you know at the end of the day today i was chatting w some other paras. i was a special ed para for a seventh grader today that's what i did. and the last block for them is just learning center and it's chill and it's friday and some of the kids were making pizza and no one was really doing anything or stressed or bothered so the kids and the adults just have various little shooting-the-breeze sessions although im usually not that active in these bc Im Shy, And A Substitute so i feel very out of place a lot of the time. but anyway i had never really talked much w either of the paras i was with today and we struck up a conversation about some stuff and one of them says to me "you know just so you know i LOVE your hair" and she turns to the other para and she's like "isnt it gorgeous? dont you love her hair?"
and i kinda blushed and said thank you a couple of times and looked down bc that's what i do when i receive a sincere-sounding compliment unexpectedly. and then i chatted a little more before i kinda drifted out of the conversation and opened my book and after a page or two one of them asked me about what i was reading (it's Song of the Cell: An Exploration of Medicine and the New Human by Siddhartha Mukherjee if you were wondering and i started it a few days ago). so i told them a bit about it and started chatting again on the topic of reading and i guess i was just naturally smiling and the same one who complimented my hair said "look at those dimples. i just can't w you"
I feel so bad for Xel from the last comic but,, I admit I got a laugh out of a random thought because like, imagine that Scar and Grian bonked heads because their kid’s mass is like comically off,, Xel has the mass of the center of the sun (his adult body mass) crammed into his tiny body and he just forgot before he jumped
"I think this is the most inhuman; and human, that I've ever felt.."
MUCH CAN HAPPEN IN A YEAR. IN FIVE YEARS. A DECADE. imagine how much can happen in a century. just ONE (1). How will you grow? what phases do you find? even in 5 years, you will find patterns.
Could you explain your position on Shallura? Since Allura was established as a teenager when she started dating Lance and Shiro was very clearly an adult. I can understand the bi shiro headcannon but the shallura thing worries me
i am going to remind yall that i have been in this fandom since 2016. and in the early seasons, allura was not established as a teenager. in fact she was coded as older, as closer to shiro's age -- there was a specific divide between her and the younger paladins that she did not have with shiro. they made her younger (both explicitly and in mannerisms) as the show went on. and i do not give a fuck about voltron like...post s4 and i didn't even watch s7-8. so like. especially with older fics, im going to enjoy shallura.
Could you tell us more abt ur au where Apollo doesn’t come back exactly right after surviving being so close to chaos 👀
Yes!! Actually I had a fic that I really wanted to write about this, and I am planning on still doing that but I will tell y'all the gist of it bc I cannot contain myself. (Also this is a bit different from some of the things I've said before about this so I hope you still like it lol)
Ok so, the fic was gonna be a 5 + 1 fic, where Meg and Apollo both realize that something's ... off about him after the trials. His powers and abilities are fluctuating for seemingly no reason. Sometimes he's just a normal god, but sometimes it's like he's still a mortal. And he's also having times where he's way stronger than a god should be, like, near primordial levels. It's causing him a lot of issues, for example:
Gods don't need to eat or sleep, but mortals do. If Apollo doesn't realize his energy levels are going down, he will just end up crashing from lack of food/sleep. This leaves him perpetually exhausted and shaky.
His blood is now all kinds of crazy colors, and it changes based off of where he is on the mortal/immortal scale.
When he's in a "mortal" state of being, he's pretty similar to a demigod. Meg and Apollo learned this when Apollo accidentally did some lightning bending one day. This is not something Apollo has ever wanted to be able to do, and he freaks out appropriately.
One day, Apollo woke up sick and tired of this whole situation. He jokingly wished that someone else could just take over the sun for the day. However, Apollo hadn't realized that he had just gotten a huge power boost overnight, and his harmless little wish just created a second sun. Haha whoops.
Eventually, Apollo ends up breaking his father's rules and visiting Asclepius just so he can get some answers about this, so here's a little rough comic based on the scene I wanted to write explaining this whole mess.
Keep thinking of Buck and Bucky's perception of Rosie through their eyes. When they meet him, Rosie's a great pilot, has been training gunners for ages and knows his way around a plane well - but has yet to see any combat. He's that wide-eyed kind of hopeful that he can make a difference.
When they meet him again by the end of the series, Rosie's gone on to fly 52 missions. He's well and truly past his first tour, and well into his second. The rest of the 100th adore him and respect him as a leader; and Rosie adores them all right back.
Despite all of that, Rosie still seems like the same person - undemonstrative, and a little more heaviness to his shoulders perhaps, but that wide-eyed hope that I can make a difference hasn't faded.
Have you seen that post on how Cersei pushing Jaime into forcing sex on her is an abuse technique on her end?
no, but i checked his tag now lol. while i know that george explicitly expressed that the sept scene was intended as consensual by him, i still believe that jaime’s pattern of pushing to have sex with cersei, and how, speaks of an unhealthy relationship with consent in this relationship on his part too, a lack of respect for boundaries on his part, as well as objectification on his part that cannot be removed from the context of this society’s gender dynamics, especially when it concerns cersei’s themes and her character (to contextualize and expand on what i mean, heres a very quick collection of quotes regarding how jaime’s relationship to cersei, sex, swordplay, and even violence blend or function similarly in relation to very heavy dissociative tendencies):
i understand the jc dynamic’s set up:
“She has never come to me, he thought. She has always waited, letting me come to her. She gives, but I must ask.”
“She wanted to draw his face to hers for a kiss. Later, she told herself, later he will come to me, for comfort. “We are his heirs, Jaime,” she whispered. “It will be up to us to finish his work. You must take Father’s place as Hand. You see that now, surely. Tommen will need you . . .”
i also understand how george seems to establish communication and patterns within this dynamic that reinforce his expressed intention, which is also apparent in a scene that a third party witnesses and how that mirrors the sept, and i obviously also do not think these two would do all of this healthily and establish things akin to safe words (lmao) (though i take issue with a lot of things here still when it comes to grrm and how consent is framed):
and i understand george framing cersei utilising sex, or even love and affection, as a means to have power, and that being a big factor in this relationship’s dynamic and how she takes control (see instances when cersei does initiate— jaime’s narration is not entirely correct, we know of the inn, which is unique but important, so it is interesting that he chooses not to connect this until feast, that would mean confronting something he doesn’t want to— and what motives she has: “She smiled for him, so sweetly. “Do you remember the first time I came to you like this? It was some dismal inn off Weasel Alley, and I put on servant’s garb to get past Father’s guards.” “I remember. It was Eel Alley.” She wants something of me. “Why are you here, at this hour? What would you have of me?” His last word echoed up and down the sept, mememememememememememe, fading to a whisper. For a moment he dared to hope that all she wanted was the comfort of his arms.”
but i do not think that changes much about the issues on jaime’s part, or how patriarchal hegemony works, or how a lot of fandom frames cersei. we know cersei only enjoys sex with jaime (it is sex that is categorized as different from lancel, osney, taena, and robert — all of these also cannot be conflated for obvious reasons — by her), she says so, but that doesn’t change that she still believes that it is her only source of power and means through which she can reach equal ground within her society. we can understand why cersei thinks and functions this way: we understand how she was reared and how she was viewed as a sexual object and a tool for political transactions with no autonomy since childhood by every adult around her. we see how and why jaime is needed by her to feel “whole”, and how he is her “sword.” it is also not difficult to acknowledge that while the abusive dynamic is not what i would consider equal: jaime does not verbally berate her to the degree she does him, does not physically hit her and throw things at her, does not use her or emotionally abuse her the way that she does him (and no, i personally do not agree with people that say they are equally terrible to each other or they equally benefit from this relationship), jaime still ultimately has some power over her due to his gender (the physical is obvious, but on top of that this is a medieval society with extreme levels of gender inequality), and nothing will really erase that because this relationship does not exist in a vacuum. this is not diminished by how this relationship functions, her status as queen and jaime’s status as her kg, and other variables that play into the unequal power dynamic. it will always have to be acknowledged that cersei is a woman + everything that comes with that being the case in a medieval society with complete patriarchal domination. i also think the unhealthy belief system of “we are one. you are me. i am you. we are two halves of a whole” will have effects on the understanding of consent and how both parties function in the relationship. i think this extreme delusion would lead to a plethora of issues when it comes to consent and boundaries. with cersei too, the moment she (including her offering sex) is rejected by her “other half” she emphasizes and says things like “you swore that you would always love me.” and “i was a fool to ever love you” or starts verbally berating him, emasculating him, being ableist etc. this relationship operates on some absurd conditions and ultimatums, it is not healthy, hence things like “the things I do for love” too. in reality, it really is the opposite of “unconditional destined lovers.” both of them have things that they end up prioritizing over the other, and both have an incorrect idea of the other that fits their specific needs and wants. i just despise this whole “cersei groomed and manipulated jaime since they were children” bullshit. a child is not capable of this. teenaged cersei was navigating the strict and dehumanising boxes that her father and society forced her into since she was 7 years old. she looked to her brother for comfort and escape as much, if not in many ways more at this point, as he did. i also think cersei escapes into the relationship to subvert those societal patterns in many ways (i have seen people discuss that jaime views her as an equal and a person more so than others: “If I were a woman I’d be Cersei.”) but this still does not change the flaws that jaime has. he is not only a man in westeros, he was also reared by tywin lannister lmao. he is a misogynist with a skewed understanding and view of a lot of things. no point in denying this.
and all this aside, i also understand “mutual abuse is not real”, and understand the damage ignoring that can do to narratives revolving around victims of abuse, and the issue with framing ‘retaliation’ or ‘bad victims’ as mutual abuse (see discussions regarding robert and cersei for example and some of the putrid narratives that come out of that), but we are talking about fiction and its themes, discussing an author’s known intention and execution of that intention (that we can also criticize), as well as what is written in a text, and i do not think we should be ignoring the nuances when it comes to applying a modern lens to a medieval society with some very different and more severe and strict paradigms when it comes to gender inequality and the oppression of women.
here are george’s actual comments that i do not believe contradict the bulk of my perspective either tbh:
As a fan of Jlud, how do you enjoy the Sterma ship if at all?
i dont rlly get the hate between the jlud and strma shippers... (NOT SAYING UR A HATER SRRY ANON) i get the jealousy 100%. but to me its like jrm and his little side hoes. AND I RESPECT THAT! its something so endearing to me,, the way he brings up lud when hes w str and vice versa.
What Deacon thinks: what did that mean? did he want me to wear a collar too? why else would he mention my neck? i mean, if he /asked/ me i would wear one but he didn't so would wearing one be weird?
What Ymber meant: It's nice to be near someone who isn't tethered to this world to serve it with a physical reminder for all to see.
It's 2024 and there's still those who feel the need to tell people who ship Jonsa that all the evidence is a reach. Why is that? Why are they so preoccupied with a ship that they think is delusional?
I think Sansa and Sandor is delusional, there's zero chance of it happening but I'm not sending anons to the people who ship it saying it's never going to happen.
The antis just need to admit that they're terrified that Jonsa is going to happen. GRRM has subtly sprinkled Jonsa dust and it's the critical reader who sees it. That's why you have people who don't ship any of the characters and aren't interested in any of the fandom ships who see the links between Sansa and Jon and wonder what it's about and why it's there.
we got that modern day cassandra curse. no matter how much evidence we have, the greater fandom will ignore it. but that’s ok, half the takes this fandom comes up with are terrible so i would rather keep them away from jonsa as long as possible.