#theme: found families

[aftgficrec]

Literally anything and everything written by bazookajo94 -  they write the funniest and most chaotic aftg fics

As you can see from the long list of their fics that we’ve previously rec’ed, we completely agree with you! - S

previously recommended:

‘stab me yourself u coward’ here

‘survive the night’ here

‘tit for tat’ here

‘definitely something’ here

‘eat the rich’ here

‘prove your love’ here

‘all that i’ve been dreaming of’ here

‘last piece of gold’ here

‘long journey home’ here

‘the prettiest blue’ here

‘dirty little secret’ series here

‘what’s yours is mine’ and ‘Crazy Rich Neil’ here

‘Go Team!’ here

‘we were together’ series here

‘most likely to commit crimes’ here

‘give or take’ here

‘cone sold stober’ here

‘spooky scary’ here

Here’s one that hasn’t appeared on our blog yet:

in another life by bazookajo94 [Rated T, 11506 words, complete, 2022]

Dear Andrew Doe,

I am not picking one of the pen pals that’s in California or whatever. I am going to write a fake name and a fake address and send this letter to a fake person. The teacher won’t let me leave until I send this to someone.

Bye

Alex

*

Neil Josten sent fake letters to Andrew Doe for years, thinking they disappeared into the void.

Andrew Minyard received every single one.

tw: implied/referenced torture

[riddlerosehearts]

thinking about how people who watch the emperor's new groove and somehow come out of it shipping pacha and kuzco, or thinking yzma only became evil when kuzco fired her and that she would've been a better ruler than him, are both so wrong in so many different ways and are also missing one of the things that i absolutely love about the movie. which is that, the way i see it, pacha and yzma are counterparts. as parental figures to kuzco.

like, just to get this out of the way first, yzma was a dismissive asshole to a peasant whose family was starving. and yeah, if kuzco had been in her place he definitely would've also done that, which... is why she would not be a better ruler than him. she'd just be the same because they're both horrible people in the exact same ways. her reaction to being fired is to plot murder, and as soon as his funeral is over she sets everyone to work on replacing paintings of kuzco with paintings of herself and covering the palace with imagery that makes it clear that it's all about her now. i'm not even sure why this is a discussion tbh.

and also, kuzco is literally a teenager. he's barely 18 years old. source: in the movie, yzma says at his funeral that kuzco was "taken from us so tragically on the very eve of his eighteenth birthday." she also claims in the movie to have "practically raised" him, to which kronk replies "yeah, you'd think he would've turned out better". and sure, she could be exaggerating, but what evidence do we have that she is? we learn absolutely nothing of his parents, who are never mentioned even once in the movie, or of anyone else who could've raised him, and she's his advisor who for some reason sees no problem with attending to royal duties in his place. most likely because she's his regent. also, i'm not exactly a fan of the sequel tv series "the emperor's new school" but it does have something that backs up my point: kuzco is revealed to be an orphan and just before his father went and got lost at sea, he asked yzma (who was also his advisor) to take care of kuzco if anything happened to him. so, yeah, the writers who worked on the series clearly thought that yzma genuinely did raise kuzco, and nothing in the movie contradicts this.

and i find the idea of her being his only parental figure for pretty much his whole childhood incredibly interesting because, and this also goes back into why she wouldn't be a better ruler than him--she mirrors him as a reflection of what would've become of him if he'd never met pacha. they're both incredibly arrogant, power-hungry, selfish, and cruel, with a tendency to blame their problems on everyone but themselves. yzma was even originally going to have her own reprise of kuzco's theme song "perfect world", which i really wish had been kept:

[ID: Lyrics that read:

I'Il be the sovereign queen of the nation And the chicest chick in creation I'm the cat with all the cream and ooh-la-la This deadly concentration Will put an end to my frustration Now this perfect world begins and ends with moi

What's my name? Yzma, Yzma, Yzma Yzma (what's my name?) Yzma, Yzma (What'd you say?) Yzma (Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!) Yzma. End ID]

(this song can be fully heard in "the sweatbox", the documentary about the making of the movie, and is also on youtube btw)

anyway, i'm sure yzma would not exactly have been the most nurturing or hands-on guardian, especially given that she and kuzco don't exactly treat each other like family. but it makes a lot of sense to think that her behavior influened kuzco's throughout the years. and for the entire movie, she remains determined to kill him. when he tries to reason with her and admits that he should've been nicer, she says the same thing to him that he originally said when he fired her. she never grows or changes and in the end, she hurts the one person who was willing to stand by her (and even then, kronk had never fully been on board with her plan) and he ends up trying to crush her with a chandelier. kuzco on the other hand is able to realize the error of his ways, come to regret who he was in the past, and start taking steps toward being a better person. his theme song gets a reprise where it's changed from a song about one person being the center of the world to a Power Of Friendship song. why? because, as i've already mentioned, he has pacha.

pacha, who similarly to both yzma and kuzco is in a position of authority as the leader of the village but unlike either of them is gentle and humble. who isn't afraid to stand up to kuzco and be honest with him even though he's the emperor, who agrees to take him back to the palace but has no obligation to be so helpful, kind, and caring toward him--and just about every reason not to be--and still chooses to be anyway. pacha who is 45 years old (also stated in the sweatbox documentary) and can see that kuzco is practically still a kid, not a single day over 18, who has time to grow and change. pacha, who already has a wife and two kids with another on the way, but practically treats kuzco like one of his own. who acknowledges that if kuzco dies all his problems will be gone and then still worries about him and goes out of his way to rescue him after he wanders into the jungle. who sees kuzco shivering at night and covers him with his poncho, who carries him when he's genuinely too weak to keep walking, who refuses to give up on him even after repeatedly being betrayed by him because he believes there's good in everyone.

also, while yzma ends up repeating kuzco's harsh words of dismissal as she tells him of her plans to kill him, kuzco had previously repeated pacha's words that "nobody's that heartless" after he saved pacha's life. and as the movie progresses kuzco and pacha's relationship becomes more and more equal and is constantly contrasted by moments of yzma being cruel and unappreciative of kronk's kindness. a good example of this is how kronk is constantly being forced to carry yzma everywhere on his back while yzma literally walks all over him and steps on his hands when she gets down, whereas when pacha briefly carries kuzco after the latter collapses he tells him he'll have to walk the rest of the way later and kuzco doesn't even protest.

idk if i'm even explaining well what i'm trying to say here. but basically, if yzma actually raised kuzco and contributed to his current behavior, then she and pacha both are figures who guided him and helped him grow. only yzma helped him become the tyrant that he was at the start of the movie, who was selfish and callous and saw everyone else as beneath him. whereas pacha helped him see the value in being selfless and considerate of others. and in the end, yzma is stuck as a cat and nobody is concerned about her. kronk has found a new job that makes him genuinely happy, while kuzco has decided to build a hut on the hill next to pacha's and effectively joined his family. in the sweatbox documentary it's even mentioned that chicha and the kids were at risk of being removed from the film, but it was decided that they needed to be there because having just pacha as a single guy who lived alone wasn't interesting enough--kuzco needed to go from having basically an empty world where he had nobody to being able to come together with pacha's whole family. and i just think that's incredibly satisfying and beautiful. it also leads up to one of the few things i really do enjoy about the emperor's new school, which is the fact that during the show kuzco moves in with pacha and chicha and pretty explicitly thinks of them as basically his parents while he's like a son to them.

idk. i feel like my mind went in a million different directions while i was writing all this. but i guess i just think that for all of the praise the emperor's new groove gets for its comedy and for how hilarious yzma and kronk in particular are as a duo, the movie also has a lot of genuine heart that gets overlooked. kuzco's character growth and his unique dynamic with pacha is, for me, really what elevates the movie from just a funny movie that i like to one of my favorite disney movies. and i wish more people appreciated that aspect of it and saw it as a found family story in the same way that treasure planet, brother bear, and lilo and stitch are all found family stories.

[stewyhosseini-bf]

[beskarfrog]

its not like me to dream about the impossible, but you've always brought that out in me

[destinywillowleaf]

one of a kind living in a world gone plastic

baby you're so classic

@most-tragic-character-tournament

(all my thoughts in the tags)

[thunderflowerssupremacy0]

When i heard that tim drake had a new superhero persona i tough "finally he's moving on", when i heard it was "drake" i got excited.

I was expecting tim to be a dragon themed hero, i was not expecting tim being a duck themed superhero.

What is was expecting / What i got

[outer-stars]

the TOH finale had me thinking about The Hardest Thing so

And a close-up on some details ^^

[fourth-dimensional-thinker]

Back to the Future + excerpts from "Keeping Up With Teen-Agers"

[caluupin]

Finished TGAAC around 2 1/2 weeks ago but only finished the doodles today. but still, here ya go!

[zeravmeta]

an incredibly underrated dynamic in one piece in relation to its themes of found family is luffy and jinbe specifically because one piece heavily emphasizes the importance of how blood doesnt define your family and that you fully choose it but luffy and jinbe literally shared blood and became that family. and more than anything a large defining aspect of impel down and marineford is how luffy was entirely on his own in the world with ace specifically mentioned by jinbe himself as the guiding light luffy followed as a pirate and how this entire saga starts with ace asking jinbe to protect his brother and is book-ended with jinbe becoming a guiding light to luffy in the same way to help keep him on his path as a pirate and honestly much like how wano is a complete representation of luffy inheriting ace's will to save the people he'd left promised to save one day there is also jinbe inheriting ace's will of a big brother who cares for and protects his little brother. luffy and ace may not have shared blood but they were always brothers and just like whitebeard said it doesnt matter if you extinguish a bloodline you cannot extinguish what it represented or the will it left behind and then this is brought full circle in fishman island with generations of bloodshed being tackled not with grand idealism but the act of saving one another by sharing blood. luffy ace and sabo shared a sake cup to christen themselves as brothers and jinbe in this moment of sharing his blood with luffy, completely spitting in the face of generations of prejudice, fear and hatred, also became his brother.

[iridescentscarecrow]

continuing my thought on family but the hayakawa family is interesting because it's so fundamentally astructural and the description of it in nuclear family terms is one imposed by makima, as a part of the greater struggle with structure and the alienation of self that living within a structure entails. a theme that forms a major stem of csm. but in reality, the hayakawa family is Messy. they have blurred roles, forming relationships that are founded on different kinds of intimacy, intimacy that resists definition and challenges structurally informed depictions of what and How relationships are meant to work and what labels one can give them under a capitalist regime;

which is why i find it so bewilderingly hilarious when sections of the fandom source from makima's terms to Define this atypical found family for themselves. it's actually ironic.

[steddieunderdogfics]

Not Exactly Napa Valley by twiceasfar

Rating: Mature

28,885 words, 5/5 chapters

Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply

Tags: Fake/Pretend Relationship, Friends to Lovers, Period-Typical Homophobia, Platonic Soulmates, Absent Parents, Robin Buckley & Steve Harrington Friendship, Past Steve Harrington/Nancy Wheeler, Steve Harrington Has Bad Parents, Eddie Munson Lives, Family Video (Stranger Things), Mechanic Eddie Munson, Eventual Happy Ending, Eventual Romance, Dungeons & Dragons References, background ronance, Complete, Mild Smut, Love Confessions, Found Family

Summary:

The fake relationship AU that literally no one asked for. Featuring Steve and Robin as platonic soulmates, a destination wedding to a winery, and a thrilling quest to piss off Steve’s parents. Robin lets out an exasperated sigh. “Eddie would be the perfect date for the wedding!” Steve freezes. “Whose wedding?” Eddie asks.

Thanks for the rec!

This rec is a part of Theme Weekend. The theme this weekend is FAKE DATING.

Know a fic that deserves extra love? Submit through our asks or the submission box!

[thesmpisonfire]

Smth smth Cellbit taking Richa to paint together with Maxo, saying how even if Trump is dead, Maxo is still his dad so Maxo being there helps to fulfill Richas' quest. They're family.

[luck-of-the-drawings]

(OLD OC SKETCHES) Meet Sunnabelle Von Sunnoviche, final daughter of the Sunnoviche family. Peeking from behind a window, she witnessed a wizards final spell, one that reduced the world to a wasteland. Her noble blood damned her to [HELL], but unwanting to suffer with her family, she made a deal with the devil. She now hunts in his name. The top of her head was taken by the blast on that day. The fires of her spirit have boiled her blood into a super-heated plasma.

[dragonsarecats]

To be fair CF is just as much about found family than VW

Hi anon! I'm gonna link the post I talked about the Golden Deer here for clarity's sake lol.

I think when discussing themes of found family in different three houses routes, it's important to talk about Byleth. In a game where the single, main variable between possible futures is Byleth's interference, it means the story has to be written in a particular way--I mentioned this before when talking about character supports and endings; each character needs to be able to have a romantic ending with Byleth, which affects how their supports are written. In the case of the Lord's, this means you're given tangible reasons why you should've chosen them.

I mean. Let's be real here. Claude has the highest survivability rate of any character in the base game. He can't die if you're completing Verdant Wind (for obvious reasons), or Blue Lions. He's heavily implied to live to see another day in Silver Snow, and you can spare him in Crimson Flower! Edelgard and Dimitri die without the professor's stabilizing influence--but Claude? What does he lose without the professor.

That's sort of how I determine subtler themes of each route in a way--by comparing what you get with and without Byleth.

So when I argue that Verdant Wind is the most about found family, I mean it thematically; the other routes don't have tangible less found family, but without Byleth members of the Golden Deer just blatantly disappear unrecruited post time skip in several routes!

Without Byleth, the option for found family is removed for Claude in a big way, I personally feel, and not just by full recruitment runs lol. Not completely, of course--even in Crimson Flower a recruited Lorenz laments having to face off against Claude and Hilda is willing to die in defense of him and the city--but enough that it was blatantly shocking to me that if you don't recruit Marianne, she does not appear at all post time skip, no exceptions.

In a narrative sense, perhaps slightly unshocking; but in a practical sense? This leaves Claude without a healer.

Claude can't hold onto all his Deer even if you don't recruit any of them in the Academy phase. Silver Snow, Azure Moon, Crimson Flower--Marianne will always be gone; consistent, non variable. Depending on the route other characters like Lorenz might disappear as well.

The themes of found family are prevalent in all the routes, but since each route is pretty much defined by the Lord who leads it, I feel as though their personal relationship with the found family is most defining, if that makes sense.

People stand by Edelgard, Dimitri, and even Rhea for better, or for worse. Even recruited, characters like Felix make it abundantly clear that switching sides doesn't change the immense emotional attachment they have to their original lord.

This just. Isn't true for Claude.

Without Byleth, he doesn't get to keep everyone together. Without Byleth Hilda is recruitable in two routes. The idea that you could ever do the same with Hubert or Dedue is blatantly laughable.

Byleth's presence is what enables Edelgard, Dimitri, and Rhea to remain the most of themselves, if that makes sense. Edelgard's war strategy in Crimson Flower is a lot less aggressive and scorched earth then it is in the other two routes because she's had the professor as an emotional rock. Similarly for Dimitri, he's able to recover because Byleth is there to keep him alive and safe. And then Rhea will blatantly die in the Verdant Wind route where she doesn't in Silver Snow. Byleth, in every sense of the word, keeps these three characters alive and well.

But without her? They still inspire loyalty and devotion--unquestionable, again, if no recruitment takes place. Dimitri, Edelgard, and Rhea can all face up against you as enemies with the full force of their houses/allies (save for, oddly, Annette).

Claude does not.

Claude's whole route is about learning to trust others in a way that allows them to trust him. The Deer are devoted to Claude in Verdant Wind in a way they just, textually aren't otherwise, and that's due to Byleth's influence, both as a Professor to these individual students, and to Claude.

When I say that Verdant Wind is the most found family thematically to me, I mean it at a very base level. Claude knows he doesn't have what Dimitri and Edelgard seem to take for granted. It seems almost effortless, in Verdant Wind, the loyalty and devotion he inspires in his friends despite how often you, as Byleth, are told that Claude appears to be an untrustworthy and sneaky individual.

But it's easy to see in routes where you don't chose him that without Byleth, that image mantains. Claude is an outsider. And maybe he doesn't need Byleth in the way the other lords do to survive or achieve his dream (after all, there's nothing saying he can't open diplomacy with his former classmates after he goes back to Almyra so long as he lives to do so), but just as Byleth is uniquely able to be a peer to the Golden Deer, so can Claude uniquely trust and gain the trust of his house in full.

It's not as dramatic as the other two houses, and I think it's the point. Edelgard and Dimitri have already built a solid foundation of devotion and loyalty. Ferdinand and Felix (your "rival" characters in those houses) are loyal without Byleth, even if Ferdinand claims it's to guide her or if Felix complains every step of the way. Lorenz isn't. In Verdant Wind, you sort of take it for granted that everyone will be there at the reunion if they survived the Academy phase. Of course they will--they promised, didn't they?

But outside Verdant Wind, it's clear to see that you as the player took it for granted. And that's why I think Verdant Wind is thematically the most found family. It's not because the other routes don't love each other as much or aren't as complex or there isn't devotion. It's because fundamentally Verdant Wind is about Claude, for the first time in his life, having a group of people he can rely on and who will rely on him without hesitation. It's about the formation of found family, and how Claude doesn't need it to achieve his dreams, but man, does it give him something to achieve those dreams for.