#i could have sworn i had a more unique tag for writing related posts other than just... 'writing'.

[freshlybakedspiderbread]

thinking about the series of stories i wrote for shipweek back in 2021 and i dont usually like talking about regrets and stuff when it comes to writing because I feel that could possibly colour expectations and i’d rather other people make their own opinions about how something i made might make them feel. Buuuut its been long enough and also i’m not particularly attached to that story anyway so...

I feel like i’ve said this before, but i was going about fantastic chain of love in the most unnecessarily troublesome way possible. Like I had actually planned out exactly what ships i wanted to do for the whole week beforehand... But then suddenly on the very day before the week started, i completely changed my mind on what i wanted the first ship i wrote to be. And because of the gimmick i commited to with those stories, it meant I had to come up with something new for each day of the week, so i just kinda stream-of-consciousness quickly thought of something and then tried to write it within twenty four hours, and then did this like twelve times, for seven or so days in a row 🤪 

Honestly its a miracle that any of it even came out comprehensible, and i did ultimately accomplish my initial goal, was to just write anything because i had been in a huge writing rut up until that point. Now only time will tell if history will repeat itself or if im approaching 2023 shipweek any smarter! (I mean i kinda already know the answer, but i’ll let any potential readers decide for themselves... o_o)

[noplotnostory]

Test to see if I still can...

A NSFWednesday Monsters in Mythology

So, I’m working on my first ever skelesmut, and I wanted to make sure that the proper skeledick was used in this fic. I ended up going with the most common type of skeledick utilized in UnderTale skelesmut, but this was still a fun topic, so here’s a Monsters in Mythology about it.

Now the reason why this is a Monsters in Mythology instead of a normal NSFWednesday post is actually related to a prior Monsters in Mythology about my favored theory on the nature/origins of the skelebros. Specifically, that they are, in fact, spartae. Or spartoi. Again, the spelling varies from source to source...

But the point is that they are identified as both men and skeletons. Literary sources lean more towards the “man” thing, but visual depictions of spartae/oi are almost always skeletal.

Now this could be because Ancient Greek storytellers had a bit of a bias regarding the “default state of being” as Overly Sarcastic Productions points out in her Trope Talk video about Manly Men (the relevant information here being that much like “white straight male” has been considered the default character template for much of Western Literary History, the default character template in much of Ancient Greek literature was usually “Greek bisexual male”), so describing the spartae/oi as “men” might have been an assumption, especially after they demonstrated aptitude in combat, participated in the founding of a city and began to breed with humans.

Or it could mean they had visible genitalia.

I mean, both skelebros have features that make them clearly not-human-skeletons, so why not?

There’s even precedent for this in animal biology. I didn’t actually know about this until I stumbled upon an article on Cracked.com titled “5 Ways Evolution Designed Your Body To Be Awesome At Sex” and read the final item on the list. Apparently, most male mammals actually have a bone in their penis known as the baculum (have fun writing Sans pun with that), and since there’s a significant amount of monsters with animal features and quite a few have sort of mix-and-matched features, we can’t rule out the possibility of the skelebros having some skeletal features that resemble other species more than the human skeleton. Since this bone basically makes it impossible to not have a boner (unless magic skeleboners can move? Somehow? I’m no expert on this, I’m just trying to get people thinking about all the options) it does make how clothes fit a little questionable, but they were already skeletons so Sans clearly is wearing a belt or has a drawstring or elastic band in his shorts if he’s not actively using gravity magic to hold them up? Whatever. How skeletons wear clothes is a subject I just don’t feel ready to tackle in depth.

Moving away from the “All Bone” possibilities but not quite entering the “ectojunk” category yet...ok, I’ll level with you, the basic idea of this post and several links for reference (which have been supplied thus far, as I believe in providing sources) have been sitting in my drafts for a while. As a result, there are currently two reasons why this section isn’t happening the way I was hoping it would.

Reason One: The Tumblr Purge.

While text posts are still allowed (maybe?), fanart blogs have taken a hit and some have been removed entirely. This includes a blog that had gone by the URL “rexphilia”. I had only discovered this blog and it’s fanart shortly before I even heard about the then-upcoming purge and gotten sick almost immediately after. Between my preoccupation with my own posts, the ongoing conflict between myself and the dreaded season known as winter, and the fact that I had known about this blog and had gathered (now useless) links to include in this post for less than a day before setting this whole thing aside in my drafts to focus on other things, I have no clue where to find this artist, now and therefore am unable link anything to credit them or provide screenshots for reference. Best I can do is provide the name I know them by (rexphilia) and describe what I can remember about their fanart. Which is, coincidentally enough, the thing that I wanted to reference in this post to begin with: Their skeledick design.

Rexphilia’s depiction of skeledick (both Papyrus’s and Sans’s) was black with white rib-like ridges that kind of remind me of the rib-like decor on the jacket of Ghost Lewis from Mystery Skulls Animated know that I’m actually reading that description and was that the inspiration for the design? Was Rexphilia a fan of MSA? Or am I remembering the placement/shape of the ridges wrong because I watched a video reviewing MSA earlier today? OH, CHEESE, I DO NOT WANT TO THINK ABOUT LEWIS’S GHOST DICK! NEXT PARAGRAPH! NEXT PARAGRAPH!

Reason Two: My memory capacity (or lack thereof).

Ok, so I could have sworn for the longest time that I had at one point read a fic where Sans had a black skeledick, sans the white stuff. I also could have sworn for the longest time that the fic in question was puppehgal’s oneshot “The After Show”. But rereading that fic’s description of skeledick leaves me...conflicted... Don’t get me wrong, it’s still a very interesting and unique depiction of skeledick (and skelebro anatomy in general) and the fic itself is still something I would readily recommend to fellow fans of Sans/Reader smut, despite not being tagged as such (it’s told through the perspective of an “Anonymous Human Female” who is referred to in the second person throughout), but this particular skeledick could be interpreted as a visually distinct variation of ectodick instead of a permadick, depending on how much control Sans has over that magical webbing. Since this is a oneshot of what is tagged as a One Night Stand, neither the human character experiencing all this nor the readers enjoying the written version have the context to know either way.

If everything had gone as planned, the Non-Bone Permadick section would have contained an accurate description of rexphilia’s depictions, links to fanart containing said depictions, and a linked mention of “The After Show” that isn’t wishy-washy on whether or not the skeledick presented in said fic is, in fact, a permanent feature of Sans’s anatomy. It would have been glorious.

Now for the fandom’s most prevalent version of skeledick: Ectogenitalia.

I’m not going to bother linking anything because there are so many fanfics and fanart with this particular type of skeledick, it would be kind of pointless. You probably know what I’m talking about, anyways, if you’re reading this post.

There’s a reason this option is the most popular: Depending on your personal interpretation, ectojunk can be a free pass to give the skelebros any type of genitalia their partner (or the content creator) desires. If ectojunk is naturally customizable and the skelebro attached to and/or summoning said ectojunk has sufficient control over his magic in intimate situations, he can have male parts, female parts, change the size and shape of said parts, move or alter said parts while maintaining a position or motion in which the movement or alteration of said parts would probably catch someone off-guard, and possibly, maybe, depending on who you ask, be detachable for long-distance use.

Unless you just want to experiment with other headcanons or aesthetics, color seems to be the only potential problem.

In most depictions, Papyrus’s ectowhatever is always orange and Sans’s is always blue, because these color schemes are the Commonly Accepted Fanon, but there are people who have other theories on what color the magic forming the skeledick ought to be.

This is totally fine. My dear friend @popatochisssp is one of those people and her smut is so delicious that I’ve praised it in three different NSFWednesdays and her reasoning for the magic color she uses totally fits with her headcanons concerning the skelebros and her portrayals of them in said fics.

But people that aren’t decided on their headcanons on what the color should be are left with uncertainty. Since I’m one of those people, I guess I’ll just avoid mentioning the color completely.

@ladyarkytiorofdunans

[kittykatknits]

"I do have thoughts on the potential baby and how it could play into the story along with what it would mean to Jon/Sansa as characters." I'd love it if you'd expand on this.

Anonymous said:Do you think Sansa will end up raising Jon and Dany’s child?

Anonymous said:I know you said you’ll do a write up and it’ll take a few days but can you please just answer this question: Will Sansa raise Jon’s and Dany’s kid?  

The original plan was to do a longer write up after the season was over but I’m going to do this summary instead. It’s still ridiculously long. It seems like there are a number of frustrations, to put it mildly, with this season. I’m going to dispense with this whole Jon bending the knee nonsense, because it isn’t happening in the books. Then, we can go into the potential baby.

First, and this is a big surprise to me, is how much impact dropping f!Aegon from the storyline is causing. Honestly, I thought it was a good idea when first learning of it and am still pretty sympathetic to the decision. However, D&D are still trying to create, with varying degrees of success, the dance of dragons we are going to see in the books. It’s this change in the source material that is leading to the stand off between Jon and Dany. To put it bluntly, Jon kneeling to Dany is going to be a complete non-issue.

I think it is extremely unlikely Jon will be crowned the KitN, that’s a show-only invention, given to him for a variety of reasons. Right now, I’m playing with the theory of Jon as a King of Winter since it better matches with his story. Jon isn’t going to be king, he is not going to be in a position to negotiate or offer up the north.

Now, let’s talk about the wight hunt which led to Jon’’s offer to bend the knee. Sure, the specifics of how it happened are stupid, but the entire damn concept makes no sense at all. The WW are an intelligent race, they communicate, they have weapons, they have a purpose, even if we don’t know everything yet. But, wights can not go south of the wall. It’s enchanted, it’s got spells. Remember the rotting hand with Aliser Thorne? Realistically, if this happened, the only thing Jon would have to show for his efforts is a rotting corpse. He could dig up a random grave and get the same results, with a lot less danger.

So, about the big meeting at the dragon pit. Again, that won’t happen either. In the books, it isn’t going to be some gathering of nobles in KL (it will be all blown up by then) that alerts the Seven Kingdoms to the danger in the north. It’s going to be Sam at the Citadel. He’s perfectly positioned to know when the wall goes down and happens to be where the single largest collection of ravens is located in all of Westeros. Honestly, this is one of the scenes I am looking forward to the most, I expect to be crying over it.

Back to Dany, as I said, the show seems to want to keep some version of the Dance. This is why Jaime’s character is all over the place, because in the books he’s already filed for divorce. It’s one of the reasons Euron’s story has been changed as well because he sure doesn’t want the IT. As for Tyrion, he’s not Team Dany and is not going to be interested in forging some sort of truce between her and Jon. He’s actually going to play Dany and Aegon:

“Dragons,“ Moqorro said in the Common Tongue of Westeros. He spoke it very well, with hardly a trace of accent. No doubt that was one reason the high priest Benerro had chosen him to bring the faith of R'hllor to Daenerys Targaryen. “Dragons old and young, true and false, bright and dark. And you. A small man with a big shadow, snarling in the midst of all." 

- Tyrion VIII, aDwD

In the books, I do believe Dany will land at Dragonstone, ready to conquer and take the throne. She’s going to be battling against Jon C. who will use Tywin-like methods in his efforts to secure the IT for Aegon. It’s going to be bloody, a lot of innocent civilians are going to be killed. There is a quote in the first (I think) Arianne gift chapter with a dragon dream that describes just how bad it will be. Dany’s conquest will come to an end after she blows up KL, killing an entire city’s worth of people. It’s only after this happens that Dany will finally turn her attention north to fight  the WW.

In the meantime, Jon will have no crown, no houses sworn to him, and he won’t have the Vale. Kneelgate ain’t gonna happen, at least in the books. There’s a ton more regarding Northern Independence, the GNC, the “Dance of Wolves”, and other stuff that plays into this too, but they all reinforce the same conclusion. They aren’t going to marry to join the north and south, they aren’t going to mary for some grand political union.

Ok, let’s talk about the Magical Targ Baby. As I said earlier, Dany is not barren and she never was. At least in the books, if Jon has a child with her, it will be a bastard. It’s just like Martin to give Jon what he most wants, a child and family in Winterfell, and what he wants least, the child to be born as a bastard like him.

Now, will, the two of them have a child together? Maybe. Possibly. We don’t really have enough information to know for certain. Whether this happens or not, I do believe Dany will not survive the series. She’s going to go out saving humanity from the ultimate form of enslavement, fulfilling the messianic role as the breaker of chains.

As for Jon, he’s a rather straight-forward monomyth hero. He’s interesting and well-done (at least to me) but not particularly unique as far as characters go. In the show, Jon has reached the final stage of his journey, freedom to live, and is singularly focused on defeating the WW. The truly fascinating part, is that it was Sansa who came along on his journey towards the end. Like, that blows my mind every time I think about it. Sansa was the one at his side while he finished his journey. How awesome is that? In the books, we don’t yet know how Jon’s return home will play out, he’s still in the underworld.

We also don’t know what will come after. Will Jon go out like Neo, saving the world? Or will he be closer to Rand and Frodo, still alive but no longer able to be part of the world. Or perhaps he is Odysseus, longing for nothing more than going home again?

Before I go any further, I want to state, that I am a Jonsa shipper. I hope/want (like desperately so) them to be endgame but I will not say that is the case because I just don’t know. None of us do right now. I’ve also been reading these books for years and have learned to keep expectations low when it comes to my personal wish list. So, to get to a point here, I am not advocating for or wanting a Magical Targ Baby.

Frankly, this season has left me kinda depressed with aSoIaF, forcing me to think about the potential endgame for the first time in awhile and I’m not enjoying it.

If Dany does get pregnant, there are two options I foresee, neither of which I like. Dany is either going to die in battle and her child meeting the same fate. Or, she’s going to give birth and still die. If that does come to pass, I do believe the child will be raised in Winterfell by Sansa. As I said, I don’t like these options. Martin loves his dead mothers (“Lady Stark. She’s dead.”) and the idea that he would do this to Dany really turns me off.

Now, if Dany dies while pregnant, it flies really close to the idea of a Magic Targ Baby as sacrifice and the theme of death paying for life. The other option is that Dany gives birth and then dies saving the world. I can’t figure out how to make this work (that wall is on the verge of falling) in the middle of the war for the dawn. If this happens, Sansa will be raising Jon’s bastard in WF, a repeat of what came the generation before. I find this problematic too. There are a number of implications here I find deeply uncomfortable. But, it fits with Sansa’s story and the mother theme that keeps appearing in her arc.

Now, as to how this relates to Jon and Sansa. I’m going to assume, for this post, that Jon lives through the end of the series. If this is the case, Sansa will still be raising the child and be the only mother it knows. If the two of them get married, or end up together, it will be based upon a relationship of respect and affectation that will grow to something more. I am not convinced we will see all or even most of that take place on the screen/page. We will get a dream of spring.

I could go on and on but hopefully this answers some of the questions sent my way today. I will also say that I play around with and mull over theories constantly and tend to be very slow to make a final decision on what will happen. Like my “Jon will be remembered as a villain” theory or my ever-favorite “Sansa will never marry but give birth to a bunch of bastards” theory. My tendency to do this is what has kept the books fun for me so long, the idea of possibility. So, these are my thoughts, as they are today, in this moment. Ask me again in a month and you may get a different answer. 

ETA: I’m not trying to depress anyone, sorry if this did. I’m trying to answer the questions as honestly as I can while also keeping my expectations low. I will also happily remove tags if they are upsetting anyone.