#with that one having to do with when she starts trying to reclaim her identity and find a new path forward

[valiant-portabella-pirkko]

fun fact: I actually have not 1, not 2, but 3 dedicated playlists of OST-style music for my various Guild Wars 2 AUs, and... that, of all ways, is the closest I get to "outlining" my stories. every sequence has a dedicated track that I picked out according to what I'd imagine playing in-game if it was an actual playable story arc in Guild Wars 2.

Regrowth's playlist has 59 songs and Flourish has 28.

then the Tideturners have one too, with a grand total of 22.

......... I don't have a problem,

[spicymancer]

So just wanted you to know, "yellow" is a common slur against Asian Americans and so Huang Feng, being a Bruce Lee (whos an Asian man) clone and all could raise some eyebrows to your intentions. And before i get accused of white knighting, i am Asian

Thanks for reaching out! This is honestly something that might be important to discuss and I appreciate your attempt at broaching the subject delicately. More after the jump.

So to start. I am also Asian. Specifically Chinese American.

As an American born Chinese, I have a weird relationship with my Asian heritage. I have a bad accent when I speak Chinese and most of my upbringing and cultural understanding is very American and western-centric. So I have certain biases at play here that I fully acknowledge. My experience is not universal. But these characters are drawn from that experience.

Huang Feng is a reference to Bruce Lee's performance as Kato in the Green Hornet. Dà Huángfēng being a Chinese term for a hornet.

The character is also narratively implied to be a secret moonlighting identity for the Yellow Ranger in my made-up sentai team. (Who, due to my own decision to always refer to the characters by their Ranger color, is literally just called Yellow by the other members of the cast.)

This is also a reference. Specifically to one of my greatest inspirations, Thuy Trang (Rest in Peace), who played the original Mighty Morphin Yellow Ranger. She was one of the first "Cool Asian Characters" that I encountered in media targeted at me as a child, problematic color choice aside. I sincerely adored her and her giant robot Saber-Toothed Tiger.

To be honest I have a complicated relationship with "Asian Themed" characters in media. So often saddled with cliché stereotypes: Martial Arts, dumplings, nunchucks, etc etc.

But the thing is, even as I roll my eyes whenever I see the Fighting Game character that is The Chinese One who wears a rice hat and a qipao. Or when one is literally just Bruce Lee. I do also immediately main that character. It's a bit of a guilty pleasure. Taking what representation I can get with mixed feelings. Similar to my enjoyment of sexy anime girl art even though it's all rooted in pretty uncomfortable sexist and objectifying aesthetics. A lot of my work comes from a place of exploring my own sexuality/identity. These characters are, partly, my own attempt to explore Asian themes and ideas for myself.

I would love to say that I'm trying to "reclaim" the term or something but I'm just some internet artist drawing cute anime girls and monster smut. For me, playing with these clichés is just another way of being self-indulgent.

Not really defending these creative choices so much as explaining my perspective on them. I totally understand if all this turns folks off! I fully respect those who don't vibe with my work and wish them all the best. It's a big internet and I'm sure they can find something super great to enjoy elsewhere!

Anyway, sorry for the long rambly post. Despite the fact that I'm posting this on Tumblr, I am not super mentally equipped to engage in Discourse, so forgive me if I don't respond to the tags on this.

So I'll just leave y'all with a neat article by Kat Chow discussing the history and usage of the color Yellow in regards to Asian Identity.

[trillscienceofficer]

I would like to clarify that when I say that Seven's situation on Voyager is fucked up (like in this post I wrote yesterday) I don't mean that Janeway should've listened to her demands and let her go in “The Gift”, or that Janeway and the Doctor had no right to start removing her implants (leaving them would've killed her after all). What I mean is that the fucked-upness is in the whole situation that made Seven's reclamation from the Borg possible but also put her in an environment (the USS Voyager) where survival is guaranteed by the close collaboration of everyone on board, which also means concessions of personal freedom and privacy. Other crewmembers entered this pact voluntarily (we can discuss some other time what choice did the Maquis actually have other than join the crew), but Seven unequivocally did not. Yet it's the only way she could've been reclaimed because we know, and the show drives this point home multiple times, that she was so young when she was assimilated that Seven of Nine, Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One alone would always choose the Borg. She knew of no other alternative.

I don't think letting Seven go back to the Borg in “The Gift” would've been an actually ethical choice, even if it's true that that was what she wanted. She was undoubtedly a prisoner, but I think that we forget (well, I do sometimes at least) that Seven, outside of any metaphor, can be very dangerous. She is strong and quick, she has Borg weaponry and technology at her disposal, she is relentless when pursuing her goal, and even as a drone she knows how Voyager works inside and out. Janeway took the gamble of disconnecting her from the Collective in “Scorpion, part 2” because they were expecting her to try and assimilate Voyager on her own, which she promptly tried to do as soon as the Species 8472 was no longer the main threat. So imho the ethical question posed by “The Gift” is, what do you do when an extremely dangerous individual asks you to be freed so she can rejoin the genocidal alien army of brainwashed zombies that terrorizes the galaxy? They will likely pursue you afterwards, but even if by some lucky chance they don't, you'll still have given back both a weapon and cannon fodder to the genocidal alien army. In addition to that, there's the concrete possibility that your prisoner might one day start living a different life once the brainwashing loses its hold on her.

So no, I really don't think that Janeway made a bad or even questionable choice in “The Gift”, even if it's painful to see Seven struggle against it. The complication has only just started at that point, imho. The fucked-upness comes from her having to “become an individual” in a highly-regulated and closely-surveilled community, one she could've never chosen on her own. On one hand this allows Seven to develop skills she completely lacked in a somewhat safe environment, but on the other hand it limits quite severely what she can or can't do. And while at first she rails against those limitations (she spends the entirety of season 4 doing just that), with time she starts understanding the value of living on Voyager. She manages to resist the Borg Queen's threats in “Dark Frontier” because she has learned compassion in the meantime, eventually choosing voluntarily to return to Voyager. It's a turning point that definitely does a lot to compensate for her lack of agency in “The Gift”. She thinks of Voyager as her new collective, which is equally a testament of how far she's come as much as it is a worrying admission that her new group identity is not that far off the Borg, in her mind.

By season 7 Seven is outright grateful for everything Janeway has done for her, but it still doesn't make her arc learning to ‘fit in’ any less of an exercise in shaping herself into the mold she was given as her only possible future. Is it better than being a murderous, mind-controlled zombie? Yes, it absolutely still is. Seven's independent thoughts and actions now matter, even when they clash with the rules, which is just not comparable with being a Borg drone in any way. Yet it's easy to see why her role on Voyager is also stifling, and that again she can't choose differently because she knows of no other alternative, and none are available to her anyway.

The fucked-upness also comes from extra-diegetical, production reasons, of course. The stupid ideas about what a woman is and what Seven should do to really be one (does she even want to be one?), the fact that a medical practitioner could control so closely how she presents and what she eats, the lack of actual clothes in order to make her a sexy babe for the 90s Trek target audience (“males aged 16-40”), the lack of locks on Cargo Bay 2 where she regenerates, and many other aspects that I'm sure I'm forgetting now... Ignorant, ‘default’ assumptions on how things ‘are’ that the show simply refuses to acknowledge. I know they only seem so obvious now because more than twenty years have passed since Star Trek: Voyager was on the air and the culture (in the US) has changed so much since then. This, I agree, is the kind of fucked up that I could easily do without and Seven's story would be better for it.

So in conclusion, when I say that Seven's situation is fucked up it's not so much because I think Kathryn Janeway should have chosen differently when it came to her; it's more that Seven's arc on Voyager is very complicated, for the most part, by design. Even if I think Janeway could've handled some things in a different way, in most cases it makes sense for her character to have taken those decisions regarding Seven, and I don't always think it would've made for a better story if she hadn't. Obviously I wish the production-level assumptions weren't there, and I think part of what Star Trek: Picard did right in its first season was flipping a lot of those assumptions on their head in just a handful of episodes where Seven appears.

Personally I find it valuable to keep in mind that Seven's storyline on Voyager can be complicated and fucked up without necessarily wanting to make it ‘better’. It still is interesting and effective because it's far from perfect, because everyone tried the best they could given the very difficult circumstances, because we've never seen the whole crew, much less the Captain, outside of survival mode. Yet Seven is also a survivor of almost unimaginable violence and coercion and it makes sense, I think, that her presence regularly poses ethical challenges to what other characters and even the audience might consider ‘right choices’ or ‘right behavior’. Survivors in real life, I think, often challenge our societies (none of them perfect, and where many also live in survival mode) in precisely the same way.

[coraniaid]

Speaking of Faith, Hope & Trick: that first conversation between Buffy and Faith must be so different from Faith's point of view.

I mean, the episode itself is very much told from Buffy's perspective. She's only recently reclaimed her identity as "Buffy, the Vampire Slayer" and she just started to reconnect with her friends as of the end of last episode. Of course she feels challenged by Faith's arrival; of course she feels like Faith's deliberately trying to upstage her. Of course she feels Faith is trying to intrude on her life. She reacted much the same way when she met Kendra, and that was when she was a lot less keen on being "the Vampire Slayer" and much more comfortable with her place in Sunnydale. As she tells her mother later, she's "just getting her life back […] not looking to go halfsies on it".

But think about it from Faith's side. Even while she's lying about where her Watcher is, she admits that she came all the way from Boston looking to meet "the infamous" Buffy Summers. She presumably set up the earlier encounter with the vampire deliberately to try to lure Buffy out (she's the one to lead him outside and she only starts fighting him seriously once Buffy and the Scooby Gang have arrived looking for her). She must have picked out her never-to-be-seen-again outfit and practiced her slightly too casual introduction of "I've got it. You're, uh, Buffy, right?" (as if she came all the way to California to meet some girl whose name she didn't quite remember) well in advance. She's already calling her 'B' while the vamp's dust is still cooling. You think she hadn't planned that too?

And Faith is trying to so hard to connect with Buffy in this scene. Yes, she tells a lot of "tall tales" (as Scott Hope will later put it) -- she wants to seem impressive! she wants Buffy to view her as an equal! -- but she's also the only person in the group who keeps trying to get Buffy to share things. It's not her fault that the rest of the gang talk over Buffy's attempts to talk about her own past battles or that they undermine her attempts to tell equally impressive stories. It's not even really her fault that she ends up sharing things about being a Slayer that Buffy as obviously been trying to keep secret from her friends (I mean, it's her fault a little, sure, but I don't think it would even occur to Faith to be embarrassed by anything she says).

"Did you really use a rocket launcher one time?" Faith asks, having already heard the story from somewhere and so done her best to convince Buffy that she too has done equally cool things (she hasn't). "What was your toughest kill?" she asks, having fled most of the way across a continent to escape a vampire she couldn't kill herself. "Isn't it crazy how Slaying always makes you hungry and horny?" she asks and "You and I are gonna have fun," she promises. What can that mean but: don't you feel the same way I do? Aren't you just the same as me? Aren't you glad I'm here?

Yes, Faith is jealous of Buffy's friends and her Watcher and her Mom, right from the start, but she didn't arrive in town looking to meet them. She came looking for Buffy; and look at how quick she is to accept Scott's description of her as "Buffy's friend" the next day. But Buffy (very understandably, from her point of view, because of experiences Faith has no knowledge of) just keeps trying to shut her out. The harder Faith tries to impress her -- by trying to win over Buffy's friends, and her Watcher, and her possible boyfriend, and her Mom -- the more aloof the other Slayer seems to get.

No wonder Faith gets annoyed by the rejection. No wonder she starts to get angry. No wonder she's ready to start exchanging threats once they're alone on patrols and the vampires aren't even showing up the way they're supposed to. Like she'll complain later in the season: she came to Sunnydale, she slayed, she did the good little girl routine, and what did she get? Not Buffy, that's for sure.

[stackslip]

your post about fma03 are good and i'm stuck thinking about scar for hours at a time again. stories talking about 'revenge' can read really bad to me because a lot use 'this oppressed minority trying to fight state violence is bad' plotline. fma03 was honestly pretty unique in that scar was this tragic hero instead. it's sad, it's clearly difficult for him and he see him struggle, but everything he does was also necessary to prevent further genocide.

YEAH, it's a trope i absolutely loathe and scar in the og manga is its poster boy and everyone and their mom loves to pretend it's super progressive or something lol. there are aspects to scar's manga character i wish i could have enjoyed more were he not constantly scolded by half the cast for being an Evil Murderer when the war criminals' redemption arcs are assumed to be done by now and they're good people we should all root for. bc like. i genuinely LIKE the idea of scar's brother's other arm being about reconstruction. i LIKE the concept of scar holding destruction and rebuilding at once, and being able to one day move on and participate in the rebuilding of ishbal! but it comes with the idea that he is wrong for wanting to destroy amestris's military and the people who've murdered his people in the first place, it comes with him calling himself scum for being a Bad Murderer, it comes with the only other major talking ishbalan character BEING A MEMBER OF AMESTRIS'S MILITARY, UNDER THE COMMAND OF A WOMAN WHO CURSES HER BROTHER OUT FOR NOT HAVING JOINED IN THE GENOCIDE, basically scolding scar in turn for daring to want revenge. lol. i likewise would like the thing between him and mei a lot better if it didn't feel like it didn't play in tropes of "this big brown scary man is actually sweet bc this cute pale skinned girl makes him Soft" which.... i'm not fond of. i like mei and his relationship to her a lot, I Do Not Like The Framing. i do not like what arakawa does with scar in the manga, and this will always, ALWAYS be my biggest contention with fma, my line in the sand that i refuse to back down. so many things i can chalk up to taste, but i'm never not going to argue that scar's treatment in the og manga is absolutely abysmal.

in comparison, the way 03 reframes scar from his very first appearance as someone a lot more vulnerable/human and understandable, how his violence is put into context for what amestris has done to him and how al and him have this direct connection and mutual understanding, down to al flat out saying "if someone killed my brother i'd probably want to burn down the world too".... it's just. really good all around. scar's arc does not revolve around the elrics' plot, but when he does encounter them it's not so ed can scold him for being a murderer--because scar can and does bite back ed for participating in the military in the first place. his encounter with lust, the dynamic between him, his brother and his brother's love and how all three of them have been denied even their very names and identity in the aftermath of the genocide..... unbelievably bleak. how lust and scar likewise are trying to reclaim an identity as specifically Ishbalan in different ways too! lust by remembering what she was made from, going against dante and realizing what has been taken away from her, dying while proclaiming I WAS A WOMAN FROM ISHBAL. and then you have scar, who refuses his past name because he died with his brother and he died with the old ishbal. amestris murdered him along his people. there's no coming back from this. and like.... it's tragic, because it means scar is doomed from the start. he sees himself as a ghost and he is unable to not be one. but he also *chooses* to do something of it. to not simply pursue revenge but to actively stop amestris's military from repeating the genocide in liore! he is STILL enacting violence, he is using ishbal's own old alchemy and usurping amestris's claims so he can turn their own weapon back on them. ishbal was murdered for amestris's principles, and likewise scar is going to destroy as much of the amestrian military as he can in the name of not only avenging ishbal but stopping it from ever happening again! and his plan works. it works, and it's tragic, but also triumphant. it's tragic because scar was a good man.

that's the difference between the treatment of scar in og fma and 03. in the former, scar is the one character who has to Grow Into A Good Person, because it is assumed that no good person should use violence even to defend their people and avenge genocide. because violence is the prerogative of the protagonists, and because it is easy to remove the "bad people" from the premise--you can just excise them as a tumour, and then amestris is no longer a fascist and genocidal hell state. never mind that a sympathetic character (one often touted as a feminist icon ffs) is actively defending her choice to participate in the genocide to the end and derides another for NOT participating in it, but apparently she's fine! but scar has to Learn To Forgive and becoming a good person means settling down and things will magically improve. and scar has to learn this from the elrics, even as they talk down to him and see him in a very negative light, because apparently the two blonde protagonists understand violence better than a survivor of genocide does.

in 03, scar is a good person. or at the very least, he's entirely justified. and he might not be right 100% of the time, but he is from the beginning considered to understand a lot more of the world than the elrics are! he is a tragic hero because he died long ago, and there was no other path for him. and he isn't.... wrong. it's been shown in 03 that ishbalan survivors literally get hunted and displaced wherever they go. they can't rebuild, as long as amestris is as it is! you can't just spout platitudes about how violence is bad, because even if you give up violence it will show up at your door and burn your refugee camp and the only way to counter is meeting it with violence yourself. where ed sacrifices himself at the end for his brother in another tragic hero ending, scar sacrifices himself for not only the memory of his brother but for all of ishbal AND liore to be able to live. and he's right! he's destabilized the military enough that when roy makes his choice and kills bradley, the military has been crippled and is forced to take a step back, and amestris is suddenly on the defensive and no longer able to take on offensive wars. ishbalans and liorites are shown rebuilding in peace, as amestrian soldiers are no longer able to attack them. scar's sacrifice worked. he took on the identity of old ishbal's avenging ghost, and he pushed it to the end. he finally accepted his brother's love and sacrifice, and sacrificed himself in turn--like the elrics do! his last words are words of love. they're tender. in the moment that he kills hundreds of amestrian soldiers, music swells. yes, it's tragic. fma 03 isn't saying that justified violence is all glory and roses, it's still painful--the soldiers' death isn't a fun happy time, but.... they were coming in to murder thousands of liorites, possibly rape some of them like they did rose. their lives, 03 says again and again, are *not* more important than the lives of marginalized people. they've made their choice. violence here was the right call, it was an act of love, and it is framed as such. scar's final act is mirrored by the final act of the protagonists, there too an act of love. scar in 03 is so much more humanized and respected a character than he is in the manga, and regardless of 03's other failings or differences in taste, i will argue that his story in 03 is more relevant and real as ever today as it was during the political context of 2003-04

[ushi-mama]

For what it's worth. I have a lot of friends on here that I've known long term and even some I know IRL, some of whom already know this about me, but;

I was on HRT for the past five years (FTM) and recently decided to stop.

In the beginning, I was thrilled with the changes. The euphoria was intense and I felt great. But around year 3 the euphoria stopped, and things I didn't like about HRT started to outweigh the pros. I was going bald before 30, and I'm a redhead, so my hair is one of the only things I really like about my own appearance. It was devastating me. I generally liked my changed voice, but I wasn't able to sing anymore, something that had given me a lot of joy when I was younger. Those might seem like trival things to some, but they were important to me.

On top of it all, I have untreated ADHD and most likely Autism. Keeping up with taking my shot weekly was hard. No number of alarms and reminders could keep me on track. I would take my shot consistently for a couple weeks, then I'd fall off for a few weeks, which was doing awful things to my body hormonally and mentally. I didn't realize it until recently.

I decided to stop taking testosterone for my own mental health, and to try reclaiming some things that were important to me. I've never had an surgeries, but there are things that will still never quite return to what they were before. I'm making peace with that. I don't think going 100% back to who I was before is what I would want anyway.

I'm still presenting as male at work. I've gone by Jude for way longer than I was on HRT and it still feels right. I don't anticipate changing it formally. Though going by my old name doesn't feel wrong, either. She/her pronouns used to upset me, but these days it doesn't.

I'm not entirely sure of what my identity is now, but I'm feeling more like myself since I stopped HRT. The thing is, I don't think HRT is bad and I'm never going to try to convince someone to stop. What I do wish is for more queer folks to speak up about how sometimes HRT isn't the be-all-end-all of gender affirmation. Sometimes, it isn't it the answer. I don't regret my time on HRT because I think I did the most growing up during those years. I became a proper adult on HRT. But it no longer served me in making me comfortable in my own body, and that shouldn't be a controversial thing.

[revenancy]

impossible fires || the post.

One hundred twenty years ago, the starship Atalanta left a shattered Earth behind.

Designed by an anomalous intelligence calling herself the Matriarch – something from beyond the scope of human understanding – the mission of the Atalanta was clear from the start: Survive long enough to find a new home for humanity.

Thirteen decades in, doubtful whispers are building. The Matriarch isn't concerned about humanity, they say. The ship doesn't have a destination. There is nothing outside the Atalanta but the void of space, and empty galaxies beyond.

One thing is clear: It's too late to turn back now.

[[ under serious construction ]]

setting

The Atalanta is a layered ship – society given structure, some might call it. Everyone else would call those people apologists. If they're being nice about it.

The odd levels – L1, L3, and L5 – are reserved for the engineers and other scientists that work to keep the microcosm in balance. They follow the Matriarch's vision and commands. L3 is also home to the R&D divisions of most companies on the ship, and is a veritable hive of corporate wealth. L5 is poorer – home to an elite class of engineers that have an innate understanding of the Atalanta's inner workings, that doesn't stop it from being home to the steepest poverty rate and addiction levels on the ship.

L2 is a city of prosperity. French bistros and film studios, pet shops reclaiming nearly-lost species, a vibrant emergency response service and well-trained police force – this is home to the hundred people important enough to have their name printed in the press, and the forty thousand people under them who serve to create a stunning tableau of postmodern life.

L4 is barely a city. Formed of six fragmented quarters, the people of L4 are crowded and filthy and passionate about their home and their faith in the Matriarch. The last century has seen churches built in her honor, and her priests have come to enjoy some semblance of social security. Hundreds of thousands of people are stacked on top of each other, each clawing for survival, clinging to their hope for a better tomorrow.

That doesn't mean there aren't dissenters. Somewhere in L4 is the base of the Stillwater Gospel – a doomsday cult that disavows every promise the Matriarch has made. Followers of the Gospel still their own tongues, communicating solely with the aid of auxiliary radio transmitters installed in them by their leader. They believe the end is coming, faster by the day – and they will do everything in their power to bring it about.

plot

Someone is lighting fires. Building feeds cut. All surveillance down. There are no hints to their identity, their motives, their desires – they're a non-entity, and the all-knowing Matriarch hasn't said a word about them. Instead she's set the police on their trail: Hunt. Find. Apprehend.

On L4, there's a buzz around the latest fires, as rumors start to spread: I heard it's the Gospel.

I heard they're trying to burn it down.

characters

Marley Haight → an engineer, turned dropout. Haunted by her past, searching for her next high, walking out of dead-end jobs – and crashing with whatever friends she has left.

Jacín Rial → an atheist cleric. He inherited the congregation from his father, and he can't turn his back on the hundred people who need him most – or, when an old friend comes knocking, Marley.

Nile Whist → a ghost with a fake name. Pulled back from the brink of death thirteen years ago, he owes his life to the Gospel that saved him, and he would do anything to repay that debt.

Song Liran → an artist and, reluctantly, a daughter. Born into wealth and forced to play into her parents' wishes, she finds herself apathetic at the thought of whatever future they want for her.

Katsura Yukimori → a police inspector and tabloid personality. Betrothed to Liran since they were eleven years old, he's trying to talk himself into being happy about that. He'd rather just work.

Eliza Fallon → chairwoman-elect of her family's company. It took two years to outgrow the title of Yuki Katsura's ex – now the bios call her a devoted wife and mother. But when Yuki needs help, she's there.

—

more to come.

[americascomic]

Hello. I sat here for a good 30 minutes trying to think of best how to ask this question without giving the online version of an annoying exposition dump, so I hope this somewhat makes sense: I’ve found myself, increasingly, having conversations with the more tenderqueer-esque queers in my life surrounding slurs- specifically slurs like faggot and tranny. I’m a trans guy, and I was told by another trans guy of the genre of person i just mentioned that only gay men can reclaim the word faggot, and trans women can reclaim the word tranny. I thought this was a stupid and gatekeep-y idea, and told him so, but i have been genuinely wondering if this is just a manifestation of terminally online induced queer infighting or a form of ignorant transmisogyny on my part. Is tranny a slur directed at and only to be reclaimed by trans women? Or is it just another tick in the barrel of a long line of slur speciation discourse?

I think the short answer of who can say what slur is "this is terminally online bullshit"

And my second answer is "this is a conversation that mostly people under the age of 30 have, and people mostly online have." I think the age is important - it's feels like it's a developmental phase a lot of queers go through, where they negotiate their identity." So, like I'm patient (if a little irked) when I see it on my feed. Or hear some dipshit socially awkward t-femme at Bluestockings rudely chime in to a conversation I'm having with a friend.

and I sometimes put it as a hypothetical;

I'm telling you right now, as a trans woman, in my lived experience, people of your exact intersecting identities are only allowed to say the word "tranny" on a Tuesday and "faggot" on a Friday. If you forget, remember 'tranny' and 'Tuesday' starts with 'T' and 'faggot' and 'Friday' starts with 'F'

Like, that's absurd for me to ask. And so I think that kind of forces the thought that at the end of the day I'm the one asking it. There'll be no consensus on this issue.; you have to decide for yourself whatever or not to respect one point of view over the other.

We say "listen to black people" but I had this moment in my life where IRL I did a call-out of Nazis in my community and a Black friend told me that I was talking over people of color and another thanked me for speaking up in a way that they wouldn't be listened to. Who is right? Neither. Both. You have to decide for yourself and have a strong sense of race. Same with interacting with our own queer community.

Who can say what queer slur where and when is a thing that can never be litigated online. It's such an interpersonal person-to-person thing. There's no pundit square that can fit all slurs and all identities and all experiences.

in the case of the teen in the previous story who told me not to use the word "tranny," I immediately retorted that people say that word to me on the street and spit at me, which means they recognize it as a thing of power and so I will use that power. And I don't think she'd ever had copped to it, but I think changed her mind because she was saying "tranny" over the next months.

I think for some of this shit, us trans women policing who can say "tranny" is us just doing a proxy war for transmisogny. Like, we get transmisogny in our community, an AFAB person queer person of some type who could probably leverage their privilege against us says "tranny," I can see it irking some. But, have you met a trans woman? Everything irks us. We're reprehensible.

And, I think in terms of your conversation and your friend. I dunno, I think of who-gets-to-be-lesbian discourse. I see so many people online twist in the wind trying to justify to others that they're a trans masc lesbian, or a non-binary lesbian or a bisexual lesbian and I'm kinda sitting there on my ass wondering why they're trying so hard to get probably the dumbest people online to justify our identity. Like, we're hear, we're queer, get used to it. I sometimes feel of the matter that we're all a mass medium as one and just going about shit without apology as a way to force people to confront our humanity.

Iffen you want my personal feelings on the matter, you're just as impacted by the codified violence of the state that's imposed on us and so we're all faggots at the end of the day. But the t-girl sitting next to me might feel differently, and you have to negotiate with that. Sometimes times calls for moments of respect and sometimes it's a matter of saying "fuck it" and doing the thing you know how it is.

If you would like, I can draw you a card that says "Amber, a hot trans woman, says I can say 'faggot'"

Finally, I'll say I wrote a couple paragraphs for you so I'm going to force you to return the favor and just challenge you to sit on your ass and ask yourself in honest ways what the word means and what it means to you and what's beautiful and what's ugly about the word. That - an internal process - a lot more valuable thing worth to litigate then everybody in-community being cops to each other.

And then after that, I always like to challenge people to look beyond the debate. This post I made on the matter is about a dead trans teen. It's nice to debate words, but it's also nice to look out at our wonderful, annoying community, name problems we see that creates material struggle, and then imagine solutions.

[joshy-tomato]

Ok, the Wriollette (and Focacchino) miraculous au >:3

Wrio has the cat miraculous and Neuvillette has the butterfly one. Their enemy is Arlecchino, who uses the Ladybug miraculous and is after the cat one to fulfill her wish.

Whats her wish? It has to do with the reason they got in this situation.

Before Wriollette there was another hero duo, Arlecchino and Focalors. They were against Vacher, a Butterfly user, who used the Akuma as a distraction to kidnap young women and experiment on them in an attempt to recover his lost lover. Arlecchino and Focalors eventually made the connection and got to Vacher's hideout. However, something went wrong and while they were able to detain Vacher, only Arlecchino came out, Focalors disappeared. Struck with the grief and guilt of not being able to protect Focalors, Arlecchino went rogue and made her objetive to reclaim the cat miraculous and wish for Focalors return.

Eventually, the Guardian was forced to give the Cat Miraculous to Wriothesley, trusting he would keep it safe and out of Arlecchino's reach.

Meanwhile, Neuvillette is Furina's brother, and he knew about her secret identity as Focalors. He is investigating Vacher research on order to get closure, but also in hopes to find a way to save his sister, and during one of his investigation he found the Butterfly miraculous. He decides to use it in order to 1)Help Cat!Wrio 2)Clean the name of the Butterfly Miraculous. And 3)Keep Arlecchino from making a mistakes because he knows Furina wouldn't want that for her beloved partner.

So now Neuvillette life is divided between fighthing Arlecchino, protecting Wriothesley and find a way to bring back Furina without using the wish. And trying to not fall in love with Wriothesley. He already failed the last one, better not fuck up the others.

Other things I didn't know how to had:

Furina Miraculous was the Peacock. Yes, she is basically the Emily of this au.

Focalors and Arlecchino had a love square dynamic where Arlecchino was in love with Focalors and Furina was in love with civilian!Arlecchino. The dynamic was starting to shift when the disaster fell upon them.

Meanwhile wriollette doesnt have that, they dropped the secret identity thing due to pragmatism. Their problem is that Neuvillette is constipated emotionally and not coping well with Furina disappearance. Also Wrio as been pinning for Neuvillette for the longest time, so this whole situation doesn't do well for his hearth.

Thinking seriusly on making Zhongli the guardian of the box cus would be hilarious.

It could also work to give Neuvillette a beef with him now that the dragon and Archon drama doesn't exist. If Zhongli hadn't given miraculous to Furina and Wrio then Furina wouldn't have disappeared and Wrio wouldn't be being targeted. He may also be jealous too.

Also, thinking that instead of being disolved the girls were send to the abyss. And Furina disappearance wasn't really and accident but she purposely send herself there on an attempt to save the girls. Arlecchino and Neuvillette assume it was an accident because she didn't tell them her plan, knowing they would try to stop her.

[ace-donovan]

Ace sat on the right hand side of Eli at the long table where others were gathered. Tobs was shifting blueprints to hand off to Eli for final approval. Eli looked at the design of the warehouse design options. Ace signaled his second hand to give the answer to when design they’d go for. “Let’s do this option,” Eli muttered as he handed Tobs the second design. “This gives the best use of square footage for the food pantry,”  he added. Tobs nodded and left. 

Gast, a beefy man who had butterfly tattoos on his jaw, came up to speak to Eli now. He sat down in the folding chair next to him and let out a loud sigh. “So boss, there’s this woman.” A couple of the men working at the table start howling at him. Gast rolled his eyes and nodded, “Nah it’s not like that, man.” 

Ace was humming to himself during this interaction, showing no interest in the conversation until it was necessary. 

“So tell me about this woman,” Eli said casually. 

“Her name is Carmen, her old man was the leader of the Sureños—” 

“No,” Ace said loudly, a surprise to everyone in the room, including Eli. Ace was cautious about keeping his identity unknown to everyone in regards to the gang and his leadership. 

Eli shifted a little in his seat, unsure what to do or say. He had never been in this position before and he didn’t know if Ace was going to take over or what. 

Ace leaned up in his chair and laid his arms across the edge of the table’s edge. He calculated his next thoughts and then glanced over at Eli, seeing the confusement and uncertainty in his eyes.  Ace let out a soft sigh and then speaks directly to Gast, “The Sureños have no loyalty to anyone, including themselves. I’ve heard from others that Carmen is the one that turned on Bato and led to his incarceration.” Ace shifted his eyes to Eli, “It would be a mistake, boss,” he said softly. 

A piercing shrill echoed in the large room and all the men at the table turned to look at the doorway where a heavily tattooed woman stood, literally stomping her feet on the ground as she swore in a slur of Spanish. 

“You brought her here?” Ace said, standing up quickly. Eli did the same. “Get this crazy bitch out of here,” he said, walking around the table and grabbed Gast's shirt and yanked him up. “You’ve lost your damn mind. You stupid, bastard!” 

Eli grabbed Ace by the arm and pulled him back as Gast ran to the doorway where the woman was still screaming. “It’s all good, mate,” Eli said cautiously, waving at Gast. “Get her out of here,” he said, trying to reclaim control of the situation—unsure if this was what Ace wanted. When Ace allowed him to do this, he felt more confident in the matter. “Everyone, clear out,” he said loudly. 

As soon as everyone was gone, Eli turned to face Ace. “You good, man?” 

Ace strummed his finger along his lower lip. “I don’t like this situation. Carmen showing up? That makes no damn sense to me. Gast knows better than this.” 

Eli grabbed Ace’s shoulder to give it a squeeze, “Listen, we’ll sort this out. Okay? You just head home. You got a busy week.”

[illicien]

So Dark Soulmates AUs just crossed my dash and my brain went immediately into WinterBaron overdrive with a couple of these...

Particularly a combo of:

Soulmates are supposed to live and die together. That means as soon as soulmates lay eyes on each other, their souls get entwined, so that if one dies the other does too. It has become quite common to hire people that specialize in finding and killing soulmates, so that they never randomly meet them and risk dying through them.

Starting at age 18, people will stop aging until they find their soulmate to grow old with. Many people don't want to give up possible immortality and hire hitmen to get rid of their soulmates.

Soulmates feel each other's pain and criminals use this to torture two people at once.

Which in my mind has become (more under the cut this got long)

HYDRA trying to hunt down who Bucky's soulmate is at first to prevent him from aging and having his soul entwined so that they can keep their asset, but after decades they just assume Bucky's soulmate is already dead, since it doesn't seem like he's reacting to any kind of unexplainable pain at all early on. It isn't until Zemo's in the military that he actually winds up hurt enough to cause any pain to HYDRA's asset, but because he's in cryo so often the sensation of pain isn't registered, and it's not like the wounds leave any marks. Instead, the first time an unexplainable pain is registered through the Asset is during the fall of Sokovia - Zemo's leg gets pinned, and the Asset (Bucky, slowly reclaiming his identity) finds himself stumbling. Having assumed, himself, at this point that if he had a soulmate they must be long dead, Bucky is perplexed by this sudden occurrence, and finds himself chatted up by a kindly old lady who remarks that she hopes his soulmate didn't hurt too much. ("Oh, stubbed their toe did they? It always catches you off-guard!" she speaks from her own experiences, not realizing that a stubbed toe wouldn't be nearly the kind of pain that would typically make him stumble that way. Zemo, of course, hasn't been oblivious. Neither he nor Heike began to age when they met, he didn't feel Heike's pain when she went into labour, he hadn't felt any of her pain, and while they were genuinely in love, it was clear that they weren't one anothers' soulmates. Nevertheless, she was the person he had chosen and the loss of both her and their son still sets him off on his plan to deal with the Avengers. The time in which Zemo and Bucky see each other isn't what makes things clear - it isn't as though anyone notices their bodies beginning to age so quickly. In fact, it's when the fight Zemo initiates between Tony and Steve and Bucky begins that it clicks for Zemo, but he's in too much shock from the revelation to really process it. It's outside, in the snow, that reality really starts to crawl in; he took his revenge for the sake of his wife and child, and in so doing he manipulated and fucked up the life of his soulmate. (Cue additional reasons for T'Challa's interference.) Being in prison, isolated as Zemo was, the only one who feels any real pain from anything is Zemo, but there's no real way to be oblivious to the fact that Bucky is finally aging, even though he has no answers for the people who ask about who his soulmate is. The blip is a strange anomaly for everyone; some peoples' soulmates are blipped, and yet it doesn't kill the remaining soulmate, leaving many people actually quite hopeful about people coming back. Zemo, however, has no way of knowing that Bucky was among those blipped. Things proceed as usual, Zemo doesn't make any comments on anything, and it isn't until, in a NZPU and Zemo is kidnapped that Bucky really catches on. Zemo's been tortured before, sure, but this is the first time Bucky's been active during that, and so the moment Bucky and Sam manage to recover Zemo, and Bucky sees the obvious injuries, Bucky finally realizes.

Anyway, as usual, that's the jist of what I've got. Just spewing some thoughts. You know. Enjoy them. Or don't. Adopt them. Or don't. Whatever pleases you.

TBH I'm too hot to function or make the rest of my brain work enough to make this make more sense I just have rambling thoughts...

[sloshed-cinema]

Dog Day Afternoon (1975)

I aspire to have my life reduced to an end-of-film title card reading more or less ‘Leon is a woman now and living in New York City’. In an anarchic revolutionary system which was New Hollywood, this film perhaps encapsulates the movement better than most this side of the likes of Easy Rider. It’s angry but inert, woke but problematic, revolutionary but keeping the same cycle moving forward. Countless think-pieces of the last five or so years with really creative titles like ‘be gay, do crime’ exist trying to reclaim this as queer cinema, and while Al Pacino’s performance is certainly committed and even-keeled (I’m not going to do something stupid like call him ‘brave’ for portraying queer identity because fuck off), it definitely leans into the popular identification of non-hetero sexual orientation. Sonny is a folk hero when he defies the police (fuck yeah) but also becomes a target once his sexual orientation becomes public. The car ride to the airport is the perfect embodiment of the “two dudes on a bus” meme, half of the crowd supporting him and the other decrying him as a faggot. Was Sonny’s decrying of the police any less valid when he was straight-presenting, I ask? It’s all a lot of production, all to end in a sudden blaze of something other than glory. This remains true to the New Hollywood sensibility in that sense, too: counterculture figures can try to define a new existence for themselves, but they’re bound for failure. Not in a moralistic sense, per se, but rather because the system is simply too large and entrenched for success. There are innumerable cops poised to spring the moment anything seems to go wrong, and one robber is dead and the other in prison as a result.

Al Pacino sparkles in this, frazzled and harried and sweaty and effortlessly navigating his own sexuality. There’s something to be said for this, how frank he is in his relationship to the two women in his life. There’s no glances to the wings or nervous prepping. He simply is, even when his partner needs for the Fed to assure the media that there is only one ‘homosexual’ perpetrating crimes. Sal may be a criminal, but he’s straight as an arrow guaranteed! But the real winners are the ensemble surrounding this duo of criminals. The blue-bloused senior teller is the real MVP, unflappable even when she’s sweating through her clothes and taking the dictation of Sonny’s apparent last will and testament, looking out for her girls and making sure that racist cops don’t shoot the hostage who is being released simply because he’s black. The elderly dude is fun, too: I really need to find a way to work “It’s not the pizza, he’s got diabetes!” into everyday conversation.

THE RULES

SIP

Someone says 'alarm', 'cop', or 'bathroom'.

Sonny swears.

A phone starts ringing.

BIG DRINK

Sonny unlocks the front door of the bank

Algeria is mentioned.

[sytokun]

Art by Mikkusushi on Twitter.

I've been sort of entertaining this idea for a while now. Knowing all the unfortunate baggage and mishandling involved with the White Fang, why not just. Make them the good guys?

Say an official rewrite or reboot of RWBY exists in the future - if those two words rub you the wrong way then whatever, basically a clean slate or re-adaptation of RWBY - the fact stands that the White Fang need a heavy revision.

People are smart enough at this point to know that you shouldn't be villainising the oppressed group trying to fight back against a world that is actively pushing them out - if anything the SDC should be more of a antagonistic faction, kind of like the Shinra corporation from Final Fantasy 7 which RWBY is clearly heavily based on, what with Dust and Materia and all that. But that still leaves you with the White Fang and Blake's arc to write.

This has been a large headache point for anyone trying to figure out how to revise RWBY's more fundamental writing flaws, because the WF are such a prominent antagonist faction throughout the Beacon arc and they were such a problem that CRWBY had no choice but to sweep them under the rug entirely after Adam's death. But hear me out here. Do we really need to latch onto that idea so hard? That the White Fang need to be villains?

Like, imagine a RWBY where the White Fang are shown as terrorists on TV and in newspapers throughout Vale, but when you actually meet them, they're a ragtag band of freedom fighters. They're like Avalanche from FF7; the freedom fighters from Sonic SatAM; you start to realise that they're the good guys. They're the embodiment of Chaotic Good or at worst, Chaotic Neutral.

In any other show they'd be the Resistance, the Rebels against an evil corporate empire - they're just not in the main point of view of the story. Going off this change in perception, one would then rewrite everything else based off that foundation.

Putting aside Adam, Ilia and others simply because they're all supplemental to Blake's arc, where does Miss Belladonna herself fit into this?

If we want to keep her backstory as a person atoning for a dark past, then the WF would be more grey in response, but still not outright evil. Revolution is not without sacrifice, and when you're fighting for drastic societal change, conflict is inevitable. While they may fight for a good cause, not everyone has the will or strength to fight, to endure the monumental societal backlash and opposition. Perhaps Blake was one of those people - jaded and burnt out by the never-ending struggle to be heard, losing hope that change would ever be possible - so she runs away in hopes of finding herself, only to be scooped up into Beacon instead.

What would she feel, fighting for the side that, while may not have oppressed the Faunus directly, have remained ambivalent and blind to their struggles? Hunters who claim to fight for human and Faunus alike, but who clearly have more humans in their ranks and would choose to rather save a prosperous human city over a struggling Faunus slum? Would living among humans change her outlook on the fight, where she's torn between reclaiming the hard fight to preserve her own heritage, vs. a relatively comfortable new identity, but one that forces her to assimilate with humankind and live on their terms? Is there a way for her to reconcile these two sides of herself, these two families she's now a part of?

But let's not exclude other possibilities too. Assuming we have a Chaotic Good WF, what if Blake was actually proud to be part of the Fang, and enrolls into Beacon as an unashamed member? Her conflicts would then come from the people around her struggling to accept that - how would Weiss work with someone whose group keeps sabotaging their trains? How would Beacon deal with a public member of the Faunus liberation movement? Would some staunchly oppose her enrolment, while others see it as a possible bridge to better relations with the Faunus? How many Faunus would be inspired by Blake and look up to her as a Faunus-born Hunter, while others would decry and dismiss her as just a hollow figurehead and Remnant's equivalent of a diversity hire?

When seeing other rewrites or revisions of RWBY, I still mainly see people trying to work with the WF as given in canon. They still keep the activism turned to violence and extremism. The WF and thus a majority of Faunus are still portrayed as terrorists and cannon fodder for fights. But what if there's a better way of going about all this?

In the end, this is just an interesting thought exercise, but I leave you with this:

As Blake has said in the manga: "Fangs of pure white need not shed blood." Those words and the imagery they evoke have always stuck with me when I think about the White Fang and how Blake could have been written, and gives such a valuable insight to why the group was named the way it was.

What if they had never strayed from that name? What if they had not been treated by the story as just faceless enemies to mow down by the dozens... but as people from the very beginning?

[siriuslysatorusimping]

Author Discussion: Before I Love You - Part 2: Broken Lens

OKAY. HI. So, I wanted to talk about Before I Love You because I know people had so many thoughts about Part 1, and now that I’ve posted Part 2, there are a few things I wanted to highlight.

1) Narrative/Stylistic Choice

An important decision I made with Part 1 is that Rinko’s name isn’t used except when someone else says it. Not sure if anyone noticed, but the only two people who say her name are: Naobito and Gojo. This is incredibly important because it’s the two people she relied on to determine her self-worth. Her father treated her like shit most of her life, and that destroyed her self-image, but him trying to mend that relationship really started making her feel like she was suddenly worth his time. Her relationship with Gojo made her feel wanted. And that’s all most of us want, amiright? We just want to feel loved and wanted, and Gojo made her feel both of those—until he cheated on her.

In Part 2, we see the shift in her reclaiming her identity. As she recovered from her heartbreak, she found herself and learned to love herself without needing the validation of someone else to make her feel worthy. In the first flashback, you’ll likely notice that her name still isn’t used, only Yuzuki’s name is. In the second flashback with Gojo, it isn't used either. But at the end of the second flashback with her mother, there’s a shift. As she stands in the bakery and reflects on the situation, it’s the first time her name is used in a flashback beyond someone else saying it. All of the ‘present day’ sections in Part 2 include her name because it’s meant to show how comfortable and secure she is with herself now.

2) Rinko, Identity, and Self-Image

The purpose of this story is to highlight the idea of identity and self-worth without needing someone else to determine them. I know I struggle with it, and I see so many patterns that emphasize that others do, too. It’s easy to fall into the idea, even just subconsciously, that we need another person in our life(i.e. a relationship) to validate that we’re worthy of love. My intent with Before I Love You is to show Rinko’s healing process and learning to be happy with who she is outside of a relationship. It’s her loving herself and where she is in life without constantly craving that companionship.

She has a better relationship with Naobito, but she knows now that how he treated her when she was a kid never had anything to do with her and everything to do with him. She was able to forgive him because she realized that her worth never had anything to do with his actions. And that helped her realize the same thing about Gojo cheating on her: whatever reasons he had were his problem, not hers.

Rinko’s heartbreak allowed her to grow and blossom into the person she is now. She’s close with Toji and Megumi, and the twins rely on her for safety. She’s content and happy with her life, which is why she’s in a place where she can allow Gojo that small space as her friend because she did miss her friend.

3) Gojo's Perspective

I decided to have the last bit from Gojo’s perspective because I felt it necessary to show that he’s sincere and genuine. He understands that he fucked up and that there’s nothing he can do or say that will ever fix things or earn forgiveness. His apology to Rinko, and his apology to Yuzuki, were important for his closure. They allowed him to finally close that door on a portion of his life that’s haunted him for years. Not only did he hurt Rinko and ruin their relationship, but he also lost one of his closest friends. And he knew he had no one to blame but himself.

The most important thing to emphasize about his perspective is that he expected nothing from Yuzuki when he apologized. He didn’t expect her to even believe anything he said, and he didn’t ask anything of her except to listen. He doesn’t expect her to tell Rinko, in fact, he doesn’t want her to know that he talked to Yuzuki because he doesn’t want her to think he’s only doing it to look good or gain favor. These steps he’s taking are for him to grow. That’s why they’re so important. He’s taking steps to better himself for him, not someone else. He’s not trying to win Rinko back. He’s not trying to prove that he's a better person than he used to be, he’s just trying to move on with his life and quit carrying this weight he’s had on his shoulders since college.

This story is primarily about Rinko’s healing process, but that doesn’t mean that Gojo doesn’t do some soul-searching and evolving as well.

The idea is that, at the very least, they'll become friends again now that they're older and a tiny bit wiser.

Anyway, that’s what I have for now. There’s more I could say, but I think I’ve addressed the main things I wanted to highlight! Hopefully, I made sense…

As for if I'll continue this story? Jury's out. I'm leaving each ending hopeful to provide at least some closure while also keeping the possibility of continuation open!

[swimming-karyss]

(zoom in to see her freckles better)

More about Rouge, Makino and Goa(there is a simple map! to know who's where) under cut

In this au Rouge tries to hide her presence and identity as much as she can, and flees to Earth, as it's the most quiet and uneventful human settlement she could think of. She was able to find a place to live and not attract much attention, but her pregnancy isn't going so well, and her health is deteriorating, and then Garp finds her-

... to proclaim her as his daughter? ..?

Roger's last wish was for Garp to take care of his child, so obviously it also extends to the mother, right? right. And the least suspicious excuse for his help would be blood connection. Plus some protection from Garp's status. And the excuse for him not telling anyone about his daughter? also his status. He has too many enemies in the criminal word to let anyone get such information. Plus his actual son pretty much hates him too, so not much change there👍

With Garp's help Rouge was put in a good hospital, and while Ace was born without any complications, her health left much to be desired. She stayed under doctors's care for a couple of years, (I think Garp has brought both Ace and Dadan to visit her in the hospital on some occasions, once the boy was old enough). When her health has gotten better she and Ace moved to the Wind turbines district, because air there isn't as polluted as in the city, and it may help with her health a bit. She still can't be very active but slow strolls near the forest are already something. Rouge gets along with Dadan, because on good days she can match her temper very well, and while neither Rouge nor Ace really know how to approach each other, they will come to it one day. Her days are very uneventful, she tries to keep in touch with the news, and keep tabs on friends, but most of them lay low, so she doesn't get much information, and she can't contact them because it will bring attention to her. Another highlight of her days is Garp visiting during his vacation to check in on them. Rouge would rather not see him at all, but he complains about her friends specifically and some of the stuff he says can't be found in news (it's restricted information, Garp! you can't just- ah whatever), so only for this reason his presence is tolerable. It becomes more tolerable once he starts to bring Luffy with him(oh so what's why he spends half of his vacation month elsewhere), usually only for the duration of Garp's vacation, but after a couple of years the boy just stays for the whole summer. Rouge doesn't respect Garp in the slightest, and isn't afraid to show it (he knows he deserves it) but his sunshine grandson has nothing to do with it! plus, honestly, Ace and his sad kitten of a friend really could use some company. .....and they try to avoid him as much as they can. oh, these children....... But at least Ace seems to start to grow on Luffy as time goes on.

Also has anyone read Yokohama Kaidashi Kikō/Yokohama Shopping Log? bc that's pretty much the state the Earth is in in this AU. In a sense that the civilisation there is slowly deteriorating, many things happened there, it's greatly scarred by wars and poisoned by humanity's negligence. But all of it is in the past, many humans left to conquer other stars, hoping not to repeat past mistakes, ecosystems have recovered with the help from humanity (it's our beloved home planet after all), and now it was left to nature to reclaim, while only some sparks of human activity remain. Goa kingdom is one of them.

(Also Moon&Mars were the first places humanity colonized, so to simplify, Moon is something like a countryside you go to visit your grandparents, and Mars is an industrial city that was built for the plant, and the plant long since stopped working, so while the city didn't stop existing, it's definitely not as active or populous as it used to be)

(Venus is known for its scientists and researchers, civilians don't live there. Some moons of gas giants are colonised, and gas giants themselves have research stations. Same with asteroids)

(inner circle serves as the Romance Dawn East blue, (the weakest of the seas and the quietest star system) , I couldn't really think about something for the Red Line, but as some kind of treacherous entrance to more dangerous world, asteroid belt would work just fine. I'll think what to do with Crocus and Laboon later... outer circle is a couple of first islands of the grand line. The whole galaxy is divided into six parts. Four sectors of the habitable galaxy(four blues), inner core(Mary Geoise) and the edge of the galaxy (the grand line) or something like that)

Kingdom of Goa is a coastal city-state on Earth. (king is more of a figurehead than a real ruler, in actuality it's an Oligarchy). It's a rather prosperous city, but only the central District of the city enjoys it fully. There is still a problem with wealthy people disposing of their stuff just because it's out of fashion, but the trash managing is a bit better thanks to sci-fi, so there isn't a giant area of trash heap.

'Countryside' is where Wind turbines district is! I've decided that it's more of a countryside than suburbs, bc I prefer to subject my beloveds to other kind of horrors. This district gets most of its energy thanks to wind turbines, hence the name. Some people have person wind generators, and most of the wind turbines is on the shore. Of course this means that the access to the sea is restricted, but. it's as close to the big city as it can be. I really wouldn't advise to swim in there anyway. even going to the mountains to swim in the river is less hazardous.

Makino's bar (simplified) ↓. It's a really cool bar with futuristic interior and neon lights. It's near the spaceport, too far to get a ton of visitors, but close enough to still see interesting clients. On the floor above is Makino's apartment.

Also Makino is older in this au, because I cannot put the task of raising a child and managing a bar on a teenager! Once Luffy started staying with Rouge for the whole summer Makino got her number to check in on Luffy. They continued communication throughout the rest of the year, because both of them could use both company(mostly Rouge) and friendly advice(mostly Makino). While Makino's bar is small enough for her to manage it by herself, there is actually a part-time employee here. Luffy found a concerningly intelligent kid somewhere, and she's not a big fan of letting children stay on the street. Plus he helps Luffy with his studies, and the boy really needs some help with that. (funnily enough, Luffy is the only one of the ASL who went to school... at least for a while)

Also while Makino and Rouge have never actually met personally, they have developed a great friendship! Once Rouge is confident enough in her health she decides to pay a visit to her and brings Ace with her. Makino is delighted. Particularly because she'll finally meet a dear friend! (yay!) and partially because she came to a certain realisation, and she is sure to have some fun once these people all come together.

I'm not really sure what to make of Shanks yet, so I'll leave him for a while. All I know is that he visited Earth in the end of August, to spend a year there. And it was the main reason why Garp decided to let Luffy stay with Rouge for the whole summer, to keep him away from that red haired idiot.

[faythian]

Discourse on Lyse Hext

This screencap popped up for a background on my computer today, and it got me thinking about the discourse surrounding Lyse Hext. I do not think she deserves any of the hate/spite sent her way. My thoughts below (long post below cutoff):

Lyse comes from Ala Gannha. She was five years old when Curtis Hext, her father, bundled her and her sister, Yda, up and left. They went to Sharlayan, probably the colony in Dravania. Yda became an Archon; Lyse idolized her sister.

Papalymo was the one who had to tell a young Lyse that her sister and father were dead. To cope, she took on the identity of Yda. She lived as Yda for five or six years. She was always paired with Papalymo, who became a surrogate father for her. He is shown multiple times lecturing her, admonishing, and guiding her. While he knows it’s not a healthy coping mechanism, he still went along with her request to assume Yda’s identity and work. Or as much as she was able.

Then she lost Papalymo.

She decided to reclaim her identity of Lyse, but she didn’t have much of an identity to reclaim at the time. She needed to untangle herself from Yda, but did not get the time (either because she was thrust into the push to liberate Ala Mhigo, or because she herself would not give time for such a delicate task).

She is understandably shocked by her reception in Ala Gannha. She grew up fairly sheltered after the trauma of the uprising against King Theodoric, leaving at a young age, being a refugee, and then settling in a foreign land. Lyse still saw Ala Mhigo as her home, despite growing up in Sharlayan and not truly understanding what was going on in Gyr Albania. She was blinded and made naive by her father’s legacy as a hero of the Resistance.

The Legacy of Curtis will haunt her for a while.

She tries desperately to understand what those who stayed behind have gone through, trying to draw on what she knew best: Yda’s personality. Lyse does not start to truly come into her own until she leaves for Doma. There, she has no legacy to live up to. She also finds a friend and mentor: Hien. Hien is the same age as her but was brought up knowing who and what he was meant to be. If one watches carefully, while in Doma, Lyse is watching and taking note of Hien’s moves politically. She is also watching Yuuguri. Yuuguri knows the villages and their people, unlike Lyse back in Gyr Albania.

While we get to see some fantastic character development of her, it’s all in the background, as the Doman part of Stormblood is focused on Hien, Yuuguri, and freeing Doma. Unfortunately, upon returning to Gyr Albania, Lyse is still trying tactics that aren’t her own and trying to live up to other people's expectations and identities. She is not using what she learned in the way Lyse would use them; she is trying to do what Hien or Yuuguri would do, or how she feels her father might have used these ideas. She still hasn’t truly found her own voice yet.

When Conrad dies, he named Lyse the new leader of the Resistance. M’naggo accepts this, seemingly readily. Most people see this as a nepotistic move, and it is, but it’s also more. M’naggo, I feel, accepts this because she sees what Lyse represents to the Resistance—Curtis’ dreams and ideals.

His legacy.

Lyse now has the added burden of not only living up to her father’s image, but now his ideals and goals. We do see some of her struggles as she tries to lead the Resistance, a lot of that being how heavily she leans on the Scions and the Warrior of Light for help.

The game does a disservice to Lyse by not letting us see this struggle fully. All we get are snippets from which we then must infer what she is going through. She is a legacy without understanding and being given very little support from those she is meant to inspire and lead.

There were golden opportunities for others to truly assist her in discovering her own voice:

Urianger, who understood intimately how the shadow of one’s betters can cloud a person’s path and self perception;

Y’shtola would have been a fantastic mentor due to her more pragmatic view of the whole situation;

Conrad should have been more of a presence for her as he had local knowledge as well as historical knowledge (i.e.: Curtis’ actual goals);

and even Raubahn should have been there (and behind the scenes might have been) as he also knew Curtis, the Resistance, and what they were all up against, in addition to what it means to be a leader of a nation.

Instead, she was allowed to become a symbol of something she didn’t fully understand and set out on the balcony to wave and smile.

By the end of the main plot, she is seen as a leader, and she does show many traits of a good leader just coming into her own. But we are not truly shown her journey to this point. Lyse is just suddenly Leader.

The writing for her was fairly terrible. The lack of attention paid to her character and character growth throughout Stormblood was, at best, disappointing, and at worst appalling. We get to see Alphinaud’s continued journey, we get to see Hien and Yuuguri’s journey, we even get to see Fordola’s journey, but not much of the trials and tribulations of the character SquareEnix seemed to call the Main Character (if the posters and official art are to be considered).

As I write my narration of a couple of my own characters going through the MSQ, I will be visiting Lyse a number of times during this expansion and putting in those scenes that I feel are needed. I will be giving her mentors.