#like in universe implications and also themes

[spacedustmantis]

thinking about if they got out

[marinsawakening]

[Timmy Turner voice] I wish every Links Meet AU that uses Marin as a phantom to haunt and traumatize Link goes to hell no matter what

[werewolfrevenge]

Did I tell you all 03 Leon gets to witness his own bad alternate future like Donnie does?

[aroaceleovaldez]

reminder that the only reason the "ADHD is actually demigod BATTLE STRATEGIES" and "dyslexia is DEMIGOD BRAINS HARDWIRED FOR ANCIENT GREEK" things exist in the PJO universe is because it's a very direct reference to early 2000s teaching/parenting techniques for neurodiverse and disabled children, which aimed to frame childrens' disabilities and hardships as a "superpower" or strength so that the children would feel more positively about their disabilities or situations. This technique has fallen out of favor since then for the most part since more often than not it just results in kids feeling as though their struggles are not being seen or taken seriously.

Yes, demigods are adhd/dyslexic (and sometimes autistic-coded) in the series. This is extremely important and trying to remove it or not acknowledge it makes the entire series fall apart because it is such a core concept. Yes, canon claims that their adhd/dyslexia is tied to some innate abilities, which is based on an outdated methodology. It's important to acknowledge that and understand where it comes from! But please stop trying to apply it to other pantheons in the series like "oh, the romans have dyscalculia because of roman numerals!" or "the norse demigods have dysgraphia for reasons!" - it's distasteful at best.

A better option is to acknowledge the meta inspiration for why that exists in the series, such as explaining potentially that Chiron was utilizing that same teaching methodology to try and help demigods feel more comfortable with their disabilities and they aren't literal powers. In fact, especially given Frank, there's implication that being adhd/dyslexic isn't a guaranteed demigod trait, which means it's more likely to be normally inherited from their godly parent/divine ancestor as a general trait, not a power, and further supports the whole "ADHD is battle strategy" thing being non-literal. It also implies the entire greco-roman pantheon in their universe is canonically adhd/dyslexic - and that actually fits very well with the themes of the first series. The entire central conflict of the first series fits perfectly as an allegory about neurodiverse/disabled children and their relationships with their undiagnosed neurodiverse/disabled parents and trying to find solutions together with their shared disability/disabilities that the kid inherited instead of becoming distant from each other (and this makes claiming equivalent to getting a diagnosis which is a fascinating allegory! not to mention the symbolism of demigods inheriting legacies and legends and powers from their parents and everything that comes with that being equivalent to inheriting traits, neurodiversity, and disabilities from your parents).

anyways neurodiversity and disability and the contexts in which the series utilizes representation of those experiences particularly during the 2000s symbolically within the narrative is incredibly important to the first series and the understanding of what themes it means to represent. also if i see one more "the romans have dyscalculia instead of dyslexia" post in 2023 i'm gonna walk into the ocean.

[queerfables]

I'm still working out what the significance of this is, but I'm now surer than ever:

In season 2, Aziraphale's bookshop is the Garden of Eden.

What first tipped me off was the end of 2x01, when Gabriel asks about Outside, and Crowley urgently warns him that he needs to stay inside the bookshop. It reverberated against the themes of season 1, where choosing freedom over safety is symbolised by Leaving the Garden. Supporting this connection, one of the songs on the season 2 soundtrack is called Leaving the Bookshop; it plays in 2x06 when Crowley escorts Nina and Maggie outside.

There's an even clearer indicator of the symbolism, though, and I am so fascinated by the implications. When Gabriel first arrives at the bookshop in a state of undress, one of the things he says to Aziraphale is:

"Who told you I was naked?"

It's a funny line but it's also surprisingly biblically significant. In Genesis, Adam and Eve's loss of innocence after eating the fruit of knowledge is shown by their realisation they are naked. In this scene, Gabriel is like them before this transgression, innocent and unconscious of his own nakedness.

But it's even more on the nose than that, because in Genesis, when God appears to Adam after he eats the fruit, Adam hides, and then admits he's afraid because he's naked. And I quote directly, Genesis 3:11 (New International Version):

And [God] said, “Who told you that you were naked? Have you eaten from the tree that I commanded you not to eat from?”

I'm sure this reference is intended. It's too similar to be a coincidence. So Gabriel's memory loss is comparable to the innocence that preceded the Fall of Man, and that's fascinating in its own right. This also makes the bookshop, where he is protected so long as he stays inside its walls, a clear parallel to Eden.

In relation to Gabriel, I think Beelzebub is Eve, offering Adam the knowledge of good and evil in the form of a fly holding his hidden memories. An argument could be made that they are the serpent to his Eve, but I think the partnered dynamic makes this a more fitting interpretation.

I'm still thinking on the roles that Crowley and Aziraphale play in this analogy. I keep coming back to Gabriel's line, "I don't go outside, and now I have two friends." If this is Eden, who are his friends? Are Crowley and Aziraphale reprising their roles as the serpent and the guardian? Are they God and Satan playing games with their own little universe, perhaps? Or are they Adam and Eve?

Obviously, if the bookshop is Eden, this has major implications for Crowley and Aziraphale too in the context of their break up. With this framing, Crowley telling Aziraphale, "You can't leave this bookshop" becomes a fascinating twist on his traditional role. He's asking Aziraphale to stay with him in blissful ignorance, rather than confront the truth of their world. I'm not arguing that this is the only level at which this line should be read, but it's one that's worth considering.

You may also notice that in light of this biblical reference, "Who told you I was naked" becomes the first time amnesiac Gabriel echoes the words of God. I'm really not sure what these echoes mean, but they sure do intrigue me.

[gojhoes]

A Ruthless Game

summary: It’s the eighth annual haunted house held by your boyfriend’s university theatre program. You decide to pay it a visit in support of Gojo, but what happens when you get lost and find yourself alone with him in the Blue Room?

- contents: NSFW, MDNI. fem!reader x gojo, all characters in their early 20s, college student au, gojo is a theatre major, established relationship, dom gojo, sub reader, sex in a public place, smut, dirty talk (sacrilege, tbh), gojo speaks in quotes, p-in-v (why not), praise kink, unprotected sex, masque of the red death theme - wc: ~4k

Having been in the same year in high school, you knew very well of Gojo's affinity for pulling pranks. You also knew, however, that sometimes he could take it just a little too far.

It wasn't unusual to come home after a grueling day of exams to get jump-scared by Gojo before getting into the shower. More than once, he'd claimed to have stood behind doors for up to 30 minutes just so he could leap out and scare you as you walked by. Not to mention the time he'd camped out in the backseat of your car after overhearing that you were about to leave to meet Shoko somewhere. You'd come pretty close to accidentally stabbing him over that, and you made him promise not to do it again. But still, every time you got in the car, you peeked over your shoulder just to make sure there were no surprises.

October, the second month of autumn in the Northern Hemisphere and arguably your favorite of them all, had come at last. The changing of the leaves, the merciful drop in temperature, and new scents in the air were all pleasant. But the main reason you loved it so was Halloween.

It wasn't until you were well into your new relationship with Satoru that you discovered your love for the holiday was something he reciprocated. His university's theatre program held a haunted house annually, which he'd participated in religiously since his freshman year. So, being the supportive girlfriend you were, of course, you agreed to pay him a visit with all your friends.

The morning before your ticket for the haunted house was valid, Gojo waltzed up behind you as you stood naked in front of the bathroom mirror. He slithered his arms around your waist and rested his head on your shoulder, leaving sweet kisses all over your bare skin. Being that it was opening night, his day was starting early with back-to-back dress rehearsals. This meant he wouldn't be joining in the shower, as was usual, and that you would be alone until it was time to meet with Nanami and Shoko later. He was already dressed in his costume- a burned, destroyed, fake-bloodied ensemble that represented nothing in particular. It didn't matter to you, though. He could've been wearing rags and he'd still be the prettiest man you'd ever had the pleasure of looking at.

"Wear something cute tonight," he'd murmured into your ear before giving you a teasingly chaste kiss and heading out the door. For Satoru, 'cute' meant slutty, or something with easy access like a skirt with no panties. The implication sent your heart aflutter and resultantly, you were left distracted the entire day.

In the car, you tried desperately to pull down the skirt as it relentlessly rode up and threatened to expose your bare ass. Shoko had been able to convince Nanami to drive you, much to your surprise. Getting him to do anything outside of school hours was about as pleasant as pulling teeth, but with Shoko's promise to buy him a couple of beers, he'd eventually agreed without much grumbling.

Gojo had warned you that it would be packed for opening night, so the best course of action was to come early. Turns out, this one was one of the rare times when his advice had been useful, as the ticket line damn near wrapped around the block as you approached the haunted house itself. There were no phones allowed in the house per university rules, so Nanami offered to take yours before you took off inside.

"Aren't you coming?" you asked, a last-ditch effort to try and convince him to join.

"Absolutely not," Nanami replied stubbornly. "I'm here as the designated driver only."

Your face fell in disappointment, but you knew better than to try to argue with Kento Nanami.

You, Shoko, and 50 of your closest friends filed into a room much too small to house such an amount. The walls were painted to look like blood-spattered wood, and you could just make out the motifs of several different doors. Any trace of sunlight seemed to be sucked away the moment you entered, truly adding to the effect. You were impressed with the design thus far, feeling inclined to agree with Satoru's claims of his theatre program being The Best.

"I'm bugging out," Shoko said to your left.

"You claustrophobic?"

She gave you a look as if to say, "are you stupid?", and you raised your hands defensively. More and more people kept spilling into the room, squeezing you impossibly closer to the wall. There had to be at least 100 or more patrons occupying the space now, but there was no sign that the outer doors were going to close anytime soon.

A random frat boy tripped and crashed into Shoko, which not only pissed you off but also happened to be her last straw. She ignored the boy's attempt at an apology, all the color draining from her face in an instant. Her brown eyes were wide with fear as she sputtered out,

"Fuck this. I'm getting the fuck out of here."

Before you could get the chance to call after her, she turned quickly and hurried toward the way you'd come in. The crowd was impossibly thick, and she moved so fast in her panic that you were unable to catch up. Just as you made it to the edge of the crowd, the loud sound of a gong rang throughout the room at an ear-splitting volume.

Right before your eyes, the large doors swung inward with a melodramatic creaking, bathing the overly crowded room in complete darkness. At least Shoko had made it out safely. For a moment, nothing happened aside from the illumination of several dim lamps overhead. You thought that maybe someone had missed their cue, but then a sound sweeter than singing angels filled the room: Satoru's voice.

“Quiet, brats!” he boomed. The room fell silent in an instant- even you had to admit that the command sent a slight chill down your spine. You concluded that his voice was being carried over a set of speakers, as your boyfriend's familiar tall frame was nowhere to be seen.

“Our university’s theatre department would like to welcome you to its eighth annual haunted house.”

There was an awkward pause, and you heard someone cough.

“APPLAUSE, brats!”

You joined the others in a series of claps and forced cheers, smiling to yourself. No wonder Satoru enjoyed this so much; he was perfect for it. In your mind’s eye, you could see his lit-up face as he bellowed into a microphone in some nearby room.

He knew your time slot already, but you'd shot him a quick text to let him know you'd arrived before leaving your phone with Nanami to go in. You wondered if he’d spotted you yet, thinking maybe you should wave or something. Surely there had to be cameras in the room.

"'One thing I do dislike, are cowards'," Satoru went on. “However, because of your precious laws, emergency exits are marked in every section. As you proceed through the house, follow the WHITE ARROWS. Does everybody get that? WHITE. ARROWS. Everyone, repeat it so we get your verbal acknowledgment.”

In unison, the crowd obediently droned out ‘white arrows’, and you fought back a giggle at the absolute kick he must’ve been getting out of this.

“Wonderful!” Gojo cried, pretending to make his voice break emotionally. “Doing so well already, brats, makin’ me proud.”

He cleared his throat as murmurs of laughter floated through the room.

"NOW!" he shouted abruptly. "After I stop talking, the doors will open. There are seven of them, so choose carefully because God knows what might lie beyond the wrong one.

"And remember," he crooned. "'Hell is empty, and all the devils are here.'"

A dramatized rendition of his signature snicker warped into deep, evil laughter as several doors opened on the room’s other three walls. The house-goers around you burst into nervous laughter and excited chatter as groups decided which way they would go. You trailed behind a group of high school girls on the premise that they'd likely be safer to follow than the frat boys you'd seen earlier.

It was a tight fit, to say the least. You found yourself at the back of the line as the holding room emptied and patrons passed over the various thresholds. The door you'd chosen to enter led into a long, dark hallway with, as promised, an arrow slathered on the floor in white paint. The same dim lanterns hung from the ceiling in intervals, though they did little in terms of providing much brightness.

The group of girls you'd chosen to follow turned abruptly into the first room off the side of the hall. It was a room painted completely in the dimmest of blue light, casting an eerie glow over your skin. It was a grand chamber, with impossibly tall ceilings and a chandelier hanging in the middle. You were unsure if it was the hued lightbulbs and lack of other illumination, but every prop in the room seemed to match in shade. You traipsed around the edges of the room, peeking at every object from the cerulean breakaway chairs to royal books and faux food.

When you glanced up in search of a guiding arrow, you found that you were completely alone. The girls you'd been dead set on trailing had disappeared. How was that even possible? You'd stopped only for a minute to look. Just moments ago, you’d been surrounded by people, trapped in a suffocating cloud of body heat and bad breath. It was so cold now in comparison, so dark, and so quiet. There wasn’t a shred of decent light in the room and having left your phone with Nanami, you had nothing in the way of a flashlight. You started feeling your way toward the wall to guide yourself when a familiar voice spoke, and your blood ran cold.

"I was hoping you'd go with that one."

You gasped at the sudden tickle of Satoru's breath on the back of your neck. Where had he even come from? The disappearance of your fellow patrons suddenly made sense as you dawned on the thrilling realization that you two were completely alone.

"You told me to dress cute," you replied, fighting to keep your voice steady.

Satoru chuckled, low and breathy, and you felt the fine hairs on your neck stand up straight. "And that you did, didn't you? Always so good for me."

His praising words sent a wave of heat straight to the space between your legs. He wasn't yet touching you, though you could feel the warmth of his body from behind. You didn't dare move, having all but frozen under the weight of his proximity. Blood roared in your ears as your arousal burned low in your abdomen. Just his presence was enough to make you forget where you were in only the minute he'd gotten you alone.

"Always," you affirmed shakily.

You felt him move forward and close the space separating your bodies, his hips pressing against your ass. You willed your hands to remain at your sides and the air felt thick and hot, not unlike how the holding room had been just a few minutes ago. Something hard between his legs poked at your flesh and if you'd had any, your panties would've been soaked from that occurrence alone.

"'If you love me,'" Satoru murmured, his wet lips brushing against your neck. "'Then you will keep my commandments.'"

There were so many things about Satoru that were hot. His body, the charm, and his pretty face. But the way he’d sometimes speak in quotes and passages was by far his most attractive virtue. Perhaps some found it cringe-worthy, but the words slipped off Satoru’s tongue like honey and you hung off the end of each one.

“I love you,” you said, surer of that statement than of any other you’d uttered in your life.

His tongue and teeth took turns connecting with the soft skin of your neck. His pretty mouth latched on, sucking gently on your most sensitive spot as a hand landed on your side. You leaned into his touch, long fingers toying with the fabric of your skirt as they crept up your thigh. He trailed teasingly over every inch of skin you had to offer, and goosebumps erupted over the entirety of your leg. You heard him let out a sigh when his hand reached your bare hip under the skirt.

"Such a good girl," he said in a low voice. "Always doing exactly as I tell you to do."

"Satoru," you whined as his fingers flitted over your clit, which throbbed persistently in protest of the lack of stimulation.

"Shhh, keep it down," Gojo chastised in a whisper, circling his free arm around your waist. He pulled you into him roughly and you let out a small squeak. "Think of all those people who might hear. Don't want to scare them, do you?"

You opened your mouth to reply, only to slap your hand over it to stifle a moan when he slipped two fingers into you without warning. Your other hand grasped at the wall, searching for something, anything to grab to help cope with the sudden intensity of your pleasure.

"So wet," Satoru said softly, approval dripping from his tone. "All for me."

The hand crushing you against him slid down from your abdomen to your hip, creeping over agonizingly slow to rub circles on your achy clit. You relaxed into him instantly, the relief sending tingles through your whole being as he took his time fucking you on his fingers. His cock was painfully hard through the thin layers of clothing that separated him from you. You trusted him to hold you upright, retracting your steadying hand from the wall to reach down and palm at him behind you. As if rewarding you, the tips of his fingers curled against that sweet spot that made you dizzy, and you whimpered pathetically.

Your back still pressed to his chest, you fumbled over the waistband of his costume pants as you blindly slipped your hand inside. His cock strained against the fabric of his briefs so hard that you almost pitied him, already wishing to relieve him of the clothes and have him buried inside of you. You pulled his underwear down enough that you could feel the curve of him, running a single finger over what you could touch of the shaft. He laughed breathily into your ear, praising you for touching him even in such a difficult position.

That familiar twinge in your cunt drew a deep, unwarranted moan out of you. The sound rang throughout the room loudly enough that it distracted you from your pleasure. Were you really about to fuck in this very public haunted house? The door was wide open and while it was very dark, there was nothing stopping anyone from entering. You turned your head and pawed at Satoru's chest pathetically to get his attention.

"What if someone comes in?" you babbled in a fleeting moment of clarity, searching his face for any sign of fear.

Satoru rolled his icy blue eyes affectionately, though his tone was deliciously condescending when he replied,

"Then I guess someone will see me fucking you in the Blue Room. Isn't it ironic that we're doing such an act in the one that's supposed to represent birth?"

After one final curl of his fingers, he retracted them in an instant, leaving you understimulated and clenching around nothing. He nudged you in encouragement to face him, to look upon his lust-clouded eyes and flushed cheeks. You held his gaze, knowing that if you didn’t, you'd be punished, as Satoru guided your mouth open with the fingers he'd just fucked you with. He loved to see you taste yourself, half-devoted to getting you addicted to it. And you, always aiming to please him, licked them clean in earnest.

"Good," he praised, wiping the appendages dry on his pants leg. "Now lay down for me."

You whirled around and let him guide you downward so that your chest was flush against the tabletop and your ass faced the ceiling. You heard the telltale brushing of fabric as he freed himself from his pants and let them bunch around his ankles. He teased his hardened cock against your clit, knowing how much it drove you crazy when you were already so frustrated.

You whined impatiently. "Satoru, please-"

A gasp escaped your lips and interrupted your plea as large hands latched onto either of your hips and jerked you backward suddenly. His chest brushed your back as he leaned over you, lips brushing the shell of your ear as he spoke.

"Quiet, baby," he cooed. "I'd hate for us to get interrupted."

Just the idea of having to stop right now was enough to send you to your wit’s end. You dedicated what was left of your focus to keeping your lips pressed tightly together to trap any sounds that might escape through them. With how wet you were, you could only imagine how unhinged Satoru had become. With the knowledge of what was to come, you gripped the edge of the table with both hands to steady yourself.

The risk of getting caught was imminent, and even if he acted like he didn't care, Gojo wasted no time in sliding into you. You took all of him at once, swallowing hard to keep an instinctive moan at bay. He was struggling too, it seemed, as you heard air expressed sharply through his nose the moment he bottomed out. His pleasure always amplified your own and you felt yourself clench at the sound. It was a sick satisfaction, knowing that he was feeling as good as you did because of you.

He fucked you slow at first, pulling out till only his cockhead remained, and sliding back in at a teasingly hesitant pace. You knew he would have to make it quick, but that didn't mean he wasn't going to have his fun with you. Impatient little whines replaced the noisy complaints you normally gave him when he teased you. Gojo loved to make you beg, but the thrill of taking you in such a public setting would fill the need for now.

Satoru settled into a pace that had you melting into the table, especially when two of his fingers found themselves rubbing your clit just as consistently. He knew exactly what to do to get you off, his tempo never stuttering even when his own pleasure clouded any rationality he might've held. You kept your back arched low, following his lead as he pounded into you roughly.

"You feel good, baby?" he asked, his voice a strained whisper.

You nodded quickly, distrusting of your ability to remain quiet. It was always good, even when you didn't get to take your time and work each other up to the breaking point. Despite his unrelenting nature, the way in which he held you was gentle, and he knew how to read your body even better than you did.

It was too much, the length of him, the speed of his fingers on your clit, not being able to express yourself vocally. You felt stunted like you were unable to get the stimulation you needed to achieve your release. Too much, yet not enough, but you told yourself to trust Satoru. He always promised he would take care of you.

"Look at me."

He didn't give you much of a choice. Gojo's hand cupped your chin and guided it backward so that your eyes were staring directly into his. The telltale pink flush on his cheeks was visible through the many layers of white stage makeup. The horribly painted-on clown eyes were smudged around his pale lashes, but the wild lust in his expression was all you cared to notice as you fluttered around him in a way that signaled you were close.

"I want to see your pretty face when I make you cum right next to all these people."

You shoved a hand in your mouth to muffle the involuntary moans as you came. The roiling waves of pleasure rushed over your body as your cunt clenched rhythmically around Satoru's cock. He grinned at you widely as he fucked you through your orgasm, reveling in the way your body went rigid under his own. His own washed over him without much difficulty; a few moments later his lower lip was caught between his teeth as he grunted with the effort it took not to moan himself. His pace picked up rapidly as he gasped.

"Ahh- 'm gonna cum," he said breathlessly.

You relished in the feeling as he emptied himself inside of you, hot and twitching as he painted your walls with his seed. The grip on your hips was near bruising as if the shape of your bones beneath his hands was the only thing tethering him to this earth. You remained in that position, both of you panting as you came down from your high. Even with him still sheathed inside of you, you could feel the astronomical amount of cum pooling there. Just how pent-up had he been?

He slid out of you slowly, the lack of his bodily warmth adding to the heartbreakingly empty feeling as he did so. Before you could even think of moving to get to your feet, Satoru aggressively slid two of his fingers back into you. He didn't like to waste a single drop of his cum, shoving what little had begun to trickle out back inside.

"There," he said retracting them once more, satisfied now that you were properly filled. "'ll help you up."

He smoothed your skirt down over the tops of your thighs and reached for your arms to guide you into a standing position. His hands found your waist as he pulled you into him, nuzzling your hair and breathing deeply. Your head grew fuzzy at the feeling of his cum beginning to seep out of your cunt once again. You let him hold you in a hug that encapsulated both your body and soul.

Satoru drew you away from him, smiling when he glimpsed your face.

"Aw, baby," he said softly. "You're such a mess."

You brought a hand to your face to feel something sticky beneath your eyes, likely mascara that you'd smudged. Your cheeks were already flushed from his incessant fucking, not to mention the sticky warmth trailing down your inner thighs. You could only imagine the state of your lipstick.

"Not my fault," you protested, attempting to smooth out your disheveled hair.

"It is your fault," Gojo corrected, tapping your nose with his index finger. "For wearing that skirt and letting me catch you."

Your face drew up in a pout, to which he grinned devilishly. He pulled you into him once more, peppering kisses all over your face and squeezing you tight. You tried to fight him off in lieu of your already tousled hair, but even your stubbornness was no match for his strength.

His breath tickled your ear as he whispered, "What are our friends going to think?"

Somehow, your face burned hotter at his words. When you finally forced yourself to break away from him, he let you out through one of the emergency exits to find Nanami and Shoko. They looked appalled at your appearance, and you silently cursed Satoru for using you so roughly. They demanded to know what happened, and you couldn't very well tell them the truth.

"I just got really scared," you lied. "They made me cry. Fucking jerks."

Even though he wasn't there, you could hear Gojo's laughter in your ears at such a stupid response.

[sy-on-boy]

My 2 cents on the plot / thematic relevance of Ch 95

This is not about advancing Plot B or showing Anya's school life (which is still true but has been discussed), but rather the overall theme of education and war. There was an excellent post about how Eden is at the frontline of the cold war and it is subtly shown through the innocent lens of the first graders (I can't find it now, would link it if I could). And I think that perfectly applies to Ch 95.

Quick recap on some references about education/students/war throughout the series (that I remember at the moment):

Sylvia gravely condemning the Berlint University Student Terrorists during the Doggy Crisis arc (Ch 20) and saying "did you learn nothing about war at your university?"

Henderson talking about his experience as a history teacher (Ch 27.5, Short Mission 4) and quote: "Yes, well, I have always maintained that there is nothing to be learned from the memorization of time lines. From the grand efforts with which our forefathers crafted society to the foolish notions that sent them racing to war, to not study the human element at history's root is to not understand history at all"

Note that Damian's best subject has been established to be history, and his family (father) has been involved in war, at least Donovan was PM during most of the war (established by Melinda in Ch 91). Donovan is also a graduated Imperial Scholar (Ch 64).

The Red Circus group started out as a peaceful student demonstration "advocating for peace and quality" (Ch 72) and "speaking out to protect the weakest members of our society". And Billy Squire said, "We were a respectable movement that fought for our cause with respectable means. It was the state that turned violent against us. So I'm not taking criticism from a member of the establishment (referring to Henderson, an educator). I'm gonna see to it that they reap what they've sown." Billy's daughter Biddy was killed by the state at a protest.

Less of a point, but Becky is the daughter of the CEO of a major military manufacturer. Despite their very likely involvement in military conflicts because they sell arms, the Blackbell cohort has been depicted positively so far: Becky being a kind, wonderful friend to Anya, Becky's father doting on her, and Martha again being kind and dignified (and also being an ex-soldier and acquainted with Henderson).

Eden Academy is a major setting for SxF and the themes of politics, education, and war are embedded in it. The students involved in protests/groups are older (the university students, Billy's daughter), but the political implications remain even among the youngest of the students— the first graders.

Hence, Ch 95. When mere first graders are shown to fight to gain connections, which can be political as pointed out by Henderson: "In the world of politics, dances serve as major social events". But of course, they are kids, so they see it more playfully and innocently, especially Becky with her shipper lens on.

Of course, there is also the aspect of getting to know other people better out of interest (the boys asking Anya and Becky to dance because they were impressed after the bus hijacking). But as people have mentioned, nobody mentions this to Damian despite him being equally involved in saving the class (all three of them got a star). The girls aren't interested in Damian as a person, they're interested in him as an asset because of his family and their power.

And I can see the teachers trying to diffuse the tension and create camaraderie with their friendly competition. To me, this reads as the teachers fully realizing "the battlefield of political maneuvering", and they want to remind the kids to have fun, to show good sportsmanship, to unite the kids, to operate as a class and be friendly with one another, and overall make it more lighthearted. It's nice to see the classes work together and get excited / win as a unit, especially compared to the more "individual" bits of fighting for a dance partner later.

We get a bit of comparison between Bill and Damian, with Bill showing good sportsmanship while Damian scoffs at him. But Damian ends up becoming ultra competitive and telling his classmates to not screw it up.

Like the Dodgeball chapter, Damian is clumsily attempting to lead the class by doing good in his quiz, while getting stressed and yelling at his peers when they don't succeed like he did. So he's not really a good leader. Like how him being good at history does not necessarily mean he is good at being peaceful (Short Mission 4 ends with Henderson staring in exasperation at Damian + Anya bickering with each other). But obviously, he is merely a child, and he is naturally immature.

At first Loid is all for advancing Plan B and analysed Anya's suitors in a rational (reductionist?) way by ranking them in terms of gaining intelligence, but he remembers this is just a dance, Anya is a kid, and she should do whatever she wants. Loid (and the adults) are very aware of the political side of the gala, but ultimately they want the kids to have fun and not worry / worry less about politics.

Because they're kids! They'll grow up and learn more and be politically active later, but right now, they're just kids. Kids who don't know much about the world but are eager to make the world a better place.

In the end, we get a panel of Anya and Loid "teaming up" to win Damian's hand for Plan B / world peace. The Damian-Anya dynamic is cushioned with the silly crushy feelings, but underneath it, Operation Strix continues to be a core motivation.

I find it interesting that Endo chooses to focus on the first graders and their innocent view of the world / politics. It's embedded everywhere and especially in a prominent school like Eden, but the kids don't really realise it / realise the severity of it. Heirs and heiresses are educated at Eden and grow up to have incredible influence and the power to shape the world. Our protagonist's best friend comes from a family that manufactures arms. Henderson mentions the importance of learning history to avoid making the same mistakes (ie. war).

So Ch 95 is a cute prom chapter. But I think it also helps to show the themes underneath the fun, bubbly interactions.

[lakesbian]

it's the moment like 4 of you have been waiting for:

i finally rotated pact creature design in my brain enough to post about it. to all the people who sent me asks wanting to hear my thoughts explaining Why Pact Creatures Are So Good this ones for you.

the core of pact's monster design boils down to one very good fact about pact's worldbuilding: in the world of pact, the universe canonically loves a good story. magic literally runs on themes and ideas. subsequently, strong themes aren't the end result of pact's monster design so much as they are the most fundamental aspect of it--meaningful themes and narratives are such a textually important part of how pact monsters work that one bogeyman outright tries to start a conversation with blake by, upon noticing the birdhouse in his soul (tm), asking if birds are important to him.

what really seals the deal on this being fascinating is that pact monsters aren't invented wholesale--a lot of the book hinges on offering its own explanations for preexisting folklore or urban legend. pact takes a variety of common threads in the way cultural myths & monsters are presented, picks out the conceptions with compelling implications, and distills them into one design so thematically coherent and clarifying that it makes you go "ohhh, why aren't All ghosts/dragons/fae like this? this is Exactly What They're Supposed To Be."

like, we all know that ghosts are dead people, and oftentimes the appearance and/or behavior they're written as having is either implicitly or explicitly based on reenactments of their past life/how they died, and sometimes they're depicted as lucid but more often than not they're depicted more like broken or warped remnants of a person, and sometimes they make things colder/give off Bad Emotional Vibes/etc. those are generally true assertions about how ghosts are often culturally presented.

pact takes that and explicitly declares that ghosts are what happens when something so bad happens that an imprint of the resultant misery is left on the fabric of the universe. some ghosts appear horrifying because their appearance is warped and exaggerated beyond what's realistically possible to match how awful whatever happened to them felt. some ghosts are more lucid because their imprint is more recent, or has been strengthened and fed by human attention instead of left to decay. some ghosts are less lucid because they were forgotten. when ghosts make the atmosphere feel awful to be in, that's because the ghost isn't just the imprint of the person, it's an imprint of the awful thing itself. incredibly interesting! it feels so very much like the absolute heart of what ghost stories are about--about the grief and horror of being impacted by the ever-present echo of something terrible, about something so viscerally wretched happening that reality itself cannot forget it, about the emotionally powerful interactions between someone still-living and the memory of someone already long gone.

(pact also gives an aside that, in very rare scenarios, neutral or arguably even positive occasions which leave a sufficiently strong enough impression can also become ghosts. genuinely fascinating expansion.)

& the thing here is that pact does this for creatures like ghosts that are already richly thematic and iconic, but it Also does it for creatures with less obvious theming. how do dragons work? what's pact's underlying explanation for their position as immortal, powerful, regal, fire-breathing* fantasy monsters?

*&, depending on the media, sometimes ice-breathing or poisonous or whatever else

well, you see, dragons are recursive loops. "dragons are recursive loops" is perhaps one of the Top All Time sentences in the entire book, and the delightful thing is that, in addition to sounding excellent, it makes sense.

that's how they generate and spit out so much of whatever their element is. they're snarls. they're ouroboroses. they're something feeding into itself, self-sustaining for thousands of years, drowning anything which threatens it in torrents of whatever the self-feeding element is--fire, sometimes, but it could be poison, or ice, or whatever else, and that's why you've probably heard of ice dragons in addition to classic fire dragons. Dragons Are Recursive Loops. recursiveness is, after all, a form of immortality.

or, like, fae? we all know that faeries are incomprehensibly old/outright immortal Tricky Little Bitches who like to manipulate people while posing in an inhumanly/horrifically beautiful fashion and going "teehee." pact takes that to a fantastically surreal level of extreme artifice, one that's almost grotesque in its dreamlike nature--they have all lived for so very long that, to them, boredom is worse than death, and so they have complicated social games spanning centuries, and speak in the most practiced of misleading wordplay, and perfectly curate their forests so that even the smallest pebble is an intentionally-chosen setpiece for their play. they graduated from handjobs a couple dozens of millennia ago--now they're more into erotic-poetic descriptions of full-body degloving. you will not notice when a faerie steals and replaces your child, because you are very young and stupid compared to them, and playing-pretend at being your child is only the briefest of trifles in their unfathomably long lifespan.

the other good bit is that pact explicitly acknowledges that faeries run on what is colloquially deemed Bullshit--the universe likes a good story, and faeries have gotten very good at telling it a moving story. if a faerie tells a good enough story about having a sword that breaks the laws of physics, then that is what their sword will do. and so the way to combat faeries is not to out-bullshit them--because no one is out-bullshitting a being with thousands of years of bullshitting practice--but to say "no, that's fucking stupid and made up" until their implausibly long sword acts like a sword of that size actually should and shatters on the spot.

& all of these writing decisions feel so naturally truthful to what these creatures are Supposed to be--they're really not wholly new takes, they're a presentation of preexisting ideas in a way that gets why those ideas appeal to people and goes full-throttle on all the most thematically rich or otherwise narratively interesting parts. It's Good Writing. I Like It. you could spend an entire essay breaking down the presentation of literally any single one of pact's creatures, it's that compelling in its reflection and organization of Ideas About Creatures.

[batrogers]

Civilized Or Not

So there’s some common Zelda fanon I wanna talk about, relating to civilization tropes I think some of y’all haven’t really thought about in detail before, and that’s Hyrule (Zelda 1 &2 Link), Wild (BOTW mostly), and Ravio (LbW).

I’m using the Linked Universe names, because that’s where most of it comes up, because these things happen most often where you can contrast the boys with each other. This is often done, quick and dirty, by people assigning “roles” to each without much thought. Ravio’s unfortunately tends to be extremely pervasive outside LU spaces, too.

But, in brief, there is a trend for people to craft these characters in a framework of innocent vs savagery vs trickery that can have some really unfortunate implications I’m not sure many are even aware of. Hopefully I can explain better where these ideas come from, why they’re so easy and appealing, and why we should try to avoid repeating them for more than just the sake of “easy” but also to stop repeating some really nasty historical tropes.

I would start from what’s probably the simplest one to address: the tendency towards a “feral” personification of Wild. This tends to come from two places: Wild’s amnesia, and the collapse of society around him and his lost place in it.

Now, brain damage is complicated. You can lose a range of things to any given injury because of the way information is encoded differently and in different places. You can lose memory and/or skills and/or coordination and/or balance, etc, because it all depends on what got damaged. But in-game a lot of stuff suggests that Link retains things like speech, reading/writing, coordination, and martial skills. None of the people who knew Link prior to his injury suggest he seems changed in any way not attributed to stress and anxiety...

And, more importantly, real people suffer memory loss just like that in the real world. Treating him like he’s become “feral” due to memory loss is cruel to actual people living with brain damage today, and if you go there you should have a good reason for it.

Social collapse is a wide-spread theme in basically every Zelda game. The threat that the Big Bad poses is almost always the destruction of society as it exists: Malladus literally vanishes the infrastructure of New Hyrule in Spirit Tracks; the Twilight turns people into spirits living lives they don’t realize are questionably real in Twilight Princess; Veran freezes the passage of time to force people to work forever in Oracle of Ages. King Daphnes and Ganondorf under the sea vie over the fate of the world above in Wind Waker: keep what’s been made, or start all over again?

In modern culture, people tell a lot of stories about the fragility of civilization and what happens in its absence. You get the range from Lord of the Flies, in which children wrecked on an island attempt (and fail) to recreate civilization on their own, Kipling’s “The Jungle Book” in which Mowgli is treated as reckless and innocent, and a much more obscure piece from the 18th century “Paul et Virginie” (and likely many more I don’t know offhand.) Essentially all of them play with the question of how do people become civilized, and what happens when they do? In Lord of the Flies, the children were civilized and failed to maintain it; in the Jungle Book, the boy wasn’t civilized and innocently interacts with it. In Paul et Virginie, the children were (relatively) uncivilized on the (French colonized) Mauritius, raised by their mothers but when the girl was sent away, she becomes civilized and dies tragically to preserve it.

The two Links most removed from civilization are Hyrule and Wild. Wild “lost” civilization, losing both his memories of it and the structure of it. Making him feral, without manners, and without a place to belong is that kind of Lord of the Flies savagery mixed with Mowgli’s innocent playfulness: there isn’t a structure to adhere to, so he’s a savage. Whereas Hyrule is more like the Paul eg Virginie side: innocent of civilization, he remains pure and sweet and kind, unable to conceive of big concepts like evil or money or so on. Neither position permits them to interact with the civilization that is right there in front of them! Wild can buy a house; he has people who know and care for him. He has social connections and social rights. The world exists, but the fandom does not seem to want him to interact with it in favour of remaining “wild.” In Zelda 2 – a game explicitly set within a decade of Zelda 1 – there are whole towns with trade and a castle and massive structures with on-going life in them... but very few fans seem to ever reach into that story or relate it back to the first. Hyrule, the character, does not exist within Hyrule, the country.

Strangely, Wind Waker does not fall prey to this, I think because the structures are presented as fait accompli: Link wakes up with his grandmother and his sister, he has a defined home, and a society in which you spend the entire game forced to engage with. Zelda 1 & 2 were not sophisticated enough to waste resources on going as in depth in social terms (although such interactions absolutely exist in Zelda 2!) and BOTW leaves such interactions as optional: you can survive the game with minimal social contact... but it’s a choice to play with it that way, not the default. The ways in which this edges onto the noble savage trope, in which “uncivilized” tribes are either innocent or brutish (rather than complex social systems in their own right) is fairly obvious.

There is one other character in Zelda who gets treated to the question of whether he is an innocent, free of civilization and all its rigour... or something else. Ravio, coming from the devastated world of Lorule, can often wind up slotted into the scared, innocent child trope and unfortunately that’s the better position people frequently take. The worse one evokes the Merchant of Venice: the deceitful, Jewish merchant who values money over people’s lives.

Lorule (and Nintedo’s approach towards their humanoid Zelda villains in general) is near-eastern-coded in many ways, down to the fact that Yuga’s outfit is the spitting image of Ottoman dress. Yuga being a depraved bisexual (a common historical trope about Muslim men towards Christian men and boys), and Hilda being deceitful and conspiring against everyone she was once allied to are a backdrop to the ways in which Ravio is a greedy coward. He’s not an evil character in the game; the mechanic of penalizing death without being too severe is interesting and works well! But that doesn’t take away the stereotype, just like it’s not okay Nabooru is pretty explicitly predatory towards child Link in Ocarina of Time, too.

Arab and Jewish stereotypes often converge, because both people's originate from the same region, and both are hostile "Others" to Christian Europe and Nintendo doesn’t have a great track record of their near-Eastern coding in Zelda. It crosses the whole gamut from harem and amazon tropes with the Gerudo to breath-takingly anti-semitic or anti-black (Ganondorf being green, eg. non-human, in various incarnations), all packaged neatly in the ideal of medieval fantasy Europe. The scale would be impressive if it wasn’t so damn awful, but we can at least stop repeating it in our fanworks.

Wild doesn’t have to be feral to be a playful little shit; Hyrule doesn’t have to be pure and innocent to be kind. Ravio doesn’t need to be innocent or scheming, and he shouldn’t place money over Link’s well-being (If you chose to respawn at home, he is consistently only ever concerned for Link! Once you buy the items outright, he promises he'll still be there to take care of you.)

Do better. It’s more interesting that way, and I want to see that variety grow!

[If any of y'all would like me to dig up better sources on any point, I can do so but I didn't want to bog this post down further. I have largely left the anti-arab stuff alone because it's not the biggest issue with Ravio's fanon presence, which is the focus here.]

[tonythr]

Floating platforms in Hollow Knight are weird, lore-wise

Soooo I haven't seen anyone actually talk about this, but those things just keep *bugging* me.

These things.

Why did Team Cherry put these particular platforms in the background?

Ok, there are numerous floating platforms in this game, of course, because the player needs them to traverse big spacey rooms vertically. They're not even an issue lore-wise, because their existence can be explained by them being attached to the fourth wall, which is what the player looks at the Knight through. It's basically a game construct that we are not supposed to think about as a part of the suspension of disbelief.

BUT THOSE THINGS are not attached to any wall! They're just. Floating. There. In the air. Without any support. And THEIR existence can't be explained by the game wanting to provide the player some convenience. The Knight can't interact with them, we never see anyone else use them or even acknowledge them, so they MUST be something that TC put there for lore reasons, as a part of that beautiful thing that we call environmental storytelling... Right?

That or they just put them there without really thinking about the implications that this anomaly creates. But that's a boring and very unlikely explanation, so I'm just going to discuss what that might mean for the game's lore, assuming they're put there intentionally.

So, I have several thoughts on why those platforms might exist as a part of the in-game universe.

First theory. Hallownest is literally frozen in time

Ok, so this is probably the most obvious one. Throughout the game we see some evidence of the Kingdom being literally put on hold with the intention to keep it alive indefinitely.

This is pretty much what is implied in the tablet in the Pale King's workshop - that PK was trying to literally pause Time itself, so that the inevitable Dawn would never Break.

(Quite an interesting theme, actually - the idea of avoiding the inevitable not by trying to actually avoid letting it happen, but by delaying it by an infinite amount of time. It deserves its own post, really)

So, with Time itself being literally frozen, it's pretty safe to assume that this is exactly the reason as to why some parts of the Kingdom are literally stuck in one place, right? I mean, it's pretty much a trope to have floating rocks and buildings in a place that is stuck in some kind of time stasis. I'd say this is a pretty solid assumption, but when we actually look at some of the other parts of Hallownest we see that it's pretty lively for a place that is frozen in time. The rain is pouring, the stalactites are falling, all those machines in the Crystal Peak are still working...

Some of that stuff can actually be explained by either the Radiance's influence or the Knight's movement. The Infection is presented as the inevitable force of change that resurrects everything and moves it towards Light. The air thickens, the bugs arise from the dead, the Infection takes over the Crossroads, the Moss cultists get turned into mush, and so on. Meanwhile, other creatures possessing a Will are also capable of bringing change to this land. The Knight constantly breaks things, forces the ground to crumble beneath its feet, and overall just brings destruction to Hallownest, bringing the world closer to its natural end. It's no wonder that the stalactites start falling conveniently right as the Knight passes underneath them.

BUT there are still many things that can't be explained so easily. Like, if the Kingdom is supposed to be frozen in time, then why is the rain still pouring? Why is the Wyrm's ash still falling at the Kingdom's Edge? Why is the sand still falling from the ceiling? Why do larger things seem to be fixed in place, while smaller things are seemingly unaffected by the Kingdom's stasis?

That and the fact that at no point we see these floating platforms being acknowledged by the game's lore in any way other than those two places makes me think that this theory is probably incorrect, unlike the next one.

Second theory. Those two particular places are just that special.

The only two places where we actually see floating platforms being a part of the background (if I'm not missing any) are located near some of the most mysterious places in the whole game.

First, we have the ones that are located near the Colosseum of Fools. To be honest, even the interactable platforms there just seem useless, as some of them don't even protect us from the Bellflies. They all look like some kind of decoration (alongside with those strange thin pillars with circles on top of each) leading us along the road towards the corpse of a huge beast which the Colosseum is located inside. What even is this creature? Is it a higher being? Is it a Wyrm (don't mossbag me, he's wrong about those things being its claws because we see a third one in the foreground lying aside from the main structure, detached from the body)? Is the Lord Fool its reincarnation? Is it connected to the Ancient Civilization? How are there so many warriors there? Why does it still thrive after everything that happened to Hallownest? There are so many questions about that place left unanswered that I wouldn't be surprised to learn that the magic of the Colosseum actually affects time and/or space around it, making it possible for the floating platforms to exist.

Second (and this is the most important one), we have the platforms that are located inside and outside the Hive. As far as I know, this is the only place in the whole game that has this many floating platforms located in the background.

This basically confirms that this is absolutely NOT a coincidence and is a part of the intentional in-game lore. The whole place is floating!

The Hive seems to be in its own kind of stasis, probably due to its isolation. Vespa says that going against nature is a folly, so this anomaly is probably something... natural.

And you know where else floating things are a natural occurrence?

The Dream Realm.

So, the Hive and the Dream Realm are both places that are tied to the Light, which is a kind of force or energy that can alter reality and even create new realities, which are not necessarily bound by the usual laws of space and time. The Hive is not located in the Dream Realm, and it's safe to say that it's not some kind of in-between-the-worlds situation like with the Lifeblood Core, so the stuff that's going on there is less crazy than what we see in the Dream Realm, but it is also the only material place that is connected so heavily to the Light, so it is safe to assume that the anomaly that lets the platforms float is directly connected to that mysterious force.

The only thing that I can't understand is how the Light in those places connects to the Colosseum of Fools. It's not a well-lit area, and even inside the arena the only source of light is just regular fire. Could it be that this mysterious force is not defined by the Light itself, but by something more... incomprehensible?

I wonder what that force even is. The Radiance is definitely not the only source of it, and we know we're gonna see some really shiny stuff in Silksong. I personally hope for more platform lore.

[shortpplfedup]

Ayan being a gremlin to Akk: accurate. Akk being pissy with Aye: also accurate. Getting together isn't a personality transplant operation; they just like kissing each other now they haven't become different people. And people also don't magically know how to be in a relationship, communication and compromise is required. We saw pretty much nothing of established-relationship-post-curse Akk and Ayan in the original series, they literally JUST got together. It's been what, a few weeks in-universe? Maybe a couple months max? Now that they're both starting to heal from their life traumas and out of the pressure cooker of the Suppalo situation and Ayan is reasonably confident that Akk isn't going to end it all, now we are seeing the part where they actually figure out how to be in a relationship with each other (well, some of the early calculus).

These two have ZERO clue how to navigate a relationship. Akk's repressed ass couldn't even acknowledge to himself that he had any kind of romantic inclinations towards anybody until basically moments ago. He is just starting to understand his needs in a relationship through his relationship with Ayan, a person he has never felt the need to people-please with, so yeah, he's salty and snapping. As for Ayan, he's learning that Akk isn't this way because of the circumstances or the environment, he's just like this. He cares about everything and everyone while Ayan cares about what and who he cares about and doesn't really give a rip about the rest of it. There is an intersection there, because what and who he cares about is Akk, but they haven't gotten to that intersection yet where they actually understand what the other person is REALLY asking for. Akk wants Ayan to care more and be less standoffish and more engaged. Ayan wants Akk to care less and be more self-protective and less self-sacrificing.

That general approach is also bleeding into the relationship. Akk wants Ayan to be softer with him (like he was when he was worried he was gonna hurt himself) and Ayan wants Akk to be tougher with him (like he was when he was worried he was gonna tear down everything). It's not an insurmountable problem, but it will require them to use their words, absorb the implications and deliberately alter their behaviours.

Akk's people-pleasing (Ayan's gripe is literally that Akk cares too much about others) and Ayan's self-centredness (Akk's gripe is that Ayan considers himself too much and others not enough) are canon. This is literally what brought them into each other's attention in the first place: Ayan doing whatever he wanted and Akk being pissed about it. Add in that Ayan enjoys riling Akk up for horny reasons and Akk softens whenever Ayan gets affectionate with him. Add in that Ayan has seen in 4k the extreme consequences of Akk's people-pleasing (the literal campaign of terror he rained on an entire school, lest we forget), just like Akk has seen the consequences of Ayan's self-centredness (Thua's anger at Ayan's hypocrisy of staying in while pushing others out).

They just like each other. They haven't become different people. And they now have to learn how to communicate and compromise because liking each other means they care about not hurting each other. Which is one of the themes of the special. One of the things @bengiyo says over and over again on @the-conversation-pod is DICK IS NOT MAGICAL IT DOES NOT FIX YOU. It's why we both bonded over loving drama about staying together more than drama about getting together. This is so intriguing to me, watching this play out, because this is the part romances tend to ignore, either because they end before they get here, or they gloss over here with a time skip. As somebody invested in the intricacies of long-term relationships and the compromises people make or don't make along the way, this is working all over for me.

[aroacehanzawa]

On Dazai, his heartrate, The Book, BEAST, and metanarratives (or: how we may or may not already know how it all ends)

Have you noticed that in the opening of season 4, Dazai is the only one who is shown to mouth along to the lyrics? Specifically, he mouths along to the last part of the line that goes something along the lines of "The context in which my soul beats, turn it into a heartbeat" (魂が打つ文脈、鼓動に変えてしまえよ (source)).

This is interesting, because as Ango established in episode 11, Dazai has been communicating with the outside world by adjusting his heartrate to encode deciphered messages. And i hate this plot point with a passion, hated it when it came up in the manga and still hate it after the latest episode, so i will cope by doing the following in this 3k word essay (which i wrote in about 5 hours on the day i have an actual real-world deadline):

Trying to figure out 1) what this skill of Dazai implies about his character and role in the overall story, and 2) how this implication is supported by the lyrics of the opening theme, "True Story" by SCREEN MODE, and 3) how this opening suggests a more intricate connection between BEAST and the main timeline, and 4) what all of this means for the current arc, the overall story, and the author(s).

I. The heartrate gimmick

The reason why i'm so put off by Dazai's superhuman ability to control his own heartrate is that this is the first time in the series where something significantly breaches the realm of plausibility which has so far been established in the universe of bsd. However, that in itself means that it may be a hint to a much bigger picture.

To start with, we've seen that human biology in bsd verse still follows the rules of our own world, and any anomalies can typically be explained by abilities, such as Kenji's superstrength. The same goes for non-human anomalies: instead of outright breaking the laws of known science, they are either some kind of manifestation of abilities or otherwise derived from abilities, such as skill weapons (like Well's time-manipulating camera, or Fukuchi's space-time sword. The plot of Fifteen and Stormbringer, even.)

Even Dazai and Fyodor's galaxy brain moments generally fall into the realm of possibility, like Fyodor memorising all the cards in Ace's deck based on their scratch marks, or Dazai predicting Sigma's rock-paper-scissors moves with Sherlock Holmes-esque deduction skills. (Dazai and Fyodor communicating in code based on their past conversations is something more unbelievable, so for now i'm putting that in the same category of unexplainable as Dazai's heartrate trick.)

The thing that bothers me is this: Ango says that Dazai's heartbeat trick is something only he can do, but it clearly doesn't fall in the realm of biologically possible as we know it (controlling heartrate to some extent maybe, but being able to encode complex messages like that?). We also already know Dazai's ability, so it can't be related to that. (Or do we? Dazai's ability in itself is a paradox, a non-ability, and that arguably places him outside the circle of typical ability-users.)

Now, when it comes to things that have gone beyond the general level of plausibility in bsd, it could be said that they are all somehow related to The Book: the reality-altering that took place when the ADA got framed, Sigma's existence and the Sky Casino, and BEAST. The island on which Yosano was stationed is possibly also related to The Book, as it apparently came out of nowhere and is surrounded by its own anomalous properties.

If so far all the discrepancies between our own world and the world of bsd can be traced to either abilities or The Book (even historical differences are caused by the overall existence of abilities), we can extrapolate that any unexplained phenomena can likewise be traced to one or the other. We know Dazai's ability, but that alone doesn't seem enough to explain Dazai, which leaves us with The Book.

I'm far from the first one to suggest that Dazai is somehow connected to The Book, and others have written some excellent theories about it, so i'll move on to my next point: the lyrics to the opening theme "True Story":

II. What exactly is the true story?

When i listed the known (or at least most significant, because i can't remember more) cases connected to The Book above, they are all significant plot points in season 4, except for BEAST. However, that may not be as obvious if we have a look at the lyrics of the opening theme.

I wont go into too much detail because i don't know any Japanese (i'm just referring to google translate as well as this fan translation of the lyrics) so if someone who knows the language decides to continue this analysis that would be amazing!

The first notable line is this: 何者でもない　白紙だった僕に　刻まれていくMy True Story ("To a blank page that wasn't anyone, my true story is etched" or "My true story is engraved on me, who was nothing but a blank page"). Here, the speaker is likened to a page of the book, something initially empty but given a purpose through the telling of a story. The reference to a blank page unmistakably reminds us of the page from The Book, that has played such a significant role all throughout this season.

I'm not going in order, so the next notable line i want to point out is: 魂が打つ文脈、鼓動に変えてしまえよ ("My soul reflects the context, turn it into a pulse" or "The context in which the soul beats, turn it into a heartbeat"). There is the clear mention of a heartbeat, and this is the line which we can see Dazai mouth along to in the opening, so let's continue by assuming that Dazai is the speaker in these lyrics.

While the song as a whole is very metaphorical and can be applied to a large part of the cast, it becomes more interesting for the purpose of this analysis if we take a more literal perspective, whilst simultaneously assuming that these are Dazai's thoughts.

Idk how to say this in a less convoluted way but: if Dazai's very existence, that is to say including his soul, is anomalous itself, then the superhuman manipulation of his heartrate could just be considered as one application of his existence. Or rather, of the context of his existence: something anomalous beyond abilities.

The mention of "context" is also interesting as something inherently tied to a story and storytelling. So far we have a page, a book, and a story, and they all point towards Dazai. Let's then assume that Dazai is indeed the speaker to whom the "blank page who wasn't anyone" is likened to, whether figuratively or literally.

The next line I want to bring your attention to is: 傍(かたわら)にいる　誰かを救うため　刻みこんでいくMy True Story ("To save someone who's by my side, I engrave (it into) my true story"). And this is where i'm going to bring up BEAST, a concrete example where Dazai has specifically succeeded in saving Oda by writing the plot of BEAST into existence in The Book or one of its pages.

If we then connect this line to the previous one with "my true story", we can say something like: Dazai saved someone important to him by writing his story onto a blank page not unlike himself.

In fact, he says so himself: 何者にも委ねないで　書き残せ自分自身で / ……書けるさ、魂を (Don't trust/entrust yourself to anyone, write it down yourself, write it down with your soul/write down your soul.") Here we get an implicit connection between writing down something, and doing so with one's soul, arguably with Dazai's existence (or writing down one's soul/being into existence, depending on what's the accurate translation).

Given the theme of The Book, we can't help but connect the act of writing to the act of reality-altering. Therefore, if we consider that Dazai writes i.e. reality-alters by either writing down his soul or by engraving a story into his soul, something akin to a blank page, we arrive at the conclusion that he is himself a reality-altering page like one in The Book.

The whole thing turns in on itself: Dazai does something external to affect the outside world, but that something is directed at himself. This circular or paradoxical nature is reminiscent of his own ability, which instead of manifesting outwardly like other abilities, is something that negates the outside, reverses an existence into an inexistence, even turns his own ability into a lack of one.

Now, an especially interesting line is this one: この命こそが文章-sentence-だ ("This life is the sentence") because the word "sentence" is intentionally sung in English, retaining its dual meaning of "a formally pronounced punishment" and "a cluster of words usually containing subject and verb".

For the first definition, there is obviously the prison sentence Dazai is currently iin, but you could also say that he considers his life a similar burden. For the second definition, does he mean his whole life has been written into existence in one sentence (knowing that it's possible to write a human into existence, if we take Fyodor's word for it when it comes to Sigma), or would it be more correct to assume that by "life" he means his and everyone else's life in the present timeline? Combining both definitions, we could even say that his life is a burden or an inescapable prison precisely on account of it having been brought into existence as a story.

Like i said, the "Dazai is the Book" idea is nothing new, but interpreting the lyrics in this way offers some interesting support to the theory, and will lead into what I want to say in the next part, which is how BEAST relates to all of this.

III. The role of BEAST

The refrain with which the song opens and is repeated several times is: 未(ま)だ語られない　物語の先へ　踏み出して征(ゆ)くのが勇気だ ("I still can't speak of the story ahead, it takes courage to take a step/to step forward and conquer"). This can be taken as apprehension towards the future, but there's something about the song that also makes it sound like Dazai already knows what's ahead, he just doesn't have the courage to say it.

Specifically, it's this line here: 出来過ぎた結末が　用意されてたって ("Even if the too perfect ending was prepared for me"). The lines following it are rather difficult to interpret through mediocre translations, but there's something about not being able to abandon ("it"? what? something or someone? "those who give up"?). We could continue with the interpretation that Dazai knows something about the future, about his ending, but there's actually another approach we can take.

I'm just spitballing here, but what was a more perfect ending for Dazai (whether prepared for him by an outside force or achieved with his own hand) than the one in which Oda lives and writes a book, and in which he himself gets the sweet release of death? Yet there's something he can't abandon - those around him, or life itself, or his own self that gave up.

I've heard the "main timeline is a prequel for BEAST" theory before and others may have also proposed what i'm going to say next, but i'll say it anyway: BEAST is the prequel to the main timeline. (Or better yet, it's both, with some variation. But that's too convoluted for now.)

The line that i mentioned before about "saving someone who's by your side" might hold the key to this idea, depending on how accurate the translation is and how we interpret it. It depends on if being "beside someone" is meant as like being with "someone important" or more like literally being next to someone, even being with them in life. Because as much as Dazai found the ending of BEAST as perfect as it could get, it is still not the same as being able to stand next to Oda in every sense of the word - at the same place, at the same time, in life, as friends, as equals.

Then there is this line: 自問自答を繰り返して　撰(えら)べ　本当はどう生きたいのか / 本性が知る解釈、根拠はそこにあるだろ (Unavoidable decisions, even if they are arranged, am I just a dull existence if I just accept them") where Dazai shows reluctance to accept something predetermined, "unavoidable decisions" such as those that would lead to either Oda or Dazai surviving but not both. There is also the implication of things being arranged by an outside force, so if we go with this assumption then the previously mentioned "perfect ending" could also be said to have been prepared for Dazai by this outsider, even if he presumably arranged it himself as he says.

And this is where we delve into the truly meta part of this analysis.

IV. The role of Dazai

First, I'm going to go back to the part where Dazai is shown to mouth along to the lyrics in the opening sequence. He is the only character to do so, effectively breaking the fourth wall by engaging with an anime opening theme, singing along to the line specifically mentioning a heartbeat, and saying out loud the lyrics that would otherwise be considered only as inner thoughts (like with character songs etc).

This is not the first time Dazai has shown to take on a role precariously close to directing the narrative. He does this explicitly in BEAST, whose universe exists because of his own meddling with reality. In the main timeline, his predictions and strategising border on the omniscient and almighty.

There is one significant line towards the end of True Story that is worth examining now: 今語る言葉　物語を創る ("The words I speak now create the story"). This line could mean that Dazai is currently crafting the story to save that someone, to create the life he wants to live etc etc everything that the song is about. But it could also be related to him specifically singing this song, the opening theme of Bungou Stray Dogs Season 4, and laying out the story that will take place this season.

All of these things add up if he truly is an existence beyond ordinary humans or abilities, like something intricately connected to The Book. That is because there is at least one more existence that's found these things - namely, the author.

With that in mind, if Dazai knows that the endings (of BEAST and/or of the main timeline) have been prepared for him by someone else such as the author, that could be the reason why he says the line "Don't trust anyone, write it down yourself" etc. To be precise, that could mean that Dazai acts as the "author" of the current arc in defiance of the true author (and the lyrics contain a lot about "truth" that i haven't touched upon at all).

But what does that mean in the long run? Is Dazai the author? Is Kafka Asagiri the final villain? Who is the mastermind? Idk, this is already the furthest my brain has gotten for now.

I do want to quickly mention an interesting discussion i saw recently about how the different instalments of bsd all have separate protagonists, who are not Dazai - yet Dazai remains this central character in all of them, somehow deeply rooted to the narrative yet standing at a distance from it. And that may be precisely due to his nature of being more than just a "character" of bsd as we know them.

So, to put together allllll of these different points and make sense of what i've been trying to say:

The existence of Dazai's character and abilities must be explained by something adjacent to The Book, or something even beyond the in-universe explanations.

Dazai is able to alter reality, either in his own right or with help from The Book (which may itself be connected to him) but the alterations he makes may have been compelled by a greater force.

In the event that BEAST acts as a prequel to the main timeline, Dazai's dissatisfaction with the pre-determined ending (and distrust of others) leads him to write his own story, in order to save someone important to him (Oda, if we take the word "someone" at face value, or it could be something more abstract like the value of his own life).

This act of writing with/into his soul relates to the reality-altering aspects of writing into The Book or its pages, so the entire main timeline can be considered as originating from words on paper following the events of BEAST.

Dazai goes from protagonist to author (which also explains his Godzai moments) but this very act pushes him outside of the story, thereby alienating himself from the circle of characters. Effectively, he has taken on all three roles of Reader, Writer, and Protagonist.

Then, how about the "we may or may not already know how it all ends" that i alluded to in the title of this post? Easy: it ends when Asagiri stops writing.

Sorry i couldn't keep out the Omniscient Reader's Viewpoint brainrot at the end there. But if you know what i'm talking about then you get it.

[ataraxiaspainting]

Secrets of Wisteria.

Yan (Serial Killer) ??? x GN Reader.

Synopsis: They don't know what to do with you.

Warnings: Yandere themes, kidnapping, gender-neutral yandere, violence/mentions of gore, thoughts of murdering the reader, manipulation, implications of sex work, mentions of starvation, drugging/alcohol, stalking, and dehumanization.

Word Count: 1.3k.

insert your fav!

*~*~*~*

It is said that everything in the universe has its place as a part of a side of a never-tipping scale.

A shining star provides warmth but also burns the flesh of those who get too close. The moon resembles that of an Earth erased of all life, a planet in all but name to some, promising to be a guiding light, but in reality is just a cold, desolate land. 

Do such beautiful stars ever scorch the adjacent moons? Do such pale, blue moons ever cause the brightness of adjacent stars to die with a shallow, husky breath? Do they simply stay with one another, because despite being able to hurt one another, the chain of space forces them to stay together?

Questions that, because of you and because of them, may finally be answered. It hurts them but also entices them.

Despite everything you had been through together, you had hurt them in ways no others have ever done.

They suffer whenever they are near enough to smell your perfume, wanting to close up their nostrils, throat, and mouth before they go down in a flame of their own making. 

The perfume is mixed with the scent of others’ sweat and pleasure, staining it in what feels to be shades of a dirty, dark black. If only you could see it, the blind fool you always were and still are.

They suffer whenever they hear your voice, see the way your lips move, your moans and little gasps. It sounds more tempting than that of a siren’s call.

Your face, the way you bat your eyelashes to get what you want. Your eyes are brighter than any supernova.

Their entire being is a black hole that wants nothing more than to swallow you.

You hurt them whenever they think of you, never wanting to burn an image of you so deeply into their brain. But, like a parasite, you unknowingly persisted. Now it is so rooted, that it has replaced some of their nerves and has left them wanting so much more. They are addicted to this poison you have created and forced down their throat. It is only fair that they get to do the same to you.

They put something in your drink to make everything down the road that much easier.

Being a blind fool, you didn’t notice that your wine turned into a deep shade of pink.

Pink in your cup, and red in theirs. The colors of love.

They didn’t have it in themselves, despite all of the unfortunate souls they have banished to hell, to put cyanide in your glass.

It would have been a much more merciful death in their opinion, though. It was fitting for a rat like you. But also will give you so much less pain than those who have met their end by a torturous blade.

You gulped it down with such ease. They were, to say the least, your favorite patron, giving you no reason to doubt them.

It was so hard to make money these days, especially in a town like this. You were grateful for them.

But still, you decided to hurt them.

It’s your fault, honestly—all of it. You are the sole reason that their kills aren’t as sharp as they used to be, so much more impulsive than they used to be.

They almost got caught just the other day. They had sprung into action without a thought in their mind to go for a person who looked just like you from behind, down to the clothes they wore.

It's all your fault. It's all your fault.

Whore.

That is what they want to say.

But they cannot, not yet at least.

…

“Come, we are almost there.” With each step down the stone stairs, a water droplet falls from above, the underground tunnel’s top.

These walls are older than some dynasties if their memory recalls. Made of the bones of traitors and peasants who have passed on from much more painful pains.

It was easy to sneak some of their victims’ bodies in here and place them in such a way that no one would ever know the truth.

“Why here, my dear sponsor?” Your eyes follow the lantern in their left hand, swinging left and right like a pendulum.

They don’t answer.

You don’t ask any more questions, your limbs feeling heavy from all of the walking and the alcohol.

“You trust me, don’t you?”

The rocks below you feel like they are moving. “Sure.”

You must have gone so deep into the earth by now that you can practically see the gates of hell. The lantern’s light is almost out, and the air feels heavy and damp.

“We are almost there.”

You feel so dizzy.

They feel so elated.

Not a word is said until they suddenly stop. A split path.

They point to the left.

You wait, but they do not move.

A second. Two. Three.

Is that uncertainty they see in your eyes?

That is new. It makes them excited for what is to come next.

“Simply go down that hall and you will see the cellar… I will be right behind you.” They added that last part to quell your questioning gaze.

They have never lured anyone here alive before. But like everyone else who has seen these catacombs and their cellar, you won’t leave them alive.

They can’t leave you as much as they try.

It is only natural that they use the chain that holds you two together to their advantage for once.

Their truth works. Your second thoughts vanish like the trapdoor and the ladder down the hall, to the beginning, an entrance to a hell you will never be able to open again.

It is quite fortunate to them that you are such a blind fool.

It is quite fortunate to them that you overlooked that skeleton that looked a little too fresh.

It is quite fortunate that they are such a good planner. They didn’t starve the man for nothing, it seems.

“...Alright. But… I will get my pay after this, won’t I?”

They nod.

“Of course.” They reply. “What sort of patron would I be if I did not give you what is due?”

Such a blind fool you are.

They’ll keep you. You are simply too stupid and too tempting to be free. “...Thank you.”

Along with the words of genuine gratitude, the flame finally extinguishes.

“...Huh?”

A swift chop is the last thing you hear, your body collapsing is the last thing you feel and see before you go unconscious.

“For everything.”

They don’t drag you like they do the others, instead putting in the effort to pick you up and curl your head into their chest.

“...”

This brings back memories both bitter and sweet for them. The first time you laid on the bed. The first time you kissed them. The first time they managed to drag someone else unconscious down here, although with much less care.

“...I mean it.”

They cleaned up everything in the cellar just for you, all of the gore disposed of. Though their trophies will remain. The brain of a doctor in a jar. The eyes of a photographer. The left hand of a young widow, the ring still on the rotting finger.

It will serve as a warning to you to behave, hopefully, for your sake. Making them angry is a bad idea for everyone involved. They would hate to bandage your broken limbs and stitch you back together like some stuffed toy. 

As they hum a tune only you have heard, they think of what collar to place on that pretty neck of yours. It is an important decision. That collar will stay on you far past when you are mounted on their wall, after all. But that is years if not decades away.

“...Thank you. You made everything so much easier.”

The scale tips in favor of the pale blue moons.

*~*~*~*

Hunter x Hunter - Feitan, Hisoka, Illumi.

My Hero Academia - Dabi, Bakugou, Shigaraki, Overhaul, Enji.

Jujutsu Kaisen - Geto, Sukuna, Toji, Kenjaku, Mahito, Mei Mei.

Genshin Impact - (Fatui Harbinger/Fake Archon) Scaramouche, Arlecchino, Columbina, Dottore.

Honkai Star Rail - Sparkle, (Mara Struck) Jingliu, (Mara Stuck) Blade, Kafka, Dr. Ratio.

Bungou Stray Dogs - Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Final Fantasy VII - Sephiroth.

Demon Slayer - Muzan, Sanemi.

Hazbin Hotel - Alastor, Valentino, Vox.

Twisted Wonderland - Jade, Floyd, Leona, Rook, Lilia, Vil, Jamil.

Chainsaw Man - Makima, Barem.

Baldur's Gate III - (Ascended) Astarion, Cazador, Shar, Rapheal, Minthara, Mizora, Zariel.

*~*~*~*

free pdf of the cask of amontillado if anyone's interested!

[polichinelle]

yeah fuck it i'm making this its own post. basically very long winded (but still not as extensively detailed as i'd like) thoughts on adam & ronan (sort of) & whelk & noah

i remember reading the raven boys back in 2014 (ten years of rot in my brain!) and being sooo disappointed that there was basically zero fandom interest in whelk & noah beyond "omg whelk is evil and awful and terrible, poor baby noah!" when that is not the narrative surrounding them, not really. i feel it's a disservice to both of their characters to do that, especially noah's:

there is nuance there. there are implications. like... it's ALL about the implications!!! we basically see nothing of whelk and noah beyond what's left after the carnage. and it's a theme in trc for characters to have irreparably changed before we ever meet them (gansey, ronan, whelk, noah). we don't know what they were actually like when noah was alive, when they were best friends. when they were tight as ticks.

what we do know is this: whelk was noah's gansey. whelk was cheating on his own girlfriend with noah's, which is a shitty thing to do for sure, but something we also have zero context for. we also don't know how true it is, because whelk has such a self-inflicted warped view of his past. he keeps rewriting his own memories to think lesser of noah, because his absence hurts that much! we know they were best friends, the same way adam & ronan are best friends with gansey. we know they did everything together

okay, changing gears a little.

i'll paste the part where adam is possessed, sorry for the amount of screenshots:

and this line from a bit further along the chapter:

then, from noah's possession scene:

compare this to whelk's recollection of killing noah, and the effects it had on him:

"red lines streaked in the corners of his vision" "in whelk's head, unearthly voices hissed and whispered, words blurred and stretched together" "dictated by something larger and more powerful than himself" "somehow invited into his body through czerny's death" yes i am going there, yes i am making that point. i think, to some extent, barrington was possessed when he murdered his best friend. neither noah nor adam get their own pov while possessed, so...

i mean, time is a circle. noah needed to die so that gansey would live. noah had already died, gansey had already lived. it needed to happen, and so it would.

where the difference lies, i think, is in barrington's reaction to being possessed, versus adam/noah. for all that i'm arguing possession, i don't think barry's a stand up guy, he's a kid who's never had good role models (need i pull out the quotes about his shit parents) and who was raised by money and objects and reputation, which is why i think the possession worked. the idea to kill noah might've seemed like his own in the moment, an escalation of the situation he was already in, but unlike adam/noah there was no one to hold him back (not to mention barrington isn't as familiar with magic things(?) as they are). in that moment, whelk did truly lost it. he did the unforgivable. but there is no universe in which he doesn't.

for every time we see noah reenacting his death, we also need to imagine barrington whelk, seventeen and shivering. realizing as he's committing the act that he can't go back. perhaps realizing too that he couldn't stop his hands from gripping onto that skateboard, no matter how much he wanted to after that first hit. ("But instead, he remembered the sound Czerny made the first time he hit him.")

there's also adam in this. both him as a parallel to barrington, and as a strange sort of part of noah in a way. adam and noah interact the least out of the main group, arguably, but they too are a two-headed creature; they started out as one singular character and you can sort of tell. something something hands and eyes, something something sacrifice. ronan sort of parallels noah, in that he is not the same lively person we hear about, and he never will be that person again. both are cabeswater personified (although in different ways).

some more things:

"he once had been tight as ticks with his roommate czerny" "only whelk and czerny, treasure hunters and troublemakers" "it was possible that czerny's death wasn't for nothing after all" "[...] his days a ribbon floating aimlessly in water" (in relation to: "he had been a swimmer himself, once") "czerny, you're in a better place than me, i think" "whelk, standing in the wreckage of his life, didn't laugh this time" "the dry, half-eaten burger on the passenger seat / the first fast-food burger he'd had in seven years" "these days, when whelk was trying to comfort himself, he told himself that czerny was a sheep, but sometimes he slipped and remembered him as loyal instead" "[...] took him back to that moment, the skateboard in his hands, the sad question gasped in czerny's dying sounds "we were friends like —"

also, whelk dying in the same place noah did. these lines:

both noah and barrington look the same in the end. broken, rumpled, forgotten. noah's family will never know his bones were reburied outside of their family plot. whelk's mother, however distant she is, will never be notified that her son has died. i think in a way barrington died at the exact same time noah did; something something invited into his body through czerny's death.

basically what i'm getting at is, noah and barry could've been ronan and adam i think, had the circumstances been different. they never will be, but i think about it sometimes.

and there's so many more things i'm not even gonna TRY going into, like noah and whelk both being parallels to gansey (the three of them kings in their own right), or the disparity between whelk talking about czerny vs adele talking about noah, or whatever the fuck is going on with whelk's backstory in general (what's the deal with his mother? how the hell did he get the aglionby job? a random headcanon of mine is that his and noah's search for the ley line lead them to fox way, seven years before the events of the book, and that's partly why whelk refuses to give out his name to maura, because barrington is hard to forget, and easy to trace back)

there is so much to talk about here and i'm so peeved no one is doing it properly... why are we still talking about declan bringing his weekly girlfriend over to monmouth for no reason when we could be talking about whatever the fuck kinda soul-fate-destiny bullshit noah and whelk have!

[pipnchips202]

while i eat up practically every valgrace fic i see, down bad jason grace for leo valdez is always one of my absolute favorites; so, here are 5 valgrace fics where jason is the pining one :)) (for the most part)

1. hopeless case by restinreeses

rating: teen and up

warnings: none

“Nico,” Jason wheezes as he slams the door to the Hades cabin open. “Nico, I think I’m in love with my best friend.”

“No, really?” Nico drawls, barely looking up from his book.

Or: in which nico is jason’s wingman this time around.

AHHHHH!!!!!! this is REALLY good; i love the characterization and the many implications of jason having helped nico get with will prior to the events of the fic. also, platonic jasico will ALWAYS get me.

2. EP: things leo does; by jason grace by jacksonpercy (robertmontauk)

rating: not rated

warnings: none

God, he loves Leo’s laugh. It’s more like a giggle than anything - all high-pitched and bubbly; his mouth stretches into the widest smile Jason’s ever seen, and his tongue sticks out of his tongue just a little bit, and holy fuck Jason’s in love with Leo.

Shit.

[leo does things sometimes, and jason notices.]

i was very much obsessed with this fic at some point (still kind of am, actually). it’s basically a 5 + 1 of jason just pining for leo and i LOVE it. small warning though, there is a mention of kinks in the second chapter, if that’s weird for you. it’s really just an offhand comment and doesn’t get brought up again, so do with that what you will. they are teenagers after all, and as a teenager myself, i can confirm i’ve thought of similar stuff several times! but, anyway, this fic is really good.

3. staring at me (with your lips and tongue) by ethannku

rating: teen and up

warnings: none

“You really believe all that?” Leo asks, and if Jason were more aware of the world, he might’ve registered the hopeful breathiness in his voice. But as it is, he’s far too focused on the hand on his chest. He nods anyway, once he realizes Leo’s asked him a question.

Leo huffs and leans closer while simultaneously pulling Jason closer.

For a moment, they just look at each other, their noses inches apart. Leo’s breath comes in soft puffs on his face. There’s a hint of a smile on Leo’s face, but the corners waver as if he’s having second thoughts. Jason registers Leo’s eyelashes flickering, and his blood sings when he realizes he’s looking at Jason’s mouth.

Or; Jason is down bad, and Leo might be too.

this one’s really good, too. lot of kissing. a few suggestive references/jokes but no suggestive actions, just kissing. also has many piper moments mixed in :)

4. Crooked Glasses by thebigqueer

rating: teen and up

warnings: graphic depictions of violence

leo & jason confess their feelings for each other in an arcane-themed alternate universe.

~~

Leo has always been flirty. When he casually smirks at Jason and tells him how handsome he looks; when he bites his lip suggestively and tells Jason that no, he doesn’t mind if he changes his shirt in front of him; when Jason asks what’s for dinner and Leo responds, “Not sure, but I know you’re the desert,” Jason doesn’t make much of it. Sure, an occasional blush and an attempt at jokingly flirting back, but Jason knows he doesn’t mean it. Besides, he isn’t special. If Jason had to count the amount of people Leo had made out with just in the past year, it might take both his hands.

But lately it’s been different. There’s a softness in Leo’s eyes when he catches sight of Jason, a more soulful smirk when he offers that they sleep in the same bed, a hopefulness when he asks Jason if he wants to come with him on his next haul.

i’m gonna be honest: although i plan to someday, i’ve never seen arcane. and this is an arcane au. however, even though i know absolutely nothing about arcane, i did understand this, i think. i’m putting it here because a) it’s well written, b) it does in fact feature pining jason grace, and c) i have very limited options when it comes to valgrace fics anyway, so i don’t have much of a choice. yes, there is action and a mild fight with sherman yang and connor stoll, but it’s not that graphic in my opinion, but that’s just me; what’s more graphic is actually the gratuitous descriptions of leo’s gorgeousness from jason’s pov (understandably so). anyway, this is a good fic; if you’re not familiar with arcane, you can probably still read it, because i enjoyed it quite a lot!

5. hold me, thrill me, kiss me by restinreeses

rating: teen and up

warnings: none

“You love me,” Leo declares, his smirk widening with every passing second. “You, the great Jason Grace, love me.”

He fumbles for his words, but they melt in his mouth as Leo's hands snaked up the small of his back – those delicate fingers tracing patterns into his skin that burnt worse than his SPQR tattoo.

“I wouldn’t call myself great,” he mutters at last. Leo leans in, raising one thick eyebrow.

“I dunno,” he says, “I’d say you’re pretty great.” His lips brush over Jason's, once, twice. “You know. For loving me.”

...

In which Jason falls and Leo catches him.

okay, so i was debating whether or not to put this one because jason is still dating piper during this fic. she doesn’t make an appearance, she’s only mentioned, but jason and leo kissing is referred to by the both of them as an affair, which might make some uncomfortable. however, this has absolutely gorgeous writing. is jason still in love with piper during this fic, though? no. a bit complicated. however, it is, once again, pining jason as promised. they kiss a lot in this one, too.

enjoy!

— piper <33

[is-the-owl-video-cute]

Would love for there to be some nuance with the HP thing. "Every HP fan is an antisemitic terf" are you for real? I, and a lot of other people, grew up with Harry Potter. It was the first time that reading really sucked me in. I got a story of an "other" that found a place to belong, and in the same way, I got a community of fans that felt the same way. Now everyone who was a fan is being told to throw away that history. You can't even pretend that you liked it once.

And now I struggle. JKR is an abhorrent human being. She constantly doubles down on her bigotry, and is proud of it. I don't read any of her shitty detective novels, I'm not on Pottermore, I never got Hogwarts Legacy, even though all I wanted for years was an open world game in that universe. JKR will not see a dime of my money, nor will I involve myself in any way with anything new she does.

This whole thing has tainted so much of my childhood. I remember staying up late reading. Going to school, talking about the books with my friends who also stayed up late reading. Those were great times in my life. Now, whenever I reminisce, Tumblr is there in the back of my mind telling me how bigoted I am. How much of a TERF that I am. It's depressing.

Oh cry me an ocean about how you feel guilty that people don’t like you indulging in a piece of media that is actively used as a means to harm marginalized people in the real world. Are you actually going to come here and act as though you having social pressure to not put your Hogwarts house in your bio is anything compared to what trans people have to deal with from the author? Especially trans women in the UK. What’s depressing is you drowning in self pity about woe is you because people aren’t super stoked that you knowingly engage in something written by someone who is even now harming vulnerable people?

The thing about growing up is sometimes you have to actually grow up and stop taking things as a personal attack. If you grew up playing a video game and loving it and then it turned out the mind behind it and primary profiteer as such was actively a grand wizard of the KKK and you look back to the games and see ominous parallels between that deep hatred for marginalized people in the games themselves, I would not respect you for continuing to enjoy those games. If your favorite book was written by a serial child predator and you were bemoaning about people reacting coldly to the idea you still greatly enjoy that book, I would not feel sympathy for you. And I will not feel any level of pity for you if you are still in current year finding justifications and excuses to be a Harry Potter fan.

The implication you consider it tainted, not because you were able to reflect on how deep rooted the antisemitic and racist and pro-authoritarian themes are in the story and how easily we all just failed to notice it at the time, but because you are criticized on tumblr for still being a fan is not lost on me here.