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wikagirl · 1 year

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Okie dokie my honey sweety sugar boos. I know I said I wasn't gonna get active in this fandom, mainly bc I don't play the game a lot outside of the story campaign because I turn into a terrible person in pvp also, I don't even own the game, my brother lets me snickerdoodle his steam account to play both the og mw2 and the remake story and that's all I did gameplay wise, but I have been obsessively reading the lore of the new characters because my brain chooses my hyperfocus and I do not get to have a say in it so here we are.

Below the cut we've got in the following order: -A warning and explanation about my chaotic writing style that you can just skip -some additional info about where I'm from and how it plays into the headcanons -Actual headcanons -Cultural foods I think könig would like -Music and musicians I think he would like

So I have been chatting with a buddy about the characters, thus furthering both our brainrot (we both have the weird tendency to get overly invested in the lore of games we don't even play, in our case cod, r6s and apex lmao) so here I am to curse your eyeballs with some more könig headcanons. I'll elaborate some more of my previous shitpost thanks to one single person asking real nicely for me to elaborate in the tags of a repost (yeah looking right at you @regretsabaddon, you enabled me to write this, now suffer the consequences <3)

Also this is a warning: I am an unmedicated adhder and you will 100% be able to tell, I am allready rambeling and overexplaining it will only get worse as I go. I'll do my best to elaborate on the really nieche cultural stuff, the elaboration will be (added to the main headcanon like this) so you can just skip over the explanation if you don't care for that kinda shit also I personally support every ship featuring könig, but I do definetly have a special little spot in my heart for könig and horangi in a best buddies kinda way because I love the big reserved behemoth + shorter feral gremlin dynamic.

Additionally, I am from a region called Franken which spans across several of the 16 states that make up germany, one of them being the most northern part of bavaria, idk if that actually matters for any of the shit I'm about to write but I though I might just bring it up......yeah

Now with that out of the way, lets get crackin'. All of this shit is in no particular order, I'm just writing them down as the come into my head. This is what my thoughts look like, welcome to hell.

The actual headcanons start here

-so first, I 100% think he was born in germany and then moved to austria with one of his parents being german and the other austiran. I'm gonna explain in detail why but if you don't care about the politics of serving in foreign military in germany or austira you can skip the whole next block.

(You can not join the german military as a foreigner without citizenship and even if he was born in austria his citizenship would have been revoked the second he joined the german military unless he lived on german soil with dual german-australian citizenship before compulsory service in germany was abolsihed in 2011. In that case he would have been allowed to join without losing his austiran citizenship. Also if I'm not mistaken his bio says he's german but the patch on his gear is the austrian flag so I personally like to believe that he grew up somewhere in bavaria close to the border and just decided to haul his ass down to austira and get citizenship there after his time in the Kommando Spezialkräfte meaning that he now either a dual citizenship or just purely austiran papers. (and I've read on reddit that they changed it to the german flag now? Don't know how true that is tho, can't fact check it atm bc I don't have the game installed. And in an offical blog enrty that you can find n the sources of the cod wiki he is said to be in the austrian jagdkommands? Make up your friggin mind. Or at least explain I'm getting confused))

-country kid, dislikes cities because they are crowded and too complex in layout, is totally fine with towns tho

-in my previous post I said that name wise he gives me major Torsten vibes and I honestly wish I could explain but I can't. You really need to have met a Torsten to know a Torsten and it just really fits. But if I had to decribe a Torsten it would be someone that gives of young dad energy, like has a kiddo in kindergarden type young dad, with a lot of anxiety, kinda protective of his loved ones but also with a childish streak (like an obesession with plushies for example) who can get very violent if he needs to....that's a Torsten.

-Same goes for what I think could be a really nice lastnmae form him. He gives off major „extemely hella old german“ lastname vibes, something like Grafeneck.

(„Dukes corner“ if you translate literally, again not a very common name but also not absolutely unheard of especially in the deep middle of nowhere bavaria)

-tldr. I headcanon his name to be something like Torsten Grafeneck

-Probably somewhere between 30 and 45

-has at least 1 tamagotchi

-is a digimon kid, the idea of having a digital creature buddy is probably also what led him to getting a tamagotchi (digimon somehow manages to have a really unhealthy grip on a big potrion of millenials and older zoomers in germany, especially the music. The german versions of intros and the transformation songs go hard af lemme tell ya)

-was one of these hella tall lanky kids in school and got bullied for being built like a flagpost

-joined the army bc he didn't know what to do with his life after school and just kind of went with it from there.

-emotionally he is still that twig of a man even tho realistically he knows that he could handle the spines of all of his old school bullies like a snap bracelet now

-probably also had some weird interests that only added to the bullying, might have even been the stereotypical nerdy kid that liked videogames and anime before it got cool/mainstream. Distanced himself from his interests/stopped talking about them in order to keep himself safe and now is just a little bit miffed about how something he used to get picked on for is now very popular.

-Mittlere Reife? Got it. (in germany you enter primary school at 6/7, after 4 years it splits into several different branches, those being Hauptschule, Realschule/Mittlere Reife and Gymnasium. Hauptschule takes 9 years and teaches you basicly all you need, stereotypically people who graduate from there do blue collar work. Realschule/Mittlere Reife is 10 years and seen as the standart/what most people go to and it's more or less the same as Hauptschule but they teach you more useless shit just to enable you to do the same jobs but with higher pay and a couple positions up in the corporate ladder. Gymnasium takes 12 years and enables you to go to uni, it's called Abitur or Abi for short. If you've got Mittlere Reife you can tag on additional 3 years in a seperate kind of Gymnasium to get your abitur too, but those ususally have a nieche thing they focus on. For example my abitur has a niche focus on economy and buissness, that's what we call a Fachabitur)

-used to have long hair in his late school years but chopped it off because of the high maintainance also if I'm not mistaken back when we still had compulsory service there were some rules rgarding hairlength that have since been abolished.

-went to a metal festival in his mid to late teens, had a blast but at the same time was constantly so overloaded with anxiety that he never wants to go again unless he can drag someone with him. Would have loved to have someone braid his hair but didn't have the courage to walk up to someone and ask/accept if it was offered to him. Goes absolutely WILD in the moshpit after a couple of beers and definetly has a whole ass playlist filled with songs to listen to back in camp. (there is this weird thing, idk if it's a purely german thing, but we sure do like to play the most annoying braincell-popping aneurysm inducing music while chilling in camp in between stage shows. It spans from hardbass-remixes of childrens cartoon intros all the way to several hour loops of the cantina band. Source: trust me bro.)

-loves his gandma a lot. Even though he's twice her height she still calls him her little boy and he loves it. Like I imagine his granny to be the type that sneaks her adult kids and grandkids candy as if they were 10 and is supportive no matter what even if she doesn't always quite understand. Also yes this is thechnically a gandma headcanon and not a könig headcanon but I don't give a shit and he deserves the greatest country-side grandma there is.

-könig ususally doesn't have a dialect unless there is someone else speaking dialect. Adapts the deepness of the dialect to the person he is talking with, in other words when he's talking with ganny even most other germans won't understand shit. Also as someone that understands the bavarian dialect he can prettymuch also understand every other german dialect because it can't get much worse except maybe what they speak in Köln depending on who you ask.

-can recognize what regions other germans and austrians are from just from the way they speak, sometimes even down to the exact ctiy because of how specific certain dialect tends to get over here.

-humms to himself when he is alone/thinks he's alone or with someone that he feels comfortable with

-has different playlist for different purposes bc he's very selfconcious about his music taste and thus doesn't listen to certain types of music around certain groups of people. As the (assumably) only german speaking member of KorTac he might listen to a lot of german music while on base bc it gives him comfort that noone understands his, in his opinion, questionable taste in music and the lyrics but definetly also has some songs in the playlist that he thinks/knows other on the base enjoy.

-his taste in music is over all very diverse with different languages (mostly english and german) and genres, some of them seem really contradictory (I might make a little list at the end when I run out of other stuff)

-is one of those guys in your friendgroup that seem very chill most of the time but have some deeprunning anger issues and the battlefield is his outlet

-doesn't like being the angry scary murder machine, but he does like the calm that washes over him after he let off some steam. The longer he goes without his outlet the more anxious he gets.

-the longest amount of eyecontact he's ever upheld with anyone was with horangi during summer, when they and a bunch of others had a bit of a dry spell in terms of missions and contracts to they all sat down for a beer together one evening. König gave Horangi the most intense deathglare as he watched the korean veeeeeeerrryyyyyyyy slowly add one icecube after a nother to his glass of beer, never breaking eyecontact in the process.

-Not a very picky eater but if you give him the chance to eat some classic german/austian food he definetly will choose it over any other option. He also is the guy that everyone gives their leftovers to when they can't finish their plate.

-same goes for drinking, however, he'd rather drink water from a swamp than Beck's (a beer brand, commonly the one you'll find at big festivals unless the festival has deals with local breweries, you either like it or think it tastes the way piss smells no inbetween)

-gets random muscle twitches in his eyebrows sometimes and he doesn't really know why

-alternates between having a little uwu kitten sneeze or the loudest eardrum busting ACHOO in existence

-it'll will take a loooooot of coaxing to get him over his anxiety but he's happy to cook with others if their housing situation allows for it.

-Everythone thinks he hates physical affection because of the way he always tenses up when he gets a pat on the shoulder or any other form of casual contact but he actually really likes it, he just doesn't know how to react really

-thanks to his past issues he will instinctively flinch when someone raises their hand too quickly (like for a high five for example), but it becomes less and less the close he is with the person

-has one of these angry-happy octopus things you can flip but the angy side is black and has red lines drawn under the eyes with a marker to match his sniperhood, the happy side is light blue with pale green dots.

-whittels wood to calm his nerves/keep his hands occupied, mostly animals from the wildlife of his home

-he LOVES highland cows. Compared to him they are basicly pocket sized plush cows (he's 210-ish cm and scottish highlands reach a shoulder hieght between 110-130 cm)

-he becomes different types of drunk depending on the perviously established mood and people he's with. When it's just him and friend he becomes the lazy sleepy snuggelbug kind of drunk, if he's in a party setting he will get a bit more hyper and loose some of his anxiety to the alcohol and if you make the mistake of letting him drink when he's allready feeling down then you better prepare for the big depresso.

-hugs people in his sleep, he has no conrtol over it but he's aware of the fact that he does it while asleep so he keeps his distance from others unless it's with his S.O or with a nother close friend but the latter will have to repeatedly tell him that it's fine and chill.

-ueses “Stadtkind” (city kid) as an insult regularly

-backpains....alot....also has a tendency to slouch down to make himself look smaller

-hates public buildings in germany because the standart door height is 1,98m and in some rare cases 2,10m meaning that he either has to duck down or just baaaaaarely fits with his hair grazing the top end of the doorframe as he walks through

-loves Karneval, or as it's called in bavaria: Fasching. He loves the fact that he can get dressed up n costumes, get wasted and basicly be a different person with less worries for a bit. Also loves the sense of community that comes with the events in some of the more rural areas, especially in towns were almost everyone is involved in organizing in some way. If he wasen't away from home so much thanks to being on base, he'd probably join one of the building groups that make the carts for the Karnevall parades on Rosenmontag but you'll probably never catch him as one of the people dressed up on top of the carts, he'd be the guy that walks along the parade in minimal costuming and acts as a security guy to make sure that everything runs smoothly. He'd probably have to do a good bit of Vorglühen (drinking before going to a party) if he plans on attending one of the Prunksitzungen (stageshows with comedy, dragging local politicans, dance, music and acrobatics) bc if he goes he wants to see the whole thing but since there are a crap ton of people there he'll need to muffle his anxiety beforehand.

-in a living with his S.O scenario he'd probably be the diy guy with a garage full of tools. No Ikea kitchen cabinets in his household.

-pet of choice? Big strong floofy dog that could probably murder someone by itself but is actually a really affectionate snugglebug

-casual gamer in his downtime. I can see him playing a variety of games like shooters (r6, apex), singleplayer rpgs (like elderscrolls series or the witcher) but also survival games. He'd probably play survival games as if they were animal crossing with a really aesthetic looking homebase and all the tameable pets where he just tends to his gardens and chills on the porch but with the bonus that he also get to deck some enemies in the face every now and then. Like he's the guy with the over engineered, perfect structural entegrity valheim base that looks like a small medival european town or he's the guy with the empressive treehouse in the redwoods in ark survival that spans across the entire forest and he definetly has one of the shoulder pets with him 24/7

-the only thing going on in his head while on a mission is the song from the "violent vincent-I'm going to kill your family" ring tone and you can't convince me other wise

-German/austiran foods he'd like probably like:

anything that includes Spätzle (basicly a german type of noodle even though it's not really a noodle bc the way the dough is made is very different from noodles but still, looks like noodle, eats like noodle, is a noodle)

Maultaschen (basicly german ravioli, they come in very different sizes. The small ones are usually as part of a soup, the big ones you eat as main dish with sauce and veggies. In some regoins they are also known as “Herrgottsb'scheißerle” which transaltes to “little lord cheaters” because the lore/legend of their origins is that a bunch of monks were gifted meat during the season of fasting and they didn't want it to go to waste so they made it into the filling for the german-ravioli so god can't see them eat the seasonally-forbidden meat.)

Germknödel/Dampfnudel (big floofy bun, usually filled with plum or cherry jam, eaten with vanilla sauce)

Schäufele/Schäuferl (littlerally translates to “little shovel”, it's the shoulderblade of a pig with meat still on it, eaten with sauce and various side dishes depending on the region but usually potatoes, spätzle or dumplings with either red cabbage or buttered veggies)

Lentil stew with flour-dumplinds and Wammerl (specific type of smoked beef)

Ahoj Brause (okay this is not a food but a soda, you can either get it canned or as little packets in powder form that you still have to mix with water. I can totally see him have a stash of the powder packs on base. Fun fact: ahoi brause was originally cancelled and taken off the market for a bit, less than a year, when the company was bought by Katjes (known for making vegan gummies but also other candies) but the germans got mad so they beought it back. Also one of the oldest unchangeing candy brands in terms of packaging in germany.)

bands/musicians and songs I think he'd listen to (but aren't limited to) + a short explanation of what the song is about if it's in german because some of the titles do be looking a bit questionable at first glance:

literally everything that Electric Callboy ever put out

probably some classic stuff (and with classic I mean stuff that everone can potentionally vibe with even if its not their main thing, not the opera stuff that's would be classical) like queen, bon jovi and, as much as we like to meme about them being bad, nickleback

A lot of songs by powerwolf

Also Feuerschwanz, most of their songs are medival/viking themed party songs with metal sprinkeled in, they also have some interesting covers of stuff like “gimme gimme gimme” or “dragostea din tei”

Alestorm

Bannkreis

Rammstein

MyDarkestDays

a bunch of songs by Santiano, Mr Hurly und die Pulveraffen and Versengold for a fun but relaxed drinking mood, all have a very “drinking in a tavern with the dnd-party” vibe

”Fahrradsattel” by Pisse (song is about a girl that wants to have serious relationship and get married but the singer just wants her to sit on his face lmao)

”Das ist alles von der Kunstfreiheit gedeckt” by Danger Dan (basicly just a guy singing about a whole lot of very questionable sometimes literally illegal to say stuff (like denying that the holocaust happened, yes that can literally get you into trouble with lawenforcement in germany) you could theoretically say and get in hella trouble for but get away with by claiming that it's covered by the freedom of art)

”Deine Schuld” by Die Ärzte (this song is literally a callout to all the doofuses that just complain about the world, stating that it's not their fault that the world is the way it is but it will be their fault if they don't make a move to change it)

”ich bin das Gesetz” by Eisbrecher (literally describes what I think König would be like on the battle field. A person that is also a feelingless well oiled machine there to execute a job)

”Hitler Töten” by Sudden feat. Alligatoah (dude thinking about all the stuff he probably should do if he had a time machine, like stopping the titanic from leaving the port or killing hitler, but he'd rather use it to get back into the arms of his last relationship, even if the relationship he describes was hella toxic)

”Du bist schön” by alligatoah (about people that have their looks as their only woth mentioning feature, also a criticism of the modern consumerism and the way we have people in poor countries make our clothes for sub-human pay)

”Willst du (mit mir Drogen nehmen)?” also by Alligatoah (literally just asking a girl if she wants to take drugs with him and a bunch of descriptions of all the fucked up shit they would do as they send their life down the drain)

”Hurt” by Oliver Tree

”Semi-Automatic” by Twenty One Pilots

”Stille Wasser” by Ignis Fatuu (song about a guy confrontig his now ex-best friend after said ex-best friend sexually assulted and possibly murdered a girl)

”Der dunkle See” by Unzucht (a metaphotical description of someones emotional state as a deep dark lake that seems to be unmoving and calm while actually being very tumultuous under the surface)

”Ein Wort flieg wie ein Stein” by Unzucht (a song from the perspektive of a guy who just had his girlfriend confess to him that she cheated. Her confession is described as a stone being thrown at him, shattering his heart like glass)

”Werben” by ASP (a song about wanting to literally be filled up, consumed and merged with ones love, described as dark magic and a devils concoction. Basicly if Gomez Addams were to sing about his love to Morticia but german)

”Krabat” also by ASP (muscial retelling of the german classic by the same name. It's a book about a guy named Krabat learning dark magic at the hands of a miller that has made a pact with the devil, giving him the power to turn into a raven. The song describes him flying across the land to escape his masters eye and be with his love)

”A little piece of heaven” by Avenge Sevenfold

”Love bites” by Halestorm

Songs for the silly “I will torture you with this until your brain goes numb” metal festival campsite/getting into the mood for Karneval playlist. I will not explain these because they either are songs that most people listen to when they are too drunk to understand the text anyways or pretty self explanatory so here I go:

”Helikopter 117” by Tobee

”Saufen, morgens, mittags, abends” by Ingo ohne Flamingo

”Margarethe” by Buddy Ogün

”Bück dich hoch” by Deichkind

”Leider geil” also by Deichkind

”Leb deinen traum” aka the digimon adventure intro

”Through the fire and the trains – Thomas vs dragonforce” by nick totsch on youtube

”Ferien in algerien” the 12 minute version by Knokator

”Tight pants/Body rolls” by lesliehall on youtube

the covers of “Barbie girl” and “boom, boom, boom, boom” by little V on youtube

And finally: Some phrases and quotes as well as german memery I could see him toss around with other german speakers. Also the dialect-ish stuff is written the way a german would say it, there is no gramatically correct way to write dialect....so good luck trying to pronounce that in your head

Starting off with a classic “Sprich deutsch du Hurensohn” literally transaltes to “Speak german you son of a bitch”, most commonly used in the german r/ichiel subreddit, though könig would probably only use it with peopl that he REALLLYYY knows he can use it without hurting anyones feelings so...almost never but just imagine him being in a convo with somebody in german and then somebody non-german, horangi for example, walks up and asks whats up, he drops the line and horangi just stands there, expression completely blank thanks to his mask and sunglasses, staring until könig start to apologize all worried and horangi just starts laughing because our big guy just worries too much.

”joa mei!” transaltes to something like “oh my!”

”na moin”/”ja moin” there is no literal transaltion for this, but it is used as an exclamation/reaction akin to going “lmao” after someone did something incredibly stupid or something funny happened.

”Pissnelke” literally transaltes to “piss carnation” it's just an insult used the same way as asshole but originated as a term for girls that men find....lacking in willingness to do certain stuff but it's just used for everyone nowerdays and I think it sounds hella funny

”hinterfortzig” is a verb that literally translated to “behind the cunt” so...just a very funky way to say someone behaves like an asshole Example: “man, Kyle really is acting like an asshole today” - “Mann, Kyle verhällt sich heute echt hinterfotzig”

”sapperlot!” exclamation of surprise.....if I catch anyone use this in an nsfw situation I will have you in a box

”warum liegt hier stroh?” it's.....from a clip of german porn that gets memed a lot....we LOVE to meme german porn because germans find german to sound very very un-sexy funnily enough. Just look up the clip on youtube if you really want to know I honestly don't have the braincells to explain this one

Also I think König would be the type of person that would be able to quote both “Schuh des Manitu” and “(T)Raumschiff surprise”, both movies by Michael Bully Herbig, by heart forwards and backwards. I don't think that there is a version with english subtitles out there saldy but they are a huuuge part of german meme culture. The first one is a winnetou parody and the second a parody of star trek enterprise.

Oh hey you've made it to the bottom of my size A4 8 page long, times new roman font size 12 adhd induced not proofread ramble about a character from a game I don't even play. Wowies you must be really really bored huh...

So yeah this is what goes on in my brain if I develop a hyperfocus and now watch me not even remember who this guy is in two weeks because my brain just do be jumping from one thing to a nother like that and it's honestly driving me insane please sent help.

Anyways I hope you had fun, plz don't take any of the shit I said as me trying to lay down the law. These are literally just random throughts I have in my brain about a fictional man and I honestly couldn't care less if you agree or disagree as long as you had fun on your way down here. And if you didn't have fun...welll...I'm sorry for your loss of braincells that you probably suffered while reading this

Have a good one.

#wiika #random #könig #könig headcanons #cod könig #könig modern warfare #könig mw2 #all of this is so very specific holy shit #I wrote this in 3 hours #if you ignore the time I spent zoned out #I'm sorry for my spelling I literally do not have the baincells to checkread #idk how bad it is but I assume it's pretty shit

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feelssogoodinmyarms · 5 months

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Spring Awakening Fandom Tag

(By @winter-asleepening )

Doing this bc i miss springy wakening😔

1. how were you introduced to the show?

when i was really into hamilton in like 2016 jonathan groff was white boy of the month for a while and i was consuming all the groff content that i could and i came across that video of him talking about when he fucked up left behind. and then i listened to left behind and cried and read the wiki page and watched the obc boot and then i woke up here

2. Seen a production live?

yus i've seen 3

3. Dream role/character you relate to most

i've been in love with wendla since i laid eyes on her and i would die to play her. im obsessed with her, she's got so much more depth than people realize and that was cut during the transition from play to musical fuck you s*ter and i would love to bring that to my rendition of her. and i was also assaulted when i was her age, i was also suicidal, i was also confused af and my mom was not helpful, i also wanted to be loved so badly, i just see a lot of my teenage self in wendla. i related to her so much when i first saw the show and that's a big reason i got so obsessed with it.

4. Favorite male character

prob moritz or hanschen. they are 2 sides of the same dramatic ass coin. they also have daddy issues and are gay like girl me too.

5. Favorite female character

all of them? wendla holds a special place in my heart but like. there is so much to love about all of them even anna and thea who we know almost nothing about have the building blocks of great characters. i've always loved combining what we know about the characters from both the musical and the play to make more complete characters especially because s*ter cut so much of the girls characterization bc he's a sexist pos fuck you and i def do that with anna and thea.

6. Deaf West Revival or Original Broadway Cast?

dwsa for life but obc walked so they could fly

7. Favorite song

AAAAAA probably touch me just cuz it's soooooo pretty

8. Least favorite song

probably woyb bc im heterophobic and melchiorphobic

9. Favorite quote/line

musical: "giving yourself over to someone else? defending yourself endlessly until finally you surrender and let heaven break over you? i just put myself in her place. and imagine"

play: "won't you come visit me in my dreams now and then? i'll welcome you with outstretched arms and kiss your breath away"

10. Favorite TV performance

dwsa touch me on seth meyers i have to watch it daily or i get 1 level of exhaustion

11. Favorite cast member(s)

i can vouch that kathryn gallagher is cool as fuck cuz i met her at a ben platt concert but j groff and jgj seem pretty cool. alex wyse and jbw seem unhinged i think i could hang with them. smf and katie whoever are so talented i wish she wasnt an anti vaxxer. andy mientus attacked me with a candelabra just like riff raff did to rocky😔

12. Favorite cast member moment

when josh castille followed me back on instagram when andy mientus, kathryn gallagher, and josh castille covered sex by the 1975 and all the videos the cast made on various social media platforms

13. Do you write fan fiction?

unfortunately

14. Do you make fan art?

i have made 3 fan arts that i don't think i have anymore

15. Do you cosplay?

i am too poor

16. Don’t do Sadness or Blue Wind?

both bitch

17. Word of your body or the Reprise?

reprise cuz i love gay ppl

18. Touch Me or My Junk?

bothhhhh

19. Explain the song of purple summer

vague hope ig? like "the adults have failed everyone but we're all 15 and will be adults soon so maybe we'll be ok" with flowery language

20. Explain the song of purple summer (wrong answers only)

ilse and mulchy took acid to see their dead friends

im tagging @dwsavideos and anyone else who sees this and is into spring awakening cuz idk if any of my sa mutuals are still active😭

#spring awakening #dwsa #deaf west spring awakening #fandom tag

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spiteless-xo · 10 months

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heyyyy tiffany i didn't see this question on the ask game thing but i wanted to ask anyways. what are some of the best fics youve read aot or not? or what are some fics that got you into reading/writing

hey!! no problem, i think #80 on the list was like a wildcard question, but even if it wasn't, i'm always happy to answer any question you guys wanna throw at me 🥰

putting these questions under a cut because it's a WALL of text 💀 -- so sorry anon, i just got carried away!!

asks game questions!

xx. What are some of the best fics you've read, AOT or not?

i already have a list of all of my aot x reader fic recommendations and you can check my tags on tumblr under #fic recs for any ones i've found on here (aot, jjk, bllk, mostly), so i'll answer this for non-reader fics!

Bertholdt by Tvieandli - Bertholdt/Reiner, dark content This is hands-down the best AOT fic I've ever read, and sadly it has been unfinished since 2014. !! WARNINGS !! there is a lot of dark content in this fic, such as: underage, slurs, dubious consent, conversion therapy, physical/emotional abuse, eating disorders, and probably more. Please don't read this fic, get upset by the content, and then leave hurtful messages to the author -- I don't think any of my followers would do that, but if someone else stumbles across this, just please be respectful. Know your own limits and boundaries. Anyway. I randomly stumbled across this author because I was looking for Annie/Marcel fics 💀 I didn't even like Reibert at the time, but I decided to give this fic a shot and I was blown away. I really like darker, angsty content because I like having that emotion be invoked through a piece of literature, and this one really did that for me. I just love this fic so much and it inspires me to be better.

softly by TuesdayTerrible - Eren/Jean Like I said above, I just love fics that tear my heart out and this one really does it to me. I actually re-read it quickly when I grabbed the link and now I'm sobbing again. I love heartache and bittersweet love and stories like this just inspire me so much.

There are also fics from other fandoms that inspire me that sadly no longer exist or I can't find them, but I guarantee you that they're all equally as gut-wrenching. There's one that I remember from the SHINee fandom during the LiveJournal days that was Onew/Minho where Minho (I think) was a robot that was ordered to Onew's house after.... something... idk but anyway, it was very sad and I bawled like a baby and when I think about fanfics that I've read and loved in the past, I always remember that one, even if I can't recall details.

xx. What are some fics that got you into reading/writing?

I used to read/write kpop fanfics when I was in highschool/early university but I ended up getting too busy and stopping completely. I got back into reading last year when I re-read The Hunger Games series by Suzanne Collins. Some of my favourite books that I read/re-read last year were: - Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes - Before I Fall by Lauren Oliver - Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn - The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins - A Head Full of Ghosts by Paul Tremblay - Before She Knew Him by Peter Swanson - Rock Paper Scissors by Alice Feeney - Piranesi by Susanna Clarke - Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir - The Seven Deaths of Evelyn Hardcastle by Stuart Turton

I got back into writing late last year because I got so inspired by the books that I had read that it made me want to create content again. I re-watched AOT late last year and randomly became obsessed with Reiner 💀 and that's how I found my way onto AO3 and starting writing for AOT! Also, for TBAW specifically, I was inspired by another love triangle fic. I can't get too into the details of why that fic inspired me because it would give away the ending to TBAW 🙊 Respectfully, an Absolute Mess by Ercthesloth - Eren/Reader, Jean/Reader

#fic recs #tiff.ask #asks game

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spiritpraiseandbeautifulhumanity · 11 months

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Apologies for this but this is the most sick to my stomach, angry, distressed -and I don’t even know what other words to use it’s just a mix of negative emotions- that I’ve ever felt regarding certain things/people I’ve come across in a long time. TW for abuse, incest, and just general venting under the cut.

So I made the mistake of looking through some of the latest posts under one of the tags for Sister, and came across this post discussing someone’s take on me regarding chapter 3 and whatnot. That post was generally okay except for the end where they briefly mention ideas related to how things would be if I left Sister. But besides that final section, everything else in the post was mostly alright. However, I then noticed how at the bottom of the post someone had reblogged it and added onto what was said. I was already getting red flags from the fact I’m blocked by them, but didn’t think too much of it initially and just pulled up the post on my browser so I could read the rest of it. But then I started to get curious about why they may have blocked me and wanted to check their profile, so I did. The profile itself isn’t too bad, just mainly reblogs of fanart, but it was the pinned post that led to my despair. A carrd was linked and naturally I clicked on the link to read it. Pretty generic stuff and then, immediately one section made me extremely uncomfortable and instantly I knew why I was blocked and the realization of it all just hit me. Besides the fact they heavily ship something I’m personally uncomfortable with due to it having been associated with an ex of mine, the specific carrd dni was just the horrific cherry on top. Now generally I’m uncomfortable by these sorts of people but they don’t tend to affect me all that much usually. But when I saw this it just made me absolutely sick to my stomach what with the hypocrisy of it and the detached way they blocked me. I’m sorry my words aren’t describing it well enough but it just, how they claim to like me so much and are passionate about me and stuff and then their dni is literally in a way just “Korekiyo DNI and stay as far away from me as possible” plus how they blocked me like I’m just disgusted(if that’s even the right word to use) and tired of people who don’t want anything to do with me liking Sister, our canon relationship, and the way I am about her and yet still claim to love and understand me and accept me for who I am, like no you don’t. People like this are why I try to avoid the Danganronpa fandom because people can rarely ever seem to treat me right no matter what their personal stance on me is. Like if they truly liked me they wouldn’t want to hate on and paint sister as this terrible horrific demonic monster without holding any regard for my feelings of her and wouldn’t try to imagine situations where I’ve separated from her. They wouldn’t if they truly liked me, but they do. They do, and because of that I can’t trust majority of those who claim to be my “fans”. So I avoid them unless they find me because most that do are the ones who actually do like me. But I’m just tired of those who are like “dni if you like Sister” and that all the tumblr tags are mainly just hate, I’m just so sick and tired of those who claim to like me and then deny and hate the fact of my intense unchanging feelings towards Sister. It sickens me. Ugh I’m getting like no sleep because of this why can’t I just be normal why do I have to be affected so negatively by things like this. I just wish people could be more respectful when it comes to our relationship. Like, I don’t care what she did in the past or whatever she makes me happy and we’re happy together and that’s all that matters. And people need to stop acting like I don’t feel that way or try to destroy what makes me happy. Idk I’ve said too much sorry I’m too weird and obsessed and I care too much about what others think and shouldn’t even really be saying anything so I’m sorry, I wish I was normal but I’m not. At least I’m happy though even if people can’t accept the ways in which I’m happy. Okay sorry I know I’ve said too much I’ll shut up now, and I’ll try to never do something like this again.

#vent #tw abuse #tw incest #⛩#ugh I hate myself why am I like this

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munamania · 2 years

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for the fic asks - F G H S T !!

ahhhhh thank you!!! i'm gonna put the answers under the cut since this is kinda long lol

also guys i love talking abt myself so like feel free to send more <3

F: Share a snippet from one of your favorite dialogue scenes you’ve written and explain why you’re proud of it.

Paranoid that other actors in these crimes will come busting down the doors at any moment, Nancy leans over the girl and taps on her face. “Please, please don’t do this.” Tears fall in a stream from her eyes onto Robin’s face. “Robin, get up! This isn’t funny.”

Blood pools against the her neck, burying her complexion in red. Nancy tries to feel for a pulse, but all she feels is the blood on her fingers. A scream works its way from the back of her throat to her teeth. “Wake up! Wake up! Fuck.”

i dont know if this, like, super counts as dialogue, but i really loved this part of two of a crime. and the following line after nancy flips out ( Nancy stumbles back into the warehouse, leaving the door open, and collapses in the room with Robin. She tries to stop the bleeding. Holds her hands against the girl’s neck. It’s not too deep, you’ll be okay , she tries to tell her, but she can’t get the words out. We’ll be okay. We made it, kid . ). nancy is so fucking smart and capable and incredible in action and that is beautiful to see! however. thinking about how she'd lost barb and quickly grown close to robin (which i called in this fic! js. i just knew they'd bond really quickly even if they did start as annoyances), watching her lose so much blood and shit i thought would of course get an insane reaction. like. she'd maybe really snap and break down. hence the ending. i think it's probably the most angsty thing i've ever written, and even if it's not all that bad, i'm really proud of it.

Mike blanches. “I don’t think I said that.”

“Oh, you definitely did.”

“Oh,” he nods, mind spinning, “well, you know…”

Will stands to be at Mike’s level, leans forward on his knees. Mike stops breathing. “I do,” he says, “but tell me again.”

Mike swallows down a breath of courage and suggests, “I think I might like you.” His eyes flit to Will’s lips, then back to his eyes. “Is that okay?”

“Yeah, I’ll allow it,” Will says, a bright smile causing lines near his eyes. Mike smacks at his arm, nervous laughter coming out with a quiet, ‘Shut up.’

as an alternative i just. i love confident will! i wanted this to be as true to the characters as i could fathom while also being. perhaps mildly corny due to the holiday feel. i was really happy with this and tying the 'crazy together' moment back into it.

G: Do you write your story from start to finish, or do you write the scenes out of order?

it sorta depends! i mostly write from start to finish, unless i have a specific moment/piece of dialogue that i know for sure i want later on. then it's a little easier to build around that and i sometimes find myself writing a far better build-up than there would've been otherwise, probably. i really admire writers that have plot points and stuff super planned out in advance, but i tend to just have a vague idea of what i want and feel it out as i go.

H: How would you describe your style?

god i really don't know. i'd love to hear how it's perceived lol. i am very... i tend to be comedic i think? i'm not afraid to be sarcastic/play with irony in my narration, to the point that i sometimes worry it won't come across well. i am also very dialogue-driven, which is something i want to work on. i literally like act out what the characters say sometimes to see if it feels realistic, and because of that i also probably overuse dialogue tags and little movements in between (almost like a script instead of 'prose' or whatever). i'm sort of fast-paced as well i think? idk i've very aware of pacing. like i'm rather quippy with my transitions and stuff because it just makes sense to me. i worry it's lazy sometimes but hey it works

S: Any fandom tropes you can’t resist?

waugh i don't know!! idk if i fall into tropes very often??? i've definitely like slipped in 'sharing a bed' quite a bit throughout the years, but i think that's as close as i get. honestly maybe i need to be more tropey.

T: Any fandom tropes you can’t stand?

hmm i think it goes without saying when people really change a character's personality to fall into a clean-cut dynamic (esp when it involves....... making one character way more submissive yk.) i cant think of any classic tropes that i specifically hate

#ask games #mutual tag #fic asks #srry this is so long. lol

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r0yalgrimm-artz · 3 months

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Since there's like a fucking chicken coop on Duel Academy island and Pharoh the cat - I like to impose that the school also has a goat.

Hear me out,,,

The goat was randomly found one day, on the island near the volcano, and since then nobody knows where tf it came from or why its there?? But they just now own it and have a little goat pen specifically for the goat to live in.

For some fucking reason it just...likes to headbutt Crowler. Why?? No fucking clue, just every single time Crowler is in within range of sight, it becomes personal. But in the later seasons the goat and Crowler fucking bond.

[CUT CUZ I WILL RAMBLE]

The goat has like four babies. It has gotten pregnant four times, no fucker knows why pregnant how, but there's mini baby goats (kids) fucking rampaging through the island. Yes, each one of them headbutted Crowler in the legs.

Jaden had ended up taking the goat to his dorm accidentally once. The goat proceeded to eat and chew at everything.

It fucking headbutted Chazz several times in his sleep. No idea why but seemed personal.

It's surprisingly chill with Blair, Chumley, Jim, Jaden and Kore. Even Miyu. Somewhat Jesse but at first it did try headbutting Jesse.

It doesn't like Alexis mainly because of the smell of the perfume she wears.

It absolutely did headbutt Sheppard several times into the ocean.

It has chewed at Chazz's jacket before. Even ran off with it. Chazz had chased the goat for hours trying to get his jacket back. He has threatened to get the goat to be put down. Has even tried PAYING someone once. Chazz absolutely hates the baby goats and is like "WHY IS IT PREGNANT- HOW DOES IT EVEN HAPPEN??" They also have tormented Chazz.

Riley has tried scrapping with the goat. Atticus got his hair chewed. Zane and the goat have some weird mutual understanding.

Hassleberry got on the goat's bad side once, proceeded to get chased across the island into a tree along with Syrus. Bastion had to hide his work from being chewed.

Hanae hates the goat mainly because it eats her outfits. The goat tries bonding with Hanae. Hanae has a weird aura that for some reason attracts the goat. Cytherea and the goat are ENEMIES. A fuckint goat. That's number 2 rival after her rival Kore. Ilya and the goat vibe, they chill. The goat even sat with Ilya once while he was reading.

Aster absolutely gets fucking headbutted in the ass. Probably after his like third duel with Jaden, the goat escaped and proceeded to literally headbutt Aster on sight. Probably happened after the whole scene in that episode cut then the goat to fucking does a number on him while Aster was trying to walk out all badass, and Aster was just like "shit shit shit fuck shit- Hope nobody saw- " Everyone did see. It was hilarious.

Adrian...ADRIAN. It absolutely fucking headbutted Adrian off a cliff once. Adrian lived but...ya know. The goat comes back for vengeance.

Axel, uhhh...a weird mutual understanding??? I mean it's had a stand off with Axel once, but...After that it was all chill??

Idk who else I'm missing out but here have this. I am super tired, I have no idea why my brain even thinks of these things. No I will not be tagging the fandom.

#grimm's silly thoughts #idk why i even fucking made this #its early in the morning for me work is crippling me and i am only running like three four hours of sleep at this point #sleep schedule is FUCKED

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schtorytime · 6 months

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I'm giving myself some little at home literary workshops (thoughtful rambling about my own writing under the cut, idk)

I dunno if anyone else feels this way, but I think writing in a fandom that - and no shade here, I'm just being objective - has a pretty low bar in terms of fic quality has made me a little bit complacent or given me this false idea that I'm a better writer than I am. Not that I thought I was the best writer in the world to begin with or anything, but I think regularly sifting through the piles of steaming garbage that makes up such a huge portion of the tags on ao3 (and this might be a mcyt thing in general, or it might be because I only read one ship and said ship is in fucking dire straits, idk) has made me feel a little too comfortable or something. Recently I've discovered a few authors that are like - genuinely good at the craft, and I've realised like... holy shit. I am so MEDIOCRE LMFAO. And I don't mean it in an emo oh I'm never writing again woe is me kinda way, that's not really my style; it's in an 'i'm inspired to improve' kind of way. Like sure, I can write in the basic sense. I can create an idea and see it through and get the basic point across; I feel very confident in punctuation and grammar etc. I feel very very at home in writing dialogue that shit comes as easy as breathing. Characterization also comes super easy to me; I find it easy to grasp what a character is about and the way they think and how to predict what they would do or say in any given situation, but everything else outside of those two things?! Mid. Just so painfully mid. My description skills are so flimsy, symbolism and metaphor are virtually foreign concepts to me - I feel like I write really *simply*, and I think the stuff I do write is good! Like it's good in the simplest form, it is, but it's still just... *simple*, and that frustrates me. I know it's enjoyable, I know it's *nice*. But I don't want it to just be nice!! I want people to walk away from my work like, awestruck. I want people to be so immersed and taken back in the same way that I feel reading some of the stuff I have in the last few months. I think I'm in this weird place where I realize I have potential and I have some of the tools and ingredients to *get there* at some point in the future if I really work on it, but I'm also a little lost I'm like how the fuck do you get from point A to point B. I'm such a 'I want a clear route cut out for me and explained to me' kinda person so when I'm left floundering to figure out how to improve by myself I'm like ... where the hell do I start. I wish I'd read more growing up (I did a little as a kid but then by my early teens I'd basically stopped) - I think I'd probably be further along if I had. Kicking my younger self, stupid boy. I dunno I dunno, I'm very inspired I feel restless. I know the answer is just practice but I want to be there NOW D:< I've been doing a little studying and reading some stuff and just thinking how the fuck did you come up with that what the fuck. I just feel like I write so simply, I dunno how else to explain it. I do too much telling and not enough showing and I probably over explain things the same way I do in real life speaking (anxiety havers rise up) but I also write from characters perspectives that I think would also do that, so I don't wanna tip it too far away from that and make it feel unnatural somehow, but I also don't want it to be so BASIC I don't even know if I'm making sense anymore I'm just frustrated but almost in a good way. I think you have to feel that way to make any actual improvements. Hmmmmmmmmm.

It's like in my head I think and see in images and movie scenes and I THINK?? (Maybe I'm a narcissist) that those images and movies are fucking genius, like I'm a genius in my brain, but when you hand me some sort of writing device and ask me to get those movies in my head on to paper???? I plop my ass on the floor and start drawing nonsensically on the walls like a toddler. Okay maybe it's not that bad, but in *comparison* to the stuff in my head - it is. Source : just trust me guys It's weird being very self aware but struggling to know what to do about it. Hmm. Idk, idk. Ignore my ass. HMMMM. Much to think about..

#scht textpost #like i don't think i'm a BAD writer. but I also don't think i'm a *good* writer. I'm just like... competent.

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tessetc · 2 years

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"Dirty Letters" by Vi Keeland, Penelope Ward.

https://a.co/8NeqDx1

When was the last time I read/reviewed a romance novel? Like... years ago?

I don't know what posessed me to read this today, but I recently read a really good Destiel fic with a similar premise (childhood pen pals who meet as adults, link below.) and since I remember liking this author team a lot, I figured it was a safe bet.

So I just finished chapter 8, and I decided to review this on the fly going forward, to track my reactions going forward.

There will probably be spoilers after this point.

(Can't remember how to place a cut on mobile)

To start with, I had to update my Kindle app and figure out how it works now. I am not a fan of how things are organized on here, but that's a problem for future Tess.

As far as my first impressions of the book go:

Perspective is alternating first person past tense. Which is fine.

Luca is the f!protag, and Griffin is the m!protag. They wrote letters back and forth under, at least partly, fake names as kids. Luca stopped writing after a traumatic event as a teenager, and she finds a letter from Griffen after her dad passes away, and she decides to re-establish contact.

Right off the bat, the exposition regarding Luca's trauma was terribly written. It's explained partly in just an info-dump and partly when she just tells a bunch of it to her therapist. Why do it this way when you have the vehicle of letters right there? Instead, she writes to Griffin after all the exposition and apparently fills him in, but the letter does not appear in the text.

The exposition was awkward, and the talking to her therapist was awkward as well because her therapist, a kind of elderly, eccentric Doctor Doolittle type, has been her therapist long enough that he should know all this.

Also her therapist is her best/only friend, and doesn't charge her.

Also also Luca has a pet pig, and I call shenanigans because pigs are huge.

As for Griffin, he writes like a 13 year old and it's incredibly offputting. He's apparently a massive rock star. Since Luca's trauma involves a rock concert, this bodes ill for the future.

He is hiding this from Luca, and doesn't want to exchange pics.

Their letters, according to the author, are "increasingly flirty" although it isn't flirty so much as horny, in an online hookup way, and not a way that feels normal after a short time swapping letters via snail mail.

It's coming across as squicky, not hot.

And besides the no-photo thing, Griffin hired a PI to track her, and as of the end of chapter 8, Luca's therapist (Doc... does he have a name? Idk) showed up with an RV to drive her to California to stalk Griffin.

And also there's a whole thing with Furbies that is just... ugh... y i k e s.

Anyway I guess I will keep going. The rest of this will be more live reactions:

Up to Chapter 11. She did decide to go to spy on him, and I don't like it.

Ch 12. They've met irl. They're both lying to each other. I don't like it.

They didn't drag it out, thank fuck.

Also somehow an entire roast pig was served which is horrible but kinda funny.

Absolutely terrible first kiss. Just "sorry about the pig" "omg its youuu" *smash kiss*

These people have no chemistry at all.

Ahhhaha... I hauled my ass through the rest of the book and it was really boring. I don't even wanna say anything else.

All the bad stuff I covered earlier. The smut was boring and perfunctory, the chemistry was nonexistant, the characters were bland, and aside from Doc there were no supporting characters.

Most of the book revolved around Luca overcoming her anxiety. Which, fine, I guess. Idk. I wasn't engaged.

So end result is 5/10 Tess does not recommend. But it's not like, obnoxiously terrible.

Anyway, I promised a link to a better pen-pals-to-lovers story, so I am linking that below. If you are here due to the Romance Novel tag and not the Destiel tag, I still recommend it, because it's an AU, and it could be read fandom blind.

Have fun!

#romance novels #tess reviews #tess recommends #fanfic #destiel #pen pals to lovers

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scripturiends · 3 years

Note

Hi!!! So I was just scrolling thru your tumblr after reading your second solhwi fic (bc I can’t get over it yet) and I’m surprised how good your analyses on Law School are?? Was actually scrolling thru to make me sleepy but reading those theories made my brain work again lol and on top of this you’re a snowbarry stan??? I haven’t seen The Flash seasons in a while bc I gave up on it knowing my precious caitlin and barry could never be endgame but wow I’m so glad I found ur acct <3

hello! thank you for thinking the content on my blog is good enough to use for ur nightly scroll!! i’d also like to thank you for reading my fic! i’m incredibly grateful. honestly, i started making the analyses as a way to organize the ever-so-messy thoughts in my head about the details of the show. i know they’re also ideas that other people must have already thought about, so if i can put them into words and engage in discussion, then i’ll continue to do so. i’ve been so obsessed with the show it’s really taking over my life.

and as for snowbarry, i pretty much gave up on the flash mid-season 3. but caitlin is forever my ride or die. i don’t know if they butchered her and frost but whatever it is, i will forever be rooting for her happiness, with or without barry. i guess that’s why solhwi is so appealing to me - doesn’t their dynamic remind you of caitlin and barry’s, even a little bit? it’s crazy.

thank you so much for stopping by and sending a sweet message<3

#idk how to tag this because it cuts across fandoms #lets just say #jtbc law school #snowbarry #sorry #people might flag me for tagging inappropriately #but i hope the sender finds this ask #i answered you!#love snowbarry and love solhwi even though the former is doomed #i will continue to ship idc #asks #mine

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shelobussy · 3 years

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I would absolutely love to read an essay about the acephobia in the Good Omens fandom bc I know nothing about it (the fandom acephobia not good omens) BUT ONLY IF you use every relevant tag you can think of, thats 100% required

(I better get an A+ bc I used literally every tag that came to mind, my friend. Also I churned this out in five hours and did not edit it, so if there are spelling errors pls forgive.)

Good Omens: An Exploration of Internalized Acephobia

The year is 2019 and the six-part adaptation of Terry Prachett and Neil Gaiman’s Good Omens: The Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter has just been released on Amazon Prime and is kicking up controversy amongst Christian moms. The show is critically acclaimed and is nominated for several awards. Headlines cycle through the news for a while--everything from speculating on a season 2 to the hilarious petition Christians sent to Netflix to take the series down--but after awhile the buzz settles down and everyone moves back to scarier headlines like next year's presidential election or that worrying virus cropping up across the world. YouTube continues to monetize Ineffable Husbands compilations, but that’s the most you see of it on public social media platforms.

Except for on Tumblr.

Six episodes of David Tennant being slutty mcslutty demon slut and Michael Sheen being a refined asshole (affectionate) disguised as an innocent do-gooder is apparently enough to keep Tumblr happy for a good long while. Supernatural isn’t doing so great on that gay content, Game of Thrones just ended as terribly as the non-derranged viewers knew it would, and Doctor Who is doing kind of ok, but the fandom is winding down as it approaches the next regeneration.

Everyone goes batshit insane over Good Omens because this show has everything. Enemy to lovers, PINING, m u t u a l pining, sacrifice, EXISTENTIAL CRISISES, recontextualizing your faith, GOD IS A WOMAN, you name it and the fandom has it. Thousands of incredible fanfics on faith and religion and existence start pouring out. The ex-catholics are Thriving. Even Supernatural fans are hopping on this train. Everyone’s having a grand ol’ time with our queer metaphysical beings.

And then it happens.

As it does with every large fandom.

The acephobia is born.

Neil Gaiman Gets Canceled

Okay, to be really canceled, it has to happen on Twitter. Which is where the inciting incident started, however, the majority of the explosion was contained on Tumblr and--to an extent--Reddit. There was some backlash on Twitter, but the real shit went down here.

So everyone is going crazy over Ineffable Husbands, and of course word gets round to Neil Gaiman who has to address that there are mountains of queer subtext in the show.

“Particularly the way that Michael plays Aziraphale just as a being of pure love, I think that gave us something very special, because people of every and any sexual orientation and any and every gender looked at Crowley and Aziraphale and saw themselves in it, or saw a love story that they responded to, and that was completely unexpected.

“Things like this, you can’t manufacture, they have to happen from a fandom.”

And the fandom lost its mind.

Fandom Response and Internalized Acephobia/Transphobia

The backlash was disappointing, but unsurprising. Here are a few favorites:

“[...] IDK how to tell y'all that the complete desexualization of these characters is homophobia regardless of what you think their gender is.”

“good omens is queerbait. full stop. it is a show deliberately crafted to have just enough doublespeak and easily interpretable looks to both have plausible deniability, and appeal to the story’s largely queer audience. creator confirmation outside of canon, much less on twitter, doesn’t cut it. this show came out in 2019 on amazon prime. people had been making their interpretations of aziraphale and crowley’s relationship known for decades at this point. there was utterly no excuse not to have them clearly be in a relationship, at least by the end. but a queerbait was more profitable, and no press is bad press, so they didn’t. insisting otherwise is both disingenuous, and displaying a profound lack of ability to be critical of the media you enjoy.”

I really just can’t get over how breathtakingly bad “this person dresses like a man, uses male pronouns, and is physically exactly like the average man except they don’t have a dick and so they’re not a man” is. This is not woke nonbinary rep folks

And this is where things get really….weird. The majority of these takes are by blogs that are run by fellow ace/trans folk and yet all of these takes still reek of queerphobia.

Have another one for good measure:

“I feel like good omens takes queerbaiting a step further, what with Gaiman’s honestly excessively aggressive statements that they couldn’t possibly be gay. Like if you wanted nb characters write nb characters, writing a fairly romantic relationship between two men-as-default characters and then attacking people who read it as gay by framing us as the villains who are denying the poor nb and asexual people their representation feels like a specifically malicious type of queerbaiting.”

A truly lovely take on that last one. Apparently it's the transphobes who are the victims for bullying the non-binaries who are taking away their representation.

So to summarize, fellow greyace/greygender blogs are all up in arms because Neil Gaiman “desexualized” Crowley and Aziraphale.

They claim nonbinary characters who still use male pronouns and physically presents as a male is bad rep, the show queerbaited--even though Neil Gaiman went on record as saying it was a love story--and the poor naysayers who want to be victimized via queerbaiting throw the blame on Gaiman for the blatant homophobic takes they're spewing online.

The internalized queerphobia reveals itself once again.

Additionally, just because you are nonbinary or trans doesn't mean you speak for the whole community. Queer people are not homogeneous and there is a wide range of perspective and experiences to be taken into account.

The internalized acephobia that emerged is not surprising. Disappointing. But not surprising.

Why These Are Objectively Shitty Takes

There are plethora of takes on Tumblr that could be chosen for this part. The one's that will be addressed, however, are the previously cited quotes.

Aziraphale and Crowley Didn't Kiss

Or, to put it more eloquently, the desexualization of Good Omen's man characters is homophobia "regardless what you think of their genders."

The implication that two characters have to be sexual with each other on screen to be queer is LAUGHABLE. Why, you may ask? How about I direct everyone's attention to the C-Drama Sensation The Untamed (2019).

The Untamed features a queer story about two tragic lovers receiving a second chance at their relationship. Because the show was created and produced in China, they had to tone down certain aspects of the books to get it past censorship. This means exactly zero onscreen implications of a sexual relationship between their main characters beyond the insanely well crafted subtext.

Wei Wuxian and Lan Wangji are a study in desexualizing queer characters. I could write a thousand meta analysis on this show alone, but that's a different post.

The Untamed, in short, is a love story.

Good Omens, in full, is also a love story.

Both have main characters who are "desexualized" and both shows ends with both ships as explicitly canon as Milo and Kida at the end of Atlantis the Lost Empire (sorry that was the first film that came to mind that did not include a kiss between a m/f ship).

The implication that two characters can only be in a relationship if they are sexual onscreen is fucking insulting at best, homophobia at worst. Actually it is good ace rep to have your two main leads not show sexual interest in each other. Actually it is excellent queer rep to have your characters be romantically in love, but show exactly zero desire toward each other or any other character on screen.

And that last line? The "regardless of what you think of their gender"?? Yeah, that reeks of transphobia too. Because Neil Gaiman confirmed that angels/demons in his work are canonically nonbinary/genderqueer and the implication that two nonbinary persons can't be in a relationship without it being sexual is super bigoted.

Good Omens Is Queerbaiting

Queerbaiting is a marketing technique for fiction and entertainment in which creators hint at, but then do not actually depict, same-sex romance or other LGBTQ+ representation. They do so to attract ("bait") a queer or straight ally audience with the suggestion of relationships or characters that appeal to them, while at the same time attempting to avoid alienating other consumers.

-Wikpedia, Queerbaiting

The marketing for Good Omens itself gave the impression that audiences would be getting a story about two enemies who gradually become reluctant friends by the end of the series. A buddy-cop story on an inter-dimensional scale. Instead, Good Omens is about two incredibly old friends too in love with earth and each other to let the apocalypse happen.

Toting Ineffable Husbands as part of their marketing scheme didn't really start until after queer fans started coming out of the woodwork. Is this queerbaiting...eeeeeehhh. Honestly this argument is iffy.

There is also the fact that Sheen and Tennant explicitly played their characters as in love and people working on the show shared that vision. They were telling a love story, albeit a very non-conventional one.

There are several articles out there on queercoding vs queerbaiting, how queer isn't just gay, and author intent that could be cited at this point, but I'm going to go easy on this section and just say this:

“Whatever Crowley and Aziraphale are, it’s a love story.”

-Neil Gaiman

Everyone screams "death of the author" until it's inconvenient for them, and this is certainly the case for Good Omens. Suddenly, author intent matters because Neil Gaiman refused to assign a direct label to his characters.

And why should he? They're his creations. And actually they're damn good representation without the label. The fandom collectively forgot nonbinary queers existed or decided that Neil Gaiman was representing the wrong kind of nonbinary queers.

Final Thoughts

Good Omens is not the first fandom to have rampant acephobia strewn throughout nor will it be the last. Homophobia of all types will always rear it's ugly head, especially in larger fandom spaces where there are statistically more shitty people to go around.

Even if the naysayers were right, the creators of Good Omens, actors and original writers intents were...well, good. It's a charming little story about two close beings who make very little impact on the end of the world, but still somehow find their happy ending.

This is a bit of a sweeping statement, but people love to be victimized in fandom. The truly magnificent gatekeeping that happened on Tumblr circa 2019 is likely going to run a repeat when season 2 releases. Hopefully most on here will figure out how to turn their critical thinking skills on and remember that the block button exists, but it's doubtful.

Let some rep go around for the greyace/greygender queers please. It's not a competition for who's the most victimized, but we would like some solid rep every once in a while without the bigots crawling out of the woodwork.

Look the series ends with a love song playing over them on a date and telling each other how much they LIKE EACH OTHER WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME-

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feanorianethicsdepartment · 3 years

Note

Alright, I read your recent post and need to know - what is your interpretation of Maglor’s relationship with the twins?

askjdhslkjag my biggest self-inflicted problem in this fandom is that my take on maglor, elrond, and elros' relationship is so intensely detailed and specific i am forever tormented by none of the fic i read ever quite getting it right (from my perspective; i’ve read plenty of fic that presents a good interpretation on their own terms, it’s just never mine.) it’s simultaneously way darker than the fluffy kidnap dads stuff and nowhere near as black-and-white awful as the anti-fëanorian crowd likes to paint it, it’s messy and complicated and surrounded by darkness, and yet there’s also a sincere connection within it which mostly serves to make all those complications worse. angry teenage elrond is angry for a great many reasons, and the circumstances around him being raised by kinslayers account for at least half of them. there’s lots of complexity here, and i don’t see it in fic nearly as often as i’d like

(warning: the post... feathers? i already have an internet friend called faeiri this could be awkward - anyway, the post she’s talking about includes the line ‘everyone is wrong about kidnap dads except me.’ this post follows on from that in being as much a commentary about why various popular interpretations of both how the kidnapdoption went and the way people subsequently characterise the twins just don’t work for me as it is a setting out of my own ideas. i’m not really interested in getting into discourse here, i’m just trying to get my thoughts down. i’ve read fic with these interpretations before that i’ve liked, even, don’t take this as a Condemnation, aight? also this turned out long as hell, so i’m putting it under a cut)

i can never buy entirely fluffy depictions of kidnap dads

which isn’t to say i don’t read them! sometimes all i want is something sweet, for these kids to get to be happy for once. it’s not like i think their time with the fëanorians was completely devoid of laughter

it’s just. the pet names, the special days out, the home-cooked meals, it can get so treacly it stops feeling like the characters they are in the situation they’re in and turns into Generic Found Family #272

it soaks out all the complexity - which is the thing i am here for - and acts like oh, these kids were never in any danger, they were perfectly happy being abducted by the people who murdered everyone they knew, there’s nothing possibly questionable about this relationship at all

and... yeah. that’s not the characters i know. that’s not the context i know they belong to

i just can’t forget the circumstances that led them to meet

rivers of blood, the air filled with screams, a town ablaze, a woman choosing to die. every interaction the three of them have is going to proceed from that nightmare

(sidenote: i tend to hold it was maglor that raised the twins, with maedhros looming ominously in the background not really getting involved. it’s mostly personal preference, i’ve been in and out of the fandom since before this kidnap dads thing blew up and when i joined that was a perfectly standard reading)

(also the cave thing was a dumb idea, old man, if only because it implies beleriand had streams safe enough for children to play in at that point. the way it separates the twins from the third kinslaying is also something i don’t particularly vibe with)

probably my least favourite angle i’ve seen on the situation (edged out only by ‘maglor was actively abusive towards the twins’ which no no no no no no no no NO) is the idea that maglor (and/or maedhros, append as necessary) took the twins specifically to raise them

like, i get where it’s coming from, but it makes maglor come off as really creepy

(i have read fics where it is indeed played off as really creepy, but that’s not a maglor i have any interest in reading about)

(’mags 100% bad’ is just as facile a take to me as ‘mags 100% good’)

even if you’re saying maglor took them in because they had no one left to take care of them - i highly doubt they were the only children the fëanorians orphaned at sirion. idk, it always makes maglor seem much less sympathetic than i think it’s meant to

i prefer to think of it as more... organic? something that evolved, not something that was preordained. them growing closer gradually, the twins finding an adult who might maybe be on their side, maglor becoming invested in them almost by accident

and then the twins are so comfortable with the second scariest monster in amon ereb they frequently sass him off and maglor’s gotten so used to not hurting them he’s not even thinking about it any more. no one’s quite sure how it happened, but they’ve made a Connection

‘wait aren’t they a murderous warlord of questionable mental stability and a pair of terrified small children who’ve lost everyone they ever knew? isn’t that kinda fucked up?’ yup! that’s the point! complexity!

another idea i don’t like is the idea that maglor was an objectively better parent to the twins than eärendil or elwing

other people have talked about this already, i won’t rehash the whole thing. i will say that while i don’t think elwing was a perfect parent - someone so young, in such a horrible situation, i wouldn’t blame her for screwing up - i do think she (and eärendil) did the best by them they possibly could

this is one of the few things they have in common with maglor

something i come across now and again is the idea that sure, elwing and eärendil weren’t abusive or horrible or anything, but they were a couple of basically-teenagers with so many other responsibilities, there was only so much they could do. maglor, on the other hand, is an experienced adult who could take much better care of the twins

and...

first off, it’s not like mags doesn’t have a job. he’s a warlord, he has a fortress to help run, military shit to handle, lots of other stuff that needs to get done to stop everyone from starving or getting eaten by orcs. i feel like sirion had enough of a government there was plenty of opportunity for elwing to take days off and play with her kids, but in the fëanorian camp nobody really has the time to chase after a couple of toddlers, least of all one of the last points on the command network. they just don’t have the people any more

(seriously, the twins getting a formal education with tutors and classes and shit is a weirdly specific pet peeve of mine. this is a band of renegades, not a royal household; if there’s anyone left with those kinds of skills they almost certainly have more important things to do)

more than that, though - well, a quick glance through my late stage fëanorians tag should tell you a lot about what i think maglor’s mental state is like at this point. he is so accustomed to violence death means nothing to him, he’s lost most of his capacity for genuinely positive emotion to an endless century of defeat and despair, he hates everything in the universe, especially himself, he’s only able to keep functioning through a truly astounding amount of denial, and he covers it all up with a layer of snark and feigned apathy, which he defends aggressively because he’s subconsciously realised that if it breaks he’ll have absolutely nothing left

(maedhros, for the record, is... i’d say more stable, but at a lower point. maglor may interact with the world mostly through cold stares and mocking laughter, but at least his mind is firmly rooted in the present)

(on the other hand, at least maedhros lets himself be aware of what they are and where their road will lead)

which... this doesn’t mean maglor doesn’t try to be kind to the twins, or rein in his worst impulses around them

there’s just so little of him left but the weapon

he stalks through the halls like a portent of death and gets into hours-long screaming matches with maedhros and has definitely killed people in front of the twins

not even as, like, a deliberate attempt to scare them, but because when you solve most of your problems by stabbing them it’s pretty much a given that people who spend a lot of time around you are going to see you do it at least once

and sometimes, he curls up in an empty hallway, and weeps

... suffice it to say i don’t think elwing’s the more preoccupied, or the less mentally ill, parent here

just. in general, the fëanorians aren’t cackling boogeymen, but they’re not particularly nice either

no one has the energy left for that. not these isolated and weary soldiers at the end of a long losing war and the beginning of the end of the world. they don’t really bother to guard the kids against them escaping. where else are they going to go?

the sheer despair that must have been in the fëanorian camp after sirion, the knowledge that the cause cannot be fulfilled, that they are utterly forsaken, that they’re really just waiting to die -

it can’t have been a happy place to grow up in, under the shadow of loss and grief and deeds unrepentable, and the slow march of inevitable defeat

they would have had a better childhood if they stayed in sirion, raised by people who knew how to hope

but that isn’t the childhood they had. and despite everything i’ve said, i don’t think that childhood was an entirely awful one

yeah, see, this is where the other side of my self-inflicted fandom catch-22 comes in. just as much of the pro-kidnap dads stuff comes off as overly saccharine and simplified to me, i find much of the anti-kidnap dads stuff equally simplistic in the opposite direction

the idea that maglor and the fëanorians never meant anything to elros and elrond, that they had no effect on the people they became at all, that it was just a horrible thing that happened when they were children, easily thrown in the rear-view mirror...

that’s even more impossible to me than the idea that life with the fëanorians was 100% fluffy and nice

like, i’ve seen the take that elros and elrond hated the fëanorians from start to finish. they were perfect little sindarin princes, loyal to their people and the memory of doriath, spurning every scrap of kindness offered to them and knowing just what to say to twist the knife into the kinslayers’ wounds

... dude. they were six. hell, given their peredhelness, mentally they could easily have been younger

what six year old has a firm grasp of their ethnic identity? what six year old is fully aware of their place in history? what six year old would understand the politics that led to their situation?

don’t get me wrong, i can see hatred in there. but something else that doesn’t get acknowledged alongside it often enough is the fear

some of the stuff i’ve read feels like it gives the kids too much power in the situation. they’re perfectly happy to talk back to and belittle the people who burned down their hometown and killed everyone they ever knew, like miniature adults who don’t feel threatened at all

and, like, six. i can see them going for insults as a defensive measure, but it is defensive. it’s covering up fear, not coming from secure disdain

(and a lot of those insults sound, again, like things an adult who’s already familiar with the fëanorians would say, not a scared child who’s lost almost everything. why would a six year old raised by sindar and gondolindrim know what the noldolantë is, let alone what it means to maglor?)

(... i’m just ranting about this one fic that’s been ruffling my feathers for five years straight now, aren’t i)

i mean, i write elrond as the world’s angriest teenager, who snipes at maglor pretty much constantly, but the thing about angry teenage elrond is that he’s angry teenage elrond

he’s spent long enough with the fëanorians he has a pretty secure position within the camp, and he knows that maglor won’t hurt him from a decade and change of maglor not, in fact, hurting him

but as a small and terrified child abducted by the monsters his mother had nightmares about? he fluctuated wildly between ‘randomly guessing at things to say that wouldn’t get him killed’ ‘screaming at maglor to go away in words rarely more complicated than that’ 'desperately trying not to do or say anything in the hopes of not being noticed’ and ‘hiding’

(and i don’t think the twins were never in any danger from the fëanorians, either. quite besides the point that before they started orbiting maglor nobody was really sure what to do with them... well, they wouldn’t be the first children of thingol’s line the minions took revenge on)

(fortunately for them, maglor did, in fact, take them under his wing. by this point even their own followers are shit scared of the last two sons of fëanor, nobody’s going to mess with their stuff and risk getting mauled. tactically, it was a pretty good decision for a couple of toddlers)

more to the point, i feel like a child that young, in a situation that horrible, wouldn’t reject any kindness they were offered, any soothing touch in a universe of terror

in a world full of big scary monsters, the best way to survive is to get the biggest scariest monster possible to protect you. that’s how elros rationalises it when they’re, like, eight, mentally, but at the time they were just latching on to the only person around them who seemed to care about them

that’s how it started, on their end. two very young very scared children lost in a neverending nightmare clinging tightly to the lone outstretched pair of hands

as for maglor...

i’ve called mags evil before, but i see that as more of a... technical term? he is evil because he did the murder, he remains evil because he won’t stop doing the murder. hot take: murder bad

but that doesn’t make him, like, a moustache-twirling saturday morning cartoon villain. he is deeply unhappy with the position he’s in and the person he’s become, and he’s always trying not to take that final step over the edge

it’s not that i can’t see a maglor who is abusive or manipulative or who sees the twins more as objects than people. it’s just that that characterisation is one i am profoundly uninterested in. i do occasionally read fic with it, but it never enters my own headcanons

horrible people can do good things!! kinslayers can do good things!! the fallen are capable of humanity!! people can do both good and evil things at the same time, because people are complicated!! maglor is not psychologically incapable of actually taking pity on these kids!!!!

it’s... again, complexity. the fëanorians straddle the line between black and white, which is a lot less sharp in the legendarium than it’s sometimes characterised as. it’s what draws me to their characters so much, why i have so many stupid headcanons about them. pretending they fall firmly on either side of the line is my real fandom pet peeve

and, like, this moment? this sincere connection between a bloodstained warlord and two children who will grow up to be great and kind in equal measure? i may not entirely like the direction the fandom’s taken it recently, but that beat, that relationship, it still gets me

so no, i don’t think elrond and elros’ years with the fëanorians were an endless cavalcade of abuse and misery. i think there was love there, despite the darkness all around them

an old, tired monster, and the two tiny children it protects

maglor never hurts the twins, not ever, not once. his claws are sharp and his fangs are keen, if he so much as swatted them he’d rip them in half. instead he folds down the razor edges of his being, interacting with them ever so carefully. he has nightmares of suddenly tearing into their skin

seriously, the power differential between them is so great, maglor so much as raising his voice would break any trust they have in this horribly dangerous creature. fics where he does corporal punishment always get the side-eye from me

the mood of their relationship is... i find it hard to put into words. melancholy, maybe, like a sunny afternoon a few days before the end of the world. three people who’ve lost so much finding what respite they can in each other as the world slowly crumbles around them

there are times when it feels like the three of them exist in a world of their own, marked out by the edges of the firelight. maglor telling stories of the stars, elros giving relaxed irreverent commentary, elrond getting a few moments to just be, all their troubles kept at bay

they are the last two lights in a world sunk into darkness, the last two living beings he does not on some level hate. he will tear his own heart out before he sees them in pain

he teaches them to ride, he teaches them to read, he gives them everything he still has left. the twins should never have been in this situation, maglor probably isn’t entirely fit to take care of them, but it is what it is, and they take what love they can

(maglor depends on the twins emotionally a bit more than any adult should rely on any child. he’s still very much the caretaker in their relationship, but that relationship is the only one he has left that’s not stained by a century of rage and grief. he’s obsessed with them, maedhros tells him frequently. maglor’s standard response to this is to try to gouge maedhros’ eyes out)

(that particular darker side to their relationship, where maglor’s attachment to the twins turns into a desperate possessiveness - that’s not something i think i’ve ever seen in fic. which is a shame, it feels much closer to my own characterisation than the standard ways this relationship gets maleficised. darker, in a different way than usual. horribly compelling in its plausibility)

however you want to read it, i don’t think you can deny this is a relationship that defines elrond and elros’ childhood. they were raised in the woods by a pack of kinslayers, the text is quite clear on this

but i’ve seen a lot of talk about how elros and elrond are only sirion’s children. they are completely 100% sindarin, they love and forgive eärendil and elwing thoroughly and without question, they identify with doriath over - even gondolin, let alone tirion. the fëanorians - the people who raised them - had zero effect on the people they grew into and the selves they created

and that, more than anything else, i find utterly unbelievable

look, i get what this is a reaction to. a lot of the kidnap dads stuff paints the fëanorians as elrond and elros’ ‘real’ family, and i’ve already talked about what i think of the idea that maglor-and-possibly-also-maedhros were better parents than eärendil and elwing. i think it’s reductive and overly optimistic and just a little too neat

but to say instead that elrond and elros held no great love in their hearts for maglor, no lingering affinity with the fëanorians, no influence on their identity from the people they grew up around, none at all? that after it happened they just left it behind and resumed being the same people they were in sirion?

that strikes me as just as much an oversimplification. it sands down all the potential rough edges of their identity, all that inconvenient complexity that stops them from fitting into any well-defined box, and replaces it with a nice safe simple self-conception i find just as flat and boring as declaring them 100% fëanorian

we can quibble over who they call ‘father’ (i personally find that whole debate kinda petty) but denying that it was actually maglor who was the closest thing they knew to a parent for most of their childhoods, and that that would, in fact, affect the way they thought of themselves and their family, elides so many interesting possibilities out of existence

(i’m not even going to get into the most braindead take i have ever heard on the subject, namely that because their time with the fëanorians was such a small fraction of elrond’s total lifespan it was like being kidnapped for two weeks as a toddler and had no greater significance than that. do you not understand what childhood is????)

like, i tend to think of elrond as a child as being very loudly not-a-fëanorian. elros is more willing to go with the flow - hey, if the creepy kinslayer wants kids, elros is happy to play into that in order to not be murdered - but elrond is very firm that he’s not happy to be here and he doesn’t belong with them

(this is after they get over their initial terror, of course, when they’ve realised they won’t be fed to the orcs for the tiniest slight. even so, elrond only really gets shirty about it around people he’s comfortable with, whose reactions he can reasonably guess at. naturally, the first person he does it to is maglor)

elros calls maglor their father exactly once, when they’re... maybe early preteens? this is because elrond hears him do it and immediately loses his shit. they have a dad, elrond says, in tears, and a mum, and any day now their real parents are going to come to pick them up and take them home

... right?

it gets harder to believe as the years roll on, as their memories of sirion fade, as they find their own places within the host, as maglor watches over them as they grow. elrond still mentally sets himself apart from the fëanorians, but it’s more of an effort every year. life in the fëanorian camp is the only one he’s ever really known. he can barely remember his mother’s voice

then the war of wrath starts, and the fëanorian host drifts closer to the army of valinor, and the twins come into contact with non-fëanorians for the first time in forever, and it becomes clear just how obviously fëanorian elrond is. he always insisted he wasn’t like the kinslayers at all, but he dresses like them, talks like them, fights like them

the myth cycles the edain tell are almost completely unfamiliar to him, he barely remembers the shape of the songs of lost doriath. even these sarcastic commentary and subversive reinterpretations he made of maglor’s stories - those were still maglor’s stories! he’s been trying to guess at the person he was meant to be, but it’s growing nightmarishly blatant how little elrond ever knew about him

instead, the people he was born to are as alien to him as the orcs of morgoth. he is a fëanorian, through and through

... yeah, elrond (and/or elros) having an absolutely massive identity crisis upon being reintroduced to his quote-unquote ‘true kin’ is another angle i’d love to see in fic that i don’t think i’ve ever come across. all those potential grey areas around who they are and who they’re supposed to be sound utterly fascinating, and i think it’s the complexity i hate to see elided over the most

i really, really doubt they could effortlessly slot back into being eärendil and elwing’s children. not when they’ve been surrounded by, lived alongside, been raised by the people who were supposed to enemies for most of their lives

they just don’t fit into that box any more. they can’t

speaking of eärendil and elwing, while i do agree that they both (especially elwing) get a lot more flak than they deserve, i don’t agree that therefore elrond and elros were never the slightest bit mad at them and fully forgave them for everything with no reservations

because, well, they were left behind. elwing had no other choice, but they were still left behind; it led to the world being saved, but they were still left behind. all the best intentions in the universe don’t erase the weeks and months and years of waiting, of a hope that grew thinner and frailer until it finally quietly broke

that’s a real hurt, and a real grievance. even if the twins rationally understand that their parents were making the best out of their terrible situation, you can’t logic away emotions like that. it’s perfectly possible for them to know they have no reason to resent eärendil or elwing, and yet still harbour that bitterness and pain

(i did write a thing once where elrond loudly rejects eärendil as his father in favour of maglor, but something i didn’t add in that i probably should have is that elrond later regretted doing that)

(not like, several centuries later, when he’d grown old and wise. two hours later, when he’d calmed down. but he was still legitimately angry at eärendil, because the one thing angry teenage elrond was not lacking in was reasons to be mad at the adults around him, and before he could figure out if he had anything less furious to say the hosts of the valar left middle-earth behind)

(it’s another element to the tragedy of the whole thing. in that particular story, which is mostly aiming for maximum pain, the only thing elrond’s birth parents know about their son for thousands of years is that he hates them)

(and he doesn’t, not really. you can’t hate someone you’ve never known)

not that i think they couldn’t ever make up with their parents! fics where elrond and his birth parents work past all the things that lie between them and form a functional familial bond despite it all give me life. i just don’t like the idea that there’s nothing difficult for them to work past

i don’t like the idea that elrond and elros would naturally, effortlessly identify with the mother they last saw when they were six and the people they only vaguely remember. i can see them doing it as a political move, i can see them going for it as a deliberate personal choice, but i can’t seeing it being immediate and automatic and easy

no matter how great a pair of heroes eärendil and elwing are, that doesn’t change the fact that to elrond and elros, they’re at most a few scattered memories and a collection of far-off stories. and so long as the twins stay in middle-earth, they’re never going to draw any closer

compared to the dynamic, multifaceted, personal, and deep bonds they have with the fëanorians - who, and i know i keep saying this but i think it gets tossed aside way more casually than it should, are the people who actually raised them, their birth parents must feel like a distant idea

and that’s why i can never buy interpretations of elrond as 100% sindarin, a pure son of doriath, with no messy grey areas or awkward jagged edges to his identity. given everything we know about his life, it seems almost cartoonishly simplistic

honestly it seems like a narrative a bunch of old doriathrin nobles trying to manouevre elrond into being high king of the sindar or something would propagate. it's neat and nice and tidy, something that’d be much more convenient for everyone if elrond did feel that way

but i just don’t see how he can. this narrative is easy and simple in a way real people never are, it ignores all the forces pulling him apart. elrond being uncomplicatedly sindarin with the life he lives and the people he's close to - that doesn’t make any sense to me

which isn’t to say i think he’s 100% noldorin, from either a gondolindrim or a fëanorian perspective. (i find it a little more believable, given, again, who he grew up around and who he hangs out with, but it’s still a bit too reductive for my tastes.) it’s also not to say i couldn’t believe an elrond who made an active choice to emphasise his sindarin heritage

it’s not how i think of him, but it works. i don’t have a problem with other people interpreting the complexities of the twins’ identities differently

i just have a problem with people acting like it doesn’t exist

in general i think there’s a lot untapped potential that gets left behind when you declare the twins, separately or together, as All One Thing

they’re descended from half the noble houses of beleriand, and they have deep personal ties to most of the rest. they belong to all of the free peoples even the dwarves, somehow, probably and i feel like that was kind of the old man’s point? so many peoples meet in them, to say they wholly belong to any one species is probably an oversimplification

they sit at a crossroads of potential identities, and rather than narrowing down their worldviews to one single path, they take the hard road and choose all of them. that’s what you need to do, if you want to change the world

and, to bring this back to my ostensible topic, in my estimation at least this mélange of possible selves does include them as fëanorians! it’s not overpowering, but it’s certainly there, and the adults they grow into long after they’ve left the host still bear influence from their childhood

nothing super obvious, nothing that wouldn’t stand out if you didn’t know what to look for, but there’s something almost incandescent in how fiercely elros reaches out for his dreams

there’s something almost defiant in elrond’s drive to be as kind as summer

as for who they publically claim as their family... honestly, it depends. while it’s usually more tactically prudent for elros to connect himself to his various human ancestors, on occasion he does find a use for his free in with the elf mafia, and elrond, code switcher par excellence, is famously the son of whoever is most politically convenient at the moment, which is rarely, but not never, maglor

(in the privacy of their own minds, well, eärendil and elwing may have been the parents elros was supposed to have, but maglor was the parent he actually had, and elros doesn’t particularly care to mope over what might have been. elrond, for his part, figures that after all the shit maglor has put him through, the least that bastard owes him is a father)

but honestly? i think before any of their mountain of identities, before thinking of themselves as sindarin or gondolindel or hadorian or haladin or fëanorian or anything, elrond and elros identify as themselves

they are peredhil, they are númenóreans, they are whoever they make themselves to be. that’s how elrond finally resolved his identity, figured out who he was and found something past the pain and the rage

he wasn’t doriathrin, or gondolindrin, or falathrin, or fëanorian, or whatever else. he was elrond, no more and no less

and that person, elrond, could be whatever he chose to be

... elros came to a similar conclusion, with much less sturm und drang that he’s willing to admit. being able to go ‘hey, i can’t possibly be biased towards any one of your cultures, because i’m descended from all of you and i was raised by murderelves’ makes it a lot easier to unite people around your personal banner, turns out

the stories other people tried to force on them shattered into pieces, and the peredhel twins were free to shape themselves into anything they could dream of

and as the new world struggles alive, these lost children of an Age of death begin to bloom into their full glorious selves -

i just. i love the poetry of that. despite every single shadow that hangs over their past, despite all the clashing notes pulling them apart, they harmonise it all into a greater, kinder theme, determined to make their world a better place in whatever way they can

they fail, of course, but so do all things. the inevitable march of entropy doesn’t diminish the long millennia they (and their descendants) held onto the light

and their growing up in the fëanorian host definitely had a huge effect on the noble lords they became. you can see it in elros’ loud ambition to create a land of happiness and hope, elrond’s quiet resolve to heal all the hurts inflicted by this marred reality

it wasn’t a perfect time by any means, but neither was it a nightmare. it was what it was, a desperate existence at the edge of a knife where, nevertheless, they were loved

even after years upon decades upon centuries have passed, it’s hard for the wise king and the honourable sage to separate out and identify all the conflicting emotions swirling around their childhood. they never knew eärendil or elwing, true, but they also never really knew maglor

not as equals, not as adults, not as people who could truly understand him. he disappeared into the fog of history, leaving only childhood memories of razor-sharp, gentle hands

it’s messy and it’s complicated and getting any real closure would be like shoving their way through a thornbush with bare hands even if elrond could find the shithead, and yet at the core of it all, there is light. not the brightest of lights, maybe, but an enduring one

that contrast, above all, that note of warmth amidst the shadows, is what fascinates me so much about their relationship. three screwed up people in a screwed up world, finding a little peace with each other

and the fact that somehow, it does have a good ending - the children grow up magnificent and compassionate and just, they become exemplars of all their peoples, lodestars of the new world born out of the ashes of the old - that makes it seem to me like this relationship must have contained some fragment of happiness

but, fuck, all the darkness that surrounds that love, all the tangled-up emotions its existence necessitates, all the prefabricated self-identities it can never slot into - nothing about it is simple, nothing about it is easy, and i find that utterly enthralling. especially how, despite everything, that flickering light never goes out

well, i don’t think it does, anyway. my take on this relationship is both complicated enough no one else ever quite gets it right and well-defined enough every single ‘error’ in other people’s interpretations sticks out like a kinslayer in rivendell

it is an entirely self-inflicted problem, i will admit. other people are allowed to interpret those complexities differently from me, and it’s entirely my own fault i lack the :waves hands around nebulously: to write my own hypothetical fic on the subject at a pace faster than glacial

still, though. i do wish there was more fic out there that engaged with these complexities. a lot of the common fandom interpretations of this relationship just sweep it all away

#ask #my terrible headcanons #elros #elrond #maglor #elwing #earendil #feanorians #niphredilien #yellow feathered faerie #putting your old url in the tags for archival purposes #post nyanyannya askbox clearout #ironically it turned out almost as long as the songfic that clogged up my askbox in the first place #and it is DONE #fuck this took forever to write #stayed up late just to get it out the door so i don't have to think about it any more #this is a long ramble and i'm pretty sure the end is just me repeating myself ad nausem sorry #i'll admit to a certain pro-feanorian bias in my interpretation #but i also don't want elros and elrond to just. live in a neverending horrorshow for decades #the silm's cruel enough we don't need that #narratively i feel like elrond being All Of The Elves is a good mirror for elros being All Of The Humans #but it didn't really fit the angle i was going for #bleck #let's see how many followers i lose for this

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