#that doesn't foster any kind of good results

[catcze]

Spoilers for Wriothesley's backstory !! References to leaks of his backstory !!

When Wriothesley was younger and homeless on the streets of Fontaine, an orphan who ran from his foster home to fend for himself, there was no one for him to rely on. It was a dog-eat-dog world, and putting your trust in the wrong person could result in lying facedown in a ditch, just another casualty of the city.

Wriothesley was prepared to fight for himself for the rest of his life. Was prepared to sleep with one eye open, and ready to get stabbed in the back at any second. Everyone around him wouldn't cast him a second glance and wouldn't offer him a shred of help.

No one, maybe, except for you.

You were around his age— that much was evident from the first day he met you, when you found him crouched in an alleyway half-starved and soaked through by the rain. You were kind, if the umbrella you covered his head with was any indication. You had gotten soaked yourself, but you still smiled at him and told him to keep it, that he needed it more.

And lastly: you were born into good, good money. He found that out the next day when you bought him a packaged meal of warm meats and bread. Although he was hesitant to accept your kindness, cautious of what price you would attach to such a thing, the grumbling of his stomach won out and he finished the whole meal in less than five minutes. It was one of the best things he had ever tasted.

You said nothing as you sat beside him, uncaring of how the dirt of the sidewalk stained your clothes. When he was finished, you offered him a bottle of water. As he chugged it down, you gave him your first name, and when he hesitated to tell you his, you smiled and shook your head.

"It's fine, you don't have to tell me," you told him with a slight smile. And that was that.

From then on, you find him every few days at the same spot. He doesn't talk much, you discover, but he's always willing to listen to you talk. Anything under the sun— your lessons, your absent parents, the droves of socialites who try to butter you up with hollow words and false admiration— you can ramble about it for hours and hours and he'll sit beside you, interjecting on occasion, but generally letting you take the lead in conversation.

Once, you brought him a canister filled with tea, and watched as his eyes lit up at his first taste.

"This is some really good stuff," he told you, awe in his voice, already going for a second sip. You smile, seeing him so pleased.

"I'll bring you more next time. I'll try to make a different brew, too, to see if you'd like that even more."

When he gets scuffed from street fights, you're there to patch him up. Clumsily at first, with a furrowed brow and tangled strips of bandages, but you get better and better at it over time. He doesn't reject the help, and you don't scold him for getting hurt. It is times like these where your hands —only calloused by the grip of a pen and nothing more, unlike his that are so scarred and rough— make you both remember how different your worlds are.

One day, you go to the place you two had been meeting for nearly a year now, and it's empty. That's not particularly unusual— it's happened once or twice before where your friend couldn't make it, so it's no cause for concern. You merely leave the food and water in a little nook he had shown you before, and make your way home, hoping that he's alright and not too banged up.

When you get home, the maids and the butler all tell you of a recent incident that happened not too far away in the city— of an assault and a mangled body, of the perpetrator on death's door himself, barely rushed to the hospital in time. While you have dinner alone, they urge you to exercise caution if you go out tomorrow.

So you take heed of their words, bringing a new platter of food and hide small knife in your pocket as you head back to the same place yesterday. The food and water from before is still there, hidden in the little nook only the two of you know of.

Anxiety grips you, but you try to shake it off. You return the next day. And the next. And the next. Each day, the food you leave remains untouched every time.

You fear the worst after a week is up— you fear for his safety, for his health. You fear for the only genuine friend you had ever made, who had seen you as more than just your parents' only child. You don't leave your room for a week, poring over the newspaper and anything else you can get your hands on. The househelp thinks you're ill— and you are. You're sick with worry, sick with the late nights spent up as you stretch yourself thin trying to find something, anything about him. But when your parents learn of your seclusion, you're forced to give up your search. In the end, you're the only one left to remember the nameless boy with the soft smile and a love for tea.

It is years and years down the line. Wriothesley had been doing well as the administrator of the fortress— so much so that he had been invited to the Palais Mermonia to receive the title of Duke. He had barely managed to sidestep a grand investiture ceremony, instead opting to sign, take the relevant certificates, and be done with it.

When he enters the office of the Iudex, he's met with the man himself and a surprisingly familiar face. One that he had never forgotten, even on days where the ground threatened to crumble underneath him and the walls of his prison cell felt like they were closing in.

Your eyes blow wide, your grip on the documents threatening to rip the papers, and he doesn't miss the slight wobble in your lip as you gaze at him.

"Good afternoon, I'm pleased that you could join us," says the Iudex. He sweeps one hand in your direction. "This is one of our top attorneys,assigned to assist with the processing of your documents and certificates."

Wriothesley smiles, wider than he has in a long, long time, and reaches a hand out for you to grasp.

"Hi," he says, never taking his eyes on your face. He squeezes your hand and feels you tremble in his hold. "My name is Wriothesley. It's nice to meet you."

[nerdpoe]

Like Facing off Against C'Thulu, but it's Really Just your Fears. Part 3

Part one, Part two, Part four, AO3

Sorry about the wait, stress and life happened, and also this chapter is gonna be a bit different. Sorry if it doesn't follow the flow of the previous two, feel free to ignore this one if you didn't like it.

Dick felt himself crawling towards wakefulness, and the second he realized he was waking up his body forced him to be fully aware.

Painfully so.

The ache was vicious, his skin burned on the inside, and his stomach muscles wouldn’t stop twitching; the memory of being cut open making his own insides flinch.

It was a terrifying feeling, when each movement made his skin pull against the stitches holding him together. 

But he recognized the lights above him, the smells around him. The chittering of bats and the gentle hum of electronics, the echoes of a cavern dark and deep enough to hide one of the world’s biggest secrets.

He was home. He was also very, very drugged.

His attempt to sit up instead resulted in one hand lazily swatting himself in his own face. Some kind soul delicately lifted his wayward hand and gently set it on his side.

Dr. Thompkins' relieved face was the first thing his bleary eyes made out.

“Welcome to the world of the waking, sleeping beauty,” she said, brushing his bangs out of his face.

Dick hummed, enjoying the feeling of a kind touch. 

It helped to banish the ghosts of hands that were tracing his ribs.

Against his will, his eyes closed. 

He was still very much awake, though.

“To prevent you from doing something monumentally stupid, yes, the boy was saved from his parents,” she continued, noticing his need for contact and leaving her hand where it was, “He is currently upstairs, still settling in. I believe Tim is showing him how to use the online high school they found.”

Dick knew that if he was not drugged up to his ears, the feeling of joy at the news that the kid would be able to continue his education would not have been as muted as it was.

“Bruce is fostering him right now, and it seems to be going well. Slow, but well.”

There was another set of steps walking into the room, but Dick couldn’t bring himself to turn his head away from the gentle hand laid on it.

“The boys…parents have been escorted to Arkham. Our only hope of them being there doing any good is if they turn on their fellow inmates during the next outbreak.” 

Dick agreed, and also agreed with whoever had put their hand in his own. He squeezed it lightly, taking note of its size.

Damian!

The precise steps that walked in after Damian, along with the shuffling of the blankets being rearranged…

Alfred!

Two of his favorite people! This was so much better than being asleep.

“His name is Daniel, he goes by Danny; he’s a meta,” Damian’s voice cut through, steady for all that his hand in Dick’s was not, “He possesses super hearing and super strength at a minimum, so we felt it pertinent that he be made aware of our vigilante status before a miscommunication could drive him to an unsafe situation.”

That did make sense. Damian was so smart. Dick was so proud of his little brother.

“As for you; you’ve been in a small coma for around two weeks,” Leslie said, her hand removing itself from his forehead heedless of his pitiful whine, “Your body needs to heal, Dick. I’m sorry, but with physical therapy and how long we will need to wait until we can even begin to attempt that, you’re looking at being benched for a good seven to nine months.”

Well,

“Fuck.”

“Master Dick, language!”

~~~~~~

Sam hadn’t been there when she’d needed to be.

And she knew that even past her Dying Day, she would never forgive herself for that.

She’d been out sick when Danny had finally broken down, had been snippy with her mother and gotten her phone taken away when he’d reached out to her, and had been asleep when his shit parents had finally taken the hint that no one wanted them in Amity and fled.

And they’d taken Danny with them.

So she may have lost it.

Possibly.

The past few months had been full of interesting new experiences for her; Domestic Terrorism, starting riots, getting arrested, committing assault, getting arrested again, performing unauthorized demolition, almost getting arrested a third time by the GIW instead of the cops…

Just girl things, really. 

Paulina had actually been with her every step of the way, and hey; they actually really got along when it came to burning down repressive regimes. Paulina knew how to make a fantastic molotov cocktail, and Sam had loads of unwanted clothing she needed to get rid of that could be used for scraps.

But after causing so much chaos, the entire town was now starting to get behind her. They didn’t give a shit about ghosts, but they wanted the GIW out of their home.

But they needed help to do that, and to get that help then that firewall and media blackout had to go.

Which was where Tucker had stepped in.

Tucker had locked himself in his house after the Fentons had run away, obsessed with finding Danny through any means necessary. He’d thrown himself into cyberspace, and had been essentially chucking himself at the firewalls the GIW had set up around all of Amity. Mostly it ended in excruciating headaches that Sam couldn’t do anything to help with, except to just be there for him while he recovered.

But it had finally gotten one result, the exact one they’d needed. 

The firewall was hosted on one server.

Just one. 

Stupid, but useful for them, and that was what mattered.

It had taken a week to plan the massive riot currently distracting the entire GIW-every single citizen that was willing was using their Liminal abilities out in the open for the sole purpose of being destructive.

Distraction firmly in place, she grabbed Valerie, grabbed Tucker and dragged him away from his hovel, and forced Vlad to comply.

Blackmail did wonders when dealing with rich megalomaniac assholes, although given his face when she’d mentioned Danny, there was a very real chance she hadn’t needed the blackmail at all. She knew he knew something, but she didn’t want to know. It was a feeling she had; if she was told, she would break, and at that moment, she could not afford any weakness.

Together, they’d broken into the Ghost Investigation Ward HQ in Amity and forced the tech blackout curtain to burn to the ground.

Every tweet, every Youtube video, every TikTok, every Paranormal Investigator that had ever been blocked had had their posts stored, apparently to be used in evidence as ‘treason against the state’. 

A stupid oversight, but the GIW appeared to make it a habit to excel in physical violence without the brains to back it up.

It had only taken Tucker fifteen minutes to have every single Twitter account send out all of those blocked tweets at the same time, absolutely flooding the Justice League Official with notifications and getting nearly everyone suspended for suspected bot use.

Youtube was suddenly absolutely filled with videos of people interviewing ghosts, insights into ghost culture, amateur scientists who hadn’t been allowed to leave Amity clumsily recording their findings of Liminality in Mortals.

TikTok was filled with teenagers making memes with Ghosts, Ghosts themselves making memes with stolen phones, and clips of pure unadulterated violence from the GIW chasing them both down.

Sam took a moment to appreciate the comments and retweets, watching as the internet denizens collectively went from curious and puzzled to absolutely furious.

Good.

Why should she be the only one angry?

It was time the world knew.

Then her phone pinged, an alert coming through from outside of the Amity area.

Jazz could wait, they needed to ensure the flow of information was uninterrupted. 

But it pinged again.

And again.

Then Tucker’s phone pinged.

Sighing at the intrusion, Sam pulled out the brick of a phone she insisted on keeping-and her mind screeched to a halt.

Danny.

He said he was in Gotham, that he was fine, that he was staying with a Foster family and was recovering. The texts dated back by two weeks, and the texts after that were Danny just…talking about normal family stuff. He was seeing a therapist, seeing an actual doctor for his physical needs, getting used to having siblings again, eating regular meals, not being chased every day of his life just for existing.

Learning to live again.

Sam didn’t realize she was crying until Vlad, coughing awkwardly, offered her a handkerchief.

He was okay.

Danny was safe.

~~~~~~

Bruce was watching on from the batcomputer as Danny and Dick reunited.

Danny had been unsure of himself at first, but Dick had beckoned him closer and worked his charm, citing that if he’d been able to sit up then he’d juggle for the traumatized teen.

Danny had, instead, juggled random medical supplies for Dick. They’d hit it off from there, and got on like a house on fire.

Tim was at work, Damian and Duke were at school, Steph and Cass had left citing that they “had to leave this testosterone-infested house and get some fresh air”, which meant they were probably working with Oracle on a case they were trying to hide from him.

He’d figure out what it was, of course, but if they wanted to handle it on their own he’d leave them to their own devices. Unless it was the fighting ring. No one was allowed to approach human traffickers alone, no matter how loudly Jason complained.

Bruce frowned and his hands hovered over the keyboard. Maybe it wouldn’t hurt to just take a quick peek-

His phone pinged.

A message from Tim.

Another ping, a different tone; one from Duke.

Tim again.

Duke again, four times in a row.

A message from Steph.

Damian eight times in a row.

Tim again.

Jason?

A whopping twenty-eight from Jason, all in a row.

What on earth was-?

A call, Barbara’s name on the screen.

He glanced over at Dick and Danny as he answered the call; Dick, still hopped up on pain meds, hadn’t noticed. 

Danny had, though.

His head had turned enough to keep Bruce in his line of sight through the window.

“Yes? Is someone hurt?”

“Bruce, you need to check twitter. Danny’s hometown? The weird one I couldn’t get past the firewalls on? Yeah, someone on the inside took down the media blackout. It’s been a hotbed of Crimes against Humanity, violations of meta and Alien rights, violations of Basic Rights, and I don’t even know how many treaties with other dimensions this place has broken.”

Bruce hadn’t been aware he was standing until the faint conversation between Danny and Dick came to an abrupt halt.

“Human experimentation, alien experimentation, coverups, abuse of power; Bruce, this is bad. Amity is going to need League presence to protect the citizens while the government gets this sorted out. There’s already fighting in the streets, I wouldn’t be surprised if casualties have already started.”

“I’ll go to the tower as soon as I can.”

Bruce disconnected the call and made his way over to the medbay, opening the door to the mostly sound-proofed room.

He had to take care of something very important first.

“Danny,” he started, ridding his voice of the edge it had gained and deliberately softening it, “Someone took down the media blackout on Amity, and the internet is having a field day with it. I’d like you to stay off of social media, but I’m not going to order you not to go on it; just be aware that there are some pretty disturbing things out there right now.”

He would never forbid this child from being able to access social media; the day Bruce became like Danny’s parents in any way he’d sign over the custody of all his legal children to Clark. He couldn't forbid the boy from basic social interaction for his age group. He would never isolate him like that.

Danny had just started trusting them; he’d fallen asleep in front of Bruce for the first time yesterday, and had actually talked back to Jason when they’d been in one of their morbid debates, not an ounce of fear in his face.

He would hate for Danny to have come so far, only to have it all negated with one badly timed peek into TikTok.

Danny stared at him with wide eyes, his hand tightening around Dick’s.

“What media blackout?”

Oh.

He hadn’t…

No way.

“Didn’t you wonder why the League was never called to help out your hometown?”

Please, please, please-

“I mean, the government was there, and they were pretty-uh. Pretty…efficient, in finding abnormalities.” As he spoke, Danny’s face grew pale and his gaze dropped.

Damn it, damn them, and damn every person that had ever failed this boy.

Bruce pulled up a chair and sat down, silencing his phone and sliding it into his pocket.

“Danny, what do you know of meta rights?”

Danny’s confused look just grew.

“What’s a meta?”

Bruce closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and attempted to center himself. Danny didn’t know he was called a meta, and given the severity of what Oracle had just told him, had most likely been told that he deserved to be punished for existing.

It was difficult to ask for help when one didn’t even know there was help available.

“You, and I heavily suspect the majority of people in your hometown. You all fall under various laws designed to protect metas, to ensure that you are not abused or discriminated against.”

There was a shaky inhale, and Bruce opened his eyes to Dick rubbing circles with his thumb onto the back of Danny’s hand.

Danny was crying.

“So Sam and Tucker won’t be taken?”

Bruce knew those names, knew they were friends of his youngest charge. He hadn’t known they were metas, which begged the question; was Amity Park a city made up entirely of metas?

The concept was a bit too much for Bruce to consider, so he steered away from it and focused on the child in front of him.

“No. They have just as much right to security and safety as the next citizen. As do you.”

Danny shook his head, ignoring when Dick tried to gain his attention to reaffirm what Bruce had just said.

“But I’m not a meta; I’m only half human.”

Bruce took another deep breath, trying and failing to reign in his anger. He was not successful, and Dick took advantage of his silence to step in.

“Danny, you have abilities beyond being human; that makes you a meta by legal definition,” Dick explained quietly, anger hiding behind the sympathy in his voice, “So you deserve just as many protections as Duke.”

Danny’s eyes grew wide.

“So I can talk about Duke’s powers and he won’t be-he’ll be safe? He won’t get hurt?”

Bruce took out his phone and sent a text to Clark.

He would have to miss this particular mission, regardless of what he had told Barbara.

He had a previous victim of Amity Park right in front of him, and his priority was to ensure that Danny learned all the legal ways he was entitled to protection by the law.

Besides, as long as he stipulated that Diana be in charge, it would be fine. That was the beauty of being a part of a much larger team; the rare instance he was otherwise occupied, there were others to step in.

He would send over Red Robin though, just in case. And Orphan. Oracle was already overlooking the situation, she wouldn’t mind orchestrating rescue and containment, surely?

Instructions sent, he slipped his phone into his pocket and looked back to Dick and Danny.

“Do you want to go over the laws concerning metas, Danny?” He asked, leaning forward and resting a hand lightly on the boy’s shoulder.

Danny nodded.

Bruce nodded back, grabbed the tablet Dick had been using to entertain himself, pulled up documentaries about the history of meta rights, and began.

~~~~~~

The streets of Amity Park were filled with a rolling mass of people and ghosts, all fighting against government agents in pure white suits. If there had been order, it was no longer present. 

Buildings were on fire, the few adults who still had their rationality were trying to either shepherd or shield the small children that had gotten caught in the crosshairs, corpses were lying on the street only to have the ghost of that person jump up and dive right back into the frenzy, and the few unlucky enough to get caught were being dragged screaming into vans.

The ghosts were clearly against the Guys in White, but also had no regard for the humans in their presence. The humans, likewise, were using weapons clearly meant for ghosts against the Guys in White, damaging their allies in the process.

The streets were one big free-for-all, and no one was coming out on top.

Even if the Justice League could round up the humans and give them proper orders, the ghosts were a risk as entities with unknown powers who were prone to severe emotional outbursts. Which, in turn, made the humans nervous, and more likely to keep anti-ghost weapons on them, which started the whole cycle over.

It was a mess.

Red Robin maneuvered the batplane over a football field, the only clear place of landing. 

Orphan was behind Red Robin, across from Red Hood, and he could hear the leather creaking in her gloves with how hard she was gripping the armrests.

And Red Hood, who had snuck on board because there was no way in fuck he was letting his siblings into a warzone alone, calmly switched out his rubber bullets for real ones.

This was not the kind of situation where a minor ouchie would keep the baddies down.

This had to be permanent.

He’d try for nonlethal shots where he could, but he’d seen the lengths the Guys in White were willing to go through the windshield. He would have to work in the background and rely on the chaos to divert the League’s attention away from his existence, but it was doable.

“Stand up, Pretender; we have work to do.”

There was no way Bruce had known how bad it was, or he would never have sent anyone other than himself. Large bad guys? No problem. But this?

This was war, plain and simple.

How lucky for Red Hood, then, that his little Pretender was far more violent that Bruce would ever know. The piles of Ra’s soldier’s corpses were a testament to that. If there was anyone else better suited for a battleground, it was Robin, and the kid had a very important math test in twenty minutes.

Orphan joined him at the door, and after a few seconds Red Robin joined them.

He shoved all the spare, useless thoughts to the back of his head and made his way off the plane.

He stepped into …something. Something wet, that stuck to his shoes, and smelled like stagnant water and copper. The grass was overgrown and wet with a mix of green and red liquid, and just from his position alone he could see the corpses of at least twenty white suited agents.

Whoever had laid them out had done a damn good job, but Hood had a feeling that whoever had done it was probably no longer among the living.

He looked at Red Robin and nodded.

Red Robin lightly touched the communicator in his ear and started working with Oracle to find out where they would be needed the most.

Hood, meanwhile, was distracted. 

For all that this place was drenched in terror and pain, it felt…homey. It felt like he was home, or close to it.

Like a piece of him that had been missing was nearby.

He felt, for the first time since his rebirth, almost complete.

The Lazarus pit was humming in the back of his mind, a constant presence of satisfaction pushing against what his humanity was telling him was very, very wrong. Why did this scene satisfy him? It was carnage, it wasn’t meant to generate this feeling of…of being pleased-

Orphan lightly tapped his arm, motioning with her head towards a large, fuckall knight.

The knight just in turn just stood there. Staring at them. Staring at him, specifically.

Hood quietly shifted so that he was in front of Red Robin; a bo staff would do fuckall to that metal armor, and Hood would have to provide the opening for RR’s other tricks to come into play.

The head tilted, the trio of Bats braced themselves, and-

“My Prince!”

What?

“Your father still sleeps, locked in eternal slumber, but if you give us an order we will gladly obey!”

The knight was clearly looking at Hood. Hood tilted his head minutely at RR, but the bird shrugged his shoulders.

“What makes you say I’m the Prince you’re looking for?” 

Buy time; he had to buy time for either Red Robin to figure something out, Orphan to sneak up on the knight, or one of the Big Hitters from the League to arrive.

“You, and all who have been baptized in the blood of the King Himself and survived, have passed judgment and taken his bloodline unto yourselves.”

There was a whole hell of a lot that Hood did not understand about what had just been said, but he had a feeling it was something he didn’t want to know. This ghost seemed powerful, if not unhinged, so he could just send the guy away so he wouldn’t have to contaminate his ears with Shit He Did Not Need To Hear.

“Great; help defend against the Guys in White and tell the other ghosts to cooperate with the Justice League.”

The knight jackknifed up, and bowed.

“Your Will shall be done!”

And the knight…was gone. Just, poof! Disappeared.

Hood groaned and raised a hand to rub the bridge of his nose, only to hit himself in the helmet.

Fuck.

What was he supposed to do with that information?

“Well, Your Royal Liegely Highness Prince Red Hood Sir, Constantine says we need to get to the town square,” Red Robin gave an overly extravagant bow, pointing towards Orphan who was already almost out of the football field.

Hood ignored him and stalked towards Orphan.

He was never going to live this shit down.

“Also, My Royal Princley Liege, how the fuck are we going to explain you to the League?”

Fuck, he would have to be front and center to issue orders.

What a shit day.

Okay, so the idea behind this is that the Lazarus Pits, the mains ones the side ones the random ones-they're all Pariah Darks blood/ectoplasm. As he is King of the Infinite Realms, they're pretty powerful, so they can heal and, in certain cases, revive.

Provided you survive them.

If you survive them, you get a piece of Pariah Dark in you and a guarantee that you will become a ghost destined for the Zone. Every alive person and dead person who has been in the pits are viewed as legal Princes and Princesses by the Ghost Zone.

So by Ghost Zone standards, Ra's and Jason are related. Ra's and Damian are still grandfather and grandson, but both are Princes.

Danny Defeating Pariah did not count, as he had to use an external suit to do it and could not rely fully on his own power. What Danny did do is prove himself worthy to be Fright Knights Page and Successor.

Idk, weird idea, decided to roll with it, gonna need one more chapter to close this baby out

@skulld3mort-1fan @zelabee @waspsarebetterthanbeesanyways @ailithnight @randomkiddoscrewingaround @apointlessbox @pyramaniac @emergentpanda-blog @pastalavistamf @gin2212 @beacedocrime @spectralstardustandphantomnights @introvert-even-on-the-internet @candeartist422 @icarusinstatic @overtherose @toomanyfandoms11 @redhoneysugarorange @vythika96 @blueflipflops @undead-essence @readerzj @rainbowbunny0159 @cursedzucchini @firegirl108 @malice-of-the-sunrise @cryptid-fisherman @terzatheunderscorerima @avelnfear @amercurio @ritzocha @the-archer-goddess

[pragnificent]

Ooh also ⭐ something about identically different too please

So what I'm thinking about is like, how I was pretty far into the series before I consciously realized that what I'd done in this AU was actually a social class flip, and that's what resulted in the role swap.

Will is southern Old Money and the closest thing to nobility (derogatory) that the US has; Hannibal is peasant stock, whose family has benefited from (the extremely mixed bag that was) Soviet social improvements, and among other things he and Mischa are the first members of his family that grew up being taught how to read (his father was literate but only learned as a young adult). Which, ya know, kinda comes with the implication that growing up rich makes you Worse, which is TRUE actually. However, it's not really the class difference that were the deciding factors in Will becoming a serial killer and Hannibal opting not to do so (until...) so much as a matter of expectations.

Canon Will, I've always felt, was able to escape a lot of abuse simply by staying out of his old man's way. He's playing in the woods, staying at the library until it closes, anything to avoid his father, and his father is putting very few expectations on him because he just doesn't give a shit about Will. There's physical abuse but it's mostly neglect, and that gives Will the room to become Observable Weird to others, but also to build his walls and his coping skills.

IDAU Will, on the other hand, simply doesn't have that kind of freedom. There are very firm expectations about not only what Will is doing with his time, but how he looks, speaks and interacts with others, and deviance is getting beaten out of him behind closed doors. He's masking in a way that canon Will never learned (or cared) to do, but he's a fucking powder keg of suppressed emotions and trauma. And his father is Worse for some of the same reasons, and there is no way for Will to get away from any of that, because instead of being a no-account drifter who just kinda incidentally has a kid he never really wanted tagging along after him, Will's father is Focused on Will and making sure that Will behaves Properly and does not Embarrass the Family. And eventually, of course, it gets to be too much for Will and he kills his dad, (and good for him!) but unfortunately now Will has realized there there's one surefire way to bleed off all of that bottled up tension, which is by making it someone else's problem in the worst possible way. On the other hand, Hannibal grows up in a Soviet orphanage, as here he has no surviving family to come and retrieve him. He's under a lot of scrutiny, he's kept very busy (usually in work that involves caring for the interests of others), and a LOT of effort is going into fostering pro-social behavior in all of the children there. He doesn't get the chance to kind of withdraw from the rest of humanity and grow happily weird in all of the idiosyncratic ways that the canon version of the character did.

So Will is Worse in this universe because he wasn't left alone to be Weird in the specific ways that canon Will is Weird, but the opposite is true of Hannibal.

[despazito]

Aussie here, why not a cockatoo? I would get that importing it to the US would be fucked, and that they're one of the loudest birds ever. What other reasons?

There’s a blog run by animal behaviourist who specializes in parrots that i really enjoy reading, she has a very good writeup on them: The Inconvenient Truth About Cockatoos

the average person cannot take proper care of a large parrot. they are extremely social and intelligent animals who are very demanding if you are their only companion.

most pet parrots are hand reared or even hatched in incubators by breeders and are never given a chance to be raised by their parents, virtually none stay with their parents until a natural weaning age before getting sold. which is wild considering it is fucking illegal to do something like that with puppies or kittens.

A parrot isn't really born wired to human companionship in the same way that a dog or cat is. they imprint on their parents which sets the blueprint of their kin, and they generally want to only form extremely close bonds with others of their kin. To get a very people-oriented parrot, it has to think it’s people.

This is different from the socializing practiced in raising cats and dogs or acclimating ferals to people. socializing means exposure to things so that the animal doesn't grow up to see the target as a threat, and ultimately that the target is something that can be very rewarding to spend time around. A dog raised with its mother and socialized to people still understands that it's a dog, it can get along with other dogs, but can also form strong bonds to people. They actually read both dog and human body language and have an awareness that we are different species.

The companion parrot is raised to think it’s people, and as a result many lose the ability to form bonds with their own kind. in fact the reason many breeders remove eggs or chicks from the nest is arguing that the parents don’t really know how to raise their chicks- because they themselves were hand reared and never learned how from their parents! we essentially alienate them, and when they don’t have people around to meet their extremely high needs even if there's other birds around, the human-bonded parrot can become depressed and even self mutilate. parrots that were left with their parents, are raised as parrots, and weaned at their own natural pace overwhelmingly do not exhibit these destructive behaviours.

I think any parrot hand reared and imprinted onto humans is deeply psychologically damaged, they have been robbed of a normal parrot life.

 a productive relationship with a pet parrot is one that fosters independence, not dependence on the human. those owners act as more as a zookeeper to their parrot instead of coddling and creating a ‘velcro’ bird glued to the hip, and socialize via training sessions instead of letting their birds indulge in pair bonding behaviours like petting and preening.

[archivalofsins]

Lope: Ah, another pain. What are these two twins? Well difficult pairs are hard to come by now a days. Maybe they could work well together? Hopefully it's not a case of like repelling like.

Lope's Commencement

Daniel Prisoner 001

002 - Mirelle Apte

Place of Birth: London, England

Date of Birth: 09/15/2007

Age: 16

Ethnicity: Indian

She has a proper demeanor befitting of her prisoner colour. Directly underneath that is an aggressively forward woman. Lacking patience, she started investigating our facility as soon as she could. A trait that would be more desirable if she were a guard. Any wannabe guards should follow her example. Information doesn’t just come to a person, sometimes you need to search for it.

The guards those cottontails pick are rather unthinkinking to take a turn of phrase from one of my superiors. They couldn’t follow a lead even if they slapped a GPS in some of their hands. Atrocious. Ah sorry I got distracted...

Since she is not a guard her behavior is very frustrating. Incidentally, she also appears to be scheming with Milko- a pain in the making. Make sure they don't cause too much trouble.

Prisoner Color: #280137

Permanent record Apte has a history of good attendance and is a B grade student. However, with enough application of effort, we expect her to progress up to an A grade average. Apte is attentive in class. However, she doesn't participate much and is prone to verbal altercations when interacting with peers.

Dear Mirelle Apte,

Congratulations!

Your application for our foreign exchange program has been accepted. This is a pivotal step in pursuing higher education for you. This will not only expand your educational prowess but your social aptitude as well. Our staff will be there to aid you during every step of this monumental process.

Make sure to pull up your information online and check that you are committed to this by changing your status to such. We can't wait to have you here in Wisconsin for the remainder of your sophomore and junior year.

Sincerely,

XXXXXXX

To all parents and students,

It has come to our faculty's attention that some students have been putting up fliers around the school with vulgar language and a student's personal contact information on it. The students responsible can consider this their first and final warning to stop. Harassment of any kind is not allowed on this premises.

These fliers and the messages on them do not reflect any of our students' character or the mannerisms our school wishes to foster. If this does not cease immediately, we may need to reexamine the privileges given to our students in order to properly reflect the sort of people they feel inclined to be at this moment.

There are many events that have yet to transpire this school semester. With those in mind really reflect on the individuals you wish to be and the sort of school year you wish to have.

Vice Principal XXXXX

Dear students and parents,

As a result of the continued vandalism. Sophomore class b will be excluded from further school functions until the vandalizer is found or comes forward. That is all. The behavior exhibited by sophomore class b along with the harassment of any student will not be tolerated.

Vice principal XXXXX

Lope: Ah, for those interested. I'm a jackrabbit not a cottontail. Please don't mistake me for one of the higher ups. They wouldn't like it and I'd definitely hate it. Sorry to burst the cute little image of me you undoubtedly had in your head.

[vaguely-concerned]

I just finished padawan by kiersten white and had a blast with it -- it was exactly the kind of thing my brain craved this week, just some nice character study and adventure story stuff for my brain to chill in. thoughts:

a) I love obi-wan and his poor anxiety-ridden teenage self so so much. peak a delight to have in class to the point of nervous break representation, someone help him. local boy manages to become parentified child to an absent father somehow. that part where he's so afraid he's so bad and useless that the force itself might just decide it doesn't want him after all........ heartbreaking. that's exactly what I would have thought at sixteen too probably. (also my personal headcanon has always been that obi-wan is on the ace spectrum, so that was a very nice thing to find supported in this book! canon is vast and can support any number of stances that way honestly everyone should go hog wild with it in whatever manner they please, but that's always been my vibe)

b) qui-gon fucking jinn if you don't step up and do something to help the child in your charge with his ACTUAL DEBILITATING ANXIETY DISORDER RUNNING HIM RAGGED other than ask him to meditate so help me I will come over there and do maul's work for him ahead of time I swear to fucking god

c) no, really, it says some not very good things about qui-gon's mentorship abilities that obi-wan really only manages to grow and be calmer when he's outside of his influence. I know this book means you to come away with the feeling that obi-wan takes a big step towards enlightenment and adulthood on this trip (and I do think that's also true to be clear!), but there is a part of me that also thinks that just as much as personal and spiritual development what we're seeing here is an avoidant attachment style definitively entrenching itself as a result of having no adult that can be consistently trusted to meet him emotionally. (which also makes a horrible kind of sense, thinking about what obi-wan and anakin's relationship is going to be like in the future -- obi-wan is avoidant and self-contained when it comes to trying to deal with his emotions, and anakin skews far more anxious and towards lashing out, and they never quite understand each other for all the love that is there. you can trace that all the way back here. sins of the master, huh.) obi-wan finds some agency and catharsis in being able to help a group of abandoned children, you say. hm. I'm sure this means nothing and has no parallels in his own inner world. you let the kid think you'd completely abandoned him instead of communicating with him openly for like five minutes. For His Own Good of course. Wow I didn't realize I was this angry about this but here I am once again livid on obi-wan's behalf, actually. 'I'm an incredible teacher and this lack of honest emotional communication I'm fostering in favour of (benign!) manipulation is never going to come back and bite the jedi order in the ass, surely'; the qui-gon jinn story

[itsawhumpsideblog]

Character sketches

Francis was the first of the Safehouse boxboys to make himself known, although Mikey was not far behind. The thing I'm finding most fascinating about writing Francis is finding ways to convey his worldview, which I feel like I'm doing to a greater extent than with Mikey or Nathan. Because he was living with another person who had very definite ideas about what he should be like, Francis had his worldview sort of forged for him in really odd ways.

There will eventually be an installment where he learns to count higher than ten, for example, but right now he thinks everyone gets to ten and starts over and therefore functionally can't conceptualize of quantities greater than 100 (ten tens, as he would think of it).

He also speaks in third person, which obviously the other two do not, and has developed a very flowery, formal way of speaking as a result of being a living showpiece and as much an accessory in his former owner's home as the art on the walls. I imagine that his owner worked on training him to speak in a highly artistic style and move as if everything is a ballet.

Francis gets really good at interpreting for Mikey when Mikey learns to sign and ultimately decides to pursue interpreting as a career. It's a good fit for him because he doesn't have to speak for himself or produce original utterances unless they're really simple; he can just interpret from one language to another what somebody else is saying. He also prefers not being the focus of the conversation in any way and interpreting lets him fade comfortably into the background.

I imagine that he uses a wheelchair or crutches depending on how he's feeling, but because of the nerve damage in his feet, has a lot of difficult walking without a mobility aid.

When I write Mikey, I kind of can't help but make him sound small and waifish, because he's so sad and scared all the time- at least until yesterday's short story, which gives a brief glimpse of Mikey in the future. In fact, Mikey is a pretty big guy, which is likely what you'd want for a guy who lives as somebody's personal bouncer. He's probably six inches taller than Francis, although Nathan is closer to Mikey's height.

And as I elaborated on a little in yesterday's backstory, he's very muscular from a combination of enforced workouts and a low dose of steroids. Incidentally, I don't think the WRU publicizes their use of steroids but I would bet everyone knows they do it. Owners presumably make the choice to continue that practice or not, but I think Mikey's owners don't. There's probably a story about withdrawal in there, actually.

I don't know much about Mikey or Francis before they were boxboys, but I do have some idea what happens to Mikey after he's been at the Safehouse a while. As you can guess if you're caught up, he is going to be able to use his hands and arms fairly normally (although he hates when it rains because he gets so sore) and he becomes a fluent signer over time.

I think he goes from resignation at the loss of his voice to having a lot of anger about it. He experiences bouts of depression as he learns to cope with knowing how things could have been vs. how they are, but he finds strength and fulfillment in becoming an activist against the Pet trade. It's the kind of outlet for his anger that Mikey really appreciates- he abhors violence, but he feels a strong need to "get back at" the people who took so much from him. He probably does, or tries to do, research to find out who he used to be. I'm not yet sure what amount of success he has.

Poor Nathan was the last of the three to come along and I feel like he sometimes get short shrift. His backstory is the only one I have much of a handle on, and he talks about it in one chapter. He aged out of the foster care system and basically didn't have the counsel or a parent or mentor to give him a realistic perspective on what volunteering to become a Pet entailed. I think he was very briefly working a soul-sucking job somewhere he hated and was recruited on the basis of his looks and the recruiter's desire for a commission check.

Obviously, when he got to the WRU facility, it was nothing like he had imagined. I don't think he knew about the memory-wiping process, although I think most adults in his society are aware that something like that goes on. In my created world, as in many other peoples', I think, Pets are a luxury and generally only affordable by people who are wealthy or willing to save up. So Nathan went in with just the information he had from the recruiter, which obviously wouldn't reflect reality.

Once I wrote the bit where Mikey remembers another Pet who was kind to him and who was the closest thing he ever remembers having to a friend, I knew I wanted them to be re-united. I wasn't quite sure what Nathan's defining feature would be until I was writing it and sort of discovered in the process that although he had signed the papers and been sold and lived as a Pet, the memory wipe had never taken.

I was pretty fascinated with the implications, which I'll definitely want to explore at greater length. One thing it means is that Nathan knows exactly who he is and what his life was like before, although he was pretty lonely to begin with, so nobody's looking too hard for him. It also means that he knows exactly what happens at WRU facilities and can be a whistleblower, if and when anyone's ready to hear the truth.

But the effect of all this on his mental health is hard to overstate, because it's so traumatic to go through training and living as someone's possession without ever giving away that you're the same person you always were before. (Side note- Nathan is dyslexic, which is how he gets by without admitting he can read. He definitely can, but it's enough work that he doesn't see words and visibly process them without meaning to.)

The almost endless mental stress of pretending to have no memory, on top of the same stress other Pets experience, like trying to please a person who may be impossible to please, never having time to themselves, and being under constant physical strain, really takes its toll on Nathan. I think he has a sort of permanent thousand-yard stare, even when he's looking directly at someone or something. A part of his brain is just always a little stunned and distracted and he usually looks sad, even when he isn't. Meeting Mikey again, though, gives him a bit of a new lease on life, because he's so relieved and happy to know that Mikey has a chance at a happy ending.

NB: originally written for a BBU Community Days prompt that I was informed I misunderstood. I’m not able to rework the post but I hate to waste the work so I’ll leave it in case anyone is interested.

[igotsnothing]

Ok, ok, ok...I was not that excited about this expansion. When it was announced, I thought I wouldn't like it at all because I'm more of a San Myshuno kinda gal. I love big cities, grew up in big cities, and always felt the countryside was great for naps, slipping into comas, and hiding out in the witness protection program.

Obviously I am an idiot.

Less than 24 hours since I began tinkering with this pack, I am now furiously and obsessively plotting this story.

Asa Wyman was born and raised in Chestnut Ridge, where he proudly owns and runs his own ranch. He raises sheep, llamas, and keeps dairy cows. Asa is focused, hard-working, but also kind and generous. He's an idealist and is a deeply-feeling, sensitive person. This has led to much heartache in his life, but he doesn't know how to be otherwise. This soft-heartedness also causes him to make the impulsive decision to foster a severely neglected horse, Copper. While his intentions are good, he is completely out of his depth. Asa needs help with the horse, who has trust issues and is terribly defiant. This prompts him to reach out to the legendary horse trainer, Ignacio...

Ignacio "Nacho" Rodriguez is part Chiricahua Apache on his mother's side and Chicano on his dad's side. His family moved to Chestnut Ridge when he was already in his early teens, which made him feel like an outsider among the close-knit cliques at school. As a result, Ignacio comes across as somewhat aloof and indifferent. He loves the landscape of Chestnut Ridge: the rugged land and wilderness call out to him. Although he is a passionate person, he doesn't believe in serious relationships or any type of long-term commitment. In fact, his few friends joke that only horses get Ignacio's complete devotion. He is known for being a horse trainer, a fabled "horse whisperer", whose services are often sought after even beyond Chestnut Ridge. So, when Asa appears before him one afternoon begging him to help Copper, he is intrigued...by both the case and the disarmingly charming rancher who is failing-oh-so-hard at keeping his obvious attraction secret...

Copper is ADORABLE, my sweet widdle horsie-pooh! Look at him! Look. At. Him! He can do no wrong! Actually, he can. He has issues. He's scared and afraid to trust and it makes him difficult to deal with and defiant. Copper is verrrry smart, you see. He's got everything figured out: the foster guy doesn't know what he's doing AND he's on to the trainer guy's tricks. He likes it, though, when the two of them come see him at the ranch. He doesn't know what they're yammering and bickering about, but he feels better when they are both there. There's a warmth and sweetness he can pick up on when they're there and it's very soothing and healing for him; so, he needs to make sure they keep showing up. Together!

[alitontress]

Q&A: Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto

I’m going to be answering all of your asks about the story under a cut so no one gets spoilers.

Ask about the caretakers’ decision regarding Wassily going to Oslo:

Hi. Idk if you’re still doing Pluto asks but I have a question. I felt a bit confused about why the care worker ladies just let a couple strange men take Wassily away without consulting Epsilon. Maybe I wasn’t fully paying attention and there was some larger unavoidable reason for them giving him up? Did I miss veiled threats or something? Just felt like the ladies were all “oh well, we have to I guess…” Many thanks in advance.

Listen! When I tell you that part of the story makes me rage like a white boy punching drywall I just—! Ugh. Just call Epsilon *dial dial, beep boop bop* 'oh hey Epsi, my boss, the dude who takes care of the orphanage, hey ya listen, I know you're getting grilled right now, but uh there are some wack dudes here who want to take your kid away, you cool wit dat? no? okay. how fast can you get back here??' Done. Easy. Epsilon wouldn't have been put in the situation to go into Abra's trap. *punching drywall

I digress.

Here is my theory as to why they justified letting Mr. Johansen take Wassily without telling Epsilon based upon the circumstances and other factors which might have motivated them.

Of the seven most advanced robots, Epsilon has the most powerful and destructive capability. If he had joined in the war a lot of battles would have ended very, very quickly if he unleashed his photon energy.

The world might have believed a lot of people and robots wouldn't have died if he'd joined the fight. So they could've blamed him for not preventing so many deaths.

In the manga, it's stressed that people around the world very much despised and even abused Epsilon.

Not only did the world hate him for not fighting in the war, but also for raising human children.

Even though the war was over, Epsilon was still contemptible.

What I think is interesting is the false claim Mr. Johansen makes about him and his wife visiting the orphanage before, (in the anime, he says they've visited several times). Perhaps he's implying that Epsilon hadn't let them foster Wassily in the past and he's come back to try again but without Epsilon present to deny him. A child protection service would find Mr. Johansen, "a famous figure", being denied numerous times concerning if he had reported that experience to them. They might even send a representative with Mr. Johansen to see if something could be done about it...

What Ms. Griffith I think has to weigh is whether to deny Wassily being adopted because Epsilon wasn’t there to approve it, which would likely cause further scrutiny and a full investigation into Epsilon's orphanage as to why/if he's preventing children from being adopted and raised in a normal, human family environment possibly resulting in all of his children being taken away and the orphanage being shut down—or let Wassily be taken. They might even want to still take the other children away simply because they finally have enough of an excuse to prevent Epsilon from raising children, no matter how small the excuse was. Ms. Griffith knows the children are cared for by Epsilon more than any human could and she doesn't want that to stop. She could fear that if Epsilon had been there or if they had called him, that he might have denied Wassily being taken by Mr. Johansen which wouldn't have looked good, (unless, of course, Epsilon was given the opportunity to research the man and find out he had a fake identity and was working for Abullah). If the man accompanying Mr. Johansen had the authority to take Wassily away because of being some kind of child service representative, then maybe the caretakers legally didn't have a choice and they really were going to take Wassily no matter what. Letting Wassily be taken away would be beneficial to the orphanage and the children under Epsilon's care financially and maybe even legally.

So maybe the caretakers made the decision with the best interest of the other children in mind—and even to protect Epsilon.

But in the end, no one could protect Epsilon. Wassily and the other children still lost the one person who loved them more than anyone else in the world ever could...

[crumbleclub]

I'm not sure if I'll use this for Blips, but there's this scenario in my head for William trying and failing spectacularly at being kind that's too good not to share.

William, in childhood, was never taught to hide that he was being mistreated. The fact that no one ever stepped in– a few helped, but none prevented anything– was a failure of every adult in his life.

As a result of this, even as terrible as he is to children, he's unlikely to ignore something that meets his own definitions of wrong.

(These definitions are narrow, often hypocritical, and many times come down to possessiveness over people or things he sees as his.)

In addition, William struggles to feel things with any intensity. This leads to only the most extreme experiences evoking much attachment from him, and, as a result, he sees these things as special.

His ability to give life and take it away is a gift, in his eyes.

When William returns home after being declared innocent in a court of law, he knows something is wrong with his remaining son; and it's not his wrong. He can tell that somebody else did this.

He pries the knowledge out of Michael. He doesn't care if it hurts or if Michael begs him to just leave the topic alone; he has to know.

It works. Michael breaks. William is made aware of something that happened while Michael was in foster care; something he wasn't even close to ready to tell him about.

William's not as angry as he wants to be, but he acts on principle. Firstly, nobody should be messing with his things. Secondly, this has clearly caused Michael great upset, and maybe, just maybe, a grand show of affection could win him over to William's side again.

After all, he'll be needing some help soon.

So, in a great display of "care," he kills the one who did it. He kills the one who hurt his son while he was away, and he leaves the news article open on the table like a cat dragging in a dead bird.

[oxygenbefore1775]

Hi! For start congrats on the milestone 💞

So for the color analysis event that got me intrigued I'm picking Reiner ofc. And the color I'm picking for me would be light purple if that's good and wasn't submitted yet 🤧💜

thanks so much for the kind words Mai <3

Reiner Braun

It's certainly an interesting choice since purple on the opposite spectrum to yellow - Reiner's "official" color and also the color that I myself assigned him. So, suffice to say, this would be interesting to dive into.

One of the distinctive features of the color purple lies in its composition, being a fusion of two colors - red and blue. This symbolic blend mirrors Reiner's dichotomy as both a Paradis soldier and a Marleyan warrior. But unlike the harmonious combination represented by purple, Reiner has always grappled with the challenge of assigning himself to either of the roles bestowed upon him.

Purple is also symbolic of mystery and the unknown. While this aspect doesn't directly align with Reiner's overarching narrative, it does coincide with the period between seasons two and three when his motivations became pretty much a mystery, sparking discussions and speculation.

Purple, historically associated with power as it was originally worn by monarchs, reflects an interesting facet of Reiner's character. On one hand, it aligns with his influential role in the RBA group (being its leader), where his decisions catalyzed major plot events such as the Fall of Shiganshina and Clash of Titans. Yet, this symbolism takes on a painfully ironic undertone in Reiner's life. Not only was his entire existence dictated by those in power, but even his installment as the Armored Titan resulted not from his efforts but from the influence of another person.

With this said, it only goes downhill, as nearly all the purple symbolism serves to underscore the ironic tone of Reiner's character rather than aligning with any of his other traits.

Take, for example, the connotation of innovation associated with the color purple - it truly drives the point across (and is my favourite to talk about). Purple, commonly linked to knowledge (hence Hange's "official" color), can also symbolize innovation, a product of intellectual work. However, innovation is precisely what Reiner is not, as demonstrated by the vulnerabilities of his Armored Titan to recent inventions - such as Thunder Spears (again, Hange's creation) during the Return to Shiganshina and the new anti-Titan artillery at the battle of Fort Slava. Innovation is simply not a defining trait for Reiner in the context of the color purple - on the contrary, it contradicts his character.

Another facet of the color purple is its fantastical quality, fostering the imagination. But in Reiner's case, not only it is ironic but also tragic, considering his initial motivation of becoming a Marleyan Warrior. Erroneously hoping that gaining a Titan would improve his family situation, Reiner imagined a future where his father could live with them, reuniting the family. However, this dream shattered when his father rejected him, leaving Reiner disillusioned. Another dream that met a similar fate was his aspiration to become a great Warrior after successfully completing the mission on the Island and earning himself a hero status. Evidently, this ambition never materialized, reinforcing the theme of disillusionment in Reiner's story. In this sense, the color purple only amplifies the mockery of magical and fantastical elements it brings for Reiner's story.

But the suggested color for Reiner is light purple - meaning, it has white added to it. While the color white may not significantly contribute to the conversation about Reiner's character, one prominent meaning associated with this color is that of a new beginning and the ability to start over. White, often seen as a plain canvas for other colors, symbolizes a clean slate. Although not directly indicative of Reiner's personality, it does represent his narrative progression of perception - initially viewed as an older brother figure, then thrust into an antagonistic role, and ultimately reinstated in a positive light, earning the role of a character worth rooting for.

All in all, the symbolism of purple doesn't directly play into the nuances of Reiner's character. If anything, it downplays and mocks the elements that are indicative of Reiner which is also interesting to see. It may not be Reiner's color but it could well be its antithesis, considering that purple is the direct opposite of color yellow (the color I believe to be Reiner's "official") which is a delight to see.

[kafkaoftherubble]

First off, the desert!

My brother and I were discussing the geography and I made a big mistake saying that Ira's home is good for farmland. See, Odeda is south of the equator and Ira's home is just in the perfect location for a desert. My brother and I did not want to change the geography very much and just rolled with it.

North of Odeda is country called Pylark. Mostly, they stay in the mountains but they have part of this desert. It's shared with Odeda but because the land isn't valuable, there's never been any solid borders drawn.

Enter, the symbol.

Odeda (goddess) was upset that Pylarkians didn't worship her, so she erected pillars in the desert. These pillars are also a source of water, so she created a huge oasis for the Pylarkians who were suffering with an incredibly dense population and drought.

The Odedans were greedy though. They saw this symbol of Odeda and thought it was for them, so they went to war with the Pylarkians over this oasis.

This was the war that killed Ira's family. He grew up very isolated so he hardly knew about Pylark or Odeda at all but was manipulated as a teenager into becoming an Odedan nationalist.

Some interesting results of making the desert and pillars: my brother and I have to make an entire pantheon, more monster lore, flesh out the world history more and read up on color theory.

A little stuff about the gods too.

All countries worship all gods but each country has one god they worship a little bit more, eg Habad worships all gods equally except Kenelm whom they worship a bit more. Odeda obviously has Odeda, but they took it to the extreme and almost completely neglected other gods. Pylark has the opposite problem where they worship everyone but Odeda, hence her decision to help them in hopes of gaining their favor.

The gods each have a set color palette and their respective countries will have a color palette like that. For example, Odeda is orange and red so a lot of Odedan plants are red all year around and the people wear warm colors. Kenelm is green so as a devout worshipper of him, Edith wears lots of green.

Hold up. HOLD UP. So Ira... isn't actually Odedan? He's Pylarkian?! Or was he actually... stateless? But the Odedan government told him he was one of them and he became a nationalist from that biased narrative?

From what I know about religious psychology, "the more uncertainty, the more the faithful." Places that are less optimal for human habitation like the desert, or places that pose more danger to humans, will always foster communities more religious than those found in a more stable environment. In the face of adversity, it's common for humans to look everywhere for boon and help... including a higher power. I find it pretty logical that the Pylarkian people therefore worship almost everyone in the pantheon!

However...

Why do the Pylarkians single out Odeda? Is there a historical reason for this? A mythological reason? A legendary reason?

If the Pylarkians did not worship Odeda, wouldn't the god(s) they worship be a little pissy about Odeda trying to reach their followers? Or maybe a suspicion that they are being upstaged by her because she created pillars of water and an oasis, while these gods didn't seem to have given the Pylarkians such obvious boons?

Additional queries:

are there other characters who are explicitly Pylarkian? Tell me about them too!!!

What kind of work do Pylarkians usually do? Trading? Mercantile business?

How did a big city (big enough to garner a dense population) come to be in Pylark? I'm curious about this because, instinctively, an arid area like a desert doesn't support an overgrown community, since resources are scarce. So, there is usually a river or an oasis before a densely-populated city is formed. If the oasis is born after the formation of a densely-populated city (Odeda gave them), then something else must have supported the city's growth. I got curious about what that might be!

What I love the most about this new lore:

It's interesting that Ira's basically someone who was suckered into imperialistic propaganda despite possibly not being Odedan in origin. It really goes to show how arbitrary the idea of citizenship is and how hollow narratives like "the proud sons and daughters of a nation" can be. It also gives a window into one of the quieter things colonialism can do to the native people it takes hold—sometimes it makes the most ardent supporters out of erstwhile outsiders.

The correlation between colors and gods is intriguing! Lotsa real-world cultures featured favored colors too.

Is Odeda "orange and red" because of her hair or something?

[eleemosynecdoche]

Nah. ASOIAF is just reveling in the brutality of the imagined past. You can look at the Dothraki, or the way that child molestation and violent rape are more socially condoned than they were in high medieval Western Europe, to see that. It's all of a piece. Apologists talk about how this is because of the Romantic overtones- lower lows to get higher highs. That doesn't really scan for me, but regardless, it's not really about accurately depicting retinue-of-retinue armies.

And one way you can tell this is the case is looking at who does engage in looting, foraging, and pillaging. It's sadistic monsters like Amory Loach, Gregor Clegane, and the Bloody Mummers (the latter two conspicuously dehumanized) who engage in this raiding, with some truisms about "war is hell" to assure us the Starks have done the same. Robb Stark the Young Wolf never gives orders to go and rob peasants of their food, we never get any kind of close-up on the results of his jolly heroic raid into Lannister lands, and the Night's Watch aims for a series of good stand-up fights to defeat Mance's army in detail, rather than attacking their stomach in this precarious northern land.

In other words, the depredations of armies in ASOIAF are done by inhuman villains or faceless nobodies. It's very much a post-Vietnam series of books, but one of the ways in which it is that is that it acknowledges the horrors of the Vietnam War while trying to deflect responsibility for or involvement with them. My Lai was the product of William Calley and his platoon, rather than an exceptionally bad instance of what American troops did to Vietnamese civilians many times, driven by a complex assembly of policies including Taylorizing warfare, making bodycount a KPI, fostering alienation from the Vietnamese general population, etc. etc. And which were done by otherwise ordinary people.

I want to contrast this with Glen Cook's Black Company novels, especially the first three. In the first book, there's an episode where the titular group have defeated several enemy military units, one of which is all women, and the narrator/POV character stops to have a metatextual comment that yes, he's aware he's censored out the morally hideous things this mercenary group does, such as raping adult women, and that he can only offer pitiful excuses for doing so, because he feels a need to defend his fellow soldiers. And that one of the other characters has threatened to take the book away and write the "real story".

And then there are other episodes, which make it clear that these characters do have lines that they won't cross, and that women are quite capable of sexually victimizing other women. We even get a recurring minor character attempting to sexually harass a major character in disguise, and after she beats him up, he's then chewed out by his superior. He has not been presented as a slavering creep before this point.

And at the same time, at this point the characters are all in the service of a teenage/early 20s disabled woman, and no indication is made that they see her as a potential target for sexual violence, because she's seen as one of them.

Cook understands sexual violence as driven by structural factors and the desire to express dominance most of all, and as something which is done not just by slavering monsters (which there are quite a few of in these books) but also by ordinary human beings with interiority and charm and the qualities of being a decent person otherwise. These are not, I would say, works of explicit feminist fantasy, but they have a feminist outlook in their worldview that's somehow aged well through the intervening decades, though we understand YesAllMen's problems now. And this feminist outlook is transmitted in part through thinking through, "How could good American boys who played baseball and had teenage sweethearts and listened to Howlin' Wolf on the radio late at night and noodled around with a guitar go over to Vietnam and do all those horrible things?"

Black Company is in its own way more traditional high fantasy fiction- it has evil sorcerers and sorceresses, reincarnated heroines, cosmological signifiers of heroic deeds- than ASOIAF. Where it does things more interestingly is not in "subverting the tropes" or whatever, but in using fantasy as a vehicle to think about these concepts.

[lutawolf]

Hi Luta!

I am wondering if you might be able to give me some parenting advice. I am a single mother to a kind, sweet and intelligent 6yo girl, who also happens to have a very dominant personality. She knows herself and her boundaries and is very good at verbally expressing and asserting herself. I am immensely proud of her and want to foster these traits that she has.

Unfortunately I have a much more submissive personality overall and I often find myself feeling a little in over my head when having to discipline or generally give her news she doesn't want to hear (time to turn off the iPad/get ready for bed/do homework, etc.). I often feel exhausted quickly during these power struggles and find it difficult to stick to my guns and lay down the law when it feels like she's steamrolling me (though I am getting better!).

Do you have any advice for how to best parent a child who is more dominant than you? Is there a better way to do this than to try to overpower her all the time? I need her to respect my authority.

Hey, Hey nonnie!!!

Congratulations, you've just proven you are an amazing parent. You've hit a struggle and are asking for help. Trust me when I say that all of us parents struggle. The best parents still struggle. Kids do not come with instructions books and we often times have to lean on our critical thinking skills, and sometimes we don't have the information to be able to cope. It happens to the best of us. Admitting it and seeking help. That's what makes us good parents. We care about them more than any inconvenience. We care about them more than the issue. They know they are loved. You are doing good. 💜💜💜

Bossy, commanding, demanding, insatiable, frustrated, restless, and resistant sound familiar? If you are not seeing these same issues at school, then congratulations again, you are doing well. She knows when she has to behave, and that's a learned behavior from you. If you are experiencing these things at school as well, as you need further outside help and I suggest talking to the school counselor as well as a family therapist.

Assuming that school isn't an issue. Know that Doms aren't good at taking commands, and the stronger ones barely take suggestions. Children who are born dominant have a natural tendency to act like they are in charge of their adults. My dom child tries this. Dom children aren't bad, and their behavior isn't learned, nor can it be punished out of a child. They are the result of emotions and instincts, and they often test these behaviors on the adults they trust, because where else do you test your boundaries? But it makes taking care of them difficult and exhausting.

Do what a sub does best. Don't try to out dominate, anticipate your child's needs prior to. By anticipating her needs, you avoid the fight that would push either one of you to need to be in charge. This will also teach your child leadership versus domination. What I'm hearing is your child doesn't like change and has to have routine. Set up a routine: we get up at this time, we go to school, we come back, snack at this time, homework at this time, play at this time, done by this time, and bed by this time. These are boundaries and rules that they can see. This is not something to fight with, these are boundaries and rules that must be maintained. It simplifies things for them. I also did a chart for my kids and both the dom and brats like them.

Knowing what's to come, not being surprised, and having structure are the key to peace. But if you do need to be the one in charge, remember you are not a doormat. You have the right to assert yourself for the people you care about. But often times if you aren't having issues at school but are at home, they just aren't understanding what is expected of them and are stressed out. They need structure.

When you do have to punish, give them punishments that will wear them out. Time out doesn't work on these kids, it gives them time to sit and stew. Come up with plans that make you want to pull your hair out. Instead, you need to become a coach. Ever watch how the best coaches of a rowdy bunch discipline? Run laps. Yes, she is six, mine is seven. I make my baby run laps when she's tried to push her authority. It calms her right down because it wore her out in a way she needed. She had too much going on upstairs. I also highly recommend a sport and letting her be coached. You can learn a lot from the coach. But it will also help wear some of that energy that's built during school out. Especially if she is neurodivergent. I don't know if she is, not saying she is, but if she is, then yes, she needs a direction to put her energy.

Okay. This got long. Sorry! Hope you found it helpful! 💜💜💜

[cak31ssuperi04]

Do you have any general hcs of the 1bit/1beat cast? Anythings fine

Kind of rough but

-I've played around with the idea with Eruno being from an orphanage/foster home(the "because you've got a proper family" bit) but I go back and forth on this one.

-Nio and Sakuma are friends! He does shifts at Bitwave they hang out there. The poor boy needs someone to fend off the fangirls.

-Eruno and Akitaka accompany Haruya on deliveries sometimes. Pals.

-When Aira's mimetic muscles get installed she doesn't really quite get how to use them immediately. Her expressions start out real stiff(which she expresses dissatisfaction with, and gets help from the others) to real exaggerated and overplayed(think unbridled rage or pained anguish at things that just kind of annoy her).

-Also she has Kiri make her taller so she can grow alongside her friends!

-Also Also by 1beat she has at LEAST one sibling who's just, a really muscled out doll in frilly clothes.

-Meru listens to death metal. She'd hoped it'd help her stay up better but now she just kind of likes it.

-Outside of tending to the shrine, Hakuhi has embroidery as a hobby.

-Izuchi took piano lessons when he was younger(parents made him do it to try and play up the prodigy genius image). He quit.

-That potion thing he made in 1beat was ripped from Kirai's anime but in part he'd made it after Eruno came to him Demanding a way to make her dog live longer.

-He went to Blue sun college(less because he thought he needed to and more for the benefits a degree there would give him) and got into an apprenticeship with Kiri. He keeps the lab when Kiri moves to Coco Alley(easier to skirt by the law). Familiar with the Blue Sun Trio to some extent.

-He has a sweet tooth but doesn't really admit it because he deems it unhealthy.

-While he did have a hand in the creation of the master program, he doesn't stay on the team after it's finished. Does continue to get occasional updates about it from Hiyu and Nanase though.

-His room is all clean and organized on the surface(maybe a few seashell displays, a poster covering a hole in the wall) but he keeps all the goofy weird shit stored away in drawers and under his bed.*

-I've played around with the idea of there being a 3rd Nasuga sibling who's just too young to be relevant in the game(<-no canon basis i just thought it'd be fun) but I'm not sure if I'd keep that.

-Enri has a pet hamster! He's like the band's son.

-The gang Kirara used to be a part of was like a sparkly gyaru girl gang. She never really enjoyed fighting but took a lot of lessons growing up so she was really good at it. The gang is still going strong though and at least a few of her Gyaru Friends are members(and there's at least one member who's just a plain normal ass girl that hangs around them but that's getting into oc territory).

-Rocca ends up growing up to be like Really Fucking Tall. Momori models clothes on her and remarks that she could be a model if she didn't trip over herself so much(not that she'd want to be one anyways).

-Mary has 3 siblings, they've done a way better job at staying out of the public eye(and have grown somewhat distant from her as a result).

-On account of being friends with a lot of the townspeople and having a lot of relatives, Hitohito is just one of those guys with a lot of connections. In a "guy who knows a guy" way.

-Chino is Coco Alley's mom jkasdsa.

--She brings Sora(was familiar with his family and doesn't want him to get too lonely) cookies and flowers sometimes and while he's dismissive about it he does secretly appreciate it.

-Tobari is the heiress to a big tea emporium who dipped because she got bored and/or got into a disagreement with someone over there, but continues playing up her Elegant Fancy Lady image despite living paycheck to paycheck(which I mean, good for her I guess.)

-Although Sagara knows Asuto through Hitohito, they actually interact fairly regularly in anime forums.

-Hitohito, Izuchi, and Sagara were on friendly terms when they were kids but grew distant for reasons. Hitohito and Sagara had gotten back in touch and still hang out. Heat reached out to Izuchi but was promptly brushed off, still looks out for him. Izuchi and Sagara have a weird frenemy/rival thing going on.

-Sagara has no siblings she just kind of lives alone with her mom who may or may not hate her.(although it's less "hate" so much as disappointment)

-Sagara's chicken avatar is modeled after one of her childhood pets.

-Sagara definitely Naruto runs.

-She holds DnD(\Dnd adjacent. Just some ttrpg I'm not an expert) sessions at every couple of weeks. I'm not saying Izuchi willingly participates(those commoners are hopeless without his guidance), just that she didn't exactly have very many other people to invite(Hitohito and sometimes Meu and eventually Nanashi).

-She has a knack for trying to help townspeople as part of some sort of Magical Girl Code but isn't as good at it as she thinks she is.

-She has a compartment in her arm warmers that's full of bird feed, she's made an alliance with the pigeons.

-While she does cool it with the Organization stuff, she never drops the chuuni behavior. Eventually opens a small cake shop with some edgy chuuni-esque title(debated on whether it should be in the same place Little Berry was, like after little berry closes its doors).

-Nomiya and Hiyu butt heads a lot but they both get along fine with Azusa. Somebody needs to be nice to her god damn it.

-The Kujohs have a pet dog but it's actually Azusa's. Following with the rest of the family, it's a big intimidating dog that's actually just really chill. Enri has tried to look past it but he's always very leery about visiting them.

-Nomiya's riding an adrenaline high throughout most of the game but his more calm demeanor in his events is just him going in the opposite extreme as a result of coming down from it. He's usually fairly loud and confrontational, just not THAT loud and confrontational.

-He keeps in closest touch with Tobari after the hackers are disbanded. Somewhat on account of her being able to hold her own in Break Passage the best out of the other three. She views him as a weird little brother.

-The hackers hold gatherings in memory(or what little of that memory they even retained. It's mostly secondhand from Nanashi) of Mikado where they commit minor crimes. The gathering was Kotora's idea the crime was Nomiya's.

-Sagara has a journal that she calls the Abyss Tome that's just full of fanfiction and anime drawings of herself and her friends(/enemies). Has a bunch of spell names listed down in it.

-Saaya and Meu are friends! Saaya comes to her for divinations about her love life a lot and just ends up venting. Meu's happy to listen though and tries to comfort her the best she can.

-Speaking of therapy though, Saaya does get therapy sometime post-canon and distances herself from Nanase(while a lot of Nanashi's friendships that start off on the wrong foot have room for growth, the memory thing makes things kind of... weird with her). She's in a much better state by 1beat.

-Saaya writes a lot of poetry.

-Yoh and Sagara are related. Somehow(I did consider nephew at one point but that didn't really pan out).

-So are Hiyu and Arumu. They've got that green hair and funky eyebrows.

-Akuta and Kaori date briefly(well, she's a fan of his work, and he is rich, and while he can't speak multiple languages he is well-spoken, what could go wrong?) which just ends in them breaking up over a disagreement over a book's ending. That was more the final straw though, actually getting to know him put into perspective just how far from her expectations he actually is and she's not super pleased about it. They do stay friends but something something important lesson about your idols being people.

-I feel like I've said somewhere that Kotora leaves the cafe to Rocca when he retires but I need to clarify that Kotora keeps being the cafe guy well into old age and that Rocca would be a whole adult by then.

-Kaori was the youngest of her siblings and only one to stay with her mother, she sees her dad as a good for nothing deadbeat(it wasn't an amicable divorce) and the ordeal heavily influenced how she views romantic relationships as a whole. Grew up somewhat distant from Kotora and their sister but reconnected in adulthood.

-Her "ideal guy" is just the best traits of her favorite book leads cobbled together like some kind of frankenguy. (And she might be internalizing something... who knows)

-The world did enter a more 'cyberpunk dystopia'-esque futuristic state a long time ago and the return to more traditional old timey ways is sort of in response to that, but Yasune is the only one who'd actually lived through it. Although then again the 2nd oldest character in the game is only 36 so...

The post is starting to not process so I'm going to cut it off here.

[decamarks]

I know people have stated many times before that Tumblr's presence as a social media site is distinct from others due to its sense of community—and this brand identity is definitely being encouraged by the site's staff/marketing team—but it genuinely does make me happy, and it makes the site itself feel worthwhile and worth caring about. I'm always intrigued by the little changes being made, regardless of if they're good or bad; it's not like other sites where every update is nigh incomprehensible to its users, and generally followed with nothing more than a sigh and a "Oh god what is it this time". I'm genuinely interested in the mechanics of all these new updates: what they serve to improve, the purpose behind their implementation, etc. That or I'm saying "Oh god what is it this time" with a bewildered, morbid sort of glee, which is equally good.

This interest is encouraged by staff blogs like changes and wip, and that's just a fun kind of relationship to have to a website. Rather than silently accepting whatever new nonsense a corporation has decided to do to their site (presumably in the interest of exploiting their users in terms of time & money), Tumblr's sense of community tends to encourage exploration of what exactly it is being changed—critically, analytically; it doesn't go unnoticed. And 'critical' and 'analytical' are two adjectives you don't find most other social media platforms encouraging in their user populace, LMAO.

It helps to see the silver linings in these types of things. The frequency at which features are added, removed, altered, broken or bugged, speaks to the humanity of the site's coders and staff—and, more likely, the occasional complete incompetency of their higher-ups, but let's not get into that LOL. Aside from a few particularly awful or unintuitive elements, these uncertainties and imperfections tend to be enjoyable and even valuable, in my eyes. They're quirks, but not in the sense of a 'quirky' fast food brand with a 'silly social media guy'—who is, in reality, the result of highly calculated marketing efforts. What differentiates Tumblr in this case is that these imperfections aren't really artificial. They're simply being embraced. And that's… kinda nice?

In a site that serves to foster expression through the digital medium in so many different ways, there are bound to be certain boundaries broken, for better or worse. Think of all the strange, inexplicable glitches Tumblr has experienced through the years. The relative lack of limitations—on file size, on media type, on character counts—naturally leads to all sorts of strangeness. A few months ago I made a post that displays as an image when viewed on a blog page, thanks to some HTML style elements I was strangely able to include. I don't know why that's possible, but it is! Even excluding silly exploits like that, users are free to play around with comically long, obtrusive posts whenever they please. The fact that "Do you love the color of the sky" is a site-wide staple speaks volumes about the kind of platform Tumblr is.

You're allowed to reblog a post 100 times in a row, and that post can be an obnoxiously long sequence of the sky. Rather than fight against pitifully low character counts, you're free to type up sprawling, rambling blocks of text, and it's up to you whether or not that goes under a read more. Your images aren't cropped or downsized, or crammed into neat, tiny aspect ratios. In terms of a clean, intuitive user experience, this is... objectively awful. And that's what makes it great. You're allowed to be obtrusive. In the near infinite space allowed, you're free to exist in any format you see fit.

It's easy to be cynical about this stuff; trust me, I'm well aware that this sense of 'humanity' is propagated primarily to create a likeable brand identity, also in the interest of generating profit from its users—but come on, that's just kind of a given, and severs aren't free. I don't think it's bad to embrace the community formed as a result of this, and I'd argue that having an interest in the site surrounding the community you enjoy is just genuinely good. I still highly encourage everyone to learn how to make their own websites (due to the plentiful easy to use resources and platforms available), but I recognize that this isn't a one-size-fits-all solution. There are many benefits a large social media platform has over an independent website, and you'd be ignorant to ignore them. And when so many websites are being sanitized, sterilized, and swallowed whole by an all-consuming interest in profit alone, it's nice to see Tumblr try to cultivate chaos instead. Basically, it's a cool social media website with a cool community, relative to the other options out there. And that's pretty cool!

Anyway all of this is to say that I still think the new 30 image limit is awesome. SERIOUSLY WHAT OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA SITE WOULD LET YOU DO THAT