#the gods are present without actually being represented

[teagrammy]

I love how Paris toys with Helen's sense of her own destiny and her sense of humanity as a demigod, especially in relation to her own feelings toward Paris. She implies that she's seen visions/had premonitions about Paris since childhood

In "Perfect Stranger" there's a sense that Aphrodite has guided her to the beach to engineer this meeting with Paris. However, in a less supernatural sense it could indicate that since she's a child she's had an underlying desire for someone who encourages her to be emotive and give into the desires of the heart.

She establishes in both "Long Time Coming" and "Thoughts of Love" that she's lived as a figurehead for her whole life, and in "Chorale" the chorus outright states that she is fashioned in the image of the gods. She feels like she cannot be human, and in a way she's correct because even at the point Paris meets her she's already mythologized. Paris on the other hand is human to a degree that she finds embarrassing, but also intriguing and endearing. It helps that when they meet, Paris doesn't know her identity as the Queen of Sparta, but just sees this beautiful woman Aphrodite has promised to him. He worships her, but in a way that seeks to prioritize Helen's comfort and feelings and make her feel loved. It makes her uncomfortable because she's been worshipped in a way previously that distances her from her humanity. Menelaus outright states this in "Thief in the Night."

Menelaus clearly adores Helen, but in a way that makes Helen feel alienated. She's admired but in a way that makes her more symbol than human. Yet at the same time, Helen has this deep sense of dread that indulging in this human part of her will bring ruin for everyone involved. If she's seen visions, she understands the fate of her relationship with Paris is not going to end happily. But what Paris ultimately argues, and she ultimately accepts is that these sacrifices are needed for her to actually progress and have some sort of fulfilment as a human. In a twisted way, even though Paris dies, the whole affair shifts Menelaus' perspective of Helen and makes him more attentive to her human needs afterward.

Anyway, it's just wild an 80s rock opera gave Helen better characterization and more depth than she's gotten from supposed feminist retellings in the past ten years, but that's neither here nor there.

[thedensworld]

I Can Fight | J.Ww

Pairing: Wonwoo x reader

Genre: fluff

Summary: Since you married Jeon Wonwoo, you always considered to not wear revealing clothes. Honestly, Wonwoo doesn't mind.

Maestro is definitely Wonwoo's era. My love from him escalates from hundred to limited🤍 god, i need him in my life. However, enjoy this fluffy fluffy wonuuuu🥰

It hasn't even been a year since you tied the knot with Jeon Wonwoo, the heir to a vast conglomerate. He possesses everything one could desire: a top-tier education, a lucrative career, and a prominent place in society. Yet, despite his wealth and status, he insists that you are the center of his universe. You, a mere lecturer at a university owned by his father, never imagined you'd capture the heart of someone like Wonwoo.

Your paths crossed at an event where you represented the university as its youngest dean. Wonwoo's attention was drawn to you instantly, captivated by the calm grace you exuded. The following morning, you were taken aback to find him at the university, seeking you out.

"I have something to discuss with you," he said, his eyes filled with a mixture of determination and something else, something softer.

As he proposed an internship program to benefit the students, the conversation effortlessly shifted from professional to personal. It became evident that his true motive was to get closer to you, to unravel the layers of your being.

You couldn't deny the flutter of excitement in your heart as Wonwoo confessed his ulterior motive. How could you resist someone who pursued you with such sincerity and charm?

Wonwoo's pride in you knew no bounds. He loved to showcase you to his friends and colleagues, boasting about your intelligence and beauty at every opportunity. Being by his side at elite events was both an honor and a responsibility, one that required the perfect attire to match his prestigious status.

As you surveyed the two gowns laid out before you in the bedroom, the weight of the upcoming event pressed upon you. Your current formal attire had already made its rounds, and you couldn't bear the thought of causing Wonwoo any embarrassment by appearing in the same outfit again.

With a heavy sigh, you reached for your phone, dialing Seungkwan's number without hesitation. He was your trusted friend, the one whose fashion sense you relied on for such occasions. But as you questioned his choices, your finger instinctively pointed towards the more daring of the two gowns—a black off-shoulder number with a thigh-high slit.

"What were you thinking with these options?" you inquired, your voice laced with a mix of frustration and concern. The other gown, a deep red wine hue, was equally alluring, with its backless design and knee-high slit, presenting a different kind of challenge.

"I thought that's what rich people wear to events like that! It's straight out of the pages of those fancy books!" Seungkwan's voice came through the phone, his defense ringing with a hint of sheepishness.

You took a moment to collect yourself, inhaling deeply before responding. "Do you honestly think I usually wear something like these?" You couldn't help but chuckle, the absurdity of the situation washing over you.

Seungkwan's laughter echoed through the phone. "Of course not. Last time you wore something revealing was when you danced to '10 Minute' at Jeonghan's birthday party in college."

A wistful smile tugged at the corners of your lips as you recalled the carefree days of youth. "And I was so drunk that I slit my skirt and cut my sleeves," you added, shaking your head at the memory.

Seungkwan's tone turned more serious. "Just wear it. You won't embarrass your husband by wearing it. Trust me."

You nervously bit your lip, the weight of Seungkwan's words sinking in. "He's a respected person, Seungkwan. And I'm an academic. Last time I wore something tight, someone actually talked about him."

"No way! What did they say?" Seungkwan's curiosity piqued through the phone.

You let out a weary sigh, memories of the unpleasant encounter resurfacing. "Just that I looked too hot for a professor, and my look didn't match Wonwoo. It was awful, really. I wish I could have stood up to them at the time."

Seungkwan's voice came through with conviction, urging you not to let others dictate your choices. "Darling! Don't let them stop you. What if you are actually too hot? It's their fault they couldn't handle your fire! Stand up to them if someone talks to you like that."

A soft laugh escaped your lips at Seungkwan's fierce encouragement. "You know I can't fight," you admitted, resigned to your non-confrontational nature.

Before you could dwell further on the conversation, the sound of the bedroom door being pushed open interrupted your thoughts. Your heart skipped a beat as you turned to see your husband standing there, his presence filling the room with warmth and reassurance.

"Wonwoo just got back from work, I'll let you know my choice. Thanks for getting me these dresses, though," you informed Seungkwan.

Seungkwan hummed in acknowledgment. "Say hi to Wonwoo. I believe he'll choose the black one."

You couldn't help but chuckle at his teasing remark. "Shut up," you retorted playfully before ending the call.

As Wonwoo entered the room, his presence instantly filled the space with comfort and affection. His tie was discarded, and he loosened his blazer before casting a glance at the dresses laid out on the bed.

"Seungkwan got me these for tonight," you explained, gesturing towards the gowns. Wonwoo nodded in understanding as he wrapped his arms around your waist, resting his chin on your shoulder.

"He has great taste," he murmured softly, his warm breath sending shivers down your spine.

A tender smile graced your lips as he pulled you closer, his embrace providing solace and reassurance. "You'll look good in everything," he added, his words washing over you like a comforting embrace.

You gently touched his arms, leaning into his embrace. "But don't you think they'll be too revealing? I could just wear the one I've already used."

Wonwoo shook his head, a gentle smile playing on his lips. "If you want to wear these, then wear them. I think you'll look absolutely gorgeous, whether in revealing clothes or not."

A surge of warmth flooded your chest at his words, his unwavering support comforting you. "However, I would love to see you in them," he added, his eyes sparkling with anticipation.

You raised your eyebrows in surprise, turning your head to meet his gaze. "Really?"

Wonwoo nodded, his expression earnest. "Let's show them that you're hot, just like what Seungkwan said."

Your astonishment grew as you realized he had overheard your conversation with Seungkwan. "From which part did you hear us?" you asked curiously.

"From the start. I actually wanted to surprise you, but you were talking to him," Wonwoo confessed with a sheepish smile.

A moment of silence passed between you before he spoke again. "Actually, I want to thank him for getting you these dresses. I can't wait to see you wear it," he added, his excitement evident in his voice.

He gently withdrew his arms from your waist, turning your body to face him. His hands tenderly moved from your hair to your face, cupping your cheeks and stroking them softly. "I'd love to see you in the black one tonight," he murmured, his voice filled with affection as he pressed a soft kiss to your lips.

A warmth spread through you at his touch and words, reassurance flooding your senses. "Your friend knows me so well," he remarked, planting another kiss on your forehead before trailing down to your shoulder.

His gestures of love and appreciation enveloped you, melting away any lingering doubts or insecurities.

***

You approached Wonwoo where he sat on the couch in the living room, a hint of uncertainty in your gaze. "Isn't it too revealing?" you asked, your voice tinged with self-doubt.

His breath caught in his throat as he took in your breathtaking appearance. The black dress hugged your curves in all the right places, accentuating your beauty in a way that left him speechless. The subtle yet alluring makeup only enhanced your features, drawing his eyes irresistibly to you. And the scent of your perfume, a familiar fragrance that never failed to captivate him, enveloped him in a heady mix of calm and desire.

As your hand moved to cover the revealed thigh, a part of you that he found utterly captivating, Wonwoo couldn't tear his gaze away from you. His heart raced with a jealous fervor, envying his own eyes for having the privilege of beholding your radiance.

"Is it not working?" you questioned, disappointment evident in your tone as he remained silent.

Unable to contain himself any longer, Wonwoo reached out to gently grasp your hand, pulling it away from your thigh. "No, it's not that," he finally managed to say, his voice filled with reverence and admiration. "You look absolutely stunning, beyond words."

Wonwoo sensed your apprehension and immediately shook his head, stepping forward to take your hand and press a tender kiss to it. "I can't believe I'm married to you. You look amazing, love," he murmured, lifting your hand and encouraging you to spin to showcase your dress.

As you twirled, a hint of uncertainty lingered in your mind, but Wonwoo's gasp of awe and promise to buy you countless dresses like the one you wore washed away your worries.

"You can wear anything you want, love. I can fight.," he declared, his words echoing your own inner resolve.

A smile graced your lips as you leaned in to peck his cheek, feeling reassured by his unwavering support. "I'll fight them with my whole life. But kiss me again, here and now," he requested, tapping his lips playfully.

You obliged, landing another gentle kiss, but before you could pull away, Wonwoo's grip on your head tightened, deepening the kiss into a passionate embrace. Lost in the moment, your hands instinctively found their way to his neck, reveling in the intimacy of the kiss that ignited a fiery passion between you.

"Should we skip the event?" he suggested with a mischievous smirk, tempting you with the idea of spending the evening wrapped up in each other's arms.

You playfully slapped his chest, chuckling at his suggestion. "Let's wipe your lips and let me fix my makeup. Seungcheol is going to kill you if we skip his birthday party," you reminded him, handing him a wet wipe.

Wonwoo chuckled as he wiped his mouth clean of your lipstick. "He loves me, he won't kill me," he mumbled before turning his gaze back to you. "So, what do you think?" he asked, anticipation dancing in his eyes as he awaited your response.

[vaguely-concerned]

for what it's worth I personally don't believe spite had anything to do with the pantry near-kiss experience at all. I think that was a 100% lucanis naturel disaster no supernatural additives present or indeed required. at most spite was watching that whole situation go down with mild puzzlement about approximately every part of it, I don't think he'd have much interest in it one way or the other. the explanation seems much more mundane and grounded and in some ways much sadder to me.

if your nervous system has never been in a place where any surge of emotion, even -- in fact sometimes especially! -- a good and exciting one makes you feel like your soul just touched a hot stove it can't get away from, then sincerely, from the bottom of my heart and without a trace of snark, thank goodness and I hope you never experience it. For the rest of you... fistbump of solidarity it's rough out here but *grits teeth* we stay silly etc. In the place lucanis is in during that part of the game, feeling like you're losing control (again even for ostensibly good happy reasons) can feel an awful lot like you're dying, or worse. on top of everything else going on for him -- again going only with non-supernatural elements and not even comprehensive: a year of non-stop horrific trauma added to pile of previous mountain of childhood and attachment trauma. chronic sleep deprivation. apparently dead grandma doubling as mother figure. cousin-brother aggressively fucking around and in real danger of finding out. fucked up the ONE thing he thought he knew how to do that's been the central pillar of his identity. the world might be ending even more than it already was because of it. keeps faceplanting with barely any dignity and having to get up again with alarming regularity GOD how could I ever not save treviso this man desperately needs a W (just one!!) like few people in the history of the world have before him. he's more caffeine than man because the alternative feels worse. it's bad in here. and ON TOP of all that he's in the process of falling just. appallingly soul-shrivingly in love, which can notably be playing on hard mode even when you're in a mostly functional place, that shit routinely rocks people to the core under the best of circumstances.

so I'm not surprised it's too overwhelming for him to handle when he tries to throw himself in head first -- in fact I'd have been more surprised if it weren't lol. he clearly wants it so much, which only makes it so much more painful that he can't actually bear to touch it when it's offered to him freely and eagerly. this is the tantalus-level awfulness of this kind of attachment trauma; food seems to be right there, you can see it, almost smell it sometimes, but no matter what you just can't seem to reach it. seemingly not for any flaw in the existence of the food, but because of something broken in you that can't or can't bear to actually eat. his deliberate flirting routine is kind of deeply dorky tbh lol (in the most endearing way possible let's be perfectly clear) and I don't think it's entirely natural to him -- that's a hastily cobbled together 'oh god I am getting the vibes here it is happening for some reason they like me for my personality quick what would illario do' approach if ever I saw it, supported by the fact that it never really makes a return after this --

BUT I do think his obvious near-unbearable delight with rook's existence and person that shines through in that scene is entirely real and unfeigned. he likes them so much. he wants so bad to be able to be close to them. he's so hungry for the reprieve and release and relief they represent to him, just for one moment, just one break from all the awfulness to have something uncomplicatedly good. and it's here, it's been offered, he's welcome!!! and he has to flinch away at the last minute anyway because he's an exposed nerve of a human being. there's a point at which every sensation including joy becomes indistinguishable from agony. he's pretty much exactly at that point. for the love of god have some mercy on him people. the feeling that salvation is right here but you're too broken a vessel to hold it is one I wouldn't wish on anyone. let him have a few moments to stare into the void before he's ready to get back up and try again surely we all deserve at least that much lol

[kindaasrikal]

OH MY GOD

Morro’s character perfectly portrays the sin of greed, both in the perspective of himself and in the perspective of others actions.

Looking at it in the perspective of how he himself portrays it, it’s quite obvious. Morro actively causes his own demise due to wanting more than he already had, likely influenced by his time on the streets, and no thats not me saying ‘poor people are greedy!!!’. I mean in the sense of what he personally went through and how he had to force himself into toughening up to survive. Morro couldn’t afford to be kind, soft, and shy, like how he seemed to be shown when he first met Wu and was shown kindness, as well as when he first discovered his element.

They very purposefully presented him as a child who is far more innocent and sweet before the want for more took over.

Its due to that time on the streets and scavenging for more, likely prioritising his own safety rather than others (which is actually shown through other characters, the orphans who were with Morro when looking through Wu’s trash and then proceeded to run away the second they saw Wu come out without telling Morro. This was a behaviour that was likely shared amongst most of the orphans in that area and around that age), that led him to cling onto gaining more when told he could be more.

Tell me, how would a young child who had nothing, react when being told they could have everything? They would clearly cling to that idea.

Of course, as i have talked about before, Morro’s motivations wasn’t solely based on the want for more in general and for power (it was also based on factors like gaining Wu’s approval and achieving his expectations, Morro’s overall stubbornness that causes most of it, as well as his lack of any form of identity outside of it all) however those two things were very likely two important factors that made him continue wanting to be the green ninja even decades later.

Whatever innocent or naive or traumatised excuse/explanation that could’ve been given no longer hold equal or as much weight when applied to Morro in season 5, who clearly ends up wanting the green gi due to power (in multiple forms, not just power in terms of physically) more than anything else.

However, looking at how Morro represents the sin of Greed in the perspective of OTHERS is far more interesting when you think about it. I’ll try to keep this brief.

Wu, who was desperate to find the green ninja and impatient. Now, thats not to say Wu was greedy when he got the idea of Morro being the green ninja. Instead, understand it in the idea of how impatience fuels greed. When someone is impatient it is usually due to wanting something in a short amount of time, being greedy in terms of not waiting and rushing something that needs time or shouldn’t happen to begin with. Wu shows the sin of greed by (unfortunately) being the reason Morro became so greedy and for letting his impatience feed into that, as well as learning to not be greedy for more in a short period of time, and instead let things happen as they naturally should.

The Preeminent, who was likely the creature that fed into Morro’s greed to manipulate him onto helping fulfil her own. The Preeminent’s is not portrayed as a creature who is as sentient as we are, though she does have some form of sentience that is higher than usual. She had a more innocent version of greed in terms of her having less complications thoughts and seemingly only wanting more because she herself desires it. Innocent is definitely not the right word for it but i can’t think of anything else. She was greedy for more cursed souls, to escape her own realm, to take over all the realms, and to control all souls with an overwhelming amount of power. She actively used Morro and his own greed (whilst also amplifying it) to have him allow her to have her own greed fulfilled.

Shockingly enough, Lloyd, as a character who was greedy yet was no longer anything of the such. We all clearly remember Lloyd’s time as a child and his own desire for power (fuelled by naivety and neglect he’s just a tiny little guy). Later, he loses that sense of greed and instead gains a sense of selflessness (that honesty does more harm than good sometimes). He’s a perfect representation of freeing yourself from the control of your desires and greed to allow yourself a kinder life.

Theres also Kai, who was also greedy for power (with different reasons and motivations) and let go of it for Lloyd and the other ninja.

Last but not least, Garmadon. Garmadon is an amazing example of an individual who struggles with their greed and desires.

All of these character represent greed in various forms, yet nonetheless they are all the same things and lead to the same outcome. Something harmful to each of them.

All these character connect to Morro well with his story, with Kai being in the exact same position as Morro at one point, Lloyd being the one possessed by Morro in his greed as well as having that same childlike naivety and selfishness Morro did, Wu being Morro’s sensei as well as the starting point for his greed, the Preeminent being the key player in Morro’s greed growing as large as it had and leading him to make bad decisions due to it, and Garmadon whose story and life is uncomfortably similar to Morro’s whilst also suffering through an entire lifetime of fighting his desires and greed until eventually having it take over.

And yet now in Dragons Rising, all forms of greed have left Morro, leaving him sacrificing his entire existence for the sake of protecting others.

He makes me SICKKK IM CRASHING OUT MANNN

Sorry this is probably written a bit messily and like i trailed off and didn’t complete my point but its 5am guyssss :(

[fan-goddess]

A Mutual Feeling Of Hate

Pairing: Aemond Targaryen x Strong!reader

Summary: As Aemond Targaryen rounds up the male Strongs, he realises one man is missing, and in his hunt for him, he finds you…

Warnings: Explicit talk, p in v smut, breeding kink, murder, talk of SA, oral f receiving, praise in Valyrian, riding, sadism and masochism, jealously sex, exhibitionism, marking, let me know if I’ve missed anything

Taglist: @valeskafics, @arcielee, @blue-serendipity,

Authors note: I’m not as happy as I’d like to be, but still here we go hope you guys like it. It was my first time writing on Google docs 😅

Harrenhal had never truly been your home. Throughout the years you were forced to live there, in your eyes it had always been your husbands. Although according to him and, in the more recent years to come it would soon become the home of yours and his children too..

Your husband, Geralt Strong, had been merely a second son when the two of you first married. Yet after the tragedies that struck Lord Lyonel Strong and his eldest son and heir Harwin, it soon hit you that your husband was only an accident away from being appointed the supposed honour of representing his house as its Lord. However, you were not the only one who noticed this predicament, as soon after Larys was appointed with no wife or children of his own, your husband decreed it was time for you to fulfil your wifely duties, and provide him with heirs of his own.

He’d been drunk every time that he tried to force himself onto you, but apparently he was too weak-souled to do it while sober. The man would become so incapacitated, that he’d pass out from overindulgence before he could even properly get off his breeches. For the first time in your life, you were grateful to be married to such a weak minded man.

Although, to play your role in the supposedly ever so slowly closing in win of his succession, you would force yourself to finish taking off his breaches, and stroke him till he burst in your hand, to make it seem like he’d actually completed his part. When he eventually spilled, you would always feel disgusted, wanting nothing more than to wash it all off and clean your whole body of his filth, and yet you found a strange joy  in it. Thinking that whenever you were forced to lick the salty taste off of your hands, you were practically eating his children, and his legacy from your very hands. In a strange way, you found honour as you played one of the gods…

Still, when your husband was not drunk, and managed to have his way with you, you still requested moon tea. A wet nurse that you surprisingly found yourself becoming close confidants with named Alys, would somehow always come to you whenever you need it, a small vial in her hand in preparation.

However, when the banners of war were officially brought out of hiding, and calls for soldiers and blood broke out amongst the land, your husband became much too preoccupied by the impending doom of Harrenhal to bother you. You can remember clearly in your mind the day Daemon and his men came for you all. It was something everyone present would remember. Ser Simon, the man who led House Strong while Larys was in kings Landing, was not a man in your eyes that day, as he surrendered easily during the assault of Daemon's attack. It was not difficult to spot Daemon Targaryen amongst the many of his men from your window, the colouring of his hair making him stand out when his helmet was shrugged off, and the wish that your husband could’ve been more like him stood out to you whenever you saw the man. You could not help but feel envious of the usurped queen whenever you saw him standing valiantly and without fear.

That however, was why It was strange, when the prince and all of his men left all of sudden in the night. All pondered over the reason, but then came the sound of a dragon's wings, and the distinctive noise of a dragon's roar, the sound of it echoed and vibrated through the air. It was not Daemon coming back, no. It was the colour green of their banners that told you who they were, and what this meant for you. It was time for you to shed yourself of that ‘Strong’ husband of yours.

Your husband in question has pushed past you to look on in horror as the men in green and gold marched closer. And while he was gawking down below at the sight, you yourself took hold of the intricately carved dagger that was gifted to you by your mother. There was no real need for you to be quiet, as Geralt's eyes remained solely on the now revealed Targaryen below, and when you stood behind Geralt silent to also get a glimpse of the sight, you were most definitely not disappointed.

It was not hard to decipher that it was Aemond Targaryen who stood there, and demanded that a sword be given to Simon Strong. The eyepatch that hung over his disfigured left eye made it easy to realise which Targaryen stood there. He uttered something to the trembling man, but sadly you were unable to hear what it was he spoke.

You were surprised though, when Simon Strong it seemed had finally grown a backbone, as he fought the prince in what was seemingly a trial by combat. However, it seemed he grew it too early, as the sound of clashing of swords was soon over, and instead the sound of a dragon's cry echoed soon after. It wasn’t until you heard the screams till you realised that the prince had fed the mangled corpse of the man to his dragon Vhagar. He made the man, who to you was undeserving of his own blood, into something as meaningless to his dragon as a common sheep. If you weren’t occupied with standing a few paces back from Geralt ready to strike him down, you most likely would’ve gone down to the prince and given him your utter devotion and loyalty, if he didnt make you into food for his dragon too that is.

The voice of Aemond Targaryen rings again, as you yourself twirl the dagger in your hand in preparation, and it booms loud enough for all to hear throughout the castle. “Bring me the rest of the men who possess the blood of House Strong!” You cannot help but feel excited at the tone the prince holds. Madness, and a type of pure unrelenting rage. It’s not hard to tell what the intention of his demand is, even the dumbest of men would be able figure out what he wants to do.

You almost miss your opportunity as you get swept up in your own excitement. Still, you make a noise similar to a yelp in an attempt to draw Geralt's attention from the spectacle below, and when he responds just how you had planned for him to act, with his body and neck turning swiftly to you in sudden alarm, you waste no time in plunging the dagger deep into the flesh of Geralt's neck. You can feel the warm specks of his blood as it splatters onto your face as you withdraw the blade, and as he staggers towards you while clutching the profusely bleeding wound in a poor attempt to stop it, you cannot help but find yourself smiling at the utterly pathetic sight. Thanks to the one-eyed prince and his hatred, there will be no more ‘Strong’ men left to stand in your way to freedom, and no so called ‘respected’ witnesses to your crime.

There’s a small series of grunts that manage to make their way from your husband's blood gargling throat. Although, soon his stumbles become too weak, and he collapses onto the hard stone floor. His movements are weak, as he seems to use all of his energy so he could look up and stare up at you. If you were honest with yourself, the sight before you feels like the greatest honour you could ever think of, to watch the life leaving Geralt's eyes. You feel like you are playing one of the Gods, because thanks to you, they are now forever immortalised with a permanent look of confusion and betrayal.

It hits you though, a thought of realisation that makes your very spine shiver in annoyance. The thought being, that there is no doubt about it, that the prince already has a list of names of those that he needs to kill in his rampage, in order to properly eradicate the house Strong once and for all. If he didn’t… Well then, the prince is more of an idiot than you took him for. Your husband was the man set to inherit everything if and when Larys Strong is to pass. So there is no doubt in your mind that he’ll be one that the prince will wish to make sure is dead at his feet.

There is a sudden knock at the door that drives you away from your thoughts, and you just know that it is the prince's men who have come to fulfil their orders. You take a moment to prepare yourself to play the role of the already mourning wife. The tears you feel drop from your eyes are fake, and yet as you open the door a fraction, the men who look at you see no difference. They’re young, only a couple name days older than you, and you thank the gods because of it, as with their inexperience they will be unable to decipher your tricks. In their eyes, you have already seen the taking of your husband, and by the blood on your face, he was taken not so long ago with some force.

They say no real words to you, other than a small grunt you presume is a type of apology, and leave you to your supposed mourning of your husband in solitude. Though as soon as you shut the door, you grab a chair and manoeuvre it to the window to watch the show below go on.

The sight of the one eyed prince successfully slaying an entire house brings a small smile to your face. He makes the man or boy say their name, and what makes them a Strong. The first to be slaughtered was Ser Simon, and soon after it was clear to all that not even the unclear bastards, with blood muddled and unknown origin, were even safe. None were spared from the Kinslayers blade.

From the balcony soon after the full-blooded men were slaughtered, you watched the beheading of an eleven name day old child. From your understanding of Harrenhal, the only reason that boy was here was because his mother was forced upon by the wrong man, and he refused to allow her the opportunity to rid herself of the child. It’s a sad sight, even you must admit, but there is truly nothing you can do other than let the show below go on.

It’s not long until the pile of corpses stops being enlarged, as the prince's men are forced to halt in their duty in bringing the men. The sounds of bloodshed are soon broken by the many sounds of high pitched women crying for their loves and their families. When you turn your head to look back at your own husband, still laying there in his own blood and filth, you can’t help but let out a scuff of disgust and disbelief, before turning back to continue to watch the prince.

You cannot help but ponder when it’ll happen. What will happen when the prince will eventually realise that no man has come forward to be slaughtered bearing the name of your husbands. Though it appears as soon as you begin to question it, the prince questions it too. “WHERE IS THE MAN THEY CALL GERALT STRONG?” He shouts. His voice somehow managed to echo over the sounds of the crying wives and daughters that resonated from their windows.

One guard steps forward, possibly one of the two who had visited your chambers earlier, but he’s too far to tell or not. He leans to whisper something into the prince's ear, and when the guard leans away, the prince looks somewhere in your direction. You can almost swear that you lock eyes with him, though he soon quickly looks away, before whispering some words to a knight, and beginning to walk towards the part of Harrenhal you reside in.

He disappears from your line of sight, and you begin to wonder if he’ll be searching all the rooms for Geralt. Though once again, It’s not long before you hear the sound of your chamber door being opened, with a loud creak of the handle. There is a sound of footsteps, although they seem to halt quickly. If you had to guess, they must have spotted the corpse. When you turn your head slightly, your eyes once more meet the single lilac eye of the princes. Although he does not make the contact last long as he breaks it to stare at the pitiful view of Ser Geralt Strong, still laying there in the pool of his own blood.

His face gives no indication of any particular emotion other than annoyance. Though you can’t help but notice an unfamiliar glint in his eyes as he looks back at you. “I thought I had ordered my men to bring me every living male strong.” It is not a question, as there is not a single inch of confusion in his tone. This was a statement.

“I know…” It's a strange feeling that resonates within you the longer the prince looks at you. One that makes your entire body strangely burn in a pleasurable sense. Not that you’d ever know what that would even feel like… “Your men followed their orders as they were told, my prince. As he was not alive before your men rounded them all to be apart of your genocide.”

You see that glint once more in his eye. It looks almost similar to admiration?

“I presume you are Geralt Strong's lady wife. Did you truly hate the man that much for you to risk your safety to kill him?” Again, this was not a real question. This was another statement and a demand directed for you. From the look in his eye, he already knew the answer.

“You are correct.” You say no more, and you don’t even need to, as the now dried blood that is still present on your face, slightly sticky to the touch you figured, and your eyes that have managed to remain bone dry with a matching expressionless face. They seem to say more than you ever could. Plus if anything, it seems the prince is the more emotional one in the room between the two of you. His own face holds in its possession a small smile, which looks much more akin to a prideful smirk, while your own is hellbent in an attempt to stay blank.

The two of you stay silent, him standing there not taking his eye of you, while you yourself continue to sit in your chair unmoving. It was strangely peaceful, until the prince began to walk towards you and took your throat in his hand, holding it firmly to not allow you head to move, but not too hard that you couldn’t breath.

“I suppose I must thank you…” He seems to muse, taking in your face as he presents it to himself. “Although-” He cuts himself off, peering down at your stomach with an almost pondering look. “How do I not know that you are currently hiding a Strong inside of your womb from me at this very moment?”

“Because I drink moon tea of course, my prince. Why would I wish to potentially burden my future children with the tainted blood that ran through my husband's veins, when there are hundreds of men throughout the seven kingdoms who easily possess blood ten times purer than his ever did?”

“And who are these men then my lady? Could you name a few so I may have an idea of your idea of pure blood?” He’s playing with you. Testing you even. And yet you must admit that it’s honestly the most fun you’ve had in Harrenhal the entire time you’ve been held practically as a captive there.

“Well there’s your brother of course, the king of the seven kingdoms…” The trail was unintentional, but you couldn’t help but let the next words die on your tongue just so you could admire the thundering glare on the prince's face at the mention of the king. You had heard about the disputes between the two, but you had no idea that this supposed brotherly hate ran so deep between them.

“Tell me who else,” He growls. The sound of it mixed with the feeling of his hand tightening around your neck sending the pure feeling of electricity straight to your already wet core.

“Why there’s many men, my prince! It wasn't like it was hard to possess purer blood than that of a Strong! There’s Dalton Greyjoy… Cregan Stark… Joffrey Arryn… I would even count your own Uncle Daemon to be possessing purer blood than my husband. He is probably one of the few men I would allow to give me my pure children…” With each man you list, the prince's face darkens more and more. You intended to play with the prince at first by making sure to name the men who appeared to side with his half-sister in regards to the throne. Similarly to how he had been teasing you moments ago. However, it seems you played too close to the flames. As when the name of his uncle, and now the name of a man seen as a sworn enemy of the crown, is mentioned from your lips, the prince pulls your face towards his own by the grip on your neck, and claims you with a fiery kiss. The warmth of him spread throughout you, and It truly at that moment felt like you were playing with a true dragon…

“What about me, sweet girl? Am I of purer blood than that of your dead tainted husbands? Am I worthy enough to overflow your womb with my seed and show the kingdoms of how worthy I am?” His whispers make your whole body burn up, as if the blood of the dragon was running through your veins.

“I cannot say my prince… I think you’ll have to show me if you truly think you are worthy enough…” It is the feral-like sound from which the prince releases from deep within, that reminds you once more who it is who is about to claim both you and your body. A dragon. That is what stands before you, and is ready to claim you and change your life forever.

The feeling of the prince's body forcibly overpowering your own as he drags you from the chair you were previously on to the bed, brings a feeling throughout you that Geralt could never have ever achieved.

“Present yourself fully to your prince.” The words drip with lust and desire, as he does not even wait for you to properly respond. Instead, he just tears the weak material straight from your body, leaving you left in only your small clothes before him. His single eye roams over your body greedily to take all of your nude self in. However, you can see it stop at the sight of your heaving chest, your shallow breaths leaving your chest to stutter slightly.

“Gevie…” He mutters before taking a hardened nipple in his mouth and sucking hard, no doubt forcing deep coloured marks to form soon after this is over. His mouth wanders even lower though, sucking and biting gently in his wake, before stopping at the skin of your inner thighs, biting softly at the flesh. The sensations make small whines to leave your mouth whenever his teeth seemingly went deep enough to leave indents of his teeth.

The prince does not appear to be in a hurry. As instead of acting like a true dragon would and just taking you, he just stares at the fabric concealing your dripping core from him with a hooded eye. He does not even attempt to move it, as a lone hand of his simply brushes over the fabric lightly. Your head tilts back at the pleasure, so you are unable to see him grinning proudly at the sound of your whines for him when he does this again, and again. Maybe this is your punishment for mentioning his traitorous uncle? Or maybe he is just simply teasing you again…

“Please my prince… show me how I deserve to be blessed with your seed…” You whine, the words must have driven some part of him, as the next thing you know, your smallclothes are being torn off you like the rest of your clothes, and a warm wet tongue is feasting on your cunt giving you the best pleasure you’ve felt in your whole life.

“Oh fuck!” You shout. There is no real need to be quiet, as who is there to hear you? While you yourself are moaning loud enough for the seven to hear, you almost miss the sounds of the prince's own groans, seemingly already addicted to the taste of your arousal that all but leaks from your quivering body onto his awaiting and eager tongue.

“Ao sylutegon se sȳrje … kesan brōzagon ao ñuha mērī ābra sir till se mōris…” He groans into the depth of your cunt, the vibrations adding that extra arousal needed to begin your push over the edge. The words themselves mean nothing to you, and you find that you don’t really care, as you feel the coil deep within you begin to tighten more and more. “Please my prince let me cum!” You shout, “Please my prince!” You try to stop yourself from releasing, you really do, but at the sight of the prince's head seemingly nodding in allowance, you feel yourself releasing on the prince's talented tongue harshly, leaving you breathless and lightheaded.

While you attempt to try and recover from your peak, you can still feel his tongue inside of you, the wet sounds reaching your ears. He acts as if he was trying to claim and taste the last remnants of your peak and arousal, before he no doubt soon rips another from your quivering body.

As the prince lifts his body up to take off his own clothing, you get the glimpse of his arousal covered face. In the current light, you can see his mouth and his chin shining, and it spreads an entire new feeling of arousal within you you didn’t even know was possible. It only worsens though, as you watch him collect some of your juices from his chin with his finger, before sucking on it with an appreciative sound as the taste glides over his tongue.

“Do not call me your prince, call me by my name. Call me Aemond.” He mutters, before he silences your response as he bends to your level to claim your lips with his own.

It’s the combined taste of your arousal on his lips, and the feeling of his erect cock touching the skin of your inner leg, that makes a pathetic whine leave your lips. You almost release another, when the prince, no Aemond, backs away for a moment to look at you with a hooded expression. He truly looks like a dragon about to devour you…

The prince's hands trail over your sweat layered skin with the kind savagery only seen belonging to a man in war. Because by technicality, he is. Aemond Targaryen has no idea when he will die in this Targaryen bloodshed, so he makes sure that he acts on his desires and takes all that you will give to him with great pleasure.

He pumps his cock a few times, to which you watch with eager eyes at the sight of beads of his pleasure coming from the tip of his cock. Much to your surprise and gratitude though, he inserts himself slowly inside of you, and the mixed sounds of his and yours groans of pleasure echo in the room, mixing as one.

Soon, the feeling of the prince's careful and precise thrusts whilst pleasurable, becomes not enough for you. Your legs hook around the prince's waist, and you take Aemond by surprise as you turn the two of you over and take no time in beginning to bounce harshly on his cock.

The deep groans that the prince lets out at the new position are easily one of the most beautiful things you’ve ever heard in your entire life. “Qogralbar… Konir sagon ziry… sȳz līve gūrogon aōha pleasure hen aōha dārilaros…” Again, the strange words' ,most likely to be that of Valyrian, are lost on you. But the way they sound coming from his tongue specifically, spark something almost primal deep inside. The grip that Aemond has on the skin of your thighs, will no doubt leave harsh and deep coloured bruises, and yet when you feel the sparks of pain from his actions, equally arousing sparks of pleasure get sent all the way up your spine.

Your hands grasp at Aemonds skin for some kind of stability, and your nails dig into his skin so harshly as you try to ground yourself, that you can see small droplets of blood beginning to mark the surrounding flesh. The very sight of it though does not deter you, and if anything it makes you harsher in your efforts for another peak to wash over you.

Although, Aemond surprises you by gripping at your hips and beginning to harshly thrust himself upwards into your wet heat. His cock reached the rough patch deep inside of you that you never knew existed. You were so invested in this new pleasure though, that you had no idea that at this development you had begun to practically shout your pleasures loudly and clearly into the room.

As his cock head bullies that spot inside you, one of his hands reaches to take hold of your neck similarly to earlier. But the grip he holds you now is harsher and less careful, and it makes you breathless. “Oh fuck…” You murmur as your head begins to fill with a strange fuzziness sensation. You feel like you could honestly die there and then. You’ve never felt this type of pleasure before. Never with your husband, and not even with yourself whenever you tried exploring your body as a young girl. The feelings that Aemond was giving you, made the entire world numb, and your body fucking electric.

“Will you let me shoot my seed deep inside you?” Finally, he speaks some words you can understand, other than his deep groans he was serenading you with moments ago. “Will you allow me to show the seven kingdoms the woman who carries my babe in her belly?”

The whine you let out is involuntary, as well as the imagery that comes to mind of you walking eagerly with the prince, a swelling belly officially holding the babe of a man worthy of possessing his blood inside of your womb.

“Yes my prince… show me exactly how worthy you are of me…” A devious idea comes to mind, and a smirk is present on your face as you next speak. “Show me if you truly are better than my husband, the Strong…”

Aemonds face visibly darkens with anger, and the grip that he holds your skin with tightens. His thrusts are harsh as he forcibly brings you to your peak, the feeling of it all rushing through your body at speeds you had no idea was imaginable.

Even when you feel yourself try to recover, the overstimulation begins to set in as Aemond continues to thrust up into you, even as you begin to go numb all over. Still, you’re thankful at the sound of Aemonds deep growl as you feel the warmth of his cum fill you to your brim.

As you gaze down at the heaving body of Aemond, your eyes drink him all in. The blood that you had caused to be brought up from his chest, ran in small delicate trails down his skin, and it excited you all over again to see it. 

A knock rings from the door, and to your surprise, Aemond merely sits up to hold you in his arms and tells the person to enter.

It is not a man who enters, but a boy who looks as if he was already scarred by the war he has joined. It is a pity to even look at, but it certainly looks up as you see the shock on the boy's face when he observes the room and spots the body of your former husband, now stiff and pale on the floor.

“What is it you need?” Aemond snaps, his tone making the boy's eyes snap to look at him, only for the boy's eyes to wander to you, and takes over you unashamedly. He is only able to see the nude form of your back, and yet your body still burns with a mixture of embarrassment and arousal at the situation.

“Ser Cole said that when we are sure all the male Strongs were dead, we were to await your orders my prince.”

“Now that the males are dead, I command you to tell the others to make sure that they leave no Strong alive, except this one… this one will be of great use to me…” Aemond murmurs, a single finger tracing the skin of your face to look only at him, as he gazes at you deeply.

You can hear the door shut behind you, and while the silence overcomes the room you cannot help but question Aemonds previous command. “What of the women like me?” The prince raises a single brow, as if he is confused. Yet he is Aemond Targaryen, the man who has near successfully committed a whole genocide on a single house in one day. You cannot allow him to dodge a question on the basis of fake confusion. “Women born not of house Strong, and yet sold to them to be wedded and bedded for their blood to be spread?”

“Why little one they too must die, for they have had the seed of a strong taint their womb forever more. While you on the other hand my lady, knew of the tainted blood of House Strong, and rightfully rid yourself of any opportunity to taint yourself. House Strong must die, my darling, and not only by blood, but by name as well. Surely you must understand, given out shared hatred moments ago?”

“Is my name not Strong currently, my prince?” You tease. Your face widening in a content smile as Aemond dots wet and no doubt marking kisses on the skin of your neck, high enough so your collars may not cover them, so all could see who has done this to you.

“Soon my darling… soon it shall be Targaryen. And it shall also be the name of my son who is currently sleeping in your belly…”

His hand traces your skin, and you hope he does not raise it higher in fear that he will hear the sound of your heart racing at his words. You cannot find yourself able to reply to him, as the words seem to die in your throat. Instead, you simply lay your head on his shoulder, and try to blank out the high feminine screams of your fellow women as they begin to echo on the cold castle walls. The single tear that begins to roll from your eye could easily have been from the emotional turmoil you have faced, or it could easily be sadness and regret of what you have just done. You will never know…

High Valyrian Translates Part:

• Gevie - beautiful

• Ao sylutegon se sȳrje… kesan brōzagon ao ñuha mērī ābra sir till se mōris - You taste the best… I will call you my only woman now till the end

• Qogralbar… Konir sagon ziry… sȳz līve gūrogon aōha pleasure hen aōha dārilaros - fuck… thats it… good whore take your pleasure from your prince

[neigepomme]

okay i need to yap about this rn and i feel like you'll understand miss pomme. it actually hurts me how pure caleb's love is and how selfless he can be. he started loving and protecting mc when he didn't even know what those words meant. he was just a little kid and he asked for nothing in return. he spent years looking out for her, searching for her in every crowd and not once did he put himself first. it's almost as if it's an instinct for him. i love him so much :( i want him to be happy in every lifetime he gets to experience with mc. ok bai

anon i am holding your hands GOD i have never understood something harder in my entire life.. yapping a lot because it genuinely makes me so upset too

i think about this a lot!! i enjoy yandere caleb stuff, and i think the darker content is enjoyable to read — but personally? i think if you genuinely did not want him in your life, he'd disappear, as long as he knew you were safe. he never really allowed himself to feel selfish or to require your love, always satisfied with being by your side without you necessarily reciprocating it.

sometimes, i wonder if he ever resented the life he was condemned to. i don't think anyone would blame him if he did. it always breaks my heart just how much love he holds in his heart, and whenever i see his freckles and how bright his eyes shine, it makes me super emotional. caleb had to grow so fast, and he never had a moment's respite — always on edge and constantly fighting to stay alive. his relationship with josephine wasn't a good one too. he remembers all of the experimentations, yet lives with one of the perpetrators, just so he can stay and care for mc.

what drives me even more nuts? the way he always looked up to the sky and dreamed of freedom, and how mc was always included in his vision of freedom. he went to the DAA hoping to learn how to fly, how to be able to feel free and his motivation was always mc. his worth is always associated with mc, and even in his weakest moments, where he should care for himself, where he should feel hurt, his mind never allows him to.

in the new world underneath story, you find out that he limited the radius of the explosion with his evol in order to shield mc — which is why he was significantly more injured than he should have been. he would much rather die than encounter the possibility of mc getting hurt. in such a stressful moment, where he surely could only feel pain from the flames and the debris, where he should have cared for himself, his mind was only on mc. and when he lost his arm? the only thing he mourned was the ability to feel mc's warmth.

you know what gets me about this too? if he was offered the chance to do it all over again, he would. in a heartbeat, without even hesitating for a bit. in every scenario, in every dream of his, mc is there. his love is too big for his body, and he would much rather be miserable and know that mc is okay, than be okay without knowing if mc is. every single time he is given the opportunity to be selfish, he decides to be selfless.

i really hope we get a card where he's genuinely happy, and we see him act a bit more selfish. i want caleb to be greedier, to demand love, demand affection, demand care. i want him to put his desires first, and most of all, i want him to smile without worry. he deserves so much and i really hope that we get to see him live his childhood freedom dreams without a care in the world. need the world to give caleb his wings back!!

edit: ok this got real emo i feel bad so have what i think caleb's love would feel like <3333

caleb's love is a hope that gives you wings. shades of orange and purple, sweaty hands tightly held as you chase sunsets, past, present, and yet to come. summer breeze carrying the weight of unspoken childhood memories. freckled cheeks painted with melted apple flavored ice cream. shared headphones and loud guitar, representing the intensity of your beating hearts. adrenaline rushes and familiar laughter into the early morning hours.

[tillsfan]

my interpretation of what Till’s flower art means to him!

before the patreon post, i wrote down my interpretations of the flowers for each character (except mizi and luka, as i hadn’t gotten to them). i might share the rest eventually. this is a really long rant Since i think about till an insane amount.. this is mostly just me rambling

the edelweiss.

love, courage, bravery, devotion, purity, strength, resilience. a flower that is difficult to obtain due to it growing in the toughest conditions, though it thrives. “delicate yet hardy.” they’re used as a gift of selfless and pure love. in folklore, there’s a story of a man risking his life to climb a mountain and obtain the flower to gift to his love, symbolizing sacrifice and devotion. there’s also a story of a queen who fell in love with a shepherd, but he was thrown to his death, and her tears blossomed the edelweiss.

till’s existence is a product of love. he had loved and had been loved all his life. he symbolizes such pure, raw love, having been the only character to experience love prior to anakt. maternal love, the most unconditional and pure bond. he craves that freedom he’s felt before, his resilience keeping him going.

till is a strong and pure of heart character. despite the tough living conditions he was subjected to, he always stayed true to himself, never letting the segyein keep him down. he was the only person to constantly defy the segyein despite all the punishment and abuse. he goes against them whenever he possibly can, outright killing an alien in round 2. he’s a symbol of bravery and courage.

till has been devoted to mizi all his life, going as far as to sacrifice his own freedom in order to continue “protecting” her. he also directly faced an alien in front of her, to protect her and show that he won’t let the segyein hurt her. the first tale i presented reminded me of how till feels towards mizi, persevering through the toughest conditions in order to demonstrate his pure love. despite all his love for her, he simply admires her from afar, which in my mind pushes the ‘devotion’ aspect, like a believer devoted to a god.

the second tale reminds me of till both after mizi’s disappearance and ivan’s death. we saw how till acted after mizi. till heavily grieved, nearly unable to hold himself together. he was willing to throw his life away because of how hard it was to live without her. and round 6, i tend to believe ivan’s death was when till finally realized how he felt. i believe this because of the wedding theme round 6 is supposed to hold. ivan’s sacrifice successfully shifted the narrative of the story, the kiss symbolizing their lives linking. but as soon as this happened, ivan’s life came to an end, leaving till to grieve.

the fact that edelweisses are difficult to come by because they’re in such isolated places also reminds me of how till was constantly locked up for his behavior. this can also represent till’s severe struggles with avoidance. he kept both mizi and ivan at a distance all his life, isolating himself from them emotionally as he heavily fears intimacy for a multitude of reasons.

till is the only one with chains surrounding him, which can symbolize a couple of things. the immediate thought i had was how he was constantly oppressed by the segyein, locked away and forcibly dehumanized all throughout his life. being tied down was his norm, and he got the most reprimand from it. this can also symbolize his emotional isolation, as i stated previously. besides this, i’m not too sure what the chains could represent here.

a thing i should mention is that edelweisses are actually mentioned in unknown till the end… how cool

this isn’t my most in depth analysis, i was mostly just dumping my thoughts.. let me know if you’d like to see the thoughts i had on ivan, sua, or hyuna’s flower art!

[artbyblastweave]

Hey I've sent you a few asks in the past and I really appreciate your takes on the superhero genre, and I'm hoping you can share your input on this.

I'm obsessed with categorizing things, not always in a healthy way, but in my thinking about literary conventions I've come up with a Cartesian grid, where if fantasy and sci fi are on either end of the x axis, then the y axis runs from horror to superheroes. It's far from universal, but it serves my purposes.

For the x axis Dune and The Lord of the Rings can serve as a sort of representative ur-text, in that they aren't progenitors of the genre, but if you spend enough time in SFF you will eventually have to reckon with them, and they are vast and dense enough to warrant serious study.

I'm currently on a horror binge trying to decide if anything fills that same type of niche for the y axis. The Cthulhu Mythos comes close. For all their faults Lovecraft and Derleth cast long shadows.

With superhero fiction it'd be easy to point to something like Watchmen and call it a day. It makes sense if I don't think too much about it, but that feels like such a cop out. I'm also not really well read enough to have any confidence in that pick.

Maybe my framework just doesn't function, but I'm curious if you have any thoughts on it.

Thanks for your time

You're right that it's a bit of an awkward fit to use Watchmen for what you're talking about because even if it's the wellspring of basically every superhero story told since, it's good specifically on the grounds of how it engaged with the forty years of codified genre tropes that existed up to that point. That makes it a significantly different beast from LOTR and Dune. I'd argue that with the axis you've presented, Horror and Superheroes actually mirror each other pretty well as two genres that have a massive corpus without necessarily having a standout platonic version of the thing. It's telling that instead of a specific Lovecraft story, you picked the mythos- I.E. the whole written corpus of two different authors. I think you can similarly point to the sprawling perpetual publication of silver-age Marvel or 1950s Schwartz-and-Binder Superman as something loosely analogous to the mythos, in your analogy- collectively emblematic but with no one piece being standout.

Now feels like a good time to bring up Avengers #88, a piece of work-for-hire writing done by the esteemed Harlan Ellison.

This issue was has always been remarkable to me because it's very, very clearly a loose adaptation of the plot of Call of Cthulhu. It only dodges plagiarism status by virtue of the first page opening with a cheeky little quote from the story proper. It follows the same loose story beats, except instead of the cops breaking up a cult in Louisiana it's Cap helping the Falcon track down a brainwashed friend of his, and instead of Cthulhu acting as an intermediary for the higher pantheon of dark gods it's an alien named Psyklop, and instead of Norwegian sailors stumbling on R'lyeh It's the Avengers, who kick down the door and kick Psyklop's ass and save the day. A cosmic horror story except Superheroes show up at the last second.

Given their respective publication timelines- superheroes following on the heels of lovecraft by about a decade- and given the perpetual escalation of the threats that they punch out for our viewing pleasure (e.g. "The FF fight God)" for a while now I've conceptualized superheroes as an antibody against cosmic horror. This comic is basically the epitome of that comparison.

[abnormal-vacuum]

A closer look at Simon "Ghost" Riley's interpersonal guilt

1 + 2 + 3 + chapter 4 ghost/soap 1,138 words - ao3 tags: mentions/discussions of sexual assault + rape. not too graphic i dont think but tread with caution . maybe a little bit of ocd coded ghost

Simon is fairly certain he's liked the Sergeant for a long time. Maybe since the first time they met. Probably not, his hair pissed him off. But very quickly he grew much too fond of him. 

It's always been a very frustrating affair when Simon catches feelings, ever since he was little. Originally, when he was a boy, he was upset because it made him realize he was gay. It took him a long while (11 years, actually) to get over that. But as he got older—after Roba—his frustration stemmed from the fact that it would never work. He would never allow it to work. He was too fucked up to ever be in a proper relationship. He has a hard time sharing a bed due to his nightmares (or night terrors, depending on how truthful he's being in describing the reality of the situation), he's very stubborn when it comes to his routines and “odd habits”, he’s slow to trust, and has enough baggage to sink a ship. The last time he hooked up with someone was maybe seven years ago, and even then he left nearly as soon as they both finished. He hasn't simply slept in the same bed as someone in… four years, probably. And that was with Price. It was a one time thing they have yet to discuss.

This is all without taking into account Simon's distaste towards contact, especially in a sexual manner. He dislikes even being naked in front of someone due to the fact that it makes him feel vulnerable. The act of sex itself makes him feel like he’s both the victim and the aggressor. He would never call himself a rapist, but the term still weighs heavy in his chest. It pops into his head any time things get a little too heated with a man at a pub, along with images of his hands forcibly being put onto a woman. Luckily he’s long since given up on endeavors like finding a stranger to shag. He technically has assaulted women before. Three, to be exact. He doesn't remember what their faces look like. He's fairly certain he watched anywhere but in their eyes on purpose. One had brown hair and a tattoo on her inner thigh, he remembers that. She bled. He started crying, apologizing. He knows she couldn't understand him. He hopes this doesn't make him a bad person. Or maybe he does. This uncertainty is what tears him up. Sometimes he wishes someone would just grip him by the shoulders and shout at him for all the horrible things he's done. Get it out in the open, maybe some confirmation would be good, as the ambiguity of his own morality is a subject he often ponders to a self-sabotaging extent. He knows that what he did to survive under Major Vernons and Roba’s hands doesn't represent him. He would have never, under his own volition, done anything like that; but, in the end, just knowing that he caused that sort of harm to anyone… it sickens him. 

And thinking about accidentally doing something like that to Johnny… it makes him want to never touch him ever again. Most days he can't even properly have a wank because that stupid bastard's face will present itself in his formerly anonymous fantasy, then that will quickly devolve into him being concerned about him somehow forcing himself onto the sergeant. And how does one even broach this subject when speaking to someone? There’s no casual way to say “oh, yes, hello, by the way I’m very worried about somehow raping you.” He would sound like a madman, more than he already seems. 

This is all in relation to Johnny's wellbeing. If Simon was considering himself, he might have to stay at least three meters away from Soap at all times. The last time he touched Ghost (a prolonged hold on his shoulder, paired with eye contact that made Simon feel as if Johnny was trying to crawl inside his skull) his skin burned for hours. He can't imagine the pain he’d be in if they were to, god forbid, cuddle. 

Besides, he would never want to burden someone like Johnny with someone like Him. He’s a lot to handle, which is why he does most of the handling on his own. Soap is privy to maybe two percent of Simon's issues, and even then the ones he does know about are surface level. He doesn't need to know anything beyond what he can extrapolate based on Ghost's somewhat bizarre behavior. Simons moderately damaging inner reflection and self awareness has begun to present itself as a problem. He's been in his own head a lot recently-- not when it's dangerous, as he's a good enough soldier to be able to turn that off in the field and the debrief room, but it has become a small issue when he's attempting to socialize. Or, more accurately, when someone is trying to socialize with him. Frequently he finds himself sitting, or standing, just… thinking. He thinks too much. 

Johnny sometimes helps. It's like he can sense when Simon is in distress, like a damn therapy dog. Then he just stands there and goes into some swear ridden spiel that has Simon forgetting his train of thought. Sometimes he wonders if he does this on purpose, but then he deems that too conspiratorial and self indulgent to be the truth. 

He’s gone over these points time and time again in his head, all the while he's got no idea if Johnny even likes men. 

He needs to find a hobby. 

A few card games later, Ghost decides it's time to head back to his room. He says it's because he's getting tired, but really it's because he doesn't want anyone to see him leaving the Sergeants room at this hour. He isn't concerned about his reputation—he's more concerned about Johnny’s. Sleeping with your superiors is already frowned heavily upon, let alone sleeping with The Ghost. Not that they were doing that, but nobody would believe them if they tried to explain themselves. 

Simon doesn't sleep that night. He lies awake, staring at his ceiling for hours until the light starts to peek through the blinds on the small window of his quarters. He checks the clock, then peels himself out of bed and starts to get dressed. He’s running drills today. Simon hauls himself through his usual routine of getting changed, walking a few paces around his room without socks, then checking the closet once before tugging his boots on and slipping out the door. He jingles the knob once, then twice to “double check” whether it's locked. He wanders through the sparsely populated halls towards the mess. He might go to the gym after getting some grub, but he hasn't fully decided. 

[ilikekidsshows]

Oh god, I just had a horrible thought: if the writers didn’t actually intend to give Marinette anxiety as you said, what if this is just how they think normal teenage girls act like when they’re in love? 🤢 Bc Marinette’s “anxiety” has always been most prevalent when it comes to Adrien, or as a result of situations which could easily induce anxiety in NT folks as well.

---

I don't think I've discussed this before, but, that fear of yours is something I’ve been thinking about as well. It’s not like the writers are having every teenage girl in the show act like Marinette does, so clearly they grasp that different people react differently. But, we also have to consider that only Marinette is really treated as a fictional person by the narrative, the only character that feels real to the writers. Her emotions are the most important in any situation. What anyone else has going on is only important in how it’s going to affect Marinette. Marinette is fully justified in doing things that would get other characters shipped to another country by their abuser because she’s having feelings.

In a show with this many female characters in positions of power and with this much talk about how great girls are, we really shouldn’t be running into the Smurfette phenomenon, where one girl is representing girlkind as a whole, but it’s somehow still true a lot of the time. Like, Alya is the second most prominent character in the show, period, now, and yet we don’t know how she feels about getting manipulated into being the backup Guardian. Alya seems totally blasé about Marinette piling more and more responsibilities onto her. Compare this to when we practically got an entire season about how stressed out Marinette was with her responsibilities and how everyone should bend over to make things easier for her.

Bringing back that point about this show talking about how great girls are; it never actually delivers on that. Marinette is possibly one of the biggest losers I’ve ever seen as a superhero. The best she could manage against her nemesis, no matter what resources she had at her disposal, was an eternal stalemate, she surrendered to that same nemesis and got the world destroyed and finally she had the gall to lie to everyone about her failure so that she can be praised for stopping Hawkmoth when that’s not what she did in any shape or form. And the writers expect us to agree with the assessment of her being a super awesome superhero. I don’t think even the Watchmen would let her join their ranks and their entire thing is to be failures as heroes.

They constantly pay lip service to the idea that girls are amazing and talented and competent, but their actual results are pretty bad. Like, they made a big deal of how the girls always beat the boys at sports in ‘Penalteam’, but are we ever actually shown the girls being good at sports? Because I can’t recall a time that’s happened. The writers can talk the talk by having characters say things that sound empowering, but they can't walk the walk by actually committing to showing the girls doing cool things.

So, yeah, the writers may treat Marinette as the greatest superhero ever whose mistakes are just little oopsies that can be forgiven by her feeling really bad for a few minutes, but that doesn’t mean that she actually is depicted as strong and competent in any way. It’s ironically the same thing the writers are having Marinette do towards Adrien; woobification to the target’s detriment. Marinette’s coddling of Adrien is infantilizing to the degree she is actually dehumanizing him. Similarly, Marinette is presented so much as such a poor, precious baby that needs comfort and understanding that she gets infantilized to the degree where the part where she’s supposed to be a competent, powerful superhero is just another vehicle to woobify her when she's never managed to win in a season premiere or finale without Cat Noir there to give her a little pep talk first.

The need to treat Marinette as the primary target of audience sympathy turns her into a really sexist depiction of a teenage girl as someone who fails without a boy there to hold her hand, completely lacking in any kind of emotional regulation and too easily overwhelmed by her need for romance to bother with things like being considerate. This all is meant to make Marinette sympathetic, because she’s constantly suffering under her overwhelming emotions, but these are actual, real-life stereotypes about teenage girls.

Even the romance is actually really sexist. We get the whole "girls resent each other over guys" trope with Marinette instantly being suspicious of any girl she thinks is interested in Adrien. In addition, Marinette's feelings for Adrien are her primary motivation when her need for control isn't informing her actions, leaning into the sterotype that girls only care about romance.

[seeingteacupsindragons]

Aro Week 2024: Let's Talk About the Limits of Representation

A lot of the discussion around writing marginalized identities comes down to one thing: representation. Representation in the books versus the authors, what the representation looks like, the variety of representation, what representation is present and allowed, what diversity is there and what isn’t.

For aro week, I want to talk about how limited that is for aro (and ace) people. Because the thing about representation is that to be exist beyond Word of God, it’s got to be discussed in the text. And that means romance (or sex, for ace people, but while I’m ace, and most of this is going to cross-apply, this post is for aro week so this is just a global note) has to be discussed in the text.

But a lot of time what I want as an aro person is to just not have to think about it. I think in general I’ve seen similar sentiments expressed across marginalized groups: we always have to think about our differences, and it’s a mental load and burden that other people don’t have to deal with. And as an aro writer and reader, a lot of the time what I want, and what most allows me to lay down that burden is to just not have romance in the damn thing. It’s hard to figure out how to write sometimes, it’s something I have to mentally keep in mind while I read.

While I go through life in general, I often just…forget it’s a thing. I forget when Valentine’s Day is often. I forget that people are normally dating. I forget people want to discuss with their romantic partners when making plans with friends. I forget they want to go everywhere as a group. I forget things look like dates. My life is one in which romance is rarely a factor unless imposed on it by outside forces. It’s not relevant.

But if I write that for characters, or for readers, a place where romance is not just imposed on their mind, the characters aren’t actually…aro. A story in which romance, romantic attraction, or interest in such things never comes up is one in which no character is canonically disinterested in or not in possession of such thing. It’s one which has no moments of obvious recognition of the aro experience or joyous bursts.

It’s a story in which, “Eh, they could or couldn’t be attracted. It never came up, so anything is valid because nothing is canon.”

The definition of being aro might lie in not experiencing romantic attraction. And sure, the character might not. But this is fiction. Not reality. And in reality, aro people’s experiences are more than the dictionary. People have relationships to romance and attraction and interactions with the concept are often recognizable and definitional. No real person can live without interacting with romance and attraction, and those relationships to it are as definitional and important to being aro or being gay or being straight or bi or whatever as the dictionary definition is.

Characters don’t have to interact with it. I’ve said romance isn’t relevant to my life as an aro person much of the time. If romance isn’t relevant to a character’s story—well, lots of things aren’t relevant to stories we assume are happening, like…most bathroom trips, or meals, or menstruation. A character isn’t representing an eating disorder because they’re never shown eating: it’s more complicated than that.

Being aro is more complicated than that.

A story in which character relationships wholly rely on and depend on something other than romance, a story where character relationships are undefinable and not attempted to be defined but only described and developed, a story in which characters and societies and people exist outside the omnipresent framework of romance inherently comes from a place of aroness and the aro experience. It speaks most to that place.

Most people who experience romantic attraction are often thinking about it. A story without such things is one which is lacking something they’re looking for and expecting, not a story where everything proceeds as usual without being interrupted by Oh, Yeah, That.

So, then, if alloromantic people will notice something is Different and aro people might seek it out, this way of writing around romance because it’s not relevant to the story the way it is not relevant to my life needs to be framed in the metatext so people, aro and alloro alike, know what to expect and what they’re getting into.

But when all talk about marginalized stories comes down to “What Types of Characters Are Here?” and “What Culture Is This World Based On?” there’s this empty space to explain stories like mine.

There’s so many things to the aro experience that don’t revolve around rejecting romance. But if you ever look for an aro story about something else, how can you even find it? It’s so difficult to talk about an aro story that isn’t Representative and exists in a way you don’t even have to think about it and there are no smooth bumps to remind you of yourself so you can immerse into it that…I think people forget stories like that can even exist.

[demonslayedher]

Kamado Family Name Analysis

竈門: Kamado A rare but existing surname, the hearth (竈, kamado) is also an important gateway (門) through which disease can enter a home and make a family sick, so it therefore needed special attention in order to keep the family healthy. Likewise, it required care so as not to cause fire damage. However, it was likewise the source of sustenance for a house’s inhabitants, so the state of a hearth also reflects the state of the family. To say things are lively around a hearth is to say that a family is doing well, to say that the hearth is broken is to say that they’ve lost their fortune, and so on. You could also think of the fire itself sometimes being a cause for danger, something susceptible to evil influence, like how it might burn humans, so it took having a god of the health to protect against that too. These are reasons why the god of the hearth has been worshiped since ancient times, not only for protection from the dangers of fire, but also for prosperity.

As for the the personal names throughout the generations, follow me below...

Sengoku Period (often considered 1467–1568, though other dates are in use):

炭吉: Sumiyoshi Although you don’t typically see charcoal (炭, as sumi or tan) in a name, 吉 isn’t all that uncommon, whether as yoshi or kichi. It means “luck.” It’s worth stating right away that although making charcoal means working with fire for a few days at a time, it also means the longer-term work of forest management. A charcoal worker is nothing without plants. Notice the 山 (mountain, yama) that is also with 火 (fire, often hi or ka) in the 炭.

すやこ: Suyako Presented only in phonetic hiragana, we don’t have kanji to read into, but this is a pretty clever name. Because how -ko makes it sound like a typical girl’s name, similar to her descendants Nezuko and Hanako, the su also makes it feel similar to the rest of her family. Suya doesn’t really mean anything on its own, but suyasuya is an onomatopoeia for “sleeping soundly.”

すみれ: Sumire Another clever one presented only in phonetic hiragana. Sumi makes it sound like she inherited the charcoal family name, but sumire means “violet,” so this is a precursor to later Kamado family naming trends. (However, the flowers she gave Yoriichi were not violets, but Catharanthus roseus—as a fun tidbit, these are called nichinichisou, that is, “sun-sun-grass” (日々草).)

Meiji Period (1868–1912) & Taisho Period (1912–1926):

炭十郎: Tanjuurou (Whatever)+郎(rou) is pretty common in men’s names, since it’s basically like adding “son” to the end of boy’s name. Using numbers in men’s names (like the number 10 here, 十) used to be relatively common too.

葵枝: Kie Although 葵 (aoi or ki) is commonly translated as “hollyhock” (due to being conflated with tachiaoi), it is more accurately translated as “wild ginger,” but this is annoying because even though it has a similar scent, it is not actually related to ginger. Let’s just call this low-growing herb aoi, since it has a lot of religious connotations with ancient shrines and festivals—but this is also annoying, because there is a character named Aoi and her name is written phonetically and might be in reference to the color. So let’s use the Latin name for this genus, Asarum. 枝 (e) is “branch,” so Kie’s name is literally “a branch of Asarum.” But, if we want to go a step further, in older ways of transcribing Japanese, 葵 used to be written phonetically as a-fu-hi with a-fu meaning “to encounter (later on transcribed as au)” and hi being a word representing a god’s power, so it’s said that the a-fu-hi/aoi plant symbolizes coming upon incredible power. How ironic that Kie married into a family known for Hinokami Kagura.

炭治郎: Tanjirou We’ve covered 炭 and 郎, so why the 治? This is a pretty common way of adding the ji sound to a guy’s name (like Hakuji), but why this one instead of, say 次 or 二? This may be because Gotouge wanted to give his name both fire (火) and water (水)! You can see the fire in the charcoal kanji, but the three dots at the left side of 治 are the water radical, which often means the kanji might have some association with water. Although 治 literally means things more like “quell” or “reign” or even “heal,” it can also mean being in control of something like a river.

禰豆子: Nezuko First off, most OS systems do not express this first kanji correctly. The left radical would look more like ネ, with 爾 on the right. Alas, 禰 (ne) is a bit of a rare kanji in the first place, meaning “ancestral shrine.” This is kind of heartwarming what with how connected Nezuko is with her family, and how the checkerboard pattern the Kamado family uses also denotes a continuity of family. As for the 豆 (zu or dzu or mame), this is “bean.” Beans are deeply tied with warding off demons. This is especially seen in the Setsubun custom of throwing beans at demons to cast them off. But, more recently I stumbled upon the knowledge that the kurobe tree (Japanese arborvitae/Thuja standishii), a coniferous evergreen with flattened branchlets, is also called nezuko (in phonetic katakana, ネズコ).

竹雄: Takeo “Bamboo man,” with 雄 (o or yuu or other readings) being a pretty common thing to stick to the end of a man’s name. It’s a kanji with a sort of heroic ring to it if you're adding the masculine -o ending anyway). Fast-growing bamboo (竹, take) can be a problem if, say, you primarily focus on making charcoal out of oak, but bamboo charcoal has a lot of uses for keeping spaces around the home free from humidity and bugs. What’s more, bamboo itself is a bit of a heroic plant—it grows straight, stays strong through the winter, and can stand a lot of pressure and still flexibly bounce back. I've also heard of it being associated with happiness because there is a bamboo radical at the top of the kanji for "smile/laugh" (笑).

花子: Hanako “Flower Child.” The plants are a bit obvious in this one.

茂: Shigeru Another common manly name, “to flourish.” Like plants would flourish.

六太: Rokuta I have tried really, really hard to look for hidden meaning this one. He’s just “six” (六, roku) with another common way of ending a boy’s name, 太 (ta or tai, for grand, broad, magnificent, or fat). Tanjuurou and Kie weren’t feeling very creative by the time they got to this one. Couldn’t you guys at least have given him a plant reference? That would have really helped my meta out, thanks. But maybe not all is lost on this name! After all, remember how we might conflate 火 (fire/hi) with 日 (sun/hi) in Hinokami Kagura? Arguably, the sun is just as important for charcoal workers who manage the forest! 日 is not the only way of writing "sun." There is also 太陽 (taiyou)!

Heisei Period (1989–2019) & Reiwa Period (2019–current):

カナタ: Kanata KAMADO FAMILY, EXPLAIN. First off, nobody else born into the family has a name in katakana, and by the era Kanata is born, this would be pretty unusual for a boy. I can only assume this choice was made in order to make an obvious connection to his great-great-grandmother’s name, カナヲ (Kanao). That being said, did they simply forget to give their eldest son the traditional charcoal name? Or did they notice a plethora of girls throughout this series named “Sumi” and decided to avoid it? In that case, too bad they forgot all about the existence of Ubuyashiki Kanata! (Her name was written in phonetic hiragana, かなた.)

炭彦: Sumihiko Oh good, the Kamado family got their act together and remembered the kanji they were supposed to pass on. As for that -hiko, I’ve heard some Japanese fans try to read into how it was also used in one of Muzan’s fake names, 月彦 (Tsukihiko, as he went by in Asakusa when married to a woman named Rei), but 彦 (hiko) is also so common at the end of men’s names that I don’t see any merit in digging for connections. What we can dig into, though, is 和語 (wago), that is, native Japanese words that existed before the influence of Chinese and the writing system that went with it. Hiko meant “a boy endowed with a divine spirit” (the equivalent for a girl was hime, which you might recognize later became a word for “princess.”) And why stop there? This still brings us back to hi, the divine power that is sometimes just a divine power, sometimes is fire, and often is the sun.

Speaking of the sun, here’s a couple honorary Kamado descendants, because they have really good homage built into their names:

燈子: Touko Remember that 火 (hi) character for fire which you can also find in charcoal 炭? It’s fitting that fiery Nezuko’s great-granddaughter has it built into her name! The 燈 (lantern/tou) has all sorts of hopeful, positive connotations about keeping a light going in the darkness.

善照: Yoshiteru Another clever one! Yoshi is another reading of the zen kanji (善, virtue) used in Zenitsu's name, and 照 (usually read teru in names )also means to “to illuminate.” It’s got a hi too! This time it’s the 日 for sun! Oh! And those four dots at the bottom of 照? Kind of looks like a fire at the bottom of a hearth, doesn’t it? That’s because this is also another radical for 火/fire, it’s just been broken into four different strokes!! He’s got fire and sun!! So much hi! But let’s not forget, hi can also just be a general way of referring to divine power, right? That is essentially what lightning was always thought of—a very, very powerful divine power. And certainly one that illuminates things, doesn’t it? There’s no lightning directly pounded into this name, but the associations are easy to make.

Okay, now really just throwing one more in for fun:

青葉: Aoba This is truly just “green leaves.” Or is it? Actually, the history of different color names across different languages and periods of time is very interesting, and it’s lead to 青 having multiple meanings. Blue and green didn’t always use to be separate ideas, so this kanji used to stand for both of them until 緑 (in Japanese, midori) came along. Nowadays in mainland Mandarin Chinese, you tend to use 绿 (lǜ) for green and 蓝 (lán) for blue, with 青 (qīng) reserved more for a blue/green shade or more generally with youth. In Japan, 緑 (midori) is used for both the color green and for the greenery of plants in general, and 青 (ao) is used for various shades of blue… typically. Sometimes it is still used for “green,” which is why traffic lights are “red, yellow, BLUE,” and sometimes, well, leaves are also called blue. Anyway, because the name is likely in homage to his great-grandmother and because he’s got the kanji to go with his, this is part of why I interpret Aoi’s phonetic katakana name (アオイ) as being in reference to the color (which is also used a lot in her character design) as opposed to the aforementioned plant. (More on Aoi, Kanao, Kanae, and Shinobu's names here.)

[jazzintown]

SPOILERS FOR ALL OF ISAT

I have a whacky theory/headcanon/canon divergence thought (which is technically two whacky theories in one, fool!)

Canon doesn’t explicitly tell us how the Island disappeared and was erased from memory but it is implied to have been caused by Wish Craft. Knowing that Siffrin's time looping was due to his simple wish of wanting to remain with his family, what if the Island's disappearance of the Island was equally consequence of an ill-phrased wish? This, of course, would require a lot of Craft power from the person wishing, something only two people have been able to do so far - the King and Siffrin. Which leads me to my second point: In the same way that Loop used to be Siffrin, the King used to be Siffrin, too. If I remember correctly, the King also knew Siffrin's name without being told, and was able to remember the loops at least somewhat.

The obvious similarities aside (the hair, the interest in narratives and theatrics, the tendency to go all-or-nothing out of fear of losing something dear), a thing I noticed is that throughout the game, Siffrin seems to have an inner conflict between "rest" and "eternity". This can be seen when praying to the Change God statue before obtaining the Key Knife. "Rest" is represented by Loop (since they literally became Loop by wishing for rest and an escape from the loops), while "eternity" is represented by the King. Both Loop and the King have nicknames for Siffrin that describe something star-related. "Bright One" -> something that is bright tends to stand out, but also remain when all other has darkened. "Stardust" -> canonically, Loop explains this as "what remains". Also, not to read too much into it, but I think it's interesting how Loop's pronouns are solely they/them and the King's he/him - if this theory was true, it would imply that Siffrin's identity was somewhat "split" between Loop and the King at some point.

Now, here comes the time fuckery: At some point during the loops, after finding out all about his past, Siffrin gets so overwhelmed that he, in an emotional moment, wishes to be able to "forget his past" or "have his past disappear". This wish makes the Island disappear in the past, leading to the events in the present in the first place. This creates a sort of grandfather-paradox and essentially traps Siffrin in the loop in the first place. Desperately realising that there is no way out, Siffrin then gives into the mindset of having to "play a certain role" to keep the narrative (fate) going. Thus, they need to either become the King or Loop for a new dimension/a new Siffrin. This is a whole loop in itself, too, or rather a cycle. So, in summary:

The Island disappears. Years afterwards, Siffrin begins travelling with the group. When in their loops, they learn about their past and, in a moment of desperstion, wish to be able to forget it. The wish comes true, leading to the Island disappearing. In order to not let reality collapse in itself (because he basically trapped not only himself, but reality itself in a huge paradox), he places a wish on a star and either wishes for rest (to become Loop) or for eternity (to become the King). In a new dimension with a new Siffrin, they now play out their role to continue the cycle.

I drew a graph for this once somewhere - it's easier to visualise when it's in an actual circle.

[anilyan]

Venti is Phanes + on Istaroth and the Primordial One

[Edit 13/04/2025: THIS IS OLD AND MESSY. Instead, please check my updated theory, it really goes in-depth and is organized and without inconsistencies. I would have posted it on reddit, but it exceeded the character limit >.< So you can check it on tumblr and twitter]

Not so crack theory: Venti is Phanes and is the androgynous being born from the Chymical Marriage between the Primordial One and Istaroth, before she was betrayed by the Sinners

(I posted this before but now it's properly explained)

I am using this lore in my old mondstadt fic, Nameless (actually soon to turn into trilogy, since vol 2 is about venti rewinding time and vol 3 is present time story and I took so long to plan all the lore with all the canon crumbs and theories we had...)

Yes, a lot of the info about gods is pulled from wikipedia, I’m not being paid to research more, okay? I just want to feed the brainrot. My main sources besides those are the videos listed at the end.

I would love if this theory made its way to some big lore content creator for them to analyse and criticize, because I have been rotating this in my head but I don’t have their capacity or knowledge to tear this apart.

NOTES:

This post contain minimal mentions of 2 leaks, about the rest of the collection of The Pale Princess and the Six Pygmies, and a sus minimal old leak about Venti

This post contains some references to the Penacony arc from Honkai star rail, but no knowledge about the game is required and in fact, I don't even play it myself and those are just sus parallels

0. Summary / main points

Istaroth and the Primordial One parallel Chronos (personification of time) and Ananke (most powerful dictator of Fate and mother of The Fates/Moirai), respectively.

Chronos and Ananke laid down the cosmic / orphic world that created/reshaped the world. In a way, that was an Alchemical Marriage, that also gave birth to the androgynous winged being Phanes/Venti, and to the Abyss,

Venti has many ties to fate, including extensive apple symbology visible even in wisp form. The apples, besides being a symbol of fate, also represent a dream bubble in accordance to the structure of Teyvat. Quoting his most sus birthday art, “It is written that there is a whole tiny world hidden inside an apple core”

Venti has at least some control over 1 half of Teyvat while the other half is ruled by The Night Mother/Nyx. He also offers us half of the apple in the mentioned birthday art.

Ananke was a serpent-like being, and we see a Black Serpent 1) coiled around Phanes 2) coiled around the pearl/cosmic egg in the Gnostic Chorus 3) in the Black Serpent Knights, who also had Ishtar/Istaroth’s star as a symbol 4) In Nibelung, if we consider serpents and dragons the same

Istaroth supported Khaenri’ah (thus why the Nation had her symbol) and both opposed the Heavenly Principles/Celestia, until she was betrayed by the Sinners/6 Pygmies and forgotten

The Primordial One was opposed by Celestia. We also know that Nibelung fought Celestia. They were either allies or even the same being (a black serpent), and their perceived opposition is not too different from how Remus went down misinterpreted by history

1. About the Primordial One

In case it’s not yet clear, this assumes that Phanes =/= Primordial One. After all, the book Before the Sun and Moon simply says that “The Primordial One may have been Phanes*”,* and the fandom just started equating the two.

I am of the opinion that the Primordial One and Celestia are in opposition, while Istaroth is on the side of the Primordial One, or at least opposed to Celestia too. Maybe the Alchemical Marriage was part of a plan of theirs. Read more about it in section 3.

And if the truth about Remuria taught us anything, is that some rivalries depicted in history are false. In the same way Remus went down as a Tyrant when in reality he never wanted to employ force and was even allied with Sybilla (a vishap), I would say that the Primordial One and Nibelung/dragons/vishaps probably found ways to coexist. We do know that Nibelung went to war against the Heavenly Principles/Celestia, but if Celestia and Primordial One opposed each other, that just makes an alliance between PO and the Dragon King more likely.

We don’t know if Primordial One = 1st Descender and Celestia = 2nd Descender, so I will avoid using those terms throughout the post. But if the 2nd who came = 2nd Descender = Celestia, then that would lend further credibility to the idea that Celestia and the PO are on opposing sides, since the 2nd who came basically stole PO’s ruling of Teyvat.

2. About Istaroth AND Khaenri’ah

Like I said above, I believe that Istaroth sides with the Primordial One and that both are in opposition to Celestia

Istaroth has the ability to create alt Looms of Fate through those seeds she gives away - those basically grow into trees that are databases of history outside the control of Celestia. I had already affirmed this for my fic before we got the 2nd Caribert quest, but at this point is practically confirmed.

Istaroth is based on Astaroth and Ishtar, and Ishtar’s morning star is an 8-pointed star just like the symbol of Khaenri’ah. And so the Black Serpent Nights probably served Istaroth in some way.

Khaenri’ah supposedly didn’t have a god, but let’s keep in mind Istaroth was forgotten by time. It’s also possible that, even if Khaenri’ah had a god, they still considered themselves the pride of humankind since Istaroth likely wasn’t associated with Celestia, as I mentioned

Speaking of Black Serpents, other prevalent Black serpents are the one in the Gnostic Chorus, and Nibelung, in a way (not sure if they are or not the same entity). So I would say that Nibelung is/was also allied with Khaenri’ah/Istaroth/Primordial One. Please refer to the section above for an explanation.

The 6 Pygmies and the Pale Princess is a book that is an allegory for the 5 Sinners of Khaenri’ah + Dainsleif and Istaroth. I include, at the end, a video that explains that properly and is very much worth the watch. From there (or at least, from the leaked volumes), we know that the Sinners basically betrayed Istaroth, which might explain why she ended up being forgotten and why Dainsleif is the only Pygmie that didn’t go fully down the Sinner’s path.

3. The relationship between the Primordial One and Istaroth

Like I say above, many things point to them being allied. At the very least, we can quite safely infer they both opposed Celestia/The Heavenly Principles and in turn allied with Khaenri’ah.

The cosmic/ orphic/world egg was created by Chronos (personification of time) and Ananke (most powerful dictator of Fate and mother of The Fates/Moirai). “Ananke and Chronos are mates, mingling together in serpent form as a tie around the universe. Together, they have crushed the primal egg of creation of which constituent parts became earth, heaven and sea to form the ordered universe.”

Ananke and Chronos have to be the PO and Istaroth - which one is which is a bit debatable, with their genders being a counterargument on its own. But I would say Chronos is Istaroth (due to her associations with time, although she is more a god of moments than of time) while Ananke is the Primordial One (who had the 3 moon sisters/moirai as shades + is probably the Dreamer/HSR’s SUNday parallel who plays the symphony that creates the fates reflected by the moons (read more in next section)).

The cosmic egg that birthed the world, together with the Abyss AND Venti, probably resulted from their Alchemical Marriage. I wouldn’t be too surprised if it was also the Gnostic Pearl depicted in the Gnostic Chorus cutscene, or even if the Black Serpent there was Ananke/Primordial One. In fact, that would only solidify the connections with the Black Serpent Knights and them wearing Istaroth’s symbol. And it would be extra funny if somehow the Primordial One and Nibelung were the same entity (since I already explained why I think they were are least on the same side)… and therefore were a black serpent/dragon.

Okay, but what is an Alchemical/Chymical Marriage? It’s a marriage between a Red King and a White Queen, the Sun and the Moon, gold and silver, sulphur and mercury. It’s sometimes pointed as the source of the Philosophers' Stone, and from that union of opposites is birthed an androgynous being. Btw, that marriage is facilitated by a dove, but this is off-topic and you can see why that is interesting in the last video linked. It’s also a process that sometimes involves ‘fermentation”, which is also off-topic but ties well with the wine-making process and other things mentioned in the last video too.

According to Jakob: "The Seal of Chymical Marriage was an ancient Fontainian ritual meant to seal off the source of life. Now it has been reversed, and all has been set free once more!" So, it can be used to separate the Primordial Sea from the world, which sounds similar to creating a world/pearl/philosopher’s stone/egg/dream bubble that floats in the sea of quanta or wtv is the logic used across Hoyoverse’s worlds. We confirm again this was necessary to create Teyvat's egg, and that the Primordial One couldn’t do it alone because two people are required for a marriage.

And do you know what Marriages also require? A ring. Who was escaping with a golden ring, that is an important figure of Khaenri’ah and the only Pygmy who didn’t act like the others/didn’t become a Sinner? Dainsleif, whose constellation is even a Serpent ring. May I point to the Das Rheinegold music drama, that is part of the series The Ring of Nibelung, and maybe use that as extra merit to associate the Primordial One with Nibelung?

4. About the world of Teyvat

Dragons = Vishaps = Sea slugs = Bees = Seelies. Yes. We already know that the the dragons and seelies in Genshin are based on irl sea slugs, I won’t elaborate on that. As for Bees, that is because we have seelie-like bees in Remuria, connected to the prophet Golden-Bee Sybilla (don’t mistake Sybilla with Sylla, who is a Dragon King, although I guess this is all the same family)

Teyvat is theoretically 2 worlds/halves, the version we know and the mirror world, that is probably the Abyss. Or maybe all of it is a mirror world, idk. We can even see similar world structures in Honkai Star Rail, especially in Penacony, where the world there is literally mirrored and a dream too. Some people say Teyvat is divided in 3 parts: the Light Realm, Void Realm, and the Human Realm. But I think the Pimordial One just transformed the Light Realm into the Human Realm, so there are still 2 parts only, and we know they can overlap anyway.

Cycle: People die » are absorbed by the roots » are supposed to travel to the top of the world tree (inverted, so top is in abyss) to become Irminsul fruit / stars » said stars form constellations that determine people's fate, or more accurately, since they are all in a dream, are data that allows the tree to predict their fates » it’s because people exist as stars that their fates and presence can be summoned in the form of shooting stars

Dainsleif confirmed that the leylines can be woven to determine Fate / have their records changed. The Loom used to weave them is a Symphony, or in other words, Remus’ Symphony of Fate is very similar or the same thing as a Loom of Fate, although maybe not at the same scale. It’s possible that other God-Kings also attempted to create their own Looms of Fate.

Add to that some Penacony’s parallels, and you can infer that the Symphony is controlled in a floating palace, that is actually a Grande Theater, by the Sun(day) (potentially Phanes or the Primordial One, basically the one who Dreams), and it’s reflected by the moons (Aria, Sonnet and Canon, so the musical associations are fitting). Considering that the 3 moon sisters are also probably the mythological Moirai who weave Fate, yeah, that tracks.

5. Finally, about Venti

Addressing the Venti is/isn’t the weakest Archon debate: Idk and I don’t quite care, because regardless of how much power he holds now, this theory is about his origins and role more than anything.

Venti is the one narrating the Gnostic Chorus cutscene, so clearly he knows about the origins of Teyvat and other important stuff. Yes, it can just be because of his ties to Istaroth who had the winds of time and bla bla, but I would say he has a bigger involvement.

In the Gnostic Chorus, there is a Black serpent, and I already mentioned how it ties with Khaenri’ah and Istaroth in the second section. Well, Phanes is a figure that has a serpent coiled around him too, Ananke, to be more precise.

Phanes was believed to have hatched from the egg of Chronos and Ananke (Istaroth and PO, section 3), OR Nyx in the form of a black bird and wind, OR from the cosmic /orphic egg placed in and hatched from Aether, who was the personification of the bright upper sky and another son of Chronos. Regardless, it seems like the egg birthed both Phanes AND the world?

Phanes is described sometimes as male, sometimes as androgynous. I don’t need to explain how that fits Venti. The androgynous part also fits with how a being born from an Alchemical Marriage should be androgynous due to being an union of opposites.

Phanes is also described has having wings and a crown. We are yet to see a crown, but at least the angel wings are there.

Some myths say that Phanes was Dionysus (god of wine… amongst other things), or Eros (god of love, yes I’m simplifying), and oh boy isn’t Venti the god of all of that too? Although this is complicated since it has to do with gods being iterations of past gods and such, you can read more about it here

In a certain play, after Phanes mates with Chaos, he creates flying creatures. It would also fit Venti well, especially given that tale from Amber’s Quest where he taught birds how to fly.

Okay, this gets less obvious now. Phanes is a first-born deity who emerged from the abyss and gave birth to the universe, and is a god of creation, light and goodness. The Abyss part is extra intriguing because the world has an abyss half, and some in-game books even compare wine with the Abyss, and also with the idea that drinking the abyss/wine is a way to acquire Forbidden Knowledge. Please, check the last video I link.

Phanes counterpart is Nyx (Night). In some tales she is Phane’s wife, sometimes his daughter, and in others she creates an egg from which Phanes is born, so wtv. I don’t know who Nyx is (besides being clearly The Night Mother from the book of the Six Pygmies), but it’s pretty clear that the Abyss half is under her responsibility in some way.

Oh, right, this was a sus leak that broke my mind months ago and seemed completely nonsensical, but since I started cooking this theory, I can’t help but look back at it. It claimed that Venti was the guide of the Primordial One. Humm… yeah, if Venti was part of a plan between Istaroth and PO, I can see that, although I don’t know what the goal could be. Maybe he is assuming Istaroth’s role now that she is gone in supporting the PO?

This is a very wild guess, but I really thing Venti has something to do with the Gnostic Pearl. Idk if that pearl is the same one that hatched the world, or something that holds the world together (think Mikha from HSR), but I can imagine him having some responsibility over taking care of it.

And if you think Venti holding Fate in his hands is a stretch… let’s talk about Apples. Especially in anime, Apples are often depicted as the fruit of Fate (look no further than Mawaru Penguindrum), and in Inazuma, the girl giving Fortune Slips is called Gendou Ringo, with Ringo meaning ‘apple’ in Japanese. Well… Mondstadt is a land full of apple trees, Venti loves apple cider and is often asking for apples to pay for his performances, is being given an apple in archon form in one of his birthday arts, created the Golden-Apple Archipelago, and even the top of his head in wisp form resembles an apple stem. Seriously, I go crazy with how many people never noticed that. This is too much in our face to not be relevant.

This sounds like a stretch, but apples are round and so the shape is not too different from a dream bubble. And do you know what the birthday art I mentioned had in the caption? “It is written that there is a whole tiny world hidden inside an apple core. Here, this half is for you. Let's take a stroll in the tiny little world. But remember to keep it a secret because... you're the only one I want to bring there.” If he isn’t holding Fate or a world in some way, then I don’t know what this is supposed to mean.

You know how I said that Teyvat is divided into 2 halves? That also connects well with his quote (when he gives us half of the apple/world), and with the idea that Phanes is the day while Nyx is the night. So maybe Venti is responsible for the half of Teyvat that we know/he gave us while Nyx is responsible for the Abyss side.

So… is there any proof that Venti is Phanes? No. Are there many many sus elements about him and connections with the things I listed? Yes. I could see the Traveler being Phanes and being entrusted the Light/Human half of Teyvat by Venti as a scenario just as likely, especially if The Abyss sibling ends up being/becoming Nyx, but I like this version more xD

But even if the main theory ends up being wrong, I hope people you got some things to think about.

Some videos for extra lore, more a less in order of relevance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VZIR-tfzfd4 » Reinterpretation of all volumes of the Six Pygmies and the Pale Princess in light of finding out about the 5 Sinners of Khaenri’ah + Dain + connections of Istaroth with Khaenri’ah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zK3xYKtUniQ » More about the connections between Istaroth and Khaenri’ah

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ePjY4c0Rj0k » Elaborates on how a Loom of Fate is basically another database, as opposed to the Irminsul, and mentios how Istaroth can could create several Looms of Fate

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mAm9uElsKd4 » Parallels with the Penacony arc from Honkai Start Rail and list of evidences that Teyvat is a Dream bubble

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vhST-fz6Yps » Video is from before we learned about the 5 Sinners, and I’m not fully sold on the chronology, but I still think it does a good job at elaborating n the serpent thing from the gnostic chorus and other things we can infer about genshin thanks to parallels to Penacony

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHCv8KFdL6M&t=1045s » Ties sacramental bread and blood with wine and the way wisdom/abilities can be passed down thrown ingesting parts of gods, and the concept of fairy rings and The Ring of Nibelung, with the concept of a Chemical Marriage.

[turtlesystem]

loooong, positive (but bittersweet) essay about our system and the hulk:

the nice thing about being a system where each part is so different from each other is that we have at least one guy who can take care of something . also, it’s given us the privilege to have the brain space to handle a very wide breadth of interests and specialties that we keep up with consistently as alters front .

i absolutely don’t like the circumstances that caused us to form the way we did . the worst part of the circumstances is that giant hole in our chest that nothing can fill , and figuring out whether it’s because we keep pushing away anything that tries to come in or if it’s because the hole just grows no matter how it’s treated .

do i wish those circumstances didn’t take place? yes, but also, i’m grateful that we found a way through . i think what also helps us is that we’ve known nothing except those circumstances from infancy, so we have the privilege of seeing a better youth as an unattainable ideal than a blessing long gone . “better” meant numbness , moments where nothing happened .

even if the path we forged through the years is an ugly one, it’s still a path and it’s helped us function in human society more than anything else . especially the alters that socialize , that help others , that are able to do that , that have it in them to do that because they are supported by the system members designed to handle our own baggage .

there are alters who hate the world because of trauma but it’s because of them that the alters who love the people in it exist . our anger holders give the rest of us the capacity to deal with other things , to have the energy do things that we want , like supporting others while having a temporary pause on our own triggers and struggles . it’s like temporarily getting the ability to walk on water to extend a helping hand, temporarily able to ignore a giant flood wave just about to crash over you . if i could , i would just never be affected by our own baggage again so that we could never get frustrated and anxious with people for using us for help

i don’t like seeing people suffer but helping them out of that suffering opens up a lot of old wounds . like plunging your hand into a den full of harmful bacteria while it’s still recovering from semi-open lacerations . it’s our anger holders that allow us to ignore the pain .

anyways … without hulk , banner was shown to not want to help people . from the outlook of my system , it seems like banner is unable to help people without the hulk because he, as one identity, cannot handle the weight of … well , all the circumstances that caused his system to form . banner has expressed several times that he has a desire to help people, a lot of his healing arcs are he and hulk learning to coexist so that they can help ppl with their abilities … oagh … and he fears hurting others and just turning into something so aggressive that represents his emotions , an involuntary reaction to his circumstances , but that is the farthest thing from what he wants and IS as a person , a person who wants to help …

hulk is often interpreted as “banner losing control” but in actuality … hulk is KEEPING banner from losing control … protecting banner from involuntarily becoming the opposite of what he wants .

give it up for all anger holder protectors , they’re fr doing God’s work . because oh my god i cannot imagine dealing with … everything … all by myself … like omg … because i know i could not have survived if i dealt with all this by myself . my system did not make me lose the core identity, the whole system IS the core identity because it’s the only thing that could have possibly existed in the very questionable childhood we had . moreover, the system at least allowed us to exist in the present day as SOMETHING . it’s again not the prettiest form of existence but im so grateful that i have multiple people here with me … even the alters who scare me , honestly , even they hold a portion of the trauma that would be impossible to survive . their taunting and triggering behavior is at least coming from them , and not on my own volition , which is comforting to know .

arlo (he’s part of our system, the anger holder protector in question) if you read this later, we all love you so much . you’re our hulk fr <3 we are so so grateful . i’m sorry that i’m so scared and moreover ASHAMED of getting angry , because it makes you feel like we’re ashamed of you . thank u for giving many of us the blessing it is to have the energy to help people

- the gamma subsystem :)

[gemsofgreece]

Not wanting to sound like a 19th century racial anthropologist lol, but is the greek nose that common among greeks ? Most greeks i know have big noses, so do i have just a shitty sample or was the greek nose named greek for some strange reasons ?

You do sound a bit like that hahaha

No, there's just a series of misconceptions you are making here.

The "Greek nose" is not a Greek-born concept. It was the Western Europeans who started speaking of a "Greek nose" stereotype by observing ancient Greek statues.

The Greek nose has nothing to do with size. The Greek nose refers to the straight nose, the nose that has no upturned or downturned tilt. It can be massive, so to speak, as long as it's straight.

Many ancient Greek statues have a characteristic nose that also has a straight bridge, a bridge that seems to be completely aligned with the forehead, without any bump at all or any upwards inclination. This was an artistic choice, it seemed to be some sort of beauty ideal to them, which means it could perhaps have existed but it was rare. In our times, such a feature kind of exists but is indeed quite rare, not just amongst Greeks, but amongst human phenotypes in general.

The way you can tell this was a beauty ideal and not a common reality is that this straight bridged nose is in most statues depicting gods or idealised conceptions of youth (like kouros and kore) yet hardly in statues of actual Greek mortals that truly existed. And I think one of the biggest flaws in the comparisons foreign people are so keen in trying to do between ancient Greeks and modern Greeks is that they compare modern Greeks to ancient Greek gods and not ancient Greek mortals...!

Judging by living amongst modern Greeks and by looking at statues of ancient Greek mortals, I will say that both groups seem to have had pretty diverse noses, maybe with a tendency towards a medium or a moderately large size and, indeed, a straight shape. That's not to say that there aren't numerous Greeks with tiny noses, delicate noses, upturned noses, very large noses, hooked noses, bumpy noses, downturned noses, round noses, wide noses.

I will say however that the most standard or super common characteristics you will see in a Greek's nose is to be pretty defined, on the pointier rather than the rounder side, and again mostly straight, usually medium to moderately large, and more often with narrow nostrils, without that meaning that all the "less common" traits are not totally present in the population as well. A prime example being Socrates in fact, who had a very uncharacteristic nose for a Greek, but he was in fact an Ancient Greek native Athenian. The rarest traits in Greek noses are a nose being too short or too rounded or too wide. Socrates had all that.

But I am a little confused by you sort of suggesting that modern Greeks have large noses "as opposed to ancient Greek statues" because to my eyes ancient Greek statues - both of mortals and even idealised ones - tend to have prominent noses, maybe more often on the large rather than the small side. A small nose is actually kind of rare in Greek statues, no?

Here are some examples of statues of Ancient Greeks who actually existed:

...You know? The smallest nose here is medium. And there is a lot of diversity in shapes.

(Obviously realistic looking mortal female statues are harder to find in a quick search, so I just went for famous Ancient Greek men. Alexander is not included, because his statues were always highly idealised / deified.)

BTW during my search of Greek statues I found this image. Has a variety of noses too!

* how dare the person who made this not know Psarantonis’ name, when they know everyone else, this is sacrilegious!

As for your sample, I wouldn’t use the term shitty but it is limited indeed, not because it is not representative of Greeks but because it is not diverse enough nose-wise.