#//Could be related to That canon happening that spooked her

[dutybcrne]

She seems a little more quiet that usual, legs kicking out a bit in unease as they dangle over her seat’s edge.

[achickennamedcheese]

OHHHH CHEESE~

I HAVE BROUGHT MORE UNDERTALE AU LORE FOR YOU

and yes, it is Bloodmoon related :3

There he is, the guy himself. He’ll set up traps all around Snowdin and the forest in order to capture (or outright kill) Lunar. Lunar though spooked actually finds the twins to be cool, but they both kinda intimidate them so they’d only actively want to befriend them both in a replay. Now as for Blood’s fight.

He technically has five total fights, but the first four are more just him ambushing Lunar and attacking a bit and then getting distracted with something else. In those four first fights he’ll use a mace, a bow, a scythe, and a chainsaw to fight. One of those fights, probably the scythe one, would be interrupted by Snow complaining about Blood stealing her favorite weapon, which would lead to a small argument between the twins which Lunar would use to run away. In short, Lunar has to run away from all four fights. And then, the actual fight. In the outskirts of Snowdin during a snow storm, Blood will use every single weapon they had used before and some knives to try and fight//kill Lunar, by then he’d be pissed by the fact he hasn’t been able to kill them and would absolutely not hold back. There’d be multiple insta kills at various points in the fight. And of course, the blue soul mechanic. Lunar would have to actively avoid traps that had been set in the battlefield by Blood all while dodging the bot’s attacks. It’d be a very fun fight over all, well, for the player, Lunar would be terrified on their first run. And then comes the special attack, Blood chases Lunar all around the battlefield with the intent of leading them to a giant fucking bear trap hidden in the snow or something. If activated, the trap is an insta kill. If not…

The trap still activates. And Blood falls on it.

from here there are five different ways the battle could end, I have made a chart though I forgot one of the variants.

There are two turns where neither Lunar or the player can act, due to the shock (and angst >:)) of the event. Once free to act, there are three turns left to the battle. This isn’t the case if Lunar had been fighting prior to this happening and had lowered Blood’s health over 50%, in that case Blood would straight up die from the bear trap, EXP would be gained from this. If his HP is over 50%, he’d lose a good chunk of it, the rest slowly draining as the turns pass.

If the three turns are up and nothing has been done to either help, escape, or end things, Blood will die, no EXP would be gained from it.

If choosing to attack, Lunar will hit the trap so it hurries draining his HP up, Blood dies, EXP is gained.

The canon thing that happens in Lunar’s first run is they run away. They exit Snowdin, shaken up by the events that just transpired, and will refuse to go back to Snowdin if the player tries to go back. They would try to not think about it and keep going through the underground, only other mention of Blood being Solar (haven’t thought that through yet), and it isn’t until they reach Judgement Hall that they remember that. They are confronted with what they did by facing the person who’d be the most affected by Blood’s death, though she doesn’t mention it at all, she just gives Lunar their judgement and leaves, her wearing her dead sibling’s scarf being the only giveaway that they know what happened. Needless to say Lunar feels extremely guilty about it, but y’know, final boss, so they deal with that post game in the phone call, where Snow addresses them coldly and uncaringly.

The happy ending is the one where Lunar helps Blood by disarming the trap. He scrambles away and the battle ends. Lunar looks around and finds him sitting against a tree, processing what just happened, when he notices he doesn’t know what to say, he simply stares at Lunar then at the trap then at Lunar. He mutters a small thank you before running away. That’s all Lunar hears about both twins for a while. And then, the second half of waterfall is reached, and Lunar receives a phone call.

“Uhhh, is this the human? Hey. Hey! Hi, it has been some time, uhhhhh. So I uh, I wanted to say thanks for helping me out back there, I uh, I appreciate it… god that feels weird to say— anyways! I know we got off in the wrong foot, so uh, sorry for trying to kill you? I can, like, make it up to you? Just drop by our place or something, I got rid of all the traps (I think) so, yeah… Wha? How’d I get your phone number? Other caught it while looking over your shoulder as you used it, anyways— later!”

And so, the blood twins can be befriended.

You might notice I’m missing a variation of the fight, and that’s because the No mercy route is so incredibly different that any other. I also have a thing to illustrate what I mean with this

Blood will straight up not fight in the No Mercy route. The first four encounters do happen, but by the time the outskirts are reached he has decided he simply won’t fight you again. You had no reaction to any of the traps, you hadn’t even flinched when he took out the chainsaw, he’s creeped out by you. He tells you he won’t even bother since no human in their right mind would ever not react to any of that, he also gloats about it also probably not being a fair fight because he’d probably win easily if he didn’t hold any punches. The fight starts, and there are two ways to go about this, kill him or don’t.

If you kill him, he’ll be very taken aback by the strength of your attack, he won’t say anything, he won’t move, he’ll just stare at you. In the last second he’ll turn away to run, but it’d be worthless by then, he’d turn to dust a few feet behind you.

If you don’t kill him he’ll be relieved, he had been very anxious about this confrontation for what he assumes to be no reason, he’ll just be like ‘cool’ and walk away. Just like him living in any other route, he calls you once you reach the second half of Waterfall, though he isn’t as chipper as he could be, in fact he’d still be very creeped out by you, but be willing to talk about murder and bones over some prepackaged meals or whatever.

That’s all I have for now, please give me your thoughts and please give input on if this is too much or something

Later ;P

BRUH PLS I- AHDJFKWJFJJEF

You even got everything down to the routes and mechanics??? Dude omfg this is sick

Also- love how... how should I say this- uh- fruity/zesty Blood is 👍

[thatonefandomjumper]

If you were able to make Valdangelo canon how would you write them ?

Very good question.

The thing is, Valdangelo is a relationship that I feel had so so much potential due to how the characters were individually written, but at the same time, I really don't trust that Riordan would have done them justice just on account of how Heroes of Olympus was written as a whole. To really make their relationship satisfying, I'd probobly need to make some substantial rewrites to the series as a itself.

But for simplicity sake, let's say we're keeping all big plot points and beats the same with the only difference being that Valdangelo is endgame.

House of Hades would be the most logical place for the two of them to shine, considering Nico was, uh, quite occupied during Mark of Athena. Leo is canonically very spooked by Nico's mere existence on the ship and Nico prefers to keep to himself most times. Not only that, but the two places they each spend the most time is not only the most isolated parts of the ship but also, sort of the furthest away from each other (Crows nest and Engine room).

Not only that, but these two are so bad at normal human interactions that the only way they could genuinely start to open up to each other and find that they are oh so eerily similar is for some outside factor to push for it to happen.

Whatever that is, and no matter how it happens, the biggest thing the two of them need is just a conversation. Genuinely, I think that's all that is needed for something to happen. Something romantic? Not necessarily, but hoo-boy if they opened up to each other in one way or another things would never be the same.

There will always be a terrifying thought of "Oh god, you see right though me and I see myself in you. This is awful I must stay away or I might learn something about myself that I don't want too." But at the same time, no one else will ever get it. To hate yourself so much. To feel alone all the time. To be unworthy of love and broken beyond repair.

So as much as they want to stay away, they inevitable meet again. Possibly in the night, when they are alone, because they would not want anyone around for this.

I am a dynamic girly at the end of the day, so when I ship characters I rarely actually think about the getting together part or anything that relates to that, but were they to get together at this point, it would be in a sort of fucked up self-discovery way where both of them adamantly agree to keep it a secret. They do not want anyone to find out ever that they kiss when they are on the verge of breakdowns.

But evolving from that (And after Nico's outing and Leo's stay in Ogygia, probobly with platonic Caleo or at least Leo feeling obligated to save her out of guilt for not being able to be with her) they become each others confidants. They both dislike showing true weakness, especially of the emotional kind so having someone who just gets it is not only new but terrifying. Whether that be the deaths of their family members or both of their serious cases of internalized homophobia, the other will understand.

People notice, of course, but Nico and Leo avoid each other in public to such a comical degree that it makes it almost more obvious that something is going on. They deflect like crazy when their relationship is brought up and most back off out of respect, but Piper and Percy are the two who speculate the most...

As the journey passes, little things start happening. Leo tells Nico to eat once in a while. Nico forces Leo to take a proper nap. Things the others either don't know they struggle with or aren't thinking about because there ae more important things going on. And slowly, the two start... improving? It was never the intention because they don't see themselves worthy of healing, but the other wants them to get better, and they don't want to lose the one relationship that let's them be wholly vulnerable. It's strange, but it feels good.

Now, I have always hated how angry Nico was at Leo for dying in canon because it makes zero sense in my opinion, but that's a whole 'nother conversation. But this time around, Nico would feel every right to be furious, because let's be real, Leo's secretive ass would not tell him this. There is a line to his emotional openness and telling his sort-of-dating-for-convenience-boyfriend about the fact he's actively planning his own suicide, despite the fact he's planning to bounce back from it is just a step too far. He knows it's selfish. But he just can't.

And it's in the time they're apart that they truly understand just how much they'd started leaning on each other in the time they were together. The bad habits they broke coming back and the longjng to see the other growing stronger. They both sort of hate it. Nico joins Jason and Piper in their search while Leo is trying his best to get back to camp.

No matter how the reunion would go, I like to think that Nico would have spilled the beans about their relationship to the others at that point, so Leo, who had been psyching himself up to swoop Nico into his arms and declare their love to the camp doesn't exactly get that. But what he does get is tears, angry, possibly unfair words, and reconciliation. Their back with each other, and this time, they won't screw it up.

Valdangelo is a story of healing. Of two broken people building each other back up. No matter what direction I'd go with actually making the relationship happen, they will always represent the mortifying ordeal of being known.

Anyway, they are actually impossible and there is something very wrong with them. Thank you for the ask and here's a drawing:

Also, I wrote a Valdangelo fic way back in 2021 where a similar scenario played out if you are interested:

[alligaytorswamp]

Can we get a bit more about Lutz's story? What are his relations to he Wansheng funeral parlor? Does he have any unique interactions with Barbara or any other members of the church? What about with Venti?

UADHSAJKHADSJKH THANK YOU FOR ASKING THISSSS AUGH !! okay okay i will uhhh spam it under the cut, because god knows i have a yapping disease-

re: more story- i could probably write an essay on exactly how his life went. however. that is definitely too much info, so i have to ask which part are you talking about ? 👁

his life is split up in somewhat okay parts on here, maybe that helps akjdhaskljhdsjka

re: wangsheng funeral parlor i dont think he has been to liyue... at least for now i havent created any canon event that would involve that but! he knows about it, i think some characters from liyue who visit mond would maybe talk about it ? he is The Cemetery boy, i feel like it makes sense and Lutz thinks it's coolest place! Like it just sounds very impressive to him, he thinks to have such a place that's been running for so long is just a nice thing? Openness about death is also smth he respects. And I'm sure he heard bits and piece about Hu Tao so he thinks she is cool too LOL Maybe makes a joke that like if he ends up dying in Liyue he will make sure to get a deal in wangsheng

idk if mond has a funeral parlor... is there none at all, or there is it's just smaller/has a different name? either way Lutz wishes Mond had smth like Wangsheng lol

members of the church: he is close to a lot of nuns in there, mostly because they were the ones taking care of him, after his family died i think he is a Known Character to all regular church goers (he works there, he is a church boy himself, after the tragedy i think it would be impossible to miss an entire child with bandages over half of his face)

Barbara... hm.... i think they are on friendly terms and act more like colleagues? I dont think they ever got super close... I believe Barbara is a bit younger than him, and given her popularity and all.. yeah Lutz just doesn't wanna bother her too much? She seems busy already lol But he does have a very good opinion on her

Rosaria... i think Lutz is scared of her. LMAO. there is just weird spooked respect he feels towards her. He is also lowkey impressed with the fact that she isn't even that devoted... he can... understand that 👁

Venti... are we talking just some bard dude? I don't think Lutz has a strong opinion on him. He likes his music that's for sure... thinks he is oddly young looking.. but dats about it

Venti as in Lord Barbados and just Anemo Archon? Oh Lutz has a mixed feeling on him he is a church boy, so being mildly religious was smth put into his brain from the young age. However. After losing his entire family and also getting hurt like that..? I feel like it's understandable he became doubtful.. when someone promises you that gods are looking out for you and then THIS happens? Yeah idk i think Lutz definitely had a moment where he became a total non-believer/hater as he was going through the motions of dealing with his grief. Like he definitely blamed all the archons for it at least once. Over the years tho... i think he just.. calmed down? Like he isn't a total believer still, but he isn't against it. He just no longer puts too much faith into 'powers above'. and he thinks archons are unlikely to care about fates of some random people... which is understandable to him...

[the-lightless-flame]

ok i promised @bornetoblood so here is the web!agnes headcanon

this takes a bit of explaination so ill go into how it would work and then ill talk about why i like it

(also obviously this is just based on my interpretation of agnes and her story, if u have a different interpretation of her thats fine!! i just love my funny messiah woman and want to see her happy)

this became very long so the essay is under the cut

ANYWAy so the 'how':

jonny said in the season 4 q+a that one could probably sever their connection with the desolation via a completely selfless sacrifice.

agnes' suicide probably fits this description; the in-canon explanation (from what agnes told arthur) is so that the lightless flame could eventually try the scorched earth again with another messiah.

i dont fully believe what arthur said, and its definitely possible that she was just telling him what he wanted to hear. in that case, her making the decision to once and for all stop herself from being able to bring about the scorched earth probably counts as a selfless act as well, cause even if the scorched earth was never actually going to work, she didnt know that.

the first option doeshave a certain irony to it imo, but it doesnt really fit with how i see her at this point, as i think at this point shes not that loyal to the lightless flame (see: jack barnabus). it doesnt really matter to the headcanon tho, all that matters is that agnes committed a selfless act.

doing this disconnected her from the lightless flame, but in doing so she could have potentially connected to another entity.

all that's really required for becoming an avatar is choice, but physical and metaphysical death is encouraged; agnes is experiencing both (physical is obvious, and metaphysical as the death of her as messiah of the desolation).

imo the web is the obvious choice. she already has a connection with it through gertrude and hilltop road, and a lot of agnes' story is about the ways the lightless flame controlled and groomed her, as well as how her final weeks were when she finally managed to get some kind of control over her life (even if that control is her own death). basically, since control is a big theme in agnes' story, and taking control is the prominent feeling that led to her death, i dont think creating a connection to the embodiment of control is such a reach.

so agnes goes through something similar to jon's coma. maybe the lightless flame thinks shes dead, maybe they realise she isnt connected to the desolation anymore and leave her alone.

from there, agnes just does whatever. probably tries not to do anything too notable. she burns emma harvey's house with gertrude obviously, and she does need to feed her power but i dont think she'd do anything thatd get in a statement.

ok so thats how i think it could happen. now why i like it:

first, i dont really like agnes having died. it works fine as an ending to her story as a part of the show at large i guess, and it doesnt really matter to me in that sense. but for her as a character, i think her ending just makes her generic tragic character and thats not really my kind of thing. idk, like i said im not mad about it being her ending or anything, theres definitely a lot to be said for how her living under the lightless flame couldve led to that decision, but its not really what i want for her.

there is also how it relates to the queer reading of her story, but i talked about that earlier.

also i want her to be happy. leave me alone.

second, i really like the idea of agnes having a semi-normal life. she still has web stuff, but its mostly just subtle stuff (we know there are a lot of spooks that arent reported to the institute, and i think what she does is probably that). gertrude tracks her down at some point to help killing emma harvey, but that it.

the web probably doesnt need her to do anything major, cause thats what annabelle's for and shes only a few years away from being an avatar.

in the eyepocalypse she probably tries not to make things too bad for people in her domain, as much as thats a thing she can actually do.

third, iirc it means that every web avatar thats dead was killed by another web avatar. and i think thats fun. obviously she wouldnt have been a web avatar for raymond, but she probably wouldve been marked and thats enough for me.

i like the imagery of the web keeping people only until theyve become obsolete, i imagine it probably wouldnt want to keep people around once theyve done what it needed them to do. also spider imagery.

fourth, agnes did not get NEARLY enough opportunity to be gay. like she probably fucked jude for at least a while but there is. no way that relationship was healthy. (i could talk a lot more about that but this is already too long)

idk who with. i like gertrudeagnes conceptually but i also like them only having met once. they probably did fuck tho.

i saw a fic earlier that shipped her and annabelle and i havent read it yet but that sounds fun.

idk maybe she just finds a normal, non-aligned girlfriend. thats probably the best option. anyway let her be gay

ok thats it the essay is done. i probably forgot stuff but ill just talk about it later. again this is just my headcanon, u might interpret her different to me and thats fine! the whole point of her story is we dont know that much about what shes really like so theres a lot thats just up to personal opinion.

if for some ungodly reason u read all of this then why??? (i just checked its at like a thousand words wtf) but also tysm i probably wont have children but if i do u are now entitled to my firstborn.

this is too long im going to stop talking now bye

[sparkles-and-trash]

The Gaang are Roommates AU ~

note: this is a rewrite and repost of my old roommates au, there was some stuff I wanted to change, and I wanted to make the parts a little longer, so yeah, ta-dah! 

- think modern setting in the canon universe, bending is still a thing 

- the Gaang are all in going to Ba Sing Se University 

- I’m gonna change the ages a bit to make it easier for myself, sorry 

- Zuko, Sokka, Suki and Mai are 20, Katara, Ty Lee and Azula are 19, Aang, Toph and Yue are 18

- so, Zuko, Sokka, Katara, Aang and Toph end up living together in a big loft type apartment 

- Sokka and Aang are old best friends, they met Toph in Middle School, and Katara is a natural part of the group 

- until now Sokka and Katara have both been living in the dorms, and they both hate it intensely 

- but now that Aang and Toph are also in uni, they all decide to move in together!

- …but the only problem is that the only place they find that they like is just out of their price rage (Toph’s parents aren’t supportive of her major so they’re not helping out much)

- enter: ~ Zuko ~

- so, Zuko has been living with his uncle Iroh since his Father, who’s a high up in some big and important company the Fire Nation, disowned him for speaking up against the company’s shifty treatment of workers and ruining a lot of sacred land etc 

- they’re still firebenders and the scar still happened, not in an Agni Kai, but it happened 

- but after Zuko started uni, Iroh really tried to push him to meet some people his own age and make some friends

- the only people Zuko talks to on the regular besides Iroh is Azula, Ty Lee and Mai, and Mai is the only one who is like, his friend yanno?

- the last year the deal was that if Zuko didn’t branch out, Iroh would have him live one year with other students

- it’s his idea of tough love 

- Zuko tried to do some random kid’s homework to have them pretend to be his new friend in front of Iroh so he wouldn’t have to, but Iroh can tell he’s lying so easily 

- so, Zuko ends up hearing about the Gaang through Mai, who heard from Ty Lee, who plays field hockey, Suki, who’s best friends with Sokka

- so, he goes to meet them, and it’s so awkward mY GOD

- Katara is a B I G environmental activist and HATES Ozai and his company, with good reason

- she eases up a tad when Zuko admits to being turned away from as a teen, but she is still suspicious

- Aang loves him right away, ofc, and that makes Katara even more suspicious because she’s pretty protective of Aang

- she claims it’s because he’s so kind and believes everyone but she totally liikeees hiiiim

- Toph is just like, sure, as long as he pays his rent idgaf

- Sokka is weirdly quiet, because he’s had a huge crush on Zuko forever, and the only one who knows is Aang (and Toph but she ain’t no snitch)

- so, ya boy makes the cut, and before they know it, it’s move-in day!

- but, the idiots didn’t think through the facts that it’s only three bedrooms oops

- and Toph is NOT afraid to pull the “I’m blind and I need my space” card

- and nobody’s up to fight her on it, so 

- let’s just say there is A LOT of back and forth, but with Katara refusing to room with her brother again, and Zuko being rightfully scared of Katara, it ends up with Zuko and Sokka sharing a bedroom, and Katara and Aang

- they have separate beds ofc

- but still, tension, man, so much tension

- it takes a while, but the dynamics starts working out really well

- Zuko is good at grocery shopping and likes to clean, and Aang is always happy to help him out

- Sokka loves cooking, so he does that a lot

- Katara is always on top of the others with schoolwork and making sure everyone is okay, and she usually does it in genius, sneaky ways so people doesn’t even notice that she does it

- Toph is clearing the air off bullshit

- like, she will call a bitch out

- but because she cares about said bitch

- so, Aang knows that Sokka has a crush on Zuko because Sokka told him in a weak moment, and Toph knows because she just knows

- Aang is a good friend tho, and he tries to like, ease them together

- but he is so awkward about it, the poor thing, and Zuko doesn’t understand AT ALL

- Toph is just sitting back and sighing a lot

- Katara doesn’t understand either but she just stays out of it (smart girl)

- but okay, we know how oblivious Zuko can be right?

- Sokka can give him googly eyes and blush and stutter around him so much and he still has no clue at all

- Zuko starts thinking Sokka just doesn’t like him at all

- but then one night Zuko has this really intense nightmare

- okay and quick addition, his scar is… handshaped? Like, you can clearly tell what happened to him

- but nobody talks about it, yet

- but then he’s having a terrible nightmare and is talking and begging and pleading in his sleep

- so much that Sokka wakes up

- and he catches on pretty fast, but had no idea what to do

- so he just shuffles over to Zuko’s side of the room and starts tapping his shoulder rapidly

- but nothing happens

- so he just… gently and awkwardly pats his head until Zuko wakes up

- and Zuko is like… wat u doin there bro

- and Sokka is like… just patting ur head to wake you from a nightmare bro

- and they awkwardly just mumble and go back to their beds

- but Zuko is smiling a lot because someone who’s not his family or a family friend really cares about him

- after that, Zuko slowly starts opening up to all of them, but Sokka especially 

- he never really tells them about being cast out and burned tho

- until one day he kinda casually slings it into a convo all fast and awkwardly

- it’s just Toph, Aang and Sokka there

- Toph yells so WHAATTT so loudly and just metalbends the whole fridge into a clump in rage

- Aang cries lmao but he tries to hide to and be supportive and not awkward

- Sokka is kinda quiet, but he carefully asks about it that night when they’re in their beds, and they talk a little about it

- Aang tells Katara (with permission) and she awkwardly, but wholeheartedly tells him that he can always talk to her

- they do that «awkward sibling hug» from Gravity Falls after

- *hugs stiffly* «pat, pat»

- but okay, Toph and metalbending when angry, it happens quite a lot 

- this was the first time it was the fridge, but the toaster, the microwave, and several other appliances have met the same fate

- everyone is kinda used to it now, and she always replaces it

- except Zuko, who’s still kinda new to them all

- but what are you supposed to say when your new friends is so outraged by the abuse you went through that they crush a whole ass fridge?

- it actually reminds him that he’s cared for here, by these people who owe him nothing, and is not related to him, and it makes him a little dizzy to have people care this way

- he casually mentions it to his Uncle Iroh the time he’s in at work, that his new friend is a metalbender and squashed their whole fridge when she was pissed on his behalf

- Iroh is thrilled

- to the point of offering Toph a job lmao

- Toph, desperate to cut of as much ties with her family and be as self-sufficient as possible, agrees

- and now Iroh have two formerly rich kids with no clue about any sort of customer service and basic stuff like that working for him

- Toph is a hard worker tho, and she and Zuko work surprisingly well together

- Katara is a little relived, because the more those two work, the less are the chances of either of them trying to cook or do too many chores around their apartment

- they mean well, or, Zuko does, but he does so much dumb shit when trying to help lmao

- Sokka starts spending a lot of time over at The Jasmine Drago too

- Aang is still trying to keep the fact that Sokka likes Zuko a secret, but he is having trouble

- Katara is his biggest weakness, and now they’re suddenly alone with her a lot

- someone else who could always read Sokka really well is Suki

. whom he used date in high school, but they parted as friends and everything s cool

- but Sokka is a little taken aback when she comes into The Jasmine Dragon one day, hand in hand with Sokka’s childhood crush obsession, Yue

- for the first time in man’s memory, Sokka is a little speechless

- and Suki’s like “lmao dude I haven’t seen you like this since the first time you saw Zu-”

- cue Zuko popping out behind them like “WELCOME TO THE JASMINE DRAGON FRIENDS OF SOKKA :D”

- Sokka is so fucking red, poor boy is just about having an aneurism at this point

- but luckily something happens and Zuko gets distracted

- Suki is having the time of her life tho, Sokka always used to tease her for her crushes before and after they dated, and suddenly, here they are

- at the apartment, Aang decides they need some apartment traditions

- they’ve been living there for almost three months, after all

- so he decides that weekly movie nights are mandatory

- so are pillowforts

- Katara is actually really excited for it, she loves all things cozy and fall-like

- also… she is weak for Aang, y’all, and she loves seeing him all excited

- Zuko barely knows what a pillowfort is, he didn’t think real people actually made it

- but imagine these dorks in a pillowfort with hot chocolate and lot’s of pillows

- Toph claims that she thinks it’s soo dumb, but she will always make sit in the middle of the group all wrapped in her blanket and laughing when the others jump and get spooked from the horror movies Sokka always wants to watch

- and she will make sure the fort is right and perfect lmao

- Zuko is a little awkward about it at first, but he likes it too

- Sokka always manages to plop in next to Zuko lmao

- they haven’t talked about the head patting incident yet, but Zuko is def starting to feel the butterflies

- one time after a movie night Sokka falls asleep on Zuko’s shoulder, after the others have left for the night

- Zuko can’t resist waking him up with awkward head pats similar to the one Sokka used on him

- Sokka thinks he died and went to heaven lmao

- but then he fully wakes and sees Zuko’s shit eating grin and can’t help but laugh at the whole thing

- and Zuko has his “oh no he’s hot beautiful and I really adore him” moment

[gothgirlbethany]

((Bethany for the ask game?))

((from this post. im gonna leave this one out of parentheses for ease of reading.))

A-Realistic: Bethany first fell down into the Basement when she was 9. Like Isaac she was being chased by her mom with a knife. I haven't thought about specifically where she goes to enter the Basement yet. All she knows is after she entered whatever it ends up being, all she could see was darkness, all she could hear was gross flesh-related sounds. Eventually after running blindly around in what she could decipher was a four-walled flesh room, a door opened, and found the one who opened it was a ginger boy about her age. Lazarus was the first person she met down there and he immediately led her back to the lobby.

T.Beth re-entered the Basement when she was 22. A lot of you have probably seen the lore already, but here's a recap: her mom found out about her interest in the occult, locked her in the Home closet, and Beth was in there for what felt like an eternity. She hears a click at the door and sees her past self open it, and as soon as T.Beth tries to chase after her, OG Beth is long gone and she finds herself in the lobby she hung out in as a kid.

B-Hilarious: When it comes to fight-or-flight OG Beth is definitely flight. However there were times Azazel or Cain intentionally spooked her and she instinctively beat them up for it. Not even with wisps or tears. She just started wailing on them with her Book of Virtues.

T.Beth's grown up a bit from childhood fears and jump scares. Mostly. For someone into demons and ghosts and other paranormal happenings she sure is still afraid of the dark.

C-Angst: As some of yall have seen in a current thread with a particular Horseman, Beth WANTS to have faith in God. Mainly because the concept has been beaten (luckily not too physically) into her and she doesn’t know much else.

She wants. SO BAD. To love God. But she realized that He’s the reason she’s in this mess. The reason why her dad left and why her mom wants her dead and why her BFFs Edith and Esau were murdered as children. Beth despises God. But she can’t help but want Him back in her life even when she has strayed so far from His light. It’s just her trial, she thinks. The demon-summoning and being friends with and dating demons and the pre-marital sin of *gasp* hand holding are all a part of her trial. And God will forgive her one day. Because that’s what He’s supposed to do. Jesus loves her. She wants to believe that she can see.

D-I REJECT CANON, JOJO-: Like I've mentioned on this blog all of the characters are their own individuals and not Isaac just playing pretend. Beth's parents are named Judy (after the land of Judea where the town Bethany is based) and Michael (after my dad lol. it's a coincidence it's an angel name too). For some reason I feel like her last name would be Killicks. I just like the name and the irony of a prudish goody two-shoed Christian girl having a sinister sounding surname 👌

[fatal-rewrites-warriors]

tell us about fatalverse raggedpelt or fatalverse russetfur?

Well, first and foremost, Fatalverse!Raggedpelt is a molly! I felt like more relevant characters needed to be mollies (esp cats in leadership) and I wanted to make Yellowfang a lesbian as well, so her and Raggedpelt's relationship persists but as a much healthier and much gayer version as opposed to canon.

Before she was Raggedpelt, though, she was Moosepelt, named for being absolutely huge (at least to a Shadowclan cat), owing to her outsider heritage on her father's side. I like to think she had...some issue with potentially being half kittypet, but as she got older she came to appreciate the strength that outsider blood could bring to the clan. She never sought out her father like in canon, though, and basically none of that conflict with the kittypets that happens in Yellowfang's Secret occurs.

Raggedpelt was a rename that she got after a run in with a peculiarly intelligent and organized rat colony at the Carrionplace, in which she led a patrol to quickly take care of the problem. This was both around the time Yellowfang became a healer apprentice and they became mates.

Nothing else of note really happens. She becomes leader during a famine that was caused by Cedarstar and inevitably killed him. Afterwards, she brings in outsiders to fill out Shadowclan's ranks (including Russetfur, but we'll get to her in a second). This is when she finds Brokentail as a kitten near the border.

The rest you can basically read here. It covers a bit of Yellowfang and Raggedpelt's relationship, as well as their breakup shortly after Raggedpelt decides to adopt Broken.

-

As for Russetfur, she and Blackfoot are siblings and joined Shadowclan together. If they're related to Raggedpelt at all, we'll never know and it's never really relevant anyways.

She started out in the Town alone with her brother, who generally took the lead while they were there, leading to her becoming a little bit of a yes man to what he wanted, since he at least seemed to know what he was doing. Russetfur herself has spent a lot of time not quite nothing who she is or what she wants, but helping Blackfoot get what he wanted at least felt productive.

They left the Town at around a year old, around when things were starting to get particularly bad (ie when they started organizing a la Bloodclan) and joined Shadowclan--mainly at Blackfoot's behest, because he found meaning in Starclan. Russetfur was mostly just happy to get meals and a warm place to sleep on the reg, and didn't care much for Starclan.

Russetfur did thrive in the clan, though! She discovered she was a molly and was immediately accepted by her peers, no questions asked, and she found that she enjoyed being around other cats. It let her grow away from Blackfoot a bit...at least until Brokenstar became leader.

When Blackfoot started following Brokenstar, that's another instance of Russetfur going along with her brother. This time, though, it was less because she didn't know what to do (she very much didn't like Brokenstar and certainly didn't think he was in the right, star chosen or not!) and more that the idea of not doing what Blackfoot wanted spooked her.

And to be clear-Blackfoot never hurt her or manipulated her. It was simply all she knew. We'll hear more about Russetfur in the coming books, though. ;)

[askaceattorney]

Turnabout Memories

Hello and hap’piraki, everyone!

(Whoa...  Déjà vu.)

Now that we’re finally nearing the end of this (*twitch, twitch*) year, and now that I’m preparing to step off this blog for a time, I’d like to take a moment to reminisce about all the ground we’ve covered since the day I first discovered the uniquely fun experience of Ask Ace Attorney.

It all began a few years ago when...

Oh, right -- this’ll probably be pretty lengthy, so I’ll continue below the cut.

It all began a few years ago when I discovered Ask Ace Attorney through a Google search.  I don’t remember most of the details, but when I first found out about a blog that attempts to bring video game characters to life through blog posts and the power of imagination, I thought the idea was both strange...and amazing.

I’d only recently started getting into Ace Attorney at the time (after seeing Matthew Taranto’s hilarious mashup between it and the Kirby series), so I decided to send in a few letters and see if they’d get an answer.  Sure enough, a few months later, I saw the first response to one of them!  It was a pretty exciting feeling, to say the least.

I’d share that letter response here, but unfortunately, it included my real name, so we’ll have to save it for later.  For now, here are a couple of the earliest ones from me: a deeply emotional one from Dahlia to Iris (a little far-fetched, maybe, but I CAN SEE IT HAPPENING, THE MOD), and a short, punny one from Moe to Phoenix.  Not surprisingly, I enjoyed seeing the characters react to them in ways I found believable as much as I enjoyed writing these and several other letters.  I knew the Mod (the only moderator here at the time) wasn’t affiliated with Capcom, but his character portrayals were spot-on each time, and my creative spark and love for Ace Attorney received some constant fuel for a while thanks to this blog.

And then...this happened.  For a brief moment, I thought about how fun it would be to see if I could do what the Mod had been doing for so long, but then I decided it’d probably be better to leave it in someone else’s hands.  Sure, I was a huge fan of Ace Attorney and its loveable characters, but did I really love them enough to pretend to be them on a hugely popular blog?  Naaah.

I went over the rest of that story once before, so I’ll just give a brief recap here: my friend the Modthorne won the audition to become the next de Modder, I asked her if I could join, and then it ended up just being me here, followed by Mods Paups, Kristoph, and Maya.  That’s the way we became the Ask Ace Attorney bunch.

So, when I first made my debut as the Commode Co-Mod, my only real strategy for answering letters was to emulate the Mod's style.  I honestly wondered if I could accurately portray so many different personalities in a believable way, but, with a few hiccups along the way, I somehow managed to pull it off to some degree.  I also started developing my own style and becoming less conscientious about how my portrayals looked (that definitely took some time, though), and worrying less about the blog’s popularity and overall performance review.  That, I believe, was a big part of what made both of those steadily rise over time, until we ended up reaching and surpassing 12,000 followers!  (I’m still geekin’ out about that one.)  Just relaxing and going with the flow made things a lot easier for me, and apparently helped Ask Ace Attorney reach its current level of popularity.  Something tells me that choice paid off in the end, and thank goodness.

I of course have to give credit to the popularity of Ace Attorney and its characters, as well as the Mod for giving me and the other moderators so much material to start off with, but I sure never expected my role in helping to build the Ace Attorney fandom’s strength and size to be quite this large.  Heck, just getting to create things for so many people is a huge honor, so...what can I say to that, except a huge thank you to Capcom and the Mod?

Don’t worry, I’ll get to thanking all of you in just a moment.  ; )

So, anyway, that’s all the general stuff.  Let’s talk about the highlights of the last three years, now, shall we?

My first holiday-related post was an April Fool’s Day one, so let’s start there.  We came close to hearing about Phoenix’s lawyer camp incident...

...gave a few of the characters a chance to ask some questions of their own...

...had a little run-in with some of the bad guys...

...and briefly opened the window into some characters’ minds.

We sure didn’t fool around when it came to fooling around, did we?

Then there was Halloween.  We dealt with a creeper in the darkness...

...let one of the lesser-known characters go on a brief venture beyond the fourth wall...

...let some characters switch outfits and personalities for a short while...

...and paid homage to a classic interactive cartoon by letting them give out candy.

We sure had our fill of sweets and spooks, didn’t we?

And then there was Christmas, which included some of my favorite content.  We enjoyed a musical performance by several members of the Ace Attorney cast...

...a less flattering musical performance by yours truly...

...a short play taking place in Pearls’s dreams...

...and a fan-made song parody about a non-canon (but believable) incident involving Phoenix and a reindeer.

(Sorry if that image cursed anyone for life, by the way.)

I don’t know about you, but I loved every bit of our holiday hijinks.

And of course, we can’t leave out some of the great moments that occurred on non-holidays, including Her Benevolence falling victim to a classic comedy gag...

...Pearls meeting herself from a different time period somehow...

...Apollo taking a trip to the Pokemon world in his dreams...

...Athena getting tricked into thinking she had passed on briefly...

...Trucy getting caught red-handed by Arnold Schwarzenegger himself...

...and, uh...this thing happening to Iris.

No idea what I was thinking back then.  Sometimes you just have to go with the moment.

Not to mention one letter response that received an unexpected explosion of popularity.  Edgeworth always did know how to drop a sass bomb, didn’t he?  And one moment I’ll likely never forget is the letter regarding Athena’s hair.  For the record, I thought the shorter hairstyle looked okay, but somehow I didn’t think she would feel the same way.  Make of that what you will.  X )

Of course, it wasn’t all fun times and laughter -- I ended up stepping on some toes by accident, making a few jokes in bad taste, struggling to keep a balance between blogging and the real world, and...well...

...that happened.  I don’t regret a moment of it, though, because if Ace Attorney (and life) have taught me anything, it’s that powering through the less enjoyable moments in life is what makes us stronger, and what makes the good times that much more enjoyable.

But out of all the fun, hilarious, thought-provoking, and deeply touching moments that stood out in the last three years of blogging, the one I would say I enjoyed the most is this one.  It was my first attempt at responding to a letter in character (with one of the biggest “characters” in the series, no less), but, as with many of my letter responses, it also included some of me in it -- specifically, the part where Athena tries to sound optimistic, but not too prideful.  That was the sort of attitude I wanted to have whenever I answered letters -- I wanted to keep the fun and creativity of Ace Attorney and its characters going without injecting too much of myself into it.  The series wasn’t mine, after all, and neither was the blog, so my main goal was simply to sound like the characters.

And with that in mind, let me just say this: If any of these letters (even one of them) have made you smile or laugh on an unpleasant day, made you think about things from a different perspective, or simply helped you suspend your disbelief for a moment and believe you’re actually talking to someone from a video game, then my goal has been reached.

Anyway, I didn’t mean for this to be my goodbye speech (I’m saving that for later).  What it is is a sincere thank you for the fun and creativity that I and the rest of the moderators were able to engage in with all of you, thanks to our shared love of Ace Attorney, its characters, and its unique humor and depth.  Every last piece of witty dialogue, every picture, every song, and every custom sprite (the last of which can be found here), was inspired by your creativity and willingness to participate in this imaginative collaboration work.

I hope you’ve enjoyed it at least half as much as I have.  You guys are awesome.

-The Co-Mod

[thewatsonbeekeepers]

Chapter 4 – It is always 1895 [TAB 1/1]

TAB is my favourite episode of Sherlock. It is a masterpiece that investigates queerness, the canon and the psyche all within an hour and a half. Huge amounts of work has been done on this episode, however, so I’m not going to do a line by line breakdown – that could fill a small book. A great starting point for understanding the myriad of references in TAB is Rebekah’s three part video series on the episode, of which the first instalment can be found here X. I broadly agree with this analysis; what I’m going to do here, though, is place that analysis within the framework of EMP theory. As a result, as much as it pains me, this chapter won’t give a breakdown of carnation wallpaper or glass houses or any of those quietly woven references – we’re simply going in to how it plays into EMP theory.

Before digging into the episode, I want to take a brief diversion to talk about one of my favourite films, Mulholland Drive (2001).

If you haven’t seen Mulholland Drive, I really recommend it – it’s often cited as the best film of the last 20 years, and watching it really helps to see where TAB came from and the genre it’s operating in. David Lynch is one of the only directors to do the dream-exploration-of-the-psyche well, and I maintain that a lot of the fuckiness in the fourth series draws on Lynch. However, what I actually want to point out about Mulholland Drive is the structure of it, because I think it will help us understand TAB a little better. [If you don’t want spoilers for Mulholland Drive, skip the next paragraph.]

The similarities between these two are pretty straightforward; the most common reading of Mulholland Drive is that an actress commits suicide by overdose after causing the death of her ex-girlfriend, who has left her for a man, and that the first two-thirds of the film are her dream of an alternate scenario in which her girlfriend is saved. The last third of the film zooms in and out of ‘real life’, but at the end we see a surreal version of the actual overdose which suggests that this ‘real life’, too, has just been in her psyche. Sherlock dying and recognising that this may kill John is an integral part of TAB, and the relationships have clear parallels, but what is most interesting here is the structural similarity; two-thirds of the way through TAB, give or take, we have the jolt into reality, zoom in and out of it for a while and then have a fucky scene to finish with that suggests that everything is, in fact, still in our dying protagonist’s brain. Mulholland Drive’s ending is a lot sadder than TAB’s – the fact that, unlike Sherlock, there is no sequel can lead us to assume that Diane dies – and it’s also a lot more confusing; it’s often cited as one of the most complicated films ever made even just in terms of surface level plot, before getting into anything else, and it certainly took me a huge amount of time on Google before I could approach anything like a resolution on it!

Mulholland Drive is the defining film in terms of the navigating-the-surreal-psyche subgenre, and so the structural parallels between the two are significant – and definitely point to the idea that Sherlock hasn’t woken up at the end of TAB, which is important. But we don’t need to take this parallel as evidence; there’s plenty of that in the episode itself. Let’s jump in.

Emelia as Eurus

When we first meet Eurus in TST, she calls herself E; this initialism is a link to Moriarty, but it’s also a convenient link to other ‘E’ names. Lots of people have already commented on the aural echo of ‘Eros’ in ‘Eurus’, which is undeniable; the idea that there is something sexual hidden inside her name chimes beautifully with her representation of a sexual repression. The other important character to begin with E, however, is Emelia Ricoletti. The name ‘Emelia’ doesn’t come from ACD canon, and it’s an unorthodox spelling (Amelia would be far more common), suggesting that starting with an ‘E’ is a considered choice.

When TAB aired, we were preoccupied with Emelia as a Sherlock mirror, and it’s easy to see why; the visual parallels (curly black hair, pale skin) plus the parallel faked death down to the replacement body, which Mofftiss explicitly acknowledge in the episode. However, I don’t think that this reading is complete; rather, she foreshadows the Eurus that we meet in s4. The theme of ghosts links TAB with s4 very cleanly; TAB is about Emelia, but there is also a suggestion of the ghosts of one’s past with Sir Eustace as well as Sherlock’s own claims (‘the shadows that define our every sunny day’). Compare this to s4 – ‘ghosts from the past’ appears on pretty much every promotional blurb, and the word is used several times in relation to Eurus. If Eurus is the ghost from Sherlock’s past, the repressive part of his psyche that keeps popping back, Emelia is a lovely metaphor for this; she is quite literally the ghost version of Sherlock who won’t die.

What does it mean, then, when Jim and Emelia become one and the same in the scene where Jim wears the bride’s dress? We initially read this as Jim being the foil to Sherlock, his dark side, but I think it’s more complicated than this. Sherlock’s brain is using Emelia as a means of understanding Jim, but when we watch the episode it seems that they’ve actually merged. Jim wearing the veil of the bride is a good example of this, but I also invite you to rewatch the moment when John is spooked by the bride the night that Eustace dies; the do not forget me song has an undeniable South Dublin accent.* This is quite possibly Yasmine Akram [Janine] rather than Andrew Scott, of course, but let’s not forget that these characters are resolutely similar, and hearing Jim’s accent in a genderless whisper is a pretty clear way of inflecting him into the image of the bride. In addition to this, Eustace then has ‘Miss Me?’ written on his corpse, cementing the link to Moriarty.

[*the South Dublin accent is my accent, so although we hear a half-whispered song for all of five seconds, I’m pretty certain about this]

Jim’s merging with Emelia calls to mind for me what I think might be the most important visual of all of series 4 – Eurus and Jim’s Christmas meeting, where they dance in circles with the glass between them and seem to merge into each other. I do talk about this in a later chapter, but TLDR – if Jim represents John being in danger and Eurus represents decades of repressed gay trauma, this merging is what draws the trauma to the surface just as Jim’s help is what suddenly makes Eurus a problem. It is John’s being in danger which makes Sherlock’s trauma suddenly spike and rise – he has to confront this for the first time – just like Emelia Ricoletti’s case from 1895 only needs solving for the first time now that Jim is back.

At some point I want to do a drag in Sherlock meta, because I think there’s a lot more to it than meets the eye, but Jim in a bride’s dress does draw one obvious drag parallel for me.

If you haven’t seen the music video for I Want to Break Free, it’s 3 minutes long and glorious – and also, I think, reaps dividends when seen in terms of Sherlock. You can watch it here: X

Not only is it a great video, but for British people of Mofftiss’s age, it’s culturally iconic and not something that would be forgotten when choosing that song for Jim. Queen were intending to lampoon Coronation Street, a British soap, and already on the wrong side of America for Freddie Mercury’s unapologetic queerness, found themselves under fire from the American censors. Brian May says that no matter how many times he tried to explain Coronation Street to the Americans, they just didn’t get it. This was huge controversy at the time, but the video and the controversy around it also managed to cement I Want to Break Free as Queen’s most iconic queer number – despite not even being one of Mercury’s songs. There is no way that Steven Moffat, and even more so Mark Gatiss would not have an awareness of this in choosing this song for Moriarty. Applying any visual to this song is going to invite comparisons to the video – and inflecting a sense of drag here is far from inappropriate. Moriarty has been subsumed into Eurus in Sherlock’s brain – the male and the female are fused into an androgynous and implicitly therefore all-encompassing being. I’m not necessarily comfortable with the gendered aspect of this – genderbending is something we really only see in our villains here – but given this is about queer trauma, deliberately queering its form in this way is making what we’re seeing much more explicit.

Nothing new under the sun

“The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun” (Ecclesiastes)

"Read it up -- you really should. There is nothing new under the sun. It has all been done before." (A Study in Scarlet, Sherlock Holmes)

“Hasn’t this all happened before? There’s nothing new under the sun.” (The Abominable Bride, Jim Moriarty)

This is arguably the key to spotting that TAB is a dream long before they tell us – when TAB’s case is early revealed to be a mixture between TRF (Emelia’s suicide) and TGG (the five pips), and we see the opening of ASiP repeated, we should be questioning what on earth is going on. This can also help us to recognise s4 as being EMP as well though – old motifs from the previous series keep repeating through the cases, like alarm bells ringing. Moriarty telling Sherlock that there is nothing new under the sun is his key to understanding that the Emelia case is meant to help him understand what happened to Jim, that it’s a mental allegory or mirror to help him parse it. This doesn’t go away when TAB ends! Moving into TST, one of the striking things is that cases are still repeating! The Six Thatchers appeared on John’s blog way back, before the fall – you can read it here: X. It’s about a gay love affair that ends in one participant killing the other. Take from that what you will, when John’s extramarital affection is making him suicidal and Sherlock comatose. Meanwhile, the title of The Final Problem refers to the story that was already covered in TRF and the phone situation with the girl on the plane references both ASiB and TGG, and the ending of TST is close to a rerun of HLV. It’s pretty much impossible to escape echoes of previous series in a way that is almost creepy, but we’ve already had this explained to us in TAB – none of this is real. It’s supposed to be explaining what is happening in the real world – and Mofftiss realised that this was going to be difficult to stomach, and so they included TAB as a kind of key to the rest of the EMP, which becomes much more complex.

However, if we want to go deeper we should look at where that quote comes from. I’ve given a few epigraphs to this section to show where the quote comes from – first the book of Ecclesiastes, then A Study in Scarlet. It’s one of the first things Holmes says and it is during his first deduction in Lauriston Gardens. This is where I’m going to dive pretty deep into the metatextual side of things, so bear with the weirdness.

[we’re going deeper]

Holmes’s first deduction from A Study in Scarlet shows that he’s no great innovator – he simply notices things and spots patterns from things he has seen before. This is highlighted by the fact that he even makes this claim by quoting someone before him. If our Sherlock also makes deductions based on patterns from the past, extensive dream sequences where he works through past cases as mirrors for present ones makes perfect sense and draws very cleverly on canon. However, I think his spotting of patterns goes deeper than that. Sherlock Holmes has been repressed since the publication of A Study in Scarlet, through countless adaptations in literature and film. Plenty of these adaptations as well as the original stories are referenced in the EMP, not least by going back to 1895, the year that symbolises the era in which most of these adaptations are set. (If you don’t already know it, check out the poem 221B by Vincent Starrett, one of the myriad of reasons why the year 1895 is so significant.) My feeling is that these adaptations, which have layered on top of each other in the public consciousness to cement the image of Sherlock Holmes the deductive machine [which he’s not, sorry Conan Doyle estate] come to symbolise the 100+ years of repression that Sherlock himself has to fight through to come out of the EMP as his queer self.

This is one of the reasons that the year 1895 is so important; it was the year of Oscar Wilde’s trial and imprisonment for gross indecency, and this is clearly a preoccupation of Sherlock’s consciousness in TFP with its constant Wilde references, suggesting that his MP’s choice of 1895 wasn’t coincidental. Much was made during TAB setlock of a newspaper that said ‘Heimish The Ideal Husband’, Hamish being John’s middle name and An Ideal Husband being one of Wilde’s plays. But the Vincent Starrett poem, although nostalgic and ostensibly lovely, for tjlcers and it seems for Sherlock himself symbolises something much more troubling. Do search up the full poem, but for now let’s look at the final couplet.

Here, though the world explode, these two survive

And it is always 1895

‘Though the world explode’ is a reference to WW1, which is coming in the final Sherlock Holmes story, and which is symbolised by Eurus – in other chapters, I explain why Eurus and WW1 are united under the concept of ‘winds of change’ in this show. Sherlock and John survive the winds of change – except they don’t move with them. Instead, they stay stuck in 1895, the year of ultimate repression. 2014!Sherlock going back in his head to 1895 and repeating how he met John suggests exactly that, that nothing has changed but the superficial, and that emotionally, he is still stuck in 1895.

Others have pulled out similar references to Holmes adaptations he has to push through in TAB – look at the way he talks in sign language to Wilder, which can only be a reference to Billy Wilder, director of TPLoSH, the only queer Holmes film, and a film which was forced to speak through coding because of the Conan Doyle estate. That film is also referenced by Eurus giving Sherlock a Stradivarius, which is a gift given to him in TPLoSH in exchange for feigning heterosexuality. Eurus is coded as Sherlock’s repression, and citing a repressive moment in a queer film as her first action when she meets Sherlock is another engagement by Sherlock’s psyche with his own cinematic history. My favourite metatextual moment of this nature, however, is the final scene of TFP which sees John and Sherlock running out of a building called Rathbone Place.

Basil Rathbone is one of the most iconic Sherlock Holmes actors on film, and Benedict’s costume in TAB and in particular the big overcoat look are very reminiscent of Rathbone.

Others have discussed (X) how the Victorian costume and the continued use of the deerstalker in the present day are images of Sherlock’s public façade and exclusion of queerness from his identity. It’s true that pretty much every Holmes adaptation has used the deerstalker, but the strong Rathbone vibes that come from Ben’s TAB costume ties the 1895 vibe very strongly into Rathbone. To have the final scene – and hopefully exit from the EMP – tie in with Sherlock and John running out of Rathbone Place tells us that, just as Sherlock cast off the deerstalker at the end of TAB (!), he has also cast off the iconic filmic Holmes persona which has never been true to his actual identity.

Waterfall scene

The symbol of water runs through TAB as well as s4 – others have written fantastic meta on why water represents Sherlock’s subconscious (X), but I want to give a brief outline. It first appears with the word ‘deeper’ which keeps reappearing, which then reaches a climax in the waterfall scene. The idea that Sherlock could drown in the waters of his mind is something that Moriarty explicitly references, suggesting that Sherlock could be ‘buried in his own Mind Palace’. The ‘deep waters’ line keeps repeating through series 4, and I just want to give the notorious promo photo from s4 which confirms the significance of the motif.

This is purely symbolic – it never happens in the show. Water increases in significance throughout – think of Sherlock thinking he’s going mad in his mind as he is suspended over the Thames, or the utterly nonsensical placement of Sherrinford in the middle of the ocean – the deepest waters of Sherlock’s mind. Much like the repetition of cases hinting that EMP continues, the use of water is something that appears in the MP, and it sticks around from TAB onwards, a real sign that we’re going deeper and deeper. I talk about this more in the bit on TFP, but the good news is that Sherrinford is the most remote place they could find in the ocean – that’s the deepest we’re going. After that, we’re coming out (of the mind).

Shortly after TAB aired, I wrote a meta about the waterfall scene, some of which I now disagree with, but the core framework still stands – it did not, of course, bank on EMP theory. You can find it here (X), but I want to reiterate the basic framework, because it still makes a lot of sense. Jim represents the fear of John’s suicide, and Jim can only be defeated by Sherlock and John together, not one alone – and crucially, calling each other by first names, which would have been very intimate in the Victorian era. After Jim is “killed”, we have Sherlock’s fall. The concept of a fall (as in IOU a fall) has long been linked with falling in love in tjlc. Sherlock tells John that it’s not the fall that kills you, it’s the landing, something that Jim has been suggesting to him for a while. What is the landing, then? Well, Sherlock Holmes fell in love back in the Victorian era, symbolised by the ultra repressive 1895, and that’s where he jumps from – but he lands in the 21st century. Falling in love won’t kill him in the modern day. What I missed that time around, of course, was that despite breaking through the initial Victorian layers of repression, he still dives into more water, and when the plane lands, it still lands in his MP, just in a mental state where the punishment his psyche deals him for homosexuality is less severe. This also sets up s4 as specifically dealing with the problem of the fall – Sherlock jumps to the 21st century specifically to deal with the consequences of his romantic and sexual feelings. There’s a parallel here with Mofftiss time jumping; back when they made A Study in Twink in 2009, there was a reason they made the time jump. Having Sherlock’s psyche have that touch of self-awareness helps to illustrate why they made a similar jump, also dealing with the weight of previous adaptations.

Women

I preface this by saying how incredibly uncomfortable I find the positioning of women as the KKK in TAB. It’s a parallel which is unforgivable; frankly, invoking the KKK without interrogating the whiteness of the show or even mentioning race is unacceptable. Steven Moffat’s ability to write women has consistently been proven to be nil, but this is a new low. However, the presence of women in TAB is vital, so on we go.

TAB specifically deals with the question of those excluded from a Victorian narrative. This is specifically tied into to those who are excluded from the stories, such as Jane and Mrs. Hudson. Mrs. Hudson’s complaint is in the same scene as John telling her and Sherlock to blame the problems on the illustrator. This ties back to the deerstalker metaphor which is so prevalent in this episode; something that’s not in the stories at all, but a façade by which Holmes is universally recognised and which as previously referenced masks his queerness. Women, then, are not the only people being excluded from the narrative. When Mycroft tells us that the women have to win, he’s also talking about queer people. This is a war that we must lose.

I don’t think the importance of Molly in particular here has been mentioned before, but forgive me if I’m retreading old ground. However, Molly always has importance in Sherlock as a John mirror, and just because she is dressed as a man here doesn’t mean we should disregard this. If anything, her ridiculous moustache is as silly as John’s here! Molly, although really a member of the resistance, is able to pass in the world she moves in in 1895, but only by masking her own identity. This is exactly what happens to John in the Victorian era – as a bisexual man married to a woman, he is able to pass, but it is not his true identity. More than that, Molly is a member of the resistance, suggesting not just that John is queer but that he’s aware of it and actively looking for it to change.

I know I was joking about Molly and John’s moustaches, but putting such a silly moustache on Molly links to the silliness of John’s moustaches, which only appear when he’s engaged to a woman and in the Victorian era. He has also grown the moustache just so the illustrator will recognise him, and Molly has grown her moustache so that she will be recognised as a man. In this case, Molly is here to demonstrate the fact that John is passing, but only ever passing. Furthermore, Molly, who is normally the kindest person in the whole show, is bitter and angry throughout TAB – it’s not difficult to see then how hiding one’s identity can affect one’s mental health. I really do think that John is a lot more abrasive in TAB than he is in the rest of the show, but that’s not the whole story. Showing how repression can completely impair one’s personality also points to the suicidal impulses that are lurking just out of sight throughout TAB – this is what Sherlock is terrified of, and again his brain is warning him just what it is that is causing John this much pain and uncharacteristic distress.

This is just about the loosest sketch of TAB that could exist! But TAB meta has been so extensive that going over it seems futile, or else too grand a project within a short chapter. Certain theories are still formulating, and may appear at a later date! But what this chapter (I hope) has achieved has set up the patterns that we’re going to see play out in s4 – between the metatextuality, the waters of the mind and the role of Moriarty in the psyche, we can use TAB as a key with which to read s4. I like to think of it as a gift from Mofftiss, knowing just how cryptic s4 would be – and these are the basic clues with which to solve it.

That’s it for TAB, at least in this series – next up we’re going ever deeper, to find out exactly who is Eurus. See you then?

[highladyluck]

For the fic title meme: Lay Down Your Crown and Sword

So, I was thinking maybe this is about Aviendha's feelings about Rand when they're in the Aiel Waste... just kidding, I know what the people want from me.

Wheel of Time, Mat/Tuon, post-canon, ANGST. This is one take on a scenario where Mat attempts to achieve his stated relationship goal, which is convincing Tuon to abdicate and run away with him.

(This sucker is LONG and SPOILERY so I’m putting it under a cut.)

It's ~2 months after the Last Battle. There's growing danger to Tuon- an almost-successful assassination attempt (my money's on Moghedien) that scares Mat, Selucia, the Deathwatch, and maybe even Tuon herself, just a little. The sul'dam secret is leaking out and emboldening the faction that wants to kill her, there's worry it'll lead to local rebellion, plus there's still the Seanchan homeland power struggle. Mat uses all this to convince Tuon that she needs to lie low for a while. His idea is for her to fake her own death, install a puppet successor secretly loyal to her, and go hide out with him in a place no one will be able to find them for a few months.

She's not thrilled about it initially, but it's not like she hasn't faked her own death before (love that about her!) so she agrees to Mat's plan, which is 'hang out in a Portal Stone alternate timeline'. (Mat would not come up with this on his own, Mat does not like Portal Stones, but Min suggested it and he eventually agreed it would suit their needs.) Tuon would prefer something where she could keep an eye on political conditions more easily, but she feels safe with Mat & appreciates that this is definitely a secure option, and she's been out of contact with home base before for a while and been fine. Selucia stays in the palace, to keep an eye on things and do intrigue (and also give Mat and Tuon actual alone time- I am entertained by the grudging truce between Mat and Selucia, but her chaperone services are not needed this time around.)

They've got an official pickup scheduled in a few months, about a month before Tuon's due; Mat thought about waiting more time to go back but he'd rather have the option to call in trusted medical help for the birth and he wants to leave a wide margin of error for the actual due date. He intends to rope in Nyneave if it seems necessary, although he doubts he'll be lucky enough that Nyneave would help Tuon out of the goodness of her heart or even as a favor to him. More likely Nyneave's help would cost Tuon in political concessions, which he will have to either convince Tuon to accept- assuming she's in a position to make that kind of choice- or negotiate on her behalf, if she's in too much immediate danger. Either scenario keeps him up at night, but the alternative is worse. Also, he hasn't run this contingency plan by Tuon yet- likely because he isn't totally against the idea of extracting political concessions from Tuon, so there's guilt as well as fear of how she'd react. The other thing Tuon doesn't realize about this vacation plan is that Mat is hoping to convince her to move there forever- if it's nice- or at least to keep faking her death and start a new life with him somewhere in disguise in their reality.

The Portal Stone world is one that's relatively close to their world, so it has people and feels fairly familiar, but the apocalypse hasn't happened yet and doesn't appear to be doing so in the near future. (For fun let's say the obvious divergence is Damodred-related; maybe the non-asshole Damodred branch is in charge, so you don't get Laman's Sin and/or Tigrane is actually happy in her political marriage, so the Dragon hasn't been reborn yet.) Tuon's ok with the 'vacation' vibe at first, we get some cute romantic bonding moments between her and Mat as they do normal people things, they have some cute dates in taverns or whatever. But Tuon becomes increasingly bored and anxious and frustrated about not being able to keep tabs on what's happening- probably some residual trauma from the last time she went AWOL with Mat, and came back to find her homeland in shambles and her family dead. So that's a source of conflict, especially since she doesn't actually confide that in Mat. She also keeps wanting to hash out political/military plans for when they get back, but Mat keeps trying to distract her, or makes arguments she doesn't like (re: Seanchan policy reform). Maybe Mat brings up the Nyneave contingency plan because he got worried about her health, and Tuon's like 'uh how long have you been sitting on this idea, when the fuck were you going to run it past me, the person it most concerns?'

Their relationship has always had an element of conflict in it, but back then they were strangers, had rules of engagement constraining them, and a kind of shared purpose. Their conflict was a kind of game that they played together, and it drew them closer. Now they know how to get under each other's skin and aren't constrained by witnesses or promises, and they have a shared mission (keeping Tuon safe) but don't agree on who is in charge of it. What's holding them together still is their own compassion and affection for each other, but they're not great at communicating it with words and now they're using words as weapons sometimes, so most of the reconciling is with gestures/gifts/actions. In general, things are tense and there's not much going on outside of their own interactions to distract them; Tuon's temper is flaring, she's feeling powerless and like her personal integrity is being attacked sometimes; Mat's being propelled around by his gut reactions and he's scared of losing her (and the baby), in any number of ways, and mad that she doesn't want what he thinks is best.

Finally the scheduled transit date arrives and they pop back to their original universe and get caught up on the news (maybe from Min?) Over in Seanchan, possibly emboldened by news of Tuon's 'death', a warlord has consolidated most of the warring factions. Now they know who to go after, and a war in Seanchan would help unify the Seanchan in the westlands; the Seanchan military-industrial complex loves a good patriotic war. Things domestically are a little better than before they left. Selucia flushed out the network from the earlier assassination attempt and is generally keeping things running and the puppet ruler honest.

Tuon's relieved; she was really worried that everything was going to fall apart when she was gone and now she's kind of grateful for the break. She tries to tell Mat this without actually admitting that she's got trauma around it, because the Empress doesn't admit weakness and Tuon the person is extremely bad at talking about feelings anyway; she's like "Ah, that's much better news than I came back to last time you kidnapped me. I'm glad to be back to work again, let's get to it." Mat's irritable, not catching on that she was actually really worried about it based on her previous experience, and thinking she didn't appreciate the break, and also worried that his plans to convince her to leave with him aren't going to work. Tuon catches that he's cagey and unhappy and not getting her jokes, and she remembers that this was what he seemed like when she first saw him in the Tarasin Palace. Mat argues that they should at least wait until the baby comes, that the person she put in charge is doing well, they can certainly let them rule a while longer. He says he's not sure it's the right time to attack Seanchan, he'd need to check the troops out, sniff out local sentiment. He's not decisive or commanding or focused when he says these things- it's stalling, it's bravado covering panic. It dawns on her- oh shit, he's gonna run.

Tuon's spooked. She KNOWS Mat now, but that doesn't mean she knows what to do to hang on to him. She doesn't know how to deal with a loss of control in her personal life, so she turns to what she knows she can control- the empire, her role, her property. She takes refuge in past promises. She tells him they will discuss the disposition of the army and the prosecution of the war in Seanchan once her heir is born and she's officially 'off the hook'. Mat looks grim.

Tuon wanted to announce that she's back immediately, but she starts having contractions and Mat's like 'you are absolutely not going to return from the dead right this second, you're super vulnerable right now.' They stay in a relatively secret spot in Tuon's territory with a small coterie of loyal retainers until the baby is born; it goes fine. There is one (1) cute bonding moment between Tuon and the baby and Mat; then the baby vanishes. Mat was on guard along with the usual people you'd expect to be on guard (not Karede, Selucia, or Min though). Tuon FUCKING KNOWS Mat did it with Aes Sedai help, she's initially furious and betrayed, but Mat isn't admitting it and within the extremely tight circle of people who know about the vanished baby, he's doing a reasonably convincing job looking as freaked out and upset as everyone else, and she's still hoping she can resolve this privately without any drastic public actions.

She takes Mat to a private place and she tells him that she has always, always been able to trust him. She trusts him so much it terrifies her. She does not know if this is what love is, but it is what she feels for him. She asks him to honor that, to honor himself, and not to lie to her. She then asks him why he kidnapped their child. Mat staggers, and blurts out that he can't bear the thought of their children constantly at risk of assassination, from strangers or their own siblings. He has nightmares about their child beginning to channel, or being able to learn, and what that means for them in the Empire. Tuon's made her choice and he'll respect that, though he hates the risks to her, and what the Empire does to her and others. But their child deserves the choice Tuon didn't have. He loves Tuon, but he cannot love the Empire, and he will not fight in the Empire's wars, and he will not let the Empire own his children, whether that's as royalty, sul'dam, or damane. He says he trusts she'll come to the right decision about what to do with this information.

The next scene has Tuon in mourning white. It's neither Tuon's nor Mat's POV- probably Karede, or maybe Min. In front of the whole court Tuon, as Empress back from the dead, bestows the Bloodknives ring and blessing on Knotai, and orders him to take a few members of the Deathwatch (the ones on watch the night the baby vanished, our observer notes) and assassinate the warlord in Seanchan on her behalf. She says she trusts he will succeed. They stare inscrutably at each other. The court is shocked into silence at first, but the whispers rise behind Mat as he straightens from his extraordinarily polite leg and heads out of the chamber. It is left up to the reader to decide if this is an elaborate plan to fake Mat's death and set him free, or his execution.

--- You may notice this is suspiciously fleshed out for a prompt I received this afternoon. XD I've been kicking around some of this premise for a while, though this ask made me finally come up with the circumstances that get Tuon to actually agree to temporarily leave her job, as well as most of the details. The main emotional beats came from stringing together several Mountain Goats songs, because of course it did. The whole sequence is Twin Human Highway Flares, Riches and Wonders (Eliza Rickman cover), Alpha Incipiens, Fault Lines, New Britain, Family Happiness. I’m not sure if I’ll actually turn this into a finished story with description and dialogue and everything, but it’s possible. This is also not the only Mat/Tuon post-canon idea I have kicking around! It’s not my ideal scenario for them for sure, but it’s a lot easier to write a ‘bad ending’ for them than to work on my ‘good ending’, because I have a lot more emotional investment in the ‘good ending’... perfectionist problems. :/

[allalrightagain]

Which of the Marauders was the most into Monty Python's Flying Circus and why was it Remus?

But in all seriousness, how in tune with the Muggle world do you think he actually was? I am very curious about your Thoughts. <3

Ooh ok this is actually a really interesting question, especially because my parents are almost exactly the same age as the Marauders (like +/- months), so we watched a Lot of Monty Python growing up. You are very correct that Remus was the most into Monty Python’s Flying Circus, that’s practically canon.

HOWEVER! I actually don’t think (pre-war at least) that any of the Marauders had much experience with the Muggle world at all. Obviously Sirius and James are purebloods and had no concept of anything Muggle until they were at least 11. Peter I don’t think we know much about beyond the fact that his mother got his finger and the Order of Merlin, but given *hand waves broadly* everything later, I find it hard to believe that Peter had any ability to navigate the Muggle world, because otherwise he probably wouldn’t have lived twelve years as a rat??

But to your question about the sad werewolf man specifically:

We know he’s a halfblood, and I know it’s popular to have him be comfortable living as a muggle well before he gets to school because of his mother and so that he could have a life outside of magic etc etc— but uh, I’m not that optimistic or kind to Remus unfortunately.

First of all, I think wizarding law and muggle-wizarding relations are so isolating to the muggle partner by nature that having Hope be the dominant cultural introduction is unlikely. Pre-bite there’s the expectation that Remus will have magic, and post-bite I think Remus is isolated from the Muggle and magical worlds alike. In addition, we know that technology doesn’t work well in the presence of magic without modifications, so I think they probably didn’t have a tv in their house— introductions to any tv was probably done at Hope’s parents if they were around.

Second of all, I’ve always assumed that Remus’s backup/original plan if he didn’t go to Hogwarts was to be homeschooled for magic, not for a Muggle life. This works pre-Hogwarts without any issues, Hope stays at home, teaches Remus math, writing, etc. But then Lyall was going to have to teach him anything beyond that— magic, magical culture. Suffice it to say they were all very happy that didn’t come to pass.

All this to say that I think Remus’s exposure to living as a Muggle was relatively minimal pre-Hogwarts.

And then he goes off to school.

(A quick clarifying point: the Remus Lupin who lives in my head is a trans man, and he doesn’t transition at all until he’s at least 12. He bunks with Lily, they’re good friends, he knows the rest of the Marauders but he isn’t actually close with them until he moves into the boys dorm, at which point he gets swept up into the magnetism of JamesandSirius and leaves Lily behind a little, partially because she wants nothing to do with JamesandSirius.)

In terms of when Remus becomes Muggle-literate, so to speak, part of it happens in drips as he’s growing up and some of it, including Monty Python, comes in his first few years at Hogwarts because of his friendship with Lily and her influence.

But this is Remus Lupin we’re talking about, so post Hogwarts has to be mentioned. I think they all get out of Hogwarts, and there’s a war, and they start to fracture off a bit, and Remus has a little knowledge of Muggle media, and maybe a little knowledge of how to get around. What he doesn’t know is how to talk to Muggles who don’t know magic exists.

He’s spooked, has bolted from his friends, on a stupid mission for Dumbledore to hang out with shitty, terf-y werewolves, and he’s absolutely terrified he’s going to break the Statute of Secrecy because he doesn’t know how much Muggles know about anything. It’s rough. But hey, he knows what Monty Python is and can spell the Beatles, so he’s doing better than his friends would! (That becomes a less fun fact at some point.)

After the world falls apart? Well I think you’ve already covered that well enough 😘

[seyaryminamoto]

Anon-Nemesis - Right, I’ve got some free time, so I’ll have to make this a quickie, but I thought about my answers while at a boring family lunch thing.

Favorite Character: Ozai (The way you write him anyway, he’s pretty meh in canon))

Least Favorite Character (one who’s constantly there): I do have a few less than liked minor characters, but none of them are “Constantly There” So I have no good answer for this.

Favorite “Antagonist”: Ozai & Ol’ Spooky (Seethus) Lets face it, Ozai is the big papa of baddies, quite literally, and Ol’ Spooky spooked me good in his arc, at least till Azula and Xin handed him his own ass on a golden platter. I’m listing them together because you sort of portray them as a team where Seethus is just an extension of Ozai’s will personified (I might’ve picked Zhao too, but he hasn’t actively opposed our main duo too much so far, so instead I will pick)

Favorite OC: Rui Shi, duh. The guy has been there nearly from the start and has had Azula back even back in the early days when she was quite a jerk and hadn’t been, uh, tamed by Sokka (lol, not my best choice of words but I’m sticking to it, Azula might find the idea privately amusing these days but would kill me for sure for saying it like that) I feel like Goro would be high on this list, as would Ol’ Spooky, but we seen too little interaction with either for me to list them.

Favorite Gladiator: Aside from Sokka and Toph; My fav is The Millennium Dragon. Runners up The Alchemist (Well his sponsor is more interesting than him) Special Shout Out to the Dart Slayer, he jobbed so hard he got Sokka recruited (Was it Dart Slayer? Shit, it was so long ago) and a last conflicted entry, Rhone, I like what he represents (Basically Evil Sokka) but I don’t like him as a person, the dude is a straight asshole who needs a good thrashing.

Favorite Suitor or a Suitor I wished would make moves on Azula: Toph, I don’t mean in a shipping sense, but just Toph could mess with Azula and offer to marry her as a joke or something. Azula’s reaction would be priceless. A more serious answer, Zhao, He may be a douche, but I kind of like the guy in Gladiator, he’s not quite morally grey, but he does seem to only want the best for Azula, or his idea of the best, which ain’t actually the best for her.

Most Relatable Character: The young dude who works the desk at the Royal Dome, Shouji I think its spelled, such a timid little fellow, yet so composed since he’s always coming face to face with some of humanities mightiest people, the Gladiators, and scummiest people, sponsors. Plus he knows his business and does his job effectively. Supporting Sokka’s career is also nice. Also, special shout out to Keno. Wait, who was he again? Ah nevermind, probably nobody important. Anyway, where was I? …

Character I’d like to see more: Ol’ Spooky, mainly, that creeper really fascinates me, Its funny how he and Azula are frightened of eachother even though Azula would effortlessly waste his ass. I want to know how Ozai keeps the loyalty of someone that dangerous. Is he even human? Or some ancient fire spirit? He’s one of the biggest mysteries you’ve got going. Goro is one I really hope you develop, He’s got a nice fatherly, or grandfatherly vibe that could be a much needed point of stability for Azula in part 3.

 Favorite Canon (Gladiator canon)Pairing: Main Duo aside, Rui and Song were my number 1, but lately Ozai/Ursa has stolen it (Even though Ursa is gone.

Favorite Non-Canon Pairing: I can only come up with joke pairings I’m afraid, but. One sided Ty Lee X Ozai (The mental image of Mr. propper n serious, but buff, handsome Firelord with that bubbly bundle of joy hanging off his arm, bugging him to take her somewhere fun. I can’t stop laughing, he just wants her to get lost, and Azula is deeply worried about her friend’s sanity) Azula X O'l Spooky, or Azula X Sparky Sparky Boom Man (No matter which way you slice it, its one big, powerful and passionate fire storm, loud and explosive, silent and deadly, and each hella destructive) Okay fine, I’m only thinking of their bending, not the characters themselves. Sokka X Boomerang/Sword/Club (Wholesome until you realize he’s having a foursome with his own armory. Hell, let’s throw Azula into the mix, she can bring her own sword. Man, that’d be a dangerous bed, so many sharp and pointy accidents waiting to happen. But maybe Space Sword X Wolf’s Bane, they fight together, and snuggle together, just like their owners.

Favorite Arc: Tough call. Its a rivalry between Giving In arc, Slave Riot arc, Fire Lord’s Shadow and Air Temple arc for 2nd place. But 1st Place goes to combined Whaletail Island/Shu Jing arcs with how well they flow together, you outdid yourself with them, fluffy as half of them were

Favorite Place/Location:

 Part 1 or Part 2?:

I wished to see Sokkla more in/like … :

Guessing Game: Guess how good/bad I am at guessing games.

Finish the following sentences: “They don’t? I guess they were probably too busy looking at your… a-at… y-your ? ? ?” (Yeah, spot that one motherF-ers, I dare you.)

I think Azula & Sokka’s relationship will be revealed when/like/because of … Their own inability to exert willpower over their horny impulses. In other words their own reckless stupidity.

I believe at the end of Part 3 … Ozai gonna die, that’s about all I’m certain of. The invasion happens, lots of death and destruction. Since Aang ain’t a killer, my money is on Aang defeating Ozai but its Katara or The White Lotus who kill him. I don’t think Azula could do it though no matter how much she comes to hate her dad. Sokka won’t either since Azula still cares about Ozai, he’s still her papa. Besides, Azula may be too busy having a violent ass knockdown drag out deathmatch with Ol’ Spooky to keep him off the heroes backs, she wins and Ozai loses his two greatest assets. Ozai fights to the bitter end, ignoring Azula’s pleas for him to surrender, he’s too far gone in his hubris, his ego and his rage at Azula’s betrayal by then. Afterward, happy-ish ending, bittersweet, but Azula becomes Fire Lord, Sokka becomes Fire Lady, and has lots of kids and rule happily everafter, of 5 minutes ever after since those two can’t stop attracting trouble.

I’m glad you had a chance to join in! :D thank you for that submission, my friend!

[robotslenderman]

Still only partway through CP77.

Spoilers for the Death’s Head questline.

Warning: this involves my V ignoring canon, having a mental breakdown and expressing it by attacking poor, poor fucking Judy.

So like

My V was a complete fucking mess after the Heist and what happened there. Her best friend (and crush) was dead, she almost died, and she had a fucking terrorist in her head who could TOUCH HERRRR and had hijacked her body and hurt her, and she was going to die in a month and slowly lose control of her body to someone who wanted to hurt her.

She. Was fucking. Terrified. Even when Johnny offered an olive branch she didn’t trust him at all (something Judy would come to relate to, although my V hasn’t yet noticed the parallel).

So when Judy refused to give her any information on Evelyn?

V, who was absolutely scared for her life and having a mental breakdown after the death of her best friend, went to visit Judy.

With a baseball bat.

And used it.

I know this doesn’t make it better at all, but V did hold back a bit -- didn’t hit the head, pulled her punches on the body and spine, and mostly went for the legs. If any permanent damage was done, it wouldn’t be to Judy’s brain, it wouldn’t be to her hands or arms. Better she disabled Judy’s ability to walk if she went too far than fucking lobotomising her or fucking up her hands.

How fucking considerate of her, I know. V basically wanted to scare the shit out of her, made her think that other people were hunting down Evelyn (”if you don’t give me this information, I’ll just fucking kill you. I don’t need you. I can wait for someone else to find her first and drop in on them. So you better talk because otherwise you’re not getting out of here alive”), and made a big song and dance about how the only reason V wasn’t going to fucking annihilate Judy on the spot was because Jackie would never forgive her for turning into a complete monster.

Anyway. Poor Judy quickly blurted out the information about Clouds once she realised V was not fucking around. V threatened her again, then got the fuck out. And obviously hasn’t been back to Lizzie’s since.

When she calmed down she wrote Judy an apology letter. (I told my friend this. She was like “your V is fucking psycho.” Yeah.) She was like “look, I know an apology doesn’t mean jack fucking shit after what I did to you, but... idk man. send me what you owe the ripperdoc and I’ll square my debt to you.”

Yeah V, because contacting someone you fucking traumatised is a BRILLIANT FUCKING IDEA, I bet Judy wouldn’t be afraid AT ALL to send you a bill!

(Naturally, Judy didn’t reply and just sent some of the Mox. V gave them everything she could spare and told them to come back in a week for the rest. They roughed her up. She fought back enough to defend herself and eventually toss them out, but didn’t attack them because she knew that wouldn’t help Judy.)

Needless to say, when she ran into Judy at Fingers’ place Judy was NOT at all happy to see her and didn’t want to work with her at all. V basically gave her all the details she uncovered at Clouds -- by now she was actually pretty damn worried about Evelyn and she’d started coming to terms with the fact she was going to die, so she was far more concerned about finding Evelyn than getting anything from her, and was terrified Evelyn was dead.

But obviously Judy was still Mega Freaked Out and traumatised and wasn’t going to work with her. V didn’t offer, either. V didn’t try to scare Judy, but she was also a bit tetchy because Judy obviously didn’t want her looking for Evelyn still, and so V probably scared her a little still because V was like “look, I’m going to find her whether you like it or not, get out of my way. She is in big fucking trouble and I don’t have time for this.”

Judy followed her into Fingers’ room and watched her deal with Fingers. V was actually pretty calm when dealing with Fingers, then realised how fucked up it was that she beat up Judy but not this asshole, so she beat up Fingers too.

Nice, V. Way not to freak out Judy even more.

But obviously, Judy didn’t want to work with V like she did in canon. So V got the snuff film by herself. Unfortunately, she needed an editor, so this was the point where she reached out to Judy again. Sent her a text message that basically said, “This film could help me find Evelyn. Give me a time when you won’t be in and I’ll use your stuff to get into edit mode and track them down.”

V’s dumbass logic: “she probably doesn’t want to see me but I need this information, so I’ll just tell her to keep away from me.”

Judy’s response was “oh my god, even if you could do this without someone on the outside what the hell makes you think I’d let you on my tech unsupervised?!”

(V: “Oh. Right.”) “Do you want me to find Evelyn or not?”

“That’s not what I meant! Come in, but I’m operating the computer and I’m putting Mox in there with us, so don’t you dare try to intimidate me.”

“... Yeah that’s a much better idea. I just knew you wouldn’t want to be alone with me.”

“Can’t imagine why.”

(V, thinking a joke might put her at ease a bit, not realising it just makes her look like a psychopath anyway.) “It’s okay, I’ll leave the baseball bat at home.”

(Judy is not at all amused.)

So the questline continues the way it does in-game, except with a very jumpy Judy. It’s when they find Evelyn that Judy is freaked out enough to be distracted from V. V carries out Evelyn, speaking to her softly.

At this point V had totally come to terms with the fact she was going to die. And Evelyn was a complete fucking mess, and Evelyn was not going to talk even if V wanted her to. So my V didn’t even bother with that, just helped Judy get Evelyn the hell out of there.

Once Evelyn was settled in Judy’s apartment (it’s only later that Judy realises “oh shit, now V knows where I live”) Judy and V’s conversation went almost exactly as it did in canon, with the exception of the more trusting/loyal responses Judy gives you, which Judy simply omitted. V also elaborated on some of the stuff in her letter -- that V was dying because of the relic slowly overwriting her presonality, and she’d hunted down Evelyn because Evelyn could give her a lead to go on to reverse the process. But V still didn’t make any attempts to talk with Evelyn. V knew she was going to die. She wasn’t going to compound Evelyn’s trauma even more. When Judy expressed concern that other people were hunting Evelyn, V was like “oh, shit, no, actually, I was bluffing.”

“...”

“I wasn’t going to kill you. I just wanted to make you think I was. I don’t know of anyone actually trying to hunt her down, and I didn’t run into anyone at all while chasing up this information on her. So either she’s in the clear and nobody wants her, or they’re being damn subtle about it. Either way, since she’s in this condition she’ll be staying inside and lying low, so that’ll help her shake off any tail she might have.”

V gave Judy some more money, though not the full amount because she’s still scraping the eddies together -- told Judy she’d make sure she was fully reimbursed before she went. Told Judy if she or Evelyn needed anything more, call her.

...

By then, after seeing her with Evelyn, Judy is not sure about my V.

After the baseball bat incident, Judy thought that my V was an unhinged violent lunatic. I mean, V was an unhinged violent lunatic -- but she’d thought my V was that by default. But obviously my V showed Evelyn a lot of empathy and concern -- genuine empathy and concern, not V trying to go “LOOK HOW NICE I AM” to Judy. She knew V wasn’t trying to show false empathy to butter up Judy because V got pissed at her in Fingers’ office for getting in the way of her trying to find Evelyn to make sure Evelyn was okay. That is, pissed at her for that specific occasion of Judy getting in the way -- V was definitely not checking on Evelyn’s wellbeing when she visited Judy with the baseball bat, but Judy tried to discourage V from going after Evelyn again at Fingers’ office and V’s response was pretty much “oh fuck OFF, she’s in a really bad situation and needs help.”

So Judy was like, okay, there’s two possible judgements you can make about V:

V is one of those people who seems absolutely lovely until she gets in a bad mood, which is even more fucking terrifying because that makes her unpredictable.

V legitimately was in the middle of a mental breakdown and Judy just happened to be really fucking unlucky in that she was the convenient target. V had said this in her letter but obviously Judy was like “What the FUCK did you really send me an APOLOGY LETTER for almost BEATING ME TO DEATH” and hadn’t really taken it seriously, but now she’s starting to think V might have actually told the truth.

Judy is hoping it’s the latter but she’s not holding her breath, and also you have to remember that even if it was a mental breakdown... it showed her exactly what V was like when she was having a mental breakdown, and therefore meant V was perfectly fucking capable of doing it again.

(Meanwhile V was thinking “If she knows I was having a mental breakdown then she knows she doesn’t have to be scared of me doing it again.” No, V. You’re wrong.)

Judy is less spooked after seeing V in action with Evelyn, but she’s still very wary of her. But after V helped her with Evelyn, Judy told her not to worry about the rest of the eddies and just accepted what V gave her then and there. V almost pushed it, but realised Judy probably didn’t want to feel indebted to someone who beat her up with a baseball bat, so she dropped it.

V later sent Judy a weighted blanket for Evelyn to sleep under. “I’ve got one, it helps when I’m stressed. It won’t make her any better, but it might give her a little comfort.”

So right now, V and Judy have an uneasy truce. V keeps her distance from Judy unless she has to, except to occasionally ask after Evelyn, and Judy keeps her distance right back.

V is, however, not sucking up to Judy or grovelling to her. All she wanted was to let Judy know she didn’t have to be scared of her (although again, Judy is perfectly fucking aware that even if it was an actual mental breakdown then yes Judy should be scared of V having another one), that Judy didn’t have to worry about V going back to have another go at her.

V’s not going to make a huge deal about what a horrible person she was. She’s... well. Even if she thought it would help, she’s got a month to live unless the omega blockers give her more time. She’s not going to wear a hair shirt over this. She gave Judy some funds for the ripper doc, she’s apologised (even if an apology feels awfully pathetic), and she’s kept away from her.

Now she’s going to go back to chasing up leads, because Evelyn is in no condition to help. Because Judy released her, she’s been able to pay off her debt to Vik, and now she’s scraping up funds to pay Rogue for help and trying to talk Hakemura out of that fucking parade because that idiot keeps trying to get himself killed and she has to stand by to haul his ass out of the fire.

[marypsue]

Steve and Robin's less-than-excellent ET Adventure for the "post a snippet" ask meme! Just going off the title, it sounds magnificent

Oh my god, so that one is actually the very first working title for the fic I’ve also been referring to as the Monster Stranger Things Longfic! I was also debating calling it Homecoming and then Homecomings for a hot minute before settling on what is now its final title, the road goes ever on!

As you may imagine by the evolution of the working title, it has...ballooned from my original idea. It started out as a silly canon-divergence AU idea that was very #Steve Harrington Has Powers-centric, picked up a secondary plot about El dealing with the loss of Hopper and her powers, and then just fucking snowballed into an entire alternate season 4 (or maybe it’s more accurate to say season 3.5) complete with character arcs for everybody, Big Bads, chapter titles, new locales and characters, an 80s soundtrack, an El-makeover scene, and a Mr. Clarke cameo. I have been beating my brains out on this fic for nearly a year and I am a chapter and a half away from a finished draft, and then I have a number of edits and a bunch of interstitial scenes to add, and then I am going to post it and stop thinking about it and maybe finish one of my existing posted WIPs for a change. 

Also, you did say ‘post a snippet’, did you not? :3

...

Robin wakes up with a start.

Her alarm is blaring, and the sun pouring in around the curtains feels like a hammer to the head. There’s a coppery taste in the back of her mouth, and a tight, tugging feeling in the skin over her top lip and around her left nostril. When she scratches at it, dried blood clumps under her fingernails and flakes off onto her sheets.

Robin sighs, and smacks her alarm off before she rolls out of bed, heading for the bathroom to wash her face. She can’t say she’s a fan of this new routine.

She stares blankly into the mirror as she brushes her teeth, trying to remember what about her nightmare had freaked her out so bad. It’s weird. She’d half-expected to have nightmares about being locked up and held captive, about the Russians doing whatever fucked-up shit her mind can throw up, about the meat-monster and the guy it had taken over. About people she knows turning out to be – what’d the kids call it – flayed. Robin has, in fact, come up with some really creative nightmare scenarios, and that’s just in her waking hours. Maybe she should start writing horror stories.

It is weird, though. Her actual nightmares aren’t anything like that. Actually, Robin’s not sure how they’re related to what happened at the mall at all.

They’ve all been pretty much the same so far. Or, at least, what Robin can remember of them has been. She’s alone. It’s dark. She’s not sure where she is, but wherever it is, it’s big. And silent. And empty. And wet. She’s not sure what that’s about, but the ground’s always all wet, like she’s standing in a shallow puddle or a room with a washing machine that’s overflowed. And it’s completely dark.

It’s not that scary. When she thinks about it while she’s awake, anyway. But – when she’s there?

Robin can’t shake the feeling that there’s something out there, in that endless, featureless dark. That whatever it is, it’s looking for her. Coming for her.

That it’s only a matter of time before it finds her.

She doesn’t know what happens when it does. Something tells her that she doesn’t want to be there to find out.

Robin spits toothpaste foam and blood in the sink, rinses until her spit no longer comes out rusty pink. She checks the alarm clock on her bedstand. Half an hour until she has to meet Steve for lunch.

She swallows down the twinge of guilt that the thought of Steve gives her. She really shouldn’t have brought up the Russians to get him to shut up about her plans for the fall. He’d sounded so spooked on the phone.

But it’s not like she doesn’t know what that’s like. And it’s not like she made it up just to get him off her back. She could swear she’s seen the same truck in the parking lot outside the strip mall every day this past week, but she’s never seen the driver go into or come out of any of the stores. There’s an odd, hollow quality to all her phone calls that she doesn’t remember ever having been there before. And maybe weird rustling in the bushes is just the local wildlife, but…

“Is it still paranoia if they really are out to get you?” she asks her reflection. Unhelpfully, Mirror Robin has no words of great wisdom to offer. Steve was right, though. She does look like shit.

Robin squints at her reflection, sticks out her tongue, crosses her eyes, and then grabs her brush and starts to work it through her hair.

[luminousbeansarewe]

what are your takes/version of how the sequel trilogy went down? because i also have my own version in my head, not.... that, but im really interested in the ideas other people have had for it

hoo boy there’s a lot of ground to cover here lmao i will try to keep them as short as i can... i also enjoy multiple versions of events and outcomes for the sequels as long as they’re in-character so i’m not trying to say no other version of the sequels is good or cool bc only a sith deals in absolutes amirite? (i won’t apologize for that dumb joke.) first the jumping-off points:

first of all, i fully support Force-sensitive Finn. even if he didn’t become a full-blown Jedi, if the entire concept of the Jedi was reforged and we don’t see him become the kind of Jedi we saw in the prequels (more on that later), i see him as someone who was attuned to the Force in a way that is similar to how i conceive of Barriss; empathetic to the suffering and joy of others. this would drive him to defect from the Empire and fear it, too. i also saw him becoming a reluctant leader for the rebellion, and there’s a GREAT fic which i’ll link here that riffs on the idea that he creates a spark within the stormtrooper ranks and more and more of them begin to defect... which i love

Rey being a nobody is cool to me. the ONE character moment where she became super relatable for me was when she realized how frightened she was of her own Force abilities. but i don’t think she has to be the legacy of Palps to have that. she doesn’t need supercharged powers to be spooked by them in a post-Jedi Order world where the most recent memory anybody has of the Force is Vader. (also Rey being a Kenobi seems more out of character for Obi-Wan than anything else lol he was pretty committed to the ways of the Order even after they were destroyed, plus he already had one kid to furtively watch over... just imo). this also ties into my expansion on the Force.

Poe being not a carbon copy of Han. i think Leia looked after him, found him somehow after she sent Ben to the Jedi Academy and was a motherly figure in his life. i like the idea that he was a little shit, and she’s the one who taught him to turn his reactive defiance of authority into bravery when fighting for the rebels. i think he looked up to her, wanted to be a leader like her. i saw him in the position of generals like Akbar by the end, as he learns to balance risk-taking with steady leadership. I wanted to see that growth, how those leaders are formed, see Leia get to impart her wisdom to someone. (also i fully support Finn/Poe and Finn/Rey/Poe, i’m not a committed shipper so i’m down with no romance at all between them but those ships are choice af and Stormpilot is all Oscar Isaac wanted anyway, so...) plus can u imagine the dichotomy of Ben the fallen son with Poe, the “adopted” son who became what Ben couldn’t? the guilt of Leia for not knowing how to teach her son about the Force, doing better half-raising a nobody who had the same shitty attitude as Han when they met but no Force ability? THIS IS JUICY CHARACTER CONTENT

Rose was given cheesy lines to introduce an important topic: that fighting is all well and good but throwing away your principles defeats the purpose of the fight in the first place (an important theme in the Clone Wars era, too.) she was there to be the voice of the truly little people in the gffa, who we don’t hear much about in the other trilogies. Finn’s sensitivity puts him at risk of the sorrow-to-hate arc i described for Barriss; Rose is there to be the empathy that sustains hope rather than becomes a crushing weight. i love the idea that she might rally volunteers from blue-collar places (like... Lothal, for example?) and spearhead the notion that the New Republic should be very different from the old one, calling out the fact that working conditions didn’t change with the shift from republic to empire and the First Order simply took it to an extreme that left her and her sister with nothing else to lose.

Ben Solo, hoo boy. so here’s the thing, we don’t KNOW Ben Solo. we were expected to want him to be redeemed because he was the son of Han and Leia, and that’s it. that’s lazy as fuck. him killing Han in the first movie (if it happened it should have been in movie #2, that’s how fucking second acts work) was an excuse to shock people, subvert the ‘i can’t kill my own father’ thing, and make sure we knew he was “evil” even though we’re supposed to also want a redemption arc? you have to read the Rise of Kylo Ren comics to learn that he was a) hounded by the voice of Snoke in his head from childhood, manipulated by it, which is horrific bc it’s like grooming... or b) that he felt HUGE pressure as a legacy Force-user to save the galaxy, lead the New Jedi Order, etc. these are much more empathy-generating and we should have learned them in TFA. echoes of Anakin much? which is why i think him being redeemed in a way other than self-sacrifice (which made sense for Vader given his long history of being a terrible person, knowing it was too late for him in the end, and really just wanting to save his son rather than “become good again”) is more interesting than him just falling (which is too much the same as the prequels.)

it should have been Finn’s call, a moment of Truth that held the balance of Finn as either falling prey to darkness or learning forgiveness, whether or not Kylo got redeemed. Finn and Rey working together to get to that point while Rose and Poe took on the military aspect of the Big Finale would have been great. Finn with a lightsaber to Kylo’s throat, feeling the temptation to murder him instead of making him face what he’s become in a meaningful way? Rey trying to urge him away from darkness as she’s been tempted before, but this is the first time Finn’s really been tested, and he was the one who so often reminded her of her own humanity? Rey calling up Rose’s point of creating a new paradigm instead of recreating the old one, of Poe’s growth or Leia’s willingness to take Ben back showing it’s possible? shiiiiiiit

the rest is going under a cut!

SO... given those things as a basis...

there being no scene where Force-ghost Anakin bops Kylo on the head (but you know, more subtly and with gorgeous metaphor ofc) was a travesty. we needed some version of that, also imo that reaffirms that Anakin was the chosen one... as him redirecting his grandson away from that path would be restoring hella balance

Snoke should have had his own fucked up backstory, if he was even there at all. a dark sider fucking with Ben Solo is reasonable to me, but Snoke could have been someone who looked up to Palps as much as Kylo supposedly looked up to Vader. that would have been interesting... maybe there are multiple “nobodies” who are being touched by the Force, just like there always were in the prequels era, but some are going dark with no Jedi to try to convince them otherwise? or, maybe Snoke’s life was ruined by the Empire and he chose to become the beast that harmed him, whereas Kylo becomes the version where you think you want to do that but then realize that it’s just as bad and you still have empathy and regret what you’ve done?

Thrawn being the main military antagonist, since they couldn’t be arsed to make Hux into anything but a sniveling baby fascist (despite his really upsetting backstory of an abusive father, also found in the comics... noticing a trend here?). Thrawn was already established and beloved in the legends. why would you not use him. whY?? he’s like a foil for Tarkin. contention between him and the Force-users in charge (Snoke and Kylo) would have been VERY interesting, esp with the character of Thrawn in the new canon seeing the Empire as a ‘necessary evil’ and now maybe having the potential to make it into something else? how’s JOINING WITH THE NEW REPUBLIC for a subversion of the classic tropes, Rian?????? you fucker????

if Thrawn’s history is “too storied” for a bunch of cowards to "fit” into a new movie trilogy, invent another antivillain to take Thrawn’s place whose history is a little more concurrent with the sequel era... you cowards

Luke fucking off after his failure isn’t out of character IMO. he was THE STRONGEST JEDI EVER and his star pupil still fell? maybe he broke under the same pressure Ben did. maybe that’s what allows him to reach back out towards Kylo and reconnect, admitting his failure. i want to hear more about him cutting himself off from the Force bc i LOVE KOTOR 2 and Kreia, but maybe that’s too much for one trilogy to delve into meaningfully, i dunno

Han fucking off after Ben wrecked the temple isn’t OOC either. i think Han was always a little frightened of the Force, the way many non-sensitives are. I think he was critical as a father, because he was critical of himself and Han is the king of projection. i wanted more of the dysfunctional relationship between him and Ben.

if Kylo kills Han, the scene needs to show more of the fact that Kylo actually regretted it, which Snoke only alludes to in TLJ, foreshadowing his future. i rewrote Han’s death scene for a friend and got a lot of good feedback about it so maybe i’ll post it here sometime. i can get behind a version where he doesn’t die, too, i just haven’t fleshed it out in my own head.

i like the idea that the Jedi Order needed to be remade, and that Luke saw the failure of the old order when he saw Ben turn like so many of the Jedi in the Order did. i like that Rey and Finn might spearhead this, and maybe Kylo’s role is to know the dark side intimately enough now that he can actually teach how it works, how to deal with it... how inevitable its temptation is. because...

in this canon, i don’t think the Force has light or darkness. i think it’s Force-users who do. it is their internal landscapes which cause them to “fall” or be redeemed or not, after all. Finn can attest to the same, so can Rey and Luke... so like, all the Jedi need DBT therapy or something i guess. lmao hold the dialectic, you nerds

the Force has shown time and time again that it cannot be “balanced” so maybe it is ourselves who need to become balanced instead

the Force is chaos, a never-ending series of colliding butterfly effects that to us will always and inevitably be seen as turmoil, cause and effect on a cosmic scale. if you drink too greedily of its power, or try to exert total control over it, by its nature it will consume you because it is beyond your mortal ken. whatever you hunger for, the force will give you more and more of it until you are overwhelmed, drowning in it

this is why peace was a central teaching of the Jedi... peace, the antithesis of chaos, which can only ever be created from within, the eye of the storm which must be sought time and time again

anyway thanks for coming to my ted talk? i’m always down to hear other people’s ideas for these characters tbh. and always down to get more into these topics if you want to know more... esp as it relates to the failure of the Jedi Order, or KOTOR 2 and Revan and Kreia, or OF COURSE my OCs because Sol has a very interesting relationship with the Force.

thank you for this ask lordimperius!! ^_^