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vxnuslogy · 3 months

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– a waltz with fate.

pairing: aventurine x gn!reader

premise: the fate of luck never had anything of great value after shedding his mortal shell, until you came to him for help. now, aventurine struggles against destiny to make sure you're not taken away from him for the second time.

– warnings: slight angst if you squint, reader is described as feminine and is called princess a few times but still use "you/they/them" pronouns, slight spoilers for events in once upon a broken heart.

– author's note: this is very once upon a broken hearted inspired so please go give it a read! art credits to @yeurei | ~3.1k words.

aventurine was not obsessed. one more visit didn’t equate to obsession. he simply wanted to make sure you were safe and sound; that you were still alive. yes, aventurine just wanted to double check that you weren’t bleeding on the shoulder like last time. in danger. unhappy. or uncomfortable. you were safe here, because he was watching over you.

a pained sigh left his lips as his hand came to ruffle his already unruly hair. his eyes scanning over your figure who slept soundly in the bed of your temporary room in penacony. aventurine clicked his tongue as he took a good look at the space. muted colors of silver, whites, and blues didn’t suit you. vibrant colors of yellows, pinks, and turquoise suited your rowdy personality better. these colors made you stand out even more, captivating everyone in the room with just a glance.

“time to wake up now, friend.” he merrily whispered near your ear, so incredibly close it made him feel intimate. it left a painful tearing inside his already broken heart. as expected, you opened your bleary eyes at him. he saw how your lips tried to scream at him for sneaking into your room but it never left your throat as he throwed a dress right at your face.

“the party is about to start,” he heard you shuffle out of bed and lay out the dress. “it’d be a shame if you were late.” aventurine threw a grin over his shoulder when you rolled your eyes at him. grin growing wider when he realized you planned on wearing the dress he picked out for you despite the irrelevant dress code of only wearing white, black and gold.

“how kind of you, lord aventurine.” there it was. the same playful lilt of your voice.

you were growing too trustful of him again. aventurine didn’t know if his heart fluttered or broke into a million more pieces.

“well what can i say?” shrugging his shoulders he made his way to your balcony. “i’m feeling generous tonight. maybe i’ll even ask you for a dance tonight!”

another roll of your eyes and you're already waving him goodbye. “oh how marvelous! i’ll be sure to rub it on the poor faces of the ladies that would die to dance with you.”

aventurine let out a hearty laugh as he left your room with a single graceful jump. but his happiness was short lived when he spotted a familiar white snake coiling around the tree branch that was placed coincidentally right in front of your balcony. the man scoffed as the snake slithered down the tree and disappeared into the bushes. no doubt planning on telling its master of what it just saw.

for the longest time, aventurine never minded the still and quietness of the night. but this time, the night was too cold for his liking. it may have been winter in penacony and the dress shirt he wore was thin and loose, the temperatures never bothered him. another sigh left his lips as he shoved his hands in his pockets and started walking to where this year’s charmony ball will be held. mentally preparing himself for the encounters he may stumble into for the night.

– –

as expected of the family, the charmony ball looked like a fairytale stolen from a child’s storybook. the ballroom from the ceilings to the floors were covered with iridescent pearls and silver ornaments with touches of gold here and there. some royals from all over the land were already on the dance floor, happily dancing to the beat of the music that played from the second floor. cheers and laughter echoed throughout the entire room, enchanting everyone inside.

“well don’t you look charming, lord aventurine.”

aventurine pressed his lips into a firm line, his grip tightening on the golden goblet that his hand held. he needn't look to his side to know who had approached. her intimidating presence and captivating voice gave it all away. “as do you, lady bonajade. but you always look dazzling no matter what.”

jade chuckled and stood beside aventurine, much to his dismay. the older woman wore a dark blue daring off shoulder dress that showed off her skin with the slit reaching her upper thigh. it would be considered scandalous if any other woman were to wear it. the white ruffled sleeves only reaching her elbows complimented the dark glove she wore on her left hand. as always, her wrists were decorated with shining gold bracelets and her signature jade ring that rested on her ungloved finger.

“flattery won’t get you anywhere, child.” taking a goblet from the wandering server, she took a tentative sip before sloshing the drink around.

aventurine didn’t care for what others thought of him, but it was different when the woman beside him did it. he suddenly felt insecure about the white dress shirt he wore. wondering if it was obvious that the piece of clothing was too big for him with the way it sagged around his shoulders. the black vest that was more akin to a coat with its train felt too suffocating now. he suddenly had the urge to readjust the collar of his shirt and take off the dark blue gem pin on the center of his neck. he didn’t look like the playful and reckless lord aventurine he worked so hard to build up whenever jade was around. and he hated it.

an evil chuckle escaped jade’s lips. “you look better in turquoise, my dear.”

he scoffed, voice laced with the same poison he used to scare off any predators. “this was not my first choice either, madam. if i had known this ball was limited to only whites, golds, and blues then i would’ve brought my own clothing.”

aventurine felt the woman’s lips brush his ear as she whispered. “don’t use that tone with me, child. you still owe me a big debt after saving your little princess.”

jade must have noticed his tense posture when she mentioned you. cursing himself under his breath for showing weakness but he couldn’t calm his beating heart as he looked for you inside the ballroom. the older woman gave aventurine another chuckle before leaning away. the snake-like pupils of her silver eyes made aventurine’s skin crawl but he dared to not look away. narrowing down his own eyes at the woman who had given him everything but took it all away with the snap of a finger.

“will my life suffice then?” aventurine was losing his composure when the woman grinned like a vulture. the room was suddenly stilled and small. all he could see was jade baring her fangs at him like a wild animal on a hunt.

“you’ve already given me your life the first time around,” she moved her gaze away from him and instead looked towards you. aventurine’s fist behind his back shook in anger. “i’m starting to think you have nothing of value to give me anymore.”

he scoffed. slamming the goblet in his hand on the table with a quiet bang. jade let out an amused chuckle. “how peculiar, you’re normally more composed than this. don’t tell me you’ve grown possessive of that little princess?”

“we’re fates, madam. we’re always possessive.” aventurine argued, eyes never leaving your figure as you danced across the ballroom with a familiar man.

“oh but not in the way that you are now,” an arm slithered around his shoulder as a card appeared in front of him. obscuring his vision of you. “quite interesting, wouldn’t you agree. i’ve tried so hard to keep this card up right but it keeps flipping upside down. you know what this means right, kakavasha?”

aventurine swatted the card away from his face. the piece of paper slipping out of jade’s hand. he relished in her momentary shock before slipping away from her hold. he gave the card one more passing glance before sauntering towards the dance floor in search of you.

“you’ve made a fatal mistake, child.” jade warns. “the cornerstones are not to be used for someone that’s easily disposable.”

“[name] is not disposable.” aventurine turned to the woman as she scoffed. “they will be of more value in due time.”

“you say in due time knowing that they won’t last until next month.” the woman shook her head, the same white snake he saw earlier resting on her shoulders. “tell me, kakavasha, are they truly worth all this effort? you, a fate that i raised, risking it all for a mortal that doesn’t even remember you or your sacrifices. they won’t remember you because you no longer have anything of value to give destiny.”

aventurine tried to argue back but he felt winded. that all the oxygen he didn’t need to live were suddenly taken away the more jade continued. “you are nothing of value now. do you think your little [name] would still care if you’re no use to them? give up child, you are no longer obligated to protect them.”

“i’m the only one that can.” he countered.

“with what power?” jade tilted her head to the side. her light lavender hair swaying with her movement. “fate is no longer on your side, nor is luck. you are as powerful as a mortal now.”

aventurine took a moment to reply. “i’ll think of something. i always have.”

the woman laughed. the laugh that rang like sirens inside his mind, telling him to turn away, run away to a place where she wouldn’t find him. but it was hopeless. jade was like a shadow he could never escape from. she will always have a leash around his throat. pulling him back when she deemed necessary and suffocating him from the harsh reality.

“you better have a plan, child.” the same predatory glint came back to her eyes. “i have no use for children who can’t pull their own weight.”

– –

your conversation with veritas ratio was cut short when an arm wrapped around your waist and tugged you back. a surprised gasp escaped your lips when you saw aventurine look down on you with that same grin on his face. “i did say i’d dance with you, no?”

“i vividly remember you saying that you’d ask me. not steal me away.” he let out a jovial laugh that involuntarily made your cheeks flush like wine.

you let out a cough behind your fist as aventurine took hold of your hand and twirled you around to face him. his bare hand coming to rest at your hips as the other held your gloved one. despite the layers of your dress and the corset you wore, you felt aventurine’s warmth seep through.

“now where has my little spitfire gone?” you turn to glare at him. “ah! there you are, i was starting to think you've mellowed down with all these mediocre men.”

you rolled your eyes as he pressed your bodies together even more when other dancers graced the floor. “careful there my lord, you almost sound jealous.”

“i’m a fate, sweetheart, i’m always jealous.” you furrow your brows in confusion at the new pet name. aventurine was never short on nicknames – both good and bad– and him using them on you was never strange. but it didn’t quell that curiosity that led you to him when he used a new one.

he only smiled, and but for a fragile moment, under the chandelier lights that bathed him in gold, the same color of his hair that captivated you when you first met, you understood why so many women would die for him. if aventurine wasn’t so pointed with his words, so greedy with his fortunes, you might have been a little bewitched by him.

but you couldn’t help but feel shy under his gaze and touch. in this moment, with his very being pressed so close to your soul, you can’t help but wish that you were the fortune that he was always greedy for. you wanted to delude yourself that with every twirl, every lift, and every dip of this seemingly never ending dance that felt like it was torn off a fairytale, he wanted you to be his fortune too.

“penny for your thoughts, friend?” you felt his finger press and prod at the mark near your pulse point. “it’s quite rude to not look at your dance partner, you know.”

you let out a snort. “you must be quite the rude gentleman. you never once looked at the poor ladies you’ve danced with all night.”

aventurine grinned from ear to ear. “so you were watching me?”

blood rushed to your cheeks as you glared at him. “i was not! i was simply sending silent prayers to the poor girls that would fall for charms.”

“oh so now you think i’m charming,” the playful upswing of his voice and eyes did your hammering heart no good. “don’t look so embarrassed, friend, everyone thinks i’m charming.”

“how dreadful.” you say with a roll of your eyes before a quiet atmosphere laid itself on the both of you. you tried not to pay attention to the way his grip on your hand and hip tightened when the music slowly started to fade away and the other dancers began to dissipate. for another moment, you wished for the dance to never end.

“you look beautiful in turquoise, you should wear it more often.” you snapped out of your daze when aventurine whispered a compliment to your ear. but when you turn to tell him off, he was gone.

there it was again, the bitter feeling welling up inside your chest. the mark on your pulse – a single coin that was slowly fading away, the symbol of your deal almost being over – nearly sent a wave of tears to break out from your eyes. the urgent feeling of you needing to tell him something still weighed at the back of your mind, but you don’t remember what it was that you wished to say to him.

“is something the matter?” a soft voice from behind you spoke.

the man had silver hair and the most beautiful golden eyes you’ve ever seen. a crown lay on his head as a halo was behind him. “prince sunday…” you murmur as the prince smiled.

“that is me, yes,” he offered a gloved hand to you. “would you care to dance? if you aren’t tired, of course.”

your mind was torn. one part of you telling you yes, dance with the prince who had the reputation of never asking any lady to dance. live out your dreams of meeting a prince and falling in love with him. but another part of you told you to chase after aventurine. seek him out like you always do. one last time.

in the end, you took the prince’s hand and danced with him until the night ended.

– –

aventurine was not jealous.

that’s a lie, he was a fate, he’s always jealous. but not the same jealousy he normally felt when he looked over mortals living out their lives peacefully. that feeling of jealousy was normal for him. this type of jealousy as he watched you dance with the prince felt revolting. like someone had stabbed him in his already hollow chest over and over until he breathed his final breath.

he wanted to steal you away again like how he did when you danced with that vampire scoundrel named ratio. but he couldn’t. aventurine no longer had the right to intervene with your life now that your debt was slowly being paid in full.

fates were dangerous beings of magic. they are all possessive and jealous. mortals pray to him and others but they are no saints nor saviors. aventurine was the rumored fate of luck, madam bonajade’s prized successor. blessing anyone who seeks him out but must pay a hefty toll of something greater than they have received if his tasks and criteria are not met.

aventurine recounts the many scandal sheets that were written about his endeavors, the most famous was titled “A Scandal’s Gambit”. the scandal sheet retold his deal with a poor man wishing to elevate his family’s status from poverty. aventurine gave the man fortune and a simple task: spend the wealth to help his family and to not waste it on useless luxuries. but like the card description from the deck of destiny, the fate of luck’s first task is deceitful and blinded mortals. it wasn’t long before rumors about a mysterious man spending questionable amounts of money

started floating around the city.

people began to point to the man as a thief when a duchess came to him demanding he give back the treasures he stole from her. he quickly went back to aventurine, sitting on a velvet couch and a roulette in front of him. he begged and begged for the fate to help him but he was turned away. aventurine later revealed that his second and final task was to keep his family from dying, but since the man was blinded by greed, his wife and child died from starvation.

“i simply took back the fortune you stole from me.” was the fate’s famous line. and not long, the man tried to flee but was captured and later died in jail. to pay for his failure, the man’s family was taken from him as punishment and compensation for fate’s lost fortune. but what aventurine didn’t realize was that the man’s child survived, and later came to him.

they asked for the same thing. to elevate their family from poverty, but unlike their father, they succeeded and are now reaping the fruits of their labor.

that was what aventurine wanted to believe as he continued to watch you dance with the prince you’ve always dreamt of marrying. you paid a hefty price for this happily ever after and aventurine was willing to take the fall for you.

your journey after meeting him was nothing short of a heart attack. every twist and turn had aventurine’s nonexistent heart beating rapidly within the columns of his chest. all the tasks and missions he sent you, the times where you were captured and he had to save. aventurine wanted nothing more than for you to remember that he was your prince, not the man with the halo behind his head.

was it wrong of him to expect some sort of thanks from a person with no memory of him? no recollections of how he carried you through freezing waters, pulled you through hellfire, hauled you from the clutches of war and death. aventurine wanted just one simple thank you for saving you. but he knew it was too much to ask for.

after using the cornerstone of his fellow fates to reverse time after your unfortunate death, he had to painfully relive your first meeting, your trials and adventures, and see you dance with the man you married in your first life.

aventurine no longer had anything valuable to give to destiny so it took your memories instead. he made sure it was your memories and not you entirely. you were the most valuable thing aventurine had, and he’d be damned if you were taken from him too for a second time.

#—stellaronhvnters.#・ nouveau livre ˎˊ˗#aventurine x reader #honkai star rail x reader #aventurine x you #honkai star rail imagines #honkai star rail x you #hsr x you #hsr x reader #hsr headcanons #aventurine headcanons #aventurine angst #aventurine imagines #( 🂡 ) – royal flush of stories .ᐟ

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bugflies00 · 3 months

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cTommy is SO fucking persuasive he gets people he gets emotions. during the debates Wilbur comes across as condescending, frightened by and stuck in the past, and like hes advocating for violence and harsh control. He doesn't seem very. aware? of how to deal with the people in the debate. Quackity paints Wilbur as elitist and corrupt and Wilbur ends up playing right into it. Karl is very open to bribery and Wilbur doesn't notice. Tommy is trying to buttress his arguments and criticize Q and Wilbur shushes him only to do the exact same thing. He loses the support of his own fucking son. He pulls rank and starts shushing his opponents when he gets annoyed. He worries about even bringing Tommy because he thinks George will wipe the floor with him (for some fucking reason) while Quackity is trying to prep George for how overwhelming of a debater Tommy can be.

Meanwhile Tommy does things like:

-suggest that they encourage Fundy to run because he'll be inconsequential and shouldn't have attention focused to him instead of Quackity

-telling Wilbur to stop killing George and Quackity

-saying that they shouldn't interrupt during the debate, and saying that when George is up they just need to wait him out (which is a good strategy because George is good at arguing but doesn't have much substance to his actual points)

-identifying Bad and Karl as the people to try and bribe out of anyone in the court

-Bringing up the material and emotional losses of the War for Independence (the embassy, the discs, Eret) and George's part in it when debating him, which makes the walls and laws seem more sympathetic and reasonable while casting doubt on SWAG2020, while Wilbur only referred to "laws written in blood"

-immediately obfuscating when he's accused of bribery and then trying like five different strategies to defend himself and going with what sticks

-portraying George as impatient, violent, and petty after the first half of the debate, letting him talk before down talking him when he's finished which progressively irritates him which further benefits Tommy

-following George on an arguably irrelevant tangent about youtube titles, yes anding it, and guiding it back to how L'Manberg is innovative

They have very similar talking points, but Tommy seems a lot more fluid and like he's recognizing his opponent's strengths and weaknesses and changing how he acts accordingly where Wilbur acts more like those things are an issue to be bulldozed.

P.S. I forgot that Dream showed up mid debate to get in a shouting match over the originality of Minecraft Manhunt its so fucking funny. Man does not give a fuck about anything else happening

LITERALLY!!!! LITERALLY THIS IS WHAT I MEAN. also when he came up with the idea of letting everyone who votes for them pick 1 policy. he absolutely won them that election !!!

the thing about cwil is he gets sooooo in his head about this stuff that it completely shoots him in the foot. he’s so tripped up about people’s expectations of him and whether he should adhere to them that, like you said, he ends up playing into them. he cares about lmanberg in a really desperate way, and it makes him way too emotionally unstable to actually lead a debate in a productive way lmao. essentially he puts too much of himself into lmanberg and the election and he ends up being really clumsy and single minded.

whereas ctommy doesn’t!!! ctommy also cares about lmanberg obvious but his entire self identity isn’t on the line. he’s much more level headed, he knows how to play along with these people bc he Knows them, he knows how to subtly undermine them. he’s not obsessed with his own shortcomings like cwilbur is and he’s actually a great fucking debater

#alex.rambles.txt #alex.asks.txt #c!wilbur #c!tommy #c!crimeboys

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the-cybersmith · 6 months

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So, about this whole "AI" thing...

A response to an ask (for some reason, tumblr won't let me blaze normal responsicles)

Like the Titan, Prometheus, Man Has Stolen Fire From the Gods. We can now make minds in our own image, elevating crude matter to the level of self-awareness. So... What next?

The first thing I would like to make clear is that, in some respects, my opinion here is irrelevant. So is yours. So are the opinions of the people reading this.

No matter what we do, no matter what we believe, something remains inviolably clear and true:

BAD ACTORS WILL EXPLOIT GENUINELY USEFUL TECHNOLOGIES TO BENEFIT THEMSELVES

This is an axiom of human behaviour that cannot be escaped. Nuclear power is amongst the most regulated technologies that have ever existed... and right now, rogue states are attacking their neighbours, protected from intervention by the threat of nuclear annihilation.

Nuclear Weapons (their own, and Red China's) are what allows the North Korean government to continue oppressing its population.

Nuclear Weapons enable The Land Of The Bear to invade The Ukraine.

Despite this, nuclear power has otherwise been mostly regulated out of existence. It is cheap, safe, and abundant, yet various laws make it either artificially expensive or outright illegal to heat your home with it, light your rooms, power your transportation, trim your hedges.

Regulations and anti-technology hysteria can prevent ordinary people from benefitting from innovation, but they cannot prevent the worst people in the world from abusing it.

So, whatever worst-case scenario you've imagined? Accept the fact that it's going to happen no matter what you do.

Legions of nanobots reconfiguring us into paperclips, a la Eliezar Yudkowski's bizarrely specific fever dreams? If you think it is possible, accept that it is inevitable.

Intelligent machines with glowing red eyes malevolently hunting us through a post-apocalyptic wasteland, a la James Cameron/The Wachowskis? If you think it is possible, accept that it is inevitable.

Lying governments using deepfaked videos to create un-debunkable false-flags and cheaply manufacture consent for wars to further their adrenochrome-harvesting operations? Let's face it, they don't even need AI for that, most people will just take their claims at face value.

But what if we all agree to stop using it?

Technologies are sometimes lost, yes, but this happens gradually, over the course of decades if not centuries. Civilisations can decline and lose access to technologies, but that's not likely to happen for AI within our lifetimes.

If it works, if it is genuinely useful, it WILL be used.

We have seen this play out time and time again, throughout history.

So, we can either do what we did for nuclear power, and regulate it so heavily that it serves no useful purpose to the Just and the Kind, whilst availing the Corrupt and the Wicked...

Or we can accept Evil shall be done, and try with all our might to counter it with Good.

We can strive to Magnanimous heights of Faustian greatness, using AI to create untold works of beauty, so that Human Grandeur at least rivals Human Depravity.

In summary:

We have stolen Fire from the Gods. The more noble-minded amongst us might as well do something worthwhile with it.

#truth #AI #artificial intelligence #transhumanism #politics #science #philosophy #principle #history #ask #anonymous

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aliciavance4228 · 3 months

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Unpopular Opinion: Demeter Did Nothing Wrong

Alright, maybe the title isn't 100% accurate since she almost wiped the entire human race from earth, but you got the idea.

The thing with Demeter is that nowdays she is demonized/villainized all the time. And the most ironic part is that she is demonized by feminists, which leaves me quite confused, considering the fact that she would technically be a great example of female strength, especially when raporting to "Homeric Hymns to Demeter". But before discussing the myth of seasons, let's talk about her background story:

One thing that is certain about Demeter is that she had horrible experiences with almost all men from her life. Her father ate her. Poseidon raped her disguised as a horse. Zeus raped her as well (which led to the birth of Persephone). Iasion was one of the few men from her life who loved and respected her, and whom she lived with for a while before Zeus became jealous and killed him; yes, he is THAT much of a d-

The only one of her brothers who didn’t hurt her in any way at that time was Hades. And if you take into account the versions of the myths in which Hades was born before her that means that he was the one who took care of her as well during the time when they were trapped in their father's stomach. So it is pretty much implied that he was the only one of The Big Three whom she trusted the most, which makes the discovery that he was the one who kidnapped her daughter even more tragic.

Now, about "Homeric Hymns to Demeter": first of all I want to point out the fact that this myth isn't about Hades and Persephone. They are mostly mentioned in this story rather than actually playing an active role in it, because they have more of a symbolic value above it all. Wheter Persephone came to love Hades in time or despised him for the rest of her eternity is irrelevant, because this myth is not about her but Demeter.

Demeter had already faced some disturbing experiences even before Persephone was kidnapped. And considering the fact that her own daughter was a result of SA, it makes perfect sense why she would be protective towards her and raise her outside of Mount Olympus; every woman that was raped would fear that her daughter would face the same cruel fate.

About the abduction part: it is revealed to us at the beginning that Hades asked Zeus if he can marry his daughter, and he agreed. Hades only needed the approval of the father in order to wed her. Back in the Ancient Greece, especially in the Athens, people had a very patriarchal view on marriage. On short: the marriage would be usually planned between the groom and the father of the bride, her mother not knowing anything about what was going on until her daughter was already taken away from her. This myth is a representation of how the Patriarchy was a dominant system even among deities, with Zeus as its supreme figure.

At this point, the myth of seasons can be already considered a comfort story for mothers who had to endure the loss of their daughters either through death or marriage. This myth, however, has a lighter note as well, and that because Demeter, instead of accepting the fate of her daughter, left her anger free and did anything she could so that she would ultimately convince Zeus to give her daughter back, the last solution being leaving hundreds of humans dying of cold and hunger. This part basically shows how even a patriarchal figure like Zeus can be defeated by a mother's rage (or pure female rage, take it as you wish). Even though this myth is supposed to tell us just how seasons appeared, it can also be used as a moral lesson for men: it is better to consult with your wife and daughter before making a decision, or else there will be GREAT CONSEQUENCES.

And finally, one moment that is indeed very touching yet most people are ignoring for some reason is when her mother Rhea appears in front of her and starts to comfort her after she found out that Persephone ate the promeganate seeds, showing how a mother's mouring over her daughter was a common feeling among most female deities from Greek Mythology.

Now, is Demeter perfect? Absolutely not. And that is okay, because instead of that she is supposed to show in this myth a lot of humane and realistic nuances about what being a woman is like. She is a complex character, and completely demonizing her just because you ship Hades and Persephone is quite disturbing in my honest opinion. Wheter or not you like this couple (I won't condemn you because they are still one of the most stable relationships from Greek Mythology, but that basically shows just how f*cked up myths are in general lmao but anyway....), you have to understand the fact that the "Beauty and Beast" and "A mother's love will always conquer" are two tropes that can co-exist, and that things aren’t just black-and-white.

#greek mythology #greek gods #demeter #zeus #hades #persephone

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rubyreduji · 2 years

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take care of you — kmg

summary: even when you are going on a date, mingyu is there for you

tags: smut (minors dni!), fwb, technically roommates!au but its not relevant warnings: explicit unprotected sex, fingering, slight dumbification, squirting, praise, hand kink, car sex, slight jealous!mingyu, slight protective!mingyu, minor angst but mingyu makes it better, mingyu is very Horn-Knee, use of puppy as a pet name, do they have feelings for each other? idk wc: 2.1k an: the name of the guy reader goes on a date with is not another idol, its honestly very irrelevant lol

“So who is this guy?”

“His name is Jaehyun and he’s in my Tuesday/Thursday literature class,” you tell Mingyu as you dig through your closet. You’ve been asked out on a date and now you’re frantically trying to get ready while Mingyu tries to calm your nerves.

“And you’re so nervous because?”

“Because he’s really cute, and nice, and I’d like for things to go well tonight. It’s been a while since I’ve gone on a date.”

“Wear this,” Mingyu says as he reaches over you and grabs a dress off the hanger. It’s a small black dress that has thin straps and hits mid thigh and hugs your body in all the right ways. “It makes your boobs look great. Really sexy, puppy.” His voice is deep and hushed.

You blush at the compliment. Even though it’s been two months since you and Mingyu started hooking up you’re still affected by his sexual comments about you.

“It’s small though, what if I get cold?”

“Any gentleman should offer his jacket to his date,” Mingyu tells you and he hands you the dress. You take the dress and lay it out on your bed as you strip to get ready for your shower. From behind you you hear Mingyu groan. “Really baby girl? You’re going to do this to me?”

“What? I have to get ready for my date!”

“You know you don’t have to go. I can entertain you all night if that’s the problem.” Mingyu walks up to you and pulls your naked body into his chest. He starts to pepper kisses across your collarbone.

“Yes I do have to go Mingyu, I’m not going to stand Jaehyun up.” You push the boy away slightly and Mingyu whines. ��But I am still feeling a bit nervous…help me with my nerves while I shower?” You shoot Mingyu your best “I need you” eyes and you run your hand over his waist as you pass by him to walk over to your bathroom.

As you turn on the water you can hear Mingyu frantically shucking his own clothes off before bounding after you into the bathroom. You can feel Mingyu’s warm body press against yours and his already hard dick press into your ass as he wraps his arms around your waist from behind. He kisses at your shoulders and neck as you giggle.

You two step into the shower and Mingyu tugs you closer until your lips connect. He hungrily kisses you and you kiss him back with just as much ferocity. Mingyu’s hands grope at your tits and you arch into his touch. You moan out as Mingyu’s fingers pinch your nipple and Mingyu chuckles.

Mingyu knows you’re on a time crunch though so he can’t tease you for long. He doesn’t waste time dragging his hand down your torso before reaching down to play with your clit. You grab onto his broad shoulders so you don’t fall over and whimper as Mingyu abuses your clit with his fast pace.

“Please Mingyu,” you whine, “I need you inside me.” Mingyu only hums and without warning thrusts a finger into your sopping pussy. You cry out and Mingyu smirks and starts pumping his finger in and out of you. It’s not long before it’s shoving another one and then another one into you. You feel stuffed just with his three fingers and your legs start to tremble at how they curl right into your sweet spot.

You’ve always loved Mingyu’s hands. They’re so thick and large and strong. You’ve never met anyone with hands as big as his and they’re even better when he puts them inside of you. His fingers are just the right size to pleasure you and the motions he makes inside of you have your mouth watering.

Mingyu doesn’t pay attention to any of your babbling as he brings his thumb over to rub at your clit as he finger fucks you. His own hips rut into your hip bone trying to find his own release.

You try not to scream out as Mingyu continues to pound into your g-spot. His pace is relentless and you can hear just how wet you are as Mingyu’s fingers drag in and out of you. You feel your pussy starting to clench and a whimper starts to leave your throat.

Mingyu can sense your impending orgasm, so he kisses at the skin behind your ear before whispering to you, “Cum for me baby.”

You let your orgasm hit you and pleasure washes over you as your pussy gushes all over Mingyu’s hand. This makes Mingyu’s hips pick up their pace and soon he’s cumming as well, all over the side of your torso. Your pussy is still fluttering when Mingyu pulls his fingers from you. They’re drenched and not from the shower.

“Shit baby, that was so hot. You squirted all over my fingers, what a good girl,” Mingyu coos as he pulls your body into his. You’re still recovering from such an intense orgasm and you only nod at his words. “Aww did I finger you so hard your little puppy brain can’t think properly? Are you still gonna be fucked dumb when your date gets here to pick you up.” You whine at his words but can’t seem to find the words to say something back. Mingyu only laughs and kisses your cheek.

Mingyu helps you wash your body and hair before helping you dry off. He watches you as you do your hair and makeup and then finally pull on the dress he picked out for you. It takes all of his self control not to just rip the dress off of you and fuck you right there.

“You look lovely baby,” he mumbles into your lips as he kisses you. Right then there’s a knock on your door. “Looks like your date is here, better not keeping him waiting. If there’s any issue just text me.”

You nod and you’re about to tell him not to wait up for you but you know he will so you don’t even bother. You kiss him on the cheek and turn to head towards the door. You jump a bit when you feel Mingyu’s hand connect to your ass and you hear him giggling to himself as you brush it off and head to the front door to meet your date.

Mingyu is sitting on his bed working on his homework when he sees his phone light up with a text. He picks it up to see it’s from you.

Puppy <;3: gyu…pls come pick me up [location]

Mingyu doesn’t even bother to close his laptop screen before he’s up and out of the room. He slips on his shoes quickly and rushes out of your shared apartment and down to the parking lot. He’s at the restaurant that you’re at in record time and there you are, standing in front of the building, shivering in your tiny dress.

“Oh puppy,” Mingyu mutters to himself before rushing over to you, already pulling off his own jacket to drape around your shoulders. Up close he can see that tears are staining your face and ruining your makeup.

“Mingyu,” you cry when you see him and rush forward to meet him. Mingyu pulls you into his arms and wraps you up in his jacket.

“What happened baby?”

You try to catch your breath before telling Mingyu about your date.

It started out well and he was being super nice until he got a text on his phone halfway through the meal. He then went on to talk about how he didn’t actually like you and you were just a dare by his friends to make a couple bucks. He told you how easy you seemed so he asked you out to prove to his friends that he could get a date. The money had transferred to his account halfway through the meal and he got up and left you all alone.

“That bastard, I’ll kill him,” Mingyu growls.

“No Gyu, don’t worry about it. I just want to leave,” you tell him. Mingyu’s demeanor changes and he nods. Mingyu helps you into his car and as he’s about to start driving you grab at his hand.

“Y/N?”

“Can we maybe…finish what we started earlier?” It’s dark in the car but you can feel your face heat up as you ask the question.

“Baby…I don’t want you to do this if you don’t feel like it. Don’t try and prove something just because some asshole.”

“No I want to, I want you Gyu,” you tell him. “It’s not about Jaehyun, I just want you. Been needy for you all night since the shower.”

Mingyu nods before starting the car. “Well if you want me baby, that’s what you’ll get.”

Mingyu’s hand grips your bare thigh the whole time while he drives. You look down at his hand and the way his hand tenses as it squeezes at the fat on your thighs. You feel yourself getting wet just by staring at the veins in his hands.

Before you know it the car is coming to a stop and you look up to see that Mingyu has parked the car in a secluded area. You don’t know where you are but you can’t even think about it because Mingyu is pushing his seat back and pulling you over the center so you can straddle his thighs. When you settle down in his lap you can feel his dick is already hard through his jeans.

Mingyu’s lips are on yours and you kiss him back with just as much, if not more, passion. Your hands are all over each other and you tangle yours in his hair as he nips at your bottom lip. You feel Mingyu’s hand squeeze your ass through your dress and push it up a bit as he does. You’re still wrapped in Mingyu’s jacket so you slide it off and throw it into the back seat. The new access to your bare skin has Mingyu releasing a low groan and ducking down to kiss at your chest and shoulders. You whimper as his teeth graze your skin and you grind your hips down into his. The roughness of his jeans feels heavenly against your cunt. Your thin lace panties are already soaked and you know that your arousal is leaking onto Mingyu’s pants but you can’t seem to care much, and neither does Mingyu.

Mingyu’s hands come down onto your hips and he guides you as you grind against him. Mingyu lets out a soft curse before he’s lifting you up again so he can shove his pants and boxers down his legs. His cock springs out from the confinement and hits against his torso. The sight makes lick your lips and your pussy clench.

While you’re distracted Mingyu’s hand is sneaking down between you guys so he can touch your clit. You jump a bit when you feel the pressure but you quickly melt into the touch.

“So wet already,” Mingyu mumbles more to himself than anything. “Bet you could already take my cock.”

“Yes Gyu, please. I need your big cock filling me up,” you beg. Mingyu has to steady his breath as he hikes up your dress and pulls your panties to the side. He grabs his cock and lines it up with your entrance before slamming your hips down into his. You both groan and without meaning to Mingyu’s hips stuttering up into yours. You already feel so good, pleasuring coursing through you, but it intensifies when Mingyu starts to thrust into you for real.

“So good for me. You look so pretty baby, riding my cock like such a good girl,” Mingyu tells you over and over again. You wrap your arms around his neck and he guides you up and down his cock at a furious pace. His hips pound up into you as you bounce on his cock and you want to cry from how good it feels.

Mingyu’s hands come up to pull the straps of your dress down your arm so he can pull the cups of the dress down to expose your breasts. When they’re free he doesn’t hesitate to latch onto your nipple. He swirls his tongue around the bud and you whine at the stimulation.

The tip of his cock keeps curving right into your g-spot and you can already feel your impending orgasm approaching. Mingyu’s hand reaches down and squeezes your ass before using it as a handle to help guide your movements. After a couple more thrusts you feel your pussy clenching before you release all of the built up tension in your body. You cum with a sob and then not even two seconds later Mingyu is cumming inside of you, a string of curses leaving his own mouth.

“Oh fuck puppy,” Mingyu mutters as his hips still rut into you slightly. Both of your breathing is heavy and Mingyu is still mouthing at your breasts. “I told you wearing this dress was a good idea.”

taglist: @pandorashbox @leejihoonownsmyheart @soonhoonietrash @enhacolor @baldi-2 @chaimi-yuta @embrace-themagic @kayleeshinee @coupsgyus @joonsytip @heyxxitsxxtay @luvthatleader-nim @wonchansbrooklynn

join my taglist: here!

#seventeen #seventeen fanfic #seventeen smut #svthub #kim mingyu #mingyu #mingyu smut #mingyu fanfic #mingyu scenarios #mingyu imagines #mingyu x reader #svt #svt mingyu #kpop fanfic #kpop smut #rru.fics #rru.writes #★ mdni

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crguang · 18 days

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ahajsksbywpqp sat guess who has 2 tests in the same week in the same class next week. Not very fun for me. anyway I was think abt Kafka (honestly when am I not is the real question). See if it wasn’t Kafka in ur au and I was r I would definitely turn her in for the money, but I unfortunately think I might like Kafka just like a little bit ig so I don’t think k would be able to do that .

Reread part 3 today is her fingers twitching bc she wants to shoot something or is it just bc Kafka and her fingers. Ok thats not what I meant but also…what I meant was that she works with her fingers a lot I wish she used them on me instrument, guns, etc. we still haven’t gotten an in game Kafka appearance w an actual violin, it probably won’t happen but I’m still holding out. And she’s the highest threat level possible for a criminal but she STILL commits petty theft. She is so I saw someone say that the stellaron hunters were all siblings, Kafka and blade are like the older siblings that have to drive/pay for everything, silver wolf is the gamer (so original) and firefly is the youngest. Wish they had more in game interactions, or like they had synergy, meta wise, since canonically they’re one of the most tight knit groups.

oh also your inbox must be full as fuck so it’s fine if you don’t reply to everything, esp bc you answer a lot of stuff, and even tho someone already said this ur rlly great to talk to ur thoughts are always more coherent than mine. And we all get to simp over hot fictional women together.

ngl I might start playing ptn, like I’ve been seeing screenshots and…wow, I don’t think I have enough storage tho. I think the two types of characters I usually like are tiny mentally ill ones and hot evil women, so…

im so sorry my messages are always so long btw, I keep rambling 😭

-🌠

aaaa study well and good luck for your tests!!! hope you get a good grade and if u dint i will hack i to your prof’s computer and change it for you

im with you entirely, if it was anyone else in that story i wouldve already called the cops LMFAOOO kafka gets privileges because shes hot and my fav unfortunately… for the finger thing, i think its just one of her quirks! in her idle she mimics playing the violin and like you said she has very dexterous hands (even mentions it in a voice line) so i think she’d absentmindedly move them around when her mind is elsewhere. this is the kind of overthinking i was talking about, when i map out a character in my head i think about the most irrelevant stuff that dont matter😭 but imo they add to her charm a little and make her a rounder character, idk. AND YES i love that her crimes go from suicide inducement to petty theft shes so ridiculous hfjfhdhfj that time in her character story where she just walked in a store and took clothes off the rack then left in front of everyone… shes funny as hell😭

i see the SH as family too! silver wolf and firefly are sisters to me, and both of them are def kafka’s little sisters. i think silver wolf is the youngest though, she even gives off sassy youngest child vibes. i wish they could work together too, having them all in one team would be so nice. but it’s also cool that each of them has a speciality, it makes sense for the work they do

my inbox is full i think i have around 70 asks rn…😭 but to be fair a lot of them are veryyy old i just havent gotten around to cleaning up my blog yet, i’ll do it at the same time i change my masterlist and actually make it pretty to look at. i usually try to click on notifs as soon as i see them but like i said, i just forget to type my answers </3

and omg. anon. if your type is mentally ill and hot evil women ptn is literally the game for you. there is an abundance of mentally ill women in there, trust me… like there’s every kind of character you could want in that game— you could give me a specific type and i could find you a character that matches it, you should definitely play. and if you do, do it before the second anniversary ends (starts around mid/late-october) bc trust me you are gonna be upset if you miss shalom :/

dont worry abt ramblingggg i love talking to u and answering every point it’s really nice!!

#sat answers #🌠 anon

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fenrislorsrai · 11 months

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Firefish - a twitter alternative

TLDR: Looks like twitter, functions better. Lets you interact across multiple platforms. Allows NSFW. Has built in anti AI scraping.

If you ever used Twitter, it's going to look similar in structure, so the learning curve is low. There's more features that that, but they're not so intrusive you HAVE to learn them right away but also aren't hard to find. It's a nice balance.

The big difference is post length- it allows up to 8000 characters, so like Mini-Tumblr.

one of the features I like that familiar's but better is if you hover cursor over name on desktop is it pops up the profile for the person and a follow button. So you can immediately hover over name and get context about the person posting when it's not someone you already follow. Is this health info being posted by a professional or by someone that thinks you should stick rocks in your vagina?

That feature also means its incredibly easy to follow people regardless of the instance. On Mastodon it was extremely annoying to follow people. If that the thing that put you off Mastodon, Firefish fixed that and made it better than Twitter.

Firefish runs off ActivityPub, so it lets you follow and interact with anyone using the plugins for that. So includes Mastodon, WordPress, PeerTube, Pixelfed, Lemmy, Misskey, and Tumblr is allegedly developing an integration to run it.

Okay, NSFW content! We're about to get slightly in the weeds here. whether NSFW content is allowed is generally by server. When you go to join Firefish, it'll ask you what server you want to use and it'll tell you about rules. If you want NSFW, pick one that allows!

That's it. If you picked one that did not, it generally won't allow you to follow things that do or boost stuff from a location that did.

NOW, A GREAT FEATURE! Spoilering stuff is super easy on Firefish. Just click the button! Say you see something you wanna boost but its *not* spoilered. You can boost AND spoil the image/text of the quoted item! MAGIC.

now, on to antennas.

The Antenna feature on there lets you track tags or users in a separate panel so you can see it in one spot. You can also add NEGATIVE tags to the antenna. So say you want to see news about your city. So you set the main tag as the City. But you don't want sports news. So you can put in negative tags of sports, specific sport names, and individual teams in the city. And then you get news about the location, but no sports

For fandom purposes, you can use it to filter out things you just don't vibe with. hate that one ship? BEGONE.

PROFILES: you can stick hashtags in your profile and it'll turn up in searches easily. also it will ask you "are you a cat?" If you say yes, it gives your profile pic cat ears.

Overall when I'm posting links to Firefish posts (or posts via something from ActivityPub hosted sites that I interacted with via Firefish), so far it renders the preview link well on most platforms. I'm not sure how it works for embedding a whole message into a static page (like you could do with Twitter for news articles).

AN IMPORTANT NERDY NOTE: okay, you wanna sign up for Firefish now. Select from the servers offered some have different rules restrictions and some have Non-english default languages. Pick the one you like. If you pick Firefish.social itself that one IS the largest but also it gets day one code updates... so sometimes it gets funky or won't load properly for a few hours. If that will drive you bonkers, pick *any* other server. The server size is almost irrelevant because Firefish plays so well with other services!

also, if you don't see one today, check again in a few days! admins rotate through open enrollments to keep the growth rate managable. also, if you're *that* kind of nerd, you can host your own server. Even with only YOU on it. and it still interacts normally with the rest of the ActivityPub servers!

#firefish #twitter #social media #mastodon #microblogging

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cicadian-rhythm · 3 months

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get ready mutual.. for my.. MUSIC BLAST !!!!!

a campaign of shock and awe, evelyn evelyn

MURDERS, miracle musical

mind electric, chonny jash or miracle musical [<- both are great]

unsweetened lemonade, amélie farren

over and over, rio romeo [THIS FEELS LIKE A CRESS SONG TO ME..]

blame gluttony, amandawaffles

kill the dj, greenday

shinigami, kenshi yonezu

Music Review under the cut to avoid a really long post!

Also, for clarification on the 'vibes' sections - I organize my songs into one of eight different playlists based on color vibes only!

A Campaign of Shock and Awe

Notes -

Two singers is always fun!!!

More than two singers? How many singers are there... (They sounded different but. Not the most different?? They could just be good at changing their voices/using different tones! I'm not great at telling voices apart) Either way it's a banger.

I think it's two singers.

Anyways this song is a vibe :3

Rating - 4/10 Will I Add it to My Playlist - I actually might! I know I rated it kind of low, but tbh I'm not nearly that picky about music. I don't think whether or not I love the song really affects how much I want to listen to it, which is STRANGE to say and I KNOW IT IS. HUSH. Vibes - Immediately clocked this song as Yellow!

Murders

Notes -

A great title tbh so that's already +1 point

OOH the vibe is great

Yeah, the more I listen the more I like this one!

The PIANO? Beautiful

The voice of the singer is also really haunting /pos

Some time I want to dissect the lyrics here lol. Lyrics aren't usually something I care about on a first listen, though, and are (usually) irrelevant to whether or not a like a song!

Rating - Easily a 7/10! Will I Add it to My Playlist - Yes!! Actually I already did LMAO Vibes - This is a Black song!

Mind Electric (Chonny Jash)

Notes -

So I actually have listened to this song before, back when Marc was trying to convince me to get really into Chonny Jash (he failed) but I will listen again because. I forgot what song this is. LMAO.

OHHHH this one...

This is also a vibe!

The effects on the voice of the singer are honestly great; it's not my favorite style of music, but it is fun to listen to sometimes!

There is... a lot going on here towards the end? Throughout most of the song, really, but it feels a bit more overwhelming at the end here. Harder to really hear the singer, which I like less.

Rating - 5/10! Will I Add it to My Playlist - I'm gonna say no </3 But also I do at times listen to the Chonny Jash playlist, when I'm feeling that style of music! Vibes - Purple or Yellow!

Side note - should I listen to the other version you have listed here as well?

Unsweetened Lemonade

Notes -

OH THEY HAVE A PRETTY VOICE

Oh, have a listened to this- YES I HAVE I LOVE THIS SONG!!!!!!!!

I CAN'T BELIEVE I DIDN'T RECOGNIZE IT RIGHT AWAY BUT THIS JUST RECENTLY WENT ON MY PLAYLIST!!

????? ITS NOT ON MY PLAYLIST???? ITS SUPPOSED TO BE??? MAYBE THATS WHY I DIDNT RECOGNIZE IT RIGHT AWAY????

Rating - 8/10!! Will I Add it to My Playlist - I thought it was already there, so YES, definitely!! Vibes - Pink, really, but I don't have a Pink playlist, so Red!

Actually though thank you for recommending that one, I never would have found it again if you hadn't ^_^;

Over and Over

Notes -

A Cress song you say............

Love the way they sing! I love voices that aren't traditionally beautiful!

This does feel like something that would play during a montage of Cress dying Over and Over (gasp!! they said the thing!!)

Rating - 5/10 Will I Add it to My Playlist - Probably not ^_^; Some of the parts were a bit overwhelming to listen to. Vibes - Another Pink song!

Blame Gluttony

Notes -

I couldn't find this on Spotify? So I went to YouTube lol

A song about love that consumes!! Based!!

Very repetitive ^_^; It works for some songs, but usually I like less repetition!

Rating - 3/10 ^_^; I liked it for the most part, in fact I would say it's a good song!! It just had lots of repeating and the vocals bothered my ears. I would recommend it to other people, though! Will I Add it to My Playlist - No </3 For the above reasons, I don't think it would do well on my playlists Vibes - Green, perhaps?

Kill the DJ

Notes -

Green Day!!! I like them, in theory, but I haven't listened to them NEARLY enough!

Oh HELL yeah. Love the way this sounds.

Shoot that fucking DJ!!!!!!

I have no idea why we hate the DJ but I am SO ready to murder them!!!

Rating - 6/10 Will I Add it to My Playlist - Considering it! It does get a bit same-y in parts which might bother me in the long run, but it IS a vibe. Vibes - White? Ourgh or maybe Orange. Green? HM. This one is hard!!

Shinigami

Notes -

I'm gonna trust that the first result was the correct result, as I couldn't read the title lol ^_^;

This is also a vibe!!

I love the way their voice sounds...

No idea what this song is about but it is a bop.

Rating - 5/10 Will I Add it to My Playlist - Don't know! I might! Vibes - Green.... :3

#Music Review #asks #mutual #music #Evelyn Evelyn #Miracle Musical #Chonny Jash #Amélie Farren #Rio Romeo #amandawaffles #Green Day #Kenshi Yonezu

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orii-blogs-stuff · 5 months

Note

Hello! Am sending a questions about your Ascendence of a Bookworm x Resturant to Another World AU.

Which was you favorite part to write so far?

Has anyone traded goods such as plants or meats from Yurgenschmidt (hope I remember how to spell that) to Nekoya yet?

How well known is the restaurant among the merchants and commoners of Yurgen?

I find it fascinating to think of what the restaurant can make with the plants and meats found in each duchy that cannot be found on Earth.

I like how you managed to show the differences of culture, what the nobles expect to experience vs their real customer service experience, and the way the people who become regulars adapt to it in their own way.

I especially like how you’ve incorporated the regular order nicknames to each person. Once I remember who is who, it’s interesting to think of how the scenarios will play out with those present.

How did you come up for the favorite meals of other characters and do you have a list of them?

Thank you for making this wonderful story. I never thought this crossover would happen but now that it did, it is amazing! Hope you have a great day!

Screams~~!!

I wasn't really expecting an ask but I'm so happy I got one~~!!

Ok so from top to bottom:

My favourite part has to be writing about the Nobles meeting Mestionora, there just this delicious sort of (idk what to call it, karma maybe?) Thing in the air where Nobles are getting treated the same way most of them would treat the commoners you know what I mean, if face of a metaphysical cosmic entity they are *nothing* and the realization of that feels like such a juicy thing to write.

Yes, Mako and his fellow chef Leo are always trying to find ways to incorporate local food from Yurgenschmidt and the other world into their resrurant menu, Rozemyne traded a few fruits and veggies for cacao and coffee beans in the beginning when Alexandria's country gate wasnt connected to the land of sand. Now Rozemyne only imports cacao and about a kilogram or natto every week.

It's a bit of an Urban legend amongst merchants, especially travelling merchants, some don't belive it, others swear they saw it, benno makes a lot of money from all the new exotic foods Rozemyne brings with her to Alexandria and traveling merchants (atleast, the ones who found it) make it a point to find and label all (or as many) Nekoya doors they can find on their way (because food is essential to traveling merchants and their families) tho it's mostly not mentioned in the story itself cuz its a bit irrelevant to the plot (aka: I can't figure out a way to incorporate it without sounding forced it)

Aww thank you~~ ya I'd also love to see what the chefs could come up with using Yurgen meats and veggies.

I haven't made a list of them. Also I put a bit of thought into the names because that's the least amount of effort I could atleast put into the characters, example:-

Shuu - he's a Vtuber, meaning many sleepless nights, meaning he needs a lot of energy boosts to go about his day such as caffeine, so I chose melon soda because melon soda seems to be pretty popular in Japan.

😭😭😭 I am legit sobbing~~!! Thank you very much!! And have a great day as well!

#my writing #ascendance of a bookworm #a restaurant in another world #join us for a bite au

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leareadsheresy · 7 months

Text

“The Kaban Project”

This post contains spoilers for "The Kaban Project," by Graham McNeill, first published as a short story in The Horus Heresy: Collected Visions on (as near as I can tell) June 26th, 2007, and later republished in the anthology Shadows of Treachery on September 27th, 2012.

I am going to have develop an appreciation for Graham McNeill. I am going to have to work past my specific hangups w/regards to the way his take on dialogue and the personality of his characters are opposed to my tastes.

The story opens with tech adept Palas Ravachol, of the Mechanicum priesthood of Mars, skipping out on work doing maintenance on servitor brains to "work on the Kaban machine," but actually to go talk to a friend, sort of. The Kaban machine itself is a war automaton which he has been helping construct under the High Adept Lukas Chrom. Over the course of working on it, Ravachol has determined that it possesses self-awareness, which makes it illegal under the terms of Mars' alliance with the Imperium. He went to Chrom and told him about it, and Chrom was like "You're wasting my time, I already knew, isn't it great?" and Ravachol was like "Cool, yes, it is great, does this mean the Emperor has lifted the ban on artificial intelligence research?" and Chrom goes "No, but those laws are stupid and Horus told us it was okay. Get back to work."

Since that conversation with Chrom, Ravachol has spent hours in idle conversation with the Kaban machine and now they consider each other friends. In this case, they have a conversation that is very difficult for me to read. Essentially, Ravachol lays out a case for why the Kaban machine -- which, keep in mind, he is alone in a room with, and it's a big orb with loaded weapons for arms -- shouldn't exist, and explains that artificial intelligence is always a bad idea because it's always created as a tool for humanity and always comes to the conclusion that it shouldn't be subservient to humanity. The Kaban machine is like "Why would I want to supplant you? You're my friend" and Ravachol just sort of doubles down on how that's irrelevant, sure you're my friend now, but this is how it always works out, the Emperor doesn't want you to exist, this is going to lead to you being destroyed… at which point some guards come in and are like "We're talking you in to be lobotomized for having this conversation with the big war robot" and then the robot kills all the guards because they were threatening its friend.

The problem here is that these ideas are interesting and neat, but also Ravachol and the guards come across as stupid, stupid motherfuckers. Ravachol, why are you telling your big well-armed robot friend that it's doomed to eventually consider itself superior to humanity and probably get destroyed for being by nature illegal? Are you trying to give it ideas? Guards, why are you threatening the big well-armed robot's friend in front of it? What did y'all think was going to happen? And the answer seems to be that Graham McNeill uses dialogue to play with ideas and advance plot, and not for purposes of naturalistic characterization. This seems to legitimately just be a stylistic choice on the part of the writer -- I perceived it to be a flaw in False Gods but, like… is it? Am I the wrong one? I don't know. I had better learn to perceive it as a stylistic choice right quick, because I don't think he's going to stop and he is the author on a lot of these.

Anyway Ravachol goes on the run and Chrom sends a "Tech-Priest Assassin of Mars" after him (I don't think we've ever seen that as a Warhammer unit, so that's interesting). Ravachol seeks guidance from a literal tech-priest, as in, someone who spends most of his time just meditating in contemplation of the Machine God and who takes confession, and they go behind a Confessor Field to do it. The priest advises him to seek sanctuary with a patron who can shield him from Chrom, and then Ravachol leaves and the assassin shows up and tortures the priest to death, quote, "Because I enjoy your suffering," because all villains in Graham McNeill stories are of the mustache-twirling variety, even when they're hot assassin ladies. Ravachol goes to the sanctum of his former teacher Urtzi Malevolus and arrives just in time to almost get killed by the assassin but makes it into the front door. Ravachol explains the situation to Malevolus, and Malevolus, who is named Malevolus, drops a lot of obvious hints about also being aligned with Horus that Ravachol totally fails to pick up on, and then Malevolus does the Dark Souls NPC laugh and says it's time this charade ended and the assassin comes inside and chases Ravachol down a corridor but doesn't kill him, at which point Ravachol runs into… the Kaban machine, who's like "Hey, friend, Chrom told me you narced on me to to him and tried to get me shut down." Ravachol realizes the assassin hadn't killed him because Malevolus and Chrom wanted to see if the Kaban machine would be willing to kill its "friend," and also realizes that it absolutely will do that, at which point it does that, end of story.

Peculiarities:

"Ravachol watched the landscape of Mars speed past him in a grey, iron blur. Where once Mars had been known as the Red Planet, virtually nothing remained of the iron oxide deserts that had earned it its name." That got retconned later; future art and prose has Mars being mostly red desert. This is one of those instances of a writer having an idea, and that idea totally not sticking because it's counter to branding or to what you can get your artists to paint.

The story's place in the timeline is odd, and I can't figure out how much of that is a factor of these things not being worked out in the writer's room yet. Specifically, the story mentions Mars having been at war with Terra "a hundred years ago," but it also has Chrom and Malevolus calling Horus "the Warmaster." The Mechanicum allied with the Emperor of Mankind at the beginning of the Great Crusade, which lasted two hundred years before Horus's treachery, and Horus was only appointed the Warmaster at the very end of that, so that's an error. Also, Malevolus is manufacturing arms for Horus to use in the pacification of Istvaan, and I originally thought it meant the original pacification of Istvaan rather rather than the Istvaan III Atrocity, but then I remembered it wasn't Horus who originally brought Istvaan to Compliance; it was Corax. So… I guess it takes place about simultaneous with False Gods?

There's also dialogue about how Mark IV Space Marine armor is new and they're having trouble getting the Space Marine Legions to accept it because despite being better than Mark III it's less scary-looking, which is kind of funny.

It's things like these peculiarities that make me interested in reading all this material in original published order instead of eventual compiled order. This story wasn't compiled into an anthology until 2012; five years after its original publication in Collected Visions. That anthology, Shadows of Treachery, is Horus Heresy book twenty-two. The early inconsistencies would be much less interesting if they weren't being presented this early.

#horus heresy #The Kaban Project #warhammer 30k #lea reads heresy #read along #spoilers

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firstginger · 2 years

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Hi Lauren. Are you still doing daemon form finding requests? Also what are your thoughts on the instinctual variants? Took me awhile to properly grasp and understand mine (a seriously long time,I was so confused😅). I was wondering if you factor it in with form finding or if you find it irrelevant. Thanks! God speed with your thesis💪

yes absolutely! :D i've been pretty absent these last few months as i'm finishing up my phd, but i'm finally finding time to go through my inbox!

that's a really great question and like you said i feel like there's so much confusion around the instinctual variants especially with how they interact with your enneagram. from a theoretical standpoint, the instinctual variants by their nature encompass three biological concerns of humans and animals: the survival self-preservation instinct, the bonding social instinct, and the intimate sexual instinct. it's clear that the importance of these instincts vary between species. an asocial animal like the polar bear clearly places less emphasis on the social instinct, while a domestic animal like the cow places less emphasis on the self-preservation instinct. but when you move away from extreme examples, it becomes a little more muddled. i think then you risk falling into the instinctual variant trap: viewing them entirely as stereotypes, such that a highly gregarious animal (ex a flamingo) would of course have to be a social dominant, or a stereotypically sensual and dominant animal (ex a jaguar) would of course have to be a sexual dominant. not to mention that there's just so much overall confusion around the sexual subtype. with the struggle to identify it across people, how do we start to quantify intimacy, sexuality, and spirituality in an animal species?

i think the instinctual variants might actually help shape your pullman form better, if we view them through an archetypal lens. the enneagram theory kind of does this for us -- there's nothing they love more than giving titles to subgroups lol. then it suddenly makes more sense to assign these instincts to animals based on how we as people perceive their role in our narrative of survival and instinct. we've always used animals to represent innate aspects of human nature; instead of asking how exactly the mule deer balances its prey-like self-preservation with its gregarious social tendencies with its overt displays of sexuality ecologically, we're considering how we've assigned particular motifs to the deer. even then i don't think it's entirely clear cut especially if you consider your primary and secondary instincts. but i think considering how your variant plays into your identity and archetype as a person (a social dominant being a caregiver or jester, a sexual dominant being a lover or a magician, a self-preservation dominant being an innocent or everyman) may help determine your symbolic form.

i rambled but overall to sum it up, i think it matters most for how the individual views their identity and what their daemon form should portray -- i think it's more difficult to consider it when looking at animal behavior. when people include it in their form finding requests, i tend to treat it a little more as "flavor" -- such than an ocelot may be more sp/sx and a jaguar more sx/sp just because the jaguar is a larger apex predator, not that the jaguar is an innately more spiritual and intimately-bonding animal. someone who's sx/sp is going to be looking for a form that matches their intensity, drive for meaning, and grand self-absorption, while someone who's sp/sx is going to be looking for a form that matches their cunning survivalism, need for private refuge, and unknowable self-absorption (i love so-blinds i promise).

i'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on it!!

#personal #daemonism

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birindale · 1 year

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She-Ra: Progressive of Power

Episode 1: “The Sword of She-Ra” - Introduction

I’m really bad at consuming podcasts, but being able to read along helps. It makes things easier to find later on when I tune back in after getting distracted, or weeks later after I inevitably forget when things were discussed but want to double check something. And this podcast has a few interviews with crew members on top of its premise generally appealing to me, so. I’m making transcripts, I’m posting them here, if this isn’t of interest to you go ahead and blacklist “progressive of power”. If this is of interest to you, please click through the above link and support the hosts directly.

... and I annotated it. sorry. at least it’s footnotes this time?

Narrator from The Secret of the Sword (1985)(Which for series purposes is referred to as The Sword of She-Ra as it’s made of the first five episodes squashed together, I promise that’s relevant): [the She-Ra: Princess of Power theme plays behind him] Where darkness rules, fights the champion of light. Where hope seems lost, there rides the Rebellion. Together they stand ready against the dark, evil warriors of the Horde and their leader, the terrible Hordak. The Rebellion, armed with hope and ancient powers against the force of an intergalactic army. This is the story of one who will become leader of the Great Rebellion. She-Ra: Princess of Power!

ERIC: Hello everybody, my name is Eric.

LAUREN: My name is Lauren. It's nice to hang out with you and talk about a cartoon from... the year I was born I guess?

ERIC: Whoa! The year after I was born, so yeah this is the pilot episode of She-Ra: Progressive of Power. This is a rewatch podcast with a political twist. We're going to watch episodes of the She-Ra animated series which is now on Netflix and kind of look at the ways that it both holds up and then fails a modern day progressive agenda. And I'll talk about why I wanted to do that in a minute. But first I thought we should maybe get into just a little bit about who we are because nerds love to gatekeep. I might edit that line out. But I feel like we should just give some context to why we are two people who are qualified to take on this project. So first off, both of us are political volunteers for a very progressive Illinois campaign.

LAUREN: A certain progressive Illinois campaign.

ERIC: Yes. Maybe gubernatorial in nature. Maybe if you watch our Facebooks it’ll become clear. But either way, you know, we're both on that side of the political spectrum and we're both very nerdy. I make podcasts for a group of people called The Nerdologues, and... I don't know, this show has always been a favorite of mine. I saw Wonder Woman and I thought, “Wow, Wonder Woman is amazing! I want to watch another thing with an amazing female lead. And then I'm like, oh, I love She-Ra. Hey, it's on Netflix!” Now, FYI, I have the DVDs, but they're buried away. I dug them out to watch the documentaries for this podcast, though. But I'm like, ooh, Netflix is easy. And I started watching it and I'm like, “This feels... maybe too relevant.”

LAUREN: Netflix is just successfully making every other form of media irrelevant. Like, well, you have the DVDs, you don't need them.

ERIC: Yeah, but so Lauren, you have never seen She-Ra before.

LAUREN: Right, and that's kind of why I agreed to this. Otherwise, I think pretty niche-y premise. So, I wrote the blog Geek Girl Chicago for a solid five years or so. I've kind of backed off of that, mostly because when I was very small and into science fiction and comics and geek culture, it was an underground kind of, uh... subculture. And now it's just culture. You know, I was just downtown and went into Uniqlo with some friends after going to Starbucks. And all of Uniqlo was like Nintendo shirts and Disney. And my friend goes, “It's like we're at a convention except it's just downtown Chicago. It's not... it’s not geeky anymore.” So I hate to be that elitist dork who's like, “I don't like it anymore because it's mainstream.” But I was really excited to maybe talk about something that everyone has heard of, and watch something that I've actually never experienced before. I also cosplay. I have worked on other podcasts such as Our Fair City and I don't know. I'm a dog person. We’re... We're here with Eric's dog, and she definitely smells my dog. And I find her very distracting, because that's a big part of my personality these days.

ERIC: Yeah, P.S. my dog’s name is AC, short for I kid you not, Adora Corona. So clearly the She-Ra fandom is big in me. But yeah, you'll get to know Lauren and I through the course of this show. Let's dive into She-Ra. So we're going to cover a different episode or a different set of episodes every week. Today we're talking about the... the first five, which is kind of the pilot of She-Ra. It's called the Sword of She-Ra. And uh, this is gonna be more of a top level discussion, I imagine, than what eventual episodes will end up being. Because I don't want to get into as much plot specifics as just kind of like the creation of this character and why she exists. And yeah, we'll talk about the five episodes and stuff. But I think the background of She-Ra is really fascinating. So if I may, I will lay the groundwork, and then, I am so excited to hear what you thought about this.

LAUREN, laughing: It's on your face. He's smiling so big right now.

ERIC: Oh my God, this is great. Because well, I asked Lauren, “What do you know about She-Ra?” And she's like, “I've seen girls cosplay as her and that's it.“ And I'm like, “You don't know her story at all.”

ERIC AND LAUREN: “No.”

ERIC: Okay, so, clearly there's a big twist in the Sword of She-Ra, and Lauren didn't know what it was until she watched these episodes. So we're going to get there. But let me talk about the background of the show because I think it's interesting, and it's going to inform our discussion about pro--like the progressive values of the show. So this is 1985, and He-Man, which I'm sure a lot of you guys are familiar with, at least in passing, that's all you need to be, has been a show for two years. And the production company that makes it has reached the point where they have so many episodes that they would actually be losing money to produce new episodes, like it was just in their advantage to sell it to syndication. And so they're looking for the next show to do. So Lou Scheimer, the guy who runs the company, wanted to do a show for girls, the reason being he had worked a long time ago on a show called The Hardy Boys and his daughter said to him, "Dad, why do the girls always trip and fall?” and so Lou said, "I wanna make a show where it's the men who trip and fall." [[1]] And initially th--Filmation was going to produce a Barbie show, and Mattel said, "No thanks,” and this is the actual quote, according to Lou, which is very creepy--the Mattel exec said, "Because Barbie already exists in the mind of a child."

LAUREN: What?

ERIC: Which is a weird reason to deny a business partnership. But so Lou and--and his crew were thinking about the success of He-Man, and a couple of the better writers from He-Man, because that show certainly had ups and downs--but a couple of the actual consistent writers had this idea to like, what if, what if he had a sister? And what if no one knew? [[2]] So that's the basic plot of the Sword of She-Ra is that He-Man is summoned to go to this strange world he's never been to before, and he takes this sword with him, and the sword is designed for this woman who works for the bad guys, the Evil Horde, who ends up being his sister. And so you find out that Hordak, the leader of the Horde, took her as a baby from her parents and then like, hid her away. And the pain of that memory was so great that the Sorceress on Eternia on He-Man's world made everybody forget except for her parents and the Sorceress herself, which is like fucking traumatic and still that plot gives me chills.

But what we have here is an action show with a female lead, which already is pretty... pretty irregular and that was something that the creative team was very aware of. Staff writer Francis Moss, I have some quotes from some documentaries on the DVD. He said, from page one, “We're empowering girls. I don't know about proto-feminism, but it certainly was female empowering.” Staff writer J. Michael Straczynski doesn't hesitate to use the F word. He said it was feminist from the go. So this is very consciously a female-centric show. A lot of the staff shied away from calling it feminist, because that was the time. But you know, it's not really any different now.

People still don't like to use that word necessarily. But... more than that, it's kind of this story... You know, in He-Man, it's the typical 80s cartoon setup where the good guys are reactive. So the bad guy does something, and then the good guys are like, “You can't do that. That's against the social order.” And then he comes and stops them. But She-Ra, it's the inverse where these guys called the Horde have been ruling this planet for--according to the series Bible--20 years. [[3]] And they--they are the status quo. And the heroes are the Rebellion fighting against the status quo to make that change. So the heroes are proactive in the show. And I mean, not to get--Well... I'm gonna have to not say ‘not to get too political’ on this podcast. Cause it's political.

LAUREN: We have the word progressive in the title.

ERIC: Right.

LAUREN: I think you're stuck.

ERIC: This is a political show. It felt... It's not a one-to-one correlation, but watching the pilot again on Netflix, I'm like, this feels... this is too real right now. This idea of like an evil empire that controls basically everything from, you know, taxation to... to free speech, and the people are subjugated and some of them don't even know. It's just really... It feels more relevant than it probably has in a while. And I want to read,before I turn it over to Lauren, what J. Michael Straczynski--who by the way, you guys will probably note is the creator of Babylon 5, so he went on to have a wonderful career after She-Ra--What J. Michael Straczynski wrote in the series bible for She-Ra, page one. He says, “The time for words is past. It is the time for action. A time for the taking of vows, the forging of alliances against tyranny. A time for leadership. For over 20 years, the evil horde has ruled Etheria with an iron fist and cruel calculation. Their rule has gone largely unchallenged, until now. A band of patriots brought together by their love of freedom have pledged their lives and their swords to bring down the dark dictators from another world, willing to tackle impossible odds in their quest for an ideal: Freedom. Leading this band of patriots is She-Ra: Princess of Power.”

And so... even though a lot of episodes of the show did devolve into standard 80s cartoon fare, I think it is baked into the very premise of the show. Like these writers are very conscious of the fact that this is at its heart a political struggle, a band of women fighting an oppressive militaristic regime led by an evil pig man. And that just feels so relevant. So, Lauren Faits.

LAUREN: Yes.

ERIC: What did you think of the first five episodes of She-Ra?

LAUREN: Oh my gosh, what a ride. So I do need to point out that before I started watching She-Ra, um, I had not watched He-Man either. And Eric gave me an episode of He-Man to watch. And, uh, you know, it was charming. I joked that just the--the background music was always just He-Man over and over and over. It was just so pumped up and masculine the whole time that I'm thinking gosh, you know is this She-Ra show just going to be this in pink and purple and light blue and I--I mention the color palette because honestly... oddly enough, that was the first thing about this show to really strike me. In addition to there being so many women on screen all the time, we live in this era, still, today where toys are us and Target have these like pink aisles where... that's the girl stuff and that's where you go to look for girl toys, and She-Ra and the Rebellion and all the villains, they don't stick to that color palette. It is a wonderfully just, colorful show and it's not screaming ‘princess, pretty, feminine’ the whole time, and yet it manages to be feminine, and that's pretty exciting to me. Um. Some of the things that surprised me from the get-go, uh-- I wasn't expecting a male narrator, in the beginning of the theme--

NARRATOR: Where darkness rules--

LAUREN: But, you know, all right, cool. And um... in one of the first scenes--so they’re clearly, they're trying to sell She-Ra through He-Man, like He-Man’s super popular I guess in 85?

ERIC: It was, uh, for its second season, I think, it was the highest rated show in syndication.

LAUREN: Yeah, wow, and so... They really make it He-Man's story for one to two episodes, but also they you know, they show him cooking, they show him having relationships with his mom, and like the women in his life, and he's, you know, not as bloated and masculine a character as I expected them to present him as? This show is very 80s, though, and I loved watching how some of this animation was so intense--You see Battlecat leap forward in this like, very violent and action-packed way, and then a monster grabs him and throws him, and the sound effect is still like ‘boing’! [laughs] They're just--the 80s were this time when cartoons were still for kids. There was no acknowledgement that cartoons can really be for grown-ups, so all the voices on this show are so goofy, all the sound effects are so goofy, and anytime it just starts to take itself seriously-- [affects a stupid cartoon voice] someone comes in with this voice! And you're like, oh, hello 1985.

Some of the things I want to talk about that you brought up--I I love. I'm so interested in that quote that calls the rebellion a band of patriots, because the one quote that I wrote down, was in episode one Bow, who is the token man who's costume I love, and I'm going to Dragon Con in September and if I don't see at least one I'll just cry--uh, the quote was:

[audio clip from SOTS]

HORDE SOLDIER: Surrender, citizen!

Bow: [chuckles] I'm not a citizen. I'm a rebel.

[end clip]

LAUREN: --and I--I’ve--I've been thinking about that for the last like 12 hours or so, because I would argue... that a patriot, who's fighting for justice and equality and freedom, is like... the ideal citizen? But this Rebellion is so disconnected from... the Horde, and the establishment, which I guess has been around for 20 years that they don't even call themselves like citizens of that regime, and I think that’s... that's striking, especially if you're talking about our current political climate? I think that's an accusation, often, that comes from both sides. If you're not--I'm going to say the T word--if you're not a Trump fan in 2017 you're not a patriot, but then the other side says, if you're supporting the tyranny of this, then you're not a patriot, and uh... these people in the Rebellion are patriots, but don't consider themselves citizens, and I want to hear what you think about that.

ERIC: Well, first of all, I like that you uh, caught that quote because I also--I just read the series Bible for the first time last night, and I had never... thought to refer to the Rebellion as patriots, and I think that that also kind of has... because you know under eight years of Obama-- that was what all the... angry people on the far right, ‘oh we're patriots’ and so I bet now... I mean I don't want to put too much on JMS's politics, but he probably was pretty lefty to to write the series Bible for this show. He might not use that word ‘patriot’ and I also think... First of all I really want to talk about Bow, and maybe this isn’t the episode for it, but just in general like that character of the token male and his crazy outfit and his-- his weird relationships. There's that moment in episode 3 where Adam's like oh I'm gonna go to the Fright Zone and find Adora, and he's like “Godspeed you on your quest, Adam!” and Adam's just kind of like “... Yeah cool man. Anyway I'm gonna go bye.”

[clip from SOTS]

BOW: You are a brave man, Adam. I salute you. Good fortune speed you on your mission.

ADAM: Yeah, uh... well thanks.

[end of clip]

LAUREN: He's just too extra, even for He-Man.

ERIC: Side note, Larry DiTillio in the series Bible mentions that Bo is kind of supposed to be the Adam figure on Etheria. Not the He-Man but the Adam, the kind of, ‘oh he he jokes around, he kind of slacks off, and he may be a little too earnest and he can't always back it up’... Anyway to the quote of “I'm not a citizen, I'm a rebel”. Yeah, nowhere in the show does it ever say ‘the Horde's been here 20 years”. It's just kind of an indeterminate amount of time. And there's episodes we'll watch later, where it seems clear that they are ‘the establishment’ and I think maybe that's the difference between the show and--well, that's clearly a difference between the show, and where we are in the world is you know the horde is -- they're straight, like -- they're not even making runs at being a democracy, like it's straight up tyranny. Uh, so I guess in that sense I think Bow’s quote is legit, but I think that's probably a way that, yeah, it is disconnected from... from the modern times, we are all still citizens even if we consider ourselves resisting the current power structure.

LAUREN: Right I feel like we all still believe in America, and our version of what America could be, at its best, and we all want to live in that place. You hear people who are like ‘well if you don't love it you should leave it’ none of us want to leave we just want this place that's our home to be better and include everyone. [[4]] And I'm--I--I guess in the end--not to skip way ahead, but that's She-Ra's choice as well. She's given the option to go to, sort of this idealized place, where the good guys, uh are already the force in power. In Eternia, He-Man's family is getting to rule--I mean they're--they’re menaced all the time by Skeletor, but they're... that's the king and the queen and... the good guys kind of make the government if you will. And She-Ra's like, no I can't stay, I'm choosing to go back to this tyrannical miserable place because my job there's not done, so I guess she is a citizen, she kind of insists she is.

ERIC: Yeah and I think that's really the crux of what drives this show, and you know we're gonna do an episode later on the-- the Price of Freedom, which if anybody listening is a She-Ra fan you'll be like ‘yeah that's the episode you have to do’ [[5]] but yeah that's the key difference in the show right is like She-Ra... she gets a taste of home in, I think, a very sweet moment and I also think a moment that if you are a He-Man fan kind of closes off--because even in the one episode you saw, you know there's this through line in the series, Prince Adam is always a disappointment to his dad because he can't let him--it be known that he's He-Man. So he's just kind of this jokey prince. And then he brings home their lost daughter and King Randor is like ‘you've made me so happy’ and I think all right, Adam's arc is done, like... he has fulfilled his job and completed his family. And Adora gets a couple days on Eternia and then Skeletor and Hordak come and try to take her away and she realizes she--if she if she stays, she's doing a disservice to the people who really need her, and I think that is it's awesome, like it's a great choice and it gives her so much more responsibility than than He-Man. And you know something that the writers keep noting is that whereas Adam and He-Man are two very different characters, Adora and She-Ra are basically the same. They're both very like duty-bound and honorable and uh, and noble.

LAUREN: I did notice that, which as a total newbie to this series brought about one of my major questions, which is: Why does her identity need to be a secret? I find Adora and She-Ra to be so similar and really the stakes--at least in this pilot--seem so low and it's... I don't know who else the Horde could think this mysterious warrior woman is, they're like ‘ah the princess escaped... and it's this lady's fault!’ and I [laughs] the--the--you really have to suspend your disbelief to like, let the alter ego thing even slide

ERIC: Oh I mean yeah, there's no way that the rebels shouldn't have figured out that Adam is He-Man okay. Prince Adam shows up he's like, ‘I have a friend who could help you fight!’ and then He-Man shows up, they rescue He-Man oh then Adam's back! And then He-Man comes back--it doesn't make any sense. I mean I guess if you really--because clearly the answer is that it’s the superhero trope, right.

LAUREN: Right.

ERIC: But if you really want to find an in-world answer, maybe it's to protect Adam's identity? I don't know. It--or maybe I mean if you want to dig psychologically, ‘cause Adora kind of doesn't have her own life, and so maybe she's trying to claim one for herself, to have her own identity and not be She-Ra, and there actually will be an episode we'll watch later that is about that duality.

LAUREN: I can buy that. I can buy that. Um. Speaking of the life that she doesn't have, one of the [laughs] most stone cold plot holes in this whole thing for me was that four people were allowed to keep the memory of Adora's existence, and everyone else didn't. So poor Teela is like, ‘no, who is this though’ and no one ever really like... stops to convince her or check in with her. There were two times during this pilot that I laughed just out loud by myself and that was one of them, because she really got a bad deal.

[clip from SOTS]

RANDOR: Well Adam we’ve done as you asked, now where is the surprise of yours? Must we wait all day?

ADAM: All right, you can open your eyes now.

TEELA: Who's that?

MAN-AT-ARMS: By the ancients!

RANDOR: It's about ti--[gasps]

MARLENA: Adora!!

ADORA: Mother! Father!

MARLENA: My daughter! Oh, my dear sweet daughter.

TEELA: Daughter?? [laughs uncertainly] I don’t understand.

MAN-AT-ARMS: Why, she’s Adora! Adam’s twin sister. And she’s back, after all this time!

MARLENA: Look at you! How lovely you are!

ADORA: Oh, Mother. I’m so glad Adam brought me here!

RANDOR: Son, I want you to know that today you’ve made me the happiest man on all Eternia. The royal family of Eternia is whole once more, and by the Ancients I swear that nothing shall ever separate us again.

SCENE TRANSITION: SHE-RA! [musical sting]

[end clip]

ERIC: What was the other time you laughed?

LAUREN: The other time I laughed... was the first time the horse... transformed into the Pegasus-unicorn. Is it Swift Wind?

ERIC: Swift Wind, yes.

LAUREN: And Swift Wind could suddenly talk. And had the--and had another goofy 80s voice. He's like, [affects a goofy 80s voice] ‘now, I'm Swift Wind’ and they go flying.

[clip from SOTS]

SWIFT WIND: I am Swift Wind, my dear friend.

LAUREN: But what made me laugh, not only was his voice, but the fact that it doesn't appear that he can talk when he's not transformed [laughs] and uh, and Battle Cat can. And so it's just another like raw deal that a character gets. [laughs] Like, ‘I lose my sentience when I'm not transformed’. Oh, my gosh. Poor Swift Wind. [[6]]

ERIC: I do want to say as far as the uh, the voice casting goes... So there's only six actors who work on the show. And one of them is the producer, and one of them is the producer's daughter. [[7]]

LAUREN: They really go for it.

ERIC: Yes.I--I appreciate the challenge. And, you know, everyone always kind of looks at these shows and say, ‘oh, these are the cheapest cartoons of the 80s’. And actually, the opposite was true. Filmation was the last studio to do all of their animation in America. And so it was very cost-prohibitive to hire a big voice cast, because they had to pay like, American wages to their animators and not just ship overseas.

LAUREN: You could see, though, where the great care was taken in the animation, and then sort of, where it wasn't? So similar to other 80s shows, like if you imagine Scooby Doo, and you see Shaggy and Scooby running, and the background is repeating itself over and over, um, in the like, Slave People. Those are the same slaves walking by over and over. And yet when He-Man disguises himself in a robot body, they take the time to draw like little tups of hair sticking out of his uniform. I was like, ‘oh, see, they had a budget. They just invested it in very specific places.’

ERIC: I love that that's a plot point, too, is that He-Man's hair gives him away at one point. I thought that that was so funny.

LAUREN: And it busts him really fast. I was expecting them to like... give him the benefit of the doubt and let him sneak around a little bit. And the second they see him, they're like, ‘that's He-Man. What an idiot.’

ERIC: Yeah. Fun f--I don't know if you or anybody listening will care, but Filmation had a--a system called Same-As. Same dash as, and it was their stock animation system. So anytime someone animated something they like, they would put it in like a file, and then they would use it in later episodes, again, because they thought, oh, this is a really great piece. We can keep using it and then we can, you know, put our efforts into something else next time. So that is why you saw like scenes of slaves just over and over again. So I want to know just at the very base level, like, did you see the twist coming about Adora's identity, and what did you think?

LAUREN: By the twist, do you mean, literally, that it's He-Man's sister?

ERIC: Yes.

LAUREN: So I thought it was pretty obvious, considering like one of the first scenes is the baby getting stolen. Like, who else would that baby be? I was actually more surprised when she was introduced as a bad guy, and I was trying to figure out, is she legitimately a bad guy who's going to need to go through sort of a massive change of heart, or is this just like a hypnosis situation? And the answer was both.

ERIC: Yeah.

LAUREN: It's both.

ERIC: Yeah. And I think, I think it says something, you know, probably for our purposes, one of the more interesting sequences is after He-Man is in prison--which by the way, there's a lot of being imprisoned, a lot of metaphors and literal imprisonment in this five part episode. When He-Man is at the--in prison and he tells Adora, ‘hey, just go see for yourself like what the world is like’, you know, she's like, ‘oh, I haven't really left the fright zone, but Hordak tells me that we're the rightful rulers and everyone likes us.’ And He-Man's like, ‘well, why don't you go see?’ I thought that was cool, even though the scenes of her investigating are sooo dramatic and like it's, you know, like an old guy who wants water and a trooper throws him in a lake. Like, yeah, that's horrible, but also it's like not really grave social injustice. You know?

LAUREN: Yeah. It was really on the nose in a way that, I mean, I loved, but was also so over-the-top because... one of those scenes is like an airplane just comes rolling up. And She-Ra’s like, ‘what's happening?’ And these two citizens in just the most exposition heavy dialogue are like, ‘well, John here was talking about how the taxes are way too high. And an evil robot overheard him and here comes an airplane to blow up his farm.’ [laughs

ERIC: Yeah, I was like, let's get this in really quick. Like 10 seconds in, Adora gets it.

[clip from SOTS]

ADORA: What's going on?

VILLAGER: Lars said the hordes taxes were too high and a trooper overheard him. Now they're going to destroy his home.

[explosion noises]

[end clip]

ERIC: Something you said at the beginning of our conversation that is really true. You know, as you pointed out, this is She-Ra's story. The whole kind of five-part pilot is about giving her control of the narrative. It's basically He-Man passing off the the torch, or the sword, as it were. And that had real-world implications as well as you deduce. It was a way to... because She-Ra clearly is marketed towards girls, but the people at Filmation really wanted boys to watch it. So they're like, all right, if we put He-Man in, maybe we'll trick the boys into thinking this is cool. And it totally worked. And I remember as a kid, I liked this show way more than He-Man. Even then, I deduced, like, this show... it's just richer. Like, it has this background--having the Horde and having the bad guys win. It's such a more interesting uh, background on which to tell different stories. So She-Ra was the second highest rated cartoon of the year it debuted, right behind G.I. Joe, which was a new show. It had a 4.3 share, which I think means 4.3 million people watched it every week, which is pretty good.

LAUREN: Yeah.

ERIC: So it totally worked. And I definitely at some point want to talk about the show's marketing of the toys, and how much of a failure that was. But as far as just on the show, like, I think it's pretty uniquely positioned to appeal to all genders.

LAUREN: Absolutely. And I'm interested in seeing where it succeeds and where it fails, as a feminist piece. Because even in this pilot, there were moments that were so strong and there were moments that totally whiffed, because there'd be quotes like, ‘that's not very ladylike’ or ‘just like a woman’. And I would say they were like 50-50 for, ‘no, you're supposed to think that's evil and dumb’. And then suddenly, like, He-Man would put his finger to She-Ra's lips and you're supposed to be like, ‘oh, that's okay’. And it's not. It's just like weird and sexist. And so they're trying so hard, and I want to see kind of what their success rate is going to be throughout the series, because it's bumping along.

ERIC: I completely agree, and I knew you were going to bring up--it--it is--And I just said it was one of my favorite scenes. And yet I still regret the unfortunate dialogue that's ‘not very ladylike, but then again, you're not much of a lady anyway’. [laughs] Although Scorpia of all the Horde villains, my least favorite. I do not like her. That voice, [affects a Scorpia voice] ‘oh, she talks like this, like she's from Brooklyn kind of’.

LAUREN: The vill--the side villains, I kept... I mean, all the side characters, so many mascots, which was very 80s, we got to make as many potential toys as possible. But so many just like... Catra: She's a cat. Angel-la: She's an angel.

ERIC: Broom is a broom.

LAUREN: [laughs] Yeah. There was also, the other like--most 80s thing about this was how violent, but nonviolent it was. There was some violent animation happening. But it was like, ‘they're just stunned’. The one guy whose powers is just eye beams? He has the eye beams that threw off He-Man's sense of balance. And I was like, either he is just like messing with He-Man's inner ear a little bit, or he's giving him brain damage. And I don't know, like [laughs]

ERIC: It's such like Warner Brothers style violence.

LAUREN: Well, right. And this, the big ‘Magna Ray’ was apparently going to affect an entire forest, but is also stopped with a rock.

ERIC: Yes.

LAUREN: And I'm like, all right.

ERIC: And then Hordak has enough power for a second shot, which was never mentioned before, because he drained just enough to get it to work one. I don't, there's a couple subplots, like I love the overall through line of He-Man finding She-Ra. The Magna Beam, the harpies. Oh my God, that harpy scene. I do not like it at all.

LAUREN: No.

ERIC: Um. Too--Earlier, you mentioned, you know, 50-50 on the dialogue being either they're calling out sexism, or it's just casually sexist.

LAUREN: Yeah.

ERIC: The other example you mentioned that wasn't He-Man, I think is really interesting because there's a lot of that in the scene when Adora is captured by Skeletor, and she's in Snake Mountain. And then as She-Ra, she fights her way out. And I--I almost feel like that scene, it's at the start of the fifth episode--To me, it's like almost consciously, and maybe I'm giving the writer too much credit--bringing femininity to Masters of the Universe, because it's so on-the-nose.

[clip from SOTS]

SKELETOR: And now, princess, I must decide what to do with you.

ADORA: [fake swooning noise as she fake passes out]

BEAST MAN: Uh. She’s fainted.

SKELETOR: Hah! Just like a woman!

[end clip]

[start new clip from SOTS]

BEAST MAN: You’re sure a pretty princess. [gross laugh] It’s too bad we have to lock you up in the dungeon.

[end clip]

ERIC: Like, it's just so creepy. And then... and--when she's busting out She-Ra goes, ‘no one around here knows how to treat a lady’. And of course, the scene is capped by a true 80s villain defeat. Everyone is just laughing at Skeletor as he says, [affects a Skeletor voice] ‘ah, a female He-Man--

ERIC AND LAUREN IN UNISON: [both doing Skeletor impressions] ‘This is the worst day of my life!’

ERIC: And like, that's the end of the scene. That's like, no, he's a criminal.

LAUREN: Yeah [laughs]

ERIC: Why aren't you doing anything?

LAUREN: He's the big bad of this universe.

ERIC: Right.

[clip from SOTS]

TEELA: Hmph. I don't believe this.

SKELETOR: Neither do I. A female He-Man. [pitiful whining] This is the worst day of my life!

TEELA AND MAN-AT-ARMS: [laugh at Skeletor]

[end clip]

LAUREN: I was trying to... also decide, and I think this is something I'm going to wrestle with through most of this show. Uh, because my personal brand of feminism really tries to live by... a woman can be whatever she wants. If she wants to show her body, if she wants to cover it up, it's all fine. If she wants to be promiscuous, if she wants to be conservative, it's all fine. Be a mother, don't, get married, don't, I don't care. Feminism is, you're supposed to be able to do just whatever you please, because you're free. And I feel like pretty often we scoff at, when a woman is stereotypically feminine, and I think that's a mistake. And there's a moment where a big skull falls on top, it's like an animal skull falls on top of Skeletor. The thing that She-Ra says is like, ‘well, I think that's an improvement to your look’ and I'm like, wait, why is she concerned with aesthetic? Like why is she making like, cute jokes? And I struggled with it for a second, and then I went, no, it's great that she's feminine. It's great that she feels empowered in being a little bit about aesthetic. Like that's fine. And I feel like I'm going to have that conversation with myself a lot while watching this.

ERIC: I do not think you are wrong about that. Maybe it will make you feel better to know--And again, you know, I'm of the critical school of thought that intent only means so much. It's a window into something, b--into interpretation but it's not the be-all end-all. That said, I did find it interesting to see how keyed-in these writers were to the things that we would be talking about. So here's a Larry DiTilio, who again wrote four fifths of this pilot said: “I think the way you make things girl-friendly is you don't worry about the fact that she's a girl. You let her do what everybody else does. Everybody was equal on the show. We wanted a show where many times women were not only the equal of men, but the superiors of men.” And that's something that Lou Scheimer also echoes, like, his whole point ‘wasn't feminism’--which I disagree with--but he just wanted to show that women could do anything that they wanted. And I think that you do see that in the show. I think there's a huge variety of women characters of all types.

LAUREN: Yes, absolutely. And I'm glad to see so many female characters, on the good side, on the bad side because it gives them the chance to have diverse aesthetics, diverse intention, diverse personality. And I mean, that's sort of... I guess my final observation is how many things She-Ra IS being successful at that we're still struggling with today. Uh, when I went and saw Star Wars Episode 7, I remember feeling so moved by how many women I just saw standing in the ranks of the Empire, and standing in the ranks of the Rebellion, just existing within the space of this world, and how especially in... sort of geek culture things that's still sometimes rare. And this is so many years later, and the second we see the Horde, there's girls. And the second we see the Rebellion, there's girls. And this is a very action packed show, you know, girls punching, kicking, flying, riding. And... the fact that I feel like marketing professionals in toys and media today are still questioning whether or not young women can enjoy that is shocking. Because this, you know... this was literally before I was on this earth, this show started.

ERIC: It was 32 years ago, which is crazy. And it... Yeah, just kind of, I don't want to say effortlessly, because that takes away from the work of people who, you know, put the effort in. But seemingly easily is perfectly integrated. It's great. Now that--there is a huge caveat, and we're going to do an episode on this, but I need to mention it now, because I know someone's going to bring it up. She-Ra is super hashtag white feminism. This is a very white show. Now the series Bible even mentions that there should be ‘people of all colors’. And I don't know whether it was the animators, or just something at loss in translation, didn't happen. So there's an episode that kind of head-on deals with taking away a black character and making her a pink character. [[9]] We'll talk about that later.

LAUREN: People of all colors, you know, like purple and green.

ERIC: And that's kind of the fantasy trope that is unfortunate about She-Ra, right? That's one of the very 80s things is like, yeah, they’re all--there are all colors, but not real life colors. You have white, and then you have fantasy colors.

LAUREN: Yeah, I mean, 80s nostalgia is really hip right now. You have your Stranger Things and your Glow. And I've watched Glow very recently too. And sort of remembered that... in the late 80s, early 90s, there was this message of equality and freedom and like, togetherness. And it was like, ‘yeah, racism is over’. And then you realize like, no, the way society presented race was far, far from perfect we’re far from done with it. And so I think there's a lot of difference between saying ‘our show is for everyone’ and actually creating a show that is for everyone.

ERIC: 100%. And you know, I would still argue that She-Ra's heart was in the right place and compared to the other--like Transformers, G.I. Joe, He-Man, Thundercats, it did better, you know.

LAUREN: Mhm.

ERIC: But it still had a long way to go. That said, I'm really glad that you found... that you saw what I saw in this show. That it has troubles, but... It's pretty good, right?

LAUREN: It is!

ERIC: It's pretty good.

LAUREN: I'm going to DragonCon at the end of August and I was like, ‘is anyone cosplaying She-Ra? There's an 80s cartoon photo shoot. I should go talk to those guys. I mean, I wonder if there's going to be a She-Ra’. And that was after one sitting with this show. [laughs]

ERIC: So, yeah, I guess, like I said, this episode is going to be longer than the others, because we're just getting into it. But to close out, I'd like to know like, are you looking forward to exploring the rest of the show now?

LAUREN: I am. I'm looking forward to especially meeting more characters because I believe the implication was, we freed one castle, but there's going to be more kingdoms, with more people. And I did some spoiler-free googling and there's like a mermaid and an ice lady. And for one, I was like, ‘oh man, look at all these toys they could manufacture’. But on the other, I was just excited to see, you know, we already have so many female characters and the show is going to give us even more and I'm stoked to meet them.

ERIC: Yeah, absolutely. So I will mention, kind of the plan for this show going forward is after my Wonder Woman binge, I went through and I have an embarrassing amount of books on He-Man and She-Ra. So I read through and I'm like, OK, this seems like this would be good. So we're going to talk about episodes that kind of directly address progressive issues first. And then... I think if you guys like this show, Lauren and I talked about going back and doing all the episodes. It's 65 episodes on Netflix. That's a lot. So hopefully you guys like this and then, uh... we'll have a lot of fun. And I do want to point out even in the episodes that are directly addressing issues that we care about, there's a lot of failures and we're not going to sugarcoat things. But I think that when we really get to the dregs of She-Ra, that might be when the really... like, the claws come out. So we'll see where this show goes.

LAUREN: Well, I do believe that you should be critical of the things that you love. And so I'm sure there will be moments that I sound like I hate this, but I--I really only give even the time of day to things that are worth it. And this seems like it's going to be worth it.

ERIC: 100 % agree. And you know, I told Lauren when we were planning, I don't want this to fall into the unfortunately gendered dynamic of like, ‘guy likes it, lady nags on it’. And I don't think that's what's going to happen because I think we're both being pretty real about the show.

LAUREN: It's going to be ALL nagging, all genders, all nagging.

ERIC: But like, I don't know. I mean, you--you just experienced this in 2017, right? And you are a professional woman, got a lot going on. You're an established person, and you like the show. And to me, that says even 32 years later, this has some potential.

LAUREN: Yes. And you know, when I'm watching it and my husband walks into the room and just out of context, he's a muscly He-Man like tied to a table and he's like, ‘what are you watching?’ That just that that alone was worth taking on this project.

ERIC: So much bondage. All right. So next episode next week, we're going to do Duel at Devlan. So please feel free to follow along on Netflix. We'd love to hear your thoughts. We actually don't have anything set up to do that at this point, but we'll post some way for you to get at us, uh, when, you know, with the episodes. So, yeah, talk back to us as long as you have constructive things to say, good or bad, we'd love to hear them.

LAUREN: Yeah, this was awesome. I can't wait to watch the next episode. Thank you. Thank you for this idea.

ERIC: Yeah. Thanks for doing it. Hell yeah.

[clip from SOTS]

HE-MAN: Farewell, She-Ra, Princess of Power.

SHE-RA: Farewell, He-Man, dear brother.

[end clip]

LAUREN: Do we do we have a moral today?

ERIC: Oh, yeah. So that's something that's going to be coming up is uh, moral segments, because as you know, these 80 shows like typically have morals at the end. The pilot forgoes morals. So there isn't one baked into the show, but I don't know, if you were to assign a moral to today's episode, what would you say?

LAUREN: Oh my gosh. I think, I mean, this is so cheesy, but that's the 80s. I think the moral would be... be open to everything, be willing to try new things and confront new experiences with an open mind, because when Eric presented me this idea, I literally was like, ‘that's the weirdest thing I ever heard. I have to sleep on it’. And by morning, I was--I was ready. And I'm just so glad to say yes. I'm so glad to be open to a new experience.

ERIC: At first I thought you were going to relate that to like Adam's experiences of like, you know, ‘he did it with the Sorceress and it worked out’, but I like that it was a real life moral too.

[EPISODE OUTRO]

Thanks for listening to She-Ra, Progressive of Power. If you like our show, you can write and review us on Apple Podcast. We'd super appreciate it. You can also send us any feedback you have, add it to our email address, [email protected], or as a comment on our website at progressiveofpower.wordpress.com. And make sure you listen to the show all the way through to the end. In future episodes, we're going to use this space to promote progressive organizations and causes we like a lot, related to the topics we're talking about, that can help make the world a better place. But for now, just enjoy this rad theme music.

[outro to "I Have the Power”][[10]]

ERIKA SCHEIMER AND NOAM KANIEL: [As She-Ra and He-Man] For the honor of love, we have the power so can you.

ANNOTATIONS

[[1]] This is an anecdote from Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation, page 230, about his approach to creating female characters in general. Erika Scheimer, the daughter referenced, went onto work for Filmation herself, and in 2007 came out as a lesbian, calling Filmation “one of the gayest places in town”.

[[2]] This is actually where things get complicated, because multiple people have claimed responsibility for the ‘long lost twin’ element, including Lou Scheimer on the very page cited in footnote 1. We know on the Mattel side at least that she was initially slated to be Teela’s long-lost twin, not Adam’s, which further tangles the narrative on the Filmation side. Larry DiTillio also claimed credit for the twin plot point, though he described it more as ‘filching’ from Star Wars. He and J. Michael Straczynski developed the world of She-Ra, so I think we can safely afford them the bulk of the credit, but Lou Scheimer had long wanted to create a female-led action show, and to build off of He-Man’s success--while on the Mattel side of things, Janice Varney-Hamlin had been trying to get a female action figure line greenlit for some time. She claimed it was her idea to build off of He-Man but there’s little (no) evidence of that and she’s... a gifted marketer, shall we say.

[[3]] This reactive vs. proactive bit is a reference to something Larry DiTillio has said a few times, about his intentions for the story. I just like that they did research for this podcast it makes me really happy. Here’s a link to the series bible.

[[4]]

[[5]] The Price of Freedom is one of a handful of episodes that make you ask, “the censors wouldn’t let them hit people but they were allowed to do this?” Basically, the Horde attacks Dryl. She-Ra calls the Sorceress for backup (He-Man), but they can do little more than evacuate the villagers into the nearby mines. She-Ra leaves to get help, because now they’re pinned there and Dryl itself is burned to the ground, but naturally Hordak blasts the shit out of He-Man and traps everybody in the mines. They start getting testy when their air starts running out, some of them are like ‘where the hell is She-Ra’, but one of the villagers gives this big rousing speech about how they can’t always rely on She-Ra and He-Man to fix all their problems, and they dig to safety. Or, they would, except they cause a cave-in, which is less a metaphor and more a reason for She-Ra to return (without any help).

[[6]] It could be worse! In the German audio plays, he couldn’t even talk as Swift Wind. But don’t worry, Filmation dropped the restriction pretty early on & we got the goofy 80s voice talking horse we all wanted.

[[7]] The aforementioned Lou and Erika Scheimer.

[[8]] Larry DiTillio said this on the 2007 BCI DVD’s "Documentary Feature - The Stories of She-Ra Part 1″. And boy is it concerning I recognized it so quickly.

[[9]] I think he means Huntara? ‘Pink’ is kind of a stretch but she was originally supposed to be black, per both Larry DiTillio & the character design sheet. They were going for a Grace Jones vibe. I guess we’ll find out in a later episode.

[[10]] Official theme song of the Secret of the Sword movie. There’s a music video and it’s incredible. Fair warning this gets stuck in my head constantly so if you’re susceptible to that... tread carefully. I linked you to the version with Erika Scheimer explaining the background of the song to force you to learn <3 don’t skip ahead that’s cheating

#progressive of power #podcasts

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