#yeah the others are all strong and cool and capable warriors but they're WARRIORS

[gonkaccino]

AAAAAAAAAAA MY BABY GIRL FINALLY GETS A BUDDY WHO’S JUST AS INSANE AND RECKLESS AS SHE IS I’M SO PROUD OF YOU ALOY

[bella-rose29]

besides the fact that aphridute cheated on hepahestis I like her lmao shes cool

yeah she coulda not done that

but also she's the embodiment of lust so if she gets the feels for someone she's gonna act on it (not excusing her cheating but also the marriage wasn't her choice so y'know, nobody is entirely in the clear)

I love the idea that she's a war goddess in some views??? I think bc love and war are so closely linked, and quite often in greek myths war is caused by love, the idea of Aphrodite getting royally pissed off and going on a rampage is so srhgisufenivrt if you know what I mean

slightly unrelated??? but there's a quote from Terry Pratchett that's something to do with a war happening and at one point even the women have picked up weapons and are fighting

and I think a lot of people misinterpreted that as 'oh, we ran out of strong, capable men who can actually fight and now we're left with the women'

but actually it's more 'the war is at a point where there is no other choice. there is no escape route, no other way out, the only option is to fight. if a woman has picked up a blade you should be very very afraid.'

and also historically there are warrior queens, like the ones in Nubia (whose names I can't remember but they were so badass), who when they went onto the battlefield they would be on the front line. they would then completely decimate their enemies, because they were so proficient in battle. it got to the point where armies were downright terrified if they knew the Nubian Queen was fighting, because they could take out hundreds of soldiers on their own and live to rule another day (I love Nubian Queens they're so fucking badass and cool and one of them lost an eye in battle or something and then she looked even more scary in all the battles she fought in afterwards)

basically Aphrodite would be fucking terrifying if she joined a war because nobody would really expect it of her, and she would kill everyone with no mercy

[tortilla-of-courage]

Yeah, kind of insane that the Adoption AU started with a 3am Taco Bell run.

I do actually have a few one shots already written for this AU! There's the Taco Bell story, the time Sky got arrested, the time Twilight got shot, a funny story I wrote based on real events with Twi, Wars and Wind trying to cook, and something based on that one picture of the boys playing the floor is lava by cherypaii(? I think that's the url?). And I have a half finished fic about Lullaby reacting to Time's increase in kids I call "Lullaby reacts to Time's Batman-Level Adoption Bullshit", and a half finished fic introducing Wild's twin. So if anyone is interested in reading some of the fun bits for the AU, since I'm still writing for the plot part (although this conversation has given me inspiration and motivation to write the bit where they find Twi after he was kidnapped, so,) then I'd be happy to post them.

And since you mentioned hoping more info would magically appear, consider this magic.

Midna is a mafia princess, and her family immigrated to get away from it. Zant is her cousin, and his parents followed to make sure Midna's parents didn't embarrass the family. She briefly had to move away after the incident where Twi got shot, but she's back before the plot happens.

Twi and Time both have their face markings in this AU. Time had his tattooed on after the FD incident as a reminder of what he's capable of and what he's lost (considering this plot beat's connection to his family and the Order), for better or worse. Twilight was gifted his by Midna after he fought Zant to try and protect her and Dusk from Zant. The markings are traditional Twili tattoos, painted on with some kind of something that acts as a mix of tattoing and henna, and have to be earned. Twilight's represent courage, boldness and sacrifice.

Warriors has a whole plot I've done nothing with involving Cia being, well, creepy as all get out. Basically I read somewhere that a victim of abuse is more likely to end up in other abusive relationships when looking at how Warriors' bio parents being abusive would effect him and then I remembered Cia and decided to be mean to him.

The underground hospital that took care of Wild after the wreck is called the Shrine of Resurrection because I thought that was a cool way to connect that.

I had this stupid idea once that Midna writes purposefully terrible fanfic and a few people suspected she wrote 'My Immortal' for a while, and when she comes back everyone is like "The Chaos Corner guy's brother is dating the lady who wrote My Immortal???" and Midna decides to set the record straight by doing a small livestream on like, Instagram or something where she explains she's actually dating Dusk. She's reapplying Twi's markings as she says this, and is basically in his lap. Twilight spends the whole thing looking like he wants the floor to swallow him.

Rottla is informed by a therapist that she should try and do something since her kids don't feel safe (which, considering Time got stabbed in their living room, not feeling safe is understandable), and decides the best way to fix this is to teach them how to fight. Time and Lullaby are both black belts in several martial arts and can use most weapons well as a result. To Rottla's credit, this does actually work.

The sorority Warriors befriends is made up of the fairies I saved in his game. Because I love those fairies. They're my favorite part of his game. Also, Proxi is here.

Navi lives! She's rescued by the Order, like how the rest of Deku's kids were. She plays the role of a Great Fairy for the order. Her fairies are actually Warriors' sorority. And Tatl, actually.

Saria is a strong contender to become leader of the Order eventually.

Majora is here and I can't tell based on my outline if I have Time kill Majora or not. So, Time potentially kills a man.

Wind has a boat with an old radio connected to a lighthouse where an old man lives. This old man is Daphnese Nohanssen, but Wind always calls him Red. They talk a lot, and Daphnese is glad he has someone who will talk to him because he is very lonely.

Wild has a motorbike (Master Cycle) that it is honestly a miracle he hasn't wrecked yet. He breaks himself but never the bike. Wars has an older car that he's put some elbow grease in and you'd never know it wasn't new. Twilight has a beat up old pickup truck everyone is just waiting to die, but it hasn't yet. This is impressive, considering Twi does drag racing.

Also, Warriors has a tendency to get in fist fights, and between them and Legend (who is never arrested for the same thing twice), Time happens to be on a first name basis with most of the police in the city. The chief has his number on speed dial for when he needs to go pick up a kid.

Wild's friends are all alive and they love him. Flora is laser focused on helping him with his memory issues. And feeding him weird things. For science.

Wild's twin, Knight, is mute. He speaks in sign. He's also a bit blindsided by how chaotic the house is, but he fits in very well. They buy a roomba that Knight tapes a knife to and blames Wild.

At some point I'll write the fic where someone modifies a nerf gun and things escalate until Time shows up with one of those machine gun nerf guns hooked up to a car battery (a modification he did with help from Sheik and Ruto). Who needs depth perception who you can shoot 60 darts per second? It's chaos and when Malon gets back from a trip she takes this week she finds the house in disarray and a hockey puck in the wall. Clean up takes three days, and they are still finding nerf darts in weird places.

This is off the top of my head. I am certain I am missing something.

Forgive the weird formatting, I don't know what happened there.

-Attllhak

honestly i’d love if you ever posted any of the one shots you have already - and i think i saw one or two other people say they wanted to read the story too in the post where you explained most of the plot, so i’m not alone on this aha

Can i say i love how you somehow connected a lot of their games’ original details and made them make sense in a modern setting???? like it can be a hard thing to accomplish but with wat you just told us here it sounds like you did it amazingly and it makes me all the more excited to see what other connections there are!!! 

[colour-outside-the-liness]

Hi Colour! This is going to be a long one, so buckle up!

Oh wow, that's so precious! You've definitely earned the "real life Dani" nickname haha I wish I could find something meaningful like that to do with my life. I'm actually autistic and have ADHD so hearing you do this kind of work makes me really happy! Keep up the good work Ms. Clayton! 😁 Haha

You sound like a lot of fun to hang out with at pubs! Haha I'm glad you identify with that bit of info on your star placements. I had a lot of fun doing it too!

The thing about Hozier is that some of his lyrics are incredibly sapphic to me for some reason, I'm still trying to figure it out. NFWMB is one of the songs that feels like that to me. Don't know if you've heard it before but give it a try if you haven't. If you close your eyes it sounds like you're in an epic romantic story and there are swords, pretty gowns, and rooms lit by torches. Haha

The beginning of this song was inspired by a poem written by W.B Yeats called "The Second Coming" in 1920, and it talks about an apocalypse of sorts, alluding to all of the horrors men inflicted upon the world which ends up awakening this beast that goes to Jesus's place of birth in the Bible (Bethlehem) to be born. The last lines being:

"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,

Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?"

So the song starts with:

"When I first saw you

The end was soon

To Bethlehem it slouched

And then, it must've caught a good look at you"

And oh boy do I think of Dani when I hear that. Especially bc of that scene where Viola accepts Dani's invitation to live inside her. And nobody knows why she accepts it (but I do!).

And yeah at first glance you might not think much of Dani. in the beginning she's just a tiny frail small-town girl with a lot of anxiety, running away from her past traumas. But she proves us wrong again and again and again. She moves to a country she's never been before entirely by herself, sees an opportunity, and doesn't let go of it even when it looks like it went wrong. Then is very loving and tender with these children who have gone through so much and are still going through so much. Tries to fight (with a fire poker!!) the threatening man that keeps harassing her, the children, and her friends. THEN manages to soften the angry, grumpy lesbian who's given up on people after A LOT of trauma (too much in my opinion) and doesn't give up on her when she rejects her either. Freaking exorcises her ex and makes him stop haunting her so she can be with the love of her life. And then finally as if all of that didn't make her the bravest hero in this story, she literally stops an apocalypse from happening and saves everyone from this beast by sacrificing herself without even thinking twice. Saves everyone that came before her and then the ones who'll come after for the rest of eternity. I mean the P-O-W-E-R this girl has. 💪 so hell yeah the lady in the lake wanted to take her.

When Hozier says:

"Ain't it a gentle sound, the rollin' in the graves?

Ain't it like thunder under earth, the sound it makes?

Ain't it exciting you, the rumble where you lay?

Ain't you my baby? ain't you my baby?"

I can only think of Dani at the bottom of the lake laying on top of all the bones of the people Viola killed and how she's at peace living forever in a dark place like that. That's kinda hardcore y'know?

After the first verses, Hozier goes on to talk abt his lover, someone so utterly terrifying even the beast of the end of the world can't stand to look at them. But this song is also about being proud to be this person's lover bc nothing can fuck with them, not bc you are there to protect them and wouldn't let anyone harm them, but bc they're more than capable of protecting themselves and you too. So in my head, this song is Jamie's declaration of love to Dani.

And then I think of Jamie's devotion to Dani when she said "If you can't feel anything, then I'll feel everything for the both of us." shown in this verse:

"If I was born as a blackthorn tree

I'd wanna be felled by you

Held by you

Fuel the pyre of your enemies"

And the fact that she took what she could get just to be with Dani. She knew she'd have to suffer for/bc of her at some point, but chose to be with her anyway. I have no doubts in my mind she'd want to be anything for her as long as they could be together in any way, shape, or form. In all the lives they happened to meet one another too.

Wouldn't it be cool to see them in an AU where Dani is like a medieval princess who's supposed to marry Edmund to form an alliance between kingdoms or something and Jamie is an assassin who is hired to kill the princess so she has to pretend to be Dani's personal guard or wtever but they fall in love and run away together and Jamie teaches her how to fight so Dani becomes this warrior but turns out Dani is naturally good at it and then she becomes a legend? Hahaha I can see her riding a horse in the winter with paint on her face and her blonde hair falling over this fur-lined cloak, fierce look on her face, and Jamie riding next to her (always). Then they come across Viola who's a witch and puts a curse on Dani and then Dani and Jamie have to travel to all sorts of places and fight all sorts of people and go on this whole adventure to rid Dani of this curse. Maybe Dani has to go back to her kingdom bc her father dies and there are other people trying to take her kingdom so there's a lot of angst and suffering but then they win at the end after a lot of sweat and tears and they live happily ever after! 😎Hahaha

Anyway, I hope you're having a great week so far and hope you had fun with your niece today! (I know if I was her and you had us make fudge and paint I'd worship you haha) I'm sorry for the very (very) long ask, but I've been obsessing over this idea for months and I just had to share it with someone! ✌️✨

(And you can call me Libby or wtever since I'm not anon anymore 🤗)

Awwh thank you so much for saying I have earned my 'real life Dani' title is means a lot to me that you guys see that in me!! I am sure you do so many meaningful things in life without even realising it!! I honestly just want to make a difference and I love helping people so going into a career like this just seemed so natural to me and I really do love what I do!! Thank you so much I really hope I can keep up the good work!! I hope I'm a lot of fun- I know I have helped win a few pub quizzes and there's been a few times I've won games of trivial pursuit as well so that really did make so much sense to me and learning about all the placements of my chart was so much fun and was so interesting so thank you very much!! I have heard some of Hozier's lyrics are quite sapphic and I always mean to look into more of his songs and then just never do but I will definitely look in to NFWMB because the lyrics you have sent me here are incredible and definitely give of Dani x Jamie vibes I definitely agree with you in everything you have said about why Viola accepted Dani's invitation- Dani and Viola are similar in some ways and this was something I was explaining to my niece when she watched it with me. I explained to her that both Viola and Dani are strong willed, and stubborn, and would do anything to fiercely protect the people they care about. We saw that time and time again with Dani, how within days of knowing Miles and Flora she was out with a fire poker trying to protect them from a strange man that she kept seeing around the manor. And how Viola would've done anything to protect her daughter. One major difference between them though is that Viola seemed to have a slight selfish streak where as Dani is entirely selfless, she was selfless for the longest time in even agreeing to marry Eddie so she wouldn't hurt him, she was selfless in protecting Miles and Flora, and even more selfless in saving Flora's life and freeing all the trapped spirits of Bly Manor and then she is selfless in the fact that she won't drag anyone down and won't hurt anyone else at Bly ever again. The one thing she did for herself was being with Jamie- and she was able to make Jamie open up and trust people in way she probably hadn't for the longest time. Dani is a truly strong person as was Viola and I can see why she would accept Dani's invitation. I will have to listen to this song to see it from a Jamie perspective which I will definitely do tomorrow but from the lyrics you have sent me I can definitely see it being a love declaration to Dani from Jamie. Jamie knew in the end she would suffer because she knew she wouldn't be able to keep Dani forever, and knew that one day she would have to leave her- but she knew loving Dani for as long as she was allowed to would be worth that pain in the end and Jamie is a truly strong person as well for knowing this and staying by Dani's side anyway when that must have been such a hard thing for Jamie to ever have to accept. Jamie would've been anything for Dani and would've one anything for her as Dani would've for Jamie and that's why I love them so much. They loved each other so purely and without conditions and so wholeheartedly and it really was such a lovely thing to watch play out in front of us (even if it did hurt us all at the end). I think it would be so cool to see an AU like that I think medieval stuff is always so fun and so interesting and a good enemies to lovers start never fails either because there's so much tension there between them. And Jamie being undercover as someone to get close to Dani and them slowly falling in love with each other would just be a great thing to see!! And I am all for warrior Dani and Jamie (women with weapons is a little bit of a weakness of mine)!! This whole AU just sounds incredible I love a good curse in fantasy stories and the curse slowly taking over and you thinking they're going to run out of time but everything works out in the end!! Dani going back to her kingdom because of her sick Dad dying would be great for angst because it would look

like she would have to marry someone to create an alliance and that she would have to take over a kingdom (perhaps something she never wanted to do in the first place)!! I think this could be a very angsty one shot and could be so interesting and fun and the happy ending would definitely make all the angst worth it in the end!! I am having a good week so far thank you and I had so much fun with my niece today, making fudge went great and she was happy that I was able to show her how to do it because she'd never made it before so now that's something she knows how to do (I think she thinks I'm way cooler than I actually am haha thank you for saying you'd worship me though if you were my niece haha 😂) but tomorrow she is teaching me how to do something because I taught her how to make fudge today... she's gonna teach me how to draw in an anime style- which is something she is really into and even though I'm not she loves drawing so I've asked if she can teach me since I taught her something today!! There's no need to apologise I loved this long angst and I loved this idea I think it's really great and interesting and that song just seems amazing and I am definitely gonna listen to it tomorrow when I get chance!! Thank you for sharing this idea with me I loved it!! ☺️ Haha oki doki then as long as that's alright with you Libby is what I'll call you!! Like I said you can seriously call me anything!! ☺️

[ganymedesclock]

Yes! I am so fucking sick of the "fuck yeah humans!" mentality that's seems to have wormed its way into every fandom. I'm tired of reading stories and ideas about aliens marveling at how humanity is so strong, dangerous, powerful, intelligent, adaptable, and all that shit, and how they can beat anything and anyone because they're just "inherently better." It's that same 40k crap, just retexturized.

I feel like “humans are weird” is trying to be a rebuttal to the perception of humans as the generic, boring, everyman race, like “oh why would you ever play a human when you can play an elf or a space elf,” when I feel like ironically both of those concepts have the same problem: it’s a perception of humans as a default.

Humans Are Weird doesn’t actually challenge the perception of us as default, generally; it’s just a question of whether humans are the bottom line or the top, whether everyone else is more interesting than us, or everyone else is less interesting than us. Both, ultimately, flatter humans with the idea that we’re the meterstick by which the whole world can be judged, even if humans as the bottom line seems like it’s insulting us, which is why I think Humans Are Weird falls short- it perceives it as an insult and tries to solve it with aggrandization, but, in actuality, the problem is we’re already overly aggrandizing ourselves other hypothetical other peoples. 

Many a generic trying-to-be-Tolkien high fantasy gives us Elf Cities and Dwarf Cities and Orc Cities, but if they just want to make a port town or a lovely peasant village or a bloodsports arena city these things are often made human. It’s the same problem that if you have a cast of white able-bodied men, they’ll be divided according to personality and theme, the Introverted Smart One, the Brave but Gentle Strong One, the Charismatic Leader, the Sarcastic but Loyal Second In Command. But in many traditional media, if your hero team has only one girl, being The Girl will be considered her personality trait, so she doesn’t need another one.

Same problem here- being The Elf is considered a personality trait. So if you have humans, they’re allowed to be a bunch of different things inside and outside of their culture but even if we have colorful characters, we might put a Proud Warrior on the cast because of his Proud Warrior Culture, or a charismatic linguist from their charismatic linguist culture, or a brilliant scientist from her brilliant scientist culture. While humans can have a proud warrior, a charismatic linguist, and a brilliant scientist- because since we are humans, we realize that the idea of trying to characterize even a single culture out of the many cultures on Earth as having a single personality would be ridiculous and stupid. We don’t have people in space operas introducing themselves of “oh, I come from the proud New York clan, in New York, everyone is a warrior, it’s simply not DONE otherwise,”

Personally as a writer, if you really want to take a crack at fixing the underlying problem posed by humans as default, I feel like there’s two solutions here.

If you don’t have any noteworthy standout thing to do with humans in your fantasy or scifi setting, exclude them entirely. This forces the audience instead of perceiving the environment as a default with a bunch of cool add-ons, that instead they need to empathize directly with the viewpoints of the elves, orcs, dwarves, goblins, etc. that dwell in this world. 

If you do want to include humans... make them interesting. For example, being light on some details, I’m working on a Voltron reimagining AU which features people from Earth as part of a broader community of sapient life. And no, I don’t have Allura boggling in wonder and horror at, say, the lack of viscosity of terran tears. But I did still have some fun worldbuidling with the terrans:

They currently lay claim to the only fully artificial planet. They did that! It’s pretty cool. They also tend to modify and climate-control the hell out of a lot of their colonies, which is a tendency born of the fact that, as the intergalactic whippersnappers of the Leo Supercluster who also experienced a mass exodus early in their dealings with other races, they snapped up a bunch of what was not exactly prime real estate and didn’t look it in the mouth.

Similarly because of this you have a lot of terran diaspora on planets that aren’t Federation holdings. Comparatively, galra living elsewhere like that is rarer because the galra tend traditionalist and their culture is basically built around accommodating entire clans rather than specific individuals, so they tend to move or organize themselves.

So, in this setting, the terrans have an interesting chunk of worldbuilding to them, they’ve got a history that’s uniquely theirs that makes them good company with the unique histories of others, and this leads to some cool features you can see- for example the diaspora and ‘less habitable’ planets affects these versions of Lance, Pidge, and Hunk- Lance, who grew up on a Spaceport, which is full of different people, and so he’s the team’s cheerful polyglot who’s conversational in a large number of spoken languages since he grew up leaping from Spanish to English to several galran dialects to olkarin and back again in three conversations. Hunk, as a character, who comes from an affluent background and thus has access to the luxury of cybernetic augmentation- because before they had mastered making planets safe for them, terrans figured how to make themselves safe for planets. And Pidge, who’s from a high gravity planet so she’s short, abnormally dense, and capable of impressive jumps.

That’s not an insistence that you have to specifically characterize humans in a fantastical setting the way I have, naturally, but just, don’t treat humans as defaults, and don’t feel like you have to diminish everybody else to make up for how “boring” humans are.