." She could see his eyes becoming misty at this point. "But my leadership still almost cost me everyone I knew throughout this last year. In 1996, we were forced to flee to Australia and board a sleeper ship which we christened the SS Botany Bay, and then came Marcus' discovery of us." A tear slid ever so slowly down out of his left eye while the other one was still welling up. "If it is destiny which has brought me here to you in this time, then it must have a perverse way of thinking. I'm not certain whether or not I should be thankful for those circumstances."

"I'm so sorry." The security chief was finding his tears to be contagious. "I wish me and the others knew what was going on - he was manipulating you and threatening to take away every person you had left who mattered to you, and we did nothing..."

"You mustn't blame yourself, Zinalya." Khan turned to face her slightly more, and then came the tear from his right eye to match the one on his left cheek. "I'm sorry that I've gotten us into this current situation." He placed his index and middle fingertips from his left hand onto the surface of his side of the glass to indicate what he meant: they were separated from each other by nothing more than a thin material, and faced with the uncertainty of whether they'd be allowed to go into exile together or be well and truly separated indefinitely.

She gently shook her head and did the same with that of her right hand, turning her position herself to make it so that it was the left side of her body up against the glass instead of her back, as it had been previously. "It's okay. I know half your life's been hard - you didn't deserve those deaths of Tanvir or your mum, Khan. You didn't deserve any of the bad things that happened to you at all."

Hers were somewhat more free-flowing compared to his, but Khan and Zin just let their tears stream out in each other's company. The former shifted his position again in terms of how his head was inclined, which now made it look to anyone seeing it from in front of or behind them like they were leaning into each other with her head on his shoulder and his own head on the top of hers. They sat there for a while, in a silence laced with unspoken tenderness between them.

[earthbovndmisfit]

I hope this isn't too weird of a message to send, but doesn't it seem like Jonawagon doujinshi are pretty uncommon? I've only seen maybe 3 posted online & I have a copy of a SpeedJona doujin but aside from those I haven't come across any. Is it like a rare pairing or something? I thought they were fairly popular

It isn’t weird at all, anon! All the opposite actually, cause I love getting asks even if i'm not always around or it sometimes takes me a hot minute to get to them gfjhkjh

This is gonna be long and probs gonna have bits that might sound rant-ish to some, but I hope that’s alright! :'D

For starters, sadly, jonawagon/jonaspeed/speedjona or however you call the ship is quite an underrated ship. This has to do partly with the wrong perceptions some folks have built around it and around the characters as well (that them both and the couple itself are the epitome of "purity" and "innocence", sometimes even labelling them as "boring" as a result even though both characters are far from that, that "it could only be a one-sided thing" on Spw's end despite both showing and sharing a certain bond/closeness towards each other -closeness that sometimes Jonathan didn't show towards anyone else-, etc), partly because of the many timeskips in PB and all the scenes the anime cut out and people wrongly assuming that the main events happened in the span of a few days and thus people dropping the ball on the ship/characters when Jonathan and Speedwagon actually knew each other for as long -sometimes even longer- than other more popular characters/ships in jjba did, partly because neither Jonathan or Speedwagon are as popular as other characters in the franchise as a whole, and also partly because, as sad as it is to say this, the ship lacks a LOT of support, especially from it's own fanbase. While jonawagon is a popular and well liked ship overall (in the sense that even general fans who don't care much about shipping, or those who are still on the fence about mlm ships, or those who just don't actively ship jonawagon actually like and support the ship or the idea of it upon seeing the actual dynamics between the characters and their potential and the fact that the ship can actually coexist with jonaeri without altering the characters/making them ooc, nor altering the story and so on), it still lacks a lot of support from it's fans. I often see most other ships/characters get lots of reblogs and exposure from their fans on literally any and all platforms, helping those ships/characters reach new audiences and gaining more popularity and drawing interest from potential new fans, while jonawagon stuff as well as solo Jonathan or Speedwagon stuff usually only get likes and a few reblogs at most from their fans, which is nice and all, but it doesn't give the artists/writers any exposure nor get those works or the ship any farther than that and just keeps them within part of the already existing fanbase at best, which often times makes the artists/content creators lose interest in continuing to create stuff for the ship/characters. This is also why I always strongly ask -almost beg at this point ngl- for people to support the artists/writers/etc via reblogs!! The ship having a bunch of different names also might have an impact on all of this, as it's not always as 'easy' to tag/find contents if you don't know how to tag/search for it. Jonawagon (normally used in the western parts of the fandom), JonaSpeed/SpeedJona (Western version of the ship's most popular names in Japanese: ジョナスピ/スピジョナ or JonaSupi/SupiJona respectively], SpeedStar (a name that became a bit more popular more recently after a mini jonawagon event in 2019), being the most common ones afaik, asides from the standard JonathanxSpeedwagon/SpeedwagonxJonathan ie and others. In short, Jonathan and Speedwagon as well as jonawagon are quite well liked and even popular to an extent, but they lack a massive amount of support from the fans, which also usually translates into artists and content creators for this ship losing interest in continuing to create new material for it and thus end up not making any more contents.

In regards to doujinshi more specifically, I’m a bit disconnected when it comes to Jojo doujinshi in general, but it seems to be a bit like that for most of the non "crazy popular" Jojo ships if you ask me, which is kinda normal considering the massive amount of characters in the whole series. Putting my experience as example, if it helps, I used to collect doujinshi from one of my previous fandoms, which had a shit ton of them for plenty of it’s ships and it was somewhat easy to acquire hard copies of despite it being an “old anime” basically while most Jojo doujinshi (especially anything that is not parts 3, 4 and 5) seems to be a bit hard to come across regardless of the ship(s) in them, even in auction sites or places like pixiv that sell digital copies if the author puts them up on sale, which is understandable since the aforementioned parts are some of the most popular parts in Japan, where most doujinshi is created, and thus take most of the fandom's interest -authors’ and readers’ alike-, as well as the hype for parts like Phantom Blood being long dead (with it being dead/dormant since the original airing of the anime ended in 2013, and it coming back ocassionally whenever there's a 'special' re-airing of PB in Japan or when events such as the Joestar Radio take place), so maybe my parameters on the whole subject are somewhat disproportionate?

This is also gonna sound all boomer-like, but I’ve also noticed, or it seems to me at least (still in comparison to the doujinshi from my previous fandom), that doujinshi books as we knew them aren’t /as/ common nowadays as they used to be a while back. Even the works themselves don’t seem to be much that way either. For example, doujinshi anthologies used to be a big thing a while back and, while they still exist, they don’t seem to be too common anymore (these worked as "promo books" of sorts for all the artists featured and they also helped lesser known/popular artists and ships to get some exposure to newer audiences). Nowadays such thing still exists, and I actually recall seeing a Jonaspeed/Speedjona anthology being made “recently” (recently as in 2019, if I’m not mistaken? it was published and sold during the mini Jonaspeed event they held at a Jojo con in Japan that year), but they aren’t nearly as common as they used to be, since now most artists can post any samples they want (much more reduced tho, cause you normally get a few pages instead of a full mini story) in places like Twitter or Pixiv. And it’s kinda the same with regular doujinshi. Before, most doujinkas had to publish a book in order to get their stuff out and get some exposure, so they were always working on new stories and making new books to sell and promoing their stuff, sometimes one after the other and even creating multi-volume stories in some cases. Now, thanks to how "easy" it is to get some exposure on social media, it’s much more common to see doujinkas for any ships/characters making short stories (1-4 pages, sometimes more) or just 1 page illustrations instead and posting them on their social media every now and then as a promo for their works. They also still make and sell their books (a few jonawagon artists on twitter do, at least), and these short stories/illustrations serve to boost their works instead, which is not a complain at all cause I think it's amazing tbqh! But this also translates into less stories/doujinshi being created as many of these artists often opt for leaving those stories that years ago would have been their own book or a mini story in a book as a prompt or a short story only.

As for actual jonawagon doujinshi, while it is not as common as say pt 3 doujinshi, there is quite a bunch of it. Some date from 2012-2013 (when the PB anime was originally aired), some are much older than that and some others are much more recent (as there are still some active jonawagon doujinkas around). There are also "fanfic books" that are also considered doujinshi and that seem to be a thing sometimes, but these contain little to no art at all and are usually written 100% in Japanese. The problem here is that not many of them have been scanlated/translated yet, sometimes because they aren't easy to find on sale online, sometimes because re-sellers who do have them set high prices for them plus shipping costs, sometimes because the artists/online shops won't sell stuff overseas, sometimes because those who do own doujinshi copies don't always know how to properly share them (since scanning a doujinshi in high or decent quality without destroying the book can be hard af) among other reasons.

All that said, there is a bunch of jonawagon doujinshi that has been scanned and is available online! but it can be tricky to get sometimes due to the different names this ship can go by and because of the "translations" of said names into different languages (as some doujinshi can only be found in Chinese sites, or Russian ones, and so on for example, so it can take some serious time to figure that out and have a successful search).

In all honesty, anon, I'm a dumdum and I had never thought about doing so in a more public manner until now, since I've already shared my entire jonawagon collection (pics, doujins, etc) with friends who have requested it more privately, but I can upload the doujins I have scans of if anyone's interested?? (I’d post the links where I found most of them but since my hd is pretty much dead and I can’t access Windows or my windows/mozilla profile, I’ve p much lost all my old bookmarks). They were only like... 8 last time I checked (9/10 if you count the Japanese and English versions of the "Joestarsaaaaan" one), but it's something :D Just be aware that some of them are nsfw! and that a couple are either part of a book that has stories from other ships in them (I only have the jonawagon parts tho) or contain other ships implied or openly shown in the jonawagon story.

I also have about 4 more, but the scanlator of one of them openly requested for the file to not be reuploaded, so Idk if it'd be alright to share it? (and they also deactivated their blog, so there's no way to ask them for permission). The other 3 are scans a friend sent to me of their own doujinshi copies, so I also don't know if it would be okay for me to post them?? (i haven't seen this friend in over a year so idk gfhgjkjlkñ). 2 of those 3 are nsfw.

[margridarnauds]

Rip idk if I accidentally sent my last ask too early or it it got deleted before I sent it but anywho,, if you’re still bored and wanting to talk about Celtic lore, I’d love to here about grainne ni mhaille or Brigid of tuatha de danann? Alternately, what’s one of your fav stories?

I was in the middle of typing up a response and apparently SOMETHING happened to it because it totally disappeared on me. 

ANYWAY, 

I can talk about both of them, to different degrees. 

Gráinne was one of my first Irish research interests (Thank you The Pirate Queen, you…..interesting piece of media). That being said, I am VERY rusty when it comes to her, the main takeaway that I have being a very visceral reaction to the words “Anne Chambers” because…..suffice it to say….I have Things to say about her scholarship and the occasional sloppiness thereof, but I don’t think I brought my copy of her book on Gráinne with me, the school library is closed, and I generally don’t like to utterly eviscerate something without having it on hand. But I can say that her treatment of Donal O’Flaherty was bad, based purely off of wish fulfillment and her own attachment to Richard Burke, and that my personal reading of their marriage, which I will admit is just a READING, is that Donal and Gráinne actually had a fairly egalitarian marriage. 

Think of it. 

Gráinne, if we believe the legends, and the legends of her early life are very in keeping with what we know of her adult life, was truculent enough that she cut her hair short just to get on a ship. She was defiant, spirited, and ruthless to the core. (The woobification and victimization of Gráinne is something that is ANOTHER post, given that I feel like it does her a MASSIVE DISSERVICE). Donal….would have HAD to have known what he was getting into. And Donal was TÁNAISTE OF THE O’FLAHERTY SEPT. And, as I’ve discussed….that was not necessarily something he got just because his daddy was chieftain. That was something that was AGREED on. He was not a weak man, he was not a coward, and his cognomen was Donal AN CHOGAIDH, Donal OF THE BATTLES. But he seems to have fought his wars on land, Gráinne on sea. Together, they would have been one badass pair. In terms of NAMING, look at the names of their children. Owen - Same name as Gráinne’s father. Murrough - A common O’Flaherty name. And Margaret - Said by some sources to be the same name as Gráinne’s mother. And what was the name of Owen’s son? Donal. Now, there could be a NUMBER of reasons for this naming pattern, it could be nothing. But, what I believe at least is that it shows a certain level of cooperation between the two of them. I am NOT claiming it was a great love story, but I am claiming that what little evidence there is (and there can only be so much), indicates a certain level of respect, especially given that Gráinne, in general, was not the sort to tolerate fools. 

Chambers also claimed, incorrectly, that Donal killed his nephew, but a quick reading of the sources would have shown that it was his cousin, ALSO named Donal who did it. The patrynomics don’t lie on that one; it was Donal mac Ruari, “Donal of the Boats”, not Donal an Chogaidh who did it. 

But. Gráinne. I love talking Donal, but this is about Gráinne. 

Something that I feel really does get underplayed, probably in service of making her a Perfect Feminist Heroine™ (I am a feminist, don’t get me wrong! But my idea of feminism centers around the idea that women can be as fundamentally flawed as men, they can have the same quirks, the same corruption, and they do not have to be perfect, long suffering, soft, or forever victimized) IS that ruthlessness and pragmatism that really underlines her character. People play up her attacking her son Murrough as some kind of righteous fury against him for talking to the English while conveniently forgetting that Gráinne herself spent most of her life alternatively appeasing and attacking the English. She was not a Nationalist, she wasn’t a patriot. She was, however, a survivor, as were MANY of the Irish nobility at this time. Another example of a survivor from this period was Iníon Dubh, probably one of my favorite women in Irish history (though she herself was Scottish by birth), who did try to bargain with the English for the life of her son Hugh Roe by giving over some Spanish survivors of the Armada to English authorities. People (CHAMBERS) try to pin Murrough with the worst faults of his father, but I honestly think that, at his heart, he was more his mother’s son than perhaps even she would be willing to admit. 

(Also like. The entire thing with Risdeárd an Iarainn? I have read the marriage tracts, I have a friend who does law stuff. None of us can think of ANYTHING in the Brehon laws that would allow for a “Marriage” like the one described. Only thing I can think of that’s SIMILAR is the Teltown marriages. Acting like it’s a common Brehon law thing gives it a veneer of legitimacy that I strongly doubt. The oral tradition COULD be lying to us, I’m willing to say that there might be gaps in our understanding of a law, or Gráinne could have actually done it without….how shall we put this…..the usual degree of sanctity and security that we tend to assume, given that what the law said on marriage could be very different to marriage in reality. Tl;dr: She MIGHT have catfished him. Or. The 16th century Irish equivalent. But like. Catfished where you’re actually married and have a kid with one another. Or the story could be a complete fabrication, like I FIRMLY believe Hugh de Lacy’s story was. Who knows?) 

Anyway, as payment for listening to that rant, have some of Sir Richard Bingham Whining, right from the horse’s as-mouth. I of course meant. Mouth. 

I could read this all day. Cry, Bingham, cry harder. 

Don’t think too hard about the fact that one day I might actually be in charge of a classroom, please. 

Brigid I can hopefully talk about less, to some extent, given that we know comparatively little about her. Throughout this, I’m generally going to be calling her Bríg, since I’m talking about her in a mythological context and that is what she is called in Cath Maige Tuired (which is my all time favorite, baby text, answering the third part of your question), though she is called Brigit in Cormac’s Glossary. 

So…what do we know about Bríg? Very little. But she is also an endlessly discussed figure, with the evidence being pored over again. And again. And again. A lot of the arguments have been discussed by Mark Williams in Ireland’s Immortals, the curious fact that, she is described in UNUSUALLY specific terms in Cormac’s Glossary, being described as a patroness of smiths, doctors, and poets, and there being three sisters named Brigit, one for each function. 

At the same time, however, she only really appears in one saga, the aforementioned Cath Maige Tuired, where her role is purely to keen over her son, Ruadan, that she had via her relationship (past or present, it’s kind of left ambiguous) with the former king of the Tuatha dé, Bres. It is a genuinely poignant, heartwrenching scene, a kind of rare moment of pure humanity in a text often saturated with descriptions of blood and gore and sex of literal superhuman proportions. And in all of this, a woman grieves for her son, inventing keening and giving us a reminder of the HUMAN element of war, the mothers, the wives, the women who are left to grieve in the middle of the fighting. Which, in a text that tends to be fairly misogynistic and skeptical of women’s voices, is actually intriguing. (Bríg is also associated with a lot of DARK SHIT in this section as well, such as night whistling, which is absolutely fascinating to me given that we tend to think of her as this kind of healing, sunshine and rainbows figure and this shows a distinctively different look at her.) There is also a Dinshenchas story, Loch N-Oirbsen that mentions her inventing keening for the loss of Mac Gréine, which COULD (underline COULD) indicate that the story might have pre-dated CMT, replacing the figure of her brother with her son. Or possibly vice versa; CMT influenced quite a bit of the mythological literature. 

I believe that it was Elizabeth Gray in her “Cath Maige Tuired: Myth and Structure” who pointed out that Bríg’s situation in-text is reminiscent of what many women would have dealt with during the period, their hearts torn between their fathers and, perhaps, more to the point, their fathers’ peoples, and the husbands and sons they had with the Norsemen. (Though I have…..certain doubts as to whether we should take it for granted that Bríg was WITH Bres at the time of Ruadan’s death, and all things considered, I do also question whether the entire episode was an afterthought, given that Ruadan doesn’t appear in ANY of the other lists of Bres’ children, nor is the story of his death represented in the Dindshenchas, indicating a certain lack of popularity. Nor do I believe it turns up in the early modern redaction of CMT).

This episode is one that I don’t really talk about all that much, mainly because people tend to treat it as a way of slamming Bres, or using Bríg’s grief as a battering ram against Bres, and that is something that, as the unofficial president of the Bres Fan Club….obviously rankles me. Just a bit, and is honestly one of the key reasons why I generally don’t discuss Bríg. Suffice it to say, like with Gráinne and Donal, I don’t really believe that that relationship was quite as unbalanced as people might interpret it, not the least because, in Cath Maige Tuired, a key trait of Bres’ is his dependence on the women of his life, especially his mother. Which….could create an AWKWARD situation, yes, but definitely doesn’t lend itself to the image of Bres being a tyrant at home as well as politically. 

 If they did split apart, it would be more because of Bres’ actions as king, such as his attempt at executing her father or the general treatment of poets under his reign, which, as a patroness of the poets (IF we assume that there is continuity between her appearance in Cormac and CMT, which is not inherently a given; assuming continuity in Irish Mythology is always a tricky subject because individual scribes often went their own way with this sort of thing) she would presumably be opposed to. But, of course. This isn’t really expanded on, Bríg is MASSIVELY underused in this text, and all that I really have are speculation (on an academic level) and headcanons (on a non-academic level.) 

In terms of the connection with the Catholic saint of the same name………..many people have come up with ideas, I don’t believe it’s something that will ever get resolved. I do think that many things we TEND to label as definitively part of the goddess’ traits tend to be overstated, however, with some of them being found in other Saint’s Lives, or having a similar event in the Bible, which, to an ecclesiastical audience, would be familiar. I feel like it can be very easy to get overzealous in that, because of course it’s a very, very natural thing to want something solid for someone who we KNOW was very important, yet have very little real info on. In some redactions of Lebor Gabála Érenn, Bríg is described as the mother of the Trí Dé Dána, “The Three Gods of Skill,” Tuirill, Brian, and Cet, with Bres as the father. These three are notoriously elusive and difficult to pin down, not the least because they tend to be merged with Brian, Iuachar, and Iucharba, the Sons of Tuireann, but John Carey, in his article “Myth and Mythography in Cath Maige Turied” has suggested that, given Bríg’s identification as a patron of poets, her mothering of these three “Gods of Skill,” and the close connection she has to Bres and, through him, to figures like Ogma that the whole lot of them + The Dagda, Elatha, etc. are part of a “Pantheon of Skill,” which is essentially a cluster of gods renowned by the literary elite. So, there is that. She was definitely an important figure, given……Brigantia. 

While I do not like drawing straight lines between Gaulish figures - Welsh figures - Irish figures, I will say that it seems like, at the very least, they share a common linguistic root. It does seem, judging from Caesar’s description of the Gaulish “Minerva” as being a patron of crafts, and given Bríg’s penchant for multiple crafts, that that is the figure being described, or at least someone who followed similar lines (This was argued by Proinsias Mac Cana in Celtic Mythology, pg. 34), since doubtless things would be different across geographical boundaries. (Welsh and Irish Mythology, despite having certain similarities, are distinct, I can’t imagine how much different Gaulish Mythology would be, if any of it had survived.) Something I do find interesting is that, while Mac Cana notes the Gaulish Minerva as a figure beloved by the lower class in particular, the Bríg we see in the Irish tradition is very associated with the upper class, the men of skill. But, then again, all of these written works would have been commissioned and written by and for that same elite, so it might not be that surprising at all. The oral tradition might have been very different, and perhaps the saint reflects that more. Or perhaps not. 

In terms of the connection with the Catholic saint of the same name………..many people have come up with ideas, I don’t believe it’s something that will ever get resolved. If you can get your hands on Mark Williams’ Ireland’s Immortals, I think you’ll find that most of what I say re: this topic (and….a lot of topics in general) will be echoed in there. I do think that many things we TEND to label as definitively part of the goddess’ traits tend to be overstated, however, with some of them being found in other Saint’s Lives, or having a similar event in the Bible, which, to an ecclesiastical audience, would be familiar. I feel like it can be very easy to get overzealous in that, because of course it’s a very, very natural thing to want something solid for someone who we KNOW was very important, yet have very little real info on. 

In terms of what I believe her function was….as hesitant as I am to apply a function to ANY member of the Tuatha dé, given how tenuous the evidence is and how it can kind of miss the forest for the trees in terms of literary analysis, I believe the bulk of the evidence, such as it is, rests on her association with the crafts, specifically as found in Cormac’s Glossary, with all the limitations thereof. I won’t say “No, you can’t worship her like that” to a modern pagan, I wouldn’t WANT to, because my relationship with these figures is not the same as a religious relationship. That is NOT my place. And that, if we are to take them as religious instead of literary figures, they might very well appear to different people in different ways. That being said, on an academic level, I do believe, at present, with the understanding that my views can definitely change and I am not infallible, that there is little to no evidence to suggest that she was a fire goddess, a goddess of spring, a fertility goddess, or a sovereignty goddess. The association with keening, outcry, etc., seems to also be more solid, so there COULD have been some association in there. Generally speaking, my main focus isn’t so much what a figure WAS so much as what was done with them afterwards. 

…For what was meant to be a quick note, that was very long. And tragically, I had no memes pre-prepared for this one, so I went back a month on a friend in the department’s Facebook and found this.

 I am willing to talk CMT if anyone WANTS to hear me talk about it, since it is my all time favorite myth, as well as….ANYTHING else, both the stuff I’ve discussed in this and anything else relating to the field, but I think that for this particular post, I’ll cut you free, with the hope if not the confidence that at least 1/3 of what I’ve written is vaguely coherent. 

[vagrantblvrd]

Okay, so the GMOD where they realized they could set the alien creature on each other?

But with space AU. (FAHC space AU, even.)

Just imagine these idiots dealing with a Dire Situation in which they come across a space station, right. This little outpost smugglers and ~space pirates and the whatnot use to refuel and resupply without having to go through major hubs when they maybe don’t want to be showing their faces?

But this time around the whole place - it’s not gone dark or anything, but it’s a totally weird creepy Mary Celeste kind of deal, you know?

Lights on and everything like nothing’s wrong but no signs of the usual crew staffing the place. (All these neutral parties and certain Rules set in place to keep them criminal type from shooting the place up and such, because reasons.)

At first they don’t think much of it because shit happens, you know? Not like there were a lot of people keeping the place running as it was because this is just one of countless other outposts like it out in space.

As to other criminal types like the Fakes or whatever they’re calling themselves in this AU, well. Sometimes the authorities come out a little too far, dangerously close to where outposts like this one sit and there’s a network warning people like the Fakes to maybe choose a different route for the immediate future, yeah?

Sure, there wasn’t such a message this time, but they don’t always get advanced notice or it slips past unnoticed and anyway, anyway, not important.

They’ve got a running tab or some such, access to the storage bays where the supplies they placed an order for ages back are waiting and most of the time that works just fine for everyone involved.

Better not to do too much in the way of face-to-face business transactions in case plausible deniability is a thing that needs to be used at some future date. (The Fakes get into trouble and the authorities come sniffing around and has the outpost commander seen them lately and so on.)

ANYWAY.

They just figure there’s a situation that has the usual staff otherwise preoccupied and this is just a pitstop and they’ll be on their way.

BUT.

Then little thing, fussy little things start to make them wonder? Like. Tiny things, and someone goes off looking into things and before you know it you’ve got this giant face-eating alien chasing everyone around and all the screaming is happening, omg.

Rooms and hallways where Something Bad happened because blood literally all over the walls and floors. Bodies (...bits of bodies), bullet holes and/or energy weapon burns/marks, and so on.

That scene where everyone’s holed up in a room somewhere putting what they know together, someone hacking into the outpost’s systems/network to piece together garbled logs and messages and other communications and realize how fucked everything is?

Some clandestine government lab somewhere fucking about with this newly discovered alien species someone wants to weaponize or whatever typically cliche trope you want to use.

Maybe some truly horrible bastard of a criminal type “procured” said alien species for a bounty was transporting it to said lab or whatever when it managed to escape and then Bad Shit happened.

Possibly said bastard of a criminal type was contracted to capture this alien species and purposefully given insufficient/inadequate capture equipment. You know whoever contracted them were banking on them stopping at a disreputable outpost like this where the alien species ~might escape - on its own or with a little help thanks to an operative in the bastard criminal type’s crew or just a simple little bribe and greed doing it’s thing.

And then, okay, whoever contracted the criminal type to get them this alien can sit back and watch things unfold from a position of safety. Take all the noted they need, get the footage to show what an asset this alien species could be if/when they find a way to control it and all that and no one, okay, no one would bat an eye at some low-life criminals dying for these demonstrations/tests/experiments, so yeah.

The Fakes sitting back after realizing the kind of mess they’re in - maybe someone’s out there running around working for the main baddies in all this (definitely some government agency/lab/company using the criminal types as guinea pigs or what have you) who went and sabotaged their ship so they’re stuck until they can get it fixed to get the hell out of there.

Cobbled together weapons and barricades, whatever they can use to keep themselves alive - and on a foraging/scavenging trip they run into other survivors.

Outpost staff or various criminal types. (Some of whom may or may not be on the main baddies payroll and so on.)

And then, basically just the plot of various Alien(s) movies kind of mushed together, but with these idiots involved????

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

ALSO.

At some point (after their ship is sabotaged?) the Fakes discover Trevor is/was a rocket scientist - or future sci-fi equivalent in terms of then why the fuck are you running around with assholes like us? since sci-fi space ships and the whatnot and he ends up helping to fix the ship. (Because, you know, he worked with a company that helped design ships like theirs and is kind of familiar with them and also Plot Reasons and such.)

ALSO, ALSO.

What if, also, this is some pre-FAHC crew scenario and they all have to learn to ~trust one another and work together As A Team to survive?

Like, before everything Goes To Hell they’re all there for their own reasons?

Geoff and Jack coming off a job for Burnie and the Roosters and a stopover for fuel and supplies and the others there for similar reasons?

Michael and Jeremy a pair of hired guns meeting by chance at the bar or whatever and just being idiots together.

Ryan’s there because he’s chasing after some little shit or other, which - coincidentally, might I add - is why Gavin keeps trying to avoid him once things go to hell and everyone if forced to work together?

Ryan scowling at Gavin and generally being creepy about it everyone is like ??? about it because they know about his reputation, but even this is weird from what they know of him?

Later, of course, it comes out they’re in this sekrit relationship wherein they’re totes head over heels for one another but kind of dumb about things.

Also! Gavin gets in trouble like no one’s business and since no one knows they’re ~involved (for both their safety, and also the aforementioned dumb thing?), Ryan gets hired to either kill him or being him to someone Gavin’s made an enemy of so they can kill him all the fucking time and honestly? It got old a long time ago.

Of course Ryan tracks Gavin down every time it happens because God knows what other asshole is after the price on his head and they’ve talked about it, Gavin. Why are you like this?

Also, also!

The ~truth comes out when the others think Ryan’s cornered Gavin in a storage closet or other confined space to murderize him only to realize makeouts are happening instead and jfc, could you two maybe not do that when they all might die horribly in the near future?

And then, some adventures and close calls, someone getting Hollywood shot when the saboteur/operative is discovered and more death-defying shenanigans before they manage to escape.

The outpost goes kaboom while they do, and everone breathes a sigh of relief knowing the alien species went with it, because of course it did, right?

(...or did it??? *dramatic music cue because gotta leave it open-ended for potential sequels*)

All these idiots deciding to stick together because they made for an effective/impressive team, and also ~bonding and other such things.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[ayearinfaith]

𝗔 𝗬𝗲𝗮𝗿 𝗶𝗻 𝗙𝗮𝗶𝘁𝗵, 𝗗𝗮𝘆 𝟮𝟴: 𝗦𝗰𝗶𝗲𝗻𝘁𝗼𝗹𝗼𝗴𝘆

Scientology is a religion founded in the 1950’s by L. Ron Hubbard, formerly an author. The organization has become mired in numerous controversies such as fraud and capitalistic exploitation of its followers. In some ways it is structured like a classical mystery religion and as such much of the public knowledge of their teachings comes from leaked documents and the testimony of those who have left the organization.

𝗗𝗶𝗮𝗻𝗲𝘁𝗶𝗰𝘀

Before the religious movement there was Dianetics, a method and organization of psychotherapy devised by Hubbard. He was inspired primarily by the writings of Sigmund Freud, a prominent figure in early 20th century psychology. In this method, Hubbard conceived of a partitioned conscience, the conscious analytic mind and the subconscious reactive mind. This reactive mind was the host of harmful traumas which Hubbard eventually dubbed “engrams”, a term from cognitive psychology (Hubbard’s engrams are not the same). These engrams were quite literal memories, or fragments of memories, of events in a person’s past, even from past lives (more on that later). Engrams festered in the reactive mind and could cause all manner of ailments, both mental (ex. anxiety and depression) and physical (ex. asthma and arthritis). Homosexuality was also caused by harmful engrams. Ridding oneself of engrams and the surface level issues they caused could be done via a process called auditing. In an audit the subject, known as a “pre-clear” is guided by the auditor via a series of questions and suggestions to analyze and talk through traumas. While originally these were done solely via dialogue, Hubbard sought a method to aid the auditors in tracking and measuring pre-clears. The answer eventually came in the form of the “E-meter”, short for “Electropsychometer”. The E-mater is a type of device that measures skin-level electrical activity in the human body. The polygraph of “lie-detector” is another such device, and Hubbard even took them under consideration before the E-meter. The pre-clear takes a pair of cylinders in their hands and the auditor adjusts the meter so the dial holds steady in the center of its display. E-meter displays have no numbers, as they are not for taking electrical measurements. Instead, the auditor is trained to look for fluctuations in the bobbing of the dial for guidance. The end goal is to achieve “clear” status, meaning that one’s reactive mind has been cleared of engrams. A clear is supposed to experience a lack of physical and mental maladies and furthermore possess a higher intellect that before and perfect recollection. Dianetics was official published in 1950, and for about a year was an enormous and profitable fad. It came with legal issues though, as the scientific and medical communities rejected the idea that Dianetics was a viable program (scientifically) and the Hubbard had failed to produce any verifiable support. Hubbard claimed that he had and blamed his rejection in part on the international Communist party and, even more vehemently, on the psychiatric community whom he accused (and Scientologists still believe) of being part of a global conspiracy to keep humanity shackled. As the fad died down and legal fees built up, Hubbard was eventually forced to flee and sell off the organization, including the copyright to Dianetics. Though he would eventually reclaim the copyright, the stage was set for the next revelation: religion.

𝗧𝗵𝗲𝘁𝗮𝗻𝘀 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗕𝗿𝗶𝗱𝗴𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝗧𝗼𝘁𝗮𝗹 𝗙𝗿𝗲𝗲𝗱𝗼𝗺

In 1953 Hubbard officially founded the Church of Scientology in Camden, New Jersey (it is now headquartered in Clearwater, Florida). Scientology continues the practice of Dianetics, albeit with government mandated disclaimers. It also expanded on the scale of Dianetics. It its original capacity, Dianetics was largely based on someone’s current life, and the engrams developed therein. Scientology brough the nature of an immortal and transcendent soul, the “Thetan”. Though the Thetan shares many similarities with the general concept of a soul, Scientology elevates it to the primary mode of existence. Bodies of flesh are temporary and the individual they represent isn’t much better than a lie. The true you is an immortal Thetan, a powerful cosmic entity that has lost its memories and powers due to the accumulation of engrams. Information on Thetans is closely guarded by the Church who claim that the knowledge can be harmful, even deadly, to those not ready to receive it. Practitioners of any rank are obligated to deny claims made by former practitioners or the non-initiated. Scientologists may elevate themselves by means of auditing, certain aspects of which can cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. The path is known internally as the Bridge to Total Freedom. The first level is that of clear, the aforementioned clearing of engrams. After that one can rise to varying levels of “Operating Thetan”. Each level comes with increased revelation of Scientology doctrine. Currently the Church offers 8 levels, though Hubbard wrote of more. Thetans originally were all-knowing, all-powerful, and self-created entities from beyond the material universe. For a number of reasons (possibly as a sort of game) they created the material universe and inserted themselves within. Over time they have experienced many traumas and become increasingly trapped within their own fiction. By untangling this trauma, which can go back quadrillions of years, Thetans may reclaim their awesome reality altering powers.

𝗫𝗲𝗻𝘂 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗦𝗽𝗮𝗰𝗲 𝗢𝗽𝗲𝗿𝗮

Scientologist beliefs include a large and detailed history of the cosmos, included extraterrestrial activities over the course of hundreds of trillions of years. The most infamous is known internally as “Incident 2” or the “Wall of Fire”. It has often been called a “space opera”, and Hubbard actually wrote a film screenplay about it in 1977. It is revealed to those who have reach OT (Operating Thetan) level III. The story takes place 75 million years ago in an interplanetary government known as the Galactic Confederacy. The Confederacy was ruled by a dictator called either Xenu or Xemu; Hubbard used both in speaking and his handwriting is inconclusive. Plagued by overpopulation, Xenu crafted a nefarious scheme. Under the guise of tax auditing or some other bureaucratic excuse, Xenu transported billions of Confederate citizens to Earth, know to them as the planet Teegeeack. Once there, hydrogen bombs implanted in major volcanoes were detonated which killed everyone. Aware of Thetans, Xenu also arranged for special devices to capture the Thetans before they could locate new bodies. These Thetans were subjected to brainwashing and forceful reeducation, effectively stripping them of their self-awareness and implanting new ideas about humanity and the cosmos, including all other world religions. Though Xenu is overthrown by rebellious officers, the Earth and its Thetan prisoners is left abandoned. Thetans who leave earth continue to be reprocessed by stations on various stars and planets, including Venus. Because there are more Thetans than human, modern humans are both a Thetan and the host of “body Thetans”, extra Thetan individuals that have attached themselves to the same body out of confusion.

𝗖𝗼𝗻𝘁𝗿𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿𝘀𝘆

It would be impossible of me to summarize effectively, within just this entry, the history of Scientology’s conflicts with the law and other organizations. Its status as a protected religious organization has been vehemently fought for, and is still under debate in Germany (the government does not recognize it, but the court case is ongoing). Back when it was still Dianetics that state of New Jersey raided and seized many documents and items such as E-meters. After years of litigation the state was eventually forced to return it all, though the Church was made to pay for it. Scientology’s elite form a committee known as the “Sea org”, which originally was actually located on boats, and the Church still does maintain a large cruise ship, the Freewinds, which is where OT VIII audits occur. The original function of the vessels was likely to perform Church functions away from prying government regulation. Members of Sea org must accept certain restrictions on their living quarters, marital status, and sex life, different in practice but similar in theory to the limitations placed on Catholic priests. As the Church does take payment for audits and other services it has been criticized for exploitation and has gone to court many times in multiple countries for such claims. As mentioned earlier, Scientology has never been able to back claims that the Dianetics method is clinically viable and must now provide disclaimers even as a religious organization.

Image Credit: David Miscavige, current leader of Scientology, in a 2007 announcement titled “𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘎𝘰𝘭𝘥𝘦𝘯 𝘈𝘨𝘦 𝘰𝘧 𝘒𝘯𝘰𝘸𝘭𝘦𝘥𝘨𝘦 𝘧𝘰𝘳 𝘌𝘵𝘦𝘳𝘯𝘪𝘵𝘺”, standing amid images of international translations of Hubbard’s books. Taken from www.scientology.org.

[thoughtsofaninsignificant]

A letter to anyone who may be affected by my ED-

If you’re reading this, then there’s a good chance you have in some way been affected by my affliction with an eating disorder and I want to address the elephant in the room. I don’t write this letter to seek sympathy or evoke an emotional response, rather to explain how I think and why it affects my behavior. I hope that in being honest with my mental state, it will give greater clarity to you in terms of what I am dealing with and perhaps it can make sense of why I respond the way I do… if not, I suppose that I just feel it would be good to know. So here it is, all laid out on silver platter…. Ha  ha.. Get it? Cuz like… food joke…. And this is about eating… ha haha

-I have literally broken my body’s ability to digest food. My body has such a hard time digesting whatever I put in it, that if I go beyond certain things, I hurt- everywhere. I can go from feeling fine to nauseous to completely bloated within the span of a few minutes and it sucks. I am still dependent on medication to help myself regulate and it’s really frustrating. It serves as a constant reminder that I have, and continue to make, choices that literally break my body.

-My body is going through so many physical changes. I am having an immensely hard time gaining weight. While I know for some, they might not notice if they gain any or write off weight gain as “just a part of life” - that’s not possible for me.I notice every single ounce that goes onto my body. This goes beyond the mental piece (which I will go into later) but even further, I physically feel different. I can feel it when I sit or when I stand differently. My clothes actually fit now and it is a strange sensation that is hard for me to not be triggered by. This is something I literally cannot escape… which brings me to my next point.

-I wake up every morning and my first thought is: “I don’t want to be in my body.” I start, go throughout, and finish my day all while my brain is screaming at me to literally exit my own body… which we all know is impossible. That being said, this is a combination of both physical and mental sensations of me literally not feeling comfortable physically, but also mentally I feel incredibly uncomfortable in my own skin. It would be like if you spilled coffee on your pants first thing in the morning and your co-worker gives you a pair of pants that don’t really fit quite right and you have to wear them all day. These pants are pinching and pulling at you, and you can’t wait to take them off… except I can’t take my own skin off.I don’t know about you, but for me it makes me feel like it’s pretty hard to function as a normal human when you feel constantly uncomfortable.

-Speaking of being uncomfortable, I have absolutely no clue what my body looks like. Again, I know I sound like a crazy person or like I am making this up, but somehow my human brain has made this phenomenon possible… I can look in a mirror and truly not know how to judge or perceive what I am seeing. Which makes for one hecka weird experience- to look in the mirror and logically know that it is you but at the same time, have absolutely no clue who that person is. It’s disillusioning, disheartening, and completely exhausting. One moment I will come out of the bathroom stall and see something in the mirror that seems at least somewhat neutral, but I could leave and pass by a mirror in the hall two seconds later and sweat that I have just put on 15 pounds. Especially if I am feeling physically full or uncomfortable. 

-It is these kinds of thoughts, feelings, and emotions that keep me trapped in my ugly disordered brain which is the main reason that I am writing this. Truth be told, I have not felt like myself in a long time. This ED brain has stolen my thoughts and personality and replaced it with calorie counting. Speaking of calories, they are both my best friend and worst enemy. They are constantly going in the back of my mind like a song on literal constant repeat. I can’t even help it anymore because I have been counting calories for so long I just look at something and either instantly know how many calories is in it, or my brain goes into overdrive trying to figure out how many it could possibly be. 

-The above listed reasons are some of the main reasons that I feel so constantly guilty about not being present, or about being distracted in public settings. If there are times where I seem preoccupied or agitated it is honestly probably because of one of the aforementioned things- I am either physically in pain or uncomfortable, or my brain is screaming at me so loud that I can barely hear what you’re saying. It’s awful. I feel so guilty all the time…. Which leads to this never ending cycle of these reoccurring thoughts.

[falling-red-petals]

Friendly reminders

A.) If you're a fan of RWBY and have FIRST, pls tag for spoilers.

B.) If you're a fan of RWBY and have to wait that extra week (like myself) make sure you filter phrases like "RWBY Spoilers" & "RWBY Volume 6 spoilers" if you, y'know, don't want to get spoiled.

C.) DO NOT watch the episodes on anything that isn't the RT site or their official YT channel (if any of the episodes even end up there.) They need the revenue or else they can't keep making the show. NOT HAVING A FIRST ACCOUNT ISN'T AN EXCUSE YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO WAIT ONE WEEK. IT ISN'T THAT HARD. IF THEY DON'T MAKE PROFIT THEY MIGHT HAVE TO CANCEL THE SHOW.

D.) DO NOT harrass the writers if your HEADCANONS and SHIPS don't become actual canon. THEY ARE ONLY HEADCANONS AND SHIPS. RT can do whatever they want with the characters that they own. The show does not belong to you.

E.) DO NOT harrass people for shipping something you don't. I don't care how much you hate the other person's ship, they are not hurting you by pairing certain characters together. Someone ships Black Sun but you ship Bumblebee? Oh well, move along.

F.) Likewise DO NOT harrass people for liking characters you don't. You hate Blake but someone else adores her? Oh well, move on with your life. You think Ruby is a bland vanilla protagonist but someone else thinks she's a great protagonist and likes her the way she is? Tough shit, that's their opinion. You think Jaune is annoying but someone else calls him their "noodle son"? Whoopsie-poopsie! Turns out people are allowed to like things you don't.

F-2.) The above also applies if someone dislikes a character you like. It's their opinion, they are entitled to it. They are not harming you for disliking the character you love.

G.) (The most important one). DO NOT wave Monty Oum's dead body around to hurt his close friends. DO NOT assume you knew him better than his former fiance, brother and aforementioned close friends. DO NOT assume you know more about his vision than THE TWO PEOPLE WHO HELPED HIM CREATE AND PLOT OUT THE SHOW. The most contact any of you probably had with Monty prior to his tragic death was maybe meeting him at a comic con or an RTX event once or twice. You will never be able to convince me that you knew him more than his literal family and his friends.

H.) If you don't like the writing do not specifically target Miles Luna with your criticism. HE ISN'T THE ONLY WRITER ON THE SHOW.

H-2.) If you don't like Jaune, that isn't a reason the verbally harrass and threaten Miles Luna. He's been put through enough. Learn to provide actual constructive criticism.

H-3.) Don't harrass ANY of the VA's! There's literally no reason to, so just leave them alone. (Again, you can throw some constructive criticism Miles' way but for the love of god DO NOT VERBALLY ABUSE HIM OR THREATEN HIM).

I.) When providing criticism do not verbally abuse the crew. (Threaten, belittle, cuss at, etc.) THEY ARE HUMAN BEINGS. Provide actual constructive criticism. Calmly state what you didn't like, explain why you didn't like it, and suggest what you would have done differently. DO NOT ACT LIKE AN ASSHOLE ABOUT IT. THAT IS THE QUICKEST WAY TO HAVE LITERALLY ANYONE WHO COULD CHANGE THE SHOW IGNORE YOU AND NOT TAKE ANYTHING YOU SAY SERIOUSLY!

I-2.) Ex. I think the use of aura is wonky, vague, and kind of cheap. We don't know the full extent of any of the main character's aura pools. Because of this, we can never tell when they are in serious danger as their aura breaks at seemingly random moments for drama. The most we know is that Ren and Blake have smaller pools of aura than the rest of the cast, while Jaune has more. It's hard to feel worried for them when you have no idea how many hits they can take.

J.) DO NOT assume that just because you can write a fanfic based on pre-existing content that you have the same level of knowledge and experience that writing and creating a unique world with its own equally unique characters both provides and needs. While constructive criticism is always a good thing, acting as if you have GOD-LEVEL-KNOWLEDGE of how things work behind the scenes of the show is not. You don't, so don't act like.

TL,DR: Don't stream the episodes on anything that isn't the RT site, don't pirate them, and don't be an asshole. Let's keep Vol 6 non-toxic. Pls, for the love of God, I'm asking for just one Volume to be non-toxic.

[charismastaticarchive]

lulu ( & patricia ) hc/meta:

motherhood/maternal instinct in fiction & feminist analysis

if u read my content, you know that i like to have a bit of a leftist, feminist&genderfuck slant to all my writing and the analysis of all my characters. women in particular are never just women, and they’re always more than the fanservice and literary/video game tropes that are pushed on to them.

i want to talk, for a moment, about “cis” motherhood and a cis woman’s body, particularly a fictional/conceptual/symbolic one---from the perspective of a non-binary afab lesbian with psychosis who has experienced delusions and dysphoria about pregnancy my whole life. from my own personal perspective, mostly because of the aforementioned marginalizations and mental illnesses i experience.... pregnancy and motherhood are both terrifying. 

but i don’t really want to talk about that, i want to talk about the typical “cis” women characters with maternal instincts----and how i believe mothers in fiction can be portrayed as complex women without losing their personalities and personal goals, namely by choosing to believe that a woman’s experience with pregnancy, childbirth, and her family/romantic entanglements are as complicated and varied as she is---and believing her problems are not solved by a man, a child, or pregnancy and in fact, can even be excacerbated by them.

so to do show examples of simpler narratives that can be made more complex, i’m going to talk about two different characters of mine that are ‘mothers’ in canon----patricia, and lulu.

to start with, patricia is the archetypical dead anime mom. the only things that make her a special character to me are that: 1) she had an extraoridinanary amount of children in order to birth a ‘special’ child. 2) she was married to two men at apparently the same time. and 3) because of her wanting to see her own child, extreme tragedy takes place that she apparently is aware of when she asks the villains of the game---a man masquerading as her own brother included among their ranks---to help her.

now we could go the typical route. we could say that patricia is a mother---and of course she loves her  biirth children more than anything, and she wanted to see her birth mother instead of her step-child. (in addition to being a dead mom archetype, she makes a very excellent evil step-mother.) but her life is so much more complicated than her child. she has two husbands. her brother is one of the main villains of the game that tortures her child. there’s thing you can get into, hidden depths that can’t be explained by her just being a woman or a mother. perhaps she loved her birth children as if they were her only family bc she knew her brother no longer was her family, her parents did not believe she was any use to them other than a bargaining chip to becoming royalty. the emperor was old, and she was very young. perhaps she felt for the past ELEVEN pregnancies that only her children, made inside her body, were the only thing that were her own in that terrifyingly lonely castle. perhaps she wanted to see them because her second husband was just as patriarchal as the first, perhaps as self-consumed. perhaps she wanted to be more than a wife---and all she knew she could be was a mother.

there’s was you can write her as very complex, and even make the seemingly simple motivation of just seeing her birth child a symbol of a greater inner life within her, even though she’s not even mentioned on the black eagles route, and is only mentioned in passing in blue lions route!

and so, on to a much more complex example of my portrayals, because lulu is an actual canon character who we can  actually see in the canon of ffx and who is not just alluded to.

lulu is maternal, an ‘older sister’ figure to yuna, and a voice of reason the whole game who takes care of yuna and even wakka in a famililal context. she’s nurturing and kind despite her dark & gothic appearance, and even her puppets refer to her as ‘mother’ in certain unlockable cutscenes in the second game.

but despite this, this is not all lulu is. lulu is a wise guardian figure---but she’s also a fierce fighter that can get the most damage in your party. she’s knowledgeable about the world at large, she’s sensible to a fault and takes 0 bullshit. she’s deeply traumatized about the loss of her first love, chappu, and probably her second lost love, someone she tried to guard shortly before the game begins. despite the most important person in the world to her being her sister character in game, the second game pairs her up with wakka (her dead fiancee’s BROTHER) and ‘shows her’ having a child with him. i say ‘shows her’ because, the game uses the exact same model from the first game, and does not ACTUALLY show her looking pregnant before she has the child even tho she could supposedly give birth at any moment.

we can assume lulu wants to move on from all the death in her life---to a new life with wakka. but it doesn’t make sense that she would get over her trauma so easily, especially without yuna by her side. she lost her parents to sin, she lost chappu, and just because sin is gone, doesn’t mean that the church and all its teachings which she believed in for long hasn’t left a mark on her, or that the church being willfully wrong about how to save the world (and sacrificing so many people in the process) ALSO didn’t have an effect on her when so much of her trauma is related to that.

i think lulu as a mother figure fails. i think in this case of canon, motherhood is a copout for the character---who literally just wasn’t in ffx-2, because it would restrain yuna and not let her grow as a character as much, in the director’s own words. she’s ‘healed’ by wakka and motherhood, her agency as an active player in the story (and her sister’s life, the most important person in the world to her) is taken from her. we’re supposed to take it as FINE with lulu that yuna just left in the middle of the night and never came back even tho she told no one where she was going! she could’ve been dead!

but i think we CAN make the circumstances of lulu in ffx-2 more complicated, if we try. if we take lulu’s trauma seriously, and show that her circumstances effect her. if we make her relationship with wakka something of desperation---to try to make her life make sense, to try to inject new life into a world still full of death & ghosts. we can make her feel not connected to her body and her baby by not being able to ‘show’/’see’ the growth of her child inside her. and we can make part of the reason she wanted to have this child because she felt she ‘lost’ yuna, that yuna was growing beyond her---and she wanted to have someone to take care of, still, even tho she might never have the same connection with her child as she does with yuna---and that SCARES her. we can also note that as a wlw as i play lulu---she might’ve thought she HAD to be with wakka to ever find someone who could love her AND have children with her, and being pregnant with a man’s child making her feel lost from her body and sense of self---her love for both chappu, and for women.

final notes: this was about cis women, but i want to note that all motherhood can really be something beautiful. i believe that stories should be about LOVE more than anything, and the bond between mother and child---especially a trans mother who chooses their own child through adoption, found family, surrogacy, or having a child with their partner with a uterus---can be one of the most beautiful sources of love on this planet!

being responsible for another human’s life with always be taxing. but when it’s something you choose---knowing that responsibility, wanting to bear the burden of a human life, and actually seeing the goal of raising them for the rest of your life and seeing to it that they’re happy and healthy---that’s something that’s really special and wonderful, even if it’s something i can’t see myself doing.

still, i don’t think the story is EVER so simple as a cis birth mother in a nuclear family loving their child and their husband, and living solely for them. life is complicated. women are complicated, with rich inner lives! and that’s part of the thing that makes willful, ethical motherhood so beautiful----knowing that taking on the burdens of taking care of another person for the rest of your life, meaning that your life comes second, is such a. big step in giving up part of your self just to love someone, just to take care of them and be there for them as your child deserves.

it’s more complicated than that, obviously, but love is complicated! and if love is worth telling stories about, then complicated stories about women and the ways they love their children, each other, and themselves are even more important.

i don’t know how to end this so [dabs] i guess lol

[housebeleren]

Throne of Eldraine New Commander Cards

Alright, now that we’ve gone through all the Legendary creatures from Throne of Eldraine, time for all the other cards that might make a splash in Commander. I love this part.

This may seem like a weird pick, but there are honestly a bunch of Voltron commanders that might be interested in this. I can definitely see it in Sram, Tuvasa, and Bruna builds as ways to go really big really fast. You need some form of evasion, but there are plenty of ways to do that in those decks. But that’s a lot more action than most draft Uncommons get.

Charming Prince, aside from looking like he’s about to drop dead from Cholera or something (seriously dude, that ghostly pallor is not a good look), is a surprising amount of utility for a 2 drop. Early in the game, the Scry 2 ability is going to smooth out your draws, and later on, he’s all about the flicker to reuse ETBs. I could see him in more casual Brago, Roon, or Chulane builds. But are there casual Brago or Chulane builds anymore? Unlikely.

More restrictive Oblivion Ring effects aren’t usually something I’m in the market for, but decks that care about Artifacts may be into it. The first one that comes to mind is something like Sharuum the Hegemon or something, and there could be others. Probably not powerful enough for Breya, and Alela has access to better options that are Enchantments.

Hushwing Gryff variants see a fair amount of play, and this one also shuts off death triggers, which is a significant upgrade, because it hoses two strategies instead of just one. It doesn’t have the Flash to surprise your opponents, but the added utility is probably worth it for decks that want to hate.

Board WIpes are always welcome, and this one has the added utility of coming attached to a large creature after the fact. The best place for this will be in decks that have lots of ways to return the creature to hand so you can set up loops clearing the board, or in decks with lots of Giants so you can break parity. Kalemne comes to mind as a great home for this.

True Love’s Kiss has a lot of competition, most notably Crush Contraband and Return to Dust at the same CMC. I think which one you want depends a lot on your metagame. If you face lots of decks that are heavy on the Artifacts & Enchantments, you may want the ones that can hit multiple targets. If you just need the occasional spot removal, getting the card draw might be better. I also like this a lot for Taigam, Ojutai Master decks, since cantrips are extra useful there.

The Magic Mirror is is a rework of Mind Unbound, a card I’ve never played and probably never will. However, in a deck with lots of Instants & Sorceries, you can get this down for as little as 3 mana, which is way more palatable. If you can back this up with counterspells to keep it alive a few turns, it’ll become pretty potent pretty fast. I can picture it, is what I’m saying.

Honestly, I’m pretty big on Midnight Clock. I think a lot of people forget that this is a mana rock, and it doesn’t even come into play tapped, so the floor is pretty high right off the bat for heavy Blue decks. Plus, the counters get put on this on EVERY upkeep, not just your own, so it only needs to survive a couple turns before you get a personal Timetwister out of it. I’m not saying it’s an autoinclude or new format staple or anything, but I would definitely be willing to try it out.

Efficient, flexible removal at its best. Epic Downfall will hit just about anything you want it to hit, other than a Gaddoc Teeg or something. I expect lots of decks to be looking to throw this into the mix of spot removal.

Foulmire Knight isn’t going to go into every deck, but it’s certainly a contender for Zombie tribal, since he comes with card draw attached. Plus, lots of such decks have tons of ways to retrieve him from the graveyard, so you can get extra utility. I’m putting him directly in my Gisa & Geralf deck, because a fun quirk of their ability is that you can cast the Profane Insight half from your graveyard, even though only on your turn, so you lose the Instant-speed fun. Other decks that could be interested are Varina and The Scarab God.

Literally everything I said about Foulmire Knight above applies to Murderous Rider as well, except more so. Having a Zombie stapled to a Hero’s Downfall is incredible, and generally a clear upgrade, since the life loss is so negligible. The one kink (well, I shouldn’t presume he only has one) of this guy is that he tucks himself on death, which is a bit unfortunate but probably necessary to avoid him being ridiculous. HOWever, there are some fun things there. First, his death trigger goes on the stack, and can be responded to. So, that means the following:

If it’s your turn when the Rider dies, you can cast Swift End from your graveyard with Gisa & Geralf.

You can exile the Rider and one other card from your ‘yard to Varina in response, and get a Zombie token, which is kinda her thing.

You can get him back to your hand by activating Phyrexian Reclamation or similar with his trigger on the stack.

So yeah, there’s some fun to be had here.

Revenge of Ravens bears a lot of similarity to other cards we’ve seen before, like Blood Reckoning and Marchesa’s Decree, most of which see very little play. But this one has one important upgrade, and that’s the fact that it gains you a life. As a result, it has extra utility in decks that care about lifegain triggers such as Oloro and Karlov builds, both of which love their pillow-forting. I doubt it’ll see much play, but could be a niche inclusion in decks like those.

Tutors are great, and this is one of the most unique tutor effects we’ve seen in a long time. They key to this card revolves around breaking parity so your opponents don’t get to take advantage of it. The first way that came to mind for me was to include this in Aminatou, the Fateshifter builds, since she can just flicker it back to your side of the board after activating it. Which seems... gross and awesome at the same time. (I totally put it in my Aminatou build immediately.) Other possible options are Breya, who can sacrifice it in response to its ability, or in decks with cards like Ashiok, Dream Render or Stranglehold, so they just can’t use it. On a really jank note, if you have an Ob Nixilis, Unshackled deck, this is a funny inclusion that punishes whoever you give it to. 

Voltron decks with Red will be interested in Embercleave. So... Zurgo Helmsmasher comes to mind, assuming you’re not going full-on Worldslayer combo. I could also see it in decks like Saskia and things like that. Probably not a major player, but potential for decks that want to go aggressive.

The clause that you can only cast one more spell after this is unfortunate, but it could still be a reasonable inclusion in mono Red decks like either version of Neheb (the Eternal or Dreadhorde Champion) that want to go big burn. Also, if you have a 7 CMC mono Red general like, Drakuseth, Maw of Flames, this seems like an auto-include. I mean, you need all the help you can get if you built a Drakuseth deck, so...

Now, hear me out. Looters/Rummagers are great in certain builds, and Merchant of the Vale is unique in two ways. First, he’s got a one shot effect tacked on as an Adventure, which is some added flexibility. But second, he’s actually the only Rummaging creature in mono Red that doesn’t require tapping. Seriously. That means in some big Red Mana decks (like the aforementioned Nehebs), you can rummage to your heart’s content with all the mana you generate to dump into this. Not saying he’s great, but saying he’s worth consideration if you’re in the market for mana sinks in mono Red.

Obviously, the dream is to cast this off Irencrag Feat, but even if you don’t, this could be a reasonable inclusion for mono Red big Mana decks. (I’m sensing a theme with these last few cards.) Dealing 21 damage is no joke, and I could even see this in some versions of Vial Smasher that focus on big mana production. Again, most decks probably won’t want it, but the ones that do will make good use of it.

There’s no shortage of ramp spells, and for 3 mana we’re accustomed to fetching 2 lands (see: Kodama’s Reach & Cultivate). That said, this one has some advantages. First, the land it fetches comes into play untapped, which is a nice little bit of utility, especially if you can follow it up with a one drop mana dork immediately after. But it also has a Rubblehulk tacked on for the late game, which is a totally viable win condition in some decks. Would I trade Rubblehulk’s Bloodrush ability for Beanstalk Giant’s ramp? For most decks, abso-fucking-lutely. And this one is mono-Green, so it can go into way more decks. I’d consider it for certain builds of Kynaios & Tiro, Chulane, Azusa, and a variety of other big-mana decks that thrive on versatility.

The Great Henge is expensive, but will be amazing once it resolves. It adds mana, it draws cards, and it buffs up every creature you land, which is a ton of action. And if you can reliably get this down to 5 mana, you’re in great shape. Big Green Stompy decks like Ghalta will be super into this, and I can also see if for +1/+1 counter decks like Ezuri, Claw of Progress, since those often get big/big with ease.

While the Transformation doesn’t have the target flexibility of Song of the Dryads, it’s a pretty effective way to deal with annoying Commanders or problematic creatures, and the card draw on ETB is a nice touch. It’s a fun little pairing with Estrid’s Invocation, so keep that in mind if you’re playing Bantchantress or some such nonsense.

I don’t know what deck wants this, and I honestly don’t really want to know, because it seems ridiculous. But returning stuff straight from the graveyard to play is always a strong move, and buying back a pile of Artifacts in something like Sharuum or Breya is probably a game ending play. The non-Aura line of text makes it a little less appealing for Enchantment builds, since most of the best one are heavy in Auras. Still, I’m sure it will find some homes and be a lot of fun (for at least one person) when it resolves.

Also, somewhere on Twitter (don’t remember where, unfortunately), someone said that this card should be called “Manse Dance Revolution,” and that is absolutely correct.

Drown in the Loch is versatile removal at a very reasonable cost. All it asks is that your opponents have cards in their graveyards, which is super easy in EDH. The funny part is, this honestly gets stronger the more competitive your metagame, since competitive builds will have Fetchlands and early interaction, plus their average CMC is much lower, so you’ll more frequently have targets. In mill decks like Mirko Vosk or Phenax, you are always running this, and I’d consider it in just about any Blue/Black based deck.

Green has some better engines to draw cards, but as a quick burst, 5 for 5 is a pretty awesome rate. Plus, I like that the card has some protection against flipping a few lands by at least letting you play an extra one, so worst case it’s an Explosive Vegetation. I’d definitely run this in Wort, the Raidmother decks, because conspiring this to flip 10 cards, then immediately dropping two more lands seems like a solid way to set up a game-ending turn. And if you’re building Gruul in general, it seems like something to consider.

I couldn’t not mention Nessie here. 6 mana is a lot, but he has a pile of abilities for that 6 mana, and Flash lets him come down at end of turn, so he’s more likely to resolve. In a way, it reminds me of Pearl Lake Ancient, another card I occasionally run as a WTF element in my decks to catch people off guard. They’re both giant serpents, they both have Flash, and they’re both resilient recursive threats. You definitely don’t want to use Nessie’s sacrifice abilities too much, but they’ll be handy if you’re flooded. Plus, he’s got incidental Graveyard hate tacked on, which is actually my favorite little secret of his, so I especially like him in decks with lots of Wheels (Nekusar says “HI!”), as something you can discard for value, then activate to remove problematic cards your opponents may want to recover from their ‘yards.

3-cost Mana Rocks are never the competitive option, especially when they only produce one color at a time. But 3-cost Mana Rocks with a team-wide pump attached is worth a second look. Mono-color go-wide decks will be interested in this for sure, as well as 2 color decks that consistently produce tokens of a single color, like Alela or Kykar.

Okay, before I start on this card, I’d just like to say that a lot of the lands in this set are highly playable. Basically all of the Castle cycle are playable, especially Castles Vantress, Locthwain, and Garenbrig. Also, Fabled Passage is phenomenal tech for multicolored decks, and is such an obvious staple, it’s not worth writing about. 

Of the Common Land cycle, however, there is one that stands above all the rest. Yes, Witch’s Cottage is basically a better Mortuary Mire in heavy Black decks, so some places will run it. But the big news is Mystic Sanctuary. This card is such the hotness for mono Blue decks and a few others of note. First of all, the potential to combo this with Time Warps is off the charts. I literally cannot imagine not running this in God-Eternal Kefnet decks, because the synergy is so strong setting up your next draw. And lastly, I’m putting it in my Aminatou the Fateshifter build (which runs both the aforementioned cards), because putting expensive spells back on top of your deck is kinda what that whole deck is about. Plus, she can flicker it, which is some stupid-level combo right there.

Brawl Deck Cards for Commander

Okay, that’s it for the main set. Now we get to the cards from the four Brawl decks that have potential for the big time.

Mace of the Valiant is an interesting one. It’s a Voltron card that wants lots of little creatures to enter the battlefield. That makes it a little paradoxical, but I think there are probably homes for it. Two of the obvious ones are the decks it came in, Alela and Syr Gwyn, but there are certainly others. There’s potential in several generals who have fallen out of favor, such as Rafiq of the Many and basically any of the mono-White cats, like Kemba, Kha Regent, who seems preemptively designed specifically for this card. (Seriously, if any of y’all run Kemba decks and haven’t put this in yet, what are you even doing?)

Shimmer Dragon is too obvious, but therefore I have to mention it. This will be a format staple for years to come, since Blue-based Artifact decks have always been popular. Yes, it’s expensive, but once it comes out, drawing your deck in short order will be absolutely trivial. Urza decks will love this. Oops, all my mana rocks and constructs are also card draw! Seems good.

Chittering Witch seems fun, if a little on the casual side. But she doesn’t cost much, and her ability is a pretty reasonable way to snipe down problematic threats as you need. In decks with tons of sac fodder, you could definitely do worse. Endrek Sahr comes to mind as a fun combo piece with this.

This is definitely more on the casual side, but Red needs more options, and Embereth Skyblazer has some potential. Pumping up your entire team for +3/+0 on each attack can be brutal, and it gets especially interesting in decks that involve multiple combats, like Aurelia the Warleader, or that increase damage dealt, like Gisela, Blade of Goldnight. In short, this is actually a Boros card.

Steelbane Hydra seems really good, especially in big mana decks (Azusa, Gitrog, Kruphix, Nikya, I could go on...) or in decks that can add +1/+1 counters to him (Atraxa, Marath, Vorel, Ezuri, Ghave, I could go on...). In other words, there are all kinds of homes for this guy, plus: TURTLE HYDRA!

He’s so cute.

Now, I’ll readily admit that my opinion of Thorn Mammoth may be skewed by the fact that it is absolutely stupid good in 1v1 Brawl. It obviously gets worse in multiplayer and in bigger card pools. But, that said, there are times when this card could absolutely own the board. My particular dream would be to cast an Avenger of Zendikar and Heroic Intervention with this guy out, and just build my own Plague Wind. Because that sounds fun, if a little jank. But seriously, Green can find ways to make this good, and can certainly find ways to cast it.

Obviously, Knight’s Charge belongs in one type of deck, and that deck is Knights tribal. And in that deck, this will be the best card in your deck. So whether you’re running Syr Gwyn or Aryel, Knight of Windgrace or motherfucking Morophon Knights for some reason, then you’ll run this and you’ll like it.

Okay, Tome of Legends is a card that nobody asked for, but here it is and if your commander is all about coming down quickly and going sideways, then here’s a card for them. So... I guess... Captain Lannery Storm, we found a card for you?

Aaaaaand last but definitely first, we have this gem. Arcane Signet. The card that made Commander players everywhere lose their collective shit and buy out every copy of every Brawl deck, jacking prices up to the sky. Way to go us! (Seriously though, I’m totally part of this problem and I fully admit it.)

Well, after many sobering hours of reflection pondering our addiction and the general meaninglessness of the pieces of cardboard we spend literal thousands of dollars on, and hence, the meaninglessness of life itself, we started slotting these babies into decks and forgot all about that nonsense. Because yes, truly, this card is great, and you should always run it.

And if they don’t reprint this in literally every Commander and Brawl product ever printed going forward, so help me... 

I’m fine. I swear.

So yeah. That’s it. All the cards from Throne of Eldraine for Commander. There... sure are a lot of them, aren’t there? It’s like Wizards is thinking about majorly pushing this format or something... :)

[artificialqueens]

Thank you so much, for everything P.2 (Biadore) ~Rat~

An: thank you so much for the love on part one, I really appreciate it. Be warned this chapter does contain some smut towards the end (words: 1508)

Roy’s eyes fluttered open as he slowly started to register his surroundings. He scanned the walls and room; this wasn’t his bed. He found his body under the weight of another person who seemed to be completely oblivious in their dreamy state. As he became more conscious, he became very aware that he and this other person were naked. And then like a flip of a switch everything made sense and came flooding back. Danny.

A tidal wave of emotions rushed over him, panic, regret, lust, but most of all, guilt. His mind is going insane. How dare he take advantage of Danny like that? He had just gotten out of his first long term relationship a mere 2 weeks ago.

As Roy is just about to slip out and leave a note but Danny completely dashes all his plans by abruptly waking up with no warning. The younger immediately sits up in a panic like state, his face like he had just witnessed a murder. He glanced over the body who was awkwardly half sitting and laying down, next to him. Relief visibly washed over him.

‘Oh it’s just you’ he sighed as lay back down with a thud.

‘And good morning to you too’ Roy retorted.

Danny glanced outside only to see its pitch black out, he grabbed his phone from the bedside table to check the time

21:04

‘Evening actually, it’s 9pm’ Danny replied, smirking slightly for no real reason

Then an awkward silence fell upon the pair. They were so close so silences had never been weird before but I suppose it’s different when you’re naked in bed with your best friend a mere two weeks after a serious breakup. Besides what are you supposed to say after that?

‘Look Danny I’m sorry’ the older began, breaking the silence

‘For what?’ Danny said, laughing but with genuine confusion laced in his tone

‘For taking advantage of you, you were in a bad place and really vulnerable. I slept with you when you were probably not thinking straight. I mean what kind of friend does that?’ He practically whispered in upset and defeat.

‘Woah, woah, Roy no. It’s not like that. I’m not a kid, I’m 26. I have to take some responsibility no matter what state of mind I was in’ Danny replied, still slightly laughing but also very sympathetically

‘I know, but-‘ Roy said before he was cut off

‘Plus I initiated it! I wanted to and I don’t know about you but I don’t regret it one bit’ he interrupted

‘Still…I could’ve said no’ he uttered

‘Well ya didn’t. And what’s done is done’ the younger practically sung cheerfully in an attempt to lighten the mood ‘you want pizza?’

‘Nah I should really be heading back now. Also Danny, I know you don’t regret it and I don’t either, but we can’t do this again. We’re about to do BOTs again and I don’t want to ruin anything if one of us catches feelings’ Roy explained.

‘No I totally get it. I was going to say the same’ Danny lied.

———————————————

After seeing Roy out, Danny’s mind went manic. What did he mean by ‘catch feelings’? Did Roy feel something? Was Danny feeling something? Why was he so disappointing that Roy didn’t want to sleep with him again?

As Roy basically did the walk of shame back to his apartment his mind was also racing. How could he do that to Danny? Was he catching feelings for him? Is a 14 year age gap too much? Is BOTs gunna be awkward? Will they ever be the same again? His train of thought came to a halt when he was greeted by two elated pups at his feet.

———————————————

Three weeks had passed since the incident and the pair had barely spoken to one another. However that was going to change because BOTs was starting today. They’ve got to act normal or the other queens will figure out something happened.

Danny hauled his over-packed suitcases into the storage compartment of the bus before taking his comparatively tiny night bag to the bus. Danny being the social butterfly he is, he picked a bunk that was surrounded by other full bunks. However he had failed to realise his bed was directly opposite Roy’s. ‘It’s fine’ he thought to himself. Roy’s supposed to be his best friend so this was gunna be fun right? Deciding he didn’t want other queens to become suspicious, he did what he did what he did best. Annoy Roy

‘Hey roomie’ he giggled as he poked Roy’s back, who was laying in his bed facing the wall.

‘Oh god’ the older queen scoffed with a soft laugh as he rolled over to face Danny and the rest of the world.

And just like that the previous 3 weeks of awkwardness melted away. Roy sat up to have a proper conversation. They chatted about life for around 5 or so minutes before they were interrupted by a certain someone.

‘Hieeeeeee’ Alaska yelled as he pranced on the bus with his recently won all stars crown on his head.

‘Why are you wearing that?’ Danny snorted in an attempt to speak through his hysterical laughter

‘Even though Violet has her crown I still don’t trust her so I have to keep it on me at all times’ Alaska spoke, loud enough so Violet could hear which sent the entire bus into a giggle fit.

And almost as if planned Kim Chi fell onto the bus which just set everyone off even more. This tour was going to be great

———————————————

The 3rd show of the BOTs tour had finished around an hour ago and everything had gone perfectly. Roy and Danny were back to normal like nothing had happened so both their performances were flawless as usual. All the other queens de-dragged and either went to the club or the bus quite quickly. But Roy liked to take his time with it. He wanted everything to be clean so the janitors didn’t have too big of a job. Danny decided to wait today as they were the last two left and he didn’t want to walk alone.

‘Why are you so sweet?’ Danny sighed in awe

‘What?’ Roy asked as he was only half listening

‘I mean, literally no other queens takes so much care like you do. With the places they work and with other people. It’s adorable’ Danny replied, still in awe

‘Oh, I just always have’ Roy said.

He picked up the last few pieces of trash from the floor then turned to Danny who was sat on the now empty snack table, drinking a red bull.

‘Ready to go then?’ Roy half asked/announced.

‘Yeah just one thing’ he paused to take a sip of red bull ‘can I have a hug pleeaseee?’ Danny begged like a toddler.

It was no secret that Danny got very lonely on tour and consequently became very clingy, especially towards Roy. So Roy happily obliged and padded over to the pouting boy to engulf him in the tightest hug possible.

‘Thank you’ Danny muttered against the other queens neck.

Roy wordlessly began stroking Danny’s hair and slightly rocking the boy. They pulled away after what felt centuries but, as if like magnets, their lips came together. It was just as, if not more, electrifying than last time. Their lips and tongues moving together perfectly like they were made for each other. Everything in that moment felt right.

Roy began to kiss and nibble at Danny’s neck as the younger lifted the hem of his shirt, urgent to get it off.

Soon enough, their aforementioned promise to never do this again disappeared as Roy was fucking Danny against the table. Their sweaty bodies melted together seamlessly. Roy was biting his neck and practically hugging Danny as he finished inside the condom. He pulled out, swiftly took it off and put it in the trash. He went straight back to Danny who was sat on the table, head against the wall, legs wide open, naked and panting covered in sweat.

Roy got on his knees and asked Danny if he was okay. Once he got his response he began sucking Danny off until he came.

———————————————

They got dressed again without saying a word. This time it was Danny to break the silence

‘So much for never doing that again aye’ he joked

‘Yeah that’s too good to never do again’ the other replied ‘tell you what, for the rest of this tour we continue this but keep it strictly physical. We can sleep with other people. No feelings. What do you say?’

‘How could I say no?’ Danny winked and smirked with his tongue poking out through his teeth.

And so began the tour that would change their lives

[homosociallyyours]

a friend just posted a pic on fb of the coffee shop we used to hang out at, taken way back in the day. it’s just a shot of the place taken from inside, looking out the big glass windows and onto the street of downtown chattanooga. but one friend pointed out that she could see another friend’s van parked across the street, and one of the baristas came on and said he’d taken the photo and then proceeded to post a bunch more. 

anyway i’m feeling nostalgic so i’m posting about it. memories behind the cut. 

i started going there when i was maybe 15 years old. i don’t remember why, but it’s likely that the artsy nerd club i was a part of (we stayed after school to watch amadeus and monty python and we’d sometimes go to the local art museum) went there after a meeting one day. or maybe someone told me about it. anyway, it was my favorite place to go. i would drink pots of tea, always trying new things. 

on my 16th birthday my parents got me a teapot from there and a gift certificate to buy tea with. i had that teapot til it broke a year ago. 20+ years! it moved with me to and from college, to nyc, california, texas, and back to california. damn. 

anyway after i’d been going for a while i started talking with the owner. his name was ian, and he was pretty young. he loved tea and coffee and he had a roaster where they’d make their own coffee. it was loud and lovely, and for a long time it lived up front, right by a little elevated area with couches. when it was running you couldn’t hear anything and had no choice but to either shout or be quiet. 

ian encouraged my love of tea, and offered to keep track of everything i’d tried in a little notebook that was kept behind the counter. i got to make notes on every pot i drank, and i remember writing “terrible! grass!” after my first pot of green tea (it was oversteeped--my fault--and probably made with water that was too hot--their fault). i had my first pu-er there, and fell in love with its damp leaf flavor and that turned earth scent that it has. i drank multiple pots of jasmine pearls and wrote a caffeine fueled poem about it with a friend. i loved that little coffee shop. 

i don’t remember when i went from hanging out inside to hanging out outside, but i feel like i was 18 or so. the older people (they were probably barely 21-25, fucking babies) sat out there smoking and drinking coffee. i developed a crush one summer on a guy who made me think of arthur dent for some reason (don’t ask because i don’t know) and we went on one awkward date and didn’t kiss, and now i wonder what’s happened to him and if he, too, wasn’t straight. who knows? someone, i’m sure, but i can’t remember his last name anymore so is it even relevant? 

i’d never felt cool til i went off to college. it was like leveling up without trying, like when you’re playing a game and do one action and suddenly all your stats are refilled and you’re like...this is unexpected? but i’ll take it? i think that’s why i decided i could really sit with the outside tables. that and my bff, who was dating someone who was friends with a lot of those people, would show up sometimes and sit out there. 

(if you’ve actually been reading along so far, here’s where i’m gonna introduce you to a bunch of people i’ve never talked about before and will likely never mention again. just so you have fair warning.) 

the cast of characters shifted a lot, but there were always the constants. scott, the barista, who was much older than most of the people hanging out but looked young and seemed young. i look back with adult eyes and question the relationship we had, but at the time i just thought it was cool that someone so much older thought i was worth hanging out with. but he was 30 when i was 19, and man that’s a lotta years. he had a summer where he hit on my friend and i constantly, after his wife left him and he was kinda floundering a bit. but it never went past flirting and it never bothered me, though like i said it kinda does now. we were still hanging out when i was 21 and we’d go get beers after the coffee shop closed at ten or midnight. he’d turn up obnoxious music really loud and i’d sometimes help close. 

there was gabe and george, brother and sister in a family of people with names starting with the letter g. george was tiny and cute and either very drunk or very hyper from coffee at all times. gabe was a nerd who was usually quiet but loved to play scrabble, and we’d take the board inside sometimes and battle one another. he was much better than me, i won’t lie. liz and ever were both writers who would play with us sometimes. ever had changed her name at some point (to ever; any name she had before is irrelevant) and when we met she explained the meaning of her new name, which i won’t give because damn it’s very google-able. 

she was a so fascinating to me, always talking about some feminist theory or philosopher, and i always felt so smart when we’d hang out. like a Serious Thoughtful Adult and not a kid. and liz was less serious but no less smart. she played scrabble a lot more and for a while we got pretty close. she took me out after coffee sometimes to a shitty bar with pool tables and tried to teach me how to play pool. she had her own cue and even though she was like 5′2″ she could break like nobody’s business. i never figured out how to do that part. 

alex would come with us sometimes. he was tall and handsome and rode a motorcycle, and was the first openly bi guy i ever met. one time he invited me over to his house and we laid around listening to the smiths and talking. he burned me a copy of their greatest hits that i still have, all scratched up so it probably doesn’t play anymore. he crashed his bike more than once driving drunk. dumb fuckin kid. now he repairs coffee machines and sails, i think. life is funny. 

a few other people ran in groups. meg and waide and the aforementioned jason and ardyce. some people called meg “big megan” and another megan (her family was really wealthy, rich southern politicians who knew the clintons and have a mention in sweet home alabama--the song, not the movie) was “little megan” because she was still in high school. i joked that i was medium megan, but the whole thing was awkward because big megan was fat and i was small fat and little megan was skinny. i’m gonna blame it on thoughtless dudes, but who the fuck knows? we all pretended not to mind it anyway. 

waide ended up being a connection with other people who i met later. my hometown is weird in that it’s actually a pretty big part of the southern punk scene, so a lot of punks i meet have spent time there, and anyone over a certain age probably spent time at the bar waide worked at (the stone lion, and then maybe also the pickle barrel) so he’s one of those people who i’ll end up mentioning even though we haven’t spoken in years. 

at some point a kid named ory showed up. i think he was 16 when he started coming around, and i used to call him puppy because he was excitable and silly, full of energy one minute and then mopey crashing the next. like a lot of people there he drank a lot and would be fucked up sometimes and make dumb choices. i always wanted to protect him. when i was 22 (and he was 19, i think) we ended up sitting together at the second lotr movie and having some kind of weird chemistry. that summer i drove him home one night and we had a super heavy make out with lots of clothed grinding. honestly the furthest i’ve ever gone with a cis straight(ish, he hooked up with a couple dudes but idk if he’d say he’s bi) dude and it was awkward in that we never talked about it? and then he came to visit me a couple years later in new york because he was in the navy, and he got super drunk and passed out on my couch and was a mess because he literally never stopped being a puppy. 

he’s fucked up now, fully cancelled bc he said shit about girls rock camp (really dude?) and also probably cheated on his wife on their honeymoon? idk, it was fb rumors and then he deleted. but i’d believe it, honestly. 

and then there were all these absolutely random downtown characters: dirty mark (a crusty punk who was drunk or high most of the time) and shirtless dave (yeah he really didn’t wear a shirt that much) usually came as a pair. sometimes dave hung out with a guy my friends and i called blue hair. he once hit on my friend and she panicked and gave him my number instead of hers because her brain didn’t make up a fake number fast enough. 

there was sandy the flower man, who just passed away a couple weeks ago. he’d get flowers from local florists and go around on his bike, stopping into the coffee shop or to bars with roses and carnations and daisies. people gave him money usually, but sometimes he’d just hand you a flower because he wanted to. i saw a picture from a memorial and there was a portrait of him that was sat on top of his bicycle, all of it surrounded with flowers on flowers. so pretty. it’s what he deserved. 

things changed around 2005 or so, i think. by that time, all the old baristas had left and the kids who came in were all weirdly religious and went to the christian college on the mountain. they made shitty coffee and sometimes played xtian rock and most of the old regulars couldn’t take it anymore. ian got sick around that time, too, and ended up selling the place. they stopped carrying much tea, if any. 

but they finally sold the space and moved in like 2015. i remember the first time i drove by and didn’t see the lights on inside. it felt like seeing a friend from grade school all grown up, maybe the kid you had a crush on but they have a family now and you don’t think they’d recognize you at all so you just have to walk away. gone. 

fuck this post is long as shit, i’m sorry for anyone on mobile. but damn it was good to get my memories out. 

[cryoflyte]

WE WERE WARNED

I was going to tweet this but it turns out Twitter only lets you thread up to 25 tweets in a draft. That’s insufficient. So fuck it, I’ll do it here. I’ve been ranting about this since season 1 (back when it looked like just a tiny blip on an otherwise great show, rather than our first warning sign that these people might have no fucking clue what they’re doing), it’s actually managed to get worse since then, I’m not over it, I’m not getting over it. 

Gather round, dear Voltron Twitterati (or tumblrati or whatever y’all are called around here). Let Cryo the Salt Phoenix regale you with ALL the reasons why Pidge's gender flip being a plot twist was, and remains, completely fucking stupid.

First, a couple of external biases to acknowledge:

1) I feel Pidge was the worst possible character to gender flip, precisely because it was so obvious. He's spent 30+ years getting "lol DotU Pidge wore a headband and had a squeaky voice, maybe he was a girl!" jokes. Buying into them is a disservice to both the character, and the stated idea that VLD Pidge is supposed to represent people who don't fit a norm. Okay sure, you took the character who got mocked for not sufficiently conforming to his gender, flipped him, then went "look how our Pidge represents not fitting in with the norms!" Nah, guys. Not how it works.

2) ...of course that's if you believe them suddenly saying Pidge is supposed to represent people who don't conform to begin with. All we heard in the beginning was "We wanted to make him a girl! Look, he's a girl! Girl, girl, girl! No, not trans, not nonbinary, GIRL! Look how smart we are for making him a girl!" That and how Lauren didn't like DotU Pidge, so she decided she needed to make him more appealing. To her. Which...

3) Pidge has, in all prior canons (possibly excluding DDP? Was it ever fully explained there?), been an alien. In VF (which supposedly Lauren did watch but didn't like him any better in) he was explicitly an alien ninja. So, you know, forgive me for being a little bitter that we got "the only way to make Pidge appealing is make him a girl. Now here, have five seasons of Keith the alien ninja!"

4) My complaint is not really against the concept of gender flipping Pidge. Had they done it upfront as they did the changes to Sven and Allura, I'd have been somewhat irked for the aforementioned reasons, but hey, new reboot, new rules. My complaint is about them lying to our faces for three months (up to and including Bex bluntly saying "Pidge is a boy" in an interview) in service of perhaps the most pointless plot twist in franchise history.

And that brings me to our feature presentation. Get the popcorn, y'all, I've got the salt.

Someone name for me a single solitary moment, watching the first three episodes, where there was even a hint that Pidge was wrestling with his (gonna use male pronouns until the reveal) identity. No, not "oh hey if you go back with knowledge of the twist this was foreshadowing it!" A point where prior to knowing about the twist you went "huh, what is Pidge not telling the rest of the team?" and it was NOT answered by him revealing that Commander Holt was his father. Seriously—please point one out to me. Pidge's premise is very consistent in the first three (and a bit beyond, but I'll get to that) episodes: he has his own reasons and priorities for being there, he'll do the bare minimum of teamwork necessary to achieve his own mission, and he's not there to make friends. Everything he does is consistent with this read. Nothing is pointing to further complexity, him hiding something totally unrelated. There's the picture, but it's at best confusing: I just figured it was his brother with HIS girlfriend, to be honest. Were we really intended to interpret a sad look at an ambiguous photograph as "Pidge is hiding another completely different big secret related to that picture!" rather than "Pidge is sad about his family, like he keeps saying"?

It would have been simplicity itself to add actual hints. Instead of Hunk just presenting "look, it's his girlfriend!" as fact when he finds the picture, "who's the girl? She's cute!" and have Pidge get defensive over that. When they're putting on their armor, maybe skip Hunk making the first of 500 throwaway fat jokes in favor of Pidge looking uncomfortable at the thought of, you know... changing in front of the others? Have him duck behind the armor case? Do something. Do ANYTHING. 

Even after the internal reveal in episode 3, we get nothing. Allura specifically drills her about "hey, do you have a big personal secret?" and she doesn't look the slightest bit worried or defensive, she just looks confused. Pidge is not that good an actress, we know that from Lance having to save her butt back at the Garrison. Also from seven seasons of watching her complete inability to keep her emotions in check, ever.

Pidge's internal struggle is never once presented as being about her gender, or about how the team thinks of her. It's about whether she's going to put aside her own personal priorities for the sake of the team. This is the struggle that's been built up. This is the struggle that she's invoked and settled in the climactic moment with Haxus: "I'm not a child. I'm a paladin of Voltron!" Haxus could just as easily have called her a "little girl" if we were supposed to be reading any sort of gender conflict into this.

(Of course as it is Haxus didn't know she was a girl—more on that later—but that's purely arbitrary. A show that wanted to sell Pidge having a gender conflict would have made Haxus realize she was a girl, especially given Coran's "we were supposed to think you were a boy?" in the next episode. You can’t just pretend it’s so obvious then have nobody else notice it ever.)

Now, I of course acknowledge not every worthy plot twist has to be able to be guessed by the audience prior to the reveal. But it doesn't work here. Because here's the reveal: Pidge is all "I was afraid you'd think differently of me" and the whole team is all "of course not!" and that's that.

Wait, she was WHAT now?

We have not seen Pidge struggling with this. At ALL. There is zero emotional weight to this scene because there were absolutely no stakes shown. You cannot have her say "I've been worried you'd think of me differently" when you haven't fucking shown her worrying that they'd think of her differently. This is writing 101, guys. And then Shiro is all "owning who you are is going to make you a better Paladin"—WHEN HASN'T SHE? Literally the thing she's been shown struggling to accept is THAT SHE'S A PALADIN! Not that she's a girl!

This reveal is bad. It's so, so bad. The only way I could make sense of it after first watching it was assuming they'd wanted to make her trans and chickened out at the last second. Nothing said in this scene seems to be part of the same show we've been watching for the past five episodes. It's not clever or interesting, it's just bizarre.

But now let's take a step back. Because in order to set up this terrible, pointless, non-event of a plot twist, we have also done great violence to certain characters. We have turned Pidge and basically all of Galaxy Garrison into morons.

Is Pidge not supposed to be a genius? What exactly was her thought process here? The whole wide world of possible disguises was open to her, and she went "I know! I'll pretend to be a boy, and I'll make myself look identical to my brother, the famously MIA space explorer. Nobody will catch on." Really, Katie? You couldn't buy some hair dye, maybe a spray tan?

And then nobody fucking does catch on. The Kerberos mission is so well-known it's being used as an object lesson for cadets, Pidge flips out every time the mission is brought up, and not one person thinks "hey, this kid who looks exactly like Matt Holt totally freaks out whenever the mission Matt Holt disappeared on is mentioned." This does not hold up if you think about it for more than two seconds.

Why does she even need to look like Matt for meta purposes? Oh right, because of the picture that was attempting to carry the entire load of this twist. Great. That's totally worth the blatant insult to everyone’s intelligence, not to mention the affront to common sense.

On that note, one specific point of the disguise: why does Pidge wear glasses? We know she doesn't need them. She takes them off to wear her helmet, Katie never wore them. And sure, they make her look less like Katie Holt... but they make her look more like Matt Holt. This was fairly weird even in season 1. It only gets weirder when we finally meet up with Matt.

Oh hey, guys. She's not just wearing a pair of fake glasses that make her look more like her famously MIA brother. She's wearing his literal glasses. Which, incidentally, we know are functional prescription glasses because he says he doesn't need them anymore because the Garrison fixed his eyes.

How many people did this go through without anyone pointing out that wearing glasses you don't need actively fucks with your vision? 

Yes, I know this is a show about alien space cats that I'm holding to standards of opthalmological realism. But most television manages to understand how glasses work. And again, it's just pointless. Why not just have Katie wear glasses to begin with? Oh right, because we need the guy in the picture to wear glasses and the girl not to because SMART PEOPLE DOING A PLOT TWIST, DERP!

It didn't work, guys. It didn't work at all. You know how people figured it out early? Because you gave her a female VA and we've had thirty years of "lol Pidge looks like a girl" so hey look, the picture confirms the meta theory that people were pitching even before we saw the character designs. Doesn't add even a shred of impact to the reveal. The only way to add impact to the reveal was if she’d actually been worrying that the others wouldn’t accept her being a girl. But no.

And after all this dumb, what exactly is there to show for it? Well... nothing. Nobody else in the show knows she's a girl. Aliens consistently refer to her as male. The team has used female pronouns for her what, once in seven seasons? Miss the right four episodes and even a viewer wouldn't have a clue.

Don't get me wrong, I respect the stated rationale that gender shouldn't matter. Know how else they could've shown that? JUST MAKING HER A GIRL IN THE FIRST PLACE. I mean, if they're going to crow about how brilliant they are for "plot twist, she's a girl!" maybe people should at least be able to tell she's a girl after said twist. Or hey, even better, they could make her trans, or genderfluid, or non-binary, put in some rep that would actually be brave and interesting. But no, instead we get "she's totally a cis girl, but it doesn't matter and nobody can tell because she's there to represent people who don't fit neatly into a box!" That's pretty much the worst of all options, guys. Good job.

And then everyone went “OMG yes! You made Pidge a girl! Yay rep, you’re so smart!” without the slightest shred of critical thought on how it was handled, while a tiny handful of us hoped it was just a fluke, the product of a showrunner pet project that didn’t signify anything for the rest of the series.

Then we got Keith’s Galra reveal, which somehow managed to be even worse.

Then we got season 4 making the bulk of season 3 immediately irrelevant.

Then we got two years on a space whale.

Then we got season 7, where everything is garbage. 

Every season has just been more and more ridiculous plot twists in place of character or consistency. It turns out nope, if we wanted to see where this show was going, the horrible Pidge twist was the ONLY part of season 1 we should’ve looked at. Let the salt flow freely.

Okay, I think that's it. Thank you for coming to my TED talk?

[hornyliverpudlianputz]

I got an ask recently about the doubling method used on The Monkees and I got excited about answering an historical film question. But I didn’t realize until I went back and re-read the ask that I didn’t actually really answer the question, which had more to do with the stage of development of 60s film technology and less to do with how The Monkees doubled Micky and Davy in their respective episodes. So, in an effort to rectify that and as an excuse to talk MORE about film history, here is some stuff.

First let’s cover the basics: in the 60s, movies and TV shows were shot using physical film on 35 mm reels. It looks like this x:

Obviously by the time The Monkees started airing in 1966 film had sound (something that is actually added to the physical film strip) and color, but easily accessible color film was actually a fairly recent development. (Note that there is an actual difference between “color film” and “black and white film”, it has to do with the emulsion layers. Ask me if you want to know more!) Gilligan’s Island, a show that ran for 3 seasons from 1964 to 1967, was shot on black and white film for its first season. The pilot episode for Hogan’s Heroes, which aired in 1965, was also shot in black and white.

So in 1966, color film was still a relatively new thing. This is why the initial auditions and interviews of the boys aren’t in color; that was supposed to be footage that no one saw so they used the cheaper black and white film to shoot with rather than waste more expensive color film.

But anyway. Physical film. This is important because it means that to get “special effects”, you have to either accomplish it in front of the camera in real life, or you have to manipulate the film afterwards. And manually editing physical film is A Bitch. The industry standard was 24 frames per second which means that, for every second of film there were 24 individual frames. So if you wanted to edit just one second of film you had to edit 24 frames of material. This is probably the reason why the “stamps” that were done in the first season were freeze frames; it was most likely easier on the editor to reproduce a single frame for 3 seconds worth of film with a stamp than to stamp 3 seconds worth of individual frames x.

Also, cutting a film together quite literally meant cutting up film and splicing (basically taping) it together the way you wanted it. This is how they did a lot of the disappearing/appearing with people and objects; they film part of a scene with or without the thing, remove it or add it in, and then splice the film together to make it look like no time has passed. If you look carefully during those scenes you will often notice tiny “glitches” where something in the “after” section didn’t quite line up with something in the “before” section because it’s extremely difficult to get them to match seamlessly. Which makes the Daddy’s Song scene from Head very impressive:

The nice thing is, the ability to splice does mean you can throw in pretty much anything you want to as long as it lines up size-wise with the rest of the film. That’s how we get animations intercut with live action material x.

There is also cutting the film vertically, which is one of the ways I mentioned the “twinning” of actors was accomplished. In order to have the “identical” characters in the same frame where we could see their faces, they would have the actor who was doing double duty shoot both characters parts on opposite sides of an invisible “line” (usually based around a vertical reference so the editor had an easier time of it) and merge the two versions to make one x.

But avoiding having to edit the film is why a lot of the time they used what are called “practical effects” to work their magic; that means they had to do it for realsies. This leads to the use of good ol’ fashioned trickery to get things to look a certain way. This includes the use of body doubles, again for the aforementioned “twinning” efforts, which is basically where someone of a similar build or body type gets into costume and stands with their back to the camera while the actor plays their scenes to them as if they were the “identical” character x.

There’s also just plain sleight of hand or doing something just out of camera view. I’ve briefly discussed it before here but take a close look at this bit from “Some Like it Lukewarm” when Davy falls into a closet and emerges with a “moptop”, and pay special attention to the shadows on the inside wall x:

I had originally assumed there was a cut here between the addition of the mop, but looking at Davy’s hand on the door frame told me that it wasn’t. His hand doesn’t move at all from when he disappears from sight to when he re-emerges, which is nigh on impossible to accomplish if there was a cut. Further evidence is found in the shadows on the closet wall where you can see a hand placing the mop on Davy’s head while he’s out of view. That means that to pull off this neat bit of comedy, there had to be a person standing out of sight in the closet set who not only had to put a mop on Davy’s head, but had to time it just right. And they did. 

And of course we have the classic Hollywood “smoke and mirrors” effects like Davy pulling comically over-large objects out of a bag they shouldn’t fit in x

or him growing an extra pair of arms spontaneously. 

Finally the tried and true method of using wires that the camera doesn’t pick up to make things “levitate”:

On the other side of the spectrum, “Head” is basically a study in experimental film technique, but that is for another post. Anon I hope this better answers your question, and I had an absolute ball writing this so if anyone else has questions or comments on subjects like this do not hesitate to ask!