#the flipside of this is the people who think if you forget something it means you don't care

[strawberrys-starship]

I was reading through my Star Trek headcanons note in my notes app and came across this and figured I'd post it here cuz why not

So here's my personal ponderings on how I think AOS mcspirk got together, or well, more like how they realized their feelings for each other

-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-

Ok so I'm trying to figure you who fell in love first in this whole mcspirk dynamic

So obviously, Kirk and McCoy was a thing before Spock came along, but who made the first move? Or, did they even get together before they met Spock? Like, they were both definitely in love, but all three of these bastards are stubborn as hell so I'm not sure if they would have even confessed to eachother before the events of the first movie

Ok, but who fell first? That's the question we're asking

So in this, McCoy is still demiromantic (editors note; I headcanon TOS McCoy as demiromantic, but usually I headcanon AOS mccoy as some form of asexual, so that's why I make special note of it here) so my first thought was that Kirk fell first, but we cant forget that that poor boy's been through hell and back already, so he's real slow to trust people

That doesn't necessarily mean that he didn't fall first, it might have just taken him longer to realize he had, honestly he might have not even realized it till McCoy confessed (if I decide to have McCoy confess first)

For McCoy, it was definitely the "A fell first, but B fell harder" situation, like im imagining that McCoy and Kirk were just eating lunch or something, or hell maybe he was just minding his own business at work and then just all the sudden he's hit with "OH FUCK IM IN LOVE WITH HIM" and then he realized that yep, he's very deeply in love with Kirk. And ofc he's fucking terrified of that after the shit with his ex wife, so he just goes "repress feelings: activated" bc he knows Kirk does like to have casual sex and all that, and he probably also knows that committed relationships also scare the shit out of Kirk. McCoy probably thinks there's no way that kirks even attracted to him either bc he's a dingus

And on the flipside, kirk knows that McCoy is demiromantic and has somehow convinced himself that they aren't close enough for McCoy to even consider them anything more then casual friends (keep in mind that this is all academy era) and not to mention Kirk is polyamorous and he's only ever seen or heard about McCoy being in monogamous relationships so he thinks that even if there was a chance, that it still wouldn't work

Little does he know that McCoy is also polyamorous, just not actively practicing bc he's also scared of commitment

Honestly I don't think they managed to figure their shit out till Spock came along and was like "I want to date both of u" and then McCoy and Kirk are like "I love that idea but Jim/Bones would never be attracted to me :(" and then Spocks like "ur a dumbass he's also in love with u" and then there's some emotional confession between the two and then they're all happy

Anywho! I've been contemplating writing some AOS McKirk turned mcspirk but I can't think of a good enough story to actually get the motivation so this is me getting that energy out, but honestly who knows this might just make me actually go and write it 🤷🏻‍♂️

[onlyplatonicirl]

Hello HeadcANON here, late, but here nontheless to congratulate you ON TCOTI's fifth anniversary. To say this fic changed me would be an understatement.

It became something so much more than just a piece of fanfic.

It became a source of inspiration, of comfort, of joy. It became a reason for me to keep going, through anything really. Anything difficult I was dealing with, I knew I could do it because despite everything you've been through, whether minor or major, you persevered.

That and, if I hung up this hypothetical phone too early, I'd never get to hear the end of it, and I really, really wanna.

This fic meant and still means so much to me. You published it when we we're 13, now we're 18, and all throughout that time, my interest (if not obsession) with your fic and characters never dwindled. It only grew. It made me want to pick up writing again, and I did, and I still do. And, I hope you continue to do so, as well.

Genuinely, I'm glad to know how much this fic has changed your life, but I need you to know that on the flipside, it's changed mine and so many other people's lives as well. Whether by inspiring them to write their own stories or to begin drawing, or just giving them that same feeling of comfort and joy.

Thanks for everything, Lorel - HeadcANON

Under normal circumstances when I recieve a complimentary message I keysmash and spam a million heart emojis because I'm not the best at taking compliments, but I would be an absolute fool to not respond to this ask with the same sincere and heartfelt energy that you put into it.

I legitmately began to cry as I was reading this ask. It absolutely baffles me that I have literally impacted people's lives over something so silly and self indulgent.

I want you to know that I see and fully internalize every single person who has ever sent me a message like yours. To know that I am inspiring people to draw, to write, to create, to overcome challenges not based on my writing but from what I've been through myself, it's all I can really hope for in life. By all accounts, if my fic really did do everything you said it did for you, than I have quite literally succeeded in life. Even if it's only a handful of people, knowing I have helped them through dark times in their life, even inadvertently, means more to me than I could ever express in words. I am so incredibly happy.

Genuinely from the bottom of my heart, I am so grateful that I could help you all like this. And I know you know you've all helped me too. I hope even when my silly fanfic has finished writing, that we can all continue to support each other and go out into the world and raise more people up. I sound so insanely sappy and dumb right now, but about a couple of weeks ago one of my friends I met thru TCOTI flew out to come see me, and us plus a mutual friend hung out together in my appartment and talked and laughed and all watched movies together and I realized my life, and their lives as well, have been changed by this. Which is simply insane to me.

I hope that as I continue writing this story you all enjoy what I have to offer. I plan on updating by at least the 9th of January, but we'll see haha.

Have an amazing day headcANON and I hope you know how much love you have filled my heart with today. I don't think I will ever forget this message <3

[marginaletchings]

I’m going to get raked over the coals for this but whatever, we die like heroes-- Messily, suddenly, and in a demise of our own making.

In the Year of Our Lord 2023, My Fellow Gender-Nonspecific-Bitches-In-Christ, I Ask You:

Why are people in the Hetalia fandom still confusing headcanon and interpretations for CANON?

Stop. Oh my God, just... stop.

Your interpretation of a character is technically valid but that doesn’t mean it’s correct or that it’s canon or that it is license for you to be petty, aggressive, or pushy about how you feel other people need to experience/view things.

Examples below the cut if you feel like getting salty.

Example: Claiming a ship is incestuous just because a JAPANESE MEDIA had a small young lad refer to an older familiar person as “brother”/Nii-san/Onii-chan is actually a wild fucking stretch. (Learn to Weeb Better, y’all.) You’re allowed to not like USUK. The flipside to that is that I am allowed to like it and I shouldn’t have to put up with passive aggressive bullshit because you’ve projected your problems onto something which never had them to begin with. “YOU LIKE USUK THEREFORE YOU LIKE INCEST AND THAT MEANS UR TOXIC :((((((” No. That train of thought actually means you lack critical thinking skills and you need to stop projecting. God forbid a small kid refers to an elder familiar person in a polite way, only to have it translated and taken literally. If you want to interpret it as a father/son relationship and just don’t like the ship? That’s FINE. But don’t act like people who ship it are somehow disgusting for doing so.

Example #2: Stop fucking treating colonialism and imperialism like it was a thing only perpetrated by the Anglosphere. European Empires did the same fucking shit--in fact, they kicked it off way before Britain even started its Navy. You don’t get woke points for picking the low-hanging fruit of the English-speaking side of the internet by pointing out that the British Empire and the United States are soaked in centuries of blood. It’s a good start, sure, just make sure to come back to me when you want to talk about shit like the Portuguese and Spanish slavers, particularly in the 15th, 16th, and 17th centuries. You don’t get to avoid the messier parts of history by covering your ears and pointing fingers away from your faves. (And in case anyone might accuse me of doing the same: Let us not forget the British privateers and pirates who would pirate slaves from other European slave ships to sell the people off at an even larger profit. And all the people literally branded when that shit got officially sanctioned iirc starting with Elizabeth I.) No one is getting off the hook here, and that’s the point.

Example #3: Reps are not their governments.  Reps are not their governments.  Reps are not their governments.  Reps are not their governments.  Reps are not their governments.  Reps are not their governments.  Reps are not their governments.  Reps are not their governments.  Reps are not their governments.  Reps are not their governments.  Reps are not their governments. Have I made myself clear, or....

[frauleinandry]

finally finished my persona q playthrough! ultimately, i thought it did some things well and some things not so well, but it was definitely more of a positive experience than a negative one. i'd rate it 3/5 in general. detailed thoughts under the cut!

for a bit of context, i like persona 3 a lot, dislike 4, and have minimal experience with etrian odessey (played a demo, enjoyed it, but knew the lack of plot/characters would mean I wouldn't have fun playing 40+ hours of it). i wanted to get through this game and q2 before persona 5 tactica came out so i knew what to expect story-wise (though the chances of me finished q2 before november are pretty much non-existent now lmao).

starting with the plot, i thought most of it was good, but there were a couple of weaker aspects. the gradually escalating creepiness of the labyrinths up until the rei reveal was really well done, and i absolutely loved the twist with her character. the way the themes from personas 3 and 4 were combined was sublime - her rage and sadness was so poignant, and it definitely managed to tug at my heartstrings. zen's whole deal is interesting too - i find persona doesn't tend to implement its god characters very well, so he and chronos were a refreshing take on it.

on the flipside, i didn't particular enjoy the plotline related to the actual persona characters. i chose to play the p3 route to avoid as many teddie/yosuke shenanigans as i could, and the whole senpai vs kohei thing felt like a child had written it. it's basically what happen in p3 canon but shittier. it reeeeeeeally didn't help that they use the investigation team as an example of a 'good' team, since their dynamics are rancid. i also think persona q really could have done a lot more with the 'ps: you're gonna forget this once you leave' thing, as opposed to it being a one-note revelation in the epilogue.

moving on to the characters... hm. very mixed bag here. on the positive side, it gave shinjiro in particular some much needed screen time - he actually felt like a genuine member of SEES here, as opposed to the guy who shows up and is then killed off almost instantly. it also toned down yosuke's creepiness a lot, which. well, i ain't complaining. also, i'm very happy yu/minato actually get to have a personality here. tbh persona MCs would really benefit from being upgrade from silent protags into something more similar to fire emblem three hopes shez (though probably with a little bit less character than them).

at the same time, akihiko (and to a lesser degree chie) are utterly butchered, and the portrayal of numerous other characters feels very surface level. sure, the cast is too large to really flesh everyone out, but... nobody should be feeling blatantly OOC. zen and rei also didn't really feel like people until the end of the 4th labyrinth, which makes sense from a plot perspective, but is bad from an actually-getting-attached-to-them one. as good as i found their storyline, as individuals, they're both pretty forgettable. ultimately, i think the character writing is fine in the strolls/during the sillier moments, but falls apart during the serious ones.

gameplay, yet again, was another mixed bag. the dungeon crawling is a lot better than in persona 3/4, especially in the later labyrinths where FOE movement is a lot more complex. i enjoyed most of the puzzles, and the little character moments scattered around the levels were fun too. mapping was cute, even if it was a bit of a novelty - i can't see it working on the switch or anything, but the 3DS is a good console from things like that.

of course, here's where the '.... but' comes in. in persona q case, i comes in the form of the combat sucking ass. the boost system is irritating to wrangle, but a necessary evil if you want good personas/not to chew through tons of items. in the end, i used impure reach naoto to basically skip 90% of the fights. also, what the fuck was that chronos gimmick? like, don't get me wrong, the death timer was cool in theory, but when i first fought him i only had 3 revival items on me because i simply wasn't using them!! suffice to say, i had to fight him and the spider again, and was pretty unimpressed with that.

the game is also really hampered by not sharing party exp. there's no way to use every unit unless you do tons and tons of grinding (and who has the time for that in the year 2023), but you also get penalised for not training certain units too. i didn't unlock ultimate personas in my run-through since i benched yu after the second labyrinth and didn't want to spend ages levelling him up asdfghjkl.

there was one gameplay thing i thought persona q did really well though... and that was sub-personas! god, i fucking loved that idea. like, i love it to the degree that i'd legitimately prefer it in the mainline games over the current wildcard system - let's just say i made an excited post when i saw this feature was returning in tactica. it adds a level of customisation which means any character can shine with the right investment, and i just think that's neat.

[pyroclastic727]

Is Amity autistic?

In the Owl House fandom, we hear a lot about how Luz is written to be ADHD. Now I would like to present the flipside: Amity is coded as autistic.

Here’s the breakdown.

Amity is touch-averse. “BuT aMiTy ToUcHeS LuZ aLL tHe TiMe” nice try. The key to autistic touch-aversion is only being okay with touch when she initiates it. And that totally matches up with Amity. See, Amity is really happy when she initiates touch with Luz. She’s also cool with it when Luz holds her hand after standing near her for enough time that Amity can predict an incoming touch. That’s because Amity consents to that touch and expects it.

But when other people touch her? She doesn’t take kindly to that. When Luz initially bumped into her at Covention, she snapped at her and degraded her. Even when she bumped into Luz in Enchanting Grom Fright, her initial instinct was to snap at Luz, since she didn’t expect to be touched. When Hooty touched Amity’s face without consent, she flipped out and beat him up. Not even Lilith beat Hooty up when he wrapped her up in his mucus-filled tube, but Amity gave Hooty the injuries we all wanted to see him with, because he breached her boundaries without her consent. Even as late as the last episode, Amity fell over when her face got close to Luz’s on the bleachers, because she didn’t expect it.

Amity stims. Okay, this one took me a while to catch, since most of the time, Amity is very controlled with her actions. This symptom isn’t very intense; her senses aren’t understimulated too often, and she really only does it when she’s really excited.

Mainly, when Luz offered to carry her. While she adorably scrambled for words, she also flapped her hands against her legs. At first I thought it was just a cute thing she did, but there’s more to it. She was so excited to be held by Luz that it showed up in her hands flapping...a common stim. With Amity feeling more comfortable around her new friends than the old ones, I wouldn’t be surprised to see more stimming in the future.

Amity always has The Mask as her expression. You know, the one with her eyes half-lidded, eyebrows raised, mouth slightly downturned. I also call it the Resting Blight Face, for...reasons.

At first I thought it was just a way to hide her true emotions, since her parents are assholes. But even though Luz makes her feel accepted, she keeps doing it. It’s more like...you know that feeling when you’re thinking really hard, or uncomfortable, or ashamed, or even just relaxed, and you can’t think of which expression to wear quickly enough, so you put on an unreadable one to tide people over? Apparently most people don’t do that, since allistic people tend to have expressions for those feelings, ones that arise naturally.

Another symptom of autism is having hard-to-read expressions, or being less expressive. In Amity’s case, it’s the fact that she doesn’t see a need to have an expression in calmer moments, so she just uses her usual expression.   

Amity hyperfixates. This has several facets, so I’ll break this down.

She initially hyperfixated on school. And that’s how she became top student. Amity Blight is who you would mistake for a “gifted student.” But make no mistake...she is not gifted, and gifted is a bullshit label used to overexert people and force them to keep school as their special interest for their entire lives (and I may have a bit of a vendetta against it). Anyways, we already know she’s a perfectionist. My theory is that Amity originally was hyperfocused on school--the Abominations track, to be exact--and that’s part of how she got so good. Then, her focus shifted, but the school expected her to keep being top student. Cue the perfectionism; she was no longer able to focus on school like she wanted to, but everyone expected her to, so she got insecure about it.

She hyperfixates on Azura, just like Luz did. Yeah, she keeps it secret from the world, for most of the time. But she definitely likes Azura a lot. I mean, she started to reconsider her opinion on Luz when Luz offered her an Azura book. She destroyed her jock career because she tried to use an Azura move in real-life Grudgby. Her interest in Azura is long-lived, starting about the time that her interest in school would have expired (which would explain why she stayed closeted). And we can’t ignore the fact that she sees Azura in Luz and is definitely enjoying the parallels between herself and her fictional counterpart. (Which might not be a coincidence, but that’s an entirely different theory).

She hyperfixates on Luz. Yes, part of this is a crush. But a lot of us have watched Amity’s personality go from alpha bitch to cutest little bean in the Boiling Isles, all thanks to Luz’s influence. Lumity is not a rivals-to-lovers speedrun due to bad writing, it’s due to Amity hyperfixating. She’s already extremely introspective, going so far as to keep a diary where she analyzes and makes sense of herself. It’s not a stretch to say that she identified the faults that kept her from Luz and worked hard to change those off-screen. 

Amity keeps a journal. To me, this seems like masking. You see, Amity is what people would consider to be high-functioning, since she can pass for allistic. But in order to do this, she has to put in significant effort on her part. See, when she does something that makes it so she doesn’t pass, she just sees it as a problem (since she probably doesn’t know about autism, and she passes well enough that she would totally be undiagnosed). Then she tries to fix the problem, in order to keep being perfect. 

Amity has awkward body language. Thanks to the journal and other ways of masking, you don’t see this early on. But once she feels comfortable enough around Luz to let her guard down...she completely forgets boundaries. To review: in episodes 15-17, she throws herself at Luz, holds her formal rival’s hand for 24.71 seconds, blushes every time she sees Luz, and loudly declares her thirsty thoughts about Luz in uniform before literally running away. While some of this can be seen as normal gal pal things or crush things...you’d think a repressed wlw like Amity would try very hard not to touch Luz, so as to avoid being outed. Or at least she would do less of that stuff, so as to respect Luz’s boundaries the way she wants her boundaries to be respected. But that’s not the case, since she straight-up misses a lot of social cues. And since she feels comfortable around Luz, she doesn’t feel the pressure to be so paranoid about the cues, and can be her awkward self. From her point of view, she probably sees it as being freed from her parents’ judgment.

Amity takes things literally, sometimes. Now, this doesn’t happen all the time, since she isn’t heavily affected by this autistic trait. But when Luz says “I’m picking up what you’re putting down” and Amity says “I’m not putting down anything” and looks down...she not only missed the conclusion Luz drew from her words, but also assumed a literal meaning from her words. I can’t come up with many other instances of this, mostly because this doesn’t happen often. I would assume that Amity missed these a lot early on, and learned how to mask/identify them.

Amity is easily upset when things don’t go as planned. Let’s review these. In the library, she gets really mad at Luz when they end up stitched to a book, and it takes Luz’s sweet personality to get Amity to loosen up and laugh over it. When she goes to practice magic, and Luz steals her wand and uses it to get her siblings kidnapped, Amity locks Luz in a cage and assumes that she will get badly injured if she tries to fix the problems she caused. When Luz comes to her school, she panics and focus on how that doesn’t change anything. When she burns Willow’s mind, she appears absolutely terrified of being punished, flinching and bracing for impact when Luz finds her near the memories, constantly trying to distract Luz as they work together to save Willow, and hiding behind Luz when she confronts the Inner Willow. When Luz asks her to join her in Grudgby, Amity doesn’t initially agree, instead taking much more of the episode to come to terms with her involvement in it.

Amity likes predictability. She’s not attached to routines, but she does like being able to expect things. If she makes a plan for the day, she expects that day to adhere to that plan, and she doesn’t respond well when it changes. When Luz comes to her school, she focus on how that doesn’t change anything...not how that would ruin things or complicate things. Whenever she gets involved in Luz’s shenanigans, she either gets angry, scared, or takes a while to accept it. In a broader sense, she takes a while to accept that Luz and her shenanigans are a permanent fixture in her life--sixteen episodes, to be exact.

Finally, it would make for some excellent representation. An ADHD Dominican-American bisexual protagonist is pretty groundbreaking. But an ADHD Dominican-American bisexual protagonist girl who dates an autistic wlw witch girl from another dimension is exactly the kind of intersectional representation you’d expect to see from an unrestricted Owl House crew.

...Now, this might just be me hardcore projecting. I’m a little scared to post this because I don’t know how much of this is me reading into imaginary things, or trying to convince myself that Amity is like me. Feel free to debate/disprove me or support me in the comments. 

[writerbuddha]

George Lucas on attachment from 1999 to 2021

BILL MOYERS: Do you know yet what, in a future episode, is going to transform Anakin Skywalker to the dark side?

GEORGE LUCAS: Yes, I know what that is. The groundwork has been laid in this episode. The film is ultimately about the dark side and the light side, and those sides are designed around compassion and greed. The issue of greed, of getting things and owning things and having things and not being able to let go of things, is the opposite of compassion--of not thinking of yourself all the time. These are the two sides--the good force and the bad force. They're the simplest parts of a complex cosmic construction.

George Lucas and Bill Moyers 1999, Time Magazine (http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,990820-2,00.html)

GEORGE LUCAS: He turns into Darth Vader because he gets attached to things. He can't let go of his mother; he can't let go of his girlfriend. He can't let go of things. It makes you greedy. And when you're greedy, you are on the path to the dark side, because you fear you're going to lose things, that you're not going to have the power you need.

George Lucas to Time Magazine April, 2002 (http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,1002323-3,00.html)

GEORGE LUCAS: In this film, (Phantom Menace) you begin to see that he has a fear of losing things, a fear of losing his mother, and as a result, he wants to begin to control things, he wants to become powerful, and these are not Jedi traits. And part of these are because he was starting to be trained so late in life, that he'd already formed these attachments. And for a Jedi, attachment is forbidden.

George Lucas to CNN, May 8, 2002 (https://edition.cnn.com/2002/SHOWBIZ/Movies/05/07/ca.s02.george.lucas/index.html)

GEORGE LUCAS: Jedi Knights aren’t celibate – the thing that is forbidden is attachments – and possessive relationships.

George Lucas to BBC, May 12, 2002 (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/entertainment/1989505.stm)

GEORGE LUCAS: Well, a lot of people got very upset, saying he should’ve been this little demon kid. But the story is not about a guy who was born a monster – it’s about a good boy who was loving and had exceptional powers, but how that eventually corrupted him and how he confused possessive love with compassionate love. That happens in Episode II: Regardless of how his mother died, Jedis are not supposed to take vengeance. And that’s why they say he was too old to be a Jedi, because he made his emotional connections. His undoing is that he loveth too much.

George Lucas to Rolling Stones, 2005 (https://www.rollingstone.com/movies/movie-news/george-lucas-and-the-cult-of-darth-vader-247142/)

GEORGE LUCAS: The core issue, ultimately, is greed, possessiveness - the inability to let go. Not only to hold on to material things, which is greed, but to hold on to life, to the people you love - to not accept the reality of life’s passages and changes, which is to say things come, things go. Everything changes. Anakin becomes emotionally attached to things, his mother, his wife. That’s why he falls - because he does not have the ability to let go.

No human can let go. It’s very hard. Ultimately, we do let go because it’s inevitable; you do die, and you do lose your loved ones. But while you’re alive, you can’t be obsessed with holding on. As Yoda says in this one, [The scene in which Anakin seeks Yoda’s counsel] You must learn to let go of everything you’re afraid to let go of.’ Because holding on is in the same category and the precursor to greed. And that’s what a Sith is. A Sith is somebody that is absolutely obsessed with gaining more and more power - but for what? Nothing, except that it becomes an obsession to get more. The Jedi are trained to let go. They’re trained from birth, they’re not supposed to form attachments. They can love people- in fact, they should love everybody. They should love their enemies; they should love the Sith. But they can’t form attachments. So, what all these movies are about is: greed. Greed is a source of pain and suffering for everybody. And the ultimate state of greed is the desire to cheat death.

J. W. Rinzel - The Making of Revenge of the Sith page 213, published in 2005

GEORGE LUCAS: Anakin wants to be a Jedi, but he cannot let go of the people he loves in order to move forward in his life. The Jedi believe that you don’t hold on to things, that you let things pass through you, and if you can control your greed, you can resolve the conflict not only in yourself but in the world around you, because you accept the natural course of things. Anakin’s inability to follow this basic guideline is at the core of his turn to the Dark Side.

George Lucas to sci-fi online, 2005 (http://www.sci-fi-online.com/Interview/05-11-01_GeorgeLucas.htm)

GEORGE LUCAS: Love is a secret to the universe, which is compassion, which is love others, take care of others, help each other. (…) Struggle in Star Wars is about passion against compassion. Which is greed, against giving and giving up primarily and the whole issue is the flipside of greed is fear of losing. So you are either trying to get things or afraid to lose things that you’ve got and the idea is to let go of those things." - George Lucas, 2007, Devin Kumar Productions (http://www.devinkumar.com/interview-with-george-lucas/)

GEORGE LUCAS: The fact that everything must change and that things come and go through his life and that he cannot hold onto things, which is a basic Jedi philosophy that he isn't willing to accept emotionally and the reason that is because he was raised by his mother rather than the Jedi. If he'd have been taken in his first years and started to study to be a Jedi, he wouldn’t have this particular connection as strong as it is and he'd have been trained to love people but not to become attached to them.

But he become attached to his mother and he will become attached to Padme and these things are, for a Jedi, who needs to have a clear mind and not be influenced by threats to their attachments, a dangerous situation. And it feeds into fear of losing things, which feeds into greed, wanting to keep things, wanting to keep his possessions and things that he should be letting go of. His fear of losing her turns to anger at losing her, which ultimately turns to revenge in wiping out the village. The scene with the Tusken Raiders is the first scene that ultimately takes him on the road to the dark side. I mean he’s been prepping for this, but that’s the one where he’s sort of doing something that is completely inappropriate.

He’s greedy in that he wants to keep his mother around, he’s greedy in that he wants to become more powerful in order to control things in order to keep the things around that he wants. There’s a lot of connections here with the beginning of him sliding into the Dark Side.

(...)

Because of that, and because he was unwilling to let go of his mother, because he was so attached to her, he committed this terrible revenge on the tusked raiders.

George Lucas, Attack of the Clones DVD audio-commentary, 2008

GEORGE LUCAS: It’s fear of losing somebody he loves, which is the flipside of greed. Greed, in terms of the Emperor, it is the greed for power, absolute power, over everything. With Anakin, really, it’s the power to save the one he loves, but is basically going against the Fates and what is natural.

George Lucas, Revenge of the Sith DVD audio-commentary, 2008

GEORGE LUCAS: It’s pivotal that Luke doesn’t have patience. He doesn’t want to finish his training. He’s being succumbed by his emotional feelings for his friends rather than the practical feelings of “I’ve got to get this job done before I can actually save them. I can’t save them, really.” But he sorts of takes the easy route, the arrogant route, the emotional but least practical route, which is to say, “I’m just going to go off and do this without thinking too much.” And the result is that he fails and doesn’t do well for Han Solo or himself. It’s the motif that needs to be in the picture, but it’s one of those things that just in terms of storytelling was very risky because basically he screws up, and everything turns bad. And it’s because of that decision that Luke made on [Dagobah] to say, “I know I’m not ready, but I’m going to go anyway.

George Lucas, Empire Strikes Back DVD audio-commentary, 2008

GEORGE LUCAS: The core of the Force–I mean, you got the dark side, the light side, one is selfless, one is selfish, and you wanna keep them in balance. What happens when you go to the dark side is it goes out of balance and you get really selfish and you forget about everybody … because when you get selfish you get stuff, or you want stuff, and when you want stuff and you get stuff then you are afraid somebody is going to take it away from you, whether it’s a person or a thing or a particular pleasure or experience.

Once you become afraid that somebody’s going to take it away from you or you’re gonna lose it, then you start to become angry, especially if you’re losing it, and that anger leads to hate, and hate leads to suffering. Mostly on the part of the person who’s selfish, because you spend all your time being afraid of losing everything you’ve got instead of actually living. Where joy, by giving to other people you can’t think about yourself, and therefore there’s no pain. But the pleasure factor of greed and of selfishness is a short-lived experience, therefore you’re constantly trying to replenish it, but of course the more you replenish it, the harder it is to, so you have to keep upping the ante. You’re actually afraid of the pain of not having the joy. So that is ultimately the core of the whole dark side/light side of the Force. And everything flows from that. Obviously the Sith are always unhappy because they never get enough of anything they want. Mostly, their selfishness centers around power and control. And the struggle is always to be able to let go of all that stuff. And of course that’s the problem with Anakin ultimately. You’re allowed to love people, but you’re not allowed to possess them. And what he did is he fell in love and married her and then became jealous. Then he saw in his visions that she was going to die, and he couldn’t stand losing her. So in order to not lose her, he made a pact with the devil to be able to become all-powerful. When he did that, she didn’t want to have anything to do with him anymore, so he lost her. Once you are powerful, being able to bring her back from the dead, if I can do that, I can become emperor of the universe. I can get rid of the Emperor. I can make everything the way I want it. Once you do that, you’ll never be satiated. You’re always going to be consumed by this driving desire to have more stuff and be afraid that others are going to take it away from you. And they are. Every time you get two Sith together, you have the master, the apprentice, and the apprentice is always trying to recruit another apprentice to join with him to kill the master. The master knows that basically everybody below him wants his job. Only way to overcome the dark side is through discipline. The dark side is pleasure, biological and temporary and easy to achieve. The light side is joy, everlasting and difficult to achieve. A great challenge. Must overcome laziness, give up quick pleasures, and overcome fear which leads to hate.

George Lucas, explaining the Force to the Clone Wars writing team, 2010 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9nFMBBrliyQ&t=41s&ab_channel=StarWarsCoffee)

GEORGE LUCAS: When you start to care about yourself and the things that you own and the things that you have and you’re greedy and you want things all the time and you don’t want to give them up because you’re afraid to give them up, you turn to the dark side. And that’s what happened to Anakin.

George Lucas Q&A: Field Museum, Chicago 5/8/2010 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRaVjM_goKM)

GEORGE LUCAS: The thing about Anakin is, Anakin started out as a nice kid. He was kind, and sweet, and lovely, and he was then trained as a Jedi. But the Jedi can’t be selfish. They can love but they can’t love people to the point of possession. You can’t really possess somebody, because people are free. It’s possession that causes a lot of trouble, and that causes people to kill people, and causes people to be bad. Ultimately it has to do with being unwilling to give things up.

The whole basis here is if you’re selfish, if you’re a Sith Lord, you’re greedy. You’re constantly trying to get something. And you’re constantly in fear of not getting it, or, when you get it, you’re in constant fear of losing it. And it’s that fear that takes you to the dark side. It’s that fear of losing what you have or want.

Sometimes it’s ambition, but sometimes, like in the case of Anakin, it was fear of losing his wife. He knew she was going to die. He didn’t quite know how, so he was able to make a pact with a devil that if he could learn how to keep people from dying, he would help the Emperor. And he became a Sith Lord. Once he started saying, “Well, we could take over the galaxy, I could take over from the Emperor, I could have ultimate power,” Padmé saw right through him immediately. She said, “You’re not the person I married. You’re a greedy person.” So that’s ultimately how he fell and he went to the dark side.

And then Luke had the chance to do the same thing. He didn’t do it.

George Lucas, 2019 (https://www.starwars.com/news/star-wars-episode-i-the-phantom-menace-oral-history)

GEORGE LUCAS: They (the Jedi) trained more than anything else to understand the transitional nature of life, that things are constantly changing and you can't hold on to anything. You can love things but you can't be attached to them, You must be willing to let the flow of life and the flow of the Force move through your life, move through you. So that you can be compassionate and loving and caring, but not be possessive and grabbing and holding on to things and trying to keep things the way they are. Letting go is the central theme of the film."

George Lucas, "Star Wars Archives 1999-2005" p. 72-73 (2020)

GEORGE LUCAS: Luke is faced with the same issues and practically the same scenes that Anakin is faced with. Anakin says yes, and Luke says no. (…) We have the scene when Anakin decides to save Palpatine and join him, so they could learn how to save Padmé. The equivalent scene in VI is when the Emperor’s trying to get Luke to kill his dad so he can save his sister.”

George Lucas, "Star Wars Archives 1999-2005" p. 421 and p. 212. (2020)

GEORGE LUCAS: The secret ultimately like in Star Wars is that you have to not be afraid. Fear is the enemy; fear is the Dark Side. If you afraid, you are going to the Dark Side. The Light Side is compassion. As long as you love other people and treat them kindly, you won't be afraid. So, the secret is to just love everybody - I know that sounds very 60s but that's what I grew up in - but it its fear that cause the problem. So you have to stop being afraid and be kind to everybody.

(...)

The main theme of Star Wars is that compassion is the good side, fear is the bad side.

(...)

I kind of lost control of Star Wars so it’s going off a different path than what I intended but the first six are very much mine and my philosophy. And I think that philosophy sort of goes beyond any particular time because it’s based on history it based on philosophy. (...)

The thing with Anakin is that he started out a great kid he was very compassionate , so the issue was how did he turn bad. How did he go to the Dark Side? He went to the Dark Side, Jedi aren’t supposed to have attachments. They can love people, they can do that, but they can’t attach, that’s the problem in the world of fear. Once you are attached to something then you become afraid of losing it. And when you become afraid of losing it, then you turn to the Dark Side, and you want to hold onto it, and that was Anakin’s issue ultimately, that he wanted to hold onto his wife who he knew, he had a premonition that she was going to die, he didn’t know how to stop it, so he went to the Dark Side to find, in mythology you do to hades, and you talk to the devil, and the devil says ‘this is what you do’ and basically you sell your soul to the devil. When you do that, and you’re afraid and you’re on the Dark Side and you fall off the golden path of compassion because you are greedy, you want to hold on to something that you love and he didn’t do the right thing and as a result he turned bad.

Mellody Hobson, George Lucas - Virtual Speaker Interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wRqVdcE5oyI)

GEORGE LUCAS WAS ALWAYS CLEAR ABOUT THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LOVE AND ATTACHMENT, AND HOW "PREQUEL-ERA" JEDI PHILOSOPHY WORKS.

[albatris]

oh oh oh!!! for nat/quinn perhaps,,, 13, 22, 28, and 29?? if that's too many tho ofc you don't have to do all of them!!

:D!! thank you for the ask, xavier!!

yeehaw here we go okay

13. What’s their opinions on PDA?

both big fans!! they both love to be in contact with each other and find it comforting, so PDA is fairly common with them hahahaha. cuddles, hand-holding, pecks on the cheek, sitting on each other's laps, etc, etc, all of this is welcome :3

Quinn also enjoys making it Known to other people that Nat is Their Boyfriend, not in a possessive way but very much in a sort of show-off-y way lmao. Quinn gets petty with it. Quinn engages in Competitive PDA. whereas Nat is just a very cuddly vamp who likes to be close to people and welcomes any friendly contact, whether it's specifically PDA from Quinn or not

but ye, they both enjoy it!

22. How do they apologize after arguments?

Quinn initially tries to shower Nat with affection and gifts and Not Use Their Words, and while Nat does secretly enjoy this adoration, Quinn is eventually forced to come to grips with the fact that what he actually wants is just an honest conversation and for Quinn to understand what they're apologising for. in terms of apologies he's not looking for such a "please don't be mad at me anymore" bribe and instead would rather have a productive and constructive conversation about the argument. Quinn has to actually Acknowledge It out loud and not just skirt around the issue :P

on the flipside, Quinn often needs time to sulk and be Ready For an apology even after very small arguments, so Nat eventually learns to give them space n wait until they signal in some dumb Quinn-like passive-aggressive dramatic way that they desire an apology and are ~so devastated and hurt~ that Nat hasn't given them one yet and is so callously ignoring them xD despite the fact that Quinn would have been pissed-off and even more dramatic and offended if Nat did try to approach them and offer an apology while they're in sulking mode.

I mean, yeah. Yeah. Quinn has a lot of difficulty expressing genuine emotional needs directly to others, so Nat just has to let them get all the petty out of their system and wait for The Mysterious Signal, at which point he'll usually do something nice for Quinn like cook their favourite meal or pick out some flowers before attempting an apology hehe. Quinn doesn't need a deep dramatic emotional conversation and, despite how long their sulking periods tend to be, doesn't actually want to dwell on the apology much. Just a "hey, I know I fucked up and I'm sorry" is good! Anything more feels like grovelling to Quinn :P

28. What’s something that reminds them of their partner(s)? Do they have anything on them daily as a reminder (a photo, phone background, tattoo, clothing/accessory, etc)?

Quinn has stolen quite a few of Nat's hoodies lmao. Though they're not Quinn's style, they're big and cosy and smell like Nat, so Quinn loves to wear them around the house especially when Nat is away and they haven't seen him for a while. Quinn's not really the type to carry around little mementos or reminders on their person, but I think post-story Quinn probably keeps a phone background of them and Nat and can often be caught listening to the music Nat likes that Quinn always said they hated :3c

Nat has a bunch of little trinkets and accessories from Quinn that he treasures...... Quinn generally doesn't think twice about lending him stuff to fancy up his outfits if he needs to go somewhere nice, like sparkly necklaces or little floral hair pins or nail polish.... Quinn forgets about this stuff because they have a tonne of this stuff but Nat adores it all, he's not a person who indulges in fancy things very often. Quinn lends him a pretty necklace he'll wear it tucked away under his hoodie for weeks and be all silly and happy and "hehe I have a Special Treasure from my beloved" about it

but also, mostly, he's very emotionally dependent on that shampoo Quinn got him as a gift one time. like. if he'd bought it for himself he'd like it just fine, I guess, but it's specifically the fact that Quinn picked it out personally and because they thought he'd like it that makes him so happy. even though Nat doesn't put a lot of thought into caring for his hair, he uses this shampoo religiously and likes the smell of it because it reminds him of Quinn and it was a very thoughtful gift :3 Quinn was trying to find something similar to what Nat had used as a human so it would be familiar and comfy for him, but with a less harsh scent for vampire Nat n his newly sensitive nose. it was a sweet gesture!

29. What is something they can never agree on? How do they meet in the middle?

whether or not Nat still counts as a vegetarian even though his diet involves occasionally murdering people and drinking their blood (Nat insists yes, Quinn thinks no)

whether or not Nat still counts as a vegetarian if he buys and cooks bacon for Quinn but doesn't eat any himself (Nat thinks no, Quinn assures yes)

fdghdgh ok um proper answer, uh.......

Nat is and has always been a super thrifty person with a sixth sense for hunting down free furniture on the side of the road, and Quinn is. not a fan. Like. You don't know where that's been. You don't know what's happened to that couch. What do you need another dresser for? Is that even going to fit through the stairwell?

so often Nat finds a sick coffee table and is like "Quinn it's free we gotta" and Quinn is like "no there's a weird stain on it and what if it's full of bugs or termites and also we don't need it" and Nat is like "but Quinn it's so solid and it will look so nice with that armchair I also got off the side of the road and the bugs in that weren't too hard to get rid of" and Quinn is like "wait do you mean the armchair I was sitting in earlier? that's a Bug Armchair? you let me sit in a Bug Armchair? why did you keep it if bugs???" and so on and so forth

Nat is not nearly picky enough when it comes to just nabbing free mystery furniture of unknown history and origins, and the very idea of mystery furniture of unknown history and origins in general makes Quinn feel queasy. they do compromise, though??? Quinn occasionally just sets Nat loose in various op shops to hunt down whatever cheap used mystery furniture he wants because at least in an op shop there's at least a bit more of a vetting process before it gets put up for sale lmao. AND Quinn gets the final call if there are any weird stains

it scratches Nat's itch to be thrifty but is not hazardous to anyone's health lmao

[maxwell-grant]

Jumping off from my previous question/suggestion, might I please ask if there are any superheroes you think would make fine Pulp Villains and any Supervillains you think would make convincing Pulp Heroes?

I'm gonna go ahead and remark that I'd personally suggest to anyone who's trying to create pulp characters inspired by superheroes (which would be probably about 90% of you who may want to do that sort of thing) to flip the script around a little. As in, don't try to create pulp analogues to the Justice League/Avengers upfront, but play around with some of the lesser-known icons and filter those through your idea of what “pulp” means (which is gonna be quite different than my own or anyone else’s). 

I’m not gonna really mention characters I’ve already talked about before like Vandal Savage or Namor, instead I’ll pick new ones and see what can be highlighted about them.

Regarding “Superheroes who could make fine/convincing Pulp Villains”, even though he’s a character I've read basically nothing on, Martian Manhunter definitely leaped out to me as an obvious option. He’s a Sci-Fi Superman who takes the first half of the name to an extreme that borders on comical, except he’s not a square-jawed white man, he’s a 1.000 year old green alien from Mars with shapeshifting powers who can look as monstrous as the artist desires. He’s the product of an advanced civilization and genetic modification, and on top of the Flying Brick powerset and shapeshifting, he also has incredibly powerful and extensive telepathic abilities, he can become invisible, phaze through matter, use telekinesis and other weird abilities. A lot of pulp stories closer to sci-fi were based around the idea of taking one of these abilities and extrapolating horrific consequences for them, and J’onn has those by the dozens. He also has an extremely mundane weakness that would allow him to be beaten by Macready with a blowtorch if that’s where the story ended.

He was also a law enforcement officer from Mars who became a police detective and it’s even right there in his name, and again, I have never read anything he’s in (I should probably pick the Orlando mini), I know he’s for all intents and purposes a generally nice man who tends to job a lot in crossovers and cartoons, but the idea of taking all those great vast and horrifying alien powers, combining all of them into a single character who also happens to be the last survivor of a doomed planet (and one who actually lived through it’s collapse), and then making that character a former cop trying to resume his work on Earth? 

That is a Pulp Supervillain begging to happen, and a particularly horrifying one at that. And hey, speaking of The Thing-

Now, Plastic Man’s potential for horror has already been explored quite a bit in some of the darker DC continuities like Injustice and DCeased, and it’s quite funny seeing a lot of these turn Plastic Man into The Thing because there were quite a handful of Wold Newton pages that ran with the idea that Macready from the original story was Doc Savage, and that the secret chemicals that Eel O’Brian was hit by that gave him his powers were actually samples of The Thing contained in one of Savage’s labs. Regardless, the idea of a former street crook suddenly gaining bizarre shapeshifting abilities that allow him to reign terror on his gangster associates could make for a great premise as a pulp crime story that veers into horror as the gangsters gradually figure out what is Eel O’Brian’s deal, and then the story can take a more tragic turn.

The thing about Jack Cole’s Plastic Man that modern takes on the character neglect is that, while Plas was a lively roguish anti-hero (arguably the first of it’s kind in comics), he’s still for intents and purposes “the straight man” (HA, right, Plastic Man being “straight”). He’s the relatively sane hero who plays off Woozy’s wackier misadventures and the imaginative madness that Jack Cole paints his adventures with, and it makes for an interesting contrast considering Plastic Man is already a weird character, having to ramp up the strangeness of the world around him so that he still remains the sane man. There are ways to twist this into something quite horrifying, even tragic for Plastic Man as he either struggles to maintain coherency, or embraces the shifting chaos the world’s spiraling into for better or worse (and definitely for the worse towards those on the receiving end of his vengeance, or even his humor).

Now, onto the flipside, regarding Supervillains that could become Pulp Heroes -

Normally I’d not mention the Batman villains here, because I already have a lot to talk about in regards to them as is, they comprise some of my favorite comic characters, but I pretty much have to make an exception for Two-Face in this topic, as not only a pretty obvious option but one with even case studies to prove it, as not only do we have The Black Bat, a 1930s costumed pulp hero with an identical origin story and several other conceptual overlaps with Batman, as well as The Whisperer, a young hotshot police commissioner who dresses up as a disfigured vigilante to kill criminals without consequence (and who’s somehow less of a maniacal asshole in his secret identity than in his regular one), but it turns out that there actually was a 1910s pulp hero called The Two-Faced Man:

Crewe was created by “Varick Vanardy,” the pseudonym of Frederic van Rensselaer Dey (Nick Carter, Doctor Quartz), and appeared in three short stories and two novels and short story collections from 1914 to 1919, beginning with “That Man Crew” (The Cavalier, Jan. 24, 1914). 

Crewe is “The Two-Faced Man.” 

He is in his forties and has gray hair and a “sharply cut and handsome profile—until one caught a view of the other side of his face and saw the almost hideous blemish that nearly covered it, and which graduated in corrugated irregularity from a delicate pink to repulsive purple.” 

Crewe is two-faced in another way. Crewe is a saloon owner in below Washington Square. But he has another identity: Birge Moreau, portraitist and socialite hanger-on. Crewe uses both his identities to solve crimes as an amateur detective.

The only person to know about both of Crewe’s identities is a police inspector who is also Crewe’s friend and who Crewe helps in pressing cases - The Encyclopedia of Pulp Heores by Jess Nevins

And speaking of obvious picks for Supervillains turned Pulp Heroes,

Assuming I even need to make a case for Kraven the Hunter other than just presenting this cropped panel from Squirrel Girl and in particular the art painted on the Kra-Van, or even just telling you to read Squirrel Girl and it’s take on “The Unhuntable Sergei” (I had no idea most of the people saying “Kraven’s arc in Squirrel Girl is as good if not better than Kraven’s Last Hunt” weren’t actually joking in the slightest and I speak as someone who has Kraven among their absolute favorite Marvel characters, it had no right being that good), I’m going to quote the brilliant Rogue’s Review from The Mindless Ones that lays down in painstaking detail why Kraven could make a killer protagonist in that horrifically over-the-top pulp fashion

One thing that strikes me writing this, is how well Kraven could hold his own comic. There’s always room for a book spotlighting a ruthless, hardcore, gentleman bastard, and Kraven’s raison d’etre makes him supremely versatile, so well suited to any genre, any environment. It’s odd that more writers haven’t jumped on the fact that in a universe where off-world travel is possible – indeed, common – a hunter like Kraven would have a field day. 

I can just imagine the opening scene – herds of weird cthuloid bat creatures grazing in the gloomy green nitrogen fields, bathed in lethal, bone splintering fog, when, suddenly, LIGHT! from above and an unholy bellowing: “CTHGRGN fthgrgnARAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHGN!”

They look up in fear and then they start to run – ploughing into and over each other, tentacles flailing, as from the space-ship’s docking bay Kraven silently plummets, barely dressed for the cold, a glowing knife smothered in elder signs jammed between his teeth. 

You should have seen him one night previous, sipping alien tokay around the Captain’s table with the other guests, discussing the morning’s hunt; and the way he insulted the Skrull dignitary by forgetting himself and accidentally sporting his favourite piece of formal wear: his boiling unstable dinner-jacket of many colours, fashioned from the hide of one of the Ambassador’s super kinsmen.

Whoops!

Midway through Kraven explaining how the best way to irreparably damage a symbiote is to wait until its bonded with you and then seriously maim yourself, the Skrull decided it might be a good idea to simmer down, while his beautiful Inhuman lover hung on every word.

The deeper I get into this the more convinced I am that the MU’s hunter-killer extraordinaire wouldn’t limit himself to bloody planet Earth. And neither would he limit himself to this dimension, or universe or timeline. The guy’d be just as at home leaping, sword raised, onto the back of a T-Rex in the Savage Land, as he would be ploughing through werewolves in the graveyards of Arkham or tracking a howling Demon across Mephistopheles’ realm. 

He’d work perfectly in all these environments because he has a damn good reason to be casting a bloody swathe through them: wherever there’s big game, you’ll find Kraven.

The next choice I guess is an oddball, but not that much of an oddball if you know already what is my main frame of reference towards Marvel

I don’t think people appreciate enough that the main reason Shuma-Gorath has anything resembling a fanbase has nothing whatsoever to do with the comics he was in, but entirely because, when Capcom designers had a list of Marvel characters to pick from to work on Marvel Super Heroes, they took a look at the diet Cthulhu and went “gimme THAT one”, and then went all-in in giving the alien squid monster a funky personality along with a great stage and music and animations and all that great fighting game character stuff, and now he’s maybe the most popular Dr Strange villain along with Dormammu and Mordo, despite having ZERO film appearences or major showings in comic sagas.

Capcom's designers redefined Shuma-Gorath from a nebulous cosmic evil into a comically smug cartoon bastard who can rant about devouring all dimensions and souls horrifically while also cracking poses and zingers like “How do you expect to win a fight with only two arms?” and having dinners with Dhalsim or hosting Japanese game shows in his endings, and it kills me that none of this ever made it’s way into any depictions of the character outside of MvC. 

So that’s kinda what I’d go with. I’d take Capcom’s Shuma-Gorath, depower him a bit obviously from his canonical power, and run with the premise of his MvC3 ending where he decides that, well, if he's the unlikely savior of this pathetic planet and these wretched human dogs like him so much, and he’s clearly having a much better time here among them than he ever had drifting among the stars cealessly consuming life, then maybe he can take a break from all that eldritch business and keep up hosting the Super Monster Awesome Hour and maybe fight whatever PITIFUL villains think can take HIS planet. I mean, he’ll probably still end up destroying the planet by the end, but why not give this hero business a try?

Just until he gets his full powers back of course. 

I mean you can’t deny he DOES look pretty good in that bowtie, surely The Great Shuma-Gorath wouldn’t be so unmerciful as to deny these vile wastes of flesh something good to look at in their brief and miserable lives.

[rallamajoop]

How (not) to say ‘fuck’ in Etruscan (and other things I cannot believe I spent so much time tracking down for a throwaway joke in a Witcher slash-fic)

Buried in chapter 4 of my fic Something Nice is a joke which, as much as it amused me, no-one else is going to get unless I explain it. So here we go.

For the last few people in this fandom who haven't heard yet: The Witcher 3's vampire-language is Etruscan. To my knowledge, there's never been an official statement from CDPR to confirm this, but the evidence (ie. that basically all the vampire vocab can be found in online Etruscan sources) seems pretty solid. To explain why this made me go oooooh that's so NEAT, we need a little context.

Context!

The Etruscans (in my admittedly far-from-expert understanding) were a people who lived in Italy back before the Romans got around to conquering-slash-assimilating the rest of the peninsula, and the language they spoke is one of the most frustratingly mysterious of the ancient world. Most dead languages are at least related to something modern linguists have a decent handle on, but Etruscan seems to have been related to almost nothing else spoken – it may even have pre-Indo-European roots (a whoooole other tangent I am in no way qualified to cover).

Surprisingly, we do owe our modern Latin alphabet in part to the Etruscans, since the earliest Roman alphabets were adapted from the Etruscan (who got it from the Greeks, who got it from from the Phoneticians, and so on). The Etruscans may even be the reason we're stuck with so many weirdly redundant K-sounds (not only K and C, but X and Q, which are really just 'ks' and 'kw' with an overblown sense of superiority).

But being able to sound out every surplus K-word from an Etruscan inscription isn't much help nowadays when there are no surviving Etruscan dictionaries to tell us what it actually means – not even a decent Etruscan Rosetta stone to give us a push-start. So while modern linguists may rattle off Ancient Greek fluently or puzzle out Egyptian hieroglyphs from thousands of years before the Etruscans even had an alphabet, the Etruscan vocabulary available to us nowadays remains embarrassingly limited. Bits have been figured out from context or thanks to loanword exchanges with their neighbours (plenty of ancient Greeks and Romans certainly spoke Etruscan, even if they failed to write it down), but a lot is still as mysterious to the experts as it would be to you and me.

So why to I love the idea of using Etruscan as the Witcher’s vampire-language so much? Basically, if you want a language that will sound both old and reliably alien to anyone listening to it – be they the mainstream English-speaking market or the original Polish-language audience – Etruscan is a damn good call. You're not going to have much vocabulary to draw from, but it's not like there's a lot of vampire-chatter in the game anyway. It's a cool little easter egg for fans nerdy enough to try and figure out what they're saying.

Translations and Sources

You aren’t going to find a lot of great Etruscan language sources on the web – few of the easily-discovered online sources on Etruscan vocab appear to have been updated within the last ten years, and lord knows how consistent some of these are with current scholarship (let alone how sure linguists can be about anything with a task like this). All the same, have some links you may find useful:

Etruscology – Brief, but more readable than most

Lexicons.ru Etruscan Glossary – Probably one of the best collections of many terms in one place

Maravot.com Etruscan Language pages – Hard to navigate, but gosh there are a lot of vocab here I have not seen elsewhere

Old, Tripod-hosted Etruscan Glossary – I think these are mostly just the same terms from the Lexicons page, but in harder-to-use format

Etruscan word search – Decent, but not the most extensive vocab

Introduction to the Etruscan Language – Looks to be from Maravot.com, but in pdf format

Paleoglot.com’s Etruscan tag – Blog by an actual linguist who regularly discusses Etruscan material, and who even created their own translation applet! – which was, unfortunately, in flash, and is thus no longer usable. (There is a certain irony that even the tools available online to help you understand Etruscan are written in a language that is now no longer supported or understood by any modern browser.)

Not that translating what’s in the game is going to be easy, oh no. Take, for example, the oh-god-please-don't-kill-me ceremonial greeting Geralt has to offer to the Unseen Elder to survive that meeting – "Eclthi, lautni ama".

'Eclthi' is apparently a "demonstrative (locative)" (’here’, ‘there’, etc). "Lautni" is trickier – it means a freed slave, but may also imply a familial relationship or a client of sorts, while the root “lautn” apparently designates simply “possession.” House slaves in the ancient world were often considered part of the family, and freed slaves were an important class in many ancient cultures, who often maintained relationships with their former masters, so you can see the internal logic, but what sense was the Witcher using it in? It’s hard to know.

"Ama" is possibly worse – most translations seem to have taken it as "to be", but sometimes also “to love”, or even "now" or  "meanwhile." Then you hit the question of Etruscan grammar, and I have no idea where I’d even start. So, with a little creativity, you could probably translate that phrase as anything from "take this and consider me a friend" to "meanwhile, this is family" to "a demonstration of love from your slave." I mean, you've got the same general theme going there regardless, but there's a lot of ambiguity in the inflection.

For what it's worth, I feel garasham's translation efforts are easily the most convincing I've seen – they have the above line as “Here I am a slave / a friend / kindred” FWIW. (Mind you, given the wiki doesn't even try to do more than offer you one possible meaning for each word, there's not exactly much competition out there).

So, bringing this all back to that fic and how to say ‘fuck’ in Etruscan...

I've already gone to the web's Etruscan dictionaries once while I was writing Forget-Me-Not, seeking inspiration for a 'real' name for "the Queen of the Night" from the first Witcher game. Neither 'queen' or 'night' got me far, but the Etruscans did apparently have a goddess of the moon called 'Aritimi, Artume or Artames', which worked pretty well. If anything it's almost too close to the better-known Greek goddess Artimis, who was obviously a relative (ancient cultures bleed into each other even when they're not bleeding all over each other, nothing new there), but I'm not going to be picky.

However, being a) a giant nerd, who b) writes a lot of smut, and c) is no more mature deep down inside than the rest of us, I couldn't resist seeing if I could find some slightly more obscene vocabulary. Did the Etruscans have a word for, say, 'fuck'?

Alas, if they did (and I mean, they totally did, c'mon), the web wouldn't tell me about it. Nor could I find much else relating to sex or genitalia (male or female), or even a decent word for 'thrust'.

On the flipside, there were a couple of different terms meaning 'plough'. And anyone who's played – well, any of the games, but especially Witcher 2 – would probably realise exactly why that filled me with so much glee.

Speaking of which, here, have a picture which is in no way related:

The fact that the various Etruscan terms meaning ‘plough’ could also apparently be translated as things like “to worship“ or “to act through movement, including ritual acts,” or that an important mythological figure was “a prophetic child who sprang from a freshly plowed furrow” was in no way discouraging.

The word I ultimately picked was 'esari'. Admittedly, variations on the prefix ‘ar-’/‘ara-’/’aras’ were much more consistently attested to throughout the various online Etruscan dictionaries as ‘terms meaning plow’, but figuring out how to convert an Etruscan prefix into a satisfying word is officially where even my enthusiasm for all this nonsense gives out. Esari was, by comparison, already a much more solid-sounding term, so let’s go with that.

Why go to all this trouble anyway? Well, the honest answer is “entirely for my own amusement”, but the nominal excuse comes right back to “so I could give Regis and Geralt this little exchange during a sex scene.”

"Unless you have any particular objection," said Regis, moving to straddle Geralt's body, "I thought we might engage in some esari... hm, what was the equivalent term in your language again?" The vampire leaned in close to Geralt's ear as he made a show of remembering his answer, "Ah, yes—I thought I'd fuck you."

Never let anyone tell you you never learnt anything from porn!

[chickenfreeblog]

chicken i'm a teacher and i feel like a lot of the advice given to teachers for how best to support students with adhd comes from the neurotypical community. things like chunk information into smaller parts, give frequent breaks, use fidget toys, etc. and maybe that's all good advice (??), but is there anything you wish teachers would do differently? things that would give your brain the best chance of learning?

oh man this is such a good thoughtful question & one that i hope every teacher thinks about, but i know it’s tough so i really appreciate that you are!! i think the ones you gave are pretty good practical tips, honestly? i’m hoping other people will jump in because i just have my experience to speak from.

a couple things that i would say that are less... concrete but just stuff i wish my teachers had known:

- the formal dx isn’t everything / don’t assume that kids are neurotypical

i know there’s a lot of paperwork and stuff around these issues for you guys, so this can be a little tough to manage. one thing that happened to me though and that i hear a lot from friends is just like..... it’s hereditary, and also there’s a lot of stigma around being neurodivergent, especially in older generations? i know my mom really pushed back against anyone that suggested that i had adhd, because she has the exact same symptoms and was kind of like Why Are These Teachers Using This Parent Teacher Conference To Call Me a Big Freak. i know other parents that just think it’s too weird to have an nd kid and basically picked any possible weird workaround over getting an actual diagnosis. i think a lot of teachers kind of look at formal dx as a way to separate kids who are lazy but normal from kids who have “real problems,” and that can get really super gnarly if you’re, y’know, a ten year old whose parents just don’t believe in the idea of adhd for whatever reason.

- don’t assume that kids aren’t trying?

i know there’s totally just some kids that need more motivation for whatever reason, but...... i think the flipside is that..... you can also just put a ton of pressure on a kid who is genuinely trying super hard? i think a lot of teachers have a little bit of an idea that there’s a series of magic words that they can say to properly motivate a kid, and then presto, they’ll follow directions and be Fixed. and definitely they mean well!! but also i think you can really easily make a kid shut down if they’re trying their absolute hardest & none of the adults around them are perceiving it at all? it honestly was pretty traumatic to want to be good at school So Badly and still have every adult be constantly like okay...... we need to talk about why you’re lazy and don’t care and why you’re shitty at this, actually. i think my best teachers just really had a sense of humor about the fact that i was going to misunderstand stuff or forget deadlines and that it wasn’t a matter of them teaching it badly or me not caring to learn.

- if you figure out how to work with one kid with adhd..... congratulations you figured out how to work with one (1) kid with adhd

this is something that autistic people have talked about a lot, but i think it also really holds true for adhd? my partner and i always make each other a lil crazy because despite having Same Guy Disease we have uhhh completely opposite needs. jay’s dyslexic mcfuck and he wants verbal instructions and someone to talk to basically every waking minute or he’s like I’M BORED I NEED TASKS NOW!!! IMMEDIATELY!!! I’M POKING THE WORLD WITH A STICK. DO SOMETHING. whereas i..... cannot interpret verbal instructions worth one good goddamn and if you give me strict instructions and deadlines with no wiggle room i’ll simply get claustrophobic and die. like my ideal school situation is someone gives me a textbook full of problems and they sit in another room and never speak to me unless i have a question. genuinely. i know there’s some skepticism in ed about learning styles, but i do think for people with Sensory Stuff that just being... more thoughtful about how information is delivered and how they’re receiving it can really help? a lot of adhd people really struggle with written info or verbal info, and if you’re relying 100% on one option it’s... kind of impossible for them to Do School in any real way.

- just have a sense of humor / support kids if they figure out a way that works for them?

i kinda mentioned this earlier, but i think a lot of people fall into the trap of thinking that they can motivate every kid into doing things The Right Way, and then a lot of kids just shut down instead? genuinely the teachers i got along with the best were the ones that just.... kind of sat back and accepted that like, i was not native to their environment and wasn’t going to be able engage with stuff the way they envisioned. i took the same math teacher for three years of high school because at one point i just started ignoring her lectures & doing homework during every class. instead of confronting me about it she just was kind of like “weird!!! not technically a sin though!” and we?? got along great after that? like literally better than i had ever gotten along with a teacher until then. i didn’t even know you could go to math class and not cry! amazing. i won’t say i was ever super great at math, but i went from being the kid getting Fs on every single test and never turning in homework to being a pretty reliable B+ student. she totally could’ve gotten offended in that situation since she was trying dang hard to give an interesting lecture, but having her just kind of go “weird! okay” and not be like Callout Post: This Child Is So Annoying made such a huge fucking difference for me (shoutout to ms. butler thank you for letting me graduate high school etc etc)

let kids see other life paths without judgment

kind of in line with the motivation thing, but i think like.... yes kids with ADHD can absolutely thrive in academics, but also make it clear that it’s not a catastrophe if it’s not a good environment for them? there’s so much rhetoric around “you have to do well in 1st grade so you can get into harvard and be a lawyer” or whatever, and i think kids who struggle pick up on that more than people realize. i remember really genuinely feeling like there was straight up not a future for me if i didn’t find a way to just like.... get a new brain??? and i wish i’d had positive role models for the idea that like. you can have a cool interesting life even if you’re very bad at sitting in a lecture!! it’s fine!! maybe you can’t be an astronaut or whatever but it’s still worth trying to graduate and see what’s out there

OKAY my two practical tips: let kids wander the fuck around AND also. start a knitting club

okay this is just for me but lmaoooooooo my elementary school teachers thought i was gonna SIT STILL??? and THINK???? at the SAME TIME???? i don’t even do that as a 25 year old. please. you know those bikes that like power electricity generators? that’s what a hyperactive brain is like. if they’re not moving they’re just not doing anything. 

also yeah knitting club. you gotta. my 4th grade teacher sucked so bad on every single front listed above and she hated me soooooo much but she did teach me how to sit through a 30 minute meeting without crying. fucking around with string and sticks IS adhd culture probably. idk.

[ungiftedmusings]

everyone’s talking about parallels between Glasses Boys without commenting on the symbolism of the glasses themselves, so let’s talk about it:

glasses help us refine our vision, but they only help if there was a flaw in the first place.  if you have perfect eyesight, glasses won’t help your vision in the slightest.  however, if you realize something is off, you can correct it.

glasses do not give us the ability to see any better than someone with 20/20 vision, they allow us to keep up.  they do give us a greater awareness of the potential for flawed vision, and sometimes a greater appreciation for our corrected vision.

at the same time, they place a physical barrier between us and the rest of the world.  we can be as close as anyone else to the action, but we will always have an extra tiny bit of protection.

we have two “hero complex” characters: pang and supot.  at first sight, their glasses counterparts fit the role of sidekicks, but i would argue that they are more than that.  they do not just blindly carry out the hero’s will; they are there to resist it.  which, in the context of the heroes both possessing powers allowing them to impose their will on others, is extremely necessary.

supot and pang they have (or had) seemingly the strongest moral compasses, a constant drive to do what is best for everyone, but they both lose sight of the dangers involved in their mission.  they lack awareness of the possibility of endangering not only others, but also themselves (supot telling the ministry about his experiments, pang facing the director directly at the end of season one).  yuth’s line, “when you want to accomplish something, you can’t just attack it head-on,” is so important.  wave’s anger when pang went to face korn alone was similar.

the hero characters forget that the consequences of their individual loss could mean losing the war, and they throw caution to the wind.  the glasses characters, even as they acknowledge that morality drives the hero characters, are able to take a step back and see the flaws in their plan.

our hero characters cannot afford to acknowledge that their morality might be wrong.  what they’re fighting for, what they’re fighting against, is too big to face with half a heart.  but the glasses characters are different.  they have an extra bit of protection, they have already had to acknowledge that they are lacking (yuth doesn’t have a potential and doesn’t want to gain one through experimenting; wave’s lack of trust made him an antagonist for most of season 1) and move forward with the knowledge that broken doesn’t mean unfixable.

if there heroes acknowledge the danger, they also have to acknowledge their fear.  as the ones on the frontlines, this isn’t as sustainable as going in blind, going in stupid, going in without fear - and also without caution.  yuth and wave are constantly on edge, they’re looking for fear, and that’s okay - because they are a little bit safer.  they have some protection.  yuth didn’t interact with the ministry (until the very end, but we’ll get to that in a bit), and wave observes the action from a computer room.  they can be scared because their actions don’t require fearlessness.  they require bravery in the face of fear.

and you know what?  as soon as supot lost yuth, as soon as he lost his vision, his protection, he became a “bad guy.”  no, it wasn’t by choice, but it happened because supot did what heroes do: he faced the bad guys without fear, and by the time he felt it, it was too late.

i think it is telling that yuth continued working with supot in spite of supot’s betrayal.  maybe it’s wishful thinking, but i believe wave and pang will make up, too, because that’s the other thing about glasses characters - they have placed their trust in the wrong people in the past, and so they can now see more clearly when someone is worth trusting.  even if that trust is breached - they might need some time to think things through, some space to protect themselves and to feel safe, but they will eventually return to the people who give them hope.  the characters who want to be heroes so badly they lose their way.

on another note: yes, i think chanon and third’s glasses are symbolic as well, but in different ways.  for example, pom never wanted to be a hero.  as a result, their dynamic is different from those of supot/yuth and pang/wave.  pom doesn’t see himself as a hero, or even as a good guy, but chanon does.  i think chanon was the bravest of all, because he saw the outcome, he knew things would go wrong, and i’d bet money he was scared, but he chose to face things head on because he knew they’d turn out okay for his friend that way.  i cannot stress how much i hope he remains a good guy but also how much i doubt he will.  i don’t know.  maybe if he goes to the dark side pom will bring him back, but on the flipside of channon’s bravery is pom’s cowardice and i’m not sure he’s made much progress to overcome that.

third is the one i know least about and thus have the least commentary on, but - his potential is stealing information from people’s mind’s, right?  so actually very similar to waves but with people rather than computers.  he has been antagonistic at times and i could see him having a villain arc, or maybe he already has in a way that was less dramatic than wave’s.  i really can’t tell where he stands right now but maybe i’ll have more to say about him in another episode or so.

[the-silvertonguewitch]

Musings on Lyra’s journey in TSC

I’ve been thinking a lot about Lyra’s journey in the second and (upcoming) third book of the Book of Dust series. Especially about the hints and clues from TSC pointing to some eventual “sacrifice” (to get Pan back, to enter the red building) in the final book. Beware: spoilers for TSC below.

 I don’t think that Will and Lyra reunite, or see each other again. Pullman could’ve made it work at some point, but not after TSC. Lyra’s journey there is too dependent on Will not coming back.

 Let me explain. Lyra and Will could’ve chosen to stay together. They could’ve made the choice to live a very shortened life together. We know why they didn’t: as Will puts it, one of them would’ve died young, leaving the other grief stricken, and it would’ve meant two lives wasted. On the flipside, they would’ve loved each other deeply and intensely – probably more deeply and more intensely than most, since they would’ve known from the beginning that their years together were counted – and it would’ve been, all in all, two short lives well spent.

Again, they could’ve chosen that. Instead, at the end of TAS, they decide to give a life without each other a chance.

But what’s been life for Lyra so far, eight years later? She’s a student at St-Sophia, a good one, gets good grades, is probably somewhat interested – but doesn’t sound passionate – about what she’s studying. Friends at school? There’s Miriam – more a casual class buddy than a real intimate BFF. Lovers? There’s Dick Orchard, though from the look of it their relationship erred more on the “friends with benefit” side (and at some point, it’s strongly implied that Lyra never touched Dick’s daemon Bindi, contrasting the deep, soul-like connection she had with Will). She forbids herself from getting too close with boys she might fall in love with (coughMalcoughcom) out of fear of being unfaithful to Will’s memory. All in all, it’s exactly like what she tells Farder Coram: “I thought all the danger was over… Everything, the good as well as the bad, it was all over. There was nothing left but learning and… Well, just that, really.” (TSC, p. 280) She adopts the new trendy way of thinking of Brande and Talbot, one of cold rationality, hard facts, a black and white representation of the world, because Brande and Talbot’s philosophy deny the reality itself of every traumatic experience she had to go through between 11 and 13: the knowledge of who her parents were (as well as the lack of closure in her relationship with both of them), being almost separated from Pan in Bolvangar, Roger’s death, coming across soul-eating specters, having Pan ripped out of her heart, loosing Will. If daemons don’t exist, if there’s no land of the dead and no specters, if love is nothing but a fancy of the mind, then Lyra can’t be hurt by these things, unless by deluding herself into believing that they’re real. Her fascination with Brande and Talbot is a coping mechanism, and it could almost work, except that it’s the perfect recipe for a bleh, bland life.

 Fact is, TSC’s Lyra probably, consciously or not (but more consciously than not, I’d wager), regret parting from Will. If she had gone with him into his world, she’d be in pretty bad shape by now but so what? She would’ve been happy. Happier, at least. Fulfilled.

 I even wonder if that isn’t one of the reasons behind her estrangement with Pan. Going with Will would’ve meant choosing love over life, and what is a person’s daemon, if not that person’s “life”, in animal form? Why else would daemons disappear when their person dies? Why else would they be forbidden from crossing into the land of the dead?

 And so, maybe, her journey in the TSC is about discovering that the choice she made in TAS wasn’t a “wrong” one after all. That she can still live a wholesome, fulfilling life, and that she can still love as deeply as she once did with Will. That she can still hope.

 This doesn’t mean that Lyra will love Malcolm “more” than Will, nor the other way around (that Malcolm would merely be the “second choice”, the best she could hope for if she can’t be with Will). Pullman pulls tricks like these all the time. He did it with Jim and Sally, and with Ginny in The Broken Bridge, and now he’s doing it with Lyra too: protagonists falling deeply in love with someone, loosing that love, and unexpectedly finding another love. That “other” love is never presented as “more” or “less” than the first, because that’s not the point. The point is that there’s always hope.

 Strangely enough, Lyra and Malcolm’s journeys in TSC have quite a few parallels with Lyra and Will in TSK (and somewhat in TAS too, though I expect the third installment of TBoD to have more parallels with TAS specifically). Only this time, Lyra is Will and Malcolm is Lyra. Lyra is the one without a daemon, the odd one out, the one who makes herself invisible, who’s desperately looking for a lost loved one, who can’t return home, who finds comfort in letters written by someone she cares for, who gets her hand badly wounded in a fight. Malcom is the one searching for Dust rose oil, the straight-face liar, the slightly obnoxious, the one who gets out of sticky situations all the time but still ends up drugged and passed out in a train (but not in a suitcase at least). I’m not sure where the story is going with this or what’s the purpose of these parallels, though I’d guess that they contain some hints and clues of what’s gonna happen in the last  BoD. Lyra’s journey doesn’t only boil down to romance either. Romantic love, and all other kinds of love, is just a part of Lyra’s lost “shadow”. Or Lyra’s lost “Dust”, as I believe that that’s what the “shadow” refers to in the poem of Jahan and Rukhsana. Malcolm concludes that Rukhsana’s stolen shadow = Lyra’s daemon Pan, but I’m not sure if Pullman isn’t pulling another trick on us, because –

 “Nevertheless, that shadow-colored cat on the moonlit lawn…” (TSC, 143)

“As if Gottfried Brande was some kind of enchanter who made you forget everything you used to love, everything mysterious, all the places where the shadows are.” (TSC, 175)

“You’re expecting the sun to describe shadows. The sun has never seen a shadow.”

“But the world is full of shadows.” […] “I came here”, Pan said, “because reading your novel persuaded my Lyra that the things she believed in were false. It made her bitterly unhappy. It was as if you’d stolen her imagination and taken away her hope with it.” (TSC, 360-361)

 I could probably quote more, but you get the picture. It seems like what Lyra hopes to find in the red building is Dust/shadow particles – meaning that she, too, knows that *something* was taken from her – and she hopes to find it there, specifically, probably because she’s already unconsciously linked the red building to the world of the Mulefas, where the flow of Dust was so abundant and where she and Will kissed for the first time.

All that to say, Rukhsana’s stolen shadow = Lyra’s stolen imagination/Dust. Or so I believe for now. We’ll see.

It’s complicated, though, because in the poem, Rukhsana must make a great sacrifice to get her shadow back, and likewise Lyra’s told by that alchemist in Prague that she’ll have to make a great sacrifice to get Pan back – and even then, that she’ll get him back, but “not in the way” she’d expect. We also learn from Dr. Strauss’s journal that entering the red building costs a life. Another sacrifice, another place.

For Pan, I have my own guesses. The “sacrifice” will either be 1) Lyra giving up absolute rationality, which means she’ll also have to face all the traumas she’s been repressing and discounting as “not real” so far, or 2) Pan will return to Lyra, but as an invisible part of her or hidden inside of her, like peoples’ “daemons” from Will’s world. They’ll never part again, but Lyra will lose the companionship that she had with an external part of herself. Hence Pan not returning to her “in the way she thinks”.

Actually, I’d think that we could see 1) and 2) both. In TSC, Lyra questions the realness of daemons and it would be almost too easy to deny their existence altogether if they weren’t visible. Obviously TBoD will not end with Lyra now enlightened with the understanding that Pan never existed and was just a “projection of the mind”, so for Pan to disappear inside of her, and for her to truly believe in his existence regardless, would point to some significant change of faith, which is probably what the books are building up to anyway.

The “sacrifice” needed to enter the red building is even murkier. From Strauss’s journal, it’s sort of implied that Strauss and Cariad were the “payment” for the rose specimens given to Hassall, so I’m not sure if the sacrifice “pays” for an entrance into the building, or if it pays for the knowledge of what’s inside it. Besides, Lyra and Malcolm are probably both going in – or, rather, Malcolm was sent there by Oakley Street with the official purpose of gathering information while Lyra is traveling to Karamakan with the intent of entering the building, so they both seem set up to parallel Dr. Hassall (Malcolm) and Dr. Strauss (Lyra), respectively; however, once they reach the place they’ll obviously both go in, so the “life payment” might not be required.

 How they’ll trick their way into leaving the red building is another matter. Again, I’d expect some nods and callbacks to TAS, especially the part where Will and Lyra managed against all odds to escape from the world of the dead. Back then they had the knife and Lyra’s imagination (part of the deal was that they’d tell stories to the harpies in exchange for their help at finding the way out). Might be that Lyra’s newly returned talent at storytelling comes in handy this time again. Or maybe – and this is just a very big MAYBE –

The story she will tell in the red building is the poem of Jahan and Rukhsana. Oh, but what if it must be a true story? Well actually, it is, and Lyra and Malcolm are right there to prove it. How “true” the story is, that’s like asking how true to reality a metaphor is. It’s a matter of perception, or rather, imagination.

[maid-of-the-golden-deer]

Tell me about why you love kurt wagner.(I love him either💙💙💙, I just like to read other people's reasons bc I feel like I can't articulate a text properly haha)

sorry if you've had to wait awhile on this, just woke up haha. and i can DEFINITELY provide this, but it may get a smidge rambly lol.

let's start with the most superficial reason; he's visually interesting. he's a striking blue, he's almost always in a unique pose which makes him stand out from others in groupshots, and he has his unique eyes, hands, feet, and tail. you're never mistaking him for anyone else, and i love that. can't forget the adorable pointy teeth either lol.

along with just how he looks, his skill set and appearance means a GOOD artist has to get creative with his action scenes and expressions. he has highly mobile, close combat fights which are interesting to look at. and when he's not fighting, because his face is often obscured in shadow + he lacks pupils, he gets exaggerated, fun expressions. he just lights up whatever page he's on tbh.

okay, now to move onto less shallow reasons lol, which are harder to articulate because there are so many small things that come together to make him as great as he is. i think, at his best, he brings a nice level headed balance to a team. like he gets emotional and irrational like anybody, but as seen in his early interactions with Cyclops and Captain Britain, he's generally the one giving out advice and knocking some sense into the heads of a team's more melodramatic members lol. he's even explicitly called the backbone of the tram in excalibur.

this screenshot also brings up another things i love about him, even if it makes me sad- one of the things that "humanizes" him is his tendency to self doubt. he's kind, understanding, forgiving... but whenever he makes a mistake, or feels hurt, he tends to get inside his own head and beat himself up. i obviously want him to be happy but i do think he needs this aspect as a way to keep him from being a little one note.

on that note... i love his self confidence. and no, this is not as contradictory as it sounds. like yeah he has doubts and doesn't always believe in himself, but it has very little to do with appearance. he likes how he looks, revels in the abilities he has, both that he has earned and that come from his mutant powers.

and in X-Men forever, a sort of "what-if the Claremont era X-men kept going" comic, he ends up switching appearances with Rogue, and misses how he used to look.

(I know the plot reasons for it but I hate human looking Kurt, give me my fuzzy blue boy.)

to go along with his confidence, i obviously adore his swashbuckling nature and love for all things dramatic and fun. he likes to triple wield swords which is just downright delightful, has movie posters up in his room, makes movie references... he's just got so much joy and lust for life!! his two best solos are when he gets to go on dashing interdimensional adventures and i hope that gets capitalized on again sometime soon (pic isn't from a solo it's from excalibur lol)

another flipside point, unsurprisingly, like many characters of his type, he uses humor to hide his (and others! he likes to make others feel better with his antics) pain and his fear. he KNOWS he's perceived as confident and balanced and patient, so he'll use that a means to distract from what he's really feeling. it's very :( but another thing necessary to make him as well rounded as he is. kindness and joy aren't endless wells that can be pulled from constantly, there have to be limits.

and speaking of, time to get to the part everyone knows and why he's so beloved, in universe and out; his kindness and friendliness. no matter what you do to him, good writer or bad writer, bleak scenario or silly, he's just kind and understanding down to his bones. you don't become one of wolverine's first friends, and then remain his best friend for the rest of both of your respective lives and even well beyond your deaths unless you're something special. you aren't killed as a plot device to emotionally devastate the x-men unless you're one that they all love. you don't get called the soul of the x-men unless you are.

he has every reason to hate the world, but he refuses to, he makes the much harder choice to love it. he leaves eternal paradise to protect the world and his friends who live in it. beloved, amazing, wonderful-

so yeah, these are the big reasons why i love him. he's a man of logical contradictions, good even when goodness in short supply, and just... man just a delight.

a few bonus things i like: he's a hit with the ladies in universe, how his religion (ignoring that elephant in the room we all ignore) is used as a grounding, humanizing element, and he was originally the team's medic.

to sign off, i will share my fave panel of him

[atimefordragons]

10 Signs That You’re in a Clara Novel/Project/Writing Collab/Rp/~Thing~

tagged by @ayzrules thanks for the tag! I love tag games and talking about myself XD 

1. DRAGON MOTIFS - [svea, Vera, deevi, shiera, rhaella, ilyana, aurora, literally all of them] lmao, every character and thing ever of mine. I always loved dragons, but the obsession really just clicked in my soul when I watched emilia clarke emerge unharmed from fire with three new dragon hatchlings. after that it was forget whatever witchy and murder shit I was obsessed with as a gothic and macab tween, dragons only now and forever. the dragons can be either literal or figurative, but they are always there. The Dragon does not fear bby. 

2. FIRE & ICE DICHOTOMY - [vera, shiera, raya, svea, zlata] almost always in one person, this kind of happened by accident, I’ve always loved winter and the cold, so naturally, all my characters and worlds end up like that too, but I am also hot headed, and the obsession with dragons results in my winter princesses/queens/etc having a fire dragon while also being ruler of the snow and ice. Sometimes more metaphorically with WRC/FTC Vera, who was ruler of the coldest nation on earth and also had a bunch of nukes and wars, but also ITU Vera, again, ruler of the coldest nation in the realms, but her nuke was a literally dragon this time, she also supernaturally caused a volcanic eruption (spoilers). 

3. HATING ON/JUDGING AMERICA - [all characters] this is intrinsic to my personality. I hate America and so do all my characters. even characters that exist in realities without america, they still hate it. I will not elaborate. 

4. RUSSIANS - [ilyana, zhenya, nika, katya, marena, zlata, vika, vitya, dima, kolya, raya, vova, etc] honestly, I don’t know where my russian obsession started, predates eurovision, post-dragon, but not by much, like, I just woke up one day and decided 80% of my characters are gonna be russian from now on. They tend to be oligarchs, FSB/KGB, bratva is a newer trend for moi. I dunno, but I, a person who has never been to Russia and is not remotely Russian in any way, got brainrot for Russia and Russian history, hmu with them imperial, communist, and modern facts. See you all at Blue Light next year. 

5. BOURGEOISIE -  [99.9% of all my characters] moi: fucking hates capitalism and finds a way to blame everything on capitalism, also me: makes 99.9% of my characters ungodly wealthy. it’s about the financial security and desire for things. probably. idk, but tis my thing, probably one of my oldest things, always loved royalty and nobility, I tend to make vieux riche as opposed to nouveau riche characters, defunct titles, lost glory and all that.

6. THINLY VEILED REFERENCES TO PPL - [lol, not gonna out myself] this isn’t always a negative, this is something that started in like middle school when I would name characters after my friends and just base their personalities on them without having to think, as I got older, this shifted into being references to other characters, like I’ve made an Oikawa and an Ushijima, etc, and still do that, but on the flipside, also use this to create characters based on people I detest and vicariously act out vengeance. 

7. SASS MASTER MEDIEVAL FEMINIST - [élodie i] there were others, but I like to think I’ve grown past this a little, like, don’t get me wrong, I still got my medieval snarky ass ladies who are all for the girl power, but that exact level of my writing at the time was pretty white feminist, and I’m woc, so pathetic me. hopefully, you can find more dynamic and evolved versions of this trope in my writing now, but whatever. I write for me and my friends to enjoy, my bad writing is your problem guys. 

8. DESTRUCTION OF A RELIGIOUS ORGANIZATION - [into the unknown, for the crown, serve or burn] this isn’t as common as the other things, but in a setting where I have full control of the world, there’s always something like this, either it is christianity, or is a thinly veiled reference to it. Look, while I do technically agree that there’s no such thing as an “evil religion”, there is nothing more evil than the christain organization, usually I mean catholism, but the evangelicals and mormons are weird and fucked up cults too. Anyway, imma die bitter about all the damage christanity has done to the world, so in my worlds, it gets burned to the ground. I am not sorry.   

9. MALE LOVER BOYS ARE JUST A MANIESTFATION OF JOHN MULANEY’S “MY WIFE IS A BITCH AND I LIKE HER SO MUCH” - [nika, lucas, ademir, vorian, kolya, etc ] listen, the only type of male lover I want are those who are deeply devoted to the subject of their affections, no “I lie to protect you” bullshit, they’re pretty, usually buff, but not necessarily, that’s just a common aesthetical attraction choice of mine, and they have like skills and talent I guess, but most of the time they stand behind their wife while she does whatever is plot relevant and hold her hand when she’s sad. 

10. A WORLD THAT’S TOO BIG AND TAKES TO LONG TO DEVELOP - [see; into the unknown] listen, listen, I know this is like, a problem with me, okay? I make the world too big and get buried in all the plots and the calendars and the timelines and the history and it’s all an exhausting mess that I never quite finish. but, whatever. I can’t have a basic ass world with no detail, I hate that shit, I’d rather take forever building the world, than the world being empty. 

tagging: @celestialfairies @kzombi3 / @thots4daze @themonsterslut @turquoisesiren @heartless241 @alittlebitluna @eternalsailorstar @themadmonarchist @forebodinq + anyone else who wants to do this

[crqstalite]

Big list back at ya! H column for Kodelyn!

the list.

Ooo thank you for this one!!

H. Romance and Intimacy

H-1: What is your OC’s orientation, romantic and/or sexual? Has it ever been a source of stress for them? Have they always been pretty sure of their orientation?

Kodelyn is biromantic + demisexual. I don't think it's ever been a source of stress, both because I doubt a galaxy dealing with space flight and aliens is gonna give a shit who you love. Also because she surely doesn't care. It's always just been a thing for her. As sure as she is about being a woman, she's bi and demi too.

H-2: Is your OC a thoughtful partner, in whatever aspect of that you want to cover?

I'd definitely think so. I mean, I have thoughts about it, but in the terms of thoughtful -- Kodelyn's a good listener first and foremost. Whether about a problem or about something Kaidan loves, she's willing to sit for a while and spend that time with him. Sometimes she forgets to share those things with him in return, but is considerate nonetheless.

H-3: Does your OC believe there’s only one ideal partner (or multiple ideal if not monogamous) for everyone, or that there are many people who could be right?

Considering I've currently only ever paired her with one character, I feel like she has a murky take on it. She thinks anyone could've been 'right' for her in theory, and she just didn't find anyone who clicked before she met Kaidan. Ideal is another story all together. Not to say she can't compromise, but I think there would've been a point where she would say 'no, there's too much of me I'd need to change to make this work' and moved on.

H-4: Does your OC believe in love in first sight?

No. She's pretty firm on that. Aesthetically she can think someone's attractive, but it doesn't translate to romantic attraction immediately. Kodelyn is not a whimsical person, and it applies to her partners as well. Kaidan especially, she considered him a good friend long before ever considering that she may care for him romantically. She couldn't really see him as anything else until they'd been that way for a while either, which is why their relationship really starts to solidify in Mass Effect 3 rather than right off the bat in Mass Effect 1.

Fear of it not really lasting is another big part of that, they hadn't known each other very long up to that point. In the grand scheme of things, they don't know much about each other. What if they just eventually found out they didn't fit, or couldn't fit months down the line? She'd rather be entirely certain about him before she stuck the modifier 'love' onto it. After that point though is where she falls fast and hard. When she thinks she's entirely sure about where they stand.

H-5: Does your OC believe in marriage (or their culture’s equivalent)?

She does! Post-war it's a pretty exciting time for her too, even if it wasn't something she really dreamed about as a kid.

H-6: Has your OC ever cheated on anyone or been cheated on?

No. Again, not that kind of person.

H-7: What do they look for in partners? (Emotionally, mentally, physically..)

Excellent question!

She doesn't really know. Prior to Kaidan she had plenty of good friends, but never really toed that line. People who tend to drain her mentally and emotionally are definitely people she doesn't like, but on the flipside she does click really well with people who are understanding and considerate of her needs. And those willing to tell her when she's being a little foolish.

H-8: What’s your OC’s idea of a perfect date?

I'm not sure Kodelyn has one (or maybe that's me talking). Nothing too crazy, but quiet ones or nights in are always pleasant and welcomed.

H-9: What are some things that your OC finds to be an instant turn-off in potential partners?

Liars. Pushy people. Her boundaries are bound to be pushed here and there and sometimes she does struggle to properly enforce them, but she will notice and remove herself from them pretty quick.

Thank you for asking :D

[ama1gamates]

theory:deltarune is one of gaster’s experiments

apologizing ahead of time if this is written in a disorganized manner, also the fact that i veer off topic a couple times to just talk about ways the games are related. its very difficult to organize my thoughts when there is so much to consider despite the fact that this is like my fourth time rewriting this (woops)

theory: deltarune is one of gaster’s experiments. like the entire thing is an experiment.

if you’ve never heard who gaster is in relation to undertale, you should probably look into that first because that’s what this entire thing is about. tldr; he was the royal scientist before alphys, fell into his own experiment and “died” or disappeared. he is presumaby sans’s and papyrus’s father or a part of the family (assuming that w.d. stands for wingdings going along with the whole “named after the font they talk in” thing, especially considering the fact that the journal 17 hidden room is written in wingdings). although we don’t exactly know when gaster is in the timeline of the backstory, we can assume he was hired as the royal scientist to figure out how to get them out of the underground. we can probably assume that he worked with determination, considering that the one time he is visible in the game he appears kind of drippy, like the fact that that’s exactly why amalgamates even happened in true lab. also, the determination extraction machine - was gaster’s. there are blueprints in sans’s workshop, written in a code that frisk cant understand, as well as a broken machine covered by a sheet; we’re assuming that’s an old determination machine and sans translated the blueprints for alphys (she even says in a journal entry “i used the blueprints”). if the “creation” gaster fell in wasn’t the core, it might have been this, because once again he appears all melty like the amalgamates or undyne when she dies. gaster’s appearances in undertale kind of seem like random easter eggs about a character from the past, but i’m not convinced it’s unimportant; in both deltarune and undertale you cannot name your character gaster, it just restarts the game.

now onto why i think deltarune is an experiment: when you download the game onto your computer, the file saves as “SURVEY_PROGRAM.exe” which actually scared me a little bc i was scared i just downloaded a virus, plus the fact that the license agreement when i was installing it said “YOU AGREE TO EVERYTHING THAT HAPPENS FROM NOW ON” or something like that. terrifying! and once you open the game it does survey you, asking you to create a vessel and name it as well as yourself, unlike undertale where you only name the first fallen human, chara. plus there is someone that talks you through the whole intro asking you these things, which seems very separate from the narrator of everything else that happens in the game. and i think that this is how gaster was experimenting with human souls; when you die and when you save, the game doesn’t focus on determination like undertale does. (the flipside of this is alphys experimenting how to break the barrier with monster souls and determination).

MY BIGGEST REASON WHY I THINK THIS THOUGH: journal entry 17 from gaster. the entire thing is talking about a darkness growing stronger and cutting deeper, saying “i think this next experiment is going to be very very interesting.”  THE ENTIRE PLOT OF DELTARUNE CHAPTER ONE IS RESTORING BALANCE TO THE WORLD BECAUSE OF A FOUNTAIN OF DARKNESS MAKING THE DARK WORLD GROW STRONGER.

it’s also just very Funny(tm) to me that undertale has the surface and the underworld, and that deltarune has the light world and the dark world. there’s just! a very specific! kind of parallel there! like someone might have based it off of the concept of having a surface world and a world underneath!

one other fun thing: clam girl, a rare-appearance npc, talks about her neighbor “suzy” and how the protag should meet her. and once you talk to her, if you go to sans’s workshop, one of the drawers contains a poorly drawn photo of three smiling people the protag doesn’t recognize that says “don’t forget”. but only if you talk to clam girl! also goner clam girl, an even rarer npc, says that u never met suzy but the time to do so is “fast approaching.” i just think it’s interesting ;)))

about kris: i’m thinking that the soul kris out at the end is the player’s? maybe that’s a common theory, idk it probably is. like gaster just chose a human on the lightener world and said “here you go! here’s a soul! have fun being my experiment!” and this soul has more determination than kris; i saw this pointed out in a video, but the first time you play the game and you get to the first save point, you literally overwrite a save file under the name “kris.” in undertale, only the person with the most determination has the ability to save, which is why the only time flowey could save is when he had six human souls in his control, so we can assume the player has more determination than kris. also the fact that kris literally doesn’t emote at ALL the entire game, to me that makes it rlly clear that the soul they rip out is Not Good.

of course i don’t have all the answers! and this isn’t without holes, because yeah our information about gaster is limited and we only have one chapter of deltarune. something i realized today though: in undertale when you read the signs in waterfall, the last one mentions an angel who has seen the surface, presumaby asriel, come will back to free them all (which does happen in true pacifist!) the only other time an angel is mentioned in undertale is when you talk to gerson about the delta rune emblem; apparently the other bleaker take on the angel is an angel of death who’s a harbinger of destruction. SO ITS REAL INTERESTING I THINK that in the deltarune prophecy, it mentions that when the trio restores balance, they will “banish the angel’s heaven?” and somehow even after we closed the fountain (which btw i’m not convinced it worked) we don’t know what that means or what it’s referring to. but if we’re going off of the thought that undertale’s “angel” is asriel...... we bring in the theories about ralsei and asriel having something to do with each other, considering their names being anagrams and looking somewhat similar. also the fact that theyre probably related and asriel will make an appearance in the game in the future makes me nervous about that. THIS COULD BE A THING! WHO KNOWS. just wanted to point it out as well even though i don’t think it has anything to do with gaster.

ANYWAYS THIS IS A MESS but those are my thoughts on the ways that undertale and deltarune are related!!! and if anyone wants to add their thoughts feel free, i’m open to discussion