#the more retellings i read the more im like.....you didnt even try

[queer-ragnelle]

idk who needs to hear this but if you're writing an arthurian retelling and neglect gaheris...you are my enemy. either cut him entirely (like gillian bradshaw) or use him fully (like gerald morris) but under no circumstances are you allowed to dump his crimes onto agravaine and split. you're supposed to add depth, not shift the maximum two things he does narratively and leave him with nothing. gaheris did not put his whole pussy into his squire duties to be written off as the tagalong matricidal middle bro with zero personality traits to speak of. he's going on a high shelf until authors grasp this.

[mentallhealthmatters]

Hey didn’t Shubble say that Wilbur would bit her in front of other people and she would “play along”? Aside from the obvious, she admitted that actively hid how she felt about some of the things he did. And she doubles down on that line of thinking, when Wilbur was depressed and couldn’t clean, did she say she tried talking to him or his friends and family for help? No she just stayed silent and cleaned. She claims Wilbur bit down a bit harder after she said the safe word? Well if he was used to biting up to that point wouldn’t he be surprised or shocked when he heard it? She doesn’t tell him off or ask him not to do it anymore, she implies it happened multiple times. That she gave him her permission to keep going. It shows that she would hide things from him that he would need to know, and she has the audacity to complain how he should’ve known?! Like girl if you had a problem with him then it’s up to you to talk to him about it!

Thats what im thinking! She said they talked it out, but it sounds like she was never honest with him and is blaming HIM for HER dishonesty, like girl people arent mind readers and dont gain the ability to read minds when you fucking start dating eachother.

Like if shes lying to him, thats not him being manupltive thats her not advocating for herself and or communicating honestly with her partner.

Shes the source the problem shes complaining about and the fact she has the nerve, my gods undatable. Shes undatable. Shes so neurotypical. Her talking mental health and depression makes it clear, shes very not demure mindful and very neurotypical.

And i dont say that with a funny haha, i mean shes generic white girl with firet world issues number 1097933 looking for excuses and drama. Im pretty sure she had less of an issue back then and then some friends conviencied her it was an issue.

Shes extremely dumb too, she keeps insisting because she never name dropped in her FIRST time talking about the issue that means she cant be sued when she would kater change the accuations and admit its him shes talking about, meaning technically yes, especially than thats hes coming to america, he CAN 100% slap back with a lawsuit of various kinds.

By her changing the story, shes actually giving herself less legal ground to stand out. Where as wilbur actually didnt admit to it, just said "im sorry you felt that way, i had no idea, i wish i knew because i have texts saying the opposite of what your claiming and we could have talked it out" like more or less, but like

Notice how wilbur doesnt bring up the accuations every two weeks, notice how hes not giving himself every other breath to change his story, hes not letting himself do that and by doing so hes giving himself more legal ground by ensuring he can keep his story straight. Hes doubling down on his version of events, but he didnt retell his version of events when hes annoucing hes doubling down, hes just saying that hes not changing his story and thats it.

Shelby even if unintentionally, has changed story and technically harrassed him trying to change the limelight to focus on her every other week, thats in the eyes of court, not the actions of a victim an innocent person. Thats the accuations of someone whos cried wolf and wants attention because she thinks shes pretty and people will gkve her what she wants.

Like her behavoir is text book "how to spot a liar" and im honestly annoyed at how dumb and sheep like her followers and @ranboosaysstuffs is. Like not my fuilt theyre gullible mindless sheep with no personaility and need someone else to tell them what to think or what to believe.

Like 🫠 honestly if you gonna be like that just leave the fandom, im glad Ranboo dropped minecrfat because honestly his old friends were too good for him and they dont deserve them, his old friends, tcehnoblade, philza, tommy deserve better than that spineless coward.

[babiebom]

Hey!! I love ur writing for stardew so much. I was looking at ur rules & things u write for. And saw u do criminal minds ??? Like fuck yeaaaa!! I was wondering what ur headcannons would be with dating Spencer Reid? (Especially with him dating a genderfluid / nonbinary person with adhd) Thank you sm!!! Ur work is so amazing!! 😭😭😭

A/N: yeah!!! I do write for criminal minds, mainly the fic im working on is on ao3 and I’m debating on posting it here~ also thank you thank you for enjoying my writing!!!

A/N 2: B R O T H E R I WROTE THIS ENTIRE THING AND TUMBLR DIDNT SAVE IT SO NOW I HAVE TO REWRITE AND ITS GONNA BE WORSE THAN THE ORIGINAL BECAUSE I CANNOT FOR THE LIFE OF ME REMEMBER WHAT I WROTE!!!! And I know whoever reads this (not you anon) will be like “why don’t you remember it’s your headcanons” ITS BECAUSE I FORGET JUST AS QUICKLY AS I WRITE LEAVE ME ALONE.

Tw: some cursing, adhd being portrayed by a person that doesn’t have it

Criminal Minds Masterlist

So before I get into these headcanons I do like to point out that I do not have adhd and I also identify as cis so I’m not writing this from a personal pov. Obviously I am going to try my best but I just want to warn people and say that if anything is inaccurate let me know!!

So what I know about ADHD is there is three main types

The inattentive type the hyperactive type and the combined type

And personally I feel like Spencer would know the differences in how it affects you and would behave accordingly.

But we’ll get to that in a second because either way gender-fluid or nonbinary has absolutely nothing to do with how he treats you!!

Like dude is in love with you he doesn’t care about how you identify as long as you’re happy he’s happy and he will always introduce you as his partner or significant other.

Like unless you’re feeling a certain type of way and want to be introduced in that way he is more than comfortable with everything just being neutral.

Like sometimes I think that he does go about these things in a logical way, so I feel like it could be very helpful as well as sometimes unhelpful y’know?

Like there are pros and cons to everything EVEN someone being the most understanding anyone could ever be.

The adhd can however come with self esteem issues and I know sometimes even if you’re proud of who you are and what you identify as, there will be some hard days where everything just seems hopeless.

And while I think he would do his absolute best to comfort you, he just doesn’t understand what you’re going through from a personal point of view.

He does stay with you through it and does whatever you need him to because he high key would feel awful that someone he loves feels awful.

OKAY now onto the adhd aspects

I think the differences between the three types means that there will be different ways that he handles everything.

So for the inattentive type I think he would become more conscious of everything around him that way he can help you whenever you need it.

While yes he wants to help you work on finding ways to manage the symptoms and stress he also knows that it takes TIME and that helping in this way makes everything slightly better for you.

So when you’re together and he can see you’re losing focus he either remembers everything that was said and retell them to you or try to get you to pay attention again without making it too obvious.

Like he doesn’t want you to be embarrassed and he doesn’t want the other person to feel bad or angry so he tries his best.

Or he reminds you of simple things like did you remember to place your keys in this certain place? No? Okay let’s look for them or y’know just put them there to make sure we can keep track of everything

Reminds you to eat

It honestly just seems like he’s a doting boyfriend but I feel like it would feel like much more than that

Like you’re cared for and loved

But also it depends on the type of person you are because someone doing this could also piss someone off and make them feel dumb.

I would hope that you’d be okay with it because it’s not a bad intention but I also understand that sometimes intent and impact are very different things so….

Sometimes gets his feelings hurt because he does like to go off on tangents ably things that he finds interesting and sometimes it’s hard for you to pay attention for an extended amount of time.

Knows you don’t mean it and that he’s used to it due to usually being cut off but it still sometimes hurts.

ONTO THE HYPERACTIVE TYPE

I think that this type would be more difficult for him to help with in my opinion

Like he himself has lots of things to do and has to no time to relax. So him being on the go and you being on the go is just too much.

He still wants to help but helping in this situation is difficult especially because trying to get someone to sit and relax when their mind is racing is almost impossible

Like sitting there thinking about how many things you need to do gets you more agitated and upset.

BUT I think that this type is more comical in a way with him because your conversations are just both of you going off on tangents and interrupting each other.

But it’s not offensive because both of you understand that’s just how your conversations work.

Also I think while it’s tiring for both of you there’s no one upset about both of you being gone all the time because I honestly think in this timeline you would have a job that allows you to maximize and take advantage of your adhd powers.

You understand that he’s just unavailable sometimes and he understands for you as well

I think it makes those days where you can spend all day together that much more special.

Does want to help you control it though, and if you want his help he will find ways that you can relax more because everyone needs a break once in the while.

Now with the combined type of adhd I feel like it’s more….unmanageable than the other two due to it being a combination of things working against each other and together.

Again if I’m wrong tell me (be nice though I’m trying)

And this type causes the both of you distress because he really does want to help but with everything clashing it makes it hard to be okay.

Like according to what I looked up it seems like EVERYTHING is impacted by it.

Like sleep problems, memory problems, self esteem issues, sensory issues, like damn stepping away from these headcanons are y’all ALRIGHT?

This is something that he would be like lmao I don’t know how to help you so all I can do is be here for you if you need something

Which is enough y’know

He is there when you’re breaking down, there when you’re happy. He helps you with your confidence and with loving yourself

Tries to help manage everything but in a less hands on way than the other two types.

Like with one or the other the things that are impacted are very specific things so it’s easier to help(not saying that it’s easy don’t get me wrong) but this impacts a lot more and is more general so it’s difficult

Does his best to be someone you can depend on.

I think he is very helpful with these things because of his experience with his mother

Like they’re not the same thing; adhd and schizophrenia, but like he’s used to dealing with people he loves not being in the best of mental states.

When he is not helping with everything I think in general he is a very touchy person ngl

Like he wants to be on you at all times

Not sexually and sexually like he just likes being with you.

Best guy best bf love him 💖💖💖

[catos-wound]

Hi, no pressure to answer but also feel free to rant! Would genuinely love to hear your take on Madeline Miller's SOA/Circe, as my own opinion is quite conflicted. (if you're tired of discussing it that's totally understandable tbh)

ahh oh boy fair warning im not going to even try to be academic and objective about this

i read tsoa, liked it > read iliad (twice), liked that more. > read tsoa again, didnt like it anymore. i think as an introduction to greek myth/homer its fair. fine's fine. she's got it kind of down. the irritating part is just how awful some people are when discussing why x is good or bad and its clear theyre basing it entirely off modern retellings. <- especially so when its about gods. doubly ignorant to me

circe i liked even less than tsoa, although that may be because my favourite guy is odysseus and that i hated the telegony. my main gripe was how often circe needed a 'reason' to be the villain. she needed to be the ugly sister, the rejected girl, the rape victim (did that happen? ive forgotten) to justify all the 'man-hating' stuff she did. and her portrayal of odysseus - again, biased pov - was less than enticing. odysseus isnt a saint but theres a tasteful way to interpret just howww much of a predator he can be to this woman in particular, i believe. i will say if youre looking for a feminist odyssey retelling i recommend atwood's penelopiad. it has its own issues (god help me) but i mostly liked penelope, and i really liked penelope and odysseus.

and to be clear i think its disingenuous to write off the telegony just bc it sucks (it does suck). to me thats like beefing with apollonius for saying that achilles was fucking with medea lmfaooo. my unhappiness with many retellings is usually less about plot solely/'origin' adherence and more about why are we still writing like thissss. like its not necessary to overvillainise men for being. men in an ancient time. much less young men (pyrrhus was in his early teens i believe). I think you can be feminist without being irritating. which circe is majorly. tsoa... i wont even try to argue about it being feminist. quite clear its. not.!

[samoyari]

HEAR THAT? LISTEN! ⌇ SECRET TIMES

✹ ﹒ some self ships i have with characters from multiple fandoms! ( love & deepspace, genshin, persona, final fantasy, etc )

before reading : i am quite new to this & im not sure how it works. everything is just for fun! please please please do not interact if you're uncomfortable!! if you dont like this kind of content & find it weird or cringe its better to click away!

ZHIRO ﹒ zhongli && zira

“i find myself running home to your sweet nothings”

the star and the sun.

zhongli had met zira when she was only a traveller—traversing the unknown lands of liyue. since then, he had looked forward to the afternoon tea time filled with conversations from the past. their souls were linked since the very beginning, a crystal lace tied from each of their hearts. zhongli had believed he discovered a version of love that no one else ever had.

zhongli often finds himself listening to zira’s little stories. he envelops himself into a brand new world—a glimpse into his partner’s little mind. only to retell some of the details to the adepti when they have a small reunion.

zhongli is the listener—zira talks. thats how they go—how the stars are always there for the sun, even when it outshines them.

SONG: SWEET NOTHINGS — TAYLOR SWIFT

STORMHEART ﹒tighnari && zira

“ive never been a natural—all i do is try, try, try”

the storm and the warm home.

tighnari met zira when she was at her lowest. she was emotional and vulnerable, stupid and irrational. he was there to listen, even when the distant thunder seems to be getting louder and when the rain starts to pick up and the drops of water hit his skin like needles—he was there.

tighnari is quite big on pda or any form of skinship. he loves hugging zira anytime, and that feeling itself calms her down.

SONG: MIRRORBALL — TAYLOR SWIFT

THE GLACIER’S CRACK﹒ zayne && zira

“the feeling that im loosing her forever—and without really entering her world”

childhood friends , partner's in crime , cardiologist & anesthesiologist.

zayne never believed in love. he believed that only a few things mattered in life; one being his academics, the second being his health, the third would be being the best cardiologist out there, and the fourth being zira. moving out for med school was not an easy job for him and it almost made him feel disconnected from his home. it didnt take long until he realized that everything became unbearable because she wasnt around. sure, they called often, talked and did favors for each other—but he couldnt buy twin popsicles and half them. he couldnt comfort her when she cried. so once summer break came around, he made that sacred promise.

zira took on medicine a year spontaneously after zayne moved away. she wanted to be able to atleast spend time with him somehow knowing that he'd be busy with shifts all the time. zira found her passion in the medical field—wanting to pursue it much seriously and ended up choosing her role as an anesthesiologist. she later revealed this to zayne when she found out he was going as a cardiologist. it took a while before she officially became a doctor, but its safe to say that they now spend every free time they have in the hospital together.

SONG: SLIPPING THROUGH MY FINGERS — ABBA

more…

NOCTZIRA — noctis && zira

[thekingofwinterblog]

Do you think the Silmarilion is worth reading as its own book? Once tried to as a kid but found it boring as if I was reading a fictional bible or something (ironic considering Im reading the real thing for the second time right now lol)

P.S. Also sorry if I came of as a dick in some of the replys to your post, wont happen again

Yes and no. There are some interesting stories there, but i cannot under any circumstances advice you to read the whole thing through from cover to cover. It's a history book, and it reads like one.

There are tales in it worth reading though, but i would far more advice you to instead read the actual books Christopher hammered together out of his father's work before his death, before trying to read the equivelant of their stories in the silmarillion.

The children of Hurin is not a perfect read(it has a couple of timeskips where it's clear tolkien had things planned, but because he didnt get it done before it finished, the book basically sums up a time of war and adventure in narration. Think how LOTR's early chapters had a passage where 17 years passes as Gandalf came and went as he tried to figure out Bilbo's ring, and you have it), but it's overall a pretty good book, that covers the important parts of Turin's life, even if it's a greek styled tragedy.

I havent actually gotten around to reading the Fall of Gondolin, but from what i hear it does a much better job of hammering in the point that the battle of the unnumbered tears really was the last chance the forces oppossing Morgoth had a chance to win in a conventional war, and it was impossible after.

as for the book version of Beren and luthien, from what i hear it has the problem that Christopher was unwilling to just hammer out one, definite version out of his father's many, many takes, so the version we got here is a sorta frankenstein of the many texts, where it's treated as all the various in universe legends about this tale in one, sorta overlapping book. all fine and dandy, except there are part that are extremely confusing, as there were versions where Beren was an elf as well, removing a lot of the logical reasons why the plot happens.

honestly, i would recommend just reading the lay of leithian, https://tolkienleithian.blogspot.com/2013/03/canto-i.html which tells most of the important and interesting part of the story, and has a summary for the second and less interesting part. it is a story told in song though.

as for the rest, there arent more direct books, but there is an alternative to the first part of the silmarillion, The Ainulindale. the creation of the world.

it unfortunately only covers the first part, and doesnt go far enough to cover the age of the lamps, the awakening of the elves and melkor's first imprisonment, but it's a far more engaging alternative and coherent retelling of the making of the world than the more abstract yet dry telling from the silmarillion.

as for the rest of the silmarillion, there is worth to most of the stories, but if you read the ones i recommended above, the only one i would say are must read, are:

chapter 2: which retells how the dwarves and ents came to be.

Chapter 5-9, and then 13, which tells the story of feanor and his sons from valinor to their siege of angband(narratively its far and away the most coherent part of the story, even with that skip between 9 and 13).

chapter 17-18 which tells about how men came to the west and became part of the political world there, the breaking of the great siege, and Fingolfin's famous duel with morgoth.

Also if you just wanna read the duel in song form as Tolkien originally intended, here's another lay of just that.

chapter 20: The battle of the unnumbered tears, the last shot of victory. Also told in Children of Hurin, but this chapter is actually good, so i'd recommend reading it regardless.

chapter 22: which explains what the hell happened to Doriath, and sees the story of the sons of feanor reach it's end.

chapter 23: The story of Earendil the mariner, and the war of wrath that ended Morgoth's reign, and sunk beleriand under the sea.

after that, if you want to read about the second age, go read fall of numenor instead. its a way better source, even if not hammered together by Christopher.

[corvidinthewoods]

a new philosophy tube video came out and i have a lot of thoughts. i left this all as a comment on youtube, but i figured i might get better discussion elsewhere so im posting it here too. i put it under a readmore cause its kinda long and i dont want it to clog up ppl's dash, especially if discussion turns into a reblog chain (which would be nice!!!)

specifically this is thinking about what she said regarding gender dysphoria and pathologization and stuff

i started hrt in february 2020, so before any changes could be easily seen the world went into lockdown. i also got top surgery in april 2021, less isolated but still not especially opened back up yet

i don’t see my extended family very often just due to geography, so with covid it became even less frequent. the first time i spent time with some of my aunts after starting T, I think was thanksgiving or christmas 2021. So, at that point a lot of changes had happened and I imagine for my extended family it was much more sudden than for my immediate family and friends. That probably contributed to why gender and transition came up in conversation.

One of my aunts is fairly tall for a cis women, and she wondered why people choose transition over a different way of being their agab. she shared a memory of hers from growing up, how she felt like she wasn’t Correctly Female because of her height. But at one point she joined a tall womens social group, and was actually only just over the minimum height requirement. There, she was actually shorter than most of the other women and it helped her feel better in her own womanhood.

That’s a very nutshell retelling of it, but her full explanation sounded to me just like gender dysphoria, based on both my own experience and on what i’ve read of the experiences of others. It wasn’t the point of her question so I didnt bring it up, but it did (and obviously still has) stuck with me

Later, I went into a trans-focused discord community and asked others whether they thought cis people could feel dysphoria. The consensus from answers i received was ‘no’, and that surprised me.

For a while now I’ve also been feeling that the line between ‘cisgender’ and ‘transgender’ is a false binary, just like with the male/female binary.

I’ve recently been going back to Contrapoints videos, and in one of them she talks a bit about how her conception of gender and transness has changed, particularly with regards to trying to categorize it. She said her current mindset was that some things about human existence are just irrational, and will always defy attempts to group them. So rather than endlessly try and make them make sense, it’s better to just accept them.

I feel like this could apply to gender dysphoria, if we approach it in the more linguistic sense like when Abby Thorn used the word to summarize her feelings when someone asked “how are you”. Sometimes when a person is feeling dysphoric, the solution is adjusting her view on tall womanhood. Sometimes the solution is taking bioidentical hormone therapy. Sometimes it’s hormone replacement therapy, sometime’s its surgeries to change sex characteristics like breasts or genitals. Sometimes it’s just a feeling that we have to cope with and eventually let pass, like nervousness or sadness. There’s no way to systematically decide ahead of time what the outcome of ‘feeling dysphoric’ should be, and when you try to make that system you can end up with the clusterfuck going on in the uk.

[lunatic-fandom-space]

Der Kronprinz (1989) [The Crown Prince]

This one was really good, I was very pleasantly surprised!

But before I talk about everything that I liked, I need to be negative for a moment. So, Ive been trying to watch all these films in their original language and Ive mostly succeeded so far, but this was a hungarian film that I watched the german dub of because I thought it was a german film and it obviously wasnt. I dont really like watching dubbed live-action media, I actually thought for the longest time that I didnt like watching any live-action media because "seeing humans captured on film felt unnatural to me" like Im from fuckin back when movies were invented, but then I realized that the thing that actually felt unnatural to me was the fact that the words people would say were obviously not actually coming out of the actors' mouths. I know better now, but dubbed media still feels 'off' to me whenever I watch it, and that was the case here as well.

There were also some weird directorial choices that contributed to that off-ness, like whenever a character would make a longer statement, the camera would slowly zoom in on their face until they were done, and the way people would look towards the camera was very weird, its not that they would look straight at the camera/at the audience but they would kinda look past it but it never really seemed like they were looking at other characters who were behind the camera, it felt more like they were looking past 'you' or the audience. Idk, Im not describing it in the best way but it made for kind of a weird viewing experience

But whatever, the plot of this film more than makes up for those minor complaints. This isnt just a straight-forward romantic retelling of the events leading up to Rudolf and Mary's suicide like most of the other films so far, its actually about these two guys, Peters and Lukacz, trying to piece together the truth of Rudolf's death in the immediate aftermath of it. Peters is an american wroter who originally came to austria and met up with Lukacz to write a book about the austrian empire in general, but then they announce Rudolf's death by stroke pretty much as soon as he arrives. They talk about it while theyre on a train to vienna and the conductor overhears them them and tells them that he thinks Rudolf was actually murdered because 30-year-olds dont usually die of strokes so thats suspicious, and he wasnt very well-liked at court so theres a motive there, which piques Peters' interest. Then, when the newspaper says that he died due to heart issues instead, Peters decides that he needs to get to the bottom of this, and then the rest of the film is him and Lukecz going around and asking people who were somehow involved with Rudolf and/or his death, interspersed with relevant scenes from his life.

If youve read my other posts, Im sure youve already guessed that the main reason I like this film so much is that it has a different setup and approach to this story than the others, and that is true, its so unbelievably refreshing seeing a Rudolf-film thats not just two hours of "aww isnt it soooooo tragic that he was soooooo in love with this 17-year-old girl but just couldnt be with her because of his shitty family and wife, they had to both die to be together 😭😭", but I also think it was very well-executed. All these interviews with all these different people who are all biased in different ways do a good job of painting a very complete picture of Rudolf (in my opinion as someone whos not very familiar with him as a historical figure, Im mostly saying that because he comes across as very flat in most of the films, which I dont think is the case in this one). Theres also all these rumors sprinkled in from like random people around Maylering that Peters and Lukecz interview to see if they maybe know anything, or even them themselves being like "you know, I heard this thing...", which I really liked because it added to this being a film about the unreliable narrative(s) and the drama around the mayerling incident. In some ways its about the messy birth of the whole Mayerling Mythology which was very interesting after seeing all these romantic and 'clean' movies that exist because of it.

Another reason why I liked it, that you might have guessed already as well, is that Mary wasnt really in this film all that much. And I know that sounds bad especially coming from someone who would consider herself a feminist, but Im gonna be honest with you, Im at a point where i dont even want male filmmakers to include female characters if they clearly dont care about them. Give me a story with a rounded out cast consisting of only guys instead please, its easier to ignore the fact that you dont see women as people that way. Sorry, Im just so sick of all these boring one-dimensional portrayals of Mary and her relationship with Rudolf that this film gets points for simply not torturing me with it. However, Mary does get one very interesting scene in this one, its the very first scene of the movie before we even meet Peters and Lukecz, and its basically the only part thats presented as 'true' because its not framed by any kind of unreliable narrator; theyre at Mayerling and Rudolf is finishing up his goodbye letters and Mary asks him if he's writing one for Stephanie, he tells her that he already wrote one and shes like "did you tell her that Im with you? I want her to know that Im the last person who saw you alive", the scene goes on for a little longer but I only wanted to talk about that part because, good god, that is such an insane thing to say. But I mean, I like it, I think its interesting that shes spiteful towards Stephanie here both because Mary is usually portrayed as innocence incarnate, and because I feel like these films never really get into what she thinks of her. Well, technically this film doesnt really get into it either, but atleast theres something there

Anyway, thats pretty much all I wanted to say, the only thing would be that I didnt really like any of the performances but I find it hard to tell if its because they were actually bad or if its just that off-ness I talked about at the start.

All in all, it wasnt my favorite viewing experience but I really liked this film, it was very interesting

Oh, and theres one last thing I have to say that didnt fit anywhere else, I feel like I havent had one of these in a while;

To my knowledge, this was the second time Rudolf has been shown as a child in a film since Erzsébet királyné (1940) which is literally insane to me. Youre telling me theyve been making films about this mentally ill freak for 49 years at this point and not only has no one ever attempted to seriously psychoanalyse him or link his mental illness to his childhood, only two of them ever even showed him as a child?

[wiihtigo]

Could you talk more about sam and max being autistic idk I just like hearing your thoughts about it your doc was cool

you come to me on the day of my daughters wedding and ask me about sam and max autism headcanons, forcing me to open tumblr and start writing what ive been thinking recently about maxs autism in relation to him in 305

i talked about this in private a bit but i think 305 could be taken as an allegory for maxs giant autism and thinking you dont feel things the right way with ASD

-max turns into a giant horrible monster in 305, this could be taken as him literally seeing himself as a monster and the whole town, all their friends, see him as such and want him DEAD all except sam whos constantly vouching for max this entire episode. at the end when superego was like "wow! max is actually capable of self sacrifice! amazing!" sam says "told you so." very smug because he knew all along, he always knew max was capable of kindness and love because he sees it firsthand every day!

theyre partners and best friends, of course he knows him better than he knows himself. Literally in this case, where superego, personification of part of maxs brain, thinks hes not capable of feeling things in a normal, proper way, max doesnt think that about HIMSELF, superegos issue with max (maxs issue with himself lol) is that he thinks hes capable of more and max is just ignoring him he says specifically hes tried to push max towards the finer things in life and being more proper (max trying to push himself? talking about max and superego as separate when theyre essentially the same is so hard #HELP.) he thinks hes selfish and cruel and not capable of a selfless act.

theres even a line superego says to sam where he says "you of all people should be able to understand my frustration after years of being partnered with a creature driven by pure id" which is like. does max think sam gets frusterated with him and doesnt want him as a partner because of the way that he Is. max. this is a nice little parallel to sam just last episode having that thought "max is getting so powerful now soon he wont even need me :(" but thats getting away from my point a little. (veering into max depression discussion which is a whole can of worms on its own, but it is worth mentioning autism and depression often go hand in hand and some of maxs self worth issues can be attributed to feeling weird about his autism traits)

anyways of course max was capable of a selfless act, of course he would save sybil and her baby, he loves sybil and he loves babies and he has a lot of love in his little heart. so skipping ahead a bit to the biggest scene in sam and max that baffle and confuse millions, maxs reaction to coming back to sam.

a lot of people are confused by maxs nonchalance and casual retelling of the horrible events that apparently went down in his timeline where he had to kill his sam. (interestingly but a little off topic, he specifically says HE blew sam up, whereas in this tl, max killed HIMSELF, sam didnt do a thing. in fact he wouldve probably stayed trying to save him until they both blew up if superego hadnt convicned him itd be tooootally fine to leave. seriously sam its OK hes NOT going to blow up i promise. ok bye bye."

so max comes back, immediately tries to jump back into normalcy and jokes and feels unsure and uncomfortable when sam doesnt reciprocate. he looks confused when sam hugs him even. a lot of people are like "what the hell did he mean by this" but TBH as someone with ASD and lots of experience in the "getting bad news over the phone and then going to a funeral" pipeline i really felt a mind and soul connection with max there! this is mentioned somewhere int he sam and max bible for the cartoon but steve purcell writes something along the lines of "max sees things differently from anyone else" on the topic of his strange reactions to things. which is like. You have autism ->

theres an unskippable line in 305 right before you get to the endgame where sam says "why does max have tear ducts? i cant remember the last time ive seen max cry." and then immediately gets into maxs juxtaposed reaction to sams death to sams absolute MISERY over maxs. max might not feel grief in the way people would expect from a person. he might not even be sad. he might not feel things in the "proper" or "normal" way but that doesnt make him a 50 foot shambling eldritch monster, hes just wired differently. as someone with autism ive felt it too where i dont think i feel things in the right way. if something really sad and fucked up happens to me i dont feel sad and the only thing im immediately concerned with is feeling uncomfortable with watching the people around me crying which, as im typing this, makes me feel like a monster freak for being so cold and cruel, but thats the point im trying to get at, 305 could be read as an allegory for this exact feeling.. because at the end of the day max is just max and sam is happy to see him and accept him as he is. hes not a monster, hes just sams partner and best friend and its ok to be exactly the way he is without feeling the need to change

[antiloreolympus]

12 Anti LO Asks

1. arent some of the copies of that lo book upwards of $40 dollars if not more? like bare minimum ive seen it at least $20 even for the paperback but it goes way up for the hardcovers (tho the second vol already had a pretty massive markdown by what i saw on amazon which was ... weird). wt readers flip out over paying a few cents for fast pass, why would they buy the same thing they already read for free for a much higher price thats not even formatted correctly and kept all the typos?

2. i swear LO is making me into a pearl clutching nun. I get its trying to be ~pro sexuality~ or whatever but its so hamfisted in trying to do so and everyone and everything is so horny for??? reasons?? like no one talks or acts like this.

3. the way rachel "designs" characters deadass looks like how NFTs work. she just uses the same template and changes one or two things and calls its unique.

4. Does anyone know a comic where Persephone ACTUALLY chooses to go to the Underworld? Because LO and Ficlets still has her be kidnapped and Punderworld has it just be an accident she ended up there.

5. i think whats annoying me too about all these flashbacks is that im not sure whats actually true?? which i think is maybe the point but even when we see it from h or p's POV it comes across as the worst option? like helios' version actually made persephone look better than reality, hermes' flashback gave her personality and set their relationship better, meanwhile we get it from hxp and hades is just a neglectful ass to a literal child meanwhile persephone just looks like an idiot? like?? 💀

6. The biggest thing to me is these ancient stories don't belong to us, and modern "retellings" are not the "natural progression" of mythology, it's just people taking known stories and more often than not just making fanfic with the creator's biases. LO is allowed to exist, but Rachel is not "keeping the mythology alive" or "adding to the canon" as her fans claim. LO doesn't even fit a loose retelling, and it is not nor will ever be as legitimate as the actual texts. Sorry to be harsh but 🤷🏿

7. The way my skin crawled at the Niobe part… that’s so dumb if RS wants to portray Artemis as good and Apollo as bad why would you choose that myth like 😭 “hey Artemis only killed 6 instead of 7 like her awful brother” how does that even make sense??? Also ofc cutting so much of the original myth like-

From OP: Yeah, it doesn’t even make sense because we hear Leto is a sun goddess in LO but not the goddess of motherhood.

8. i dont get why all of a sudden now persephone wants to be queen? off of what? first its set up on she had goals to get her degree and have freedom, but now she just wants to be his wife? why? second, even her idea of making elysium is just her trying to relive her own guilt, not that she actually cares about the dead. her motives are out of nowhere and purely selfish, which the latter would be fine if LO didnt set up one set of goals but drop them to be hades' wife instead with no reasoning.

9. i think the biggest issue with this trial plot line is one) so dragged out, who cares, but two: hades is both leading up and during this whole thing has been so cartoonishly awful that i dont even care if he points out something right. a broken clock is also right twice a day, but that doesnt mean it still isnt broken. not to mention its very easy to make him look "right" when rachel purposely makes everyone else so irrational/wrong that he looks correct in comparison. that isnt a win, actually.

-----FP Spoilers/Mention-----

10. FP SPOILERS// Hades basically tells Persephone that what doesn't kill you makes you stronger in reaction to learning about her sexual assault and that really rubs me the wrong way because that kind of trauma doesn't make a person stronger, it damages you and as you heal you become stronger in spite of what happened so idk that whole diamond pep talk just irked me idk if anyone else feels the same way

11. Fp) Helios (thought it was Hera at first lol) she gives you HOMEMADE birthday cards as a bribe each year how dare you report a homicide she committed... Of course now we will get to know the real story is completely different and Perse is an angel who allowed those poor mortals to duebabd Minthe co. are such a horrible people for lying. She can't do anything wrong. Also, seriously? Russell? Such a Greek sounding name again.

12. I shouldn't be as annoyed as I am that episode 184 was basically more pointless stalling, it's honestly just a trend at this point. Is it bad that I actually laughed when Helios told Persephone that her birthday cards ain't shit? The way she actually tried to guilt-trip him for reporting her murdering people by saying "bUt I mAdE you Birthday Cards!!11" and him njust not having that shit. Beautiful. Also, as much as I was never a fan of Smythe's demonizing of Apollo, I'm not sure I like the direction she seems to go in now, namely the implication that Apollo's predatory behavior is really all Leto's fault because she encouraged it. It's yet another female character Smythe villainized just so Persephone could be the most perfect woman of them all in contrast to all these manipulative harpys on Olympus.

[ndoandou]

I saw your requests were open again. I got so happy. If it’s ok if I can request how would the ikevamp boys would react to over hearing mc talk to someone else. Like venting about having a wet dream about them? Could be nsfw or sfw i don’t mind either way. 💕

Hello! Thankyou for the i n t e r e s t i n g request! 💜💜💜

//i had too much fun with leonardo's part HAHAHAHAH

//i appologize if i did a shit job, i waffle too much especially since i wrote this as 2 am x.x

Mild NSFW (suggestive themes)

CHARACTERS: THEO, COMTE, LEONARDO, ARTHUR

.

.

Hmm in this case, id imagine her venting to sebastian in the kitchen ( lets imagine they decide to speak french to eachother instead of japanese) , cleaning up at night. one of the vampire boys would head over to kitchen to get something/look for MC but stops when he hear the conversation going on in the kitchen.

Theo

He would find this adorable lowkey tbh

He would lean over the wall, waiting for her to leave the kitchen

I think it would be a turn on for him? But he finds it more cute than arousing- okay maybe VERY arousing

He can't wait to tease his hondje with the info he has just heard

Wants to make her "bark" in bed

Scenario:

MC walked out of the kitchen after venting out her T h i n g to sebastian. To her surprise, theo was leaning on the wall with an amused expression.

"T-theo? What are you doing here?" Mc said as she was not expecting him to be there.

"I was looking for you. Thats when i heard.... an interesting confession from you hondje" theo said smirking

He walked over towards mc, causing her to walk back, her back eventually hitting the wall. Theo placed a hand on the wall, next to her face, kabedoning her. MC let out a yelp and Theo leaned over to her ear.

"You sure do have the wildest things to say hondje. Why dont we recreate those naughty dream of yours tonight, hm?"

Comte

He would be amused lowkey horny 😳

He knew that MC always had something funny or cute to say, but this? Very interesting

I feel like he would write a small note telling MC to meet him in his room

When MC is in his room, that's when the fun and teasing begins ;)

Scenario:

Comte initially came looking for MC in the kitchen but to his surprise, he heard something rather interesting.

"I.. had a very questionable dream- me and comte was doing uh- i-"

"Deep breaths MC, speak slowly"

"Oh? What is this?" Comte whispered softly to himself as he stood by the closed door listening to their conversation.

"He touched me everywhere and the he uhhh... well..long story short, it was a sexual dream that involved intercourse..."

"My, oh my"

Comte's lip curved into a smirk. He quickly walked over to his room to write a special note. As soon as he done that, he walked over to the kitchen door. He placed the note by the door.

.

.

MC left the kitchen feeling embarrasment and guilt after what she confessed to sebastian. That was when she stepped on a piece of paper. Mc picked it up to examine it

"To MC..Meet me in my room..abel" mc read aloud to herself

She froze

Had he over heard what she had been talking about to sebastian??

"There is a good chance that.. he had been eavesdropping on us" sebastian said teasing MC

MC glanced over to sebastian with a confused expression, which she then ran off towards Comte's room.

She slammed the door open, revealing Comte who was sitting on the bed with a mysterious smile

"Good evening, mon amour. I take it that you read my note?" he said calmly as always

"You.. heard everything did you" MC said full off embarrasment

"Yes, and now we will do whatever you dreamt about here" Comte said patting the bed with a devilish smile

Leonardo

Big horni but he tries to act cool

In reality hes losing it🥵

Big big horni, straight to bed as soon as he and mc meet eachother

Would want MC to retell her dream to him in absolute detail as he rails her

Btw take a shot whenever i say "ciggarilos"

Scenario:

"She had a lewd dream about me?" Leonardo thought to himself as he inhaled his cigarrilo

He was eavesdropping on MC and sebastian. He had his ear placed over the wall far away from the door, as he didnt want them to smell the scent from his ciggarilos. This was the only time he found his enchanced hearing usefull, as a pureblood.

His member was throbbing against his pants as MC's description got even more detailed as it went on. At the same time he inhaled his ciggarilo sharply whenever MC said something that is a big turn on of his. His ciggarilo was the only thing stopping him from going insane from arousal.

Eventually he inhaled too sharply, causing a coughing and wheezing fit, alarming MC and Sebastian.

"Merda!" Leonardo swore under his breath as he quickly ran away fron the scene towards his room

.

.

MC knocked on leonardo's room

"Come in."

MC invited herself in. Leonardo was sitting on his bed with his cigarrilo.

"Are you alright? I heard you coughing earlier and it sounded intense" MC said worriedly

Leonardo inhaled his ciggarilo as he scratched the back of his head

"About that..." he trailed off

"Well?" MC raised a brow

"I was eaves dropping on your naughty conversation cara mia. i wasn't expecting that much lewdness from you which caused me to choke on my cigar." Leonardo said as he chuckled, glancing over to MC who was trying to process what he had just said.

"You.. heard everything?!" MC said in disbelieve. That was when she glanced over to his pants, revealing a huge tent.

"Well.. yes. And it has caused a rather BIG problem, as you are looking at it right now.." he said suggestively

Leonardo crushed his cigarrilo onto the ash tray.

"Care to help cara mia..?"

Arthur

My man would straight up open the kitchen door too confront MC like its nothing

Actually glad that MC has such dreams because as embarrising it is to admit, he had such dreams about her multiple times

He wish she would have told him directly as its a good reference for bed ;)

Scenario:

"And he was touching me down here.."

"Oh? She had a rather naughty dream about me?" Arthur said to himself

He initially came looking for MC bit was presented with something interesting..

He opened the kitchen door open causing MC to jump and sebastian to look over to the door

"Arthur?!" MC exclaimed full of surprise

"Well, well. What an interesting story, love. Im rather upset that you didn't tell me first~" arthur said as he walked slowly into her direction, eventually pinning her on the wall

"Lets have some fun shall we?" Arthur said, whispering into her ear earning a soft gasp from her

"Ehem. I shall leave you both together" sebastian fake coughed as he exited the kitchen pretending to not have seen anything.

.

.

Long story short, arthur railed MC in the kitchen like no tommorow 🤭

[childlikemperor]

Do you have any fantasy book recs? :o Or book recs in general? I feel like you have immaculate taste!

yes i do and thank you so much for asking/thinking i have good taste

Ok so I'm just getting back into fantasy so I only have two book recs and a half for that particular genre

I just finished Ninth House by Leigh Bardugo on tuesday and i loved it so much, but theres a trigger warning for csa and sa so please please be mindful! This is the first "dark academia" book i read that managed to not be the most pretentious shit in the world, its about meddling with death and magic in Yale secret societies!!

Everyone already knows I love Peter Darling by Austin Chant, its a Peter Pan retelling where Peter is trans and goes back to Neverland all grown up and falls in love with Captain Hook (yes i know i promise it isnt weird its perfect)

My half rec is Middlegame by Seanan McGuire only bc im not done with it yet but I'm 68% in and loving it... its the kind that you gotta pay attention to bc there's time travel and some dense expository dialogue but I managed to understand it p well so far even tho i zoned out a couple times... this is basically umbrella academy: dallas (the show doesnt exist to me) meets wizard of oz with clones!! trust me its so cool... also literally found family

Also, speaking of found family and moving out of fantasy into horror-ish sorta sci-fi pls get into The Dark Descent of Elizabeth Frankenstein by Kiersten White theres no actual dark descent all the marketing is lying BUT there is found family and Viktor Frankenstein bashing so what more can you ask for in a Frankenstein retelling (which btw pls read if you havent, theres like 3 different free audiobooks on LibreVox if classics are hard to get into for you)

Still in that vibe I super recommend Wilder Girls by Rory Power its about monster girls in a boarding school trying to survive and the fact that it was YA didnt actually ruin it for me

Also speaking of sci-fi This is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El-Mohtar and Max Gladstone is everyone's darling for a reason so if you havent already bc ik time travel can be p iffy, trust me that its p easy to keep up even if you dont fully understand the mechanics of it all, plus the prose is so gorgeous... i especially recommend it for people trying to read "real books" who love and miss that vibe that really really good fanfic has!

Finally is a horror classic that, as with all true horror classics, isnt super scary: PLEASE READ The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson ITS SO BEAUTIFUL!!! If you feel like you've gone your whole life looking for a home, looking for connection and understanding... please please read it! Ellie gets us and shes our best friend!

So yeah, if anyone is intro thrillers i can rec that too at some point just hmu

[anarchistbitch]

hiiii, how are you?? how's school treating you??

ok, I'll be honest, I do not remember what that last link was sjhjks i have shit memory and i usually just go back to check what it was but it seems like they erased the post, but yeah, it was probably about sxf sdjhsjk I CANT BELIEVE YOURE DONE WITH MANGA WHAT KJSHSJKF Anya deserves everything she desires and by god are Yor and Loid going to try their best to give it to her

i'll have to look up that review bc there's always so much thought going into costuming that the average viewer wont notice and it's so cool to learn about it all

edwina being angry was so necessary, they really did her wrong and it wouldve been a disservice to her character if she was just like 'it's ok, you love each other' so yeah, super satisfying and validating

i thought the queer storyline was gonna come from benedict kjdhekjdh eloise i was hoping would find her own happiness by herself despite society making it basically impossible back then

sjhhghagsf perfectly understandble, the friend i usually watch shows with also hasnt finished cbaw

oh shit a retelling of the fall of the house of usher that sounds amazing, im gonna look the book up now

i have also ditched the goodreads challenge despite having set it up for like 5 books only, last year i didnt even reach that so yeah, then again i forgot i was reading a korean novel ???? like full on forgot about it until i was checking my bookmakrs and found it again lmao

yeeeeeeees the cauliflower metaphor was amazing, and sfhjhfh yeah, karthik helping aman on the train was just *chef's kiss *

my friend and i finished it last night and just ahhhhhhh i am so happy about it, imogen was a dear and im happy that even tho there were changes from the webcomic it all still felt so true to character and the storylines from the webcomic werent erased, just changed a bit

no, fr, she does have something against tao bc no come oooooon, what is that (im joking about the stylist but not about how bad the hair is)

JOE LOCKE REALLY BROUGHT HIM TO LIFE SO WELL like seriously, he was a perfect Charlie :'3

for real about yoongi, he has said so many things that live in my heart, the others have too like Jin's speech for (i think) 2020 graduates, that one hit me

oh it makes perfect sense, im a casual fan of so many groups and not a proper fan bc theyre always churning out so much stuff, i cannot keep up with it all

my recs: kard, loona, dreamcatcher, a.c.e (four members are in their military service rn tho), the rose, day6, i've been really into straykids lately but that is mainly bc i find lee know hilarious and instagram has been feeding me their reels, i like twice, enhypen, itzy, txt, kep1er, oneus, alexa, taemin, holland, wonho and rolling quartz too

kard are awesome bc theyre a co-ed group and they generally dont subscribe as much to kpop industry's purity culture as much, loona i found bc their song heart attack is gay af and the rest of their songs are amazing, dreamcatcher are more rock leaning and when they started out they had a HEAVY horror concept, love that from them, their song deja vu gives serious gay vibes too, a.c.e i found bc i like techno and edm as well and they started out leaning into the genre, theyve moved on from it by now tho, theyre still talented af and i do try to keep up with them as much as bts, the rose are a band in the more traditional sense, they each play an instrument and stuff, and have LOVELY songs, day6 and rolling quartz are also traditional bands, rq are more new tho and more rock leaning than the others i'd say, straykids are awesome, they did the opening and ending for the tower of god anime (which i recommend as well sdkhjksd), blackpink is another of the groups i try to keep up with as much as bts but they dont put as much music out or as often as bts does and im conflicted about it bc 1, the kpop industry is just insane about that, and 2, it means they get more time to rest and produce quality content but 3, their company has other artists that DO put out music pretty often and it generally feels like they just dont care about them (stinks of misogyny too) so yeah, enhypen debuted with a vampire concept and it was just fantastic, heavy twilight vibes on their debut mv, sinc then they havent really abandoned the supernatural concept, twice are insanely good and i would stan them but theyre very active and ive got no energy lmao, the others i mentioned i dont stan either but theyre super good, taemin, alexa, holland and wonho are soloists btw, holland is gay and he's producing a BL and starring in it with han gi chan who acted on where your eyes linger

oop, sorry the kmusic thing got really long, there's just plenty of great artists, and im sure many more that i know nothing about

ahhhhh i cannot wait to hear your thoughts on ons and jjk (specially ons, i have been obsessed with it since like 2016 or 2017), i tend to lean towards action anime, i am not immune to a well animated fight scene, another great one is the god of highschool, that one made me bawl, tho i watched it again with my friend earlier this year and she did not shed a single tear in that specific scene lmao

sorry if there's too many recs, got too excited dkjsfhdj

monster hugs are the best :'3 specially from a dear friend like you <33

hope you're having an easy time and staying hydrated

-M<3

m!!!!! bestie🥺🥺 how are you?!!?!?[sorry for not answering i was out of station and my draft got deleted so rewriting rn]

never underestimate what a person can accomplish while trying to ignore important tasks😎 i finished the sxf manga in? 2 days and it was so good omg. i really liked how they named each chapter "mission" like thats so cute🥺 okay so half of the manga is the family stressing out over academic & political on goings and the other half is them stressing out hiding their identities its quality media u really should read it if u wanna!!![ the anime is pretty much the same but the anime adds more action scenes like in ep 5 and also the song when loid was zipping down??] me🤝🏾 loid 🤝🏾yor wanting to give anya the world and more

wait ill link it right here. the video spans the summary, her own review then the costume bit which made the video very enjoyable and her other videos are p cool too!! [and ooh the met gala reviews. she articulates her videos pretty well but the met gala reviews are my fave cause. well u have to watch it!!]

edwina was one of my fave characters and also like in s1 its pretty mild simon and daphne literally just made out but anthony fell in love with edwina's sister like that actually scandalous and it made it more interesting but also WOOW bro thats her sister. still enjoyed it tho :p

i thought for sure that benedict wouldve begun an affair with the art guy , and in s2 they were hinting at eloise and penelope i think (hopefully im not the only one) idk i wish they hadnt ditched it cause!!! it wouldve been cool idk. although in s1 i thought eloise and penelope would end in a qpr or the regency equivalent of a qpr

im gonna try to finish cbaw by this weekend!! one of the main reasons i havent finished it yet is cause the only way i can access it is on a site with a lot of pop up ads and my ad block expired so i figured out a way to download the episodes then watch so the weekend awaits me!!

also fair warning i read the book a long time ago so check out the tw's before you read it

brooo i set my goodreads goal for 69 this year as a JOKE😭😭then mid april i was behind 17 books so i dropped it cause everytime i logged on there goodreads basically spit on me lmao wait which korean novel👀👀 and speaking of!! i recently started semantic error manhua and i might start the novel after a month or so cause its so interesting

smzs subverted a lot of classic bollywood tropes like *checks list* chasing a train and helping someone on it, defying parents, interrupting wedding of ur lover, and pretending to be the partner at the wedding covered by a veil into a movie about gay men and its one for the ages🏳‍🌈

imogen was really cool imo and i like how they handled nick turning down a romantic relationship with her. i was literally pin pointing out the scenes with the webtoon tab open 😭 the kissing scenes with the shoes was just ahhhh so good😊😊

ppl were plotting against tao fr

joe locke!!! was the perfect charlie!! also side note thats such a cool ass name

a lot of the things bts say do lodge themselves in my mind and the graduation speech is one of them. jin's speech about wanting to catch up to everyone else and rather to take it slow because everyone has a different pace and to let go of the disappointment that comes with taking your own road was important to hear especially during 2020.

i have heard most or all of these of these groups and i do have a very large kpop playlist that i keep meaning to arrange properly into other playlists, but i keep forgetting😭

skz, twice , enhypen i do try to follow them and i like a lot of their songs especially fever by enhypen and literally twice has soo many bangers likey one of the best gg songs ever imo. loona and dreamcatcher have really cool themes and they execute it pretty well!! i started following rolling quartz after finding out that theyre a rock band and what more reason did i need akfhsdklfhs

i haven been following holland and wonho for a lot of time!! i heard about his bl show and i cant wait!!

i already started them jjk and ons and im thinking of taking it slow and finishing the god of high school first cause the premise sounds very very interesting

dont worry about the amount of recs lol i love content [and u💜]

ur a dear friend to me too🥺🥺 giving u 3 monster hugs today!!!

also just realized i havent given you a song rec in a while so: heavy by yonaka

staying drank !! hope ur safe and hydrated as well

[bladekindeyewear]

HS^2 bloggin’ mainline 2020-08-23

More homestuuuuuck

I’m a little tired today so I don’t expect much intelligent analysis out of myself, but if anything classpecty happens I doubt I’ll be able to help myself regardless.

oh, always

(EDITS: added note on horn colors, link to ask on potential Blood powers reference)

> CHAPTER 12. Really Convoluted Metaphorical Horseshit

cuuute

In the bowels of a different ship, at a moment in time that is not pinpointable in either direction from the previous interaction, another Dave raps quietly to himself.

another dave raps quietly to himself.  i am glad that phrase exists it brings me joy

(LATER EDIT: A friend on Discord pointed out that throughout this entire update, Karkat's horns are #FF0000 red. They were normal candy-corn colors in previous glimpses at the ship crew, though they used a dark single-color shortcut typical of old Homestuck at one point... but THIS time it stays STARK red even when we zoom in close later. Is this just artistic liberty? Did Karkat color his horns for fashion? Does this happen to red-bloods like the Sufferer after a certain age? Just how much time has actually passed, here? We might have to wait for the commentary for this one.)

KARKAT: I WAS SAYING I THOUGHT WE MIGHT GO, I DUNNO, ANYWHERE ELSE ON THE ENTIRE SHIP WHILE THE CLOTHES WERE WASHING. KARKAT: SEEING AS THIS DECREPIT MACHINE WE WERE SO BLESSEDLY PROVIDED WITH MAKES A WHIRRING SOUND SO PANCHAFINGLY ARHYTHMIC THAT IT THREATENS TO ERADICATE THE ENTIRE CONCEPT OF TEMPO FROM THE UNIVERSE.

Karkat really has chilled out hasnt he?  like this is surprisingly level for him, and that fact is hilarious.

KARKAT: AND YET SOMEHOW BASICALLY ALL THAT HAS HAPPENED SINCE WE STARTED THE LOAD IS THAT YOU’VE BEEN USING IT AS A FUCKED UP BEAT TO WHISPER TO YOURSELF ABOUT FLOWERS TO.

oh gosh that’s why he’s rapping

> ==>

DAVE: kanaya was telling me this kids story the other day about this dude who didnt cherish a flower enough until it peaced out to do flower stuff idk its not pertinent to the story DAVE: except the flower was a person DAVE: because it was a metaphor

Oh right, coming back to the Little Prince stuff I was too lazy to metaphor-deep-dive into, and literally asking the same questions we were asking about who the Little Prince’s story applies to mapped here if anyone at all, like Dirk and such, or what biases were in the retelling of it and the way Kanaya phrased it.  So now we’re practically mocking it by deep diving it here, hence the last page’s “DAVE: i was just thinking through some really convoluted metaphorical horseshit”, which means we’re both about to further explore AND shit all over the existence of this story metaphor until it doesn’t mean anything and most of the meaning we drew from it earlier is made a joke~

well, not “we”, cause I was too lazy, so... y’all

DAVE: anyway what goes down in the story is that once the flower lady is out of the picture DAVE: the main character goes around making all these connections between her and everything else in the universe until every damn thing feels like a symbol for how much he fucked up and how much he will never see her again KARKAT: THIS SEEMS PRETTY FUCKING INTENSE FOR A KID'S STORY DAVE: yea thats pretty much what i said

Oh holy shit.  That’s yet another way to put it.  Are we doing a whole moral takedown of the Light aspect today?  cause it sounds like we’re taking a dump on the Light aspect and RoboRose getting too obsessed and immersed in it, which would be excellent

DAVE: but i guess its not so much what the story was technically textually about but more like the version of it kanaya internalized and then told me when we were talkin about how she misses rose

exactly

DAVE: so like now im taking the story she told me she was projecting her feelings onto and projecting my feelings on top of that

yes absolutely, you just rephrased it a different way with that exact same bias

DAVE: this is just one big game of emotional projection telephone so feel free to go paraphrase it to roxy later and make it about whatever fuckin thing youre currently missing

perfect. i need an emoji for that Italian thing for when you pinch your thumb and forefinger together and kiss it

ah this’ll do:

its like the expression “choice” but in nonverbal form

[...] whatever fuckin thing youre currently missing KARKAT: YOUR ABILITY TO GET TO THE POINT DAVE: gotem DAVE: anyway you’re not gonna have to miss that skill of mine for long DAVE: get ready for this shit because i am about to slap you with the point so hard youll fall ass first into the washer DAVE: just scrambling around in there getting all sudsy DAVE: but your brain is gonna be so blasted from the mindfreak of a point im about to make that there wont be anything left to clean

Anytime dave is told to get to the point he is contractually obligated to spend at least 20 seconds talking about how he’ll get to the point in a way that is not getting to the point

DAVE: so its genuinely cool that kanaya can go around creating meaning that may or may not be actually present in every little thing DAVE: connecting every feeling she has to the idea of her wife existing out there DAVE: so i told her she should keep that shit up DAVE: but im having the opposite issue where im struggling to find anything to be that kind of tether because every single thing i could possibly consider about what it is were doing just reminds me of yet another thing to be afraid about

Great examples of Light being good and bad!  Attaching strands of connective meaning to everything.  --though, in Dave’s case AND Kanaya’s case you could argue it’s both bad in terms of effects.  That it’s great for Kanaya to care, but that she should be able to divest herself and live on her own terms without idealizing Rose literally everywhere she looks, personal growth which would be useful in helping bring Rose back to her in the first place.  The struggle they’re looking forward to is largely philosophical, not just physical, and until Rosebot acknowledges that she was wrong it’s not over.

DAVE: everything fuckin sucks huge cosmic donkey sack and im terrified KARKAT: OK, SO I FEEL LIKE YOU SKIPPED A COUPLE NECESSARY STEPS IN YOUR POINT CLARIFICATION PROCESS.

Pretty sure Dave was on the same page as most Epilogue and start-of-HS2 readers.  This situation is pretty bleak to dump our heroes into, no matter how much we believe will be resolved in the long run.

DAVE: ok but were you going with sweet or savory please give me that much at least KARKAT: YEAH IT WAS GOING TO BE SUNDAE-BASED. DAVE: nice KARKAT: YEAH. KARKAT: DO YOU WANNA WATCH MORE GBBO AFTER THIS? DAVE: absolutely

--ah, Great British Bake-Off, can’t say I’ve indulged

do they still have that?? did they save it from old Earth?  or did they go where unflooded Britain used to be and say hey, new show reboot

KARKAT: GREAT. ANYWAY, LIKE I WAS SAYING, FOR THE LOVE OF SWEET HUMAN CHRIST, PLEASE BACK UP TO WHATEVER THE FUCK YOU’RE ACTUALLY SCARED OF. KARKAT: ALSO COME HERE, IDIOT.

That last line is like, exactly as fucking sweet and awesome as we imagined their relationship to be.  :)

> ==>

OH MY GOD THAT’S ADORABLE

DAVE: ok yeah this is a better position to unleash all my inner fears n anxieties from

indisputably.

DAVE: those times its like my mouth was saying words about the situation wherein our friends are AWOL and maybe dead but my brain wasnt fully letting me experience the emotion that goes along with them DAVE: man its like i cant even start genuinely thinking about how afraid i actually am for rose and john without my brain flippin its wad and whiting out DAVE: like haha fuck i hope theyre ok DAVE: now i better make a fuckin joke before i succumb to the gaping mouth of despair waiting for me to fall in it as soon as i look down and acknowledge that its there ogling how juicy my ass looks as it trembles with terror

I really hope that the writers of HS2 know full well that this feeling? the one Dave is describing here? is what many of us who got way overinvested in the well-being of Homestuck’s surviving characters felt reading the Epilogues and Homestuck^2.  So I really hope they’re working through it in a way that will result in a preponderance of GOOD THINGS happening and hope-filled situations.  Cause that “can’t even think about X” feeling is too familiar, and if they understand it as well as it LOOKS like they’re getting to, I’d really like them to give us a helping hand healing.

I think that’s what they’re going for?  Seems hopeful for me to think so, but they HAVE been doing better as HS2 has been going forward, from an emotional standpoint anyway; definitely better than the Epilogues.  And I’ve worked through some of that stuff with the help of that, because it’s MUCH easier nowadays to think about Homestuck without my gut clenching.

DAVE: i guess im just fucked up about how to worry about dirk and be angry at him at the same time DAVE: because if i get as unholy pissed at him as i sometimes wanna be i also gotta admit to myself that maybe i coulda done something different there

Mhmm, Karkat’s potentially a pretty good person to speak with here since he’s done so much work trying not to feel responsible for everything that’s ever gone wrong.

DAVE: also like DAVE: and this by the way adds a whole other layer of guilt on there that i dont really know how to fuckin reckon with but DAVE: even with all the shit hes pulled and the fact that we are more or less heading toward having to take him down DAVE: whatever that is gonna mean and whether or not he planned it like that DAVE: i just DAVE: me and him had come so far with each other and it was really cool for a while to have him and i DAVE: ugh DAVE: i dont WANT to hate him

Yeah, Dirk and Jane’s heel-turns were really shitty for anyone who was a fan of them in the fanbase, as well.

KARKAT: WELL THEN QUIT FUCKING PICKING AT THE SEAM ON MY SHORTS AND SPIT IT OUT. THEY'RE BARELY HANGING ON TO THE DEFINITION OF "SHORTS" AS IT IS.

That is an adorably real boyfriend-laying-in-boyfriend’s-lap thing to do

DAVE: the part i mentioned before about how we really have no goddamn clue how long this trip is even gonna take DAVE: i cant help but feel like its barely getting revved up DAVE: and for me and roxy and jade and callie and kan thats normal shit at best and boring at worst but we all have our immortality to thank for that DAVE: we can just dick around in space for near-eternity waiting to catch up to our friends who may or may not be our enemies now and itll be fine DAVE: i mean no itll be categorically miserable DAVE: but well survive it KARKAT: HOLD THE FUCK ON. DAVE: but you KARKAT: DAVE. DAVE: no lemme say this

Oh god damnit.  Karkat’s limited lifespan.  As if we hadn’t ALREADY covered a nauseatingly extensive gamut of disheartening topics of conversation.  We really have to confront every shred of misery in their past, present and future one after the other after the other in the Epilogues and HS2, don’t we?  >:(

I guess it had to be discussed, though.

DAVE: we dont talk about it much and i got shit to say about it DAVE: its not like i never thought about how youre mortal before but i just thought wed be able to figure it out before it mattered DAVE: come up with some kind of plan DAVE: i was just distracted being happy with you i fucking guess and so i didnt think up a way to fix it DAVE: and now thanks to dirk we have to work it out right the fuck now DAVE: because i cant spend this trip just sitting around watching you get old and die

Jesus.  I mean, WE know(?) that it’s not gonna be THAT many years, but THEY don’t know that.

Unless it really IS going to be that many years and HS2 is going to shamelessly take a fucking sledgehammer to our feelings for no goddamn good reason.  Which it won’t!  Right???  >:T

> ==>

Dishwasher ding

> Dave: Grapple with the clean, soggy consequences of the passage of time.

Hey, don’t make it a metaphor here. --though, fuck.  I suppose we are dealing with everyones dirty laundry.  God damnit.  SURE, deal with it all story but then GET IT OUT OF THE WAY AND PUT SOME SERIOUS FUN AND LAUGHS IN HERE so we don’t feel like we’re wading through an entire garbage dump!!!  *click*

Karkat’s eyebrows-only mouthless frown is really cute.

> ==>

okay Karkat explain the nope you’re lodging

> ==>

*put*

> ==>

*foot*

> ==>

DAVE: ok go on

I mean I at least appreciate the time investment in adorable boyfriends.  That’s definitely something of SOME good value they’re giving us in exchange for this misery

> ==>

That Karkat image makes me wanna do that red-shaky-gif-thing with it

KARKAT: IT'S NOT LIKE I'M NEW TO THE PARTICULAR MOOBEAST WRANGLING EVENT OF SOMEONE I PREVIOUSLY LOVED BRUTALLY TURNING ON ME AND LEAVING ME TO TRY AND CRAM MY FEELINGS ABOUT THE SITUATION BACK TOGETHER ALL ON MY OWN.

True

KARKAT: HE DID THAT ON HIS OWN. AND WE MADE THE CHOICE TO GO AFTER HIM ON OUR OWN.

Yes, and you’ll possibly convince him more of that over time, though not in this short conversation

KARKAT: I WAS FOLLOWING YOUR LITTLE TRAIL OF COOKIE CRUMB FEARS UNTIL IT LEAD TO THE BIG SNACK FINALE OF WORRY ABOUT MY FRAGILE MORTAL MEATSACK. KARKAT: IF I HAVE SOMEHOW NOT BEEN CLEAR ABOUT THIS WITH YOU YET, LET ME GO AHEAD AND RECTIFY THE SITUATION RIGHT THE FUCK NOW. KARKAT: HANGING OUT WITH YOU ON THIS LONG TRIP TO WHO THE SHITTING FUCK KNOWS WHERE IS QUITE LITERALLY THE HAPPIEST I HAVE EVER BEEN IN MY ENTIRE MEAGER EXISTENCE. KARKAT: I'M SO ABSOLUTELY BLISSED THE FUCK OUT OF MY MIND TO BE ABLE TO LOOK AT YOUR STUPID IMMORTALLY SMOOTH HUMAN FACE SKIN EVERY DAY AND NOT HAVE A COMPLEX ABOUT IT.

D’AWWW

And with that darkly angry expression too, that’s PERFECT

I mean it’s true.  What exactly would they be doing DIFFERENTLY on Earth C other than enjoying each other like this?  It’s pretty fucking great.

...hm.  Isn’t this journey-not-the-destination stuff pretty Breathy?  Karkat’s proving more balanced by the moment.

KARKAT: AND I'LL BE STRAIGHT WITH YOU. IT'S NOT LIKE I HAVEN'T BEEN EXPERIENCING SOME COMPLICATED GUILT, MYSELF. KARKAT: THE FACT THAT I'M HAVING THE TIME OF MY LIFE JUST FUCKING CHILLAXING AND BEING IN LOVE IN SPACE IS A CLEARLY INCONGRUOUS WITH THE REASON I'M ACTUALLY HERE CHILLAXING TO BEGIN WITH, AND I'M NOT LETTING MYSELF FORGET THAT, EITHER.

Pff.  He feels guilty for ENJOYING IT so much.  <3

KARKAT: BUT I RESENT THE IMPLICATION THAT MY HAPPINESS IS REGISTERING FOR YOU AS YOU HAVING TO JUST "SIT AROUND AND WATCH ME GET OLD," BECAUSE I KNOW YOU KNOW IT'S MORE THAN THAT.

I’m glad Karkat knows that DAVE knows somewhere in him that it’s more than that, because yeah, if Karkat thought he DIDN’T know that at some level that’d be a reason to take MUCH MORE SERIOUS offense.

KARKAT: LIKE, JESUS, DAVE. YOU KNOW I'M AFRAID FOR YOU, TOO, RIGHT? KARKAT: OR DID YOU FORGET THE WHOLE HEROIC DEATH THING? KARKAT: I WORRY ABOUT LOSING YOU FAIRLY FUCKING REGULARLY.

Hah!!!  Point taken.  Karkat must view Dave as practically more fragile than HIM.

KARKAT: ONE: WE'VE BEEN THROUGH SO MUCH HELLACIOUS PANWARPING TRAUMA THAT I REFUSE TO NOT ENJOY THIS SHIT WHEN I FINALLY FUCKING GET IT, NO MATTER HOW LONG IT MAY OR MAY NOT LAST. KARKAT: TWO: IT'S NOT LIKE WE'RE DOING NOTHING. WE’RE MOVING. WE’RE WORKING. WE’RE HEADED SPECIFICALLY TO A PLACE WHERE WE WILL UNDOUBTLEDLY ENDURE YET MORE FUCKING HELLACIOUS PANWARPING TRAUMA. KARKAT: AND THREE: WE'RE DOING THAT BECAUSE WE HAVE FRIENDS WHO WE CARE ABOUT THAT NEED US. THAT IS OUR FOCUS, HERE. NOT OUR FEAR. IT'S ABOUT THE PEOPLE WE HAVE TO SAVE. KARKAT: SO DON'T FUCKING WORRY ABOUT ME, DAVE. I'M FINE.

Okay, this is great and wholesome.  I am now retroactively GLAD that this topic got brought up.  :)

> ==>

Dave is still afraid. There is a part of him that will always be, he thinks. He has accepted this about himself. There is another feeling coursing through him too, though. It’s something he's felt before, though never quite so intensely. He looks up at Karkat and understands, viscerally, the simple power his words have. They pump through Dave’s own body, alive and warm and true.

He wonders if Karkat realizes it, or if he’s just, as always, saying what he feels as he feels it. Dave doesn’t attempt to dissect it further. There will be time for that later.

Every really loving moment like this is sort of undercut by the fact that it’s also, in some senses, part of alt!Calliope’s narration and, by extension, her fanfiction.

EDIT 2: There's also either a hint to potential Blood powers or even an explicit Blood power use here that I didn't recognize. I'm leaning towards it's-laying-the-groundwork-for-future-use-of-Blood-powers-but-isnt-magical-in-this-case.

> ==>

Smooooch!

That was nice.  Still gonna wait on doing any commentary til next time or a Bonus update or two, cause I’m beat.  See y’all next time!

[dahniwitchoflight]

fucking, god, he called his ship Theseus. Oh god im not ready to face this epilogue stuff in actual visual form oh jeesus

Dirk, Dirk pls. no one can take you seriously now that we can actually SEE your Villain-Sona. 

oh god, the second hand embarassment is real.

Alright so there seems to be like, a tinge of Rose existing as her own person, doing things that Dirk dislikes, but its in conversation only, so it seems facetious.

The other true thing though is the narrative is entirely Dirk’s perspective, and Dirk is exactly the kind of person who would absolutely love and believe he was capable of subsuming another person’s soul and idealogy entirely, but we went through this deceit in the epilogues with John and Roxy as well, with John’s unquetionaing hold on reality and what is canon also seeming to have an unconcious warping effect to whatever John thought was important, but Roxy gave a good point of how do you even know you did this and i didn’t choose it or wouldnt have chose it? you dont

So we could see that being repeated here, either as a parallel of that or a subversion, remains to be seen

“ Speaking of which, I think it's time I started undoing some of the more egregious mistakes this story has been subjected to over the years. Yes, I'm talking about that guy. The other orange one. Remember him? Vriska got stalked by him a bit and it was uncomfortable for everyone concerned. Anyway, the point is that he fucked up big time, and I'm here to clean up the horseshit. It's time to get this story back on the rails, back to what it was always supposed to be. I know it, and you've somehow always known it too. There was something else, some other route that Homestuck was meant to take but then didn't, a way that wouldn't've spent so much time dicking around with stuff nobody cares about. Like seriously, why did we all have to sit through talking about everyone's most intimate and private feelings for two hundred thousand fucking words. That would never have happened in Act 1. Where did it all go wrong? “

lol the andrew hussie is peeking through a bit here, so Homestuck2 is gonna be the exact thing I figured a sequel would be, its going to be a sort of retelling of the story, but its gonna flip the importance for certain things in the opposite directions, so right here its saying Homestuck is a story with a layer of importance on the characters themselves and their mindsets and how they lived in the environment they found themselves in, with the lore and the conceit of the story being a huge creation story more of a backdrop than the focus

so Homestuck2 is going to be a more "creation story” focused more on the sburb lore, buts its going to have less of a focus on the characters (perhaps even to the detrimnet? maybe characters will seem strange and out of character? but he kinda already made that feeling i the audience with the epilogues, thats what that intended effect was)

and neither one i think will turn out to better or worse than the others, theres definitely going to be benefit and downsides for both, but its not hard to see that Homestuck1 is the story that Hussie wanted to Tell, and Homestuck2 is how he’s changing it and telling a different story than he originally would have in the first place

not that hes changing Homestucks orignal story at all, but now hes telling a decidedly different one

Thus far, even though I understand Dirk’s basic mindset being “Hussie’s story sucks im gonna tell a BETTER one” and deciding that he alones gets to decide others will is unquestionably villainous train of thought, like why cant we let the characters just decide for themselves what kind of story they wanted to have and be genuine..

I AM dying of curiosity to see what sort of lore and information were going to get out of this, especially with the twist of that sort of focus being brought more into view, it’s a tantalizing glimpse of something very sexy that im into...

WORLDBUILDING :p

The World of Homestuck to me, HAS always been more infinitely exciting and interesting to me than the characters themselves, even though i liked them fine, they werent the reason why i kept reading the story for sure

Anything little thing we get about sburb or the world system out of this im happy with, regardless of what happens to the characters

(Would that be considered a villainous mindset if I was in canon? maybe ^^; good thing im not lol it does give off very “evil mad scientist morally corrupt experiments” kind of vibe lolol)

“ Look, I know what you're all really craving. I've been studying canon—or rather, what's left of it—and I think I've found it. The critical moment, in the wake of which everything started to take a nosedive into the protracted, endless slog of sheer insufferability we got saddled with near the end. This was the single most crucial error in the process that led to the present situation. The day when the story was wrested screaming from the arms of its readers like a bawling infant and carried helplessly away, from then on to be raised according to the whims of a masochistic menace with no thought for you, the common fan. “

I do have to laugh at this though, because your not wrong??? but also, it was inevitable that a story that started out like homestuck and was written like homestuck and ended like homestuck would inevitably turn out the way it did

it was a communal product of the screaming masses that turned into a singular mans story, it was unfortunately going to lose something to everyone, because everyones ideas couldnt all coexist in one canon at the same time (thats what outside of canon is for)

and then Dirk does something I DIDNT expect him to do

“Channelling my full potential as an ascended player of Heart, I expand my consciousness to commune with the boundless force of collective willpower that is the internet. My mind floods with its divine potency, a million formless cries coalescing into a sequence of discrete, formal instructions. It is a maelstrom as chaotic as it is deafening. And yet from this formless, uninterrupted spate of hard, unembellished data, a single suggestion takes form, as if bubbling up from a vast, infinite ocean of possibility. It is a whispered prayer to a compassionate god whose ear attends faithfully the will of his believers.Ok, let's see what you chucklefucks came up with.“

instead of entirely subsuming other’s will like a villain would, he has instead opened up his heart and conciousness to absorb the ideas, suggestions and wills of the masses, he is literally trying to bring back the act1 flavor of homestuck by taking suggestions, be he is ironically doing something no different than hussie did by curating and choosing which one to respond to

hah! he really does think he is the hero of this universe with Hussie as some sort of villain. 

So Hussie has probably intentionally curated this idea of himself as “Author Villain” who drives the story seemingly into mud by seeming to reject and upend the audiences expectation rather than curate them and bringing forth the best out, 

this happens with the epilogues undoubtedly, 

and this environment has gown a character from inside the story to step out and try to “oust” him from this position and instead tell a “good” story one that “everyone” wants, but is in fact detrimental to the story and world that the characters inside it themselves wants, which is was Hussie curated the whims to in the epilogues instead of the audience

So maybe this will be a “good” story, and hit all the marks for what the audience wanted originally, but there is no benevolent force to make sure a happy ending exists for any of the characters inside of it, because what the characters want doesnt matter anymore, only the lore does

[candytuftgirl]

Somnia

A Secret Santa fic for Amylion! (My dumbass couldnt find your tumblr ashfg).

I hereby present this... mess. Probably not what you were asking for (definitely not; Im so sorry I just realized I didnt use the prompts they were going to come up later on RIP) and maybe a tinsy bit cringe-worthy.  There was supposed to be more, but yeah; here’s some good-natured kid Leia and Dad Vader, with a pinch of prophetic dreams for zest.

Well, I tried. 

(Also, this one shot was not beta’ed, I die like the horrible mess of a writer I am)

The hallways are dark.

The shadows that surround a few illuminated viewports create frightening monsters, if one had the right imagination for it. What was worse was that she was alone. There were no droids, white masks or suit-people in sight.

If she were younger, maybe she’d ask a droid to accompany her on this late night journey. But no; she was a big girl now (Seven! That was two fingers more than a whole hand) and besides, her daddy didn’t really like them much.

He didn’t like a lot of things, but there were some he disliked more than others. And she noticed, which was why she was walking alone, in the dark, the metal caging her in from the side. And she’s not scared. Not at all.

Still, if she squeezes Mr. Catty just a bit too tight that was just because he was shivering so much.

The big silver doors are in view soon enough, and she shuffles a bit faster when she notices them. It doesn’t even take a moment before they silently open. She walks in, the doors close and the familiar whirring noise echoes all around her.

“Leia.” Her daddy steps out of the dark, his breathing machine the only constant source of sound in the room. He’s tall, dark and shiny- just like he was when he put her to bed. It calms her; and Mr. Catty.

He absently waves a finger, turning the lights on as he steps closer to her small form. “Angel, what’s wrong?”

She doesn’t answer. Instead she walks over with her bare feet (she was going to get a scolding for that for sure), Mr. Catty firmly in hand and looks up at her father’s dark mask. The staring only lasts a moment.

There’s a small hitch in the constant whirring noise, like an exhausted little sound, and her father firmly picks her up and sits himself down on a nearby chair. She’s on his knee, one black gloved arm still around her while she makes herself comfortable, and now it’s just her father’s strange mask that stares down at her.

Leia doesn’t hesitate. “I had a strange dream daddy.”

She didn’t dream often, but when she did, she always dreamed of strange things. A cave filled with crystals, shining so brightly she swore she heard them sing. An underwater city, beautiful; but there were fish people standing on top of buildings, crying, screaming: “Traitor, traitor!”.

A moon made out of metal, with a heart that screeched in pain.

Everyone always said her dreams were silly, and she was making too much of a fuss about them. Overactive imagination, her retelling a version of a story she read somewhere; one suit-man even accused her of lying once! The more she talked about them, the less everyone who heard them believed her.

Sometimes, Leia thought that if it weren’t for her daddy, their gentle reprimands would turn scathing.  

She knew she shouldn’t have shared her dreams, knew most never believed her, but she couldn’t help herself; they all felt so real to her in a way. Why couldn’t other people understand that?

She knew better now. All the droids and suit-people dismissed her worries so she dismissed them as well; except for her daddy.

He never said she was making things up, and he always listened.

“It was a dry place.” Leia began, fumbling with Mr.Catty’s stuffed legs. She tried to remember. “Like, really dry. Everything was orange and the ground was bright and smooth; with all these little pebbles on them.” She shook her head lightly. “Oh no, they were even smaller than that: tiny, little pebbles. And there were no trees, or rivers, or-“

“A desert.” Her father stated, quickly cutting off her rambling. “You were dreaming of a desert.”

She scrunched her little button nose up at him. “A desert? Like, dessert?”

“No. A desert is a barren wasteland, largely inhospitable, dry and covered in sand; the tiny pebbles.” He explained, and she files away this new revelation in her mind. “I believe the chocolate waffles you had for breakfast this morning don’t fit the same description.”

Uh-oh. She cringed, fumbling her fingers around her stuffed toy. “Oh- you know about that?”

So she might have eaten sweets for breakfast this morning. Really, though, it hadn’t been her fault! She was alone with the droid in the kitchen, and it did ask her what she wanted for breakfast. And she really didn’t want to eat porridge filled with fruits, vitamins and all the “healthy necessities her body required to grow”. Besides, she was sure chocolate waffles made her grow more than that mush anyway.

“We will discuss your punishment tomorrow.” Leia made a face at that; she really didn’t want to scrub her room clean. Again. Her father’s mask turned towards her wriggling feet. “Where are your socks?”

“-So anyway.” She continued undeterred. “I was in a desert. But I wasn’t alone. There was a boy there too.”

Her father straightened a bit more at that. He always did, whenever she dreamed of someone. “What kind of boy?”

She shrugged. “A boy. I guess he was like me- except, well, he’s a boy.” Leia thought about him for a bit; the boy that inexplicably drew her attention more than any scary dream ever had. “He was blonde, with blue eyes- and his clothes were too big.”

She furrowed her eyebrows in concentration, trying to recall the image of a boy in large white sleeves chasing furry creatures across the ground. “He was kinda scruffy looking.”

“Language.” Her father quietly added, though it was more of an automatic response than anything. “Is that all?”

“Umm, he was chasing some weird rat; I guess he was playing a game and-“

“I mean, was there anyone else in the dream?”

Leia shook her head, expression serious as she looked up at her daddy. With her chubby cheeks and button nose, she looked far too adorable to emulate any kind of sobering face but that hardly stopped her from trying. Like a little queen waiting for her adviser’s opinion, she stared at her father while he thought about her dream.

Her father’s mask stared off in a vague direction, head tilted as he considered what she said. The longer he remained in that position, the more Leia’s heartbeat echoed in her head. This is important then. Daddy must think so too.

It didn’t scare her; it made her strangely giddy. Like that boy was a puzzle piece, something she unknowingly needed to complete the distorted picture in her life.

“It’s nothing like your… usual visions.” His rough voice brought her back from her daydreams. Black mask meeting her large chocolate eyes, her father stated his final judgment. “No. I do not believe it really means anything, angel. Maybe it really was just a dream.”

Mr.Catty made a straining nose from the pressure of her tiny fingers.

In hindsight, this information was wonderful. She often came to her father, crying her eyes out because she hated all the scary dreams she was having, and she didn’t want them anymore. The fact that this dream might have been just that; a dream, not a nightmare, not reality…

Leia hated it.

“No daddy!” She yelled suddenly, wiggling free and sliding down to the floor. It caught her father off guard, too surprised to stop her.

With red cheeks she stared up at him, and all his black glory. “He was real. I know he was.”

“Leia…”

“No!” She threw Mr. Catty to the floor, angry tears appearing in her narrowed eyes. “You think I’m making things up! Like everyone else!”

“Leia.”

Her father got up, voice cold as the atmosphere in the room shifted. No longer approachable, but massive; He stared down at her in the oppressive silence, hands on his hips, looking like a mountain that would break the earth before it would bend.

A scary sight, one that many feared. Leia was no match for that; small, with her chin trembling, and wet, sloppy tears already rolling down her cheeks. She couldn’t even compare.

Still, she refused to back down.

She knew her daddy was angry, and he was probably going to be even angrier the more she continued this staring contest; but- I’m angry too!

After all, out of all the people in her life, it was her father who was supposed to believe her no matter what. The fact that he didn’t, that he thought it was all a dream…

That hurt her.

The staring continued. The tension rose. Before she knew it, the temperature in the room dropped some more. She vaguely wondered if she was going to freeze up. Like those poor people in the vacuum of space, ones that fell under fire and drifted out of reach into an asteroid field. No one went back for them. Nobody even tried.

Would her father leave her like that, all alone? Here in this room, like a sculpture? Would she be able to see? Move? Become a statue for eternity?

It was a daunting thought, the coldness seeping through her jammies and into her skin now. She couldn’t stop shaking; the fear was swallowing her, but she wouldn’t-

It wasn’t until she glanced at Mr. Catty laying on the floor that realization set it and the fear stilled. Eyes straying away from the black void of her father, she took a few steps to her fallen toy, the coldness subsiding as well.

Gingerly picking him up, she muttered a quick apology to her favorite friend, facing her father as the tears roamed unchecked now.

“I-I’m sorry Daddy…” The hiccuping made it harder to speak. “But, but-“

She was full on sobbing now, and just like that, the atmosphere in the room shifted back to normal. The coldness subsided, the warmth came back and she couldn’t stop crying.

Her father made that whirring exhausted little noise, before slowly bending his knees in a crouch so they were more at eye level (Leia didn’t like how he towered over her so much, so piggybacks were still an often occasion).

It was a bit comical to see her tall and menacing father lost as to what to do, his tiny daughter shaking and desperately trying to rub away all the evidence of her uncontrollable tears.

“Oh no, angel not your-“ The warning was too late, as she blew her nose into her sleeves. They were icky already, but she kept smearing her tears in them. Her father quickly battered her attempts away. He looked around, his shoulders slumping some more. 

Soon enough, she was blowing into a soft and leathery like material; her father sacrificing his shiny black gloves, gently wiping away the grime and the snot from her small face.

He was probably going to make that sad little whirring noise about that later, but for now, he remained composed.

“Calm down, angel.” He spoke as gently as he could with his distorted voice, his own version of Sssh, sssh- don’t cry now. 

“I’m sorry, daddy.” Leia stared at his black, droid like mask with her puffy eyes. She made a few more hiccuping noises, before croaking out the truth she knew in her heart. “But… but he’s important.”

“The boy from your dream?” She nodded. “How so?”

“Be-because!” She wiped the remains of her tears away, frantically trying to explain to her father the underlining importance of it all. It was so clear to her, didn’t he understand? “I saw him, daddy. I saw him jump around rocks, kick rats; fix- or maybe he was breaking- droids-!“

Another memory appeared in her head, one that makes her smile. “And he stares at the sunset daddy! Like you stare out the viewport. He must be real.”

This knowledge didn’t seem to appease her father; if anything, it seemed to do the opposite. The coldness in the room came back with alarming ferocity, before it changed into something incredibly hot, like a blazing sun- and then she could breathe again.

Her father’s shoulders slumped lightly, before he started to reach out his hand to her. He stopped, probably remembering the sobbing incident, and pried his gloves off, gently laying his hands down on her small shoulders. Leia tried her best to not shiver from the cold metal prosthetics. They glinted in the light, fake fingers squeezing her softly.

(Once, a long time ago, when she was still curious about her father’s strange suit, she had asked him if he was a droid. She couldn’t see it, but she just knew her daddy became very sad, and she instantly felt bad about it.

“No, not completely” he said.

She never asked again.)

“Leia.” He had her complete undivided attention. “The dream you had was real. But it was only a vision of the past.”

“The past?” She repeated, blinking as her father retracted his hands from her. But that would mean… “Really?”

“Really.”

The boy she dreamed about was real, as real as her heart in her chest. But it was a boy from before, not now. A boy from the past.

She felt an uncomfortable weight settle inside her.

“How do you know?” It couldn’t be true- the boy she saw was here, now, like she was- and he was important. She just knew it. “Did you… know him?”

“Once.” Her father looked away, like when he looked through viewports at the stars; like the boy. “I knew him, once.”

Her father was many things, but he wasn’t a liar.

She sagged with that newfound knowledge, tired and sad all at once, Mr.Catty limp in her hold. A boy from the past- it hurt her in a way she couldn’t explain, like a goal she could see as plain as day evaporated just beyond her reach. He had seemed so real (was he still real?), and now…

Just a boy from before. It felt like the truth.

And yet, there was still a part of her that believed differently.

There was shuffling in the background, her father’s loud stomps echoing in the room. Looking up, she saw him searching for something in his sleek metal closet. He only had one in his room.

Or was it an office- that term would perhaps better serve to describe his room (he didn’t even have a bed; sometimes Leia thought the plush chairs and sofa were there only for her benefit).

Most would have called it an office- if it wasn’t for the large bacta tank standing at the other end.

She opened her mouth when he walked back to her, but he stopped her new bouts of questions by deftly picking her up- new and shiny, clean black gloves in place.

“Enough. It’s late.” That was his order-voice now. The one that didn’t allow protests. She slumped a little in his hold.

The walk back through the shadowed corridors wasn’t as scary as before, and Leia rested her cheek on her father’s broad shoulder as he swallowed the distance between their rooms in short time.

He put her back to bed, exchanging her star shirt for a clean one with lothcats, and tucked her in. Opening her closet, he made sure to look inside before closing it again. A nightly ritual for checking monsters. No matter how many times he assured her that there was nothing scarier than him around, Leia insisted. That late-night holo she saw still made her shiver.

Besides, her daddy wasn’t that scary.

Smoothing down the hair on her head, Mr.Catty snuggled up beside her, he straightened and pointed a finger at her in warning (like he did at the suit-people, though his voice wasn’t so cold): “Now, sleep.”

He left. She shifted to find a more comfortable position, obeying the silent order and closing her eyes. Before drifting off, she repeated the words she knew rang true in her head; her heart.

The boy is real. Like me. I know it.