#me actually posting meta??? it's a fucking miracle

[chuckwon]

Concept: Jack Kline was turned into an Ostium

And looking at how the Ostium was used in the season finale further underscores what will be needed in the future for the story to move forward, and for Jack and his family to heal.

Let's go through it:

LATA: Our box has a name. They call it the Ostium.

CARLOS: Oh. Latin for "an opening in the body." What, didn't any of you guys ever go to Sunday School? ...So is that thing organic? Is it a mouth or... [chuckles] any other kind of hole?

LATA: Let's just stick with a mouth, please.

ADA: So this box eats monsters?

–SPNWIN 1x07, "Reflections"

–––

ADAM: It's one of my ribs, dude. Everything can contain the spark of the divine, but this puppy? It's packing enough punch to create life. Or, in your case, destroy God.

SERAFINA: Jack, making your vessel strong, reclaiming your human soul, it was... it was all preparing you for this.

JACK: What'll it do to me?

ADAM: Start an elemental chain reaction. It fuses your soul and your grace into a... Like a...

SERAFINA: Metaphysical supernova.

DEAN: Meaning what?

ADAM: You'll collapse into a living black hole for divine energy. One nothing can escape—not the darkness, not God himself. But once it starts... you can't stop it. So, don't use 'til game time. You dig?

–SPN 15x17, "Unity"

–––

Dean: All that prep work we did to turn Jack here into a cosmic bomb? Oh. Well, it turned him into sort of a power vacuum. He's been sucking up bits of power all over the place.

–SPN 15x19, "Inherit the Earth"

–––

"A living black hole for divine energy" / "a power vacuum" is akin to how the Ostium functions. (And remember that Chuck orchestrated this outcome.)

The final step of Jack's transformation in 15x17 and the way the Ostium is activated are also similar:

Adam's rib, containing extra "spark of the divine," was placed in Jack's palm and he absorbed its power. After his initial explosion outward, Jack was then turned into a vessel that acted as a vacuum for divine power.

When an item was placed on the Ostium–like a rock from the Akrida's world–it absorbed the item, which determines what powerful beings the box "eats" and where it sends those beings when activated.

Both Jack and the Ostium were also wielded as weapons.

Which, of course, this show condemns explicitly:

LATA: So you had a friend stuck in a cycle of violence, and instead of helping him, you wielded him like some kind of weapon?

–SPNWIN 1x06, "Art of Dying"

And, with Joan / the Akrida Queen, we saw what happened to a hunter who absorbed monster essence: she became corrupted.

JOAN: What I decided was that the monsters weren't the problem, kid. Mankind is the problem. They always need saving. And Hunters are the ones who end up paying the price with our lives. And then what do these rescued humans do with their precious second chance at life? They waste it… kill each other, beat each other down, destroy our planet. Monsters have it right. Humans are nothing more than food.

LATA: Is that you talking? Or is it the monster essence that's powering you?

MARY: The monster essence drove her mad. She became so obsessed with making sure that Hunters were protected, and she believed the only way to do that was to wipe out everyone who needed saving.

–SPNWIN 1x13, "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye"

(Joan is also a dark mirror for Dean, but that's a separate meta topic entirely.)

With how Jack is acting in 15x19 and the SPNWIN finale (and as part of Chuck Won as a concept), something seems to be wrong with him along those lines.

So in regards to the Ostium, what was the solution the team used in the season finale? What did they need to defeat the Akrida Queen?

ADA: The Queen is about to sing her swan song. We can't rewind this tape here.

CARLOS: Wait. What if we could rewind the tape? Metaphysically speaking, if you know what I mean.

–SPNWIN 1x13, "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye"

–––

CARLOS: Well, whatever you feed it creates a portal connected to that object. So we fed it the rock, and it was able to shoot the Akrida back to their world.

MILLIE: So, if we feed it the journal and trace the sigils in reverse, the Ostium can bring here whatever was tied to the journal... the Mystery Man, if he's even alive.

–SPNWIN 1x13, "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye"

They reversed the polarity of the Ostium to try to summon Dean, which required using the journal–something “personal” and “clearly connected” to him, as Mary said at one point.

Now, of course, the result when they used it on the Ostium was that it gave the team the Impala rather than Dean for plot reasons. However, the point holds: Dean's journal was the key to metaphysically rewinding the tape and getting the Ostium to release / return what it had absorbed.

That journal was filled with Dean's thoughts, which we got throughout the show in the form of the story he's telling / narrating. They're the healing lessons repeatedly demonstrated by the 1972 gang that Dean has to use in his own life to free himself from the trap he's in, break the cycle of violence, and get his own happy ending.

So, follow the through-line:

The Ostium and Jack are seemingly similar. Just like Dean's journal was used to reverse the Ostium and get it to release/return what it absorbed... The lessons inside of Dean's journal are what’s needed to reverse the polarity of Jack’s transformation, getting Jack to release the God power he absorbed too.

And what are those lessons in Dean's journal? Ah, well, that's what The Winchesters (the story Dean is telling) is dedicated to showing and telling us. That's the function of the entire show.

To highlight a few mirroring moments relevant to the topic at hand:

TONY: You're scared of your own son?

ADA: I'm not scared of you. I... you are my son, and I love you.

TONY: If you love me, you would've told me the truth.

[...]

ADA: I... was wrong to lie to you about who you are, and I was even more wrong for not believing in you. I know you're not your father. You're not the worst parts of him. You're not the worst parts of me. You're just... you're my... You're Tony.

–SPNWIN 1x05, "Legend of a Mind"

----

MAC (possessing John): Why did you give up on me?

TRACY: I didn't know how to help you. I was scared.

MAC: I was scared too. I needed my family by my side.

TRACY: I know it's about ten years too late... but I'm here now, and I am so sorry.

LATA: It's not too late, Mac. You can still break the cycle.

–SPNWIN 1x06, "Art of Dying"

–––

MARY: Because I still want to get out of hunting. I really do. But it's not gonna be at your expense.

–SPNWIN 1x06, "Art of Dying"

–––

Mutual honesty, apologies, and forgiveness between Dean and Jack are the vital place where they must start. After all... Jack went through with his transformation and later with the corrupting absorption of God power simply because he was desperately trying to earn Dean's forgiveness, something that was repeatedly emphasized throughout season 15. The cycle remained intact instead of broken, and that's why they lost.

So saying that they need to reverse the polarity... What does that mean? It means that their family needs to have emotional release for there to then be the cosmic release of God power, so that that power can be put back out into the universe and no longer have personhood.

Only then will they break the cycle of violence and be able to be free of Chuck's influence once and for all.

You don't need Jack and Ostium parallels to understand and know this about the story. But I do think it's neat, further enhances the overall themes, and once again supports the fact that a Chuck won plot / what happened to Jack was deliberately being centralized! :)

[rageserenity]

It's 2024. Are you still thinking about movieverse!Cherik? Because I am.

For the past several months, there's only been a very slow trickle of posts/fics in the xmcu cherik tag. Let's try to breathe some life back into this incredible pairing!

With one clear winner of my poll, here's thirty prompts for the thirty days of April. (This is a super chill, laid-back event---do these in any order, interpret them as loosely as you like! Create in any medium! Fic, art, gifs, meta, incoherent screaming about the otp…all winners in my book.)

The only rule here is to cherik too close to the sun. Alright. Here are the prompts.

Mutual Pining

Doesn't really even need elaboration! Write that horrifically slow slow-burn. Gif every time McAvoy made insane fuck me eyes on screen. Make a playlist of songs about impossible love.

2. Alternate Meetings

There are endless quotes about how these two complete each other in a way no one they'd met before or after ever did. How else could they have met?

3. Erik Has A Telepathy Kink

This is basically canon. Let my boy get freaky!

4. Canon Fix-It

All the times Fox fucked it up. There are endless options.

5. Hurt/Comfort

Put them in that Situation. Put them in that Blender. Break them apart and put them back together ❤️‍🩹

6. Canon Compliant

Draw that missing scene! Gif your favourite cherik moment!

7. Beach Divorce

Make it worse. Make it better. Show it to us exactly how it was. Break it down in a 3,000 word meta. Go wild!

8. Domestics

Sometimes you just want to see them doing normal couple things. Erik put the gun down.

9. Found Family

The real heart of x-men!

10. Time Travel

There are SO many possibilities here. Stick them in a time loop. Give them a chance to change their past.

11. AU

Love a good AU!

12. There Is Only One Bed

Had to get this one in here. What better way to amp up the tension?

13. Genosha

By some miracle, cherik actually did end up together at the end of 2019s trash bag disaster Dark Phoenix. We aren’t making a big enough deal about this.

14. Declaration(s) of Love

Who says it first? How do they say it and when? Have they said it…without saying it?

15. Jealousy

Need I say more.

16. Reunion

These two have absolutely no chill.

17. Soulmates

Classic prompt, had to get this in here too.

18. The DOFP Aircraft

The TENSION here. Break it down for me. How does Charles feel about his injury? How does Erik feel about his injury?

19. Gay Mutant Road Trip

You already know.

20. Body Swap

SO fun when people have superpowers.

21. First Kiss

When? How? Who initiated it?

22. The Mansion

Mansion!content is a genre of its own.

23. Conflicting Ideology

Give me your theses. Who’s right? Can they ever reconcile completely? Write a fic where it drives them apart.

24. Sebastian Shaw

A trope unto himself.

25. Team As Matchmaker

They had to have known something was going on, didn’t they?

26. Cooking

Charles deserves a good meal. Also, imagine Erik using his powers in the kitchen. The sheer domesticity…

27. Hurt No Comfort

Plenty of scope with these two 🥲

28. Growing Old Together

Giving Sirs Ian Mckellan and Patrick Stewart their props as well!

29. Making Up

*pushes chess board across the table* sorry babe

30. Charles Xavier Did More For Mutants Than You'll Ever Know

Rising to each other’s defense. Only I can insult this man.

I will be tracking #revivecherik to reblog stuff! Here’s a fic collection for the same. Let’s get this ball rolling! Please feel free to send me an ask if you’ve got anything to say! And most importantly, let’s all have fun 😁

*I know a few of you preferred something like a gift exchange because of the commitment factor—I’m super down to organise a tiny one for the handful of us! If this promptathon doesn’t flop horribly, we can hopefully do a whole bunch of stuff :)

If you read this post all the way through, please reblog for reach! Thank you! Hoping you participate come April.

Shoutout to @inmymagnetoera for reaching out and helping with this!

[actual-changeling]

i feel like all my meta posts just clicked and solved a puzzle in my brain. however i am also currently upping my sleep med dosage so if any of this sounds like the incoherent rambles of a mad man it's cause i am. incoherent and insane and rambling that is. (not a man)

but i have to write this post since i had a lightbulb realization moment.

because the thing is, besties, that aziraphale is a fucking horrible liar. he gets nervous and fidgety, he stutters, you can SEE him sweating anxiety. just look at him in the bookshop when the archangels inquire about their not-so-little 25 lazarii miracle.

his best "lies" are when he is actually telling the truth but twisted. he has never been a good liar (see job) and that has not changed in six thousand years. all smiles directed at archangels are visibly wrong, his discomfort is tangible.

whenever he panics it is written across his face clear as day, including, and this is the important bit, when he is talking to the metatron.

now, you are wondering why exactly that matters, and the point is something we have all talked and thought about for ages but my brain just. formed some new neural pathways.

because he is a terrible liar, he is horrible at hiding his emotions.

but you know who isn't?

crowley.

unless you know him, it is very hard to read his facial expressions with his glasses on. he can turn his emotions "off", he can put a wall in front of them and by extension around himself.

i talked about it more in this post, so for background info have a look at it (if you want to)

it's crowley's thing yet there is one moment, one, glorious moment in which aziraphale executes it perfectly. and that moment mirrors crowley putting on his glasses, it is aziraphale attempting to hide away all of his feelings and thoughts so no one can tell what he is really thinking.

the parallels besties. the fucking parallels.

what really sells it to me is that last comparison because it matches too well to not be intentional. honestly, after the sink story i think every little thing in this show is done on purpose and with attention to detail, so.

the empty look, the heartbreak, the pain - the realization. this is it. i am not walking away from this unharmed but i am walking away. or rather into the loneliness, the absence of the person i love.

for aziraphale also the realization that the world is about the get fucked and he is not.

after that we have the inhale of courage. taking a deep breath to calm yourself, to find your way back to your body. a kind of preparation we have all done at one point or another.

the mask slides into place. or at least you want it to slide into place, you are trying to fucking jam it into the spot you need it to be but sometimes it's like trying to push the square peg through the round hole.

it's a disconnect, it's putting up a physical and emotional wall. crowley does it to hide away from aziraphale.

aziraphale does it hide from heaven and the metatron, yes, but he does it to hide from himself. at his core, aziraphale compartmentalizes. he is so fucking good at cognitive dissonance it's scary, and that's what happens here.

he knows, he KNOWS, that he needs to lock up his feelings or he won't be able to get into that fucking lift and do what he thinks he needs to do.

and so he walks away from crowley just like crowley walked away from him, copying him and doing exactly what he has seen him do a thousand times: putting up wall after wall after wall. ripping out every sprout of vulnerability before it can bloom.

except that he stopped doing it after the no-pocalypse, and that is why it hurts so fucking badly when he puts his glasses back on.

he is not ripping out a sprout, he is uprooting an entire fucking tree

aziraphale cannot hide behind sunglasses by crowley so he hides underneath an angelic persona, the person he thinks he should be, needs to be, and the problem is that whenever he slips into that role, it becomes him.

getting crowley to take off his glasses again is going to be a herculean task and the same goes for getting aziraphale to drop his act. they're one and the same in shape and origin and purpose but they are not indestructible.

because listen. all of this is painful and it hurts. it really is.

the fun part, however, is the fact that we know exactly what it takes to destroy that barrier, we have seen it happen to crowley before.

my point is that we are missing the parallel for said destruction.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

AITA for getting into a fight with my old boss for replacing me?

I (M19) worked for this guy (M late-30s) as a teenager for a couple of years in a very physically laborious job. I had a pretty shitty home life, and I came to see him as kind of a father figure. He was a bit gruff but was one of the only people who supported and looked after me. He helped me with school, taught me the ropes of the job, and consistently gave advice and backup when needed at work. Most importantly though, he helped me get out of my home situation, which is something I will always be grateful for. I tried my best to make him proud and be helpful to him.

However, while working there, I had an accident that prevented me from working for a while. I won't go into detail, because it would take time and I also don't want to get too gruesome, but I suffered major physical harm and couldn't work, go to school, or really do anything. It wasn't his fault at all, but he was the one that found me after it happened. I think he blames himself for what happened to me. It devastated me, because I really loved working there and working with him, and don't blame him for what happened.

I didn't see him for a while after the accident. In the time it took for me to recover and to be deemed okay to work again, I was desperate to return and see him again. It's actually a miracle I was able to work at all, as the professionals I'd seen all thought there was no hope for me. However, when I did go to see him, I realized that he had hired someone else for my role while I was gone.

To be clear, I hadn't applied for a job with him. He didn't have a job posted or anything, but knew about my home situation and offered me a chance to get away from my family and make some money by basically acting as his assistant.

So he didn't need to hire this other guy (M15), he could've left my position free for me to return to or just got rid of the job entirely. It doesn't help that he acted the same way with this other kid that he used to act with me, like some kind of a father figure/mentor. This other kid even looks like me, it's actually creepy. For all intents and purposes he replaced me.

Furthermore, the thing that caused my accident in the first place hadn't been removed either, which is just neglectful and puts others in danger.

I got so angry and jealous that I lashed out and took over Gotham's criminal underground, naming myself after the old alias of his greatest enemy, the Red Hood, and masterminded a plan to fuck him over. I beat up my replacement while wearing my old uniform, and told my old boss, Batman 🦇, that he could either kill me or kill the thing that caused my accident - or death - which was the Joker 🤡. He choose the Joker, so I blew up the building we were in.

In retrospect, I wonder if I might've overreacted slightly, so AITA?

What are these acronyms?

[marley-manson]

Could you expand on your dislike for the Raphael!Crowley headcanon? I'm fairly certain I know why but your meta posts are always so thoughtful and articulate and I would love to hear your thoughts on the topic

Thank you, I really appreciate it! And fwiw I always enjoy reading your thoughts as well!

And yeah I'm happy to! I mean first I should say that I don't actually like, hate-hate it in fanfic, it's not like an instant back-button for me if it comes up, and I feel like I've seen one or two fics after season 1 where I thought it was fine and it didn't take me out of the story.

But yeah in general I just don't like Crowley being special lol. I like the book vibe where Crowley and Aziraphale are just two... not quite nobodies, given their roles in Eden and the spy allegory of the present day, but certainly not particularly powerful or impressive demon/angels. Crowley and Aziraphale's "superpowers," such as they are, are just their adaptability thanks to living on Earth so long. That's what defines them compared to the rest of Hell and Heaven and sets them apart as uniquely capable of giving a fuck and doing something about the apocalypse. Eg Hastur and Ligur are explicitly more powerful than Crowley, but Crowley escapes them by the skin of his teeth because he's able to break convention by weaponizing holy water, and he's familiar with technology, and more capable of thinking on his feet in general.

I like that all their uniqueness comes from living on Earth with humanity. It resonates with the thematic core of the story, it's fun, and it's interesting. Crowley now being able to perform super impressive miracles and casually resurrect people (something presumably not every angel can do since Aziraphale can't resurrect Edinburgh girl) and read heaven's secret files and potentially stop time in season 1 because he's a former archangel diminishes that vibe to me.

Another con of Raphael!Crowley as a headcanon is that a lot of the time, ime, it feels similar to lost scion of royalty headcanons in other fandoms in an unpleasant way - the way that kind of leans into the idea of someone being inherently superior and worth more by birth (or creation I guess in an angel's case lol). I don't think this is necessarily inherent to the headcanon, or an aspect I think Gaiman will definitely emphasize, but there is that worry lol, especially considering how gary stu-ish Crowley felt to me this season.

Like, why is him being a former archangel meaningful or significant at all? Why does the headcanon exist? What makes Raphael!Crowley different enough from Random Angel #2398!Crowley that it's even brought up as a character detail or plot point that excites people? And I'm not implying that there are no valid reasons (eg exploring why a high ranking angel specifically would fall, or to add some drama for Aziraphale if he finds out and it matters to him, or to add drama between Crowley and the other archangels, etc), but quite often the vibe I get from this headcanon is that Crowley's just inherently more interesting and cool if he used to be a high ranking angel instead of some rando, which is a vibe that puts me off.

Ultimately I just tend to prefer mundane origins to surprise significant origins, and stories about average people (at least in their own context, as angels or w/e) moulded by life who make interesting plot-driving choices rather than inherently unique and special people. And Crowley being Raphael doesn't necessarily make him special, but it does lean in that direction, especially if it's treated as a surprise significant reveal and yk, a source of superpowers.

And to be fair I actually have been thinking about directions this concept could go in season 3 that wouldn't annoy me, and one is to emphasize that archangels aren't inherently special at all and it's an arbitrary designation, and Crowley doesn't give a shit and anyone who does (like other archangels or w/e) is going to be painted as naive and silly and too into hierarchies.

And/or, yk, emphasize that "Anthony Crowley" is emphatically NOT Raphael, regardless of who God created him as. Choose your own destiny. All that jazz. Especially if the Metatron is offering him angelhood again I could see former identity and status being brought into play and held up as extra significant by the antagonists and treated as something to be shut down and dismissed by the narrative, which I would enjoy.

So yeah, at the end of the day I just prefer Crowley as just some guy who happened to get the Earth Agent assignment, rather than the mysterious only fallen archangel.

[jotun-philosopher]

If you liked that, you might like this: Good Omens and World Of The Five Gods

Heyo! Time for another ramble~!

Good Omens has given me a bit of a taste for theologically interesting fantasy, which led me to the World of the Five Gods series by Lois McMaster Bujold -- let me tell you about it! (Not everything, but hopefully enough to whet your appetite and spark your curiosity ^_^)

Putting everything under a cut, because while this isn't really a meta and I'm going to try to avoid spoilers as far as possible, I am going to be infodumping so it's gonna get loooooooooong XD #AutismForTheWin

So! World of the Five Gods is set in a sort of fantasy-counterpart-culture version of Medieval Europe (more or less late Reconquista era), but with the map rotated 180 degrees. Consistent across countries and cultures is the Quintarian religion, which involves worship of a pantheon of five gods:

The Father of Winter, who deals with mature manhood, fatherhood, justice, fairness, leadership, natural deaths, male virility and suchlike. His colours are grey and black.

The Mother of Summer, who covers mature womanhood, motherhood, love and its results, female sexuality, birth, renewal and healing/medicine, among others. Her colour is green.

The Daughter of Spring, whose purview is youth, beauty, virginity, education and planting. Her colour is blue, which is frequently trimmed with white.

The Son of Autumn, who covers war, hunting, courage, harvest and emotion. His colours are red and orange.

The Bastard, the broadly benevolent but frequently inscrutable trickster figure of the pantheon. His purview is orphans, demons, disasters and chaos, illegitimate children, queer folks, executioners, divine justice where mortal justice fails, lives unnaturally cut short, "all things out of season". His colour is white. He likes it when his followers 'pray' to him by cursing him out, both because they're actually *thinking* about their situations and because he finds it hilarious. (His sense of humour is a bit odd...) At the uttermost end of mortal justice, when all else has failed, one can pray to the Bastard for a 'death miracle', which if successful will kill both you and the intended target via one of the Bastard's demons taking your soul and theirs.

The Quadrene religion views the Bastard as a demon rather than a god, and reviles as heretical those matters which fall within his purview.

The gods have total power over the world of spirit, but their ability to affect the world of matter is highly limited at best; they thus have to rely on mortal agents. The tool is not the work, though -- tools get broken, after all -- so being a tool of the gods tends to really fucking suck.

WotFG has (at time of writing) three novels and twelve novellas.

The novels are:

The Curse of Chalion -- The Daughter's book. An escapee from a slave galley seeks a position in the household of his old patroness, is assigned as secretary-tutor to the Royesse (= princess) of Chalion (roughly equivalent to Castile in Reconquista-era Spain) and does his darndest to protect her from the deadly court machinations of the PROFOUNDLY evil chancellor and his brother while also seeking a way to break the curse of the title. (Seriously, get you someone who's as fiercely loyal and devoted to you as Cazaril is to 'his ladies'!)

Paladin of Souls -- The Bastard's book, and direct sequel to Curse, taking place a few years later. Ista, Dowager Royina of Chalion, is fed up of being locked in her rural castle by well-meaning caretakers who mistake her god-touched status for insanity. She goes on what is ostensibly a pilgrimage for her mother's soul, and finds that the gods are not done with her yet... (not quite the little-old-lady fantasy hero I've seen tumblr posts about -- Ista's in her forties -- but she is *very* badass and outspoken; one can imagine her being played by Catherine Tate)

The Hallowed Hunt -- The Son's book, set about 250 years before Curse, in the Weald (roughly analogous to Germanic areas). Ingrey kin Wolfcliff is dispatched to a remote castle to collect a young woman called Ijada, as well as the corpse of the highborn would-be rapist whose head she bashed in with a giant war hammer. Devious machinations and long-laid schemes abound surrounding the Hallow Kingship of the Weald, into which Ingrey and Ijada are swiftly drawn.

The thirteeen (so far) novellas focus on Learned Penric kin Jurald, scholar and sorcerer-divine of the Bastard's order, and his demon Desdemona. They take place roughly 150 years after Hunt (so, about a century before the start of Curse) and start out set in the Cantons (equivalent to Switzerland), but Penric (and the stories) travel around a fair bit. There is some interesting gender-wibbliness involved as well, because all of Desdemona's hosts prior to Penric were female, still live on in some way within her such that Penric can channel and converse with them, and Penric has to cross-dress more than once (particularly and memorably channelling the courtesan Mira).

In terms of approximate internal chronology, the Penric novellas are:

Penric's Demon, Penric and the Shaman, Penric's Fox (collected in the omnibus titled 'Penric's Progress')

Penric's Mission, Mira's Last Dance, The Prisoner of Limnos (collected in the omnibus titled 'Penric's Travels')

Masquerade In Lodi [chronologically earlier than the stories in Penric's Travels], The Orphans of Raspay, The Physicians of Vilnoc (collected in the omnibus titled 'Penric's Labors')

The Assassins of Thasalon, Knot of Shadows, Demon Daughter (at time of writing, to the best of my knowledge, only available in e-book format)

edit 17/08/24: Penric and the Bandit (published 1st July 2024, ebook format only)

The novels and novellas can technically be read in any order (though, being a sequel to Curse, Paladin of Souls contains spoilers for that book). Personally, I find the worldbuilding easiest to digest when reading the novels in publication order (Curse, Paladin, Hunt), then the Penric stories. It's up to you, though!

The setting of WotFG as a whole (as I mentioned at the start) is informed to varying degrees by the history of Spain's 'Reconquista' era; the influence is especially strong in The Curse of Chalion, to the point that I'd strongly advise against making a drinking game out of it -- there are parallels to persons and events you wouldn't think could *have* parallels! Good fodder for a history-side-of-tumblr meta post, though, eh? ;-) (pls tag me if you do make one, I'd love to read it!)

Having come to WotFG from Good Omens, I have a particular soft spot for the Penric stories -- there are a few parallels with GO (a small enough number that it's probably safe to make a drinking game out of it -- though I'd still recommend tumblr meta-posts as the safer and healthier alternative!), all of which are more than likely genuine coincidences, but enough to add an ineffably lovely layer of enjoyment :D Have fun finding 'em ^^ (Srsly, the AU fanfics almost write themselves...)

Happy reading!

(tagging @ao3cassandraic and @vidavalor -- I get the feeling you'll like WotFG if you haven't run across the series already)

[osunism]

𑁍 O S U N I S M 𑁍

Hello y'all, welcome to my little corner of Tumblr! I'm Muse, the writer and fangirl running this blog. This is strictly fandom-related, mostly to house my 呪術廻戦 brainrot.

A rebloggable version of this.

I reserve the right to set and maintain boundaries with my blog and my writing. As a rule, I block ageless/blank/minor-run blogs. This blog is run by a real adult and so I only want to interact with other actual adults because my content lends itself to being adult-oriented.

Every original female protagonist I write unless otherwise stated is a dark-skinned Black woman. Sometimes I will include art or a model for closest approximation, but for the most part I make this explicitly clear in the narratives.

I usually only write OC/Canon ships. That is central to all of my writing. I know a lot of people are weirdly hostile about OCs being shipped with their favorite characters but I promise you it’s not and never will it ever be that serious. If you’re a dick to me about what I choose to write, at best the only attention you’ll get is a block.

That being said let’s just get this out of the way: I write characters who like to fuck. Sex is going to happen in my work so if that gives you the ick well…you’ve been warned.

I do not take requests. Writing is already very taxing for me given my health issues and schedule, and I want to focus on writing things that I personally enjoy, this includes prompts I choose to participate in.

Do not ask me about BioWare [Dragon Age and Mass Effect] content. Yes, my work is still available to read. But I no longer have any interest in creating content for that fandom, so don’t ask me about it.

My purpose and goal in my fanfiction is not to strictly be canon-compliant, and my interpretation of canon events and characters may [and likely will] differ from yours. Canon is not sacrosanct to me. If you find my work disagreeable because of this, feel free to go read the canon material!

If you like my work, pleasepleaseplease reblog it. Liking my posts or giving kudos on AO3 doesn’t do much if you don’t share it for others to read. Comments are encouraged and appreciated as well.

Due to the frequent racist hostility and unpleasantness in other fandoms I inhabit, my comments on AO3 are moderated as a rule. Be courteous.

Below is a list of all my current works. Since I’m currently only active in the JJK fandom, those are the works that’ll be listed!

⛩️ AO3 || FFN || OC Masterlist || Headcanons & Meta ⛩️

Fic Status Key

[♡] - AO3 version of the fic.

[⭑] - Tumblr version of the fic.

[♤] - Fanfiction.net version of the fic.

[🚩] - Dead Dove: Do Not Eat

[∞] - In Progress

[☥] - Rewriting

[☯] - Complete

Relationship Key

🧿👹 - Satoru/Sundari

⛩️⚔️ - Sukuna/Nadja

🧿🧜🏾‍♀️ - Satoru/Asabé

⛓️👸🏾 - Toji/Akasha

⛓️👩🏿‍🦱 - Toji/blackfem!Reader

Relevant Tags

#muse writes

#fic rec

#jjk x oc

#jjk x black oc

#jjk fanfic

#jjk fanart

#fic: [ficname]

#series: [seriesname]

#ch: [charname]

#oc: [ocname]

#otp: [shipname]

If [♡] [⭑] [♤] – One night, Satoru meets a woman who sears a place on his memory and in his dreams. Who was she? [☯] 🧿👹

We Might Even Be Fallin’ in Love [♡] [⭑] [♤] – The miracle of existence bridges the infinity between them. [☯] 🧿👹

Before It’s Gone [♡] [⭑] –Toji’s been darkening your doorway for a while and is only now realizing what you already knew. [☯] ⛓️👩🏿‍🦱

S O N D E R

This series, unlike Parallax, consists of stand-alone AUs with loosely-connecting narratives that share the universe. Some characters may reappear in these works from others, perhaps even in different roles, as different genders, with different origins. I’m playing with a multiverse thing here.

The Unforgiving Roads That Lead to You [♡] [♤] – Roxanne Abaza, the only foreign-born special grade sorcerer in existence, is called to assist with the wrangling and exorcism of Ryōmen Sukuna. What ensues is more than she bargained for. [☥]

Halfsleeper [♡] [⭑] [♤] – A young widowed sorceress seeks protection under the aegis of the Honored One, but he has a better idea for keeping her out of the clutches of her dangerous clan. [∞] 🧿🧜🏾‍♀️

Unsanctioned [♡] [⭑] [♤] – Bodyguard/Yakuza AU. Toji Fushiguro, who is in disgrace after having an affair with his boss’ now ex-wife, is now tasked with protecting her as the mercurial grounds of Tokyo’s Underworld begin to shift into uncertainty, putting the entire syndicate and anyone associated with them in peril. [∞] ⛓️👸🏾

P A R A L L A X

Beast of No Nation [♡] [⭑] [♤] – One night, the King of Curses took an over-curious fugitive of heaven to task. Over the course that night, and the many that followed, she found herself continuously drawn to the jujutsu world. [☯] ⛩️⚔️ || 🧿👹

Daughter of Disgrace [♡] [⭑] [♤] – In the aftermath of Satoru Gojo’s sealing, Sundari must choose rebellion in order to free him. Lucky for them both, rebellion has always been her preferred modus operandi. [∞] ⛩️⚔️ || 🧿👹

© 2024 Hajara Asiri. Do NOT copy, translate, plagiarize, repost anywhere without permission [reblogging posts is okay]. This includes my masterlist format. I only upload on Tumblr, AO3, and FFN. All general banners and dividers by @cafekitsune. Title banners by me.

[bbcphile]

Personal post alert!

I am so fucking tired of the fact that any attempt to treat one of my chronic medical conditions makes the others worse. It’s like the worst game of whack-a-mole ever, because no matter what happens, not only does the mole pop up again, but I keep getting hit with a hammer!

For instance, my doctor wants me to increase my mestinon dose to treat POTS and help control my heart rate, improve brain fog and muscle activation, and reduce fatigue. It makes sense! It’s a miracle med for so many people!

But for me, I can only increase my dose by a 1/4 tablet at a time (anything more and I’m having utterly agonizing stomach cramps and dry heaving. Ugh), and even that is flaring my MCAS and hEDS. It is definitely increasing muscle activation, because it is causing all the muscles in my body to cramp, so everything hurts, but worse than that, they are cramping so forcefully that they are pulling bones and joints so hard they’re out of position, so now several vertebrae, ribs, fingers, carpal bones, and one shoulder and knee are partially dislocated, and holy shit does that hurt!

It also is currently increasing the brain fog and fatigue, but I’m also in enough pain that I can’t actually fall asleep if I try to nap. This is saying a lot, because I have narcolepsy, too, so I’m usually fighting to stay awake.

It does not help that my brain decided now would be a GREAT time to give me back trauma memories I had blocked out (gee, thanks, dissociative barriers. 🙃 Ya know, my writing meta about trauma was NOT ACTUALLY AN INVITATION to remind me how bad experiencing it is), so every day is an “adventure” because I don’t know if it’s going to be a “compartmentalize the shit out of everything and write 4k words” day or a “have all the feelings and everything is terrible” day, and the oscillations between the two and everything that goes with it is exhausting.

All this to say: uggggggghhhhhh.

(Telepathic hugs or cute animal photos or fic/art recs about my blorbos would be greatly appreciated.)

[eisforeidolon]

Tumblr shows me such horrendous posts sometimes especially from tags like #dean winchester People genuinely with their whole chest think that he could have been saved from that rebar with a first aid kit 😂(even though he obviously couldn't plus they didn't have gods power anymore) and also thinking he gave up lol as if he hasn't said all along how he knew he'd die a hunter, wanted Sam to have a peaceful life & him dying first was best case scenario. They never listen to Dean the show or Jensen

Oof, yeah. It's been ages since I braved the main tags because - at least on tumblr - this fandom is a trashfire of bizarre and ignorant opinions. Like, just as a thought exercise, let's give the maximum benefit of the doubt possible.

I can see, to an extent, why after the light fantasy irreverence of the Dabb years, someone might be wishfully tempted to forget SPN's horror roots and think the Winchesters might not die at the end. Except Jared and Jensen made it pretty clear every time they talked about the ending that they saw the Winchesters dead at the end, one way or another. Except even when we were full on in the hunting-is-a-lark and constant resurrect-o-rama of Dabbernatural, it was still a show that revolved around monsters and death almost as much as it did the brothers' relationship. Except how do you even end a show where the characters constantly bring each other back from the dead in a way that feels significantly final other than them accepting death?

I can see, to an extent, why there would be some confusion over the severity of injuries, because the show never took them as serious as they would be IRL, Chuck or no Chuck. TV in general is pretty terrible about that. Except as much as I loathe the concept of the Winchesters only being competent and surviving because of Chuck, it was a thing in the show. Except we're talking about being stabbed fully through the main body cavity where there are a lot of pretty vital things you can't live with shish-kebabed. Even if it would have been possible to survive that injury IRL as some kind of medical miracle, it would definitely require medical professionals for him to survive getting off that rebar and they were in a barn in the middle of freakin' nowhere - being realistic is not "giving up". Except we're talking about a fictional character where the entire point was that the writers had decided Dean was going to die then, so it was a fatal injury because it was written as fatal. Except I think it's pretty obvious some fans only wanted Sam rushing around trying to do first aid to avoid 7 minutes of incest Dean's speech showing Sam was still the most important person in Dean's life to the end and he was perfectly capable of saying I love you - despite their reams upon reams of meta claiming otherwise.

I am not in any way saying anybody needs to be happy that Dean died, or even needs like the finale. I actually agree Dean's lack of self-worth and fatalism about how he'd inevitably die fighting monsters relatively young (especially when he said that in a particularly low moment) aren't good things, so him being ultimately right is actually really fucking sad. As is Sam getting the normal life he once wanted when IMO he no longer particularly wants it and it's at the expense of losing Dean after all they'd been through together. Disappointment, even disappointment one should reasonably have seen coming, is totally fair. The ending is meant to be bittersweet with the sweet part coming from the heaven reunion, and even dismissing delusional shippers? Not everybody is going to like that kind of ending. Except there's disappointment and then there's being really fucking weird about that disappointment by insisting a tv show owed you to end the way you wanted and further, it personally wronged you because no one tried to put a band-aid on a sucking chest wound. Also, a character dying from doing something dangerous and acknowledging they are dying when they get a fatal wound doing it instead of trying to insist they're okay is ... endorsing suicidal themes.

[waitingforwinterwinds]

Surprise, not dead!

So here's what's been happening: the day after my last post was a super heavy workload day for me and when I got home, I was kinda busy, and I thought to myself "I'll take a quick five minutes to just jot down some meta on the Ygritte/Jon Snow relationship regarding the sexual abuse, voided consent and the juxtapose of what I think was GRRM's intent versus what he actually wrote" because Rouka's right, that relationship is pretty fucked up in actuality, and that's not something I've been addressing (directly if at all*) in my read throughs for a couple of reasons, but I do kinda want to have a chat about it at some point. ("chat" I mean rambling thought train.)

(*like, to the point I think I've accidentally given an impression that I feel one way rather than another on the matter actually? maybe? That's gonna be awkward if true.)

several distractions, hours and pages later I have an incoherent mess between key points, that clearly needs to be put aside for a few days at the very least and several rounds of editing, so I save it, look over at the clock and think "how the fudge ducking hell is it so far after midnight???"

So naturally I think "it's fiiiiine, I'll do Dany's chapter in the morning and be back on schedule for evening."

More fool me.

The eagle eyed amongst my regulars might be able to tell you I have a weakness against psychic damage.

I'm prone to headaches.

It's actually a little worse than that: I'm genetically predisposed to migraines that send me blind. (Kind of a miracle this hasn't cropped up to this degree before now during the project.)

So I've been working on limited vision the past few days; that's stabilized and I'm back to my normal field of vision, but my brain does still feel incredibly bruised, and like someone's taking a sledgehammer to a pickax lodged in my grey matter if I step too enthusiastically.

I'm hoping to be back to the read through tomorrow, but we'll have to see.

The meta piece, if I end up deciding to go ahead with that one, will probably be a few days after Ygritte dies (omg spoilers) and if it does happen, after speaking with their agents, Steel Chair has agreed to be on hand for a special guest appearance.

And no, the fandom is not allowed to weaponise feminism on this one. (I've been in the female character tags, I know some of y'all will take any excuse whether you actually like a lady or not.)

Anyway, painkillers, hydration, and bed for me.

Goodnight~

[knbposting]

Not to be insane in the ask box but I was going through your knb blog (which is a miracle given that it's 2024 and not 2014) and all the kagami-posting just makes so😩😩😩

And MY personal crazy moment is that his cynophobia is treated as a joke because while I am personally not afraid of most dogs, I also scare myself with watching "It's me or the dog" type of shows and those animals can bite - we KNOW that Kagami had near death experiences in America and I'm sure his encounter with the dog landed him in a hospital getting stitches so I never liked it how Kuroko chases him with Nigou :(

PLEASE GO INSANE IN THE ASK BOX BESTIE otherwise i'm here going insane By Myself

i'm with you!!!!!!! i guess it's because kagami is the big, very tough, scary looking guy (also he's cat/tiger coded which might be important) and it's sooo haha that such a big guy is scared of a puppy, but it's not that funny to me either. like ik i sound insane but STOP MAKING KAGAMI CRY WTF???

i'm sure you saw my stupid meta about his near death experiences but i wholeheartedly reject his being bit on the butt like they try to tell us he did. not to belittle ppl who actually get bit on the ass but it's so clearly part of the joke and it's also sooo not funny whattt.

to me, they set up kagami to be the big tough main character, and then gave him a SHIT show of a backstory (neglectful parents, potential dead mother, having no friends for ages, being a sad sack, abandoned by his brother, language barrier issues literally wherever he goes, all those near death experiences, very very very big phobia of dogs, not liking his childhood nannies and not having any power to do anything about it, running away from home multiple times, becoming so strong at bball that he surpasses all his friends and they stop wanting to play with him, being called a monster, getting into scary situations with actual real bad guys (i.e. when alex makes him compete in those streetball comps when he travels to america in s2-ish). they built him up to be as traumatised a character as any of them (aomine in his loneliness, his insurmountable skill. akashi with his parental issues, neglect. himuro with his quasi-delinquent lifestyle. also fuck you himuro sorry idk what just came over me right then. anyway), and then they did nothing with it.

i'm not saying i WANT kagami to show trauma or anything, but his backstory is in canon absolutely miserable and yet they don't give him space to feel it? or to realise that he's deliberately not feeling it? they don't even give him a chance to express his opinion on any of it? the closest we get from memory is kagami saying that he was hurt by the dog, and what himuro did by leaving like that, but then he's back to being friends with him when they reunite. and that's just totally?? accepted as fine? idk bc i havent watched it recently but himuro FUCKED KAGAMI UP. he fucked up his trust, his enjoyment of their sport, his trust in himself, all of that. himuro is such a fucking slimy bastard to him and then it's :) just totally fine :) and it IS fine that kagami acts like that because it's in-keeping with his inability to register his own traumas. but nobody else has anything to say? i think kuroko gets close when he talks to kagz about it on the court in their game, but STILL? if i was kagami's bestie, i'd have some harsh fucking words for himuro i am TELLING YOU.

[time-is-restored]

do u guys think it maybe says smth that im currently getting more narrative + emotional fulfilment from dostoevsky that Hates You as compared to the fucking football sitcom.

anyway patho au thoughts below <3 <- (it actually turned into a manifesto abt my thoughts abt Original flavour pathologic. will add au thoughts in a reblog otherwise this is gonna be unconscionably long LMAO)

the thing about the Macro Metaphor™ (oh yeah baby this is gonna be a POST) in pathologic is like. at least w how i experienced it pathologic had to be a video game because it had to give its players the closest thing to free will that is possible in a world that has been crafted from the ground up to give you An Experience™.

and the fact that what little free will we APPEAR to have is largely an illusion cast by various dialogue trees stating that we are doing something unexpected is . very much the point! to get anything out of pathologic you have to 100% buy into the fiction as presented to you. bc the game is incredibly meta, that includes buying into the idea that what u are playing IS at its core a video game made by ppl w a very specific and esoteric mission statement, who are doing their level best to funnel u towards the themes + questions that they find most important within this narrative.

. okay ive gotta talk about The Loop actually strap the fuck in (note: a lot of what follows is copied + pasted from me explaining my feelings abt pathologic to someone who Has Not Played pathologic, so sorry if im being over explanatory at points!)

so in clara's route there's a specific bit of dialogue u can get w the developers where they say clara is 'the only one out of the three [protagonists] that could accomplish a True miracle. who could break the loop.'

the 'loop' in question is. kind of hard to pin down. but its basically referring to the inherent contradiction at the heart of pathologic existing as a game: the developers wanted to explore how it is impossible for a miracle to exist in anything other than a temporary moment of spontaneity. if you try to cage it, it is no longer a miracle, it is a process which has consequences (in the game, this consequence is - at least according to some povs - the plague):

SO they give the player a closed system of a world, in which free will is By Definition impossible (you can't do anything the developers haven't explicitly programmed in), and essentially ask you to perform a miracle. on one hand, they admit to hoping that you can do it. on the other, they acknowledge it's impossible, without some Other miracle interceding.

thats why, in this same conversation w the developers, they talk abt the other healers' endings like they are simultaneously predestined, and like they can be changed after all! like here:

^ put a pin in that 'except for a lapse of judgement, but we're not concerned with that' comment!

SO. this is what's so interesting about CLARA being (apparently!) able to break the loop

bc the only thing that concretely sets clara apart from the others (they all have a bunch of superficial differences, but im pretty sure its not bc she's a girl, or a child, for example) is that she has no backstory.

she wakes up with no memory of her life, no real understanding of herself outside of what she is being accused of being (a thief, and a plague bearer). she is able to lie (state something about herself that has nothing in the game supporting it) without lying (state something about herself that has nothing in the game contradicting it).

due to pathologic's own rules (in this case, im literally just referring to it being a video game that was coded by a team and then released on steam), there is no way for a character to truly do something unexpected. clara acknowledges this specifically and gets rlly morbid abt it here:

however! because pathologic is inherently a conversation between the developers and the players, and the developers can't actually control OR react to the completely internal experience the player has while playing the game, there is a level of free will here that can't actually be eroded!

the game can TRY to account for as many different dialogue options, quests, endings, general opinions abt the world + its characters, but bc the total amount of code has to stop somewhere before infinity, it can't get it 100% right. there are emotions + opinions abt pathologic that u are going to experience as a player that pathologic itself cannot or has not accounted for!

clara's miracle is that she's (in universe) as unrestrained by the programmers as the player is (out of universe). she can't be caged any more than u can! YOU can't be caged bc u literally don't exist in the world that the developers have 100% control over, even while they spend several hundred hours of gameplay trying to convince u that u do. and CLARA can't be caged bc there's literally nothing to tie her down! she has no degree of verisimilitude that she has to stick to, no bounds on what is reasonable vs unreasonable for her to do. we ultimately don't know enough about her for her to ever be 'out of character'.

pathologic is inherently a role playing game, but when clara (or, technically, you AS clara) rejects the role she is given, you break from one of the most restrictive shackles the game has had weighing u down in the past two playthroughs. daniils often a prick to ppl he shouldn't be, burakh can't be neutral about His Fucking Town Dying, etc. if u took those things away from the characters just to give the player more freedom AS a player, the game would be compromising with you - something that pathologic explicitly refuses to do (14% of ppl who play the game ever beating n1, etc).

but clara can say fucking ANYTHING!! like. i cannot emphasise enough that you, as the player, as clara, lie about the fact that you have an identical twin, and then summon this twin into existence. its literally the first thing you do in the whole game!

because that's the rule!!! the player cannot be allowed to say something about the world that isn't true, without the explicit and recognisable intent of telling a falsehood! but NOTHING that clara says can be demonstrated to be false, bc there's nothing to check against!!! the executors EVEN imply that the version of clara you meet throughout the game (the one u call the 'evil twin'), IS actually clara, and those conversations are the PLAYER talking to the 'original' clara. which means that by PLAYING the game, you are in equal parts replacing + rewriting clara!

again, this isn't even CLOSE to the degree ur able to transform the other protagonists - the opinions they do/don't have abt their own fate + endings are explicitly laid out to u in black and white. daniil can think the polyhedron is beautiful, OR he can be afraid of it, etc. while you can CHOOSE to change ur mind between each conversation, there is no 'both' or 'neither' option at any point. you have to pick from what ur given.

like . this is the dialogue u get after asking abt what the haruspex's route was 'about'. the line before this says 'Executor: Diverging branches. He was the only one who could attain true freedom. He wasn't facing the kind of dilemma that the ever-deceived Bachelor found so dismal.'

its like. this is simultaneously the most obtuse thing these fuckers say in the whole game but also!!! there were feelings involved!!!!!!!!!

the 'loop' is that there is no freedom, and yet there is love. the game is not real but you get attached to the player characters as if it is. you see things through their eyes, and start to agree that these pre-determined, tragic resolutions to an explicitly harsh binary choice are correct, for the characters enacting them (HENCE THE 'except for a lapse of judgement' comment! pull that pin back out! yes, anyone who plays the bachelor's route is able to CHOOSE to guide him towards another ending. but how many of those players are able to genuinely sit with the bachelor's ideals + fears, and convince themselves that that is an action he himself would take! not you, but dankovsky! the developer's aren't concerned with any given instance of the player abusing their authority over the healers' lives. they're INTERESTED in taking that authority and choosing not to abuse it. to commit to the world as written. to make the impossible choice).

clara's route is like yes obviously there is a journey programmed in here there is an ending just like there is for every other character, and clara (the npc, when you don't play as her) argues for it just as strongly as you do when ur playing her + taking her over. but what's JUST as inevitable is that someone will push past that, will play through her route, will separate her out from the developer's (admitted!) confusion + rush + muddled intentions, and make a true miracle happen! its a loop! but its a miraculous one! the miracle is that you played the game at all!!

look at this! look at clara staring her fate as written in the eye, and saying 'fuck off, im busy!'

the miracle is the fact that the developers, while making a game about how you cannot cage a miracle/force one to persist, gave the player enough freedom to prove them wrong. the miracle is the fact that clara rejects her fate-as-written, to be the plague bearer, to destroy the game and everyone involved in it, and instead DEMANDS to be a miracle-worker who can and will save the town and all the lives within it. the miracle is that you save everyone that it is possible to save. the miracle is that you want to save them at all. the miracle is that the player finishes all three routes of pathologic. the miracle is that anyone who experiences this game, first-hand or second-hand, whether they finished it or not, now has a totally unique experience w and interpretation of that game. freedom clawed from the jaws of a closed system.....

the miracle! is art!!!!! is the inherent flimsiness of communication, both symbolic and written and visual and auditory and!!!!!!!! the miracle is that you're playing a game made two decades again written in RUSSIAN while the game developers pull out literally every trick in the book to make you have a TERRIBLE time and want to give up and you DON'T!!!! you refuse to give up on what they're telling you! you refuse to not let this experience matter, in however small a way!!!!!!!!!

the miracle is that the game devolpers could not build a tomb foreboding enough to keep the players from diving in head first, crashing face first into spice traps and vats of acid and plague bearing rats and fucking homing-missile knives and. idk. mummies or some shit what the hell do you find in a cursed tomb

the miracle is that the game means something to you even when the game is actively trying to force u to give up + let go of any sense of agency and control. 'your actions are meaningless, you are helping no one, this bloodshed is inevitable and in many concrete ways you are making it worse' -> 'OH BOY DAY FIVE <3'

the miracle is also that clara convinces like seven fucking people to die for her but. y'know. this might as well happen.jpg

like . this is the dialogue u get after asking abt what the haruspex's route was 'about'. the line before this says 'Executor: Diverging branches. He was the only one who could attain true freedom. He wasn't facing the kind of dilemma that the ever-deceived Bachelor found so dismal.'

its like. this is simultanoeusly the most obtuse thing these fuckers say in the whole game but also!!! there were feelings involved!!!!!!!!!

the 'loop' is that there is no freedom, and yet there is love. the game is not real but you get attached to the player characters as if it is. you see things through their eyes, and start to agree that these pre-determined, tragic resolutions to an explicitly harsh binary choice are correct, for the characters enacting them (HENCE THE 'except for a lapse of judgement' comment! yes, anyone who plays the bachelor's route is able to CHOOSE to guide him towards another ending. but how many of those players are able to genuinely sit with the bachelor's ideals + fears, and convince themselves that that is an action he himself would take! the developer's aren't concerned with any given instance of the player abusing their authority over the healers' lives. they're INTERESTED in taking that authority and choosing not to abuse it. to commit to the world as written. to make the impossible choice).

clara's route is like yes obviously there is a journey programmed in here there is an ending just like there is for every other character, and clara (the npc, when you don't play as her) argues for it just as strongly as you do when ur playing her + taking her over. but what's JUST as inevitable is that someone will push past that, will play through her route, will separate her out from what the developers wanted from her, and make a true miracle happen! its a loop! but its a miraculous one! the miracle is that you played the game at all!!

[jasontoddiefor]

Tyki Mikk is a Clone and I can (almost) prove it

Tyki Mikk is undoubtedly a fan favorite and yet we don’t really know a lot about him. For a character that was created with the purpose of being handsome (cf. D.Gray-Man Manga Volume 5, page 150), he carries a lot of baggage and has a rather unclear past. A theory that has haunted me since I read chapter 198 and has only grown in strength with the most recent arc is that Tyki is in fact a clone of Nea. As far fetched as this seems at start, there is quite a bit of evidence supporting this theory.

1) Tyki’s visible similarity to Nea (and Mana)

One of the first things Wisely remarks on when he meets Tyki is his similarity to “a certain man” (Chapter 187).

This similarity is picked up twice more in the manga. When Allen meets Nea for the first time (cf. chapter 198), he mistakes him for Tyki at first.

And it is brought up a third time by Nea himself in chapter 225 when he says:

To which Tyki, or rather Joyd, has this wonderful reaction:

But more on that guy specifically later. Point being right here is that three different characters, or four if you want to count Road and Wisely separately, acknowledge that Tyki resembles Nea a lot, down to the man himself. How does that saying go again? Once An Accident, Twice A Coincidence, Three Times A Pattern? This is something that repeatedly gets brought up again. And this is without going into detail on how much Tyki resembles not only Nea, but said man’s identical twin as well. Just look at that dashing long hair!

And take this from chapter 158 as well

Pretty long haired boy Mana is nothing new as of chapter 218 and 219:

Another interesting point here is that Tyki is the exact same height as the Earl in human form! They’re both 188cm tall. Nea, on the other hand, is listed at being 177cm. This could just be that Nea unfortunately ended up as the shorter twin, or, we take into consideration what Mana tells Allen/Red in chapter 238:

He remembers being seventeen, which means that he and Nea probably weren’t done growing yet when the “Earl” corrupted Mana. (It also kind of makes everything about Nea more hilarious if you realize he’s just seventeen.) Tyki, however, is 26 when we first meet him and should be around 27 now. He is an actual adult and not bound to hit another growth spurt.

But to summarize the first argument: Tyki looks uncannily similar to Nea and Mana and the manga keeps pointing it out so we can assume this resemblance is important.

2) Cloning is possible in canon

Now the second point is just here to point out that we know cloning to be possible. Funnily, Tyki’s resemblance to Nea gets pointed out just before the Alma Arc, which very much deals with the concept of reincarnation – only there we have the brains of deceased Exorcists transplanted into youthful bodies.

However, it’s not as if something like DNA hasn’t been mentioned before. Specifically, it has been called “Helix of life” by no other than maybe-former-Bookman but definitely First-Nea-host Past!Allen in chapter 221:

So let’s assume that, in the aftermath of Nea’s “death”, PastA didn’t just wait around for Nea to wake again, but tried to find a vessel for him. Messing around with this helix, and whatever other dubious science and magic this world had to offer, and created a new body to host Nea. Except he failed, and the result is Tyki.

But if that is so, shouldn’t Tyki remember anything about that? Good question. Time for some more shady weird stuff about Tyki.

3) The Missing Years

In chapter 202, while the Earl is resting, Tyki talks to Road. I don’t speak Japanese, so I can’t verify which translation is more accurate, but I’ve found these two:

Now the official German one also goes with a similar translation as the second one here, implying that Tyki has been with the Earl for ten years. In any case, the fact that this decade at all gets mentioned is quite odd because it doesn’t match up with what we know of Mana travelling with Allen. Cross calls Allen a “ten-year-old brat” (chapter 208) when he looks after him. So between Mana travelling with Allen and current canon, only 6 years have passed – what are up with the other 4 that are supposedly within this decade? We don’t have a definite age for how old Allen was when he met Mana, but I’d say around 7 or older. That’s still not enough to fill out the decade they speak about here.

Now, presuming that it does in fact refer to Tyki staying with the Earl for that time, we’re either left with assuming that the Earl acted as a separate entity as we see in 218, or that Tyki’s memories are just flat out wrong.

4) Tyki Mikk’s Canon-Typical Ignorance AKA The Baby of The Family

The more often Tyki appears, the more we see how much he actually doesn’t know about the going-ons of the war, or even himself. This goes back as far as the Ark Arc in chapter 130 with the Earl pointing out that:

So this form is apparently something that all Noah of Pleasure can take on, a sort of second stage of awakening. Still, it feels significant that Tyki separates his life so much into “black” and “white”, “Noah” and “human”, going as far as suppressing a part of his Noah. It puts him in direct opposition to Skinn, who was more or less entirely consumed by his Noah memories. Though, perhaps this is also just a narrative ploy because a character with the ability to chose is, frankly speaking, fuck off overpowered and the only reason why Tyki isn’t constantly leveling battlefields is probably that he just doesn’t know how to apply himself.

Regardless, Tyki’s ignorance also becomes visible in chapter 187 again when he wonders about his Noah name:

Nobody else reacts like he does, even though the other Noah haven’t been awake as long as he has and also should have retained the same memory damage as Joyd after Nea’s murder spree. Yet Tyki feels a little like the baby of the family, still learning and growing while everyone else is already in the know, which can’t be too far from the truth if we look at chapter 225:

Wisely and Road definitely know that something went down and kept it from Tyki for so long for reasons. So besides Allen learning the truth sometime in the future, Tyki is also heading towards some kind of realization – and honestly, what better than the fact that the man who enjoys his freedom and roam so much, was artificially created?

Road could have manipulated his subconsciousness, his memories. It’s a miracle really that the Earl hadn’t had a breakdown around Tyki already given how much he looks like Nea. And if Tyki really awoke as a Noa a decade ago, then eh would have been right the age Nea was when he died. The Earl should have reacted in one way or another.

Other small details that don’t add up is a) the claim that Tyki and Sheril are actual brothers. They have different last names, which would imply that they are perhaps rather half siblings, sharing one parent, or maybe they just aren’t related at all in the first place. The other thing is that Nea recognizing Tyki’s face immediately after confronting Mana about his changed appearance just adds even more suspicion.

5) TLDR

Tyki is either a clone or something else messy went down because there’s no way that there’s a natural Nea and Mana copy running around who also just so happens to be a Noah. No way.

Thanks for coming to my  TED talk I’m never writing meta again this was a nightmare to post.

[n7punk]

Knifepoint Fic Notes

Knifepoint is now complete! These are all my notes for the chapters, original idea, meta links, fic playlist, etc. The usual “post fic” summary stuff has been moved to my Chapter 14 notes since it’s a bit different for this fic.

Songs for this AU:

This playlist has a few turning points. As such, this is separated in sections. Undercover/the turning point: AViVA - BLAME IT ON THE KIDS, Paramore – Renegade, K.Flay - The Cops, PVRIS – Heaven, Alec Benjamin - If I Killed Someone For You, Ghost – Badflower (included mostly because the first verse hit me like a fucking train for Catra). Catra on her own: Phoenix (ft. Cailin Russo and Chrissy Costanza), YONAKA - Seize the Power, FLETCHER - Last Laugh, Mothica – BUZZKILL, Ashnikko – Tantrum, DIAMANTE - Ghost Myself. Catra/Adora: Bahari – Savage, Bahari - Waking Up The Neighbors, XANA – PRAY, Mako – Murder, gabriel black - jump (feat. Sofi de la Torre), Halsey – Graveyard. Act III: Hailee Steinfeld – Afterlife, Miss Americana & The Heartbreak Prince – Taylor Swift, CHVRCHES – Miracle, Dove Cameron - We Belong, Star Fire - Sleeping Wolf, Bonnie & Clyde – YUQI, Bea Miller & Jessie Reyez - FEELS LIKE HOME. Finale: UPSAHL - STOP!, MØ - Live to Survive, Lil Nas X - Bring U Down.

Chapter 1: Prologue

This idea came to me on March 16th when I was watching a GTA V Online let’s play. I have no idea what the story of that game is, but I was thinking about immortal/respawning criminals, and then my next thought was “Ooo, Adora respawning somewhere other than the Horde being the sign of her defecting” and the rest of the AU came from there. My focus for the AU was exploring that rivalry-while-lovers dynamic that I always liked in canon fics where Catra and Adora used to be together before Adora joined the Rebellion.

In my head this fic is split into three acts(/stages/parts). They’re a lot less differentiating than the acts in SLAS, they’re just the three story phases this fic has. Act I: The Horde/Undercover. This is the first section of the playlist and ends with the end of Chapter 6, when Catra dies. Act II: Enemies in Love. This is the Catra on her own and Catra/Adora sections of the playlist, characterized by Catra and Adora working separately and dancing around each other while hooking up. Act III: The Softening™. This is labeled as Act III and the Finale in the playlist. It’s characterized by Catra slowly coming to accept Adora’s love and Adora’s belief that Catra is her soulmate solidifying, as well as them finally coming together and the final conclusion of the fic. That isn’t a hard line between Act II and Act III, they kind of fade into each other slowly. Initially the fic was just Act I and Act II in my head with Chapter 6 as the central point of the fic, but I ended up making changes to the story I’ll talk about at the end that lead to what became Chapter 6 falling earlier in the fic and Act II having the fade into Act III.

Hint #1 that this was a soulmates AU: Shadow Weaver referring to immortals as “beings of love.”

Chapter 2: Lamb (to the slaughter)

CW addiction, suicide, child neglect: Originally it was mentioned in this chapter, but it got cut in editing, so I’ll say it here: Adora’s backstory in this is very similar to her backstory in OTOS, where her mother died and her father fell into addiction to cope. She basically just wandered off while he was on a bender. He looked for her for a few weeks, and then the grief of losing them both got to him. Adora ended up losing both her parents and becoming an orphan without knowing it. She became a street kid with very few memories of before.

Shadow Weaver says she “knew” the truth about Scorpia, but actually she never had an inkling before that moment and just began to suspect once Scorpia’s body disappeared. She turned out to be right, so then she was like “I knew all along and am all-knowing.”

Hint #2 for soulmates: Shadow Weaver mentions that immortals usually live in “pairs or triads”, referring to couples and polycules.

Shadow Weaver allowing them to finally be together was attempted murder, as stated later in chapter 6. Shadow Weaver was trying to push them into a relationship before Adora went undercover and potentially found out how immortals work. She wanted Catra to become mortal before then so she could always keep her as leverage over Adora’s head. Catra is, after all, much younger than Shadow Weaver. Shadow Weaver would die of old age before Catra would die of natural causes, so having her be a vulnerable mortal would be the best way to leash Adora. Shadow Weaver just honestly doesn’t understand what “happy and fulfilled together” means for people who actually feel emotions, so she didn’t realize it wasn’t satisfied. She genuinely believed that Catra was guaranteed mortal by the time Adora went undercover.

This fact had me laughing when I read the comments and saw people lamenting over Adora not saying "I love you”, since that silence was a factor in what was going to save Catra’s life later.

Chapter 3: First Contact

Shadow Weaver was listening to their conversation in the car through Adora’s hacked phone. She had bugs in both Catra’s and Adora’s apartment as well, but this conversation was the one that ultimately confirmed to her that Catra and Adora has been together this whole time. She was furious about it because she was certain they were soulmates until that moment, but her rudimentary understanding of immortals told her that couldn’t be the case and Adora must have another soulmate out there who she might leave Catra behind for, thus freeing her from Shadow Weaver’s manipulation. This is why Shadow Weaver was so paranoid and unwilling to play the long game.

Adora referring to Catra’s TV awkwardly as a “television set” is just a little nod to how fucked their childhood was that she would refer to something so commonplace in such an awkward way, because it really wasn’t a part of their lives.

Scorpia didn’t jump to assuming that Adora was talking about immortality just because they’re so rare and most people don’t believe in them. She found Perfuma when she was searching for a way to recenter and recover, and she met the rest of the Alliance through Perfuma and Entrapta, since both were hooked up to Angella’s network.

Octavia hated Catra’s guts ever since the eye incident, which played out very similarly to how it did in the show, but she did used to complain to Scorpia that “I hate that fucking stray, but I want Adora to pull her head out of her ass and get with her just so she’ll get laid and mellow out.” Little did she know that there is nothing on the planet that could make Catra mellow out.

They didn’t tie the sack onto Adora’s head because they were scared of doing it too tight and were cutting off circulation without realizing due to Scorpia’s paralyzing venom. Also, it didn’t matter if it came off since they were all wearing masks.

There’s a piece of Crew-ra Shadow Weaver art done by Diana Huh that is her lounging on a seat in Bright Moon. This is pretty much how I envisioned her when Catra arrived at her apartment to find Shadow Weaver inside.

My lore is that both Shadow Weaver and Hordak are drow in most AUs (Dark elves, though I don’t buy into the DND “all dark elves are evil” bullshit, Shadow Weaver is just obviously a drow and it’s the closest I can come up with for Hordak). Specifically, drow have grey, blue, or purple skintones, ranging in lightness from pretty much snow white to midnight blue or black. Drow have naturally occurring chemicals in their skin that can result in photodermatitus. The name “dark elves” refers to their nocturnal habits in sunny climates to avoid it burning them. Not every drow has enough of the chemical in their skin to cause a reaction, and the intensity varies (often it’s stronger in lighter skintones, though dark skintones can have intense reactions as well).

Perfuma was the one to tie Adora up. I have a headcannon that she’s into rigging, which ended up being mentioned in a later chapter. She ties both Entrapta and Scorpia up. Scorpia finds it hot, whereas Entrapta finds it peaceful and comforting. The suspension is a good sensation for her and lets her just think. Sometimes she requests it when she needs to brainstorm because it helps her focus and think.

Adora’s cover was supposed to be that she got “hysterical” after dying for the first time and Shadow Weaver tried to assure her by telling her about Scorpia and the Alliance, but Adora was still like “I fucking DIED”. At which point Shadow Weaver was worried about a Scorpia repeat, so she let her take a few weeks off to “sort herself out and process” with the insurance of Catra being kept firmly in Horde territory so she knew that Adora would come back for her. Shadow Weaver was supposed to “accidentally leave out” the report on where Scorpia had been spotted before Adora took her leave. Adora was then supposed to have, of her own free will, gone to seek out the Alliance to figure out what was going on with her, since Shadow Weaver was withholding it as another method of controlling her.

Thus, Adora telling the Alliance that Shadow Weaver was holding her girlfriend hostage was all part of the plan, but her telling them that Shadow Weaver wanted her to come find them wasn’t. She was supposed to genuinely believe it was a slip that Shadow Weaver “left that report out”, but instead she straddled the line between being truthful about the undercover operation and lying, admitting that Shadow Weaver definitely wanted her to come here and gather intel, but not telling them that she was reporting in to Catra and there was a whole plan there.

Adora never tells them the truth about this during the fic because it stops feeling like it matters to her after she and Catra have left the Horde, but it still matters to some of the members of the Alliance. Adora does end up telling them a few weeks after the end of the fic. Some of them like “you should have told us earlier”, but Catra leaps in to explain how little Adora actually shared at their check-ins and things like Adora lying about being bugged to avoid giving the Horde information, and it diffuses the situation. Though some members make comments about it here and there, the nature of these is mostly teasing. It’s a bit like “yeah, you should have told us, but we get why you didn’t, so now we’re just going you shit about it.”

Hint #3 for soulmates: Glimmer saying the “nature of immortals” means they’re good people. They exist to love, not to hurt others.

Hint #4: Perfuma asking how long Adora had been with Catra to determine if it’s possible that Catra is her soulmate (+ her certainty that Catra was mortal after hearing that they had been together for years).

Shadow Weaver showed up at Catra’s apartment both to threaten her just in case and because the tracking on Adora’s phone had suddenly gone down. Entrapta killed it when she, Glimmer, and Mermista showed up in an SUV to transport the unconscious Adora back to the base. Scorpia literally stuffed her in an alley and loitered outside waiting for the others to drive over. It’s the Fright Zone – anyone who saw something untoward going down quickly looked the other way.

Chapter 4: Immortal Boys Club

Scorpia grew up in the Horde and never knew anything different. Her mother’s, however, were forced into it. When Scorpia regenned in their apartment, they had no clue what was happening, but they knew that the Horde thought she was dead and they had to use the opportunity. They finally told her every horrible thing the Horde had done that they had hidden from her so she wouldn’t be in constant emotional agony over what she was serving, and then they smuggled her from the city. A few days later, Shadow Weaver called them into a meeting, at which point they were captured and tortured for weeks before one of them finally broke and admitted they smuggled Scorpia away, but they insisted the Horde would never see her again. Shadow Weaver killed her for insubordination. She continued to torture her wife, trying to get her to admit Scorpia’s location now she knew she was out there, but she wouldn’t admit anything. She didn’t actually know where Scorpia ended up after she escaped anyway. She spent months in the cells before she died in her sleep from a combination of injuries, the stress to her body over time, and a lack of will to go on. She and her wife were both dumped down the body chute, where Catra was eventually tossed in Chapter 6.

Yes, Entrapta does consider disabling tech killing it.

The Alliance really wasn’t worried about showing Adora their faces. They already believed Adora, but even if she was lying/spying, most of them are pretty old and don’t have mortals into their lives they have to worry about if they were exposed. Entrapta and Frosta are the only ones who aren’t legally dead, and Entrapta can’t do much with her legal identity considering she doesn’t look anything approaching the 40 she’s supposed to be.

Hint #5 is basically the same as hint #2, when Adora brings up immortals only dating each other. She draws the incorrect conclusion that this is because they can’t stand losing someone mortal, but I can’t make things too easy on y’all.

Shadow Weaver was mad because: a) Adora’s phone tracker never came back online, b) she listened to the tapes and now “knew” that Catra wasn’t her soulmate since they had clearly been together already, and c) Adora respawned at Catra’s apartment, indicating that Catra was her home. Which is good as far as using her as a hostage goes, but Shadow Weaver was annoyed by Adora’s dedication to her not-soulmate because it seemed to fly in the face of the rules she knew of for immortals (thus implying she didn’t fully understand it, an implication she resented).

Chapter 5: Truth Hurts

Bow and Mermista exchange a glance when Adora asks if she should wake up with Catra because they’re both thinking about the inevitable change when Adora meets her soulmate.

Scorpia didn’t know for certain that her mothers were dead when she returned to the Fright Zone. She knew they likely were, but she was hoping that since they hadn’t tried to desert themselves, Shadow Weaver would let them live, even if she knew they were likely tortured. When she returned, however, she found everything they had once owned long reclaimed by creditors or stolen and that none of the few people in their personal life outside of the Horde had seen them in years.

Scorpia stayed away for so long only because her mothers insisted on it and she swore to obey them. She didn’t even know for sure the Horde ever discovered she had lived, she just stopped receiving letters from her mothers and knew the likely answer as to why. She also tried calling them despite how they made her swear not to (so as not to be discovered/tracked for her own safety) and found their phone line had been disconnected.

Scorpia was hoping that they would somehow find her moms alive and well and they could move into the spare bedroom that became Adora’s, though she knew it wasn’t likely.

The different nature of love between soulmates is actually a metaphor for the inherently different way lesbians experience love in a world openly hostile to their kind of love/sexuality. People joked about gays being immortals in the comments but that’s… kind of the answer. Yes, queer people’s different relationship with love and sexuality doesn’t give us superpowers, but it does give us an understanding to a world outside of cishet’s people experience of the world, analogous to the broader experience that living a long time affords. Immortality is a metaphor for the queer experience.

Mermista said at the start of this chapter that there are no hard and fast “rules” to being immortal, a sentiment Adora then promptly forgot the moment Perfuma said Catra couldn’t be her soulmate. The truth is that it’s all a balance, and if you didn’t get enough time to be happy with your soulmate, then you regenerate when you die.

Chapter 6: Death of a Bachelor

Initially Catra was supposed to cling on to life for awhile, finally passing on when she was thrown down the body shoot (I referred to this in the outline as “meeting Scorpia’s mothers” since they were down there too), but I really didn’t want to extend the suffering since it was already a lot.

Shadow Weaver left Catra’s body on the floor of her office as she ranted and raved to other lackeys for awhile so she could watch it to be sure it didn’t vanish, but the bodies tend to linger and delay regenerating when there is someone looking at them. Basically, she needed to turn around and look back, which she never did before she couldn’t stand seeing Catra’s body anymore (she wasn’t remorseful, and she was in fact still incensed, but at the same time it was hard seeing the body of the girl she projected so much on) so she called someone in to grab it and dump her down the chute.

Shadow Weaver then came to regret this decision within an hour, paranoid that Catra had regenerated the moment that she took her eyes off of her. The people who dragged her to the chute assured SW that she was dead and no one could survive that fall anyway, but Shadow Weaver immediately set to reviewing all devices monitoring anywhere she thought Catra might regenerate, checking her apartment, their old bunk, and Adora’s apartment. She didn’t know about the blanket in the van, but even if she did, she doesn’t understand how emotional ties work for most people or that Catra wouldn’t want to regenerate in a) the center of the hell that had been torturing them, b) her girlfriend who abandoned hers bed, or c) her apartment and the bed that she last shared with her girlfriend before she betrayed her. As a result, she never would have suspected Catra regenerating on the blanket even if she knew about it. She scrubbed through all the footage from every camera in the headquarters that day, but as Catra never emerged from the back of the van, she never spotted her and was satisfied that Catra really was a mortal that Adora latched onto as a substitute for her soulmate.

The body chute is a reference to an actual body chute at the abandoned Waverly Hills Hospital where they would drag dead bodies out of sight of other patients. The one the Horde uses is an old tunnel that leads down into an abandoned tank below ground where the old factory used to tap into the sewer system before it was abandoned. It’s a long drop to where the bodies pile up, and some have been down there for a decade or more. When the raid takes place, it takes them a few days before they find the chute and realize there are bodies down there, eventually going on a mission to recover them. Most of them remained unidentified, though they were able to match some of them with DNA or dental records.

Chapter 7: Lone Wolf

The Horde Trio finding out went like this: On Saturday, Kyle avoided the hell out of Shadow Weaver because she was on a warpath. That night, Kyle told Rogelio and Lonnie what he did and Lonnie was like “oh my god you’re stupid” and Rogelio was like “you’re stupid and I love you.” Basically, they both agreed with what he did but they were like this is the worst idea you’ve ever had. They were glad they didn’t have to make the choice themselves.

On Sunday morning, Lonnie wandered up to Shadow Weaver and asked if she could have Catra’s bike (which was currently taking up room in the headquarters’ garage). Shadow Weaver didn’t want to see the reminder of the traitor, so she basically said “fine” and waved her off. Lonnie said she thinks the keys were on Catra’s body (causing Shadow Weaver to instantly tense up given her hang-ups over Catra’s body). She then says the spare key was probably at her apartment, and that they should salvage it for any useful gear anyway. Shadow Weaver glared at her, but gave them permission to do so.

All three of them went over that afternoon and collected all the gear and money they could find, as well as anything they could claim as mementos of the five of them from before Adora turned and Catra died. They then brought the hybrid gear and half the money back to the headquarters, with Lonnie claiming she kept the stuff useful to her (weapons both she and Catra used, bodygear she could fit into, etc). They also said that since Catra’s money was made on their heists, they should get half of it now she was gone (1/6 for Adora, 1/6 for Catra, 1/6 for Shadow Weaver’s cut all would go to SW now, and then 1/6 for each of the trio would go to them). Shadow Weaver truly did not give a shit at that point except that the Horde had taken a hit to finances recently, so they gave her 4/6ths. They brought the remaining cash to the hotel that evening with her other things.

As discussed later in the fic, Adora has no idea how to cooking anything due to growing up on microwave meals with the other street kids. She isn’t experienced with kitchen mandolins. Mermista was trying to teach her how to cook (by which I mean Adora started an attempt to cook while Mermista was chilling at the kitchen counter and Mermista was like “what the hell are you doing” and then proceeded to neg her while scattering in corrections/advice) but she didn’t get up from the counter and show her exactly how to use it and Adora accidentally sliced like a centimeter off the tip of her finger. It wouldn’t stop bleeding and she was feeling faint so Mermista was just like “Regen” and Adora was like yep makes sense since I’m blacking out anyway.

Chapter 8: Drag-along

Mermista “looking considering” in the first scene is the exact moment she began to suspect that they could both be soulmates still, given what Adora just said about being punished for expressing affection.

Catra knew the Horde had abandoned the location because she was checking it in anticipation of Adora showing up.

Angella can’t be a regular historian because at least the sanitizing is done with lower stakes when it’s art history, and there’s things she knows are factually wrong but the academic sources were destroyed so she would just start tearing her hair out trying not to be like “I know because I was there!” and it’s best she just doesn’t deal with any of that. She has lived a thousand lives and been many things, but art historian is her current path.

Adora’s a lot more casual about dying now than she was when Shadow Weaver made her plans hinge on it because 1) she’s had more time to get used to the idea of being immortal, 2) she understands a lot more about how it works now, assuring her that she will actually come back, 3) she knows that if she did fight Catra on it, she wouldn’t force her into it, although she might drop her off on a street corner blindfolded, 4) poison is a lot less violent of a death. She knows that she’s still killing herself by drinking it, but it isn’t the same as being locked in a vault with a gun, knowing that pulling the trigger is your only way out.

Chapter 9: Rendezvous

The Wastelanders are of course a reference to the Crimson Wastes and a loose collection of criminal gangs banding together to pool resources and drive off others.

Chapter 10: A Little Messed Up (like you)

Chapter title is from the song “A Little Messed Up” by june.

There’s a whole backstory to the necklace I ended up cutting because it was tangential, it’s weird that Catra even knew it, and it broke up the flow. However, the story is this: It sold for 12 million at an auction two years ago, and then not long after, the person who bought it died under mysterious circumstances. Their estate has been tied up in an investigation ever since. The moment it cleared, the person who inherited the necklace put it up for sale. It was expected to go for upwards on 14 million at auction. The person who inherited the estate murdered the original owner for their wealth, including the necklace.

Catra took a loss for the necklace because she was selling it illegally and can’t provide authentication, especially on such a short time frame. Eddie has to make his profit selling it to his buyer too. He doesn’t even have one lined up at the moment considering how tight the timeframe was, he just knows he’ll be able to find one.

The little scar on Catra’s right hand was from when Catra, who had been favoring her left up until that point, was forced to use her right hand as her dominant one to conform with Horde standards (Shadow Weaver wasn’t about to get her left-handed scissors, never mind special equipment). She wasn’t as dexterous with her right hand during the transition period despite being mildly ambidextrous, and she accidentally gave herself a bad cut on her palm that Shadow Weaver wouldn’t “waste” medical supplies on since the injury was “her own fault” and thus it ended up scarring noticeably despite having much more mundane origins than some of her others.

Catra tenses when Adora first drapes over her during the smut because she suddenly felt a bit suffocate, but Adora pulled back and let her adjust, which lets her relax again.

Okay, so I wrote the majority of the chapter on the 27th, then moved on and kept writing and editing. I came back to this chapter multiple times (specifically the scene in the car) to keep it consistent with the other edits I was making to hammer out the arc of their relationship. Finally, on the 3rd, I came back to do my final edit and post it. When I got to the end of the chapter, the final scene just wasn’t there. I was so confused. I went back into my version history, and found literally ten minutes after writing the scene (with totaled 1k), I somehow accidentally deleted it, because it disappeared between versions with everything else inexplicably intact. Luckily I was able to go back and recover it. I love the scene and it established some things important for the Alliance to know before Bow’s shooting, but I’m still confused about what happened.

This chapter ended up with a quite different set-up than it was intended to. Below is the original outline.

[Adora is shocked when catra materializes over her shoulder and hands her a slushie. “What is this” “just drink it” “did you poison it” “obviously”. Adora looks at her for a moment, and then she drinks it. catra takes her hand and leads her towards the park. They walk around it, hand in hand, almost like a date, until adora starts stumbling. Catra leads her out of the park, towards a car. “just a bit further, princess”] [adora wakes up and cuddles the hell out of catra. Catra misses her] [“the last poison tasted awful”. “I got a new one” “aw, for me?” “no” she snaps. Sighs. “Yes”. “Take me out again some time?” “im taking you out right now” she responds and hands her the glass]

Okay, I obviously changed things. They were less enemies at this point than I initially planned, and the consensual drugging felt iffy to me anyway (I certainly wasn’t going to have any smut in this chapter when it was a plot point, because I didn’t want those two events anywhere close to each other) so I cut that entire beat and replaced it with another blindfolded Swift Wind drive (which also allowed me to have them talk around the drive – part of Catra’s initial reasoning for the drugging was to avoid talking, but then they were going to do it during the cuddling anyway).

Chapter 11: The Scarlet Ibis Job

Knifepoint is really an example of the way a hero loves versus the way a villain does. There’s a great post about it somewhere on Tumblr, and it kept popping up into my head when I wrote some of Catra’s lines.

The hotel’s name is all thanks to @malachi-walker. I wanted a name that referenced the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas (due to its ties to the mob & Bugsy Siegel’s murder) and was struggling to come up with a suitable bird. Scarlet Ibises look kinda similar to Flamingos (not that you would confuse them, but that they have visual similarities).

Speaking of, the title of this chapter is a reference to the show “Leverage”, where all the episode titles were “The [blank] Job” (EX: “The Juror #6 Job”).

Chapter 12: Soulmates

The words that Catra says to herself and label as “Shadow Weaver’s words” are from throughout the story. You can find her thinking or saying them in earlier chapters, and Shadow Weaver says a lot of them pretty casually in Chapter 6. EX: CH8: “She was willing to leave everything behind to join them, planning to haul Catra around like a stray she expected to follow her anywhere.”

If someone had died in the fire, Catra wouldn’t have lost her immortality. Basically, if you kill someone on accident, then it doesn’t happen. Everything is a balancing act with immortality, though, so it isn’t just that simple. If you hurt someone knowing that it could directly lead to their death (IE shooting them in the leg and they bleed out, even if it’s a “non-fatal” shot), then their death will “count as murder” and you’ll lose your immortality because you were reckless with their life. However, if you’re driving and someone walks in front of your car, you never had any intention to hit/hurt them, and their death doesn’t count. Especially the longer from the initial action their death is (aka you shoot them in the shoulder with a rubber bullet, which somehow leads to complications like a blood clot that cause their death years later) the less likely you are to lose your immortality because of it.

Because Catra had taken every precaution she could and was actively trying not to hurt people and to protect them, any accidental deaths wouldn’t have led to her losing her immortality. However, if she had been uncaring and, say, set the house on fire without sweeping it and someone died, even if they weren’t in the house but ran in after the fact to help, they would count as murders because she was purposefully being reckless and uncaring with life, well aware there could be someone else inside who died. Intent and the amount of recklessness are important factors. It’s like karma.

Adora ducked into a nearby alley and ran. Grizzlor got out of his car to chase her down, but it took too long and she escaped. During this, bystanders saw and were watching Catra’s body, which prevented her from regenerating. Grizzlor then quickly returned and threw her body in the trunk. All the upper level captains had been told that Adora defected and was to be captured and never killed if found so they could interrogate her and learn what she had given up. Catra they were told had been killed for helping Adora defect, but her body was inappropriately disposed of before it could be verified that she was dead, so if she was spotted, to attempt to arrest her and interrogate her if possible.

Grizzlor was actually aiming for Adora, attempting to incapacitate her, but Catra got in the way and took the bullet. They had been explicitly instructed that if one of them did die, their bodies were to be taken back to Shadow Weaver so she could personally verify their death and that they should never take their eyes off their bodies because the Alliance uses heart-rate slowing poisons to fake their deaths to escape custody (the lie Shadow Weaver told the Horde at large to cover up immortality). Because they didn’t know this really meant you can’t take your eyes off them for even a second, Grizzlor threw Catra’s body in the trunk and fucking booked it. The cops were already nearby from the explosion and he needed to get to headquarters. He called Shadow Weaver on the way and she screamed at him, since it was basically now confirmed that Catra was an immortal. Sure enough, she was waiting when Grizzlor pulled into the Horde, and upon opening the trunk, they found it empty. Shadow Weaver stabbed her knife right through the lid of his trunk. She would have stabbed him if her lackeys weren’t already waning in loyalty/availability/number already due to the Horde losing power and sources to supply them.

Chapter 13: The Matriarch

Sea Hawk made French toast for everybody and then Frosta insisted on having him put cinnamon sugar on hers. Mermista: “That is not how the French do it.” Frosta, with a cold, dead stare: “Viva la révolution.”

Angella was the daughter of a merchant in the Roman Republic in around 200 BCE. I’m not a history expert, so forgive me for getting this wrong, but Angella had lived in many places over many centuries and changed her name as appropriate to accommodate them. She chose her last name of Proserpine in the modern era as a nod to her heritage. Proserpine was the Roman version of Persephone, but only grew to replace the previous goddess of Libera in the beginnings of the century 200 BCE. As such, Angella was familiar with both, but authorities considered Proserpine a more respectable figure of worship for women. Angella considers herself as Libera, an ancient relic dressed up in the robes of Proserpine (pretending to be a normal mortal) to make herself acceptable to the world around her.

Bow refers to her as “Dr. Proserpine” because she and his dads work together and so he was used to referring to her that way in the academic setting.

The scene with Angella greeting everyone was inspired by the vibe of when the entire family gathers to greet a relative who is visiting from out of town.

It is possible to transition after becoming immortal, just more difficult. Because a lot of the methods used are relatively new and there are so few immortals (and thus very few trans immortals), there’s a lot less known about transitioning compared to things like changing weights or growing hair. It doesn’t take eight years of HRT to lock that in as your body’s “natural state”, but no one assumed their body would just adapt like that, so it took them a long time to notice.

Factors include a) how long/if they were taking the med/had it in their system when they did for the first time, b) how often and in what concentrations it is in the system at the time of death/regen, c) how long and often it is in the system between regens, so as to “trick” the body into thinking it is supposed to be there (this factor especially means having to go longer between regens, because if you’re only alive for 2 days, then the drug can only be in your system for 2 days and it’s hard for your body to accept as natural). Generally, it has to be been in the system for a long time – years – for the body to accept it and naturally produce it.

In the next chapter Catra speculates that Angella asked about Adora’s death to justify killing Shadow Weaver to herself, which is partially true, but it is a question she tends to ask immortals to offer them space to talk about it with someone. They can’t exactly go to traditional therapy for it, so Angella has kind of been the best thing they had.

Chapter 14: Her Love’s Like A Funeral

The title for this chapter is from/inspired by Funeral by Meg Myers.

Angella just wanted to be with Micah and live normally. I know some people won’t consider Angella’s arc as a “happy end” but it is happy because she is happy. She has lived a long time. She’ll get to grow old with the love of her life and watch her daughter grow into a young woman – what could be happier than that?

I’ll be blunt: I had some plans for an epilogue for this fic, but I got sick the day I posted chapter 12 and struggled to write. I was sick for an entire week (actually, longer, but I was unable to write for a week) and totally lost my steam for the fic. I had already written chapter 13, so I managed to finish off Chapter 14 as I intended, but I just didn’t have the motivation for an epilogue anymore and writing it wouldn’t have been fun for me because of that. Below are some of the ideas/scenes that I wanted to cover as a kind of extended look at their life beyond the fic.

Angella stays for an additional few days, beginning to turn over her network/empire to Glimmer slowly (over many years). She’s lived far too long to share everything before she goes, but she keeps lots of records, and Glimmer replaces her as the head of the network with plans to one day train a protégé to carry on in her place, ensuring her mother’s legacy and that immortals have continued support through the decades.

The Alliance – and Catra – always make jokes about Catra and Adora going to Catra’s place when they have screaming sex. Catra maintains her basement as a base and fallback locations for regeneration. They do go there when they really want to let loose, but they primarily stay at the penthouse. Adora and Catra both like staying somewhere with windows to let in light now they have that option, but the basement is a secure place for them.

Catra finally told Adora about everything that happened while she was in the cells a few weeks after the fic ends, after they watched a news report about the investigation into the Horde earlier that day. It was emotional and Adora petted through her hair as she finally learned about Catra cutting it to stop Shadow Weaver from dragging her around by it. Catra takes one look at Entrapta’s calendar for growing back out her hair and goes “yeah, no”.

Catra one day just, like, realizes that she’s immortal and suddenly goes on a tear eating all the foods that are toxic to her that she has never gotten to eat. They won’t actually kill her, but she doesn’t have to suffer through the aftereffects when she can just reset. She tries chocolate – isn’t a fan, which then sets the Alliance on a quest to find The One Chocolate She Will Like which resolves on a different day – eats human ice cream, pastries, baked goods, pasta, etc. It takes her a while to work through all the foods she has always wanted to try and she finds she likes the savory carbs well enough but not the sweet stuff so much as she never developed a taste for it. Adora finds it all very amusing and supports Catra through her candy rampage. Afterwards Catra is like “I can’t fucking believe you eat that shit all the time” despite how it doesn’t make Adora feel trash like it does for Catra.

The “I know the chocolate that Catra will actually like” competition is held literal weeks later because some of the chocolate had to be flown in from fucking Switzerland and shit. Everyone in the Alliance put forth one chocolate and the one that Catra likes best becomes the winner. Catra blind tastes each chocolate without knowing a) what the wrapper looks like (though Adora has a card with all the flavors so Catra will be forewarned and not dislike one because it surprises her with a nougat center or something), b) how expensive it is/where it’s from, or c) who selected it for her. The competition is fierce just because they’re all like that.

Perfuma puts forth her own homemade chocolate which is her attempt at basically making a magicat edible (none exist since magicats can’t have chocolate or weed lmao). It includes alcohol and catnip (though catnip isn’t a drug to magicats, it does help them relax, as other herbs do in humans) (if you haven’t read previous fics, alcohol effects magicats similar to how catnip effects cats). Catra knows who’s chocolate that is even during the blind taste test because of the homemade aspect. It comes in third place because she doesn’t like the idea of getting drunk/high while eating, but it is good.

First place goes to Adora, because she knows Catra’s palette better than anyone, and while some others do figure out the “she doesn’t like sugar” thing, they just can’t match her tastes. Mermista got her a super fancy dark chocolate from Europe, convinced it was the best in the world, but it’s not going to be Catra’s taste – which is, by the way, a dirt-cheap grocery store dark chocolate. Catra used to live on the street. That fancy shit isn’t what she’s acclimatized to. The others accuse Adora of cheating and consider Entrapta the “unofficial” winner since competing against Catra’s soulmate is unfair anyway. Entrapta got second place with a mid-dark sea salt chocolate that appeals to Catra’s more savory tastes.

Angella gets them all matching loungewear outfits in varying pastel & neon shades for Christmas one year, like a mom getting everyone matching sweaters. They all have a rhinestone letter on the back spelling out “THE ALLIANCE” on the back. They need one more person, which Angella says can be Frosta’s soulmate when the time come (Frosta pulls a face) but for now Angella takes an ‘A’ and Micah takes the photo of all of them wearing them. T – Perfuma. H – Scorpia. E – Glimmer. A – Angella. L – Bow. L – Sea Hawk. I – Mermista. A – Adora. N – Frosta. C – Catra. E – Entrapta.

Entrapta is insistent that her ‘E’ is the finale e of “Alliance” and not “The” despite Angella having set it up so she can be next to her girlfriends. No one knows why Entrapta decided that, but Entrapta just knows her e is the last one and considers it “misspelling” when they try to arrange her next to Perfuma and Scorpia, so everyone goes along with it (yes, this is what the ND experience is like).

Despite Catra’s insistence on staying solo, she quickly starts tagging along on some jobs after Adora makes puppy eyes at her. She still does solo jobs (or occasionally small jobs with just Adora) and she resists being an official part of the Alliance for awhile, but one day she realizes that the plan has just assumed that she’ll be joining them without asking for the first time. And then she’s like “I’m not part of the Alliance” and everybody Looks at her and she grumbles and tucks into Adora’s side but she goes on the job. She doesn’t join all their jobs, and she appreciates being asked, but she’s satisfied as long as she maintains her freedom and side jobs as well.

Angella has a few safehouses around the world (that she passes on to Glimmer, and the penthouse is amongst them). After about a few years, the Alliance packs up and moves cities. They actually settle down a bit there, only pulling jobs occasionally, before they move again and go on a tear. They have all the time in the world, so they ebb and flow. At one point Perfuma semi-retires to teach yoga again for four years before getting back in the game, just chasing whatever interests her. At times the Alliance decentralizes (living in separate apartments and working/living more independently) but they often come back together after awhile because they’re all friends and kinda adrenaline junkies lol.

Angella and Micah die old holding each other like in the notebook.

Original Outline:

This fic followed my outline pretty closely. Some things ended up taking longer than I thought or being moved up to the chapter before, but overall, it was pretty true to form. I would say that they were supposed to be more antogonistic towards each other at first after separating, fighting a bit more about Adora leaving and Catra not wanting to, but it just didn’t fit once I reached that point.

Initially the first 5 chapters were supposed to take place over a more stretched out timeline, with Adora joining the Alliance and slowly beginning to see how awful the Horde was once she was on the outside and could a) see all they were doing and b) that it didn’t have to be like that. Adora comforted herself with the fact that all the criminals in the Fright Zone were like the Horde when she was in it, but that simply wasn’t true. They were a special kind of evil.

However, doing this would mean drawing things out to a point that just felt unnecessary, especially once I started writing and was able to show that growing distance and tension between Catra and Adora anyway. Adora was supposed to truly be undercover, then slowly grow to feel at home with the Alliance. She was going to be surprised when she suddenly regenerated with the Alliance. They would then throw a “welcome to the family” party, meanwhile the whole time Adora was worrying about the Horde finding out, which of course they had. Shadow Weaver would then order the kidnapping.

During the kidnapping, Catra was supposed to “interrogate” Adora a bit, both trying to determine if she had defected and kind of slipping her information as she spoke about what Shadow Weaver knew and suspected so Adora could try to lie around it. She failed to do so when Shadow Weaver came to her in the cell, she was tortured, and the screams haunted Catra just like they did in the fic. She then slipped in to free her. Adora’s death was supposed to be a lot more brutal. Catra was supposed to kill her with her claws because she had already turned over the poison pills to Shadow Weaver.

The rest of the circumstances changed before I wrote it, but I actually did write this version of Adora’s death and it was just too gruesome and dark, so I went back and edited it. Using the pills also let Adora justify to herself that Catra was able to free her secretly and thus didn’t face retribution for it, because if she thought Catra was still trapped there and being tortured she would have run right back after regenerating elsewhere.

Meta:

Extra #1: Shadow Weaver

Extra #2: Soulmates, Angella, & Micah

Extra #3: Death counts

Fic Notes #2: Timeline

Other meta: The Horde’s structure, Entrapta’s overalls, Adora’s dress in CH11, platonic soulmates.

What’s next?:

My next AU is Lullaby of the Drowned, a siren/pirate AU! I’ll start working on it now Knifepoint is done and should begin posting it any time in the next week or two.

[grimmradiance]

Close to Me: How the Hollow Knight's Fighting Style Reflects Their Trauma (and the Radiance's as well)

So I've been trying to actually beat the Radiance, which means I've been fighting the Hollow Knight. A lot, as a matter of fact, since I'm beans at this game sometimes. I've also been thinking about @lost-kinn's meta about how fighting styles are how Vessels, especially the Little Knight, communicate.

In trying to apply this to the Hollow Knight, I've been coming to some very interesting conclusions, especially taken in context of...Everything Else in the lore, and Everything Else implicated in this by the psychology of it.

There's a lot to cover here, and it tracks through a LOT of different places, including trauma psychology, the relationship between chronic stress and lifespan health, and shape symbolism. Two warnings first:

One: this essay is gonna get heavy. It includes fine-grained discussion of the Hollow Knight's trauma, including discussions of the real-life machanics of psychological abuse, as well as the Extremely Concerning Implications of them harming themself during their boss fight. please read with caution and when you're in a safe emotional place to do so.

Two: This post is not a place for justifying the Pale King. If you read this essay in its entirety and still want to do that, please make your own post; my relationship to the Hollow Knight themself is deeply rooted in my own experiences, so in the context of this discussion I can't promise I won't take it personally.

With that out of the way, let's talk trauma and fighting styles:

We know that the Hollow Knight is trained to be a paragon of fighting skill, through the Pure Vessel fight, and this gives us a fantastic way to compare what they were like before they were made Government Assigned Radiance Jail, and after. Or, in other words, we're given the perfect opportunity to see what the Radiance is doing (i.e. context effects), and what Hollow is (i.e. what we can conclude is reliably consistent as a part of them). Listed here, for reference:

Hollow's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Radiant Shade Soul, which launches a volley of Infection blobs in arcs

A Radiant Desolate Dive, which produces pillars of entwined Void and Light at random intervals

The Infection bursting out of them in random arcs, covering a significant amount of the aerial space of the arena

The Radiance ragdolling their body around trying to hit the Knight

Contact damage from them stabbing themself and falling over atop you

The Pure Vessel's attacks:

Three slashes

A dash slash

A Pure Shade Soul, which launches a volley of nails in straight lines

A Pure Desolate Dive, which produces nails at specific intervals

A Pure Focus, which causes circular explosions across most of the aerial space in the arena

Lashing out with a Void Arm (word choice intentional)

I've highlighted attacks from each battle that are different, since those are our points of interest here. In addition, both the Pure Vessel and Hollow are exceedingly fond of teleport-spamming in a way that is usually reserved for a specific group of bosses.

Another very important distinction between these two fights: the Pure Vessel doesn't scream. Well, they certainly try to, but no sound comes out. No voice to cry suffering, after all. All of these points have a lot to go into, so let's address them one at a time.

All That Remains: Theoretical Background On The Significance Of Constants

Making comparisons across time is important specifically because humans (and human-like bugs) change. Most personality traits aren't set in stone--they exist as an interaction of someone's internal tendencies, their experiences, and their environment. Speaking of those last two points, not all experiences and environments are created equally. Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs for short) are known to have lifelong implications for a child's health, both physically and mentally. These are events that are so stressful or stressful for so long that they exceed a child's ability to cope and become toxic stress (yes, that's the term in the literature, because it actively damages your organs). They compound, as well--the stress of one ACE makes it harder for a child to cope with another, especially if they overlap.

Some examples of ACEs? Being exposed to physical danger or the threat of physical danger, deprivation of normal social relationships with peers of a similar age, being forcibly seperated from family members, witnessing a loved one being hurt or killed, chronic illness in oneself or a family member, neglect of a child's emotional needs....

Poor fucking Holly. It's a miracle they didn't disintegrate under the pressure. The only other option is that they bent and adapted under that much stress--in other words, most of their personality has been forcibly reshaped by what they've gone through. Anyone who has up-close experience with parentification or complex child abuse already knows: this was by design. I'm not saying the intent was to traumatize the Pure Vessel past several points of no return, but the intent definitely was to reshape their personality for the purpose of being The Vessel. We only see them (the Pure Vessel) in battle after this process is mostly or entirely complete, but we do see them a few times beforehand. I'd like to draw attention to the Path of Pain cutscene right now.

I've seen people talking about the look the Vessel and the King share as a sign that TPK really does love his child. That might be true, but it's definitely not relevant when it comes to how abuse works. This is, in fact, exactly how the cycle of abuse uses affection as a tool. Long periods of abuse or neglect, smoothed over by small periods of affection that placate the survivor? That's textbook love bombing, the kind that forms stubborn trauma bonds and facilitates unhealthy dependency. Forgive me for not giving the Higher Being of knowledge and prescience the benefit of the doubt on that one. (/s)

Team Cherry knows about the importance of parallels and dissonance. There's a reason the music in the second phase of the Hollow Knight fight plays in the Path of Pain. There's a reason it cuts out the moment the battle with the Kingsmoulds is over, instead of at the room transition. There's a reason it doesn't cut out in the Black Egg. Actually, there's two potential reasons, which could also coexist: either little Hollow trusts the Pale King to keep them safe, even after the borderline torture that they were just subjected to, or big Hollow is so hypervigilant that they're in full functioning-through-trauma mode even while they're at death's door.

If you don't see how much the Pale King scarred his child at this point, I'm not sure we were playing the same game.

Walking the Straight Line: How the Pale King's Teachings Show In the Pure Vessel

The Pale King loves order and control. Everything about the White Palace and every decision we see him make implies this. Everything is spotless white walls and well-maintained gardens; the only signs of disorder are hidden away, either in his workshop or in The Pit™. This also reflects in the Pure Vessel's title--pure as in holy, but also pure as in without flaw. Considering the Nailsmith's emotional state after completing the Pure Nail, TPK's fate with his Perfect Controlled Kingdom, and the Godmaster ending as a whole, attaining perfection is not a good thing in any sense.

We know the Hollow Knight isn't perfect--that's the whole catalyst for the plot. But considering their upbringing and their fighting style as the Pure Vessel, their imperfections absolutely kill them emotionally. I'll spare the lecture on how perfectionism affects neurodivergent kids even more severely than neurotypical kids, if only to keep this post to a reasonable length (look up "twice-exceptional children" if you'd like to know the theory I'm glossing over in more depth). But, in essence, the deck is doubly stacked against them--they have a higher goal to reach, and far more obsctacles in their path, including their own emotional scars.

I've already discussed how Hollow isn't meant for this kind of stress in a physical sense in other posts. They're not prepared for it emotionally, either--the Pale King wants perfection, and they can't even stand up straight (every spoonie in the audience already knows how exhausting people's obsession with Standing Up Straight is). There's another page on their stack of emotional baggage, even BEFORE you consider that the Pure Vessel knows their perfection is what bought them a ticket out of the Abyss.

Bringing Teleportation To A Sword Fight: Where The Pure Vessel Reveals Their Fears

How else are they going to cope with that need for perfection, that need to prove themselves worthy of the reason their life was spared, by being flawless in any way they can? Being a mechanical, flawless fighter puts so much pressure on them, both literally (repetitive strain injuries fucking HURT) and figuratively--if you're predictable, the only sure way to win is to mop the floor with your opponents before they figure you out. Hell, that's the way most people play their first run of Hollow Knight, by throwing themselves at the bosses over and over until they figure out the patterns. That strategy is inherently going to fail against an opponent that's, say, an immortal higher being.

There's no way that the Vessel didn't figure this out, and yet none of their TPV specific attacks are positioned randomly--the nails are always evenly spaced, and the Focus explosions are always in a specific height region of the screen. That's clinging to survival strategies even when they become maladaptive in its purest form.

Another dip into psychological theory: let's talk about disorganized attachment. Attachment styles describe how someone's relationships to their main caregiver(s) influence their understanding on relationships in general. Disorganized attachment is a result of an upbringing of inherently unstable parent-child relationships, where there's no way of a child predicting whether an adult is going to be delighted to see them, ambivalent, upset, or otherwise. If my parent woke up some days saying "all right my child, time for the Infinite Buzzsaws Obstacle Course," I'd be the same way. In adulthood this manifests as an inability to form a stable sense of self-concept as well as concepts of others. Mission accomplished, TPK, there's no will to break if you broke it yourself.

This is where the fighting styles as communication comes in--Hollow needs to keep Ghost at a distance to fight, but also wants to be closer to their sibling (the only being who has a chance of understanding what they've been through), BUT also has a trauma-rooted fear of attaching to people, as their experiences with attachment are inherently unpredictable and dangerous. Hence, both the teleportation that doesn't seem to match their fighting style any more reliably than "aim at the thing attacking you" and the second attack unique to the Pure Vessel--they're quite literally lashing out in pain to push people away. There's a reason that attack is so reminiscent of the Thorns of Agony.

Of note is that Holly does seem to teleport like the bugs of the Soul Sanctum do (favoring the edges of a screen, rather than going wherever like Dream Warriors do), which makes sense--they're the most obvious answer to the question "how did they learn how to teleport, anyways?" However, Sanctum bugs have abilities designed to capitalize on this, like homing spells and slashes from above. I can only assume this means that someone saw Holly's proficiency with the nail and assumed it translated to other forms of combat, and didn't feel the need to give them at least a bit of a primer on how to make the best use of it. There's another tally for the Hollow Knight as an autism metaphor.

Trauma Bonds: How the Radiance Speaks Through Hollow

Now, we're back to the Black Egg, and two people stuck in the same sinking ship. The thing that makes this hurt so badly is that Holly and the Radiance are at complete cross purposes here, and yet they both want the same thing:

They both want out, no matter the cost. For the Radiance, this means forsaking the pacifistic nature of the moths and nuking Ghost personally.

For Hollow, this means forsaking the way they were raised and everything that was bludgeoned into their personality: the only way out is to fail, give up control, and trust that Ghost will do what needs to be done.

Imagine how much pain they're in to actually go for it. Going against a literal lifetime of conditioning is something that takes the average person years to even consider, let alone go through with. It's a form of learned helplessness--if you try to break free and fall, again and again, it actively discourages further attempts. Breaking through learned helplessness is an interesting process, because it generally involves re-establishing a sense of control by recalling previous events where the person was able to change their situation.

Which, as far as we know of, are nothing but traumatic memories for Hollow. It's very unlikely that they'd break through it on their own, but we know they have by the time we see the second phase of their fight. This is them at their most desperate: the same music as the Path of Pain, the way they let, or can't stop, the Radiance throw their body around, the way they actively try to let the Radiance out by stabbing themself.

You'd think that giving up and learned helplessness are inherently compatible, but when giving up both goes against your core personality, and involves your active participation, they're in direct opposition. So either Holly was able to process all their trauma by themself (which I doubt, judging by how much effort the player has to go through to even see Ghost's and Hollow's traumatic memories), or someone gave them a nudge or three in that direction.

Considering that there's been someone living in Holly's head who has a vested interest in them Not Doing Their Duty, I think we know who. And the thing is, I think we watch Hollow have this breakthrough during their battle. Imagine for the first time in decades, at least, you can move. You're in pain from being in the same position, probably hallucinating from sensory deprivation, with an infection sucking at what strength your body has left. And there's this little creature who looks ready to fight you, who seems to have let you go for that exact purpose.

And you look down, and both you and the Radiance recognize them from a place rooted deeper than consciousness, in the murky depths of trauma. You see the other Vessel who just as easily could have been you, and who looks so much stronger for not being you, for being an imperfect, willful creature. And the Radiance sees history threatening to repeat itself, another one of the Wyrm's cursed children seeking to lock her away once more.

What else do you do when you're triggered? You scream, and you go on instinct, and you retreat into your head. Those first blows, with the epic music? That's the Vessel the Pale King forged, the fighting machine that will endure unimaginable stress because it knows no other way. What snaps you back out of dissociation? Usually, either the passage of the triggering stimulus, or an even more relevant stimulus (severe pain from getting beaten up by a nail, for example).

The tragedy is this: we know this isn't a triumph. I think most of us went into that fight the first time, knowing we'd be putting the Hollow Knight out of their misery. The music turns tragic, Hollow screams, and then we see the Radiance and Hollow themself break through: the Radiance trying to fight Ghost directly with the resources she has, and Hollow trying to help her along.

For what it's worth, Hollow even had the right idea, when it came to letting themself rest while helping Ghost stop the madness their father started--they were just digging for the Radiance in the wrong place. The dynamic between the Radiance and the Hollow Knight is something I could write on for pages and pages, but this has gone on for long enough. Tune in next time, where I'll presumably talk about this same topic but in reverse with regards to the Radiance.

[stomp-that-ho-regard]

(same anon) personally, I think ppl who ship i/modna are

a) deluding themselves bc you've already SEEN what c/r does. how has it not taught you anything? how are you still hoping that by some miracle they'll do smth different this time? I have to pity you your naivete. you're going to get burned again there's no two ways abt it

b) also should NOT face such utter backlash like. you know from the getgo that this was an attempt at an b/j apology ship. you just know it. I'm sorry to these so called Pseudo-intellectual Meta-Writers but if something as simple as pattern recognition as this doesn't get through to you, then I fear you aren't as Nuanced™ as u think you are lmao.

also, it's very funny that b/j fans who now go to i/modna are going to get harassed by the b/y crowd. like, I find the entire deal w c/r incredibly exhausting. but it's somehow very funny to me to see how threatened the b/y crowd still feels by b/j. when all we've done is literally nothing lmao we left. and YET you guys are still thinking about us. Still intent on making us the villians lol. Its hilarious house fear works on a subconscious level where you have to dehumanize us by making shit up abt us to feel validated in hating us. (remember the extremely harmful false info they spread abt b/j fans being trsnsphobic when literally a) all b/j fans I know are trans b) we are all so in on the trans b/j agenda like I remembered my friend & I being they/them beau truther and trans jester makes So much sense in a commentary about embracing femme it makes me heart sing. its so vile to say such absolutely untrue shit about us when we are literally all trans people having a good time w our trans b/j headcanons. imagine calling *us* t/erfs with nothing to back you on that gross misinformation.)

its very funny to me that b/y fans had to resort to calling *us* names when literally the actors marisha and ashley are the ones who equate lesbianism w pussy™ and constantly joke about genitalia. the sheer obsession w grossly sexualizing lesbians at every turn and pretending it's the height of romance. eugh.

no wonder something as organic and developing and emotionally competent (unlike the emotionally constipated b/y) threatens them. they couldn't BE beaujes. that's what bugs them to this day I think. why being canon still doesn't satiate their upset. because being "canon" doesn't erase that most of their speculation and fan-theories abt b/y is just that. all in their head.

anyway, enough of me talking down to b/y. the hangup they have from b/j shows on i/modna bc they didn't get to harass b/j fans enough. they gotta take it above and beyond to c3 to feel validated in the leftover anger they still have at b/j.

I have nothing to really add to your ask, anon, because you’ve pretty much said it all. But I do want to address the ‘a)’ at the top of your ask.

I made my own rant post about this very thing: seeing a bunch of BJ’s gleefully running back to CR because of Im/odna, and being frustrated and confused by it. Wondering why they would willingly go back to a thing that hurt them. And I said stuff about me not seeing any solid evidence that they’d take it to a romantic place and that there’s a higher probability that they’re just fucking around. That they’ll essentially ‘gal pal’ it. 

The thing about that stance though? I don’t want to be proven right. I don’t want to continue being right about terrible shit. I WANT to be proven wrong. I want CR to be better now than it was in C2. I want the cast to be more respectful towards their audience and not end up going “Ha ha! Psyche! We didn’t really mean it!”

I actually DO want this all to work out for the better. And for two reasons 1) because I want the BJ’s who are all-in for Im/odna to have something good to look forward to for once. Something to celebrate. And 2) I want them to be able to say to all of the bitter BY bitches, “We told you so. Everything we speculated was correct. We were right, you were wrong. Eat shit!” I want them to have something to rub in the faces of all the pricks who are actively rooting for Im/odna to fail.

Even with me. I will GLADLY eat shit too for doubting. If Marisha and Laura go full throttle to Romance Town, those same BJ’s are more than welcome to flood my inbox with unabashed gloating. And I will be thrilled.

I would gloat right along with them. Everyone in the Beaujester fandom (whether you ship Im/odna or not), is still dealing with all that shitty baggage from C2. And I think we ALL deserve a chance to gloat. We’ve been fucked around with and stomped on far too much. We should get something good.

However, if I am proven wrong, that doesn’t mean that I’m gonna suddenly fall in love with CR again. I’m not gonna give CR props, I’m not gonna watch C3, I’m not gonna buy merch, I’m not gonna start praising the cast and fawning over everything they say and do. I’m not gonna praise Marisha and Laura for finally committing to something. THAT would a bridge too far. If CR does something good for once, great. But I’m not gonna feel good for them. I’m gonna feel good for the people they did right by.