#idk I’m not an amputee or anything like that so I wouldn’t know

[loonarmuunar]

People talk about how weird it must feel to lose a limb. But I never see anyone talking about how weird it would feel for someone born without a limb to just suddenly have one. Obviously thats an impossible scenario but like. Still. For someone born without an arm to have all 4 limbs would feel freaky. Imagine you wake up and now you have a 3rd leg.

[colonelpancakes]

I am, at long last, getting around to watching the new season of The Dragon Prince so. Have some of my thoughts on the new episodes. Uh I guess this is kind of a liveblog thing? Idk, I wrote these down while I was watching the episode. Under the cut because this ended up getting quite long. Image IDs are in the alts. I'm new to this be nice to me-

Okay, is it just me or does this startouch elf look kinda like Sarai? I swear she does, she has like the same face shape. I don't know, maybe it's just me and my god awful facial recognition but... 👀

Also, "We are, all of us, stardust held together by love for an instant." is such a beautiful quote. It reminds me of the Minecraft End Poem.

Ooh, I love the twist on the previous Mystery of Aaravos intro. I wonder if this is gonna be the intro for the whole season or if it'll switch to something else after this episode?

Poor Terry he does not deserve to be dealing with all this shit. He's such a sweetheart. A little bit of a fucked up sweetheart but a sweetheart nonetheless.

Oh so Viren’s not dead. Huh. I need to rewatch the S5 finale because I’m gonna be honest, I do Not remember exactly what happened. Viren was going to die if he didn’t kill Sir Sparklepuff? I think? Or maybe that was just what they thought was gonna happen and there was a chance it wouldn’t? I don’t remember. Anyways, congrats Viren on your new will to live.

Claudia. Claudia what did you do Claudia?

Claudia, why is the sand covered in blood?

CLAUDIA!

Oh poor Terry... You can see the moment he spots the severed wing.

Hey, quick question, WHY IS THIS SHOW STILL RATED Y7? This would have fucking traumatized me as a seven year old! I thought there was a limit on how much blood you can show on a Y7 show, HELLO?? OUGH.

“It’s like you said. You do anything for family. However dangerous, however vile.” “No. No that’s… that’s not quite right. It’s never what I meant. You do anything for your children. Never the other way around. No parent wants their child to suffer for them.” Ough… Oh that hurts. Ohhhh. Also, “no that’s not quite right” is the same thing he says to her in the first episode when she says something weird. Callbacks to simpler times ow that hurts.

OH YEAH. JUST RIP MY HEART OUT WHY DON'T YOU? Augh.

JESUS FUCKING CHRIST GIVE CLAUDIA’S VA AN AWARD. NOW. That is hands down actually the most like. Realistic depiction of someone crying in any media I have ever encountered. The way she sounds like a child having a breakdown? She’s not crying quietly, she’s screaming and sobbing oh my god. I literally started tearing up watching as like a sympathetic response good grief. Who is Claudia’s voice actress? I looked it up and apparently it’s Racquel Belmonte. Give her like fifty awards right now

Viren. Viren listen. I appreciate that you are attempting to heal and face justice and become a better person separated from dark magic. I really do appreciate it. Good for you. HOWEVER. Perhaps, just maybe, abandoning your daughter, who has become an amputee less than a day ago, in the wilderness with no one but her boyfriend after she just completed a very traumatizing ritual AND knowing that she has severe abandonment issues after her mother and brother both left her. Is not the best move? Like. That girl is not mentally stable she needs support. She does not need her dad abandoning her on a beach, covered in blood and missing a leg as she screams and cries for him not to leave her. Viren, just caring about your daughter does not automatically make you a good dad. Viren. Viren you have to actually stay and support your child and NOT LEAVE HER IN THE FUCKING WILDERNESS. I do, though appreciate how they are creating a character who does CARE about his children so so much. And is still an absolutely god awful father to both of them.

Awww the baitlings are so cute 🥹

Pondering the Orb 🧙‍♂️

Callum… Callum you good? I am getting a very bad feeling about Callum being so adamant about destroying it. I feel like that is absolutely how Aaravos gets released and maybe he’s controlling Callum? This all feels like a bad idea. Also, I will admit the Lord of The Rings joke made me giggle.

Exactly what I was saying, Rayla! Destroying the pearl sounds like a terrible idea.

Ohhh… Poor Zym… He misses his mama. Also, I can’t remember if this was in previous seasons, but I appreciate the stitching in the painting where it was mended after being ripped apart. Such a good detail.

Hey Callum, why are you glowing with star magic? Is it because Aaravos is possessing y- oh nevermind it’s the monkey.

Mmmm the difference between Rayla and Callum. Rayla will put the safety of the world over her loved ones. Callum will put his loved ones over the safety of the world. Rayla refuses doing something that could potentially endanger the world even if it would mean getting her parents back.

Oh, so it’s not Aaravos influencing Callum it’s just Callum being anxious. Also, give Callum’s voice actor an award he's nailed the tone of "so filled with anxious energy you can't stop you have to do something, it's like you're driven by a motor." and that is a very specific tone.

[More in reblogs because I ran out of room.]

[jimmythejiver]

For the first time in a long time I went to the movies in forever and then to Target. At Target I see some Godiva bars on discount yellow tags and I was ecstatic until I read 70% Cacao, Dark, Salted Caramel and was deflated.

Anyway that's how I felt about seeing The Green Knight. What you thought this was about chocolate?

No see since the pandemic I've been back on my perennial King Arthur kick. I've for a long time since I was a young preteen thought, someday I too will write my own King Arthur epic and it'll be gay, magical, gangster and culty too, but for now I'll make up my own stories for practice and then with every story I got attached too, it got too involved and convoluted to the point that when it came down to actually writing a novel, I threw it all away and made a space opera I only planned in two weeks and wrote in a month. Anyway...so now I've been writing this very gay, magical, gangster and culty take on Final Fantasy XV with my boyfriend and just fell in love with Somnus Lucis Caelum who nobody has any insight about him than to make him the Mordred to Ardyn's Arthur, which is a strange flex, but okay, I thought about what if I wrote a Dark Age prequel about Ardyn and Somnus, but Ardyn becomes king and Somnus his shogun and they play games of seduction and power because I'm twisted like that. Anyway...I was like I'm never going to write this and I have to keep making up characters based on FFXV characters and King Arthur tropes because there's not a lot of stories that take place during the Dark Ages, it's always some Roman Empire story, or High Middle Ages and FFXV gave no room for either society to happen after the fall of Solheim and the rise of King Somnus...so we left with Dark Ages, y'all, the King Arthur comparisons are obvious, but Ardyn is no Arthur and Somnus is no Mordred, Aera is only Guenevere if you make up an affair with Somnus, Gilgamesh is no Bedwyr/Bedivere, but uh...they both amputees and the oldest companions to their respective kings so...I guess. Anyway making an ancestor of Cor Leonis and deciding well he's Owain/Yvain, or am Ignis type as idk Sir Cai/Kay I guess, they both cook, but Cai's more like Seifer Almasy than any FF character... Anyway I'm losing people.

My plan was to just scrap the FFXV prequel, leave my Somnus ideas into Overtime (a gangster and gods story) and just plan an actual King Arthur adaptation. I'd have King Arthur the treasure hunter, leader of a warband turned founder of Camelot who fights giants, giant cats and dogheads, but also fights King Claudas of the Franks and King Aelle of the Saxons and Cerdic a Briton who puts in his lot with the Saxons, etc. It'd been a a glorified turf war, meanwhile Arthur's gotta make alliances with King Pelles, The Fisher King and his strange cult he's founded because, why yes I find the ends justifies the means prophecy of the Holy Grail Quest very culty because Christianity then does not resemble it now. Meanwhile you got the secondary plots of Mordred, Gawain, Lancelot, Percival, Tristam and other's going on because they matter and too many modern King Arthur stories sideline the knights.

So many have always sidelined Mordred as a final boss eldritch abomination in mortal flesh conceived of sin and give him no personality, or complex motives, or even just a relationship with Arthur. I also have noticed the general sidelining of Lancelot, or give him a chad villain upgrade if you must include him at all, and the villainizing of Gawain to the point that you don't even have to have Mordred, or Agravain as a catalyst shit stirrer in court, just slap Gawain's name on Liam Neeson in a top knot and you're good. Mordred can just be a child offscreen until last act...fuck that, while Morgan Le Fay can either be a villainess plotting her cabal through men, or a well-intentioned, ineffectual idiot. Fuck that.

Now Hollywood just be doing King Arthur first acts that suck ass, only for said director to get rewarded failing upwards by giving this same jerk the Aladdin remake. The tonally shitty, crammed in blockbuster mess of a cliche heroe's journey that sucks.

With that background I was excited for The Green Knight. I read an illustrative version as a kid, I read Tolkien's translation as a teenager, I read Simon Armitage's superior, but with liberties taken translation. I was prepped to go knowing that indie, or not they were going to make changes to weave the disjointed poem together. I'm excited that because this movie exists Project Guternberg's finally thrown Jessie Weston's prose rendition up on their website. I'll be reading that at some point when this blows over.

The movie adaptation makes a lot of...choices, many I wouldn't love, but would forgive had their been a payoff. There was none.

The journey was fine, the cinematography was a breath of fresh air after crappy slo mo, glossy action scenes ruined another. Guys, I don't think I want to see a Zack Snyder Excalibur, it'll marginally be better than Guy Ritchie, but that ain't saying anything. Leave Excalibur to the post-Star Wars 80s where it is impeccable for it's time. I liked Green Knight's breathable pacing, it's color palette's in the forests and mountains made up for the muddy grey of every Ridley Scott send up in the castles and villages in every other Dark Ages/Medieval story in the last I don’t know since the shitty 00′s. For all the dark tones when there was blues, greens, yellows or reds, they were vibrant in this movie to contrast the gloom of Britain. The soundtrack was good. This isn't all what makes a movie, but it enhances it so let's get to the story and what I did and didn't like.

Things I Liked: Gawain is still a novice in his career The Costume Dressing Everyone pronounces Gawain's name different. I pronounce it like Gwayne, or Guh Wayne, but here you got Gowen (like Owen), Gowan (like Rowan), or even Garlon who I'm pretty sure is the Fisher King's heir in some versions of that Arthurian story, so uh... The reference to Arthur slaying 960 men with his bare hands (Nennius for the win!) The Waste Land that is implied to be a site of a battle (an important aspect of the Arthurian landscape) The Fox companion No long grisly, drawn out hunting scenes. The Fox lives! No misogynist speeches

Things I'm Mixed: This being a dream, is the magic real? Are the giants? Is the Green Knight a figment of Gawain's imagination from a spell Morgan casted in him to hallucinate? Is Lord and Lady also figments? It's...a way to interpret the poem, but lazy and I don't see why it's got to all fantasy, or all dream...this movie makes it too vague you're stuck picking one camp than to accept it's a fantasy with dream and hallucinatory sequences.

Things I'm Meh: Morgan Le Fay as Gawain's mom. Look I fucking hate Morgause as a character and these two get merged and steal each other's aspects so much at this point the difference is who did they marry, King Urien or King Lot? Both are attributed to being Mordred's mom, Mordred is Gawain's brother...both practice magic depending on certain incarnations, both love and hate Arthur their brother and are in conflict with him. Saint Winifred. I actually liked this sequence, but I don't appreciate her as the tacked on wife in the later dream sequence as like...a contrast between the wife you should marry than the whore next door you don't respect anyway? I don't even know what lesson I'm supposed to get out of the damn dream sequence, or any of it? That Gawain should've married his girlfriend and then he'd be a just ruler? That he shouldn't be king? That he'd never have to make the same heartless, impartial choices? I don't know, he seemed like a king doing king shit because guess what? It never gets easier. Wars will be waged. The world didn't become better because he married the right woman, respected her and lived in obscurity. The world didn't become better because he made her his queen. We certainly don't know the world would be better Gawain had his head chopped off and dead XP They never reveal the Lord and the Green Knight as one and the same because of this shit.

Things I Hated: Arthur withdraws from the challenge because he's old. In poem he takes it on and Gawain takes it so he don't have to and he finds himself more disposable than the king. Gawain only takes the challenge because of arrogance. Arthur and Gawain had no prior personal relationship. I'd not have hated this so much if it wasn't compounded by it cancelling out the first two things. Gawain is portrayed as having no respect for his woman, or any woman, maybe his mother? He has to be pushed by Winifred to regain her head. Gawain is portrayed as arrogant, covetous and ready to pass the buck, or the bare minimum than have any honor or decency. It didn't matter the kid in the wasteland was shithead bandit, the way Gawain acted towards him, when he gets robbed, it almost feels like he deserved it and Gawain doesn't learn a damn lesson. I'll admit him taking the sword to cut his ropes and cutting his hands was a neat sequence, it shows him go from stupid, to almost clever and having will to survive...you know traits he had in the poem, but he stops showing these traits or growing. Basically Gawain has to be dragged kicking and screaming to help people and shows no fortitude when facing temptation, or when showing respect towards others, it's exhausting. You don't make this kind of journey story without character growth. Why are you skipping this? Also is it just me, or is this like when you take Frank Miller Batman and transport him onto a Bill Finger story? This is at best Thomas Malory Gawain (and this is charitable) transported on the earlier Pearl Poet's story. Stop it. It's not tonally correct and goes at odds with the story and the set up characterization you'd need to tell it. Speaking of which, you know how I get through the oof... of Liam Neeson Gawain in Excalibur? By pretending he Agravain instead. Here...I don't even think Gawain could pass as Mordred in spite of his covetous nature, lust and entitlement. Why? because I don't think even Mordred is this dumb to warrant this hubris. Essel being invented as a tacked on love interest just to be shit on utterly and for what? I don't think I have much commentary here as there is no Essel I'm aware of to compare, or stack up. I just notice this trope of like...usually if you include a sex worker in Hollywood she often has a heart of gold, she often has her own sense of values that goes at odds with society, but is more true and less hypocritical than a privileged lady’s. I thought that's what they would've done with the added trope of back at home sweetheart to contrast and pit her against the despicable femme fatale of Lady Bertilak and her adultery and her ladyship...and I'm glad they didn't...but you did nothing with Essel than to shit on her for existing when you made her exist, you know. Lady Bertilak being portrayed as the seductress devil incarnate. Look I know adultery is a touchy taboo, but uh her and Gawain hit it off in the poem, dammit! Her values and his values come to clash, but here it's played off as Gawain is stupid and covetous and Lady Bertilak wants to prove something because...? If my brother's theory that she's a figment of Morgan Le Fay's magic, then I'll take this as a lesson of Gawain is impulsive and covetous and his mom knows it, but he don't want to fuck his mom, but he wants her power, and Morgan wants to teach him a lesson... I guess. Hey we don't have misogynist speeches in this movie, but we'll make sure to have the movie drip with it with no point, or commentary. Pass. Lord guilting, extracting and initiating the same sex kiss and only once. Poem automatically better that Gawain don't have to keep being reminded to keep his part of the bargain and he does it willingly more than once. What he doesn't do is give up his belt...gods how did we get more homophobic as a society that the homoeroticism here is worse? Catholics of the middle ages officially had no issue doing same sex, passionate kissing until it lead to sex. The Ending: The gods damn ending. In the movie as is, Gawain waits to uphold his end of the bargain and get his head chopped off. He imagines, even though we don't get any fuzzy or distortion to indicate this is a dream, but I already knew this was coming, he runs away and comes home, is regarded a hero, he sees his lady, takes her from behind and if you saw Brokeback Mountain (I didn't, but DJ has) you know this is a sign of disrespect to women. He gets her knocked up, pays her off for the kid she wants to keep, he is crowned king, marries the ghostly saint lady he helped retrieve her head earlier from a lake in the movie (this right here is the damn tip off). There's no more dialogue by this point and everything is montaging, so you know by now it's a dream, though nothing is out of focus. He rules as a heartless king, his whore son dies from war he waged, he has a daughter, his wife dies. Gawain then takes off the belt that would've saved his life and his head falls off. This would've been the one good twist, except... In this sequence of events he never had his head cut off so uh... now we back in present day. He decides not to bitch out, Green Knight in a sexy way is like "now off with your head," movie cuts to credits with no resolve...uh what the fuck? What the fuck? This is not good. You wasted the one twist in your dream when idk, you could've...

How I'd fix it: No dream sequence at all. No Incident At Owl Creek twist. Gawain comes home a hero and survivor of this game and ordeal. He wears this belt of shame. He becomes a well-renowned knight, but he bears a shame. One day he goes to take off his belt and his head falls off because he cheated to get this belt and to survive this encounter. There. Done. Improved your high concept movie that couldn't play any of the lessons straight from the damn poem without making everyone an asshole for no reason! Ugh! But nope you had to end it on we don’t know if Gawain lives or dies...because...it's dream magic made from his momma's witchcraft...?

Last Thoughts So then post-credits scene because Marvel because Pirates Of The Caribbean existed. A white girl who looks nothing like Gawain's daughter we see who didn’t pay off, or any child I can remember through this whole movie picks up King Arthur's crown that dream Gawain inherited and puts it on her head. Who is this girl? Are we gonna have an indie equivalent of of the Marvel Movie Universe/Universal Horror Monsters thing with ancient British legends? We gonna get a Life Of Saint Patrick next that crosses over? I don't know. What is this?

[jeezlouiseoncheese]

Some thoughts on My Hero Academia

(please keep in mind that is based off my knowledge of the anime, I haven’t read the manga nor have I watched the movies)

-villain deku is lame because most of the time he barely has a motive other than getting revenge for people who wronged him (e.g. his bullies) which is a terrible motive ESPECIALLY for a villain that people hype up as super scary and powerful

-villain deku also just makes no sense character wise. I mean yeah, I get that the whole personality change is kinda the main point of it, but logistically it just wouldn’t happen without something really big happening to Deku to change his perspective. Being a hero has been his dream his whole life, why would he just randomly give it up because he’s getting bullied for it? Even when he was considering giving it up because his hero had told him to, he wasn’t angry or vengeful, he was depressed. He just wouldn’t react to it like that.

-villain Bakugo is better than villain deku, but it has its flaws too. Bakugo absolutely has the motivation to become a villain, because of how poorly hero society has treated him for having a ‘villainous’ Quirk. He’s been traumatised under the care of his teachers and has had nothing done to make sure he’s okay mentally or psychologically. Plus, he is naturally a very angry and vengeful person, so it would make sense that he’d want revenge for the way he’s been treated. However, he’s also very stubborn and very passionate about his dream of being the number one hero, so it’s still a bit hard to believe he’d just completely turn away from that, especially when he’s been called a villain by people around him-- which probably just reinforces his desire to become a hero, so that he can prove them wrong. 

-Villain Bakugo is nonsensical because of his passion about becoming a hero, BUT AUs in which he is an activist against Quirkism (is that a term? Idk if it is but I don’t know how else to describe it, what I mean by that is a bias against and for certain Quirks) make much more sense because then he can get revenge for his mistreatment by solving it at its root. However this is a bit tricky because if he’s fighting against Quirkism he should also be fighting against the marginalisation of Quirkless people, and I’m still unsure if he’s changed his views on Quirklessness since his character development or not bc it’s not really discussed much in the show 

-also deaf Jirou AUs are wayy better than deaf Bakugo AUs because they have a lot more potential as Jirou loves music so much. I mean seriously this AU needs more attention

-while we’re on the topic of AUs, an Amputee Deku AU would be so interesting. Like imagine he actually breaks his arm to the point he can’t use them anymore, and how everyone would react to that. Think of how people would judge him, how it would make him feel, how it would affect disabled people to see a hero who is an amputee. There’s just so much hidden potential.

-the lack of attention being brought to how judgemental and biased society is against certain types of Quirks and the extreme commercialisation of heroism is upsetting to me personally because honestly the worldbuilding of My Hero Academia is so cool and interesting and it really makes me think but it barely ever gets explored. The socio-political implications of it are so interesting yet they are repeatedly ignored and it’s frustrating. 

-Why do the police not apprehend small-scale villains? Like literally what do they do if not that? THE POLICE IN MHA ARE FUNCTIONALLY USELESS AND ITS LITERALLY SO ANNOYING. I may be dumb and not know any other use for police but like, what is the actual difference between a police officer and a Pro Hero besides the colourful outfit and hero name? there’s literally no difference. Pro Heroes are just police officers turned into celebrities for the sake of profit. It’s literally capitalism at its finest.

-also on the subject of pro heroes, Stain is an idiot for blaming the heroes instead of the companies. When it comes to societal issues it is almost always the big corporations and companies at fault, because they have the most power and influence. He was completely right about the word ‘hero’ losing its meaning but his conclusion that the pro heroes are at fault for that is bullshit. 

-to add on to the whole thing about words losing their meaning due to hero society, ‘villain’ has lost its meaning too. Like in the first episode of the anime, the first example they give of a ‘villain’ is a guy stealing someone’s purse (I think? I haven’t watched the first episode in a while, but I remember it wasn’t a major crime) which is like, super confusing. I literally remember Kamui Woods calling the guy something like ‘epitome of evil’ or some shit like that, as if this guy had committed mass murder or something. That guy was a criminal, but he didn’t seem to have a history with it as far as we know, and he wasn’t planning on destroying the whole world or something, so he really doesn’t seem like a villain. Yet people identify him as one simply because he committed a crime. Does that mean illegally downloading movies makes you a villain? Are you a villain if you do drugs? What does villain even mean? The line between criminal and villain is practically non-existent to the point where I’m not even sure they’re two different things in the show. 

-also the fact that a good chunk of people with Quirks emit them from one or more parts of their body, usually their limbs (e.g. Bakugo, Shoji, Jirou, Shigaraki) makes such unused potential for villains. Like you could literally make a person functionally Quirkless by cutting off a part of their body, why hasn’t anyone thought of this yet

I’ve just realised how many times I’ve used the word ‘potential’ in this rant. Eh, who cares, it’s not like I’m gonna change it. Anyway, I think that’s all. If anything I said above is disproven by something said in the movies or in the manga, I’d like to know, but without any big spoilers of course. If you disagree, or want to add something on, go right ahead, I’m open to discussion :)

[gra-sonas]

Damn that ratings drop was brutal! NGL, after what they did in 2x2 I feel avenged but also I do love some of the cast so I feel bad too. Anyway, in your opinion, what do you think is a bigger factor in affecting ratings in an upcoming episode: the ep synopsis or the previous episode itself? Cuz I'm in the fandom and I don't even go searching for a sysnopsis. I highly doubt a casual viewer would. So thoughts?

Yeah, that drop was rather significant. :/

I think there’s more than one reason.

1/ The super long hiatus. Many casual viewers simply forgot the show even exists (there are still people on Twitter, who only now discover that the show wasn’t actually cancelled and is back for S2. I can’t even imagine how many casual viewers who’re not active on social media have no idea the show’s back).

2/ The total lack of promotion for the show between S1 & 2. The official social media accounts went radio silent after S1 ended, there was zero effort to attract new viewers by telling them the show’s on Netflix, or that there would be a S2.

3/ No new content for almost a year. The only new content we (as in 'the people already invested in the show’) got between S1 and 2 was random pics/vids and some spoilers the cast/Carina shared + the NYCC trailer. A trailer in super wonky, distorted quality, yet it still provided better and more exciting glimpses into S2 than the official S2 trailer did (which was only released about 2 weeks prior to the S2 premiere…) So for almost 11 months, there was basically nothing to get people excited unless they were actively looking for news. 

4/ Lacklustre S2 promo. CW promo’s always kinda bad, but the one for RNM is pretty much non-existent. Leading up to S2, there was nothing but the occasional pre-scheduled promo post (with S1 promo pics and clips and the hint to download the CW app or sth like that). And they didn’t even start to promote S2 until about two weeks before to the premiere. They had to cancel a press day bc of COVID-19, instead they’ve organized the weekly IG takeovers now, which are really cool, but also mostly of interest to those who’re already following the show more closely. Any casual viewers are probably unaware.

Currently it seems like the CW PR team pretty much forgot about the show (we didn’t get any 2x03 promo pics prior to the episode, and they didn’t release a preview clip either). There’s basically no effort made to promote the show, and I’m not even talking about huge billboards or AOL Build talks (though stuff like that wouldn’t hurt), just… IDK, keeping things going and flowing between S1 & 2, and actively making more people catch up on S1 on Netflix could’ve gone a long way, y’know. :/

I think the lack of PR on every level is definitely playing a role in the dropping numbers. It shows, that not only didn’t they manage to attract new viewers, they even lost S1 viewers. Whether that’s entirely due to the lack of promo, or is in part to blame on the writing, is impossible to say.

5/ That being said, S1 didn’t exactly end in a good place, and 11 months is a looooong time to forget about characters you may have cared for (just a normal amount :P) a year ago. I don’t know how happy or unhappy casual viewers have been with the show’s writing, but you don’t have such a drop in ratings just from a lack of promo.

No idea whether this will change anything in regards to the writing of the show next season. Who knows how decisions by TV higher ups are made, where the ‘blame’ is put for stuff like that, and whether Carina would actually be ‘ordered’ to make changes? (I don’t really think that will be the case tbh)

For now, we don’t have to worry, S3′s a go, and once that’s wrapped, I doubt the show’ll get cancelled (broadcast syndication/international sales is where The CW makes most of their money, and the more episodes a show has, the more valuable it becomes for syndication and outside-of-the-US sales).

Another bonus: they’re filming in Santa Fe, which is cheaper than LA, Georgia or Vancouver (where many other shows are produced) and comes with additional tax incentives. The cast isn’t as expensive as the cast of most other CW shows either, neither does the show rely on expensive special effects (like all the Arrowverse shows) - all good reasons for the CW to keep the show in production, especially as a mid-season show.

Dropping viewership numbers still suck tho, and I feel sorry for the cast. :(

They’ve been working so hard for almost 8 months to make the show, the least The CW could do is properly promote it, and also look for more opportunities to get the cast out for interviews (like, why isn’t there a single RNM related interview with Tyler about Alex Manes in S2 - a gay amputee veteran character -  or an interview with Trevino, he was at atVfest, and last year he did an interview or two, but apart from that, there’s nothing, and both Trevino and Tyler are two of the ‘bigger names’ on RNM, with people knowing them from their TVD/PLL days).

And please, for the love of humans and aliens alike, up your laaame social media game, CW pr team. The RNM Costume IG account is doing a much better job at promoting the show than you, and it’s NOT ACTUALLY THEIR JOB.

[wahbegan]

Oh Wait Now I Can Do a Proper Candyman Trailer Breakdown

I can analyze everything in the first trailer much better now, I think with the supplementary material provided by the puppet show and the other TV spot oh right i guess i should put this under a cut like I do cause i just know it’s gonna get long as balls all right

Opens with yeah recap of Candyman legend nothing really to see here

Not much in the bathroom scene either apart from it first introduces this Candyman’s shtick of only being visible in mirrors and shadows which is really neat...oh yeah also no the one Asian girl def chickens out after the 4th Candyman repetition so he literally only kills the white girls which i find personally hilarious. Speaking of hilarious....the girl with the buzz cut? Her character’s name is Boof. Ah, to be young again...anyway

There’s a lot of like...ochre and seafoam in this trailer, have you noticed? Like the bathroom, Candyman’s pants and coat idk i doubt it’s thematic it’s probably just an aesthetic choice but it’s interesting colors for a horror movie

“I feel really connected to this neighborhood” yeah as i mean everyone knows by now but Anthony was kidnapped by Candyman as a baby so it’s hard to tell how much of his fascination with the dark history of prettied-up Cabrini Green is just pretentious artsiness and how much is Candyman’s influence

Okay so the local ominous old kook here says something I find very fascinating when he tells him where he lives. Anthony said I just moved in around the corner, and OOK says “The old candy factory...” not next to the old candy factory or anything, just “the old candy factory”

Now we know from the puppet trailer that there’s a new character they’re introducing who is a black worker at a candy factory with a hook, but y’know like a real person hook that actual amputees get, maybe cause of a factory accident, i do not know, who was good natured and gave free candy to kids on his way home because y’know he works at a candy factory and some white cops saw, assumed he was a paedophile, chased him down to the bottom of the stairwell of presumably the building he lived in, and beat him to death

This character actually seems p important, in the new TV spot there’s a shot of a guy in a trenchcoat and seafoam pants in front of a building i THINK MIGHT be him, and a shot of some cops descending a stairwell, so I think we’re actually gonna see what happened to him, and I think he is going to be introduced as y’know a competing story to Daniel Robitaille’s, he’s MY BEST GUESS going to serve the function in the plot of revealing to the audience the idea presented in the puppet show trailer, that Candyman is more of an abstract entity or a floating moniker, it’s not necessarily bound by the identity of Daniel Robitaille

Anyway, i’m pretty sure by OOK’s comment here that the condos Anthony and Brianna live in are literally built on top of where the candy factory where that guy worked used to stand

Oh yeah just neat little shot of the graffiti of Candyman more as Clive Barker designed him fun reference

Bee stinging Anthony, more on that later, also notice he’s not just a painter, he’s a photographer as well because that becomes important

Oh yeah “he’s the monster that’s part of this neighborhood” is in all probability part of the same speech from the TV spot “Candyman ain’t a HE, he’s the whole damn hive. He’s the way we deal with the fact that these things happened. That they’re still happening.” Candyman I’m prob gonna make a whole post about this but his transformation from urban legend used to cope with random violence and urban decay in Clive Barker’s story to urban legend used to cope with racial violence seems complete in this movie, and I believe thematically the idea is the gentrified Cabrini and Anthony are under the delusion that this is a monster, a story of the past, and Candyman appears to...disabuse them of that notion. With a big fuck-off hook

We know from the TV spot the all-black portrait he’s working on in his apartment is Daniel Robitaille, and a damn good likeness of Tony Todd can I just say who the hell did these paintings they’re amazing anyway the one we see at the gallery of the man with the swollen face is I think the candy factory worker who was beaten to death. That guy i think is also the one who introduces the concept of the seafoam pants and ochre coat btw to Candyman’s wardrobe. Cause of that, he might be how Candyman appears when he kills the High School girls i do not know but that’s interesting, ain’t it? Candyman appearing in different ways to different people depending on the story they’ve heard

Oh the mirror opening to the space behind it must be a reference to the hole through Candyman’s mouth graffiti in the og i just got that that’s pretty sweet cool exhibition

When bearded guy in that god-awful Overlook Hotel carpet-looking button up shirt is saying Candyman, that movie that’s being projected in the background...I’m not sure which, but based on what little more we saw of it in the TV spot, pretty sure that’s footage of the lead-up to/possibly the actual act of the arrest or murder of one of Anthony’s Candyman subjects which is ahh....dark. I mean hell, he’s black, if anyone can do it he can but that feels a little tasteless Tony buddy

Anne-Marie is still obvs shaken up about Candyman, based on their two brief interactions in this trailer I’m assuming...well, cause he was a baby when it happened, he wouldn’t remember, i’m assuming she never told him about what happened to him and this is the first he’s hearing of it.

Candyman agrees with me that the movie was tasteless

Related to that Candyman becoming a monster of racial violence rather than urban blight thing, unlike the original movie, almost ALL of his victims in this are white, which is i mean yeah more on brand considering his origin story(ies)

Candyman appearing in the mirror and Anthony’s hand rotting from the bee sting yeah may as well talk about it here, it becomes obvious at several points through the trailer that the Candyman entity if you want to call it that is taking hold of Anthony

For a split second when he throws the glass, I think you can see his James Byrd, Jr. portrait in the background (with the exposed skull)

Yeah, I’m not exactly sure what’s happening to him as he paints but it SEEMS like he’s somehow experiencing the pain of his subjects

When he’s in his painting clothes covered in black paint seems to be mid-late in the movie when he’s kinda losing his shit yeah we see later the hook come out of a sleeve in the coat he’s wearing when he gets his hand sawed off (more on that in a sec) and the paint-splattered jeans so i’m pretty sure the painting clothes with the old fur-lined coat over it is gonna be HIS Candyman Transformation Chic

“He had a purpose for you, to be another one of his terrible stories.” This is completely shooting in the dark and it came to me late at night as I was falling asleep so I have no idea how stupid or crazy it may or may not sound, BUT if we accept Candyman as a recurring entity and his “terrible stories” as victims of racially motivated hate crimes, okay, hear me out. Remember how in the OG Candyman just kept framing Helen for everything? I wonder if Anthony’s story via Candyman was supposed to be “white woman harrassing Cabrini Green residents chops up woman’s dog, steals her baby, and puts him in a bonfire to be burned alive.” Like Anthony was supposed to be a what’s the word they use in the puppet trailer’s blurb “unwilling martyr”, a black baby boy burned alive by a white woman to keep the faith of his congregation going

I feel like that might be the old candy factory worker sawing Anthony’s hand off, anyway yeah he’s in a very Candyman coat, his hand infected presumably via bee sting is being sawed off, what I really love is that you can see that not only is his right hand getting amputated, he’s been blinded in his right eye. Now remember in Candyman’s original story, Daniel Robitaille had his hand sawed off not just so he could replace it with a sick-ass hook, but because that was his painting hand, that was the source of his talent and pride and wealth. Anthony, like I said, is a painter and a photographer. So Candyman takes his hand and his eye i just love that lil detail

I think that woman in the burned church with SWEETS TO THE SWEET on the wall might be Helen, who we know is in the movie and probably has a conversation with Brianna for plot purposes cause there’s a reaction shot of Brianna in the same church saying “this isn’t real”

Yeah that is absolutely definitely 100% Anthony killing that guy in the alley so yeah i guess there’s no question Candyman gets his ass but i feel like there’s more to it because well y’know they’re very open about it in the trailer number one in a way they’re usually not about the struggle the movie revolves around and as evidenced by him killing people the movie still clearly keeps going after he becomes Candyman so ???? i wonder what’s going on

There’s a brief shot of a little girl watching what looks like her dad jump out the window, I assume that’s Brianna seeing as how y’know a kid is credited as young Brianna and i think there was a character blurb mentioning her having a troubled past, so i feel like her dad’s suicide is obliquely related to Candyman in some way. It is worth noting he seems to jump out of some kind of painting studio

This little kid finding a corpse covered in blood and bees in the bathroom is, first of all, that’s only black person we see killed by Candyman, but also it just seems so disconnected from the rest of the plot and i can’t figure it out at all that I feel like this scene must be either a cold open or a stinger at the very end

[marinsawakening]

About arospec headcannon thing anyone from FMA of your choice and a character from a series/book that you have enjoying latelly!

“character from a series/book that you have enjoying latelly” bold of you to assume I’ve had the attention span to be reading anything anon. the only thing I’ve been reading lately is ‘The Bacchae and Other Works’, demonstrating that I can, in fact, be a smart literary reader every once in a while, but the only play I’ve finished is Ion, and like… sure Athena is aro, but I also feel like headcanoning a greek god as aro is kinda cheating, but in the spirit of ancient greek myths, I’ll be doing my fave aro headcanon, Percy Jackson. He’s going under the cut though, because Ed’s turned out… long. Sorry about that.

Anyway, from FMA, I’m (predicatably) picking Edward Elric, because I can’t and won’t stop:

What arospec identities do they have? (Can be as specific or vague as desired)

I generally headcanon Ed as nebularomantic, though I also really really like the headcanon of him having my exact aro experience because honestly, I like projecting onto him. But I usually go with nebularomantic because I feel like the headcanon possibilities for that are more interesting, so I’ll go with that in this post.

(Or arovague, a little more, maybe? He’s nebularomantic in the sense that a) alexithymia makes figuring out whether he’s feeling platonic or romantic attraction pretty much impossible, and b) he feels like he doesn’t really fit into society’s ideas of romance due to it heavily being tied up into neurotypical standards, and finds the concept of romantic relationships/romantic attraction somewhat inaccessible to him as a result. So he’s kind of a mix between nebularomantic, quoiromantic with the ‘disidentifies with the concept of romantic attraction’ definition, and arovague, I guess, but I think he’d just use nebularomantic because it’s easier and it still encompasses his experiences very well.)

How proud of being arospec are they?

Pretty proud, if only because he knows it pisses people off and he loves doing that. He’s not dropping it into every conversation ever, but he definitely has a couple pins and shows up at pride with the flag painted on his cheeks.

Do they prioritize their arospec identity over any others?

I’d say that on the Minority Identity tier, it’s probably his least important identity to him, definitely after autistic/ADHD (kind of the same thing to him) and nonbinary. It’s still pretty important to him, though. Maybe the only thing he prioritizes it over might be his amputee status, mostly because, since he grew up with a bunch of automail engineers and later living in Rush Valley with Paninya and Winry for a long while, amputees have kinda become the norm for him. However, I can also see that, due to the Circumstances surrounding the loss of his limbs, he might prioritize his physical disability anyway, because he’s had to learn to take pride in it, whereas for the nebularomanticism, that came pretty naturally.

Are they out? If so, how did they come out, and to whom?

He’s out to pretty much everyone, although the only people he actually sat down and had a conversation with were Winry, Paninya, and Al. Winry because she helped him figure out he wasn’t allo (even if he couldn’t pin down his specific aro identity), and Paninya because he brought it up when he proposed starting a qpr to sort of close a sort of ‘qpr’ triad between him, Winry, and Paninya. Al also knows because Ed talked his feelings over with him when he was still questioning, and then Mei found the identity ‘nebularomantic’ and told Al, who told Ed, and that’s how Ed figured out his identity.

How do they feel about romance? Romance-favorable? Romance-neutral? Romance-repulsed? Or does it fluctuate?

Romance-neutral, largely. I mean, he’s married, so that counts as romance-favourable probably, but honestly? He’s mostly neutral to the concept of romance because he doesn’t understand why it exists. It’s pretty much impossible for him to separate neurotypical expectations of romance and love from the concept of romantic relationships/romantic attraction in general, and this was one of the main reasons he and Winry decided to change their relationship from ‘romantic’ to ‘idk what but we’re definitely important to another/queerplatonic-ish’; he constantly felt like he was failing in romance, and Winry had a bit of trouble adjusting her expectations from a generic romantic relationship to one with Ed once they moved from a long distance relationship to a short distance one, so they felt like it was best to change the label. But that said, he’s not repulsed, and he’s not necessarily opposed to the concept of a romantic relationship, he just doesn’t really understand why that exists and has trouble living up to the neurotypical standards it generally entails.

Have they ever experienced arophobia? If so, how?

Some mild stuff, but nothing extreme. He married Winry fairly young, so that warred off all the ‘I can fix you/you need to be fixed’ and ‘you’re horrible and are going to die alone!’ flavours of arophobia, but at the same time, the fact that he married her means that a lot of people deny, ignore, and/or erase his arospec identity. Even showing up in public with an aro/nebularomantic pride flag doesn’t stop people from ignoring it. Since he’s a pretty high-profile figure, this means that it’s especially noticeable.

In addition, he’s also faced some ableist-specific arophobia in people saying that he just doesn’t understand romantic attraction because he’s autistic/ADHD, which, yeah, duh, that’s why he identifies as nebula? But people use that to deny his identity, saying that his aro identity isn’t real because it’s caused/affected by his neurodivergency, or that it must be fixed with therapy. He generally punches those people in the face and they shut up really quickly.

How do they show their arospec pride?

Like I said, he goes to pride and paints his cheeks in the nebularomantic/aromantic pride colours (one on each cheek), and he doesn’t shy away from talking about it in day-to-day life. On the rare occasion that he makes a public appearance such as an interview or as a gala attendee (mostly when he’s lost a bet to Mustang or Ling), he usually takes either a small or big flag with him (depending on the mood he’s in), just to smirk when people get awkward or try to ignore it.

Do they actively try to combat amatonormativity in their daily lives or elsewhere? If so, how?

He constantly corrects people if they call Winry his wife (yes, they’re partners, and yes, they’re married, but ‘wife’ specifically has connotations to him that he doesn’t like), constantly corrects them if they assume he’s alloro, and just generally is an obnoxious arospec fuck who’s not going to let any part of his arospec identity get erased.

Was it easy for them to label themselves arospec, or was there a long period of questioning? How many labels did they have to try before landing on the one they use now?

The questioning process took pretty long, both due to the complicated nature of his identity and alexithymia hindering the process. As I already said, it’s pretty much impossible for him to distinguish neurotypical expectations of romance from romantic attraction/relationships, but he was also aware that societal expectations =/= romantic attraction at its core, so he didn’t know if his confusion surrounding the matter was enough to make him anything but allo. Furthermore, there was the fact that alexithymia made trying to figure out whether what he was feeling was platonic or romantic pretty much impossible: he could barely figure out if he was feeling hungry, fuck if he knew he was having a squish or a crush. There was also the obvious fact that yup, he sure married Winry, and he didn’t want to divorce her because he did want to be in some kind of relationship, but he didn’t know if that was because he was feeling any kind of romantic (or platonic, for that matter) attraction, or because he simply felt at home with her, and yes he did consider that the ‘at home’ feeling might’ve been romantic, but probably not, since he also feels it with Al, but then again it was still very much different with Al, so maybe…?

Anyway, you get the point. Questioning was long and messy, and eventually came to a head when Winry basically said ‘look listen I don’t know what’s going on with you, but you promised not to keep me in the dark anymore, so spit it out’ so he did and she basically said ‘well in my expert alloromantic opinion that’s not very allo’ and he went ‘oh. shit. why didn’t I ask you earlier’ (it was because he’s the world’s smartest idiot). So they sat down and figured things out, and eventually agreed that it would be best if they ‘cancelled’ the romance aspect of their relationship for now, just to figure out what would work for them.

Also Mei was actually the one who found the term ‘nebularomantic’ way later, when she was researching arospec identities after her and Al’s relationship crashed and burned horribly (she definitely has access to a huge library of queer identities in Ling’s palace shut up), and Al heard her say the definition and he went ‘oh shit that’s my brother’, so then he called Ed and that’s how Ed came to identify as nebularomantic.

Would they be interested in a QPR? Why or why not?

He’s in a queerplatonic triad with Winry and Paninya! The relationship is actually kind of complicated, with Winry and Paninya being in a romantic relationship, Ed and Winry being in a committed relationship they’re chosing not to label at the moment, and Paninya and Ed being in the world’s most casual qpr, but the three of them call their triad ‘queerplatonic’ to simplify stuff. He probably wouldn’t necessarily search out a qpr, I think, but he very much loves people (regardless of whether or not it’s platonic or romantic or something else entirely), and he does like living with other people, so he’d probably have fallen into one naturally anyway, even if canon hadn’t played out the way it did.

Final thoughts?

If you think that I won’t headcanon someone as arospec just because they married and had kids at the end of the series then you’re so fucking mistaken.

What arospec identities do they have? (Can be as specific or vague as desired)

Percy’s demiromantic!

How proud of being arospec are they?

Very proud! If you think he ever stops making demi jokes, you are very very wrong. He goes to pride, has pins, has a flag up in his room, and generally won’t shut up about it.

Do they prioritize their arospec identity over any others?

Somewhat! He’s both demisexual and demiromantic, and he doesn’t necessarily separate those two out, but he does prioritize both of those over his demiboy identity, though that’s definitely important to him too and he’s proud of that as well (plus, he appreciates the pun material).

Are they out? If so, how did they come out, and to whom?

He’s out! After he figured it out the first thing he did was kick Annabeth’s door open and go ‘Annabeth Holy Fuck!’, so she knows. His mom and Paul know, because he actually had a Serious Coming Out conversation with them (he knew they’d take it well, but still). Everyone else at camp also knows, because he won’t shut up about it, and also like everyone at Camp Halfblood is queer as fuck, so they just kind of expected something like this sooner or later. The puns are an unwelcome surprise, though.

How do they feel about romance? Romance-favorable? Romance-neutral? Romance-repulsed? Or does it fluctuate?

None of the above, he’s very firmly romance oblivious. He’s not going to catch you flirting with him, he WILL read over romance subplots without picking up on them, he is always the last to catch on to relationships his friends have started, etc. etc. He’s romance-favourable in the sense that he’s currently in a romantic relationship with Annabeth, but honestly, I don’t think he cares enough about romance to use any of the above labels.

Have they ever experienced arophobia? If so, how?

Yeah, he’s had a bunch of assholes tell him that he’s just straight, or that he needs to use demi as a modifier, or that demiromanticism doesn’t exist, etc. etc. However, he’s been lucky enough to have a supportive family and a queer as fuck friendgroup, so it hasn’t been as bad as it could’ve been and he’s had a lot of support.

How do they show their arospec pride?

PUNS (IN THE FORM OF DEMI- JOKES). SO MANY FUCKING PUNS. NEITHER HE NOR I WILL SHUT UP ABOUT THE PUNS.

Do they actively try to combat amatonormativity in their daily lives or elsewhere? If so, how?

Sort of? He’s loudly demi, which combats amatonormativity pretty much automatically, but he’s not exactly the type to go around educating everyone about the concept of amatonormativity or anything. That’s what Annabeth is for.

Was it easy for them to label themselves arospec, or was there a long period of questioning? How many labels did they have to try before landing on the one they use now?

Honestly, he just sort of assumed that the world was playing a prank on him regarding this ‘falling in love at first sight’ thing, or in general, this ‘falling in love’ thing. He’s never had a crush on anyone before Annabeth, and was honestly halfway convinced that the concept was fake until her, but he also never really analyzed that? He just kind of… assumed that was normal. Calypso was the first real wrench in that theory, but he chalked it up to her being not human and went about his life.

Aaand then he overheard someone talking about being demi, got massively confused for a second, asked for clarification before, you know, calling a satyr, and realized ‘oh hey that’s me!’.

So all in all, the questioning process was pretty straight forward, just hampered by him being very oblivious.

Would they be interested in a QPR? Why or why not?

Hmmm, maybe? I think he’s satisfied with his romantic relationship with Annabeth, but I also don’t necessarily think he’d be opposed to one. I don’t think he’d search one out, but if someone asked, he’d probably be willing to give it a go.

Final thoughts?

This was my first ever aro headcanon and I can and WILL die on this hill.

[cosmic-spoons]

Lake Brightfall

Okay so this is an odd little fanfic I did as a request on Ao3 but I like it enough to give it a 50 Shades treatment and turn it into it’s own thing. Or...tried to, anyway. Mainly posting this for @aelia-likes-monsters because she deserves more kelpies in her life. (Don’t we all?) Maybe I’ll do more of these, idk.

Characters: M/M, Human x Kelpie

Tags: Light gore, maybe? There’s a severed hand involved but it’s not graphic. Also: puns. Bad ones.

Word count: 4,857

This was it. This was the place where it happened, Marcus was sure of it. Lake Brightfall was exactly how he remembered, from the jagged outline of the rocky shore to the way the gentle wind fanned his face and tousled his hair. He'd run along this exact pier in his nightmares so many times that he felt like he could count the planks from memory. The murky water below was crowded in blooming lily pads, unnervingly similar to the last time Marcus stood here, back when he was still a naive child. That was the last day he had both of his hands.

Marcus didn't remember much about that day. The traumatic experience had since been mostly repressed by his adolescent mind, and not even rigorous therapy could piece together exactly what lead to the loss of his left hand. All he knew was that one moment he was completely fine, just a normal kid who was excited to go to the lake near his home to show off his rock-skipping skills to his baby brother, and the next, he was waking up in the hospital as an amputee.

Nobody else saw what happened. Marcus' father looked away for only a few minutes, heard a blood curdling scream, and then found his eldest son struggling to swim back to shore in red-stained water. Three-year-old Noah was the only witness to the attack, but he was too young to understand what was going on, let alone describe what he'd seen. All they could get out of the confused toddler was the word 'horse.'

Clearly a horse wasn't responsible for that kind of carnage, though. The cut had been incredibly clean, as if by a razor sharp knife, prompting a huge investigation in their small town which shook it to its core. The very idea that there was a sicko capable of mutilating a child in broad daylight had the entire community fearful even to this day, as the culprit had never been caught.

It took a whole decade and a half for Marcus to finally summon the courage to visit this place again. He didn't remember the incident, but there was something about the sight of this lake that made his stomach churn and trigger a panic attack, so he spent the better part of his life avoiding it like the plague. Marcus knew he couldn't run forever, though. The older he got, the more nightmares about that pier he had, and the more he burned to know who – or what – that blurry figure reaching out for him from the bloody water really was.

Or maybe it was nothing. His brain could be trying to fill in the gaps with whatever scenario made the most sense in a senseless situation. He wouldn't be surprised if what little he did remember weren't memories at all, just figments of his imagination gone wild over the years, though he could swear those dreams felt so real...the water was so cold...

Unable to stand not knowing if he could trust his own head or not, Marcus finally decided that enough was enough. He was going to get to the bottom of this once and for all! Maybe if he could recover some real memories, his nightmares would stop. Maybe he could even provide valuable clues that would help catch the fiend who was responsible! Or, at the very least, he could conquer his fear of Lake Brightfall and visit his childhood home again without having to take a double dose of anxiety meds first.

It took several attempts, but eventually, Marcus managed to step onto the very pier that was the symbol of his mental torment and follow it all the way to its end. He came alone, which was probably not a wise idea, but this was an incredibly personal journey for him and he needed to be able to take his time. Nothing could distract him from what he was here to do! It was time to end this chapter of his life and finally-

“Greetings!”

Marcus jolted upright from his meditation by a cheerful voice coming from directly in front of him. What the...how did that voice come from in front of him if he was at the edge of the pier?

“Hay, down here!”

The young man brushed some ginger hair out of his face and looked down at the water to see, to his surprise, a face looking back at him. It was a guy floating on the surface around his age, maybe a year or two older, with eyes as deeply blue as the dark water he'd emerged from and bits of reeds stuck in his long dark ponytail. The hair stuck to his bare shoulders like running ink against tanned skin, and the stranger's friendly smile was toothy and oddly sharp. Marcus was too startled by this person's sudden appearance to do more than stutter out a very confused reply. “U-uh...hello?”

The stranger tilted his head curiously. “You look familiar. Have we met?”

Marcus was pretty sure he would have remembered meeting someone like this before. His narrow face looked almost like it'd been chiseled from stone, like a statue one would find in a museum. There weren't a lot of people as striking as him in this small town. “I don't think so, sorry.”

“Hmmm...no, I definitely know you from somewhere,” the stranger pressed, pursing his lips and rubbing his chin as he looked Marcus up and down.

“Did you go to Brightfall High?”

“Neigh,” the stranger shook his head with a light laugh, like the idea was ridiculous to him. “Have you been to this lake before?”

“Not since I was very young.”

“Huh,” the other shrugged, causing ripples to dart away from his toned shoulders. “Oh well.” What Marcus wanted to know was why the heck this person was swimming at this time of year! It was too early in the spring for a dip in the lake to be any kind of refreshing, yet he didn't seem bothered by the frigid temperature. It gave Marcus goosebumps just looking at him. “What are you doing?”

Nosy, wasn't he? “I was trying to meditate. What are you doing?”

“Greeting you,” the stranger answered, that sharp smile easily slipping back on his face as he folded his arms on the pier right in front of Marcus's crossed legs. Marcus nervously scooted back a few inches with his good hand, keeping his prosthetic one concealed in his jacket's pocket. He wasn't ashamed of his disability, of course, but he was well aware of how easily it drew the eye and would rather not have to answer any questions about it right now. “Greetings!”

“...Yes, um, hello.” From the way the stranger was making himself comfortable, it looked like he planned to stay and chat awhile. Marcus usually tried to stay a lot more approachable in normal circumstances, but this was a time and place where he'd much rather be alone. “Did you need anything?”

“No. Why?”

“I'm sorry, but I'm a little busy right now.”

“With what?”

“Meditating,” Marcus said pointedly, hoping he would get the hint. Unfortunately, the stranger's interest didn't seem to wane at all, looking at him like he expected more explanation. “...Which requires peace and few disturbances.”

“Ah.” Finally, he got the hint. “Okay, I'll leave you to it. It was good to meet you!”

He enthusiastically raised his hand towards Marcus, who eyed it warily. It was the right hand, prompting Marcus to offer his left. Except he didn't have one. It would be rude to refuse the handshake, though, and he wasn't sure how to talk his way out of it, so Marcus had no choice but to take the prosthetic out of his pocket, praying that the other wouldn't ask.

Marcus had no such luck, though. The stranger's eyes widened at the sight of the plastic appendage and was quick to grab at it. He completely missed the hand, though, and latched onto Marcus's wrist with his clammy fingers, lifting the sleeve of his jacket to gape at where skin met plastic. The nerve! “Wha – hey, stop that! It's rude to just grab someone's – wait, what are you – stop!”

The velcro strap around Marcus's wrist was yanked off and his prosthetic hand slipped from his arm and bounced off the pier, landing in the water with a plop. Marcus was horrified to watch it disappear below the surface, and then quickly shifted to outrage. He was about to yell at the stranger for his rudeness and pry him off, but the man with a vice-like grip on his arm and an utterly ecstatic look on his face suddenly lifted higher out of the water, leaning in uncomfortably close to Marcus' face.

“It's you! Marcus! I knew I recognized you!” he laughed. “And your brother, Noah, I remember him, too! You both used to play here when you were little!” Marcus was dumbfounded. Apparently he did know this guy from somehow, but he was less concerned about that and more about the invasion of his personal space. “It's me, Horace! Don't you remember me?”

Marcus wanted to be properly angry at the loss of his property, but those thoughts left him right as the air was suddenly robbed from his lungs at the sound of that name. It triggered something deep in his mind, like a faraway ringing bell in the dead of night.

Horace.

Horace...

Horse.

A feeling of intense dread overcame Marcus just then. The hairs on his arms raised with goosebumps as flashes of memory exploded in his head, glimpses of sensations and sounds straight out of his nightmares. Something round and smooth, a splash, a scream, a voice, the color blue, bright red, cold, pain, pain, paIN, PAIN-

“Marcus?” The man, Horace, tugged on his arm when Marcus's breath started coming quick and shallow. His smile gave way to too-innocent concern. “Are you alright?”

No. No, Marcus was not alright.

“Stay back!” he demanded and yanked himself away from the man, struggling to get to his feet on shaky legs. The blinding fear gripping his chest was indescribable, so much more consuming than it ever had been before, and he desperately staved off hyperventilating until he could flee as far from this place as possible. “G-get away from me!”

“Wait! Why are you running? What's wrong?” Horace called after him, swimming along the side of the pier to give chase. The way he swiftly glided through the water, parting the lily pads in his wake, was noticeably unnatural.

Marcus didn't say anything else to the stranger named Horace. He sprinted across the pier to the beach, half convinced that this was all just another one of his reoccurring nightmares, ran all the way up the hill to the parking lot, and scrambled into his car the moment he reached it. Horace didn't leave the water to follow, thank goodness, so Marcus locked himself in to collapse in his seat and cradle his throbbing phantom limb as he gasped for air.

He didn't know what just happened, but he knew two things for sure: Horace had something to do with why his hand was gone, and he was never coming back to Lake Brightfall ever again.

Marcus went back to Lake Brightfall a few days later.

It turns out there was only one thing that scared him more than crippling childhood trauma: the price of a new prosthetic. They weren't cheap! Marcus was already paying off enough loans from college and he'd like to be debt-free sometime this century. That being said, it's not like returning to the lake was an easy feat. Noah had to drive him there or Marcus would keep 'accidentally' missing the turn-off, which spoke leagues to how much Marcus didn't want to do this, seeing how he usually refused to let his little brother drive him anywhere while he still only had a permit.

Marcus spent the entire time trying to convince himself that everything would be fine. He wasn't alone this time and that man probably wouldn't be there so early in the morning. The bright colors of dawn were a minor distraction from the nerves that were making his foot tap like a jackhammer and pale fingers pry at the hem of his jacket.

He didn't tell Noah about Horace yet. For some reason he could hardly even think about the man without triggering another awful episode, so he opted to deal with that in therapy later and first focus on getting his hand back. His nightmares had been getting worse ever since that surreal encounter and he was starting to think that maybe he shouldn't have tried uncovering his missing memories at all. Perhaps his brain had a good reason to repress them.

“Alright, we're here,” Noah said as he parked the car on the hill overlooking the lake, his voice softer than usual. For once he was actually being considerate towards his brother on this touchy subject and refrained from ragging on him for his irrational fear. Marcus really must have been a mess. The lake stretched out wide in front of the elder brother's eyes, like a giant looking down on an ant, and he took a deep steadying breath and readied himself to leave the car.

The air was chilly and strangely still as they walked along the path towards the pier. It was so unassuming this way, surrounded by lily pads and reflecting the colorful sky on its calm surface. If Marcus weren't so terrified of this place, then he would have thought it was a scene worthy of a calendar. He stopped in his tracks as the two approached the wooden posts that anchored the old pier to the shore, but Noah kept going, turning around to throw him a raised eyebrow.

“Hurry up. You didn't drag me out of bed at 6:30am on a Saturday just to stand there, did you?”

Marcus shook his head and swallowed the lump in his throat. Carefully, he stepped onto the pier and watched the water around him for any sign of movement. He couldn't properly explain it, but there was an invisible itch in the back of his head, like the sixth sense of being watched...

“Okay, so where did you drop it?” Noah asked, eyes narrowed at the water, searching for any sign of the plastic hand through the gloom He wasn't looking anywhere near the right place, though.

“Over there,” Marcus answered, pointing to the very end of the dock where the water was significantly deeper, and Noah followed his finger with a groan.

“Are you serious? You dropped it all the way out there?! Shit, I thought it was just going to be in the shallows or something!”

Marcus's throat was too tight to chastise his brother for his for his foul language. “This is why we brought the fishing line...”

“Yeah, but it's gonna be ten times harder to hook it when we can't even see it that far down! Ugh, hold on, I'm gonna see if I can find a big ass stick or something. Maybe if we poke around first we'll find it.”

Noah walked back to shore and Marcus begrudgingly stayed put. He stood in the middle of the path and tried to do some of his meditation exercises while he waited, calming himself as best he could as he stood alone in the one place in the world he would rather not be. The silence was unnerving. It was so quiet that he could hear his own heart beating, which is why when he heard the soft sloshing of water behind him, he nearly jumped out of his skin.

“Marcus!”

Marcus's thumping heart jumped to his throat as he whirled around to find, to his shock, the same sharp-toothed smile from before climbing out of the water and onto the pier. Why the heck was he still here?! Marcus unwillingly got a much better look at him now, and he discovered that Horace was well over six feet tall as he stood up at his full height, built with a strong swimmer's physique, and bits of uprooted lily pad clung to his shamelessly bare body. What had Marcus letting out a terrified scream, though, was how the man's legs were bent in all the wrong places, ending in a set of hooves.

Hooves.

Oh god, this couldn't be happening! There was no way this was real! It was just a nightmare, Marcus told himself, and he willed himself to wake up with every fiber of his being. He didn't, though, and he jumped when Horace stepped forward, clacking loudly on the wooden deck.

“Don't be scared, it's only me! I'm so glad you came back! I have something for you.”

Horace was holding something out to him in his hands, but Marcus was too busy running in the opposite direction to see what it was. It didn't take him long to reach the end of the pier, though, leaving him trapped between the deceptively calm water and the approaching creature. “No – no, don't come any closer!” Marcus pleaded with short breath. Every ascending clip-clop sent an arrow of panic through his chest, but Horace completely ignored his distress with a perturbing smile.

“But I need to give this back to you! I've been keeping it safe for so long.” Horace motioned to the thing he was holding. “Don't you want it back?”

He was close enough now that Marcus could better see what he was carrying, but Marcus was too freaked out to know what he was looking at. Was that his prosthetic? No...Marcus's prosthetic was much larger than that. This one was small, more like...

...Like a child's hand.

“I always expected you to come back for it, but you never did. Do you know how hard it was for me to get it back? Not to mention how tough it was to keep it in such good condition!” He turned it around, proudly showing the pristine dismembered limb off, not a trace of rot or blood, and Marcus' stomach churned. That was...that was really his hand?! “Lucky for you, my magic is exceptionally strong!” That was Marcus' real long lost hand. “Here, let me put it back on for you! ...Marcus?”

The world was spinning as Marcus's mind reeled at the gruesome sight. A flood of sensations filled his head, making his lungs burn with the need for air he couldn't seem to find. Or maybe that burning was coming from the swirling memories he was reliving, the desperate gasping, the pressure of cold water, the sounds of splashing and screaming, his own screaming, blinding terror, sharp teeth, pain, fading light...

Marcus didn't know he was falling until the chill of water consumed him. Even then, he could barely feel it as his overwhelmed consciousnesses slipped away, and the last thing he was aware of before he fainted was a familiar shadowy figure silhouetted against the surface reaching for him...

For once, Marcus didn't dream. He was drawn from a void of empty darkness by the sound of voices talking far away...wait, no, they were actually nearby, and they were both familiar. One was far more familiar than the other, and it didn't take long to recognize the sarcastic tone as Noah. It took longer to figure out what they were saying.

“...othing? Not even me?”

“Nope.”

“Ah...that explains a lot, actually. I'm not surprised that you don't remember, since you were so young at the time, but I thought for sure Marcus would! No wonder he ran away.”

“That, and you're a naked freak with horse legs.”

“I told you, I'm a kelpie.”

Marcus felt damp and heavy, like his body was made of lead, and it took considerable effort just to open his eyes. When he did, he saw the roof of his own car above him, and he discovered he was in the passenger seat reclining back as far as it would go. The fan of his car's heater droned in the background as he looked around and found his brother sitting beside him in the driver's seat, turned around towards the one he was talking to, who must have been sitting in the backseat. Marcus coughed, his throat feeling like sandpaper, and the sound made the other two stop talking. Noah bent over and tapped on his cheek.

“Fucking finally! Hey, you soggy idiot, are you okay?”

“Uh...I don't...know,” Marcus answered blearily. “What's going on?”

“You fainted,” came the quick reply from the other familiar voice behind him, and when Marcus turned his head, he found that Horace was the one in the backseat behind the driver's side, voice dripping with worry and blue eyes full of guilt. “It's all my fault, I'm so sorry, Marcus! I didn't mean to scare you, I just didn't know that you don't remember the day we met.”

“Huh...?”

“Slow down, Seabiscuit. He's still coming to.”

It took a minute for Marcus to remember what happened right before he fainted. When he did, a sudden rush of adrenaline had him shooting upright in fresh panic. “N-Noah, what on earth is he doing here?!”

“Woah, easy!” Noah grabbed his shoulders when Marcus swayed, a bought of dizziness hitting him from having gotten up way too fast. “Calm down, everything is fine! Horace is the one who dragged your ass out of the lake!”

“He's the one who cut off my hand!!” Marcus cried, pointing an accusing finger at the person – the thing sitting in his backseat with his jacket laying tastefully over its hairy lap. It took a second to realize why everyone had gone still and was staring at him so weirdly. The finger he was using, it was...

It was on his left.

Marcus sucked in a shuddering breath as he drew it back and gingerly inspected his left hand. This wasn't...it was...this had to be a mistake. He was dreaming again, there was no way this was real! But no, the more he flexed his fingers, felt the warmth of his skin, and traced the lines of his palm, the more he couldn't deny how incredibly real it felt.

“Marcus,” Noah said his name carefully, patting his bewildered brother's arm. “Listen to me, Marcus, breathe. In and out. It's okay, you're okay, and yes, this is real. That's actually your hand, apparently.”

Marcus had no words. He didn't know what to say, or even what to think! There were no scars, no marks, it's as if he'd never lost it in the first place. But that's impossible, people don't just grow back their limbs! Especially after more then a decade! Oh god, Marcus was going to faint again.

“Would you allow me to explain?” Horace asked quietly. He was fidgeting where he sat, hooves tapping against each other on the floor and lips drawn into a thin nervous line. “I swear to you, it was all a terrible accident!”

Marcus didn't think he had a choice. After all these years, after everything that happened, all of those nightmares, the episodes, and now this, he was going to go clinically insane if he didn't get some answers right flipping now. He wordlessly nodded, and Horace started from the beginning.

“We met on the day you lost your hand. I saw you on the dock with your brother, and you were trying to show him how to skip stones. I thought it was magic! I really wanted to learn how to do it, too, so I approached you, and you agreed to teach me.”

...

Something round and smooth

...

“You didn't seem to care about what I am. I mean, you were obviously curious and you asked a lot of questions, but you didn't run away or call me a monster.” A smile returned to Horace' face, barely a twitch in the corner of his lips, but it was clear by the warm look on his face that that this memory meant more to him than he was letting on. “You let me play with you and your brother. We were competing to see who could skip stones the furthest, and I picked up the skill pretty fast. You were trying to beat my record when...”

…

A splash

…

“Your rock accidentally hit another kelpie in the lake. Ah, um, that's what I am, by the way,” Horace informed, gesturing to his legs. “The other kelpie was older than me, and he was much bigger, and stronger, too. And angry. He grabbed you by the hand and tried to drown you.”

…

A scream

Blinding terror

Fading light

…

“I tried to get him to let you go, but it was no use! Once a kelpie has you, it's impossible to get away.”

…

A voice

The color blue

'Don't worry, Marcus, I'll save you!'

…

“There's only one thing I could do: I had to take off your hand before you reached the bottom of the lake, or you would be lost forever.”

…

Bright red

Cold

Pain.

…

“...So you...you did it to save me,” Marcus whispered as the pieces finally began to fit together. He still didn't remember all of it, and there was no way to know for sure if what Horace was saying was the truth, but for the first time, everything was beginning to make some sense. A strange sense of calm was settling over him now, like a peace he hadn't known in a very long time.

Horace nodded, beaming at Marcus proudly. “Exactly! I was so scared when the humans took you away. I never knew for sure if you lived, but I never gave up hope, and here you are! I'm so glad you came back, I've been waiting all this time to return your hand back to you!”

The kelpie reached out and touched Marcus' left hand, cupping it in his own, and gave it a small squeeze. Marcus just stared, still trying to digest all of this. It was unbelievable. The hand Horace was holding out to him at the lake had been child sized, but it seemed to have grown to match the right one after Horace...uh...re-attached it? He had no idea how that worked, but this was a mythical creature he was talking to, so anything seemed possible at this point. Magic? He decided not to let himself go down that existential rabbit hole for now and just focus on how entirely grateful he was for this gift, and he looked up at Horace with tears in his eyes.

“Thank you,” was all he could manage to get past the lump in his throat. “Thank you so much, Horace, a-and I'm so sorry I was so scared, I didn't realize...!”

“Don't be,” Horace shook his head with a light laugh. “Admittedly, I was being a bit of an ass.”

His long black tail that matched his hair flicked cheekily at the pun, and it brought a smile to Marcus's lips. There was no way to describe the amount of relief he was feeling, the years and years of uncertainty releasing from him in an instant. All thanks to Horace, who had saved his life twice now. Marcus didn't have the foggiest clue of how he could repay him.

“Uh, so, not to ruin the moment, but...” Noah cleared his throat, which reminded them that Horace was still holding his hand, and he awkwardly let go. “What the piss fucking christ are we going to tell Dad?”

Oh. Right. “Language, Noah. And I'm not sure. This isn't very easily explained, is it?”

“That's the understatement of the century. 'Hey Dad, Marcus got his hand back! A magical horse man who lives in the lake gave it back to him!' He'd probably think Horace is a demon or some shit and try to exorcise him.”

That was sadly an accurate prediction of what their incredibly religious father's reaction would be. He was a priest, after all, and something told Marcus he wouldn't take well to Horace's magical existence. “Perhaps we should tell him it was an angel?” Marcus suggested half-jokingly. Horace's shoulders tensed, his eyes suddenly going wide and cheeks flushing, clearly flustered by the sudden compliment. “I would say it's not entirely inaccurate.”

“O-oh, um...oh my.” The kelpie in the backseat rubbed the back of his neck and looked away bashfully. Marcus smirked. To think he'd been afraid of this guy only minutes ago, and now he was starting to think he was kind of cute like this.

“Oh god,” his little brother rolled his eyes and turned away. “I know he's your knight in literally no armor, but try to keep it in your pants, Marcus.”

“Noah!”

ummmm like comment and subscribe?? idfk thanks for reading though

[janiedean]

on whether jaime and brienne *deserve each other* or not

right, this is a thing that has been bothering me for a while.

now, I’m not saying that people have to ship jaime and brienne or think it’s obligatorily romantic - to each their own. but two of the most popular arguments against it are that ‘he doesn’t deserve her’ and that ‘she’s too good for him and deserves better’ and honestly… there’s a lot with both that really irks me and I don’t really think it’s a fair way to put it so… sorry for the rant but I’m gonna go at it just to have it off my chest.

first of all, premise: I don’t really see how deserving someone - if we’re talking about mutual relationships in between consensual adults - is a thing that should be even taken into account. people like people, they don’t…. weigh their merits vs their non-merits or whatever and decide whether they’re worthy of being dated based on that. people fall for people without thinking that in most cases, so I already think it’s an iffy hill to die on. but specifically…

one: she’s too good for him and deserves better

now: there are endless issues with this specific argument. in order:

brienne has been told her entire life that no one will want her *for her*, at most for her island, and that she should be glad to find anyone who’ll have her and who’ll want to have sex with her long enough to give her a kid;

she’s been told all her life that her looks are the gateway to Never Finding A Husband and being Like All Other Proper Ladies;

she’s 100% convinced that no one can want her sexually or be attracted to her;

she doesn’t even think of herself as better than anyone else, morally or not (read her POV, she puts herself down all the damned time);

she fell in love with renly because he danced with her and then okay he took her in his service but it was because he saw her usefulness and she felt like shit because she couldn’t protect him;

we all know that she’s spent her time in the riverlands killing herself over having to fulfill her oath to jaime and cat (who’s dead, ops).

now: do people really think that someone like that would buy it if you told her ‘you can’t be with that guy because you deserve better than him and you’re too good for him’? specifically, never mind that brienne doesn’t think she’s better than anyone nor too good nor recognizes in herself all those qualities even if she strives for them…. okay, so, counting that brienne is canonically into jaime (there’s no room for text interpretation, she thinks he looked like a *god* when getting out of the bath, she thinks about him while she’s bathing, she wants to cry on his shoulder [specifically feminine thing hmm], dreams that he puts a cloak on her shoulders, asks for him in a nightmare where she goes through the humiliation ronnet connington put her through and was ready to die for him rather than kill him, let’s not even argue that), that means that:

the only man who has treated her and seen her with true respect as a knight and sent her on the quest she always dreamed of

the only man who did that while not lying to her about how he didn’t like her when they met or about her looks (differently from the guys who wanted to have sex with her on a bet) and who always was sincere with her

the only man who actually trusted her and confided in her (if you think she didn’t understand the weight of his confession in the bath think about it again)

the only man who bothered to come back for her and save her life (in the bear pit) when for her entire life she’s had to do it herself

the only man who not only gave her the quest and the respect but also the proper kind of sword for that kind of quest

the only man who respected her as a fellow knight and sent her on that quest showing that he trusted her skills

the man she’s in love with to the point that she’d rather be hanged than kill him (and fine, she changes her mind to save others but if she’s not killing LS over it to save him in a true knight/damsel in distress gender role reversal I’m eating my own hat)

….. isn’t good enough for her?

like.

the man who’s pretty much filled all the boxes that could be filled when it comes to making sure brienne of tarth loves you (specifically: respecting her and her skills, not lying to her about how attractive she is or not, not belittling her as a knight, coming back for her and saving her life the one time she could not)……. isn’t good enough?

and then, sorry, who would be better? or good enough? like, brienne of tarth doesn’t want someone without a stain on their conscience. brienne of tarth wants someone who respects her and sees beyond her looks and won’t demean her, and jaime did exactly all of that while showing her that her view of the world was too black and white and teaching her to not judge people too harshly. and like, brienne doesn’t even consider that he might be into her because she’s too ugly. do people saying she deserves better than him understand that for brienne’s standard no one else can do what jaime did for her? cat did it up to a point because she took her in her service and respected her, but brienne’s not attracted to cat and cat is dead, for that matter. if someone told her that she deserves better, she’d probably answer ‘well I tried that with renly when I thought I was into the gallant lord who treated me like a proper lady and took me in his service even if he didn’t care about me so explain me who it is that I deserve’.

because if the answer is that she’s too good for anyone and she should play joan of arc and be the virgin warrior sacrificing herself for the realm, congratulations on having missed all the parts in the text suggesting that she greatly suffers for her supposed un-attractiveness and for the way people don’t see her as desirable, and she does have feelings and urges and is not the virgin warrior archetype. and tbh saying it of the undeniably ugly female character is… really… not a nice implication. wow, now undeniably ugly female characters who are good at fighting can only do that while staying chaste and pure maidens? miss me with that kinda puritan implication.

anyway: this is why I think objection number one is really damned iffy and has a lot of, uh, problematic implications.

but sure as hell not as many as option the second, as in…

two: he doesn’t deserve her because she’s too good for him

this one is even worse. because the entire premise is that if HE doesn’t deserve to be with someone as good as she is then HE has some kind of issue/damage which means that he’s not suited to be with Someone Good Inside. fair enough. so what are the possible reasons? wild guesses:

he’s done horrible things and he’s hardly a nice person: yeah, and she’s entirely aware of every single one of them. she knows he pushed bran from the window, she knows he killed aerys, she knows he was in a relationship with his sister and they had children together, and she doesn’t give a single fuck about it since in affc as stated above it was obvious that she had feelings for him;

he can have a fairly horrible personality and he used to insult her: yes, in the beginning, and they got over that part, and guess what, she took him at his worst and had no issues giving him her worst back/insulting him back, and now they respect each other. people change. she doesn’t even think about him insulting her in her POVs because it’s obvious that to her, that matters less than what he eventually pulled through;

(meaning: renly might have treated her like a lady, but never did anything for her out of everything that jaime did eventually ie saving her life/giving her a quest/treating her with respect - like, out of all the men in brienne’s life that weren’t her father or her master at arms, jaime is the one who only ever pulled through for her, no one else did)

he doesn’t have a hand: … so what, lacking a body part means you aren’t enough to be in a fully committed relationship with someone? just because you lost it? never mind that this is really ableist as hell because then every amputee in the world would not be ***deserving*** of finding love, did we all forget that brienne was there for every second of it and she was the one pushing him to live when he felt like letting himself die after he lost it? brienne of tarth couldn’t give a single fuck about jaime’s lack of hands or not and if anyone thinks that makes him lesser then sorry but it’s fairly gross;

he comes from an abusive/unhealthy relationship and wouldn’t know how to have a healthy one: (idk, I SUPPOSE it might be an objection) …. okay, so everyone who comes from an abusive/unhealthy relationship has no right to try to get over it with someone else? I mean, same as above: people who come from abusive backgrounds aren’t ruined nor broken nor unworthy of anyone else;

he’s traumatized and has to work through fifteen+ years of untreated ptsd: same as the hand. so what, now if you have ptsd and are traumatized and are trying to work through it (because spoilers, as much as a lot of people in this fandom want to ignore it jaime is actively trying to be a better person and overcome his faults and whether he manages fully or not, he’s trying) you are unworthy of being in a relationship… until you are healed? or are you ruined forever? we just don’t know.

like, sorry but especially the last three points (alone or together) seem to imply that a) having a physical disability, b) being mentally ill, c) coming from an unhealthy/abusive background mean that you are unworthy of a healthy loving relationship or even worse, that you can’t deserve to be happy because those things ruined you to the point where they made you such an unpleasant person that you would saddle anyone who was unlucky enough to be with you.

and… that’s… really, really shitty? I don’t even want to say it has unfortunate implications because it’s way worse than just unfortunate. it’s just a toxic and negative attitude all around that says nothing good and tbh denying people a chance at happiness on the basis that they went through some *damage* (mental or physical) is really a thing I wouldn’t ever want to imply. ever.

and anyway, let’s assume that all of the above made jaime such a horrible person that he wouldn’t deserve such a good person as brienne (ASSUME, because jaime has very good traits balancing his worse ones and as far as brienne’s concerned she’s had proof in spades)…..

guess what, brienne’s still very much into him and is in love with him and if she was at the point where she’d consider putting a move on anyone, she’d put it on him. and guess what, there’s enough text to go on in jaime’s chapters to assume that he’s into her as well even if book-canon wise he hasn’t fully realized it yet but most likely will very soon (and in show canon he left king’s landing when she told him that he should say fuck it to honor and do the right thing) and his asos pov chapters are choke-full of romantic imagery used very specifically. and since people should be with the people they want… well, she might be too good for him and maybe he doesn’t deserve her, but the important thing is that they would want each other regardless of who’s the better person of the two.

because, surprise surprise, if you like someone, you don’t think ‘do I deserve them’ or ‘do they deserve me’, you think ‘do they want me or not?’, and if the answer’s yes, then you should be together and who even cares about deserving? DESERVING is and should never be in the equation when it comes to consensual relationships between adults.

brienne deserves to be with a man she wants and feels comfortable with and respects her and jaime a) doesn’t deserve to be written off the ‘deserves happiness’ list because of his trauma or his abuse victim status or his disability [lacking a hand is a disability guys], b) should hopefully for him be with someone who he wants and who wants him back and knows him and won’t use him for something else, or b1) should be with whoever he wants to be. and if for brienne jaime could be that person and she could be it for him, well, then whether she DESERVES better or whether he DOESN’T deserve her shouldn’t matter a single bit because you don’t choose people based on whether they deserve better than you or not and it’s a notion that should burn with fire in general, not just when it comes to shipping.

NOW: with all of this given, people are entirely free to ship or not ship jaime and brienne - it’s a pairing, people can like it or not and I’m sure there’s a bunch of reasons why it’s distasteful to some or just not their thing - but bringing up that she deserves better than him or that he’s not good enough for her imo has really unfortunate implications and seeing that they’re two fairly common opinions around when it comes to reasons why jaime and brienne should not be a thing is a thing that always leaves me with a fairly bad aftertaste. peace.

[transcriptroopers]

TranscripTrooper’s FAQ

I finally started getting enough repeats that I felt vindicated adding a FAQ. If you’ve asked me one of these questions in the past, don’t sweat it! All that means is that you helped alert me to a common concern that needs to be addressed. 

Why join the army if it's not the highest paid, the most prestigious, or the most well treated? For many people, it's a family tradition. You'd be incredibly surprised how much loyalty a person can have to any given branch strictly based on their familial relations. For others, it seems to be the most direct service when it comes to helping people, probably courtesy of seeing the National Guard being so prominent. Civilians have no idea how the military works; they think the navy just sails around, the air force just flies around, and the Marines just...idk...do whatever Marines do. Plus people think the army is just the Default Military. It's like the army is the “generic brand,” you know, like someone saying “Q-Tip” when they mean “cotton swab.” Others, quite frankly, couldn't join the other forces. You'd be surprised; I knew many people who originally wanted to join another branch but either weren't smart enough or weren't physically fit enough. I distinctly remember someone in basic saying he originally was going AF, but when he brought his ASVAB scores to their recruiter office they literally told him “the army recruiters are down the hall.” What does this piece of jargon mean/do soldiers actually use this jargon? See this post and if you still have questions be sure to send me a clarified ask. My soldier character received a(n) ______ wound from combat. Would this get him discharged?

To clarify, wounds both combat and non combat can get a soldier discharged, so your soldier doesn't have to be in combat to be wounded severely enough to warrant a medboard.

Eye: if there is permanent vision damage that drops the eyes below the standards associated with Army Regulation 40-501 paragraph 3-16e, which for reference is: (1) Vision that cannot be corrected with ordinary spectacle lenses (contact lenses or other special corrective devices (telescopic lenses, etc.) are unacceptable) to at least:

20/60 in one eye and 20/60 in the other eye, or

20/50 in one eye and 20/80 in the other eye, or

20/40 in one eye and 20/100 in the other eye, or

20/20 in one eye and 20/800 in the other eye; or

(2) An eye has been enucleated. (removed) Ergo it's up to you if your soldiers meets those standards after an eye injury. If your question is, “if he goes blind in one/two eyes” then the answer is “yes.” If your soldier is “legally blind” in one eye but it is correctable with lenses/surgery, the army covers that and actually allows active duty soldiers to get corrective lens surgery even without eye injury, so barring an unreasonably long recovery time I don't see why that wouldn't apply.

Ear: harder question. If your hearing is damaged enough, (”enough” being a subjective term) your soldier might at the very least face a mandatory reclass, which means the army will assign them a new MOS and they will not only have to go back to school for training in that MOS but they won't be able to do their current job any more. If the hearing loss is more severe, they may be medboarded instead. The exact numbers of acceptable hearing are probably not of interest to you but suffice it to say it's up to you whether the soldier's hearing is bad enough to warrant a discharge. I will say that soldiers being slightly hard of hearing isn't unheard of and it's also not unheard of for soldiers to be able to pass the hearing test but still have poor hearing in the field.

Limb: if the limb is amputated or otherwise non functional, it is grounds for a medboard. However, some soldiers have successfully been able to return to active duty with missing parts, although the vast majority of these numbers are those who've lost hands/fingers. Whole arms, toe, foot, and below-the-knee amputees are much less likely to return to active duty, although it's not impossible. IOW unlikely but up to you. Other: unless the wound or a mental illness would otherwise disable the soldier, there would be no medboard.

tl;dr: do you WANT it to be enough to get them discharged??  Also read this post about aftereffects of being medboarded via combat wounds.

I'm writing a fantasy/sci-fi story and I have to make up ranks. How do you suggest I start?/I have a soldier whose duties include X, Y, and Z. What rank would he be? Read these posts about ranks and if your question still isn’t answered then send a more detailed post explaining what you need. I will not help you come up with imaginary ranks. Enlisted Ranks Officer Ranks Rank Purpose Multiple branches working together What would a soldier with PTSD act like? You should consider reading @scriptshrink‘s post on PTSD. It’s a clinical assessment but it contains valuable information I consider nigh essential for writing PTSD characters. Other than that, I don’t have PTSD, (or at least PTSD associated with combat) so I don’t feel entirely right answering this question. I can tell you with some confidence that while their medical needs would be met by the army as far as medication goes and officially mental health is considered a priority, unofficially the military’s stance on mental illness is “you’re fucking weak.” How long are soldiers in combat? Generally? They aren’t often even IN combat, at least not in the current war. It’s absolutely a falsehood that most soldiers will see combat. Having said that, a firefight might last a few seconds to a few days, although with our current enemies I’d lean more towards seconds/minutes. Our biggest concern atm is actually IEDs.  What are the fraternization rules regarding soldiers/is fraternization really that strict? Officially you can read about this here An expanded-upon answer can be found here. Information about holiday events here. Fraternization across branches here. Short answer yes, the army does tend to take fraternization that seriously, but as with most rules it’s often dependent on the chain of command when it comes to just HOW seriously they take it. There might be demotions, article 15s, verbal and written counselling, changes of station, and there might be, you know...nothing. Personally I think the rules were a lot more strict when I was at home than when I was deployed. During deployment I think people can get away with pretty much anything because in a lot of cases it’d be significantly more detrimental to the unit if they punish the soldier than if they just let it go on until it becomes a problem.  Are women really called “females” in military environments? Yes, as are men called “males.” Calling female service members ladies, women, or girls is considered rude/derogatory. The only exception is female officers, who are called “ladies” as male officers are called “gentlemen.” It’s also now unacceptable in the military to disparage troops by using “girls/ladies/women” as insults. How much money does _____ make? The answer depends not only on the soldier’s rank but also their marital status, deployment status, and their Time in Service (TiS). You can read a good article about it here, but you can always just google “this year’s military pay chart” and something basic will come up. Be sure to take into account whether they have kids or take care of a parent! Where do soldiers get medical care? We normally get seen at the TMC, or Troop Medical Clinic. It can be as small as a trailer or as big as a multi-story hospital. If more intense care is needed, we might be sent to an actual hospital. But soldiers can also just get medical care at any location that offers medical care, whether civilian hospitals or clinics. They won’t be expected to foot the bill as long as they present proof that they’re active duty. Your leadership should be informed if you use civilian health care and if you acquire any medicine from them, and this is considered a sort of “no other option” choice so it shouldn’t be done willy-nilly. Does not (typically) apply to dental or mental health.

What are the most common injuries soldiers face? In combat we most frequently see extremity injuries, (52% of all injuries) and usually from explosives (75%). TBIs are also a common problem. When a soldier is hurt in combat we usually use the word “wounded” over the word “injured.” For the general army, I’d probably say sprained/twisted ankles. In most of the TMCs I went to, you don’t even get examined if you just walk in and say “I twisted my ankle.” They’d just throw you some ACE bandages, some ibuprofen, and the recommendation to ice it. It’s just such a mundane and boring injury, but it’s woefully common not only because of our level of physical exertion, but because the army won’t let you keep off your feet and you’ll be forced to keep working on that bad ankle so that you’ll continue to have problems with it forever.

What kinds of medical conditions disqualify you from service? I’ve gone into more depth/information about it here, but basically any chronic illness will be scrutinized by the military before you join. Mental illness included. If you’ve had bronchitis before, or an invasive surgery, (especially one involving pins or other foreign entities) that might be a DQ. Most allergies are a DQ, although it’s possible to get a waiver for less severe ones. IBS, diabetes, anemia and other similar chronic illnesses are an auto DQ. Even acid reflux is taken into account.  If you develop a chronic illness while enlisted, depending on the severity and how manageable it is, you might be permitted to stay in or you might be medboarded. There are active duty service members with diabetes for example, but if it becomes too much for the army/you to handle, separation might be initiated. So as is so often the case, if you want your soldier to develop a chronic illness, you’ll have to decide just how manageable the illness is. The army will allot time for medical care and give any necessary medication to the soldier.

What is the proper way to capitalize ranks and branches of service?

If you’re listing the rank itself, it’s not capitalized. If you’re using the rank as a title, it is capitalized. ”As the colonel trailed off, the sergeant left without saying a word.” ”As Colonel Vaughn trailed off, Sergeant Torres left without saying a word.” Similarly, if you’re directly saying “the U.S. Army,” it’s capitalized, but if you just say “the army,” it’s not. This is as far as grammar is concerned. As far as the inner workings of the actual military are concerned, these words are often capitalized regardless of their actual practical application. So while I recommend you write the story with the above rules, anything written by a service member will probably vary.

Didn’t you used to be part of the Script Family/are you still scriptsoldier?

Yes! I left Script Family due to my inability to keep this blog on topic, so I’m no longer affiliated, though I have left Medic’s credit up on my blog since I did start this blog because of her hard work and informative posts! I am not shy about sharing my political opinions on this blog, namely because I feel that the military is inherently political due to its chain of command ending directly with the president of the united states. 

What kind of opinions?

I am a leftist and an anarcho-communist. I I think it is reprehensible to join the military for any reason. Those are usually enough lol but there’s more!

Well then, why did you join the army?

Fair, no excuses. But for for context, I was a poor gay loner welfare kid from an abusive home and was targeted by military recruiters who hung around my high school from freshman year until after I graduated. I was convinced that I had no other options and that I would never make it otherwise. I did four years and got out as soon as I could. 

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That’s all for now! I’ve probably forgotten at least one common question, so do check back now and then to see if I’ve updated the post. Please feel free to ask me any questions that aren’t covered by this post, or to ask for clarifications on things brought up in this post! -Kingsley

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