#i know this book was written before Calamity

[ickaimp]

[BotW] Excuse Me While I Kiss this Guy (discontinued)

My SidLink fic, ‘Excuse Me While I Kiss this Guy’, has been getting a lot of attention on Ao3. It’s two parts, and I tried to write a part three from Link’s POV. That was back in 2018, and I’ve since moved five times. Needless to say, it never got past the WiP stage and the HTTYD fic, ‘Coming Down is the Hardest Thing‘ ate our brain instead. But in honour of Tears of the Kingdom, figured I’d put everything in roughly a chronological shape and post what got written. It’s not complete, prolly never will be, but hopefully it’ll give a couple chuckles. 2900 words. There is also now a bonus scene at the end of Excuse Me While I Kiss this Guy on Ao3.

+++ He didn’t mean to return to the Zora Domain.

Death Mountain lived up to its name, Vah Rudania had been freed from Ganon’s touch, and all Link wanted to do was go somewhere cooler where he could relax and recoup from climbing over a moving metal structure that was standing over gigantic pools of lava. So his duty done to the Gorons, he’d pulled out the Sheikah slate and hit the first shrine that looked near water.  Finding himself facing a handful of angry armed Zora guards had been a bit of a shock, but he’d honestly been too tired to care. Getting the helmet off and breathing the cool humid air of the Zora domain helped, more so when Sidon arrived. The shock on the prince’s face was comical. Even more so when he told his guards to stand down and offered Link a bath. +++ The kiss to the top of his head was unexpected, and made his chest feel light and fluffy. The gesture was as unexpected as it was confusing, but not in a bad way. Sidon’s explanation, his offer of kisses, just made it funnier. +++ Kisses. Link reminded himself as he struggled and fought his way through the shrine. Sidon believed in him, and when Link finished, he could see Sidon again. And get another kiss. +++ He didn’t know how to pay back Sidon for the encouragement. For the kisses. And he wanted to. He wanted to show Sidon how much it meant to Link. How much Sidon himself meant to Link. Armour was important to Zora. Milpha had made him armour. He was pretty sure there were books in the library that explained how to make armour. And armour would keep Sidon safe when Link wasn’t around. He could do that. He had gems and supplies from his travels all over Hyrule. He could make armour. +++ He couldn’t make armour. He could, but not armour for Sidon, who was much larger than Link, or the average anyone. The armour came out the same every time he tried, just the right size for him to fit in to. This was a problem. +++ “You’re making something entirely new.” Rhondson said, shaking her head over Link’s confusion. “You and your magic have seen jewellery and many kinds of armour and know what shapes to make things it has seen before. But to make something new, you’re going to have to do it the hard way.” Link looked down at his hands. Well, it wasn’t as if he didn’t have the time to learn something new. 

+++ Zora made their armour from scales, but Link didn’t have scales. Which meant that he needed to get scales somehow. What had scales? Fish, of course. Zora, but he couldn’t ask them for scales, not for this. Dragons. He had a small collection of their scales and horns. Not enough for armour. Which meant that he’d have to get more. 

“I’m gonna go fight a dragon.” Link declared, anticipation singing through his body. 

“Link? Is everything okay?” Zelda looked worried as she peered into his face. “You’ve kind of got your crazy eyes on.”

He just grinned at her. 

“Okay then.” Zelda sighed and shook her head. He knew that he worried her, that before the Calamity he’d been raised to be a knight, with all the genteel manners and stuff, but he didn’t remember any of that. 

And really, it sounded completely boring and dull. He liked who he was now, he couldn’t go back to whatever he’d been before. Zelda had accepted that, but she still fussed at him. It was kind of... nice, in a strange way. 

She kissed him on the cheek. “Go do your thing. Try not to come back all bloody.” 

He appreciated the fact that she never referred to the castle as his home. It was hers, certainly. And while he didn’t mind staying here, it didn’t feel like home to him. 

His heart called him elsewhere. 

‘No promises.’ He agreed, kissing her cheek as well. Her kisses weren’t like Sidon’s. Still sweet, in a different way. Softer, for one thing. And not as varied, she liked to kiss and be kissed mostly on the cheek.

He liked Sidon’s kisses better. The feeling of rough scales on skin was more welcoming to him than that of soft Hylian skin. Kissing Zelda didn’t leave his heart fluttering and skin tingling and wanting more. +++ The dragon scales were too large and unwieldy to just make into armour. Especially for someone who was as streamlined as Sidon. Cutting them down with normal tools didn’t work, they shattered swords and shears alike. The only thing that seemed to be able to cut dragon scale was dragon scale itself. Link growled to himself, realising that this meant he needed to get more scales, some for the armour, some to use as tools. Which meant more time away from Sidon. He sighed. He could do it. +++ ‘Think it’ll work?’ Link signed, as Bazz looked contemplative, looking over the scales Link had harvested and started to cut into shapes based off the books and patterns he’d found. 

“It should.” He agreed. “My biggest concern is what are you going to attach it to? You’re going for shock resistance, so metal is out, which means some sort of really heavy duty hide or cloth. If you use leather, you could boil it, making it harder and shape it, but I don’t know what would be thick enough.”

That was a problem. Monster hide might work, but he’d killed most of those. 

And he wanted something for the shock resistance too. It was kind of worrisome that Zora couldn’t even touch shock arrows, leading Link having to collect them from the Lynel....

Link paused, looking up towards the tip of Shatterback Point. ‘Be right back.’ He signed, and took off running. 

“Wait! No!” Bazz hissed. “Link! He’ll kill me if you come back dead!” 

Link laughed as he jumped off a balcony, his hang-glider snapping open and catching the ocean breeze. The breeze wasn’t strong enough to get him all the way to the top, but it’d get him part way there. 

+++

A few hours later, Link pulled the fresh Lynel hide out of his pack and set it in front of Bazz. ‘Think it’ll work?’

Bazz made a sound like he couldn’t decide if he was laughing or crying. “You’re certifiably nuts.” He said, shaking his head. “The two of you deserve each other. Yeah, I think that’ll work.” 

Link tilted his head to the side, wondering what Bazz meant by that. 

“We’ll have to sit down sometime with a pint or two and I’ll tell you some of the things our Prince has gotten up to in the past.” Bazz grinned, his sharp teeth glinting. “You heard about him being eaten by the Octorok and going up against Vah Ruta on his own? That’s nothing.” 

Link grinned. He knew he liked Sidon for a reason. +++

“Link, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about your new habit of carving dragon scales during meetings.” Zelda’s lips pressed together in a disapproving line. “It’s scaring some of the Council.”

Link grimaced. It was about the only time that he sat still long enough to get any carving done, he was constantly interrupted otherwise. ‘You want me to stop?’ He offered. He’d just have to figure something else out. 

“Oh good heavens, no!” She beamed at him. “Could you please sit next to Councillor Tyrol? We might be able to get some work done if he stops sharing his ‘hunting’ stories. He’s quite terrified of you, you know.”

+++ Zelda glanced around before tugging on Link’s arm and pulling him closer. She had a mischievous curve to her lips and he leaned in so no one else could overhear what she was saying. “Some of the Council thinks you’re dating a Gerudo woman.” She whispered, then covered her mouth with a hand to contain her laughter. 

It made a certain amount of sense, he was in Gerudo town a lot. … He also wore the clothing a lot while coming back. Did they think that he was dating himself? Or someone else? He paused, eyes narrowing as he remembered the inquires to the Gerudo Chieftain's health. “Riju’s twelve.” He deadpanned. She may have been the steadfast leader of the fierce Gerudo, but she was also a kid who loved soft plushies, especially those of Sand Seals. 

Zelda nodded with barely repressed glee. “I know that and you know that, but how many people here do you think have meet a real Gerudo in their lives? Much less know who the Gerudo chief is?” 

That was a good point. They should probably fix that, get more of all the various tribes together more often. ‘Should I start mentioning Isha more?’ He offered. 

She thought about it, then giggled. “You should invite her to the castle as a merchant.” Zelda grinned. “Plus, I’d like to meet her.”

+++ ‘You need a break.’ Link signed with a frown as he looked Zelda over. She looked kind of like she wanted to punch something then take a nap. “I can’t.” Zelda closed her eyes, looking frustrated. “There’s no where in the castle I can go that someone won’t find me with some sort of emergency. I feel like all I’m doing is putting out fires.” 

Link pulled out a bomb and offered it to her. She stared at it for a moment, which he was starting to think was the default reaction to being offered a bomb. Although it wasn’t like he offered them to just anyone, but Sidon always looked so surprised and confused by the bombs. 

Zelda looked like she was contemplating using it. 

“No.” She shook her head, pushing the bomb away. “Thank you, but no. That’d just undo all the hard work we just finished constructing.” Which was a pretty good point. With a shrug, he put it away again. A thought hit, and he looked her up and down, silently measuring her with his eyes, a smirk growing.

“Link.” Zelda crossed her arms, turning her body away, looking uncomfortable ‘We’re almost the same height and size.’ Link grinned at her. He was a little broader in the shoulder, she a bit broader in the hip, but still about the same proportions. Well, given his lack of height.

“And?” Link bounced a little on the balls of his feet, feeling pleased with himself. ‘That means you should fit my clothes.’ He explained. ‘And I should fit yours.’ She stared at him for a moment, her mouth agape. “There’s no way it’d work. I mean, you don’t talk, that’s easy for me to mimic, but the ruse would be over as soon as you opened your mouth.” 

That was easy enough too. He held up a finger, silently motioning for patience, then rubbed his nose vigorously, until it was red, then coughed a couple of times. “I’m sick.” He rasped, trying to pitch his voice slightly higher. “I need to stay in bed.” 

Then he fluttered his eyelashes at her and grinned. 

Zelda gaped at him. “No.” She said, then immediately wavered. “I mean. No. It couldn’t possibly work.” He shrugged. ‘I need to finish carving some scales, I could do that while you go on a ride, get some fresh air. Wear the champion tunic, everything'll run as soon as they see you coming.’

Link could see her visibly waver. “Oh.” She glared at him, stamping her foot in irritation. “This is a horrible idea. Give me your tunic.” Link grinned and tapped the Sheikah Slate, switching clothing until he was wearing the Champion’s Tunic, pulling it off over his head and tossed it to her. Zelda wrinkled her nose, holding it away from her face.  “When was the last time you washed this?” He gave her a puzzled look back. He never washed any of his clothes, any rips, tears, burns, or other assorted damage were gone whenever he dismissed them and put them back on. “Nevermind.” She shook her head, pulling the tunic on. It was a little big on her in the shoulders, but nothing too obvious. He pulled off his pants and handed them to her as well, before wandering over to her wardrobe and sorting through it before finding a long nightgown, pulling that over his head. This method of getting dressed was such a hassle, it was so much easier to get dressed via the Sheikah Slate. Less fabric to get tangled up in. “You’re hopeless.” Zelda informed him sounding amused and fond as he felt hands tug the fabric down over him. He gestured his thanks, smiling a bit to see her in his clothing. It was kind of strange, seeing her dressed like this. He reached up, undoing the pins in her hair, fingers quickly undoing the braids and messing up her sleek smooth strands. He could never get his hair nearly as soft and nice. The thought of if Sidon liked his hair, so different than the Zora’s scaled flickered through his mind, then he dismissed it. He was pretty sure that Sidon liked him, scales or no scales. Pretty sure. “Gah.” Zelda batted his hands away, stepping backwards out of reach before moving towards her vanity, checking her hair in the mirror. She made a face at seeing it so disordered, then grabbed a tie, pulling it back in a messy pony tail, then teasing the hair out on the sides of her face a bit. “What do you think?” She asked, looking up at him. Link walked over so they could see each other in the mirror. They looked disturbingly alike. They could almost be siblings, possibly even twins. He nodded, and she echoed the movement. “Okay.” She agreed. “This’ll work.” He gave her a thumbs up. +++ A knock on the door interrupted Link’s concentration and he growled in annoyance. He stood up, detouring long enough to grab a blanket from Zelda’s bed and tossed it over his head, wrapping it around himself like a cocoon before opening the door. “What?” He snapped, his voice low and rough. “n-Never mind.” Councillor Tyrol scurried off. Link huffed, shutting the door with a slam and went back to making smaller scales out of larger scales for armour. +++ “Got any clothing in red?” Bazz inquired, idly twirling his trident in one hand. It immediately put Link on edge, because there was something a little too casual sounding to the warrior’s tone. 

‘No.’ Link signed, confused. Almost all of his clothing was blue, unless he took the time to dye it. ‘Why?’ “Could you get some?” Bazz asked. Link shrugged. He didn’t have any at hand, but it’d be easy enough to swing by the Hateno Village and talk to Sayge at the Kochi Dye Shop. He could spare five rupees for payment, and a few extra apples or spicy peppers he could use for red dye. ‘Yeah. Why?’ 

“The next time you come to see the Prince, you should wear something red.” 

This was starting to sound really suspicious. ‘Anything specific I should wear?’ 

“Doesn’t matter. Just something bright red.” Bazz shook his head. “As a favour to me?” He asked, attempting to look as sweet and innocent as a kitten. It didn’t quite work.

Link did kind of owe Bazz for his help in making the armour, making sure it’d fit the prince and keeping it a secret from Sidon. “Okay.” He agreed. It was easy enough. 

“Thanks.” Bazz gave him a bright grin, full of razor sharp teeth and Link wondered just what he’d gotten himself into. 

++++

“Link! My Dear!” Link had just enough warning to brace himself before he was picked up and pressed against Sidon’s ginormous chest. “It is such a pleasure to see you!”

“Sidon!” Link wrapped his arms around Sidon, pressing as close as he could. Sidon smelled like he usually did, water and musk, something always made Link relax. 

It meant safety, comfort, and laughter.

He kissed the nearest part of Sidon he could reach, his jaw just below the fin that framed his face and felt a small shiver run down Sidon’s frame. 

Sidon eased his grip slightly, pulling back so he could look Link over. “It’s so good to see you healthy. No new scars?” 

Link smiled and shook his head. Sidon beamed in delight, taking Link’s hand and kissing the palm. “I’m glad.” 

Seriously, Sidon was the only person who worried if Link could take care of himself. Well, maybe other than Zelda, but she was more likely to laugh at him for it. 

“Is this new?” Sidon asked, peering at Link’s shirt. It was just a basic tunic, but he’d dyed it the bright red of fresh chillies, as Bazz had requested. 

Link shrugged. Honestly, he couldn’t remember where he’d picked the shirt up from. 

“I like it!” Sidon beamed at him, and Link wondered how he could contain such joy in his face. “We match!” 

… They did. He looked at the shirt against Sidon’s scales and realised that they did, the dye almost the same colour as Sidon. Anyone seeing them together would probably assume they were a matched set. 

He didn’t know whether to be grateful or to strangle Bazz for his meddling, when Sidon barely set him down for the remainder of the day, almost always keeping in contact with Link. He also made a note to wear more red, if this was Sidon’s reaction. 

-fin- -And that’s all folks.

[simonnebethel]

Writeblr Introduction

Just learned what a writeblr intro is so I'm gonna make one before I go to bed lol

I've already done something like this a few days ago but that was when I had no clue what I was doing lmao, so might as well make a more in depth one

About me:

19, she/her, bi

American

I write mostly fantasy and urban fantasy, and honestly i dont think i've ever written a story that was non-fantasy lol

Started writing when I was 10, but it was mostly Warrior Cats fanfiction on Wattpad lol. I went through a writing slump for most of highschool but last year I decided to get back into it since I'm not doing anything else lol

I like to read fantasy and classic lit, also anything with vampires. I also have a soft spot for slowburn romances where the main characters dont kiss until, like, the 4th book heehee

In love with anything gothic, vampire, and wlw 👩‍❤‍💋‍👩

I think one of my more niche interests is any early 2000s fantasy/sci-fi movie with a nu-metal/rock/alternative soundtrack like Queen of the Damned and The Crow. They are just...*chefs kiss*

My current stories:

A Chant for Blood (Formerly known as Account of Calamity)

Account of Calamity is a gothic victorian fantasy about a Grand Marshal, Karliah Helisende, and a blood-drinking fiend, Yorick Gwynplaine, who work together to investigate the mysterious portals that spawn dangerous creatures into the city of Isarnan, all the while Karliah is being haunted by the mysterious ancient temple that watches over her every move.

I'm currently working on the second draft, and I may start looking for beta readers once I'm finished, although I know I'm not far from finished with this novel. I also plan to make it a 4 or 5 book series, and slowly add a slowburn romance.

12/30/24 - Second draft has been finished!!

Looking for beta readers! Look here!

Our Demonic Hearts - The Craven Pact Series #1

Our Demonic Hearts is a urban fantasy about a cambion woman, Ana Kravens, haunted by her past. Taking place in a small Mississippi town, a man she went through a traumatic incident with, Beau Motloe, shows up on her doorstep one day with a deal; help him find his missing mother, and he'll give back the memories she lost during the traumatic incident. Her father, a demonic creature of unknown origin, wants nothing more than the Motloes dead, claiming that they were the very reason his daughter was almost killed 6 years ago. Ana goes against her father's wishes and accepts Beau's deal, suspecting that her father isn't telling the whole truth about that fatal night.

It is completed and available on Wattpad and Royal Road!! It was just a small project I had done for Nanowrimo, and has been edited at least once before being published. However, I plan to make it a trilogy and maybe have some spin-offs. This story is fairly new, but most of the characters are at least 5 years old and I love them very much <3

What I plan for 2024:

Finish the second draft of Account of Calamity and look for beta readers(In the beta reader phase!)

Start the second novel of The Craven Pact Series

Write a short story/novella or two taking place within the Account of Calamity universe. My brain is currently exploding with ideas rn(2 are in the drafting process currently!)

Write a short story about Ana Kraven's mom and how she met Marchosias, Ana's father.

Plan something for Nano?? Idk where I'll be in November lol

I'm interested in following other writers and reading everybody's stories! I would also be interested in a beta read/beta swap ^^

Other sites I'm on:

Wattpad: LillithOfBees

Royal Road: SimonneBethel

Nanowrimo: BeeWitch

18+ Writing discord!!!

[circinuus]

TW. chapter 109 and bungou stray dogs. angst angst angst. sad.

You've always wondered what you would do in the last moments before the world caves in.

Gaze into the sunset as the economy falls into ruin? Find a good book as humanity morphs into mindless monsters?

Run and fight for the love of your life?

You weren't sure. You've never been. Everything passed by like the sigh of dawn. Hasn't it been, always? You were having an outing with him. He was smiling, and you were too. Then he was gone. Then everyone else was gone. Then the world started to crumble, and you are left with nothing but blisters on your feet and soul.

Was there even anything left? Of this world and of this sick death maze? Of this twisted war and of the reality that you've all lost?

Nothing.

Nothing?

No, there was something. Your everything.

That was why you run. That was why you're here. Are you not?

You run you run you run. You don't care. You don't care. About the cracked walls, the blood staining the floor, the calamity that might as well struck the world by now. You don't care about all that. One thing only rings in your mind.

Dazai.

Dazai. Dazai. Dazai. The curious shell of a man. The pitiful, lonely man. The man you love.

Then you find him.

There he lays against a cold white wall. Deformed, broken, splashed with cracks and glistening maroon and oh God!-

It was sick. Horrifying. Wrong. Wrong. Wrong.

He just sits there. Why is he just sitting there? In front of him stands a person. No, you don't care. Your mind only rings about one thing. Dazai. Dazai. He is alright. He must be. He always has. This must be wrong.

So you ran. Like all your life depended on it. Maybe it did. Your life is his life. You are his. He is yours. The man in front of him resembles someone you know. A vacant gaze in his eyes. A gun in his hands. But it doesn't matter. None of it does. In your mind only rings one thing.

"Dazai?" you whisper. tentative, scared. His warmth in your cradle is familiar. But not the seeping coldness. not the dampness of the crimson.

"Dazai? Dazai?" his cheek is cold and for a split second, his eyelids seem to flutter. But even your gaze is getting blurry. What of? Of tears? But why? Dazai is alright. He always is.

A slight squeeze on your arm. He is too frail. Has he always been? That doesn't matter.

He is alright. You will help. You will help him.

"You'll be okay," you whisper again as you appraise his wounds. "You'll be okay," you choke as you realize his broken bones.

"You'll be okay," you rip a piece of your own, bloodied and tattered clothing, desperately dressing up whatever mess out of his body. "You'll be okay," you appraise him, again, perhaps to convince him once more. Or to convince you. It doesn't matter. None of it does.

He looks so frail. Hasnt he always? But he looks too frail you feel the beats of your heart escaping you.

"I'm sorry." you press another piece of ripped fabric into his wound." I'm sorry." The wound on his shoulder continues to bleed. It must've hurt. "I'm sorry." Then you patch the one on his side. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm sorry." Dazai hated pain. It must've hurt. It must've hurt. "I'm sorry."

Then you stop at the wound on his brow.

"I'm sorry, darling."

And maybe, at that point, you felt like your life is spent, too.

this took more time than I thought. i haven't written anything properly these days qwq (and i don't know if you guys rmb but) thank you @white-heartt @extemporeies @muderdrones! for encouraging the completion of this piece heh

♡ taglist @ashthemadwriter

[totallynotsloughjykk]

I know my account is mostly shitposts but I need to scream about this. spoilers ahead!! jun wu is such a well-written villain. xie lian has absolute trust in him, he looks up to him, he's been his role model ever since he was young so obviously you wouldn't suspect him, right? even from an outside perspective, the literal heavenly emperor is the last person you'd expect to be a calamity. it was such an amazing plot twist and it makes so much sense once you learn his motives xie lian was uncannily similar to him - both crown princes, both once beloved gods, both faced with destruction, both doing outlandish deeds to save their kingdom; hell, even born under the same star. jun wu understandably saw him as the perfect apprentice. no one else could really understand the pain he had to go through, so he took it upon himself the second he saw the opportunity the "body in abyss, heart in paradise" quote also is just.. amazing foreshadowing. that was the moment jun wu began pushing him towards the same fate he was doomed to out of envy and anger. it struck him so hard and understandably so, since he turned to insanity after the physical and mental torture he was put through. like I mentioned before, it's amazing foreshadowing to xie lian's choices later on in the book. he was faced with the hell jun wu had specially prepared for him, the same hell he experienced, but he still chose to do good and be kind. I can imagine jun wu's disappointment after he finally made xie lian reach the brink of insanity only for him to snap out of it because of a single water merchant (which I'll probably also make a rant about) they're perfect narrative foils in every single way and books 6-8 are my absolute favorites. mxtx's writing is absolutely amazing tl;dr: jun wu was the perfect villain and I don't understand why people say he overreacted

[baiwu-jinji]

i apologize in advance if this ask sounds kinda weird, but i'm kinda curious to hear your thoughts on how the narrative treats qi rong, mostly because i think interacting only with the eng version/fandom might take some context from his character. i've seen people complaining that some fans woobify him too much, others complaining that some people treat him as a pure hate-sink when he's more than that. while i do think he's a multi-layered character, i do sometimes get the feeling that mxtx did not go easy on him, with the revised version being even crazier than before (some even say he was given a bit of onesided incestuous subtext with xl, but i wonder if that interpretation isn't just the result of weirdly translated lines in eng). i think this might be because he strikes me as a meta personification of sorts for toxic fans who place their identity and self-worth on just one person they completely idolize, and when that person is shown to be imperfect they immediately turn against them, and we know mxtx has had experience with those kinds of people.

i do think he's largely meant to be seen as unsympathetic overall, though i think there's strong nuances with his character as well. since his childhood he always lacked something and never really had a well formed identity, his prince name being symbolic of his life. he projected himself onto xl in life, and he kept on absorving the worst traits of the people around his life without really understanding them in order to feel powerful and important, from the xianle nobles to the signature traits of the other calamities. he also strikes me as very... "little brother"-coded, in the sense that he keeps looking for any sort of recognition and seems unable to mature. even when he hates xl i think he still somewhat craves his attention, and qr only developed a bit when he was forced to let go of this role by accidentally becoming a father instead. i think it's also interesting that he started out a lot like his father, but ended up sharing the fate of his mother.

i do wonder how the cn fandom views him and if he's nearly as divisive as he is here. i'd also be pretty interested in seeing some meta about him from cn fans. again, it feels like some context is missing by not speaking the language the book was originally written in...

Hi! I think the narrative basically takes the same stance as Xie Lian in its attitude towards Qi Rong, which is the sort of "I can't love you but I don't want to hate you, the best I could give you is indifference". I agree that Qi Rong isn't meant to be lovable, but MXTX isn't dismissive of him as a character either - she devoted almost an entire chapter to Qi Rong's death, let him speak his mind, and gave him some form of closure.

Qi Rong having onesided incestuous subtext with XL (!!) in the revised version is...very interesting haha, I haven't read the revised version so I can't know (someone please tell me where to get the revised version ><). Although I want to speculate that even if there is some incestuous vibes, it's not truly sexual - it's probably libido directed the wrong way when you're lusting over someone else's identity, but not over that person per se. Qi Rong lusts over XL's identity in the sense that he wants to be XL - or rather he wants to be perfect, worshipped, all-powerful etc. (bit of digression, there's an underrated psychological thriller called Cracks starring Eva Green, if you watch it you'll know what I mean)

I don't have the impression that he's truly divisive in the Chinese fandom, but then I don't engage with the Chinese fandom that much so I could totally be wrong. And I don't think any context is missing for English readers either (except maybe the humour of QR's obscene language might be lost in translation?) because human nature is the same everywhere, and Qi Rong's distorted psyche is more a matter of human nature than cultural context.

As for Chinese fandom's view of QR, there's this great meta I translated and posted a few days ago, and I found some other opinion pieces about Qi Rong on Zhihu (Chinese equivalent of Reddit), as you'll see they're quite diverse.

A lot of Chinese readers say that what stands out most about Qi Rong is his comedic role in the story because his cursing and name-calling are really funny; a lot of people also mention being really touched by his self-sacrifice to save Guzi. I found this one post that has a similar view to yours, which is QR represents MXTX's toxic fans:

"I always felt it's the author admonishing her fans in an implicit way not to be as crazy as Qi Rong [...] My guess is that the author can't ask her fans outright not to act in this way because that would hurt people who support her but are immature, however she can't turn a blind eye to these people going around provoking more resentment, so she creates QR to remind her fans not to be like QR, or they'd appear as unlikable as QR to the public. But the author still feels symathy for thse fans, so she didn't depict their representation in the novel as totally incorrigible - QR retains some humanity and is a little adorable when he starts to care about people."

I also saw opinions about the narrative (or rather Xie Lian) not going easy on Qi Rong, like this one:

"Xie Lian is clearly a very good person but why is he so heartless to QR? He eventually treated QR as a joke and a burden, but QR was once a true follower of his. At first I thought XL was perfect and cares about everyone, but he never really cared for his cousin. When I read that XL felt neither joy nor sorrow when QR died saving Guzi, my heart chilled. If XL could forgive the masses who betrayed and reviled him, why can't he forgive his cousin who once followed him whole-heartedly?"

There're also people saying that Qi Rong's potential divisiveness is what makes him a great villain, like this post:

"What MXTX's well-received villains have in common is a tragic childhood and not being loved growing up, and they only have a soft spot for one person. Although these villains did horrible deeds and are unrepentant, they all reserve some kindness in their heart for the only person who's good to them. This contrast is striking and touching, yet most likely to cause controversy. Therefore, MXTX knows very clearly how to create a memorable villain, and I admire that."

Someone else says when they read about Qi Rong they "don't know whether to laugh or cry" (XL's signature emotion hehe). They add that "this is where MXTX is successful in writing a villain - you both hate and pity him; he's infuriating, but you don't really want to see him die either."

Another view is that since Qi Rong has no filter, he sometimes serves as the truth-telling voice. For example, when XL wanted to keep Lang Qianqiu in the dark about the truth of the Gilded Banquet Massacre, Qi Rong blurted out the truth.

There's also a question posted on Zhihu that asks why people like Qi Rong, and there're some interesting answers. There's one post that says "I find him attractive because he's depicted as alluringly ghostly in a lot of fan art like vampires in Twilight" haha

Another post says they like Qi Rong "because he's guilelessly wicked, while XL and Hua Cheng are hypocrites" emmmmm

Another one says they like Qi Rong because "being Xie Lian is exhausting, he's so wronged but he just endures it all, while Qi Rong just launches verbal assults whenever someone rubs him the wrong way, it's so cathartic. The most difficult thing in the world is to be a good person, because as soon as you do one thing wrong, everyone criticises you; but if you're a bad person, even if you did just one good thing, everyone praises you for it and shows you pity".

[faroreskiss]

The Power of Understanding / Pilot (Part 1 v2)

Rewritten to v2 on: 2023/09/10

Cheat Sheet

Read of Ao3

Chapters: Pilot, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9

Summary: You have been with the Chain for a while now, as their "scholar" and translator. You know everything about them, because you are from our world. But do *they *know the truth about how you can understand everyone?

A little introduction and world building concept for the Translator!Reader and her adventures. Check notes below for more info!

Non-linear fic.

AU fic, prior to TotK (instead of TotK, chain events happen).

Loosely based on the same reader in my NSFW fic, which is a very loose prequel to this one, and a work in progress.

More background info to come, if I feel like it :D

Warnings: None, maybe some cussing, but nothing is censored. SFW content.

Points of interest: This is your thing if you are into the mystery of chain being able to talk to each other. I am an actual trained linguist IRL, hence this HAD to be written!

You were daydreaming in the middle of the day about him again, amidst the smell of horse shit around you, when you're supposed to be finishing the work you have until the end of the day. Or until a new portal pops up to swallow you all to Goddess knows which Hyrule this time. Damned black-blooded monsters. At least, this gave you some break.

You, coming from our own era, have been acting as the scholar of the Chain for the last couple of years, while hopping from world to world with them. Knowing this, Malon put you to work on the books of the ranch, instead of letting you deal with the cows or the horses, even though you really didn’t have anything specific to do with maths. You thought she was being kind to you, not letting you deal with dirty ranch work, you guessed? She was a sweetheart either way.

You wanted to hang out with Twilight at the same time, so instead of using the little study Malon offered, you took the books and went down to the stables. You continued with your own stuff, while he was taking care of the horses.

There was also this little thing: you were the only one who understood every single one of them, (almost) very clearly, comparatively speaking. Sure they could communicate without you just as well, but due to a bunch of coincidences, you were the closest thing to the “translation magic”, if you can call it that. Maybe it was your Hoshi Sato gene*. Maybe it was the fact that you actually stayed with Link & Zelda in the post-Calamity world, around two years prior meeting the Chain**, maybe a bit of magic was also involved. Hylia works in mysterious ways! Did it almost cost you your brain? Yes. Was it worth it? Absolutely. 

Some Links, of course, understood each other better than the others, especially when their eras were, linguistically speaking, not that far. Time and Twilight were just fine. Legend and Hyrule were already able to understand each other, even a little bit better than Time and Twilight. Sky was a bit further away and had a “funny way of saying things” (according to the Sailor), almost gibberish, but when you listened and when he spoke slowly enough, you could at least get the gist of what he was trying to say. Wind, Time, and Warriors already knew each other from other “incidents” before the Chain, so they already had a way of communicating. 

These worlds also did not have many invasions and wars by “outsiders”, if you don’t count things like the Triforce War, Imprisoning War, Sealing War, and of course, anything that had to do with Demise, Ganon & co. and their horrible reincarnations. This meant, not a lot of language change.

In the end, what happened was that over the two years you have been together with the group, you helped them understand each other better. They adjusted their accents, and somehow warped the Hylian they speak in a way that the group would understand (and especially you), when the dialogue was still within the group. Of course, the Old Man would speak more “naturally” with Malon and vice versa, and some of the chain would adjust better (e.g. Twilight or Smithy) to the language of the era they are in. After some point, communication was not that much of a problem. You learnt it all in the end. 

Writing? 

Funny enough, Wild, Sky, and Twilight had similar scripts. Time and Wind had more similar writing systems. Wild, Wars, Legend, Time, and Rulie were also better at understanding the scripts of their respective eras. Overall, other than a couple of hiccups, most understood the others’ script to an extent. 

And then there was Wild. Also known as “The Cook” nowadays. The rest of the chain didn’t know you called them the Chain in your mind, and had your little nicknames for them. The nicknames most likely revealed a bit too much, and even though most of the secrets were out nowadays… You knew better than to risk more. You have caused enough damage, you would think sometimes. Even though you just couldn’t resist the urge. 

Anyway… Wild, his case and communication issues… were complicated.

According to the rest of the chain when you guys first met, whatever he was saying (and vice versa) was almost complete gibberish at first. Some terms and special names like “deku,” “korok,” “Hylia,” “Hyrule,” “rupee,” and such were still there, albeit with a different accent, and they helped, but it was not enough. You only found out later that it was kind of… your fault. 

In the end, he was also able to communicate with them just fine. Each Link had their own… language variation and accents, so to say. Some of them did not even have the difference enough to call it a “dialect” comparatively. As you thought, language change is a slow enough process, and with the lack of ‘conflicts’ (for lack of a better word) compared to your world, no wonder they were still somehow able to understand each other. . 

The Goddesses work in mysterious ways indeed.

How did it work for you, though? There was this little secret that… First time around, when you first dropped into Wild's Hyrule, “Hylian” was basically a weird mesh-up of English and Japanese to your ears, after the enchantment from the Great Fairies you have received. It was “so you could slowly understand and grasp and communicate”, you were told. 

Oh boy, it really felt like a genie granting you a wish, but in its own twisted way. You found that out later though. 

Second time around when you first met the rest of Links, though? The first enchantment… kind of messed everything up. Second time around, you actually ended up learning real Hylian. At least, the Hylian that was used as a lingua franca between you guys. 

Of course, some learning skill enchantment was definitely not out of the deal this time as well, thanks to Rulie & Time and their fairy friends, and of course the Smithy. But what a disaster it had been! Well, it wasn’t your fault that the first time the enchantment was made, nobody calculated that you would meet the Links from other eras.

You also naturally know the reason behind why Links in kind of irrelevant eras could decipher each other's texts, even when they didn’t understand the words all the time. Some were based on the Latin alphabet, and some were on Japanese kana. No way you could clearly explain it to them.

“Oh, by the way, you are made by a game company called Nintendo, and this guy is called Miyamoto…”

Yeah, no. That didn’t go well last time. Nobody even understood what you meant. 

That was a battle to fight for another day… Now, you need to focus on the budget of the Lon Lon Ranch. And not be distracted by Twilight’s statue.

________________

Notes:

Fanciest and most OP translator you will ever know. Star Trek Universe. 

"You” already spent three years with Link and Zelda in Wild’s world and were enchanted by the Great Fairies (with Zelda’s involvement) for the improvement of learning abilities.

[12pt-times-new-roman]

I do want to point out:

Ludinus knowing Laerryn's name is not, in and of itself, proof that he was alive during the Age of Arcanum.

Laerryn was on his list of "people to reach out to." But this document was in his home in Molaesmyr, a city he arrived in 500 years post-Divergence. Why would he keep that document, knowing that Laerryn fell with Avalir and that her body was irrecoverable? Why would it be pinned on his wall like it's important, over 500 years after Laerryn's death when speak with dead is off the table?

We know that Avalir itself is known about in present-day Exandria by esoteric scholars and specialists. Imahara Joe has a book that talked about it, so it's not like it's completely forgotten, and honestly, the entirety of the Ring of Brass were so involved with Avalir's internal politics and inner workings that there's no way their names weren't written down a hundred times over in various records, reports, and news clippings. It's not out of the realm of possibility that Ludinus was able to get ahold of this information, especially with Laerryn being so prominently involved with Avalir's most intricate arcane mechanics and experiments.

So I think that this list was of people Ludinus wanted to contact using the contact other plane spell. It reads as follows:

You mentally contact a demigod, the spirit of a long-dead sage, or some other mysterious entity from another plane. Contacting this extraplanar intelligence can strain or even break your mind. When you cast this spell, make a DC 15 Intelligence saving throw. On a failure, you take 6d6 psychic damage and are insane until you finish a long rest. While insane, you can’t take actions, can’t understand what other creatures say, can’t read, and speak only in gibberish. A greater restoration spell cast on you ends this effect. On a successful save, you can ask the entity up to five questions. You must ask your questions before the spell ends. The DM answers each question with one word, such as "yes," "no," "maybe," "never," "irrelevant," or "unclear" (if the entity doesn’t know the answer to the question). If a one-word answer would be misleading, the DM might instead offer a short phrase as an answer.

Personally, I think that Laerryn would most definitely count as "the spirit of a long-dead sage," as would most other pre-Calamity archmages (which I can only assume Vishtaron and Vatora were). The spell is on the wizard and warlock spell lists, so it's entirely within the realm of possibility for Ludinus -- plus, it even plays into his particular flavor of anti-theist magic, since it's essentially a non-divine version of commune.

[pawthorn]

So, I’m now seeing takes that the Princesses in Neverafter actually have a good point, and after we just went through this with Asmodeus in Calamity and Ludinus in Critical Role, I gotta say…

There’s a difference between being sympathetic and ethical.

There’s a difference between being sympathetic and ethical.

Asmodeus was sympathetic. He was also a murderous, manipulative, hate-filled liar who wanted to destroy every mortal in Exandria.

Ludinus is sympathetic. He brings up reasonable questions about the worthiness of the gods. But he has also been the benefactor of the suffering of others, of children under the protection of the Assembly under his protection, for years. He stole items of extreme cultural importance to the Kryn, propagated misinformation about them, and was the catalyst of war with them. He is the ultimate force behind almost every murder and act of violence in Campaign 3. He is not right.

The Princesses are sympathetic, but their goal is to destroy everyone and everything. The same as Null in The Unsleeping City, Volume 2, in fact, yet I didn’t see much sympathy for Null, or for Tony Simos for that matter.

And I wonder if people fall into siding with these villains because of the Marvel villain paradox.

Because Marvel saw people’s response to Killmonger in Black Panther and decided to make every villain sympathetic. But a key to Killmonger's appeal was that he was cleverly written, sympathetic while still being incredibly violent, carrying the violent teachings of the CIA and applying them to the entire world. And T’Challa’s response to Killmonger was not to reinforce the status quo at the movie’s end, but to tell those that came before that they were wrong and take steps to make real change.

This is contrasted by the Marvel villains who come after, who are sympathetic, care-giving to their communities, revolutionary, but whoopsy, they do some murders (often completely out of character) so the hero stops them and says something about change while restoring the status quo.

Which is frustrating and lazy writing and not what’s going on in these actual play shows.

Ludinus has been rotten from the start. We know the kind of person he is from his previous actions. And we know that, like most power-hungry people, he’s a huge hypocrite. Because the change he wants to see, where the gods can’t directly influence people at their whims? We’re already there. The gods are behind the Divine Gate. The Calamity is over. They cannot strike cities from the sky any longer. His brighter tomorrow is a lie, and his true goals are known only to him. (Also even if his goal was as he said, it’s a nuclear option, and things like that always affect the powerless and oppressed more than they ever affect the most powerful.)

The Princesses are also hypocrites. They lament their lack of agency, but they steal that agency from others. They always intended to kill the Snow Queen. They lied about their motives to the Baba Yaga, to their allies, until they had Rosamund alone. They stole the Book from Tim before the party did anything to disrupt or harm them. And if you don’t think that choosing non-existence for every being in the multiverse isn’t a breach of agency, I don’t know what to say to you.

And, unlike the Marvel heroes, Destiny’s Children specifically do not want to maintain the status quo. They’ve looked at the Fairies and the Princesses, and chosen not to side with either. It’s not as simple as one faction being right, though I know that would be comforting.

Anyway, I’m excited for what’s to come in both stories. I’m eager to see Ludinus’ real motives, and to see the third path that Destiny’s Children make for themselves.

[kaurwreck]

OMG you also like TGCF???? I didn't know that!! Who are your favorites? What are your thoughts on my loves Hualian? Have you read any of MXTX's other books? Kisses!!

oh I love love love tgcf, loving tgcf literally changed the trajectory of my career. I love tgcf so much I co-wrote a series comprising almost 100k words of post-canon continuation. I love tgcf so much I have four tgcf-related tattoos.

hualian is love and light and healing. san lang is my smarmy baby boy, and xie lian is my sage king ferret rat prince. i wrote a fic about the degree to which they are baby boy/ferret rat prince here.

(unsolicited tidbits below)

Xie Lian woke slowly, leisurely, in the loving arms of his husband. His heart stirred with affection. His heart stirred with mischievous intent.

...

“Good,” Hua Cheng nodded, his shape rippling as he returned to the more mature form that he’d forged in the kiln of Mt. Tong’lu. “Then come to bed; you’re too far away and I want to be coddled. Didn’t you say you’d coddle me? I want it now. We can talk about my rewards too.”

my absolute favorite is he xuan, though, which is why my tattoo of him is my entire inner bicep. i tried to write a fraction of my affection for him into a post-canon character study in which hua cheng tattoos him (badly).

but I'm particularly fond of and will eventually finish my post canon wip in which he teaches mu qing sex ed (badly):

The Supreme Ghost King, Lord Black Water Sinks Ships, hissed at Mu Qing like a particularly curmudgeonly catfish.

...

"What do you know about matters of the flesh?" Mu Qing asked when He Xuan looked away to guzzle the complimentary tea the server placed before him. He Xuan proceeded to choke, but Mu Qing merely rolled his eyes. It was He Xuan's fault for drinking the tea as if he'd never been forced to behave in public. Then again, Mu Qing thought back to what little he remembered of Ming Yi and considered that perhaps he hadn't ever been taught how to behave after all. Mu Qing took a delicate sip of his tea and pitied Ming Yi and his terrible table manners.

...

The reality of what Mu Qing had done set in. He'd invited a god-slaughtering, divinity-snatching calamity to a meal solely to pry from him the secrets of the bedroom that Mu Qing had assumed others were graced with while he was dutifully cultivating on Taicang Mountain. His horror was matched only by his frustrated libido.

...

"And," Black Water Sinking Ships said at the crest of a great sigh, "I'm not teaching you how to have sex." "I should have known better than to ask you," Mu Qing huffed, adaptable as ever. "How could I expect someone like you to know anything of clouds and rain?" "Do you think I spent centuries in the Heavenly Realm yet can't recognize negging?" He Xuan retorted.

(if you haven't noticed, I only write post canon tgcf. except for when I wrote my 1943 san francisco diaspora tgcf noir murder mystery dinner party)

other tgcf beloveds: ling wen, yushi huang, pei ming, shi wudu, and jun wu.

and then yes! I have also read svsss and mdzs. I have also written fic for those two but not in any way that's reasonable enough to snippet.

kisses kisses, ty for such a lovely ask, it makes me so warm to think about tgcf!!!

[austinmaris18]

Personal Thoughts on Yona (No Bashing)

I'm gonna be honest, I hate shipping discourse because at the end of the day, characters aren't real and muting tags, posts, accounts are a thing. I also don't want to clog the Sidlink tag with discourse bc it's bad enough on twitter. However, if there's one thing I've learned about myself, it's that when something's bothering me, I need to talk about it, if only to process it. So, apologies but here I go. I will say that I feel like this is a nuanced take, so I guess if you're interested in that feel free to read. Disclaimer before I go in: there will be absolutely no Yona bashing. This post isn't to bash or attack Yona, anyone who enjoys Yona individually or paired with Sidon. I don't necessarily dislike her as a character, I'm more annoyed at the writing surrounding her introduction.

I've been thinking a lot, and I think the reason that Yona's introduction bothers me so much is because it mirrors (more than likely unintentionally) a pretty annoying heteronormative trope. In Jeffrey Brown's book Love, Sex, Gender, and Superheroes (an amazing analytical book in general, would highly recommend) they note that following the publication of Seduction of the Innocent in 1954 - which claimed amongst other things that Batman and Robin were a couple - there was a sort of moral panic about comic books. This was also during the era of McCarthyism, and so to avoid Senate action, the comic industry created the Comics Code Authority, which partly ensured that "illicit relationships" weren't hinted at, and in 1956 Kate Kane as Batwoman was introduced to be a love interest for Batman to reinforce his heterosexuality.

Now, am I comparing Sidlink to the supposed queer subtext of Batman and Robin in 40s and 50s comics? No. Am I saying that Nintendo purposefully introduced Yona for the same purpose as DC did Batwoman? Not necessarily. I just think it's almost comical how similar the situation feels, and the writing doesn't help either. Now, Yona is apparently Sidon's "dear childhood friend" and is also from a different kingdom. That in and of itself feels so awkward because again, we've had Breath of the Wild and Age of Calamity AND their respective DLCs, and not once have gotten mention of Yona or her kingdom. Not in a throwaway line from an NPC, not in the murals of Zora's Domain, not in Mipha's diary. (Also, I know that technically, Age of Calamity isn't canon. But it still had input from the Zelda team, and it provides a supposedly canon view of the settlements in Hyrule before the Calamity.) Especially considering the fact that we get confirmation from Sidon's mural and King Dorephan's dialogue that the engagement to Yona is political/arranged, this engagement was not really foreshadowed in any meaningful way other than this sort of heteronormative notion of "He's a prince so he'll have to get married at some point." Like, Sidon had a whole fanclub in BotW, and not one of them knew?? Did the engagement happen in the six/seven years between BotW and ToTK? Again, for a race of long lived beings like the Zora, that feels a bit hard to believe.

This in particular is what makes her introduction so jarring. We've seen all the countless Twitch and YouTube streamers reacting, the TikToks, the tweets and Tumblr posts of people shocked and disappointed. Here's where I point back to the fact that Aonuma and Fujibayashi even addressed the fact that Sidon was so popular during the BotW DLC Dev Talk. That's not to say they were aware of the ship or even cared enough to have taken the action of mitigating any potential queer readings. Other than reactions to the gameplay and the overall story, I don't think Nintendo particularly cares what we do, think, or ship. But they did know that Sidon in particular was a standout popular character, and so it seems so strange to not pair him off in a more well written way.

That's before even mentioning the whole Zora mural where Sidon parallels his relationship with Yona to that of Mipha, literally calling her a sister. There's also no getting around the fact that he uses that phrasing as in Spanish, French, and the original Japanese (those are the languages I read, so that's what I'm referencing) so it's not an English localization quirk. And I know there's the line about his feelings become more "difficult to quantify" but again, why? Why not just say he admired her instead of comparing her to Mipha in that way if they want to show us there was something there even in their childhood? I know it's meant to be sweet and to depict a sort of growth of feelings between them, but it reads strangely.

So we have these aspects and then we compare this to Sidon's interactions with Link this game. (Also before that, I want to acknowledge something: the vast majority of us who ship Sidlink or just enjoyed Sidon's character were never under the illusion that Nintendo would go towards any canonical romance between Sidon and Link.) We arrive to Zora's Domain to find a statue of us riding Sidon from the Vah Ruta battle. There is a whole Hylian bedroom constructed near the area where Sidon and Link fought Vah Ruta (more built out than the bed area Mipha used). The whole "Link Shrine" Sidon has singing his praises. Sidon literally getting down on one knee, taking OUR HAND in both his hands before presenting us the ring (I know that the other champions say the same oath and give us rings, it's the imagery of a proposal that I'm referring to). Link standing equally distant to Sidon as Yona during Sidon's crowning. Yona telling us that when Sidon speaks it's more than likely to talk about Link. Already Yona's introduction so funnily parallels heteronormative tropes, but to actually have so much imagery and subtext for Sidon and Link makes it feel even more crazy? I think this is where people get so hung up on the idea that "Yona was just introduced to get in the way of Sidlink." Honestly, I think the interactions with Link are more probably concessions for fans (not necessarily shippers) because again, the devs know how popular Sidon is. But it compounds with the manner in which Yona is written into the game.

All that being said, I don't necessarily have a neat conclusion to draw from these thoughts, but going back to the Batwoman parallels, I do think it's a shame Yona won't have to chance to canonically develop further the way Batwoman did. After all, despite her original introduction, most people nowadays think Batwoman and think of Kate Kane, the redhead badass lesbian superhero. But that happened over the course of decades in a medium that iterates narratively on the same characters over and over. Even if we get a story DLC for ToTK that has more Yona content, I don't know that it would be enough to smooth over how awkward her introduction was, and it's hard to believe Nintendo would make another direct sequel or carry over Sidon and Yona to the next version of Zelda. But we can already see Yona's iterative growth through fandom!

Now listen. I know myself, and the truth is I'm never going to actively ship Sidon and Yona. But I'm sure there are amazing artists and writers out there who will flesh Yona and her relationship and history with Sidon out (whether that includes Link in a polycule or not). I'm glad that the game has made the interpretation of a lavender marriage between Sidon and Yona who have their respective paramours possible (with the politically arranged aspect of the marriage, Sidon's boisterous actions concerning Link, Yona's acknowledgement of Link's importance to Sidon). I'm looking forward to fics, standalone art and comics that take that route. I'm sure that there will continue to be art and fanfiction that don't acknowledge ToTK or Yona, and I will surely be consuming those as well. I really hope the homophobia and general discourse towards Sidlink subsides, because it's been surprisingly overwhelming on Twitter. I also hope that there aren't people actively attacking posts about Yona. After all, muting and blocking words, tags, and accounts are options across all social media platforms.

This post will definitely be a one off for me, and I don't ever see myself making another post like this again. I honestly might also delete this post in the future now that I've properly written out my thoughts. Anyways, time to get back to drawing practice and working on my fics.

[voltstone]

…about the clementine comic (again): why is she illiterate?

I've already written an exhaustive essay about the Clementine comics written by Tillie Walden, and that was before the first book was out. It was more of a discussion of what was already seen from the teaser, Walden being an…interesting choice to write this, but more than that, it was to preemptively stake the claim that no, it isn't canon. Not in the way that's just "ew I hate this I refuse," but more so, "the games (and character) by design and functionality do not allow for single interpretations to adequately continue the story."

These comics can be…a canon. But not the canon.

In the same way as The Walking Dead Game's (TWDG) fanfiction, like my own where I'm writing only my canon interpretation, the others who do the same, and so on.

(This right here is the essay, by the by.)

It has been a couple years since then. I have read both comics, and there is a lot I can say about them. I may one day, but not right now.

Instead, I want to direct attention to how…weirdly anti-apocalyptic it is?? Because it bothers me. A lot. That I'm watching a Clementine as a character get reduced to a kid who doesn't know how to read or write, doesn't know how to dress and care after a wound...

All things necessary for survival—the reading especially within an apocalyptic setting. Which. No. I'm not kidding. I do mean that.

Before I really indulge in my grievances, however, I will start by outlining the world that TWDG has established, and what it actually takes to survive within it.

(And yes, this is another lengthy post.)

[Surviving the Apocalypse]

Throughout the games, we ultimately see the apocalypse under two overarching eras. The initial stage is calamity. The walkers swiftly overrun what people upheld as a stable, and very secure way of life. And the fact that it only takes one factor to destroy the "we're untouchable" notion, it's terrifying. (Which, on that note, though the undead is an extreme, we did maybe learn this post-COVID. Ergo, stories like these may resonate a little bit better than they had before.)

What's different about The Walking Dead (TWD) as a universe is that…, the true calamity arguably doesn't hit until later, because the dead themselves aren't what really destroys the untouchable mindset as before. In most universes, such as The Last of Us, it's something contagious that you don't want. However, it is also something to overcome and fix. Though the dead in TWDG's cousin is far more brutal, if you isolate them, or find a way to vaccinate…, there could feasibly be a future where the fungus is more akin to rabies or the black plague rather than a devastating change in society.

Because that's how diseases like these work. They will never go away, especially if humanity mishandled their responses to them. Rabies is still out there, because it is a violent disease (am also under the impression that walkers is very synonymous with rabies, but I digress). The Black Plague? That whole thing? Yeah, the plague itself is also still out there. The problem was solved by nature, where a fire torched all of London.

But since then, we have vaccines. We know better (…I hope) in how to appropriately respond. And…that's the best we can do. Pathogens will always dictate life.

Of course, this isn't to undermind what outbreaks as seen in those other stories do to the world. They evidently are a turning point, if not the end, of humanity's way of life. The reason why, however, falls more in-line with a society being greatly unprepared, and a virus, fungus, whatever being the perfect amalgamation that spreads rapidly. It's what we as humans have gone through, will go through, to an absolutely extreme. Complete annihilation. That kind of deal.

Here's the thing about TWD, and I honestly could go on and on with this (and why it's my favorite apocalypse I've seen in fiction):

The bite is not what does it. Everyone is infected.

And the longer you think about it, that in itself will not end. I'm in the camp that it would be maternally passed-down given how blood circulation works within pregnancy, so. You know.

The point here is TWD as an apocalypse is very unique in this one change. It fundamentally breaks how people approached these kinds of stories. The walkers are not particularly fast because they don't have to be. They are a looming presence. As they deteriorate, because they're so slow-moving (as apposed to clickers), they manage to tell their own stories in how they died. You can see if they were bit, or starved, or shot… List goes on.

They are representative of nature reclaiming the world, and on top of that, a dangling threat to anyone who has the gall to think they're above it.

Because they're not. So either make sure your head is shot, or deal with walking around like a mangy pile of rot.

It changed how people approached this because rather than a devastating outbreak, this feels like a sort of damnation. There is a very bleak sense of finality to this universe—to the point where… Yeah. They could live on, try to find a cure, but this is it.

This is the true calamity of this world—not the walkers themselves, but the fact that they are there to stay, there is no going back. At least, for a long, long, long time. You can't just isolate them. If someone dies the wrong way, there could be one in the room right with you. Hence…making sure your head is shot.

And as with in the games, it is such a bleak reality that it forces people to just move on.

Which they do. The way to survive this initial era is, amongst a wide scope of things, to accept the fact and carry forth.

The characters that don't, and are simply too rooted in the past, like Katjaa… Well, they don't make it, do they? There's a reason why we don't see that many unable to let go after the first season, because they don't last. If they do, like with Tenn, it's because they got lucky and had a community to fall back on. Regardless, given what we see with Katjaa, Season One (S1) is this time.

The second era of the apocalypse is seeding. Both in the literal sense, and symbolic.

I'm not talking established communities, no. The closest we get to that is the boarding school, given they do have established practices. But, with how many things need to be done, the schoolkids are still within this second era.

Season Three (S3) is arguably the first season of the four solidly within the second era. Sure, there are still scavengers, but there are also several communities at once—enough so that the conflicts between end up being why they fail, not purely the dead. This leaves Season Two (S2) to be the fitting chaos that ensues between the eras, where much of the world is scavenging, they're reminded of how cruel winter is actually, but there are already solid efforts in building communities; then, Season 4 (S4) as well within the second era, with clear signs that there is the gradual chance of establishment.

The second era requires not only what the first proposes—moving on—, but also a sense of ingenuity. They're left with the scraps of the past world, but that past world also grew out of the earth, so they can cobble those scraps and earth together and make something out of it. We have Prescott on the airstrip; that is the epitome of cobbling things together. There's Richmond, and Howe's Hardware as well, where it's making use of the scraps left behind to establish proper farms. Then Ericson's as a meld of both—the kids have their structure, but they needed to feed off the land. (Not quite at the farm stage like the others were.)

All of what I've discussed thus far, however, is on an overarching scale (and isn't exactly exhaustive either). It can be extrapolated and used in reference to an individual's survival, but there are ways to better articulate an individual's survival than just…get the fuck over it, and build a farm.

And what's interesting is there is a vast difference in requirements depending on how they choose to survive.

With a community. Or. Alone.

The benefits to a community is you yourself don't have to encompass the three traits to survive. (Oh, yeah, this essay will have three primary traits of surviving on an individual scale; obviously there will forever be more nuance, but…shush. I'm typing.) Within a community, you can rely upon others that do encompass the three traits—and it doesn't have to be all in one person. The people within a community can specialize in skills.

And the schoolkids best emulate this.

Tenn and Willy, though they have their own skillsets, are example of those who need to rely on others. Both have the school, though they are closest to Violet and Mitch respectively—those, if asked, would likely be considered the closest thing to caretakers that either boys have.

And right alongside them, Louis, because my man…would like to say he's allergic to work, but really, it's the self-doubt. Now, if not a person who is reliant, he is good for raising spirits. He knows games to play. He brings entertainment.

There's Marlon, who's the well-spoken leader. Ruby, who plays nurse. Aasim, who…writes? Writing's important and stuff in the apocalypse, right?

(Yes. It is. Again, we will get to that, so, hush-up.)

Rosie. Dog. (This is also very important. You can pet her!)

Mitch was likely the muscle, or something along those lines. Omar, the cook.

I would say Brody sits near the "needs to rely" camp, given her anxiety, though, she does actually pull her weight, ergo, support. You can task her with anything. She'll likely be able to do it, such as with fishing and hunting.

Violet was also probably another support, though it is difficult to really tell at the beginning because she's withdrawn from the rest of her people. (I've always felt the Violet we meet at the start isn't who she was before the twins left. Of course, Violet is Violet, but… Depression, and stuff. Probably BPD stuff.) Here's the thing though: come to find, Violet is also another thing.

That being deputy. She can step-up and play leader when need be, but will step down because that isn't quite what she is—hence why the leadership ultimately goes from Marlon to Clementine by the end. This has Violet be the ultimate support. She can do whatever, fill in the leadership role, so on and so forth.

As the community develops, the others will find more nuances in themselves like these. Beyond what I've outlined, and the present nuances already in S4.

The thing with this line-up to understand is there's huge variety here. Not only in the nature of each role, but also their complexity. Because…, turns out, there's a lot to living.

Which. I mean. All of that is no shit, Sherlock. Because yeah.

When I go on about, say, Violet, it's to explain a very specific concept that one word is not going to do. There's a specific reason why I say deputy, and not second-hand; there is a thing where roles will and do change depending on circumstance, and time. (As with Willy (and Tenn) when he grows up, and when Louis becomes more confident.) But this doesn't mean it's more important. When I say "Omar, the cook," or "Ruby, who plays nurse," neither are to designate either as lesser roles.

They're actually crucial. Because no fucking shit. You need to eat. You need to learn how to mend yourself.

It's why those roles are so…simple. Because title alone says everything.

Certain roles, like Violet's (which…may or may not be ironic), are very community-centric. Others, like Omar and Ruby's, are fundamental to just life. And what you see is within communities, those fundamentals go from just skillsets to an art or to a science. When you have people who specialize in each, they are given the time and space to truly understand the ins and outs of what they're doing.

Cut to alone.

Those like Clementine.

Surviving alone is difficult because not only are all of these crucial roles in the community on one set of shoulders, there has to be great sacrifice. Of course, a leader or deputy isn't needed because there's just one. The social aspect of a community is not present.

With that social aspect follows specialization of the core fundamentals.

You need to eat. You need to learn how to mend yourself. And defend...

When you are on your own, without the security of a home, you are not given the time nor the space to truly know those ins and outs. So, when you look at those like Clementine, yes. She's not going to know little tricks, or the sciences, in what she does. The stitching for example:

Clean it. Sew the fucking body part shut. Wrap if you can. There you go, you just did stitching.

Which she does. However, S2, part of why the dog bite (oh, and yes, comic people? yeah, there's supposed to be a deep, concerning scar down her left forearm) scarred the way it did is because 1) …um, she was in a shed, dunking-back apple juice in between sutures in my case, getting jumped by a dead dude, and 2) the stitch-work was very rudimentary. Enough to close the wound and have it heal, sure. Then, S3, the same with Javi; Kate upon inspection does mention that she sees it bleeding through, indicating that again, it's very rudimentary. But, we have Eleanor examine it, and she notes that it is satisfactory, so long as it's looked after.

Had someone like Ruby, or better yet Eleanor (who Dr. Lingard complimented this exact skill) done it, they would have known different stitch techniques that not only closes the wound tight, but also leaves minimal scarring. And the other things, like how to adapt the techniques to different parts of the body, because…no, you really can't just stitch a knee like you would a back.

But again, Clementine didn't have the time to really learn the specifics. She's busy learning how to cook, and hunt, and defend, and scavenge supplies, drive, shoot, car maintenance, feeding a child, taking care of the child, protecting the child, prioritizing necessities…

Essentially, in terms of community vs solo, it's an argument between the specialized, and the jack of all trades.

Stay with me now. I'm not exactly done going over what is needed to survive, because there are more. There's the three traits I mentioned. But as I babble on, once the discussion over the comic begins, I do hope it's clear as to why I am going through these things as meticulously as I am.

Now we get to why Clementine of all girls would be able to live in this kind of environment. She's a kid, but like…young adult given the context. (I'm sure the medieval ages wouldn't argue.) She's like…stupid, or something. She only went to so much school, and we all know that only smart people graduate from school. I never met a dumbfuck at college ever! No!

…got a little side-tracked.

Genuinely though, what is it about Clementine?

I'll start this with a curveball:

What is the dumbest thing that she has ever done within the games?

There's room for debate, but the majority will probably point to S1, where she goes on to trust the voice at the other end of her radio—the voice being the Stranger's.

It's the decision that we, as an audience, thought Clementine was above doing even at that age. It's also what ultimately kills Lee.

Here's the thing, though:

Clementine putting faith into the Stranger wasn't just a child being stupid. For one, she is…eight/nine. So. A child. But, two, it was an exercise of her greatest flaw:

"She's a puzzle."

Something that is brought up, time and time again. To my mind, it's most notably done by Katjaa, whenever they're beside the train, and Duck is of ailing health. Clementine sits on her own log. Doesn't respond much to Lee, not until Chuck (as a breath of fresh air) comes to join the party.

See, she heard a voice from the other end of this radio—one of two (including the hat) mementos she has of her family—, and the one thing that she had in way of sanctuary. The Stranger said the right things, so she kept to herself with that radio, and let her desperation flourish.

Finding her parents was the one thing she wanted. So yes, through a child's gullibility, and a man's manipulation, she believed the wrong person.

We see this sort of flaw propagate time and time again. Granted, it does depend on the player's interpretation of her for S2 and S4, given we play as her, but in S3 where she's (quite literally, for the most part) out of our hands, what does she do? She keeps to herself. What happened to A.J? was a question on our minds, largely because of her reluctance to open up. Clementine lies to Javi about the New Frontier, then she turns around and explains her lie…, reveals her branding…, purely for survival's sake, not because she wholeheartedly trusts him.

Of course, in S3 it's understandable that she doesn't just open up to Javi. That game covers only a handful of days—short of a week by the end—, with the exception of the flashback sequences. (As opposed to S1, across several months, S2, a few weeks to a month, give or take, and S4, which sits about the same.)

Still, however. This is absolutely a part of Clementine's character: she's reserved. Without the player, her first inkling is to keep herself from the topic of conversation.

The thing to understand about this flaw, and how it bleeds into the comics, is that…I think(?) Walden acknowledged this part of her character. But…half of it.

The reason why comic Clementine pulled away from the boarding school is because she…, as she does…, kept to herself after her leg, got into her own head, and thusly ran off. I will say, I do agree that Clementine would be an absolute fucking mess with her leg gone because she has to rely on people again. (Which is devastating because of her specific trauma: à la parentification.)

Now…, run away…? Um…

(…it's also this specific trauma that… Um. Yeah no, she would not leave A.J.)

Whatever. Not the point of this essay.

The other half of this flaw, the half that the comics blatantly miss, speaks to quite an…insightful aspect of Clementine:

She is a very, very perceptive individual. Because the thing we see in S1 is that she's not just quiet. She's watching. She's observant. Clementine is quiet, not only because she gets into her own head, but because she's taking in the world, and so she notices things that other people don't pick up on.

Throughout S1, there will be moments where Lee can try to sugarcoat things, particularly after Duck's bite, only for Clementine to say it plainly:

"You don't know that."

Those moments speak to a kid who knows the difference between reality and not, and telling Clementine that she won't get snatched or bit is…not reality. It will likely happen, and it does.

Other moments, she'll notice details in the environment. She can point them out. Help Lee, as with getting into the train station. Make a comment, like in Hershel's barn with the "dookie"/shit/manure.

Or, back in the drugstore, where Carley (…not too subtly) outs Lee as a murderer in front of Clementine. …which, of course, Clementine picks up on. (The trigger for this is to pick up the photo of Lee with his family, hence why it can be before or after moving the desk.) To which, upon leaving the drugstore's office, she'll ask about it, and you'll have the option of being open and honest, sugarcoating it, or just flat out lie.

Staying in the drugstore! Lee asks for something to bar the entrance. Walkers are scratching to get a nibble. And? Immediately, she goes to his dad's cane (cuz that man ain't using anymore!).

S2. Same spiel. Because…, oh boy, incompetence is rampant as it turns out, and as I've stepped into adulthood for myself, I've come to appreciate that season as essentially "Clementine learns why the motel family fell apart, adults are grown ass children, she has to babysit them— KENNY, DOWN! STOP IT! STOP BITING THE RUSSIAN!— throughout a winter."

Because. Newsflash. Adults? About as stable of a concept as a table with a missing leg, then another one of mangled-together cutlery. And I will forever adore stories from a kid's perspective slowly realizing this fact.

(…also, parentification's a knocking. It wants in.)

Then, S3, where she gave up being the hero, but still…, somehow…, rattles off exactly what the player needs to do and where to get the tools when stealing a truck because she just can't help herself.

…okay, I think I've done enough. S4 also speaks for itself.

Point being, Clementine is a very perceptive, very resilient, and very adaptive person. It's why she out of all the kids she comes across is the one to survive.

Sarah immediately comes to mind as someone who really struggled with adapting. She can, but the tragedy of it is that it's not in time. Too little, too late. (Circumstances also don't help.)

With Gabe (if he dies), same kind of thing. He always struck me as someone painfully unaware of how good he had it, and how bad everything else was. And he needed to grow up. Fast. But again, that alone isn't what saves him—his uncle, and/or Clementine do(es). If he's saved at all, anyway.

Duck? Same fucking thing. And it was his death, through Chuck, that spurred Lee to start teaching Clementine the basics.

To which she adapts, and she adapts well. Their first outing doesn't go…all that great. Clementine freezes. But, throughout S1, she does shoot her first walker (with Omid, or in Crawford). If Lee cannot fight off the Stranger, she will be the one to kill him. And then, of course, the whole Lee death scene thing.

The second season starts off with Omid dropping because of a neglected gun. (Clementine freezes again.) Change is always on rocky road—despite the season prior, she still had a lot to learn, and she did throughout said season.

Perceptive, and resilient, and adaptive. To be those is the ticket to survival. Those are the three.

So why…does it seem like the comics don't know?

[VANCOMYCIN]

To anyone unaware, vancomycin is not a random string of letters for Clementine to work her mouth through. In fact, she knows how to read it. Had to, in order to inject this medicine into A.J within S3—whether or not she goes through with it is dependent on player choice.

Vancomycin, to give a better idea of the sheer desperation she was in, is not something to treat the common cold or flu. It's to treat Gram-positive bacterial infections—hence why it wouldn't necessarily work for colds or flu, given most are virus-borne—, and is generally synonymous with more serious infections.

Meaning. A.J was genuinely sick.

(My hunch is bacteria-borne pneumonia.)

I don't know what most of the fandom assumed, but it was not just a little bug. It was…bad. And a legit miracle that he survived (whether it be without the injection, or…with the injection where Clementine poked the syringe through his shirt? Game? Graphics?).

What likely happened was, somewhere down the line, he either just caught something on an off chance (the world hasn't been sanitized), or he got too close to danger and got himself sick that way off of one of the walkers/animals around. (If it was pneumonia, he likely inhaled something.) Regardless, Clementine was at a point where she…just did not have the resources to help him, would not know where to look, wouldn't feasibly be able to scavenge for it, and so she joined the New Frontier (whether or not you had her agree initially) because it was just that bad.

It is a heavy drug. Not only does it give insight as to why Clementine chose to join regardless of your choice for her, it also explains why the group threw her out for even handling it. It's not like aspirin that's easy to come by.

And, of course, there's the pronunciation of it. As with every medical term like this, it looks and sounds convoluted, but as you break it down, it's pretty straightforward.

Keep this in mind as I rattle on further. I find the vancomycin to be a very succinct contrast to what I take issue with in the comics.

Speaking of, the comics.

Hello there.

…Clementine.

The Clementine Comics, by Tillie Walden, read as a hard reset on the series, from S1 onward. Which yes, is the core issue. There was no effort in even trying to continue off from S4, it was just a way to have Clementine still run around, while avoiding the whole Telltale-RPG implications of a continuation.

So, if you're somehow out of the fandom and you're reading this, hi? Welcome. This is why people are upset about the comic, and for once, no, it's not just because this fanbase is being…unhinged. (In a bad way.)

On top of the plot decisions, however, there are things that just prove Walden was not the artist for this project. The artstyle is an interesting(?) fit for TWDG, but ultimately is an aside. There's the focus on romance. There's the dull characters.

And then there's Clementine herself. Very out of character, and that's coming from someone whose Clementine has…made decisions in her life.

What this essay will focus on, however, is the choices made to have Clementine incompetent.

Medically so.

In the first book, Clementine is taught how to clean and dress her amputated leg. I can get behind learning how to wrap the thing properly, because it is a different part of the body, and it's a different angle—on herself, not someone else.

But she asks…why she needs to clean it. Like she doesn't know. Clementine has to be taught that.

This kind of ignorance then follows her into the second book, because she fell ill (and slipped into a month-long coma??), largely due to her not cleaning the wound. Her leg had an infection. And it spread.

…okay. Um.

That's very interesting considering Clementine:

(S2) Got bit by a dog, felt like she needed to take care of it herself due to circumstances, cleaned it, sutured the wound with fishing wire, and then went to bandage it (before getting attacked). (By the way, the scar is not on comic Clementine. So.)

(S2; optional) Can sit beside Rebecca during her pregnancy to help, but then does have to assist with the walker/lurker problem.

(S2) Tended to Kenny's lost eye because he was beaten by a walkie-talkie by cleaning it.

(S2) Probably had to deal with that whole wound in her shoulder, you know, from the FUCKING RIFLE SHOT, either with Kenny, Jane, those at Wellington, or on her own (feat A.J). (No, they did not patch it up because time, and it went clean through. When Jane and Kenny fought, Clementine just had an open bullet hole.)

(S2/S3) Had to take care of a baby. With Jane or Kenny or in Wellington, and/or on her own.

(S3; alone S2 ending) Broke her finger on a car door to the point where she (presumably) had to amputate and cauterize the finger herself.

(S3) THE WHOLE VANCOMYCIN THING. I WILL GET BACK TO THAT.

(S3) Cleaned and sutured Javi's arm after he got shanked (cuz Gabe… never mind).

(S4) Twas a great start. Car accident—boo boo head.

(S4) Had to patch-up A.J cuz he got shot by a shotgun. And was in recovery for two weeks.

(S4; optional) Louis/Violet gets their finger chopped off. Probably helped deal with that.

(S4) Um. Her leg? You know. The one she lost, and the schoolkids managed to get her stable. Willing to bet Ruby would lose her fucking shit if it wasn't cleaned properly.

And that's just what we do see, in regards to Clementine personally.

Do I…have to go on and explain why it's fucking stupid that she doesn't know the basic information she had to learn in the comics? No?

Okay. Good.

I will get back to it, because I think this choice is indicative of a larger issue. We'll get to that weird…bias the comics have with Clementine being negligent and ignorant to all things medical.

Because now, we're here.

Not only is Clementine ignorant medically, she struggles to read her way through a dictionary. There's scenes of her sounding out words like she's in preschool.

For what reason?! Because in a world where people don't have higher education, they just don't read and write?! What?!

Okay, so, no, I didn't outline precisely why reading and writing (more so reading) is crucial of a skillset to have within an apocalyptic setting. I will do so now.

Because it's the crux of this essay. Hence why I've given it its own section. (…that's what this is, by the way.)

Why is it, exactly, "so" important Volt? Society's gone!! You don't need to read!

Listen up, ✨ dipshit ✨ This is an apocalypse. Not a nomadic setting.

Okay, that was a little mean. If you're asking this, you're not a dipshit.

Anyway, I am being genuine here. To the point where even implying that nomads by nature are illiterate is also…wrong. Because that's not necessarily true either, but assuming so falls into such an ignorant bias that people in 1st world countries have. (The same that the comics have.)

And this bias is the reason why I really, really want to have this discussion because the comics really rubbed me the wrong way with this, and, I'm kinda sick and tired of reading other people implying the same thing.

So let's start here:

What distinguishes us from the rest of the animal kingdom? Why is it we consider ourselves more intelligent?

The answer boils down to one thing:

Our mouths.

We can talk. And in doing so, we can communicate to each other very complex and nuanced concepts that require articulation beyond body language and emotion.

It's why we're able to distinguish things like envy versus just being irritated by someone. Because frankly? They physically feel the same because they are the same emotion. The context is what differentiates envy vs irritability. The why.

"I feel [this] because I want what they have." vs "I feel [this] because they're being stupid right now."

The [this] is the same. The body only has so many ways it can tell you what you're feeling, so it ends up boiling down to very basic emotions, where they can be felt at different extremes, or in unison. So. You know. Think Inside Out. What makes envy special is…you have to take context into consideration. Yes, it is also irritability, but it goes beyond that. And it requires language to communicate such a thing.

When you look at animals, that's why they're "unintelligent." They respond to what they feel the way they do because they don't have a way to articulate it. So they just react. Rather blindly in our eyes. Same thing with babies. They haven't gone through language acquisition just yet—they're in the same boat. It's also why a lot of dog breeds are said to "have the same intelligence as a 3 year old." It's related to language. They feel the same emotions, or whatever equivalent (can't claim I know how their bodies process emotions). However, they physically cannot exercise language verbally. Ergo, they're more or less stunted in the acquisition.

And then you have that we are wired to speak. Our mouths by design are made to verbalize complex sounds. A lot of our brain power is in being able to talk, or at least comprehend patterns in speech if the individual is mute. I for one was a child who rarely spoke for my first ~4/5 years, but I knew what people were saying. (Funnily enough, I was a lot like A.J.)

Beyond emotions, it's also to communicate things rather than [follow me, are you following, I'm looking at you, follow me,] it's "okay, I'm going over here, meet me by this tree." There's immediate clarification. There's a passage of thought between two brains. We don't have to interpret body language as much, we have to comprehend words.

To the rest of the animal kingdom, that makes us already mind-readers. Given that people are honest, and can articulate well, we literally are.

…it's also this emphasis on verbal language that has people be real fucking shit a reading body language, but whatever.

The point here is language is so fucking important. And there's a reason why we started writing things down. Some of the first records of written language, hundreds upon hundreds of years ago, were to keep track of agriculture. We also forget things, so we wrote those down. Heard of the Iliad? The Odyssey? Those were orally passed down for generations, but Homer decided to scribe them so they weren't forgotten. (From what I remember, he wrote those during the Hellenistic era of the mythos. …I want to say the stories come from the Mycenaean times?)

And above all.

Long distance communication. Or. Leaving behind knowledge.

So there would be couriers. There would be scholars who learned from scrolls of scribes decades before them.

(In modern times…, labels on products so that you know what it is, how to use it… Just a thought.)

Language is what makes us different. And by proxy, writing helps us retain that.

It is never something people are just going to abandon when the world goes to shit. If anything, it's going to be the one thing people will grapple onto by the skin of their teeth.

Out of the two, yes, language would come first. There are many cultures that lived (even thrived) without having a true writing system, and did just fine because the culture had such an emphasis on oral tradition, or other ways in cementing their culture to the test of time. A lot of the Native American cultures come to mind. Nowadays, however, there's been an effort to have them written so they aren't lost because…colonialism. I don't really need to explain that, but I do think the history is important to understand (the linguist in me is also morbidly fascinated). In summary, however, the way in which these cultures were torn apart rattled people, and people saw their way of life was evaporating with every person lost. They couldn't leave anything physical behind.

I do bring this contrast to light, however, because there is a detail to understand about an apocalyptic setting, and its relationship with written word: it's reflective of what society fell. If the society before was like a lot of the Native cultures, where their culture was recorded through oral traditions and other practices, then sure, I would expect the people left behind to be "illiterate". …at least, in terms of writing. They're literate in those oral traditions and practices.

But, that's not TWDG. What we have is a society that is reliant on writing. So much of our world is articulated through an alphabet printed onto a surface.

In any case, back to the apocalyptic setting.

Another thing is, yes, we do see language come before writing. In survival, it does land people in situations where it's "I don't have time, I've been starving, I'm going to grab all the food in this place before the books." Of course. Then you have that books are heavy. You're not going to realistically carry a library around. You're going to choose other things that would help immediately.

Like a knife. Or a gun.

Those do better bashing heads in than a book (but a tome wouldn't do that bad).

Here's the thing though. To step back to how reliant our society is on writing, I don't think people realize just how much they read. (Hint: you're reading right now. You had to read in order to navigate this page.) So here's the follow images of things that, in an apocalypse, are pivotal for survival, and requires of you reading comprehension:

Signs. Food labels. First Aid labels. Maps. Manuals. Guidebooks.

You need to know where you're at. You need to understand what it is you're eating, how to cook it, and quality (ex: expiration). You need to understand first aid, what you're working with and how to apply it. You need to know where you're going. If you have equipment (like, say, a car) that you're not privy to, but need it, you need to learn basic maintenance. If you're not familiar with how to do certain activities (how to make jerky, how and where to put your urine/fecal matter), you can learn in a guidebook.

Literacy is about self-sufficiency. And each of these represent different aspects of how to live off of the scraps of a failed society.

Signs are pretty straightforward. They're articulated landmarks, and given how streets are, they're good to follow for navigation. If they're signs for complexes, they're a good way to know where you should scavenge should you be looking for a specific thing. Ex: hardware supplies; you're trying to build a camp. Either it's get lucky, or go over to someone's garage, or go over to a hardware store.

Food and First Aid labels are different things—the way they're organized is very different—, however, they serve the same purpose: those are there to inform consumers how to eat/utilize. Even though each have a very specific language, they are designed so that people not specialized in food or medicine can use them. This also applies to a lot of agriculture. Things like seed packets. Or anything that can be planted. If it has a consumer-base, there's a label on it. If it doesn't have instructions, it will most likely inform what it is.

Maps is where we start to get into more "optional" territory. Do you necessarily need a map to survive? No. It would be a life-saver to know where you are, even away from where the society was established. It would also tell you where the next town vs city is (which, to someone like Clementine who may be inclined to avoid cities, she would know which roads to take).

Manuals and guidebooks, again, are the same. They also fall into the kind of thing where weight now has to be considered.

But. Here's the thing: how many people know how to go camping? How many people were ever in boy/girl scouts? And how many more people didn't have to learn any of that because society promised security and the fact that…we don't need to focus on survival?

Okay sure, go on and on and on about how people who knew those skills already and prepped for the apocalypse would be the ones to survive. Because, uh, don't know about you, that's not necessarily how that works (luck is always a thing, and people surprise you), but also, within TWDG, I can only come up with so many people who would fall into that camp: Lilly, Mark, maybe Larry (military experience), Christa (got the vibe), Pete. Um… …Carver? He talked about, like, sheep and stuff. In reference to people, sure, but like… Uh. Hm. Well shit.

You know all the people who didn't have the experience before the apocalypse? Everyone. Fucking. Else. Including Clementine.

This is the reason why manuals and guidebooks are invaluable. They speak to a luxury because you do have the space and capacity to carry them around, so that you can gather what knowledge they have. And people just don't know this shit. Community helps, because you may meet someone who does, or has read up on it, so you don't have to. But when you're alone? …kinda a really, really good thing to have.

And none of that is going into how important books are in just passing the time. People get bored. Books are nice if you got a bum leg.

Regardless, my point should be quite clear. Sure, reading and writing will not be important in the same immediate regard, and neither will be as prolifically done as it was before. Within an apocalypse, it's not about texting, or emails, or news reports, or essays… None of that. Ergo, they're designated as an investment that weighs heavy (quite literally). It takes time to read. It takes strength and space to lug them around. You may not have any.

However. With all of what I raised, it goes back why it is, actually, so fucking important to be literate to some capacity. And to build upon that literacy. Because these people are not just living in caves. They're not in a place where humans have never gone before—quite the opposite.

Which makes it an apocalypse.

In order to navigate within the carcass of a fallen society, you need to be able to comprehend the very scraps that you're taking from said society. It left behind food, and medicine, and tools, and machinery, and knowledge. To just put that all to waste because you can't read?! Really?!

And what about a life-and-death situation where it entirely depends upon your skills in being able to read and comprehend information given to you?

I'm going to go back to the vancomycin now.

It's not something the game harps upon, but it is significant enough to Clementine's arc in S3. This medicine, regardless of injection, is why she could not see A.J, and why she had such a resentment for the New Frontier. They said they could help. In her eyes, they instead left him to die.

It is also a significant point of interest as far as this essay is concerned. Because this scene alone encapsulates all of what I'm rattling on about:

The medicine itself is a scrap of her past society. They're not making these anymore, and while I can…question how good that medicine would be by this point in time after the apocalypse (shots do have an expiration date; they also need to be stored appropriately, like in refrigerators or freezers), the vancomycin represents a limited, valuable resource.

Clementine's comprehension of what this medicine is, and why she needs it, speaks to something far from an ignorance medically. She is competent. She even knows to ensure there aren't air bubbles trapped in the syringe (hence why she lets some of the drug out before injecting; air bubbles can lead to…really nasty ways to die).

How she actually knows which drug to use, well… Either someone wrote it down for her, or she wrote it down herself. Maybe Dr. Lingard told her, or she found a resource somewhere and realized that's what she needed. It speaks to literacy, despite the challenge medical terms often have—even for medical professionals themselves.

This…is what it takes to live in an apocalypse. You have to be perceptive, and resilient, and adaptive.

Part of that adaptation is being perceptive of your environment. This environment asks you to read it—because it says everything, wears its heart on its sleeve. Ergo, you have to adapt by learning how to read.

Maybe not novels, or scriptures, but specific things. Like signs, or labels. Maps.

But this comic, it falls into a bias that a lot of people have.

And that bias bothers me. A lot.

[Why Does This Hurt Me So?]

There are three reason why this just does not work for me.

First of which, Clementine's characterization. The continuity of it. I really don't have to go on about this, since if I do, I'd just regurgitate all of what I've established before. For the sake of this section, it's just that Clementine is medically competent, just not in a specialized sense, and she knows how to read to get by. (She even starts to teach A.J how to both read and write.)

Now we'll get to the larger points of discussion.

Secondly...

How the fuck did Tillie Walden get this project?

Say what you want about the artstyle, or the characterizations, or the narrative. None of that is really what this essay is on, but are all viable criticisms down this same line of thought. You have the artstyle being very whimsical…, but…since when has TWDG been about whimsy? Or the characterizations? Which…, by now, we know about that—again, I don't need to regurgitate. Then, the narrative too? Why does it read like a romance by the time the second book comes around, rather than a story of survival?

Actually, that last one may be relevant to this after all.

Walden does not write apocalyptic works. Of course, there is no correct way in writing an apocalypse, but I'd argue this is one of the wrong ways. Not only do these comics misinterpret the bulk of Clementine's character, and precisely why she's been able to survive as long as she has—to the point where her playing the games at all is put into question—, these comics also have a strange notion on basic intelligence, and does the thing where people without school are just…stupid, almost, if not plainly illiterate.

It goes against what I've outlined as a mark of an apocalyptic setting—the survival both within nature, and within the rotting shell of the society it once was.

And, it feeds into this bias that I keep bringing up.

That bias is the third reason, and it's not a comment on Walden herself, because she's far from the only person I've seen/heard make the same assumption(s).

The bias I refer to is what I'd like to call the Modern Intelligence Fallacy. I'm confident that I and this essay are far from the first to comment on this…thing people do.

Essentially, it's whenever people judge the past and/or present group of people for being "dumber" than the current society they're based on, solely because "we're modern; we have technology, and medicine, and schools. And we know how to read and write too." It's when people undermine other cultures and/or time periods because they themselves are ignorant to what intelligence actually means.

Going back to Native Americans, and any cultures alike that didn't have a written structure. I've heard people make comments and assumptions, rather ignorant ones. But the fact is, no. The lack of a writing system is not indicative of intelligence, it's indicative of what the culture valued, and how they wanted to express that.

Part of why writing is such a core element in many European cultures, for example, is because…colonization. Look at English, and why it's such a patchwork language. They had to find ways to communicate long distance, because have of them were separated be countries between. Ergo, they wrote. Nowadays, there's telephone, or video. Then, there are other contexts which beckoned for writing, but I digress.

With a lot of these Native cultures, they valued community. That's why so many of their traditions fall within that, and that's how they communicated and passed down their history. Essentially, they just found other ways to do what the other cultures around the world were doing, and it worked for them, so what of it?

The attitudes behind this fallacy doesn't care, however. This bias does put value on the presence of language in written word in regards to intelligence, and an overall sense of superiority.

Yes, I've gone through and maintained that I do not believe, for a second, that Clementine is illiterate, and I've been defending that tooth and nail. I also do put value in language—I'm a writer, and I love linguistics. Of course I do.

And that's the awkward bent in this essay.

So, I must say, the thing to understand is…it's not really about the language itself. It's the attitudes behind the bias.

You here to argue that Clementine isn't as competent reader/writer like a girl her age would be now? (…present issues with the school system aside,) yeah. Probably.

But then why…does the comic have her be negligent with medicine? To the point where it comes across as, "Yeah, Clementine! Clean your wound! Everybody should know that! And that's just the basics!

"Silly kid in an apocalypse! She needed a grown adult to carefully explain it to her!! Oh boy, we would be so lost without our society now!"

This is why I've also taken note on the medical throughout all this. Because the medical practices aren't really related to literacy. You can be told, like Clementine was in the games, and go from there.

In the comics, however, the moments where she's told about how to take care of her leg, and the moments where she is learning how to read… They read the same. Because they are the same. They're commenting on this weird idea that humans would be stupid without our current advances, which is ridiculous because in order to have said advances…, we needed to be learning this shit before in order to create them.

These moments come from this Modern Intelligence Fallacy, and it bothers me because, let's face it, we're just as smart as we've always been.We have more knowledge. Whether it's we pass them down through specific traditions, or we've written them down to share beyond time and distance. But in terms of intelligence… No.

Do you know how many stupidass people there are out there?

There's tons of them. If anything, there's more of them now because they can rely on their communities to do the heavy lifting. And they saddle themselves right beside the people who need to rely on others, and not by choice.

I'm talking as though I'm not one of them. I don't know. I might be.

I did accidentally melt two plates in microwaves on two separate occasions so. If you want to take my words with a grain of salt, fine.

With that, though, hopefully my point(s) came across well enough.

[Conclusion]

And now I am left here. With…this.

I'm not as resigned as I was of TWDG since the comics came out, because quite frankly, there's so much to these comics where…it just feels like I'm not watching Clementine. Whether it be I'm on a couch silently judging someone else play the games, but nodding along to play nice, or just…this isn't the character at all… Yeah, I'm still stewing on it. But, I have my fanfiction, and I have the games. It is easy to ignore the comics.

The reason why I've decided to write this is 1) I find it interesting, 2) the bias people have is SUCH a pet peeve of mine, and 3) I am BAFFLED by Skybound. I honestly don't know what qualified Tillie Walden to write this, to the point where I'm frankly impressed.

It's one thing to hire someone who's unfamiliar with the franchise in hopes of an objective and new perspective, or an artstyle to try something new and unique...

And entirely another to hire someone who either isn't interested in writing, or doesn't know how to write, the genre. There are so many ways to go about writing in an apocalypse, but at its core, it will always be "no matter what, humans are going to human." This is how you can have stories of hope in an apocalypse. Or have them be bleak. And so on. With TWD, it's always been a meld of both.

Because it's human are going to human, this…bias towards any scenario where people are not traditionally educated gets in the way. Because "traditional education" is not traditional, actually. It's societal. What is traditional is people learning an array of skills to survive, much of which is medicinal, and with writing… That's dependent on the environment. Way back when, in times where the world didn't rely on literacy, absolutely not many people would be literate. But in eras where so much hinges on at least being able to navigate?

Or or, in times where you are relying on a recent past that did write and read as much as it did for survival? Um. Yeah. You do need to be able to at least read, if not write as well, for communication's sake. Which I didn't go much into, but oh well.

And this right here is what TWD is set in. This universe isn't a hard reset. You're effectively just going back a couple hundred years. All the infrastructures and scraps left behind are still there, just not maintained.

So… Yeah. I don't get it. The most I can fault Walden for is being negligent, but this is just…Skybound, not caring enough about this story to the point where they'll hire anybody for some reason.

I also don't get the bias people have about intelligence, and stuff, but I really…, really don't want to go on a spiel again. It incites violence within me. I've already gone and done a mini spiral over the comics themselves, and they were kinda but not even the point.

Ah well. I'll just crawl back to my hovel now. The links to some of the linguistic concepts I raised are below, if you want to do any additional research. The specific articles are more generalized to give a broad picture, but can be used as a jumping off point should they pique an interest.

I'm just gonna continue to write about my alcoholic Clementine.

Hope you enjoyed.

:)

Linguistic Articles:

History of Writing Systems (1), (2) ; Language Acquisition (1)

Native American Language History (1), (2), (3)

[mistresslrigtar]

Chapter Five: Sun (written for @zelinktines24 day 5 prompt)

Read below or HERE

The front door knocks against the table in the foyer, causing the blue and white vase filled with flowers to wobble precariously before righting itself. Looking up from her nest of pillows in the corner of the main room, Zelda smiles when she sees Link standing in the open doorway wearing his simple work clothes, a loosely woven cream tunic, and worn brown trousers. He brings with him a warm breeze and the scent of late spring. Zelda notices his skin is turning golden and sandy highlights streak his dark blond hair, from hours spent in the sun, tending their garden, grooming the horses, hunting, and making short excursions.

“How I long to sit with thee and while away the hours.” He quotes a line from Carik, Zelda’s favorite Sheikah court poet. “And gaze upon a sun-kissed world in a field of fragrant flowers.”

Since their dinner a few evenings before something has shifted between them and she welcomes the change. With the approaching promise of summer, her spirit has been improving and it feels like a veil is being lifted.

“What would Carik think, hearing you quoting him?” Zelda muses, setting the book aside she’d been reading and rising to her feet. 

Carik had been a not-so-silent rival to Link before the Calamity fell. He’d spent the remainder of his days composing sonnets to aid Link when he returned. His protégé, Kass had given Zelda a book of Carik’s poems when she and Link had visited him after the Calamity’s defeat. She’d been surprised when Kass shared a beautiful song Carik had composed that was a tribute to her and Link’s love.

“Carrot? Nothing complimentary, I’m sure.” His lips curve into a mischievous smile when Zelda snorts at the nickname before he shoves his hands in his pockets and gives her a questioning look. “It’s a beautiful, clear day and I’ve let the horses out to graze. Would you consider sitting outside with me?”

Zelda glances out the wall of windows that offer an expansive view of the green pasture and azure blue sea beyond. Epona’s deep chestnut coat and Star’s golden yellow shimmer in the afternoon sunlight. Their tails flick, indicating their contentment as they graze, cutting down grass allowed to grow tall. Link is hoping they’ll breed soon and produce a stunning dappled filly.

Worry twists cold in Zelda’s belly thinking of how she’s not had her monthly cycle since she’s returned. She’s afraid the trauma of her transformation has left her infertile or worse, she didn’t return fully human. Will Link still want her if it turns out she can’t bear children?

Looking back at him, he still stands patiently in the entry waiting for her to decide. Zelda shakes off her doubt and looks back at the horses. The scene is idyllic and would make a perfect study of nature. Perhaps it’s time for her to be a little more adventurous, even if that was taking a few steps outside the front door. Collecting her Purah pad, charcoals, and sketchbook from the kitchen table, Zelda joins Link. His eyes light up when he sees the tools she’s chosen and retrieves a blanket from the basket by the door. 

Choosing a spot near the horses, Link unfolds the soft blanket and spreads it on the grassy knoll. Kicking off her shoes, Zelda stretches out her legs and lifts her chin to the sun. A sea breeze carrying the faint scent of salt and brine ruffles her hair, tickling the nape of her neck.

Link lays on his back beside her, crossing his arms behind his head, and soon he is dozing, a contented smile gracing his lips. Zelda marvels that even though he’s never regained all his memories, some things remain unchanged–like his ability to fall asleep anywhere. When asleep, the worry melts away from his face, leaving his visage youthful and unlined. She wonders what he was like before fate pulled him firmly into her embrace. There’s no one left to ask who would know.

Turning to a blank page in her sketchbook, Zelda opens her charcoals and begins outlining his profile. Capturing the way the sun casts shadows across his cheekbones and brings out the subtle highlights in his messy hair, her heart swells with love for him. She takes note of every detail–the warmth of the sun on her head, the soft whickers of the horses, and the gentle rhythm of Link’s breathing. It’s a perfect moment, forever frozen in time on the page before her, and Zelda doesn’t realize she’s weeping until teardrops splatter across the page.

<day one><day two><day three><day four>

many thanks to @floraunderground for looking this over and being kind about my attempt at poetry 😅

[safely-in-vhagars-belly]

FIRE AND BLOOD THE FANFIC (DARK!AEGON AND DARK! AEMOND X OC) (Chapter 21: The dance of the two dragons)

CONCEPT:

You are the Lady Brienne Beesbury, Aegon's tutor for his Valyrian lessons. You are elegant and the beloved daughter of Lyman Beesbury, his youngest precious daughter. Needless to say, your pupil Aegon takes a interest in you, and when Aemond also takes a interest in you, things go south rather quickly. They make a deal that you are quick to accept: You will be their plaything for their dark pleasures. You just had no idea.......How far the realm would burn, and how much you all would suffer because of these choices.

WARNINGS: A lot happens, aemond and aegon fighting, jealousy, non-con, forced marriages and MAJOR BOOK SPOILERS REGARDING HELAENA TARGARYEN. (FOR REAL!)

Aemond and you land that evening in King’s Landing. He helps you off Vhagar’s back, chuckling as you stumble, your legs barely adjusted to the sturdy ground. He catches you before you can fall, kissing your bloodied forehead. His lips have a red print of blood on them, and you are certain not even the Stranger himself can make that man stop smiling.

You are escorted to the Red Keep by him. He never lets go of your hand as you two walk to the entrance to the council room. Ser Criston Cole is keeping guard by the door, awaiting the prince. He straightens his back and greets Aemond with a bow. ‘’My prince. My lady. You both look as if a calamity happened.’’

You glance slightly in Aemond’s direction. He is the prince. He must do the speaking for you. You are the calamity. You let Aemond speak for the both of you. Aemond puts his hands on his back, folding them, letting go of you for one brief moment. ‘’Cole. We went to the Riverlands. Lovely scenery. A bit too dull for my personal preferences. Luckily, my lady found a way to brighten the dull environment up.’’

‘’Your brother is in there. As is the hand, your mother, grand Maester Orwyle, and Larys Strong. Tyland Lannister is there as well.’’ You finally have names to the mysterious council that serves Aegon. You take your leave, understanding that Aemond is needed in that room as well. You stand on your toes to reach his forehead and kiss him full of devotion, parting with great sadness written in your eyes. ‘’You left them waiting quite some time, my prince. We expected you by dusk.’’ Cole continues berating Aemond for his tardiness. You can’t help but glare at Cole.

You step between the two men. ‘’My father was expected to turn seventy-five this year. Men don’t always meet their expectations. Princes especially. Surely you agree, Lord Commander?’’ You speak sweetly, your voice full of honey.

Aemond does not let himself get insulted that easily either, and sizes Cole up. ‘’Good thing I have returned. Shall we?’’ That smirk of him proves nothing good. But when he looks at you, all you see is the shadow of the man he once was. You bring out the light in him. You reach for his hand once more. He smiles, petting your hands and kissing your lips full of passion. Cole coughs and rolls his eyes. ‘’Wait up for me. I might have a surprise for you if things go well.’’ Aemond whispers.

They finally take their leave and close the door behind them.

You are curious as to what they discuss there. Luckily, you grew up here as well. You know very well of the hidden painting and the space where you can easily listen in on what they will discuss.

Aemond sits far from Aegon, and several others are sitting between them. Aegon sits on one head, Aemond being the guest sits on the other end. ‘’Now that we are finally all here, let us discuss business.’’ The hand speaks, glaring at his second youngest grandchild. Aemond leans back in his chair and patiently waits for the chance to speak.

They discuss Harrenhall, as well as other settlements taken by Black forces. You also hear of the battle for your hometown, where they are met with more resistance than they had hoped. Death toll is rising as is hunger. Eventually, Aemond has the chance to speak. He raises from his chair, speaking. He and Aegon are right in front of one another. ‘’I have an announcement to make.’’ He speaks, staring his brother down. You feel your heartbeat increase as you play with your necklace.

Aegon blinks as all heads turn to the prince. ‘’You do?’’ He asks, surprised.

The kinslayer nods. ‘’Yes. I have decided to take a different lady wife. I will annul my engagement with Floris. We will both agree on an alternative agreement. If my son with my new wife comes of age, he will wed one of her daughters. If she has no daughters, he will marry another one of her sister’s daughters to ensure our agreement with House Baratheon remains.’’ That is a good idea, in theory. You know that a fair world would be a good idea, in theory. But that will never happen. You think Aemonds proposal is a stuppid one, one doomed to fail.

His plan is not fail proof, however. You do not know if Floris has another marriage prospect. If she was set to marry the prince, word has spread that she is reserved for Aemond. Any man with a brain would not oppose Aemond Targaryen. ‘’She apparently has a sweetheart in the Riverlands, named Lord Edgar FyshCreek. The two of them will marry the young sweethearts.’’ He says. You know Edgar very well. You were friends once. You know that Edgar is kind, perhaps a bit of a pushover, but with Floris as his wife, he will perhaps finally learn a thing or two about wit.

Aemond continues laying out his masterplan and you worry when exactly he started to plan all of this. ‘’Their daughter will marry into our house, marrying my son with my new preferred wife.’’ He says. ‘’We will both agree..’’ he said, so she hasn’t agreed yet. Come to think of it, this is so sudden he likely hasn’t informed her at all.

The council is silent as the grave. Tyland Lannister only shakes his head, and Larys Strong smiles, but it is a sad smile. ‘’Who is the lucky woman, my prince?’’ He asks, the little weasel. He butters up to Aemond, and sadly, Aemond does not mind his step anymore.

Aemond’s eye sparkles with love when he speaks your name out loud. ‘’Brienne of house Beesbury.’’ You did have a feeling, but to hear it out loud is surreal. Aemond wants you to marry him. He stares at no one but at his brother. Aegon stares at his fingers, his ripped nails, and studies them, ignoring his brother’s glance.

The council erupts into multiple protests. Alicent sighs deeply but seems not to be surprised. I'm only disappointed. Otto is mortified and horrified at once, Tyland just sits and smiles. ‘’You can’t.’’ The hand croaks. ‘’Aemond! We worked hard to secure Storm’s End. You can not give it all up for a whore!’’ You scoff but don’t reply, watching in silence as the chaos unfolds.

He slams his hands on the table, rising. ‘’Aemond. We killed her father, a known traitor. At this moment, we are busy crushing her traitor rebellion brothers and digging their graves.’’ Aemond does hear his grandfather but he chooses to ignore him. He knows the importance of Storm’s end but he wants you as his wife more than he wants his duties. He always called himself the bigger brother, the better one when it came to duties but now he is the one who is willing to stab it all in the back. For you.

Alicent takes hold of Aemond’s hands.

‘’I understand that you love her, Aemond-’’ She pauses. ‘’We can’t allow this to happen. Aegon, talk sense into your brother.’’

Aegon stands up, as does Aemond. ‘’You will do no such thing, brother. You will not marry Brienne. You will do your duty and marry Floris Baratheon.’’ He says, slowly speaking each and every word. Aemond’s lips turn into a scowl.

Aemond scoffs, anger written across his face. He grabs hold of his brother, begging him with something you never saw in his eyes before. Hope. ‘’If you care for my happiness, if you love me as your brother, if you value me even a little bit, just a tiny bit..’’ He leans into Aegon’s arms so that he can’t look away from Aemond. ‘’You will let me marry her.’’ He speaks. You are touched but also worried. One time they nearly killed one another when there was jealousy. And now there is a proposal.

‘’Please. I am begging you. She is all I ever wanted.’’ Aemond begs, and you feel confused and conflicted.

Aegon pushes Aemond off with cold eased movements before getting in his scarred face. ‘’My answer is final. You will do best to remember that. You will marry Floris Baratheon. You will set out with your dragon today, and you won’t see Brienne for a while.’’ He orders Aemond and you feel bad for both. Aegon is in love with you, but so is Aemond. A proposal from both or either can bring death.

To think that Aemond one-eye, the same man who watched Aegon take the crown, the throne, a working dragon egg, their sister, their ancestor’s crown and sword would leave it at that, would be foolish and naief. ‘’You think you can keep us apart? She loves me! She killed for me! We’ve bonded in the way of our old house!’’

Slowly, Aegon’s eyes go up and his voice becomes thin as ice. ‘’What ways?’’ He asks, coldly and reserved in ways that don’t fit him.

And Aemond smirks knowing his bait has been picked up by the King. Aemond has no trouble shaming you in front of the entire council.

Aemond smirks, proud.

‘’I took her for a dragon ride.’’ He leaves it up to his brother if he means that you rode his dragon or something else that belongs to him.

Aegon laughs, quickly reminding him that he showed you his dragon first. You rode Sunfyre first. ‘’She flew with me and Sunfyre first.’’ He says. "I don't think that a girl as Brienne, a gentle sweet girl, can appreciate an old ancient hag as Vhagar. She wants the glitter and the shiny things in life."

You never knew that such a sweet sentence could make you tear up. Once you were a sweet innocent girl. But that girl died for the sake of your own survival. You had two choices: Become Aemond's pet or let him become yours.

But Aemond is not done yet. He can only keep smirking and deals the other blow to his brother. "You may have showed her your dragon, but tell me, Aegon;Did she kill for you? Did she feed corpses to your dragon? Did she fuck you dry when you burned cities with your dragon, because she did with me. I showed her true power and true fire and true blood and she wants nothing less anymore.’’ Aemond shows his bloodied sword to prove his words as Aegon is silent. All he does is gulp and stare at his feet. You see a broken man.

And your heart breaks the same moment his does.

Aemond chuckles. ‘’Perhaps once you had her heart, but it belongs to me now. You are only making a fool of yourself for keeping us apart.’’ He says.

Without further explanation or reason, you watch as Aegon's hands connects with Aemond's scarred cheek. The king is seething. ‘’One more word and you’ll be known as Aemond no-tongue as well.’’ He warns his younger brother when Aemond feels his red cheek with a scowl. ‘’Get fucking flying. For your own sake. I don’t want to see you for a while.’’ He warns his brother. "Go to your wife. Go to Floris and you will invited back to King's Landing."

Alicent tries her best to smooth the situation but she only makes it worse. ‘’It is for the best, Aemond-’’

He shrugs his mother off. ‘’I suppose since you had a unhappy marriage, your children must all suffer your fate, don’t we, mother?’’ He spats at her. With those words, Aemond leaves the council room.

You leave now that you have had your information. You have much to think about.

----

That night you prepare for Aemond's visit. They have allowed you back in your old rooms as promised. Your toys and plushies are no longer in sight. You have put them in a box locked with a key.

You are trying on different dresses that show off more of your breasts and neck area.

A servant announces a visitor. And it's not Aemond. "His majesty, King Aegon II of house Targaryen-"

"That's quite enough. I don't have all night." He tells her. The girl makes a curtesy before heading off.

You are still in only a corset and a pair of undergarments, deciding between a bloodred dress or a dark emerald green one. You turn to face Aegon when he takes in your body, his eyes lingering over your behind as well as your other curves.

You make a curtsy as well.

‘’Hello, my king.’’ You greet him with an innocent tight-lipped smile.

‘’Lady Beesbury.’’ He greets you stiffly. ‘’I heard rumours. About my brother and you.’’ He crosses his arms over his chest and stares at the two dresses.

‘’What kind of rumors?’’ You ask but you know that Aegon knows what you and Aemond have been up to in the Riverlands.

‘’That you terrorized the Riverlands together.’’ You ignore that statement and turn your emotions off for now. You softly touch your own breasts and eye Aegon through the mirror when slowly slipping the red gown on.

Aemond likes Green. Aegon prefers red. It is so easy.

Aegon becomes mad that you ignore him. As planned.

‘’That you fucked him, Brienne. That you watched him kill and encouraged him.’’ He sounds disgusted with your behaviour.

You sigh. You have changed perhaps. But who could not? Who would not break after what you have been submitted to?

‘’What do you want me to say, Aegon?’’ You say with a roll of your eyes. "We are at war. People die. It happens."

Your ignorance and your boredom worry him. He does not care about the peasants. But he does care about you. And about your moral compass. ‘’That it’s a lie!’’ He yells desperately for it it be one. He even has small tears in his eyes and you must master all your wits to keep from touching his face and crawling in his arms.

You instead force yourself to smile. ‘’Well, it is not. It’s not a lie. Aemond and me fucked a few times, we killed a lot of people and we even helped you by telling everyone it was Rhaenyra’s work-’’

He scoffs enraged.

‘’And you think her supporters will carry on that message for you?’’ You think not. You don't really care. The girl may tell whatever lies or truths she likes.

The people of Westeros have been conquered by dragons before. They will be conquered once again. It doesn't matter if they blame Rhaenyra or Aegon's dragons.

If it was Rhaenyra she would be hated. Of course she would. She is a woman. But because its Aegon, a male he would cause fear. Men will never see the danger of the other sex…

Not even when it will be their own downfall.

You close the distance between the two of you and comfort the King with rubbing your hands over his back, feeling the good fabric of his silken clothes. ‘’I think you seem tense. What is the problem? Are you jealous, my king? Are you jealous of your one-eyed little brother who fucked me?’’ You whisper in his ear when slowly unbuttoning your gown.

‘’He came to ask for your hand, the fool.’’ Aegon still refuses to look up. You have to tilt his chin slightly so he can see your breasts.

"Tell what else troubles you." You whisper. Aegon rapidly pushes you away from him. He glares at you.

"He destroyed you. Look at you. You are no better than a whore!" He hurts you deeply. Because his words are true. You feel dirty and inpure.

"‘’I think you’ve spend enough time in his company.’’

‘’But not nearly enough…’’ he pushes you against the wall when slowly revealing your shoulders by pulling your dress down. ‘’In the company of your king.’’

Aegon pushes you on your knees before pulling you on the pouffe in front of your vanity. He bares you naked and drops his own trousers as well. The moment you turn you are met with his erected red swollen length that is pushed in your entrance fucking you tightly. You are thrown with your chest on the pouf forced to take the cock as Aegon fucks out his anger and disappointment in you.

You turn wet easily by your feelings and your confused twisted heart when Aegon takes you for the next coming moments as only grunts and groans leave his mouth.

‘’Tell me, can he make you moan as that? I bet he can’t.’’ He boasts getting off on his brothers failures.

‘’He's incompetent when it comes to your pleasure. He only cares about his own. When we fuck, you are my queen. You hear me, Brienne? You are my priority." He promises you when smashing his mouth down on yours. You have trouble breathing when Aegon buries himself inside of you and pounds away as your breasts widely shake with every trust he gives.

You moan and as Aegon suddenly comes you are dragged along the height as well coming all over his cock when eagerly riding out your orgasm. You improvise and sit up when clinging to his shoulders when fucking his cock. You scream and fall a moment later when Aegon watches you amused.

Aegon dresses without a word and leaves. Your heart is crushed. You do know how to hurt him back. Aemond wants to marry you. A bastard will help you both. Aemond will simply do what he always does, and you will have your body to the rest.

When you look for the Kinslayer to fuck you you are met with a empty room. You recall that Aegon banished Aemond for a short while.

You do find letters. None of them speak to you. Except a recently opened letter. Aemond likely read it before he left. And you recongize the seal very well.

Oh no.

Millions of thoughts cross your head as you quickly reread the letter and your heart sinks as dread fills your chest."To Aemond Targaryen. Unfortunately, Lord Edgar FyshCreek won't marry any lady of House Baratheon."

You nearly slam your head against the desk. Edgar. Poor Edgar. He is so foolish.

Aemond is gone yes.

It was just you and Aegon's stupid mistake to let him. He is not in the Storm Lands. He is going to Edgar. And he is going to kill him for thwarting his plans.

When you return to your rooms, Aegon is there.

You don't tell about Aemonds plans yet. Because you don't know if Aemond is going to kill a man out of spite or choose his duties. You don't know if he will risk upsetting his brother even more. And you don't know if you want Aemond's anger if he is killing. And you doubt that Aegon can stop Aemond from so far away.

Aegon offers you tea. You smile and take the cup.

You try to settle your nerves. "How is your sister?" You haven't seen her in a while. You wonder how Helaena is doing. You were friends once. Before you slept with her brothers and her husband.

He does not respond at first. "Aemond wanted to keep this a secret from you." He speaks, choosing his words carefully. "I agreed because we both knew it would kill you if you had known."

Your alarms ring too late. You feel a cold shiver go down your spine. Something happened. "What?"

One word echoes through your mind. Dead. Dead. Dead.

Aegon does not lie to ease your feelings. He never did so and never will do so. "Helaena killed herself." He says.

Your mouth drops. "She…" You knew she was spirted, perhaps. But always in a positive warm matter. She was always happy and kind. For her to commit suicide, something terrible must have happened.

The king tells you and you hang to his every word anger and tears getting the better of you as you mourn your friend. You were jealous she was pregnant with Aegon's child again. And you were jealous she was his wife. And now she's dead. And you never had the decency to tell her what you did behind her back.

You burst into tears breaking. You promised yourself to be strong but this blow came unexpected.  "Assassins took my heir. They forced her to choose between our three children. Justice, the Blacks called it. What kind of justice is found in killing a child, a driving a mother to madness?" You suppose that Rhaenyra had something familair happen. She too lost a child and she too was driven to madness.

Aegon comforts you by forcing you to drink the tea. You hope it's moontea but also notice a another herb.

"Your brothers have gained…support from the North as well as the Reach and the Storm and crown lands. The Blacks are now strong allies with your house." He tells you and that surprises you. Aemond is very hush about the state of war and he made it sound as if your house was losing and would continue to lose until nothing was left.

Aegon gently rubs your back when you notice your eyes starting to drift. Your head pounds softly. "You have become a figurehead, my Brienne. People heard stories about the beautiful maiden from a small house that enchanted three princes, was forced between two sides of the war and bedded both the king and his brother."

You sound as a hero. You are anything but.

"A neutral Queen. That is what we need. I must remarry. I know you will take it well.'' Aegon's words begin to sound more sinister as you try to make sense of the tea you have had and your sudden dizziness.

Take it well? You understand it however. He is the king. He must remarry. You do wonder who he picked. Your thoughts blur together and you can't think as your muscles slowly freeze when Aegon gives you a kiss. And a another. And another…

You try to tell him you are not well. "Aeg, I don't feel so good."

He ignores you kissing away at your body when undressing himself. You can't have sex right now. "Aegon, i can't…I can't…" you try to escape but your body is frozen.

Aegon sinks inside of you with a soft grunt and takes you for a second time that night. You are in pain and too weak to fight him off. You let him have his fun and hope it ends soon as tears stream down your face.

"Stop…" you do beg from time to time. You do grunt and whimper. But all Aegon is focused on is his own pleasure.

He kisses you excusing his behaviour to you. It feels not justified. "I love you, I am so sorry but I love you too much. I asked a maester to give a little bit extra. You will be so calm tonight." You wail. He will continue this throughout the night.

"I love you too, Aegon. I'm sorry….too.." You blurt out.

And darkness swallows you whole. "Nhn…"

----- When you wake up, the worst of pain has passed. You are dressed in a white gown by servants and they were busy doing so even when you were asleep. Your hair is braided in a familair yet strange fashion. Braids.

Under the watchful eye of dozens guards you are escorted to the dragon pit. You don't know what you'll be doing there. You finally see familair faces. Aegon. Alicent. And even Otto. But the other faces of dozens of unknown inhabitants of King's landing make you uncomfertable.

And you miss so many. Your father. Helaena. Aemond.

You are tempted to rush to Aegon and to ask him what is happening. You don't understand. You glare at Aegon as you recall what he did with you last night. He took advantage of you. And he gave you something as well.

He has the audacity to smirk at you. You cross your arms. "I wish for an explanation."

"Please kneel, Brienne." Aegon speaks his voice soft as silk and sweet as honey. "It will be clear in a moment. I promise." You refuse too angry to see reason.

Ser Criston forces you to kneel, so you do.You don't understand what is happening. Perhaps you must bend the knee publicly. Have your brothers and the queen agreed to peace? Have they all found peace? Perhaps they have lost and this is a demonstration of what happens to family members of traitors. Perhaps Jace has made another proposal to you or has Aemond done something that takes it all too far.

Perhaps Aegon wants to fuck you in public.

Dozens of scenarios go through your head. Dozens of thoughts. Dozens of ideas. Some rational. Others not so much as fear makes master of you and the time closes in. None of the ideas are sane.

But none are as insane, When the septon approaches you with a pillow with a crown on it. None of your thoughts prepared you for what would happen next. Nor for the words that the septon speaks as he places the crown on your head. "All hail Queen Brienne, first of her name! The Ivory Queen!"

Your body freezes hearing those words, and you suddenly understand what Aegon meant. He was pressured into taking another wife. He heard you were becoming popular. He combined two problems and made it his solution. And your end.

Because the Blacks might forgive you for being a prisoner. But they won't forgive you for being a queen.

Ser Criston brings you to Aegon, who presents you proudly to an enthusiast public. They scream your name and wave their arms. Aegon finally takes your hands into his own and looks into your eyes. "With this kiss, I pledge my love. I pledge my loyalty, and I take you for my lady and my wife..." He speaks loudly.

You gasp as the septon smiles at you, waiting for you to repeat rose words. You can't. You can't become the Queen. You can't become his queen. Or aemonds. Or anyone's. You can't rule nations. Aegon chuckles dangerously in your ear. "I see how it is. Luckily for you, your king does not need your consent. If I wish to marry you: I damn well shall." You feel your heart shatter.

Another face suddenly pops up in the crowd as you take in a familair eyepatch and one blue angry eye. You don't have time to defend yourself before Aegon follows your gaze and notices Aemond's heartbroken stence. With him is Floris.

He went to do his duties. And in return, Aegon stabbed him in the back with marrying you the girl he loves. "Ae-" before you can speak Aegon seals the kiss and your fate. The crowd cheers as you try to find Aemond again. But he is gone.

[i-need-of-a-hobby]

So we all know the theory that Gravity Falls, The Owl House and Amphibia take place in the same universe right?

its a pretty well know theory (even if you don't believe it) in all three fandoms but if you don't here's the gist of it:

so basically that theory is built off easter eggs, like willows dads having a book with Hop-Pops face on it

and references to the other shows like that entire Gravity Falls episode in Amphibia,

that imply that they’re taking place simultaneously, with gravity falls taking place in 2012 and TOH and amphibia taking place in 2019-2020 (without the covid the lucky bastards) with Camilla reading an article about a girl returning from a frog world in the season 2 finale of TOH

but that opens the door for a whole lot of inter-dimensional *shenanigans* and so many plot points i can and will argue reference and overlap with each other.

now theres the obvious similarities like how bills minions fit the description of beast demons from the owl house:

(ignore the circling its not my screenshot I found it on google)

and bill himself is on one of kings posters when he tries to teach Luz about demons:

Bill is also in the book that tells marcy about the calamity box:

a book I believe was written by ford since the cover says its by "Dr. P" (P-ines anyone?) and has eyes that look awfully familiar, which I think are a reference to either the cores eyes, the portal doors eye from toh, or Bills eye (and the fact that this eye symbol is so similar across shows feeds the theory that they're all in the same universe)

meaning the Bill is a semi-universal character/figure throughout the different realms

if the other realms (Bill's realm, the several Ford got trapped in, the Boiling Isles, and Amphibia) have access to each other, and Bill is as universal as he seems, he probably interacted with some citizens of those realms, and probably left a mark

now it's finally time for my personal take/add-in:

we never get an origin for the core 

or the newts relation to the core

we get an episode about Andrias's personal history and his individual relation to the core, and how he came to be the guy who manipulated and then stabbed a very vulnerable teenage girl, but it seems like the core has just been with the Leviathan lineage since at least before Andrias's dad (who's over a thousand years old since thats how old the flashback is)

so, what am I rambling about?

well, if bill, a dream demon, made his way to amphibia, the core might have been the newts attempt to artificially replicate his powers

NOW HEAR ME OUT: on top of being incredibly powerful once he’s released in gravity falls

he also has the power to go into other peoples minds and search their memories like he does to Stan in his very introduction

which is an awful lot like what the core tries to do, since Andrias says the core is the hive mind of a dozen of the greatest newt minds and when Darcy happens it has complete access to her memories

not to mention how when it talks to andrias what physically appears when it talks are it’s eyes, which is what changes on dipper and Blendin (time travel dude) when bill possess them

the amphibians (powered by the music box) were an incredibly advanced civilization capable of a lot of damage (as seen by the literal frobot army they created

so i don't think it would be crazy to say that when they (specifically the newts) saw what a being like Bill could do, they would try to replicate it.

Obviously, the core and Bills mind-jumping powers are not the same, which is a way I'd say the Amphibians failed: instead of popping in and out of peoples minds like Bill does, the core completely takes their minds, more like a parasite.

we don't know all the parameters since we know basically nothing about the other newts in the hive mind, other than that each mind shows up as an eye on the cores "head" before and after it possesses Marcy. and speaking of the girl, she has no control or consciousness (that we know of) while under the cores control.

but we do get one and a half-ish examples of people who are very aware of the cores presence in their mind (unlike Bill) but are physically controlling their own bodies (we think) (unlike Marcy) and those two are Andrias and his dad, who both communicate with the core more like it's just a very dangerous, intrusive thought.

so.... yeah...

idk how to end this but please reblog and tell me if you think im crazy or not-

[nerdylilpeebee]

I have a story idea.

I'm kinda rewriting my story "Pandora" because I kinda didn't find as much enjoyment in what I was writing as I wanted to, and I just honestly got a really cool idea in my head that I wanna roll with. I would like to write it down here, both for y'all's opinions and so I have it written down somewhere.

So, this story is about vampires. Specifically, it is the story of a new vampire.

A young noble girl, named Thalia, is born in a society that treasures magic-users. It's a society as advanced as our own, but magic has been an integral part of it for thousands of years, so it is a bit different than our own.

And she, on the day of her 18th birthday, is to finally go through a ritual all mages must endure to discover what their true magic affinity is. Some can know this even before the ritual just due to the nature of how their magic manifests, but Thalia's magic has always been... Odd. No one could quite tell what type it was. She could cast the most novice spells like any budding spell caster, but her magic energy always gave anyone who could sense it this... Uneasy feeling and the color of her magic energy was a deep violet, an incredibly uncommon color.

Masters of magic and scholars of history had only ever seen the color before in the pages of history books, and always on a figure who would bring great calamity. A necromancer. However, despite the color, Thalia had never shown any real indication she was a necromancer. She was kind, she never harmed anyone with her magic, she could even heal minor wounds on people. Granted it never looked like any healing spell anyone had ever seen before, but there was still nothing but the color indicating she was a necromancer.

But then came the ritual. Mages must cast their magic energy into a magic circle. What happened as a result would reveal their magic type. Some had the circle produce a gout of fire, some an icy structure, some a column of water. Etc. Thalia's... Produced a spirit. But not just any spirit. Rising from the circle as if summoned straight from hell was a being Masters of Magic knew well from their studies. A being that had long been gone from this world. The first Vampire, Lilith, rose before them in spirit form, powerless to harm them, but a clear sign that Thalia was, indeed a necromancer.

Many wanted to kill her right then and there. But ultimately, it was decided the High Council, a group of master mages that advises the emperor, should decide what happens to her. Thalia's family was, after all, very important and influential and held a seat on the council. Killing their daughter without their consent, even if it was, from their perspective, to protect the world from another Calamity would provoke an all-out civil war.

Thalia, of course, receives no explanation. Didn't know what she was seeing or who the spirit was, nor what it meant about her magic. She just witnessed their terrified expressions around her as the spirit appears, and is forcibly detained within the ritual tower. Some time passes, and she realizes she can speak to the spirit she summoned. Tho she doesn't really have anything to say to Thalia, seemingly refusing to converse with a human.

Lilith, who's name is more a title than her actual name, which she abandoned long ago, can see where this is going and frankly doesn't care much to warn Thalia or try to prevent it. In her eyes, there is no point to it. And besides, if they kill her, she is sure of one thing: the calamity they fear so much will come to pass. She's seen it all before, after all, the rage and resentment of an innocent person being condemned to death. That rage resulting in the one thing humans should fear most but are too ignorant to know of: a Lich. And Lilith is eager to see mankind's folly result in their own destruction.

And just as Lilith suspects, the rest of the mages return, taking Thalia from the ritual tower. She is guided to the bottom floor and out to the grounds, where her family awaits. She is grateful to see them, but begs for clarity. What is going on? Why were they so afraid? Why was she locked in the tower? And very quickly, she gets her answer. For awaiting beyond her family is a large stone pillar, surrounded by an awaiting pyre. To the horror of both Thalia and Lilith, who watches from the top of the tower, Thalia's sentenced is the same as all practitioners of the dark arts: death by fire.

Thalia resists of course, but she has no real power. No strength. She can't escape and is dragged to the pyre and tied to the stone, each wrist restrained by rope. She does as all innocent people do as they are told they will die for no wrongdoing of her own: she cries. She asks her family for help, her mother, her father. But they only answer her with cold, unfeeling eyes.

The high council declares Thalia a threat to the natural world, and declares she will be cleansed by fire. A formality of course, as all present already knew the sentence. As the wood beneath is set alight, Thalia's eyes lock with her parents'. She asks them for help one last time, but is again met by silence.

The fire rises, and Lilith smiles, sure now that she will become a Lich, and humanity will regret this day for the rest of eternity. She can almost feel it coming, the anger, the pain... But as she watches Thalia's head lowers, rising moments later to look her parents in the eyes again... instead of rage and resentment at being abandoned, Lilith sees... A smile. Thalia, with death closing in, says she doesn't understand what is happening or why she needs to die, but if her parents wish it then it must be for a good reason. Her final words are the last thing anyone was expecting, least of all Lilith: "I Forgive You."

No one has time to process this. Thalia's smile is quickly replaced by screams of agony. The fire quickly consumes her, engulfing her entire body.

Lilith looks on disbelief. For the first time in a long time, she began to feel it; empathy for a human. Absurd, she thought. Why should she feel sorry for a human? Humans had exterminated vampires a long time ago. They had shown no mercy, not even to their own. Why bother feeling for beings that did not even seem to feel for each other? She tried to force it down, to stop this rising emotion, but as Thalia's agonizing screams began to fall silent, tears began to fall down her face. And she made a decision. Maybe there would not be the hate required to produce a Lich, but this crime would not go unpunished. She would not let it.

The fire raged until nightfall, Thalia's body being reduced to ash. Lilith, now free from the circle binding her to the tower, quickly makes her down to the now-burned-out pyre. The crowd once surrounding it had long dispersed, a sole priest left behind to cleanse the ashes and lay her to rest. As she looked upon the evidence of mankind's folly, of yet another attrocity committed by mortalkind, she raised her hands before her, channeling all of the dark magic she could muster.

"hear me, innocent one," she cried, smiling as the life essence of the Priest, who only just noticed her presence, was drained by her spell. "Unjustly killed, unfairly judged."

The stars in the sky begin to flicker out and die as she speaks.

"Forced from this world by this worthless sludge. Hear me now in your slumber, death cannot contain such a worthy grudge."

The moon begins to shine a blood red.

"Rise from your ashes, as nightmare to all. Rise in darkness, Nosferatu, and bring about humanity's fall!"

Her voice echoes through the night, magic swirling around Thalia's ashes. A skeletal hand rips out from the remains, grasping at the earth around it. Slowly, the skeleton of what once was Thalia begins to pull out of her ashes, its muscle reforming itself around her.

She gasps for air as her lungs reform, pulling herself further out of the ash until finally her entire body was free. Her teeth began to sharpen as her regeneration reached it's final stage. Her skin reformed around her, then her hair, fingernails, everything reformed until finally Thalia was whole again. Breathing deeply, trembling on the floor as her psyche struggled to recover from the agony she had experienced.

Lilith waited with a smile, relished the dark magic permeating through the air. She knew it wouldn't be long until the humans reacted to this darkness, but it didn't matter now. A new Nosferatu had been born.

As Thalia's eyes finally opened, glowing blood red in the crimson moonlight, Lilith's smile became almost manic. Finally, her kin walked the earth again. Finally, the vampires extinction was overturned. Finally...

The wheel turns upon all human-kind.

_______________

I honestly may try writing this in third person, but yeah, this is my story idea. It's basically the prologue to what's going to happen. It's obviously gonna take place over several chapters, and since Thalia's the main character it will be told from her perspective. I'd love any and all feedback. :3

[nofomogirl]

Thinking of the implications of Bigshot Crowley

Especially looking forward to S3

In the original book, it was pretty much the whole point that Aziraphale and Crowley were nobody particularly important for their respective sides. Just regular low/middle-ranking field operatives, most of the time invisible drones to their superiors.

In season 1 it is certainly not as pronounced - possibly simply because some things are easier to stress in a written medium - but it isn't contradicted in any way either.

Unsurprisingly, there had always been many headcanons and fanfics that made Aziraphale and Crowley more special in the great scheme of things. I say "Aziraphale and Crowley" but of course, 95% of them focus on Crowley. Since there's more room for speculation and all. The particularly popular fanon is that Crowley was originally an Archangel. Possibly Raphael, but there are other candidates as well.

And now we're after season 2, where pretty big hints were dropped that Crowley was indeed pretty high in the angelic hierarchy before his fall.

How do I feel about it?

I'm not too sure.

I'm still getting used to it being canon. I've always enjoyed the speculations, the theories, and the fanfics. But I also felt that while for some people it was just a "what if", some simply couldn't be satisfied with their protagonists being ordinary. I have some feelings about that.

And what do I think about it?

A lot!

Firstly, if Crowley used to be someone with considerable authority was it his choice to give it up? And if it was, then when exactly did it happen?

Fanons usually point to the Fall as the turning point and it makes sense. It was always implied that Crowley wasn't really invested in Lucipher's rebellion, he just had questions of his own and that's it. So it made sense that after becoming a demon he decided to lie low and not get involved.

But doesn't pre-Fall Crowley seem awfully... alone to you? In the one scene we got he is about to bring his creation to life and the only witness is the randomly (?) passing Aziraphale? If he's someone important, isn't it weird?

I can't help but feel that in Heaven Crowley was already removed from main power structures. Perhaps he simply never saw the appeal and never participated. Perhaps he lost interest along the way. And perhaps he was somehow excluded, possibly without him fully noticing.

But most importantly, what does it mean for his character development? And how it ties to Aziraphale's character development?

Because let me stress it: we had ended season 2 (1) knowing that Crowley used to be in a high position in Heaven and (2) seeing Aziraphale accept a high position in Heaven.

And frankly, it was this realization that made me really want S3 to happen. I mean, I wanted it before simply because I want to see the two finally get properly together and have their happily ever after. But now I'm really curious about where exactly we go from here. Now I'm interested not just in a destination but in an actual journey they're going to take.

It seems pretty obvious that Aziraphale needs to finally free himself from Heaven. Experience the ultimate disillusion.

But what if Crowley's entire job isn't just to wait and graciously accept his angel back when he finally sees reason? It would certainly make for a much better story if he had his own crap to sort out.

My headcanon right now is that Crowley indeed was an Archangel but because he was not into politics - for lack of a better term - he let others call the shots. I think he never fully acknowledged and processed that he had the power to make things better.

And that finale...

Crowley might have wished Aziraphale could just drop everything and go with him like Gabriel and Beelzebub left together. But the point is Gabriel and Beelzebub never cared about Earth, they're selfish and don't give a damn what calamity and bloodshed they leave behind, and too self-righteous to question their choices.

It is a fact that Heaven and Hell can't be left to their own devices.

Aziraphale and Crowley aren't humans who can just quit toxic jobs that are also corporations ruining the planet, move to another country, and make it not their problem. Humans have a chance of living happily and dying before the consequences of their former employers' actions ruin their little paradise.

It's perfectly understandable that Aziraphale doesn't want the responsibility of doing nothing while he could. It's also perfectly obvious that he's being manipulated and way over his head. Especially with Crowley not by his side.

I just want season 3.

It would be also nice if it wasn't just Crowley being right about everything and Aziraphale needing to apologize for his entire existence. But I'll take what I get, I guess.