#they’re a little too prominent of a character for me to make up everything about them

[rhpsdys]

y’all ever write a character except ur like wow i know nothing about you

[illwynd]

What direction would you have enjoyed most for Thor and Loki after TDW?

I recall in the long dry years between TDW and TR, a large part of the conversation in the fandom around this topic was on how pissed off Thor would be when he learned that Loki hadn’t actually died and had kept that fact from him (or “faked his death,” however you wanna phrase it) and how much trust would have to be rebuilt. And there is definitely that aspect of it. I think there was trust that needed to be rebuilt on both sides, in fact, and many long-overdue conversations about everything that had gone wrong to get them to that point. Conversations about Loki’s ancestry and his miscalculation with the Destroyer and all the questions Thor didn’t ask when Loki reappeared and not visiting him in the cells and ancient resentments and so many other things. 

But most of the fandom, in the discussions I’ve seen, seems to have been hoping for resolution between them, for things to get all healed and tied up in a tidy little bow and have their character arcs just ride off into the sunset and… yeah, I don’t want that. I never wanted that. There is way too much emphasis these days on “healthy” and “wholesome” and, goddamn, like what are y’all doing looking at these two if you’re looking for therapist-approved wellbeing? You’re digging in the wrong place. (Something that I feel is carried over from Norse mythology into their characters is the idea that there is value and importance in lives that don’t have a Happily Ever After, worlds ending in destruction and final defeat but with a deep integrity to what mattered. The world doesn’t promise healing. Sometimes, living with the knowledge that things will not be fixed in the end but it all matters anyway, and the connections between people matter, and the ability to find flickering moments of joy amidst the sorrows… to me that is far better, far more fitting to who they are than any tidy, happy resolution could ever be.)

One of the things that I love about many of their comics arcs is the sense that while things do change between them over time, with different emphases coming into focus and into prominence, there is an essence to both of them that keeps them in perpetual conflict and ALSO keeps the love strong enough that neither of them ever wants to go their separate ways permanently. They both have their own lives, with Thor doing his best at heroing and Loki doing his best at being himself, but Their Relationship is a constant, and it’s nobody else’s business, and whether they’re on opposite sides in their daily lives doesn’t really factor into it. 

So basically, in my ideal world in which phase 3+ didn’t suck, TR would have involved some of those long-overdue conversations and some working together against a bigger bad, but the kiss-and-make-up would have been incomplete, like an unresolved chord at the end of a phrase of music. Loki would have disappeared again but this time making sure Thor knew he wasn’t dead, and he’d have popped up again from time to time, always with uncertain allegiances, to have a few poignant interactions with Thor, or to absolutely destroy some big bad that’s threatening Thor’s life but in the meantime doing something that makes it seem like he got some material gain out of doing so (just to keep everyone on their toes), and if anyone questions this in Thor’s presence you’d get a very stormy look and a subtle suggestion that he doesn’t have to be slumming it on Earth. 

Loki would be there to be The Most Important Person in Thor’s life even when he’s not physically present, and the niggling itch that never quite goes away from the fact that things aren’t resolved and may be unresolvable. (Having a relationship like that—where it is possible or likely that things can’t be fixed—is actually really important to telling Thor stories that have emotional weight. Resolving the relationship or making the question null through death cuts off so many of the important questions that cling to Thor in themes and resonances. To a character who embodies the virtue of striving for heroism and goodness, an unquenchable love for such a liminal character as Loki, whose moral standing flits all across the field at any given moment, and having Thor see that not as a problem, as a liability or an inconsistency but instead as a value in itself—that keeps Thor from becoming an insufferable, inflexible moral pedant.) And Thor—Loki’s love and devotion to Thor, mingled with his resentment of him and the lingering frayed edges of his trust and the centuries-old anger and desire to win against him just once—would be there to rest like a base color underpainted beneath everything Loki does in his schemes and clever workings and, a gnarled anchor or a rusted root, keep him from wandering too far afield.

And, I mean, they’re gods. If you carry any story on long enough it ends in death, but in a story of superheroes and modern legends, the gods should still be there in the end, at the edge of the tale, perhaps, but continuing nonetheless, spinning against the stars, the huge half-invisible shadows of giants bordering the far horizon, the cycles of their lives so much longer than ours.

[thatonegenshinsimp]

Hello! I love your writing sm aAAHHH they're so nEATO nbhjBFVJHF

aA can I make a small request of Childe and a shy S/O who's quiet/not so vocal in bed? Well, they'd make some sounds but they're quiet. Those two have had their intimate moments together but it's usually always Childe that's initiating it. So one day they're the one initiating it for the first time, but since they're shy... They're far too embarrassed to ask. Ignoring their 'problem' isn't going to help either, so they try to figure out how to ask him or get his attention... They get noticeably clingy and flustered, holding onto him whilst trying to figure out how to ask.

But Childe figures it out and did notice their behavior. =^)

I'm not sure if you're okay with this but I hope you'll have a good day!!

Hello anon! I’m glad you like my writing and of course! Childe is such a fun character to write for tbh. Anyways, enjoy!

Warnings: NSFW, sub! reader, creampie, tried to keep it gn! so let me know if there's any mistakes with pronouns or anatomy!

NSFW below, Minors DNI, by scrolling down past this point, you have chosen to read the content below of your own accord!

In your time dating Ajax, he’d always been the flirty and dominant one in your relationship. That worked just fine for you, with him seeming to choose the times you were also in the mood to ask you if the two of you could go somewhere less… public. He was very attentive to your needs and wants, which you thankfully didn’t have to voice most of the time. You weren’t the best with communicating those things since you were usually quiet and reserved. However, this time was different.

Childe had been at work for the past two weeks without so much as visiting you or taking much of a break. You were worried about him, yes, but you were also getting very needy for him as of late, too. Unfortunately, he didn’t have the time for the moment, but promised that he’d give you all the love and affection you could ever ask for once his schedule was freed up a little more. Thankfully, it was now, for the next two weeks with Lantern Rite going on in Liyue, but things usually stopped at cuddles and light kisses, and you didn’t know how to ask him to go further. You didn’t want to fumble your words or say something dumb, so you simply… didn’t. You didn’t utter a single word whenever his hands went a little too low for it to be considered an accident. You didn’t say a thing when he would kiss your neck or have his hands under your shirt. He was teasing you, and you didn’t have the wherewithal to say anything. You’d tried everything to get him to understand that you wanted him, but he pretended not to notice. Little did you know, he had been planning this for a while. He wanted you to ask him, even if only once, to do something to you. He understood that you were shy, but everyone can talk if they’re either coaxed enough or pushed far enough, and he chose the ladder. It was on a rainy day in Liyue harbor that he watched you walk up to him, gently tapping him on the shoulder and waiting for him to stop reading the book he was reading. “Hm? Oh, hey. What is it? You look a bit nervous.” He said, a teasing lilt to his voice as lust swam in the deep depths of his ocean blue eyes. “I- I um…” you froze up like you usually did, not able to go further. “Ooh, can I guess?” He asked, causing you to nod. “Do you need some water? You look kind of thirsty.” He said, causing you to shake your head. “You want something?” He asked, causing you to nod with a hopeful smile on your face. “Well, what do you want?” He asked, watching as your smile turned nervous again. “I want… I…” you bit your lip and then finally looked up at him. “You.” You replied, your voice barely above a whisper when you spoke. He thought to tease you further, but when he saw the prominent red hue your face had taken on, he decided against it. “Aww, why didn’t you say so?” He asked, laughing as you glared up at him. “Alright, I’m kidding, come on.” He said, leading you upstairs.

You were grateful he'd stopped trying to make you be more assertive, and instead decided to just let you do your own thing like he usually did. "You want me to take care of you?" he asked, causing you to nod. He hummed softly, picking you up and immediately helping to undress you. You, finally deciding to be a little more bold, slowly started unbuttoning his shirt, before lowering your hands as you looked at his scarred chest. You always loved to trace over them after a long night shared between the two of you. Ajax finished undressing you and finally laid you down against the mattress once he'd finished undressing himself. You sighed softly when your back hit the bed, watching as he gently grabbed one of your hands and kissed your knuckles. His other hand made its way further downward as he started to play with your hole, slipping his fingers in and scissoring them to prep you. You whined softly as he pulled them out when he was sure you were ready, smirking down at you as you gazed back up at him through eyes half lidded and glazed over with lust. "Ajax, please." you whispered, causing him to smile softly. "Ok, I've been teasing you enough today, anyway." he said, before he positioned himself against your entrance and slowly slid in, causing you to flinch slightly and shut your eyes tightly from the burn of him stretching you out even further. "Hah~ so tight- shit." he whispered, pressing his lips hotly against your neck as you tried to relax. You shuddered softly as he kept kissing your bare neck and shoulders, whimpering and sighing against his mouth when he finally kissed you on your lips. Ajax slowly slid the rest of the way in until his hips were pressed fully against yours, looking down at you with a much gentler gaze now. "There we go, just relax, I've got you." he reassured, smoothing his hands up your hips and pressing his forehead against yours. You nodded before feeling him start to gently roll his hips against yours so as not to hurt you. You couldn't help but moan softly as he started a slow pace, his thrusts gaining rhythm quickly as he made you a mess of quiet whimpers and moans. You reached up and tangled your hands in his hair, pulling him down to kiss him. He gladly accepted, kissing you back and pouring his love and adoration into each movement of his hips against yours. You moaned a little louder when he hit your sweet spot, your hips jolting upwards before he held them down. Childe slowly kept going, grinding himself against that one spot that made you clench around him and moan loudly. "Hnn~ o-oh, right th-there- Ahhn~! Ajax, please~!" you cried, tears beading in the corners of your eyes and slowly rolling down your face as he thumbed them away and kept moving. You felt the knot in your lower abdomen get tighter, grinding your hips up into his as he met your thrusts half way, his pace getting sloppier as he tried to hold himself back long enough to let you cum first. "Come on, let go, I know you want to." he breathed, kissing your neck again. "AhnNg~ m'cumming cumming- Ahhh~!" you moaned into his neck as you came, wrapping your legs around his waist as he kissed you gently, a stark contrast to the way he wildly slammed his hips into yours. Your eyes rolled back when he came, stuffing you full of his cum as he shot thick ropes of sticky white against your inner walls, gasping as you milked him for all he was worth. You kept his hips against yours as he kissed you again. "S-s'good- fuck- take it all." he groaned, as he stilled his hips against yours.

He panted and sighed once he'd calmed down a little, smoothing his hands up your back. "Did that feel good?" he asked, watching as you nodded in response. "Mhmm, felt s'good, m'tired. I wanna sleep." you said, kissing him on the neck as he looked down at you. Childe braced himself on one arm and held you still with the other, pulling out and watching as his cum gushed out of you and further soiled the sheets below. He paid that no mind as he picked you up and let you lean against him as you slept soundly in his arms. He carried you to the bathtub and slowly cleaned you up. He made sure that any marks he left on your body were properly cared for before he kissed your temple and wrapped you up in a fuzzy, warm towel. He then quickly went to change the sheets, before finishing drying you off and laying you down under the covers. He slipped in bed beside you and held you close, wrapping his arms around you as he drifted off to sleep as well.

[hpalways]

A Game of Tag

Fandom: Twisted Wonderland

Character(s): Jack Howl x GN!Reader

Quick Summary: Jack’s siblings came to visit, and you were shown yet another side to him, reinforcing your belief that his compassion expanded beyond bounds. 

A/N: I literally love his character so much hahaha. He also gives off major tsundere vibes but in the best way possible. But yeah, I was confused why I liked him so much and then I see he’s a libra and it makes sense now (jk haha)

BACK then, Jack Howl used to scare you a little.

Now? Not so much.

You were beginning to know him a bit too well. There were cracks and crevices that shown past through his initial persona to reveal a deeper character, with dreams, passions, goals, and experiences. He had many different dimensions, but he always stayed consistent to himself. Which you thought was admirable. And when you finally earned his respect, you were continued to be shown so many diverse sides of him.

Like today, for instance. His siblings had come on campus to visit him today. A younger brother and sister, with vague features similar to Jack's. You had come out to the field to see him entertaining his siblings and stayed to watch for a while.

For once, he had worn such a carefree smile.

It nearly took your breath away from how usual it was. But it was also stunning. His sharp pearls glistened underneath the sun, while the curves of his cheeks turned upward in delight. His usual messy, silver hair was even more tousled from all the running, but the corners of his ears were upright to display his affection. A strange combination with the brute strength he contained, rippling muscles and big form. And yet, somehow it worked. All these qualities of his made him Jack Howl. When it came to the ones he cared about, he did it to the fullest.

Golden eyes flew over to meet yours. "Come join us, [Y/N]."

"I'm good," you said, hands up in surrender. "I don't have that kind of stamina. You're a beast."

Despite your protests, he called a time out to his siblings and allowed them to explore on their own. Then he ran up to you, a glare suddenly fixated upon your presence. "What did I tell ya? You needa start workin' out."

"Okay, coach," you responded, rolling your eyes. He growled under his breath and you grinned. "Stop whining so much. I saw you how happy you were."

He widened his eyes and looked away, annoyed that you caught him. "I was not."

You reached out an arm and with the help from the bleachers, you were tall enough to touch his hair. It was soft and furry, the feeling of it comforting beneath your palm. Before he could do anything about it, you gave it a good ruffle. His reaction was everything. Shocked and embarrassed, his cheeks reddened as he pulled away. But like you said, you knew him too well. He liked it. He liked it, a lot, as a matter of fact.

"You're gettin' too comfortable." However, that was all he said, which you took it as a good sign.

"Tell me about your brother and sister," you said, ignoring his statement.

"They like sports."

You made a face. "Is that it? They're exactly like you."

He nodded. "I just know we'll have a good time together. It's nice watchin' them grow up."

"You must be a proud brother," you added, a smug smile weaving along your lips.

He stared at you for a moment, not saying anything as if in deep thought. The softening of his features clearly expressed more than words ever could. It was a look... a tinge of slight nostalgia mixed with bittersweetness on top of swelling pride. How cute. It was always thrilling to learn more about Jack, especially since he kept it himself most of the time. But you knew actions speak louder than words. His actions were always prominent and special, played out in utmost care.

The sun was killing you. You didn't understand how Jack could stand it when he had been out for hours already. No wonder he was so tan.

"I'm going back," you told him.

"You're joinin' us for one round of tag first."

"What?!"

In the end, you could not get out of your predicament. It didn't take long until the two kids returned, fired up with passion. Jack was not wrong at all. They were indeed really into sports. It was evil of him to involve you like this.

The game of tag started, with Jack's brother being it. As he counted up to twenty, you ran with your poor legs as fast as you could, panting heavily from your obvious lack of stamina. If this wasn't hell, you didn't know what was.

It didn't take long before the rascal caught up with you, chasing at your tail. Yelling in fright for your incoming doom, you ran like your life was ending. Alas, it didn't make much of a difference. The little guy pounced on you and you were tackled to the ground.

Laying there as he ran off, you stayed there for a moment, chest rising up and down.

A shadow loomed across your face, blocking the sun and bringing about cooling relief. "You quittin' already?" It was Jack, thoroughly amused by your nearing deathbed.

"You!" you quipped, sitting upward. You started chasing him down, your eyes stuck to your destination. And as you cornered him like a predator latching on its prey, you began to realize that your thoughts applied everywhere. Your eyes were always on him, on his familiar biker's jacket and spiky hair. There were so many charms that came along with him, and those charms continued to attract your attention. "I gotchu now, you loser."

You spoke too soon. As you dived towards him, he dodged to the right and sped off into the distance, his skills shining through.

The game ended with you as the tagger, to no one's surprise.

Sweat riddened and exhausted, you slumped into a ball.

Jack's familiar form appeared once more. "You did good, [Y/N]." And though you struggled the entire game, he was genuine in his compliment.

With his back turned on you, he leaned forward to show that he was willing to give you a piggyback ride back to the dorms. Classic Jack. 

[somepsychopomp]

So I kinda have problems with how Fionna is written…

I saw a post somewhere online that said that Fionna’s not even really the protag of her own show and that Simon is more prominent than she is and high key that person was right (and I’m both ok and not ok w/ this)

Fionna starts off as a super relatable and compelling character who also teaches us that her world is (suspiciously) not magical. She’s a great jumping off point and her episode being the first is a perfect fit narratively.

But the fact that she had her previous heroic abilities stripped away is both narratively compelling and the greatest flaw to her rn. Which sounds a little obvious but like… at first I assumed we’d see a hopeful and ultimately very determined fionna try and fail to be a hero when her back’s against the wall (like in the Farmworld ep). But with each episode she’d gradually learn to be a hero, albeit and amateurish and still struggling one. And she’d end the series by saving the day, maybe not as the Fionna from the original AT episodes we saw, but as someone who grew from episode one of F&C

It sounds simple enough but that really really hasn’t been happening and it’s kinda worrying me now

In Destiny, we see Fionna lose fights against characters and even sees the farmworld version of herself kick ass (doing what she couldn’t do herself) before being defeated by Scarab. The episode ends with her screaming at Simon to hit the button. Which I get- she’s been humbled multiple times this episode and just saw a much more capable version of herself go down and possibly die. She must’ve been terrified.

Then everything in the Winter King happens and that becomes a focal point for Fionna’s doubts and sadness in the following episodes. Which makes me wonder… why was she not cut up about being unable to do more for Farmworld Finn and his (maybe now orphaned) family?

This is a group problem I had with Simon and Cake too, as a whole they’re collectively hopping into universe after universe and are completely unconcerned with the fate of every abandoned inhabitant they leave behind (cough baby Finn cough).

So I was a little weirded out when Fionna and Simon wanted to just bail and leave apocalypse!bubblegum to probably die at the hands of a horde of vampires. Like I get it, this isn’t their world and they never should’ve been there to begin with, so that Bubblegum’s fate really isn’t their responsibility.

But Fionna is a mirror to Finn, and our Finn never would’ve abandoned his Farmworld counterpart when he was in trouble. He never would’ve abandoned Butchblegum. Even if he was outmanned and outpowered he never would’ve gone down without putting up a fight first.

Finn has always wanted to help everyone he could. Fionna throughout her own show is really only ever concerned with getting back to her world and making it magic again so she doesn’t have to think about getting a job or paying rent. (That is, until the end of Jerry.)

What I was expecting from episode 1 and onward was that Fionna would have had the same compassion and heart that Finn has- but that her struggle would be from the fact that due to circumstances beyond her control, she’s not experienced enough to help at all. That she’d stop seeing the people around her in each universe as akin to video game or anime characters and realize they’re as real as she is. And that the survivor’s guilt/guilt in general from being unable to help them would be devastating for her.

Maybe this is on me tho and I was just expecting soemthing completely different out of this show

(Again tho Jerry kinda shakes things up. But it’s 4 am for me and I can’t think critically anymore)

But Fionna couldn’t defend herself or her friends from the Destiny gang, got Martin killed, but really only feels bad about the events from episode 6 for killing all those candy people. Simon and Cake are also only concerned with their own goals tho- I’m not pinning this all on Fionna or the way she alone is written. But it’s more glaringly obvious when it comes to her

I guess what I’m saying is that Fionna is a complete and total girl failure, which humbles her and keeps her relatable, but in 8 out of 10 episodes she hasn’t been able to change this fact at all. It leaves me a little worried that the finale of F&C will either magically (or conveniently) give her the ability to be a hero… or just kinda flounder bc they’ve so well established that one of their titular characters is effectively useless in almost all circumstances. To the point that in the Star, Butchblegum straight up said she didn’t care about Fionna and only wanted Cake’s help.

((Even Simon who was woefully out of his depth adventuring with Finn reconfigured the remote, insisted he wanted to help the Candy Queen, instantly started making stakes for vampires in ep 7, also offered to help repair Bubblegum’s tank, and rightfully recognized that the huge decrepit man with horns and exposed bones and empty eye sockets sitting on a pile of skulls in a creepy dark cave was a horrifying dangerous figure and not just a guy named Jerry.))

In all honesty I just have absolutely zero idea where they can take Fionna at this point but I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the F&C crew know what they’re doing

[mashpotatoequeen]

mentor figures

Thinking, again, about Mr. Benedict. About how he reads differently from so many mentor figures in so many books directed at young people. It’s a well established role, a well established trope, of course, but it’s rare I read a story where I thoroughly enjoy the character the way I do him.

Excuse my whimsy, but it’s a funny little thing, to read a children’s story once you’ve grown. To have fallen in love with the characters woven through the pages gripped in your grubby childhood hands, and then to fall in love in an entirely different way as they remain, stagnant in their growth, and you just get older and older. The tale stays the same and your perspective shifts.

Stories often go like this. A child, with nothing to lose and everything to gain, gets brought into a life different from their own and falls in love with it. A mentor- usually older, usually grey, wise and experienced and knower of secrets and holder of quests- offers them an adventure and they accept it, heedless of the danger.

Crooked perspectives, crooked lines in the sand. Reading these stories again as you grow, you cannot help but think about the burdens these sorts of characters place on such young narrow shoulders. The unfairness of it all. The idle cruelty under the laurels. Books can call it love all they want, but to send a child to the front lines even once is enough to make me question.

(You have to be fair about it, mostly. You have to acknowledge when children's books are meant for children, that if the characters are never allowed to step up to the plate then the story would never have happened. Plot needs conflict, breeds the necessity of child soldiers, and allows young readers to see themselves as heroes in their own stories, too. It's easy to forget, and important to remember.)

I don’t know. Thinking about Mr. Benedict, this wise old man, who was ridiculed and determined and young, too, once. Thinking about Mr. Benedict, looking at these children collected at his door and knowing exactly how it feels to be that kind of particular lonely, the sort of lonely that comes with being young and knowing you should have someone, but don’t. The kind of lonely that comes from being different. 

In the books, Mr. Benedict lays the dangers out one by one by one. He says, clearly, exactly what he knows and how. Answers details and explains logic. He asks the children to complete a dangerous quest, of course, but he does not lead them into it blind. 

He doesn’t expect them to do it alone, either. Every step of the way, there are grown-ups watching over the Mysterious Benedict Society as best they can. The kids aren’t sent to be spies, they’re sent to go to school. Stay safe. Collect information. There are two priorities there and it’s easy to guess which is the one Mr. Benedict prioritises. 

Priorities: the minute the danger becomes prominent, Milligan is sent to retrieve the children. Their lives are not forfeit. They are prioritised over even the world's twisted end. This is a series in part about mysteries and puzzles and adventure, but it’s in part about this, too. About finding the people who love you. It’s about sorting out your own self and the way you fit into a family both.

It goes like this: Mr. Benedict asks the children, once, as a last resort, to go on a carefully observed quest, and then he never asks anything more of them except to learn, grow, listen, and be as safe as possible while doing so. Any adventure hereafter is because the kids embarked on it on their own, going specifically against their guardians' wishes to do so (that particular kind of loneliness, after all, is a hard habit to break).

I don’t know. I don’t have too much to say here. Something about kindness I suppose. Something about characters made to fit in roles designed to be a loving mentor actually getting to be so. It's a clever bit of writing, to make someone read the way Mr. Benedict does in this series, to have both the children in the spotlight even as they are surrounded by people who love them and care enough to try and give them ways out.

(Thinking, again, about the third book. The children finally start asking for help and reaching for it, and when the grown ups rise up to answer the call, it feels earned.)

[sympetali]

Since it seems like CRWBY is heavily hinting at big Ruby and Jaune moments in the episode tomorrow, I thought I’d share this think piece drabble I decided to write in the middle of the day a few weeks ago (haha undiagnosed adhd, am I right?)

Here’s the thing about Ruby and Jaune: I think they have one of the most interesting dynamics in the series.

They meet in the first few episodes, and they’re immediately sort of bonding about being outsiders. They don’t feel like they belong in this space: Ruby is too young and Jaune literally bluffed his way in. Jaune calls Ruby cute (this is not an inherently romantic reading of their relationship,) and sort of hints at romantic interest in her before he sees Weiss and well… we all know how that goes. Ruby thinks Jaune is kind of a dweeb, but in the affectionate “you’re weird, I like you” sort of way. It’s a very light-hearted first conversation. But beyond those surface level introductory interactions, then we have the fact that these two become the most unlikely team leaders. They both become responsible for three other people, and Ruby points that out to Jaune in one of the most prominent moments for him early on. The others being his work with Pyrrha about accepting help and his confrontation with Cardin which is like, the defining moment for him—one where he puts both Ruby and Pyrrha’s advice to work. And that alone could be very telling about how close they are. But it doesn’t end there.

Something I think that makes these two so intrinsically linked is their very specific shared grief. No one else knew Pyrrha was going to die and no one else had to see Pyrrha die. Jaune knew the minute she kissed him and ran off. Ruby, still just a 16 year old kid, had to see it. And suddenly both of them are feeling this heartache in a way no one else can understand. But they can understand each other. We don’t know if Jaune ever even told anyone about that kiss, but we do know he called out desperately to the others about her going to do something reckless (hats off to Miles Luna for that scene because holy cow,) and Ruby was already barreling headfirst into hero mode. Pyrrha’s death will play in a loop in both of their heads for a long time.

Then we have the span of time that volumes 4-6 take place in. Ruby, with no team of her own, sets off with Jaune, Ren, and Nora. They acknowledge that at this point, things are incredibly different and they’re following Ruby. Jaune takes a backseat in terms of direct leadership, but he’s still a unifying voice. He understands Ren and Nora a bit more, and I think we see that in their battles scenes. But still, Jaune so easily follows Ruby. He believes in her. He doesn’t know what it is exactly they can do at the place they’re in, but he’s ready to figure it out with her. He’s going to keep improving and he’s going to keep supporting her. I think that’s really beautiful. Their like, little reunion at the end of Vol 3 is very sweet to me. It reads very much like a ride or die, I will follow you into the dark sort of situation. Everything these characters know has been completely flipped on its head, but all they can think to do is keep pushing on. Keep moving forward. And it’s clear that at this moment in time, Ruby and Jaune need each other to do that. Yes, Jaune has Ren and Nora but he lost his partner. And we know that that loss has him pushing Ren and Nora away for awhile. He doesn’t know how to grieve with them. He’s afraid. Ruby doesn’t have her team anymore at all. Yang is despondent. Blake is missing. Weiss was forced to go home. She leans on the people she knows she still has, but we have to assume she also feels the absence of Pyrrha in that space. Everything in Team RNJR/JNR is kind of fragile. They want to pick up the pieces and do the next right thing, but it’s also very hard to do so when there’s so much they’re not saying or doing.

Ruby and Jaune have excellent little moments of casual intimacy as well. There’s a real softness between them. And again, this is not necessarily a romantic reading of their connection, but it’s not NOT a romantic reading. Jaune’s double down on his belief in her before the fight against the Nukaleve, his determination to keep her safe from Tyrion, even butting heads with Qrow (another dynamic I love to scream about,) Jaune is always just so steadfast in his faith in her. The same way that past all the teasing, Ruby’s faith in Jaune is a huge part of his confidence as a leader. Their reunion in Argus is my favorite moment between them. He is so relieved to see her alive and she just wants that moment to feel good and light so she reminds him she promised they’d see each other there. And he has to smile. And they share this lovely hug that feels so cozy and safe and like something they both needed. There’s so many important relationships and bonds in this story, but I really do think that outside of the main four, this one is imperative to the narrative. It’s one that we as the audience have literally followed since the beginning. Any way you read the relationship, they are so important to each other and their connection is a driving force in their motivations. They make each other better.

But we’ve reached a point now where these two haven’t had a lot of time with each other since they took on their own challenges in Mantle and Atlas. Not to mention the new and unique position they’re in with Jaune having aged rapidly in the Ever After. We have Ruby at her weakest mentally. She’s lost all hope. She’s feeling the weight of everything she’s learned and she’s seen and she’s done, and she’s gonna have to reckon with Jaune’s decision to mercy kill Penny on top of that? Now, I fully believe that Ruby is typically the kind of person that after an emotional initial reaction, she would sort of step back and be introspective. She would offer that understanding to the best of her ability. It would be hard no matter what, but she would see Jaune, Jaune especially actually, for who he is and why he did that and not focus on the action itself. But again, this isn’t Ruby like we know her. This is Ruby already wrecked by grief and on the cusp of just completely giving up. She might really lose it over this, and her and Jaune could have an incredibly difficult moment. Maybe even a division we see follow them for awhile. But I think that would only add to the emotional impact of their relationship. Again, they are sharing a profound grief that cannot be felt by anyone else. Ruby did everything she could to keep Penny around, and she lost her anyway. And Jaune would have never wanted to do what he did but he put Penny’s wishes first, even if that left him in a much worse state. We all love Penny and we understand her naivety in that request, but it’s hard not to at least think about the quiet cruelty of it. We know Jaune agreed because he wanted to do what he thought was best in that moment, but we as the viewer have to try to see it from all angles. He’s the one who has to live with that decision, not anybody else. And he has to know the way that might affect his relationships with other people, particularly Ruby. They are always balancing on these scales, I think. They’re trying so hard to do the right thing and when either one of them makes a misstep, it’s the other that seems to help move the weight. Now we’re in this precarious position where it could be Jaune’s actions that tip Ruby really far down. And that’s fascinating because it’s so easy to sympathize with both sides. We hurt for Ruby’s loss and we hurt for Jaune’s too. He also loved Penny, but there’s all these other layers. He had to take a life, which isn’t something he ever wanted to do, much less an innocent one: one of somebody he cared for. But also— there’s one other person who once ended a version of Penny’s life. Pyrrha. And I know deep in my bones that that thought crossed his mind. Pyrrha is always with Jaune. Literally and figuratively. What is the sword he carries, and killed Penny with, forged from?

This also draws a new and specific thread from Pyrrha to Ruby and Jaune’s relationship. Ruby knew Pyrrha didn’t mean to kill Penny 1.0. I don’t think she ever even thought about that. But again, Ruby isn’t the same person she was the first time she lost her.

Idk. Much to think about. I love Ruby and Jaune so much, individually and together, and I’m very anxious to see what’s in store for them.

[aphantpoet]

Queer rep is not a vacuum

There is so much debate over what is and is not queer rep and it seems to change with each new show. For this I’m going to explore four series that I’m personally a fan of and break down their rep individually ;LOK, SPOP, TOH and Arcane. I will do it this way because Queer rep is not a vacuum.

It is first important to understand the perspective I’m coming at from this: so Yaama, if you don’t know me I’m a queer [Enby and Demi sexual lesbian]and indigenous [Australian] writer; I mainly write about queer people for queer people. I also want to say that I am not bashing any of these series, I love them all.

1. Korrasami

Korra and Asami have a slightly rocky relationship when they first meet but they become fast friends. Both characters are confirmed Bisexual and their relationship is far more obvious from a  queer perspective. They are far less explicit than other shows on this list but that is due to studio censorship.

The ship itself is really sweet. Both women are close and support each other with Korra writing to only Asami at one of the roughest times of her life.

This ship, being the first queer rep in Avatar, followed by Kya being confirmed as a lesbian, gets a lot of flack for being too subtle and not built up enough. As much as I do not like Some writers on the Avatar team, I do genuinely believe they were trying their best here.

The ship itself isn’t problematic and came at a time when there was little rep in mainstream media, let alone kids media. While it has it’s issues, it is some of the first rep kids in my generation saw. Sue me, I’ve got nostalgia.

2.SPOP

This is a contentious one but it cannot be denied that SPOP was full of Queer rep. Spinetossa, catradora, None of the princesses were straight and Double Trouble.

SPOP is unashamed of it’s queer rep and as world where no one is straight, no one is homophobic. This provides escapism that we as queer people sometimes need.

While Catradora has it’s criticisms, it’s a beautiful ship that underpins the narrative  and drives the plot. to call it “toxic” or “abusive” ignores the nuance of the story.

Spinetossa is a solid relationship that provides fluff and comedic relief in the darker episodes. they’re background characters but the nature of their relationship is clear from the start. they’re always together, they wear chokers with each other's colours . From the get go, before we even hear the cute nicknames we know they are a unit. 

Double Trouble , while  stemming from a problematic trope, is a solid character with complexities and comedy gold to spare. While the trope of making nonbinary characters non human is dodgy at best in a show where cis characters are also not human they don’t stand out too much so they can have a pass.

3. TOH

TOH is also unashamedly queer, Eda, Raine, Willow’s dads, Lumity, Edric.I’ve also seen commendations on the Neurodivergent rep  but that’s not my place.

Disney was obviously trying to censor things earlier on but around late season two A Dana stopped giving a shit and good for her. We got Edric having a partner, to quote his sister Emira “ After he accidentally sent  a love poem to THEIR mum”. Love that for him. The first Lumity kiss and them getting together and everything after it.

Willows dads’, minor and cliched as they may be do not come of a tokenistic, a nice change from other shows there the Mc’s best friend’s queer parents is often some of the only rep.

And Raine, a nonbinary person, who while not quite human isn’t an alien/robot/demon/spirit. They’re also a prominent character and their relationship with Eda is just a delight.

Cool Aunt Lilith, AroAce queen and all the flags in season three and it’s only the first episode.

there are some issues with Luz dating her friends ex bully but they address it and smooth it over.

4.Arcane

The biggest thing to come out of Arcane was CatVi/Violyn. I’ve seen some people ship Caitlyn and Jayce but that’s a small group.

Both character’s are confirmed as lesbians.While I love Luz I do find that lesbians do often get left behind in representation or claimed as Bi when they aren’t.

there’s not much else in terms of queer rep for Arcane but it’s very clearly a world where homophobia isn’t an issue.

The CatVi relationship is also important to the story and builds up over the first season. the show isn’t concerned with it but it’s nice to see.

All this to say, Queer rep isn’t a vacum, just because one series shows wholesome queer people and another shows messy,complicated queer love does not make either superior to the other. To put wholesome queer relationships over messy ones perpetuates respectability politics. Both can be good queer rep, both can be bad queer rep.

[antigonewinchester]

ooh share something about hesitation or triptych? <3

I will self-indulgently to do both <3

Hesitation but IC is inspired by a Destiel fic called, surprise surprise, Hesitation, written by apokteino, who I think was a fairly prominent fic writer back in the day? She had a series of dark Destiel fics, including Hesitation, the Bone series, the When series, and most infamously With Understanding. I find her work interesting intellectually, in her focus on exploring questions around sexual violence, relationships formed under duress, and the complexities of perpetrators & victims & their dynamics, but it feels like she maps her ideas onto SPN rather than centering canon characterizations or dynamics (at least in my read of the show/characters).

So, I decided to try my hand at a fic with the same premise but more in line with canon, particularly taking into account Cas's control/power over Dean in S4 (and which I don't feel is negated just because of Cas's sexual inexperience, altho it does add some complexity) and Dean's full experience in Hell. Part 1 is from Dean’s POV and Part 2, which I’m currently working on, is from Cas’s:

“You told me Dean wanted to have sex with me. He did, and then he didn’t.” Zachariah and he are sitting at a bar in New York, the city. It’s night, but he can’t see any stars, only the glowing of offices and apartments and advertisements against the sky. One large, flashing sign reads: Open Happiness. The moon is a cut of pure white. The humans around them talk and whisper, blissfully ignorant of the angels and the war they’re fighting to protect them. Their breath forms clouds that rise to disappear into the dark. All are dressed in what he believes are fancy clothes, long flowing red fabrics and unwrinkled suits of black, but he’s no longer sure how much he knows about humanity. Zachariah shrugs. “Humans say they want one thing, then do another, and Dean Winchester is no exception. This is why they need Heaven’s hand, Castiel.” The woman sitting to his left laughs. The man she’s talking with has taken her palm and put it up against his. Her fingernails had been carefully painted in stripes of white and black.

Triptych is sort of the opposite end of the spectrum, in that it’s my attempt at a Dean/Jack fic after looking on AO3 and finding... 2 decent fics of the whole bunch.

I started out as just wanting to do Dean/Jack during S14, but its slowly turned into Dean/Jack in the aftermath of Dean/John, probably in part 'cause I started writing it in the midst of Utena rewatch, which all about memories & cycles & incest & eternity (and then when I got to the part of S14 where Dean suggested locking himself in a coffin for eternity to save the world...) I was also struck by a post of someone discussing a common Utena interpretation that one character didn't actually want to sleep with her brother, but the poster asked if she did, would that desire negate any harm? Does wanting something "bad" mean you can't be hurt by it? If a relationship was both meaningful & hurts you, how do those elements go together?

Got a bit stalled out on this one because Holy Shit the emotional complexities here, and I want to handle it respectfully? Not be gauche? My plan is to have it all lead up to 14x20 and Thee Dean Jack Moment, re-contextualizing it within the scope of my fic, but I'm still figuring out what it all... adds up to, I suppose. (Also that I'm bad at writing character being mean, and Dean has to be mean in this fic, at least for parts of it!)

Heaven turned out to be the world’s best movie night: his favorite memories playing over and over and over again. The road trip where Sam introduced him to Harry Potter and Dean taught him how to read a paper map. He could rewind and play through his favorite five minutes as many times as he wanted. He could make everything faster or slower, which was funny for a little while, but he stopped after it got weird, like when he repeated a word too much and suddenly something would change and it wouldn’t be a real word anymore, just meaningless sounds. He could change from memory to memory in an instant, if he really wanted, but mostly he liked to let them play out before he moved onto another. And once he got to end, it was back to the beginning: a conversation trailed off or a lesson finished and then he was back at the start, to Cas’s reassuring smile, telling him about mistakes and guilt and forgiveness, or Sam’s bright concern, telling him how to take a punch, or Dean’s warm hand on his back, telling him where north was. The one thing he couldn’t do was imagine anything new. He tried, at first, in the memory of that day with Dean, how their conversation at the river could have gone—Dean’s voice low as he’d whispered, “Come here,” and then—and then—but it never worked. Guiltily he’d moved onto other memories, and at least they were too the same: if he'd ordered a hot dog, all he could eat is a hot dog; if Sam and Dean had driven past the apple orchard on a hunt, there was no turning down the short dirt road to pick fruit instead.

[thestobingirlie]

Hello!! How are you?? So, I absolutely hate ronanc/e. Like you never ever date your friend's ex, especially if it ends badly. Which is what happened. There's going to be a ton a complicated feelings about Steve and ro/nance and even if Steve didn't express his displeasure about it, it would negatively affect Steve's relationship with Robin. Like ST4 completely screwed over Stobin for Stancy. And it drives me crazy that Steve, who canonically has issues with people committing infidelity, would go for someone already in a relationship. And Dustin, Robin and Eddie for convincing Steve to go after someone in a relationship!! And Nancy and Robin barely have a good relationship in canon! Nancy gets annoyed with Robin until she does something helpful to Nancy's cause. (Which is something that is now like ingrained in Nancy's character and I would like for the Duffer's to let her change from it, because it makes her so unlikable and the one of the most unrealistic parts of the show is that no one treats her like she only cares about people until they are useful to her.)

I honestly think people are harsh on Vickie (I adore her, she looks like a really good match for Robin and she's bi! If not canonically, then in my heart.) because Robin is the sole canonical wlw character in the party. So her love interest falls under way more scrutiny and when the Duffer's gave her a similar trait to Robin, people were disappointed, especially with how little screen time she has. And if the Duffers wanted, they could have really easily made Vickie a more prominent character. Have Chrissy take her for backup at Eddie's trailer and have them both go on the run or something. And most non party love interests get the same amount of development. (Take Suzie) However, on the fandom side of things, people will literally make up backstories for Gareth and ship him with Will???? You see this white boy who's a junior and got like 30 seconds of screen time and decides he's a good match for Will, but you see Vickie and deem she is too similar for Robin and won't bother creating backstories for her? People literally do it for Chrissy and ship her with Robin! Nothing against Buckingham, it's just that people will take any character and give them backstories and ship them but they won't do this for Vickie.

I think that the whole Robin and Nancy making fun of Steve things stems from Robin making fun of Steve in ST3 and Nancy just generally being demeaning to Steve in general. And ST4, with every single person demeaning Steve's intelligence did not help at all. And people say that you shouldn't bring a man's feelings into a wlw relationship, but Steve is entangled in this relationship. Nancy was his first love and Robin is his best friend. If the genders were swapped, people would be having a conniption. [Also, I honestly believe that if you swapped the genders of the characters, Steve would get a lot less hate and Nancy would get a lot more, but that's my opinion. Like people would never doubt that Nancy cheated on Steve and Steve breaking the camera wasn't all that unreasonable.]

Anyways, sorry for the long ask, I just have a lot of opinions on ro/nance and platonic Stobin and Vickie! (Also, from above, like Vickie and Chrissy could have been childhood friends but then grew apart but they know they can go to each other for everything, so Chrissy takes her to Eddie's trailer and then season 4 continues with lots of Rockie interactions. I would love to read a ST4 AU like that but unfortunately I haven't seen any of those on AO3 and I have negative writing skills, so I will be waiting for the day that it might come) ~@thestrangerthingsmeadow

hi!! i’m good, thank you.

i’m so glad other people dislike r//nance! the ship feels so difficult to escape within this fandom, which is insane, because it honestly makes no sense to me. i think a lot of people that ship it, ship it because they’re two hot women, and don’t really care beyond that. their personalities don’t mesh well, and their situations in life don’t either. like you said, steve is robin’s best friend and nancy’s ex. it’s just not the kind of thing that mix.

i didn’t love that a lot of stobin scenes became about stancy, and i feel like nancy replaced a lot of scenes that could’ve included robin. it is also weird to me that so many people were pushing for stancy when nancy and jonathan are still together. like you said, steve has major issues with infidelity, and while i can see dustin pushing for steve and nancy (because he loves to involve himself into steve’s love life) i don’t really understand eddie putting in his two cents.

and yeah! nancy really only likes people when they benefit her in some way, which is a really interesting character trait, but not if the character never develops out of it. nancy’s character development has been stagnated for 4 seasons, when they gave her a handgun and decided that was enough.

i love vickie so much and it kills me that the fandom doesn’t appreciate her. i’m pretty sure she’s canonically bi, but people toss her aside for no reason. and while i would’ve liked vickie to have more of a role, i also think it makes sense that she doesn’t. someone compared her to rosie from lotr. the calm in the storm, the peace at home, the hope you long for during horrible times. i know the st fandom loves trauma relationships, but i just love the idea of robin being able to have someone safe, outside of everything horrible that’s happened to her. and yeah, i don’t have anything against gareth, he’s a fun little character, but i have no idea why people love him and will so much, it’s honestly weird. people found the closest in age, good looking teenager they could, and said that’s good enough! wlw will always come under more scrutiny than mlm.

i’ve made a post about how much i hate steve becoming the butt of all stranger things jokes, but it’s even worse if it’s his ex and his ex’s new girlfriend that is also his best friend making fun of him. and i think it’s insane that people complain about a man being involved in a lesbian relationship, like… first of all, it isn’t even a real relationship (not in real life, or even the show) and second, a man is involved. he is quite literally at the centre. you can shove him off to the side, but in doing so essentially create entirely different characters. and i think i made a post about that!! if nancy was the man people would hate her, like she would probably be one of the least liked characters. people would consider it girl power that steve had slutshamed nancy, and smashed the camera. and if you’d had a drunk guy calling his girlfriend bullshit, and saying he’d never loved her. people would think they were the worst person alive.

you don’t have to apologise for long asks!! though it might take me a bit longer to respond!! and i do love that idea to involve vickie more!! honestly if i had written the season, i wouldn’t have given her a current boyfriend, but still, i’m just glad we got her at all. and if that fic existed, i’d totally read it!!

[literary-illuminati]

Books I Read In August

38. When the Tiger Came Down The Mountain by Nghi Vo

I’m an increasingly big fan of Vo’s work. The Empress of Salt and Fortune was good, but honestly didn’t really stick with me nearly as much as this did. 

Part of that is just the increased centrality of the framing device, honestly. I mean first of all I don’t really tend to have much patience for wish-fulfillment characters, but very hard to overstate how much Chih is just living the dream life (and my university indoctrination was thorough enough that the association of the study/preservation/gathering of history and sacredness seems very right and fitting to me. 

Also, I just absolutely adore when the story makes a thing of unreliable narrators. Like, when someone’s telling a story and as the scene’s ending someone else interrupts and goes “You’re telling it all wrong!” and gives a completely different version that’s at least as biased in another direction? Poetry. 

The actual myth with the lesbian romance and the were-tiger warlord and stuff was also a lot of fun don’t get me wrong, but like, would have been a bit forgettable without the framing device stuff around it. 

Anyway, give Chih a tv show. Or at least a half dozen more novellas like this. 

39. Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky

This is the first actual full book of poetry I’ve read….I mean ever, probably, if we’re taking cover to cover. Certainly since I finished high school. So there’s some Culture achieved. 

I was…not especially impressed, if I’m being entirely honest? Or, properly - “We Lived Happily During The War '' and “In A Time of Peace '' were both really affecting, but also I had already read both (posted here on tumblr, actually). They’re what sold me on the book. Everything between them did, well, not really live up to it?

I mean, I’m sure that there’s all manner of genius in craft and stuff that flew right over my head, but it just seemed so focused on being clever with line breaks that it failed to do much else. Like, most of the books on the list have plenty of lines that are more poetic by my (doubtlessly irredeemably philistine) definition than any of the poems that made up the middle of the book. 

40. The Yiddish Policemen’s Union by Michael Chabon

I honestly forget where I first heard about this book, but it’s been very vaguely sitting on my mental tbr list for the last few years,and the library happened to have it in, so. 

Anyway, the conceit (an alternate history where WW2 went slightly differently, and also Israel lost in 1947, and through a bunch of political compromises there ended up being an autonomous federal district carved out in Alaska as a temporary national home for the Jewish people - ‘temporary’ meaning expiring on the near year as the novel takes place) is just fascinating, and Chabon had a lot of fun with little offhand references to how different the rest of the world has gotten, too. The fact that everyone speaks Yiddish but with occasional catch phrases and curses called out as being said in American was cute, too.

The story itself was just incredibly, almost painfully noir - genius of a police detective with a ruined marriage, crippling alcoholism, and no future is woken up in the middle of the night because a heroin addict who boards in the same hotel as him was found dead by gunshot, discovers that the victim was the firstborn son of a prominent underworld/religious authority, disowned and ostracized for being gay, through this he stumbles into a sinister conspiracy involving the CIA and the death of his sister. He can’t stop the conspiracy but he might just be able to get justice for the murder, etc, etc. The commitment to the genre is fun,but the late night diners and descriptions of hangovers do begin to get old eventually.

It was also kind of dated, in an interesting way? Like, the Federal government spooks being clean cut bible college boys, all polite and well mannered and sincere Christian Zionists trying to get America into a war to help bring about the End Times, really feels like the sort of thing that only gets written during the Bush Administration. (The single tragic too-good-for-the-world dead heroine addict gay guy and the constant jokes about every less-than-perfectly-feminine woman being mistaken for a lesbian, also somewhat dated).

Anyway, think my vocabulary of random Yiddish words about doubled from reading this, and also many themes about Judaism that I am not even slightly qualified to comment on. 

41: Rogue Protocol by Martha Wells

This books are so fun. And just about perfectly bite-sized, too.

Or tv episode sized, really - each has about the perfect amount of plot for an hour long episode of network tv, I think. Pity they’re basically unadaptable. 

Anyway, not too much to say about this, really, except that Murderbot’s complete inability to understand their own emotions would probably be annoying by now if it wasn’t so funny, and reading it really left a grin on my face. 

Or well, also, I do really enjoy all the little hints that the ‘corporate rim’ is actually kind of a galactic shithole, and Murderbot just treats it like the hegemonic default because its all they know. Certainly nowhere else seems to be nearly as bad about synthetic life (nowhere’s exactly good either, mind, but).

42. Radiance by Catherynne Valente

Oh I adored this book. 

I mean in large part because I’m a big fan of Valente’s prose when she gets all grandiloquent, and also the basic aesthetic of the setting (High Victorian Space Age by way of the Golden Age of Hollywood on the moon) is just utter catnip to me. But the whole epistolary pretension, telling the story through interviews after the fact and remaining scraps of documentary footage and different drafts of a dramatization made a decade latter that are each completely different genres and occasional clips of Severin’s previous films? 

It’s all just showing off to an incredible degree and I’m sure if I didn’t love the book I’d find it unbearably pretentious, but I do, so it’s absolutely great. 

The amateur historian in me was kind of irked by the sort of political stasis - it does the fallout thing where the fin de siecle kind of just continues uninterrupted for another fifty years bit with stranger and more wondrous tech, the apocalypse of the Great War put off by all the virgin lands to colonize and everything just kind of continuing as it was (except for the development of the film industry). But that’s kind of a theme. (Much more minorly, the world only seems to have gotten weird in the late 19th century, except that there are sovereign and internationally significant Seneca and Iroquois nations that get mentioned several times, which kind of require a fundamental change to the nature of the American state significantly before then.) 

The ending also didn’t really land for me - anything about infinite multiverses honestly makes it difficult for me to stay invested, and anything where the fictional setting tries to encompass/include the ‘real world’ almost always loses me instantly (qualified exception for actual portal fantasy, if it’s good. But introducing the real world in the third act has basically only ever worked for me exactly once).

Which is a pity, because aside from those bits the ending could have been designed to appeal to me in a lab. Was so close to perfection. 

43. How to Invent Everything by Ryan North 

I took a three week break in the middle, so this technically took me a full calendar month to read. Library was getting pretty angry. 

Anyway, I think I said it before but I stand by it  - this book would be a significant improvement over the majority of currently existing middle/high school science curriculums. (In the same way that Magic School Bus and Bill Nye taught me more than science class ever did until high school (and even then)). 

Anyway, did pick up a lot of interesting trivia, and the author is apparently the dinosaur comics guy(?), which really shows through in the writing (not ALL the jokes come anywhere close to landing, but the ones that don’t are mostly dad-joke like enough that it’s kind of endearing). 

Also learned the exact limits of my understanding in (in decreasing order of) mechanical engineering, electricity, and computers. (I really do need someone to gently take me by the hand at some point and explain how basic logic gates doing addition and subtraction ends up with, well, tumblr, or triple A video games, or any of it. Like on a mechanical level.) 

Anyway, I should take up sewing. And write the half-essay floating around my head about how horrible mines are and how morally uncomfortable that is.

44. Stiff: The Curious Life of Human Cadavers, by Mary Roach

Okay I forget who on here recommended this to me, but thanks! Was a ton of fun, great light morbid summer read.

Roach has a great sort of chatty style, and she does the thing I normally rather dislike working personal anecdotes and descriptions of people she interviewed into everything, but she honestly actually makes it work. 

It came out in the early 2000s and was endearingly dated at times, and vaguely racist in a ‘the strange and exotic Orient!’ way at others, but like generally mostly holds up, I think? 

It’s not nearly as difficult a read as you’d expect given the subject matter (‘the human corpse, how it decays, and things we do to it’, essentially). Or, well,that might me a be mostly a me thing, but I found it a trove of fun trivia, anyway. 

(The one exception being the section on the history of the pursuit of the human head transplant, and specifically the animal experiments done on the subject. That made me more queasy than anything I can remember reading recently, which is I suppose a useful thing to know about myself.)

[coolcataetheryte]

Say You Love Me series (1, 2, 3, 4)

Pairing: ThancredxJoker(mWoL)

Tags: angst, separation, a lot of crying

Note: Mild spoilers for post-ARR Takes place right before Heavensward actually begins. When everyone has to split up. Just felt like exploring how Joker would have acted based on how I imagine his character plus the AU elements.

Background info: This is a series of snippets of Joker’s life with Thancred and G’raha in my Magical Heroes AU, during any part of the entirety of the game. The AU elements may not be entirely prominent in all stories, but know that they do take place in an AU, and so some things may be different from canon. Not every part will be in chronological order. I’ll just be writing them as they come to me. I’ll always give a bit of context of when it takes place. It isn’t necessary to read the previous ones, but they may help with understanding some things, such as specific gestures, or phrases they do/say to each other.

Word count: 788

“Thancred and I will hold them off.”

Joker's heart sank at Y’shtola’s words. He couldn’t breathe and everything was muffled in his ears. He didn’t catch any of the next words exchanged between Minfilia and the others. It was only when he felt Thancred’s hand on his cheek that he came back to himself.

“I’m not going to leave you,” Joker said, holding Thancred’s hand to his cheek. “I’m not going to do that.”

“You have to,” Thancred urged. “You and Minfilia have to make it out.”

“Then promise me you’ll make it out, too,” Joker was nearly crying, desperately trying to hold himself together.

Thancred moved his hand from Joker's cheek to hold the long braid hanging by Joker’s shoulder, then stroked his fingers down its length, gently brushing over the ribbon tied around it before placing a kiss against the end. With the other hand, he tangled his fingers into the shorter locks of soft blue hair. He pressed their foreheads together, ignoring Joker’s circlet digging into his skull.

“Say you love me?,” he said, calling back to the saying that accidentally became so special to them not long ago.

“Thancred, promise me,” Joker demanded.

“You need to hurry,” Y’shtola rushed. “They’re almost upon us.”

“I want those to be the last words I hear from you,” Thancred said.

Joker bit his lip hard enough to bleed, willing the tears not to fall. He managed to choke it out. “I love you.”

Thancred kissed him passionately, pressing their bodies fully together. He briefly tasted Joker’s blood as their last connection, then shoved him along. “Go.”

Joker did as he was told. Running as fast as he could with Minfilia at his side.

It wasn’t long before she, too, bade him to continue without her. He could only grit his teeth and watch as she transformed into her magical warrior garb, something she so rarely did. He knew there was no point in arguing with her if she had deemed she must transform, and no time. He reluctantly moved on.

From there it was a blur, and he hardly registered his place on their savior’s carriage. He was too focused on keeping his emotions in check. Alphinaud was distraught enough as it was. He was the last pillar of strength for his young friend.

Keep it together. Keep it inside. Don’t cry. Don’t think about him. Don’t cry! Damn.

As soon as his last moment with Thancred flashed through his mind, there was no stopping the tears. He could feel the dried blood on his lips. He could still feel Thancred pressing them together in that nearly bruising kiss in his attempt to pour every ounce of love into him before they parted. The feeling of Thancred’s hands stroking through his short hair and gently tugging the braid lingered. The ache from Thancred shoving him away..

He wasn’t sobbing. It was quiet, and his face showed very little, but the tears were a steady stream. His body was tense, long ears pinned almost flat against his head. He felt Alphinaud slump further into his hands beside him. Damn.

He was on autopilot. He didn’t even know when he’d de-transformed. He was in his banquet attire once more. He barely heard Cid speak when they met with him, if he’d commented on his appearance, Joker didn’t notice or respond. He wasn't aware of their destination.

All he could do was rub the ribbon in his hair between his fingers. Thancred had given it to him. It was all he had of him now, unsure if he’d even survived. His mind was blank. The ribbon was the singular lifeline holding him to this plane of existence.

When he felt the bitter cold of the Coerthan Highlands, he finally regained some semblance of alertness. His dress shirt did absolutely nothing against the icy winds. He didn’t have the energy to transform again. The magic of his warrior glamour would have at least given him longer sleeves and enhanced endurance, but alas..

Once they were dropped into the freezing snow, he held Alphinaud close to him. He had to get it together. He’d had his moment, and now he needed to protect his friend. His tears were frozen against his cheeks.

When they reached Camp Dragonhead, he eased Alphinaud into a chair and hurried to speak with who would hopefully be their host for at least the night.

Haurchefant’s warm welcome was like sunshine. Joker couldn’t stop himself from hugging their friend tight, finally shedding tears in hope rather than despair. Haurchefant held him without hesitation, shedding a tear himself.

Joker was unsure what would lie ahead of them, but knowing he still had more friends on his side, the future felt less bleak. With Haurchefant’s optimism, even Alphinaud was able to cheer up. Joker began to feel less heavy.

[eric-cartman-my-beloved]

why do you hate the post covid specials

  Well, anon, since you asked… Prepare yourself.

  If at any point during answering this I seem angry (I probably will) I promise it’s not because of you, only because of the subject matter.

  So far, the only South Park episode I have intensely disliked (not even hated) is “Make Love Not Warcraft”. But the Post Covid Specials…they just make my blood boil.

  Before starting, let me just mention that aside from a scene or two, I have only watched the specials once. (One time was already painful enough.) So if I make any mistakes plot-wise, you’re free to let me know.

  There are certain things I can appreciate about the Post Covid Specials – like Stan and Kyle’s interactions, for example – but for every thing I like there are about five I dislike. I wasn’t really satisfied with the direction they took Butters to, I didn’t like Kenny’s adult design, I didn’t like Randy, and Scott did not even make a cameo. However, I can tolerate these and they are more or less minor details when compared to the actual problem I have with these god-forsaken specials.

  Eric.

  In fact, I have such a huge problem with him that I think if Eric was completely absent from the specials, they’d be 10.000% better.

  Why I dislike this… iteration of him so much? Well, this can be split into two parts: a) design and b) characterization. And one last thing, for the most part I’ll be referring to Eric in the specials as “Rabbi Cartman”. I couldn’t call him “Eric” even if you paid me.

  Let’s address the elephant in the room first:

Design

  What is this.

  What. The. Devil. Is. This.

  I mean come on, really – what is that thing???

  Literally – and I mean literally – the only slightly positive thing I have to say about it is the suit. Everything else is just…ugh…

  What is wrong with his head? Everyone else gets a normal – for South Park standards – shaped head but his is just built like a ball?

  Scratch that, his entire body is shaped like a ball. What’s up with the short, stubby legs and the arms that barely reach his sides?

  And as if that wasn’t enough, look at his face again.

  That stubble…Why? It’s so ugly, so disgusting, so gross…

  Also, he’s the only one – out of the main four, at least – who looks like he has wrinkles around his mouth. Him! Not Kenny or Stan. Him.

  And why glasses of this shape specifically? Granted, I don’t think any other shape would have fitted that ball of a face, but still, they could have somehow been better than this! They make him look like a grandpa.

  Not to mention…the graying hair! Yeah, okay, I know, Stan and Kenny appear to have some graying hairs too, but they aren’t nearly as prominent or as much of an eyesore to look at. And look! His hairline seems to be receding, even! (And you’re telling me that Eric, who cared about his hair so much more than the rest of the boys, would just let that happen and walk around with gray hairs without doing anything about it.)

  Next up, we have his eyebrows. Remember how Eric is the only kid character with triangular – so presumably nicely-shaped – eyebrows? Yeah, not anymore. Now they’re thick and look unkempt.

  His nose… That’s not a nose. These are just two holes. No one else has a nose shaped like that. It just leads me to believe that it was made different and therefore ugly on purpose.

  Did I mention his voice? The cute little inflections he used to make in words are gone. Now his voice just sounds like the voice of every other adult character. If you close your eyes, there’s no way you’ll be able to tell it apart from others.

  But wait. We’re not done yet. There’s more.

  (The moment this had come on screen I regretted ever tapping on the play button.)

  Why. Why. Why? Oh god, why…?

  He’s so round and ugly… The hairs… On his chest, on his arms, on his freaking shoulders! The way his belly is shagging downwards… Eww…

  Now, because some might misinterpret this, I’m not saying his weight is the problem. Of course Eric will be heavy in adulthood as well – it would look weird (and OOC) if he got a six-pack out of nowhere – that’s not what I’m saying. It’s the way the weight is distributed that is the problem. And certainly the fact that he looks so greasy and old.

  But maybe…just maybe…I could have looked past all of that…

  If they hadn’t made him the shortest one out of the group.

  *Trying to contain rage* This picture infuriates me so much…

  Eric’s father was a football player. They’re tall. If you don’t believe me, all you have to do is a simple Google search.

  So then why – oh why – did Kyle, with the shortest mother out of the rest and what appears to be a father of average stature, turn out to be the tallest, and not Eric?

  “But nutrition and diet play a role too, not just genes-”

  I don’t care. That’s not always the case. Sometimes genes overpower nutrition. But even if it was, this is a show about fourth graders who travelled to space – now people wanna think about realism?

  “But Kyle and Stan’s designs are based on Matt and Trey”.

  So? That’s not an excuse not to give Kyle Matt’s height and make Eric taller than him.

  Overall, this is a design that I do not think fits Eric at all.

  But maybe…maybe…I could have excused all that. (Eric’s design is not what attracted me to him in the first place. I could have ignored how he looked entirely.)

  If Rabbi Cartman’s personality was anywhere near close to Eric’s.

  *Sigh* Let’s get to the second part.

2. Characterization

  Rabbi Cartman looks like someone who is kind to his family – loving, even – can get along with his friends, on the surface level, at least, but also has a darker, manipulative side.

  It was when we got to see that darker side that I could see some remnants of Eric’s usual personality. However, everything else about him is off.

  First off, Rabbi Cartman is, well, a rabbi.

  How? How did he leave all of his usual ideas he has been clinging onto for years and took up Judaism? When did this inane 180-degree turn happen in his life?

  Eric has never shown enough motivation to make a change in his life and try to be a better person. Besides, the whole point of his character is for him to be the most insufferable and terrible person he can be, all while being amusing for the viewer. With this drastic change of heart, his whole concept is essentially diminished.

  So no, I can’t just accept that Eric woke up one day, decided he wanted to be a Jew and left all of his racist/nazi tendencies behind. Perhaps if they’d shown us some snippets of his past and we could actually see how he developed, maybe I would have considered it. But now there is no way I can believe that Eric made a genuine change because he was unhappy with himself.

  Nor can I accept that he has found love.

  During both specials, he is not shown being rude towards Yentl even once, which comes in complete contrast with his behavior towards Heidi while they were dating. Does he love Yentl? Personally I cannot believe that. I do not believe that Eric is capable of love, and I certainly cannot believe it without any kind of explanation.

  Why does he love Yentl? What is it that he gains from her? How did he end up liking her enough to marry her?

  Love and marriage aside, Rabbi Cartman is a father. Not of one, not of two, but of three children.

  To me, Eric does not seem like the type to want kids. At all. Why would he want to take on responsibilities that do not directly benefit him in some kind of way? And yet, Rabbi Cartman tends to his kids, without complaining and occasionally even tries to “discipline” them. It makes absolutely no sense. Eric is an extremely selfish being. How can Rabbi Cartman care about his kids so unconditionally? Without personally benefitting whatsoever?

  The only part of his personality that has stayed somewhat similar to his canon one is his obvious dislike for Kyle. Which doesn’t even come into play until later.

  Rabbi Cartman has clearly been thinking about Kyle for quite some time now, and it’s that obsession of sorts that is reminiscent of his younger self. But that just isn’t enough. This is still not Eric, because Eric’s entire character is not based on obsessing over Kyle, it never was. Kyle is just a part of Eric’s character. Perhaps a large one when compared to some others, but still just a part.

  And as for those who say that he is able to change:

I do not/cannot believe that at all and

Again, we didn’t even see how exactly the change happened.

  You can’t expect me to believe that such a precious and fascinating character – a gift of a character, really – was butchered just because a random special that was only made for a deal with Paramount+ said so.

  Now that we’ve gotten Rabbi Cartman out of the way, let’s talk about Homeless Cartman for a bit (I can’t call that thing “Eric” either).

  Oh dear…

  This ending makes zero sense for him as well. It’s obvious that Eric has a self-destructive and dangerous personality, but his instinct of self-preservation is also quite elevated. He will do anything he can to survive and to save himself from hardship. And that means anything – that boy has no scruples of any kind. Combine that with the fact that he can be very smart, calculating, manipulative and innovative and you get a person who is simply too qualified to end up on the streets in the pathetic condition Homeless Cartman is seen in.

  There is always a way out for Eric. Even when he is leading a movement that is planning to eradicate all non-gingers and he re-discovers that he is not a ginger. Always.

  But even if he made some mistakes that led to him being homeless, it would be for a very short period of time. (Homeless Cartman looks like he’s been roaming the streets aimlessly for quite some time.) Eric would figure his way out of whatever tough situation he would be in.

  Conclusion:

  I cannot take the Post Covid Specials seriously when they do not take themselves seriously. (And I mean that in the context of South Park, which is, of course, a comedy.) I do not even consider them to be canon.

  The impression they give me is that Matt and Trey did not care about giving Eric the treatment he deserves, or a believable future. They just wanted him to be the punchline to a couple of jokes they had in their heads.

  “So you know how Cartman is a nazi? Wouldn’t it be hilarious if we turned him into a rabbi who’s happily married? No one’s gonna see it coming”.

  Which of course is their right – it is their show and their character, duh – and at the same time I have the right to hate it.

  Lastly, I do suppose I kind of hate the Post Covid Specials’ “heritage” in the fandom too. It just fueled more people to headcanon him as the shortest in the group and as the more submissive one in fics – namely, Kyman ones. I wholly disagree with both these depictions – without that meaning that I have a problem with people sharing their own opinions. Both of these things you wouldn’t see nearly as often before the specials came out.

  I think I’ve said this on Twitter, but I’ll say it again here:

  If I was somehow given the choice of either bringing Scott back to the show or forever erasing the Post Covid Specials, I would choose the latter no questions asked. (And this is coming from someone who loves Scott a lot, so it is a big deal.)

  I guess we’ve reached the end. If you’ve actually read this far, thank you!

  I’d say I’m sorry if I’ve made you bored, but you were warned.

  Thanks for giving me an excuse to talk about this!

[mobiusstripper]

Holy shit, I found you—-

Ok I have to say, I’ve been reading fanfiction for nearly half my life, and out of all of them, your Code Geass Britannia’s Daughters series are quite possibly the best I’ve ever read. Specifically “The Tigress.”

Just everything about it is perfect. The writing, Euphemia’s characterization, how small seemingly insignificant characters like the gardener Matiu have a bigger impact than one may realize, how they bond over how much they miss their loved ones, and how he comes up at the end when Euphy’s dying and she hopes he can come home to his daughter (I think her names Anahera)

Euphemia was up there as one of my favorite code geass characters, but your fanfiction quite possibly made her my favorite. I’ve probably internalized an unhealthy amount and projected it into canon to the point I forget that we don’t know her mother or what’s happened to her, or that we don’t know what her classmates thought of her, just things like that.

I’m not exaggerating when I say this fic changed my life, with Euphemia realizing there are things worth sacrificing if only for the chance, how every worm mattered and was worth saving even if they couldn’t save them all. I think about your piece of writing every single day, hell nearly every day during the school year I’d pull up your fanfiction and read it and just feel every emotion within. According to my archive history, I’ve visited The Tigress over 300-400 times….I need a life lol

Ok and with Cornelia’s pov in fics like When You Lie Howling (love the meaning behind the title) To start off, it’s just…the little things between the fanfictions. How in The Tigress Evelyn is hardly mentioned because Euphemia hardly remembers her but she’s much more prominent in fics with Cornelia’s pov because she was around. Or how the Tigress has a softer, more flowery feel with a bit of edge and suffering in the cracks, while When You Lie Howling has a very brutal, hardened feel with occasional flowers growing in the crevices. I feel like it perfectly characterizes the sisters.

Also, another thing I loved in WYLH is that scene with Cornelia, Evelyn, and baby Euphie. In between the hard exterior and feelings and thoughts of the second princess, we get a glimpse of what it was once like. I could legitimately feel the nostalgia, the faded edges a childhood memory has, and the melancholic aura. I’m pretty sure I cried once after reading it near the end between all the scenes of Cornelia’s heartache.

Even if it’s Never Enough….you really know how to destroy somebody, don’t you. All of Cornelia’s guilt is confronted, head on, and her feelings on how Euphemia might feel toward her and everything, which is heartbreaking because we’ve seen Euphie’s perspective and we know at certain parts she would never feel that way towards her sister. And not to get personal on main, but as someone who has sorta lost people, you’ve captured those feelings of grief and regret, very, very well.

Anyway, I am so sorry for suddenly invading your askbox with my brain rot over your fics, I am not exaggerating or making it up when I say I think about them daily and nearly forget they’re not canon, and that I really, really look up to you and your fanfiction. Anyway, have a good day/night

PS I have also read Noli mi Tangere, Look me in the eyes, and your other code geass works and I absolutely adore them too lol. These three in particular are just my personal favs

I have been thinking all morning about how to respond to this wonderful message, and wanting to make sure that I took the proper time to do so.

First off, thank you so much. You have absolutely nothing to apologize for; any writer would be elated to receive a message like this one. Especially those of us who have poured our hearts into our work for years in relative obscurity. To know someone out there has been listening. That someone got it. That someone opened their own heart up to ours. This series was one of the first places I ever allowed myself to be really vulnerable in my writing, and "The Tigress" in particular has so much of my unguarded soul in it. What you have written here means so much to me, and it absolutely made my day.

I have such mixed feelings about Code Geass' treatment of Euphemia. In so many ways, she felt like one of the "realest" characters to me. On the surface, she has all the trappings of the naive, sweet ingenue. And she is naive and sweet to a fault, but she's also so much more. She has incredible emotional intelligence. She is not afraid to put herself in real danger for what she believes in, and it she's not just some silly young girl who is too sheltered to know bad things could really happen to her. Multiple of her siblings have been killed in this conflict! She nearly watched her sister die on the battlefield! She knows what could happen to her. And, at the same time, she is also a sensitive teenage girl struggling with insecurity and loneliness. Nobody around her takes her seriously or recognizes her strengths.

It felt like they gave her so much dimension and then never really gave her the space in the story to fully explore all of it, to let her bloom into a full character. For all her complexity, she never quite escaped the fate of being used as a plot device. I wanted to, at the very least, give her final fate back to her. Make it part of her story. Not just a clumsy plot twist that creates shock value for the audience, guilt for Lelouch, and rage for Suzaku. (I consider it the sacred duty of a fanfic author to pull women out of refrigerators.)

Cornelia got the same treatment, arguably with even less insight. There were so many hints at complexity with her, but she was too relegated to the supporting cast of someone else's story for any of that to ever pay off in a satisfying way. What happens to her sister drives her - this woman whose entire identity was wrapped up in her station and her empire - to abandon both. Because she was a sister before she was a princess or a general. But we never get that story at all - only little glimpses of it whenever she happens to cross paths again with the main characters.

I am truly honored to hear that the life I have worked to breathe into these characters has helped bring them more to life for you. That small introductions like Evelyn and Matiu have made their impact. Because these characters carry a lot of weight. About what it means to be a woman in the Britannian royal family, to be one of many wives, to be a mother of daughters. About what it means to be a subject living under the Britannian boot, still trying to find hope for the future for one's children (and how an observant, sensitive girl like Euphie never even had to leave her own home, let alone the imperial core, to begin realizing and hating the ways she was unwittingly complicit in this web of suffering and oppression).

"Or how the Tigress has a softer, more flowery feel with a bit of edge and suffering in the cracks, while When You Lie Howling has a very brutal, hardened feel with occasional flowers growing in the crevices."

This is so what I was going for, and I'm thrilled that it came across so clearly. The way both of these women have suffered, and while Cornelia responded by becoming harder, Euphie responded by becoming softer. And how Cornelia believed that she could shield Euphie by making herself tough and standing between her and the realities of the world. But, all the while, those realities still got through, and Euphemia handled them in her own way. And then the lingering question of, did it make a difference in the end? Was the net result good or bad, or did it matter at all? And what comes next?

I have toyed with the idea of adding more works to this series because there are still so many corners I want to shine a light one, and knowing someone is listening makes me think it might be worth the effort after all.

[jancys-blue-bayou]

Well, for how I feel about the Jancy of s4 and the gross and unnecessary Stancy shipteasing, see previous post (ask response). For s4 in general I’ll say... vol 2 was better than vol 1. S4 was better than s3. But it’s really not good, I think.

There’s just way too many locations and characters. It sidelines a bunch of characters which I ranted about here before. The Cali crew (sans El) barely got do anything at all to do with the plot. We got some nice character moments, esp between Jonathan and Will in vol 2. But plot wise they had nothing to do. Jonathan just got to drive for 9 episodes. Mike got to “be the heart” aka yell encouragement to El. Will got to... tell Mike to do that. And together they got to do a rehash of the sensory deprivation tank in s1. And at the end Will got to have a little UD tingle moment. It’s ridiculous that main characters who were at the heart and center of the show before was reduced to this in s4 while walking Russian memes and new mains like Eddie got more to do.

The bigness in terms of abundance of characters and locations also throws the pacing off. Especially in ep 9 when there’s so much stuff that’s supposed to happen simultaneously but bc they go from Nancy/Robin/Steve to El/Max vs Vecna to Cali crew to Russia gang to Lucas fighting the jock to Eddie and Dustin with the odd sprinkle of Erica too, there’s like at least a half hour between Nancy/Robin/Steve getting choked by vines to us seeing them again... still being choked. I get they’re very proud of their big action sequence and in theory I think them all fighting the Hive Mind on different fronts is a neat idea but the execution is lacking, I’m just like how are the guys in the Creel house not dead yet El is taking her sweet time doing anything in the Mind Scape etc.

There’s other pacing problems too but this was where it most jumped out to me. I think it worked way better in s1 and s2 when they also had simultaneous plans going into action but not to this scale and it worked better then I feel.

There’s some interesting UD and Vecna stuff though idk if it makes sense really but hey, maybe they’ll pull it all together in s5. But right now I still have a lot of questions about why Henry is who he is, why he had powers and why he decided “i’mma be super evil” like are we gonna get more of a motivation than “I hate 9 to 5 eat work die lifestyle” lol? Also why did he tell Nancy everything? I suppose they’re saving that for s5 but. The border between the real world and the UD disappearing is a neat concept, I think that can be really cool. On the other hand I’m having trouble wrapping my head around the logic of one dimension overtaking another but I’m willing to run with it.

As an aside, I’m not wild about turning to using another test subject as the big bad, just on principle I always thought the test subjects would be innocent victims. But how they changed up all that background about the Lab and retconned a bunch of stuff in s4 turned into... yeah. Idk. On the other hand I totally see the appeal of Vecna as a villain, I’m just torn.

Also I don’t see the point in the Russia stuff. Yeah I get it, the Cold War was going on. But I think they could’ve just used Russia as a looming but unseen threat, it’s enough with the supernatural threats + the US government as a threat.

Speaking of, the portrayal of the US government from s2 and on is really weird. How they humanize it with Owens and now have turned into internal conflicts, Owens vs Brenner vs Sullivan, it’s really weird. Esp Owens part of it, why is there randomly this super friendly uncle in the shady covert government operations and why is he so completely selfless and willing to sacrifice and save El and her friends, why does he care so much?

Btw goddamn what a choke hold Coca Cola has Stranger Things in, that product placement at the end with El spinning the bottle. I don’t get why she had to spin a bottle at all was it just to get a prominent COKE logo in there?

Positives uh... aside from cute Jancy reunion:

Jonathan and Will talking and hugging and Jonathan clearly knowing Will is gay and seemingly Will knows Jonathan knows, that was all nice but eh couldn’t they have let Will say it please?

Nancy being a fucking badass.

The little Nancy and Max scenes we got in s4 was great, why couldn’t we get more of that instead of all the needless Stancy shipteasing moments? Stancy is long dead, you could’ve just focus on Nancy and Steve both having a lot of nice bonding with everyone else in their plot (and be completely fine, platonic and not weird with each other).

Joyce got to hug both her sons this time lol. Still can’t believe Winona asked the Duffers if she could hug Jonathan too at the end of s3 but got “there’s no time for that” as answer. There was time for the most overlong, unnecessary, excruciating musical moment in tv history, but not for Joyce Byers to hug both her sons.

Lucas and Max was great this season both individually and together. I’m never into kid ships but Lumax might be an exception to the rule, they’re very sweet together.

[arafinweanappreciation]

I posted 357 times in 2022

That's 357 more posts than 2021!

112 posts created (31%)

245 posts reblogged (69%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@tolkien-feels

@aureentuluva70

@procrastinationonvacation

@arafinweanappreciation

@gil-estel

I tagged 193 of my posts in 2022

Only 46% of my posts had no tags

#silmarillion - 49 posts

#silm - 48 posts

#finrod - 31 posts

#finrod felagund - 27 posts

#turgon - 14 posts

#lotr - 11 posts

#maedhros - 10 posts

#aj's finwean ladies ask game - 9 posts

#elrond - 6 posts

#finarfin - 6 posts

Longest Tag: 139 characters

#elrond internally when they arrive in rivendell: this is a terrible idea but i can't just say that out loud to my great-grand father's face

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

I love that the most prominent trait that Turgon and Finrod have in common is that they physically cannot restrain themselves from assimilating more people into their found families. Leave a child unattended in Turgon’s presence for more than ten minutes? They’re his now, sorry. Made eye contact with Finrod? You’re invited over to his house for dinner on Sundays. They can’t help themselves.

257 notes - Posted June 29, 2022

#4

So I was thinking up domestic fluff for the House of Finarfin (as you do), and I have come to the very important conclusion that Finarfin doesn’t do baby talk. He talks to infants as if they are simply small adults. For example:

Finarfin, walking through the library, running his hands over the spines of books, carrying baby Finrod in a sling: If there’s anything you want to read, just let me know.

Finrod: *happy gurgling*

Finarfin, pulling a book off the shelf: Excellent selection

Finarfin, carrying baby Galadriel on the beach

Galadriel: *points and makes interested noises*

Finarfin: Fascinating observation

Finarfin, holding Orodreth in his lap

Orodreth: *insistent babbling*

Finarfin: Interesting opinion. What lead you to that conclusion?

Angrod, listening in from across the room: Dad???

301 notes - Posted June 28, 2022

#3

I’ve always had this little headcanon that all the sons of Fëanor have necklaces with Fëanorian stars as pendants. Their father made them for them when they were born. Reminders that they were princes of a mighty line, and should carry themselves with that knowledge. They wear them every day. When Amras dies, Amrod takes it and wears it alongside his own, in memory of his fallen twin. When the three C’s are killed, Maedhros takes theirs before they’re buried, and wears them, too. He takes both from Amrod after his death, as well. And in the end, when he decides he can’t go on any more, he leaves them on the last ledge before the lip of the crater, lined up side by side, one by one, just like they used to be. And when Maglor finds them, he knows he’s found his big brother. Far, far too late. So he picks them up, and he dusts them off, and he puts them on, carrying his brothers with him as he mourns.

360 notes - Posted July 23, 2022

#2

LotR fans: Wow, Elrond is so ancient and wise and powerful and truly a relic of times lost and--

Silm fans:

445 notes - Posted July 13, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

One thing that I find interesting in thinking about the Finwean siblings is that Finrod and Maedhros exhibit pretty clear drives to take care of and protect their siblings (or younger cousins/nephews/other relatives or friends that they’ve adopted). But Fingon. Doesn’t do that. He’s not keeping a close eye on his younger siblings like Maedhros and his siblings aren’t recorded as coming to stay with him or confide in him in times of distress like Finrod. Aredhel doesn’t even visit him when she leaves Gondolin. She goes to see Celegorm and Curufin. Turgon, on the other hand, is pretty much defined by his protective nature (see: the entire concept of Gondolin). He’s the one fighting his way to Fingon’s side and risking everything to help him rather than the other way around. Aredhel goes to him for refuge after leaving Eol. I know that the loss of Argon and Gondolin’s secrecy make things a little more complicated and murky than the Arafinwean and Feanorian sibling relationships, but Fingon was never even noted as noticing that his brother and his followers just started disappearing. Turgon seems to have usurped the role of Eldest Brother in his family and I want to know WHY

451 notes - Posted October 7, 2022

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