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mania-sama · 3 months

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rule #9 - child of the stars

Rule #9 - Child of the Stars - Fish in a Birdcage

Jujutsu Kaisen Character - Gojo Satoru Tags - prison realm, asphyxiation, self-harm (from the asphyxiation), blood, whump Summary - Gojo Satoru is sealed in the Prison Realm and everything goes great until he realizes he's running out of oxygen. Worse yet, there's nothing he can do about it. Word Count - 1,370 Cross-posted from Archive of Our Own Whumptober 2023 - Day 28: Oxygen Deprivation See my full Whumptober 2023 Challenge on Tumblr or Ao3

Gojo Satoru had no intentions of being sealed. When he answered the call to protect the people inside Shibuya, he had a general idea of the opponents he was going to face and the Prison Realm they hoped to trap him in. He also knew that, without a doubt, he could kill them all.

Of course, no one had prepared him for Geto Suguru or the creature inhabiting his best friend’s skin. No one in their right mind would have thought to warn him because they didn’t know. Gojo would have gone to Shibuya anyway. He would’ve faced his best friend’s animated body regardless.

But it would’ve been nice to know.

Maybe he wouldn’t have been sealed. That momentary shock, the two seconds that can change the tide of war itself, may have been the difference between his concealment and total victory. He can’t be sure of it, and he knows better than anyone that to dwell indefinitely is to effectively kill the psyche itself. He’ll be worse getting out of the Prison Realm than when he was put in. If his assumptions are correct, then he’s going to be on his best physique when his students open the back door of the realm.

Gojo silences his mind. He cuts off his thoughts of Geto Suguru, the what-ifs, and the future, and focuses on the present. The Prison Realm is dark, small, and gratingly loud. As a holder of Six Eyes and Infinity, Gojo is difficult for the Prison Realm to restrain and comprehend. He can’t get out by any means, so the realm itself isn’t weakened. He assumes that the manifestation of its difficulty is in the churning sounds all around him where the sides of the realm turn like cogs on a machine, but he can’t be sure until enough time passes. It’s possible that the realm itself will never be able to fully comprehend him. Which would be hilarious if it weren’t for the fact that the noise is going to drive him insane.

There are a few things he knew about the realm before he even entered Shibuya, but it’s limited to what’s been researched outwardly rather than what's been revealed by people who have been inside of it. For example, time doesn’t pass in the Prison Realm, or if it does, it’s incredibly distorted. Whatever is inside is unable to break out, whether from the realm taking away cursed energy and techniques itself, or physically restricting movement itself. It exists as a half-way domain, meaning it technically doesn’t belong to any one person as the realm is a separate creature itself.

He prods the “floor” with one of his fingers absently. His heart is pounding and his veins are thrumming with anxious energy. It feels like he’s moving fast, but without going anywhere at all. Like a plane ride, except he’s watching the land and sky shatter into a million pieces and whip by his window. And it’s not that he’s an anxious person or that his psyche breaks easily, but he has the incomprehensible sensation of his mind scattering, running away with his thoughts.

It’s not a pleasurable experience by any means. However, he’s not being actively tortured, so he considers that an absolute win.

No torture.

His heart picks up the pace, and his breathing grows shallow.

No torture.

Something isn’t right.

Gojo doesn’t want to be hurt, obviously. It should go without saying. The anxiety he’s experiencing has to be the impact of the sensations of time stopping and shattering while he moves without it, or it moves without him. The human body and mind are simply not able to fully comprehend the complete stoppage or distortion of time, so they panic and try to save themselves the best they can. That he understands.

What he doesn’t understand is the way his throat is starting to catch on each breath, and how his heart is racing beyond the raised levels of innate panic. His energy levels aren’t depleted, so he knows it can’t be from exhaustion. In all honesty, he feels fine outside of the assessed symptoms, which is why it’s so odd.

Then he stops breathing.

Oh no, don’t worry, he tries. His hands find his neck and scratch to relieve the pressure clogging his airway. His torso twists around and he spits out copious amounts of saliva to somehow get even a little bit of oxygen through. He curls his hands into fists and beats his chest and stomach.

Gojo has never had the displeasure of being choked. He did almost drown once when he was young and undergoing early-age sorcery training courtesy of the Gojo Clan, but that was a very different experience to what he’s enduring now. Back then, there had at least been something and someone — water surrounding his head and body, people waiting to drag him to the surface before he died completely, and most importantly, his natural-born technique.

Satoru now, twenty-two years after that week-long ordeal at age six, drowns without the water, the people, or his technique. He has nothing but the faux strangulation, the lack of air getting through his throat, and he wants to scream, but all he can do is cough. He can get none of the carbon dioxide he expels back, so his diaphragm cramps in response.

He wishes that had taken the opportunity to stand and stretch his legs ten minutes ago because currently, the only thing he can do is curl into a tight ball while every bit of his body is lit on fire. His fingers nearly bend without his will. They grip, tear, and yank every part of him and the realm they can get their hands on. His head hurts from the lack of air and the clumps of hair he’s already pulled out, and his eyes are stinging from leaking tears and the nails scratching his skin and poking his eyeballs.

The tips of those nails are turning purplish-blue, and the color is slowly traveling down his fingers to the first knuckle joint. He coughs painfully into his pale, blue-tinted hands. Blood settles on his palms to add a little fun to the canvas his body is becoming.

If he weren’t dying from asphyxiation, he would find the colors incredibly funny. Maybe he’d laugh, or even smile! Red, blue, and their mixture purple. Hilarious. He couldn’t have made a better joke itself. But it's not funny. He doesn’t laugh and he doesn’t smile. Gojo torques in restless agitation and panic, and more blood spurts from his cough. His lungs simply have nothing to expel, so it takes chunks of his body that can be gotten rid of: his blood and saliva.

Satoru stares up at the dark expanse above his head, shrouding the grating cogs embedded in the “ceiling”. He doesn’t know if he can reach the top if he’s fully standing, or if scratching at it for long enough would make the realm give way. Gojo knows that’s not how domains and realms work. He knows.

Yet panic makes rabid dogs out of rational people.

His fist slams into the edge of the tight realm. It’s airtight. That’s why he’s suffocating — he’s used up all of the oxygen and carbon dioxide already.

Mind scattering as time and hypoxia strangles his body and brain, Gojo comes to an important secondary conclusion after discovering the “airtight” property of the Prison Realm: under no circumstances is the prisoner going to die.

He flattens on the ground, his knees bending to give his legs room to stretch upwards since there’s not enough length to hold his entire height lying down. A second later, he’s pushing himself over and digging his nails into his scalp again.

In his twenty-eight years of life, Gojo Satoru has never felt so incredibly helpless and useless as he does now.

His coughed-up blood and saliva run down his chin and dribble on his uniform. His fingers dig into the bare skin of his arms, and he has nothing more to do than pray that the world will have mercy on him. Maybe each time he blinks his eyes, he’ll open them to something other than the churning cogs of the Prison Realm.

#jujutsu kaisen #jujutsukaisen #jjk #jjk fanfic #jujutsu kaisen fanfic #fanfic #fanfiction #ao3 fanfic #gojo satoru #jjk gojo #prison realm #satoru gojo #ai less whumptober #whumptober2023 #whumptober fic #whumptober

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nothorses · 3 years

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Interview With An Ex-Radfem

exradfem is an anonymous Tumblr user who identifies as transmasculine, and previously spent time in radical feminist communities. They have offered their insight into those communities using their own experiences and memories as a firsthand resource.

Background

I was raised in an incredibly fundamentalist religion, and so was predisposed to falling for cult rhetoric. Naturally, I was kicked out for being a lesbian. I was taken in by the queer community, particularly the trans community, and I got back on my feet- somehow. I had a large group of queer friends, and loved it. I fully went in on being the Best Trans Ally Possible, and constantly tried to be a part of activism and discourse.

Unfortunately, I was undersocialized, undereducated, and overenthusiastic. I didn't fully understand queer or gender theory. In my world, when my parents told me my sexuality was a choice and I wasn't born that way, they were absolutely being homophobic. I understood that no one should care if it's a choice or not, but it was still incredibly, vitally important to me that I was born that way.

On top of that, I already had an intense distrust of men bred by a lot of trauma. That distrust bred a lot of gender essentialism that I couldn't pull out of the gender binary. I felt like it was fundamentally true that men were the problem, and that women were inherently more trustworthy. And I really didn't know where nonbinary people fit in.

Then I got sucked down the ace exclusionist pipeline; the way the arguments were framed made sense to my really surface-level, liberal view of politics. This had me primed to exclude people –– to feel like only those that had been oppressed exactly like me were my community.

Then I realized I was attracted to my nonbinary friend. I immediately felt super guilty that I was seeing them as a woman. I started doing some googling (helped along by ace exclusionists on Tumblr) and found the lesfem community, which is basically radfem “lite”: lesbians who are "only same sex attracted". This made sense to me, and it made me feel so much less guilty for being attracted to my friend; it was packaged as "this is just our inherent, biological desire that is completely uncontrollable". It didn't challenge my status quo, it made me feel less guilty about being a lesbian, and it allowed me to have a "biological" reason for rejecting men.

I don't know how much dysphoria was playing into this, and it's something I will probably never know; all of this is just piecing together jumbled memories and trying to connect dots. I know at the time I couldn't connect to this trans narrative of "feeling like a woman". I couldn't understand what trans women were feeling. This briefly made me question whether I was nonbinary, but radfem ideas had already started seeping into my head and I'm sure I was using them to repress that dysphoria. That's all I can remember.

The lesfem community seeded gender critical ideas and larger radfem princples, including gender socialization, gender as completely meaningless, oppression as based on sex, and lesbian separatism. It made so much innate sense to me, and I didn't realize that was because I was conditioned by the far right from the moment of my birth. Of course women were just a biological class obligated to raise children: that is how I always saw myself, and I always wanted to escape it.

I tried to stay in the realms of TIRF (Trans-Inclusive Radical Feminist) and "gender critical" spaces, because I couldn't take the vitriol on so many TERF blogs. It took so long for me to get to the point where I began seeing open and unveiled transphobia, and I had already read so much and bought into so much of it that I thought that I could just ignore those parts.

In that sense, it was absolutely a pipeline for me. I thought I could find a "middle ground", where I could "center women" without being transphobic.

Slowly, I realized that the transphobia was just more and more disgustingly pervasive. Some of the trans men and butch women I looked up to left the groups, and it was mostly just a bunch of nasty people left. So I left.

After two years offline, I started to recognize I was never going to be a healthy person without dealing with my dysphoria, and I made my way back onto Tumblr over the pandemic. I have realized I'm trans, and so much of this makes so much more sense now. I now see how I was basically using gender essentialism to repress my identity and keep myself in the closet, how it was genuinely weaponized by TERFs to keep me there, and how the ace exclusionist movement primed me into accepting lesbian separatism- and, finally, radical feminism.

The Interview

You mentioned the lesfem community, gender criticals, and TIRFs, which I haven't heard about before- would you mind elaborating on what those are, and what kinds of beliefs they hold?

I think the lesfem community is recruitment for lesbians into the TERF community. Everything is very sanitized and "reasonable", and there's an effort not to say anything bad about trans women. The main focus was that lesbian = homosexual female, and you can't be attracted to gender, because you can't know someone's gender before knowing them; only their sex.

It seemed logical at the time, thinking about sex as something impermeable and gender as internal identity. The most talk about trans women I saw initially was just in reference to the cotton ceiling, how sexual orientation is a permanent and unchangeable reality. Otherwise, the focus was homophobia. This appealed to me, as I was really clinging to the "born this way" narrative.

This ended up being a gateway to two split camps - TIRFs and gender crits.

I definitely liked to read TIRF stuff, mostly because I didn't like the idea of radical feminism having to be transphobic. But TIRFs think that misogyny is all down to hatred of femininity, and they use that as a basis to be able to say trans women are "just as" oppressed.

Gender criticals really fought out against this, and pushed the idea that gender is fake, and misogyny is just sex-based oppression based on reproductive issues. They believe that the source of misogyny is the "male need to control the source of reproduction"- which is what finally made me think I had found the "source" of my confusion. That's why I ended up in gender critical circles instead of TIRF circles.

I'm glad, honestly, because the mask-off transphobia is what made me finally see the light. I wouldn't have seen that in TIRF communities.

I believed this in-between idea, that misogyny was "sex-based oppression" and that transphobia was also real and horrible, but only based on transition, and therefore a completely different thing. I felt that this was the "nuanced" position to take.

The lesfem community also used the fact that a lot of lesbians have partners who transition, still stay with their lesbian partners, and see themselves as lesbian- and that a lot of trans men still see themselves as lesbians. That idea is very taboo and talked down in liberal queer spaces, and I had some vague feelings about it that made me angry, too. I really appreciated the frank talk of what I felt were my own taboo experiences.

I think gender critical ideology also really exploited my own dysphoria. There was a lot of talk about how "almost all butches have dysphoria and just don't talk about it", and that made me feel so much less alone and was, genuinely, a big relief to me that I "didn't have to be trans".

Lesfeminism is essentially lesbian separatism dressed up as sex education. Lesfems believe that genitals exist in two separate categories, and that not being attracted to penises is what defines lesbians. This is used to tell cis lesbians, "dont feel bad as a lesbian if you're attracted to trans men", and that they shouldn’t feel "guilty" for not being attracted to trans women. They believe that lesbianism is not defined as being attracted to women, it is defined as not being attracted to men; which is a root idea in lesbian separatism as well.

Lesfems also believe that attraction to anything other than explicit genitals is a fetish: if you're attracted to flat chests, facial hair, low voices, etc., but don't care if that person has a penis or not, you're bisexual with a fetish for masculine attributes. Essentially, they believe the “-sexual” suffix refers to the “sex” that you are assigned at birth, rather than your attraction: “homosexual” refers to two people of the same sex, etc. This was part of their pushback to the ace community, too.

I think they exploited the issues of trans men and actively ignored trans women intentionally, as a way of avoiding the “TERF” label. Pronouns were respected, and they espoused a constant stream of "trans women are women, trans men are men (but biology still exists and dictates sexual orientation)" to maintain face.

They would only be openly transmisogynistic in more private, radfem-only spaces.

For a while, I didn’t think that TERFs were real. I had read and agreed with the ideology of these "reasonable" people who others labeled as TERFs, so I felt like maybe it really was a strawman that didn't exist. I think that really helped suck me in.

It sounds from what you said like radical feminism works as a kind of funnel system, with "lesfem" being one gateway leading in, and "TIRF" and "gender crit" being branches that lesfem specifically funnels into- with TERFs at the end of the funnel. Does that sound accurate?

I think that's a great description actually!

When I was growing up, I had to go to meetings to learn how to "best spread the word of god". It was brainwashing 101: start off by building a relationship, find a common ground. Do not tell them what you really believe. Use confusing language and cute innuendos to "draw them in". Prey on their emotions by having long exhausting sermons, using music and peer pressure to manipulate them into making a commitment to the church, then BAM- hit them with the weird shit.

Obviously I am paraphrasing, but this was framed as a necessary evil to not "freak out" the outsiders.

I started to see that same talk in gender critical circles: I remember seeing something to the effect of, "lesfem and gender crit spaces exist to cleanse you of the gender ideology so you can later understand the 'real' danger of it", which really freaked me out; I realized I was in a cult again.

I definitely think it's intentional. I think they got these ideas from evangelical Christianity, and they actively use it to spread it online and target young lesbians and transmascs. And I think gender critical butch spaces are there to draw in young transmascs who hate everything about femininity and womanhood, and lesfem spaces are there to spread the idea that trans women exist as a threat to lesbianism.

Do you know if they view TIRFs a similar way- as essentially prepping people for TERF indoctrination?

Yes and no.

I've seen lots of in-fighting about TIRFs; most TERFs see them as a detriment, worse than the "TRAs" themselves. I've also definitely seen it posed as "baby's first radfeminism". A lot of TIRFs are trans women, at least from what I've seen on Tumblr, and therefore are not accepted or liked by radfems. To be completely honest, I don't think they're liked by anyone. They just hate men.

TIRFs are almost another breed altogether; I don't know if they have ties to lesfems at all, but I do think they might've spearheaded the online ace exclusionist discourse. I think a lot of them also swallowed radfem ideology without knowing what it was, and parrot it without thinking too hard about how it contradicts with other ideas they have.

The difference is TIRFs exist. They're real people with a bizarre, contradictory ideology. The lesfem community, on the other hand, is a completely manufactured "community" of crypto-terfs designed specifically to indoctrinate people into TERF ideology.

Part of my interest in TIRFs here is that they seem to have a heavy hand in the way transmascs are treated by the trans community, and if you're right that they were a big part of ace exclusionism too they've had a huge impact on queer discourse as a whole for some time. It seems likely that Baeddels came out of that movement too.

Yes, there’s a lot of overlap. The more digging I did, the more I found that it's a smaller circle running the show than it seems. TIRFs really do a lot of legwork in peddling the ideology to outer queer community, who tend to see it as generic feminism.

TERFs joke a lot about how non-radfems will repost or reblog from TERFs, adding "op is a TERF”. They're very gleeful when people accept their ideology with the mask on. They think it means these people are close to fully learning the "truth", and they see it as further evidence they have the truth the world is hiding. I think it's important to speak out against radical feminism in general, because they’re right; their ideology does seep out into the queer community.

Do you think there's any "good" radical feminism?

No. It sees women as the ultimate victim, rather than seeing gender as a tool to oppress different people differently. Radical feminism will always see men as the problem, and it is always going to do harm to men of color, gay men, trans men, disabled men, etc.

Women aren't a coherent class, and radfems are very panicked about that fact; they think it's going to be the end of us all. But what's wrong with that? That's like freaking out that white isn't a coherent group. It reveals more about you.

It's kind of the root of all exclusionism, the more I think about it, isn't it? Just freaking out that some group isn't going to be exclusive anymore.

Radical feminists believe that women are inherently better than men.

For TIRFs, it's gender essentialism. For TERFs, its bio essentialism. Both systems are fundamentally broken, and will always hurt the groups most at risk. Centering women and misogyny above all else erases the root causes of bigotry and oppression, and it erases the intersections of race and class. The idea that women are always fundamentally less threatening is very white and privileged.

It also ignores how cis women benefit from gender norms just as cis men do, and how cis men suffer from gender roles as well. It’s a system of control where gender non-conformity is a punishable offense.

#transgender #transphobia #trans #transmisogyny #radical feminism #radfem #feminism #transandrophobia #terfs #tirfs #gender critical #nothorses #cult mention #long post

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c-is-for-circinate · 3 years

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Ok, Hades gameplay reaction time!

(Because I have been terrible this quarantine year about posting thoughts about stories I've been invested in, and I'm really enjoying this game, and I'm playing basically blind and I have theories, and what is tumblr for if not recording those things to look back on later.)

I love this specific kind of fantasy/speculative fiction, that straddles the line between 'allegory clearly designed to explore a real-world issue' and 'the themes of this reflect real-world issues but also everything is times one million for drama and setting's sake'. I love it so much. Because, look, this is a story about a teenager/young adult trying to gather up the skills and resources and help he needs to escape his controlling, possessive, emotionally abusive father's house. That's it. Strip away all of the trappings, and that's what the story is about. By comparison, I think about Star Wars. (I love Star Wars too.) That's also a story about a dysfunctional fucked-up family dynamic. But that family is fucked up because dad went on a magic-corruption-induced killing spree, and his twin children were separated at birth to be raised in seclusion with the intention of someday taking him down, and look, that's cool, but it's definitely not how people actually are. All of the dysfunction in that family is an outgrowth of the fantastical setting, which means it is fantastical dysfunction. It can occasionally mirror or remind us of real-life interactions, but it's a fantasy. Which is great and fun to watch and very comforting and so on, but I don't necessarily want that in every story, and I love Hades because it is not that, at all. When you extend out the basic 'kid trying to escape his toxic home environment', Hades is the story of Zagreus trying to get out with the help of his dad's estranged, complicated, wealthy and powerful family, who are absolutely part of the reason why dad is Like That in the first place, and may not be any more reliable in the long run but who he needs right now. And his stepmom and teacher, who love him enough to help him leave, unconditionally and supportively (ask me how many feelings I have about 'look, Hades can't hurt me for helping you, don't worry about me, I am going to take care of you and that means helping you get out of this house' coming from an adult authority figure, ask me). And his dad's employees, who like him but also have to fear the old man's wrath, and walk that line in different places the best they can. And stepmom's long-estranged parent, because this is a story about families and how they split apart and come back together. And all of that is so real, so grounded in actual, concrete, this-is-how-humans-work family dynamics. But it's also individual. The story works so well because Hades isn't just a silhouette of the controlling asshole father; he is clearly The Way He Is for reasons, complicated ones, good and bad alike. The Way He Is has details, particularities, paperwork, a dog he pretends not to love and rely on. He is specific. Nyx and Achilles are specific, not just generic kind stepmom here to be a trope inversion and cardboard cutout teacher. Nyx has backstory and personality of her own, Achilles has a complex history, opinions, a missing lover, and they BOTH have very particular relationships with Hades that aren't just boilerplate script. Yes, there's abstraction there, you meet these characters in brief visual novel-esque three-line conversations over the course of dozens of escape runs, of course there's abstraction--but there's the very real sense that all of these people have nuance, have good and bad days, that they've made choices to be who they are, even if we don't know what those choices are yet. And, like Star Wars, some of the ways in which this story is so specific rely entirely on the fact of the otherworldly setting! I've seen stories that go the other way, that try to use their setting entirely as window dressing, and they end up feeling so flat I can't even remember them right now because they don't let the environment lend complexity and nuance to their characters at all. The environment these characters live in matters. The absolute control Hades exerts over his surroundings is a divine power. The fact that everyone Zag runs into, for or against him, is either immortal or immortally dead, changes how the react to

one another and to the situation at hand. The shape of his attempted escapes (gauntlet combat with a variety of legendary weapons) might be an allegorical construct of the genre, true, but it doesn't work in any sort of real-world setting where there exists the possibility of authority figures above or aside from Hades and his extended fucked-up family. That's part of why the family is so fucked-up in the first place. But these changes still fit well within the realm of, 'yeah, if you took this extremely real-life dynamic and added these factors to it, I can envision people doing this thing'. I can envision these specific people doing this thing. They add to the specificity of these characters. Letting them be influenced by their unreal surroundings makes them more real. So hell yes for good storytelling!!!!

I'm still relatively early in the game (by which I mean I'm like thirty runs in but only just got past Meg for the third time, because I am not good at this game, although in my defense it's only the seventh video game and second button-mashing game I have ever played in my life so there's that), but I'm starting to develop suspicions about Persephone. Because, look, outside of Persephone's absence from the underworld, this story knows its Greek mythology, uses it, revels in it. And there is some kind of mystery still shrouding Persephone leaving in the first place. She left a goodbye to Cerberus in her letter but not to her own son. Nyx has warned Zagreus multiple times not to let the Olympians know she's his mother. He literally never even knew she existed. That's complicated! Add to that, Persephone left--the exact thing we are trying and failing to do again and again and again. She left with one note, which means either she managed a one-shot speedrun out of the entire realm or she had some other way to leave, because if she'd washed up in the Styx pool to plod back to her room and try again, she wouldn't've needed to leave the note in the first place. And, you know, she's Persephone. Really quite famous for leaving the Underworld! Also quite famous for being forced back. So. I'm wondering if Zagreus, so conspicuously absent from her goodbye, has something to do with it after all. Six pomegranate seeds condemned Persephone to six months, half a year, half her life. I wonder if a child that's half of her her constitutes a fitting trade instead. Which, of course Hades would be even more resentful and dismissive and cruel to the kid he got in place of the wife he loved (who he chased away by being cold in the first place). Of course Persephone would have difficulty saying goodbye to her son in those circumstances. It would make sense. The tricky thing here is how the Olympians fit into it, because I also suspect the rift between Hades and Zeus sprang from Persephone's departure. And yet, if the Olympians never knew Zagreus existed, let alone that he's Persephone's son--how can he count as payment into the deal in their eyes? So in that case, what does Zeus think is the justification for Persephone leaving, after the pomegranate thing? Or are we just not doing the pomegranate thing at all? It would be a shame to lose it entirely, out of a story that really seems to enjoy the myths it's playing with. And there should be something complex here, something more than simply 'mom fucked off and left because dad sucked and now I'm following her because same'. It feels more complex than that. 'Mom and dad had a baby to try and save their marriage, it didn't work, but when mom left she had to leave me behind because otherwise dad would have gotten the cops and her extended family involved' feels more right, while still just as grounded in reality as the story has been so far.

I sort of want to write some meta about how each of the six legendary weapons corresponds to their original divine wielder, but I haven't unlocked all of their codex entries yet (look I am very bad with ranged weapons in this game ok, I am working on it), and I still need to think about the details. Aside from, of course, fuck yes of course Hestia's the one with the railgun. Leave drama and elegance and traditional weaponry to her brothers and sister (Demeter, who knows how to get her hands dirty, gets a pass). Hestia is out here to get shit done. With a grenade launcher.

#hades #hades game #zagreus #hades spoilers #I do not know this fandom are there tags I should be using?#C plays stuff #long post #driveby meta attack

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terrainofheartfelt · 3 years

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I think it's pretty amazing how much the gossip girl Fandom has changed. From my experience, most of my friends admit they didn't know what they were thinking with Chair when GG was on TV. And now you see this women empowerment movement. It's nice to know I've always been right about supporting DAIR. If only you saw the Fandom when GG was popular lol.

Oh, well for starters, let’s all be glad I wasn’t in the GG fandom while the original show was airing for a lot of reasons. Back then, I was a teenager DEEP into the twilight saga. My myspace page was all about my devotion to Team Edward. I was insufferable, my parents and brother are not on tumblr (thank whatever gods exist) but shoutout to them for loving me & putting up with me at my Peak Fangirl.

But to your point on how the fandom has changed, to put it extremely simply: I think it’s because we’re ten years older now. Most of my beloved gg mutuals are in their 20s like me, and while I can only speak for myself, the distance of my beliefs between when I was a teenager and the person I am now is VAST. My ideas of self, of feminism, of love, of sex, they’ve all evolved drastically over time.

Oh god especially my ideas of sex. My sex ed in high school wasn’t even in school, it was received via my church youth group [horrifying]. Now we don’t have time to unpack ALL of that, but I remember the exercise we did for the idea “just remember you’re having sex with everyone they’ve ever had sex with” (which, sidebar, I’ve always thought is a stupid ass phrase. That’s just not accurate, but I’m getting off topic) and it wasn’t that we were taught abstinence-only, but more like, “now don’t you want to keep this number as low as possible?”

So, between twilight and my religious upbringing, I’ve internalized this idea of “the first person you have sex with should also be the last person you have sex with,” and I think I’m still grappling with undoing that idea in my brain. BUT. bringing this back to GG: this idea permeates a lot of teen soaps in the 2000s, and the romantic fatalism that goes along with that.

I’ve been watching The OC for the first time, and it’s been interesting bc it’s the show the GG showrunners did before GG, so I can kind of see the blueprint for the ideas and characterizations that were really...amped up in Gossip Girl? Like OC is a dramatic-ass show, but it feels more gritty and grounded than Gossip Girl, in which everything feels heightened and elevated and...distanced, I guess? And these two shows are really actually period pieces, they are such snapshots & products of the area in which they were created -- which, carried those views of love and sex as a throughline throughout the course of their shows. (i.e., dan & blair both end up with their respective firsts, bc it’s Destiny. Or something like that).

So, when I first watched the show (I was a freshman in college, the show had just come up on netflix streaming - I still thought I was straight, I was still Christian, I still had yet to take a gender studies course), well - for starters, I was so into the derena endgame, and chair...I wasn’t too invested, but like, it’s not like I wasn’t positive towards it. And I think a lot of that was due to these 00’s media ideas of, what’s the right word...sexual fidelity? And the belief that everyone has One Person, and if they’re ever not with that One Person then those other relationships are fake and false. And derena and chair in the show both followed and affirmed that kind of viewpoint by ending up together.

I should say here that I am not equivocating the relationship dynamics of these separate ships, I’m lumping them together to make a point, but derena =/= chair in my interpretation of the show and of the characters.

Now, I am older and hopefully a little bit wiser, and I believe that romantic love isn’t necessarily destined, but it’s something that’s built, that grows, and a person’s sexual history is not a reflection of their goodness, and that love can change and evolve and it doesn’t have to be romantic or stay romantic to be meaningful. So, when I rewatched the show in my mid-20s, dair was the ship that resonated with me the most. And it still does, which is why I’m here, writin’ fic, and answerin’ tumblr asks from you lovely people.

Also on my rewatch, I read that dan & serena grew out of each other, which is sad, but it happens, and that’s okay. And with chair, all those red flags that 00’s teen soaps gloss over (because they do them for nothing but the Drama, the lasting implications don’t matter, it’s about taking the stakes of the moment as high as possible) I really saw them, and they alarmed me in a way that didn’t alarm over-romanticizing 18-year-old me. That being said, I’m very happy in my little corner of the fandom sandbox, and I’m not looking to argue the virtues of some ships over others or change hearts and minds. I just want to write my silly little stories and maybe have my friends read them :)

I think it’s also important to mention that since GG stopped airing we’ve entered a new wave of feminism, and the MeToo movement arose, and as people of my generation have grown up, we are engaging with the media we grew up in with our evolved/evolving viewpoints, and I think that’s why there appears to be such a change within the fandom. Plus, in the grand vast scheme of history, sex positivity and gender empowerment are SUCH recent things, and in the past ten years, they’ve progressed lightning-fast. Like, remember when I said I began college and I still thought I was straight? Gay marriage was not legal where I was from then. Like, I remember the day Obergefell v. Hodges was decided, and that win was not a guaranteed one. (I was actually studying abroad in Rome at the time, so we American students were running through Italy being like “gay marriage!!!” while the Italians just watched us like “????????”)

You say you’ve always been a dair shipper, and that’s great for you! But I wasn’t. And for me, I am constantly learning and unlearning and relearning, and media (even off the rails CW teen dramas like Gossip Girl) is one of my ways of doing so. Though I will put on my Old Lady Librarian Liz hat for a second and say: if you’re still in school/university, and have the opportunity to take a gender studies course (outside the realm of the internet, bc tumblr is not the be all end all of education), I highly recommend it. I’m still no expert, and I can’t throw any verbatim Judith Butler at you, but engaging with those ideas and the history of gender studies academically gave me a framework for thinking critically that I’ve taken with me. And nothing teaches you humility like wading through Butler jargon.

Thank you so much for this ask, this really got me to think and reminisce and I enjoyed it!

#asks #anon #long post #on today's episode of liz overshares...#you may have gotten more than you bargained for with this response anon #but tbh no one has ever accused me of being shortwinded #gg meta #also for tagging purposes #anti derena #anti chair

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higuchimon · 3 years

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[fanfic] The Perfect Home

Yubel wasn’t just in Juudai’s soul. He gently slid their three cards into his deck. He would have to figure out new combos with them but that would take time. If anyone had ever asked, however, he would have truthfully said that he didn’t care if Yubel didn’t work with his deck. He never wanted to be separate from them again.

Yubel’s touch caressed against the side of his neck and he leaned towards it. Yubel didn’t have to appear for him to be aware of their presence. Said presence was there at all times, and he breathed in deeply, luxuriating in the sense of being whole.

He’d never thought that he missed a part of himself until Yubel was there to fill the hole.

“Everything all right?” Juudai murmured. Yubel nodded slightly.

“Your deck is interesting,” they replied. Their other hand caressed something that he couldn’t see. “It has been some time since I saw these.”

Juudai tilted his head and tried to see what they meant. “The Elemental Heroes?” He didn’t think Yubel meant the Neo-Spacians. They’d only been available to be seen during their duels.

“Yes. You don’t remember?” A bit of a smile touched on their lips. “Of course you don’t.”

“Remember what?” Juudai knew things from his past life. He knew that he loved Yubel and that the love hadn’t changed in all the time between then and now. Most of what he remembered involved time with Yubel. But if he tried very hard, there were faint images that he wasn’t even sure existed as more than just fancies…

Yubel chuckled. “Our realm was Kuragari. What you now call monster spirits were just – people there. And you, my beloved prince, had a bodyguard. Those were the Elemental Heroes.

He blinked a few times, then turned to take a long look at the Heroes, whose spirits stood in a clump not that far away, watching as silently as the Neo-Spacians did. He wasn’t sure if they were comfortable here in Neo-Space, but they were there all the same.

“We were,” Featherman agreed. “It’s been a very long time since then. I’d almost forgotten.”

Sparkman shrugged. “I thought there was something special about you but I wasn’t certain. But you are the Prince that we guarded so very long ago. Now that Yubel’s a part of the deck, we remember it too.”

Burst Lady crossed her arms. “What took you so long to get back here? Juudai’s missed you!”

“It wasn't my idea,” Yubel replied calmly. “I would have returned much sooner if I had my way about it.”

Juudai rested a hand on Yubel. “It’s okay. We’re together now.” He didn’t want any part of his deck – his friends – to ever be at war with another part.

Burst Lady didn’t look as if she were too thrilled about this at all but she didn’t argue the point. Juudai smiled, a little tired after everything. He didn’t know how long they’d been here in Neo-Space since he and Yubel’s souls fused, but everything jut seemed so far away and long ago. He knew he needed to get back to Duel Academia eventually, but not now. Not until he’d rested.

But first he needed to do something. He’d not done this for the Neo-Spacians, mostly because he hadn’t known he could. He’d been too eager to get back to school and have that rematch against Edo. Now was different.

Now he turned to all of his deck, and gestured to Yubel. “This is Yubel. They’re the one that I love. I fused my soul to theirs, so they’re going to be with me forever. And they’re going to be joining the deck.” He tilted hi head. “Yubel, do your other forms – do they-”

“I am them and they are me,” Yubel told him. “I merely change how I present myself. One spirit for all three.”

Juudai nodded, before he gestured to the Elemental Heroes and Neo-Spacians. “This is my deck.” It didn’t matter that some of them seemed to know Yubel already. That wasn’t the point. “We’re all friends here.”

Yubel crossed their arms over their chest and regarded all of them. Juudai wasn’t going to force any of them to talk to each other. He just wanted everyone to know that Yubel was there to stay, ad for Yubel to know that they were his friends too.

“Welcome to the deck,” Necro Darkman said, taking a step forward. He bent his head formally towards them. “We have seen what you can do and it is most impressive.”

“Juudai’s deck is a great place to be!” Hero Kid – one of them - chirped up. “I wouldn’t want to be in anyone else’s deck!”

Yubel’s expression softened just the smallest bit. The other Elemental Heroes slowly greeted her, as did the spirits that weren’t part of either side of the deck. After that, the Neo-Spacians added their greetings and welcome. Finally, Neos stepped forward.

“Welcome,” the blank-faced warrior intoned formally. He’d been on the field when Juudai made the decision to fuse himself and Yubel; Juudai wondered if he understood why. Maybe he’d ask when he got the chance. But he didn’t seem to object, whether he knew or not. “We are pleased to see that the Light’s been driven out of you.”

Juudai could feel a wince that washed through Yubel at that, and how many memories just the mention of the Light called up. He wasn’t too fond of it himself. But Yubel’s reply betrayed none of that.

“Juudai’s soul is where I’ve always belonged. The Light – and nothing else – will not harm him while I am here. And I will always be here.”

Juudai slid his arms around Yubel; their wings and arms folded around him. He thought he remembered times when Yubel took him flying. Perhaps they’d end up doing that again. But for right now, he remained content to have Yubel there, in his deck and in his soul and in his heart.

The End

Notes: From December 21 to December 27 I’m running Soulshipping Week on Tumblr. Very much looking forward to it! I hope you enjoy it too!

Also, the Gem Beasts were sorta there but taking a nap or something. I headcanon that being in Neo-Space isn’t easy for any being that isn’t either a Neo-Spacian or connected to Juudai’s deck and the Gem Beasts were just visiting the deck, not a permanent part of it.

#fanfic #higuchimon writes #ygo gx #yubel #yuuki juudai #yubel x juudai #juudai x yubel #soulshipping

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noragami-ru-manga · 4 years

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Soul summoning and Father’s return from Yomi

For someone who supposedly hates Father, I sure talk a lot about him, huh

While I was flipping through the pages of the manga, I once again came to a stop at the soul summoning scene in chapter 37. Specifically at Nora’s tale about Father escaping from Yomi, which I, apparently, did not pay due attention to.

I’ve never had a single opinion on how Father got in and out of Yomi, so I toyed with a few.

1. When Father was still human, he was already interested in researching ayakashi (like Ebisu, for example), somehow learned about the kotonoha (the Word of Yomi) and decided to get one for himself. He voluntarily ventured into Yomi but asked the pock-marked girl to soul call him beforehand, and she did just that.

2. The pock-marked girl died, and Father got mad at the gods for being directly or indirectly involved. He went to Yomi to get her back, stumbled upon Izanami, saw the brushes in action, and either stole or wheedled out one of them.

3. Father was the one who died while the pock-marked girl lived. While in Yomi, Father encountered Izanami, learned about the brushes, and got his hands on one of them.

In this post I want to examine the last option – the one in which Father died and was resurrected by that girl of his through soul summoning.

First of all, let me remind you that soul summoning isn’t something Adachitoka came up with specifically for Noragami, but an actual Japanese tradition.

I think it’s reasonable to assume that whatever exists in our world is also a thing in Noragami universe. All the locations that we see in the series, specifically shrines, are real places (with the exception of the characters’ houses, Takamagahara and Yomi, obviously). This means that the tradition of soul summoning can easily exist in-universe.

Maybe it’s just me (or the translation), but the way Kofuku talks about soul summoning seems to imply that she knows what it is and expects others to know about it, too. Apparently, they just never thought of using it on a god because it’s a human tradition.

And it goes against everything both Father and Amaterasu say.

Amaterasu says humans can’t (mustn’t) come back to life at all, Father implies he is the only one who’s managed to return from Yomi/come back to life. How do we reconcile these statements with people climbing on roofs and staring down wells trying to revive their loved ones? The answer is – people did all that, they just weren’t successful. Except for the pock-marked girl.

I’m absolutely sure she was the one who called Father back from Yomi, thanks to a discussion I stumbled upon here on Tumblr.

@sayaka19fan gave an alternate translation of this scene that differs from both the official transalation and the fan scanlation: “Even if he said I was a girl with pock marks I wonder if she was his loved one”. Aka “he was cold to me, even if I had her appearance”. So Father being distant made Izanami question her choice of appearance and wonder if she impersonated the wrong person.

If the girl was alive, then Father not being swayed by Izanami is easily explained, he simply knew that whoever was in front of him couldn’t have been that girl. This rules out her dying first and Father coming to Yomi to retrieve her the way Izanagi came after Izanami (not to mention that this particular scenario would require some other person to call Father’s name). So between the two of them, Father was the only one who got into Yomi.

The thing about Yomi is that it’s unclear whether it’s really a place where people go after their deaths. On the one hand, you have this word “yomigaeru” - to come back to life = to return from Yomi. On the other hand, there are opinions like this one:

In no ancient Shinto textual source is it explained who exactly goes to Yomi and why. Some historians suggest that the concept of a life after death was not a familiar one to the ancient Japanese and it only took form with the introduction of Buddhism from China in the 6th century CE. Yomi certainly has a very limited place in Shinto thought where a life after death is only vaguely alluded to and where there is an absence of a general concept of punishment and reward for souls in the next life as found in many other religions. The only suffering of souls in Yomi, if indeed there is any at all, is their separation from their living loved ones. The noted Shinto scholar and theologian Hirata Atsutane (1776-1843 CE) explains Yomi and its limited significance thus,

“The old legends that dead souls go to Yomi cannot be proven. Then it may be asked, where do the souls of the Japanese go when they die? It may be clearly seen from the purport of ancient legends and from modern examples that they remain eternally in Japan and serve in the realm of the dead governed by Okuninushi-no-kami. This realm of the dead is not in any one particular place in the visible world, but being a realm of the darkness and separated from the present world, it cannot be seen…

The darkness, however, is only comparative. It should not mistakenly be imagined that this realm is devoid of light. It has food, clothing, and houses of various kinds, similar to those of the visible world. Proof of this may be found in accounts…in which a person has occasionally returned to tell of the realm of the dead.

After death the soul leaves the body and resides in the area of the grave, a fact attested by countless accounts…of both ancient and modern times of miraculous occurrences by spirits in the vicinity of graves…Some say that the soul goes to the filthy realm of Yomi, but there is not a shred of evidence that this is the case”. (Scott Littleton, 94)

Even in the manga itself Yato and Ebisu didn’t encounter a single soul when they were in Yomi, only ayakashi and Izanami’s maidens. Then again, we learned in chapter 86 that where souls go in their afterlife depends on what they believed in when they were alive. So technically, if Father believed that dead souls end up in Yomi, that’s where he could have gone after he died.

Why do I now think that he died and didn’t venture into Yomi as a living person specifically to get the kotonoha? Again, it all comes down to the pock-marked girl. I think that her death could have been, in FMA terms, an “equivalent exchange” for Father’s return from Yomi.

See, gods in Noragami are pretty powerful, I give them that. They can, for example, turn into giant spiders (Ookuninushi) and lightning (Takemikazuchi). And while the series never really explains how exactly Tenjin goes about helping students get better marks, or how Ebisu helps businesses, I’m pretty sure that gods can alter reality to some extent. However, they aren’t all-powerful, and there’s one thing they can do nothing about – death.

Of course, we should take into account that Yato isn’t exactly a god of healing to at least theoretically be able to postpone someone’s death (he can totally do the opposite though). I do think, however, that any other god would have said the same, because this is the one thing the gods cannot change. They can’t postpone death because the circle of life is the nature of things and shouldn’t be meddled with. Not because “Amaterasu said so”, but because that’s how the world is. Who made the world like this is a tricky question to answer, since to extent to which the Japanese cosmogoniс myth is applicable to Noragami, aka what came first, the egg or the hen, is a topic for a discussion of its own.

Bottom line is, if Father came back from the dead, something had to balance that out, and that something was the pock-marked girl’s death. It wasn’t a punishment from the Heavens for his breaking out of Yomi, which the Heavens, apparently, don’t even know about. It wasn’t an injustice that some god committed, ‘cause gods had nothing to do with it all. Father became bitter at the world for taking the pock-marked girl away from him, at the gods who didn’t help him when he needed them, and at humans who created and support those useless gods. The clothes Father was wearing when he was escaping from Izanami are the same ones he was in when he was hugging the girl in chapter 60. If this is how things went, then the effect of his return was immediate – as soon as he came back, the girl died.

There’s one more thing that bothers me about Father – how he’s survived after his return from Yomi, specifically how he changes bodies. It’s hard to tell if he had a body in the scenes from Yato and Nora’s childhood, since Far shore beings can interact with the real-life objects (food, clothes) just fine. All we know is that he’s had the same appearance in Yomi, in Yato and Nora’s childhood, and even now; and also that he doesn’t just possess bodies, but their souls as well. His current “host” Fujisaki is a third year high-school senior, meaning he’s roughly two years older than Hiyori. If Father is reborn in a new body each time, then Yato hasn’t seen him for 17-18 years now. And that Yato has never seen Fujisaki before his father made himself known when he and Yukine were walking down the street is apparent not just from their exchange in Fujisaki’s house

but also from the very first scene Father was in. Yato saw how Fujisaki caught Hiyori, and if he knew that the guy was his father, he definitely would have warned her to stay away. Granted, Yato probably didn’t see the guy’s face, but it doesn’t change the fact that Yato first saw what Father now looks like in the year the events of the manga currently take place – after 2010.

Except we see in the Volume 8 omake that Father collected articles about the “Yatogami miracle” from 2000′s, too – when Fujisaki was barely in primary school. (I don’t know if I need to explain this, but just in case it confuses you. I’m not talking about who and when was collecting the papers. What I mean is that Yato worked as a magatsukami in 2000′’s when Fujisaki was only a child).

Could Nora have been the one to make Yato go back to his work as a magatsukami all on her own on those occasions when Father couldn’t command him, being a grown man in the body of an infant or a child with all the restrictions that come with it (also, gross)? She was able to deliver him to Father using the masks, but for the most part she was just following his orders. So I’m really curious what Father meant when he said that he “didn’t get to chose”. Does it mean he has to be reborn as a baby each time he dies? Or maybe two souls are just too much for one body to handle, thus he has to switch them quite often and at the most inconvenient times, so he just uses whoever is available? He had to change schools to spy after Yato and Hiyori because Kouto didn’t live in Tokyo, and he seems to somewhat care about his “sister” and “nieces”. But his being out of Yato’s life for a solid decade after each rebirth (before he at least has some freedom of movement, being a child and all) is too good to be true.

And even though I’ve said we don’t know for sure if he had a body after his return from Yomi, I’ll just go out and say that he had – his own body, no less, the one we saw in Yato and Nora’s memories. He had to be human to have wished Yato into existence in the first place, and since his appearance back then matches his current looks, he could have initially returned into his own body.

After all, time flows differently on the Near shore and on the Far shore. Although so far we’ve only seen that the passage of time is slower both in Yomi and Takamagahara.

Is the opposite possible? Could it be that while Father was in Yomi, very little time has passed in Nakatsukuni, so instead of burying Father the girl tried calling him back and succeeded? It’s a wild guess, but if day and night don’t have a set length on the Far shore, then it means that one day in Yomi can also be shorter than one day on Earth.

In any case, if Father did come back to his own body, it lasted for a while – at least until Yato was a teen.

Another thing that bothers me is how come Yato didn’t know what Father looked like after an entire month of staying in that cottage. Did Yato never look at him during that whole time? Or would Father come to the cottage as himself? We know that his soul can separate itself from Fujisaki’s, but is it accidental or intentional?

Look at his latest encounter with Hiyori.

Father showed himself for a split second, distracting Hiyori and letting the ayakashi bite her. Did he accidentally “slip out” because of his strong emotions, or did he do it deliberately to make Hiyori lose focus and be an easy target for his doggies? The second one is a very Father thing to do, and if he can separate himself from Fujisaki from time to time, it explains why Yato didn’t know he looks like a student now. However, he was Fujisaki when he came to collect Nora after the whole ordeal with Ebisu.

Maybe Yato only saw Father that one time during his entire stay at the cottage – when Father ordered him to go to Yomi. This way it’s possible that Yato indeed never looked at his face. Except chapter 29 seemingly disproves that.

The background to Yato’s thoughts is Father putting down the bucket with purifying water in it. If this is just to remind us that this person is Father, I’m fine with it. But if this is Yato’s memory, something he saw with his own eyes, then it can only mean that Father did not look like Fujisaki then.

TLDR: I think that Father came back from Yomi because the pock-marked girl resurrected him via soul summoning and died in exchange, accidentally or voluntarily. I’m not overly attached to this theory and I won’t be surprised or disappointed if it’s never confirmed. It was just fun to dig into Father’s possible past once more.

P.S. while I was reading the soul summoning scene, the inconsistencies in Amaterasu’s actions and words (“call him like in a soul summoning” – “people can’t come back from Yomi”, “call him by his real name” – “are you the one called Yatogami?”) made me entertain the idea that the girl who helped the gang wasn’t Amaterasu, rather her lookalike. Like her twin sister Tsukuyomi? They weren’t twins according to the Japanese mythology as far as I know, but in other mythologies the sun and the moon are twins *cough Greek cough*, and we’ve already seen that Adachitoka don’t exactly retell mythology but adapt it however they like. I did cast away the thought since there was too much focus on the sun during the scene, but it’s still a fun little idea.

#noragami #noragami manga #noragami meta #fujisaki kouto #father

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mythicaldemigoddess-of-deltarune · 3 years

Photo

Credit for Invader Zim goes to Jhonen Vasquez

Credit for Powerpuff Girls goes to Craig McCracken

--------------

I’m gonna wait a bit more, to talk about some feelings regarding PPG.

which has to do with some Positive and Negatives that has to do with the Fandom.

anyway I got this ship that pop into my head, had to draw a ship drawing of it....if they get married, that would make Dib and Gaz the new Big Siblings of Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup.

the chances of this ship getting more shippers is perhaps well, maybe small......I don’t know how many will like this ship.

also ever since finding out about Resident Evil Character

Lady Dimitrescu, I have seen or heard the word “Simp”

what does that mean anyway....?

she is a very tall lady, in theory I believe she could be a bit more taller than Slenderman himself.

speaking of height, I’m starting to think I’m not 5′5″ at all...

I mean once I thought I was 5′6″ but turns out I’m not.

so I asked my pendulum, asked it if I was 5′5″

it circled slow for No, asked if I am taller than 5′5″

still gives me a No.

asked if I’m 5′3″ and it gave a Yes.

even if it could explain how I notice how my shadow is,

it just seems so small even when I stand close to it, and check the height between myself and the shadow are about the same.

at least my shoes make me a bit taller.

I guess my pendulum could be telling me the truth

about me being 5′3″......but it could be one of it’s pranks.

I’m listening to Addict right now,

the song was created by a fan called Silva Hound,

the song then ended up having it’s own official Hazbin Hotel Music Video.

you can find the song on both Silva Hound’s channel,

as well as it’s Music Video over at Vivziepop’s channel.

and I DON’T mean the one that is called “Vivziepop Club.”

I’m still not pleased with that “club channel.”

I’m just gonna try to keep a eye out for the real episode 4

of Helluva Boss.

was playing the AU of AU FNAF game called

Five Nights of Flirting, finally got a Good Ending in them.

well the Romance ones, even if one of the characters didn’t really say they were but kind of implied it,

it is nice that they made them Ace.

well I’m Aceflux, well technically Aroaceflux.

I still find romance interesting and well do some shipping.

plus it is still possible for those who are Ace to get crushes

or fall in love, plus there are different forms of romance

that doesn’t always have to be well the intense version.

like a tender kiss on the forehead or on the cheek.

just hanging out and watching shows or movies

or reading comics or playing video games you love.

anyway I had successfully got the Romance Endings

with Jeremy and Fritz. (in two different timelines, not at the same time.)

just need to try to get the others, and maybe I will get to a True Ending.

Purple Guy is perhaps gonna be difficult for me.

or as he is known as Vincent.

I like to think of him as the Canon Purpleman’s Son,

like the one who was always bullied by his older brother.

I’m keeping the name I’m using, if I change it

it is most likely my progress from the Jeremy & Fritz’s timelines

will be lost.

well the name I’m using is well, it is spelled a bit differently.

but I decided to go with “Alice”

but I decided to spell it with a “y” instead of a “i”

that alternate way of spelling Alice is interesting,

plus they both will still sound the same.

if I have another Save, that is separate from that one.

I could always try to go with the default name “Doll”

I kind of want to think of the three versions of Doll,

being siblings, a Sister, Brother and Sibling.

it be nice if Undertale had such a option.

like you could pick to be either Female or Male

or Non-Binary/Genderfluid.

those are the three picks for Five Nights of Flirting.

well when we do play Undertale,

whatever the Bio-Sex/Gender of the Player,

it can be projected upon Frisk.

so when I play Frisk and well control them throughout the game.

I can see them as Gyno-Agender.

it isn’t like “Agender” where it is just Non-Binary.

it is a Bigender Identity, being both Binary & Non-Binary.

think of it as being a fusion, think of the song Stronger Than You.

the original from Steven Universe, but the Undertale Parody is still awesome too.

I decided to make a new tumblr avatar,

that shows both my sexuality & gender identity.

the colors I picked is suppose to be for my Aroaceflux Identity,

while inside the heart will be for my gender identity.

so it is suppose to be a Sexuality/Gender Identity type avatar flag.

also I’m gonna try to look up the whole Simp, maybe look it up later and finally figure out what it means.

cause I have No clue.

also I want to say that, it can be possible for even someone who is Ace or Aceflux, to be a empath to “pheromones”.....

even if some might think that can’t be true, I believe it is.

the best thing to keep me from picking up THOSE kinds of energies from family or others that live where I live,

is to keep wearing my bracelets that has Black Obsidian and Selenite Agate.

I started getting gems, to help me.

I even keep them under my pillow.

I even sleep with my bracelets on too, but only take them off

when I have to take a shower or bath.

but after that, I will put them back on...

it be nice if hospitals had two types of doctors,

ones that treats well the seizures that actually needs medicine in the form of pills.

and the other giving advice to just move to a place with less negative

energy from both human and supernatural.

not all seizures will be the type that needs pills.

but try telling doctors that, hey if someone goes through withdrawal

don’t just put them back on the pill thinking they need it.

they NEVER needed them in the first place, they needed to get away from the town because it is that place that was causing the dang seizures in the first place.

I....went through withdrawal before, even if now I believe I never truly needed them, just needed to move far enough away from the negative energy......

I think it is possible, when I thought I was being touched

but no one was touching me....I think it might of been something else that I couldn’t see that was perhaps, really touching me.

like you being touched on your arm or back.

I wish doctors didn’t misdiagnose so much.

not all seizures are gonna be the same, and some spiritual doctors would be nice to see too.

I can’t help but be, concerned about staying in a room too long

if I start to pick up certain energies...

plus I’m gonna try to take a break from using my pendulum,

so gonna try not to use it too much.

but only use it once in a while.

also if it is possible that those from a distant future

are messing with timelines,

and that is why I remember a story I was told before

that has to do with someone in my family....

then well I can only hope the ones messing with timelines,

will stay in their own timeline, and stop breaking reality.

timelines can become more fragile the more you try to tamper with it.

plus it is possible those who try to tamper with it,

will get karma, so it is best for them to stop before the karma becomes really REALLY bad.

even if you do try to correct the changes that were made,

that would most likely cause problems too, but you should only fix it

if it truly 100% needs to be corrected back to how it was

before some human messed with it.

if that is true, that would be on my list.

I’m Semi-Misanthrope, I still like humanity but there are ugly parts of it that makes me disappointed.

so there are still good, even if there are the bad mixed in there too.

Starlight Glimmer did the same thing, but what if she wasn’t the first?

what if Sunset was the original element of Harmony,

but Celestia changed the Pony version of her friends memories.

but in theory, if Starlight made one more change in history

it would of most likely cause a break of all reality.

I think those timelines that were created, still exist

but are now Alternate Universes, still having existence.

but not being part of the Main Timeline.

or the Beta Main Timeline, while the Alpha Main Timeline

is the one where Sunset came from I think.

I still love SVTFOE and MLPFIM,

but I just don’t like how they seem to blame the scapegoats

for what Discord, Moon Butterfly and Mina Loveberry started.

even if some fans aren’t fans of Steven Universe Future

(and that’s okay, not everyone has to like it.)

at least that show didn’t pull the same Broken Moral Compass.

the endings of those two shows were awesome,

like Luster Dawn seems like a really interesting and awesome character.

and the whole dimensions in SVTFOE, merging is awesome.

also I’m starting to wonder if Glossryck really did die

or if no longer being bond to SVTFOE’s Realm of Magic,

left him free to explore the Multiverse.

after noticing in the magic book of spells,

that had Glossryck’s to do list.

I believe in theory he is secretly alive,

even if it is off screen, and fans might need to figure it out.

I also believe it wasn’t Toffee who corrupted Star’s Wand or the Realm of Magic, that was Star.

it is possible the Dark Magic was always in The Butterfly Family.

well Negative Emotion Magic.

Toffee was never in the wands, he was just speaking through from where he was in the Realm of Magic.

I can’t be the only one who is noticing the habit

where Heroes kind of pull a Anti-Hero move

and don’t even bother to punish the ones who started the problem in the first place.

once more I still love those shows,

I just am not a fan of the Broken Moral Compasses moments,

like Star deciding to place the blame on Magic for her problems,

but it isn’t magic that was to blame, it was her family misusing it.

or the whole Cozy, Chrysalis and Tirek being turned into a statue.

I’m not sure if Discord even got punished for bringing those three together or for everything else he’s done that leads up to it.

I wonder if it’s weird to kind of start to see

Blossom, Bubbles and Buttercup

as Cozy, Chrysalis and Tirek’s Reincarnations.

like Buttercup being Chrysalis’s Reborn Self,

Blossom being Tirek’s Reborn Self

and lastly Bubbles being Cozy Glow Reborn Self.

of course that would be Fanon, and not canon.

anyway, once again this ship of Utonium x Membrane

might not get many shippers.

but I think that’s okay, I mean not everyone has to like this ship.

and if my pendulum keeps giving me a Yes

about being 5′3″, I guess I will have to believe it.

but I would need to gather more proof.

I will believe it’s Yes answer about having Multiracial heritage.

but I’m not gonna try to date HUMANS.

not unless they aren’t some stuck up racist shisno.

once again, I’m Semi-Misanthrope, even if I still like humanity,

the disgusting part of it just really disgusts me, and the whole racism thing is only part of it.

plus thanks to my pendulum, I now believe that Jesus

was indeed Black.

and all through out history it had been censored.

once again even though I am a Ma-Acolyte, I can still believe in Jesus too....but now I believe he was in fact Black.

my pendulum gave me a Yes, when I asked if Jesus’s Mother was White, and a Yes for Jesus being Black.

but you can’t try to force people to accept that, it is best to let them accept it by their own free will.

like I mention many times before, I do NOT like forced converting.

even if my pendulum gave a Yes

when I asked if Jesus had a interracial heritage that he had inherited from his mother Mary (Not from Joseph.)

not many people will support that, but there will still be some that will support it and believe it is true.

plus I don’t know if I should tell my family about it,

I mean I did finally talk about the whole Asexuality...

but I know there was some form of misinterpreting.

even if some who are Ace are Gay, some will be either Bi, Pan or Hetero or even Omni.

Omni can have different forms of attraction.

but I want to try to wait a while to correct my family for misunderstanding Ace, I still love my family

but I know they can misunderstand things

worse than me at times, I think.

I think I should take it one step at a time,

when I’m ready I will correct them about their misunderstanding of Asexuality, as well as the whole needing to tell them that there has been lies told about a distant cousin.

I’m glad I never came out as Aroaceflux,

because if I did, I would most likely get the whole

passive aggressive treatment.

which means your family still loves you, they just can’t accept ya being that way......and it might be possible it could take most families time to fully accept.

plus the passive aggressive, is less bad, it is still bad,

but it wouldn’t be as bad as the aggressive.

it is the aggressive without the passive part.

I will try to sign back on later, so I can check on some stuff on here.

but before I sign out, I’m gonna change my avatar.

then I’m going to “Wing-Town”

I asked my pendulum, and it seems my energy wings are hugging around me right now, so I will assume I’m already in Wing-Town.

it’s like Sweater-Town, but with Earth Angel Energy Wings instead.

plus I can’t see them, but I should make sure to not go out if there are those around who can see them.

not that I can go out right now anyway.

anyway I’m just gonna hurry up and change my avatar

then I will go lay down in bed while being in Wing-Town.

then later after I finish laying down in bed

(which it is likely I might fall asleep.)

I will go and eat some good.

hope some of you like this drawing of Membrane & Utonium.

so see ya later, stay safe and remember that there many types of ships, and not all of them are romance.

go here to learn that there is more types of “ships”

https://shipping.fandom.com/wiki/Shipping_Wiki

just go to the part that says Shipping.

I believe that because people might misinterpret.

for Friendships, it is best to use “I Bud It”

and for Found Families, it is best to use “I Fam It.”

not using “I ship it” keeps from any misunderstandings.

maybe after I take a nap I will watch Kids Next Door,

and maybe even Invader Zim too, as well as some other Cartoon shows

and maybe even a few movies too.

I’m a bit tired, so I’m gonna hurry up and change my tumblr avatar

and then go lay down for maybe a hour or a few.

PS:

maybe this ship will get a lot of fan art, or not...I’m not really sure.

once again see ya later and stay safe....

#professor membrane #professor utonium #lgbtq positivity #crossover ship #otp ship #invader zim fanart #powerpuff girls fanart #kissing

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the-irish-mayhem · 4 years

Text

Fosterson Fic Rec Masterlist: Multichapters

The Main Reclist has been split to fix the links that tumblr decided to break if there were too many of them in a single post. I’ll be keeping the main reclist updated (even if the links appear broken) as well as maintaining this list and the list for oneshots.

I need help expanding this list! If you have any favorites or fics of your own of your own you don’t see included in this list and you’d like to submit for consideration, please drop me a line.

List updated April 2020. New additions marked with **

Updated during this wild quarantined time, which should serve as a reminder to everyone to APPRECIATE YOUR CONTENT CREATORS! Leave all the comments and kudos to show our love for everything they do. Big thanks to everyone who recommended and/or created content for this amazing ship.

Rated G/K-K+

**The World has Turned and Left Me Here by alwaysaprilia: Jane Foster’s mission is impossible: build a wormhole, save the world. Thor Odinson thinks his task is even more impossible: keep Jane Foster alive long enough for her to accomplish her mission. AKA: What-to-do-when-the-damsel-in-distress-keeps-distressing-you. Rec: This is such a lovely little AU fic, brings in such an expansive world so succinctly and smoothly. | 16k | In progress

**Unspoken by igi_pigi: Post bringing his brother back to Asgard from Midgard, Thor is told by Heimdall that Jane Foster has decided to stop looking for him. [Set after Avengers1.] Rec: Angsty, with some nice Frigga content. | 4.8k | Complete

**Overlapping Spaces by khilari, Persephone_Kore: Thor returns to Earth a month after the Chitauri invasion to keep his promises -- to see Jane again, and take her to see Asgard, even if the rainbow bridge is still undergoing repairs. Not that Jane is complaining about watching the repairs. But she wasn't expecting Loki to be haunting the palace library, even in psychiatric care; and Loki wasn't expecting to make friends with Thor's mortal girlfriend. Rec: If you’re looking for a good, long Jane-centric fic that also features endgame fosterson, a well written Loki, and really interesting take on Asgardian culture, this is the fic for you. | 107k | Complete

IW Coda by hariboowrites: THOR AND JANE FOCUSED CODA TO IW bc i am who i am. Rec: We all need a fosterson followup to Infinity War, and this one has an ending that made me scream internally with excitement. Make this the opening of the next Avengers movie pls. | ~4k | Complete

Five Times Jane Was Kinda Jealous And One Time Thor Was by shinyopals: ‘Hello, Jane,’ said Thor. He gave her a smile that would move mountains and definitely still made her stomach flutter. ‘This is Rachael and Amanda. They wished to give their regards for my help during the Convergence. Although of course without you we would have been hopeless.’ He turned back to Rachael and Amanda. ‘This is my dear friend Dr Jane Foster, of whom I was speaking.’ Dear friend? Jane blinked. They’d been sleeping together for a couple of weeks and had had a slightly awkward conversation to establish where they stood with each other (what Jane called dating exclusively and Thor called a courtship). “Friend”, however “dear”, seemed a bit of an understatement. Sometimes dating a gorgeous world-saving alien prince has its drawbacks. Rec: BURY ME AND HAVE THIS JEALOUSY FIC PRINTED ON MY TOMBSTONE. I usually don’t like the toxicity most jealousy fics are infused with, but this one is so pure and wonderful. I could read it every damn day. | 14k | Complete

The Arizona Banana Famine by Niobium: Thor experiences the simpler side of Earth. Rec: Absolutely hilarious. Thor + shenanigans of living on Earth and trying to hide his identity + Jane helping him to varying effect. | 7k | Complete

Non Est Ad Astra Mollis e Terris Via (there is no easy way from the earth to the stars) by Rozilla: Jane Foster keeps out of social media mostly, but does keep a blog for all things science. With a few personal posts thrown in. Edited (with sarcastic asides) by Darcy Lewis. Rec: Fosterson is mentioned often, but Jane’s voice is incredibly worthwhile. | 10.4k | Complete

Hidden resonances by kes: After the vision Wanda Maximoff gave him, Thor had more questions than answers, and so he sought truth with Jane, in a cave beneath the mountains. Rec: A really great fix-it taking place during AOU, plus some fosterson feels. | 6k | Complete

Time and Trouble by shinyopals: Frigga thinks she knows exactly what to expect from the rest of her life. Then one son perishes and returns, whilst the other falls for a mortal woman who’s like nothing Frigga could have predicted.(Frigga’s POV from the end of Thor right through to post-TDW.) Rec: BLESS ALL FRIGGA-CENTRIC FICS. Great outside perspective fosterson, plus a TDW fix-it. | 14k | Complete

If You Want To Live series by hariboo: They lost Loki when they sunk Manhattan. Three years laters Loki finds them and that’s really when everything begins. This is that beginning. Rec: Terminator fusion AU that you didn’t realize you needed until now. Knowledge of the Terminator films is helpful but not required. The 'needing each other’ that comes along with a desperate post-apocalyptic situation really lends itself well to fosterson. It also hurts a hell of a lot. I wish it wasn’t finished. | 5k | Complete

Fabulous Baking Sisters or How to (not) Get Over A Norse God in 730 Days by Rozilla: After seeing Jane in a slump one too many times, Darcy decides to get her into stress baking… and soon regrets it. Rec: A lot of Jane/Darcy brotp, but lots of fosterson goodness especially near the end. The phrase “sex coma” is definitely used. | 8.5k | Complete

Waking Ease by Salmon_Pink: Thor/Jane, rated G. Set after Thor: The Dark World. Written for Comic Drabbles, prompt "halo”. Rec: very, very short, but cute. This is a part of a larger series by this author, but this is the only fosterson chapter I’ve seen so far. | <1k | In progress

Hold the Sun by writerblocked: Thor and Jane (and everyone else) share a meal. Rec: A nice peek into regular life, complete with some touches of angst and fluff at the same time. This story, like the above rec, is a part of a larger work that does not solely include fosterson. | <1k | Complete

If She Is Worthy by Mr. Chaos: During the battle with The Destroyer, Mjolnir returns to Thor’s hand. But what if Selvig hadn’t pulled Jane away? And what if it wasn’t just Thor that had proven himself worthy? Rec: Jane kicking ass and taking names with Mjolnir. Nuff said. Downside? A giant twist at the end and still waiting for a sequel. | 4.5k | Complete

A Story of Us by me: Short and sweet prompt fills. All feature Thor and Jane as the main couple and are all just ridiculous fluff. Rec: A collection of my prompt fills from tumblr. It wouldn’t be a true reclist without a self-plug. | 26.2k | In progress

Rated T

The Foster Edition series by asoulofstars, MissChrisDaae: What happens when Jane Foster is in the Battle of Manhattan? In short, it changes everything. Rec: FIXING MARVEL WITH JANE FOSTER IS THE BEST, NAY, THE ONLY SOLUTION I WILL ACCEPT. | 60k | In progress

Game Changer by asoulofstars, MissChrisDaae: In the aftermath of the Convergence, Jane and Thor return to Earth in search of the scepter, and the Avengers slowly begin to reassemble. Across the cosmos and on Earth itself, enemies begin to gather, enemies that threaten everything the team has ever fought for, and Jane is faced with something just as daunting, but far more personal. Evolving from a mortal to a goddess. From a spectator to a player. From a scientist to a queen. Rec: A fluffy setup for something big, I can feel it. | 8k | In progress

A Magical Solution to the Einstein Field Equations by shinyopals: Jane Foster has got enough on her plate, what with being a full time researcher, giving lectures, applying for grants, writing books, and consulting for Stark Industries. When Thor drops off the face of the universe and leaves her on Earth with no clues as to where he is, she doesn’t know what to do or how to find him.Then an attack on Stark Industries changes everything, and she finds herself getting thrown into a life that she’s previously only watched from the sidelines, and where getting punched through a wall is suddenly just an average day of the week. Rec: THE MOST PERFECT RAGNAROK AU TO EVER EXIST ANYWHERE EVER. EASILY ONE OF MY FAVORITE FICS OF ALL TIME. | 56k | Complete

Ace in the Hole by MissChrisDaae: Working alongside Selvig on Project PEGASUS, Jane manages to escape when Loki arrives, bringing with her the data on the Tesseract, and making herself SHIELD's biggest resource in combating the rogue trickster. At least until her semi-boyfriend finally makes good on his promise to come back, and she finds herself caught in the middle of a war. And she might be a key part in stopping it. Rec: MOAR JANE IN THE AVENGERS. MOAR JANE BEING VALUED IN THE MCU. MOOOOAAAAAR. | 11.5k | Complete | Part of The Foster Edition series

Wild Card by MissChrisDaae: Separation is, for Thor and Jane, a little easier in knowing what's happening to each other, but they have their own trials to face. In the midst of a war, Thor learns of a force greater than anything he has ever faced, one that could change the fates of both himself and and the woman he loves. Nothing is certain, and the burdens of his family, his life, and his love are weighing heavily upon him. Working with Betty Ross, Jane works to understand the secrets of the universe, unaware of the fact that she's being tested with every move she makes. When she temporarily moves to look after her mother's house in London, she and Darcy come across the Convergence. And, for the third time, Jane's life is turned upside down by an ancient force from another realm. Rec: Canon divergent Fosterson is my freakin JaaaaAAAAm. Also BETTY ROSS. A great replacement for canon if you’re feeling Salty. | 33k | In progress | Part of The Foster Edition series

Dancer in the Dark by MissChrisDaae: Jane Foster has always been a member of the corps de ballet, and has never voiced complaint until one night when she indulges in the fantasy of being the prima ballerina. A mysterious voice calls out to her, tempting her, coaching her, offering to make her a star, and she accepts. Months later, the prophecy comes to light when the star of the company becomes mysteriously indisposed. Jane is suddenly cast into the spotlight, becoming an immediate success, but she only has eyes for Thor, the young scion to the ballet's greatest patron family, who has been masquerading as a stagehand in order to continue a longstanding liaison with her. But Jane's made a deal with something far worse than the devil, and now he's coming to claim his due. Rec: A ballet AU that reminds me a lot of Black Swan tone-wise. Warning though, there is a love triangle that includes Lokane. | 9.6k | In progress

Five Times Having An Alien Prince's Baby Sucked A Lot, And One Time It Didn't by shinyopals: It was the doctor’s turn to look nonplussed. ‘Dr Foster,’ she said quietly, ‘you’re around four weeks pregnant.’ ‘No I’m not,’ said Jane again. She was pretty sure she’d remember if Thor had reappeared for some awesome sex a month ago. He had not. She’d gotten through enough batteries to prove it. Jane isn't quite sure how this all happened. She just knows it's a lot of work and it keeps taking her away from her Physics. Rec: The Definitive™ Fosterson babyfic. I’m generally not much for babyfic because I’m not much for babies. But I’ve read this so many times and it’s so incredibly wonderful. | 24k | Complete

Strange Earth series by Niobium: The apocalypse has come and gone, leaving the Earth strange and altered in its wake. What was once a thriving world of magic and science has become a tractless, untamed Wilderness teeming with dangerous creatures born of warped energy pouring through rents in the fabric of space and time. Society has withdrawn into magically-walled Wards to keep itself safe as it seeks a way to reclaim the planet before it’s twisted beyond all recognition, and its Seers and Champions struggle to protect humanity and one another. Rec: An incredibly imaginative ghost hunting AU. Great world building, and fantastic interaction between Jane and Thor. | 12.6k | In progress

The Obloquy of Newness by Niobium: Jane just wants to present her findings and maybe win a Nobel Prize. That would be a lot easier if all these xenophobes, science deniers, and robots bent on world destruction would stop getting in the way. Or, Jane Foster and Darcy Lewis, and what they were up to before, during, and after Avengers: Age of Ultron. Rec: A really delightful companion to AOU. | 17.4k | Complete

Sex Ed For Asgardians (Isn’t Exactly Necessary) by shinyopals: 'It’s a condom,’ Jane said eventually, reminding herself she was an adult in an adult relationship, albeit a very new one with an alien forty times her age who could hardly be expected to know what Earth birth control was like. Jane and Pepper learn that some myths and legends are true. Rec: I have no idea why this wasn’t on the reclist before. It’s hilarious and also really heartfelt. I love Respectfulinthebedroom!Thor. I love the open communication between them. Lawd. | 3.4k | Complete

Pedulum: Beginning by hariboo: Kept apart, with worlds between them, Jane and Thor do not give up on one day finding each other again. Rec: Exquisite buildup to a reunion. Both Jane and Thor are in-character with their own agency, but its obvious they’re nuts for each other. | 28.5k | Complete | Part of in progress series, Pendulum

Pendulum: Between by hariboo: Having found each other again doesn’t mean things have gotten easier for Thor and Jane. In some ways things are only getting more complicated. At least now they can face whatever comes their way together. Rec: Continiation of Beginning (recced above). Nuanced, sweet, messy, fantastic character dynamics, and with a great plot. | 56.8k | Complete | Part of in progress series, Pendulum

The Hitchhikers Guide to the Guardians of the Galaxy by Maybug: Jane Foster and Thor are finally getting married! Most couples go a little crazy when they’re ecstatically happy, unfortunately for these two going crazy involves knocking a hole in spacetime and marooning themselves and two of Jane’s friends on a desolate and dangerous planet halfway across the galaxy. Meanwhile Darcy, Sif and Bill are trying to find them in Skuttlebutt. Will they survive? Will they make it to the wedding in time? Will Thor’s attempts to communicate with Groot drive everyone crazy? Will Darcy get to witness Jane’s brief Goth phase? Will Jane’s friend Sayed get over his Star-Trek inspired fantasies about green-skinned alien women? Find out in the next exciting installment of Journey into Mishap! Rec: Part of a really great series by a great author. Humorous and kind of cracky. Mixture of MCU and comic canon. Just one chapter short of completion. | 12.7k | In progress | Part of Journey into Mishap and the Fosterson Files

Welcome to the Fall by Niobium: The Avengers pick up the pieces in the aftermath of Sokovia. Inter- and post-film gap-fillers and ficlets, with varying POV characters. A couple of them are slightly canon divergent and will be labeled as such. Rec: A really solid piece of prose, careful of canon while building upon it/improving it. The fosterson is handled really well. | 5.5k | Complete

The House of Foster by ArticulatioHumeri: She had set out to study wormholes. Never would Jane Foster have thought that it would lay the foundations of a family clan. Rec: Great fosterson moments, and with proper time devoted to them. A good, long read. Probably the longest fic I have on this list, and the longest Marvel fic that actually legitimately features Fosterson prominently. | 224k | Complete

The Measure of a Man by fayedartmouth: Thor is banished to Earth. Reclaiming his worth is harder than he thinks it will be. AU of the movie Thor. Rec: By now, y’all know I love fics where Thor was on Earth longer than in canon. This is probably my favorite, because Thor is incredibly well-written, and the cultural/personal struggles he encounters are written fantastically. The fosterson is incredibly organic and lovely. | 140.7k | Complete

Towards the Storm by iwillavengeyou: Jane Foster is worthy. Jane Foster is the Mighty Thor. But was she always this way? This fic seeks to examine Jane’s path to picking up the mighty hammer Mjolnir, and her journey as a heroine who, underneath it all, is only human. Rec: One of the few fics I’ve been able to find and enjoy that deals with Jane’s place as Thor in the 616 universe. I like the story’s trajectory, but it has since been orphaned. If anyone wants to... ya know... pick it up... that’d be swell. | 1.5k | In progress

As You Wish by MissChrisDaae: After the apparent death of the only man she will ever love, Jane finds herself the unwilling bride-to-be of the kingdom’s icy hearted crown prince, whose interest in her is almost as unnerving as the man himself. Before the wedding can take place, Jane finds herself in the hands of three kidnappers, her life in danger, and a mysterious figure in black pursuing them. Fencing. Fighting. Torture. Revenge. Giants. Monsters. Chases. Escapes. True love. Miracles. What more does a story need? Rec: THE PRINCESS BRIDE FUSION THAT YOU DIDN’T KNOW YOU NEEDED UNTIL NOW. Also Sif is Indigo Montoya. If the fosterson wasn’t enough to get you to read it. | 21.3k | Complete

Girls’ Night by Maybug: With Thor in Asgard and the other Avengers away on a mission, Darcy, Betty, Pepper and Jane decide to have a girls’ night. A certain supervillain has other plans, but it’s nothing they can’t handle. Rec: fosterson is background, but you all know I can’t resist a good Marvel ladies asskicking story. Story is mostly from Jane’s POV, so good insights on fosterson. | 11.2k | In progress

Thor 2 Rewritten: The Shaded Tree by kes: Rec: A series of oneshots and short multichapters that rewrite the second Thor movie. Not everything is over fosterson, but it’s always an undercurrent. Worth the read. Such a great alternative to canon. | 44k | Incomplete, abandoned

don’t need no ammunition (ain’t the bridge that’s falling down) by anthropologicalhands: Thor (2011) AU. After the battle at Jotunheim, something goes wrong and Sif finds herself stranded on Midgard. Jane is still chasing bridges and wants to know how this strange woman got in her atmospheric disturbance. Darcy’s psyched…and a little freaked out. Meanwhile, Thor and Loki embark on an quest (actually: intergalactic road trip) to rescue Sif. Thor has to prove himself. Loki is having an identity crisis. Do the math. Rec: Great interactions with everyone. Jane and Thor are still absolutely smitten despite the different circumstances. Loki/Sif is also a main pairing. | 39k | Complete

Fate Has Brought Us Together by asoulofstars: A series of one-shots detailing the lives of Thor Odinson and Jane Foster. Set after the events of Thor: The Dark World. Rec: We all know I’m a sucker for fosterson fluffies. The chapters are generally short and sweet. Read for smiles and butterflies and rainbow puking. | 9.9k | In progress

We Have Joyed To Be Forlorn by Niobium: Jane Foster’s life carries on in the wake of the Convergence, complete with exciting new research prospects, a displaced and grieving alien, considerations on the functionality of magic, and massive shakeups in world espionage. Or, The continuing adventures of Jane Foster, from the end of Thor: The Dark World to just after the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. Rec: What it says on the tin. I highly recommend reading anything by this author. Both Jane and Thor are done justice to, beautifully. Lots of cutesy Fosterson that feels very real and not just like a fangirl threw up on a page. Really a gorgeous story. | 13.8k | Complete

Rowing in Eden by ancarett: The Bifrost is no longer broken but is becoming unpredictable: delivering its travellers far afield. With Midgard’s link to Asgard at risk, Jane and Thor have to restore stability to the wormhole or risk being separated forever. Rec: Jane and Thor doing science together and being cute together. Features all the Avengers. | 34.5k | Complete

Fundamental Forces by nayanroo: In an attempt to rein in the son that remains to her after Thor’s banishment, Frigga arranges a marriage between two old friends in the hopes that they can work together to heal an eroded realm. On Earth, a prince searches for identity after his world is turned upside-down. And in the darkness, something stirs. Rec: mostly a Loki/Sif pairing story, but there is enough fosterson to give a rec. Even if it wasn’t, I’d still rec it somewhere else. One of the most well-thought out stories I’ve read (part of an amazing series, which contains gratuitous fosterson) with incredible characterizations. Great plot, monstrous word counts in chapters. | 181k | Complete | Part of in progress series, The Kingsverse

When the Stars Fall Up by Nyxelestia: Loki is not so foolish as to let his pride get in the way of his plans. And Thor learns there is a lot more to being a king than being brave. Rec: Despite a Loki-heavy intro, we get some good Jane/Thor in the second chapter. It’s incomplete, and hasn’t been update in a long time, but I feel like it is going somewhere good if it is continued. | 7.3k | In progress, possibly abandoned

Watchtower by me: When research on the Tesseract begins, SHIELD recruits Jane Foster instead of Eric Selvig to harness the other-worldly artifact. When Loki raids the facility, he takes over the mind of the mortal woman his brother loves. The Avengers with Jane Foster in Eric Selvig’s place. Rec: Because it wouldn’t be a true reclist without a self-plug. (although tbh I’m tempted to take this off the rec list because I hate the way I wrote it so much XD) | 56k | Complete

Let Me Follow You Down by me: Jane is sick of her family always pushing her towards a relationship. She thinks she’s figured out the perfect solution. Fake Dating AU. Rec: Because it wouldn’t be a true reclist without a self-plug. | 24k | Complete

Rebuild All Your Ruins by me: Ragnarok AU. Despite his hunt for the Infinity Stones taking him far beyond Jane’s galaxy, Thor had always managed to get word to her that he was safe. When months pass without any word from him, Lady Sif arrives with a dire message: Thor has gone missing, Heimdall has been removed from his post as Gatekeeper, and the Warriors Three wonder if their king is truly Odin. Rec: Because it wouldn’t be a true reclist without a self-plug. | 11.2k | In progress, slow updates because it’s me and I’m garbage

Rated M (these won’t contain the smuts unless otherwise noted)

**Stalemate by igi_pigi: "It appears we're at a stalemate, Miss Foster." He meets her eyes at last with his bloodshot ones. "My association with you will continue to doom you with mortal dangers at every turn. And you will continue to inexplicably not hold me blameworthy for it." (Alternatively, how it should have been instead of how it was in Thor3.) [Well after Thor2.] Rec: PAIN. LOTS OF IT. Contains some smut | 8.7k | Complete

Symbiosis: Part I by SteeleHoltingOn: Jane and Thor have to decide if they can make their relationship work. She’s a scientist. He’s a prince. It’s the ultimate of long-distance relationships. It seems that Odin isn’t (wasn’t?) the only Asgardian who is unhappy with Thor’s fascination with Jane. Rec: An amazing look at Thor and Jane post-Dark World building their relationship, as well as all the pitfalls and heartache that comes with that. This author really plunges their hands into the nitty gritty problems with Jane and Thor, their cultural differences, their age/lifespan difference, and so on, yet it is still clear how much they love each other and their determination to make it work. | Contains some smut, but nothing very explicit | 92.5k | Complete

Symbiosis: Part II by SteeleHoltingOn: Loki ascends the throne of Jotunheim. He might have been lonely, but for the little hitchhiker in his head. Thor and Jane have their hands full with their daughter, Val, and the demands of Asgard and the Nine Realms. Rec: A lot of Loki, but also copious amounts of married Fosterson. As someone who isn’t always Loki’s biggest fan, especially when it comes to fan portrayals, I can say that this one is very true to canon and is an incredibly interesting read, and is balanced well with Jane and Thor-ness. The political drama is done very well. The plot planning seems meticulous and is absolutely admirable. I still have the same praise for it as its predecessor. | Contains some smut | 41.4k | Complete

Terrestrial Constellations by NightOwl360: For Jane and Darcy bringing Thor back to Earth is only the beginning of the adventure. Relationships are never easy, the past is always just a step behind, and sometimes the people we know best have the biggest secrets. Rec: Great characterization of Jane and Thor, and fabulous buildup until they meet again. Packed with not just fluff, some inevitable angst, as well as an intriguing storyline. Only downside: I’m pretty sure it’s been abandoned, and on a hell of a cliff hanger. | 78k | In progress, possibly abandoned

The Poetic Edda (was almost entirely wrong) by PhoenixVictoria: In Which: Thor is from a warrior culture (and Jane Foster understands); Loki is badass (but also kind of a puppy); Thor grows a pair and fixes his mistakes (and is a good brother); Loki is a slut (and is a good brother when he has no knives); Darcy Lewis is The Geek Whisperer (which really turns Loki on); And the Odinsons have no idea how to act in front of the media (and wouldn’t care if they did.) Rec: Almost entirely for Thor. He is so well-written in this. Loki and Thor fixing the damage they’ve done, and Jane being a great person. I love this so far (it is a WIP). Later chapters make Tasertricks a thing, so a heads up if you’re not into that ship. | Contains some smut, graphic imagery of torturing/punishment | 81k | In progress, possibly abandoned

One and the Same Thing by MissChrisDaae: Jane Foster is born to the bloodline of the Alchemysts, and the first woman to be inducted into the order. After the murder of her mentor, Jane becomes the first Alchemyst to mix the study of alchemy with that of magic, trying to enhance the art and find a way to avenge him. This is seen as bastardizing the craft, and she is cast out of the order, still working her craft as she wanders the realm. Forbidden from using the title of Alchemyst, Jane instead calls herself Ástkona Óþekktur, a Mistress of the Unknown. On her travels, she picks up an apprentice in Darcy Lewis and the two women meet another very unusual pair: the crown prince, Thor, and his foster brother, Loki, on the run from Amora, the sorceress who murdered Thor’s father and usurped the throne, the same woman who killed Jane’s teacher. Finding common ground, the four agree to join forces in taking down the Enchantress. Even if Jane won’t admit it, she finds herself drawn to the older prince, and Thor seems to be returning her affections, much to the annoyance of Loki, who sees the Ástkona Óþekktur as an unneeded distraction from what matters. If they win the war, there may still be something left to lose. Rec: You can see by the description that this is way AU. Incredibly imaginative, with a good characterization of Jane. | 33k | Complete

The Salt Skin by hariboo: One day Sif walks to the edge of the Bifrost to see compelled to see where Loki had fallen. At the same time Jane is testing a way to open the Bifrost. By accident Sif falls to Earth, what happens after she never would have expected, and then she finds Loki. Post-film. Rec: I can’t believe I haven’t recced this yet. A long, Sif-centric fic that is respectful to fosterson is hard to find, but this one hits all my must haves. Jane and Thor are beautiful idiots, and the outside view of their relationship is great. Very well-written. Loki/Sif is also very prominently featured. | 44.4k | Complete

Off The Grid by Shawn30: As stated by Phil Coulson in 'Agents of Shield’ episode 1-15, "Thor is currently off the grid.” So the question is, where are Thor, Jane, Darcy, and Eric post 'The Dark World’? Rec: This person was one of my FAVORITE fic authors of all time because of their Star Wars fics, and then THEY WRITE A FOSTERSON STORY. I was over the damn moon. There’s a unique take of all the characters, and there’s promise of really great things coming from this story. This fic would be a wise investment. Only problem is that sometimes their fics have very slow updates. Contains some smut | 15k | In progress, possibly abandoned

Lost in a World Full of Terrors by psychollama: Inspired by typhoidcandy - “After Darcy attempts to perform one of Loki’s spells, things go awry and she’s sent to another universe. In this medieval-like universe, Loki is King, Thor is banished and living in the forests, and Jane is an arrow wielding rebel. Can Darcy make it home before the real Loki finds out what she did? Or before medieval Loki captures her and either kills her or makes her his slave?” Rec: A different take on a medieval AU. The first and only chapter is very fosterson-centric, and sets up the action nicely. Jane and Thor are handled very well in the different context. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been updated since 2013, so I fear it has been abandoned. |4.4k | In progress, possibly abandoned

Stop All The Clocks series by Della19: Rec: NOT fosterson centric. This series is, I think, the first thing I read on AO3, and I was blown away. This person has constructed a great world around Supersoldier!Peggy Carter, and I rec the whole series, as the world and the characters are all vibrant and well-rounded. The stories, while connected, can easily be read as standalones. The fosterson, when it’s a larger focus, is absolutely lovely. | 49k | In progress

Rain Upon the Ashes by me: Medieval Fantasy AU. An ancient evil threatens Yggdrasil. An illegitimate heir sits upon the throne of Asgard, and an unknown menace seeks to destroy the Royal Family. Thor Odinson, true heir to the throne and banished years before, emerges as one of the leaders of the Rebellion, further endangering his family. Known publicly only as the Raven, Jane Foster, once a high-born Lady of Midgard, finds herself fighting a war when she once only desired to see the stars. Rec: Because it wouldn’t be a true reclist without a self-plug. | 33k | In progress, slow updates because it’s me and I’m garbage

Rated E (these will contain the smuts unless otherwise noted)

The Secret of Mind and Memory by capitainpistol: Jane and Thor wake up to an empty Asgard and zero memory of their pasts or each other. PWP. Rec: The Amesiacs Who Are Instinctually Drawn to Each Other AU that I never knew I needed in my life. I can’t wait to see how it ends. | 2k | In progress

Love in a Time of Tentacles (or How We Hired Out Our Sex Parts To Tentacle Monsters in Exchange for Remaining in Space) by Rozilla: Jane and Thor’s ship is left drifting in space and the only option is to take up the offer of a Bio-Engineering corporation to submit their bodies to science. Science in this case being mostly tentacles. It’s a good thing Jane’s into this sort of thing. Rec: I hope you’re into wild space porn because that is exactly what this is. Woop woop. Mind the warnings. | 13.2k | Complete

Edging Towards the Light by Shawn30: Thor and Jane navigate the treacherous relationship waters of ambition, duty, passion, and love. Rec: SMUT WITH PLOT YUM. A unique but plausible take on Fosterson. | 30k | In progress

Play Along Prisoner by Rozilla: You’re so used to being not listened to, put down, doubted and generally made to feel worthless when you work twice as hard as everyone else, sometimes you need a hobby like this one. Especially when you have such a willing participant. Rec: AU, Domme!Jane and Sub!Thor. Mmmmyes. Mind the warnings. | 15.3k | In progress

For The Days Inbetween by Simple.White.Lie: Heroes are seldom allowed happiness, and far too often Duty comes before Love. That only means he must fight even harder for that which he desires. Rec: While it isn’t always the prime example of great writing, this fic is still very good. It is a long multichapter which features gratuitous smut (hurrah!) while still maintaining good plot. Jane and Thor’s ups and downs as a couple are well written, and if you’re a sucker for married Fosterson, check this one out. | 79k | Complete

On the Outside by Simple.White.Lie: The King and Queen of Asgard are not prepared for the dish Fate has served for them. To be tossed out like a ship in the wind is more than their hearts can take. Their love is something to fight for.. Isn’t it? Rec: Sequel to For The Days Inbetween (recced above). Both stories feature a very strong Jane, which is a big plus. Again, while the writing isn’t always stellar, it is a worthwhile read. | 33k | Complete

Thor Pwns Walmart by charis2770: Jane and Thor have found a way to be together at last. It’s all she could have wished for, and then some. But it’s playing heck on her worldly possessions! Jane takes Thor shopping at Wal Mart so she can replace all the things which have been torn or broken during their reunion. And buy more pop tarts. This turns out to be an adventure. And hotter than you might think. Rec: Okay, holy high heavens this story is well done. The author does BDSM amazingly, and I recommend their other stories, too. Mind the warnings. Also, if BDSM isn’t your thing, I still recommend the bits in between the smut because it is hilarious and perfect. | 35k | Complete

Stealing Away by charis2770: This is what happens when the Black Widow puts herself in charge of planning a weekend getaway for four friends, three of whom happen to be Super Heroes, and one of whom has an unfortunate tendency to be a little hard on Midgardian buildings. Rec: a continuation of Thor Pwns Walmart, and also features a good deal of BDSM Clint/Natasha. This author remains a good example of how to properly write good BDSM. Mind the warnings. Also, if BDSM isn’t your thing, I still recommend the bits in between the smut because it is hilarious and perfect. | 30.4k | Complete

#fosterson #jane foster #thor #jane x thor #thor x jane #fic recs #fosterson fic rec masterlist

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cold-neon-ocean · 4 years

Text

Let’s talk about Ronan and Crystal for a hot second please

Y’all it astounds me how much this fandom grossly mischaracterizes Ronan and sleeps on his relationship with Crystal like... have any of you read the comics??? Do you not know what an absolute love-struck doofus this man is?????

The War of Kings and Realm of Kings comic runs were are first REAL look at Ronan’s character. Prior to he’d been mostly an antagonist figure who was slowly evolving into more of an anti-hero. But we hadn’t spent any significant time getting to know him outside of the Annihilation run (and even there it was still limited). How he behaves with Crystal is a showing of who he genuinely is and how he naturally behaves. The Kree are in a very difficult spot in their history at this time, being unable to evolve, but despite this Ronan never has a short fuse with Crystal, never raises his voice at her, he’s never once in his whole character run even REMOTELY angry with her of his own mind, even when Medusa pushes him to his limits. He never takes out any of his frustration on her, and is only ever respectful and understanding. Coming from all the previously known info about Ronan, painting him as nothing but this difficult, aggressive, blood-thirsty, conquest hungry, warlord, to THIS, a very caring individual capable of loving and loving purely, giving his 100% devotion to this one woman was very surprising to say the least.

I could get into all my thoughts about Ronan as a character as he’s my end all be all single favorite fictional character and has been for the past... almost 6 years now~ but I’ll save it and get into beginnings of his and Crystal’s relationship!

I’m gonna start from the beginning of Realm of Kings, after the complicated war with the Shi’ar just so I can get to the meat of their budding romance and just how much of an absolute dork Ronan is (I’ll touch on the preceding events in War of Kings and some stuff after Realm of Kings a little in this too but I’m gonna save most of it for a separate post!) For context, the Kree are now being ruled under the Inhuman Royal Family. Ronan and Crystal were arranged to be married as a political symbol of the two races’ newfound unity and it was meant to be just that. Their relationship was a pretty slow burn that neither of them, or anyone, expected.

[ Above - Realm of Kings: Inhumans 01 ] So from the get go Ronan is just,, PROTECC even tho at this point their relationship is SUPPOSED to be purely political he’s still so sweet and polite with her just out of seemingly sheer natural instinct. This guy isn’t used to relationships okay, he’s literally only ever been in one other one his wholeass life and it didn’t really go very well. He’s very much just trying to do the chivalrist thing and doesn’t demean her in any way, or at least he very much doesn’t mean to, nor does he think she’s incapable he’s just naturally trying to be a gentleman.

[ Above - Realm of Kings: Inhumans 01 ] Their growing relationship is very subtly hinted at in the early interactions between them, as they’re both very polite with each other. Crystal’s genuine kindness towards him REGULARLY catches Ronan very much off guard as he’s just... not used to that kind of interaction with others?? He’s so used to being approached with hostility or fear or an uncomfortable worship like respect that when someone is just.. genuinely nice to him he can hardly process it.

Crystal would visit him in the hospital after the Shi’ar attack on their wedding (where Ronan nearly died) and Ronan was probably so surprised to see her there like “I forced her to marry me so I could maintain some political status over the Kree which I already felt bad about, then our wedding was laid waste to by the Shi’ar but she came to visit me in the hospital??? Why would she do that, doesn’t she hate me?????” But no she doesn’t hate him, and not only does she visit him to keep him updated on how the Kree were fairing she’d go so far as to just take him outside for some fresh air and a break from staring at nothing but four hospital walls all day. She doesn’t HAVE to be doing any of this, she doesn’t HAVE to care about the Kree or him but she does, and Ronan is just unable to understand why because all he ever receives is hostility; the Kree abandoned, tried to wipe out, then tried to re-enslave the Inhumans, he was well aware she didn’t want to marry him, and yet here she is- caring about all of the Kree, caring about him. Even the Kree people themselves have been shown to be quick to turn on him, despite his lifelong devotion to them; but SHE, despite having no reason to, is genuinely compassionate and caring with him so how could he not start falling for her just a little??

Alrighty so this is gonna be a LONG ONE so I’m putting the rest under a cut for the sake of your dashboard :’D

[ Above - Realm of Kings: Inhumans 02 ] More big protective husband mode. I love that she keeps having to remind him that she’s fine but his brain is just in constant “PROTECC WIFE MODE” he’s a disaster. A total and utter disaster of a man. Also Crystal casually calling him “husband” kasjdfashf meanwhile he’s not sure if it’s okay for him to refer to her so casually (even tho it is you blue dumbass) so he just calls her either “my lady” or “Lady Crystal” respectfully or just by name. He called her “my wife” once before this in WoK but he was talking to Medusa as he said it and not addressing Crys directly.

[ Above - Realm of Kings: Inhumans 02 ] By far one of my favorite single comic panels in existence. STILL BEFORE THEY ACTUALLY REALIZE AND GIVE IN TO THEIR FEELINGS FOR EACH OTHER, he get 1(one) kis for checking in on her after they run into Pietro (who is an absolute garbage man btw I could talk about him too). Look at his face. He is on cloud nine right now, he could die happy right here. He got kis and frankly he deserves u3u (I’ll talk more about this panel later!)

[ Above - Realm of Kings: Inhumans 03 ] (sorry if this is a little hard to read) Look at him confess to her at how genuinely impressed he is with her. Not because of how she treats him, he’s of course leaving his personal gratitude out because he’s already been told their relationship is supposed to be political, but because of how she’s gained respect from the Kree people- more so than her family has! Because why? Because Crystal has shown actually cares, wow! The Kree aren’t exactly what one would call “popular” among other races in the cosmos, and they don’t particularly care, so Crys giving a genuine care about them (especially given the Inhuman’s personal relationship with the Kree) is astounding. The fact that she has any room in her heart for them and assumes her responsibility over them maturely and with and honest desire to do right by them~ Ronan is so grateful, especially given that she’s pretty much the only one aside from himself advocating for the well being of the Kree to Blackbolt and Medusa.

[ Above - Realm of Kings: Inhumans 03 ] Another of my favorite Ronan moments because.. just.... GOD! It’s Zarek’s insult to his patriotism that sets him off because he’s been through plenty of that before, but you DO NOT, I REPEAT, DO NOT INSULT HIS WIFE! It’s the insult to HER that enrages him. Let’s face it, if Crystal hand’t asked him not to, Ronan would have ceased this man’s whole existence in an instant.

[ Above - Realm of Kings: Inhumans 03 ] But of course, she still appreciates the sentiment! Also Ronan’s deadpan “Just about” makes me wheeze aloud ever time. He wanted to eviscerate this dude for insulting her but didn’t because wife asked him not to. He’s so fucking mad tho look at him akjsdhfa wife please let me destroy this man in your honor

[ Above - Realm of Kings: Inhumans 03 ] And then he goes and lets his feelings slip! Which she’s actually kind of amused by, as she’s been picking up on his affections for a little while now (he’s been totally subtle about it /s). But her last marriage didn’t end well at all so no doubt she was probably withholding to see just what kind of man Ronan is (spoiler alert: he’s a grade-A husband turns out and a really genuine guy when you get to know him. Or should I say when he lets you get to know him lol!). He also very subtly calls her ‘fine’ here which, I mean.. she is let’s be real.

[ Above - Realm of Kings: Inhumans 03 ] (again, sorry this is hard to read! tumblr really didn’t want to work with me on these pics akjsdh) Probably one of my top two favorite Ronan and Crystal moments. She calls him out on calling her “beloved” and this ABSOLUTE DUMBASS first tries to play it off like he has no idea what she’s talking about then is just like “oh uh.... well I mean... it was... the heat of the moment......” Excellent cover, my good sir, no one suspects a thing. But of course Crystal isn’t gonna let him get away with that so easily. And in a moment of pure bad bitch energy she THREATENS TO KISS HIM if he keeps it up. And he’s just AGHAST, SCANDALIZED, HOWEVER COULD SHE HAVE FIGURED OUT HIS FEELINGS FOR HER??? HE WAS SO SUBTLE, SO RIGID IN HIS COMMITMENT TO KEEPING THINGS PURELY POLITICAL. SHE MUST BE SOME SORT OF PSYCHIC! (insert metal gear solid exclamation point sound effect on Ronan’s face in the last panel someone help this man)

Crystal: “You said you liked me.”

Ronan, the pinnacle of Kree dignity: “.......... No I didn’t..”

[ Above - Realm of Kings: Inhumans 04 ] Crystal is nothing if not a lady of her word and it doesn’t take her long to cash in on that threat~ When Maximus mind controls Ronan and tries to force him to kill himself (Bioshock 2 style) Crys figures this is the perfect way to snap him out of it, and she was very correct. Ronan’s face I just sob lol, he’s always so lost for words when flustered bless this adorable soft man. He’s not used to kisses. (Also Crys putting a hand on his chest is my favorite thing, and just wait until they start holding hands)

And from this moment on these two are pretty much all in on this relationship. No more hiding, no more denying their feelings for the sake of politics. There’s of course a lot more in War of Kings about the very beginnings of their character dynamic and their arranged marriage but I’ll get to that in a separate post (if you made it this far I appreciate you so much and apologize profusely)!

What I’ve always loved about their relationship and why it’s my all time favorite is just how pure and genuine it is, and how much they benefited each other and how much they grew as individuals through each other. Ronan from the beginning felt bad about their arranged marriage, he didn’t do it for any other reason than needing to maintain a seat of authority when handing over leadership of the Kree to the Inhumans in the hopes the Inhumans would help them with their stagnant evolution. He never tried to solicit anything from Crystal, and maintained a respectful space, never overstepping any boundary unless SHE invited him to do so, but always offering himself should she need. The relationship only ever moved at the pace she wanted. Ronan valued her input and views and demanded nothing but respect for her from others (I mean look at what happened to Zarek when he called Crystal a “pink-fleshed lab animal”).

[ Above - Realm of Kings: Inhumans 02 ] (spliced this page for the sake of posting) Jumping back in the timeline a little bit, this particular moment is one I find very important. Crystal defending Ronan in front of her ex-husband Quicksilver (who sucks) while also subtly hinting at her own growing affections for him. She says that Ronan is actually “rather sweet”, so his constant protectiveness is clearly something she takes no offense to. Not only that, but when Quicksilver asks if Ronan makes “her feel the same way he used to”, Crystal ADAMANTLY says that Ronan does not and the’s grateful that he doesn’t. She told him that she doesn’t need to justify anything to him yet she makes a point to be very clear that Ronan has shown himself to be better of a husband than Quicksilver was. Remember, Crystal and Quicksilver’s marriage didn’t end well (I’ve personally never liked how lightly Marvel has taken it and how things seem to smooth over rather unrealistically. The things Quicksilver did should be unforgivable.) so not only is Crystal going to let Quicksilver show up and interrogate her on her new marriage, she’s definitely not going to let him down-talk her new husband, who frankly, she’s surprisingly happy with and who’s treated her better and valued her more than Pietro ever did. Also to clarify, this is the conversation where Ronan comes in and checks on Crystal afterwards, asking if she’s alright and insisting he’s not trying to pry (and getting that kiss on the cheek from her); he doesn’t butt in on the conversation at any point and gives them space. I don’t think he’s aware of their previous marital status, that subject might be a bit too heavy for Crystal to share with him so early on, but he clearly senses the tension and makes a point to ask Crystal if she’s okay when he’s able. I think Crystal saying aloud what it is about Ronan that sets him apart from Quicksilver, and how he’s turned out to actually be a really good husband is what maybe flipped that final small switch in her, like hearing it out loud made her think “huh he really has been nothing like I expected, maybe he is someone I can be happy with~” thus prompting the kiss on the cheek even tho she hasn’t yet confronted him about his feelings or made her own clear to him. She’s just very grateful to him, of how kind he’s been, how he’s listened to and valued what she has to say more than Quicksilver or her own family seems to, and of course she’s just endeared to his surprising gentle and sweet nature.

It’s a real shame that Marvel erased all of this in the MCU, Ronan has shown a few minor hints of what could be a personality similar to this in the movies but we all know that didn’t last long. Ronan’s a surprisingly deep character, and a rather sad one when you look at his history, it’s just a lot more subtle than a lot of the big name Marvel characters. Crystal was probably the first truly good thing to have ever happened to him, and aside from her daughter of course, he was probably the same for her as well. The writing of their relationship is my absolute favorite due to how mature and subtle it was. Ronan never tried to win her over so that their marriage would seem more like a desirable thing to her like you’d expect characters in a situation like this to do. He gave her space and respected her boundaries and was just genuine and kind (something we didn’t know he was capable of up until this point), and in doing so she just naturally gravitated towards him. They were both always mature, no petty relationship drama like jealousy or miscommunication like so many couples in fiction are written for the sake of making things interesting (which they never do in my opinion, it’s just annoying) and then is dragged out unnecessarily. None of that cliche “they could easily sort things out if they just talk to each other!” or “person A is jealous of person B just talking to their ex even though there is no reason for them to be”. Crystal and Ronan are both too old and have been through too much to deal with petty nonsense like that. They see each other for their true and genuine selves and love each other for them and that’s all that matters. Like I said, Ronan was willing to defy the whole of the Kree empire, the empire he’s given his life to, for her without a shred of hesitation; and when the Inhumans decided to leave Hala and return to earth, Crystal chose to stay with Ronan (all moments I’ll talk about in a separate post at some point!)

There’s so much more I could say about just these early stages within Realm of Kings alone but there’s even more within War of Kings and following comics like Fantastic Four and others I want to touch on in another post as alas I don’t have the room for all the images I want to share :’D

But thank you for reading this far if you did! These two are so special to me and I could talk about them endlessly ;;

#Marvel #Ronan the Accuser #Crystal Amaquelin #ronan x crystal #Kree #Inhumans #War of Kings #Realm of Kings #Marvel Comics #MCU #[ I could write a book about Ronan okay listen #I've invested 6 years of my life into this big blue dumbass #and I don't care what anyone says I like the Inhumans #and Crys is my favorite Marvel lady #her and Ronan could have been such a power couple in the MCU #*shakes fist at marvel* why yall gotta ruin my kids ]#long post

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smallcowplant · 4 years

Note

Hi! I'm sorry to bother you with writing advice but, I know that some of your projects take place in like, universes that aren't our own and I was wondering if you could give me some advice on how not to info dump about the world and how it works, bc I find myself doing that and I feel like it would be very confusing for the reader. Thank you!

Hello! You’re absolutely not bothering me, don’t worry! I love talking about writing!

A little bit of a preface:

At the moment, the only project I’m working on that takes place in an alternate universe is Jinx (and I suppose TSS kind of does, but it’s very much more real-world). And perhaps, this sci-fi story I have bubbling in my head. But that’s a conversation for another day.

I don’t ever really go Full Fantasy (mostly bc I really don’t like writing in that genre lol), I just take fantasy elements and adapt them into a reality that is very similar to ours!

I remember reading something in a Rainbow Rowell book about the character putting on makeup for the first time: “she looked like herself, but with the volume turned up” or something along those lines….and for whatever reason that really stuck with me. My worlds ARE our worlds….just with the volume turned up. (Take that to mean that I build my worlds off of the reality we exist in, just adding in fantastical elements.)

Btw, I’m writing this as if you’re asking me about a sims-based story, so I apologize if it’s not 100% accurate to you!

EDIT: THIS TURNED INTO A GENERAL RAMBLE ABOUT WRITING/STORYTELLING IN GENERAL BC I AM RIDICULOUS AND ONCE U GET ME STARTED I CAN’T STOP I’M SORRY

Personally, I’ve noticed that taking away writing that is separate from the pictures (i.e. NOT writing an extended caption under the screenshots) has REALLY helped me stray away from info-dumping.

Relying solely on the captions on my screenshots has forced me to truly pay attention to how I’m framing a scene! I think my brain switched between writing for a drabble/a book to writing as if I was making the screenplay for a tv/film!

Tumblr is an inherently visual platform, just like film or television, so focusing on the visuals instead of long descriptions works better for me. A lot can be conveyed by facial expressions/angles—-framing your character as significantly smaller compared to something else can convey the vastness of the problem/how alone they feel, framing them as staring up at something skewed can suggest that the thing puts them off-kilter, cutting back to character reactions (without words) can quietly show the audience how each character is feeling.

But anyway……

This also really depends on the POV of the character(/s) you’re telling the story through.

Is this a Call to Adventure/Hero’s Journey-type story? Where your character(/s) are thrust into a new world/journey that they know nothing about?

If so, consider

Is your character an outsider/transplant to this world? Like, did they fall through a portal/through the pages of a book/stumble into this realm unwittingly?

Or are they an insider to the world….have they lived in this world their whole life, only to discover something earth-shattering about their status quo that NEEDS to change (take down a big bad/search for their identity independent of their previous role/etc.)?

This will greatly impact how you share information with readers.

If your character is new to the world, there will probably be your fair-share of Harry Potter in Diagon Alley-esque scenes, where your character stares open-mouthed at the world and ask a ton of questions to their guide.

If your character is part of the world, they probably have a good grasp on what the world is like/what’s going on. They will know things the reader does not, and will start off with different motivations and ideas than the hapless newcomer.

I think that it’s good for YOU as a writer to know your world inside-and-out, but your audience doesn’t necessarily need to be the same (at least, at first).

Plant breadcrumbs through scenes—-a comment here, a poster/paper there, an action here—-that show your reader things about the world…..you want there to be curiosity with your readers….how does this work? Where did this come from? Why is this the way it is? Those are questions that build interest, and they are the ones you, as a writer, MUST have answers to (even if you don’t share that info fully).

Side-note, but I’m a big proponent in my stories for SCENES TO MATTER.

If I feature a scene in my stories, it HAS to matter for the bigger picture.

They have to function as plot/story-driving scenes. That doesn’t mean that they all have to be fast-paced, action/heavy scenes.

A lot of the scenes I like to write are intimate, casual conversations between characters or small, introspective views of character’s daily lives. A scene with two characters talking can bridge the gap between intense/plot-heavy scenes AND reveal valuable information to your readers.

A good slow-paced scene:

Tells us something new about a character/characters.

Reveals something about the world.

Builds a relationship/dynamic with the characters/world they live in.

A bad slow-paced scene:

Rips us out of the story only to have the character(/s) state something that we already know/waste time. (I used to have PLENTY of these scenes in my old sim-stories. The character would wander away from the excruciatingly slow-moving plot to comment that they were lonely/confused/scared…and those scenes didn’t add anything, lol. They just sat there, like a boring journal entry where all you do is go to the grocery store and take a nap.)

Is one that you could completely omit from the story and nothing of value would be lost.

Basically, if you find yourself having characters fuck off away from the plot just to state the obvious/describe the situation to us….cut it. You can convey emotions/problems through scenes/dialogue without having to be tedious!

Think of IRL conversations and how they work—-you may have a couple occasions where friends/acquaintances catch you up on drama/information, but they usually don’t dump EVERY person’s name/motivations/relationships. Think….what do your characters know? What do they not know? How do certain characters view each other/the world? How would they communicate that?

The great thing about storytelling is that you aren’t trapped into only showing what your characters know—-you can cut to a scene completely divorced from their POV (i.e. the villain/another world/etc.) and give that perspective to the audience.

Just keep a tab on what 1) you know as the writer, 2) what your audience knows and 3) what your character knows. These are most likely all different things. You’re the Dungeon Master, baby! You hold all the cards and you know all! (You can use this to sow doubt/drop foreshadowing unbeknownst to your audience/be selective with what you show!)

tl;dr: focus on understanding your plot/plotting in general—-once you know what you’re going for, you can trim the fat. be selective with what you show/what your audience see’s. try to treat your creation like it’s real—for example: on Earth, how does humankind function? what are the rules/status quo/known truths? what are the anomalies/oddities? apply that to your story. don’t dedicate entire scenes to explaining the world your characters are in—–SHOW us (whether in visuals/interactions/dialogue), don’t TELL us outright. your audience is smart, and they can put things together over the course of the story. if your world has rules, remember them. they don’t need to be outright stated, but if certain things are not possible, communicate that through actions in the story.

#I talk way too much oops!!!#asks #anonymous

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incarnateirony · 5 years

Text

Re: Primordial or Universal Concepts in Supernatural

Let it be said I’m going to try to cover this as... unilaterally and streamlined as I can. I’ve just come to realize, recently, that ideas like void, oblivion, or godhood tend to sit in an area of abstract that people haven’t really sat down and thought about. Most people remember their parents reading the bible about god splitting the waters and making light and darkness, and that’s it, that’s their comprehension of mythology on nothingness. Which is... fair.

But as Supernatural delves deeper and deeper into the primordial: God, Amara, The Shadow, The Empty, and Beyond -- so much as what seemed like a perfectly Reasonable(TM) statement from me about Dreaming In Nothing really seemed to blow out a valve on some people and I had to step back and go, Why Is That? I mean, our show already covers universes that aren’t even remotely attached to our center one (French Mistake vs MainVerse, as opposed to Endverse or AUverse which are timeline divergent), but I think people have had a hard time stacking up some mythological concepts our team is employing.

And it’s not just Random Speculation Of Intertext I Like that they’re employing. Some are in name, some are in direct concept, some are in... episode titles. Be it directly in “Ouroboros”, or more abstractly in Optimism vs Nihilism.

I may employ a few reference visuals and will definitely pull corresponding quotes from dogma(s), but let it be said -- these ideas are not even necessarily unique. I am not going to deep dive into the specifics of these beyond what is needed, because while I’d love to say “it’s obvious they’re using pure hermetics” from my angle, as a hermeticist, with recent titles and themes -- they might not be. They might be mixing and matching and just employing sweeping Omnimyth structure, such as The Hero With 1000 Faces but in mytharc form rather than just hero journey. (Also, read Campbell’s work, cuz reasons.)

THAT SAID.

I’ll carry away immediately into an aside that it was once kinda the swaggy thing to consider Hermeticism as “optimism” and gnosticism as “pessimism,” and they were parallel but not identical philosophies to discussing the origins of the universe. Both philosophies basically go on that the soul can only escape material bondage through deep and special, personal intuitive knowledge. There’s no one path through any of these, they both have respective denominations -- they are more philosophy than hard dogma and are designed for debate and, in some facets, scientific testing and comparison. That said, there’s some paradoxes, which is why I’m not gonna sit here needling any specific vein.

And you know, they touch on other ideas -- Qabbalism, for example; a great many creator myths, and so forth. Most of these resonate from an idea. Once there was nothing, and now there’s something, so we have to figure out how the fuck we got to all this Something out of Nothing. And I mean even if you say “big bang,” a related question in this philosophy is okay, but why was there the infinitely compressed boomy dot and why did it bang, because if there was nothing, how did nothing bang.

You see the catch-22.

SO LET’S TALK ABOUT NOTHING.

I’m going to use the Qabbalistic concepts, but these are in heavy discussion, only slightly divergent, in a variety of these discussions. Change the label as you will, there’s really only so many ways to discuss Nothing.

When we see The Empty in the show, we see black space. Which is fair. We, the viewers, are in a three dimensional world viewing light pouring out of our TV screen, and not in an indefinable void of any concepts, much less space.

Both of these fields use the Qabbalistic tree of life as their way to sort of like, grok how things go from nothing to everything, but even the tree means Something is there. We’ll get to the tree in a bit.

Before it all though, there is Ain. It’s negative existence, an absolute nothingness, sometimes called The Prime Cause or the Originless Origin of all manifestation. It’s not knowable or describable and anything you can say about it is not. In fact, that word pasta is itself still too defined. You feel me?

But once you creep past that, you talk about the Ain Soph. Ain means “Not.” Soph means “End.” Ain Soph is nothing but it’s an infinite nothing, infinite space, and eternity. That is to say, it’s gained some sort of cohesive definition while still being nothing. It’s called the Old One Of All Old Ones and is a total absolute primal darkness. Darkness being relative, of course, because we haven’t comprehended actual things like dark and light, but we’re getting close enough it applies. But it’s sort of a unified form of nothing-everything.

After that you hit the Ain Soph Aur. Aur just means “Light.” And once you hit the Aur, you’ve hit infinite light.

Once we start breaking free of the infinite-nothing-never-was-always-void-never, we discuss Ain Soph Aur as retracted into a point. There’s somehow substance in the nothing. This brings forth the Crown of the Tree of Life, where pretty much all other points in the universe descend.

Here, it splits off into pillars. To the left, the female form, judgment. The negative. Not negative like evil; negative like... magnetism. Atomic structure. Then you have Mercy, the male form, on the right, or the “atomic positive”. Between them is a neutral pillar of mildness and balance, and this makes the cap of your tree. There’s a hidden, or if you will, “unofficial” point called the abyss, which is a realm of ideals. Beneath the abyss is what starts to be considered “reality.” It’s the universe coming together and taking form in its many dimensions, thoughts, feelings, experiences, shapes and forms. Above that, you’re in sort of... primitive state of Ideas(TM).

Now, again, I’m using Qabbalism as a base, I’m not saying this is like... specifically nail on head what the powers that be used.

Now, Qabbalism or not, general creation myth or not, I really don’t believe they’ve hardily stuck through and through top to bottom of running Supernatural on a tree of life path. That would be insanity to suggest in retrograde. A good deal of its existing concepts before inclusion of these primal ideas, in our show, plug well INTO it in retcon or retrograde, but we know pretty much for a fact that when Kripke threw down his little draft about two dudes and a car, he wasn’t really thinking about The Concept Of True God And Oblivion. So I’m going to spare that waterfall of fuckery, perhaps for another day.

But we do know several things about SPNVerse:

There is a definite point of Empty/Nothing

There is a point that Empty starts getting feisty, but is itself separate from the creator

There is a creator represented by light and a “destroyer” represented by darkness, each gendered to these old ideologies.

I mean, we can banter sexism and the ilk, but that actually comes with a very human perspective understanding and a bit of a struggle of understanding that destruction is not necessarily evil and creation is not necessarily good, but both are necessary forces. Now how well Supernatural handled that in execution is another thing entirely, but I’m not here to cover the social aspect of that in this meta -- I’m just here to sort of help with a confusion I’ve witnessed in recent commentary I’ve dropped.

There are many ways this gets listed depending on what... ideology you’re applying to this tree. Hell, there’s Egyptian versions.

Tumblr’s probably gonna shrink that illegibly but if you can’t squint it out, you’ll notice the top is the concealed, source of power, infinite potential and subjective realm, and so on. And that’s already being past the respective Ain Soph of nothing and into the Realm of Light.

TL, DR, basically, the rules of operation that you know in your material, living existence or within your universe are not necessarily employed in the above. Height, depth, width, emotion, feeling, these are all thoughts of this universe. And in theory, there may be other nodes of light that have their own outpouring.

This, in example, might be employed in concepts like The French Mistakeverse which, even according to the angel there, lacked heaven, god, or any of the rules within the SPNverse. It came from another, slightly shittier cascade of light and thought its own thinkie thoughts until it reached that point in an otherwise atheistic universe wherein Sam was something named a Padaleski when he got thrown into it. The rules and terms and conditions of that universe have, in the very least, not followed down the same path on the tree. On the other hand, the tree has shadows, parallels, or different spheres that have different levels of or parallel existences; or of course divergences in timeline in what is otherwise the same cascade of reality.

Again, to not diverge too heavily into a singular train of thought I’m going to cut that off there, but hopefully the concept I’m trying to deliver is clear:

Endverse and AUverse in theory are very likely on a similar waterfall of existence but

French Mistake and Scoobynatural and others like it are likely not.

It is reasonably arguable that Scoobynatural is almost a node within that plane, similar to Gabriel creating a sphere of his own when doing his trickster fuckery. In which case, I point to French Mistake, which was a universe unto itself.

PEDANTICS ASIDE,

I bring you to why I’m talking about this to begin with.

Now, it was a conversation of headcanons and potential-canon thoughts that brought this up, but something that seems to hold fairly canonically sound, if in subtext: The Dream.

When Chuck was mortally wounded by Amara, the universe started... dying. Now, the real question is, if there is a world without god within it, why can it exist while another will fade if its god dies?

Well, first of all, that depends on the concept of an incarnate god; is the French Mistake’s god more of an abstract? Was there an early dream wherein the universe is only vaguely conscious, similar to ours which quantum scientists are testing its reactability as we speak, wherein it behaves differently while observed than not but doesn’t necessarily have angels in togas and trenchcoats popping around in direct view as much as our wavelengths being literal like, forces of the universe most of the time? And what defines consciousness? BIG question in both science and a lot of philosophy.

Before we digress into that, however, let’s talk about the concept of the incarnate god -- I’ll do so in shorthand as to not turn this into some sort of Initiation Class(TM) but essentially, considering it’s canonically sound that Chuck probably wasn’t walkin’ around like a Dude before there were humans for his angels to possess, and we’ve heard the rise of humans over neanderthals, what does that leave us but the awareness that this is an incarnate, and more directly engaged concept monitoring its realm?

And of course, the idea of the dream.

To give some context, I had posted this as an “endgame potential thought,”

“The Everybody Dies BUT” Ending:

The Empty eventually comes for Cas. Also, so as to not auto-revive him, they’ve also killed off Jack, and the Empty claimed him anyway. Be it by battle or long life, Sam and Dean also perish, and are also escorted to the Empty by Billie. However, due to their strong connections, nephilim, profound bond or whatever else, they find each other in oblivion – in this liminal space before God and Amara and Creation – and create their own dream among each other. No angels, no god, or at least none without their version of doing it Right™. A new world – a better one – paradise.

This, I realized, confused people -- and as above, rightfully so to people not really realizing the concept of Nothing is completely outside of the universal construct. I had tried to shorthand it in that blurb, but it kinda whiffed over heads and really, I get why. I’m actually going to use this exchange to see if, now with some context, I can better trade off and fill it out without top-to-bottom trying to Qabbalah through the whole SPNverse:

Other questions came shortly after in asks:

In your "Everybody dies BUT" Ending, when you say TFW 2.0 creates their own paradise, do you mean like they create a dream, like a collective heaven of their own, concious design, where they can be in peace together? Or do you mean it as they go cosmic entity mode, and create a version of the world that they consider perfect, basically becoming God(s)?

To which I replied,

Perhaps people aren’t used to abstract thought wherein the question is, what’s the difference?

What makes a cosmic being beyond being the one to have a thought to create a thing? By nature it is their dream, it is their world and it is thus both subject to them and dependent on them, so chicken or the egg, ouroboros and full cycle, legitimately, what is the difference of one dream or the other?

But again, curse of knowledge/perspective, I realize I kind of missed the mark on that explanation, as was further evidenced by this follow-up ask:

I guess even in abstract terms the definition and perspective between what's real or what's not varies,just like the concept of perfection.I think everyone sees aspects that would represent differences between dream and reality in a some way,but it's always different. For instance,for me the SPN heaven is real in terms of it's existence,but it's also a dream,because it's a reflection of what a individual wanted to be real.It's real,but also a dream,it all varies on the layer you're analysing.

Fair, of course, but as we were addressing this conceptual point, which is -- as shown above, difficult to detail, I replied:

You’re still thinking within the universe.

Heaven, and hell, exist within the universe.

Other universes exist. Some are parallel but varied timelines. Some are French Mistakes with different rules. Some are cartoons. These do not all function under the same rule set.

Heaven is part of the universe that Chuck made. At one point, he existed in oblivion, for whatever reason; we do not know whence he and Amara or even Death among them (chicken or the egg as Death put it) came. They simply were, as far as we can comprehend, as they predate time within the universe. Because Chuck created the universe. Ergo they all existed before the universe.

It requires a form of nonlinear thinking to parse it. But at some point, Chuck Made Everything When There Was Only Nothing. That world can fade out if Chuck dies, even inside the world. Just like, if someone was to die while dreaming, their dream would end as well. Many parts of your dream imagine themselves from your subconscious. Other parts you can become lucid in and start to control and take command of. Many elements run simply on what you know, or the depths of your mind manifests. Such is the nature of a dream.

Heaven isn’t to be treated as separate because it’s within that universe. Now, what Sam and Dean and Cas and maybe Jack might dream of as paradise might not be what Heaven is. Heaven, after all, was only part of Chuck’s vision of creation.

That first primordial spark that made Chuck’s early intangible dream that blossomed into everything he wanted above and below, that’s the universe.

If, as per The Post In Question, TFW started from that same oblivion point… what divides them from Chuck? “Power”? What is power when it is a dream reliant on YOU? You are the power.

And then came this follow-up ask:

I think I see your point.But just to understand your stand on this better,when you say suggest that power would be irrelevant in a situation were power is basically the ability to dream,that makes sense if that's the true source,or at least the initial source,of Gods powers.But what if there was something else,if he, Amara and Death had,for wathever reason,came into being with more power than just creativity?Could a being that came into existence without those powers obtain them,in your opinion?

This is the point in which I dug in my heels, but I now recognize did so unclearly:

I think this opinion requires that the authors are completely bypassing any and all myth regarding the concept of oblivion in multiple legends, and that people are having a hard time wrapping their heads around what ideas like Nothingness actually mean. Black Space is ironically too much. The idea of void predates… I dunno, time, space, height, depth, width, light, dark, that’s why it’s actually void. Most creation principles dawn from the idea that somehow, some way, a spark of thought dawned. What that spark is called, how it manifests, that’s where everybody bickers. But things like “uber power scale” are completely irrelevant when you’re talking about starting points of literal nothing, and that’s ironically the concept of things like the Ouroboros.

You see, the reason I dug my heels in, however, is not pure stubbornness. If we are operating outside of the laws of any mechanical or existing universe in which presence and power is defined, the power and presence within that universe is moot. Once a creature enters that universe it brings with it the weight of its general principle, but within the Empty, all things are relative. If this were not true, the Empty “would have thrown Cas so deep into the Empty that you can’t bother me,” but “except you can’t, or you would have already.”

“Pretty smart, pretty smart, tough guy.”

What we have is the Ain having something from the Aur thrown in and essentially becoming the Ain Soph, there is now Something in the Nothing and the Nothing just wants it to fuck off and leave it alone so it can resume being Nothing. It’s now vaguely aware again, of Things(TM). Of worlds and dreams and people and things, when everything else was just so peaceful Not Existing.

If we defer back to Qabbalah again, this is a breech of something called the Tzimtzum. The tzimtzum is basically the act of when “God” “contracted” into the infinite point of light to barf out space and made its polar parts, it was considered creating “conceptual space” in which these finite and seemingly independent realms could like. Exist. But it made a bunch of empty space around it. Again, space being relative, when talking about Nothing, but doing it in a way we can discuss it. But here we are, putzing around in this place that doesn’t even exists and thus wants to be left the fuck alone. God is even called “Ha Makom” or “The place” in this structure. So there’s The Nothing and The Place. The Place is God’s universe basically.

God, in this structure of naming, actually wouldn’t be Chuck as we know it. Chuck would quite-likely be the male pole with Amara the female, but again, we can’t swear up and down how closely they held to this. It would more be whatever thought hiccupped and made the PrimordialTwins that had their bickering match in season 11, which kind of made the non-space they started having their slap fight in.

Also, realistically, there seems to be a level of retcon in this, as in theory “sealing out the darkness” could also correspond to this idea itself, and there’s a variety of terms one could sling around in treating Amara as herself conceptually outside of this space. The original intent/application could genuinely be either/or, and that’s the fun part of dealing in this level of philosophical fuckery. And the Tzimtzum did lots of cool things, like made not just spiritual and physical worlds but yes, even the very concept of Free Will is on the list of things it made space to exist.

One could also argue no retcon needed, as even if the primordial aspect of Amara was sealed away, the Mark used to do so still waterfalled her concepts and impact through the rest of the known universe via Lucifer, Cain, Dean, and whatever else that shifted along the way. Without the mark, Lucifer wouldn’t have fallen and made demons, and hell wouldn’t exist, still realizing “destruction” or “severity” into the universe. Wherein if she were ironically imprisoned within the realm of light, as it is more metaphorical light at that point, somewhere in the area of Ideas rather than Physical Reality And The Known Universe, it all applies and once that Abyss is crossed is where the Mark instead impacted reality in her stead.

The hermetic God is really Both Of These, not to be confused with the idea of the Christian God, more easily directly encapsulated in Chuck. One simply does not exist without the other. And there’s a billion reads on these in philosophy, some weirder than others and really, the application of these is light enough we need to ask if there were even retcons, much less trying to badly staple over our Favored Denomination Of Thought(TM). Supernatural handled it as brother and sister, one egg if you will. Many versions treat it as a hermaphroditic concept that split in two somehow. Others... get even weirder, we’re not gonna go there because frankly, the show didn’t even really try. We got brother and sister. It is what it is.

So while this post is somewhat in explanation of what I realized sounded like a madhouse theory to people not used to thinking abstractly over what is admittedly a headcanon/hopeful ending concept, it is also -- perhaps oddly to some people -- how I’ve taken to compute most of the ongoing mythology within the Dabb era, naturally as per my base... like... life? And study and teachings?

And frankly probably adds up a hell of a lot better than just assuming it’s a leveled-up power-game, which while from the bottom it looks like such, in the full scale, the top and the bottom are not so unlevel from each other, for -- “as above, so below,” the cardinal concept of the Ouroboros (14.14).

If the Nothing did not Become Infinite, nothing might Be. But if the Infinite Nothing did not then retract itself into a point, then Nothing Could Exist. In retracting to a Point, something existed. That Point births an origin, and all attributes that become the recognized universe and reality, to which there are poles and balance of arguable levels of sentience, and from which all things flow, including -- in this essay-ass meta thing -- Chuck’s creation(s).

Heaven, hell, probably even purgatory, those are all parts of Chuck’s respective dream, that moment Something In Nothing pulled its shit together and started having Thinkie Thoughts. Maybe in French Mistakeverse it became a Big Bang. Maybe it even was in SPNVerse considering the mention of evolution. But the simple fact is, it all came from Somewhere In Nothing.

Which does, yes, roll back to my little idea about a possible ending I’d like to see on a list of a few, but also might help recognize what I mean when I say things like “power scales are pretty relative and abstract at these points” and so forth.

Hindsight edit: @drsilverfish may enjoy.

#supernatural #primordials #chuck #amara #the empty #pagan life #meta #my meta

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twocubes · 5 years

Note

tbh though (and this is an anon ask less because "I hate that I know this" and more because "I hate to admit that I know this"), human pet guy is weird less because of the human pet part (strange and niche, sure, but like... in a within 2, 2.5 standard deviations way. it's kinda within "not for me but I can see it" range of standard d/s.), and more because of all the *other* stuff he attaches to it. The surgery bits and the "in a public resturaunt" and whatnot.

(Although *actually* human pet guy is weird because of all the other non-fetishy-related crap he espouses. Like "knives are the weapon of thugs, carrying knives for self-defense makes you a thug, you should carry a rapier or a whole-ass polearm instead".)

content warning: discussion of the nature of weird kinks.

I mean, without... actually going through the effort to check what it was, I’ve forgotten the details of hpg’s specific stuff... while the surgery and in-public stuff is outside the realm of standard kink play (of course) it isn’t technically that far out of the scope of like, weird fetish porn tropes.

Public, everyday situation stuff is usually some sort of signifier that you’re dealing with one of those “universe where X sex act is just a thing everyone does all the time” settings? Which you’ll find everywhere, down to fairly vanilla settings. And, well, surgery stuff is... also something that exists on a sort of continuum, with just breast implant stuff on the vanilla end and like... full on ero-guro at the other.

If I’m frank idk if hpg’s actual fetishes are that weird compared to, e.g., (on the innocent end) deviantart guy phen-projnu who has a thing for giantesses with tens of heads and legs and arms and the feet are also hands or (on the other end) the sort of stuff you’d see labeled as ero-guro.

Really, his general kink fits into a fairly usual sex-gender-power thing; Ray Orbison wrapped in cling film this isn’t, yknow, or that blog that followed me in the first few months I was on tumblr that was entirely pictures of kids in dentist’s chairs with lip separators taken from the perspective of the dentist.

As far as I can tell, the main oddity with human pet guy is that he... kind of has an extreme case of that thing even many normie people have where they don’t seem to really be able to distinguish between things being sexy or aesthetically appealing to them and other reasons they might want to do things. He’s like. Constantly in the state of some kind of rp fetish blog suddenly interacting with a blog that isn’t that, but for literally everything.

And that’s why everyone knows him, and why I could use him as an example. Anyways.

#i dont know how to tag this

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orihara-infobroker · 5 years

Text

On Writing Fanfiction

Especially of the NSFW Variety

I’ve been thinking about this a lot recently. I’ve been writing since I was a child. It’s always something I’ve enjoyed doing but, outside of some assignments that I did in high school, I’ve rarely shown my creative writing to others. I’ve always been too self-conscious to do so. Back then, they were all original works. I think I still have some of them kicking around. A few of them were shorts but the longer pieces all went unfinished.

I only wrote original works for a few reasons. At first, it was because I didn’t know fanfiction was a thing. Some of them were probably derivative of the books I may have been reading at the time. I loved other peoples worlds and it was easy to imagine original characters (self-inserts? Yes, definitely.) creating their own stories in these worlds. Creative writing classes like the one I did in high school teach you to create your own works, not write about others so it never even crossed my mind to write stories based on other peoples characters and works.

When I was introduced to fanfiction, it was through “slashfic”. At the time, I genuinely had zero interest in writing anything that was solely about two characters and their relationship. It just didn’t hit my creative spot. I still don’t like writing solely about relationships; I need plot and action and adventure. So, to me at the time, if this is what fanfiction was about, I wanted no part in it. It struck me as self-indulgent fantasy. (Nothing wrong with self-indulgent fantasy, just not my thing at the time. I also wasn’t into fantasizing about celebrities or any other stereotypical romantic/relationship things.)

Eventually, I learned that fanfiction was more than just slashfic but by then I had been struck by the “real authors don’t write fanfic” prejudice. I genuinely believed that no one would take a fanfic writer’s work seriously because “they’re just ripping off other peoples works”. It’s a stigma that’s still prevalent, an elitist attitude that I’ve grown to dislike because it hinders growth in young writers who start learning to write through fanfiction.

There is a gap of years where I stopped writing because I had very little time for creative things. I would still write bits here and there but nothing consistent and nothing I would have considered posting. When I started writing Sex and Violence in 2017 (I can’t believe I’ve been doing this for 2 years) it was kind of scary because I actually put it up for people to read. I had no idea how people would receive my writing, still hung up on the idea that fanfiction wasn’t “real” writing and I didn’t want any of my irl friends to see it. So, of course, I created this whole account hidden away from the rest of my social media. Ao3, separate Tumblr, separate Discord etc. All because I was terrified of how the people in my offline life might view my writing. One might even say I was ashamed of it. Especially because I write nsfw. And not tame nsfw. S&V is heavy in the realm of BDSM. On top of that, it’s mlm which, in and of itself, has a lot of judgement attached to it.

So I created a bubble wherein I basically only exist as a fanfic writer, completely separated from my real life and I can’t help but think in hindsight that it’s a bit sad that I felt the need to do this. It’s strange to think that these people are my friends but I don’t feel comfortable sharing with them something as personal as my (gay bdsm) writing, for fear of judgement, but that I’ll throw it out onto the internet for a bunch of strangers to judge. I can’t imagine I’m the only writer who has done this. I suspect there are probably a lot of fanfic writers who hide their writing from their irl friends. Fanfic has certainly grown more acceptable since I was a teen and that makes me hope that people writing fanfic now don’t face the same sense of anxiety, shame, embarrassment etc. that I do/did.

Anyway, this got long and pointless. You may now return to scrolling through memes... XD

#writer thoughts #my experience in fanfiction #living in the fanfiction closet?#I like closets...#they're comfortable...

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princessmans · 6 years

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About that “Return to Murder House” twist... (SPOILERS)

My first reaction to the revelation that Tate had been used by the Murder House as a vessel to create Michael was a mixture of disappointment and relief. On one hand, I loved being able to enjoy Tate running down the stairs to Violet like a little kid at Christmas, but I also felt like one of the greatest villains ever portrayed on screen had been cheapened by what felt a tad like fan fiction.

To be honest, I always felt like Tate being manipulated by the house was a possibility based on some of the direction, dialogue and acting choices. It was what I WANTED to be true, but not knowing if this was the case, or if he really was just a psychopath, was what made him so scary to me and I felt like that fear had been taken away by a definitive explanation.

However, the more I have thought about it and reflected on the events of Murder House and early episodes of Apocalypse, the more I think it works and is actually kinda brilliant. It makes Michael an absolutely terrifying villain and makes Murder House disturbing in a whole new way. I have compiled just a few examples here. Obviously, since this is Tate and AHS we are talking about, some topics may be triggering.

Tate’s First Therapy Session

Most of what Tate says in his first session with Ben appears to be symptoms of some sort of mental illness - cutting and violent fantasies specifically. But analyzing his dialogue with “Return to Murder House” in mind makes what he says even more chilling.

“I prepare for the noble war. I'm calm, I know the secret. I know whats coming and I know no one can stop me not even myself.”

His mention of a noble war echoes Michael’s dialogue in Apocalypse whenever he talks about fulfilling his purpose and even the way he believes he is purifying/re-building the world through nuclear war. Additionally, Tate saying that even he cannot stop himself could be interpreted as pointing toward some form of possession where he truly is not in control of his actions.

“The Indians believed that blood hold all the bad spirits, they would cut themselves once a month in ceremonies, let the spirits go free. There’s something smart about that. I like that.”

Again, this line - and the way that Tate does admit to self harm- can be interpreted as another symptom of the emotional pain he is obviously in. But now I can’t help but be freaked out by the idea that he subconsciously knew he was being possessed or at least manipulated by some sort of evil spirit. Tate even sees a vision of himself covered in blood - which he ignores and is never explained but introduces the idea of dual personas.

The Rubber Man Reveal Scene

I have always found the Rubber Man reveal scene to be particularly strange in the way it seems to cut between two separate takes with two completely different choices on Evan Peters’ part - especially since we see him lower the mask twice. At first he looks horrified at what he just did, then it cuts to a more determined, villainous expression before cutting back to horror.

In retrospect, the editing choice could be interpreted as revealing not just Tate’s inner conflict, but dual spirits in one body or at least a visualization of how Tate is being manipulated. If he was fully possessed in the way Mary Eunice was in Asylum then there is a whole other horrifying option to consider. If he was completely controlled by a demonic force, than Vivien is not the only victim of rape in the scenario - Tate is as well. However, I tend to lean towards more of a demonic influence and manipulation over full-on possession for reasons I will explain later.

Inability to Kill Gabriel Ramos

Everything Tate does - apart from murdering his peers, but more on that later - is for a specific purpose. He either wants to appease or avenge ghosts in the house (Nora or Larry’s family who immolated themselves), help create and protect the Anti-Christ, or protect Violet from physical and emotional harm. His desire to kill Gabriel in order to give Violet a new boyfriend appears strong but he is ultimately unable to kill him.

This final violent act occurs after Michael has left the house and is in the care of Constance - supporting Madison’s theory that the evil inside Tate did leave with Michael. Without it, Tate is unable to go through with the murder, despite how much he may want to in order to “help” Violet.

Not Remembering the Westfield Massacre

Tate’s claims to not remember killing 15 of his peers can easily be interpreted as denial or straight up lying in order to not lose Violet - though Evan Peters’ raw emotional vulnerability in some scenes has always made it difficult for me to not believe him. Re-watching these scenes now puts a whole different spin on his claims.

Could he not remember what he did because he was not fully in control? I have always found the skull makeup in his visions to be an interesting choice, seeing as he did not wear it during the actual shooting. Another Tumblr user suggested that the skull makeup was his subconscious’ way of representing the devil that was influencing him and I agree that it comes across that way.

Even if he does remember the murders on some level, he is unable to say why he did it- apart from his first claim that he did it to save his victims from the pain of the world. The scene where Violet finally confronts him about this shows him at his most vulnerable as he repeats “Why would I do that?” Again, this could be further denial or lying, but maybe he really doesn’t know.

In what I always believed to be the most harrowing and disturbing scene of the season, Tate is shot to death by a SWAT team in his bedroom before one of the officers asks him why he did it. His death before he can answer has always been profoundly moving to me, not just because the audience is not given an answer as to why Tate did it, but because it reflects how the motivation behind school shootings is often left unknown.

Now I just find this scene really depressing. In order for Michael to be born, Tate needed to die in the house in order to become a ghost. It is possible that the house/the darkness/the devil manipulated him to commit a mass shooting and return to the house and pull out a gun so he would be killed.

Warning: The rest of this section enters the realm of even wilder speculation and theorizing less supported by facts. Skip if you want.

Of course, Tate could have just killed himself in the house, but it is my personal theory that in order for the Anti-Christ to be born, the spirit who fathered him would have to have committed horrible acts. In my mind it is sort of like Voldemort having to kill people in order to split his soul in order to make Horcruxes. I actually theorized this before “Return to Murder House” aired but I really don’t have anything to support this. Moving on.

Michael Langdon is Hella Scary

I started to wonder if Tate’s actions were going to be explored while watching the first episodes of Apocalypse, especially after Michael delivered the following (amazing) line:

“I’ve never been a fan of getting my hands dirty. Learned that from my father. Always more fun to entice men and women to dirty deeds. Confirms what I’ve always believed...That all people, if given the right pressures or stimulus, are evil motherfuckers.”

Michael, according to Cody Fern, is the human form of Satan - which makes sense as a further perversion of the Holy Trinity. This means Satan, Michael and the Darkness that influenced Tate are one and the same. Even in the bunker we see Michael’s power over people to do awful things - Venable wipes out the Outpost with the apples and snakes Michael sent, and Mr. Gallant is tricked into brutally murdering his grandmother.

This is what makes Michael the new most terrifying villain in AHS for me. Yes, he can make people’s heads explode, killed a great many small animals, and can literally wipe souls from existence. But what really scares me is his ability to “see into the dark places” of people’s souls and use that knowledge to manipulate people’s actions.

This is why I personally find the explanation of Tate being full on possessed less interesting than him being manipulated. It seems to me that Satan/the darkness/the house/Michael whatever you want to call it, knew exactly what would drive Tate to murder and rape. So maybe Tate’s life would have been different if he had lived in a different house. Instead he was used by the Devil to create the Anti-Christ - completely ruining the lives of Tate, the Harmons, Chad, Patrick, 15 innocent students, and Constance in the process. There is even the possibility that the human side of Michael - the side that wanted to be good and grieved his grandmother - is also being destroyed by the demon inside him. That is pretty evil if you ask me.

This leaves Tate’s character and morality in a weird place. He is certainly not a hero as he succumbed to the influence of the Darkness - even if he was possessed, he is merely a victim. But he isn’t a villain either. Redemption may be too strong a word, but I personally believe he deserves a little happiness with Violet. He even seems to have forgiven his abusive mother (why is no one talking about if she deserved to be with her children?) and has worked out a lot of his issues with Ben. I hope we see more of him.

So while I may be a little disappointed that Tate is no longer the greatest villain on AHS, his story builds up a villain who is shaping up to be really something special.

Of course, there are still 4 episodes left. We may find out that Madison was lying, the magic dust was cocaine, Tate is actually evil and everything I just said is completely pointless.

#tate langdon #michael langdon #ahs apocalypse #evan peters #cody fern #murder house #violate #madison montgomery #ahs coven

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itsclydebitches · 5 years

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RWBY Recaps: Vol. 5 The More the Merrier

This is a re-posting from October 9th, 2018 in an effort to get all my recaps fully on tumblr. Thanks!

Hello, moon.

Will we ever learn what happened to you? Not in this episode! That ominous shot (countered with the oddly soothing sound of crickets) is just to situate us before we pan down, revealing the gang making their way to the meeting with Lionheart. And honestly? I kind of love everything about this composition. Let’s tick things off:

We have Jaune and Ren mirroring each other with determined expressions and clenched fists. They’re ready to kick ass if need be.

Same with Ruby and Nora except they look like they’re out for a casual moonlit stroll—with the added bonus that Nora is manically thrilled about this adventure.

Yang is pretty blasé. Been there. Done that. Survived worse.

Weiss? The embodiment of “Ugh I could be home right now instead of walking around in this heat this had better not mess up my hair.”

Oscar looks way out of his depth and is hanging back from the rest, as we’d expect given that he’s a farm boy joining a group of elite fighters that have had years to bond without him. It’s Awkward New Kid Syndrome with a side of extreme danger.

And then there’s Qrow. Out in front. Suspicious looks all around. Iconic hunched shoulders. Really wants to put his hands in his pockets but the animation isn’t quite there yet. Behold, everyone. Our leader.

For real though, jokes aside I honest to god love this opening. It’s quick and from a practical standpoint sets up only that they’re heading somewhere as a group, but if you take the time to actually look you’ll see each of their personalities shining through. We might bitch about RWBY’s faults, but there’s a whole lot of love poured into this series and more often than not you can see it in the details.

Ruby pauses then to take in Haven tower—always one to appreciate beauty even when things are bleak—and then hangs back until Oscar has caught up. It’s a wonderful little moment between them because there’s no dialogue and ultimately none is needed. He doesn’t stop for reassurance, but he could. Ruby gives him that option and waits until Oscar passes her before continuing herself. The whole scene is heavy and poignant. There’s nothing but music until they arrive inside and Lionheart breaks the peace with, “Why hello. There… seems to be more of you than last time.”

Yeah. You can hear the fear in his voice. As if the rest of this setup didn’t already scream “TRAP, TRAP, TRAP,” He’s gotta be super suspicious in his greeting too. Leading them out here in the dead of night. Lionheart up on the podium—both figuratively putting himself above them and literally keeping himself out of harm’s way. Then the first thing out of his mouth is a worried comment on their numbers? Suspicious, suspicious.

Qrow: “Oh you know what they say. The more the merrier.”

He did the title thing! Love that.

Except the delivery makes it clear that Qrow is also suspicious as hell. No one has drawn their weapon yet, but the fight has already started. Qrow and Ozpin know that this is no simple meeting. Now Lionheart knows that they know. A quick shot reveals both his fear and the fact that he came with a weapon of his own:

Qrow tries to continue the charade by asking what’s up with the council and Lionheart is so bad at acting casual it’s actually painful to watch. He wants to know why they all brought THEIR weapons while hiding his own behind his back. As if they in any way failed to miss him standing there with it in full view for the last thirty seconds.

I can’t with this guy. He's just so bad at being bad I almost feel sorry for him.

(Although, as we in the U.S. have certainly discovered the last two years, the incompetent ones are often the most dangerous…)

As said, the fight has already begun. While Qrow and Lionheart trade subtext Yang checks out their perimeter, immediately picking up on the raven that just happens to be chilling on the banister. A simple, whispered “Mom?” and Qrow has his weapon out and a shot off, barely missing Raven as she swoops down beside Lionheart.

Can we appreciate that reaction time for a second? I feel like between Ozpin’s Super Secret Magic and Qrow’s self-deprecating drinking the fandom tends to forget that he’s easily one of the most powerful fighters we’ve seen to date. He demonstrated that in his playful spar against Winter, keeping Tyrian on his toes while also ensuring that the kids were safe, and here as he responds blindingly fast to a one syllable word. A few seconds later Raven calls him out for missing or, just as likely, deliberately missing since he doesn't want to kill her—yet. Which makes it all the more impressive that he can aim and achieve the results he wants in such a short amount of time. You 100% do not want to fuck with Qrow.

A nice cut using Lionheart’s back and Raven becomes human once more. In the realm of ‘artists paying careful attention to how their background characters act,’ Oscar is uncomfortable but isn’t even looking at the threat—almost like he’s listening carefully to something the rest of them can’t hear—while Nora looks downright floored. “They really are magic,” she says to herself, solidifying with evidence what they'd been told a few episodes back.

Okay. Rant time. I still don’t buy these reactions. Really not great on the world building front here. I mean, we’ve had Pyrrha who controls magnetism, Ren who manipulates emotions, Yang has a Hulk mode that includes changing eye color, Blake can create clones of herself, Weiss is basically a necromancer, Ruby turns into rose petals, give him an episode and Jaune will straight up heal a girl, and Nora herself can store/release electricity. Why is turning into a bird so incredibly shocking? It would feel way more natural if they saw Raven and Qrow’s transformations and went, “Okay… so that’s their semblance?” and then Oz has to explain about the difference—being born with an ability vs. being granted it—which is cool and there’s surprise that that’s a Thing, but their reaction to the ability itself is still pretty meh. Because they’ve literally seen weirder.

We’re given no indication as to WHY a bird transformation instinctually reads as more impossible than transforming into rose petals, other than “one is magic and one is not because we say so.” There’s no justification behind the characters’ ability to recognize magic when they see it, especially given the incredibly wide range of abilities RWBY has shown us over the years. Either attach more overt rules to semblances (obvious boundaries where the viewer understands what is and is not possible) or make Ozpin’s magic look radically different. In this world summoning storms and turning into birds doesn't read as radically different. Hell, in many ways Dust, an incredibly common commodity, is more powerful than this supposedly gasp-worthy magic. Why be impressed with Raven summoning rain clouds when Weiss can create powerful winds in her fight against Flynt with just a bit of Daddy’s money?

But anyway. I digress.

The verbal sparring continues. Oscar still isn’t making eye contact. Raven spouts more of her excuses, Salem can’t possibly be stopped, we're all out for ourselves, blah blah blah. Ruby emphasizes that they’ve already done the impossible, but they only achieved that because they were working together. Separation and a pessimistic attitude is exactly what Salem wants. Ruby wants Raven to join them.

And take a gander at that contrast between sisters. As I’ve said before, Ruby is the classic full-of-heart protagonist who believes that almost everyone can be redeemed. As we’ll see in a second, the exemption to this appears to be Cinder. Her murder of Penny and Pyrrha highlights her irredeemability in a way that overshadows Raven’s—and even Salem’s—more nebulous crimes. The bigger your actions are the harder they are to conceptualize. The smaller and more personal they are the harder they are to forgive. Paradoxically, it’s easier for someone like Ruby (and the fandom…) to shrug off Raven’s actions because as of yet she hasn't felt their repercussions as intimately.

Yang though? She has. And in this moment she’s not ready to forgive.

Raven refuses of course and tells Ruby she sounds just like her mother. (Give us flashbacks of Summer!) She summons a portal where a fireball flies through, hitting Ruby square in the chest and allowing the whole evil gang to join the party. We get a closeup on Oscar as he and Oz recognize Hazel, locking them inside while the White Fang sets up their bombs.

Hazel: “No one’s getting in… and no one’s getting out.”

Because RWBY, for all its dark storylines, is still hella cheesy at times lol.

Weiss: “So this was all just a trap?”

Ren: “It appears so…”

Ah, naive little children. If only you were watching from our fourth wall perspective you would have realized it was a trap more than an episode ago! Too bad.

We learn that Lionheart was the one who secured Team Bad a place in the Vytal festival. Not only that, but he’s been passing information about huntsmen and huntress whereabouts to Salem. That’s how they were all murdered and Qrow’s realization of this—after spending all that time looking for them and hoping against hope—is definitely a kicker. “I couldn’t find any of them… because you let her kill them.”

Keep in mind, most of those people were Qrow’s friends.

Jaune, as we’d expect, is at his breaking point. Pyrrha’s murderer is standing right there and, as he says, rubbing their faces in how many people she’s killed—“All with that damn smile on your face!” We’ve had all of two instances of RWBY cursing and it’s definitely needed here. I appreciate that his tears and his anger are basically a call to arms. Most everyone draws their weapon as soon as he's finished speaking. Qrow’s still trying to keep the peace, but Jaune’s very existence is a walking testament to exactly how much these people deserve to be brought to justice.

He yells that he’s going to make Cinder pay for what she did and then comes the most brutal line in all of RWBY.

Cinder: “Who are you again?”

Damn. They’re never gonna top that.

Perfect characterization though. As the audience it’s easy to forget who knows who in a big ensemble cast and, more importantly, who cares about who. From Cinder’s perspective Jaune is a nobody she's barely met. Why would she remember him? If she’d instead made a taunt about his dead girlfriend most of us probably would have just shrugged off the plot-hole, but paying attention to details like this is not only, a) satisfying but b) wonderfully vicious. Way to twist the knife here.

Jaune attacks as we knew he would but Cinder easily blocks him. Ruby joins the fray only to be stopped by Emerald—“You’re not getting near her.” (Love the devotion.) Yang pairs off with Mercury to settle an old score. Raven orders Vernal to take out “the heiress” (rude, she has a name) and in another excellent nod to the switcheroo that tricked both the team and a large chunk of the fandom, she casually throws out that Vernal doesn’t need to use her power to kill a kid.

Good excuse too. Considering, you know, she doesn’t have any.

No more fake outs. Qrow attacks Raven head on with the announcement that they’re not family anymore. Harsh, but deserved. Raven’s “Were we ever?” smells more like denial. We also get a good look at their similar, but differently balanced color schemes.

As their fight takes them out of frame we stay with a rather terrified Weiss. To her credit though she holds her ground against Vernal, assuring her that she’s “more than a name.”

Finally, Ren and Nora—ever the perfect duo—are left to fend off Hazel. He’s one of those real asshole villains who has a “code” that they follow. He doesn’t want to fight two kids half his age and power level… but he has to. Just like he has to keep pursuing his misguided revenge against Ozpin. And he, like Raven, feels the need to announce to the world that this isn’t what he’d prefer. It’s just how things are! Totally out of his hands, I’m sorry to say.

We’re seeing a trend with the villains and their justifications, yeah?

With everyone paired off Ozpin-Oscar (I need a portmanteau for them…) sneaks over to confront Lionheart. Lionheart goes from telling this supposed stranger to get himself out of the fight while he can to attacking him with a rock-lava-energy blast thing in like five seconds flat. Of course, our two favorite BAMFs block it with ease and we get the RWBY equivalent of,

(x)

Holy shit this kid blocked my hit??

Beautiful.

The second the cane comes out though everything makes sense and we get another stellar line of “Not quite” when Lionheart identifies him as Ozpin. I really love that they let Oscar handle the first half of this battle. Yeah, it’s a little flimsy that he’s able to take on an adult after just a few weeks of training, but we also don’t know how much he and Oz are already sharing. Fighting might come naturally to him now in a muscle memory sort of way. Regardless, he kicks ass and I’m loving it.

“You found Qrow,” Lionheart says. “How?” implying that he might have been doing even more work than we saw to keep those two apart. A voiceover from Ozpin wonders what happened to his former ally. The fact that Lionheart knows all the details of Ozpin’s reincarnation tells us that yeah, they were really, really close.

That knowledge is dangerous too. Realizing that Ozpin “couldn’t have had that form for long” Lionheart gets over the debilitating shock of fighting, you know, Ozpin. We hear him rationalizing in the wonderfully creepy manner of the desperate that this is just a boy in front of him, a boy soon to be Ozpin, and if he delivers the kid to Salem he’ll “finally be free" of her. Sounds a lot like Raven thinking that the relic will protect her; a lot like a hurt Tyrian muttering that she’ll forgive him.

RWBY does a good job of reminding us in small ways how utterly terrifying Salem is...and what that fear drives people to do.

This would be the (supposedly) perfect moment for Ozpin to take over. Oh no! Lionheart is all serious now! Oscar is worried! But the only thing Ozpin does is tell him to “fight.” I’ve heard a lot of people in the fandom claim that Ozpin is a monster for his possession, culpable for something that’s outside of his control. But Ozpin has no desire to take over people’s lives like this and—unlike Hazel or Raven—it really is out of his hands, to say nothing of the fact that he does all he can to actually achieve what he thinks is right. He can’t keep himself from merging with Oscar, but he can give Oscar as much agency as humanly possible, including here. The only times we see Ozpin take that agency away is when it really is for the greater good (they can’t afford to hide on a farm forever) or when Oscar is well and truly in over his head, like after the fight with Hazel goes on too long. Taking over Oscar at that point is to save his life, akin to forcing someone out of the way of a blast.

But we’ll get to that.

We come back to the fight between Weiss and Vernal as Weiss tries to buy herself enough time to summon her knight. Vernal easily cuts through her summoning though… which is kind of a relief? In that RWBY (usually) knows when to limit new powers. If Weiss had no real limitations on her summoning��the time it takes, the energy it requires—we’d be wondering why she didn’t just summon a whole, super-powered army every time they were in a spot of trouble. Too many shows (Supernatural...) craft crazy powerful characters and then conveniently forget about that power when it would too easily solve a conflict.

Also, check out that smile from Vernal.

We segue to Cinder and Jaune. Kudos to Jaune for holding his own one-on-one! He really is Pyrrha’s student. Remember what other kid managed to hold her own against a freaking Maiden, at least for a time?

Emerald won’t let Ruby get anywhere near Cinder. She “owes her everything" after all. But she’s willing to indulge her (so to speak) and summons up a mirage of Cinder to fly at Ruby. That and the resulting attack startles her enough that she sets off Crescent Rose, the bullet narrowly missing Weiss.

…Portent of things to come.

Because we’re back on Weiss and it's becoming clear to the viewer why we’ve been focusing so much on her in this battle. A shock from Vernal’s weapon rips out a scream from her, draws Jaune’s attention, and Cinder cruelly asks if he’ll “let her die too.”

Gotta have the fake-out first though. Deciding to take him seriously, Cinder charges with intent to kill and the head-on strike triggers Ruby into remembering Pyrrha’s death. Her silver eyes instinctually go off, blinding everyone and halting the battle.

Emerald knocks her out fast but even those few seconds was enough to effect Cinder. Apparently once you’re struck by that kind of power your body remembers it. She’s down on her knees, clearly in pain, and Jaune takes the opportunity to get a strike in, managing to clip the half-mask she wears.

And yeah. Cinder’s pissed.

Partly from getting caught in one of Ruby’s blasts again. Partly because a “nobody” like Jaune managed to hit her. Awful when that power you sought isn’t as perfect as you were promised, huh? Jaune makes the mistake though of declaring that he’s not important, only his friends are… and Cinder knows exactly how to make one of the good guys suffer.

Why just kill him when you can instead kill the girl he was worried about moments before? Why grant him peace when you can vividly recreate the trauma of Pyrrha’s death instead?

We have just enough time left in the episode to see the team’s shocked faces, watch Cinder’s weapon disappear, and then we cut with Weiss in mid-fall.

It’s a brutal combo of content and editing. Thanks, Rooster Teeth! I hate it!

We all know how things turn out though… so that's some kind of comfort. Until next time!

Other Details of Note

When everyone enters Haven tower we see this statue… and honestly I’m not entirely sure what to make of it. Something something it’s a maiden guarding a Maiden relic. Something something broken chains and freedom. Something something Atlas-esque imagery of holding up a world…you get the idea. It’s symbolic.

Cinder calls Qrow “little bird” and Lionheart “lion.” Always something wonderfully creepy about villains with a penchant for nicknames.

When Jaune first charges Cinder we pull back behind the chain on the statue and see it sway from the force of his attack. It’s quick and subtle, but an excellent visual detail to show us how strong he’s gotten. Pre-Fall of Beacon Jaune never would have managed that kind of force.

For all its faults in places, I enjoy how much this fight makes use of space, especially when it comes to Weiss using her glyphs. It’s not perfect or as complex as what we might have had with Monty, but I think the team is improving in their choreography overall.

Yes, Jaune is well over his schoolboy crush on Weiss---something I'm pleased about---but it still hits hard to have her as the victim here. Out of every team member Cinder could have targeted she chooses the one other girl Jaune might have had legitimate, romantic feelings for. In an alternate timeline, so to speak.

So the whole “villain walks slowly towards the person they’re gonna kill and everyone who normally has superhuman reflexes doesn’t move an inch” trope is crazy annoying, right? Just putting that out there...

#rwby #mymetas #RWBY Recaps

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