#these feel very vague but whatever

[jadewing-realms]

DAO brainworm can't leave me alone at work, so have some Salem/Warden headcanons:

- before he was taken away to the Circle as a child of 9, he lived in the Denerim alienage with his parents Neela and Arisfan. His first sign that he was not a normal child was at age 5, when his hair, previously black, turned silver at the roots and continued to grow that way. He also attracted static electricity to an unusual degree, constantly shocking himself and others.

- his parents tried teaching him to hide his strangeness, but when that didn't work, he was confined to his home. He didn't attend school.

- the event that led to him finally being taken to the Tower was when he had a great argument with his parents and then ran away from home. He was found by a merchant and nearly taken to be sold as a servant, but managed to summon an electric shock that left the man severely burned. He was apprehended by the Chantry that night.

- his parents never knew what happened to him, didn't know if he was alive or dead until he made himself known as the Grey Warden, hero of Ferelden, in Denerim once the Blight was defeated.

- He’s not actually super invested in saving the world, as a concept. Helping people be safe? Sure. Making sure the world doesn't end before he can experience life outside the Tower? Absolutely. Believing in the "greater good" or "being a hero"? Nah. Heroes are an idealized concept people invent in their minds to feel better about the darker side of reality.

- he's a bit of a madman when it comes to battle and bloodshed. The moment a situation is beyond reason and the blades come out, he’s known to grin, all teeth, as if delighted at the turn of events. Most find it disconcerting. Zevran thinks it’s sexy.

- he is constantly asking questions, to the point of incessance. He is deeply curious and analytical by nature, and seeks to grasp how things work, from gadgets to spells to even perspectives he disagrees with.

- it was in the Tower that he learned, through a series of crushes, that he was not only pansexual but also polyamorous. Everyone was just too pretty and interesting to imagine choosing just one. He never had any serious attachments until Zevran and Leliana, though.

- life, to Salem, is to be lived by whims. Not inconsistency, mind you. But life is too long and potential too vast to waste time doubting one's choices at every turn. Live to learn and learn to live.

- having Bodahn and Sandal in camp is not good for his purse. He doesn't make a lot of pointless purchases, but he’s not patient when it comes to getting things he wants or needs. The most frivolous things he buys are knickknacks and baubles for his personal collection (or for his crow friends) or random gifts/pranks for his companions.

- he chose to betray Jowan and inform Irving of the plot not out of loyalty to the Circle but trust of Irving's judgment. He also never thought blood magic was evil, only stupid to try it right under the Templars' noses.

- he is very bad at not burning himself out of mana. He has a flair for the dramatic and tends to prefer spells that hit hardest and cause his enemies to tremble in fear, at the expense of his own stamina. Its part of why he gets into blood magic himself - it's nice to be able to feed off the energy of his opponents rather than his alone.

- people criticize his confidence as if it were arrogance. Perhaps it is. But he doesn’t see the point of being unsure. If he's right, why should he second guess? And if he’s wrong, it's a learning opportunity. Simple as that.

- looting is a lifestyle. Never let anything go to waste. If it can't be used, it can be sold. Or thrown at someone when they're being annoying.

- off the battlefield, Salem is known as highly intelligent, extremely reasonable, and morally flippant. He has no better nature to appeal to, but if your argument is sound, he has no reason to fault you. Won't stop him from killing you if he has to, but it won't be personal.

okay, I'm draining my phone battery quickly at this point, I should stop for now

[kidfur]

one day a sinkhole formed in my backyard

it swallowed up the garage, left nothing behind

“thats normal” everyone said, “sinkholes are inevitable”

nobody seemed concerned as it grew bigger

dad just sighed and shrugged his shoulders when it ate his lawnmower

mom just sighed and shrugged her shoulders when it ate her car

it just kept growing bigger and bigger

i found myself walking outside every day just to look at it in horror

the corner of my room started sagging

my closet was the first to go

but it just kept eating

it ate my phone and my computer and my tv and my bookshelf

my parents wouldnt let me sleep in the living room

so every day and every night i sat in my bed and stared at it

i dared it to come closer

“this is normal” i said

“sinkholes are inevitable”

i promised myself as it ate me too

it was one thousand million years of darkness before i woke up again

and everything was put back just the way it was

and everyone remembered the sinkhole, how much it ate

how much of our lives it took away

but still didnt seem concerned 

nor surprised that i had survived somehow

dad cut the grass, mom drove to work

and as i struggled and gasped and whined and moaned from the agony of being alive again

every single bone and muscle and nerve and cell in my body on fire

i wondered if my parents were feeling this pain too

and i wondered why i was the only one who cared about the sinkhole in the backyard

[orykorioart]

TAZ Sapphic Week Day 5: Haunted

Couldn’t finish what I originally scheduled for day 5 (so itll have to be pushed back), but I still wanted to have something. So let’s have a quick experimental Lureen (if that is the ship name?) angst! Because that little scene in the GN really got me 😔✌️.

[onesidedradiostatic]

Personally I think they're both huffing a bit of copium about one another (Vox and Alastor) but Alastor is better at hiding it/maintaing his cool. We know that at least Valentino feels confident enough to goad Vox into taking the bait, that Alastor "almost" beat him last time. It's an interesting attitude compared to Vox's. Even Velvette doesn't seem all that concerned with Alastor, both her and Valentino are confident in the Vees current status and it's only Vox's personal insecurities that prevent him from sharing that mindset.

Vox's medium IS the victor in the grand scheme of things, he (along with the other Vees) ARE more relevant than Alastor/radio. And Vox is also capable of upgrading/improving himself over time in a way Alastor (from what we've seen) is not. It's so interesting seeing Vox unable to fully realize his strength/power - he can say it all he wants, but I don't think he really believes it. We the audience, however, know that visual media is king... case in point we are watching this series as a show on screens. Vox's hypnotism and electric powers are also pretty OP, he's got a good deck of cards (even though we haven't seen the full extent of how he can really leverage these yet).

And let's not forget Alasor BOOKED IT across town to get back at Vox during Stayed Gone. I think Alasor is (and should be) somewhat nervous (maybe "cautiously aware" is a better term) about the influence Vox and the Vees have regarding the future of media. He doesn't crack easily, as we've seen, but he cares enough to engage with Vox which he doesn't bother doing with outright "lessers".

In this way the dynamic is more even (in my opinion) than many give it credit for, which I personally prefer, but to each their own... for me, if it's not more equally matched, I struggle to see how the Vees will be worthwhile antagonists in the next season and that would be such a shame for characters that have so much potential. I just love the Vees!

(prev ask)

ehh I mean I do feel that they are on more equal level than some of the fandom may make them out to be but I still don't feel like they're exactly on the same level. like every time I see takes about mutual stuff between them I still can't fully agree cause to me, it's still on some level imbalanced. I do think they are of roughly equal power yes, but I think alastor being able to keep his cool is in fact a point towards him having the upperhand. it's the fact that vox is literally incapable of keeping his cool when it comes to alastor that spells more of his weakness when it comes to him I think. but yeah I mean how the vees, or rather vox will be a proper antagonist when he's so easily defeated by alastor is what I've been asking for a while LMAO.

and the thing is, we've seen instances like alastor being somewhat scared when zestial pops up, his mask slipping when starting stupid beef with lucifer (his eye is literally twitching the moment lucifer steps into the hotel LMAO), and of course with his fight with adam. we don't see any of that when it comes to the vees/vox, alastor waves them off as "nobody important" when niffty asks, easily tramples vox in stayed gone (and yes, he did immediately go back to his radio tower to bite back, but I don't think that's necessarily out of fear, could've easily just been he saw he was being insulted on live tv and HAD to bite back because he's a petty bitch), and gloated to him about having to "try harder than that" after failing to spy on him.

in my view, he doesn't see the vees or vox as a serious threat. HOWEVER, I do think that could easily be a point against alastor. his cockiness and not taking them seriously could very well come bite him in the back (JUUUUST like with adam!)

but when it comes to his current season 1 dynamic with vox, I do think he has the upperhand because of their different attitudes. if vox was able to keep his cool like alastor he wouldn't have caused a city-wide blackout over stayed gone LMAO. they're definitely more leveled power-wise though I think, the difference comes in their attitudes. if vox won the idgaf war a bit more they'd be more leveled, but he has chosen to obsess over him 24/7 so here we are.

[districtscare]

when people stop using the excuse of “olive [skin] is a spectrum!” when referring to any character that hails from the seam, i can die peacefully.

for reference: the seam — dark hair (straight, with the exception of haymitch and his curly hair,) olive skin, gray eyes. (e.g, katniss, gale and the hawthornes, haymitch.)

merchants — blonde hair (curly,) pale skin, blue eyes. (peeta, delly cartwright, mrs. everdeen and primrose.)

yes, in the case of the seamfolk, it is definitely possible that they are simply tan white people. however, in the racial context of appalachia, there is a population of native americans (who often have olive skin and straight dark hair,) along with the melungeon population (which includes people of color.)

suzanne collins would've made the distinction, as she did for the merchants if they were white. this theory is unlikely though, considering that systematic oppression plays a role within their race. (the seam are worse off; they're the poorest part of the district with people casually dying of starvation in the streets, they're also workers in the mines and more likely to have lung problems/die from mine collapses if not explosions. they also run a black market for sake of trades and food. the merchants run shops and are better off than the seam.)

i'm not saying at all that white people can't be olive skinned, i do very much agree with that and it's something i acknowledge. but again, appalachia, where twelve is located, has a population of people of color in which fit the description (which could likely be native americans.) there's a stark difference in both sides of twelve's population and their races, and if suzanne had made the seamers with the intention of them being white in mind, katniss simply could've said it was a white-predominant population with the notion of seamfolk being darker.

with all of this in mind, no matter how you flip it, the seam-originating characters in the movies are whitewashed. and that takes away from the history of these people and takes from their oppression and representation of history in a book that already deals with racial issues and such things.

[mantisgodsdomain]

More notes for Roach conlanging. Roach has grammatical gender, in which only Male, Female, and Object are grammatical genders, whereas Worker uses feminine grammar, Queen and King use a slight variant on feminine grammar, and Drone, and Queen-Alate use masculine grammar. This is because King is derived from Queen, due to their similar positions in a colony, and Queen-Alate is derived from Drone, as both are forms of alate.

Queen is an alteration of feminine grammar that functionally just adds a handful of extra syllables to it, and King is an offsprout of Queen that uses the same grammar with different pronouns. Queen-Alate, despite the name, is derived from Drone, as they are both for referring to different types of alate ant.

Most Roach dialects are intelligible to speakers of Snakemouth Den Cordyceps Roach, but Snakemouth Den Cordyceps Roach is not entirely intelligable to speakers of Roach dialects due to a mix of the excessively specialized vocabulary caused by the specific needs of its speakers, the fact that its speakers do not necessarily have Roach mouthparts and thus may not pronounce syllables in a similar way, and due to the fact that Inanimate Object is a full grammatical gender that does not exist in any other dialect of roach and replaces a decent chunk of terminology for things that previously had Other Words For Them.

[minionsuncle]

my take on Edward and Lydia. The graphic novels pulling me back a little wont lie …

[say-hi-intrepid-heroes]

.

[technovillain]

"he would not fucking say that" but it's "they would not fucking start dating/ catch feelings that easily". i have such a thing about like. thinking about how much *work* would have to go on with certain characters before they would even consider entering a relationship in media. yes i have ships that i enjoy but only under like a very specific set of conditional noncanon scenarios yknow.

[soullessjack]

ive been thinking a lot about how adrien was supposed to be disabled during his concept development and how much of a missed opportunity the whole thing was, like. on one hand I honestly respect the writers for backing out of a topic they thought they wouldn’t be able to handle well; not to say the representation in miraculous is anything great but it shows they do care about it at the very least, which is more than most media can say. I also know this was a decision that came way before the show even started, but I feel like Tomoe Tsurugi is proof that they can write disabled characters and do it in a way that’s fairly decent, so i feel like they could still incorporate it in now since their prior concern is pretty much ruled out (they’re never gonna do this).

and narrative wise I think it would add very much to the entire Agreste family arc, like idk. you could have his disability be a result of the peacock’s damage, or damage to his Amok. have it be part of the reason why Gabriel is so controlling and isolating (ie; viewing his son as frail and made of glass now) and distant/abusive (viewing his son as now “less than perfect,” at least in terms of what he’d envisioned for a perfect child, and blaming Emilie’s sickness/death on it). Adrien’s modeling career is entirely just inspiration-sensationalism with a “hopeful ray of sunshine” public persona. it can even be important to cat noir, too! it’s still an escape from his home life and career, but it’s also a chance for adrien to show that he’s not as fragile as gabriel thinks. It’s his own way of having independence and autonomy and for once being someone that isn’t constantly pitied or made to pretend he’s a docile ray of sunshine constantly.

I’m also deeply autistic enough to say it could match with him being the holder of destruction; half of his life is centered around preserving him and, again, treating him like he’s made of glass. so why not give him the power to literally crack and shatter that glass? poetic cinema and all that. additionally it adds to both why he’s so unserious with his role as a superhero and why he values his partnership with ladybug so highly—he’s indulging in this new freedom while also recognizing that the partnership it comes with is about the only one where he’s genuinely treated as an equal and trusted to take his own part in something. that’s not to say I think all of his friends would instantly change personalities and baby him (especially not Nino) but let me tell you, even as someone who’s not physically disabled, the distinct feeling of being othered or unequal is there no matter how much support you have.

everybody knows this already but there’s just so much potential in everything that the writers don’t do reagghhhhhghhhh

[arolesbianism]

Despite how much I suffered making my last isat au Aris sprite redraw, I decided to do it again and once again went through hell doing it. There’s like a billion mistakes in this (such as her having the wrong arm rip) but at the end of the day I’m still happy with how it turned out :]

[radioroxx]

remembers my isat tattoo hcs from one million years ago

[tadpoles-and-daydreams]

Hi again, here's a different sort of ask to round out the reading requests! ☺️ I had (what I think is) an interesting thought rolling around in my head, and I thought that you might enjoy weighing in on it (no pressure to respond to this ask, of course), as you're someone who is likewise queer and polyamorous, but much, much more experienced with deity work. I'm just beginning to reconnect with someone who I've been loosely acquainted with for a while, and I'm aiming to grow a much deeper friendship with her (or maybe more! 🩷💜🩵) - AND I'm aware of who the major deities in her life have been (Apollo and Dionysus). I was considering whether it might be a fun and beneficial idea to connect a smidgen with her deities at the same time? I don't mean that I wish to begin working with them - I, as a beginner, have already adopted more deity friends than I should have - but would it be a good idea to introduce myself, have a friendly chat with them over a cup of tea, and announce my positive intentions towards one of their fave children? What's your opinion?

Heyo! Fucking adore this ask, you have no idea how needed an ask that WASN'T a reading request was needed lol. (Love the reading requests though!! Super excited for them, I just will need time to get through them!)

I fully understand "adopting more deity friends than you should have," my craft began with Persephone tbh and I had to just let go of the idea that a beginner can't do deity work and have recently had to make changes to the way I perceive deity work when it comes to how many I'm "allowed" to work with. That's just a side note, though-

HOLY SHIT I, for one, think you're a genius. That's such a green flag in my opinion, I think just having a chat with the deities she works with is a wonderful idea!! It vibes like getting the parent's blessing, letting them know you value their kid and want good things for her and such. I absolutely love using witchcraft as a love language of sorts, I literally just recently asked Apollo to go help out my partner's pet and he was happy to do so. My opinion is 100% go for it that sounds so fucking cool, friendship or romance it's seems to me like such a genuinely caring thing to do to specifically make the effort to reach out to her deities!

[tomwambsgans]

lbr if tom ever did convince greg to put on a wedding dress (or any other kind) he'd only proceed to find him significantly less attractive in it. like woops nah i'm more of a fag than i thought lol put the suit back on

[cuddlytogas]

an incomplete list of terrible but extremely popular Our Flag Means Death takes that I would like to never see again please

(and I do mean popular, as in, lots of people seem to think they're canon, to the point where I feel slightly insane and like I was watching a different show to everyone else)

1. Ed's mum was loving and nice and supportive, if hampered by her bad situation

this comes up more in fic than analysis, to be fair, but good god, what show were some of you watching? this isn't to vilify her, because yeah, she's clearly a product of colonialism, white christian supremacy, and domestic abuse, but like. that doesn't make how she raised Ed good. clearly she was trying to keep him safe, but "we don't deserve nice things", and especially "it's not up to us, it's up to god", speaks to me of someone who squashes down any ambition on her son's part, has fully bought into the lies of christian colonialism, and tries to pass them down to her son.

as does happen in colonised communities, particularly among older generations. I know us white people like to think that every indigenous person is a perfect left-wing anti-imperial activist, but that's simply not the case, and Ed's mum is so clearly an example of an older conservative christian indigenous parent who had to believe the lies told by their coloniser in order to survive, but is now passing on that trauma to their children. and I just...

if I read one more fic where Ed's mum is a perfect loving supportive angel who always believed in her kid and always supported and protected him, I'm gonna scream. yes, it's sweet, and it's fun to sometimes veer from canon and give your blorbo nice things, but it's still veering from canon. and yet, I see very few people acknowledge that, or actually talk about the nuances of Ed's mother, and how she definitely tried to protect him, but was far from sweet, doting, and unconditionally supportive.

2. Ed's loving look when Stede is picking food from his beard in 1x07

like most of these things, I enjoyed it as a joke or exaggeration at first, until I realised that people were actually being serious. but every time I watch that scene, I see Ed looking absently-mindedly over Stede's shoulder, because a) that's what you do when someone leans in to pick something off you, and b) surely the point of the scene is that they're so comfortable and easy together that they don't notice the intimacy of what they're doing, but Lucius, an outside observer, thinks it's obvious. right?? I can't be the only one seeing it???

[sigh]

anyway. finally, the really really big one:

3. Ed is a soft uwu babygirl princess femme bottom sub who loves her cat collar and is teaching Stede how to dom him in the "say you're the captain" scene

I mean, there's not much to say except to link to duke's absolutely phenomenal twitter thread about "how the 'babygirlfication' and infantilization of ofmd ed teach is an extension of racist perceptions of indigenous men being inherently violent and thus needing to be emasculated to be considered sympathetic"

but especially That One Fucking Scene, good lord. talk about taking shit out of context. everyone looked at a slowed-down gif of one shot in the trailer and cried "babygirl!! he's such a simp, he just wants to be dommed!!", when actually that scene is about how a) Stede is cringefail and terrible at being a typical harsh, commanding pirate, and b) Ed is lovingly embarrassed by this. he encourages Stede to assert himself (and give Ed something to do during his probation/help him make amends with the crew), but like. normally. he's acting perfectly normal in that scene, and mostly annoyed by the outfit and embarrassed by how badly Stede fails. but just because he's sitting down while Stede is standing, and he happens to take a breath in that one shot (because, you know, people breathe sometimes), everyone's doubled down on their "submissive babygirl" bullshit, and I can't get the fuck away from it.

which - listen, it's fun for me, too! it's fun to explore exaggerated aspects of a character, it's fun to read/write/draw that angle in smut, I get it! but I keep seeing people keep claim it's literally canon, and I cannot stress enough that that is Straight Up False. for the love of god, please just watch the show without your (potentially kinda racist) bias glasses on, and remember to treat the characters with respect instead of projecting onto their every interaction a shallow dom/sub binary just because you find it hot.

Our Flag is a show very specifically about masculinity, and what it means to be a man; how assumptions about that can harm and restrict men; and how men can grow beyond them. it's a nuanced and sympathetic examination of this. the whole point is that Ed is allowed to like nice fabrics and be tired of violent piracy and still be a man. the point is that two men fall in love - equal, honest, sincere love - and are still men, still exactly who they are.

(on that note, insisting that Ed is canonically trans or femme because of these things often ends up just leaning into gendered stereotypes: men are harsh and active and dominant, and women are soft and passive and submissive, and if Ed's not the former, he must be the latter, right? it also tends to hetero-ify the central relationship, casting Stede as "the boy" and Ed as "the girl", needing one to be masc and one femme. not always, and again, I understand and have enjoyed transformative works that take those elements and run with them, and explore what the story could be like if Ed were trans/nb/etc - but it's still a transformative interpretation. it's not canon.)

relatedly: those fucking wedding toppers! it seemed blatantly obvious to me that half the point of those scenes was that Ed is distraught and blaming himself for Stede leaving because he wasn't the ideal partner. it's his entire arc for the first half of season 2! Ed hates himself and believes there's something wrong about him that makes him unlovable. so he keeps and then discards the wedding toppers, painting himself onto one of them, because he's projecting himself onto an image of ideal/successful romantic love that he thinks Stede wants, and in which he doesn't fit. he's trying to mould himself into someone else to make himself lovable, not realising that Stede already loves him for himself.

like, it's important that the groom figure isn't actually like Stede, either. yes, it's blond and has a nice, peach-coloured suit, but a) Stede was very specifically unhappy in the posh, heterosexual, married state the figures represent, and b) Stede by this point looks nothing like that figurine. it's directly contrasted with the image of him in the rowboat, scruffy and plain and earnestly in love, rather than fancy, cold ceramic.

so it's important to the whole narrative that Ed's yearning for/projection onto the wedding toppers is false, and born from his insecurity. he gets drunk, and play-acts a stereotypical image of romantic happiness into which he doesn't fit, but real love looks nothing like that, because real love isn't found in stifling hegemonic cultural structures, but honest, emotional connections between people allowed to be their whole, vulnerable selves. Stede is not like the groom, and Ed is not like the bride, because they shouldn't have to be. Ed should not (and does not) have to warp himself into a demure bride in order to be worthy of love: he's already lovable and loved exactly as he is! that's the point!! of the scene!!!!!!

but no, I have to wade through swathes of art and fic and meta about how badly Ed wants to be a sweet little demure kitty princess, how he wants a wedding night and a ring to prove he's Stede's property, and acting as if this is somehow canon, because people on the internet have zero reading comprehension and are scared of brown men.

the whole point of Our Flag is that you don't need to compress yourself into prescribed social roles, and in fact, doing so will only make you miserable; and that racist, patriarchal, colonial institutions should be resisted and dismantled at every opportunity.

so tell me again why the ultimate message is that Ed and Stede should get married under an arch in front of an altar and their lined-up friends, with flowers and rice falling around them, all dressed in white, one in a suit and one in a dress, with rings and a kiss and a honeymoon after, before they move into a detached house with a yard and a fence and re-adopt the kids that Stede abandoned? and this isn't about promises, fidelity, or even monogamy - I'm specifically talking about everyone in this fandom who seems to think that the ultimate goal is the most stereotypical 20th century cisheteropatriarchal christian wedding, but with the name "matelotage" slapped on top, as if that takes away all of the underlying baggage.

just - I know we're all meant to hate men and masculinity and yadda yadda yadda, but actually, to be earnest for a second, men deserve respect too, because all people and all genders do. and two men are allowed to be in a relationship and still both be men - complex men, with their own, layered relationships to their gender - without having to fall into neatly-arranged dom/sub masc/femme roles, or seal the deal with a hegemonically-approved ceremony.

so please, stop reducing an indigenous lead character to a caricature of a femme uwu princess bottom just because he has long hair, wore a robe once, and you're too scared of brown men to imagine him with proper agency. and then please, for the love of god, stop claiming that that interpretation is canon.

[anghraine]

There's something percolating in my head about how sometimes the scenarios and characters we relate to the most are the ones that don't explicitly identify what they're doing in the terms of how we relate to them. Sometimes there are even specific indications that it's not that thing and yet we can still find it there and find it powerful. Sometimes that can feel more affecting and intense than the better representation out there (and not necessarily just better in a purity culture sense).

And I do think it's important not to give credit where it's not actually due, and not to insist on this kind of stuff as a replacement for actual representation. But I also think it's important to ... idk, allow space for the fuzzier depictions that speak really powerfully to some of us.

(I know this is vague! As I said, it's percolating.)