Masterpost of TLT metas
This is mostly for my own reference, as tagging doesn't seem to guarantee something being findable on Tumblr...but if you like wildly overthinking lesbian necromancers in space, enjoy!
Overthinking the Fifth House:
What is a "Speaker to the Dead"?
Actually, Magnus Quinn isn't terrible at sword fighting
Imperial complicity: Abigail the First
Pyschopomp: Abigail Pent and Hecate
Did Teacher conspire with Cytherea to kill the Fifth?
What does the Fifth House actually do?
The Fourth and the Fifth can never just be family
Cytherea's political observations at the anniversary dinner
Abigail Pent's affect: ghosts and autism
Were the Fourth wards of the Fifth?
Abigail probably knew most of the scions as children
Magnus Quinn's very understandable anger
Fifth House necromancy is not neat and tidy
Are Abigail and Magnus an exception to the exploitative nature of cavaliership?
"Abigail Pent literally brought her husband and look where that got her" (the Fifth in TUG)
The Fifth's relationship dynamic
The Fifth's relationship is unconventional in a number of ways
The queer-coding of Abigail and Magnus' relationship
Abigail and Palamedes, and knowing in the River
Was Isaac the ward of the Fifth?
Did Magnus manage to draw his sword before Cytherea killed him? (and why he probably had to watch his wife die)
How did Abigail know she was murdered by a Lyctor?
Fifth House necromancy is straight out of the Odyssey
The politics of the anniversary dinner
Was Magnus born outside of the Dominicus system?
Overthinking John Gaius:
The one time John was happy was playing Jesus
Is Alecto's body made from John's?
Are there atheists in the Nine Houses?
Why isn't John's daughter a necromancer?
The horrors of love go both ways: why John could have asked Alecto 'what have you done to me?'
Why M- may have really hoped John was on drugs
What is it with guys called Jo(h)n and getting disintegrated? (John and Dr Manhattan)
John's conference call with his CIA handlers
Watching your friend turn into an eldritch horror
Why does G1deon look so weird? (Jod regrew him from an arm)
When is a friendship bracelet not a friendship bracelet?
Why did John have G1deon hunt Harrow? (with bonus update)
The 'indelible' sin of Lyctorhood and John's shoddy plagiarism of Catholicism
Are John Gaius and Abigail Pent so different?
What was Jod's plan at Canaan House?
John and Ianthe tread the Eightfold path
The Mithraeum is more than a joke about cows
When was John Gaius born? (And another)
John Gaius and the tragic Orestes
John and Jesus writing sins in the sand
John and Nona's echoing chapters
John's motivations
Overthinking the Nine Houses:
'No retainers, no attendants, no domestics'
Funerary customs and the violence of John's silence
Juno Zeta and the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad time
The horror of the River bubble
Every instance of 'is this how it happens' in HTN
Feudalism is still shitty even if you make it queer and sex positive
How do stele work?
Thought crime in the Nine Houses
The Houses have a population the size of Canada
What must it be like to fight the Houses?
You know what can't have been fun? Merv wing's megatruck on Varun day...
Augustine's very Catholic hobby (decorating skeletons)
Necromancers are not thin in a conventionally attractive way
Matching the Houses with the planets of the solar system
Why don't the Nine Houses have (consistent) vaccination or varifocals?
How would the Houses react to the deaths at Canaan House?
How does Wake understand her own name (languages over 10,000 years)
What pre-resurrection texts are known in the Houses?
Camilla and Palamedes very Platonic relationship
The horrors the Cohort found at Canaan House
Do the Houses understand the tech keeping them alive?
Overthinking House religion:
What do the Houses believe about death?
Was M's nun a Franciscan?
Cavaliership and arbitrary socio-religious structures
Ritual scarification
Sacraments and sacramentals
What did Silas think god wanted at Canaan House?
In defense of Silas
There's no such thing as a 'good' necro/cav relationship
Veiling and shaving in Ninth House cult practice
Tongue-in-cheek thoughts on Eighth and Sixth religion
A very long deep-dive on House belief and practice
Overthinking Harrowhark Nonagesimus:
'The meat of your meat...belonged to god' and 'that is how meat loves meat'
The horror of parental touch: Harrow, John Gaius, and Abigail Pent
Why is Harrow so obsessed with Abigail's hands?
Frontline Titties of the Fifth and transgressive necro/cav relationships
Harrow, Wake, and permeability of the soul in HTN
Bible studies for weird queer necromancers:
Epiphany: revealing god's child to the wider world
The Holy Innocents and the creche massacre
The Virgin Mary and Commander Wake
John Gaius and John the Baptist
Instantiating the Trinity and the Second Resurrection
What's the significance of Paul?
St Paul's theology of gender and sexuality and the House theology of cavaliership
Maundy Thursday: consuming another for eternal life
Harrow and the Harrowing of Hell
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✍️ more fic writer asks!
reblog & your followers can send asks with the questions they’d like you to answer!
the last sentence you wrote
a character whose POV you’re currently exploring
how you feel about your current WIP
a story idea you haven’t written yet
first sentence of the fifth paragraph of an unpublished WIP
the word that appears the most in your current draft (wordcounter.net can tell you)
your preferred writing fonts
if you had to write a sequel to a fic, you’d write one for…
start to finish, how long did it take you to write the last fic you posted?
what is the longest amount of time you’ve let a draft rest before you finished it?
a WIP you’d like to finish someday
a trope you’re really into right now
a fandom you’re thinking about writing for
where do you get your inspiration?
favorite weather for writing
favorite place to write
talk about your writing and editing process
if you keep them, share a deleted sentence or paragraph from a published fic
the most interesting topic you’ve researched for a fic
in what year did you publish your first fic?
when did you publish your most recent fic?
do you ever worry about public reaction to what you’re writing? how do you get past that?
pick three keywords that describe your writing
how do you recharge when you’re not feeling creative?
besides writing, what are your other hobbies?
are you able to write with other people around?
your favorite part of the writing process
your least favorite part of the writing process
how easy is it for you to come up with titles?
share a fic you’re especially proud of
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EDIT: New suggestions still welcome, but skim the current replies first to make sure you're not saying what twenty others have already said. Let's just say NO MORE JAPANESE NAMES to be safe (most of the repeats are Japanese); I'm still interested in other culture's tasty snack names
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Guys, it's an emergency guys
I have lost my notes on names for Zuko's feral mantis-shrimp badger that he pulls from the trash behind his Uncle's teashop and makes into a (hissing, snarling, Nephew Please Put That Down--) pet guys
Please reply to this post with very cute food-themed names, particularly food that is small, sweet, and generally served as a tea cake. NOT tea names, Zuko hates tea. Tea snack names.
Her working name has been Madeleine but I'd prefer something more Asian, because I don't want a subplot explaining how Iroh acquires madeleines in the AtlA world. This should be something served at his shop, or available readily in town, so Zuko can impulse-name his new Snarly McBadIdea Pet. Also I cannot for the life of me spell Madeleine without a google search, so there's that.
If I end up using your name, you'll get credited in the upcoming story.
Also wanted: names for Toph's delicate seeing-eye shrimp-badger, who is a well breed and hard-working lady and therefore deserves a ludacris beefy Earth-Rumble-type name
So that when the Gaang shows up and meets Feral Trash Badger and Little Lady Badger
And hears their names
They absolutely guess wrong on which is which
And Sokka gets an Offended Badger to the face
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nothing too insightful to say just !!! toph is the disabled character of all time and it means so much to me, personally. thinking specifically about what you mentioned on the last post about how she learns to let herself be loved; it is often such a fundamental aspect of growing up with a disability that “love” is the guise that adults stripping you of agency wear.
it’s not just being helped in a way that harms and deemed incompetent. it’s being perceived as incompetent, receiving help for your disability that strips you of autonomy, being vulnerable to the abuse and unable to speak for yourself in response to it because you are too frail, helpless, all under the premise of “love.” when disabled love becomes the equivalent of burdening another and being taken from yourself, toph is kind of incredible because it took me nearly twenty years to even begin to unlearn all of that, but she managed to open herself up to others within a few months (to varying degrees, it’s also interesting she seems to trust sokka the quickest, maybe i will send another ask after breakfast rambling about that).
but toph’s ability to adjust her concept of what love is and open herself to it, is genuinely one of the most powerful disability arcs i have ever seen. she becomes able to accept help and not have that feel like embodying weakness, which feels dangerous when disabled because your perceived social weakness is why you have been stripped of all agency and dehumanized, esp. as a disabled child. toph is incredibly strong in regards to earth bending, but truthfully it is this ability to listen, observe and adapt that is her greatest strength. her character is soooo good and her arc is so fucking beautiful
YES 💗 i don’t talk about toph’s disability enough because i don’t like getting too personal on here but you really do articulate that struggle perfectly and i agree so much with what you said.
toph’s foundational trauma is tied not to her experience being blind, but rather the abuse she received due to her blindness. the struggle of being disabled is always twofold: firstly, and i hate when people sugarcoat or ignore this, having a physical disability does make life more difficult. we see toph struggle when she’s not in a position to use her earthbending as a mobility aid; there are aspects of life that are difficult or genuinely impossible for her to participate in due to her limitations. she can and does often compensate by being a brilliant earthbender, but there are still some things she simply cannot do.
but what’s more important to toph’s experience with disability is the way she is treated by those around her, especially her parents. toph simultaneously struggles with being coddled and smothered due to her unique needs, denied agency due to the assumption that she is somehow less able to dictate her own choices, and treated like a shameful burden due to her disability. so by the time toph joins the gaang, she is very afraid of being seen as a burden, but she also doesn’t want anyone helping her with anything or telling her what to do, because she associates that with her parents’ abuse.
she bristles when katara tries to get her to help out, because she wants to be the kind of person who respects everyone else’s space and lets everyone be capable of “carrying their own weight,” just as she wants to be allowed to be left to her own devices. she doesn’t yet understand that a community or support network is not the same thing as a denial of agency, and so she assumes that katara is overbearing and motherly instead of a kid who comes from a place where everyone does an equal share of labor and expects everyone else to do the same.
that’s why i think a lot of people who have never experienced any kind of major disability firsthand don’t really understand toph, and just assume she’s spoiled and brash due to being rich and entitled. but that’s not the case at all. she’s spent her whole life being treated like a fragile doll instead of a person, and it’s dehumanizing and isolating. she doesn’t understand the value of a community because she’s sick of people trying to help her, and due to her own experiences being “helped,” assumes that help is necessarily negative and a denial of one’s agency.
the last thing she wants in that situation is to be overbearing, to be the one telling other people what to do and how to live their lives (yet another reason why she would never become a cop). of course, she signed on to be aang’s teacher, so pretty quickly she does have to get over herself and actually instruct, and she’s not a gentle pedagogue either. but she also knows that she is supremely qualified to teach earthbending, and so it’s easier for her to tell others what to do when she knows that her wisdom counts for something and she isn’t just imposing her will onto someone else for the hell of it, or because she doesn’t respect them.
she also definitely takes iroh’s advice to heart, because unlike a certain incorrigible nephew, she’s really wise and emotionally mature, able to respond to measured advice and actually internalize what iroh is saying. so it doesn’t take long for her to develop a bond with sokka where she doesn’t feel afraid to rely on him. and it’s funny, because she accuses katara of being overbearing and motherly, but she does actually listen to sokka and follow his every command, despite her supposed disdain for authority. and i think it’s the fact that even though sokka does sometimes forget that she’s blind, he’s never purposely insensitive, and he never bosses her around for the hell of it.
unlike katara, who is genuinely unkind to toph in “the chase,” sokka never disrespects toph, and he certainly never disrespects her disability. he’ll banter with her about it, like when he says “well you’ve never not seen anything like this” in “sokka’s master,” but the joke isn’t at her expense, unlike “the stars sure are beautiful tonight,” which is straight up cruel and lowkey unforgivable (sidenote: as someone who has been bullied for being disabled, i do think that this is hands down the worst thing katara ever says in the show, and i understand why toph would continue to hold a grudge against her for that for a long time). whereas sokka always treats toph like a person, and toph recognizes that, so she thus not only accepts his help, but actively asks for it and enjoys receiving it.
toph does grow and accept her own vulnerability remarkably fast, but to the gaang’s credit, they are great friends, and they all treat her like a person instead of a burden or a doll (including katara). having people who love you and understand you, both in terms of your strengths and your limitations, is really necessary, for anyone, but especially for disabled people. i’m really lucky to have people in my life who love me like that, and toph’s arc is so beautiful specifically because she is given that love and care and never takes it for granted. i definitely think that toph is one of the greatest disabled characters of all time, and it’s because her disability isn’t simply incidental to her character, but rather the central pillar of her arc that informs all her motivations at all times. she learns to ask for help, and accept help when it’s offered. she finds a community.
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